Epstein files are the only thing that’s maintained even a tiny bit of traction among his supporters and made some of them…well I’d say think twice, but that implies thinking a first time.

Because after Trump’s first term, including the failed coup, when nothing happened to them, the republicans came to a startling realization: no matter what they do there are no consequences, because the democrats refuse to enforce any.

For decades they’ve worked to be either technically within the law, or carefully over the line in ways that are both deniable and difficult to prosecute. But during Trump’s first term, it became apparent they don’t need to do that anymore. They can do whatever the fuck they want and no one will impose any consequences. Even if someone stops them in the moment, they just get to try again.

And it’s all because democrats are too concerned with decorum and looking polite.

So why can’t democrats do the same? Cause you bet your britches the republicans will hold them to account if they start doing whatever they want. Republicans would love that. They would be thrilled to lock up most of the democrats. But given the opportunity and very real justification for doing so, the democrats just…didn’t do it to the republicans.

It’s an innocent looking woman bawling her eyes out while being arrested. Why would they think this would help their anti-immigration cause?

Didn’t you notice her skin is dark, and she’s fat? Also probably something about her hair. These obvious signs point to the true evil inside her, you see! Only a bleeding heart satanic liberal atheist could see that and think she’s an innocent woman!

The way I perceived it, that’s exactly what it was. Yeas, the kids of stupid people are stupid but I don’t recall it being specified it was genetic. The sequence in the movie just made me think it was upbringing and lack of education.

Stupid people on average will have stupider kids, if their parents believe education to be a prissy intellectual thing for gay liberals and not for good decent hard working people like us.

Now show me where they’re paying attention to what they can’t do.

Like, how nobody can just access secure government systems without proper clearance, which the President can’t actually just give without procedure.

Or even more simply, the fact that Trump is not in fact currently eligible to be President in the first place due to his part in the events of Jan. 6.

I do not have confidence that they will be stopped by the fact that something is not permitted, because they aren’t being stopped by things that are not permitted, and if this continues for 4 years…there will be nothing left of the system that is supposed stop them.

Nationalize the companies involved in production and distribution and eliminate profit, making and selling everything at-cost also works.

Of course that’s what you see - those ideas have been planted. That’s exactly what they want, they want regulations to prevent just anyone from getting into it and making use of the technology.

OpenAI whining about not being able to make money if they can’t use the training data? That’s Brer Fox Rabbit crying “please don’t throw me into the briar patch, anything but that!” because if such regulations happen they’ll pay a fine or something and then…nobody new can compete with the established parties. They absolutely love to use regulations to pull the ladder up behind themselves so they can’t be competed with.

If anything I wonder if all the weird shit they’re pushing is just to stoke anti AI sentiment so they can get these regulations passed.

It’s deeper than that. It’s about defense of the Status Quo. No superhero looks around at the parts of society that we just accept without thinking about and says this needs to change.

Yeah, and we still haven’t learned the lesson. We have people today attacking AI technology rather than the way it’s being used to funnel wealth inequitably.

It actually helps the wealthy capitalists, because they can use that sentiment to promote regulations that will entrench their positions.

Primaries are only rigged in that yes, the rules and the entire framework is built to benefit those currently in power, but that is less rigged than the general is against a third party, which is to say, totally, absolutely, and unassailably rigged. Proclaiming it impossible because it’s rigged is silly when you’re advocating for instead competing in one that is far, far more rigged and has far more structure to prevent any upsets.

We have never actually won a primary and had them ignore it. They use their structural advantages as much as they can, but if we push hard enough to overcome those advantages, they don’t just nullify the election and go with their candidate. We do get people like Ocasio-Cortez in there from time to time, when people actually show up to the primaries enough to flip it to the more progressive candidate. If we got enough candidates like her in, not just in congress but state houses and such too, we’d actually start getting places.

Now the bribes and money on the corporate side, nothing we can do about that - we have to overcome it so that we can get officials in place that will do something about it.

Now lemme put it this way. I live in bumfuck Ohio where there’s no chance of a progressive candidate being elected. But I still vote in every primary. People who live in places where there is more of a chance of doing something need to be as diligent as I am, if not more, damnit.

No, a third party is non viable. But the right move would have been exactly what the crazy right wingers have done with the Republicans. Get organized and primary the fuck out of the people blocking things.

The “tea party” gave us the blueprint, but we’ve been too dumb and lazy to follow it. When they didn’t give us the public option with Obamacare, every primary since then should have been about cleaning house of the corporatist, establishment Democrats and replacing them with real progressives. But since we’re too lazy and dumb to vote in primaries in mass numbers, their establishment people keep sailing to victory.

That guy failed. It makes a big difference when they actually get killed.

The time to do this would’ve been immediately after it was discovered that Trump took classified documents and had them in his home during visits from foreign agents.

The Republicans would’ve howled about it, but I think it could have been done, at that moment. Like, have the first news about it not be talking about the documents, but simply that former President Trump has been detained and will not be allowed to communicate with anyone but his legal representation, because of suspicion of potential coded communication to enemy agents.

Ummm…yes! Of course I would make that compromise! If I have a choice between they both die or one dies, of course I’m taking the choice where one lives!

What wouldn’t I be willing to compromise on? Nothing. If I have a choice between bad and worse, I’m taking bad, what kind of lunatic would intentionally choose worse?

At the end of Obama’s term wouldn’t have made any difference because by then McConnell was committed to holding the seat open for the next Republican.

But people called for her to resign back during the middle of Obama’s presidency, when the Democrats controlled the Senate, and her hubristic old ass decided to fuck everyone else by hanging onto power and prestige and trying to be even more historically important.

Woman had a bigger ego than Trump and Musk, and I really hope that historical opinion of her fucking remembers that.

This is not quite accurate. The vice president must be eligible to be the President, not to be elected President. The 22nd amendment has some very specific language.

“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”

It prevents someone from being elected President, but does not make the person ineligible to be the President since it only restricts that one method of gaining the office. A person can definitely become President through succession even if they have served their full two terms already…at least by the constitution as written.

That gives a false picture since it only counts legal declared spending.

For instance, what’s the effective value to Trump’s campaign of Elon Musk buying Twitter and using it to explicitly promote right wing views? How much did Russia spend this time to promote Trump? What about Israel, cause I’ll wager Netanyahu prefers having Trump in office, since Kamala might’ve demanded at least some holding back.

Actual spending to promote Republican and right wingers was way higher.

Are they running anyone in elections they might actually win? I might vote for a party like that for mayor or something. But I wouldn’t even vote for them for state house representative unless they were well known enough in my state that they might actually win.

‘Third’ parties in this country can show themselves as serious if they try to establish themselves from the bottom up. If all they do is run for president and occasionally Senate or House, then they show themselves as unserious parties which are probably nothing more than attempts to siphon votes that might have gone to a real candidate.

Even Trump can occasionally be right!

Up until the court decided to start ignoring centuries of legal tradition that is the bedrock of our legal system and threw out stare decisis the decision was actually more secure than a specific law.

Any law codifying it can be challenged on many grounds, especially the 10th amendment. It could easily have been struck down as unconstitutional because the federal government has no power to pass a law affecting this issue, since the constitution doesn’t grant it.

Only a constitutional amendment would have been likely to survive a court willing to do what this one has done, and there is zero possibility the Democrats could have passed one.