And remember, because I feel this always needs to be said with such sums...

193 million isn't enough for him, and 193 million plus whatever millions he made in years prior isn't enough for him. He's going public because he's a broken, disturbed human being that looks at his unethical levels of wealth, enough for most of the other humans that live here to live 2 dozen extravagant lifetimes, and still demands mooooooaaaaaar.

Why isn't this widely accepted as severe mental illness?! This is hoarding disorder.

These aren't big ocean house sums. These are buying politicians sums, and they are only achievable through exploiting other human beings and selfishly pocketing most of the value of their labor because you can get away with it.

China's problem is a universal problem. They're "communist" in name only. Their economy has capitalist demands for growth/metastasis, same as ours and most developed economies.

People want to have kids when they can expect those kids to live at minimum the same quality, and preferably better quality, than they themselves did and do. That just isn't the case anymore as the global economy has run out of massive new sectors for growth/metastasis and has begun eating itself. You can see this in all the entire sectors here merging into monopolies and duopolies. Constant merging isn't a business strategy, it's just trying to buy time in a failing economic model.

Capitalism has always been a long-term pyramid scheme to concentrate all the power/wealth/means/capital to a small owner class. The problem is, the con has run out of new places and ways to exploit people as you eventually can't squeeze more out of a fully exploited stone. No pensions, laughable pay, no future. Just expected to thanklessly generate capital for the owners in larger and larger quantities for the love of what? The nation trying to commoditize your entire life to profit the right people? Why would you bring another poor, desperate child to suffer such a world?

Now, in their desperation, these economies that lead their societies and governments around by the nose are desperately screaming "MORE LIVESTOCK TO EXPLOIT GOD DAMN IT!" because in lieu of not being able to squeeze any harder on existing capital batteries without being correctly told to 'get fucked,' that's all they have.

I firmly believe that is why the federalist society that runs our SCOTUS is trying to get abortion banned, as the most profitable capital batteries are desperate, poor ones. I also believe the intentional decline of our public education system is meant to address the same problem, if they can make the population stoooopid enough not to consider the lives the children of already struggling peasants would have.

This world is finite. Its resources finite. An economic model literally based on infinite continuous growth/metastasis or die is not compatible with the world as it is. In every sense, it is killing us, whether by climate change from without, and loss of actual personal meaning within, at least for the non-winning vast majority. The goal of global economics should have been to establish a sustainable population that could find equilibrium/homeostasis with our shared, COMMUNal environment we all rely on from one breath to the next. Not a lot of room for Super Yachts and private jets in such a world though...

Look at the sheer scale and number of massive, malicious mistakes that one of our billionaires makes, while having ZERO impact on their tangible quality of life or lifestyle. None. Their ego score goes down and nothing else changes. The people they laid off suffer, never them.

Remember that when some pro-market capitalism class traitor nitwit inevitably tries to shame struggling people for daring to get a latte, eat Avacado toast, or get an education based on learning and growing as a person rather than solely insatiable greed.

People in the little club basically have to rape dozens of people to finally be permitted to fail, like Harvey Weinstein.

You aren't poor because of "your bad decisions," you're poor because of a relatively small, insatiably greedy, powerful group of people that demand and expect almost all of the capital value your effort produces to go directly to them.

That's deeper than the Titanic! 12,500 vs 16,000 feet.

Can we send Jeffrey Bezos or Elon Musk down in a submarine to confirm the find?

Am I supposed to be mad at these small time con-men capitalists? This is what the modern global economy is all about. Attempting to fuck over the people who aren't you, attempting to receive the maximum while providing the absolute minimum you can get away with without consequences. Their mistake was only slightly miscalculating that minimum where people would feel cheated but otherwise leave minus their money grumbling, but not enough to make it a weird news of the day story.

When's the last time your fast food sandwich looked remotely like the one on all the signs?They look like that sandwich in the ad was a tire that got deflated, deforming under its own weight, at best. Those scammers just had swaths of lawyers and lobbyists to make their false advertising your problem, until now it's just how it is.

Why are you harassing these glorious, aspiring job creators acting in rational self-interest?

Yo-ho, all together, hoist the coooolors high...

The NYT Strikes me as an organization that would rather attempt to continue to exist under Trump than try to fight the rising fascist tide he's riding.

They've always been that high on themselves, and they've always been pragmatists to the point of standing for nothing except their own gravitas.

Honestly, strategy wise, she's fighting an obese, very old, demented, rageful man. People make fun of her, and fuck her politics, but she's one cheeseburger away from being the Republican candidate with the most electoral votes who also has a pulse.

He's also an old friend.

I don't believe in guilt by association. Asking for leniency for an old friend to a judge, and he didn't get it, doesn't make them monsters or rapists by proxy.

If our culture demands every felon be shunned by their friends and family members going forward, then end the perverse charade and just kill everyone upon a felony conviction.

Masterson did a very bad thing, some friends wrote letters to inform the judge that that isn't all he is and to consider that, not out of malice, but out of compassion.

Man, the internet has absolutely destroyed the concept of nuance. Then again, we only see our "justice," lol, system as a way to turn the screws on bad people... that our society made, btw. Wanton spectator cruelty without the guilt. Not even a hint of attempts at rehabilitation, and just about everyone roots for a parolee's failure to confirm their biases.

Advocating maximum cruelty be inflicted on a perpetrator shouldn't be confused with compassion for the victim. Americans largely ignore that distinction, because it's convenient, easy, and pleasurable to revel in cruelty and call it kindness.

Psst!

Its because they don't want to raise their pay, and also want the employee to blame themselves for not getting the pay raise/promotion instead of their greedy employer.

But don't tell anyone. Its a secret!

-This SCOTUS, unironically unfortunately

The Federalist Society is an organization of right-wing extremists conspiring against the United States as far as I'm concerned, and they have won.

There was a time, prior to the Reaganomics Jack Welch Wall Street takeover, where many companies subscribed to the 123 rule: customers first, employees second, investors third, because when customers and employees are happy, the profit comes, as they're the ones that generate it.

That meant security, promotions, real pensions, benefits, a sense of partnership in the work being done and, in this case, EMPLOYEE BUY IN.

now it's investors 1,2, and only. That's why service sucks when you're a customer, and why most correctly treat their employer as an adversary. When employees are treated as disposable drains on company time, nickeled and dimed and underpaid at every step, threatened, scolded, and basically given zero respect, you have to be a sucker to care about your employer's needs.

When your employer has a problem and you aren't on the clock, not your fucking problem. Your employer has a problem outside of your job description's scope, also not your fucking problem.

The workers didn't set these terms, yet the owners and their blindly devoted bootlickers seem outraged when we recognize them and respond appropriately, as if it's a personal affront when you don't just take the abuse with a smile, falsely conflating being a doormat and a mark with being a "responsible adult."

There were anti suffrage women's groups.

There were pro-Nazi Jewish people in Germany until they came for them too.

There's always some people within a population who just choose to side with power, even power that loathes them, in hopes they'll become a favorite pet.

The log cabin Republicans come to mind.

It's important to remember we are doing it for glorious purpose:

From what the capitalists and their non-wealthy sycophants tell me, this is the only way, and we should stop complaining as they end the world to see who can get th highest ego score.

Steve Jobs was a piece of shit human being who contributed nothing to technology.

That said, he was a hell of a skilled bullshitter/marketer. Most people fucking looooove to be bullshitted, and Americans more than most.

It's why we elect virtually no wonks/technocrats, even though thats who we should elect almost exclusively. We'd rather some snake oil motherfucker sell us on magical lies while telling us we're pretty.

I know I'm in the minority in this, but you know the most fucked up thing?

This impasse won't end because of the pressure of federal workers suffering.

This impasse will end because our credit rating effects the profitability of our capitalist owners, whose sociopathic greed infecting our society is the reason we have sociopathic politicians like McCarthy in the first place.

Because here in the US, sociopathy is encouraged, even mandated in business by shareholders, hurt whatever peasants you want if it makes you an extra nickel, just not the owners. That was Bernie Madoff's mistake.

Edited for spelling

I mean, it's not a myth, billionaires literally have enough financial freedom to live large for 100 lifetimes.

The myth is that they're willing to share their rigged casino gambling "speculative investment" derived wealth/winnings, because reminder: nobody can come remotely close to earning a billion dollars through honest labor.

Market Capitalism has poisoned the very core of humanity, civilization, and literally the COMMUNal environment we all rely on from one breath to the next.

Good thing the market capitalists are so fucking confident that the solution is... going harder on market capitalism. We'll just merge, monopolize, and lay off our way into human happiness and equilibrium, won't we?

That's why the owners propagating this system are building luxury bunker compounds in places like New Zealand, because they're planning to clean up their mess and have confidence in a bright future!

As usual, corporations want all of the PROFIT that comes with automation and laying off the human beings that made them money for years, but they also fight for none of the RESPONSIBILITY for the enshittification that occurs as a result.

No different than creating climate change contributing "externalities," aka polluting the commons and walking away because lol you fucking suckers not their problem.

That's ok. They have Dr. Cletus, who got his MD at the school of Common Sense and did his residency at the hospital of Traditional American Values.

Red states don't care about having physicians trained from filthy leftist academia, propagandizing them with "facts" from scientists trying to sell books. Cletus is more competent to perform surgery than any blue state "Doctor," because he knows the south will rise again, and he has gumption and a can do attitude. Checkmate, stuff in books!

Get this man a bulletproof vest, bodyguards, subdermal GPS, and a food taster.

Being in a position to and actually credibly threatening the capitalist's exploitation derived profit expectations seems like an effective way to commit suicide.

Yet another example proving that having more money is no indication of intellect or critical thinking skills.

Teslas have always been junk. Junk the manufacturer doesn't even bother stocking adequate replacement parts for because you already bought it, suckers.

Imagine being about to die any day now, and still using your failing, literally sputtering life force to proactively stand for enduring corruption even when you're gone and will no longer profit from it, as if the corporations that bribe the Republicans and Neoliberals will be able to send the bribe checks to hell or something.

There aren't many villains, even in fiction, that lack any nuance to this degree. McConnell truly is a palpatine-esque cartoon of malevolence.

Yes, the planet was destroyed in the name of insatiable capitalist greed.

But for one shining moment in time, we created a lot of value for shareholders!

(and just to be crystal clear, not you)

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/18/the-wealthiest-10percent-of-americans-own-a-record-89percent-of-all-us-stocks.html

Only as valued as their productivity.

"You don't need a formal conspiracy when interests converge. These people went to the same universities, they're on the same boards of directors, they're in the same country clubs. They have like interests, they don't need to call a meeting. They know what's good for them."

-George Carlin, from an episode of Politically Incorrect

https://youtu.be/VAFd4FdbJxs?si=BZOXSSkui3_FbyCd

There are powerful classes of people that oppress you, but not because they go to secret meetings where they plan to, power/capital simply tends to corrupt.

And from our perspective it feels coordinated because the capitalist's punches all come from the same direction: downward from above.

The truth is, they've bled us dry and have begun to turn on and eat one another having conquered the board with little room left to grow/metastasize. That's why entire economic sectors are turning into TimeWarnerHBODiscoveryParamountSoonEtc...

That's what we get for giving the Confederates Military burials instead of an unmarked mass graves for their murderous treachery in the name of slavery.

Mercy was a mistake.

Turns out the "fuck everyone who isn't me" party is not so great on cooperation.

The ridiculous notion is that such things are entertained for anyone by our courts, but often are for "important" (possessing capital means) people.

Sure you're implicated in serious crimes, but the justice system will take your affluent schedule into consideration!

Watch a street dealer, aka a low income criminal ask to have their trial delayed by 3 years through a public defender and judge all but dictating they take a plea "deal" that only makes the court's life easier.

We crow about being a "developed, first world, wealthy nation" but just like the utter ruins of our K-12 system and our collapsing infrastructure, our pay to play justice system makes us anything but.

He knows what Republican voters want: cruelty.

Republican voters haven't given shit 1 about governance since I've been alive. They don't believe in society, and believe everything they have was in no way facilitated by the society they live in or the government that maintains it. Remember how psycho the voters went when Obama simply pointed out that entrepreneurs rely on national infrastructure and wouldn't have made their business empires what they were in a vacuum without said infrastructure?

Donald Trump became president on the same philosophy of cruelty plans first and only. The closest Republicans get to running on a policy position is promising to "drown the government in a bathtub." Psychotic enough for you?

Republican derps gotta herp.

I can't think of another Congressperson more deserving of publically convulsing and pissing himself live on C-SPAN for posterity.

He didn't hurt some people here or there. He's made hurting the little guy to make people like himself richER his life's mission, and unlike some of his knuckle dragging Republican compatriots too stupid not to get in their own ways, credit where it's due, Mitch was adept at accomplishing his malice.

Please don't retire with any dignity, Mitch, even resigning on your own terms and walking out on your own two feet. You don't deserve that.

I honestly think using twitter is a mark against someone at this point.

In a nation where corporations literally have more rights and fewer responsibilities than people, I see this as theater.

The owners will get their way. They own this fucking place.

Prominent member of the "Fuck Everyone Who Isn't Me" Party fucks over his party.

Shocking!

Republican voters: "Does he still piss off the many, many, many groups of people we openly hate and wish harm upon more than any other candidate could?"

Well yes, but what does that have to do with effective governance?

Republican voters: "what the fuck is governance?"

When your reaction to poor, sick human beings getting the medicine they need without losing everything else in their lives is disappointment, you're a bad person.

Fuck market capitalism and the sociopaths it creates.

Edit: and of course they're actively suing from their steel towers for the right to continue to gouge sick, poor people deeper into poverty. What a humane economic system, amirite?

I'm sorry Republican voters, literally all your candidates compete for who can declare who will hurt the most people to appeal to you, the people that vote for them on that metric.

For this reason, I cannot entertain the notion that you care about this nation, the people in it, or really even yourself.

When's the last time you've heard of a pizza delivery person going to the wrong house and killing someone?

Doesn't happen.

Lol they spent decades doing the opposite, generating the vast majority of emissions with big manufacturing and big livestock, and then successfully shifting blame on poor peasants claiming the planet is heating because they're not sorting their recycling well enough.

There is a paradox of confidence.

The people most confident in their competence tend to be the least competent in practice.

The Dunning–Kruger effect.

Self-cheerleaders tend to be morons, the most intelligent people by their nature tend to second guess their own abilities. Idiots just stroll through life taking whatever credit they can grab.

“The only thing I know is that I know nothing, and i am no quite sure that i know that.”

-Socrates

"Throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart.'

-Donald Trump

See the difference? By genuinely doubting, aka examining your abilities, you are in more competent company.