Oof, yes, we need opponents for this guy who understand the fundamentals of how he and his rhetoric work. The better way to deal with him is to flip the frame. Specifically, in the opening statement, Biden needed to call out very explicitly that Trump was going to lie constantly, and furthermore, point out that you can recognize his lies when he says “best, strongest, biggest, greatest.” That little bit of verbal jiu jitsu would’ve ensured that it was no longer Biden calling out the lies, but the viewers’ own ears, and by bringing them to conscious attention, draining the power of those statements. (Trump spews lies and nonsense that don’t parse analytically, like that alphabet-soup closing statement, but he’s really aiming his words at the subconscious mind.)

It’s an old joke. Here’s on permutation of it: McGregor the Pier Builder

Tell that to MacGregor the church-builder.

It is, and always has been, an option. Perhaps not an easy one, but the two-party duopoly has brought us here to the brink of democratic collapse.

But what gets me is being told that the other guy will be so much worse for Palestine, when it’s not entirely clear that there will even be a Palestine by inauguration day.

I think—and this is fucking mental, I know—that we should all vote for a President that’s not supporting genocide.

This sounds like a dogwhistle-call to violence.

True, but if you call yourself conservative while espousing views that society at large views as somewhat left-wing, you’ll constantly need to explain yourself.

Not kidding, at least 7 of these bullet points sound “wacko extreme-left” by the standards of American politics. The modern conservative version is:

• Party over principle

• Government exists to protect the prerogatives of the people at the top of the hierarchy

• No dissent allowed

• The vote must be restricted to people who vote as we like

• Christianity is the basis of government

• Government control over the most fundamental of opinions, like about one’s own personal identity

• The well-regulated militia clause is moot, the right to arms is absolute

• SCOTUS can make profound changes at will, even to the Constitution itself

The above is what most people think when they hear “conservative” these days.

Well, my whole point here is that DJT is a symptom of the much deeper disease. It won’t be him in 2028. It will be another authoritarian, and we can count on that.

I haven’t read all of the comments, but here’s a fact I haven’t seen mentioned: The sociopathic narcissist doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Palestine, true, but he also doesn’t give a rat’s ass about Israel. He cares about himself, and will say or so anything to gain support and acclaim. He’s making this threat solely because it plays well to his donors.

THAT’S the scary part. If the authoritarians didn’t exist in our midst, he’d be a middle manager somewhere, instead of a contender for the office of President, again. THAT’S what we need to address, and the history of the past 30 or so years shows that getting a Democrat in office doesn’t fix anything. Electing Biden won’t make the authoritarians go away, which is why we’re back with as rematch of the 2020 election, with our democratic institutions four years weaker, and the vulnerable people in our society more scared and more under threat.

Who’s going to beat them in 2028?

We could ban lobbying for consideration. (We already have a well-developed body of contract law which spells out the scope of consideration.) A lot of the effectiveness of lobbying comes not from donations, gifts, or other bribe-like transactions, but rather from the scope of their presence. For example, petrochemical lobbyists can show up in person every day of the week, exert direct pressure, and even soft influence like providing consultations or “expert opinion” about bills that come before Congress. The people affected by fracking, on the other hand, have lives to live, and the best that they’re capable of is calling and writing letters occasionally.

Ban consideration in exchange for lobbying, instead. If an individual wants to go to D.C. and lobby on behalf of the petrochemical industry for no personal benefit whatsoever (not even covertly), great, that’s democracy in action. They’d be on a level playing field with the rest of us.

I feel this in my soul, except about Windows. I’ve got a handful of machines at work that refuse to update to Windows 10 22H2. They give an error code during the compatibility check. Googling that error code returns dozens of forum posts with hundreds of users and “Microsoft support agents” chiming in. They give the same list of suggestions—that don’t work—to fix it. Nobody can say what the error code means, or what the compatibility check checks. The official Microsoft fix is to reinstall.

I don’t want to reinstall. The suite of software these computers run would take several hours to reinstall.

This is typical of my experience with Windows. (I’m a Unix/Linux guy.) I look up how to do something in Windows, and with the official Microsoft documentation, one of three things inevitably happens:

1. I follow the steps and click the things, and it still doesn’t work.
2. I can’t follow the steps because one of the things to click is greyed out for some reason.
3. I can’t follow the steps because the documentation refers to an older edition, and Microsoft has removed one of the things to click.

One time, when trying to get Excel to run a mail merge, I ran into all three problems in three attempts.

The same happens with 3rd party sites. They never say the edition of Windows to which their guide refers, and the feature is deprecated or gone. (Most recently it was about getting a Windows 10 start menu behavior back on 11.)

Oh, and since Windows is mainstream, a lot of the information is in the form of AI vomit, and covered in ads and dark patterns.

Good news, everybody! It’s already mostly leveled, so the odds of there being anything left by next January are slim.

Back in the mid -1990s, an outfit called the New Party tried to remedy the issue by a different angle, called fusion voting. That’s a practice which lets more than one party nominate a candidate, and the candidate’s name appears more than once on the ballot. That way, different parties can team up, eliminating the spoiler effect, and the winning candidate knows from whence their support comes.

You’d think that the Democrats would be all about that? Think again. Minnesota’s state law bans fusion, and the Supreme Court held that the ban does not violate the 1st Amendment right of freedom of association, on the ground that the state has a compelling interest in preventing electoral chaos. That’s patently ridiculous, as New York allows it without issue. The DFL could change the law in Minnesota, but they still have not. The New Party subsequently disbanded, and only one former affiliate (Progressive Dane) is still active.

The two major parties work along the same lines to hinder voters to protect their own power, and this is only one example. But I still think of that case when people insist that 3rd parties should build their base in state and local races. That’s when I learned that, at the bottom line, the Democratic Party cares more about its power and prerogatives than what’s good for the country. Just like the GOP.

Evan McMullin’s vote total in Minnesota in the 2016 Presidential election was larger than Hillary Clinton’s margin of victory. Gary Johnson’s vote total was almost 3 times McMullin’s total. Johnson’s vote total was larger than Clinton’s margin in Colorado, too. If it weren’t for third-party voters, Clinton would’ve had an even worse electoral college drubbing. (Perhaps this is the case in other states, too. Those are the two that I know off-hand.) Much has been made about how Jill Stein’s vote total in Wisconsin in 2016 was higher than Clinton’s margin of defeat, but without any 3rd party candidates, she would’ve lost by even more.

In 2020, Jo Jorgensen’s vote total in Wisconsin was larger than Biden’s margin of victory, as well as in Minnesota, Arizona, and Georgia. Her vote total in Pennsylvania was very close to Biden’s margin of victory there. Without 3rd party candidates, Biden would’ve lost in 2020.

This article is about Rep. Tim Walberg, who blew out Democratic Party challenger Bart Goldberg in 2022. The 3rd party candidates in that race were from the Libertarian and U.S. Taxpayers parties. Without them, Walberg’s margin of victory would’ve been greater.

Grosskreutz (the one who survived) could have shot Rittenhouse and justifiably claimed self-defense under the law. He had a gun pointed at him by a dude who had just wasted two other men with it. The law’s fucked.

He was being beaten with a skateboard after he killed somebody with a gun. So, uh, y’know, just out of nowhere. /s

Nitpick: It wasn’t a BLM protest. It was protests and unrest following the shooting of Jacob Blake. The events over many days in Kenosha included some organized BLM protests, but also outside agitators who wanted to stir shit up. BLM protests took place in daylight hours. Rittenhouse went there for the unorganized unrest in the nighttime hours.

I mention this because it’s a right-wing rhetorical tactic to link BLM to violence in people’s minds to discredit the organization and movement, and it’s bogus.

Ooh, we got ourselves a mind reader, folks!

Yes, if it’s cold, I will often make a 4-minute drive instead of walking 20 minutes from my guest house to my main house on my own property. It’s so relatable to most Americans!