UnderpantsWeevil

“can’t hold a demonstration in one office building” is precisely the same as “no citizen right to petition their representative”.

When you're locked out from your rep, you have no legal mechanism to get their attention

Yeah nothing current can be blamed on this orange turd.

There's plenty to blame him for. Iran is a great example. Trump pulled a trigger that no other president was willing to touch, going on 47 years.

But the policy he's stating wrt Taiwan is the exact same policy we've been operating under since before he was born.

Grow the fuck up

"The adults in the room" crowd has been shitting the bed since Reagan. I cannot imagine a bigger tell that your foreign policy is shit than "My policies are mature and yours are for babies".

Particularly when the policies would accelerate yet another armed conflict.

It took only a few hours after Trump warned Taiwan not to try declaring independence…

It's been standing US policy going back to the Nixon Administration not to recognize Taiwanese independence.

You can't lay this shitbird at Trump's feet. Go blame Eisenhower for his choice of VP.

That’s patently untrue

It is evidenced by constituent lobbyists being dragged out of Congress in handcuffs

do you see the distinction between making an appointment and “occupying” a common space in a congressional office building?

Largely in how it is reported. You can make an appointment and your Congressman can fail to show. There is no consequence.

You can go to a Congressman's office and camp out waiting to speak to them, and that's a crime.

Demonstrations are not allowed inside Congressional Buildings

Passive Voice. Who made this rule? Who enforces it? Who is it enforced against? What is the purpose of the rule?

How do you picture people making requests for the government to do things in a world where lobbying is illegal?

Lobbying IS illegal, outside the channels of private donation and sponsored solicitation.

You cannot demand to see your Congressman and your Congressman is under no obligation to speak with you. Any attempt to approach your Congressman without permission is a crime.

It's a Shepherd's Tone headline. Taken at face value, I have to assume 110% of the county is illiterate and scores are expected to get twice as bad by the end of the year.

Here's a jpg of a graph with no citations and a poorly defined X-axis. Please go be Doomers in the comments now. Don't forget to point at a generational cohort and blame them for everything

Really intrusive to take the AI pee-test every six months. But that's what it takes to maintain my security clearance, do whatchagonnado

for some unfathomable reason

Seems pretty fathomable to me

Can I legally enter the Capital Building to speak to my Congressman?

Dozens of veterans and military family members protesting the Iran war were arrested by U.S. Capitol Police on Monday after they occupied the Cannon House Office Building in Washington, D.C.

If the only access to your congressman is through privatized channels and pay-to-play events, then Lobbying is de facto Bribery.

Lord of the Ring: Just The Ringbearer

The Full Squadron of Starfighters

Wait, is this the singular of Shivers or something else?

The President's Single Guy

Being rich means having a surplus of valuable commodities and capital.

In a modern capitalist system, the commodities are fetishized in order to inflate their received value.

But in a more socialized system, shared capital has the capacity to enrich everyone.

The big catch is that, under a more socialist economy existing in parallel with a capitalist media, poverty becomes associated with the public institutions while capitalism becomes indicative of education, independence, and success.

An individual might be wealthy with respect to historical peers under a socialist model, but still feel improvised relative to the elites and their horded private wealth. That they've got access to libraries and parks and subways and public housing doesn't feel like wealth relative to the country clubbers who have more grandeous private versions of all of the above.

You'll see this in Western depictions of Soviet states all the time. Small apartments, bread lines, and grumpy bureaucrats are slanted as rampant poverty. Meanwhile, homelessness and malnutrition and the lawless frontier are all just part of the Hero's Journey on the way to glory.

I haven't seen anyone doing a better job. Lots of hype around the new things, though.

everyone at the time thought people would be crazy to vote for him in the first place.

Not everyone. We'd seen this cycle of the reactionary break out vote in '08 and '12. Ted Cruz probably could have secured the nomination if Trump hadn't run and he's a whole different level of fascist.