I mean, it's good for the strip clubs isn't it?


That's what I think about in the south. God. Guns. Strip Clubs. All three are deemed integral to the fabric of the area.

@jamellebouie.net on Bluesky

Man if we only had a UVa grad around here...

At least they are working hard at changing their perception and offering up a platform for voters to support. Wait, they're spending all their time attacking some guy who won a primary in New York City because he isn't subservient to Israel.

The party is cooked. It'll take a larger than life figure to come along and completely transform it like Trump did.

Democrats: We must figure out how to win over young males and minorities.

Candidate: Wins an election out of nowhere with overwhelming support from young men and minorities.

Democrats: Not like that.
wsj.com

I agree that is what it is going to take. I have long thought that. An Obama with a back bone.

Mamdani ran a really great campaign. His ground game and social media were on point. I think his ads, where he said that it shouldn't be hard to live in NYC, were really effective.

Meanwhile, Cuomo didn't have much beyond I'm experienced and I have endorsements.

dola

I don't think SCOTUS thought that their education ruling is going to eventually end standardized assessment testing. How can students be expected to test on material they aren't required to learn?

I feel like the decision to allow parents to opt out of any lesson they disagree with because it maybe touched on something that was lgbt related more or less ends teaching curriculums. They've got RFK saying parents will make all vaccine determinations and want to end it in schools. They've got scotus saying parents have final say in what their child will or will not do in school (for the record, we opted our kids out of any of the dumbass abstinence specific classes, and really, that's born from a religious teaching, not science or health, which lgbt comes from).

We're going to see these lines pushed further, and further, because in the end, it's really just the public schools that suffer. Public admin, public teachers, etc. Because private schools don't need to follow the same rules. That pushes us closer to public funded private schools.

It has always been the goal to destroy public schools. They finally have everything set up to make it happen.

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Exactly. 100%

Furthermore, it enables the creation of a permanent underclass. Those private schools can be selective, even with public money, and they won't take kids they don't want. And wealthy blue areas can continue to fund their public schools, but the people who live there were already wealthy before they moved there.

Honestly, we're pretty much already there. The gap between well-funded public schools and the rest is significant and only growing, and struggling public systems are being hollowed out by charters and enormous budget deficits, when they aren't already in the process of destroying themselves (hello Chicago Public Schools).

They just want more people to die. And the crazy thing is, the people who are most affected by this are in the reddest areas.


https://www.local10.com/weather/hurricane/2025/06/26/critical-hurricane-forecast-tool-abruptly-terminated/

Tom Tillis announced he's retiring at the end of his term because of Trump.

The president of the united states tweeted at AT&T asking for tech support.

Time to get Trump in a can you hear me now commercial

Love it. Let’s see how really serious he is

President Karen asked for AT&T's manager.

You can't force people to listen to things they don't care about.

There's many layers to unpack there, I'd be very interested in seeing the methodology for that survey as well as a very healthy dose of skepticism that traditional polling methods mean much of anything these days (my first job after I moved to the US was for a sample provider).

However if you take that at face value, my thoughts are (not necessarily in order):
1) We're absolutely fucked.
2) Lots of people who think they don't care about a thing are going to start to really care about a thing in a few months.

Trump said today that they might have to "take a look" at drporting Musk. He also suggested DOGE might look at cutting Musk's government contracts.

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That might break more necks of people across the political spectrum as they contort to fit positions they’ve been howling about for the last 6 months faster than any other news event in history.

They have now fully funded Trump's Gestapo.

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A watered down bill that accomplishes little and leaves the most idiotic shit intact (tip tax exemption I'm looking at you).

Yippee, what a "victory"

shamelessness is their super power.

NOEM: We love everybody. We do

TRUMP: Not everybody

NOEM: Mr President, you surround yourself with great people. And I think that's because everybody wants to work for the greatest president the United States has ever had pic.twitter.com/sTol0DmwdW

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) July 1, 2025

For#2, no they won't, they'll just blame minorities even more.

Well, yes that was the point of my #1 comment. They will care a lot about it though, they just won't be informed enough to blame the right people.

Feels like Dems should have been speaking up on the bill a lot more instead of crying about a Muslim winning a primary in a city they don't live. But they have their priorities.

People can do more than 1 thing at a time. Sort of like how you clearly don't care about massive amounts of human trafficking and slavery in southeast Asia that's killing far more than the genocide in Palestine. But I guess if the Jews aren't doing it it's not a priority.

Even the "best" GOPers are ridiculous clowns.

They can but they won't. Sort of why you guys always lose.

Yeah I'm kind of focused on where my tax dollars are being sent since that is something I actually have the power to vote on and change. In the same way I care about feeding people in this country as opposed to a country I don't live in, pay taxes in, or vote in. It's nice Israel can afford universal healthcare while we gut Medicaid.

Also feels a tad antisemitic to correlate genocide with the Jewish religion. A lot of Jewish people oppose Zionism and the ethnic cleansing taking place. Evangelicals are way more into it.

The mental gymnastics some of them have to do to pass an unpopular bill that will fuck their constituents but try to hedge at the same time.

Though you keep referring it as an ethnostate (in an obvious antisemitic negative tone), but make no mention of the dozen other ethnostates in the region that want that one destroyed and its people dead because they are Jews. In case you are wondering, we sort of live in one as well (at least now they are publicly voting on bills to teach the bible and hang the 10 commandments in classrooms).

They literally passed a bill declaring themselves an ethnostate! One of the weirdest part of the discourse is that Israel is proud of what they are and what they do but we have to pass it through some weird American filter to protect them I guess. Reminds me a bit of how Trump will say something insane and then his supporters have to rush out to say "well he didn't mean it that way" or "he's just trolling".

Seems antisemitic to treat them like children who need you to tell us what they truly mean. Not to mention the insinuation that all people of the Jewish faith share these views.

I also don't support Christian nationalism or the efforts to turn this country into an ethnostate either. Been pretty clear about that in other threads. I think the lack of consistency from liberals on that matter is why people don't take them seriously when they do speak out against that stuff in America.

Stephen Miller's group filed an EEOC complaint against the Dodgers - not coincidentally after the team refused to allow ICE to use its parking lot as a staging ground for raids and pledged money to help affected minorities - in which it claimed discrimination against white men. You know, a famously under-represented group in baseball.

I don't even know what this is anymore, it is well past the joke/unbelievable stage in terms of how blatantly racist he is, not to mention warped, insecure, weak and stupid. Poor white guys can't catch a break.

The June jobs report was really, really bad. The first decrease in private sector jobs in over 2 years when they were projecting 115k added. I can't wait for Trump to say its fake.

"Biden's economy" when things are bad, and "Trump's economy" when things are good. They're going to run with that strategy until 2028.

Look like OBBB is going to pass. Welcome to +$3.3T of debt over 10 years.

Access to this page has been denied


Alright Elon, open up your checkbook and let's do your grass roots thing.

Lots of leopards going to be eating faces over the next couple of years in red states when Cletus can't figure out why MeeMaw has to move in to his double wide after she breaks her hip because the rehab facility closed due to Medicare cuts.

I'm not on Twitter anymore, so I don't know who's fake or not, and since this account does not exist, I can't tell if it's because it was always fake or they posted this and got flamed so hard they deleted their account, but - if real - this woman would appear to have chewed her own face off. That said, I don't trust a damn thing I read on social media...

Voting for spite has its consequences. @UltraMAGALady pic.twitter.com/7IkP8PTPVp

— MissChris (@guelphgirlchris) July 2, 2025

I try to be a good person but I have a lot of trouble mustering even a token amount of sympathy for people who put themselves on that situation.

I'm guessing fake. Someone like that wouldn't mention voting to piss off liberals in their post - they would be solely focused on whining about themselves. Also, someone like that wouldn't be even realize their Medicaid is taken away until so much later they would not even think to connect it with this bill

That is my suspicion, although it's all over multiple social media posts on a variety of platforms from what I can see. But it seems to tick too many boxes all in the same post.

I suppose it is fake as well, but those people are out there in droves in red America and are about to get hammered when clinics and hospitals start closing or offering less services.

I doubt that impacted folks will blame Trump or GOP priorities when these consequences start to downstream. They'll blame poor management for the facilities that closed. They'll blame their states when their medicaid goes away...and then they'll angrily elect a new red governor and/or state legislators. If they're really mad, they'll blame Congress -- and probably the Democrats in Congress for some talking-point reason.

I live in a deep red state. The carping about government (in general) is incessant, but they keep electing the same GOP guys just with different haircuts. Trump is immune from any of this anger. As far as I can tell, he really has convinced people that he's a stable genius and anything that goes sideways is the fault of someone else further down the food chain.

A caveat to the above: I have a suspicion that what's going on with folks in my state is that the poor and the lower middle class have been beaten down and taken advantage of for so long that it's come to be seen as just the way of the world. That is, the way of the world is that the elite just keep taking more and more, and there's no hope that things could actually be better. That's why the price of eggs is such a big deal. When those prices go down, it feels like a rare win in their favor. The idea that we could structurally change society itself to more reasonably distribute treasure and resources in a more equitable way is just one bridge too far. When all you expect is to get kicked in the teeth, only getting a bloody lip from a punch to the mouth feels like mercy.

The funny thing is that I don't know how far down people have to be pushed before they're desperate enough to demand change. I heard a story on NPR yesterday about the food distribution chaos in Gaza. Those people are literally starving and still just settle for whatever crumbs they can get, which tells me that the bottom must be somewhere below that.

I think there's probably some truth in this, or to put it into terms of why the Democrats keep losing elections, when people aren't doing well no amount of telling them that things aren't actually that bad and will be worse under the other guy (oh, and if you vote for him you are a POS as well, btw) is going to help.

Whether it's true or not, and whether we think it makes them idiots or not, choosing to believe the guy who says he sees them, knows who is to blame and has a plan to make things better is probably the natural human response. Or put in other terms, what do people have to lose?

They are about to find out

As someone that lives in a red state, I don't think people realize how little poor, undereducated white people care about their healthcare. Most actively don't want to go to doctors. And if they have an emergency, they don't have a issue with not paying for it after they're safe.

I hear this one..."even if it's not the best at least HE'S DOING SOMETHING!"


They don't really want to think about it, they just want to hear enough stuff that he's forcing through by bypassing all those people they don't like without thinking about how it will actually impact them.


The system and process has been so broken that we're ready to embrace a single decision maker and expect all our reps to follow in line no matter what, just so our stuff can get done. I mean, it's no less then the D's wanted from Obama and he did with limited effect. After 2 years though it was over. I expect the D's to retake the house in 26 after all this though.

Their problem is from what I have heard a lot of rural areas are going to become healthcare deserts, so these people will die because the closest hospital is now 2 hours away.

I think a big part of it is that the GOP is seen as being winners and Dems are losers. That dynamic alone appeals to a lot of people.

Already happening here, and that was just the effect of not taking the Medicaid expansion. It is going to be so much worse now, but they will all die with smiles on their faces because brown people are getting fed to alligators. That was what was important.

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And a lot of people that understand healthcare have good coverage and don't want others to have coverage because they believe it will make their own healthcare worse.

I think that sort of sums it up. We've been on a steady downhill decline for 50 years with regards to lower and middle class. Both parties work for corporations and wealthy people at this point and can't offer any real solutions that will work.

Democrats used to be the working class party but shifted in the 90's when they felt they needed corporate donations to compete. You have the infamous Schumer quote in 2016 about how for every blue collar worker they lose, they gain two moderates in the suburbs. They're for the status quo and don't really run on anything other than the other side being worse. Not a terribly inspiring platform.

Republicans also don't care about the working class but they at least offer some solution. That solution is of course to blame minorities and transgender athletes. Convince people that giving money to billionaires means it'll trickle down to the rest of us. It's moronic of course, but they're at least pretending to care which is why you can see people drawn to it (especially younger people these days).


I wouldn't say they settle. Hamas was formed out of the ethnic cleansing in Palestine. The People's Guard during the Nazis. Rebel groups will always pop up under authoritarian regimes.

But they have a solution for it in that bill. That's why you give hundreds of billions in funding to your secret police. Why you build concentration camps in Florida. Why you gut education so people don't know they're being fucked. They understand we've entered late stage capitalism and what this bill will do to most people and are preparing for those repercussions. There's a reason these billionaires have been setting up private islands and bunkers.

Selfishly I am thrilled the SALT deduction cap went from 10K to 40K. Going to be a big difference for us at tax return time.

So the bill doubles the number of ICE agents.

What does that job interview look like?

Maybe Edward can apply?

But that's a normal reaction for anyone. If you are doing poorly in life and one side says "you're wrong, things are great!" and the other side says "things are bad and I'll fix it", who has the more compelling argument?

For the flipside, look at the New York mayoral race. Zohran was a huge underdog but actually offered up solutions to people who were struggling in New York. Cuomo couldn't because of his donors. The result is a lot of people came out to vote for him. Many of those people don't normally participate in elections.

There's so many little nuggets in the bill like this handout to AT&T.

403 Forbidden

We're talking about the same people who said "keep the government's hands off of my Medicare" or call SSDI "their draw".

When their "kin" die because the nearest hospital is 5 hours away, they're going to blame black people hoovering up all the medical care in the inner cities.

And bankruptcy and collections mean nothing to them because they can't afford anything anyway.

And the GOP controls the Senate and enjoys a healthy structural advantage in the EC because of these people. These people who siphon money away from blue states and blue cities.

The GOP is doing to them what they always thought Democrats would, and they'll still blame Democrats.


Same, plus I believe the other tax cuts will also benefit us. I've been voting against my economic interests for 30 years, but the GOP keep giving me, a rich white man, stuff.


Someone did the math, and ICE now has a bigger budget than all by 15 of the world's defense budgets. Just behind Canada, just ahead of Italy.

Worth noting that the bill passed by 2 votes in the House. 3 sick and old Democrats passed away this term. Had they run younger candidates, this bill would not have passed.

They just would've had to bribe a few more. That's it. Why try when you can Murkowski?

It got 218 votes, which is what you need to get to with a full house. It just would have been 218-217 with the 3 extra democrats. But I do agree the sick old people dying doesn't help.

I think the other big takeaway is that it's an admission from the ruling class that China won. This was likely inevitable with the direction both countries were going, but this is the final nail in that debate. We're at the stage of 90's Russia where you're just stripping the empire for copper.

I think I'm seeing a resemblance to Trump's rise in 2015-16 and the rise of Zohran Mamdani. The more both parties and the press demonize him, the more people are flocking to him, and more rabid his supporters get. People don't react well to the pile on. It starts feeling concerted, and makes you more sympathetic not less. Especially when the things you are using to demonize the person actually strikes a cord with people.


Edit: This latest stuff from the New York Times is a perfect example of how ridiculous it is getting. They had a leak from a data breach of Columbia University that he marked Asian and African American on his application. How is that a scandal. He literally is both. I guess they are trying to play off the anti-DEI thing, but the kicker here is he didn't get into Columbia. WTF does it matter?
And the worse thing: The source that gave them the information is a literal Neo-Nazi who promotes eugenics. They published hacked information from a Nazi. That is a level of desperation that makes Zohran look dangerous to the establishment in a good way.

Holy shit, I agree 100% with something Rainmaker posted. Quick, run out and buy a lottery ticket :D

Agree. And now you have one of those reporters crying on social media that his story didn't change the betting markets in the mayoral race. And let's not forget that they refused to report on the JD Vance vetting information because it came from a hacked source.

People can sense when there is unequal treatment in media. In 2016, they went after Trump for the sexual harassment and racism, which is fair game. But they ignored the fact that he was running against a candidate who ran a racist campaign against Obama and is married to a world-famous sex pest. The Russia stuff turned out to be a dud, too, and crushed what little credibility they had left.

Then when things finally catch up to Trump, they do it again. Completely ignoring Biden's mental decline during his Presidency and running cover for his genocide. And while the Hunter Biden stuff was never as bad as the right made it out to be, there was corruption in there that was largely ignored.

I think it's more of an issue when the candidate is an outsider, as Zohran and Trump were. Mainstream media hate those people as they're a threat to the status quo. When you're going to bat for Andrew Cuomo of all people, a corrupt pervert who killed countless seniors during COVID, people know something smells. All these stories do is further degrade trust in media and help outsiders who receive the unfair treatment.

I'll look for forthcoming job ads. I'm guessing the IT systems will need to be created/updated.

From way back in 2018, aka a "single source of truth"

Quote:

7) Implement a system that can track all immigrants, guest workers, identified illegals, folks that overstayed their visas etc.

Quote:

The problem is there is no good way to track these situations currently. Immigration reform needs to address creating a system/database that can track/report/alert etc. I honestly don't know why this isn't already in place.

Quote:

(2) there is a verification system and employer can check but it's not perfect.

If you are referring "rise in" NY, lower odds but can see that happening.

If you are referring nation-wide, I don't see it.

I do mean New York. It is questionable that it plays out like he is the front runner in three years, but then who knows. Trump was already a well known national figure, so the obsession with him in the national press was part of his success, but it wasn't his introduction. Mamdani was an unknown in New York, and the over the top attacks are part of the reason he became well known there. If the focus stays on him for the next couple of years nationally, maybe? IDK.

In case passage of the latest legislation wasn't bad enough, I accidentally read some of the details on how they got people on board. I wish they had just bribed them with state-specific benefits like Murkowski...

The person who continues to rise, nationally, and clearly had a connection to Mamdani's victory, is AOC. I remain unconvinced she'd win the EC, but she might do a lot better than we'd think. However, I suspect she'll get Schumer's seat at some point and having someone like her, and with her energy, boosting a refresh of Democratic ranks, with messaging that appeals to people who have been shit on, especially economically, is only a good thing.

These are not serious people.

The priorities of these fucking morons.

President Donald Trump wants UFC fight on White House grounds - ESPN

Imagine of Obama tried to do a UNC-Duke game on the WH grounds

In response to the stupid article in NYT about Zavhon's application to Columbia where he didn't get accepted, ProPublica publishes an article on how Jared Kushner got into Harvard without qualifications other than being rich.
https://www.propublica.org/article/t...tm_content=7-4

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Meanwhile Trump called some Jewish bankers Shylocks and the media can't even decide whether or not the term is antisemitic.

I spent more time wondering if he realized it was Shakespearean.

Get a grip. It's part of the 250th birthday celebration, which will have hundreds of events over the course of TWO YEARS (runs til 7/4/26). UFC is also one of 13 official corporate sponsors helping to pay for events all over the country.

Surprised you’re not asking for non-white individuals to fight to the death as entertainment. Probably more up your alley.

China is far and away the biggest winner of Trump's bill. The clean energy cuts are going to allow China to continue to spread influence across the globe by pushing their clean energy projects into other countries. It's going to give them a huge advantage in AI.

Oh look, another person who really needs to go fuck themselves.

You actually think I've got any more use for illegal invaders from Canada? Or for that matter, lily white libtards?

Now the whole GOP is saying there are no windmills in China.

Meanwhile, China leads the world in wind power generation. But now this will also be ignored by MAGA.

Musk is saying he is forming the "American Party". I put money on no one ever running as a part of that party.

They were kicking our asses in EVs anyway. This is about saving face too. Don't worry though, when coal makes its big return, we will be ready!

If he frees up the purse strings, I'd think he would find the right people, in the right districts to run against the establishment on their fiscal irresponsibility.

Just a moment...
My guess is he's going to have to do a POC (proof-of-concept) on a select few in mid-terms 2026. If successful enough, then go into 2028. Otherwise, it'll just fade away.


Really no idea how it'll all turn out. But if he's serious, I'm happy someone is giving it a shot.

I'm not saying he couldn't do it, and find people to play a part. I'm saying he is going to lose interest in be into something else before it goes anywhere.

Yeah, I can see that happening too.

One can imagine that if he were to try forming a new political party, that the companies he leads would ask him to step down. After all, there's no way he's spending a "minimum" of 40 hours per week in the office in each company like he expects his employees to do.

I like that these guys can go around buying elections, politicians, parties... but I have to declare any donation my wife or I make because one of the companies they own (that I do no business with) is banking related. Combined we make what Musk "earns" in about half an hour. But that $20 might just corrupt our country.

Also, if he doesn't suddenly "lose interest" he will have the contracts his companies rely on killed and possibly be deported back to SA, so there's that.

It's just structurally impossible to be successful as a third party. Perot found this out, any position that a party takes that's popular is going to be co-opted by one of the two major parties. The only way to get somewhere with a third party is to start locally and build support over many years. There's no path for a party to start at the national level.

Focus on areas with ranked choice.

Nothing to see here. Everything is fine. .https://www.axios.com/2025/07/07/jef...administration

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Dola: What is really funny about this report is that AG Pam Bondi said she had the Epstien list on her desk. And now it doesn't exist.

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Guess she lost it. What a stroke of bad luck.