DJT: “I thought ‘the buck stops here’ means I get to keep all the money.”

We are so far past all the “but he can’t do that!”, “that would be illegal” bullshit now. This is a fascist regime. The rule of law no longer applies.

I hope we all realize by now that Dump doesn’t give a shit whether something is legal or whether he has the legal authority to do it. He just does it. He doesn’t care if one day in the future some court will say, “Oh you shouldn’t have done that.” By the time courts can do anything, it’s far too late–the damage was already done. He has the support of the Congress which is controlled by repubs. The courts either go along with his corruption or he just ignores them. I read yesterday that they’re going to carve his name directly into the marble facade of the Kennedy Center, ignoring the courts. ICE and his concentration camps violate all kinds of laws every day and nothing is done to stop it. He’s put billions of our taxpayer dollars into his own and his cronies personal pockets.

So can we please stop with the “don’t worry, he doesn’t have the authority to do that” stuff?

He’s been saying out loud that he’ll declare a state of emergency, which lets him do whatever the hell he wants. But people will still be surprised because most people just can’t conceive of it. I don’t expect armed guards while voting is going on (though wouldn’t be surprised) as much as I expect the state of emergency declaration, and armed teams of Fed agents will sweep into selected polling places (dem-heavy precincts) and confiscate the ballots and/or voting machines.

So unless states have taken measures to physically protect their ballots with force against Feds (exceedingly unlikely), this will be very easy for them to do. They’ll allow ballots in repub-heavy precincts to be counted and/or let the election be declared invalid or whatever, it won’t matter as long as they disrupted the ability to count all the votes.

And that $2.2B is just what he reported on his taxes–i.e. the technically legal income.

I love that we’re finally getting good progressive candidates and I only hope we’re not one election cycle too late for a free and fair election.

If at all possible, everyone who can should vote early at the election center to make sure whatever fascist plans they have in store will not interfere with your vote, especially in swing states and Dem-leaning districts. Help others vote early by giving rides or otherwise helping them get there.

Don’t depend on mail-in ballots and be concerned about election-day voting at polling places. If you have to wait until the day, go as early as possible. They can’t be everywhere the whole time so their plans will be to pick the places their interference will have the most impact.

Unfortunately, he’ll be in a long line and either nothing will happen or it go on for years.

All candidates are not the same and candidate quality is very important, as much as policy positions. Some great DSA and DSA-aligned candidates have won their primaries, endorsed by Bernie and AOC. But in their judgement they both decided not to endorse Hong.

John Phillips had made it through TSA, had his ID checked and went through facial recognition before agents stopped him as he was boarding, he said.

He says after about five minutes in handcuffs, agents found his Georgia ID and showed him a picture of the man they were actually looking for. “He looks nothing like me, other than that he’s a white guy and I’m a white guy,” Phillips said

Delta and TSA were cooperating with ICE, so at any time through this process, ICE could have examined his ID and compared their faces and everything they needed to figure out he wasn’t the guy they were looking for, but it was only after they “pinned him to the wall and put him in handcuffs” and screamed at him, did they look at his ID and decide he wasn’t their guy.

What this tells us is that they went through with roughing him up, terrifying him, and inducing PTSD just because they wanted to and knew they could get away with it. They knew he wasn’t the person they were looking for, but they weren’t going to pass up a chance to have their fun. Sick pieces of shit.

Yes, when the article was published in the newspaper of a city in that very US state of Georgia, there is no need to doubt, or to specify. Do you seriously expect a newspaper in Atlanta, GA writing about a local election should specify that it’s not talking about another country?

So that means they must have thought Iran would shoot his plane down. I guess they considered the poor suckers flying on the Air Force One expendable. I wonder if anyone told them about it.

edit: Oh, per the article the answer is No, of course they didn’t:

On this occasion, the journalists who thought they were traveling with Trump on the older Air Force One reported being advised to keep their window shades in the press cabin closed. The Post said aside from ‌reporters, some White House staff also believed the president was on board.

When asked later by reporters why they had to keep their shades shut during the flight, Trump said it was because they were “probably on ​a dangerous flight”. He went onto say: “But if I go, you go. Right?”

I think it would mostly balance out though, for individuals. Right now, their greed is boundless because they keep practically all profit made so nothing mitigates their desire for more, more, more.

But when they know they only get to keep 8% of what they make beyond a certain point, they won’t have as much motivation to keep squeezing more and more out of their customers (or whatever the money source is). As the tax rate increases with income, an equilibrium would be approached where they wouldn’t consider it worth the effort to keep pushing for more, knowing there’s a functional limit to just how much wealth they can accumulate after that point.

I agree with you that this only addresses part of the problem. Another important legislative step is to take back control over corporations and forbid monopolies again! We used to, but the antitrust and other laws controlling their growth and power have been effectivley dismantled and now we’re in a new gilded age.

Those two things could be implemented quickly, along with eliminating some of the more egregious tax loopholes. Then over time reform (or replace) the whole tax code (enormous task).

Yeah but taxing the hell out of them helps with lowering production of them. The highest bracket tax rates used to be >90%

Why does anyone think there are still chances left?

edit: to clarify, I mean there are no more chances to “halt the erosion of US democracy”–it done eroded already. We’re starting over now. The only thing we don’t know yet is whether the coming elections will be free and fair. If they are, we can start rebuilding with a new movement to replace the old failed parties. If not, other steps will wind up being taken, one way or another.

They can afford to lose one GOP vote and still get this sleazeball confirmed. (or 2 if Fetterman pulls a Fetterman). Or maybe it’s 2 they can lose, but either way:

Because Collins’ Senate seat is the most in jeopardy, she is the one chosen to be allowed to vote against him. It’s all planned in advance. If they couldn’t afford to lose her vote, she would definitely vote for him.

Murkowski is putting on a show of thinking about voting No (as usual), but you can be sure she’ll vote ultimately yes (as usual).

Likewise the 2 repubs who had been holding him up in committee, Cornyn and Tillis, were always going to vote for him. They just wanted to put on a little show to pretend like maybe, just maybe, they wouldn’t. Blanche’s “agreement” not to do the slush fund will only last about 5 minutes after his confirmation.

God I hate all this shit.

And remember when you learn emacs to also learn org-mode!

Sorry to interject with a different opinion but I think it would only be confusing for OP to take that advice about starting out with evil-mode, especially if they’ve never even used Vim before. Evil mode is fine for someone who has become used to Vim and wants to continue using its keybindings, but not for other emacs beginners.

IMO new users should learn emacs with its default keybindings, the way it was designed, to avoid confusion and get the most out of it and understand how it actually works. Then change any keybindings you don’t like to whatever you prefer. Then later if you want, experiment with things like modal editing by trying out Evil mode or meow or Xah flykeys, etc.

Same. We were out all day, no one knew where we were. No cell phones. Go home by dark for supper.

This makes absolutely no sense.

Note that this article doesn’t mention who the people they’re quoting voted for, or anything about their political views.

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