I guess if our populace has become this damn stupid, then democracy can't work here anymore. Democracy requires a certain minimum level of education and knowledge in the voting population. The number of comments I see online where people think the POTUS is some kind of emperor who just has to decree something and it happens (even in other countries!), and that Congress and SCOTUS have nothing to do with anything, is astounding.
Do they not teach government and civics in schools any more? Not to mention history. The ignorance of history is a huge part of the problem as well, not knowing about anything that happened more than 10-20 years ago, let alone the past century or two.
I see. So you live in Europe and your goal is not to learn how the US Constitution stipulates that Congress, not POTUS, determines the number of justices, but to spread misinformation in the US, presumably with the goal of creating political division.
Who decides how many Justices are on the Court? Have there always been nine?
The Constitution places the power to determine the number of Justices in the hands of Congress. The first Judiciary Act, passed in 1789, set the number of Justices at six, one Chief Justice and five Associates. Over the years Congress has passed various acts to change this number, fluctuating from a low of five to a high of ten. The Judiciary Act of 1869 fixed the number of Justices at nine and no subsequent change to the number of Justices has occurred.
I'm glad to hear you took it upon yourself to learn, kudos to you! And that you mention books, not (just) the internet as a source. Your library should have lots of great books on these subjects. I thought history was kind of boring in high school, but later I found out it's really fascinating (was it me/my youth, or the school that made it seem boring? :D).
One thing I definitely remember being drilled into us back then was that we must be constantly vigilant to protect our rights, or we'll lose them. How true that turned out to be! We're on the verge of losing so much right now. :(
What "arguments"? This isn't a debate. I'm not trying to convince anyone of a political view like you are. I'm debunking your misinformation with the fact that only the Congress can change the number of Supreme Court justices, through legislation, including links to sources--but anyone can simply read Article 3 Section 1 of the Constitution and the history of how Congress set up the courts to understand that this is the case.
The fact that you keep insisting falsely that Biden could have done it himself shows that you have a political agenda. The fact that you aren't from the US and keep repeating a false, divisive talking point in spite of it being disproven shows that you have a political agenda. We aren't falling for it. Go back to twitter and FB where you'll find more gullible marks to buy your propaganda.
That's great! I have to alternate non-fiction with fiction to "cleanse my palette", lol.
I'd forgotten how they would put more emphasis on memorizing dates than on why the events were important. Yes, it's definitely the school's fault. :)
I think there's always been that teaching to school kids that "we're the greatest and bestest country!" (gotta get that indoctrination well-embedded). When I was in school during the Cold war it was mostly about all the reasons why we were better than the Soviet Union (many of which either had unmentioned exceptions, or sadly no longer apply, especially post 9/11).
Glad you are liking Mint! Browse through the Software Manager to find tons of good programs (there is usually a link to their homepage for more info about them) or ask here for suggestions of Linux replacements for the Windows programs you've been using.
A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40...
Last time he had a bunch of "normal" (old style) republicans in his cabinet, and they stopped him from doing a lot of what he wanted to do. And of course the career civil servants in all the government agencies followed the law and that stymied a lot of his and his minions' schemes--which they learned from. Now they know where the roadblocks to dictatorship are and have had 4 years to come up with plans like project 2025 and others.
Next time, no one will even try to stop him. Everyone in the cabinet and appointed post will be loyal lackeys who will do whatever trump says. Career civil servants who don't follow illegal or crazy orders will be fired and replaced with those who will. Even the Supreme Court now has the 3 extreme conservatives he appointed along with many many federal/district court judges who were drawn from a list compiled by the same people who authored the project 2025 plans.
The next time ain't gonna be like last time, folks.
Pathetic Russian troll, trying the ol' concern troll tactic. "Oh, we all know Russia is going to win, why make the Ukrainians, who BTW are just as bad as Putin, suffer even more by delaying the inevitable?" No one on here buys that shit, go back to facebook and X where your propaganda will find more fertile ground.
Let's see now, who started that war? Oh right it was Putin. No one else in the entire world (except maybe a few of Putin's cronies) wanted that war, least of all the average person--including average Russian, who is suffering far more than average Americans because of it, since Americans are basically not suffering at all because of it and many pay no attention to it at all.
You're saying that since average people suffer from the wars started by dictators like Putin, that we should all just roll over and let them own the world. "Oh, just let Putin have Ukraine (and then inevitably) the other former SSRs, and if that goes well, maybe a little more here and a little more there, that way you won't suffer so much, which is totally your own fault for resisting." Fuck that shit, troll.
Europe and NATO will not let that happen because it's simply too big a threat to Europe. Putin is ruining a whole generation of Russians' lives and futures along with Ukraine's, just to satisfy his impossible fever dream of building an empire, and it will only destroy Russia in the process. You should be trying to help us stop him now if you want to prevent more suffering for the rest of the world.
The money US sends to Ukraine is a drop in the bucket and has no effect on the life of the average American--there are far bigger factors that affect our economy and our lives than that pittance of the military budget, much of which we'd be spending anyway to replenish our inventory with up-to-date supplies. You know how our MIC works. It's a machine far bigger than average Americans have influence over, so even if people buy your propaganda it means nothing to that machine. Our lives are affected much more by domestic policies. Your propaganda efforts fomenting social unrest have been much more successful in that area golf clap but it won't help Russia survive what Putin is doing to it.
Putin will sacrifice everyone and everything in Russia to try and achieve his fever dream of taking back Ukraine and the other post-Soviet states before he dies, and it just ain't gonna happen. There is not the slightest possibility of it. The best he can hope for is to keep some portion of the Ukrainian territory that he already had before he started his idiotic enterprise, and he will have ruined Russia for generations in the process.
Also, I would imagine that once Putin's gone, whoever comes after him will cede the territory back to Ukraine because the West will demand that, if Russia wants to be allowed to rejoin the world economy. All that suffering was for nothing but Putin's ego. That's what dictators do, and why we have to stop them, not appease them.
Ending my responses to you now.
The guy who tweeted that is running Cornell West's campaign for POTUS. Of course he's going to attack Biden, in this case showing a picture of the Texas State Troopers that TX Gov. Abbott sicced on the protestors, falsely implying that Biden sent them or would have had some way to stop Abbott from doing it.
If you want to criticize Biden go ahead but don't make up fake shit to do it.
Propaganda site. You are supposed to superficially read the graphs' titles and notice the big arrow, then uncritically accept the narrative that something happened around 1971.
When you see a personal blog site or social media post with a graph or graphs on it, stop and think.
First, are these real and accurate graphs? What is their source? Look up the same info on reputable sites that track these numbers to verify.
Second, notice attempts to manipulate. All those big arrows pointing to 1971 as if they mean something. In most cases there isn't even an inflection point or other notable feature of the data at 1971, but the arrow makes you think there is if you don't look closely.
edit to add: if you start looking up graphs of things like wages vs productivity and wages compared between income groups, you'll find that things started going to hell during the Reagan era, when Reagan and Thatcher devastated the economy by slashing income taxes on the wealthy and corporations, deregulated industry, and busted the unions, and more.
Unfortunately there are a lot of people pissed at our current immune system, complaining that it's too old and weak to meet the standard of perfection they demand immediately. So instead of trying to keep it alive and build a strengthened immune system over time, they're planning to just let the patient die, despite knowing how that would make their lives many times worse. It's up to the rest of us to keep the patient alive and work to improve its health, in spite of them.
But you see, only trump's opinion matters, and trump hates dogs. If he picks her, magats will fall in line and come up with rationalizations that what she did was good.
I think you're right that they'd be disturbed. But I think their cognitive dissonance will overcome that and they'll rationalize it in whatever way they need to to see it as acceptable, because in their eyes trump never makes a mistake or does anything wrong.
Mint has an auto-upgrade tool so you don't have to reinstall each time. It used to be only for minor version upgrades but now you can auto-upgrade to a new major version as well. In any case there are plenty of great distros to choose from.
And yes! whatever distro (and other FLOSS software) you use, support them with a donation if you can! When you consider the value you are getting for free vs. what you'd be spending on proprietary software, it's not so hard to do and feels good too.
Whatever (midwest.social)
Progressives Prep $10 Million Campaign to Expose 'MAGA Supreme Court' (www.rollingstone.com)
1 month of Linux Mint and some thoughts
About a month ago I switched to Linux mint from windows 11....
Am I supposed to ask stupid questions here, or *not* ask stupid questions?
It’s kinda how you read the name, innit?
Conservative Plan Calls for Dozens of Executions if Trump Wins (www.thedailybeast.com)
A conservative plan for Donald Trump’s potential transition into the presidency calls for dozens of prisoners to be executed, according to HuffPost. An 887-page plan by Project 2025, led by the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation, says that if elected, Trump should make a concerted effort to execute the remaining 40...
"Number of different devices" fail to keep Trump awake in court (www.salon.com)
Ya gotta do what ya gotta do (lemmy.world)
The Biden Admin Is Trying to Guarantee a Forever War in Ukraine (www.theamericanconservative.com)
deleted_by_moderator
WTF Happened In 1971? (wtfhappenedin1971.com)
(kinda) A great website to share if you have no idea how to explain the downfall of the US economy....
voting this year so voting continues to be a thing (lemmy.world)
Kristi Noem killed her pet dog, "Cricket," after the animal misbehaved on a hunting trip, she says (www.salon.com)
Sam Alito Thinks We’re All Stupid (newrepublic.com)
I AM SO DISAPPOINTED WITH UBUNTU 24.04 😡 (news.itsfoss.com)