5C5C5C

... She hasn't chosen her VP yet...

I don't know what got your goat but you're projecting an enormous amount of non sequitur into my very innocuous remark.

I was pointing out one itty bitty silver lining of an effort that's doomed to fail. I never suggested that we should be satisfied with that silver lining and call it a day.

I'm fully supportive of all actions, including those outside the realm of politics, to defend against fascism. But that's no reason to stop taking political actions, even those which we estimate to be doomed.

Porque no los dos?

It'll still be nice to get the "small government" party saying in writing that they support the presidency having unlimited power.

I think a lot of our collective notions around "merit" need to be challenged in general. How is merit really measured? A person's achievements? Who decides what qualifies as an achievement? If a person has the deck stacked against them (e.g. coming from a low income household, not as much access to quality education) and manages to get a college degree then it's easy to say they've "achieved" more than someone who grew up privileged and obtained the same degree with similar grades.

But how should these things be weighed? If someone grew up privileged but is also exceptionally skilled, have they achieved more or less than someone who grew up underprivileged and obtained above average skills? Who has more merit? Who deserves greater recognition? And who decides if one skill or another is even meritous? Is the merit of a skillet ultimately just decided by how much the job market is willing to pay for those skills?

These aren't meant to be leading questions; I genuinely don't think there are any good answers here. When I'm in a position of making hiring decisions for my company, I make a point of not thinking in terms of merit. Instead I think about these factors:

• Alignment: Will the candidate be interested and motivated in the work that we have available for them?
• Qualification: Do I have good reason to believe the candidate will be able to competently handle the role we're hiring for after a reasonable ramping on period? They don't need to immediately have all the skills required, but I should see evidence that they have a good foundation to build off of and a willingness to learn what's needed.
• Perspective: Does this candidate bring and new and potentially valuable perspective to the role? This perspective could come from past work experiences and/or their personal life experiences. I don't want a team that's totally homogenous because that will fall too easily into groupthink and miss valuable opportunities to improve.

I think when people talk about merit they fixate on qualifications, but I genuinely believe that alignment and perspective are equally important. I would much rather take someone who is highly motivated but less qualified on paper than someone with amazing credentials who won't really care about what our team is trying to do. I would also rather have someone who is going to challenge our team's assumptions and bring insights from other fields and experiences than someone who will very competently agree with our status quo.

I think people who complain about DEI are totally missing the value of diverse perspectives, to say nothing of the moral concern of systematically reinforcing social divisions and the inequity that naturally follows from that.

Maybe someone that expresses a little authentic human joy is exactly what the American public needs right now.

As someone that has never had soda my entire life (my parents were normal soda-drinking people, I'm just weird and was never interested in trying it), maybe I don't know what I'm missing out on, but water is soooo gooood. It's so refreshing and delicious if you're thirsty. I don't comprehend why these drinks even exist.

If you live almost anywhere in America or another developed nation, you get dirt-cheap clean water delivered right to your home constantly, and it's so great. Why does anyone spend money on garbage that's going to give them diabetes? And then the people who are sensible enough to try to avoid the diabetes just drink some other garbage and complain about the taste..??

WATER IS DELICIOUS YOU FOOLS

Honestly I think it's more than fluff. Her relationship with her family says a lot about her character and her integrity. She really is the anti-Trump in every conceivable way, and I'm really starting to believe that the stark difference between the two is going to pay off.

It's well established that she has an excellent relationship with her kids-by-marriage, and even became close friends with their bio-mom while attending the kids' extra-curricular activities together.

And my personal favorite part: the kids refer to her as Momala, because step-mom just didn't feel right to them.

Anyone who doesn't find that video endearing has something seriously disturbed going on in their head.

This is the first time I can recall having someone so human and genuine run for the presidency. Obama was close, but he was also so polished and reserved, probably because he felt he needed to be as the first black president. Kamala seems like someone who's really speaking from the heart, and I think that's what America needs most right now.

My only concern is the demographic that would have been too lazy to vote but now will be frothing at the mouth to vote against a black woman.

I can only hope they're outweighed by the demographic that was apathetic toward Biden but is willing to get off the couch to vote for Harris.

I've been thinking a good line for her to whip out some time would be "From my line of work I'm accustomed to guilty felons being afraid of me, and former president Trump is clearly no exception to that."

Would you have us believe that while money is still the deciding factor in politics, we should let our own political campaigns starve and die so that strangers on the internet can't falsely accuse us of being hypocrites? 🙄😮‍💨