The sex part they’re a bit young for, but perhaps the Chinese Communist Party talking points have some merit. :D

It’s also the death of even the pretense of the American dream. Think about it. All pricing goes algorithmic, for all goods and services. Every company figures out the absolute maximum you can pay and charges accordingly.

What does this do in aggregate? It means that every raise you will ever get during your career is now immediately consumed by rising prices. This produces an economy where there is literally no point at all to advancing your career, gaining new skills, or bettering yourself. Why go to college or trade school, if the extra money you earn is just going to be consumed by companies charging your more for the same products? Why should anyone do anything but simply find the most tolerable minimum wage job they can, and simply work it until they die of old age? If all pricing is algorithmic, anything you do to improve your personal financial situation will be immediately hoovered up by the big conglomerates.

Exactly. The whole point of a ghost gun is that it’s untraceable. You made it yourself; they can’t track it so some purchase record. The way you use a ghost gun is you make it, use it, and then just leave it at the crime scene. You make sure you never touch the thing with bare hands, so there are no prints on it. If you made one ghost gun, you can make another. They’re easily replaceable. No need to keep it with you after the crime.

It’s important to keep in mind that Luigi is exactly the type of person that the police would try to pin this on. It’s so easy to see how it could happen. The NYPD had a high profile murder of a wealthy CEO to deal with. The NYPD leaders had politicians and corporate leaders breathing down their necks, demanding this case be solved immediately. And at the same time, the suspect seemingly made a perfectly planned getaway and had disappeared. This kind of thing has happened countless times in history. Have a high profile case that simply must be solved? Find some undesirable to pin it on. Ideally this is someone who is already dead, maybe someone who recently killed themselves. You don’t have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if you blame the crime on a corpse. But if a suitable dead person isn’t available, then a living person can do in a pinch.

If you want to pin a crime on someone, you find someone who resembles the suspect and also isn’t someone with a lot of social respect or clout. Homeless people are classic targets. And Luigi was a queer kid, out of contact with his family for months, living in a youth hostel. He is the exact type of person the NYPD would choose if they were looking for someone to pin this on. I’m sure they would try to pin it on a black person if they could, but the person they chose had to at least have some visual resemblance to the person on the security footage.

I’m sure it will be built by a contracting company incorporated just for this purpose. And after this, it will be dissolved. They’ll have no reputation to defend.

Polls have been pretty accurate. Some of the polls involving elections Trump specifically runs in have been less accurate, but even the polling of his race in 2024 was pretty accurate.

You know, now that I think of it, there must have been some decent number of men that had a Hitler moustache before Hitler ruined it. Imagine being the guy in 1941 who is stubbornly refusing to shave it saying, “hey, it’s not my fault he’s a jackass. I’m not changing my life due to him!”

It’s the only way to promise justice that cannot later be revoked by a second Trump. This is restitution. And it needs to be delivered in a durable form.

I want to see potential 2028 Democratic candidates NOW announce what they will do to right the wrongs of the current administration. For example, if I were running, I would publicly state:

“To all those illegally removed while going through the lawful immigration or asylum process, I tell you, you will receive justice. I promise to use executive authority to create a fast track to immigration and citizenship for anyone unjustly removed from the country by Trump. Any immigrant denied their due process by the Trump administration will receive full US citizenship by the end of my first term. Let President Trump know that denying asylum seekers their day in court will do him no good in the end. Asylum claimants normally have a low chance of success. But for those whose rights were violated? I will guarantee them success. I will guarantee not only asylum status, but full citizenship, to any asylum seeker that Trump has violated in our names!”

Depends. Have you ever had a passport in your dead name? That is the critical question. If so, then they can see it in your records when you go for a passport renewal. And if so, you’ll receive a passport back under your birth sex.

As far as the effects of having an incorrect passport gender marker? It can get you in a lot of trouble. I’m a trans gal myself. There’s no easy way for me to even prove that I am trans. I could strip naked in front of someone and it wouldn’t be obvious. Yet under these rules, when I update my passport, I’ll end up with an M marker. This will make it nearly impossible for to travel internationally.

This can cause big issues when crossing a border. It can mean you’re pulled aside for extra scrutiny. It can get you outright turned away from countries hostile to lgbt people. It can make border agents suspect your entirely legitimate document is fake. Hell, the same conservatives who would give me such a document would argue I’m committing some act of fraud for dressing and looking a way that doesn’t match my documents.

Just imagine what trouble you might encounter if any basic info on your ID was clearly wrong. Imagine your passport says your height is a foot different from your actual height. Can you not see how that would obviously cause you problems when trying to cross a border?

Eh, I don’t think they give a shit about the natives to be honest.

Jews were only 1% of the pre-Nazi German population. Trans people are only 1% of the US population.

Yup. The Zoomer conservatives won’t reform their ethics. They’ll just replace the teachers of poor black kids with AI chat bots.

You’re confusing being a good politician with being a good leader or representative. Being a politician is all about winning elections. The man can’t lead the country worth a shit, but he can get elected.

Trump is a brilliant politicaian. I hate the ground the man walks on, but don’t discount his political skills. He has stronger political instincts than almost every politician alive in America today. He can be evil while also being a great politician. You see his politics and conclude he doesn’t know what he’s doing. But you are simply not his target audience.

Because in the US, you only exist in a democracy if you are in the top 10% of the income distribution. This has actually been proven empirically. The opinions and preferences of the bottom 90% of the population has zero influence on what legislation Congress eventually passes.

This is why Democrat’s plan to run on defending democracy or simply not being Trump has failed so hard. Only 10% of the country has ever actually lived in a democracy. You cannot ask people to defend a democracy that they themselves are not members of.

If you vote to enable fascism, you are yourself a fascist, regardless of what color arm band you choose to wear.

And this is why we need to shout down and muppet that blindly parrots “vote blue no matter who.” These folks rely on the flawed assumption that electing Democrats is the fastest way to fight authoritarianism. But if the party is actually just a scam? If it’s just controlled opposition? You have no great options at that point. At that point your only option is to ignore the fake opposition and push for a new left wing party, even if it takes you 20 years to implement. Voting for a captured opposition party is little more than an act of masturbation.

What I am saying is that I think online leftists really badly want to pretend this isn’t partially on them too, like they weren’t doing GOP campaigning for them and like they did their best to try to make the DNC more progressive by force, when really all they did was bitch that they didn’t change, bitch when they were in office without 3 branches and a super majority and didn’t accomplish what it would take just doing illegal things to accomplish, and who are now bitching that the democrats they didn’t support enough to give significant power arent doing super hero feats to solve this.

Your post could be summarized as:

“Never hold Democrats accountable for anything, as they will always be able to cite the 60 vote rule in the Senate. Completely ignore the things they can don’t do that they could do with the power they do have. Just keep voting Democrat forever. Voting for the good team is more important than actually making policy changes.”

This man cannot be allowed anywhere near the White House. He is extremely unlikely to reverse many of the Trump administration’s worst policies. For example, he is unlikely to reverse Trump’s rules on trans/nonbinary passports and social security name changes. Newsom is going to take one look at the polls, see that trans people are unpopular, and that it’s politically advantageous to leave bigoted policies in place. He will be too much of a coward to risk headlines that say, “President Newsom endorses child sex changes with passport policy!!” Simply put, if he is the Democratic nominee, I will not be voting for president in 2028, consequences be damned.

You can whine that “surely, he must be better on trans issues than Trump,” but there’s no evidence of that. He’s built in the same mold as some of the most vehement anti-trans bigots in the English speaking world, the current labor government in the UK. A Democrat can absolutely be just as bad for the trans community as a Republican can. The labor party proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt.

You can complain, “well, surely, even if he’s bad on trans issues, then he’ll be better on other things.” But frankly, if the Dems follow the Republicans down the path of bigotry, this is no longer my country. If that comes to pass, I see no reason to participate in elections for a country I no longer consider my own and do not plan to remain in. For me and my community, an anti-trans Democrat is even worse than a Republican in office, as it will so completely shift the Overton window as to deny trans Americans their rights for decades to come.