Things That Annoy You

[RavynousHunter]

I dunno, I think you might be able to beat her if you wear pumps.

[davedan]

Wow she was possibly the worst candidate in the world. Ms 'I don't believe in a living wage'. Wow

[Svata]

So. We're never winning anything, then. Fuck this country.

[dpareja]

So. We're never winning anything, then. Fuck this country.

Don't be so sure. These were all heavily Republican districts (at least at the House level), and all of them ended up much closer than they should have under normal circumstances. (Look at SC 5. To quote someone else, "South Carolina 5 was surprising in the opposite direction. That it was single digits? Not surprising. That it was low single digits? DEFCON 2 for the House GOP.")

[Svata]

So we can ALMOST win. Which means... fuck all. They're winning by closing polling stations, gerrymandering, passing laws to keep themselves in office, all sorts of bullshit. You can't beat someone who sets up the rules of the game such that they auto-win. Its only close so that they can keep laughing at our futile efforts to matter. To laugh at our pointless hopes, our unobtainable dream of winning.

[dpareja]

So we can ALMOST win. Which means... fuck all. They're winning by closing polling stations, gerrymandering, passing laws to keep themselves in office, all sorts of bullshit. You can't beat someone who sets up the rules of the game such that they auto-win. Its only close so that they can keep laughing at our futile efforts to matter. To laugh at our pointless hopes, our unobtainable dream of winning.

You're forgetting the voter IDsuppression laws.

EDIT:

There's also the part where the US does something that international elections monitors usually raise red flags about: have partisan officials run elections, specifically, state Secretaries of State*. I imagine that if you took some African country and plunked the entire US model into it as-is, people would be screaming about how it's not a democracy.

*By contrast, for federal elections here, the only people (other than minors) not allowed to vote are the two people at the top of Elections Canada, so that the public can be certain that the election is being run by somebody truly nonpartisan.

[ironbite]

Seriously all these special elections have been in safe Republican strongholds.  It's disappointing that we lost but to come so close?  Dude that's amazing.

Ironbite-+20 districts almost falling does not bold good fortunes for the +6 districts they'll have to defend come 2018.

[dpareja]

Seriously all these special elections have been in safe Republican strongholds.  It's disappointing that we lost but to come so close?  Dude that's amazing.

Ironbite-+20 districts almost falling does not bold good fortunes for the +6 districts they'll have to defend come 2018.

I point you to the recent special election for New York's State Assembly, where a district that went +23 for Trump and +37 for the Republican candidate in 2016 went to a Sanders delegate in said special election by 16. These districts could have been flipped.

(And note that New York Republicans these days are not the John Lindsay/Jacob Javits/Nelson Rockefeller-style Republicans of decades past; they are firmly Trump/Tea Party-brand Republicans.)

[dpareja]

This doesn't annoy me so much as incense me; here's a Republican on the process the Republicans are using to ram health care "reform" (really a massive tax cut for the rich) through:

If anything, the Republicans are getting smarter about legislating. If your opponents are intractably against whatever you want to do, why give them a chance to sabotage the process?

FUCK OFF YOU ANTI-DEMOCRATIC ASSHOLE.

https://www.budget.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/SENATEHEALTHCARE.pdf

Oh, and there's the Senate bill. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

[Askold]

I have once again seen someone unironically say that if you want socialism "move to China or Russia."

...I know that it's hard to keep up with current events but how long does it take for these people to find out that USSR collapsed years ago?

[dpareja]

Next time you see that, reply, "And if you want capitalism, move to Somalia."

[The_Queen]

Next time you see that, reply, "And if you want capitalism, move to Somalia."

I miss Neutral Guy (who also greatly annoyed me).

[Askold]

So many people upset about Wolfenstein mistreating the "poor innocent Nazis."

[Søren]

My partner gets on my case because I refuse to do small talk to randoms. We were at a pub the other night, and our friend's friend is talking with us (five or six people not including me). I was on my phone most of the night, didnt really have anything to say (80 percent of the conversations were of magic the gathering, doctor who, nothing i knew about)

Then we are walking to the station couple of days later, she comes up. And the conversation between them is literally just "how are you, im good, nice weather" crap. He gets on my case and says im rude for not saying anything other than hello. Like...dude...you know me...i dont bother with that crap. He thinks the talk is polite, i think its a great reason to throw yourself into oncoming traffic.

[Askold]

Someone had a really good point about a villain in One Piece manga/anime who is implied to be a FTM trans. The series has a character who can by touching people control their hormones and cause bodily changes. These changes include stuff like giving them power boosts, rapid healing, shape change but also this character can basically transition people from physically male to female or vice versa.

Anyway, point is that at one point in the rant it was mentioned that the person with the "hormone powers" transitions an enemy who is so happy about the results that they defect. Which is actually bullshit. What happened was that the person was angry because their father, a king of an island, had been turned into a woman and the family had been disgraced. Hormone, fella explains that the king had wanted to be a woman and they just granted them that wish and then they change the angry son into a woman as well. Except that the latter person does not appreciate this and runs away crying. There is no implication that I have seen that they had also been a transperson and wanted that to happen.

So yeah, the series has several trans characters, the first such was a comedic and not in a nice way. A few have been good guys (including the comedic character) and later on the series has some nicer portrayals of a person wanting to transition or in two occasions people who change gender at a whim and it's not a big deal to people (other than that they at first don't recognize them after the change.)