How are they going to stop it? Republicans have been trying to stop elections since 2017, they're not smart enough to figure out how. They couldn't even figure out how to schedule a press conference about it at the four seasons.
Well Trump can say whatever he wants, whether he actually can do what he says is another matter. In this case for example, congestion pricing has simply continued as before because Trump doesn't have power to change the laws of New York. When it comes to killing people, government employees are subject to the same rules as everyone else about unlawful killing, even if they were ordered by the president. Of course Trump can pardon his assassins for federal crimes, but states can still prosecute them and if nothing else the victims can still use deadly force to defend themselves without being guilty of a crime.
So legally speaking, Trump isn't so much a king as just some fat, old, possibly mentally-challenged man who can't be punished for things.
But in the technical sense, we're all kings and can do whatever we want. We've just agreed as a society that if people do certain things we all unite to help put them in a cage or whatever.
Trumpism has significant control over large parts of the media from which millions of Americans get their information. Fox and Musk’s platform X, among others, are not normal media outlets. Their basic function is not to cover the “news” but to spread rightwing extremist ideology.
Trumpism is utilizing the concept of the “big lie” in a way that has never, in this country, been seen. Day after day, blatantly dishonest statements and conspiracy theories are propagated – and repeated over and over and over again.
What is the solution to this? Because from where I sit, it looks like the strategy of plutocrats buying media and using it to push dishonest narratives in their favor is extremely successful and does indeed make what Bernie's asking for unachievable. And I don't see anywhere in the article a way to solve that problem.
I don't doubt the left can win on Lemmy. But the second Lemmy gets any actual power, watch out for the buyout.
Russia has been strongly suspected to use Tyler Durden in its influence operations to appeal to the US mainstream-to-far right.
All of Zero Hedge’s posts are written under the nom de plume of “Tyler Durden,” the anti-establishment character played by Brad Pitt in the film Fight Club. “We believe that not only should you be comfortable with anonymous speech,” Zero Hedge contends in its “manifesto,” “but that you should be suspicious of any speech that isn’t.” For whatever reason, people seem to go along with this, and it’s a strange sight to see the name of a psychopathic character in a Chuck Palahniuk novel cited as a source in a Congressional Research Service report and a scholarly law review article, or introduced as a guest on Bloomberg radio.
Neither Zero Hedge’s anonymity nor its Bulgarian connections and pro-Kremlin views have turned off some financially savvy readers.
modern Democrats are not an opposition party, ever. The news media is complicit as well.
The US political system is thoroughly broken but it's not changed much leading up to the Trump era, it's really the news media that made Trump happen right now.
It started in the 80s with cable news and continues today with toxic podcasts and social media. People are like your annoying ex-girlfriend - they don't want to be told the truth, they just want to be validated. Billionaires and con artists (and billionaire con artists) have figured out how to use newer forms of media to exploit that tendency and I think it's still getting worse. Eventually like all predators they'll overconsume their prey but there's a lot of suckers in the world for them to run through first.
To me I'm not really sure what his reply even means. I think it's some attempt at a joke (because of course the government uses SQL), but I figure the joke can be broken down into two potential jokes that fail for different, embarrassing reasons:
Interpretation 1: The government is so advanced it doesn't use SQL - This interpretation is unlikely given that Elon is trying to portray the government as in need of reform. But it would make more sense if coming from a NoSQL type who thinks SQL needs to be removed from everywhere. NoSQL Guy is someone many software devs are familiar with who takes the sometimes-good idea of avoiding SQL and takes it way too far. Elon being NoSQL Guy would be dumb, but not as dumb as the more likely interpretation #2.
Interpretation 2: The government is so backward it doesn't use SQL - I think this is the more likely interpretation as it would be consistent with Elon's ideology, but it really falls flat because SQL is far from being cutting-edge. There has kind of been a trend of moving away from SQL (with considerable controversy) over the last 10 years or so and it's really surprising that Elon seems completely unaware of that.
There are definitely far left groups, primarily in Europe, that ally with Russia. All groups on the fringes have proven useful for spreading pro-Russian propaganda. In the US, Trump's pro-Russian sympathies and general stupifaction of the GOP has led to the GOP becoming an ally to the Kremlin. But prior to that, both parties were anti-Russia with Republicans being moreso.
The most successful tactic of the right has been judging the left for their politics - "woke" etc. This works because it's "othering" - makes the left part of the out group that people don't want to be a part of. The left needs to be similarly unabashed, even though othering is kind of against the whole point of being on the left.
But it needs to be more fun and less serious than this post. Why is there no "screaming maga" meme? Surely there's plenty of those images, and more.
What's annoying is the US cable/social media incessantly jumps right to the Trump/Musk framing of things.
The US AID shutdown has led to food aid stuck at ports as populations that rely on it starve.
A report on Monday from Paul Martin, the USAid inspector general, found that close to half a billion dollars’ worth of food was rotting because of confusion surrounding Mr Trump’s freeze last month.
How many americans have heard about the consequences of Trump's actions? 1%? How many have heard about Elon's vague and baseless claims that US AID is a big fraud? It seems every Republican I know has heard that.
He did the exact same thing after taking over Twitter, talking about "poorly batched RPCs" in the timeline which makes zero sense because that's obviously not how HTTP works.
The sad thing is Elon regularly shows how much of a very judgmental, "I'm so smart" idiot* he is, but somehow I keep meeting people who think he's a genius. I guess the assumption that money=smart still holds true in the US, despite being disproven time and time again.
*Do we not have a single word for this concept? I come across this kind of person so frequently there really should be one.
If you were to try to drive someone else's car, that would be illegalIf you were to try to command a bank teller to give you money, that's also illegalVice Presidents aren't allowed to fuck couches.
Did you see the debate? There's a reason the Trump puppet masters refused to let him do another, and it comes down to his reaction to something Kamala said.
But that being said, the plan is unrealistic for the simple reason that it assumes the press is working for Democrats - which as the results show, is clearly not the case.
Historically, this is not usually the result of the military taking over a country. Usually the general who did the coup becomes the new rich person, thanks to all the political power.
It's shopify, which requires an account to report. So if anyone has a shopify account, please do the needful. Can probably be considered a threat of violence or terrorist organization, or both.
Not yet. Trump saying something horrifying while it not being entirely clear he understands what he's actually saying or how anything in government is supposed to work is what we call Monday around here.
It's more complicated than that. Look at the fight over PBMs right now. The drug companies say the PBMs are the problem, and the PBMs say the drug companies are the problem, and both are right. The PBMs are an insurance/pharmacy cartel, and the drug companies are legalized monopolies due to drug patents. All of these are corporations whose sole goal is to maximize profits in a totally amoral fashion, and all of them have PR departments that will claim they have the complete opposite motivation that they actually do have. None of them are ever going to actually try to reduce prescription drug prices, but all of them will claim that they are trying as hard as they can and blame everyone else.
This is the intended result of corporate capitalism. It takes the individual out of the picture entirely and shifts the moral responsibility to an entirely amoral, profit-driven entity. When I look at the reaction to Luigi, maybe that's why people like it - they were never ok with the idea that the individuals can't be blamed. The corporation and blameless capitalism generally was created by unelected monarchs hundreds of years ago. No one asked for it and it's time for it to become something that brings individual responsibility back (preferably without the lawless vigilantes).
That's gonna be a big ask. Republicans don't even get the blame for the things they do themselves. Oligarch propaganda is everywhere and pernicious, look at how the average working class American has accepted the notion that low level bureaucrats are the reason they're poor.
Gustav Bauer had no religious affiliation and in any case he did not sign the Treaty of Versailles. It was signed for Germany by Matthias Erzberger, who was also not Jewish. But, those sorts of facts tended to make little difference to the German far right of that time which basically branded everyone they didn't like as Jews.
How are they going to stop it? Republicans have been trying to stop elections since 2017, they're not smart enough to figure out how. They couldn't even figure out how to schedule a press conference about it at the four seasons.