For tens of millions of people, democratic life has been absent for decades

Absolutely, I’ve been arguing this point for a long time. American democracy is dysfunctional, and for decades it’s only gotten worse.
Money = speech, gerrymandering, first past the post, making voting difficult, taking voting rights away from people in prison.

These are all things that are clearly against democratic principles, but have been widely abused to manipulate elections in USA.

As an example:
Nixon wanted to limit the power of the peace movement, and one of his strongest weapons was to make cannabis illegal. That way the peace movement was disrupted in their activities, and a lot of them also prevented from voting as a bonus.
Same principle was then continued later and doubled down on, to prevent people of color and poor people from voting.
This is why people in prison simply have to have voting rights, otherwise you can marginalize people and keep them out of influence, on issues that are completely arbitrary, and only serve a political agenda.

Now that cannabis is widespread among almost all demographics, it has been legalized in many states.

USA has not been a real democracy at any point in history, which is somewhat understandable, but at least in the 70’s USA should have begun to realize that their democracy needed reform, but instead USA began in the 80’s to move towards less and less democratic, and more and more authoritarian policies. Undermining the poor, workers unions, and social security that is essential for education. This is so bad now, that it is moving up and hurting the middle class too.

It absolutely does help Russia, I already made that point the first day of the war.
Putin sacrificed Iran to help the Russian economy.

Doesn’t even matter if it’s big or small, when he is making others pay. The price is small to him, and that’s all that matters to him.
The cost to the global society and USA is already HUGE! And obviously the price is worst for the Iranian population.

There is no way USA will defeat Iran in any meaningful sense.
If USA put boots on the ground, it will be many times worse than Afghanistan.

First: There are even more hiding places in the mountains of Iran than in Afghanistan, and the population is twice as big. And the area 2½ times bigger.

Second: Iran is way better organized, and has several big well trained organizations that can be made ready for guerrilla war almost instantly.

Third: I very seriously doubt any traditional allies to USA will be willing to support such an action. so USA will be on their own. If Israel goes in too, it will probably only make it worse.

Fourth, there is no organized support for the invaders as USA and the allies had in Afghanistan where it was supported by the reigning government.

It’s very doubtful the war can be won from the sky, it’s simply never been done! So the outlook for USA winning this war is bleak to put it mildly.

TLDR: Toddler in chief is threatening to not sign any new laws.

Operation Epstein should be the general name forward.
The operation is to distract from the Epstein files, and it’s an operation made possible by people Epstein gave Israel compromising information on. The P-tapes in the Steele Dossier were not for Pee, but more likely for Pedophile.
And if Trump has such tendencies, there is no doubt Epstein got the evidence, and handed it to Israel and Russia.

I suppose they’ll just have to cut the food stamps.

Paywall

I sure hope it’s something serious, thoughts and prayers. 🙏

Paywall 😡

Not really, it was a mix of knee jerk reactions and political opportunity and a lot of cowardice, because they were afraid to back up Al Franken.

the US Declaration of Independence in 1776?

You are only proving my point, this was from when USA was created as a democracy.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal

Except for slaves and women, so no that is not a declaration of respect for human rights as we understand them today. But it was a start.

But even if the meaning was good, USA no-longer respect the values of democracy. Many other democracies do.

Fuck Gillibrand for demanding him to go, based on a Republican orchestrated scheme against Al Franken!
She was the main reason he never got a fair chance.

They were not a thing like they are today, where most democracies strive to observe human rights.
For instance it wouldn’t make much sense for a government to claim to be for human rights while they extort colonies.
And human rights have always been a thing only respected by democracies. But nowhere as much as in EU where it is a requirement.

Those examples are straw-men, because before WW2 human rights were not a thing. In the stone age people hit each other with clubs doesn’t prove anything.

There are degrees of disrespect, and I would argue that every single EU country has higher respect, also because to be in EU it is a requirement to observe human rights.
Disrespecting the rights of people even if they aren’t of your own nationality, is contrary to democratic values.
You may be thinking China and Russia are just as bad or maybe even worse, but that isn’t the pattern you should be looking at, you should compare with other democracies, and especially countries that have better democracy than USA.

USA has absolutely zero respect for the rights of people in or from other countries.
This was also evident in how Obama explained the “balance” of US surveillance.
It is also evident in how USA spies on allied top politicians. The might makes right mentality in USA is disgusting.

Maybe we should just ban Christian marriage as a superstitious ritual.

What? Americans voted for him to move USA backwards, and he is moving USA backwards!
They got what they asked for.

That’s like claiming he can’t be a male chauvinist because he is married to a woman.
Trump is both.