CFTC Staff Were Told to Retract Analysis of Suspicious Oil Trades
bloomberg.com
bloomberg.com
Edit: And, if we accept that this is the default state, then lets dismantle the surveillance part. Might as well be free in that aspect, right?
It’s actually worse; when states try to shut down sports betting in prediction markets, the CFTC fights on behalf of Kalshi with the reasoning that only the federal government has the mandate to regular futures and prediction markets. And then they refuse to regulate!
The CFTC is supposed to have 5 chairs, with no more than 3 in the same party. The administration has gotten around this rule by simply removing 4 of the commissioners and then refusing to appoint replacements. In effect, the CFTC has only 1 republican chair and no opposite party representation. The level of corruption is staggering.
It’s a bit more complicated than that. The CFTC argues that under Dodd-Frank any bet on a future event that can have economic consequences is regulated by the CFTC.
It’s a bit silly because this obviously wasn’t the intention of the legislation, and it would also mean anyone betting outside a CFTC regulated exchange is in illegality. But it’s valid enough that The case will probably go to the Supreme Court.
Of course it's a policy that helps the two-party system become further entrenched. It should be no more than 2 from the same party. (Not that it matters given the fact only one is appointed, but still.)
https://www.wsj.com/finance/regulation/flurry-of-suspicious-...
"I get why people voted for him. Because even before he came on the scene, American politics was coin-operated.
Money goes in, favors come out. It’s been running on corporate money, secret money, billionaire money. Both sides.
And when members of Congress aren’t fundraising from lobbyists and corporate PACs, they’re trying to dodge getting bombed by these super PACs.
Spectacular wealth buys an ever greater share of power over our national affairs. And this corruption is why nothing works for ordinary people."
Enough of the voter base will cut the nose to spite the face
But please note that he's pre-emptively declared he won't run if Kamala runs[0]. He even admits this is because they're both backed by the same groups and share the same donor network[1]. So there's at least one more Democrat you simply should not vote for.
[0]: https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/gavin-newsom-sa...
[1]: Quote from above article: "The governor said he would not want to force a contest against the former vice president, noting that the two share many political allies and supporters."
That's a good point.
What scares me about Newsom is that, outside of California, Newsom's corruption, broken promises, and policy failures are totally unknown. He's just the handsome guy with all those great anti-Trump zingers. And as a relatively young white man, he might be seen as a demographically "safe" choice for primary voters burnt by their experience with Hillary and Kamala.
> I hope primary voters are as fed up with the corporate Democratic party as the country in general is.
I think a good chunk of them are. The question is really, who can win both the Democratic nomination and the general election?
AOC is the obvious choice for the DSA faction, but I'm deeply skeptical she can win in the general. The corporate faction seems dead set on Newsom or Kamala. If Kamala can somehow eke out a primary victory, she's gonna crash and burn badly in the general. And I don't see anyone else suddenly appearing as a viable candidate.
So from where I'm sitting, it looks like Democrats' most likely path to victory goes through Newsom. And I think his corruption and inevitably poor governance will discredit the Democratic party for a generation and catapult MAGA--perhaps another Trump--back into power. Then we'll be properly fucked.
> It's early, yet, but if Democrats can't win a state or two in the south, they're going to have a hard time taking the White House.
The Democrats are going to have a hard time taking the White House. Full stop. The electoral map isn't pretty. And if current trends continue, it's gonna become almost impossible for a Democrat to win the Presidency after the next reapportionment.
> The northern "blue wall" simply aint
Preach. It was always a delusion. Democrats have a long history of taking their voters for granted. Then, of course, they are shocked when they give them the finger. Unfortunately I don't see this changing any time soon. The DSA faction seems similarly aloof, in their own way.
It was thinking like this about Kamala that got us Trump.
I don't want Newsom either, but if it's a choice between Newsom and Trump 3.0 (if he swings it) or JD Vance, I'd still take Newsom any day.
but I'm afraid that the dem party will work against her just like they did Bernie in 2016, which got us the mad king
They're simply in the oligarch level now. Everyone understands that they're above the law. Nowhere near enough Democrats are talking about the level of corruption clearout that would be required to bring accountability. Law enforcement are heavily compromised in the opposite direction. See the raid on Ilhan Omar, for example.
The relative lack of consequences there enabled this go around.
With Reagan and Iran-Contra, Reagan was never charged, most officials were pardoned, and only one person served any jail time.
With Bush (43) there were no consequences for any of it. Not he war under false pretenses, not the domestic spying, not the torture.
And with Donald Trump (45) a single judge recently appointed by Donald Trump held up legal proceedings until he was elected President, again.
Yes. That's deeply bad precedent.
Roger Ailes founded Fox News, explicitly, to avoid a recurrence of even that minimal level of consequence.
He was threatened with impeachment for lying about it after he found out it had happened.
It's baffling to watch people destroy their reputations, careers and possibly risk their freedom for a chance to get close to power and pad their (possibly offshore/crypto) savings accounts. For as evolved as we pretend to be, we're really not very far beyond our "lizard brains" and a few missed meals away from mania. I was actually just thinking about Todd Blanche and the stupid games he's playing, flirting with contempt in a number of lawsuits. He's almost certainly got less time in the AG seat than Trump has in the president's and reality is going to slam into his brown nose very hard, sooner than later.
Remember the whole system is filled with institutionalists who believe following in the program, no matter who sets the standards.
We need to focus on systemic change rather than populism.
What's happening in Brazil right now should give people pause about thinking that an interregnum with someone left-ish in power trying to restore normality will reset things to a saner state.
These are people totally willing to burn the crops and salt the fields. Trump could die tomorrow and a thousand heads would pop up looking to benefit from the anger and resent.
And the answer is, largely, nothing.
It’s a shame, really.
Obviously there's a lot more nuance and detail to it (the blame Nixon deserves being of specific note IMO) but the argument is there.
So I'd argue that both the means are bad and the end
The election was a rejection of stability.
At least, that's how people in the middle, who decide election results, saw things.
We rolled the dice and lost. But things still aren't working very well in society, so we'll roll the dice again.
A lot of voters in the middle aren’t taking the time to understand why things seem to keep not changing (somewhat understandably so, but also unfortunately given the need for an engaged electorate in a healthy democracy). Both parties are being sticks in the mud, but one in particular is doing a lot more to keep change from happening than the other.
In the usa we have an overemphasis on the president, but we’ve slow walked ourselves into a dysfunctional congress that just can’t do anything. The point of democracy is to let the best ideas win, and part of that is being able to try those ideas out, and respond when they don’t work. Having a senate with two votes per state regardless of population, that are only replaced a third at a time, with an archaic but also recent rule that effectively requires 60/100 vote to pass almost anything meaningful, is just a recipe for failure.
End the filibuster as it is today. If you want a filibuster, force people to talk for it the way it worked for the first ~150 years of our country at least.
Having some slimy Mitt Romney types doing math about various state industries and interests when wording bills and trading votes would be a huge improvement over the equally slimy jerks we have now scheming up ways to serve their donors (who's interests correlate with the voters even less than the state's despite that bar being low to begin with) while leveraging abortion this guns that wedge issues to get re-elected despite screwing their voters.
The distribution of senators to states would also matter less if they weren't direct elected and therefore as beholden to party platforms and funding systems and whatnot.
Why? And why is indirect selection of senators better for that? Won't it just hand power to backroom operators at the state level, instead of to the people of the state?
Isn't that cause and effect? In essence, what the US is showing is that the executive has so much power now that congress is largely obsolete.
If there was a better balance of power and less executive power, the only way the executive branch can get something done is to work with congress.
Obviously that doesn't work in all cases, conflict in particular. But in my experience that's where most democracies have drawn the line on executive power, basically for emergencies.
You can see the same thing playing out in Brazil
Because many people in this country just go by vibes and don't really care what is happening.
We rolled dice well known to be unfair and lost. At some point, victim-blaming is the answer.
It's also not just happening to US elections, perhaps not even primarily to US elections. Brexit, AfD, Orban, etc. were all boosted with a strategic goal in mind.
And some simply found Trumpian corruption and abuse to be manly and cool.
Even if you work by the logic of respecting the median voter's position as legitimate and worthy of equal consideration by mere virtue of it being democratically held (a viewpoint I don't necessarily subscribe to), it seems as if the median voter got an own goal this cycle.
I'm trans. I'm also smart, wealthy, and live in America - an intersection of categories that essentially mean you can do almost anything you want to do with your life. I've barely felt any of the consequences of the election because I can afford to move to somewhere where the legislative climate is more friendly, can afford to have a social life among people who are not hostile, can afford to pay out of pocket for every new medication of mine that gets banned off insurance, and largely shrug off fuel and food inflation. I'm not feeling the consequences of the current regime half as bad as the people who voted enthusiastically for it. If the goal was to obstruct or ruin my life for being a member of a given suspect class, then the goal failed.
Culture war is nonsense and nothing can ever supersede material conditions.
There is no solution to this problem other than electing a candidate who will raise taxes, fund infrastructure, and stabilise prices. I don't care what party they come from. I don't have optimism we'll get anyone like this on the national stage within the next decade - NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani is the closest I've seen yet to a candidate who espouses the positions I'd like to see in someone who is qualified to run for president.
Yes, "both sides" do this, but Trump's party has refined it to a science with help from people like Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg, while the Democrats still rely on shoe leather.
I think Trump mostly happened to be in the right place at the right time.
Notice how many countries had the then opposition party win (or come much closer than usual) around 2023-2025. It didn't matter which side they were on, Poland went right -> center-left for example, so did the UK.
People in 2024-ish were very unhappy about their economic situation (which was mostly caused by pandemic disruptions, with the war in Ukraine not helping things), but was usually attributed to whoever was in power at the time. In the US, that happened to be the democrats, so that's whom people blamed.
This gave the GOP a trump card (no pun intended) which they played reasonably well. I think the Democrats could perhaps have made some hay there (by focusing on "evil capitalists" causing "fakeflation"), but the Republicans automatically started from a position of strength by not being in power at the time that particular disaster happened. Even so, the DEM focused mostly on race and not economics, which was a bad play at the time.
The Ukraine war also had a lot less impact on the us than it did in Europe. Europe was much more reliant on energy from Russia, and that was where the pain was in 2022/23/24.
- Elon Musk, June 5 2025 (https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1930667528696828120)
Voters obviously bear ultimate responsibility, but there's a lot more going on than just "voters are responsible." If that were true, corporations and wealthy individuals would have no interest in injecting money into politics, but alas... they do.
He's got a lot to lose!
Will be done by the end of the year (tm)
You can never blame anything on propaganda and deliberate misinformation and manipulation of the public. And you have to assume all speakers have the same power and reach.
Unrestricted free speech in practice falls under what Anatole characterized : "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread."
Elon can lie and propagandize at scale with impunity. But let's blame voters.
The private sector, for slightly more benign reasons, and sometimes less benign reasons like keeping cigarettes from being blamed for cancer and emphysema, uses the same mechanisms to sell products. If that didn't work, nobody would pay for advertising and PR.
Even something as simple as, attractiveness mattering more in presidential candidates since the advent of television in homes.
At the same time, we had a system whose establishment largely looked down on middle class Americans who didn't go to college. Early to mid 2000’s through the great recession saw the middle class tighten, with no real improvement to healthcare or affordability (attempts were made but ultimately medical costs are still rising). Many middle class people rely on things like cheap gas, child care, and affordable heating among others.
Then you have a system whose leaders actively works to increase gas prices (regardless of EV incentives, you’re asking individuals to purchase new cars when a difference of 1 dollar in gas goes a long way), some states subsidizing green energy programs by additional taxes on oil and natural gas heating costs (just switch to heat pumps and take on a 0 interest loan for 10 years), and rising childcare costs partly due to regulations in childcare businesses.
Then you have someone who claims to be an outsider (he wasn’t), who clowns on the existing elites in debates, and makes vast promises. The other party doesn’t say anything about positive change they’ll bring, just that they aren’t Him. Why not try something different than the status quo over the last 2 decades?
With gas prices up, the Epstein scandal still unresolved, and another ME war, i think if many of middle America were told these would be the outcomes they would not have voted him in again.
We should have more empathy for our fellow Americans, and try to understand each other instead of assuming they want the worst for your side.
If you go with the presumption Jan 6 was a mob that got out of hand (not my position, just one of the perspectives), then the idea that he wasn’t able to enact his agenda due to the opposing party, coupled with the shenanigans of the other option (no democrat primary for Kamala being one, with democrat party having done similar in the past with Bernie), then claims that the democrats are spinning Jan 6 and risking another term with him seem more reasonable.
Whether I or you agree with those premise is separate from what the zeitgeist is for much of America
The media bubble is something these people seek out. They avoid sources that offend them. They don't go to original sources or seek first hand accounts. When confronted before they get the talking points their responses are rational, then after receiving orders they'll pivot on a dime.
Push that through a media filter that optimizes for engagement and it's no wonder these things are happening.
I can't agree with your position based on the election of 2024. We knew exactly who Trump was, and it was obvious the second term was only going to be more extreme and unhinged.
I also blame the people who voted for Trump for Trump getting elected. Ultimately its the voters who chose this disaster of a presidency, despite obvious signs.
Politicians flip flop, or hopefully truly develop different opinions after experience/learning more.
Kamala came off as a piece of clay molded in the last minute to appease groups just for their vote. A good politician makes that “molding” process come off more naturally. Her and Walz did not really resonate with voters, they were just not Him.
And that is a lesson I hope democrats or a third party has learned that they can’t just reflectively say “I’m not Trump,” they need to show that through their principals, track record, and message of unity.
Hillary admonished trump voters, many of whom are middle class union/laborers. Biden claimed he was pro union then broke up the railroad strike. Kamala couldn’t hold a conversation without some sound bite failure (doesn’t make her bad, just not a politician) and wasn’t elected in any primary.
I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did, then provide a better option not just a different one
> I think we need to better hear and learn the context of the other side’s perspective to understand why they voted the way they did
I hear it all the time. If I vote democrat, they're going to do forced gender reassignment surgeries in our public schools. If I vote democrat, I'm for murdering babies. If I vote democrat, I'm supporting Satan, and can't possibly call myself a Christian. To vote against Trump is to vote against God's will. This isn't just some stupid talking point on TV ads, its a position I've heard in person countless times and has absolutely touched me personally.
I've had people who were supposedly my friends for years, people I shared a table with weekly for years, decide they couldn't associate with me anymore because of a yard sign.
These are the people you're telling me that I need to better understand.
Where is the expectation for them to take a real look at reality and actually examine their positions aren't backed by reality, and their votes are going against their own interests?
Perhaps the many, many comments in this thread, going on and on about how people are misinformed, ignorant voters who vote against their own interests, could be understood for what it actually is, which is that.
There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests. People vote based on what they think will make their life better. The quality of a person's life has a massive number of interrelated variables that are hard to tease out.
Someone might decide that their quality of life will be improved by having better jobs or doing something about the extractive corporate sector that makes it almost impossible for normal people to thrive. They might also try to improve their lives by trying to make other people besides themselves feel humiliated and outcast in society since they are sick of being those people. In fact they might decide that's only thing they can change since that first thing isn't on the agenda of either party.
In all cases people get to decide what they care about and what they think their life improvement chances are by whatever metrics they pick. They are right about their preferences by definition. That's inherent to democracy.
Totally. No one likes an asshole. But assholes can be right. What's a kinder label than "misinformed" for someone who rejects the truth because of its source?
This is easily disprovable. People care about gas prices. They were unhappy with gas prices under Biden and said so loudly. They voted for the candidate that increased them even more.
Reason: ignorance and misinformation.
Outcome: voting against one's own declared interests.
I'm not denying preferences exist. But preferences are shaped by lies. They easily lead to outcomes contrary to those preferences.
So they voted for the candidate who had a track record of lower inflation.
Turns out things didn't happen that way but that's a different criticism. You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
So they made the ignorant choice at choosing the candidate who teed up the highly inflationary environment and enacted policies which driectly drove the inflation. Like, the $450B in cash handouts and the near trillion dollars in forgiven PPP loans with zero enforcement. Loans which his family directly abused.
> You're assuming a forward-looking omniscience of some kind or prediction skill that just doesn't exist.
No, I'd expect people to not make stupid choices. Anyone actually paying attention would understand Trump is bad for the economy long term. But here we are.
When "smug asshole Democrats" explained why this wasn't Biden's fault, given that it happened on the other side of the world, they got called "smug assholes".
Enacting tariffs and waging war also causes inflation. Tariffs were a campaign promise - zero omniscience required.
And gas wasn't this expensive in 2022. So you're wrong about that.
"They're eating the cats and dogs!"
- get an abortion up to one month after delivery
- get gender reassignment surgery coordinated at your school without parental awareness or consent.
"There's no truths or untruths here". There absolutely fucking are. And then people like you are acting like we're the ones contributing to it, "Well, have you considered why they might think that way?"
You're not asking them "Have you considered how what you're saying is utterly disconnected from any reality whatsoever?"
Why not?
Trump literally said he could say the stupidest things to his supporters and they'll still cheer. Trump is a smug asshole who thinks he's better than his supporters, talks down to them, lies to their faces over and over, and knows they'll support him because they literally see him as God's anointed one.
> There's no such thing as people voting against their own interests.
This is truly as nonsensical opinion as people always choose healthy choices. People can absolutely make self destructive choices. A smoker choosing to smoke isn't making a good choice, but to you they couldn't possibly choose something against their interests. It would be in their interests to stop smoking, but they're unable or unwilling to make that decision.
Now see if you can figure out why self-destructive choices can be rational at times?
Can you formulate a hypothetical where smoking is a rational decision? I can.
It's not a rational choice. It's choosing to make the irrational choice.
A drug addict choosing to shoot up isn't making the rational choice. It's a choice we can examine on why they made that choice, but it wasn't reason that drove them to make that choice.
Thinking Trump is the anointed one isn't a rational decision. Voting for Trump to get rid of corruption isn't a rational choice. Voting for a rapist in the middle of a big pedophile ring isn't the rational choice at fighting the pedophiles.
Is it irrational to take out yourself as well as your enemies if you have no realistic prospects for improving your situation but you do have the ability to hurt people who hurt you?
Yes, I'd agree it's irrational to willfully give yourself a chemical addiction in a place where you are already have enough stressors and it'll be hard for you to continue to feed that addiction once started. It's probably a terrible choice to start an addition in a concentration camp. I can understand why people would choose it, and I don't fault them for making such a decision in such a bad place, but it's definitely not the rational choice.
Just purely from a self-improvement standpoint, you should try and not assume you know everything about someone through a short conversation.
I'm not passing off a moral judgement over someone choosing to smoke in a concentration camp. I don't fault someone making that choice. There's a good chance I might make the same. That doesn't make it a rational choice.
This is because 35% of the country identifies as rejecting all science and asserting the belief that the earth is 6000 years old because they explicitly believe a "plain reading" of the bible trumps all
https://news.gallup.com/poll/647594/majority-credits-god-hum...
This statistic is at a historic low
The believe that the earth is 6000 years old or "Young", a belief that is explicitly taught in hundreds of private schools funded through school voucher programs that only hand little timmy very special textbooks that assert that scientists are evil and trying to keep them from gods light.
This belief requires you to not learn how science works. It requires you to reject empiricism entirely. It requires you to believe that science in general is an evil cabal directly in league with satan to make you stop believing in god. It requires you to believe that democrats are in league with these satanists to "brainwash" your good little god fearing kid in school, so you should put him in a private school where he won't be brainwashed because instead he will be taught the truth of god, which is to just do whatever the Pastor and his leaders say, and don't think.
Yet another example of "voting against your interests" due to massive amounts of ignorance.
Trump owns a social media company. The leaders of the other big social media companies backed his run to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.
So you can dispense with that assumption. Hopefully you can pick up on the point I was making, which is that there are a lot of irrational belief systems in politics. You can find them everywhere.
What I dislike is this tendency among overeducated elite, nominally Democratic Party-type commentators to focus on this meta discussion: Why are they stupid? Why are they misinformed? What bots are influencing them?
How about we just focus on the merits? What exactly is your favorite politician proposing to do? Do they have a conception and understanding of how power works and will they use it to achieve goals of any kind? Can we evaluate them on those goals? The last time your team got a chance, what did they do with it? Can people trust you? Who do you serve and who do you fight?
If the answer to that last question is that you serve Wall Street corporate interests and Silicon Valley and you fight against labor and wage earners then you're not on my team either.
How do you engage with the many, many millions of Americans which believe these things? You think they give a damn about how some infrastructure bill finally started the planning on replacing that bridge in town that they don't even realize is about to collapse when their pastor says voting against Trump is sentencing you to hell? These same voters that can't put 2 and 2 together and realize the reason why the only hospital nearby closed finally because their state refused Medicaid expansion so long ago.
What's the way you suggest we connect with these topics? What's the right give-and-take here? How do you come to a middle ground when they're off in adrenochrome-fueled lala land?
But hey, according to you, I guess they're acting rationally, and there are no truths or untruths.
People are refusing to vote for Talarico because they know he's a transgender vegan who will outlaw meat in Texas and force your kids to be gay. You think people who think these things will be swayed by another vote for Medicare for All or eliminating the tax cap on Social Security or paid family leave? Nah, he's unelectable because he suggested maybe God doesn't have a penis, as we know for sure God the Father is definitely a dude even though somehow women were also made in the image of God. They can't vote for Talarico because he's against God...as opposed to the guy who's defrauded his friends, practices extreme corruption, got impeached by his own party, and flies around the world with his mistress to party with fugitives illegally supporting him in a Muslim country while costing the public tons of money.
Pretty sure it matters. In fact, I think the merits of the people that you run for president are super insanely unbelievably important. The idea that there's any other way to look at this is completely baffling to me. The fact that Biden was essentially incoherent and Kamala did not appear to have a discernible idea of why she was running in the first place mattered a ton, as did the fact that Kamala was literally selected by an opaque committee process with no voter input whatsoever.
They matter a lot. Try it the other way and run a candidate that has a clear and articulable vision for how people's lives will get better if they're elected, and then starts to act on that vision as soon as they're elected effectively. See what happens. It'll be different. It's happening in New York City right now, if you want one example. When people try this approach instead, the distinction is really easy to see. As is the suddenly vicious opposition from the establishment Democratic Party that's behind these people you're talking about
> People are refusing to vote for Talarico because... Nah, he's unelectable...
This election hasn't happened yet. Once it happens, that will be a better time to explain why he did or didn't win.
I still think that your understanding of the reasoning of the people who don't like him is flawed. The reason people oppose him and don't want to vote for him is because they don't think he's like them and or has their interests in mind. They think he cares about other things and other people besides them and the things that they care about. Conversely, the people that will vote for him will have been convinced that he does care about the things that they care about and will help people like them. Because that's pretty much always how it works.
Have you ever talked to a single person who has the views that you think they have? Or is your opinion of these "people" with these crazy views something that was served up to you by a company run by Mark Zuckerberg or Larry Ellison?
Yes. Constantly. Every single day of my life. I've told you that several times now. They're my neighbors. They're my relatives. They're the people who used to be my friends at church. They're my kids classmates parents. They're the people I talk to waiting for the train. They're my barber. They're the person sitting next to me at the bar. Most people I've talked to who support Paxton do so for one or more of the above reasons. The few who aren't like that support him because they're worried about their taxes going up, because their personal financial situation is above all else in their lives. If you truly think these people are rare, you're burying your head deep, deep in the sand.
I've rarely heard any other reasons other than the above as to why vote Paxton over Talarico. These are the arguments I hear in person, on the fliers stuck to my door, and on the TV all the time. And you're failing to give anything different here. You're absolutely right "they don't think he's like them" in that they think he's going to force your kids to be trans and allow for entirely open borders.
If these kinds of lies weren't effective, why would the GOP put so much stock into them? Why would they go on the debate stage and say immigrants are eating your cats and dogs? The answer: because it works. People I talk to in person still routinely think Haitian migrants are likely to eat your pets.
If this isn't really a worry of GOP voters, why would Republican campaign groups go so far as to fraudulently represent themselves to make such fears seem so salient to their voters?
Due to voting histories I'm on a lot of GOP mailing lists. Other friends aren't. I received the mailer, they didn't. I've heard the same thing widely.
Clearly they see this as a sticking point to try and drive more GOP votes.
There was a lot of campaigning in 2024 based on completely made up claims. Many voters voted based on that, even though they thought the other candidate was better on other issues they cared about.
I, and the other poster, are beyond that point. I've actually had it said that it's our fault (liberals) that things are like this, because we are refusing to engage and that we "owe" conservatives the opportunity to listen and understand their argument.
That we somehow owe it to people to argue in good faith with them when they are talking of (the ones I've personally had mentioned): post-birth abortion ("in several Democrat states, abortion is legal up to one month post birth!". Apparently you can take your baby home, come back a month later, and say "Nah, changed my mind on this one", who knew?), adrenochrome harvesting, etc.
That it was my/our fault such views propagate because we're not "willing to understand their perspectives".
The thing is, their perspectives are a lie. And in many cases, they know they're a lie, they just don't. fucking. care.
So they can go online and whine about being dismissed or criticized, or pat each other on the back for "knowing the truth". There's a subset who, I'm sure, see such things as actual literal truth, and that's a different issue altogether, but not sure it's my responsibility to solve, or that failure to engage on my part makes the current situation "my fault".
"Maybe I need to put more effort into why they think or feel that way?" That won't work, because I'll be the only one doing so. You'll note that it's never framed as a matter "maybe they should think about why people think what they're saying sounds absolutely ridiculous". There's no effort on critical reasoning or discourse that will work there, because it's not grounded in reason in the first place. And when that comes up, crickets. But no, "keep going high", keep working on empathy for people who actively celebrate LE shooting people, and for a President that will say from the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, quote, "My kids are insider trading all the time".
Do the candidates you support have any kind of track record of making people's lives better, helping average regular everyday working people live lives of dignity where they can afford to live in places and raise their families?
Or do they have a long track record of doing the opposite, favoring the interests of war overseas and corporate hegemony at home?
Those are political questions.
How is "does your candidate favor a corporate hegemony?" a political question, but "does your candidate favor allowing abortion?" not? Politics is the methodology by which we organize a society, which includes legality, morality, and ethics.
I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals. For one, I am unable to vote in US elections. And for two, the candidates I would support would be far left of today's Democratic Party, and I would vote for that Party only if/because the realistic alternative candidates were ... as abhorrent as they currently are.
> I feel you think you've had some sort of "gotcha" moment by implying that Democratic candidates have failed in meeting their claimed goals.
Yeah, of course I do. The fact that Democratic politicians have failed to improve the lives of regular people and aren't really trying to is pretty fucking relevant to why they lose to obviously corrupt opponents.
Which seems important if your goal involves acquiring and wielding political power instead of lamenting all the idiots out there in internet posts.
Nearly 1/3 of the country think the Earth is less than 10,000 years old.
Most people I've personally talked to about voting for the MAGA candidate have said one or more of these things. The others are usually wealthy people happy for their tax cuts. As mentioned earlier, I've had close friends and relatives refuse to associate with me because I've voted D a few times in my life and obviously do the work of Satan. This isn't some fringe rare thing, if it was would most TV ads I see against Talarico appeal to these fears? If this was truly some fringe why would the President constantly hammer these points?
The answer is, it's not rare. This is the new base of the GOP. The same people who knew Obama was a Muslim from Kenya.
Let's say these people really are some statistically irrelevant percentage of the population. Let's say it really is just that normal, sane, middle class Joe's are truly the people the D's need to target more. How on earth are the R's the better choice for them? This is the party which cuts their healthcare, works to defund their public education, cutting access to college, is even more in bed with corporate interests, is even more obviously corrupt, and overall has had power more and delivered less for the common person. How does it make sense to vote that way?
For a real concrete and recent example, can you explain the voting base for Paxton versus Talarico? Why would that average Joe voter support Paxton over Talarico?
Yeah, the biggest speedbump for Democratic candidates or left leaning people is the DNC.
From Hillary and the whole Debbie Wasserman-Schulz sabotaging Bernie, being caught doing it, denying it, then ... surprise! She's Hillary's campaign manager within 24 hours of resigning DNC leadership...
... through to one of the most uneducated electorates (which is on both sides), where the single most popular Google search on Election Day? "Did Biden drop out?"
Individual people may have nuanced takes on politics when you talk to them. But it all gets compressed down to 1 bit on the ballot: left or right? Red or blue?
I wish we had a system with more parties, like they do in many other countries.
It's amazing what a little bit of propaganda can do to a system of government.
It's no different to when impoverished white men insisted that letting black men be "equals" in a philosophical sense was worth dying for. When you are so pathetic, so stupid, so inept and impotent and just unspecial, sometimes you will do whatever it takes to pretend to be special.
Projection is what they do all the time. Remember when they kept crying about "Identity politics"? They can't process their self consciousness.
America is a mental health wasteland.
A lot of these people are to this day holding a grudge about that black man. It's taught to entire generations of southerners still that the south didn't revolt to protect the institution of slavery, despite every document of the south stating such in plain english, because the alternative, as the confederacy plainly stated and feared publicly during the close of the war, was to recognize how awful a person you were to be willing to die to keep human beings as some other random white mans property and believe that god wanted that to be the case and to believe that you were inherently better than black people for zero reasons.
People in these worldviews have to start inverting reality at an extremely young age, and so they are well equipped to continue that in adulthood. These are the people that are desperate to have an external reason to be failures. To have something to blame. It's funny, because I don't get that. I'd rather things be my fault, because then I can change that. But these people genuinely struggle to accept that being wrong is normal. People like my brother who insist "I am never wrong" at the age of 40 as an alcoholic who blames not getting into a good college on "affirmative action", as if he could even compete with the average black kid in college. He's as smart as me at least, but because learning requires you to accept your own fallibility, he refused to engage with it, or he refused to accept that he struggled from ADHD, which he refuses to treat because he wants to believe stupid anti-mental-health stigmas despite direct evidence from family members that it fixes problems. He flew a confederate flag on his truck in high school, insisting "Heritage not hate". In fucking Maine (Woo Chamberlain!). As a Frenchman who had his culture erased by the literal KKK. Who shares family names with black people in Louisiana because of the previous time his culture was erased by the British before the US existed.
When I was 12, his young son was first getting into public school. He knows very little about the world, so he didn't realize how shitty school lunch had gotten since he paid attention to it in the 90s. So he blamed poor school lunch on Michelle Obama. This led him to assert that "All Democrats should be shot", to multiple family members who are democrats. In front of his house with more firearms than kitchen utensils. At least he takes gun safety seriously with his kid.
They just want to be proud but the only way for them to do that is to utterly reject reality and ensure there is a strong enough underclass for them to feel superior to. It's pathetic.
Thank goodness for the little things.
As for the rest, I feel you. I'd say this is at least forgivable though. Trashy people have always existed, and it's understandable that they're trying to rationalize their situation rather than doing the work to escape it. You get the same thing in the blue tribe, of people externalizing their locus of control and embracing the blue-flavored victim narratives.
What I find unforgivable are the people who don't actually live their lives that way, who do have better access to information, who aren't stuck in the shit end of society - but yet still take up the destructionist banner because they want to be edgy, or because it's lucrative, or because they have legitimate problems with things like "the woke" but are too lazy to do anything but lash out. People who really do know better but yet still insist on back-rationalizing a whole fictional extended universe is how this self-defeating perspective ends up being legitimized. The entire red tribe has thoroughly destroyed their own culture to the point that they don't even try proposing constructive solutions to problems any more, rather they seemingly just want to watch the world burn while pointing and laughing at everyone else for caring.
Not even denying it, admitting it and proud of it.
There's a two-year delay baked into the system. If the house flips (and it almost certainly will), the house will be able to investigate these things.
I expect fireworks.
It appears that one party has settled into reckless disregard for democratic and social norms because they can rest assured that the other party is feckless and only cares about "returning to normal" rather than holding anyone accountable or ensuring the harm can't be repeated. They're probably right.
All of this is thanks to the winners-take-all voting system which entrenches two parties and prevents any meaningful consensus to be reached at a national level. I think where the US is at now is inevitable given the voting system in place.
A fragmented party system driven by Parliamentary coalition building might actually mean less accountability, since right-leaning independents and ex-Republicans disgruntled at the erosion of democratic and social norms under Trump suddenly have to worry about actual socialists being part of the alternative, and options that genuinely aren't MAGA to vote for who in practice will need to ally with MAGA
the real problem is SCOTUS and their "gifts" to Trump
and yes, the DOJ under Biden failed spectacularly by not aggressively prosecuting Trump and putting him behind bars
Me too. Fireworks of "We have to move on" and "We have to reach out", etc.
So, if the Democrats have any modicum of backbone and integrity(doubtful), they might not be able to jail anyone but they would be able to claw back illegally gotten funds, sometimes at a 3x multiple
I would love to know where you got this analysis from. Hopefully not from polling or CNN. I think we all learned a lesson from using those data points.
The best indicator for this is the futures market. It never lies.
That should serve as a simple existence proof that the futures market CAN and does sometimes "lie".
At least in the U.S. they we're spot on predicting Trump's victory 2022 & 2016, and congressional control. 2020 predicted the loss.
If your willing to share how you read futures markets for predicting elections I'd love to hear it.
I expect fireworks as well, as in flashy, noisy but nothing real accomplished.
Certainly hope that there will be accountability, and maybe there will be some, but I'm not going to hold my breath.
Post-Watergate there was some accountability and laws were changed. Campaign finance laws were introduced. Other laws to limit presidential power. But those laws have subsequently been eroded and weakened and here we are with an imperial presidency again.
Even if the House and Senate flip, majorities will be slim enough to prevent anything major. Certainly unlikely we get any impeachment trials in the Senate, though I'd love to see Hegseth get tossed out.
Congress can perform investigations, but without the President's signature they cannot take actions that have the force of law. Impeachment cannot remove any official from office without 2/3 support in the Senate. Congress CAN refuse to fund some activities, but the administration has been ignoring existing legal restrictions on spending.
So no, Congress won't take any meaningful action to reign things in for at least two years, regardless of who wins the election unless we also overthrow the government in some way.
Curious what you think should be done.
No offense, but often when I see this kind of comment there's a call for… unspecified action?
The only partially redeeming thing we will soon witness is that he will lose the upcoming elections, no matter how much he plans to cheat. The TechBros pissed off too many people and stole too much money in addition to that. All that money should be given back, directly to the people. The superrich should not be allowed to control and manipulate democracies in general, even though they are currently prepping up the eyeliner-boy as successor to the orange insanity clown.
(edit: /s but not about making the government some money off this corruption)
> Those trades paid off 15 minutes or so later, when Trump wrote on Truth Social that he was reversing his threat to attack Iranian infrastructure unless the country re-opened the Strait of Hormuz.
Likely the entire purpose of the war is to create opportunities for corruption in my opinion.