Uh oh, after a democrat is disappointed they might gasp consider a sternly worded letter.

How can fascism survive such robust resistance?!

This is just trump for “I’m too stupid to realize that Putin has been using me, getting massive value for empty promises and cheap flattery.”

It wouldn’t matter one bit.

You would have every right wing media outlet either calling it fake or saying that it has always been everyone’s peak sexual fantasy to do piss play and the wokies are just jealous that Donnie two scopes is getting some.

We are well past the point where there’s some big scandal that’s going to drop and save us. These fucking people sit in the Oval Office and say “we just aren’t following the Supreme Court anymore, fuck it, we have concentration camps now and we can send anyone we want to them”

The scandals are out in the open, they are shouted proudly by the worst people you can imagine and the cult eats it up.

Sad news for his family.

I do wonder though about these people that hang on to power all the way up until death. Is that fulfilling?

What was the point of all that amassing of influence and power, just to spend the last few months of your precious finite time on earth sitting in a little office arguing with people.

I wonder if there is an afterlife how many of those that held onto power with an iron grip up until death look back and go “I wish I had spent more time with my family. I wish I had used some of that wealth and power to enjoy the fruits of life. I can’t believe the last heathy months of my life were wasted doing these things that in retrospect seem so unimportant.”

There is this group of old billionaires and politicians that are bound and determined to run up the high score as high as possible and for what? Billions of dollars and still heading into the office day in and day out stressing about the next product launch? Why live your life like that?

Isn’t the point that you can get out of the rat race at some point, not just become the fastest rat?

I’m sure after a crisis of that magnitude we put robust safeguards in place that have only been strengthened over time.

Right? panic right?!?!

We gave out risky and predatory loans to people with bad credit and now they aren’t repaying them

Shocked pikachu

Live by the DoorDash bnpl die by the DoorDash bnpl

I never really understood the idea of the popular kids in high school. I wasn’t popular but wasn’t unpopular, just sorta a regular dude.

I remember thinking how odd it was that people liked people simply because a lot of people liked that person. Or that those people felt like they were better than others because a lot of people liked them.

Then I graduated and got into the real world and there were celebrities but beyond that there were no popular kids anymore. And celebrities were generally well known for some actual thing they could do exceptionally well, acting, singing, sports, etc.

Then social media gave us influencers which are just popular kids for adults. People follow them because lots of people follow them and some of them are genuinely talented but a lot of them are just flexing with wealth (or pretending to) or just attractive.

I remember being relieved that the “popular kids” was a thing people grew out of, and kinda appalled that we somehow engineered it back into adulthood.

It’s extremely interesting to watch them give trump leeway here. I saw polling recently that many of the trump faithful believe that the tariffs will bring short term pain but it will be worth it for the long term benefits.

What’s going to turbo suck is that they will take the exact wrong lesson from this. It will enforce their short term thinking because they will remember this time that they experienced short term pain for long term gain and the gain never materialized.

I just wish we had the ability as a society to have a more nuanced conversation than sound bites. Ok we disagree about tariffs, one side thinks they are real fucking dumb and the other thinks they are great and will have long term benefits. It would be amazing if we could have an adult conversation about this, how it’s expected to work, how likely that is, what issues might be in the way, etc.

Perhaps it’s decades of being an engineer, but I propose designs that are meant to achieve goals and other engineers check my work, ask questions about things I might not have considered, help play out scenarios that aren’t accounted for and at the end of that we have a better design. As a nation we now seem so incapable of having an honest dialogue between the two major parties that not only are we advancing ideas that obviously won’t work but it’s clear we have no feedback mechanisms to correct course. So now we will just blow up the economy because a group of people think it might, somehow, using mechanisms no one can identify, lead to a future that is “better” where no one can meaningfully define “better.”

And that’s the state of discourse.

We should make them take an oath to defend the constitution so they would know what they should do…

I mean I remember back in 2008 when dailykos would frequently say “elect more democrats and better democrats”

The idea being that we could fix the dnc from within. Progressives just needed to vote for better Dems.

The dnc realized that they had a real hard time beating republicans in the general but boy oh boy could they whoop the progressives in the primary.

Blue dog dem, here’s the dnc gold card and the PIN code.

Progressive dem, we will spend any amount of money to keep you off the ballot.

And we see where it’s led us, the dnc is now good at one thing and one thing only, raising money for the dnc. Oodles and oodles and oodles of money and losing the nation to autocracy

There’s no way this government would ever declare American citizens to be a part of this gang and sent to El Salvador. No sir. No need for Americans to be worried one bit.

Headline makes it sound like they just plan to stab people.

Look the government just doesn’t have any money. None for usaid, none for Ukraine, none for science or education or healthcare, there’s just no money.

Except I guess for performative bullshit like painting over this mural.

Did you know that a tree will turn sunshine and carbon dioxide into oxygen and shade, for free?!

The tree doesn’t even try to maximize its economic value by charging for this service? It does sell the oxygen or comfort of the shade at all, it doesn’t have a subscription service so that you can pay it monthly for oxygen and shade.

It’s downright unamerican.

Yea I feel bad for him too, you can tell when the officer tells him he has no choice to arrest him that he’s realizing how badly he just messed up.

In his mind he was about to lose his pardon and go back into the prison system.

But to me that also makes me think the officer is justified in his use of force. People that think everything is ruined are unpredictable and he was reaching for violence. While he was saying he was going to turn that violence on himself, there’s no particular reason to trust what he’s saying. I think there’s a very real possibility he gets the gun saying “I’m shooting myself” but then once he has it maybe shooting the cop sounds a bit better.

If I’m the officer I’m not rolling the dice to see if he points the gun at his head or mine.

And as much as I can empathize with the feeling of fear and loss in that moment, ultimately he made a bunch of choices that led to that. He did whatever he did to get his license suspended, he drove on a suspended license, and even in this instance he broke the speed limit knowing that the results of even a minor infraction could lead to the loss of his freedom.

At some point he has to be responsible for the consequences of his actions.

Police Activity posted the bodycam footage.

https://youtu.be/zf6BgUd86I4

It’s under 7 minutes and when the shooting happens it’s blurred out. It’s relatively tame from a gore point of view, but it’s still a video of someone being shot so watch with care.

Here’s my synopsis of the footage for people that don’t want to watch it themselves, you can skip the preamble if you just want to understand the shooting. In my opinion the officer acts reasonable, friendly, and professional throughout.

Preamble

• Officer pulls the guy over for going 70 in a 55
• Guy offers up unprompted that he’s a J6 defendant that was recently pardoned
• Officer doesn’t seem to care one way or the other asks for license
• Guy says he’s coming from church and his mother’s grave. He doesn’t have a license and has been trying to get a hardship license, produces an expired license
• Officer asks how often he’s been caught driving suspended
• Guy says “in my life”
• Officer clarifies “recently”
• Guy indicates not much
• Officer goes back to his patrol car to run the guys information.

Shooting

• Officer asks the guy out of the vehicle, they go to the rear of his vehicle
• Officer explains that he’s reached habitual traffic offender status because of driving suspended.
• Guy begs for leniency
• Officer explains its now reached the point of being a felony and he has no choice but to arrest him.
• Guy says he’s not going back to jail
• Guy runs away from the rear of the vehicle and jumps back into the drivers seat
• Officer gives foot chase back to drivers door, he provides verbal commands to stop
• Before the officer can reach the guy, he says “I’m shooting myself” and reaches for something in the passenger seat.
• Officer says “no no no” and fires three shots at the guy.

This is shown from his bodycam and also from his dashcam.

A felon retreated into a vehicle, stating he wouldn’t go back to jail, produced a firearm, and threatened violence. Was the guy lying about shooting himself, was his plan to fire the firearm at himself or the officer? Based on my view of the video, the officer acted within his lawful authority, was polite and professional, and only used force consistent with what the situation required. But I’d encourage you to watch the evidence and make up your own mind.

There are a ton of bad cops and awful shootings. I don’t like J6 but I don’t see this as justified because the guy is an asshole, but justified because of his actions at this traffic stop.

I mean I’m sure the forms aren’t identical but is having to tell the same information so much of a burden that removing it materially changes anything?

It seems like to work would be in tracking the spending and then once that is done what all is there to save from only having to hand that data to one watchdog instead of two?

Unless of course one of those watchdogs, being a smaller state agency, could be cheaply bought and have their reporting requirements gutted.

When powerful people want small government what they really want is cheaper bribes.

This has real “let them eat cake” vibes

Eggs have traditionally been one of the cheapest staple sources of protein for the working poor.

The right is living out their wet dream right now, in charge of almost every facet of the federal government.

And your concern is that people aren’t being nice enough to them and their supporters.

Collaborators can eat shit

There’s no way a busty woman talking about bitcoins could honeypot any of these people. No sir. These young men are definitely above that sort of thing and no enemy of America would be wise enough to take advantage of these young lads.

Nope, totally safe and secure. We should all sleep soundly tonight knowing some 19 year old has access to our national treasury under the order of a ketamine addict.