Crap is also friggin shrinking too. A bunch of packages of things I buy are now a little bit smaller than they were like 5-10 years ago.

Yet. There’s still more juice to squeeze in the exciting world of trains.

I’m not going to pretend I’m a political expert but from everything I can tell you are spot on. The right here is moving farther right at a much faster rate than the left is moving left. The other interesting (and depressing) caveat is that people that lean right, at least recently, tend to be much more staunchly right in their beliefs. People that lean left are often times more splintered. Which is why you get people like Bernie Sanders that are outspokenly independent but run as a left Democrat because they have a much better chance of winning if they join up with one of the two parties and they find a good amount of support on the left but virtually none on the right.

And yes! From the rooftops yes! I agree with you that it’s on the Democrats (or either party really but since the Democrats have ground to make up we’ll go with them) to move the party and meet the voters but so far they absolutely refuse to do so. This is why you are seeing such a high degree of dissatisfaction within the democratic voter base. The party is forcing candidates out that the people in their own party don’t really want, much less people that are undecided. It is truly surprising how out of touch they are with their own voter base. Which stinks because the right is (at least until very recently) very strongly united behind their movement.

Because people like you…

Ah damn. I thought there was a decent chance at a constructive political discourse. But I see I we’re just skipping straight to finger pointing (which is quite entertaining as all signs point to us being at least ostensibly politically aligned). But you are right. I concede. This is all because of me and evil people like me. You’re 100% right. Surely it has nothing to do with the system that has all of us boxed into nicely manicured corners.

Just remember the 1st and only rule of political finger pointing in the US. Keep it eye level or lower. Don’t look up.

I mean yeah of course. But look at how many people in the country actually are 3rd party. Like I said if the country wasn’t very clearly and decisively divided into 2 parties it would be different. But the fact is people in the US now are typically either pretty far left or pretty far right. The amount of people in the middle (like truly in the middle) is absolutely miniscule - less than 3% last I checked. If 100% of the 3rd party people voted 3rd party, it wouldn’t amount to much sadly. I would absolutely love for that to change but we are wedged so far into these two parties that it will be a loooong time before that happens.

Your opposition party would be absolutely thrilled if you voted 3rd party. There is no conspiracy to stop you from doing so. I’d argue the bigger conspiracy is against changing how we vote and how a winner gets chosen as that would make it much easier for a 3rd party candidate to make headway. As it stands, the more people they can get to throw their votes away instead of voting for someone that actually has a chance of winning (unless it’s their party of course) the happier they’ll be.

I would be so happy to be wrong here but over the years this has only gotten worse and worse, exacerbating the problem and pushing us farther into this hellhole of diametrically opposed political theatre. But at least we are HOT HOT HOT as a country now right?! 🔥🚒 🔥

I’m right there with you but until there’s an alternative voting system (like RCV, STV, or STAR or something), a vote for a 3rd party is as good as a vote for the opposition party. It sucks but that’s the price of a ridiculous divided 2 party system. Well, there’s many prices to pay for that actually but that’s one of them…

This was my first thought. It reminds me of the highway tolls in Illinois. They were originally announced to be temporary until they paid for the highways’ construction themselves… in 1958. They discovered they like money and made them permanent.

I can’t help but feel like a huge, huge problem is that like half the country, and the most rich and powerful of us, are fully behind the same things that everyone else wants to gather up and blow up DC or something over. This is not like the country is united at all. Its more like half of the Americans (the poor half) are super unhappy with what’s happening and the other half absolutely love it. Makes things a lot harder.

What are we doing? What’s going on?

It’s trickling down any minute now!!!

I feel like it would have to be state level or nothing right? I can’t imagine she won’t get pardoned for anything and everything on the federal level unless she crosses Trump or something. She bent over backwards kissing his ass more than anyone. I gotta imagine she has a pardon waiting for her.

This was so bat shit insane to me. I spoke with multiple people that swore up and down it was a heart warming gesture and everyone was being ridiculous for even suggesting it looked like a Nazi salute. If there was an Olympic event for sig heiling, this shit would have gotten the gold medal. Perfect 10’s across the board. The second one was a little weak tho. Maybe like 7.3/10

It already was. Fun fact, Penn Wharton just came out with a full breakdown of federal spending as it pertains to civil benefits with regards to your age. In other words, how much the government spends on its citizens according to age. For fiscal year 2025, the federal government is spending $43,700 for every person over the age of 64. Conversely, it spends $4,300 on every person under the age of 26. That works out to the government spending 10x more on elderly people than children.

The full breakdown is here if anyone is interested. We’re great again!!

Yep. As usual. Mission has already been accomplished. But I’m sure there will be severe punishments for breaking the law. 100% sure. So totally sure. Positive.

Unfortunately we live in a time and a place where this idiot absolutely has more public sway than a lot of members of Congress and basically all of local government. This country does have a reality tv star as president after all.

I mean yes but at this point Trumpism is basically it’s own party. I mean in the midterms the single biggest issue among gop candidates was how much of a Trump supporter the candidate was. Plenty of people lost solely because the public didn’t believe they would follow Trump off a cliff. It’s bonkers.

Around me it’s not so much that the data centers use so much that it raises the price for everyone. It’s that the state government wants their business so bad that it has agreed to raise the prices of utilities (water and electricity) for everyone living around the area to subsidize the operational cost of the datacenters. Our electricity bill is up 30% from 2024 and most of the datacenters are still under construction

Just to be clear, this money was already spent by the previous administration on federal leases that were going to be used to build these offshore farms. The government will now be reimbursing the company the money it spent on those leases. Not quite just paying the company to not do something like the headline makes it seem. But that’s now $1 billion that could certainly be put to better use elsewhere that will be wasted paying this company back.

It’s also embarrassingly short sided for a myriad of reasons but that doesn’t matter anymore. We’re great again!

It is 1 billion percent the norm around me. I personally have been fined for three different basketball hoops in two states by boomer ass HoA board members. They (boomers and HoA’s alike) are literally the anti fun police.

https://youtube.com/shorts/R7LsubMttMs