OpenStars

Silly you, thinking that women are “people”. :-P (/s) “Fearing for your life”, according to those who “tell it like it is”, is actually code for gentrified white men, though going to college may remove from you this privileged status.

There is no possibility of this ever causing negative effects of any kind, certainly it will not ever be misused (like one pilot being pressured into flying 5 planes at once bc… profit).

• Elon Musk, probably

sudo make behave

I’m just going to leave this here, in case anyone needs it… :-D

Every single time the FCC tries to do absolutely anything (no matter how modest), the telecom industry works with the GOP to first demonize the proposal (or regulatory nominee as we saw with Gigi Sohn) as extreme, and then set about working to dismantle it. Usually successfully. And often with the help of Democrats.

No biggie! :-)

Okay, a fair point, but… we were talking about abortion:-D. (also, can we stop, or is it a stipulation somewhere in the contract that we must send? perhaps any time they are “attacked” we must automatically send a certain amount? there may be more there than the for-profit news media is willing to tell us, thinking that we are too dumbp to undermastand so they instead just focus on emotional one-liners that generate more clicks…)

I should have admitted in my previous response that I might be biased, trying to find a shred of hope where none exists. But also I aim not to be either an optimist nor a pessimist, but a realist. I do not claim to actually know what that means here though:-).

That said, what I said earlier still seems true to me: if you live in a state that allows - maybe even enshrines? - abortion as a right, then its being banned in other states affects you none to little (unless you actively visit those states, perhaps even traveling through them on the way to other states?), while if you live in a state that bans abortions, you have MANY problems, of which that is merely one of them (a big one to be sure). So it is one issue - perhaps the biggest of our time - and yet all of that said… what are we going to ACTUALLY DO about it? Congress needs to pass a law to make a decision one way or the other. Or else individual states need to do that. So far, Congress is more divided than it has ever been (during the Civil War, the South did not send their representatives anymore, so bills actually got passed!:-P), and we are looking towards another constitutional crisis happening as soon as the very next election, possibly spilling out into actual bloodshed. I don’t, but listen to the rhetoric on the side most likely to fire the first shot, and tell me that has no chance of happening, sometime in the next ten years? So yeah, I believe Biden when he says that it would be a difficult ask to get such a thing through Congress right now… that’s not about what’s right or what’s wrong, it’s about what’s possible at the current time.

Also look at democracy globally - like UK with Boris Johnson, Brazil with Bolsonaro, uh… right now is not a good time for democracy it seems. I am not speaking out against it, just echoing your thoughts that we are already fucked, in so many more ways than one, since it seems that our particular brand of it (meaning: coupled with low levels of edumacashion), seems to be vulnerable to certain outside parties who may have interests in interfering with our electoral processes? :-(

And in the midst of ALL of that, what the Dems offer is… Biden. Yeah, I know, but it’s not about what’s ideal, it’s about what is possible.

That’s probably the gist of it right there in fairness - he could have tried harder. Then again, he knows what’s what, and like (a) the mess he inherited from the previous occupant of the job took an enormous amount of effort to deal with, like basically ALL of the efforts, really, that were to spare (and things like the border crisis, huge spike in homelessness, greedflation, etc. continue onwards even now), and so (b) to have fought the good fight would have come at the cost of enormous political capital that would have prevented other things from happening. Thought experiment: what would Dems be willing to give up, in order to have made a useless (I mean purely in the sense of doomed to failure in the short term, though ultimately such things may need a coordinated effort over many years) attempt to appear to try to codify Roe v. Wade? Would we have been willing to sacrifice funding for Ukraine? Passing a budget for the year at all? College loan remittance? Political capital has limits, so in order to work towards that goal, something else must be sacrificed, that’s just reality.

Also, unpopular opinion alert - or rather, adjacent to one, in the service of a deeper understanding - women are not prevented from having abortions, at least on the federal level. If a state such as Florida or Texas etc. prevents such a thing, then don’t live in those states? There are MANY things going on in those states - book burnings, teacher shortages, also libraries, also doctors/nurses, also basic infrastructure, the list just goes on forever - and Biden is merely one old man, so what is he being asked to do, replace Jesus in those states? There is only so much that he or any one person could do. e.g., when a Supreme Court seat opens up, that’s when he can do a lot to work towards his goal, but I cannot say this loudly enough, even as a President he cannot pass laws. He can be part of a solution but he cannot be the entirety of one. Nor should he be.

“Successful”? Ah, I see, you think they are making their choices strategically, rather than emotionally. Interesting. :-D

I kid, but there actually is strategy involved there - by saying that their votes cannot be “counted on”, they could be attempting to wrangle additional concessions.

Ofc there is a bunch of nonsense going on as well - e.g. blaming Biden for not managing to codify Roe v. Wade, in this Congress!? They would have a better chance of asking to go to the moon - that is expensive but at least possible in theory!:-P I mention Congress ofc bc that is the government body that passes laws - the Presidency enforces, maybe vetoes, but does not make laws, so having a President receptive to and even someone who heavily pushes for a certain thing is not sufficient. Contrary to popular opinion, the Presidency has many limitations, and you do not simply show up to vote and somehow life gets “all better”, as some seem to think. Young people can be quite inexperienced and naive sometimes.

Then again, it was not young people that gave us Trump, and if they choose not to bail this country out again a second time, especially if they vote their conscience as a result of Israel (right or wrong mind you, in fact especially the latter), I will not be blaming the least experienced among us as the scapegoat to all of life’s problems… It should not be the case that it is up to those least prepared to deal with a situation, to be the deciding factor that “saves” us all - and the fact that we continue to ignore this aspect every time the young people show up to do so, shows how perilous the situation truly is. Maybe next time they won’t? If so, then we never deserved saving in the first place… bc that’s not freedom, to continually lie in the shadow of destruction.

If you mean vote for him vs. not vote for him, then yes.

If you mean vote for him vs. the Republican nominee, then no, as there are other options. For starters the article seemed to suggest that some may just not vote at all. They also might vote for him but do so reluctantly, e.g. without discussing with their friends strongly promoting the voting for Biden as they did in the last election.

But it’s a long way to the actual election, and campaigning has not started in earnest yet.

“Welcome to the Hotel California…”

That would probably lead to the absolute worst outcome - every time he opens his mouth he damages his rep further in the eyes of his followers, so we need him to keep doing that:-).

:wq will save and then exit, while :x will save only if the file has been modified and then exit, and then there’s ZZ that does the same as :x, plus there are probably others:-)

I used to think this way, in part bc there’s an aspect of this that is obviously true - conservatives and liberals from many states are not all that far apart. However, I do think we’ve crossed over into dangerous territory here, to the point where politics are not “merely” shitty as usual, but actually ends. It’s like the difference between people who as they get older feel back pain, vs. outright dying. That is normal too I suppose, though it is our duty to be as diligent as possible to delay that eventual outcome for as long as possible.

I keep thinking like, if the question is “what is 1+1?”, then Democrats will say -100000, then give contracts to the corps that bribed them, and while in the past Republicans might have done similarly, now they will pull out a gun and shoot you in the head (as their way of answering the question).

Thank you for your service. Indeed we all need to struggle as best we can to open our eyes to what is going on, bc it’s not pretty. This nation that you tried to serve is hurting.

They’ve even struggled at times on basic votes to keep the chamber functioning.

You seem to be assuming that proper functioning was their goal. They were sent there to tear it all down, which is precisely what they did. Never forget that they play by an entirely different set of rules.

Why does that look like the longest handgun I have ever seen in my life? :-P