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I made a prediction that Iran might step up attacks before the midterms. Looks like that may be happening and the rates of attacks are up:
Two ships sink near Hormuz after being hit by projectiles amid surge in attacks
Container ship hit by projectile sinks in Strait of Hormuz, Singapore says
The decision to pause the war by Trump remains puzzling to me, and it suggests a lack of conviction in the war effort. A side confident of success would act immediately rather than grant Iran weeks to strengthen its defenses, plan retaliation, consult its allies, and position its assets. One thing it certainly isn't doing is helping with inflation:
Consumer prices rose 3.7% annually in September as gas prices skyrocket
Trump seems to have a plan though, although it is not popular even among Republicans:
Bipartisan group of senators call on Trump to rescind Russian diesel deal
Polling numbers and prediction markets also paint a pretty bleak forecast for the Republicans.
From Nate Silver:
If things go as they seem, we are about to witness the end of the age of Trump. If we get a Blue Tsunami -- and I believe we will -- Republicans are going to turn on him. Why wouldn't they? What can he offer them at this point but big fat L's. The only question now is what comes next on the Right, because it's certainly not Trumpism.
Trump was doing great until he decided to simp for Israel and attack Iran. The next Republican candidate could just keep Trump's playbook while doing away with the retarded stuff (Zionism, tariffs).
Sure, that person is J.D. Vance. But the problem is how does he get the retards motivated to vote? Trump is a uniquely talented politician because he can speak to regular people the way that someone like Vance or Buttigieg cannot.
It does feel existential because if Democrats get a trifecta in 2028, odds are high they will establish a permanent one party state.
No they won't. Zealous partisans lost in the weeds always say this about American politicians they don't like and it never happens. The democrats haven't even chosen a nominee yet and you already think whoever is nominated will overthrow the republic and constitution? This is just the mirror image of the redditors who are convinced Trump will declare himself president for life.
@aqouta too, why not.
Immigration amnesty, multiple million new voters who vote ~70% democrat. Game over. This has been a publicly stated policy objective of the Democratic party for at least two decades.
Broad-spectrum debanking and lawfare against political organization by Red Tribe, systematically crush all remaining Red Tribe institutions, "Disinformation controls" shut down conservative communication, common-knowledge production and grassroots organization. Game Over. This has been a publicly-stated policy objective for at least a decade, and was actively being implemented a few short years ago.
No plausible democratic nominee would oppose either of the above plans. They're all on record enthusiastically supporting these policies, and other similar policies with a similar terminus.
Further, the Game Over isn't gated by Blue Tribe setting up camps or whatever. The Game Over hits when when a sufficient number of Americans lose faith in the political process to begin earnestly pursuing alternatives that the reaction becomes self-sustaining. We've been watching norms collapse and institutions blow out for well over a decade; at some point, there aren't enough remaining to hold what's left of America together; we're an accretion that hasn't been hit hard enough yet to scatter.
This is a conversation we can have in advance. You can, in this moment, extrapolate out potential events and ask yourself how you expect your tribe to react, how you expect the other tribe to react, what basis this model is based on, how it plays out given previous history. You can do this in a way where it delivers you a comforting story about everything working out, and even that is useful: just ask yourself what the discontinuity is to get us from our current trajectory to the one you want to believe in.
This just reads like all the woke whinging about how the republicans were going to strip women of the rights to vote and establish a fascist dictatorship. No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking. Amnesty isn't popular(dreamers is semi-but they'd be giving up a lot of political capital to get it because dems weakest issue in polling is immigration) and wouldn't ensure them permanent majorities because unless you start stupid wars in the middle east or send goons into Hispanic communities they're a pretty conservative constituency and would happily vote for a red tribe without the MAGA tendencies. The first amendment still rules in this land and enjoys broad support, the banning of tik tok didn't even stick and it's a foreign agitprop tool.
This is you, this is your project, you are preaching this message on this site most days. I'm sure there is a shadow FC in DSA forums with pink hair and strange pronouns making the mirror case. But it's not popular, people don't like this shit. The voters swing back and forth violently trying to escape people like you and your wokkelganger.
Our trajectory, god willing, is that the democrats win the mid terms convincingly, Trump proves to be a spent force, the current coalition collapses and a conservatism that can appeal to moderates is reborn from it's ashes, glad to no longer need to mouth Trumps retarded lies in order to stay in the good graces of his sycophants. Then in 2028 we'll see how things settle out. The more moderate wing of the democratic party seems to have weathered the DSA insurgency pretty well, the DSA backed candidates are under performing their moderate counterparts and even they are trying to create separation from the more embarrassing leftwing wing media figures.
Some one was in favor of executing pro-Trump public speakers, as a demonstrated fact. A swarm of people celebrated the Kirkivesry. People here, literally on this forum, told us at length about how conservatives made that bed and deserved to lie in it
And as a demonstrated fact, enough people were in favor of broad spectrum debanking (twice) -- and siccing the FBI on rando schoolmoms, and harassing kitchen table FLLs, and blocking issuance of -- that these policies happened in a clearly provable sense. Even in the times they faced internal pushback, they still pushed through. It's not some policy proposal you can wave away like some rando put it into a twitter post or wrote up a position paper; it's all been done.
No one polls on it, because the polls don't matter.
"Nearly two-thirds of voters (64 percent) say they prefer giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status". I don't think that's real, in the same sense that the '90% of polled want universal gun background checks' didn't real for the polls that actually count. But I also note that undeniable evidence that policy caps out around 60% support in the Bluest of blue states, still hasn't stopped advocates from calling for it, and blue state politicians from doing it.
This didn't work out that way during the Dubya era -- somehow, Trump scores better among hispanics -- and it's not even a coherent position when the progressive position stopped being about hispanics alone over a decade ago. "Will a Democratic politician send tens of thousands of refugees from a Wheel Of Third World disaster areas to a single specific town" stopped being a newsworthy unless a Republican said something mean enough about the refugees.
What protected Douglass Mackey, the First Amendment, or Trump?
That's the sort of question that should make you throw up in your mouth a little, and then you look up the answer, and it gets worse. Same for questions like whether the Second Amendment, SCOTUS, or a politician is the line between California being able to spend two years before you can even apply for a permit. Or if you want a mixed case, look at B&L Productions, or the Defense Distributed cases, or the people suing the Gatalog, or how Mrs's Ames has been doing since her 'win' at the Supposedly Supreme Court Of The Land.
So, when the 'moderate' wing of the Democratic party is calling for an amnesty, will you eat crow, here? Or is this the sort of claim that's only meaningful until it's tested?
EDIT: the good news is that the moderate wing, the decelerationists, and the self-described reasonable people, all get a vote, now. The bad news is Jay Jones won that vote.
What the fuck does this have to do with broad spectrum debanking? Yes, people on the internet mock Kirk, Floyd and an endless list of people that the opposing side finds tasteless precisely because the opposing side finds it tasteless. Welcome to the edgy internet.
This story is incredible weak sauce. broad spectrum debanking is not when a handful of banks decided, without government coordination, to not work with companies that they believed had a "reputational risk". I believe this is bad and have long supported crypto because we shouldn't have choke points like this that can be lobbied by busy bodies but it's basic freedom of association to not make a bank work with people they find odious. That article is a great example of bounded distrust.
The title claims:
Which is not supported by the text which claims:
(well duh, you're absolutely supposed to sway decisions based on business activities.)
Which is not supported by the report which merely suggests that the banks could have been swayed by these factors because they on paper took reputational risk into account. Unless a bank didn't considered reputational risk at all then it would have flagged for this in the report. And I'm sorry, I wish it weren't the case, hence crypto, but yes it's reasonable for banks to consider reputational risk with their clients. Preventing this would require more, not less state interference in the banking industry.
This is at least closer and unacceptable, but
A memo that led to some pointless and fruitless investigations and zero on the ground effects. It could have been much worse though, it could have even been a bad as the Garland memo under Trump which was genuinely worse in every way.
This is a bellweather poll that was essentially just a referendum on Trumps ham fisted ICE politics. If you position yourself as being intentionally cruel then voters often press the "I don't like this" button
The filings for this case started under the Trump Admin. It didn't come down to the first Amendment because the law is about conspiring and intent, the method isn't relevant. What protected him is that they couldn't find that he conspired. If he had conspired with others to evaporate his parent's votes by pouring salt on the ground in the shape of a pentagram with some others online and thinking really hard about twilight sparkle's asshole(or whatever it is bronies do) then he'd have been guilty and it wouldn't have any implication on his right to access salt.
It says: there's a enough support for far more aggressive actions than debanking, and you don't need a lot of support for it to actually happen. Because Kirk's neck didn't Just Do That.
"Reputational risk" is not just some term that some banks invented and implemented on their own. It's the equivalent of a 900-pound gorilla looking over your shoulder and telling you to do what it wants.
... like "are these people making money", "will they pay us back", "would we be in compliance with the law", not "did they say a mean word about the President".
... and gun companies. Which, coincidentally, happened to be politically opposed to both the then- sitting President and a number of his high-profile claims. Because he wanted them to not exist.
We don't have an option for less state interference in the banking industry. Sorry. Would be nice if a serious one came up! Instead, the nutjob libertarian candidates can't even fake wanting it.
I forget; is whataboutism good, or bad, today?
Beyond that, try again by pointing to part of a summary that was actually bad, not the ACLU motioning about how waahthiscouldbeawfulinsomevaguewaywecan'tspellout. Because the actual text, and the way the executive order has been carried out, hasn't turned out that way. The central case brought under it -- which the ACLU has also been panicking about -- had a man shoot a cop in the neck, and the man's co-conspirator's planned or were a part of throwing lit fireworks at officers.
There's some fun due process questions about how closely tied some of the planning needs to be for culpability in the violent attacks by a related party; I'm certainly open to more serious debate on that. But this isn't remotely similar to what happened under the Biden admin.
A November 2024 poll gives 38% (albeit obscured as 60% of 64%). Which, yes, is a lower number. It's also very unclear it's actually more real, with a 2015 poll giving 65%.
The filings were not started until January 22nd, 2021. The investigation certainly started before then. If you want to claim the Trump administration has a iron grip on the behaviors and activities of the Department of Justice in the second half of 2020, more power to you, but I'd try an argument you can make with a straight face instead.
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