Mangela Lansbury

Dang, I was hoping my cousin Cal had figured out cloning and made college basketball team of all hims.

I entered my family's bracket by flipping a coin. The coin picked Cal. What's Cal?

That's kinda business as usual in China, though. Even after a few anti-corruption campaigns, China ranks pretty high on the scale of dirty states.

Yeah, it bums me out too. Can you do this, Vader?

As someone who loves Bergman, I can say with full confidence that this is a bad idea. Bergman made some really, really good movies and a lot of crap. Even the high rated movies are so well regarded for vastly different reasons. Something like Persona is highly rated because he plays with the medium and did something interesting with it, especially for the time. Something like Wild Strawberries is highly rated because it's a well executed version of a then typical type of film -- I think it's among the best of a boring genre, which still leaves it a boring film. It's more worthwhile to look at what you like about Tarkovsky, and where that's expressed in Bergman's films. Be picky about what you watch. If you don't like portrait shots and monologues and very interior films that examine family relationships very closely, Bergman likely just isn't for you.

If you can't close the medicaid gap by raising the ceiling on who medicaid covers, you can lower the floor for ACA qualifying coverage. That population is still probably only going to be able to afford bad policies with high deductibles (healthcare coverage that's just awful but ticks off the "they're insured" box has proliferated under ACA, from what I understand), but that expansion of Obamacare would still be meaningful.

Yeah, it's not a huge deal -- like I said, it's a nitpick -- but it's a popular term that rubs me the wrong way. I don't like the way that it removes the humanity from an expression that implies a human force. Instead of having an occupying force, or a military presence, or staging an invasion, we "have boots on the ground." It's a euphemism that, to me, hides the purpose of a military maneuver and attempts to cover the human part of the military.

Your points are valid to an extent, but I still feel that establishing a new NATO necessarily includes establishing a new international military force, which will end up deployed in the Middle East. Even if it's just for "military training," such an organization would require the deployment of US forces in the Middle East. Stronger diplomacy with Russia and Iran, a pivot towards sensible counterterrorist policies, and an end to drone strikes (drone strikes that Sanders has reservations about, but ultimately supports) would go much further than forming a group with a list of members that would make it as paralyzed as the UN Security Council. Also, to nitpick, I very strongly dislike the euphemism "boots on the ground." It's an easy way to dehumanize soldiers and minimize the sacrifices that are made in the name of a nation.

A huge part of NATO is its military arm, made up of human resource contributions from the armed forces of its members. It's currently led by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO Allied Command Operations, four star USAF General Phillip Breedlove. In the wake of Libya, it's undeniable that NATO is a military organization. Drawing a parallel to it brings everything that implies.

Whistleblowers are offered immunity from prosecution for providing the public with information about the illegal or unethical practices of a public or private entity. Obama's administration does not consider Snowden a whistleblower, leaving him with the choice of either living in exile or becoming a political prisoner. The Sanders administration would carry on this legacy of oppression and intimidation.

I guess that's one way to look at it, but it's also hypocritical of Sanders to accept any money from lobbyists or political organizations at all, given his hardline political stance against lobbyist money. Given that people generally level accusations of hypocrisy at Hillary, it's worth looking at Sanders' own hypocritical acts in his ideological campaign. It's only fair. Sanders' views on foreign policy are lackluster at best, as well. He thinks Edward Snowden should stand trial for being a whistleblower. He says we need to create another organization like NATO to combat the Islamic State, but doesn't want American troops fighting the Islamic State -- those are two contradictory goals. So #WhichBernie will make the decision when he's in office?

A registered lobbyist is a registered lobbyist. Their job is to speak politically, often using their money. It doesn't matter what their point of view is, and whether you agree with it or not. Taking money from a lobbyist is taking money from a lobbyist. If your stance is "don't take money from lobbyists," your campaign's imperative should be clear. But to Sanders, it isn't. $3,200 is a tiny amount of money, to be sure. It's a tiny amount of money to have, and it would be a tiny amount of money to not have. So why does he have it? To be clear, I support Bernie Sanders. I just think he should be taken to task for the peculiarities in his campaign.

The Sanders campaign, unlike Obama's, accepts money from registered lobbyists. While their contributions account for a very small portion of his campaign funding, they do exist. It's peculiar that someone who's calling for the DNC to reinstate a ban on contributions from lobbyists accepts contributions from lobbyists for his own campaign.

In 2006, she was supportive of the states that were making gay marriage legal. In 2007, she supported at least a partial repeal of DOMA. She also supported fully equal civil unions which would be separate and distinct from marriage in name only. That little bit of wordplay is not a huge deal to a lot of queer people, myself included. It's just a matter of politics. 6 years to go from supporting the idea of gay marriage to the words gay marriage don't really matter.

In her tenure as Secretary of State, Clinton was a huge advocate for LGBTQIA+ rights. She did many things wrong, but she did that right. I mean, in 2009, she managed to expand partnered queer state department employees the same rights as heterosexual married employees. In 2011, she gave a historic speech where she stated, "Gay rights are human rights, and human rights are gay rights." Her record as Secretary of State speaks to that commitment. Even after her tenure as Secretary of State, she came out in favor of the Equality Act, which would expand the Civil Rights Act to cover queer Americans, granting legal protections from discrimination in credit, housing, education, employment, etc. She has the record of someone who has had an honest change of heart -- the same honest change of heart that most of America has gone through thanks to coming out campaigns. Besides which, the LGBT community is made up of all kinds of people who prioritize issues in vastly different ways. Don't trivialize any of us by thinking that we vote based only on that one part of our identity.

Hillary is most decidedly not who you want in charge under the broad interpretations of the AUMF that Obama's DOJ has been working under. Both of the current AUMFs in effect are already stretched past their original intention, and arguably past the point of legality. Specifically, the statute states This is not as broad as the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, but it has been made to be so -- and in that, it has been rendered as large a failure. The legal acrobatics necessary to use this to justify drone strikes on ISIS are impressive, one would imagine, but it's impossible to say since the legal justifications for war are classified. Hillary's hawkishness would continue to stretch the statute, and given the precedence of classified legal justifications for war, the public would continue to be robbed of a substantive debate about whether or not going to war is the right thing to do. The only possible obstacle to further war would be for the UN Security Council, wherein the US has veto power, to pass a resolution authorizing advisory findings to be made on the legality of said war, and even that wouldn't be substantively meaningful; regardless of the findings, a suit cannot be brought against the federal government in its own country if it hasn't waived immunity. Rex non potest peccare. (Please note: I am not a lawyer and wartime/international law is incredibly complex so any or all of this could be wrong.) You nominate someone and they get confirmed. You usually nominate someone who gave you a lot of money so that you could get elected, which is how a former lobbyist for cable corporations is the current chairman of the FCC. After every presidential election, the appropriate committees of the Senate and House of Representatives get together and publish the Plum Book, which lists all the positions subject to noncompetitive appointments nationwide and when the terms of those positions are set to expire. As the terms of an appointment expire you appoint new members, or re-appoint the same members if they're still eligible. To continue with example of the FCC, the entire FCC board of commissioners have terms expiring 2017 - 2020, so by the time the next president has served their first term, there could be 5 new commissioners in charge of the FCC. Not immediately, but by the end of 2020. (Please note: I am not an expert. I had it explained to me a few years ago at a bar in DC, I may be wrong about this as well.)

It's probably less a response to you than it is a response generally to people who disagree with how those of certain identities vote. Like how after Super Tuesday, some Bernie supporters were talking about how black southerners "should have voted" based only their skin color or how many gays are just aghast over log cabin republicans. It's easy to forget that people are more than the sum of their labels.

Gawker published a story where they tried to track down a rumor about Ted Cruz and talked to people he went to college with. It paints him more as a clueless wannabe than a cynical calculator.

Not necessarily. I've heard it justified as not wanting to vote establishment, which is valid in its own right if misguided in supporting Trump.

Donal Trump is a terrifying indictment of American politics as usual, as practiced by Democrats and Republicans both. You can't expect to defend mass collection of private citizens' data because of the existential threat that terror poses and not expect it to have an effect. You can't continue to indiscriminately murder civilians abroad (sometimes American civilians) using drone strikes because of the existential threat that terror poses and not expect it to have an effect. You can't refuse to offer displaced Syrian refugees a place to live because of the existential threat that terror poses and not expect it to have an effect. Donald Trump is the sum of all political choices made since 9/11, but he's largely uninteresting to look at; rather, it's interesting to look at the people who give him the power he has. You can say the media is to blame for his rise to power, or you can say it's the fault of Republicans for not taking him seriously, but none of that is really all that interesting or important: Donal Trump has a support base, and it's interesting to look at why they support such a nauseating demagogue. I think the most compelling point about his support base was a long point Vox made about the rise of American authoritarianism. American authoritarianism can also explain why we ignore our moral imperative to welcome Syrian refugees, and why we stand behind a Middle East foreign policy and counterterrorism strategy that's objectively, as measured against its stated goals, an abject and total failure. We are a nation that fears alterity, and one that's consumed with hand-wringing about how the changing social order marks an end of civilization as we know it. We're confronted with the moral collapse of America as shown through cops murdering black people or black people murdering cops or selfie-taking, empowered youth or whiny, pathetic youth or having an opinion or anti-having an opinion free speech maximalism or feminism or anti-feminism or any of a number of easily digested false dichotomies, so we aren't bothered by a moral imperative to not let Russia bomb Syrian civilians, and we aren't bothered by Europe turning Greece, a country it's already damned to economic failure, into one great internment camp for Syrians, and we aren't bothered by funding several governments that are repressive military regimes -- because what about us, and what about our safety. We don't address the larger moral failure of all of us because it's easier for us to point at Trump's supporters and dismiss them, just like it's easier for Trump's supporters to point at and dismiss us, when the truth is that we all have a little bit of authoritarianism in us -- even if it's just the littlest bit. The left is prone to the same kind of lashing out as authoritarians are, only we frame it as callout culture and pretend the new name makes it something other than what it is. I think Donald Trump is an uninteresting symptom of an interesting problem: the problem of the fundamental breakdown of the American people. He is himself a shallow and banal subject, and should largely go unaddressed. What makes him interesting is the question of why people support him, so we should remove him from the equation as much as we can and just look at his support base. They came from somewhere, and they feel the way they do for a reason. This is pretty disjointed because I woke up in the middle of the night and will go back to bed after posting this, but I hope I made my point at least well enough for the gist of it to come across. The short version is basically "who cares about Trump, it's his support base we need to be paying attention to."

I really like the additions of Steptoe Cyberlaw and Rational Security. The hosts and guests fall on the other side of security and privacy issues than I do (the host of Steptoe Cyberlaw is a former general counsel for the NSA, so uh... you know), but they're smart people with thoughtful, considered opinions. It's nice to see the other side of things as presented by people who can robustly support their views with considered evidence and viewpoints.

I have a pretty high threshold for production mistakes and can stand a pretty low overall production quality, but Jesus Christ get your shit together, Valve. It's too much for even me.

Funding local communities is a great proposition, but it's ultimately unsustainable. You end up where we are now -- with neighborhoods that succeed and neighborhoods that fail, and where you land is ultimately determined by the circumstances of your birth. Paired with systemic changes, like a guaranteed basic income, people have real choice and the power to exercise their voice. Just look at the American housing market. Community driven initiatives have made real gains in keeping people in their homes after the mortgage collapse thanks to both federal funding and local grown initiatives, but the system the collapse was built on still stands. The federal funding is there, but the problem of distribution can't be solved at a community level. It must be paired with systemic change.

Your definition of a "healthy life" doesn't seem to include recreation, which really just puts us at an impasse. And it's really kind of staggering to me how you say you're not judgmental or condescending to the impoverished, then say the impoverished shouldn't get "a little bit of money for candy after their basic needs are met."

Spending less on food does not necessarily translate to not eating healthy. You can get all your nutrition on very little money. I'm pretty confused over the community development vs private luxury thing. France guarantees everyone a basic income equivalent to working a minimum wage job. They do plenty of community spending and I don't think anyone can accuse those who live on RSA of private luxury.