Did you try shrinking the photos a bit? I narrowed the browser to shrink them and my phone camera picked up 11 of 12 of the ones in a grid.

Grand Qanon Party - aka Trumplicans

Options are definitely nice for those technical enough to understand and use them.

Though personally I am keeping an eye on Linux devices for my next upgrade.

Do I not want USB-C (for some weird reason)?

This is probably temporary until it is time to move past USB-C. Which will be a slower and more difficult process now that there are laws in place requiring it.

Same reason that people stick with Google.

After years in the eco-system it is obnoxious to swap, and the other main competitor isn’t any better of a company to deal with.

More strawmen, more name-calling.

Just find a mirror, then the conversation will be the same as the one in your head.

Yeah, party affiliation is way more important than who a person is or how they live their life!

You are putting words in my mouth and then knocking your own words down like it means something.

Why not try actually arguing against what I said, instead setting up strawmen and then engaging in name-calling?

I could not care less what skin color she has.

I care that for political gain Newsom singled out her sex and skin color like they were the most defining factors about her.

I care because some people buy into it so thoroughly that they think someone pointing it out makes them a fascist.

The issue I take with this meritocracy take is it assumes that the best candidate wouldn’t be a black woman.

That is odd. I see this exactly the opposite. To me it looks like Newsom assumed that the best candidate wouldn’t be a black woman so he had to eliminate 97% of the field before choosing.

The best candidate very well could have been Butler, but unfortunately we do not know that because Newsom discounted all of her skills and experience and chose race and sex as the most important qualifiers for the position.

Even if he planned to choose based off of race and sex, all he had to do to not undermine his future pick was keep his mouth closed about it.

It should be very obvious what I am saying.

In choosing Butler on Sunday, Newsom fulfilled his pledge to appoint a Black woman if Feinstein’s seat became open.

I am saying that it is morally wrong to choose a someone primarily based on their skin color and genitals.

I am further saying that if you are going to do it anyways, then you denigrate the person you are choosing by announcing it publicly.

Additionally, I will point out that, Asian, Hispanic, White, and mixed race peoples all significantly out number black people in California. It is bad enough to choose a Senator based on race and sex, but it is even worse to eliminate 97% of his state’s population before even considering their qualifications for the job.

They are definitely something, but they were not the main qualities that Newsom repeatedly stated that he was searching for.

While I agree in the lesser of two evils kind of way, meaning its better than they are in the House rather than Senate or President, I still think it is pretty shameful. If they just can’t let go of politics it is time to go back home to city and state legislative bodies.

Still, it is wonderful to read an actually well-stated view point in this post. Seems that most of the thread has devolved to name calling and verbal diarrhea.

Have an upvote for some quality content!

She seems like a good appointee

Hard to tell, but she does meet the only two qualifications that Newsom thought were important enough to mention.

Thank you for clarifying. Could not remember for the life of me.

McCarthy finally put on his big boy pants and is proposing a 45 day clean spending bill

While I was definitely a proponent of this, I will easily admit that I was a bit surprised that he actually did it. There are far too many “non-starters” for both parties right now, and it seems to be getting worse not better. Even identifying as a moderate or centrist is pretty well derided at every turn. It is a bit crazy, but the most heated arguments I get into are with people that I agree 80% or more with.

and then their constituents buy into the “fiscal conservatism” ploy

I am sure that the fiscally conservative Republicans are just as frustrated by this issue as you and I are. Over and over we hear the talk and then they come back with even more spending and less taxes, which is definitely the opposite of what is needed. The problem I see, is that I can’t even remember the last time I heard a Democrat in office pushing for a balanced budget. I am not sure what is worse, not mentioning it or talking about it then doing the opposite; probably the latter but clearly not everyone agrees.

The worst thing in all this, is that we have some how taken on all this excess debt during during a virtual golden age. It is a bit scary to think about what the future would look like if we had a long-term recession.

No one is willing to take on our defense spending issues

I fully agree that this is an issue, and with most of your related points, but I really don’t have any kind of a solution for it. The idea of creating or propping up an additional military company indefinitely frustrates me even when just thinking about it.

I keep teetering on an isolationist bent, where we would pull back from a lot of our military bases and make it clear that some old commitments are about to be updated, but I think it is pretty clear that some of our world adversaries would take that as a sign of weakness and start pushing their boundaries immediately.

I think it is time that some of our allies that rely on our military take on some of their own responsibility, but most of them are nowhere near ready. Also, I am pretty sure it will just create more world level chaos and likely lead to a new great war.

I think we likely have gotten ourselves into a bit of a pickle. Doubly so, since we are having such a cultural and political division issue at home. When its nearly impossible to handle simple issues, deeply complex issues like these are almost laughable, in the Joaquin Phoenix as Joker kind of way.

Are they in session while walking the halls?

You seem to be misunderstanding the Hastert Rule. The rule does not say that the bill has to be passable without bipartisan support. It says that the Republican portion has to represent a majority of their party. I didn’t say it had to be so friendly to Democrats that most Republicans wouldn’t vote for it.

Also, McCarthy’s Speakership won’t survive turning his back on the Freedom Caucus anyways, unless the Democrats decide to back him. So there is no reason he has to follow that rule at all, if he’s going to cross the aisle. Hastert himself broke the rule a dozen times according to your link.

In this case there are 221 Republicans, they would only 111 to have a majority of the party on board. Sure a true bipartisan bill would be great, but they only really need 18 democrats willing to vote along with 200 Republicans or as many Democrats as 107 with only 111 Republicans. There is a lot of wiggle room if both sides have members willing to cross the aisle.

The real problem is finding enough Side A-ers that would be willing to have their names alongside them crazy Side B-ers.

Shouldn’t be too hard to ignore the freedom caucus and reach across the aisle. The only thing it would cost him is the Speakership.

Many of them are professional politicians that support their families with those paychecks. It is one thing to convince someone to take an extremist route when it keeps the money flowing, it is another thing altogether when that same action would leave them jobless.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

― Upton Sinclair

Wait, tell me again why it is so important to not pass a budget?

Too bad there are only Republicans in the House. It is shame that there is no one else just sitting on their hands that someone could do something crazy and “reach across the aisle” and find some common ground with.

Let’s just keep pretending the 21 extremists who are likely following what their constituents want are solely at fault. Clearly, the other 198 Republicans and 211 Democrats who can’t find any middle ground have no blame here.

I know extremism is popular on both sides but this bill has to pass the senate eventually no matter what.

If McCarthy wants to show some real leadership for once, he’d use his last act as Speaker to throw the bipartisan bill from the senate on the table and see who really wants a government shutdown, or even better sit down with whatever moderate Democrats exist and write an annual budget for the first time in however many years. If congress really wanted to blow Americans out of the water, they might even make it balanced.

Ramaswamy is pretty far out in right-field, but he got one thing right in the last debate, start the budget at zero.

Should be start at $0.00 add an expense, add a tax to cover it, and keep going until they can’t agree to add a tax to cover whatever is left hanging.

This is a fantastic read.

I remember febreeze coming out and being like, that would be cool but you can’t trust ads and it sounds like total BS. I knew they added a scent, but I had not idea about the subtle social manipulation that they used to shift people’s habits.

Speaking of habits, this is the first time I have heard about all the science involved in studying and breaking them.

Thank you for that link. Definitely going to save it.