Democrats truly are their own worst enemy…

Straight from your source: […]

Yup, Democrats started to institute firearm regulation as a pillar of the party platform and as a result began accepting progressively less and less NRA donations. The 90s was when it began and the trend continued into the 2000s until today when Democrats overwhelmingly and explicitly pledge not to take NRA money.

It was a decision by the party that public safety was of greater importance than taking NRA money.

Because Citizens United makes that completely and utterly legal.

No. Parties can create their own internal rules, including rules that result in membership being revoked or other consequences (losing endorsements, committee positions etc.). Which would stop them running in democratic primaries. What they cannot do is legally stop people generally from taking campaign donations.

It’s rich that you’re bemoaning the lack of civic literacy when you yourself don’t even understand that parties create their own internal codes of conduct and ethical guidelines (or are intentionally misleading people), which they 100% can use to maintain party ethics.

See how I never even implied that?

You quite literally did.

Your kneejerk response to someone making a simple observation that Democrats allow the meddling of zionist PACs in our democracy (by allowing members of the party to accept AIPAC money) was to deflect responsibility away from those willfully accepting the money to the decision that allowed them to accept the money.

You’re being deeply dishonest about your intentions here, attempting to obfuscate it with condescension and trying to project an unearned sense of authority.

Civic literacy in this country is fucking awful.

Its not that people opposed to zionism are civically illiterate, it’s that you’ve mistaken your latent right-wing views and intellectual dishonesty with civic literacy.

You’re flipping causality.

No, I’m not. The NRA historically spent over a thirdof its lobbying money on Democratic races. They stopped because Democrats stopped accepting the money or were just donating it to charity as in the case of Tim Walz, not because the NRA doesn’t want influence over Democrats.

You know who the largest source of Republican money into Democratic races is right now? AIPAC.

Now why would Republicans donate to AIPAC knowing that AIPAC is going to be spending millions in these Dem primaries? Hmm 🤔

Almost like AIPAC is a means of introducing far-right influence into the Dem party and attempting to displace criticis of the rightwing extremist Israeli regime. Like how AIPAC spent record amounts to help replace Jamaal Bowman with a racist like George Latimer.

The Democrats absolutely can create rules about where members can recieve money from, and they absolutely should. It is a choice the party makes for themselves, it’s not foisted upon them. It’s naive (or dishonest) to pretend that money isn’t leveraged to direct party politics and that it’s not weaponized across party lines.

Citizens United is the cause of our lobby issues generally, yes, but the Democrats are still responsible for allowing their members to take AIPAC money.

They stopped members taking NRA money when the NRA was trying to play bothsides, they can do it with Israeli money too. Swearing off money from AIPAC and other Israeli groups should be a requirement to run in the party.

So tired of Democrats letting zionists meddle in our democracy.

In regards to Musk’s businesses it might be considered a mercy for his kids to not inherit them…

The thin silverlining to that scenario is he’s not president/commander in chief and can’t have his goons lower security so his rioters can get in.

Bipartisan is a really bad sign. My money says this is not going to be aimed at actually addressing the underlying profit motive that drives big tech to purposefully promote misery through their algorithm designs, instead it will be further restriction on users freedoms and privacy.

Israeli fascism is not a result of democracy…it’s a colonial project born from the pre-war mentality of Europe and the preceding centuries of monarchy and despotism. It is, fundementally, anti-democratic.

Israel and the US are indeed different. The US, regardless of its problems with its right-wing and the right’s support of Israel, is not an apartheid state and there is meaningful internal opposition to the far-right in the US (unlike Israel, or Russia, or China).

You’re trying to conflate democracy and capitalism, which really makes me question your motives.

What little life he has left. I’ll never understand how people get to that age and are still behaving like they’re going to live forever. If someone has a forward-looking sense of duty that motivates them to make a better future for others I understand that, but Trump is clearly just in it for himself so I don’t really understand the motivation if it’s not just straight up denial of his own mortality.

The end is right around the corner for old Dumpy, you’d think he’d want to spend it sitting on a beach drinking pina coladas that he got other people to pay for.

Potentially, yeah, I’m not exactly pinning all my hopes on it or anything, but I feel like even with the people who are fully in the cult, a lot of them are mostly just kind of dim and easily manipulated. They’re ordinary people laboring under a lie, not necessarily the people who actually fabricate the lies themselves intentionally (though some of them certainly might be that type, as you say).

It creates a short circuit in the system when those ordinary people have the direct access to the truth without Fox or Trump or whoever else being able to act as a middleman and spin it. It’s harder to lie to yourself when you’re the one faced with the decision to tear up the ballots or whatever they would have to do to make things fit their world view.

I don’t think people are all good, most are a mixed bag at best, but I do have faith in average people to admit the truth to themselves when it’s presented to them in a way that they can accept it. With some those conditions under which they’ll accept it are just especially extreme.

We can only hope that literally being the ones to be involved in counting the votes and seeing the results for themselves first hand is enough to get them to accept reality.

A long shot, but if these people genuinely believe that there was election interference and they aren’t simply looking to knowingly commit fraud, there’s a chance they might acknowledge the facts in the end if the results really are just undeniable.

Edit: This American Life did an episode back before the 2020 election about an election administrator who basically made it his priority to make the process as transparent as possible so that election deniers could see under every stone and explore every nook of the process.

And I think it both speaks to the power of transparency as an antidote, but is also a bit sad how this guy bends over backwards to accommodate these people and is still treated with suspicion. Really interesting listen and highlights how fair elections really do rest on the shoulders of these lower level workers.

“The what? The Meritage Federation? What did you say? Carriage Fumigation, what? Can’t hear you. Never heard of it, is that like a Cracker Barrel thing?”

This is illustrative of why I have no faith in Israel to actually behave as a liberal democracy the way its allies pretend it is.

It’s not just that they temporarily have a far-right administration as part of some cycle between liberalism and conservativism, the population itself is overwhelmingly far right and supports apartheid. The only thing that upsets them about what’s happening in Gaza is that the Israeli government clearly doesn’t care about getting the hostages back. The wholesale slaughter of innocent people does not bother most Israelis in the least, many of them see it as a positive.

There is no internal opposition to the far right in Israel, and the country should be geopolitically categorized the same as we categorize Russia, China or any other hardcore authoritarian state. It’s not a democracy.

https://www.cityandstateny.com/politics/2018/11/nyc-purged-200000-voters-in-2016-it-wasnt-a-mistake/177964/

Then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman would eventually reveal that they were among 200,000 New York City voters who had been illegally wiped off the rolls and prevented from voting in the presidential primary. But by January of 2017, when Schneiderman announced that he would intervene in a federal lawsuit against the New York City Board of Elections, along with the U.S. Department of Justice, the news fell on deaf ears.

[…]

As the candidates entered the New York race, Clinton was leading Sanders by 209 pledged delegates. Although The New York Times, the Daily News and Newsday had endorsed Clinton, the momentum was with Sanders, who had come off seven straight primary wins. By April 2016, Sanders had narrowed Clinton’s initial 60-point lead with voters nationally, to 10 points, and appeared to be gaining on her. However, a Sanders victory in New York had been deemed a long shot, based on Clinton’s formidable support by the local Democratic Party establishment.

Essentially Sanders was closing the gap with the votes, so the establishment helped kneecap his momentum for Clinton’s benefit.

This is why it’s important to make sure people in your life know where to go to confirm their registration: https://www.usa.gov/confirm-voter-registration

Currently the GOP is doing this for obvious reasons, but the Democrats will also try this kind of thing during primaries. They “cleaned” a swath of young people within the demographic that leaned towards Sanders back in 2016.

Always check your registration leading up to an election.

The contexts are really different. Boris played up his “harmless eccentric” facade, but Trump isn’t going to benefit from looking whimsical or whatever, no one would buy that from him. No one sees him as some mad genius.

Reality is people are pretty tired of weird in their politics, which is why in this context I think it’s potentially a good approach.

My sense of the general sentiment is that people don’t have time for weirdos at this point, we’ve had 8 years of weird and now we’ve got real problems facing the nation and the world and can’t be mucking around with a bunch of troglodytes like Vance who think only married people who own property should be citizens or whatever bizzarre Gilead type ideas conservatives have for the country.

He’s got brainrot for fascism. Weird guy.

Some talking heads on NPR were discussing the economy and how this was “the first time Millenials were seeing inflation” and how the economy is just waiting for consumers to “adjust”. This in the context of them also basically saying there needs to be more unemployment so wages don’t get higher.

It’s like victim blaming or something, corporations went on a price gouging spree during the pandemic and now we all have to learn to deal with it so Wallstreet can go back to business as usual, and they’re getting all pissy that people’s response is simply finding ways to spend less, instead of giving up their last nickle.

Funny how they never talk about corporations needing to tighten their belt or “adjust their expectations” to paying higher wages.

Dating myself a bit but it had to probably be the first Half-Life. It wasn’t only about realizing how limited and awkward a gamepad is, but the mods opened my eyes too.

I still to this day don’t see the point of consoles. They’re just a way for companies to try and silo off customers and get everyone on proprietary hardware.