I know it will exclude others, but apparently it won't exclude the author. My apologies to anyone who is on a foes list of a friend of mine if you actually wanted to post to this.

The problem is that their reality does not allow them to assign blame to their own. If gas went to $20 per gallon in 2026 it would be Biden's fault. If Russia invaded in 2027 it would be Biden's fault. If Trump was caught in bed with a hooker in 2026 it would be Obama's fault. If Trump died of a heart attack it would be Hillary Clinton's fault.

The party formerly of "personal responsibility" is all about deflecting responsibility onto others. A while ago I saw a perfect summary of it - "Trump cannot fail, he can only be failed".

Well, even slashdot gets something right once in a while. The story was buried in less tech oriented "news" and barely registered any attention.

Story about actual tech here gets less than 80 comments. Story about Trump trolling "teh left" pulls in four times that many as people do the happy dance here. Slashdot is only marginally less biased than fox news.

When I was in undergrad, I pondered med school for a year or so. As I met more pre-med and medical students I realized that path was not for me. AMCAS is deliberately filtering for undergrads who excel at memorization / regurgitation, while unfortunately making life more difficult for scientists, engineers, and other students who actually want to know how things work. This leads to physicians who memorize very specific material and quickly toss aside previously memorized material.

A great example is Organic Chemistry (OChem). Every MD had to take it, and those who did not pull a A in it had a very hard time getting into med school. We could easily identify in class who the pre-med students were based on how they approached studying for the class. Yet the number of MDs who remember anything of OChem - aside from not enjoying it - is vanishingly small. The next time you're in front of an MD, ask them if they remember the anti-Markovnikov addition. You'll be hard pressed to find one who remembers anything of it, yet it was a very important reaction that they learned and regurgitated when they were undergraduates.

Now that we have AI that can do memorization better than people, it's time to rethink what kind of physicians we want to train.

There you are erroneously assuming that the GOP would allow the democrats to play by the rules that they use for themselves. That isn't how it works any more. The permanent new rules are now that the MAGA party has power over the Senate under all circumstances, without concern for the composition of its members. They can make, break, and discard rules any time they wish. If elections are held in 2026 and the GOP lost every senate seat it had up for election, they would still hold all the power in that chamber. What McConnell did to rewrite senate rules will look like nothing compared to what the MAGA party will roll out in 2025.

The biggest challenge in dividing the US into new countries lies in the fact that political divisions do not follow geographic lines well this time. The bluest states have red counties, the reddest states have blue counties (except perhaps Florida, but Bugs Bunny already laid out a solid plan for dealing with Florida).

That would be true if the democrats and republicans played by the same rules, or allowed each other to do so. The GOP would burn down Washington DC before they would allow the democrats to get such an appointment through, even if the democrats had enough votes to do so. Hell if Joe Biden wanted to appoint Sean Hannity to fill that theoretical vacancy, the GOP would refuse to hear it just to deny him that "win" and would make sure no hearing ever occurred.

I would put the odds at least at even for this administration being the last one of a 50 states United States. Now whether or not the GOP would allow for secession is another matter; we know that Trump is willing to send the US Military after his own American opponents. Likely we'd need to split into at least three different new countries if not more. There would likely need to be an amnesty period as well to allow people who find themselves on the wrong side of the border at the start to pack up and relocate to a different new country. Naturally a lot of people who would want to accelerate this would have less than no idea of how complicated such a relocation would actually be for actual people.

If you're arguing that politics exists in a post-truth reality, I couldn't agree more. The frustrating part is that one party embraces that reality very enthusiastically while the other keeps hoping that someday enough voters will catch on to it to come back around and vote for the candidates who actually sell a product based on reality.

Unfortunately it is more likely that Trump will completely dismantle our democracy before 2028 comes around (if he lives that long). He will have absolutely nothing to stop him this time around, even with single vote majorities in both chambers.

There is chatter about encouraging Sotomayor to retire from the SCOTUS before January. That ship has sailed. There is no way that the GOP would allow the senate to appoint a replacement for her even if she resigned this evening; her resignation would lead to an even more hopeless 7-2 conservative uber-majority.

Interesting! Where do we find the cap? I guess I'm not sufficiently social here. I've got a few dozen on my friends list, and none on my foes.

Trump won't reduce income taxes for people from the lower 95% of the wealth distribution in our country. He will continue to tell us - incorrectly of course - that China will pay for the tariffs. Anyone who knows the smallest amount about tariffs know that is not how they work; consumers will notice the tariffs as soon as they are implemented. The Trump administration will then quickly divert those tariff funds to their preferred destinations; the consumers will never see benefit from them.

The idea behind a tariff is to make the imported goods less attractive to consumers. One problem we're overlooking though is that there are a lot of goods that nobody makes in the US. One small example is slow cookers (crock-pots) for the consumer kitchen. Whether you buy the least expensive one at Wal-Mart or the most expensive one at William-Sonoma (or Macy's, or anywhere else where you can pay hundreds of dollars for one), it came from China. I've looked through as many sources as I can find and I cannot find an American made one that is currently in production for any amount of money. Yes, there isn't huge demand for these - and most people who want one already have one - but this is but one example. Can you find a hard drive that was made in the US? Of course not. Video card? No again.