According to Harvard Business School, in 1937 J. D. Rockefeller’s net worth amounted to 1.5% of GDP. In today’s wealth, that would amount to about $415.8 billion. And to be honest, I have more faith that the Rockefeller number represents an accurate representation of the real, if not necessarily liquid, wealth that he commanded, whereas rather more of the modern-day billionaires’ wealth is smoke and mirrors based on their own bullshit evaluations of what their assets are theoretically worth.

It’s still a contest between which dragon is lying on top of a bigger hoard of ill-gotten gold, but those gilded age fucks were really historically impressive.

You’ve got to check your card.

Normally the metaphor isn’t this literal.

The idea did occur that I’d better be damn sure that I like whatever honey I’ll be eating for the rest of my life.

Let’s all take a look at how well it worked out when America provided support for the Mujahideen in their war against Russia, but then withdrew that support when it was no longer convenient for us.

A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.

—Mitch Ratcliffe

“Our jobs are hard! We deserve the occasional murder, as a treat!”

Olivia, my eldest daughter, caught measles when she was seven years old. As the illness took its usual course I can remember reading to her often in bed and not feeling particularly alarmed about it. Then one morning, when she was well on the road to recovery, I was sitting on her bed showing her how to fashion little animals out of coloured pipe-cleaners, and when it came to her turn to make one herself, I noticed that her fingers and her mind were not working together and she couldn’t do anything.

“Are you feeling all right?” I asked her.

“I feel all sleepy,” she said.

In an hour, she was unconscious. In twelve hours she was dead.

Roald Dahl, pleading with people to vaccinate their children against measles.

“I don’t know what’s scarier, that it’s happened, or that it happens often enough that there’s a word for it.”

America First, by Dr Seuss (1941)

There’s a quote from a Heinlein book where he talks about how Communists can only exist in places where there are real, not imagined, ills that are not being addressed, and I feel like something similar applies for Trumpists. Their lives have gone wrong somehow, likely driven by forces beyond their control, and they’ve been promised easy answers by a vile con game. I don’t appreciate that they got hoodwinked, but I can understand how it happened.

He literally can’t.

https://i.imgur.com/ZfXN74B.jpeg

“______ Resigns Under Pressure From Trump”

Fuck you, make him work for it! Make him fire you, then sue for wrongful termination! Don’t just politely get out of the way so you can be replaced by some goon who will happily do the horrible thing you’re resigning in protest of!

Use every procedural tool in the box to gum up the works. Demand full debate on every motion. Demand full roll call votes on every vote. Democrats respecting norms and Republicans exploiting them is what got us here, so it’s time to turn that around on them. There should be no weird, underhanded, but technically permitted delay tactic that Democrats aren’t using until they get enough popular support behind them to actually do something meaningful.

My version of this would be to run a campaign on the basis of “You know Joe Manchin, and how he’s an absolute thorn in the side of the Democratic Party? Well, how about we elect a Republican version of him, who is technically a Republican but who is a goddamn pain in the ass for the Republican party! Vote for me, and I’ll live rent free in every Republican’s head and drive them absolutely fucking crazy!”

If 800,000 government workers go on strike just for starters, with who knows how many more in other fields striking in solidarity, there won’t be enough cops in the world to make them all to back to work.

I only just learned about it today, myself. I work that day, but I might be able to shift things around.

I really wish that these protests were more widely shared in advance. I want to be involved, but only getting a couple of days advance warning makes it really hard. I know that sometimes you have to act fast, but if you want your movement to succeed then you’ve got to try to consider the real lives of all of the people who want to help, but are also really limited in their time. Plan protests on weekends, and if you’ve got to protest on a weekday, then plan it way ahead of time and give everyone a chance to plan to be there. I’m sure it looks better to have one big protest with 10X people there than ten protests with 1X people attending.

How does this hold up against a first amendment test?

This is the really real world!