35 year old that enjoys games from 1980 to today. Pokemon/Final Fantasy fan. Loves RPGs. Twitch Affiliate. Trans woman. Other interests include bad movies, history, cheese and camp, leftist politics, and humor.
Mastodon profile: https://retro.pizza/@UngodlyAudrey
The killer here is that we don’t really have any recourse. Like, the best case scenario is what, wait until some of the right wing justices pass away and hope that the Democrats have both the presidency and the Senate? And, even then, it would take a long time to undo the damage the Roberts Court has wrought. Maybe THIS will get the Dems to ditch the filibuster and pack the court. Of course, that would require the Democratic party as a whole to show some fight, something they refuse to do for some reason.
I can’t help but think this is them trying to institute mandatory indoctrination of the so-called 'woke youth". I’m not sure it’d actually work, though. When I was stuck in the military, I met a ton of people from many different backgrounds. If anything, I got even more left-wing in my time there. It seemed that to me, the lifers skewed Republican quite a bit, while junior personnel were all over the place politically.
Why they’re floating this now, I have no idea. The draft is something that people tend to vote against, after all.
Wait, “sermon on the mound”? I’m not even Christian and I know it’s the Sermon on the Mount.
Is it true that he can still run for the office even if he’s in jail?
Eugene V. Debs ran for president in 1920 while he was serving time for “sedition”(he had been making anti-war and anti-draft speeches during World War I). It’s certainly possible, though incredibly doubtful he’d win. I find that I can’t really count anything out when it comes to Trump, though.
Convicted Felon Donald Trump. Let us hope that his downfall is nigh.
I start to check out once someone starts talking about “the economy”. It’s just a rich person circlejerk about “line goes up”. It doesn’t really impact me at all unless I get laid off. I guess, technically, I have a 401k but I doubt I’d ever truly be able to retire.
Besides, I’m barely making ends meet. Any praise of the economy is going to ring hollow in my ears, because I sure as hell am not seeing any of the windfall.
Research has found liberals to be more empathetic than conservatives, so in a troubled world one might expect them to be sadder. But a profound shift appears to be under way when it comes to excitement about change. “One of the fundamental traits of the conservative attitude is a fear of change, a timid distrust of the new as such,” wrote Friedrich Hayek in “The Constitution of Liberty” in 1960, “while the liberal position is based on courage and confidence, on a preparedness to let change run its course.”
of course we’re not excited about change… shit’s getting worse
If something’s going to try to grab my attention, it had better be worth my while. I block as many notifications as I can, both on my phone and my computer. I also try to avoid using apps for things unless I have to.
As nice as it would be to see people ditch Threads for the Fediverse, I suspect the number of people who will actually do that would be infinitesimally small. The power of inertia is very, very strong.
I’ll never use a Meta/Facebook product if I can help it. They’re pure evil.
Good. She can’t win; she’d only function as a spoiler. Not that I’d want her to win anyway, she was awful. I still remember that weird thumbs down into curtsy motion she made to kill a bill (I think it was to increase the federal minimum wage). Had real “fuck the poors” energy.
How shocking it is that someone dumb enough to work for Trump is dumb enough to lie to prosecutors. Guess he isn’t getting away with just probation after all.
This isn’t surprising in the least. They’ve been pushing more and more ads recently; trying to get streamers to run them more often. I hate ads, so I have always opted for a short pre-roll so that when its done, viewers won’t have to worry about ads anymore. But I think Twitch will eventually force streamers to run ads every half hour, no matter how many people they scare off.
Fortunately, Musk walked it back(for now):
UPDATE 1/9/24: Hours after reporting out this initial story, some of the suspended X accounts returned. X has not explained what happened and the affected account owners have no idea why they were briefly suspended. The reinstatement came after notable users such as George Galloway, a former member of the British Parliament, called out Musk for banning the accounts.
Of course, anyone who’s still on there should consider leaving… he’s going to continue to pull this shit, and the more people that interact with the platform, the more legitimized it is.
Hey, that’s neat, wasn’t really expecting that. It’s still an absolute joke that he lasted this long, though.
It’s alright, just basically Twitter 2. It’s useful for some things. A lot of creatives chose to migrate there, which is nice so that I can network with fellow Twitch streamers and keep up with news on the platform. As much as I like Mastodon, I just wasn’t getting that there. It’s also nice that a bunch of artists I used to follow are there.
About time. I was really starting to wonder if they were planning on leaving it open until the government shutdown date next month. Not that this’ll stop them. This guy is a MAGA traitor, after all. None of these Republican clowns are fit for office at all.
Criticism of the actions of Israel’s government does not make one an antisemite.
Honestly, any Republican that tries to work with the Democrats at this point is going to get eaten alive. Even if it’s a “moderate” one. They have completely gone off the deep end.
Justice Sotomayor did not hold back in her dissent:
"Looking beyond the fate of this particular prosecution, the long-term consequences of today’s decision are stark. The Court effectively creates a law-free zone around the President, upsetting the status quo that has existed since the Founding. This new official-acts immunity now “lies about like a loaded weapon” for any President that wishes to place his own interests, his own political survival, or his own financial gain, above the interests of the Nation. The President of the United States is the most powerful person in the country, and possibly the world. When he uses his official powers in any way, under the majority’s reasoning, he now will be insulated from criminal prosecution. Orders the Navy’s Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political rival? Immune. Organizes a military coup to hold onto power? Immune. Takes a bribe in exchange for a pardon? Immune. Immune, immune, immune. Let the President violate the law, let him exploit the trappings of his office for personal gain, let him use his official power for evil ends. Because if he knew that he may one day face liability for breaking the law, he might not be as bold and fearless as we would like him to be. That is the majority’s message today. Even if these nightmare scenarios never play out, and I pray they never do, the damage has been done. The relationship between the President and the people he serves has shifted irrevocably. In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law.
The majority’s single-minded fixation on the President’s need for boldness and dispatch ignores the countervailing need for accountability and restraint. The Framers were not so single-minded. In the Federalist Papers, after “endeavor[ing] to show” that the Executive designed by the Constitution “combines . . . all the requisites to energy,” Alexander Hamilton asked a separate, equally important question: “Does it also combine the requisites to safety, in a republican sense, a due dependence on the people, a due responsibility?” The Federalist No. 77, p. 507 (J. Harvard Li- brary ed. 2009). The answer then was yes, based in part upon the President’s vulnerability to “prosecution in the common course of law.” Ibid. The answer after today is no. Never in the history of our Republic has a President had reason to believe that he would be immune from criminal prosecution if he used the trappings of his office to violate the criminal law. Moving forward, however, all former Presidents will be cloaked in such immunity. If the occupant of that office misuses official power for personal gain, the criminal law that the rest of us must abide will not provide a backstop. With fear for our democracy, I dissent."