#donate to bernie

[kelsonius]

'There is no way that any government can represent the interests of working people when billionaires are able to buy candidates ans elections.'

Bernie Sanders, It's OK to be Angry About Capitalism

[veganpepsibaby]

[galacticslugs]

WHOMST wants to help me $$ for groceries i will be grateful 🙏 venmo/cashapp is galacticslug

[robot-carl]

I took a nap today and had a vision. This was that vision. Scarecrow posed as mittens Bernie Sanders. He is once again asking you to donate your body for his experiments.

[lady-raziel]

I'm angry. I'm really, really furious right now. I am absolutely livid that when the stakes are so high-- not just for Americans at risk from project 2025, not just for people in Europe being threatened by Russia, not just for people in Palestine, but for pretty much widespread global stability-- that the elites of the Democratic party would dare, would have the fucking gall to let Joe Biden run for a second term in the first place, and then when the magnitude of their own hubris is revealed, would not correct the mistake. And even worse, now, after what we've seen over the past two weeks-- that many of them, including some of the most progressive, would look out upon the people who they claim to be champions of, the diverse and varied America who will suffer at the hands of the conservatives' agenda--and they would EVER dare to say that YOU are wrong to point out the truth before your own eyes.

After the NATO press conference, where Biden absolutely had to prove he was not on the decline, and resoundingly failed to do so, I was appalled to go on Twitter (I'm still not calling it X, sorry) and see favored Democratic insiders claiming that the performance I had just seen was GOOD. That I should be PROUD of this. That I should WANT to vote for this.

How dare you. How dare you say that I should be proud, should wholeheartedly endorse the candidate at the head of a party who, time and time again over the past 30+ years, has only ever chosen to raise up its own aging elites, and occasionally younger people if they met the right demographics to portray the image of the "diverse party of the people."

No. It became evident a long time ago that you only ever cared about yourselves and consolidating your own power. Time and time again you have destroyed the chances of any candidate that strays beyond what you consider the bounds of acceptability for yourselves. There were good candidates in 2004-- and instead, the Democrats gave us John Kerry and handed the Republicans another four years of Bush. Hillary Clinton first ran for president in 2008-- had Barack Obama not been so compelling, had the idea of having the first African American president been so appealing, would you have allowed him to stand a chance? In 2016 you again and again ignored what the average person had to say, ignored concerns that had been brewing for decades that your commitment to "diversity" only mattered if it could be wielded against conservatives and used to prop yourselves up, and destroyed Bernie Sanders' campaign in service of an elite no one wanted.

The seeds of Donald Trump had been brewing for a long time, and instead of doing something about it then, you rested on your laurels and held on to your power instead of raising new people up to move the mission forward. And now, when the situation is MORE CRITICAL than it has EVER been-- still you refuse to listen. Still you refuse to change. Biden literally said in that press conference they aren't listening to polls anymore--is there ANYTHING that will get you to see that you are fucking this up???

So no, Biden campaign surrogates on my Twitter feed, DNC donation-prompt texts, endless barrage of emails one after another-- I see no reason to my proud of this. For many of us, this election as well as the last one was ALWAYS a strategic calculation to prevent worse things, empower local-level candidates, and allow a party structure to exist in some form in hopes of change. This was ALWAYS a dispassionate choice made with the full knowledge of complex situations in order to play the long game.

How dare you say I too should wholeheartedly believe the emperor is dressed in robes of splendor when he and the rest of you have lain bare for the longest time, while those of us trying to keep things from getting worse have to convince the rightfully angry people who still care to ignore the nakedness of who you are--to prevent people cloaked in blood from taking the reins. Shame on all of you, honestly. I wish I could say that this might be a learning moment for the Democratic elite, but I have little hope, and I expect to hear you pontificate on end regarding how "young people just don't understand the political process and that's why we lost" as we all go down together.

Fuck you.

[smitethestate]

"If voting was worthless they wouldn't be trying to make it harder."

"If voting worked they'd make it illegal."

Okay these are both fun slogans but let's talk about what really happened here in the US.

First they made it so only white landowning men could vote. Then over the years other groups of people kept fighting for the right to vote and winning and the white landowning men were like "fuck well we can't defeat the masses outright on this so we'll just make a bunch of rules that make it hard for them to vote." And the oppressed masses fought against those too and won a bunch of gains on the issue like the Civil Rights Act.

So the powerful learned from their mistakes and made other, more subtle rules to make it harder to vote as the two parties battled back and forth to win the most power and influence and corporate donor money.

Republicans fought by making it as hard as possible to vote because they tend to win when less people vote, and especially when only the privileged with a lot of money and free time can manage it.

Democrats fought by trying to get more people to vote, but it's a bit more complicated than that. They're still beholden to wealthy corporate donors, so they can't just let pure democracy happen. They can't let real leftists become presidential nominees or allow real leftist policy like universal healthcare to pass. What they can do is convince you over and over to vote for the "reasonable" option under threat of Republican Hell so that you not only give them more power, but hand over your money and your time/energy to convince other people to give them more power and money.

Republicans benefit from the same kind of threat to their constituents, even as they're more blatant in their fight to stop people from voting.

The result is a system in which both the statements at the top of this post are true. If our voting system threatened to turn the US into a socialist utopia where the masses had all the power, they'd make it illegal. Democrats have never made a serious move to abolish the Electoral College. They absolutely mobilized to prevent even Bernie from becoming the Dem nominee. They'd do it again.

And you can see the same patterns in similar nations. Labor gained power in the UK only to become an anti-labor neoliberal party practically overnight. France elected a leftist government and Macron just went "nope."

But they're never going to make voting all the way illegal for just landowning men again, let alone make it outright illegal, because they know that would inspire the masses to rise up and make too much trouble again, and who knows what they'd lose? The current situation is working out great for them.

Meanwhile, of course Republicans want to make voting a certain amount of hard because they do want the most power, but even Trump probably knows better than to outlaw voting. At most he'd turn the US into a sham democracy like his idol Putin.

Which would of course suck, but the point it that the two statements up top are both essentially true but reductive.

Voting isn't worthless but those in power are never going to let us vote our was into a society that removes or even significantly reduces their power. You can maybe make things temporarily a little better or prevent them from getting worse for some people by voting.

But the problem is that people aren't just voting. They're voting and then telling themselves that they did their duty and using that as an excuse to do nothing else. Or they're voting and donating millions to Kamala in mere hours while GFMs for Palestinians and other desperate people stagnate. Or they're voting and giving all their attention, energy, and time to the two big party presidential candidates by volunteering or yelling at people on social media or both so all the money and power is funneled back into those who already have nearly all of it.

And nothing is left to actually fight for a better world.

I don't care to tell people whether to vote or how. It feels to me like a choice between a fast death or a slow one, which sucks either way. What pisses me off is that we're letting the powerful convince us to invest so much in them with this perpetual election season as the world circles the drain, and the most powerful know full well that this leaves us with too few resources to ever topple them from their thrones.

You're letting them pull your strings instead of breaking them. Things get worse every year and the longer we do this, the worse it's going to be for us all, and worse still for future generations. How long are you going to fight to slow down the train that's headed for the cliff instead of jumping off it while there's still time?

Don't scold me about voting on behalf of the train conductors hoarding all the train food. It's not a perfect metaphor ok but the point is fuck off and fuck this.

[shedidntevenswear]

So this is only two articles out of millions but I have thoughts on this and I'm really interested to hear others' thoughts as well.

First of all: extremely valid critique to point out the problems with Taylor's capitalism and the weakness and gaps in her activism. These are conversations that we within the fandom, the biggest die-hards, have on a regular basis. Of course there are a lot of fans that can't hold space for their love of Taylor and their criticisms of her brand at the same time, and I think those are the loudest Swiftie voices to the public when they go into defense mode at the drop of a pin so I get it. I understand the general sentiment that Swifties are uncritical of these important things.

My main take in this regard is: are we expecting too much of celebrities? The one-stop-shop, superstore view of celebrities we have slipped into doesn't seem to be serving us. We're viewing public figures as a Walmart of a person, where we can get our music and our content and our fashion and our moral and ethical leadership. Whereas I think we should look at them more like specialty shops, like the hardware store or the craft store. You don't go to Joann's and end up shocked you can't find a frozen pizza there. I'm not going to Taylor Swift for political leadership. I'm not going to Bernie Sanders for pop songs. Not that public figures shouldn't be pressed to speak out on important issues or donate their hoards of money or whatever - we should absolutely still hold them to a high standard, especially the ones that insist on making activism part of their brand. Have we rewritten the social contract with them that they have to give us the superstore experience or else we won't engage in their purported specialty (ex. "if Taylor Swift doesn't do more public activism I no longer find her art entertaining")? I think we'll find that thought process, especially as it seeps into our interpersonal relationships as well, will just leave us lonely and devoid of joy.

Thoughts?

[probablyasocialecologist]

The earnings of the ultra-rich are literally unearned. This isn’t a value judgment: it’s the US tax agency’s term for money made through “investment-type income such as taxable interest, ordinary dividends and capital gain distributions”. While Astor and Rockefeller surely followed the wealth-maximising maxim of buy low, sell high, and put money in trusts, charities and other vehicles to minimise taxation, we’ve seen this logic taken to the next level, without policy changes to correct for it. Most of us pay tax on our incomes at double-digit rates; if we’re fortunate enough to own assets, we pay tax on the profits when we sell them. Billionaires, on the other hand, “can borrow against their growing investments year after year without owing a dime in taxes, allowing them to pay lower tax rates on their income than ordinary Americans pay on theirs”. That statement doesn’t come from Bernie Sanders, by the way, but from the achingly centrist White House, which in 2022 proposed a 20% minimum tax on households worth more than $100m. It went nowhere, in part because its subjects so strongly opposed it. The impending arrival of the trillionaire signals another step backwards in the fight for a more balanced economy and healthier democracy. The billionaire class, after all, skews the balance of power in the marketplace, in politics and in society. Its members own newspapers that shape public opinion. They donate to politicians who pass the laws that they want. According to one study, 11% of the world’s billionaires have held or sought political office, with the rate of “billionaire participation” in autocracies hitting an astounding 29%. Another study shows they tend to lean to the right: positions that typically help them keep their own wealth, and that of their peers, intact.

[phoenixyfriend]

Calls for Action, Call Your Reps: 2/21/24

This is USA-specific, as that is the place I live and know.

Find your elected officials.

There are no bills scheduled to be on the floor on the House or Senate this week, though that may change. The chambers are using this time to debate and negotiate changes to the bills that were passed in the other chamber last week.

Suggested verbiage and strategies for calling your elected officials.

Both House and Senate:

Reinstate funding for UNRWA. While the claims made by Israel that employees of the relief agency were involved in Oct. 7th are troubling, THEY are not well supported, and western officials did not do their duty in investigating the claims before cutting funding. This arm of the UN is currently providing food, water, shelter, and medical care to the 2.3 million displaced peoples of Gaza. It is especially disturbing and concerning that the many children of Gaza, who are already suffering due to this conflict, are now having this support revoked. Many sources are also claiming that the evidence is flimsy at best.

UNICEF is reporting that children are dying of hunger in Gaza, as of today (2/21/24).

Urge both Senate and House to refrain from funding Israel, or to at least put some strings on it. The IDF cannot be given funding without some regulations on what they can do with it. They have proven that they are unwilling to take steps to protect civilians.

Sanctions must also be placed on Israel for its continued impediment of aid intended for Gazans, including aid from the US.

Urge for the US to stop vetoing ceasefire demands in the UN. No, the suggested replacement written by the US is not an excuse.

FOR THE SENATE: Urge your senator to put their support behind Bernie Sanders and his motion to restrict funding to Israel until a humanitarian review of the IDF’s actions in Gaza has been completed. Cite it as Senate Resolution 504 if your Senator is right-wing enough to react negatively to the mention of Sanders by name. NOTE: This resolution was TABLED by the Senate on 1/16, but it is being brought back in as conditions continue to escalate.

Passed in the House last week, so bother your senators about it, is H.R. 3016: IGO Anti-Boycott Act. Vote Nay. This appears to be intended to force US companies to do business with US allies instead of participating in boycotts. This appears, to me, to be an attack on movements like BDS. To Dem Reps, argue that this refuses the right of peaceful protest to US citizens. To Republican Reps, argue that this is a dangerous government overreach and that it is not the right of the government to force US citizens to purchase products and materials from specific foreign partners.

Not related to Gaza: It looks like they're gearing up for another push at KOSA. The canned email responses I'm getting are really proud of being FOR KOSA, which is... bad. VOTE NAY.

FOR THE HOUSE: Urge your representative to put their support behind Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s petition for the US government to recognize the IDF’s actions in Gaza as ethnic cleansing and forced displacement, and put a stop to it. ALTERNATELY: recommend that they support House Resolution 786, introduced by Rep. Cori Bush, Calling for an immediate deescalation and cease-fire in Israel and occupied Palestine.

If you wish to support my political blogging, I am accepting donations on ko-fi.

[kp777]

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

June 25, 2024

"Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education."

Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report Tuesday detailing how right-wing billionaires are bankrolling coordinated efforts to privatize U.S. public education by promoting voucher programs that siphon critical funding away from already-underresourced public schools.

The report notes that last year, the American Federation for Children (AFC)—an organization funded by former Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos—"ousted state lawmakers in Iowa and Arkansas who resisted proposals to subsidize private education in states and passed expansive private school vouchers."

Aided by millions of dollars in funding from DeVos and her husband, "AFC's political affiliates and allies spent $9 million to win 277 out of 368 races to remove at least 40 incumbent lawmakers," the report adds.

The DeVos family is hardly alone in using its wealth to undercut U.S. public education. The Bradley Foundation, which has been knee-deep in efforts to privatize education in Wisconsin and across the country, spent $7.5 million in 2022 "to fund 34 state affiliates of the State Policy Network to push conservative policy agendas, including privatizing education, and $8.3 million to building a youth movement to 'win the American Culture War.'"

"The Koch-sponsored group, American Encore, has funneled substantial amounts into state governor races and ballot initiatives around the country, including more than $1.4 million to elect Arizona's former governor Doug Ducey in 2014 (who led the efforts to create the nation's first universal private school voucher)," the report adds.

"For too long, there's been a coordinated effort to sabotage our public schools and privatize our education system. Unacceptable."

The analysis also names billionaires Jess Yass of Susquehanna International Group, Richard Uihlein of Uline, and Bernard Marcus of Home Depot, all of whom have recently donated to the School Freedom Fund—a PAC that supports voucher programs and shuttering the U.S. Education Department.

School voucher programs disproportionately benefit wealthy families, analyses have shown, while undercutting the goal of serving all students within a community.

"Over the past decade, there has been a coordinated effort on the part of right-wing billionaires to undermine, dismantle, and sabotage our nation's public schools and to privatize our education system," Sanders (I-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement. " That is absolutely unacceptable."

"We can no longer tolerate billionaires and multinational corporations receiving massive tax breaks and subsidies while children in America are forced to go to understaffed, underresourced, and underfunded public schools," Sanders continued. "On this 70th anniversary year of Brown v. Board of Education, let us recommit to creating an education system that works for all of our people, not just the wealthy few."

The new report, authored by the Senate HELP Committee's majority staff, comes days after Sanders presided over a hearing at which a pair of public school teachers decried the low educator pay and lack of resources plaguing schools across the U.S. and threatening the foundations of the country's public education system.

The committee's report shows that while most states have chronically underfunded their public schools, spending on voucher programs that subsidize private schools with taxpayer dollars has surged across the country. Between 2008 and 2019, according to a recent analysis cited in the report, Florida ramped up spending on voucher programs by 313% while "decreasing per-pupil funding of public schooling by 12%."

"The expansion of private school voucher programs forces very real tradeoffs. Money spent on private school vouchers could instead be used to hire teachers, raise wages, hire school counselors, and invest in high-quality academics for students," reads the new report, which estimates that "Arizona could hire 15,730 more public K-12 teachers with the money it is instead spending on private school vouchers."

The report calls on Congress to help reverse the trend of billionaire-backed school privatization by investing more in public education—including early childhood education and community schools—and by passing Sanders' legislation to set the pay floor for U.S. public school teachers at $60,000 a year.

The report also recommends passage of the College for All Act, a Sanders-led bill that would make public colleges and universities tuition-free for students from households making less than $250,000 a year.

"As the richest country in history, the United States should have the best education system in the world," Sanders' report reads. "Our public education system is not perfect—it is underfunded and racially and socioeconomically segregated. Our educators are not respected or paid nearly what they deserve."

"Massive tax breaks to the wealthiest people and largest corporations are being prioritized over opportunities to progressively raise revenue to support social services and public education," the report continues. "Instead of siphoning money and increasing tax breaks to subsidize private education, we have a responsibility to ensure all students have access to quality K-12 education. This requires adequate and equitable funding and addressing structural challenges in our public schools."

[astrangetorpedo]

On New Year’s Eve, during a house party at her home in Richmond, Virginia, Lucy Dacus had her fortune told. She thought why not. On a personal level, 2017 had been a wretched year – a steady conveyor belt delivering the 22-year-old bad news.

“This girl, who I didn’t even know, came to the party and gave me this year-long reading,” she explains. “Month-by-month it was so specific. So far, it’s kind of lined up.”

In the past Dacus has been sceptical about the prophetic powers of the tarot card deck, and was taught that the pentacles (coins) were a symbol of Satan. “It’s hard to look to the future and see nothing, to know nothing,” she muses. “I still don’t know what’s going to happen, but having something to have your mind bounce off is nice. That’s why I like tarot. It gives you something to reflect on.”

It’s all part of a fresh way of thinking for Dacus, a new “mood of just trying to be open to new things.” For so many reasons the past year has been one Lucy Dacus is keen to put behind her. “I guess I could just list things,” she says laughing, but not joking. To begin, some of her close family suffered health problems, compounded by her own serious issues including a bout of appendicitis that forced her to have surgery. She was attempting to buy a house for the first time, a process that proved “trying”. Three of her tours got cancelled.

“It was a little bit miserable,” says Dacus, sitting in an east London cafe. “Towards the end of the year, I just had to laugh… Like, come on!”

Interwoven with these practical challenges she was having to navigate something much more troubling. “I got out of a relationship in 2016, which I was waking up from in 2017 – realising that it was abusive,” she begins. “Letting myself say that, it took many months to come out of the numbness… to stop being brainwashed. So, that’s all been a growth. It’s ended up being positive, but it is difficult wondering how I let that be a part of my life for so long.”

Deepening the ordeal, still, this year of personal upheaval was set to the backdrop of Trump’s first 12 months in office. A vociferous supporter of Bernie Sanders through the 2016 election campaign, Dacus is a passionate advocate for equal rights, attending marches and collecting donations for community organisations at her shows. To have Trump sat in the White House representing her country, she says, felt – feels – “horrible”. “It’s just absurd and I feel like I’m in an alternate universe,” she says. “It’s really hard maintaining hope.

“Coming to Europe I’m embarrassed to be an American sometimes, but then I just have to hope that people know that I am not part of Trump. I’ve thought about wearing shirts at the airport – just like ‘not my president’. In little ways I just want to assert that opinion.”

And then there were the disturbing revelations surrounding Harvey Weinstein (and subsequently many other men) revealed in Autumn 2017, that opened out into a global conversation around the abuse and harassment of women.

“It’s been nice coming out of that really terrible relationship during a time when women are speaking up more. It feels like I’m allowed to say these things now,” says Dacus, crediting the #MeToo movement. “All these horrible, heartbreaking stories of women being mistreated are at the forefront but the solace that people are doing what they need in order to find closure and help each other prevent that happening ever again. For one of the first times I’ve been noticing male friends of mine actually examining their past behaviours.”

While there are some early shoots of positivity, the truth is, the culmination of all of these factors left the songwriter dealing with anxiety for the first time. “2017 was a new state of mind for me – and not really in the best way.”

Lucy Dacus was raised in Richmond, Virginia, about two hours south of Washington D.C. on the east coast. It’s a place sometimes described as “the biggest small town left in America.” The family home was in the rural suburbs and she travelled into the city to go to high school. “It’s hard to tell you in one answer how my whole childhood was,” she says. “It’s a large variety of things. Overall, I’m coming out with my thumbs up.”

In her household music was always there. Her mother is a piano teacher, as was her grandmother. Picking up songwriting was never a big deal, like a second language that was spoken around the house. “That’s how music is – like, it’s just part of my life,” she recalls.

Yet the dream of being a professional artist seemed almost so unattainable that it was invisible. In her late teens, Dacus went to college to study film but dropped out, primarily because she’d end up saddled with huge debt. “That, paired with the feeling of being misunderstood in my programme,” she confirms. “I just didn’t have a lot of like minds in my classes.”

That prompted a move back to Virginia where she took a job in a photography lab developing kids’ cheesy school photos. She’d been writing songs in her spare time and gathered nine of the 30-or-so she had together when her friend Jacob Blizard (now her touring guitarist) asked her to record them for his school project. Her 2016 debut album, ‘No Burden’, was made in one day in Nashville. Blizard passed school, and that album received rave reviews. NPR called it “vulnerable”, while Pitchfork said it was an “uncommonly warm indie rock record”. As a result, 20 different record labels reportedly scrabbled to sign Dacus. She settled on Matador, and began to prepare for what should have been a joyful 2017.

The first time Dacus remembers assuming the role of historian she was seven or eight-years-old. She was writing in her journal – and she smiles now recalling her first entry. It complained about how the babysitter spent the whole evening on the phone to her boyfriend. “There’s a point where I realise I’m journaling and so I stop and go, ‘I should probably introduce myself… I’m Lucy’” she laughs, remembering it clearly. “It’s really cute.”

More than a dozen notebooks, and many years later, she still keeps a diary now. Sometimes she writes every day, other times, weeks go by and then she fills 20 pages. Occasionally she flicks open an old one to either “laugh or cringe” at her younger self.

‘Historian’, then, isn’t just the title of her latest album, but also the way she thinks of herself. A chronicler, of her own experiences, but also those around her. Those pages aren’t just a document of a growing maturity, but also a therapeutic habit that helps make sense of many life events, including that recent damaging relationship. “Seeing that it had been broken for the whole time but that I was just oblivious to it, [reading about] it helps to accept that things didn’t change,” she says. “I just saw it for what it was finally, and so perspective is good.”

Those handwritten journals are sacred, which is why, when her tenth one was stolen on tour a few years ago along with a bag of possessions, it was the notebook she replaced first.

The album itself is a recent history – a narrative burrowing through those myriad dark times. Dacus knew that she wanted it to form a complete story, and wrote the track list before some of the songs. “It’s an arc” she says, that begins in a “relatable place” with the only break-up song she’s ever written (‘Night Shift’) that subsequently delves “deeper into darkness.”

“Then the subject matter gets a little more intense,” she tells me, “– going through identity crises, or loss of home, or loss of faith, loss of a loved one, loss of your life. I feel like I’m pulling people into an uncomfortable space.” She pauses. “There’s then a change where hopefully I’m turning on a light and saying, ‘Yes, all of that exists, but it’s a foil to joy.’”

It is an extraordinary piece of work. Musically it’s a colossal step up, reminiscent of recent albums by Mitski (‘Puberty 2’), Angel Olsen (‘My Woman’) and labelmate Julien Baker (‘Turn out the Lights’). The subject matter is heavy, but it’s never a dreary listen. In fact, it’s charming, funny even – like a brave smile emerging through a curtain of tears. And Dacus has a gift for lyric writing; like the eloquent way she pays tribute to the humility shown by her dying grandmother on ‘Pillar of Truth’. From first to final note it’s evocative and powerful. “The first time I tasted somebody else’s spit I had a coughing fit,” goes the LP’s opening line in ‘Night Shift’. “If past you were to meet future me,” she sings on the final line of the closing title track, “would you be holding me now?”

It’s heartening to hear that the contents of Dacus’ NYE tarot reading were largely positive. The forecast noted that she should enjoy the proceeds of her hard work, but that “something horrible happens in the summer, then there’s kind of a rebirth, growing back into, like, life in an even more knowledgeable and peace-oriented way.” Dacus is about to leave, and picks up a bag of books she’s been keeping underneath the cafe table.

“It could be wrong,” she says. “I’m not superstitious. I’m taking it in. When that does happen I hope I can take my own advice – let it be what it is, and look past it eventually

(x) 3/14/18

[mywitchcultblr]

🚨 Scam alert 🚨

The antis vs pro ship bullshit is going too far with NOW SOMEONE TRIED TO SCAM PEOPLE just to own proship or whatever and prove a point

Listen... You are taking this god damn bullshit too damn far! Why are you literally going to commit fraud over shipping and discourse?! Forget about pros vs antis whatever, you are planning to commit fraud and taking random people's money wtf

Also that person have Tumblr account as well and she seemed to be friends with a serial harasser: aster-disasters who trolling and harassing on pro ao3 post or whatever i remember someone sending me DM about it but i don't remember details because it happened some time ago... Holy fuck...

Imagine you plan to do fake commission or whatever, taking people's money + lying about your situation because you are so deep in online BS... Oh my fuckin' god some gen z are fucked beyond help...

Don't commit fraud over shipcourse!

Look if anyone with those account names babykn1fe or slime whatever asking for donation/offering commission project. Don't trust! 🚨

That person is on TikTok as well with the same name as Tumblr

Edit: Correcting pronouns + Wtf that twitter account saying "Good luck, have fun!!" To someone who's going to scam people online out of their money

It's like saying to Bernie Madoff:

"Oh! Bernie! You wanted to steal 70 billion dollars from people? Good luck! Have fun old boy!"

[smashedpages]

In 1986, DC Comics followed in the footsteps of the music industry and their group projects "Do They Know It Christmas?" and "We Are The World," producing a benefit comic where all proceeds were donated to charity to help with the hunger crisis in Africa.

Spearheaded by Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson, Heroes Against Hunger #1 featured the work of 100 contributors in a story about Superman, Batman and Lex Luthor trying to relieve hunger in Ethiopa. Creators who participated included John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Cary Bates, Steve Englehart, Klaus Janson, Mindy Newell, Michael Kaluta, Steve Leialoha, Al Milgrom, Gray Morrow, Bill Sienkiewicz, Walt Simonson, Marv Wolfman, George Perez and many more. Neal Adams and Dick Giordano did the cover.

(Not incidentally, the comic followed the Heroes for Hope X-Men comic from Marvel, which Jim Starlin and Bernie Wrightson also spearheaded).

[phaeton-flier]

You are 70/30 Dems winning the Presidency in 2024!! Explain yourself, why is Nate Silver an idiot ^_^

Alright, this was a gut level response. Starting from 50/50, because I think Biden has a better chance than Trump, I think public sentiment is lagging the improving economy by ~6 mo, I think "Biden is old" is going to get to be less of a thing as he and Trump debate and Trump's own mental faculties start getting called into question (If you think he's actually got a faulty brain watch some actual speeches of his and not just a few gaffes from the Obama Administration Gaffe Machine. The problems with him being old are him having some out of time political positions.) I think a lot of the "voters say Biden's age is a problem" are less solidly-held positions and more responses to it being repeated in the news cycle, and that's a position

I think the Israel/Palestine situation will be less of a drag not because a miracle occurs but just because it lags out of people's minds/his (real and perceived) position shifts as time goes on, and certain major left wing figures push against protest votes (Bernie's already done this). This sucks and I wish the answer was "Biden pulls a solution out of the bag and stops the genocide".

Trump's legal situation is likely to start really being a factor in people's minds, I think a lot of the voting public isn't aren't aware of the seriousness of the charges and they just sorta assume it's all mudslinging. I disagree with the occasionally thrown around view that he can just turn it all into an attack on him; Sure, some of the major base will believe that but I think the median voter is gonna start raising eyebrows. The money issue he's going thru right now isn't going to help matters, especially as he's made paying his legal fees the first payment tranche of donations. Filling the RNC with his own picks does not speak top competent picks.

I know it's a common criticism, but I kinda think Nate Silver's let punditry outweigh data, and from what I've seen his position here doesn't seem as data driven as it was before. Biden was A-Tier since he announced according to Nate's own podcast back in the day, and that's something that's only improved by incumbency; Trump, meanwhile, has the disadvantage of not being able to run like he was in 2016 because people know his actual presidency, mired though it is through the mind of the average voter.

[darkmaga-retard]

Kevin Barrett

Sep 19, 2024

I should know something about politics and madness. Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly have both questioned my sanity on national television. But they and other mainstream purveyors of partisanship may be the crazy ones. Below are my thoughts on that subject. For a different take, listen to Jim Fetzer push back against my criticism of some of his work on Sandy Hook, and opine on politics and madness, when he sits in for me on Revolution Radio this Friday September 20 noon to 2 pm Eastern—click on Studio B. (Please note that I am traveling this week and doing fewer broadcasts than usual.)

Can politics drive people crazy? Or do crazy people naturally gravitate to politics? And do psychopaths, who are not crazy but just evil, deviously manipulate the craziness of politics and its partisans?Those are among the questions raised by the latest alleged Trump assassination attempt. The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, apparently spent the night in the bushes outside Trump International Golf Club last Sunday, then took a potshot at the ex-president and fled when Secret Service agents returned fire.

Routh was, shall we say, “political.” Substacker Eugyppius writes:

As we would expect from a crazy person, Routh’s political allegiances show no clear pattern. He claims to have supported Trump in 2016, but he didn’t vote in that election. Later he turned on Trump and used his Twitter account to express support for Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, to deride Biden as“sleepy Joe,” and to advocate for Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy in the 2024 Republican primary. All the while he appears to have made various small donations to Democratic organisations.

The war in Ukraine pushed Routh over the edge. He flew to Kiev with ambitions of fighting the Russians, but because he was in his mid-fifties and mentally unstable, the International Legion turned him down. He responded by styling himself as a military recruiter working to fly under-occupied Afghans to Europe to defend Ukrainian democracy. Of course, he did not recruit anybody. What he did do, was set up a creepy protest tent at Independence Square in Kiev, which he called the “International Volunteer Center” …

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Molly Redden at HuffPost:

In his Democratic primary challenge to Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Wesley Bell, the St. Louis County prosecutor, is raising money hand over fist — and not all of it from Democrats. Bell’s latest campaign finance filings include donations from notable sources such as Steven Tilley, a GOP former Missouri House speaker who’s now a lobbyist, and Daniel Loeb, the billionaire founder of the hedge fund Third Point, who has donated millions to Republican causes.

David Steward, a billionaire tech CEO from St. Louis, has also supported Bell. Steward recently served as the finance chair of a super PAC that supported Sen. Tim Scott’s (R-S.C.) run for president. All told, Bell raised more than $65,000 from donors who also gave to one of Missouri’s two Republican senators, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, in their most recent campaigns, or Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft, the leading Republican candidate for governor. The influx of money for Bell from donors who normally back Republicans comes after the prosecutor abandoned a Senate campaign against Hawley in order to challenge Bush. Bell jumped races in late October, a decision he partly credits to Bush’s stance on Israel’s military action in Gaza. Shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, Bush introduced a resolution for a cease-fire and condemned Israel’s retaliatory military action as an “ethnic cleansing campaign.”

Around that time, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the deep-pocketed pro-Israel lobbying group, unveiled a plan to spend up to $100 million to unseat Bush and her fellow Israel critics. The group endorsed Bell in February. “Wesley Bell is a progressive prosecutor who will stand up for President Biden’s agenda and oppose MAGA extremists and Donald Trump ― and everyone who supports or donates to his campaign knows that’s exactly what to expect from Wesley,” said Anjan Mukherjee, an adviser to Bell’s campaign. “Cori Bush has proven she would rather get headlines and protest than do the work of getting progressive results for St. Louis.”

[...] Bush, a nurse, became a political activist after the 2014 police killing of Mike Brown and the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2020, with support from Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and progressive groups that helped elect other left-wing Squad members, Bush pulled off a shocking upset of longtime incumbent Rep. Lacy Clay Jr. She has become an advocate for Black maternal health, abortion rights and diverting money from law enforcement to public services. Bell’s political career was forged in Ferguson, too, where he became a city councilmember after the unrest. In 2018, Bell rode a wave of enthusiasm for progressive prosecutor candidates to become the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney. Bell is campaigning on elements of his record, such as his efforts to reduce the number of people jailed for minor offenses. But some activists who helped elect him claim he failed to differ much from his predecessors, starting with when he declined to seek charges over Brown’s death.

If you thought that Wesley Bell was going to primary incumbent Rep. Cori Bush (D) a year ago and raising money from Republicans and pro-Israel Apartheid folk, you'd been laughed out the room.

In the #MO01 Democratic Primary, a pair of politicians who had their rise fueled by the Ferguson protests in the wake of the killing of Mike Brown nearly 10 years ago are facing off against each other.

Bell initially was gonna run for #MOSen, but switched instead to the Congressional set currently occupied by Bush due to her resolutely pro-Palestinian stances on the Israel/Hamas War and Gaza Genocide.