He became the focus of the climate deniers, but he wasn’t the cause. They were in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry.

Gore is a popular figure among Democrats. This is an important step. It gives others cover to do the same thing.

My guess is that they wanted him so they could actually use him. Then it became clear that Congress wasn’t going to go along with anything he did, especially after the election interference became public, and then they decided to just embarrass the hell out of us.

Well, that’s as depressing as it is unsurprising.

I would think any text coming in from a third party would have to go through a filter, but you may be right.

I suppose that’s generally true, but if you are allowing 3rd parties to post anything on your site at all, generally you have a profanity filter.

How do they not have this in a basic profanity filter? I assume if I went on there as a third party seller and named my hat “A great motherfucking hat” they’d catch that.

No, I think you are wrong. If they don’t get the 50 votes to take it to the floor, there will be no vote at all. I think.

On Slate’s political podcast last week, there was in interesting discussion about this. John Dickerson was saying that it would pass because leadership needed it to. It not passing wasn’t really an option for them. Then Emily Bazelon pointed out that while that is true for leadership, a bunch of the individual…

I was discussing this with a friend to day and we thought the difference between the parties was interesting. If it was the Democrats trying to do this (like it was 8 years ago) there wouldn’t be one person in the room advocating that we kill poor people.

That’s a good one. But then they need to have solid policy proposals to go with it. It would be best if they came up with the basics of a bill to fix Obamacare, as well as one for infrastructure and one aimed at income inequality. Then name them memorably, come up with the talking points, and stay on message.

But that doesn’t do anything to help them in the next election because we’re not in a declared war. They need something to define them.

It’s true, and it’s sad, and it’s wrong. Police are supposed to protect us, but they have somehow become a serious threat. In other western countries, the police are polite and friendly and recognize that they are public servants. For some reason, in the US they are more like a third world militia. We depend on them…

That’s bad enough, but knowing that the Russians have everyone’s data is actually less concerning than having all of it public for everyone to know. I mean, the Russians are bad and may do bad things with it, but it’s not the same as having everyone who could do something bad with it know.

I don’t think they will. Leadership needs this bill politically, but the actual members don’t. If you are Susan Collins or Dean Heller, there’s no reason to vote for this. It’s deeply unpopular and it’s going to be even more so in a bunch of specific states. They did a poll and they asked about support of Republican…

Yeah, but again, they have characters and they are going to reboot them anyway. When they went from Jay to Barry or Barry to Wally, they weren’t trying to make any political statement. It was white guy to white guy to white guy, each becoming Flash. It’s something they are going to do anyway. It’s because The Flash…

I agree, but I also think that they are so delusional that they actually believe the comparison. I think they really do think that in their crusade to take rights away from others, they believe they are on the side of freedom.

Not necessarily. I have a relative who got into debt really badly and killed himself because he knew the life insurance would cover a big chunk of it.

It’s not just the term “religious freedom.” All of their messaging is supposed to make it seem like they are the ones fighting against discrimination even though they are the ones fighting for it. That’s why it doesn’t surprise me to hear bigots trying to use MLK. They honestly think they are the side standing up for…

I’m sure what you’re implying is a total stretch...