Yeah like I understand all the conservative arguments against Newsom, but he seemed like the most reasonable candidate to me for the Democrats when they have had such an issue finding anyone except Bernie (who is too old now) who has any kind of broad appeal.

Which makes me wonder… Who will run for the Dems in 2028.

I remember something about him having an affair, right.

Nonetheless, he seems to be competent and he comes off as capable of handling himself well in a debate and in front of a camera.

I think Gavin Newsom would’ve been the most logical decision. I think Walz was a better pick than Buttigiege. I am just speaking as someone thinking of what I would have done…

Honestly, when going against Trump I have always thought the strategy I would employ would be to grab a guy like Gavin Newsom, keep him in the middle as much as possible, give him a very tepid, normal Democrat platform, and just hug center while acting like Trump is a weirdo who is far right. This is the strategy I think the media would do best at helping with.

Buttigiege would not really help with this - not because I think being gay is an issue, but because he is uncharismatic and only looks bad standing next to virtually anyone, lol.

My favorite part about this is that it’s one of the most beneficial acts ever done for the domestic work force and is total market interference but liberals on Lemmy can’t get behind it because of their loyalties to the blue tribe.

I just want people on both sides to agree that

• Murder is wrong
• Assassinations are wrong
• You have free speech, and exercise it how you wish

Severla years from now… remarking that it was ironic that he died due to the widespread private ownership of guns is appropriate. The day he dies saying this, without heavily caveating it, and wishing the best for his family, and doing so in a group receptive to discussion of it… that is just rage baiting people, at best. At worst, you believe in violence and death on your enemies… And you’re a fucking problem for any free & democratic society because you wish evil upon law-abiding private citizens whose crime is disagreeing with you.

All that is true! And these realities should inform a proper understanding of history. Held in a vacuum, however, they obscure the real story.

Brilliant line - very true.

Everything has to be taken as a whole.

I think this is all really complicated, though. We have to also consider that most countries practice protectionism and have subsidies and other benefits given to their companies to try to enable them to gain some kind of competitive edge. This is not only because they want to profit from the hard cash inflow of successful industry and major commercial endeavors, but also simply because of the fact that they benefit very much from having greater amounts of their people employed.

One of the ironies about this, too, is how a lot of formerly Communist/Socialist states benefited immensely from their period under a planned economy by having a centralized force bring in the industry and infrastructure necessary to have a superior private market.

I am not saying Capitalism is wrong, per se, I think their descriptions of the free market are generally good… I am just saying that socialism actually also makes a lot of sense for the developing world and for nations that do not have the edge to be competitive internationally.

That’s why you see it everywhere and there really is no such thing as a ‘free market,’ and so designing your economy around a free market is just shooting yourself in the foot.

There are certainly aspects of a planned economy, which I think is a more accurate way of describing it without calling it socialist.

Protectionism and government ownership of strategic economic assets all make sense, and they are certainly not capitalist in nature.

I support these policies, by the way. They seem necessary.

I also wish that the left was more open to the fact that right wing populism should be cooperated with on some fiscal issues, if only in a limited capacity.

Brandon Herrera, the man in question, is a Texas Republican and second amendment activist who would seemingly just be a normal conservative.

And, as the article states:

During the video, the person filming commented, “Brandon Herrera for president. Yeah, I met Brandon Herrera at SHOT Show last year and he and I had a conversation, a brief conversation, we agreed on a lot of things, so y’all should vote for Brandon Herrera for president.”

SHOT Show, which is an acronym for “Shooting, Hunting, and Outdoor Trade Show,” is an annual trade show held in Las Vegas.

I have a simple policy on this… I let people define their own terms. I just do not really like debates about semantics enough… Plus I believe especially that If I am not X, I do not have that much of a right to define what X is or isn’t. I only safeguard against absurdities.

In terms of this, though, I am sympathetic to the idea that the USSR, Communist China, Communist Vietnam, etc., were Communist since many sincere people attempted to make Communism work there.

Is Communism different from socialism? Certainly. And I respect those differences. But it also makes sense to come to conclusions based off of the extreme socialist models about socialism, IMO.

To be entirely fair, it didn’t work out that way in the USSR or China very well at the lows of communism, and it was as they eased up and allowed less communistic policies that the situation improved.

And that’s fair - even when I made my comment I thought… “Geez, do I really want to revisit this…?!”

So we can end it there.

But… FAIR WARNING TO ALL OF US… It may be a big topic again soon.

I respect you and your positions but I just am always open to the idea that “the government sucks, they are not working for our best interests; they are doing an inadequate job.” This is true for both left/right.

All human institutions fail us.

But what we have is polling data from swing states here… This is not exactly hacked or highly secretive information, it differs only in that it has become suspicious because people providing it have Russian names and such.

… And all this about polling data?! Just wild.

OK, so was there collusion?

To be completely fair, family formation generally costs so much that there aren’t a lot of families - conventional families at the bottom dependent on social safety nets.

One of the big issues behind this is that many people refuse to form families because they are worried that they do not have enough to provide.

It makes sense, IMO, that if we really focus on targeting Americans who donate to random Palestinian charities deemed to assist terrorism that we also make an effort to target Americans who support the illegal settlements that are part of project for the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank.

To be fair - this is entirely normal in cases where LEOs are targeted. I do not think the transgender element factored into it too much.

Just as a note for other people who were curious - Kaboom appears to have been banned from his home instance, and is not seemingly banned from our community on Hilarious Chaos.

We are dealing with the problem of occasionalism - that God is involved in everything. I accept that, of course.

“Every trial and temptation is permitted by God as a cure for some sick person’s soul. Indeed, such trials not only confer on us forgiveness of our past and present sins, but also act as a check on sins not yet committed.” (in the Philokalia)

Here is a decet write-up.

I first heard of Eugyppius when he was mostly just on Twitter doing a lot of great work talking about COVID-19 stuff. I’ve found his content to be excellent, and the guy strikes me as not a bigot who is particularly motivated by any angle on immigration, but a true free-spirited thinker.

The substack article is witty, and it also highlights something that is just really wrong about how it is being handled from the ground up:

Stories like this often come in groups, and what set off the present cascade was a particularly grim incident from 22 June in Gelnhausen (Hessen), in which a group of Syrian migrants aged 18 to 28 molested eight or nine underage girls at the local pool. When the girls first complained about what was happening, pool personnel sent them back into the water. After this incident became a nationwide story, the mayor of Gelnhausen, Christian Litzinger (CDU) gave an interview in which he appeared to ascribe the crime to “high temperatures,” which can cause “tempers to flare up.”

This stuff is just preposterous. Like blaming sexual assault on “I was drunk.” I am an alcoholic - I have been drunk thousands of times, and while I recollect making a pass at women at bars or in other circumstances, occasionally succeeding and occasionally (freuently?!) being shot down, I have never assaulted anyone (and am living SOBER now)…

The idea that now hot, overheated people will just go out and pull an SA because of the weather is even more absurd.

Hot temperatures have perhaps annoyed me to the point of losing my “cool” (pun intended) more than a couple times, but I’ve never felt that the heat & humidity has acted as an aphrodisiac. In fact, I distinctly recollect even being sexually unmotivated by heat before.

Hot temperatures is absolutely a demotivational.

What we are dealing with is a social catastrophe - girls are being molested, in groups, at swimming pools, and the actual staff is not taking responsiblity for fear of being called racist, and the local politicians are providing bogus excuses for the scum doing this.

Look, I reject the idea of painting all black/brown people as criminals, but you can never use the fear of fulfilling a stereotype as a reason to go to bat for people who SA kids… KIDS for crying out loud.