It passed. The senate version is better than the house one, so I’m glad it got left alone… but really that’s like saying putting your hand in hot vomit is better than putting your hand in hot dump.
Knew it would. Sadly, it was not delayed enough to derail Trump’s weekend. Fucking republicans, can’t even depend on them to be assholes to each other when needed.
I don’t think that Zarah Sultana is going to have much luck raisin Jeremy Corbyn’s political career from the dead, it’s just not a play that’s in line with the currant mood in the UK.
Silly news here.
My fav part of all of this is that the German space exploration company is called “The Exploration Company.”
We have always said we know less about our own oceans that outer space…
In other news, Zucc discovers a whole new level of privacy invasion.
Lucky for them, earth is in space too.
Translation: Criminal Group breaks in Itaú Bank to ask for more taxation of the super-rich.
One word: what?
Most Americans (at least those who pay real attention to politics) would love an actual third party that was capable of winning a few seats… do they want it to be Musks party? No.
Musk has no hope of creating an actual, viable third party in the US. He can throw every cent of his considerable wealth at it and it won’t help. The reason? America has too much of a team sports mentality. It’s one side or the other, against each other, you pick your team and you stay loyal to your team. And as long as this sports obsession remains in this country (a mentality that disgusted me long before I ever even cared about politics), Musk doesn’t have a prayer or creating his own workable party. Let him punch himself out trying.
A leftist/progressive third-party would only siphon votes from Democrats, as the Greens have. Better that Musk’s weird tech bro incel fans vote for his Oligarch Party than the Republicans next year.
Yes I agree and if the Libertarians could win a few seats they would likely be siphoning GOP votes. I didn’t really have a specific party in mind besides “not one created and controlled by the worlds richest person.”
It would just be nice to have a third (or 4th or 5th) option where you felt like a vote for them wasn’t 100/% wasted. Green Party, Hyper Progressives, ultra fiscal conservatives who are totally disinterested in telling women if and when they can/can not have an abortion. Federalists who want to get rid of the State/County system. Whatever. It’s a rigged system though. Twice or three times as hard to win if you’re not a Donkey or an Elephant.
You’ll need actually good candidates to win for third parties. I feel that they’re only going to attract the pro-China, anti-Ukraine antivaxxer loons who can’t be bothered to vote Democrat.
The Democrats are flawed, but they mean well and we generally agree with them 90% of the time. If the Republican Party isn’t forced to collapse after Jan 6, why should the Democrats?
Light and dark, yes or no, left or right - the choice is always binary and the only way a third party would become as established as the two major ones would be if they had tremendous resources. The major parties have entire media conglomerates behind them, research and analytical staff at every level. You’d have to do a lot of gerrymandering, huge PR, and win elections as they do at every level. Sheriffs, DAs, mayors, governors, state legislature, there are hundreds of elections you’d have to be able to cover with candidates, without their ideology being too similar to the main parties. And in Congress, they’d need congresspeople and senators, plus a small army of deputy whips and strategists.
And all that’s just to be get big enough to be ballot worthy!
And that won’t happen, because for Americans, it’s team sports. It’s our team against their team, it’s our side against their side; our side is right, their side is wrong, you can’t have a third side in right and wrong, and any attempt to make a third side will only take people away from our side, which is bad, unless it takes people away from their side, which is good. You see how ridiculous that is? But that’s what we have. America needs to grow the fuck up.
I wonder how much of this ‘us vs them’ mentality came about organically through fear of strangers, and how much was manipulated. I’m always reminded of divide and conquer: indoctrinate one side into following you by telling them the other side is after them, and do the same to the other side. Playing them against each other is far easier when there’s no third option. Either you’re with us, or you’re against us. And if we want you to vote a certain way, we’ll ‘leak’ that the other side wants you to do it.
Interesting fact, there are millions of unaffiliated voters in the US, enough to actually rival the major parties, which is why new voters are so heavily targeted.
It’s all been manipulated. While racism and classism has always existed, the way it exists in America was deliberately designed to get poor, uneducated white people (specifically Christians and specifically men, but not exclusively either) to vote against their own interests by believing that everybody not like them was out to get them and/or take what they had and what they were led to believe “belonged” to them by right. This was put in place even before the colonies decided to revolt, and fast forward some three hundred years or so and here we are, with the us vs them mentality penetrating right down to the bones at every level of our society.
Alas, it’s not exclusive to the US, but it does seem more prevalent as a closed-loop system of cradle-to-death indoctrination. Party affiliation permeates even to colleges, clubs and hospitals. I’d love to see if the benefactors of both parties are one in the same, playing both sides against the middle, and believing none of the rhetoric themselves.
Wait, that’s Providence 
Honestly, I truly don’t think it’s a conscious effort, at least not anymore. I think the wealthy elite are just trying to keep wealth and power, they see what works to their personal advantage, and push it, and since they are all doing it at the same time, it just happens to permeate all society. I don’t give these people the credit of having the forethought of consciously, intentionally trying to control society itself; none of them have done anything to convince me they have the intelligence to do that. It’s an accidental concerted effort born about of everyone looking out for their own best interests at the same time and it just happens to work.
That’s why I don’t believe in secret wealthy cabals or shadowy world governments-behind-the-governments like Providence or other examples in fiction; society as a whole isn’t smart enough for that. They exist, but accidentally, unintentionally, and they’re just trying to help themselves only, to the point that they may not even be aware that they’ve formed a group as a result. Ones who do try to deliberately do things like this get exposed immediately, like Project 2025, and while they have largely succeeded, it’s also mostly by accident as well.