MAGA crowd is very easy to scam and exploit

A lot of this isn’t scamming, strictly speaking. It’s a legalized form of bribery.

The Qataris are some of the biggest holders of these coins, as a means of extracting foreign policy concessions from the President

Nobody respects this man.

He’s a tool to extract surplus labor value from the country. And in that regard, he’s a national treasure. The folks in Trump’s inner circle have enriched themselves enormously. And the wealth they’ve accrued will be recycle into future generations as a means of bribing, extorting, and abusing the next generation of “democratic” leadership into furthering the cycle of abuse.

When Trump dies, he’ll be held up with the same veneration as Andrew Jackson, William McKinley, and Ronald Reagan. The icon of what a President should be - an extraordinarily useful idiot.

They feign respect of Trump while holding the knives to stab him in the back

Trump won’t be stabbed in the back. He’s the golden goose, shitting out the US Treasury like clockwork. He’ll be celebrated for ages by the oligarchy. The gift that never stopped giving.

Reduce federal spending, reduce federal taxes, and let states manage their own policies

This would require states to pick up their own slack. And even the bluest of blue states seem loathe to inherit the responsibilities of the federal government. California doesn’t want to implement its own national health system. Vermont doesn’t want to implement Single Payer. Massachusetts doesn’t want to make state universities free of charge. Colorado and Virginia don’t want to cut their policing budgets or implement public housing and jobs programs. Washington State won’t match its minimum wage to the state cost of living.

All of these governments are run by corporate oligarchs. Some of them wear a liberal veneer, financing parades for the wealthiest members of the LGBTQ community or issuing land acknowledgements for the destitute native populations sequestered on their reservations. But actual socialist policies - publicly owned utilities, publicly owned and distributed agriculture products, fully democratic school boards, free-at-point-of-service mass transit - are vanishingly rare in practice.

There will still be people unhappy with their state’s policies, but moving to another state is a lot easier than moving to another country.

The biggest draw to a given state is employment with wages in excess of cost of living. Texas continues to bring in lots of people abroad because the O&G industry pays very well and the cost of living is comparatively cheap. People are fleeing NYC in droves largely because the cost of living exceeds even the unusually high local wages. Meanwhile, West Virginia is emptying out with the death of the coal industry while Utah balloons its population with California retires and Silicon Valley tax dodgers.

State policies that fixate on economic growth do far more to drive migration than any kind of social policy, because you can’t eat social policy. If Florida has transgender people drawn and quartered, but their real estate market and entertainment districts can land 20-year-olds into the six-figure income range, more people will continue to move there. If New Hampshire launches a full blown secession movement from the tyrannical Trump Regime, but its townships keep getting overrun by bears, you’re not going to see an influx of new residents.

Sooooo that goes both way, right?

Republicans get to be vindictive because they believe they’ve got nothing to lose. They don’t see blue states as winnable and they don’t believe they need those votes to run the country. They focus power within the executive branch and secure the courts in order to rubber stamp unitary executive authority.

Democrats have to be servile because they believe they can’t win without red-state support. They consistently insist that states like Texas and Florida are within their reach if they just move a little farther rightward. And they believe they need the support from these states in order to secure the power to govern nationally. They focus on securing legislative majorities because they believe they need 60 votes in the Senate and a surplus of Democrats in the House in order to affect any kind of policy reforms.

Blue states can stop paying fed taxes, right?

Taxes are collected at the point of individual employment and business transaction. My employer sends a chunk of my paycheck directly to the IRS. My company pays business taxes directly to the US Treasury. None of it passes through any state or local agency. And state/local agencies have no authority over the federal collections process.

Blue states do host a variety of federal assets and employees. So, you could see a state government try and pull a Ft. Sumtner - effectively threatening to evict federal employees and claim federal property as their own - because they don’t like federal policy. But the last time states tried that it ended very badly for them.

Texas is a shithole state with less freedoms than I have as a Californian.

When you’re getting your head caved in by the cops, the LAPD doesn’t feel much freer than the thugs running Austin.

I can walk down the street right now and buy weed from the weed store. Texans can’t.

Most major Texas cities have fully given up on marijuana prosecution as a waste of time and resources. Meanwhile, California’s the state with ICE agents crawling up everyone’s assholes, while your governor does dick all to stop it. Quixotically safer to be undocumented in San Antonio than San Bernadino, simply because your state is on the President’s shit list.

Texans are a bunch of cucks that let their legislators shit on them.

Californias are a bunch of cucks that let their legislators shit on them, then insists the shit doesn’t stink.

Dianne Feinstein was more responsible for the appointment of Amy Comey Barret than Ted Cruz, ffs. Your state is as big of a fascist shithole as anywhere in the country. You just cover yourself in Patchouli and dose yourselves in Kambucha, then pretend you don’t use slave labor to keep your wildfires in check.

Some of those that work forces

Are the same that burn crosses

Back during my time at the University of Texas at Austin, the Young Conservatives of Texas would host “Immigrant Roundup”. Members would dress in big orange “Illegal Migrant” shirts and students would be encouraged to chase them around campus with butterfly nets.

This was considered perfectly fine and good by university administrators. But the LGBTQ club had to meet off campus, because it was immoral and in violation of state laws forbidding sodomy.

Cipher: “I love steak. Yum yum yum. Even if its fake, I love steak.”

Agent Smith, smiling: “As soon as I don’t need you anymore, I’m going to turn you into a literal cockroach and step on you.”

And the corporate world comes to a screeching halt.

In theory, businesses would be required to register their VPNs and… idk, this would limit access to them somehow?

Much like with the Assault Weapons Ban and the assorted online porn bans and strip club bans and dry counties and SEC rules on insider trading, etc, etc, etc a lot of this boils down to “how hard do you want to work in order to enforce this?”

And the short answer is “we only want an excuse to arrest people arbitrarily”. So a VPN can quickly because a “everyone with an Internet connection is a criminal suspect”. And then you just harass the people you want to harass under cover of “we thought you had kiddie porn” as an excuse

BYD tends to be higher end (although the Seagull comes in around $11k). If you want a cheaper compact, try a Geely Xing Yuan or Chery Arrizo ($8k-13k range). For a sportier economy car, there’s the Xiaomi SU7 ($30k).

The big catches with these cars is that they’re far smaller than their American equivalents.

Unironically, to a degree. 40 years ago, you could buy an economy car from an American dealer that got 70 mpg. Now you can buy a car twice the size with an enormous block of lithium as its fuel tank.

WTYP had a great episode on the end of the small American car, with the failure of the Ford Pinto.

The American auto industry basically doesn’t make small cars anymore. So much of the modern car price is just the volume of car you’re required to purchase.

I don’t think you get to take money from the Israeli government if you don’t continue to promote propaganda

Sure you do. Just vote the correct way and the money flows. Maybe not as much as when you’re out there shilling professionally. But keeping your mouth shut (or issuing some meally mouth “I condemn Hamas and support a two state solution”) is enough to keep stay in their good graces.

I know it seems like I can trace the Heritage Foundation to everything wrong with the world in 2025.

They’re part of Matt Taibbi’s Vampire Squid. Like, it’s easy to trace it back to them, sure. And the Federalist Society. And the Mercers and Adelsons. And ALEC. And the Young Conservatives of Texas.

It’s movement conservativism which, at its heart, is a project to extract labor value from the rest of the world at the highest velocity possible. A vast right wing conspiracy, as the saying goes.

running away from AIPAC

Puts on the They Live glasses

continuing to take money under the table while pandering to small dollar donors during the primary season

It’s a complex machine. Unfortunately, there’s no silver bullet. Exposure therapy helps avoid some allergies later in life. But other people just draw the generic short straw.

We gave our son a mix of powdered common allergens in his formula early on. So far, so good.

Knock on legumes

Republicans have done an excellent job of selecting their voters. They’ll survive the mid terms, then come back and sweep the next election cycle