It was that they wanted to get republicans elected.

The “old guard” was going to move the national headquarters from DC to Colorado so they could make a compound with shooting ranges to give classes and shit

The “new guard” that staged the revolution canceled that, and sunk that money into lobbying and that’s been their primary expenditure pretty much ever since.

It’s always stunk to me as a Republican backed strategy to set up an intermediary for donation washing back when we still had campaign finance laws.

Like, shit was the same time as Watergate, shady shit was happening all over and it’s not like everything came to light.

The NRA has been waning for a long time. Their member count is only so high be cause for a lot of the big gun shows, it’s free if you’re NRA. And an annual membership is sold onsite and costs less than one time entrance fee.

Their money is largely coming from large donations more to get republicans elected than anything about guns.

The inflated membership numbers is just smoke so they can maintain an air of legitimacy.

Lots of older people act like the “takeover” in the 70s never happened. Before that the NRA was mostly about hunting and argued against CCW. It’s actually pretty interesting how it all went down, and something relatively minor changed American politics for generations.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_at_Cincinnati

You don’t start a career as a CEO.

But they often start as “executives” which is a huge problem.

Very few modern CEOs have ever actually worked a day in their lives. They move around between various different industries with no knowledge of what’s important.

Their only concern is making stock price go up over a short timeframe

Yep, there’s even elections in non presidential years!

What’s unfortunate is with a Dem presidential candidate like Biden that people aren’t excited about, is it makes the down ballot races less likely to win in red states. 08 Obama was fucking huge in that respect, and I’m feeling old now that it’s apparently ancient history and no one remember.

Hell, even just 2020 there was that effect because people wanted trump gone and Biden was still an unknown to most Dems nationwide.

Lots of people believed last primary and the promised Biden made.

It’s hard to get that goodwill back from voters.

Because that makes any statement meaningless…

Just figured I’d answer first

Eh, I could live in one of the ~45 states where we already know what the result is…

Everybody wants to act like we don’t know what votes mean these days. The sad truth is if you’re not in a battleground, it doesn’t matter who you vote for as president.

Even 08 Obama that flipped a bunch of states, he already had it in the bag without them.

Moderates:

Biden has no power, he’s just a president!

Also moderates:

Look at these good things that happened while Biden was in office, he did this!

Biden:

Fuck congress, I’ll go around them if it’s something I want like supporting a genocide or violating human rights at our borders

You’re allowed to say you disagree with people transitioning.

That is your opinion, it’s terrible and makes you look like a terrible person, but you can have that opinion and deal with the fall out for telling people you hold it.

Saying what you did, can be construed as you disagreeing with them existing.

It being legally permissable doesn’t mean that it happens

Have you ever thought about what a great investment a bridge is?

There’s one a Brooklyn you may be interested in purchasing.

In fact, the US is pretty unique in terms of how much influence voters have over the process.

How?

The primaries are non binding and can be legally rigged because of that…

Republican and moderate Dem politicians support the genocide, because Israel pays some people to support them, and pays for the campaigns of some people who already support them.

The American people largely dont support Israel’s actions, we just don’t get a say in our government anymore thanks to money in politics and primaries not being binding elections and open to manipulation.

presidential party primary

There was an autocorrect there, but if that doesn’t clear it up:

A primary isn’t binding.

That was the DNCs legal argument for why if they rigged it, that would be legal.

The entire primary process is merely a survey.

We have to face that loads of high ranking “moderate” Dems would prefer a Republican to a progressive.

If a Republican gets in office, it makes it easier to get people vote lesser of two evils.

If a progressive gets in office, it’s really hard to unseat them. They can barely manage to get House Reps out for moderates even with AIPAC money.

If Bernie had won 2016, he’d have gotten to name the DNC chair, he could of solidly ended in the failed neo liberal experiment.

We were really fucking close to fixing things, but after NH got their delegates stolen, I don’t think itll happen.

I honestly think if a real progressive wins a presidential party primary, the standing party might disregard it.

But Arnold in his prime only weighed 240 lbs.

That can’t be right.

That might be his cut weight for bodybuilding, but in his acting days (what people think of) he had to have been more.

People just assume if you can walk up to a wild animal, it’s tame.

To a bison, killing a human is like swatting a fly. Well, easier than swatting a fly. We’re a bigger target

We’re not a threat, we’re not food, we’re just a potential annoyance. Dumb enough to get close to a calf, and then you’re really fucked. It’s like picking a bare knuckle fight with a wrecking ball.

Did you mean to post to /noonedownvoteme instead?

Like, people answered yout question, what more did you want? A gold star?

We need money out of politics, but it’s not going to happen because moderates Dems and Republicans both take advantage of it.

We won’t be able to fix it till progressives are the majority, and we’re having difficulty because dirty money goes into primaries too where it’s even more impactful.

If you bring in lots of money (shady was doesn’t matter) you get leadership positions.

That’s why Jaime Harrison is is running the DNC despite not knowing how to win an election.

The system is built around money, not votes.

Some of the videos of Mr. Biden circulating during this year’s campaign are clearly manipulated to make him look old and confused. Others cut out vital context to portray him in a negative light, a process sometimes known as a “cheap fake” because it requires little expense or technological skill to create.

And some are simply brief, unedited clips of an octogenarian president who is an uneven public speaker prone to verbal miscues, who shuffles at times (his doctor has said he has a “stiffened gait,” partly because of arthritis) and who is otherwise showing signs of his age, his greatest and most persistent political liability.

I think that’s the rub.

It doesn’t take much to exaggerate it to where he looks incapable because he’s 82 freaking years old.

He’s 20 years past retirement age for his generation, his age is effecting him. Just because it’s not as bad as Republicans say, doesn’t mean it’s not bad.

We can’t let Republicans define our standards. What they say just flat out doesn’t matter.

But reality does.

I do disagree with the end:

his greatest and most persistent political liability.

His greatest and most persistent political liability is being consistently more conservative than Dem voters want, and a complete refusal to ever compromise with them, while repeatedly giving Republicans want they want.

Not never

But yeah, if you’re not learning it young you’re super far behind and might never catch up.

For this it would need to be taken even further though, you’d need people at least 25 who had never been exposed to language in any way. Most feral children are found after just a few years in the wild. I don’t think there’s ever been an adult human that never was exposes to language and then reintegrated.

It’s 100% good to study this, but the glaring issue is they’re using people whose brains developed with language but now have lost that capability.

We need to be looking at people who never learned language and how their brains develop.

Which isn’t really ethical in anyway.

Kind of like how we could learn so much if we started separating corpus callosums again, but you can’t just do that to people just to see what happens.