The problems of the Democratic party

Did Musk ask/tell him to back him up on that argument?

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So good to see him complaining about the truly important problems of the moment.

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No idea, but Khanna represents Silicon Valley and I don’t find him hard enough on the tech oligarchy… There is plenty of evidence that online gambling is incredibly hurtful, especially to the poor and vulnerable. John Oliver did a show on it a few months ago…

He’s also on board with that whole “abundance agenda” bullshit, which is nothing more than warmed over supply-side economics, but with an attempt to make it “more progressive”…

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Many years ago I had a roommate who I’d call a well recovered addict, and he claimed to have tried all of the available highs, but he said none of them even came close to sports betting, the feeling of losing, then some out of nowhere event changes everything, or vice versa… nothing like it.

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If gambling losses are significant enough to affect your taxes when deducted, you just might have a gambling problem.

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Don’t these predatory online gaming companies love to claim that it’s just a form of entertainment, anyway? People don’t get to deduct the money they spend on video games or Disney World vacations.

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Addiction is weird. It’s kind of hard to fully understand exactly how it all works. I’m a recovering alcohol and opiate addict. But gambling just never flipped any of the same switches for me. I’ve played slots a few times, and I just don’t get the attraction. It’s completely random and literally rigged to favor the casino, so while you might win big in the short term, in the long term, the house always wins. Always. And the game itself I don’t find interesting at all. It’s about as fun as flipping a coin to me, even with the bells and whistles. Sports betting is the same, to me, as is day trading on the stock market, for that matter. It’s all completely random and rigged to favor the house. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t like to gamble. I love poker. But there, it’s the game itself I find fun. So . . . it just doesn’t flip those chemical triggers in my brain that cause addiction. I love poker, but I also haven’t played in a couple of years. I’ll probably hit the casino after the bar exam at the end of this month, just to celebrate being done. And then I probably won’t play again for a year or two. And that doesn’t make me better than gambling addicts. It just shows that addiction is a weird thing, and it’s hard to predict who can get addicted to what. But we do know some people will get addicted to gambling, and we’ve made it super easy for those people to feed that addiction. You can literally do it on your phone right now.

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Oh no doubt, there’s no one model of addiction, like there’s no simple classification for any number of human traits.

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I never really got into gambling either. I think it was Alex Trebek who once said he doesn’t feel any great joy when winning $100, but gets really mad when he loses $100. I’m pretty much the same way. When I’m in a casino, I might drop like $20 on slots or video poker or something just for fun, but win or lose I’m pretty much done after that.

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It’s easier to destroy than create… but not THAT much easier. I really hope if we survive this and fascism falls, we have something far, far better than the Democratic party to replace it.

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But he was old. Can’t have that.

And Trump steals his BBB purposefully.

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A fighter.

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IMNSHO, it also has a lot to do with old-white-male pride. Joe shoulda gracefully stepped down into the background while supporting Kamala 100 percent.

(and in a different parallel reality that’s eg-zacly what happened, and she won, too.)

(and to me, an “elite” is someone who made it up the ladder but doesn’t necessarily expend a lotta energy helping other people climb)

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Maybe, but I also think that some white dudes will not vote for a woman, especially a Black woman. They just won’t. Both certainly contributed…

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Who’s also of East Asian extraction, was AG of California, and is a liberal who owns a Glock,

Forgive me, the patriarchy seems to be as baked-in the pueblos of Arizona, probably more so, even.

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Sure, but not like most dudes who refuse to vote for women are getting that deep into things. They don’t care about blended identities (or Glocks, unless they’re in their own faces). They care about keeping control, more than anything. They know what many men have done to women, and believe (like many white people believe) that a world turned upside down with regards to gender relations will put them on the bottom and abused…

Yeah, it’s baked in, but it’s not inevitable. We can do things in a different way, and humanity has in certain contexts. It’s hard to throw off these structures, but as Ursula K. LeGuin has said, the divine right of kings once seemed inevitable, too.

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A bittersweet reference at this particular time in our history.

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Indeed. It raises it’s ugly head again, even if it’s not necessarily an actually monarchy. In some ways, it didn’t ever fully go away, but found a new configuration in the modern dictatorship. But there is a generally understanding that it’s “bad” (except by the partisans that support it).

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Mother was a great fan of hers and of Andre Norton as well. Anne McCaffrey, though - I’m finding original paperback with the cool covers SF had in the 1970s and one could see 'em all at B. Dalton Bookseller; or, if one was patient, at the local branch of the DPL. Many branches btw, were built by WPA workers. And I’ve talked about my mom’s dad working on the Boulder Dam.

But I was raised in a union town, which was seemingly baked in and always voted Democrat (did they use “blue” and “red” back then? when did that start, I just now thought about that. lol). I mean rich snob/playboy or down-to-earth guy/Texan, Dems of the past seemed to pay attention to what voters actually wanted, not what they were told by their consultants. I hate to use the term “noblesse oblige”, because it doesn’t apply to Truman, LBJ, Carter, Clinton or Obama. I think they listened more than the gops, but out of a sense of duty and/or self-aggrandizement (figure out which one goes with which reason, LOL).

It’s just so crazy - NOW the workers are really bitching about the promise to bring industrial manufacturing back to the USA, when they mother fucking VOTED for it under Reagan - I mean, it’s on film somewhere, I’m sure.

But either party don’t care if their candidates are old unless they lose their balance/minds/whatever on camera and/or audio. Just so they’re white and they’re male, they don’t even have to take any fuckin’ tests at all. It doesn’t even matter if they were convicted on 34 counts of felony fraud How the fuck did the Dems not take advantage of that? I woulda used quotes of Susan Collins saying about trump oh he’ll get better that’s just his way blah blah blah, then show her saying “oh my dear we need to maybe do something”.

grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr LOL

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That article, and the book it’s reviewing, lost me with this quote from one of the book’s authors:

It’s not a book that has an opinion

I mean . . . what? Of course the book has an opinion. It’s a book about why the Democrats lost the election. That’s not a subject that has an objectively verifiable answer. It is, by definition, an opinion.

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