Voting in elections is like breathing. The next one is always the most important one of your lifetime.
The last important one was in 1980. The people celebrated their own destruction as they counted the days when they would be the millionaires inflicting themselves on society.
Fucking suckers.
Big capital owns both parties now, the literal 5ish spoilers between both chambers that the neoliberals hate more than their opposition party can’t do a thing in a sea of hundreds of well bribed, oh I’m sorry “donated,” sycophants. There’s no escape under the current framework.
Worse, we’ve used our massive hard and soft geopolitical power since then to make the rest of the world as exploitative, sociopathic, and greedy as us, and we’ve been wildly successful at it.
Look up Jerry Falwell and his ‘Moral Majority.’
Falwell was a TV preacher who decided he wanted to get into politics. He had a simple formula to take over the GOP. The Party depends on small local clubs to do all the little things like getting petitions signed and driving folks to the polls on election day. Those clubs pick local office holders like sheriffs and county clerks.
Falwell told his people to show up at those clubs whenever there was a decision to be voted on. If there’d been twenty folks there for the last vote, Falwell’s ‘Moral Majority’ would show up with fifty. Pretty soon Jerry had a lot of local folks in his pocket. Those soon became Congressmembers and Governors.
AOC did it in one Congressional district.
If they owned the elections they wouldn’t be trying so hard to stop people from voting.
The last important one was in 1980.
I think millions of people are about to find that the last important one was a month ago now. Especially all the ones that are about to be put in concentration camps and the ones who care about those that are about to be put in concentration camps.
By “important” I meant our overall trajectory and our ability to change it.
Every election has consequences for many, what I meant was that, imho the conversion of the former opposition to neoliberals, and the codification of legal political bribery that started with the creation of the Federalist society in the 80s that culminated in Citizens United means fight over social rights all you want, beat yourself bloody poories, the economy is no longer something the people have a say in under the current government.
The economy is the core rot that breeds desparation, which leads to hatred, which leads to scapegoating. The conditions are right for Trump, and if not Trump, someone like him, because of the effective economic dictatorship of our oligarchs.
As you said IF we’re permitted a vote again, we’ll keep electing “strongman” archetypes like trump out of ignorant desparation(no different than Germany post ww1 because of sanctions), and we’re desperate because we’re largely not benefitting from the value we’re generating by design.
Without making the economy work for society, we’ll keep circling back to fascism until it destroys us, and we no longer have the means to change the economy because almost anyone and everyone can be bought by those with effectively infinite sums in the light of day now to keep their exploitation in place.
democracy is when you let a bunch of unelected elders in robes dictate how society operates
They don’t entirely, though. In fact, much of what the SCOTUS has struck down has been them saying Congress needs to do their job and write laws to do what they want the laws to do, versus having the SCOTUS legislate from the bench. Don’t get me wrong, this SCOTUS is fucking awful, but there’s some slight truth to some of what they’ve said on some of their rulings. For example, Roe v Wade could’ve easily become a national law, but Congress won’t do it.
It’s bad when even RBG was saying roe shouldn’t have been used as law. The dems have had a ton of times to solidify it into law via the proper channels but won’t because it gets votes.
Have they, though?
It wasn’t because it gets votes, but because it loses votes. People will strongly object to one thing a hell of a lot faster than they’ll give you credit for doing anything. Look at Biden’s entire administration. We handled post-covid inflation* better than any other developed nation, but he didn’t get credit for the 90% he fixed. He got shit on for the 10% left to go.
* And I’d argue a good chunk of that inflation was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), the bipartisan bill Trump signed into law while rejecting the oversight the Dems wanted. That was the biggest corporate giveaway in our nation’s history. Literally just giving public money to private corporations. A step far beyond “privatize profits, socialize losses”.
Dems believed, reasonably, that Roe was settled and wasn’t in imminent danger. Holding a vote on that just pushes people away. Of course, in hindsight, they should have done it anyway. But as you can tell from this past election, and all the states that went red while passing women’s rights legislation, having the issue out there is not getting them votes.
There is probably 1% of dems who are pro-life. The mass majority is pro-choice. This is like saying people who vote repubs are anti-gun. Dems have had a ton of chances to solidify it into law, which is way harder to remove.
This only sounds reasonable until you think about it for 2 seconds. Do you really want the Senate and Congress to have to learn about and try to legislate the details of chemistry, medicine, finance, engineering, etc, rather than delegating figuring out the details of tasks like “make the food safe” or “make the water clean” to scientists and other experts at agencies?
Notice how I emphasized “some” twice in my comment. It wasn’t a catch-all statement.
Roe v Wade would take a super majority and Dems had that for 4 months in the last 44+ years. Obama used that to get the ACA through. Not easy at all.
The Supreme Court only has the power it does because the legislature has been dysfunctional. Most of their terrible decisions are not based on the constitution, but rather their interpretation of laws written by Congress. Congress can easily override them by passing a law saying “No, that Is not what we meant”.
An incompetent Supreme Court would fit your argument.
But what about a malicious court doing destructive things a paralyzed congress could not possibly fix?
Your thinking of a plutocracy or a senate.
“Separation of powers” is an incredibly nonsensical concept. If we live in a democracy then the democratically elected legislature should have total power. The idea that unelected judicial branch can dictate policy is indeed anti-democratic, the judicial branch should be wholly subervient to the legislature. The same is true of the executive branch, the executive branch also should be wholly subservient to the legislature. Giving a single guy control over the whole freaking military and making the branch roughly independent is also entirely nonsensical. It has happened historically in the past in several countries that the executive just tells the military to attack the legislature and the country collapses into a dictatorship. This literally almost happened in South Korea literally today, although the president backed down at last moment. Any country with separation of powers is already borderline a totalitarian dictatorship, since it just takes a single crazy executive to decide to pack the courts and disband the legislature solely for their own personal gain and the whole thing falls apart.
Lol remember signing our supreme court justice approvals. Fucking silly us.
I’m just glad Obama rolled over and allowed Mitch McConnell to steal a seat. Because the decorum that preserved really helped this country.
“When they go low, we go high.” is a saying I’ll remember for ever and teach others…
As an ominous warning to never, ever, EVER be an Honest Man in a lying contest.
Senate was under republican control, Obama wasn’t getting any justices confirmed.
Refusing to hold a hearing could have been interpreted as de facto confirmation.
No it couldn’t. The Senate has to confirm them, and McConnell refused to hold a confirmation vote. There wasn’t a damn thing Obama could do about it.
It would be setting precident and Democrats refuse to ever do that.
It’s argued at length here.
That argument sounds nice but it wouldn’t hold up. POTUS can’t just impose an arbitrary deadline. Unfortunately the constitution is too vague and has a lot of untested loopholes like that. Still, I agree they should have at least tried to argue it and get a ruling on it for future reference.
One thing the Dems need to learn from the Repubs is that you should go down fighting, don’t cede even when you’re 99.5% sure to lose on an issue. Even though repubs have lost most of the time, they’ve gotten away with some shit with that strategy and it moves the overton window on what is considered possible, making it gradually more likely to get away with even more.
It wouldn’t hold up to whom? The Senate? I’d like to say that even Democrats could spin that in their favor, but maybe they are that weak. The Supreme Court? What exactly would they do about it? Remember the national guard enforcing integration? The court has no enforcement arm, so just have the national guard escort and physically seat the new judge. All through the process, keep pounding on the message that the Senate is free to step up and do their duty at any point they choose.
You don’t think Republicans would play it that way? I think that will seem pretty damn tame next to what we are likely to see in January.
Obama was just like Joe by his second term, he was a piece of shit that did next to nothing. Fuck the democrats (after thoroughly fucking the conservatives, of course). We deserve better than these shitty fucking parties that do nothing for the people.
Voters allowed trump to stack it?!
Obama didn’t fight for his pick because the party wanted to use it to motivate voters to vote for Hillary, which didn’t work.
McTurtle refused to vote to confirm, and legally all that needs to happen is the Senate has an opportunity to vote to confirm. Obama had a year to say:
“I take no vote to mean no objections, Merrick Garland is on the SC”
Except Garland probably wouldn’t be that much different than Trump’s picks.
Stop blaming the voters for stupid shit the only option we have to vote for keeps doing.
The party refused to pressure Breyer & RBG to step down. Obama refused to play hardball with Garland.
Biden negotiated with himself and cut debt forgiveness to 10K. Then the SC strikes it down
, and he throws his hands up and walks away. I’m old enough to remember when Trump’s obviously unconstitutional muslim ban got banned and he rewrote it and tried again until it stuck. It didn’t fully take until the third try. Then he expanded it twice.[Edit: I looked it up and he did give it another go, my b]
Biden didn’t give up on debt forgiveness, he pushed 20 different forgiveness schemes instead of trying to get the original 1 scheme reapproved
Yep
It’s because the same billionaires/corporations donate to both parties.
If a moderate wins, the most they’ll do is “try” they were paid too much money to actually succeed, so they do the bare minimum till people stop complaining they didn’t do anything.
And the donors know that means a republican will likely win the next election, which is their preference anyways.
The moderate wing of the party only exists to make sure the wealthy never lose and we never really win.
The biggest problem is the donors can say, “what about your constitutes? Fuck um, they’re not going to do shit.”
Then we don’t do shit.
and legally all that needs to happen is the Senate has an opportunity to vote to confirm. Obama had a year to say:
“I take no vote to mean no objections, Merrick Garland is on the SC”
From what I know (not much) this is a creative take on it. The Senate needs to confirm. If they don’t confirm then the judge is not placed. I welcome expert legal scholars to weigh in but afaik what you said is wrong.
Obama could have temporarily placed the judge but that would have only lasted until the end of his term.
If there’s one thing that’s clear…
It’s that people vote Republican because they legit don’t know how politics works.
And people stay home because they do understand how politics works.
Low Voter Turnout = GOP Victory, so no
Not true this election. Trump won with first time voters. True in prior elections though. It’s almost like it’s time for the Democrats to find some new strategies.
Yeah… unfortunately PragerU worked…
The right wing disinformation machine is particularly good at taking the same propaganda and repackaging it for a dozen different channels, each aimed at different audiences. I think PragerU is aimed at the dumbest adults who can still dress themselves.
It sadly works.
Found a friend of mine who suddenly supports the Supreme Court potential ban on gender affirming care. He basically accused the “transgender movement” of going to far, and claimed that “Europe has actually been second guessing it themselves, and there are so many reports out now saying it’s bad for you.”
I was confused by this, so I did a little digging, just to make sure I wasn’t stuck in an echo chamber.
Here’s what I found: The only report claiming gender affirming care is bad is the Cass Report from the UK, which was cherry picked to hell and back, overseen by the Tories (a very Anti-Transgender party of an Anti-Transgender country), and contradicted by a more recent report from France that has no such criticism. The claims that “Europe has turned its back on the transpeople they once accepted!” was… Misleading at best.
It was a sneaky lie by omission.
When most people say “Europe” in American News Outlets they’re referring to the European Union. In order to get the “Europe having second thoughts” narrative, they mostly had to count Russia and several Eastern European Arabic countries, the former which has a blanket ban and the latter consider it “Impersonation of another gender”, which you guessed it is a death sentence.
The EU, which is what most News Outlets refers to when they say “Europe”, is not “Second guessing transpeople”, outside of Spain banning trans-athletes which they caught a lot of flack for. France and Norway seem especially Transfriendly.
I basically had to say “Oh no! 500 studies saying Gender Affirming care is necessary from Scientists or one written in crayon from a PragerU coffee boy, it’s so hard to tell which ones are telling the truth!”
I wish I could say I opened his eyes, but he stuck to his guns that “Transpeople need to learn to compromise”
But when the compromise is “Stop existing, and maybe we’ll let you wear panties behind closed doors every now and then.”, why the hell would we do that? If anything I was convinced the trans rights movement hasn’t gone far enough. We cannot accept a “How about we only kill three million jews?” style compromise from the Nazis.
I mean the whole “Starting off a presentation with Ladies and Gentlemen is basically a hate crime” wackos are still idiots, but every group has their weirdos, and ours are the twitter people, or are they the bluesky people now?
And this is why repubs want to shut down the Dept. of Education. We already stopped teaching Civics/Government in schools a long time ago, which has led us to this current level of ignorance about how our government works and what powers the president does and doesn’t have. For the last year(s) I’ve seen comments demanding Biden do this or that thing he has no authority to do (even thinking he can order other countries’ leaders to do what he wants!). They think it means he just doesn’t want those things to happen.
They think POTUS is supposed to be a king who just has to decree whatever he wants and it happens, no matter what the other 2 equal branches of government do. They want a king, dammit! So they voted for a king. They elected Trump who will throw out the Constitution and be a king for them. Enjoy having a king, suckers.
There does seem to be a disparity between what biden can do and trump can do though doesnt there.
When government is functioning as it was designed, the checks and balances work, and a POTUS who does not respect the law would be checked, impeached, and/or removed. But when an entire party that is in power not only refuses to act as a check, but willingly does his bidding, then the law-breaking POTUS is effectively a king.
We have examples in the past, like Nixon, who was forced to resign under threat of impeachment by his own party. We have an example today, of the president of South Korea, cancelling his declaration of marital law under pressure from both the opposition and his own party.
The Constitution is an agreement, governing with the consent of the governed. Once the majority of those in power refuse to abide by the Constitution and rule of law, then it is no longer worth the paper it’s written on and we no longer have a functioning democratic republic. That is where we are.
Isnt biden ignoring popular will to back israel an example of democrats doing the same thing? Everyone’s acting like democrats follow all the rules and republicans break them all.
I would say, yes. However that is foreign policy. That doesn’t make it better in any regards just easier to stomach. Biden supporting Israel could be some bigger game that I’m not seeing, doubtful, or pull us into a war that we don’t want to be in defending a genocidal country… Much more likely. But it doesn’t affect my day to day.
Trump and the Republicans supporting isolationist policies affect my day to day. It makes getting clothing and appliances more expensive. Cars become more expensive if we need to buy one again. Medicine produced overseas becomes more expensive.
It also lets traditional adversaries of the beliefs I hold, such as self determination and governance, run rampant. To clarify, I’m thinking Ukraine war in particular there. But also the Republicans support Israel unfailingly and it’s fucked up there too. In both cases people who want to govern themselves are not being allowed to do so by the force of a larger neighbor.
So both sides suck for foreign policy, but one sucks worse and the one that sucks worse is also throwing everything into chaos domestically. Our family is well off enough we can likely weather the storm, pay off or mortgage if we have to, etc. But even we are looking at the future with concern and trepidation. We just upgraded a computer we were going to wait another year or two to upgrade because who knows what it will cost to upgrade it in the future. We are looking at our clothes and making sure we’re good there and generally preparing to spend less. It’s a frightening position to be in because I moved into the middle class during Biden. And this upcoming economic uncertainty is really shaking me in a way I never could have expected. I’m the past I never would have been able to plan ahead for expenses… Now I can and suddenly I’m finding that we will need to be more careful in what we buy and spend on. It’s a wild feeling and I know I’m not alone in feeling it. The movement of money is going to slow under Trump. That is going to have ripple on effects long after his term is over.
I got to rambling a bit but I hope this helps answer your question.
There is, for sure, but that is a bit like arguing there is a disparity in what a good driver and bad driver can get away with.
The good driver gets away with more because people will give them the benefit of the doubt, and they can put up a front that they do care, whether its true or not.
That’s just simple entropy. It’s far easier to be destructive than it is to be constructive.
He could go destroy union regulations making different kinds of labour action illegal.
If you listen and believe the incoherent ramblings and lies of one particularly large, wrinkly, and orange anal sphincter and his allied gang of extortionists and sexual predators, sure.
I’m sorry, who allowed Trump to pack the court? The Debt Collective?
The republicans I suppose. If I recall correctly they were against Obama appointing a judge before the end of his term for some reason while very supportive of Trump appointing judges before his term ended
Every single non-voter in the country willingly allowed the Republicans to fuck everyone over.
Edit: Going back decades, obviously. The latest election has nothing to do with the current SCOTUS. And sure, it’s not the American non-voters’ fault they’re brain dead consumers with no will of their own. It’s all very sad, blah blah blah.
One way or another, any government which remains in power is a representative government. If your city government is a crooked machine, then it is because you and your neighbors prefer it that way - prefer it to the effort of running your own affairs.
Hitler’s government was a popular government; the vast majority of Germans preferred the rule of gangsters to the effort of thinking and doing for themselves. They abdicated their franchise.
—Robert A. Heinlein, Take Back Your Government
Down voted for the truth.
Say it with me- fuck nonvoters.
Ofc libs gotta blame somebody else. Say it with them.
“Is it my fault that I refuse to run on popular issues and can’t win elections? No, it is the voters who are wrong.”
Isn’t that ALL non voters do? Blame someone else? I mean, that’s their entire schtick, isn’t it? To do nothing and point the finger at others for the results?
If you think the results would be different if all people voted, you’re just coping. Vote of half of the society is extremely representative
It has been studied time and time again. There are simply more registered Democrats than Republicans. If everyone came out to vote, Democrats would win. No question.
simply more registered Democrats than Republicans
Or maybe registration numbers aren’t representative to the final election outcome?
That’s the point I’m making, the lack of voting is the problem if dems want to win.
Implying non voters would vote for Biden XD
Also he just gave the biggest middle finger to his own supporters by pardoning his son. After the elections, you’re all just worthless trash to him.
Oh gosh :o
The 2016 Hilary protest non voters.
Leaving out the part where Biden refused to even consider stacking the court and instead ordered a commission on Supreme Court reform. Then, after three years of silence, with only three months to go before the election, they came out with…term limits and a binding ethics code. Two milquetoast reforms they didn’t even run on.
When democrats lose: “We could’ve had a utopia if you had simply voted for us!”
When democrats win: crickets
When democrats win:
crickets“We didn’t win enough so I’m afraid our hands are tied.”Funny thing is they never win enough. Even when they win a majority, magically enough members switch sides to cancel any possibility of progress. It’s like a rigged carnival game, but you think that if we simply adjusted our aim we could certainly get the ball in the hole. It’s crafted to look like you have a chance when you really don’t.
I always took crickets coming out of the political arena to be a positive. I want my politicians to shut the fuck up and govern, thank you very much.
I wish they would govern, but all they do is the bidding of lobbyists and then loudly proclaim that they are defending democracy or freedom or whatever.
That makes no sense. Government changes your life, so why keep it secret?
Who is “y’all”? People are blaming anti-debt activists for trump? Another new low for the libs.
The for profit media and captured education system has pitted non wealthy Americans against each other irreparably by design.
As they rage over how to address the social issue symptoms of our crony market capitalist economy, the one truly unapproachable topic is remaking our economy to reward honest labor over increasingly abstract (credit default swaps, stock shorts, etc) speculative, insider information laden GAMBLING, or rebuilding a safetynet for our fellow neighbors that struggle, and that necrotic economy we the people have been largely deluded into not wanting to address causes or exacerbates all the problems we do get a vote on to provide the illusion of choice.
Example: abortion is usually an economic decision, and rightly so. If the owner’s greed hadn’t required 2 full time incomes to run most households, and the minimum wage were a living wage, there would be less abortion and birth rates would go up, no threats or bans required. Worker productivity skyrocketed for decades, but that wasn’t enough, everyone get into the factories and cubicles and make the masters moooooaaaaaaar!!!
To thunderous applause as the tens of millions of deluded economic victims are told GDP is life, and life is GDP, and if they’re struggling, it’s the powerless homeless people outside dying faults, lowering property values that stopped them from getting a raise. Bullshit.
The United States isn’t a society, it is a death cult of greed/avarice enablers, and it’s easy to see if you recognize the deification of our supposed “free market” they shove down your throats as the self-serving lie that it is.
Freedom without responsibility is a destructive force. The owners feel no responsibility towards the nations they exploit, including ours.
Clearly the reason my life sucks is because of the people in a lower station than me that have and control nothing.
Couldn’t possibly be the people in a higher station than me that have and control everything.
Nope. Damn homeless gay Mexican transgender immigrants. Dey derkerder.
Hope this helps: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_you
The most infuriating thing about that whole plot arc was that the people bringing the case to the Supreme Court had absolutely no standing to even file a complaint, and Biden’s actions were actually, through any logical reading of the law, completely within his authority, but they were like “lol no”
and Biden, a consummate Democrat, just was like “well that’s all we can do, corpo has spoken.”
I am still convinced Harris lost in most states because people were looking for Biden’s name on the ballot and couldn’t find Kamala so they just circled Trump.
I am still convinced Harris lost in most states because people were looking for Biden’s name on the ballot and couldn’t find Kamala so they just circled Trump.
You give people way too much credit. They enthusiastically voted for Trump, knowing what he is.
Question for the Americans. The Supreme Court has ruled that presidents enjoy automatic immunity for anything they do as part of their official duties (e.g., arrest or kill people). Can he use this to forgive student loans? Like couldn’t he just say “I almost fell down the stairs exiting Air Force One yesterday, and the only way I could save myself was by violently flailing my arms in search of the railing while also forgiving student loans”?
No, all the supreme court said was: “You can’t do anything illegal, but if you do, you won’t get in trouble for it.”
So the president still have to find those “yes-men” in the government to do the deed.
He can say: “All student loans are now void. BURN ALL THE RECORDS”
The people that run those departments that administers the student loans would be like: “Um… so do we burn these records or what?” and if even one copy of those records survive, its pointless.
Same with trying to kill the supreme court, doesn’t matter. I doubt anyone is obeying those orders. Joe can have a meeting with the justices and then shoot them himself, and he might ne immume. But is that gonna matter? Jan 20 comes and republicans pack the court with even more Magats.
Trying to kill trump doesnt work, he got like so many bodyguards both private and SS, and also if he dies, vance would just take over, or mike johnson, or pres pro tem of senate, like the line of succession is all republicans.
Its over.
Contrary to what other people will tell you, yes he could. For example, he could simply order all loan records destroyed and all loan enforcement stopped. He doesn’t even need that Court ruling to do that, the Executive branch opts to not enforce laws all the time. Simply stop the government from doing anything about student loans. In fact, he (his administration) has done some of this–see the note on this page:
On March 9, 2022, the U.S. Department of Education asked the U.S. Department of Justice to request a pause of any active bankruptcy case if the borrower wishes.
Right now, student loans are a huge problem in the US because (unlike other debts) you cannot (easily) get out of student loans through bankruptcy and young people are getting saddled with monstrous amounts of debt that they aren’t entirely consenting to, so rather than fix that in any way the “fix” was to simply force students to repay the loans regardless.
At the same time: no, he could not.
The fact of the matter is the case would eventually end up before the Supreme Court who would simply find against Biden. Nothing Biden does would be considered legal, everything Trump does would be considered legal. Literally the only way out of this is to remove the Justices who have no regard for the law.
This immunity ruling is a loaded gun that the Supreme Court dropped on the desk of the President. If the Biden does anything with it, the Supreme Court is going to say “no that’s illegal, you can’t do that!” Using this immunity ruling to remove them would be a good option, but Biden has no intent of ever doing that and so the loaded gun is still sitting on the desk for when Trump takes office. Whenever Trump does anything, the Supreme Court is going to simply say “immunity”.
AI means the president is immune. Not his orders and actions. The courts can sometimes stop those.
Lol oh, I allowed it? I’m so sorry, you’re highnesses… But I only get one fucking vote every election. Fuck off now, thanks.
Because indebted students run the Democratic Party, gotcha
And Inbred stupids run the Republican Party, gotcha
Expand the court then? Well, too late now since Dems are losing every branch of government.
