drewofdoom

Except the majority didn’t put those people in power when we’re talking about Texas. Texas is not majority Republican. Most of the Democrats are concentrated in the urban areas - Dallas/FW, Houston, Austin, etc. Nevertheless, there’s a nearly 50/50 split in population affiliation. However, the Republicans control the state through a combination of voter suppression and gerrymandering. And, of course, the independent wildcards.

Point is, it’s not the majority who are keeping the state red. It’s the majority of the people who are allowed to vote when calculated in such a way as to make Republican votes count more than Democratic votes. The state is rigged to keep Republican control regardless of the actual majority.

It happens. Apology accepted. You don’t have to downvote yourself, lol.

Thank you for being mature enough to recognize the situation for what it was and to reply with honest self-reflection.

Nice insult, I guess? Is that the new thing instead of calling someone a bot?

Anyways, I guess the explanation of how OP took the traditional brownshirt and updated it to fit the color that represents Trump in order to propose that his fascist forces could be called ‘orangeshirts’ just kinda flew over your head, huh? It’s ok, maybe you’ll get it somewhere down the line.

Oh, I’m firmly against genocide. I’m also against the death penalty. I lean a lot more socialist and am what most on the right would consider an “extreme leftist” (even though my views are pretty much center left when you consider global politics).

I think that relations with Israel are very complex, and Biden is fucking them up. I don’t support what his administration is doing in thar regard.

But I also lived through the last Trump presidency, and I know what is at stake. Most of the astroturfing we’ve seen aimed at the left for the last decade, at least, has been an attempt to suppress the Democratic vote by latching onto a single issue to point to and say, “see! The Democrats are just as bad!”

When people don’t show up for the presidential, down ballot votes suffer, too.

And in the end, will you want to vote for the guy who supports Israel and wants to destroy democracy, or the guy who supports Israel and wants to retain democracy? Because those are the likely choices.

So keep the pressure on. Call your representatives and let them know of your disapproval. But please stop with this, “the Democrats are evil because of this one thing,” bullshit. Politics are complicated, and you should be able to recognize and weigh more than one issue at a time.

If you’re not skeptical of single issue leftists, then you should be more skeptical in general.

We know that there was a LOT of foreign astroturfing in 2016. And 2020. 2024 will likely repeat this trend, but armed with AI.

We’ve already seen one weak “it was AI and fake” argument from Roger Stone. Going to see a lot more of that this year, too.

So he careful who you trust, because they just might have an agenda.

I mostly agree with your response, except for chastising OP about the color of the shirt. They start by mentioning brown, then parenthetically say “orange” as an unveiled reference to Trump.

This is because Trump is known to use a LOT of bronzer that turns his skin an unusual orange color. So what OP was trying to do was to relate the brownshirts to the presumed task force that Trump would create if he became a dictator.

So they’re saying we need a steeper exit tax too? OK, let’s goooooooo

You don’t lose your right to vote just for being arrested. In Colorado, the person would need to be a convicted, currently-incarcerated felon to lose their right to vote. Felons who have completed their sentences (even if they’re out on parole) regain their voting rights.

And here’s the other argument we hear all the time. “This bill doesn’t fix everything, so it’s pointless and should be dropped.”

Drinking in a car is illegal, but how would an officer be able to tell if there are passengers drinking behind tinted windows? If the driver has booze in his or her or their yeti, how would a cop know? Since the cop can’t know, drinking in cars should be legal, even for the driver.

That’s basically what you’re arguing.

Sometimes a bill is stripped down in order to pass with conservatives or moderates. Sometimes a bill is a trial balloon for what you really want to pass. Sometimes a bill addresses a specific issue, and that it doesn’t fix some other issue is just moot.

And sometimes you have to walk before you run.

LOL, “I’m willing to listen to reasoning, but only if you format it in a way that I’m willing to read.”

For real, though, fewer guns means fewer gun crimes. The whole ‘then only outlaws will have guns’ is really a myth. Statistics have shown over and over again that the vast majority of criminals who purchase guns do so legally. If they can’t purchase one locally, they just go a state over where the laws are lax. The whole ‘black market’ gun stores thing is just a false argument.

The idea that a ‘good guy with a gun’ will make everyone safer is also pretty well debunked. Just look at John Hurley - the ‘good guy with a gun’ who was posthumously branded a hero after he was shot by the police.

Guns are inherently unsafe. We’re never getting rid of them in military applications, but any reasonable restrictions for private ownership should be a no-brainer.

All the arguments for ‘private gun ownership makes us safer’ fall apart under any scrutiny. So does the constitutional argument. The only real, provable argument you have is that your personal freedom to own a killing machine is more important to you than public safety.

Foreign policy has nothing to do with fascism. Like literally nothing. Any form of government could do that.

Besides that, Republicans have done just as bad. Oliver North comes to mind…

I mean, I’m not really interested in reigning in spending on things like social programs. I do think the military could get slashed by a very large amount, however. Especially considering how much military contractors over-inflate the cost of absolutely everything they sell the US government. Instead, I’d rather we just pay for the stuff we want to do by decreasing the wage gap by a VERY large margin and fixing the business tax code.

How about we do both? Continue to fund Ukraine in order to provide a stopgap against Russian encroachment and destabilization of Eastern Europe, as well as take care of people in America? It wouldn’t even be that hard.

Tax the rich so they pay their fair share. Use that money to fund social programs and boost the economy for the middle class and lower. Tax businesses to the point where it’s more lucrative to reinvest in their own companies than it is to make massive profits - this promotes raising wages. Cap executive pay to a fixed rate above the lowest-paid employee. Just like that, the ‘richest country in the world’ can act like it and not relegate their poorest to third-world conditions.

But you weren’t interested in a real answer, were you? Just shilling for the alt-right and Russia.

There are a lot of reasons to not judge it yet. First and foremost, the director/show runner has zero input on the trailer. That’s all the marketing department, and the trailer is designed to get as many eyeballs as possible on the final product. Numerous examples exist of trailers which bared little resemblance to the movie/show/game/whatever.

Secondly, they buried the lead on the director. Jonathan Nolan did direct much of Westworld. But he also wrote a bunch of award winning films for his brother, Christopher Nolan. Movies like Memento, Interstellar, The Prestige, and Dark Knight. He’s no slouch, and I’ll reserve judgement until I see it.

I take your point, but Madoff and Bankman-Fried are the quickest to come to mind. It’s rare, but it does happen, and usually because of financial crimes that affect other billionaires.

Keep in mind that she won her district by a super narrow margin. After this, I’d say she loses easily next time round. To the point that I wouldn’t be surprised if she gets primaried.

She pays good money for a PR team. Should at least get her money’s worth.

Cooperation from co-conspirators is always helpful.

Trump’s current strategy (or, at least what we can discern from his lawyers’ TV appearances) is to blame the lawyers he had at the time of the election. If all these co-conspirators point the finger directly at Trump, that goes a loooong way to proving that he was the ringleader. Not some lawyer. Not some aide. Trump called the shots.

That’s what they want.

As pointed out, he is appealing. Also, it states that the prosecution requested the maximum sentence.

Depends on the state, but finding isn’t really the issue here. It’s a move to a voucher system.

The idea that they are pushing is to privatize the entire education system. Privatization has been a wet dream for Republicans for many years now, and not just in education. It would further corporatize the country and allow for more money that was once ‘the people’s’ to be siphoned into private pockets.

So the state gives money to families with children. Those families send their kids to a private school and give that money (plus probably a lot more) to that private school. Public money flowing into private hands. Add to that deregulation of the industry - no standard tests or textbooks. Education will be chaos.