A wealthy kid born on 3rd base who thinks if you criticize the US you should lose your citizenship and be deported. What’s fascinating about yet another spoiled fascist? A brown kid who’s deluded enough to think white nationalists will be ok with him. These dudes are dumb, weird and boring!

between this is “repeal Obamacare so we stop giving money to big healthcare companies”, it’s weird how much current conservative thought sounds like country-scale nimbyism

Like, do you really need the main character to look directly into the camera and say “Hi I’m one of the main protagonists in this film. You know that thing the villain just said? I disagree with it. And me disagreeing with it is the main message of this film”

"it was one step up from mandatory corporate diversity training to make the skittle haired newcomer" I think a lot of people have accepted a lot of altRight language in their information bubbles when it comes to TLJ and need to deprogram themselves

Also... TLJ spends a lot of time being a submarine movie, and one of the biggest features of submarine movies is using isolation and military chain of command working against our sympathies to create narrative tension.

At the start of The Last Jedi, Poe Dameron is depicted as a "hero." At the end, he is depicted as a "leader." The difference between the two is his entire arc in the film. If your analysis of the depiction of Admiral Holdo does not account for this, your analysis is not well thought out.

Not ICE. Border Patrol. They’re wearing Border Patrol uniforms with clear Border Patrol patches on them. There are many videos of ICE officers doing outrageous stuff but a lot of the absolute worst videos are of Border Patrol, who are basically Bovino and Miller’s most aggressive tool right now.

I often have occasion to think of this older piece by @bakertoons.com

People insist the movie has a “Both sides are equally bad” view because 1 character articulates this view, & it is apparently completely irrelevant that said character is a transparently sleazy crook who betrays the protagonists and then has them reject him and persevere by doing the exact opposite

“You think what? I'm gonna walk out with a laser sword and face down the whole First Order?”

If I have learnt a single thing from 8 years of arguments about The Last Jedi, it’s that George Lucas was absolutely right to just explicitly and clunkily spell out themes like “I knew there was more to you than money!” when the franchise started rather than trusting it was clear to the audience

(I know I’m screaming into the void on this but it doesn’t oeacenik, the “both sides are bad and the weapons manufacturers are the real villains” view is advocated by a *bad guy* whose views are explicitly rejected!)

"I have to be polite to the lying Nazi robot or else all my posts will disappear and no one will see them"

Respectfully, “I decided not to follow through on my threat to ignore the coin-operated lying nazi toy at the nazi bar because the rules of the nazi bar are if I’m rude to the toy, the owner would use that to make me less popular at the Nazi bar” is not actually making this look better for you!

Instead of applying the tax credit to the insurer's bill automatically on behalf of the purchaser I suggest sending them a check so they can...also pay the insurer's bill but with several additional steps. People love it when doctor's offices do that.

I genuinely think it’s bad for Jews to be there at this point. You can’t really have a reasonable headspace if people are screaming antisemitic shit in your feed all the time.

If you’ve been focused on the Houthis and the situation in the North or the Red Sea, make sure you also read this editorial detailing the spiraling effects of conflict fragmentation in Yemen. The fallout from this editorial has also been significant for the writers. 1/

Six people died from tampered Tylenol and the company pulled 30 million bottles off the market. ChatGPT is accused of urging seven people towards suicide, and OpenAI just assures us they’re still working out the kinks. Billions in investment, zero accountability.

The trouble with being a malignant dictator. It’s as if you were naked, but nobody would tell you that you had no clothes. Someone should write a fairy tale about it.

The Edmund Fitzgerald was a symbol of Great Lakes shipping, of Michigan industry, of American strength. Over the next few days leading up to the 50th anniversary of this story, I will be sharing some details about why this story lives on.

The worst part is that MAGA controls Congress, and Trump almost certainly COULD get an AUMF if he asked. Pass something saying they can kill foreigners involved in narcotics because it's a threat to natsec and yadda yadda. Trump wants the power to kill *without* any AUMF. To be a dictator.

Dem gains in this week's elections erased the inroads Trump made with non-white, young, and low-income voters in 2024. In fact, the R-to-D shift from 24 to 25 is double Trump's gains from 20-24. Claims of a GOP political realignment have been highly exaggerated www.gelliottmorris.com/p/trumps-win...

When the president gets ordered, multiple times, to pay out federal food benefits as the law requires:

Of course the Roberts et al could choose to extend the admin stay or, more likely, will just straight up stay McConnell’s order before KBJ’s deadline passes. But she did what she could to control the process tonight and let CA1 put its reasoning on the record before Roberts et al disregard it.

Today on the Senate floor: Democrats made an offer to Republicans to re-open the government and extend the ACA tax credits for one year. We’re calling their bluff. The ball is in their court.

The thing is, the GOP doesn’t “have” elections. It’s not their choice. Elections happen. They happened earlier this week. They’re just venal and malicious and stupid and that explains it.

I tell you what, some days this site is like watching football with people who don't know what a touchdown is

Like I don’t even know what the people complaining WANT to happen. Do they want the government shut down indefinitely? Do they think the GOP will just retire en masse and leave a Democratic majority? Do they realize that lots of people are hurting right now because of the shutdown?

The Democrats started this process with a specific goal in mind: protecting affordable healthcare. If they get a deal for it for even a year, that is a WIN. They only have limited leverage because they are the minority party, thanks in large part due to the same assholes who are complaining now.

I think it is true that: 1) Asking for a small, reasonable concession only to see it be rejected is very good politics. 2) The fact there is no reasonable endgame where Democrats can bring Trump in line with norms as a minority party is going to make EVERYONE on here angry later this month.

I won’t say Dems never blow it but I will say the fact that you all say they blew it every single time makes your claims they blow things carry less weight than they otherwise would.

Also, at this point Dems have won the political battle over the shutdown. The only thing they need to do now is not lose, and preferably give Republicans as much rope as possible to keep hanging themselves with along the way.

Schumer just dog walked both GOP and you, and both you and they are mad about it. Now Democrats get another round of news stories about how Republicans refuse to negotiate and are making everything worse, *and* can now safely retreat to better asks. An unmitigated win. But you're still mad.

Yeah, but we're also getting real close to the point where the counterfactual in which the files are a big nothingburger is also catastrophic for them. "You cancelled Thanksgiving over *that*‽"

the funniest part is that in a normal government, this would be a bog standard, easy compromise for republicans, who want the subsidies extended, too, but they're all terrified of the elderly tariff otaku, and johnson and thune are both extremely weak leaders in thrall to their most insane members

I think a lot more people would be able to cope with politics if we understood that from Schumer's point of view, it's not that they are the rebellion leaders covertly negotiating with the evil empire while trying to bring them down, they're stuck in a machine room with crazy people pulling levers

I don't think people fully realize how brutal a vise Republicans are in now. If they cave tomorrow Democrats get all the credit for giving people healthcare. If they somehow bypass the filibuster they get a year plus of headlines about ripping people's healthcare away.

republicans rejected this offer almost *immediately*, schumer knew that's what they would do, and now schumer can go back to fed unions, governors, and the caucus and say, in all honesty and good faith, "look, we're trying everything we can here, the republicans are completely unreasonable"

i mean, this should maybe inform your opinion of why he offered what he did (and in the way he did it)

"Republicans are keeping the government closed, starving kids, and making you miss your Thanksgiving flights because they want your healthcare costs to go through the roof" is actually a pretty effective message for Democrats

The thing about a party organized on the Führerprinzip is that if the leader is a narcissistic idiot who then develops Alzheimer’s, the party is going to make very bad choices

Democrats should publicly offer absolutely nothing. Try to seem as unreasonable as possible. That's been working out great for the Republicans, clearly a winning strategy.

You people are stupid.

They have played this in the worst possible way. Schumer read them like a book

Even in the “DEMS ARE GOING TO CAVE” articles, they always say Schumer is in the way. If he was going to “cave” why would they do this right after rejecting the Republican one.

"it's only a one year extension". yes. where does that put the next ACA fight on the political timeline?

the goal of a shutdown is not shutdown in the same way that the goal of a strike is not the strike

also suspect he wouldn't be proposing this on the senate floor if he thought thune would agree to it

I think this is a great move. It automatically makes the ACA subsidies the #1 issue in the midterms and forces the GOP to shut down all over again right before the midterms. Can't imagine the GOP taking this. Politically, a one year extension screws them where a longer one doesn't