Not saying it’s right, but only appropriate things can be advertised to children, so in the UK that’s no junk food for example

When was the last time any company got prosecuted for violating that? And was the fine less than the profit they made by violating the law?

Coming from the same ghouls that vow to “protect women” from the evil trans people.

Fall from within is one thing. Being toppled externally is another entirely.

Governments don’t actually get toppled by mobs of protesters storming the palace gates. Machine guns are quite effective at preventing that. They topple when some other individual or faction convinces enough key players in the country that the new guys are a better option. The protesters only storm the gates when the army decides to look the other way. And the army only decides to look the other way when there’s some viable alternative to the existing government. No high-ranking general with a retirement to worry about wants to see the state they serve collapse into complete anarchy.

The point of this is that internal revolutions tend to be good for their people. A revolutionary movement can only successfully topple a government when they can make a good case to a lot of powerful people that they can competently manage the gears of state.

But imposed from without? You can invade a place and stick someone on the throne, but they won’t have any legitimacy. And that power and legitimacy vacuum leads to sectarian violence and civil wars. Or, as in the case of the Shah, the foreign-imposed leader maintains their position through shear force and barbarity.

I mean, that’s what they said about Saddam. And then Iraq had a million dead over the next decade…and ISIS.

Can we go for something more Biblical? Maybe struck by lightning immediately after, in an outdoor public speech, denying having any involvement with Epstein?

Hey Fates, are you listening? Can we just make the Caesar metaphor completely on the hose and have him be stabbed to death by a group of Republican Senators?

I want to buy a telescoping flag pole. Forget half mast, I want to be able to fly flags at double mast when someone particularly wicked dies.

I could see why people would stick with it. It’s a relatively low-stress job that pays decently, has government labor protections, government benefits, and doesn’t require a lot of education. Some searching suggests the average pay of a TSA worker is $56k. Plus retirement and health insurance. And the only credential required is a high school diploma or a GED.

What other job that requires nothing more than a high school diploma has pay and benefits that good? Maybe if you start your own business up. But in terms of wage labor, very few things come as good, at that education level, as a TSA job. A couple, each working at the TSA, can easily bring in $100-150k per year if they stay there awhile.

It’s quite understandable why the TSA agents won’t quit during a shutdown. When the money is flowing, being a TSA agent is a pretty decent gig.

I mean, Trump is known for a love of gold objects, maybe he bought some old antique ring at some point? And it is a miracle that he’s lived for long as he has, considering his diet and lifestyle…

they’re talking about people who have debilitating medical or psychiatric conditions

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_abuse_of_psychiatry_in_the_Soviet_Union

In times like ours, I’m going to oppose any attempt to expand the powers governments have at putting people in cages, however benevolent the aim.

“Do I look like some STD-ridden guy?”

“Well, STD-ridden guys tend to refuse condoms. That’s how they got their STDs. So you tell me.”

Yup, and Uber will cave, saying cis women have a right to “be comfortable.” They’ll ignore that women being comfortable was the main justification for Jim Crow laws.

It’s really a question of scale. You don’t make the majority of your draftees political draftees. Imagine if only one in twenty soldiers is drafted due to their political activities. You’re not trying to draft every single person in the country that would want to vote against you. Rather, you draft people who start up resistance movements or alternative political parties. You don’t draft everyone who attends the protest. But you do draft all the protest leaders. You start with the most prominent and go down the line until you’ve filled up as many of your political drafts as you feel comfortable.

It can be a very useful tool for a despot to target their political opposition. And it also has a silencing effect. It won’t take long for people to notice and to prove that the draft board is politically biased. But then the courts OK it for some bullshit reason. Now you live in a country with a draft board that is politically motivated and not even trying to hide it. Imagine what effect that has on people’s willingness to resist the regime.

But yeah, imagine being one of those political draftees. You’re one in twenty. And everyone is told you’re a political draftee, so no one wants to trust you. They know even being near you could cast suspicion on them. The vast majority of those around you are just poor unlucky bastards whose number came up. They tried their best to remain outside of politics, but politics came for them anyway. They just want to quietly do their time, keep their head down, and do their best to survive. Imagine being one of those one in twenty and trying to organize a coup. Maybe it would work. But history shows such rebellions are quite rare.

Oh, they’ll draft him. In fact, they’ll draft him, and he’ll rise up the ranks with record speed! All his assignments will be positions like “Army Special Liaison to Customs and Border Patrol.” Any role they can find that can puff up his resume while putting him in absolutely zero direct physical danger and requiring next to no actual skills or duties. He’ll do photoshoots in uniform. And Trump will solemnly say, “I’m sorry we have to bring back the draft. But I believe this is so necessary that I have drafted my own son into this conflict.” Or they’ll find a way to fabricate a story of military heroism around him.

Be careful what you wish for. That’s what Baron being drafted would actually look like. The only way Barron would actually be drafted and treated as a common conscript would be if he miraculously developed a conscience and publicly denounced his father. That might get him drafted for real.

I wonder how much this actually happens though. Does no one ask, “wait…should we really be giving our political opposition access to and training with heavy weaponry?”

Setting up a meat grinder can also be a great way to target your political opposition. A corrupt draft board can draft members of their political opposition. And once in uniform, they can be given the suicide assignments.

Exactly. Is there sexism in the electorate? Sure. But those folks are unlikely to vote for a Democratic candidate anyway. Maybe there are a handful of people that are deeply sexist but still want to vote for Democrats, but it kind of goes against the entire core brand message of the party. Just how many people are there that would never want to vote for a woman president, but also want to protect immigrant rights, queer rights, black and brown rights, etc?

And we should also not ignore positive sexism. Are there some people that would vote for a male Democratic candidate but not a female one? Probably. But there are probably even more people that would be persuaded to go from non-voter to Democratic voter simply to see the first woman elected president.

The example I always keep coming back to is Margaret Thatcher, curse her bones. She was elected prime minister of Britain…in the 1980s! Britain has a very similar political culture to the US. And she won while running as a conservative! Left of center voters, the people most likely to support a female candidate, opposed her. And rightly so because of her policies. But she was able to win over conservatives. If a conservative woman can become the leader of the UK in the 1980s, there is zero reason a liberal woman can’t do so in the US in the 2020s.

And yet, Biden barely won in 2020. He only won in 2020 because of Covid. And polls at the time he dropped out indicated he was on track to losing far worse than Kamala did. I think you’re just projecting your sexism onto the electorate.

The point is, in a country of 330 million people, we have no shortage of extremely competent and qualified people to serve at the highest levels of office. Sure you might vote in someone bad, but at least this keeps the bad incumbents from sticking around forever.

I think you’re just projecting your own sexism onto the electorate as a whole.