I also think he could have closed Guantanamo.

Apparently you don’t remember how that went either.

And I even think he could have bailed out the people that lost their houses and not the people that owned the houses.

Oh, sure, just pass an executive order for it, right?

I still think he should have nationalized the banks that failed and renamed them to “Bank A” and “Bank B.”

Jesus Christ man.

Crazy huh.

In desire, no; in perceptions of what the president has the power to do, yes.

If Obama had wanted it, he could have done it.

Lord.

California and New York have GDP’s above most other countries in the world.

But Cali and New York do not reap the tax revenue of a country with the GDP of their size; they can only reap part of it, both because Federal taxes remove a portion of that taxable income, and because states are necessarily more limited in their options for taxation than national governments.

It’s possible, don’t get me wrong, but significantly more difficult.

Tell me why I shouldn’t blame the democrats for:

Doing Obama care half assed, when something like 80% people wanted a public option.

Bruh, do you not remember how Obamacare was passed?

I oppose breakfast foods for a different reason. Pancakes for dinner, and damn the haters!

And still supporting him now, no doubt.

“We haven’t seen anything like this” says demographic hit hard by something like this by the same exact fuckwit a few years ago.

only in Africa (see the answer in AskHistorians)

While my answer was related to Africa, as that’s where I’m most familiar with a paucity of study and an excess of material, I’d bet even money that there are plenty of other non-European (and outside of the Americas) collections that have yet to be fully catalogued, especially in the Islamic World and India. I just couldn’t swear to it or name any regions in particular to look into.

That’s one hell of a fucking take.

Not sure about the wisdom of making the move to the US in current circumstances, but the Green Card Lotto is where many start.

Merit is generally the superior of the two. Seniority should only really be preferred if:

• The performance of the task at hand is more dependent on pre-established connections and the like - ie a very knowledgeable and charismatic but new diplomat might actually be a worse choice for a given job than a rather boring and mid-tier diplomat who nonetheless has a lot of long-standing relationships in the area.

• There is an issue of systemic rules in an institution where merit is not always the top concern, or not easily and clearly discerned - such as legislative committee appointments. “The best person is the most qualified for the top job” is a nice thought, but raises questions of “How do you figure out who is the best person?” and “The people didn’t send the best person, they sent this fellow to represent their interests.”

Office Space

Fucking Christ. This timeline gets stupider and stupider.

Will the political will to start an actual shooting war with the US be there?

Theoretically yes. This is an issue that has been considered before, though admittedly not with regards to fucking Greenland. Turkiye and Greece have long been enemies as well as members of NATO, and it’s been considered that the invocation of Article 5 by the aggressed-upon party against the aggressing party in case of a serious war would, theoretically, be binding on the other members of NATO.

In practice, NATO is a gentleman’s agreement with no means of enforcement. Everything comes down to political will - NATO is just an organizational structure to facilitate a response. It cannot replace the will (or lack thereof) of national governments.

Stress helped me lose 20 pounds in three months last year ^.^

I wouldn’t recommend it.

No, I reserve all my hate for Tingle

The mask is more iconic than the kid, the mask gave me nightmares for years

As someone with limited exposure to leftists outside the Fediverse I can’t confirm or deny that statement, so I guess I’ll just take it with a grain of salt, but it seems to me that there’s room for nuance between unquestioning participation in the system and unquestioning denial of the system.

As noted in the last-moment edit I slipped in, hoping to get it done before anyone read the comment, the non-insane (and much more widespread) version is harm reduction.

Here on the Fediverse, MLs and fellow-travelers of that sort are much more widespread than IRL, and they tend towards more… uncompromising positions. At least when their least-favorite bourgeois democracies are concerned.

As someone who’s been predicting Harris would lose since August, both are true.

… not unless you think that the election of Harris would have resulted in the same scenario we’re facing now?

Also rather than “in this society” it’s “everywhere”. The way I like to put it is that electoral politics is only the victory lap; you go out and do activism work, build a base of support, spread your ideas, create a movement, negotiate with or (metaphorically or literally) come to blows with the establishment and finally ask people to vote for you or your ideas in the election. So with that in mind, nobody anywhere is saved by electoral politics alone because whether you win or lose in the election hinges on doing the actual hard work before and during campaign season.

That’s generally not what people mean when they say ‘electoral politics’ though. When they say ‘electoral politics’, they are generally talking about the entirety of electoral politics, not just election day. “You will never destroy the master’s house with the master’s tools” is how they usually put it. They are not advocating for a more robust participation in bourgeois democracy, they are advocating for revolutionary action and, quite explicitly, the total rejection and nonparticipation in civic affairs under current government structures.

The non-insane version is ‘harm reduction’, wherein participation in bourgeois democracy is permissible so long as you don’t confuse it for an end goal or a primary means.

“Nobody is saved by electoral politics” for example is, well… that’s exactly what happened.

“Nobody is saved by electoral politics” pretty clearly implies “Nobody can be saved by electoral politics, by the nature of electoral politics in this society”, not “Nobody will be saved by electoral politics in this election, because I believe firmly in the inevitable victory of the immeasurably worse candidate to win by 2% of the vote”