It was apparent when that Georgia recording came out that he must have been calling all over the place making these unsubtle "suggestions" to various state officials. It was just a matter of who decided to grab a recording and hold onto it to cover their own asses. I think everyone involved knew full well that even having the conversation was crossing all kinds of lines, and impossible to defend.

Maybe the secret ingredient is human empathy. Not that crazies are unique to the right by any means, but the organized effort to dehumanize and attack segments of the population has gone disproportionately mainstream on that side of the spectrum. So many talking points involve a vaguely-defined "enemy" of some kind. It's unfortunate that people get sucked into it, but you can't really blame the individuals when the leaders they look up to are actively working to mobilize them in that way as a political strategy.

I guess the ideological space the left fills at the moment just isn't one that requires that type of anger to support. There are certainly issues to get angry about, but in general it's just taking that low-hanging fruit of giving your fellow humans the same respect you would want for yourself and your loved ones, even if they seem different or weird to you.

I seriously appreciate all of the points you're making, but the idea of men and women as cohesive social units here might not be realistic or helpful, especially for issues affecting sub-groups. Sometimes the people actively working to improve something are fighting an uphill battle against societal expectations and/or larger portions of their own group who don't recognize it as an issue. I'm sure you know that doesn't make it any less valid.

There's that and the fact that most people who sell a house will still need new housing afterward. The value can be kind of moot unless you're in a position to majorly downsize or relocate to a lower cost-of-living area.

As true as it all may be, these guys seem to absolutely thrive on their own hypocrisy. I don't think they would let the fact that they stink ten times as bad stop them from going after anyone else.

Yeah, this is kind of the issue with walling the workers off from the success of their product and converting it all into poker chips for other people to play with. Imagine how different things could be if everyone's pay grew with the success of the company.

While I'm fully uncomfortable with the influence donors have over these institutions, I also feel like the handling of some of those hearing questions was catastrophic. Lady got maneuvered into giving them exactly the weak non-answer they were fishing for. It's bad all around.

While I'm fully uncomfortable with the influence donors can wield against these institutions, I also feel like the handling of some of those hearing questions was catastrophic. Lady got maneuvered into giving them exactly the sort of weak non-answer they were fishing for. It's bad all around.

I kind of wish everyone who set foot in that room was fitted with a device that electrically zaps them every time they say some disingenuous bullshit. It's always so uncomfortable to watch, and they know exactly what they're doing.

It took me like three hours to finish the shading on your upper lip.

Not that we had much choice along the way, but you're right, we were almost completely in the dark about how much anything was going to cost as it happened. Various groups were mailing us bills for the full amounts even before insurance had settled their portion. Nobody in the entire insurance and billing game is on your side.

Absolutely. Taking healthcare costs off our backs would go a long way. The birth of my first kid absolutely wiped out the savings I had built up since getting out of school, and that was WITH insurance coverage. Six years of careful planning and saving just flushed down the toilet in an instant. There's just no financially-responsible way to manage the risk of a hospital bill that could range from hundreds to hundreds of thousands depending on what does or doesn't go according to plan, not to mention the following 18+ years of unknowns. It's kind of a wonder that people are still having as many kids as they are these days.

Tell us about the infrastructure programs next.

That's certainly the overall picture for the party, but at the lowest level these are still a bunch of actual, individual humans filling seats. So many of them are so forthcoming in speaking out about being on the wrong side of history the moment they step out of those roles. I would like to understand what's compelling them to consistently vote and speak in unison against the things they swore to uphold, and lie directly to our faces every day right up until the point where it doesn't matter anymore. Whatever is at work there is going to burn everything down eventually.

Congressional republicans really hung the entire country out to dry when they chose to cross that line with him. That's what it all comes back to. These questions should never be riding on individual judges; it's why the legislative branch was defined as its own thing and not just another arm of the president. But they signaled to everyone that his actions were just fine within the framework of the gov.

I mean the whole point of this country was to NOT have power consolidated in one office, and these clowns are just going full-steam ahead on sending us back there again, and dumping all of their resources into convincing the public it's a good thing. Some days I just don't know what kind of backward mirror world we fell into.

The news outlets do this with every experimental battery tech. Personally, I probably won't even know when something effectively surpasses Li-ion for consumer applications until it actually hits the market, since I've been conditioned to ignore the headlines.

Definitely seems like a pattern with these things. So many of these people who are into some stuff, but rather than accept it as a personal battle, they channel everything into finding some external "evil" to help them rationalize the existence they're struggling with. It's too bad they can't see how many others they're hurting.

It should be interesting to hear how they plan to make this determination. I just know from the rural side that the burden to serving poorer communities usually is both technical and financial, like building out a few miles of fresh fiber to serve a handful of residences. That's why they have programs in place to push expansion into those areas, and the telecoms involved there are already bound by progress and reporting requirements. I guess it could be a different situation in areas where the population density is pretty consistent across the board.

With constitutional originalism being all the rage nowadays, a person could certainly ask what sort of arms existed at the time of writing.

So why is political representation so skewed that the "left" party needs to confine itself to the middle of the spectrum? That sounds like something to discuss.