Phoenix_person

Hamas won roughly 44% of the overall vote in the 2006 election. They didn't win a majority of overall votes, they just won more than any other party. Hamas control of Gaza came only after infighting between them and Fatah, the party of Yasser Arafat which currently controls the West Bank. So no, I don't think it's necessarily accurate to say that a majority of Palestinians support Hamas. Their support may be proportionally higher in Gaza due to the restrictive nature of Israeli occupation there, but there's an entire generation of young adults in Gaza who never got a vote, so it's hard to say for sure.

I'm also high-functioning autistic and listen to music very frequently to help me focus. I even bought a headband/sleep mask with built-in headphones to help me sleep, because apparently Amon Amarth and Screeching Weasel are more calming for me than silence. 😅

A couple of boomer scholars first called us "Millennials" in 1991. The name is a reference to the fact that we came of age in the beginning of the new millenium. The world changed so rapidly during our adolescent and early adult years that some of us were given the distinction of being a "micro-generation", the Xennials (because many of us relate more to Gen X than Y) or geriatric Millennials. This is where I fall. I also recently learned that kids born from 2010-2025 are being identified as Generation Alpha. I'm guessing that the following generation, which is a few years away from being born, will be Generation Beta.

The amount of deliberate misinformation and propaganda coming from both the IDF and Hamas is dizzying. I truly don't know what to believe lately. They know the world is watching and there's more lies than rockets being thrown around in that region. I've had a busy week and haven't had much time to dig into the hospital atrack, but we seem to have verification that IDF used white phosphorus on civilian populations in Gaza (which is very specifically forbidden by the Geneva Conventions) and attacked caravans of refugees who were fleeing Gaza on Israeli recommendations. The actions of Hamas that started all this were horrific and indefensible, but Israel isn't exactly making themselves look great with their response. I get that Hamas is a difficult enemy to fight conventionally, but preservation of innocent life still needs to be a priority, and I'm not convinced that IDF views any Palestinian life as innocent.

The sexual assault allegations/lawsuits are new to me. Maybe that was covered elsewhere in this thread and I missed it.

This story has a very unfortunate update. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2023/10/09/breaking-five-women-have-filed/ I know how y'all feel about the Tribune, but this is being reported by multiple outlets.

Having grown up in the DMV area, I agree. MD drivers are the actual worst. Texans complain about their drivers, but they're really quite tame.

I volunteer for a faith-based group of progressive community organizers that's primarily made up of Christians and Muslims, and I think there may be some synagogues affiliated with us as well. And I'm not the only atheist on the team. 😅 The range of belief systems and backgrounds in our organization is astounding. We have pastors, teachers, doctors, imams, farmers, students, life-long Minnesotans, transplants, and one mentally-damaged atheist Army veteran. It really drives home the need for political/community work to be intersectional. I feel like the political right struggles with this a lot, and the left definitely has room for improvement.

The Democrats didn't owe McCarthy anything. They did the politically expedient thing, which was to let the GOP eat itself. And make no mistake, the GOP would have done the same if the roles were reversed. I have no confidence that McCarthy could have avoided a government shutdown, and he would have blamed Dems for it. Now if the shutdown happens, all fingers will be pointing at the House GOP, and just in time for election season.

For the first time in history, the Speaker of the House has been removed from his seat. 👀 https://thirdhour.org/forums/topic/60241-who-won-the-debate/?do=findComment&comment=886561

HKQGEMdTdbdx75s2Obo8EFiEdQDKVtcoagU0Nrk57yWk&mibextid=Zxz2cZ Disney announces a donation of 1.5 million to various non profits. While this is commendable, I feel it's worth noting that this is roughly the equivalent of me donating $4 of my monthly income to charity.

I've never met anyone on "my side" who wants to dismantle anyone's privilege, at least not in the way you mean. The ultimate end goal is to reduce or eliminate privilege, yes, by increasing the number of people who can reach it. After all, it's only a privilege if there are people who can't have it. I don't see anything wrong with this. The way you're wording it doesn't indicate that they want to eliminate support for nuclear two parent households. They just want single-parent households to get the same support. Didn't you say that you want to expand access to privilege so everyone can have it? One way we do that is by treating all family formats as equal. And ultimately, the things that benefit single-parent families can also benefit nuclear ones. Things like paid family medical leave and paternity leave are essential for non-binary families. Would you consider it a bad thing for your nuclear family to have access to those things?

Hate's a strong word. Most of us are just tired of seeing centrist dinosaurs waste Dem power by rocking the boat as little as possible so that other centrist dinosaurs will keep voting for them. "Right now, Minnesota is showing the country you don't win elections to bank political capital – you win elections to burn political capital and improve lives." -Governor Tim Walz

I didn't know that about Johnny. But if he was good enough for Henry Rollins and Brett Gurewitz, then he's good enough for me.

Spirituality is just unstructured religion, and frankly it seems more logical to me than the rigid dogmatic systems that make up many modern religions. The biggest problem I have with religion is that it ascribes increasing levels of complexity to a system that's based on an intangible and objectively unknowable entity. Convincing me to believe in God is tricky enough. But you also want me to believe that he hates pork, loves polygamy, and wants me to dedicate half of my weekend* to piety? It's hard to look at organized religions and see them as something other than man-made systems of control. That's why even some Christians are abandoning their churches in favor of honoring God and Jesus on a more personal and less ceremonial level. I still don't agree with it, but it seems more sensible to me to have a flexible spiritual relationship with a diety than a structured dogmatic one. It's more in line with the concept of a personal god, imo. *Which half is open to interpretation based on whether or not you accept the New Testament as gospel.

Woof. What a difference, indeed. A lot happened in the few months after I posted that, certainly enough to make me rethink my stance on precedents regarding presidential criminality. And also enough to turn some former nose-holding Trump voters against him. I still stand by the prediction I made in 2016. https://thirdhour.org/forums/topic/60241-who-won-the-debate/?do=findComment&comment=886561 https://thirdhour.org/forums/topic/60241-who-won-the-debate/?do=findComment&comment=886619

This is a fun* game to play on Tinder as well. *There's nothing fun about it.

He came close to making some good points, but the second verse went off the rails. Not surprising when you see his noggin-enlarging playlist. TBH, I'm surprised I even made it to the second verse because, politics aside, his singing is nails-on-a-chalkboard bad.

61 seconds!

You're right. I stand corrected. And you're right that using TwiXter as a primary news source definitely was a detriment in this case. It doesn't change the fact that Trump illegally tried to pressure Georgia officials to "find" 11,000 votes, or that he tweeted this while there were rioters in the Capitol building actively looking for Mike Pence. Again, I'm not excusing the sore loser behavior of Democrats, but I hope you can see why I have a particular amount contempt for Trump in particular. I took the same oath that every other government employee does, including Trump. I may not be bound to it anymore, but I still take it very seriously.

I'll start at the most basic level. You live in a town or city. Elected officials in your city/town/parish/whatever make decisions that directly affect your community, perhaps even you personally. Arguably, these elected officials have more influence on your immediate quality of life than anyone in DC. I believe that citizens have an inherent right to decide who makes these decisions, decisions that determine how their tax dollars are spent (again, more so than anyone in DC) and what kind of community they'll be living in. From there, you can expand the reasoning to a national level. After all, Congress and the president make decisions that affect all of us to some degree or another. Why should it be a privilege to decide who makes those decisions? Taxes aren't going anywhere in this country, and so long as people are paying taxes, shouldn't they get to decide who spends that money? No taxation without representation, right? This is exactly and exclusively what I was referring to.

I'm not going to defend any of them. That said, what irks me isn't necessarily the fundraising. Politicians are professional fundraisers. I imagine I'll probably be spending a significant part of next year helping my local DFL reps raise money. What irks me is the attempts to normalize unconceding denialism. That's the difference. Gore, Clinton, and Abrams may have been reluctant to concede their races, but they conceded. A lot of politicians are sore losers, and that's bipartisan. But there's a difference between disagreeing with an election result and actively underming public trust in our democratic process. All I'm going to say about this is that there's a considerable portion of leftists who would be perfectly content to see Joe and Hunter as cellmates. Maybe they could form their own gang with Trump and the January 6th "tourists". On this we're going to fundamentally disagree because I view voting as a right, not a privilege. Like some rights, it can be revoked, but it doesn't need to be earned. I served in the Army for 10 years, so I take rights pretty seriously, including your right to disagree with me. 😉 A lot of people weren't legally people back then, and property ownership was a requirement to vote. The requirement of having an established address is less restrictive, and I'll confess that I'm not sure what a good workaround would be to accommodate the homeless, aside from eradicating homelessness.

Why? Why? Why? These all seem like pretty arbitrary policies that would make it harder for people to vote, but not necessarily prevent the kind of fraud you claim is happening. This is just a theory, and I don't really have much to back it up except for my own recent and limited experience politics, but perhaps lopsided political districts are easier to corrupt than close ones. If one party is pretty much guaranteed victory in every election, then what incentive is there to play by the rules? I'm not saying that everything is 100% copacetic in more competitive areas (more on that in a moment), but closer elections tend to be watched more closely by both parties. We've seen instances of problematic Democrats (all in solid blue seats, notably, see my above observation) being thrown to the wolves by their own party (Rod Blagojevich, Anthony Weiner, Al Franken, Andrew Cuomo). Off the top of my head, the only example of an established GOP politician being held accountable by their own party is a local one that barely got any national coverage. Jennifer Carnahan, the former Minnesota GOP chairwoman, was compelled to resign after one of her top donors, Anton Lazzaro, was arrested for child sex trafficking (he was convicted and last week was given a sentence of 21 years in prison). There were other issues looming over her (she apparently treated her staff horribly), but Lazzaro effectively ended her political career in a state where the GOP is very vulnerable. Why? And what about people who are physically unable to serve in the military? Why does ownership of property matter? Last I checked, this was the 21st Century, not the 18th. Like S_S_V, you seem to have some arbitrary ideas of who should be able to vote and how.

How? Democrats can talk about election integrity until they're blue in the face and not one Republican will believe them. That's fair and understandable, but we've reached a point where Republicans who refute election fraud claims are castigated and labeled as RINOs. 2.5 years after January 6th, we still have people on the far right who are convinced that Trump was right, Pence is a traitor, and Biden's victory was illegitimate, all without a single shred of credible evidence. Meanwhile, Trump raked in $250 Million in donations AFTER the 2020 election, ostensibly to fight the election result. One of the many investigations that he's currently the target of is working to determine what he used that money for. In Arizona, Kari Lake raised $2.5M+ for her legal fight after losing her election for governor*. Losing elections is a lucrative business, it seems. https://www.npr.org/2022/06/16/1105279623/jan-6-committee-trump-campaign-legal-defense-fund https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaign/arizona-lake-trump-finchem-fundraising-loss *That number is as of January of this year. As of that time, she had spent less than 10% of that on legal fees, though she's probably spent more in the past couple months as she's been the target of a defamation lawsuit filed by an AZ election official. I imagine she's probably raised additional money since January as well, but I couldn't find any solid confirmation.

Now I want to watch SLC Punk! 😂