BootmanLA

Just to be clear: My support for the Democratic Party isn't "unwavering". At times, it can be a very frustrating experience; as Will Rogers once said, "I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat." But my support IS deep - because I recognize the arc of its policies, writ large, bends in the direction I want the country to go. Conversely, the arc of the Republican party is towards theocracy and fascism, and that's a direction I will fight at every turn. The theocratic turn predates Trump, going back to at least Reagan and then Newt Gingrich, but the actual turn towards fascism and strong-man dictatorship is decidedly a Trump development, and his essential capture of the base of the party means that's not going away unless and until he does - if then.

I don't think it's entirely a "trick only works once" sort of thing. For starters, Georgia governor's races are two years apart from the presidential elections, and turnout usually varies substantially between federal and state elections. The 2020 turnout was 66.2% in GA, 57% in 2022 (reflecting more the lack of national support that should be present again this November. I'll also note that among middle of the road voters - that is, neither MAGAts nor Social Democrats - Biden's considered a lot more moderate than Abrams, and thus may have been more palatable (and we can't ignore that there are some moderates who just won't vote for a black person for statewide office). I do agree that primaries sometimes produce fringe candidates, but to call Biden "fringe" betrays a lack of understanding I don't think I've seen in a while. The vast majority of people I've seen upset about student debt cancellation are Trumpanzees, many of whom never set foot on a college campus except maybe to watch a football game. The suburban/middle class voters I talk to are glad not everyone else is going to face the same debt devastation they did.

Considering that Islam arose in the Arabian peninsula, to the extent that places like Indonesia and Malaysia are Muslim, it's due to a sort of colonization as well - a religious one, rather than a strictly political/economic one, but just as invasive.

Uh... this *IS* the politics forum.

Actually, it's still fulfilling its original intent: to give a greater voice to big empty spaces with fewer voters, most of whom are more conservative than the mean. Never forget that one of the primary reasons the EC exists is the same as its underpinnings with apportioning the House: they counted slaves as 3/5 of a person for apportionment, giving a lot more Congressional representation (and EC representation) to states that then gave 0/5 of that vote to the actual slaves. And the same for the rules in the Constitution for when the EC can't reach a majority - letting each state's congressional delegation cast a single vote, meaning California (39 million people) and Wyoming (581,000 people) have the same voice.

Sadly, you live in (apparently) one swing state and one that might end up being a swing state, and yet you're willing to risk throwing the election to the candidate who would happily ensure we never have to worry about elections again. Do I think Biden is the best possible candidate? No, of course not. But he's the incumbent, and that alone gives him a boost over anyone else; when Lyndon Johnson chose not to run again in 1968, trying to find the candidate to replace him led us to Hubert Humphrey (a statesman, but hardly a great campaigner). Part of the problem of the US political system is that if a president announces he's not going to run again, he's immediately a lame duck, and that's the end of any plans he might have to improve the country. Had Biden announced he was not running early on, we wouldn't have gotten half of what he's done through the Congress; and if he had announced as late as last fall, there really wasn't time to groom a valid successor. Trump is going to get the nomination from the Republicans even if he's sitting in jail after his trial that started this week. They have the same problem: it's too late to find someone else who could keep the party together through the election. Personally, I'd be happy as a pig in shit if the nomination went to someone else, causing that person to lose as the MAGAts stayed home. As for the student debt thing: the people complaining about the cancelations weren't going to vote Democratic anyway. They're all Republicans who believe in the bootstrap myth and most of them didn't have student loans to begin with.

I do not believe Trump - or any other president - can ever be successfully impeached and convicted again. The Congress elected in 2020 saw first-hand the kind of destruction he happily unleashed on them trying to stay in power, and even then, 80% of Republicans voted to acquit him. I think we're approaching the point Trump told us when he ran in 2016: that he could literally shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose support in his party.

That's one of those things that's going to vary from individual to individual, sometimes dramatically. There are couples where one partner is 100% dominant "in the bedroom" (metaphorically speaking - that might extend to any other place they play/have sex), but otherwise there's no dominance whatsoever. There are couples (much fewer in number, in my experience) where the submissive is submissive 24/7. And there are a bunch somewhere in the middle. One variant I've seen from time to time is someone who's in a position of authority and/or power in his everyday life - bank president, CEO of this or that, law partner in a major firm, whatever - who craves letting all that go outside of work. I knew one such lawyer whose income was well into seven figures a year, who was totally dominated in the home setting by his partner, who worked landscaping (and not as management). It worked for them because the lawyer needed to "turn loose" and not be responsible for anything of substance at home, not even what the meal choices were (although he did most of the cooking), and the landscaper was naturally a leader who liked control but who had less opportunity in his work life to express that, especially since his firm tended to have very demanding and picky clients. I would question your terminology: you say you're in a "monogamous relationship" but then you say he has casual encounters too. That's not a monogamous relationship; that's you being monogamous and him NOT being monogamous. Which is fine, if that's what you want. Just as it's fine that he makes all the decisions (or at least, when he does, he expects you to follow his lead), as long as YOU are happy with that arrangement. I think it's a very good thing that your partner treats you with respect, though I would wonder how he'd react if you simply stood your ground and refused one of his decisions in "non sexual everyday matters." In other words, does he only respect you because you don't buck him in any way? Would he still treat you respectfully if you simply said "No" to something he decided, and you refused to back down? If he would, then great; if not, that's not respect, that's essentially hostage-taking. As I noted, what works for couple A may not work for couple B. The submissive partner in A may not be affected by his in-home submission and may go on to have a thriving professional and social live, while the one in B may be incapable of advancing, career-wise, due to a lack of confidence. Lastly: take a lot of what people post here about domination and humiliation with a grain of salt. A huge portion of what's posted here is pure fapping material, not in any way a reflection of someone's actual life.

Not that I disagree - everyone's take on things is different - but for a lot of guys, "boy" is a term of endearment, not a power play, as is "Daddy". I called my biological father "Daddy" until he died in his 80's, but it was always a term of love and not about any sense of "power" over me. So I can certainly see "role play" that uses those terms that aren't about power at all - in fact, I know some "Daddy/boy" role relationships where it's the "boy" who is the top, who's probably got more "power" in their interactions than the "daddy". That's not to negate your experience or to say it was "done wrong," at all. I'm not sure from your post whether you (and/or he) viewed this relationship in "role play" terms or not.

It's actually a bit more complicated than that. For starters, judges in the U.S., no matter how they're selected (elections, appointments, etc.) are politicians too. They are officials in one of the three branches of government we have, and all three branches are inherently political. Secondly, the law in question wasn't "re-enacted"; rather, it's been on the books the entire time, but has been unenforceable between early 1973 (when Roe v. Wade was decided) and mid-2022 (when Dobbs v. Jackson overturned Roe). Under American jurisprudence, if a court blocks enforcement of a law because it's unconstitutional, the law remains on the books unless and until the legislature repeals it; that's part of the doctrine of separation of powers. The judiciary can decide that laws are unenforceable, but only the legislature can enact, amend, or repeal them. In fact, during the period when Roe was still in force, Arizona passed another abortion law that specifically contained provisions stating it did NOT implicitly or otherwise repeal any other law on abortion that was on the books. The assumption was that the (less severe) law passed recently, which limited abortion after a certain number of weeks of pregnancy, might be upheld and then LATER Roe might be overturned - and the legislature didn't want the new law to be interpreted as getting rid of the old, 1864 law. So things in AZ turned out exactly as the legislature had intended at that time - that when Roe fell, the 1864 law came back into force (as the Supreme Court of AZ determined recently). What makes this deliciously fun (though still a tragedy for currently pregnant women in the state) is that between the Dobbs decision and now, Americans have made it pretty clear that in most places, a total or near-total abortion ban like Arizona's is deeply unpopular, and Arizona Republicans are scrambling, trying to get the law changed before this fall's elections. Because they know if the law is still in place, Republicans have almost no chance of winning anything on a statewide basis, and probably not a lot in the two largest metro areas (Phoenix and Tucson, both of which are leaning much more blue these days). By scheming to let a draconian abortion law resume its effective status without having to take a vote on it, the Arizona GOP may have shot itself in both feet and at least one hand. And as I say, while it's awful that Arizona women won't have the right to terminate a pregnancy under any but the most extreme circumstances, if that, it may flip the state legislature to a point where that right will be protected going forward.

From time to time I see this inane phrase in a person's profile, or in a posting somewhere, and it makes me want to strangle them. Because they're also the ones complaining, all the time, about how much this or that part of their job sucks, or how expensive rent has gotten where they live, or how much insurance or health care costs, and it's always blamed on "them" - whoever "them" is. I saw something today that encapsulates the appropriate response: You're not into politics? Well, your employer is. Your landlord is. Your insurance company is. Your doctor and your local hospital are. They get involved. They vote. They make sure that the people who can DO something about the problems you see DON'T do something about them. What "I'm not into politics" really means is "I don't care enough about my problems to do anything but complain about them."

What the vulture capital class "seems" to own, and what they actually own, are two different things. They do not own Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC; they do not own the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Tampa Bay Times, or the Minnesota Star-Tribune, among the 10 largest papers in the US. They do not own the Associated Press or Reuters or UPI. It is true that they are increasingly buying up smaller media outlets - Alden Capital is particularly bad about this - and gutting their news operations, and the biggest concern about media ownership is that local news is fast becoming unavailable, at a time when local government activity is more in need of observation than ever. My point was that people do not need to be taught self-interest; that's something that develops innately and early, and much of education and socialization is about teaching people NOT to be so absorbed in self-interest and to be concerned about others and society as a whole. I sincerely hope you don't think doctors were still doing house calls until the ACA passed. Again, the problem with doctors not seeing their patients as customers stems more from doctors no longer owning their practices, with giant health care corporations owning the practice and dictating the pace of how much time a doctor can spend on an appointment and how much can actually be spent on that care. That's not the ACA; that's greedy giant corporations wanting vertical control of the system. Only someone ignorant of the history of exploitation of workers with no legal protections would make a statement like this. That was, essentially, the case until the 14th amendment, which radically reshaped the relationship between the states and the federal government. We fought a war in part over that principle. It's why things like the First Amendment, which on its face only restricts Congress (ie the federal government), applies to state and local governments as well - the 14th amendment specifically prohibits any state from violating a right that a person (or citizen, depending on the circumstances) has under federal law. And it's arguable this is more in keeping with what the founders intended anyway, given that they had just rejected the looser "compact" version of a federal government under the Articles of Confederation. They clearly intended a more robust federal government than we had previously had. In cases where we have invaded other places, sure, an argument can be made that sometimes those were bad decisions. Helping an ally prevent that kind of invasion - as this administration is trying to do with Ukraine, despite the best efforts of many Republicans to bolster Putin and Russia - is not invading anyone. It's drawing a line in the sand that says we, as allies, won't allow this. Again, not defending things like invading Panama or Nicaragua or Honduras, or plotting to overthrow the duly elected leader of Chile, or whatever. But helping defend allies is fundamental to our national identity.

Most districts don't *have* to be lopsided, though - that's a choice by those who draw the districts. I mention only the most egregious examples of gerrymandering, but it's very possible to draw a lot more competitive districts - it's just that the people who have the power to draw them don't want to, and that's primarily a problem, as noted, in Republican states.

Yes and no, as in technically, you're right. But when you're a Democrat living in a hopelessly gerrymandered-red state that nonetheless is closely divided electorally, you may not bother to turn out to vote for president when you're more or less guaranteed to have Republicans representing you in Congress and your state legislature. It's quite possible to depress turnout enough to keep such a state from swinging to the Democrats for the electoral college.

Technically...... impeachment itself only takes a majority of the House. It's the conviction on the impeachment charges that takes 67 votes in the Senate. (Impeachment is roughly akin to an indictment, but for political, not criminal, matters.) But absolutely - the idea that 15-20 senators are going to cross the aisle to vote for an impeachment these days is fanciful.

Very little of our media is owned by the same people or companies that own pharma companies or arms manufacturers. It's true that a few hedge funds, in particular, own big chunks of second-tier print media (ie those beyond the big papers that have overseas bureaus, etc.); for instance, the "USA Today network" of papers. But most of the big papers - and the big television networks - have no overlap in ownership with pharma or arms dealers. Now, one could argue that the billionaires (and multimillionaires) that own these papers have more in common with the big giant corporations, but that's not the same as them being the same corporations. I stand by my point about children, who start out completely self-absorbed and who must develop, if they actually do, a sense of compassion and empathy for others. Donald Trump, for one, never did. I agree that conservatives have (AND STILL DO) shame others who aren't like them - witness the contempt "conservatives" have for immigrants even though they themselves are undoubtedly descended from immigrants. As for "woke people" (and use of that phrase is always a sign of assholes), what you deride as "woke" is simply recognition that concern for others is a sign of a mature individual. The problem isn't a highly diverse world; the problem is the "anti-woke" people in that world who resent that diversity and who are intent on treating people not like themselves differently. The "anti-woke" people demanding recognition of diversity is laughable. What redistributes to the rich is more an issue of stagnant wages for the working class. From about 1980 until well into the pandemic, real wages (after inflation) basically stood still for the vast majority of people with jobs, as opposed to the owner/investor class. But the incomes and wealth of the owner/investors skyrocketed. That wasn't due to inflation, which was mild through most of that period. It was due to tax policy favoring capital over wages; it was due to immigration policy favoring winked-at illegal immigration for manual labor, which depressed wages; it was due to vast increases in productivity (partly through automation/computerization) that ate away at working class positions. I'm glad you're concerned about the flow of money up to the rich, but you have the problem wrong, and the solution wrong. The solution is to return to the tax policies that produced the middle class in the first place. If our adversaries are "antagonized" by us keeping troops and bases in our allies' countries to keep them from being invaded, so be it. That doesn't mean every alliance we have is a good one - our support of right-wing dictators in Central America stands out as a generally bad policy - but that's the nature of alliances. The point is - as it was during the Cold War - to deter our adversaries from attacking and absorbing our allies such that when they DO come to threaten the United States, they aren't massively empowered the way, say, Nazi Germany was. Or the way the USSR was at its height. Health care costs were rising by double-digit numbers every single year before the Affordable Care Act. That increase has been reduced - to on average well under 5%. As for replacing "thinking medical profession" FAR more of that has happened due to private insurers looking to boost profits than the government has ever even contemplated. Ask any doctor who isn't already a right-wing Trumpanzee and he'll tell you that insurance companies and their regulations are the single biggest drag on their practices. Insurance's overhead costs routinely hit 20% (the maximum allowable under the ACA), whereas Medicare and Medicaid's overhead is a tiny fraction of that. Given that the payments allowed under M/M are smaller, you'd think overhead would be a larger percentage, but it's not; it's just cheaper to run a single-payer system with one set of rules than it is to have hundreds of insurers with thousands of differing policies that have to be sorted out. Which is one reason Trump's candidacy is so frightening. In the months before he left office, he tried to radically gut the civil service, removing job protections from all important positions (to make it easier for a new, anti-regulatory regime to gut an agency). Google "Schedule F". His anti-government team - the Steve Bannons and Stephen Millers and the like - is already planning to roll out something similar as soon as Trump takes office (assuming he's re-elected or steals this election). If that happens, the amount of damage an anti-government administration could do in a single term, much less in back-to-back terms, is enormous. Here's the thing: No "swing state" - that is, one where the votes for president are typically separated by 5% or less - is gerrymandered for its congressional or state legislative seats in favor of the Democrats. Several (Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, for example) are heavily gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. Pennsylvania fell into this category as well until just recently, when a court-ordered redistricting brought the state closer into balance away from Republican domination. Looking at the largest states, California's legislative and congressional seats, as well as New York's, fairly closely track the Democrats' share of the popular vote there (in part because both have redistricting commissions). But the largest Republican states (Texas, Florida) have a much higher Republican House and state legislative delegation than the overall balance in the state. The closest thing Democrats have is Illinois, which has far fewer congressional/electoral votes than TX or FL. The clear conclusion is that the Republicans do a lot more gerrymandering than the Democrats. That doesn't mean that some smaller Democratic-majority states don't gerrymander in favor of their own party. But when you're making a delegation 4-2 instead of 3-3, you don't have as much effect as, say, a slightly Republican state like Ohio being districted 12-4 for Republicans (and thus for electoral votes), or Pennsylvania's former spread of 13-5. You're free to disagree, of course. But I'd point out that it doesn't matter whether a right is "god-given" in your view or "government-granted" in mine; if the government doesn't recognize the right, people are shit out of luck. And since I don't believe in "god" - not the murderous, contradictory Judeo-Christian one, at least - I'm not going to accept that my rights come from a mythical being, period (all I care about is whether the society I live in recognizes that right through its government). That's simply false. Government subsidies for green energy are a tiny fraction (especially adjusted for inflation) of what the government has given fossil fuels. If you add up all the mining and drilling concessions on public land, the enormous tax breaks, etc. that fossil fuels have received over the last 150 or so years, green subsidies are a tiny part of that. ESPECIALLY when you consider the cost of environmental degradation that fossil fuels have inflicted on the world. If Big Oil had been required to pay for that, as opposed to ordinary taxpayers, they'd have gone bankrupt long ago. That's a subsidy keeping them afloat. Except that to the extent that there are economic conservatives left, they're mostly Democrats. Republicans have zero concerns about voting for massive tax cuts, even though those are indistinguishable, from a deficit perspective, from spending hikes. Republicans always demand that Democrats offset spending increases (and then rail on them for wanting to increase revenues, or rail on them for cutting tax breaks for the rich). But Republicans ignore any demands that tax cuts be paid for, instead pretending that "growth" is going to offset them. Except that economists are coming around to realize that in a mostly services economy, like ours, government spending does more to stimulate the economy than tax cuts. When we had a manufacturing economy, tax cuts made sense because it meant corporations could invest more in machinery and equipment to become more efficient and produce more stuff. When corporations mostly make money on services, there's only so much you can do to increase throughput or efficiency, and above that, the tax cuts just go in the owners' pockets. Which is why the rich have gotten richer and the workers haven't, for the last 50+ years.

Generally, no, I don't think the owner of the forum can "change the source code" of anything. There are configurable options, but this is a third-party software package for hosting a discussion forum. So outside of the configuration options provided I don't think change is possible. I think the reason each forum has its own "What's allowed here" or "Read Before Posting" (or similar) topic is that the rules vary from section to section. For instance, any discussion of bug-chasing outside of the broad "Backroom" section is against the rules, but here, it's fine. There are things you can post in the politics sub-forum that are discouraged, if not outright banned, in the general discussion areas. And so on.

Kudos for recognizing that distinction, but it's not the media stealing the country blind. "love and compassion for themselves" is not a conservative achievement. It's something fully mastered by most children by the age of two. The problem is that many conservatives never advance beyond that developmental stage, solely concerned about what's in [anything] for THEM. Exhibit A is Donald J. Trump. I'm not sure what you mean by this, except possibly objecting to the notion that participants in a society owe financial support to that society. If you mean proposals to tax the wealthy at a heavier level, I laugh at your notion that their wealth is "stored value of...hard labor" - unless you mean the labor of people OTHER than the wealthy person. I've never known anyone who works harder than most of the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Sitting in a chair directing one's investments from one tax sheltered entity to another is not "hard labor". To a certain extent, I agree - we have a long and sordid history of messing in the affairs of other countries. But influence over others - and banding together against outside threats, like NATO - is not an out of control empire. It's maintaining alliances against those who would actively do us harm. What destroys common people's savings, more than anything, is the disastrous costs our society imposes on those who have the misfortune to get extremely ill. No other country spends nearly what we do on health care in total, and yet we have among the worst health results in the developed world. And that's primarily because of the vast amount of overhead we let private insurers, Big Pharma, giant hospital chains, and others suck out of the system - the people providing the care, for the most part, are overworked and underpaid, but not the C-suites at Aetna, United Health, the various Blue Crosses, most hospital chains, Pfizer, Merck, J and J, etc. We had a social compact in this country in the late 1940's into the early 1970's that helped shift millions of people from poverty to the middle class. We know what to do. We just don't have the political will to do it because of the billionaires who control Congress to maintain the status quo. We absolutely have. That's primarily, again, a result of conservatives' grip on the presidency and the judiciary from Reagan forward - they seed the agencies with conservatives who cripple the agencies' work to please the special interests, and they rely on activist conservative judges to strike down the agencies' rules that dare to try to improve things for ordinary people. I'm less worried about regulatory capture than I am about judicial capture, especially when conservatives manipulate the rules to stack courts, even the Supreme Court, with partisan operatives. It's not that I think we want nannies - far from it. We want a robust enough government that can protect its citizens from state-level tyranny like the kind being implemented in most red states these days - from voter suppression to violating citizens' First Amendment rights and worse. Especially since once in power, conservatives are adept at gerrymandering their way into staying in power long after the voters as a sum reject their policies. See, for instance, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. That's simply false as a categorical statement. Even though the founders believed certain rights were endowed by an alleged creator, they nonetheless recognized that government clearly had the power to grant and recognize additional rights. The only ones specifically acknowledged as creator-derived were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the authors of the Constitution went well beyond that, and amendments to the constitution have granted rights that the founders would not have recognized AT ALL - like the right to vote regardless of race. I'm all for that. Unfortunately, the dogma of the "conservative" movement is that we need NO climate agenda at all, that the earth is just fine, everything we're experiencing is a normal variation, and for god's sake we can't expect Big Bidness to give up one fucking penny of profit to hedge against the distinct possibility that maybe, just maybe, climate change is real. That may be the case. But no libertarian is going to win major elected office this year, or next, or anytime in the near future, and in the meantime, those who DO win are going to be in power. I do not see any way in which conservatives will be creating safe space for homosexuals (radical or not), satanists, or anyone other than people like themselves. This is a party/movement determined to eradicate even LGBT books from public libraries, for fuck's sake. As problematic as many liberal positions might be - and that's not to say they are, only acknowledging that possibility for the sake of argument - our positions aren't aimed at eliminating our opposition from the public square. Theirs are.

I think the point being made was that if you're concerned about one's own personal information being made public, a rather peculiar way of showing it is to register for a site like this using your own personal information in a way that it can clearly be seen by anyone who looks at (not even joins, just "looks at") this forum.

So let's recap: No, you can't name a single country that thinks the US, under Biden, is the laughingstock of the world. Nor can you refute what I wrote about the Mueller report, because it's 100% factual. You claim to seek out "independent sources" but don't cite any - which would give others the chance to check out your sources. As far as your documentation goes, you could have just made up everything you claim is "real news". No, I don't admit Adam Schiff lied. Reading comprehension is not your strong skill, in my view - Maryland does have good adult education programs, though, so you might check into a class in that. I'm sorry to inform you that there's no such thing as "State of the Union policies." The State of the Union is a political speech and nothing more; it doesn't DO anything. As for his economic policies - the only things Trump changed, economically, were (a) lowering taxes for the rich (which blew up the deficit and thus increased the debt), and (b) disastrous trade wars that hiked tariffs (which are taxes on domestic consumers of the imported goods); the reciprocating tariffs, primarily from China, caused their importers to turn to alternative sources for the affected agricultural products. That, in turn, caused widespread disruption of our agricultural sector, requiring massive bailouts that (a) further blew up the deficit and (b) essentially negated any revenue from his tariffs. If that's what you consider "best" economic policies, I also recommend remedial economics courses. Now, I do agree you're free to think and believe what you want and vote how you want, no matter how stupid the things you believe are, and no matter how dumb your votes are. That's the beauty of America - you can do incredibly stupid things freely.

That seems like a rather low testing rate - if you're having that much sex (and more power to you, if you are), then four months between tests seems pretty irresponsible. Even if you don't care what YOU get, I'd think courtesy demands you keep tabs on what you might be passing on to partners (and avoid doing that).

Based on the number of guys on here who claim they love drinking the cum out of used condoms, apparently quite a lot of them can.

I'll take "Things that Never Happened" for $800, Alex.

As I understand it, some of the tests required to ensure you're HIV-negative require blood samples. If you're not able to do a finger prick for a blood card, you almost certainly can't draw a blood sample to send in, either. Yes, it would be great if the testing could be done at home. But it can't, because there's no lab technology that would work for that.

FWIW, the governor of Kansas is a Democratic woman - Laura Kelly - and while that's no guarantee she'll veto the bill, there's a good chance of it, presumably. The bad news is that both chambers of Kansas' legislature have a >2/3 Republican majority (68% in the House, 72.5% in the Senate), so assuming they stuck together, they'd be able to override a veto.