• 13 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • The problem as I see it is not that they have been critical of Biden, but that they are not ringing the alarm bells loudly enough over some of the batshit garbage Trump has been spewing recently. “Dictator on day one”, cutting off funding for schools that require vaccinations, etc.

    It is reminiscent of the “both sides” criticism moderates get — in an effort to provide even coverage, they are functionally giving the crazy and the corrupt a free pass.




  • There is room for a lot of good faith debate here, but FWIW I reckon It is a mistake for the left to prematurely roll over and telegraph an inevitable Biden vote (whether on this or any other issue) just because Trump would be worse. The time for that utilitarian calculus is much closer to November. Right now, if you want policy change — you have to raise hell.

    As much as you love to hate ‘em, this is what the Tea Party and their ideological successors got right about wielding power within their own party. When the time comes, by all means circle the wagons and vote pragmatically, but during primary season you have to come across as a credible threat to the party power structure.

    I’ll personally be willing to (attempt!) to shame my progressive friends into voting blue, say, around October. In the meantime, I am proud of folks for speaking their mind and standing up for human rights.





  • Yes, judging by the tenor or the questions it probably won’t even be close. They may end up ruling that Section 5 requires enabling legislatIon to be passed before state enforcement of Section 3 can proceed, but who knows. I think the fix is in on this one, regardless of the actual merits of the legal theories.

    I’ll also go out on a limb and say that even though I am viscerally with Colorado here, a victory could easily turn into chaos once GOP-controlled courts in battleground states start engaging in a tit-for-tat. I can already hear the MTG-caliber arguments about humane border policy equating to insurrection.

    The upcoming immunity case is going to be way more problematic for Trump, I think.






  • Too early to tell for sure, but Georgia is starting to look grim for Trump, Inc. The state RICO statute by its nature lends itself to rolling up these “wink, wink, nudge, nudge” type conspiracies that are hard to prove individually but taken together show a coordinated pattern of conduct. With every co-conspirator who rolls over and takes a plea deal in return for testimony, it gets easier to prove, and more worrisome for those left.

    Open question is whether the Fulton County DA can prove the requisite RICO predicate acts. I think they are trying to pin them on false statements and an unlawful attempt to influence an official, as well as the county election office interference, but it would be interesting to see a dispassionate analysis that evaluates the likelihood of success with those allegations.

    Also unclear is what impact Meadows’ testimony in the Federal case will have, if any, on the Georgia proceedings.




  • It is one thing to hop on the internet and complain about the system (like we are doing now), but another to actually do something about it.

    Unionizing - and then actually striking for better pay and conditions - are the most immediate ways to move the ball. As he says, workers have not historically improved their conditions by working harder, but by refusing to work en masse.


  • As pointed out time and time again, the MAGA caucus is interested in maximum chaos for social media clout, not governing. It will be interesting to see how much of the ‘mainstream’ GOP goes along with this idiocy.

    I get the sense they are pretty spineless, because after all, who wants to anger the base and have to give up the fancy Washington restaurants to return to the sticks and live among the rubes once the inevitable MAGA primary challenger takes you out?



  • The truth is, the biggest pharmaceutical companies aren’t really drug development companies at all: they’re marketing, lobbying, and litigation firms with patent portfolios. While Big Pharma holds vast portfolios of existing patents for prescription drugs, the innovation pipeline for new drugs actually has very little to do with Big Pharma. In reality, public sources — especially the NIH — fund the basic research that makes scientific breakthroughs. Then small, boutique biotech and pharmaceutical firms take that publicly generated knowledge and do the final stages of research, like running clinical trials, that get the drugs to market. The share of small companies in the supply of new drugs is huge, and it’s still growing. Fully two-thirds of new drugs now come from these small companies, up from one-third twenty years ago. It is not the research labs of Pfizer that are developing new drugs.

    This is completely true. The majority of research, at least for life saving drugs and not baldness cures, takes place at universities and small research firms, much of it funded by the NIH. If the investigators are successful, they spin off a company or license the IP.

    Big drug companies then step in, long after the initial “drug discovery” is done. They have captured the regulatory system and, yes, can fund and run Phase 3 trials with their deep pockets and armies of bureaucrats, but at that point they are acting more like record labels, extracting rent (loosely defined) from a convoluted regulatory and distribution system that they themselves had a hand in creating.

    Fuck ‘em.