• starik@lemmy.zip
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      6 days ago

      They don’t give a shit. All they care about is how it affects them politically. Which means they’re also fucking idiots because this isn’t even smart politically.

      I guarantee you they’re worried about appearing soft on crime/immigration. They’re stuck in 2015 and I wish we could send them back there.

      • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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        6 days ago

        Seriously this is an unbelievably dumb fucking move. They cannot be this fucking dumb.

        More and more I wonder who it is that actually calls the shots for these Democrats? Who is that gives them their orders. Obviously it’s corporate donors just like it is with Republicans, but who are they?

        Did they really let Venezuela happen because they didn’t want to look weak, or do they share the same incentives as Republicans courtesy of the oil industry?

        • floofloof@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          Schumer, at least, has proven himself to be a person who will claim one position in public while encouraging others to do the opposite, which is his real position. He’ll take a stand for the right thing only when he knows he has enough people doing the wrong thing that he will be defeated, and then he’ll publicly shrug and regret that there was nothing more he could do. He’s dishonest and cowardly and does not serve the voters.

          • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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            6 days ago

            Then you have people like Ro Kahnna making a very public display of allegedly fighting for equality and justice while Peter Thiel pulls his fucking strings from backstage. Calling for the U.S. to recognize Palestine as an independent state while downplaying his own investments in Palantir and history with other silicon valley billionaires like David Sackler.

            It just makes me wonder how many billionaires are actually funding both sides and directing Democrats to play off of each other in this never ending one step forward and two steps back bullshit of calling for the right thing as a publicity stunt, only because you know it will blocked by a simultaneous counter measure and go nowhere.

            • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works
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              6 days ago

              Primary them in a few months. Then, we build an actual party and hopefully redo this whole fucker because this hasn’t been working for decades.

                • Whostosay@sh.itjust.works
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                  6 days ago

                  Not if it’s overwhelming. Unless they pull the Biden/harris shit again, then yeah. But that would surprise me. If they do that, we can move straight to burn this mother fucker down so no one can have it mode.

            • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
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              6 days ago

              Collecting politicians is the new hobby among billionaires. Anyone can buy a car, yacht, even a rocketship, but to actually own and control a politician? That’s valuable.

              Theil is putting together a nice collection, starting with Vance. Musk had Trump in his collection for a while, but Trump likes to remain a free agent. He’s in the unique position to be able to collect Billionaires instead.

              And we’re just down here, standing in the rain. That is rain, isn’t it? They wouldn’t actually be pissing on us, would they?

              • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.works
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                6 days ago

                Well if nothing trickled down they would look like a bunch of liars and con artists… So if anyone asks, yes it’s rain.

                Also, Thiel and Trump have been lovey dovey since his first term, he was just smart enough to keep fairly quiet about it. I suspect he actually brought Musk (and all the other tech bros) into the throuple to be the scapegoats for everything he’s been planning for over a decade at this point.

                Theil actually pitched deregulating the FDA to Trump, long before Trump decided to partner with RFK Jr. Theil also helped select several of Trump’s cabinet members, including Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) member, Michael Kratsios.

                When most Americans hear Trump and data they typically think of DOGE creator and Thiel’s longtime friend?/rival, Elon Musk. Although Musk seems to have stepped back from his role in the White House, just as Kratsios was getting settled back in, from Kratsios own words, the Trump administration’s focus on data began long before Elon gave Nazi salutes at Trump’s inauguration.

                Further, Kratsios served as CTO under Trump, while some very questionable policy decisions regarding technology were made. However, neither the previous jokes regarding his lack of science experience nor his role in miserably failed COVID related tech policies (see example at the end of this post), were ever mentioned by the press when Trump picked Kratsios to serve as his official science advisor for his second term.

                In hindsight, I’ve realized what I thought were failed policies, were most likely just a preview of what we’re seeing in Trump’s second term as he destroys the United States. Policies hidden behind bold faced lies that were always intended to accomplish the exact opposite of what the administration claimed they were doing.

                … while Trump has asked Kratsios to utilize AI technology to blaze a trail for American dominance in 2025, it may also be worth noting that just over 5 years ago, in March of 2020, Kratsios was also tasked by Trump to use cutting edge technology to tackle COVID misinformation and track early cases of the virus in the U.S. in order to keep it from spreading.

                There’s no way to prove this, but I honestly believe the true goal was probably always to spread COVID misinformation especially regarding masking during the earliest days of the pandemic.

                Why would the tech side of the Trump administration care about keeping people from masking? My guess is because the beginning of the pandemic happened to coincide with the earliest stages of Thiel et al. rolling out Clearview AI’s facial recognition technology.