Tuco

In some ways, I think we may be relying to much on history for explaining the current political environment. It's the standard narrative that the "white working class" is pushed towards Trumpism because of "economic uncertainty". I think that narrative is pretty shaky. A couple of points. 1. The typical analysis on the rise of Nazism is usually paired with severe economic distress in Germany. While I understand there has been a growth in wealth inequities in the US, we are not seeing massive unemployment or inflation. To the contrary, we are/were near record lows on both. Uneven growth has perhaps priced some people out of population centers - like San Francisco or New York - but those are still heavily blue areas. 2. To Bozo's point, certainly there have been folks that have been displaced by technology, but I believe there are more people with free time and luxuries compared to 20 years ago. I'm not sure how to quantify that, but I think the rise of paid sports for kids would support that. The percentage of dual income families peaked around 1990, and has slightly tapered since [Pew]. Average home sizes have increased, by nearly 1000 ft in 40 years, and with smaller families, that has mean nearly doubling the sf per person [ok... AEI sucks, but not sure if they are gaming the numbers.] Number of cars per person has increased [DOE] . Maybe my perception on comparative wealth is skewed by growing up poor, and now being upper-middle class. But I believe people are generally better off today than they were 30 years ago. So, if I am right, what the fuck is happening? Some other potential explanations: A. Environmental concerns are a greater threat to middle class life style than job security. Certainly there are a lot of people who can afford to buy $50k trucks. But, they are continually told that in order to address climate change, they should scale back the size of their truck, or scale back how much they drive it. If they own a big house, they are told about the environmental impacts of it. Travel causes emissions. Eating meat causes emissions. (insert fart joke here). Don't water that your grass too much. Don't dump your oil down the storm sewer. In the Dem bubble, we rightly identify that many in the middle and lower class vote against their own interests on tax code or health care, but do we recognize the resistance to actually following progressive efforts regarding environmentalism? The problem is that environmental issues are too important to just back off because it costs votes. I think Dems/progressives need to recognize the hill that needs to be overcome. While we are telling folks that they need to by with less - not because they can't afford it, but because the Earth can't - the Republicans are telling them that climate change is a hoax. It's a pretty little lie. And once they are hostile to progressives, it's easy to dismiss basic analysis of the tax code or health care disfunction. B. The internet has made it too easy to compare yourself to others, and 50% of the people out there are below average. Maybe in absolute terms, things have gotten better for middle class and certainly I don't believe there is want of 1930s Germany. But, on a day to day, constant barrage of information demonstrating what you lack, is the psychological damage the same. That's from the internet. That's from a well tuned marketing machine, that includes social media plants. It's reality shows focused on the wealthy. Does this create a sense of want? On a subset of the internet, I am curious how porn might play into this. You get a lot of older white guys, many with fat wives, and they are regularly watching something they will never, ever have. Sure, they might be able to hire a couple of pros to recreate the scenario, but they are still part of it, which will leave the experience a little...short. You get the "cuck" rhetoric, which really highlights an insecurity around sex. More obviously, you have the incels. Only some of them have been radicalized to violence, but many others have found solidarity in hating women for their lack of success.

This. He seems legitimately surprised that having a sugar-daddy relationship with an underage girl might put him in prison. Above everything else, he is just so fucking stupid.

I got poked today. It felt great.

I wonder how many women priests would tell a battered woman that she could either 1) stay with her abuser, or 2) divorce him, but it would be a sin to ever have sex again. Because that's advice offered by celibate old men who have "thousands of years" of providing marital directives.

I'd say that's a distinction with little difference. Pope Francis, for all his intelligence, earnest study, and fine moral character, does not understand anything beyond the outline and stereotypes of a mature, sexual relationship. None of them do. Not a single fucking one of them. Yet, they set the rules on contraception, divorce, and gay marriage. And people actually listen to them. I was raised Catholic. I credit a scholarship to a Catholic high school to give me the stability to get into a good college. I've known a lot of priests, and even corresponded with one for a few years. Like any other profession, some are really good people and some are assholes. But I would never listen to any of them when it comes to real life relationships. You might as well take fashion advice from a blind man.

"There is also scant evidence their machines, or ozone in general, can safely eliminate SARS-CoV-2..." That's the critical word. It's not that tough to kill (deactivate, neutralize, whatever) coronavirus. Ozone will definitely kill bacteria, and likely "inactivate" most viruses, but so does a lot shit. You could, as Trump suggest, inject bleach. You could, as my idiot brother-in-law did, claim that his gym was safe to reopen because he used a machine that vaporized hydrogen peroxide. The trick is not killing a whole lot of human cells with it. So I could see this as a reasonable approach to sanitizing equipment (masks, equipment), but terrible for sanitizing spaces. One of the techs that HVAC vendors are pushing is "needle point ionization": basically jolting the air with electricity to split molecules and give them a charge. It does a couple of things: 1) makes contaminants clump together, so they can be filtered out more easily, 2) damage the molecules in viruses. But, when you split O2 molecules, they recombines as O3 (ozone). They have to monitor to the ozone production, to avoid degrading the interior air quality. What responsible engineers view as a dangerous byproduct, Kobach is pursuing as a goal. (Assuming he was pushing space sterilization, not equipment sterilization.)

PSA: My daughter got her first dose today at the fairgrounds super site. It was crowded, but fast. She has no health issues, is 22, and handled Covid with light symptoms 3 months ago. If she can get one, any of you old fucks can. Sign the fuck Dallas area Texans. Get safe.

This is, or should be, the correct answer. Particularly today, when the various factions of Representatives regurgitate different versions of reality, it is needed. Before you can address a problem, it needs to be defined. That definition shouldn't be by lobbyists or factionalized media. If Congressman Dumbfuck from Florida wants to claim that the real problem on January 6th was Antifa, let's put that out in front of Congress to vet it. Will it make a difference to Congressman Dumbfuck? Probably not, as Matt is too busy selling his version of reality to be bother by its veracity. But the tool is still there, regardless if the Congressmen chose to use it.

This thread demonstrates how the “tolerant” left is intolerant of utter stupidity. Hypocrites! /Trumpster logic

Helping people in need has long been a political ploy. It’s not a bad thing. Beats the fuck out of just finding someone to blame.

I'm not sure social media attention-whoring is any more prevalent in the younger generation than they are in older generations. I know at my kid's high school, talking about social media and how it can follow you to job interviews was discussed quite a bit. Meanwhile, you have old fucks storming the Capitol who are honestly surprised that the FBI would look at the Twitter feed.

Waco is in Texas. Sexual Assault in Texas (and other states) is defined by penetration of the anus, vagina, or mouth. (Sec 22.011) As with India, there are other crimes (Indecent Assault, for example) that apply if there is no penetration. Indecent Assault is a Class A Misdemeanor. The law dogs can correct me if I am missing something.

What is commonly misunderstood about Giuliani : he was not working for Trump; he was selling access to Trump. In order to secure that access, he would do shit for Trump, but at the end of the day, Giuliani was being paid by people to either lobby or to acquire face time with Trump. For example, Dimitri Firtash paid Fraud Guarantee (Lev and Igor), who hired Rudy for his consulting expertise on cyber-security. That's a half of a million dollars that flowed from a Russian-friendly Ukrainian fugitive, through a couple small time lowlifes, to Rudy. Michael Cohen and Elliot Broidy were also exposed for selling access/influence. It's a big business. Rudy wasn't doing this shit for free; he was getting paid. It would have been less seedy had he been paid by Trump.

I think Elliot Broidy is the poster child for Republican hypocrisy. In 2009 he pled guilty to "providing excessive gratuity" (aka, bribery) to the chief investor of the New York State Retirement Fund. The charge he pled guilty to was a felony. It then got reduced to a misdemeanor, after Broidy paid $18M to the state in restitution. (You know, if more felons would just fork over millions of dollars, they'd no longer be felons. I should suggest that to the public defenders office.) In 2016, he became the vice chairman of the Trump Victory Fund - the joint fundraising venture between the Trump campaign and the RNC. In 2017, he became one of the three National Deputy Finance Chairmen for the RNC. Convict Michael Cohen was another. In 2018, he admitted to paying 1.6M to a Playboy model to get an abortion and to stay quiet about it. Michael Cohen brokered the deal. It has been speculated Broidy was taking the fall for Trump. Broidy resigns from the RNC. And that's not the bad shit. I will now quote from Wiki to save on typing. [When reading the shit on Qatar, keep in mind that Trump took credit for engineering an embargo of Qatar in 2017.] So, yeah, bribery, abortion, lobbying for the Chinese Communist government, lobbying for Muslim theocracies, etc... But he funnels money to Republicans, so they do not consider him a criminal.

Why not. It will piss off the racists in ten years when we have his name removed.

"Our economy is a rocket ship."

That's why I actually support Parler. They can't help but hate. Let them hate each other.

Those examples are at least about the messages they conveyed. Right-wingers also boycotted Disney because Disney was one of the first large corporations to give benefits to domestic partners. They were so worried about about whether a gay person got dental insurance, they kept their kids from watching kids movies. (And there are still some right-wingers boycotting Disney based on their "agenda".

To any Republican politicians pushing for unity, I say this: I'm not going to unify with white supremacists and QAnon dipshits. They are dangerous to my country, and to me personally. If you want to unify with me to address this danger to our country, I will gladly welcome your help. But I've been asking for it for four years, and have yet to receive any assistance. And it would be easy. You just need to tell the truth. You need to repudiate the white supremacists for their racist, unAmerican bullshit. You need to tell the truth to those who harbor delusions about fake elections, deep state conspiracies, and international cannabalistic pedophile rings. And I realize that's difficult for you, not because you lack the power of speech or because you are still researching whether those delusions are actually true. It's difficult because you won't win elections without those people on your side. But that's what it's going to take to defeat these lunatics. If you're not on my side, you're on theirs. And I will never concede to their insanity.

article +  hour and half video

That is exactly the point of this thread.

Sure, but the counterpoint is the acquittal of the Oregon Militia. Maybe the Feds completely botched that case, but they fact that every juror came back with "acquit" is truly frightening. It only takes one to hang a jury. I think they will convict people who are shown assaulting cops and probably destroying properties. I don't think you're going to get broader charges to stick on anyone who entered the Capitol. There is some room for interpretation there, and I do not trust a jury of my fellow Americans to interpret facts the same way I do.

Keep two words in mind when the Feds move to finalize charges: "jury selection". There will be Trump supporters in the jury pool. There will be people who think the election was rigged. There will be people who have a hard time distinguishing between a BLM protest on the streets and a insurrectionists storming the Capitol. Trying to get a conviction on even the obvious will come down to jury selection.

Well, he was a bit homo. It's Tennessee Williams, after all.

Didn't Trump call them "haters." I think his current gaslighting attempt is to try to convince people it was actually Antifa who stormed the Capitol. And there are still complete morons on social media who believe that narrative. If he pardons everyone, that is much harder to sell. I could see selected pardons to the Trumpstains who look less crazy, on the excuse that the Capitol Police let them in, but there is no way he's pardoning the scary-looking folks like the Shaman.