#Republicans get a brain challenge

[hwang-inhos-fish]

Something some people don't understand is that Squid Game is an ALLEGORY

Yes, many characters are very dictated (/doomed) by the narrative, beholden to their convictions, BECAUSE IT’S AN ALLEGORY.

Yeah, some things don't seem 100% realistic (although it's a fantastically well thought out world and story), BECAUSE IT’S AN ALLEGORY.

This story, these characters, THIS ENTIRE WORLD was meticulously staged TO SEND US A MESSAGE.

It's about capitalism. It's about classism. It's about the evil of hoarded wealth. It's about the dehumanization and infantilization of disadvantaged groups by privileged ones. It's about choice and autonomy, and how neither of those mean much - and yet, mean EVERYTHING - when all you have are bad choices. When all you've BEEN GIVEN are bad choices.

It's about the violence of poverty. About what people become when they have no other choice. About what people become when they don't have even the basics of life provided for them, the selfish beasts we must become to survive when those situations are imposed - and about how, then, we're blamed for it.

It's about the way we're pitted against one another while those in power sit back and watch. It's about the violence of consumption - specifically media consumption.

Of course In-ho is a little evil; HE EXISTS TO SHOW US WHAT HAPPENS TO NORMAL PEOPLE WHEN YOU FORCE THEM INTO THOSE CHOICES.

Of course Gi-hun trusts too easily, accepts Young-il as a friend despite that damning number on his chest; HE EXISTS TO SHOW US THERE’S ANOTHER WAY.

[theconstitutionisgayculture]

Not to sound overly paranoid, but do you think that Texas bill is gonna pass? No matter how much we all gather around and say how ridiculous or insane it is, it sets a dangerous precedent for the other states if it passes. What gets me is that they're blatantly saying context doesn't matter and that there's a possibility that they could just say any piece of media they don't like falls under this bill.

I'm conservative too, and the way they view any kind of explicit material, no matter why it exists, is the same way leftists view offensive remarks or words. The reason why the words were said doesn't matter, leftists are angry that the words were said at all. The reason why the explicit material exists doesn't matter, conservatives are angry that the explicit material exists at all.

"Free speech is all fine and dandy until you say or make something we don't like, then you and it gotta go," is by far the worst political take in history, and neither side is immune to it.

That Texas bill is the first thing since the shift that has got me worried. But I’m not in Texas, there’s always the possibility it doesn’t pass/get’s a lot of backlash, and we’ve had bills like this pass before that has quickly been repealed due to it being deemed unconstitutional in retrospect. But between the fear-mongering all over the internet about everything, and the recent cases of Chinese authors getting arrested for smut, my paranoid brain is afraid I’m going to get in trouble for reading shit like Black Butler, so that’s great.

These are two different asks but I'm combining them because they're basically about the same thing.

I'm pretty sure the bill will pass. Texas is a red state (supermajority I believe) and it already went through the house with every Republican voting for it. It will be sold as a "protect children from pedophiles" bill which will give them the cover they need to ignore the people who have free speech concerns. Which is infuriating on multiple levels, not the least of which is the fact that they're going to give ammo to the people who criticize any legislation passed to protect children as a cover for taking people's rights away. The next time a red state wants to ban child transitioning the trans cult will point to this law and say "Look at what conservatives do when they claim they're protecting children. They just lock you up for reading manga and don't save a single child from a predator" and they won't even be completely lying this time.

As for the law being repealed by t he Supreme Court, I don't think it will be. "Obscenity" has long been held to be a legal exception to the first amendment, and there are enough right wing justices that I don't see any challenge to the law succeeding.

But this is just a part of the larger return towards puritan censorship on the right. The porn ban freaks are coming out of the woodwork demanding anything lewd and impure be banned. The anti-video game scolds are picking up where Anita Sarkeesian left off trying to ban sexy, scantily clad characters from video games. Even parts of the anti-woke are picking up where the woke left off demanding that all media cater to their specific tastes and their specific tastes alone.

So many people who just spent years fighting against censorship from the left now demand censorship as long as it's coming from the right. It's pathetic, and it's going to hand our culture back to the left once it's all said and done.

[batboyblog]

How concerned do you think we should be about election officials who are election deniers refusing to certify results? I’m trying not to be anxious about it but it is a challenge.

well this was a worrying moment

my understanding is that Mr. Richer will oversee this election before his term is done, it's super duper VERY VERY important that any Arizona voters who see this make sure to vote all the way down to the Democrat Tim Stringham to make sure ALL Americans get free and fair elections.

ANY WAYS, how worried should you be? well, I think its always important to not let fear and worry paralyze you, its important to remember that in 2020 election deniers did try, but Joe Biden had won too many states, they had to try to overturn Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, and Nevada, too many state courts, too many election officials, too many moving parts. So our best hope of frustrating them again is to win big. Many of them will lose their nerve and not want to be on the "losing side" which again happened in 2020 with most Republicans going along with the election. In 2024 Trump will be an old-old man, to try to run again for President he'd be 82 years old, everyone says his public appearances have slipped from the past, his legal battles drag on, he could be sentenced to jail in 2025, all to say if I'm a scummy Republican Congressman in January 2025 and Trump has lost every swing state commandingly I'm not sticking my neck out for him.

SO! you want to feel better? you want to not feel worried, get involved, its the only cure, I swear to god it is, I know no one believes me when I say that but its true, want to not have election anxiety? Volunteer, the anxiety comes from a sense of a huge out of control event looming over you, if you take action your brain won't feel out of control, you will feel better.

look for an event to volunteer with here, if you live somewhere super red or blue without an important Senate/House race, I recommend checking Run for Something they support young progressive candidates running for lower profile offices. If you're super stressed about the federal thing Democrats do Phone Banking a group called Field Team 6 is doing Text Banking to help register likely Democrats in key states, Swing Left is writing letters and Progressive Turnout is doing Postcards starting on the 5th

EVERYONE! can do SOMETHING! even from their own home, but trust me, door knocking is the easiest, most satisfying, and most cathartic thing you can do. And it's all any of us can do about Republicans plotting, win, and win big.

[centrally-unplanned]

A quick write-up since I am occupied today, since I do in fact think the Trump admin is engaged in destructive and generally-illegal behavior, most particularly around the civil service takeovers, the actual avenues to opposing that (outside of blocking by civil servants themselves) is really only Congress & the courts. Congress is a bit of a soft power thing in the short term, since they aren't gonna quickly pass a new law clarifying this-or-that management of USAID. But they have real power - if enough Republicans were to peel off and go "okay this is too far, back down" then that is something the Trump Admin would listen to. Additionally, the "second-order" route is for big stakeholders to make their pressure known. The big companies and Chamber of Commerce, a joint letter from CEOs, the Christian Right orgs, etc. You know the drill here.

We just know that isn't going to happen. The median voter might be shocked by these events (probably not, they probably aren't paying attention and don't care), but conservatives aren't. They spent the past 30 years building up the idea that the government is a Deep State undermining Real America and all that. At the start most congressmen understood that it was a convenient lie for their conspiracy-brained voting base; over time the inmates took over the asylum and now it is a combination of true believers and apathetic opportunists. And it combines with a much-more-reasonable take that the US governmental system is in fact a hot mess of broken "checks and balances" that is in need of reform. Certainly some things will draw Republican ire (tariffs are definitely a tax increase, Rand Paul isn't happy, Rubio got PEPFAR back as a Republican darling program), but overall I will be shocked if there is grand pushback here. They confirmed fucking Hegseth y'all; they cooked. The only saving grace is their margins are super tight - there is some hope from that, but not a ton.

So it is up to the courts. As it often is in the US system! Which is where all Dem effort should be going right now. Because court cases in the US are very much an art that can go wrong - you need the right plaintiff, the right standing, the right evidentiary case, the right arguments. The court challenges definitely are flying, the Dem "establishment" has so far being doing a pretty good job of hitting everything with an injunction where they can. But I haven't seen a lot of coordination on that, it is more opportunistic than strategic. I'm not behind the scenes myself on this, just reading the sources I know, but right now that is where the Chuck Schumer's of the world need to be putting 70% of their effort, while the rest goes into the more Hail Mary attempts to get the Lisa Murkowski's of the world on their side.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Jay Kuo at The Status Kuo:

The Trump regime’s war on our democracy began with a war on truth, and that fight is continuing apace. They currently have a clear goal: turn public opinion against migrants and anti-ICE protesters to justify a police state in Democratic cities. They’re deploying three key messages to achieve this.

First, they’re falsely labeling all undocumented immigrants as criminals in order to telegraph to the nation that they deserve what’s coming to them. Second, they are grossly exaggerating the scope and nature of the anti-ICE protests in order to deploy even more federal troops. Third, the White House is brazenly conflating peaceful protestors with violent rioters and “insurrectionists” in order to suppress First Amendment freedoms. When we hear and read the regime’s statements, they usually fall into one of these three buckets. To form a coherent response, we need to be disciplined about identifying their lies, exaggerations and conflations where we see them. And as members of the public, we all can help get the truth out there to counter their propaganda.

Immigrants aren’t criminals

The playbook of the White House is neither inventive nor unfamiliar. From his very first speech as a candidate after coming down the golden escalator at Trump Tower, Donald Trump has labeled whole immigrant communities as rapists, drug dealers and murderers in order to dehumanize them; turn the public against them; and weaponize fear, bigotry and division.

Republicans habitually exploit instances like the tragic murder of Laken Riley to paint all undocumented immigrants as murderous gang members. Democrats unfortunately are pretty terrible at responding to these attacks. They often even feel powerless to vote against draconian legislation (intentionally named after victims like Riley) because they worry they’ll be viewed as soft on “migrant crime.” Republicans learned long ago that it’s far easier to tar an entire community with the actions of one person than it is for Democrats to prove a negative and demonstrate how the vast majority of immigrants are law-abiding and hard-working. But the White House has recently made a series of mistakes borne of overconfidence, and they have taken things too far. That presents a solid opportunity for concerted response. Recently, for example, the White House crudely photoshopped an image of Kilmar Ábrego García in order to claim he’s a gang member. Donald Trump even pulled the picture out to show the world his “proof,” getting fact checked and ridiculed in the aftermath.

And this week Kristi Noem called the entire city of Los Angeles a city of criminals, not a city of immigrants, while Stephen Miller got called out in reporting by the Wall Street Journal for ordering I.C.E. not to round up actual criminals but to target immigrant workers outside of Home Depot. The best way to handle habitual liars is not just to challenge each and every lie, though that is important. They must also be labeled as liars whose credibility is worthless, tinged with animus and never to be trusted. This approach leverages how normal people’s brains actually work. If someone lies to you once, you might wonder what they’re after or hiding from you. If they lie to you repeatedly, you learn to not trust a thing they say. (MAGA appears to be an exception to this, with cognitive dissonance and cultish obedience dominating over critical thinking.)

[...]

L.A. is not “ablaze.”

If you were to watch Fox coverage of the protests for any length of time (and I’d not advise that for anyone) you’d start to notice something. The same video images of burning Waymo cars and tear gas filled streets, complete with rock throwing protestors, are being broadcast on repeat. This has two effects. First, it gives the distinct impression that there is massive danger, chaos and destruction happening. Second, it suggests, falsely, that the entire city of Los Angeles looks this way. From this, we wind up with tweets from Republican senators like Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who claimed Gov. Newsom caved to the “radical left” and “illegals” while the “largest city of California was set ablaze.”

Marsha, Marsha, Marsha. So the entire city of Los Angeles is on fire now, is it? Can you name a single building? Which district is it in? The GOP and its media allies of course did this before. During the George Floyd protests, particularly in places like Portland and New York City, there was a widespread but false belief that both cities were “ablaze” and in total chaos. Fox News watching parents and grandparents called to make sure their adult children were okay. But like the L.A. protests of today, the conflicts in 2020 were contained to small areas. The National Guard wasn’t needed then, and it’s certainly not needed now.

[...]

Protestors are not rioters or insurrectionists

If you listen to the rhetoric coming out of the White House, as I am sadly forced to daily, you begin to notice patterns. Suddenly, the anti-ICE protests of last weekend, which were by and large peaceful, were dubbed “insurrections” against the government—even when they were simply crowds of people protesting ICE abuses.

[...] People have a right to peaceful assembly in this country. A crowd approaching an ICE facility is not an insurrection.

Jay Kuo wrote in his Status Kuo blog that the Trump Regime’s fascist lies about migrants and ICE protests serve a purpose: to justify the enacting of a police state to suppress dissent against Tyrant 47 and his allies.

See Also:

The Contrarian: Trump won’t stop with California

[xeyesofstardust]

I for one and terrified.

That ass hat in chief wants to challenge the birthright citizenship for Native Americans. I remember if I made this clear on my blog, but I am of indigenous descent. It says it on all of my legal paperwork.

My entire family is also indigenous.

I don’t know what’s gonna happen, this is very terrifying.

My brain is wired to think of the worst case scenario as possible and right now I’m thinking that they just lock us all up and detention centers and that scares me.

I am convinced that Trump is going to get his way on this. The Republicans will side with him no matter what because they’re all fascist and the Democrats are too weak to stand up to them.

The Democratic Party has absolutely no spine whatsoever. They won’t protect us from this fascist regime. they’ve shown us time and time again that they will never stand up against fascism and white supremacy.

[anthonybialy]

Wheeling Falsehoods

The media needs a wheelchair.  A sickly occupation is full of frail minds.  The revelation that aides thought semi-president Joe Biden would need the ambulatory device had he won another election serves as the bombshell.  Of course, the headline featuring ancient news is really about those who willingly fibbed for the side they keep claiming they don’t have.  Refusing to concede bias is just another example of it.  

Original Sin is an unwittingly perfect title for the book that’s ostensibly about a Democratic president who couldn’t think clearly.  The confession about blasphemy is actually a tale of planned negligence from a profession adored by lawyers who appreciate being despised only the second-most.  Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper tag-teamed to admit they suck at their jobs.  You could be generous and call them oblivious.

The milk in the fridge is about to spoil a couple months ago.  It would have been nice to get confirmation that a president couldn’t think straight while he had access to nuclear codes.  It’s tough to remember both those and Pac-Man patterns.  Failing to break news as it happens shows the media is broken.

A dispatch during a Democrat’s term about a precipitous drop in brain power from a subject born before D-Day would have been classified by fellow guild members as hateful partisanship.  But Biden’s out of office, which means they’re free to be brave truth-tellers.

History’s greatest heroes didn’t acknowledge the most obvious actuality until after there was no way it could hurt their side’s president.  The best excuse for shielding Biden is that he has been such a dolt for so long that it was tough to distinguish when dementia kicked in.  Timing is everything in the news business in its way.

The worst part about tales emerging now about Biden’s acuity loss while in office is how predictable it is.  Everyone capable of observation knew the president should have been talking to a potted plant in an assisted living facility, not serving as commander-in-chief.  And everyone who knows how the media works was aware that they’d tell tales of just how addled he was once he left office as if there were no clues while he technically served.  The only reason nobody got rich wagering accounts about Biden’s decline would emerge after he left office is that no bookies would take the bets.

It’s too bad there was no way to learn Biden couldn’t express his hazy thoughts during his presidency like performing journalism.  In the case of President Oatmeal Skull’s swift descent, it took watching him try to speak.  The unreasonable assignment was too challenging for people who hold jobs based in them following around the president.  To be fair, listening to Biden talk is challenging in its way.

The easiest way to check for slanted coverage is to ponder how the press would have acted if not only a Republican melted down so quickly but one certain Republican.  If Donald Trump deteriorated this severely so quickly, I think it’s safe to claim that we wouldn’t wait to hear specifics in a book not published until 2029.

Don’t wait for followup, as it would expose initial ineptness.  Journalists are reviewing every decision by the Biden White House to scrutinize whether they were made by someone incapable of thinking clearly or others made them for him.  I'm kidding: they’ll congratulate themselves for predicting the Eagles won the Super Bowl after the game.

I have good and bad news for news professionals who are suddenly worried about the sharpness of the previous president: I found conspirators who tried keeping a secret Biden couldn’t remember.  Tapper should DM me for the name of the chief stooge.  I think he’ll be surprised.

Comrades engaged in the bravest and most useful career write down what others do.  And they’re not even good at that.  You can tell just how distant from reality journalistic stenographers are by how they expect virtual applause.  They deserve to hear cursing.  Middle fingers are loud in their way.  Anyone that detached from basic notions is obviously going to pursue employment in cataloging information.

Journalists think they’re special, which is just another thing they get wrong.  Embodying free speech because they run their mouths just means they enjoy protections everyone else has.  Biden’s unofficial staff provides ample examples of why the First Amendment allows pompous dolts to spew duplicitous blather without legal consequences.  Remember to thank them for inadvertently making the point that expression is best suited for a free market where we can judge what words are worthwhile.  People who claim to fact checks sure need their facts checked a lot.

Pushing Biden’s wheelchair to his term’s finish line is a notably egregious example of active crusading.  Lamely attempting to conceal a president’s clear slide into enhanced incoherence is far worse than ineptness, although they’re quite skilled at proving they’re unskilled.  Practitioners of mendacity think they deserve praise for retroactive honesty when they’re revealing partisan failure.  The media is engaged in a permanent circle jerk with an emphasis on jerk.

Media flunkies sleep soundly knowing they made an impact.  Sure, it was negative, but they’re not going to get caught up in details.  They’re especially excited to be part of such a monumental narrative.

Prevaricating about why Biden couldn’t finish a sentence endangered the nation.  The potential perils of a befuddled leader are as frightening as the actual turmoil was terrifying.  Things didn’t go well during the diminished plagiarist’s term in the same sense he didn’t know where or who he was.  Proclaiming Biden couldn’t Velcro his own sneakers would have been the right thing to do even if it caused the horror of a Kamala presidency.

The embodiments of phoniness are delusional enough to think they’re participating in events when they’re merely watching them.  At last, they’re right, although it’s only because they inserted themselves as voluntary press secretaries.

Correspondents naturally missed the story.  That’s probably a bad sign.  Getting angles wrong is nothing unusual for journalism majors who aspired to somehow not fail math classes.  But the particulars of Joe’s doddering are unique because it implicates them.  The willfully blind were accomplices in the Jill Biden presidency.  For people so full of themselves, journalists are awful at introspection.

Accurate reporting about Biden’s missing cognizance would have been beneficial even as a matter of calculation.  Competitors in the field used to be proud of scooping each other.  Documenting the president’s empty gaze was wouldn’t have even taken much effort, which appeals to workers so indolent that they majored in communications.

But sharing what’s apparent is forbidden in an industry based in helping people as long as they’re Democrats.  A chronicle of an enfeebled president and his decrepit guardians required tattling on each other, so the public had to figure out what was happening without updates from those tasked with providing them.  In a perfect world, anyone who fled the cult to describe Joe Biden’s woeful condition with veracity would be blowing through their Pulitzer Prize cash.  They’re awarded by Columbia, so forget it.

[possessesnightshift]

my lord seeing all the posts talking about not voting for joe biden like...

im not even gonna push my personal opinion. i just want people to take the time to earnestly reflect about what they're deciding to do

as in. just think "what is the impact of my decision?" think about what would come about if you voted for biden, or against biden, or third party, or (likely the most popular other option ppl want to pursue) didn't vote AT ALL.

then reflect on the actual issues that matter enough to sway your vote. think about palestine. think about queer liberation & disability advocacy. think about the writer's strike and the actors strike and unionizing. think about the environment. the fucking economy. basically anything that's defined the political landscape of the 2020s.

and then circle back to "what is the point of making this specific choice?" in regards to voting in the 2024 election. if you want to make any of these issues better, ask yourself if those changes will be easier to make under a trump administration or a biden administration. would trump be better for palestine than biden? the environment? the economy? even if he's worse than biden in a lot of areas, is there one special issue that could push him over the edge? what are you trying to accomplish with this vote (or lackthereof)?

the reason i felt compelled to lay it all out in this specific manner is quite simple. i want to emphasize something important.

i feel like a lot of people planning to protest their vote for Joe Biden see themselves as possessing a moral high ground with respect to our corrupt political system. by refusing to participate and play the game, you're avoiding complicity in a machine designed to grind people up and spit out their bodies for the sake of profit. i get it. i know exactly why you don't want to take part in something so horrible.

but you DO.

even if you don't want to. you are a part of this system.

withholding a vote isn't exempting you from anything. you are still making a decision. a decision that impacts your life, the lives of those around you, and of course the lives of people overseas caught up in our country's colonialist bullshit

i promise you nobody is keeping score. you won't get extra woke points in heaven because you didn't vote for someone who does bad things. say hypothetically we lived in a country like australia with compulsory voting, and protesting your vote was literally not an option. what would people say then? would the anti-genocide crowd encourage you to vote for trump? vote third party? do these choices make sense??

because at the end of the day, we have 2 choices. we can continue sucking ass. or we can bring in someone else to suck ass EVEN HARDER.

i'm not sure what i can say beyond this much. i get how easy it is to turn off your brain and rail against anyone challenging an opinion that, from your perspective, feels beyond the realm of criticism. these people do not have bad intentions. our brains can't think in terms of stupid political games. we see a man encouraging a genocide running for re-election, and the LAST thing we want to do is reward him.

but the system is illogical by design. (see electoral college for more info.) you can't make it make sense. these people in power aren't gonna buckle to your pressure based on morality or shame because they have none. they know exactly what the fuck is going on. they know what they're doing, and they're doing it on purpose.

if republicans can accept that holding your nose and playing the bs voting game can make the system work in their favor, why the fuck can't college educated socialists come to the same conclusion?

whatever you decide to do come november, just be honest about why you're doing it. whether it's about gaza or trans people or even just the prices of groceries always increasing, it doesn't matter. i know what change i want to see in the world, and i'm doing what i can to help move the needle in that direction.

[thelonesomequeen]

Re: birthright citizenship is a part of the 14th amendment which cannot be overridden by Executive Order. A whole new amendment would have to be added to take the power away (like 18 being reversed by 21) and amendments need a super majority of Congress and states. That EO will be challenged fairly quickly by the more liberal leaning federal judges (which there are hundreds of) and when it’s being ruled on it can’t be put into effect until the Supreme Court takes it on (like Biden’s student loan forgiveness or Trump’s transgender military ban in his first term).

Don’t get me wrong I’m as disturbed by all of this as well but some things can’t just magically happen because there still are protections that will be upheld…at least for now. Now do I believe that SCOTUS will rule in favor of Trump? Unfortunately, yes. But it will take time and won’t go down without a fight.

Also if he wants to get rid of birthright citizenship then that’s 4/5 of his kids…

I understand what you’re saying, and the logical part of my brain wants to believe that too, but we’re in a new political era in the United States. I think the unfortunate part you may need to come to terms with is that laws don’t matter anymore. Not when it comes to trump anyway. If they did, he wouldn’t be president at all right now as outlined by the constitution, but here we are. He’s going to do what he wants and he’s going to get away with it because all branches of our government are under Republican control right now. It’s going to be a horrible 4 years. And no, nothing will happen to his own kids because as usual, it’ll be “rules for thee but not for me!” I’m not trying to be overly pessimistic or dramatic, but I think people need to be prepared for the worst to happen.🦎

[theculturedmarxist]

The Republican and Democratic parties have no intention of allowing independents and third parties into their exclusive club. A series of arcane laws and rules governing elections make it extremely difficult for outsiders to get on the ballot, receive exposure, raise money, comply with regulations that are designed to advance the interests of Republicans and Democrats or participate in public debates. Third parties and independents are effectively disenfranchised, although 44 percent of the voting public identify as independent. This discrimination is euphemistically labeled “bipartisanship,” but the correct term, as Theresa Amato writes, is “political apartheid.”

“One of the best-kept secrets in American politics is that the two-party system has long been brain dead — kept alive by support systems like state electoral laws that protect the established parties from rivals and by Federal subsidies and so-called Campaign reform,” the political scientist Theodore Lowi noted. “The two-party system would collapse in an instant if the tubes were pulled and the IV’s were cut.”

Amato was the national presidential campaign manager and in-house counsel for Ralph Nader in the 2000 and 2004 elections. Her book “Grand Illusion: The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny” is a sobering account of our political apartheid, based on her experience in the Nader campaigns. It chronicles in minute detail the nefarious mechanisms, especially the Byzantine rules that vary from state to state, to even get on the ballot. 

Third parties not already ballot-qualified and independents must collect valid signatures on a petition to run for president. Some states require a fee or a few hundred signatures. Others require tens of thousands of signatures. The Republicans and Democrats set the requirements in state legislatures, and then, flush with corporate cash and teams of lawyers, haul independents and third party candidates into court to challenge the validity of their petition signatures. These lawsuits are used to invalidate signatures to force candidates off the ballot, deprive voters the opportunity of supporting other candidates, as well as drain the campaign budgets of small competitors.  Republican and Democratic party state-level officials, either elected or appointed, administer the federal elections to serve their party’s advancement.  

The requirements to get on the ballot resemble the rules erected during Jim and Jane Crow to prevent African-Americans from being able to register to vote. Ohio, for example, demands that petition signatures be written from only one county on each petition, forcing circulators to carry around stacks of county petitions. The state of Washington requires a 10 day advance notice published in a newspaper before holding a nominating convention. West Virginia mandates that circulators first get credentials from the county clerk, in every county, which must be displayed while collecting signatures. Nevada requires that each petition be notarized. 

“To complicate matters further, in a Kafkaesque way, many of the election officials are afraid to say exactly what provisions of their state law mean; they do not want to be implicated in a legal battle — so they often claim that they do not know, that they cannot say, and that you cannot rely on anything they say,” Amato writes. “Alternatively, you may get different opinions, based on whom you ask, or encounter election officials who just don’t know the law they are enforcing, even in some of the biggest states, as we found in 2004 in California.”

Commissions and boards set up to monitor elections, such as The Federal Election Commission, are also composed almost exclusively of Republicans and Democrats. 

Amato describes mastering the Federal Election Commission campaign finance laws as equivalent to learning “a foreign language in a few days” and then trying to teach it to campaign staff and volunteers who have little or no experience with federal regulations.

The national, state, and local branches of the Republican and Democratic parties contract vendors and political consultants to work on each campaign cycle. This is usually not true for third parties and independents, who lack the resources and funds to build a permanent campaign infrastructure. The two ruling parties can also rely on Super Political Action Committees, or Super PACs, to raise unlimited amounts of cash from wealthy individuals, labor unions, corporations and other political action committees. The Super PACs can make unlimited “independent” expenditures on behalf of the campaign, although they are not supposed to give directly to the campaign or co-ordinate their activities with federal candidate committees. 

Republicans and Democrats, because they raise so much money, have no incentive to participate in the public financing system or create an alternative one that might assist third parties and independents.

“What do impoverished third-party and independent candidates have?” Amato writes. “They get federal financing for the general election only after the fact — if, and only if, they break five percent of the national vote total. The uncertain possibility of getting money after the fact is just about useless to the candidate running in the current election who cannot count on it, though it may be helpful to the party next time around.”

If third parties and independents are willing to subject themselves to an automatic and onerous federal audit, as well as meet a variety of precise financing requirements in at least 20 states, and agree to spending limits in all states and overall for their campaigns, they may be eligible to qualify for primary election matching funds.

As the book “Third Parties in America,” points out, the Federal Election Commission Act is “a major party protection act.”

Those that attempt to challenge the stranglehold of the Republican and Democratic party duopoly are attacked as spoilers, as being naive or egomaniacs. These attacks have already begun against Cornel West, who is running for The Green Party nomination. The underlying assumption behind these attacks is that we have no right to support a candidate who champions our values and concerns. 

“In 2016, the Green Party played an outsized role in tipping the election to Donald Trump,” wrote David Axelrod, the chief strategist for Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns,  “Now, with Cornel West as their likely nominee, they could easily do it again. Risky business.”

This is the same message that was repeatedly delivered by Democratic Party officials, the media and celebrities to discredit Ralph Nader, who received more than 2.8 million votes in the 2000 election, when he was a candidate. 

Independents and third parties do not yet pose a serious threat to the duopoly. They usually poll in the single digits, although Ross Perot received nearly 19 percent of the popular vote. They raise only a tiny fraction of the hundreds of millions of dollars available to the Democrats and Republicans. The Biden-Harris campaign, Democratic National Committee and their joint fundraising committees, for example, raised $72 million from April to the end of June. Former President Donald Trump, raised more than $35 million from April to the end of June. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis raised $20 million in the same period. Cornel’s campaign has raised $83,640.28, according to Jill Stein who is managing Cornel’s campaign. 

Biden raised $1billion to fund his 2020 presidential race. The total cost of the 2020 elections was a staggering $14.4 billion making it, as Open Secrets pointed out, “the most expensive election in history and twice as expensive as the previous presidential election cycle.”

Third party candidates and independents are nevertheless dangerous to corporate-indentured Republicans and Democrats because they expose the duopoly’s political bankruptcy, dishonesty and corruption. This exposure, if allowed to persist, will potentially fuel a wider movement to bring down the two party tyranny. The Republican and Democrat parties, for this reason, mount sustained campaigns, amplified by the media, to discredit its third party and independent rivals. 

The government directed censorship imposed on social media, as Matt Taibbi exposed, is aimed at shutting down critics from the left and the right who attack the ruling power elite.

You will hear far more truth, for example, about the apartheid state of Israel and the suffering of Palestinians from Cornel than from any Republican or Democratic candidate, including Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who supports the Israeli government.

There are numerous problems with our electoral system: voter suppression, difficulties in registering to vote, the cumbersome process of often casting a ballot, the flawed mechanisms used to count votes, the 30 or 40 incumbents who run in each election cycle for Congress unopposed, redistricting, denying residents of Washington, D.C. voting representation in Congress, denying the right to cast a ballot for president or a voting member of Congress to the peoples of U.S. “territories”— such as Guam and Puerto Rico, the disenfranchisement of over three million ex-felons and the purging of millions of non-felons from the voter rolls, and the absurdity of the Electoral College, which sees candidates such as George W. Bush and Donald Trump lose the popular vote and win the presidency.

But these problems do not compare to the obstacles placed in front of third parties and independents which mount and run campaigns. 

The ruling corporate parties are acutely aware that they have little to offer a disillusioned public other than more wars, more austerity, more government control and intrusion into our lives, more tax breaks for Wall Street and corporations and more misery for working men and women. They use their control of the electoral system to force us to choose between mediocrities like Donald Trump — and major Democratic donors such as Lloyd Blankfein said they would back Trump if Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party candidate — and Joe Biden. The only electorally viable candidates outside the two-party structure are the very rich, such as Ross Perot or Michael Bloomberg, who, as Amato writes, are able to “buy their way around the barriers of ballot access restrictions and nonexistent media coverage.”

Voters do not vote for who they want. They vote against those they have been conditioned to hate. The oligarchy, meanwhile, is assured its interests are protected.

No Republican or Democratic presidential candidate has any intention of halting corporate pillage. They will not curb the fossil fuel industry or combat ecocide. They will not rebuild our decayed infrastructure and failing educational system. They will not reform our predatory for-profit health care system or restore our right to privacy by halting wholesale government surveillance. They will not institute public financing of elections to curb the legalized bribery that defines elective office. They will not raise the minimum wage. They will not end our permanent wars. 

Third parties and independents, even if they poll in the single digits, are a threat to the corporate duopoly because they back reforms, such as increasing tax rates for corporations and the rich, which have broad public support. They expose the corruption of a system that, without funding from billionaires and corporations, would collapse. On nearly every major issue — war, trade policies, militarized police, suppression of the minimum wage, hostility towards unions, revoking of civil liberties, gouging of the public by big banks, credit card companies, big pharma and the healthcare industry — there is little or no difference between the Republicans and the Democrats.  

Monolithic  power always confuses privilege with moral and intellectual superiority. It silences critics and reformers. It champions bankrupt ideologies, such as neoliberalism, to justify its omnipotence. It fosters intolerance and a craving for autocracy. These closed systems throughout history, whether monarchical or totalitarian, ossify into bastions of greed, plunder, mediocrity and repression. They lead inevitably to tyranny or revolution. There are no other options. Voting for Biden and the Democrats will accelerate the process. Voting for Cornel will defy it.

[watchgang49]

You’re a fucking halfwit a waste of skin and space. What the fuck is the matter with you. If that shit for brains Trump gets elected, you’ll be living under a dictatorship and your freedoms will be gone you fucking dick head. I’m so glad I don’t live in the USA with all of you dumb ass Americans and I hope someone assassinates that fucking nut job. The guy is a fucking nut job. All of you Republicans are mentally challenged hillbillies.

"If the Israeli assault stopped today, and we decided to hold a funeral every single day for each Palestinian killed in the last eight months, it would take us 100 years to honor them all."

The Palestinian speaker at the UN Security Council highlights the devastating toll of casualties among Palestinians resulting from the Israeli genocide in Gaza.

[centrally-unplanned]

In my previous post around "ignoring election victories as events-in-themselves" we were memeing about it being a subtweet of Richard Hanania, but as I mentioned at the end it really isn't. And for a bonus reason, he doesn't make that mistake! He has a very explicit theory about "why Trump winning itself won't change the party":

This is an argument, fair enough! But I think it is a pretty bad one. The intellectual journey for this is, imo, the way that Trump beat all of his challengers in the post-2024 environment. People seemed to copy his playbook, he had halfheartedly launched a failed coup, and yet none of it was enough to beat him. It made a lot of people think, "oh, this guy is magic. No one can replace Trump"

The key weakness of this reason is that, yeah, no one can replace Trump - because Trump still exists? He was president. And he is still running for office! That is, in fact, quite normal for how loyal followers work. For them nothing has changed, why would they change? Trump's coalition is definitely not as bright as Obama's coalition so he gets a more extreme version of it, but Obama is still getting glowing reviews and polls well almost a decade out from his presidency era from typical voters. People are naturally sticky this way, it is how we work.

There certainly is more to it - Trump's 2020 lie definitely gave him a sort of narrative throughput to justify extended support for example - but you really don't need more, because this factor goes away when Trump dies. Which he will, pretty soon. And meanwhile what Trump's core wants is probably not going to go away (particularly because it is pretty incoherent). The idea that they will simply be incapable of elevating someone else to the same position is extreme Great Man Theory Brain.

A lot of this buys into this notion of 4D Chess Mastermind Trump but for political charisma, but that is silly. He is a perfectly talented politician in some respects, a charismatic guy, don't get me wrong. But he isn't like a savant; he constantly does weird, alienating shit, and is much worse this campaign as his age is showing. There just isn't any big mystery to why he succeeded (beyond the inherent mysteries of all causation): he was famous and also very committed to being a big liar who gunned for the obvious Republican weaknesses. He was happy telling a motivated base he truly understood their nativist impulses, while promising mainstream Republicans normality and his commitment to things like abortion. Shockingly few Republicans were actually willing to just Come Out And Say It like he did - like really, you can find barely anyone in 2016 who does it.

And meanwhile, Trump is not a popular politician! He isn't at 50/50 because he ran a good campaign, he ran an awful campaign. He is just up against an incredibly unpopular incumbent in a world where incumbents in every country are losing every election. Nikki Haley would have easily done better. A big part of Trump's hand-picked down-ballot candidates doing badly is that he just chose fucking awful ones because he is a dumbass. They weren't awful because they were radicals; they were bad politicians, with ludicrous weaknesses and poor skillsets. What "magic" is there to capture here? The next leading Republican politician will likely do much better than him, unburdened by all his terrible baggage and off-putting behavior.

A next leader who will be leading a party that has now been shaped and molded into one far more comfortable with authoritarianism as a solution to policy gridlock. Maybe they won't value that! Fair, I think that is possible, and even likely. Most people are just generally decent people, and voters generally find this brand off-putting. But saying that it can't happen is complete folly. And we have a laundry list of leading Republicans who have openly embraced election denial to juice those odds, and voters who love to punish incumbents for this-or-that problem of the day.

IMO this is cope, building up Trump to be something far more special than he is. Voters just like authoritarian policies sometimes, and courting that isn't magic. It alas be that way.

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Rothkoff at TNR:

If you live in the United States, you are in greater jeopardy today than you were six months ago. So is your family. So are your friends and neighbors. Virtually all of the most important parts of the U.S. government that were created to protect the U.S. from the greatest risks we face are being shut down, gutted, or marginalized. What is more, plans and statements of the president and his advisers suggest further cuts are contemplated that increase the likelihood that one or more crises will catch us unawares and that when that happens, we will be much less equipped to handle it than we have been in decades. Our early warning capabilities, our planning tools, our interagency coordinating mechanisms, and the resources available to the government to respond to crises have all been greatly diminished. This will remain true despite planned increases in defense and homeland security spending—especially as those resources are directed at illusory “invasions” and nonexistent “insurrections.” It will remain true despite—and even to a degree because of—costly and distracting displays of military and law enforcement muscle-flexing.

Area after area of the government with responsibility for anticipating, preparing for, and handling major national security threats has been affected. Despite news reports addressing some of these developments individually, the scope of the changes to institutions, personnel, budgets, and policy, and the interrelated and cumulative consequences of those changes, must be better understood and reversed. This should not be a partisan issue. It impacts red states and blue, Democrats and Republicans, cities and rural areas, rich and poor, all of us. Furthermore, this is not an abstraction. Every area impacted is demonstrably one that recent history has shown should be of urgent concern to us.

At the core of this critical situation is the effective lobotomization of our government’s national security “brain” and “nervous system.” We have not had a dedicated national security adviser to the president since May 1 when Mike Waltz resigned. In the intervening six weeks, this critical role has ostensibly been filled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But not only does Rubio have a massively challenging job as secretary of state, he is also serving as interim head of the U.S. Agency for International Development and as acting archivist of the United States—head of the agency responsible for preserving all the government’s records. None of these tasks is minor. None can be performed on a part-time basis. Although it has been observed that Henry Kissinger once held both the top State and National Security Council positions, that was considered such an error that President Gerald Ford told me when I interviewed him for my history of the NSC, Running the World, that undoing the arrangement was one of his most important decisions as president.

The State Department is undergoing a major reorganization while dealing with the complex and volatile world situation. USAID, a crucial tool of U.S. foreign policy and one with a vital role to play in helping to contain disease and conflict worldwide, is effectively being dismantled. Rubio is also taking on roles that many former secretaries of state did not get deeply engaged in, like determining who should be granted or denied visa status. In addition, his burdens are increased because there is no confirmed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and more than 70 other ambassadorial positions remain open. Rubio simply could not effectively do what he is being asked to do even were he not also being given the most critical national security policy development and coordinating role in the White House. Making matters dramatically more challenging, on May 23, the White House announced the elimination of 100 jobs within the National Security Council, reducing its professional staff to its smallest size in decades. Furthermore, there are credible reports that further cuts are likely, with some estimates suggesting the president is considering reducing the NSC staff to half of its over 350 positions or even further to “just a few dozen people.” This would make the NSC smaller than it has been in decades. But for an entity that is responsible for monitoring the world and threats to our national well-being and then coordinating the development of policies and the implementation of the plans approved by the president, as big a blow as the cuts are, more important is that the entire NSC process is being marginalized by a president who has repeatedly and recklessly made it clear he does not feel he needs advice.

[...] The president has announced he is considering eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency and handling all disaster response decisions personally. The ability to anticipate hurricanes and help people prepare for other environmental disasters will be harmed by cuts to the parts of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that handle those duties. Even cuts to public broadcasting will make it harder for information about natural disasters to get to rural areas. Elevating individuals who don’t believe in climate science certainly also makes matters worse. Cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services have hobbled our ability to predict or respond to pandemics or bioterrorism. Cuts to Medicaid will hinder our ability to prevent or respond to disease outbreaks—once again with impact on rural communities being most negative. Programs to develop and promote vaccines that could help prevent such health disasters have been eliminated, as has vital expertise in epidemiology and immunology, among other key areas.

Even the parts of the government that help us avoid and control financial crises have been weakened dramatically, and financial institutions have been given more latitude to repeat past or invent new forms of risky behavior. Rather than learning from the experiences of our own lifetime, from terror attacks to wars to financial crises to the pandemic, we are actually increasing the chances we relive them or worse in the near future. We cannot anticipate what will come next. With the volatility in the Middle East at the moment, increasing violent extremism at home and abroad, bird flu, measles and tuberculosis cases regularly being reported, market volatility due to trade uncertainty, and the start of hurricane season, what we do know is that serious risks are everywhere.

Donald Trump handles crises badly, as evidenced from both his first and second terms.

[bllsbailey]

Karoline Leavitt Teases Release of Biden’s Robert Hur Interview: Americans Would Be ‘Quite Interested’

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt teased the potential release of audio recordings of Special Counsel Robert Hur's infamous interview with former President Joe Biden.

Hur spoke with Biden regarding his storing classified documents in his home, garage, and office for decades but declined to pursue legal action because, as he put it, the former President was a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

Reagan Reese, the Daily Caller's White House Correspondent, asked Leavitt Tuesday if the administration was considering releasing the tapes.

"I don't have an update on that, but I can certainly check," Leavitt replied. "I think the American people would be quite interested to hear that tape, but I'll double-check on the release of it."

RELATED: Bombshell WSJ Report Confirms What We All Knew - The Dems Lied Through Their Teeth About Biden's Senility

New Shocking Info About Biden's Incapacity and Insult to Families of Troops Killed in Afghan Withdrawal

Hur's report and conclusion were one of the more impressive displays of legal and mental gymnastics to avoid prosecuting a significant public figure since ... James Comey allowed Hillary Clinton to escape similar consequences because she was "extremely careless."

Despite letting him skirt the classified documents issue, Hur couldn't cover up what he witnessed while speaking with Biden.

A transcript revealed that in his five-hour interview with Hur, President Biden frequently confused dates, countries, and the sequence of significant events, such as when his son Beau passed away and Donald Trump was elected.

On several occasions, Biden repeatedly struggled to recall “important” dates and had to be rescued by his legal team.

“Trump gets elected in November of 2017?” Biden asked during the interview, which, of course, was incorrect and off by a year. And you'd think that would be an easy date to remember since November 8th, 2016, was the single most tragic date in the eyes of Democrats until January 6th came along.

In another portion of the interview, Biden stated that his son Beau was “deployed or is dying” in 2017 or 2018. In reality, Beau Biden tragically passed due to complications from brain cancer in 2015.

Biden, whose people were actively hiding his obvious mental struggles and dismissing video and audio evidence to the contrary as "cheap fakes," asserted executive privilege in trying to keep the Hur interview hidden from public consumption.

Or whoever was controlling his autopen did.

“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal — to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” White House Counsel Ed Siskel said in a letter to House Republicans demanding access.

Around the time of the release of the Special Counsel report, Biden twice claimed to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017 - about the January 6th riot at the Capitol in 2021 - and insisted that he had spoken with former French President François Mitterrand who died in 1996.

Nobody had to chop up or distort that evidence.

Release of the Hur audio at this point might be overkill. Everyone knew Biden was cognitively challenged for years, and once that presidential debate took place, the media, who had dutifully covered it up, could no longer do so.

In fact, some of the more enterprising among them, like Jake Tapper, are now trying to make money off the scandal they helped hide from the American public.

[teaandinanity]

Tagged for this by @darkfromday - thank you!

Gonna put my answers under a cut because I am, as ever, chronically incapable of shutting up.

Three ships I like: Literally sitting here paralyzed by indecision although I guess Hua Cheng/Xie Lian (Heaven Official's Blessing) are a mandatory pick since that's the fic I currently have open on my phone. It feels slightly traitorous to pick them over LBH+SQQ since the later pair are the ones I've done a lot more of my own art and writing for. I have no idea how my brain picks what fandoms I wanna create for and which ones I want to consume for but there's a Venn diagram and inexplicably TGCF is mostly in the 'I want to devour other people's creations forever in vast quantities' bubble. We'll see if that eventually changes I guess. Also Markus/North (DBH) probably also ought to be on here, on account of I angrily wrote fic for them and then tried to fix the story of the latter part of the game before having to confront the fact that I do not actually enjoy writing politics or combat and it was going to require So Much of that to work. And on the subject of things I'm gonna die mad about, I'm gonna give the third of three to RazAya, because the network did Green Lantern: The Animated Series SO dirty and it deserved better and I wrote and drew for them and still kind of want to firebomb a couple of executive's houses about the cancellation. Like, not while anyone is IN them, but I think I would feel better if I barbecued some of their possessions.

First ever ship: I have a bad sense of when things happen and/or sequential time and I am internet-old, I have NO idea. I think the first shippy fic I posted anywhere was SoRiku (Kingdom Hearts), if that counts? Like, I'd definitely shipped stuff before then because I didn't start writing with intent until late high school (I still owe a debt to the teacher who left a glowing note on one of my creative writing assignments that concluded 'and it was a genuine pleasure to read,' she is half the reason I started trying and kept at it), but that is at least something I can point to on a timeline.

Last song heard: Uh, something on the doyoulikethis-videogame-song blog so damned if I know what it was lol. Phone says the last thing I had up in my car was Lovers or Liars by Lauren Aquilina.

Currently reading: So Much Fanfiction. I should make a rec list about it. Currently open on my phone for a comfort reread is For you I'll become invincible by HanaSheralHaminail which is an AMAZING TGCF Wulian->Hualian AU rewrite of the whole series where Xie Lian meets He Xuan before he dies and they become friends and it changes the world, 300+k words with lovely illustrations. I also just got many things in the mail (NEW BOOOOOKS) but I haven't started them yet (The Hands of the Emperor is more than 700 pages and physically intimidating okay).

Currently eating/ate: … I have a bag of Reese's Minis open on my desk because I was craving chocolate REALLY bad when I made my last grocery order.

Currently watching: I have not watched actual TV in forever and a day, and I think the last time I even used the DVD player was LAST spring. That said, I do watch a lot of people playing games I also like but which are challenging (recently mostly Vintage Story and Project Zomboid) because it lets me pick up some useful tips AND if I'm doing other things listening to it is kind of soothing (jumpscare monsters and occasional yelps aside). Also a couple of different fairly chill true crime channels. I suspect the reason I find it so pleasant is that I don't talk to other people very much now that I live up a mountain and it's nice to hear familiar voices even if they don't belong to anyone I actually know.

Currently craving: Now that I have chocolate the top honors for this goes to Consequences for powerful men who choose to be The Worst. Alternately, the blessing of getting to read a couple specific obituaries. (The fact that my wealthy white FORMERLY REPUBLICAN and definitely still rather conservative mother quoted the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party thing at me because she knows I feel the same way really demonstrates how Profoundly Fucking Unhinged current events actually are.)

Pets: Tuesday, my long-hair dilute tortoiseshell moggie. She is napping within arm's reach as I type.

Am feeling shy about tagging today (we just got rain so I am less terror-frazzled about the state being on fire but now my brain is soup instead of screaming) so I'm just gonna say 'please steal this if you have the smallest inclination to fill it out and tag me because I like knowing more things about pocket friends' 💖

[dallasareaopinion]

Three very serious and wild truths

1) Trump supporters will give Trump as much leeway as Trump needs for way too long no matter how much it hurts them. They cannot admit that Trump is wrong because they are so far down the rabbit hole with him. Things are really going to have to break for his supporters to break with him. Demagogues survive this way and we, even the supporters, suffer immensely until it is too late.

2) If the Democrats had any real brains or backbone, they would force Johnson to vote for campaign reform first since the CR is a stand alone bill. The Democrats should have a bill written that wipes away Citizen United and puts real teeth into how much people can contribute to campaigns at the federal level. Let’s get the money out of politics now and add serious limitations to lobbying. I have written proposals previously if you want more details. Also maybe through in tougher penalties for grifting off your office.

3) And since the Democrats won’t do anything about campaign reform and of course nor the Republicans this is just one reason we need new parties to challenge their duopoly.