I’ve been away for a couple of weeks. Given the great greying that has happened in the meantime, I’d appreciate someone to ungrey me once again. Thank you!

A reform to take power away from the capitals will actually become easier to undertake, once the United Kingdom leaves the EU. However that is also not a position popular in the Visegrad states right now, especially in Hungary and Poland, whose only interest in remaining in the EU these days is getting those sweet…

A few political scientists and journalists wouldn’t hurt in the writer’s room, but then again, I have no idea what Univision pays, or how much they care about the quality of the reporting here.

Chuck Schumer has no leverage to “keep Joe Manchin in line”. That’s not indicative of Schumer’s leadership, but of the Democratic Party having no tangible assets they could withhold from Manchin in West Virginia. Joe Manchin is the Democratic Party in West Virginia. That makes it irrelevant how much Chuck Schumer…

The European Union isn’t a United States of Europe, and likely never will be - at least not in the next generation or two. Even the most fiercely pro-European Frenchman is French first and European second, but even the most fiercely state’s rights Texan is American first and Texan second.

We send the Enterprise back in time for the whales.

The time to get such a person ended when the primaries ended, and Manchin beat his primary challenger by +40. Unless Manchin retires, there won’t be another chance until 2024.

Chuck Schumer may be a weak minority leader, but he is entirely able to do basic math. 49 < 51.

The difference between both sides is that one side represents 450 million people (with the respective GDP), while the other side only wields one sixth of that power. Britain had a lot of leverage to extort special treatment from its neighbors when it was in the EU and could veto everything - that allowed it to punch…

They’ve pushed this take so many times during the last two years that even Russia Today would say “hold your horses, you’re overplaying your hand”. If they were Russian operatives and their goal was to cause apathy and depress Democratic voter turnout, they could not do a better job than they’ve been doing so far.

I suspect Amy Coney Barrett would have sailed through this nomination process and probably received more Democratic votes than Neil Gorsuch (who is an actual choir boy, unlike Kavanaugh, but did happen to steal Garland’s seat).

No, it wasn’t a moment worth losing a Senator for, because that Senator would not have made any difference. With Manchin toeing the party line, so would Murkowski - and if not, Mike Pence would have broken the tie. Manchin’s only hope to retain his seat is to depress Republican voter turnout in a rabid Trumpian state…

At this point I find it highly unlikely that the UK will manage to finalize a soft Brexit agreement, which needs to be delivered to Brussels until mid-November at the latest. The Tories have had two years to come up with a workable solution, but party inner fighting has rendered that impossible. They still want to…

Best band name since Soulless Minions of Orthodoxy.

The big tax break was always the big prize. The cultural war scraps (Roe) are for the suckers, so they keep voting for the millionaires who fuck their retirement funds. Bait and switch.

It’s crucial to add that all of these movements popping up after the 2008 world financial crisis are no accident. Other than a few small and isolated countries like Iceland, the bankers walked away with the loot everywhere. The inability to hold them to account made one pillar of liberal democracy - equal justice for…

Maybe it was erroneous of me to use the term in that context. I was thinking of other countries’ history and how much their system of governance has changed in the 240 years that the United States has been around. Think about the second largest Western nation as a comparison for instance. In all those decades that saw…

Exactly. By the year 2040, 70% of the population will live in just 15 states, most of whom will be solid blue states like California and New York. They will be represented by 30 senators. 30% of the population will live in 35 states, represented by 70 senators. If some of those more rural, less urbanized states aren’t…

That depends on the Democrats coming up with a long-term strategy to push back this tide of fascism, which would include broad and sweeping reforms not enacted since the Roosevelt era.

There is nothing that they could have gotten him with that would have mattered to the Republican majority. Those dog days of the Republic are over, and they are never coming back.