I mean, it sounds like they did ask how much it would cost, he just bulldozed through the question instead of seriously engaging with it and legacy media is too chickenshit to report it as “Trump apathetic about costs of deportation plan” or “Mass Deportation to Cost Billions Despite Trump’s Claims” because putting the things he says in context makes him sound like the madman he is and apparently truth is no longer sufficient defense from defamation.

I hadn’t thought about it in those terms, but this makes a lot of sense. Especially in a 2-party system the election is inevitably going to be a vibe check on the status quo as much as it is a specific election focusing on specific candidates and policies. I’d like to look more closely at the margins to get a feel for whether the Republicans could have run a ham sandwich and still been successful as opposed to the specific appeal of Trumpism.

Not that that changes how rough the next 4 years are going to get for a lot of people.

There’s a certain spirit of online debate about trivial or nonsensical things like this that can best be understood as happening purely for the sport of it.

I didn’t say anything about voting, I’m just trying to be realistic about who else is looking forward to the collapse of the current system. If you want to roll the dice on that then you should at least be honest about who else is sitting at the table.

So the neocons of the 2000s are the C’tan, providing neoliberals with unending life by running against fascists and also necrosteel bodies but at the cost of their souls. One day we will overthrow the gods and place their shards into our doomsday weapons.

Hey now, let’s be fair. It’s not just ashes, it’s also going to be blood. And between 2 and 3 of the 4 cats are literal Nazis.

This is goin’ in tha book.

Yeah, though in his (incredibly lukewarm) defense he seemed more interested in the batshit crazy aliens-control-the-government theories than the more pedestrian conservative stuff, although the line between the two has greatly narrowed over the years.

So when Ukrainians try to push for closer alignment with the EU it’s a Washington-backed color revolution and thus is no different than Russia rolling into the literal tanks.

Like, even if you’re not a Russian troll you’re still adopting a conspiracy theory that completely ignores any agency the Ukrainian people have.

But only the specific subset of anarchists that I read about first in my early 20s! All the others are just like those fascists in the Judean People’s Front!

Honestly I feel like in this case it works out better. “Eat shit, Rene Magritte” is such a good line to have no context on.

Of course, some months later as fall approached, travellers saw stretched between the ruined pillars a banner proclaiming: Spirit Halloween Now Hiring!

How are you holding them accountable when one of them is still going to be in power? You’re just sacrificing one of the few concrete mechanisms you have to actually make things better. Yeah, a Harris victory doesn’t mean immediate victory in the fight against this atrocity, but a Trump election does mean defeat.

Actually it’s vitally important if you’re going to have an outdoor catgirl. Otherwise they’ll decimate the local birdgirl population.

Obligatory plug for calcgpt

I got all the way down on my one knee and nothing short of the second coming is gonna move me from this spot

I feel like there’s a “law as it currently exists” thing versus the ideal. The law as it currently exists makes it illegal to discriminate based on content. This has historically been an important vector for, say, allowing civil rights activists to send essays to be published in newspapers. But much as it was illegal to deny a gay couple their marriage license, it ought be somehow made illegal to spread damaging lies about trans people in order to stir up a hate campaign.

In this case I’d say that 5 days fully paid suspension is probably an appropriate consequence for this rule-breaking, and could only be made more appropriate if it actually included tickets to spend those days someplace warmer and friendlier than that part of Canada and a knowing wink from the postmaster general.

I want to know when that report was filed. “I can’t find my cat, therefore my Haitian neighbors stole it to eat” is the kind of statement dreamed up by the utterly deranged, unless the idea was already in the water supply because a vice presidential candidate was saying it in interviews ahead of a national debate.

A police report would mark a diversion from the usual pattern of these things where Trump surrogates talk a big game about the massive conspiriacies against them (and therefore against You, the hypothetical American voter) to the media, but if they ever end up in front of a court or a police report or something where lying may have actual consequences they back off hard. How many times did we hear about all the mountains of evidence they had of voter fraud in 2020, and how many of the resulting court cases include those same lawyers specifically saying “we do not allege voter fraud” when the judge asks about it.

And those people are being told that the moderators were lugenpresse who were on the wrong side and want to protect criminals over your dog as part of their something something woke. The fact that the lamestream media keeps talking about how false it is and going to increasingly desperate lengths to deny it must mean we’re onto them.

This is how the propaganda works. This is such a blatant lie that it should be a simple fact-check, but since that doesn’t actually change anyone’s mind all the attempt does is keep everyone talking about immigration, an issue that fires up the right-wing base and exhausts a lot of their opponents. You’re absolutely right that we shouldn’t be still talking about whether this is true or not, but focusing on how weird and dumb this conspiracy theory is getting. That’s why the “weirdo” tack has been working for Harris in this campaign, and it’s unfortunate that the headlines have lost interest.