It looks like we have an answer to the question "what happens when the FBI shuts off the Russian money pipeline to American right-wing grifters?". Apparently, the answer is that they organize a griftcon.

It's really not about him losing votes, though. Despite the fact that there are a truly mind-boggling number of idiot cultists out there who are for some reason devoted to this moron, there are not enough of them to win an election. Both candidates need to appeal to the vast pool of undecided or apathetic voters in order to win. In 2020, the Democrats won because that pool of people were highly motivated to oust Trump after living through 4 years of his presidency, but people have very short memories and even shorter attention spans, and so the Dems can't really count on the same thing happening again in 2024.

When Trump was running against Biden at the beginning of this race, things were looking grim for the Democrats, because that group of morons who can't be bothered to pay the slightest bit of attention to what's happening in their government (apathetic & undecided voters) decided that they couldn't really tell the difference between two senile, doddering old men, so Trump's rambling incoherence wasn't that big of a problem. Now that he's facing someone more than 2 decades younger than him who still has the complete use of her mental faculties, it's imperative for him to do SOMETHING to make himself not look like a shoeless old man in a hospital gown wandering between lanes of traffic after escaping from his rest home. This debate didn't do that.

It's amazing to me that anybody on his team was shocked he did so poorly. It just indicates to me that they're absolutely shit at their jobs. Being a good advisor requires you to be able to recognize the difference between reality and fantasy, and anybody who thought Trump would do well in this debate after spending any amount of time actually listening to him has failed this most basic of tests.

I'm surprised that he did so well in the debate, actually. I mean, he still got absolutely bodied, but no microphones picked up the sound of him shitting himself this time, so he's already showing an improvement over his debate performance with Biden.

Edit: it just occurred to me that Trump randomly shitting himself could be the reason his team were so gung ho for muted mics: it means that there's 50% less chance he'll drop a deuce while near a hot mic. If so, that's a great strategy on their part.

I suppose the title isn't exactly misleading, but it certainly left me with the impression that he had another sundowning moment where he gets off on a tangent and then a tangent to that tangent, and never gets back to the original point.

This wasn't that. He was talking shit, obviously, but his drivel contained cogent points. It's probably the most coherent I've seen him be in the last year or two. While he was speaking (and making one coherent point), he was interrupted by a mosquito, and then took a moment to mention how much he hates mosquitoes. Then, and this is the important bit, he went back to his original point. Everybody does this. Usually, it's nothing more than just waving your hand around in front of your face and saying: "fucking mosquitoes!", but it's the same general principle nonetheless.

Contrast this with his whole shark / boat / battery scenario. Or his long, rambling diatribe about how powerful "nuclear" is. This is nothing.

That's a really good idea; I hadn't thought of it because it's not chronic pain, but at the very least it shouldn't hurt him to try it, so it's worth a shot!

Sorry if this makes me sound like uncultured swine, but is this piece a reference to anything? Like did this artist want to do an homage to something else? Or is it just a bunch of random bullshit of varying shades of white placed into a concise pattern?

Be the change you wish to see in the world.

The thing that most disturbs me is how cavalier the bystanders were about the guy having a gun, which the group proceeded to fight over. They're just sitting there filming and providing commentary. My ass would be out of the pool, out to the parking lot, into my car, and driving home.

50 bucks says that the instant that Arlington staffer's info gets made public, s/he'll be inundated with death threats from Cult 45ers.

I prefer using higher precision when responding like this. I will often say something like: "137.825%". Mostly, I do this because it makes the other person feel awkward, and I do it because I constantly feel awkward, and so I just want other people to feel a tiny portion of what it's like being me.

I mean, everything does happen for a reason. It's just that most of the time, the reason is "because so-and-so is an asshole". It makes it essentially a useless platitude, but not an untrue one. I definitely take issue with the implication of it, that there's some supreme, all-knowing authority in the universe who has this complicated, labyrinthine plan for everyone that involves massive amounts of suffering. That whole "mysterious plan of God" thing is a way for Christians to take credit for all of the good stuff that happens, while downplaying all of the bad stuff that happens as just "part of God's plan!" It's insidious.

Also, in case you're not familiar, this is referencing a tweet from someone whose neighbor told him that his cats keep getting eaten by coyotes. He asks the neighbor how many cats he has, to which the neighbor replies that he just goes and gets a new cat from the shelter every time. So the guy says "sounds like you're just feeding shelter cats to coyotes", at which point the neighbor's daughter starts crying.

Huh. Guess I've got some vision loss.

Typically, when links are published to link aggregator sites like lemmy or reddit or whatever, the link aggregator looks for a meta tag marked thumbnail to grab the URL for the image. It looks like this:

<meta name="thumbnail" content="https://path/to/img.jpg">

In this case, the thumbnail tag contains a url to a different picture, and the one used for this link is nowhere to be found, so I’m guessing that when OP created the link, Lemmy cached the thumbnail picture from the provided URL, and then afterwards, AP changed it in their article.

By the way, on packing the Supreme Court ... you may know this already. It's unconstitutional.

The only things the constitution has to say on the matter of the supreme court are: there has to be one, the supreme court judges should be paid, and the president can appoint supreme court justices with the advice and consent of the senate. It is completely silent on matters of how many supreme court justices there should be, or how long their terms should be.

For all his many, many faults, Mitch McConnell is not a profoundly stupid man, so I'm sure he knows this. Since he very likely knows this already, he probably has a reason for lying to the public on the matter. If the president does appoint several more justices, it's not like the Republicans can sue: no lower court would take the case, and the supreme court would already be packed with people who will actually be faithful to the constitution. So legal threats are a complete non-starter. That just leaves non-legal threats, which is what I think this is. I think Glitch is previewing the Republican strategy in the case of Harris getting more justices hired, which is they'll stoke up the fear and hatred of their idiotic, mouth breathing supporters. It's a thinly-veiled threat of treason.

Useless figurehead doesn't shave for a couple of days. News at 11.

Ok - I'm sold that Khelif is intersex. But again, that doesn't change anything. The IOC sets the rules for their competitions, and they don't preclude people with Khelif's condition from competing, so she did not break any rules as you suggested. Additionally, according to that same coach in that same interview you posted, Khelif had been on a hormone adjustment regimen for the past year, meaning that her muscle mass and testosterone levels are in line with other female athletes of her age. So it's not like she has an unfair advantage because of increased testosterone. And besides that, it's not like she's unbeatable. She's lost 9 fights to other women, and that was before 2023, when her coach said she started having her hormones regulated. 9 other women beat someone who was living with all of the advantages you ascribe to being intersex.

Also, your repeated misgendering of her is really shitty of you. She was born, raised, and identifies as female. Gender isn't just based on what your chromosomes are. You saw a woman win against other women, and you got all hot and bothered about it, despite it being completely within the rules of the competition she was in, despite her having testosterone levels and muscle mass within the range of her competitors, and despite her losing against other women on several previous occasions.

I think a more fair recap is that you tried slinging lots of mud, declared that no evidence exists, ignored the part where this can be easily fixed with a simple cheek swab, and then shat on the women that had their dreams crushed.

Hard disagree. First of all, any "evidence" you provided is speculative at best, and downright trash at worst. Secondly, why should the Olympics single these fighters out to even more scrutiny just because some people like you are butthurt about a woman beating a woman in combat sports?

A journalist has claimed to see the test results

Ok? Did he publish them? Did the lab publish information about the tests they did? No? Then who gives a shit? If the evidence isn't public, then it's not useful. You're claiming that it exists because you want to believe it exists. The only evidence for it is a shady organization and one journalist who says that he saw the results once. I really hope you're not an investigator, because you'd be shit at it.

They’re allowed to be pissed off that the rules allow men to compete, and advocate for change.

They very clearly don't, though. No competitor in women's boxing was a man. Your insistence that they were is completely unfounded.

I hope you’ll listen to the evidence as it comes out

If any evidence does come out, and if it is credible, I will change my opinion on the matter accordingly. That's a big "if", though, as there has been no evidence presented to date, other than your feelings.

I think it's probably good to take a step back and see how we got to this point. Do a little recap. The first thing that I said was that you were strapped to some propaganda machines. That's how this entire comment chain started. Please feel free and go back to my first comment in this thread if you feel I'm mischaracterizing it.

You asked why I thought you were sucking down propaganda, and I enumerated the reasons for it. Not the least of which, I might remind you, is that you care so much about the outcome of an amateur female boxing Olympic event that you made a post about how disappointed you were with the Lemmy community for how they were reacting to it. Our entire conversation to this point is predicated on the fact that you're so deeply affected by the outcome of a sport that you very likely didn't give a single, solitary fuck about 2 weeks ago. So let's set that as a baseline here.

Next, I pointed out that the only evidence you've presented for your argument that Khelif is a man is that the IBA said so, that the IOC made an ambiguous tweet, and that some of the people who Khelif beat were butthurt about it. Again, please feel free to peruse the entire conversation to date to verify the truth of what I just said.

When I pointed out that even in the off chance that Khelif is intersex, it very specifically doesn't violate IOC rules, and that Olympic events are run by the IOC, you throw some catch-22 bullshit at me.

Let's face it, my guy: you're unhinged. There is no reaching you. You have a conclusion that you want to be true, and you're upset that other people you share this space with aren't convinced by your evidence. I think it would be a very good idea for you to take a step back, and examine why you're so invested in your foregone conclusion here. Why do you feel so strongly about this issue that you're willing to not only make a post about it, but go to something like 12 or 13 replies deep in a hostile conversation with a stranger about it? What do you get out of this if you're right, and what do you lose if you're wrong?

I think your perspective is entirely too narrow, and that you're entirely too invested in an issue that has literally nothing whatsoever to do with you. This is why I suggested in my first reply to you that you should probably distance yourself from the internet for a bit and do some soul searching.

Ok, well first: some of the women "they" fought thought "they" cheated. Not all of them. Second, who gives a shit? Seriously, who the fuck cares what losers think? That one lady - Angela Carini - claimed that she had a "warrior spirit", then quit after being punched in the face twice. 46 seconds in. That ain't a fucking warrior spirit; that's fucking weak.

The point is, the women who lost and were bitter about it don't set the rules for the tournament. The IOC does, since it's an IOC event. And the IOC said that both Khalif and Lin were qualified to compete in it. So bitching from Carini and a couple of others means precisely dick.