Walz should just start running for president now. Become an instant symbol for people to rally around.

Trump started his 2024 campaign immediately after the 2020 election’s inauguration. If Trump can start campaigning 4 years in advance, so can Walz.

The purpose of presidential candidates need not be simply a candidate for the office. They can be a president-in-waiting. They can continuously rally the base. They can provide someone on the side of the opposition with a giant megaphone in the media. Trump benefited from all these things in the 2020-2024 period. He was the president-in-waiting, the presumptive nominee. This could be one individual, or it could be 3 or 4 leading candidates. But if we had some declared primary candidates running around shouting the message now, that could really help things.

Vance is the creepiest motherfucker I have ever seen. That man has no soul. Not in the sense that he’s cruel. No, look into those eyes, and tell me there is a soul in that husk. Vance is a philosophical zombie. There is nobody home.

Is this monkey’s paw taking suggestions for cause of death? If so, might I nominate, “death on the toilet?” It just seems appropriate for Trump.

Yeah, I’ve used the name before in a similar tale. It just really tickles me to think that there in fact ARE Jewish space lasers, and there’s a brave group of rabbis up on a space station keeping the planet safe from extraterrestrial threats. And “Rabbi Rabinowitz” is one of the most ridiculously over-the-top Jewish names I can think of. And instead of nefarious conspiracies, it’s very fun to just be like, “what do you have against the Jewish space lasers?! How dare you insult the good work of the great Rabbi Rabinowitz! You ungrateful bastard. He’s given his life to save you!!”

What’s everybody got against the Jewish Space Lasers? Rabbi Rabinowitz has been in charge of those lasers since 1998, and he’s been doing a damn fine job keeping the Martians and asteroids at bay! You know he’s only come down from Skylab II twice since he took the director’s position up there? You know what that much zero gravity does to a man? He’s been up there so long, he can’t come back anymore. He’s gonna die up there manning those lasers. That’s what Rabbi Rabinowitz has sacrificed for his country and planet! And the gall of some people, ranting about the Jewish space lasers. Are there Jewish space lasers? Yes! And they’ve been keeping your dumb ass safe from Martians and meteors for decades!

[In my head, I read this in Bernie Sander’s voice.]

I mean, isn’t it obvious? Christianity has traditionally believed that Earth is the center of the Universe. Everything in the Universe is moving away from us, as if we are sitting at the very spot where “Let There Be Light” resulted in light being let. Physics has proven that we are at the literal single unique geometric center of the Universe. /s

His followers did that - after being led by their leaders into doing so. It was the leaders that made it all possible. The only reason several dozen Republican Congress members aren’t rotting in jail right now is because Biden is a coward and a traitor to the Republic.

I’m sure it’s somebody’s fetish.

Damn amateur methhead copper thieves. Don’t they know the first rule of something like that is to break into into unrecognizable pieces or melt it down prior to taking it to the scrap yard?!#

And are they purging everyone who used such chats? Are they purging every straight person who ever mentioned a romantic partner? Are they purging every cis het guy who mentioned hooking up with someone over the weekend?

Give me a break. People talk about their personal lives all the time at work. This isn’t Severance. What kind of company have you worked for that people never talked about their personal lives? Except, the administration has chosen to interpret completely normal discussions about personal lives and health matters and declare them obscene, simply because they involve queer lives and bodies, rather than straight ones.

People who appeal to “the rules” are usually doing so in bad faith. If the NSA really does have such formal and strict rules, then they would likely have to fire every person there for violating them. The employees on this chat were clearly acting in a way that was considered acceptable within the culture of the agency.

Would you freak out over a group of women discussing their health issues? What about a chat where a group of men discuss the pros/cons of a vasectomy? Everybody has issues that can sound gross and obscene if you read them in bad faith. It’s obvious that at the NSA, this kind of discussion was just acceptable. But then they chose to only fire the trans people for violating the sanctity of “the rules.”

You are the kind of person MLK warned us about, the kind that prefers order over justice. And you should know from history that “the rules” are often applied with blatant bigotry and double standards. And that is the problem here. Appealing to “the rules” when they are clearly being applied incredibly unevenly in the service of overt bigotry shows that you do not give a damn about justice.

Are they also purging everyone in the agency that ever texted about hooking up with someone over the weekend? Please. People talk about their sex lives all the time, even at work. They just make sure to discuss it an appropriate context. And this discussion group was just that kind of appropriate context.

Again, are they firing everyone who ever texted about a weekend hookup? If not, then it’s simple bigotry. Even using lurid words like “gangbang” is honestly almost a slur in this context. Do I participate in that kind of romance? Personally, no. I’m monogamous myself. But I also recognize overt, rank, and despicable bigotry when I see it.

This is how bigotry puts on a polite face. You declare certain sexual practices as obscene while consider others polite and acceptable. On cis het guy brags to another about the time they hooked up with two chicks in one weekend? That’s just a player. A queer person has multiple partners and chooses a poor word to describe it? Suddenly it’s worth firing every trans person in the agency.

You clearly don’t hate this administration enough, as you are completely willing to accept their framing that certain sexualities are inherently deviant and shameful.

Anyone interested in the real story here needs to read the Erin Reed article on this. https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-new-mccarthyism-lgbtq-purges

This story isn’t being covered well by the mainstream press. They’ve always tended to “both sides” trans issues, and here they’re simply accepting fascist talking points at face value. What’s really happening is that there was a chat group provided by the NSA to employees specifically to discuss trans-related issues. They have groups like this to support the needs of all sorts of demographic groups. The trans group, unsurprisingly, sometimes contained discussions of trans issues like surgery, hormones, etc. Fascists like Gabbard consider trans people to be pornographic for simply existing. A trans person walking down the street is pornographic to her. Any discussion of any of the realities of trans existence is considered elicit and pornographic to them.

This is actually part of Project 2025’s explicitly stated plan to imprison and eventually exterminate the trans population. When people use the phrase “trans genocide,” this is exactly what they’re talking about. The goal has always been to define trans people as pornographic, to make trans people being in the presence of minors a sex offense. And they also wish to make sex offenses against children punishable by the death penalty.

That is what these people are for. That is what they believe. Unfortunately, the main stream media is ignorant, complicit, or both. They simply accept the framing that any discussion of trans people or their issues is “explicit,” and they repeat fascist talking points without thought or criticism.

Most of it seemed to be just discussions of healthcare that are only defined as “explicit” because it’s talking about the healthcare trans people need. It’s just part of the long-running attempt to define trans people as porn. If you are trans, you are walking pornography to these people.

Remember, this was on a chat that was specifically set up, by the agency, to serve as a resource and information sharing section for trans and LGBT people. The employer told them to use it, and they did. Now the new administration, following the model of Florida and other shithole states, has decided that trans people by their nature are pornographic, and any discussion of trans issues is explicit.

And worst, they went through years of texts and found the most explicit messages they could. They leaked these texts to fascist hate mongers to stir shit up. Then they fired anyone who had ever posted on the chat. You could have gone on the company LGBT chat once, said, “Hi,” and then never used it again. And you would be fired for it.

This is the Lavender Scare all over again. They are simply using the chats as a pretext to fire every trans person from the agency.

https://www.erininthemorning.com/p/the-new-mccarthyism-lgbtq-purges

Time to bring back the medieval Writ of Outlawry. Literally make them outside the protection of the law. The lawless do not deserve the protection of the law.

Yeah, it’s definitely something that would need to be experimented with locally first. I mainly like the idea because it removes the ability for the most depraved and power-hungry people to achieve high office with any frequency. The real problem with power is that it attracts evil people like moths to a flame. They seek power for its own sake. Not because they have a vision of how to improve the world, or because they want to help people. They simply want power over other human beings. I’m firmly convinced that any presidential candidate for instance is almost certainly almost demonically evil. You simply don’t get to that level of power and influence, in our current system, without leaving a whole bunch of bodies along the side of the road on your path to the top. You have to cheat, betray, lie, and stab people in the back. You have to abandon your closest supporters in the name of political expediency. You have to hide your real beliefs lest you angering the wrong people. Our existing system just selects for the most dishonest and evil sociopaths among us. The higher the level of government, the more depraved and evil you can expect the politicians to be.

Sortition solves this problem entirely. I like the idea of maybe just using it to select 3 candidates. That way the voters can hopefully prevent the real crazies from winning office, if one happens to have their lot drawn. Just by voting, you probably can’t weed out a power monger that happens to get picked randomly for a presidential candidate slot. But you can at least prevent the legitimately crazy person whose campaign platform is just, “I’m going to launch all the nukes the minute after I get sworn into office.”

But with sortition, you prevent the worst of the worst from ever getting into the halls of power. Look like someone as sociopath and conniving as a Mitch McConnell. That man should have never been let anywhere near high office. But he wormed his way to the top. With sortitition, the only way he would ever see office is if he managed to win a million:one odds lottery first.

I think that generally, most people are good people. And yes, as you alluded to, they likely will need to rely heavily on expert opinions. But elected leaders already do that. But most people do want to seek compromise and work for the greater good.

As a plus, this would completely kill political parties as we currently know them. You don’t need the party to win election. And if each representative only serves a single term, there’s really nothing to be gained by sticking to a persistent political alliance like a party. Better for representatives to just form ad hoc coalitions as they go through their terms.

I say we do a zero-representation system. No one gets elected. No kings either. Government posts are filled by sortition.

No one who most desperately wants power should have it. Solve this problem by filling offices through a lottery. I’m in the US, and I personally think we would be doing a hell of a lot better with a Congress made from 535 randomly selected Americans than the 535 we have up there right now. Or maybe some sort of hybrid system, where you get to choose between a few randomly selected candidates.

I think it’s time to unreunite Germany.

Honestly, I wonder if that’s deliberate. Trump is famously litigious, and he has promised to weaponize the Justice Department against his political enemies. If you publish a video like this (ignoring the hacking onto government computers part right now), but that is clearly meant to appear real, what civil or criminal liability might you face? You could face a defamation lawsuit against a litigant with an unlimited bank account. You might face fraud charges by the Justice Department.

But give Elon two prominent left feet? No one is going to believe the video is real upon any close inspection. Any reasonable person will conclude the video is fake, rather than Elon having two left feet. Unless Elon wants to admit he has two left feet, he can’t sue someone for defamation (at least under existing defamation law.)

If this is deliberate, it’s actually quite brilliant. It’s an AI video version of the small penis rule. This might get around anti-deepfake porn laws, but I’m not really sure on that one. This is more a traditional defamation thing. Not sure how it applies in anti-deepfake porn laws.

Nudist Ballet.

This is going to quickly escalate into full-on Trump and Musk hardcore gay porn appearing in random government offices.