Soccer diehards team up with Argentine retirees to protest pension reform (2025)

I guess we’ll have this to look forward to when they eventually gut the whole thing.

That’s exactly what I’m expecting. They’ll just make a whole lotta new things illegal and jailable then apply the laws in a specific way such that only “particular peoples” are incarcerated and used as prison slaves. We saw this in post-Reconstruction South, during Jim Crow, and over the course of the War on Drugs. My favorite was suddenly people just standing on sidewalks being arrested, charged, and convicted as vagrants then being forced to do legally allowed slave labor for the state under threat of punishment (beatings, torture, solitary confinement). America said “We’re banning slavery (except for this one case)” then immediately said “Let’s increase the number of people who can be exceptions.” This is a re-run. Or better yet, a remake of an old movie or show.

I’m fleeing Texas in the next couple of months because of this and possibly getting caught up in mass deportations even though I’m a citizen. I’m Hispanic, my wife is white. I’m leaving my wife behind because she doesn’t want to go. All I can think is ‘Thank goodness we don’t have kids.’ I’m so lucky I’ve got friends and family in freedom loving states and I feel for those who don’t.

We both know there’s gonna be separate standards for the in group (them) and the out group (all the rest of us). Hell, here’s an in group member who got 10 weekends in jail for that exact crime earlier this year. But, they’ll arrest us for providing food to people who need it. (Dayton 2024) (Houston 2023) The laws are already there in some cities, why not make it federal law and make the punishment severe.

Goddamnit! They’re trying to monopolize mayonnaise now?! They can take my more delicious Mexican and Japanese mayonnaises when they pry 'em from my cold dead hands!

Ha! My friend did this yesterday with their new partner who had never seen the movies.

I’m right there with you, but I am preparing for the worst case by moving to a blue state and near the border with Mexico. If things go south, I can go south and stay with relatives for a while.

Trump supporters in a couple of years: “He’s not hurting the people he needs to be”

They’ll say it not knowing, or believing, conservatives are hurting the people they see the need to hurt which are 90-something percent of people in this country.

Article about that time they said exactly this

I’m thinking similarly and that the Democrats will use the Senate filibuster to block as many things as they can. Of course, conservatives may end up changing the filibuster and ram through all their terrible policies, then they’d only have until the midterms to pass all the crazy stuff they want to pass. Unless they figure out an illegitimate way to stay in power and go full fascist authoritarian on us. No matter what, the next few years are gonna be terrible.

I can’t help but think Trump’s slogan should have been Make America Weak and Miserable. Everything they’re planning on doing is going to be terrible for the country domestically.

Here’s a fun thing that happened at the state level when Republicans cut taxes.

The Kansas Experiment

Essentially, the Republican dominated state government in Kansas significantly cut taxes, the ‘expected’ increase in revenue didn’t materialize, the quality and quantity of public services decreased, the state’s credit rating went down, and everyone got mad. After a few years, the governor was voted out of office and Republicans ‘saw the light’ and put the old taxes back in place. What’s wild is there are still conservatives who look at that and say ‘Well, you guys didn’t do it right. I still think it’s a good idea.’ If it were up to me, we’d go back to the tax levels we had when that antifa commie Marxist-Leninist far left extremist Eisenhower was in office.

Marginal Tax Rate on Regular Income over $400,000: 92% - 91%

Maximum Tax Rate on Long-Term Capital Gains: 25%

Romney’s Approx. Tax Bill: $5,250,000

During the administration of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a 92 percent marginal income tax rate for top earners in the United States remained from the previous administration of Harry S. Truman. At the time, the highest tax bracket was for income over $400,000.

This was nearly the highest tax rate for top earners in the century, just under the 94 percent rate for income over $200,000 instated during World War II under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency.

In 1954, the 92 percent marginal rate decreased to 91 percent under Eisenhower. The maximum tax on long-term capital gains was 25 percent – a rate that remained in place for a decade.

And-

Eisenhower explained it this way: The super rich could avoid the high taxes by investing their money in things that make America stronger. If they wanted to avoid high taxes, he said they could invest in business expansions and higher employee wages. They could give a million or two to tax-exempt non-profits that feed, house and clothe poor people of America, among other things.

I do wonder, though, what they’d do when

crops are left rotting in fields and houses and buildings aren’t rebuilt after disasters because all undocumented immigrants have been reported;

after LGBT+ folks hide themselves and “fit in” for safety like it’s the 1950s;

when there are masses of unemployed young people born after abortion and contraception are outlawed living in a nation unequipped to handle them;

after the education and environmental protection systems cease to exist and the country falls behind in every metric of a developed nation from an absence of knowledge pools and poison in everything.

What will they do after creating an environment that fosters stability, innovation, and a thriving society like we saw in the mid-2010’s Middle East. It sure sounds like a great and prosperous future, doesn’t it. Right?..

Here’s a list of states that have effectively banned adult films websites by requiring sites to verify a user’s age:

The states are:

• Alabama
• Arkansas
• Florida
• Georgia
• Idaho
• Indiana
• Kansas
• Louisiana
• Mississippi
• Montana
• Nebraska
• North Carolina
• Oklahoma
• Texas
• Utah
• Virginia

How age is verified:

While the specifics vary between states, in general the new laws mean users are required to provide a pornographic website with a copy of their ID to obtain access or by sending it to a third party.

Project 2025 and “adult conent”

“Pornography, manifested today in the omnipresent propagation of transgender ideology … is as addictive as any illicit drug and as psychologically destructive as any crime. Pornography should be outlawed. The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned. Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders. And telecommunications and technology firms that facilitate its spread should be shuttered.”

What does this mean? Well it seems to mean that the far right want to define a book that features a same-sex couple as illegal pornography and throw the author of the book and any distributors of the book in prison. It seems to mean that a book talking about sexual violence could be classified as porn and banned. It seems to mean that talking about the existence of trans people would be “porn” and criminalized. In short: anything that goes against normative gender roles and hierarchies, or interrogates those hierarchies, could be considered obscene and criminalized.

These are the kinds of laws they have in theocracies. These were the kinds of laws they had in the Soviet Union. This is where they want to take us. And that is where we will go if we let them.

There’s a neat post I came across some time ago showing how few votes can still win the electoral college.

Comment link

Direct link to website

Turns out, though unlikely, it is possible to win the election with less than 25% of votes through the magic of the electoral college and disproportionate representation.

Here’s a fun thing about student loans: we have stupidly high tuition thanks to CA governor Reagan and president Nixon wanting to reduce the number of students protesting against the Vietnam War. Of course the excuse they used was to balance the budget. This is just one more in a long line of things that Reagan and Nixon ruined in this country for decades.

https://12ft.io/https://theintercept.com/2022/08/25/student-loans-debt-reagan/

Also, the real reason school vouchers were pushed was to backdoor segregation after Brown v Board of Education desegregated schools.

https://12ft.io/https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Here’s the original since 12ft.io looks a little weird on mobile. https://www.forbes.com/sites/raymondpierce/2021/05/06/the-racist-history-of-school-choice/

Nope! Everyone knows undocumented immigrants are buying ALL the houses, they’re taking ALL the jobs, and getting ALL the public benefits (except for the benefits welfare queens get), they’re bringing in and doing ALL the drugs, they’re committing ALL the crime, and they’re voting in ALL elections. It’s true, I saw it on the TV. They’re busy, I don’t know how they have the time to do all of that.

You know, it seems kind of ridiculous when typing it all out like that. Were the TV people lying to me? Can’t be; now excuse me, I’m going to tell my employees to keep working after clocking out and use the savings to buy several blocks of housing and rent them out at high rates. Their poor time management is not my problem.

Maybe Boeing should have thought of that before making poor decisions. It should learn a little something called personal responsibility and if it goes broke, well, that’ll be a shame. Anyway!