It's sad how that can apply to either Maher himself or his guest, Rahm Emmanuel.

Same here. It's why the most recent photo that's of me online is an extended family photo that my mom posted on Facebook over 5 years ago for my cousin's wedding.

Sure, that might take another decade when I turn 40, but like the famous saying goes, "sometimes it's worth the wait." It just sucks that I have to suffer for the time being.

Stuff like that is why I'm doing everything that I can to save up enough that I have a fairly decent amount in my savings to afford to become a Canadian citizen and move to Winnipeg (mainly because it's the closest decently sized city closest to Minnesota) that I will be more open about my true self

It further squashed any hopes of that when my mom's other siblings agreed with her about it being a big deal, and my mom cared too much about being in their good graces to really speak out about it that it just made me feel further alone.

I mean, that all happened a couple of years ago, but still.

I was hoping that my mom's siblings would be at least somewhat accepting of my being a bi/pan enby, but when her older brother's nearly 65 yo wife started freaking out about the fact that A KINDERGARTENER was caught wearing his sister's underwear at the nearby school, fully quashed any hope of it.

Should I ever become an official Canadian citizen and move to Winnipeg (it's the closest decently sized Canadian city to Minnesota, my current state), I plan to be more open about my true self, but I unfortunately don't feel safe to do so at this current time.

Even my mom's siblings (including her 45 year old brother) are a little too conservative for me to be open around them as well.

Way too many of the coworkers on the assembly line at the company where I work at are fairly conservative and have been for some time, so I have yet to feel comfortable with being open about my true self.

My mom forced me and my sister to move back to a fairly small (the population is only about 26,000) semi-liberal town because her siblings and mom live around there. The main problem is that, with me being nearly 30 with only an HS diploma, my career options are extremely limited.

All this is to say that you are not alone and that there are many people (like me) who are in the same boat as you. You're just a little bit further in that journey than I currently am.

Stuff like that is why I refuse to be public about my true self, at least for the time being. If I have to wait for another 10 years when I turn 40 (I will turn 30 this July) when/if I hopefully become a Canadian citizen and move to Winnipeg ("Canada's middle child"), then so be it.

One of my coworkers was public about her being a lesbian, & sure, some of our coworkers were accepting of it, one of the coworkers that she had to work next to day after day (we work on an assembly line) kept on bullying her into going back into the closet (at least at work).

Stuff like that is why I don't plan on telling anyone but my (eventual — I don't have one yet) therapist and people on this site who don't know me personally about me being a bi/pan enby person. I want to wait until I am living in a larger, more accepting city before I become public with that.

They could take Nebraska's note and run independents in those "solidly Republican" states. Independent Dan Osborn barely lost to Republican Deb Fischer, and that was in 2024. Should he decide to run again, with how unpopular GOP is nationally, Dan has a decent chance of winning this time.

What they should do is push independent candidates to run in those states. Independent Dan Osborn barely lost to his Republican opponent, Deb Fischer, in 2024. The best Democrats can hope for is for Independents to run in those states and have them promise to caucus more with Democrats than the GOP.

I agree that this is just wishful thinking on Buttigieg's end that Democrats have even a chance of even making it to the ballot in that state, but it would be interesting to see an independent who even just occasionally caucuses with Democrats would fare in that state as well.

An independent has a higher chance of taking that state than a Democrat ever will. I mean, just look at Nebraska. They are known as a "solidly Republican" state, and yet independent Dan Osborn just barely lost to his Republican opponent, Deb Fischer.

Same here. I found out that I can't handle Indica strains because I get paranoid and start uncontrollably twitching every so often when I take a fairly big hit from my weed vape. I also get that "couch-lock" condition when on it.

Let's just hope that, should he get elected president, he doesn't go the same way as Obama of running on a fairly progressive campaign and constantly degrading his Republican opponents only to reverse direction a year in and start capitulating to the right-wing "moderates" of both parties.

It's just sad that so many are willing to vote for a smarter, more coherent version of Trump. Just as authoritarian, but at least they aren't brain-dead like Trump. I know WAY too many Millennial and Gen X people who hate Trump but share many of his same politics. It's really sad how that is.

It's not just older people Millennials and Gen Xers are becoming terrible as well.

Then there's my Millennial aunt who claims to be anti-Trump but goes out of her way to fulfill various Trump conservative goals, like making public schools worse by sending her daughters to a Catholic school and making the ACA worse by choosing a fake Xtian "insurance" org instead of the ACA.

It's not just older people. I have a Millennial coworker who spends the vast majority of her daily life either watching various TV shows or going on various beer tours with her husband and friends. Only occasionally does she keep up-to-date with the news.

I know @reason.com is a terrible news outlet, and I should stop reading their posts on YouTube, but I just remember reading the comment section on their recent post about his city-run grocery stores, and it disappointed me at how many people hate progress just because "rich conservatives hate it".

What's hilarious is that he's Sister Souljah-ing himself:

bsky.app/profile/bubb...

No one but Beshear himself on more than one occasion, apparently:

bsky.app/profile/bubb...

Sure, most of the mutual aid stuff was talked about through either a Signal group chat or a private Facebook group, but the fact that my local newspaper even just wrote an article about the anti-ICE protests that happened in my city on more than one occasion surprised me even more.