Williamson is an absolute loon and Walz wants to stay governor.

Agree, but still slightly higher than Biden, imo.

Politicians aren’t activists, you’re just confused on how the system works. If you want politicians to change the only thing you can do is apply pressure through their constituents. That means changing minds and motivating people to action. Politicians want to stay in office and largely will be swayed by a shift in public opinion. The right wing is winning because their brand of crazy is highly motivated. It’s easier to moan on the Internet than change minds and change laws.

But changing laws is not as hard as most people believe. A handful of motivated people can change a state law simply by convincing people in their district to call and apply pressure on their behalf. Constituent lobbying is incredibly effective, 10 people convince 10 people each to apply pressure to the right people and suddenly a 45/55 vote becomes 51/49 seemingly over night. I’ve been a part of that more than once to great success. You just gotta put in the work.

Changing minds is harder though, we are competing against media conglomerates that mostly don’t care about truth. But it can happen with work.

Over time that work translates into different politicians, the state I’m in (Minnesota) keeps inching left a hair at a time because the work that is needed keeps happening. It doesn’t happen fast, but it does happen.

What I’m saying is, if you only show up on voting day and just complain all other days don’t be surprised when the country moves right. Political change happens every single day of the year, voting is just the political act that reflects that work. We get wet farts like Biden because little of the work is done by the left the make substantive change to our culture. Much of the left views whining as a political act and no more.

Parties don’t decide where the country moves politically, citizens do. If you want people to move left, you have to put in the work to change minds. You don’t sway people at the ballot box. All voting is, is a poll of what people already think and parties try to match their candidates to that poll. The reason our politicians are terrible, is because our people are.

A public servant that gets off on enforcing an unjust disproportionate entrenched system. Executioners are public servants by definition too, should I respect them as well? Prosecutors are mostly goobers.

It’s not that simple, if gaining undecided votes comes at the cost of more votes than they gain then you’re not going to win. That has been the struggle of the Dems for decades on every progressive issue.

Most of those where cops only larping as military. Military operations are a completely different thing. No country wants to fight their own people. Your own logistics, intelligence, supply chains, and financing all rely, in part, on the very people you are fighting… You can’t trust or count on the chain of command at any point, at any point your keys to power can turn on you and you’re dead. Leaders with half a brain know you usually don’t have a long life attacking your own people.

Domestic wars are never pretty, no matter how powerful the military. Most people in the military don’t serve to shoot their own country. Countries don’t want to damage their own infrastructure or enflame their own people. Oligarchs won’t support a war that damages their bottom line. People vastly over simply how easy it would be to stop an armed resistance.

Thank you, I think she believes she is not protected. I’ll look into this.

My sister in law is blind in one eye, but because she has one working eye she has no disability protection as far as I know. She still can’t drive because she has no depth perception and it’s very dangerous. It’s made navigating going to work difficult over the years, often working the same place my brother did so he could drive her. Luckily her current employer works with her and lets her work from home. But a decade ago no one would have dreamed of letting her work from home.

Realistically it’s only those 1-2 days after snowing when things are still being cleared that it’s an issue. I bike commute 52 weeks a year in Minnesota and there were only 3 days this year I regretted biking. 2 snow days and one heavy cold rain. I can always supplement another option on those days.

I do and it’s honesty much better than those 33+ c days. When it’s below freezing, I wear thermal high tops, snow pants, down jacket, face mask and ski goggles. Its perfectly comfortable.

I don’t doubt anything you are saying, but it’s worth mentioning that (iirc) 80%+ of severe injury and death on a bicycle is caused by motor vehicles, or complications of motor vehicle involvement. People very rarely have severe injury or death on dedicated bike infrastructure. The primary risk on bicycles is motor vehicles. If you remove motor vehicles, there is still risks, but someone might decide that risk is low enough to forgo a helmet. I don’t feel those people should be called stupid for their choice.

There is considerable evidence that everyone wearing a helmet in a car would save vastly more lives and prevent severe head injury, and yet pretty much no one even considers that as a normal thing to do. The bike helmet thing is therefore just as much a cultural attitude, as it is about safety.

I still use a helmet, and more importantly, visibility gear, on my bicycle in 100% of my rides. I’ve never worn a bike helmet walking or driving in a car, even though my cousin died from a head injury getting hit by a car while walking and my grandma-in-law died of a head injury in a car…

A helmet is only needed if you intend to spend significant time in traffic. Most of the world doesn’t use one.

The math behind using one is a lot more on the margins than people realize. In order for it to save you, it first has to prevent a head injury, and then prevent one that is in the range of severity that makes it useful. The vast majority of bike injuries won’t fall in that range, they’ll either be related to another part of the body, or in the case of high speed crashes from a car, too severe for a helmet to matter. But helmets do give people a false sense of security. Statistically people ride faster and take more risks with a helmet on. Lastly, again statistically, the visibility gear you put on yourself while riding does more to keep you safe in traffic than a helmet. Lights, reflectors, reflective vest, etc.

All this to say, the religiosity with which people proselytize helmets is misplaced. I still wear one, but I don’t judge people who choose not to.

Getting caught up with semantics arguments seems like a waste of energy. Because, genocide or not, for many people impacted by any war with disproportionate power imbalance, it sure as fuck is as horrific as a genocide regardless of how one defines it. (I’m not necessarily criticizing the use of the word by some, I just think many activists get bogged down in defending the use word rather than addressing the horror.)

Any regular person putting significant cash in individual stocks instead of index funds is just gambling. All US broad market index funds beat inflation over every 10 year period since index funds have existed.

Transportation pales in comparison to heating and cooling homes and businesses. The single greatest thing we can do to reduce climate change from a policy standpoint involves reducing that. From work at home, to multi family zoning, to converting business skyscrapers into living space, to increasing efficiency and fossil fuels from energy production. And all that does a lot to improve transportation environmental costs as well.

Under your simplified system a person making 55k brings in less than someone making 49k. Which disincentives getting a raise at that salary range. There is a reason that currently we only tax money over the brackets set.

Progressive taxation isn’t really the problem here though, our low tax on investment profit is. We should also probably enforce a 2% wealth tax on anyone making over a billion dollars.

Plenty of states it’s much higher, in Minnesota the rate is set by the state according to patient need. It’s not unheard of to pay $15k a month as $14k month is the average cost per resident.