#going to be change if we keep giving them what they want. Biden is BANKING on you being too

[allgremlinart]

I cant find the I hope President Biden kills himself today post. I hope President Biden kills himself today.

[solrovivrus]

The White House managed to get off its ass and do the bare fucking minimum for once. Now I need to reiterate something that the settlements in the West Bank are completely illegal. They are illegal under international law and nothing the US says or does will change that. Having said that this article states that the Biden Administration has “recognized” the settlements as “inconsistent with international law”(aka illegal). Now this is not necessarily new, the US has stated that the settlements in the West Bank are illegal since 1976, which has fallen under both democratic and republican presidents like Carter/Regan etc. However, the Trump administration changed this to say they no longer viewed the settlements as illegal in fact,

“Under an unrealized Trump peace plan, Israel would have been allowed sovereignty over all existing settlements and permitted to annex up to 30 percent of the West Bank.”

So it’s not so much that the Biden Administration is making a progressive step but rather returning to an established status quo. In fact he states he is going further ahead with his support for a two state “solution”, the merits of which are dubious at best and flat out ignoring the actual help Palestinians need at worst, but has not committed to reversing Trumps plan. This does not necessarily mean he is in favor or supports Trumps plan but it does lead to my main problem with all of this. It’s just lazy, bare minimum horseshit.

There is a lot to discuss about Bidens handling of the war but this whole thing really takes the cake of showing how while Biden does do things that on the surface seem like they could be helpful once you look into them, even a little bit, it just proves how lackluster his whole strategy is.

He claims that the bombings are “indiscriminate” and Israel must protect civilians at all cost, but then bypasses congress to send them more bombs. He claims he wants more aid and humanitarian assistance into Gaza, but vetoes a ceasefire for a third time and brings in another proposal that says a ceasefire will happen when it’s “practical”. It’s the same with this.

Everyday I look at the news, especially with what’s happening in Rafah, hoping that something will happen. Something, anything, to make this any better. To bring an end to the violence and death that has destroyed countless lives and scarred many others. And I read shit like this because it appears to be a silver lining, something good for Palestinians, something that gives them any autonomy and agency during this time. But all I get are basic table crumbs of shit we should’ve been doing from the very start, why is it that only now Biden has called out this very obvious illegal practice? Why didn’t he do that shit before all this carnage? Hell why didn’t he do this shit during his four fucking years as president?

The only thing keeping me from sinking further into rage is the fact that it is a shift. Biden is only doing this because he sees the pushback from protesters and knows that public opinion is turning. Israel’s response has been so overblown that it’s impossible to ignore the amount of injustice, and people are now more than ever seeing its true colors. So this push is small, and it sucks. I am not going to sit thanking them for basic table scraps. The Overton window on Palestine is shifting and we would be fools not to take advantage of it. We must do every single thing within our power to make more progress than ever.

It does not escape me that while Biden has nothing to be thanked for and has blood on his hands, Trumps plan fucking terrifies me. Its one thing to be frustrated by hollow promises, for Biden to expect a thank you for recognizing that the illegal thing is still very much illegal and punishing four people with economic sanctions even though 399 Palestinians have died on the West Bank with over a thousand more injured due to violence. Meaning that those who committed these crimes will most likely never answer for what they did. I hate that these are supposed to placate us, that this somehow makes up for everything. But the idea of Trumps plan, that not only would the recognition that the settlements are illegal not happen but they in fact would be actively supported by our country creates a pit in my stomach. It makes you realize that one small misstep and we could lose more than we have already lost. But I refuse to settle.

I don’t just want to have the settlements recognized as illegal, I want the West Bank and Gaza to have full autonomy over their personhood and over their land. I want justice for those who lost their lives and the lives of their loved ones. We have a duty to these people and to ourselves to never give an inch, to demand better, to demand more. Never settling for complacency. And we must also be strategic. We cannot assume that because things are bad that they cannot get worse. We cannot stoop to petty infighting when people are counting on us for our help and solidarity, doing whatever it takes to make things better for them. We must stand for Palestine liberation, we must never settle for complacency. From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.

[the-firebird69]

It's only a matter of time before I get a message across talking about the max thank daddy keeps gives perpetuating it but all these people are that's a joke I can't steal them. But today we have another problem is wizards are screwing around with them already no way that's unacceptable so we're going to move them to some other location how the hell away from him and it's not good. He started off with Biden AKA Sophocles and he's on the street and homeless in Florida and he has a lot of money and they won't let him access it any of it and they use their idiots and mac and foreigners don't care so you know they're kind of week for that you say no wonder how weak the max are it doesn't look like they are that week well they're not they're 20% of the population the foreigners are about 60% but they're different groups okay they're not all pulling for each other in themselves as no real place for them to go and congregate and they never really did it in the United States as much as people think it's always been these gifted people and I did it the United Nations and NATO no that was them too so they're divided as well the point of that is that they're 60% is really broken up into 10% and 10% 20% and about three fives and a 10 and then you know something like that it's really separate peoples and that's how it goes. And the difference between them and the max is not glaring what they have a shield and they have 4 billion warships than they have mega bases and phones don't have that also they have probably 90% of what's left of the monetary system and investments. And that would be the max and we've been working on it and they are saying that we haven't it's not really true so we also are working on trying to secure money and the money system and it's not going that great I only have these computers and we have to adjust and we have to change things. We have ownership supposedly of the banks and I keep saying it we have controlling share but we don't have a presence there that we need and that's globally 90% is not good we used to have a large presence in the Midwest now it doesn't matter so we have to start to work on that immediately I expect of 30 more percent by the end of next week and we need volunteers for the student full-time would be very greatly appreciated and also you may transfer out if you wish but we were hoping for you to stay on with that duty we also want people to volunteer in a temporary basis and a lot of times they stay on. This is at the heart of the matter how people need to eat and have a place to live like everyone else.

-another issue is housing probably nobody can get housing all over Earth and it's because the max owned a lot of it and we've been buying tons of it and taking tons of it from warlock areas and it's working and we need to redevelop those immediately and Hera and Zeus are giving the order for us to start doing that on our own we were going to do it as joint projects and we were going to do it with them and they just will not do anything so they deserve to do it that way I don't think they can control us and it's their problem we are going to build a lot of places forgierners are doing it too successfully. We have probably 30% of the land in the areas other than the middle area of course it's a decent amount for our group's makeup and it's almost exactly what we would have so it doesn't really help that much we're looking at what people are doing things they need and the phone is too and that's about it there's people everywhere and the max have ownership of in the 70% they have 60% of it and most of the apartments and most of the houses that are rented are theirs and other places that people live trailer parks campgrounds condos and we have to start fixing that also they are trying to monopolize the areas around the huge ships. Sterling said something that they still run things on the outside of the perimeter and it was a lot of people came up and asked me and I told him what it was really happening and it's good to know they said and they have a safe stuff on this device but a lot of it is true and it was kind of true we were running out there.

-for the orders out now we need to get a lot more aggressive and we need to start getting involved with the money and housing or we're going to be in trouble like these people are. We also need to get the keys there and we need to get people trapped but you keep announcing it and saying what phase is at right now it's Friday you'll be at camp David shortly and then he will be in Utah and the games will begin again last night was a precursor for today and we think it's War of the worlds it's going to happen this morning as he's not at camp David all day and then he will have a night time of nightmares and go to Utah later tonight and gained 3 hours and he'll be there early evening before sunset which is not the schedule but it's close and he's supposed to be in Utah for almost a week six days I believe and there will be a ton of things happening American made and dumb and dumber dumb and dumber too will happen first the money from cesario will go to Utah hurricane high School occur Guantanamo Bay ultimately from that all because of Utah and the money will go to Utah and the keys will be separated from him out there we believe and Tommy F will take them to Korea to the submarine and there's two of them and they only mentioned the one in the Atlantic the other one has the other key and that's just number two guy and yeah he uses Trump to do it and his son in the Pacific and they end up underneath the ice sheet and the keys are retrieved and yeah there are sons and daughters key both of them was two that go together and that's going to begin sometime this coming week well he's supposedly still in Utah after that the keys are transported all over the place and it begins with mission impossible and Abu Dhabi after Europe and after the king tries to coordinate people and you're trying to taking over to the White House all this happens this week and and then they go to Abu Dhabi Europe the keys go to Italy because of trump and he secures them in the second movie the first one was cut years ago 2 years ago this would be live and then Greyhound happens after the submarine incidents several subs are broken away from the Navy and they're fighting fiercely over basis and over these ships and we're taking tons of them you have about half more to come shortly the freezer will occur and then it will be Tom Cruise in the sand over New York and DC and the launch the Canadian ship and this week we think

Thor Freya

And yes we are raising Hera and Zeus sons and daughters from below cities and they are immense and as the city is clear in the Midwest we will do so and I get a request this morning from Abomination and she abomination when can we do the cities what is the sequence and we already went over it but it's fresh and they have changed and I said these here are weaker and so they're going to work on them and Zeus and Hera said when you do that we need people working over here so they simply don't migrate there and we're going to do that for them and starting now

Thor Freya

You do understand your concern and we appreciate your help it's true that it would happen without being minimal this will cover it and also help push along the program which we need and it also pushes on our building up defenses. We appreciate the assignment and we're going to go for it and we have a lot of friends and family who are doing it and our cadre and Elizabeth says a whole bunch of them there too

Abomination and She Abomination

This is the beginning of a new era but we're just beginning and he warned us we have a lot of problems and we must secure a lot of things and we do know that the big stuff can't wait and we had a lot to say about it already and a lot to do and needed to

Olympus

[prismatic-bell]

So the other day I said a thing about how I felt like a line could be drawn between antis, and the rise of 24-hour news networks. I’ve given that thought some time to bubble to see what, exactly, my brain meant by that statement, and here’s what I’ve got:

When I was a kid (back in Ye Olde 1990s), we had three major news stations in my town: Channel 12, Channel 24, and Channel 35. These corresponded to NBC, ABC, and CBS, but I don’t remember which one was which so don’t ask me. Anyway--you had a half hour of news at 8 or 9 am (depending on which station you watched), an hourlong program at noon in which half the program was stuff like “here are today’s beach closures and some recipes and also if you’re looking for stuff to do with the kids this weekend here are local promotions,” and half an hour at either 5, 5:30, or 6 (again, depending on which channel you watched). One of the three stations also did a half-hour capper at 10pm. So unless you were watching all three stations, and picking the news every single time, the max amount of news you were going to get was like an hour and a half. If you wanted more news than that, you read the newspaper. When my mom was a kid (back in Ye Olde 1960s), this would have seemed like an inordinate amount of news--for her, it was half an hour at 6pm and ten minutes at 10pm and then the station (there was only one station that did the news) played the National Anthem and went off the air until 6am, at which time you might get like . . . the weather and a traffic report.

For anything else, you read the newspaper.

Now with only half an hour to present a whole lot of news, what are you going to do? You are going to stick to the facts. You don’t have a choice. You have a very short time to fit a whole lot of information. “Notre Dame cathedral caught on fire today. French firefighters are working to get the flames under control, and authorities in charge of the cathedral are doing their best to remove relics, paintings, and other holy objects while it’s still possible. French President Mr. Somebody addressed the nation and stated every attempt to save the building, and to rebuild the damage, will be made. In local news . . . “ And that’s it! If you want more information, you’ve got to wait for the newspaper in the morning, and you’re going to have to get a copy of the New York Times or USA Today, because the local paper will only have a blurb, and that blurb will mostly cover what you just heard!

But then the news changed.

By the time I was a teenager, the non-cable news looked like this: All three channels had a morning show that started at 5 or 6 am (depending on your station) and ran until 8 or 9 (depending on your station). The station that ended at 8am then had a half-hour morning news show. The mid-day news at 11 or 12 was still an hour. Channel 35 did a half-hour news segment at 5 and another at 5:30, back to back. The other two stations simply did an hourlong segment. And then one station did half an hour at 10:30, and the other two did hourlong segments at 10pm.

What do you do with that much time? Well, you expand. Yes, you can fit more news, but you can also fit more about the news. “Notre Dame cathedral in Paris went up in flames today. The fire began in the famous historic bell tower, and spread to the roof. At this time, portions of the roof appear to have caved in, and there are concerns about the integrity of the medieval stonework in the cathedral walls. French firefighters have been working since 8am Paris time to get the flames under control, and authorities in charge of the cathedral are doing their best to remove relics, paintings, and other holy objects while it’s still possible. Some firefighters are also helping with this project, as portions of the building have become too unsafe to enter. French President Mr. Somebody addressed the nation late this evening and stated every attempt to save the building, and to rebuild the damage, will be made. Of the cathedral itself, Somebody said, ‘Our Lady has weathered worse troubles than this. Paris as a city, and France as a nation, will overcome.’ In local news . . . ”

Still facts, but a few more facts. At this point the internet as a public thing is just past its infancy, and in theory you could go look up some stuff on, like, AOL, maybe, about what was happening.

(Nina, you were talking about antis . . . ?)

(Yes, I was. Bear with me.)

But at this point you also saw the rise of Fox News and CNN.

Now up to this point, I could trust the news. That is important to know. “Nina, American news is full of propaganda--” Listen, you’re not wrong, but the point is, if Scott Brennan told me Notre Dame cathedral was on fire and priests were trying to remove the holy relics, I could safely assume Notre Dame cathedral was on fire and priests were trying to remove the holy relics. If Channel 24 told me “the blizzard of the century” had occurred the night before, I could look out the window of my snowed-in house and go “yeah, that seems legit.”

I grew up, in other words, in a world in which facts were facts. We didn’t waffle or wring our hands over whether or not Notre Dame was on fire. And this allowed me to take a similar approach to fiction: it is a fact that murder is wrong, and knowing this, I can read a book in which someone commits murder for very good reasons, but still know they did something wrong.

But now you have 24 hours of news to fill.

No matter how you pad it, no matter how many voice clips you play or retrospectives you do, you cannot find enough news in the world to fill 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year. You just can’t.

So they started adding “opinion pieces.”

Notre Dame is on fire--is it worth saving? Notre Dame is on fire--but is it as big a catastrophe as it’s made out to be? Notre Dame is on fire--but France has been steadily calling themselves a secular nation, so is this the punishment of G-d? Notre Dame is on fire--

--wait, what was that?

Yep. You saw it, I saw it, we all saw it. But as the “opinion pieces” slowly took over the regular news and stopped being called “opinion pieces” and started being called “programs,” it became less and less clear what was and wasn’t fact.

Now obviously Notre Dame is on fire. But now we have to ask ourselves: is it worth it to save it or not? Is the financial cost outweighed by the history? Will those answers change depending on how bad the damage becomes? And you, lonely elderly person in your chair whose predominant socialization these days is at church, how does this make you feel about French people? These are questions that once would have been asked of the church caretakers and the French government. Now every single person is being asked to think about them, without being provided all of the context that is available to the church caretakers and the French government. And along the way, you get these nice, nasty little bits of prejudice and slanted thinking and bias sneaked in.

I told you I’d come back to antis. And here we are.

The vast majority of antis are very young. They grew up in a world where those “programs” were the norm. They were not provided with a cultural basis of “these are the facts.” They were provided a basis of “here is what I think about the facts.” They were provided a basis of, as Mr. Banks said in Mary Poppins, “kindly do not cloud the matter with facts.”

There are no facts! Who fucking cares! An anti who’s 15 years old today was eleven years old when we were introduced to “alternative facts”! Is it wrong for a 27-year-old man to pursue a relationship with a 13-year-old girl? Depends on which news channel, and which presenter, you ask!

They literally grew up in a world in which critical thinking was discouraged. Once upon a time, you would have seen on TV that Notre Dame was on fire, and at dinner--or whatever your family did for together time--you might say things like “going to be expensive to fix that, I wonder what they’ll do,” but you wouldn’t have been hit with six presenters telling you exactly why Notre Dame should/shouldn’t be rebuilt. And don’t forget--even if you, personally, do not watch the news (or read it on the internet, which is just as bad, because everybody’s after those elusive advertising clicks, everybody needs the “scoop” two seconds before it happens), you know people who do. You hear their opinions and their hot takes and their retellings all around you. And those  opinions and hot takes and retellings will be colored by which “program” that person saw first.

Watch the first thirty seconds of this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dn2RjahTi3M

Walter Cronkite, a legendary news anchor, giving his opinion on Vietnam. You will notice that he states, very clearly: “it seems very clear to this reporter.” This is Cronkite’s opinion, nothing more, and he makes it clear that he is speaking only for himself.

Now skip to approximately 1:05, and watch him report the Kennedy assassination. You can see he’s emotional, but also keeping it under wraps as best he can because he has An Important Job To Do, and that job is twofold: to deliver the news accurately and concisely, and to keep the American public calm (you can see this when he hurriedly says Johnson is probably taking the oath to become President; a missing VP would be a crisis at this moment). This is a man who’s just found out the most beloved president in modern times is dead. And not just dead--murdered. It’s not like Kennedy had a heart attack, his damn head was blown off. This news is still coming in so quickly that you can see him glancing off the screen to get fresh reports. He’s one of the first to receive this absolute blow--and he’s still holding it together, barely wavering. (When I was a kid, this role would go to Dan Rather. He was no Cronkite, but he tried.)

Where is that kind of rock for today’s teens? Imagine--heaven forbid, in the state our country’s in right now--that tomorrow we get the news Biden was shot.

How would we get that message?

Would it be delivered by an even-keeled, just-the-facts reporter like Cronkite? Or would we get it from a bunch of half-hysterical articles and crisismongering “programs”? And would it be delivered to us straight, like Cronkite did, or would it be buried in three days’ worth of opinions on his “legacy” and policies and What This Means For America?

Now: how are you supposed to build any kind of strong convictions and moral compass on a world like that? Where anything can be true if enough people have an “opinion” on it? Where the facts get immediately buried in a wave of bullshit?

Antis are reacting to a world of “opinions” and “programs” being thrown at them 24/7 by trying to create a world they can control, where there are in fact things that are true, in a world that has actively refused them the opportunity to learn how to parse and process facts. And so what they’ve come up with is this grossly distorted version of facts, because gross distortions of facts are all they know. It’s all they’ve ever seen. They’re perpetuating a system they don’t even realize they’re part of, because they never experienced life before it existed.

They’re not lying when they say they were heavily influenced by fiction because the bounds between fact and fiction have been actively erased. On purpose. And it’s difficult to grok that, if you grew up in a world where you didn’t have to go seek out photographic evidence to be absolutely certain that Notre Dame was, indeed, on fire.

So what we need to be doing, first and foremost, is rebuilding that wall of facts, that line of truth. Otherwise, what we’re going to see is more of this, but getting worse daily.

We set them up for this, and now we’re paying the price for it.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Biden's Right to Repair will include electronics, too

The Biden administration teased a sweeping antimonopoly executive order last week, including a Right to Repair provision that was to be aimed at agricultural equipment — a direct assault on the corporate power of repair archnemesis John Deere.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/07/07/instrumentalism/#r2r

But it turns out that the executive order goes far beyond tractors and other agricultural equipment — it also applies to consumer electronics, including mobile phones, and this is a huge fucking deal.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3d5yb/bidens-right-to-repair-executive-order-covers-electronics-not-just-tractors

The Right to Repair fight reached US state legislatures in 2018, when dozens of R2R bills were introduced, and then killed, by an unholy alliance of Apple and other tech companies fighting alongside Big Ag and home electronics monopolists like Wahl.

But the R2R side had its own coalition — farmers, tinkerers, small repair shop owners, auto mechanics and more. If the Biden order had stopped with an agricultural right to repair, that would have weakened the R2R coalition.

Divide-and-rule has long been part of the anti-repair playbook. In 2018, farmers got suckered into backing a California R2R bill that applied to agricultural equipment, only to see the bill gutted, denying them the right to fix their tractors.

https://www.wired.com/story/john-deere-farmers-right-to-repair/

The reason Right to Repair has stayed on the agenda even after brutal legislative losses — the Apple-led coalition killed every single R2R bill in 2018 — has been its support coalition.

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/02/euthanize-rentiers/#r2r

That’s why the early news that Biden was giving farmers their right to repair was bittersweet — breaking the coalition might snuff out the hope that we’d get right to repair for our phones, cars and appliances. It’s why the news that the EO covers electronics is so exciting.

It’s a hopeful moment, following other triumphs, like the automotive R2R 2020 ballot initiative that passed in Massachusetts with an overwhelming majority despite Big Car’s scare ads showed women literally being murdered by stalkers as a consequence.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/11/13/said-no-one-ever/#r2r

Right to Repair got a massive boost this week when Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak made a public endorsement of the movement and described its principles as fundamental to the technological breakthroughs that led to Apple’s founding.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-57763037

Seen in that light, all of Apple’s paternalistic arguments about blocking independent repair in the name of defending its customers’ safety are exposed as having a different motivation — blocking the path Apple took for future innovators, so that it can cement its dominance.

And repair is just one element of the antimonopoly executive order, which is broad indeed, as Zephyr Teachout wrote for The Nation. All in all, there are 72 directives in the EO.

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/biden-monopoly-executive-order/

They encompass “corporate monopolies in agriculture, defense, pharma, banking, and tech,” ban non-compete agreements, and direct the FTC to go to war against the meat-processing monopolies that have crushed farmers and ranchers.

And further: they direct the FCC to reinstate Net Neutrality, the CFPB to force banks to let us take our financial data with us when we switch to a rival, and open up the flow of cheaper drugs from Canada, where the government has stood up to Big Pharma.

Teachout points out that some of this is symbolic in that the agency heads don’t have to do what the president says, though in practice they tend to do so, and FTC chair/superhero Lina Khan has publicly announced her support for the agenda:

https://www.thenation.com/article/economy/biden-monopoly-executive-order/

Teachout calls this an historic moment. She’s right. The Biden admin is refusing to treat agricultural repair as somehow different from automotive, electronic or appliance repair. More importantly, it’s refusing to treat tech monopolies as separate from all monopolies.

This is crucial, because the same kind of diverse coalition that kept R2R alive is potentially a massive force for driving an antimonopoly agenda in general, because monopolies have destroys lives and value in sectors from athletic shoes to finance, eyeglasses to beer.

The potential coalition is massive, but it needs a name. It’s not enough to be antimonopoly. It has to stand for something.

As James Boyle has written, the term “ecology” changed the balance of power in environmental causes.

Prior to “ecology,” there was no obvious connection between the fight for owl survival and the fight against ozone depletion. It’s not obvious that my concern for charismatic nocturnal birds connects to your concern for the gaseous composition of the upper atmosphere.

“Ecology” turned 1,000 issues into a single movement with 1,000 constituencies all working in coalition. The antimonopoly movement is on the brink of a similar phase-change, but again, it needs to stand for something.

That something can’t be “competition.” Competition on its own is perfectly capable of being terrible. Think of ad-tech companies who say privacy measures are “anticompetitive.” We don’t want competition for the most efficient human rights abuses.

https://doctorow.medium.com/illegitimate-greatness-674353e7cdf9

A far better goal is “self-determination” — the right for individuals and communities to make up their own minds about how they work and live, based on democratic principles rather than corporate fiat.

https://locusmag.com/2021/07/cory-doctorow-tech-monopolies-and-the-insufficient-necessity-of-interoperability/

That would be a fine position indeed for the Democratic Party to stake out. As Teachout writes, “[Democrats once] stood for workers and the people who produced things, and against the middlemen who sought to steal value and control industry. They understood that anti-monopoly laws were partly about keeping prices down — but also about preserving equality and dignity, and making sure that everyone who contributed to the production of goods and services got a fair cut.”

[antoine-roquentin]

“The federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on,” Mitchell wrote. This banker, Jeff Courtney, put that figure closer to just 51 to 63 cents.

Now, for a private lender, like a bank, this projected shortfall would indeed be a ticking time bomb. The bank might be in danger of insolvency (unless, of course, it was rescued by a federal government that could give the bank an emergency cash infusion and take those bad loans off its hands). But there’s no real danger of a federal Cabinet-level department becoming insolvent. The Treasury Department is already in the habit of making up the Education Department’s budgetary shortfalls.

So what is the problem again? Typically for a news outlet like the Journal, the story describes this potential shortfall as what “taxpayers” would be “on the hook for,” but obviously, we all know that that is not how federal budgeting works. Taxes could rise for certain people for certain reasons, but no one will receive an itemized bill for this uncollected debt. And as for that large, catastrophic number ($500 billion!) that might never be paid back, it amounts to less than one year of a national defense budget that “taxpayers” are similarly “on the hook for.” (The Journal’s editorial board recently complained that the Biden administration’s proposed 2022 $715 billion Pentagon budget, while an increase in real terms, nonetheless represents an unconscionable decline in the defense budget as share of gross domestic product. “Taxpayers” are not mentioned in the editorial.)

Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report.

The story, then, is that the government might not collect some debt, even if it currently pretends, for budgetary reasons, that it definitely will, and, as a result, the deficit may rise to levels higher than the current estimates predict. For a committed conservative, such as DeVos, that situation is inherently scandalous. For everyone else, that could only ever become a problem in the future, and only if that future deficit has some negative effect on the overall economy, which is not very likely considering the entire recent history of federal deficits and economic growth.

That state of affairs may explain why articles like the one in the Journal so often invoke “taxpayers,” as if everyone would have to write personal checks to cover the Department of Education’s shortfall: because without imagining taxpayers as victims of government deficits, it’s hard to point to anyone actually harmed by a government department giving unrealistic estimates of future revenues.

Except in this story, there are actual victims: the people who hold debt that the government doesn’t realistically expect to collect in full but who are bled for payment regardless. As Courtney’s report found, because of the importance of these loans to the department’s balance sheet, the government keeps borrowers on the hook for the loans even if they will never be able to repay all of the money they owe, often by placing borrowers on a repayment plan tied to their income. (As the economist Marshall Steinbaum has explained, the “income driven repayment,” or IDR, program is framed as a means of helping borrowers, but in reality, it “exerts a significant drag on their financial health, to no apparent purpose” by forcing them to “make less-than-adequate payments for many years before their debt is finally cancelled.”) The victim of such a scheme isn’t taxpayers, it’s debtors.

There’s one particular portion of The Wall Street Journal’s story that the public should treat as a moral and political scandal (the emphasis here is mine):

One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, a program that removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was included in a sweeping law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, which had become a concern in both parties as the nation spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as baby-boomer retirement was set to raise Social Security and healthcare outlays.

A key motive for letting graduate students borrow unlimited amounts was to use the projected profits from such lending to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the legislation.

Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws in the 1990s as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education in the Obama administration.

But how agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office “score” such changes—determine their deficit impact—“is a key factor in deciding whether a policy is adopted or not,” Mr. Shireman said. “The fact that it saved money helps enact it.”

To explain this more plainly, Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report, because CBO scores are more real to senators than flesh-and-blood people.

This is the sort of depravity that deficit obsessions produce. The Iraq War needed to be “paid for” with the future earnings of students who, lawmakers imagined, would eventually be rich, even as many of the same lawmakers voted to cut taxes on already-rich people. Now the debt of the still-not-rich students can’t be forgiven because of its importance to the federal government’s predicted future earnings. And politicians and commentators in thrall to deficit politics still paint the situation as a morality tale, in which the borrowers are irresponsible for having the debt and the government would be irresponsible to forgive it. After all, think of the poor taxpayers.

The early days of the Biden administration led some to believe we were finally free of this incoherent political mode, where dubious predictions in CBO reports dictate the limits of the politically possible and determine who will be arbitrarily punished for the sake of limiting the size of a program in a speculative 10-year budget projection. The proof that Democrats had learned their lesson was one major piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan, designed to respond to a unique emergency.

More recently, the administration, and some of its allies in Congress, have signaled strongly that they’re returning to the old ways. The American Prospect’s David Dayen has reported that the White House is determined to “pay for” its infrastructure plans, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is apparently leading the charge to ensure the infrastructure spending is “offset.” This will have the likely effect of limiting the scope of the plan, once again sacrificing material benefits for the sake of estimates and predictions from the CBO.

The Biden administration seems to be determined to go about this without violating its pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 (a threshold meant to define the upper limit of “middle class” despite being comically higher than the Obama administration’s similar $250,000 limit for tax hikes). It has floated increasing IRS enforcement and raising the capital gains tax for the wealthiest Americans. Both are fine ideas. But the best thing about taxing the rich is not that you can use their money for infrastructure, it’s that doing so reduces their political and economic power. That’s also the reason why it’s so difficult for Washington to do it.

The complete incoherence of the current Democratic position on spending and deficits is summed up well in another Wall Street Journal story, where Montana Senator Jon Tester was quoted saying, “I don’t want to raise any taxes, but I don’t want to put stuff on the debt, either.… If we’re going to build infrastructure, we have to pay for it somehow. I’m open to all ideas.”

“Open” to “all ideas” but unwilling to tax the rich, and unwilling to allow a CBO report to show a larger deficit as a result of needed spending: This is more or less precisely the dynamic that led student loan debt to explode in the United States, and it’s the zombie worldview that threatens any chance of this government averting a multitude of political, economic, and ecological disasters.

[qqueenofhades]

Trump's SCOTUS pick scares the ever loving shit out of me. I'm trying not to have a full blown panic attack actually.

Sigh. I know.

I’m not going to say that picking someone literally, un-exaggeratedly out of The Handmaid’s Tale for SCOTUS, especially to replace someone like RBG, isn’t mother fucking terrifying. It is.  Especially since Mitch McConnell is trying to set her final confirmation vote for October 29, literally five days before the election. Yes indeed, that would be a third Supreme Court seat filled by an impeached president who lost the popular vote by three million votes, (possibly) confirmed by Republican enablers (some of whom are absolutely going to lose their seats in this election) who represent a sizeably smaller fraction of the US population than their Democratic counterparts, in a display of outright, staggering, truly breathtaking hypocrisy about the protocol of election-year vacancies on SCOTUS, which they themselves shouted about to no end with Merrick Garland in 2016. This is how tyranny by minority rule works, and... yeah. It’s bad. It’s awful. When is this going to end.

That said, however: we do not yet exist in this theoretical grimdark future where some dystopian 6-3 (or even 7-2) conservative SCOTUS strips us of our rights at every turn, with no recourse except for us to sit passively and take it, and there are a lot of things that we ourselves can do between now and then to make sure that it never happens. First off, House Democrats have proposed a bill to introduce 18-year term limits for SCOTUS justices, rather than it being an automatic lifetime appointment. This would also give every president the ability to appoint two justices per four-year term. Because SCOTUS has become such an instrument of partisan warfare, and because the obvious implications of having a partisan head of state pick the senior federal judges for a lifetime is part of what has fucked us up now, this would be a GREAT improvement. House Dems can’t make it into law right now, because Democrats do not hold a majority in both chambers of Congress and they do not hold the presidency. You know how this COULD be passed? If Joe Biden was elected with a blue House and Senate. That way, even if God forbid the GOP horror show snuck Coney Barrett onto the bench just before the election, this could be fixed.

Here’s another way to think about it. I myself have a HUGE problem with catastrophizing: a bad thing happens, and then it seems like an inevitable chain of nonstop bad things until everything gets irredeemably, unfixably even worse. This year, obviously, has not done much to help that, because yes, the bad things keep coming. But they’re still individual events and have not yet crystallized into some unbreakable, unavoidable future. History is made up of thousands of millions of choices, accidents, unforeseen developments, total random bullshit, and much more, as much or more as it is made up by the macro-scale actions of oligarchs. Obviously, globalization and capitalism have made us all more connected to each other, and thus changes to the system can ripple more broadly, but they are not the only people who make history. If there’s one thing I can tell you as a historian, it’s this: the future is just history that hasn’t been made yet, and it is subject to the exact same unpredictable bullshit that has constituted history throughout, well, history. Nothing is unavoidable and we have never existed in a world where we can’t do anything at all. Also, authoritarian regimes (especially those imposed without the consent of the people -- willing subjection to authoritarianism is one thing, but the other, yeah) have a relatively short shelf life, historically speaking. That won’t help all of us who could be hurt right now (though we can STILL fight back and speak up and help our neighbors), but it’s the truth. Authoritarian rule (especially when it’s not balanced by economic security, which sure as hell isn’t happening right now) can last for a while, sure. But it is always its own worst enemy, and it will always be ended. How that ends is a choice we can make.

This isn’t the “get out on the streets and Start The Glorious Revolution!!!” nonsense that the armchair internet leftists, none of whom are actually starting a glorious revolution or doing anything except bitching on Twitter about how Biden and Trump are alike, are fond of. This is an active choice to realize that there are always things you can do, that there are things you can do right now, and one of them, most obviously, is voting. This mess was all completely goddamn avoidable if people had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. But well, they didn’t, and we get one last shot to fix this by democratic process. Trump is already openly setting up to contest the election results/try to invalidate them/throw out ballots. This is all old-school fascism. This is what is happening. He is counting on another razor-thin margin of votes that he can then contest in his hand-picked SCOTUS; he wants another Bush v. Gore very, very badly. The only way to blow away any legitimacy for anything like this is to vote in such overwhelming numbers that there’s no question of Biden’s victory, no need to wait for mail-in ballots (another reason the GOP has been trying so hard to destroy the post office) or anything else. At heart, Trump is a coward. He’s also an egomaniac. If it comes to stepping aside peacefully or being dragged out of the White House by the FBI for everyone to laugh at for the rest of time, hmm, I doubt he’s going to go for that. (And if he does, well, I will also savor the sight of him in handcuffs for all eternity.) However, that doesn’t mean the GOP machine won’t TRY, because Trump is not just Trump, but is his entire miserable cabal of enablers. I have written my fingers raw about how badly people need to vote. This is literally your last chance to do it.

I’ve seen a lot of the-sky-is-falling, we’re-doomed, they-have-the-votes-so-don’t-even-bother handwringing in the last few days. To some degree, yes. We all feel doomed. We have all been asked to find strength to deal with massive and unending waves of terrifying bullshit past anyone’s normal capacity, and we’re tired. We want it to end. But it’s SO CLOSE to ending, if we can all just get out and vote for Joe Biden in massive numbers on November 3 (or if your state has early voting, sooner; BANK YOUR VOTE). That’s such an easy thing to do. Nothing is set in stone. We can still fix things and make it so, you know, we’re not living in a fascist state ruled by Gilead. (And besides, all this Chicken Little rhetoric is super easy for the Russian troll farms to exploit. Don’t listen to it. Shut it down. Reject it.)

They want you to think you’re powerless. You’re not.

They want you to think this will never end. It will. We decide how.

They want you to think this is a foregone conclusion and you should just go back home and let it happen. You don’t have to.

They want you to think your vote doesn’t matter. It does.

They want you to think your rights are gone. They’re not.

They want you to think this future is inevitable.

IT’S NOT.

Hang in there.

Lots of hugs.

[anexplanationofunfortunateevents]

FIVE MORE DAYS

There are three things you need to do in the next few days.

I. If you haven’t voted yet, you need to do that.

If you still have your absentee ballot lying around somewhere, you need to bring it to a drop box or your local elections offices. If you try to mail it in, the regime’s capture of the Supreme Court and sabotage of the postal service may succeed in stealing your vote. Don’t let them.

If you didn’t request an absentee ballot, that’s totally fine, but you need to make your plan to vote now. If your state has early voting, you need to go TODAY.

Absolutely no bullshit games about “oh I’m in a safe state, I can not vote/vote third party/write in my dog.” Do not let anyone get away with saying that shit in your presence. First of all, no state is safe until it’s certified. Second of all, the margin of the popular vote is REALLY IMPORTANT. Any crap these mobsters might be tempted to pull is going to be more difficult and less appealing if there’s a five point Biden win than a one point win, harder and less worth their while still if there’s a nine or ten point blowout. That’s true in any particular state and it’s true nationally. If they think they’re going to contest or throw out votes, AND THEY DO, then we need to have more votes in the bank than they have time to steal.

II. You need to keep your head.

Their plan is to overwhelm everyone with their bullshit. It probably would’ve been smarter not to spend four years teaching us how to tune them out; lucky for us, they’re brainless jackasses.

Their big confusion play seems to be scaremongering if we don’t have a winner called, like, during prime time on Tuesday night. Ignore them. If it takes a few days, it takes a few days. That’s part of making sure the votes get counted. Even recounts and lawsuits in the days and weeks afterward are part of a sensible process. Don’t let these goobers overwhelm you with their shitty Trump fanfiction.

III. You need to prepare yourself for Wednesday, November 4.

I don’t mean emotionally. I mean that you should expect you will need to take some kind of direct action the day after all the votes are cast. Keep an eye on Protect the Results for events near you. If it’s available in your state, download the ACLU mobile justice app and get familiar with it now; if not, at least get the number of your state or local ACLU into your phone. Pack a little knapsack now:

hand sanitizer and a spare mask;

a tiny bottle of whatever OTC pain medication you use, plus a dose or two of any prescriptions you need;

a bottle of water and some snacks you can eat while you’re out;

an extra flannel or sweatshirt;

a photo ID and some bail money might not be the worst idea in the world.

In my opinion – AND THIS IS JUST MY READ ON THE SITUATION, WHICH CAN CHANGE ANY MINUTE – I still think the most likely scenario for next week is pretty similar to the midterms, where Trump goes to bed that night thinking the margins are close enough that he can wriggle his way out of a real loss, but the magnitude of a Democratic landslide gets clear pretty quickly. He doesn’t have the guts for a real fight, and he doesn’t have the psychological ability to absorb a narcissistic injury fast enough to take action. He’s spent years alienating the top brass of the military. He’s spent weeks trying to give his Secret Service detail the ‘rona. (Seriously, what successful coup has included “try but fail to kill a bunch of your armed bodyguards”? I’m genuinely curious.) But that’s the most likely scenario out of a lot of scenarios. It’s not over until it’s over.

People are anxious. They’re disoriented after 2016, when everyone knew Democrats would win a free and fair election but too few people realized that wasn’t what we were having. And they’re discombobulated now, because most Americans don’t have practice waiting for an election that they already know will be unfair. Chances are pretty good that at least a few of these people are in your social media feeds. So you might see a lot of doomporn loser talk about how it’s all rigged and he’s never going to leave anyway and blah blah blah.

Those aren’t misplaced concerns. But there’s a way to talk about them in a way that’s a lot more constructive, and it’s this:

Trump cannot win legitimately. That’s not me reading tea leaves or interpreting polls or whatever. He cut himself off from that possibility with his solicitation of foreign interference, his extortion of foreign leaders and American governors for his own political benefit, his willful destruction of the infrastructure we need in order to have an election, and his incitement of terrorism against journalists, opponents, and voters. He did not want to win an election with any democratic legitimacy and so he won’t.

That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll win. But I like our chances. Even knowing about so much of his cheating, and being aware that there’s almost certainly more cheating we don’t know about yet, I like our chances.

So let’s do it. Get that ballot in. Use whatever platform you have to remind other people to do the same. Make calls if you can. It’s not too late to chip in to your state party or the DSCC – they’re probably done buying ads, but we should assume they’re going to need money for recounts and lawsuits.

This is it. Crunch time. We can do this. Let’s go.

[abolitioncommunism]

“Congressional Democrats want to make it easier to identify and prosecute police misconduct; Joe Biden wants to give police departments $300 million. But efforts to solve police violence through liberal reforms like these have failed for nearly a century.

Enough. We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police.

There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job.

Now two weeks of nationwide protests have led some to call for defunding the police, while others argue that doing so would make us less safe.

The first thing to point out is that police officers don’t do what you think they do. They spend most of their time responding to noise complaints, issuing parking and traffic citations, and dealing with other noncriminal issues. We’ve been taught to think they “catch the bad guys; they chase the bank robbers; they find the serial killers,” said Alex Vitale, the coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College, in an interview with Jacobin. But this is “a big myth,” he said. “The vast majority of police officers make one felony arrest a year. If they make two, they’re cop of the month.”

We can’t simply change their job descriptions to focus on the worst of the worst criminals. That’s not what they are set up to do.

Second, a “safe” world is not one in which the police keep black and other marginalized people in check through threats of arrest, incarceration, violence and death.

I’ve been advocating the abolition of the police for years. Regardless of your view on police power — whether you want to get rid of the police or simply to make them less violent — here’s an immediate demand we can all make: Cut the number of police in half and cut their budget in half. Fewer police officers equals fewer opportunities for them to brutalize and kill people. The idea is gaining traction in Minneapolis, Dallas, Los Angeles and other cities.

History is instructive, not because it offers us a blueprint for how to act in the present but because it can help us ask better questions for the future.

The Lexow Committee undertook the first major investigation into police misconduct in New York City in 1894. At the time, the most common complaint against the police was about “clubbing” — “the routine bludgeoning of citizens by patrolmen armed with nightsticks or blackjacks,” as the historian Marilynn Johnson has written.

The Wickersham Commission, convened to study the criminal justice system and examine the problem of Prohibition enforcement, offered a scathing indictment in 1931, including evidence of brutal interrogation strategies. It put the blame on a lack of professionalism among the police.

After the 1967 urban uprisings, the Kerner Commission found that “police actions were ‘final’ incidents before the outbreak of violence in 12 of the 24 surveyed disorders.” Its report listed a now-familiar set of recommendations, like working to build “community support for law enforcement” and reviewing police operations “in the ghetto, to ensure proper conduct by police officers.”

These commissions didn’t stop the violence; they just served as a kind of counterinsurgent function each time police violence led to protests. Calls for similar reforms were trotted out in response to the brutal police beating of Rodney King in 1991 and the rebellion that followed, and again after the killings of Michael Brown and Eric Garner. The final report of the Obama administration’s President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing resulted in procedural tweaks like implicit-bias training, police-community listening sessions, slight alterations of use-of-force policies and systems to identify potentially problematic officers early on.

But even a member of the task force, Tracey Meares, noted in 2017, “policing as we know it must be abolished before it can be transformed.”

The philosophy undergirding these reforms is that more rules will mean less violence. But police officers break rules all the time. Look what has happened over the past few weeks — police officers slashing tires, shoving old men on camera, and arresting and injuring journalists and protesters. These officers are not worried about repercussions any more than Daniel Pantaleo, the former New York City police officer whose chokehold led to Eric Garner’s death; he waved to a camera filming the incident. He knew that the police union would back him up and he was right. He stayed on the job for five more years.

Minneapolis had instituted many of these “best practices” but failed to remove Derek Chauvin from the force despite 17 misconduct complaints over nearly two decades, culminating in the entire world watching as he knelt on George Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes.

Why on earth would we think the same reforms would work now? We need to change our demands. The surest way of reducing police violence is to reduce the power of the police, by cutting budgets and the number of officers.

But don’t get me wrong. We are not abandoning our communities to violence. We don’t want to just close police departments. We want to make them obsolete.

We should redirect the billions that now go to police departments toward providing health care, housing, education and good jobs. If we did this, there would be less need for the police in the first place.

We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society. Trained “community care workers” could do mental-health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.

What about rape? The current approach hasn’t ended it. In fact most rapists never see the inside of a courtroom. Two-thirds of people who experience sexual violence never report it to anyone. Those who file police reports are often dissatisfied with the response. Additionally, police officers themselves commit sexual assault alarmingly often. A study in 2010 found that sexual misconduct was the second most frequently reported form of police misconduct. In 2015, The Buffalo News found that an officer was caught for sexual misconduct every five days.

When people, especially white people, consider a world without the police, they envision a society as violent as our current one, merely without law enforcement — and they shudder. As a society, we have been so indoctrinated with the idea that we solve problems by policing and caging people that many cannot imagine anything other than prisons and the police as solutions to violence and harm.

People like me who want to abolish prisons and police, however, have a vision of a different society, built on cooperation instead of individualism, on mutual aid instead of self-preservation. What would the country look like if it had billions of extra dollars to spend on housing, food and education for all? This change in society wouldn’t happen immediately, but the protests show that many people are ready to embrace a different vision of safety and justice.

When the streets calm and people suggest once again that we hire more black police officers or create more civilian review boards, I hope that we remember all the times those efforts have failed.”

[giftofshewbread]

Cry Out to God

By Daymond Duck    Published on: April 18, 2021

On Apr. 7, 2021, Jean Worland posted an article titled “America just died a little…”

It was written by an unknown writer, and I want to pass on some of what the writer said.

It looks like the Deep State is controlling everything in Washington (Congress, the FBI, the CIA, the Justice Dept, the Pentagon, the Military) plus Silicon Valley, the social media, cable news, and more.

The Clintons have never been prosecuted for destroying e-mails, phones, servers, etc. (add to that pedophilia, and more).

Obama, Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Rice, and others have never been prosecuted for spying on Trump, falsely accusing Trump officials, etc.

Soros is never prosecuted for funneling money to groups that riot, loot, destroy property, etc.

Durham’s report on the Russian Collusion myth has never come out.

I will add that:

Dianne Feinstein was on the Senate Intelligence Committee (and even chaired it for a few years) while employing a Chinese Communist as her office manager and driver, and her husband was getting wealthy trading with China, and nothing was done about it.

Eric Swalwell was on the House Intelligence Committee with access to all of America’s intelligence when it was discovered that he had slept with a Chinese spy that helped get him elected. Nancy Pelosi (whose husband also got rich trading with China) refused to remove him, and even reappointed him, and nothing has been done about it.

There is plenty of evidence of election fraud, but the courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, refused to hear most of it (and now the Shadow government wants to pack the court so they can get away with everything they have done in the past and everything they plan to do in the future).

Biden says “no Amendment (to the U.S. Constitution) is absolute,” signaling the Shadow Government’s plans to destroy freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and disarm America so they can do what they want, and no one can resist them.

Things are not hopeless because persecution causes God’s people to cry out to God, and when enough do that, He rescues them.

Here are several reasons why I believe the global situation will worsen, cause more of God’s people to cry out, and soon result in Christians being caught up (Raptured).

One, concerning the days of Noah (wickedness): on Apr. 9, 2021, it was reported that experts have confirmed that the abandoned laptop computer at a Delaware repair shop belonged to Hunter Biden, and there is no evidence that the information on it is not true or that it is “Russian disinformation.”

Tony Bobulinksi has verified the accuracy of e-mails on the computer, the work order that was signed when the laptop was left at the repair shop contains Hunter Biden’s signature, and Hunter now acknowledges that “it could be his.”

The laptop contains evidence that Hunter and his dad (Pres. Joe Biden) potentially betrayed America, and Hunter was a sex abuser and drug addict.

Despite this strong evidence, it looks like Hunter and Joe are going to get away with their crimes.

Two, on Apr. 4, 2021, Pope Francis sent a letter to the spring meeting of two globalist groups, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Francis called for a new system of global government, a new system of social order (a godless world religion), everyone on earth to be vaccinated for Covid, and wealth redistribution (a new economic system; The Great Reset) so poorer countries can help pay for programs to fight “climate change.”

Francis’ call to restructure the world mentioned “the common good” (the way he often refers to world government) several times; it totally ignored Jesus, and mentioned God only one time.

These three global systems (world government system, world religious system, and world economic system) will be established, and the role of God and Jesus will be ignored while they are setting it up.

It is incredible that the leader of a religious organization that is located in a city on seven hills is playing an important role in this.

Three, in Jan. 2021, the state of California passed a law requiring officials to jail prisoners according to their gender identity.

On Apr. 6, 2021, it was reported that 261 prisoners that were jailed as men have said they are women, requiring them to be transferred to women’s cells.

Some officials believe some prisoners could be lying about their gender in order to be jailed with women, and this will increase sexual violence and pregnancies in prisons that house women.

Connecticut and Massachusetts have passed similar laws.

Four, the Biden administration is pushing the Green New Deal, and some of those behind it want U.S. citizens to eat less meat.

This passage of Scripture has come to my mind, “Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; Speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth” (I Tim. 4:1-3).

Five, concerning the Mark of the Beast: on Apr. 11, 2021, the Soufriere Volcano on the Caribbean Island of Saint Vincent was erupting and approaching a possible danger level.

Officials decided to use cruise ships to evacuate the island, but they would only allow those that have been vaccinated to board the ships.

Unvaccinated people that wanted to be vaccinated immediately could be, but they would still not be allowed to board the ships because their vaccination could cause them to have side effects.

Six, many that follow current events have seen reports that Covid is mutating, and there could soon be a need for vaccinated citizens to be vaccinated with new vaccines.

We have also seen calls for “vaccine passports” and other ways to track and identify those that have been vaccinated.

On Apr. 5, 2021, Dr. Anthony Fauci said the U.S. will not require citizens to use vaccine passports, but he believes the private sector (businesses, schools, etc.) will require proof of vaccination if citizens want to use them (buy and sell, get an education, have a bank account, seek medical care, etc.).

Moreover, it was recently reported that one of Biden’s senior advisors said the Biden administration is already providing guidance to the private sector on this issue.

We don’t know how long it will take, but there is good reason to believe that new vaccines and tracking systems could eventually lead to the Mark of the Beast.

Seven, on Apr. 7, 2021, it was reported that former Vice Pres. and Chief Scientist for Allergy and Respiratory Research at Pfizer, Dr. Mike Yeadon, said governments, media and big tech are lying to the public about Covid.

Yeadon said they are planning to produce billions of vaccines for Covid “variants,” and regulatory officials are planning to approve those vaccines without testing them to see if they are safe for the public.

This former Pfizer executive added that he cannot think of any reason to vaccinate potentially billions of people with untested vaccines they don’t need unless it is being done to reduce the population of the earth.

On Apr. 10, 2021, a study of 400 people in South Africa found that more vaccinated people are getting the new strain of Covid than unvaccinated people.

On Apr. 12, 2021, it was reported that official government documents in the U.K. show that the next round of Covid deaths may be higher among people that have already been vaccinated than among people that haven’t been vaccinated because Covid will spread faster among careless, over-confident vaccinated people than among more careful, unvaccinated people.

On Apr. 13, 2021, the CDC recommended a pause in vaccinations with the Johnson and Johnson (J & J) vaccine while they investigate reports of unusual blood clots in six women between the ages of 18-48 (J & J denied that the clots were linked to its vaccine).

Eight, many readers are asking me for advice on whether they should be vaccinated or not, and I am not qualified to answer that question.

A reader sent the link below to me, and those that are considering a vaccination might want to watch this video before they make up their mind.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2021/01/bill-sardi/horrific-latent-deaths-predicted-among-the-elderly-by-genetics-professor-after-immunization-with-rna-vaccines/

The video is less than 5 minutes long, but please pay attention.

When the video ends, keep watching, and a second video will start that contains the opinions of many doctors and experts (28 min. and 34 sec.), and what they say sounds extremely important.

Finally, if you want to go to heaven, you must be born again (John 3:3). God loves you, and if you have not done so, sincerely admit that you are a sinner; believe that Jesus is the virgin-born, sinless Son of God who died for the sins of the world, was buried, and raised from the dead; ask Him to forgive your sins, cleanse you, come into your heart and be your Saviour; then tell someone that you have done this.

[striving-artist]

From @fjordtoughtexblade​ on this post about Biden’s Student Debt Plan

You can call me progressive as though that’s some form of insult, but I still think that they should commit to just eliminating it all together, all payments and all debt accrual via education, the whole kit and caboodle.

Banks renegotiate the terms of loans all the time, that doesn’t make them bastions of class equality. Reworking the current educational debt structure doesn’t do away with what the ACTUAL problem is: the designation of education as the sole province for the rich.

Is Biden better than Trump? Yeah, in the sense the being killed quickly is better than being killed slowly. What I mean is, this whole situation is a pile of horse shit, and to sell it as anything else is, at the least, disingenuous.

@striving-artist Joe Biden is a right-of-center moderate, and he’s *barely* that. In most other western countries he would be a true believing, dyed in the wool conservative. Reworking the loan structure is the barest of bare minimums that a government could do to incentivize the continued participation of millennials and gen z in a workforce that soon going to need to prop up the failing economy of a nation about to navigate the largest and most deadly ecological disaster in the history of mankind.

It’s a bet hedged against our better futures. Designed to *look* appealing to liberals while *being* appealing to conservatives. But the blowback’s gotta go somewhere, and it hits us right in our future. He could have committed to completely erasing the structure of paying for knowledge, college and vocational training would be free and freely available, and the US could have one of the most highly educated, most highly trained workforce in the world to help guide us through the shitstorm that everyone know’s is coming, but instead we kowtow to the desires of a few ultrawealthy people, and knowledge is inaccessible to the lower classes.

So, please, spare us all the unenthusiastic explanation of a truly, and deeply disappointingly transparent capitalist attempt at an olive branch between the right and the “left.” Thinking about it just makes me sad.

sorry to pull this into a new thread, but I cannot bring myself to reblog that full wall of text again. Unfortunately this is also a very long post, but, I wanted to cover a couple things. OP is tagged bc it felt rude to quote them and not tag.

These kind of responses (and I’ve gotten about a dozen or so out of 9k reblogs) are as far to the left of Center in America as the Tea Party is to the right. They’re ridiculous, and they’re damaging to their own cause. I am a progressive, and these responses annoy me.

This is like walking into an ice cream shop, and being pissed that they won’t sell you a burger. There are no burgers on the menu.They’ve never sold burgers. But maybe, If you and all of your friends show up, time and again, week after week, and support the ice cream shop, while continuing to ask for burgers, maybe, eventually, they’ll add burgers to the menu. But if you walk in once, throw a fit, write a yelp review and think you’re done, they’re gonna ignore you. They should. You’ve proven your demand is performative, and nothing more.

You wanna know why the Tea Party became accepted as a thing and the far left hasn’t? because y’all keep leaving yelp reviews and going home. The Tea Party moved the Overton gap to the Right. The Far Left threw a fit and weakened their support when Obama had to compromise to get progressive bills passed.

And this idea that you can measure American Politicians on other countries’ scales, is absurd. That’s not how anything works. But if you do, make sure you look at the full spectrum. There are places that make Trump look like a flaming liberal. But see, we live here, and have to deal with our political scale.

The options currently on the menu are the only things we can choose from and expect to receive, and there is no version of the future where we flip a switch and instantly get the future we want. Go ahead, order a burger, you aren’t going to get one.

There is no version of American politics where a guy gives a magical speech in congress and the clouds part and the light shines down and the conservatives suddenly decide to enact a wealth tax, ban all guns, and commit to a socialist lifestyle.

Oh, wait, or were you planning for armed revolt instead? Have fun facing the US Military, they’re disgustingly overfunded, but I’m sure you’ll be fine. Enjoy your coup.

You wanna fix things? You wanna move The Overton Window until talking about fully wiping loans is a real debate in congress? Until we’re talking about not just taxing the income of the wealthy, but taking back and redistributing the mountains they’ve gathered? So do I. Do you have a plan? Not just wanting the electorate to miraculously shift left, but an actual plan to move them? No? Do you have anything other than whining and pie-in -the-sky dreams? Cause right now, there is only one way we move towards our goals. We find the best option we’ve got, and we remind them constantly that we want more. 

It is slow, it is painful, it is the work of years, we have to compromise, we’re going to lose some battles, and the rewards are incredibly rare. It is easier to give in, give up, and surrender to whatever the right wants this week. We keep ourselves going by celebrating what we can. 

So how dare you tell people they’re aren’t allowed a moment to be happy when something goes our way? This plan isn’t enough, but even this would change my life, and that’s true for millions of people. For the space an hour one night, my future looked a little less terrible, and I was excited, because the work during the primaries had done something. Biden’s plans are further left than any major presidential candidate in history. Hands down. But I’m not allowed to be happy about that?

Fine. Sure. you wanted a burger, I get that. A burger sounds nice. But every time this attitude shows up, I’m reminded why the GOP has so thoroughly trounced the democrats in so many elections. The far right always votes with them, because they can see that incremental improvement is better than incremental loss. Meanwhile the dems have the far left, which has people like this, sitting at home, writing pissy yelp reviews about the fact they wanted a burger.

I’m genuinely sorry this group has decided to live their life in a way where they’re not allowed to be happy until everything is perfect, because they’re never going to be happy. I can’t live like that. So yeah. I’m gonna keep celebrating the small victories.

[monkey-network]

Who is Best Girl in Konosuba?

Welcome back, fellow weebs, to Media & Entertainment Developers Essentials Lessons Book. Today on MEDELB, we’re discussing the question that existed since one of the most disastrous years in the 21st century, 2017. A question that dives into one the greatest anime of all time. Yes, even better than Dragon Ball Z, Cowboy Bebop, and Steven Universe. I am talking about KonoSuba: God's Blessing on this Wonderful World! Today we’re discussing: who is best girl? Aqua? Darkness? Megumin? Your father?

Now it’s important to know that KonoSuba is genius because it supports judicial simplication, a professional term that I can break down for you. Judicational Sampling is the idea that a free society does not impinge on the actual taxing benefits of localized source banks. KonoSuba is genius because it made a lot of money... to make more KonoSuba. It is not Disney, whom is the greatest bottom in the Hollywood industry, but in truth I wouldn’t want it to be. Sometimes, genius is fine where it is and you shouldn’t question it. There are people who question why KonoSuba originated as a light novel, and those people are to be shunned because they also believe Harry Potter is worth reading, straight people are bad, and that ranch dressing is good on pizza. You know, the alt-right and we have enough problems on our hands as it is. And as the great Joe Biden once said,

But today’s focus will be on discussing on who is best girl and how that affects our society. And if you are one of the people unaware of this discussion, then perhaps you should realize that any comments you have contradict themselves and function as your self-righteous wannabe soapbox. In short, you’re acting like a su crit, so please read history. Because ultimately, I am a proud KonoSuba kinnie and member of the intellectual anime community founded by the General Rebecca Sugar. I would appreciate it if you would recognize the context and respect. It. Because ultimately again, I sent you all a respectful anon about this earlier today which you ignore and this sounds, smell, looks, feels, tastes... like Racism. But back to KonoSuba, let us discuss Megumin.

Now, Megumin is a good person. She can create explosions which are big.... explosions, this represents her pride. She wears red which is the color of your blood, so that could mean satanic blood pacts. Megumin represents the resolve in critical deductive intelligent smart reasoning where blind subservience has been... eradicated. But what is blind, subservience? For a simple understanding, think of it as the cooked Molotov of slice of life shows or some other perceptively anodyne prosaic internationalized statement.

Overall, Megumin is a short person so choosing her as best girl is pedophilia and if you try to tell me otherwise, you are a nazi troll and deserve the chamber. And if you agree with me, don’t speak if you’re Afro-American like myself. Because this is just a cartoon for kids and you’re complaining too much about it. Or am I?

Next, we have Darkness, which is a force parallel to light and is also used in the form of attacks in the Kingdom Hearts universe. Those who follow the path of Darkness will usually gain untold power at the expense of something of their former selves, so this naturally explains why she is an explicit masochist. Then again, her real name is Lalatina Dustiness Ford which explains a lot more. We continue asking who she is, and what she is, but nobody is asking how Darkness is. Because looking like the poster child for Aryan superiority with her blonde hair and blue eyes, she isn’t capable of being best girl because that would mean the guillotine for you and I love you too much to not let that happen. She is overall the better character for inventing good things like the dominatrix, but she cannot be best girl because she is a good character and supports capitalism. I too support capitalism but I hate people who think capitalism is alright, if that makes sense.

Aqua is a better contender for best girl because I was fortunate enough to see less porn of her. Kazuma notably has called her worthless, but Kazuma is what internet users would call an braincel. He played video games, so obviously he isn’t one to be speaking on value. Aqua was able to survive getting vored by a frog multiple times, so clearly she is more cunning than the average E-girl. Aqua is able to make the most of her situation and entertain people with watersports.... and tricks. Kingdoms Hearts wishes it had a character named Aqua as cool as this one, but then again, you’d have to wait 4 more years for KH4 so what life would you have? She is mostly blue, which is a color, and I prefer it when anime has color. If it doesn’t, it’s racist. As the wise Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez once said this last November, 

This Disproves Objective Analysis.

She represents the element of the holy flood thesis joining the narrative tripling in subsequent disagreement that there any factual basis to the truth that Kazuma is wrong but because there’s simple authentic observation there is no objective truth. Plus she cries a lot, and if there’s anything I learned from Steven Universe, it’s that if you cry good enough, you can topple entire totalitarian empires. Except for General Rebecca Sugar, because she can smell your fear and absorb it accordingly. She is basically the Mother Teresa of animation. Again, great contender. But we have to consider the others so let’s move on.

Next, we have Wiz. 

...

...

Next, we have Sylvia from their first and latest movie. It’s as they say, if it is new, it is better. I believe Sylvia is more than the sum of their parts, they are caring and charismatic and can turn into a powerful creature. None of the other characters can turn into a powerful creature, and that is why they possess internalized misogyny. The slimy veneer of quasi empiricism can be a very disgusting tool for nefariously slipping in one’s own rotten viewpoint or value. One that you know might otherwise be c̷h̵a̷l̸l̸e̴n̴g̴e̸d̴ ̵a̸s̴ ̸r̵i̷t̸u̵a̷l̵i̴s̵t̷i̴c̵a̷l̶l̵y̶ ̶s̷u̸p̸e̸r̶l̴a̷t̴i̶v̵e̸ ̵o̶r̸ ̷p̶e̵r̵h̷a̵p̵s̵ ̷y̵o̴u̸ ̸t̵h̴i̴n̸k̵ ̷t̴h̶a̶t̶ ̶w̷͍͍̠͉͚̦̦͛̔̓͗̏ā̵̛̬̜̂͋ṙ̸̨̐̌̈̅ ̸̦͔̣̮͔͋̊̑̕i̷̛͎̽̅́͑s̴̠̩̟̝͙̍̏̀͌̑̕ ̷͚͔̦̜̜͊̾̽͊͂j̸̡̨̣̙̮̓͘ų̵̣͚̹̱̐͌̎̑̈̎̆s̶̢͚̺͉̰͂̄̉̾͑ț̵̤̭͔̲̲̮̀͒̏̐̓ ̵̡̙̟̖͐́͋͝p̷̙̳̣̫͍̬͗̽͒̀e̸̻̯̽̆̇́͑͒a̵̡̞̣̫̫̯̰̿͛̅̄̅͂c̷̀͐̊͗͝ͅē̵̠͕̫̙ ̶̻̼̳͑̓̈́̿͐ŵ̷̼̝̣͇̞̞̺̍͋i̸̠͓̪̣̜͍̘͊͂̀̄t̸̟̣͉̼͑̒͜h̵̥̗̲̩̑̏́͜ ̵̡̠͉̝̾̆̌̇͐e̷̢̨̼̺͖̒̈́̃̃̆x̸̟̟͂́̄̍͛́̄t̴͖̣̼̫͇͐͋̆̽̎̚r̷͎̙̯͈͉̲̚a̵̩͎̥̺̮͂̀̃̚ ̸̠̜̣̥̜͍̠̌ṡ̴̢̡̐̽̅̃̇ͅt̴̖̣̹͙̙̼̟̔̐̚͝͝ĕ̵͔͍̤̼̂͌̐̑p̸̡̹̪̻͔̬͕̃̚s̸̫̙̈͛̉̋̉͝ ̶͔͚̽͝y̸̨̘͎̠͕̺̽̉̃o̶̜̥̺͔͑̏ͅu̵̓͜ ̴̨̦͉̀̊͊̓̌̃f̶̢̮̱̳̖̟̼̰͒̊̈͜i̸̯̼̫̩͚̇̉l̸̢̢̯̗̠̪̹͈͎͚̬̭̮̣̬̿̈́̍͘t̸͕͕̮̻̭̰̬͎̻̰̬̙̟̀́̍̋h̷̡̡͎͙̘̩̞̤̰̳͖͙̺͈̅̓͆ͅy̴̡̢̳̤̮̘̻͚̲̪̳̭̗̙͈̽́̔̄̓͊̅̍̓͗͑̓̈̿͝,̵̛͙͚̒͐̍̅̓͗͌̕ ̷̢̡͚̮̜͚͈̖̥̳̹̦̙͈̄́́͛̈́̈́ͅt̸̛̼̯̯̠̰͓̩͍̺̊̽̔͂͑̕ë̵̢̖͕̰͕̜̹̰̫͙̣̩͈́͐͐̿̆̽͌̓̀͐̊̑̀̆͗̕͜ͅͅs̴̢̡̜̯̀͋͛͒͐̌̓̕t̸̠̳̱̙̃̓̽̈̔͗̏̋̓̈̏ ̷̧̧̤͉̦̲̜͔̫̤̯́̽͊̕̚t̸̘̲̼̜̱̿̿͑̽́̈́͋̔͘u̶͍̞̜͛͜b̸̛̯̙̼̜͙̏̓̄̽͆̏͘͝ẹ̷̛̉̑̂ ̵̡̡̞͓̱̤̞̫͛̎̆͘͝b̸̡̡̟̫̱́̔̓̋͗̃̊ǫ̶͍͕̼̥̳͕͖̥͈̼̳̎̒͋ͅŕ̶̢̨̧̛̞̝̰̠͍̥̓͛͗͛̃̏̂ņ̷͔̞̜̟̱̮͍͎̹̬̠̰̳̌͠͝,̸̙͕͓̟̥̜͛ ̶̛͓͊̉̑̍̀̿̽̅̓̂͝͝a̷̧͕͎̜̮̟͚̮̦̜̝̺̿̈́̍̀͂̔͝ņ̴̛̰̮̟̤̭̘̲̠̹̲̟̎̉͂̃̈́̅̂͒͑͠͝ͅͅṱ̶̛̥̘̬̖̳̤͈̟̫̻̘̻̅́̿̓͂̒͂̓̏̐̔̈́̊̊͜į̷̧̱͚̱͉̲̺̬͕̙̀̅̔̆-̷̫͈̳̩͔̠͕͖̹̲̓͊̂̅̈́̔̈́̔̍̎̒̇͌́̃͘͜͜S̶̘̻̱͖̗̠̩̥̝̺̻͕̪̯̊͒͆̽͐́̀͠͝ͅJ̸̨̝̲̬͕͈̘̞̠̱͖̮̒͑̈́̎̃̄̍̃̚͘̚͝ͅͅẂ̸̡̖͉̞͍̙̲͈͈̜̼̪̯̱͇͉̋́͋̎́͗̿̋̈́͂̈́̽̉̚ ̴̣͓̼̟̼̬̙̜͈̰̼̼̖̣̆̅̋̽̕͝͠C̷̙͉̭̜̭̞̝̲̳̰̊̓̃͝E̵̤̟̮͠N̵̨̢̼̱̺̭̦̟̳̪̻̘̿͛̀͜ͅT̸̹͚̆͆͐̊̀̏͑̓̈͝ͅR̸̛̮̲͇̼̻͇̹̙̞̤͎̗̾̊̈́͊͗̋͑̅̿̓̐̔̔͝͝ͅI̵̧̩͕̼̱͚͈̻͎̮̝̖̰̐̑͛̎̂̃̇̇̀̈́́̃̕͠S̶̞̘͔̈́̒̑͒́T!! But, Sylvia is dead, so as much as I wanted to consider, they can’t be best girl so we must move on. 

Next we have Yunyun. It is said that she “forms a rivalry with Megumin as an excuse to create a friendship.” Now we could call her a beta cuckquean, but that would imply you have a life outside a human being. As our current president once said, 

I’m never a Trump supporter myself, but this is wisdom I can kinda get behind regardless. Sure he ghost wrote this, but not all wisdom comes from the mouth. However, Yunyun represents the normalcy of KonoSuba, and as such could be a nice change of pace for those too dependent on the definitive waifu. She has big jiggly boobs, sure, but have you ever considered that her boobs have, personality? A lot of otakus and bronies have not been understanding this as of late, as I feel we’ve overlooked something far more important: Tactile anime feel. We can stare at breasts all we wish, but how realistic are her proportions? You can say it’s fiction all you want, and you’d be right, but if I’m envious that the fiction women have better boobs than mine, my opinion is now better than yours. What I’m getting at is that Yunyun is like a ghost, you try to find her, you search for them, and you look for them, and you try to find them, but you can’t find them, thus they are empty handed.

The last contender is Kazuma, who is the villain of KonoSuba because he doesn’t act like the typical isekai protagonist. He isn’t like Kirito from SAO who was almost involved in incest or Sonic the Hedgehog who believed stalking people is okay as long as you’re alone. As Luigi Mario once said, “It is common, but not too common.” He spits in the face of a critically stupid people because he believes in true gender equality. Those who don’t believe in this philosophy are mostly women, and that’s okay. He must clearly be best girl because he is asserted with the phrase “Give and take”. Most people complain about 11 hour Youtube videos, but they can hardly spend three hours overthrowing their bastardizing governments. Which is why Ligma is not running in the 2020 presidential election, because you keep putting your time in the wrong cubby hole. KonoSuba is a complicated anime, and Kazuma is the crux of that complication. So the sooner you can understand Kazuma, the more you’ll understand KonoSuba; that is why he’s considerably best girl. Otherwise, go play World of Warcraft like the mainstream loving psuedo-intellectual toesucking simp that you are.

To conclude, KonoSuba has a lot to think about for a smart people. Choosing best girl is not about finding your interest, it’s about avoiding callout culture because you have shit taste. If there’s enough controversy, I avoid it unless it can benefit me in the long and short term. Clearly Aqua is the choice for when you yourself have little to prove, Yunyun understandably for when you have nothing to gain, Kazuma for when you want to feel better about yourself. In any case, if you are not horny on main, you are probably the reason Trump got elected because you are yourself sexually fascistic. Sorry, I don’t make the rules and ergo this post was never made for you. Real, in-depth nitty gritty perspective, prescriptive criteria for denationalization context barriers are still alive on the internet. Ultimately, we must decide on whether or not this was all worth it. Simplicity is hard to strive for, but that is why people only use five percent of another’s argument. Or else we’re fans of the She-ra reboot, always over-complicating the idea that kinship will save the day in the end and thinking the creator didn’t copy the great works of famous Shark Tale actor Martin Scorsese. You know? Tankies. I myself have made a long post expressing this complicated issue, but then again, I am a chronophobe. I fear time and I would appreciate if you wouldn’t timeshame me, you potential ablest. So in truth, you choose who is best girl because you are valid. Not more than I but still.

Thank you for reading my post. If you liked this essay, please comment. It’s free. If you liked my paypal, please donate. It’s free. Sharing this would be highly appreciated. It’s free. Dollar Dash Share is offering a free shaving earbud for the first ten sign ups when you use the promo code, ‘MNKY’. Make sure to try out their Curiosity streaming service and use the 5000 silver to unlock new warriors or maps. Thank you for reading............ KonoSuba.

[scotiaeire]

Biden, Second Wave Covid and Neo-Feudalism

LAST WORD BEFORE I LOG OUT FOR THE WINTER.

IT’D PAY FOLKS TO LISTEN TO PEOPLE LIKE BJORN AND OTHERS LIKE HIM. YOUR BASIC FREEDOMS ARE BEING STRIPPED FROM YOU, AND YOU’RE COMPLIANT IN IT BECAUSE YOU ALL BELIEVE A VIRUS THAT IS *LESS* DEADLY THAN SPANISH FLU IS SUCH A THREAT PEOPLE CANNOT LIVE THEIR LIVES AS COMMUNITIES ANYMORE. YOU’VE MADE GODS OF THE POLITICIANS, ALLOWING THEM TO CREATE LAWS TO IMPRISON FOLKS ..INCLUDING YOU..IN YOUR OWN HOMES. THEY’VE MADE US DISTRUST ONE ANOTHER ..AND I THINK OF “INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS”, PARTICULARLY THE DONALD SUTHERLAND VERSION WHERE THE ONE SURVIVING WOMAN STEPS OUT AND SPEAKS HIS NAME, THINKING HIM A FRIEND. BUT HE TURNS AND FROM HIS WIDE OPEN MAW A SCREAM EMERGES AND HE POINTS AT HER, AND EVERYONE TURNS TO HER.

AND IN A WAY, IT’S BECOMING LIKE THAT. RAISE A VOICE AGAINST WHAT’S HAPPENING, AND YOU’RE IMMEDIATELY OSTRACISED, ACCUSED OF WANTING TO “KILL PEOPLE” BY SPREADING THE VIRUS. ALL WITHOUT THINKING, WITHOUT THE RECOGNITION OF JUST HOW MUCH OF YOUR OWN PERSONAL FREEDOMS YOU’VE LOST. OR ABOUT THE REALITY OF CASES VS DEATHS AND THE RATIO COMPARED TO PAST PLAGUES. AND YOU BELIEVE MSM. EVEN I, AN OLD WOMAN, GAVE UP DOING THAT IN MY TEENS.....

AND WHEN YOU CAN NO LONGER GO TO WORK TO SUPPORT YOURSELF OR YOUR FAMILY, AND *MUST* DEPEND ON STATE AND POLITICIANS TO FEED AND HOUSE YOU? WHEN YOU’LL DO ANYTHING THEY ASK OF YOU TO KEEP THAT SITUATION, SO YOU AND YOURS DON’T STARVE TO DEATH?

WILL YOU THINK IT’S BEEN WORTH IT?

IF ANYONE READS THIS AND SEES WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING...NOT JUST THEIR GREAT “ECONOMIC RESET” (BTW, KEEP AN EYE ON YOUR BANK ACCOUNTS. ALREADY BANKS IN ENGLAND ARE REFUSING CUSTOMERS ACCESS TO THEIR ACCOUNTS, NO REASON GIVEN) BUT POPULATION CONTROL. HERDED LIKE CATTLE. IMPRISONED AT THEIR WILL WITH YOUR OWN STUPID CONSENT....

IF ANYONE RECOGNISES WHAT IS ACTUALLY HAPPENING, THEN I’M ASKING YOU TO PLEASE, FIGHT AGAINST IT.

BECAUSE I KNOW, FIRSTHAND, WHAT IT’S LIKE TO LIVE IN A NATION WITHOUT FREEDOM. I KNOW, FIRSTHAND, HOW HELPLESS IT CAN MAKE YOU. PUT IT THIS WAY, I WAS FORCED FROM THE LAND OF MY BIRTH (SCOTLAND) DUE TO ENGLISH POLITICS. MY CRIME? MARRYING A DISABLED EU CITIZEN. AYE. BREXIT.

THIS, HOWEVER, IS BIGGER, AND IF YOU THINK IT WON’T AFFECT YOU, IF YOU THINK LOCKDOWN AFTER LOCKDOWN IS THE SOLUTION, OR A DUBIOUS VACCINE CREATED BY BILL FUCKING GATES WILL CURE THE VIRUS, THEN FRANKLY, YOU DESERVE WHAT’S COMING.

BJORN IS CORRECT. YOUR ANCESTORS (AND EVEN MINE..JACOBITE WARS OF INEPENDENCE) FOUGHT FOR THEIR FREEDOM. AND THIS GENERATION WALKS SILENTLY AND COMPLIANTLY INTO JAIL.

HUMANITY HAS *ALWAYS* HAD TO FACE ILLNESSES, PLAGUES, DISEASE AND VIRUSES AND NOT ONCE HAS WORLDWIDE IMPRISONMENT BEEN A SOLUTION TO THE CURE.

THE SUBLIME TO THE RIDICULOUS...PROTECT THE ELDERLY AND PHYSICALLY VULNERABLE BY ALL MEANS, BUT THE BULK OF PEOPLE, EVEN THOSE WHO HAVE HAD OR WILL CATCH THE VIRUS, RECOVER AND THE SCARE STORIES LIE. YOU DO NOT “RE CATCH” THE VIRUS. YOU *DO* CREATE ANTIBODIES TO IT (OR YOU’D BE DEAD) AND HOW DO I KNOW THIS? MY FAMILY CAUGHT IT IN MARCH. WE’RE STILL ALIVE. AND I HAVE A HEART ARRHYTHMIA, AND COPD, AND MY HUSBAND IS PERMANENTLY DISABLED. AND WE’RE OLDER FOLKS.

SO WAKE UP, PLEASE, FOLKS. SEE WHAT THEY’RE DOING TO AND TAKING FROM YOU. AND FIGHT TO KEEP YOUR FREEDOMS. BECAUSE FREEDOM IS NEVER HANDED TO ANYONE ON A PLATE.

OKIES, WELL NOW THAT  I’VE WRITTEN A POST NOBODY WILL GIVE A SHIT ABOUT (I KNOW I’M WASTING MY TIME BUT I HAD TO TRY....) I’M OFF. TO LIVE MY LIFE, TO HARVEST FOOD AND PRESERVE IT AGAINST THE WINTER MONTHS, TO LOOK AFTER MY LIVESTOCK AND MAKE SURE WE’VE GOT WHAT WE NEED FOR THE “ECONOMIC CRASH” THAT’LL HAVE THEM SEIZING THE PUBLIC’S BANK ACCOUNTS TO “SAVE THE ECONOMY”. THINK THEY CAN’T DO THAT? BET YOU NEVER THOUGHT THEY COULD FORCIBLY DETAIN FOLKS IN THEIR OWN HOMES AS PRISONERS EITHER.

WELL, IF ANYONE DOES READ THIS, NO MATTER WHAT YOU THINK OF ME, TRY THINKING OF THE SUBJECT MATTER. DO A LITTLE RESEARCH OF YOUR OWN. TAKE A LOOK AROUND YOU, ONCE YOU GET YOUR NOSE OUT YOUR SMARTPHONE, AND SEE WHAT THE WORLD IS RAPIDLY BECOMING. AND BE SCARED. AND BE ANGRY. AND TRY TO CHANGE IT. OR LOSE EVERY SCRAP OF INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM YOU HAVE.

[rkmuse]

The Republicans...Oh God...You Don’t Want Socialism!

The Republican chant is that Socialism is to be feared. There are also Democrats who reject the idea of Socialism. Are you aware that we already have Socialism in the USA, but it exists only for the wealthiest, and that includes our Congress and Government employees. Most of the members in Congress have become some or the healthiest and wealthiest in our country based on how long they’ve been in office. They’re multi-millionaires and billionaires which has become the norm.

Congress obstructed the Constitution and voted collectively to govern themselves. They give themselves extravagant benefits, raises, and if they get in trouble Congress judges them and not a court of law such as what the majority of the people are judged by. They have a great salary for the time they put in, The best health insurance, their travel is paid for, retirement funds, they take lobbying money, and so many more benefits that include even schooling for their children. When they get ready to retire, many times their children end up running, and it becomes a family business of sorts, and it’s difficult to remove someone who has been in Congress for 40 or more years. They are touts to the lobbiest for huge banks and corporations who count on them to vote a certain way, and their paid well for doing just that. Both parties in Congress are violating what is written in the Constitution. That needs to be on the list of what needs to be changed. The Founders anticipated greed and constructed it as such.

 Large corporations reap even more benefits, they often pay no taxes, and they are the recipients of huge tax breaks from the President. Trump just gifted all his friends, and himself, a huge tax break. When the stimulus came out, huge corporations took the money first, and little was left for small businesses. The very small businesses got nothing and many went out of business. One fat cat was in debt way before the virus. A private airline company Trump knew. He got 10 million from the stimulus and saved his business. The rich have always had a form of socialism and that goes for the President on down to state and city government workers. When they retire from Congress they are mostly all multi millionaires with huge retirement funds, healthcare, and they can take their (pittance) Social Security as well if they paid into it. There is no justice for everybody that harms nobody. When it comes to healthcare that is a right not a privilege. Of course they don’t want the majority of the people to have what they have. They would argue that it would be too costly. After all....they may suffer. Right. The Taxpayers are paying for their own expenses, and constantly fighting for equality through decent healthcare etc. Prescriptions and Big Pharma are a separate issue. 

Trump and the Republicans want to take away Social Security, Medicare, and not cover pre-existing conditions, and that will really only affect the majority of the people. Any Government official is fine. Isn’t it odd that politicians will only talk about the majority of the people getting Obamacare which they say is so good, but it’s not as good as the healthcare that Congress has, and that the taxpayer pays for. Why doesn’t the Congress also have Obamacare? Why do they get more sophisticated plans and pay nothing, or very little?

Social Security is not a gift from the government. People work all their lives and pay into it. Around 66 they can retire, and get a set amount. On occasion, the government will give you a minuscule raise while raising the price of the Medicare that is automatically taken out of your Social Security check. I know what my mother had, and how it worked. Her raise was minuscule when she got one which wasn’t that often. The government has borrowed from the Social Security fund over the decades, and probably never paid it back. It’s your money that was taken out of your paycheck every week when you worked toward your social security and your Medicare. When you retire, the government takes out of your pension a charge for Medicare.  Medicare only pays for 80% and you’re responsible for the remaining 20%. Most people end up taking out GAP insurance (which they pay for themselves) to cover the 20%. That is getting to a big chunk out of just a Social Security check. Trump went into the hospital, had the best care possible, and didn’t pay anything. Why is one human life more important than another whether he’s the President or not.  Everyone in our government has better healthcare then the majority of the people who actually pay for and the quality isn’t the same. So the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. 

We can do better. We have to do better. Congress has to stop governing themselves, and be responsible to the same laws as the people when they break the law. Right now, if a member of Congress does something wrong they’re judged by their piers in the Congress, and they may get a slap on the wrist but no jail time. An example, is Martha Stewart.She was charged with insider trading years ago. She went to prison for 1 year. Right after that, Bill Frist (Senator) did the same thing, only he was judged by the Senate, he got a slap on the wrist and eventually resigned. Fair? I don’t think so.  Congress - The House and Senate, is in violation of the Constitution. The Constitution advocates term limits. You serve a term, and you go back into the pubic arena. Someone else serves a term and then goes back into the public arena etc. etc. Congress turned their positions into a full lifetime career where they keep getting elected and raise money from people who want to keep them in there, so they can count on your vote. Campaign finance. The Republicans got the SCOTUS to open the floodgates to super pacs, and unlimited amounts that corporations and the wealthiest can dump into an election. Then candidates are beholding to the people who donate such vast amounts of money and they vote the way the huge donners want them to vote. If this sounds crooked, it’s because it is.

I’m waiting for people to demand the same healthcare as the Congress has which I’m sure includes dental, vision, everything...and maybe even plastic surgery (lol - forget I said that one) but maybe it does. It’s a Cadillac plan. No person running for office will ever suggest the people get the same healthcare as they get even though you the taxpayer pays for theirs.  

We have so many changes that need to be made and Joe Biden is going to have to be the one to step up to the plate and begin instigating them. But...the people have to organize and demand it. The government won’t just do it. If it’s up to them it will always be inferior. Crumbs not the whole cookie. I do know people that aren’t happy with Obamacare. option 1 - Either the majority of the people need to have the same healthcare as our Congress, or option 2 - Congress needs to take Obamacare, the same healthcare as the majority of the people. I’m sure if the Congress had option 2, they’d work like heck to get option 1 for everyone if they were treated equal to the majority that they are supposed to represent.

[theheaterishotjournals]

Found the rant I wrote. I laid into poor Walter and I wasn’t even trying to fucking aim it at him. I was just so mad and I had an outlet to rant about this shit. 

Dude. I don't care anymore. I don't give a shit. The fucking DNC did everything they could to keep Sanders from winning this shit despite him doing well. THey pushed and pushed. They put out attack ads on him. Change poll numbers. Did every dirty tactic they could for a supposedly fellow party member.

THey want a conservative Democrat so bad? Go right the fuck ahead. I am fucking done with believing in a party funded by the exact same fucking billionaires that fund the republican party.

Kamala Harris has voted for parents to be jailed if their parents are truant. Forced schools to snitch students to ICE. ICE, the department that forces the people detained to drink toilet water? That chemically cleans the jail cells in hazmat suits leaving the detainees with nothing? That separates children from their famly and then give them to white people? Kamala, who arrested black people on marijuana possession. Voted against legalizing it? How many times has her Republican opponents actually ended up more left than her on an issue? Fought against indigenous tribes from keeping their land?

Biden who voted for segregation. To go to war with Iraq? Who, through his entire history, has voted with the right on major policies so many times. Who is ALSO implicated for rape?! MUCH LIKE DONALD TRUMP? He is BETTER? How?! Biden who JUST RECENTLY said that he plans on having more police out there to stop the "rioters".

You say THESE are NOT authoritarian in ANY WAY. Are you SERIOUS. DNC is just pushing that fucking narrative constantly. "They're slightly worse. Actually, they're just as bad but we give the American people the illusion of choice. So vote for them if you aren't stupid."

HOw are these two ANY BETTER. How is this not corrupt? What the fuck did my family get out of Vietnam for? From one system where the friends of the higher ups keep getting hired over and over again to another system that only elects people willing to suck billionaire dick?

Local elections. That's all I care about anymore. Local policies to get changed. I vote on local policies and try to help my city. I want to flip seats in the House and Senate. I will devote time to get other states to vote that way. I don't give a SHIT about the presidential election anymore. I am voting third until this shit breaks. I am fucking sick and tired of the DNC manipulating people into thinking that this is the only way to beat those dirty Republicans when the mayors of cities with disproportinate deaths of black people by the hands of police are still democrats.

I am disillusioned. I hae no faith in the system. I refuse to keep being bullied to perpetuate a cycle of our tax money going to rich people to overseas bank accounts that can't be taxed while poor people try to hold down 3 jobs in order to even feed themselves. I am done. I am so hateful and full of spite at how Americans are being held hostage by this two party system. By the electoral college (that they recently voted on and said it wasn't in the constitution to have winners be selected by popular vote) and they actually did nothing about it.

I am disillusioned.

-------

Democrats are pushing a propaganda narrative too. It’s the republicans. Not the billionaires, it’s the conservatives, the republicans. Vote Blue. We’ll suppress those dirty conservatives any day now. 

[cherp-official]

Real Talk Time

CW: This is politics talk, sorry, folks! We’ll be returning to your regularly scheduled RP content soon.

Hiya, folks. Friendly neighborhood Mod TTMIYH here, here to talk about something absolutely unrelated to cherp or RP as a whole except in tangential broad strokes.

If you are an American, and you are over 18, you have to vote. The majority of the Cherp userbase almost certainly consists of marginalized individuals in one way or another, and if Cheeto Hitler wins a second term, a: we are not going to have another free election, and b: marginalized people everywhere (me included) are going to get fucking demolished. The planet is on fire. We have to stop the bleeding now, not in four years, not when it’s convenient for us, NOW.

How can you help? I’ll make it very easy for all of you guys.

1: Find a candidate you like. I like Bernie, and I think besides him and Warren most of the other candidates are unpalatable, so I’m going to be volunteering for Bernie’s stuff, but, and this may not be perfect praxis, literally anyone is better than four more years of trump, especially if we can get a majority in the senate and house. At the bare minimum, getting a senate and house majority will be able to cockblock Trump for four years and probably impeach him, but we really need to be aiming for a complete sweep via ANYONE other than Trump.

Bernie Sanders: https://map.berniesanders.com/ Elizabeth Warren: https://elizabethwarren.com/join-us (Sigh) Pete Buttigieg: https://peteforamerica.com/forms/volunteer/ Amy Klobuchar: https://amyklobuchar.com/ Tom Steyer: https://www.tomsteyer.com/volunteer/ Andrew Yang: https://act.yang2020.com/sign/organic-web-volunteersignup-20180821/ (Also Sigh) Joe Biden: https://joebiden.com/join/

Great. Got one you like? Did you research their policies and are sure they’re what you want? Good!

2: Fight like hell for them.

We need to be involved with the civic process at EVERY STEP OF THE WAY. Put in your zip code, find out phone banking and canvassing and door-to-door events near you. The more people you can get off the couch and inform about what is at stake, the better. Even if your preferred candidate loses the primary, you’re still helping engaging potential voters that would not otherwise have been engaged, and that can help whoever wins.

If your preferred candidate loses, I’m sorry! That sucks. But pick your chin up and get behind the next candidate in line. Your efforts are not wasted, but we have to keep it up.

3: Pester EVERYONE. See what I’m doing right now? I’m using the platforms I have (with permission from Insolent, don’t you fret) to spread the message that we need to fucking mobilize like never before. We need to absolutely crush the Republican party into the dirt with sheer numbers so that they can’t possibly fuck around with the vote enough to win.

Get your relatives to volunteer (if they’re the same party as you). Get them to pledge to vote. Bug your friends until they go canvassing with you. Talk about this on social media. Talk about it everywhere. Become the obnoxiously political friend. Reward yourself with some ice cream every time you get someone new involved with volunteering.

Do research. Don’t argue on the internet with people on the other side, because they’re not going to listen and it’ll wear you out, but convince people who seem like they haven’t decided one way or another. Make sure you know exactly what your candidate’s policies are so you can talk about them in a way that gets people on board.

Use your voice! You have one. Use it. If you reblog this post you are magnifying my voice to everyone that can hear you.

4: Engage in the civic process. I will make this just as easy for you as I did the volunteering stuff. Go to https://resist.bot/ , you can access it through Twitter, Facebook Messenger, or text message. It will guide you through the steps to send letters to your local representatives, even your representatives in your state legislature, your senators, your congressmen, and so on. You can send an email or a snail mail or even a fax because for some reason they still use faxes.

Research your representative’s policies. If they align with yours, encourage them to keep it up, and make sure they know if they keep doing the right thing, you’ll vote and donate to them. If they don’t align with yours, threaten them via civics. Explain how, if they vote against Trump’s impeachment, for example, you will do everything in your power to elect their opponent.

Make it personal. You are such and such from X part of their constituency, you grew up in XYZ town, yadda yadda. They are humans. Their staffers are humans. Appealing to their humanity won’t work for 99.9% of the bad ones but you might be that one letter that cracks someone’s shell. You have nothing to lose by giving it a shot.

Resist.bot makes it so easy. I sent my representative a letter just today and it was easy so I’ll probably send more. Yesterday I volunteered to do phone-banking for Bernie.

I’ve been sitting on my thumbs my entire life waiting for everything else to go well for me, but I don’t have time to sit on my thumbs anymore.

Things aren’t going to change unless we force them to change.

Volunteer. Vote. Get yourself involved. Mobilize.

There is too much at stake not to.

Thank you.