Dunno if you've noticed, but the POTUS has crested the lift hill on the roller coaster of dementia and is gaining kinetic energy into the first turn. Months ago, he lost the ability to process metaphorical language (like my first sentence), which we saw when he promised to build an actual, literal dome over the United States like the one Israel has over it; or when he described in concrete terms the actual operation of the giant faucet in British Columbia that Canada uses to control water to the U.S. West Coast. The thing about dementia, having seen it first-hand in a family member, is that there will be good days and bad days, so even if we see him appearing to have it together (and it's not just from a teleprompter), there are days on which a complex issue by itself will totally escape him— much less a complex web of such issues. And those days will be coming much more often as time goes on and he continues to deteriorate.
That is to say, if your gut feeling was developed during his first term, don't trust it. He doesn't have the capacity for that kind of nuanced cunning any longer. If he's talking about annexation now, take it at face value. Take everything he says as literal now.
Remember that their fascism is based in feelings of superiority in addition to fear.
Hi, it's me, I'm the "well akshuslly" guy today. Fascism (and the whole right-wing mindset) is based on fear, primarily fear that they, personally and individually, are interior. That's why they need the constant and over-the-top demonstrations of dominance and claims of superiority—to drown out those fears.
Honestly, I think it is disingenuous, and the argument is loaded. Namely, if a believer does effectively communicate the notion that God has some universal, eternally-true standard of morality, then the person making the argument can spring the trap:
If that standard of morality exists, we don't know it. God hasn't told us. The Bible is very definitely, historically the word of mankind. The standards it espouses have been relentlessly fought over by different religious factions with their own interpretations, and what's more, they're internally self-contradictory.
The idea that religious people need the threat of hellfire to behave just doesn't stand to scrutiny, since so many of them have no problems professing an interpretation of God's morality to justify whatever behavior they want.
Eh, continents are entirely a socially-constructed category. I mean, how can Mexican America and South America be one continent when there's no land route between them, yet Europe and Asia can be two continents? The Americas are on different techtonic plates, which similarly is enough to earn India the designation of subcontinent. And where's the cut-off between big island and continent? Bigger than Greenland, and smaller than Australia is all we can say.
Anyway, what I'm saying is that with just a quick redefinition of the continents, which already don't make sense, Canada can be in Europe.
Honestly, I think that we the people need to assert our own right to name things more often. I don't recall the latest name of the Brewers stadium in Milwaukee, for example. Whatever company that paid to have them put its name on the front didn't pay me. It's "the new County Stadium" as far as I'm concerned.
(I have no philosophical objection to the name, by the way. Reps of the new company can DM me, we can work out a deal.)
Hell if you aren't able to save anything you will definitely be heading for bum status when you get old enough that you can't work. Holding on to being able to own something is an investment in not descending into desperate poverty later.
I picked this out because it illustrates how utterly fucked up our system is, because we need housing to be:
Expensive, because it's the default retirement investment vehicle for the working classes.
Cheap, so that young people just starting out can buy it.
Not him, per se, but the realization that I'm part of the same species with people who care about foreign royalty, what some actor was wearing, or a rap feud. Cripes, there's even a separate Wikipedia entry about it, which somehow meets the notability requirement.
Angsty, disaffected, adolescent me in the 1990's believed that repeated rounds of "least-worst" would lead to, well, it's here. He wasn't proved wrong.
Voting isn’t some bargain between a thousand voting groups and one candidate.
That's literally what it was intended to be. Political party conventions once were real, high-stakes meetings to hash out a platform that appealed to as many interests as possible.
Goddamn, that question was, like, babytown frolics! Even I, as a non-career-politician, know the answer which stays true to your principles (insert worried Padme face) without giving the opposition a sound bite would have been, "I believe that all decisions about appropriate treatment should be left up to the doctor and patient."
Haha, that happened in 2011 with the Wisconsin Act 10 protests. It was literally the most peaceful thing you ever saw in your life: singing, chanting, mutual aid stations, pizza, people on their goddamn hands and knees cleaning salt and sand off of the floor of the Capitol in the evenings.
And the Republicans were cowering in pants-shitting terror! (I mean, more than their usual.) The governor would enter the Capitol through the utility tunnel from a nearby state building. One legislator was terrorized by scratches on their car, and got the State Patrol to investigate the attack. (The SP concluded that the perpetrator was a stone kicked up by the wheels.) I know people who got arrested for having cameras in the Assembly chamber.
They don't expect that you'll actually report illegal income. They just want to have tax evasion as another charge to add to the indictment in court. Wisconsin's lawmakers were pretty open about that ploy when they added a tax on illegal drugs years ago.
Borrowing is not an option?