100% agree though I will note that I’ve been in budget hearings where everyone on the board had the same “how does this affect someone like me” moment and the fact that they were all looking at it from identical perspectives was not helpful. Age isn’t the problem - lack of diversity is.

Leftists are a small part of our political spectrum and unlikely to be the ones in power after Trump. From what I can tell the vast majority of Americans support Ukraine - it’s just competing with so many other things for our attention right now.

Hate to say it but this is the case for a lot of voters. Vibes matter.

I don’t expect every Democrat to subscribe to socialist policies, but I do expect them to respect the will of the voters. Morelle could have abstained.

Feels like we’re entering the “it happened but you’re overreacting” phase of this scandal.

They’re saying “make America affordable again” a year into their failed tariff experiment - certainly sounds like an admission of defeat.

Particularly for town board positions, representation matters more than qualification or policy. A time will come when the board has to decide if the tax levy is fair for the services rendered, and you’ll want as many perspectives in that meeting as possible.

Death panels. That is the one service they provide. No matter what system we have, someone has to be responsible for rationing. At the very least we should ban for-profit companies from providing this service. No one should profit from the decision to deny care.

I can’t overstate how easy it is for 2 or 3 stubborn people to fundamentally transform the identity of their local party by just showing up to committee meetings and openly challenging the norms.

Even better, join your local committee. Most are just a handful of people trying to network for their own political aspirations. As constituted committees, leaders are elected and major decisions are made by vote. Show up with a few friends, refuse to leave, and change it all from the inside.

They’ve fucked all of us with this. Even if we stop it in the house, the token compromise could be enough to shift the blame and erode support.

Trump is surely celebrating.

The DNC is to blame. The party endorsement is supposed to mean something. We need a new party, but we can have it by just showing up to our local committee meetings and refusing to leave. Nominations for next year are already underway and no one is showing up to vet these people.

There’s a reason we don’t negotiate with terrorists. If you really cared about SNAP recipients, the military, and federal workers, you wouldn’t be rewarding the people holding their benefits hostage in defiance of court orders.

As citizens we struggle to see the difference between corruption, incompetence, and circumstance. These factors exist, but we’re not equipped to recognize them. I’ve scoured the budget and attended every hearing and I still don’t know what I’m really looking at.