Wow, so apparently I’m now back in the greys? I wrote this and suddenly I’m punished for it? What bullshit fucking cowardice is that? I’ve been out of the greys on Splinter for ages.

That speaks more ill of you than it does of me. 

So obviously you’re just a worthless troll, as numerous others have stated, but you realize the Democrats have been losing, and a big part of it is spineless centrists who won’t speak out against gerrymandering or voter suppression or other potentially controversial issues, which let’s Republicans cheat without…

You do realize the polling data shows the complete opposite of your assumption, right? Voters support more liberal healthcare policies, a majority of them, including a plurality to a majority of GOP voters depending on how the question is worded. 

This is a hilariously bad take, completely ignorant of data, voting trends, and realpolitik. I mean, this couldn’t be more self-righteously ignorant if you tried. Progressives hurt your feelings, well grow the fuck up and use data and evidence to inform your opinions not your hurt feelings. Bloody hell. 

...is this really worth a story? Chait is an asshat who only occasionally writes a decent piece, and is pretty much “gatekeeping white centrist” to the T, but this isn’t news and it’s barely gossip.

It was still around then, and to my knowledge it’s still around now. It’s actually a pretty predatory store, stores going under basically get shipped all the shit they can’t sell in healthy stores, so it’s a constant mess. But last time I checked their basic inventory isn’t even that far from what I dealt with a…

Yup same thing. Our displays and their location was all planned by corporate, who’d never set food in our store or mall. 

Ah let me rephrase that. Store managers were chill. Anything above that was insanely corporate. I mean they’d send us pictures of the displays then wanted in the store and if we didn’t follow it there was hell to pay. No matter if it didn’t suit our store or mall or anything like that. They eventually shut down my…

So I did about a year at Spencers, which obviously wants to give a vibe of being cool and rebellious (despite being super corporate in reality) and the one time that actually seemed true was all the store managers seemed pretty chill as long as we didn’t say anything bad in front of customers. 

That’s terrifying. I assume most people have had at least some retail experience, and being able to relax and talk shit when customers aren’t around is a seriously necessary psychological crutch. Human beings are just not designed to stand at a cash register and not socialize for hours at a time. It causes stress and…

Both are common. Fox will put nearly anyone on TV these days. 

It would take a serious investment, both by NATO countries and the EU, to set up a “defensible” border against potential Russian expansionism in the Baltic. But that risk remains low, if concerning, with political influence and proxy threats far more likely.

The minute his far-right allies and his camp started pushing conspiracy theories and turning this partisan was the minute I believed he did know. That sort of damaging honorless behavior is rarely used except when the alternative is worse. The fact that he’s spending political capital to get his allies to rally around…

Exactly. It’s not worth instability to push smaller countries towards that goal and ignore all other issues. The 2% is one of those arbitrary numbers and it’s generally not good to set policy based on that. Especially given there’s no major military threat aligned against NATO. It’s exceedingly unlikely the size of…

Even beyond that, there’s not really a conventional military threat equal to NATO. If most NATO states up their defense spending it will be useful, but I think we’re at diminishing returns levels there. No outside threat, including Russia, is equal in military terms. Trump always seems to think NATO countries would…

Yeah, it’s complicated by that and I think the most likely outcome is it happens. Russia getting that lifeline isn’t good, but it may be unavoidable. But what Trump did isn’t going to help the US and other EU states not keen on the idea make their arguments. 

4% is an utter waste of money for NATO. The 2% target should be pushed, but it’s not a massive concern either. The largest threats are presently assymetrical; we’re no longer worrying about the Soviet army marching to Berlin, and the Russian military is largely short term conscripts and outside of some of the more…

It’s about asserting their authority. They allege he crossed without their approval. The informal rule of bureaucracy is if you don’t assert your authority any time it’s challenged you may end up losing it. That said, this is a fairly stupid hill to die on even by that standard. 

This is amazingly stupid. I’ve said it a dozen times and I’m sure I’ll say it a hundred more, but the institutional culture at CBP is toxic, just like ICE. Petty authoritarians high on their own authority and without good institutional checks and a bureaucratic culture that has little emotional intelligence or common…