The 2024 U.S. Presidential race

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I swear this guy looks like someone took one person's face and photoshopped it onto another person's head.

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

I'm a dangerous slasher....of prices!

 

[Dakota Tebaldi]

Wait....did Biden's team post that sometime after the White House public announcement that he had COVID?

If so....not too bad, old man.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Look, let me be perfectly clear. We have to live with the system we have. That system has given us the choice we have. If you refuse the choice, because it isn't the "perfect" choice, you are part of the problem. I'll take a dumpster fire, which Biden is NOT, over a nuclear Meltdown any day of the week and twice on Tuesdays.

Well that is only partially correct: you don't have to live with a bad system, you can always try to improve it or move away into another country. The problem though is gaining enough momentum to reach that goal.

Within the system there's in America this legend floating around about the 4 boxes of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and catridge. The 4th box clearly indicates if something goes too wrong you've got to fight for it by whatever means necessary, even including violence.

There are of course also other ways, like protests, public pressure and so on. But these only will work if the politicians are willing to listen.

And if your system is so degraded that it is only a democracy on paper, but heavily rigged in favor of one party you are screwed, because your vote has no impact at all. America seems to deteriorate into that direction pretty fast with the acting president now having immunity like Louis XIV.

Anyway let's just remember history, namely the GDR in 1989. This was on paper a democracy, in reality a dictatorship because only one party always wielded the power, the SED. People within the GDR were not dumb, they knew about that.

After living 40 years in that construction in 1989 people had enough and wanted real freedom. They stood up, and protested against their rulers openly and peacefully. When the state pushed back, they only came back stronger and even bigger. In the end it lead to the opening of the wall to West Germany, democratization and downfall of the GDR. The whole block of Warsaw pact in fact collapsed, because people had enough.

So - no, you don't have to live with a shitty system which only gives you shitty choices. There are enough examples in history where people overcame such rigged systems. But you cannot do it alone, and it might never work.

In the end the biggest problem and at the same time sometimes advantage of the USA is how inflexible its constitution is. It's almost impossible to reform today or just even add amendments, and has nasty quirks like electoral college (ever thought about how the members of that college are chosen?) which were a necessity in the 18th century but today are just not required any longer due to high speed travel and modern communication.

The problem with the constitution though is now that Trump seems to have cracked the code how to get dictator like powers at some degree legally, which is a really bad thing.

 

[Free]

Cannot change the spots on the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

MAGA makes racist attacks against JD Vance's Wife

Usha Vance, born and raised in California by Indian immigrants, met Donald Trump's running mate at Yale University.

www.newsweek.com

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Free]

Yup. As a kite on acid.

 

[Free]

President Joe Biden tests positive for Covid-19 at pivotal moment in reelection campaign

President Joe Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, disrupting a key campaign event meant to shore up support with Latino voters at a critical juncture in the election.

Biden, 81, was experiencing mild symptoms and has received his first dose of the antiviral drug Paxlovid, according to his doctor.

“I feel good,” Biden, who is fully vaccinated and boosted, told reporters Wednesday in Las Vegas, flashing a thumbs-up before boarding Air Force One to head to his Delaware residence. The president will self-isolate there in line with US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

I guess having those press conferences was not a good idea.

 

[Free]

Ahem...

 

[Free]

Some good backgrounding by Rachel (and her staff!) on Vance.

 

[Lexxi]

 

[Lexxi]

 

[Lexxi]

 

[Khamon]

Ahem...

Is that traffic generated by the RNC or the drag queens in town to perform in all of the downtown bars this week? Why not both!? We'll go with that.

 

[Kamilah Hauptmann]

Cannot change the spots on the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

MAGA makes racist attacks against JD Vance's Wife

Usha Vance, born and raised in California by Indian immigrants, met Donald Trump's running mate at Yale University.

www.newsweek.com

Stolen from elsewhere comment about Ms. Vance:

It's also worth noting that Munger, Tolles & Olson, the law firm from which she just resigned, charges fees the amounts of which wouldn't even register in the minds of regular people to help mighty Galtian ubermenchen, massive corporations, institutions of higher education, etc. avoid the consequences of professional negligence and violations of labor and employment law, anti-discrimination statutes, antitrust laws, False Claims Act cases, &c, &c, &c.

 

[Jopsy Pendragon]

Well that is only partially correct: you don't have to live with a bad system, you can always try to improve it or move away into another country. The problem though is gaining enough momentum to reach that goal.

Within the system there's in America this legend floating around about the 4 boxes of liberty: soap, ballot, jury and catridge. The 4th box clearly indicates if something goes too wrong you've got to fight for it by whatever means necessary, even including violence.

There are of course also other ways, like protests, public pressure and so on. But these only will work if the politicians are willing to listen.

It comes down to the unequal division of wealth. There's too much wealth concentrated in the hand of too few, who now have enough surplus to research ways to game the ballot box, out-shout the soap box, overwhelm the jury box and radicalize militant unstable useful idiots into using their cartridge boxes.

Wealth will back whichever side increases the disparity, and attack any effective opposition to it.

And like gun control, its just not enough to have a few "good" oligarchs to take out the "bad" oligarchs.

This nation serves them, not us. It's getting more and more transparent about it. And it's getting more efficient at shrinking and defending the set of people who are wealthy enough to be protected by the system, from everyone else.

Leaving would be nice, but it usually means losing the support and ties to family and friends nurtured through life, starting fresh somewhere else requires more social/job/skill/financial security than many can scrape together.

Maybe a despotic powerful leader who will use brute military/judicial force against the wealthy is what we need... But TFG sure ain't it.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Maybe that's one of the reasons why the US are so strictly against China nowadays, because they are walking down a different path in terms of ecomic system. China is by no means even near a communist country since decades, instead they are using something which you could call highly state regulated capitalism, meaning the state only gives that much leeway to companies before taking sometimes really drastic actions.

In China the party is everywhere, and the absolute power. If a company or billionaire becomes too cocky, like Jack Ma, they tend to disappear out of the public for quite a while. When Jack Ma reappeared he lost half of his wealth, and was strangely docile compared to before.

Also just have a look at what China did to the crypto bros, evicting them by force. And companies usually will not get any bailout, they let them crash.

In short this type of treatment is something American billionaires and mega corporations do fear passionately, and they do not want to make it its way to America.

Disappearing billionaires

Xi Jinping’s war on China’s billionaires is telling on the country’s economy, entrepreneurship, innovation drive and financial market stability

www.deccanherald.com

 

[Cindy Claveau]

 

[Cindy Claveau]

Fact check: Trump makes more than 20 false claims in RNC acceptance speech

(Sorry for the CNN link!)

 

[Monica Dream]

Fact check: Trump makes more than 20 false claims in RNC acceptance speech

(Sorry for the CNN link!)

What's wrong with CNN?