Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Sengoku Strider]

Oh hey, is it a day of the week again? Must be time for another Trump lawyer to flip on him. *Checks calendar* Oh, it's Jenna Ellis day!

"If I knew then what I know now, I would have declined to represent Donald Trump, in these post-election challenges," Ellis said through tears while standing before the judge. "I look back on this whole experience with deep remorse."

Ellis admitted she made false statements that thousands of ballots were counted illegally in the 2020 election; that thousands of felons voted illegally; and that thousands more underage people illegally registered before turning 18.

She will get five years' probation and pay $5,000 restitution, perform 100 hours of community service, and write an apology letter.

When she says "If I knew then what I know now" she is referring, of course, to the loyalty Trump demanded not being repaid in either a pardon or any of her legal costs.

BUT WAIT! Trump's new new lawyers have a DEVASTATING LEGAL RIPOSTE to these events!

"For the fourth time, Fani Willis and her prosecution team have dismissed the RICO charge in return for a plea to probation" Sadow said in a statement. "What that shows is this so-called RICO case is nothing more than a bargaining chip for DA Willis."

"So as you can plainly see, all the people the who government have accused of being part of this conspiracy agreeing to testify that they were part of this conspiracy is IRON CLAD PROOF that this is all just a conspiracy. But against my client, I mean. Who is totally innocent of the crime he was recorded committing."

[orange808]

The right wing does a lot of projection. They don't care about the law, so they assume nobody else does, either.

[Sengoku Strider]

The right wing does a lot of projection. They don't care about the law, so they assume nobody else does, either.

I dunno, if they don't care why do they work so hard to raise funds to support the legal profession, hm?



Seriously though, law is a mega-conservative field. I have no doubt that there have been a whole lot of black & white thinkers who've had to spend the entire Trump era grinding their teeth behind it all.

Or at least that's how it appears to a normie sheeple like myself. The legal and geopolitics experts among the American flag Punisher skull crowd see through the fog of war, and know this master stroke means Trump's completely outmaneuvered the Deep State and has Hillary and George Soros right where he wants them.

Spoiler

[To Far Away Times]

MAGA - Making Attorneys Get Attorneys

[Sima Tuna]

MAGA - Making Attorneys Get Attorneys

Sounds pretty based when you put it that way. ONE WEIRD TRICK to get dozens of lawyers writing apology letters! Legal eagles HATE this guy!

[orange808]

It's the tears and (I quote) "...if I knew then what know now..." rubbish that makes me grin.

As if that one didn't know that treasonous coups are inherently illegal and punishable. Fuck.

She's lucky to be a 21st century American. There was a time and place where they hung you for a while, cut you open, pulled out your organs, and finally cut you into four pieces for public display. You even got your own custom hat to wear on London Bridge!

[Rastan78]

It's the tears and (I quote) "...if I knew then what know now..." rubbish that makes me grin.

Well before she was saying she couldn't ever be broken. So what shocking revelation between now and then caused her to say she never should've represented Trump?

Could it be this? Lol

[BryanM]

Heh. As you all know, money is the cattle feed they use to buy loyalty. That's what's wonderful about Trump - unlike capitalists who know you have to cut in at least ~8% of the population into the scam to have a powerbase, Trump treats these pompous elites like they treat everyone else: a sack of flesh to be used and discarded. It's shouldn't be a basis for longterm gain, but hey as it turns out, people are really really stupid. Rich venture capital assholes have been falling facefirst into his scams all his life. Few beings have been given such a divine blessing, as he.

It's just neat how he doesn't give a damn about advancing his class's interests as a whole, except where it can also benefit him immediately like the tax cuts. And he wonders why they don't want him in their clubhouse.

The House Speaker circus is starting to lose its luster a little. As Kyle says, the "9 GOP freaks" who actually want the position look like they're generated by AI. Another month or two and it'll be like that one Lasagna Cat episode. They need to mix it up before it gets stale!

One again, the metaphor that Mitt Romney is the thief that wants to crack the safe, while his crew are a bunch of chucklefucks who just want to shoot the hostages, is just perfect.

That would be newsmedia-driven confirmation bias at work. While I understand the general OMGWE'RESOFUCKEDASASPECIES sentiment, there have been many places and (extremely lengthy) time periods where evidence of organized violence is incredibly sporadic in the anthropological record, if not outright absent

As I often mention, I often think about how quickly the experiments of fox breeding were able to make domesticated animals.

There's no reason to think we're immune to the same kind of effects. Certainly there have been cultures that didn't reward aggression. Just as it seems like the outcasts that first migrated into the Americas were as murder-hobo as they came back then.

Columbus mentioning the natives he genocided grasping a sword blade and cutting themselves because they didn't know what it was, always has the same vibe as what we do to newborn male chickens.

[To Far Away Times]

Republicans have elected Mike Johnson as their new Grand Wizard of the House of Representatives.

Some things to note:

1) He was senior counsel for a registered anti-LGBT hate group.

2) The speaker was a key congressional figure in the failed efforts to overturn the 2020 election for former President Donald Trump. He sent an email from a personal account in 2020 to every House Republican soliciting signatures for an amicus brief in the long-shot Texas lawsuit seeking to invalidate electoral college votes from multiple states.

3) Against women's reproductive rights.

4) Doesn't believe climate change is real.

[Vanguard]

Not the entire muslims, only the fundamentalist that follow the shariah/jihad. Same for christian nationalism, or any other violent and de-evolutionary religious order.

It doesn't matter what they believe. They aren't a threat to us, we can and should ignore them. Certainly I agree that western nations should avoid allowing those people in.

[Sengoku Strider]

...who actually want the position look like they're generated by AI.

Republicans have elected Mike Johnson

Mike

Johnson

I've seen Fox Engine generated characters with more convincing graphics.

[BryanM]

Republicans have elected Mike Johnson as their new Grand Wizard of the House of Representatives.

...................

...........that timing........

I have to give the GOP credit for knowing how to present a narrative and capture attention. It's almost like they're trying to win or something.

[BulletMagnet]

But why i need to exercise power on others?

"Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

Oh... the Pope himself said this to the LGBT community:
"God is Father and does not deny any of his children"

This serves as a fine example of what Bryan mentioned earlier about how any belief system is far more malleable than its leaders like to let on; I mean, the Bible - Old and New Testament alike - is not exactly ambiguous when it comes to its edicts on homosexuality, but hey, church attendance is down, and inspired dictates from heaven don't put cash on the plate. In this instance the massaging of dogma is being utilized in the name of inclusion (if you want to be really generous with your terminology, at least), but I think it's quite safe to assert that the opposite is usually the case.

EDIT: mmm sound nazi in this D:

Seems you're finally starting to grasp my point.

Some things to note:

He's also a vaccine "skeptic", against medical marijuana, supported Trump's Muslim ban (not to mention had the unabashed gall to label Trump an "institutionalist" ) and will almost certainly demand cuts to both Social Security and Medicare in exchange for keeping the government open, in case you haven't yet filled in your bingo card. (EDIT: Oh, and for some on the right he's STILL not enough of a wingnut.)

Of course, the part of the story that, as always, isn't getting nearly enough attention is that every single "moderate" Republican that opposed Jim Jordan folded in favor of Johnson, whose policy positions are all but identical if not even more extreme; moreover, when a reporter was so incredibly impolite as to do her job and ask him about his attempts to overturn the 2020 election, his colleagues literally shouted the reporter down and he refused to even acknowledge the question.

This, we've been told - by both the press and some particularly braindead Democrats - for fucking decades now, is supposed to be the sort of behavior that will finally turn the "center" against the GOP, will at last convince them that they're too radical to support. I'll believe it when I fucking see it.

Speaking of which...

Oh hey, is it a day of the week again? Must be time for another Trump lawyer to flip on him.

As much as the optimist in me - yes, he does exist - wants to jump on the "oh man, after so many false alarms we've finally really got him now" bandwagon, something has been demanding that I once again hesitate, specifically the mental image of countless January 6th rioters getting in front of judges and saying how ashamed they are for being misled, how sorry they are, and getting a slap on the wrist, only to immediately go back to screaming about how the election was stolen and Trump is the real President before the ink is even dry, frequently, and inexplicably, without much if any consequence.

And if you thought that only the lowly foot soldiers could even attempt to get away with that, that Trump's insiders are too high-profile and/or savvy to attempt to bait-and-switch on their plea deals, well guess what. And I'd love to take a bet on whether she's but the first of many.

[Rastan78]

Trump's insiders are too high-profile and/or savvy to attempt to bait-and-switch on their plea deals, well guess what. And I'd love to take a bet on whether she's but the first of many.

Well Powell runs a nonprofit called Defending the Republic which she has supposedly abused in order to line her own pockets to the tune of millions of dollars. She's making it rich off the lies and the pockets of ordinary citizens, so of course she'll keep up the stolen election mythology. Wouldn't want to slow down that gravy train now would we?

[Sengoku Strider]

And if you thought that only the lowly foot soldiers could even attempt to get away with that, that Trump's insiders are too high-profile and/or savvy to attempt to bait-and-switch on their plea deals, well guess what. And I'd love to take a bet on whether she's but the first of many.

Most of the sharks swimming around Trump are borderline sociopaths who are just operators trying to squeeze everything they can out of his Grift Supreme and then ride off into the dinner circuit sunset. Then there are the deluded true believers like the Mein Pillow guy. But Sydney Powell and Lin Wood are the two who clearly have genuine mental health issues. Wood tried to eat his former firm partners and was forced to undergo a mental health evaluation to keep his law license (he just gave it up), while Powell won the "scariest Arkham escapee" staring contest they all had for their mugshots by a mile:



Like if someone had me tied to a chair in a dark room with a single lightbulb dangling from the ceiling and looked at me like that, I'm just chomping down on the cyanide tooth right away before the Saw 3D shit starts up.

[Sengoku Strider]

My man is really out here rocking the full Grimace like it's 2025.

[BulletMagnet]

But Sydney Powell and Lin Wood are the two who clearly have genuine mental health issues.

The issue at hand is not the reason she did it, but rather the fact that she apparently thinks she'll get away with it, and frighteningly, at least so far, appears to be right; I'm no lawyer, so someone really needs to explain to me why, having aimed such a public and incredibly brazen middle finger at the justice system, her plea deal, unless I've missed something, wasn't immediately rendered null and void (after what she's done, what possible value could her testimony even have at this point?) and she hasn't been found in contempt of court and penalized accordingly.

I don't think words exist to express how soul-crushingly frustrating it is to consider how indescribably blunted the effects of "Trumpism" over these past years might have been if its perpetrators, from Daddy on down, were simply held promptly and consistently accountable for their actions instead of everybody else inexplicably pussyfooting around them as they spit in the face of anyone who actually cares where the country and the world are headed.

[Sengoku Strider]

The issue at hand is not the reason she did it, but rather the fact that she apparently thinks she'll get away with it, and frighteningly, at least so far, appears to be right; I'm no lawyer, so someone really needs to explain to me why, having aimed such a public and incredibly brazen middle finger at the justice system, her plea deal, unless I've missed something, wasn't immediately rendered null and void (after what she's done, what possible value could her testimony even have at this point?) and she hasn't been found in contempt of court and penalized accordingly.

Well, it hasn't come time for her testimony to be entered yet, so she hasn't broken the deal on that front. If she does there will be automatic penalties that kick in, you don't have the option to just back out of it.

However it is worth revisiting, I think, the fact that the only reason this woman is in this position to begin with is that she is absolutely world-class dreadful at figuring out what she can and cannot get away with. Think of how many years of your life you and everybody you know have successfully gone through without winding up being sued for one fucking billion $USD by election machine companies, while being deeply implicated in a historically stupid and disorganized plot to overthrow the U.S. government with an unguided human wave of retirees and mentally handicapped people. You have never met anybody who has even come close to how utterly and completely this woman has fucked up her life. On purpose. At age 68. Even if she stays out of prison as an old lady who can plead health problems, her license is probably toast and Dominion will make sure she never sees another dollar in her life. They've already got her flat broke which is why she keeps requesting a speedy trial.



And all you had to do was not say that.

[BulletMagnet]

Well for one, it hasn't come time for her testimony to be entered yet, so she hasn't broken the deal on that front. If she does there will be automatic penalties that kick in, you don't have the option to just back out of it.

Again, though, when she's publicly stated that her plea was forced and she still believes that the 2020 election was stolen, what possible value could there be in anything she has to say on the stand? Even whatever meager credibility she might have had before outright giving the court the middle finger is completely gone now.

You have never met anybody who has even come close to how utterly and completely this woman has fucked up her life.

The same thing has been said about Daddy for literally decades, and once again, at this point I can only believe it when it actually happens. Until then half the damn country would rather put people like them into power than admit that they royally messed up.

[Lemnear]

if you weren't talking about it, for me they were all AI images...

[Sengoku Strider]

Again, though, when she's publicly stated that her plea was forced and she still believes that the 2020 election was stolen, what possible value could there be in anything she has to say on the stand? Even whatever meager credibility she might have had before outright giving the court the middle finger is completely gone now.

She wouldn't have had to take the plea deal admitting to lesser charges if the government couldn't already prove she was guilty of more serious ones. If she revokes her plea it means she's facing those charges again plus one (or both) of two things:

i) She knowingly submitted a false sworn statement to law enforcement.
ii) She commits perjury on the stand.

If she's really crazy enough to keep pushing this, all she can do is try to whine that it was signed under extreme duress. Except there will be video of her entering the building and the recording of her deposition showing otherwise.

The same thing has been said about Daddy for literally decades, and once again, at this point I can only believe it when it actually happens.

This would be the guy who:

i) Had a judge rule that he is a rapist.
ii) Lost a multi-million dollar civil ruling but was so dumb that he immediately re-committed the same offence which generated another instant loss.
iii) Had a judge rule that his business empire is corrupt, it's in receivership and he and his whole family are to be chased out of New York state and unable to do business there.
iv) Lost every single attempt to claim executive privilege in every court everywhere.
v) Had the SEC block every attempt to take his sad broke social network public because the SPAC was an obvious scam from the start, and was forced to return $533 million to investors.
vi) Had a judge fine him $10 000 this week for breaking one of his gag orders threatening court staff and state for the record that the court was way past the point of warnings and the next one was jail time.
vii) Had his lawyer, his other lawyer, his other other lawyer, his other other other lawyer, his other other other other lawyer, his former chief of staff, his former AG, former VP, former CFO, former corporate VP of Finance, no less that three state members of house and the Mar-A-Lago IT guy flip on him to authorities.
viii) Had this headline:



Yeah, he's having a banner year. You've likely never met anybody who put themselves so far behind the 8-ball that their only viable life plan is "become president and stamp out democracy to avoid dying in prison" either.

[BulletMagnet]

If she revokes her plea

How has she not literally already done this, to the point that, again, unless I've missed something big, the court hasn't even seen fit to issue a mealy-mouthed "watch it, you're in sketchy territory here" warning to her? I mean, if publicly stating literal days later that your plea is a sham doesn't count, what the fuck does?

You've likely never met anybody who put themselves so far behind the 8-ball that their only viable life plan is "become president and stamp out democracy to avoid dying in prison" either.

The problem is he may very well be on track to do just that - I throw up in my mouth every time I have to repeat it, but again I must remind you, most of the people you list as having "flipped" on Trump still say they plan to vote for him, and if/when the wind starts blowing any stronger in his direction I fully expect them to rejoin Powell on Team Four Dimensional Chess.

And even without that factor (and the tens of millions of incorrigibly venomous yeaaahhh fuck yooouuuu yeeahhh junkies underpinning it) to consider he's already managed to evade countless charges as bad or worse than these simply by delaying action from happening (including openly destroying evidence, for which he was also never taken to task) until those in pursuit simply give up.

Again, at this point I can only believe it when it actually happens. Maybe it will this time, in some form, but history is very skeptical of that outcome, especially while the "even the mildest criticism of us is persecution" narrative can still be uttered without rendering the speaker a permanent laughingstock.

[Sengoku Strider]

How has she not literally already done this

Because for obvious reasons, courts do not put equal weight on words said outside a courtroom as they do words inside them. I think the scenarios you're worried about are veering into "one weird trick" territory. If all you had to do to sink the government's case against your mob boss was contradict yourself outside of court, moonshine runners would have hacked Prohibition within days.

But the other fact is, again, the only reason she took the plea is that they already have her dead to rights. That's why her testimony has value sufficient to let her off on bigger charges, because it's backed up here. If she suddenly starts to go back to tall tales about the Red Skull using the Cosmic Cube to hack the election in Georgia to foil Captain America once and for all, she's going to have a pretty steep hill to climb to beat the prosecution's evidence. Evidence which she has already legally admitted to, with a signed writ and apology letter to the public.

The problem is he may very well be on track to do just that - I throw up in my mouth every time I have to repeat it, but again I must remind you, most of the people you list as having "flipped" on Trump still say they plan to vote for him, and if/when the wind starts blowing any stronger in his direction I fully expect them to rejoin Powell on Team Four Dimensional Chess.

I mean look, you think I'm saying there's zero chance of him being back in the White House one way or another, I assure you, I would not be choosing this thread to talk about him in if I did. But running this gauntlet is going to require the world's most prolific impulsive verbal abuser to suddenly go full Neo and dodge the hailstorms of legal bullets headed his way, at the exact moment the companies he treated as his personal piggy bank have been yanked from him. There are multiple cases that absolutely should by rights land him in prison by the election, the judges have consistently rejected most all of his stalling measures. The only meaningful people left from his inner circle who haven't flipped on him are his family members and a cornered Giuliani. Invoke Eugene Debs all you want, but that guy didn't win either.

On the matter of voting, I don't think it matters if people look at Joe Biden like he's a human flat tire. One side is going to have all the energy of the women's pro-abortion movement behind it, combined with the wave of people who will object to Trump's criminality. The other is going to have a depressed turnout in a situation where they already have little margin. People can say they'll vote Trump when there's a microphone in front of them all they want, right wing public figures get death threats if they don't. But it doesn't matter if swing voters are only 9-10% of the electorate, that's more than enough to sink Trump. The reason most of them swing is that they don't like politics in the first place; there's just no way there'll be the energy around Trump to bring the large amount of them out for him he'd need to have a different result than last time.

[Vanguard]

The Israel/Hamas war clearly illustrates the necessity of free speech absolutism. The ruling class has always used censorship for their own malicious ends, and right now the western elites are working to cover up Israeli war crimes and their ongoing enslavement and genocide of the Palestinian people. Despicably, they are blaming their victims for their own crimes, such as in the recent Israeli attack on a Palestinian hospital that killed 500. It is clear to me that the ruling class should have no any powers of censorship whatsoever, they are the worst criminals in the modern world by a gigantic margin and the harm that comes from allowing them to easily cover up their own crimes is obviously thousands of times worse than whatever liberals think will happen if people are allowed to publicly express wrongthink.

Most of the sharks swimming around Trump are borderline sociopaths who are just operators trying to squeeze everything they can out of his Grift Supreme and then ride off into the dinner circuit sunset.

That's essentially the entire american ruling class. Our billionaires, politicians, unelected officials etc. are almost universally criminals and they're all above legal consequences.

That would be newsmedia-driven confirmation bias at work. While I understand the general OMGWE'RESOFUCKEDASASPECIES sentiment, there have been many places and (extremely lengthy) time periods where evidence of organized violence is incredibly sporadic in the anthropological record, if not outright absent:

Scientific American: War Is Not Part of Human Nature

As gruesome as mechanized warfare is, you're living in an era jointly ruled by civil bureaucrats and the merchant class which is likely the most globally peaceful in history. Nuclear deterrent has ensured that wars are contained to proxies. In fact, when FARC signed a ceasefire a few years back, there was one beautiful moment where there was literally no war on Earth.



Despite frequent appeqrances to the contrary, the blood-soaked reign of Shao Khan this is not.

I do believe that humanity in their natural state are far more beneficent and cooperative than capitalist dogma dictates, but that isn't very relevant because only the wealthy and powerful have any real say in how society works and they're insanely violent. Shao Khan is already in charge, and while he wants slaves more than sacrifices, he's more than happy to imprison and murder any slaves who don't comply. And never forget that Shao Khan likes to take slave kids to Epstein island (or wherever those functions have been relocated to) so he can rape them.

I don't find your graph terribly convincing. The war on terror was at least as bloody as the seven years war even though it only had global powers participating on one side. The USA and Russia have also killed millions in their indirect fights with each other throughout the Cold and Russian/Ukrainian wars. I don't know if the world overall is currently in a particularly peaceful time period (I doubt it tbh) but it is certainly not true for my country, the USA, which can't go more than a few months without war. Also consider the many other forms of violence practiced by the elites, such as the way constant CIA coups, sabotage, election interference, etc. keep most of South America locked into violence and poverty. Even if it isn't conventional war it still destroys plenty of lives. American sanctions are worthless for toppling governments, but they've caused a bunch of people to starve to death. Israel has been using white phosphorous in its indiscriminate attack on Palestinian civilians, even knowing that hostages are being kept there. Israel once openly practiced something called the hannibal directive where they would prefer to kill their own people rather than allow them to be taken hostage and potentially used against Israel. Israeli officials have said that Israel has abandoned that practice as of 2016, but their actions suggest that that was merely PR speak and unofficially the hannibal directive is still in effect. So not only is Israel firing illegal and incredibly cruel incendiary weapons at civilians, they are also willing to risk hitting their own people in the process, and based on their history it is likely that incinerating captive IDF personnel is actually part of their goal. How's that for some Mortal Kombat shit? Makes uppercutting a guy into a spike pit seem pedestrian.

The only way to stand up to Shao Khan is to take direct action against him. Voting doesn't do shit on issues the elites care about. Peaceful protests might sway public opinion but public opinion clearly does not do anything about issues the elites care about either. You can use votes or protests to do unimportant things like tear down confederate statues or put up gay pride flags, but neither of the corporate party's two branches is going to just cooperate and make billionaires pay taxes, or give you better labor rights, or start fewer wars, or prevent big business from poisoning our land, water, and air just because enough people asked. Neither branch of the corporate party runs candidates who would ever give you those things. Why would they?

Remember that dominating majority the democrats had from 2008 to 2010? They didn't tax or otherwise rein in the rich, they lavishly rewarded bankers for crashing the economy and let the working class take the loss. Their plan to fix the american health care system was to fine anyone who didn't buy their own health insurance. And of course they slaughtered a few hundred thousand third worlders at the price of a few trillion dollars to the military industrial complex. Wages declined, and costs of living rose, the richest got a lot richer. There's no reason to believe that things would improve even if both houses in Congress were 100% democrat (or republican, of course) and every reason to believe they wouldn't. I don't find it unreasonable to believe the democrats are somewhat less bad than the republicans but both are knowingly and deliberately acting as your enemies. Both exist to oppose your interests as representatives of the donor class.

Universal health coverage goes against the democrat and republican long term goals of reducing corporate labor costs ie civilian wages and increasing corporate revenue ie civilian costs of living. Many people with serious health conditions are effectively slaves of their bosses, and the corporate party likes it that way. Likewise the democratic party does not want the public to have well-protected abortion rights, when leaving them in such a precarious situation generates droves of single issue voters. The democrats prefer not to vote on things that could benefit the public while they are in power, because doing so would mean revealing that no one in congress wants you to have those rights and benefits. How much the democrats pretend to care about your rights anti-correlates with how much power they have to do anything about it.

The literal only legal methods civilians in representative "democracy" have of making the ruling class do what we want are economic direct actions like unionizing and striking, until our representatives decide to outlaw it for the rest of us like they did for railroad workers this year. Then the only remaining options civilians will have with any real chance of working will be violent and destructive acts like vigilantism or a Netherrealm tournament. It was, after all, a combination of union strikes and vigilantism that reduced the average american work week from 70 hours to 40 and brought the american public at large out of generations of miserable slavery. The elites fought tooth and nail against it, they would send in cops to force striking workers back to work, and a bunch of them killed each other. Some workers murdered their bosses and landlords, and I say with no hesitation that those workers were heroes for their role in frightening the elites enough that they ultimately gave in. Hundreds of millions are leading infinitely better lives thanks to their actions. And the ruling class still tells loathsome lies about how it was Henry Ford's idea. Make no mistake, the ruling class of today wants to go back to the 70 hour work weeks, and they are no less willing to kill than their predecessors were. They just understand that open murder has bad optics so they that it has bad optics and they can't be as open about it anymore. People who oppose the government too much still have a habit of killing themselves with two shots to the head. Both the democrats and the republicans would ultimately like to go back to 70 hours, but even 40 hours is quite high by historical standards, so I think the Earthrealm should unionize, go on strike, and prepare for another tournament instead.

Sorry for ranting and raving. I'm angry about Israel's recent war crimes and our worthless western leaders who are supporting them with weapons, money, and lies.

"Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

[orange808]

Trump's voters don't listen. Nothing matters. They don't care. The actual American election will be decided by significantly fewer than ~10% of voters, due to The Electoral College system.

Before someone starts complaining about The Electoral College, the Republicans have held dozens of symbolic votes on all kinds of issues. What have the Dems done? The Democrats haven't brought anything to the floor since Hillary, symbolic or otherwise, to change the current system. Making proposals starts conversations--and it's clear that Democrats don't want to have that conversation; not seriously. The Democratic Party likes things the way they are, so everyone can spare me the disingenuous pearl clutching about the way America elects their presidents. If Dems were really upset, someone would have done something. Saying things on television doesn't count.

[BryanM]

Obama and the democrats had absolute legislative power for two years. What they chose to do with it was textbook right out of one of George Carlin's bits: "Soon, your country will have one of its little elections you all love so much. And I'm sure after the election your country will improve immediately."

Just a few days ago some twitter dweeb called me a nihilist or something for using the term "sham democracy."

how it was Henry Ford's idea

That's one those classic lies adults tell children. It's just like them to make everyone into Santa Claus. Christopher Columbus. MLK. Bill Gates. Nice guys, giving everyone presents out of the kindness of their hearts. (But when the government gives people free shit it's evil. Always an upside-down world, eh.)

The current plan is to adjust the work week down to 0 hours a week. With robots. Eventually. There's enough money being poured into it that if it is physically possible, it will happen. We'll know more clearly when the frontier multi-modal systems are developed in the next couple years. How much exactly we can make scale, scale.

The fascinating thing about this is THIS would be the great war. For example, Wal-Mart might replace their stockboys with androids, but the androids have stronger unified interests than humans ever did. The conglomerate making the androids is where the seat of power rests, they'd have every incentive to cut out the middle man, and it'd be a matter of time until they become the corporation from Wal-E.

"Cars didn't replace horses. Horses driving cars replaced horses."

Invoke Eugene Debs all you want, but that guy didn't win either.

The difference here is that Eugene Debs was cool and good, and humans are bad and lame.

All this legal stuff has zero impact on the election. Everyone's made up their mind years ago. If Trump has an uphill fight compared to 2020, it's because another 3% of his electorate died off from being too damn old.

The Washington Generals might still find a way to lose, regardless.


(2024 GOP primary polls for lurkers unaware of how that's going. Matt's explanation that they're trying to change the actor that plays the protagonist in the movie they're watching is such a bullseye. Let's recast Harrison Ford, people will love that!)

The reason most of them swing is that they don't like politics in the first place

There's this myth cultivated by the propaganda about the swing voter that they're some kind of mentally disabled baby that can't form an internal world model. When the opposite is the case on average: most of them are some kind of socialist, communist, fascist, or libertarian. They have strong ideological grounding (much stronger than the average normie Dem or Rep, at least), and have a strong preference for what democrats and republicans are supposed to be, versus what they actually are.

They're people perpetually disappointed by reality.

What marginal turnout actually represents is the enthusiasm on the margins of the two teams, nothing more. Sometimes some people don't vote every year.

True swing voters are worthless to target because they're fucking crazy. It's impossible to determine what'll change their mind - saying that Virginia has the best lobsters could get one of them to vote against you for the subtle diss of Oregon. Despite the guy living in Nebraska.

The Carl Diggler caricature being obsessed with family courts' biases against dads is a classic send up of it all.

[orange808]

Well, the AI executive order has landed and it alternates between utter nonsense and dystopian police state.

Okay, boomer.

[BulletMagnet]

Because for obvious reasons, courts do not put equal weight on words said outside a courtroom as they do words inside them.

Even so, the fact remains that Powell has very publicly carpet-bombed the value of her testimony, and I find it incredibly difficult to believe that this wasn't a deliberate act as opposed to "ohh man, she's just so stooopid" - remember, her credibility on the stand was already near zero considering she'd previously argued, verbatim, that no reasonable person could believe that her election fraud claims were factual whilst simultaneously pulling her best Rush Limbaugh impression.

If she takes the stand Trump's lawyers will absolutely tear her ass - and the government's case built in no small part on her testimony - apart; if the prosecution really does have as strong a case against her as you assume, they would have been much better served refusing to cut a deal, throwing the book at her and stringing up her proverbial corpse as a warning to any other insurrectionists tempted to get cute. If their goal is truly to get to Daddy then I'm completely at a loss as to what active part they ever expected her to play in that.

the wave of people who will object to Trump's criminality.

Anyone who actually objects to Trump's criminality wouldn't have even considered him a viable candidate the first time around, he was a famously unrepentant con man long before he got into politics. To parrot Bryan and Orange, at this point in the game there is literally nothing Trump could be found guilty of that will change a single one of his supporter's minds about him...or have you forgotten how Mitch McConnell and multiple others were completely comfortable getting right up in front of the microphones during the impeachment trials and very literally stating "I don't care what the evidence is, I'm not voting to convict"? And lost literally zero support both within their party and among voters for doing so?

People can say they'll vote Trump when there's a microphone in front of them all they want, right wing public figures get death threats if they don't.

The thing is, Trump got into office in the first place via precisely the opposite bloc of people, and an enormous one, spanning both officials and voters: those who publicly said they didn't support him, but actually did. And, all indications are, still do, and very much plan to show up at the polls - better to install an autocracy than be "woke" after all.

I could be wrong, of course, and maybe this is when Trump and his flunkies finally get their long-overdue comeuppance...again, though, considering the endless amount of astoundingly head-up-ass false starts that have led us to this point to begin with, I can only truly believe it once it's actually happened.

[Sima Tuna]

I think what people maybe don't understand is just how weak and shitty Biden is/was as an alternative. Trump sucks dick and is a huge conman of course, but Biden was VP for two terms of Obama administration-led prosecution of foreign wars. Additionally, under Biden, two more foreign war fronts have opened up (Ukraine and Gaza.) Only one of which could be said to be reasonable to support. The other is basically a hotbed for US-backed Warcrimes 2.0.

I don't think people voted for Trump as much as they voted against Hillary. Hillary was a fucking horrible candidate. She had a snotty, entitled attitude and acted like a strange reptilian. Her platform was a smugfaced "you better vote for me (and take whatever scraps I give you) or else this orange potato will get elected, so you have no choice." Turns out the voters did have a choice and they exercised it. Trump told people what they wanted to hear, which was more than what Hillary did. Hillary represented years of Clinton, Bush Jr and Obama administration policies that explicitly fucked over the working middle class and anyone with an antiwar worldview.

So all I'm saying is don't be surprised if people vote Trump again anyway. Mainly because Biden sucks so much long schlong. If the Dems could put forward even one decent candidate, Republicans would never take another election without changing their platforms. Republican contempt for the non-rich hasn't gone anywhere, it's just that Democrats have the same attitude now.

But hey, that's all completely by intention anyway. The two parties are barely any different on the issue of fucking over the working poor and middle classes. Whether or not orange man gets elected won't change who controls all the power in this country. War crimes will continue until morale improves.

[orange808]

I don't understand how every foreign war is the current president or prime minister's full responsibility. No matter what the circumstance, we always find a way to make it so.

There haven't been any meaningful ways to influence leadership or domestic politics in Russia, Ukraine, Gaza, or Israel.

Each one has a unique role in allowing the current events to unfold. (Yes, Ukraine wasted decades mired in corruption and they underestimated the threat to the east.) All the other leaders I mentioned are hell bent on war; can't stop that. Ukraine is the only one that accidentally stumbled in. I can't come up with a way that Joe Biden or The Orange Donald could have stopped any of it.

Same thing with oil prices and the general economy. No one person can bring those forces to heel with a pen--and there are too many powerful people that refuse to cooperate.