interesting to discover that MAGA does have a line for what they are willing to accept. Up until this moment I truly thought he could say or do whatever he wants and MAGA would drink it down like castor oil. Also fascinating that Trump has brushed up against this line already, not even 6 months into this term. We are in for a long 4+ years…

the right detains people for simply holding different political views and talking about them online. Meanwhile, the Biden admin couldn’t even be bothered to file the papers for Trump’s actual treason against the United States.

The order calls on the health department, led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., to broker new price tags for drugs over the next month. If deals are not reached, Kennedy will be tasked with developing a new rule that ties the price the U.S. pays for medications to lower prices paid by other countries.

I’m struggling to understand how this would play out. CMS (Medicare/Medicaid) just says “this is what we’re paying now” and the pharmacies just accept that? I can’t help but feel like this will set off a chain reaction that will end in poor people unable to get their needed medications, as drug manufacturers withhold their product or something because this EO doesn’t have strong enough legal footing. Nothing Trump loves more than inflicting suffering on poor people.

transparent window for Qatar to see US government secrets

from the very first line of the linked article:

When Australia holds its federal elections on Saturday, it’ll do so with the requirement that all eligible citizens head to the polls and vote. If they don’t, the Australian Electoral Commission will fine them $20 AUD (that’s roughly $13 USD).

Someone on reddit pointed out that this deposit is useless without facilities to process it into usable lithium, and currently almost all of that capacity exists outside of the US. They are in the middle of building a massive facility in California, but even after that is built, it won’t be big enough to process even half of US need for lithium processing. So this headline is yet another US win that will be turned into a loss by the Trump administration.

It will close after it spends around 99% of Gates’ personal fortune, he said. The founders originally expected the foundation to wrap up in the decades after their deaths. Gates, whose fortune is currently valued at around $108 billion, expects the foundation to spend around $200 billion by 2045, with the final figure dependent on markets and inflation.

Look , I know we should analyze the Gates Foundation’s spending closely and make sure the money is going to effective places. I know it would be better if we taxed these assholes and resdistributed wealth in a more efficient way. But I want to believe that this is genuine, and Gates is having a late-life crisis change of heart and realizes that billionaires should not exist. giving away 99% of your personal fortune is pretty sincere, if he follows through.

Not a bad theory. The Anonymous that we know is long gone, so the new blood has to be from somewhere.

Another day, another stupid 180 from our mercurial king 🙃

when the markets are this chaotic, only the wealthy can afford to trade futures. The rest of us can’t afford the risk to our life savings.

Different zones on the same spectrum.

to me, the more principled stance would be to stay and resist until they are forced to fire you, which makes them look bad. I would have no qualms about telling my kids I made the right choice in that scenario. But others have pointed out that doing this might lead to a career civil servant losing their retirement benefits, and I can understand that that is a lot to throw away for resistance actions that will ultimately change very little.

this makes a lot of sense to me. I can understand choosing to resign if this is the case.

i don’t really agree that “one could say the same” because these are totally different situations. A voter is not a civil servant. A voter does not get paid to vote. Most voters did not swear an oath to defend the constitution (unless they are a naturalized citizen). A single voter also has no power to block an insurgent force from taking over key government systems, unlike a civil servant.

why are these people leaving? they should force the government to fire them and make a big stink about it.

thx Bard, we’re still allies to my mind even if we have strategy disagreements <3

yeah don’t worry, just the woke mob exaggerating things again

i know you won’t respond. but my perspective is that at this point, a seat held by the Dems is not a seat at the table. It is a seat held by a Republican that has decided to pander to non-whites for as long as it is politically advantageous for them. They don’t care about us. As income inequality has grown (under the careful care of the Dems), the politics of this country are no longer left vs. right. It’s billionaires vs. everyone else, and sorry, but the Dems are going to side with the billionaires every time. Continuing to throw in with the Dems is choosing to give more oxygen to this left vs. right farce. The Dems do not care about protecting poor people, or migrants, or queer people. They are throwing them all under the bus right now, as we speak, to maintain their seat of power under Trump’s regime.

And as long as we primarily elect Dems from this demographic, they NEVER will be.

Let me take you one further: as long as we continue supporting the Democratic party at all, we will never have representatives that care for us. The Dems have done some fine work over their long history, but they have outlived their usefulness to the American people. These are the SENIOR LEADERS of the party that are being quoted in this article. The party is sold and bought by the billionaires, full-stop. The billionaires allow the DNC to exist because, on a national stage, the Dems suck up left-leaning votes that might otherwise go to a more progressive third party candidate.

To make my point, let’s look at the actual party leadership: Ken Martin, the DNC chair. Ken has never won an election of voters. He has run campaigns, so he knows strategy. He has won elections among other DNC members, so he knows how to schmooze the elites. These skills allowed him to win an election of other Democratic party elites, without ever having to consider what the average American might want or need. I’m not saying Ken Martin is evil, but he is of the demographic that you are telling us to stop electing. He’s comfortable, so he has no sense of urgency. The DNC chair is always/will always be someone like this, a person who knows how to play the game and is invested in keeping the game going because it is the game that they know how to play. Someone who is comfortable in the current status quo, so they aren’t really that invested in planning for changes unless they need to to win an election.

The DNC will probably always have this leadership structure, because the billionaire donors like it and the Dems are addicted to the billionaires’ funding. This structure allows the billionaires to maintain control over the Democratic party, even if more progressive candidates win in the most progressive pockets of the country.

TL;DR - nothing is going to change until we abandon the Dems and start a real anti-billionaire party.

Although the Heritage Foundation advises using tungsten slugs (i.e., bullets) as interceptors, hypersonic missiles have been opted for instead. To this end, a new organization, the Castelion Company, was established in 2023.

Castelion is a SpaceX cutout; six of the seven members of its leadership team and two of its four senior advisors are ex-senior SpaceX employees.

Of course this is about Musk lining his own pockets. I guess that’s what the US government is for now, enriching billionaires at the expense of all other citizen.