I thought Trump was a shoo-in? Christ knows that’s the message these people are getting over and over again, drummed into their heads so they can get good and pissed off when they’re told the truth.

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Huh. Well, everybody I hung out with knew about it. IIRC moderation was tacked on after USENET had already taken off. If a newsgroup wasn’t proposed with moderation then it couldn’t be moderated, so most of them weren’t. It’s pretty wild that they didn’t understand how desperately necessary it would be. In order to get a group to be moderated you’d have to get a proposal for an entirely new group through the committee, which was nearly impossible. The process was so slow and bureaucratic that the web literally just showed up and stole it all in what seemed like overnight. I remember when I switched over… it was like 2002, 2003? I’ve never had as much fun on any web forum as I had on USENET though. Those were fun times. And don’t get me started on the web’s lack of threaded discussions. Drove me NUTS.

I asked my SO what she thought his wallpaper might be. First answer: himself.

Yes pardon me I left off the word “largely” before “unmoderated.” We all knew it was possible, but it didn’t matter because, as you point out - nobody really did.

Which doesn’t really change the point does it. These people are de-facto kings ruling us; their wealth subverts the entire idea of democracy. You can’t tax them out of existence without taxing their wealth because none of them have any actual income. Banks fall all over themselves to fund anything they care to do.

In any case, 2% isn’t going to do fuck-all even if it gets passed which is hardly a certainty.

Google buying Dejanews, the largest archive of all messages, and merging it with the travesty that was (and still is) Google Groups just about killed the whole thing.

Well that and the fact that it was unmoderated which eventually led to it being populated almost exclusively with mentally ill troll savants. USENET by the end was the digital equivalent of a horror zoo of abused monkeys slinging shit all over everyone and themselves.

There’s a great video about this whole stupid ordeal. If you haven’t seen it, check it out.

A concentrated effort by bad-faith actors who understand that the only thing Americans love more than being told they’re right is being able to feel smugly superior. Tap into that with the power of social media and voila.

Le Coq suggested that when simply considering the 10 biggest fortunes in France, the tax would bring in no less than €13bn for the state.

A 2% tax on billionaires. Give me a break.

The point isn’t to bring in money, the point is to eliminate these blights on society by any means necessary. How bad will the world have to get before something that looks like this happens? When the world was more civilized - the world conservatives constantly pine for - the ultra-wealthy were taxed over 90%, because we knew that too much power in the hands of a single person was immensely dangerous. We knew this intrinsically from generations of being ruled by kings, but we got firsthand experience with it from them constantly fucking up the economy.

There was shame in being wealthy. Hell, there was shame in being rich when I was growing up - it was understood that you couldn’t get mega-rich without stepping on the necks of the working class and being horrible people. It’s nearly Christmas - go rewatch It’s a Wonderful Life for crying out loud. 1946!

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“by now, we know that the vaccine was not safe or effective.”

Also yet another a dangerous moron who thinks they’re a fucking genius.

They don’t need any dirt on him, he’s a fucking coward. All they have to do is point to the window, ask him if he is familiar with the term “defenestration” and assure him he will become intimately familiar with it unless he starts behaving the way Moscow wants. Yet another reason billionaires should be taxed out of existence like they used to be.

Absolutely goddamn tax them out of existence. Yesterday.

In case anyone was wondering, this article makes abundantly clear that McConnell is (still) nearly as big a bag of shit as Trump is. He is a loathsome, worthless human being who deserves nothing but contempt. If I got to be president and had a congressional majority the first fucking thing I would do is put two new members on the SC to nullify the two illegitimate members that were put on the bench thanks to this fucking turd.

Forget “they don’t think he’s talking about them.” They actually really care about the border. Are they brain dead? Trump killed a bipartisan deal over the border for the sake of politics and they are rewarding this behavior. That’s just plain stupidity.

So do you suppose the SC is basically saying “quit bringing us these piss-ant rulings, bring us the real shit” by basically ignoring this one? Takes no work to just ignore it, but requires a lot of work to write up a contentious 6-3 ruling? I can’t understand it otherwise.

This really just amounts to remnants of The South (and those allied to the cause for whatever reason) attempting to destroy the federal government.

No, that’s why I said “I’d like to think.” Because I don’t.

If they take control of both houses of congress, I would like to think one of the first things they would do is expand the supreme court with the justification that denying Obama an appointee was straight-up unforgivably unethical. And suspend the filibuster to do it.