I dunno, he seems bent on trying to convince people it’ll all be short term.

And after bitching with India about sanctions on Russian oil, has had to embarrassingly reverse course AND release about half of the available strategic reserve.

I think he knows high oil prices will destroy the republicans in the midterms.

Admittedly, I’m reading this in a bar… And I think created the meme in said bar the other night…

Oh no, I’m becoming Pete hegseth.

Might be a failure of my imagination, but I have trouble picturing a Dem donor who would feel burned by Dems going after trump.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding your comment?

Win huge in the midterms, it’s the only way. Even that might not be enough, Dems need to win a few Senate seats in Red territory (Texas, North Carolina and Maine) and pray trump’s approval tanks.

I’m not sure what would stop him from doing that earlier though?

It’s trump, he’d just tell his base it was a step in stopping a tenth war or whatever number he’s claiming nowadays, and that he’s lowering American gas prices.

I don’t think it’s entirely Epstein, that’d be facile. But, I do think that if trump is good at anything, it’s generally PR/spin but Epstein is the one thing he hasn’t been able to spin to get his base on side. And it’s an issue where he, and his administration look increasingly bad (think Lutnick, the mishandled redactions, credible witness interview saying trump assaulted a 13 year old etc.)

It’s also a matter of fact that trump has been acting much more erratic since the Epstein bill. Notably, carriers etc started building up in the South American theatre as the Epstein Transparency Act was being passed, with Maduro, Greenland and now Iran shortly after the initial deadlines.

Add really bad advice (oh yay, a Fox News host as secretary of defence), a cadre of yes men without the adult guardrails of the first administration and a streak of risky decisions not backfiring (e.g., striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and kidnapping Maduro) and you can see the stage being set for increasingly bad decisions.

Again, I don’t think it’s ALL Epstein but I do think trump is desperate to keep people distracted and that he doesn’t plan long term. So yeah, he’s probably been wanting to strike Iran and now that his mental calculus adds “keep people from talking Epstein” to the benefits column and that may be enough.

You should still be able to view the modlog:

https://lemmy.world/modlog

Looks like an automod issue (they do try to catch spambots etc) but also looks like you have been unbanned too.

All’s well that ends well?

Hegseth and trump seem legit surprised by Iran’s actions even though they’re exactly what every Middle East observer predicted…

Maybe chatgpt didn’t warn them.

It’s more they went on a semi random tangent about the NDP for the vulnerable, which is not the point.

It’s like Pam Bondi being surprised people laughed when she brought up the DOW in the Epstein committee.

You just went off on “nuh uh, here’s why the NDP is good for vulnerable people” which is to miss the entire point.

It’s like when Bondi asked why we aren’t talking about the DOW in the Epstein hearing.

Voters would not forgive a party, especially on the Left flank for putting us in an election right now, especially when the Conservatives look strong.

But a member of the Liberal party…

You are 100% correct!

Sorry, this reads more like ai campaign slop than a response.

It’s also, at earliest in a Canadian time zone AFAIK, 1am when you wrote all that.

Goodnight.

Edit: To those annoyed. Look, the beginning was silly (what creates a middle ground? Two different positions, one being the progressive wing’s!) And then was a long ramble about how the NDP would be good for the vulnerable which is to completely miss the point and reads like they just copied and pasted something.

I’m protective of my time and I imagine others are too.

Amazing! 70s choices were so danged bold! Yeah, not all worked out but…!

Most of my walls are a fun but oft complained about, green. Here’s the walls, with her highness basking in having successfully dethroned me:

the erosion of the NDP like this

The erosion was the vote collapse, not this.

In the federal Democratic Party down in the US you have a progressive wing of the democrats. How much have they been able to accomplish within the party?

Out of power? Fuck all. You might as well as what the harder right part of Poilievre’s flank has accomplished.

Before that? Basically universal healthcare.

You can move the Liberals left by opposing them

And risk everything against an ascendant populist right? This feels close to “I’m fine no matter how the election goes, fuck the vulnerable and others who have to deal with the generational consequences, we need to say and a message!”

The more we make ourselves into a thorn in its side, the more likely the US is to DAMAGE us.

That being the case, then our situation’s “natural”.

The problem is that there NEEDS to be a checklist to go through, before a country sides-with/against any war, & that checklist needs to include:

The first point is correct. So, how many people should, in your estimation, lose their jobs to have zero effect on the war besides making you feel better?

Being the one crucial vote is a hell of a lot of leverage.

You can’t apply it all the time but still, that’s a hell of a lot of power. And if anyone has the mandate to push a handful of things farther to the left, it’d the NDP convert.

(I’m assuming the two basically safe Liberal seats fall Liberal and PQ wins Terebonne (sp?))

I’m more curious, do y’all have a green carpet? Am I about to find out I’m cllourblind? Is this outdoors?

… Any chance one of you fine folks knows an easy, Linux friendly software so I can make something like this? I just wanna put the crude moving captions/images on gifs etc and make gif meme content but am held back by a complete and utter lack of knowledge.

it’s a more transparent and sensible moderation model?

Certainly more transparent with the modlog though, depending on the domain etc you might come across some interesting moderation (.ml is hilarious for this stuff.)

Regardless, welcome to the fediverse, hope it tickles your fancy!