Well in that case it will be a true bipartisan effort.

Exactly. They really really wanted to get him, and this was the only thing they could get to stick.

His wife flew the flags, supposedly. Which could be true or could be just his excuse. The pine tree flag is being turned into a right wing extremist symbol specifically to attack Alito. It has never been an issue before, and has been flown all over the place, including San Francisco's city hall. It's very weird and should be very concerning to everyone. I'm not even speaking to his credibility or fitness for the position he has, but the fact that someone is making a concerted effort to rewrite history in order to attack the Supreme Court is crazy.

But at this point, the damage is done and a flag that actually meant something has become tarnished in public opinion to the point where it's lost it's meaning and value.

A million? How did you get that number? How many died directly as a result of covid? (Estimated 1.2 million total, depending on your source) And how many of them actually could have been prevented if everyone got vaccinated as soon as they could have? How many died from covid despite being vaccinated? It's not like it was available or even as effective as everyone initially hoped. It actually blows my mind that everyone forgot how evil and influential the pharmaceutical industry is, the lengths they would go to, how absolutely filthy rich they got. I remember for decades they got in trouble for fudging efficacy data or even straight up fabricating, bribing politicians and doctors, and now years later we still got people like you going to bat for them. White knighting for big pharma... what a world.

I tried finding numbers on how many could have been saved if everyone got vaccinated who could have been, but they vary wildly depending on assumptions. Most of the answers to my questions above can't even be found because nobody did the math besides sources you would diregard anyway. Boy do I ever wish we could have an honest conversation about it instead of political partisanship coloring everything about it.

Yes well, there is always a way to justify actions you support and condemn those that you don't support. The only way to avoid an authoritarian regime of one kind or the other is to hold certain rights to be inviolable and above the scope of government. If you give the government power to remove your rights under certain circumstances then they will create those circumstances in order to use that power. Come on, you know this. And even if was for a cause you support this time, next time it might not be.

Careful not to underestimate the authoritarian left. They seemed willing to go pretty far during COVID.

People aren't thinking about consequences when they commit murder, so it doesn't really matter how severe they are.

Death penalty isn't necessary at all anymore, as there isn't any risk to society in keeping them imprisoned. In the past we were sometimes forced to execute because there weren't viable long term prisons. That's the only legitimate need for the death penalty to exist in my opinion.

I can't imagine it works as a deterrent given the psychopathic nature of these crimes.

I suppose it could bring some kind of peace to a victim of aggravated rape, that their rapist had paid the ultimate price so that would be nice. I'm not sure it works that way though or if it's a healthy coping mechanism.

Overall it feels like it should be a relic of the past.

Yep, and so we get very gradual change. It's not like the political environment is actually broken into left or right anyway. If the Republican party disappeared overnight, conservative Democrats would immediately become the new hurdles to progress, albeit shifted a bit to the left. "Progressive" policies would be more left, and the new "conservative" policies would as well, but they would still be conservative relative to the others.

I'd be curious to see similar math for republicans. It's probably a similar amount of time where they had full bully powers to do whatever they wanted, right? Maybe it's just me, but I'm fine if that kind of power from a single party is rare. If it happened more often we would get much more volatility as laws were changed back and forth. This way change happens more slowly, but it's generally objectively good change rather than reactionary or populist.

I think those are fair criticisms of Trump's moral character, and evidence that he is not a person worthy of admiration and praise from a pastor or as a man of faith and religion. It's pretty clear, to me at least, that his religion is a tool to appeal to a certain political base.

But this is not unique among politicians. At that level of politics, morality and character are whatever they need to be in order to get votes from their base.

So different news sources simply down play the bad aspects of his character and emphasize the good. They also amplify wrongdoing of his opposition, focus on injustice towards him, and discuss all the bad things that will happen if the opposition wins. It's all the same tactics preying on people's emotions and basic instincts, just spun up a little differently.

I don't know what value or use it is to know these things, or dwell on them. Each of us still comes back to the values we hold closest, and support whichever candidate best represents those values, knowing that they will never be fully or perfectly represented.

They can start by developing indicators that actually work, instead of indicators that make them look good.

I'm not sure if these people are propagandists or just dumb. It seems like a very obvious non story if you actually read what happened.

The charges were about collusion, and not about whether or not the Russians tried to interfere.

The entire system is being challenged from top to bottom, with supreme Court justices and Judges all over being called into question.

It's a little confusing what Biden even meant. I assumed he was asking if white people were swapped out for Black people on Jan 6, and all else were equal.

How do you think MSNBC and CNN would cover it?

I agree with you, but this is blatant misrepresentation of what actually happened, and that should worry you. I'm not saying this to defend Trump, I'm saying this to point out the misrepresentation of events by the news media.

You honestly believe that? Our perception of the world and our opinions is formed by what we see and here. It's that simple. Not sure how you think you somehow transcend that, and have some innate ability to discern truth from propaganda. Whole nations and civilizations have been deceived by propaganda and none of us is above that. So the question we should be asking ourselves is what propaganda are we consuming and how is that affecting us?

There's a lot of people in the world with disgusting views, and most of them are irrelevant. White supremacists are irrelevant. They don't actually do anything besides March around every now and then, and normal people give them side eye and move on with their daily lives.