If Trump had allowed his lawyers to mount the best defense they could, he’d probably have a decent chance at complete acquittal or a hung jury.
Instead he forced them to perform a “defense” aimed at his base and maybe some people with “soft” dislike of him and most importantly aimed at hurting his “enemies” and puffing up his ego.
I did hear a persuasive argument that he might be acquitted on the charges related to checks he didn’t personally sign (his sons signed instead) but get convicted on the checks he did sign. From what was reported that means it’s possible the first 10 verdicts will be “not guilty” and the last 20+ will be “guilty.”
I actually sort of hope that’s what happens because 1) it will prove the jury wasn’t out to get him and 2) he’ll be feeling really good for those first verdicts then get gut punched for the last ones.
I wonder if this is the harbinger of a bunch of companies breaking up after decades of consolidation.
It would definitely be good to have a big round of breakups to get competition going again. Then we just have to fight against the consolidation that will start up in 20-30 years.
There was a part of me that held out hope that she would at a minimum just not endorse Trump. Seems like she’s decided to try to be his VP pick. Probably since Noem the dog slayer became unrealistic.
Indeed with Haley endorsing Trump now I think all the Trump cosplay idiots who’ve been showing up to court in Manhattan can hang it up.
What Republicans realized decades ago is this is fundamentally true. Every election is the most important election. They just leave off the “…so far” that should be at the end of the statement.
I think before Reagan (or maybe Gingrich) people could reasonably see some elections as less consequential than others. But the Republicans realized that it’s all about building. Build a bench of charismatic, intelligent, possibly sociopathic individuals. Get them in local government and then state government and then federal government. Tell your base voters that you’re building something that will one day pay off.
Just keep building, just keep building, and one day you have a juggernaut. Especially if your opponents didn’t build to match.
Democrats spent the 80s and 90s assuming the status was quo. They spent the last half of the 90s and the 00s living in the fantasy that what people liked about Clinton was the fiscal conservatism without the religion, so they should be more conservative.
Only very recently have progressives started breaking through.
Now we have to build.
Luckily the Republicans have hitched their wagon to a human wrecking ball. That might let Democrats catch up sooner than they otherwise would.
He’s doing what all the “everybody could be rich if they just did X” jackasses do: see some people who don’t have money make bad decisions and generalize it to all people who don’t have money.
Middle aged parents with 2-3 kids and jobs in the $40k to $60k range aren’t going out all the time, buying the latest gadget, buying new cars, etc. They’re scraping by.
They could do some “personal development” if they had the time and energy after working full time and caring for children. But they don’t.
Actually I’d like to see a comparison of the number of people in different income groups who “splurge” on the stuff Buffet is accusing them of versus those who have to “splurge” on an unexpected expense like a medical condition or fixing a broken car or an unexpected home repair. I’m betting people actually end up spending money on the latter way more than the former.
And it’s just disgusting hearing him complain about people using credit cards when he and all the other economic vampires in his cohort have been purposefully restricting wage growth since the 1970s when they introduced credit cards as a trap for young people who expected their quality of life to increase with increasing productivity the way it had for decades before.
Obviously this is a real and difficult neuro/psych issue to deal with, and I know some people who probably suffer (but aren’t formally diagnosed). Heck, I’ve been prone to letting certain negative comments send me on a spiral briefly myself.
Unfortunately like a lot of genuine neuro issues, this one seems like a really difficult one for typicals to interact with. Because there are people who react badly to genuine critiques, especially in regard to politics, religion, and tradition. Some of them probably are suffering from RSD but a lot aren’t.
We only know about when humans mastered fire or started using metal. But we know the exact date when the first powered flight took place. What are some really early “first ____” we know the date of for sure?
Have to be careful on this one as you don’t want to cause more harm than good. Make sure it’s all focused on disabling pumps and valves while not increasing the likelihood of releases.
Some idiots would go around blowing things up causing massive environmental damage when what we really want to do is just leave the stuff in the tanks it’s already in, or in the ground it’s already in.
It’s possible to build nice apartments that have a good amount of space to live in. But that’s not as profitable per sq ft for the property management companies that have been buying up all the land.
There’s also some minor regulatory reforms that are probably needed to allow a little more flexibility in building design, specifically around the required number/type/location of stairwells. But we have to be careful about that one because we don’t want to make death traps.
We need to go back to a 90% or higher tax rate on income over some threshold, and fix the loopholes that let wealthy people have income that doesn’t count as income. Especially the “take a loan and pay that back and all the activity there doesn’t count as income for tax purposes” bullshit.
And tax corporate profits more, and make a corporate tax system that rewards real R&D (while auditing to prevent fake tax shelter R&D), rewards higher employee salaries and better benefits (instead of taxing those), and rewards infrastructure investments like new factories but also investments in efficiency, water use reduction, etc.
I guess on balance it’s more important to me that the Democrats reject Greene than reject Johnson. It’s clear to everyone that Johnson is “weak” (in MAGA support) and dependent completely on Democrats to get anything done.
Now that that’s out in the open and he’s slightly a MAGA pariah, he’ll probably get back to more old fashioned Republican projects like destroying the environment, fucking over workers, giving billions to billionaires, and a blank check to the military.
Got a link for Biden calling them antisemitic (without also speaking against all forms of hate speech)?
I’ve heard Biden and others say that the protesters shouldn’t be using antisemitic, anti Muslim, or any hate speech. I haven’t heard him blanket call all the protestors antisemitic and only that. That’s what they do on FOX “News.”
Isn’t that a prerequisite for enshitification? Publicly-traded companies are required (by law, I think) to maximize profits for their shareholders, even if that means utterly ruining their original product (Reddit, Boeing, etc.), yes? What do you think?
I’ll let others address the “enshittification” angle but I thought I’d point out that “shareholder value uber allies” is a relatively recent … “innovation” … in economic theory, brought about by failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Milton Friedman in the last half of last century:
The rethinking of what the boards of companies are supposed to do (from maximize stakeholder value to maximize shareholder value) and how they can operate (from requiring justification to approve mergers to requiring justification to block mergers) really took off with them, and exploded when former union boss Ronald Reagan found “religion” (because Nancy’s pussy was just that good) and ruined the economy for workers.
Lots of other people contributed, including Clinton after he “won” the 1992 election with 40% of the vote due to Perot splitting the Republican vote. His campaign of fiscal conservatism but without less bigotry became the model for the Democratic Party for the next two decades.
Anyway, Biden’s FTC is finally working to help workers again, which might even release the death grip of the Chicago School from our economy. We’ll see after November I guess.
This genie is probably impossible to get back in the bottle.
People are going to just direct the imitative so called AI program to make the face just different enough to have plausible deniability that it’s a fake of this person or that person. Or use existing tech to age them to 18+ (or 30+ or whatever). Or darken or lighten their skin or change their eye or hair color. Or add tattoos or piercings or scars…
I’m not saying we should be happy about it, but it is here and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Like, if you tell your so called AI to give you a completely fictional nude image or animation of someone that looks similar to Taylor Swift but isn’t Taylor Swift, what’s the privacy (or other) violation, exactly?
Does Taylor Swift own every likeness that looks somewhat like hers?
What’s really gonna suck is when people are like “holy shit why did they let us kill all the bugs if they were so important?!!”
Personally my property (2 acres) is free of all pesticides and herbicides. I’m killing introduced species of plants (trees of heaven and privet) by hand mostly pulling them out of the ground.
This year I might add Japanese honeysuckle to the target list.
I mean we’re probably doomed to some sort of major collapse either way, but I’ll do what I can on the micro scale and vote for people who will fight for the right path on the macro (e.g. never Republican).
PS - I do use poison bait inside for ants and cockroaches so not 100%. Only when they get noticable. Sorry.
Yep! But they’re a dickens to actually eradicate. I’m going to be hatcheting some gashes in a big one or two on my property in August or September so I can poison its roots with glyphosate when it starts getting ready for fall. I’ve learned the hard way that if you leave the roots healthy you’re making tons of future work for yourself.
Privet is also a runner based plant and it’s also not from North America, but I’ve had more success looking it the old fashioned way.
It’s really gratifying to watch native species rebound and move back into the places after the introduced/invasive plants have been removed.
Well just for one example, Joe Biden has been aggressively using the powers he has via the department of education to cancel outstanding student loan balances that were completely legal and very profitable for usurious loan servicing companies.
No Republican would do that.
He and the Democrats leveraged their control of Congress in 2021 and 2022 to pass legislation that is going to do more to reduce our contribution to climate change than ever before. Not enough, but way more than any Republican would do.
I feel like that means our democracy is sort of working.
In so called “blue” states, they’re expanding voting access.
I agree that campaign contributions are a serious challenge, but for example Bernie and Elizabeth Warren have done great things without contributions from billionaires.
We can do this, but we need to stand up in the face of fear and push as hard as we can. The only thing to fear is fear itself!
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Donald Trump jury "will convict" in New York trial, legal analyst predicts (www.newsweek.com)
Russia denies Trump’s claim he can free US journalist if he wins election (www.theguardian.com)
Spokesman says ‘there aren’t any contacts’ with former president regarding Evan Gershkovich’s release from Russia...
Dupont is splitting into 3 organizations. (www.cnn.com)
Justice Department sues to break up Live Nation, parent of Ticketmaster (www.cnbc.com)
Haley says she will vote for Trump over Biden (thehill.com)
Groundhog day (midwest.social)
squander rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
RSD is a bitch (lemmy.world)
superfile - A pretty fancy and modern terminal file manager (raw.githubusercontent.com)
github.com/MHNightCat/superfile
What are some of the earliest "firsts" that we have a definite date for?
We only know about when humans mastered fire or started using metal. But we know the exact date when the first powered flight took place. What are some really early “first ____” we know the date of for sure?
What are the most powerful climate actions you can take? The expert view (www.theguardian.com)
House quickly rejects Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's effort to remove Speaker Johnson from office (apnews.com)
Voyager 1 (mander.xyz)
A YouTuber let the Cybertruck close on his finger to test the new sensor update. It didn't go well. (www.businessinsider.com)
Biden launches police state crackdown at US universities (www.wsws.org)
As Biden Plans to Reschedule Marijuana, Advocates Say 'Fully Legalize' It (www.commondreams.org)
Does enshitification happen because companies are publicly-traded?
Isn’t that a prerequisite for enshitification? Publicly-traded companies are required (by law, I think) to maximize profits for their shareholders, even if that means utterly ruining their original product (Reddit, Boeing, etc.), yes? What do you think?
Spurred by Teen Girls, States Move to Ban Deepfake Nudes (www.nytimes.com)
Study that asked people to count squashed bugs reveals worrying results (www.independent.co.uk)
Citizen science survey shows 78 per cent decline in ‘bug splats’ on number plates...
Man Sets Himself on Fire Near Courthouse Where Trump Is on Trial (www.nytimes.com)
Not much info at time of posting what prompted the man to do so
More than 400,000 songbirds killed by organised crime in Cyprus (www.theguardian.com)
Report links rise in birds trapped for human consumption to cuts in anti-poaching resources in area of British military base...