Let it be know that if you take office while actively committing fraud, embezzlement, and lying through your teeth about nearly every single detail of your life and accomplishments, the rest of Congress will ONLY let that slide for 11 months! You’ve been warned!
the most insulting part of this is ‘people’ suddenly pretending like we love and always loved the office, when it’s been a fundamental symbol of stagnation and boredom and misery in culture ever since they became widespread. NO ONE would voluntary want to spend 5 days in a shitty building after a commute wearing clothes they don’t want to with bosses sniffing around their necks all day leaving maybe 4 hrs a day to yourself in your home. ‘top talent’ or not, everyone deserves to be able to work where they feel most comfortable.
People used to make sardonic jokes about cubicles. Then cubicles disappeared in favor of the open office and somehow the jokes stopped, just as things got worse.
Through the course of my career I’ve somehow lost office space as I’ve ascended the corporate food chain. I had a private office/technician room in my first job out, then had an eight foot cubicle with high walls, then a six foot cubicle with low dividers, and then the pandemic hit. The operations guy at the last place was making noises about a benching arrangement after RTO, like people were going to put up with being elbow to elbow with Chris The Conference Call Yeller and Brenda The Lip Smacking Snacker while Team Loudly Debates Marvel Movie Trivia is yammering away the next row over.
Hell, if it meant getting a space to myself with enough privacy to hear my own thoughts I might consider giving up my current WFH gig. But everybody’s obsessed with building awful office hellscapes and I don’t have the constitution to put up with that kind of environment.
Studies have found that that those who work in open offices are more likely to take short term sick leave or a sick day. Those employees might be using 62% more of their sick days due to the environment. Employees with this office layout are also more prone to headaches and respiratory problems due to weakened immune systems.
Gonna be honest, I prefer to be in an office over WFH, despite WFH technically having “advantages”.
Home is an awful environment to work in. I get less done, worse quality and in general dislike it more. While that’s technically a personal problem, it’s not fair to say no one would voluntarily work in an office 5 days a week. I do, and know multiple other people who do as well.
WFH when you’re just starting your career sucks. Both my internships and start of my FT jobs were WFH, and it made it near impossible to learn to work with a team, get information from senior developers, get IT help if there was hardware issues and a ton of other minor things that aren’t a problem for someone who had been working at the company prior to going 100% remote, but are huge sticking points for new hires.
100% with you on the new hires thing. Was remote in college and have been for all my jobs. Maybe its a case of the grass is always greener but I would much prefer to predominantly work from an office. Maybe not 5x a week nor a sizeable commute but I feel like I’m missing out on a lot of career growth, networking, and team cohesion. As an OSS contributor, homelab hobiest, and adhd experiencer, I find it difficult to sepererate my headspaces and get into work mode.
You know, I work full time from home ever since covid and it is brilliant because I had a long commute to an office I didn’t really needed to be in because all my peers/colleagues are in other countries. But when I started out, I worked in a nice office which was a 10 minute bike ride from my home and it was brilliant. If I could do the same work within a 10 minute commute I do now, I would be in the office every day I think.
It also really depends on what “home” is. My current home is a tiny room in a cheap apartment (to save money) with a tiny kitchen, a small living room, and a joke of a dining area. I feel inclined to go to the office despite a 45 minute commute because there isn’t anywhere good to spread out and focus on work at home. Plus in-person connections with colleagues is another benefit. I’m currently hybrid with WFH 1 day out of 5.
I am the opposite, I thrive when I work from home. But it’s important for me to have a dedicated space for it, not in my bedroom, and free from distractions like wife, kids, pets, and neighbors with drills.
My home setup is 10x better than at the office… I have a great desk with lots of space, big awesome monitors, awesome keyboard and mouse with kvms to make switching to my personal PC easier. My coffee is better than any work coffee machine I ever used. My internet is much faster and more reliable.
I shit you not, at the last company I worked they proxied all web traffic through another country thousands of km away. As expected, it worked like shit and was failing constantly. And you couldn’t even access repos like maven central, because they used a proxy autoconfig file with hundreds of rules, which is not supported by any software except browsers.
And there’s also the benefits of having a private office, away from noisy coworkers and prying eyes.
“Found guilty” is inaccurate, since he was not charged with it as a crime. Rather, it was a finding of fact in a civil case. The standards of evidence are different, and a criminal prosecution would still have to prove the charge to a higher standard. But for purposes of civil liability, yeah, he did it.
The very fact that she said she could not tell if he used a finger or his penis kinda proves shes not lying… if she was set out to make money off him by lying Im pretty sure part of that lie would be “yeah his penus was def inside me bro”
I thought about that, but since guilty isn’t only a legal term and commonly implies responsibility for wrongdoing in general and the judge is clarifying trump is responsible for raping carroll regardless of the legal term used, naming his guilt is appropriate and perfectly accurate.
I haven’t been following this tbh since I’m not American but I did read another comment that said something about the statute of limitations so maybe criminal charges can’t be brought due to that weird part of the law where rape gets an expiry date.
Correct, the state passed a law allowing those cases where statue of limitations have been passed for criminal trails to still sue their attacker in civil court.
It’s been suggested this was passed specifically to target Trump, but a good number of sexual assaults never go reported and I believe a few hundred cases have come from this law.
It has since expired, it was only valid for one year.
Because, again, he wasn’t convicted in criminal court. And again, there is a different burden of proof in civil cases (preponderance of evidence vs. “Beyond a reasonable doubt.”). There are many reasons why a case may be brought in civil court and not criminal.
One famous example is OJ Simpson. Ruled not guilty of murder in criminal court, but lost in civil court and had to pay Ron Goldman’s family a fuck ton of money, as well as giving up any profits he may have made, or ever will make, based on the murders (that ridiculous book, etc).
Not enough evidence to convince a jury in a criminal trial, but more than enough for civil.
See also Martin Luther King Jr’s family bringing a preponderance of evidence to a civil trial alleging the FBI and CIA were behind the assassination and winning $100 and a footnote in history books.
Do you guys use ‘Preponderance of Evidence’ as the standard of proof for civil cases in the US? In Australia we use ‘On the Balance of Probabilities’. I wonder if there’s a technical difference there.
(Tiny pedantic note but the Burden of Proof is about who has to produce the evidence, not the level of evidence required to make a finding - that’s the Standard of Proof)
There is also the notion that is not all or nothing depending on the proof for and against a defendant. You can ask for X amount, but only get X-Y because the proof against the defendant weren’t enough to grant all the X amount.
In criminal court, you are either guilty or not and then, if you are guilty, you can have factors that reduces or lengthen the sentence.
People say I’m guilty, he’s guilty etc but it’s unlikely to hear “they were found guilty” outside of jurisprudence, and to say that when referring to a judicial trial and then say you meant a lay term when the professional term exists is a bit lax.
I wouldn’t say “WiFi” in place of “internet” while referring to an IT problem for example.
Less common outside of jurisprudence, sure. The term is purposefully in my personal TIL body text rather than the title where I kept things succinct and formal. Using a different term doesn’t change his guilt of rape, or that a jury legally found him liable for rape and a judge definitively found him guilty of rape.
It was found that he raped someone, he is guilty of rape, but a judge did not find him guilty of rape. Why do you insist so much on muddling the definitions of these things? It’s not good for democracy or the judicial process to use terms randomly and without definition.
The judge cited definitions offered by the American Psychological Association and the Justice Department, which in 2012 expanded its definition of rape to include penetration “with any body part or object.”
Using the definition of the word rape, the judge declared trump guilty of rape.
Having used definitions, this “judge definitively found him guilty of rape”.
You may personally be more familiar with other uses of the words “definitively”, “judge”, “guilty”, “found” or “rape”, but their usage here is in no way inaccurate or untrue.
This shit right here. Both times I was exited for a candidate he got thrown out because the party leaders didn’t like him, first with Hillary, and then with Biden. I’m just going to continue to vote for not-trump because I know how bad it will be but I don’t want any centrist democrat almost as much as I dont want trump.
IMO, Biden was nominated because he was a fairly uncontroversial (by mainstream sensibilities anyway) white male candidate who also isn’t that attached to many positions that would threaten the powers that be.
Biden is a weather vane that swings in accordance to the winds. Which is all that was needed to beat a historically unpopular candidate like Trump. Thankfully, Trump is such a bad option that even Biden can be a palatable candidate.
Why this fossil didn’t bend the knee and allow another younger, more exciting candidate step up for 2024 is beyond me though. But I guess seeing the average age and mental capability of Congress, it shouldn’t be surprising. IMO, everyone over the age of 65 should be ineligible for elected office. They are at retirement age, and have no real, justifiable stake in the future. They should retire with the knowledge they won life and can live out the rest of their days in comfort and leave running the country to people who have skin in the game and the energy/mental faculties to actually play it.
The other candidates dropped out because Biden blew them out of the water in South Carolina and his campaign picked up momentum from there. A number of candidates effectively had their campaigns ended in South Carolina because it was clear they couldn’t secure the crucial black vote.
This is normal. It has happened in primaries for decades. Candidates drop out as it becomes obvious they don’t have a pathway to victory and the field narrows.
It’s not some absurd conspiracy.
Bernie’s strategy of only winning a plurality and not expanding his base was a terrible miscalculation.
Bernie’s didn’t have working class or minority support. Hence his heavy defeats in places like Michigan.
Bernie was simply not that popular with the electorate.
I voted Bernie but this is absolutely true. I mean, he himself said his campaign was resting on young progressives coming out to vote for him and guess what? They did what all the people in here are doing- bitch and then NOT VOTE.
Does anyone wonder why “the establishment” doesn’t pay attention to progressive attitudes? It’s because progressives don’t fucking show up every. single. time. like other blocs. They bitch all the goddamn time but refuse to participate if their version of Santa Claus isn’t running. The truth of it is that you need to get involved and push the ideas and people you want and if they fail to get the primary nod, then you still vote to advance your goals as far as you can (ie. the moderate Democrat.) If they do get the nod (a la AOC) then you keep fielding more and more candidates. Look how they have pushed the convo further left already.
Someone best explained it as “you’re going 10 blocks north. One taxi will take you 5 blocks, the other takes you 10 blocks south of where you’re at. Do you just not take either? Or do you at least go 5 blocks north.” Also because if you don’t vote to go 5 blocks north, guess what? You’re going 10 blocks south. Great job- even further from your goal.
But no- I’m sure after years and years and years of sitting out and complaining on the sidelines, surely the Dems will come to their senses and go “hey- why don’t we run someone completely far left so maybe these people who refuse to ever come out might show up.” Sure, that’ll do it. That’s worth betting the farm on- run someone that is essentially progressive Jesus and risk alienating every voter who does show up every single time.
Biden won because black women liked him and they actually go out and vote in the primaries, unlike the louts in this thread who are literally talking about how they won’t vote.
Biden won because black women liked him and they actually go out and vote in the primaries, unlike the louts in this thread who are literally talking about how they won’t vote.
I think that goes with him being uncontroversial. Black people in America are fairly conservative, and politically they like to go for people who can win that aren’t too radical. Biden was that candidate.
Why this fossil didn’t bend the knee and allow another younger, more exciting candidate step up for 2024 is beyond me though.
Probably because the geriatrics fucked two whole generations of politicians by not stepping down when they should have.
Gen X and millennials don’t have enough horses in the race with the experience necessary to run for president because they got fucked by the boomers.
We’re going to be in for an exciting ride over the next two decades as something like 40% of Congress retires or dies in office without anyone with experience available to replace them.
I'd rather we nominate someone who is electable, i.e., palatable to centrists, even if they're not as exciting as someone who would move the Overton window leftwards.
What if is instead of focusing on a vanishingly small number of centrist swing voters, you focused on the 35% of non-voters by improving their material conditions?
Maybe all the people bitching need to show up EVERY ELECTION and then they’ll start getting good candidates. But time and again progressives and everyone else just decide to not vote so therefore don’t even come close to getting what they want. Vote in every election for even dog catcher like it’s your religion and maybe you’ll start seeing change.
The majority of non-voters believe there is no material difference between candidates. Improving candidates is not going to fix that. The problem is lower level civic engagement rather than “Pick a more leftist candidate.”
Not being trump is enough for me. Sure, I’d love someone better. But I’d vote for a wooden brick if it meant america wouldn’t turn into a dictatorship.
Or maybe grow up and realize that political offices and the people that fill them shouldn’t be “exciting”. Maybe the problem is that we all want someone exciting… With no regard for competence.
Problem is that you need to convince tens of millions of people to grow up. I think this chap here is merely suggesting we give the idiots what they want.
Candidates that will the whole party will find exciting are basically a once in a generation event, if that. This generation’s such candidate was Obama. Democrats as a party are reliant on far too big of a tent to make this a viable strategy or thought process.
A candidate that I, a far left progressive, would get excited about is a candidate that a lot of center-of-left or moderate voters would find boring. Even within wings of the party there’s not going to be lockstep excitement (go back to Dec 2019 and ask Sanders supporters how “excited” they’d be for a Warren candidacy!).
This line of argument is consistently just people pining for candidates that more closely reflect our own ideological views, not a reflection of the reality available to us. There was no such candidate in 2016 or 2020 and won’t be for 2024. I’m not going to hold my breath for 2028 either. Maybe by 2032 we might see the next Obama, someone that excites the whole party.
I gave you an upvote because I agree with the spirit of your message. However, I would like to remind you that if the DNC hadn’t literally rigged the system against Bernie Sanders in 2016 that we more than likely would not be where we are today.
There was a HUGE amount of grassroots support behind Bernie (the most in modern American history), and the Democrats burned a lot of goodwill with voters by shoe-horning Hillary in as the heir apparent. There has never been a candidate that bridged the gap the way Bernie did in my lifetime, and that one single decision did incalculable damage to the world.
I will gladly vote for Biden because I know it is a moral imperative to do so, and I am not a moron. I am also not trying to take away from his legislative victories because I believe they warrant more merit than they have received. However, I will not easily forgive or forget the chicanery, underhanded closed door attempts at king-making, and generally coercive tactics utilized by the DNC that got us here.
Yeah, many of whom went on to vote for Donald Trump in the general election.
It’s “great” that he had so much “moderate” support, but if it had anything whatsoever to do with his actual policy views, so many of them wouldn’t have stayed home or voted Trump.
They just shifted that excitement from Bernie to Trump, because it has nothing to do with policy. They ultimately made things worse by poisoning the well against Hillary.
These aren’t the kind of people you want to court.
I disagree. If he had won the primary, those would have been voters for him instead of Trump, and I truly believe he would have won, or at least been more competitive than Hillary. People misjudged the mood of the voters badly prior to that election.
That’s exactly what I meant when I said he bridged the gap. Every single person I knew from every walk of life in my state were Bernie supporters including a surprising number of rural voters, moderates, and younger conservatives as you said in your post. I have just never seen anyone who’s messaging was so effective at bringing so many different people together over solution oriented propositions on the issues.
Nothing has ever jaded me as much politically as watching what the DNC did to Bernie. The amount of fear they had over a candidate who was able to muster legitimate support from a heterodox voter base was very telling, and it shaped my political views more than any other experience in my life.
I think the bigger problem was that he was completely honest and showed that his message was consistent with his actions and votes over his career. Being smeared and pushed aside early on (see Rachel Maddow and all of the media trying to say Hilary had too many Delegates already pledged to her to overcome before the first primary vote did incredible damage that the “she got more votes than Bernie” group cleanly ignore had a huge effect, and that he still nearly won anyway shows how big the support really was that the Democratic party actively destroyed.
If you’re going to make an extraordinary claim like “Rachel Maddow’s (objectively correct) reporting that the entire concept of superdelegates is bullshit, changed the outcome of the Democratic primary,” you better cough up some extraordinary evidence.
What an absolutely absurd thing to claim. This kind of shit makes me question what your intentions here may be.
If you’re going to make an extraordinary claim like “Rachel Maddow’s (objectively correct) reporting that the entire concept of superdelegates is bullshit, changed the outcome of the Democratic primary,” you better cough up some extraordinary evidence.
If you have to badly fake a quote from apostr you are replying to, then you clearly don’t have a legitimate arguement and need evidence to porove that your commments even have any merit at all. I clearly stated “see Rachel Maddow and all of the media trying to say Hilary had too many Delegates already pledged to her to overcome before the first primary vote did incredible damage”
Nothing there at all about the entire conecpt of superdelegates that you yourself self-inserted and shows that perhaps the truth may lie in you either believing completely in the lie to push away anyone who isn’t a true blue Democrat from having any say in the party’s direction, or you are one of those far right Trump supporting trolls who used this “I supported/voted for Bernie in the primary until Hilary won the DNC nomination” argument to pretend that they were actually on the side of Bernie supporters to get them to vote for Trump. Lies, gaslighting and pretending to be on the same side as the person they are arguing with tells me which side you are on and what YOUR intentions here are.
But can we please stop pushing this bullshit agitprop designed to divide Democrats and progressives?
Political parties aren’t government organizations, they’re private companies. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, and even though he often caucuses with them, he’s been very outspoken against the Democratic party. Why would anyone ever think that the DNC would do anything to promote him over Hillary?
Even with all of that said, Bernie still came pretty damn close, and the DNC didn’t “shoe-horn” anyone in. Hillary got more votes, it’s time to get over it.
But can we please stop pushing this bullshit agitprop designed to divide Democrats and progressives?
I fail to see how you could misconstrue my comment as an attempt to divide the base? I specifically said that I would gladly vote for Biden. That does not mean that I am afraid to levy legitimate criticism against the inherently anti-democratic primary process that has continuously shown itself as a failed mechanism for protecting democracy as well as providing for the material well being of our fellow citizens.
Political parties aren’t government organizations, they’re private companies. Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat, and even though he often caucuses with them, he’s been very outspoken against the Democratic party. Why would anyone ever think that the DNC would do anything to promote him over Hillary?
Yes, this is a big problem, and at some point we are going to have to engage with this issue if we wish to move forward as a civilization. I agree that this election is not the time to break down or deconstruct this monster that has been created. I would think it should be self-evident that there are serious issues with this kind of monolithic architecture given the Republican Party has fully bent the knee while being almost fully taken over by fascist, christian-nationalist, authoritarians. If you think this is a problem that is just going to go away if we happen to preserve democracy for one more election cycle then I would implore you to listen to reason. The system that allowed this to happen is inherently a problem (amongst many others, I will grant you). Again, at some point we are going to have to wrestle that demon. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but it needs to be done while we still have the opportunity to do so…
Even with all of that said, Bernie still came pretty damn close, and the DNC didn’t “shoe-horn” anyone in. Hillary got more votes, it’s time to get over it.
Agree to disagree on that one. I think the results speak for themselves. Hillary was a historically unpopular candidate who followed a historically popular candidate. It was a losing proposition, and the apathy towards voting for her is exactly how we got here. You can continue to ignore the very real Kompromat that ultimately soured the electorate against her, as well as the tactical decisions by the DNC (via her dear friend and chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz) to both prop up Trump as a spoiler candidate and ignore the populist support behind Bernie in favor of continuing their structural consolidation of power. However, I am not so naïve, and so willing to forgive or forget as I said before. That does not mean that I will bury my head in the sand, and throw fuel on the fire by disengaging with the political system therefore doing my part in guaranteeing the downfall of democracy ™. Instead, I make it a point to engage locally as well as nationally so that I am practicing what I preach by supporting candidates who are attempting to reframe these issues in a way that is more constructive for future generations.
Agree to disagree about the objective fact that Hillary won the Democratic primary by receiving more votes? Yeah, no.
He lost. Don’t be like conservatives. Don’t create new realities to try to comfort yourself.
It’s people like you that make Bernie supporters look bad. The kind of fucking idiots that voted for Trump out of spite, so they could watch it all burn down of whatever, because their candidate of choice predictably lost. He may have done better than most people anticipated, but, and I cannot stress this enough, he fucking lost. He received less votes. Please be better than conservatives, and start living in reality again
That isn’t what I said. I was pointing out that while that may have been the case it wasn’t without controversy surrounding the less than democratic approach the DNC utilized in garnering that outcome. I’m not saying it didn’t happen, it did happen. However, that does not paint a nuanced picture of the procession of events that lead to that eventuality.
Edit: Since you seem so inclined on personally attacking me.
I will point out that it is exactly this kind of behavior and ad hominem attack dogging that makes people afraid or unwilling to engage with politics in the first place, and we are all worse for that in my opinion.
Secondly, I did not vote for Trump, and you attempting to paint me into that convenient corner to justify your vitriol because I disagree with you shows your true colors sir. I hope in the future you can aim to be better, and engage with less hostility.
Lastly, I am no way inventing some new reality by pointing out issues with the primary process as a way to comfort myself or mentally masterbate. I fully accept the reality of the events as well as their outcomes. Where we differ is on the semantics of why they occurred. You can attack me all you want for wishing to engage with the problems as I see them within the primary system as it currently exists, but I will continue to raise my concerns regardless because I feel it is important to do so.
I didn’t personally attack you, I was describing a type of person and I said that’s how you’re coming off.
I’m questioning your motives, because you’re doing work in this thread and whining about a completely fair and straightforward election that happened nearly a decade ago. What kind of positive outcome do you think this accomplishes?
Keep bringing up DNC dirty laundry. That’ll show em. That’ll make the Democratic party progressive.
It’s people like you that make Bernie supporters look bad. The kind of fucking idiots that voted for Trump out of spite, so they could watch it all burn down
Calling me a fucking idiot by proxy is still calling me a fucking idiot. That is a personal attack as far as I’m concerned, but perhaps that was not your intention. I still think it was at best, intentionally disrespectful.
I’m also not “whining”, I was engaging with you because you responded to my comment. I was never shitty towards you, I engaged in good faith with the things you had to say, and if that is where we needed to leave it then it’s all good.
However, you intentionally took it another step further by using abusive language to justify your position. I’m not some pantywaist who can’t take criticism, but I am also trying to make a point to be better now that I left the Reddit bubble because that is the kind of community I would like to foster. If you don’t then by all means, continue with your current trajectory.
Maybe… Maaaaaayyyyyyybeeeee the left voters need to actually show up to vote.
Now everyone is going to say they voted in a presidential election, possibly even a primary which makes them a rarity! Those aren’t what we’re talking about. The right has made it a point to vote on everything even as small as schoolboards so the only people voting in the tiny little races are the right wing rage crowd or the centrists who are being pulled to the right. Yes, the presidential vote matters, but frankly those lower down votes mean a lot more and if you watch how the Republican primaries are going, shows exactly how much power that batch that will show up has over a party.
This is some real “pull yourself up by the bootstraps” energy. If “just vote” actually worked, they’d change the system just enough so it doesn’t. Assembling establishment voltron in 2020 during the primaries is just a tiny taste of the lengths that democrats will go to in order to prevent a progressive candidate from winning.
That’s cute everyone gives up, bitches and does nothing, then complains it doesn’t work.
Here’s a free tip- get off your ass, get involved, and WORK FOR IT.
but hey, easier to bitch on lemmy and blame everyone else eh.
I even support left ideas but the left in general absolutely sucks at getting the vote out. Look at AOC and how hard she and her people worked and got elected. That’s your template but yet, not enough do that. Sorry but throwing your hands up and saying it can’t be done is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Thing is, it isn’t “Just vote”, it’s being absolutely active every step of the way. Dunno what your territory is but my state we’re having an absolute route of the ultra-right wing going for every local position with the Republicans national conference funding them, the Dems have considered the entire state a lost cause.
So kinda, yea, it is a pull yourself up by the bootstraps, and anyone else who you can pull up as well because we’re sure as hell not getting help from the top, but it’s either that or sit on our fucking hands and go “whelp”. Remember, whether you like her or not, AOC primaried the supposed “2nd in command” Democrat. If you don’t like the establishment, you root it out from the bottom.
Or maybe you need to understand that the down ticket races are more important than the presidency?
Change in the US starts at the bottom. Not the top.
Fuck the presidency. Just vote for the candidate that isn’t going to burn the country down.
You want real change? Real progressivism? Vote progressives into local offices. Your young, progressive education board member today is your congressional rep tomorrow. Your congressional rep today is your presidential hopeful tomorrow.
Let the status quo dems toss whatever geriatric they want at the presidency and vote them in so we don’t get another trump, or worse, a president desantis or something.
Presidents don’t often push new laws anyway. You want to change the country? Help take the House and the Senate. As long as the president is the same party they’re not going to veto progressive legislation.
You want real change? Real progressivism? Vote progressives into local offices
Show up to every local election. Pay attention at the local level. Use your passion against the two party system to get third-party candidates elected to your state house.
Anyone “worth getting excited about” is going to challenge the status quo too much - even nominally - for the DNC to be okay with it. They are conservative in the descriptive sense. “No-one’s standard of living will fundamentally change.”
I get that we have many problems that aren’t really being actively solved, but personally I’ve been pretty happy with this return-to-status-quo term as compared to the previous non-status-quo term… and right now the narcissistic traitor is leading the nomination polls.
You’ve been pretty happy with status quo have you? Great, love that for you. Sounds like being apathetic to the problems is working out for you specifically. I certainly wouldn’t want you to have to think about the enormous numbers of disenfranchised, poor and minority people who overwhelmingly don’t turn out to vote because they don’t see a real difference in their lives between parties and the dems aren’t doing anything to prove to them why they should care. That sounds like it wouldn’t be comfortable for you, and that’s the top priority here.
You’ve been pretty happy with status quo have you?
I’ve been pretty happy with this return-to-status-quo term as compared to the previous non-status-quo term
Context matters. If you take my words out of context, then you aren’t actually addressing what I said, you’re addressing a straw man. Or did you intend to imply that you were happier with the previous president?
And this is putting words in my mouth:
Sounds like being apathetic to the problems is working out for you specifically.
But never mind your flawed approach to debate, let’s actually take a look at what’s been done during Biden’s time in office:
The bill’s economic-relief provisions are overwhelmingly geared toward low-income and middle-class Americans, who will benefit from (among other provisions) the direct payments, the bill’s expansion of low-income tax credits, child-care subsidies, expanded health-insurance access, extension of expanded unemployment benefits, food stamps, and rental assistance programs.
"Historians, economists and engineers interviewed by The Associated Press welcomed Biden’s efforts. But they stressed that $1 trillion was not nearly enough to overcome the government’s failure for decades to maintain and upgrade the country’s infrastructure."
Since the May 2020 onshoring of TSMC used by Under Secretary of State Keith J. Krach as a catalyst for the bill and to secure the U.S. semiconductor supply chain, a significant number of companies and a list of ecosystem suppliers have committed or made announcements for investments and jobs in the US.
“Nine months ago, President Joe Biden signed a sweeping bipartisan gun law, the most significant legislative response to gun violence in decades.[…]Several months in, the law has had some success: Stepped-up FBI background checks have blocked gun sales for 119 buyers under the age of 21, prosecutions have increased for unlicensed gun sellers and new gun trafficking penalties have been charged in at least 30 cases around the country. Millions of new dollars have flowed into mental health services for children and schools.” [reference]
Some of those accomplishments are worth celebrating, but:
A competent response to COVID-19
lol are you kidding? The only countries on Earth with a competent response to COVID were New Zealand, South Korea, and China.
Supporting domestic manufacturing of semiconductors
This is just tradewar bullshit with China. I work in manufacturing so I’m not against seeing more investment in my sector, but like, this isn’t about making good American jobs. It’s only about preparing for the inevitable war over Taiwan.
I could compile a similar list of their failures if I cared to. This is just a gish gallop.
Here’s one: Hillary’s campaign directly promoted the extreme far right leading directly to Trump’s victory in 2016.
In its self-described “pied piper” strategy, the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new “mainstream of the Republican Party” in order to try to increase Clinton’s chances of winning.
That’s not “good”, that’s “enabling fascism”. Absolute clown shit.
If you have to compare them to outright fascists to say they are comparatively “good”, that’s not a great look, but even then you can’t ignore when they do shit like this. You can’t hide behind their supposed good intentions either. They nearly threw 2020 by pushing Biden into everyone’s faces like a wet fart and saying, “At least it’s not a torrent of diarrhea! Vote for the wet fart please!”
I never told anyone not to vote as far left as was practical - which in the US means voting Dem. I am simply pointing out the reality that the most disenfranchised people in the US don’t even vote. Not voting isn’t a sign of privilege, thinking voting will change anything is a sign of privilege, because it means you’re in the increasingly small minority that might see any change from it.
You say I’m letting the perfect be the enemy of the good, but you actively defend mediocrity from any and all criticism because you can’t see past the false dichotomy you’ve been presented with. If I want my kids to leave the park, I don’t say, “We’re leaving now,” I say, “Do you want to leave in 5 minutes or 10?” and they respect the results, even though I invented the entire spectrum of possibility for them. The two party system has done the same thing to you.
It doesn’t matter why you’re happy with the status quo, what matters is that you are defending the status quo. That makes you functionally conservative. Just because there are other conservatives that are worse by comparison doesn’t change that.
i doubt it. i bet they think what the cia wants them to think about it, but knowledge is a justified true belief, and my bet is that they believe a lot of things about those ideas that just aren’t true.
Because if voters are excited, they may start voting in primaries…
Every since Obama beat Clinton 15 years ago, party leaders seem more motivated to make sure their pick wins the primary than a Democrat winning the general.
“Moderates” seem ineffictive because they’re not trying to just win, they’re trying to win by as little as possible. Like a corrupt pro athlete who’s not throwing the game, but trying to win by less than the spread.
They know the reason most people vote for moderates like Biden, is if they don’t, someone like trump would win. It’s just the party leaders would rather trade back and forth than let Dems like FDR win every election for decades.
Biden’s first presidential primary was 35 years ago…
He was the expected front runner due mainly to his (at the time) exceptional public speaking but got caught plagiarizing speeches, lying about his grades in law school, and even people finding out he cheated while in law school by plagiarising papers.
But everyone forgot about all that because he spent 8 years standing next to Obama. And the only reason he got that job was to make old white people less uncomfortable voting for a Black guy.
That’s a great way to put it. Both parties are funded by dark money interests, one drives us to the right and the other keeps us in place. This is described as the ratchet effect
and millions are claiming the democrats are radicals, little do they know that the country was more progressive on certain fronts 50 years ago. So they have to resort to blaming gays and trans, because everything else about the current staye of the country is kinda right-wingy to begin with.
I cannot believe that there are companies and non-wingnuts who are still actively using that site at this point. Like maybe at the start it was ha-ha funny watching him flail about with code printouts and unplugging random microservices leading to outages, but I feel like the moment he started actively funneling money to alt-right knuckleheads and human traffickers should have been enough of a kick in the pants for even folks heavily reliant on the platform to make their exit.
Yep. It’s easy to complain or change your profile picture or share a link but if putting your money where your mouth is results in even the slightest discomfort or change to your comfort zone, that’s usually where people stop having a problem with the latest offense.
As long as our lives keep moving unaffected we’ll abide anything 😞
That’s the power of critical mass. Person 1 won’t leave because they have too many followers and follows Persons 2, 3 and 4, who also have too many followers and only follow person 5 and 6 there, who…
The decline is gradual, but will hardly be complete. Facebook isn’t as used as some years ago, but it’s still absurdly big. Xitter is likely to lose some relevancy, but there’s not much that can be done to truly “kill” it. One way to speed that up is if space karen x decides to block all porn.
The problem is that there isn’t a great replacement for it now. The same with reddit. I’m on here and I’m on Bluesky. The main uses I have for both Reddit and Twitter/X is sports news and discourse. Reddit for the discourse and Twitter for the news. There aren’t the communities here to have that. I want to talk Orioles baseball but the Orioles community here literally has zero comments other than bot comments updating scoring updates/pitching changes during the game threads. I’m trying to do my part and comment/post stuff to them but without any actual responses or conversation it feels like yelling into the wind.
Yea a lot of the niche communities haven’t and probably won’t migrate to these smaller sites like Lemmy and Mastodon. Don’t know how to solve the issue either.
In this case, the Orioles would have to announce they have an official mastodon to get most fans to move to it.
Personally I’ve just stopped using the internet for checking on my niche hobbies. A good number of Reddit clones have been trying to populate communities with bots to just post links but without any discourse, it’s the same effect as just googling “topic” and filtering for links from this week. I’m sure it will get better with time. Maybe
My utility company uses Twitter, and keeps it updated with better information than they do via text message alerts. I wish they would get a mastodon account. During tornado season or ice storms, it’s nice to know if power will be back on in an hour or in three days. And once the boil water notice appeared on Twitter a couple of hours before being sent out by text.
Yep. There are only so many people willing to take the leap for ideological reasons. I bailed from Twitter the day Apartheid Boy reinstated Donald Trump (but laughed when Donald decided to start his own dollar-store Twitter instead). Most people aren’t willing to go that far.
I’m tired of being manipulated & jerked around by shitfucks like Apartheid Boy, so I came here for ideological reasons, specifically, because I think it’s time to bring democracy to social media, and the distributed Fediverse model is the way to do that. Those playing ball with the Zucks and Musks and Spezs, should know they’re playing footsie with wannabe dictators, so don’t be surprised when they get shit dictated at them.
Why must every faction of Progressives attack each other. Bernie Sanders is the most solid progressive I know of, but Code Pink wants to attack him because his Ukraine support isn't anti-war? I'm anti war. In particular I'm anti the war that Russia started by invading Ukraine. Anti war doesn't mean just letting the bad guy do whatever they want. If so, then anti-war is pro tyranny, because they always let the aggressor invade.
The issue is that the centrist and right wing media latch on to the narrative of these fringe weirdos and pretend that they represent the entirety of the left wing, even though there are WAY MORE lefties who find them disdainful.
We have less than a dozen morons here. They don’t represent anyone but themselves.
Meanwhile we have entire factions of the Republican party at war with themselves from the Lincoln Project to the infighting in the House just this week.
All of them intend to vote for Trump in November, regardless of legal court findings, if they have any chance to vote form him, through legal means or otherwise they will all do it.
Because Bernie’s a lukewarm progressive at best nowadays and he’s incapable of actually influencing policy. The Democratic party is stuck in a rut caused by decades of neoliberal policy (which, for example, is why Clinton got so many resources during the Democrat primaries) and refuses to even consider a more radical alternative.
Voting isn’t working to actually institute change in America. Either the country needs to push more power down to the states, or it needs complete electoral reform to remove the FPTP system that got America into this mess.
Edit- why am I getting downvoted because this idiot has some weird definition of what a progessive is, and discounts Sen Sanders career over one decision he disagrees with that happened 25 years ago. I’m not agreeing with him, I was saying his useage of “solid progressive” is as dumb as his whole argument
Yugoslavia was invading Kosovo and commiting ethnic cleansing of Albanians at the time. Agree or disagree with how it was executed, it fits with the idea that he opposes the aggressors in war
The intervention was a key reason the war ended after multiple years of conflict and ethnic cleansing. Are you saying that ending the war caused more ethnic cleansing afterwards than was already happening? That ending war made things less stable?
The intervention also lead to many innocents (like the chinese embasy) being targetted and bombed by US forces.
I do agree that the intervention was likely needed in this case, but that intervention should not have taken the form of carpet bombing as it ended up killing people completely not involved in the conflict; Clinton even apologised for this and recongised it as a negative.
The tensions have never went away however, the campaigns of mass imprisonment have only put it to sleep for a while and if recent tensions are anything to go by, they are likely to escelate again.
My sources on this are reading and being friends with a few people who grew up through this war, it is a harrowing one and I would say that often times its better to have ‘no opinion’ on matters concerning this unless you have personal stakes in it. Thats not directed at anyone in particular, just more towards americans who use this conflict to score cheap points.
The war itself made things less stable and, arguably, more people died as a byproduct of the war than if the war had never happened.
The fact that things recovered (ish) is a convenient coincidence and not the expectation. If you look at other times the US or NATO intervened, you’ll see why it’s not a given that things will be more stable afterwards.
Well we can play “what if” all we want, but bringing it back to the main point of Sanders, you can argue all you want about if it was the correct course of action but his vote was to stop an invading force.
Sure, but that’s a perfectly valid reason for anti-war protestors to dislike him. There’s a belief out there that diplomacy can resolve most conflicts and that military force should only be used after diplomacy is exhausted.
There’s a reason the UN hadn’t yet approved an intervention.
Russia indicated they would veto and both China and India were also opposed to it (though India doesn’t really matter in terms of UNSC resolutions). Remember that Russia had been voting for earlier resolutions on the issue (1160 and 1199) and China had been abstaining to prior votes under the policy of nonintervention on internal matters.
It’s important to note that, according to this translation of the Serbian Assembly, on March 23rd, the Serbian government had accepted the notion of Kosovo’s autonomy under the condition of avoiding NATO intervention:
The National Assembly of the Republic of Serbia empowers the state delegation to sign a political agreement on self rule in Kosovo-Metohija on which agreement will be reached by representatives of all ethnic communities living in Kosovo-Metohija
(at the time, Albanians were still by far the dominant ethnic community).
I’d argue that NATO intervention was likely to be one of the key factors that stopped Russia from advocating for the agreement. With pressure from all other parties, it’s hard to imagine a world where Serbia wouldn’t be forced to come to a more agreeable compromise. The OSCE KVM prior to the deterioration of negotiations was doing it’s job of preventing further escalation, after all, and it’s important to note that only about a third of the 1.2 million Albanians displaced by the war had been displaced up to that point (largely due to work by the KVM) and that, as a direct consequence of NATO intervention, the forced displacement of Kosovar Albanians was accelerated significantly.
One of the things that made me really like Sanders when he was first campaigning for president was when I looked up his record on American war and he had a voting record that tended to follow a quote from him that amounted to something like (paraphrasing), “War should be the last resort, but if a war is started, we need to see it fully see it through.”
It’s not like siding with Ukraine and getting into that conflict is supporting warfare. It’s seeking to prevent warmongers from profiting off a senseless war. The idea that abandoning Ukraine to just be invaded and allowing Russia to get whatever they want by force is an, “Anti-war,” stance is fucking absurd.
I am anti the war that “USA started by attempting a coup in 2003, and succeeding with another coup in 2013, to manufacture a war against Russia”. I support Russia defending itself from NATO’s genocidal biochemical warfare attempts and Ukrainian militia Nazis killing thousands of ethnic Russians for 8 years.
You mean to tell me that a Trump deal was shady from the start, a whole bunch of people involved in it are under investigation and facing criminal charges, and in the end a whole bunch of people are going to lose their shirts and another business will go bankrupt?
Surely you jest! This has never happened with any of Trump’s transactions before!!!
This but kind of unironically, him doing this makes it much more likely the US government will blow some of its military budget to fund some sort of competitor.
If Musk doesn’t learn to play ball, the us government might well take control of the tech for the remainder of the war. Geopolitics is the game that is played with all the pieces.
“they” are the same people who control politics and have ensured that the balance isn’t disrupted, please grow to realise this, it is not natural for humans to be divided down the middle over how to follow natural law
What the fuck are you going on about? Also they in fucken qoutes, smells like 4Chan JQ trite. Also natural law? Like fucken gravity, or are ya vague posten about trans folks. Ya know what it doesnt matter, your entire comment read like a damned dog whistle and I am satisfied pointen it out.
If ya can give a reasonable explanation please do. If not piss off.
stop using full grammar when you can’t even type correctly half the time, you need to establish a firm grasp upon the logic with which the world exists in to understand that most things pushed nowadays aren’t correct, i suggest you exercise your mind by means of theorising about concepts rather than jumping upon a wish to “see sources”, because the sources are invented by those who want to keep you from your own mind :)
I have never seen someone give off stronger sovereign citizen vibes without specifically mentioning “traveling not driving” or admiralty law. If you’re trolling, well done.
Its called phonetic writing ya shitstain, a concept pioneered by Samuel Clemens. Also way to fucken go with dodgen the fucken question, maybe if you read a little you wouldnt be an insufferable cur, and this is commin from an Inland Imperial Redneck.
I can spell “correctly” if I want, I choose not to. But then again you sound like someone who gets pissy that I spell and say aluminum and not aliminium even though I aint a fucking Saxon.
But that is all irrelevant, you are choosing to not interact with any of my points due to a thin veneer of classism. All cause I choose to spell phonetically. Or in other words, Ya done did what I expected boy.
But I can practically smell thine weakness through your comments. And allfather willing I hope you can hike up thine fucking panties and respond properly, stop being a gormless cowardly bitch.
i’m also not english, i’m irish by family, culture, ethnicity, language, and self-declaration, thankfully i’m not a putrid american and i can even speak the languages i do in the correct manner lol, please do come back to me when you have a valid point to make though, whenever or if-ever that should be :)
Wow a Irish person who is as bad a fucken Saxon thats a fucken new one. But I digress, you continue to avoid my original fucken question of what the fuck you mean, but y’know what I couldnt care less. Also real fucken rich calling other folks bad at writing when you seem to be only capable of writing with commas. Are you alergic to periods or something?
And finally, as a son of Stewart and a Mac An Ultaigh. You are pathetic excuse for a Gael.
i knew you were useless, but now that i know you’re a reject ulsterite i can confirm that, maybe you also need to learn how to use commas in writing and understand that full grammar during an online text chat isn’t useful
and finally, as an Uí Laoghaire, you too are a pathetic excuse for a gael :)
My ancestors havent stepped foot in Ulster for a thousand years, we hailed from Conacht by the time we came over 400 years ago. And I still aint gonna take writing criticism from captain run on sentence. And I wish my grandma McNulty was around so that she could split thine flesh until you learned proper fucking punctuation.
I am glad my ancestors chose to help conquer a continent, otherwise I couldve ended like you. An overly smug asshole who disgraces their ancestors with every breath.
Headline aside, 28% turnout for genz vs 23% for millenials, genx, and boomers in their respective first midterms is not going to swing an election where current boomers turn out 70% and genx turn out 60.
In the 22 midterm elections from 1934 -2018, the President’s party has averaged a loss of 28 House seats and four Senate seats.
In 2022 the Democratic party only lost 7 House seats and gained a Senate seat.
Leading into the election polli g and pundits predicted a decisive win for Republicans, and the unprecedented youth the out by Gen Z is credited as being a difference maker in the Democratic party outperforming expectations.
It would be foolish to write off Gen Z in 2024 by attributing to them the preceding generations’ (including mine, I’m Gen X) participation at matching ages.
I feel like the 2022 turnout is more down to the unique conditions and issues, across the age spectrum - especially Dobbs and election lies - than to anything specific to 20-year-olds. 28% turnout still means that the vast majority of GenZ can’t be bothered.
I mean, the handful of GenZ that have reached adulthood do seem marginally more active than other post-war cohorts, but they aren’t overthrowing historic voting trends. Pinning hopes for future political outcomes on them is as foolish as pinning the future of US democracy to black voters, or hispanic voters or any other minority/niche population, but media love doing just that. Just try googling “black women save democracy.”
No way buddy if they’re not showing up for the whitest, oldest, boomerest strike blocking genocide supporting procorporate trash candidate there’s literally no pleasing them. These damn 40 year old kids don’t know a compromise when they see it! /s
I’m not saying to pin all hopes on the one generation. I’m saying don’t write them off as disengaged non-voters when they’ve already shown a higher participation rate than their predecessors at their current age.
Same. I’m nearly 40, and I’ve been hearing this since before I could vote, and yet the GOP hasn’t been voted out of existence. If it were up to me they’d be purged from every position of power nationwide.
And instead what we got is the Democrat party moving to the right. Because as it turns out, procorporate trash would rather lose to fascists than compromise with leftists.
There were/are a lot of olds. They have dominated politics for a long time and have also not died due to being the first people to take advantage of modern medicine.
Republicans are doing a lot to hold on to power. There’s multiple states where they control the courts and legislature but can’t win a statewide office to save their life anymore. Which brings obvious questions about what the hell kind of elections they’re running. It’s also why they’re pushing for a SCOTUS ruling to make legislatures the only state governing body that matters.
They were record years for voter turnout in general. So youth turnout, though improved from previous years, was still less than turnout of older generations.
Can’t imagine why that would be. Boomers elected the whitest, oldest, boomerest candidate running in the 2020 primaries. Don’t these young people know a compromise when they see it?? /s
But let’s protest Biden by abstaining in the general! That’ll teach the Dems a lesson! And get a shit ton more Palestinians murdered but I’ll teach the Dems a lesson that they will definitely forget by 2028!
Only if you ignore that there’s also a segment of Democratic voters who would reconsider support for Biden if he took a stance that they perceived as anti-Israel. Democrats are a coalition party of compromises between factions who have to work together to find as much common ground as possible in order to have any political relevance in a first-past-the-post system. Biden has to walk whatever tightrope loses the fewest votes, and he seems to think that not doing a 180 on decades of US foreign policy is the best way to do that.
Young dems are so fucking blind to the fact that the majority of Dem voters, the 30-and-ups, support Israel. Biden would LOSE votes from the largest segment of Dem voters for dropping support. He really is caught between a rock and a hard place.
The protest vote did send a pretty strong message to dems, but they evidently didn’t give a fuck so now we just have to suck it up and vote for biden. It’s not that they’ll forget the lesson, it’s that they never learned it at all. 2016 should have been a lesson as well but we see how that turned out.
This part really kills me. We already watched it happen once and are now dealing with irreparable damages as a result. How many people protested HRC by either abstaining or voting for a third-party? Fucking nobody wants Hillary in office anymore, but we don’t get a say in the ticket so you suck it up and vote for the person who isn’t saying they will literally commit all the crimes because being president absolves them of any blame.
Oh, you’re not voting for Biden because of his support for Israel? Tell me more about how you care more about teaching dems a lesson than you care about minimizing the Palestinian death toll.
Even if they had the same stance on Israel, which they clearly don’t, let’s not forget the Ukrainians that would lose support on day one of a Trump presidency. Also, China would likely begin to move on Taiwan without US support. He’d set the stage for WWIII and justify it as isolationism.
Agree on Ukraine, but China doesn’t have the capability to make a move on Taiwan and won’t for another decade, if ever. Though Hong Kong and the Uighurs would have an even worse time with Trump in the Whitehouse to be sure.
China’s capability of invading Taiwan has been overstated in the media. Sure they have a massive army, but Taiwan is an island and amphibious operations are very very hard to pull off. That being said, Trump probably wouldn’t be sending a lot of arms to Taiwan so China invading Taiwan in a decade would be more likely.
That’s a fair assessment of invasion threat. However, if we pull out of the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, they’ll be forced to accept China’s control of import again. That’s devastating to an island nation’s economy.
China can’t blockade Taiwan while being outside the range of missiles and drones. China probably has about 400 ships but what is the quality of the air defense and drone boat defense do they have?
They don’t have the space to do what Russia is trying (unsuccessfully) in the Black Sea with keeping their ships outside the range of missiles and drones.
There aren’t going to be people left by the time Trump takes office. A million people are getting displaced right fucking now. And Biden deserves to be criticized for supporting that. So does Trump, but he’s not President right now. Biden is.
Having interacted with these people I can tell you that nothing has any effect on these goalpost moving liars and you just have to step on their dicks and convince bystanders like you do with any worthless bullshitter
The value of the items was either high enough to meet whatever internal threshold they have for opening an investigation or they were already aware of organized tool theft rings in the area.
That, or they were bored and said “Fuck it, let’s do it”.
Or they had a few reports of missing tools and no leads when this guy shows up and says “I know where my tools are but you have to get them”. Of course they will help him with the hope it pans out.
Of course they will help him with the hope it pans out.
Nah, this is giving cops too much credit. People can have gps coordinates, video of crimes occuring, first and last names of thieves and plently of times cops do literally nothing past filing a report.
Yup. My buddy owned a hellcat. That’s a $90k car, with like 800 horsepower. It was stolen. He had an AirTag under the seat, giving him detailed location data. He was on the phone with 911, and they were refusing to do anything about it. Told him to come down to the station and file a police report.
Then he mentioned his handgun was under the seat. Cops were on the scene in less than 2 minutes, with guns drawn.
I wish they’d do that instead of stupid speed traps.
Just this morning on my way to work, I was behind a cop, and they went 30-35mph in a 25 (everyone goes 35-ish on that road, it’s very wide). I know because I was following their speed, noticed I was over, then slowed down. They pulled over, then in my rear view mirror I saw their lights go on and they pulled someone over like 3 cars behind me who couldn’t have been going more than 35mph.
How does that benefit anyone? I’d much prefer they “waste” time tracking down theft like this instead of taking down hardened speeding criminals on roads where the speed limit should probably be adjusted (it’s residential, but it’s one of the few connector roads and has tons of space).
Mike Johnson said “I personally have real reservations about doing this [expulsion], I’m concerned about a precedent that may be set for that.” Yes, let’s NOT set a precedent of holding politicians accountable for lies, fraud, and theft!
It should be pretty easy to find the list of everyone else who voted not to expel, so we know who is pro-corruption.
He said this well after the Ethics Committee released its findings. Santos was effectively shown to be guilty.
In the previous attempts at expulsion, a lot of people voted against simply because the report wasn’t out yet. It would have set a dangerous precedent to vote to expel someone without proof of wrongdoing.
He literally was just convicted in a trial by his peers. His explosion is exactly the basis for common law including many of the points of the magna carta.
Smells like a well oiled propaganda machine doing exactly what it’s supposed to. I don’t think this is desperation I think it’s theater and a lot of people are eating this shit up.
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