If the Republican Party becomes nonviable, the Democratic Party will take their place with all their policy positions without a second thought. That is what the Democratic Party leadership will do in my opinion.
So many people in this thread defend J.K. Rowling, or at least the Harry Potter works, under the guise that Rowling's anti-trans positions are just an opinion. She does so much more than just talk. She uses her personal fortune made directly from Harry Potter to fund legal attacks on the rights of transgender people in the UK.
Imagine if Elon Musk showed up one day to fund a civil case against you for playing rec league soccer or to get you fired from your job. This is what the beginning of genocide looks like. It may take years to get to the camps and the ovens, but we will get there. Hell, the camps are already built here in the US, and they will house more than the transgender.
https://www.advocate.com/news/jk-rowling-anti-trans-organization
J.K. Rowling is a billionaire, think about that. She has access to a resources on a scale that is unimaginable to most people and uses those considerable resources to actively harm an entire group of people, transgender people, simply for being who they are. I know I am screaming into a void with this comment to you, but the fact that what J.K. Rowling does is standard issue capitalism does not make the feelings of the OP hollow.
Tesla announces earnings miss expectations by 34.89% and the stock trades up after hours. Something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
The NYT Pitchbot cannot keep up with reality moving at a high rate of speed.
[https://bsky.app/profile/nyclabor.bsky.social/post/3lmfcyl2fn22j](NYC Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO)
NABTU President Sean McGarvey: We demand SMART Union apprentice Kilmar Armando Abrego-Garcia be returned to his family. Bring him home now.
What's wrong with facing a primary challenger? Every politician should have to truly face their base every election. It is the height of entitlement to view primary challenges as something worth bringing a civil suit over.
If Carville thinks the current crop of old guard democratic politicians are doing the right thing, what's to fear from a primary?
So apparently this guy died back in 2023, that's on me.
Paleo-conservative is the bullshit peddled by people like Pat Buchanan. They overlap with the "the South will rise again!" people. They are not big fans of Jews. But the larger point stands, all the taxonomy around conservatism is a way to distract from the fascism.
How do these Natalists feel about the African continent?
“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father in heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in Your name, cast out demons in Your name, and done many wonders in Your name?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness!’
Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.
It's getting wild watching MAGA right now.
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
The destruction of property while sparing lives is a form on non-violent resistance.
I love that he has a bell to ring, presumably when he gives up on a movie so he can announce to the room when he's going to get up and walk away from it. His girlfriend/wife already knows what's going to happen. It's been 10 years, and he still hasn't picked up what she's putting down when she asks if he wants to watch Netflix and chill.
So much thinking goes into considering the average person as a Consumer. When someone on the left makes the statement above, even they are accepting that consumer framing. The people sitting in the cab with the levers of power speak of us, the people, as consumers, i.e. those who take and never give. The self appointed locomotive engineers graciously hand out their hard earned gains to us "consumers" to keep the engine turning. Too bad the engineers decided to outsource their own job to Elon Musk, they must've figured it'd be cheaper that way. They definitely don't want to be held responsible when the train pulls into Treblinka, but they'll be dammed if they aren't going to keep collecting that sweet engineer's paycheck.
I posit the following: There is no ethical participation under Capitalism, not for the Workers, not for the Managers, and most definitely not for Capital.
The Worker who works for slave wages and turns around and buys cheap clothes from Amazon or Wal Mart himself buys slave made goods. He perpetuates both the exploitation of the foreign slave and works against his own self interest by feeding the international competition that pushes wages ever lower in the singular, international labor market. Interesting that capital can flow freely across national boundaries, but not labor. I wonder why?
Do I know of this mythical Worker who plies his trade against his own self-interest? Well of course I know him, he's me. So long as this Worker keeps working under the current system, he perpetuates the very system destroying him.
Next up to bat we have the Manager. The Manager demands ever higher amounts of productivity from ever shrinking numbers of Workers while paying ever smaller wages for the work rendered. These folks in the Professional-Managerial Class are our temporarily embarrassed millionaires, and their current class leader is Chuck Schumer, but to be fair to young Chuck, he isn't alone. Leadership is diffuse. The Democratic Party Old Guard represent the interests of the Managerial Class, though they are representing very poorly these days.
The problem now for the Professional-Managerial Class is Capital is now directly after them and theirs, and those folks of the Managerial Class with two eyes and ~three brain cells can see where the train's going, and where they are sitting on that train. Thus even a number of Managers are getting onto Chuck's case, but as can be seen with California's proposed ballot initiative the "Luigi Mangione Act", many if not most of these Managers still think the status quo, with a few minor adjustments, will save them. It won't. Neo-liberal Managerialism is dead, long live the King.
The Workers have a problem here. So long as those in the Professional-Managerial Class look to the Capitol Class with bated breath, awaiting their Golden Ticket into the great Country Club in the Sky, that Managerial Class will betray the Working Class. Mind you, it most definitely is a betrayal. After all, there really is only one Class, the Human Class. We are all human, aren't we?
One could call me a fool for attempting solidarity with the Managers and a hypocrite for saying they only have three brain cells when I like most Workers should only have two. Jokes on them, I have four, the two working cells I stole from my last employer, though my act of theft may have led to his decision to vote for Trump.
Others may find the name of the Professional-Managerial Class to be confusing. We can workshop the idea, maybe give this class concept a new, cool, foreign name. Maybe the French have a good word for it. We've already stolen so much from so many others, what's one more word?
I have saved the best for last, the Capital Class. Where do we find the Capitol Class? Many Workers first look close to home, eying their eternal President of Small Family Business Co., Inc., LLC, Ltd., Etc., Etc. as the Capitalist Enemy. Nothing could be further from the truth. I understand, our good friend the President is a terrible manager, but he is a Manager nonetheless. The President doesn't really own anything, and is likely leveraged up to his eye balls. That nice home and yacht down in Florida probably have notes on them.
The thing is Managers are not the ones in charge here, so who then does our Managerial President answer to? Who is Capital? The banks of course. Our Benefactor at Small Family Business Co., Inc., LLC. Ltd., Etc., Etc. has a line of credit with one or more banks and uses his accounts receivable as collateral. He needs that line of credit to make payroll every week or every other week, and he pays himself from that same line. The President's business profits are really just his salary for managing Small Family Business, drawn from a loan paid off using the fruits of the Worker's labor.
Our most excellent President has a problem though, no matter how much he styles himself the Boss, he's not the Boss. Capitol is loaning him the money, so Capital gets the final say in how the business runs. The banks took a look at the day-to-day operations of Small Family Business and did not like the way the Old Guard Managers ran the place, so meet the New Boss, same as the Old Boss.
The new boss gets to work implementing a proper bank run business, maximizing short-term profits, cutting labor overhead, streamlining the decision-making process. Well the new boss and his party were supposed to implement the banking plan, the banks are just now beginning to see the New Boss is an idiot and his party a bunch of sniveling cowards. Trouble also is what parts of the plan that do get implemented, like going lean on labor, have a deleterious effect on Small Family Business, as these policies have done to all of the bankrupt businesses that have come before.
When we cut all costs to zero, especially labor which is the true source of productivity, what state are we left in? Inanition, or starvation if you prefer. Small Family Business starves from lack of productivity, the Workers just starve.
Despite what I tell you, the banks are not Capitol though. The Workers are Capitol. We the People already own the means of production, we simply need the political will to use eminent domain to reinstate what's already ours.
Some may read this screed and accuse me of Communism. This is hardly the case. You'll never catch me wearing the hammer and sickle. To use those symbols is cultural appropriation, and we as the American people should come up with our own symbols. Maybe we can call our movement Sparkle Motion. I put it to the artists here in the US to get to work on this, don't worry, I'll pay you in exposure.
Forgive any spelling inconsistencies, English is my first language.
My Crazy Conspiratorial Thinking:
Thank you in advance for me stretching Rule 3 to the max, and I apologize if all this is already posted, I feel the need to post it again and comment on it, to better keep the conversation alive.
Nobody understands what is going on in this country right now. Donald Fucking Trump spends the last few weeks cozying up to Putin, trying to throw Ukraine under the bus. He wants Zelenskyy to throw in the towel, all so he can get the Nobel Prize.
Too bad Trump is so stupid he can't see the only way he gets a Nobel Prize is to invade Norway, topple their democratically elected government, arrest or kill the current members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, and install his own handpicked one. I do not condone such actions, by the by.
Donald has a problem though, Ukraine won't give up. They will fight to the death. Marco Rubio already is out there denying we, the United States, will send support to the fucking Russian Federation, which means they're floatin' the trial balloon.
Vladimir Putin and Trump aren't in cahoots, Trump is a child, a literal child, being manipulated by the world's best. Vlad uses Trump's admiration for Putin, for the Strongman, to plant in the child's head, you can get the Nobel Peace Prize if you just help me end this little operation with Ukraine, I'll let you take all the credit. They'll make golden statues of you.
Trump is God's Perfect Fool being led by a bunch of nutjob techno-religious fascists. And yes, they are religious, all of them, even Zuckerberg, especially Zuckerberg.
You know all of the ridiculous hype around AI, these billionaire fucks are true believers. They, with the White Evangelical Christian leadership, think they've found God in the Machine, and they called it AI. David Bowie warned all of us back in 1970.
YouTube Link: Davide Bowie's Saviour Machine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBO0gf27sl8&ab_channel=DavidBowie-Topic
Elon Musk and his merry DOGE minions are using AI, some large language model, to make the government "more efficient". As we can all see, it's not the God they think it is, and High Priest Musk is starting to sweat.
The White Evangelical leadership, despite myself above, doesn't think they've truly found God. They don't believe in God. They believe in Themselves. The White Evangelical leadership is using the chaos generated by the Church of AI to affect a coup in this country. They are a bunch of self serving pricks who are going to flagellate We the People for their sins. Jesus died for their sins, so why can't we as well?
This is my conspiracy theory. Please don't hesitate to prove me wrong, but please do back yourselves up with sources, better than mine, mine being my ass. But this one time, I think my ass actually knows something.
TDLR: Thank you for reading my rant, this is cathartic. Thank you for being my free therapists.
For Diane Feinstein to resign from the Judiciary Committee and for appointing someone else to the committee right now requires unanimous consent, and the Democrats are not going to get that from the Republicans right now. Regardless, the act of replacing someone on a committee is subject to debate and can be filibustered. If Diane Feinstein were to retire or die, that's it, a 10-10 split in the Judiciary Committee until the next Congress, so long as the Republicans refuse to play ball.
I don't plan on going back to Reddit in a major way. After giving Reddit up, I find myself thinking over my experience on that site for the last few years. Engaging commentary was harder and harder to find, particularly in any sub of sufficient size, and I spent a lot of my scrolling through Reddit angry. Leaving Reddit has been a wake up call for me. It's a rat race on Reddit, and I don't need that in my life anymore.
A proper old school union both destroyed businesses that deserved to be destroyed and the ownership that operated said business. That's not insane revolutionary speak, that is real working class history.