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berlinerbaer

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Everything posted by berlinerbaer

  1. My second stint at UC Berkeley was as a postdoc where, like all other postdocs and many other staff positions, I was actually represented by the UAW. This was in the physical sciences, so not the kind of crowd that would join the picket line alongside Humanities. The UAW was entitled to a small fraction of my salary, even if I wasn't a member, but my health insurance was badass. "Hi, I'm Todd. Your UAW representative. Are you interested in becoming a member of the union? We have monthly meetings and your monthly membership dues would be XX." "No. I'm too busy." "I understand. Are you aware that xx of your monthly pay goes to supporting us regardless of your membership?" "Yeah. I'm cool with that. Keep up the good work. But really, I'm too busy." My experience may be unique, having worked in Libtown, USA. Now, as a researcher in Corporate America with a family who thinks my healthcare premiums and deductibles are too damn high, I'd be down with union membership. Still, I think the incubator of the concept is earlier in the professional career, i.e. in academic environments, and those folks are too overworked to care, and too beholden to unsympathetic faculty. /csb
  2. If you must know, I saw a comment on Youtube that she apologized to Putin on Twitter and went to go find it. No such luck but she certainly is having a moment.
  3. She is melting down on Twitter. I checked and refuse to repost, and now I need a shower.
  4. How about the one who was actually born in Ukraine?
  5. What are y'all's thoughts on Larry Hogan running for the MD senate seat? Some polls have him ahead of his hypothetical Dem opponents.
  6. Joe told Bibi he'll be on his own in any counterattack. https://www.axios.com/2024/04/14/biden-netanyahu-iran-israel-us-wont-support
  7. Yes. The ball was in Iran's court.
  8. We caught the show in Llano and the clouds did the whole disappearance thing about 30 minutes before the show and stayed mostly away until the finish. Just badass. I'm thankful my family let me drag them a lot farther away that originally planned in order to find someplace clearer. Game balls go to the DFW NWS page and their cloud cover predictor app, and the restaurants, coffee shops, and taprooms of Llano that seemed well prepared for the influx of people. The red color comes from a single wavelength of light from the emission of hydrogen atoms, called H-alpha, at 656 nanometers. The sun's outer atmosphere shows this luminescent light emission due to the input of magnetic energy, rather than the incandescent light emission seen on the much denser surface.
  9. Ahh, whoops. I blame the cocktail I'm taking fighting the flu.
  10. If that's a real screen grab above, then it seems like you have experience in freely posting your number onto the WWW.
  11. A new meme is needed. It's too bad Corvettes are only two-seaters.
  12. Most of them would vote for it under normal circumstances. It's on-brand and understandable that House progressives don't want to ram a bill through in this manner that gives funding to Israel. (Mea culpa if the discharge petition isn't the Ukraine/Israel/Palestine/Taiwan conglomerate foreign aid package that was part of the dead border bill.)
  13. The comment upthread regarding the Uyghurs is pertinent. Is TikTok filtering searches and restricting content covering issues sensitive to the Chinese? History suggests that it probably is, which is admittedly problematic. Is there any evidence TikTok has been slanting content toward one political party or promoting content about election fraud or otherwise attempting to disenfranchise voters? That's an immensely bigger problem but also much more of a stretch. China has largely been agnostic towards US partisanship. If this becomes law, it will be really unpopular among young people, a key Democratic coalition. No wonder the Republican-led House passed it so easily. I think the Senate needs to think long and hard about this bill, as they should, and Biden needs to come to his senses. He needs to hear from Dems at the state and local level who use it effectively to reach younger voters. And if the other option is letting Musk or Mnuchin get their hands on it, hell-to-the fuckin' no! Given the choice between TikTok being ran by the Chinese or by MAGA, I'll take the Chinese anytime every time.
  14. The hearing was a dud, apparently, just like they all have been. I say let Trump-world get involved as often as they wish. Stakes are scary high, but these dipshits can't get out of their own way.
  15. There is no universe where Garvey would have placed any worse than second.
  16. My restaurant eavesdropping just a few days ago revealed a man who thought it would be great for Trump to pick Tim Scott as his VP in order to lock up the black vote. Because it's that easy.
  17. Bolded is absolutely true. There are Republican reps that need to be shown the door and a D sweep on the Senate ticket in November would have made that easier. But the idea of outside influence propping up Garvey at the expense of Porter is some next level Leftist dooming bullshit. Let's not pretend there aren't actually Republican voters in California. I think there are more who live there than in Texas. In any case, Schiff and Garvey both doubled up Porter's margin. There's no way she could have closed that gap, dark money or not. The real problem was Lee running and crowding the progressive lane. She probably would have gotten my vote if I still lived in CA. East Bay represent!
  18. Democrats in coherence: why that's bad for Biden. - NYT, probably
  19. I'm considering voting in an R primary for the first time ever, just to stick it to Cheeto, Rafael, etc, but I'm not willing to go down that path if I'll get my mailbox filled with batshit GOP flyer trash. What has been peoples' experience?
  20. The father of a special needs child showing up at a Nazi rally, AND bringing the kid? That can't be real.
  21. We can debate the accuracy of the D-R head-to-heads, like Trump +7 over Biden. That result is obviously subject to the perceived partisan lean of the sample set versus the actual partisan lean, which is of course unknown. The comparisons within party, OTOH, such as between Biden and Allred, are likely to be more accurate because the partisan lean of the sample set doesn't really matter as much. IIRC, the last poll had Allred running ahead of Biden by a similar margin. A national environment like that in 2020, when Trump beat Biden by 5.5 in Texas, could see Allred beat Cruz.
  22. I read lots of screaming on here about the Left, and I get it. The Left is VERY online and punches way way above its weight in communication capability. You'd think they would be the bloc to make or break the Democrats. Here's the thing: politically they are irrelevant, as the following evidence will support. Certainly not enough to warrant the hand wringing on this board. There just aren't that many of them, at least those who vote. Biden has been crushing the primaries up until now. If the Left was such a large presence, surely they could drag themselves to the polls and vote for Marianne Williamson at a greater clip than the 2% she has been getting? Nicely matches the 2% Tulsi Gabbard was drawing back in 2020. Now, Bernie had a good showing in the primaries in 2020 as a Leftist, but he at least has some responsibility and mainstream cred after being in the Senate like 20 years. He heads the Senate Finance Committee, FFS. That takes the edge off. Next comes the Border Bill, which - let's be honest - was a fucking awful conservative's wet dream of a bill. It had the potential to be a total wedge issue for the entire left-of-center crowd. But most Democrats would have happily voted for it and Biden was going to sign it. Why? Because they know damn well that the number of independents/moderates they could have courted vastly outnumbered the amount of Leftists they would have pissed off. It was a total poison pill but worth it electorally, because the Left is loud but otherwise inconsequential. Now it's the Republicans, in their extreme idiocy, who decided to not only torpedo their own Democrat subversion efforts, but to OWN it. Fucking clowns. There are Republican strategists tearing their hair out right now. AOC is basically a team player at this point. Ditto Bernie and Warren. Sadly, they have both stopped talking about single payer healthcare, but there is a simple explanation.
  23. Lol Biden has had a reputation of making gaffes for decades. From 2008:
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