He had meetings with Putin without anyone else present while being president. That alone should disqualify him from holding any public office, let alone becoming president again.
Jesus, I get off work and suddenly there are 20 reports on comments about Abbott being in a wheelchair.
Removing ALL of them. You want to make fun of him for being a useless fuck? Go ahead. Pick on him for being emotionally and intellectually bankrupt? Not a problem.
Going after him because he can't walk is low hanging fruit. Do better.
Deleting comments because the mod finds them distasteful then that mod commenting while including the details of the distasteful comments doesn't remove the distasteful content.
Thank you. That was pretty disappointing both how readily they were coming out and how thoroughly they were being supported. Taking a hard stand to not make that the norm is good for the community.
For the unaware: He’s in a wheelchair because a tree branch fell on him while he was jogging. He sued the homeowner where the accident occurred, won millions in the settlement, and even got the homeowner on the hook for lost future earnings. Abbott had just graduated from law school a few months prior to the accident, and argued that since he wasn’t able to work he should be compensated for his future lost earnings. So the homeowner has to pay him a wage of $14k/mo (an amount the judge decided would be fair for a lawyer to make if they were able to work full time) for the rest of his life. Abbott then used that money to kickstart his political career.
The only time it’s “acceptable” to make fun of him being in a wheelchair is when pointing out his hypocrisy, because one of his first acts as a lawmaker was to put a cap on his exact type of settlement, with an exception for himself. So nobody else can get the same kind of massive settlement he did. The dude is the very definition of “pulling up the ladder behind himself.”
Precisely. It’s textbook GOP “fuck you, I got mine” behavior and he should absolutely be shamed with it, if that degenerate had the capacity to feel shame.
Fuck Abbot, and you can still practice law just fine from a wheelchair. But the valuation of the career isn't insane. If he'd actually been hurt in a manner that affected his ability to practice law, it wouldn't be as galling.
Biden could order the military to kill all Republican members of Congress as well as any democrats who would support his impeachment for doing so. He could order the execution of all of their replacements as well. He could even order the execution of governors who appoint congresspeople who don’t support his agenda, and the voters who voted for them.
I’m sure this is exactly what the authors of the constitution intended.
I mean… didn’t they (the founders) like repeatedly ask Washington to be King or President for life at least. It was only because Washington was basically burnt out that he did two terms and those technical limits stuck around until FDR went a bit over it…
I don't think the framers did. A few at least were leery of a transition of power happening at all. Some figured that a revolution would be necessary frequently. But some members of Congress and some prominent figures at the time were asking Washington to stay. I don't know if anyone officially wanted him to stay until he died but they wanted longer. I assume they didn't have much faith in democracy working well enough.
This is why using 'the Founders' as some sort of blanket label doesn't work. There were wildly differing opinions on just about everything, including what the official language should be.
Jefferson agrees with you. In one of his letters to Madison he argued that a “generation” was about 19 years and that a new constitution should be written about that time period. His quote was summoned as “I’m afraid that we’ve tied the men of the future to the men of the past.” Which is rather telling that the guy responsible for the document itself that we still hold up had those ideas 200+ years ago. He knew the framework that was laid out shouldn’t be permanent and that it was flawed no matter what.
They’re wildly complex people, and if you just simply read one document on them they sound either terrible or amazing, but the truth was much more complex. For me, Thomas Jefferson was ahead of his time and knew how history would look back on them. They weren’t ignorant just from a different era.
There weren't any real term limits until FDR, though I don't think there was a need for them prior to him. There may still not be any real reason for it except that his opponents in Congress became sad that the people liked him.
Hilariously, there are very few actual monarchs with that sort of power. They all abused it until the people revolted. These yahoos are trying to create a type of monarchy that even monarchists would never accept.
Medicine and technology questions aside, serfs probably lived better than we do based solely on the number of hours required to work in order to survive.
Historians say they typically got somewhere between 1/3 and 1/2 of the year off work. Not the only metric in the world but damn that's a stark difference especially if you're an American.
But they shouldn’t be mere comic fodder, nor accepted as normal: They are a worrisome sign about a leading presidential candidate. If Trump can’t manage to stay awake during a trial when his very freedom is on the line, what are the chances that he will be able to focus on the intricacies of a spiraling regional war, a trade policy, or any new crisis that might face him if he returns to the White House?
This kind of bizarre hypothetical is so 2016. We are WAY past that. What are the chances he’ll be able to focus? Seriously? NONE! Just like last time!
Again, we all know the answer, so what is the friggin point of asking that question? Atlantic are you casting about for the mythical undecided voter or some other ridiculous thing?
Yeah, he’s not all there, no kidding. He’s a demented rapist fraud with thick slimy orange makeup who smells like shit. And he’s demanding to be instated as king! Why are you still - after ALL the shit he’s already pulled, after all you already know with 100% certainty - why are you still writing about him as any sort of normal person?
I can only come up with one reason, and it’s not a good one.
Yeah yeah right, as if he's ever gonna see a prison cell from the inside. He might be an idiot but even he knows how corrupt and stupid the american justice system is.
Ah good ol’ Alex Acosta, the only state prosecutor to include the generous provision “or all the other crimes we might almost certainly find later” included in the plea deal. FFS.
This is a dangerous lie. Sure, Trump doesn't know history, and the people voting for him don't know history, but Trump's just a face. He's not capable of coherent thought, let alone policy. The Heritage Foundation think-tank that drafted up Project 2025 though? They're smart and evil. Don't look at the gibbering idiot, keep your eyes on the puppeteer.
Christianity as we know it was canonized shortly after the emperor of Rome converted.
Unsurprisingly, they canonized traditions portraying a divine monarchy for which patriarchal monarchies on Earth were effectively a mirror. The emperor was picked by God to rule and that form of rule reflects the divine.
They excluded texts that had Jesus suggesting a very different attitude towards dynastic monarchies, such as this gem from a text eventually banned from possession on penalty of death (we only have this line because a single person buried a copy in a jar in the 4th century which survived):
Jesus said, "Let one who has become wealthy reign, and let one who has power renounce it."
Gospel of Thomas saying 81
While less progressive by modern stances, if this were said during Pilate's reign it would have been extremely transgressive. Tiberius, the emperor at that time, was the first emperor effectively inheriting the kingdom rather than ruling because of accomplishments and while initially mismanaging it, by the time Pilate was appointed Tiberius had just completely abandoned the role to go party all the time, but never relinquishing the role of emperor to another.
So a statement about how someone should be appointed to rule based on merit and not birth, and that those who rule should relinquish the power rather than hold it indefinitely - was quite the rebellious kind of sentiment. The sort of thing which might even get the person saying it publicly killed by the Roman empire.
Unfortunately, that sentiment wasn't preserved and instead "monarchy is divine" got amplified, which contributed to millennia of human suffering and now today the evangelicals are frothing at the mouth to reinstate a supposed divine monarchy on Earth, and the neo-fascists have co-opted that movement.
Exactly this. The only change has been that they've started to say the quiet part out loud. Their political behavior hasn't especially changed, they're just not bothering to be any shade of discrete anymore.
He literally waged a war on trees after this, overriding protections in Austin for heritage live oaks to try to allow developers to cut them down for parking lots. Abbott is a a psychopath who has no business holding public office!
Also, Conservatives: "Imma regulate everything and everyone I disagree with, for any reason that pisses off my snowflake ass"
Who would've thought that a political ideology founded on "conserving" the monarchs and their crony 0.01%-ers post-revolution would turn out to be so authoritarian and anti-democratic...
Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition ... There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.
And the overwhelming majority of those kids have up to this point, never given two shits about what has been going on over there before this last year.
Bandwagoning political idealism is cringy as fuck not to mention dangerous.
Ya it's way better to stay ignorant to the shitty stuff your country does in the world than gain awareness of new issues. It's cool to support a genocide.
Yeah, there a huge difference when kids cherry pick the issues they want to be upset about and then use those issues as an excuse to not vote.
I never said if ignorance is better. I said they don’t give a shit until it’s cool to be seen giving a shit. Maybe they should try always giving a shit. I’d bet we’d be a lot better of if these idealists worked 24/7. Instead of every four years.
The situation with Palestine and Israel is shit and has been shit for a long time now. Hamas are a bunch of bastards that are standing up against another bunch of bastards. They both suck and neither Hamas nor Israel should be shown any support at all. It's like when the USSR fought the Nazis in WW2, neither option there was good, and just because the Nazis were slightly worse doesn't mean the USSR deserved support.
That said while Hamas absolutely doesn't deserve any support, Palestine and the Palestinian people absolutely do, and the way they've been treated by Israel even before the current situation is terrible. The current situation is so much worse though, with Israel just going full mask off genocide now.
Even if the US isn't going to get involved in that conflict directly the least we could have done is just not support Israel, don't provide them with weapons, shut the fuck up when other countries start accusing them of war crimes and genocide. Instead we're doing the exact opposite, sending weapons to Israel and using our international clout to shield them.
Critism of US policy towards Israel has been a growing with the left for years. Now, a major change in the facts on the ground have made it a much more salient issue.
The left, yes. Not these kids that are bandwagoning shit. Because I’ve yet to meet anyone one the left that would refuse to vote over single-issue drama.
I'm a Joe hater, and a voter of Joe Biden, and I agree with @mozz . I plan to vote for Joe Biden, but campaign against AIPAC-endorsed candidates in favor of democratic candidates willing to be critical about Israel without stepping over the line like "From the river to the sea" chant. Oct 7 happened, and abuses from Israel settlers happened.
The half whos never gonna vote for him because hes a democrat. Biden loses votes when he moves rightward and none of the right is coming to fill in the void.
And this isn’t some conspiracy theory. Read the Federalist Papers and you’ll find they didn’t want an unruly mob making decisions. Hence why senators were picked by states originally, and why there’s an electoral college instead of popular vote for president.
And it's high time all this was fixed. Just because some dudes 250 years ago thought a system of government was good, doesn't mean it's still adequate today.
In the DC case Trump's lawyers are arguing that he can't be criminally charged unless he's impeached and removed first.
In the Georgia case, Trump's lawyers are claiming that he can't be charged because he was already impeached for that action and that's double jeopardy.
Ignore for the second that the Georgia crime is not what he was impeached for. Trump's lawyers are arguing that you can't charge a President unless you impeach him, but also impeaching him means that you can't charge the President.
Money to bribe them to stop? Realistically they’ll go until they feel safe. Do you know what else should help them feel safe? More ammo for their anti middle defense. More infrastructure to rebuild the wall. More surveillance to prevent the next attack. None of which is an offensive weapon against Palestinians
None of that will help until they stop oppressing Palestinians. You can't security or military solution your way out of making enemies out of an entire population. Even lots of Israelis realize that Netanyahu's solution isn't working, they need to work on a diplomatic solution, one state or two state, something.
I'll do both. Dude's a crippled Nazi that can't stand up for himself, and is running Texas into the dirt. Unfortunately, he's shown that he can roll with the punches.
I'm not taking shots at disabled people, just the one right now. I have shadenfreude from Paxton not being able to walk. If someone else that takes that as an insult, that sucks for them. If Paxton fell out of his chair and couldn't get up, and I was the only person around that could help, I'd laugh at him, tell him this is karma, and skip away, because I can.
You're telling all the disabled people here that their condition is something worth mocking. The fact that you are doing it to someone who's also shitty doesn't change that. It's no different than fatshaming trump or being racist towards candace owens, make fun of them for shit that's actually bad and doesn't let people know you're a bigot
Oh great, we've reached the casually throwing around slurs part of this productive conversation. Really showed everyone that it's just this one guy you don't respect.
I have a cousin in an electric wheelchair, she'll never not be in one. She intentionally runs into people on the street just so the normies apologize to her out of a misplaced sense of fault. She thinks it's fucking hilarious. If she has that good of a sense of humor, why can't you?
we are on the verge of civil war, a world-killing environmental crisis, and the return of fascism. your petty social justice concerns over words do not matter. take a back seat, kid.
punks like you aren't going to win the war if you're worried about hurting somebody's feelings. we've got bigger issues to deal with. take a back seat, kid.
Yup, truly nothing is tougher than getting your panties in a bunch when people ask you to be more polite (aka not a blatant fucking bigot). You're not a leftist, you're a republican gun humping larper in an ushanka x3
You are just too much x3 I haven't gotten this good a laugh out of an internet though guy in a long time, thanks a lot, it genuinely makes me feel better :3
you can hide behind your coy, calmer-than-you-are internet BS, but we both know the truth - IRL you are a feckless little man that would submit in a heartbeat.
I think that they'd all rather be Sarah Palin than Donald Trump. Get famous enough that you can spend the rest of your days as a Fox/OAN talking head and 'best selling' author.
Have y'all heard about Trump being the antichrist? I'm not religious but it's eery how closely it matches up. So many specifics that can't just be made up.
Revelations was written down a few decades after Nero's famously-poor rule of the Roman Empire, and there had been plenty of poor leaders in living memory. There have been plenty of boastful liars who gained power in history, and so many of them have had similar comparisons drawn.
And the antichrist characteristics they describe are a selection of the ones he fits, without including those he doesn't. He hasn't (pretended to) come back from the dead, and isn't connected obviously to the number 666, for example.
That he fits into some of the classic descriptions of dangerously bad leaders doesn't seem eerie to me, but unsurprising. He's a classic con man.
I’m sure if I divide the numbers of bottles of tanner he uses on his face by the number 45, and multiple it by 13… it would end up 666! CHECKMATE… somebody.
No president has ever won an election to become president again after losing once. This is about as close to political resurrection as one can imagine.
The Revd Professor David Parker, Professor of New Testament Textual Criticism and Palaeography at the University of Birmingham, said on Tuesday that the possibility that the sign of the Beast was 616, not 666, was considered by Irenaeus in the second century, but he rejected it.
Referring to the newly examined text he said: “This adds weight to those who believe that it is a reference to Caligula’s attempt to desecrate the Temple in Jerusalem, by having his statue erected there as part of the cult of emperor worship.
“There may be a reference to it in Mark [13.14], where he refers to the ‘the abomination of desolation’. But this was overlaid by the Neronian persecutions. People believed that you could get from ‘666’ to Nero because in Greek he is the emperor Neron Caesar. And 666 is one number less than the perfect 777.
“The text is quite legible to the naked eye. It was published in 1999, but it has taken people time to catch up,” he said. www.papyrology.ox.ac.uk
The article says it's a possibility, not a proven fact.
And the antichrist characteristics they describe are a selection of the ones he fits, without including those he doesn't. He hasn't (pretended to) come back from the dead, and isn't connected obviously to the number 666, for example.
The article actually specifically mentions both coming back from the dead (Covid) and 666 (Kushner).
Dont get me wrong, I'm not saying they aren't tenuous and I'm 100% not saying he is the literal antichrist. But its not accurate to say they dont include that stuff
“Papyrus 115 (which is the oldest preserved manuscript of the Revelation as of 2017), as well as other ancient sources like Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus, give the number of the beast as χιϛ or χιϲ, transliterable in Arabic numerals as 616 (χιϛ), not 666”
Seriously though, that's almost too on the nose. If I believed in that stuff I'd be scared to death of this guy. I mean I am scared of him, but not because of this but it's fucking eerie how close all of that fits.
I mean, it's an interpretation, so part of it is what the author thinks. For example, "he was bent on conquering", but the author says he's competitive and likes to win.
Personally I'd say a conqueror would have more to do with invading other countries, but maybe that doesn't fit Trump as well. Or does it..?
If I believed in that stuff I'd be scared to death of this guy.
Counterpoint: evangelicals do believe he's the antichrist and actually want him to bring on the end times in order to trigger the rapture so they can check out early and reunite with all the dead believers "in the clouds, to meet the lord in the air"
They're an accelerationist death cult, and their scheme only works if we all go down with them. They know how bad trump is, they know he fits the bill as their antichrist, and they're gambling our entire planet and life as we know it on their little fairytale stories. Not to mention all the non-believers that even within the evangelical belief system would just be fucking smited I guess or go on living in the apocalypse if their rApTuRe were to ever happen.
It's very similar with the climate. There's that certain subset of religious accelerationist zealots who are well aware as to what's happening with the climate and want it to happen, because that'll bring back Jesus or something. Just ignore that those same people would end up lynching Jesus for being brown.
Yep, that's what I was trying to touch on with the "gambling our entire planet" bit.
Anyways, I'm calling it now. The rapture is going to be nuclear holocaust and their "uniting with dead believers and the lord" is just going to be everyone on the planet fucking dying and receiving whatever final judgement they believe in.
At least that's what I imagine some dude in a desert 2000 years ago, who thought he was receiving divine images and words from god, that were actually just regular old premonitions of a Donald Trump-like figure bringing in the end-times via some sudden catastrophic event, could only comprehend as a divine culling. I also imagine that if quantum physics and wormhole theory have any merit in this discussion, the energy spent by a nuclear holocaust and subsequent death of humanity could conceivably send those visions/experiences back in time to that dude 2000 years ago. I'm not a physicist or anything though, so I suppose my guess is as good as the fundies' lol
Don’t for one second give credibility to Christianity. Every word in those god forsaken books can be twisted and turned to fit whatever narrative you want them to.
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