HaveAnotherTacoPDX

Not every men's group is a shitty stereotype. It does seem unacceptably common, though. Not every women's group is a safe space, and some are just as toxic and abusive as the far-too-common men's groups. Do we ban them? I don't think we can. Because women's shelters need to exist even if men are domestically abused too and never in my fucking life have I heard anyone suggest a battered men's shelter might even maybe be a good idea. Okay, fine, so violence and safety reasons … Except, shit, not everyone is hetero… A same sex partner can probably find out where women's shelters are. And men are abused to by their partners, men and women, in alarmingly higher rates than anybody seems to take note of. And what do you do with Trans folks? Because their rights are human rights too and why the fuck do we still need to explicitly say that anymore? sigh

And that doesn't even begin to cover social groups.

I guess if you're not an asshole, a bigot, an abuser, or whatever … best you can do when you encounter these things (and you will) is ask yourself whether something gendered is reasonable or not. The answer might be yes, or no, or conflicted either way. I'd like to say that it should be okay if we don't agree about the answers. I'd like to say that people should be able to accept that the other person is making a good faith effort to determine the relative "okayness" in an individual case with an individual perspective. Sadly, we humans seem not to be wired to do that. I'm just gonna continue thinking gendered stuff is pretty dumb on the whole with a couple of conflicted views on a couple of specific things because I know I don't live in a perfect world.

People seem to love it. But it's highly proprietary and there seems to be planned obsolescence built into their model

I'm just gonna suggest that we not take anybody's word for it that "it'll probably fail" unless we make damned fucking sure it fails. Voter suppression, screwing with voting machines, vote tallies, people getting to polls, throwing out votes, throwing out voter registrations, stuffing ballot boxes (something they accuse us of which means they're doing it), seizing ballots, ballot boxes, voting machines, voting humans, vote counters, or elected officials… or just ordering the military to drag anyone who protests him canceling the election to Aligator Alcatraz, CECOT, or other concentration camp … any of that is possible.

Guys, the truth is that dictators often come to power (apparently) "legally" in democracies. But never in the history of ever has such a despot elected democratically (presumably) been later deposed by means of an election. Never. Not once. The only reason is might possibly happen this time is that Donald Trump is completely fucking incompetent. But do not underestimate him. Especially not because someone else says you can/should.

No, it pretty surely is that he is a pedophile … he said so himself. It was recorded and he knew it was recorded. The fact that this was news in a lot of the country but not on any Republican-serving media source is testament to the lengths they went to in order to protect a disgusting human being.

What's really sick is that a bunch of Americans would've voted for him if they knew. Probably not enough to win an election even against Hillary Clinton who acted like the presidency was owed to her without campaigning, but enough to illustrate a problem in this country both with where people get their "facts" and how few care what the facts are.

I see what you did there.

Running mate for someone who can. But I don't think that person is on that list. Someone else suggested Kelly or Pritzker as middle of the road people with wider appeal who might be able to pull it off. I think it's too early to pick a candidate.

She's the best candidate on that list by far, and she's got what it takes to do the job. I don't think she can win the 2028 election given what's going on right now, though. We've gotta do some stuff to clear the way for her to run later I think. A real winner candidate isn't on this list. And that's fine, we've got awhile yet.

She lost to Trump AND Biden.

Mark Kelly is a pretty respectable dude who should have wide appeal, even if he's not super progressive. Pritzker could do it, you're right. Either one of these two saying they want AOC as a running mate (and actually listening to her) elevates them on my list of candidates immediately.

This plan didn't work with Trump in 2016. Republicans rammed him in where he wasn't (shouldn't have been) welcome because they refused to allow any other candidate. In the same election, Democrats let their party officials to ram Hillary through because the party wouldn't accept Bernie.

Suggest we find someone WE like and do what Republicans did. It doesn't matter if it's an "outsider" or not, but I'd appreciate it if we could not pick a child rapist and sex trafficker, kthx!

I genuinely think our candidate hasn't really made themselves known to be willing to run yet. I don't think it's AOC this time, though I think she's got what it takes to do the job. I don't think it's Harris, people still feel burned by 2020. I hope we can do better than Newsom.

Kinda still want to draft Jon Stewart because he genuinely gives a fuck, can communicate like few others, knows how to be damned serious when he needs to be, and if he were on that list today he'd be near the top if not at it, just like that. And when asked, he didn't say no. We could do far worse and still be okay.

But yeah, I'm waiting to see what happens. I don't think the candidate I want that I'm sure will win is on the field yet. But I hope AOC is the running mate, whoever that person winds up being.

If you're an American voter, you are. That's the thing about sea changes in politics. They come from people who have very little power. And we do have very little power. It happens when there's a damned lot of us, and not until then. The last time was when they kicked out the railroad barons and created anti-monopoly laws that are still on the books, mostly unused since the 70s. The time before that was pre-civil war. And before that was the revolutionary war itself.

These things don't always have to be done via war, but they do have to be done by an overwhelming majority of people. Fatalism doesn't help. Organizing does.

The big reason why the electoral college has "rigged things" (aside from Jefferson fucking things up, but that's an argument for another time) is that the vote of so many has been so predictable. They only really worry about the places the outcome is likely to be volatile. Except in this election people are so pissed off that the outcome of the whole country is at least fuzzy, or can be if we work to make it that way. If they think they're gonna goround Texas, they need to send people down there to intimidate. But they don't. They might. In fact they're likely to.

Everything's in play if we make it all be in play. That's on us, so let's make it so sending goons to a few places won't suppress the nation's will. This isn't even a presidential election, so the electoral college isn't a factor. We can fix some of this shit right now.

Please help us do that! I'm treating this election like our lives depend on it, because they do.