Telorand

@Telorand@reddthat.com

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Telorand ,

Sounds like Trump has been listening to somebody who idolizes Ayn Rand.

Telorand ,

Libertarians love to gesture vaguely towards unregulated freedom and even anarchy, as if it's some panacea for society's problems.

Of course, that's usually about as far or deep as their plans go. They think grit and gumption are enough to get us there, somehow, and that we'll all sing kumbaya, if only we'd let capitalism run unfettered and let people use racial slurs and hate speech with impunity.

Telorand ,

Also, doesn't really roll off the tongue, does it? /j

Telorand ,

They can change him! You don't know him like they do!

/s

Telorand ,

Also, it's election season. They're already fractured due to Trump and his sideshow, so doing another multi-round speaker vote while they try to eke out a handful of votes by prostrating themselves, would result in another zombie House doing nothing and would be political suicide for the party as a whole.

Telorand ,

It's a bot

Telorand ,

I don't think it's on purpose, though I agree she'll go on to do grape [sic] things as a blonde muppet in the Conservative griftosphere. I read the transcripts yesterday, and based on her performance, she was using the questions to lead to:

  • A motion for mistrial
  • A motion for recusal

...both of which she attempted in this same fucking trial, like she thought she was Phoenix Wright. The best part, though, is when she objected to evidence presented. A paraphrase:

AH: Objection!

Judge: On what grounds?

AH: It's prejudiced.

Judge: Ms. Habba, all evidence presented by the plaintiff is going to be prejudiced. That's the nature of the evidence.

She literally tried the "because it's damaging to my case" defense! ROFL

Telorand ,

I think it can be both. She's trying to throw the case out (because that eats into "valuable" campaigning time) and she's also trying to make a circus so they can claim persecution, both of which she is failing spectacularly at.

Ultimately, he'll lose no votes, but I'm not interested in that for this particular case. I want to see Trump get the book thrown at him for being a whiny little baby who pathologically can't stop defaming the person he raped.

Telorand ,

Trump's team also did themselves no favors by objecting out of turn, especially after he explicitly ordered "one witness, one lawyer" during a recess.

Telorand ,

It's a spam bot promoting its namesake site.

Telorand ,

I don't mind bots aggregating news. I do mind bots that are for the sole purpose of shameless self-promotion of someone's dumb online "magazine."

Telorand ,

Seriously. Never once have I worried that Joe Biden will start WW3 with a tweet.

Telorand ,

I feel bad for them. Material is scant, what with Trump and Republicans fucking up reality.

Telorand ,

I don't know what's happening behind closed doors, but this is a great illustration of why Millennials and Gen Z are increasingly getting their news from sources other than Mainstream News. It's practically right wing billionaire ghost writing, at this point.

Telorand ,

If you don't vote, you may lose the opportunity next time. Fascists don't exactly like democratic voting systems.

Politics is messy. This just sounds like a bunch of over-privileged naive people who are afraid to get their hands a little dirty.

Your vote isn't a valentine, it's a chess move.

Telorand ,

"For nothing." Lol.

Yeah, surely they're not trying to remove him for clearly and obviously violating the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionists from office. Or trying to put him in prison for stealing top secret documents, lying about having them when the National Archive requested he return them multiple times, showing them to people without clearance, and trying to systematically cover up evidence that he had them. Or asking the Georgia Secretary of State to "find him" the votes he needed to win in 2020.

Bruh, the fuck are you on?

Telorand ,

The problem is there's too many people hoping for the perfect candidate, who will champion their progressive vision, who will guide us into a utopian future. People want their vote to feel good.

But that's a pipe dream. That person only exists in fiction. Real politics is messy, because it's a group endeavor, and you will inevitably have to get your hands dirty if you want your voice heard, or else lose your voice to people who are glad you stayed silent.

Telorand ,

Hey, I feel you. But I don't see what alternative we have. We can wish for something better, but like I once heard an author say, we will often lose on the way to progress, but that doesn't mean the progress isn't worth those losses.

Telorand ,

As someone else in the comments called it, it's "Everybody's Doing It" propaganda.

Telorand ,

True, but before we go making a wishlist, let's remember that it's not even a possibility if Trump wins in November.

If anyone likes these systemic changes, mundane as they may be, remember that at the voting booth.

Telorand ,

And so it begins, the first real steps of Project 2025, with the goal being to consolidate power in the executive branch.

Telorand ,

The goal is to take away the Agency power, after which they'll (eventually) argue that the Executive Branch should just unilaterally decide things. It looks like a neutering of power, but the goal isn't public good.

Telorand ,

Doing something about it has a non-zero chance of success.

Doing nothing about it has a guaranteed chance of failure.

Telorand ,

Effectively 1/3 of the US is Nones (and growing). I don't have the breakdown in front of me, but a sizeable number are "switchers," people who left their childhood religion.

I'm personally now an ex-fundigelical antitheist, so I would relish the opportunity to report them!

Telorand ,

If I hadn't come from an actual cult, I'd have considered this as a real tactic!

Telorand ,

This is not going to go anywhere. "Because the intelligence community is against me" is not an answer to the charge, "Why did you knowingly keep government secrets, show them to people without clearance, lie about keeping them, and attempt to destroy evidence showing that you knew you had them?"

These lawyers should be glad they have Canon as judge, because any other would be giving them sanctions for what is essentially just a political tirade.

Telorand ,

The people you wronged are often adversarial.

Telorand ,

CNN can be relegated to the pile with Newsweek and The Hill. They're riding any previous credibility they had off a cliff, on fire.

Telorand ,

Honestly, it doesn't matter at this point. The debates are only useful for sound bites and headlines.

The other Republicans have no actual shot at winning; 82% still want Trump and don't care about the Hitler larping or whether he's a convicted criminal, a rapist, a fraudster, etc. He's their guy, the monster they always wanted who will exact vengeance upon their always-nebulous "enemy" for a litany of misdirected and mostly-fictitious transgressions.

Telorand ,

His people don't want a debate, they want a rally, something to entertain their vanishingly small minds. The rest of us just want him to shut the fuck up and go away.

Telorand ,

I bet it would be Nikki Haley. Vivek is annoying and not a Christian, and Ron is really weird and only liked in Florida.

And despite being just as unhinged and authoritarian as her comrades, she has some appeal among the moderates.

Telorand ,

Did he? I know Chris did, but I hadn't heard about that!

Telorand ,

It's unfortunate that "Global Warming" was the phrase that got lodged in the public's collective brain, because it's such a terrible summary of what is actually happening, and idiots run with it.

Telorand ,

All fascinating stuff, even if concerning.

I like this video from Gutsick Gibbon that talks a lot about evolution as it relates/related to climate change and what our future may hold if we don't change.

https://youtu.be/uxTO2w0fbB4?si=bYoBldeh02glM9wR

Telorand ,

Will not be sad when this literal mobster dies.

Telorand ,

Or they're in on the grift, somehow. Crooked lawyers, while likely rare, do still exist, as evidenced by the common names that have helped the likes of Alex Jones, Trump, etc. The rest are the greenhorns too naive to know that their career is effectively over, because they're not getting paid and they'll have lost the most important cases for their demigod.

Telorand ,

Grape job, Barnes.

Telorand ,

Cool, so I guess the Race Riots were incorrectly named, and segregation never happened. Phew!

Telorand ,

If Dems keep campaigning on how Republicans are actively trying to remove people's bodily autonomy, restrict people's right to exist, and set up a State Religion, they should be able to overcome voter apathy.

Telorand ,

It's what keeps me from sliding into it myself.

Telorand ,

You'll lose access to games by virtue of lack of support. Systems will change, libraries and dependencies will fall out of sync with requirements, and "the games you love" will be forgotten by devs (though not in all cases).

I used to play a really fun game on MacOS (pre-X) called Glider Pro. There was no easy way to play it, since you'd have to emulate a MacOS 9 system. Only recently did the original devs upload the files to GitHub and open the source. Some smart people then forked the repo and made it playable on various systems.

And that's just one game. Lots more are now lost to time, and yet we've all collectively been able to continue gaming.

Telorand ,

I'm old enough to remember a time before DRM. My point wasn't that it's not valuable to fight for consumer rights, but that some software will inevitably be lost in spite of efforts to preserve it.

It's not an erosion of consumer rights, so much as it's accepting that time comes for us all; hell, I have countless games I'm never going to revisit, and neither is anyone else. Does it truly matter that I own them, if I know I'm not going to play them again?

To be clear, I'm not proposing this model for everything in life, but where games are concerned, I think there's a lot of collectors and archivers who think they speak for people like me, and I'm really just along for the ride.

Telorand ,

I think there's world enough for us all. And that is the indomitable human spirit I can get behind!

Telorand ,

Damn, all that Women's Suffrage...such a sensitive issue, 103 years later.

Telorand ,

I get your original sentiment, though, and I agree that it's not a guarantee that he'll lose. But it's going to be an uphill battle for him, because even if he doesn't lose to a Democrat, he might lose to a less-worse Republican.

Telorand ,

How silly of me.

Telorand ,

Yes, and also, Ted Cruz isn't Abbott. Abbott ran against Beto, who made that gaffe about taking people's guns away. Additionally, the turnout for the gubernatorial election was abysmal. Something like 24-30%, iirc.

Since Nov 2024 is the presidential election, which typically sees at least 60% turnout, and Trump and Republicans have been leaning hard into Fascism and these culture war issues, I expect Ted to have to actually fight for his seat.

I'm not saying he'll definitely lose, but I don't think this is going to be a cakewalk for him.

Telorand ,

Ah, that's interesting. Thanks!

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