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mike pence electrifies a diverse crowd of supporters inside the penn drug store in sidney iowa

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"It’s almost Shakespearean, to see a man who had spent 30 years hoping to be president, hungering and thirsting for it, watch it slowly escape his grasp. Mike Pence wanted to be president practically since he popped out of the womb”

Among the crowd in Sidney sat Dave Heywood, a 66-year-old who had “retired from pretty much everything.”  He and one of his friends told me that despite the stickers, they weren’t necessarily Pence supporters. But they had received them from one of Pence’s “gals” — referencing either a volunteer or a paid staffer — and in the tradition of Midwestern politeness they stuck them to their shirts.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/10/21/mike-pence-sad-presidential-campaign-00122589

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5 hours ago, ignatius said:

yes. and somehow he was the better option. 

same w/obama. millions of more people got healthcare in USA because of him but he also went hogwild with drone strikes. the domestic side of things is the harm reduction in this case.. but we could look at every act of policy both foreign and domestic and tally up a pros/cons chart.. seems pointless though.  just know that there's often a better choice in any election (federal, state, local).. and that no one can see the future so you do your best and hope they prove you right more often than they prove you wrong. 

harm reduction.. when someone makes life better for some people.. it reduces harm. things like child tax credits... that pandemic stuff massively reduced childhood poverty. 

i'm ok taking what opportunities come along to make things a little better and i know that i'll not get everything and society won't be greatly changed and we'll only get incremental change. 

i don't need to have a litmus test and i don't expect every politician in the mainstream.. part of the system or whatever.. to be revolutionary and bring on some kind of socialist mutual aid based system based on anarchic principles with no hierarchies.. 

that's just not gonna happen... so why not do the best we can and try to at least make life less cruel for as many people as possible?

also, sometimes they do make things better longterm for some people. it happens in small ways.. sometimes by accident or the by-product of some other action. 

i reject the idea that we should all should abandon the system because it isn't exactly the thing we want or the thing we know is better.  i've had conversations w/people who i'd characterize like that. all or nothing. burn it all down. fine. go ahead. in the meantime i think it'd be cool if some kids got free school lunches and didn't go hungry or some people got health care or tax credits or whatever... or that there was better public transportation or a few more public parks. 

 

>i don't expect every politician in the mainstream.. part of the system or whatever.. to be revolutionary and bring on some kind of socialist mutual aid based system based on anarchic principles with no hierarchies.. 

thats a pretty high bar which is systemically never going to happen, that can only come from outside

but its not a high bar to give everyone universal healthcare, education, etc. plenty of other capitalist countries have done it.  harm reduction, i wouldnt say its harm reduction, democrats and republicans are a unified front defending the owning class's interest, and they are very good.  democrats play a role of pretending to be left wing, and pretending to give an alternative to republicans, and they do more harm than good.  if they disappeared entirely, would their voter base too?  no, and that voter base is much further left than the democrats.  so it suggests a spontaneously arising party starting from nothing representing democratic voters desires would represent them better than the democrats

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9 hours ago, zlemflolia said:

>i don't expect every politician in the mainstream.. part of the system or whatever.. to be revolutionary and bring on some kind of socialist mutual aid based system based on anarchic principles with no hierarchies.. 

thats a pretty high bar which is systemically never going to happen, that can only come from outside

but its not a high bar to give everyone universal healthcare, education, etc. plenty of other capitalist countries have done it.  harm reduction, i wouldnt say its harm reduction, democrats and republicans are a unified front defending the owning class's interest, and they are very good.  democrats play a role of pretending to be left wing, and pretending to give an alternative to republicans, and they do more harm than good.  if they disappeared entirely, would their voter base too?  no, and that voter base is much further left than the democrats.  so it suggests a spontaneously arising party starting from nothing representing democratic voters desires would represent them better than the democrats

you're missing the point. i know they suck. they all suck. none will deliver. some will partially deliver.. so if i can vote for that person to make things suck less for some people then i will. that's all i'm saying.  and yes, when possible we vote for the better candidate.. fight the battles we can fight.. look around locally, get to know our neighbors, when crisis happens it's usually our neighbors who will help us long before the government comes to action. this doesn't mean we don't take part in trying to put people in places of power who aren't total shit heads and have some idea of how things should be etc. 

yes. we know the dems in america. .the mainstream left in america.. is like a right center party in europe. we get it. it is what it is. we change that as we can by trying to find people to better represent the ideas many of us have. but it's a lost cause to pour lot's of faith into this system. 

we know the dems foil progressive plans all the time. they fight against more progressive policies and politicians. sometimes this comes back to hurt them later. that's fine. 

> thats a pretty high bar which is systemically never going to happen, that can only come from outside

yeah.. that's the point. so what do we do in the mean time? try to manage the collapse to ease harm on vulnerable people. this can happen in various ways.. sometimes it's through voting and sometimes it's through community action/organizing and what not. 

also, still one of the funniest photos of the orange one. 

qv7dbaigynvb1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&a

Edited by ignatius
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I really wish that they would invent another political position besides president. It seems so difficult that our only chance at having good politics in this country is to elect the perfect leftist to this one position. Like yeah, obviously once we achieved that, we'd have a total victory, and would see zero pushback from congress or the supreme court. So people are absolutely justified on having tunnel vision over the presidency. But sometimes, I wish there was another way.

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2 hours ago, taphead said:

I really wish that they would invent another political position besides president. It seems so difficult that our only chance at having good politics in this country is to elect the perfect leftist to this one position. Like yeah, obviously once we achieved that, we'd have a total victory, and would see zero pushback from congress or the supreme court. So people are absolutely justified on having tunnel vision over the presidency. But sometimes, I wish there was another way.

thats not accurate, electoralism is a sham, thats the entire point, electing a "perfect leftist" to this one position will simply result in them being shot in the head by the CIA if they start getting too good. even if not, they will just be obstructed by the rest of the government, or their changes rolled back once they leave

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On 10/22/2023 at 7:55 AM, ignatius said:

also, still one of the funniest photos of the orange one. 

qv7dbaigynvb1.jpg?width=640&crop=smart&a

“Mr. Trump asked his wife, Melania Trump, to strut around Mar-a-Lago in her bikini 'so all the other guys could get a look at what they were missing out on.”  anthony pratt

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STEPHEN BANNON (HOST): Here's the playbook. Tom Emmer, the biggest never-Trumper in the House, a guy who hates Donald Trump, and is endorsed immediately by McCarthy. 
And here's the probability Tom Emmer is going to be speaker: zero.

https://www.mediamatters.org/steve-bannon/steve-bannon-says-tom-emmer-hates-donald-trump-and-hell-never-be-speaker-house

DC Draino: Trump calls Tom Emmer a RINO

Says he is “totally out of touch with Republican voters” and voting for him would be a “tragic mistake”

Consider Tom’s goose cooked!



Breaking News: House Republicans nominated Tom Emmer of Minnesota to be their candidate for speaker, but it's far from clear he can get the votes he needs to win the job on the House floor.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/live-blog/house-republicans-choose-new-speaker-nominee-live-updates-rcna121674

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Breaking News: House Republicans nominated Tom Emmer of Minnesota to be their candidate for speaker, but it's far from clear he can get the votes he needs to win the job on the House floor.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/live-blog/house-republicans-choose-new-speaker-nominee-live-updates-rcna121674

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and he just quit

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/live-blog/house-republicans-choose-new-speaker-nominee-live-updates-rcna121674

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5 minutes ago, chenGOD said:

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CHOCKING!

it's funny. he's talking about michael cohen. and of course there's more to it than that. he said "he told me it'd be great if this looked the way i wanted it to look then he looked at me and made sure i knew what it is he meant for me to do.. and he knew that i knew"

this testimony is about damages anyways.. the case is already over otherwise.. trump lost. so, this is only about damages. 

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1 hour ago, ignatius said:

it's funny. he's talking about michael cohen. and of course there's more to it than that. he said "he told me it'd be great if this looked the way i wanted it to look then he looked at me and made sure i knew what it is he meant for me to do.. and he knew that i knew"

this testimony is about damages anyways.. the case is already over otherwise.. trump lost. so, this is only about damages. 

also.. 958 likes lol

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"I came here to say it’s become clear to me this is not my time. So after much deliberation I have decided to suspend my campaign for president effective today" - Mike "Judas" Pence

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/mike-pence-drops-2024-presidential-race-rcna122619

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Extra strength Copium. As soon as Pelosi confronts these people, they immediately don’t assign any blame to Trump for their convictions and incarcerations, the explanations are mostly the same; lack of higher education, ex-military that believe they are above the law, and white man SDE. They all deserve what they got. 

IMG_6132.jpeg

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they're not all corrupt. geeks like me who spent their lives learning the lay of the land, with media spins, and familiarizing with journalistic methods, are able to have a good sense of what's real. many politicians are not corrupt. it's easy to confuse people, though. running for office costs money. that's how it's easy to confuse people about anyone. "hey look! they take money! they're corrupt!"

please, people, get past this, and try to pay closer attention. "they're all corrupt" is the message from the rightist media that panders to covering for the deeply corrupt national GOP. they're literally out there trying to make the left look corrupt so that the right won't look so bad. they want you to not pay close attention. they want you to think "it's all the same, it doesn't make a difference, they're all liars, they're all corrupt." this is the objective. and it's obviously false. you could run. canvas your town for a year and you can be elected mayor. do a good job for two years and you can run for state office. do a good job there and you can run for governor. etc. 

please don't let fantasies pedaled by agencies and foxish news outlets snuff out free society. the deluge of bad info we're drowning in is a real threat. the best solution is for individuals to take responsibility for not being full of shit. 

here, i'll give you a mystic secret. it's from socrates. know when you don't know. this is an elemental step toward being able to navigate in a hazardous information environment.

Edited by trying to be less rude
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