First of all, again, they did control the Senate; Schumer was Majority leader. If you want to argue that they didn’t have a strong enough Majority to govern, fine, but that’s not what, “control of the Senate,” means. Second of all, the last time the Democrats did have a strong Majority in the senate (60 seats at the start of Obama’s term), they let the public option get stripped out of the Affordable Care Act and abandoned homeowner mortgage bailouts because they preferred to let one Senator (Joe Lieberman) hijack the negotiations. Either the leadership of this party isn’t interested in advancing a progressive agenda or their the most spineless, incompetent negotiators in history.

They did control the Senate: 50 members (48 Democrats and 2 Independents that caucus with them), plus the Democratic VP to break ties. But they couldn’t pass anything Biden ran on because a couple of, “moderates,” wouldn’t play ball. Just like, even though the Democrats were winning on the shutdown last year, eight, “moderates,” decided to cave. The Democrats will always find a few Democrats to be the villains of the week so that the party can betray their voters to please their donors.

I think Schumer knows he’s a dead man walking. He won’t be reelected in '28, and he won’t be Majority Leader if they take back the Senate. Jefferies (unfortunately) has a shot of hanging in; he’s just as weak and feckless as Schumer, but he kept his caucus together on the shutdown, while Schumer caved. That’s why even normie centrist Democrats want him out, and why he can’t even be bothered to pretend he’s a political leader anymore.

For sure, and don’t get me wrong, this is meant as a condemnation of Schumer, not praise for Greene.

For context, Marjorie Taylor Greene has said more in Omar’s defense than Schumer.

You have no idea what you’re talking about. This, “investigation,” is outwardly about fraud on her childhood immigration documents, and in reality an attempt by Trump to denaturalize a political opponent. It has nothing to do with imaginary embezzlement.

Also, Schumer has never defended her. He’s a hard-core Zionist and she’s a critic of Israel. He’s called her antisemitic in the past for criticizing AIPAC. He and Pelosi hung her out to dry on multiple occasions; he hasn’t suddenly, “cut ties,” because of, “what she’s done.”

Her net worth is high because she’s married to a hedge fund manager. If you think politicians and their families shouldn’t be allowed to trade stocks, fair enough, but it’s (infamously) not illegal, and completely unrelated to what’s beijg done to Omar right now.

The only reason that Graham Platner got as far as he did was because the centrists pushed Janet Mills. Once Mills was in the race, leftists who were actually properly vetted by organizations like the DSA decided it wasn’t worth competing against a DNC funded candidate (of course, they didn’t know she’d implode spectacularly). That’s why you had a two person senate primary and a five person gubernatorial primary. There’s an alternate timeline where Schumer doesn’t meddle in the race, there’s a competitive primary field, and Platner’s voters switch to Troy Jackson after the Nazi tattoo story breaks.

Anecdotally, I’m seeing a lot of normie liberals get radicalized by watching Democrats approve Trump’s nominees, pass his legislation, and cave on their own government shutdowns. Turns out, if you pitch yourselves as the only opposition to fascism, people expect you to actually oppose fascism.

The Politico reporting is extremely damning, and these accusations really can’t be described as anything other than rape. He’s gotta go.

Imagine if someone tried to have you murdered by a mob and this was the harshest criticism you could come up with.

Yeah, AOC’s record on Israel isn’t as good as Tlaib’s or Omar’s, but it’s still better than 95% of Democrats. Only an idiot or a liar would call her a Zionist because she didn’t vote for a symbolic amendment for a bill she voted against anyway.

Also, you’ll notice that the people who gleefully brand her a Zionist or a Neoliberal never have an alternative to tell you about. They’ll tell you why every promising progressive is actually an imperialist, or why the DSA are actually corporate shills, why no one is actually a real leftist, but they never have someone they actually want to get elected. They just want to say “no,” or at best, they demand, “next,” without doing any work to find that next person.

Well, we could start sending him some red meat gift baskets, but it might get a little pricey.

You know, Fetterman has talked openly about his struggles with suicidal ideation. Just saying, with the right letter campaign, we might be able to solve this one.

Honestly, I remember similar vamp lore dragging down the first one. There some interesting stuff with Frost being lower class because he was turned Vamp instead of born Vamp, but the third-act vampire-god thing was kinda meh, ending with some horribly dated CGI.

Also, while the world building was cool, it’s not as though Blade is a super interesting character. He’s a super cool bad-ass, but I find myself checking out when they get into his emotional backstory. Whistler id mich more of the emotional core of fhat movie, which is probably why they had to bring him back in the second (which ie something in fhe second movie that I thought was a cheap cop-out).

Yeah, I thought that was the general consensus too, but I couldn’t be sure that wasn’t just an echo chamber I’d created with my friend group.

I would argue that Blade II is the better movie. Guillermo del Toro is a much more interesting director, and the Reapers are basically a dry run for his take on Vampires in The Strain.

I don’t know what Stalin thought, but I do know that he was able to rule for so long because he was broadly popular throughout the Soviet Union. Also, Victor Orbàn clearly cared about public opinion, as did Ferdinand Marcos, Hosni Mubarak, and Alexander Lukashenko, to name a few.

You can’t control a country where the vast majority of people hate you. Even if the military remains loyal to you (and they won’t), if the majority of people are out in the streets protesting you instead of going to work, your economy will implode, and gunning everyone down won’t help. You need your opposition to be small enough that they seem like a trouble-making minority, while you remain popular enough that most people either support your violent suppression of dissent or at least don’t hate you enough to stick their own necks out.

Generally speaking, authoritarians want the support of at least a plurality of the citizenship. Even in well established authoritarian regimes, widespread public discontent will lead to regime collapse, even if it’s a military coup that just leads to another authoritarian regime.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot, but the problem is that the President can only pardon federal crimes, so if a mob drags Steven Miller from his house in California and kills him, the President can’t do anything to intervene. However, I’m pretty sure that the President could pardon crimes committed in D.C., and the Supreme Court has basically said the President can’t be held accountable for crimes committed in office, so in theory, a future President could order agents to take Miller into custody, bring him to D.C., and execute him. He could then pardon everyone involved and no one could be held accountable.

The response to this needs to be a resounding, “LOL, no,” from whatever administration comes next. The constitution gives the President the power of the pardon? Well, if gives Congress power of the purse, but we let him ignore that. The Supreme Court will intercede? One of them is married to a J6er, another one is openly taking bribes, and ar least three of them committed perjury when they told Congress said they wouldn’t overturn precedent. Our country can’t continue without accountability.