I'm a leftist, not a libertarian, but I always feel compelled to bring up a specific point in Snowden's defense when he is mentioned to divisive opinions:

He did speak up correctly, using the correct channels, and the proper channels told him to shut the fuck up.

Then he again did what he did the rightest way he could, by giving the data to one of the oldest members of the fourth estate, the press, to decide proper course, ONLY AFTER the primary state failed him spectacularly.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Estate

AND he only did so after the "proper channel" for whistle blowing, his internal superiors, told him to shut the fuck up.

I feel this always needs to be said. The United States has a lot of slogans and posters about integrity and ethics for a nation that has neither in practice.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2014/03/07/snowden-i-raised-nsa-concerns-internally-over-10-times-before-going-rogue/

And remember, because I feel this always needs to be said with such sums...

193 million isn't enough for him, and 193 million plus whatever millions he made in years prior isn't enough for him. He's going public because he's a broken, disturbed human being that looks at his unethical levels of wealth, enough for most of the other humans that live here to live 2 dozen extravagant lifetimes, and still demands mooooooaaaaaar.

Why isn't this widely accepted as severe mental illness?! This is hoarding disorder.

These aren't big ocean house sums. These are buying politicians sums, and they are only achievable through exploiting other human beings and selfishly pocketing most of the value of their labor because you can get away with it.

Biden helped engineer the growth of our for profit private prison BUSINESS in the 90s. He was a good neoliberal who joined hands with Reagan Republicans and furthered the regressive capitalist "trickle down" agenda we all suffer into today. He's a bad man who has done bad things to vulnerable Americans.

He's leaps and bounds better than the only alternative Americans were presented, which is why I voted for Biden against Trump.

No politician worship here. No "we need a strong man" demagoguery here. Good luck walking right-wingers through that rational breakdown though.

Am I supposed to be mad at these small time con-men capitalists? This is what the modern global economy is all about. Attempting to fuck over the people who aren't you, attempting to receive the maximum while providing the absolute minimum you can get away with without consequences. Their mistake was only slightly miscalculating that minimum where people would feel cheated but otherwise leave minus their money grumbling, but not enough to make it a weird news of the day story.

When's the last time your fast food sandwich looked remotely like the one on all the signs?They look like that sandwich in the ad was a tire that got deflated, deforming under its own weight, at best. Those scammers just had swaths of lawyers and lobbyists to make their false advertising your problem, until now it's just how it is. Deception is a vital component of market capitalism.

Why are you harassing these glorious, aspiring job creators acting in rational self-interest?

Look at the sheer scale and number of massive, malicious mistakes that one of our billionaires makes, while having ZERO impact on their tangible quality of life or lifestyle. None. Their ego score goes down and nothing else changes. The people they laid off suffer, never them.

Remember that when some pro-market capitalism class traitor nitwit inevitably tries to shame struggling people for daring to get a latte, eat Avacado toast, or get an education based on learning and growing as a person rather than solely insatiable greed.

People in the little club basically have to rape dozens of people to finally be permitted to fail, like Harvey Weinstein.

You aren't poor because of "your bad decisions," you're poor because of a relatively small, insatiably greedy, powerful group of people that demand and expect almost all of the capital value your effort produces to go directly to them.

China's problem is a universal problem. They're "communist" in name only. Their economy has capitalist demands for growth/metastasis, same as ours and most developed economies.

People want to have kids when they can expect those kids to live at minimum the same quality, and preferably better quality, than they themselves did and do. That just isn't the case anymore as the global economy has run out of massive new sectors for growth/metastasis and has begun eating itself. You can see this in all the entire sectors here merging into monopolies and duopolies. Constant merging isn't a business strategy, it's just trying to buy time in a failing economic model.

Capitalism has always been a long-term pyramid scheme to concentrate all the power/wealth/means/capital to a small owner class. The problem is, the con has run out of new places and ways to exploit people as you eventually can't squeeze more out of a fully exploited stone. No pensions, laughable pay, no future. Just expected to thanklessly generate capital for the owners in larger and larger quantities for the love of what? The nation trying to commoditize your entire life to profit the right people? Why would you bring another poor, desperate child to suffer such a world?

Now, in their desperation, these economies that lead their societies and governments around by the nose are desperately screaming "MORE LIVESTOCK TO EXPLOIT GOD DAMN IT!" because in lieu of not being able to squeeze any harder on existing capital batteries without being correctly told to 'get fucked,' that's all they have.

I firmly believe that is why the federalist society that runs our SCOTUS is trying to get abortion banned, as the most profitable capital batteries are desperate, poor ones. I also believe the intentional decline of our public education system is meant to address the same problem, if they can make the population stoooopid enough not to consider the lives the children of already struggling peasants would have.

This world is finite. Its resources finite. An economic model literally based on infinite continuous growth/metastasis or die is not compatible with the world as it is. In every sense, it is killing us, whether by climate change from without, and loss of actual personal meaning within, at least for the non-winning vast majority. The goal of global economics should have been to establish a sustainable population that could find equilibrium/homeostasis with our shared, COMMUNal environment we all rely on from one breath to the next. Not a lot of room for Super Yachts and private jets in such a world though...

That's deeper than the Titanic! 12,500 vs 16,000 feet.

Can we send Jeffrey Bezos or Elon Musk down in a submarine to confirm the find?

Yo-ho, all together, hoist the coooolors high...

The NYT Strikes me as an organization that would rather attempt to continue to exist under Trump than try to fight the rising fascist tide he's riding.

They've always been that high on themselves, and they've always been pragmatists to the point of standing for nothing except their own gravitas.

Honestly, strategy wise, she's fighting an obese, very old, demented, rageful man. People make fun of her, and fuck her politics, but she's one cheeseburger away from being the Republican candidate with the most electoral votes who also has a pulse.

He's also an old friend.

I don't believe in guilt by association. Asking for leniency for an old friend to a judge, and he didn't get it, doesn't make them monsters or rapists by proxy.

If our culture demands every felon be shunned by their friends and family members going forward, then end the perverse charade and just kill everyone upon a felony conviction.

Masterson did a very bad thing, some friends wrote letters to inform the judge that that isn't all he is and to consider that, not out of malice, but out of compassion.

Man, the internet has absolutely destroyed the concept of nuance. Then again, we only see our "justice," lol, system as a way to turn the screws on bad people... that our society made, btw. Wanton spectator cruelty without the guilt. Not even a hint of attempts at rehabilitation, and just about everyone roots for a parolee's failure to confirm their biases.

Advocating maximum cruelty be inflicted on a perpetrator shouldn't be confused with compassion for the victim. Americans largely ignore that distinction, because it's convenient, easy, and pleasurable to revel in cruelty and call it kindness.

Relevant Context:

https://m.thewire.in/article/world/chart-6407-palestinians-and-308-israelis-killed-in-violence-in-last-15-years

and with enough money I don't care.

Most people are like you.

Which is precisely why humanity will be just another of many dead end evolutionary cul-de-sacs in Earth's natural history.

I've come to peace with that, but this is a nice microcosm of the core reason. We can do better, we know better, but at the end of the day, almost all of us will just take the animalistic dopamine rush of winning.

Live together or die alone. We choose the second one like breathing.

If most humans were like Kempf (we're not), we'd actually have a chance.

If I could wave a magic wand and undo a Presidency, it would be Reagan's.

Trump was a big loud stupid animal, but almost completely ineffective at legislative work. McConnell carried all the water of his few cruel "accomplishments." All Trump wanted to do was hear/see himself talk/tweet. He thankfully got in his own way a lot.

Reagan, on the other hand, was competent evil, and his malice towards American peasants is felt by most of us every day whether we realize and acknowledge it or not. One of the few people I can say without an ounce of guilt or shame deserved the traumatic way he died and far worse.

Psst!

Its because they don't want to raise their pay, and also want the employee to blame themselves for not getting the pay raise/promotion instead of their greedy employer.

But don't tell anyone. Its a secret!

It makes me mad at myself, but his fear and confusion in that moment was cathartic. You have to hurt a lot of people eyes wide open to actually deserve the suffering of witnessing your own mind and sense of self crumbling from the inside, but Reagan was and McConnell is on that list.

We at least got to witness him experience a tiny sliver of the shame, pain, and terror of the Americans he inflicted his cruelty on for decades with a shit eating grin so he could cut his own taxes and that of his country club friends on the backs of hard working, struggling human beings.

No sympathy for the devil. I'll remember you this way, Mitch. Now go fade away you spooky, sociopathic fuck.

Yet another example proving that having more money is no indication of intellect or critical thinking skills.

Teslas have always been junk. Junk the manufacturer doesn't even bother stocking adequate replacement parts for because you already bought it, suckers.