Yea, not a fan of Buittegeig either for the reason you stated and also some of his policy positions. For what it’s worth, though AOC, Bernie, and Zohran aren’t perfect, I think they serve as a pretty good counterpoint.

I truly cannot stress enough that I don’t care about his philandering or personal life, just his policy positions or his personal beliefs that would affect those positions. I don’t really think it’s whataboutism. I don’t think we should be increasing military benefits until we address the actual problem with the military. He admits he watched people murder civilians aboard for fun and he did nothing about it. I don’t think a morally upstanding person can do that and still sign up to support the US military. I don’t think that’s a particularly high bar to clear, and morality is a pretty good predictor of politics in my experience. I’m not saying Mainers need to abstain or that they have a better option, just that I think we can do better. I’d like to see us commit to doing better, but obviously my idea of better differs from others because the left is not of one mind.

I think it’s reductive to suggest the alternative to someone with the number of issues Platner has would be smooth groined. Plenty of Dems with better policy positions (imo) haven’t victim blamed SA survivors, kept supporting our military activities despite admitting to being personally aware of people targeting civilians for fun and leveling cities, or had a Nazi tattoo.

My biggest issue sticking point is his stance on the military, but maybe that is less bothersome to others. I’m not saying people shouldn’t vote for him, but there’s plenty of people in the US that are on the left and don’t have that kind of history.

Died is the past tense of the word die. I think in this case they are indeed wrong.

It’s ok to say “I loved my wife, I still do, but I did previously too.” Since the love occurred in the past tense that makes sense, but since her death has not occurred I do not believe OP is grammatically correct.

I don’t really eat at fast food places with kiosks, but when I have had the occasion I actually prefer it too. Because I don’t eat at these places often I am generally unfamiliar with the menu and the kiosk tends to have it organized with pictures which are helpful if I don’t know what a “crazy burger” is. It also makes me feel less rushed since I don’t have a human on the other end who has to wait for me to decide or to tell me what’s in a crazy burger or whatever. Especially because a lot of places don’t seem to display their full menu anymore. Not sure what’s up with that.

Hi! Just a ping about the article if that’s still on the table.

I appreciate your perspective, but please note I’m not attempting to promote apathy. I’ve said regularly to go out and vote, even for imperfect candidates, and I understand why people would vote for him, but he has removed several parts of his platform after being publicly criticized for them. Below is an archived version of his website that has the following quotes:

I will work tirelessly to rebuild the American military.

If we are serious about addressing the recruitment crisis, we will take some money out of these ungodly contractor and bureaucrat salaries, and pay the rank and file a fair wage.

Full disclosure, I have very little sympathy for our troops and see what they do as very different than working for MS or something. I’m not against them moving on from that life, but I don’t think we should be supporting an increase in recruitment until we can get a handle on rape within the military, war crimes, and better options for civilians. If we keep investing in compensation for troops and vets it will be more and more tempting for the exact wrong kind of people (people who just need a paycheck). I know people in the military and they often went that route because there was no other options for them. We should have much higher recruitment standards. That should in part stop people who sign up and have no concept of right and wrong and do war crimes for fun.

I also do not support the VA. There should not be a two tier system for healthcare. If a vet qualifies for Medicare or Medicaid then they should have access, but we need Medicare for all and a VA stands in the way of that.

To be clear I don’t care too much about the concept of military spending in general. A military is needed after all, but I’d rather money be spent on corruption and waste than on more soldiers. As it stands now, I do not feel safer in a room with soldiers, so I don’t like the idea of making more of them.

To be as fair as possible to him, he does say he wants to get rid of military spending fraud and stop forever wars, but that seems like an extension of his want to devote more spending to the actual military.

https://web.archive.org/web/20250827163707/https://www.grahamforsenate.com/platform

Edit: formatting

I pass an anti data center yard sign quite regularly that is featured right next to a pro trump yard sign. It’d be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

I wish he would have sat out forever. He’s unrepentant about his involvement with the military and is looking to increase military benefits.

The left has no need of people who are in support of expanding the military, especially considering what it’s been up to recently. Just one “drug” boat targeted by us would be enough to demonstrate that our military has no intention of following the law or denying illegal orders. Unfortunately for us there have been enough “drug” boat attacks to demonstrate that the entire organization is corrupt and not worthy of its current budget.

If we have enough firepower to waste murdering civilians then we should consider investing more money in schools so people can learn the definition of the word. Any politician who can’t see that should not be taken seriously or embraced by the left.

That’s super nice of you! Greatly appreciate it. Will do!

If anyone ends up getting access, I would also be interested in the study.

I work with small businesses and generally they are not using AI. I don’t know if that holds everywhere but that’s true of my area in the us at least.

That makes sense. I have been asked to write a program that does a standard spreadsheet function on multiple occasions, so I was just curious. Sometimes people just don’t know the tools at hand, want to offload their work, or think an over complicated workflow is a better workflow. I can see how it was actually useful in your case though.

How big were the CSVs? That sounds like a standard thing most spreadsheet apps can do already, unless the data size made traditional apps unusable.

I don’t think it’s a bait and switch. It’s not going to charge you for the game once it’s no longer free. Plenty of games do discounted releases or have a “free week” once in a while to drum up some attention.

It’s from RT.

Per the Wikipedia article on RT: RT has regularly been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy. Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation and conspiracy theories. UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast “materially misleading” content.

In 2012, RT’s editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Russian Ministry of Defence. Referring to the Russo-Georgian War, she stated that it was “waging an information war, and with the entire Western world”. In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a foreign agent with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

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I don’t necessarily have sympathy for them, but they do say that they have voted for Dems since and that people need to stop watching Fox News. I obviously have no way of guaranteeing they never vote R ever again, but it seems like they learned at least a little. Is it enough? Probably not, but they apparently were willing to lose friends and family over this change. I’m sure there’s still a lot of distance between their politics and mine, but at a certain point we have to allow people to come out and say this. They’re publicly isolating and basically humiliating themselves to show people there’s a way out. I can’t offer that and someone needs to because there needs to be a viable path out of the Fox News pipeline. I’d love if everyone woke up tomorrow with the goal to bring about luxury gay space communism or whatever, but barring that, how do we expect the country to change for the better if we don’t allow people to change for the better? Even if what sparked that change isn’t what or when we would have liked. I’m not saying we have to like or forgive them, but they live here regardless so I’d rather too little too late than never at all.

Them when electing a president:

[ ] literally anyone else

[X] man who “says things off the top of his head and doesn’t think them through”

I guess he really won out with relatability because they also appear to say things off the top of their heads and not think them through.

Fair enough. I took it to mean more “he wouldn’t do it because it would be catastrophic”. I see now it was meant more to draw attention to the issues it would cause.

He literally started a war over nothing. At best it was to distract us from the fact he’s a pedophile rapist. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don’t think he really cares about our country.