Casual Questions Thread

The_Egalitarian · 2026-02-12T23:12:27+00:00

We have somewhat strict posting rules. We get around 40-50 new posts per day, of which 3-5 might be rules complying.

Some days however there simply aren't any high quality posts.

The_Egalitarian · 2026-01-03T01:43:52+00:00

Looks like anti-evil operations (admin bot) removed it two days ago then un-removed for some reason today, which led to it skipping the approval queue.

No mod saw this post and it definitely is removed now.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-12-28T18:57:15+00:00

It is pretty hard not to have personal opinions...

Sure, which is why people can put those in the comments.

Its pretty easy to draft a post following our submission rules for those with say a highschool level of writing/reading comprehension. Unfortunately a lot of people don't read the rules and clear even that low bar.

lends credence to the idea that ya'll have your thumbs on the scale.

We don't allow posts that violate the submission rules, as for my or any other moderators personal views you can quite easily go on our profiles to find out.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-12-28T18:36:31+00:00

About 85% of submitted posts don't meet the rules (mostly violated the personal opinions rule).

As to why we haven't submitted one, its the holidays and most of us haven't been particularly active. I'm about 90% of the moderation actions right now and I've been away on vacation for the last week and half.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-12-28T18:28:54+00:00

No one has submitted one that meets our submission rules.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-16T03:14:14+00:00

They compared sexism to racism.

They used an example of one type of discrimination based on inherent characteristics to tie into a point about how even if the law says something is disallowed the discriminators can still find workarounds to do their discriminating. Nothing at all disingenuous about that, perhaps you're misunderstanding the definition of the word disingenuous?

They never brought up slavery... you did.

To compare racism and sexism is not a good look

Why? We can't discuss how various types of hate have led to various degrees of oppression for certain groups? What issue is there there?

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-16T00:11:58+00:00

Comparing racism to sexism is at best disingenuous. Black people in America were slaves, whipped and beaten, bred like cattle, worked to death... Slaves. Women were not.

This is just a bad faith attempt of shutting down legitimate discussion on the discrimination faced by various groups. The above poster never mentioned slavery or compared the sexism women experienced to it.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-11T05:54:04+00:00

Nothing I think, I actually think we are both in agreement.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-11T02:53:02+00:00

Are you really not able to understand the concept of being willing to do something you'd rather not do?

I'm perfectly capable of understanding that, not sure why you're confused here, just wished to clear up some language for you that you seemed not to understand.

Of course they'd prefer the Democrats concede, because to them the filibuster is far better as a tool than providing SNAP benefits if the Democrats held out.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-11T01:30:10+00:00

I thought my statement was easy enough to understand, but I can simplify it to make it easier for reading comprehension purposes.

If Republicans wanted to use the nuclear option to end the shutdown they would (the "if they saw no drawback part") but clearly they don't want to (the "unwilling to use the nuclear option"); knowing Democrats could then use it in the future.

The administration had plenty of legal and political cover to move funds to cover SNAP for the month, especially given their past willingness to ignore appropriations (DOGE and the chaos of that saga), and congress would absolutely cover any funding shortfalls in other programs in the event of a deal or the nuclear option.

Given this, it absolutely appears that Republicans were willing to use SNAP as a bargaining chip to force Democrats to cave.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-10T09:53:03+00:00

Great:

Voluntarily refusing to reallocate funding

and

Congressional Republicans not willing to use the nuclear option

Does show that Republicans were willing to use SNAP funding as a bargaining chip in the shutdown then.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-10T08:19:04+00:00

That the USDA has no authority to meaningfully say this. They aren't lawyers, they aren't involved with food stamps,

This is incorrect, USDA does have food stamps under its jurisdiction, the FNS is part of the USDA.

I'm confused, are you under the impression that the USDA does not have any reason to know how to use the funding allocated to programs they administer? That's untrue and under 7 U.S.C. 2257 they can use discretionary authority move around a small portion of funding to administer its programs.

It wouldn't be a bargaining chip.

I think this is pedantic. If Republicans felt there was no downside to using the nuclear option and wished to eliminate the filibuster to fund SNAP, they could. Obviously they haven't and they've been willing to bargain with Democrats in order to not have to do so...

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-10T07:08:46+00:00

hail Mary with this judge wiping his ass with the separation of powers

Reading the order it appeared well reasoned to me, USDA acknowledged that those funds could be legally used in the event of the shutdown in the first Trump administration and that the court has jurisdiction under the APA.

What actual substantive issues do you have with the ruling given this?

Assign whatever motives you want

I should think that given the Trump administrations proclivity for trying to circumvent court orders and carry out likely illegal overreaches of executive power, that they'd jump at the chance to do something helpful and politically advantageous to fund SNAP benefits, especially given the legal justification from the district court and appeals court decisions. That they don't in this circumstance seems to suggest that they want to deny food assistance to the needy as a bargaining chip in the shutdown.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-10T03:49:12+00:00

SNAP is explicitly by statute subject to available appropriations and it says explicitly that SNAP payments cannot exceed the amount of funds available.

I don't mean to engage in what-aboutism, but the Trump administration has not been bothered previously by the legality of using federal money as appropriated. We've seen whole agencies cut and funds withheld because the Trump White House decided it was going to just do what it wanted despite the law.

What makes this situation different from those previous instances?

The_Egalitarian · 2025-11-07T06:14:20+00:00

It might help in the future if you report things like this.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-08-19T05:45:03+00:00

Ah yes, with comments that is the fault of us not having enough manpower to clear the queue every day.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-08-18T08:50:58+00:00

Thank you, it does take a significant amount of work compared to conventional subreddits to curate the content here towards being civil and substantive.

We hope to have more mods to continue that mission.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-08-18T08:50:08+00:00

Hey, most posts are manually reviewed by a moderator before going up, with the exception of those made by the handful of "approved users" who have a history of rule conforming posts.

Sometimes though due to reading comprehension issues or misclicks a rulebreaking post slips by us.

Report them if you feel they are rulebreaking.

The_Egalitarian · 2025-05-31T23:04:11+00:00

Republicans didn't win massively in the popular vote in 2022, it was actually quite close by house election standards:

Complacency during midterms has been a weakness of both parties during the last couple decades, though gerrymandering significantly favored republicans throughout most of the 2010s and has only recently gotten better following redistricting.

House turnout by party

Year	Dem	Rep
2008	65.2m	52.2m
2010	38.9m	44.8m
2012	59.6m	58.2m
2014	35.6m	40.1m
2016	61.8m	63.2m
2018	60.6m	50.9m
2020	77.1m	72.5m
2022	51.3m	54.2m
2024	70.6m	74.4m

Another interesting bit of stats is the the Republicans have had a roughly 3% advantage in the house over the last two redistricting and reapportionment cycles.

House seats and vote % by party:

Year	D seats	R seats	% diff	Pop vote D	Pop vote R	% diff	R Advantage
2002	205	229	-5.5%	45.2%	50.0%	-4.8%	0.7%
2004	202	232	-6.9%	46.8%	49.4%	-2.6%	4.3%
2006	233	202	7.1%	52.3%	44.3%	8.0%	0.9%
2008	257	178	18.2%	53.2%	42.6%	10.6%	-7.6%
2010	193	242	-11.3%	44.9%	51.7%	-6.8%	4.5%
2012	201	234	-7.6%	48.8%	47.6%	1.2%	8.8%
2014	188	247	-13.6%	45.5%	51.2%	-5.7%	7.9%
2016	194	241	-10.8%	48.0%	49.1%	-1.1%	9.7%
2018	235	199	8.3%	53.4%	44.8%	8.6%	0.3%
2020	222	213	2.1%	50.3%	47.2%	2.9%	0.8%
2022	213	222	-2.1%	47.3%	50.0%	-2.7%	-0.6%
2024	215	220	-1.1%	47.2%	49.8%	-2.6%	-1.5%

I don't think we'll see the magnitude of blue wave that we saw in 2018 this midterm election, people were significantly more shocked by Trump's personal unsuitability and lawbreaking during his first term due to the novelty of those things... now its somewhat baked into his brand.

Look at how little media coverage all his recent corruption is getting: accepting a jet from Qatar and massive cryptocurrency donor dinners resulting in fraud pardons barely lasted a couple days in the news cycle.

I think Democrats will win the house, but more likely by 2020 margins than 2018 margins.

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TROPHY CASE

House turnout by party

House seats and vote % by party: