mozz

It was always thus

This was the point of Thomas Jefferson saying that a little revolution every now and again is a healthy thing. If there’s ever a population that’s just sitting around assuming everything is gonna be okay because of “the leaders,” or just passively observing that the leaders aren’t good, and therefore, oh no!, or anything like that, that’s a recipe for bad bad trouble.

It’s you and me man

Basically, the OP article said that the main vehicles by which protest can drive social change are twofold:

• At a small scale, by galvanizing public opinion one way or another. A violent or disruptive protest can make the voters think the protestors are the “bad guys”, or a protest without clear cohesive demands can be too abstract to produce any real change, but a clear and cohesive protest can induce people to vote for the side they see advocated for, especially if there’s a violent police response to paint a clear picture of the protestors as the good guys and the establishment as the bad guys. That perception can swing elections.
• At a large scale, the awareness that there are millions of people ready to get in the streets for an issue can cause existing leaders to react differently on it, regardless of any voting in the equation.

They are just excited for you that you are traveling around and hanging out with people, and they love you so much that imagining you happy with this pretty girl as your girlfriend is overpowering

It is ok

I get why it bothers you, but out of all the sins a person’s parent can commit this one is pretty fuckin minor. Life is not forever, nor parents. I would let it go.

The SCOTUS has decided that the constitution and separation of powers that forms the foundation of (relatively) safe government that we’ve depended on up until this point, is no longer the basis of the American legal system.

If it was just precedent, it still wouldn’t be good, but it would still be quite a bit safer and less seditionous than what they did.

The absolute best kind of propaganda is the type with a big grain of truth in the middle.

If I were Ukraine, I would most of the time say that we got information from enemy agents in the military, when I didn't, and then when I actually did I would say nothing about it. Kind of take the legitimate level of it that is happening, and the legitimate fear and overreaction about it from the Russian commanders, and just toss a little more fuel on that already real fire every now and again.

Yes.

This is a fuckin five alarm fire. It's time to leave the building. Don't grab your shit, don't put your shoes on first, fuckin worry about your safety first and foremost because this is an emergency.

I don't know what to do, to be honest. I feel like if you just went to DC near the physical location of the Supreme Court at any point in the next week you would see at least a decent number of people carrying signs and yelling. I thought about traveling there and finding them and talking to them about who they're with and how I can join. I don't know that that will solve the problem, but I think it would probably put you in touch with people who are at least doing fuckin something about it.

It will be good to have allies, learn what people are trying to do, maybe some of it will be productive, and then if the real bad shit starts roughly one year from now, at least you have some allies in place. But yes. It's a fuckin emergency. It's real, real bad.

I actually agree that Biden's performance was a big problem. Also, the polls are feckin useless, but seeing the relative change that happened because of some event is actually like the one thing they can do pretty well. If you remember the middle school science chart of accuracy vs. precision, they have dogshit accuracy which was off by an average of 16 percentage points when I investigated it for some recent elections, but against all odds they actually are precise.

So, that said: Here's an overview of recent polling.

• Trump's polls really did drop by quite a few points after he was convicted. The same outlets freaking the fuck out over Biden's YouGov polling dropping from 42/42 to now 40/42, didn't say a goddamned word about Trump's "debacle" of being convicted of etc etc when his polls dropped by more than that; in fact they wrote the exact opposite story.
• The massive tanking of support which was predicted did not materialize. IDK what's up with this NYT poll, but what the fuck, just look at the other ones. He dropped a couple percentage points. It's not real good but it's actually a lot less than I expected given how bad the debate was.
• All the other Democratic possibilities are worse. The issue actually isn't Biden. The issue is that the news misrepresents reality so aggressively and mendaciously that people can't figure out whether it's a better idea to take home a cat that's got some health problems, or a rabid dog. That's the root of the whole "Michelle Obama" story -- I think they were looking desperately for some story to write that wasn't "but Biden is still better than every other alternative except Kamala Harris who he's 2 points behind, and we can't write about her being good because she's a realistic replacement and writing good things about her might actually create good things for the Democrats and I'll get in trouble with my boss."

I am beginning to share Trump's hatred for the media

The quote leaves out the best part.

people have cast doubt over the quality of Telegram’s encryption, given that the company uses its own proprietary encryption algorithm, created by Durov’s brother

That was exactly my point, yes

Sure, keep pretending this is a purely objective and data driven choice you reached purely for reasons of trying to help the Democrats. You can point to whatever polls you want to to help in that endeavor. I will not stop you.

Actual quote:

The Vanity Fair article also features Eliza Cooney, a former part-time babysitter who worked for Kennedy between 1998 and 1999, alleging that he groped her in his kitchen. Kennedy declined to directly acknowledge the sexual assault accusation at first, instead dismissing “the other allegations” as part of a “very, very rambunctious youth.”

“I’ve said this from the beginning. I am not a church boy. I am not running like that. I said … I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have … so many skeletons in my closet, that if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world,” Kennedy said, adding, “Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories, and I, you know, am not gonna comment on the details of any of them.”

When asked directly whether he denied sexually assaulting Cooney, Kennedy repeated, “I’m not going to comment on it.”

This comes right after he directly and at length denied the allegations that he ate part of a dog.

Also, this part of his very, very rambunctious youth happened (allegedly) when he was 45 and had several children.

Oh so they have dropped Cornel West and now this is the new thing for unrealistic alternatives to Biden

Dude, fuckin Jon Stewart

If you’re gonna float some weird outsider person as the alternative to Biden, float the guy who would clean up the fuckin election left handed and might well not do too bad a job running the country afterward, either