Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents
from the zero-sum-governing dept
At one point, we had a functioning Constitutional Republic. Sure, it wasn’t an actual democracy — the Electoral College still elected our president — but it seemed to function about as well as any major nation’s government does, if not better on most occasions.
Then things changed. For reasons I still can’t understand, a failed billionaire with a sexual harassment problem was elected president. He lost the popular vote but won the electoral college vote, providing his base with plenty of reasons to ensure the electoral college still made the major decisions for the US of A.
After four years of extreme mismanagement, Trump lost the next election. He not only lost the popular vote, but he lost the electoral college vote. But rather than lame duck his way into presidential history like his predecessors, he offered his support to his followers’ attempt to overthrow the government.
This action shocked the portion of the nation still capable of being shocked following four years of demonizing anyone not straight or white while people died by the millions as the Trump Administration refused to treat a pandemic like a pandemic.
While, again for bizarre and incomprehensible reasons, Trump remains the frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination, somewhat distantly behind him is the great hope of Republicans who think “what if Trumpy, but not quite so Trumpy,” who also currently presides over Florida. Ron DeSantis has absorbed the lessons taught by one of worst presidents ever to endear himself to a voting base that seemingly desires the chance to have their throats crushed by their chosen government thug. He speaks for so-called constitutional originalists who believe the Constitution doesn’t cover anything they don’t like.
DeSantis is the freshest face of the Party of Hate, which has spent the past half-decade leveraging the support of political bottom feeders to roll back an already-shredded Constitution. If you think reversing Roe vs. Wade was the end goal, you’re lying to yourself. That may have set us back 50 years. The end goal is taking us back at least 150 years to a time when no one but white men could vote, and anyone not immediately recognizable as hetero would not be recognized as a human being with human rights.
Executive power has always been accessible to executives — whether they preside at the national or state level. Occasionally, abuses happen. But most executives seem to realize they have more to lose than gain if they leverage these powers to destroy their opposition.
Not only are the gloves off post-Trump, but Florida governor Ron DeSantis obviously feels he has nothing to lose by engaging in obviously-political deployments of his executive power. At one point, we had something resembling a democracy, replete with checks and balances. Now, we’re dealing with a competitive set of autocrats who desire a fuller deployment of ex-president Trump’s zero-sum version of democracy.
Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suspension of the prosecutor in Orlando is drawing attention to his repeated use of his executive authority to remove local officials whose policies he disagrees with, but who have not been charged with crimes.
Unlike previous Florida governors of both parties, who used their power under the Florida Constitution to suspend elected officials when they were charged with breaking the law, DeSantis has repeatedly removed elected officials for political and policy reasons.
Wednesday’s move — suspending Monique Worrell, the state attorney in Orange and Osceola counties — comes as DeSantis is looking to change the subject away from the turmoil that has engulfed his campaign for the Republican presidential nomination.
His presidential campaign team pushed out a series of talking points and other messages on social media touting what he’d done to Worrell, a Democrat who was elected in 2020 with 65.7% of the vote. “This is what we can expect under a DeSantis presidency,” Adam Laxalt, chair of Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting DeSantis, posted on social media.
As this report from Anthony Man for the South Florida Sun Sentinel notes, this is highly unusual behavior from a state governor. While it might make sense to eliminate corruption by ousting policy makers charged with crimes, the only reason to do what DeSantis is doing is to ensure no one but DeSantis makes the rules. That’s not democracy or even a state-level version of a constitutional republic. This is DeSantis paving the road to autocracy — hedging his bets in case the former Asshole-in-Chief decides to run again, despite facing multiple criminal charges himself.
Democracy means reaching across the aisle to make things better for all of the governed. Under DeSantis and others post-Trump, democracy has come to mean throwing bones to the worst of worst people casting votes — the ones who would rather see this country die than have to put up with anything they don’t like.
Need any more confirmation this isn’t just “government business as usual?” Here you go:
Republicans praised DeSantis’ latest move.
Appearing with DeSantis when he announced the decision in Tallahassee, state Attorney General Ashley Moody said “we’re fortunate to have a governor committed to both the rule of law and to holding elected officials accountable for doing the jobs that they swore to do.”
Moody, a Republican ally of DeSantis, said it wasn’t a political move. “ I commend Governor DeSantis for taking this brave step and ensuring that citizens of the Ninth Circuit have a prosecutor that puts their public safety as their very first agenda.”
Wayne Ivey, the Republican sheriff of Brevard County, joined Moody’s praise.
Everything seen here is performative. But that term undersells the danger it poses to the state and the republic beyond it. It’s one thing to do dumb stuff for the cheap applause of bigots. It’s quite another to engage in performative acts that have long-lasting repercussions far beyond the initial performance. The fact that only Republicans are willing to applaud this abuse of executive power says what DeSantis will never publicly admit: he wants to run a tinpot dictatorship in Florida and, if elected, do the same thing to the other 49 states.
What we’re seeing here are the actions of someone who doesn’t want to lead a democracy. He may be angling for the top job, but he’s indicated he’s only interested in serving certain constituents, rather than the entirety of the governed.
This sort of thing has been observed repeatedly in the former USSR (and Russia under Putin). It’s a purge. And from what we can see here, a presidential front-runner is making it clear he wants to replace the stars-and-stripes with whatever Florida’s equivalent of the hammer-and-sickle is: presumably an an alligator and bath salts.
I realize some commenters will read this post and complain (disingenously) that Techdirt has become “too political.” Hey, we didn’t elect the fools doing this shit. And beyond that, when I hear people complain that I’m too mean to Trump and those walking the path he paved with three-inch-lifts, all I really hear is people upset they’re no longer able to use the word “faggot” in public as freely as they used to.
If you want to defend autocratic acts by hateful people in power, at least have the honesty to admit you have a preference in boot polish flavor. Otherwise, maybe take a couple of moments to consider why you think the government should not longer be “for the people,” but rather an abusable set of options for the tin-pottiest politicians ever elected.
Filed Under: authoritarian bullshit, democracy, executive power, florida, monique worrell, politics, ron desantis
Comments on “Florida’s Governor Continues To Abuse His Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents”
Thankfully as people outside Florida have encountered DeSantis his numbers go down, down, down.
And when I say people I mean Republicans, he is the Rick Perry of this election cycle.
They’re also aching to destroy public education and remake it in the eyes of White Christian nationalists. Look at what they’re doing across the country with course rejections, book bans that target books by/about queer people and people of color, and attempts to rewrite history to make slavery sound like it wasn’t really so bad.
Reversing Roe v. Wade was also important to the goal of rolling back women’s rights. After all, women won’t need to have rights outside the home if they’re pregnant all the time—especially if they were raped and forced to have a child as a young teenager. And who gives a shit if they happen to die during childbirth, so long as they offer an addition to the next generation of labor before they die? Certainly not the GOP, that’s for sure.
And that’s not even getting into the GOP’s thoughts on immigration (killing undocumented immigrants is apparently the new hotness), climate change (they don’t believe it exists), inflation and the economy (do they still believe in trickle-down theory?), and affordable healthcare (they don’t believe everyone should have it).
Ron DeSantis and Donald Trump are symptoms of a much larger institutional and ideological rot inside the Republican Party. The GOP no longer has an actual ideology—it has grievances borne from the twin ideas of “straight White cisgender conservative Christian males should be the only people who matter in this country” and “only Republicans should hold power and wield it in service of the people who matter in this country”. Anyone who votes for a Republican isn’t voting to “conserve” a damn thing because Republicans don’t want the status quo—they want regression to a fabled golden era that only exists in the fantasies of people who think the 1950s were awesome for everyone.
Re:
And those people are the elite, and not those who voted them into power hoping to reverse economic imbalances caused by the same elite.
Re: Re:
Yeah, pretty much. Republican lawmakers see poor people and think “some of them will have to die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make”.
Re:
I dunno. I think shit’s finally catching up with them, despite their lack of believing their own eyes.
We had Covid, which killed a significant number of these simpletons (albeit not enough). I’m a big proponent of making them stick to their ‘logic,’ instead of allowing them to fuck everyone else over, taking up hospital beds instead of being true to their beliefs and taking it like the true patriots they claim to be.
For example,
and affordable healthcare (they don’t believe everyone should have it).
When they start dropping dead in significant numbers either due to the climate-related events below, or their misguided notion that medical decisions should be ‘faith-based,’ let them pay the full cost of hospitalization, which should bankrupt enough of them to make the point. Or they can drop dead at home, as god intended.
climate change (they don’t believe it exists)
They’ll have no choice when it’s a summer of endless heat, the midwestern tornado zone expanding, wiping out more of their trailers, and the disgusting slop of the Florida coast eroding their nursing homes.
They like to talk the talk. For our own sake we’ve gotta start making them walk the walk. Otherwise, all that’s gonna happen is right in our face proof of what not to do, and when to recognize the paradox of tolerance knocking at the door.
Re:
The fight to overturn Roe v Wade was always, from it’s very beginning, (and according to the record, by their own statements at the time) a cynical and purely expedient* political ploy, chosen by a theocratic-leaning coterie of “christian” fundamentalists as a highly emotive, but superficially “non-religious” issue, that could serve as a stalking horse for their underlying and motivating christian nationalist agenda (ie. to recreate American society in conformance with their vision of a “christian” nation).
*) it was expedient, because after losing tax-exempt status for segregated “christian academies”, they’d been forced to recognize that the fight against desegregation had become a losing strategy, and so they needed some other “sacred cause” that would sway unthinking emotional commitment.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/05/religious-right-real-origins-107133/
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We are in agreement that straight white Christians are the biggest threat to walk the earth.
The only way out is more niche Rule 34 content to drown out the propaganda of breeders, and replacing priests with drag queens. It’s not as though it’d be harmful to children.
Re: Re:
You can’t hide the truth davec. I don’t care if you get your son to try to censor me. The both of you are going to get a dick up your ass and you’re going to like it. Besides, you fuckheads get pounded by cop cock so much it’s not like it’s going to make a lot of difference.
Also...
DeSantis also removed a Democratic district attorney about a year ago for similar reasons.
But this time, this district attorney is an African American woman that was voted in by about 2/3 of the vote. It’s my hope that DeSantis will get a lot of push back over this, even if all the (white) Republicans are falling all over themselves to suck up to him. You know, how all Republicans suck up to Trump to get the support of his base.
But the bottom line is that Republican politicians have no problem doing corrupt things since they know they’ll never be held accountable. Even Trump is walking free after 2 impeachment and 4 criminal indictments.
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It’s a rule that you get to walk free after indictments (unless you pose a flight risk or a danger to the public which, uh, would actually fit Trump but let’s ignore that for a moment). Innocent until proven guilty. Guilty, guilty, guilty!
You are off by a century
The 1830s you mean. Republicans are sick of being the party of Lincoln and Eisenhower. They want to revert back into the Whigs. And they don’t want anybody complaining about Confederate flags and statues (and statutes, too).
But it’s not like they are closed-minded. They are willing to adopt some Democratic Party policies, too. Of course the Democratic Party of the 1830s. Make Racism Great Again.
Re:
If they want to go back in time so to speak, why not let them do that in some far away place where the rest of us do not have to watch them suffer from lack of modern medicine and dentistry, put them on their own little island that will soon be under water.
Re: Current GOP
Remember that much of what calls itself the GOP these days are the result of Nixon’s “Southern Strategy” where the segregationist southern wing of the Dems were invited to “cross the aisle” with a wink to their racism after LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act.
Their policies have become the default for the party since the Reagan era.
Re: Re:
No need to “remember” the sun rising in the East. It will be there.
Today’s big idol of the “Party of Lincoln” isn’t Eisenhower but Reagan.
Eisenhower had a firm grasp of the real world where problems get addressed. Reagan lived in a Hollywood world, where plot distractions get removed from the canvas. And that is where the modern Republican Party wants to be.
Lincoln wouldn’t vote Republican these days. The Republican party became a thing exactly because Lincoln put civic issues before party. That’s why the Whigs are long gone now.
It’s actually surprising how long the Democratic party managed to maintain its existence before LBJ pivoted its soul to where the Republicans had stood fast from the get-go. And it’s even more surprising how short it took the Republican party to abandon its core values.
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Re: Re: Re: "I didn’t leave the Party, the Party left me."
In 1940 there was only one communist country. In 1950 over half the world’s population was under communist control (and they had “The Bomb”). Eisenhower had the support of a frightened “Free World” that also included Democrats. During the 60’s and 70’s we had the Vietnam war and the anti-war movement which eroded faith in America and its values. In 1975, despite promises of support the Democrats in Congress turned their backs on our South Vietnam allies and refused air support and resupply—the worst act of cowardice in American history.
America had lost its first war.
When Carter became President, the Democrats had moved so far to the Left there were hardly any American flags at their convention. For many of the Democrats, the anti-war movement of the Vietnam era became the anti-American movement of the 70’s. Reagan referred to it as the “Blame America First” movement and just as CRT brings everything back to Race, “Blame America First” pointed its finger at the US. Reagan, who had been a lifelong Democrat said “I didn’t leave the Party, the Party left me”.
By the time of Carter’s “malaise speech” patriotism was viewed the same as racism. America was falling apart. Later that year Iranian students took Americans hostage, and we did nothing. The Blame America First crowd did just that. It took 5 months before Carter did anything and when he did, it led to the disaster of Operation Eagle Claw.
When Reagan was elected in 1980, America was at it’s second lowest point in my lifetime. Today it is at the lowest.
While Lincoln was a great leader in a time when we needed one, he jailed more than 2000 of his political enemies without charges or trial. Today he would probably be considered a Democrat.
Just to put things in perspective. Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy only served 2 years in prison for his part in a war that killed more than 620,000 Americans. Not the hundreds of years that the Democrats are demanding Trump serve.
Re: Re: Re:2
Your whole screed reads like this: “Republicans are the only true Americans and should thus be freed from the bondage of laws that are unfair to Republicans who committed crimes.”
Re: Re: Re:3
Take your “blinders” off and try reading it again.
Re: Re: Re:4
We get it, people didn’t suck you off enough for fighting in Vietnam and you’re still saltier than a deep-fried corn dog about it.
Re: Re: Re:2
Really? Who. China”s revolution still hadn’t happened yet.
Only one country has ever implemented actual communism, China. It lasted till Mao’s death. the USSR was a socialist commune, a capitalist socialist, and a mix of strange attempts at mixing socialism and communism with international trade and a power elite.
And I remind you, communism did not cause the problems within “communist” states. WE did. We, the United States and NATO are directly and completely responsible for the murder of millions by starvation. Our blockades and sanctions and sanctimony, the christian crusade, is the cause of every bit of suffering that happened in the Soviet.
The problem with DeSantis...
is that he is likely to win the primaries by default when Trump gets arrested late in the race because too few people spent time thinking about a contingency plan, did not look what options are actually there, and will then blindly vote for #2.
And for better or worse, DeSantis currently ranks as #2 pretty solidly. He can leave a lot of the hate-mongering to Trump and then jump on his coat-tails when he crashes out. The hate-mongers will think their best bet is DeSantis, and the others will not have spent enough attention to see that the hate-mongers are right.
DeSantis contains the letters you need to spell “insane”.
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Trump can not run for any office anywhere within the USA per the fourteenth amendment to the constitution, section 3.
In theory …. we will see whether this is a nation with rule of law rather than rule of man.
Re: Re:
To the best of my knowledge, there is no legal implementation of the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment.
State elections are controlled by the states themselves. There is no law saying that the secretary of state can take off a name because of an accusation of insurrection. If they did, presumably people could still vote for him as a write-in candidate.
Assume that, against all odds, Trump wins sufficient states – as a write-in candidate – to win the electoral college. What then?
For more information, one might look through The Volokh Conspiracy posts. They have had several on this very topic.
Re: Re: Re:
“To the best of my knowledge, there is no legal implementation of the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment.”
???
Re: Re: Re:2 Self-executing
The only actual precedent for applying the insurrection clause was that those who had served in the Federal government prior to the Civil War and accepted public office in the Confederacy were barred from public office during Reconstruction. (The Congress eventually granted amnesty by the required 2/3 vote.) No enabling legislation was required; the 14th Amendment itself was sufficient.
Since no Federal officer since then has committed insurrection, there’s no further case precedent, but there’s surely a colorable argument that the amendment does not require a separate statute for enforcement.
A better argument would be that Trump has not been charged specifically with ‘insurrection’, ‘rebellion’, or ‘giving aid or comfort’ to those who engaged in the same, and that any other crimes of which he may have been convicted by the time of the 2024 election will not be a Constitutional bar to office. But the barring of the Confederate legislators militates against that interpretation – none of them had been convicted of insurrection before a jury.
In any case, there’s far too great a chance that the courts, the legislatures, and the secretaries of state will lose out to brown-shirts in red hats.
Re: Re: What conviction?
Trump has not been convicted of anything that would bar him under that clause, yet. So yes, he can currently run for office until such a conviction is secured.
Re: Re: Re:
No Confederate legislator was convicted of rebellion before a jury. They were still barred from public office until the Congress granted them amnesty.
Re: Re: Re:2
And the Confederates made it very clear they were in rebellion. In this case, though it pains me to say, it’s not as clear-cut that this was legally binding insurrection. Thus the need for actual jury trial before we can bar him.
Re: Re:
Are you sure about that?
Reason I ask is, 14A does not require anybody to do anything, it simply states a condition for disallowing a person from being put on a ballot. As noted by those scholars, when a state or a county prints a ballot, they are somewhat required to do a summary investigation into the fitness of the persons running for office. (Thus preventing some wag from entering “Mickey Mouse” as a legitimate name.) I’d bet that most election officials don’t even know of this little factoid, let alone entertain the notion of doing such work.
But here’s the thing: 14A says, in pertinent part, that election officials shall consider if a person has “given aid and comfort to those engaged in an insurrection”. It does not require a judgement be handed down by a court of any kind, it only requires that the election official apply his or her common sense to the applicability of 14A to any given person.
And there’s the rub – it’s all up to individuals that are, for the most part, elected by the local populace. Now, if we can be sure that all of these officials have been “put on notice” about 14A, then we can also be pretty sure of two things:
1) The so-called ‘red states’ will ignore this completely;
and
2) The so-called ‘blue states’ will take it to heart, and act according to their oath of office. I posit that most of them, a great majority in fact, will say to their constituents “No, Trump cannot be on the ballot, he committed multiple serious felonies against this country, including some of those listed in 14A.”
And there we have it. A not-too-close look at the political make-up of our states shows that we have about 27 red states and 23 blue ones. But the majority of the population resides in coastal blue states, and that’s where things get scary. All of the Repukelicans can get upset all they want, threatening election officials with lawsuits up the ying-yang, but in the end, 14A will trump them (pun highly intended) – the suits will go nowhere but follow all of the ‘Kraken lawsuits’ down to perdition. 14A gives absolute power to election officials, and no one else.
Call it a bug, or call it a feature, that’s up to you. But we’ve lived through it before, and doubtless we’ll have to do it again at some point in the future. H. L. Mencken said so in 1920:
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Stop with the conspiracy/doomerism dude
Re: Re:
This isn’t doomerism or just conspiracy theory, unless youyou just have your head in the sand. State republican platforms are calling for the end of no-fault divorce. They want to make getting an abortion a criminal act on par with murder (regardless of your opinion on this topic, it criminalizes any negative pregnancy outcome & any action by a pregnant person that could result in a negative outcome, such as drug use). There are legislators advocating to ban birth control & spreading disinfo about birth control being an abortifacients & that ectopic pregnancies are viable. In FL TN, AR, & TX (& more) there are organized attacks on teacher accreditation & licensing in order to push qualified professionals (which are mostly women) out of the classroom & bring in conservative men (a sex abuse nightmare) without relevant degrees & model all colleges after Hillsdale (seriously, check out TN governor trashing teachers & anything that scumbag Rufo says). They are undermining academic freedom with rules restricting & banning courses that deal with racism & gender. Libraries are being defunded in both local & state level govt- like MO. Tx put up a floating barrier with circular saw blades which works by drowning & maiming people.
This kind of regressive garbage is not just in the fringe & people with big money are pushing to make it mainstream. And I’m only pointing out a few examples of the plans in motion, it’s much worse.
Executive Power To Eject His Political Opponents
Similar instances are also occurring elsewhere. For example the gop house wants to impeach Biden even tho they admit there is no evidence. Also Wis gop wants to impeach a state supreme court justice where again they have presented no evidence of wrong doing, it is like they think they can just get rid of opponents via impeachment – no crime is necessary .. lol they are nuts!
(X) Doubt
Re:
The political system in the U.S. is rather old and quirky for the principal goals it wants to achieve. Also, it was rather optimistic regarding the moral fabric it was working with.
Compare that to the political system of Germany (Western Germany at the time), designed much later and with a really large bout of disillusionment. It was actually pitch two at a republic in a comparatively short time, with the Weimar Republic having failed to hold up to nationalism and mass media destabilization and strongman promises.
The problem is a lack of safeguards, the “this couldn’t happen to us because we are the good guys” belief. But good guys or bad guys, we are animals, the crown of creation, selected by evolution to be the deadliest among competing individuals, acting in concert when primed by warlords on their purported enemies, any kind of competition that we consider not representative of ourselves.
Societies (not just the political system) have to be designed with that in mind. Democracy is only helpful in that it is designed to dilute power and only allow for temporary aggregation of it, sort of like recipes for dealing with fissile material.
The U.S. has rusty moderation rods that stick a lot.
Re: Re: rather old and quirky
Lol, when a political system is less than 200 years old and you call it old and quirky. Compare it to some of the really old parliamentary systems like on the Isle of Man (over 1,000 continuous years) or in Iceland, (nearly 1,100 years, though with a big gap in the middle), then we can start calling something old and quirky!
And if the Democrats pulled something like this, the GOP would be screaming bloody murder.
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The GOP is perfectly capable of screaming bloody murder for actions only attributable to Republicans. Because if the Republicans are doing that, they are only doing payback for what the Democrats must be doing a whole lot more because Democrats are bad people.
Really.
It’s an advanced form of whataboutism, of the “we are not half as bad as what we imagine the others must be because they are at least doubly as bad as we are” kind.
Because oneselves as the good guys is doing bad things, just imagine how bad the things the bad guys are doing must be.
It’s a great way to morally bootstrap any kind of reprehensible activity.
Imagine this...
DeSantis gets the nomination and in the general election, the Electoral College voting is close enough that Florida’s EC votes would make the difference.
Does anyone think that DeSantis would do anything possible to steal those electoral college votes even if he were to lose the popular vote in Florida?
Re:
he wouldn’t have to – Scotus would do it for him like it did in 2000
Following
That that follow blindly get what they get, and NEVER see it coming.
A leader that listens to everyone(or the best ones) tends to be 90% correct. Insted of 50% wrong.
If you open a persons box of crayons, and all you see is 64 White crayons. I think you have a problem.
'If you're not a republican you don't deserve to be in office'
You know, just in case anyone was naive enough to think that the failed insurrection was an outlier rather than simply the most obvious demonstration of the modern GOP’s principles of ‘the only valid election is one in which we win’ and ‘the only legitimate politician is a member of our party’.
Re:
It was obvious from Trump’s words that he wouldn’t accept Hilary winning in 2016 … he wasn’t exactly subtle about his lack of respect for election results that didn’t go his way.
Re: Re: "they cheat"
He said from the start the only way he could lose was if “they” cheated, setting up the whole situation we’re in now.
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Re: Re: Re: Corrupt
In 2016 the Democrats said they were cheated.
In 2020 the Republicans said they were cheated.
What’s going on now has already tainted the 2024 election. American democracy is DEAD! Killed by those who would stop and nothing!
Re: Re: Re:2
No, in 2016, Democrats lamented how the Electoral College gave Trump the electoral win despite his losing the popular vote by 3 million votes. They may have felt cheated by seeing Trump win electorally, but to my knowledge, not a single Democrat lawmaker outright said “Donald Trump stole the election”—and no Democrat lawmaker stoked the fires of rebellion by whipping their supporters into an insurrection.
In 2020, Donald Trump lost both the electoral and popular vote. Trump, his inner circle, his fellow Republican lawmakers, and a bunch of his supporters all failed to find tangible evidence that the election had been stolen. They all kept claiming—and many of them still claim to this day!—that the election was “rigged” or “stolen”. Donald Trump himself faces several criminal trials over his actions in the wake of the 2020 election—notably, his efforts to have Georgia overturn its lawfully certified election results and his encouragement of what would become the January 6th insurrection.
You want to act like both sides are the same. You are objectively wrong. The Democrats are generally a bunch of feckless cowards who are barely right-of-center, but the Republican Party is an increasingly fascist political party. Thinking otherwise is a mistake.
Re: Re: Re:2
Reich-whingers: Incapable of drawing an equivalence that isn’t a false one.
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Re: Democrats did and are doing exactly what you claim.
Didn’t the Democrats claim that the 2016 election was stolen? Didn’t they claim that Trump colluded with the Russians? Didn’t they continue that claim for more than 2 and a half years. With no proof!
How many people died in our 1st Civil War? 620,000
How many people died on December 7, 1941? 2,403
How many people died on 9/11 ? 2,996
How many people died on January 6 ? 1
For this you want a second Civil war and the elimination of the Republican Party? You guys are out of your fucking minds.
Re: Re:
Nope. That is a strawman that the Republican Party has been pushing since the 2016 election, but it simply isn’t true.
Some, yes, with evidence. Others simply said it ought to be looked into.
It’s been more than 3 and a half years since Biden was elected.
Which is entirely irrelevant. This isn’t about how many people have died so far.
Also, the first number is a bad comparison, anyways. The Civil War lasted years. Every other event mentioned only lasted a single day.
I’ll take “Things No One has Ever Said” for $400, please.
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Re: Re: Re: Playing with fire
Hillary paid for the rotten Russian dossier then claimed that Trump was colluding with the Russians. She made that claim right after she lost the election. The Mueller Probe started in May of 2017 and went through March of 2019 and it found no collusion but for two and a half years the Democrats declared Trump illegitimate. The Durham report investigate “Crossfire Hurricane” and the Mueller Probe and found both were started and continued through political and judicial corruption. Christopher Wray said he made changes so that could never happen again. Did he????
Pelosi promised that if the Democrats won the House they wouldn’t impeach Trump. The Democrats took over in January 2019 an impeached Trump in February 2019.
The seriousness of a situation is measured in blood. The response must reflect that. When the Confederates fired on Fort Sumpter nobody died but in the next 4 years 620,000 Americans died trying to kill one another. We are playing with fire.
Re: Re: Re:2
Per Wikipedia:
So maybe stop believing what Fox News and other Trump-friendly outlets are telling you to believe.
The fact remains that only one “side” has been actively calling for another civil war to “fix” the United States—and unless you have proof to the contrary, it sure as hell ain’t the Democrats doing that shit.
Re: Re: Re: 'Every accusation a confession'
I’ll take “Things No One has Ever Said” for $400, please.
Counter-argument: Flip the party and between the failed insurrection, pre- and post-election insistence that the only way a republican could lose a presidential election is via fraud and removing opposing politicians as demonstrated in this article and ‘Accusing the other side of your party’s desires and actions’ for $500 would seem to be a better category.
Re: Re:
I’d like to remind the Chauvin simp that it’s not the Dems who are screaming for murder.
It’s his side, and Jan 6 was a statement of intent.
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Re: Re: Re: We get the intent
Two weeks after January 6, Biden was peacefully sworn in as President.
Weaponizing the judicial system by blatantly bending and breaking the law to attack your political opponent and those who support him is also a statement of intent.
Coordinating attacks in order to corrupt the 2024 election is also a statement of intent.
Millions of Republicans are now sure why Biden wanted to hire hundreds of thousands of IRS agents. They understand his intent.
If DeSantis becomes the front runner, he will be charged with kidnapping and human trafficking.
Ramaswamy will be charged under the RICO statue for saying he will pardon Trump. Any Republican the Dem’s don’t approve of will be charged with a crime.
We get the intent.
Biden is the worst President in my lifetime. Half the time he doesn’t even know he’s President. He’s not orchestrating this, he is just the King in a sinister and corrupt game of chess.
Re: Re: Re:2
And on January 6th, a shitload of people were prepared to commit lethal acts of violence (“Hang Mike Pence!”) because their Dear Leader had convinced them that the only way to save American democracy itself was to stop the second most important act of that democracy (the certification of the electoral votes in the Senate) by force. That Joe Biden was sworn in two weeks later is nothing less than a miracle, considering how hard Donald Trump fought to stay in office despite losing a free and fair election.
Funny you should say that, because Trump and his Republican asskissers are the ones promising to do exactly that should Trump win a second term. And the only prosecutions I see are prosecutions of people credibly accused of committing crimes—like Donald Trump, who is credibly accused of [checks notes] almost 100 felonies across four different criminal cases.
The people most likely to do that are, whether you like it or not, Trumpists.
What, do you think it was about having them act as FBI agents or some shit? It was mostly about bolstering the IRS workforce to more effectively enforce existing tax laws and such—and I would assume that is primarily about enforcing those laws against rich-ass motherfuckers, which is why Republicans and their rich-ass leashholders took issue.
He could probably be charged with it now if a prosecutor with some actual balls could directly link him to any order to transport people (especially immigrants, undocumented or otherwise) against their will either out of or into the state of Florida.
If he could be charged for that, he would already be charged for that. Besides, that only matters for the federal cases Trump is facing; the pardon power doesn’t extend to state cases like the one in Georgia.
And yet, I don’t see Republican lawmakers being arrested en masse right now. If this thing you claim could happen were going to happen, why wouldn’t it happen before the election instead of after?
Define “we”, bootlicker.
Biden is a middling centrist needledick who inherited a pandemic, a cratering economy, and a democracy riding on a Slip’N’Slide to complete ruin. He sucks, but he’s far from the worst person to sit in the Oval Office.
That honor belongs to a man who convinced millions of people to stop trusting expertise, evidence, and even themselves. That honor belongs to a man who convinced thousands of people to damn near wage war on Congress so he could stay in power even after he lost an election. That honor belongs to a man who convinced himself that being the President of the United States allowed him to do whatever the hell he wanted without any repercussions.
The worst U.S. president in the lifetime of anyone alive today is Donald Trump. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lost to the delusional void of Trumpism. May they one day escape and realize what they’ve done in service of a man who’d sooner shoot them on Fifth Avenue than treat them like people.
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Re: Re: Re:3
One person was killed on January 6. Ashli Babbitt.
Wow! You are afraid that what is ACTUALLY HAPPENING RIGHT NOW might happen if Trump is elected. That doesn’t open your eyes???
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you because paybacks a bitch!
There aren’t enough jails for all the Regimes enemies, but there might be enough IRS agents.
If DeSantis or whoever becomes the front runner, they will be charged.
“Show me the man and I will show you the crime” Lavrentiy Beria
And Biden made it worse. All of it!!! He was supposed to bring us all together and now we are on the verge of a civil war. Inflation, homelessness, crime, addiction, the economy. The only way he can hold office is to jail his opponents.
Re: Re: Re:4
Dude, touch some grass holy shit
Re: Re: Re:4
And she was shot because she was trying to force her way into a room where members of Congress were being kept safe by Capitol police from violent people doing violent things in the name of Donald Trump.
Here’s the funny thing about this statement: It implies that the only people who can ever hold a Republican lawmaker accountable for their actions are other Republicans. For all the talk about a “two-tiered justice system”, Republicans sure do seem to want one of their own—one that ignores their wrongdoings and punishes with maximum measures any wrongdoings (real or imagined) by Democrats.
I rest my case, Your Honor.
And which “regime” is that, sir?
You sound like the assholes who claimed that Obama winning in 2008 and Biden winning in 2016 would lead to mass incarceration of Christians only for being Christian. How’d all those predictions pan out, son?
Every indictment of Donald Trump has laid out, in detail, the crimes with which he’s charged. That you think he did nothing wrong—or that he doesn’t deserve to be charged because of who he is or what political party he represents—is your problem.
aaaaaaaaahahahahahaha
…oh wait, you’re serious. Let me laugh even harder.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
If anything, that’s because dumbfuck doomers like you keep aching for a civil war to “take back” the U.S. The only group of people who keep seriously calling for an actual civil war to take place all support Donald Trump.
Yes, they all suck right now. But Biden isn’t armed with the Infinity Gauntlet—he can’t snap his fingers and make everything better on his own. Maybe ask the Republican lawmakers who have no actual plan for governance beyond “own the libs” to start helping Biden fix shit and stop spending their time foaming at the mouth over culture war grievances like women having bodily autonomy, queer people existing in public, and slavery being taught as an objective evil.
Re: Re: Re:5 CNN's Jake Tapper: So, "Trump Was Right"
Only one shot was fired on that day and it killed an unarmed female veteran Ashli Babbitt. Not much of an insurrection.
You are leaving out the fact that this has never happened before in the history of American politics. It is blatant and wouldn’t be happening at all if Trump wasn’t the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Biden said earlier that they (I’m assuming he means Democrats) will use any means to prevent Trump from taking office again.
Democrats are not only bending the law but breaking the law by interfering with the 2024 election. You are supposed to win elections by political persuasion not political prosecution.
If the Democrats are successful in their coordinated political attack, it will become the new normal and the Party that is the most ruthless will become the Party of power and the Party of suppression.
For the first two and a half years of Trump’s Presidency, he was investigated about colluding with the Russians. Trump said it was a “witch hunt” and he was right.
Within a month of getting the majority in the House, Pelosi impeached Trump for asking about Hunter Biden.
I’ll let Jake Tapper tell you.
CNN’s Jake Tapper: So, “Trump Was Right” And “Biden Was Wrong” About Hunter’s Overseas Business During 2020 Debates | Video | RealClearPolitics
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/08/18/cnns_jake_tapper_so_trump_was_right_and_biden_was_wrong_about_hunters_overseas_business_during_2020_debates.html
Trump was right about border security as “Sanctuary cities” are finding out. My wife is an immigrant and when her family came here, they had to have a job lined up, a sponsor and money in the bank. Now millions of people (with no background check) are being released into the country with the idea that we will sort it out later.
The rise in inflation is linked to the increased cost of energy. Fossil fuels could have helped pay for Green Energy in the US. Instead, we are giving that money to the Saudis and others. Then Biden released millions of barrels from the Strategic Reserves and the Chinese bought it.
Re: Re: Re:6
That the insurrection failed or wasn’t as violent as you think it should be to qualify as an insurrection doesn’t make it any less of one. The point of the raiding of the Capitol was to disrupt the process of American democracy out of spite for the result of a free and fair election. How is that not an insurrection?
That’s a good reason to go through with the prosecutions: We need to send a message that even the most powerful people (regardless of party affiliation) aren’t immune to the laws of the land.
Let’s assume what you say is true. For what reason would you want someone who lied about the results of a free and fair election, incited an insurrection against American democracy, and thinks he shouldn’t be tried in court for trying to overturn the result of the election he lost to ever be a frontrunner for a presidential nomination?
Yes or no: Should the legal system ignore the serious crimes for which Trump stands accused only because of politics?
And if we ignore Trump’s crimes and let them go unpunished (or even unprosecuted), “the new normal” will be Trump’s crimes, repeated every time a Republican loses an election.
Even if the Mueller Report found no evidence of direct collusion between Trump and the Russian government, it found enough evidence that said Trump welcomed Russian interference. The report also found enough evidence of Trump and his cronies attempting to obstruct justice—so much so that the report dedicated an entire part of itself to that evidence.
He was impeached the first time for “abuse of power” (for his decision to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless Zelenskyy announced an investigation into Joe Biden) and “obstruction of Congress” (for his attempts to obstruct Congress’s investigation into his attempts to solicit foreign interference in an American election). He was impeached the second time for “incitement of insurrection” in relation to the events of January 6. Maybe you think that’s defensible because a Republican did it, but if Biden were accused of the same thing, I can all but guarantee that you’d be calling for Biden to be impeached, jailed, and possibly even executed for treason.
“Republicans are the only true Americans and should thus be freed from the bondage of laws that are unfair to Republicans who committed crimes.” That’s you. That’s you right now.
Re: Re: Re:7
insurrection, an organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects; also, any act of engaging in such a revolt.
January 6 was anything but organized.
It was not a rebellion.
If people protest, burn cities and demand the whole political system be torn down, we can now charge them with insurrection?
If a crowd refuses to disperse, can we charge them with insurrection?
Should anyone who denies the official outcome of an election be charged with insurrection?
Insurrection now becomes a tool of the Party in power to attack its enemies, which is exactly what is happening now.
No!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It is a HORRIBLE precedent that will destroy democracy. It is only used by the most corrupt regimes.
It doesn’t matter who I want. It matters that the Party in power will not bend or break the law to go after its enemies.
Yes because it is apparent to everyone he is only being charged because he is the leading challenger to the Party in power.
And the Durham Probe said the Muller Report was a travesty and should never have happened.
Which was all based on a phone call whose transcript I posted, and you didn’t read. If you had, you’d know what you are saying is Bullshit.
Communist advocated for the overthrow of the government—sedition?
Socialist Workers Party advocates for the overthrow of capitalism—sedition?
BLM wants to overthrow what they feel is an unjust system—sedition?
Disputing the outcome of an election—Hillary—sedition?
Yet only Trump and his supporters are being charge.
Two tiered system.
Re: Re: Re:8 Fīat iūstitia ruat cælum.
Irrelevant.
They tried to disrupt/obstruct the certification of a free and fair election in the name of the loser of said election.
If they try to subvert the results of that election in the same way Donald Trump and the GOP did in 2020? Absolutely. If they’re only grousing about the results of an election, which is pretty much what Democrats and anyone who didn’t vote for Trump did in 2016? Hell no.
The funny thing about this statement: If Democrats really were trying to use the law against Republicans to prevent Republicans from holding public office, they’re doing a really shitty job of it.
Let me get this straight: Do you seriously think people with power should be allowed to use that power with impunity, such that they can break the law and never be punished for their illegal actions—even (and especially) when their actions are meant to subvert the functions of democracy, such as Donald Trump asking Georgia election officials to find votes that didn’t exist so he could win the state?
And I don’t see that happening in the case of Donald Trump. He isn’t being jailed even after being indicted four times. He’s being given every appearance of fairness from the courts so far (and one judge, who was one of his appointees, has arguably acted favorable towards him). Other than “BuT hE’s RuNnInG fOr OfFiCe!!!1!” or “BuT hE’s A fOrMeR pReSiDeNt!!!1!”, for what reason shouldn’t Trump be tried in a court of law for the crimes he stands accused of committing?
I’m pretty sure he’s being charged with committing crimes because prosecutors believe he committed crimes. Declaring himself a member of the party that’s not in power or launching a presidential campaign shouldn’t give him the right to escape the legal system.
So fucking what?
Dude, I read the transcript when it was first made available. Even if he didn’t explicitly ask for a quid pro quo, the implications were most certainly there.
Protected speech unless it rises to the level of actual action meant to attack the government.
Ib id.
Ib id.
Hillary Clinton didn’t dispute the outcome of an election, at least in the sense that she tried to subvert the outcome with dozens of legal filings, calls to state election officials, and a rally on the day of the certification of that election where she implored her followers to fight back and save democracy. Donald Trump did all that shit, though. Disagreeing with an election result is fine; trying to change the result of that election, on the other hand…
Show me where Clinton supporters broke the law in their protests of Trump winning the election. Show me where Clinton herself broke the law by way of attempting to subvert the results of the 2016 election. If you can do that, I’ll gladly support any prosecution involving that evidence. Otherwise: The reason Trump and his supporters are being charged with crimes is not that they’re Republicans, but that they committed crimes.
“Republicans are the only true Americans and should thus be freed from the bondage of laws that are unfair to Republicans who committed crimes.” That’s you. That’s you right now.
Re: Re: Re:9 He is in the way
And if the Democrats are successful against Trump that will set the precedent. Trump constantly says, “They are not after me, they are after you. I’m just in the way.”
We don’t see his actions in the same light. Millions of Americans see what is happening as a political prosecution. They don’t have faith that Trump will be treated fairly by the courts or by the press. Trump wasn’t charged until he became the frontrunner and the Democrats are looking to add more charges, more indictments and more coconspirators. They want to attack him, silence him and imprison him. He’s in the way.
They could have tried him a year ago or in 2025, but no they want to try him during an election year and stagger his court dates to harm his campaign. That is election interference against a GOP candidate that got more votes than any GOP candidate in history.
This is a political hit and millions of people see it that way. Even those who don’t want to believe it. It is a blatant use of the judicial system to corrupt the 2024 election.
No, they weren’t and that is the problem. You were told he was asking for a quid pro quo, but it wasn’t in the transcript, nor would any unbiased person assume it was. I read it and had a totally different take on it just like millions of others.
These charges are not slam dunk. If Trump is acquitted and loses the election by the narrowest of margins due to judicial interference. How will people have any faith in the fairness of our democracy? I don’t think they will, and I don’t think you care. Boom! There is your civil war.
Re: Re: Re:10
And you believe that glorified con man? The whole point of him saying that is to make his worshippers think they’re being attacked when someone tries to hold him accountable for his crimes. It’s literally some cult bullshit.
No shit.
Two things.
If prosecutors had tried him a year ago, they wouldn’t have all the evidence and witnesses and such, and there’s a not-zero chance he would’ve been acquitted. If they try him in 2025, there’s a not-zero chance he’ll be POTUS and thus immune from prosecution. The reason they’re trying him now: They have what they feel are much tighter cases with lots of evidence and witnesses they can use to prove he committed crimes. You want to act like this is some political witch hunt, but if declaring a candidacy for presidency is enough to get someone out of being prosecuted, you’d be seeing a lot more people declaring their candidacies.
Again: If Donald Trump committed actual crimes—and it sure as shit seems like he did—for what reason (other than politics) should he be allowed to dodge prosecution for those crimes? And if you think politics is the only reason he should be allowed to dodge prosecution, what do you think you’re saying about yourself if you believe a Republican shouldn’t be tried in a court of law if there’s a chance doing so could affect their political career?
How many people will have any faith in our democracy is Trump is allowed to escape prosecution because he declared himself a candidate for president?
The only people openly pining for a civil war are Trumpists who want to use their godking’s legal and political woes as an excuse to kill other people with impunity. Everyone else is wondering what the fuck is wrong with you people.
Re: Re: Re:11
I’m fairly sure we’ll have a major issue either way. If Trump wins 2024 I don’t expect nearly half the country who absolutely despise him to just… accept it. Not when so many in 2015 called for death and bloodshed and terror.
Both sides have a militant fringe that is frightening. I only hope either way they are small enough in number to be swept up quickly and tried for treason, regardless of the party they claim allegiance to.
Re: Re: Re:10
Them’s fightin’ words! Try that in a small town y’all!
Re: Re: Re:5
Let’s be honest, she was guilty of criminal trespass. Vandalism?
Breaking and entry.
The use of deadly force was excessive.
May I remind you that there was no “insurrection”
blaming thousands of peaceful protestors for non existent crimes because a few dozen climbed walls and broke windows and doors
There was no insurrection. There was (a) small number of insurgent(s) among the peaceful crowd.
Punish the actual criminals with proper sentencing and the country needs to move on: not make up fantastical fabrications.
But it would help if he actually acknowledged anything in reality.
Millions are illegally crossing the second largest unpatrolled land border known as the world. Armed militias, the cartels, are killing US citizens on US soil.
Rather than round them up and send them back, we feed, clothe, shelter them.
Biden is illicitly, and possibly illegally, auctioning off parts of the wall supplies for pennies on the dollar.
All this while sending billions to a genocidal tyrant whose only goal is to kill anyone that doesn’t bow to his will… in his fight against a tyrant who’s only goal is to kill anyone who doesn’t bow to his will.
Great mess to get involved in there.
Re: Re: Re:6
Not according to the investigation into her death, which found that the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, who was trying to get to members of Congress during a violent riot, was justified.
What else would you call a riot on the grounds of, and inside, the Capitol building that was carried out with the implicit intent to delay the certification of the election and therefore subvert American democracy on behalf of the loser of said election?
This is exactly what is happening. Nobody is arresting Trump voters or Republican officeholders en masse, after all.
From where I sit, Democrats do that far more than Republicans. Or do you think slavery “benefitted” the enslaved and the global climate change that helps create the conditions for massive wildfires and annual once-in-a-lifetime storms is a myth?
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Re: Re: Re:7
Lmao. These are the same people who think it’s acceptable to shoot a 1 pound ball if for, miss the damn dog, and shoot a person 20 meters away by accident, all under qualified immunity.
Did they use pepper spray? Taser? Bean bag rounds? Stun rounds?
No, the idiot cop had a panic attack and murdered a trespasser.
Criminal dissidents. Having a few dozen insurrectionists doesn’t an insurrection make. OKC was an insurrectionist, not an insurrection. Texas, Miami, etc.
stop giving the idiots a platform.
And yet we have fantastic claims of incitement?
I have never supported slavery. But I remind you how few slave holders there were at the outbreak of the civil war. Less than 20 registered. One of them was black. 18 were democrats. 2 were in the north. Slavery was just about a dead practice before the civil war, and would have been outlawed without the war.
I have a problem with forced labour in prison in this country. So don’t you dare say I turn a blind eye, let alone support, the process.
We will never agree on climate change. Not only do I say climate change is real, I say so what. You look in lifespan time frames. I look at 5 billion years of reality. The only difference humans have on the natural cycle of planetary weather is it’s a bit warmer and wetter today. Then without humans. This would have been a discussion in 2120. Rather than 2020.
Primates of intelligence have been alive since a time when Florida and most of Mexico were under water. Alive when you could walk across Alaska to Russia due to ocean water loss in glaciers. And here we are today.
Humans have an absolute minimal effect on global environment.
Global warming, even ever so slightly accelerated, is not apocalyptic,
It’s normal. Whilst you cry in fear for California and Florida, I see the other aspects. A green sub-tropical Serengeti. Lush mangrove across Central Europe. The swamp oasis of Central America. Wonders of wild life across Siberian grass lands. FYI, it’s happened more times than we can accurately count.
Stop reading doom and gloom. Miami isn’t going to sink in a weekend. Slow rise in temperatures will create movement among all animals. The earth will continue to turn as it always has. Life will carry on. Old species die. New ones appear. We adjust to weather. Like all life does. We adapt or we die out. So what. That’s the way it works.
Re: Re: Re:8
He literally warned her several times that he had a gun and he was going to use it. He was protecting members of Congress from what he perceived (correctly, might I add) to be a violent invasion of the Capitol and an attack on Congress. He was stuck in his position and facing down people who were trying to bust down the door in front of him, presumably with the intent to find and attack those Congresspeople he was protecting. That he only fired one shot is a miracle. That it ended up killing Ashli Babbitt is a tragedy. That people still think he should’ve, I’unno, let her and the people with her walk into the chambers of Congress and do whatever to members of Congress is fucking astounding.
How many does it take—hundreds, thousands, or millions? What is the exact and objectively correct number of people required for an insurrection?
…says the Trumpist.
That wasn’t my fucking point. (Jesus tapdancing Christ, how is he this dumb…)
Yes, yes, you don’t give a shit about other people unless what’s happening to them also affects you personally. We get it, you’re a Republican.
Tell that to people whose homes have been destroyed by the wildfires that were exacerbated by climate change. Tell that to the people in SoCal who just got a hurricane dumped on their laps. Tell that to me, who remembers a time when August nights were ten degrees cooler than they are now and when Christmastime needed a huge puffy coat instead of a mere windbreaker.
Climate change, on its own, won’t kill the world. Nothing will kill the world. But it can sure as hell kill life. We’re reaching a point where a lot of people won’t be able to cool our homes with air conditioning no matter how much power is behind those fans. Arizona had heatwaves so bad this year that people got burned by falling on sidewalks. Climate change is real, climate change affects everyone, and climate change is being made worse by human beings.
But hey, who should give a fuck about the rest of the world when they can be selfish and give a fuck only about themselves and their loved ones~? It’s not like anyone else matters, right~?
Re: Re: Re:9
You don’t need to lie to make a point. I clearly stated there were many other options to use first.
And he should have used them.
Republicans tend to disagree with you.
Caused by forest mismanagement? Combined with the fact that prior to 1900 wildfires were quite normal across the US. If you build in the known path of wild fires, you get burned. If you build on a flood plane or below sea level, you get flooded. If you build in the path of tornadoes, you get them.
All these things happened before the combustion engine was invented.
And don’t tell me about the, ghastly, 80 mile an hour winds in SoCal today. The north eastern plains and hartland get that every few days with torrential rains. 2023, 1923, 1823, 1723, 1623…
Little has changed.
Wow, American entitlement. Spend a week in much of the world. Where aircon is rare and people survive just fine. Today as they did 10 years ago. And 100 years ago.
I’ve spent considerable time in much hotter weather than the US gets without aircon. Common sense will keep you alive. Billions of people live long healthy lives never knowing aircon.
And that line shows the underlying reality of your idea. It’s not about save the planet. Which doesn’t need saving. It’s about maintaining personal comfort. Tell me who is really selfish. You make the point that the NYT made this weekend about US travelers to Europe, in showing how pampered so many in this country are. Complaining about no ice water and how even when you find the rare location with aircon on its “…not US on”.
I give a fuck. I just won’t bend over backwards to defend selfish stupidity and liberal pampering.
Re: Re: Re:10
Or, we could close a few military bases, bring our troops home, not give away billions of dollars to other countries….
And not raise taxes because we’d have a surplus.
And you make my point for me. We spend… there
Rather than spending on their poor, we should spend on OUR poor.
A doctor’s visit should be free. I do believe I said that. How much have we dumped into central Africa. How much have we given Ukraine.
How many years of free for all public health could we have funded with those alone.
Maybe if we stopped giving free resources to criminals trespassers and instead sent them home and used the funds for our own poor, …?
Re: Re: Re:11
Fuck, dude, we get it: You want to shut off the U.S. from the rest of the world. God, get a new schtick.
Re: Re: Re:12
No, dude, you don’t get it.
There’s a middle ground. Not America only, just America first.why does 80% of annual spending leave the country. What other country in the world does that?
Show me one democrat that ran for president in the past 20 years that didn’t have the same level of money you claim to detest. Other than the young outsider of Obama.
You are blind in your assault. You see the “enemy” that you were told to bake at and ignore the master that beats you.
(That’s not a slave image, it’s a pet image) stop being the lapdog for the Uber wealthy. The party doesn’t care about you. Or anyone else nor donating million to them.
Re: Re: Re:13
…says the guy who literally talks about closing the borders and withdrawing the U.S.’s presence from the rest of the world.
You really don’t fucking get what I’m talking about when I talk about obscene wealth.
People like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are worth so much money that if they liquefied their assets and turned it into straight-up spending money, they would never be able to spend it all in their lifetimes. And no matter how many billions they give away to charity, they keep making more and more back. They hoard their wealth like dragons in a fantasy novel—sitting on a pile of money and doing little-to-nothing with it. All the while, people starve in the streets every day because they can’t afford to buy food or shelter thanks to their low-paying jobs and the kind of corporate greed that keeps raising prices on everything because The Line Must Go Up.
That money could be used to fund public services and improve an untold number of lives. But it’s all figuratively sitting under the asses of rich motherfuckers who would rather keep their money to themselves. When I talk about taxing the obscenely wealthy, I’m not talking about people who are worth a few million dollars—I’m talking about people who are worth more than entire countries. I’m talking about people who made their wealth by exploiting the poor, be it by outsourcing products to foreign sweatshops that pay workers pennies to make products they’ll never be able to afford, paying domestic workers well below a living wage so they’ll have to keep working multiple jobs just to survive, or charging more money than the average working class person can realistically afford to pay for goods and services that said working class person needs to survive.
Power without love cares only about power; wealth without genuine altruism cares only about wealth. The obscenity of obscene wealth lies not only in the amount of that wealth, but in what it takes to actually “earn” that much wealth and how that wealth stays locked away.
I believe in taxing the fuck out of the obscenely wealthy not to “punish success” or “steal from the haves” or whatever other apologia for boundless greed that you want to toss out. I believe in it because the obscenely wealthy can afford to lose most of their personal wealth and still live a life of luxury. Compare that to the situation most poor people face: They can rarely afford to lose even one dollar more than they’ve budgeted for a given time period without sinking deeper into poverty.
No one with any reasonable sense of morals and ethics can look at a billionaire and think “wow, they surely earned all of their money through hard work and fair treatment of others”. No one can look at Jeff Bezos’s life history and come out believing he earned his billions only (or even mostly) by the sweat of his own brow. And yet, you seem to believe taxing the underpaid warehouse workers who make Amazon run smoothly—even at the cost of their health or even their lives—is more important than “punishing” Jeff Bezos. No fucking wonder you voted for Trump, who gave the rich a huge tax break: Both Trump and the GOP believe the poor should suffer and die in service of the rich.
Re: Re: Re:14
I never said we should close our borders. I said we should secure them. So that every person that comes in is known.
There’s a major difference between the two ideas.
I absolutely do NOT want to close the borders I don’t want to be blocked from international travel and I don’t want to be stuck somewhere else not allowed back. I don’t want, and have never said or implied, isolation. That hurts everyone.
I call for spending our trillion dollars in our own country. We could have universal healthcare and education and income for every citizen if we simply stopped dumping money over seas. And we could reduce taxes at the same time!
Re: Re: Re:10
I didn’t. I was making a point. God, take a class in reading comprehension and media literacy.
Dude, I sat through two hurricanes when I lived on the Outer Banks. I know what hard winds look and sound like; I’ve seen the damage they can do to an area as sparsely populated as Hatteras Island. I’ve also seen the damage even a weakened hurricane can do to inland areas. Don’t give me shit about hurricane-force winds because you want to scoff at a once-in-a-lifetime storm like an Internet Badass.
From what I’ve read, some places in the world are right on the edge of being inhabitable for people. Climate migrants are going to be more of a thing as time goes on. That you’d rather stick your head in the ground and ignore or understate the real effects of climate change is your problem, not mine.
Yeah, yeah, we get it—you think people should be fine with a little heatstroke or whatever so they can save money on their energy bills. Maybe they should just drink more water, amirite~?
Re: Re: Re:11
I stayed in place through two hurricanes in Georgia and another in Florida. I won’t yawn at it, but I call crap when I see it. 80mph gusts are par for the course in the mid west every year in July, August, and into early September. Our storms are why home insurance in the corn belt is almost the same as the south east hurricane states.
In reality Cali has been exceedingly and exceptionally lucky for a very long time.
If you don’t like the weather, move. That’s what every animal capable of self mobility does.
Move, survive, or die. That’s the very basic reality of life.
Yes. That’s exactly what intelligence brings. See issue. Move.
Bingo. Drink more water. Wear less clothing. Keep wet. Don’t exercise.
Re: Re:
Were Democrats unhappy about the fact that Trump lost the popular vote but still won the Electoral College? Yes. Did Democrats say the 2016 election was stolen in the same way Trump claimed the 2020 election was stolen? No. Did Democrats try to steal the 2016 election for Hillary Clinton by doing what Donald Trump did after the 2020 election? No.
They claimed—with more credibility than Trump, natch—that the Russians wanted Trump to win because they saw him as a useful idiot. To that end, the Russians tried their best to interfere in our elections with targeted mis- and disinformation campaigns. That a Trump family member took a meeting with known Russian agents is part of the story, yes. And while some people may still allege that Donald Trump himself directly colluded with the Russians to influence the election, the broader understanding of the situation is that the Russians worked to get him elected regardless of whether he colluded with them.
I rarely, if ever, see anyone even one step left of center seriously calling for another civil war. And while I wouldn’t be opposed to the Republican Party disappearing forever like it just got dusted by Thanos, I’m not out here calling for actual physical violence against Republicans—and certainly not a civil war.
The only people I ever see calling for Civil War II to happen are people on your side of the political aisle. That y’all seem more than willing to drop the pretense of tolerance and civility for the sake of achieving permanent totalitarian rule over those with whom you disagree is a problem for y’all to solve.
(Side note: I can’t wait to see you—the most well-known blue-line bootlicker on this site’s comments sections—defend the actions of the police in Marion County, Kansas.)
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Re: Re: Re: Do you condone it?
I will answer this one first because this is exactly what I’m talking about. Magistrate Judge Laura Viar signed off on the warrant and instead of blaming her, you blame the police officers who carried out the raid. There are people we trust to see that the judicial system is not being weaponized and when it is, it must be stopped. I blame the Fulton County DA for what she’s doing, but I don’t blame any of the Fulton County police officers.
(62) Hillary Clinton says the 2016 election was ‘stolen’ from her – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77i_pC3lp04
Nobody wants a civil war. They didn’t want the last one either.
Do you condone this blatant weaponization of the Judicial System? If you do, let it continue. Let them throw Trump in jail for 100 years. Let him die in prison. Let them bankrupt and jail his supporters and his children. Let’s see how the 2024 election turns out. 2028? Let’s just see what happens.
Re: Re: Re:2
So why are you still part of a side that wants one?
Re: Re: Re:2
Dude, I blame everyone involved with greenlighting and performing that raid. The cops get my ire here because you’re enamored with the idea of giving them qualifying immunity for anything short of a presidential assassination (and you’d probably be up for giving a cop QI for killing Biden).
The cops also get my ire because they’re the ones who submitted what is likely a bullshit affidavit to the judge and performed the raid itself when they had to know it was going to bite them on the ass. The judge isn’t to blame for the cops deciding that intimidation of a small-town newspaper was the proper response to that newspaper investigating the past of the police department’s current leader. That shit’s all on them.
Did she say the election was stolen in the sense that results were altered by the destruction of ballots or some form of widescale voter fraud?
Tell that to the conservative pundits and right-wing social media assholes who actually do call for a civil war. I’m sure they’ll be surprised.
You don’t see any “weaponization of the judicial system” unless you believe in the Republican ethos that any infraction they commit, no matter how serious, must involve no punishment at all. The belief that a Republican can’t be charged with a crime while a Democrat is in office isn’t a complaint about “weaponization of the judiciary”—it’s a complaint against the rule of law itself.
Donald Trump stands accused of nearly 100 felonies across four different criminal cases. Please explain the reason he doesn’t deserve to stand trial in any of those cases. And for the record: “Because Democrats” isn’t a valid response.
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Re: Re: Re:3
You only want to take QI from the cops, not from judges, magistrates, or politicians. So only the cops pay the price.
Trump lost by the counted vote, but the election was rigged. Hunter’s laptop wasn’t Russian disinformation and the FBI knew it!
I don’t want a civil war. I just don’t see how they are going to stop it. You might as well cancel the 2024 Presidential election. Democrats won and they will jail anyone who says they didn’t.
Re: Re: Re:4
Anyone who violates the law should pay the price. QI shouldn’t be a thing for anyone. But if we have to start with stripping cops of QI, so be it.
Please show me any Democrat lawmaker who actually believes this, or else I’ll assume that (per usual) you’re talking out of your ass.
Even if the laptop could provably be linked to Hunter Biden without all the chain of evidence issues, so what? The things Trump and his family did in office far outweigh any possible crime of which Hunter Biden could be accused. (That said: If Hunter Biden committed any crimes and prosecutors can prove it, he should face the punishment for those crimes.)
Well, for starters, you can try talking to all your cop friends about refusing to support a political party that apologizes for, and sometimes even excuses, extremist political violence as a matter of internal party policy. The only political party whose supporters are calling for a civil war is the same party that keeps trying to downplay the events of the 6th of January 2021.
You can also ask your cop friends if they’d be willing to kill friends and family members—to kill you, even!—over the 2024 election results. If a civil war goes down, your friends won’t be spared from its horrors, one way or another. Make them recognize that reality and you can help prevent those horrors from taking place.
Plenty of dickbags have claimed in the past that Democrats winning a national election would result in the mass incarceration of Republicans, Christians, and anyone else deemed an “enemy” of the DNC. None of those predictions came to pass after Obama or Biden won. They won’t come to pass if a Democrat wins in 2024.
If anything, Trump winning a second term would likely see him doing his best to bring those “jail his political enemies” predictions come true, because he is a petty asshole and he has no qualms about abusing the power of the Oval Office to get what he wants. After all, if he can’t have a third term (though I’m sure he’d stop at nothing to try and get one!), he’ll spit on the rule of law and all but dare his GOP colleagues to stop him (which they won’t).
Who would you rather have in the Oval Office: an ineffective centrist needledick or a fascist with an axe to grind and absolutely no qualms about swinging for some heads?
Re: Re: Re:5
Hunter Biden entered a plea deal for the one provable crime he had. I think it was the “owning or buying a gun while high off the cocktail of drugs he had available”. Oh, and admitting to a few counts of tax evasion.
And that’s the funny part. The man Republicans assume is one of the guiltiest people alive actually did the adult thing.
Can’t say the same thing a out Trump, Desantis, the little piss baby Josh Hawley and violent Republican supporters like our jackbooted thug davec here. We know what you fucking did.
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Re: Re: Re:6 Hunter's Sweetheart Deal
In return for Hunter pleading guilty to those charges and getting a slap on the wrist, the prosecutor offered Hunter immunity from any other crime he may have committed. Totally unheard of and that is why the judge wouldn’t sign off on it and the deal fell apart.
The Republicans have alleged that Hunter Biden is the “bag man” for selling political influence to foreign countries like China and Ukraine. Want a pipeline shut down, call Hunter. Want a prosecutor fired, call Hunter. It may cost you millions, but make you billions.
Evidence was all over Hunter’s laptop. During the election the FBI claimed the existence of the laptop was “probably Russian disinformation” even while they had it in their procession and knew it wasn’t.
When Trump asked about the involvement of the Biden’s in getting a Ukrainian prosecutor fired, Pelosi impeached him.
Re: Re: Re:7
Remind me: Who was it that received $2bn from the Saudis six months after Donald Trump left the White House?
You know what’s funny? Even if—if—the laptop is actually Hunter Biden’s, it can never be used as evidence at a trial of any kind because of chain of custody and potential evidence tampering issues.
Trump told Volodymyr Zelenskyy in no uncertain terms that the U.S. would stop providing military aid to Ukraine unless Zelenskyy announced the Ukrainian government was investigating Joe Biden. Trump literally tried to solicit foreign interference in the 2020 election. That is why he was impeached.
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Re: Re: Re:8
Emails don’t disappear (unless they are on a private server and BleachBit-ed and hit with a hammer). They know who the emails were sent to and what they said. Hunter Biden’s partners verified the emails sent from the laptop to them. They have the IP address and the metadata. It is a matter of connecting the dots.
Bullshit
Here’s the transcript of the call. No where does he even mention military aid. Trump complains the Germany and the other European countries aren’t doing as much for Ukraine as the US is doing. Then he asks Zelensky to find out if Ukraine has the “Crowdstrike” server (that supposedly had all Hillary’s deleted emails.
Full Document: Trump’s Call With the Ukrainian President – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/09/25/us/politics/trump-ukraine-transcript.html
And now there is a coordinated attack to interfere with the 2024 election and the Democrats just sit back and chuckle.
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Re: Re: Re:5 These are the times that try men’s souls.
Remove QI from everyone and see who sticks their neck out.
I think we can safely assume all Democrat lawmakers believe Trump lost the vote count.
As far as Hunter Biden’s laptop goes…
Hard drive containing Hunter Biden laptop data examined by two forensic experts – The Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/03/30/hunter-biden-laptop-data-examined/
Testimony Reveals FBI Employees Who Warned Social Media Companies about Hack and Leak Operation Knew Hunter Biden Laptop Wasn’t Russian Disinformation | House Judiciary Committee Republicans
https://judiciary.house.gov/media/press-releases/testimony-reveals-fbi-employees-who-warned-social-media-companies-about-hack
Vietnam is a very corrupt country. None of the Communist that run the country are rich, but their relatives are. You buy political influence through the relative and the relative in turn takes care of the official. I guess that is fairly common in Communist countries because everyone knows about it. This is why Hunter was being paid to be on the board of Burisma even though he knew nothing about running an energy company. That is why Joe bragged about getting the prosecutor investigating Burisma fired. Biden is the brand and Hunter is the “bag man”. In Hunter’s emails he complains about having to kick up so much money to his dad. The entire Biden family is profiting from the scheme. I wonder how many Independents would have changed their votes if they knew what was going on, but it was suppressed by the FBI. The election was rigged.
BTW cops are not going to start a civil war. Civil wars begin when no one is willing to compromise. When half the country sees the other half as the enemy. When they see a blatant abuse of power to lock up a political leader. We have never done that before and I’m not sure it will be tolerated. These are the times that try men’s souls.
Re: Re: Re:6
Give QI to every cop for every possible infraction and see whose heads the cops put on the chopping block.
QI shouldn’t be an excuse to act with impunity, and it shouldn’t be used to protect cops who knowingly commit crimes.
He lost the popular vote, yes. But that doesn’t matter on a national level thanks to the Electoral College.
That’s nice. But we’re talking about the United States.
If you’re going to claim the 2020 election was “rigged” because the FBI “covered up” the Hunter Biden story, you’ll have to say the same thing about the 2016 election because of the FBI’s “October Surprise” in announcing a further investigation into Hillary Clinton. How willing are you to make that leap?
You can be damn sure whose side they’re going to be on, though. (Spoiler: It’s Trump’s side.)
Democrats want to let trans people live in peace. Republicans want to take trans people out of public life, if not existence itself. By all means, show me what a compromise between those two positions looks like.
Donald Trump literally tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election by asking election officials in Georgia to find votes that didn’t exist so he could win the state. If he doesn’t deserve to go to jail for that, no one deserves to go to jail for any goddamn thing. But hey, no big surprise that a Blue Line bootlicker thinks a Republican shouldn’t be bound by any law for any reason.
Other countries have jailed former leaders when they broke the law or tried to overthrow democracy. For what reason should the United States be any different, other than the dumbass belief held by conservatives that no Republican should ever have to face any consequences for their actions?
Shut the fuck up, doomer.
Re: Re: Re:7
Hillary did claim that cost her the election.
The 2020 election was the only one we have ever had during a pandemic lockdown. Ballot harvesting, paper ballots, everyone getting mail-in ballots, Drop boxes, States changing the rules in the middle of the election, rumors about massive voter fraud, the fact that Trump got more votes in 2020 than in 2016 and still lost (that has never happened before), the closeness of the election, etc. I would consider all that as reasons to question the outcome.
Alexey Navalny?
So much for liberals being civil and cordial.
Re: Re: Re:8
But you’re the one who claimed—and I quote—“the election was rigged” (in reference to 2020). You say that as a statement of fact, not opinion. If you’re going to say the FBI rigged the 2020 election by somehow blocking the Hunter Biden laptop story from being A Thing™, you must also admit that the FBI’s October Surprise in 2016 rigged the election in favor of Trump. To claim one is true but the other isn’t makes no logical sense, since you’d be arguing that provable actions by the FBI didn’t rig an election but things the FBI didn’t do actually did rig an election.
It was also the most watched election in American history precisely because of the pandemic and the necessity for mail-in ballots. Everyone wanted to get it right—and, barring the typical insignificant amount of voter fraud that we usually see in a national election, we did get it right.
And yet, neither Trump, his legal team, or his supporters have ever shown any evidence that the outcome was anything but the outcome of a free and fair election. Five dozen dismissed court cases, several automated and hand recounts, and that ridiculous-ass Cyber Ninjas “audit” stand as proof. If you have evidence of any amount of voter fraud beyond the typical insignificant amounts, by all means, share it with us. (Please note that Breitbart, InfoWars, Project Veritas, the Babylon Bee, and your ass are not credible source of information.)
Conservatives want queer people like me dead. Tolerance is a peace treaty, not a suicide pact, and civility is for people whose ideology isn’t based in “unnecessary and grotesque physical and psychological violence against the marginalized is the only path to peace and security for the nation”.
Re: Re: Re:9
Hear, hear. We must intolerate davec until he’s no longer capable of intolerating. Glory to FSM!
Re: Re: Re:4
Those people don’t get QI to begin with. Currently, they get absolute immunity. These are not the same thing at all.
Re: Re: Re:
Democrats put forth a slate of alternative electors. You ignore that. Democrats votes against counting votes. You ignore that. Democrats protested at the capital. You ignore that
The only difference here between 15 and 20 is that a) a few dozen people actually broke into the capital, and b) someone was artistic enough to create a mockup non-functioning gallows.
You didn’t complain about the signs of crosshairs on Trump images or a bloody head photoshop from a failed comedian.
Re: Re: Re:2
Prove that Democrats illegally put forth a slate of alternative electors in 2016 in the same way Republicans stand accused of doing in 2020. Please. I insist.
Objections to the certification of votes during said certification is largely bullshit, but it’s not illegal, or else a shitload of GOP lawmakers would be facing consequences for doing it in 2021.
Democrat voters protested, but Democrat lawmakers didn’t make veiled calls for violence under the guise of “saving democracy” or “taking back the country”. And Democrat voters sure as hell didn’t storm the Capitol with the intent to stop the certification of the results of a free and fair election while chanting for the deaths of lawmakers and assaulting police officers.
They’re bullshit, but I don’t feel the need to denounce them at every turn because they’re obviously bullshit and I don’t support actual physical violence as a solution to political issues.
Besides, by and large, Democrat voters are willing to accept the results of an election when a Democrat loses. Republican voters literally tried to help their orange godking overthrow American democracy after he lost, and they’re already prepping for some serious shit if/when Trump goes to trial. Trump himself will keep riling up his supporters with claims that his trials are actually an attack on, rather than a proper expression of, the rule of law to make them feel like they need to act on his behalf. And given what his supporters did on the 6th of January 2021 in his “honor”, the likelihood of violence in support of keeping Trump out of jail is far, far higher.
But keep going with the denial that stochastic terrorism isn’t a thing, Trumpist. When someone inevitably goes after one of the judges overseeing Trump’s trials, I hope you choke on that denial.
Re: Re: Re:3
The only thing you have in that reply is electors. And since they weren’t charged there is no legal question to answer.
The right to challenge is enshrined in the process. Sorry. Not sorry.
In fact the only thing you have is the few dozen that broke into the capital. All of who I agree should be charged for the crimes they committed.
But I see no call for violence. In fact even most democrats have backed off of such claims.
Those few who continue to push that invented narrative should probably see a therapist. You’re inventing something that didn’t happen.
When you see hidden messages in things you need help buddy. That’s not normal.
Re: Re: Re:4
And yet, you mention Democrats putting forth a slate of alternate electors as if they did the same exact thing in 2016 that Republicans did in 2020—a situation that, I must remind you, has resulted in criminal charges being filed against some of the fake electors that Republicans tried to push forth as part of a scheme to steal the election in favor of Donald Trump.
That you don’t see the storming of the Capitol—and the violence both inside and outside the building—as an insurrection against American democracy by people who wanted to install Donald Trump as an unlawful and unelected president is your problem.
That’s only because they didn’t get what they wanted.
Re-read that “turbulent priest” bit I posted earlier and that linked-to bit about his speech before the insurrection. The whole point is that even if Trump didn’t directly say “I want you to march on the Capitol and kill Mike Pence”, he didn’t have to for his supporters to get riled up. His deliberate choice in language was designed to keep him from crossing the line of direct incitement while invoking feelings and thoughts in his followers that would inevitably lead one or more of them to commit violence. That, in a nutshell, is stochastic terrorism.
I’m sorry you can’t understand things like subtext and context. But that’s your fuckin’ problem, son.
Re: Re: Re:5
Fine a single place where I have ever complained about the democrat’s challenges in 16, or 2004, or 2000.
They don’t exist. A few times I’ve said it’s stupid. As I say it’s stupid the Republicans did it in 20. But it /is/ part of the process.
But it is the right to challenge.
Yes I did. A few dozen people broke in and charged up the stairwell. Broke into offices and entered the floor area. All criminal trespassers. A few a bit worst, such as theft and vandalism.
I’m a stickler for the law, no matter how stupid a law may be. If you don’t like it, push for change or become a politician and change it yourself.
Ah, grow up. Attempts at inciting rarely stick anywhere in this country. For a reason. People are responsible only for the physical actions they take. Nobody can be incited to do anything they do not choose to do of their own free will.
Trump is not responsible for action he did not specifically state to partake in. And even there, the absolute best you get is conspiracy, if he plainly made such statements.
Nobody heals a gun to anyone’s head and said break the windows and enter. Nobody kidnapped family at threats of torture. There was no incitement. Nor threat upon those that broke the law of their own willingness.
Re: Re: Re:6
Challenging the votes at the time of certification is part of the process, yes. Putting together fradulent slates of fake electors in an attempt to delay the certification process and muddy the legal waters around an otherwise free and fair election? That’s not part of the process, no matter how much you try to minimize the fact that Republican lawmakers literally tried to do what Donald Trump accused Democrats/Joe Biden of doing: steal an election.
Not only are you unable to understand context and subtext, you can’t even read complete fucking sentences, holy shit.
And yet, you’re more than happy to keep saying that the fake electors plot after the 2020 election is just “part of the process” despite several people now facing actual felony charges for their roles in that plot. No legal expert (who isn’t already kissing Trump’s ass) is willing to say that the fake electors plot was anything but an attempt to steal an election.
That’s kind of the point of stochastic terrorism: Someone who, say, hangs on every word of Donald Trump will hear him and his allies use language laced with violent imagery, then get it into his head that violence is the solution to whatever problem stands before Dear Leader. Trump doesn’t have to directly exhort violence from his followers when he can use violent language and wait for the inevitable. In that way, he’s like a mob boss who talks about a “problem” he wants “solved”: The boss doesn’t need to explicitly say “whack Joey Tattletale” for one of his underlings to get the message and go whack Joey Tattletale.
Imagine for a moment that, like many other Trumpists, you were stuck in the conservative media bubble of Fox News and its further-right ilk. Really sit with the idea as you picture it. Then let me take you on a different journey than the one you just imagined.
Imagine turning on your TV and being told every day by Fox News and Newsmax and OANN that Democrats are actively destroying the country. Imagine checking social media to see conservative pundits claim that Democrats are grooming kids, transing everyone’s genders, giving out free money to drug dealers, and other such weapons-grade bullshit. Now imagine that the media bubble shows you a speech by Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party, where he claims only conservatives can save the country. He asks his followers to “fight like hell” over and over, implanting in their already angry heads the image of a fight—a brawl, a donnybrook, a slobberknocker where throwing fists is just the beginning. He calls people like you fighters and warriors—again invoking images of violence, this time of people stained in the blood of their enemies for the sake of a noble cause. He tells you that “you’re allowed to go by very different rules”, implying that the law won’t apply to you if you commit violence in his name. You hear nothing but these kinds of messages all day, every day, for years, until you finally take them to heart. “Yes, I am a warrior. Yes, I have to fight for my country. Yes, I have to save democracy by any means necessary.” You then decide to find the nearest DNC office and firebomb it.
Trump didn’t ask you to do it and the right-wing mediasphere didn’t demand you do it. But they planted in your head, through repeated exposure to violent rhetoric and a lack of any opposing perspectives, the idea that violence is the best solution, if not the only solution, to the “Democrat problem”. That, dear Trumpist, is stochastic terrorism: They don’t have to demand you do anything violent if they can light the spark of that idea in your head and let your brain lead you down the rest of the path.
Now, I imagine that you’re going to say “oh I would never fall into that situation!” or some shit. And I tend to believe you, your fervent and unquestioning support for Trump and his thousands of lies notwithstanding. But there are people who would. And there are people who did.
One of them was Ashli Babbitt.
How’d being a loyal Trumpist acolyte work out for her?
Re: Re: Re:7
Just like I never complained over the peaceful actions of BLM, I have zero complaints about the many thousands of peaceful protestors on Jan 6.
Just like I call for the death penalty for the terrorists that firebombed a a federal court house (an actual act of treason), I say there are a few people from Jan 6 protests that may deserve some stiff penalties.
Just like there are idiots who think racism is a “systemic” issue today (it’s not, there are small pockets of like minded groups, and a random sampling in the general population) … yeah clearly a few freaks figured that Trump made some non existent cry for violence.
Yes, I agree even that there are 3 truly deserving of being tried for terrorism on Jan 6.
But for many, there are real questions on the 2020 election. Not result changing questions, but major issues that MUST be addressed and SOLVED!
Facts: multiple postal offices did not change the stamp date (or rolled back the stamp date) for ballots. Ow, generally this ballots were IN THE BUILDING on time, and with those I generally agree with the intent of backdating. But in one case ballots arriving in trucks after midnight were back dated. Those should have been set aside. The Supreme Court would have to decide if they are to be counted or not.
Fact, ballots were dumped randomly throughout the country in batches again not enough to change the election. In actuality most of those ballots were recovered and counted.
Fact, ballots were counted in every state without the direct oversight of poll watchers. Be it too far away to read the ballots or ballots counted without them present.
Fact, people voted as other people. As is usual, dozens of reported false votes occurred. People try to vote and are turned away because they “already voted”
Look, we NEED to deal with the ID issue.
We need to join 92% of countries in the world and offer a free, or free-for-most, national identification.
And that should and must be used for voting.
There were major issues with the system. The biggest, most important, is the volume of states that voted 100% illegally. State legislature sets voting methods. Not a governor. Any state where the governor modified voting methods without the legislative process invalidated the entirety of that states federal vote.
We can argue all day (and I’d probably generally agree with you) about the how and why. But by the letter of the law, states had no legal basis for voting at all in the 2020 election.
The stolen election issue would not be an issue if we had legitimately secured elections. From identification to transport. To the point of count.
Jan 6 would likely not have happened at all if Democrats too a few minutes to actually, logically, address any of these issues.
It’s not that the results were winner-changing… it’s that there are legitimate concerns. When they are shoved aside and ignored, the room for conspiracy theory is huge.
Look, I don’t even like Trump. He’s an old misogynist arse. With some very wild ideas on fairly normal things. But, he wasn’t Clinton.
He offered to secure the border, reduce international involvement, pull troops home, and invest in American infrastructure. All things I support on the top of my list.
He did, or attempted to do, everything on that list.
We can argue the “lest” list till we are blue and dead. You see all bad, I see 70/30 good.
We have no ability to vote for someone who only agrees with us. For 99.9% of the population that would only be ourselves. I do not regret my choice in 16/20. Nor my choice of Obama in 8/12.
My cote for Bush 2 in 2004.
For Perot throughout the 90s. Etc.
I made my choice based on what was important to me. The way everyone should. I accept the benefits come with consequences as well.
Re: Re: Re:8
As an FYI: The Capitol grounds were closed to visitors on January 6th precisely because of the business of democracy going on in the Capitol. Everyone who breached the Capitol grounds was not “peacefully protesting”—they were functionally attempting to delay and subvert democracy. Those who did so “peacefully” do deserve credit for not actually being violent, but that’s about all they deserve.
Consider the following: Nobody found any significant amount of voter fraud in the 2020 election. You want to whine about mail-in ballots and whatnot, but nobody anywhere has proven that the system is patently unsafe for American elections—and that includes states and cities where mail-in ballots were a norm years before 2020.
The only reason any “questions” exist about what happened in 2020 is Donald Trump sowing the seeds of doubt about a free and fair election—objectively the most-watched election in American history!—that had no major hiccups and no significant amounts of voter fraud. Even now, nearly three years later, the only people still choosing to litigate the 2020 election and the alleged myriad of results-changing “issues” therein are Trump and his followers. Doesn’t that tell you something?
As for all your bitching about those supposed issues: Hey, remember how, in 2020, we were in the middle of a pandemic nobody saw coming? That states changed the rules to account for the fact that nobody should have to risk their life to cast their vote should be cause to celebrate instead of claim that their results should be invalidated and the election overturned. And yes, you’re doing exactly that—and I expect nothing less from a hardcore Trumpist like you.
Again: Show me where any amount of significant voter fraud or disenfranchisement happened in the 2020 election, and maybe I’d agree that our elections aren’t secure. But all you’re doing is taking the same baseless or overblown accusations from Trump-loving conspiracy theorists and trying to turn them into an excuse to say “the 2020 election was stolen from Trump”.
Yes, yes, we all know you believe Hillary Clinton to be an actual demon. Get over it. Also: Your claim to not like Trump is undercut by all the times you defended what he did as president.
Yes, we get it, you care more about isolating the U.S. from the rest of the world than helping marginalized Americans.
If you know a trans person, ask yourself: “Which candidate has a better record on supporting trans people?” If you know a poor person, ask yourself: “Which candidate supports economic policies that would help poor people instead of rich people?” Think of the most marginalized person you know, then vote in their best interests. Voting only for one’s self-interests is selfish and borderline sociopathic…which would certainly explain why Trump won in 2016. (Well, that, and all the racist backlash after Obama won.)
Re: Re: Re:9
I know quite a few non-straight people. Including what dems term as trans. HE happens to be gay and prefers effeminacy. Not delusional thoughts about that. Bi, and lesbian. both identify as tomboy. I myself am not linked to any sexual orientation or prescribe. I simply don’t care.
But in reality the Democrat party isn’t looking out for the poor. They take from the haves and create a perpetual cycle of trickle down sustaining poverty through dependence. There is no escape from poverty when the very actions of giving raise the cost of everything out of reach of the bottom.
Taxing for social support doesn’t work. Taxes go up, payments get larger, taxes go up, payments get larger….
What you call sociopaths, I call normal order. The way life is. Every species is. You care for your personal survival and that of your family. Follows by tribe and clan. Then community. If any time is left, any energy is left, you consider the wider world around you. Otherwise you die off.
Re: Re: Re:10
And who do you think they’d vote for, given that Republicans are continually attacking queer rights? Better question: Do you think they’d be your friends if they knew you voted for someone who leads the party that attacks queer rights—i.e., their rights?
They’re doing a better job than Republicans.
Dude, you really don’t get it. “Trickle down” economic theory isn’t about “taking from the haves”—it’s about the idea that if we let the rich keep making obscene wealth off the backs of the poor, they will eventually “trickle down” some of that wealth to the poor. But that shit isn’t happening, and it never will. Rich motherfuckers will do everything in their power to keep themselves and their companies from being taxed. Look at minimum wages: Even as companies raise their individual minimum wages, they keep making things more expensive to buy, thereby negating the usefulness of any wage increase beyond mere survival. Lots of people don’t buy houses because they can’t save the money for a house because they don’t earn enough to pay all the bills and put aside a decent amount of money in a given month. And you seriously think poor people looking to keep themselves fed and clothed and sheltered by asking the government for help is a bigger problem than a few hundred rich people looking to hoard damn near the entirety of the world’s wealth by asking the government for help?
It would if we could tax the rich to actually pay for that sort of thing instead of taxing the poor or asking the poor to simply die because their social support can’t pay the cost of living. (And while I’m at it: Sit with that phrase “cost of living” for a minute. Really think about what it means.)
You can care about the broader world while still prioritizing your own survival. That you seem to think you have to give a fuck about only yourself until some arbitrary point in an hour, day, week, month, year, decade, or lifetime where you can deign to give a fuck about someone else is your hangup. No wonder you voted for Trump—he doesn’t really care about anything or anyone but himself.
Re: Re: Re:11
Generally, non-party. 3rd party.
And yes, we are friends despite my vote for Trump. See, some things are more important to some people than others.
Trump wasn’t going to lock you up for wearing a dress.
We’ll just completely disagree and move on. I think the leadership of both parties has zero care for anyone except the top. They just have different ways of making sure their donors stay rich. And the poor stay poor and dependent.
And what is it with the liberal need for taxing. We don’t need to tax anyone more. In fact we could cut all taxes if we stopped wasting money in other countries.
That 4 billion to Ukraine could have put $10 in the pocket of each American. That’s the math. The real cost of our stupid pointless spending abroad.
And maybe if we stopped wasting all that money on others we wouldn’t have any poverty here. Less than 20% of national spending is in country.
So don’t talk to me about caring about others. Your party and the Republicans both don’t represent me. Sending bombs and tanks and jets and missiles isn’t humanitarian. It’s psychotic.
Here’s a bit of a reality note for you, 7/:10 running libertarian party members historically have supported universal free healthcare and education from birth to death.
Just because I don’t support stealing from successful people doesn’t make me not care. It makes me one of those people that want to focus on our country in ways that don’t punish people for being successful. And doesn’t reward dictators around the world for licking the American bum.
Re: Re: Re:12
His Republican acolytes are certainly working on doing that, though. And they can do that out in the open thanks to Trump being an open and unrepentant bigot without suffering any political consequences.
Public monies are needed for public works and the commons, duh. Or are you one of those jackass Republicans who think everything should be privatized, from schools to police department to the roads everyone drives on?
Yes, yes, you believe the U.S. should isolate itself from the entire world like North Korea, we get it.
You do realize that a lot of the money we spend “overseas” isn’t used solely for the military, right? Like, we spend money to help combat famine and disease and human rights violations, not to mention trade agreements that bring goods to this country. But hey, if you think we should stop all of that so we can concentrate on domestic issues to the exclusion of the rest of the fucking world, just say so and be done with it.
I don’t support Libertarians because there’s only two kinds of Libertarians: High schoolers and people who shouldn’t be allowed within 500 feet of them.
Y’know, it’s funny: Neither do I. But what you call “success” is an obscenity when it involves hoarding more wealth than most of the rest of the world combined is even worth. I say “being a billionaire is immoral” because no one gets to be a billionaire without exploiting the poor to absurd degrees for personal gain. Companies worth billions of dollars are worth that much because they do anything they can to make a profit—which includes underpaying workers and raising prices—then do everything they can to avoid paying taxes. (If you think inflation is about anything but the kind of greed inspired by capitalism’s The Line Must Go Up mindset, you’re fooling yourself.) I don’t see taxing the rich as “stealing from the successful” because (a) we barely even tax the rich in this country compared to how much we tax the poor and (b) the rich have more than enough resources to be heavily taxed and still live a more comfortable and luxurious life than practically everyone else on this planet. Or do you sincerely believe that Jeff Bezos only being able to buy one superyacht in a year instead of three because he had to pay taxes proportionate to his level of personal wealth is a horrific injustice?
Dude, the United States don’t punish success. It punishes poverty.
Consider how much someone without the ability to afford medical insurance would have to pay for a doctor’s visit—and how much that debt would crush their already meager finances. Then consider that, by taxing the wealthy, we could more than afford to pay for universal healthcare. Oh, but that’s riiiiiiiiiiight! According to you, taxing the obscenely wealthy so they’re only worth hundreds of millions of dollars instead of billions of dollars is a crime on par with treason! I guess we can’t have that happening, so I guess we’re shit out of luck, huh.
You really are one of those temporarily embarassed millionaires, huh.
Re: Re: Re:13
Not really. You confuse not wanting men in skirts intermixing with naked teenage girls and ‘lock them up”.
Our government currently brings in Apx 12x the amount of money it needs to run. After! we had federal healthcare and education AND base income for all. We could re buy the post office and STLL have money left over.
Please, stop being a plank. I’ve not pushed isolation, I push America first. US money
Should be spent in the US. First. Then global partnerships.
If there’s any leftover surplus THEN we could donate to others, and look at reducing taxes further to not have a surplus.
Yet ignoring poverty and a broken education system here. Where the majority can’t afford healthcare.
And the rest of your reply, makes my point.
Admit it or not you make clear people should not have more than you.
Democrats aren’t after “obscene” wealth. The methods they intend to push so often (stock portfolios) would gut the US middle class.
Because they are trying to tax non-held money.
Explain to me this, because it makes up the majority of stock holders:
How does a family of 4 pay 4200 in taxes on a 20,000 stock portfolio? When they bring in 50,000 per year?
Stocks are not stored value, stocks aren’t extractable money. Half the country lost 50% of estimated return after the 2019 election. Many recovered, Some did not.
If you taxed them on nov 1 you would have excessively over taxed half the population. If you taxed them on Nov 29… you would have ‘under’ taxed them.
The current method IS fair. The only way to be fair. You pay taxes when the money becomes a spendable unit.
I can’t use my stocks to buy food at the corner store.
Investments are already
Taxed when started,
When closed, and even when transferred on death.
A child inhering a stock portfolio will pay twice. Despite the fact that there is no concurrent value to them.
And they want to arbitrarily tax them yet again at some random point
All at the same time they create an infinity loop in poverty by raising taxes to pay for services that increases the costs on the very people who can’t afford goods and need the services.
The solution is not more taxes! The solution is not sending 80-some percent of US taxes overseas.
Re: Re: Re:
Sadly that’s true. Too many republicans want a violent response to legislative stupidity.
Unfortunately the Dems just want to lock up anyone who disagrees with them.
Then there’s us, the rest of the population. Many of us simply want the end of the “Union”.
Most of us call for a UK style end.
We tried. It never worked in the first place. And it’s probably best for everyone to simply end it and move on.
The “union” ended the day federal troops illegal invaded a sovereign state and commenced the wholesale theft of weapons and munitions. Not over “security,
As claimed by Lincoln, But over refusal in taxation. The munitions stolen being the very weapons used to defend the state’s shores from rampant piracy that the federal navy had ignored. The navy being tasked with enforcing lopsided trade restrictions against Europe (and against the south) by cannon point.
The Union is dead.
Today the cities of SoCal and NewYork dictate over the population as an illicit king.
There is no freedom, no justice. No ability for honest and equal representation.
What’s interesting is every time a state attempts to restructure, the city population say no and blocks it.
Maybe it’s not so interesting. After all.
Re: Re: Re:2
All I’m hearing here is “I want a civil war and I want to be on the side with all the guns”.
Re: Re: Re:3
That’s only because you think you’re in the right. And that is only because if big cities were removed from states as their own states, the cities would fail quite quickly.
A division I doesn’t need bloodshed. Be it more states, or dissolution of the union. There was no Bloodshed over the UK. And others are looking at peacefully leaving the EU.
Re: Re:
Yes.
You breeders have long since overstayed your welcome on this rock. You had your fun pissing on the rights of everyone else and we’re not going to take it anymore.
It’s enby or bust!
The confederacy shall rise again?
Re:
“The confederacy shall rise again?”
Idiocracy
Re: Re:
Maybe.
But not wholly wrong.
Here’s the thing so many democrats today, and republicans of the past, forget… we are NOT a single country.
We are a republic of self governing states (countries) bound by a representative republican union.
We are the prototype of the EU and USSR.
That we have lasted as long as we had in our union is impressive.
We are at the end. The calls for changes and divisions in state lines are loud and clear today.
California splitting in two or three. Oregon and Washington looking to join Idaho and dump the cities in the west coast. Illinois looking to jettison Chicago. New York dumping the south east corner.
Now Florida residents are considering dumping the southern tip.
But such changes require ratification at the federal level. And the current power structure would quash that. Central and Southern California have stood in the way of peaceful division multiple times in the last decade and a half.
Armed civil conflict is closer today than ever.
The tiny footprint mega populations are dominating over the majority of the country. Despite living in 10% of it. People like ST Stone say land doesn’t vote. No. But when a single city has more voting power than most states, something is wrong with the structure.
The country is fed up. The differences are irreconcilable.
Re: Re: Re:
And most of those are either fascist pipe dreams or influence campaigns started and supported by foreign adversaries.
The people who voted like you did in 2016 and 2020 who are far more willing to start than conflict. Think about that for a minute.
When a single city holds more people than an entire state, maybe it should have a little bit more of a say in national politics.
That said, since I know you’re about to go for my throat: Yes, people in rural areas deserve representation and a say in national politics. But if the major cities shouldn’t get to control every little bit of what happens in the rural areas, the inverse should hold true as well—unless you’re willing to argue that rural areas full of racist shitbirds should be able to make large cities unable to enforce the Civil Rights Act because doing so would offend said shitbirds.
Enough Republicans sincerely believe “Republican rule is the norm and non-Republicans holding any public office should actually be illegal” that the so-called irreconcilable differences are less about how to handle the American economy and more about who gets to exist in American society. Reconciling “maybe we should tax the rich” with “queer people should be third-class citizens” should be impossible.
Re: Re: Re:2
Really? 87% support in the tristate plan in the north west (of those looking to separate from the coast) is hardly a pipe dream. Note is it fascist.
It’s about the majority of two states by area not paying taxes for unrelated internally created failed policy in two cities.
Yes, I support self defence. When you point a gun in a car and say get out, I fully support the driver pointing a gun back and blowing the CRIMINAL’s brains out.
Carjacking me will be the last time you car jack anyone. I fully support that. And don’t hide that.
Finally something rational. I don’t totally agree. But it’s rational.
The problem is those 10% of area are 100% dependent on the 90% of the country. If farms simply went poof gone, the cities would not survive.
The inverse is not true. If cities went poof gone, farms, the 90# of the country, would carry on just fine.
As I have discussed before in the various attempts in California for the state leaving the union, the 49 remaining states would carry on just fine. Cali is NOT a vital resource. They may be the current largest supplier of a few minor crops. Oranges, nuts, grapes, avocados. All of which could quickly be set up in other states quite easily within two years. However, California would not survive alone in a split if it were just central and southern, costal, California.
These are facts. Not opinion. Well researched and documented facts.
The 10% of land the cities occupy are completely dependent on the rest of the country.
I have no loyalty to either party. Because while you talk of trickle down economics not working, the democrats are just as intent on the idea. Tax the rich to the point of poverty. It’s forced trickle down. That doesn’t work either.
Yet the democrats are attempting to take my ability to feed my family? While ignoring the weapon used in 99% of all gun crime?
i remember one of the reasons I supported, and worked for, the Obama campaigns. Border security.
Reduced international involvement was another key for me. He wasn’t an isolationist, but he definitely campaigned on less.
Clinton was a globalist.
I’ll take national defence any day. Even if that means voting against the social platforms I support.
Sadly, neither party is going to solve anything. So maybe a breakup of the union is due. Ever wonder why democrats are 99% against the rural breakaway? Because they understand they would suddenly be stuck in their own mess they created with their crap policies that are dependent on the rural population and designed to never allow the poor to progress.
Cities like New York and a Chicago are prime examples of how tax first methods fail. People simply leave the city lines for purchasing. When the state becomes a tax problem people go over the border or move.
Notice the mass exodus from California, New York, and Illinois?
If something doesn’t change the union will fail, violently. But it won’t last long.
Cities will build walls to stop the invasions they expect that will never happen and the rural population will simply send enough equipment to make sure they stay
Inside their walls.
Mi don’t know if that is better or not. But I can’t see rural population ever j caring the city.
Though the city will eventually become unsustainable and then has a choice. Proper barter, or force. And if the democrats in cities continue to try force, by tax and law today, by gunpoint in a broken union, they will loose every time.
It’s time, past, for the democrats to dump the progressive wing and embrace the neo-socialism of the new breed.
And yes, it’s time for the republicans to dump the small far right populace of militant brain dead Christian nationalists.
Both Obama and Trump were non-partisan outsiders. Both made the same mistakes of embracing the party banner and extremes during their run. Trump isn’t a racist, he had one of the most diverse executives in history.
He simply didn’t denounce the far right.
And Obama wasn’t a communist. He simply didn’t denounce the Clintonian movement.
But the country whole is now stuck fighting fake nonsense against each other.
Neither racism nor communism are of any real concern in this country. It’s high time the media across the board stop pushing fake inventions of division.
Rural communities aren’t mad at cities because of race. They’re mad about lopsided taxes and ignorant regulations, and criminal expansion.
Very few people outside of politics are against free education and healthcare. We fight the method of funding.
We don’t NEED to raise taxes to put 1000 cash in every pocket monthly. With lifetime free healthcare and lifetime free education.
We could do that easily by reducing our funding for NATO to our percentage of count. And cutting aid to foreign civil wars.
I’ve said before, despite your ignorant beliefs in a relation to personal opinions and choice in vote… you have good ideas. We agree on more than you give thought to. Maybe if the population stopped watching the tv news and started talking outside of politics, we could actually discuss politics and not political affiliation.
Our country is on the brink of a massive disruption, if it doesn’t dissolve into chaos outright.
Re: Re: Re:3
I wasn’t talking about self-defense—unless you consider a civil war to be self-defense.
Because of course you think rural areas should have more control over cities than vice versa.
And if cities went poof gone, a lot of farms probably wouldn’t survive, either—or they’d at least be burdened with a lot of food and no way to transport it easily from coast to coast. We’re all interconnected, whether you like it or not. That you seem to think land should have more of a vote than people in how this country is run is your problem, son.
And yet, you are loyal to the man who all but runs the GOP, so your partisan loyalty is pretty clear to me.
Two things.
Hillary ran as a Jew? (Alternatively, and more to your actual point: We live on the same planet; a country trying to exist in near-complete isolation from the rest of the world is how you get North Korea.)
Missiles and bombs over queer rights, huh? You sound more and more like a conservative every time you write a new line.
And what economic policies do the Trump-led Republicans have that are designed to let the poor progress? Because trickle-down theory sure as shit isn’t working, and neither is giving obscene tax breaks to rich people and the companies they own.
This sounds an awful lot like “sacrifice the marginalized to save the rich” to me, and if that’s not what you’re trying to say, you should probably clarify that shit.
The GOP will never abandon the only real voting bloc it has left. And yes, the vast majority of the GOP voting bloc is, or at least supports, militant Christian nationalism. After all, look at how the moves to ban CRT and queer books and drag shows are all coming from organizations with ties to, if not directly run by, Christian nationalists. Like, seriously, the GOP is not going to make any significant attempt to appeal to anyone outside of its typical voter demographic because…well, they don’t want to piss off that demographic, but also because they don’t have anything appealing to offer. I mean, do you actually think queer people in general will ever accept the GOP’s “queer people should be third-class citizens” bullshit?
He is a racist. You’re just not willing to admit it, even after he used his campaign announcement to denounce Mexicans as thugs and rapists.
And that’s because the GOP wanted to make him seem like he was willing to champion diversity…up to a point.
Dude, he practically led the far-right. If anything, he capitalized on their post-Obama anger to get into office. He didn’t denounce them because they helped him win.
What should he have done, call the Pope’s exorcist?
Tell that to the victims of racism, both personal and systemic. And just for fun, tell that to the victims of other kinds of systemic marginalization—like, say, little girls forced to give birth after they were raped because they live in a GOP-controlled state with an abortion ban and can’t afford to go out of state for an abortion.
WHY?! What, do you think poor people should pay more in taxes while the wealthy sit on their hoards of money and do fuck-all with it? And by the by, if you’re gonna say “they use it to make jobs!”, that is trickle-down economic theory, and every economist worth a good god’s damn will tell you that trickle-down theory is some bullshit because, hey, Elon Musk has a higher network than 99% of this country combined. He could literally give up 99% of his own net worth and still be a billionaire. For what reason should he get to keep all of his obscene wealth while a single mother with two full-time jobs struggles to make rent after being made to give up her taxes?
(And don’t give me any goddamned flat tax bullshit because I’ve been over that with you before and you will never convince me that making a woman who makes $35k a year pay $3.5k in taxes and making a man who makes $35mm a year pay $3.5mm in taxes is fair because “the percentage is the same”. Seriously, fuck right off with that looks-good-on-paper bullshit before you even fucking start.)
We don’t need to raise taxes on the poor. The obscenely wealthy can afford to give up more and still retain an obscene amount of wealthy. Or do you think it’d be a high crime if Jeff Bezos could only afford to buy one superyacht instead of three next year because the U.S. government taxed him like it currently taxes poor people?
(Seriously, if there is one good thing anyone can learn from Christianity, it’s that those who are more fortunate should give freely of themselves to help the less fortunate. Only sociopaths would think otherwise.)
Don’t patronize me.
When a fair number of people keep expressing viewpoints that make their affiliation painfully obvious, discussing politics is that much harder. And there’s no compromise to be found between those who think queer people should have equal civil rights and those who think queer people should be forced back into the closet (if not open graves).
And by and large, that disruption is being caused by a political party that openly embraces fascism and the supporters of that party who also want to embrace fascism at any cost. Guess which party that is! (Hint: It’s the party led by your orange demigod.)
Re: Re: Re:4
What part of taxation loops do you not understand. I know you’re not dumb, but you just don’t appear to comprehend the situation.
The more you raise taxes the more money people need to buy things. That reduces ability so spend. So you raise the money the get. To pay the extra money out you raise taxes. Cost of goods go up. People can’t afford it. So you give them………
That’s an open debate. Non commercial farms would survive just fine they tend to be self sufficient and self sustaining. Outside of artificial pricing in states like California and Washington. Commercial farming, is a different story.
Now if states like California and Washington and Illinois and new York all split apart, farmers would be selling the same or more products, to the same people, at a lower operating cost. Because they wouldn’t be paying the same prior tax rates for production foods.
Being content with a person’s opinions and actions on key issues of importance to me doesn’t make me more or less loyal to anyone. It is me agreeing on key issues to me.
Those key issues were some of the same ones Obama ran on. Border security, Reduced military involvement, renegotiated trade agreements, reduced NATO spending…
Is putting money in a savings account or under the pillow. Investment isn’t hoarding. Stock monies are used by the very companies to continue to grow and create and survive. Bonds are not hoarding. They are loans to operations.
And again, such investments are not spendable by the investors, more is value stable.
What you want to do is tax the same money multiple times. Without regard to actual usable value. How do you tax an individual item with no immediate value? The highest worth it had? Even if it’s 10% of that today? When it goes public? When it hits a milestone? And do you plan to return that over-taxing when the price drops? Of course you wont.
Is pure fantasy. I’ve not said that. Trump hasn’t said that. No republican president has said that.
A wall isn’t missiles and bombs. A federal id isn’t missiles and bombs.
And what queer rights? Nobody is trying to outlaw cross dressing. Not wanting teenage boys in a girl’s locker room is not the same…
Personally we are all focused too much on sex (the act) and gender (the three that are real).
If we weren’t so repressed over all nobody would be talking about this in the first place. The problem isn’t queer (meaning different), the problem is antiquated social values and sexual beliefs.
None. The same as most democrats. Those at the top of both parties don’t care about the poor.
That’s interesting. Because the progressive camp is the Uber rich, at the leadership level. Blocking every opportunity to create a social safety net.
Pointing out that thugs and rapists are part of the group coming in isn’t denouncing the entirety of a population. You may want to actually read the transcript of the speeches, not the bastardised spin on tv.
He still had…
Stuck to and (attempt to) do what he campaigned on. End the war cycle, pull out of civil conflicts elsewhere, reduce nato spending, build a border infrastructure. Fast-track asylum cases, build fair international partnerships. Oh, and how you forget, he supported a national ID in 2007.
Such cases are few and far between. Every country has racism. At some level. As long as they commit no crime, they have a right to their beliefs. And when they do commit crime, they should be charged, convicted with evidence, and punished.
And… the Supreme Court can not create laws. Only judge laws. Any court must solely judge upon the laws as they are written, and judge the constitutional ability of the law.
The fault of abortion rights issues falls completely and absolutely on democrats who had decades of usable opportunity and failed to act.
Because the government, could redirect the Apx 80% of tax funds we spend outside of the country. To our own desperate needs.
And you could point out any who have stated that taxation in a flat tax implementation should start under $50k?
Most plans that have been put to paper or verbal explanation have a minimum above 100,000k. This not taxing any of the poor anything.
Is being caused by so many being forced to pay for failed policies they didn’t vote for on the first place.
Gas taxes as 1.40-$2 per gallon. Crushing the farming industry. And everyone else. You forget that those city buses run on fuel in most locations. That increase goes to ticket prices. The higher ticket prices reduce spending ability elsewhere… there’s that nasty cycle again.
Because democrats have never voted for a tax plan that didn’t hurt everyone. Except themselves.
Just because you hate wealthy doesn’t make a need.
We don’t need higher taxes. It is not a necessity. We need to redirect spending on other nations to spending on our own. Feed our nation before we feed others. Defend our nation before we defend ones that will turn around and use the weapons we hand them, against us.
House our homeless, before we house South America bring our troops home, rather than spend billions In countries with populations that don’t want us.
Healthcare here, before Africa.
We don’t need more taxes. We don’t need more money. We need logical use of the excess we have.
To modestly expand upon Tim’s always-eloquent statements of what should be obvious, the appeal factors of both DeSatan, and the former Dotard-in-Chief, weigh heavily amongst our general cadre of well-toasted Amerikan idiots. Great, dominant appeal is noted to those who are too lazy or life-encumbered to bother thinking for themselves, or are perhaps not even aware that such brain-matter usage is an option. Just give ’em some form of lowbrow TV (actual changing technology of such notwithstanding, whether over-the-air or cyber-streaming), enough (plenty of) beer to whet the ol’ whistle, a faithful obedient dawg or barefoot woman to love-slap and/or kick down the stairs (interchangeably), and a pickup truck stocked with a rifle rack and Kid Rock and/or Jason Aldean 8-track tapes, and an Amerikan “Country Boy Can Survive”, with enough leftover panache to comfortably scratch himself. Such is the bulk of where this country has devolved, and our Rethugnican proto-Fascist masters are there to lead our way down the blazing path toward Idiocracy (with a deserving nod to Mike Judge the societal prophet). Sleep well tonight!
This has been his playbook since the start…
Since he was elected our lovely dictator wannabe has moved and gotten his tame legislature to pass bills to restrict any local government from doing things he doesn’t like repeatedly. This was most evident during pandemic when he moved to forbid cities and counties from having masking mandates, any rent control laws, and also to prevent Key West from limiting larger cruise ships from docking due to the disruption it caused to the city and environment.
He’s the absolute worst governor I’ve seen since moving to FL in 1987, he’s making us go ‘Hey, I miss Rick Scott’.
Unfortunately he has his own local cult and the democrats in FL have the fighting ability of a 2 day old kitten.
Re:
I suspect the Democrats have been nothing more than a branch of the Republican Party since 9/11. Nothing like a little blackmail after a show of force to get your opponents to toe the line for their own sake and safety.
Re: Re: don't be "soft on crime"
The GOP going back to Reagan v Dukakis (if not earlier) have pushed the story that the Dems are weak on crime and electing them will have “those people” ransacking your family & home. Classic trope from the Dixiecrat contingent that moved to the GOP post-LBJ.
Re: Re: Re:
except it was George H.W. Bush vs. Dukakis. Reagan’s opponents were Jimmy Carter in 1980 and Walter Mondale in 1984.
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Re: Re: Re:
Do you mean like in San Francisco?
Fortunately, lil Ronnie greatly overestimates his political prowess. He barely eked out a victory in 2018 and the only reason he won a “landslide” in 22 was because he ran against perennial loser Charlie Crist (shame on the Democrats for not running literally anyone else. Hell an alligator on bath salts would have done better).
Resorting to fascist bullshit to save his floundering campaign seems like a losing strategy. Trump only pulled it off because he has a disturbing form of charisma. Desantis is just disturbing.
Re: Who for President 2024?
This is one of the reasons I worry for 2024. It looks like Biden will be standing again. If it was easy for Trump to make Biden look old and foolish is 2020, it’s even easier now. 🙁
The Democrats need to find a truly credible alternative. Personally, I’d love for a powerful woman to put Trump in his place, but is Kamala Harris that woman? (from overseas, it appears she’s been a very quiet VP)
Re: Re:
I don’t think it was that easy…Biden did win after all. The old and foolish narrative is one Republicans have tried for a long time, but they’re only fooling themselves.
Re: Re:
Biden looks old because he is, not because he was put side by side with Trump. Trump is only a couple years younger but he sounds like the one with dementia. Trump didn’t make him look foolish either, quite the opposite.
As much as I would like to see a strong woman (or anyone other than a geriatric straight white man) run in 2024,I don’t see any that are electable in the current climate. I would say maybe Pelosi, but she’s up there in age & I suspect has some financial “baggage” that could be a problem. I really want to like Harris, & she could win me over if I see a lot more of her raw passion that she showed when speaking about Florida ‘racism was good’ controversy a few weeks ago. But people still refer to her by her first name, which at least half can’t even pronounce correctly, she doesn’t command enough respect.
Re: Re:
Kamala Harris just doesn’t feel genuine. She feels like a Biden cheerleader instead of a player. Hillary Clinton had much more of a profile of her own. Voting for or against her felt like a choice rather than premonition.
BS
Looks like it’s time to include another chapter in a revised version of my book, The Life-Changing Science of Detecting Bulls#!t.
Nah
Hey, this is Florida. It isn’t “abuse of power”, it is “business as usual.”
DeStupid
The dismantling of Disney’s Reedy Creek management operation as payback for their speaking out against the Don’t-Say-Gay bill.
The dismissal of two county-level AGs for not prosecuting cases hard enough.
On a personal note, his upheaval of the state honors school, New College in Sarasota, where my kid *was* attending, now led by his former education commissioner and Ron’s CRT attack dog Christopher Rufo.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/us/ron-desantis-new-college-florida.html
https://www.tampabay.com/news/education/2023/07/19/new-college-florida-struggles-through-overhaul/
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2023/01/11/desantis-seeks-overhaul-small-liberal-arts-college
My kid has taken the offer from Hampshire College in Amherst MA for a soft landing, even though we’ll be out of pocket for some thousands for them to be able to complete their degree; with the faculty departures at NCF this wasn’t going to happen there.
That should’ve read:
and the net effect would’ve been the same.
We should all be very grateful for COVID. Had it not emerged when and how it did, we would currently be enduring Trump’s second term, and possibly witnessing the end of our pseudo-democracy as we know it. We may not be so lucky the next time.
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Re: Just crown Hunter
You’re blind if you don’t think we are facing the end of democracy now. Hillary claimed the 2016 election was stolen. Trump claimed the 2020 election was stolen. The 2024 election is already tainted. Not sure we will even have a 2028 election. Maybe they will just crown Hunter.
Re: Re:
Guy, Trump’s not going to suck your dick, just get your son to do it like you always have.
Fascism is similar to the rot one sees in stop action films of a rotting corpse. It creates nothing but chaos and is intended only to make its top members wealthier fast.
Those non-wealthy fawning idiots among the general public that think they will share in the booty of a fallen nation, always discover the truth of their rich businessmen leaders’ dishonesty, only after the fact, and are always discarded and slaughtered once the millionaires have stolen the nation’s wealth and moved onto the next nation to plunder as billionaires.
What you are seeing is the intentional decomposition of the USA, which will be followed by a lot of other countries going tits-up as well, because this time the goal is the whole world.
One World Government, run by the rich, can only exist in a Feudal form. A form where the wealthy are the only authority. If you need an example of what that looks like, simply open any history book, and look at any point in humanity’s past.
Enough laws have been altered or newly passed to allow the wealthy to take over the reins of government, justice and law enforcement and now the inability of the American public to see the writing on the wall, will lead inevitably to their complete subjugation once again, as it always has, whenever the wealthy gang-up to steal the public’s hard-earned property.
Either wake up now, or say b’bye America, cuz once the ball starts rolling you’re not going to have any choice but to fight back or die.
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Is this just the “dirt” part of Techdirt, as there doesn’t seem to be any Tech in it? August filler.
Re:
Damn shame that “forced to read Techdirt” beam hit you. Maybe you should sue Mike over it.
Re:
I feel your pain, I was devastated when I found out that Fox News wasn’t a channel all about foxes…
Reality bites
“March peaceful” protest. Not a single time did he call for violence or illegal activity.
1,127,152. Of which 81% were over 70, or otherwise “infirm”.
Those two groups are not likely to have severe issues, including death, with absolutely any respiratory illness.
Huh? Feel free to prove that with facts. Requiring yourself to prove you are who you say you are when doing something as vital as, oh, VOTING, doesn’t count.
Let’s not forget how many actual crimes that prosecutor ignored. When you don’t do your job, you should relieved.
I’m no fan of DeSantis: he’s a christian militant. One whose real world actions make the invented nonsense tossed about Trump look tame.
But really, what’s the point. Tim is a progressive. They want a large (Democratic party) government dictating how every person will think and act take from the Haves by force and hand it to the have nots, rather than actually cut spending on crap like Ukraine and wind mills.
Progressives are just as much a problem in this country as militant christians.
And progressives aren’t interested in democracy, OR freedom. Just look at the comment on the EC. Removing it would allow 10% of the land owners (city residents) to dictate how those in 90% of the country live their lives.
That’s no better than the far right.
Re:
And as you’ve been told before, Trumpist, he didn’t need to directly call for violence. I know you don’t believe in concepts like subtext and context and stochastic terrorism, but those don’t stop being things we have to deal with only because you don’t believe in them.
Dude, do you think atheists were advising Donald Trump?
Remind me: Which political party is trying to rewrite American history so that slavery doesn’t seem so bad, push queer people out of public life by declaring them “groomers”, shut down public libraries, and inject explicitly Christianist beliefs into the laws that govern this country?
Remind me: Does trickle-down economics actually work?
Remind me: Who is responsible for the successful effort to undo Roe v. Wade and take away bodily autonomy from women and little girls, even in cases of rape and incest?
(Trick question! Conservative Christians are explicitly responsible for the fall of Roe v. Wade, while liberals are responsible only for not enshrining abortion rights into federal law when they had several chances to do so.)
Remind me: Which party tried to overturn the results of a free and fair election by putting forth slates of fake electors, filing court cases with a severe lack of evidence, and even trying to directly influence election officials into “finding” votes that didn’t exist?
Land doesn’t vote. People do.
“Both sides are the same” doesn’t work when one side is high on some actual Nazi-ass shit and the other side wants to treat queer people like people.
Re: Re:
Ignoring facts and cherry picking as usual
Not only did be not call for violence, he, certainly called for peaceful protest multiple times.
That a few dozen here and there out of many thousands of protestors were violent is on the criminals that were violent, not a president that called for peace.
Um, well, he did have a meeting with members of the Freedom From Religion Foundation.
I don’t see you complaining about the connection between Biden and Clinton with the Nation Of Islam.
When exactly did that happen? Wasn’t Trump. And if you want to make such a claim point to factual evidence. There’s a difference between arguing against the 1619 nonsense and saying slavery‘wasn’t that bad’.
No. I never said it did. But unlike you I don’t support stealing people’s money just because you disagree with how much they have. Or should have. Show me a Democrat that actually supports a social daft net and base security income for all and I’ll gladly look at if their other, often nonsense when not dangerous, ideas are worth ignoring.
The Supreme Court. Who rightfully pushed the situation back to the states absent a congressional act.
Alternative. The exact same thing multiple democrats did following the 2016 election.
As is their right. I remember a large group of democrats filing lawsuits about 20 years ago… over equal nonsense.
Read the transcript. Don’t be a moron.
And you are going to tell me that what happens in a city is exactly what should happen on a farm. A person in a city has no business regulating what happens on a farm. Or a field. Or a forest.
And a single city has no right to diminish the life of the entirety of a state based on a few dozen square miles of people living on top of each other.
You left out the black power groups that want to crush all white people.
The thieves that want to steal money from anyone who has more than them. The hitters that think it’s acceptable to force a 15 year old BOY, that is a primate with a penis, into a girls shower room.
That wish ti erase anything they don’t agree with from the internet.
That want to force medical treatment on those unwilling.
That tossed the elderly into death traps during covid. That refused to restrict travel from the source country of the weaponised virus.
Both parties suck. One may suck more for certain people than the other. And the other sucks more than one for some. But both suck.
Until someone comes along with a social agenda that involves cutting wasted foreign spending and involvement in other’s wars, puts our country and its people first, and protects our country from invasion…
I will continue to vote for what ever person is a) most isolationist, and/or b) most likely to be disruptive to the system.
Re: Re: Re:
I have insomnia, and I’m making that your problem this morning, Trumpist.
Per Wiki:
Now go back and look at the quotes I highlighted from the speeches given by Trump and his compatriots on January 6th. You can deny that subtext is a thing all you want, but that doesn’t mean other people ignored Trump’s thinly veiled calls for violence. That’s the whole point of stochastic terrorism: The violence it inspires is statistically likely but nigh impossible to predict. But when a few hundred people show up to hear a man to whom they’ve pledged their undying loyalty talk about protecting democracy and stopping a stolen election with language that evokes thoughts of violence, the insurrection was far more likely and a little more predictable than the typical “lone wolf” attack that stochastic terrorism inspires.
Three things.
You should be paying more attention to what’s happening in Florida. DeSantis’s fascist whitewashing of education will spread to other states thanks to conservatives—especially Trumpists!—who think this is their chance to rewrite history in the image of their racist forefathers. And even if this isn’t Trump’s doing, his attacks on “critical race theory”, The 1619 Project, DEI initiatives, and other race-related sociocultural issues doesn’t exactly paint a picture of his being someone who opposes what DeSantis is doing.
Quick question: How do you earn a billion dollars without exploiting the poor and the marginalized in any way?
My feelings about billionaires isn’t going to change just because you want to act like I’m jealous of them. The existence of a billionaire is a moral, ethical, and societal failure. That they hoard their wealth and live like kings while millions of people struggle with poverty—with starvation and homelessness—is an obscenity. That some of them pay lip service to Christianity, the tenets of which openly preach that giving up your worldly possessions is more godlike than being a money-hoarding motherfucker, is akin to blasphemy. But sure, tell me again how I’m the bastard in need of a guillotine because I think rich people should pay far, far, far more in taxes because they can afford to lose a significant fraction of their net worth and still live like royalty.
Prove it or shove it, sunshine. By all means, show me the evidence that multiple Democratic officeholders in multiple states tried to go through with a plan to offer a slate of fake electors in an attempt to delay the certification of the 2016 election such that the [checks notes] Republican-controlled House of Representatives would end up voting for Donald Trump anyway. (Do you even think this shit through, or do you just accept whatever right-wing pundits tell you to believe without hesitation?)
Democrats filed lawsuits over the 2000 election based on all the vote-counting bullshit that happened in Florida. Those lawsuits had far more merit than any of the five dozen or so vapid and easily dismissed lawsuits filed by Trump, his (high on) crack legal team, and his (equally stupid) supporters in the wake of the 2020 election. After all, the lawsuits in 2000 were about things that were actually happening in Florida. The lawsuits in 2020 were about things that NO ONE, including the people who filed those lawsuits in the first place, has ever been able to prove. (I can all but guarantee that the big “report” Trump promised to reveal next week won’t be the iron-clad irrefutable proof he wants it to be…if he actually, y’know, reveals it.)
I’d like to think even you aren’t stupid enough to think Trump asking state election officials to find votes that didn’t exist so he could change the outcome of an election he’d already lost is some sort of innocent request on the level of “hey, could you get me [x] while you’re at the store”.
The people who live in sparsely populated areas deserve representation. They don’t deserve to, as you might put it, tell people that what happens on a farm is exactly what should happen in a city. And if the people in those rural areas can’t be fucked to follow laws like the Civil Rights Act or adhere to legal realities like same-sex marriage being legal, that’s their fucking problem. We can disagree on how to handle issues that affect rural citizens and urban citizens differently. But some laws transcend the divide between rural and urban. To act like being told “hey, you can’t fire people for being queer” is an untenable imposition on states run by Republicans and should therefore be ignored by those states (or at least the rural areas) is to act like the laws that govern this land shouldn’t govern all of the land. And like I said: Land doesn’t vote. People do.
By the same token, the rest of the state has no right to diminish the life of the people in those cities. Or do you think the rest of Illinois should be able to govern Chicago from the outside?
Two things.
One political party has been constantly beating the drum of the anti-porn crusade for my entire fucking lifetime to date. It sure as shit ain’t the DNC, despite some individual Democrats being stupid enough to think supporting porn bans won’t end with broader censorship.
One political party wants to force women and young girls—including rape victims!—into carrying pregnancies to term even if doing so would kill them. It sure as shit ain’t the DNC.
In a broad sense, yes. But drill down on the details and you’ll find that one party is full of centrist dipshits who couldn’t find their collective balls with a microscope and a giant neon sign pointing to said balls, while the other party is full of fascists who want to turn everyone who isn’t a straight White cisgender conservative Christian into a third-class citizen. Here’s a hint: The second one is the one led by your orange godking.
I also have issues with the U.S. involving itself in foreign affairs, but (a) we live on the same planet as everyone else so let’s not act like the U.S. becoming North Korea would be a good thing, and (b) disruption at any cost will lead nowhere good.
Fuck, man, I don’t like Joe Biden. I feel like shit whenever I have to defend him. The man is a middling centrist needledick who thinks the GOP still has some actual good left in it when the entire party runs on warmed-over decades-old grievances and no actual plan for governance beyond barely disguised fascism. But he’s still not nearly the kind of destructive force that Trump represents. That you think he is because he has history with a woman you sincerely believe to be an actual, literal, straight-from-the-Bible demon is your fuckin’ problem.
Re: Re: Re:2
No, I will look at the president. Anything said by others is their own speech.
And I see no call for violence.
Laws require evidence. Not you, note anyone else, has shown evidence of Trump calling for, inciting, or otherwise involved in the acts of a few dozen militant turds.
Complete nonsense,
utter nonsense,
Who?!? Only DEIs that I know of is in Detroit or Durham.
Easy. You hire people at or above the minimum wage and follow employment law. Not exploited by law. Moving on.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-democrats-house-democrats-electoral-college-election-2016-539801
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/democrats-electoral-college-faithless-trump-231731
Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)
Jamie Raskin (D-Md.)
Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.)
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas)
Barbara Lee (D-Calif.)
Maxine Waters (D-Calif)
Finding missing votes? Verify the results? Sounds like the whole bush thing. Or 2016 when democrats challenged 3 states.
Yes, and when 90% of the people living on top of each other want to dictate living on top of each other methods to the owners of 90% of the country, something is wrong.
Hopefully enough people will vote for the next proposition on California leaving that the rest of the country can move on with some reality.
Well the quick solution is coming. States are sick and fucking tired and not going to take it any more. Seattle and Portland do not have the votes to stop the jettison proposition this time.
And there little doubt that receive Washington, Oregon and Idaho will receive the required votes, to create the new state, at the federal level.
California level transit check points are in the works in the Illinois legislature. That would shut down the crime outside the city when every single person in a vehicle or public transit must show ID to enter the rest of the state. Exactly what the state of California does to every vehicle entering the state today.
A wall has been floated by neighbouring counties to reduce human traffic to searchable corridors.
New York state has lost 60% of companies since SARS 5 came on flights from southern China. The city’s population is in a free fall and eventually, possibly by 2024, the state will turn red in votes.
They number roughly the same size as white lower groups. And have about the same reach.
Being white and American first doesn’t equate to being a racist. Over 35% of the black vote went to Trump. More than 50% of Hispanics.
The other has sought to erase anything that upsets their ideal of cultural submission.
The PMRC board has 2 republicans and 12 Democrats the head was two democrats.
Don’t play that game because you WILL loose. For every republican with a complaint against porn I’ll hand you 10 democrats seeking to censor my ability to consume entertainment of my choosing.
I know of 4 members of Congress that have suggested that. In my lifetime.
Fuxk them.
One wants to eliminate law and order. The other is a bit extreme in how it enforces it. The first is lead by a man suffering from late stage dementia and receiving money directly and indirectly from foreign government associations in exchange for meetings and policy decisions.
Other than magic the gathering, er, major onset genera, er, whatever her name.
Point to a single Republican in office, having left office in the last 11 years, or running for office, that has suggested cutting off America from the rest of the world.
There’s a wide gap between not spending 50 billion per year outside the country and becoming the DPRK. Fuck you only have two shades of grey in a world of colour.
Re: Re: Re:3
You and davec seriously need to get a room.
Maybe you can teach him how to be pansexual like you alleged are.
Realistically we all know that’s not going to happen because white guys like can’t stand being the little spoon in the equation.