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Mole

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Everything posted by Mole

  1. I appreciate the approach that Biden is taking in appealing to the best in us and reaffirming our shared humanity, something that’s yet another casualty of the Trump era. It’s healthy to take this high road. It’s a real sign of leadership that has been sorely lacking. On the other hand, we’re talking about a group of people who, though cynical inaction and politicizing reality, have a pretty massive body count of American lives. I have several important people in my life that might be still alive had we had any kind of national action. How much weight do these deaths fall on the shoulders those at the Rose Garden COVID party and ultimately Trump’s failure to lead? They bear some responsibility. That’s the gig they signed up for and clearly they’ve done much worse than most of the world. And of course the ethos of “fuck your feelings” and “I don’t care, do you?” doesn’t have much worthwhile to say about empathy. It’s best for us to follow Biden’s lead and reassert goodness and humanity (it’s the only way out of this dark pit), but I don’t know how to justify feeling superior to someone feeling indifference or even a sense of justice at the current turn of events. If this were a movie, we’d all be cheering at the cosmic justice. It isn’t a movie though, and real people have been hurt and killed. Truthfully, we’ve all probably been hurt by our failed COVID response in many ways. Feeling a sense of justice is a pretty normal and human reaction, even if it isn’t best or healthy for us.
  2. I gotta be honest here, I’m not sure which thread is which anymore. It’s all the same subject. We’ve reached some kind of CR singularity.
  3. So just another Friday?
  4. I don’t disagree, but we also have pictures of the inauguration, and the Mueller Report, and video footage of him giving comfort to neo-Nazis, and Helsinki, and a Rhodes Scholar Supreme Court selection, and...
  5. This is a healthy, reasonable way to go through life and you’re probably right that he has it. But any statement he makes is far more likely to be a lie than the truth, so those set of facts point to it being a lie. The smart default with him is to assume everything he says is a lie. I still think his the < 5% of the time that he’s being truthful, but still.
  6. The GOP did a good job of revealing the sausage-making political nature of how the Dems managed the allegations. That’s a separate issue than the credibility of the accusations, which seemed believable to me, and the craziness of his response. The hearings gave the impression that the Dems sat on the accusations until the most politically opportune time. There may have been nonpolitical reasons for their timing or that politicization may be a fair and normal DC move, but in light of the seriousness of the accusations, it seemed dirty and manipulative. It’s hard to hold the moral high ground, even if that high ground is as basic as being against rape, when the allegations seem like nothing more than a political tool. The raping part was no doubt the worst part, and running interference for a likely rapist is terrible as well, but using a crime victim to win a political victory is still a bit sleazy. At first the timing seemed tactically brilliant to me, but in light of the nature of the allegations, it was a bit unseemly. Still nowhere near rape though. I thought the allegations seemed credible and his response was nuts and disqualifying, but everyone ended up looking dirty in the process.
  7. Harry Seaward
  8. I think Trump would call it absentee since it’s a red state. There’s a simple online form (provided you have a valid ID and haven’t been purged from the rolls) with a few clicks. You don’t even have to pretend to have a disability or reason. The Trump campaign sent out paper forms like once a week. As long as your name doesn’t trigger their purge script, it’s a great system. The current SOS (Kemp’s replacement) was the least bad GOP option. Just write a script and let it run overnight. Of course, I think the real concern is the unofficial poll watchers trying to cause chaos in D precincts.
  9. This. If you’re down a few TDs late in the 4th quarter, you don’t kneel, burn clock, and punt; you open up the ten yard minimum offense.
  10. With the caveat that I’m in a very red part of GA, the mail option was easy and smooth for me. I requested a ballot online through a simple online form. It took a while from when it was “sent” to when it actually arrived (like a week and a half), but I suspect the delay was it actually getting sent out. I requested mine before the first day that ballots could get sent out. I could track the process online or via email or text/phone. I mailed my ballot off on Tuesday and this morning I received a text that my ballot had been received and counted. Georgia has pulled some crazy stunts with purging voters and closing locations, but vote by mail is smooth and easy. It wasn’t this good even for the primary a few months ago.
  11. 1. We need more call out threads, even if they're mod-generated. 2. Why is fascism pronounced "fashism" and rascal not pronounced "rashal?" 3. The cloakroom RBG thread seems like a sensible thread to discuss her replacement, so the moderation was a little confusing. I don't know if I'd call it fascism, but maybe King George III monarchism?
  12. True, people do love a good spectacle, but it’s a little different when someone shouts “Worldstar!” in your living room. I watched five minutes and felt sad and sick. I avoid unhinged Trump as much as possible, so it was a shock to my system. It was so in-your-face last night. It left me with a profound sense of grief. Our country is so ill, and it only seems to get worse. I’m a veteran and the country I served is dead. I’m a Christian and the American church’s witness and standing is dead. It gave up being a force for good for worldly power. The scandal of the evangelical mind (that there isn’t much of one) has spread to the heart. Things that are so very important to me and my values were being mocked and satirized by that almost demonic display. And people I love and care about seem ok with it. That was all true before last night, but it was a cold hard smack of reality last night. It’s one thing to intellectually understand it; it’s another to have it happen in your living room. The conservatives in my life who “like his policies” were publicly horrified. You don’t get full on Trump unless you seek it out. You can “support his policies” and stay insulated from him. I don’t know if they’ll have the stomach for a round two; I don’t think I will. I’m glad I already voted Biden.
  13. If I release swarms of malaria-laden mosquitoes into my home once a week, I could come up with all sorts of rules about clothing, nets, and which rooms are off limits. Or I could stop introducing a dangerous pest into my home This feels like a rule about netting around my bed.
  14. Except the sandwich analogy doesn’t hold up. It’s more like a BLT that’s been sitting in the fridge, so the lettuce is a little wilted and the bread is maybe a little soggy vs. a bucket of bloody diarrhea and vomit that’s been sitting next to the dumpster for a few days. One is a possibility forgettable culinary experience that has a very low risk of making you ill, the other has dead flies floating in it.
  15. Calling him a clown was the measured and truthful response.
  16. Look man, if Trump has a time machine, he’s using it for all of the wrong stuff.
  17. 4 years ago I was a new Georgia resident. I was busy with life and trying to do well at my job and for the first time I didn’t bother to vote. I hadn’t even registered yet. It was the Hillary malaise plus life plus still figuring out local politics. I dropped off my absentee ballot today. I’m neither young nor African American. I’ve voted for the least Trumpy candidate in every Republican primary/runoff since then and then voted against Republicans in the general. The top of my ticket was Biden, Ossoff, Warnock. We’re still waiting on my wife’s absentee ballot to arrive, but her ticket will likely look about the same. Neither of us voted 4 years ago.
  18. I don’t know anything but how to Google, but this person with a blog disagrees: https://anthrocentric.tumblr.com/post/81621685922/pussy-is-not-short-for-pusillanimous
  19. Does that cop have any eligibility left?
  20. Yes, but this one hits differently. We all pay taxes. Most of us don’t have personal frame of reference for all the other terrible stuff. But we all get taxes. $750? Seriously?
  21. 2005 Big XII championship scored 28 straight in 3:50 during the 3rd quarter.
  22. Wut
  23. The problem isn't what happens to "them." It's what happens after. If the perception is that this was political retribution, that's a bad place to be. It doesn't matter who started it (well, it does, but someone has to end it). Criminals need to be prosecuted, but there needs to be broad national buy-in or everything gets way worse with the backlash. Trials are necessarily confusing. On some level, the defense's job is to muddy up the waters. It needs to a coordinated, overly patient effort to educate beyond the trial process. I don't know how to do that in the face of the massive propaganda we are dealing with, but it needs to be addressed. Otherwise, the grievances that led to Trump -- justified or not -- will only amplify. If he's seen as a political prisoner by a good chunk of the country, we're in a really bad place.
  24. If you’re going to start jailing GOPers because you think they’re criminals (many are), you need an extremely transparent and thoughtful process. You need to educate the country about what happened and move with some level of deliberation. You need buy-in from an overwhelming majority of the country, otherwise we’re in a French Revolution cycle of chopping each other’s heads off over and over.
  25. My voting is all over the map. I run every candidate through a three point test (are they not hopelessly corrupt, are they thoughtful and intelligent, are they competent) before considering ideology. Usually that leaves one option at best. All things being equal, I’d prefer to vote for a moderate Republican (prior to this dark turn), but I’m probably more inclined to stretch to the left than the right. What I mean is, if 0 is dead center and negative numbers are left and positives are right, I’m maybe at a 1 or a 2, but 4 is too far right and -4 might be tolerable.
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