Mountain Goats right?

No worries my dude, I had a stressful day today too. Better days ahead for both of us.

Hey fuck you buddy

(Thank you buddy, I hope you’re doing well - I’ll make sure to bring a better version of myself next time. Have a good weekend)

Your mom is a prolate sphere.

(I am embarrassed and am now lashing out with baseless personal attacks)

Because he’s so smart and good at throwing the oval ball that his opinions must be true and relevant and he deserves the platform to spread his views.

I think it’s a great example of how media outlets can seed certain ideas. If you read the headline then the context, then it’s like yeah I see how he said that. But I’m not sure you arrive there if you read the quote then the headline.

I’m about as liberal as they come, but holy shit the amount that this is done in politics is insane. It drives me nuts. Republicans often have so much wrong with their platform (in my opinion) that we don’t need to just make shit up about them.

A particularly good example that stood out to me was Trump’s “Muslim Ban”. Do I think it was profile-y in its application? Yes. But if you looked at the detail, the justification used was vague “national security”. Why couldn’t we just attack how bullshit that was? But no, media had to run with exclusively the Muslim Ban line and it was so easy to deflect for Republicans. All they had to say was “this isn’t about race stop being racist”. But because of that, no one asked the better questions, like saying “you say this is specifically about national security… How is this immigration program specifically being exploited in ways that harm us?” Were we blocking work visas from those countries? Because I can tell you refugee status is a fuck of a lot harder and has more screening than work visas.

There were just so many glaring issues, but we decide to side step into an alternative reality.

None of this frustration is pointed at you by the way, it’s awesome that you just said hey I think I got this one wrong. That’s an admirable quality on forums these days. I just hate the media apparatus.

Alright… Nuance time. Everyone please stick with me.

I don’t like Rodgers, but this is kind of a dumb headline. THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE OF RODGERS. I think what he’s saying is that the “pandemic response” was the thing manufactured, not the virus itself. I think people are misreading it, because I don’t think I really see how he’s saying they manufactured the virus. THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE OF RODGERS. Like the government gave all this money and tried to make people reliant on the government to save them, which has been his whole position with COVID.

It’s still flatly wrong. But borderline purposeful misreadings like this only embolden Rodgers and others, because it’s inaccurate, and people are attacking something he didn’t say. And this gives him more of a platform because people are talking about it again.

If you’re going to criticize someone, it’s important to be accurate and understand what they’re saying, so you can appropriately shut them the fuck up with the right facts.

One more time, THIS IS NOT A DEFENSE OF RODGERS.

They’re not perfect, but they’re not complete bullshit.

I can’t explain it all in a comment, but, like most things, there are good polls and bad polls. Saying polls are bullshit is like saying car mechanics are incompetent because some of them are.

If you read up on polls and their methodology, and read more then headlines, you can start to discern good ones from bad ones.

Most people don’t realize margin of error and how close elections are. There hasn’t been that large of polling errors in the last several elections. 2016 was larger than normal, but still within pretty explainable ranges.

Good polls are worth paying attention to, and proclaiming they are all bullshit is just a flatly bad take. They’re are a lot of shit polls that are politically motivated to make candidates look good or bad, but there are good pollsters doing good work. But you have to know what to look for. Not all polls are equal.

Not a lawyer, but I really doubt it. As has been used before, his lawyers can argue that he really does believe he’s being treated unfairly, so of course he would speak out. Or the route that it’s protected political speech meant to rile up his base. I mean if January 6th wasn’t stochastic terrorism, it leaves space for this kind of thing.

I don’t like Trump either, but anything legal around speech is pretty difficult. I’m quite shocked the Carroll case actually landed against Trump, but you can see how egregious it had to be. He’s talked about jailing all kinds of political people for all kinds of reasons. If you don’t do something the first time, then it can be used as justification that he’s not doing anything different. Is it a shitty argument? Sure. But in court, it’s effective.

I agree… Trump also has a superpower of gathering attention. The dude loves it even when it’s all bad. It’s a massive gift to Republicans because they can do crazy shit but Trump takes all the air time.

Trump is very skilled at absolutely wrenching attention away from everything else, even if he looks like a baffoon. Haley does not have that gene.

Corruption, demeanor, and leadership.

She doesn’t have dozens of lawsuits, she’s not a loose cannon who will say anything at any moment (I can only imagine how awful Trump is in meetings with foreign leaders, and his lawyers don’t even let him speak in court because he’ll get himself in even more trouble), and she can get people around her to believe in things more than her own selfish means.

I get that you wanted policies, but things like this are important too. Haley wouldn’t be headlining every day with some dumb shit she said on Twitter.

I feel oddly like I’m defending Haley… I’m not. Her border policies suck, she’ll seek to pardon Trump if elected, and I don’t see her doing shit on gun control either. Economically she’ll do the same as Republicans in that she’ll grossly underfund programs and then use their underfunding as justification for closing them, and do nothing to help the average person with tax breaks (those are for companies and upper class only).

I hear you in terms of her policies being shit, but calling the worst President in our lifetime the same as a below-average Republican candidate is just equivocating and makes people less likely to hear what you have to say. There’s a lot of Republicans who are sick of Trump and do believe he’s a threat to Democracy, but when they hear that people think Haley and Trump are the same, it reinforces Trumps worst messages.

I think this take is pretty bad. You can disagree with Haley and Trump on a lot of pretty core issues, but trying to say they are completely equal is just plain wrong, in my opinion.

If Haley was elected, I’m positive that I wouldn’t like the direction of the country at all, and think things would regress. It also encourages Republicans to run the most extreme candidates, because there’s no pull to anything rational when all candidates are treated the same.

With Trump, I’m genuinely concerned about our core institutions surviving again.

I don’t view Haley as Moderate, but I don’t think Trump is on a politicians spectrum. The man is just chaos and ego incarnate.

What time zone is that minute in?!

… He can’t run at all if he’s kicked off the ballot.

And he won’t rally people against Haley or she’ll pull the “I Won’t Pardon You” card.

Trump always operates in his own selfish best interest. And his interest will quickly become do what he can to get Haley elected. It’ll be his only out.

I would add to this… I’m not convinced they would lose in 2024. If they kept Trump off the ballot, Haley could naturally step in and say she would pardon Trump (wouldn’t get him reinstated or anything really, but I don’t think his supporters would read past “pardon”).

Then all of the sudden you might actually get a revved up MAGA crowd behind someone like Haley, who appeals way more to the center.

It’s not far fetched that she could give Biden a hard time, particularly now that they’d play the age card as much as possible. I’ve been saying this from the beginning… This is the Trump off-ramp in a way that doesn’t damage any elected officials. They can all be outraged and angry publicly, and they fits their narrative very nicely.

If Trump gets kicked off the ballot, the road for Democrats in 2024 gets harder, not easier, in my opinion.

Probably

From everything I’ve seen, this race is over. New Hampshire was one of the highest populations of Haleys base and she still lost by 10 points.

She would need a very seismic shift in the race to have any prayer of a chance.

And just to be clear, I’m quite liberal. But whenever I write these comments people think I’m for Trump. I just look at the data.

Yeah it’d be ideal if all of them had perfectly cooked and prepared meals with well researched nutritional balance and a balanced food and flavor profile.

But somehow Republicans want small government that leaves people alone except when it comes to their genitals, bathroom habits, access to books, or apparently what kind of food they get.

I guess we can continue to judge the poorest among us for what we view as poor choices with their social benefits.

I’m not even against some of the ideas, but denying people what they have because it’s not your perfect idea of what they should have is just cruel. Work towards better, don’t use people’s suffering as leverage.

For sure… But $0 a month isn’t going to buy much protein either

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/5/23712440/gmail-ads-more-annoying-middle-inbox

It’s mostly on the mobile app for me.