• 8 Posts
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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: October 20th, 2023

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  • Can we? Yes. Immediately sending peacekeeping forces to prevent the IDF from continuing to engage in genocide and coordination with neighboring countries to figure out whether this is a relocation situation or a proper two state solution (and what that would require).

    Will we? No. Because if we cared we would have done it decades ago. The US doesn’t care because we decided Israel are our allies in the region and most of NATO falls along those lines. And neighboring countries don’t care because they don’t actually like the Palestinian people (and actively block refugees) and mostly just want to hurt Israel through them.


  • It can be hit or miss with some particularly stupid government workers, but Passport Cards are very much a thing and qualify as Real ID Compliant.

    As a passport it is only valid for like Canada and Mexico but it is well worth the extra 20 or 30 bucks when you get a passport. On travel it is a nice ID that you don’t REALLY care if it gets stolen (since your Driver’s License is back at the hotel). Also incredibly useful when you need multiple forms of ID for something.

    But also would not be a horrible choice as a non-driver ID. Just a hassle to get one without a Driver’s License because 'murica.



  • I mean… that IS how you get a passport. Just replace “police station” with “post office”.

    The issue is that the US is comparable in size to the EU. Even excluding the flyover states, people can spend an entire lifetime just going on domestic trips for holidays and the like.

    So the vast majority of Americans see no need for a passport until they have booked their dream trip and realize that France is a different country. Hence the mad rush and expedited processing and so forth.


    I personally make life more inconvenient for myself because I refuse to deal with booking time for photos at a post office or pay a pharmacy to do it for me so I end up spending ten minutes in gimp formatting things every N years. But that is very much a stupid me thing.


  • project 2025 likely ends with trump and the magats. Because it is almost entirely based upon the idea of a POTUS who actively has no idea how government works and doesn’t want to do anything other than get headlines.

    Because under a romney or a cheney? They don’t need project 2025 because steps will already be taken. Just like they have been since reagan with the bushes gradually eroding away democracy.

    And… the reality is that it is inevitable that republicans will gain power again. Because The Left will pretty rapidly be at each other’s throats once trump is gone (just note all the Bernie Or Bust crew who still can’t shut the fuck up about the most important event in the past 8 years…). And people will lose interest in voting because they didn’t get exactly what they want.

    The hope is that Kamala actually acts and works to restore those checks and balances so that four years of a republican is four years of a mess for Democrats to clean up and not the first four years of Gilead.



  • I saw unsubstantiated reports claiming there was 10-20 grams of high explosive (eg C4). Which looks pretty “right” based on the footage I looked at before remembering this would be faces of death. An energetic “explosion” coming out the side of the pager that, combined with the metal from the batteries or the interior plates of the pager, would generate a good amount of shrapnel. So high odds of death if you were looking at your pager to read the message and almost guaranteed injury and cuts otherwise. And, if you were gripping your pager on the wrong side, likely loss of fingers (like a fire cracker in the hand).

    Its one reason that a big part of securing your supply chains is to actually inspect what you purchase. (Allegedly) Israel with a few hours in a warehouse overnight could swap out a LOT of pager backplates in ways that are more or less indetectable at a glance or even picking it up (20 grams is nothing). But if you were to weigh those and realize they are 20 grams heavier than all the other pagers you bought (since packaged goods are fairly consistent), that should raise a lot of red flags.

    But I am not aware of even government orgs (let alone terrorist orgs) who are willing to put the effort in to do that.







  • Its unclear how many “moderate republicans” will vote for her. In large part because it is unclear how many “moderate republicans” there actually are and it is worth remembering that folk like liz cheney and romney largely voted in lockstep with trump and the magats outside of MAYBE one or two issues that personally impact them. And it isn’t like any of the “former Republican leaders” have particularly strong support bases considering they lost to the magats years ago.

    The reality is that this is just part of the republican party trying to prepare for a post-trump election. trump supported candidates consistently lost downballot and the primaries for this election were a shitshow. maga/tea party republicans die with trump so they are making sure they can go back to reagan/bush style “We are the party of decorum and church rights. You need to meet us in the middle and let us kill just a few trans folk per day”





  • it is unclear just how much trump is angry at ivanka and jared for allegedly narcing on them.

    But pretty sure even eric and don jr know they are getting dick all. He openly loathes them and it might be his only redeeming quality.

    Nah. It is just the nature of being the party of gun nuts while openly failing almost all of their purity tests. We actually saw similar (just to a much lesser degree) when trump said something like “I love vaccines” and was boo’d like crazy.

    He is a symptom of the rot. Not the source. And by and large he just tries to ride it as best he can.



  • I mean, taking the conquered as slaves also has a lot of history behind it. So does ritualistic sacrifice to get your way (hmmm).

    But hey, that is a good enough reason. So please let me know who I should cheer for and call a hero for making the world a better place by killing themselves. Just like I need to know who should be property of others and who shouldn’t

    Or maybe, just maybe, we can realize that it is massively fucked up to celebrate suicide just because it might be politically advantageous even though, time and time again, it isn’t even that?