may be rude

noteworthy that trump's new york state criminal trial is anticipated to result in conviction and sentencing for conviction could be upwards of 3 or 4 years prison.

inflation is not rising, it is coming down. inflation was a global consequence of the pandemic and USA under biden has been recovering well. https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ he inherited a great economy from obama and he tanked it. the covid impact didn't have to be as bad as it was, trump bears responsibility. that's what happened. if obama were president when covid hit then things would have been very different and not nearly as bad. those positions of trump supporters are not logically well-supported. biden didn't cause inflation, but he's just about fixed it. trump wasn't good for the economy, he inherited a good one and messed it up. biden brought it back. that's awesome that you're engaging with people like that. it's not easy but those difficult conversations are a necessary part of the way out of this mess.

i really like that biden is focusing on cold fusion, among other great climate policies. cold fusion is one of the most important technological innovations that we need regarding the greenhouse gas problem. there have been really significant fusion breakthroughs in the last few years. https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-japan-announce-joint-partnership-accelerate-nuclear-fusion-sources-2024-04-10/ i also like the cancer "moonshot" initiative. i think these are great examples of what good american leadership can look like. https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/news-updates/2024/03/08/fact-sheet-biden-cancer-moonshot-announces-commitments-from-leading-health-insurers-and-oncology-providers-to-make-navigation-services-accessible-to-more-than-150-million-americans/ I'm not trying to take the piss or anything but sincerely asking how much of this was due to Biden and how much was due to a competent administration / cabinet / advisors / etc. I get what we're up against with orange T, that backing his challenger is important and the situation is different because we have a 1-term incumbent and so forth... Even if the answer is that a lot of it was due to the administration, that's still not a reason to vote against Biden, just want to be clear and honest about all this. i think some credit accrues to the chief executive even when their people are entrusted with decisions because the leadership is a factor in the result. inherently we have limited visibility but we do see examples of biden's individual talents and personal responsibility. particularly in national defense, the chief of command is visible because they are ultimately responsible. leaving afghanistan is something we wanted every president to do and it took 20 years and biden got it done, even in the face of unfortunate circumstances. strategically helping ukraine with public info dumps in february of 2022 that prebunked a planned russian false flag, for example, was unprecedented and shows adroitness in profound moments. recently he is criticized for continuing the long american tradition of israel support and he has actually taken actions that were both effective and highly unusual for an american president, working toward preventing the violence in gaza, such as abstaining from the recent UN security council vote, much aid delivery, and effectively counseling, advising, and persuading the israeli government to not cause civilian harm. go ahead and point out that everything's not perfect but it remains true that biden is pushing back on israel strongly and effectively to an extent that is very unusual for an american president. another thing comes to mind. when he entered office, there was no vaccine deployment strategy. trump administration had nothing in place for that. biden's team promptly spun it up from scratch and it was very effective, that winter into spring getting the vaccines to most people who wanted them, very much resolving the worst of the pandemic. taking unemployment from 10% to 3.5%. inflation is currently at 3% which is roughly normal, biden brought it down after trump helped ratfuck covid, contributing to the global inflation that countries around the world experienced. cranking the GDP and job creation, continually. these are significant accomplishments that surely his team was involved in but also i don't think you can take them away from him as though they occurred despite him. they were a result of his administration.

civil war: garland has gone public saying this could be his last film as a consequence of his experience dealing with people regarding it. i wouldn't want people getting in my face about it either. maybe he's telling people to fuck off and leave him alone. i think the movie is great. the movie begs the question: what's the point of the movie? but i think most people will get the point of the movie. it has an oblique strategy. it doesn't pretend to tackle a broad or fancy story. it's a straightforward, limited tour through what an american civil war could look like. story, acting and characters were all good but it's really a wake up call to what people have been fucking with over here in the states. american democracy falling has some wild futures. americans go hard and they're nuts. didn't we do slavery like even harder, worse and longer than other countries at the time? like they had all stopped and we were still just leaning into maximum cruelty. we're fucking nuts over here. and the military is fucking insanely powerful. and info has power over that. that's why info is all fucked. and people's brains are fucked and a fascist is neck and neck with a great american president in the presidential race. definitely surrealist but also clarifies reality and leaves you mad that people are so careless and foolish as to risk allowing things to go so far.

here's a well-produced documentary about the ukrainian children abducted by russia. at least 19,505. hard not to suspect human trafficking. https://kyivindependent.com/uprooted/

right here you admit that this is just an assumption made in your imagination. in your mind, did zelensky tell biden he wants to quit and biden said "no!"? zelensky has been risking his life for years to defend his country and his people. that is the chain of command where the decision comes from. of course the individuals in ukraine aren't operating only on command, they have their own wills to fight. who would want to be russia? who would want to let putin conquer them?

i didn't say you did it deliberately. i didn't realize you have access to ukrainian military intelligence. impressive. you know, you're talking about the country that shocked the world with the quality and effectiveness of their strategy in countering the russian invasion. well the rightist ecosystem is where most people are buying the cheap tricks designed to shut off aid to the ally in need. democrats have been trying to get an aid bill passed. generalization and wrong, not all politicians are the same, many are humans who care about human things. be advised your misinformation has real harmful consequences generalization again, this time cynically projecting motivations when in fact many public servants are motivated by doing what's right hm? the russians are drunk and not aiming their weapons. their navy is disappearing. their militia attempted mutiny. they've suffered a half million casualties. domestic support is that of a hostage with stockholme syndrome. the russians are performing horribly and modern war experts like general patraeus have assessed that the russians will lose. the russians gained a small amount of territory in the last year. ukraine gained some, like the city of kherson. russia has continued suffering strategic losses. ukraine took another russian ship out of commission a few days ago. russia has continually lost both equipment and soliders at significantly higher rate than ukraine. RU lost over 3,000 tanks so far! russia is gaining a little momentum lately but ukraine is still doing well against them. it's a difficult war but it's winnable. messages of fatalism are the stuff that russian propagandists are trying to spread around. i find it quite grotesque to witness people advocating for abandoning an ally suffering mass murder. but hey i get that things are confusing these days, i am trying to help.

you further russian narratives by spreading the idea that US is only aiding ukraine because of russia. ukraine was an ally US had pledged to support years ago. supporting allies is a thing. these things go on behind the scenes and are generally not appropriate to discuss publicly "losing bad"? hardly, man. they continue sinking russia's fleet and achieving other victories. losses have been quite minimal given the scale of the conflict. also, the "counteroffensive" was a strategy term that the media blew up, inflating expectations. also relevant to note that the planned 2023 spring counteroffensive was impacted by US republican congress members blocking aid to the ally again, it's a russian narrative that ukraine is being manipulated by US to fight a war for them. it's plainly fictional - ukraine chose to defend themselves. very, very simple logic. it's a slight of hand designed to trick people. ukraine has been doing pretty well for the last year without US aid. and they were doing well at the beginning when they were defending the kyiv airport by running over russians with cars. please don't spread the misconception that this is somehow propped up by the US, it's false. so, i notice you are furthering putin's agenda by criticizing US aid to ukraine. FYI, the amounts of money are pretty consistent with typical foreign aid, and this is a perfect example of when foreign aid is appropriate. also, it's a tiny drop in the US military budget, and this kind of thing is considered a good investment for US strategic interests.

mashed potatoes? new shit pls

duh. Trump is god. haven't you heard?? a demon, possibly alien. born June 14, 1946, orange skin, yellow hair, smells of garbage.

god disclosure. the government knows god is real.

it's a weird election year where there is a wide array of possible futures on the table. if people do things right then the only thing that will happen will be the republicans losing badly and the right learning from the loss and evolving. that would be the best thing for everybody.

regarding the million dead, it's a pretty clear argument: if US suffered death rates other countries did then we'd have lost 100,000 people instead of a million. this author, eric klinenberg, makes the point around 17:00 into this, which is a great episode. he wrote a book about 2020 and articulates well the failure of government. trumpists act like trump should get a pass for covid but actually covid is a perfect example of why he should not be president.

teleharmonic kills me agreed it's a solid album

trump dog-whistles to violent extremists. trying to be slick, using coded language, does not change the fact that the dude incites murderous violence, wittingly. he's a domestic terrorist leader. in the sept 29, 2020 debate he was prompted to denounce the proud boys and his response was "stand back and stand by." they were later key in breaching the capitol and were convicted for seditious conspiracy. mark meadows's book said trump knew he had covid when he went to the debate with biden on sept 29, 2020. biden getting covid before the vaccines would have threatened his life. he was always a sociopath and he's already been killing people as part of his authoritarian efforts. he sent ashley babbitt to her death, then paid off her family with huge fundraisers and other financial infusions. a million americans died from covid and he deliberately worsened the pandemic as part of his plan to use mail-in ballots as pretext for disputing the election. he nearly sparked a war with iran, killing their 3rd highest government official. that was coincidentally 2 weeks before his first impeachment trial in the senate started, in which john bolton was a key witness who ultimately did not testify (bolton long pushed for an iran strike). 50 americans got traumatic brain injuries from the counter-attack, and further escalation was avoided by iran accidentally downing a commercial airliner. he withheld military aid to ukraine as they fought the earlier part of the russian offensive, in which russian-backed separatists were claiming territory in donbas. a trumpist living in a van covered in trump stickers mailed bombs to obama and others. trump knows what he is doing and he is continuing to do it. the uprising he pushes fantasies about won't happen but some small amount of idiots may end up killing people needlessly. but fox news and the national republican party are still out there pushing this guy. their strategy congealed as the alternate-reality strategy, in the obama years - fox and the gop, in collaboration with each-other, legitimizing the narratives that test the best, harvested from fake news blogs, with weaselly innuendo, constructing alternate realities that brainwash people. now these people at fox and in the national gop are themselves deluded, and the ecosystem has been breeding them for cynicism that rationalizes their furtherance of harmful deception. they defer responsibility to the whole, and the whole is wandering further down a dark path, steered by foreign adversary intelligence and special interest collectives. the oil lobby props up politicians who play ball, this is an example of how different forces with different motivations and different rationalizations end up propping up the same ecosystem of bullshit. it's the counter-reality strategy that they like.

Milky Way black hole has 'strong, twisted' magnetic field in mesmerizing new image i guess they overlayed the waves on this existing image (sag a)

Akkranen

RICH JAMES ULE NED who's ned

noteworthy that so many republicans are abruptly quitting congress that the dems could take back control of the house before the election! they are 1 vote away! yet another republican house rep has not merely announced they will not run for reelection but also just decided to leave before the end of their term, leaving the republicans a vote short. you'll recall mccarthy did this. more recently, ken buck. now yesterday they lost another, mike gallagher. i think there were others too, in this congress. and this follows years of prominent republicans walking away, such as romney and paul ryan. republicans are disgusted with their own party. even elected republicans are chosing to not have a job instead of being there. this occurs as the central witness in the republican impeachment inquiry into biden is indicted as a russian agent feeding disinfo to congress, and trump is on the brink of bankruptcy as he's forced to pay half a billion dollars because of civil judgements about fraud and rape. and he is the nominee despite being indicted for conspiring to interfere with elections, stealing national defense info, and conspiring to oppress people from their constitutional rights. and the republicans have changed their position to stand against helping our ally ukraine as they face an existential attack by a brutal, malignant tyrant, and trump is bringing manafort back onto his campaign for 2024. and the people who were closest to trump are saying he should never be allowed to have power again - for example, pence said he won't endorse him and bolton said he's unfit for the office.

it will be interesting to see how things play out. we're already in the era of climate change-related disasters taking a toll in money and lives, so it's not like there's any chance of avoiding it. the question is how bad do we fuck up the planet. i would not be shocked if the next hundred years consisted of stymied partial efforts that don't effectively mitigate the damage and result in a state of civilization really struggling to keep stable. it's absolutely worth pushing for electing sanity to power and it is absolutely possible. i'm not sure what statistic you're referring to but usa decreased its grennhouse emissions in 2023. right, the damage is on a delay of decades. i think by 2050 it will be more obvious what's happening. we are in a special point, between now and then, where we could be doing a lot more but we are waiting too long because people are still waking up and bullshit is being allowed to fly. i'd like to think that, in 1,000 years, society will have evolved to a point where people have an internalized sense of duty to regulate their resource impact. personal restraint is a significant part of the equation, though nobody likes that.

good article. here the author makes an important point: that's a diplomatic way of saying that we're throwing the global systems out of whack. this is the best way to understand the situation. calling it "warming" doesn't capture it. it's destabilization. THE IMPORTANT THING TO FOR EVERYONE TO UNDERSTAND is that there is no solving climate change without climate legislation. climate change is an extremely challenging problem and the only way we can solve it this century is with strong and stable national climate legislation. the most important thing anyone can do is to vote based on climate, and to pay attention and raise awareness to help others understand that this is the needed step. the longer we wait to get this done, the worse it will be.

wow there's actually a much shorter path to a tie we were 42,918 votes from the election being tied and decided in the house of representatives

found a shorter path, actually. the 2020 election was decided by 102,791 votes across 3 states. "i just wanna find 11,780 votes ... fellas, i need 11,000 votes, give me a break" the recorded phone call in which trump threatens georgia secretary of state brad raffensperger is so damning. notable that it took place on january 2nd. also that january 3rd was the day when doj senior officials threatened to resign en masse because trump was trying to install jeffrey clark as acting attorney general, and clark was ready to send a letter to georgia advising they hold a special session to decide how to appoint electors because of voting irregularities.

it's true that the US's biggest terrorist threat is domestic extremism. thanks for posting, i will watch that. i've always found the pipe bomb part of jan 6 fascinating - 2 bombs were placed, ahead of time, at the party headquarters in DC for both parties, one each, blocks apart, and they were discovered on noon of jan 6. this was quite an operation, to place those, and definitely would be done by someone who very seriously was participating in an attempted coup. it fit with the overall plan - the proud boys planned to breach the capital, but needed a crowd as cover, trump was pressuring and threatening members of congress and pence, and trump sent the crowd. proving the connections between trump, the proud boys, and the pipe bomber is of course difficult and we may (may) never see proof but one notices how the things come together to threaten the congress members and pence to follow the plan prepared by jeffrey clark, rudy giuliani, and others, to overturn the election results. whoever placed those bombs had the balls of a special ops operative. definitely one of the wilder pieces of that whole thing, though there are many wild pieces.