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The Constitution was written at a time where personal honor was something people lived and died (even killed) by. For many of them, I think it was inconceivable that someone like Trump would make it to the heights he has. That culture has pretty much died but the Constitution hasn't changed to reflect that. If politicians of today challenged people to duels over infringements on their honor, we'd be having special elections every other week.

Just the start. He's going to drag this on for years in appeals. If there is one thing he is good at, it's gumming up the gears of the justice system and making things move as slowly as possible. If the conviction stands on this case in 2025 or 2026 when he exhaust appeals, he'll probably get probation or a suspended sentence considering it's his first offence (that he's been convicted of) and his age. The other cases, he'll drag those on until he's out of money or meets natural causes. If they do reach an end, he'll probably be too out of his mind with age-relate cognitive problems (runs in his family) that there'll be no point in locking him up. By the time everything is over and if he's alive, he'll probably be an old guy who has no idea where he is and who's around him surrounded by secret service. I'm kind of curious how long the MAGA people and GOP will stand by him when his cognitive decline is no longer something that can be outright denied, explained away or hidden.

My 7-year-old daughter likes it. It's pretty much the same plot over and over again, so two episodes back-to-back is enough for her. That's the 1992 season anyway.

Where Russia has excelled is convincing low-information voters and RW media addicts that it is a "sleeping bear." I use that term because some guy I work with at a Head Start nonprofit is apparently MAGA and started going off about how NATO is hurting our program to this guy off the street who said he appreciated what Head Start does. That random guy was like "WTF" and parted ways. I yelled at them that I didn't want to hear about politics when I was trying to eat lunch. Another real life experience was at a volunteer thing I do and one of the guys is very left wing started talking about how "NATO is no better than Russia" when Ukraine was attacked, referring to Russia trying to how Russia was just trying to "protect itself." What I get from this is that the US needs to inform its citizens why NATO is a good thing, how much life would suck without it and why Russia has to be quarantined.

Russia wouldn't win a ground war against NATO, probably not against most NATO states. The only reason it's still in Ukraine is because Ukraine is not in NATO. Similar story with Georgia. Putin is panicking. The illusion he's been able to present internationally of Russia being a global player and an existential threat is falling away. The main reason it has any sort of global reach no is its natural resources and its willingness to send its mercenaries anywhere to support tinpot dictators. It's rotting from the inside and Russia as it is now will probably die shortly after Putin.

Up next, Thomas gives his opinion on why he'd side with the majority on Dred Scott and then hands himself over to the descendants of the people who owned his G-G-G-grandparents to spend the rest of his life in servitude. Dude would probably do it no matter how stupid that sounds.

The Supreme Court is probably the least democratic institution we have. I don't think they should be directly elected or anything but there should be some sort of term limits in place and a limit to how many justices a single president can appoint per term. If Trump is president again and the court decides he has full immunity, he could just have the three liberal seats and Roberts taken out by Seal Team 6 and appoint a bunch of 20-year-old MAGAs to the seats. He's every accelerationist's wet dream in that regard.

You say that yet there's Family Guy that's way more everything anime outside of hentai can be. I can't think of a single anime that AS or Toonami broadcasted that wouldn't be OK for broadcast TV.

Digital subchannels are pretty much like cable in the 1980s and 1990s now. Want a history channel? There's an OTA for that. Want a law & crime channel? There's one for that too. Want a cooking channel? There's one for that. Like sci-fi? There's one for that. Probably only a matter of time before there's one that appeals to the AS or Toonami demographics. Only drawback is that you're not going to get all of them unless you're in a major metro. Cable TV without an internet package is quickly becoming irrelevant. Most of the channels, like MTV, seem to be reruns or blocks of single-show reruns all day anyway.

Not as much stoke as borderline terrified. I mean, the US isn't perfect, but electing Trump is like playing Russian roulette with only one chamber empty.

If he had the guy killed in the U.S. or an allied country where we already had resources on the ground or something like a NATO/allied country, it'd definitely be something at least impeachable if not criminal. A warzone without anyone in charge and no way to have local authorities capture them is quite a different story, especially if they're a clear and present danger. Plus, if presidents were allowed to pull out all the stops to prevent the constitutional transfer of power, like stage coups or assassinate opponents, we'd be Venezuela at best or North Korea at worst. I don't really want my descendants being indoctrinated to believe that the Trump family was born on Mount Denali and next to divine or shit like that. I had an essay I wrote for a website when I was a newspaper columnist about the supreme court and the fact that it's really in need of reform. Because I don't want to blast my real name, I'll just bullet point what I said and you guys can just shit all over it. Limit Justices to a single 18-year term A single Justice is appointed in each odd year to replace one term-limited out, limiting presidents to two justices per term. That would mean that even a two-term president would not be appointing more than half of justices. If a justice dies, the replacement is appointed to fill out the dead justice's term, no longer. I didn't do anything too complicated. I figured an 18 year term is long enough to keep stability on the court but also bring about generational change, preventing stagnation. It would also mean that most reasonable presidents would appoint judges in their 40s and 50s. Of course, some white dudes who hate change got butt hurt by it and let me know.

Long term goal should be ending the electoral college and putting it up to a popular vote. The electoral college came at a time when there was no real American identity, the population wasn't nearly as mobile and more than half of Americans had no right to vote.

I wish someone would just offer Trump a deal where he just promises to disappear to Mar-a-Lago and never be heard from again. If he just went away, I wouldn't care if he were charged with a crime. It's getting to a point where I know I had almost four full decades of life without Trump invading every corner of society, but every day it's getting harder to imagine a time when he's just not there. Now I'm like three years from finishing my fifth decade and I'm facing the guy who was president when I was 40 being president when I'm 50. It makes me SAD.

He could've "moved on" before he was 70 before mitläufer like Tuberville, Vance, Paul, Cruz, Lee, Scott and Hawley became the ones with the power on the GOP side of the Senate. Sure, his focus on gaining power and nothing else has led to a lot of short term gains but the lack of vision and message created an incoherent and craven caucus of backstabbers, grand standers and sycophants. His brazen strategy of voting against things just to harm Democrats, even if it harms Americans in return, made him a true piece of shit. Remember, McConnell doesn't hate Donald Trump because Trump is bad for America, he hates Donald Trump because Trump is bad for Republicans.

Pretty fluid poll that moves a lot and takes different things into account depending on the times. 100 years from now being assholes could be the norm and Trump could have the No. 1 spot.

The thing is, considering the current state of the GOP base, she's probably not wrong. It is truly something watching the party that produced Lincoln and T. Roosevelt turn willingly turn itself into the piggy bank for an unimaginative and stupid clown because they're scared that said clown's followers might get mad and cause them to lose a few seats for an election cycle.

They're just holding on to it until the general is under full swing. They aren't going to turn on Trump because he is going to let them do whatever they want to do. The billionaires who follow Accelerationism (i.e. Musk, Thiel, Zuckerberg, Andreessen) want Trump because they see him as a destructive force that will allow them to step in and rebuild America in their own image from his wreckage. These billionaires want to use treat actual human buildings and the world like it's their real-life game of Sim City. Trump's already bought into it with his "Freedom Cities" propositions. It sounds like a conspiracy theory, but remember Musk is pretty much a real life version of a Bond villain.

I try to avoid them, but it's been difficult since the pods I listen to on the way to work and on the way back home have constantly been talking about them. They ought to call MSNBC the Poll Channel now. We all know that even close to the election there's only going to be about six states that matter and within them it's going to come down to a few districts that are always close. Always sucks. I hope after the MAGA thing is over that the next gen lawmakers push reforms like a national popular vote for president (no plurality, of course, if no one gets 50%+1 there should be a runoff between the top two) and term limits for Supreme Court justices. Reforming those two things would hopefully provide for a much more stable and predictable system.

Sounds like it would be a good money laundering scheme honestly. I'd be interested to see how many of these were individual buyers purchasing multiple ugly ass shoes.

Kanye at this point is kind of a dumpster fire people walk by and say "ain't that something?" before moving on. I remember one of those libertarian types in 2020 telling me his candidacy was going to win over black voters and throw the tide of the election. We saw how that went. He's pretty much at this point the crazy uncle that comes down from the attic to rant at breakfast before heading down to the intersection to yell at passing cars till suppertime.

There's a disconnect between people who keep up with everything online and people who don't ... those that don't are the majority. They might hear something about Kanye's issues, but they aren't consuming a stream of it. To most people, he's just kind of a nut whose music they've been buying for years and short of being caught with a live boy or a dead girl they're probably going to keep buying it.

I'm kind of lost on the first paragraph but on the second, I doubt there is going to be a civil war. When the actual Civil War happened, you had the country divided into two drastically different economies, most of the federal agencies the people of states depend on now didn't exist, less mobility between different parts of the country and a lack of a solid uniting American identity at that point. Also, there were less than 15,000 men in the military in 1860, most of those stationed in the western frontier. With such a small military and many defectors, it's not surprising the South thought that they'd be done with things after a battle or two. I don't think they counted on the Union's ability to amass troops like they did nor did they expect Lincoln's administration to be so good at deterring foreign alliances and recognition for the south. We have a totally different situation today. We wouldn't have a civil war, we'd most likely have something akin to the Troubles in Ireland where terrorists attacked soft targets and conducted political assassinations at a local/regional level. Even that's a stretch since 99 percent of them are keyboard blowhards that would chicken out if they realized they could get a scratch ... kind of like Trump, who has a tendency to suck up whenever he realizes he's at a disadvantage. Also, neurodivergent people are susceptible to extremism since like religion, it offers them the chance to have a community by pretty much going along instead of having to navigate social situations which don't come naturally to them. One thing that is severely needed as part of special education programs is some sort of social therapy for neurodivergent kids. I know schools include them in pull-out classes now, but there needs to be a bit more than inclusion. They need to have an idea "why" you do things a certain way and, even if it's just objective, a way to read how other people feel.

First off, this garbage looking, bad tattoo wearing, stupid sounding, piss smelling, sex criminal idolizing dog shit of a person can go fuck himself. Second, this shit has been a talking point of the America Hating/Russian Idolizing right for the last few years under their "they're trying to make the military/public service sector woke!" bullshit. The opposite of what they're arguing has been shown to be true over and over again. You make public service and even national security work more accessible, you're able to widen your pool of candidates. There's people with cerebral palsy and on the spectrum that might have been overlooked for being experts if it weren't for programs to make things more accessible. Sure, they're not going to be on the frontlines disarming bombs by hand or driving convoys, but there's many that have skills that could prevent potential losses from afar as far as troops go. The far right under Trump has pretty much made it OK to hate and attack physical and neurological challenges. You'll notice they'll say dance around the "N" word and other slangs for race and sexuality, but they love using the R word every chance they get. Same vein, they want to say something shitty and they know that certain words are still taboo, so they just take advantage of the one that's still OK to most people even though the intent is pretty much the same as using the others.

Politico has written something about Trump's ability to pay the fines or even obtain a bond from a lender during the appeals process. I think this really explains a lot of shake up of the RNC: He installed his daughter-in-law and a dedicated suck-up. He doesn't care about the RNC's status as a nonprofit and he wants people in charge that don't care either. Like most things he's taken over, he's probably going to suck them dry and abandon them once his needs are served. If they become his personal piggy bank and lose their status, I think that'll pretty much be the end of the Republican Party. No political party can survive without a nonprofit status. So that means they'll dissolve and reform with a new name or they'll just break apart into separate parties like the Whigs and Democratic Republicans did in the 1840s.

I imagine the death parade for Putin will be very theatrical. Going by authoritarian leader deaths (Hoxha, Kim Jong Il, Niyazov) you'll probably see people lined up along the streets to outcry each other. Then there'll be a struggle for power and either Russia collapses further losing its grip on more republicans or becomes more authoritarian. Anyway, the Russians don't memorialize people who stood up to the USSR. They still memorialize Stalin looking back at him as if it were the good old days. I don't think they'll ever memorialize Navalny because Russians.