It's really not about him losing votes, though. Despite the fact that there are a truly mind-boggling number of idiot cultists out there who are for some reason devoted to this moron, there are not enough of them to win an election. Both candidates need to appeal to the vast pool of undecided or apathetic voters in order to win. In 2020, the Democrats won because that pool of people were highly motivated to oust Trump after living through 4 years of his presidency, but people have very short memories and even shorter attention spans, and so the Dems can't really count on the same thing happening again in 2024.

When Trump was running against Biden at the beginning of this race, things were looking grim for the Democrats, because that group of morons who can't be bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to what's happening in their government (apathetic & undecided voters) decided that they couldn't really tell the difference between two senile, doddering old men, so Trump's rambling incoherence wasn't that big of a problem. Now that he's facing someone more than 2 decades younger than him who still has the complete use of her mental faculties, it's imperative for him to do SOMETHING to make himself not look like a shoeless old man in a hospital gown wandering between lanes of traffic after escaping from his rest home. This debate didn't do that.

It's amazing to me that anybody on his team was shocked he did so poorly. It just indicates to me that they're absolutely shit at their jobs. Being a good advisor requires you to be able to recognize the difference between reality and fantasy, and anybody who thought Trump would do well in this debate after spending any amount of time actually listening to him has failed this most basic of tests.

I'm surprised that he did so well in the debate, actually. I mean, he still got absolutely bodied, but no microphones picked up the sound of him shitting himself this time, so he's already showing an improvement over his debate performance with Biden.

Edit: it just occurred to me that Trump randomly shitting himself could be the reason his team were so gung ho for muted mics: it means that there's 50% less chance he'll drop a deuce while near a hot mic. If so, that's a great strategy on their part.

I suppose the title isn't exactly misleading, but it certainly left me with the impression that he had another sundowning moment where he gets off on a tangent and then a tangent to that tangent, and never gets back to the original point.

This wasn't that. He was talking shit, obviously, but his drivel contained cogent points. It's probably the most coherent I've seen him be in the last year or two. While he was speaking (and making one coherent point), he was interrupted by a mosquito, and then took a moment to mention how much he hates mosquitoes. Then, and this is the important bit, he went back to his original point. Everybody does this. Usually, it's nothing more than just waving your hand around in front of your face and saying: "fucking mosquitoes!", but it's the same general principle nonetheless.

Contrast this with his whole shark / boat / battery scenario. Or his long, rambling diatribe about how powerful "nuclear" is. This is nothing.

Sorry if this makes me sound like uncultured swine, but is this piece a reference to anything? Like did this artist want to do an homage to something else? Or is it just a bunch of random bullshit of varying shades of white placed into a concise pattern?

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

The thing that most disturbs me is how cavalier the bystanders were about the guy having a gun, which the group proceeded to fight over. They're just sitting there filming and providing commentary. My ass would be out of the pool, out to the parking lot, into my car, and driving home.

50 bucks says that the instant that Arlington staffer's info gets made public, s/he'll be inundated with death threats from Cult 45ers.

I prefer using higher precision when responding like this. I will often say something like: "137.825%". Mostly, I do this because it makes the other person feel awkward, and I do it because I constantly feel awkward, and so I just want other people to feel a tiny portion of what it's like being me.

I mean, everything does happen for a reason. It's just that most of the time, the reason is "because so-and-so is an asshole". It makes it essentially a useless platitude, but not an untrue one. I definitely take issue with the implication of it, that there's some supreme, all-knowing authority in the universe who has this complicated, labyrinthine plan for everyone that involves massive amounts of suffering. That whole "mysterious plan of God" thing is a way for Christians to take credit for all of the good stuff that happens, while downplaying all of the bad stuff that happens as just "part of God's plan!" It's insidious.

Also, in case you're not familiar, this is referencing a tweet from someone whose neighbor told him that his cats keep getting eaten by coyotes. He asks the neighbor how many cats he has, to which the neighbor replies that he just goes and gets a new cat from the shelter every time. So the guy says "sounds like you're just feeding shelter cats to coyotes", at which point the neighbor's daughter starts crying.

Huh. Guess I've got some vision loss.

Typically, when links are published to link aggregator sites like lemmy or reddit or whatever, the link aggregator looks for a meta tag marked thumbnail to grab the URL for the image. It looks like this:

<meta name="thumbnail" content="https://path/to/img.jpg">

In this case, the thumbnail tag contains a url to a different picture, and the one used for this link is nowhere to be found, so I’m guessing that when OP created the link, Lemmy cached the thumbnail picture from the provided URL, and then afterwards, AP changed it in their article.

By the way, on packing the Supreme Court ... you may know this already. It's unconstitutional.

The only things the constitution has to say on the matter of the supreme court are: there has to be one, the supreme court judges should be paid, and the president can appoint supreme court justices with the advice and consent of the senate. It is completely silent on matters of how many supreme court justices there should be, or how long their terms should be.

For all his many, many faults, Mitch McConnell is not a profoundly stupid man, so I'm sure he knows this. Since he very likely knows this already, he probably has a reason for lying to the public on the matter. If the president does appoint several more justices, it's not like the Republicans can sue: no lower court would take the case, and the supreme court would already be packed with people who will actually be faithful to the constitution. So legal threats are a complete non-starter. That just leaves non-legal threats, which is what I think this is. I think Glitch is previewing the Republican strategy in the case of Harris getting more justices hired, which is they'll stoke up the fear and hatred of their idiotic, mouth breathing supporters. It's a thinly-veiled threat of treason.

The US is not a member of the ICC. Their arrest warrant on Putin has fuck all to do with the US. And besides, under no circumstances would the US desire the arrest of Putin. We won't even allow Zelensky to use US-provided munitions to target Russian airfields; you think we'd risk nuclear retaliation by arresting their president??

I get that you didn't put much thought into this post, but god damn. That space between your ears isn't just free real estate.

"Average American president attempts 0.004 coups per year" factoid actually just a statistical error. Average American president attempts 0 coups per year. Traitors Donal, who dyes face orange & attempts over 0.25 coups each year, is an outlier adn should not have been counted.

Here's a good write-up of it. It's pretty hilarious.

Shit like this is why red flag laws were invented.

This person's basically complaining about Deadpool breaking the 4th wall, not taking the Marvel franchises seriously, and having a cavalier attitude towards storytelling. Has he never heard of Deadpool before? That's, like, the core of his personality. This movie was the most Deadpool that a Deadpool movie could be. I mean, I get it if you don't much care for Deadpool, but if that's the case, why go to see a Deadpool movie in the first place? This entire article just makes it sound like this guy loves the smell of his own farts.

I mean, every piece of copaganda is like: "look, see? We're just your friendly, neighborhood guys! We like playing basketball with black kids! Isn't that cool??"

I don't know that they specifically had a campaign that said: "we're not a gang", but that's kind of the subtext of all of the PR they do.

For a group that wants to distance itself from gangs, it sure doesn't help their case when they jump in new recruits.