gAlienLifeform

Yeah, I've got some very mixed feelings about Booker two. Moreover, if this is the beginning and end of his plans, I don't think it's going to accomplish damn thing, because we are never going to guilt Republicans into being better people.

That all being said, I can't deny that it's an impressive physical sacrifice if nothing else, and if watching him stand up there so long with his voice breaking and getting emotional and worn down guilts moderate Democratic lawmakers into being less useless the next time something they could actually filibuster comes up it might be the beginning of what needs to happen.

Either way, it's better than literally nothing, and at this point I'll take anything.

Nope, a motion for cloture would end this speech and any other debate and move the Senate along to its next vote

I mean, giving an extra long speech where you point out all the terrible things Trump is doing and read letters from constituents is doing something, it's just not a filibuster or anywhere near the level of intensity we need. Telling Republicans they're hurting people isn't going to change their minds.

"Booker's speech is not a filibuster because it is not blocking legislation or a nomination." (archived)

Also, "can't" is bullshit, they just don't want to

Huh, I'd never considered that difference. Every grammar resource I've seen online says "in spite of" and "despite" currently have the exact same meaning and the emotional connotations of "spite" (which seems to have just meant "in opposition to" for longer than it's meant "in opposition to for vindictive reasons") never got inferred into the phrase "in spite of", but I actually think your reading makes more sense for how it should be (if only because there's no point in having "in spite of" and "despite" mean different things).

Then they would cease to be public media and would just be another non-profit news organization/content producer

Also, federal funding is a tiny chunk of NPR and PBS, but the individual member stations that actually broadcast the stuff NPR and PBS produce tend to get a lot bigger chunk of their budgets through the feds (this is what they're talking about when they say the funding is "crucial to bringing public broadcasting to local communities")

I'd be ok with just ruling out that first option

I'm sure RFK's CDC will get right to the bottom of what happened here and prevent it from happening again /s

This isn't even the worst thing to come out of Rankin County in the past few years, they're home of the police department that the media dubbed the goon* squad for their habit of just straight up kidnapping and torturing people. Like, they only got caught because a dumb bastard forgot to unload his gun before doing a mock execution and accidentally shot the tongue off of someone and they couldn't come up with anyway to make the forensics on that look like anything other than what it was (they did try to argue they were somehow defending themselves for a few days).

*Slang changes fast, okay?

"felt like a kidnapping."

In related news, these snozzberries feel like like snozzberries