The EU will impose additional tariffs of 17.4% to 38.1% on electric cars produced in China, the European Commission announced on Wednesday (12 June), as preliminary results from its anti-subsidy investigation confirmed prices are being distorted by Chinese state support....
The two major issues he’s highlighting is the border and gaza. I can’t for the life of me understand why THOSE are the issues his campaign has settled on. Well, I guess I understand israel because of the money groups like APAC bring in… but still it’s become really toxic among the base (even with most republicans at this point). And the border… like the fuck… we lambasted Trump for kids in cages and biden has decided that we should continue that policy and double down on it?
The only way he’s winning a second term is if somehow Trump voters have lost their motivation and devotion to him. Otherwise this election is really not looking good.
There are so many popular issues that also make trump look terrible that biden could run on. Abortion, climate change, hating nazis, raising the minimum wage, expanding workers rights, LGBT rights, the actions of the FTC to reign in big business. He’s got so many talking points to really be effective against trump and he’s instead doing Hillary’s campaign strategy of “Well yeah, look at that guy?”.
Biden’s campaign proposed that the first debate between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees be held in late June and the second in September before early voting begins. Trump responded to the letter in an interview with Fox News digital, calling the proposed dates “fully acceptable to me” and joked about...
The terms here are how the commission should have been running debates from the beginning.
Trump will never agree to these terms as they undercut his entire debate strategy. With no crowd there, Trump can’t feed off their responses. With the mic time limit he can’t interrupt and interject like he wants to do. That leaves him with his rambling disconnected thoughts.
Yeah, and that will be another problem. Even with this format, most people aren’t going to watch the debate. What they’ll watch is clips from the debate from their favorite media outlet.
Biden isn’t a great debater, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of clips of him looking like an idiot. And, well, Trump is an idiot and his supporters know and don’t really care about that… So… Yeah. These debates will ultimately be pointless. The two are known entities that really don’t need exploring. A format change, though, would hopefully help with the 2028 elections.
Though NSM-20 imposes no new legal requirements, it also asks Secretary of State Antony Blinken to report to Congress by May 8 on whether he believes Israel has complied with the assurances....
Right now? Primarily hydro with a strong solar and wind showing. Roughly 10% of my power is from Fossil fuels.
You are just shifting the shit elsewhere
Even with a pure fossil fuel grid, EVs still end up producing less CO2 than ICE vehicles. However, grids aren’t pure fossil fuels which means EVs are far cleaner than Fossil fuel vehicles. Especially in my current circumstance.
Less than 8% of energy consumption in the US comes from renewable energy. Another 8% come from nuclear.
13% while being one of the fastest growing energy production sectors.
In the unlikely event that he’s generally perceived as a gibbering idiot by that date there’s pretty much no chance that Lara Trump nor Michael Whatley would consider a super-delegate style override of the primary results
They can’t, like legally and literally. The RNC rules are setup without super delegates and they can’t backport those in right before the convention.
Literally the only thing that would keep him off the ballot is if either he dies (which will be a HUGE clusterfuck) or a court ruling finds him ineligible to hold office (which, he just won cases keeping him off the ballot so that’s really unlikely).
He could be drooling on stage while actively shitting his depends, he’s still going on the ballot. That was 1000% on display with Dianne Feinstein, for literally years, she showed very clear signs of dementia/Alzheimer’s.
And the scary thing is that none of this will stop Trumpers from voting for him. They’d write his name in even if he does die.
We’ve had politicians with clear signs of dementia still being elected years after those signs show up. Ronald Reagan was said to have very clear signs of dementia in the run for his second term.
The only thing that will keep Trump off the ballot at this point is his death. He could be catatonic in a wheel chair and he’ll still be on the ballot. There’s simply no mechanism the RNC could pull even if it wanted to to keep him off the ballot.
He can veto bills funding Israel and the current aid Israel is getting is through executive powers passed previously.
There are also laws on the books that disallow aid to countries with human rights violations that are easy to invoke.
Biden can also unilaterally put sanctions/tariffs on Israel.
There’s no somehow about it, he can stop funding today.
And will that do something? Almost certainly because the US is Israel’s largest supporter (by a long shot). Bebe can, of course, ignore this. However, that’d destroy Israel’s economy.
Much much simpler than that. Remember how just a few months ago everything the right didn’t like was “woke”? And a few months before that how everything the right didn’t like was CRT?
Well, we are here now. All problems are a result of DEI. It really does not matter that it’s completely insane to view the world like this. Right wing media has it’s current swear word of the month and that word (or in this case acronym) is DEI.
What’s super effective about this tactic is exactly what the mayor hints at. It’s a way to say the n-word without saying it.
The angle here is the right is a bunch of racist bigots and framing all the ills of the world in terms of that racist bigotry makes their lizard brained viewers happy (well, angry, but at the right people).
Quiet literally how Nazi propaganda worked. Blame all the problems of germany on the jews and the non-jews right wing morons will happily nod along with “yer right, it is the Jews’ fault our society is crumbling!” It did not have to make sense or be reasonable. You just constantly plant that fear and suspicion in your dumbass follower’s brains.
Trump is the new Ronald Reagan of the GOP. The good news about that is the GOP has largely forgotten Reagan at this point. The bad news is they worshiped Reagan for decades after his death. I suspect Trump will largely be treated the same.
You realized Christian Nationalism follows the (misinterpreted and cherry picked) words of someone who died 2000 years ago as their North Star right?
I’ll push back on this as I think it’s a mistake to view Christian nationalism as a religious thing. It really should be called “White nationalism” because that’s more what it means. They’ll prop up the bible but they really don’t give a fuck about what’s in it. Rather, it’s just a tool to justify hating Muslims, Jews, and other “brown people” religions. The christian part of christian nationalism is really a tool to sell to grandma “See, we just want a Christian (white) nation. That makes it good because anything christian is automatically good”.
Hillary lost the election because she’s a supremely unlikable person that ran a campaign of “Who else are you going to vote for, Trump?”. She ran on a center right political platform (if you can call it that) nearly as derelict as Trump’s 2020 platform. She further was pretty insultingly dismissive of the progressive wing of the party. She alienated strong base support when she should have been courting the bernie supporters.
She also did not JUST lose Florida. Further, Biden did not win Florida so that sect of ultra conservative Cubans weren’t the deciding factor.
Her lose is also why I fear for 2024. Biden isn’t running as bad a campaign as she did, but he is still heavily banking on the “What, you aren’t going to let Trump win, right?”
I grew up in a similarly christian conservative community. I think it’s a mistake to conflate conservative Christians with christian nationalists (though there is overlap for certain). Several of my very conservative christian family members are disgusted by the christian nationalists.
That’s why I don’t think it’s the christianity driving the nationalism but rather the nationalism driving the christianity. Hence the reason nazis have felt pretty comfortable attending CPAC this year in nazi garb.
There are athiest christian nationalists who will talk about how it’s “the culture” that matters and makes a “christian nation” superior to other government forms.
In my home state of Idaho, I see a lot of christian nationists in public office, and they are much more occupied with rooting out “CRT” (re: anything mentioning civil rights and slavery) and LGBT literature than they are focused on “getting prayer back in school” or other overtly “christian” motives.
I also didn’t adequately explain that I feel ‘modern’ Christianity has very little to do with the teachings of Christ, much less the content of the Bible even as a whole. It seems it’s much more a justification of their targeted hatred.
Definitely agree there. I think the union of conservative politics and christianity has made both worse.
It’s that bigotry and hatred that is the core of christian nationalism and nationalism in general. Having a target to hate is just how these fascist operate. Religion helps to have outgroups to hate, and nationalism exploits that to try and radicalize.
People who have previously stated they are atheists but also are christian nationalists because they believe in the “cultural values” it grants. Generally just people with bigotries that line up with christian nationalism’s current targets.
“I’m an atheist, but I believe that being gay will destroy society and this CRT stuff will erode the moral values of this nation” that sort of shit. Sam Harris and Jordan Peterson are two that fit right into this mold. Though there have been atheists that have explicitly said they are also christian nationalists, they are just more minor public right wing figures who’s names I’ve already forgotten.
No need to be unconvinced, right wingers have explicitly said that’s what they want. Benny Shaps recently said something to the effect of “It’s unhealthy to retire, everyone that retires ends up dying in a few years. We should all work as long as possible.”
Shows how big a lie the election is stolen narrative is.
Jordan, if he were in Congress where he knows he can’t be sued for defamation, would have ranted for 20 minutes about Dominion voting machines. But put him in a place where he knows he’d get a defamation lawsuit and all the sudden that congressional fire goes ice cold.
He’s a supreme weasel and he covered up rape for years.
It exposes you to trail, a diversity of legal cases, and how a judge thinks. There aren’t a lot of federal judges and the people that clerk for them tend to come from prestigious schools and the top of their class.
Of course, that can’t be great when the judge you are working for is a partisan hack who had zero court experience before becoming a judge and did not clerk for a federal judge. She was one of many Trump appointees the bar association ranked as “unqualified”.
But she cozied up to the federalist society, which is how she got appointed.
In the valet’s account, laid out in a transcript obtained by The New York Times, an agitated Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to overturn the election and stewed about Mr. Pence’s refusal for hours after violence engulfed Congress. Told that a civilian had been shot outside the House chamber amid the mob attack, he recalled,...
Trump was not wrong that his career with republicans was basically ended. However, Pence was ideally setup to end Trump’s career. Had he testified in the impeachment hearing, it would have been DAMN hard for the republicans to spin that as “Oh, opsie, this was just a little crimin’”
Instead, the dipshit thought he’d be loved enough to get a presidential nomination this year (TF?!?!). He’s a moron.
We’d probably have more allies if we dropped support.
What we are doing is equivalent to us deciding to support North Korea and being shocked that all of a sudden we lose regional support from just about everyone.
Israel, especially with an ongoing genocide, is toxic to stability and alliances. It isolates more than it gives strategic advantage.
The sci-fi is secondary. What we want, what we crave is character development and smart social commentary wrapped up in a sci-fi package.
TNG was great because it was mostly just commentary on society. DS9 was awesome because it was that with character development and with less rose tinted glasses.
VOY was mostly forgettable because it was just sci-fi plotlines with no real social commentary (other than Berman likes big boobs).
Now what we have is moody lighting, no plot, and what would have been an episode’s worth of social commentary stretched out for an entire season with banal messages like “different people aren’t necessarily bad”.
To each their own. VOY had good actors with a few good moments. It was, however, packed with “bad guy of the week” episodes that didn’t really have any plot other than “how will the crew escape the Borg this time?”
Which is why I say it’s forgettable. So many VOY episodes blend together with similar plots and outcomes.
I’ve not watched SNW and perhaps dropped out of discovery too soon. S1, 2, and what I saw of 3 wasn’t my favorite.
I mean, I gotta be honest, Picard somewhat ruined discovery for me. I get that they aren’t the same show but they very much have a lot of the same feels going on.
I’m using the term “dick jokes” more to describe the style of humor and less about a specific joke about penises (though, pretty sure there’s at least one in there). That is to say, the humor, particularly in season 1, is often crude.
That said, they have relied a lot less on crude humor in later seasons and oddly enough are far more serious than you’d expect from the first season at this point.
a few seasons of disco and Picard have framed your opinion of all new trek
K. I mean, you are correct. I did let the recent trainwrecks from the studio stop me from watching another production from that studio. Are you saying that was wrong of me to do?
I’ll give it a shot. I’ve been meaning to try it because it does generally come up as being good online. I’ve just not had the time as of late (and the problems with the other new trek turned me off of making time).
Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday called on the federal government to move “as quickly as possible” to change the way it officially classifies marijuana, saying that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”...
What’s terrifying about MAGA isn’t Trump, it’s who comes next.
A second term for Trump will be terrible, but it’ll end fairly quickly as I don’t think he’s going to live another 10 years.
However, if you take a look at the “Next generation” they are all copying trumpism but just making it a bit more crazy. Vivek is the poster child for this behavior. They are finding more and more than just abandoning pretext and saying the quiet part outloud doesn’t lose elections.
The only way to stop this is having the GOP lose over and over and over again. After Biden’s presidency the GOP cannot see power for at least another decade otherwise it will just snowball into more extreme craziness (it may do that anyways as the insane base will keep moderates out of office).
I’m actually drawing blanks. Perhaps it’s survivorship bias but to me it seems like most cults of personality stick around if there’s no force actively shutting them down, generally with violence.
Nazi germany, for example, didn’t end because hitler died. It ended because the allies and the soviet union occupied germany for decades squelching any Nazi sentiment. Ditto for Japan with the Hirohito (who himself was in a long line of royals that still continues just with muted power). You can look at mormonism where the founder was killed by a mob, that’s still very much alive. Or Scientology where the leader had a heart attack. Heck, even the moonies are still around.
Without a heavy societal push, cults of personality very often linger.
They may linger, but they never have the power they used to. If they do, they have to rebuild from scratch, which is more or less what Trump does with white supremacists.
I guess this is what generally concerns me about trump. I don’t think he’ll be replaced while he’s alive. However, the apparatus that made him a god amoung racists is still in place and hasn’t substantially been changed since he left office.
What’s frightening to me is it just takes the rightwing grifters to rally on another god king to ultimately start this problem anew. We have an entire “media” ecosystem that’s now learned that fascism is actually kind of cool.
The only hope, it seems to me, is that his supporters tend to be old people that will end up dying around the same time he does.
Here’s the thing, I’m not sure I’d totally classify Trumpism as a high control org. It certainly has aspects of it, but it probably more closely resembles the hippy movement of the 60s (from which many cults did spring). The only real core belief is how awesome trump is. Beyond that it’s a bunch of fringe and frayed beliefs based whatever that individual might believe.
For example, I have black in-laws that are also trump supporters (yeah… I know) who are convinced that Trump isn’t racist AND that trump has this secret plan that would have made all black people fabulously wealthy, Had Joe biden not stolen the election. It was something that was always on the cusp of happening were it not for “the deep state”.
I don’t think this is a mainstream trump belief but I now have to wonder how many trumpist have these sorts of special whacky beliefs untethered from the reality of who trump is.
But then there’s another phenomena that seems somewhat unique to trump which is, when he says something they do not like it’s “He didn’t say that. Oh, he did say that? Well he didn’t mean that, it was just something he said for X reason”. That is, they don’t actually care about what Trump says or does, they care about what he represents. Trump can’t really command his followers super effectively because half the time they are going to think he’s “just being trump”. This is also where it’s scary because a number of his followers want violence and I don’t think trump could stop them if they started down that path.
Oh hey, I’m exmormon myself! Isn’t it fun how these high demand religions drive you into researching what makes cults in the first place :D
We sort of have an analogy within mormonism though it’s a bit different. For mormons, the issue is almost the opposite, rather than no ever having an official stance on things mormonism has had official stances on just about everything but then it’s slowly walked them back and distanced itself from the wacky belief. However, that means that the rank and file still remember, hold onto, and retell things that the org itself would rather go away. For example, blacks and the priesthood. Mormons would much rather the doctrine and leaders weren’t so explicit about the “curse of Cain”.
Similarly, mormonism has gone everywhere from denying evolution to even denying astronomy (They used to literally believe that the sun was Heaven, the moon lesser heaven, and the stars even lesser heaven). That’s actually why mormons were some of the first moon landing conspiracy theorists.
We do have some off track beliefs with little to no teachings, but mormons are a lot quicker to try and tamp down and eliminate those. For example, heavenly mother.
The end result is you do still have people teaching weird non-doctrinal (or previously doctrinal) while the church tries to back away and kill them off.
I know this is a bit of a sidetrack, but are you still in contact with anyone that’s a JW and are they all Trumpers? Trumpism took mormons by storm, they are some of the most dedicated adherents to it. I’m wondering if the same thing happened with other high demand religions.
I’ve no clue who 2.0 will be. Could be someone not on the stage at the moment, could be someone like Jim Jordan or Matt Gaetz. There’s lots of options to be sorted out after Trump dies.
I view it sort of like the situation with the major rightwing propagandists. When Rush Limbaugh died, that wasn’t the end of rightwing propaganda, there were already new shitheads in the rafters like Tucker Carlson that’d eaten up the space.
With Tucker off the air, there’s now Jessie Waters (or whatever) doing his part. Before that there was bill oriely.
Trump might not be setting up a dynasty but that’s not really what I’m concerned about, I’m concerned about him setting up fascism that’s willing to glom onto the next leader like it glomed on to him.
Your impression is correct. I knew it was bad for exJW but hoping it wasn’t still pretty universally bad.
Sorry to hear you had to go through that. I can’t imagine how big of a mindfuck that would be coupled with the mindfuck of “everything I was taught was a lie”. Just the latter was one of the worst experience of my life.
Early demographics for Mormons was something like 70% approval which had them as one of the most trumpy demographics. However, it looks like that approval has taken a significant nose dive. With a majority now disfavoring him.
If I can ask. Did you previously support Trump? If so, what changed to make you despise him? Also, in the up coming election what are you planning on doing (assuming both Biden and Trump are the nominees, which seems obvious at this point).
I have known anti trump Mormons, but my understanding is they were the minority (apparently not).
Unfortunately, many former members leave under difficult circumstances and distance themselves from their friends who remain in the Church. We would love nothing more than to stay in contact with them and still be friends.
Many former mormons, like myself, are distanced by their “friends” as soon as they leave. It’s a two way street and all the responsibility isn’t on a single party.
Often times that “friendship” is contingent on church attendance and belief.
Have you ever asked a former member why they left? What did they say?
I can’t see how it could be possible to support Trump and sincerely believe in those commandments at the same time.
It’s not hard to see. Trump courts christian nationalism pretty heavily and that allows a lot of religious people to overlook his foibles. Sort of a “Who cares if he’s immoral, he’ll let us have bible reading class in school”.
I haven’t had any opportunities to actually have a discussion about it with anyone else other than online
Consider why you made the statement that former members distance themselves and that church members just want to be friends. You haven’t actually experienced or seen that right? So what made you assume that is what is going on?
One of the more difficult parts about being a former member is the assumptions about why we left. Obviously, everyone is unique, but rarely have I heard an active member actually say the reasons I’ve most heard from my family and friends and online that have left.
It would be a bit like me spouting off the lies from an evangelical anti-mormon tract as if they were fact.
To be clear, I really do appreciate that you are being open and honest here. I’m not trying to be a dick or to deconvert you. I’m mostly just pushing for understanding of people that have different views from you. After all, to the root of this conversation and why I’m so against trump, it’s that the politics he represents is ultimately that of intolerance. The best way to fight intolerance is to foster understanding.
Medicare negotiating prices is a fairly new thing for the US and something that could ultimately be killed by the supreme court (it shouldn’t be, but we have a majority of extremists on the court).
Why it’s uncertain to become law is because our right wing party (republicans) have historically been completely opposed to any social program. Our “left” party is also fairly centrist and arguably even right leaning in parts so it’s uncertain that even with a majority of them in power that improvements would pass.
The problem we have is the filibuster in the senate. It allows any senator to kill a bill. To overturn it takes 60 votes (out of 100) and the senate is currently split 50/50.
The meager changes we got under obamacare literally happened because a republican senator died which opened the gate to ram through a few pieces of legislation which would otherwise not pass. Obamacare was overall an OK bill with some good stuff in it, but it really just re-enforced the current crazy capitalist market system. That was all the right leaning democrats would stomach. There was talk about an option for using government healthcare but that was quashed.
I guess that would make it really hard for anyone, even a president, to put meaningful changes in place.
Yup. We can pass legislation that says “hey SC, you are wrong about the interpretation of this legislation so do it right”. However, they’ve invented this “major questions doctrine” principle that basically lets them strike down “big” things that they don’t like.
The only solution to that problem is either justices dying or legislation being passed to raise the cap on justices and the president packing the court. Which runs right into the filibuster problem.
At the beginning of biden’s term democrats nearly nuked the filibuster. However, 2 centrist democrats squashed that.
BREAKING NEWS: EU Commission announces preliminary tariffs up to 38% on Chinese EVs (www.euractiv.com)
The EU will impose additional tariffs of 17.4% to 38.1% on electric cars produced in China, the European Commission announced on Wednesday (12 June), as preliminary results from its anti-subsidy investigation confirmed prices are being distorted by Chinese state support....
Joe Biden's approval rating in swing states is worse than national average (www.newsweek.com)
Spectrum rule (feddit.uk)
Biden challenges Trump to 2 debates but won’t participate in nonpartisan commission's debates (apnews.com)
Biden’s campaign proposed that the first debate between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees be held in late June and the second in September before early voting begins. Trump responded to the letter in an interview with Fox News digital, calling the proposed dates “fully acceptable to me” and joked about...
Judge rejects Trump demand for a "mistrial" after embarrassing testimony from Stormy Daniels (www.salon.com)
Leaked U.S. Memos Say Israel May Be Violating International Law In Blocking Gaza Aid (www.huffpost.com)
Though NSM-20 imposes no new legal requirements, it also asks Secretary of State Antony Blinken to report to Congress by May 8 on whether he believes Israel has complied with the assurances....
Not happening, dude (slrpnk.net)
MAGA begins to panic: Trump may not make it to the ballot (www.salon.com)
John Fetterman challenges Pa. school board’s cancellation of talk by gay actor (www.advocate.com)
Republican who supported “Don’t Say Gay” law sues Pride parade for barring his participation (www.lgbtqnation.com)
‘Stop It Now’: Jill Biden Privately Urges an End to Conflict in Gaza (www.nytimes.com)
California schools forced to compete with fast food industry for workers after minimum wage hike (apnews.com)
“They don’t have the courage to say the N-word’: Baltimore mayor rips right-wing “DEI mayor” attacks (www.salon.com)
Right-wingers smear Brandon Scott, who was elected with over 70%, as a diversity hire after Key Bridge collapse...
Was the 2020 election stolen? Job interviews at RNC take an unusual turn. (wapo.st)
Prospective hires say agreeing with Trump’s false election claim appears to be a new litmus test for being hired by the party
The House GOP just gave Biden’s campaign a huge gift: Roughly 80 percent of House Republicans just lined up behind a plan to cut Social Security and ban all abortions (www.vox.com)
Donald Trump would be on track to win a historic landslide in November — if so many US voters didn’t find him personally repugnant....
Jim Jordan Gets Flustered As Simple Question Turns Awkward On '60 Minutes' (www.huffpost.com)
The Ohio lawmaker was asked about Donald Trump’s debunked claims about the 2020 election....
Why Did Two of Judge Aileen Cannon’s Law Clerks Suddenly Quit? (newrepublic.com)
Donald Trump’s favorite judge is suddenly losing law clerks....
Trump Told Pence Certifying Election Would Be ‘Career Killer,’ Valet Testified (www.nytimes.com)
In the valet’s account, laid out in a transcript obtained by The New York Times, an agitated Mr. Trump pressured Mr. Pence to overturn the election and stewed about Mr. Pence’s refusal for hours after violence engulfed Congress. Told that a civilian had been shot outside the House chamber amid the mob attack, he recalled,...
Netanyahu snaps back against growing US criticism after being accused of losing his way on Gaza, says Israel won't stop until 'total victory' is achieved (apnews.com)
‘Picard’ Season 2 Was Rewritten After Paramount Deemed It “Too Star Trek,” Says EP (trekmovie.com)
Kamala Harris Calls For Marijuana To Be Rescheduled 'As Quickly As Possible' (www.huffpost.com)
Vice President Kamala Harris on Friday called on the federal government to move “as quickly as possible” to change the way it officially classifies marijuana, saying that “nobody should have to go to jail for smoking weed.”...
The GOP can't leave MAGA — "Americans must electorally mercy-kill the Republican Party" (www.salon.com)
An ex-MAGA activist warns “no civic savior is coming” as Donald Trump’s cognitive decline becomes undeniable...
Biden says Medicare should negotiate prices for at least 50 drugs each year, up from a target of 20 (www.cnbc.com)
Key Points...