wildcat09

One thing I think is pretty clear from yesterday’s lively discussion is that Ana definitely doesn’t need therapy.

Joining the Johnny sack “conservatives don’t need therapy” party I see.

I think the most charitable take of Ana’s view on this is that he sees them all as whores who deserve that risk, either because they had sex knowing the risk of pregnancy or for those who were raped, because Eve ate the forbidden fruit and now all women are condemned by her. Of course he’ll pretend that he doesn’t believe anything like that, he’s a special snowflake who holds very artisanal archconservative religious beliefs that don’t align with those of other archconservative religious believers on anything that might be the immediate topic of discussion. He’s like a woke inquisitor, basically.

If ten billionaires who hold most of the Bitcoin in the world can’t get even richer by defrauding regular people are you even free?

How can you possibly have a cold when it's not cold outside?! /elon

I think there's certainly some problems with lawyers letting their duties to their clients overwhelm their other duties, but I don't really think that's the source of the problem. I think the source of the problem is basically the same liberal capitulation in legal academia that we've seen in politics. And I don't mean "liberal" in the sense of left-of-center politically, I mean it in the sense of liberalism. Right wing careerist assholes and dipshits lavishly funded by billionaires began laundering clearly bullshit legal theories that were fundamentally opposed to a liberal order into legal academia several decades ago now, and liberal academia (and increasingly as time went on, the courts) treated those theories as, and those who proffered them in, good faith rather than for what they were: a virus.

On a related note, I will never stop laughing at how desperate libertarians are to suck up to wealthy private individuals and how eager they are to transfer all of the power they're terrified of a representative government having to fewer than five trust fund kids.

Calling yourself a "tech founder" should be a capital offense.

Watching this squad turn defense into offense might be my favorite thing to watch in basketball since 1995. Sengun doing dad driveway shit is a close second.

I feel like some people need a reminder that BHM views 1/6 and Hillary criticizing Trump for soliciting and accepting Russian election interference as the same. I really don't know why anyone would actually engage with that.

Elon stans (pretending not to be Elon stans): no no what he means is that it’s not a perfect program and is too expensive! Elon: what fucking stealth?! I can still see it! And it doesn’t even have grok installed!

What a coincidence that every hospital that actually looks at the law and tries to figure out how it applies to them comes to a different conclusion than you. They should all hire you as a consultant, obviously, to tell them how they can comply with the law while providing necessary care.

And the key is that Democrats validated the frame of the GOP attack. What was Allred's response? It was "no I don't want boys in girls bathrooms, but..." Generating that response was half of the point, if not the main point, of the ads in the first place. The voters he was trying to reach didn't believe anything before the "but" and it de-motivated the Dem base. Democrats are so fucking conditioned to playing defense and letting Republicans frame every argument that they don't know any other way to do politics (this is why Republicans to this day are so incredibly furious about Obama actually using Romney's "47% are takers" line against him). Allred should have counterattacked with ads that Ted Cruz wanted to look up little girls' dresses and was trying to divide Texans to distract from his corruption. Would it have made him win? In this election, probably not, but he would've done a lot fucking better and a similar strategy from Harris and other Dems may have been enough to get her over the top.

That's basically what they've been doing for the past several decades. What does this even mean? For fuck's sake people, can we talk about what Dems actually do vs what a bunch of people who are literally financially invested in pretending they've been doing something else (and need to stop it) pretend they do?

It sure seems like a poster posting some 8chan school-shooter "REEEEEEEEEEE" shit should be grounds for a ban.

He doesn't have to drop it. Trump isn't president today. He should've kept prosecuting and made Trump fire him and order the prosecutions to be shut down once he took office.

Who gives a shit? We're talking about the surgeon general here, they don't do anything. She's far and away his least offensive pick so far.

November 2022 to November 2024 is three years now?

It's basically this. They want to put Ukraine in as good a position as Ukraine can be in when Trump takes office, to make it politically harder on Trump to try to force Ukraine to concede.

Oh he cares, he loves it when it happens.

I hope everyone is prepared for Garland to bury the report too.

I don't see it. All appropriate qualifications about how it's still very close to the election and we're still gathering data etc. aside, one thing that's very clear is that Harris did better in the swing states relative to the rest of the country. This means that where she campaigned and where he campaigned, he underperformed. Those were the states blanketed with the most anti-trans advertising and it clearly didn't help him; if anything it seems to have hurt him. A somewhat different argument that I think could have more merit is that trans issues plus other cultural issues (DEI, etc. like you note), while not individually salient, contributed to a diffuse feeling all across the country that Dems don't really care about "you" (whoever "you" happens to be). But Democratic candidates can't help fight that by ducking the culture war issues; they already do that and it's that ducking that contributes to that very feeling among many people. The basic approach needs to be a commitment to egalitarianism. Egalitarianism as a concept is very popular and defending women, minorities, and gay and trans people as part of the fight for egalitarianism against the billionaires trying to divide us so they can treat us all like chattel should not be a hard message to sell.

The writers seem to think that if they can convince enough people in media that Trump doesn't have a "mandate," that will somehow meaningfully restrain Republicans. To which the obvious response is, "have you ever met any Republicans?"

The first sentence gets something wrong in a way I think the second sentence gets the same thing right. I don't think Dems should or even can eliminate all talk about gender. Hell they tried doing that this election. What did we learn? That the GOP can completely manufacture an issue out of essentially nothing. The average American is more likely to be struck by lightning than have their daughter compete against a trans girl in youth sports, but the Dems tried to run from the issue and focus on more salient issues and it didn't help (this is separate from whether I think the trans issue actually helped the GOP, I don't think it really did but I also don't think the Dems helped themselves with how they addressed it). But turning the discussion from gender to something else can be effective, and it's not even hard. The Dems don't have to throw trans people under the bus and can in fact defend equal rights for trans people if they stop running from it. Better messaging would both engage in the culture war to put Republicans on the defensive, while also highlighting how Republicans attempt to focus culture war issues to distract people while they pick their pockets. And that can be as easy as "why the fuck do you want to be able to look at a 12 year old's junk, Matt? Why is that more important to you than improving healthcare/increasing wages/improving education?"

Rome actually often made deals with barbarians to settle within and defend their borders.