For less than the individual price of some missiles, you could vaccinate the entire military. Vaccines are cheap. You could vaccinate thousands of soldiers for what it will cost to treat one who gets really sick and ends up hospitalized.

This is absolutely not a cost-saving measure, even if you wholly disregard the costs of care after the fact.

I find kidney or garbanzo beans a good substitute.

You’ll get no argument from me!

Both of whom are old enough that they wouldn’t be drafted. Barron happens to be the right age.

Look up the McMahons. There are several stories about accusations/investigations of their being directly and indirectly involved in sexual abuses, including of children. If they’re not in the Epstein files, it’s simply because they already had their own thing going and didn’t need him.

Eh, yeah, we know what they’re doing. But making a public statement of the pretext isn’t for our sake, it’s just to appease the executive.

So… What happens when you look in a mirror?

As a Ben, I think I speak for all of us when I say that this Ben does not represent us or our Benly sensibilities.

The majority at least? Where I live, people say we have a church on every corner. Because we almost literally do. I drive past 5 just on my way to work every day. They wouldn’t be there if people didn’t attend. In my experience, even most of the non-affiliated will say they believe in a “higher power” or somesuch. In the Pew survey, only 6% out of the 29% non-affiliated identified as agnostic, and only 5% as atheist. Living in the south, having grown up in the bible belt, I can say with very high confidence that more than 5% of Christians actually believe in god. I’m sure some do maintain a facade for social reasons (I did myself for a few years, though would have been honest on an anonymous survey), but certainly not 95%+.

I’m sure it varies by location (obviously, the bible belt was thusly nicknamed for a reason), but the idea that less than 5% of Christians anywhere actually practice / believe in god just stretches credulity.

Where is “Pew” to save this one?

Right here: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/02/26/religious-attendance-and-congregational-involvement/

https://www.pewresearch.org/religious-landscape-study/

341,784,857 (official population estimate from 2025) * 62% (proportion of people who identify as Christian per Pew survey from 2023-2024) = 211,906,611.

So… You’re right, but they were in the ball park, but also about spot on if you include the 7% “Other religions” (who presumably mostly also believe in a god).

What do you propose? Go out and shoot a few ICE agents? They far outnumber and outgun those who are willing currently to protest violently. The opposition shooters would be crushed swiftly, and give the administration pretense to increase ICE funding/presence and push harder for military presence. Not to mention, it’d give them perfect ammo for their bullshit cannon about how “the left” are all violent lunatics (Good was a “domestic terrorist” according to them - can you imagine the “official” narrative if she actually had done something aggressive?!)

Half the voting population is still drinking the FOX news koolaid and think all the people getting detained/deported/murdered by ICE are actually murderers and rapists. Nonviolent protest raises awareness. No opposition will accomplish its goals if no one even knows there is a problem.

Can I fault them for following rule 34? …please?

There’s no legal mechanism to do so.

But there’s also no legal mechanism to murder fishermen, so …

making comparisons

You explicitly acknowledge that they’re just making comparisons while also suggesting they’re calling Israel literal Nazis. Your trolling isn’t even internally consistent.

They weren’t thinking. They were gulping down the propaganda and gorging themselves on the fear-mongering. And now their kids are fucked over because of it.

I wanna see a movie where Hitler decides to abandon his plans for global domination when he discovers his true passion: underground street racing. And the cars better honk with a period appropriate “awooga”.

Per your link, it hasn’t actually happened yet. It’s still schedule I.

Ah, right. My mistake.

That occurred to me too. Having an awful, public crime to blame on “the left” is awfully convenient, and Trump and his ilk immediately came out blaming Democrats and calling for political violence. What if Trump or one of his circle is behind this because they wanted a distraction from the Epstein situation and literally everything Trump does being unpopular? People who are okay with raping kids clearly have no moral compunctions preventing them from such an act.

But I’m not one to profer conspiracies without any kind of actual evidence, and I doubt Kirk is really considered enough of a somebody for them to believe he’d be enough of a distraction (although that may be because I just ignore anything to do with him because of his being a bigoted dumbfuck). Having something to blame on Democrats and “the left” just happened to be good fortune for them. I do think it more likely that the shooter was someone like a parent of a kid who was a victim of a school shooting or who was queer and died by suicide.

Charlie Kirk wasn’t even a politician or CEO? He was a talking head, a media personality; an “influencer”.