It’s even worse.

There’s no advantage here. He said this to have a fleeting moment of feeling special because he knew something private and had the power to reveal it.

That’s it. That’s all he got out of this, for a second he got to feel like a big man, and that was enough to smile and tell everyone someone else private medical information.

See how important I am, I know something not everyone else knows. Sure it’s terrible news for that guy, but I’m not that guy so why would I give a fuck. He said he would stay and lick my boots up until his death, so I guess the only real tragedy is at some point he will die and I’ll need to find a new person to lick my boots.

That’s what’s flowing through trumps rotten brain

My spouse identifies as non-binary and I try my best to use their preferred pronouns. That’s a more recent development and I’m used to calling them by feminine pronouns.

The first “she” is an old habit, my mistake.

This is very stupid.

My spouse was diagnosed later in life with a severe gluten intolerance. She went from enjoying beer and soft pretzels to being told “never again if you don’t want to shit yourself in public”

We have a simple rule. Bog standard gluten stuff is fine for me to have, sandwich bread, cereal, etc.

They told me that it was just very upsetting if I was enjoying some delicious gluten treat that they could no longer have.

I love my spouse, so I don’t eat delicious gluten treats in front of them because it would make them upset. Instead I figured out how to make lots of gluten free treats we can both enjoy together. Sometimes I miss the ease of getting a Popeyes chicken sandwich (I still can as long as I don’t eat it right in front of them) but I’ve learned to make gluten free fried chicken we can both enjoy.

Maybe other people would think this is silly, but the person I love is worth it to me.

Capitalism.

Now there are all kinds of things people think of when you say capitalism, the free market, democracy (for some reason), etc.

But I mean the idea that the guy that owns the means of production should get the value produced by labor.

If you boil it down to that, it’s kinda crazy. You want to start a company digging holes, but you don’t have enough money to buy a backhoe.

Fred has plenty of money and can afford a backhoe. He buys it and makes you a deal, you can use his backhoe and he will own the company, you go out and dig holes and he will pay you a couple bucks an hour.

Obviously he has to charge the people that want the holes dug more than he’s paying you to make it worth his while, and he has to recoup the money he spent on the backhoe in the first place.

Fred will never pay you enough to live and save up to buy your own backhoe. After a while he’s made back all the money it cost him to purchase the backhoe.

So now the situation is this. A customer wants a hole dug, you come and dig the hole, and Fred, who has done nothing and already recouped all the money he spent to purchase the backhoe, gets most of the money. And that arrangement just goes on forever. When Fred dies, Fred Jr will inherit that backhoe, Fred Jr will have never spent a dime for that capital, in fact Fred Jr will have had a very comfortable life paid for by the sweat of your labor digging holes.

Fred Jr will get most of the value of your labor for his whole life for doing nothing at all, just because he happened to be Fred’s son.

This is the way we decide who gets the rewards of all the work humanity collectively does (under capitalist systems) and it’s resulted in a hundred or so people so insanely wealthy we can’t even conceptualize how much money they have and everyone else scraping by.

And very serious people (often paid by those billionaires) will be on the news (or replying to this very comment) telling you how this is just the only system that makes sense. But listen closely when they do, they will always say it’s good because of free markets, or competition, or democracy or something that is NOT capitalism. Capitalism rarely defends itself by talking about why it’s good for the rich guy that owns the capital to get all the value, it always misdirects you to something else, a free market or freedom just generally. The freedom to pick between 10 different ultra wealthy companies that own everything and work to make them even more wealthy for your entire life.

7th Guest

That’s the classic in case you just wanted to know the most important piece of information they kept out of the headline to get you to click.

Oh good the long term damage to oil production, storage, and shipping is solved!

The US uses 20M barrels of oil per day this is less than 9 days worth of supplies.

This is burning down all your crops and going “don’t worry though I picked up a box of protein bars so we are good food wise”

Wakes up and says he’s going to hit Iran 20 times harder today.

Finds out about mines and says… he’s going to hit Iran super duper hard.

You might want to save some room throughout the day for escalation you fucking moron.

I remember the day so clearly when Bernie had won a few of the early primaries, Biden was coming in 4th and seemed like he would wash out.

A colleague told me something big had happened, it was the day all the other centrist candidates pulled out right before Super Tuesday and threw their support behind Biden. It worked he ended up winning a bunch of primaries in a bunch of states that would later go on to vote for trump in the general election, but that was enough for the media to crown him the winner.

I was in California at the time, working phone banks for Bernie, and there was tons of excitement for him. That day was a gut punch, I remember thinking “we haven’t stopped our slip into fascism just pressed pause”

Ive never wanted to be wrong more in my life. Now I look around and think about the 4 years where we could have zealously prosecuted MAGA for the crimes they committed right out in the open (every time I bring this up people go, “oh you want them to punish their enemies and ignore the law.” No I want them to enforce the laws which would have the side effect of actual consequences for MAGA)x

Instead, and unthinkably after a terrible pandemic response and literal attempt to overthrow democracy, the bland 4 years did nothing to prevent another trump term.

• Biden didn’t deliver punishment for MAGA to hold them accountable
• Biden didn’t change the conditions of American life enough to make the siren song of the fascists unpalatable

This isn’t to say he didn’t do anything good, but look where we are. The actions failed to meet the moment and now we are asking ourselves “will an armed paramilitary force prevent people from voting?”

Love Biden or hate him, this is where we are.

Don’t worry, just like with the war powers acts, if the Dems find out that there is a concrete plan to steal the elections you can rest assured that 4 Dems from safe districts will join up with the republicans to vote down any attempt to stop it.

https://time.com/7382846/democrats-who-voted-against-war-powers-resolution-iran-conflict-trump/

212-219 because 4 Dems crossed over, if they had held to the “party line” that’s a 216-215 vote.

The best thing for the Democratic Party is for everyone to blame those 4 politicians. It happens every time though, different politicians, always just enough.

There’s only two ways to interpret whats going on. The first is the one the party wants you to believe, they are just too weak to keep their members from voting against the party. They like this because they can reframe that weakness as a strength, you see they are such a big coalition and put such a priority on independent decision making that it’s a good thing that just enough Dems defect every time to keep the party from achieving any goals. What can they do? Aw shucks, guess whatever horrible thing we just failed to stop is going to happen.

The second way, which I think is closer to the truth, is that they are bought. For each issue there’s some deep pocketed interest going “alright pick a few people from safe seats, just enough to pass / vote down this thing.”

Otherwise it’s just terrifically bad luck right? Every consequential vote has a different set of just the right number of defectors to not do anything.

All the while the emails and texts go out pleading dor just a little bit more money. Sure we couldn’t get the bill you wanted passed, but if you give us some more money for our fight fund, boy you won’t believe how much we will not fight next time.

As a lifelong democrat that donated thousands of dollars to them over the years, I’ll still vote for them because our voting system means there’s no good alternative, but I’m no longer believing they are anything but controlled opposition. They make noises, they go on tv and say “oh this is bad,” but when it comes to actually doing anything about it they are always just a little short. They need just a few more seats, just a couple more donations. Ok we’ve got a 58 seat majority in the senate, but you know, it’s really time to compromise and make sure the republicans get what they want.

It’s such a shame that all of human knowledge isnt readily available to this person. Oh it is, on the very device he’s using to post this, how embarrassing

I think there is a very good chance that if Iran just said

“Hey we unconditionally surrender”

Trump would declare victory and fuck off.

Israel though would just keep bombing them.

Stupidest timeline problems demand stupidest timeline solutions. The 200 IQ play would be for Iran to say they unconditionally surrender and that Iran is no more, do a corporate rebrand and start calling themselves trumpistan, put that big ugly orange fuck on their flag.

Checkmate trump, whats he going to do, call the trump country with the trump flag bad? He’s a fucking moron, he’d have a 2 hour long phone call with Fox News about how great trumpistan is now, how it might be even hotter than America, how finally someone was smart enough to slap his stupid fucking name on a country.

Hell play your cards right Iran and he’d probably give you some nukes to use against Israel, just send someone to give him a big gold trinket and tell him what a cool dude he is and swear that Israel totally called him a bitch behind his back.

We are living in the dumbest fucking time

He can tell Americans they are in a new golden age all he wants, his hyper focus on it belies his anxiety.

People will swallow a lot of lies. Immigrants caused you to be poor, trans people pose some existential threat to you, if it were for woke DEI youd be better off.

These lies work because there’s no real way for the listener to validate it, you are giving them some reason why their lousy lot isn’t their fault.

The lie that doesn’t work is “you have it good” because that person you’re lying to knows whether or not they have it good. They are paying the bills and if you tell them “actually the bills are cheap” even the most believing believer will have to compartmentalize that. They will either have to sit with the lie and accept it or contort themselves into a less blatant lie like “things could be worse”

Trump is at the bar chatting up the down on her luck, past her prime, divorcee, telling her how now that she’s met him she’s hot again, everyone is saying how hot she is, everyone is saying how rich she is, everyone is saying how much she’s winning. But when she looks in the mirror, or in the bank account, she has to believe him more than her own eyes.

That’s a tough sell, he has a cult so it might work, but it’s a real tough sell.

Yep, she isn’t concerned that there are concentration camps just that she might have to see them.

I await the follow up interview with Ms Bradley where her new fiancé has been swept up in an ICE raid but she is heartbroken because he was one of the good ones, sure she voted for this, but never thought it would hurt her.

I’m sick of reading articles about people being upset that their plan to hurt others might have some minor downside for them.

Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of ICE

Six in 10 Americans disapprove of the job ICE is doing, while about 3 in 10 approve. Opinions about the agency and its actions are sharply divided along political lines, with 91% of Democrats and 66% of independents registering their disapproval. Republicans, however, remain supportive, with 73% approving of the agency’s work.

This could be a fucking victory lap. The democrats have shut down this rogue agency and will keep it shut down as long as it puts innocent Americans at risk.

But no, democratic leadership instead is so sad about how they wish they could get ICE back to doing the very necessary work they need to be doing. If only the republicans would stop blocking some token reform like body cams (that will have a phased rollout over the next 10 years, agents of course will be able to disable them at their discretion, and the footage will have to undergo an internal review and redaction before release) then we could finally give the voters what they want, a fully funded ICE back on the streets.

This party is fucking useless

In this case I think it’s distraction.

It’s amazing how easy it was to subvert all checks and balances and criticisms by just always having a few more awful things ready to go.

Video showing your paramilitary murdering citizens, boom release some Epstein files

Credible evidence that you are a pedophile, boom racist meme

People upset about racism, boom attack trans kids or something.

As long as there are a couple outrage plates spinning he can always just wander over to another one if people start getting too upset.

This is true and has led to my new system for evaluating economic systems, what does it do with antisocial people.

Capitalism is interesting in that it actually has a plan for them. Let them be greedy little fucks and the system works for a while. Then they fuck everything up and the system collapses, either in a minor correction every couple of years or into fascism.

I would love for something like socialism or communism to work, but there’s this 1% that would pick the trees clean to better their own lot.

I don’t have any answer, but I have come to the conclusion that every economic and social system should only be considered viable if there’s a reasonable and compelling solution for what to do with the guy that wants to pick the fruit tree clean.

I remember after getting pepper sprayed in DC at a protest against W’s Iraq war being told, “we need more and better democrats, vote for better ones in the primary and then whoever wins the primary in the general”

I’ve been doing that for over 2 decades now. Nothing has gotten better, everything has gotten worse, the party is effectively openly corrupt and openly controlled opposition.

I remember the gut punch in the lead up to 2020 when Bernie Sanders was winning primaries and the entire party decided to coalesce around Biden, all the other centrist candidates dropped out and threw their support behind him so he could win a bunch of primaries in states that would go on to vote Republican in the general election. But it was enough, the party was able to knee cap a better candidate and get Biden in office.

I remember thinking then that we had not pulled the country back from the edge of disaster, we had merely pressed pause. That a Biden administration wouldn’t do the things necessary to prevent another trump. Four years later I get to watch as a lawless paramilitary kills people in an American city that’s effectively under siege by the federal government while king trump is somehow back in the White House.

I’ll probably still vote for the Dems in the elections because it’s the best tactical move, but I’ve found it’s a terrible strategic move. The party is a failure, it is completely captured and currently aligned with fascism. They are sending me pleas to donate to their fight fund while their members cross the aisle to vote to give the ICE more money, more power, more funding.

The Democratic Party will not save us, they show us again and again they have no interest in that.

My spouse has this exact same thing, the thing that worked for them is OCD therapy.

OCD therapy is a combination of cognitive behavioral therapy, exposure therapy, and occupational therapy (which despite the name is more just about strategies to use for practical things like going to the store, out to a cafe, etc)

It hasn’t been easy but they’ve been keeping at it and it’s really helped them in a way nothing else has.

There are very few problems so large that they can’t be solved, but that doesn’t mean the solutions aren’t big and scary themselves. It’s easy to say “go get therapy” but I know that the reality of doing so is difficult. I’ve seen it now first hand how hard it is, but it’s worth it.

The phone call to discuss whether or not they can help is free, NOCD

Take care of yourself, you deserve it.

This is why people get confused, because they think authoritarianism is some strong man saying “you can’t do this, you can’t do that”

There’s a quote about how authoritarianism isnt someone saying “you can’t” but instead it’s someone saying “you may”

• You may ignore this law
• You may jail these people
• You may disregard due process

That’s the real danger, when rights and law are replaced with the whims and favor of a despot.

Not completely useless it allowed the republicans to have a talking point that the democrats were obstructing for no reason.