If I put the cheese out too obviously the mouse will know what I am doing

But if I eat some cheese in the corner and, “oppsie” drop a small piece in a sticky trap area… I might just awaken to an angry mouse chirping at me.

You still haven’t given an example of wtf you’re talking about.

Who the fuck are these mysterious (assumedly) pro-Stalin, pro-USSR, etc. “tankies” who ALSO are pro-USA/pro-capitalism?

Just give a name! Find a person in history or today and type their name into your text box and hit send. Is this asking a lot?

If they use it to mean “person who doesn’t get bogged down in stupid details over the USSR (or China) just for the sake of hating a communist country” then fine. I don’t care. It just gets old seeing it used as “person left of me, which means they’re bad” by the most historically illiterate motherfuckers on the planet. The kind of fuckers who say they want socialism and then cry every time someone protests in a street. Do you see what I mean? It’s not the word, I don’t care in the end. I get like a death threat per day from random Nazis who (ironically) call me antisemitic for criticizing Israel. I’ll take tankie over that, given the choice. But it’s worth acknowledging the people calling me or us or whoever “tankie” are absolutely just the dumbest fuckers online. That’s all.

Bro, wtf is a tankie if not a communist? You’re just out here making up bullshit. I want a definition!

I’ve been led to believe “tankie” was referring to fans of the USSR, which, I suppose if you wanna be annoying, one could argue “weren’t communists.” But you didn’t do that. You didn’t say “Stalin betrayed Marxist Leninism” or whatever. I could assume that’s what you meant, but I’d rather read it from you.

It’s starting to feel like, to me, that tankie just means “someone more left than me, and that makes me angry!” Because I can say who isn’t calling people tankies. That would be Marxists of whatever variety. I can also say who does seem to be using that word all the time… socdems, liberals, sometimes outright fascists. It definitely seems to be the bludgeon of liberals who fancy themselves to be socialists though. I’m going to include most leftist anarchists under the umbrella of liberal because that’s just how I roll. Like a big ol’ tank.

Anti-communism has always been a reaction to communism (leftist movements broadly).

Anyone who unironically uses the word tankie… ever… is immediately written off in my book. They’re terminally online and have never read anything, never thought about anything seriously, they’re useful idiots for fascists at best and, a lot of times, just fascists.

I feel like they think I’m being hyperbolic or forcing a false dichotomy, but, no, if you self-label as anti-communist that’s basically the same as modern day “all lives matter” people which was a right wing, reactionary, movement against the movement for justice for black people in the US. There is a movement which is objectively on the side of people, justice, etc. and there is a reaction to that movement. Just how it goes. If you identify on the reactionary side… well, there you go. Not sure why this is so complicated for the “bBUT TANKIES” dipshits.

It’s insanely profitable to Boeing mostly, yes.

They held (still hold) most of the contracts for the operating silos to this day. All the equipment had to be designed to withstand a first strike nuclear attack from the USSR. Not necessarily like a direct attack, but a nearby attack on its equivalent sites. 15 missile alert facilities per base. 10 missiles per alert facility. Three bases. Total 450 operational ICBMs under the ground with predetermined coordinates meant to strike at the most valuable military targets of the USSR, China, etc. (used to be more but Peacekeepers and others were dismantled).

Boeing designed a ton of proprietary equipment for these sites. Since it has to be hardened to EMP, radiation, heat, vibration, etc. it’s over-engineered (and probably done well since it was the 1960/70s before full enshittification struck). Proprietary equipment, most of it classified for national security reasons, has to be within very strict guidelines, etc. Boeing basically holds a pistol to the Air Force’s head with this shit. They can demand anything they want. Which is, of course, the entire point to a lot of this stuff. Enrich private corporations.

Russia and the US both still have the START treaty

However, Russia stepped back due to the whole Ukraine thing.

And yes the Russian Federation inherited the aged (even at the time) missiles which were equivalent to the US’ Minuteman III and others which have been decommissioned. Peacekeeper, Atlas, etc.

To be the most fully fair to the US, the Peacekeeper missiles were decommissioned and their former locations were (most of them) fully destroyed as to never be useable again.

Not that it matters much, but the US stepped down the Minuteman III to only carry one nuclear warhead (possible of 3 max). The Peacekeeper missiles could carry 10 warheads.

The reduction to one warhead and subsequent decommissioning of the Peacekeepers was due to US/USSR cooperation.

We did it before. We can do it again. There’s absolutely never been and never will be a reason for a country to have so many nukes.

The word impotent gave me a hilarious mental picture of a vampiric Trump who can’t “get his teeth hard” to bite people.

This should be a comedy sketch if it isn’t already. A vampire that has to take like Blue Chews to get their fangs hard enough to perform.

"Vampires, listen up. Are your fangs more like overcooked spaghetti now days? Are you having trouble getting ready for your nightly encounters? Have you been in a situation where you really wanted to suck that sweet, fresh neck-blood but your gear wasn’t operating?

Well, Count Trumpula has a product for all our befanged, sparkly travelers of the night."

At this point, anyone who is aware enough to post about Israel and denies that Israel is in the wrong basically in every single possible instance, I consider unreachable, unconvertable Nazis. These are the people who will cry endlessly about Ukraine but then do 400 flips to explain why Israel is allowed to murder or displace 2M people.

Morality and such concerns aside, these missiles are pointless beyond boomer dick-wagging.

If the US military desires to destroy the world, the submarine nuclear arsenal is fully capable of doing so. If the US is hit with a first strike nuclear attack, again, the subs are fully capable of retaliating and ensuring only cockroaches are left.

These bases and their missiles are an antiquated relic from the Cold War. Hey here’s a crazy idea: the US agrees to an open destruction of the warheads and missile sites. China, Russia, etc. can send observers to verify the destruction. At the beginning of this process just publicly announce something like “we’re willingly and freely reducing our nuclear stockpile. It is our hope that other nations match us.”

Oh, damn, I must have been off in some commie daydream for a second. What I meant to say was we should pay Boeing $10T over the next decade to update the terrestrial ICBM silos.

Anyone who claims to care about Palestinians or just generally the US not doing evil shit (or directly supporting it) and is whining or complaining about movements to dump Genocide Joe

1. supports genocide (whether they say so or not. Supporting Biden or refusing to not reject him or supporting Trump are all genocidal stances)

2. is not a serious person as far as politics goes (and probably generally speaking)

All the liberals and many self-labeled leftists (I would call that a false label, but ok) first justified the genocide stance, and now they’re trying to ignore it and distract from the genocide by focusing on “bad actors” on the pro-Palestinian side; it doesn’t much matter, ultimately, if the “bad actors” are actually pro-Palestinian or not nor what their exact stance on Israel is or isn’t, the entire goal is to be talking about them. People such as Claudine Gay who is a Zionist (as almost all libs are- so she’s not special) but wasn’t sufficiently bloodthirsty in her Zionism and wasn’t sufficiently racist enough to condemn people for peacefully protesting an ongoing US-backed genocide. And the news has spent days worth of coverage on a person (and I don’t intend any specific disrespect towards her, because she simply isn’t worth caring about) who quite literally does not matter. She’s a glorified fundraiser in one person’s body. The face of America’s “great academic institutions!” and really nothing much more.

But the news, run by liberals of course, has spent alllllll this energy and time lying about protestors and the nature of the protests, using horribly worded defense from ex-president Gay (because she’s a Zionist and incapable of defending pro-Palestinian protesters. But she also didn’t want to condemn a movement against obviously horrific war crimes the US is supporting/doing), twisting everything into universities defending antisemitism instead of what they’re actually doing which is defending Zionism, and zero focus on Genocide Joe himself (haven’t heard much from him since Christmas) or his cabinet or Iraq War-esque cronies and clowns who are totally incapable, in the same way as Gay, of saying “yes, Israel is doing genocide and ethnic cleansing, and yes the President supports it.” Instead they call perfectly-crafted legal documents, using the beloved US-dominated neoliberal international laws, “baseless” and such.

So, I dunno. Who knows what will crack or when it will crack, but this split in the brains of liberals, the ones who have any conscience anyway, is widening day by day. They’re all experiencing the same brain fuckery that Gay and the other presidents had in front of Congress where every fiber of their being (I have to assume for my own sake) wants to scream “you don’t give a shit about Jews or anyone else!” When they keep falsely claiming and just blatantly lying over and over about simple phrases like “free Palestine.” Literally just those two words. Not even the river and sea portion, nothing else, that means “kill Jews!” to deranged Zionists. So I have to wonder when the liberals will reach some crisis of contradictions where something must change. They must choose between openly celebrating genocide, like Biden and his spokesmen are basically at this point (and since the beginning), or rejecting Biden, rejecting Zionism, and ultimately rejecting the democrat (and obviously, no shit, republican) party.

I’m pretty sure that contradiction will be settled AFTER Biden is gifted the nomination and AFTER he loses to Trump, which he clearly will at this point (of course anything can happen, but if things continue as Biden wants them to, he will lose badly). Their choice will not be the choice of justice but rather the “easier” institutional choice to side with the US state, to back Israel no matter they do, and to continue to spiral the US down the drain as the world wrenches itself from 30 solid, basically uncontested, years of US domination. Every single day is a day that Biden, et al. could steer the US for a softer landing in coming decades. To stave off desire for retribution from the rest of the world.

People will forgive a LOT of wrongs done to them/their ancestors once the healing process actually begins. Very few people desire blood just for the sake of vengeance. But if you keep pushing and pushing and pushing while you lose power, I don’t know what other outcome Americans who support Biden (or yes yes Trump, but does that even warrant mentioning? Of course Trump sucks dogshit) expect 10, 20, 50 years down the line if they keep supporting genocides now, stamping out domestic protests to genocide now, etc. The blowback for this shit doesn’t seem far off in some imagined future. The blowback feels like it’s already here or nearly here and just for the sake of self preservation any serious person who lives in the US should be demanding the US adhere to that aspirational statement of “never again” in every possible meaning. That means never again back genocide. Never again do a genocide. Never again ignore genocides, done by us or others we support or not. Never again force our nation’s will upon others by use of sheer might, military, financial, or otherwise.

I don’t mean this in some sort of dipshit “I don’t see race!” way, but I must be totally pulled from the Hasbara propaganda machine at this point. When I hear, see, or think about Palestine at this point I just think “the asshole colonizer arm of the US” country and “the indigenous people they displaced and are genociding currently.” Like I’ve just totally slotted them in my brain, and not to say they’re exact equivalents because that’s reductive obviously, into white Europeans and their genocide of the Americas.

All of that to say when I’m reminded that Israelis and their propagandists attempt to falsely frame this around religion it’s always a bit jarring and takes a second for the rage to hit once I realize how moronic and frankly evil a lot of Zionists are. People like President Genocide Joe and his staff of little Himmlers. It’s the same exact propaganda and lies that echo through every mass extermination and attempt at or successful theft of land in history.

Unfortunately something I’ve come to realize recently is many Americans today think the genocide of the natives was justified or they just don’t care. Well, I didn’t just realize this; I was reminded of this truth is more correct. Maybe they acknowledge individual bad acts by Americans and Europeans (trail of tears) but they always default back to “both sides” and will never concede that one side had a righteous and correct resistance and the other side was just slaughtering people to steal their land and resources and it’s not more complicated than that. This “American exceptionalism” cope has pickled millions of brains the exact same way Zionism has to Israelis and Nazism to Germans, etc.

I really enjoy that the core idea at the start of the article is “Republicans are just lying. This is surprising!” The result of media (not necessarily this piece but it all feeds off each other) all just functioning as an unquestioning mouthpiece for the state and its actors. “Well, this guy said it, and we MUST continue pretending they have legitimacy and aren’t literally always lying.”

I guess I’m operating within the mindset of “if these are the rules (like you don’t send a giant swarm of hogs towards the capitol) then he broke the rules and he should pay.” It’s also pretty clear by now that very little will happen to him. I know the libs are coping, but we all know Trump is only leaving the race by two means: voluntarily stepping down or nature takes its course.

My civil rights, civil liberties brain says “yeah people should be able to do this stuff minus the breaking in portion.” Not because of property damage, but because, I mean, I absolutely despise Nancy and if something had happened to her then I’m not going to feel particularly sad over it. But it could also be a non total sack of shit and having a norm of “these few thousand hogs are really angry, so the Speaker just had to die” 🤷‍♀️ also seems “pretty bad.”

And of course my leftist brain is ripping itself apart between “If (s)he dies, (s)he dies” and “this will directly lead to even harsher crackdowns on BLM, anti-Israel, etc. protests by the left” Which are basically all violence-free, yet get met with 100x the reaction of the hog rally directly threatening (to whatever degree) congress’ lives. Of course that’s happening ANYWAY and this prosecution or pursuit of prosecution will probably only accelerate timelines (I’m not an accelerationist because as of right now that just leads directly to true fascism, whatever that ends up looking like (not just orange man)).

So, in the end… I guess I don’t care? I mean I don’t like what he did, obviously. [liberalness] The courts are the proper place for his grievances not in DC with his loyal squad of piggies. [/liberalness] But had it been a left winger or even a Bernie type who felt cheated, and I legitimately agreed with his claim of being cheated, then I’d want to do (hypothetically, in a book, etc.) what they did. Or, more hypothetical things even.

Of course this all runs up against reality which is you don’t take over a government by force by occupying its capitol. You don’t even do it by killing all those leaders. The government is run by thousands of faces and names we don’t know and it would continue with or without those elected names in place. And liberals don’t want to go down THAT road of speaking about actual revolutionary tactics, who would have to “go”, what places have to be captured, etc. Certainly the MSM doesn’t anyway for obvious reasons. The fucking FBI director would probably call Chris Hayes live on TV if he started talking about that shit. “Did Trump supporters plan to bomb local electrical infrastructure? New evidence is comin- hold on… ok, my producer is telling me to move on… ok… Trump was back in court today for his next round of slander cases…”

I don’t know how much weight is placed behind “intent but lacking the knowledge or ability” vs pure “intent” devoid of context such as knowledge. Like if you intend to overthrow the government, but you think doing so means breaking into the capitol, is that an insurrection? I dunno. I’d classify the whole thing probably as a riot myself. Obviously libs love institutions so defacing the beautiful capitol is a crime worthy of execution by itself in their eyes.

I haven’t seen a dipshit neoliberal with the fortitude to post here since… a long time. You guys all get so utterly blown the fuck out and slink away.

Keep supporting genocide though, Nazi boy.

I agree with many points in here or don’t disagree enough to really respond.

However, I will say about the “insurrection” stuff: did Trump orchestrate it? Depends on what that means to you, I guess.

To me, a sitting president spent 2 months-ish crying because he lost, refused to just say that he lost, and then tweeted “everyone! I have evidence! Come to the Capitol Jan 6th! It’ll be wild!” (Paraphrasing there obviously). And (further paraphrasing) had his henchmen and kid give speeches followed by himself which boiled down to “we’re gonna go to the Capitol building…and convince them to not certify this election. wink wink”

So he purposely and clearly spent months after and years before the election laying the ground, prepping his base (and Republicans had done this for 40+ years waaaaaay prior to Trump. They’ve been whining about election stealing back to Kennedy, LBJ, etc. (some legitimate, some not. Also they did the same shit anyway).

Then he gave them a specific event which he manufactured basically and pretended it mattered beyond ceremony (the actual stuff on Jan 6 is literally just ceremony. All the locking-in has been done by that point. As Pence correctly has said, it didn’t matter what he did/didnt do that day (from a purely legal outlook)).

And on the day he planned he gave a speech basically like “go MAKE them listen.” Did he say directly “go kill Nancy!”? No. But did he need to? Does a mafia boss have to say directly “kill whoever” or can it be reasonably assumed at a certain point that they’re saying certain things, doing certain things, etc. with a clear agenda towards encouraging an outcome?

I mean, look. I don’t actually care about congress, the Capitol, their ceremonies, etc. We all know this is a farce and has been for quite some time… it isn’t a democracy it’s just a capitalist-controlled hellscape. But I’m also not gonna pretend Trump didn’t sick his hordes of most brainbroken, most fanatic supporters on congress to harass them. Do I think he expected them to actually break in and accomplish anything (killing members, specifically)? No. But he knew what he was doing.

I think the event itself is overhyped, but, be definitely did that shit. What I find more concerning is the stuff like threatening officials in GA (a perfect phone call folks!). Again, liberal democracy blah blah blah, but if we’re playing the game, and we all are because we are stuck in it, he definitely was going far beyond any acceptable practices there and his party leaders should’ve barred him from office. Can’t have a shitty liberal democracy if one party is just clearly ignoring the law, telling a state official to “find votes,” etc.

I know this will absolutely never happen, but every time I hear Trump speaking on legitimate problems, I’m like “GODDAMNIT man! Can he drop the Nazi bullshit and just do… good stuff? He wants us to like him. Just do good shit!” Obviously that’s pure fantasy, but it’s absolutely frustrating sometimes hearing him speak, how he can read a room, and then seeing him pivot directly into the same neoliberal bullshit as everyone else.

Is Poland ok?

Not trying to read too much into this if it’s a joke, etc.

But

Marx was stating as an absolute statement of what he viewed as fact (and seems to be correct over a long enough timeline) that capitalism will fail due to contradictions

The Che quote is the less philosophical, more “in the shit” statement. Much like Lenin before him, these guys understood that the contradictions of capitalism lead inevitably, as Marx was getting at, to failures and collapses and it’s at those moments that revolutionaries spring up and rile their base of support within the labor force of the country. Until that moment of crisis things were bad, but tolerable. During the crisis, conditions are intolerable and people are willing to do anything, including overthrowing the government/capitalist class and possibly dying for that cause. Because the alternative is death anyway. Or a living death.

On a side note, this is why there will never be (for any foreseeable future) a socialist revolution in the US. 1) material conditions are broadly “good” (although they are worsening) 2) there is effectively no leftist political movement in the US. There are a few thousand people who are genuinely anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist and want a revolution, but that might as well be zero in a country this size. Not anything new or crazy to point out that as people’s conditions worsen further they will turn towards more and more radical leftist ideas or right wing ideas. Considering the racist undercurrents of the US and lack of any desire for any international cooperation amongst workers mixed with the (unfortunately extremely effective) FBI/CIA ops against US leftists in the past, there’s only really one path that we’re likely to head down…

Keep pushing those numbers lower and lower 🫡

Doing monthly (or more frequent) inventory of the store will “check” the cashiers, as every store has to do. When employees go through and get a total accounting of items actually on hand vs what the system says. Well, it tells the entire story not just on cashiers. How well the stockers kept track of damaged/expired items, theft, cashier mess ups, etc.

I worked grocery, all departments, including receiving when I was younger and had to do inventory all the time. Of course it relies on the employee not being lazy (👀) and actually, you know, doing inventory. Usually the managers waddled their asses over if they wanted “real” inventory done because tbh I spent about an hour actually counting shit and then went and took a nap in the bathroom (had a bench for changing clothes) and just marked everything as matching. Something something pay minimum wage, get minimum work.

Them stopping customers has to be for lowering shrink from theft, but that shit is already negligible anyway. Smart management knows that it’s already baked into the profit margin for the store and harassing people, treating everyone as a thief, will just drive away regular customers. If I get continually hassled somewhere and my time wasted there’s no way I’m gonna keep going there. Even if they manage to catch a bunch of people stealing stuff it just kind of… doesn’t matter.

This is another one of those cases of individuals not understanding statistics and profit margins, etc. You see chuds crying all the time about “but you can’t just steal the chicken! Price go up!” and they seriously can’t comprehend that, as someone who worked in the store(s), they throw away more food (from damage or spoilage) constantly than hungry people could ever realistically try to steal. Like, yeah, there’s a threshold and if literally every shopper is stealing then sure the system breaks. But most people don’t. The people who do, overwhelmingly, are doing so because they have little other choice. It’s just incredibly stupid that managers and especially random employees or (the worst) random customers try to give a shit about theft like this. I’ve had more than a few times where I was working on something and some old guy comes up like “hey. I think that guy over there put something in his pocket.” And I’m just like “ok.” And go back to whatever. I mean wtf do they expect? Should I immediately man the store’s .50 cal turret and blow away the college kid or poor single mom who stuffed a steak in their jacket pocket? I’ve seen entire cases of chicken and other meats being crushed in the waste compactor week after week. That steak doesn’t matter.