I mentioned this in a comment last week and was called a sexist for not supporting women, because I dared to say a Cheney endorsement was bad for Dems.

This has nothing to do with her gender. In fact, I just said ‘a Cheney.’ Dick Cheney also supported Kamala and that made people want to vote for her even less than Liz did. The fact that Kamala’s positions are so far to the right that known war hawk Dick Cheney threw his support behind her is a BAD thing for a lot of left wing voters.

We weren’t talking about people who voted for Trump instead of Kamala. We are talking about 15 million people who didn’t show up because there was no one running that supported their values.

So some people felt they had no one to vote for.

…with a Cheney*

Agreed. We seemed somewhat close with Bernie, but we saw how that ended. But he had support, and he could’ve held more power over the DNC if he had refused to endorse Hilary without MAJOR concessions from the party.

But that could’ve ended with Trump winning in 2016, and nobody wanted that, so he sold out his values and toed the party line. Didn’t seem to work out.

I think you’ve hit on major common ground, that all people should be able to see. The extremely wealthy have too much power and they are an extreme minority. Until someone, or a coalition of people stand up for that single issue and are willing to vocally withhold support from mainstream Dems, this problem will never be addressed in the US

Yes, but if you pledge unconditional support to the lesser of 2 evils, they have no incentive to ‘be better’ - they can just be slightly less evil than the monster who gets worse every day.

I did vote blue even though I wasn’t happy about it and it mainly came down to ‘i really haven’t done much to express my distaste over the past 8 years, why am I choosing to protest the Dems today?’

But I do think this is a turning point for me. I want to be having these conversations more often, I want to be more involved, and I want to make it known to the people in charge: what can they do to earn my vote. I think starting to define what are the universal ideals we can agree on is a great conversation to have over the next few weeks.

Just like it’s been approved for the past year.

Hahaha I didn’t even think to check that. Wild

If a neoliberal party can’t win 2 out of 3 elections against a fascist, maybe they should pivot away from neoliberalism.

Right, “did Biden drop out” had a spike as seen in the first picture below. It’s hard to tell magnitude. When comparing to another phrase, it’s easy to see that the spike wasn’t even close to the spike for another election day phrase: ‘who is Kamala?’

Jacob is similar. It is derived from an old Hebrew names and there are a ton of variants (including James and Diego)

Roberto Bolaño. 2666 and The Savage Detectives are great. He also wrote a ton of short stories. His writing is also pretty straightforward so it’s easy to follow if you’re still learning.

Luis Sepúlveda. The Old Man who Read Love Stories and The Story of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her To Fly are both very good. The latter is more of a children’s book but still worth it.

This page contains a collection of many authors and short stories. I’ve found it helpful: Literatura.us

This is another great resource for popular books by country: https://preply.com/en/d/most-translated-books–lp

Also, don’t they need to run to move food through their digestive tract? Or to force themselves to cough if they have something stuck in their lungs? I think there is some sort of dependency of basic functions that relies on the movement of their lungs/stomach going back and forth while running that they can’t easily do if they just stand in one place all day

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“Enabling shareholders to profit was seen as a means to that end.”

Right, that’s the part I take issue with. Why is there a profit on a public good?

I agree with all of the restrictions in place, but those have gotten weaker over time, when they should’ve gotten more restrictive. The problem with allowing them to profit is that over time, the profit gives them more bargaining power which allows them to erode the oversight and avoid all consequences for breaking the regulations.

I get your point, but I have trouble understanding how acting in the public interest and charging over operating costs can be compatible, especially in public service areas like hospitals/medicine and education.

“Is there any reason why this needs to be a taxpayer subsidized organization?”

Public safety? Is that a good enough reason? We should be subsiding more things that are in the public interest - programs that benefit the public should never be run by for-profit corporations.

Have you thought of trying to pick up another language? Started learning Spanish 4 years ago and now I can go on vacation and have conversations with locals. Also, I’m more interested in their local history because I can read it/listen to it in Spanish and practice the language at the same time.

I see vote counts. Is it possible that your instance blocks them for some reason?