Politics

Rigged Up

Chill Clowns, Politics

Elon Musk buying Twitter and bending it to favor Trump isn’t rigging the election, you fuckin’ numpties.

That’s called “strategy” and the Democrats should try it sometime. Creating a favorable information environment for themselves is something Dems are uniquely terrible at, so I can understand why when another person or entity does it they see it as cheating.

But it’s how you win. So of course they won’t do that.

Overground

Chill Politics, Prediction

It has been really sad to watch the mighty United States develop mental illness and commit suicide over the last 24 years.

We’re consumed by irrational hate and poisoned by nonstop disinformation. No one can think clearly about anything.

This will not get better. These are our death throes.

— Kevin Gaughen 🇺🇸 (@gaughen.bsky.social) February 16, 2025 at 11:51 AM

Might be right, might be wrong — but we have heard this before. Read documents and commentary from the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was chaos. There were riots, the Weather Underground bombed the US Capitol building and people believed society was about to dissolve into anarchy and mass death.

But it didn’t. And that’s mostly forgotten now, even in some cases by people who lived through it.

My personal guess is that we experience a pretty bad WWIII against China, Russia and North Korea, the US pulls together and we and Europe emerge stronger with China diminished and reclusive once again.

But Trump is doing the US much damage that will not be easy to repair. I agree that it is not looking good.

Understim

Chill Clowns, Political Economy, Politics

And this is why I thought then and continue to think that Matt Yglesias is a fucking idiot.

Obama made the choice that millions of Americans would lose their homes. And yes, that was a choice — it all could’ve been prevented. That was done to save the banks and specifically the banksters who wrote all that fraudulent paper. This decision ruined many Americans economically for the rest of their lives as well as making the Great Recession worse and last much longer than it otherwise would have.

Obama also oversaw the largest loss of black wealth in history. He was and is just an evil, venal person.

As president, he had one of the greatest opportunities for real reform since the 1930s. And instead he forked over the country and its wealth the rich all so he could be a billionaire later himself. No Obama, no Trump it’s also important to remember.

Outland

Chill Clowns, Politics

The US is going to be a much more hardscrabble, much worse place after this four years. Biden did a little (far too little) to forestall the looting, while his Democratic predecessor Obama allowed the plunderers free rein.

Trump is worse — he doesn’t even really know what he’s doing; he’s just a chaos agent swinging from outlandish position to absurd action, making the pillaging unpredictable and even more dangerous.

And we’re all going to pay for our not holding Obama to account back when we could’ve forestalled most of what’s to come.

Tiny Baby

Chill Political Economy, Politics

Remember how so many clowns came out of the woodwork (or the clown car) to insist that Obama had no power, that he was just a little tiny helpless baby, that there was nothing at all he could do — even with both houses of Congress and a favorably-inclined Supreme Court?

Well I fucking remember even if you do not.

Now compare and contrast with all that Trump has done. Even if you omit the items that are plainly illegal, a president can do a whole hell of a lot. Whether this surfeit of power vested in one individual should be the case is not what I am debating. And I’m not even debating if Obama was a giant useless coward or not.

All I am stating is what the evidence 100% confirms: Obama could have done a lot more and chose not to, no matter what his idiot supporters claim.

Reconfirm

Chill Clowns, Politics

Trump didn’t win just because of white voters. He didn’t win because all the rich people voted for him, he won because the working class shifted toward him. Trump won because an incredibly diverse electorate voted for him.

Yep. Many liberals are now completely lying about this, but it’s true. I saw Heather Cox Richardson just today completely making up false data and using utterly-transparent fabrications to justify why the win was all the fault of straight white men. The reality, though, is that only a few small demographics shifted away from Trump. Every other American group went Trump-ward — including black men, Native Americans and most of all, Latinos.

The liberal deniers of this sound just as clown-ass as the election-denying MAGA types. And will be even less effective. And I say this as someone who believes that Trump 2 will bring about the most disastrous era this country has seen since the Civil War. It’s just that I prefer to deal with the world as it is — uncomfortable facts and all — rather than whip up some absolute nonsense to reinforce my worldview.

You don’t win that way. And you aren’t right, which is even more important to me personally to be completely honest.

Not That High

Chill Politics

The Covid pandemic is starting to get so far behind us now that I occasionally meet or see a non-political Gen Zer who was young enough when it began to view it as, “Something that adults used to ruin my high school life completely for no real reason.” There is a lot of very deep, raw anger and resentment there. A ton.

Agree with them or disagree with them1, which way do you think those people are more likely to vote when they do pick up some politics?

Now look at the results.

  1. And I agree, by the way.

Agent C

Chill Clowns, Evil, Politics

Tulsi Gabbard is quite literally a Russian agent. This is not speculation. Even Russia says this.

This is incredibly bad. And people who thought Trump was going to help Ukraine: LOL.