#picked trump based on EXACTLY who he is

[ajunicetryagain]

nothing worth anything is built on purity.

we will all get things wrong. we will all say the wrong thing or pick the wrong people or make the wrong choice.

all of us.

you deserve grace to come back from your fuck ups and your honest mistakes without being lectured or belittled along the way and you know what? so does everyone else.

all of us.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Dean Obeidallah at The Dean's Report:

The despicable effort by corporate oligarchs—many of who helped elect Donald Trump—to convince the rest of us to submit to Donald Trump is now in full gear. On Saturday, we saw the jaw-dropping announcement by ABC News—owned by Disney-- that the corporation had agreed to pay Trump $15 million in a bogus defamation lawsuit Trump would have NEVER won. ABC also agreed to publicly apologize and pay Trump’s lawyers $1 million in legal fees. The lawsuit arises from ABC News anchor George Stephanopoulos’s exchange with GOP Rep. Nancy Mace in March when Stephanopoulos pressed Mace on how--as a survivor of sexual assault--she could support Trump given his history of sexual assault. One specific exchange cited by Trump’s lawyers was when Stephanopoulos challenged Mace to explain how she could endorse Trump after “judges and two separate juries have found him liable for rape and for defaming the victim of that rape” in the E. Jean Carrol civil case.

Trump’s defamation lawsuit alleged that Stephanopoulos knew Trump was never find liable of “rape”—only sexual assault—and, thus, had defamed him. But two things here. First, federal judge Lewis Kaplan--who presided over E. Jean Carroll defamation/sexual assault case—in his written opinion stated the jury had in fact determined Trump had “raped” Carroll. Judge Kaplan addressed this when considering Trump’s claim the damage award against him was too high because the jury didn’t find Trump had committed “rape” as narrowly defined by NY penal law. But the judge wrote that based on the evidence, Trump had raped Carroll in the way “many people commonly understand the word ‘rape.’” The Judge added, “Indeed, as the evidence at trial recounted below makes clear, the jury found that Mr. Trump in fact did exactly that.” I make that point as a lawyer who handled defamation cases to note that truth is a valid defense in every defamation case. Judge Kaplan’s opinion is the key to ABC News winning this case.

In addition, ABC News has another very strong defense. In a defamation case involving a public figure like Trump, the plaintiff has an added burden of showing not only that a statement is false but that the comment was made with “actual malice.” That means even if Stephanopoulos was wrong in saying Trump was found liable of “rape,” Trump would need to show Stephanopoulos knew that statement was false when he said that or “consciously chose to recklessly disregard the high probability that” the comment was false. But Stephanopoulos clearly could rely in good faith on Judge Kaplan’s written opinion that the jury had in fact found Trump raped Carroll when making his statement.

This is why Trump would’ve lost this case--as legal experts that focus on defamation told the NY Times. For example, RonNell Andersen Jones, a professor of law at the University of Utah, explained: “Major news organizations have often been very leery of settlements in defamation suits brought by public officials and public figures, both because they fear the dangerous pattern of doing so and because they have the full weight of the First Amendment on their side.” All of that is important to understand that ABC News also knew it would have ultimately prevail in the case--but they settled out of fear. They were bending a knee to Trump because during the campaign, Trump had threatened to take ABC’s broadcast license away after the presidential debate because the moderators fact checked his lies. Trump pointedly declared on Fox News: "They ought to take away their license for the way they did that."

With Trump now a month from being sworn in and his pick to head the Federal Communications Commission being Brendan Carr, an author of the far-right Project 2025, ABC News and other media outlets are fearful of how the Trump regime will target them. As MSNBC’s Ja'han Jones wrote, Carr is the type of “media attack dog” that will enable the GOP to follow the playbook of their beloved Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán and use the agency to silence critics of Trump. ABC News should have never bent a knee to Trump with this unheard of surrender this early in a case they would’ve won. But they were not alone in capitulating to Trump this week.

[...] However, there is also a fear factor at play here as well.

ABC News made a very stupid decision to bend the knee to autocrat-elect Donald Trump by settling, and that’s because ABC would likely have won their case. They are doing this out of fear of Trump handing out reprisals to outlets even slightly critical of him.

Brian Tyler Cohen: Mainstream Media Opts to Obey

[qqueenofhades]

It’s like he said “who will help me the most with my weak points in the suburbs, women and minorities” and then picked the man who charted negative on all three

I mean, it would have been considerably more concerning if he picked Haley (who took a solid 20-25% of GOP voters from him in each primary), as that would up the odds that the Haley voters would return to the fold instead of sitting it out or voting for Biden. Tim Scott might also make sense if they actually thought there was a real chance to increase the Black vote (though we hear every single election about how the GOP is going to up their minority outreach, but it turns out that weaponized white-nationalist fascism isn't exactly compatible with that).

But, because Trump is deeply racist, sexist, and misogynist to the depths of his miserable fraudulent rapist heart, there was no way his ego would suffer picking Haley, no matter how much of an asset she would have been, and likewise with picking Scott. So he picks the most unlikeable white-boy turd in the pot, and you know what? I support them in doing absolutely nothing to increase their vote share and just consolidating the white man Christian nationalist Trumpy base, which is not enough to win an election if all of Team Blue votes (and we fucking well better). Just saying.

[zoeys-ksbd-fan-blog]

Book 1 First Impressions

Part 1

Hiya, so as a kinda fresh ksbd fan I feel like other fans would enjoy hearing what it's like for a newcomer to read it for the first time. Maybe give them a little taste of what it was like to read it the first time themselves.

So, my first impression...

...was oh my god holy shit the art is so good wow wow wow cool oh my god wow

Also, as of writing I'm a decent chunk into book 3. When I first saw this panel I was actually overwhelmed. Which I feel like is the intended affect since the leading up pages are pretty typical. I didn't even notice the center figure got fucking beheaded until my 2nd reread.

But also it's fun seeing this panel now and being, like, hey I know what all these characters are

On that note, I am excited to eventually learn exactly what's happening here. Is that bird significant? I know what this area is called but is there anything more significant going on here? Is it all metaphorical.

Which i dont think it is, because in the description of many pages there is supplemental stories. They mimic ancient poems, and other historical texts.

And birds are mentioned pretty frequently, as small creatures made by old gods that are small enough to travel through holes in reality to other realms.

White Chain is a trans king. A male person stuck in the shell of someone who looks feminine. Based.

Although the more I read an angels gender seems to be pretty fluid, which would make sense.

I'm not trying to summarize the comics, but I guess for context. Angels can only affect the physical world through one of these sets of armors. Their real forms are less human, usually.

And I guess this is a good place to compliment the visual design. Holy shit the aesthetic of these cities being built on these corpses is extraordinarily fucking cool.

And in the description the author left an I-Spy sort of puzzle in the description which is an excellent way to get a reader to look at a panel longer.

And shoutouts to the commentor who told me to read the description and comics, there is so much extra content there I've re-read book 1 four times and have had new experiences each time.

The world building is so intricate it completely trumps most other media I've seen. I dunno what to tell you, its just great. You can just taste how long the author has been cooking this world for. And it all paid off.

Cool background character is cool.

In gonna talk about the extra description content again, they're cool and are mandatory to read. Although maybe leave it to your second or third reread because the world building already present is still very dense.

Some of them involve a figure who is talking to their birds and asking questions to the reader. Which people answer in the comments.

Those same answers are then mentioned later as conversations had by people in Yisun's hall.

Don't know who Yisun is? Read the comic.

But things get confusing, the figure asks the readers where they believe Allison is traveling right when she is pulled from her own world. Someone says that she is going to the future, and Yisun likes it and makes it true.

But she isn't going to the future? Like she just isn't? We know later that this is all taking place linearly.

It's all very meta.

On page 16 we get some wild lore. It seems to be a background on Pree Ashma. Who's name I definitely recognize but deadass cannot remember who they are.

I'm probably not gonna mention the description again, but I wanted to yap so there you go.

No clue who this person is but I thought she was cool enough to make my pfp. We know her last name from the description though.

Later clues tell us she's a knight. That and people call her The Beggar Knight.

Boy would I love to pick the authors brain about where his mind goes when he creates these characters. Because they are so consistently unique and impressive. Praman Nand is a more important character so I would expect his design to be more striking. But the effort in his design is present in even the most insignificant background characters.

I imagine the dialect Cio is speaking here vs how she speaks to Allison and White Chain is the devil equivalent of code-switching.

I really love the action scenes. The author packs in so much detail that one panel feels fast paced. While giving the important events time to breath.

And this is where I learned tumblr has a 10 image per post limit i didn't know about. Continued in part 2!

[urialnathanonwright]

Trump’s Dumbass War on the Constitution Gets Smacked Down—Again

Looks like Trump tried to pick a fight with the Constitution and got his ass handed to him. Again.

This time, it's over birthright citizenship, which—let’s be real—has been settled law since checks notes 1868 when the 14th Amendment was ratified. But in true Trump fashion, he waltzed in thinking he could just scribble some nonsense on an executive order and override the literal foundation of American citizenship like he was making up new rules for a Mar-a-Lago golf tournament.

Thankfully, Judge Deborah Boardman wasn’t having it. She called his order exactly what it is—a blatant violation of the Constitution—and issued a nationwide injunction before Trump could start stripping babies of their rights just to appease the Fox News crowd. And let’s be clear: this wasn’t some close legal debate. This wasn’t a “new interpretation” of the 14th Amendment. This was straight-up unconstitutional bullshit, and the courts are dunking on it accordingly.

Even the judge in Seattle last month basically asked the DOJ lawyers, “How do y’all say this with a straight face?” Because let’s be honest, they don’t even believe this garbage—it’s just another attempt to turn immigrants into scapegoats and keep Trump’s base foaming at the mouth.

And speaking of garbage arguments, the DOJ’s claim that birthright citizenship is some sort of "perverse incentive for illegal immigration" is rich coming from the same people who let multi-millionaire tax cheats and corporate criminals skate by every damn day. But sure, let’s worry about babies being some sort of existential threat to America.

This whole thing was a performative stunt from the start. Trump’s team knew this order wouldn’t hold up, but they pushed it anyway just to keep the outrage machine running. And now, he’ll appeal, waste more taxpayer dollars, and scream about "activist judges" when all they’re doing is reading the damn Constitution.

Bottom line: Birthright citizenship is the law. It’s always been the law. And no wannabe dictator is gonna change that with a Sharpie and a Twitter tantrum.

[thebreakfastgenie]

It’s dangerous because you should be voting for people who have polices that you like. Under Biden this country has gone to shit. Kamala was in charge of the boarder and it was horrendously run. She is an ag who locked up the most black people for minor offenses in ca history. you supported blm now you’re gonna vote for someone that locked up a ton of them for minor offenses. she’s not good at her job and if she wasn’t a democrat black women id guarantee you would not vote for her you’d trash her. Look up who you vote for on neutral websites before casting your vote. And most don’t like that they bypassed a primary and the rich and powerful got to hand pick your candidate for you. So much for defending democracy am I right?

I’m not happy about bypassing a primary either, but what’s done is done. There is no path forward now that gives the primary voters a say. I voted for Kamala Harris for Vice-President in 2020. I voted for President Biden in the 2024 primary and he endorsed Vice-President Harris. Democratic voters are rallying behind her by choice because we don’t want to waste time fighting each other or open ourselves up to Republican attack. We want to beat Trump. You're underestimating how callously partisan I am this year. I want to beat Trump. Everything else comes after.

But let's talk about you. This message isn't just badly type, it seems reads like a response to a post, but none of my popular political posts are that post. I haven't really talked about Kamala Harris being a Black woman, because although it is significant because the base of the Democratic Party is Black women they've already begun incredible organizing for Harris, the most relevant point to me and the point I have chosen to focus on is that Harris is the candidate endorsed by the president, with access to the president's campaign funds, and has quickly secured united support, averting chaos. I was against Biden leaving the reason because I was terrified of chaos. I do support BLM and I'm sure I reblogged posts about it at the peak of that movement's mainstream attention, but most of the content on my blog is not BLM posts. A lot of my posts about racism and antiracism take a more academic stance. This ask feels like a copypasta, something you just sent to any Democrats you saw supporting VP Harris. I wonder why you'd want to undermine support for VP Harris. Could it be that chaos I'm so afraid of? Could it be because you want Trump to win? I mean, you didn't say anything about Trump in this ask. Not even a cursory "of course Trump is bad but." You do go in on "defending democracy," which is a big priority for a lot of Democratic voters. It's almost like you're trying to dissuade people who care about that from supporting/voting for VP Harris. I wonder why?

But this is what really sticks out to me:

Look up who you vote for on neutral websites before you cast your vote.

"Neutral websites?" What exactly are these neutral websites, pray tell? You certainly didn't provide any examples. There's just something about this phrasing that's incredibly strange. This is not, in my experience, the way leftists with left criticisms of Democratic candidates approach this issue.

All this is giving me the gut feeling that this anon is a troll designed to suppress support for VP Harris and the Democratic Party. Maybe a human troll, maybe a bot, but the goal is the same. If I get more asks like this I might just delete them so as not to platform them, but I wanted to post this one so everyone could see what I'm talking about.

[solarbird]

Holy crow, "Coach Walz" actually sticks, doesn’t it?

I mean, it helps that he actually was a coach, and for years. Football, even, on top of all that. He looks like a football coach – the good kind, the one who teaches you how to win but also teaches you sportsmanship and tenacity and all the good things high school sport is supposed to teach.

Probably helps that he was a teacher, and at the same time.

Before Coach caught on, though, he was also kinda instantly “Dad.” Coach took over, for obvious reasons, but even with that, he’s… he’s very Dad. He’s very Midwestern Dad in particular, but regardless of how you pronounce it, there’s a lot of Dad vibes in him and they’re not subtle and he’s not exactly playing them down.

Which is kinda funny, but in a good way, right?

Because for years now, the media (and the Republicans) have been leaning hard on the idea that the GOP were the “dad party” and the Democrats were the “mom party,” and using misogyny and resentment of mothers to push the electorate right. The fundamentalist movement – today’s Christofascists – really fed on that, as all fascists do, with their absolute hatred of women.

It really breached the waters hard earlier this past year, particularly amongst the base. There was forthright talk about it, and there were memes, cartoons of sneering, vengeful Trump striding across the US, captioned things like “Daddy’s coming home,” about how he’s going to punish you (liberals, women, queers), and put you in your place for all the things you did (like exist).

Basically, Daddy’s coming home and he’s going to beat you into line like you deserve, while they – daddy’s little sycophants – will get to watch and sneer along.

Sure, that’s near-zero-content vibes, rather than policies – other than the threats of course – but the Republicans haven’t been about policies for a long, long time, and Trump wiped what policy there was clean away.

And the media have never, not once, not seriously, held them to account for it – which is why no one should give a fuck about their whinging now about the Democrats doing a “vibes” convention.

Particularly not now that Coach is coming home. Because yeah, Coach Walz… Coach Walz is also a Dad. But Coach Walz Dad isn’t coming home to punish you. He’s not here to beat you into line.

Coach knows you’ve had a rough time of it lately – but Coach knows you’ve kept going, that you’ve stuck to it, that you’re still in there slugging away.

He’s not going to fix everything, obviously, nobody can do that. But if you want some help, he’s more than happy to bring some, because…

…because you haven’t given up…

…and he is so goddamn proud of you.

He the Dad who says, “No, no, it’s okay. Let’s clean up this mess – and then let’s go win this thing.” Because he’s also Coach.

If you’re someone who really wants to pick a Dad, if that’s how you pick who you want to elect… which one are you gonna pick? If you want a vibes election, fine, let’s have one: couch-molesting psychopath Vance vs. Coach Walz.

Trump and Trumpism have absolutely no idea what’s about to happen… no, what’s already happening to them.

So while it may not be the most sportmanlike thing to do… let’s run up the score.

Let’s absolutely blow them out, on every level, shall we?

74 days remain.

[mariacallous]

In early September, Warner Bros. released a teaser for A Minecraft Movie, the studio’s new film based on Mojang’s nearly 15-year-old sandbox game. Directed by Napoleon Dynamite helmer Jared Hess, it was, frankly, very goofy. Jack Black was Steve; Jason Momoa was sporting maybe the worst hairdo he’s ever had. Everyone involved, even the animated creatures, seemed to think they were in a different movie.

But that wasn’t what the trolls latched onto. Instead, they fixed on the fact that a Black woman—Orange Is the New Black’s Danielle Brooks—was in the Overworld.

As the trailer racked up dislikes, right-wing influencers like Elijah Schaffer and Nick Fuentes posted Brooks’ image next to disparaging comments and made references to “forced diversity” and “woke” Hollywood. It was Gamergate 2.0—a reimagining of the decade-old harassment campaign aimed at rallying against diversity, equity, and inclusion—but aimed at a kids’ movie, rather than a video game.

According to Wendy Via, cofounder and CEO of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, which just published a report looking at the far right’s racist comments about the trailer, the response comes from a new, and also quite old, playbook. “Large-scale campaigns against trailers specifically are a relatively new phenomenon, but attempting to frame ‘wokeness’ as an invisible enemy infiltrating the entertainment industry is not,” Via says.

Via points out that back in spring of 2023, the far-right X account End Wokeness made similar noise about a “Protect Trans Kids” flag that appeared briefly in the trailer for Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse. The goal of these campaigns is to target “spaces where young, white men are influenced,” like sci-fi movies and video games, which appeal to younger audiences, Via adds. “Providing racist and homophobic commentary on popular franchises through large social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube serves as an effective means to propagandize and recruit young people to hate movements.”

Take, for example, The Acolyte. Earlier this year, the Disney+ show found itself the target of fan backlash while star Amandla Stenberg was subjected to racist comments online. So, too, was Kelly Marie Tran, who played Rose Tico in the most recent Star Wars movie trilogy. The minimizing of her role in the last installment, The Rise of Skywalker, perhaps emboldened diversity detractors further.

Reception of The Acolyte seemed, almost, to be a solidification. Fan unrest in the Star Wars universe is a cousin to, if not a direct descendant of, Gamergate, and since former Trump White House strategist Steve Bannon harnessed the energy of that movement and used it to fuel the then burgeoning so-called alt-right, influencers have used similar tactics to convince aggrieved men that their games, their shows and movies, and their country are somehow being taken from them.

By the time the Minecraft Movie trailer dropped, the script was already set. Influencers just had to pick which lines to say.

Whereas 2014’s rallying cry was a more broadly misogynistic, racist one, the Gamergate of 2024 seems focused on the idea of the “DEI hire”—a woman, LGBTQ+ or BIPOC person who ends up blamed for “ruining” something. Pundits used this language to attack Vice President Kamala Harris. Right-wing talking heads pointed the finger at female Secret Service agents for not fully protecting Trump during the July attempt on his life. Fans have lobbed it at the inclusion of a Black samurai in Assassin’s Creed Shadows.

Campaigning against diversity in games came into particular focus earlier this year when Sweet Baby Inc., a Canadian consultancy, became the focus of a group of players upset at what they viewed as the “wokeification” of video games. Online harassment of the company’s employees hit new heights last winter when a Steam curation group called Sweet Baby Inc Detected popped up purporting to list all the games the company had advised on, giving people an easy way to boycott certain titles or post bad reviews of them. Even though the company hadn’t touched several of the games, and as founder Kim Belair told WIRED this winter, the company “[doesn’t] want forced diversification either,” the harassing comments continued for months.

On September 4, the same day the Minecraft Movie trailer went up, the US Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against two employees of the state-backed Russian news network RT, in which it alleged that they had secretly funded the right-wing influencer network Tenet Media. The DOJ accused the company of posting content full of Kremlin-approved talking points, though individual influencers working for Tenet say they knew nothing about the ties to Russia and are not accused of wrongdoing. A WIRED analysis of Tenet’s videos, since taken down by YouTube, found several frequently used three-word phrases. Among them: “Black Lives Matter,” “diversity equity inclusion,” and “Sweet Baby Inc.”

Into this firestorm landed Minecraft. As Adrienne Massanari, an associate professor at American University’s school of communications and author of the forthcoming book Gaming Democracy: How Silicon Valley Leveled Up the Far Right, points out, Minecraft (the gaming platform), already had some right-leaning fans. Its creator, Markus “Notch” Persson, who sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion in 2014, has sent some dumb tweets about race, and Minecraft “has a reputation for being connected to the far-right pipeline,” Massanari says. Being based on a game connects the Minecraft Movie to Gamergate-like responses in some ways, but it’s also possible that a movie based on “this particular game,” she adds, has activated a certain kind of fan.

Back in August, Deadline reported The Acolyte would not be getting a second season. It was, Stenberg would later say, “not a huge shock” considering the response online. Other reports claimed it didn’t get a second season because it was expensive and didn’t attract a huge viewership. Regardless of the reason, Via says the far right saw it as a victory of the “go woke, go broke” narrative they’ve been pushing.

“Going after The Minecraft Movie may be an attempt to recreate this ‘victory’ and provide the far right with the opportunity to craft the narrative about a series or film themselves,” Via says. “If Minecraft were to perform poorly at the box office, they could point to “diversity” as a reason for its failure and justify petitioning for more media that excludes everyone but straight, white men.”

[senka-mesecine]

How do you think Barnes would react if one of his men or a man from another platoon was bothering or heckling his s/o?

Throwing an idea for a potential fanfic out here don’t mind me……

---

-"I understand the optics of this."-

-"Only woman in a platoon of men, I get how it looks like."-

-"But, if you picked a fight with everyone who ever looked at me, threw a comment in passing my way, acted occasionally inappropriate or just drew breath in my general direction, you'd pick a fight with the whole world."-

-"Sumn' wrong with that?"-

He'd challenge your attempts to de-escalate the situation and to pacify him verbally.

Dissuade him from carnage.

Him!?

That's just about how that bit of dialogue could vaguely look like, because yeah, Barnes potentially sees nothing wrong in picking a fight with everyone (in fact, he might relish the notion) --- or threatening to report them, best case scenario. Article 15. them for misconduct or go as far as getting them dishonorably discharged on trumped up charges; being entirely draconically lawful when it comes to his own affairs and possibly wholly unlawful when it suits him. Or he'd just outright hint to their faces he'll kill them if they do as much as cast a wondering glance your way ever again; a promise definitely thinly veiled in the veneer of professionalism. Chances are, you never even quite discover just how Barnes solved the issue of you being catcalled, heckled or bothered by other men on base ignorant and stupid enough not to realize what's his isn't to be trespassed upon because the problem might just abruptly...you know...stop. And that's the eerie part. A soldier or the soldiers who done it could end up transferred to another platoon, might disappear, they might genuinely be reported to the chain of command or they stay exactly where they are but whatever Barnes did to them or said to them clearly got them so scared that next time you do as much as pass their line of sight, their group falls into a tense silence and they avert their collective gazes from you. Someone like Barnes could be convinced this is a man's issue to solve. And so he solves it without you, man to man, with the other boys. Regardless of your protests. Regardless if you agree or not. Even his reaction to the matter is fiercely and strictly his own. It unfolds mainly internally. He probably saves his actual wrath and the fear-factor that comes with it for the transgressors that bugged you in the first place.

All you need to know the issue's been fixed.

And since Barnes is no peacekeeper by nature, you can only begin to imagine what sort of methods he utilized. Whatever the case --- they're wildly effectively and scarily quiet and understated; seemingly happening behind the scenes. He's awfully cool and frosty on the whole issue. But, his underlining passion? It manifests in how quick he was to want to get into a potential mortal vendetta against everyone over this.

[thepolyamorouspolymath]

Dear anons clogging my inbox...

I love how people pick and choose which parts of my statements on Gaza to read. Notice I say, repeatedly and often that I do not support Israel, I think the US needs to not support Israel (which I've been saying since the 90s when it became clear they were not approaching peace talks in good faith), that genocide is always wrong regardless of the history.

Nit once do I defend their actions. What I do is explain the ways in which it is fucking complicated in terms of US policy -- bc that is the only policy I have a say in, because Israel gives zero fucks what the American people think.

So why do I bring up those issues that complicate US policy? Well, bc I care about Gaza AND Ukraine AND Taiwan AND South Korea.

But even more because activism only works when you know the arguments to make, when you have all the angles and factors at your disposal.

If you call your Senator about how tragic dead civilians in Gaza is, I promise you they will throw that message away. You cannot appeal to the empathy and conscience -- politics is practical. You need to be prepared to make a solid case, like the fact that the US loses ground in convincing the southern hemisphere to support Ukraine because of Russian war crimes if we are backing Israel committing war crimes. You can say fuck the government, fuck the administration, fuck Biden all the live long day, but the fact is you need their votes to change anything and you get those by an overwhelming show of opposition with arguments they find valid, which are practical rather than moral.

Now you may be saying that it won't change anything, but it DOES. How do I know? Because in 4 years Trump passed virtually zero substantive legislation -- his shitty policies were done by executive order and then overturned by courts most of the time. He couldn't pass anything because of the widespread public opposition with effective arguments. The most spectacular case of that was the attempt to repeal Obamacare, which failed despite every Republican running on it.

No, Congress shouldn't need to be prodded to do the right thing -- they shouldn't even need to be told what the right thing is here, but they do.

I could cry about the tragedy unfolding every day, about the lives lost, about the horrifying methods being used. Because it IS horrifying.

But that will help exactly no one. That will change absolutely nothing. When you want people's support -- and you cannot change policy without the support of politicians, no matter what public opinion is because they control the budget -- you have to meet them where they are, and where Congress and the President are is deep in the ramifications of policy decisions.

I'm sorry if I find being an effective advocate more important than the righteous outrage that lets you pat yourself on the back for being a good person but it is.

I have dozens of posts on Israel and the history and criticisms based on actual data rather than feelings, so perhaps look at those and arm yourself with the knowledge to create a good argument for lobbying the people who actually make the decision.

Protests that get ugly coverage do make a difference in putting pressure on. Lobbying Congress threatening their seats make an even bigger one (I've been in politics since I was 18, I've worked with these people in campaign years, and believe me, it does register -- not in what they say but in the votes on the floor that never get press coverage, which is what actually matters.)

When I say that Hamas is a terrorist group, it's not a slur, it's the definition. Their founding charter and their tactics mean the US will NEVER give them military aid. Do I agree with that? Who gives a shit? It's irrelevant, because any request for it will be automatically written off. Getting humanitarian aid to them, otoh, is something that the US can do -- and has, despite a great many challenges in doing so. Cutting off aid and support to Israel is DOABLE, and has a chance of moving the needle, as Israel has only maintained their position due to US support for the last 75 years and they know it. (Which, for the record, I think was often a mistake.) But getting that done is a matter of practical arguments for how it benefits the US, which requires a rebuttal for every complicating factor.

So, anons, try reading everything I've said on the subject before deciding that me not indulging in meaningless outrage is a statement of support despite me saying it's not. I've never been shy about expressing my opinion, so if I say I oppose something it's not lip service -- I make it a policy to mean what I say without pandering.

Also, have the courage of your convictions to sign your death threats and hate mail, you fucking cowards.

[jewishbarbies]

Tbh everybody’s mad at Taylor swift for taking a luke warm stance on her go vote post but she already told us exactly what political values she has. Not only is staying silent against oppressors taking their side, but her last boyfriend was a nazi. She regularly hangs out with racists and sex offenders. She is regularly accused of micro (and macro) aggressions and using black people as props. Just because she hasn’t put it in exact words doesn’t mean she hasn’t said who she is. Advertising standing for nothing so fans think shes dropping more Easter eggs and could stand for what they believe in. She’s manipulating her “woke” fans and catering to her very large nazi fan base. I’m sick of people defending this nasty racist piece of shit.

i expected nothing less but i also find it interesting that this year specifically she's purposely leaving her political posts vague. before, she had specifically mentioned marsha blackburn, for example, and wanted people to vote against her ie vote democrat. she got an obscene amount of people to register to vote. and now she's just like "well whoever you wanna vote for just vote for them uwu" and i can't help but think that it's probably because of her angry conservative fanbase, and the fans she picked up from the NFL. she had said she was happy that trump didn't like her (paraphrasing) at one point yet here she is with a vague "just vote" post while he's actively trying to take credit for her success. when kanye did it, she was screeching from the rooftops, but trump does it and she doesn't address it at all. inch resting.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Aaron Rupar and Stephen Robinson at Public Notice:

Between President Biden announcing he’s stepping aside, his endorsement of VP Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party turning the presidential race on its head by quickly rallying around her, and JD Vance immediately crashing and burning as Trump’s VP pick, this week has been a historic one in American politics — so much so that last week’s RNC feels like a distant memory.

But it’s worth devoting some attention to how the press did Trump’s work for him by portraying the aspiring authoritarian exactly how he wants to be seen — as a heroic strongman and newfound champion of political unity. Trump accepted the Republican presidential nomination for a third time on July 17 with a rambling, incoherent mess of a speech that offered a terrifying vision for America during its rare moments of coherence. His performance was widely regarded as a disaster. But a range of major newspapers didn’t cover it that way. More than a few headlines actually raved about it. The Boston Globe: “In a departure, Trump calls for unity, healing in America.” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: “Trump urges unity after assassination attempt while proposing sweeping populist agenda.” Baltimore Sun: “Subdued Trump describes assassination try, accepts nomination.” As media critic Parker Molloy pointed out, these papers seemingly reported on Trump’s speech based on the prepared remarks, not the speech as he actually delivered it.

[...]

Trump will never pivot to unity because his whole brand is divisiveness

Not long after Trump’s attempted assassination at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13, mainstream outlets went along with the Trump campaign’s narrative: The shocking event had changed him for the better. When Trump made his first appearance at the RNC on July 15, the New York Times described him as “subdued” and claimed he showed a “glimpse of vulnerability.” But Trump had already demonstrated he was unchanged earlier that day when he posted on Truth Social that his idea of “Uniting our Nation” was the dismissal of all criminal charges against him.

Trump spewed his usual invective against his political foes throughout the week. The media, nonetheless, continued to take seriously the idea that he was a new man. Axios reported on July 15 that Trump “plans to seize the his moment by toning down his Trumpiness” and MSNBC’s Katy Tur described his first appearance at the RNC as “serene.” But the most egregious instance of this genre was a piece from Politico’s Natalie Allison, who wrote on July 17 that “there appears to be a new softness to Donald Trump, with people who’ve talked to him describing him with words like ‘existential,’ ‘serene,’ ‘emotional’ and even ‘spiritual.’”

[...] Largely left out of the coverage of the assassination attempt on Trump is the fact he not only has glorified political violence in the past but continues to do so — one of his central campaign promises is to pardon January 6 insurrectionists convicted of crimes. And he also wants to make it easier for people to obtain weapons of war like the one that shot at him and killed a man in the process.

The press sold a faulty narrative that Donald Trump is a “changed man” and a “unifier” in the wake of the assassination attempt, but in reality Trump was the same old unhinged turd that he always was.

[lepartidelamort]

“Abortion Lord” Trump Wants to Overturn Six-Week Ban, Allow Women to Murder Older Children

Andrew Anglin

So, I don’t know how much you’re keeping up with this election. I’m not really keeping up with it all that much. I don’t think voting is real, so I’m just going to wait and see who the Jews pick, and then analyze it from there.

But, insofar as I am keeping up with it… it’s everything that I predicted. Both candidates are talking a lot about the concerns of Israel, while both scramble for the middle.

Kamala is now talking about hardcore border security. She’s saying she’s changed all of her views, and is no longer a “Biden Style Radical Extremist.” She’s basically claiming she didn’t have any power under Biden and didn’t really want to do this hardcore leftist stuff.

Meanwhile, Trump is an anti-racist, pro-homosexual abortionist.

New York Post:

Former President Donald Trump suggested Thursday that he’ll vote in favor of a Florida ballot measure aimed at overturning the state’s six-week abortion ban. “I think the six week is too short. It has to be more time,” Trump told NBC News when asked how he intends to vote on the November referendum. “I want more weeks.” “I am going to be voting that we need more than six weeks,” the former president added. … Last week, Trump touted on Truth Social that, if elected, his administration would be “great for women and their reproductive rights.”

It’s hard to say if this would be a good move if the election was real. I don’t think he would be saying this if he thought the election was real. Probably.

If the election is only about appealing to Jews, who you want to select you as president, then Trump abandoning his most devoted base in favor of wanton abortionism is a good move.

He’s got the hardline Israeli Jews on board. He wants the leftist Jews to at least not be afraid of him.

This is exactly what you would expect to happen if the election had nothing to do with voting and was entirely decided by Jewish overlords.

[qqueenofhades]

I keep thinking about the ask you answered a little while ago about people wanting a leftist version of Trump is so scarily true it's unsettling. People keep demanding he "do something" about abortion and gun violence but when anyone is like.... he can't, he doesn't have the votes to, they're like "he's the President he said he would do something why hasn't he done something" and it's like ???? what part of this are you not understanding if he doesn't have the votes he doesn't have the votes. Do they want like an EO or something? I'm just not sure what they expect him to do.

And it's also so fucking annoying to see them go after the Dems at every turn while letting the Republicans off the hook completely and not expecting shit from them. You may just want Biden to write them all off and govern like the GOP doesn't exist but he can't.....exactly do that. That's not how our system works. I wonder if they're just sorely misinformed from how rife Twitter is with complete bullshit or if they understand reality but are just saying this stuff for the outrage clicks.

Honestly, as I've said before, I'm not sure? I think it's a combination of willful ignorance and a desire not to learn anything, ever, that might challenge their deeply felt moral superiority. Just the other day, I had someone in my notes who, while otherwise agreeing with most of what I was saying, also insisted that Biden was "anti-trans." And like. The president who, while VP, famously came out for LGBTQ marriage before his boss, who specifically highlighted the violence suffered by trans women of color in his campaign platform, got the Violence Against Women Act reauthorized and passed with strong new protections especially for trans and gnc/queer victims, has issued statements on Transgender Day of Remembrance, made sure to repeatedly insist to trans Americans that they belong and their lives are valid, etc. etc., is definitely anti-trans, dontcha know?

However, I happen to know that recently, the Washington Post wrote a bad and misleading article about the Biden administration supposedly joining Republican state AGs to prevent trans girls from playing in women's sports. It was picked up by a big liberal account on Twitter and amplified as "a betrayal of everything the Biden administration has stood for since day 1" (which, you'll notice, implicitly agrees that the Biden administration HAS strongly supported trans rights). Then a few days later, the account holder actually read the policy, agreed that it wasn't what was being proposed and the WaPo had done a hatchet job on reporting it, and admitted that no, the Biden administration actually hadn't done a 180 on supporting trans rights. But if all you have is one Twitter account incorrectly reporting on a bad and misleading WaPo article, which is like... layers on layers of deliberately distorted and extremely out-of-context information, and you use that to decide that BIDEN IS ANTI-TRANS, it just. Doesn't make sense. And even if in the extremely likely event that Biden and/or his administration have missed some of the ideological benchmarks arbitrarily assigned to Demonstrate Absolute Purity On This Issue, like. HAVE YOU GUYS SEEN WHAT THE REPUBLICANS ARE DOING??! HAVE YOU?!?!??!?!?!

I don't know if that is where that particular person got the idea or not, but it demonstrates how the left-wing online misinformation ecosystem works, and which is in some ways is extremely similar to the right-wing online misinformation ecosystem. It doesn't matter if the only piece of "evidence" supporting your belief is a single Tweet written by someone who hasn't read the actual policy based on a bad piece of reporting, that evidence is now to be preferred against every single empirical example to the contrary because it's "the real truth" (translation: it confirms what you already want to believe). That is the example that you will whip out every time someone tries to argue with you to the contrary, and you will never accept anything that contradicts and/or disproves it, because that's what you want to believe and now you will. You technically know that there is information out there which doesn't agree with your position, but it is the "wrong information" and therefore cannot be incorporated into your belief system. You likewise refuse to acknowledge any complexities, any other branches of government (once again, I am begging people to acknowledge both SCOTUS and how catastrophically it was fucked by allowing Trump to fill three seats), or anything other than insisting on the impossible and getting mad when it doesn't get done. Which doesn't sound very productive and/or useful to me, but hey. OUTRAGE. OUTRAAAAAAGE.

[uboat53]

Political strategy time? Why, with less than 4 weeks until election day, is Donald Trump going on a campaigning blitz in some of the bluest parts of the country in states he has exactly zero change of winning? Call this a SHORT RANT (TM).

INTRODUCTION

For those who don't know, Trump has scheduled events in California, Colorado, Illinois, and New York; states that Biden won by an average of 20 points in 2020. Even Colorado, the closest of the four, voted for him by 13 points and is the only one of the four that voted for a Republican this millennium (Bush in '04). Just as importantly, none of the specific places he's visiting (Coachella, CA, Aurora, CO, Chicago, IL, and New York, NY) are in media markets that overlap with any swing state with the possible exception of New York's media market extending very slightly into a sparsely populated part of Pennsylvania.

I'd also point out that these are fairly expensive places to campaign in, especially New York City where Trump has reported booked Madison Square Garden for his rally. In other words, he's dropping a lot of money and spending a lot of time campaigning in places where he hasn't the faintest chance of picking up electoral votes, so let's take a look at why his campaign says they're doing this.

THE STATED REASONS

The first reason that the Trump campaign is giving for this choice is "Choosing high-impact settings makes it so the media can’t look away and refuse to cover the issues and the solutions President Trump is offering. We live in a nationalized media environment and the national media’s attention on these large-scale, outside-the-norm settings increases the reach of his message across the country and penetrates in every battle ground state."

And, sure, there's some truth to the idea that the media has largely become nationalized and that making a highly unorthodox move like this can draw some coverage. I do question the assertion that it will force the national political media to cover his ideas, though, they've proven very good at ignoring ideas in favor of horse-race coverage over the last several election cycles, especially when they're forced to pick those ideas out of rambling, hour and a half long rally speeches. Also, is Trump lacking in national media coverage? At this point I'm not sure there's much he can do that would get the national media to cover him more than it already is.

A second advisor has said that no matter where Trump holds rallies, he gets huge online viewership, including in swing states, effectively saying that the location of his rallies doesn't matter.

And, again, I'm sure that's accurate, but is it helpful? At this point in the campaign, especially a campaign that's so closely divided in public polling, you need to either be convincing undecided voters to vote for you or convincing low-propensity voters who favor you that it's worth showing up on election day. Does someone who is following Trump rallies online fall into either of those groups? I'd argue that the online viewers of Trump rallies are not undecided voters and they're almost certain to show up on election day.

Finally, some supporters have made the argument that there are competitive House races in those areas that could be boosted by Trump's presence such as the CA 40th and 41st districts which are represented by Young Kim and Ken Calvert, respectively and the NY 4th district represented by Anthony D'Esposito, all of which are very close or even lean Democratic.

This is one of the few arguments I've heard that seems to have some validity to it, Trump's presence may turn out voters for these races who otherwise might not have bothered. Still, it raises the question of why he's doing this when he hasn't locked up his own race yet. Does the campaign have internal data that could make them more confident (or less confident) than what's currently public? And, if so, why does it seem to differ substantially from the Harris campaign's decisions that are based on their own internal data? Someone's got to be wrong here, and Harris' choices seem to match the public data a lot more closely.

MY PERSONAL OPINION

I'm going to note very strenuously that this is my personal opinion and isn't based on hard data like the previous section. I've been observing Trump… well, for about a decade now, and I've been making hypotheses about his behavior and testing them against what he actually does. While it's not always perfect, I've found that the most successful method I've come up with is to imagine him as a deeply emotionally fragile person with a rational understanding of the world in line with that of a toddler's.

I realize that there are many people who will argue that he's really hyper-intelligent and playing 5-dimensional chess with his unorthodox strategies, but that simply doesn't match the evidence. He tends to lose so much more often than he wins and even the cases where he wins, such as the 2016 election, are so close that it's more reasonable to attribute them to luck than skill.

Given this, my personal opinion is that this is an ego-driven decision rather than a strategic one.

Trump isn't from the more remote parts of the country, he's from New York City, and he desperately values big city things. Madison Square Garden isn't a great place for him to pick up voters, but it's an extremely prestigious venue that he's valued and coveted his entire life. There's no venue in the parts of the country in which he is popular that has the same cachet as the big arenas in the cities where he is dismally unpopular. Coachella, Chicago, and Madison Square Garden are simply more well-known and recognizable places than Butler, Pennsylvania or Howell, Michigan.

My observation is that he seems to have been thrown for a loop by Biden's withdrawal from the race and is confused and unfamiliar with the race he now has to run against Kamela Harris. Scheduling him for venues which have significant capacity and which he perceives as having high importance serves primarily as a way to boost his ego (with the risk, of course, of severely damaging his ego if he is unable to fill those venues in areas where he is unpopular).

CONCLUSION

Trump is spending a bunch of money and a lot of time with only weeks to go before the election holding rallies in several places that seem to have no rational relation to his quest to win 270 electoral votes and become President again. The reasons his campaign gives for doing so are… interesting, to say the least, and don't seem to match the available data we have or a reasonable interpretation of such.

Personally, I think he's doing rallies in big cities to boost his ego. He's never thought of the places where he's popular as being important, he's always wanted to be a big-shot in the big city. If the campaign is letting him do that, their internal numbers might be worse than the public ones, otherwise they'd probably care a lot more about the waste of time and money in the final stretch of the campaign.

Thoughts?

[magxit]

I hope it’s okay to send this, as a fellow southern liberal (and lover of VEEP!) I’ve really enjoyed reading your takes about the Dem nomination. I also majored in political science so I have spent entirely too much of my free time reading these things. Who a presidential nominee picks as their VP usually plays a crucial part in appealing to undecided voters. Obama went with someone with more experience, white, and older to combat arguments about him being inexperienced. Trump went with Pence in 2016 bc Pence was a more toned down Republican with more experience that appealed to Republicans not sure if he was really with them. I think picking Vance has been the opening the Dems have needed to shake up the campaign. Vance appeals to exactly the same voters as Trump, meaning he does not immediately appeal to a wider group. Harris is the obvious choice for head of the Dem ticket as she is one half of the ticket Dem voters have already supported. I just need people to stop assuming just bc she is a woman she has no chance against Trump. Right now his ticket does little to support anyone outside of his base.

Vance’s wife and kids is really freaking some people out. It is so gross. We need to pick someone that will add to the ticket.