It’s not blocked as much as it’s made more and more difficult, because they can’t hard block it (yet). So, the best advice, if you actually want advice and not just to bitch on the internet (it’s fine if that’s all you want, btw), is to organize. Organization is the single most powerful tool in political efforts, full stop. Examine the problem that affects voters in a given area and organize with the explicit goal of helping voters overcome those barriers. I’m not just talking about getting people to the polls, I’m talking demanding local policy changes, getting after state legislators, yelling at anyone who will (and many who won’t) listen, organize and run local campaigns for city council or county supervisor. Those races can actually be competitive in deep red/blue areas, especially if locals know a particular person on their team is a shithead. Those positions also hold a shocking amount of power, and open up political communication channels that would otherwise be inaccessible. Idk if you’re a communist, and I don’t care, the American communists of the 1800s didn’t just sit back and wait for the US to collapse, they got out there and faced likely being murdered to try and organize slaves to break up an unjust system. Get outside and stomp some grass if you want to see something different, bitching on the internet won’t change anything.

I understand that we should stop funding and supporting the Israeli government, and I also think that this is, realistically, the best we’re going to get for the time being. No major policy battle is won overnight, especially in the US. It took marijuana reform decades and decades to go mainstream, and that happened because of efforts at the state and local levels forcing the federal government’s hand, and that’s still not totally won. It’s going to take decades of consistent effort to unfuck car centrism and bad urban policy, including housing. It’s going to take decades of consistent effort to get medicare for all and other desperately needed welfare reforms (not in the sense the republicans use it). It would be great if we could get a flaming radical who eats conservatives and shits effective policy, but the best, longest lasting, and hardest to erode results in the US are won by consistent, steady effort. Kamala winning would be a step in the right direction and a signal that speaking out for Palestine isn’t a radioactive snakebite for a presidential campaign. If this blows up on her, I expect the democrats to slam a lid on any talk of progressive policy for another 20 years.

The lack of FCC enforcement has virtually made it a necessity. I get anywhere between 8-12 scam calls a day, and it’d be more if I actually answered them. I use the google call screener these days, but yeah, if I answered ever unknown call, I’d go barking mad.

[adjusts glasses] Sweden? Norway? Russia? Turkey? Poland? Hungary?

Goodness, either English searches for veganism is far more common than I would have expected in those countries, or Google is doing some translating work.

I hate to break it to you, but the teleprompter bit died with Obama. Trump and Biden both use them, too, they just got better at hiding them.

No shit, I’d vote for Commander and Major Biden in a heartbeat.

Anon, she likes you so much that she’s dating you twice.

Too bad Donald Trump won’t replace Donald Trump. I’d prefer if he picked a real anti-government type, like Commander Biden.

We have a second house (a trailer, really) and rent it to my mom for way under market rate. 100% of the rent goes to paying off the debt from rehabilitating the trailer and paying off her utilities. It’s not like we’re out here just raking in the dough, we’re just trying to keep my mom from being homeless. I know for damn sure we’ve got to do it, because the state is way happier spending its money bashing homeless people instead of preventing homeless people.

While gerrymandering and voter suppression aren’t nothing, the system is just completely incapable of responding to signals it never receives. If you don’t vote, the system is not incentivized or designed to promote people who have your political interests in mind. There’s a lot of critical reforms that need to happen, none of them as urgent as ranked choice voting, but as little as your vote means for a federal election:

• It means A LOT MORE for local elections, and these people have a shocking amount of power for how much people care about local races.

• It’s still at least some signal to the system that can be interpreted or responded to. It can’t hurt. Throw your vote away on RFK or the Libertarian Party if you want. Hell, I voted for Jorgensen last election. But I’m telling you that not voting when you could is almost always going to lead to the worst possible outcome for people who share your political interests.

Before the 9th circuit stopped it, homeless sweeps were wholeheartedly embraced as the de facto solution. Somehow, over forty years of homeless sweeps, it doesn’t seem to have solved the problem.

It’s because encampment sweeps aren’t a fix, it’s just blasting money out of the government’s ass to temporarily wallpaper over the problem and make life harder on the people who’ve been brought lowest in our society. He would be wise to remain on the path of housing reform and other reforms that California was starting to embrace when it didn’t have any other choice, that is, if he actually intends to fix the problem.

Nobody’s forcing Newsom to embrace the ruling.

Really disappointed in Newsom here. He’s done a lot to try and improve the housing situation here (though not nearly enough, it’s a lot more movement than this issue has seen in years), so I really expected better than this of him. The camp sweeps are just the biggest fucking waste of money. The state spends millions of dollars playing whack-a-mole, tormenting the people in our society who need the most help and just wallpapering over the problem, and it does absolutely nothing to help. Arguably, it makes things worse. That money could be better spent on direct action, building affordable housing, funding rehabilitation, etc. But we gotta blow it out our ass just tormenting people because whiny wealthier people want them moved now.

And we have the audacity to mock communist regimes for fake grocery stores, as if this is any better. You can’t fix homelessness by making these people miserable. The extra frustrating part is that the real fixes are far, far cheaper than this stupid fucking band-aid system we’ve developed.

Creepypasta ass smile

Let’s go! Kamala’s bringing a good energy to the table, I like to see it. I’m cautiously optimistic.

I dunno, I remember that days before the debate, there was an article that was talk about how the republicans were painting themselves into a corner with all of their Biden has Dementia rhetoric because they were setting the bar so low that if “Biden finished the debate with a pulse, he would have won by their metrics”. It’s probably the old case of double talk, really. Biden was simultaneously both a roided out giga brain secret Stalin and a feeble confused old man prepared to die at literally any second.

We deserve to have shit thrown on us by the homeless. We designed, permit, and endorse the system that creates the conditions that make homelessness such a problem. Real solutions are fought aggressively, if not by NIMBYs then by moneyed interests, and bullshit non-solutions that just blow money out of the government’s ass and into the hands of private owners and shitty startups are what’s embraced instead.

WoAh YoU mEaN tHe HoMeLeSs SpIkEs DiDn’T rEdUcE HoMeLesSnEsS?! No way! It’s almost like not actually addressing the problem somehow failed to fix it! Christian values my ass. The guy I read about would have some opinions about the US and its ‘Christians’.

It literally is. It is literally my opinion that she will be able to somewhat distance herself from Biden’s problems successfully.

Idk, I guess that’s your opinion. I don’t think it’s really that viable of an attack vector.

I don’t think those are too viable. If republicans have any sense, they’re going to treat the topic of abortion as radioactive and talk as little about it as possible. If the Dems won’t restore Roe, then what will the republicans do? And Kamala could easily enough distance herself from Economic policy.