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Donald Trump is, in fact, the first president since Herbert Hoover to lead his party to losing the presidency, the House, and the Senate all in a single term. Along with being the first president to be impeached twice and the first game-show host elected to the office, that’s Trump’s claim to the history books. Well, that and 400,000 dead Americans and the failed coup d’état business.

A job is a job. I had this conversation with my brother-in-law. He wants to make more but doesn't want to leave his field (mechanical engineering) which he loves. I've had jobs I loved, jobs I didn't love. At the end of the day you can't have it all. I don't expect fulfillment or purpose from work - those are things I create for my self.

I've just added several books to my to-read list based on this.

“I have this morning witnessed one of the most interesting scenes, a free people can ever witness,” she wrote to her sister-in-law. “The changes of administration, which in every government and in every age have most generally been epochs of confusion, villainy and bloodshed, in this our happy country take place without any species of distraction, or disorder.”

When some well-connected rat-fink government contractor in Northern Virginia misses a check, Washington treats that like a crisis. Some peon bureaucrat gets furloughed, that’s a crisis. It’s a national goddamn emergency. When the sitting president — who has threatened to arrest political opponents on treason charges and apparently engages in speculative talk about martial law in the Oval Office, who has sworn he will never concede his defeat — goes and makes multiple attempts to overturn the election . . . well, I guess we’ll get to it when we get to it.

We should have got to it.

That's what I have been thinking about both sides for the last two weeks. The house should've impeached the night of the riots. The senate should've taken it up the next day.

I have to say I'm really not for DC Statehood. For me it isn't a partisan issue. States and localities are always changing partisan affiliation. Just wait fifty years and DC could be a Republican strong hold. After all, starting from the White House you have to travel 27 miles in any direction before reaching an area where the majority of folks aren't in the top 1%.

The whole point of having a district was that the seat of government wouldn't be held hostage by any one state (situated between two and centrally located at the time). With that in mind I would be for ceding large parts of the district to Maryland and Virginia. Or moving the capitol all together (maybe middle of the country geographically or rotating between cities every so many years like the superbowl).

I'm all for Puerto Rican statehood and allowing California or Texas to create more states out of their existing boundaries. But I don't think statehood would solve the issues laid out in the article.

The crazy thing here is that the clickbait overwhelming nature of modern 'news' is all national. Where we actually could benefit from more robust news at the local level.

I don't really care about the latest scandal in DC. But I do care if the funds at my local school aren't adding up. Or if my water department is ginning up new fees.

Reading articles like this makes me really grateful that there are people way smarter than I am on these things.

A fascinating argument for liberalism. Well worth the read.

I used to be pretty against universal day care. I've since realized that we have universal daycare, but only for 5-18 year olds - it's called public school, and it only goes August to May or June.

I think offering universal child care and separating child care from education would be great for both realms. So many education complications come because we are asking educators to be child watchers.

So true.

Great advice here.

When the Bronx socialist and the Utah Republican come down on the same side of the question, it’s time to pay attention.

Yeah, I've always thought that Killer Whales are terrifying. Orcas doesn't really sum up what they are.

Excellent

I'm glad congress is doing something, but I worry this might make things worse. The arbitration puts the insurance companies in control, meaning most doctors and hospitals will lose money. Considering it is the insurance companies that cause a lot of these shenanigans to start with I can't see that as a good idea.

On the libertarian and populist right, that failure usually involved a recourse to “freedom” as a conversation-stopper, a way to deny that even a deadly disease required any compromises with normal life at all.

But for liberals, especially blue-state politicians and officials, the failure has more often involved invoking capital-S Science to evade their own responsibilities: pretending that a certain kind of scientific knowledge, ideally backed by impeccable credentials, can substitute for prudential and moral judgments that we are all qualified to argue over, and that our elected leaders, not our scientists, have the final responsibility to make.