Oh I’m with you - gerrymandering, purging of voter roles days before elections, systemic voter suppression methods, etc. are all existential threats to democracy. I’d argue that apathetic voters is a bigger issues though in aggregate, the vast majority (80%+) want taxpayer funded single payer healthcare but if you were to consider “did not vote” as a political party, “did not vote” would have won the election in 2024 by a landslide (40/30/30). Voter suppression alone cannot account for ~108 million voters.

North American elections aren’t decided by changing people’s minds, they haven’t been for decades. They’re decided by getting the non-voters out for your party. 30ish % of the electorate will never drop Trump. 35ish % of the electorate will never vote R. Elections are decided by the 35% in the middle who usually don’t even vote.

They only vote when the impact on their lives is impossible to ignore, hence why Trump’s COVID inflation gift to Biden got them off the bench. “Food is much more expensive now, I blame <person currently president>”. These people can be swung, but it requires their lives to be directly and obviously impacted. Maybe loss of healthcare would do it.

Yea idk

Worth noting that the flight itself wasn’t cancelled, his reservation/booking “just disappeared”. I highly doubt the government interfered, while the administration is certainly this petty I doubt anyone with any authority at all was even aware.

I grew up in northern Vermont. There are a lot of people who simply don’t know anything about what happens in the world - Vermont is very much like The Shire that way. The internet is unreliable and I grew up on DSL on copper lines from 1920, so FM radio is incredibly popular. Same with satellite TV. There’s also a massive drug problem and large-scale unemployment, because Vermont (without me passing judgment here) is fairly anti-industry and doesn’t have a lot of economic opportunities, especially up north in more rural areas like the NEK.

When all you have is people on the radio telling you the opiods ravaging your town are being smuggled from Canada and maybe 200 people in your town total who all listen to the same radio station, it’s really easy to believe whatever you’re told. It’s just ignorance, not of the willful kind but the naive kind. VT is the second whitest state in the union and people will frequently literally almost never meet a black person, and so racism can be a real problem just out of pure naivity.

Vermont is, in many ways, the land that time left behind in the 40s and they’re kind of only considered progressive because of UVM/Burlington and because they love weed, lol.

I do love aspects of Vermonters’ heartiness and sense of community, but it has real downsides as well. /rant

Neither do I - I use either my phone, or my smart TV, or my fire stick. SSO works fine there, or you can use the QR based session transfer to SSO on your phone and then “sign in on another device” or whatever by scanning the QR your other device is showing. I think they call it quick connect or something.

It does what you want.

And if you think Grandma can’t figure out scanning a QR code, Grandma is also not gonna figure out MFA lol.

You can run the OIDC version and use SSO and implement MFA on the IdP. I use Keycloak for SSO w/ MFA and users sign into my Jellyfin via Keycloak. Just disable username/password auth and leave it SSO only.

The only benefit Plex really has is the relaying, but I was able to sync watch with 3 people basically as far across North America as you can get from me and it worked without issue so…

Oh completely, I’m not a “both sides” guy. I think my point is quite aligned with yours, which is that the system is actually fairly reflective of the will of the people, it just turns out people are willing to go fascist for $5. The checks and balances aren’t broken, they’re just not being used because a plurality of elected officials represent people who actively want this.

Skill issue

They can be fired - SC justices can be recalled via impeachment by Congress, who ultimately derives their power from the people via elections. Congress is abdicating responsibility and power, and the electorate is too ignorant to know or care. The whole chain of responsibility is simply being ignored because the people voted for this repeatedly.

All 100% true. EU and rest of NATO giving Trump valid ammunition by not meeting spend targets and essentially giving up the defense game is one of the greatest self-cuckings of all time. Obama and Merkel sold out Crimea for cheap LNG, and EU kept doing business as usual and now the world is hyperdependent on US.

The Americans can have a little misogyny, as a treat

Yeah they can skew things and make elections harder via gerrymandering, voter suppression, etc. but ultimately the plurality of Americans either didn’t vote or voted R.

Yeah the accountability chain here is:

President is accountable to Congress via impeachment/recall. Congress is accountable to the people via elections.

The people opted to not hold Congress accountable, and Congress is a bunch of cucks that refuse to do their jobs, and the Supreme Court is clearly choosing to not even try to enforce anything… but the ultimate truth is “people chose this”. Very sadly. The American people chose this executive, this Congress, and indirectly this Court.

“This isn’t the real America” - sorry but it actually is.

Except those who dissented publicly, right? Pretty sure Sotomayor was pretty publicly pissed off at the rest of the court.

Probably. But who knows. And the fact that the only cope is “it’s just a negotiating tactic” like MAGA after prices increase from tariffs is giving me a headache. What a time to be alive.

Here’s another

https://www.ft.com/content/ce9eb7e4-7989-45f6-a3b3-3cdec73a8540

A Nato official confirmed the message’s authenticity.

I can only provide some sample articles that reference a confirmation from Rutte’s office. I don’t think they put out a statement or a release, I think reporters called the office and got confirmation that way. Not sure you’ll be able to find a public statement.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250624-trump-posts-nato-chief-gushing-message-praise-extraordinary-iran-action-rutte

Here’s a French one that theoretically isn’t bound to gobble Trumps knob.

“Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do. It makes us safer,” Rutte wrote in a message shared by Trump on Truth Social – and confirmed by the NATO chief’s office.

I regret to inform you Rutte’s office has confirmed officially. I took massive psychic damage when I discovered this was a real post of a real text not a real post of a fake text.

I would love and hate to see proof that Mark Rutte really texted this to Trump.

The “Truth” post is 100% real, inarguably, but I haven’t seen anyone reporting the picture is of a real message from Rutte to Trump.

E: never mind that is… apparently Rutte’s office has confirmed the message is really from Rutte???

???

I need to go lie down.