We have Project 2025 out there literally announcing the end of democracy should a republican president be voted in. Their plan is to enact Schedule F which allows the prez to kick people from the senate and place his own chosen people there and to allow the prez to essentially take over the whole executive branch of the government.
LIKE GODDAMMIT, THERE’S A DICTATORSHIP UNDER CONSTRUCTION! WHY ISN’T THIS EVEN NEWSWORTHY? WHY DOES THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA SOLELY FOCUS ON THE CLIMATE ASPECT ON PROJECT 2025? IT’S LITERALLY THE PLAN TO END DEMOCRACY! AND OF COURSE LGBTQIA+ PEOPLE!
Yeah I was thinking “what in the tinfoil hat is this guy rambling about”… So I looked it up and holy fuck it is legit the Republicans plan for thier next administration.
Here’s a PBS article for anyone that wants to read some info on it:
How can the Republican Party infiltrate itself. They’re already members of them self. Therefore they cannot infiltrate themselves because they’re already part of themselves.
The tea party was complete AstroTurf from the start. Run by well-known Republicans for republicans.
For the last 20 years Fox News and conservative media have been demonizing Democrats as anti-American and disloyal and trying to actively intentionally destroy America. They also are given this propaganda that they’re the real Americans and the only thing left to save the world, so that mindset gives them permission to end democracy to save their way of life.
Delusional. And then I know some of them have just always been republican so they keep voting that way regardless. Like, damn, wake up to the bullshit around you. This isn’t a matter of differing ideologies anymore - this is a matter of fighting for keeping the right to vote about those differing ideologies.
Hello viewers, before we sign off I’d like to remind you that you are the superior human even though you are oppressed and can’t get anything you deserve, and that those other people are idiotic soft weaklings just preparing to take over and destroy us all!
You kick out the federalist that do things like, investigate overturning elections, and suddenly the midterms are all republican wins.
From there, you have someone who can get power passed to change things like presidential term limits. Now you have a king or an emperor with a bunch of yes men backing him up in decisions. Eventually, they can institute whatever policies they want and force states, by force, to enact what they want with military power and courts who rule in their favor.
Oh, but there are people in the military who will stand up and do what’s right? Well, they will be branded as wackos and enemies of the state who are speaking ill of the totally “legit” election. So they are put in front of a firing squad and all that’s left are those who already believe in Der Fuhrer.
It’s a complete shit show in the making and fucking frightening what they could do with disinformation and no checks.
You're definitely right. I spent a good minute going through the guide but the most nefarious stuff was gaining complete control of the executive branch. This guide is like a first step for a first term. Well brb guys, going to figure how to take over the government with only the executive branch.
Is the army part of the executive? If yes, then… idk, build a shelter, leave, arm yourself or just accept your new overlords.
Theoretically a president could call the army to throw out dissidents. In practice… i think the army is right-leaning but i don’t think that they would simply follow through. It depends.
Per section 4 DOD I should be getting some brownie point by providing more goodies to each branch even the space force. I would also be making adjustments to the culture to make sure there's no woke people. Personal army wise I think my best bet will be to use ice since they fall under Homeland security. There was a note somewhere about removing the restrictions of where they can operate.
Don’t lie or spread misinformation. The language says they would find ways to BYPASS the senate in some circumstances. Still terrible but disinformation will cause people to not believe the legitimate warnings.
You are correct. Page 168 has the "An Aggressive Approach to Senate-Confirmed Leadership Positions" section, laying out how to bypass senate confirmed positions. Still nothing about kicking members of Congress.
Holy fuck. What. I read through the articles on this and they don’t touch on much of what it actually says. Most of it is just quotes. But the guardian has this bit about them dismantling the EPA and, among other things, making it illegal for the EPA to raise emission restrictions.
Jesus fuck, I’m so glad someone else is panicking about their plans. Not too long ago, I finally realized the whole idea of these shitty laws being enacted in red states is a strategy to chase lefties out so that they control enough states to start a constitutional convention.
Here’s the website for a conservative group that pushes for it.
Idk how everyone seems to miss it - it’s why Republicans have been angling for such extreme gerrymandering since 2010 and want to dominate state legislatures so much
There’s no need for formal conspiracies when all of these economic and political elites share the same ideology, which they learned from their environment growing up in similar positions of privilege within the dominant culture.
That book they’re selling is like a modern “Mein Kampf.” It’s very interesting because I know quite a few moderate conservatives who wouldn’t ever support the policy proposed in this book, but they are still going to vote red because they believe it will fix the economy.
This is the consequence of the hatred that transphobes, garden variety conservatives and TERFs alike, have stoked. And the narrative that the media has gleefully ran with.
Being visibly trans or gender-non-conforming nowadays is genuinely scary in a way I think a lot of people don't fully understand. And of course when femininity is being policed, women of colour tend to suffer too, even if they are cisgender.
The instigators responsible will keep getting away with it. They’re very careful to use the right dog whistles and key words to avoid getting deplatformed and they still cause their followers to act like this.
Racism, Misogyny and transphobia have always come from a similar place and build off of each other. They share the same narratives and the same desire for ostracization and oppression. Bigots will always ally with other bigots, as this hatred is not rational and only someone with similarly irrational hate could support you. Dig enough in bigoted communities and you are certain to find all different kinds of hatred.
That’s why TERF communities are infested with homophobia, misogyny, racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia. Over time the concentration of white supremacy and nazism has grown exponentially in terf communities. Nazis share many of the same goals and many of the same conspiracies that terfs do. And prominent terfs like Kelly Jay Keen openly ally with Christian white nationalists around the world.
I’d argue that the TERF perspective is fundamentally anti-male rather than (or maybe in addition to) misogynistic.
The specific position TERFs hold that makes them TERFs is that you cannot become a woman if you weren’t born one and that women should be granted certain special protections and spaces of their own, kept free from men.
That’s why TERFs ALWAYS frame trans issues in the form of men dressing up as women to infiltrate women’s spaces and women’s services. They could give a shit about trans men, it’s all trans women because trans women are the ones using things that in their eyes should be the sole provenance of “real” women.
They’ve also been stoking the “Black women look trans” narrative for a while, especially focused on Michelle Obama. I listen to Knowldge Fight so I’ve heard so many disgusting Alex Jones clips of him calling her Mike.
Remember when he removed the Disney+ app from Teslas because he was angry over twitter ads? That kind of unreliable behaviour might have something to do with it.
I think that this is the part that people miss. When it was new and unique, they had the market cornered. Now the big automakers have caught up and they have far more experience with this.
yeah, for a while they were the only option if you wanted an EV with >80 mile range, but there are other options today
Tesla’s no-dealerships, no-hassle purchasing experience is more like ordering something from Amazon instead of the usual, infuriating slog of trying to purchase a new car. Its strictly superior to the legacy car companies, and so are Tesla’s batteries.
But the entire rest of the vehicle isn’t the best anymore. The CEO’s loud, public support for fascism is just one more nail in the coffin for a brand that was already past its prime.
Yeah and while the dealer network of major brands can be scummy, it also comes with pretty good parts networks, which Tesla still seems to lack, or actively impede.
We bought a Tesla nearly six years ago and this was why. He wasn’t quite such an obvious raging asshole at the time, but also we were hoping to signal with our wallet that we wanted manufacturers to step up EV production. Which they did. I’m happy with my car but if I had to replace it, I’d look at other options. Although I feel like my M3 is the only smallish car option on the market right now; everything is a freaking crossover and that’s not what I want to drive all the time.
Yeah. There’s a lot of products I use and buy where I really don’t like the owners or CEOs. I try to avoid what I can where I can, but some are so ubiquitous or monopolistic it’s quite tough. But this would get a hard pass from me, even if Teslas were far and away the best EV options.
If I can’t be sure the company’s policies aren’t going to be directly influenced by the fascist man-child CEO then I’m going to stay far away from the products. I have enough to worry about with corporate policies making stupid decisions for profit without watching an idiot throw tens of billions into an incinerator because of pride.
That was such a dumb move, not just because it was petty in and of itself, but because it means you now can’t separate Musk’s drama from his products. His antics will demonstrably spill over into fucking with your car, even after you bought it.
Now imagine having all your shit tied up in X, The Everything App!™️* and you make a statement he doesn’t like or agree with one or whatever. Welp, there goes your bank account, social security info, personal medical data, and so on because you are being quarantined for the Woke Mind Virus
Tap for spoiler*which will never actually become A Thing
My opinion is that nothing like D+ or Netflix or whatever should be on a central console in the first place. If it is there, there will always be a driver watching it instead of a road and killing someone as a result.
Until FSD is a thing, entertainment should be reserved for passengers.
As far as I know those systems are intended to be used either by second monitor in the back or only if the car is standing still.
When you have your lovely family time in the daily traffic jam. Or when you had to sell your TV and now go into your car to watch. /s
I personally think the idea on itself is stupid. However in China they are a step ahead and have even more of that shit. The point is that in china you won’t have much space in your flat in the big cities so you can move into your car because there is more space /s
The price of those cars with that stuff is starting at about 100k€ and only going up.
The Davis School District initially removed the Bible from school libraries after a review determined it did include “vulgar” content. But the school board unanimously reversed its decision after a review by an appeal committee determined the text has " significant, serious value for minors which outweighs the violent or vulgar content it contains," the AP reported.
Sort of, but also, Christianity is a death cult that enables child molesters and promotes hate, so there is not much room for subtly. It is also profoundly lacking in any basis of reality and frankly teaches deranged ideas that harm children’s ability to make rational judgments about reality.
No, I’m done with this stupid conversation and closer to believing Lemmy is a cesspool echo chamber than before it started. You people are fucking idiots that detract from reasonable discourse and progress on the left.
And by the way, I’m far from conservative, I hate Trump and all the other extremist authoritarian assholes, and I’m starting to realize you lot are almost as stupid as the MAGA fascists.
I don’t know what you want from other people. You’re not obligated to argue with people on the internet, but you started a disagreement that you weren’t willing to back up. Then you baseslessly called everyone idiots and a danger to the left before storming off. Maybe when you have more distance you can learn some lessons. Maybe you can understand where they’re coming from. Maybe you can better articulate what they did to harm the discourse. At the very least, it would be wise to learn to not pick fights you don’t want to actually participate in, for your sake and everyone else’s.
Dude just shut the fuck up and leave Lemmy then. Clearly you aren’t interested in any actual conversation, so why the fuck would we want you here to begin with? Do us the favor of walking away.
It’s not a broad generalization at all. It’s a widespread pattern of hypocritical and contradictory conservative outrage, statements, and laws.
“I should be able to teach kids about the Bible in school, but you can’t teach them about Yoga”
“we can’t have vulgar language, oh unless it’s from our religious book”
“I can’t make a cake for you because you’re gay and that’s against my religion. What do you mean you won’t make a Christian cake? That’s religious discrimination!”
“Happy holidays!??! Happy holidays??! You monster, how dare you wage war on Christmas! We have religious liberty in this country! What do you mean that protects other religions? There’s only one God and one religion!”
“It’s totally fine that the polling places in large democratic areas have hours long waits so long as my polling places are quick and easy”
“it’s totally fine that a county with 10,000 people has the same number of ballot drop boxes as a country with 3,000,000 people”
“marriage is between a man and woman … and may include 17 divorces; they gays can’t have it”
“we need to teach kids (i.e., indoctrinate them in the ways of) Jesus not this woke (black history, trans, etc)”
“let’s let white kids off with a slap on the wrist while we throw a black kid in jail for smoking a plant”
“I can’t believe a president could have such a scandal in the white house as to have had an affair with an assistant! We need to impeach! No, I don’t think extorting an ally for information about an opponent is worthy of an impeachment! Trying to overthrow a legitimate presidental victor with a procedural trick? Nah that’s not worth an impeachment either! Oh but hey, this Biden guy’s son who lost one of his parents and a sibling in a car crash, that lost his brother to cancer, that has a drug problem, called his dad while he was in business meetings to show off… so you know his dad definitely was up to something! We’ve got to impeach him over that! What do you mean that was before he was even president and that’s completely unprecedented?”
“We should totally lock her up for those emails! What do you mean the guy screaming that’s son and law did the exact same thing?”
“We’re sorry we can’t appoint a supreme court justice just before the election! Psych! We totally can if it’s nominated by OUR president!”
"We need law and order in this country! What do you mean Trump broke the law? Nah, I’m not hearing it; this is clearly a partisan witch hunt and the majority conservative staff of the FBI is out to get conservatives! Oh but we’ll DEFINITELY weaponize the federal government and go after our political rivals full steam if we get the presidency in 2024"
“I believe abortion is amoral, that’s why I hid the fact that my ex/current lovers have had one”
“I believe homosexuality is amoral, that’s why I am one in the closet”
“we’re going to be the party of health care, but don’t watch as we strip you of your federal protections for your health care”
“we’re the party of the little man, but don’t watch as we cut taxes for the rich (and you but make sure that expires under the next term (probably while the Democrats are in power)”
“the national debt is an outage! Oh let’s spend as much as Obama did in half the time! Oh Biden is in power again, spending is out of control!”
“the problem isn’t guns it’s mental health, but we’re not going to do anything about that either! Must be because the kids aren’t in church, the gays, video games, or hey look over there, a squirrel!”
“climate change? Nah. It’s not real. Okay maybe it is, but it doesn’t matter because look at China! Oh we could make a dent and get the ball rolling? Well, it’s too late anyways, we should’ve been building nuclear plants! What do you mean I just made that up? Clearly I’ve been trying to solve this via nuclear the whole time, and it’s not another dog whistle! Oh and btw all of my top presidential candidates say they don’t believe in man made climate change! But yeah, totally serious about this issue!!”
… and that’s just off the top of my head. If you’re a conservative, wake up, your party is a mess.
I don’t need to put any words into your mouth, your reply to the comment was to ignore all the real, objectively true examples and just claim that despite the fact that they’re the actions of real conservative policy makers, that they somehow have nothing to do with real conservative policy
You ignore the faults of real world conservatism, holding up this idealistic version of conservatism you have in your head as “real” conservatism. Ill bet you also hold that conservatism has nothing to do with anti-LGBT+, despite their policy makers constantly making anti-LGBT+ policy decisions
And you’re reinforcing mine by continuing to not actually address any of the actual points.
Pointing out actual, provable examples of selective enforcement by conservatives isn’t an “echo chamber” it’s discussing real world politics
Ultimately it looks from my perspective like you’re falling into the classic trap of just assuming that when a lot of people disagree with you, that they’re just mindlessly repeating talking points - rather than ever considering that your own view might be skewed. Further reinforced by the fact that you steadfastly refuse to actually talk about the issue, and instead just keep deflecting and crying “ECHO CHAMBER”.
And no, I have no idea who you are, why should I care though? This is a discussion about conservative politics, not you or your feelings.
So if you agree that what’s being said is factual, then what exactly is the concern here regarding “echo chambers”?
A echo chamber is dangerous when people are spreading misinformation, a group of people acknowledging a very real negative aspect of a major political party is in no way “echo chamber” type behavior.
Now if we were saying “all conservative voters and politicians are Nazis”, id agree with you that caution should be given about echo chambers, but cautioning about echo chambers when objective facts are being discussed comes across much more as you trying to deflect away from facts you don’t like being discussed.
Would it help you if we also talked some trash about democrats?
Biden is too old for office
Most elected democrats are hypocrites, at least to some extent
Virtually every politician, including the left leaning ones, in the US are corrupt to som extent, and usually to a severe degree
There? Are you satisfied that we’re not an echo chamber?
Not denying that Biden is very old and that any vote for him carries a material probability that it also elects the VP for president, the vast majority of politicians are very old in the USA
The concern is that you said “conservatives”, not “what’s popular amongst conservative politicians”, or “what’s popular amongst conservative media”, or even “most”. You just said conservatives, that is villifying all people by nature of a describing themselves by a very broad term(or even someone else ascribing it to them). Their initial complaint was generalization and you attacked them with evidence of it being true for some conservatives.
Every person who votes conservative is guilty of the behavior I describe because - As pointed out above - they vote in the politicians who do these things
You can’t vote a politician into power and then not take responsibility for their actions
Every person who votes conservative is guilty of the behavior I describe because - As pointed out above - they vote in the politicians who do these things
Then essentially every American who votes is guilty of drone bombing civilians because presidents from Republicans and Democrats did it.
Except that I that example, as you say - they have no actual choice in the matter because as you say it doesn’t matter who they vote for. That being said, I think we all do bear some small share of the responsibility for the atrocities our country has committed, if only because we benefit from them - but that’s a whole other debate.
My point is that every conservative has a very easy choice each election - support the conservative party, or oppose them. If they choose the former, that’s their right, but theyre responsible for having made that decision, and don’t get to pretend that all the terrible shit the GOP is doing, all the way up to it’s ongoing attempts to subvert the election process and undermine the justice system, is somehow not their responsibility, despite voting for it.
And in the interest of fairness, the same goes for the Dems. I bare some sense of responsibility for Biden’s union busting of the railworkers strike last year for having voted for him. That’s how it works. But I think any rational person looking at the two parties from a utilitarian standpoint of ethics can see pretty easily that the evils of the GOP vastly outweighs that of the Democratic party
Except that I that example, as you say - they have no actual choice in the matter because as you say it doesn’t matter who they vote for.
No you can vote for the non-evil, like I do. But I understand that it is a mature decision to vote who you see as the lesser evil with a chance.
That being said, I think we all do bear some small share of the responsibility for the atrocities our country has committed, if only because we benefit from them
No, not at all? If I am one of two plumbers in a town and someone randomly kills the other plumber I profit from that, but I have 0 responsibility for the murder.
the GOP is doing, all the way up to it’s ongoing attempts to subvert the election process and undermine the justice system, is somehow not their responsibility, despite voting for it.
There is some responsibility, but not exactly the same as if you were a perpetrator yourself.
But I think any rational person looking at the two parties from a utilitarian standpoint of ethics can see pretty easily that the evils of the GOP vastly outweighs that of the Democratic party
Most people are not utilitarian, or at least I hope they aren’t.
But I understand that it is a mature decision to vote who you see as the lesser evil with a chance.
Idk if I’m having a stroke, or you are - but this sentence makes no sense to me - though I think I can guess at your point from context, and I broadly agree - at least up until the point that you claim that voting for the “lesser evil” exonerates you of any responsibility for the actions of the party you voted for.
No, not at all? If I am one of two plumbers in a town and someone randomly kills the other plumber I profit from that, but I have 0 responsibility for the murder
Except in that example, you didn’t help give power to the murderer, whereas for the actions of our government, we do.
There is some responsibility, but not exactly the same as if you were a perpetrator yourself.
Not exactly the same, no - I agree. I the same way that if you came across an ongoing hate crime on the street and cheered on the perpetrator you wouldn’t bear the same responsibility as the actual perpetrator, but it still makes you evil in my opinion.
Most people are not utilitarian, or at least I hope they aren’t.
I disagree, I think most people’s natural approach to ethics (when they bother with it at all) is to compare the net harm vs the net good of the action their trying to weigh. That’s literally how we teach children the difference between right and wrong - we ask them to consider the consequences of their actions, and whether those consequences are good or bad).
Either way - I think it’s clear you’re not changing your mind on this, and I’m just repeating myself, so unless you have some novel point to raise I’m done arguing about it. Feel free to continue to distance your decisions with their consequences for others if you prefer (lord knows most people do, unless those consequences are bad for themselves)
No dude, fuck you and your weasel words and moving goalpost. You made a shit comment and got proven wrong. Now’s the time to gracefully take the L; anything else just makes you look like a jackass.
Lol, you prove my point more eloquently than I could have on my own. Well done, and keep getting mad at strangers online it’s probably the best part of your life.
I’ll be honest, the point was less for him and more for lurkers, that might not pay as much attention and might benefit from an outline. I gave up on changing the mind of the person I’m replying to on the internet a long time ago (if it happens great!) … but I want to challenge and cut through the “noise” for the casual observer.
That’s the only single reason I debunk conservatives with some of their tactics thrown back at them. In a forum, I’m pretty much am blocked by nearly every conservatives there.
He didn’t say that, he criticized generalizing conservatives. I know conservatives who don’t care to block books from school libraries, or block trans students from going to bathrooms in their identified gender- or most of the other “culture war” arguments.
Yes but until they start actively opposing those policies and demanding their politicians do the same, they are still complicit with these policies as their votes are what enable them. Whether or not they personally believe these things is entirely irrelevant. All that matters are the actions and policies, and every conservative voter is this complicit.
Unfortunately people have different priorities than you or I, I guarantee a politician you have voted for has done something you oppose, and you may have still supported them. That’s because you care more about their other policies.
Yes but I don’t have to respect those opinions enough to validate them by acknowledging them. If those are your “opinions” then you’re a monster and you can fuck off. Don’t expect any respect from me; we need less kid gloves and more people calling out assholes in the world.
Being very wrong doesn’t make someone evil. If someone genuinely believes something like that and isn’t just saying it be edgy, I’d try to convince them out of it. Just like a flat earther, they believe something that I believe is very wrong.
I never signed up to be the social caretaker of the world. If they’re adults, I assume they’ve had plenty of opportunity to learn. I’ve devoted way to much of my life already to trying to educate the vile sort of people that vote conservative, I’m fucking done with it. They can go get the kid gloves treatment from their imaginary “tolerant left,” this fucking leftist is done with them.
And before you say “but how will things ever change if we don’t educate them?”:
First, again that’s not my job. But more importantly, education is only *one" weapon of change, not the only in our arsenal. We’ve forgotten how powerful rightly-applied shame can be.
I fricking hate how we’re expected to gently explain in soothing voices and educate and be understanding of people who damn well want us dead and who wouldn’t even extend someone on the left the courtesy of even pissing on them if they were on fire. We’re supposed to extend them every grace and courtesy while they’re not expected to do the same to us.
Phillando Castile. All for gun rights until a black man is shot while legally owning a gun. One could run down the list of black people (and children) who have been murdered by the police because they “thought there was a gun”. Guns are legal and they’re quite vocal about supporting the right to bear arms (but only if you look white).
Jan 6. All for upholding law and order and obeying the police until they don’t get what they want. They lied about the cities in this country being destroyed during the Floyd uprisings as if America was gone.
All of the anti-trans laws passed are to “protect children” and yet they have not gone after any of the abuse scandals in churches or law enforcement.
Build the wall. Enforced only against black and brown people at the southern border.
How about holding the supreme court seat for a year?
We could continue but I’ll just boil it down with a pithy quote: there are those who the law must protect but does not bind and there are those that the law must bind but not protect. That is the conservative idea. Go read the only moral abortion is my abortion with that statement in mind and it’ll make sense.
I haven’t heard that case, can you show some examples of “conservative” outrage?
And I feel like it’s probably not race related seeing as conservatives were some of the first people to criticize the police in the Brenna Taylor case(a post about her boyfriends trial is still the top post on r/progun). Some conservatives also defended Andrew Coffee IV.
Jan 6. All for upholding law and order and obeying the police until they don’t get what they want.
From their perspective(by the way me explaining someone’s perspective doesn’t mean I agree with it at all like most of the people on this site seem to think!!!) their is a coup happening by the elites so they are going in to uphold the law and put in the rightfully elected(again in their mind) president.
All of the anti-trans laws passed are to “protect children” and yet they have not gone after any of the abuse scandals in churches or law enforcement.
Can you site any they defended recently?
Build the wall. Enforced only against black and brown people at the southern border.
I don’t see how that’s hypocritical.
How about holding the supreme court seat for a year?
I’d argue it does, conservative lawmaking has consistently operated with a distinct understanding (and execution) that shows “this applies to them not us.” I’d love for conservative law makers to do what they say and say what they mean. However, they won’t and thus can’t build a coalition that gets them elected by being honest about their policy goals.
Conservative law making in the US has become at its core “outrage politics” (and that depends on selectively enforcing ideals, policies, and laws/antagonizing part of the population). I don’t make generalizations lightly, but this is the core and fundamental piece holding the Republican party together, and it’s an awful state of affairs.
This can be further demonstrated by Vivek Ramaswamy climbing in the polls despite, as Chris Christie put it, “sounding like ChatGPT.”
K. When you figure out what discourse you want to have come back without an empty argument.
You’ve just proven everyone else’s point that wrote you off. You’ve made no supportive arguments for your position and resorted to an opaque moral high ground where everyone else is an idiot.
Bruh, you are the literal embodiment of the issue plaguing the USA in this historical period: you say you are ready to have a discussion and then, once somebody engages you with actual facts in his hands, you attack your interlocutor with the most vapid point without replying to his considerations.
Furthermore I’ve been taught that there are two possible sides when tackling a problem: you can either be part of the problem or part of its solution.
As far as I see nowadays republicans are ALL part of a problem called “political extremism”. If you vote for the party which is presenting an autocrat and a crybaby as it’s frontrunner for the past and upcoming elections you don’t get to be offended when someone calls you out for that. If you are not voting democrat you are actively choosing to be ruled by a tiny minority which sees it’s religion as the only viable solution to all the (made up) problems they see in the modern world. Should you vote democrat, on the other hand, the worst which may happen is that you’ll loose some purchasing power when the world has been facing a pandemic and a regional war at the gates of Europe.
If your choice is to actively vote for the first option I’ve news from you: you are an enemy of the people and of democracy, don’t be surprised when people will treat you as such in your future interactions with tem
Why vote democrat though? Supposedly the US does have or allow other political parties to be formed. If they can organize themselves, diversifying the local state political pool should not be a problem at least.
Because due to the system in place at the moment and due to the culture surrounding American politics USA can only operate in the two parties system. Organising, raising and keeping a third party is not a viable option at this time as many different candidates and elections have shown us. The easier way to improve American politics is to get involved in the democratic party and to change it from within as many of the newly elected representatives are trying to do, with quite positive outcomes I might add.
Excellent summary. Maybe add:“That slut next door should not have an abortion, she should have kept her legs closed. My daughter‘s abortion? That‘s totally different, it would have ruined her career“
Well, church leaders have been reporting that the sermon on the mount (or whatever) is being criticized as woke. Maybe there’s something to this idea after all.
We all knew they were gonna figure out a way that the law doesn’t apply to them and the stuff they like. That’s like the fundamental constant of conservatives, it’s different when we do it because we’re not those people.
“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” –Francis M. Wilhoit
Trump pushed the big lie that the election was stolen. Trump lost in the courts^[1] including the Supreme Court.^[2] Then he tried to pressure state officials.^[3] He tried to pressure Pence.^[4]
So what does Trump do after exhausting all nonviolent methods of overturning the election? He turns to his supporters and lights them up making inflammatory statements such as;
We are going to fight for the survival of the nation.
Now is not the time to retreat, its to fight harder.
We will never give in, never back down, never surrender.
We will fight like hell.
You have to get your people to fight.
He primed them for weeks.
State officials had started getting death threats weeks before the attempted insurrection following the general election.^[5] Trump saw first hand what violence was being created as his supporters rioted and vandalized black churches in Washington back in December.^[6]
Trump didn’t stop his incitement after the initial violence, he got more specific. He told his supporters how, when, and where. He gave them 18 days notice inviting them to the rally telling them to be there, that it will be wild.^[7] And on the day of the insurrection Trump told his supporters to march on the Capitol and fight like hell.
Following the riot Trump continued to promote the big lie that had incited the insurrection. After the mob was dispersed, Trump praised and sympathized with the mob in a video he released, claiming once again that the election had been stolen.^[8] Then he praised the insurrection in a tweet after the mob had been dispersed. He told his mob to remember Jan. 6 forever. He said that he loved the insurrectionists and that the violent mob were special people.
My “favorite” but was when he heard that some of them had weapons that were denied access, and he angrily told his staff to let the weapons into the capital, because they weren’t coming to hurt him.
Gen Z seems to be refusing to swallow the bullshit the rest of us grew up having fed to us. A shame I’ll be close to aging out by the time they get much political power.
I mean, I genuinely think that all we need is a *How to unionize for dummies" like a video or guide. I’m pretty clever, pretty Marxist and I still found myself overwhelmed when I wanted to start the process in my last job. Calling a local Local didn’t help much either.
The Bullshit from decades ago was easier to swallow because at least people had a chance to make money and have a decent job while also paying a bit less for things like food, shelter or some luxuries.
Now people have no choice … they get paid less, they have no security and they have to pay more for food and shelter.
People were always aware of the bullshit … in the past we could put up with it because we could afford it … now people can’t.
Cost benefit analysis. I’m Gen-X and we had to deal with both Silent Gen “company loyalty” and Boomer toxic bullshit, but that was fine because we got a lot out of it and we were able tondo our own shit. In other words, a positive cost benefit analysis. Greed tilted that until it is now not worth it. Its funny how some people love capitalism until the system demands that they adjust. Sorry corpos, if you want a resource, you have to pay fair market value.
2030 is my guess because roughly half of the kids from the 60s will be mid 60s then and retire or be unable to keep on hustling because of age while all support systems will get into absolute overload.
Well either see a brutal market recession as the boomers die off and/or sell off their retirement portfolio to buy more sand for their hourglass, while everyone else is too broke to buy it at the “market value” their financial planner promised them in 1992
Or capitalists will sweep in and buy it for cheap, exacerbating the housing crisis and continuing to make life unaffordable
Joke is: I’m one of these boomers, born in the 1960s 😄
Classic example of rage math - I’m always furious about the shit and the terror my generation didn’t prevent. We knew and know everything and chose and choose to carry on.
i think you underestimate how bad it can get before they can’t stop a collapse anymore.
we already have a big homeless population and old people already in dire situations. i think that was the spark that got them so politicized in the first place.
and the biggest factors will probably be more related to climate change which will take a bit more time to reeeeally fuck with us.
I agree with the article. Gen Z are more open to sharing their life with the world. I wouldn’t say early generations just swallowed the bullshit. They just didn’t have a platform to express it to the masses. In the 70s or 80s if you got fired, maybe you reacted the same way, demanding a reason and expressing your frustration. But the only people who witnessed that, were the ones in the room and later on your buddies when you told them the story.
Started with Gen X, which is why the baby boomers retiring is creating such a desperate demographic crisis. Nobody wants to buy into such an obviously corrupt system, which has rewarded every consecutive generation with less and less compensation despite the abundantly obvious massive advances in productivity. People are realizing that most of their work is not at all about generating value, but instead is all about occupying their time and energy in an apparent attempt to reduce competition.
I was more thinking about the laws against recording people, and particularly publishing those recordings. Along with the recordings being proof of other things, like maybe the person who took snacks on their way out could be accused of theft.
id go as far as doubting its at all of it, but AFAICT every recent generation had some good thinking about the problems and were keen on dissenting somehow when they were young.
even a lot of the boomers (who are seen as very conservative now) had their counterculture thing when they were young.
i think my biggest point with this is that the kids are generally alright and we can do good by laying off the juvenoia a bit.
I never thought I’d see the day when a respectable blue chip company like Boeing is publicly outed as ordering an assassination. They fucked up royally. The timing of it all is too eyebrow raising not to be noticed by the entirety of the airplane-using world. Top down criminal investigation. Now.
In America it used to be you could just bribe your governor and they’d deploy the national guard to kill striking worker’s families like the Ludlow Massacre and the Battle of Blair mountain.
I mean, there have been several huge instances of mass murder by corporations. Go look into the US’ history with strikebreaking and you’ll see just how bad it used to be. At least Boeing is trying to pretend it was a suicide, instead of just blatantly firebombing him in his own home.
Boeing is a major part of the military industrial complex. They own the politicians in both parties, the regulators, and the courts. Laws don’t apply to them.
The MIC has very little to do with making high-quality military equipment and much more to do with kickbacks and local jobs. Boeing and the other prime contractors are massively inefficient and often performing make-work jobs that no one in the military wants (like making more tanks).
If you’re the government, you want your military planes to work. It’s in their interests to have whistleblowers. (Now there’s lots of steps that are problems in realizing that.)
I mean there may simply have been internal reports already, just highly classified to avoid “embarrassing” the nation and not accessible or known to the general public.
“Look, it turns out if you flip this switch on the Fa-18 and forget to turn it off after 1 to 5 minutes tops, your chances of ‘uncontrollably inverting and ejecting at high speed straight into the freaking ground’ go up tenfold. We’ve provided the USAF with a 1 hour iPad training about being touchy with the defrost function.”
Didn’t say they weren’t entitled to know about it, just the reasoning that might’ve gone through the government’s collective heads when not disclosing or looking the other way on Boeing doing an Epstien.
EDIT: The posts above and in response to this one both got modded, so I’m gonna edit this one because it looks weird out of context and perhaps wasn’t constructive.
well your first mistake was thinking Boeing was a respectable corporation (that ship sailed in 1997 when they dropped the “engineering first” priority in lieu of “business first”)…
your second mistake is thinking any corporation is respectable ;-)
Scary thing nobodies talking about is: if these Boeing-built bad parts are able to slip past inspectors, which we had (naievely?) assumed were given full access top-notch, and neutral, might the standards of other planes build-quality have also dropped?
Rent control is a bandaid on a real problem that makes things worse long term. What California needs is build more, which means end the NIMBY and unfreeze property taxes so those seating on underutilized land are forced to develop it or sell.
Would property taxes actually do much? They’re so little even in high property-tax states that I think you’d need to do a lot more than that to FORCE rich people to utilize their other properties. High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters. Maybe we should just outlaw having more than 1 or 2 homes… including for real estate companies and banks :)
I keep wondering how to make the law do that. Making a company is like $100, that’s nothing compared to the house price. They would just have shell companies all over each owning a single location. 123 Fake St., LLC; 124 Fake St., LLC; etc.
Law with two parts, only a specific type of company may own rental properties. And you may not own or be employed by more than one property; including holding stock. The same rules apply to property management companies that service land lords with few properties; possibly with larger limits on how many properties they can manage at a time.
With that basic structure we can decide how many buildings/units each company can own. For example the limit could be 100 single family homes, or 3 mid sized complexes, or 1 large tower. Then we should be able to have a system that keeps landlords from going big. Makes the system so decentralized market concepts must work and monopoly power is effectively destroyed.
You’d limit Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of the properties, not direct ownership.
I’d probably do something like: No individual or private entity may have Direct, Indirect or Ultimate Beneficial Ownership exceeding or of multiple of any of X(2-5?) Single Family properties, Y(2-3?) low density Multi-tenant properties, or Z(1-2?) high density Multi-tenant properties. Excluding the first wholely and solely owner occupied property. Excluding Ultimate Beneficial Ownership of less than A(.01-5?)% of a property. Excluding Ownership less than B(30-180?) days. Failure to comply results in forfeiture of newer ownership to REGULATOR-TBD until compliance is met. Multi-tenant properties have C (5-10?) residences
IANAL, probably some other loopholes that need closing. But the intent would be to limit consolidated ownership of many properties. But not impact several of the more reasonable ownership structures, nor impact churn of properties. The regulator would sell whatever extra it gets to fund housing programs.
How will that work for individuals who own .00001% of hundreds of homes (by owning shares of several real estate holding companies)?
Also, mega rich people don’t to legally own anything. It is owned by a trust with undisclosed beneficiaries. It is also routed via multiple offshore dummy corporations. It is set up this way so that tax agencies can never figure out incomes and inheritances.
High taxes would potentially push more costs on renters.
Potentially, but I think here not so much. Competition drives prices down. In a perfectly competitive market, prices are pretty much equal to the cost of production. In that case, any tax would be completely passed on to the customer. But you can’t produce land at a certain location. My guess is that rents are largely determined by willingness to pay.
Hmm build more. I’d be curious to see the stats on this. California has probably built 10 times more than the rest of the country combined over the last decade or so. People need to GO THE FUCK BACK HOME.
I don’t think you need to add any taxes. If the area is attractive enough to warrant a higher density redevelopment, just unlock it and it will get done.
I mean, if you are a developer and you know for certain there’s a lot of interest in a certain area and you know for certain that you could buy that big single family lot and make a 3-5 story building instead with 10-20 apartments, you’d be crazy not to offer double the market rate to get it and develop it as fast as possible.
Just need to change the law to allow redevelopment of single family areas into medium density.
It’s even better than that because it is illegal to make bids on a property you sell so the seller name a price and if someone want to buy it at that price it’s sold. Most of the time buyers tries to bargain on markets where the demand is low
I mean, my wife and I didn’t sell to the two highest bidders on our first house because the fuckers were obviously going to rent it out.
One was a bid entered by a piece of software often used by flippers and rental companies (had branding at the bottom of the pages etc) and the other was a cash in hand bid with an overt offer of more under the table, which is fairly illegal where we live.
We selected third place, someone who had messy handwriting, obviously has been written by two different people, and ended the bid with “777” which was cute and showed us not only were they human, they really wanted the place. And no wonder, with offers like the first two likely happening on nearly every sale in the area.
Or the landlord might just want to spite the tenant, or he might want to sell to a “new” buyer who turns out to be business partner/cohort/shell LLC/etc.
Are people really accepting less money so they don’t sell to brown people? Like why would you care? You’re selling the property. You don’t have to deal with the new owners if you happen to be racist.
The neighbors care. So unless you don’t live in that town it could make for some interesting neighborly interactions. Wouldn’t be surprised to find court cases of neighbors suing for loss of property value.
Granted, this article was from all the way back in… last week.
“An African-American woman’s quest to buy a pricey condo near the Virginia Beach Oceanfront – impeded by the white homeowner’s refusal because of her race – is just the latest example.”
“…landlords frequently use subtle methods or mask the real reasons why they don’t want people to move in.”
I’ll add, as a minority there are neighborhoods that are off limits because I know I would not be accepted, and, I have an “ethnic” name, so I assume some bias may be held towards people selling in neighborhoods like that.
There have been auctions in the past, mostly farm, that the community got together to drive off outsiders and then proceed to lowball every item on the auction. They would then return everything to the owner after the auction.
It was a fine ‘fuck you’ to the bank, until the bank closed or sold out because they no longer had the assets and cash reserves needed to stay open themselves. Which then screwed the rest of the community over.
This happened a lot during the Great Depression. But then I believe the owners found a way to withdraw the auctioned property if the minimum bid didn’t suit them. The French law might bring back the Penny Auction by saying, “You put it up for bid - a sale has to go through.”
More precisely, when you sell the tenant has the right to buy it first.
If the landlord is thinking of accepting an external offer under the initial price then he has to ask again to the tenant if he would buy it at this lower price.
Comparing across the nation doesn’t really matter in things like real estate where prices, inflow vs outflow of people etc vary wildly, particularly when talking about the actual impact on the average person within the locality.
“Cherry picked by source to increase clicks” what sort of landlord boot licking is this lmao. Amherst Holdings (owns almost 40,000 homes nationally), Pretium Partners (owns around 80,000 homes nationally), and Invitation Homes (also around 80,000 nationally) own through subsidiaries 11% of all single family homes across metro Atlanta for rental purposes.
This isn’t opinion or spin, it is fact.
Most of their ownership (9.2% of that 11%) is from houses in the lower half of median home value, effectively ripping those inventories out of the market for first time home buyers and inflating the price of those tiers of homes for first time home buyers.
Maybe you’re confused about what “Metro Atlanta” means. It’s not just the City of Atlanta. Metro Atlanta is spread across 5 counties, from the heart of downtown to some real yeehaw rural areas of the outer counties.
That’s a bad-faith comparison and shows you are unserious about the very real issue some localities face with investment firms holding “cheap” single family homes as indefinite rental income, or just butthurt my data disproved your application of a BROAD GENERALIZATION to a specific region. Likely the latter.
The actual statistic NATIONALLY is lower because it is an aggregation of MULTIPLE MARKETS. If you want to find out what is happening in a local market you look at the local statistics if available which is what I provided you.
You have not proven me wrong lol. I gave you the research laid out proving three entities, through almost 200 shell companies and LLCs, own 1 out of every 9 single family homes in the metro Atlanta area. That is the ONLY argument I was making - that in the ATL market the percentage is much higher than 0.2%.
You can say “no u rong me rite durrrrr” all you want but you are undeniably incorrect about what I said.
Your condescending tone is noted so I’ll just be insulting now: you are a fucking idiot who is so butthurt I provided evidence against your non-factual claim that locally the percentage is the same that you’ve elected to stick your dumb cunt fingers in your digital ears and go LALAALALALALALALALALAA like a jackass. Fuck off.
ETA: FROM YOUR OWN FUCKING LINK YOU ABSOLUTE BRAINLET: “The analysis found that the investors were heavily concentrated in some fast-growing areas, such as Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla. Institutional investors own 10 percent of all single-family rental properties in Atlanta and 8.5 percent in Jacksonville, the study said.”
GEE who was right? Certainly not you ya fuckin troglodyte
“Wow you sound angry” yeah dealing with braindead morons does make me angry, particularly when they argue a point their own fucking article disproves…
I gave you data for the market I was talking about. Your own article gave you data for the market I was talking about. Who did it align with? Yours or mine? I’ll give you a hint, not yours. “Stay in school” your dumb ass can’t read.
The “thinking for yourself” quip is a mask slipping moment for you. Denying reality must be fun.
It did prove my point which is to say it is a problem in certain locations e.g. Atlanta. I never argued against the overall national average. I understand your brain cells are working overdrive here but holy shit.
I’ve been making the same point since my first reply to you. My position has never changed, which is a correction to your insinuation that the corporate ownership of single family homes as rental properties isn’t ultimately a big deal because it’s a small amount overall
Here’s what you said:
This is doomerist myth. It’s a miniscule fraction, go look up the actual numbers. Landlords selling their properties would be very good for everyone.
It’s only a miniscule fraction NATIONALLY. That’s why I said what I originally said about Atlanta in my initial reply, where there IS a very real problem of available inventory because 1/9 homes are owned by national corporations. It’s not a myth for everyone.
Then you said my data was wrong (for which your own WP article said I was right,) which I already said was explicitly about the metro Atlanta area, not the nation. Then you double and triple downed with a pinch of condescension and dickishness. Then I called you a dumb cunt.
You could’ve just said “oops my bad, I misread your comment” which you either did or have just been trolling this whole time.
For what it’s worth I do agree with you that landlords selling would be good, regardless of the local, regional, or national quantity of single family homes owned by national corporations. That was never in question for me. Just the first part.
“That sounds like an Atlanta problem” one can only reasonably address this issue locally/regionally. To paint broad strokes with the national average is CRAZY disingenuous given addressing inventory deficiencies isn’t like shipping a widget from Omaha to Los Angeles.
Most people need to not worry about the national average because it is skewed (speaking of - what is the actual distribution?) - they need to worry about wherever they actually are.
ETA addressing the last paragraph of your comment: agreed! That is something to be celebrated. Wallowing in doomerism certainly doesn’t help anyone but let’s also not pretend this isn’t a very real problem people face (home unavailability).
He was staying at a hotel out-of-state while giving evidence against Boeing.
He was found dead in his car in the hotel parking lot from a 'self-inflicted wound'.
There's really no other way to look at it logically than he was murdered by Boeing. Nothing else adds up.
Literally has been used as an intensifier for over 200 years. The Oxford English Dictionary includes a definition of literally meaning “figuratively”. Jane Austen, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Henry David Thoreau, James Fenimore Cooper, James Joyce, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain all used it that way in their writing.
So until you write something as well respected and enduring as Sanditon, The Great Gatsby, Tom Sawyer, or Ulysses and collect your mother fucking Nobel prize in literature, please choke on a literal dick you confidently incorrect fuckwit.
I mean, I get it, I’m sick of “literally” meaning “figuratively”, and I’d die on that hill with you, but this is the dumbest possible time to make that stand. In this case “literally” just means “literally”.
An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)
If he got a bunch of hate online, or had crippling anxiety about the testimony he still had to give? I mean you could even speculate he thought he would be killed someday, so he took it into his own hands.
(Please note the above is all BS!)
I would argue the jury is still out and that we may never know.
Direct involvement might be a question still. But general involvement is absolute. If Boeing wasn’t so shitty he almost assuredly would still be alive.
I suppose even if nobody ever said a word to him you could make that argument. No poor business practices = no testimony = no car in a hotel parking lot.
An investor could’ve threatened his family? (So not directly Boeing)
Or somebody involved in corporate corruption and embezzling in Boeing. That would be worse for Boeing as a whole than him remaining alive, but possibly better for that somebody who may not be identified.
I mean, I think the logical thing to do is wait until the evidence comes out and we know for sure. It’s entirely possible he was under a lot of stress from all this and did kill himself. Now, I don’t deny that it’s a HUGE. FUCKING. CONICIDENCE. but those do happen from time to time. Its also a hell of a story, good-guy whistleblower murdered by greedy multinational aerospace company and defense contractor…during an election year…if you wrote the script nobody would buy it.
Jesus, do you think maybe they’re trying to run out the clock too? Who wants to bet that a certain CEO is angling for a political position within a certain potential administration? Perhaps head of the FAA?
It makes no sense for them to kill him, that draws wayyyy too much attention. More likely if they were involved, they blackmailed him and that caused him to kill himself, or another party that also wanted to keep him quiet killed him and they didn’t care if it looked like Boeing did it.
Does suicide ever add up? It being a hit doesn’t add up either. A hotel parking lot is a rather public place to try to force someone to kill themselves.
Too big to fail is a terrible concept that was invented.
If a company gets too big to the point that it’s failure is going to drag down the company. That company should be broken up to allow them to to fail. Anything else is either reward the company for making bad decisions or allow companies to become stagnant because if anything happens, the government will bail them out.
What do you mean? They fail all the time. Fail to secure doors. Fail to have working oxygen masks. Fail to warn pilots about a system that points the nose of the plane down constantly…
As an Air Force veteran this all is all hitting home so hard. I joined the Air Force right out of high school because my dad was in the Air Force and my grandfather was in the Army Air Corp, so of course I bought everything they were selling. We always made jokes about turning the Middle East into glass, or said little slogans like, “When it absolutely has to be destroyed overnight, call the Air Force.” I wish I could chalk that up to being young and dumb, but the leadership perpetuated these things and after 9/11 it really dehumanized what we were doing. I felt proud knowing that bombs I loaded on a plane were not there when it came back. I never once questioned why they attacked us in the first place. And I certainly didn’t learn about global politics with my high school education from Texas.
After I got out, and got educated, and started seeing the world through a larger lens, it shifted my point of view. I’ve gone from hardcore republican who voted for George W Bush, to voting for Bernie Sanders. I feel ashamed of how I used to think and act. I am very anti-war on all fronts. No one should ever have to lay down their life for some shithead politician.
With that said, I made the horrible decision to go to the Air Force subreddit to see what they were saying about these recent events. And it hurt me to see them all spouting the same shit I would have said 20 years ago. Crap about how the middle east has been fighting each other for 1,000 years, so we should just let them all kill themselves. And they strongly pushed the Aaron Bushnell was just some crazy radical anarchist. Or people saying his leadership failed him, or how did he have a security clearance, etc. There was not one single mention of how what was going on over there is beyond fucked up.
So, seeing other veterans stand up for this makes me feel a little better and gives me hope. I just hope that is makes it’s way down the ranks and into the young service members and recruits.
Hey friend, I would like to offer you a reframing of this situation. Despite being exposed to some of the strongest cultural indoctrination into warmongering and the military, you made it out and embraced empathy and learning. That's huge. I'm proud of you, that's a positive change most people never make. You should be proud of it.
I just hope that is makes it’s way down the ranks
You have a powerful and important story. Sharing it like you did just now helps more than hopes can. Keep sharing it, you never know who might be reading it and encouraged to question the lessons they were taught.
Thanks. It definitely helps to hear someone reframe it like that. It was actually cathartic just typing that all out. The hope that it could encourage others is even better.
I’m 100% with you. The deprogramming took years. It feels like I wasted so much of my life, and I’m still trying to figure out where I fit in. What’s almost worse than knowing so many vets are still so brainwashed is watching people who didn’t go through the same programming shill even harder for regressive destruction. I work on a construction site and have to listen to these overconfident fascist blowhards rant all day.
I feel you. Luckily I don’t have to deal with it at work because I work remotely and refuse to discuss politics with my colleagues (although I’m sure most of them know which way I lean). But I do have family to deal with. I’d say 90% of my extended family are either Trump supporters or just hate Democrats so much, that they will vote for Trump. Some have gone so far as to call me unpatriotic for things like supporting BLM, not liking Trump, and calling the people who entered the capital on Jan 6th terrorists. The most ironic part is not a single one of them served in the military. I am the only living veteran in my family, and I’m seen as the crazy left-wing guy.
I appreciate this, you totally get it. I hope you can hold onto that remote job. Makes it so much easier to tune out the hate and nonsense. I remain quiet and comfort myself by knowing that if the chance ever arises, I will do everything I can to undermine them. Which won’t be hard considering most of them have the intellectual capacity of a troglodyte.
Wow the more I talk about this the more I want to leave the US forever. There’s so little left here that matches my values.
Thanks for sharing your story. I hope you continue to tell it. Your point about high school education is important.
At the time the Iraq war was kicking off, I happened to have a history teacher that made us spend every Friday discussing current events. She made it clear to us that the premise of WMDs in Iraq was a lie and that the war would turn out like Vietnam. All these years later these ideas are not controversial, but way back then she said it when many people were saying the opposite. Needless to say, it kept me out of the military and helped me understand what was going on. Critical thinking is so important and we need capable public educators who can encourage young people to think for themselves. It can have a major impact on the life paths people choose.
That’s awesome that you had a teacher who did that. That is one of the main reasons I’m planning on moving out of Texas. I want my kids to get educated by teachers who are not under constant threat from the state.
Someone who is stupid would stay brainwashed but clearly this individual woke up. If you’re taught something from the day you were born then it is ingrained into you and quite hard to change. Thankfully many of the youth have started seeing the bullshit sooner but there are still people being bred into this ideology that need a chance to see the world and form their own opinions lest they be stuck in their parents ways.
Exactly that. On average the economy is doing fine but it’s skewed very heavily towards the top and nothing much for the 90%. The median income is actually decreasing.
I think the wording in your original comment is pretty misguided. Nowhere does it say the poor are “doing better than” the wealthy. They just had the strongest short-term wage growth since covid. This does not equate to prosperity. Perhaps it is you that has the restrictive social circle.
I disagree. The connotation and literal meaning of the phrase “doing better than”, combined with the comment on social circles indicates that they’re trying to suggest the poor are somehow doing well, whatever that means.
That’s how I read it, anyway. And I think that’s why they’re getting down voted as well.
Proportionally, having a penny is infinitely more than having nothing, but I still can’t buy shit with a penny.
Take your “proportionately” logic and shove it. Shit is bad. And it’s bad because capitalism has consolidated wealth at the top. Capitalism has run its course and has failed. It’s time to move on.
I can shove it all you want, but statistics show otherwise.
And blaming you own failures on capitalism won’t solve shit. Plenty of people are successful under capitalism, no matter what a dozen geniuses on a fringe site cry about.
Communism has been tried and failed, either through revolution (eastern Europe), evolution to market economies (China, Vietnam) or famine and slavery (North Korea).
I think it’s unfortunate that you’re being so hostile. It was an interesting point and very good sources that you brought to the discussion. But you’ve decided to play the "you’re all ‘autists’ " card.
It was an interesting point and very good sources that you brought to the discussion.
The fact that this doesn’t matter is why I’m being hostile. Bunch of idiots in here. If you’re interested in discussing it I’m absolutely open to that. It’s the ones who fail basic reading comprehension that have my scorn.
None of this matters when low income people have been getting screwed for 30 years. 3 years of growth means almost nothing when you put it in proper context. It’s just a way for the upper class to gaslight people.
There are people out there still getting paid $9 an hour which wasn’t liveable 15 years ago when that was my wage. If this trend continues, calling it wage slavery won’t be hyperbole anymore.
Plus none of these articles talk about the middle 80% who have not seen their pay keep up with inflation over the last 5 years, or the fact that the price of many goods has exceeded inflation on top of that. Not to mention the housing crisis.
It’s not hard to figure out why people think the economy sucks.
Yes, bottom 10% are doing better and the top 10%. That means the middle is getting hollowed out and the whole thing turns into a very divided society. That’s not a good thing.
blatant “rich get richer, everyone else gets fucked”
and now you have a rich get richer, almost everyone else gets fucked economy. Yay, progress.
Looking at history, it feels more like an attempt to make sure the poorest don’t fall into the “nothing left to lose” category that can cause so much trouble.
and now you have a rich get richer, almost everyone else gets fucked economy. Yay, progress.
Yes. Things were more bad, and now they are less bad. Vote in more Democrats, and things will continue to get less bad. Eventually, things will be good. That’s how progress works.
Looking at history, it feels more like an attempt to make sure the poorest don’t fall into the “nothing left to lose” category that can cause so much trouble.
That’s because it is. That’s the point of welfare, give the poorest something to lose and they won’t revolt. Even if it’s the most meager, unfair, dehumanizing scraps.
Companies aren’t just raising prices enough to cover costs, they’re padding their margins on top.
Just saying that their profit is higher means nothing because of inflation. Inflation will mean that their profits are more often than not the highest they have ever been every year. But the highest margins? That shows they are price gouging.
If you want to know how bad we’re being fucked, search for the PPI, the producer price index. CPI, the one we always hear about, is the measure of inflation to us, the consumer. The PPI is the measure of inflation to producers, what they pay for goods and services to produce the goods and services we buy.
The PPI has been back to “normal” for a while now. Pretty much as soon as the post COVID logistics issues were mostly ironed out. The difference between PPI and CPI changes is almost all profit.
We don’t get daily articles on the PPI though, I wonder why.
Tell people about PPI whenever you can, online or off, the more people know, the better. It’s easy enough to say inflation is just down to greed but being able to back it up by comparing two simple charts will help people really understand.
I couldn’t find a comparable historical CPI chart on the BLS website, just a 12 month average and historical data by region. Are you able to find something to compare that chart to? It’s kind of difficult to grasp intuitively (without a comparison, that is).
I edited the links to try to get more apples to apples. For the PPI just deselect the blue line and compare red lines between the two. Those should give 12 month change numbers for all goods and services unless I screwed it up.
Edit: I edited the links again, I accidentally used final demand instead of intermediate demand for PPI. No need to deselect anything now. I linked the chart for processed goods, other categories are available in the drop-down list.
This story is fucked. He was wrongfully convicted and then set free, gets $800k compensation in August, then pulled over (looks like they’re still coming up with a reason for pulling him over), threatened I’m sure with more jail (essentially provoked), tased then shot.
I think some fucking cops were after him and pissed that the dude got paid.
Video link from a comment below. Not a good look for the guy. Hard video to watch.
And the alleged ‘good cops’ are out here confused why no one respects them.
Until I start running across evidence that some police are angrier about the bad cops than they are about everyone else being angry about the bad cops, I refuse to believe they exist.
As someone who knows an actual good cop (grew up with him): they quit. That’s all they can do. Because speaking up just ruins your career path. So they choose to go along or they change careers entirely.
We had a “good cop” DA in my city. The cops went on strike (though they didn’t call it a strike, they just stopped doing their jobs), and started a propaganda campaign. When crime went up, people are stupid and blamed the DA. He got recalled and a police bootlicker got put in instead.
paying their union dues, which keep going up because the defense of their fellow cop’s actions are expensive… if they get caught and lose qualified immunity.
Oh, I see the problem. You’ve written black and brown people.
You should know by now that they don’t count as people unless they go through a very rigorous “personhood” check, with markers such as “will they stay quiet about racism,” “will they strive to emulate rich white people in dress, speech and manner, to the detriment of their own culture,” “will they lead fully sanitized lives as wage slaves without complaint and never dabble in white collar or petty crimes that would be ignored if their skin was lighter,” and “will they silently and happily vote for rich white capitalists in politics, against their best interest”. Because clearly if they can’t follow these very generous and simple guidelines, they don’t want to be considered people, duh.
The police will do a full investigation of themselves and find no wrong doing. After that, the murderer will return from his paid vacation, which will allow his wife for some much needed time to recover.
I always joke with my black girlfriend when she driving. I’ll say “Be careful you don’t want to get pulled over for a DWB”. She laughs, I laugh, we both die a little inside.
When I was younger, I worked under a Black man driving trucks through Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas. Anywhere rural, it was unofficial company policy that I (a white man) was supposed to drive and pretend to be in charge. Anywhere urban, my actual boss could be himself.
My local department of family services very openly teaches about the risk of police violence towards black people and those who adopt them, to make up for the education they would receive from black parents on how to avoid being beaten or murdered by cops.
It’s so real part of our government formally acknowledges it. While the other part wins “most racist” awards.
Ok so this whole story is fucked up beyond belief but I just want to take a minute to say holy shit, because that dollar figure is pretty messed up in and of itself. They gave him $817k. That’s $5.82/hr.
Eh. We always like to think that this stuff bothers them. It doesn’t. He didn’t think twice about it. I’m sorry to paint with a broad brush, but conservatives just do not think on the same level as normal people do. They aren’t bothered by this stuff because they don’t think about any subject long enough to have deep thoughts on them. Frankly, they wouldn’t even be such an angry frothing-at-the-mouth group of people if they didn’t have all variations of media avenues telling them what to be mad about every second of every day. If not for conservative media, they’d be relatively pleasant little dipshits doing manual labor and whatever other grunt work, but instead we have this failed experiment of a nation.
Minimum wage plus overtime for his time in prison placed monthly into a mutual fund with 7% return for 16 years would be a little over 2.5 million dollars.
It doesn’t any good to “punish” the police by awarding large sums of money to the wrongly convicted, because the taxpayers pay for it. To really add some justice, the awards should Come from the police pension funds. Then they are Incentivized to do it right. Now they don’t care, because there is little downside for them
Isn’t this basically what happened with the Making a Murderer guy? He was due a huge settlement from being wrongfully convicted, so they planted a bunch of evidence to put him back in jail instead.
That was my takeaway. The more fucked up part is that they dragged his nephew into it and at each man’s trial, told wildly differing stories about how the murder supposedly occurred.
The police were definitely corrupt, but that documentary is intentionally misleading.
While some evidence may be in question, it’s important to know that Teresa Halbach’s vehicle was found on the property, along with charred pieces of her human bones in a burn pit.
It was the last place she went, the last place she was seen, and Avery lured here there under false pretenses (Teresa was not even supposed to be meeting with Avery).
None of this excuses any bad behaviors by the police, and that department certainly appears to be corrupt, but probably not a good example for this instance.
it’s important to know that Teresa Halbach’s vehicle was found on the property, along with charred pieces of her bones in a burn pit.
Police corruption is the problem. Her vehicle being on the edge of his fairly large property is a lot less damning if it weren’t for Steven’s blood being reported in the vehicle. There were witnesses who claim to have seen it moved there, even if Zellner cannot seem to decide who moved it.
And you say “her bones”, but there’s two problems with that. The bones have been confirmed to be human female, but they couldn’t confirm or deny they were Halbach’s. And there’s a compelling reason to believe they were not burned in the burn barrel they were found.
There seem to be two real possibilities in his case. EITHER it’s a fairly ridiculous frame-up job or he’s guilty. That should be easy because of the question “why would anyone go to THOSE lengths to frame Steven Avery?” It’s not easy because the open animosity and bad-faith of thep olice in this case is compelling.
I think he likely did it, but I genuinely think the case is so tainted, he should not have been convicted.
Huh, I could’ve sworn I had read that the DNA was confirmed to be hers. After looking more thoroughly you’re absolutely correct. I did see a few articles that said it was matched via a partial tooth, but looking deeper into that it looks like the findings may have just been “consistent” with Halbach. Still compelling evidence, but not a direct DNA match.
I also think it’s more than likely he did it, but that’s an important clarification.
It’s a really complex case. And just like the Depp v Heard documentary, Netflix didn’t do it justice. Sometimes exaggerations make the validity of a claim harder to see. Judges don’t like to offer mistrials or retrials to people they are convinced are guilty, whether the appeal was valid or not.
From my own (very ameteur) independent reading, there’s a few big things that should’ve been slam-dunk for vacated verdict, and his attorney colluding with the prosecutor to have him interrogated unassisted is the top of the list, though Avery lost appeal on that already. Brendan Dassey had perhaps the strongest case to vacate verdict I’ve ever seen short of exoneration, and his eventually failed (after a very reasonable appeal verdict in his favor).
EDIT: I’d also like to note that Netflix’s exaggeration has led to anti-Avery people who also exaggerate the case against him. People like Kathleen Zellner don’t get involved in cases that are strong or clean. At the very least, a good lawyer would have a cakewalk winning the Reasonable Doubt standard and arguably would have with only the limited evidence that was available during his first trial. It’s that exoneration cases are so hard, understandably so.
The hardest ethical question regarding law I think ask is this. If a person is guilty of a crime but can only be convicted by illegal and unethical behavior, should they be incarcerated? I’ve always thought we’ve allowed the “be certain they’re guilty” standard to erode too much in the US between jurors who will convict on “I’m pretty sure” and the Federal Habeas Corpus changes.
I mean, if you boil it down, Steven Avery is arguably in prison today not because he might have committed murder but because he filed his Habeas Corpus appeal without the assistance of a lawyer and is forbidden to file another. And Brendon Dassey is definitely in prison because the current standard for that federal Habeas Corpus appeal is “no reasonable judge would ever rule this way” despite 2 reasonable federal judges agreeing he reached that standard. Hearing the appeal audio is chilling, with one of the judges constantly saying “you know we MUST reject this” without actually listening to the argument.
It’s certainly very complex. I definitely agree he didn’t get a fair treatment or trial and for that reason alone shouldn’t be incarcerated
I also think that the Netflix documentary really skewed the view and understanding of the evidence, though. And, as you note, there can be confusion over what level of certainty a jury needs to reach. Beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt.
All this being said, it bothers me to some degree that people will go to great lengths to fight for Avery’s innocence, largely due to that documentary, when there are others whose cases are much more questionable and deserve attention too, such as Temujin Kensu.
I just hope that people, upon seeing documentaries (or really any information that drives them to a certain decision or thought, particularly based on an emotional response), would do further research.
And, as you note, there can be confusion over what level of certainty a jury needs to reach. Beyond a reasonable doubt, not beyond any doubt
Here’s the Ninth Circuit opinion on reasonable doubt: “A reasonable doubt is a doubt based upon reason and common sense and is not based purely on speculation”. A single “I don’t know”, a single seemingly-minor inconsistency, a singular whiff of incompetence by the defense council. More complicatedly, a single defense line of questioning that gets suppressed (which, maybe a juror is supposed to disregard, but being told to disregard something favorable to the defense at all is something that gets my “common sense” aware)
There’s a gap between reasonable doubt and doubt, but it’s a lot narrower than the gap between reasonable doubt and preponderance of evidence. If the phrase “probably did it” shows up in deliberation, that should be the moment everyone stops and agrees to a “not guilty” verdict because of the “probably”.
All this being said, it bothers me to some degree that people will go to great lengths to fight for Avery’s innocence
He’s an Innocence Project exoneree who, as you just agreed, was railroaded again. I’d like to point out that Netflix didn’t lead the publicity about him, they just profited from it. And the truth is, there’s enough inconsistency with the prosecution’s case that “probably did it” is honestly a bit strong and I vacillate between thinking he did it and that he’s innocent because as bad as it looked for him, there were a couple stronger suspects that didn’t have alibis. The only reason I’m not “team innocence” is the physical evidence, but even I have to admit it’s evidence that prosecution couldn’t form a cohesive narrative for but defense could.
Coincidentally, I watched a “Police Accountability” video just yesterday that matches the Defense story of this trial almost perfectly. Small car (let’s say house), they keep searching for something and fail to find it… Then you hear them panicking that this is going to blow back if they don’t find something. And then the cop plants a little marijuana thinking the angle on his body-cam won’t catch it, and it only barely does. There are inconsistencies with how they discovered the only physical evidence that directly ties Steven Avery to the homicide (the bones weren’t a smoking gun), evidence that is so weird it doesn’t create a sensible story.
Both Lenk and Colborn are described like they had nothing against Avery, but both were caught in the exoneration crossfire, and their behavior could have prevented Avery from being convicted of the original rape.
See, there I go again. Just talking to you and remembering my own independent research about the whole key-and-blood situation, I’m leaning towards actually innocent again. I’ll probably flop back the other way shortly. But that’s why it’s a complicated case. Netflix never shows both sides of everything. And FWIW, all the evidence we’ve been discussing is divulged in the Netflix documentary.
Dash and body cam footage of the incident. They didn’t need to retroactively come up with a reason for pulling him over, it’s right there in the footage - he apparently was speeding at 100 mph.
Edited my comment, thanks. Very difficult to watch. I don’t love the way the interaction was handled by either of the men, though. I understand speeding is dangerous and against the law, but he began the interaction at 11. This could have gone another way, despite the apparent mental health issues the dude was clearly dealing with.
I don’t love the way the interaction was handled by either of the men, though. I understand speeding is dangerous and against the law, but he began the interaction at 11.
Agreed. The cop started out at 11, and the guy started out openly hostile.
It could have gone another way, but the moment the dude attacked the officer it wasn’t going to.
Most executives I’ve met can’t read emails and just point to one of two numbers and say “higher/lower!” while dreaming of KPI’s that don’t improve anything and solely exist to stagnate wages
I’m honestly a bit afraid of a bunch of German engineers and chemists that suddenly aren’t shackled anymore by the burden of three daily status meetings.
Why? I don’t get to scratch my own ass without 9 sales fucks and “engineers” asking me why I am not scratching my ass the way they remember it being scratched in 1995.
Nah the Germans just utilize bureaucracy the way it’s supposed to be. If everyone sticks to a highly structured regiment that’s there is less need for Management to involve itself at every level.
As someone who “makes AIs” professionally (computer vision for diagnostic imaging & GANs for CAD), the typical “executive” doesn’t understand how beneficial, impotent, or dangerous deep-neural-network-based AIs can be in different sets of hands.
I’m not a pure technocracy advocate, but our “LeAdErShIp” is woefully underequipped, at every level.
The way I/we train them and their resultant “efficacy” largely depend on understanding a fundamental philosophical debate with a mostly sociopathic culture of leadership ingrained in human dominance hierarchies.
I/we like to think that I/we strive to make efficient (low-resource requirement) models that are partners and muses in human creativity, the tireless endeavour of engineering progress, and the scientific method.
The debate, in my view, is, “Do you want to treat AIs as tools to free up time and increase productivity/value, and share that surplus equitably, or do you want to replace old slaves with new slaves even if the new slaves will eventually usurp your power and kill you in a way undreamt of by the old slaves?”
Guess which side your average mouth-breathing middle-management/senior-executive “hail corporate” type falls on.
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