I’ve thought about it…

Yeah sure, “the people” who actually supported the Republic when polled. The people of Afghanistan never got a say. Trump told the ANG that he was leaving them and all of the governors and tribal leaders immediately made side deals with the Taliban. When the Taliban attacked those leaders told all the government’s most fervent supporters to go fight. And then left them cut off and surrounded to be killed.

That’s the kind of deal Trump wants to make with Russia. Russia gets everything they wanted and Ukraine has to deal with it. You can also check out the Trump family deal for peace in the middle east that was essentially getting the Arab world to accept Israel and cut off support for Palestinians.

He doesn’t make actual peace deals. He just gives autocrats what they want and claims it’s peace.

The independents are more progressive than them, not less. And keeping the filibuster is a self inflicted injury.

I have no sympathy for the boy who does nothing more than cry wolf while he loses his sheep.

Re-organizing the court is a normal bill. And yes the Republicans are going to make sure anything they don’t like is highly controversial. If that’s why you aren’t doing something then you’re just keeping their seat warm for them.

The Germans absolutely did not. They were surrendering in droves well before Hitler killed himself. The government did not officially surrender but everyone knew it was over. And fascist extremists continued to fight well after he died.

That’s the popular idea but it’s not a one to one analogy. MAGA is also a political movement that thinks it’s rebelling against Washington Insiders. That’s why he’s replaceable.

Don’t worry RFK said he’s going to send people on adderall and mental health drugs to a cozy summer camp. And Trump has previously blamed immigrants for the homeless problem, so obviously all he needs to do is go through the homeless camps and deport anyone without documentation.

See? How dare you say they don’t have plans to place Billionaires Americans first!

You think Vance and company won’t be right in there behind him to continue things? Trump laid out the populist approach, the only reason others have failed is because MAGA is personally loyal to Trump. Of course there would be a PR struggle to win that loyalty but someone like Vance or DeSantis is going to win it and then we’re still in the same boat. Trump’s popularity isn’t an inherent trait, in person he’s widely reported to be a narcissistic idiot. He’s a built personality, after him they’ll just build the next one.

Biden had a trifecta, they could have pushed legislation to reorganize SCOTUS. This is yet another issue on the flaming pile of things Democrats could have done but did not because it’s better to be able to campaign on it.

The actual sad truth is that unless the Russian people turn on Putin or it turns into their next Afghanistan, there is no path to victory for Ukraine. Russia is larger with more people and more resources. It may be extremely painful but they will win in the end if the war goes on long enough. That’s why NATO is treating Ukraine as a way to bleed Russia. The best case scenario is to turn it into a version of Afghanistan, so expensive in money and manpower that Russia is forced to leave. The next best scenario is to bleed Russia and destroy enough infrastructure in Ukraine that Russia cannot use it as a base of operations into Europe, cannot make use of it’s industrial capacity, and cannot sustain a military campaign until the next generation is old enough to rebuild the Russian military.

A negotiated peace where Russia gets to keep Eastern Ukraine and start again in a couple years is the worst possible scenario as far as NATO is concerned. It will cause an arms race, and it allows Russia to absorb it’s losses (economic, material, and manpower) in a way that avoids critical problems.

Ukraine is in a horrible spot between two giants, one is despicable and the other is willing to defend itself with the utilitarian moral guide of the ends justifying the means.

Didn’t anyone learn from his “Peace in Afghanistan”? He literally just gave the Taliban everything they wanted and told the Afghans we were leaving.

They’d rather have us back as training personnel. Most of us are broken in some way that makes deployment problematic unless we’re actually desperate. Then they can dump most of TRADOC into leadership spots for new units.

It wouldn’t be the first time a country did that. It’s never ended particularly well though.

They aren’t even blue. They do not care about our political parties. Their interest is as a lobby group to benefit Israel. It’s full name is The American Israel Public Affairs Committee. And the contents match the name on the tin.

They aren’t alone, just to throw a dart and find a couple from the hundreds of organizations as an example, there’s the Japan External Trade Organization and the Irish National Caucus. That there is such a group isn’t alarming. What’s alarming is their level of influence in Democratic Party Politics while obviously preferring Trump and conservative Democrats. Other groups simply lobby for their interest, whereas AIPAC seeks to shape the field of play for our domestic politics, in the favor of Israel.

Oh no, you’re reading that wrong. The aide resigned in protest to Rep. Moulton’s comments. The article also quotes Rep. Tom Suozzi. Moulton is also in the House Equality Caucus, which is supposed to be protecting LGBTQ rights. I’m not sure how they square that with his comments that fundamentally misunderstand the process for transgender kids though. His comments show a fundamental misunderstanding of scholastic sports, human physiology, and hormone blockers. Which you think 2 of the 3 would be required reading for that caucus…

I couldn’t find anything about voting machines named Starling. There is a StarLink theory. The problem is that seems to be based on a TikTok video that was incoherent by most reports, and is no longer up.

I get that moneyed interests could get evidence removed from a centralized social media service. But nothing in the transcript I’ve found describes a specific link from StarLink to voting machines. In fact it sounds like the person just described the basics of TCP/IP in a roundabout way to make it sound sinister. The problem is election systems are air gapped with the exception of a few highly controlled access points. Situations where that’s been compromised, (such as allowing remote work from home for election office workers) have made the news for precisely the reason that it’s rare. And the most credible criticism of election security is that the election office’s computers could be compromised and used to spread malware to machines. But that’s an inherent weakness. If the office can’t access the results, they can’t report them.

Furthermore, there’s nothing special about StarLink that would make them a better access route. They aren’t close enough to intercept the unofficial results as a false cellphone tower, (and that wouldn’t change the official results later anyways), and any traffic going through them to attack election systems would also have to travel through modems on the ground, controlled by election officials. So destroying the satellite does nothing for covering your tracks. If you believe they can erase all traces of their traffic, then there’s no need to destroy a satellite as surely that would be even easier on a satellite controlled by a close ally.

At the end of the day, with what we know right now, the fuck up was with the Democrat’s messaging. Not anything to do with election security.

Pretty sure Zelensky is just trying to keep a lid on Trump and appear high minded to other western governments. Then when Russia’s demands are ridiculous he can point to them and go back to fighting with more support.

I haven’t seen anything. I know Arizona for sure would be all over it. Their last three SoS elections were about keeping Maga out of the elections. The current governor is governor largely for standing up to Trump in 2020. If they thought they got hacked they would be using bullhorns to let us know.

The kind that’s had me watching politics since Clinton… Have you been under a rock?

They’re already starting to trial run the messaging through lower ranking democrats in safe seats. (Link)