State of the Discussion

With the exception of Newsom, who is a proper ghoul, devoid of anything resembling a conscience, this looks like the most boring stable of candidates possible, comprised people who will run almost entirely on the message "Hey, at least we're not Trump!"

Wouldn't it be nice if there were potential presidential candidates in the party who had ideas, principles, even a message? That there aren't is an indictment of the entire party. The Democratic Party delenda est.

What does the future of the Democratic Party look like?

Is it skilled members of the Professional Managerial Class who demonstrate the best ability to act like a Project Manager able to herd the cats of all of the bureaucrats?

Is it a firebrand capable of whipping up the masses?

Is it Kamala Harris? I understand that she made zero mistakes in her last campaign for president (outside of the "nobody's perfect" level nitpicks that are inevitable) and the only problem was that she didn't have enough runway and Trump has demonstrated that you can win an election after losing one.

In 2012, Romney was a pretty good candidate and might have been a perfect candidate if you could drop him in the middle of 1996.

But all of the names listed above strike me as having a similar problem. Newsom would have been perfect in 2016! Pritzker? Perfect in 2016! Buttigieg doesn't strike me as presidential quite yet... He might make a perfect VP, though. (Of course, maybe he's paper-thin and would just be a gay Dan Quayle... at least he'd have the press on his side.)

The big problem the dems have is that they're trying to go through their bench and find the guy best suited to win in 2016 and not the best guy for 2028.

But Pritzker, out of all of those, strikes me as the most capable of taking on Vance.

This.

The future of human transportation will not be tethered to rail.

Fantasy about hi-speed trains in the US is a 20th century vision of the future. It's not the direction our reality is moving.

Dave Mustaine narrowed the responsibilities down to talking to God, going to court when you have to, showing up to work on time, and paying your bills.

So let's talk about that. Here's what google AI says are "American citizen responsibilities":

As a US citizen, responsibilities include respecting laws, paying taxes, participating in the democratic process (voting, staying informed), and contributing to the community.
Here's a more detailed look at the responsibilities of an American citizen:
Legal Duties:
• Obey laws: Citizens must respect and obey federal, state, and local laws.
• Serve on a jury: Being a juror is a crucial aspect of the legal system and a civic duty.
• Pay taxes: Citizens must pay federal, state, and local taxes honestly and on time.
• Register for the Selective Service: Male citizens are required to register with the Selective Service (Selective Service System) within one month of turning 18

You can do the first statement pretty much by existing and voting periodically, so let’s talk about legal duties. I have NO legal duty to “respect” any law. In fact, I’m openly contemptuous of many laws because they are stupid or I disagree with them, and based upon observed behavior, many others do to, i.e. speeding laws.

If you’re an employee and not a business owner, which is the vast majority of people, filing taxes is all you have to do. You’ve already PAID your taxes. Selective service? That’s straight up sex discrimination. Women are exempt? Nope, equal responsibilities = rights. Unequal responsibilities for the same rights? Hell no.

Eh, my definitions of "good" and "evil" are less common than I'd like (though there is a lot of overlap on pragmatic issues when it comes to my local community).

I'm not sure that discussions of morality will get you to the destination you want to go... not with the Omnicause the way it is.

According to the Jewish Virtual Library, Harris got 66% of the Jewish vote.

Biden got 68% in 2020.
Clinton got 71% in 2016.
Obama got 69% in 2012 and 78% in 2008.
Kerry got 76% in 2004.
Gore got 79% in 2000.

You have to go back to Dukakis in 1988 to get a number lower than Harris got: 64%.

How much faster and easier would things proceed (have proceeded) on Bakersfield to Merced if the State of California owned the rail corridor properties used by UP and BNSF that already connected Bakersfield to Merced and leased them to the railroads? If 65 years ago when the feds were the muscle behind the interstate highway property acquisition -- property now owned by the states, not the feds, by the way -- they had included rail and built a public transportation corridor? If California had electrified the corridor 40 years ago as part of cleaning up the Central Valley air?

Was more tongue in cheek than anything. I have a vague feeling like the West Coast liberal zone is somewhat more nimble than the East Coast liberal zone in adapting so it doesn't surprise me that San Fran is moving faster.

Sure, but that all the arguments for long distance passenger rail came generally later and now the boom has dropped on building rail lines. The land is all bought up. Could you imagine trying to buy right of ways in the densely developed, and therefore economically sensible, parts of the country? And that's without even discussing the regulatory obstacles. We can't even get around the enviro and local groups to build power lines, wind and solar plants and adequate housing let along trains.

One of the reasons, at least in the American West, is that 150 years ago we gave the desirable routes for right-of-way to private rail companies and allowed them to maintain control, without even extracting requirements of good behavior, through innumerable mergers/acquisitions and multiple bankruptcies.

To pick an example I know... RTD's commuter rail system was always intended to have Denver-to-Boulder and Boulder-to-Longmont lines. There's an almost-never-used BNSF loop that is ideally positioned. It's almost never used because it's old (as in laid out in the 1890s old). Contemporary freight has to crawl on it because there are too many curves that are substandard. RTD offered to fix the curves, double-track where necessary, and upgrade all the crossings in exchange for usage and priority for commuter trains. BNSF's counteroffer was, "You pay for all the upgrades, you also give us $8B upfront, freight gets priority no matter what we do to the commuter schedule, and then we can talk about the annual lease amount." Because neither the state nor local governments can force BNSF to do anything, we have no commuter trains to Boulder and a right-of-way that is slowly disintegrating through neglect.

Post-WWII Europe had the sense to have the government own the rights-of-way and any private rail companies had to lease usage. When France wants to extend high-speed rail, they tell the freight companies how things are going to work.

Slade: We’re going to need a cite for this: “multiple states funding what are basically IslamicNa.zi arguments”.

If you mean "the funding" then most of the media in the Arab countries is state controlled. Their various positions in the UN are also state controlled. Al Jazeera has an English feed, try listening to them for a while.

If you mean the arguments themselves, then the idea that the Jews control everything is na.zi antisemitism, as is the idea that they are especially evil and should be held to different standards because they're evil.

If the arguments only make sense when used against Jews and make no sense at all when applied to non-Jews, then that's a problem.