ziggurter

Yeah. People forget, even here, that the messaging you get during an election campaign is the absolute most radical a politician is EVER going to reach for, and that they're never even going to reach that while in office. It always, always, always goes the other way. No such "hiding-their-power-level" unicorn has ever existed in liberal electoralism, nor will they.

I don't remember, sorry. Pretty sure Obama was president at the time, though it could have been Dubya. It/they went into particularly immigrants working for Southern...food/agriculture businesses, I believe.

The surprising bit is that he can actually remember something he said. Maybe unburdening him of the stress of being president has allowed a tiny bit of rebound from the dementia.

Imma die of irony poisoning.

So...pretty much exactly as it's been since at least Obama, and maybe going back as far as Clinton. The whole point of criminalizing immigration is for the corpos to be able to use deportation as a stick. They 100% already do, calling ICE to lay people off, and violating labor rights with the literal terrorism of border militarization as the repressive force that prevents resistance. Whole documentaries have been made about this as a very real, existing phenomenon.

But with like +800% more police funding, of course.

I will be happy to see basic socdem policies like free bus service, rent freezes, a few Government owned 'ration' stores.

Sure. He's not even going to do those things, but it's good he's running on them. The point is for people not to get invested in trying to kick the football again. This guy is a Democrat, not a leftist. While he's seemingly sticking to his anti-zionist guns (good), in other ways he's not even as "radical" as Bernie Sanders.

He's being honest. It wouldn't hurt him with the people who voted for him to very directly say, "Billionaires shouldn't exist," and stick with the position. Hell, Bernie fuckin' Sanders has said that. It's absolutely uncontroversial among the people he is courting for the election. And the other people are going to attack him just as voraciously either way. There's no reason for him to not be genuine about it.

Even in the U.S., we used to literally be sold music by mainstream rap performers singing about killing cops. It's a sick, sick world that makes me nostalgic for that kind of appropriation and commodification by capitalists. WTF?!

When confronted on a statement that seemed to indicate Zohran Mamdani doesn't think billioniares should exist:

The vision that I'm speaking of, it's a vision that I want everyone to enjoy and benefit from, including billionaires....

So you weren't proposing that your policies would ultimately lead to a New York with no billionaires?

No. That's not what I was proposing.

— Zohran Mamdani on Morning Edition (NPR), July 1, 2025

Could also be that Israel is violating the ceasefire, but in "minor" ways that Iran would like to ignore so as to not "have to" retaliate.

~~Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0~~ Ottawa Missile Crisis 1.0.

(This is a bit. Don't @ me.)

Also, LOL: I just noticed that Google Maps lists Washington DC as just "Washington" now, with no "DC" in evidence. Weird. Pot shot at the "blue" state?