@leslietownes eric and junior are both very uncharismatic. i'm betting ivanka runs after donald dies, if any of them do. Or her husband.

yeah, that wouldn't surprise me. but she has her father's jowls. i give her "blonde and thin" status a few more years, max. the fox news cretins will find someone else.

@leslietownes they do seem to have a large supply of blonde and thin

i have yet to see any evidence that any trump can complete a sentence. eventually this could become a liability.

even trump's wife has his jowls. that's really weird to me. it's not genetic. couples tend to resemble each other.

I can imagine there's a lot of frowning that comes with being in that family

i bet it all falls apart when he dies. he is full of empty threats. none of his NDAs are enforceable. it will all go to hell when he can't raise an army of angry nitwits on social media.

actuarially speaking, maybe another 10 years of this crap. he can barely speak now, that's not going to improve. what replaces him might not be better, but it won't be him.

i'm more worried about the electorate. there's a critical mass of about 30% of people who are dumb as bricks, and without amending a lot of stuff with hypermajorities, the government is set up to give them, at a minimum, veto power.

blegh.

idk. i think this is far from over. the "don't vote" thing is his threat to the republican party-- "Get behind me, or I will run as an independent and we will both lose." He's spent all his time since leaving office purging the republicans that weren't loyal to him, so he won't have internal opposition when he tries to coup again in 2024

they will point to GOP-suppressed votes as evidence of a silent majority supporting trump.

trump said don't vote, suddenly people aren't voting, we speak for everybody.

blegh.

i think if one or two prominent republicans had decided that trump was over on 1/6 all of this would be over. but they didn't.

@leslietownes i think they know they can't win without his base. the 30% will pretty much do whatever he says to do

even mcconnell fell back in line after a while, and i've never known that dude to compromise about anything when he wasn't forced to

SOLDADOS

@AlexanderGruber This is what it so frustrating about the last 8 years. Remember the "never Trump" movement, of which Paul Ryan, among other GOP'ers were a part of, prior to the primary results?? Once Trump one the nomination, the GOP rank in file fell into place, kissing his butt, and smiling to cameras. The GOP wants to be on the winning score board, no matter what, even after having sold their souls to salute and kiss butt to Trump, is does not even acknowledge the value of democracy.

@amWhy he really has them fenced in. if trump actually were to split the vote in 2022, it's almost certain that the dems would gain enough seats for a supermajority, plus many state and local seats. they'd undo a ton of gerrymandering, repeal restrictions on voting rights-- it would essentially be the end of the the republican party.

from your lips to g-d's ears..

@AlexanderGruber For the survival of the GOP, ultimately, they'd be better off to challenge Trump to split the vote, accept another 4 year Democrat as Pres, while at the same time, try to restructure the republican party. But because many of those egos are party before principles, I fear that won't happen.

republicans cannot win the national popular vote anymore. they have no incentive to win legitimately.

blegh.

it's a shame we don't have ranked choice voting here. if we did we could see the democrats split into neoliberal and progressive factions, while republicans divided into classical liberal and trumpist factions... it would almost start to feel like we had enough choices for democracy to work

SPLENDID

@AlexanderGruber Indeed. I don't think I can take another term with Trump as pres... and all the consequences thereof. I've never before his election, thought there'd be any risk to our democracy. He has been singularly divisive, and his psychopathology leaves us no hope for him "coming to his senses" or appealing to his "conscience", because he has no conscience.

@amWhy i think they just can't lose any ground in order to maintain their obstructionist strategy. everything gringrich started and mcconnell continued depends on them having enough people for their stonewalling threats to be credible

@amWhy i still think it's leading to civil war.

@AlexanderGruber Yes I worry about that.

if he runs again in 2024 he'll have had 4 years to prepare for coup version 2.0

@AlexanderGruber They can't, as in they are not capable of opposing this direction, or they can't because they want to win at all costs, even if it requires they abuse our democracy, stomp all over the constitution, ...??

They will all be morally culpable, each one, individually. Not If they're tied up and prevented from opposing by being held physically hostage, but if they're simply privileged and afraid of thinking for themselves, then there is no hope for them. They took an oath, and if their mind is so caught up is self-interest, their oath was to this nation, not the party to which they belong.

@AlexanderGruber I know that very well. And it scares the hell out of me. Which is the only thing the Donald seems to like to do.

@amWhy i think they abandoned the ideals of democracy a long time ago... if it was ever there, really. Arguably you could even trace it back to the South refusing to ratify the contitutional convention unless their aristocratic class was given more of a vote than others

it's evolved so we look at it in an urban vs rural thing, but it's really always been whether elites have more of a vote or not.

@AlexanderGruber I've thought the same. I sure does seem as though the south never moved on after then, nor after the civil war.

they've got their own realpolitik, i guess. difference is who they consider to be "the nation." and that's why i think it will lead to war

@AlexanderGruber Oh, I agree. All the gerrymandering efforts and voting restrictions passed in so many of those states clearly, time and again, and somewhat elsewhere too, try to retain aristocratic classes, now self-entilted right-winger whites, who feel entitled.

@AlexanderGruber True. It seemed much of that hatred was seething, and Trump happened to tap into it, and stoke it. He doesn't want anything, personally to do with them, but he saw it as his ticket to election....

no MODULE but NODULE

@leslietownes Let's hope it's benign!! :-)

@amWhy a lot of it was created, really.

ADIPOSE tissue

by kushner and cambridge analytica and trump himself, and all of that

one thing that we have yet to see tested is whether trump can win without enormous amounts of free media coverage. the ban from twitter is huge. if you just look at his in-person appearances, they don't appeal to anybody who wouldn't buy a ticket. he seems deranged.

actuarially speaking, his voters are also somewhat more likely to die between now and 2024 than democratic voters. and i hope they all do.

there will always be a fringe element and maybe even another 1/6, but i'm not too worried about it

but it goes back further than that honestly, i mean abortion for example is a manufactured issue. before the 80s it was a "catholic issue", until the GOP saw an opportunity to secure the rest of the religious right, and started propagandizing it

@leslietownes yes, i do think this is the biggest game changer here.

@AlexanderGruber I agree. Or actively stirred up. and being as stupid as he is, he attracted a lot of stupid people. They are "Trump's base", and because he can manipulate them to vote for him, he's seen as crucial.

i'm also encouraged by the fact that all of his stupid lawsuits have been flushed down the toilet, including by 'trump judges,' while he is still defending some.

he's phenomenally stupid. a smart person with his fan base would already have done a lot more damage.

@AlexanderGruber Indeed! The alignment of the Evangelicals and the right, reveals just how the marriage between politics and religion goes wrong. Especially when it doesn't work for Jews, or Muslims, ....

the most pressing thing that needs to happen is for social media companies to do something to curb misinformation. Even if Trump himself isn't on there, there are so many cryptofascists out there fomenting discontent, exploiting the algorithms so that only their targets see their content

@AlexanderGruber Have you visited "politics.se" at all? I haven't; I suspect it won't look anything different than social media chats following news articles.

@amWhy yeah, a little bit. i don't post there but HNQ has lead me down a couple of rabbit holes there

@AlexanderGruber I haven't spent any time on Philosophy.se, because (also seen occasionally here), to many users drawn to it are secluded, self-taught, or believe everything is relative and they're entitled to their opinions.

my read on it is that a lot of it is questions like "explain why some people think X" and then somebody will explain the perspective without necessarily supporting it. It is pretty opinion based.

In 2016, and the months leading to Trumps election, I lost an incredible amount of faith in Americans. No doubt some of my faith was previously whittled away, even via experiences with my siblings.

@AlexanderGruber Exactly.

PENINSULA

INSULIN (likely already mentioned.) SENILE

whoa, good one.

we found all the penis ones first before getting to the clean and geographic peninsula. sad commentary on society.

@leslietownes Hah! In WI, we have Peninsula State Park, in Door County.

@leslietownes Nice ! With another P we'd have SUPPLIED, SUPPLY, SUPPLIES, SUPPLE

And NIPPLE, And SNAPPLE

we do have those

well done

@leslietownes You're right! Hah!

APPLES

It is amazing how attention and the mind work, and habituation (in terms of familiarity): What we see, what is there. I've also always found optical illusions fascinated. Cognitive psychology is loaded with studies on perceptual biases. And how context affect such biases, in some cases.

^^^^ (related to my failure, earlier, to see the two P's in the search phrase.)

With an R, we'd have PURPLE, SURPLUS, PURPOSE,

INDULGES (but entirely possible already mentioned).

With one T, we'd have DELEGATION, DELEGATE

i've really been feeling the missing R and T.

our cat is so cute. she's asleep in a heated bed, and the sun is on her.

@leslietownes Ohh, so sweet! My shai loves to sleep near my heat registers, or, when sunny, my living area (open concept) has a lot of windows. When open, large blotches of sun are cast on the floor, where lays on the rugs I have, and rolls from side to side half asleep, stretching his legs and paws.... I love such moments!

@leslietownes Heated bed? That's a nice idea!

that's one from a while ago. one of her favorite spots.

it's pressure-activated, so it only heats when she's on it. $40 at petco.

@leslietownes Oh, soooo sweet. I caught a quick "pet video" yesterday, showing "mom" coming home after work, with her kitten tied up in a curtain. The cat managed to twist and twist, and knock the rod down holding the curtain from the top of the window, but in the meantime, kitten became swaddled in the curtain, peeping it's head up when Mom walked in!

Smart for you! no such trappings for Olivia!

yeah, no curtain cord. risky for toddlers.

@leslietownes very very true!

i agree that there's no need for heated anything where we live :) california can be extreme, but not where we live, 2 miles from the beach

livvy has her heated bed anyway

@leslietownes Well, of course. She's a cat! :-)

i always wonder what livvy was like as a kitten

@leslietownes When did she enter your life?

around 8 months, estimated. that probably isn't exact because our shelter got her from another shelter, with the original person who brought her in not involved

I took in Shai and his litter mate/sister Rinah at 2 months and OMG, the were my monkeys; When I shared this with the Foster Mom, she said: "more like monsters". I had a good sense of humor, though. But I had to do a lot to accommodate them, like make computer cords and wires for stereos inaccessible to them. Rinah learned early how to open my cupboards, and shai learned from her. She was the leader of the two, but oh... did shai ever learn well.

we heard from our shelter that livvy bothered the other cats so much during open play time that they had to put her in a separate room where she could watch the other cats play but not join them.

Rinah was naughty, but delightful, and she was a cuddler. I lost her too early.

@leslietownes Poor livvy!

she does get very in-your-face. we don't mind it, too much.

But you and your wife saved her, and now she runs the house!

she's good when it counts. we used to have her heated bed on a corner of our dinner table, because it was the one place in the house that got regular sunlight for most of the year. she'd sit in it and watch us have dinner.

@leslietownes Shai gets like that, too. Like when he decides to lay on my keyboard.

then we moved, get a lot more sunlight in the house now, have the heated bed near one of her favorite windows.. and she still jumps on the dinner table to watch us eat.

more responsible people would never have let her get up there.

@leslietownes Oh, I get it! Shai loves to be at my face level. He observes no "off limits". Counters, my table, even the vanity in my bathroom, especially in winter, since it's the warmest room in my house.

livvy is the same way. she jumps up on the counter in the bathroom and swats at you if you leave too quickly.

Cats are willful; speaking of which my shai (I pronounce it "Shay" ( which I guess is wrong, but he knows Shay; nickname more or less "shaybe"(rhymes with baby)... is quite vocal at this moment; so I need to both eat and give him attention, the latter first.