These must be those death panels Republicans warned us of when the Affordable Care Act passed…

It really depends on what a Trump reign will look like, right?

Will he be able to round up tens of millions of people and deport them, as he has promised? Will he institute another Muslim ban, as he has promised? Will he stay in office after his next four year term, as he has said he wants to? Will he use the office of the president to persecute political opponents, as he has promised? Will he “root out” all the “vermin” in the United States, as he had promised? And if yes: who will get declared to be “vermin?” How will they be “rooted out?” Will he make torture legal, as he promised? Will he bring back family separation and child detention camps? Will he threaten nuclear war again? And if yes, will some crazy regime take him up on the offer?

And if all of that or even just a fraction of that comes to pass, will you still sleep well, knowing that you might have been able to stop all of that but voting for the lesser of two evils was just beneath you?

Because ultimately, that’s the decision you’re making.

Just like when they thought that yelling "Let's Go Brandon" was sooo fucking clever.

He's running for the office of President of The United States of America, and the multi-billionaire who owns what is still one of the world's most influential social media platforms openly spouts antisemitic rhetoric.

It seems pretty fair to ask a candidate about his view on that issue.

Then she had an anchor baby. Then her parents became citizens through chain migration.

All things that Trump supporters absolutely hate and want to punish harshly: they're hollering about shooting people at the border, they're in favor of family separation, they want to round up people and deport them - except when it's Trump's own family.

For Trump supporters, "law and order" always means "rules for thee and not for me."

Well, let's see what Trump has said about that:

"We are going to win four more years. And then after that, we'll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years."

or how about

“I have to the right to do whatever I want as president.”

or

“A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.”

or how about when he admired Xi Jinping:

"He's now president for life. President for life. And he's great. I think it's great. Maybe we'll give that a shot someday."

Having ten apartments on one floor requires less toilets and plumbing than having 100 people working on one floor.

Installing a bathroom is easy. Installing ten bathrooms is easy.

These buildings aren't being converted because it's impossible to do or because living conditions would be harsh if they were converted - these buildings aren't being converted because people calling the shots don't want to miss out on those fat profits they're still hoping to make.

A jury if his peers still found that Trump was a rapist. The judge in that trial clarified that the jury finding meant that Trump was a rapist.

This was after the Trump camp claimed, after losing the defamation suit, that none of this meant that Trump was a rapist.

So the judge explicitly clarified that the jury had found that Trump had committed rape.

I'd argue that is ProPublica, so generally very far from the kind of media outlet that would publish feel good stories, and that the story itself isn't even a feel good story: even the rich, powerful attorney with the powerful lawyer friend and the powerful doctor friend had to pay for the treatment out of his own pocket, and the story ends with the insurance company, after losing the car, still only paying a fraction of that after having dragged out the entire case for years and years.

More like "Celebrity" Lawyer Dershowitz. As in: everybody knows his name, he's a celebrity - for defending the most deplorable people who have ever faced trial.

Neither the Catholics, nor the Baptists, nor the Episcopalians, nor the Presbyterians, nor the Orthodox, nor any of the other "Christian" denominations/jurisdictions have ever put out an official position statement on behalf of their churches condemning this Christofascist Nationalism shit.

That sounds a lot like the voices who, after 9/11, were demanding that Muslims should issue public statements condemning al Qaeda, because "silence means agreement."

Republicans: "This would never happen, even if Roe v. Wade got overturned!!!"

Republicans: overturn Roe v. Wade, pass laws that prohibit abortion in case of rape

Republicans: "Well, nobody wants that, but it's the law of the land, and we just have to abide by it!!!"

I'll tell you exactly how I'd feel about that, I'd feel that you shouldn't kill innocent people from the countries that the terrorists hail from in response, because I'm not a shitty human being.

"I think this shouldn't be done" is a non-answer.

You have avoided the main topic to try and make a point that is still unrelated to the topic at hand. We are not talking about helping Palestinians. I don't know how you still don't get it. You're intentionally ignoring it and it is really starting to piss me off.

You're the one who has made exactly zero suggestions about how to stop Hamas.

Have you lost even one single word about Hamas mass murdering civilians? Have you lost one single word about Hamas torturing people, beheading people, burning people alive?

No?

Why not?

Is that just acceptable to you? Are you just a shitty human being?

Or is that, to you, just something terrorists do, so we should ask, collectively, just shrug it off?

If you genuinely think this, you're insane.

So your tangible answers are:

• Doing a better job at controlling their borders.
• Partner with the dozens of countries you are allied with.

That's your answer of how a nation should respond to a terrorist attack that killed 1,400 civilians, where the attached committed the most inhumane, vile atrocities?

Put yourself in the Israeli civilians' shoes, say 1,400 of your fellow citizen - men, women, children, babies - have just been murdered by a terrorist organization that rules an adjacent territory in the most gruesome way: decapitated, shot, bludgeoned, burned to death. How would you feel about that?

And how would you feel about it if then somebody told you "well, why don't you just control the borders a little bit better and partner with your allies?'

You are asking a question that is totally unrelated to the topic.

Because you wrote a post that was totally unrelated to my question, and totally unrelated to the entire conversation before it.

The entire premise of the conversation was that Hamas might not even exist today if Israel had only chosen to help the Palestinians.

If your entire reply to that topic can be summed up as "well, too late for that," then I agree with you.

I fail to see the point in trying to help them if you are actively blowing them up to stop a terrorist organization, you should do that before you do anything else, it's literally a prerequisite.

How do you feel that Israel should have reacted to the 10/7 attacks?

And the cause for the blockade before 2012 was that Hamas seized power in the Gaza strip, murdered its political opponents, and instituted a reign of terror where elections were suspended indefinitely, dissent was impossible, and Palestinian "collaborators" were abducted, tortured, and murdered.

And the reason for the end of the ceasefire in 2014 was that Hamas abducted the teenagers, followed by Israel imprisoning 350 Palestinian militants, followed by Hamas launching rocket attacks against Israeli civilians from Gaza.

That's the problem, isn't it - whatever any side does in this conflict, it's easy to find justification for it if you only go back fast enough in history. There are more than 2000 years of history there, full of conflict between the various ethnic groups. If anyone wants to find justification for current atrocities, it's always easy to point to atrocities previously committed by the other side.

That said: do you really believe that Hamas wild simply cease its terrorism, its atrocities, its rocket attacks, kidnappings, torture, murder and simply decide to live in peace with Israel if the blockade were to be lifted tomorrow?

You wrote a lot of things, but I still don't see an answer to the question there.

Is that because you don't have an answer?

Not blockade the Gaza strip, for one.

How would that make Hamas go away?

Egypt and Israel are blockading the Gaza strip because it's under the control of a terrorist organization.

If the question is "how could Israel help the Palestinians in a way that would make the threat if Hamas disappear," how are you envisioning that this would happen if Israel ended the blockade?

See, that's the problem, though: you're already presuming that people who don't simply go along cheering facile, generic solutions like "why don't the Israelis just help the Palestinians" - as if things were that easy and as if that thought just had never occurred to a single person in the past 70 years of murderous conflict - must be insincere.

So for the record: no, I'm being sincere. Bombing innocent civilians in Gaza is very obviously objectionable, and indiscriminate bombing is a war crime.

At the same time, I can acknowledge that Hamas is a terrorist organization which just committed the largest terrorist attack in the history of Israel, committing unspeakable atrocities and murdering hundreds and hundreds of civilians in Israel.

So with that premise established: what would be some realistic ways for Israel to help Palestinians in a way that would make Hamas go away and end that particular threat for Israel. Because that's the proposition: that the terrorist threat from Hamas could be ended if Israel only helped the Palestinians instead of bombing them, correct?

Yeah, some of the MAGAt Nazis have already announced that they will keep laying down a wreath every year on the new statue that is being cast, no matter what.

It would be hilarious if they held their solemn loser ceremony around a giant dildo every year!