The problem with letting the President unilaterally start a war is that you can’t unilaterally end a war - you can only unilaterally stop fighting, which is different and often a bad idea.

There has to be some balance between promising the voters what they think they want and actually doing what is a good idea.

The ship is not expected to be delivered until 2034

Why do they bother? It’s not like the ship will still be named after Trump by the time it’s built even if it’s named after him now.

Vindman wouldn’t have been a MAGA Republican.

Ashley Moody, the Republican candidate, was elected by a 21-point margin last time. If only the people voting in the Democratic primary vote for the Democrat in the general election, the Democrat definitely loses. So yeah, in this case I trust establishment leaders to do what might have won the election. Vindman still probably would have lost, but at least he had a chance.

Yeah, this is just self-destructive. There’s a good reason that the Democratic party tried to prevent it.

Th headline is misleading.

Another committee member told him he needed “to shut up and listen.” Vindman argued that he’d chosen to continue the conversation, but was being “attacked.” The same committee member reportedly told Vindman to “shut the f**k up.”

“You can’t f**king talk to me that way,” Vindman reportedly responded, before walking away without taking any further questions.

No one has to take that sort of treatment.

I tried to eat natto but I couldn’t go through with it. The taste was fine, but the appearance was just too much for me. It was like eating a bowl of mucus.

The one I had was actually pretty tasty, but it tasted like ordinary (but well made) fried tofu. I suppose I should be grateful that it didn’t taste the way it smelled, but I admit I was a little disappointed.

Sorry to disappoint you, but I was in Taiwan. It did smell so bad while the vendor was still out of sight that I thought my friend was pranking me by leading me to an open sewer or something.

I’ve had stinky tofu from a street vendor, which is both a fairly normal food and absolutely something that might cause a person to gag.

(As for the grossest thing I’ve eaten: one time, I found that beetles had infested my stash of buckwheat, so rather than letting them have it, I cooked it and skimmed them off when they floated to the top. I wouldn’t do that again because I’m a vegetarian now…)

I wasn’t asking a rhetorical question. I think letting these people starve, as opposed to force-feeding them, is arguably the right thing to do, but my impression is that that would be a view far out of the mainstream and I would be surprised to hear prominent human rights groups advocating it.

Forcing medical procedures on detained hunger strikers is seen as torture by many human rights groups and medical organizations.

So do these human rights groups and medical organizations advocate a policy of letting hunger strikers starve to death? Do they extend this to allowing prisoners to commit suicide by any means, or is it specific to refusing food? I don’t think that would necessarily be unreasonable but the article doesn’t specify.

That’s treating people as existing solely for your own benefit, to be exploited.

What do you mean by that in this context? I don’t think Medicaid pays for people’s healthcare in order that they might work (at least not in this context). It is rather more like a charity program, with the associated reasoning being that people who could work instead of accepting charity should.

The same place you do for people without a terminal diagnosis - you have to have a system for doing that anyway.

I have to say, that doesn’t seem unreasonable. My understanding is that one can get a terminal diagnosis long before one becomes too sick to work.

I’d say that this actually illustrates one of the strengths of the American system. In a context of bitter partisan division, the delegation of authority to individual states prevents an all-or-nothing national outcome and gives people places to go where the government is aligned with their needs and their values. Obviously relocating is expensive and disruptive, but the most powerful right a citizen can have is his exit right.

They don’t have a majority in the Senate for it even if the Senate accepts it as a budget bill, which is not guaranteed.

But whatever you do, don’t call him an extremist.

The author of this article seems to be arguing against an attitude towards Elon Musk which doesn’t actually exist. There’s no widespread perception of him as a moderate, and no taboo against calling him an extremist. Major newspapers aren’t making a big deal of his endorsement of this film because it isn’t surprising, not because they tacitly approve.

They got sentenced to about five years each, except for the guy who hurt a police officer and got two years more. That on its face does not seem unreasonable to me for causing over a million pounds in damage even without any sort of terrorist connection. How long are people in Britain responsible for hundreds of thousands of pounds in damage each usually sentenced for, given that this sentence is so outrageous to the author?