#Is going to kill people. or how the Biden administration has fucked up their Covid response so goddamn badly

[poisonousquinzel]

"a dude in Texas legally changed his name to "Literally Anyone Else" and he's attempting to run for President against Biden & Trump" [source]

okay, but putting aside the comedic aspect of this, it is concerning the amount of people who are prompted to vote for candidates just because it's funny. I'm not the biggest fan of how his policy about the boarder sounds [Site], but I do implore anyone who is able to vote in the 2024 US election to please research other candidates.

The media is only going to continue pushing the idea it's inevitably going to be Trump vs Biden 2.0 and we have no other options, that we have to vote for Biden again because of Project 2025. Is that whole thing terrifying?

Yeah, fucking absolutely.

But voting for Biden will not solidify our safety from that. Biden is exactly like the rest of them. He always has been. You can't make the lesser of two evils argument when they're both just plain evil.

You cannot say that Biden is even mildly a better choice than Trump when he is currently directly involved in a genocide. That is not some little fucking thing. That in and of itself disqualifies him as a lesser evil. Biden is just as bad as him and he will not save us because he doesn't fucking care.

Cornel West [Site] is an Independent candidate running for President in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

Claudia De la Cruz and Karina Garcia [Site] are running for President and Vice-President as the candidates of the Party for Socialism and Liberation in the 2024 Election. [Policies]

There are options.

There are people trying to change the corrupt foundation our system is built on, but we have to help amplify them because the mainstream media will not.

#have you looked at what's happening in New York & the subways #There's so many reported shootings and deaths and it just seems to be getting worse. #I just looked up subway shooting ny because I wanted to check before saying something #There's reports from like 3 hours ago about someone getting pushed in front of one of the moving subways & there's so many others #or how about the like thousands of police officers that they've got stationed at subways in ny literally doing fuck all #or how everyone's going through a housing crisis and cant afford rent and cant get medical care because it can cost #$4000 to get a fucking ambulance and that's cheap. That's a ride to the hospital less than 20 minutes away probably. #or the rise in hate crimes and bigotry and all the shit they're now trying to censor with the kosa bill #or how terrifying places like Florida have became for anyone thats not seen as an equel by people who dont view most others as equels. #or how they're pouring billions into wars while we're in the midsts of a homeless crisis #suicide rates are at record levels in the us and it's only going to get worse. theyre pulling telehealth which will take away #life saving medical care for people who dont have the ability to go in person. people's ability to get therapy and meds being taken away #Is going to kill people. or how the Biden administration has fucked up their Covid response so goddamn badly #people are referring to the pandemic in past tense and have lost understanding for others who they'd have understood before #they've lied and they've concealed and its killing millions of people and disabling even more. but they will not take accountability. #long covid is ruining people's lives and they've successfully led the narrative that its not real or not that serious. #they will sit there and they will lie. they will say they've protected women's rights and that its a top priority. #they'll say that healthcare is a top priority but have suggested that they'd veto a healthcare for all bill because of its price tag #but will spend billions and billions and billions on a genocide that the majority is against. the system isn't going to begin collapsing #it already is. #its crumbled and we must demolish the corrupt remains and rebuild a better government that gives a shit about people #ALL people. #they use basic human rights as bargaining chips. #the Democrats and Republicans on a Venn diagram is a circle. wake up.

[kineticpenguin]

Had a few drinks instead of doing homework and got mad

Look, I know that the government can do more than one thing at a time. But the fact of the matter is that while our Covid situation right now is better than it used to be, it is still a godawful mess, it is still embarrassing, it is still keeping us from living our lives. Millions of Americans are still living with the financial ruin this pandemic brought. And the Biden administration, who promised immediate $2,000 checks out the door, then tried to squirm out from under it calling Trump's $600 check a "down payment," hemmed and hawed about paying out $1400, and after the impeachment has had nothing to say about it. It’s over, apparently.

No, now the pressing issue is gun control. GUN CONTROL? Joe, this country is facing existential threats. We have been ravaged by a pandemic that, as of this writing, has killed 485,000 Americans and rendered millions of us sick and/or penniless while you and your friends at Wall Street have been making money hand over fist from the safety of your second or third homes. On top of that, we also have a media environment where the truth doesn't matter and angry American fascism has been on the rise to the point that, lest we forget, thousands of them broke into the Capitol looking to capture and kill congress people they didn't like.

You know. Your friends and colleagues. That's who they came for, Joe. Mitt Romney ran for his life. They were chanting "hang Mike Pence." What the hell do you think they would do to YOU!?

Joe, there are more guns in private hands in America than there are Americans. You are not going to solve these problems by making guns more difficult or costly to own. You all have been trying that since the 1930s and it has never worked, it has only served to disarm the marginalized and vulnerable.

The older, establishment democrats like Biden are complacent. They do not understand that this country is staring down the barrel of a civil war. If you ask some people, that war already started. If it has, then US lost the opening battle. Or have we already forgotten the Confederate flag proudly flown in the Capitol? The QAnon Shaman triumphantly telling a reporter "we won the day"?

We don't have time to "build back better," which is a buzzword version of "pretend everything is normal and eventually it will be." Things are NOT normal and pretending that they are will only make things worse. But you know what? In the spirit of compromise, I'll ignore the fascist insurrection, and simply deal with the fantasy of a mostly-normal America except for that pesky pandemic.

You're gonna get fucking rinsed in 2022, Democrats. Biden's looking to be a one-term president, too. And this head-in-the-sand behavior is exactly why.

You know what Americans are gonna notice? That Trump got them $1800. You know how much Biden has gotten them? $0. They're still desperate. The American people chose Biden because they were promised relief. And that relief isn't coming.

Because Biden wants to water his promised $2,000 down to $1,400. And he wants to means-test it. He basically wants to ensure that nobody gets any part of the relief he promised. And policy-wise, the sole difference between him and the pandemic is that feds have to wear masks. The "issue no guidance and hope for vaccines and herd immunity to just fix everything" policy still lives on.

Yeah, Trump's stimulus checks amount to making chicken feed last for most of a year, but at least we got chicken feed. We haven't even got pocket lint from Democrats. I'm looking at you, Joe. You're the face of this now. This is what you signed up for.

And now, just after the Democrats have proven beyond a reasonable doubt that they are incapable of securing our democracy and holding its enemies accountable, they decide the big issue they need to take on is our fucking guns. Unbelievable.

#yeah it's a read more rant but it's OK to reblog this #hell I would love to be proven wrong

[toshootforthestars]

From the report by Beth Mole, posted 19 July 2021:

Fully vaccinated people are largely protected from delta; the current vaccines are still highly effective against developing COVID-19 from delta and other variants of concern. Though a small proportion of people can develop so-called “breakthrough infections,” those infections will mostly be asymptomatic or mild. But, unvaccinated people are completely vulnerable. Moreover, those who have received only one dose of a two-dose vaccine or have only recovered from COVID-19 are not much better off than those who are completely unvaccinated.

But according to new polling data from CBS News, a new wave of vaccinations seems unlikely. Among unvaccinated and partly vaccinated people, only 48% said they are concerned about delta. Among fully vaccinated people, 72% reported being concerned about the variant.

Despite the fact that the current COVID-19 vaccines have proven highly effective and safe, 53% of those who are unvaccinated or partly vaccinated said in the poll that they are concerned about side effects. 50% of the group cited a lack of trust in the government as a reason not to get vaccinated. And 45% said they don’t trust the science. All of these percentages are higher than they have been in earlier polls, indicating that these anti-vaccine sentiments are hardening among the unvaccinated.

Some unvaccinated people who may be more persuadable have said they are waiting for the vaccines to receive full approval from the Food and Drug Administration (currently, they are authorized by the FDA under an emergency use authorization). On Friday, Pfizer and BioNTech said that the FDA had granted them a Priority Review designation for their mRNA vaccine, but they didn’t expect a decision on full approval until January 2022. Currently, vaccine providers are administering only around 520,000 COVID-19 vaccine per day, down from a record of 4.6 million in a day in April.

With over 161 million people vaccinated, only 48.6% of the US population is fully vaccinated.

See also: How much COVID misinformation is on Facebook? Its execs don’t want to know

For years, misinformation has flourished on Facebook. Falsehoods, misrepresentations, and outright lies posted on the site have shaped the discourse on everything from national politics to public health. But despite their role in facilitating communications for billions of people, Facebook executives refused to commit resources to understand the extent to which COVID-19-related misinformation pervaded its platform, according to a report in The New York Times.

Early in the pandemic, a group of data scientists at Facebook met with executives to propose a project that would determine how many users saw misleading or false information about COVID. It wasn’t a small task—they estimated that the process could take up to a year or more to complete—but it would give the company a solid understanding of the extent to which misinformation spread on its platform.

The executives listened to the data scientists’ pitch and then reportedly ghosted them.

The data team’s proposal wasn’t approved, and they were never given an explanation for why it was silently dropped.

The revelations come as Facebook has drawn fire from the White House for its role in the spread of misinformation about COVID-19 and the vaccines that prevent it. “They’re killing people,” President Joe Biden said about the role of social networks in the spread of misinformation. “Look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. They’re killing people.”

Biden later walked back his comments slightly, but they revealed the administration’s frustration with social media platforms—and with Facebook in particular—over their response to the pandemic.

For weeks, the White House pressed Facebook for details on how the company is combating COVID vaccine misinformation. The social network offered some details but gave unsatisfying answers to other requests.

Facebook’s unwillingness or inability to understand the scope of COVID misinformation on its platform was apparent in comments it gave to The New York Times, in which it blamed its nescience on the lack of a “standard definition” for pandemic-related misinformation. “The suggestion we haven’t put resources toward combating COVID misinformation and supporting the vaccine rollout is just not supported by the facts,” said Dani Lever, a Facebook spokeswoman.

“With no standard definition for vaccine misinformation, and with both false and even true content (often shared by mainstream media outlets) potentially discouraging vaccine acceptance, we focus on the outcomes—measuring whether people who use Facebook are accepting of COVID-19 vaccines.”

For researchers who study misinformation, that explanation isn’t sufficient. “They need to open up the black box that is their content ranking and content amplification architecture,“ Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told The New York Times. “Take that black box and open it up for audit by independent researchers and government. We don’t know how many Americans have been infected with misinformation.”

Me: 

This situation is extremely bad!

First off, the individuals that aren’t getting vaccinated just do not care to. They’ve bought hook line and sinker into all the disinfo and misinfo on facebook, instagram, youtube, tiktok, reddit, and/or whatever 8chan replacement one choosed. What they see and read reinforces their pre-conceived (and factually incorrect) views that “experts” “really don’t know shit about anything” and thusly are “blowing things way the fuck outta proportion,” etc. Their views are both informed by, and reinforced by:

what they read and see online

what they hear on FM/AM radio

what they watch on broadcast TV

what their friends and communities consume from media

what the prevailing societal and political attitudes in one’s community are

“rugged individualism” and the post-1980 erosion of the social contract

So, if your fb friends are covid truthers, if the on-air personalities you hear on the radio at work are covid truthers, if your neighbors and friends at werk are covid truthers, if the elected leaders are covid truthers, if the snippets of Fox News you get to see randomly are pushing covid truther disinfo, and if those in your inner circle at that 4th of July party you went to are covid truthers, then you yourself, at a minimum from peer pressure, will dismiss the recommendations of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, scores of hospital operators, plus countless professionals in medicine and epidemiology in your decision not to get vaccinated, nor to mask up indoors in public even when “recommended”.

“I have rights. I know what’s really going on. I’ve got things figured out.”  Or, at a minimum, “I don’t give a fuck either way.” “Fuck you.”

Facebook absolutely is responsible for the covid truther disinfo and misinfo being shared on their platform.  I believe they are the largest vector of disinformation and misinformation to the public. So many people are chugging the “vaccines are a scam, masks don’t work and I have rights” kool-aid thanks to disinfo introduced and shared widely on facebook

Some other major vectors of disinfo: iHeartMedia - Premiere Networks - iHeartRadio, Entercom/Audacy, Westwood One, One America News, Fox News, Newsmax, Sinclair Broadcast Group, YouTube + Google, TikTok, and Reddit.

“I saw a video on YouTube where the military did a study…”  or “I heard a guy on the radio saying mask mandates are part of a plot…”  It's all bullshit!

At this point it cannot be anything but an active choice the leadership at these companies consciously make to pipe out total bullshit in a time of crisis. Content from all of the above easily makes its way to facebook, too, unrestricted!

The U.S continues to spiral into this post fact, post truth, anti-intellectual, anti-science neo-fascist hellscape where no lives matter and where mass death is AOK because “none of us get out of this world alive” or some asshat folksy quip that masks as wisdom.  Empathy, reasoning, established facts and observable reality have all become political statements… People hear what they want to hear.

IMO this is truly a disastrous situation with no easy way out.

Many, many people will not wear masks again.  Many, many people see the survival rate for coronavirus and they surmise wrongly that the risk for them of getting covid is worth it, that the risk for others isn’t remotely their concern, and that the entire situation is overblown. The social contract is in bad shape. Public confidence in the state is almost gone. Covid truthers are everywhere.

Getting a vaccine requires time off from work to travel to a mass vax site that’s still open, time off to recoup post-shot (if necessary), and overcoming fear that the anti-vax disinfo on social media was true after all. Plus overcoming peer pressure from unvaccinated friends and family.

Covid case numbers are likely undercounts. Test kits are still problematic. Persons with no health insurance have no PCP to call when they get sick. Underinsured persons may have to wait weeks for their approved PCP to get around to a telehealth call. Many people are getting sick and not getting tested and they’re not reporting anything to anyone. State officials, wanting to look good, may skew whatever data is reported to them.

COVID-19 is an airborne virus. Most people catch covid from contagious asymptomatic people. Coronavirus has always been a risk for children! Getting vaccinated is part of an overall good strategy to keep COVID-19 at bay. Masks work!!! If indoors, stay in a ventilated room if you’re with other people, and keep doors and windows open for air circulation. Coronavirus is producing extremely serious long-term cognitive and cardiovascular complications for many people who survive it. “Long covid” is real.

We don’t have to live with this! The political and business leadership in much of the United States today have collectively decided there’s nothing that can or should be done in regards to covid-19, no masking requirements, no easy supplies of N95 masks, and no mitigation efforts of any kind. They wrongly conclude that COVID-19, a new virus with so many unknowns, “isn’t that bad” and so the level of permanent damage or death resulting from covid is acceptable.

None of this is acceptable, the amount of permanent damage and death occurring from COVID-19 is far, far too high, and there’s no rational excuse whatsoever to allow this virus to spread across this country unchecked. There’s no reason to allow this virus to spread further. There’s no valid reason for me and anyone else to justify allowing covid to spread out of control.

#news #coronavirus #third wave #covid vaccine #facebook sucks #please get vaccinated #misinformation #disinformation #america 2021 #rant #ars technica #vaccine hesitancy #anti vaxxer #things are going swimmingly #long post

[reasonandempathy]

A large part of why I have trouble contributing to conversations is I simply don't believe I'm equipped to actually reach people anymore. Not significantly because I've lost the capacity to say things, but...

I see these people in the notes of my posts. Shit has gotten so fucking wild these past couple years, and not to parrot a point too much, but these people are existing in a universe I have no idea how to interact with anymore.

It's not just the election breaking their brains, as to how a minority-party could lose the presidency in a record-high turnout election in a time of categorical administrative failure. How is that surprising? Where is the national continued funding for quarantined employees? The contact tracing? The street-by-street covid maps? The stipend to keep people rent-secure and spending money?

It's "Trump has handled Covid well" when literally nothing has been done since April and benefits have dried up in July.

Medicare For All is a psychotic pipe dream that will kill people when 72% of Americans want it, even in the most horrible framing you can draft up, and literally the idea of evidence to the contrary is mocked. The concept of knowing population size and basic percentages is ignored utterly.

I know it is almost a trope at this point to say the other side of the aisle has shifted drastically to the right, but it's actually at the point where it just stands almost impossible to me.

I've got full-blown [insert insult] saying Obama Birtherism wasn't racist, in fact. The thing so racist McConnell, Boehner, and McCain all (to varying extents) said was racist and bigoted. When Trump ran in 2012 he was dismissed out of hand because he was so profoundly racist in light of his support of the birtherism. Hell, in 2016 he had to make a statement that it wasn't true and it was nonsense and I still have Trumpets in my notes defending it, and now it's going on to Kamala Harris.

Trump firing multiple DoD staff after losing the election and refusing to acknowledge that fact isn't noteworthy. The sitting president losing Every. Single. Lawsuit. trying to throw out ballots goes ignored, where even if Trump's most ludicrous claims were taken wholeheartedly he still would lose to Biden.  Oh, Michigan, Nevada, and PA are all secretly Trump states?  Georgia and Arizona still put Biden well over 270.

This isn't like 2000, and even if 2000 was an appropriate parallel, Gore actually won both the popular and electoral vote then, when you counted "all the legal ballots".  There was an actual legal battle of merit, one way or the other.  It was only over 1 state, that was actually close, and within the range of a recount.  Even in 2000 Clinton started giving Bush security briefings and was starting a limited transition by now (Gore was already VP, so he didn’t need much of a transition in the case he won).  

These people live in a bubble universe where, I dunno, electrons carry a positive charge or something. I don't know what type of English they're speaking, but I can't.

[meloncubedradpops]

Repo! The Corona Opera: Final Countdown

This is the third and final installment of Repo: The Corona Opera. In the first piece, I made the argument that the surreal events we are experiencing in 2020 remind me of the world in the movie Repo! the Genetic Opera. My second essay compared the characteristics of fascism with the same movie. Here we will tie together ideas in both works to highlight a dark path that America is on, based on what we know about Repo!, in the hopes that we can reject the evils of those who are sacrificing our health and safety for their own selfish reasons. 

When I began thinking about this movie through the lenses of COVID-19, I saw uncanny patterns that just years ago seemed like an exaggerated storytelling. Millions of people dying from organ failure. Yeah, but how? 

Then 2020 happened. Oh, that's how. Sure the disease doesn't affect everyone in the same way, but its wrath and potential to harm are tremendous. The death toll in the United States alone is, as of today, is 231,000. At least, that is the death toll we are know so far. It will take time when the dust settles and we can analyze the excess death data to truly know how many of our fellow Americans have died. 

And while our world does not currently emulate those opening comic scenes in Repo, the impact from the sudden loss of life will be felt for a long time. There are a lot of really great themes in Repo: the concept of the family, drug addiction, the impact of corporate monopolies, and let's not forget it's a gothic coming-of-age story too. I am going to highlight three concepts that weave together our current reality with the world of Repo: the parallels of the Trump and Largo family, the Graverobber as the symbolic "other", and organ repossessions is genocide.

As mentioned in my previous entry, I highlighted the ways that Rotti Largo is a fascist. I went into detail supporting the argument that his company GeneCo holds tremendous and unyielding power in the city we see in the movie. And despite his efforts to save humanity from extinction, his assumed heirs and blood-related children are nothing short of entitled mediocrity. I will draw many parallels between President Donald Trump and Rotti Largo throughout the duration of this essay, but let's take a few minutes to talk about their children. Believe it or not, this meme was made by myself and my friend FOUR years ago, almost to the day! 

But unlike 2016, I had no idea that I'd find multiple comparisons to draw upon. And frankly, if we all knew how bad this presidency would be, for both America and the rest of the world, we might have made less jokes from our complacency. I ask the the real question though, which Trump and Rotti offspring are most alike?

Now, I've wanted to do this thought exercise since the inception of my essays. The surface level combinations would look something like, Amber and Ivanka (since they're both women, obvs), Donald Trump JR as Luigi (oldest child), and Eric Trump as Pavi ("you're just his useless brother!"). 

However my boyfriend raised a great point that had me rethink this: Donald Trump Jr is ACTUALLY Amber Sweet. When I took out the gender aspect out of the equation, it made so much more sense. In my next point, I will go into drug addiction in a much more dignified manner. But let's just take a moment here to consider the following. 

We know that Amber Sweet is addicted to two things in life: surgery and pain killing drugs to make surgery bearable. Amber Sweet's character provides an incredible insight to the daily life of the people in Repo. If you subtract the Zydrate Anatomy scene, you would hardly even know that zydrate is devastating lives of the people addicted to it. We hear about zydrate in the graveyard as a commercial and the media spends its first opportunity asking Rotti about zydrate's "use and abuses". After Sweet becomes a no-show in the presser, we quickly learn that she runs a support group for fellow addicts, or at least she is supposed to. 

How does this relate to Trump Jr? Quite simply, many are speculating that Trump Jr abuses cocaine. The most compelling evidence is his speech during the Republican National Convention. Now, obviously we don't have solid evidence that he is indeed consuming and abusing cocaine, and quite frankly if he is, that would not be incredibly surprising or even a huge deal. 

But the conversation doesn't end here. President Donald Trump did not hesitate to bring up former vice president Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and his battle with addiction during the first Presidential Debate. It was a low jab, especially considering that the United States is going through a crippling opioid crisis, which he even admits is exacerbated by covid-19 and related lockdowns. Both Donald Trump and Rotti Largo exploit their own children in this manner. I mean, Donald Trump helped fucked up the Trump Foundation where his children were held prominent positions, which was caught stealing from a charity intended to help children with cancer! Every time we see Donald Trump Jr on our doom-screens, we get another glimpse into Jr's downward spiral. And with every additional crime that all of president Trump's children become implicated in, the more and more we can see that this family is rotten to the core. 

If Trump Jr is Amber Sweet, then Ivanka is Luigi. In Repo, Luigi can be described as nothing short of a homicidal maniac. I am not saying that Ivanka commits murder, at least not directly, but she does hold a lot of power in the White House. Spend any time learning about the machinations of the White House, particularly in the early days, and you will learn Ivanka competed with Melania for a voice in the administration, and still works for the White House today. Even if you exclude all of the shady business ties, such as the dozens of Chinese patents (including for voting machines!!!) Ivanka has filed, clearly the boundaries of nepotism do not exist for this family. Luigi somehow kills multiple people in the movie and faces no consequences for it. How can this be? Obviously corruption, but that is too simple. If there were multiple checks and balances at one point that would have forced Luigi to face justice for his crimes, they have obviously failed to come to roost in the movie. The obvious common denominator between today and the world of Repo is that those who want power will do anything to obtain and maintain it. Does the public know about every murder committed by Luigi? Does the public know about every crime committed by Ivanka (and also by proxy her husband Jared Kushner, who by the way, failed to pass mandatory security clearances but still has access to the intelligence of our government)? Jared intentionally made it difficult for many of the states hit hardest by covid-19 in the early weeks to acquire the necessary medical supplies because the electorate did not vote for Trump in 2016. That. IS. MURDER. Just as Luigi calls the common citizens in Repo "filthy mice", “Jrvanka” (and the Right at greater) frames the nation as two groups: us and THEM. Luigi is much less calculated, but the comparisons are there. If given the chance, the Trump and Largo family will kill because of their sociopathy, greed, and egos. 

Admittedly I don't have as compelling of a comparison for Eric Trump and Pavi. However I will say that both Pavi and Eric do the bidding for their father's empire, and I would also argue that both feel like they have to compete to get a modicum of attention and love from a paternal figure devoid of basic empathy. And at the end of the day, they do not reject their father's tyranny. And honestly that is enough of a comparison for me. 

Last but not least, I can't ignore the fact that the official Republican Party platform for the 2020 election is loyalty to Trump in the absence of any other political or philosophical idea. A majority of the speakers at the Republican National Convention were members of his family. Their pitch to Americans is “Just Trust Us”. However, a quarter million Americans aren't here to agree or disagree with that statement. With each passing day, more and more Americans are getting sick, to the tune of tens of thousands of cases a day on average currently. The Largo family and GeneCo are not much different. Remember that scene in 21st Century Cure where Shilo and Graverobber are in a mass grave where we can see truck loads of humans being added to the pile of corpses? 

The only real thing separating the corpses from the rest of the city is a poorly constructed brick wall and the years of propaganda that normalizes what I imagine would be a terrible pungent smell of death. 

The entire Trump family came into the first presidential debate without masks. The president was literally sick with a virus that statistically speaking, could kill his opponent; and he was on stage shedding this incredibly contagious virus screaming and shouting, spreading his droplets everywhere. The Trump family failed to show up early enough to be tested for covid before the debate. 

This was not an accident. Jared Kushner bragged to journalist Bob Woodward back in April that Trump was going to take the country "back from scientists". As of this past weekend, we learned that Trump is floating around the idea of firing our nation's leading disease expert Anthony Fauci in a time where our cases, deaths, and hospitalizations from covid-19 are surging. It is almost grotesquely poetic how similar this is to GeneCo. GeneCo is a company in the healthcare industry, but they exploit the worst parts of society, which I will go into very soon. And in its effort to achieve maximum quarterly profits, the ends always justify the means, even if that results in fascism and excess death/suffering. Rotti's body guards kill the doctor who gives him his grim diagnosis. Trump didn't kill the doctors treating him during his recovery with covid, but information we got from the White House doctors were straight up WEIRD. We witnessed a Gentern being killed by Luigi in the Mark It Up Scene for no other reason besides existing in the proximity of him. Trump has spread misinformation about how there's more money to be made when a doctor declares a death as a covid death. I am finding it hard to see the difference. I think I've made my point regarding the parallels of the Trump and Largo family quite clearly, but you may see additional points I bring up as the rest of my essay unfolds. 

Society is complex with more nuance than we give it credit to. The different ways that various groups of people interact with are endlessly interesting, and one of the reasons I love Repo so much is because there's an incredible amount of unpacking that you can do, even in the absence of written dialogue about it. 

If you don't know, Repo started out as a story originally penned as "The Necromerchant's Debt", which gave the Graverobber character a more active role in the world crafted by Darren Smith and Terrace Zdunich. When watching the movie Repo! The Genetic Opera, the Graverobber is certainly a character seen in multiple scenes, but in a lot of ways, his importance is left out. An entire scene was cut from the film, see Needle Through a Bug below if you're interested. 

Regardless the parts that we do see are still greatly impactful. Graverobber is essentially the symbolized "other" living in a world that is greatly stratified by social class, and he's doing what he can to survive. 

Now if you have been living on this planet we call Earth and have ever paid attention ever, you probably have noticed that there are a lot of power structures that influence the resources and opportunities that aid in our development and maintenance of our needs. The access to being able to elevate ourselves above basic survival are typically contingent upon a few things, one namely our ability to draw a paycheck. As I mentioned in my last essay, so many things went wrong to have what would equivalently be either a drug trafficking felony in today's terms or maybe theft, result in permissible extra-judicial murder. And I am not saying that Trump's bragging of the extra-judicial murder of an ANTIFA activist is at all related, but look at the way Trump compares his dissidents with the way GeneCo treats Graverobbers.

 We are experiencing the early stages of economic collapse, millions of people are hungry, soon-to-be evicted, jobless. And yet, the Republicans in power just HAD to rush through a Supreme Court justice. When arguing against lockdowns that would have saved lives, the Right spent countless hours arguing about increase suicide, drug use, poverty, domestic abuse, blah blah blah, you know all the things that were there and as equally as important pre-pandemic? And they did NOTHING to help mitigate this disaster beyond the bill that was passed this spring. The house passed the HEROES Act back in May, and senate majority leader Mitch McConnel declined to take a vote on it. 

Never mind the fact that landlords are still expected to pay the banks their mortgages on their investment properties. Never mind the fact that rent wasn't cancelled. Never mind that the Trump administration sought to prevent any oversight into the first bill passed previously to prosecute fraud. So you know, we can make sure the money went to small business owners, and not instead to the many, many crony ties to the administration who were approved for huge amounts of money. Honestly to think about this is kind of sickening, particularly when you relate it back to Repo and my essay I wrote on fascism.

I could probably talk all day about our failure with the "War on Drugs", but I feel like you can probably see based on the efficacy of its policies that drugs still exist and people are still abusing them. I bring this up because the Graverobber's occupation is essentially a drug dealer. However he sells a counterfeit of zydrate derived from the body of a bug who naturally borrow in a corpse's body, which is and also isn't stealing from the corpse / their estate, but is somehow still "bad" enough that you can legally be killed "on site" if a Gene Cop thinks you're harvesting the blue brain goo. I mean this entire concept makes my brain hurt. 

The Graverobber, as a concept, is a perfect example of the enemy who is simultaneously the biggest and the least threat, and the only way to stop them is to kill them before they can appeal before the jury of their peers or go to prison to pay for their crimes. And I am sure the propaganda that justifies this is beautifully orchestrated. It literally mimics Russian propaganda, AKA the biggest foreign intelligence threat since, I don’t know, the Cold War? I can picture authoritarian stump speeches now: 

"Here the Graverobber who comes in the night, tempting your children. They sell the promise of a good time, but did you know they are raping your daughters for this drug?? They can get your husband hooked on zydrate, and you won't know it's coming until he comes home unrecognizable. These thugs are stealing your grandmother's ring off her corpse, and you will find her half-rotted corpse thrown askew across her tombstone when you go to pay your respects."

And yet Graverobber defends himself:

"Industrialization has crippled the globe (Enjoy GeneCo's day and nighttime formula of Zydrate) Nature failed as technology spread (Ask a gentern if Zydrate is right for you) And from this wake a market erected (Buying Zydrate from an unlicensed source is illegal) An entire city built on top of the dead! And you can finance your bones And your kidneys For every market a submarket grows But best you be punctual With making your payments Lest it be you on the concrete below It's quick! It's clean! It's pure! It could change your life! Rest assured! It's the 21st century cure! And it's my job To steal and rob GRAVES!" 

He then goes into detail about how this is just the cost of doing business with his modern world. How many of our current and future stories by those who will not make a single sentence in our history books will be casted as enemies of the state who were ultimately just trying to make end's meet? You can deport the illegal immigrant but neglect to prosecute the American company who hired them to work here? How is that much different? If the people in Repo need this drug to cope with the deaths of their loved ones and their livelihoods, then what does that say about the soul of their nation? 

If you are still with me at this point, I want to thank you so much. I am going to conclude on a fairly heavy topic, but it is one worth having. Organ repossessions in Repo are genocide and in America, we are currently also committing genocide. 

The whole premise of the film is the justification that those who fail to make payments on their surgeries deserve to have their organs repossessed, because what other reality is there with unrelenting end-stage capitalism? People are losing their whole lives as I type this, through no fault of their own. Most Americans cannot afford a $400 emergency expense pre-covid-19. Millions are unable to pay for basic life expenses, such as rent, healthcare or food. Our president specifically shoved a Supreme Court justice because he wants the American Healthcare Act to be deemed too unconstitutional for public policy. Never mind the 100+ million Americans with pre-existing conditions. Never mind the millions who acquire their healthcare through the ACA marketplace. Never mind the fact that we are in a once-in-a-century PANDEMIC. Never mind that we spend more per capital on healthcare than anywhere else in the world. Never mind that the Right does not have ANY sort of plan to replace something in its place. How could MILLIONS die in an organ failure crises in Repo anyways? We already know that the Trump administration already stopped caring about covid deaths when we learned it was hurting people of color disproportionality than the general population. 1 out of 1000 black Americans have died from covid. Reread that sentence. If you don't believe me, go out and seek those facts for yourself. When we think of genocide we think of Hitler killing thousands of people via gas chambers. But there are SO many other steps that lead to the normalization of that. 

Undesirables, aka the "others", are easy to discard. Is it a surprise to anyone that ICE gynecologists are removing the uteruses of detainees? I almost made my whole essay about that one controversy alone. Genocide is insidious like that. 

"Oh but if she didn't want that hysterectomy, she shouldn't have tried to come to America for a better life, even if that's what my ancestors did." 

Of course not, she's the "other", and you're the law-abiding citizen. You were able to afford the extra $30 a month for the upgraded booby package that gave an otherwise unremarkable kidney transplant a fun twist by including breast implants. The orphan who works the streets because his parents died during the plague who needed a new pancreas because insulin became too expensive is threatening your suburbs. Bonus points if the orphan has a hint of melanin in his skin or if your daughter shows favor towards his antics, completely ignoring the fact that his mommy and daddy were killed by preventable disease. I have no idea if this was intentional or not, but look at the makeup of people who get their organs repossessed in Repo and try not to tell me there's a trend. Yes it could have been the coincidence of casting, but nevertheless it is worth mentioning. We don't see many people of color in this movie, but of the few we see, they get murdered by GeneCo/Wallace. And I don't care how stupid coincidences are because that is exactly what is happening with covid-19. The so-called essential, working class citizens (who are disproportionally POC) are putting their whole life on the line to serve everyone else who works at home. 

The ends justifies the means, kill enough elderly and the federal government won't have to pay out on social security. Force everyone to get back to work and fuck you if you think you deserve money for the hours you weren't allowed to work (oh and by the way we want to make it so you can't sue for covid-19 related liabilities). Oh you lost your job, "try something new", as told by Ivanka Trump earlier this summer. 

My main point is if you let fascism get control, they will normalize genocide and put you in jail for even making the connections of corruption. "Millions of people dead from organ failure, what's adding a few more to the pile in the name of law and order?" "The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat". Once again, I am failing to see the difference. 

Okay I threw a lot at you just now, and the fact you made it to the end is a miracle. If you skip around because you have a squirrel brain like me, I thank you as well. The fact we get out of bed everyday and do anything right now is a miracle and I know attention can be finite. 

I am writing this on the eve of the United States General election after having wanting to write this since June of this year. I am tired. We are ALL Shiloh right now. Our lives have been on pause. "I must be brave", "I'll capture it", "Run back inside". Yeah girl, same! I haven't talked about her much throughout any of my essays, but I have to give credit where credit is due. 

Humans are a resilient creature. We have millions of years of experience on this Earth, and much of our survival has been based on pure dumb luck. But we have blown so many other species out of the water in one way alone, and that is our ability to communicate. 

We don't have to let people who exploit our weaknesses control us. The sociopaths who try and run our society did not historically aid in our survival. They didn't care if we ate the mushroom that killed us or would have protected us when threatened by wildlife, it was our tribe. The Right has successfully hijacked that bond between the self and the tribe so that it can fit the needs of sociopathy and greed. It is not normal for a president to tell a nation that "it is what it is" when over 100k citizens die from a preventable disease. Do not let the sociopaths throw us in that tiny pine box in a mighty small drop in a mighty dark plot, hastening the trip to our epilogue. Because every inch you give, they will take a mile and charge you by the hour. Never forget that.

#repo! the genetic opera #repo #shilo wallace #nathan wallace #terrance zdunich #darren smith #gothic #coronavirus #COVID-19 #election #vote #Fascism #politics #donald trump #ivanka trump #eric trump #donald trump junior #republicans #genocide

[duhragonball]

Cult Classic

I had a really exhausting week, so I’m going to try to chill out by writing this thing about cults that’s been bouncing around in my head since... oh, like January 6th?   For some reason?     But it’s also about my insanely long OC fanfic slash vanity project slash concept album.  Join me, won’t you?

Okay, so back in... geez 2018?   Has it been that long?   Around October 2018 I started working out the details for the big climax of the “1000 years ago” section of my fanfic.  From the start I had this idea that the Legendary Super Saiyan would be locked into a death struggle with pretty much the entire Saiyan population, led by a Saiyan King who just can’t handle being upstaged.   But I had to figure out a lot of details to make that actually work.   What I finally ended up with was the Jindan Cult. 

Why a cult?  Because I wanted my King character to be the main villain, but also be physically weaker, but also he needed to be powerful enough to challenge the heroine. I came up with all these different ways to beef up his power level without making him a Super Saiyan himself, but ultimately I wanted him to have an army of Siayans at his back.   That led me to consider some sort of magic elixir that would make them all stronger, but especially the king, since he’s ultimately in this for himself.  At first, I considered having him mind-control all of his goons, but I spent the mind control nickel in earlier arcs, and I’ll have to use it again later, because Towa and Demigra use it.   Then I thought of drug addiction, which is sort of like mind control but not literal brainwashing or anything like that.  And that led me to the cult concept.  

One major inspiration for me was the real-life cult called “NXIVM”, which made the news back in 2018 when their leaders started getting arrested, including “Smallville” star Allison Mack.   Every time I read about it, it felt like something from a movie, but it was real.   I guess the celebrity angle made it more bizarre to me, because it’s sort of like “Hey, this isn’t just some group of randos; someone you’ve heard of is in this thing.”   Not that I ever paid much attention to “Smallville”, but you get the idea.  She didn’t just join NXIVM, she eventually became one of the top recruiters.   Some of the character arcs in my fic were my own attempt to understand how a person goes from Point A to Point B. 

The big plot hole, though, in my mind, was that I came up with this whole master plan for the bad guys, but it involved sending wave after wave of Saiyan cultists to die in pointless, unwinnable battles against Luffa.    I couldn’t have them win much, because if they beat her, they’d just kill her, and the story would be over.    It struck me as fishy that these Saiyans would sign up for a war where the casualty rate is 100%, but I tried to lampshade it as best I could.   “Yeah, all those other chumps couldn’t beat Luffa, but I’ll pull it off because I’m special!”   It still seemed a bit unlikely.  

But then 2020 happened, and I guess the main thing I learned from that year was that people will accept almost anything in order to believe a comfortable lie.  The joke I’ve seen on the internet is that we need to retire the expression “avoid it like the plague”, because it turns out a lot of people don’t actually avoid plagues very well at all.   The horrifying thing about COVID-19 is how easily people will accept the climbing death tolls.   “Oh, well this person was already in bad health, so they would have died eventually anyway.”   I don’t want to get too political here, but I’m pretty sure a lot of the anti-mask, coronavirus-is-a-hoax crowd are the same people who made up tall tales about “death panels” in Obamacare.    “They’re gonna euthanize your grandma!” they would say, but now they say your grandma is acceptable losses if it means reopening bars and restaurants.

Actually, I do mean to get political, because holy fuck, Qanon stormed the Capitol Building.    Look, if you don’t believe Joe Biden won the election, I don’t know what to tell you, except please get far away from me, right now.  If you’re not familiar with Qanon, a few years ago some guy on an image board posted a bunch of cryptic messages and claimed to be an important government figure who would know about important things.    People started “deciphering” his “clues” and when he stopped posting new ones they started inventing their own “clues” and interpreting them any way that suited them.    This led to an overarching narrative that Donald Trump was actually part of this massive sting operation to arrest hundreds, maybe thousands of left-wing politicians, celebrities, and whoever else.    Any day now, he was supposed to have Hilary Clinton arrested, and also JFK Junior would somehow show up and help him, even though he’s been dead for 22 years.  Every day, these Qanon guys would add on more bizarre lore to their “theories”, and every day none of their predictions would come true.  Then Trump lost the election, which put them in a bind, because their whole mythology is based on the idea of him saving the world as POTUS, and now he wasn’t even going to be POTUS for much longer.  

I’m pretty sure this had a lot to do with the lies about election fraud.    Trump himself refused to accept defeat, and his supporters didn’t want to accept it either, so they all told each other that it wasn’t real, and they believed each other so much that they dug in their heels.   But then they’d take this stuff to court and the judge would be like “Uh, what evidence do you have of mass voter fraud?” and they would just be like “lol nvm!”  I mean, if there was proof for any of this, why would they not want a judge to see it?   But for Qanon, it was more than just being sore losers.    They needed all their whackamaroo predictions to come true, and Trump losing re-election would upset the applecart.  

So then they started telling themselves that they could win this thing through the boring certification process.   I think it was like, December 14 when all the states had to certify their results.   So they held out hope that nothing was over until then.    Then they pinned their hopes on the Electoral College, and that there would be enough faithless electors to hand Trump the victory, in spite of the voters.   I found this one amusing, since I used to see tumblr suggesting the same thing back in 2016, when they were still trying to come up with ways for Bernie Sanders to win.  

Then they decided Mike Pence could fix everything, because on Jan 6, Congress would officially count the Electoral Votes and formally declare the winner, and Mike Pence would step in and overrule the whole thing, because the Vice-President oversees that process.    Except he just oversees it, he can’t legally change the outcome, especially on a whim.    And then the riot at the Capitol happened, and I’m pretty sure all these Qanon types thought it would mark the beginning of a nationwide uprising, with all seventy-odd million Trump voters going apeshit, but it... didn’t work out that way.  

Then they convinced themselves that everything was building to January 20, because the innauguration was actually a clever trap, and once Joe Biden took the oath of office, he could then be arrested for treason, so you see, they had to make it look like Trump lost the election, because it was the only way to fool Joe Biden into incriminating himself... or... something.   But Jan 20 came and went, so the latest fallback position I heard was that there’s a double-secret REAL inauguration day, and it’s in March, and the January 20 one isn’t legitimate, even though Trump was inaugurated on January 20, 2016, but whatever.    That, or the guy we see in the White House now is actually Trump disguised as Joe Biden, or a Joe Biden android or something.   

I think I sort of understood that Qanon is a cult, but I didn’t really put the pieces together until the events of January unfolded.    Pre-November, it just seemed like a conspiracy theory, without any real timetables or prophecies, like Flat Earth.    But once the end of the Trump Administration was in sight, it really started to look like all the doomsday cults I’ve heard about over the years.  The predicted events wind up failing to come true, and they invent new predictions to explain away the old ones.   It’s not about the veracity of the claims as much as the claims themselves.    People want to believe there’s this whole elaborate explanation for everything.    They wanted to believe that Trump was this hypercompetent superheroic messiah, because the alternative is to face the uncertain reality: that he had no idea what he was doing, and real people were going to suffer for it.  

I think I sort of worked that idea into my fictional cult, but I backed into it.   NXIVM was a sex cult, not a doomsday cult, or an elaborate conspiracy theory, so I was mostly fixated on all the depraved things the cult could do to its members.   But they all share the same lure: a belief system that promises to make everything fit. I’m not sure what the hook was for NXIVM, but Allison Mack didn’t go in thinking about how much fun sex trafficking would be.   That came later, after she was convinced that NXIVM had all the answers, and one of those answers involved sex crimes, apparently.   In the same vein, Qanon attempted to explain mass arrests and executions by claiming that Hilary Clinton eats babies or something.   “Well, I don’t want babies to get eaten, so I guess breaking into the Capitol building seems like a reasonable course of action.”  

Weighed against real life, a bunch of Saiyans accepting a 100% casualty rate doesn’t seem so outrageous.   It also helps that sometimes the leaders of these groups can buy into their own hype, and think they’re infallible when they’re really not.    This week, I started reading the Darth Plagueis novel again, and I’ve seen the Sith from Star Wars referred to as a cult, but I never gave it a lot of thought until I noticed that Plagueis buys into the whole Dark Side of the Force thing a little too hard.   At times, he’ll wax philosophical about how the Jedi are the real bad guys when you think about it, and he’s not just saying that to be manipulative.   He honestly believes that the Sith can save the galaxy from decline, which is stupid and hypocritical, because they’re the ones causing all the decline.    I always got the impression that Darth Sidious understood that it was all about accumulating power as an end unto itself, and any high-minded talk of necessary evil was just to keep the rubes in line.    Rise of Skywalker plays into that idea nicely.   He somehow survived Episode VI, but he let the Empire collapse, because if he can’t rule it, he doesn’t want it to exist at all.   But he’s still playing himself, because he thinks he can win by following the same failed ideology that got all the previous Sith Lords killed.   

That’s pretty much all I have to say about it right now.    I need to move on to other topics, because Towa’s not doing a cult thing, so my fic is moving in a different direction.   But I feel better for getting this out of my head.

[quakerjoe]

A CUPPA JOE 01 November 2020

The Sound of Democracy Dying

Today, I heard the cheers for fascism by way of dozens of car horns blaring along the main street downtown here, a block from my home in rural Vermont. Dozens of them, driving up and down the main drag, being loud and obnoxious, like they all are, all excited for trumplefuckstick because they're either that hateful of a nation they claim to be so proud of and love so much or because they're far too gone and stupid to know what actual fascism looks like. It's the 21st century recreation of the thousands of cheering fans who packed audiences to hear Hitler or Mussolini speak once upon a time.

The sounds is an abysmal comparison of how things are in the US, represented by a noise typical of gridlock traffic or a multi-car pileup on a major highway. Neither are good; people get upset and some even get killed. That's exactly what this is now as we break records because 45 failed to take Covid seriously while he drained our nation's coffers to enrich himself and make the poor even poorer. Still, these fuckwits are all jazzed up for him; not because they're smart on any level but because to them it's all a game of 'own the libtards' and nothing more.

This is the sound of democracy dying. Dozens of car horns screaming in the gray, cold afternoon. Loads of flags flapping in the wind like their own lips do, spouting ignorance, bigotry, racism and hate. It's right here in my own quiet little Vermont town.

Our days are clearly numbered here in the US. All that bullshit about the bible and loving one another is horse shit. All that rambling on you hear about liberty and justice for all is a farce. We're slipping away into the next big villain nation in world history and here, the crowds (a minority one at that) think they're the good guys, just like all those fanatical Germans and Italians in the 1930's. The stench on the air of history is exactly the same.

The GOP knows how to wield and hold onto power, even when they're the minority. Democrats, for the most part, have all sold us out. We're sliding rapidly to totalitarianism, plutocracy, fascism and every other bad 'ism' out there is swallowing us whole. While those who still try to play fair and by the rules are constantly being shafted, the darkness is swallowing us all whole here and nobody is coming to save us. Not a god, not Biden, not Democrats... Nobody. 

When a Progressive/Liberal state like Vermont has these kinds of fascists having a horn rally, clogging up traffic in their auto-circle-jerk in such numbers, it's a clear sign of the times that we've lost the Republic. A blood bath is coming, rule of law is soon to collapse, and the USA is about to be a thing of the past and nobody's going to want to get near this shithole until the dust settles and that's going to be a while. Perhaps Russia and China will dabble more in affairs here as the two carve up what pieces fall to the wayside during this the way we did when the USSR collapsed.

When asked, a long time ago, what it is that we've won in our independence, Benjamin Franklin stated that we've got a Republic "for as long as we can keep it". While the "Great Experiment" had no expiration date and initially was set up to grow and prosper to be a better place, it has become abundantly clear that this is not the land of the free or the home of the brave. We know when this Republic died and continues to wheeze like a bunch of car horns sounding as the nation's dying breaths come in labored, desperate gasps. Like a patient of Covid-19, we're in quarantine from the rest of the world, dying on a respirator made of parts from corporate news and political corruption. We're not allowed visitors and we're going to die, as a nation, a long, drawn-out, lonely death before the USA finally flatlines.

Don't worry though. Those rich folk that got all the tax breaks and hid their money off-shore will be just fine. While we tear into one another, black v. white, religious v. atheist/agnostic, LGBTQ v. straight whites, they'll be dining well from afar as they watch the blood sport that "We the People" will be engaging in. The masses here never figured out that their true enemy has been the rich fucks who keep us divided; instead we, as a people, just keep giving them more money so they'll let people here be more free to hate one another and kill each other more freely. Of course, this only applies to white folk. Forget it if you're not a white, hetero, "christian" male in this nation!

The upcoming election is going to be a shit show unlike any we've seen in our history. We already know this. The polls closing, the gerrymandering, the open, blatant cheating techniques of the GOP and inaction of the Dems is patently, painfully obvious. If this was a boxing match, you'd know that the GOP couldn't win a fair fight and the Dems got paid to take a dive. It's that simple. So, we're going to see the shittiest election ever in our lifetimes. This administration has done just about everything they could to destroy the election process and if 45 loses, it'll be a court battle that he can't lose now. It's almost a waste of time and effort. It's "zugzwang"; all their moves have led up to this and the proverbial Left is about to be put in checkmate in only a few short days and there's literally nothing that can be done about it shy of a more "French" solution. Fascism is about to win. Democracy is about to die and you know what? These assholes still think fascism is some form of democracy and liberty all while thinking democratic socialism is evil. That's how stupid the US has gotten.

As we approach "Game Over, Man!" I just wanted to point out this bit of prattling on because you, dear reader, are either part of the choir I'm preaching to or one of the fucktards out there honking horns and flying flags all jazzed up to watch the nation fall and fascism prevail. "That's the way it is" and "Goodnight and good luck".

Once all of the horn honking has died down and all is said and done, it all comes down to a line from the poem “The Hollow Men” by T.S. Eliot when he wrote “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper.”

[evilelitest2]

I'm worried about 2024, I genuinely don't know if Biden will make it and I also don't like the idea of our president being his 80's but I'm also worried what scumbag degenerate fascist the gop will spit out.

So I don’t know if Biden is actually going to run in 2024, I think Biden is holding it close to his chest.  But I am honestly more confident about our chances in 2024 than I was about 2020 or I am about 2022.  Like if Trump runs again, I am almost certain he can’t win, UNLESS there is a massive covid outbreak or the economy crashes, because Trump lost by 7.5 million votes even when his administration was actively repressing the vote using the Federal Government.  BIden looks like he is going to see an exploding economy and the eventual control of Covid (knock on wood).  And the reasons why Trump lost haven’t gone away.  

He is extremely unlikable, openly bigoted  got half a million Americans killed, was horrifically incompetent, flagrantly corrupt, authoritarian, and incapable of staying on message.   I don’t think in four years people will have forgotten how much they fucking hated the Trump administration nor will they want to go back to that.  So unless the dems put up somebody as dislikable as Hillary Clinton in 2024, I think the presidental election is likely to go our way, because Trump in 2024 is going to be very similar to Trump in 2020 (the man never changes).  The only things that will be different is that the demographics will be even more in our favor and Covid will probably have died down by then.  The only chance I see for Trump beating Biden in 2024 are if 

1) The economy totally crashes in the next four years, like majorly

2) Biden does not get a handle on covid and we have a massive spike

3) Biden has a heart attack or some other serious health complication.   

Otherwise...Biden beat Trump pretty handily and I don’t see the factors leading to that defeat changing in four years that will likely be good for the dems.  

Now could Biden beat anybody other than Trump is a different question in my mind, he is going to be in his 80s and is a very boring man, so I don’t know how that will play against a more charmatic republican candidate.  But of course, I don’t know if any Republican is going to be able to get a chance in this primary, since Trump has stolen oxygen from basically every other Republican so even if Trump doesn’t win, the only person who could win would be somebody equally part of Trump world.  

#ask evilelitist2 #Trump #2024 #Biden #presidental election #Covid #Republican Party #GOP #Democratic Party

[theunvanquishedzims]

Calming my post-election anxiety with sweet sweet logic

So Trump is a wannabe dictator with crazy screaming fans who are headed toward violent armed meltdowns. What’s to stop him from going full dictator and refusing to leave office?

I’m glad you asked!

You see, the major difference between wannabe dictators and actual dictators is ALLIES. Dictators are surrounded with tight security, aided by the military, cheered on by media that they control, and are either helped, encouraged, or just ignored by other countries with the power to stop them.

Trump has charged the Secret Service money for the privilege of protecting him and his family since day one. You remember the first year, when his wife and son refused to move to the White House so the Secret Service had to RENT FLOORS in TRUMP’S BUILDING to be close to them? And how his extended family went globetrotting and the Secret Service had to accompany them? And when Trump himself insisted on hosting people at his golf club, he made the Secret Service RENT GOLF CARTS from TRUMP’S CLUB to follow him while he went golfing?

The end result was that halfway through the first year of his presidency, the Secret Service could not pay their own wages. Because half their yearly budget had gone straight to Trump’s pockets. And that’s just financially. I think we all remember how the White House came down with Covid and Trump still insisted on Secret Service agents driving him around to wave at people. He has not been kind to the people who are sworn to protect him. These people have had a front-row seat to his circus since 2016. When the time comes from Trump to leave the White House and Biden to take over, I doubt they’ll betray the country out of loyalty to Trump. If anything, they’ll be the ones to drag him out.

As for the military, Trump insulted and fired four generals from his administration staff. He said on multiple occasions that soldiers who get captured or killed are suckers and losers. He refused to visit a cemetery to honor the dead because it was raining. He tries to pander to the military by massive increases in defense spending, but that money goes to capitalists who make weapons and war technology, not the soldiers or veterans. (He also hypocritically accused military officials of being in bed with those same companies.) In a poll of 1000 service members 50% said they disliked Trump. Overall, he doesn’t act like a leader, and the way he skirts responsibility (like taking charge during the pandemic) doesn’t appeal to a group that functions on trust in their leadership.

A proper dictator would have spent the last four years cozying up to his generals and making sure they knew the financial and social benefits of answering to him personally, not the office of the President. And while Trump did adhere to the adage “find a foreign foe” to unite people against, he badly misjudged what most US citizens consider “foreign.” He hasn’t found a villain that we would root for the military taking down, and the people he targets (Latinx, Blacks, immigrants, and people in countries our military has already devastated) are not a minority he can turn the majority of the country against, especially with how many of the former two serve in the military themselves. When the time comes for him to leave office, the military might be the first to cut ties with the wannabe Dictator-in-Chief.

Now, the media. They’ve been treating him like a joke candidate since day one, but after he was actually elected and took office they’ve started to take him more seriously. He’s gotten his catchphrase “fake news!” to catch on, but that doesn’t change the fact that under his administration news reporters have been harassed, illegally arrested, and generally poorly treated by Trump, especially if they’re women. He’s trashed talked everyone, with Fox News being the last bastion of semi-legitimate news that openly supports him (and their credibility has taken a big hit over it.)

Despite this support, in recently months Trump has been increasingly dumping on Fox, even throwing the mediator they provided for the debate under the bus, and risking alienating them in the process. If his supporters listen to him and start considering Fox part of Big Fake News, it might possibly be the death of Fox, leaving most of his supporters adrift and isolated from their source of right-wing news, and sending the more extreme fringes into the arms of conspiracy theory websites. (I’m not saying this is bad, being cut off from Fox and its toxic stream of “information” can actually help rehabilitate the right.)

Honestly, I don’t think Trump ever had a shot at controlling the media like a dictator would, mainly because of social media. He’s in love with attention, and Twitter has provided him a nonstop stream of it. No other President has threatened, insulted, promoted, or hinted at war over social media the way Trump has, and he gets so much direct feedback and interaction with the public and the world as a result. He could have leveraged that by buying the company (through a shell corporation, obviously) and setting it up as The One True Source of Information, manipulating public perception of him and his administration by keeping a tight grip on what information he let out.

But he’s just. Not. That. Clever. He blurts out everything that crosses his mind, leaving his administration to play clean-up on his messes, put out fires he keeps pouring gasoline on, and claim he’s joking when everyone knows he’s testing the limits on what he can get away with saying. He took advantage of the direct communication with legions of supporters, but seemed to forget that his detractors had equal access and would absolutely call him out on things he definitely said, it’s right there on his Twitter account, they have the Tweet pulled up on their phone right now. Instead of operating a single state-run media outlet while crushing all free press and limiting internet access like other dictators, he’s mooned the world’s cameras and acted surprised when they put his saggy butt on tv. “Fake news! That’s not my butt! THIS is my butt! [image attached]” he tweets. “Twitter is so biased, they haven’t censored any of Sleepy Joe’s photos!” he later tweets.

And lastly. The key to a dictatorship’s success. To prevent outside intervention, the country a dictator runs must be unimportant and ignored, wealthy and well-connected, or scary and well-armed. Minor warlords are the former, Putin is the latter, Trump might have weaseled his way into being the middle. But at the end of the day, America’s whole thing is new leadership every four years. It was revolutionary to replace a lineage of kings and queens stretching generations with a non-royal elected leader who only held office for four to eight years, but we’ve stuck to that for 200 years and everyone’s used to it by now. It would take a charismatic and powerful person to move the American people towards abolishing such a basic tenant of our democracy, and despite the mob mentality that lead a small portion of his supporters to chant “sixteen more years!” in the heat of the moment, Trump is not that charismatic. He’s not that smart. He’s not that well-connected. He’s not that savvy. He’s not that good at politics. And he’s not that powerful.

(I was going to say something here about him being the laughingstock of the world’s leaders and shouldn’t expect any outsiders to help him stay in power, especially since his tax returns came out and showed he owes people a ton of money that he doesn’t have, but this post is long enough so let’s cut to the chase.)

Trump is a greedy, small-minded man that has clung to power by appealing to the worst in humanity and scraping away at the best. But he hasn’t succeeded. He’s a sad old man who will say anything to be loved, and I don’t think he even knows what love is, so he’ll settle for attention. He doesn’t have money, he doesn’t have an army, and the only allies he has are using him as a political pawn to further their own interests. They will cut him loose the minute he stops being useful.

Now, the bad part: crazy screaming fans. Fringe groups on the internet. Mobs chanting “sixteen more years!” Men with guns and bombs and kidnapping plots, men trying to get into voting centers to destroy the election, men driving trucks with black flags that say FUCK YOUR FEELINGS, TRUMP 2020 (available on Amazon for $11.99, I wish I was joking.) I have no idea how many people in this country genuinely love Trump. It is hopefully significantly less than voted for him. There are some big issues in this country that are make-or-break, and unfortunately by reason of running Republican Trump has aligned himself with some of them.

There are people who hate everything about Trump, but he put a pro-life judge on the Supreme Court so they’re voting for him. There are people who are uncomfortable with Trump, but they’ve forgiven their grandpa for saying worse at Thanksgiving dinner, so they’ll vote for him. There are people who don’t know a single thing about Donald Trump, but they see (Republican) next to his name on the ballot, so they vote for him. None of that means those people will side with him if he tries to make a move towards dictatorship.

Now there are people who love Trump. They’ve heard and seen the vile things he’s said and done, and are genuinely okay with it, because they are full of hate and rage and want to change the world to put themselves on top. I do not know how many of these people there are. I know they exist all over the country, not just in red states. I know some of them have guns and want a reason to use them, because they’ve been talking about it for decades. I don’t know if we can trust the police to side with us over them if fights start breaking out. (And I pray pray PRAY people de-escalate any fights, because monkey see monkey do, and one news report of a MAGA extremist shooting someone can inspire a hundred copycats can lead to full-on civil war like we've never seen.) I know we need to be careful the next few months, to take care of ourselves and watch out for the more vulnerable in our communities.

And above all, I know this: Trump is not going to keep this country. He got it through trickery and deceit and foreign influence and national indifference and people not taking him seriously. We’ve learned. We’ve grown. We’re taking him seriously now, and we will not let him take what we’ve already told him he can’t have. The election is over. He’s a loser. He’d better start packing his bags. Because he’s not staying in office.

#politics #long post #best case scenario: he tries to rehabilitate his rep as a man of the people #by pushing massive amounts of money into direct stimulus #funds it by cutting the military budget in half #everyone gets several thousand dollars next month #he screws over every white collar criminal he ever had help from #exposes a lot of corruption and behind-the-scenes stuff #and pardons every convict in jail on weed charges #''he really drained the swamp'' everyone says admiringly #''only took him four years and an impeachment'' #then he gets convicted of crimes and runs away to Russia #where he's found dead in a snowbank #because PUTIN IS NOT YOUR FRIEND YOU USELESS LUMP #Melina inherits everything and never sets foot in the US again #the Obamas send her a gift basket every Christmas #at least one of his kids runs for president #and gets laughed out of the party #the kid in question might be Ivanka who gets a concerning amount of radfem votes #it's definitely not Barron though #(watch me eat those words in 21 years)

[judedeluca]

I’m saying this as a cisgender queer white guy. I can understand the idea of people being unhappy with Biden as the democratic pick, and Harris as his vice president. There’s still a lot I don’t understand which is my fault because I’m dense. People are allowed to be unhappy about it.

But speaking bluntly, NONE OF US have the luxury to be picky now and to gripe about the presidential nominations against Trump as of this moment are not going to help. Trump is a monster.

TRUMP. IS. A. MONSTER.

I can’t believe I have to fucking spell that out at this point, after 4 years of him and another potential 4 years, OR MORE, looming on the horizon. He is a monster. He is literally the worst humanity has to offer. How many people have died in the past 4 years because of him, and how many wish they were dead after the state they’ve been left in? Not just him, but his administration and the Republicans who keep championing his gross abuse of civil and human rights.

And not just the Republicans, but the Democrats who believe their votes don’t matter or the voters who will vote for a third party candidate out of spite to Trump AND Biden. THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED 4 YEARS AGO AND LOOK WHERE IT GOT US. BECAUSE PEOPLE THOUGHT TRUMP WAS BAD BUT THEY WEREN’T WILLING TO VOTE FOR HILLARY CLINTON.

Our economy is in shambles.

Children are trapped in cages and sprayed with poison.

Those who didn’t get killed by COVID will probably suffer from permanent health issues that will most likely kill them eventually.

Our country is either despised, pitied, or laughed at by the rest of the world.

Yes, I know democracy is flawed. Yes, I know Biden and Harris may not be great candidates. BUT VOTING FOR  JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS IS JUST ABOUT THE ONLY OPTION ANY OF US HAS TO STOP TRUMP FROM FULLY TURNING THIS COUNTRY INTO A REDUX OF NAZI GERMANY.

YOU HAVE HEARD HIM.

HE’S TALKING MORE THAN FOUR YEARS IF HE’S REELECTED AND HE’LL DO IT. YOU’VE SEEN WHAT HE’S CAPABLE OF. BENEATH THE SPRAY TAN AND THE NONSENSE HE IS A GODDAMN SOCIOPATH WHO HAS RAPED THIS COUNTRY AND MANY OF YOU WOULD RATHER LET HIM KEEP DOING THAT THAN VOTE FOR THE ONLY PEOPLE IN A TRUE POSITION TO FIX THE DAMAGE.

YOU WANT TO COMPLAIN ABOUT BIDEN AND HARRIS? FINE. YOU WANT TO BE ANGRY ABOUT WHAT THEY’VE DONE? THAT’S YOUR RIGHT. BUT FIRST LET’S GET THEM INTO OFFICE AND GET TRUMP OUT, AND THEN YOU CAN FIGHT TO HAVE JUSTICE BROUGHT AGAINST THE WRONGS THEY’VE COMMITTED.

BECAUSE THIS ISN’T JUST ABOUT YOU, AND IT’S NOT ABOUT ME. IT’S ABOUT ALL OF US. THIS IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE DYING FROM COVID BECAUSE TRUMP ENABLED A PANDEMIC. THIS IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO LOST THEIR JOBS AND THEIR HOMES BECAUSE OF TRUMP. THIS IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO WERE HERDED UP AND TRAPPED IN CAGES BY ICE THANKS TO TRUMP’S ADMINISTRATION. THIS IS ABOUT THE PEOPLE WHO HAVE DIED BECAUSE OF TRUMP AND THE REPUBLICANS.

SO FORGIVE ME FOR SAYING THIS, BUT IF YOU’RE NOT WILLING TO VOTE FOR THE ONLY CANDIDATES MOST LIKELY TO GET TRUMP OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE AND MAKE AN EFFORT TO FIX HIS DAMAGE, OR IF YOU THINK YOUR VOTE DOESN’T MATTER OR YOU’RE GONNA VOTE FOR A THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE, THEN YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM AND YOU NEED TO SHUT THE FUCK UP.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Deborah “Shoulder Scarf” Birx is so sorry she stood there in the White House briefing room with her thumb up her ass while Trump recommended drinking Clorox and lied about numbers of cases of COVID and masks and everything else about the virus for a year.

Lindsay “Little Lindsay” Graham bought himself a shiny new AR-15 so he can defend his house against marauding “gangs,” and probably because if you don’t own one of these things, they throw you out of the “base” on your pin-striped butt.

You remember the phrase, “there is no bottom” don’t you?  The idea, principally involving Donald Trump, that he couldn’t possibly go any lower than he just went with his latest tweet or his latest lie.  Well, I’ve got news for him.  He’s got competition.

Little Lindsay, for one.  Can you imagine this lame squeak-toy masquerading as a senator from South Carolina and his own personal assault rifle?  Don’t you wonder where he keeps it, so he can defend against all those “gangs” that are determined to steal all his antiques or take the brooch he inherited from his mommy, or whatever the hell else he thinks he’s defending?  Well, at least we know which gangs he’s not afraid of:  The Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys and the Three Percenters, because of course they’re they ones who were “kissing and hugging” the Capitol Police on January 6, according to Lindsay’s golf partner and Mar a Lago lunch-buddy.  Nothing to worry about from them, no sir.  We’re not afraid of those gangs, because, you know…they’re not Black.

But it was last night’s CNN special entitled “COVID War:  The Pandemic doctors speak out,” that takes the cake for this week’s How Low Can We Go Award.  What fucking war?  There was never a goddamned “war” on COVID!  You point to one thing this country did during the 12 months or so Trump and his administration were in charge that amounted to a “war.”  Did they institute a nation-wide campaign against the disease, one in which all 50 states and Puerto Rico and other U.S. territories would all be doing the same thing at the same time to fight the disease?  If anything even remotely resembling a national unified effort was undertaken, I must have missed it.

And the very idea of collecting these nincompoops in one place with the apparent purpose of asking them what really happened?  I mean, they had 365 opportunities between January of 2020 and January of this year on any given afternoon to pick up the phone and call CNN or the New York Times or MSNBC or the Washington Post or anybody for crying out loud and unburden themselves about what the hell was really going on inside the White House or the CDC or the DHS or the FDA, because that’s where they worked, or allegedly worked anyway.  Any one of them could have called a press conference out on Pennsylvania Avenue in sight of the White House and blown the whistle on the fucking criminal enterprise that was the Trump administration’s response to the most deadly outbreak of disease in this country in a hundred years.

Nobody was stopping them.  There wasn’t a squad of D.C. cops or Secret Service agents out there preventing them from opening their mouths and telling the truth.  Birx tried to imply that somehow Trump threatened her, at least that was the question from CNN.  “I got called by the President. It was very uncomfortable, very direct and very difficult to hear."  “Were you threatened?” CNN asked her?  "I would say it was a very uncomfortable conversation."

Oh, goodness!  She must have broken out in a sweat and got one of her scarves all damp and everything!  A very uncomfortable conversation,” she said.  What about all the “very uncomfortable conversations” happening in every fucking hospital in the country when doctors walked outside to tell family members that dad, or mom, or a son or a daughter just took their last gasp on a respirator?  How many times you figure that happened?  Ten thousand?  Twenty?  A fucking hundred thousand times?

And who in the flaming son of the devil is Dr. Robert Kadlec, identified by CNN as a disaster response official at the Department of Health and Human Services.  You ever remember hearing from or about this goof over the last year?  You would think that being the assistant secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services for “disaster response” would put you right in the middle of the COVID pandemic, wouldn’t you?  So where the fuck was Kadlec?

Well, I had to look him up and here’s what I found.  He was the subject of a long-forgotten whistleblower complaint from way back in May of last year that I have a dim memory of.  While the COVID virus was rampaging through the country and killing at first dozens, then hundreds, then thousands a day, Kadlec was awarding a sweetheart no-bid contract for a fucking smallpox vaccine to some company called Emergent BioSolutions he had a personal connection with, at a price that was twice what the government had previously paid for the same vaccine.  So what did Kadlec do?  He proceeded to go after the guy who filed the complaint against him, Rick Bright, who was the head of BARDA, the Biomedical Advance Research and Development Authority.  Kadlec demoted him, transferred him out of BARDA and put him in a job where he had nothing to do.  So all the time Kadlec actually has something to do, an actual “disaster” to respond to, he’s running around awarding insider deals for a vaccine against a virus we haven’t had a case of in fucking decades.

And he’s one of the SOBs that CNN chose to have on its “COVID war” special.  (Rick Bright, on the other hand, was recently appointed to President Biden’s coronavirus advisory board.)

Let’s not even discuss Robert Redfield, the director of the CDC who was in charge of shutting up everyone in that once-prestigious government agency.  Or Stephen Hahn, head of the FDA, who, shall we say, didn’t exactly distinguish himself or his agency as 500,000 souls were buried under his watch.  Or Brett Giroir, the former four star admiral you used to see standing next to Trump during his Rose Garden appearances when he was screaming about “opening up” the economy and telling us the coronavirus was going to “just disappear.”  He was Assistant Secretary for Health and was put in charge of COVID testing, which we will all recall was such a success that more than a year after COVID, it is still a gigantic pain in the ass to get a test for the virus.

CNN had all these goofs on its air last night because they know “the real story behind the scenes” in the “war on COVID.”  Not one of them ever flapped so much as a corner of their bottom lip to tell what they knew about how fucked up the whole Trump administration was during the year they served under the Golfer in Chief.  Not one of them considered for even a moment resigning from their position and going public.  And now, we’re told, they are all working on restoring their reputations while there are 500,000 dead bodies out there who were buried on their watch which will never be “restored.”

I’m so glad Joe Biden made it to the White House so he could stand out there on the back lawn the other day where Trump used to tell all his lies to the press and finish answering a reporter’s question about Georgia’s new voting restrictions by saying, “You can’t provide water for people about to vote.  Give me a break.”

I’ve wanted to hear someone say “give me a break” for four long years.  Give me a break, CNN, asking all these lame fucks to tell us the truth about Trump and COVID, 500,000 lives too late.  Give me a break, Shoulder Scarf, with your whining about Trump making you feel “uncomfortable.”  Give me a break, Little Lindsay, with your brand-new shiny shootie-thingie that’s going to scare all those nasty gang guys.

Lucian K. Truscott IV

#COVID-19 #global pandemic #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #cowardice #incompetence #Lucian K Truscott IV

[sorenthestoryteller]

On Politics - A Rant on a Lovely December Evening

I used to simply dislike Republican politicians.

Trump was bad enough and my white privilege was a blinder to how genuinely evil Republicans are.

Then this year happened.

2020 has caused me to have an active visceral and passionate hate for Republicans. Mainstream Democrats are only a few steps behind Republicans but at least Democrats are trying to do something to help people.

Republicans bailed out corporations and are currently stalling anymore COVID 19 relief until Democrats say it’s cool for corporations to be protected from lawsuits over causing their workers to be harmed or killed by COVID 19.

Boy, isn’t that such a great move by Southern Baptist Republican leaders Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell.

I am so glad I am no longer affiliated with that denomination. The fact I ever had a common link with these men makes me feel oily, disgusted, and ashamed.

I realize Jesus said to love our enemies and I’ll be happy to do that when they are in prison and no longer actively trying to fuck up the world and fucking murder the planet and kill every person alive by allowing corporations to accelerate global warming.

Because, unless you are a millionaire, you are the enemy of Republicans.

They need support from everyday people and they are happy to lie to them, fleece them and then take away vital programs in the name of budget balances and giving socialism to corporations.

It is possible to be an incredibly angry and pissed off militant pacifist who is working to change the world.

I am trying to have hope that the Biden administration will have an attorney general that actively and fiercely hunts down the corruption from the Trump administration and take down various Republican leaders.

It would be nice to actually have respect for leaders again.

You know, that whole integrity thing.

I doubt many moderate or conservative Christians are reading this but Jesus is going to hold you to account for this year. He is going to hold you to account for how you handle issues of race, poverty and disease.

I promise Jesus gives not a single solitary fuck or a single damn about your 401k, what you heard on Fox News, or the self righteous culture war you conduct to feel better about yourself.

Read your Bible and put it into practice or just drop the act and admit you are a Republican shill.

Remember that bit about a man not being able to swerve two masters?

Fucking 2020 is going turn me into damn Christian Communist before this is all over.

#Politics #2020 #republicans #democrats #election 2020 #pandemic #covid 19 #fucking republicans #christian #southern baptists #mitch mcconnell #lindsey graham #integrity #rage #Post of a textual nature #blog

[somerandomg33k]

I still don’t know who to vote for?

This election is going to be a weird and frustrating one. It is the first presidential general election where I am an Anarcho-Syndicalist. And this election in the darkest timeline has a Fascist as the incumbent. But the candidate that is opposing Donald Trump is Joe Biden. Almost everyone's last pick in the primary. The only worst candidate during this primary was Michael Bloomberg, who was trying to buy his way into the election. Possible to take votes away from Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but that is damning with faint praise that Joe Biden is better than Michael Bloomberg.

The most likely results of this election are either the continued reign of a dictatorial Fascist, causes and continuing chaos and mayhem, or just straight up Neo-Liberalism. We are going back to a normal under Obama, which was terrible as well. Just not as awful as under Fascism. And we won't fix the problems that allowed Trump to rise to power. Since those are core systematic problems that the current Democratic Establishment is not interested in correcting. And the Republican party is just worse as they are OK with Fascism. Some of them want Fascism.

And let's not forget, serval people have very good personal reasons not to vote for Joe Biden. Joe Biden helped co-wrote the 1994 crime bill. In some issues, he was to the right of Regan on drug enforcement of the Drug war. He was always the most conservative Democrat in the Senate during his time there. He voted against busing 19 times. That is why many Leftists say that Joe Biden is Republican-lite. He is just the 'correct' color for Liberals and is the candidate the Democratic party chooses. So yea, there are two Republican tickets this election. The difference is one is not Fascist. Liberals know this. They are just in denial or flat out refuse to believe it. Because boy, don't say that Joe Biden and his running mate are anything but Progressive to them. Because they really hate that. "I think it is unfair to Joe Biden to judge him by International standards. I would prefer that he is judge by American Political standards," one Liberal said. Why can't Liberals admit that America's Political standards are shit?

Liberals have to believe that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are progressives because they can only think of voting for progressives and progressive causes. They can't accept they are voting for a Conservative on the Democrat ticket, because they would have to admit that the Democratic party has moved towards the right as has American's Overton Window. Joe Biden is against Medicare 4 All. On that issue, he is to the right of Boris Johnson and other conservatives of the UK and Canada. Liberals have to believe they are voting for progressives on the Democrat ticket. Because if they didn't, they would lose faith in the whole Ameican Electoral system as well as Reform. It is almost like Capitalist Realism. People can imagine the end of the World before they can imagine the End of Capitalism. Liberals probably have an easier time visualizing the end of the World before they could imagine a different system than the current governance of Liberal Capitalist Democracy.

Let's not forget, something we already know, that Joe Biden is a bit creepy. He is a Patriarch and treats women differently than men. Whenever he meets families at the White House who have sons and daughters, he would say to the sons, "You have a critical job. You got to protect your sister from all of the boys. That is something my Dad told me." The women must be protected, and it is the men who must do the protecting. Joe Biden has a habit of creepily smelling women and girls' hair and touching their bodies on the waist and shoulders. Serval women have said that Joe made them feel uncomfortable. And this was all before Tara Reade allocations.  #IBelieveTaraReade.

As for Kamala Harris, she did put trans women in men's prison, which resulted in one of them getting killed. "Kamala Harris couldn't do a thing." Is something Liberals need to stop saying. What they really mean is, "Kamala Harris choose to uphold an unjust system by blindly following rules instead of using her power and influence to change them." She attempted to block two Trans women's requests to get gender confirmation surgeries. Which, as far as I know, she hasn't really made amendments for. She wasn't good about slowing down The New Jim Crow. She was fierce to Sex Workers too. One of my comrades said, "As a trans woman and a Sex Worker, how should I feel about voting for Kamala Harris." She increased convictions for things like merely drug procession. She also wanted to jail parents for truancy. She has been called the Democrats Top Cop. Someone who is "Tough on Crime." Just like how Bill Clinton and Joe Biden were in the 90s. And that still has devastating effects on Black and Brown communities.

So many people have many good reasons not to want to vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. And Liberals want to think that they simply "have their flaws." Again, I think it is just all to make it easier for them to be excited to vote for them. All of those issues, including their voting record on increasing Military spending too, are "merely flaws." And they will also shame people into voting for Biden/Harris with, "It is the lesser of two evils." Which again, is more of an indictment of the system we have. "But we have an election, and we should all vote." So we can't talk about changing the system right now during an election. So when can we talk about change this entire system? And Just like with 2016, "A vote for a third party or a no vote is a vote for Trump."

Further shaming us into voting for Biden/Harris. "Do you want four more years of Trump?" FUCK YOU AND SHOVE THAT DISINGENUOUS QUESTION UP YOUR ASS!!

Merely bringing up all of these complaints are being associated with supporting Trump. Another by-product of the binary way of thinking with the Two-Party system and First Past the Post voting. Liberals have 'accepted' Biden/Harris is the ticket. And they honestly wish we do too. And since we are vocal with our complaints, they hate us for not 'accepting' Biden/Harris is the ticket. They hate us for not 'accepting' the way the system is as it is. "I have accepted all of this. Why haven't you?" This can explain how so many Liberals would go "URG" at the thought of Joe Biden as President back in January during the Primaries to skipping to the polls to vote for Biden for the General Election. "Well, he won the primary." "I get to vote Trump out of Office" is more what it is about and not how great Biden is. They tell themselves how great Biden and Harris will be as a recon.

And with all of the shaming us into voting for Biden/Harris, instead of voting for the Green Party or not voting, it completely ignores the fact we did vote for Hillary in 2016. She 2.8 million more votes. But it is the Electoral College that gave Donald Trump in the win. Plus, in Washington State, my state, four of the Electors didn't vote for Hillary Clinton when they were 'supposed to.' Washington State is likely to go blue again. So I don't know if it is essential for Me to vote for Biden/Harris. The fivethirtyeight poll from Sept. 22 shows Washington voting for Biden at 58% vs Trump at 36%. A 22 point difference. I think I can safely vote for Howard Hawkins and feel like I didn't help Trump win. But that won't be what Liberals think.

Now with all that said, Donald Trump is still a Fascist wannabe Dictator. He is almost the worst. His administration is just letting massive amounts of people died because of Covid-19. He is encouraging people to shoot BLM protestors. He told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by," at the first Presidential Debate.  He said there wouldn't be a peaceful transferal of power because there won't be a transferal, but a continuation. Donald Trump has sewn doubts about voting by mail. He will doubt any kind of election results where he doesn't win. So Liberals argue we most vote in such high numbers to show that it is the will of the people they want him out of office. To which he can easily say "Fake News." He did doubt the 2016 popular vote results claiming 3 million "illegals" cast fraudulent votes.

Another convincing argument is we most show that Trump's ideas can't win elections. Because if it continues to win elections, more people will adopt Trump's views and policies. It is sort of convincing. But since a Qanon supporter will win a seat in the House of Representatives, becoming a rising star in the GOP Party. The GOP Party has backed Trump throughout his time in office, Trump's views and policies will continue whether he wins or not. Even if Trump loses, we are not out of the woods yet. Not by a long shot. Trump base will still be here in this White Supremacist CisHetro Patriarchal Ableist country of the United Corporations of Imperialism. Who will always vote for the GOP and are not going away. Many Democrats will even speak highly of them. Nancy Pelosi prays for the Republicans. Liberals believe having an opposition is part of a functioning Democracy. Will the GOP no longer be Fascist? I doubt it.

"We have to get rid of Trump at all costs." I understand that urge. But the system gave us Trump and protected him. So how is voting and participating within the same system supposed to help? I know that Liberals think voting is very powerful because "So many people had to fight for their basic right to vote." And that is all true. The GOP only wins because of dirty tricks like gerrymandering and voter suppression. Hence, Trump is encouraging his base to watch the polling stations for "suspicious people wanting to commit voter fraud" and "rig" the election. It is straight voter intimidation and is happening already in Virginia. Part of the convincing reason to get Trump out of the White House. Biden will not encourage White Supremacist of all types to commit acts of violence against "The Radical Left terrorists" and "Antifa."  Antifa is not an organization; it is an idea. Even Biden got that right.

Knowing how terrible Trump is, brings me back to Biden and how bad he is. Not as bad. Trump and Biden aren't the same. Trump is a Fascist while Biden is a Neo-Liberal, and Neo-Liberalism isn't Fascism. Neo-Liberalism just leads to Fascism, as we have already seen with Trump. I simply see Neo-Liberalism worse than how Liberals see it. Not enough to make a false equivalent, but still. Remember, if Trump loses, he could pull a Grover Cleaveland and run again in 2024. Imagine that.

What bothers me the most about Liberals changing their opinion of Biden, by the mere fact he won the primary, is that Biden is granted votes from Democrats and Leftists. I am sure Democrats do love old Uncle Joe. There were a lot of memes from the Obama years. And many Liberals just love Obama. Even though they fully well know about his War Crimes. It is that acceptance that I don't have in me. "Well, he is the candidate. So I will support him to get rid of Trump." And what makes it worse, Biden isn't really offering anything as well. He is against the Green New Deal. He is against Medicare-4-all, even during a Pandemic. What is Biden/Harris offering? Even Biden, when asking these questions and about his record, says, "If you are questioning whether to vote for me or not, you ain't black."

So Leftists will get nothing and will receive all of the blame for of Trump winning if we don't vote for Biden. "If you are questioning whether to vote for Biden or not, you must want Trump for four more years."

Remember, I live in Washington State. A super blue State. If I live in any battleground state, even within a ten points difference, I would vote for Biden/Harris. But since Biden is ahead by 22 points in my state, and I don't see that changing anytime soon, I am considering voting for a third party. Howard Hawkins of the Green and Socialist party is closer to my position. I would prefer there is no State at all and no President at all. Especially no single person having that much power, especially being the 'leader of the "Free" world' by virtue of being the President of the United Corporations of Imperialism. If the President of the United Corporations of Imperialism is the 'leader' of the 'free world,' then how come the World doesn't get to vote in this election. The UCI, Imperialtopia bombs the hell out of the middle east so much, I think the middle east has a right to have a say in our elections.

I do have to acknowledge those platform holders, people with a Youtube channel, a Podcast, or have a large following on Social Media, feel the need to tell people to "to out and vote. Vote as if your life depends on it because for some, it actually does matter." Although for some people, much won't change materially for their lives, like the impoverished and the disabled. For some, it is life or death. For others, it is a shit show, regardless. But platform holders want Trump out of the White House. They don't know who lives in what state. They don't know if their audience's votes matter or not. Since they are speaking to a vast audience, and they must keep it simple, they have to say, "VOTE! VOTE! VOTE!"

But, I am thinking, if they acknowledge that some votes are more important in some states than others, they will have to admit the whole in the United Corporations of Imperialism is unjust. Votes are weight more heavily in some states than in others. The whole system has to change. But that can't happen in a year. However, folks can vote on Election Day. So, it is easy to encourage people to vote instead of organizing to abolish the Electoral College. It would take too long to do it. It would take a lot of effort. So even bother trying. Liberals would rather pretend that isn't the case and just badger and shame people into voting for a candidate they have 'accepted' won the primary, even though Biden was one of the worse candidates in that field. Everyone's tenth or so pick.

With all that said, vote for whoever you want to or whoever you feel comfortable voting for. I won't vote shame anyone. Except if you vote for Trump and the GOP. Then you are a Fascist because you are voting for a Fascist and the Fascist party. Pure and simple.

#fascist #antifa #trump #Donald Trump #Joe Biden #joe biden vs donald trump #joe biden and kamala harris speeches: election 2020 live updates #Kamala Harris #joe biden and kamala harris #joe biden's records #kamala harris' records #election #2020 Election #VOTE #vote2020 #united corporations of imperialism #imperialism #corporations #electoral college #election day #swing states #battleground states #blue states #red states #liberals #liberalism #neoliberalism #neoliberal #neoliberal capitalism #capitalism

[clexa--warrior]

Hey, Have You Heard About This Coronavirus Thing? Crazy Shit, Right? (Ferret/Shower Cap)

History texts depicting this period will read like deranged Choose Your Adventure books written by sadists; no matter how frantically you flip backwards, you just can’t seem to find the page when you still had the option to vote for the really smart lady with the email server. Anyway, join me for a quick news round-up, it won’t take long, and when we’re done, I give you permission to run away to join a roving Thai monkey street gang.

(As always, find this post WITH nifty news links here: http://showercapblog.com/hey-have-you-heard-about-this-coronavirus-thing-crazy-shit-right/)

For those of you just waking up from a Rip Van Winkle nap, the United States is facing a massive, coast-to-coast, health crisis, whose tragic consequences have exploded exponentially because our Idiot Manchild President really believed, in that churning campground septic tank he calls a mind, that protecting his personal approval ratings by understating the problem was more important than the health and safety of the American public. I don’t know what you can call that but murder. On the one hand, it’s weird to say “wow, the President murdered a bunch Americans through boneheaded, unforgivably selfish, neglect,” but we already saw him get away with precisely that crime in Puerto Rico, so here we are.

Now, I have come to expect malice from the federal government under Hairplug Himmler, but sometimes their capacity for raw, senseless, evil still shocks me. This is my way of saying that, until they got fucking caught, the Department of, and Someone Should Slap the Word Out of Their Filthy Mouths, Justice attempted to remove CDC fliers offering potentially life-saving information regarding the coronavirus from...immigration courtrooms. My God. What a small but potent horror. Feels like the work of an ambitious intern in Stephen Miller’s office, doesn’t it? Trying to impress the boss? Just a sinister little trick, to spread a little more pain, a little more misery, a little more death in an already vulnerable, and whatta-coincidence-nonwhite, community? Fuck these awful, awful, people.

It seems President Liposuction Clinic Dumpster has been calling up leading Taliban terrorists on a secret U.S. kill-or-capture list, presumably to trade tips n’ tricks on how to undermine the USA at home and abroad. Now, negotiating with these murderous dirtbags is a big diplomacy no-no (and of course Donnie Dotard got rolled anyway) but in all honestly, if I had access to a secret kill list contact sheet, I’d probably give in to the temptation to make some prank calls. “Is your refrigerator running? Yeah? Are you sure it’s not a FLEET OF DRONES ABOVE YOU RIGHT NOW?”

For Jeff Sessions, the wages of sin turned out to be a faceful of Trump-branded fecal matter, as the Candycorn Skidmark, whose campaign Ol’ Beauregard embraced way back before fascism was cool in conservative circles, endorsed his opponent in the coming Alabama Senate runoff. How must it feel to have been the very fellow who flipped the switch on the Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap Board Game device that destroyed America, and to watch the machine work its destructive magic for years, only to realize it’s also got one special crotch punt in store for just you personally. I’d feel bad for Bilbo Bigot, if it he weren’t, y’know, one of the very worst people alive.

Alex Jones got arrested for drunk driving, and, upon his release, got right back to work selling...sigh...selling some bullshit toothpaste that he’s telling the rubes magically cures the coronavirus. Authorities are cracking down on Jones and fellow charlatan Jim Bakker over their odious snake oil peddling enterprises, but I don’t know what’s more shocking and disappointing to me, that there are such vile fuckwads in the world, who seek to profit off the fear of the misinformed during times of crisis, or that said fuckwads have so many blind, willing, disciples?

Speaking of fuckwads, Ron Johnson seems to have backed down, for now at any rate, from his quest to stage a show trial for Hunter Biden in the U.S Senate. And that’s awesome and all, but never forget how ready, how eager, RoJo has been, to corruptly manipulate the vast powers of the government for his democracy-stomping Turdlord’s political benefit. Ron is the kind of fellow you’d have found stamping documents outside trains bound for Dachau.

But yeah, I suppose the big story is still that coronavirus thing. Great choice on evolution’s part, the way symptoms don’t necessarily manifest right away, so we can spread that shit around without knowing we’re even infected. Anyway, I made sure to thoroughly disinfect tonight’s blog before posting, and medical professionals inform me that though the virus can linger on plastic and metal surfaces for as long as days, it cannot survive on a poo joke, so please rest easy, knowing you can safely consume this content in comfort. Unless you're reading it next to somebody with the coronavirus, but that's on you, kid.

The Shart Administration has actually slowed progress in this crucial fight, by classifying high-level coronavirus meetings, because they’re more worried about congressional oversight of their crimes n’ fuckups than they are about OUR LIVES, and y’know what, I do believe I’ll be voting Democrat this November.

And of course, many conservatives are more concerned with blaming the virus on the Chinese than preventing its spread; by gum, there’s no need to abandon yer principles, even when your ineptitude is getting countless folks sick and/or killed! “We may be a cabal of dangerously incompetent assclowns, but let none forget that we are also RACIST assclowns!”

With the stock market finally catching up to the rest of the world in noticing a pudding-brained twit had inexplicably been placed in charge of the most powerful nation in history, Pumpkin Spice Pol Pot oozed into the Oval Office for a prime time speech, and if his goal was “fuck up the entire world as much as humanly possible in ten short minutes,” then he succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.

It was a speech that completely failed to reassure, instead reminding the world that this drooling manbaby, this bathtub drain hair clog in an ill-fitting suit, truly is President of the Entire United Fucking States, and not only is he light years out of his element but he’s probably spending most of his time practicing his “the world is ending, you have to go out with me now” phone call to Salma Hayek rather than pursuing desperately-needed solutions.

Despite being on teleprompter, with the text of the fucking speech right fucking in front of him, Dorito Mussolini somehow managed to catastrophically misrepresent his own administration’s policies, dropping one more cartoon anvil on the stock market’s already-throughly-bludgeoned ballsack. This is, of course, on top of nonsensical non-solutions like banning travel from Europe, when the virus had already had weeks to spread throughout the country thanks to presidential bungling and neglect.

For 73 years, this cretin has somehow never encountered a problem he couldn’t lie, buy, or bully his way out of, but COVID-19 doesn’t care how much money your daddy gave you, little man. And may I say, on behalf of the thousands who are about to become sick, fuck you. Fuck you eternally with a rusty shovel, for daring to take on such an important job without the skills, temperament, or character to execute its duties. Asshole.

In contrast, Smilin’ Joe Biden gave a speech of his own; calm, collected, solemn, and filled with concrete steps to address the problems facing the nation. And America collectively went, “Oh right, it’s actually highly abnormal to have a gibbering, rectum-mouthed, dolt for a President, and we can actually have a decent, competent, one again! Soon!” It was like leadership porn. I got aroused.

Meanwhile, our already-hopelessly-overmatched Golf Cheat in Chief is multitasking, lobbing missiles at Iran-backed militias in Iraq. I’m just hoping the buttons on his desk are clearly labeled, y’know? Or at least that there’s somebody hanging around who can tackle him before he bombs Seattle and launches 500 respirators at Tehran.

So, um, in the midst of this once-in-generation shitstorm, I guess Sarah Palin dressed up in a bear suit to perform “Baby Got Back” on a reality television program. I’m not a religious person, honestly, but I’m increasingly open to the idea that there is a God, and that s/he’s been on a meth bender since mid-2016.

Social distancing is the zany new anti-dance craze sweeping the nation as we all do our damndest to not get sick and die! As a result, public gatherings are getting called off left and right. March Madness, MLB, NBA, PGA, SXSW, Broadway...personally, I don’t think I fully appreciated the scope of this crisis until I saw the XFL shut down their season. Like, are we even America anymore without one billionaire’s sad attempt to reboot his once-failed vanity project?

As sensible organizations all over the world made painful but obviously necessary sacrifices to, y’know, slow the spread of a deadly disease and save lives, naturally the Velveeta Vulgarian was among the last holdouts, canceling his precious hate rallies only grudgingly, because the safety of even his own fervent base is secondary to the sugar rush of their rageful cheers, filling, if only for a moment, that empty space within him where most people have a soul.

Now more than ever, I am brimming over with gratitude that we took the House back in 2018. Thank god there’s a little leadership, a little accountability, a little common frickin’ sense in Washington now. And thank god for Katie Porter, one of the standouts in a freshman class packed with absolute ass-kickers, cornering the CDC chief into exercising his legal authority to make coronavirus testing free for every American. Imagine if Kevin McCarthy were running the House right now. He’d be fleeing from reporters, in mismatched loafers, trying to sell the public on a bill bailing out nothing but Trump University and Marm-a-Lago.

Well, the Emperor of Hemorrhoids finally buckled and declared (acknowledged) a state of emergency over the coronavirus, which is admittedly a pleasant change from his previous “do everything I possibly can to help the fucker spread” position. We’re still woefully behind, and god only knows how deeply the virus has penetrated while the doddering old bastard diddled and dawdled, but the good news is, the President of the United States finally moved his bloated ass out of the road so we can get to work cleaning up his mess, which is, I suppose, as close to an act of kindness as he’s come in his entire misspent, treacherous, life.

In the middle of today’s press conference, Vice President Mike Pants paused to give Boss Turdworm a rhetorical handjob seemingly designed to last through an entire 14-day quarantine. Jeeeeesus. Mikey Hairshirt was a man once. Not much of one, to be certain, but at least he didn’t have to worry about the possibility of bored schoolchildren pouring salt on him, which would of course prove swiftly fatal in his current state.

A reporter asked Government Cheese Goebbels, “Hey, if you’re not too busy fellating yourself over fucking up slightly less than you’ve been fucking up for weeks, why the fuck did you close down the pandemic office, you nation-wrecking clod?” and he whinged that the question was “nasty,” before reiterating his refusal to take responsibility for the things that are, objectively, his fault. I truly do not understand how this trembling coward’s approval rating isn’t 0%

So Nancy Pelosi spent the week trying to hammer out an emergency bill with Steve Mnuchin, but Republicans naturally balked at many necessary measures. It’s a tricky spot for the GOP; they can’t risk the mass-extermination of the underpaid labor/consumer force that keeps their donor class filthy rich, but doing anything to improve working folks’ lives is just instinctually anathematic to them. But at the time of posting, it does appear as though a deal has been reached, let’s hope no spray-tanned morons fuck it up, right?

In conclusion, I am sick of typing the word “coronavirus,” and you are sick of reading it, so let’s let’s all retreat to our quarantines for the weekend, okay? Enjoy the solitude! Read that novel you bought back in college! Watch that 425-minute Russian film set in a fish cannery! Hey, you can even peruse the archives at showercapblog.com if you feel like reliving just how the fuck it all came to this! Anyway, if you don’t hear from me for a bit, fear not, I’m turning production of this blog over to Jared Kushner, I’m sure he’ll figure it out.

#shower cap’s blog

[animeraider]

Your concern is trolling...

If I may note a couple of things for our Republican Colleagues:

1) Shut the fuck up. You weren't going to like ANYONE that Biden picked. You were going to say that anyone he picked would be a mistake. Your concern is trolling.

2) Shut the Fuck up. She was born in California. She's an American. End of story.

3) Shut the fuck up. Stop making statements about how "black" Kamala Harris is. That worked so well for you idiots the last time around, after all.

4) Shut the fuck up. Who on Earth thought it would be a good idea to refer to Ms. Harris as "Marge Simpson"? The American people adore Marge Simpson.

5) Shut the fuck up. Stop giving me your excuses about trying to "save" the Postal Service. You're not. In fact, doing anything whatsoever to slow the postal service is a felony. As in "go to Leavenworth" felony.

6) Shut the fuck up. No one takes Kanye West's candidacy seriously. We know you're behind it. But at least we've now got a reason to send Jared Kushner to prison - he can't be working on both campaigns.

7) Shut the fuck up. Ending the Payroll tax is an horrific idea. It kills Social Security and Medicare in one fell swoop.

8) Shut the fuck up. Do you honestly think Ronald Reagan would have accepted Marjorie Greene? So do I. And that shows how deep your problem really is.

9) Shut the fuck up. "Nasty" hasn't been an effective way to demean a woman since Janet Jackson sang about it. Why do bullies always insist upon nicknames?

10) Shut the fuck up. Tucker Carlson is a racist. Stop defending him. He just is.

11) Shut the FUCK UP. The United State's response to COVID-19 has been embarrassingly terrible. I mean, the kind of terrible we usually use to refer to North Korea, of The Sudan. We're not leading. We're not following. We are the subject of PITY.

12) Shut the fuck up. Yes, this is the worst job any administration has done with the economy.Not best; worst.

13) Shut the fuck up. If you find yourself starting to talk about stuff like this, maybe consider stopping.

14) Shut the fuck up. Puerto Rico and D.C. both get to decide if they want to become states. Afraid you'll never win the Senate again? What does that tell you about your message? Need a hint?

15) Shut the fuck up. We do not need to reopen our schools until we have solved for COVID-19. We do not need to re-open the economy until we have solved for COVID-19.

16) Shut the fuck up and put a mask on.

17) Shut the fuck up. If you are in politics loyalty is to the Country first. Always the Country First. And that means the Constitution - you remember your first day in office? They makes you swears, precious. You swears!

18) Shut the fuck up, whomever is using Herman Cain's twitter account. The man died. Allow him some semblance of dignity. Or at least respect. You at least respected him, right? See item #10.

19) Shut the fuck up. ANTIFA are NOT fascists. You keep on using that word as if it were interchangeable with other words. It is not. I AM ANTIFA.

20) Your ideas don't work. They belong on history's scrap heap, with Nazis, Fascists, Racists, and a whole bunch of other words you keep using wrong. Just shut the fuck up.

And because I love you, Cory Wong and Cody Fry:

#politics #republican #concern trolling #ANTIFA #put a mask on #USPS #Tyler Perry