Our parties are more left leaning than US ones, yeah. So the left-most leaning party, the NDP is the Bernies and AOCs. Just slightly to the right of them but not by much are the centre-left (some could argue centre, for Canada) Liberals aka US Dems but these are still left of the US Dems. Then you have the Conservatives who used to be centre right but they’re really flirting with being firmly right which is STILL to the left of the US Repubs. So yeah, we’re pretty left.

Here’s a good breakdown someone wrote on the other site:

There’s a Daily Show from back in the Stewart days when Harper’s Conservatives won the federal election in Canada. The line went something like:

“Right wing parties are winning everywhere! In Canada, the Conservative Party, or as we’d know it here, the Gay Rainbow Alliance, has won their election.”

If that gives you any idea.

The NDP are mostly in-line with the further left of the Dems, but realistically, the Liberals are only slightly more towards the centre than them. The Conservatives are historically right of centre, but still left of most of the American center. That was largely true before the Progressive Conservatives failed, merged with the Reform party, and became the Conservative Party of Canada.

That said, the Conservative parties have been moving further right in recent years. Some of this was because their supporters were generally finance, oil, large corporations, etc., so the policies they pushed forward were usually beneficial to them. But more recently they’ve been pursuing a lighter version of US-style populism. Mostly though, their platform for the past 3 leaders seems to be “aren’t you sick of Trudeau yet?” because they don’t have much substance in anything else they claim to support.

They need to pay some lip service to progressives for now to get elected.

AIPAC’s funding casts doubt on how progressive the Dems are allowed to be in the long term.

Yes thank you. It didn’t read as natural - that’s the word.

It’s disheartening that one can’t disagree on this topic without being eaten alive. I’m not saying elect Donald Trump and the couchfucker or anything ffs. Plus, I’m Canadian - so probably more left leaning than any US Dem - and as I’ve expressed, I really want the US to get their shit together.

I’ve done Toastmasters. I’m a writer for a living. I know how to give feedback on speeches. I also acknowledged that not every speech is received the same way by every viewer.

I’m not even saying she’s bad - I’m just saying she could be GREAT with more practice. I don’t understand why this is a shocking thing to say.

Nope, just saying what makes an impactful speech to me 🤷‍♀️

I’m allowed to disagree about the speech.

There’s nothing holding her back from being a great speaker like Obama. She needs more time and practice to develop her skills further to get to that next level. And maybe a better speechwriter.

I’m definitely a fan of hers, but felt that this could have been executed better. She did not have a lot of vocal variation and came out blazing fairly early on in the speech. Not going to rewatch it, but that was my perspective from last night. At one point I was like whoa Kimberly Guilfoyle, take it down a notch.

I do understand the need to be angry but it’s much more impactful when vocal variation, pitch, tone and volume are employed more effectively to build toward the anger.

Oh it’s only a matter of time until he does this in public.

Online literacy is really impacting boomers and elder gen x. Like QAnon or Covid Vaccines - some of them flip and just go psycho to the point it impacts their lives.

He could pay to go there. He’s all horny for space anyway. So go. Don’t let the door hit you on the ass on your way out.

And you have that gross Stephen Miller dude on Ari Melber last night claiming that the fake electors were totally legitimate and just citizens practicing free speech being victimized by the government. He was screeching like a Karen about it.

Hickling is a clinical psychologist from Albany, N.Y., who has studied the effects of fatal auto accidents on the drivers who survive them. He says these people are often judged with disproportionate harshness by the public, even when it was clearly an accident, and even when it was indisputably not their fault.

Humans, Hickling said, have a fundamental need to create and maintain a narrative for their lives in which the universe is not implacable and heartless, that terrible things do not happen at random, and that catastrophe can be avoided if you are vigilant and responsible.

In hyperthermia cases, he believes, the parents are demonized for much the same reasons. “We are vulnerable, but we don’t want to be reminded of that. We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we’ll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don’t want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.”

From the Pulitzer article (please read it):

Diamond is a professor of molecular physiology at the University of South Florida and a consultant to the veterans hospital in Tampa.[…]

“Memory is a machine,” he says, “and it is not flawless. Our conscious mind prioritizes things by importance, but on a cellular level, our memory does not. If you’re capable of forgetting your cellphone, you are potentially capable of forgetting your child.”

“The quality of prior parental care seems to be irrelevant,” he said. “The important factors that keep showing up involve a combination of stress, emotion, lack of sleep and change in routine, where the basal ganglia is trying to do what it’s supposed to do, and the conscious mind is too weakened to resist. What happens is that the memory circuits in a vulnerable hippocampus literally get overwritten, like with a computer program. Unless the memory circuit is rebooted – such as if the child cries, or, you know, if the wife mentions the child in the back – it can entirely disappear.”

Hmm works for me. Try this one!

It’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning article that I think everyone should read on the topic.

There’s actually a great article on this. Warning, it’s a TOUGH read.

Archive link

What kind of person forgets a baby? The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate[…]

Last year it happened three times in one day, the worst day so far in the worst year so far in a phenomenon that gives no sign of abating.

The facts in each case differ a little, but always there is the terrible moment when the parent realizes what he or she has done, often through a phone call from a spouse or caregiver. This is followed by a frantic sprint to the car. What awaits there is the worst thing in the world.

It’s a shockingly common occurrence and actually not due to neglect a lot of the time. The article posits that a large reason is because car seats were mandated to be moved to the back seat.

Uh yeah it kind of is? You’re the one who said it’s about the Last Supper (incorrect) and who has a bee in their bonnet about drag queens for whatever reason.

People have been performing different gender roles for hundreds of years. In Shakespeare’s time they didn’t let women act in plays so it was all men.

Japanese Kabuki theatre is also all men acting in male and female roles.

And yes, Ancient Greece - y’know, where the Olympics originally come from - also had men dressed in drag for female roles in their theatrical performances as women generally did not act in theatre.

Let’s also not forget France’s most famous drag king, Joan of Arc!

So I’m not sure what the issue seems to be.

You need this.

It is likely not legally habitable. And to make it so for a renter would be beyond my current financial capabilities.

I have a second home but I inherited it. It would need 100s of ks in renos to rent out. It wouldn’t bring me much money to sell it - would probably need to sell for land value only.

But - it’s a place of refuge for my family member in an emotionally abusive relationship, a friend struggling with her marriage, a crash space if anyone I love is in a rough spot. It’s brought my family together and it’s where we gather.

I don’t think this is wrong because I am using it for net positive purposes in the long term, and someone otherwise probably couldn’t use it - it would be a tear-down.

Well yeah it’s the only chance he has to get out of jail.

Not a lawyer or American but here’s the text of the law. I’m guessing it depends on how you define dispute, controversy and whether is “with” the US, or whether this constitutes “defeating the measures of.”

Playing devil’s advocate I could see an argument of he’s just looking for alternative solutions in America’s best interest.

§ 953. Private correspondence with foreign governments.

Any citizen of the United States, wherever he may be, who, without authority of the United States, directly or indirectly commences or carries on any correspondence or intercourse with any foreign government or any officer or agent thereof, with intent to influence the measures or conduct of any foreign government or of any officer or agent thereof, in relation to any disputes or controversies with the United States, or to defeat the measures of the United States, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.

This section shall not abridge the right of a citizen to apply himself, or his agent, to any foreign government, or the agents thereof, for redress of any injury which he may have sustained from such government or any of its agents or subjects.

Is there wiggle wording here? For example, would the Supreme Court be like “welllllll the dispute isn’t with the US”