Doublespeak. Republicans actively work to twist the meaning of words to their base to fit their agenda, so that the other side playing by the rules and being fair looks like political cheating. That way Republicans can engage in political cheating themselves and claim self defense.

In today’s flavor, “legal standard” means “the ability to make us lose” so they want to apply their own “legal standard” to democrats.

It sounds dumb to anyone paying attention, but their voters will eat this up.

I don’t need to show you statistics to shed light on their intent. It’s not hard to figure out what they’re doing. It’s also not hard to see that what they’re doing is damage control. The result of that would be keeping their polls from going down, not making them go up. You can’t prove a negative, so I don’t know what you want me to do.

As far as diluting the seriousness of what they’ve done, go turn on fox news. They blast Biden’s “insurrection” and impeachment “proceedings” 24/7. Do you need more proof than that?

Lastly, if you’re trying to defend your original statement, you’re preaching to the choir here. You don’t have to be an asshole about it. It’s a bit asinine to assert that they aren’t doing it with intent.

It’s a bad argument to consider not enforcing the law, but it’s not an incorrect statement. Republicans responded to the impeachment of Trump by continously trying to impeach Biden. They’re responding to the insurrection by pointing at things dems do and yelling insurrection.

It’s dumb and incorrect, but it’s pretty effective at diluting the seriousness of those particular actions to their own voter base. You could argue that that’s the point.

It’s the structure of our “first past the post” system. Basically, each party gets one representative on the presidential ticket. The two major parties have primaries where the top candidates compete in a vote within themselves, and the winner gets put on the presidential ticket for that party.

The obvious problem with that is that the party convention picks the candidate, not the voters. So it’s possible to buy a party’s candidate or for the conventions to snub popular choice in favor of not shaking things up too much in the status quo.

The latter point, the democratic party picking lukewarm candidates that are moderate at best because the establishment doesn’t want to disturb the status quo, has been a problem for a long time and is a major reason democrat voters don’t go to the polls.

Not for the corporations that make money off of extorting a basic necessity from poor people! Won’t someone think of the corporations?

Translation: “I watch exclusively conservative media and consequently have no idea what’s real or not”

News used to be 60 minutes just after prime time. Now they have whole channels with news 24/7/365. Have to fill all that air time with something

There is a voice I consciously control, and there is one that I don’t. They kind of intermingle into a single monologue, but I can still hear the one I don’t control when I consciously turn off my monologue. It’s still a quiet presence almost in the back of my mind.

One way I’ve rationalized it, it’s like when you meditate and your thoughts still flow over you. You don’t actively control those thoughts, that’s kind of the point. I’m finding that those thoughts have a coherent voice for me. They speak through my monologue, but they are still there when I shut my monologue off. Under the surface, quieter, with the rest of the thoughts I don’t control.

One of the “constantly” group here. It’s a bit more like having someone to talk to all the time who is also me. I can turn it off, but it has to be a concentrated effort and as soon as I’m not concentrated on keeping it silent it comes back.

I’ve spent many years wondering at the nature of the little voice, especially after I learned that not everyone has it. It’s not controlling or contradictory, it’s a bit more like a narrator for my feelings and a driving point for logic.

I’ve come to the conclusion that what it actually is is my subconscious manifesting as a conversational partner. Kind of like an avatar that represents the part of me that isn’t the literal point of consciousness inside my head. Make of that what you will.

Don’t get me wrong, I still think in pictures and non-verbal inclinations. That doesn’t really go away either. But it’s like having a narrator alongside it that also speaks in the first person.

I know you’ve probably heard this about a dozen times by now, but…

Don’t join Facebook.

They track everything they can about you, down to how long you spend looking at something on your screen. I’m fairly certain they listen to what’s going on around you if you put the app on your phone. An ad for something I’ve mentioned in passing has popped up on my feed shortly later too many times to be a coincidence.

They follow you around on your browser, too. They know what you shop for. It’s all specially tailored to sell you their ads.

I keep an account to stay in touch with my family, and it’s appalling how much more information they get from you than any other app. Not to mention the heavy prevalence of MAGA hats and I’ll-kill-you-before-I-consider-your-opinion conservatives.

Instagram isn’t much better, but at least the people there are nicer.

Anyone reading this thread and genuinely interested in it should go listen to the dollop podcast. It’s American history, mostly between the 1500’s and now. But the different episodes they do are stuffed full of this kind of faulty logic from the past.

Look into the death of George Washington. His doctor responded to what could have been a mild cold by taking a liter of blood 4 separate times from him. Washington very well could have recovered if he was just left alone.

Oh, and the doctor somewhat realized his mistake and tried to put some of the blood back after(!) Washington expired, with the logic that if blood loss killed him giving it back should revive him.

So yeah. Pumping blood back into a dead man. That was done on the founding president of the United States.

Was listening to an American history podcast (the dollop) about the radium girls. They wore uranium infused lipstick because it glowed and they thought it was cute. They licked their fingers regularly to help apply uranium dust to things.

While their male supervisors were wearing full lead suits totally for no reason and let those girls do that.

Many of them lost their jaws. There was a suit filed that they won, but every single one of those girls died before they could collect the money.

The suit led to a law establishing workers’ safety rights, so it wasn’t all bad. But that law was definitely written in those girls’ blood.

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Maybe that’s the point. Unity caves immediately to the big lawyers and says “Sorry guys, we tried. Looks like all you little studios will have to pay up after all. Blame Sony/Nintendo/Microsoft”

Let’s go a step further and analyze exactly what this graph is saying:

There’s only about a 20% distribution difference in the “never” sections between Christians and atheists. So on average, 4/5 atheists would answer the exact same as Christians. All this graph says is that Christians are barely more tolerant than people who identify as atheist. Barely is the key word. If anything, this graph proves that tolerance levels don’t fluctuate that much for the individual between differing religions.

But Bible thumpers need any win they can get, so they don’t read the data for what it is, they just see one bar longer than the other and declare victory.

I bought my oneplus 10 pro for sub $500 during a sale, and it has usb3.1. It’s last year’s model. You can get a pixel 6 with usb3.1 for less than $400. A Galaxy S21 has usb3.2, less than $500.

That’s almost every major android brand for $500 or less with 3.1 or better. The cheapest you can buy an iPhone 15, the one with usb2.0, is $800. What are you on about?

You’re a housing provider, not a landlord. If you aren’t making anything off of the houses you lease then you aren’t the subject of the ire of renters.

Ignore those goons saying you’re a bad investor. It’s noble of you to not leech off of the people who you rent to, and at the end of the day, the equity of the house is still yours.

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And soon, the carrier pigeon breeders will start tagging them with tracking chips…