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956 Worldwide

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Everything posted by 956 Worldwide

  1. Putin appears to have accomplished what he came for: Trump drops calls for the killing to stop and decides his timeline is no longer in effect; no consequences on the horizon for Russia; and Putin’s core demands are still miles away from what Ukraine can possibly accept for a true peace agreement. Setting the stage to walk away and blame Zelenskyy.
  2. Early returns on Alaska are: not much. The vibes from Trump were cranky, sullen. The delegation didn’t eat together, no questions at the press conference. He’s distancing himself from it, putting the ball back in Zelenskyy’s court. He’s clearly tired with this whole thing and wants a way out and will likely end up lashing out at Ukraine since they are the ones who will respond in some way.
  3. The jersey is ass. The word mark is huge and the numbers don’t match anything else.
  4. Georgia Tech is not using any navy, opting instead for grey and gold. The uniforms are just fine but schools need to use their colors. We should have left grey alts in 2018.
  5. I think the issue is that, as @Hank Kingsley has pointed out, this isn’t a strategy. In the first instance, there aren’t enough poor and blue collar Americans to win national elections. Second, even if they were, the issues are different. Why are you poor? Were you born into generational poverty and shitty schools and never had a chance? Were you middle class and then the factory in town moved to China? Did you graduate with a CS degree and now no one is hiring? Trump appeals to parts of the poor and blue collar all the time, that’s what the tariffs and bringing back manufacturing schtick is all about. You can (accurately) say it’s all BS and hypocrisy and a sham but you can’t say he’s ignoring that sector and their issues. He’s all about them and it was likely key to the win. If step one of your plan is “create a class consciousness in America” then it’s time to ask if the plan is really to win an election. Otherwise, the question is HOW are you going to appeal to the working class.
  6. There’s a post two above me calling him the blueprint.
  7. I seriously question the wisdom of using a successful ranked-choice NYC primary as the blueprint to win competitive first past the post general elections nationwide.
  8. Dems also need to take a page from the recent GOP guidebook: No one criticizes the nominee, no one criticizes the party, and once in office, no one criticizes the president. Argue for your stance. Criticize proxies when needed. Criticize (carefully) policies while treating it as a given the nominee/party/president will come around. But never, ever, ever go on tv or the internet and let voters think there light be a reason not to vote for the nominee.
  9. One thing the Democrats need to do across the board is implement some message discipline and demand that their talking heads eliminate criticism of “America” or “the country” or different systems and instead make every critique as personal and targeted as they can. This is something the GOP does very effectively. The GOP never talks about the need for “America” to reckon with its failings. They say awful things about America, but blame the lib cucks. Dems can do this too. Instead of “America must atone for its sins of racism and discrimination” try “Neanderthal assholes are ruining our beautiful country with their racism.” The first bit leads you into a fruitless debate about whether America is really a racist country and will alienate people who might otherwise vote for you. The second only alienates self-identified Neanderthal racists and that small group isn’t voting for you anyway. Instead of a critique of “capitalism,” try attacking “greedy billionaires who are ruining markets.” You can then make the same proposals for solutions, it’s all just targeted at groups that most voters don’t like or identify with. I think some Dems are getting better about this but still fall short because it’s intellectually dishonest (a bit) and confrontational. But whatever, we are trying to win. It’s very crafty because it basically allows most people to tell themselves they aren’t part of the problem set you’re talking about. No one wants to feel called out by an elected leader.
  10. As a coach, I would one hundred percent rather have my athletes playing a second sport. So much benefit to having most players doing that, more than you’ll likely get from the 18 practice spring ball schedule.
  11. “Male sperm count is down across the board.” ”I don’t put my sperm on a board, I have an old Bon Jovi shirt for that.” Fucking lost it. I cannot remember laughing harder in recent memory.
  12. This is, I think, the best chart that shows what was/is going on in DC WRT crime and how residents feel. This will be TL; DR post. You’ll have to zoom in. The red is carjackings, the yellow is murder, the orange is DC’s “violent crime index.” Up front: It’s not true that DC is in the throes of the worst crime/violent crime wave ever, there was a drop in 2024, and there’s no reason to federalize the city. There’s some things that are absolutely true though. 1. It’s absolutely true that crime in DC right now really and truly is significantly and notably worse than it was not that long ago and well within memory of most residents and a complete reversal of the success story that got started in the late 1990s. It is not vibes or perception, it’s real. Those numbers represent bodies and horrifying victimizations and it is a quality of life issue for the entire city. Residents have every right to want to get back to mid-2010s DC and we are nowhere close. 2. Lots of cities around the country saw crime spikes associated with COVID and unrest around 2020s; DCs was both more dramatic and has lasted longer. 3. DC is not the most dangerous city in the country; places like Memphis or Baton Rouge have bigger problems. At the same time DC is more like those cities than it is say, NYC or Boston and that’s an issue for the national capital and aspiring Tier 1 city. We for sure want to be more like NYC than St. Louis. 4. Carjackings represent a particular problem because it’s crime that impacts civilians who just want to go about their lives. A year or two where a gang turf war gets out of hand is terrible, but the risk to most law-abiding people is pretty low. With the spate of carjackings all of the sudden people with no nexus to criminality are being victimized in pretty terrifying and brutal ways with few mitigating options aside from “don’t drive.” That’s not sustainable and it’s going to cause blowback. 5. The carjackings have gotten better but it’s still ridiculously, stupidly bad. Everyone knows who is doing it— a small (like, a couple dozen) number of minors probably account for about fifty percent of that number. And you can also look at a heat map and see that there are much fewer in Maryland and basically zero in Virginia even though it’s five minutes away. The reason is obvious, your ass will get locked up in those states and if you read the reports you will see that a substantial number of teen carjackers actually come in from Maryland specifically to do crime because there has been almost no consequences as long as you did it in the district. 6. Beyond the numbers, DC is a lot smaller than people realize— it’s about 700k people and a really small footprint. You can do a lot to avoid the disorder and risk but again, it’s not NYC and the crime is happening close to you almost no matter who you are. 7. I honestly don’t know why the “violent crime index” is out of whack with the murders and carjackings. That’s something to dive into. It’s safe to say that the level of petty crime and non-violent crime and “takeovers” resulting in property damage and malicious loitering has also gone noticeably up than where it was not too long ago and that also got people pissed off. Putting special officers in the metro has made that experience a lot better but it’s also completely fair to say that it was a step that came too late and only after a lot of denial. Anyway, the National Guard aren’t going to fix the problem and I am concerned that all this will do is spike the forward momentum to address the issues that had finally happened, because this will give a lot of ammo to the irresponsible wing of local politicians to continue doing nothing.
  13. There is an important flip side to this: if they don’t follow orders half-assedly, this admin will find someone to follow them enthusiastically. Letting some feds in uniform wander around Georgetown for the cameras is a pretty decent outcome to this shitshow. They know what they’re doing here.
  14. I haven’t seen a real internet message board meet to fight challenge in some years now. This is the MAGA I’m here for.
  15. Aesthetics of Oppression would be a great band name.
  16. Lol, I loved this tweet from Markwayne. You do HVAC contracting in Tulsa big dawg, let’s calm down.
  17. All of Trump’s gripes about Zelenskyy and ideas about how Ukraine should behave are simply reflections of how Trump himself thinks and behaves. And bad news, it reveals how Trump can (and does) treat America. Trump is frustrated when Zelenskyy says the Ukrainian constitution won’t allow him to surrender land because he has never viewed the American Constitution as a binding commitment he has to adhere to and can’t imagine why Zelenskyy would. He can’t understand why Ukrainians would fight against a much larger and stronger enemy at great cost to themselves because he would never do anything but surrender. He cannot understand why Ukrainians would refuse to surrender towns and cities to brutal Russian occupation in exchange for self-preservation because he does not care about America and would gladly hand over American land and souls to Russia or anyone if it meant he came out ahead. it’s all just a mirror of his own personality disorders. Someone for whom literally everything is transactional.
  18. The DC circuit has ruled that even though Congress has the power of the purse, there’s only one person in the entire United States who has standing to actually seek relief over illegal impoundment (the head of the GAO). So if he or she doesn’t, everyone else can just get fucked. Oh, and the head of the GAO is appointed by the president and the current one will see his term expire this year. America sure was a decent idea. https://www.politico.com/news/2025/08/13/humanitarian-groups-cannot-challenge-trumps-impoundment-of-foreign-aid-grants-appeals-court-rules-00507106
  19. That time period was when things were coming to a head on integration; courts were ordering districts to enforce the “equal” part of separate but equal; and the entire trend nationally was away from Jim Crow and segregation. The naming was nothing to do heritage, it was an extremely savvy and pointed political message about who the schools were for and what the political class believed. You couldn’t name a school “we hate integration middle school” so you named it “Stonewall Jackson.”
  20. All through Texas you can pinpoint when schools named after Confederate leaders were opened and it’s almost always going to be in the 1950s-60s.
  21. Pelosi was a Tip O’Neil type talent in the House and in truth Mitch was too just for evil most of the time. Schumer is not on the level of those two but I don’t see anyone on the D bench in the Senate with their type of talent. The Dems have a lot of issues but he’s well down the list.
  22. The Senate majority and minority leader is not someone you select for bold and inspirational rhetorical and ideological leadership; it’s someone who needs to win legislative knife fights and wrangle the party. When you’re a minority leader coming off a presidential election, job one is literally to not get in the way of the incumbent’s party fucking things up. The most politically successful senate leader in the past century was LBJ and let’s not rewrite history: the left wing of the party fucking hated him and he got the VP nod in a bid to appeal to racists. Much like Biden, he passed some of the most progressive legislation we’ve seen by running from the center. You know what other senate leader polls dismally from his base? Mitch Fucking McConnell. He’s RINO number one, most hated swamp creature and yet Mitch Fucking McConnell is the man most responsible for all the horrible fucking GOP wins we see. The Dems need their own creatures like him.
  23. A record number of confirmed federal judges and a remarkable record of getting Biden’s agenda passed in a 50-50 chamber.
  24. If I had to choose between a grizzly bear and big spiders, I’d choose the spider but would for sure pause a minute.
  25. Loomer: Lots of people are telling me that Lindsey Graham is gay. Lawyer: We actually haven’t started asking questions but ok.
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