I am thinking of a Dollop episode that discussed pigs in early New York City. They were the trash clean up before there were people dedicated to the job. They were allowed to just run free and scrounge whatever offal they could find. It could have been less that pigs were unclean, rather pigs kept things clean. If people ate all the pigs, there would be corpses and fecal matter lying around for extended periods of time which would cause disease.

I guess we will just have to disagree.

Absolutely. We always need to keep pressure on them to be better because the people who want everything to be worse sure as hell do.

My beef is that saying that a Jewish group controls the government, even if you don’t realize it consciously, is repeating antisemitic claims that date back to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. That doesn’t mean you are antisemitic, but you should realize what you are saying.

Like it or not the regime claims to represent Judaism. I don’t blame non-Israeli Jews for what Israel does any more than I blame the average Palestinian for what Hamas did.

If you can strip away a handful of Republican votes by appealing to their morals or negotiating over ancillary matters (we will support your unrelated pet project if you vote with us).

Millions total, but hundreds of thousands of my ancestors. Everyone knows about the Jewish victims of the Holocaust but people forget about the gypsies.

And yes Israel murdered and is still murdering Palestinians. I’m not a fan of apartheid ethnoststes no matter who is running them.

Demand better from the elected representatives who actually have the power to make changes - the Republicans!

He gives his “final offer” as his opening bid, then continues to negotiate against himself from there.

Normally I would agree with you, but shooting high with demands largely just leaves the right being unwilling to even talk about negotiating. This is what they did with the original 10 demands Democrats made.

https://cbsaustin.com/news/nation-world/ridiculous-republicans-reject-dems-10-demands-for-dhs-reforms

Proposals put forward have to be tempting enough to pull individual Republicans to negotiate.

He thinks he’s safe from the jackboots.

He’s gotten multiple threats on his life including bomb threats to his office in December. He is very aware he isn’t safe.

25% of Israel is not Jewish. The land is also sacred to other faiths.

The Knesset is majority Jewish, the cabinets are almost exclusively Jewish ministers, and of course there is PM Netanyahu. He rew is the country’s official language and almost 80% of Israeli Jews think Jewish citizens deserve preferential treatment over citizens of other religions.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/how-israels-jewishness-is-overtaking-its-democracy/

Off the top of my head, elephants, dolphins, and perhaps squid could pass such a test. I’m not sure about corvids. They are highly teachable and excellent at manipulating their environment, but are limited at tool use.

I don’t think replacing Shumer would change anything. What actions did he take that weren’t fully supported by the majority of the party? His replacement would likely be Corey Booker, Amy Klobuchar, or someone similar.

There was a great experiment with chimps and human babies that shows a critical difference in our thought patterns. Researchers put grapes in a cage and gave the chimp/child a rake with tines wider than the grapes. They showed the chimp/child how to use the rake tines to slowly, laboriously scrape the grapes into reach. Both the chimp and child were able to quickly copy what they were showed.

Here is the difference. The child immediately realized that they could flip the rake over and use the flat part to drag all the grapes over in one quick swoop. The chimp never made that logical jump and kept copying the slow way it was shown.

The ability to rapidly envision other options and innovate is a distinct difference from apes/monkeys and humans. This isn’t determined by any one gene. It’s a complex combination of multiple genes. It is significantly harder to breed for something like this than for example brown hair or green eyes. Not impossible, but unlikely.

The Nazis killed hundreds of thousands of my people. I am the farthest from a bootlicker as you can get. Keeping the center left and the far left fighting is exactly what the Nazis want, because we can’t beat them unless we fight together.

Well they could have held up funding the entire budget, easily.

You mean through government shut down? That has consequences. People that depend on government benefits lose their support. Government workers can’t pay their rent/mortgage. Meanwhile the Republicans will steal funding from wherever to make sure ICE doesn’t miss a dime. Is that worth the sacrifice? It’s easy to say yes when you aren’t the one making that sacrifice.

They could also constantly bring up impeachment votes for trump and his appointees to get the republicans on camera backing unpopular actions up.

There is a fundamental thing about the MAGA mindset that we all need to understand. When Republicans get caught lying, cheating, and stealing they DONT CARE. They assume all politicians do this regardless of party. It is irrelevant as long as the politician pushed the policies they want. GOP support of Trump didn’t drop a bit during either impeachment (and in fact went up following the first one).

I see pro AIPAC stuff

No you don’t. You see anti-blaming-the-jews stuff. It’s probably been months but I’ve argued heavily in the past for an independent Palestinian state and for Israel to stop it’s genocide.

You see me as running interference for failure, but I see you and others as visualizing success that simply isn’t possible in the real world. Republicans control all three branches of the government and the President has his own personal army bent on installing their fascist dictator. The idea that show impeachment trials or protest votes are going to make any difference is laughable.

Israel is explicitly a Jewish ethnostste and claims to be the homeland of all Jews. That link is literally in Israel’s founding documents. You might as well complain about linking the Vatican to Catholicism.

Okay, let’s say they stand their ground and say “zero DHS funding”. They don’t have the votes to stop it and it gets funded anyway, right?

BUT, if they can negotiate to give something to peel off a few Republican votes in exchange for things like investigations into the killings of Good and Pretti, body cams on ICE, and no face masks for ICE? Isn’t that better than nothing?

Disagree all you want about it tactically, but at least you recognize the logic, right?

Fo now we all have exactly two choices: Democrats or Republicans. Shumer or Trump. Any third option is an illusion or a lie.

Lol, you’re right about the wealthy hoarding land. My point is that it would sound weird to say “the government is run by big realty!”

It’s true that there is a lot of dark money, but by definition that is nearly impossible to attribute a source. All we can do is speculate.

Shumer’s perspective is to try and get what he realistically can get. He could stand his ground and say “defund ICE” but it would have 0% chance of success. He believes if he can negotiate and get even 1 of 10 requests fulfilled, then that is better than nothing. With Republicans having the government trifecta, there is little leverage to get any concessions.