I still remember seeing a news clip during trump’s first term when he was at some dinner seated at a long table (don’t remember if it was Helsinki or some other event they both attended), where Putin was on the opposite side and a ways down the table from him. He kept looking at Putin trying to catch his eye and get his attention and when Putin looked his way, trump looked at him made a pumping motion with his hand in a you-know-what motion, just like he was inviting him for a hand job. No one in the media made any comment about what he was doing, but I was shocked and replayed the clip a few times to check if I was seeing what I thought I was seeing. That’s what it looked like to me.

Glad to hear you have had this epiphany, no matter how you came to it. I’ll be the first to say “good for you!” if you prove your sincerity by dropping out of politics and donating the substantial monetary gains you made via your influence and insider knowledge to worthy charities, preferably those helping people you harmed by your toxic influence. Then, having proved that you’ve really changed, you may legitimately continue speaking out against political hate and violence as a penance.

Disclaimer: My comment which follows does not apply to fans and supporters of a candidate. It applies to a difference in how male and female candidates are referred to in the media.

When our society reaches the stage where TV pundits, political blog writers, etc. stop referring to women candidates by just their first name (almost every time) in the same context that they continue referring to men candidates using their last name, or title + last name, then maybe I’ll believe the US is ready to elect a woman president.

(edit: I should add to that list, also when even the opposing side will use her last name same as they do with male candidates that they are against, meaning that they may hate her but still have at least that much respect for her as a candidate)

Probably because the US is such a religious conservative country. Christianity (especially evangelical and more conservative type), patriarchy and authoritarianism go together, and that’s who the great majority of his voters were.

Considering trump won twice against women but lost when he ran against a man, it seems the majority of voters would rather elect any man than any woman, even if that man is seriously flawed on every imaginable level. Only when both candidates were men were factors other than gender given more weight.

Could be!

After trailing by more than 10,000 votes the day after the election, Wilson, 43, chipped away at Mayor Bruce Harrell’s margin as late-counted ballots broke her way. She took a tiny lead in Monday’s count, and with Tuesday’s additions, Wilson is now ahead by 1,346 votes.

I hope this helps people realize just how important every vote is.

Whenever he tries to repeat the patient, over-simplified explanations that have been given to him and screws it up because he still didn’t understand what they were talking about, I picture the scenes that must be occurring on a regular basis:

People standing around him, some drawing pictures, others arranging things on the table, “Say this coffee mug is the nuclear enrichment facility, and this pen is the Tomahawk missile. It goes woooooooooooooooooo through the sky…”

Of those eight seats, only two are up in 2026, and those two Senators (Durbin, Shaheen) are not running for reelection. The others aren’t up until 2028 or 2030. That’s how they do these things. No one up in 2026 would have voted for it.

That just means he found enough Dem Senators to take the heat so he didn’t have to also vote for it. It’s not like he said “Hold the line” and those 8 defied him. No, it was all agreed to between him and them. This is what he wanted. As minority leader the blame is on him in spite of his ‘no’ vote.

WTF. Senate Dems got rewarded in the elections for showing some spine and holding out for healthcare, then as soon as the elections were over, in spite of voters putting them in an even stronger position with the wide margins of victory, what did they do? they fucking caved like the weak little bitches they are.

All the suffering people have been going through during the shutdown has been for absolutely nothing. They didn’t even get a damn one-year extension on subsidies (which BTW are windfalls for insurance companies but until we reform healthcare it’s the best we have for now). It was suppoosed to be not just about the ACA subsidies, but also the Medicaid cuts.

Jeffries wants the House to reject the bill and most House Dems seem to be ready to do that. Keep screaming and contact your rep (politely). There are some repubs also against it, so this shit deal can still be prevented by the House, if the Dems stick together and a few repubs also vote No.

He can’t look at it because he has a psychological issue where he can’t handle any kind of bodily injury or illness. There are lots of stories about his reactions to situations like this, seeing blood, seeing disabled vets or anyone with a physical impairment of any kind, etc.

This is just one example of why the Christian Nationalists want to do away with the Constitution. Especially that pesky First Amendment with those godless Freedoms of Religion, Speech, Press, and Assembly! It totally undermines the authority of the Theocracy they are working to establish and so must be abolished!

Once they have the Theocracy in place, the sectarian wars will quickly begin. Which christian sect will prevail? Place your bets!

I read it as Minetest Game.

How many people would have recognized that image as a Nazi symbol before thos became news? I wouldn’t have, skull tatoos are common.

That just makes a stronger case against him. It is what it is–a nazi symbol used by the nazis. Not being familiar with it just means you’re an average person who hasn’t learned about all their symbols beyond the infamous swastika. The main people who are most likely to recognize it are either people who are into WWII history or people who are into nazi shit. Among those two groups of people, someone who would actually tattoo it over their heart are in the latter, not the former group, certainly not the average person. He has (finally) admitted he knew what it was.

Antifa isn’t an organization at all, it’s just an abbreviated version of the adjective ‘anti-fascist’ that people have been using to describe themselves to show they stand against fascism.

I mean, the regime can make up any name they want, designate it or any organization they don’t like as a terrorist organization, then just say that whoever they want to arrest is a member of it.

Part of what’s making it easier for them to do this with ‘antifa’ is that it was probably a mistake to abbreviate ‘fascist’ as ‘fa’ in the first place, which means the average person may not understand what ‘antifa’ actually means. If the full term ‘anti-fascist’ had been used all along, it would be harder for them to say “anti-fascism is bad!” or “the anti-fascists are bad!” Because they’d be saying they’re the opposite of that, i.e., openly calling themselves fascists (which TBH they don’t seem to have a problem with).

Canadian government needs to buck up and reinstate the Digital Services Tax, which they scrapped to curry favor with trump in hopes of getting him to lower tariffs. By now they should have learned–capitulating to the bully doesn’t work. You have to punch right back and harder.

The problem is that while trump may not know what he’s talking about, his followers will believe him anyway. So it’s important to loudly and repeatedly point these things out.

Of course the media should but won’t do it, so it’s good that Newsom is calling attention to it, but even then he has to be aggressive and sensationalist about it for the media to report what he says. It’s a role he has taken on, possibly detrimental to his career (or maybe not–we’ll see) but it’s a role that someone with influence like his needs to play so I’m glad he’s stepping up.

And yet as outraged as they are, MAGA still finds a way to say this is the Democrats’ fault:

This is what happens when you gut national-security training, scrub every mention of Islam, jihad, and Sharia from the manuals, and let Obama- and Biden-era bureaucrats turn counterterrorism into cultural sensitivity class. We’re being led by officials who no longer recognize or refuse to name the enemy they’re inviting into our own backyard.’

🙄

Yawn. Wake me when it’s JD Vance and Mike Johnson.

Oh, if they (along with Vought and Miller behind the scenes) can get to where they don’t need him any more, they’d absolutely love to invoke the 25th. The problem for them is, so far they’re still dependent on his cult of personality. They just need to finish consolidating their power. They’re working on that with the military right now and the goal is to have everything cemented before the midterms that would normally take place next November, or before the time trump kicks the bucket, whichever comes first.

He’s a complete puppet who has no idea what’s going on. A figurehead who believes whatever the fascist regime tells him and signs whatever executive orders they put before him. They still need him because the cult base is what keeps them in power-, otherwise he’d already be gone. What will they do when he dies or can’t go out in public any more? I’m not sure if they know, but I think once the midterms are over and once they believe they’ve cemented their power they’ll get rid of him in a heartbeat.