Ari Hoffman has no major endorsements?

Wow, no candidate ever wins without establishment endorsements.

It's fine to use whatever technology you like to mark or to print out the official paper ballot. Yes, if you can't see the resulting ballot then you have to trust the printer, but that's certainly no worse than trusting the voting machine to flip the right electrical signals inside.

Voting by mail works for many disabled. They can have a friend, family member, or neighbor drop off their ballot. It worked for me when I was recovering from some smashed bones.

I grew up in Chicago. Trust me, voting machines can be rigged.

Americans ultimately will be forced to learn a very painful lesson from our hacked elections. That is, nobody can or should place total faith in technology for extremely sensitive or critical activities, such as elections. Despite all assurances to the contrary, an electronic system is as vulnerable as a paper one; actually more so because compromising a paper system requires physically accessing a location where data is stored only on paper. Compromising an electronic system merely requires an Internet connection from anywhere in the world.

"Today's been a perfect Seattle summer day, right?"
It was a gorgeous day to be outside
and to notice!

Jon fucking Stewart for fucking President
(or Bernie's VP).

Q. Is he 'qualified'?

A. If a morbidly bankrupt probably-serial-rapist/pedophile
tax-cheating Election-rigging, philandering Dimwit can 'run' this country,
Jon Stewart could.

In his fucking sleep.

@4: Cute but silly - He doesn't want the job, he's not running for it.

A better fantasy is winning over swing voters and independent in those critical electoral college deciding states to vote against Trump - in what will be surely be very tight election.

@5,

Is he explicitly on record stating he doesn't want it? What if a shitload of us just write him in, would he be constitutionally permitted to serve? Just heard this evening that both Bernie and Biden would be older upon taking the oath of office than Reagan was upon leaving it. What a harrowing thought.

@7
Or getting a higher percentage of eligible voters to bother to cast ballots- since US turnout for elections is typically around 50 per cent.

Re: Epstein & rape culture

So Secretary Molesta is out, and only for enabling and covering up an international child sex trafficking ring—it’s so unfair! This proves that Presiraptist Tr666p is the Real Victim.

But no worries, ‘cuz Pussolini has an inexhaustible supply of perverts and psychopaths to install in his cabinet, like Roy Moore, Bill Cosby, or Melanoma’s pimp, Sergey Kislyak.

@6: Getting tired of the canard of agism. We all know adults who fare quite well into their eighties and nineties. Charles De Gaulle and Fidel Castro, Queen Elizabeth II, and recall how Bob Hope and George Burns were doing TV and movies well into their nineties. Olivia De Havilland is granting interviews at 102 (and still never apologizes how she snubbed her sister Joan Fontaine at the Academy Awards).

And even if there is some slight dementia that's far better than the presidential mental illness we're suffering with now.

The rise in people finding their partners online instead of through friends, work, family or school does seem to be a real and dramatic shift.
I confess I am surprised by this. Online environments always seem so toxic. I agree with Jaron Lanier that toxicity is built in.
Dating websites must have dramatically improved since the decade or so since I shopped myself around.
Anybody have any insights into this? Why is there this sudden dramatic uptick in effectiveness of online matchmaking?

The bill limiting Trump's war powers has only passed the House.. still needs to be reconciled with the Senate bill and signed by Trump. Sorry to rain on your good news parade, but this country is still as fucked as it was yesterday.

@9 Its not a "canard", its a legit concern. You may not be concerned by it. You might suspect that others who bring it up have ulterior motives in doing so. But electing a president who will be 80 before their first term is over involves an elevated risk of a health-related incapacity and that's a fact.

@13: We have far worse elevated risks with a Trump re-election. But go ahead and let the perfect be the enemy of the good so that dems can once again snap defeat from the jaws of victory.

@9 I have to agree with @13 and add, life expectancy is a major issues for someone who would turn 80 early in their term in office (just check an actuarial table). That issue covers both Biden and Sanders. For that reason, I won't be voting for either in the primary.

@15: Suit yourself. We all have our paramount criterions.

Speaking of Life Expectancy:

If we elect a Socialist
will far right wing terrorists
offer a 2nd amendment solution?

Do the FBI NSA ETC even give a Fuck?
How about Murdoch?

@17: None of the democratic candidates identify themselves as socialist.
@18: And Trump will be 76.

@18 - Sorry, but Biden and Sanders have had their day, and that day is over. Many of us don't want another old white man in the White House. Biden looks and sounds as if he's aged ten years since 2016 not four. Sanders' facial expression and body language when he's at rest now communicate confusion instead of his large and in charge persona in 2016.

Sorry, neither man comes across today as capable of being President.

@21 - Do you want a candidate who best reflects your desires or do you want the candidate who can beat Trump?

Still very early, but the polls indicate that candidate doesn't exist.

@23: Your first paragraph was sufficient.

@24,

I also can't fathom why an otherwise successful and well respected person with essentially zero financial limitations would want to spend a significant portion of their twilight years in what has to be among the most agonizingly stressful jobs in the history of human civilization. Those dudes should be sitting on a tropical beach someplace drinking good wine and abusing painkillers.

@26

I bet I could find you approximately 10 million white American men over the age of 65 who think they ought to be put in charge of this damned country, goddamnit.

And I bet you'll die of old age yourself before they're done explaining their reasons to you.

@21 Sanders is quite old and it should be a factor but he is also the best candidate for the left (along with E Warren). All other candidates with a chance so far involve some form of sticking to the status quo (either on the environment or inequality) that is a lot more dangerous to us than running the risk of the VP having to assume the presidency

Skipping over the political stuff to second the note on Julio Torres/Los Espookys. Both are hilarious and so original. I really hope there's a season 2.