But will this ruling have any practical effect or will the GOP and their allies in the judiciary manage to smother the ruling long enough to make this nothing but a symbolic victory?

You might be surprised by the opinions of some folks who had good reasons to hate John McCain’s policy preferences, but had surprisingly high opinions of him as a person. Arab Twitter has had a lot more nuanced takes than English Twitter, ironically. 

The body politic runs on “dumb theater”. This sort of symbolism plays an important role in how societies think of themselves and how they perform out their values and ideas. It all is very dumb, but it’s also fairly important despite being dumb because this is one of those bigger social norms that people care about…

Truth is, there’s no reason to charge at all. The things required, like a phone line or internet access, are already required for the prison to run. Giving say a free 30-an hour a week would be a lot more just.

Honestly, this is largely symbolic. Part of the reason the reform was sold is because it’s good optics, in reality this isn’t changing much of anything but it tackling a recurring perception problem for the party.

It’s hard to explain police actions holistically without the idea that they’re using their muscle on counter-protesters and not the far-right. Too many incidents, too many witness accounts, too many well documented cases of racism and ties to hate groups in the police, to pretend otherwise.

Very true, but if there’s generally one winning argument even in partisan politics “this will save a ton of money” is usually it. For-profit prison companies can only dump so much into lobbying before diminishing returns. Especially given their poor favorability with the public. 

An asylum-seeker should, in theory, not have any improper entry counted against their asylum claim. In theory, that’s illegal under US and international law.

FYI fuck Twitter so much for letting so many far-right bigots use their platform, but I just got in trouble for something (they won’t tell me what) and can’t tweet for 12 hours. Meanwhile open hate groups have accounts despite their very existence and raison d’etre violating the rules, including VDare. 

VDare has been infamous among those studying white supremacists for decades. It’s a very old, very hateful cesspit. Brimelow is a vile piece of shit. So of course he’s still allowed on Twitter and sometimes far-right media, along with a whole host of the bigoted monsters he publishes (Derbyshire, Steve Sailer, etc),…

They’re doing some particularly stupid things. One of the jackasses from the NRSC was screeching about musicians being “unhinged leftists” for playing a campaign event for the Democratic Senate candidate in TN. You know, the moderate former gov.

I’m not sure town halls are where real scrutiny of any policy positions happens. In my experience they’re almost entirely performative. 

There are some red flags here, but I just don’t think anyone in the public has enough information to make any informed guess to be honest. There are things that make me hesitant about uncritically endorsing the accusations but also well worn truths that make me hesitant to dismiss them as well.

We agree on that. I wrote much the same in my comment that’s no doubt still in the greys since I got kicked back into them. But what you wrote here is a lot more moderate than your first comment (and more in line with the level of thought I respect you for).

Honestly, we should allow town halls to have someone writing down questions and answers, no video to spook people, and in the transcript not write down constituent names or identities UNLESS they consent to it. Reduces the problem, still provides the data for the press.

It’s pretty standard for people not to talk at those events too. It’s not BS. The people who dominate town halls when the media are around are the ones comfortable with that glare, not necessarily the people who need to speak the most. You’re dismissing a very normal and real concern in a way that I think is a bad…

The Hill is trash. Far-right editorial staff. Bad and misleading headlines. Anything that’s not news aggregation is Fox/Sinclair level skewed at best. It’s a rag I’d be glad to ignore forever if they weren’t so good at aggregating stories. The minute another site starts doing it well I’ll leave them and their neo-Nazi…

If you can’t win on the facts or merits, you drown out the uncomfortable facts with a shit ton of money. Tendentious or outright dishonest ads might fool just enough people to matter, or at a very least will muddy the waters so much it’ll keep their loyal partisans on board as they refuse to trust any actual reporting…

Radicalizing their base by promoting conspiracy theories and insecurity keeps their base loyal and rabid. It’s a tactic. It doesn’t matter that he was wrong. It’s not like Fox or far-right media are going to cover him being wrong. In their bubble, they might hear it was false, but they’ll write it off as unimportant…

Outside of dungeons I feel decent. I miss some of the artifact traits pretty badly though. I’ve done both Ret and Prot with my pally and felt okay, even my first two dungeon runs before 120 went easy. Since hitting 120 though stuff is hitting me really hard, I’m not getting heals well (and they pushed my self-heal…