This asshole destroyed the public option, then a few years later my life was destroyed by medical bankruptcy.

It is sad that he got to live a full life surrounded by loved ones. He deserved so much worse.

Rest in piss, you wont be missed.

Hamas would be in a far superior negotiating position if the released hostages were saying that they were treated kindly and cared for

You should read the accounts of released hostages then, many of them have publically stated they were treated kindly.

This horrific recounting of captivity and rape is an outlier.

Can I ask, what evidence would you need to see to conclude there is a bias at WaPo?

If AMZN wanted to buy a propaganda operation, they wouldn't kill every anti-Amazon story. That would ruin WaPo's credibility and thus waste their investment. Instead they would kill only the handful of most damaging stories, while also frequently posting tepid criticism of AMZN, which would give us the "evenly split" result you use as evidence.

Biden lost my vote when he told the American people he saw pictures of 40 beheaded babies.

I still have hope he can earn it back- but that would require a significant, unlikely change in foreign policy.

"Dont even bother trying to educate those idiots" seems like a horrible strategy, both for electoral politics and for society in general.

You're right that there are some cultists who are irredeemable, but there are many more on the fringes who can be helped.

I dont understand why Israel, deeply reliant on US military assistance for its defense, also routinely humiliates the US in public.

They are busy drawing up plans for their new beachfront condo in Gaza.

International courts have told Israel to stop many times and they rarely, if ever, listen. Why would this time be different?

My father: High school diploma, homeowner, family man, good retirement.

Me: Good STEM degree, can't afford home, can't afford family, can't afford retirement.

This article (and you): Why would social media do this?

Prohibition creates a black market, which in turn creates cartels, violence, unregulated and sometimes tainted product, it eliminates tax revenue, bolsters an oppressive police force, etc etc.

I believe the best model to deal with these hard drugs is legalization with heavy regulation.

There have been a handful of good studies on the harms of drugs over the years, and they all published the same conclusion: The recreational drugs that are most harmful (both to society and to the user) are heroin, meth, and alcohol.

Just like heroin, alcohol is not gentle, nice, or not a big deal.

Why do you think one is socially encouraged and the other two are demonized?

The prohibition model was a failure for alchohol, and it's a failure for heroin and meth too.

I'm not trying to say Jesus was a pacifist, but all of those quotes are Old Testament, written centuries before Jesus supposedly existed...

The document said several UNRWA Palestinian staffers had been detained by the Israeli army, and added that the ill-treatment and abuse they said they had experienced included severe physical beatings, waterboarding, and threats of harm to family members

So UN employees were abducted and tortured, then forced to repeat Israel's propaganda line, in an attempt to justify their whole genocidal endeavor.

Well it sounds like we agree on most things then, except on how to communicate to voters. I have found that being honest with voters about things like the corruption of the DNC and the serious flaws of the ACA actually helps to win them over.

Try to do a door knocking campaign and act like the Democratic Party is perfect, most voters will smell the bullshit.

It only takes a few seconds to say "yes most Democrats are corporate lackeys, but not this candidate, and here's why..." Acknowledging the flaws of the party does not suppress turnout. It is the flaws themselves that do the suppression.

My original intention here was to try to convince people to think critically when hearing a politician's stump speech, which I believe is adding value to the discourse.

I surely didn't have lofty goals to "improve the country or the Democratic Party" when I opened Lemmy today lol.

And I do believe the DNC and the donor class are a bunch of corporate goons who have little to offer, and almost all Democratic politicians are subservient to this superstructure.

Let me ask you, how do you suggest we overcome the institutional hurdles when running a progressive primary challenge? The last 2 progressive primary challengers I volunteered for had extreme problems finding vendors to supply them with the basic supplies that they need to run a campaign. This is because the DNC has a policy of blacklisting any vendors that work with a progressive primary challenger.

We can agree that Republicans are horrible and make everything worse, but how is that applicable in the case of the ACA?

The ACA got exactly 0 Republican votes. There was no reason to negotiate or even listen to Republicans in this case. It was Democrats doing it to themselves. And as I have already established, yes the ACA is a right wing bill.

As for advocating for progressive ideals, I am doing that when I call out the hypocrisy and corruption of the corporate Dems. It's becoming very difficult to tell the difference between a modern corporate Dem and a 90s-00s Republican, and that scares me.

I think it's a good thing to say "Democrats bad" when they are in fact bad. Whatever demons lurk on the other side of the aisle does not change this. Putting your fingers in your ears and yelling "vote blue no matter who" is not a solution.

Yes that is exactly my point, Dems had full control and they still passed a right wing healthcare plan.

In that 70 days they abandoned a public option and quickly adopted Romneycare. Then they added even more corporate subsidies and giveaways for health insurance companies.

I'm not sure about bots, but this is politics@world, Lemmy's home for BlueMAGA.

I wear my downvotes from here with pride.

There is no "both sides are equal" argument here, Republicans are obviously worse.

I agree that we should examine who is opposing tax raises for billionaires. And we agree Repubs are horrible, so just consider when Democrats had full control of Congress and the WH- what stopped them then?

Democrats can't pass economic populism, even when they have full control, due to their corporate donors, lobbyists, the DNC, etc. This Democratic establishment has prevented anything left-of-center from getting passed in my lifetime.

There is a huge difference between a sales pitch and a policy target, you seem to be confusing the two.

A sales pitch is just rhetoric and can often be disingenuous.

I see no reason to suggest that economic populism will become a serious part of the Biden policy agenda.