Mangela Lansbury

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/03/07/bernie-sanders-says-white-people-dont-know-what-its-like-to-live-in-a-ghetto-about-that/ That's a deep dive into the answers of both candidates to a specific question at a debate. You can look up Sanders' lackluster response independently.

I would appreciate the tone being more "this is why you should support Sanders," and less "this is why you should hate Clinton." The latter doesn't really do anything for anybody.

No, it makes it more heinous. She's not making efforts to be appealing to American Jewry-at-large because the support of a broad base doesn't matter as much as the support of the wealthiest few.

I feel obligated here to point out that Clinton is not pandering to the Jewish demographic. She is pandering to zionists, probably because zionists are the ones who have the wealthy lobbies. They're the ones who are impacted by BDS, which she is an outspoken opponent of. All signs point to shrinking Jewish zionism among the American Jewry, but the wealthiest American Jews are generally right wing zionists.

There's a whole host of BLM criticism to his comments that come to mind (like the ghetto comments he made), some criticism about offhanded remarks about mental health, criticism of his support of Fidel Castro, criticism on his gun control comments... He does a fair amount of damage control. Not an extraordinary amount, but he's a politician after all...

PolitiFact rates the truthiness of contentious statements being reported in the media. Take that as you will. Also, from what I understand from when I used to follow PolitiFact, "mostly true" means that someone said something that was true, but it was decontextualized in a way that may be misleading, but the decontextualization mostly impacted the nuance of the statement, not the core.

I'm really not even sure what you're disagreeing with here. Like, who says that compromise is a bad thing? What's preferable -- utter gridlock in Washington? A government where everyone refuses to give even an inch, so the government shuts down and never reopens because nobody has the exact same viewpoint? The thing that you're advocating for is basically Trumpism -- don't back down, and don't give in to demands. You're the best guy with the best ideas, so get them into play at all costs. It's just not how the world works.

This is a great way for someone who has zero power or influence on policy to think. This is a terrible way for someone with any power or influence on policy to think. For instance, I'm a huge detractor of ACA. I think it's locked the nation into skyrocketing healthcare costs, has forced people into the arms of private insurers who want to increase their profit margins more than they want to help people, and has soothed the left into not acting on a better solution. But you know what? I have damn good health insurance. I can afford to be against ACA. I'm not reliant on expanded medicare coverage or a subsidized plan. People who are in that position would disagree with me about ACA, and with good reason. That's ultimately why it's a good thing that I'm just a small man with no power -- my ideology would blind me to a good solution because it's not the best solution. In the same way, I don't like DADT. But a gay kid from a poor, broken home whose only path to a college education was military service was probably damn grateful to have DADT -- he could go about his business on his own time and not be beholden to questions about it. He would think differently than me about DADT, and with good reason. His opinion wouldn't be that DADT is dehumanizing, but that it was a lifesaving avenue to a better life for himself. Having ideological positions is great. They're a huge benefit in a lot of ways. But when you're dealing with real policies in the real world, things are more complicated. There isn't as much black and white. Someone isn't necessarily for us or against us, but rather they often lie somewhere in the middle. For example, Governor Nathan Deal of Georgia has been a staunch opponent of LGBT rights historically, but now that Georgia's legislature is considering passing a "religious freedom" act he's come out as accepting of gays. He says that people don't need to feel threatened by people doing things they don't agree with, and he backs up his view with biblical quotes. So is he for gays or against gays? He seems to be mostly against, but it's complicated. He's somewhere in the middle, and it doesn't do anyone any good to say that Governor Deal voted against gay adoption rights in 2006 or whatever else he's done, since in 2016 he said that people should accept gay marriage even if they don't agree with it. He quoted the Bible -- as his Southern Baptist upbringing would guide him to do -- saying that people should love and accept society's outcasts. I don't have full faith that he'll push for more gay rights, but he seems to be standing up for the ones we have. Does that mean he's against us, or does it mean he's with us? I think it means it's complicated. Life is complicated. Reducing things into the two categories of "good" and "bad" doesn't really help anyone make things better.

The closest I could see to that is people saving labor on some special sort of billboard by putting some kind of screen area on them that your robo-eyes can recognize and display an ad over. Or it just detects your emotions and displays an ad for your local hitman whenever you see an ex.

Clinton was for civil unions that were equal to marriage in all but name in 2006 (so your second fact is suspect, at best), and her entire tenure as Secretary of State is full of examples of her trying to do her best for queer communities around the world -- from Ghana to Switzerland to the USA. The timing of her coming around is suspect if you want to try and say that queer communities -- and the coming out campaigns that are largely the reason LGBT communities are so well accepted in the Western world -- had no hand in impacting the minds of the people they came in contact with. I'm legit offended by people who think that she's only pro-LGBT rights because it's politically convenient because that stance ignores the millions of queer voices that probably had a hand in changing her mind, and renders moot the efforts that people took that put them in danger. Does she have a history? Yes. She's been politically active for basically my entire life. I don't like some of the things she's done. But DADT was 20 years ago, and she was a part of the administration that repealed it. Get over it.

Well, I don't think a foreign life is worth less than an American life, so I guess we're going to have to agree to disagree that the last point is a thing. And in general, I think you're just fully committed to thinking Hillary is the literal devil who can do nothing right ever, so I'm just gonna let you do you. I'm pretty over being told that I have to hate Hillary because I'm gay.

https://medium.com/@HillaryClinton/on-the-fight-against-hiv-and-aids-and-on-the-people-who-really-started-the-conversation-7b9fc00e6ed8#.absml1nxy She misspoke, and then admitted she made a mistake while recognizing the historic efforts of LGBT people in the fight against HIV/AIDS and putting forth a concrete plan for future improvements. There's also this little foundation with her name on it that works on this kind of thing. https://www.clintonfoundation.org/our-work/clinton-health-access-initiative/programs/hivaids

A good ally isn't one that knows everything -- that's an unreasonable expectation. A good ally is one that apologizes when they're wrong, and then puts effort into being better. Clinton has shown that she does that. I don't support her for the Democratic nomination, but I'm happy to call her an ally.

Clinton said what she said about HIV/AIDS, but that was not a mistake. She did perhaps misspeak, but only because she did not know. And she did not know because she does not have to. It gave rise to an opportunity for education, and Clinton apologized shortly after her comment brought awareness of a difficult time in queer history to her mind and to the minds of people who may otherwise not have known about it. Her misstep led to her own personal growth and, hopefully, the growth of a nation that now knows more about the difficulties that queer populations faced in the 80s due to the HIV crisis. What's fucked up is not what she said. What's fucked up is the way the nation functions, and one person's small misstep pales in comparison to the violence of a nation. What's fucked up is people expecting a straight white ciswoman to know queer history in a nation that doesn't ask straight white ciswomen to know queer history. My own gut reaction was anger but when I thought about it, I wasn't angry at Clinton; I was angry at Nancy.

To be fair, the Tea Party had goals and benchmarks for success. Occupy Wall Street had no clear, unified, stated goals (on purpose, to not alienate anyone who wanted to join) and was just an expression of anger that eventually was coopted COINTELPRO style and adopted a set of goals as it faded into obscurity following widespread police violence.

How long until the Dominos pizzabots are equipped with flamethrowers? You know, for "on the go pizza cooking"

Clinton served in maybe the most opaque administration since the whole White House Press Secretary bit became a thing. She learned how to not deal with the press from the best, and she's been using that training well. She went almost 100 days on the campaign trail without taking questions from the press already. I don't see how this could change.

It wouldn't be a bad idea, but this election cycle seems to be just bringing out the worst in everyone -- especially Sanders supporters with the conspiracy theory level "the media is against us!" bull and generally appalling elitism -- so maybe it would be better to leave a spot for containment.

Uhhhhh I don't think the obstruction started with Obama. The 107th Congress was pretty strong precedence, with Democrats stalling a lot of appellate court nominees in committee even though Bush elevated a Clinton appointee as peace offering. It wasn't until Republicans regained a majority in the Senate with the 108th Congress that a lot of those blocked nominations went through. I wasn't paying attention before that and looking up the history is unwieldy on a phone, but in my memory this is a fight that Democrats started. Republicans are just escalating.

Clinton is predictably bad. Sanders would be unpredictably bad. I don't disagree with anything you said (except maybe laying more of Libya at Samantha Power's feet) -- I just prefer someone who's predictably bad. America is already incredibly politically unstable enough.

Obama's foreign policy has been pretty disastrous -- the destruction of Libya, the entire Syrian civil war, worsening corruption in Afghanistan, and continued drone wars that serve only to push more people to radicalization. Even the pivot to Asia has largely been a failure, with worsening tensions between China and Japan and the Abe cabinet losing tremendous amounts of support based on its support of Article IX revision to appease American hegemony. And these are only broad brushstrokes -- once you get into the nitty gritty, the Obama doctrine has been one of ignoring opportunities, and losing out when it takes on the wrong risks. Being "no worse than Obama" is not a comforting endorsement.

In all honesty, I think this is a best case scenario. I love Bernie's domestic policy, but the harder I look at his foreign policy the more I think he would be a natsec liability. Pulling the party left and getting people in power who are empowered to improve conditions domestically is better than having him in the situation room.

I've read Everything Together and liked it, but I didn't know where to go after that. I liked what I read, though! Alt comics can just be frustrating if you're trying to navigate finding new things by yourself.

I got Ganges 5 a while back and read it this weekend! Kevin Huizenga writes good comics.