the meme that you should vote third party or stay home because the Democrat isn't liberal enough for them.

You understand Russia well enough, but if you think the left is upset at a Democrat for not being liberal enough, you really don't understand left politics. Liberalism is fundamentally a conservative ideology. It was liberals that made the Democrats into weak and ineffective corporate bureaucrats, thus setting the stage for the latest rise of fascism. (That's how fascism always takes root BTW.)

You are also buying into the establishment bullshit argument that the left doesn't show up for elections. Left leaning voters are the most reliable voting demographic in the country, in spite of the Democratic establishment blaming them for all their failures.

If just half the energy wasted lecturing the left were put to good use, we wouldn't have Trump in the first place.

Nobody has forgotten the stutter.

This is why I'm not interested in a source battle with you. To someone uninterested in the truth, it just provides a bigger attack surface for ad hominems and muddying the waters.

You are talking about one incident at one hospital when there have been over 400 hospital bombings impacting every hospital in Gaza. I don't need to prove it to you. The whole world sees it, and Israel has fucked itself for decades.

The rise of fascism is always the result of a long strong of causes. In a democracy the final cause in that chain will always be voters, but I think it's intellectually lazy to assume that makes the failure of voters "worse".

Most of the voters who don't show up are just disinterested in politics for a variety of reasons. I don't think there area many that say "Oh, no, a problem! Better ignore it"!

Blaming voters might be somehow cathartic, but the voters you're blaming aren't going to care. That's the way to go if you care more about assigning blame than actually addressing the problems.

AIPAC is dumping a boatload of foreign money on American elections aimed almost exclusively at eliminating progressives from both state and federal offices. Where is Hillary's gang and their hand wringing about foreign interference?

Whether the US is a net importer or exporter of oil and gas is actually pretty irrelevant to gas prices. It's important for other reasons, but oil is a global market regardless of where it's produced.

The ceasefire vote passed, and just like everyone predicted it will have zero impact on the genocide in progress. The only impact it has was to further limit the ability of the US to pressure Israel to not advance into Rafah. You got your resolution, and now the situation is worse. Yet, here you are doubling down.

I totally appreciate (and share) your zeal in wanting the slaughter to end (assuming that is actually your objective), but this development clearly illustrates the deep flaws in this kind of criticism, and how little you understand about foreign policy and negotiation tactics.

The US has one negotiation point left to keep Israel out of Rafah, and that's the weapons. Once that is played, the only other choice would be to allow the genocide to continue, or intervine militarily. Thankfully the US didn't play that card already, and the Biden administration is sending clear signals to Israel that it's on the table.

Israel has other options for aid and weapons, but they only become viable if the relationship with the US is severed. Once that happens, Palestine is done.

BTW: Abstaining from the vote was, if anything, kissing Putin's ass, not Netanyaho. There were sticking points between Russia and the US, and the US blinked. Anyone who actually followed the negotiations would understand that abstaining means the US decided the resolution was too important to hold up over specific language.

This is very similar to the last such resolution to pass. Russia and America couldn't agree on language, so both agreed to abstain. This time, Russia got their way while the US took the high road.

It works the same for capitalism. I'm in the camp that says neither pure capitalism nor pure communism are systems that can realistically exist at all. In one system, the government usurps the power of capital and in the other capital usurps the power of government. They both end up totalitarian by different paths.

I'm libertarian, but that gets confusing since in America the right wing has twisted the definition beyond recognition. Libertarianism started as a left wing philosophy that uses the power of government and democracy to protect individual freedom from both government and capitalist tyranny.

That'll be in the history books.

The only kind of true choice that exists is informed choice. The establishment of both parties has captured mass media and to a large extent social media. Democracy in this country is a joke.

A few years ago when I was working from home and on the phone all day, I much preferred my landline. My cell service was decent, but the landline was better. No dropped calls, no static or garbled audio (from my side anyways), and no latency causing me to talk over other callers. I always hated getting on calls when I was remote from my home office.

An apple crate would allow him to promote his own voice far beyond what it's worth.