I hope I’m wrong, but I expect the difference being going from a small handful of aid trucks a day to zero aid trucks a day. That would be a big difference to the people of Gaza.

There are over a million Gazans still alive. That is a very large number of people barely hanging on from starvation that can still be mercilessly wiped out. You really sure about that 5% figure?

Doesn’t his Sec of Defense nominee have a Deus Vult tattoo? Yeah, that doesn’t bode well…

Excellent. I wonder if we’ll finally hit a critical mass over there.

Assuming he abides by constitutional law, this will be his final term.

Was wondering how long it would take to roll something like this out. Bout time.

That last line was the funniest thing I’ve read in the past few days, so thank you for that.

I understand the sentiment, but I’m not so sure it’s actually true. We’ll have to see how many left leaning folks came out for Harris, percentage-wise. Not counting Gaza uncommitteds, they’re a different story imo.

It’s all about the data though, nobody cares about sentiments or online complaints, it has to be hard numbers to actually convince people.

Yes, I think we can.

But remember, during WW2 the USSR and the US were able to cooperate to defeat fascism. We cannot be too picky when it comes to alliances when there’s bigger fish to fry. Ideological purity is not our friend, never has been. Even if that makes everything a confusing pain in the ass, which it does, that diversity of opinion is necessary if we are going to robustly pursue our goals and not get too stuck up our own asses and blinded.

I’m ultimately glad, he was giving democrats a bad name. We could afford that a decade ago, but we no longer can.

There’s a mild reshuffling of the parties happening, with the Tulsi Gabbards switching to red and the Adam Kinzingers switching to blue, and I’m fine with it. It’s about priorities. Which parts of your platform and beliefs are more important than the other parts?

There’s around 2 million Gazans still alive. That’s a lot of ethnicity still to be cleansed if cleansing is the goal.

I didn’t say 330 million registered voters. I said 330 million people, as in total population of the country including all nonvoters and ineligible.

At any rate, I don’t think any singular factor dominated, each person has their own mix of issues. Economy was a big one, including things like rent prices that the feds have little control over in our system. Gaza was a smaller one, definitely. There’s at least a dozen more.

Polls cannot really accurately capture this, they’re too clumsy a tool. Focus groups can though.

There are around 50 million registered dems in the country and Harris is currently sitting at around 70 million votes. Our problem is everyone else in a country with 330 million people.

On the arms shipments, we may try lawsuits via the Leahy Law if the ethnic cleansing ramps up. The way the law is written, it actually looks at arms shipments all the way down to the granular level of individual military units. It does not say arms cannot be exported to countries engaging in war crimes, it specifically says individual military units that commit war crimes cannot receive arms. If they choose to engage in a broader campaign of organized displacement out of Gaza or starvation in places where combat has largely died down, a larger number of military units could potentially become implicated, which could maybe make a lawsuit more feasible. We’ll have to see.

Regarding AIPAC, since Citizen’s United determined that monetary donations are a form of speech, this requires either an amendment or recapture of the Supreme Court. Otherwise Americans are allowed to lobby the government for whatever they wish, even if they are doing so at the behest of a foreign government. They have to disclose that, but so long as they do, they are simply exercising their Constitutional rights as perceived by the current Supreme Court. This isn’t going away any time soon, the current law is very clear and pretty much ironclad, rooted in the Constitution itself via the Bill of Rights.

Some good answers already. To add, in the media sphere Pod Save America and their related branches is a liberal progressive media organization that tries to run counter to the conservative media ecosystem, trying to ride the line between policy wonkery and approachability.

Keep the faith, Brits. Perhaps Brexit washed some of the insanity out early enough that the far right continues to struggle there.

Hopefully we’re not slowly returning to the Napoleonic Era, I’m not sure you guys could withstand all of continental Europe a third time.

So, if I authentically offer to kick his nuts up into his stomach that’ll be enough for him to him to like me? He has literally zero opinions on what actually might be a good or bad idea for the country, just so long as I say it with gusto?

I do get it, but I find it pretty outlandish. If he was born in Mad Max Fury Road, would he just be perfectly happy being one of those pole guys? They seem very authentic, look like they’re having a blast too. “Witness me!”? When I see drug cartels and their quest for money and power, they seem very authentic about it. Very authentically killing everyone who crosses them.

Not gonna lie, that’s a problematic value system.

edit: Should also make him damn leery of Trump, if he has any sort of real instincts about people. Rich assholes are not bottomless wells of authenticity.

Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders in the 2020 Democratic primary and then voted libertarian

…wat?

I kind of understand Bush vs Kerry. Bush had a vision. It was a crazy neocon vision, but it was a vision and he used it to communicate effectively enough that we still occasionally meme about bombing people into freedom.

Obama had a clear vision, and communicated it well. Hope, prosperity for the middle class, international leadership. Biden had a vision, a less divisive America where we came together and worked on overdue problems. Hilary didn’t really, nor did Kerry or Gore. They were more policy administrator types who focused on specific policies and administration, and the idea of incremental improvement just didn’t resonate with people.

Trump, for all his failings, does have a vision he is capable of communicating to the American people. Harris did too, better than Hilary anyway, but it didn’t really come online until fairly late into the campaign and stayed a little too nebulous. I do think she was hurt in this regard by getting such a short campaign with no real prep time, she was evolving in the right direction.

I think we need a Bernie or AOC, someone with a powerful vision and ability to clearly communicate it, to the point of literally cudgeling people over the head with it. And we need to vote them in during the primary, over any competent administrator types, despite the fact that we are fully aware of how effective and necessary those policy administrators can be. Our valuing of them is a place where we’re out of touch with the broader American electorate though.

I think you were really lucky, a pocket knife is a lot riskier than a can of mace or taser or something. Easy to take away. But if it’s what you got, then it’s what you got. Also should’ve aimed a little lower.