Am I missing something?

Several thousand mentions of Russia, Moscow and Putin in the Trump-Epstein files, maybe?

I have no firm opinion on whether Epstein’s primary allegiance was to Russia, Israel or some other entity, or whether he was a freelancer. But I think it’s wrong to discount his numerous and deep Russian connections.

Epstein didn’t have a wife.

Before that, it was attributed to Richelieu.

This shit needs to be heavily regulated, with massive fines for anyone who inconveniences a customer due to a false positive or a staff error such as what happened in this case.

My money’s on mockery, and him being a compulsive, arrogant, lying shitbag.

Yeah, that’s right, he’s a fucking liar, and wholly owned by Putin.

I don’t trust any testing done by any firm whose finances depend on successful testing results. Independent third-party validation or GTFO. Self-regulation isn’t worth shit.

Ballot or bullet.

And this pig wants to take away the ballot.

This is also happening when Japan is being run by a hard-right leader whose party has been stirring up already excessive xenophobia.

They shouldn’t be allowed the use of firearms or “less than lethal” weapons at all. No body armor either. They should be issued with a foot-long udon noodle for self-defense and provided with a motivational video on the power of sweet talk.

With the insane volumes of data collected by the TLAs, the problem is always relevance. If they have any tool sensitive enough to flag a threat, the false-positive rate is likely to be astronomical. So it doesn’t really meet its claimed purpose, but it’s really effective as an indiscrimate tool for oppression.

UAE is like Saudi Arabia (maybe not quite as extreme), where there’s a big LBGT scene on the down-low, but also draconian laws against it that are selectively enforced. Think Victorian England, but with more executions. And similar levels of hypocrisy. I worked over there, and queer colleagues were never short of companionship, but they had to be very deeply closeted. And every couple of years, the government would raid a club, arrest a few people, torture them and maybe decapitate a few. And, like everything over there, if you have money and/or connections, it’s easier for you.

it’s a very welcoming country for LGBT folks (yes, including T, despite what the government may say)

I live in a largely rural county, and that’s been my experience too. A lot of the pubs and clubs in town not only have substantial LGBT clientele, but also management, and the straight clients don’t seem at all bothered by that. And it’s common to see groups of neighbors and coworkers that include same-sex couples. I’d venture that racism and xenophobia are more pervasive here than homophobia. And even those don’t seem that bad-- my visibly foreign wife and kids got more shit in London than they do here. I’m foreign too, though not visibly, and I’ve never had problems, except a couple encounters with belligerent drunks, and those are easily handled. Those idiots would pick a fight with a hatstand and still manage to lose.

UK here. Starmer went full TERF for some moronic reason (far from his first bad decision), but we still have only non-gender-specific toilets at my rather large workplace. So it’s bigoted and nasty, but it hasn’t been applied with the fascist zeal that it would be in the States.

Schumer’s job is to resign immediately and never involve himself in public life again.

European countries that don’t have FPTP are just as fucked up as the ones that do.

The same is true of term limits. US states that have implemented them don’t have any better governance than those that didn’t.

Have they considered actually standing up to MAGA?

And what about actually delivering something of value to their voters, in the places where Dems have a majority such as state and city governments?

“Fraudulent” means “not what MAGA wants.”

And yet there are still jobs.

They also don’t care if we starve to death. That’s just thinning the herd as far as they’re concerned.

Don’t like being livestock? Better get organized and do something about that.