Lmfao, no never. This will always be our fault. I’m far enough left that the Democratic Party looks to me like the Republican Party looks to neoliberals. I’ve been forced at basically gunpoint to vote against my interests and against my conscience for three elections in a row now. Three times I’ve voted for the Democratic candidate that I did not believe legitimately earned their nomination. I should be allowed to have that be disqualifying, but the goddamn Nazis won’t let me.

And two times I’ve seen the Democratic party and base viciously attack the left for their own shortcomings, both during the primaries and after 2016. I’m betting this third time will be the same.

I’m so fucking tired of being blamed for the shortcomings of the lesser evil.

My wife kept her name (both of our names are important to us, and neither of us care about tradition). So far no real issues, just people who know one of us assuming the other shares a last name. Unless it’s someone we’re going to interact with a lot or we’re filling out paperwork, we don’t bother correcting them.

We are trying to have a kid, and if we succeed we’ll give them her last name. So… I’m super looking forward to being a man picking up a kid with a different last name and all the assumptions I’m probably going to have to face. I’m just hoping by the time that happens this will be a normal enough occurrence that it won’t be a big deal.

In fact, their Bible explicitly condones abortion. Priests would administer abortions in the form of “bitter water” to women who were accused of adultery.

Their god doesn’t give a shit about babies, but apparently cares a lot more about keeping women in line. Almost like the whole thing was written by a bunch of men in power who wanted to keep their power. Hmm…

I agree the left thrives on optimism, which is why I’m especially unhappy with the Democratic Party in the last 10 years. They’ve done absolutely nothing to make people optimistic. Instead of leaning into the enthusiasm that Bernie drummed up, they played dirty and launched a smear campaign. And they’ve followed that up with 8 years of nothing but “you have to vote for us because what else are you gonna do?”

They call milquetoast achievements like “we didn’t fail to follow through on policy passed 17 years ago” great accomplishments and think that’s good enough to inspire optimism? Give me a break.

Took a lot of getting used to when I moved to the East Coast for grad school. Supposedly they do live in my home state but I can’t recall ever seeing one here. It’s mostly spiders, millipedes, and earwigs where I’m from.

The thing that really freaked me out about centipedes is how absurdly fast they are. Also the one time I watched one crawling above me in bed and then it dropped onto my pillow what the fuck.

Vote, but don’t be complacent. The Democrats do not adequately work for the needs of the people.

Donate or volunteer for local progressives during the primaries, fight like hell to make your government fight for you. And do not accept mediocrity as a victory.

Uh, no. That’s pretty clearly not what I’m saying.

I’m saying I expect my government to do more than simply follow through on 17 year old laws and pretend like that’s some amazing achievement. And student loans in particular have been abysmally handled by Biden, both in his Senate career and his failed promises to the populace when running for president.

“But the Supreme Court”: yes, but they were a known obstacle and he still chose to delay any attempt for two years in order to try to double dip, which still ultimately failed. He knowingly left the people with crushing student loan debt to suffer while waiting for a politically expedient time to even try. And he failed anyway, so why wait?

Well… I’m responding to you saying they should use this to get young people to vote. I’m saying that’s not a good idea because it’s manipulative and only serves to highlight all the ways they haven’t followed through on student loan debt, instead they keep touting tiny band aids and legislation signed into law by Bush Jr.

Sure, but that’s the bare minimum. That’s not going to inspire apathetic voters. Claiming credit for a Democratic Congress / George W Bush admin era piece of legislation is not very impressive.

Especially since the Democrats passed it with a 49+2 / 49 majority in the Senate (and filibustering still very much a thing), so it’s a stark contrast to all the stuff they claimed wasn’t possible during the Biden admin because they simply didn’t have a strong enough majority in the Senate even without a Republican president. I know times are different now, but it kind of paints a circle around the lack of legislative backbone this administration has had.

Idk, it feels manipulative to me. All they’ve done here is follow through on existing policy. I have higher standards for being impressed than doing what you’re required to do, even if others before you failed to do so.

Well perhaps the president of Puerto Rico ought to have done something about that.

I completely understand that reaction. When I say immature I mean a man who was abused by family so he ran away at 14 and kind of arrested his development at that point. So even things like this that sound completely insane don’t feel that insane to my family members.

I’ve had conversations with other family members to try to get them to imagine hearing this story without knowing who he was to really see how beyond the pale it was.

You downplayed his actions with the drugs as “irresponsible” (earlier and again now) and only talked about him making drugs available to her rather than forcefully injecting them when she couldn’t consent.

He predated on a very young patient. Whether or not the mother’s claims about his comments are true, he is clearly a manipulative monster.

The article talks both about the evidence and the mother’s statements. You look really bad here.

My grandfather, who is generally a good-natured but immature man, really ate up everything Fox News spewed at him about Trump. He and my grandmother always play the pity card that I don’t visit them, but they’ve been supremely unpleasant to be around for the last 8 years because they can’t leave politics out of it.

He wore a MAGA hat to my nephew’s 3rd birthday party and explicitly stated that he did it to make others uncomfortable. So no gramps, I don’t really want to visit you these days.

Here, I’ll take this up. The article also quotes text messages between them wherein he admits he injected her with ketamine himself while she was asleep.

You are monstrous for defending this monster.

It’s one big maple in the front yard, and it only killed the grass in a circle under the thickest part of the canopy. Come spring we had a brown circle that only dandelions were growing in with grass doing just fine outside the circle.

I do think part of the problem could have been the extremely wet fall & winter we had. Felt like the rain never stopped.

See, I did the whole “leave the leaves” thing last year and it completely killed the vegetation under my big maple tree. It was kind of nice since it gave me a chance to replace that grass with clover, but now I don’t want the clover to die.

It’s been a year and we still have maple leaves from last year that haven’t decomposed. Not quite sure what I’m supposed to do.

Half as much cheese and saute the onions and that looks absolutely delicious.

I saw a Cybertruck in the wild for the first time last week. It was just as stupid as I had always dreamed. 🥹