I do this. Unfortunately, you have to be able to time your laundry to sunny weather. We put laundry out yesterday when it was sunny and blue skies, and it poured overnight. So now we have to do laundry again.

Works great when the weather cooperates though.

Having been in power for so long and with arguably a strong level of domestic support for decades,

…That’s because every time someone else comes even slightly close to having any kind of popular support, they ‘commit suicide’, or commit a crime that gets them sent to prison in Siberia. E.g., Alexi Navalny. Moreover, he controls all the media in the country, and has largely managed to cut off significant access to any sources of information from outside the country. So that ‘strong level of domestic support’ is due to a dearth of options, rather than genuine support.

might we perhaps give Russia slight leniency to make minor readjustments to borders, if (hypothetically) the local regions did legitimately vote in agreement?

No. That’s like asking if Texas can choose to secede. They can not. Nor can the rest of the US vote to expel Texas without triggering a constitutional crisis. The region belongs to the country first and foremost, before it belongs to the region. Now, if an entire country votes to allow a region of their country to be annexed, then sure. Even if elections in Crimea were free and fair–and the evidence strongly suggests that most of the people voting were coerced–it would need to be all of Ukraine voting to allow the annexation.

Recall, being “ethnic Russian” is of key interest and, in my opinion,

There are a lot of “ethnic Italians”, and “ethnic Irish” living in the US, and they were badly mistreated during the first part of the 20th C. That wouldn’t have given Ireland or Italy the right to invade New York, because, despite their ethnicity, they were Americans. Not Irish citizens, not Italian citizens. And, bluntly, Putin claiming to be concerned about the treatment of ethnic Russians is concern trolling. It was an excuse to invade, just like his claims of de-Nazification. The real issue was that Ukraine had left the USSR when the USSR failed, he wants it back, and any excuse that people can be suckered into buying is good enough for him.

when exactly would we start to repair our relationship with Russia by loosening up on them a little?

Again: no. You don’t improve your relationship with a bully and a criminal by capitulating. They are the one that is acting incorrectly, so it is incumbent on them to improve their own behaviour, rather than the victim accepting a little victimizing.

If you don’t vote Biden, then don’t be surprised when Trump uses executive orders that accelerate the genocide.

They should not, because when Republicans win in the future–and they will–Republicans will do the same thing.

OTOH, if they take the house and retain the senate, I think that impeaching Thomas is perfectly reasonable, and you could make a pretty solid claim for impeaching Kavanaugh for lying as well.

115gr 9mm with Turkish primers and range brass. It’s cheap to load–about 15cpr–just as fun as +P+, and doesn’t beat the hell out of your frame.

If you have a shot timer, you can do timed draw and fire drills with a single shot from concealment, put in over an hour at the range, and only spend a few bucks in ammo.

The real splurge is 220gr 10mm. That shit is expensive any way you do it.

engage with the opposite side in a constructive manner.

Russia is currently explicitly dedicated to being an enemy of the West.

That’s entirely due to Vladimir Putin. Neither Gorbachev nor Yeltsin were ‘enemies’ of the west. (OTOH, the dismantling of the USSR really could have benefited from some help from the west; the oligarchs and political elites sacked the wealth of the country, which paved the way for Putin.) Capitulating to Putin would not soften his stance; he would still believe that all of the formerly Warsaw-pact countries ‘belong’ to the United Soviet Socialist Republics. He still believes that sections of Finland that Russia lost in the Continuation War belong to Russia. He still believes that all the Baltic countries belong to the USSR, despite the USSR not having existed for 30-odd years.

NATO is strictly a defensive organization. The NATO agreement is that IF Russia invades any member country, that all NATO signatories will come to the defense of that country. If a signatory invades Russia, then they’re on their own. The only think that NATO directly opposes is Russian aggression; all Russia has to do to avoid war with NATO is… Not invade a NATO country.

I mean, yes, but also no.

For that to really work, you need a labor surplus, i.e., more workers than jobs. As long as there are more jobs than workers, workers are incentivized to hop jobs to get better pay, perks, and working conditions. It’s in the best interest of the capital-owning class to keep a certain level of the population unemployed so that there are always more workers than jobs; that allows them to pocket more of the value that the workers are adding, because the workers have less leverage to negotiate better wages.

But when you suddenly lost 5% of your workforce, and they’re jobs that are physically demanding (and in the case of construction, are a genuinely skilled trade), then capital-owning class doesn’t have the leverage over workers. That’s especially true when the capitalist can’t easily move operations to an area with cheap labor; if you’re a contractor, you’re going to operate where there’s demand for construction, not where there’s cheap labor. An e.g. contractor can’t just not build; they lose money by sitting on land, or on equipment that isn’t being capitalized.

SCOTUS blocked Biden’s attempts to cancel student loan debt. But he kept working at it, and he’s managed to get some of it to go through. I expect that, even if red states and SCOTUS block specific policies that are intended to protect that rights of LGBTQ+ people that Biden will keep working to find a way around them that still follows the law. And, if we can manage to flip the House and retain the Senate, then maybe we can actually get laws passed, rather than only executive actions.

Whether you want to be a part of it or not, if you are a US citizen, you are. Your only choice is to reduce hard, or not.

So, to recap, you know nothing about my religion other than the name, and make assumptions about what I believe due to your prejudices, but you don’t believe that you have prejudices based on skin color. Is that correct?

Can someone who is good with politics explain to me why Dems are not fighting back against the slide into fascism?

They are.

Why are these states still receiving federal funding and welfare subsidies?

Because they’ve complied with the legal requirements to receive that funding, and so it would be illegal for them to be denied that funding due to an unrelated matter.

Why is the compromised and illegitimate Supreme Court still in power?

Because impeaching a member of the Supreme Court requires a charge be brought by the US House of Representatives, and the Senate needs to vote to convict (2/3 majority, I believe). Y’know, because of the US constitution.

Why are blue states not sanctioning fascist states?

Because they don’t have the legal authority to do so.

Uh huh.

Would you judge a man based on the color of his skin rather than on his character?

The police officers in Uvalde had no legal responsibility to protect the children in the school. They were not required to charge in and stop–shoot–the person that murdered so many children. And yet, we quite rightly condemn their unwillingness to act, even though acting would placed them at risk of harm or death at the hands of the shooter. They had the ability to prevent mass murder, and they did not.

The person that refuses to act, when it puts them at no risk, and costs no more than the minor inconvenience of standing in line for a few minutes, is certainly no better than the police officers in Uvalde.

If one were to take Russia at face-value, they might lighten up a bit with less NATO.

If one were to take Russia at face-value, then one would be an idiot that would be shocked once Russia started invading countries like Georgia, Belarus, Hungary, Poland, Finland…

Democrats are worthless when it comes to protecting trans people,

Uh huh. And yet Biden expanded protections for trans people under Title IX, and the governors that are all trying to criminalize simply being LGBTQ+ are all Republican.

Again: vote for Trump, and tell all you IRL LGBTQ+ friends that you voted for Trump because Both Sides Are the Same, and see what happens. I don’t think you have the guts to do that. Prove me wrong. Shit, post it publicly on Facebook and Instagram before the election. Go ahead. Tell your friends that you don’t care enough about their safety right here in the US to do the absolute bare minimum, to step over a bar that’s so low that it’s on the ground, to help protect them. Don’t be a coward; say it directly to their faces instead of hiding behind a semi-anonymous account online.

Let me just point out that losing 5% of the workforce like that will make inflation skyrocket, because we’ll have to increase wages on a lot of jobs done for shit pay by undocumented migrants. (Should those jobs pay well now? Of course. But they don’t.) You think houses are expensive now? Just wait until construction grinds to a standstill because there’s no laborers available. Groceries cost too much? Guess who is working in those fields?

Again: we should be paying those people fair wages now. But without significantly raising those wages, which will also raise the cost of the goods they currently produce, you aren’t going to get many citizens to do the jobs.

EDIT: one of the larger inputs for produce is labor. If we had to pay labor for picking, cleaning, and sorting produce $20/hr (which is the floor that I’d consider semi-acceptable for that kind of work), you would end up seeing a lot of prices rise sharply in the grocery store, particularly because we simply can’t automate most of that. And believe me, companies are trying, because they won’t want to pay the slave wages that they do now. If you had to pay all construction workers at least $20/hr–which is below the acceptable rate, IMO–housing costs would have to rise to accommodate the cost of the labor. Lots of restaurants still use undocumented labor; they’d have to increase menu prices. And so on, and so forth. We, all of in the US, benefit from the poor treatment of undocumented migrants, and it’s largely invisible to us.

Ah, yes, it’s the US’ foreign policy that’s responsible for Iranian morality police killing brown LGBTQ+ people. It’s US foreign policy that’s responsible for Russia’s hard right turn that’s made being gay punishable by prison. It’s US foreign policy that’s responsible for passing laws that make being gay punishable by death sentences in parts of Africa (okay, that one is directly linked to support from evangelicals in the US, but they’re not acting as representatives for the US, and the US in general has been appalled by those laws).

People in Gaza are going to be murdered regardless of which person is elected in the US. OTOH, LGBTQ+ people in the US will continue to have legal protections if Biden gets re-elected, and definitely won’t if Trump gets elected.

But really my dude (and I mean that in a gender-neutral way), if you’re so sure that it won’t matter in the slightest, if you are absolutely convinced by your own righteous cause, go right ahead and vote for Trump, and then tell allllllllll your LGBTQ+ friends that you voted for Trump because Both Sides, and see what happens. Go ahead, do it. Explain to them that they’re all chumps and suckers, see just how far that goes with them.

::sigh::

So you tell me, since you know my religion so well; what do I believe?

Even if that’s true–and I don’t know if it is or not, because I’m not a true biblical scholar–the fact is that 1 Timothy is recognized as canon throughout the Christian world. Even if it’s a forgery, it’s been accepted as gospel for the last 1800 years or so.

…And that’s completely ignoring the fact that most people that get really deep into scholarly historical bible studies very quickly end up as agnostics and atheists, because you can’t square the historical record with any religion currently practiced.

I’m white, cis-, het, middle aged, have a lot of guns, and I am far more versed (ha!) in the bible than almost any evangelical. I can pass if I have to. I have a lot of friends that can’t, and they’re going to be truly fucked if Trump wins.