If that were the case, they would’ve caved 40 days ago. Caving now ensures that all the pain we went through was for absolutely nothing.

Either would have been fine.

I’d try to negotiate. You never know; they might be willing to take Trump, Vance, every single one of Trump’s cabinet members, every Republican senator, representative, and governor… and maybe if they’re exceptionally ruthless negotiators, like 85% of all elected Democrats to boot.

Not just that; he’s the fucking minority leader. It’s his job to coerce Democrats to vote in a unified manner.

Was going to reply to this post with something like this, but you said it better than I could have. It doesn’t matter what lie he tells them, or how obvious it is, they’ll eat it up because at this point they pretty much have to. Because they’re in so deep at this point that getting out would completely destroy them.

I don’t know, man. I don’t think there’s any healing the divide that already exists. It’s not like Fox and the other propaganda machines are churning out messages of unity or anything. If you’re worried about a slippery slope, I hate to tell you that we’ve been on it for a long time, now. Obviously, the future isn’t set in stone, but I think it’d take one hell of an external threat to get us all to band together at this point. Maybe those UFOs we were all concerned about last year could do it?

I don’t dispute his personhood, but that doesn’t imply he’s believable, when his entire career has shown him not to be.

You’re assuming he’s doing it for moral reasons rather than trying to produce a “shocking exposé” around an emotionally and politically charged set of current events for maximum engagement.

It wouldn’t surprise me if this is at least partially true, but James O’Keefe has exactly zero credibility. He has made it his life’s work to produce poorly-made works of fiction, and he has the audacity to call it investigative reporting.

Still, giving Republicans the benefit of the doubt on, well, anything feels deeply immoral.

I don’t know… setting conditions on when he can die seems like beggars being choosers. At this point, I’m ok with him escaping the completely ineffectual clutches of justice and just dying of whatever disorder kills him first. Him dying won’t magically fix everything, of course, but I’d say it’s a great fucking start.

Jesus - where do you live that 1 out of every 10 times you take mass transit, it’s a harrowing affair?

Well, second biggest, anyway. White men have them beat, with 59% of them voting Trump in 2024.

True. It’s only when they lose access to the program because they voted for the party that said: “I’m going to kill that program” that they go out and write pleading articles like this bullshit saying: “Wait, no - but good people like ME benefit from it! You can’t kill this program!”

It’s worse than that, I’m afraid. The author of the article is a woman. So not only does she not care enough about her son to vote against the party who wants to kill him… she doesn’t care enough about her gender to vote against the party that wants to strip them of their rights.

She means she’s an unlikely supporter of medicaid. Unlikely, because she’s a fucking asshole who votes for the party that demonizes people who need medicaid. What she doesn’t realize is that she is made from the same mold that all Republicans are: they’re against anything that could help people unless they personally could benefit from it.

Why do people like this guy always put the onus for reconciliation on the victims? If someone voted against humanity for years, and treated me and mine like garbage, why is it up to me to extend the olive branch?

If these fucking dipshits decide to vote for non-Republicans, that’s great, but it has fuck all to do with me. I’m in no way responsible for luring them back to humanity one painful step at a time.

This is giving strong “I hope nobody finds out I went to Epstein island” vibes.

Reminds me of this poem from Carl Sandburg:

With at least 70% of us living paycheck to paycheck, and 48% of us having $1,000 or less in savings, I don’t think that a national strike is likely. I agree that it would be by far the most impactful thing we could collectively do, but hell - at least half of us are one missed paycheck away from homelessness, and America really fucking hates the homeless. Combine that with the fact that most people get their family health insurance from their job, and the fact that our Senate just voted to practically obliterate medicare / medicaid, and you get an extra level of devastating consequences for losing your job. And people would lose their jobs. Even if a significant amount of people are participating in the nation-wide strike, employers would be very heavy-handed with the dismissals. I just don’t think that it’s in the cards for us.

“Ok, so we lied about every single aspect of this case, and repeated those lies continuously for 2 months to keep an innocent man in a foreign torture prison… but we have evidence now that he gave some people a ride in his car! A RIDE in his CAR! Can you believe that?? No, seriously, please believe that. He’s a bad guy, you guys. Honest!*”