When they own the platform they can use it to serve you catered disinformation.

They can have your data but unless they can also decide what you see as a result, it’s not the same thing.

That’s the difference.

Franken should have been running for President. Smart, incisive, charismatic. Everything we needed.

Fuck.

In the US the ruling party fills lifetime judicial appointments, which means the 4 years of conservative rule can have decades of lasting impact that will thwart any progressive policies that the next leftish government tries to implement.

I’m a pretty progressive guy and I don’t think there’s much in here to disagree with. The only nit I would pick is that inertia isn’t a great argument to keep things the way they are. That is, “we’ve always done it this way” isn’t a great reason to do anything.

Your framing of conservatism is in line with the Eisenhower era when we weren’t linked into this existential crisis about the concept of governance. But for the last twenty years (at least) the American right has been against the very idea that the government should govern.

The left is trying to argue about who it should serve, taking its existence as a precondition, and the right is trying to dismantle it without regard for who it serves. As a result, we’re pretty much irrecoverably talking past each other.

Working down the backlog requires investing in our judicial system, which the cons treat as growing the government and so reflexively oppose. So they’re at the heart of that problem, too.

I saw on one of the newscasts on election night that the overturning of Chevron deference is going to come back to kneecap the whole GOP agenda because they’ll have to pass all their (de)regulatory changes through Congress which will be, as you say, closed.

My wife and I drive almost the same model of Audi, separated by a couple of years. One still has physical buttons for infotainment and one has a touch screen, but both support Android Auto and CarPlay.

I prefer the physical controls for it, because I can glance at the screen and know “turn right two clicks and press down” to get where I want, and then look back at the road while I do it.

I recall they only had like 8 months of a super majority (if you include Manchin) before Ted Kennedy died in office and was replaced by Scott Brown.

I see the couch memes as an extension of “I can see Russia from my house” memes.