Mitochondria are symbiotic bacteria

Unfortunately it’s not just in the U.S. Movements like the Freedom Party in Austria, the National Front in France, Law and Justice party in Poland, the National Front in France and UKIP are all on the rise.

the issue is that the nexus of power and money that organized politics represent doesn’t allow for positions that money strongly disapproves of;

I agree with most of that, but I don’t agree on the messaging.

It’s possible that a lot of the effectiveness of a ground game is simply a proxy for generating enthusiasm and engagement within the voter base. Trump may not have had much of traditional ground game, but he certainly had an enthusiastic base and /r/The_Donald served as a kind of virtual ground game online, posting…

But the Obama campaign used data to identify support and to complement, not replace, the ground game. Obama for America did the leg work and knocked on a lot of doors and handed out a lot of yard signs.

It sounds like Robbie Mook was too clever by half and overthinking things in terms of strategy. The best data in the world won’t do you any good unless you put it to good use.

The media is doing their best to give them a makeover, though.

Edison Research, which has done all the prior exit polls in our primaries has refused to release the raw data, as it has routinely refused since 2004.

Well, at least Detroit is going to get audited:

Voting irregularities are not a conspiracy theory. It probably wasn’t going to make a difference in the 2016 election, since voter suppression and caging aren’t going to show up in any recount, but you’re really not helping by being dismissive of election integrity issues.

this guy won the Secretary of State job

Oh, don’t worry. I fully expect Trump and the GOP congress to push for national right-to-work laws, and Democrats to just roll over and let them, so it won’t be an issue.

Right, foolish me for assuming that the Trump administration will be as vindictive in his policy as he is on Twitter, and by all accounts has been throughout his entire life.

I thought that the firing of federal workers for purely political reasons was against the law? Bush got into trouble for politicization of firing of U.S. attorneys in 2006.

That’s really frightening. The worst thing is, many of us were saying back when the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorism-related measures were being passed that these laws were rife with the potential for abuse.

They just passed this this week in the lame duck session of the MI legislature.

Apparently the Michigan GOP intend to completely ignore the First Amendment. This looks like something that won’t hold up in coutt, but it will deter protest anyway since it can only be challenged after the fact:

I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised anymore. Who knew the first casualty of the Trump administration would be satire? What’s the point when we’re all living in an Onion article.

Oh, good, we can have Celebrity Apprentice: Despots Edition with Putin, Dutarte, Assad, and Erdogan.