He thinks he’s talking to conservatives, playing on their “thin blue line” sympathies. But like every other rank-and-file Democrat, he has failed to read the fucking room. The right-wing in America showed us on January 6th 2021 that their support of law enforcement is purely conditional, and will be revoked the minute they don’t get their way. And the Left? We always hated cops.
His message reached zero people.
Jesus fucking Christ… Qatar is basically a scumbag real estate agent conning an idiot into buying a condemned shack in a swamp as a “cozy waterfront getaway”, but on a colossally stupid level.
We will get somewhere, but I’m not sure it’ll be a good place. Here’s my prediction of how it will go:
Once Gaza and the West Bank are fully and exclusively populated by Israelis and American tourists, once the Palestinians have all been slaughtered or run out of their own country, once all the dust has settled and resort hotels have been built on top of all the mass graves, then and only then will our news agencies finally refer to what happened as a genocide. Some well-known news anchor will look into the camera with weary eyes and a little ribbon pinned to their lapel, they’ll take on a somber tone, and they’ll say “never again”. Someone will win a Peabody for the story. And just as society starts to believe those words, “never again”, the history of those events will be banned from schools and libraries, and those teaching it will be fired and jailed. The memo will come down from corporate and that same news anchor will again appear on TV. They’ll look into the camera with a sparkle in their eye, flashing their overly white news anchor smile, and talk about how all the trans people being rounded up and put into camps is definitely not a genocide, and saying so means you hate God.
“This is Jim Tradman for Channel Five News, signing off. Blessed are the fruit, under His eye.”
But then, I’m a bit of a pessimist.
Most definitely. And since their entire job is illegal, why not go all-in and do more illegal stuff on cam for higher pay? That would be my thought process.
Some will. But like with alcohol prohibition, many of the people who work in the industry will just go to work in the black market.
Yeah that $3 billion won’t do squat. California spent $24 billion over a five year period and didn’t track any of the money, how it was spent, or the outcomes. It’s a safe bet that most of the money went to contractors charging extortionate fees for services while providing almost nothing in return, and probably quite a bit landing in the pockets of local politicians. It was basically a big scam to further enrich a bunch of greedy parasites. A few low-level idiots were charged with fraud and embezzlement of like $400k, but that doesn’t even scratch the surface of corruption involved in that whole scheme.
This is exactly it. A couple of days ago there was an Ask Lemmy thread about the legalization of marijuana. My entire argument is “Prohibition of vice does not work and only empowers organized crime.” This has been proven over and over again throughout history. It shouldn’t even be a question anymore.
Just think about the popularity of the “schoolgirl/barely legal” image as it currently exists in porn. If it becomes just as illegal to hire a young-looking 25 year old actress as it is to exploit an actual child, a lot producers will opt for the latter.
Alternatively, the number of fistfights I’ve almost been in with Albanians who aggressively refuse to let me pay for anything is off the charts.
If you think the porn industry is exploitative and abusive now, just wait until they push it all underground.
The comment you were replying to was clarifying to someone else that the person Trump paid hush money to (Stormy Daniels) was not the person who was alleging rape (E. Jean Carroll). Your reply that E. Jean Carroll did in fact allege rape made me think you were also conflating Carroll with Daniels. If I misunderstood the intent of your reply, I apologize.
Yeah I was shocked by the math on that one too. It is ridiculously cheap to lower crime and poverty, while increasing graduation rates and college enrollment. It’s almost like keeping people poor and stupid and criminal is intentional.
Not that I’m in favor of disarming citizens, but if you bring up gun control around these people, one of their first arguments against it is that a database of people who own guns is bad because it will be used for nefarious purposes. The unspoken part is “because that’s what we would do.”
You can draw a straight line from folk music to the birth of metal. They use a lot of the same melodies and structures, and they’re both often built around storytelling and symbolism. Before the metal gatekeepers jump on me with “but but but most metal has a classical influence”, what we call “classical music” is heavily influenced by European folk music. Over time it just became more complex and incorporated more instruments and so on. Classical is just fancypants folk.
The reason folk music blends so well with metal is the same reason classical music blends so well with metal: The common ancestor of both classical and metal is folk.
Here’s some Black Metal for you. Arka’n Asrafokor from Togo, West Africa.
Perfectly legal under the “whatthefuckareyougonnadoaboutit” clause. Under this clause, anything is legal as long as nobody does anything about it, which is exactly what everyone is going to do.
I was 24. People started panic-purchasing guns and ammunition the minute the whole Y2K story broke. Here’s a CBS News segment from 1999 about it. Here’s a DOJ paper about it. Background checks shot up 15% from the previous year, with over a million background checks in December 1999 alone.
It turned out to be a huge nothingburger with no riots, no looting, no violence… But there was definitely panic, at least in the sense that a lot of people were prepping for some kind of apocalyptic outcome “just in case”. Once the clocks rolled over and people saw that planes weren’t falling out of the sky and nukes weren’t auto-launching, they realized it was a bunch of over-hyped media nonsense.
You might be interested in the story of Tengelo Park.
Harris Rosen went from a childhood in a rough New York City neighborhood to becoming a millionaire whose company owns seven hotels in Orlando, but his self-made success is not his proudest achievement.
Twenty years ago, the Orlando, Fla. neighborhood of Tangelo Park was a crime-infested place where people were afraid to walk down the street. The graduation rate at the local high school was 25 percent. Having amassed a fortune from his success in the hotel business, Rosen decided Tangelo Park needed some hospitality of its own.
“Hospitality really is appreciating a fellow human being,” Rosen told Gabe Gutierrez in a segment that aired on TODAY Wednesday. “I came to the realization that I really had to now say, ‘Thank you.’’’
Rosen, 73, began his philanthropic efforts by paying for day care for parents in Tangelo Park, a community of about 3,000 people. When those children reached high school, he created a scholarship program in which he offered to pay free tuition to Florida state colleges for any students in the neighborhood.
In the two decades since starting the programs, Rosen has donated nearly $10 million, and the results have been remarkable. The high school graduation rate is now nearly 100 percent, and some property values have quadrupled. The crime rate has been cut in half, according to a study by the University of Central Florida.
“We’ve given them hope,’’ Rosen said. “We’ve given these kids hope, and given the families hope. And hope is an amazing thing.”
“How Do You Sleep At Night?”
Like a fuckin’ baby.
The thing about psychopaths is that they don’t feel empathy, shame, or remorse. The shit that keeps you up at night, the suffering and destruction and genocide, that’s all just white noise to these soulless fucking ghouls. Might as well be rain forest sounds or ocean waves crashing on a beach. It’s all the same to him. John Fetterman doesn’t give a single flying fuck about Palestinians being slaughtered. Hell, he doesn’t even really care about Jews. John Fetterman cares about John Fetterman, and nobody else. The only reason he supports Israel is because that’s what’s good for John Fetterman.
By all means, call him out in public. It could damage his image and cost him support, and that’s a good thing. But it won’t cause him to grow a conscience. That ship sailed a long time ago.
Fuck it. Burn it all down. I think dolphins are next in line. Let’s hope they do better than we did.
EDIT - Goddammit I forgot dolphins are extremely rapey too.