Guy Chamberlin

I think this is one of the reasons Twitter is treated more seriously. About a decade ago, it was scooping everyone with Arab Spring footage and people considered it a democratizing news source. Major political figures soon figured out it was the best place to make an announcement, float a trial balloon, or take a cheap potshot before deleting. Not to mention pro athletes and celebrities --- how many stories revolve around their Twitter posts? My wife tells me all sorts of breaking news, and when I ask where it came from she says "Twitter" and I have to follow up with "yeah, but whose account?" as it might be second or third hand or from a legit first hand news organization. But you gotta pay attention or you're just passing along hate tweets. On January 6, the 24/7 cable news networks were doing bland voice-overs with long camera shots of the Capitol while Twitter was feeding live footage of insurrection inside the building. CNN, Fox and the broadcast networks would have had jack squat without other people's cell phones + Twitter. Plus, we had a President who lived and breathed Twitter. And in some ways, that's all this is really about.

Yeah, there are a lot of women who desperately want to have children and rely on modern medical miracles to do so. But because in-vitro often runs the risk of partial and compromised pregnancies, both doctor and patient will now be classified as murderers if they do anything about it. I encourage the God's Will crowd to abandon any medical science that helps keep them alive. Or shut the f#&% up.

I've worked for both government and Fortune 500 organizations, and it's a close call. In both cases it's mostly a matter of Uppermost Management defending their turf at all costs, and Middle Management motivated to cover its a$$ and tracks, and everyone killing the messenger who inevitably brings bad news. Adorable how Republicans think an unshackled for-profit business model solves any of our problems. Hard to believe, but you will start missing government programs when the new overlords start slashing them, and everyone is reminded why they existed in the first place.

Tucker Carlson almost made me forget what an insufferable prick Jesse Watters is.

It really is a face-saving scenario. At this point there's not a great way for Putin to save face beyond Ukraine agreeing to never join NATO in return for and end to military hostilities, which Zelensky himself once considered a plausible option. I think the oligarchs and Russian infrastructure will crack before the military could secure Ukraine, and nobody is talking about the nightmare of administering the hostile nation if it surrenders. If Putin dies.....I'd like to think his successors declare a cease-fire in his honor, and use that for their own-face saving exercise. We could give them a toothless new non-aggression pact to take to their people as a victory over the U.S. I could live with that.

It would be a bit of a hoot, but it would also justify Russia's argument for the invasion.

Well in 2012 Ohio State was ineligible and all Nebraska had to do was beat an 8-5 Wisconsin team we'd previously beaten to get a Rose Bowl invite and Top Ten ranking. In 2016, Mike Riley's Husker's were undefeated at home in Big 10 play, almost beat Wisconsin at Camp Randall, and was still nationally relevant in Week 13. Indiana, Purdue, Minnesota, and Northwestern have all had their moments in the same conference, and Iowa has somehow emerged as a powerhouse. Are we aspiring to be them, now? Looking at the Big 12, I'm not seeing enough gimmes to think these Nebraska teams would be thriving had they stayed. It's not the conference or a conspiracy. Nebraska is going to have to step up and play big boy football with any given schedule.

I will say that I held out a shred of hope in November 2016 that Donald Trump would become slightly less inflammatory and dangerous as President. I based this partly on his narcissism: while appealing to angry voters is one thing, he wasn't going to risk the Trump brand on extremist policies and vengeance-baiting once in office. The job itself has historically been a moderating influence. Trump had also successfully bullied the Republican power-base, and I saw a potential upside in that. He was about to appoint people to cabinet and advisory positions who knew far more than he did, allowing him to take credit for their work while remaining the figurehead in the spotlight -- the only job he ever wanted. It wasn't going to be pretty, but it might not be the hot mess or march to fascism all the Trump-haters had been predicting. I was wrong.

It's been well documented by others, but basically American Christianity has drifted into the creation of an American Jesus that does not reflect his true Middle East upbringing or the context of his times. Jesus Christ became a symbol of American manifest destiny and his believers granted a higher moral calling. Especially among Evangelicals, this got co-opted into a form of religious nationalism and embraced by the political Right (whether believers or not) as a Christian Nation fighting a war against a modern and immoral secular world. What they (willfully) got wrong about Christianity is that pretty much any reading of the New Testament would land Jesus as a street-level activist in the progressive/social justice spectrum of modern America, and like Rome, the forces of American Nationalism would want to shut Jesus up as quickly as possible.

That Jesus is actually a slippery slope to social justice, and the United States is Rome.

If you have an issue with NPR, take it up with the fact-checkers. You won't find many news sources more careful about vetting what they report, or more proactive and respectful of the various sources they interview. If you sensed NPR reporters sounding upset and concerned at the prospect of Donald Trump's election in 2016 ---- well you caught 'em red handed. They are intelligent humans with an ear to the ground and a grasp of history, and they understood just how dark the coming years were about to get. They were, of course, right, although in truth things turned out worse than most imagined.

I heard the most powerful man in the world thought maybe you could stop a hurricane by dropping a nuclear bomb on it.

I hear Republicans and Independents on this board taking stronger stands against Trumpism than elected Democrats. For the last few cycles, the DNC has been most concerned about not alienating the moderate Republicans they hope to convert but rarely do, often by distancing themselves from their own progressive wing. It doesn't matter what those policies actually are, since everything the Democrats advance will be framed as socialism from the whackadoodle left. I would donate every penny to a candidate who could calmly walk America through the con jobs perpetrated by both parties. We don't need a charismatic figurehead right now as much as we need a good Assistant Principal.

I totally agree, but I get the narrative. Everyone seems to agree that politicians are self-serving hypocrites, and bureaucrats are the bane of our existence, and they see Trump as the outlier. All he has to do is blame the politicians and bureaucrats for failing to fulfill his vision (even if he appointed them) and claim the equally distrusted media is on a fake news witch hunt, and his followers can justify anything. He makes largely powerless folks feel like they're soldiers on a mission against powerful enemies.They don't notice they're in the pot of warm water that's slowly boiling.

Eh, not so clearly. Biden may have won, but Donald Trump got 10 million more voters than he did in 2016. Now Nebraskans are trying to decide which gubernatorial candidate is the most Trump-llke, or possibly worse.