This is all so incredibly transparent, suddenly the man being accused of being a pedo along with Epstein is now interested in sending his team to meet with Maxwell who wants a pardon or commuted sentence, instead of just releasing the files like they promised they would and would have surely exonerated him, but after weeks of refusal can you now even trust what files they do release? Especially alongside this obvious attempt to get Maxwell to lie for Trump. Hopefully that monster dies before she ever leaves prison.

Ghislaine Maxwell deserves to spend the rest of her life in prison. The whole Maxwell family needs to shut up and go away. Those turds didn’t fall far from the asshole.

America's collective stupidity was in action yesterday. When Trump talked about lowering drug prices by 500% or more, both The Daily Show and Stephen Colbert had it in their shows. There wasn't widespread laughter until the respective hosts had explained that lowering prices by 100% would make drugs free and any more than that would mean that pharma companies pay you to take their drugs.

Now mind you, the audiences in the studios when these shows are recorded are predominantly not Republican voters. MAGA people being unable to pick up on Trump's insane stupidity wouldn't be surprising in the least, but you'd expect better from non-MAGA folks. Then again, there had to be a reason why actually left candidates in primaries do not tend to win.

Trump is losing his shit over South Park. Paramount fired Colbert to appease Trump (and paid Trump millions in extortion money over the 60 Minutes brouhaha) to allow a takeover by Larry Ellison's nepo-baby son, and this is what Trey and Matt (who were vocally opposed to the Skydance takeover) came up with. 

Look, I don't know if you're just being intellectually dishonest or have comprehension problems but the statement "Lincoln needed it as much as southern leaders to have a moral cause to justify families sending their boys to die" does not mean I believe it was a moral cause, but that Lincoln and southern leaders (the subject of the sentence) did.

Maybe before accusing Americans of "collective stupidity", you might want to consider looking in your own home first.

Where were you again to call for the release in 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, or 2024? 

Or is this just because your team suddenly found this politically expedient?

Lol, fair enough!  Tragically, I wouldn't call this capitalism right now, preferring corporatism instead.  A great book from 20 years ago (by a modern-day Trump critic, no less!) is Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.  He's approaching things from the right during the Bush era but is fair in his treatment of the subject.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0767917189?psc=1&language=en_US

I also don't think we're beyond the point of recovery, but the key element we're missing is objective virtue.  At the risk of momentarily going off-topic for illustration, just look at the dating scene these days; I really feel sorry for Gen Z given all the confusion, misplaced expectations and toxicity that was built into that system.  There used to be rules around appropriate behavior, communication, etc which we intentionally threw out the window because it was deemed "old fashioned". 

Men are now starting to realize this, mainly because the system is so plainly rigged against them at the present moment, and this has fed the MAGA movement.  Yet, political or social solutions aren't going to start the 180 we need to do here.  Rediscovering why we held views in past generations on purity, monogamy, honesty, fidelity, loyalty, humility and a slew of other virtues, both in dating and in politics, is the only stepping stone I believe we can get to in order to pull ourselves back from the brink.

Otherwise, as you (and Ben Franklin again) suggested: a society without any morals will naturally appeal for tighter and tighter oversight and controls to stop bad things from happening in everyone's lives.

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Why did conservatives start pushing for the release? Why didn't they in 2019, when Trump was president? 

Conservatives have created this theater, with many of them claiming it'll hurt Democrats. 

Responding to that theater, politically convenient, sure.  

But it's frankly how the modern news cycle works. Stuff is relevant for a few weeks, and then it's not. 

Google Trends for Russo-Ukrainian War

Obviously the week that the invasion happened, people's interest in the overall war shot up massively. Does that mean they don't still care? 

There are too many issues going on in the world to constantly talk about all of them. At any given time, only a few get that much attention.  

Uh, this is over simplistic and probably wrong overall - this idea that people aren't holding morals anymore is absurd. If anything there are more people pushing for morals than ever before like honesty, fidelity. You don't think people had affairs in the past? 

People are pushing back harder on rape, cheating, general entitlement, spousal abuse. 

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