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I'm picturing an 80's movie style mix-up where someone accidentally put a post-it note with "Iraq" written on the "May 1st withdrawal date" and covered up "Afghanistan." It looks very likely that we are going to blow past the Afghanistan withdrawal deadline and push it back to later this year, but the U.S. and Iraq just announced a joint withdrawal plan of all remaining U.S. troops (there are only about 2.5k and they are stationed at the embassy and Iraqi military bases, so this isn't as significant as a withdrawal from Afghanistan would be). This would get us totally out of Iraq in under 20 years. Not sure if that should be celebrated as an achievement or not. If they wait until the end of the year instead of May 1st for Afghanistan, then Afghanistan will pass 20 years and last longer than Iraq. lol that Afghanistan will last longer than Iraq. And it will be ~17 years since "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. quote:The Biden administration is eying a withdrawal of US troops from Iraq as the country's security forces grow more capable and the threat of ISIS wanes, the two countries announced in a joint statement Wednesday. https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/07/politics/us-iraq-exit-isis/index.html
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Apr 8, 2021 13:26
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bourgeois elections run on three things: exposure, enthusiasm and funding. if you're interested in power over electoral processes, you build an apparatus able to consistently mobilise one or more of these factors. this is incredibly easy if you're, say, a fabulously rich mogul who owns newspapers, but it's a real slog if you're in fact opposed to such a mogul. getting a bad candidate can make everything else futile (lol mini mike) but a guy like coons will almost always be able to leverage his enormously superior exposure and funding into staying in place. AOC, being an incredibly good operator and facing totally complacent opposition, managed to break through, but the DNC can build up challengers for her to fight off with basically zero effort.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:33
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V. Illych L. posted:also mutual aid isn't political activism it's just how communities work ffs read kropotkin!!!! ya this is important. It's good stuff to do because it's part of being a good person and fulfilling your responsibilities to your communities and your fellow man but it's not political organizing and when you come home from doing the work of mutual aid you should think "that was fulfilling and really helped people out" not "I am advancing socialism" of course mutual aid is how organized socialists should make inroads into the community in order to recruit and broadly advance our political causes, but again it's not organizing it's preparation to organize
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Apr 8, 2021 13:37
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Without going into the definition of what "lying" is, is everything in a campaign platform even a "promise"? Or is it just a statement of a policy position? Aren't we infantilizing politics a little if we make every policy preference into a "promise"? (E: This is separate from issues where a candidate specifically says, "I promise...", which is a promise, of course.) There's also a matter that I think applies to governing in a way that it doesn't to campaigning: once somebody is actually in office, there is a strong disincentive to say "I really want this to happen and I am going to do everything I can to make it happen" when you might not be able to succeed. It makes you look "weak" to voters (or maybe something like "a liar" to some voters!) What this means is that Presidents will sometimes appear to care less about an issue if they know they won't be able to address it. This didn't really apply to the last four years because the President's brain was a puddle and he was unable to apply basic PR strategies to his administration because actual PR strategies aren't based around soothing the ego of a single toxic narcissist. The downside, of course, is that it makes it less likely that you will achieve difficult things. But if Biden was pushing hard for $15/hour that would probably be reflected more in his private conversations with legislators, until he was at a point where he was pretty sure he had the means to pass it, at which point it would become the greatest idea ever and something we desperately need and you're welcome for giving it to you. As far as EOs, Biden already did pretty much all he could regarding minimum wage when he signed an EO to raise the minimum wage for federal workers to $15/hr.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:40
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The US doesn’t give a poo poo about Uighurs because they are Muslims. If it weren’t for Uighurs, the US would find another beef with China. It doesn’t take an IQ of 149 to get that the problem between US and China aint that the latter is killing Muslims, lmao. Which however shows that one absolutely must criticize China for the genocide it is committing. Because whatever the ’support‘ of the US amounts to now (my guess is, not much), it’s gonna be poof gone as soon as the political situation changes somewhat. So here is the hint for CCP friends who never get tired to immediately bring the US into the discussion: People who genuinely care about the Uighur genocide probably have nothing to do with the US propaganda and this explicitly includes the thousands of eyewitnesses. So even if the US produces fake propaganda pieces, this does not mean all information about the genocide is fake. What’s more, these people are more likely to be on a CIA hitlist for being Muslim than buddies with the state department. Genocide is a perfectly valid reason to hate the CCP, and does not imply one likes anything about the US. If you open your eyes to which ethnicities with which religion have gotten got thus century, then you might notice a pattern. And if you think further about the US involvements and treatment of this group, then you will see that the insinuation that all informers here are US agents is not only insulting, it is downright insane. In fact, the cynical use of US propagandists of this issue probably hurts the Uighurs greatly, since they lose their voice vis a vis anyone who hates the US. So if you had any human decency as all, you would not try to dismiss any evidence as US propaganda but rather try to see that behind all this is a real problem and a real cause, which is to stop the genocide of Uighurs in China. And I am also sorry if accepting this somehow destroys the illusion that China is the magical Marxist happy place that will lead us towards salvation. But the reality is that Muslims are now crushed between not one, not two, but all three geopolitical superpowers and let me also say that in all these cases, it’s not a matter of terrorism but rather bona fide racism.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:41
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:I'm picturing an 80's movie style mix-up where someone accidentally put a post-it note with "Iraq" written on the "May 1st withdrawal date" and covered up "Afghanistan." "eyeing a withdrawal" is doing a lot of work here I'll believe it when the troops actually leave
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Apr 8, 2021 13:41
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me, standing in a field covered in steaming turds, hands in my overalls looking across the horizon approvingly: Succ crop came in early today, that's a good sign
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Apr 8, 2021 13:42
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basically this brecht poem: I hear that in New York At the corner of 26th Street and Broadway A man stands every evening during the winter months And gets beds for the homeless there By appealing to passers-by. It won’t change the world It won’t improve relations among men It will not shorten the age of exploitation But a few men have a bed for the night For a night the wind is kept from them The snow meant for them falls on the roadway. Don’t put down the book on reading this, man. A few people have a bed for the night For a night the wind is kept from them The snow meant for them falls on the roadway But it won’t change the world It won’t improve relations among men It will not shorten the age of exploitation.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:45
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you know what they say; early succ posts, long summer
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Apr 8, 2021 13:45
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spacemang_spliff posted:"eyeing a withdrawal" is doing a lot of work here Same. But, the U.S. is barely even pretending that it is going to leave Afghanistan on May 1st. It's hilariously sad that we will likely be out of Iraq totally before the "quick and good war" in Afghanistan.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:46
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that's an awful translation, poo poo
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Apr 8, 2021 13:46
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spacemang_spliff posted:"eyeing a withdrawal" is doing a lot of work here Rushing in to give credit to the administration for saying they might do something is pretty awesome.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:48
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sexpig by night posted:The US doesn’t give a poo poo about Uighurs because they are Muslims. People have been asking me about the Bad Empanada video that purports to be a ‘balanced’ view of the purported oppression against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, so here’s a thread. (tldr: the video is really not very good at getting the proper context on Xinjiang) The video begins with BE defining the two extremes: (1) a group that is so fanatically loyal to China that literally no injustice would sway them and (2) State Dept propaganda that claims there is a genocide based on dubious sources like Adrian Zenz. My first thought is, where is this group of fanatical China defenders? I have not seen them. As the video unfolds over the first 40 min, I’m starting to notice that for something that is trying to strike a balance of some sort between two camps, all this video has been about so far has been how ‘suspicious’ China is, and does a kind of frame-by-frame analysis of witness testimony, searching for differences in mood and expression to get at the deeper meaning. BE is good at this, and tells a compelling story. However, I’m wondering when we get to the part where there is an incredible US-led propaganda campaign alleging a genocide going on right now, and I’m not sure the dimensions of it are clarified by what is essentially literary analysis of video, even by someone good at such things. Nowhere is there a discussion of the broader context of massive, rapid economic and social development in Xinjiang. Nowhere is there a discussion of how on earth a genocide could be occurring in a region that has rapid pop growth, rising life expectancy, very rapid GDP growth of 8%/year, and hundreds of millions of tourist visits per year. No, it’s all about how China didn’t give the press universal access to its facilities, and how suspicious that is. What comes through most clearly is BE sneering at China’s badly staged patriotic displays, suggesting that ethnic cleansing must be happening, because China’s whole mood is just so suspicious, y’know? Like anytime a government clumsily tries to control a narrative in the press, it’s obviously to conceal their genocidal intent, as though genocide were a secret desire that all countries cannot wait to get into. Then he spends nearly 20 minutes getting into a personal story of a passport denial and a family that is separated. No doubt it is a sad story, but to not even get into the larger issues and spend this amount of time on it? Where is the bearing on the charges of genocide; BE doesn’t seem clear on what these charges are, but on something much hazier -- is a government suspicious or not? Of course, BE also makes it clear where he stands on that, saying that (paraphrasing here) "no government has ever cared for its minorities, nor even the average person in the majority group". It almost sounds as if he does not believe in government at all. Could a government, hypothetically, care about its minorities or its working class majority? What concrete policies would they pursue? What if such a country has powerful enemies, who have tried to parcel it up, colonize it, and otherwise control it in the recent past? What if the country must have certain controls in place to prevent such things from occurring? What if this results in the restriction of free speech, for example? BE seems to me to be the kind of leftist that the authorities most like. Naively assuming that all govts are bad, by hating everything, he becomes exactly the kind of naive rube that he continually ridicules others for being when they believe a government might do something good. This kind of critic is easily controllable, for they will always point out ‘authoritarianism on both sides’. That is the perfect person to manipulate. All we have to do is convince this kind of person that the other side is just a little bit worse -- 1% worse is enough, and they’ll spend most of their time criticizing a country that is our enemy, and not opposing actions we take against that country. Sure, maybe there will be some finger wagging, for say, the concentration camps on the US border, but not real opposition. At the very end of the video, he makes a bizarre comparison between vocational centers and Guantanamo bay prison, providing a confusing comparison that is somehow based on the idea that Gitmo represents the only place terrorists were imprisoned, and it was only a few hundred, as a way of implicating China’s higher detention numbers; no context is given for what the War on Terror did to the Islamic world, the millions killed and displaced, so I truly don’t get the comparison. The whole emphasis is on China controlling the narrative, somehow proving how sus the CPC is, how authoritarian, how unsophisticated are their propaganda. For BE to present China as the major player of propaganda in the western press is naive at best. China has almost no influence over the western media; the claims of genocide have been orchestrated by the State Dept. Witness the number of key US political players at a recent conference of the WUC; does Nancy Pelosi and Marco Rubio attend just anyone’s party, do you think? The star-studded guest list begins on p 4, and we can see the bipartisan interest in funding separatism, for all the DC attendees refer to the region as ‘East Turkestan’ https://www.uyghurcongress.org/en/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/Washington-DC-Event-Agenda-FULL-DRAFT-11.01.19.pdf One of the worst aspects of this video was BE’s uncritical acceptance of the Xinjiang victim database. This database is quite frankly a fraud. BE gushes over the ‘sheer, overwhelming volume of testimonies’, missing that all but 46 of the >13k testimonies are secondhand, that is they are hearsay. He does mention that ~3k come directly from Zenz, but only describes why that is problematic much later. There simply are not mountains of testimonies, there are a few dozen. BE provides almost no discussion whatsoever of terrorism in the region, apart from a single mention that there were a few ‘dozen’ terrorist attacks. I’m afraid that is a severe misreading of the history there, which BE seems not to care about, because his causality is: Government exists and naturally causes oppression → terrorism → repression → more government oppression. What a naive and simplistic view, which is utterly at odds with the history of the region. There is no discussion of the absolutely massive funding of violently fundamentalist Islamic groups in Central Asia by the US, in addition to chaos from the poorly-chosen Soviet involvement in Afghanistan. There is no discussion of how nearly two decades of US occupation of Afghanistan has strengthened Islamic radicalism in the region. No discussion of how thousands of Xinjiang separatists trained with al Qaeda and ISIS, as the US took the main separatist group (ETIM), off the terrorist watchlist, despite the well-known connection with terrorist groups. For a fan of video, BE doesn’t seem to have watched this one: Given that BE doesn’t understand the scale or magnitude of the terrorism, nor its roots, how does he think a government should deal with it? It’s easy to criticize, especially when western govts provide so many examples of evil govt action, but its hard to say what you’d do. Is China supposed to let Xinjiang secede? Where is the evidence that is what most Uyghurs would want? BE consistently gives China's efforts at assimilation and teaching another language a sinister spin. The school population going from 400k to 900k is reported without context, without providing the info on how many schoolchildren there are among the Uyghurs While this doesn’t give us the exact number of Uyghur school children, if we assume its about 4 million, a move from 400k to 900k is a shift of only a small fraction, and not necessarily some kind of sinister plot At 1:03, so over an hour in, he says that the most bombastic claims are mostly bullshit -- that’s great, but the first hour has been, ‘why China is sus’ Finally we get to the takeaway: “Is it a cultural genocide? That seems very possible, yes. Does it meet the UN definition? That seems far less likely” Wow, saying there is ‘probably’ a cultural genocide is actually exactly what Zenz says, so despite BE’s valid criticisms of Zenz made pretty late in the video, it sounds like BE actually agrees with Zenz on the larger point. Perhaps this is why the criticism of Zenz is mostly on his background and Christian fundamentalist beliefs, not so much on his argument, which it seems BE largely agrees with. The smoking gun is a Chinese government document about the policies of “strengthening political education, nationally common language education, and skill training”. It is fascinating to me how this becomes the proof. That China’s explicit, stated desire for a unified nation in which people share a language -- despite massive affirmative action toward ethnic minorities, despite massive improvements in the lives of these minorities, and all working people -- no, this stated desire is far more important. In Marxism, this is called “idealism”, the belief that it is the ideas that matter, and clearly, anything that sounds like ‘assimilation’ or ‘nation-building’ sounds sinister to the western ear. To western eyes, the old is swept away before the new and more powerful, this has always been the way, so why would it be different with the rise of China? It is eminently believable that China would sweep away its ethnic minorities, that of course they want to do genocide, that sounds exactly like we did to the Native Americans. What BE cannot conceive of is a government that actually tries, with great earnestness, and mostly with success, to achieve a great national project in a way that helps the average person as much as possible. So there are no statistics here about the elimination of poverty, about the movement from a largely illiterate population, particularly among the traditional culture of the Uyghurs, about the massive reduction in infant mortality that has come along with this, and the prosperity enjoyed by millions more people as the pop has grown. These are in fact the effects of China’s policies in Xinjiang. No, we are supposed to always have the utmost respect for ‘traditional’ Uyghur culture instead; never is it mentioned that life was quite a bit worse in XJ just a few decades ago, that women had a very low rate of literacy and were trapped in childrearing & household labor roles, having few other options, that all had fewer opportunities when the economy of XJ was just a small fraction of its current size. Is that the traditional Uyghur culture that must be respected at all costs? Yes, massive economic development combined with massive investment in social spending at all levels, has changed traditional life, as it has in every single country that has industrialized BE is basically like, “maybe the separatists have a point, if your govt was oppressing you, you’d hate that govt too”. But he starts from the wrong place, his causality is: Government -> does oppression, because all governments do that -> causes people to dislike government -> government does more repression -> repression triggers terrorism -> which begets more repression We so hate government, for the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie has done some evil, depraved things, that we cannot see what humane economic development looks like. While it is unquestionable that China is pursuing nation-building and seeks to protect its territorial integrity and its sovereignty from the many kinds of attacks from the US and its allies, and indeed that in such an environment, authority must be exercised. Every nation uses authority. The question is, to what end? BE does not evaluate the results of China’s policies in XJ, instead choosing to focus on his expertise, which is clearly analyzing video. I respect the skill, but it does not provide evidence of any sort of cultural genocide to say that China has cracked down in Xinjiang, or even to say that China seeks to control the PR narrative around this issue, or to say that China doesn’t provide unfettered access to its camps. All this says, in a long, roundabout way, is “China is sus”. That rather conveniently overlooks the true magnitude of the propaganda war here, which is mostly an all-out assault by the US, but you’d never know it from BE’s presentation which is overwhelmingly focused on ‘Chinese propaganda’. Overlooking and ignoring US propaganda isn’t being ‘principled’, it’s being naive. And saying China is being ‘repressive’ and ignoring the massive human-centered development of the region means you care only about peoples’ thinking, not the actual quality of their lives.
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Apr 8, 2021 13:53
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I dont know why everyone is concerned about China turning into an American style melting pot of cultures.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:01
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gradenko_2000 posted:People have been asking me about the Bad Empanada video god the only thing worse than a BE video is the paragraphs of response that are just someone summing it up as if it's commentary. Also I do genuinely love the whole 'okay so there's no proof of this but come on, China's suspicious right? Something...about them...makes me naturally distrust them....' tangents
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Apr 8, 2021 14:02
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my dad was "eyeing a withdrawal" on valentines day 1983 and here I am today
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Apr 8, 2021 14:07
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lmao, Palestine: we see you, we hear you
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Apr 8, 2021 14:08
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spacemang_spliff posted:my dad was "eyeing a withdrawal" on valentines day 1983 and here I am today Sorry I missed wishing you a happy conception day this year. 
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Apr 8, 2021 14:09
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gradenko_2000 posted:I'd feel comfortable with calling Sanders a worse candidate than Corbyn. There was a literal internal conspiracy in the latter's camp to feed him false information about how his campaign was being run, to his own detriment, and while we might say that Corbyn should have had the political instincts to be able to deal with that (read: stack the party with your loyalists and purge the loving liberals and Red Tories), that's less contemptible than Bernie actively refusing to win. I dunno, based on some of the stories that have been going around there was probably some of that in Bernie's campaign too. I think Bernie's greatest flaw in the end was that he still believed in the system, and that if he Played By The Rules so would everyone else and that he could win that way. Which is weird for someone so willing to step as far outside the bounds of Dem Party orthodoxy as he was (which was ultimately not that far, in retrospect), but I guess not that surprising. As for the electoralism vs naah debate that's sprung up again, I think abandoning any path forward, no matter how unlikely success is, is a mistake, but it's probably a good idea to keep expectations realistic. But also to remember that just because something's impossible is no reason not to try it.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:10
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Sorry I missed wishing you a happy conception day this year. it's okay fellow goon
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Apr 8, 2021 14:12
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sexpig by night posted:Without going into the definition of what "lying" is, is everything in a campaign platform even a "promise"? Or is it just a statement of a policy position? Aren't we infantilizing politics a little if we make every policy preference into a "promise"? (E: This is separate from issues where a candidate specifically says, "I promise...", which is a promise, of course.) What is a promise, really? What is truth? What is meaning?
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Apr 8, 2021 14:16
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'The Jewish...or, rather, Israeli...' really gave away the game, glad both parties see me as an Israeli first even if I've never even fuckin been there.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:19
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What is a politician?
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Apr 8, 2021 14:22
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Cpt_Obvious posted:What is a promise, really? What is truth? What is meaning? When is a lie not a lie?!?!?! [/riddlerishly]
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Apr 8, 2021 14:23
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Excelzior posted:What is a politician? A miserable little pile of campaign contributions.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:23
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[Dems] The Means Justifies the Ends
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Apr 8, 2021 14:25
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https://twitter.com/CoryBooker/status/1380149753602842625?s=20
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Apr 8, 2021 14:26
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If all the jews get to Isreal we get the rapture
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Apr 8, 2021 14:27
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https://twitter.com/siIver_wind/status/1248362096334602243 thank u something awful for teaching me to defend racism while not actually being racist myself as we are very ironic
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Apr 8, 2021 14:28
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When were the ACA expanded subsidies supposed to kick in? I got an automated bill email for April thanking me for my payment (oddly don't see one for January to March, that's great) and it's about the same it was all last year
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Apr 8, 2021 14:28
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tiberion02 posted:
Sorry, but the incrementalism you preach is still crap. Whatever the reason for AOC's decisions, collaborators are collaborators, and people will always have contempt for them. Also, she isn't powerless. She's just picking the moves she thinks is politically expedient for herself.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:29
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You're a good man 
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Mr Hootington posted:If all the jews get to Isreal we get the rapture We don't even need them all. We just need enough to rebuild the temple and wait for the red heifer to be born.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:30
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mastershakeman posted:When were the ACA expanded subsidies supposed to kick in? I got an automated bill email for April thanking me for my payment (oddly don't see one for January to March, that's great) and it's about the same it was all last year April 1st. You might have been billed on April for your March premiums.
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Apr 8, 2021 14:32
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friends friends were all forgetting the actual worst thing aoc has done https://twitter.com/TrueCrimePoli/status/1379995773790793736 give the chuds a template to speedrun her celebrity power but use it to actually do stuff instead of sell merch
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Apr 8, 2021 14:35
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the Tea Party of 22/24 is going to be Q Moms and they're going to be essentially unstoppable lmao
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Apr 8, 2021 14:37
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Apr 8, 2021 14:39
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Pentecoastal Elites posted:the Tea Party of 22/24 is going to be Q Moms and they're going to be essentially unstoppable lmao Defunding public education and giving every child a gun is a winning ticket in hellworld
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Apr 8, 2021 14:41
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Bernie's campaign was absolutely sabotaged from the inside. Anyone try to order campaign materials? I did the stuff never loving came. I've heard similar reports from nearly everyone else. Also, lots of stories about local campaigns being staffed with dem apparachiks that refused on every level to engage in any kind of compelling political activity. NEVER TRUST THE LIBS
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Apr 8, 2021 14:47
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:April 1st. You might have been billed on April for your March premiums. Two minutes later I got this email from healthcare.gov, they are reading the forums quote:You may have heard the good news about the recently passed COVID relief bill. With the passage of this new law, you may now be able to get higher tax credits to lower your current monthly premium. On average, monthly premiums for coverage through HealthCare.gov will be lower by $50 per person. You have got to be kidding me. They apparently made it so you don't have to file an amended tax return for the unemployment change, but you have to redo this? And it's going to gently caress up the healthcare for my kid too with how it reroutes him for a denial (that takes 2-6 months) from the state I assume this is going to get all sorted next tax year when doing the premium claw backs, it's probably easier to just wait for that than do extra applications in this horrible system
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Apr 8, 2021 14:47
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| # ? May 27, 2024 07:25 |
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Jokerpilled Drudge posted:Bernie's campaign was absolutely sabotaged from the inside. Anyone try to order campaign materials? I did the stuff never loving came. I've heard similar reports from nearly everyone else. Also, lots of stories about local campaigns being staffed with dem apparachiks that refused on every level to engage in any kind of compelling political activity. NEVER TRUST THE LIBS When I canvassed for Bernie I got like no instruction other than how to use the app. It was maybe 3 minutes of instruction lol
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Apr 8, 2021 14:49
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