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Makeitstop

Makeitstop@lemmy.world
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Especially funny since that former president is a much better example of someone who clearly doesn’t do very well when it comes to following the ten commandments.

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How well does it operate during sub-optimal conditions? Electricity can be stored in a battery, so you can spread your power out over time. I would expect some flexibility in this, since heat doesn’t instantly dissipate, but if conditions remain poor for an extended period, I would think this would be much less resilient.

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Funny how anti-woke is always synonymous with anti-freedom. The government doesn’t approve of your opinions, and therefore must use the force of law to punish you.

The good news is, I wouldn’t expect these laws to survive in the long term. The federal government could easily preempt them since they obviously involve interstate commerce. And I suspect there’s probably some blatant viewpoint discrimination baked into the laws, but that would come down to the specifics of the wording. But even if they are content neutral, I’d argue that they violate the first amendment, which thanks to citizens united would have to be applied to financial institutions too.

And that brings us to the bad news: until congress and/or the courts are no longer held by nutjobs, I wouldn’t expect either to do anything to fix this.

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Remember, the president is absolutely above the law and can commit a coup or order political assassinations with impunity. But he can’t make decisions about how to implement policies, even when congress gives him that authority.

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1930s: We’ve accidentally wandered into the past, we have to keep a low profile and avoid doing anything to change the timeline

1960s: We’re here to study the past, so we’ve come prepared for this exact scenario, and we’ll need to be extremely careful not to do anything that interferes with the backdoor pilot history.

1980s: Hi, I’m from space and want to take your whales into the future.

But in all seriousness, for the most part Kirk does quite well in the 80s, failed attempts at profanity notwithstanding. It’s mostly Spock that gets him in trouble, and he was still recovering from that whole being dead thing.

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32 percent of Americans believe a military regime or authoritarian leader (described as a strong leader who can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts) would be a good way of governing the country.

They didn’t agree with a statement that explicitly endorsed authoritarianism or military dictatorship. They agreed with a statement that is being interpreted as the equivalent of supporting those things.

And the question itself is very open to interpretation. Does “strong” mean decisive and principled or cruel and dictatorial? Does interference refer to the normal balance of power between the three branches of government, or is it referring to extreme dysfunction, or even unconstitutional actions taken by courts and/or congress that violates constitutional principles.

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Well, he was also just keeping his head down and hanging out at a soup kitchen at the time.

Much more impressive was the fact that (iirc) he infiltrated NASA during a military satellite launch in 1968, blending in so well that you’d almost think he was invisible or something.

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How well would you fit in if you found yourself 300 years in the past? You probably have a passing knowledge of what the world was like in 1724, but would you really be able to blend in and get the little details right?

And that’s probably an easier task than going back 300 years to the 20th century, when changes were coming much more rapidly.

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Right, it’s not about whether they are America’s friend or foe, it’s only about their relationship with Trump. And unfortunately, Trump seems to be better at relating to dictators.

And it probably doesn’t help that democratically elected leaders from countries that have longstanding relationships with the US tend to expect America to live up to it’s obligations. They aren’t coming in and kissing the ring in exchange for favors, they’re putting the burden on the president to, you know, do his fucking job. “What’s that, Ukraine wants the defense funding that congress allocated for them? Well what will they do for me?”

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Obviously the only poll that matters is the actual election, and that’s months away, and anything can happen, and everyone needs to do their part no matter what.

That said, I would expect Trump’s numbers to slide a bit from time to time as we get closer to the election. The closer we get to November, the more we’ll see independent and apathetic voters start to pay a little bit of attention, and there is just so much not to like with Trump. The MAGA-dominated GOP is incredibly myopic about how their views will be seen by the average American living outside the right wing echo chamber.

And as much as it would help them, I don’t think Republicans will be able to pretend to be moderate or sensible, even for the sake of the election. There is a perverse incentive to be as extreme as possible in order to gain support from other extremists and win influence on the right, but that behavior drags the party as a whole down when it is seen by anyone who isn’t already part of the base. For example, MTG gets national support and tons of media attention despite being a representative for a little rural district that no one gives a fuck about, all because she is a loud and controversial extremist. Anyone who moderates their tone or stops themselves from saying the quiet part out loud will lose influence to those who proudly proclaim their awfulness.

None of this is to say that victory is assured. Hell, I’m not even saying it’s likely (nor am I saying that it’s unlikely). I’m just saying that I think that there’s good reason to expect Trump’s poll numbers to dip from time to time.

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