lmmarsano

I’d only give the ones with an emergency or medical excuse a pass.

Stevens is firmly pro-Israel, whose government dragged the US into the unauthorized war. Their Israel lobby funding might be worth checking. However, plenty of Democrats with significant funding nonetheless likely attended to vote, because Hegseth is that awful.

Wasn’t a forgone conclusion: the votes would have sufficed if they attended on time.

It was a last ditch effort by a republican to shed his fascist affiliations

Not really: that Republican wasn’t shedding affiliations. He opposed the administration enough for the administration to endorse a competitor to cost him the primary. This was another step of many predating the election.

The votes failed to attend on time.

Most blamed traffic delays, but as another legislator put it

“We knew that this vote was coming, so people should have gotten their raggedy selves up these steps to vote,” Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-California) told reporters. “There is no reason why we should have lost this vote because of attendance issues.”

Others were in their home state, had a personal emergency, or couldn’t travel until medically cleared.

The vote was held at 18:02 EST. Democrats who didn’t vote

• Brownley D-CA
• Correa D-CA
• Gillen D-NY
• Horsford D-NV
• Jackson D-IL
• Pelosi D-CA
• Pettersen D-CO
• Stansbury D-NM
• Stevens D-MI
• Strickland D-WA
• Wilson D-FL

makes you look like an arse stupid

Corrected, and yes, that was stupid. Need my eyes checked.

He didn’t wait. Massie’s interesting

• No AIPAC funding
• 2025
  • May: rejected Big Beautiful Bill act
  • June: introduced resolution to end unauthorized hostilities in Iran
  • July: only Republican cosponsor of Epstein Files Transparency Act
• 2026
  • March: condemned the “illegal, unconstitutional, and pre-emptive war” on the House floor
  • May: introduced a bill to more tightly regulate AIPAC and other lobbyists representing foreign interests
  • May: primaried out by the administration
  • June: only Republican cosponsor of the reintroduced resolution mentioned before passed by Congress and ignored by the president
  • July: introduced Epstein Files Transparency Act II
  • September: moved onto attempting to impeach Hegseth before elections, but House Speaker Johnson adjourned the House early to preempt a vote.

One of the few Republican legislators doing anything to check the President.

Lemmy: it means something so monumentally stupid, it’s practically lemmy. Someone on lemmy said it, so it’s true! Now lemmy needs to change the name.

The lack of sense to go along with whatever is peak lemmy. Someone states a dumb opinion, then it’s the undisputed truth.

It describes such profound lack of sense. It’s not a slur but a descriptive judgement.

If you seriously believe that, then maybe the word “🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮”? Usage example:

That comment 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 wrote was so outrageously 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮.

Technically, it means “wrong about the word stupid”.

Everyone else can continue using the word stupid. Believing it is a slur takes stupidity defying basic observation. It’s stupider still to jump aboard a stupid bandwagon that stupidly tries to purity police this thread according to some stupid idea that was stupidly made up and takes levels of stupidity willfully ignoring contrary plain observation to stupidly believe.

For the record, I’m not making a free speech absolutist argument.

That’s a really strange disclaimer over a fundamental right akin to

I’m not a self-determination absolutist

I’m not a due-process-of-law absolutist

I’m not a freedom-of-movement absolutist

I’m not a freedom-of-conscience absolutist

I’m not a warranted-search-and-seizure absolutist

Absolutism here isn’t mentioned to disclaim protection of illegal speech, because that’s already unprotected, and no one here would dispute that. In this context, absolutism disclaims protection of unpopular speech people here would denounce, so it disclaims freedom of speech entirely.

This denies the presumption of a fundamental right as protected, which is entirely backward. Fundamental rights are presumed protected, whereas attempts to restrict or challenge them need strict scrutiny. The less common disclaimer

I’m not a censorship absolutist

is an asymmetry revealing a copout.

As for regulation, it’s a private device people are free to denounce, customize, or reject for a competitor. People have the liberty to produce & choose censored junk. An open society doesn’t restrict such choices when it can leverage fundamental rights^[1] to denounce, criticize, and challenge.

So youre saying the actual cops would have responded to Jane does gang rape instead of the “cops, but like we work for Cornell first and ignore a gang rape victim telling us she was gang raped when we write up the summation doc for the DA” cops? Ithaca cops that would have arrested the rapists, and then told the school, who could have then done their own academic action regardless of the frat or not?

That is by no means certain. Cops employed by government rather than a private or unelected employer (the legality of which is completely bizarre in a liberal democracy) have a horrible record of abuse despite their theoretical accountability to the public. The DA wasn’t employed by the university, and they went only by Jane Doe’s signed statement to conclude her allegations contradicted elements necessary to charge for rape as defined in state law. The statement she said she was very confident about was produced in an interview led by a campus police investigator alongside a Title IX investigator, a victim advocate, and Jane Doe’s adviser. Government police would have produced a similar statement, except the interview would have lacked university employees, especially the Title IX investigator.

Title IX is an anti-discrimination law that protects students’ equal access to educational opportunities regardless of sex. As long as the institution’s programs & activities don’t sexually discriminate or deny equal access, and a claim doesn’t allege the contrary, such claims lack Title IX interests. School conduct code violations unrelated to Title IX lack legal obligations beyond terms of contract.

Private conduct (of mostly adults) outside the school environment that doesn’t affect it lacks Title IX interests, and it would make total sense for schools to focus more narrowly on legal obligations instead of assuming responsibility beyond that of independent individuals and organizations responsible for their own conduct.

Ironically, the school so far has imposed more adverse action on the accused than have our public institutions, which have imposed none. If the DA’s initial determination is correct, the state may end up imposing nothing for an accusation negated by alleged facts.

Though the results in practice may be worse, I still think public police are preferable to non-public, because they lack conflict of interest to an unelected employer, and they could be held accountable to the public with sufficient public will and reform.

That’s called pantheism. It’s technically a belief in a deity. Whether it has all the worst qualities of organized religion or dogmatism is another matter.

“Greek life” organizations don’t need recognition of educational institutions, and institutions elsewhere in the world don’t recognize them.

Without recognition, they become unaffiliated associations (like the moonies) outside the purview of the educational institution. Alleged crimes and misconduct outside the educational institution are matters entirely for authorities unrelated to the institution.

Did you read it or understand it? Social media butchers & misrepresents the paradox, argument, and basic definition of (in)tolerance as used in political philosophy. Tolerance is acceptance that permits an objectionable position or practice despite considering it wrong. Intolerance is a rejection that doesn’t permit, ie, literally prohibits. Here’s the full passage partly quoted in the article

[Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.] But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

The type of intolerance they refer to is the kind that uses unjustified force and refuses debate. They even explicitly reject that we should in general “suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies” as long as rational argument & public opinion can still govern public choice.

The philosopher who articulated the paradox was defending an open society that protects intellectual freedom & open discourse, not arguing for a society to limit it. They were also talking about systems of government.

None of that pertains to a civil disagreement lacking imposition of force: by definition the person in disagreement is tolerant, so it’s not a case of “tolerating the intolerant”. The paradox doesn’t apply.

Yes, edit post & fill the alt text field. Editing posts and setting alt text are standard features of lemmy web interfaces accessed by web browser.

Those downvotes are part of why lemmy has a toxic culture: hostility to web accessibility and basic decency that perpetuates structural inequity. Bluesky and other parts of the fediverse like mastodon are better about promoting web accessibility. Web accessibility is a tangible matter of fairness, equal access, and decency we can all directly provide or deny.

While the rollback of post Civil War reconstruction and tolerance of violent segregationists is definitely an instance of “tolerance of the intolerant”, you should read the article and source material it’s quoting more closely, because you’re contradicting the entire argument they’re making. Here’s the quoted passage again, but in full

[Less well known is the paradox of tolerance: Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.—In this formulation, I do not imply, for instance, that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise.] But we should claim the right to suppress them [intolerant ideologies] if necessary even by force; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols.

As usual in political philosophy, the definition of intolerance is stricter and includes an element of rejection by force or imposition. From the passage, the type of intolerance they refer to is the kind that uses force and refuses debate. They even explicitly reject that we should in general “suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies” as long as rational argument & public opinion still govern public choice.

In that discourse where the philosopher is arguing that a free, open inquiry and rational argument is crucial to an open society, they unsurprising aren’t arguing for the suppression of exclusionary opinions. They’re arguing for a system of governance that protects freedom of individuals to debate (and denounce) each other.

So, tolerating segregationist terrorists in the post Civil War is a case of “extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant” as mentioned in the paradox. In contrast, a disagreement with someone who is not imposing their beliefs is not, and the paradox has no bearing.

Paradox of tolerance has no bearing on disagreements lacking imposition, and is used to defend open discourse, not argue against it.

Good job on not confusing corpocracy & corporatism.
People often miss plutocracy & kleptocracy.

checks alt text

(nothing)

This image needs a text alternative, though: the image’s text content is unperceivable to the sight-impaired, for examples, so the post isn’t web accessible.
It violates WCAG guideline

Provide text alternatives for any non-text content so that it can be changed into other forms people need, such as large print, braille, speech, symbols or simpler language.

As a consequence, it’s also unsearchable by the hidden text content, which impairs usability for everyone.

While I would love that, the more moderate republicans who argued to impeach & convict Trump last time were ousted, so that leaves the Trumpiest core to work with. GOP shittiness & general hostility to the government working in any sense for the American people can’t be underestimated. Plus, convicting Trump results in Vance replacing him.

I think some highly guarded optimism is warranted. Blocking hideous legislation and Trump appointments isn’t too bad of a check if they’re unable to pull off anything better.

See? No serious alternative.

What part of what you wrote contradicts anything written about democracy? The destruction & abuses you list could be far worse in governments with unchecked power.

Democracy isn’t a magic salve that instantly cures everything it touches. Liberal democratic institutions permit reforms through a nonviolent, deliberative process to address everything you stated. To check abuses of power that could end democratic, open society, they also limit government capacity to unilaterally impose swift, sweeping changes. The institution trades sweeping state power that’s riskier to abuse for more limited, checked, deliberative state power likelier to sustain the democratic system. You don’t get democratic reforms without that slow, power-constrained work to protect the system.

All that money the obscenely wealthy dumped into the elections didn’t get the results they paid for. Lack of action according to your timetable isn’t legal immunity.

While your criticism gripes about the problems we can observe, no one is discounting them. We are criticizing your failures to consider all the problems we can’t observe (because the system of limited government avoided them) and the strength of nonviolent, popular reform.

Your criticism looks like just griping that doesn’t seriously weigh the tradeoffs, which is fine to commiserate, but not a rational basis to weigh alternative systems of government.