Cities should all operate publicly-run day labor programs to protect workers from shit like this and from contractors who would steal their wages or put them in unsafe conditions

Sorry, in 2026, the best we can do is to allow you to legally sell yourself into indentured servitude for a period of time. Yup, that’s it. We’re bringing back literal peonage. Also we’re bringing back debt slavery for student loans. /sigh

Yes. Do not purchase a dozen gallons of flammable spirits and some matches, and then “return” them to Home Depot after the store is closed and empty of people.

God. Now I’m imagining some epidural addict rigging up a large series of hoists and pulleys to allow them to self-administer an epidural. Ain’t no ingenuity like addict ingenuity.

Eh. It can be multiple things. The Second Iraq War was about oil, but it was also about W. having a personal grudge against Saddam. Saddam at one point tried to have Bush Sr. assassinated, and Jr. had it out for him as a consequence. Plus it was for political purposes, both to drum up the base at home and to assist Israel abroad. It was about all of those things. Wars are never caused by just a single reason. Oil was absolutely a powerful factor, perhaps the most powerful. But it’s overly reductive to simply say it was about oil. Launching a war requires getting a lot of stakeholders on board. And not everyone will have the same motivations. The Zionist faction wanted Iraq toppled to help Israel, but they have no particular concern for oil. The oil industry folks wanted Iraqi oil, but money-hungry CEOs don’t really care about throwing red meat to the Fox News crowd. Launching a big war requires a coalition, even if just the Republican coalition. Wars always thus have many motivations behind them.

What’s everybody got against the Jewish Space Lasers? Rabbi Rabinowitz has been in charge of those lasers since 1998, and he’s been doing a damn fine job keeping the Martians and asteroids at bay! You know he’s only come down from Skylab II twice since he took the director’s position up there? You know what that much zero gravity does to a man? He’s been up there so long, he can’t come back anymore. He’s gonna die up there manning those lasers. That’s what Rabbi Rabinowitz has sacrificed for his country and planet! And the gall of some people, ranting about the Jewish space lasers. Are there Jewish space lasers? Yes! And they’ve been keeping your dumb ass safe from Martians and meteors for decades!

[In my head, I read this in Bernie Sander’s voice.]

Just how fucking dense do you have to be in order to be surprised that a man who created one of the most popular operating systems on Earth, and then gave it away for free, might be a leftist?