The fact that he ever had an approval rating with Gen Z is mind-boggling.

But if he didn’t create problems that he could pretend to solve through bluster and rambling incoherence, he’d have to actually work. A Trump never works.

The leopards started feasting, and he decided they weren’t eating his face fast enough.

And how large is the disenfranchised bloc at this point?

Not large enough to make a difference, if by “disenfranchised” you mean “doesn’t vote for either major party.”

Here’s the thing: In order for a third-party candidate to make any difference at all beyond acting as a spoiler, that candidate needs to WIN. Not just have a good showing. Not just have a great showing where they come in just barely behind. In a FPTP system, there’s only the winner… and everyone else.

Until we have a third-party candidate who can actually win, a vote for a third party is not quite the same as voting for the candidate you’re most ideologically opposed to, but it’s not very different, either.

And don’t get me wrong, I fucking hate that that’s the situation we’re in. But it is. I wish I could argue against the mathematics of it, but they’re unavoidable.

(queue up the two-party-system reply guys here)

I mean, that is the root of the problem. That and FPTP elections. It’s just a mathematical reality that those combined guarantee third parties cause a spoiler effect.

Say you’ve got three parties. One wants to snuggle puppies, one wants to snuggle kittens, and the last wants to use both for target practice. If 66.6% divide their votes between the puppy and kitten snugglers, and 33.4% vote for target practice, the target practice party wins in our current system. That’s just the mathematical reality.

We don’t have to like it. Hell, we definitely shouldn’t, and should push for ranked choice voting and similar changes. But it’s a mistake to just ignore that that’s the system we’re currently stuck in.

It’s almost understandable until you realize it’s not just change for themselves they fear, it’s change for anyone else. Somehow, in their twisted minds, an increase in rights and humane treatment for others hurts them.

You need to go back to your employers in Russia and tell them you need new scripts. No one believes that horseshit your peddling.

Huh. So they needed to launch an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine to protect themselves from the United States? Make that make sense. Good luck.

Mods, can we please ban RT as a source?

What that really means is they’ll be vetted for any indications of disliking Trump.

Those are the only interests he has.

That’s an odd thing to say. For one thing, there are plenty of physical activities that one could get a reasonable description of from ChatGPT, but if you can’t actually do them or understand the steps, you’re gonna have a bad time.

Example: I’ve never seen any evidence that ChatGPT can properly clean and sterilize beakers in an autoclave for a chemical engineering laboratory, even if it can describe the process. If you turned in homework cribbed from ChatGPT and don’t actually know how to do it, your future lab partners aren’t going to be happy that you passed your course by letting ChatGPT do all the work on paper.

There’s also the issue that ChatGPT is frequently wrong. The whole point here is that these cheaters are getting caught because their papers have all the hallmarks of having been written by a large language model, and don’t show any comprehension of the study material by the student.

And finally, if you’re cheating to get a degree in a field you don’t actually want to know anything about… Why?

Why fight against it? Because some of these students will be going into jobs that are life-or-death levels of importance and won’t know how to do what they’re hired to do.

There’s nothing wrong with using a large language model to check your essay for errors and clumsy phrasing. There’s a lot wrong with trying to make it do your homework for you. If you graduate with a degree indicating you know your field, and you don’t actually know your field, you and everyone you work with are going to have a bad time.

I’m waiting for the results of the lawsuits. I said “I’m not so sure,” but that doesn’t mean I think the election was stolen, either. It means I’m not certain either way.

But it doesn’t really matter either way. Say ironclad evidence comes out that he stole the election; we have no means to walk it back.

I’m not so sure, but sadly our constitution doesn’t have a mechanism to rewind anyway. All we could do is impeach and remove him, and then just keep impeaching and removing successors until we get someone sane.

Personally, I’m for a constitutional amendment to fix this, but it’ll never happen.

I genuinely don’t know what to do with people like him. On the one hand… Yeah. He knowingly hired undocumented people, making him a hypocrite, and he just voted to have those people forcibly deported against his own interests, making him a fucking dumbass.

At the same time, he seems to be showing actual remorse, and that should definitely be encouraged. The only - only - way this country has even the slightest shot at recovery is by flipping large numbers of the orange shit-gibbon’s supporters, like this guy.

I really want to believe that’s possible. I don’t think it is, but I want to believe it.

Edit: Missed the part in the article where these guys had valid work visas.

Literally Hitler’s playbook.

He’s a Republican in Nebraska. Being kinda dumb is mandatory for that variety of politician.

Every headline like this should make clear that him imposing tariffs by fiat is illegal and unconstitutional.

I hate the fact that the media just reports that he’s doing it without ever citing Article 1, Section 8:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Every one of these tariff manipulations has been 100% illegal, because the supposed emergencies he’s using to excuse them are nonexistent.

Imagine if a Biden lawyer has made that argument.