Week

That's unfortunate. Substantively, I'm in agreement DMC's response.

Cutting spending to increase the deficit. Brilliant.

Some particularly good burns for Elmo these days. Nothing burning quite as white hot has the money he invested into Twitter, of course.

It does not exist as a hierarchical, organized, aggressive, progressive force - an equivalent to fascist gangs like the Proud Boys. It does exist as a foil to those groups that will self-organize to protect communities threatened by said fascistic groups.

~"I'm not damning any responses just leveling ad hominem replies and disengaging." I'll grant you that we could *all* give each other a bit more grace... I have seen a lot of legitimate pushback on your long post that you haven't responded to at all. I'm not really sure what the point for this thread at this point -- is it discourse on discourse solely or you looking for substantive engagement on the issues?

^Really excellent points - specifically the return on investment of some/many government investments. Things like universal Pre-K, expanded SNAP, expanded Medicaid, etc. are typically at worst neutral over the long run and are mostly quite positive. Pouring money into the MIC - not so much although not always a full loss either.

It's where you started. You're asking for more than you yourself provided and damning the responses you've received. Perhaps, there's a reason why responses were as they were? /Principal Skinner meme - Am I out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong!

Then he attacked the military for focusing on woke instead of how to kill bad guys. He's so good at staying on message for the duration of the clause falling out of his mouth. A full sentence of consistency and coherence is too much to ask let alone a whole 24 hours.

The examples you've used - academia, SF DA, etc. have been cherry picked examples to accentuate a cleavage that you are trying to argue. I'd call that straw manning, personally. You could argue why or why not instead of jumping into the hamster wheel of how argumentation should work.

Well, checkmark on tone policing too. Some very legitimate questions were asked to bring some detail to the verbose statements made before by @Phylum of Alexandria. Seems like there could be some understanding and discussion which seemed to be the goal of this thread. Perhaps this is the dynamic that embodies how difficult these discussions are. It reminds me of some discussions I have with my liberal though more conservative (dem voting) parents. Getting into the detail of why a discussion or solution is complex is immediately me being difficult. I mean, god forbid we talk about how real people are affected by the student loan moratorium? Or, as DMC pointed out, the actual articulation of 'defund the police' which will never truly be acknowledged because the first impressions of the term are so baked in.

I do wonder if this will ever get real legs.

And likes... Nikki Haley?? I am wincing in embarrassment as I'm reading her 'accomplishments': https://nikkihaley.com/record-of-results/ Known as the 'Iran Whisperer '? Are you kidding me?

I went out for a short walk this morning. It was a bit cool, but glorious to touch some grass. Highly recommended for some folks in this thread.

Don't play like it's such an easy test to pass.

If we consider all talking points on the right to be projection ... maybe lizard-people really are among us.

Here's the next step after universities - Faster, cheaper delivery of labor to capital for exploitation (learn only what companies *think* you should learn.)

That pay off. Hoooeyy. Thank goodness there are people like you to breathlessly screech in times like this.

Or people are poor judges of long term partners for marriage. Or marriage as a long term commitment is less stable/attainable due to a variety of current societal factors (changing nature of work, social media, dating/cheating apps, etc.).

Stopping?? How?

Wow, talk about having a finger on the pulse of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. The juxtaposition of the Right's 1940s family values with support/apologia for fascism makes for an interesting perspective. I'll say one side looks pretty fucked and it isn't the Left.

America's Mayor (tm)

Minsc and Boo are effectively main characters. They are so inextricably tied to my memories of those games that I can't imagine not having them in the party. Go for the eyes, Boo. GO FOR THE EYES! RrraaaAAGHGHH!!!

Ok, here's the good business sense. 1) Let your tool atrophy such that you accidentally encourage users to view animal torture videos 2) Treat all concerns, legitimate and not, with disdain 3) Rip out all autocomplete functionality because you can't easily solve the problem you create 4) ummm, profit? No wonder Elon's net worth is so much greater than mine. Only someone with such a staggering intellect could guide a company through this ride with the wisdom and long term perspective as a fly on shit.

All pretty fair points. I do, however, think there is a difference between gate-keeping by the Left based on where someone worked versus this anti-Semitic Soros (adjacent, at least) framing of the refugee "crisis". As I said, YMMV indeed.

A bit more than dumbass entertainment articles but YMMV