UnderpantsWeevil

joined 2 years ago
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago

What does Medicaid Expansion even look like under a Trump Administration?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

I think @TranquilTurbulence pretty neatly established one big different - Americans produce far more waste than any actually impoverished country.

We just live poor in order to afford all those extra landfills.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 hours ago

Diamond Straws currently employs 15 people but is anticipating an uptick in business in the wake of President Trump's executive order declaring that the US is "going back to plastic straws" and moving away from paper straws.

You could one day aspire to be the 16th factory worker in the plastic straw factory. Unless, of course, those jobs are automated away by AI.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

I have to wonder how many folks who spent the last twenty years screaming "Fuck the CCP!" are going to get the pointy end of the Trump police state on the grounds that they are radical leftists.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

streaming content without paying for it

  • Watching TV at a friend's house
  • Watching videos off a PLEX server or other private local network
  • Watching freemium with ad blockers

I'm sure I'm missing a few more. But there are so many ways to watch - even without explicit piracy - that the MPAA considers should be deemed illegal because they're not getting paid per viewer.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 11 hours ago

Map of US Military Bases around the world:

Pretty much every country except France has operated as a satrap of the US since the end of WW2. NATO is the tool by which the US militarily administers the region. You're not going to see it divorce itself from the US because it is a creature of US foreign policy. Might as well have asked the Warsaw Pact to align against Russia.

That's before you get into the contradictions within the EU members themselves, which appear to be tearing the economic union apart from within. Brexit is only the beginning.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Might want to calibrate your use of "liberal" for your audience.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

Because one teeny step out-of-line on the left, and you’re labeled right wing

Genuinely trying to figure out what you're referencing. Are we talking "one teeny" Daniel Perry shooting? Or is this "one teeny" mega-millionaire Dave Chappelle not getting a sixth Netflix comedy special because he's become too transphobic? Or is this "my kids won't talk to me anymore because I screamed 'Pull your pants up!' at Kendrick Lamar during the Superbowl Halftime Show"?

I tell people this constantly, and get ignored or chided for the thought.

:-/

I’ve got a previously Trump supporter boss, who I’ve slowly become friends with and have shown him the problems on the right and moved him further to the left.

Doing the yeoman's work of leftism by... checks notes... sucking up to my Trump-loving boss.

[–] [email protected] 52 points 11 hours ago (6 children)

The tools that were used to drive Germany to madness are much the same we're seeing today. A lot of that first 1/3 is being bombarded with mass media saying "Black people are trying to kill you! Leftists are trying to rob you! The Evil Biden Government is trying to transgender your children!" over and over and over for decades on end.

This isn't just Americans waking up one morning and deciding to be MAGA chuds. It is a product of two generations of intense right-wing propaganda through every avenue of mass media.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

A lot of the cases are... loosely... based on real medical discoveries and treatments. You just pack them all under the arm of one guy to make him some kind of Doctor Genius God.

I'm glad they didn't go full on X-Files with it or inject a bunch of quackery. The show was at its strongest when it was incredible without being unbelievable.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

SCOTUS does not enforce policy - it interprets it.

So, in theory, a SCOTUS ruling allows bureaucrats in the various agencies to ignore a Presidential command. But in practice, we've got the Doggy Department stepping in behind the scenes and unhooking any individual disloyal to the President from their security badges and sign-in credentials. Power is being centralized via the mechanism of IT.

This is, incidentally, a strategy Balaji Srinivasan and his friends at Y-Combinator lay out explicitly in "The Network State" which is a favorite book of Peter Thiel and Elon Musk.

What they're building is a real technical means by which a new kind of technocratic institution can do physically what a judiciary simply orders and hopes is fulfilled. A verdict from Musk has material consequences - access suspended, accounts disabled, money transfers halted - that a judicial appointee cannot physically obstruct.

It’s as out of touch as someone saying “I think Mueller is still going to bring Donny down!”

Mueller laid out the terms by which incoming President Joe Biden could have prosecuted Donald Trump. And Biden's AG Merrick Garland just... didn't do it. This isn't a question of "can" but of "will". Do people in positions of power wish to utilize their authority to change the country?

Elon and Trump are 100% serious about changing the way the federal government functions this time around. President "Nothing will fundamentally change" Biden - the most institutional of the institutionalist Democrats still alive - was not.

I don't even think this is a Donald Trump thing anymore. He's just a vehicle for the Move Fast And Break Things Silicon Valley crowd to take control of the federal bureaucracy. But guys like Srinivasan and Thiel aren't fucking around. They are using the mechanisms of power that the administrations of Biden, Trump, and Obama just kinda sat on. Remove Trump and you'll just get JD Vance who is even more servile and pliant towards the Trillionaire Class.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
 

"Indivisible is urging people who are scared to call their member of Congress, whether they have a Democrat or Republican, and make specific procedural asks," Greenberg said.

"Our supporters are asking Democrats to demand specific red lines are met before they offer their vote to House Republicans on the budget, when Republicans inevitably fail to pass a bill on their own."

 

Sponsor: Rep. Carter, Earl L. "Buddy" [R-GA-1] (Introduced 02/10/2025)

Committees: House - Foreign Affairs; Natural Resources

Latest Action: House - 02/10/2025 Referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, and in addition to the Committee on Natural Resources, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

 

 

Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has said that any immigrants who pose “public safety and national security threats” will be targeted for deportation first. Rhetoric that paints America’s 45 million immigrants as “threats” to public safety is a key Republican strategy to drum up support for mass deportations. One of the first bills passed by the Republican House in the new Congress was the Laken Riley Act, after the 22-year-old nursing student who was killed in February 2024 by a Venezuelan man who had entered the country illegally. The bill would require any undocumented person or DACA recipient arrested for burglary, theft, larceny, or shoplifting-related offenses to be detained, even if they are ultimately never charged with a crime.

 

"CPS will continue to protect our students and their families in alignment with the Illinois TRUST Act and Chicago's Welcoming City Ordinance," one school official said.

Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates called the situation "unprecedented" at a news conference Friday afternoon.

 

After receiving the text for the ad quoted above, a representative from the advertising team suggested AFSC use the word “war” instead of “genocide” – a word with an entirely different meaning both colloquially and under international law. When AFSC rejected this approach, the New York Times Ad Acceptability Team sent an email that read in part: “Various international bodies, human rights organizations, and governments have differing views on the situation. In line with our commitment to factual accuracy and adherence to legal standards, we must ensure that all advertising content complies with these widely applied definitions.”

 

After more than two years undercover, he’d been growing rash and impulsive. He had feared someone was in danger and tried to warn him, but it backfired. Williams was sure at least one person knew he was a double agent now, he said into his phone. “It’s only a matter of time before it gets back to the rest.”

In the daylight, Williams dropped an envelope with no return address in a U.S. Postal Service mailbox. He’d loaded it with a flash drive and a gold Oath Keepers medallion.

It was addressed to me.

The documents laid out a remarkable odyssey. Posing as an ideological compatriot, Williams had penetrated the top ranks of two of the most prominent right-wing militias in the country. He’d slept in the home of the man who claims to be the new head of the Oath Keepers, rifling through his files in the middle of the night. He’d devised elaborate ruses to gather evidence of militias’ ties to high-ranking law enforcement officials. He’d uncovered secret operations like the surveillance of a young journalist, then improvised ways to sabotage the militants’ schemes. In one group, his ploys were so successful that he became the militia’s top commander in the state of Utah.

 

Body camera footage shows the moment an LMPD officer hands a woman in labor a citation for unlawful camping as she waits for an ambulance.

 

In 2025, Mexico’s current challenges are likely to worsen, as the recently inaugurated Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo administration (2024–30) has shown an unwillingness to depart from the policy playbook of the Andrés Manuel López Obrador administration (2018–24) — a playbook that has already proven unable to resolve most of the country’s problems.Political and diplomatic relations are headed for a rocky year, as Mexico drifts further away from a strategic allyship position with the United States on several items.

 

Anyway, please stay safe and don't be afraid to defend yourself.

 

We spent the whole day in Pyongyang and visited:

Mansudae Fountain Park
Victorious Fatherland Liberation War Museum
Juche Tower
Pyongyang Metro
Mangyongdae Children's Palace
Pyongyang Circus

Cost of a five-day tour to the DPRK: $1378.

The five-day tour included 4 flights (Vladivostok - Pyongyang - Orang - Pyongyang - Vladivostok), accommodation, meals, excursion program (Pyongyang and Chilbo), visa, insurance. Some entertainment is paid for additionally ($20 - circus, $7 boat ride, etc.).

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