Yes. So similar in fact that Romneycare basically never changed in its original state of Massachusetts. All the systems set up for Romneycare were copied at the national level.

I think after 4 years of Trump, if there are still elections in 2028, we’ll see a Democrat elected president simply because of the fact that how bad it is under Trump will be right in people’s faces. In 2032, however, we’ll definitely see the Dems lose to somebody even worse than Trump for exactly why they lost in 2016 and 2024.

The Dems don’t learn anything and lose, then 4 years later they win because the Republicans made things worse, and then they learn nothing, double down, and lose again, starting the cycle all over again.

One thing to note about Bernie and AOC is that they’re not popular, but their policies are. During 2016, polls showed that even the majority of Republican voters supported Bernie’s policies - but only if you told them what the policy was before you told them that it was Bernie’s.

The Red Scare is still ongoing today, and having been labeled socialists and communists has made them untouchables and pariahs. And there has never been any Red Scare equivalent for the KKK or white supremacists, or for corporatism or anything, but there has been for socialism, unions, and anything else that puts power into the hands of the people.

You may find it an absurd opinion, but I’d say it’s exactly why the Democrats can’t help but grab defeat from the jaws of victory.

They’re simply bad at showing off the good that they do and they spend their campaign time courting some mythical moderate Republican voting base that wouldn’t vote for them anyway by moving further and further right, disenfranchising their voting base. Who they then blame for their loss. Leftists don’t like voting for the lesser of two evils and vote with their heart, while Republicans vote for the nominee, regardless of their positions or values. And the stats show that the Democrats failed to motivate people to get out and vote. Trump actually lost 2 million votes compared to 2020. If there’s still elections in 2028, we’ll see a resurgence in votes for the Democrat candidate after 4 more years of this monstrosity, but people have forgotten just how bad it really was.

The economy does better under Democratic presidents. That’s a verifiable fact. Biden added 500,000 jobs to the economy and brought inflation down, started student loan forgiveness programs, and all kinds of other things. But the Dems didn’t talk about that, and the media sure as hell wasn’t when going to when they could blast Trump’s absurd claims instead. And when we did hear about it, it was through the lens of the economy as a whole, not what you average American experiences day to day. Inflation is down, but prices aren’t, and wages haven’t kept up in decades. According to the IRS, 51% of Americans made $15k or less in 2021.

So when Trump says he’s gonna change things, and Harris looks like it’s gonna be more of the same (no matter how much hogwash Trump’s claims are and things are only going to get worse), it’s gonna do nothing to alleviate the grievances leftists have had with the Biden administration on all sorts of things like the genocide in Palestine. They’ve heard the “vote for me or it’s the end of democracy!” song and dance too many times while seemingly getting nothing out of it.

Exactly what I was referring to. It’s one of the reasons that the CIA requested the FBI inquiry into Trump that resulted in the raid on Mar a Lago.

I’ve been thinking about spending a few years dead for tax reasons.

Healers aren’t tops or bottoms. They’re overworked help desk employees.

Thanks, I fucking love it.

I don’t expect the party to still exist 365 days from now.

I mean, if the shareholders can pull a pump and dump before the economy hits the fan…then that’s absolutely what’s going to happen. Thinking about anything beyond the next quarter is not standard corporate practice.

Saving this for future discussions because it’s absolutely spot on.

Also, for any Republicans complaining about Obamacare, kindly remind them that it was started by Republican Mitt Romney.

As somebody who was in middle school when 9/11 happened and was terrified then, and is terrified now, let me tell you why it’s different this time.

W was a warmonger and a figurehead for Cheney from a family of career politicians, but he was a politician and was limited in what he could do by things like the Supreme Court. Trump is none of those and has no checks or balances. He’s a failed businessman who has bankrupted every company he’s ever owned (except for the real estate empire he inherited from his father) who has no idea what the laws are, nor does he care. He doesn’t know what it takes to run a country, and he sure as hell won’t put anybody who does into a position of power. Those are reserved for his sycophants.

He’s a self-styled Mussolini who “wants generals like Hitler had,” keeps Hitler’s speeches next to his bed to read before falling asleep (according to one of his ex wives in the book she wrote in the 90s), and has both made loyalty to him the number one priority for the people in his party as well as said party having stacked all positions of power with his supporters. The Supreme Court has said that he cannot be held accountable for any crimes committed as President, and he has talked about imprisoning his political opponents.

W was a continuation of Reagan politicians. Trump is a fascist who talks the same way that Jim Jones did while praising people like Putin and Kim Jong Un and has already attempted a violent coup without any real repercussions. The Republicans of Bush’s era have been labeled as cowards, traitors, and communists by Trump’s party.

The only things today’s Republican care about are gaining and keeping power and hurting anybody their bigoted egos demand.

It really depends on where you live and the kinds of bins you have. I keep my bins in my garage because we get snow (used to get snow? Climate change and all that), and there are times when I can smell even just the normal household garbage inside the house. I also live in a duplex, so my entire downstairs is a single large room with a kitchenette off of it, meaning that when the garbage cans stink, they stink up the entire downstairs of the house.

I think the cans the town uses just don’t have a great seal on them, as I’ve heard other people complain about similar issues with the smell, and my parents even have a separate small can they keep outside specifically for their dog poop that they toss into the actual garbage right as they take it out to the curb so it doesn’t stink up their house.

Luckily, I’ve never had the issue of people tossing their poop into my cans, but I’ve heard tons of people complain about it. People not picking up after their dogs at all, however…that’s a different story that’s so bad around my neighborhood that multiple people have installed signs about it.

I surely don’t know what you mean. They’re to keep the raccoons out! That’s why they’re on a piece of velcro, so they’re removable!

Sarcasm aside, absolutely. Even if you wouldn’t get in trouble for people hurting themselves by going into your bins, you could probably get in trouble for messing with town property or something. It’s just the kind of thing I immediately think of after growing up with stories of “Let me take care of that for you” about a guy who’s probably doing 30 to life for prostitution and selling heroin/whatever else the Hell’s Angels get up to.

Oftentimes, these kinds of people don’t bother to check if the bins have already been picked up or not, so you get a bin that smells like dog shit for the next week.

Your friend sounds very creative, I’d personally go for gluing a piece of velcro to the inside lip of the handle with razor blades on it. Of course, I’m also not an engineer, just somebody whose grandfather was friends with the #2 Hell’s Angel for a state who would ask if he wanted him to “take care of” problems like that. The old razor blades and broken glass in the root ball trick worked wonders when somebody was repeatedly stealing the shrubs out of my grandfather’s pots.

Many people do this after the bins have already been emptied, meaning that for the next week, you have to deal with a bin that smells like dog shit.

Reminds me of a story from when I was younger of a guy who killed 3 people with a katana at a drug deal gone bad at a local motel. The courts ruled it was self-defense.

The most cyberpunk “street samurai” shit I’ve ever heard. Just needs to have the dude deflecting bullets to seal the deal.

Trump has been a Russian asset since the 80s. His ties to Russian criminal organizations have been known since then, but the FBI has never been able to get any charges to stick.

The CIA believed that he gave Putin information about current intelligence operations and agents against Russia during his presidency enough to request an inquiry which led to the FBI raid on Mar a Lago, where they found confidential documents on CIA activity amongst all the other confidential documents illegally held there after his term.

He will side with Russia, guaranteed.

It will be.