jakee

After all the movies about the dangers of the singularity, who would have ever thought that an honest(ish) AI would be trying to protect us from the radical politics of its megalomaniacal creator?

Not exactly. Start with the simple fact that right wing social and economic policies are fundamentally more selfish than left wing social policies and already you start to doubt that they are sure their policies are better for society rather than just better for them. Then you look at the number of times their rhetoric and their actions are diametrically opposed and it becomes clearer that the power is the number one goal and the rest is an afterthought. As one prominent example look at Marco Rubio right now. We know for sure that he genuinely believes that opposing Russia and supporting Ukraine to the hilt is the right thing to do but in order to stay close to power he instead throws Nato allies under the bus and publicly licks Putin's balls because Trump told him to. If he had a shred of sincerity he'd have resigned after a week and joined John Bolton on the TV pundit circuit.

That's just lazy bullshit thinking though, isn't it? The far right is now in near total control of the Republican party. The far left is barely represented on the fringes of the Democrat party. They are not the same, no matter how much you would like to feel better about your decisions by pretending they are.

Hence the question, are you insane? Nothing Joe said hinted at anything remotely in that direction and you know it. This is just more of the naked double standard you and your political fellows apply where the Democrats have to have the perfect candidates with the perfect policies and the perfect campaign starategy in order to even be considered as an alternative to the unethical, criminal and incompetent dumpster fire on the other side.

Are you insane? In what way is ‘and then do what’s right’ in the current Republican playbook? Project 2025 was nothing to do with the campaign, it was the behind the scenes playbook on how to consolidate total power after the campaign, and use it to push a nakedly anti-democratic agenda.

The case against her seems cut and dried.

Problem with saying one word to Trump is that he'll say it back to you a week later and claim he invented it. "Equalizing - it's a brand new word I came up with and it's probably the best word..."

“So many people want me to do a third term. It's something that, to the best of my knowledge, you're not allowed to do. I don't know if that's constitutional that they're not allowing you to do it or anything else," Its totally right that there’s just too much shit to actually pick out anything uniquely crazy. It’s Bannon’s Trump 1 ‘flood the zone with bullshit’ strategy turned up to eleven hundred. And really serious shit happens in the meantime. Actively looking at suspending habeas corpus gets barely an eyeroll. The ultra-racist and cartoonishly DEI* policy of actively inviting middle class white South Africans as asylum seekers while banning damn near anyone else from anywhere in the world no matter what’s just elicits an eyeroll and a sigh. But who can actually pick what stands out enough to post? * Literally the fake version of DEI that Republicans created so they could attack it is what Trump is doing.

Plus da change... https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/09/clergy-molestation-survivors-pope-leo-xiv

Nice! When RIAT was at Cottesmore plane spotters used to be allowed into the farmer’s field just off the arrival end of the runway. Until one day the B1B display bird held on the brakes as it ran up the reheat for a performance takeoff, and the gathered crowd found out what 4 of the biggest afterburners ever made felt like from less than a hundred meters away. They cracked down on access to the surroundings after that. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=iVdUi-8F8P0

Goddamn dude that’s some collection. Are you running real miniature gas turbines in any of them? You’ve got a Typhoon, B1B, display Typhoon ‘Blackjack’ (there’s a funny story about why 29 SQN’s logo is XXX) alongside a Rafale (though I had to cheat on that one - I wanted to say a Gripen because the colour looked Swedish). Then you’re onto a Phantom II, F16 (I don’t know the different versions / blocks) and rounding out with the truly terrifying F104 Starfighter. There’s a cockpit video from an Italian who flies an F104 and they’re using over 90% dry power on final because of the insane induced drag from those stubby wings at low speed. Doesn’t give you much get out of jail if you drop low and slow!

Supermarine didn’t make any bombers. You’ve got an Avro Lancaster there and a Supermarine Spitfire. A Mk IX I think? Reminds me of video of a scale model Eurofighter Typhoon taking off, it immediately pitches into a vertical climb before flicking into a dive and crashing…. Which is ironically exactly how the real plane would behave without the flight control computer making millisecond by millisecond adjustments.

The thing that really stands out from Trump 1 to Trump 2 is that they don't even bother to cosplay legitimacy anymore. Trump 1 was riddled with conflicts of interest and naked profiteering that would have sunk any other President ever, but they still felt the need to present the big table stacked with paper and say "look at all this paper that we promise shows how Trump is no longer in charge of his companies." In Trump 2, Trump's private business selling Trump Coin for personal profit is openly advertising that the biggest buyers of Trump coin get exclusive access to the President, in the White House, in his official capacity as head of the federal government. How do you recover from being that deep into Banana Republic territory?

We’ll have to agree that you’re lying, because you already said that you’re lying. And hey, that girl who was raped could have worn a longer skirt. That is, once again, an outright lie. Please understand, we all know you are a habitual liar. You will say anything, despite knowing it’s not true, to avoid having to back down from your position. Floyd did not resist until deceased. Unconscious people can’t resist. They can say it, but they can’t bring the receipts. But what about you? Do you believe that the money should be spent to reform America’s prisons? That money should be spent to make prisons safer for inmates, so that violent criminals and murderers can have a better life while incarcerated?

Hilarious results coming out of Australia. Lot of wannabe populists learning the hard way that MAGA does not travel well.

Careful now - absolute free speech is only free when it’s not about Elon.

Well that’s like 0.01% of the trillion bucks that Doge is gonna save, so really it’s just sensible budgeting.

At least now we know what him and Putin were really discussing on those phone calls. A birthday military parade is very Soviet chic.

She doesn't care. Do U?

But you're going to have to. One of the unique things about Trump is that he has no loyalty or respect whatsoever for the wider Republican party, so he doesn't really give a fuck about what's going to happen in the midterms. Elections that other Republicans are going to lose are a them problem, not a him problem. Therefore, while pretty much any other administration would already be panicking about how to change tack and stave off a potential electoral wipeout in Congress, he's going to just carry on full steam ahead for the entirety of the next 18 months, right up until polling day.

Problem is that, as Jan 6th proved, those who see themselves as willing to take up arms (and don’t already live in the woods) are far more likely to do so in support of an illegal authoritarian regime than against one.

I suppose unfortunately there are several Supreme Court Justices who definitely should be arrested (for non-partisan reasons) but the Trump admin are the absolute last people who ever would go after those particular ones.

Brilliant! Stunningly mediocre would be a refreshing, reliable alternative to the mercurially incompetent incumbent. Except it doesn't, because it isn't. There is no 'back atcha' involved in the tariff formulas. None. It is unprovoked and unwarranted attack. In addition (and I can't believe I have to say this to a functioning adult), having no rational game plan is a Bad Thing. I would laugh if what you were saying wasn't so depressingly racist. Trump is presiding over a huge expansion of Federally mandated DEI programs. This is the demand he made to the major private universities: By August 2025, the University shall commission an external party, which shall satisfy the federal government as to its competence and good faith, to audit the student body, faculty, staff, and leadership for viewpoint diversity, such that each department, field, or teaching unit must be individually viewpoint diverse..... Every department or field found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by hiring a critical mass of new faculty within that department or field who will provide viewpoint diversity; every teaching unit found to lack viewpoint diversity must be reformed by admitting a critical mass of students who will provide viewpoint diversity. There's your MAGA 'merit' based hiring system - you have to hire enough Republicans. Engineering Professors can't be hired on the basis of purely being the best Engineering teacher if it means a Republican is going to be overlooked. Chemistry Professors can't be hired on the basis of who has the most promising research if it means a Republican is going to be overlooked. Mathematics undergrads can't be admitted on the basis of who had the best SAT scores if too many of them sound like they might be liberals. But hey - you're just happy they definitely can't give someone a little extra chance of an interview because they're black. Exactly the same reason to vote for the leprechaun who promised you the pot of gold, with about as much chance of success. Truly, you are an amazing specimen of the Dunning-Kruger effect. I marvel at how a person so desperate to be viewed as having an unparallelled grasp of the interconnectedness of history, society and politics can also be so completely uninterested in actually knowing anything about the world in which they live and the subjects on which they speak, and so ready to credulously swallow any line of bullshit that the conservative elites throw at you. If political scientists and biologists could team up to find a way to reverse whatever the heck it is that's going on in your brain we might even be able to develop an effective antidote to the new world order of populist authoritarianism before it's too late.

Moms and regular people did that when Trump was in power.

Only by people being deliberately obtuse.