Oh yeah, I forgot about the Episcopals

Still, I think every schism probably had people saying “But we already have [religion]” before they went down

Whether or not there are decent evangelicals was kinda beside my point (I was just imagining historical parallels), but I agree and it’s definitely worth repeating

We’re gonna get a schism and the Church of America because Trump is basically Henry VIII but somehow even more disgusting

I’m kinda tempted to whip out that community meme with a “human rights violations I can stand, but I draw the line at market destabilization!”, but I’m pretty sure we’re imprisoning and brutalizing more Latinos and other migrants than China is Uyghurs and other marginalized communities over there at this point

The first step of the campaign was getting the average person to hate “politics” “the government” “Washington dc” etc., vague ideas instead of specific people and policies

Then it’s easy to sell people on the basic idea that “the government is too dumb and evil to help anyone even if it tried, but it can punish your enemies pretty good”

Would you rather they weren’t concerned and talked about something else? The problem here is the god damned politicians who keep blowing off stories like this.

You have to understand how awful our public transportation systems are and how close to broke like 75% of us already were

a) This headline forgets W losing Afghanistan

b) Fuck Nixon, but Eisenhower deserves the blame for Vietnam (admittedly one of the reasons he did that was because he thought it would give him political cover to shut McCarthyism down, but still)

This sounds like a metaphor for American politics

Except your whole argument requires migrants to still be getting paid sub-minimum wages and denied access to the social safety net which obviously isn’t something anyone left of center supports. Instead of advocating for the state to harass poor brown people yet again why don’t you direct some of your rage towards the employers who profit off of their exploitation instead.

These are legal experts and have lots of skills in this area

Nah, they’re hack idiots who couldn’t reason their way out of a haunted house and cover up that fact by just throwing fancy words and empty latin phrases at stuff until normal people just give up and assume they must be smart and serious people. Translate their arguments to 8th grade English and they sound dumb as shit because they are dumb as shit.

Kind of an empty news story when DOJ is simultaneously fighting over half the states in court to even get this data in the first place and likely to lose that fight, but I’m not surprised CBS is pretending this is a done deal to scare people away from voting

Yeah, I mean on the one hand I think what Dems were theoretically asking for here was stupid (more regulations on ICE in exchange for more funding for ICE when they have already been flagrantly violating laws left and right), so in terms of actual policy coming out of this I think this is the second best outcome we could have gotten (best would have been keeping DHS shut down until Trump was impeached and removed and ICE was totally defunded or until midterms and reassessing from there).

But on the other, the fact that Dems didn’t get the stupid thing they were asking for is a pretty hollow victory to campaign on for anyone paying close attention, and (assuming the House and Trump sign off on this) now we can’t point to the TSA and FEMA and etc. agencies being unable to function under this administration as further evidence they need to be removed from power as quickly as possible, which is really the only logically defensible position anyone can take.

according to some people on this platform now

But your point is well taken

I know there are some members of this community who are at least as surprised that anybody living in Arkansas has a moral compass

Agreed with a lot of this, but

Yes, AI will probably not be used to replace plumbers, car mechanics, carpenters, etc.

Lots of those people did get replaced already by technology, it was just called industrialization and assembly lines. What’s left now is artisan wood working and emergency repair work for plumbers and mechanics, and you can’t employ all of America’s blue collar workers with luxury stuff and emergencies.

Another thing that doesn’t get mentioned here - if AI and self driving cars work out like they want them to, goodbye delivery work and long haul trucking, which actually is a ton of blue collar jobs. Also, self checkout machines and chatbots are eating customer service jobs that less educated workers might otherwise be doing.

The biggest portion of blue collar jobs that will be tough to automate will be everything associated with construction just because they’re moving to different sites and jobs faster than it would take to get bots well trained to do that work, but if unemployment jumps and new home sales even look like they might slow down those jobs disappear fast.

My point is - if technology and labor rights get to the point the office workers are starting to feel the bite, guaranteed blue collar workers are all teeth marks by that point. Not that I would expect a CEO to talk honestly about that.

Any candidate for the 2028 Democratic presidential primary better be getting asked about pardoning all these people

Yep, and having seen all the ways for profit market based entities have screwed people over my entire life I think the only real answer to this problem of construction is a massive public works project. Housing healthcare education and public safety are all too important to be left up to markets.

Even if this exact version gets passed into law, courts are going to kill the ban on venture capital buying homes or the rich assholes will just find a loophole, and the slashing of regulations and subsidies just mean for profit developers are going to get paid taxpayer money to build barely affordable shit boxes that will fall apart in a few years

We need actual public housing and to tax the big investors out of existence

“Plan to close doors in front of smouldering crater where barn once stood under consideration”