This honestly wouldn’t surprise me.
Musk has the ear of the president, and it’s not like Trump gives a shit about space. He’ll rubber stamp whatever Elon wants when it comes to the launch industry, and I didn’t think I have to explain to anyone why cancelling SLS would be good for SpaceX’s bottom line.
Frankly, I think 50/50 odds are way too generous. More like 80/20 in favor of SLS being scraped and access to space being fully privatized for a generation.
I saw one the other day painted neon yellow. Believe it or not, it actually seemed like an improvement.
that’s why it’s not that big
Bro, what do you consider big??
We need a labor party.
Let’s quit pretending, that without all of the dirty money and influence from foreign countries, this idiot would have won.
I think you’re wrong here, as least on the money side of things. Harris out-fundraised Trump 3 to 1, taking in almost a billion dollars this cycle. Democrats didn’t lose because of dirty money — they had more than enough of their own to compete.
Kentucky also voted NO on a proposed constitutional amendment that would give the state legislator power to siphon funds from the public school system to give to private schools.
Small victory in spite of everything else, but a victory none the less
Ask yourself: Why did Donald Trump win. And think about it. The answer is right before you and blazingly far more obvious than any particular action that was within Democrats or Kamala’s control.
Trump won because more people voted for him, plain and simple.
For 9 years now I’ve listened to fellow progressives wring their hands and breathlessly say “I just don’t understand how anyone could vote for him!” The problem, the real problem is that for like 95% of us, this statement is the end of the conversation. If the democrats want to win, they need to sit down and really, really consider the “why” of the Trump voter.
Yes, there’s racism and yes there’s sexism and yes there’s xenophobia and christian nationalism that all influence the far right, but there are also plenty of people voting R that don’t give a damn about that stuff. As the dust settles, it’s becoming increasingly clear that lots of voters voted split-ticket in this cycle, so blaming it all on dogma and party loyalty isn’t going to cut it — in fact, the data is suggesting that Americans are less loyal than ever to any particular political party, so what is it specifically about Trump that resonated with so many this time around?
I don’t have any exact answers to that question (which is honestly pretty embarrassing since we’ve all had 9 years to contemplate this), but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s something to do with the fact Trump actively acknowledges that things suck right now. “Make America Great Again” is a slogan that inherently implies we’re living in an empire in decline. Regardless of which side of the isle they sit on, I think most Americans can agree with the sentiment that things are getting worse, and have been for a while.
Of course, the two sides have wildly different ideas about why things suck — with the right largely blaming the decline on immigration or abortion or LGBT proliferation or some nebulous “eroding of traditional American values”, and with the left blaming things on regulatory capture, military adventurism, and the general corporate cannibalization of all our institutions and infrastructure. But both sides lately agree we’re heading in the wrong direction, so why is Trump’s message more resonant?
Maybe it’s because Trump presents them with more tangible “boogiemen” while the Democrats play ineffective defense by pointing at rising GDP or the surging stock market or low unemployment numbers — stats that do nothing to speak to the lived experiences of individual voters. Maybe Democrats need to focus their attention less on policy proposals and “hope and change” and more on “boogiemen” like the right. Stop campaigning against Trump, stop campaigning for incremental change, stop campaigning for culture wars, and start campaigning against people like Elon Musk. Start campaigning against union-busting Howard Shultz. Campaign against Amazon. Campaign against Mark fucking Cuban who hoards $6 billion for himself and then turns around and acts like he gives a damn about the working class while simultaneously padding the pockets of Democrats so that if they ever do actually win, he can be sure his tidy fortune won’t be at risk.
Is rent too high? Is the price of groceries becoming a burden? Have wages been stagnant for two decades? Fucking acknowledge it— no, don’t just acknowledge it, tell people they’re right to feel that way and that they should be fucking angry about it. Then spend every last campaign dollar and stump speech and political add attacking the people who made it that way. Rally people against an actual enemy, the real enemy, and maybe we’ll finally start voting for you without having to hold our noses. Of course, the DNC probably has too much vested interest in keeping their corporate donors happy to ever make this the message. After all, the Harris campaign raised nearly a billion dollars this cycle. Then again, what good is a billion bucks if it loses your the house, Senate and presidency?
Anyway, that’s just the two cents of a frustrated liberal who isn’t terribly surprised by the situation we’re now facing once again. Take it with a grain of salt — I’m just as dumb as everyone else.
Biden should’ve never run again in the first place. He should have kept to his pledge of being a “one term president” and gracefully made way for the DNC to hold an open primary where the voters could’ve expressed there preference for an actual message, rather than being force-fed yet another campaign of “What are you going to do? Vote for Trump?”
anti-capitalist
net worth of $30 million
okay buddy
It’s only fine until those sulfates react with water vapor in the atmosphere to form sulphuric acid. That stuff rains back down and contributes to ocean acidification which is causing serious harm to all sorts of marine ecosystems.
“And then it got worse.”
Wait, you guys are getting President’s Day off work??
you managed to piss off a huge chunk of your paper’s subscriber base without winning over anyone from the other side
This never had anything to do with winning over MAGA voters. It was only ever about Bezos fearing retaliation from a future Trump administration if he manages to win a second term.
There’s a reason people like Musk are bending over backwards to suck Trump’s dick: They’ve all seen what happened to oligarchs in other countries who didn’t bend the knee when a new dictator came to power. Putin is probably the best and most relevant recent example, but the “Saudi Arabian purge” is another, and similar things have been happening all over the world this century.
I can siiiiiing!
Account created 13 hours ago
Bingo
32 posts a day is a LOT.
Honestly, that’s not even that impressive… It’s only 4 posts per hour over a 8 hour work day, which is completely achievable if Internet trolling is your hobby of choice.
What’s really impressive is the number of comments. I won’t speculate on Monk’s motives (out of fear of running afoul of this community’s rules) except to say that they seem extremely motivated to argue with anyone and everyone who posts a disagreeing comment. Their tactic is to bicker with any dissenting voices (without actually engaging with their arguments) to the point of exhaustion so that no one will bother engaging anymore — a very specific strategy I have to imagine is designed to shift the Overton window a particular way.
Fortunately, their efforts seem to have been mostly ineffective given the number of people around here who continue to call out their BS. So keep fighting the good fight, I guess!
Past a certain age, cats tend to develop that specific physique as they lose muscle tone — usually around 17 or 18 years old. By that point they probably also have arthritis making grooming more difficult/painful, which can contribute to the “mangy” look of their fur. Of course, age itself also affects the fur in various ways including thinning and changes in luster/texture. It’s also very common for senior cats to have some sort of kidney disease, which can lead to dehydration that further affects the fur.
To be fair, that is a pretty funny prank.
“Oh, you wanted comedy? Here, have this harrowing tale about genocide and the great depths of human suffering instead!”
It’s entirely possible these aren’t real players, but are actually some kind of automated testing scripts or service monitors that someone forgot (or just never cared) to turn off before getting sacked, running on a forgotten QA box somewhere deep in the bowels of Sony.