I guess if our populace has become this damn stupid, then democracy can't work here anymore. Democracy requires a certain minimum level of education and knowledge in the voting population. The number of comments I see online where people think the POTUS is some kind of emperor who just has to decree something and it happens (even in other countries!), and that Congress and SCOTUS have nothing to do with anything, is astounding.
Do they not teach government and civics in schools any more? Not to mention history. The ignorance of history is a huge part of the problem as well, not knowing about anything that happened more than 10-20 years ago, let alone the past century or two.
Last time he had a bunch of "normal" (old style) republicans in his cabinet, and they stopped him from doing a lot of what he wanted to do. And of course the career civil servants in all the government agencies followed the law and that stymied a lot of his and his minions' schemes--which they learned from. Now they know where the roadblocks to dictatorship are and have had 4 years to come up with plans like project 2025 and others.
Next time, no one will even try to stop him. Everyone in the cabinet and appointed post will be loyal lackeys who will do whatever trump says. Career civil servants who don't follow illegal or crazy orders will be fired and replaced with those who will. Even the Supreme Court now has the 3 extreme conservatives he appointed along with many many federal/district court judges who were drawn from a list compiled by the same people who authored the project 2025 plans.
The next time ain't gonna be like last time, folks.
Putin will sacrifice everyone and everything in Russia to try and achieve his fever dream of taking back Ukraine and the other post-Soviet states before he dies, and it just ain't gonna happen. There is not the slightest possibility of it. The best he can hope for is to keep some portion of the Ukrainian territory that he already had before he started his idiotic enterprise, and he will have ruined Russia for generations in the process.
Also, I would imagine that once Putin's gone, whoever comes after him will cede the territory back to Ukraine because the West will demand that, if Russia wants to be allowed to rejoin the world economy. All that suffering was for nothing but Putin's ego. That's what dictators do, and why we have to stop them, not appease them.
Ending my responses to you now.
Let's see now, who started that war? Oh right it was Putin. No one else in the entire world (except maybe a few of Putin's cronies) wanted that war, least of all the average person--including average Russian, who is suffering far more than average Americans because of it, since Americans are basically not suffering at all because of it and many pay no attention to it at all.
You're saying that since average people suffer from the wars started by dictators like Putin, that we should all just roll over and let them own the world. "Oh, just let Putin have Ukraine (and then inevitably) the other former SSRs, and if that goes well, maybe a little more here and a little more there, that way you won't suffer so much, which is totally your own fault for resisting." Fuck that shit, troll.
Europe and NATO will not let that happen because it's simply too big a threat to Europe. Putin is ruining a whole generation of Russians' lives and futures along with Ukraine's, just to satisfy his impossible fever dream of building an empire, and it will only destroy Russia in the process. You should be trying to help us stop him now if you want to prevent more suffering for the rest of the world.
The money US sends to Ukraine is a drop in the bucket and has no effect on the life of the average American--there are far bigger factors that affect our economy and our lives than that pittance of the military budget, much of which we'd be spending anyway to replenish our inventory with up-to-date supplies. You know how our MIC works. It's a machine far bigger than average Americans have influence over, so even if people buy your propaganda it means nothing to that machine. Our lives are affected much more by domestic policies. Your propaganda efforts fomenting social unrest have been much more successful in that area golf clap but it won't help Russia survive what Putin is doing to it.
Pathetic Russian troll, trying the ol' concern troll tactic. "Oh, we all know Russia is going to win, why make the Ukrainians, who BTW are just as bad as Putin, suffer even more by delaying the inevitable?" No one on here buys that shit, go back to facebook and X where your propaganda will find more fertile ground.
Mint has an auto-upgrade tool so you don't have to reinstall each time. It used to be only for minor version upgrades but now you can auto-upgrade to a new major version as well. In any case there are plenty of great distros to choose from.
And yes! whatever distro (and other FLOSS software) you use, support them with a donation if you can! When you consider the value you are getting for free vs. what you'd be spending on proprietary software, it's not so hard to do and feels good too.
I think you're right that they'd be disturbed. But I think their cognitive dissonance will overcome that and they'll rationalize it in whatever way they need to to see it as acceptable, because in their eyes trump never makes a mistake or does anything wrong.
But you see, only trump's opinion matters, and trump hates dogs. If he picks her, magats will fall in line and come up with rationalizations that what she did was good.
It's better to do it ASAP before they're decreed abandoned. Dig thorough everything and also check your State's Unclaimed Property dept (or the one for whatever state you were working in I suppose). And/or do some searching online to find out how to reclaim them.
"In 1983, Congress increased the full retirement age (FRA) from 65 to 67, a change phased in over the course of 33 years. This phase-in just ended, with the FRA now static at age 67 for individuals reaching age 62 in 2022 or later." (those born in 1960 or later).
What I always thought was unfair is that those who make the least amount of money get the least amount of Soc Sec, when they are the ones who need it the most. Those who make the most money get the max amount even though they need it the least. Seems backwards.
But I guess it's at least better than how things were before Social Security when you either had to make enough money to save enough for retirement and/or get a pension from your employer, or else work until you died, not to mention no Soc Sec if you became disabled. It was originally designed as part of the New Deal to help widows and seniors (poverty rate for seniors was over 50%).
Ubuntu has long suffered from NIH syndrome, constantly inventing its own non-standard components (snaps, Unity, etc) and trying to make them "win" by forcing them on their own users. Reminds me of Microsoft with its non-standard Internet Explorer, its own non-standard version of Java and others.
The lesson is to use a Community distro, not a Corporate distro. When the distro's goals align with its community's, even a distro based on Ubuntu will usually be better than straight Ubuntu. For example Mint keeps the good things about Ubuntu (in Mint's opinion of course), removes the bad things like Snaps, and adds other features that the community wants that Ubuntu won't (like built-in Flatpak support among other things).
I agree, but I'm afraid these days they'd just farm it out to a private business instead of doing it themselves with the goal of doing it right like they did in the 60's. Today they'd overpay some billionaire hugely for worse results because greed for profit = overcharging and substandard parts and oversight.
"a strong progressive president ... like Ronald Reagan."
wtf? Progressive?!!!?! Reagan?!??!?!!? am I living in the Bizarro World now? Does no one know any history any more? It wasn't even that long ago that Reagan and Thatcher ruined the world. Please educate yourself. Reagan busted the unions, deregulated industry, massively slashed taxes on the wealthy, and ushered in the era of escalating income inequality that continues to this day and destroyed the middle class (it was a thing we had for a brief period after WWI up until Reaganomics).
If you think Regan was some great president because of that oversimplified account you copy/pasted about an incident with Israel then you'd better rethink how you come to conclusions about shit. Educate yourself -- and rethink your conclusions about Biden while you're at it. Life is more complicated than your propaganda sources would have you believe.
leadore @ leadore @kbin.social Posts 0Comments 62Joined 2 yr. ago
I guess if our populace has become this damn stupid, then democracy can't work here anymore. Democracy requires a certain minimum level of education and knowledge in the voting population. The number of comments I see online where people think the POTUS is some kind of emperor who just has to decree something and it happens (even in other countries!), and that Congress and SCOTUS have nothing to do with anything, is astounding.
Do they not teach government and civics in schools any more? Not to mention history. The ignorance of history is a huge part of the problem as well, not knowing about anything that happened more than 10-20 years ago, let alone the past century or two.