Trump Admin II: Orange Fascist Boogaloo

https://www.status.news/p/nilay-patel-donald-trump-big-tech-interview

For a president to have won the popular vote wouldn't be remarkable, but for the fact that Republicans haven't done it in twenty years. It's a low bar.

Obama won more of the popular vote and more electoral votes in 2008. Did he have a "mandate" to transform the country with a New New Deal? We found pretty quickly that he didn't.

Republicans are overreaching big.

If the reason the repugs won is because black woman in charge is bad for them then maybe. They are not dems. Dems put up a block for what people thought was their toxic reach left. Repugs do not do that sort of thing. They fall in line. There are not some Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema's on the right who are ready to block Trump's crazy.

I hope I am wrong, and there is an anti-trump insanity spine there, but I really do not think so. I figure Social Security is over. I know the ACA is done. I do not know if medicare will stand. The federal department of education is toast. They are talking about court martialing the military generals for following the orders to get out of Afganistan. These are orders Trump demanded. If I was a high up military person who saw that I would be heading for the exit. America's right just back stabbed every military person loyal to the US over Trump.

All of this because America is so sexist they will not have a woman as president. Racist is wobbly because Obama, but they doubled down on women suck. It wasn't even like Kamala ran next to a person who might not have been the worst president ever. America said we would rather have the worst man ever than a qualified and experienced woman. We can no longer say Hillary lost because she was Hillary. Hillary lost because she was a woman. America made that clear.

My expectations is that whatever horrible shit Trump does, it'll be nowhere near as bad as the fever dreams think it will be, and in that context won't be seen as horrible shit.

Fears before: "he'll kill all the menfolk, rape the womenfolk, eat the children, and burn down the village"

Actuality: comes in, rapes all the women

Aftermath: "phew, lucky escape!"

Raped women:

According to democracy in America women deserve it. Don't blame me, blame the women who agree that women deserve Trump.

I came across a quote towards the end of the election, can not recall where from, but it was something like "if you think what white men say about Kamala is bad, wait 'til you hear what the black guys are saying"

So there is an issue with women, the West still has a lot of latent patriarchal attitudes, with a lot of minority communities having more overt ones, but it can be done. Normally I'd expect the breakthrough to come from the right, being marginally less inclined to treat it as a tickbox exercise to please selected demographics, which generally serves to just piss them off instead, but whilst Trumpism is dominant, I can't see it from there either.

Another Project 2025 author.



https://www.npr.org/2024/11/17/nx-s1-5193064/fcc-chair-brendan-carr-trump

Doesn't matter. It's what the left has been about for the past four years. From trying to silence people who dont use your preferred pronouns to trying to cancel people who dont think that men should compete in women's sports or be allowed in the ladies restroom. People are straight up tired of it.

I agree that isnt why Harris lost(Bidens economy and open border were the big issues), but clearly Democrats like Maher are fed up with the extreme left bullshit that they feel they have had to stay silent on. The election results are merely an opportunity to speak out.

Maher’s not a Leftie by any stretch of the imagination.

Bill Maher is not a leftist. He uses leftist language without believing in it, like any abuser trying to gain access to the trust of others, to solidify his position as an academic liberal elitist, while not even being liberal or academic, and I expect some kind of shift to "why I left the left" to eventually happen, despite him not actual being on the left. He's a smug piece of shit, but his principles are whatever keeps the money coming in. That's it.

Weird Victorian terminology is about to make a comeback. Prepare your ass for The Strombles or some shit.

RFK Jr. comes ‘home’ to his anti-vaccine group, commits to ‘a break’ for U.S. infectious disease research

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/po...-commits-break-us-infectious-disea-rcna123551

The thing is, there is real criticism to be levied at the US pharmaceutical industry and its desire to put profit above everything else, but Kennedy isn't going to fix that, he's going to replace things that work with things that don't at ten times the price. Get ready for homeopathic solutions that cost $200 a bottle but are just water with the "memory" of ingredients in it. My insulin's probably going to be replaced with LaCroix LimonCello, goddammit.

Probably in the same place they're holding Melania

And Shelley Miscavige, too.

Grifter is going to grift with his grifter overlord.

The only good point is that big pharma is big pharma for a fucking reason. They are not going to give up their vaccine and medical treatment business. That is a level of corruption that runs thick and deep into the heart of america. They will get paid off and lose the battle, or RFK will find that high velocity lead removes a brainworm real fast. I think the two of those weasels just take the fucking money and RFK goes off and eats some critter in another country on our tax dollars. He has to go research all those homeopathic cures in the rain forest for us on our dime.

Big pharma is just going to pass the bill onto us.

Whatever RFK can do to shake up America's failed, corrupt medical and food industrial complex will be welcome. Will the immediate outcomes be good? Not necessarily. But the disruption could lead to a saner admin making improvements in the long term.

Yes, accelerationism frequently ends up with good outcomes such as these famous examples:

I don't know if you're joking, so I'll play it straight (lol): while it's a reasonable idea to think that bad decisions might lead to better protections from a future administration, I should remind you that enshittification is real, and the more we get this capitalist system in decay, the less likely we'll see a restoration of sanity as we continue to spiral the drain. In other countries, maybe this would happen, but in the United States, where people pushed back against government efforts to do the bare minimum of protecting the public at large from COVID? No.

You still get people talking about the few weeks of a partially enforced mask mandate as if it was kristallnacht. They're still upset businesses closed for a few weeks and they couldn't walk into a McDonalds and order a cheeseburger without the oppressive hand of the government on their faces.

We live in the alternate 1985, Bob. I don't think there will be a "saner" administration that will improve things. We're rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic here.

Just my two bits, of course.

I mean... He probably did, but he didn't have enough experience to realize that the point of winning power is so you can actually use it. He dicked around trying to build a bigger coalition and get Republicans onboard instead of using his majorities to push through more of the change he promised.

Even if I don't like many of his policies, one thing I appreciate about Trump is that he actually tries hard to get shit done whether the opposition likes it or not.

At least he's going to get rid of DEI at the FCC. Because on the list of priorities that need to be addressed, that's gotta be #1. Forget net neutrality, the consolidation of traditional media, and the near oligopoly of social media providers, we have to deal with DEI!!!1!

In all fairness, it wasn't just Republicans. He had to contend with conservative Democrats in Congress who didn't want a healthcare public option, etc.

Trump will likely have similar problems with Congress.

The don't even remember 2020

There's literally never been a single "extreme lieft" policy enacted in these United States.

The right simply propagandizes the idea that anything to the left of zombie Jesse Helms is by definition "extreme"

If we had, for example, universal single-payer health care it wouldn't be extreme, it would be catching up with the rest of the developed world.

Just to name one issue.

This. I can't even begin to explain how much relief I would feel if we embraced universal health care and universal workers rights. Those aren't even "extreme" left, and were introduced back in FDR's day in the US and were seen as sensible measures to protect not only the economic fabric of the country, but the social fabric. When people aren't worried sick over paying rent and buying food, they're generally healthier in mind and body. It's a no-brainer, and yet these mild reforms are seen as the oncoming Communist threat they are truly not.

Bill Maher has been supporting democrats for decades. He's been against republicans for decades. He's a leftie. He's just not as far to the left as some here would like.

Supporting Democrats does not put you on the left. There are many right wing Democrats.

Being on the left involves so much more than Democrats or even partisan politics in general, and if you listen to Bill Maher, you'll find he's rather conservative rather quickly.

He was banging Ann Coulter for years, so he pretty clearly doesn’t have any deep seated political beliefs.

Never heard of Arnold Schwartzenegger, republican, and Maria Shriver, democrat? James Carville, democrat strategist, and Mary Matalin, republican strategist? Are you really so far gone that you can't grasp the concept that two people from opposing parties can be couples or , gasp, be married to each other?

So has Joe Manchin

That's a joke,right?

Fun fact: Mary Matalin is no longer a Republican.