fuck that seditious, criminal asshole.

edit: link to his horrible speech.

using their vast wealth accumulation as both the cause of future crises and the means of "escape".

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/sep/04/super-rich-prepper-bunkers-apocalypse-survival-richest-rushkoff

Finally, the CEO of a brokerage house explained that he had nearly completed building his own underground bunker system, and asked: “How do I maintain authority over my security force after the event?” The event. That was their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, solar storm, unstoppable virus, or malicious computer hack that takes everything down.

This single question occupied us for the rest of the hour. They knew armed guards would be required to protect their compounds from raiders as well as angry mobs. One had already secured a dozen Navy Seals to make their way to his compound if he gave them the right cue. But how would he pay the guards once even his crypto was worthless? What would stop the guards from eventually choosing their own leader?

The billionaires considered using special combination locks on the food supply that only they knew. Or making guards wear disciplinary collars of some kind in return for their survival. Or maybe building robots to serve as guards and workers – if that technology could be developed “in time”.

emphasis mine

except in cases of the health or life of the mother. The right wing fascists keep lying to say that progressives want abortion right up to birth, but that was never the situation in the US after Roe. They keep implying that we have to compromise and give up free abortions in the 3rd trimester - but that was never even on the table.

So happy to see women and men voters all over the country dealing out appropriate punishment to these religious prigs for denying bodily autonomy for women.

TFG keeps admitting to crimes. In public. That would have anyone else in chains for decades. Can we really not put a stop to this one man crime spree?

actually decreases everyone's freedoms. It means we all have to worry about being in public. When will the next NRA-fest be? Which innocents will be slaughtered? How can we make schools prisons - take away their freedom to be in an open, light-filled, liberating environment and replace them with windowless, booby-trapped, cement cells?

Why can't we win this argument (or at least make the argument) on the basis of maximizing everyone else's freedom not to be gunned down - or worry about ourselves or our loved ones or innocent friends that we haven't met yet - being gunned down?

Some of you may remember Grayson for actually having the guts to call out Republican inhumanity for what it is. He famously outlined the GOP healthcare plan as "Don't get sick. If you do get sick, die quickly."

He has lost some primary and general races in the years in between. And I remember there being allegations of domestic abuse during a divorce.

But he's exactly the kind of person I would love to see in the Senate, calling out Reptilian Bullshit.

See this wikipedia entry for the list of candidates in his race

They broke the Democratic agenda into two parts, one that corporations liked better, and one that the citizens liked better, with the promise that both parts had to pass, together.

Then, because corporations have to always win and never lose, and citizens have to always lose and never win, we pared the citizen's bill down to almost nothing.

And now, we will pass the corporations' bill nearly unchanged, plus the husk of the citizens' bill.

Just making sure that I'm perceiving this correctly, and that corporate America wins again and disciplines us citizens to expect nothing from government.

Joe Biden's infrastructure plans seemed so simple. Why not, it seemed to say, spend some of our tax dollars making our country and our lives better, instead of just flushing them away by giving them to people who are already rich or corporations that deal death?

But . . . the corporations who have bought the government obviously did not like that. They can't have the American people less desperate, less stressed, less over-worked. Americans must not, under any circumstances, learn that their tax dollars can be used to make their lives better. It's just not done. Not in America.

And so, we've had two avatars of this corporate mind set kill/main/wound/slow-walk the whole thing. But it's obvious to me that the rest of the corporate world is A-OK with this result, or else the other Democrats would actually object in real and strenuous ways to what was happening.

So . . . because corporations can't let Americans benefit from their government, they are ok with a small group of Democrats (and all Republicans) killing this effort. They are ok with Biden's agenda and approval rating going down the toilet. They are ok with Republicans possibly gaining back control of the house, the senate, the Whitehouse, probably to destroy democracy in this country.

My question is - Biden and the people around him are mostly creatures of Washington. They know, or should know, what is possible in the current state of corporate capture of the government. So, why did they let this embarrassment happen? Who didn't get the memo? Was it Joe Biden himself who miscalculated and thought that our corporate masters would let Americans actually get some benefit, some crumbs, from our amazing productivity and wealth? And why didn't he know better?

It's weird - it's like Zappa's quote about pulling back the curtain to reveal the brick wall behind it, except the surprised people seem to be the Biden administration. I would have thought they were cynical enough for this job, but maybe I was wrong?

In any case, we can breathe a sigh of relief that we won't have to have eye, or dental, or hearing care when we get older. Wouldn't want to cut into any corporate profits, after all, and we the citizens need to be taught that with every lesson.

Biden or his surrogates should be LOUDLY badmouthing them up and down America - they are keeping us Americans from actually getting something back for our tax dollars. They are harming us. They are anti-American. They are corporate stooges. By the end of it, they should be so lucky as to be ALLOWED to vote for the bill given the public shellacking they would be taking . . .

in my dreams. In a functioning democracy.