I lean towards libertarianism and I oppose congestion pricing because I think all the claimed benefits are just marketing and it’s simply a new tax. If it does improve conditions in Manhattan significantly, I’ll admit I was wrong.
We don’t have to guess what the future holds. London has had congestion pricing for about 22 years now. Its been largely successful.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. E-ink (like Kindle and Kobo) are far superior to backlit LCD screens of old school PDA and modern phones.
Weirdly, I thought I wouldn’t like an eReader but I got it for the purposes of future commuting. Turns out I like it a lot more than physical books.
I’ve found Reading ebooks on a portable screen a better experience for myself than paper since late 90s Palm Pilot (Handspring Visor, for me) days.
Being able to carry dozens (or now hundreds) of books with you is so convenient and if you don’t like the book you’re reading, you don’t need to go somewhere to get a different one. Its replacement is already in your hand. Reading paperbacks for hours isn’t comfortable for me as it either takes two hands, or one hand with a difficult “guitar chord” like hand shape. Hardbacks are heavy to carry. Ereaders also can produce their own light (and at VERY low levels if you want). Paper books means finding and staying next to a reflective light source.
Paper books are great for collectables, but if I’m going to read, I much prefer an ebook.
I had a connection through Geneva and while my international mobile phone coverage covered the UK and Germany, but Switzerland wasn’t included. The gate for the connecting flight was through an unsecured area, so I had to show a boarding pass again, except the United app which had the digital boarding pass couldn’t connect (because of no internet access) and I almost missed my connecting flight.
Luckily I had printed out the boarding passes, but they were buried in my carry on. So I had to unload the whole thing to find it, but I did. If I had only a digital boarding pass I would have been out-of-luck.
Further…
" In one note shared by the police, Sergeant Livelsberger said that people should “try peaceful means first but be prepared to fight” to get Democrats out of the federal government. "
Err, didn’t Democrats get largely defeated in the last election (executive and both houses of Congress, and GOP already has the Supreme Court)? So didn’t peaceful means “work” to get him what he wanted, and then a couple of months later he does this?
This is looking less like a political message and more of general mental illness. He knew he was suffering but didn’t want to seek help. Is his actions the result when mental health treatment is too “woke” to him?
Yep. The problem is that they keep trying to push it as some sort of workspace for home or office.
It’s a shitty workspace. Nobody wants that box strapped to their face and work in a cartoonish porthole view world.
It will eventually be great for a virtual workspace, but the technology isn’t there yet. The resolution on headsets has to get several orders of magnitude better, and the headsets need to get several orders of magnitude lighter/more comfortable.
I just love the people who refuse to get a Quest device (formerly Oculus) because it’s meta. And meta bad. But then they have their entire life connected in a web of google and/or Microsoft.
Meta is a walled garden. You have to give them everything to get anything. Google and/or Microsoft you only have to give them some to get some, so you can choose if what you want is worth what you get from them. Meta is all or nothing. So for Meta, I choose nothing.
Is there anything in the law preventing the insurance company from giving a customer a “go away” premium level? As in “Okay, you’re forcing us to offer a policy in a place we feel we’re going to lose money? $1m/month ought to cover it, you sure you want us to insure you, Mr. Homeowner?”
The vehicle was rented through the car rental company Turo
The truck used in New Orleans earlier today was also rented through Turo. Is this a coincidence?
Roberts also cited disinformation, exacerbated by social media and in some cases hostile foreign governments, as a problem, as it can “undermine confidence in the court system.”
No John, the erosion of confidence is your own courts doing. You refuse to hold yourself to ethical standards every other branch of government does.
If we’re looking for any consistency from trump, the one aspect would be his making snap decisions that benefit him in the moment without forethought to the consequences or who else it effects. Any agreement trump might have made with musk would be worth the entire value of the McDonald’s burger wrapper it was likely written on.
These are the types of articles that really hurt trump. The ones that don’t even mention him.
Why would an article on President Musk need to mention his vice president?
Trump just needs to lie and his voters show up. Game theory would say these are the easy votes that Democrats should go after.
Except that completely ignores the context of the situation in that “Democratic lies” aren’t going to be seen as appealing by right wingers in the way that “Republican lies” would be. Democrats did exactly this in the 2024 election and it blew up in their face.
If your statements are correct, Democrats don’t show up for “Democratic lies”. History shows voters stay home. I’m not suggesting Democrats use “Democratic lies”. You’re right, those don’t appeal to right-wing voters. I’m suggesting Democrats use right-wing lies. Right-wing voters show up for right-wing lies.
Since the GOP voters don’t actually care about policy passed during the actual term, progressive polices could be voted in by the elected leadership. When the next election occurs, the Democrat leadership simply needs to lie to these voters again. Its already worked for Trump a second time.
Again, you’re proving my argument. Democrat voters are too hard to convince to come to the polls to stand against the coming fascism and kleptocracy.
They’re not hard to convince to come out and vote, there’s just nobody out there worth voting for.
Inaction is an action. Those voters chose to let others (GOP votes) choose the leadership of the nation, which ushered in a second Trump administration.
Trump got about the same number of votes as he did in 2020. Trump didn’t win because former Democratic voters switched sides. He won because people who voted for Biden in 2020 didn’t vote at all.
You’re proving my point. Trump just needs to lie and his voters show up. Game theory would say these are the easy votes that Democrats should go after.
Based on what? No progressive policies were on the table this election.
Lower the costs of child care, health care, long term care, and housing aren’t progressive? Strengthening Medicare and Social Security aren’t either? Protecting reproductive freedom, civicl rights, and imposing term limits on Supreme Court justices aren’t either?
That’s the winning strategy when you’re an avowed right-winger trying to court right-wing votes. When you’re supposed to represent “the left,” spouting a bunch of right-wing rhetoric and courting endorsements from people like Dick Cheney is a surefire way to lose as evidenced by the fact that Harris lost so many votes.
Again, you’re proving my argument. Democrat voters are too hard to convince to come to the polls to stand against the coming fascism and kleptocracy. GOP voters require no actual delivery of policy supporting campaign statements, or if so the most simply lip service will do. The GOP voters show up on campaign statements alone. The lesson is that these are the voters to target to get elected.
No, many of the people who voted made the hard, informed decision that a slow trickle of sometimes defective tweaks to the status quo is preferable to kakistocracy.
I don’t know how you can look at Trumps past behavior in and out of office along with the his current cabinet nominees and think it is anything but a kakistocracy for the incoming Trump administration.
So you’re saying the winning strategy for Democrats is completely throw out policy ideals and adopt a “loyalty first” strategy which the GOP did and won the presidency, congress, and control of the supreme court? I hadn’t considered that, but it appears to work, so I can’t disagree with it.
You seem to be assuming that people who were going to vote for Harris decided to vote for Trump.
I’m not. Those voters stayed home. The ones that voted like to be lied to. A Democrat candidate can choose to lie just like Trump does. Same voters in play. These are the ones that vote and elect presidents.
Democrats could actually win an election or two by running the Republican playbook of lying through their teeth.But ultimately that would be a losing strategy.
Trump was elected twice on this. So clearly it works.
Democrats are not like Republicans, they not only want to hear policies they agree with, they expect to see them implemented.
Its as you said, Democrats won’t vote for it, but a Democrat candidate doesn’t need Democrat votes anymore to get elected. If you just need to make every opportunistic empty promise to get elected (as Trump did), then that is clearly the winning strategy now. This is what Americans want. They voted for it.
The GOP, unlike the DNC, absolutely care what their voters think. That’s the whole point of the culture war project.
Of course they care about what voters think. They need to know what to say to lie to them. It doesn’t mean they’ll actually intact policies that will help Americans. The most working class Americans might get is minorities being subjugated more, which for some is a win.
That’s rather the point isn’t it? Republicans lie constantly about everything but those lies are about things their voters want. Democrats meanwhile tell their voters that they’ll get what Democrats are gracious enough to give them and be happy they’re not as bad as the Republicans. In either case neither party is delivering what progressive voters are asking for. Then Democrats wonder why they have voter turnout problems.
But again, the lesson Democrats need to learn is that American voters just care about what the candidate says during the campaign, not actual policy delivered if elected. So Democrats should adopt the same method of the GOP, simply straight up lying to the electorate and the Democrats will have a better chance of winning.
People are sick and tired of showing up to vote for the lesser evil
I’m not buying this as a reason they voted for Trump. If they saw Harris as the “lesser evil” then that would acknowledge they are actively voting for the “greater evil”.
The result being either things only get very slightly worse or much worse depending on who wins. It’s particularly hard for people to justify investing that time and effort when they’re struggling to just survive day to day and keep a roof over their head and food in their stomachs.
So they vote for the one that will make it MUCH worse?
I and many others tried our best this last election to keep Trump out of office but we can all only do so much when the Democrats are working against us every step of the way. We need an actual progressive running on progressive policies out of the Democrats if they want to win an election, because running as diet conservative isn’t cutting it anymore.
Again, that appears to be the wrong message. Voters didn’t want any measure of progressive policies. They voted for Trump with his regressive policies. Democrats apparently need to do the same to win votes.
So yeah, people are sick and tired of Democrats that only ever seem to be able to successfully deliver things wealthy corporate donors are asking for.
I disagree with your assessment, but that is exactly what Trump is going to do, and he got the votes, so its the winning strategy apparently.
You might need to work on your reading comprehension.
It did what it was intended for decades, and recently the original symptom is present again. What you also apparently missed is the net total of people able to enter London has increased since then except they are largely served by 3x in pubic buses as well as 137% increase in bicycle use. So many many more people are being served in London today than they were back then, and the worst of the problem is only what it was about 22 years ago. That is an amazing success. Further, we have London to look at for an archetype for modifications to a plan for New York to possibly make it even better/longer lasting in New York than 20+ years. Even if we can’t, 20+ years for a fix for a problem of this scale is an amazing success.
Your statement alone looks comically bad. I paraphrase your response as: “We have a problem today in Manhattan which has a solution in the form of congestion pricing, but that solution will potentially need to be adjusted in 20 years time. So the best option is to NOT use the solution that will buy us two decades of a fix.”