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Northern Ireland25800 Posts
On October 02 2025 04:54 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 04:08 WombaT wrote:I think there’s probably a case that at least some of those jailed maybe were a case of wrong place, wrong time, or at least just went there to protest and not storm the Capitol, got caught up in things jr whatever. Hey it happens. The blanket pardoning of people who blatantly went there with ill intent, and committed violence is insane. It’s like a sewage pipe burst and there’s simply too much shit to focus on any particular spot that’s covered in it, but my lord that was egregious That seems to be the strategy. As long as you constantly spam horrifible, horribly stupid, or otherwise unforgivable shit, no one can focus on one thing long enough so it has consequences for you. And apparently it works. I don't know why. People are fucking morons.
If you assume malice people suddenly look a bit less stupid.
And I think we’re at a stage we probably should.
Yeah sure some people are, but hey some of the most morally upstanding people I know are pretty stupid.
It’s not stupidity. The person who’ll demand we respect cops in the face of the ‘radical left’, but be OK with people who actually assaulted police officers being pardoned aren’t doing so because they’re stupid. They’re malicious bad actors
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On October 02 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 02:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:No. That's another idiotic Candace Owens rant. Also is there any chance that Jimmy can even vaguely abide by thread rules? For fuck’s sake
That's a good point. No summary or explanation of a video = 
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Vote to end government shutdown fails in Senate as Democrats hold firm on health care demands
WASHINGTON (AP) — A vote to swiftly end the government shutdown failed Wednesday, as Democrats in the Senate held firm to the party’s demands to fund health care subsidies that President Donald Trump and Republicans refuse to provide.
The tally showed cracks in the Democrats’ resolve on day one of the shutdown but offered no breakthrough. Blame was being cast on all sides. The White House and Congress failed to strike an agreement to keep programs and services open, throwing the country into a new cycle of uncertainty.
...
Plenty of blame being thrown around
The Democrats picked this fight, which was unusual for the party that prefers to keep government running, but their voters are eager to challenge the president’s second-term agenda. Democrats are demanding funding for health care subsidies that are expiring for millions of people under the Affordable Care Act, causing the insurance premiums to spike nationwide.
Republicans have refused to negotiate and have encouraged Trump to steer clear of any talks. After convening a White House meeting this week with the Democratic leaders, the president posted a cartoonish fake video mocking the Democratic leadership that was widely viewed as unserious and racist.
“President Trump’s behavior has become more erratic and unhinged,” Democratic leaders Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries said in a joint statement, calling for an “intervention” to get the country out of the shutdown. “Instead of negotiating a bipartisan agreement in good faith, he is obsessively posting crazed deepfake videos.”
Vice President JD Vance said Republicans want to resolve the health care issues that concern Democrats but will not negotiate until the government reopens.
“It’s craziness, and people are going to suffer because of this,” Vance said Wednesday on the Fox News show “Fox & Friends.”
What’s staying open and shutting down
The Medicare and Medicaid health care programs are expected to continue, though staffing shortages could mean delays for some services. The Pentagon would still function. And most employees will stay on the job at the Department of Homeland Security.
But Trump has warned that the administration could focus on programs that are important to Democrats, “cutting vast numbers of people out, cutting things that they like, cutting programs that they like.”
No easy exit as health care costs soar
Ahead of Wednesday’s start of the fiscal year, House Republicans had approved a temporary funding bill, over opposition from Democrats, to keep government running into mid-November while broader negotiations continue.
But that bill has failed repeatedly in the Senate, including Wednesday, on a 55-45 vote. It needs 60 votes to advance, which requires cooperation between the two parties in a chamber where the GOP has a 53-47 majority. A Democratic bill also failed.
Divisions within the Democrats are apparent, as three senators again crossed over to join Republicans, signaling that Democratic leverage may be eroding. One Republican opposed the GOP plan.
During the roll call, an widening group of senators engaged in an intense conversation, including GOP Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, who has been talking with colleagues about the idea of a one-year extension of the expiring health care subsidies.
“It’s just one thought, and there are other ideas that are out there,” Rounds said afterward.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, who has said Republicans are happy to discuss the health care issue — but not as part of talks to keep the government open — is working to peel off more Democrats to his side.
The standoff is a political test for Schumer, who has drawn scorn from a restive base of left-flank voters pushing the party to hold firm in its demands for health care funding.
Johnson sent lawmakers home nearly two weeks ago after having passed the GOP bill, but said they would be back next week.
Trump, during his meeting with the congressional leaders, expressed surprise at the scope of the rising costs of health care, but Democrats left with no path toward talks.
During Trump’s first term, the nation endured its longest-ever shutdown, 35 days, over his demands for funds Congress refused to provide to build his promised U.S.-Mexico border wall.
In 2013, the government shut down for 16 days during the Obama presidency over GOP demands to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. Other closures date back decades.
the abject failure of a Trump show goes on.
so Republicans gutted healthcare in the BBB. now the markets are reacting accordingly and are pricing it into the badly designed (and on top politically sabotaged) system. health care premiums are skyrocketing already budgets stretched thin.
When The Bill Comes Due: The Big Beautiful Bill’s Hidden Health Fallout
ACA Credits: The Flashpoint
The shutdown’s core fight is the fate of ACA premium tax credits. These expanded subsidies, first authorized during the pandemic and renewed through 2025, doubled marketplace enrollment and made health insurance possible for 22 million Americans who fall between Medicaid and employer coverage. Democrats have refused to approve a funding bill that excludes renewal, while Republicans insist that health policy must be negotiated separately.
Without renewal, premiums could more than double—from an average of $888 this year to $1,904 next year, a staggering 114% hike. Insurers in nearly every state have already warned policyholders to brace for increases or risk losing coverage entirely. The Congressional Budget Office and other analysts project that more than 4 million people could lose their ACA insurance by 2034.
Democrats want at least a plaster for this gaping wound but Trump says "make me and FU ". in the process holding 750k federal workers (and their paychecks) directly hostage. and of course many more livelihoods due to the nature of projects and private public partnerships.
good stuff.
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On October 02 2025 03:10 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 01:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 23:16 ChristianS wrote:On October 01 2025 10:40 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 10:32 LightSpectra wrote:
Looks like we're officially shutting down.
"A shutdown falls on the President's lack of leadership. He can't even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak." -- Donald Trump in 2013 I wonder how long it'll last and if Trump/Republicans will really start mass firings? I also wonder whether people think Democrats should hold out on passing a "clean CR", for how long, and what the minimum they should accept is? I think one reason you get so few takers on “Okay, what should be done?” posts is that a lot of what we’re watching fundamentally undercuts our systems’ premises and foundational assumptions. It’s not clear what rebuilding those foundations would look like, or how we can expect those systems to work adequately under the circumstances. + Show Spoiler +As an example: the reason SCOTUS has lifetime appointments is because it was always supposed to be a nonpartisan, professional “balls and strikes” institution. Technocratic, if you like. For those purposes having seats be determined by the semi-unpredictable whims of biology is meant to ensure there’s no obvious way for partisans to seize control of the court. But once everyone understands justices are partisan, and figures it’s just another power center to battle over like Congress or the Presidency, lifetime appointments becomes a ludicrous system. It’s like having a legislature in which seats are determined primarily by your faction’s actuarial understanding; if you can predict your people’s deaths far enough in advance, you’ll always have an opportunity to have them step down and replaced with someone younger, and you’ll never lose a seat.
This budgetary process wasn’t functioning *well* before, but it is kind of fundamentally broken by an executive that feels completely unconstrained by Congress’s dictates. If Congress allocated money for something, and the executive doesn’t like it? Doesn’t happen. If Congress didn’t allocate money for something the executive wants to do? It happens anyway. What, then, is the point of the budget anyway?
Then there’s this farce where Republicans are gloating that a shutdown gives Trump some new powers to carry out mass firings. That’s ludicrous as a matter of law. But what do legal protections mean now anyway? He’s been firing people all year that were supposedly entitled to legal protections against this kind of arbitrary dismissal, and court cases have been playing out all year but they’re mostly not getting hired back. Maybe in a few years the court cases will conclude and they’ll get awarded a bunch of back pay, maybe they won’t, but in the meantime there doesn’t appear to be any mechanism preventing Trump from reconstituting the government however he sees fit, regardless of any shutdown.
Anyway. “What should the Democrats do?” IMO the only reason to be talking about the Democrats at all is if we’re hoping that defeating Republicans in some future election is going to end this, or at least if the threat of that will somewhat restrain the worst abuses. With that in mind, I think it makes perfect sense to choose something like the ACA subsidies – a popular, kitchen-table provision that people are already enjoying, and which the Republicans would be eliminating with a “clean” CR. If they succeed, it will mean Republicans are chastened by unpopularity out of a change they wanted to make, which is bullish. If they fail (e.g. if Republicans nuke the filibuster) they can point to the premium increases people will experience and pretty plausibly say “we did everything we could to prevent this, you’d better vote out these Republicans if you don’t like it.” None of that is even pretending to “fix” any of the ongoing catastrophes but I don’t see how any Dem response to the budget shutdown could.
This is all probably a waste of a mental exercise though, they’ll [Democrats] probably just demand Trump promise not to fire more people or something, not even get that promise, and then fold anyway. That's sorta the point. If we actually think and talk about what Democrats should/could/would do it becomes pretty undeniably obvious they are a waste of our time. The things that even their steadfast supporters acknowledge need to be done and what Democrats are willing/capable of doing simply don't overlap. Confronting that contradiction is hard/scary so people are holding out on that with their typical mock and gawk until they can return to just thoughtlessly spamming variations of "vote blue no matter who or you're a MAGAt!" instead. + Show Spoiler +Sure, and I know GreenHorizons feels that way. I guess I was trying to engage with LibHorizons’ challenge (since you often seem frustrated that no one is willing to). Of course, the other reason they might hesitate to engage is because they know LH is a performance, not a true held belief (“bad faith,” someone might say) and they suspect you’ll use any resulting discussion as ammunition for your “stop voting for Democrats” hobby horse. Personally, I think the position you need to be attacking is not “the Democratic Party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them” (which hardly anybody seems to really buy anyway). It’s “there is no path forward and we can only watch the decline, maybe trying to protect our loved ones from the worst of it.” The “mocking and gawking” seems to me like a natural response if that’s your viewpoint. + Show Spoiler +
I mean, the thing about liberals is their politics is not particularly motivated by self-interest. There’s a kind of “noblesse oblige” to the whole faction. They tend to be pretty affluent, pretty white, and most of their moral commitments don’t particularly impact them personally. If you want to be uncharitable, you could accuse them of being motivated by the appeal of smug self-righteousness and the social standing obtainable through right-think. But in the last election they widely took the position “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our way of life, and if we don’t stop him he’ll create a fascist autocracy.” The general response was “fuck you, everybody hates you, go away and never come back.”
It’s not surprising that the response would be to politically disengage and say “well, we tried to tell you, now I guess we’ll all reap the consequences, you imbeciles,” is it? I’m not saying it’s the right response, or that we need to be more considerate of their feelings or something. But I don’t think there’s much to be accomplished by telling them to despair at the Democrats’ prospects right now. They’re in gallows-humor watch-the-world-burn mode because they’re *already* despairing.
I think you make some interesting points that are worth further investigation. I don't mind revisiting LH but I'd also like to gauge where we're really at first.
Poll: I believeYou must be logged in to vote in this poll. ☐ The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them
☐ The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative
☐ The US has no viable path forward, but to try to protect our loved ones from the worst of it
☐ I don't know how to get to a socialist future, but that's what I want
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On October 02 2025 06:32 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 03:10 ChristianS wrote:On October 02 2025 01:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 23:16 ChristianS wrote:On October 01 2025 10:40 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 10:32 LightSpectra wrote:
Looks like we're officially shutting down.
"A shutdown falls on the President's lack of leadership. He can't even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak." -- Donald Trump in 2013 I wonder how long it'll last and if Trump/Republicans will really start mass firings? I also wonder whether people think Democrats should hold out on passing a "clean CR", for how long, and what the minimum they should accept is? I think one reason you get so few takers on “Okay, what should be done?” posts is that a lot of what we’re watching fundamentally undercuts our systems’ premises and foundational assumptions. It’s not clear what rebuilding those foundations would look like, or how we can expect those systems to work adequately under the circumstances. + Show Spoiler +As an example: the reason SCOTUS has lifetime appointments is because it was always supposed to be a nonpartisan, professional “balls and strikes” institution. Technocratic, if you like. For those purposes having seats be determined by the semi-unpredictable whims of biology is meant to ensure there’s no obvious way for partisans to seize control of the court. But once everyone understands justices are partisan, and figures it’s just another power center to battle over like Congress or the Presidency, lifetime appointments becomes a ludicrous system. It’s like having a legislature in which seats are determined primarily by your faction’s actuarial understanding; if you can predict your people’s deaths far enough in advance, you’ll always have an opportunity to have them step down and replaced with someone younger, and you’ll never lose a seat.
This budgetary process wasn’t functioning *well* before, but it is kind of fundamentally broken by an executive that feels completely unconstrained by Congress’s dictates. If Congress allocated money for something, and the executive doesn’t like it? Doesn’t happen. If Congress didn’t allocate money for something the executive wants to do? It happens anyway. What, then, is the point of the budget anyway?
Then there’s this farce where Republicans are gloating that a shutdown gives Trump some new powers to carry out mass firings. That’s ludicrous as a matter of law. But what do legal protections mean now anyway? He’s been firing people all year that were supposedly entitled to legal protections against this kind of arbitrary dismissal, and court cases have been playing out all year but they’re mostly not getting hired back. Maybe in a few years the court cases will conclude and they’ll get awarded a bunch of back pay, maybe they won’t, but in the meantime there doesn’t appear to be any mechanism preventing Trump from reconstituting the government however he sees fit, regardless of any shutdown.
Anyway. “What should the Democrats do?” IMO the only reason to be talking about the Democrats at all is if we’re hoping that defeating Republicans in some future election is going to end this, or at least if the threat of that will somewhat restrain the worst abuses. With that in mind, I think it makes perfect sense to choose something like the ACA subsidies – a popular, kitchen-table provision that people are already enjoying, and which the Republicans would be eliminating with a “clean” CR. If they succeed, it will mean Republicans are chastened by unpopularity out of a change they wanted to make, which is bullish. If they fail (e.g. if Republicans nuke the filibuster) they can point to the premium increases people will experience and pretty plausibly say “we did everything we could to prevent this, you’d better vote out these Republicans if you don’t like it.” None of that is even pretending to “fix” any of the ongoing catastrophes but I don’t see how any Dem response to the budget shutdown could.
This is all probably a waste of a mental exercise though, they’ll [Democrats] probably just demand Trump promise not to fire more people or something, not even get that promise, and then fold anyway. That's sorta the point. If we actually think and talk about what Democrats should/could/would do it becomes pretty undeniably obvious they are a waste of our time. The things that even their steadfast supporters acknowledge need to be done and what Democrats are willing/capable of doing simply don't overlap. Confronting that contradiction is hard/scary so people are holding out on that with their typical mock and gawk until they can return to just thoughtlessly spamming variations of "vote blue no matter who or you're a MAGAt!" instead. + Show Spoiler +Sure, and I know GreenHorizons feels that way. I guess I was trying to engage with LibHorizons’ challenge (since you often seem frustrated that no one is willing to). Of course, the other reason they might hesitate to engage is because they know LH is a performance, not a true held belief (“bad faith,” someone might say) and they suspect you’ll use any resulting discussion as ammunition for your “stop voting for Democrats” hobby horse. Personally, I think the position you need to be attacking is not “the Democratic Party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them” (which hardly anybody seems to really buy anyway). It’s “there is no path forward and we can only watch the decline, maybe trying to protect our loved ones from the worst of it.” The “mocking and gawking” seems to me like a natural response if that’s your viewpoint. + Show Spoiler +
I mean, the thing about liberals is their politics is not particularly motivated by self-interest. There’s a kind of “noblesse oblige” to the whole faction. They tend to be pretty affluent, pretty white, and most of their moral commitments don’t particularly impact them personally. If you want to be uncharitable, you could accuse them of being motivated by the appeal of smug self-righteousness and the social standing obtainable through right-think. But in the last election they widely took the position “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our way of life, and if we don’t stop him he’ll create a fascist autocracy.” The general response was “fuck you, everybody hates you, go away and never come back.”
It’s not surprising that the response would be to politically disengage and say “well, we tried to tell you, now I guess we’ll all reap the consequences, you imbeciles,” is it? I’m not saying it’s the right response, or that we need to be more considerate of their feelings or something. But I don’t think there’s much to be accomplished by telling them to despair at the Democrats’ prospects right now. They’re in gallows-humor watch-the-world-burn mode because they’re *already* despairing.
I think you make some interesting points that are worth further investigation. I don't mind revisiting LH but I'd also like to gauge where we're really at first. Poll: I believeYou must be logged in to vote in this poll. ☐ The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them
☐ The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative
☐ The US has no viable path forward, but to try to protect our loved ones from the worst of it
☐ I don't know how to get to a socialist future, but that's what I want
Is it possible that some of these poll options aren't mutually exclusive? For example, 2 and 4, or 3 and 4?
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On October 02 2025 06:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 06:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 02 2025 03:10 ChristianS wrote:On October 02 2025 01:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 23:16 ChristianS wrote:On October 01 2025 10:40 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 10:32 LightSpectra wrote:
Looks like we're officially shutting down.
"A shutdown falls on the President's lack of leadership. He can't even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak." -- Donald Trump in 2013 I wonder how long it'll last and if Trump/Republicans will really start mass firings? I also wonder whether people think Democrats should hold out on passing a "clean CR", for how long, and what the minimum they should accept is? I think one reason you get so few takers on “Okay, what should be done?” posts is that a lot of what we’re watching fundamentally undercuts our systems’ premises and foundational assumptions. It’s not clear what rebuilding those foundations would look like, or how we can expect those systems to work adequately under the circumstances. + Show Spoiler +As an example: the reason SCOTUS has lifetime appointments is because it was always supposed to be a nonpartisan, professional “balls and strikes” institution. Technocratic, if you like. For those purposes having seats be determined by the semi-unpredictable whims of biology is meant to ensure there’s no obvious way for partisans to seize control of the court. But once everyone understands justices are partisan, and figures it’s just another power center to battle over like Congress or the Presidency, lifetime appointments becomes a ludicrous system. It’s like having a legislature in which seats are determined primarily by your faction’s actuarial understanding; if you can predict your people’s deaths far enough in advance, you’ll always have an opportunity to have them step down and replaced with someone younger, and you’ll never lose a seat.
This budgetary process wasn’t functioning *well* before, but it is kind of fundamentally broken by an executive that feels completely unconstrained by Congress’s dictates. If Congress allocated money for something, and the executive doesn’t like it? Doesn’t happen. If Congress didn’t allocate money for something the executive wants to do? It happens anyway. What, then, is the point of the budget anyway?
Then there’s this farce where Republicans are gloating that a shutdown gives Trump some new powers to carry out mass firings. That’s ludicrous as a matter of law. But what do legal protections mean now anyway? He’s been firing people all year that were supposedly entitled to legal protections against this kind of arbitrary dismissal, and court cases have been playing out all year but they’re mostly not getting hired back. Maybe in a few years the court cases will conclude and they’ll get awarded a bunch of back pay, maybe they won’t, but in the meantime there doesn’t appear to be any mechanism preventing Trump from reconstituting the government however he sees fit, regardless of any shutdown.
Anyway. “What should the Democrats do?” IMO the only reason to be talking about the Democrats at all is if we’re hoping that defeating Republicans in some future election is going to end this, or at least if the threat of that will somewhat restrain the worst abuses. With that in mind, I think it makes perfect sense to choose something like the ACA subsidies – a popular, kitchen-table provision that people are already enjoying, and which the Republicans would be eliminating with a “clean” CR. If they succeed, it will mean Republicans are chastened by unpopularity out of a change they wanted to make, which is bullish. If they fail (e.g. if Republicans nuke the filibuster) they can point to the premium increases people will experience and pretty plausibly say “we did everything we could to prevent this, you’d better vote out these Republicans if you don’t like it.” None of that is even pretending to “fix” any of the ongoing catastrophes but I don’t see how any Dem response to the budget shutdown could.
This is all probably a waste of a mental exercise though, they’ll [Democrats] probably just demand Trump promise not to fire more people or something, not even get that promise, and then fold anyway. That's sorta the point. If we actually think and talk about what Democrats should/could/would do it becomes pretty undeniably obvious they are a waste of our time. The things that even their steadfast supporters acknowledge need to be done and what Democrats are willing/capable of doing simply don't overlap. Confronting that contradiction is hard/scary so people are holding out on that with their typical mock and gawk until they can return to just thoughtlessly spamming variations of "vote blue no matter who or you're a MAGAt!" instead. + Show Spoiler +Sure, and I know GreenHorizons feels that way. I guess I was trying to engage with LibHorizons’ challenge (since you often seem frustrated that no one is willing to). Of course, the other reason they might hesitate to engage is because they know LH is a performance, not a true held belief (“bad faith,” someone might say) and they suspect you’ll use any resulting discussion as ammunition for your “stop voting for Democrats” hobby horse. Personally, I think the position you need to be attacking is not “the Democratic Party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them” (which hardly anybody seems to really buy anyway). It’s “there is no path forward and we can only watch the decline, maybe trying to protect our loved ones from the worst of it.” The “mocking and gawking” seems to me like a natural response if that’s your viewpoint. + Show Spoiler +
I mean, the thing about liberals is their politics is not particularly motivated by self-interest. There’s a kind of “noblesse oblige” to the whole faction. They tend to be pretty affluent, pretty white, and most of their moral commitments don’t particularly impact them personally. If you want to be uncharitable, you could accuse them of being motivated by the appeal of smug self-righteousness and the social standing obtainable through right-think. But in the last election they widely took the position “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our way of life, and if we don’t stop him he’ll create a fascist autocracy.” The general response was “fuck you, everybody hates you, go away and never come back.”
It’s not surprising that the response would be to politically disengage and say “well, we tried to tell you, now I guess we’ll all reap the consequences, you imbeciles,” is it? I’m not saying it’s the right response, or that we need to be more considerate of their feelings or something. But I don’t think there’s much to be accomplished by telling them to despair at the Democrats’ prospects right now. They’re in gallows-humor watch-the-world-burn mode because they’re *already* despairing.
I think you make some interesting points that are worth further investigation. I don't mind revisiting LH but I'd also like to gauge where we're really at first. Poll: I believeYou must be logged in to vote in this poll. ☐ The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them
☐ The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative
☐ The US has no viable path forward, but to try to protect our loved ones from the worst of it
☐ I don't know how to get to a socialist future, but that's what I want
Is it possible that some of these poll options aren't mutually exclusive? For example, 2 and 4, or 3 and 4? It's possible. People are free to elaborate/articulate their own answer. ChristianS particular perspective is that 1 isn't where people here are at, so we can check that. If someone believes 1, 2, or 4 is the best way they would fulfil 3 they can just answer with 1, 2 or 4.
3. is basically just "I dunno, every family for themselves?" (or at least that's how I interpreted ChristianS there).
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Yeah, that’s a fair enough abbreviation. Not to say I think everybody’s there (various stages of denial are probably pretty common) but I think that’s the position a lot of liberals are approaching, if they’re not there already.
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On October 02 2025 05:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 04:05 WombaT wrote:On October 02 2025 02:38 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:No. That's another idiotic Candace Owens rant. Also is there any chance that Jimmy can even vaguely abide by thread rules? For fuck’s sake That's a good point. No summary or explanation of a video =
good points guys. Although. I did I provide a 1 sentence summary of the video, I will expand on that.
Candace Owens believes the Israeli government is involved in the killing of Charlie Kirk. She has been putting forth evidence towards this theory since shortly after this death. The farthest Matt Walsh will go, a guy who toes the DW party line, is that the details of Kirk's death "dont add up".
On October 02 2025 05:25 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
No. That's another idiotic Candace Owens rant.
IMO, the only thing keeping Candace Owens alive is her maudlin delivery. If she were as dead serious and dry as Charlie Kirk when he said he finds the details of October 7th "very hard to believe" while implying the IDF let it happen... she might be as dead as JFK.
She is getting buried right now by the people at the top of DW and the people above them. She is setting fire to her career. I pray she is not murdered.
Candace is awesome. I agree with Candace and the late Mr. Kirk. The details of October 7 are very hard to believe. I posted The Kirk interview in the past. I can post it again if you like.
EDIT: 'getting buried' means behind the scenes many many people are saying very bad things about her. its a colloquialism prolly not common in an international video game board.
So there you have it guys... JJR... Mr. Warren Buffett, Barry Scheck Jerry Seinfeld, Ayn Rand, Alan Greenspan, Andrew Friedman, Andy Kaufman, Nathan Blumenthal, ... is officially anti-Israeli government. It is sad to see the Israeli government in this state... however.. i gotta call it like i see it.
oh and of course... how could i forget Mike Morhaime.
IMO, The Israeli government is evil.
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I am worried the Government shutdown will just be used as further pretext for authoritarian consolidation by Trump. In general I support the tactic by the Democrats-- there at least ten years late to actually playing hard ball -- but it does worry me. Hope it works!
She is getting buried right now by the people at the top of DW and the people above them. She is setting fire to her career. I pray she is not murdered.
Candace is awesome. I agree with Candace and the late Mr. Kirk. The details of October 7 are very hard to believe. I posted The Kirk interview in the past. I can post it again if you like Uhuh. You like Candace' Owens a well known antisemites theory that Jews were conspiring to get their own citizens killed? I know a certain man with a moustache you must be a huge fan of.
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Meanwhile in my city of chicago, 300 federal paramilitary troops stormed an entire complex building, broke into, and detained everyone in the ~40 apartments including women children and citizens to arrest a handful of undocumented immigrants.
Ope they raided a HOMELESS SHELTER too.
Might as well just sharpie over the 4th amendment
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On October 02 2025 02:35 Jankisa wrote:
Fortunately, none that landed successfully.
Any that landed unsuccessfully at all? Any single thing other than the flag? Does Pete Hegseth want to conquer the Hun? Is he in the middle of a world war?
And noted - it's fortunate that his "cosplay" of Patton wasn't more effective, I see that cosplaying Patton successfully would be bad.
On October 02 2025 02:35 Jankisa wrote:
Cheating Pete, who you and your similarly intellectually challenged fellow citizens put in charge of the most powerful military the world has ever seen by voting for a draft dodger serial rapist has none of the charisma of either the actor or the real life character, and it's honestly insulting to the man's legacy that this moron braggart is even trying to channel his energy.
He tried to, but he's just so, so bad at it that it all looks as sad as your weekend plans.
He's ruining Patton's legacy I see. I guess Patton must have a nice, ruinable legacy that it's possible to insult by being bad at channeling his energy. So are we supposed to be frothing at the mouth or happy that he's bad at cosplaying? Basically, make up your mind whether you like Patton or not. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that in general, with the exception of beating up soldiers in hospital, a human imitating Patton, especially our idealized version of him, wouldn't be bad. But also if a man's doing his own thing we need to realize that, and for example if you're walking down the street I don't need to blow a gasket that you've failed a Charlie Chaplin impression.
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On October 02 2025 13:20 oBlade wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 02:35 Jankisa wrote:
Fortunately, none that landed successfully. Any that landed unsuccessfully at all? Any single thing other than the flag? Does Pete Hegseth want to conquer the Hun? Is he in the middle of a world war? And noted - it's fortunate that his "cosplay" of Patton wasn't more effective, I see that cosplaying Patton successfully would be bad. Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 02:35 Jankisa wrote:
Cheating Pete, who you and your similarly intellectually challenged fellow citizens put in charge of the most powerful military the world has ever seen by voting for a draft dodger serial rapist has none of the charisma of either the actor or the real life character, and it's honestly insulting to the man's legacy that this moron braggart is even trying to channel his energy.
He tried to, but he's just so, so bad at it that it all looks as sad as your weekend plans. He's ruining Patton's legacy I see. I guess Patton must have a nice, ruinable legacy that it's possible to insult by being bad at channeling his energy. So are we supposed to be frothing at the mouth or happy that he's bad at cosplaying? Basically, make up your mind whether you like Patton or not. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that in general, with the exception of beating up soldiers in hospital, a human imitating Patton, especially our idealized version of him, wouldn't be bad. But also if a man's doing his own thing we need to realize that, and for example if you're walking down the street I don't need to blow a gasket that you've failed a Charlie Chaplin impression.
You sure know how to focus on the important things in the news/politics/this thread!
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On October 02 2025 05:16 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 04:54 Simberto wrote:On October 02 2025 04:08 WombaT wrote:I think there’s probably a case that at least some of those jailed maybe were a case of wrong place, wrong time, or at least just went there to protest and not storm the Capitol, got caught up in things jr whatever. Hey it happens. The blanket pardoning of people who blatantly went there with ill intent, and committed violence is insane. It’s like a sewage pipe burst and there’s simply too much shit to focus on any particular spot that’s covered in it, but my lord that was egregious That seems to be the strategy. As long as you constantly spam horrifible, horribly stupid, or otherwise unforgivable shit, no one can focus on one thing long enough so it has consequences for you. And apparently it works. I don't know why. People are fucking morons. If you assume malice people suddenly look a bit less stupid. And I think we’re at a stage we probably should. Yeah sure some people are, but hey some of the most morally upstanding people I know are pretty stupid. It’s not stupidity. The person who’ll demand we respect cops in the face of the ‘radical left’, but be OK with people who actually assaulted police officers being pardoned aren’t doing so because they’re stupid. They’re malicious bad actors
Yes, they're malicious. But not from their point of view. They view themselves as righteous.
As I explained previously, evil views itself as good the majority of the time. It follows that supporters of evil view themselves as supporters of good the majority of the time. Overwhelmingly they believe they're doing good, and they use various means of rationalizing their support for Trump's administration.
1) They deny the administration is fascist
2) They deny the administration is racist
3) They deny the administration is anti-LGBT
etc.
When one of those denials is clearly too absurd, they shift their strategy to accusing Democrats of even worse things (things that are either A) made up or B) true but don't justify supporting Trump). This, in their minds, justifies supporting Trump regardless of how horrible he is. In their minds he's not actually so horrible because Democrats are somehow worse. This last line, by the way, is the same reasoning that Democrats also use in reverse.
In a fair and reasonable person's mind this would imply that neither Republicans nor Democrats are worth supporting. But for Trump supporters it means that they're automatically in the right (rather than asking "what if I should assume that neither Republicans nor Democrats are a good choice?"). They automatically support Trump because they agree with his made up elephants and his false accusations. Why aren't they instead taking a neutral stance? Because they feel committed. They've been defending Trump, so they keep defending Trump. It's habitual, and their ego is now at stake. If they back off, they think they "lost" something.
Whereas fair and reasonable people would say "Lets cut my losses. I'll stop supporting either party".
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Multiple official federal agencies now display political messages about the shutdown on their website.
https://www.usda.gov/
They blame some mystical "Radical left Democrats" - that somehow posess the power to shut down the government, when GOP basicly controls all branches of.. the government and is not meeting up with democrats to hold votes on budget.
If the website autodetects me as a german, the website text ommits the "radical left" and shows only "democrats"
Liquification of reality goes on.
I am pretty sad, that the US population at large didn't understand what fascism is, and was made to believe, it's only fascism if you kill people in Gas Chambers and speak german.
Hint: Fascism is when everbody is either in... or an enemy. Everybody who even as much as argues in good faith for a counter argument: Enemy.
Weak people love fascism because in turn for blind obedience.. they get into positions of power. No merrit, no discipline, no skills, no talent or charisma needed .. only shiny boots that kick hard.
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explain and scream into voter's ears: what's the BBB and the impact on their health care costs.
chances of "Radical Left Democrat" policies getting popular is pretty damn high. I feel like Republicans are way too full of themselves that they are now in an indefensible position.
conversely - Dems failing to profit from that might put the final nail into the "current leadership" coffin. maybe not the worst thing as the midterms are still about a year away.
let's see.
also this was kinda interesting and shows how far the political landscape has shifted, not that we would need more examples but still.
‘Full-throated assault on the First Amendment’: Judge rips into Trump over attempts to deport pro-Palestinian academics @CNN
Trump’s conduct, the judge wrote, violated the sacred oath of a president to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States” and the actions of his administration represented a “full-throated assault on the First Amendment.”
Young cited President Ronald Reagan, who nominated him to the federal bench in Massachusetts in 1985, as saying that “freedom is a fragile thing” and must be fought for “constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.”
That warning, Young said, has been ignored.
“I fear (Trump) has drawn from it a darker, more cynical message” from Reagan, the judge wrote. “I fear President Trump believes the American people are so divided that today they will not stand up, fight for, and defend our most precious constitutional values so long as they are lulled into thinking their own personal interests are not affected.”
...
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and their subordinates, Young wrote, “acted in concert to misuse the sweeping powers of their respective offices to target noncitizen pro-Palestinians for deportation primarily on account of their First Amendment protected political speech.”
“They did so in order to strike fear into similarly situated non-citizen pro-Palestinian individuals, pro-actively (and effectively) curbing lawful pro-Palestinian speech and intentionally denying such individuals (including the plaintiffs here) the freedom of speech that is their right,” Young wrote.
Young, highlighting the significance of the case, wrote that it is “perhaps the most important ever to fall within the jurisdiction of this district court” and “squarely presents the issue whether non-citizens lawfully present here in United States actually have the same free speech rights as the rest of us.”
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The problem is, that the fascist government of the USA is breaking the law faster than court decisions can repair the damage.
The media is sanewashing the president's utterings by reducing "You will soon need to fight an invasion from within, and if you are not ready to, you should resign - to military top brass"
into:
"Trump speaks to top generals about new agenda"
I don't say all media is complicit, but they are storytellers who have to work with some cornerstones of common reality, and those are long gone. The government of the USA is no longer sincere or respectable. The office does not command any respect at all.
I'd never thought to say that: But holy shit GOP, bring back GW. He was a blatant idiot, but he at least fought for oil and money and influence.
Trump only fights to stay out of jail.
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On October 02 2025 16:29 KT_Elwood wrote:Multiple official federal agencies now display political messages about the shutdown on their website. https://www.usda.gov/They blame some mystical "Radical left Democrats" - that somehow posess the power to shut down the government, when GOP basicly controls all branches of.. the government and is not meeting up with democrats to hold votes on budget. If the website autodetects me as a german, the website text ommits the "radical left" and shows only "democrats" Liquification of reality goes on. I am pretty sad, that the US population at large didn't understand what fascism is, and was made to believe, it's only fascism if you kill people in Gas Chambers and speak german. Hint: Fascism is when everbody is either in... or an enemy. Everybody who even as much as argues in good faith for a counter argument: Enemy. Weak people love fascism because in turn for blind obedience.. they get into positions of power. No merrit, no discipline, no skills, no talent or charisma needed .. only shiny boots that kick hard.
That usda site is fucking shameful.
Its unbelievable that these people have no pride or professionalism.
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On October 02 2025 16:25 Magic Powers wrote:
1) They deny the administration is fascist
2) They deny the administration is racist
3) They deny the administration is anti-LGBT
etc.
When one of those denials is clearly too absurd, they shift their strategy to accusing Democrats of even worse things
This is the most frustrating thing. They are unable to be argued with.
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It just shows you don't understand human on a fundamental level.
You feeling certain ways about your convictions and being reasonable about them and being able to self reflect does not mean other humans are able to.
There are these mechanisms in play that make this very logical and extremely difficult to dismantle. It's like those suicide cults. You'll never find anyone close to be reasoned with and then they kill themselves and you're just left scratching your head part in confusion, part in disbelief.
In group cohesion is very strong for these people. So much so it trumps reason.
Edit: for clarity, you need to, quite literally, speak a different language with the same words to these people because they look at reality from a different angle. It's like you both point at the same thing and you say A, while the other says B. We're now at a point where they're veering into more basic commonly held agreements in English and disagree there.
The fundamental axiom of the conservative is disagreement, while this is the opposite of a progressive. I want to disclaim that I don't necessarily view disagreeableness as negative per se, it just needs to be dosed in correct dosages.
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On October 02 2025 07:01 GreenHorizons wrote:Show nested quote +On October 02 2025 06:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On October 02 2025 06:32 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 02 2025 03:10 ChristianS wrote:On October 02 2025 01:10 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 23:16 ChristianS wrote:On October 01 2025 10:40 GreenHorizons wrote:On October 01 2025 10:32 LightSpectra wrote:
Looks like we're officially shutting down.
"A shutdown falls on the President's lack of leadership. He can't even control his own party and get people together in a room. A shutdown means the president is weak." -- Donald Trump in 2013 I wonder how long it'll last and if Trump/Republicans will really start mass firings? I also wonder whether people think Democrats should hold out on passing a "clean CR", for how long, and what the minimum they should accept is? I think one reason you get so few takers on “Okay, what should be done?” posts is that a lot of what we’re watching fundamentally undercuts our systems’ premises and foundational assumptions. It’s not clear what rebuilding those foundations would look like, or how we can expect those systems to work adequately under the circumstances. + Show Spoiler +As an example: the reason SCOTUS has lifetime appointments is because it was always supposed to be a nonpartisan, professional “balls and strikes” institution. Technocratic, if you like. For those purposes having seats be determined by the semi-unpredictable whims of biology is meant to ensure there’s no obvious way for partisans to seize control of the court. But once everyone understands justices are partisan, and figures it’s just another power center to battle over like Congress or the Presidency, lifetime appointments becomes a ludicrous system. It’s like having a legislature in which seats are determined primarily by your faction’s actuarial understanding; if you can predict your people’s deaths far enough in advance, you’ll always have an opportunity to have them step down and replaced with someone younger, and you’ll never lose a seat.
This budgetary process wasn’t functioning *well* before, but it is kind of fundamentally broken by an executive that feels completely unconstrained by Congress’s dictates. If Congress allocated money for something, and the executive doesn’t like it? Doesn’t happen. If Congress didn’t allocate money for something the executive wants to do? It happens anyway. What, then, is the point of the budget anyway?
Then there’s this farce where Republicans are gloating that a shutdown gives Trump some new powers to carry out mass firings. That’s ludicrous as a matter of law. But what do legal protections mean now anyway? He’s been firing people all year that were supposedly entitled to legal protections against this kind of arbitrary dismissal, and court cases have been playing out all year but they’re mostly not getting hired back. Maybe in a few years the court cases will conclude and they’ll get awarded a bunch of back pay, maybe they won’t, but in the meantime there doesn’t appear to be any mechanism preventing Trump from reconstituting the government however he sees fit, regardless of any shutdown.
Anyway. “What should the Democrats do?” IMO the only reason to be talking about the Democrats at all is if we’re hoping that defeating Republicans in some future election is going to end this, or at least if the threat of that will somewhat restrain the worst abuses. With that in mind, I think it makes perfect sense to choose something like the ACA subsidies – a popular, kitchen-table provision that people are already enjoying, and which the Republicans would be eliminating with a “clean” CR. If they succeed, it will mean Republicans are chastened by unpopularity out of a change they wanted to make, which is bullish. If they fail (e.g. if Republicans nuke the filibuster) they can point to the premium increases people will experience and pretty plausibly say “we did everything we could to prevent this, you’d better vote out these Republicans if you don’t like it.” None of that is even pretending to “fix” any of the ongoing catastrophes but I don’t see how any Dem response to the budget shutdown could.
This is all probably a waste of a mental exercise though, they’ll [Democrats] probably just demand Trump promise not to fire more people or something, not even get that promise, and then fold anyway. That's sorta the point. If we actually think and talk about what Democrats should/could/would do it becomes pretty undeniably obvious they are a waste of our time. The things that even their steadfast supporters acknowledge need to be done and what Democrats are willing/capable of doing simply don't overlap. Confronting that contradiction is hard/scary so people are holding out on that with their typical mock and gawk until they can return to just thoughtlessly spamming variations of "vote blue no matter who or you're a MAGAt!" instead. + Show Spoiler +Sure, and I know GreenHorizons feels that way. I guess I was trying to engage with LibHorizons’ challenge (since you often seem frustrated that no one is willing to). Of course, the other reason they might hesitate to engage is because they know LH is a performance, not a true held belief (“bad faith,” someone might say) and they suspect you’ll use any resulting discussion as ammunition for your “stop voting for Democrats” hobby horse. Personally, I think the position you need to be attacking is not “the Democratic Party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them” (which hardly anybody seems to really buy anyway). It’s “there is no path forward and we can only watch the decline, maybe trying to protect our loved ones from the worst of it.” The “mocking and gawking” seems to me like a natural response if that’s your viewpoint. + Show Spoiler +
I mean, the thing about liberals is their politics is not particularly motivated by self-interest. There’s a kind of “noblesse oblige” to the whole faction. They tend to be pretty affluent, pretty white, and most of their moral commitments don’t particularly impact them personally. If you want to be uncharitable, you could accuse them of being motivated by the appeal of smug self-righteousness and the social standing obtainable through right-think. But in the last election they widely took the position “Donald Trump is an existential threat to our way of life, and if we don’t stop him he’ll create a fascist autocracy.” The general response was “fuck you, everybody hates you, go away and never come back.”
It’s not surprising that the response would be to politically disengage and say “well, we tried to tell you, now I guess we’ll all reap the consequences, you imbeciles,” is it? I’m not saying it’s the right response, or that we need to be more considerate of their feelings or something. But I don’t think there’s much to be accomplished by telling them to despair at the Democrats’ prospects right now. They’re in gallows-humor watch-the-world-burn mode because they’re *already* despairing.
I think you make some interesting points that are worth further investigation. I don't mind revisiting LH but I'd also like to gauge where we're really at first. Poll: I believeYou must be logged in to vote in this poll. ☐ The Democratic party has a viable path forward and we just need to support them
☐ The Democratic party has has no viable path forward so we need an alternative
☐ The US has no viable path forward, but to try to protect our loved ones from the worst of it
☐ I don't know how to get to a socialist future, but that's what I want
Is it possible that some of these poll options aren't mutually exclusive? For example, 2 and 4, or 3 and 4? It's possible. People are free to elaborate/articulate their own answer. ChristianS particular perspective is that 1 isn't where people here are at, so we can check that. If someone believes 1, 2, or 4 is the best way they would fulfil 3 they can just answer with 1, 2 or 4. 3. is basically just "I dunno, every family for themselves?" (or at least that's how I interpreted ChristianS there).
It's rare for a poll be split almost perfectly across all 4 options. From a purely statistical standpoint, I think this is pretty neat, even if the sample size is currently just 14. No wonder there's so much agreement that the Republicans are terrible, yet far less agreement on how to actually move forwards and try to fix things in our country.
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EPT
