Some of these I’ve never heard (e.g. “dialoguing”), some I agree are dumb and have argued elsewhere the same (e.g. “unhoused”), and some others are just normal English words that should be fine to use if it fits (e.g. “privilege”). A few I think are actually referring to pretty important issues in the current climate (e.g. “othering”).
The battle for fiscal conservatism has been lost for decades .... the last real fiscal conservative in government was probably Ron Paul. As for taxes, they are a necessary evil, but let's be honest here - Who the **** wants to give the gubmint 30% or more of their earnings just so they piss it away on stupid shiit? I mean, outside of national defense, education, law enforcement and emergency responders & infrastructure, what else do we want these bastards spending our money on? You might add healthcare to that list, but we live in a world where that is a for profit industry and most of us pay for that ourselves one way or another. Everything else .... they spend on seems money mis spent, especially when it equates to deficit spending.
Okay so a couple things here. To what extent is the money received from taxes spent on stupid ****? Is there probably waste and fraud in government..to an extent yes. But that's a problem with all large complex organizations. You never really get rid of it completely but you try. I cant name all of the things government should be doing. But I do believe that a governments main job is to provide safety, health, and economic equity to all of its citizens. Everything else is mis spent? Can you really say that? Who are you getting that from? DOGE? So if we agree that both parties may not care about the debt, which party worse to you? The party that decides to help people in need through social programs. Or the party that gives money to the top 1% it while increasing the debt more than the former?
I just find it mindnumblingly stupid that the current administration is making us pay taxes while also cutting our benefits. What is the point of taxes if all the government benefits are being cut? More taxes = more benefits. Not this bs gaslighting in paying tariffs and taxes for less benefits. And to top it off the fking debt is still increasing. Taxes are still the same, but debt is still increasing while our benefits are being cut is stupid.
Bill Maher tells Dems how Trump became a ‘master’ at picking off their voters https://nypost.com/2025/08/23/media...rump-is-a-master-at-picking-off-their-voters/ excerpt: “Trump runs for office like that kid in eighth grade who ran for school president on a pledge of more snow days,” Maher joked. more at the link
@Salvy @CrixusTheUndefeatedGaul Rather be beaten and car jacked than have crime cleaned up by the president wow ‘suicidal empathy’
gift link https://wapo.st/45UhtRr How Zohran Mamdani is teaching Democrats to lose His critics warn he’ll drag down the party’s brand. But that’s not the biggest danger for the midterms. August 25, 2025 at 8:09 a.m. EDT Today at 8:09 a.m. EDT 4 min The closer Zohran Mamdani has come to winning the New York mayor’s race, the more people have been asking the question Aaron Blake posed in an article for CNN: “How much of a liability could he be for Democrats?” Republicans want to use him to generally label Democrats as left-wing extremists: The campaign arm of the House Republicans has called him “the new face of the Democrat Party.” (President Donald Trump prefers to describe him as “a 100% Communist Lunatic.”) Some Democratic officials, often off the record, fear that Mamdani hands Republicans ammunition against their party. Prominent elected leaders in his state are still reluctant to endorse his campaign. Other Democrats, mostly on the left end of the party, think he gives the party a needed jolt of enthusiasm. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) says, “Mamdani’s campaign really shows the direction in which the Democratic Party should be moving.” This debate ignores what might be the biggest danger that Mamdani poses to the Democratic Party. That danger is not that his performance as mayor, assuming his polling lead holds, will turn off swing voters nationally (although it might). It’s that he will excite Democratic activists in all the wrong ways. His example will encourage them to do what a lot of them already want to do: get louder and lefter. Committed partisans are always tempted to find evidence, however dubious, that being more hard-line is the path to political victory. It happens to people of all political descriptions. In recent years, though, Democrats have been especially prone to political misjudgments of this kind. Sanders’s strong primary challenge to Hillary Clinton in 2016, for example, was taken as a sign that democratic socialism had a bright political future, when it was really a sign that she was an unappealing candidate. His strong performance with White working-class voters in that contest evaporated the next time he ran, when he was no longer a protest vote against Clinton. In 2018, the spotlight turned to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a few other left-wingers who won congressional seats. Never mind that the Democrats in swing districts who gave their party a House majority in that election were almost all much more moderate. By the middle of the next year, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to remind the world that Ocasio-Cortez, like she herself, came from a solidly Democratic district: “A glass of water would win with a D next to its name.” Misunderstandings on the left persisted and set the fuse for disaster in 2024. During the Democratic primaries of 2020, Vice President Kamala Harris felt compelled to take several progressive positions that were politically poisonous — most memorably, support for taxpayer funding of transgender surgeries for prisoners. Then President Joe Biden felt compelled to conduct a running-mate search tightly constrained by progressives’ insistence on prioritizing racial and gender diversity. That search saddled Democrats with Harris and her record, which she could neither defend nor convincingly repudiate. Worse, the Biden administration underrated the risks of going along with the newly emboldened left. The backlash against Trump’s first-term immigration policies led Biden to think the public would tolerate the relaxed enforcement favored by Democratic immigration activists. His team acted on the left’s preferred theory of how to reach working-class voters: via protectionism, manufacturing subsidies and support for unions rather than any moderation on cultural issues. That strategy failed as completely as one can. Will Democrats make the same mistakes about Mamdani? They already are. See Sanders, above. Or take a look at left-wing publications, which are urging Democrats across the nation to be more like Mamdani. Some of the news coverage is helping to mislead Democrats. Commentators are saying that his win shows that Democrats need to highlight their exuberance and their plans to make life affordable to appeal to young men. Or that they need to run “relentless and cheerful” campaigns “with zippy videos.” Some of these purported lessons might even be right. But the biggest lesson typically goes unmentioned in these articles: If you’re a left-wing Democrat, be sure to run somewhere that doesn’t have many Republican voters. Ideally, run somewhere with chronically low turnout, too. (And if your main opponent had to resign his previous office over serial sexual harassment, so much the better.) Those Democrats who think Mamdani will hurt their party are right to be concerned, but they’re thinking about the problem the wrong way. It’s not the skeptics they need to worry about. It’s the fans.
WSU teaching assistant who assaulted student for wearing Trump hat gets jail time https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2025/aug/21/wsu-teaching-assistant-who-assaulted-student-for-w/ excerpt: Sani told officers Mahoney slammed his head onto the ground. “Some people might find it offensive, but it’s 2025, man,” Sani told officers. “It’s just a hat.” more at the link
