Since the orange chancre is obviously Putin’s puppet, with massive evidence already in the open to the point that we even know his KGB codename and this departing ambassador has cited that specifically as her reason for leaving, it seems clear why the US has not just quit NATO no matter how many times Trump has said he was wanted to quit NATO or was even planning to quit NATO.

The bottom line is that if the US leaves NATO, the US loses its ability to keep Ukraine out. This is extremely important to Putin, and has been all along, to the point of Putin demanding “legal guarantees” that Ukraine would never join NATO.

So instead of leaving NATO outright, Putin’s stooge in the White House is doing everything he can to destabilize and weaken NATO – and keep Ukraine forced out – without ever actually giving up his own ability to manipulate it on Putin’s ongoing behalf.

Just a reminder that between his Ivy League connections, his Reagan/Bush services, and Chief Justice Rehnquist’s untimely demise, Mr. Non-Political-Actor here went from mere well-placed attorney to Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States in less than five years, mostly by way of his work on Bush v. Gore in 2000.

Not a political actor, lol.

Yeah. The bad parts (I mean aside from the general entitled assholery, racism and classism, hooking up other elites, tossing bills at his victims, etc) are really truly fucking bad.

At one point the feds had not adequately culled the visual files like pics and video, and you could append various extensions to files labeled pdf. Body parts are black boxed; context is not. I made that mistake exactly once. Jesus fucking christ there is some evil shit in this world, and a great deal of it exists in Epstein/Trump’s world, by deliberate choice.

The feds have since shut that loophole down, which is a bit rich: they don’t want to shut the reality of those horrors perpetrated upon children down, just the visual evidence of it. I genuinely hope the afterlife involves all these people getting fucked sideways with a rusty lawnmower blade into eternity.

“Everybody out! Everybody out! Thank you! Thank you!”

deleted by creator

You couldn’t have known this, but you’re talking to someone who was around for Roe v. Wade back in the 70s: all this is new to a lot of younger folks, but for many of us, it’s been established canon for over fifty years.

Not just women, but men too: it wasn’t part of our exchange, but birth control and abortion access are two sides of the same coin, and at the time of Roe V. Wade widely available birth control was also fairly new. I wasn’t quite old enough to be personally affected, but spent time around many who were rigorously testing the limits of these newly available methods, so it’s never been a question for me: letting women control their own fertility is best for everyone, bar none except those wanting to exploit other humans in one way or another.

To me these are all literally the same issue – can’t have widespread exploitation without poors to exploit, and blocking abortion is just the start of ensuring that long, long pipeline of bodies – but regardless I’m glad to hear you weren’t just trolling, and am encouraged that you’ve given this some thought. Thanks for letting me know.

A great deal of this has to do with mainstream, established media. There is still a strong unspoken assumption that mainstream media speaks for all of us. This is how we can all be pissed off about a specific thing and yet honestly think nobody cares, just because mainstream media doesn’t report it as a problem.

When the media reports something across the board as a problem and continues to do so without letting up, change is quick to follow.

But when it reports something as not a problem, or fails to report it much at all, that seems to be a cue that no correction is necessary.

For example, compare and contrast reporting on presidential mental acuity during the Biden administration vs Trump’s administration: this is a perfect example of how the media treats the same problem very differently depending on who’s got the problem, even when the problem itself is magnitudes more obvious, serious, and damaging in one case than in the other.

This media selectivity has always been there to some extent, but this weird media equivocation toward Republican misbehavior really seemed to go off the deep end in the summer of 2015; I remember hearing some Republican who got caught doing something and expecting the same old tired apology, but instead he said the equivalent of, “Deal with it, I don’t care.” And it’s been that way ever since, as though they all got the memo that the fix was in.

Even now, no one I know personally has stopped talking about the Epstein files or caring about them, except the media. Same thing.

Feel free to disagree, but I don’t even have to guess that if Zohran Mamdani, as a very hypothetical example, said religious freedom only belongs to Muslims, white billionaire heads would explode and no mainstream news outlet would let go of it until the end of days. But this well-connected right-wing white pseudo-christian woman can drop that load on live tv and mainstream media doesn’t even blink.

Why do they use a different pen to sign each one?

This is common; the pens are given as gifts to those involved in writing and sponsoring the bill. I’ve even seen some signatures where it was a single signature (not multiple copies) and it looked like a different pen was being used for each letter because they wanted that many to give out at the end.

Explain to us how unwanted, forced births make any of those societal ills better?

Hint: they don’t. Walling off abortion to the privilege of the rich, which is all that criminalizing it does, simply ensures a better, unending supply of poor bodies to be trafficked, sent to war, or used as labor – and, as someone else rightfully pointed out, is itself a rollback of not only a civil right but also what I consider to be a basic human right for everyone, men and women alike: the right to control one’s own body and reproduction.

When you make a stand against abortion, you are very literally arguing FOR the perpetuation of the exact situations you claim to care about.

Preventing access to abortion is a direct line to keeping women “barefoot and pregnant” as the saying goes, ill-educated because they’re out of school as soon as the babies start coming, and financially powerless to walk away with ease from situations and outcomes that are not in their best interests, nor in the best interests of all these unwanted children, forever dependent on those with more money and ulterior motives just for their basic needs.

TL;DR: If you actually gave a shit about ANY of the marginalized and misused people you listed, then you’d absolutely give a shit about abortion access: these are NOT separate issues.

The leftist candidates that have been winning these various special elections by double-digit spreads over highly-favored right-wing candidates are not dems, they’re progressives. Same label, very different flavor.

And I am totally here for that. It’s been fun watching them quietly form a party within the party.

So true. In a related tangent, without this, Fox News would have only ever been another shitty cable channel. I’ve been forced to watch it a few times by virtue of being in a place I couldn’t leave, and it’s full of this shit: words or pictures provoking anger, anger, anger, praise, fear, anger, anger, etc.

It’s no wonder the watchers of it can’t get off it: the world must feel very empty if you’ve been on a careening subliminal emotional rollercoaster of media intake for however long.

Yeah, I was wondering about that myself, but for USD. Right now (May 2026) the exchange rate is roughly $1.08 USD for every Swedish Krona.

So 300sek, a doctor’s visit, is roughly $32.50. 1450sek, the line above which everything is paid for by the Swedish government, is about $157.25. The 500sek or so Stoy paid per night, including meals and meds, is $157.25.

This, as an American, is literally unimaginable to me. It sounds like the numbers from 30, even 40 years ago.

Lol that shit is hilarious, like people who actually live here can possibly forget ALL the Republican political messaging in support of this administration, its stupid ass wars, raping kids, hiding its crimes, and killing/marginalizing/deporting anyone who disagrees or even just happens to be brown.

Do you have any idea how many fucking red caps and pro-Trump signs I have to see every day? Do you really think your limp words hold a candle to all that crowing about the Republicans “hurting the right people” finally?

“here we have another liberal thinking republicans are the problem in america”

YEAH! I ABSOLUTELY FUCKING DO!

I remember Bezos at the inauguration. He’s spent millions on the administration, including the inaugural party and financing not only the first lady’s documentary, but its positive reviews. All of them. And that’s just the highlights; Bezos has given so much to promote this administration at every turn.

Glad to see this kind of multiplicative return on his investment. He is very literally getting the presidential experience he paid for.

NACHO (not a chance hormuz opens)

deleted by creator

Hey Monke, in case you missed it, there’s a related gallery of pics from all the protests happening today across the country:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/gallery/2026/may/01/photos-may-day-protests

I love seeing this, even though I know it’s being vastly underreported: at least it’s getting reported in the UK. NYT doesn’t have anything at all.

The DNC, more than any other organization in existence, is responsible for Trump’s presidency.

That’s you. What part of that do the rest of us not understand?

My post was about the DNC and the Dem leadership. Why in the wallowing fuck would I spend half of it talking about the Republicans?

Because you lazily used non-specific yet all-encompassing language as hyperbole and in the process created a lie.

then that’s very much your problem - not mine.

No, it’s very much your problem: I’ve never had to call anyone else stupid for what I chose to write, but that’s the entirety of your post history.

No problem, I get it. But hope is where it starts.

If you’re genuinely on the side of Americans getting Americans out of this mess, then don’t stifle hope when you see it.

This is the first time a lot of folks have ever had to be involved in politics, and with lies and propaganda flying in every direction – including here on Lemmy to the point it’s predictable – then save your scorn for the people whose minds you can’t change.

People with hope want to do the right thing, and it’s hard to start.

Actions don’t happen without thoughts, and actions toward change do not start without the hope that success can be had. Hope is integral to change. @[email protected] is right to have it, because that’s where ALL change starts.

Hence the propaganda strategy illustrated above: because most civilians will not fire without being fired upon, and because armed protests are either revolutions or failures, by way of false dichotomy it presents the idea there’s nothing left between those two poles.

I should note the finer details like specifically at whom we should shoot have been omitted from the rant; this too is by design. The whole thing is wreathed in colloquial “y’alls” (“look! I’m one of you!”) and then lathered in insults and pejoratives so that the prospective American reader gets emotionally fired up, but then stifled because no one in their right mind is going to just start shooting at nothing for no reason.

This kind of post is ALL about emotional manipulation, nothing more, and from someone not even on this side of the globe.

There’s plenty for us to do before we start shooting. You can keep your despair.