She had her chance, she’s extremely unlikely to get another one.

She had two chances. Her first one was an abysmal failure. If she had any sense, she would’ve learned then and there that her own party doesn’t even like her. And the only reason she got a second chance was because the DNC handed it to her on a silver platter. I get why they opted out of having another primary so late in the game, but she was the absolute worst choice they could’ve made.

This poll may as well have just asked people “which of these names do you recognize?”, because that’s really all it tells us.

EDIT: It just hit me that you meant she had her chance as the nominee. I’m dumb.

She has never won a Democratic primary in her life.

Harvard poll: 72% of Dem voters prefer more left-leaning candidates like Sanders and AOC over moderates like Harris.

Lemmy Leftists: Yes.

Cryophilia: Y’all are in a bubble.

Or it gets old people screwed out of their Social Security because the new rules and guidelines to continue receiving payments was posted on X, and they don’t have an X account because they are 80 fucking years old and don’t use the internet.

We have been. You may have heard of the 50501 protests. If not, I recommend looking into it. There are two problems though. First, the corporate media is largely not covering the protests because they haven’t turned into riots. As the adage goes, “if it bleeds, it leads”. Second, Americans are generally not inclined to riot, because our police are more heavily armed than a lot of military forces around the world. When we do riot, the corporate media clutches their pearls and wags their fingers, painting the entire movement as a bunch of criminals looking for a reason to loot. This influences even our most ardent allies in Congress to distance themselves from the movement, resulting in little to no change in policies.

Honestly, it’s going to take a lot more than protests and even riots to get out of this, if it’s even possible.

Hoarding that much money is, in my opinion, just as bad as hoarding a cure for cancer. There are like half a dozen people with enough wealth to eliminate hunger and homelessness worldwide, but every one of them refuses to lift a finger beyond performative bullshit for PR. The level of inhumanity it takes to be like that is off the charts. It’s sociopathic.

We should also make a distinction for the arts and artisans. In theory, an artist can sell their work for a billion dollars, making them a billionaire. I’m fine with that, because nobody gets exploited in the process. Like if an actor or rock star charges a billion dollars for a performance, or a painter charges a billion dollars for a painting, or a carpenter charges a billion to install hardwood floors. If people are willing to pay it, then I don’t really see a problem.

That said, their wealth should still be taxed like a motherfucker.

Luckily for Frost, he needn’t tell these obnoxious assholes to fuck off, because they’re not relevant enough to warrant such attention.

You got it backwards. It’s the fans who decide if Nick Frost is relevant enough to warrant their attention. Like every actor, his entire career hinges upon that premise. Let’s see how shitting on his fans works out for him.

And the public has overwhelmingly said this is what they prefer.

It’s the other way around.

Studios used to take chances on new IP’s back in the day when they didn’t have to make a billion dollars at the box office just to “break even” (I’m being a tad hyperbolic about that number). There’s a clip of Matt Damon on ‘Hot Ones’ breaking this down. For those who can’t (or don’t want to) click the link, it basically goes like this:

In the days before the streaming boom, a movie studio could afford to spend a bunch of money producing and marketing an original movie, knowing that what they sank into production and advertising would most likely be recouped in video rentals, in the event that the movie under-performed at the box office. Once physical movie rentals went away, so did all that back end money, and studios became a lot more hesitant to take those kinds of risks. The end result was that studios started buying existing IP’s that were already popular and producing those almost exclusively. The final death throes of video rental stores happened in the mid-to-late 2000s (think MCU Phase 1 era), and that’s where we saw the big increase in reboots, sequels, prequels, franchises, and cinematic universes.

So basically, the majority of big studios lost a ton of revenue from the defunct video rental business, so they did a bunch of market research to find out what people liked (or rather, what made the most money), then decided that was pretty much all they were going to make from then on. The public ate it up for the same reason they eat junk food or smoke meth; it has no substance, but it has all the right ingredients to trigger a dopamine response.

The fault here lies with the dealer, not the junkie.

That judge is about to take an unexpected trip to El Salvador.

Seriously though, good luck everyone. Shit is only going to get worse before it gets better.

Amy Coney Barrett and Brett Kavanaugh worked on the legal team for Bush in 2000, helping swing the case after the Brooks Brothers Riot.

For us, yes. For Republicans, no. In Trump’s first term:

He stacked the Supreme Court in his favor (2 of the 3 he appointed helped steal the 2000 election for Bush)
He appointed a record number of federal judges (260, most of which come from the Federalist Society)
He reversed a CFPB rule that made it easier to file class action lawsuits against banks for fucking us over
He oversaw more federal executions of prisoners than any president in 120 years
He cut corporate tax rates from 35% to 21%, the lowest rate since 1939
He pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and our spot was filled by China

There is so much more that he got done which set the stage for what is happening now. For example, he tried to pass about two thirds of the Heritage Foundation’s ‘Mandate for Leadership’ policies in his first term, which is what inspired them to write ‘Project 2025’, another iteration of the Mandate on steroids.

The fact that Trump lost the election in 2020 is a total fluke, and it took a global pandemic that killed over a million Americans to make him lose.

His first term was far from a shit show in terms of making the current shit show possible.

Judges also ruled that he couldn’t black-bag legal residents and citizens and send them to prison camps in El Salvador. He ignored the judges and did it anyway. Judges then said he had to return the people he kidnapped. He ignored them again.

A law is only a law if it is enforced. Until I see that fat orange fuck being perp walked through the Rose Garden in handcuffs, laws don’t mean shit.

The optimistic side of me believes this can happen. MAGA has tied themselves and their movement very tightly to Trump. Not to conservatism in general, not to any kind of policy in specific, but to the unique personality of Trump. They tried with DeSantis, and he flamed out hard. They’re trying with Vance, but he’s such an awkward goof that it’ll never work.

I don’t think the MAGA virus can survive in another host, and I think that’s why they are trying to rush into full on Fascism while Trump is still around. Once he’s gone, the Republican party is going to eat itself in the power vacuum.

Be the example then.

This is the outcome I hope for. The other possibilities are a lot more messy.

They won’t stop unless someone makes them stop. That’s how movements like this work, every single time. They never wind down on their own. They have to constantly keep increasing the cruelty and extremism, or else their base will see weakness and abandon them. However bad you think it is now, it’s only going to get worse, unless someone puts an end to it. Historically, there are only a few ways a fascist movement has ever been stopped, and none of them are pretty.

Trump says [THING] is bad
MAGA hates [THING]
Trump says [THING] is good actually <------ you are here
MAGA says they’ve always supported [THING]

As predictable as the setting sun.

I spent years installing hardwood floors. Now when I see them, all I can see are the flaws. It’s maddening.

Dementia is a punishment worse than death. Just a shame he didn’t get it sooner. Lock him away for the rest of his life and forget he ever existed. Don’t even waste treatment on him. Just let the disease run its course.