xhieron

No matter our politics, hopefully we can all agree with JB about not wanting to get shot by reactionary Christofascist radicals. I assume Black and Gass's politics are pretty well aligned with each other, and Gass didn't say anything a lot of people aren't also feeling. But you can't say that shit on stage in front of thousands of amped up fans. --not because it's wrong to say or because it's not politically correct or even because it's controversial. You can't say that shit because some of the people in the audience are unhinged and have already been radicalized by the Right.

Take a stand for the First Amendment, and take a stand against censorship, sure--but while you're standing, be prepared to duck.

I don't blame any public figure for not wanting to expose themselves to an outsized risk of violence. That risk is largely Trump's fault, but notice how I'm blaming him from somewhere other than an elevated, well lit platform in front of a room full of strangers on drugs.

Well, thief! I smell you and I feel your air. I hear your breath. Come along! Help yourself again, there is plenty and to spare!

That's a very large assumption. The simplest explanation is that we feel like we have free will because we do. Quantum mechanics suggests some major challenges to determinism, and the best arguments to restore it require a very unsatisfying amount of magical thinking.

Me too.

I'll also vote if he's not.

Blue all the way down the ticket. Fuck the agitprop. Save the Republic.

Freight rail is still alive in my area--and that means commuter rail could be. But like a lot of places, the public has been duped into voting against their own interests. I don't want to hijack the thread, but it's an issue that--if you care about it, you should be voting for Amtrak Joe. Public transportation needs to be part of the nation's climate agenda, and the Criminal Cheetoh wants to sacrifice us all on the altar of petrol.

The problem is that the infrastructure doesn't exist, and introducing it is cost-prohibitive for large parts of the US. I would love to be able to take a train from my small town to the nearest metro area 30 miles away and then take a tube to a block away from my destination--but that's just not going to happen in my lifetime, because the city can't afford to install a subway, and the auto lobby won the war against commuter rail before I was born.

Could it be better? Sure. Might it become better? Maybe, but probably not in my lifetime.

In the meantime, people are de facto dependent on cars. Destroying infrastructure necessary to support the reality of how people must, through no fault of their own, travel punishes the traveling public without addressing the actual problem.

If we're going to transition to better transit infrastructure, we first have to build the better infrastructure--and pay for it by ~~eliminating~~ unseating political opposition. Only then can we dismantle these kinds of monstrosities without disenfranchising the people who depend on them.

Good for them. At least somebody did.

Hi, comrade! I love Joe Biden and I hate genocide, so there.

Everywhere the GOP has a lock on state government, the looting inevitably follows. Vouchers literally siphon state taxes and pass them to the hands of rich conservatives and their churches who serve only rich, white, privileged children. By design, vouchers work to entrench the upper class; further impoverish poor and minority citizens; and increase wealth disparity, illiteracy, and crime.

We all called it. Didn't matter. Time to move to the next box.

Exactly! In many parts of the country Joe Biden and the federal government in general is the only thing standing between the people and Supply-side Jesus flavored fascist autocracy.

That kind of attitude lingers dangerously close to the everything-is-a-conspiracy-by-the-shadowy-cabal line of reasoning. Biden's a Catholic, but it's certainly not "obvious" that he's "intentionally letting the nation slip". You can scroll down barely a page on whitehouse.gov and watch the president commit to restoring the standard of Roe v Wade. It's under the statements in favor of Pride, committing to combating gun deaths, lowering housing costs, and protecting pensions. Joe Biden's executive orders have been the most progressive executive action since Roosevelt.

Here's something a lot of non-religious folks might not know: the evangelical right? They hate Catholics. The MAGAs hate them ideologically, but the ones running the show hate them because the Catholic Church is their competition when it comes to running private schools and otherwise lucrative community support institutions. Biden is absolutely not on their side, theologically or otherwise.