#but the message is still clear: we don't want biden even if he's on the ballot so you better change your candidate and policies before nov

[beldaroot]

mind you minnesota's uncommitted goal was 5000 votes and we ended up with 45000 votes and sending 11 delegates to the DNC :)

[striving-artist]

I'll be honest, I think there's a lot of conflation (in general) of how you actually vote when you cast your ballot and what you vocally support in the lead up to that. Preferably those align, but that isn't always possible. For example, our two party system means that, instead of voting for who we actually want, we have to look at who is most likely to get elected so we don't split the vote. Which kinda sucks lmao.

In this case, I think We the Left™ are unnecessarily split along the lines of those advocating voting for Biden bc he's the lesser of two evils and those wanting to pressure him into shifting his stance so he can gain back any votes he may have lost. To some extent I think both sides are unnecessarily focusing on the differences in how they're going about forcing change without realizing it's two different avenues to reach the same end result.

Do I think those advocating voting for Biden right now are being more conservative (not in a political sense lol) than they should be? Yeah. Do I think those saying they're considering not voting are casting away electoral victories when they can still make things materially better? Also yeah.

Full disclosure:

I, personally, fall more into the second camp than the first, not bc I don't agree with the first, but bc we're literally a year out from the election and (I feel) it's too early to just kinda capitulate. I think it's more important right now to make them realize they can't just bank on votes bc they're the lesser evil (yes. ik that's what's gonna end up happening, but I don't want them to know that), and if they ignore what their constituents are asking for there will be consequences.

To be clear, I (and I'm inclined to say many others in a similar position) am going to end up voting Biden in the next election bc the Dems don't really have another viable candidate and four years of Trump (or whoever the Reps go with) is going to be a shitshow. And no one wants that lmao.

Basically my biggest issue with saying "vote blue no matter who" (even though I agree with the sentiment) is that we still have at least a couple months where maybe we can force shifts by even just marginally threatening their power bc they thought We The Left™ were locked down.

There are definitely gonna be some people who end up not voting (for whatever reason), and there isn't gonna be much we can do right now to change it, but I think it'll be a low enough number that it wouldn't have a seriously severe impact.

(I have no idea if this makes any sense. I'm writing this right before I'm gonna go sleep and I'm yawning sm lmao)

(also, I hope this doesn't come across as combative or bad faith or anything like that. it's genuinely meant to be me vomiting (very jumbled up) thoughts into your ask box lmao)

This is all solid.

I don't think talking about not voting for Biden over this is of much use, just because its too far out, and there's not a lot of people you could put opposite Trump - or the other GOP candidates - that would make us vote for the GOP guy. We'll hold our nose, but we know we'll do it. They know it too.

We could put more pressure on him if there was a primary. But Political parties are private groups not public organizations, so we can't force them to have one, and they're not going to break from Biden. It is literally their party, their rules.

But you know what we do have? Down Ballot Primaries for federal office. Every member of Congress and a third of the Senate are up. Dems, GOP, jungle primaries. The primaries stretch for months. Putting pressure there can be very effective. Directly on that election, but also as a broader statement. If all the candidates calling this out as genocide and war crimes win their primary? Or even just exceed expectations? If it stays that way as time passes?

That is an obvious, measurable thing that sends the message that we aren't going to just forget about this. It can also get more votes in the House to reject the appropriations bills.

[ausetkmt]

It's been more than a month since a dozen civil rights and religious groups say they sent a letter to the White House calling on President Joe Biden sign an executive order to study reparations by Juneteenth, or this Sunday, June 19, marking the emancipation of enslaved African Americans.

Reparations activists outside new art installation calling on President Joe Biden to sign an executive order on reparations in Washington.

Human Rights Watch

The study activists wants comes after a decades-long push to establish a 13-person reparations commission in Congress.

A art installation calling on President Joe Biden to sign an executive order on reparations stands in Washington.

Human Rights Watch

Shortly after the end of the Civil War, Union leaders promised formerly enslaved families "40 acres and a mule" -- a promise never fulfilled.

However, a reminder of the centuries-old promise has languished in Congress for decades. H.R. 40, the Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, has been introduced in every legislative session since 1989.

The measure seeks to establish a commission to study "and consider a national apology and proposal for reparations for the institution of slavery, legal and other racial and economic discrimination, and the impact of these forces on living African Americans, to make recommendations to the Congress on appropriate remedies ..."

In recent years, the bill has gained some political traction.

In 2019, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, hundreds of members of Congress and over 350 organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Mayors, NAACP and ACLU publicly announced support for reparations.

At the Tribeca Film Festival, "The Big Payback," a documentary examining reparations, directed by "Living Single" actress Erika Alexander, premiered at the legendary festival in early June.

President Joe Biden delivers remarks in the East Room of the White House, June 13, 2022, in Washington, DC.

Win Mcnamee/Getty Images

Former White House press secretary Jen Psaki reiterated in 2021 that President Biden supported the study of reparations. However, when asked if he would support a bill on reparations Psaki said, "We'll see what happens through the legislative process."

Asked if Biden supports an executive order on the study of reparations, Psaki said at the time, "it would be up to him, he has executive order authority, he would certainly support a study, and we'll see where Congress moves on that issue."

A White House official told ABC News on Thursday, President Biden still "supports a study of reparations and the continued impacts of slavery but he is very clear that we don't need a study to advance racial equity."

Nkechi Taifa, center, speaks at Vote For Justice: An Evening of Empowerment with activists and artists at the Newseum, May 9, 2018, in Washington.

Paul Morigi/AP, FILE

Nkechi Taifa is director of the Reparation Education Project, and has been calling for reparations for moire than 50 years. In 1987, she was one of the founders of the National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (N'COBRA), an organization that worked closely with Democratic Rep. John Conyers to draft the introduction of H.R. 40 in 1989. She says now is the time for Biden to sign an executive order so the commission can be up and running before the end of Biden's presidency.

Taifa says she hopes the display at the ellipse sends a message that reparations advocates need to be paid attention to, and Black people should not be taken for granted.

She told ABC News, "If they think they're gonna rest on Juneteenth because it's a holiday and a watered down policing reform bill -- that's not enough. Black people have been run roughshod over, you know, for centuries, and it just, it just cannot continue."

Joan Neal, deputy executive director and chief equity officer at NETWORK, a social justice advocacy group founded by U.S. religious sisters tells ABC News, that "Slavery was a sin, that was the original sin of this country, and we believe that unless you acknowledge your sin and you make a firm determination to never do it again, and then make restitution for what was lost. You still have not been forgiven."

She added, "All parties have to be willing to stand up and face the sin in order for the sin to be forgiven and in order for things to be whole again."

[baronfulmen]

since you made that post, i hope it's okay to ask for info? i'm impacted by US politics but don't know that much about them

i completely agree with you about voting being a must (i'm personally a palestinian with an isr*eli ID, so even though i do not want to legitimize their govt by playing at voting, i do it each and every election to try and curb the fascism... pretty unsuccessfully i would say, but i think of all the people who cant even vote in this 'democracy' and i cast my one vote)

and i saw a post explaining how in the US system, voting for a third candidate is basically throwing your vote in the garbage (very perplexing and vexing), but HOW, out of 300 MILLION people, the only two options are 'genocider' or 'dictator'. that's, as someone put it, the illusion of choice, like a choice between eating dogshit or horseshit. sorry for the language.

i've known Biden's anti-palestine stance for YEARS, and i still posted a lot encouraging people to vote for him, and i know that this genocide under trump wouldn't have been any better for anyone, but what kind of message would it be for him to get re-elected immediately after unquestionably funding and fully supporting this horrific phase of my people's ethnic cleansing.

so if it's not naive to ask: isn't there A N Y other option? idk forcing him to step down (since he refuses to keel over already), another democratic candidate, some form of litigation, or direct action, or anything??? do americans really have so little choice that they have to basically do election charades?

sorry for the long ask, i guess i am not immune to the USA's ''''freedom'''' propaganda

Most of it comes down to it being a two party system. First of all, just to be clear, it is always POSSIBLE for our parties to change. This can happen over time with shifts in priorities and ideologies, or (way less likely but theoretically possible) by having another party show up and take the place of one of the current ones.

But to become president you need a majority of votes from the electoral college and we don't have ranked voting (which would go a long way towards fixing some stuff) so that's always going to result in two big entrenched parties. Those parties then have a primary goal of remaining in power, since if they don't they can't accomplish anything else - plus because we have no effective restrictions on how money influences politics the politicians are basically ALWAYS campaigning for their next election rather than actually focusing on doing anything good (and they're getting the money primarily from corporate interests).

On the local level you can get some good people in there, and you can even get third party or independent candidates elected. And that's one way to change things, start really pushing at the local level and pack the government with politicians that are closer to the ones you really want to see. This happened (but in the worst way) with the Republicans, really getting big with the Tea Party movement which flooded the government with absolute nutjobs. It worked so well they doubled down, which is why we now have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert or Donald Trump.

This same thing could be done but in a GOOD way, but much like Trump didn't get elected in a vacuum we would need to get the right people into Congress first. Short of that? Biden is bad, but in the same way all presidents are bad. He's not doing anything that his party doesn't approve of, so there's no reason for the Democrats to try and oust him AND no benefit if they did since he'd be replaced by someone that's functionally the same.

So, yeah. The presidential election really is just about voting for the lesser evil, and really people need to get WAY more involved locally.

That's all applicable to stuff in general, but when it comes to Israel specifically there's some other complicated shit going on that I'm not really qualified to speak on but which doesn't actually hinge on genuine support or non-support for Israel or Palestine at all, and is actually related to some Christian doomsday shit which I know sounds like a conspiracy theory but... well... we have some very influential people in this country that are eagerly looking forward to the Second Coming and judgement day and this has had a VERY real impact on our foreign policies. Just look up our current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson.

I hope this answers some of your questions.

[countkunt]

We don't fucking like Biden or support his genocide, we're trying not to get slaughtered ourselves by the violent fascist regime looking to seize power here. And unfortunately the only fucking option to prevent them from gaining more power is to vote for Genocide Joe.

It's not a good solution. But it is a means of self preservation. I can't fight for Palestine to be free if nazi trumpers have locked me up or murdered me for being queer and disabled.

Quit punching down on the people who are trying to prioritize their own lives over being a perfect ally in an imperfect world. Only ever supporting perfect people isn't going to make the world perfect. It will just make it easier for the worst bastards to enact their wills on the less fortunate.

keep enabling one wing of the same bird that hates you in the name of “self preservation” and you will have nothing left to preserve. biden is as much a fascist as trump. if the past 2 months haven’t made that clear to you i’m not sure anything will. in fact, looking at his career, he’s actually had a decades long track record of radical support for the zionist project. your final hope against fascism is to the far right of ronald reagan on israeli violations of international law. guess what that effectively makes him and his supporters?

libs have bought into a perverse and frankly racist ideology that anything can happen over there as long as it doesn’t happen here. but even if we convince ourselves our “safety” is more important, let me assure you we are more interconnected than that. if in the year of 2023 joe biden can explicitly and zealously (as he’s done throughout his career) endorse, fund, and arm the second Nakba, and fucking win the next term, what message does that send the Democratic Party? what lines are left to cross? do you actually understand the type of world neoliberalism is and has been building?

if both parties are coming together to censor dissent across the country, if the House is proposing a bill legally redefining anti-zionsim as anti-semetism, if what’s left of Gaza is destroyed with our tax dollars and arms dealers, and voters don’t even fucking flinch in the face of it, exactly what kind of future do you think you’re preserving for us? Cop City and the surveilance state are being championed just as hard by dems, and of course they're learning plenty from israel on how to go about it. biden is continuing the border wall after promising not to and waiving any environmental and indigenous protections in his way. the kids in cages libs used to be crying over are still being put in them. families are still being separated. biden continues the muslim ban. hate crimes against arabs and muslims are drastically on the rise thanks in large part to his administration's abhorrent leadership.

lie after lie, attack after attack against the most vulnerable of the domestic minority and global majority. the House just voted for H. Res. 894 that will legally censor anyone who’s against apartheid israel-finally finding a way to legally redefine anti-zionsim as anti-semitism. 311-14. the US has long dictatied what politcal movments youre allowed to support, but now Congress is bipartisanly deciding which politcal movements you're allowed to be opposed to. even those among the 14 reps who voted against H. Res. 894 have voted for aid to israel in the past or cowardly abstained, and that includes members of the beloved squad ilhan omar and aoc (.). this is the exact shit that got us to this point. and you still think you’re safer under fascists and enablers in blue. giving our government a bright green flag to act upon anyone they don't like with impunity is what liberals are working with conservatives towards.

i want to say more about how as we worry about ourselves a generation of Palestinians are being permanently disabled, how netanyahu is speaking with our congressional leaders of both parties about “thinning” a population of 2.5 million as we try to convince ourselves biden’s ghouls are any better than trump’s. but what can i say that hasn’t already been better said? it’s long past time americans admit that you can’t claim to be against something and then vote for it every election day. the capitalist system is irredeemable. neoliberalism is unsustainable. all our politicians are bought and sold by the ruling class and therefore only serve the ruling class. not disabled people. not the lgbtq community. the ruling class. you couldn’t change that in a voting booth if you tried and this system is not going to get better in any meaningful way. that is not punching down, this is the reality we have to work with. every time a liberal chooses their (ever right-shifting) status quo over human life, that’s punching down on all of us, hardest on the "third world." no one is free until Palestine is free because no one is free until we all are free.

or else, human life is worthless and we in the US will spend the rest of our lives (more time for some than others) watching BOTH parties chip our rights away as they condition the population to accept that this or that minority is merely collateral. or a nuisance that must be disposed of. or it's just the way of the world. fuck that fuck Joe biden and fuck everyone who tries to shame people into playing their games.

[kkelenca]

This is very much an anti-"Vote blue no matter who!" moment. Call your representatives. Tell them you will *not* be voting for them if they don't vote on this bill. Say you won't vote for Biden. NOT VOTING is also a tool in the box of electoralism - if the democrats face no pressure from the left to not do evil genocide then, then they will keep doing evil genocide shit.

Call and absolutely say all of that, and make clear demands for what they should be doing. I’ve been calling almost every single evening.

Recognize there ARE people like Tlaib, Omar, Ocasiao-Cortez, Bush, Bowman, Ramirez, Lee, Green, Carson, Jayapal, etc. running for these offices, House and Senate alike. Find the ones near you and support them if you’re dead set against voting for these current faces. Fight like hell to have them win.

Campaign for Dean Phillips if you’re dead set against Biden—I fully plan to vote for him in the primary myself if the field stays as-is. He’s currently saying he supports Israel’s right to self defense, but also saying he believes Palestinians should have self-determination and specifically wanting to help create a Palestinian state is a hell of a lot easier to push toward their desired unified, single, apartheid-free state than whatever secretive, genocide-abetting garbage we’re dealing with right now.

Put your time and money where your mouth is. I’m still recovering from my third spinal surgery and have physical therapy looming again once I’m no longer on narcotics and able to drive myself to bi-weekly appointments, but I already make donations to my candidate of choice for my representative on top of my 2 state-level people, and I actually reached out and we’ve spoken directly before.

I will personally always vote against the hungriest fascist I’m faced with. That’s the whole point of “lesser of two evils” in the first place. Yeah, sometimes they both suck ass, but there are still levels of awful.

You think a Republican would have any qualms about aiding Israel? We’d already be actively attacking the Palestinian people—sorry, would have “declared war on Hamas”—and would have sent way more supplies and soldiers than we already have on top of whipping the Evangelical christofascist base into a frenzy the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Republicans took the chance to do exactly that with impunity in 2001. But this time we’d be faced with someone ready and willing to engage in a violent coup here pulling those strings.

Only 4 Republicans were willing to not censure Tlaib just for being honest—the measure ostensibly citing antisemitism over use of “from the river to the sea” because some of the most powerful major Jewish organizations in the US are Zionist and have had the public and government’s ear on the situation for decades. Meanwhile, 191 Democrats voted against the measure. There’s an awfully big chasm between those two numbers. And it’s happened repeatedly, without widespread pushback, anytime criticism of Israel has come from a (progressive, Democrat) member of the house.

The vote for cutting IRS funding to give to Israel? 12 Democrats voted for it. 2 Republicans against it.

11 Republican members sponsored a bill to expel all Palestinians in the US. Landsman (OH) is a pro-Israel Democrat, was even one of the 22 who voted to censure Tlaib, yet he’s drafting his own bill against Zinke, the leader on the expulsion bill.

Breaking tonight, the Republicans have now proposed a bill to revoke scholarship money from college students speaking in defense or favor for Palestine.

That pressure from the left? That pressure is voting for progressive voices, donating and campaigning for them. That pressure is voicing your own opinions to those representing you, regularly.

Not voting at all? Considering that your way to send a message? All you’ve done is take your hand off the wheel and let all the pressure from the right take over the whole car.

[adultswim2021]

Metalocalypse #34: “Dethsources” | July 7, 2008 - 12:00AM | S02E14

Dethklok want new management, so they take on a second manager on some kind of trial basis. He’s a “cool” manager, unlike their stick-in-the-mud current guy. He has long hair, for instance, and smokes freaking JOINTS while working. He’s also voiced by Brian Posehn from comedy. Dethklok really like this guy, because he’s chilled out and parties with them. It becomes very clear that the new guy intends to get rid of the old guy (side-note: I really wish that this show had simple-to-remember-and-type names, because I despise having to copy and paste character names so gosh darn much with this gosh darn show). 

The source of the conflict is Dethklok’s dwindling cash. They haven’t finished their next record, and their money is running out. They never feel this crunch for even a second, because they are stupid idiot dumb-dumbs. They simply can not learn lessons or be nice.

This one has a lot of great scenes that have little to do with the main plot. It’s bookended by scenes of new Kloketeer recruits (their hooded servants). First we see them being weeded out by a fight to the death in the opening (not actually shown). We also see them being sworn in and branded during the show’s climax, which involves a fencing match between the two managers. The ending didn’t completely work for me, but it was fine. They had to get out of the episode somehow! 

The aforementioned “great scenes” include a pretty simple gag where Nathan texts Toki an incredibly lame joke. They are clearly extremely enchanted with texting technology. Their easily-impressed laughter is infectious, and Nathan being so proud of himself for pulling off such mild humor is so great. It’s all about the performance and the character animation (as limited as that is). There’s also a great bit with the health inspector who keeps asking if various terrible things happening due to their health code violations are “metal” or not (asked indignantly as a way to scold them) and they just shrug and go “yeah” because they all sorta are. This is the first scene in which their new manager pulls out a joint and starts smoking it and they are all childishly impressed by it. Any episode that drives home the point that Dethklok are all big dumb babies is doing it's job. This episode is doing jobs.

MAIL BAG

Remember the lady who screamed in her car for Joe Biden. She was screaming like BUCKO and CHAMP and shit like that. Well I just found out they died. Self-inflicted. See you later, sport.

This fake message caused me to find they/them on tiktok and after seeing them with various hairlengths and different outfits and stuff uhhhh, would. Please stay alive for me babythem. I need you

Have you seen skibidi toilet? it's what all the kids are into these days. makes adult swim look like barney the purple dinosaur

my friends (twitch streamers who don't know I exist) forced me to watch it (they played it on their reaction stream) and to quote my favorite racist cosmo kramer "that's spooky, man"

Quymn wasn't that good but I still find myself quoting "Go Team Boobies" from time to time

To be fair to that line, I actually did write that line down in my notes but I failed to highlight it in my write-up.

another tasty tuesday doon the fookin drain

I simply will not abide your terroistic mail bags. I'm calling the military on your ass pal. EFF YOU