I really needed Maxwell Frost today, perhaps you do, too?
Rising star Democrat @maxwellfrost.bsky.social just outlined the two things we need to do to stop authoritarianism. Watch:
— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards.bsky.social) April 7, 2025 at 8:51 PM
.
Elon was finally right about something!
— Maxwell Frost (@maxwellfrost.bsky.social) April 6, 2025 at 11:18 AM
.
Rep. Maxwell Frost: If we are quiet, if elected officials are quiet, then we are complicit. We cannot be complicit in the tearing apart of Medicaid, of Social Security, of food stamps and nutritional assistance, of the things that we fought for and earned! #HandsOff @frost.house.gov
— Social Security Works (@socialsecurityworks.org) April 5, 2025 at 4:50 PM
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Rep. Maxwell Frost: “They test the bounds. They push the limits. They break the law. And then they look at the public, to see if they’re quiet or if they’re loud.” 🗣️
— NextGen America (@nextgenamerica.bsky.social) April 5, 2025 at 12:28 PM
Youth. Energy. Passion. Hope.
Open thread.
WaterGirl
I also recommend clicking on today’s sidebar photo and stopping to take a deep breath while you look at it.
WaterGirl
The last video clip is really great.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
That’s the attitude.
A Ghost to Most
I very rarely feel like the fable- impaired.
Redshift
I was there when he spoke at Hands Off! in DC, and I can confirm he was one of the best!
zhena gogolia
@WaterGirl: Very nice.
Raoul Paste
More like this, please. I was just sick yesterday when I saw that the US Marshalls had deputized Musk’s wrecking crew
Dorothy A. Winsor
I went to see Penguin Lessons this afternoon. It’s set in Argentina in 1976 when people are being disappeared off the streets. The Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo demonstrated, demanding to know where their missing were
cain
This is exactly the kind of thing we need. Bring legislators like these to the front. Let the legislator nerds hang in the back and do their thing. This is not their time in this moment.
chemiclord
The big problem is that the public is never loud enough, fast enough.
Which is why we need BOTH the people screaming to fight, AND the people who believe “Never interrupt your opponent when they are making a mistake.”
That is a very thin needle to thread.
Jay
Looking forward to the yuuuge
North KoreanDJTdiot’s military parade on June 14th.Eric S.
@Raoul Paste: oh, FSM, what happened? Clearly I missed this news on the shit news avalanche that is every day.
Baud
@Eric S.:
Happened last month.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/20/politics/elon-musk-private-security-deputized-marshals-service/index.html
frosty
Damn, he’s good! He gets it!
(and I bet he’s been called Frosty all his life too)
Jay
@Eric S.:
It’s not new. DOGEShit has not been deputy dogged by the US Marshalls. Some of Edolf’s now 100 Personal Security Team members were, several weeks ago, “Deputy Dogged”* by the US Marshall’s Service so that they could carry guns in places where only the US Marshalls, the Secret Service and Capital Police can.
Apparently anti-Edolf assassins now lurk in the halls of the Federal Government Buildings, all Ninja like.
*do not look it up on PornHub.
Ohio Mom
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Your comment inspired me to google to refresh my memory about how Argentina threw off the junta, which was in power from 1976-1983.
Apparently it took a cratering economy, losing the war with England to seize the Falkland Islands, and then “the military leaders, with some convincing from the U.S. and others, stepped down; the general election on October 30, 1983 — and the surprising defeat of the Peronist party — marked the return of constitutional rule. Over 85% of eligible voters participated.”*
I don’t know how much of that is applicable to us — who is going to play the part of the U.S. and (unspecified) others?
*from https://adst.org/2014/10/argentinas-dirty-war-and-the-transition-to-democracy/
Harrison Wesley
@Jay: Is that kid he drags around with him also strapped?
Jay
@Ohio Mom:
In about 2 generations, your former allies and major trading partners might play that role.
Jay
@Harrison Wesley:
Nope, his Birth Certificate says his name is 66 111 100 121 32 65 114 109 111 114 13 10, which is ASCII for “Body Armor”.
different-church-lady
I just had a thought so simple I feel stupid for not figuring it out until now.
Trump only won about half the electorate. In a binary system, that means we’re out of power. But it doesn’t mean that half can’t be LOUD about how fucked up it is.
different-church-lady
@Ohio Mom:
Gosh, I’m so looking forward to the next four years…
Jay
@different-church-lady:
DJTdiot “won” roughly 33% of eligible voters Madame VP won roughly 32% of the eligible voters, roughly 35% of the eligible voters, did not vote.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
Our big problem hasn’t been lack of numbers per se, but our lack of unity and coherence.
Jay
@different-church-lady:
In a “best case”, 1 year, 9 months.
YY_Sima Qian
@different-church-lady: Cratering economy, MAGA has that covered.
Losing a war, the only scenario I can imagine is a losing effort defending Taiwan from a PRC invasion, one MAGA probably helped to precipitate by crossing Beijing’s long standing red lines. Caveats: I think the odds are now better than even that Trump simply abandons Taiwan even if his own recklessness helped to precipitate the PRC invasion; the U.S. remains the world’s preeminent military power, though the military balance across the Taiwan Strait had become unfavorable a decade ago & now the same in the Westerner Pacific & trending even more unfavorable in both, but Trumpian misrule in terms of “anti-Woke” purged, rampant corruption, & possibly getting sucked in to interminable & fruitless wars in the Middle East, will undermine what edge the US military still enjoys. There is that faint echo of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution again.
Baud
@different-church-lady:
@Ohio Mom:
Still better than voting for a chick.
Black Onion
@WaterGirl: I need this post daily, often more than once. I wish all of this didn’t hit so hard. I wish I felt like I could swim in this daily river of rapids life has become.
Jay
@Baud:
As the Billionaire’s Boy’s Club is in the FO stage, their common plaint is that “we didn’t think DJTdiot 2.0 would be worse than DJTdiot 1.0.”
So much for money = smarts.
The MSM’s continued sane washing of Sundowning Grampa is still having a yuuge impact.
Yes, some Dem’s were not on message, eg.Fetterman.
I take refuge in the r/Leopards Eating Faces threads.
Baud
@Jay:
Yeah, I’m pretty detached, even though my life has been personally affected by the election. We go where society take us.
Geminid
@Ohio Mom: When the Greek military junta fell in 1974, it was in the aftermath of Turkiye seizing northern Cyprus. Those events do not exactly track the Falklands War but the result was similar; a military junta falling after a military setback at an island the junta hoped to claim.
Cyprus has been a sore point for Greeks ever since 1974, but the divided island is now one of the most peaceful “conflict zones” in the region or elsewhere.
MagdaInBlack
@Baud: I’m much more detached than I was this morning. Thank you again, voice ‘o’ reason.
Baud
@MagdaInBlack:
Happy to be of service.
Glory b
@Jay: Know who would have been on message?
Conor Lamb.
A shame that so many people seem to have voted in the primary based on who wore a Hoodia & shorts and who wore a suit.
But Lamb had an impeccable voting record in Congress.
Soapdish
@Jay: Is there any reason to believe that if the 35% voted they wouldn’t break down along the existing 33%/32% results?
Scout211
I’d vote for a baby chick. They are so cute! Also too, I’d vote for The (formerly Dixie) Chicks any day.
But really Baud, the 1940s called and wants that word back. ;-)
lowtechcyclist
@Redshift:
I’m sure I was there, but I and my companion were too far back to hear the speakers very well. Lots of “blessed are the cheesemakers” moments, when we could even hear them that well.
We were between the Washington Monument and the stage, but about twice as far from the stage as from the Monument. The sound system could’ve used some help.
Baud
@Geminid:
I wish we had a military junta because
(1) It would be more sane than what we do have, and
(2) Junta is a cool word and it would be great to be able to use it more often.
Jay
@Soapdish:
There is some evidence based on past votes, that the breakdown had all shown up, amongst the people who didn’t vote, that 67% would have voted Harris, 33% DJTdiot, but I have not seen detailed info on how that would have effected the Electoral College.
In the US, it’s not a popular vote that decides things, it’s where you won.
PatD
Two things Dem politicians and leaders should be firm and loud about.
1) El Salvador is a small country. Our memories are long and they should consider that future sanctions and consequences are coming for their facilitating rendition of Americans or those who reside here.
2) Trump will pardon many of his administration’s criminals. But the vast majority of those who engage in every day misconduct and abuses will not get pardons. They, for example, ICE and Border Patrol officers, will face consequences.
They should do this to influence what’s happening now.
zhena gogolia
@Baud: I do like the “Hands Off” framing, because people can make it mean whatever they’re most concerned about. It’s a good unifier.
Jay
@Baud:
You can’t have a Junta.
It’s a Spanish and Portuguese word from the feminine juncta, a root of jungere, so it’s DEIA and thus banned.
You will have to settle for Military Dictatorship.
Jay
@PatD:
El Salvador also has a long memory.
YY_Sima Qian
@zhena gogolia: It’s the “Don’t Tread on Me!” w/o the reactionary connotations.
Baud
@YY_Sima Qian:
Good point.
PatD
@Jay: We have nothing to fear from El Salvador. They should at least be made aware that taking US citizens and residents and subjecting them to extrajudicial punishment will have real consequences.
Ohio Mom
@Jay: I’ll be dead by then. I mean, I’m happy for everyone who will experience the liberating of the U.S., but two generations too long for me.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Phys.org:
The economic system we have in the US is not something that arose from the immutable laws of physics. We have the system we do because of the way we constructed and enforced the rules. And we can change those rules to make things better.
Worth a click.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Martin
@Jay: Yeah, this is that data that I was seeing prior to the election telling me that the problem wasn’t drawing contrasts to Trump, but addressing why they weren’t voting.
The same polls will show that an overwhelming number of voters from both parties feel that government isn’t meeting their needs, with the implication that voting won’t change that. That’s what Democrats needed to address, and they didn’t do that. This was a very status-quo platform, which polling shows isn’t what voters want.
I don’t know if Democrats can find a positive message in 2026. They’ll definitely hold a referendum on Trump, but it needs to be more than that. They need to do more than just say how they’ll put things back the way they were, but talk about how they’ll put them back better now that there’s more room to do that.
Harrison Wesley
@PatD: Don’t you think they’re kinda being put on the spot? The current US government is the one squeezing them to incarcerate people. Tell Trump to take a flying fuck at moving roller coaster and hope the next administration (if such comes to pass) will look kindly on this? What happens in the meantime?
Ohio Mom
@Jay: There were a few fractions of a percentage point voting for either the Green or Libertarian parties; add those votes to Harris’s total, and Trump didn’t even win half of the votes cast.
Jay
@PatD:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvadoran_Civil_War
The United Nations (UN) reports that the war killed more than 75,000 people between 1979 and 1992, along with approximately 8,000 disappeared persons. Human rights violations, particularly the kidnapping, torture, and murder of suspected FMLN sympathizers by state security forces and paramilitary death squads – were pervasive.[31][32][33]
Guess who’s side the US was on and trained the Death Squads, c’mon, guess.
https://www.cia.gov/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP90-00552R000404170002-5.pdf
Guess where.
Yup, School of the America’s, Fort Benning, Georgia.
WaterGirl
@Martin: I think the Hands Off! framing is a great start.
Jackie
@Jay:
I’ll be studiously avoiding any media coverage. I had four years of June 14 being just MY birthday, and I’m pissed to be reminded it’s a 34 times convicted felon’s bd, too. Best gift for me would be him being buried 6 feet under that day – if not sooner.
Martin
@Another Scott: That seems like a rather shallow paper that is just coming to discover the concept of a natural monopoly, or just noting that US economists try to pretend they don’t exist.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ohio Mom:
@PatD:
Timely
White House floats deporting U.S. citizens. Justice Sotomayor just warned about that: Press secretary Karoline Leavitt mentioned potentially deporting American citizens who are violent repeat offenders “if it’s legal.”
Jay
@Ohio Mom:
It’s not the votes, it’s where they voted. The Electoral College decides who wins, sort of like in Canada, where is is not the number of votes won, it’s the number of Ridings won.
It is why many Canadians have switched to strategic voting, not to elect a Government, but to prevent the “wrong” Government.
In my Riding, I’ll probably vote for the Dipper, (NDP), because they are leading, and will for the most part, make common cause with the Liberals. If a Liberal or Green were leading, I’d vote for them instead, even though, as a Red Tory, I am more Dipper than Lib, and the Greens are a one trick pony.
It’s ABC voting, anybody but the Conservative.
Ohio Mom
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I can’t imagine they’ll be disappearing too many NRA members, just wimpy lefty and progressive types.
Jay
@Jackie:
June 15th should be lit with all the roads, mains, bridges, and the early estimates of the billions of dollars of damages.
Sadly, it won’t be like the 2024 Red Square Parade with one lone WWII T-34 bought from a Serbian Museum.
Or the 2022 Red Square Parade where the T-14’s broke down mid parade.
Melancholy Jaques
@Jay:
This is supposed to make us feel better? 33% voted for Trump & 35% had no problem with Trump being president again.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, 47 had some coal-related dog and pony show at the White House…
( via https://bsky.app/profile/cultureoftruth.bsky.social )
Best wishes,
Scott.
Another Scott
@Martin: ??
It’s a publicity blurb for her new 344 page book.
She’s got over 55,500 cites, and an h-index of 60, so at first glance I’d be willing to give her the benefit of the doubt that she seems to have some idea of what she’s talking about.
FWIW.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Ohio Mom:
A lot of leftists, liberals, and progressives own firearms. There’s even a subreddit r/liberalgunowners that’s 249k members strong.
I just think, especially if the Administration wants to expand this, somebody’s going to fight back and possibly kill ICE Agent(s) if they keep wearing plains clothes and face masks like they have been. Who the hell knows if they’re really federal officers if they hide their identities with masks, don’t wear uniforms etc, and not human traffickers or something worse?
different-church-lady
@Jay: Yes, I screwed that up: roughly half of those who voted, not half of those eligible.
Any rate, what I’m getting at is there’s no reason the losing half has to be quiet about it.
Jay
@Melancholy Jaques:
35% had “reasons”.
Not voting in a solid Blue State, because it’s the Electoral College, not the popular vote, Baby.
No time off to vote.
Voter suppression.
Gerrymandering,
8 years of the MSM sane washing DJTdiot and memory holing his first term. Eg. Covid.
DJTdiot’s denial of 2025 while bringing the authors into his Admin, ignored by the FLMSM.
The DJTdiot’s 47 will be the same as DJTdiot’s 45 , with out noticing that all the guardrails, from Admin, Institutions to the Courts were gone.
And a sad tell, despite warning and exposing what would happen under a Dolt47 term, the Democratic Party, made no effort to create an “insurgent” policy, a Plan B if you will, the “We Got This” policy with no “Oh Fuck Policy”,
Jay
@different-church-lady:
Nope, yell all you want, take to the streets, boycott and strike, fuck the IRS if you can, buy Canadian, burn Tesla’s.
Make some Good Trouble.
We the ROW, support you.
Timill
@Ohio Mom:
Ahem. Britain. Notably, the Welsh Guards took the brunt of Bluff Cove and the Sir Galahad attack.
An Englishman writes…
Martin
@WaterGirl: I agree it’s a good start, but Democrats either need to accept that the new battleground is going to be over which flavor of libertarianism we embrace, or they’re going to have to come up with a positive theory of government that voters will accept and a formula for how to run it. And they’re going to have to find some unity in the party around that.
And I’m not sure most vocal Democrats are going to be on board with anything other than a return to the status quo.
Baud
Glory b
@Martin: BUT we already have a theory of government, it’s called the constitution.
It takes a long time and a big lift to change it
And “voters?” How many?
Lest we forget, Democrats haven’t won a majority of white voters since the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts.
Still. To this day.
And the Republicans have made a generational project of restricting the ability to vote.
Most recently, it’s proposed that Indigenous Americans can’t use tribal IDs to vote.
Matt McIrvin
@Baud: Nope, at this point, the military junta would be the suddenly promoted mid-tier officers most acceptable to Pete Hegseth. Probably all dudes with white-power tats.
Jay
@different-church-lady:
If TSHTF, I can and will accommodate up to 18 refugees, American or not, from the US, in our 1BDR, as long as they are willing to sleep on an air mattress on the floor and adhere to a bathroom schedule.
Matt McIrvin
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Some of us have guns but we don’t have tanks, missiles or bombers.
One 300-kiloton warhead could reduce my whole state to an irrelevancy.
chemiclord
@Martin: The problem is that you have multiple ideas of how the Democratic Party should proceed and what they should be, and increasingly more and more of those groups are deciding, “If I can’t get everything I want, then I am fine with nobody getting anything.”
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
I encountered somebody who deluded themselves into this. She was retired admin staff for the county prosecutor’s office. She was honestly glad Trump won because she thought Trump would protect Social Security, “because he did during his first term.” I told her that the people and groups that restrained him were largely gone. She didn’t say anything and walked away
Jay
@Matt McIrvin:
Historically, most Military Coups, (like I said, you can’t use Junta, too DEIA), are Junior Officers pissed off with the Military Command and the Government. Both left and right.
Glory b
@Jay: I have no idea what kind of policies you’re talking about.
How do “we got this” if we are in the minority?
For better or worse, in a democracy, the majority gets the government they want.
Baud
Jay
@Martin:
Since forever, no Provincial Party has “addressed” my needs.
Joe Clark was the last Fed to “address” my needs. 1980. 45 years ago. Lost, Party destroyed, Reform.
And I am a white, old, male, settler living on unceeded hən̓q̓əmin̓əm lands.
I vote for the people who will either keep things the same, or make them slightly better and against the people who will fuck it all up.
Martin
@Glory b: The constitution is not the theory of government, it’s the rules of government. Surely we’ve seen how the interpretation of the constitution has changed as the theory of government has changed. Indeed how the theory of government has changed the constitution itself 27 times. This is a trite and losing answer.
While restricting the ability to vote is a problem, it’s not why 35% of the public isn’t voting – you’re making an excuse. It doesn’t explain the generational change in voting. It doesn’t explain why states with stronger voting rights don’t have significantly higher turn out than states that don’t. You have to give voters a reason to vote. And both parties have a tendency to set that up as a threat rather than an incentive.
Jay
@Glory b:
Jeff Tiedrich, pre November 2024, had a column up entitled “We Got This”, laying out that the Harris/Waltz Campaign were sure of winning.
That was the “thing” going in, Blue Wave.
Did not happen.
Melancholy Jaques
@Jay:
Pretty good list of grief & lame excuses. Voters have agency. Not voting is a vote of sorts, that is, a vote for whatever happens. If a person did not vote against Trump, then they were at the very least okay with Trump.
They knew he was a corrupt, lying bigot, adjudicated sex assailant, convicted of financial fraud, who incited a mob to attack the Congress in an attempt to overthrow democracy in America. And they did not have a problem with any of that. Fuck those people.
Martin
@Jay: That’s great. But a lot of people are falling behind whether it’s Dems or the GOP running the show and they need to see more, because they’re dying under the idea of keeping things the same. Why do you think that POC and the LGBTQ population have been so critical of the Democratic Party so frequently – because they supported the party with the NEED for things to get better, only to have to settle for them not getting worse. You think the trans community is okay with Gavin Newsom right now, who can probably be trusted to maintain the status quo? Pretty fucking sure they’re not okay with that.
Princess
@Jay: I gotta say, though he wears a liberal jacket, Mark Carney is as much of a Red Tory as any politician I’ve ever seen. He’s like the second coming of Robert Stanfeild and Joe Clark.
Jay
@Melancholy Jaques:
Sadly, most knew him from “The Apprentice”.
When I was at Raider Hansen, I was taking a Zoom course at the head office, by a guy out of Alabama, ( so, 5 am start) on how to calibrate, diagnose and repair Personal Toxic Gas Monitors.
Wound up that my breaks, lunch, lined up with the Admin breaks for coffee. Got to talk with the staff, and it was just after Edolf bought twitter. I said how it would go.
A few less than months later, they emailed me with “how did you know?”.
Ksmiami06
@Martin: we just need to update FDR but broaden who it applies to: a fair deal and the ability to rise while being left to your own pursuit of happiness is pretty appealing.
Jackie
@Melancholy Jaques:
Yes.
Sally
@Martin: I think the Dems did address that. Tim Walz said you mightn’t be interested in politics but politics is interested in you. Take for granted the safe food you eat – politics delivers that. Take for granted the internet, the roads, the safe meds you take, the weather forecast, the safe factories you work in, the light switch working, the money in your bank account. All that and more delivered by politics. I can’t abide people who don’t vote, or at least try to.
Jay
@Martin:
I vote, and have voted since the 1980’s for the “things not getting worse Party” in my riding. Never not voting. It’s not rocket science.
Jay
@Princess:
Yup, but the Lib in my Riding is a joke, the Green is nothing, the Dipper is an incumbent, and while not great,……………….
Whom ever can take this riding, other than the Con, get’s my vote.
frosty
@Jay: Hmmm. At our age, the bathroom schedule could be an issue LOL. Thanks for the offer but we’ll probably need something different.
frosty
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): You’re a mensch for engaging and arguing. I’m hiding behind the curtain and avoiding all these people.
artem1s
@Jay: Freedom fighting nun murdering rapists every one.
Jay
@frosty:
There are gaps, I am also old.
It’s more showers than toilet.
No 2 hour baths with candles and music.
That’s what the group affirmation meetings are for.
Jay
@artem1s:
History, what is that?
frosty
@Jay: Showers? We’ve been minimizing gray water in the trailer while camping with no hookups. We don’t need no steenking showers!
Oops, may not have phrased that quite right!
Jay
@frosty: Sponge bath?
Did 4 years of that. Unhoused.
Luckily it’s BC, we have water, not far from a river or creek, but the water is cold.
PatD
@Jay: Always good to refresh on history but it’s utterly unrelated to the point I was making. I’ve never justified or would make excuses for our past. So maybe don’t put words in my mouth.
Jackie
Heh! “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus!”
AMEN!!!
Glory b
@Martin: Those percentages have been kinda steady for the last 100 years, though.
https://www.electproject.org/national-1789-present
Jay
@PatD:
Yeah, you missed it entirely.
El Salvador’s current government is Reichwing, supported by the “War on Drugs”, billions of US dollars.
No different than the past, just swap “drugs and gangs” for “Communists”.
The actual people there, have memory. The US doesn’t.
frosty
@Jay: Wilderness Wipes from REI, when we (I) bother. A little pricey for the unhoused, I expect.
PatD
@Jay: No, you missed it. I don’t disagree with a damn thing you said except that none of it is particularly relevant to them accepting US citizens and residents in their prisons in exchange for money in 2025.
Glory b
@Martin: Huh? Americans did better under Buden than they had in decades, with more of the benefits going to lower income and younger voters.
So, if voters are rational thinkers, why did they turn against him so decisively?
Interesting Name Goes Here
@Martin: I’m sorry, but if you have to be given a reason to vote in the year 2025, you have deep issues no one, not even Jesus Christ Himself, will ever be able to fix. If you’re “looking for a reason to vote”, you are either apathetic to an absurd degree or you’re unwilling to stand for what you want to vote for because it’s screwed up beyond all known levels of morality.
Jay
@frosty:
How to Poop in the Woods. 1990. First published date.
Science.
Ignore, science.
Jay
@PatD:
It’s a Reich wing Government you put into power, no different than supplying Pinochet with helicopters to throw people out of.
Too bad, so sad, they might be “Mercan citizens.
Actions have consequences.
Jay
@Glory b:
The average ‘Mercan is functionally illiterate, reading to a Grade 4 level.
The average ‘Mercan tests at 97 on an IQ test, globally rated as “cognitive impaired”, the old non PC term is “retard”.
Jay
@PatD:
It’s a Reich wing government, it’s not the people.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Come on, Jay. You know better than that. You know as well as I do that the vast majority of the people that the Trump admin has and will try to send to the El Salvadoran gulag had nothing to do with that. The people they will want to disappear are the most vulnerable and/or politically opposed to what you’re talking about. That’s not fair to them, like Abrego Garcia.
PatD was referring to the El Salvadoran government
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@frosty:
You’re welcome lol, but honestly I probably should cut back on that. You never know what crazy you’re talking to these days
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
I have my doubts that even this crew would use nuclear weapons on US soil
Timill
@Glory b: They didn’t. They decided that while they (all races) could support a white guy, they couldn’t support a black lady. So they stayed home, and we are where we are.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): And how is an El Salvadorian government different from a US Reich wing one?
Are we the baddies,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3b710Jbz9b8
yes, you are.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Enjoy your White Supremacist Court Sanctioned helicopter ride. I hear the view is spectacular.
Martin
Trump said he’d raise tariffs on pharmaceuticals, targeting Indian made generics at the Republican meeting today.
Consider buying up a supply now as we’d likely get shortages around the time it’s implemented.
He’s also threatening a 100% tariff on TSMC, which is kind of odd since they don’t really sell anything.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Jay:
Look, I can condemn what the US government has done in the past and still doing as well as what the El Salvadoran government is doing by accepting US citizens and residents unlawfully renditioned to their gulag. I am under no illusions the current US administration are the “good” guys.
ETA: We’re in agreement about the awful US policies wrt to Central and South America that has created right-wing governments like the one in El Salvador. That still doesn’t make what El Salvador is doing okay or mean that those sent to their prisons “deserved” it. Innocent people, meaning people that are not apart of the establishment shaping that policy at the highest echelons of power especially, should not pay for the sins of America’s foreign policy
RevRick
@Jay: The US has had poor turnout in Presidential elections since 1904. From 1840-1900, we routinely had over 70% of the eligible voters turnout, except for 1852, when it was only 69.6%. Following Progressive voting reforms, it fell from 73.2% in 1900 to 65.2% in 1904, and has only been greater than 1904 in 1908 and in 2020. 2024 is tied for fourth highest turnout % with 1960 at 63.5%. 1964 was just 0.1% less.
The worst turnouts were 1924 at 48.9%, 1920 at 49.2%, and 1996 at 49.8%
Martin
Since people don’t seem to like hearing it from me, how about Mallory McMorrow? (Just saw this video)
She’s running for Gary Peters seat. She’s fantastic.
Jay
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Couple of hundreds of of millions. mostly dead. More to come.
Yes, they died to pay for your sins.
YY_Sima Qian
A dangerous moment for the world:
Rick Waters was the point person on the PRC at the State Department during the Biden Administration. Of course, the Biden team also pursued a strategy of little substantive communication w/ the PRC for the 1st 2 years, preferring to “shape the environment” in which to pressure the PRC, instead. That did not change until the last year of Biden’s Presidency, w/ the spy balloon fiasco delaying things for about 6 months.
Another Scott
@Martin: Peters has said he’s not running for re-election.
Best of luck to her.
Best wishes,
Scott.
YY_Sima Qian
Trump totally making it tenable in their domestic political environments for the foreign negotiators (if any) to make concessions (video through the link):
Meanwhile, TechBros & FinanceBros on X are having fever dreams about Trump coercing everyone in line (& committing economic seppuku in so doing) to isolate the PRC, & thereby preserving the US hegemony in perpetuity, & suggesting that the other countries will reluctantly submit because there is no alternative to US hegemony.
The hyper-financialization of the US economy & the deeply engrained American Exceptionalism have unmoored people’s brains from the physical reality.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Trump threatening to put a 100% tariff on TSMC, and I’m at a loss how that would even work.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: I assume assessing 100% tariff on any TSMC made content in any product imported into the US. Not sure if this is on top if any import tariff already assessed.
Contra the TechBros & FinanceBros, I don’t think there is any thought out (let alone well thought out) plans or strategies or conspiracies here. It is just policymaking by vibes.
Different people around Trump may also be trying to accomplish different objectives w/ the global trade war (screen caps through the link):
Martin
That’s been true for quite some time.
YY_Sima Qian
Van Jackson’s unifying theory for the global trade war MAGA is currently waging:
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: Yes, a big part of the reason we are where we are. Deeply engrained racism, chauvinism, xenophobia, toxic masculinity, & money worship on the part of large segments of the citizenry is the other big part.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Man, this is really overthinking it too much. Here’s my unifying theory for the global trade war, from Trumps own mouth:
This is simply a dominance play and has nothing to do with economics whatsoever. Putin doesn’t get tariffs because Trump isn’t looking for dominance over Putin. China gets extra tariffs because Trump is looking for dominance over Xi.
This looks like a complex situation not because the individual motives are complex, but because Trumps motives are so transparent and easy to appease, that he is surrounded by people that have their own motives – Musk to enact his RAGE philosophy, Navarro for vengeance against his critics, Putin to divide the west. These all operate independently, often in contradiction, and so finding an overarching theory that accommodates all of these requires wild contortions whereas the individual elements are very simple.
There aren’t a lot of complex politics in kindergarten. Billy wants to make a house out of the blocks. Mary wants to make a bridge out of the blocks. Bobby wants Mary to play catch. Hitting and yelling results, but there is no political state of the room, just impulsive children who haven’t learned how to share yet. We just can’t imagine the most powerful nation on earth operates that way, so we fill in complicated theories. Look at the tariff rollout – nonsensical formula, tariffs on entities with no people, contradictory reasons. There is no sense here. The whole thing is the product of 30 minutes of actual effort at most. It’s just a gun that can be pointed without care or concern of the consequences.
YY_Sima Qian
@Martin: I think what you describe is accurate for Trump, Navarro, Musk & Putin, but not Vance, Thiel & the people behind Project 2025.
Martin
@YY_Sima Qian: Well, Vance and Thiel are NRx, so that tells you a lot of where they are.