Citizens can't show up to watch on the 20th.
We couldn’t watch them count votes either. You expected them to let us watch the culmination of the fraud?
Damn peasant deplorables. You don’t get to watch your betters. Just sit in your trailer parks with the 18 illegitimate kids you birthed with your sister and do as you’re told. They will come for you when it’s time to go to the camps.
/ DC resident thinking
But, but, but CNN said that he won by the most votes in history and was the most popular president ever and the election was the most secure election ever without any evidence of fraud!
And Trump was a Nazi, White Supremacist supporting hater who hates and was the least popular and most corrupt President ever! No one liked Trump unless they are a hating hater who hates and there are very few of those people and all of them are missing teeth, live in trailer parks, and are so uneducated that they can even read Twitter if it’s spelled out all in emojis!
/s
A few differences between the folks at my grocery store and the LARPers at capitols is that the grocery store folks:
- are carrying concealed
- are not wearing BLM sweatshirts
- are much less likely to shoot themselves in the foot accidentally
- most did not vote for Biden
But carry on with your nonsense propaganda CBS, CNN, etc.
I admit that the fact that I'd be the only game in town is appealing.
But, when I run a business, it it to make money and not a political statement. The cost a brick and mortar location in Portland, coupled with the fact that Portland is a the top of the list on lock downs, coupled with the fact that almost any retail location is uninsurable in Portland,... I can keep going.
There is no business reason to open any store in Portland, much less one that is guaranteed to be burned down and vandalized daily. Folks in Portland will have to buy shit online and hope that the tech overloads in their city don't shut down the website.
That is fantastic and needed but If you're relying on Facebook as a platform for disrupting unions and school boards... that seems equivalent to opening a MAGA store in downtown Portland.
At the very least, I would suggest considering the balance of negative: positive exposure and how that is likely to shift, especially over the short to mid term. I don't see your traffic numbers so I won't speculate on your specifics. What I do know from several businesses that I have run, which are entirely non political, the liabilities and exposure to lunatics on Facebook greatly outweighed useful traffic... and that was before Facebook was actively and openly targeting things.
"Unless it is a tied to business account" is not a valid exception to me.
Don't get me wrong- especially now, I support any and all efforts to support businesses, even at the cost of setting aside ideology. Things are horrible for businesses right now and I don't see things getting better any time soon. I have owned and managed several businesses for over 20 years. You won't find anyone more in support of "whatever it takes to stay afloat" than me.
That experience has also shown me, first hand, that Facebook routinely fails to demonstrate any significant ROI and traffic referral have been sharply declining for quite some time. Nearly everyone business I have worked with assumes, "but Facebook... billions of users... have to..." but few actually look at the real numbers for their business. About a year ago, I killed everything Facebook for one business to prove the point. If I didn't tell everyone I did it, no one would have noticed.
You also have to consider that now, Facebook is just as likely to arbitrarily ban your business or, worse, promote your business as a doxxing target as it is to send any customers your way. What is the benefit of a Facebook presence if the risk of getting trashed by left wing lunatics is greater than potential customer exposure? Put a different way, having a business Facebook account for a Conservative-owned business is equivalent to setting up a MAGA gear shop in downtown Portland right now, except the audience of lunatics is global and doesn't have to leave their keyboard to trash your store.
If your business relies on Facebook... I would consider that to be the number one risk your business and would suggest putting everything I had into building alternative resources ASAP.
The problem with this rationale is that it assumes Facebook is allowing your postings to be visible. It is not as if shadow bans are a new thing and, in the past week or so, they aren't even trying to be subtle.
I do respect your attempts at promoting political engagement but, personally, I have to also question the rationale of having a PAC in the current day and age. Perhaps I am missing something but I cannot identify a single person in politics that is worth donating a single penny to. Elections no longer exist. No one in office engaged in anything but kabuki theater to resolve the systemic and massive fraud.
Perhaps it would be beneficial to take advantage of the opportunity to focus your efforts elsewhere.
Now imagine what would happen if everyone who claims to support freedom of speech and/ or Trump actually stopped using these platforms and cancelled their accounts?
If you are still on Twitter, Facebook, or have and Apple, Amazon, or Google account YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM.
There is no excuse, yet this site is still filled with Twitter posts. Anyone doing this disgusts me and is as much a traitor that anyone in government, including Democrats.
Let's go even bigger picture:
When everyone was raving, "REEEE!!! J D Rockefeller and Standard Oil Monopoly!!!"
-
Standard Oil had been almost entirely run out of its original market- lamp oil- because oil lamps were replaced with the light bulb.
-
Facing irrelevancy, JDR went all in on powering internal combustion engines instead of lamps.
When Roosevelt entered the Anti Trust political game, internal combustion engines were one, minor player in the overall transportation market. Once the idea of personal transportation got traction, people were scrambling to make competing engines that used steam, coal, and even electric (the first US electric car was made in 1871).
The Standard Oil government interference actually created an oil monopoly. All other modes of powering engines all but stopped and the gas powered, internal combustion engine displaced everything else and remains overwhelmingly dominant because government picked oil as the winner.
After government effectively shut down development of competing modes of powering transportation, oil prices skyrocketed. Very rapidly after the Anti Trust debacle, people could no longer afford the same oil that was super cheap under Standard Oil.
So, government started subsidizing oil. That continues to this day.
Meanwhile, JD Rockefeller retired, just like he was going to anyway, and several generations of his family continue to live off the wealth and assets he created.
Just for fun, because I am bored...
You have a pie.
Everyone without pie say you have a pie monopoly (which is technically true since you own the the one pie we're talking about here).
Government comes along and cuts your pie into 8 pieces and claims that there is now more pie.
...
Standard Oil had a pie.
Government calls it a monopoly, cuts the pie into more pieces. Each piece was given a different name. The same people still owned the pie. J D Rockefeller was retiring anyway and his family continues to live off of his wealth. One of them is now in Congress.
Nothing was more competitive. Before: Standard Oil people priced things based on markets. After: The same people under different company names priced things according to markets.
The same amount of oil was in the ground before and after SO was split. The same refineries proceeded it (and, related, government outlawed building of new refineries, which continues to increase prices and restrict supply to this day).
Standard Oil grew by entering markets through low ball pricing to displace others and/ or acquiring local companies and merging them under its name. The renamed Standard Oil companies continued to do the same thing.
The newly renamed Standard Oil operating entities were split by geography along the same lines that the consolidated entity operated previously as divisions of one company. Simple version: the split entities had the same geographic monopoly as the consolidated entity.
The only thing that changed is the name on the bank accounts.
Fast forward, most of the split entities merged again.
...
So, tell me again what was accomplished by government splitting Standard Oil?
Tell me again where my facts are wrong?
Let me try a thought experiment instead.
Let's say I go in my yard and dig a swimming pool sized hole. Over time, rain, snow, me going out with a hose... the hole fills with water. Next thing you know, I decide to throw pool parties and invite only hot women in bikinis. No cocks allowed but my own in my pool.
Should: A) Government step in and force me to allow everyone to come swim in my yard?
B) Government steps in and forces me to split the water in my pool into separate holes for men, women, Black men, gay men, gay women...
C) Government steps in, shuts off my hose and redirects rainfall to my neighbors yards so that my pool dries up.
D) Someone else digs a pool with a diving board and a swim up bar and invites all the hot women in bikinis to their place.
E) Ban pools and imprison me because I like hot women in bikinis, allow the government to seize my pool, give DHHS $3 billion dollars to make a website to run my pool, and mandate that everyone swim in the new government-owned pool or pay a fine for swimming anywhere else or not swimming at all.
F) Hot bikini women decide on their own that I only dug the pool to get hot bikini women over to my place and decide to go to the beach instead.
G) Government declares water sexist, swimming pools a symbol of White privilege, and outlaws pools for everyone... except government officials.
HERE IS THE REAL TRICK: Which of these options changed the amount of water? Answer: None of them.
On the contrary, I assume that everyone and everything is primarily motivated by their own self interests, without exception. Even Mother Theresa. In no way should this diminish her work but she lived her life in the way that she did because it made her feel good and it was what she saw as right.
I agree entirely with, "Nothing works as it should". That is the only point that really matters. How things fit or not within any arbitrary ideology is entirely irrelevant.
So, no plan, ideology, or intention works as it should and people always have and always will act primarily in their own self interest. Good.
So, if Person A wants to buy a gay wedding cake and Person B does not wish to make a gay wedding cake, shall we compel Person B by threats and force to make the cake or should Person A find Person C, who is willing to make the cake, thus depriving Person B of income and giving Person C access to an exclusive niche market?
Alternatively, Person B can demand go to the government and demand that gay wedding cakes are illegal and must be banned and denounced by all bakers as hate speech, all flour providers should refuse to sell to anyone who makes gay wedding cakes, anyone with a gay wedding cake website should be dropped by their ISP...
Personally, I don't care if gay wedding cakes exist or not. I don't want one, I like women, and I am not at all attracted to men but I don't care at all what kind of cake anyone else might want. If I want a wedding cake with a giant dick and vagina on it and no one wants to make it for me... is my life over? No. I decide if it is worth my investing in making it myself (and I might do it, if there is a giant, unserved demand for dick/ vag cakes), I can get a regular cake, or I can skip cake all together. All my choices.
Markets work when two or more willing participants make free and voluntary exchanges of value. As soon as anyone uses government to arbitrate, the inevitable result is that people are NOT free and cannot exchange value as they see fit. The government, according to idealogical whims and whomever pays the government the most wins and alternatives are excluded.
It ain't perfect. Yup, people are corrupt and will take advantage of others and cheat, no matter what. You can't "fix"that and the last entity on earth that should try is your fraudulently elected government made up of people who are just as or more corrupt than anyone else on earth. Government should not pick winners and losers. Government exists to guarantee the rights of everyone to participate and pursue life, liberty, and happiness... not bestow these rights on who it deems "just".
Bottom line: Who do you trust more to decide what you can and cannot buy? A business who, corrupt or not, has a direct gain or loss from exchanging with you? Your government (have you been paying attention to government for the past 100 years or so?), or yourself?
I trust myself to make choices that are in my own interests. No one else.
You're mistaken.
Market triggers are generally small, single digit percentages and, thanks to COVID and a vastly swelling number of stupid people, idiot Robinhood "traders" account for a surprisingly large part of trading.
Let's put this together- FAANG drops a couple of percent each, enough to hit institutional sell triggers. That can happen very easily. Cumulatively, that is 6 of the largest stocks the world selling off. Things spiral from there.
This could happen very easily. It really should happen because all of their valuation have been insanely over inflated for quite some time and the overall market has been running on fair dust and helicopter money for months.
The cost to the average Pede to make this happen would be 30 seconds each cancelling your accounts this weekend and you get the bonus of better quality stuff via direct retailer websites, likely for less money. Your favorite merch providers would be very, very happy to start saving the Apple and Amazon Tax.
Their stock prices are based on fairy dust, marketing, and "users"... NOT FINANCIALS.
If even a modest percentage of 75 million Trump voters cancelled their accounts this weekend, Monday's crash would be historic.
More info here: https://thedonald.win/p/11RhYM51CG/have-you-cancelled-all-your-faan/
Roosevelt was wrong and the same reasons that he was wrong in his time are the reasons that this idea is wrong now.
First, go look at history. Roosevelt was backed by the monopolies until the political winds shifted, then he shifted too. He was the Mitt Romney of his day in that sense.
Now look at the Mac Daddy. Standard Oil... which was already breaking up on it's own and would have failed within a couple of years due to competition and falling under its own weight... just like free market economics predicts. The Anti Trust measures actually saved it by breaking it up on paper. Fast forward a few years... Exxon and Mobil merged back together, along with the rest, once the right people in government got paid.
Want a business to fail? Easy as pie. Stop using them. Stop buying from them. If you dumped Standard Oil back in the day, it would have been very hard to use your car. If you stop using Facebook or Twitter... what the fuck does it matter?
Stop begging government to "fix" problems that you are not willing to act on yourself. In the end, government IS the problem.
About the only one of the things that you mentioned that is remotely accurate is OKC... and that's a big stretch.
But for the sake of meaningful, honest debate, let's set aside all the big, allegedly politically motivated violence from both sides.
Have a look at Chicago's murder stats. Who is overwhelminging killing who? Hint: it isn't cops and, unless Black folks are killing other Black folks because of skin color, it has nothing to do with racism.
Chicago has also been 100% Democrat controlled for generations and has long had the full spectrum of liberal policies and laws in place.
I don't disagree with you entirely. This is not the end all/ be all. There is more to be done.
That said, they care a LOT about stock prices. I do this professionally and have been running businesses for more than 20 years. I can tell you first hand that all these companies (actually, most publicly traded companies now) are grossly inflated air balloons and the vast percentage of their value is fairy dust.
For a very recent example, Elon Musk because the richest person in the world in the last couple of days. Telsa didn't suddenly sell a shit ton more cars. SpaceX didn't suddenly get trips to Mars sorted out. It is entirely based on inflated market values and perception.
On the other hand, even an little as a 7% change in value starts triggering mandatory trading halts of stocks. Guess what happens after that? Everyone freaks out and values start cascading.
Let's go one further- name a single time in history that any company has lost 75 million customers in one shot? Never happened. Now name a time when 6 of the largest companies on earth have had that happen simultaneously? The dollars per customer hit to revenue doesn't matter. What matters is the perception.
Go to your bank, your credit card company, etc. and tell that that you expect to work 5% less hours quarter. See what happens.
Not at all!
First, 90% of the shit on Amazon are shitty Chinese products. Almost everything Apple "makes" is made in Asia, primarily China. Trump's tariffs and trade war with China hit them hard. This will hit them harder.
Meanwhile, all of the great American companies that you love have websites of their own, most now offer free shipping without asinine membership fees or shipping is seriously discounted up to 75% or more... and you support them even more because they don't have to pay the Apple/ Amazon Tax if you buy directly from them.
I've been reverting back to direct purchases for several months, simply because I was getting sick of the crap, unknown quality of shit on Amazon. It turns out, a LOT of tools and supplies I buy are a WHOLE LOT cheaper if I buy from direct, even high end retailers, than the crap Chinese Amazon alternatives.
BONUS: After you have cancelled, email their support email and CC your local media, national media, and all the other people that we've been emailing for the past several months.
You probably won't get a response. That doesn't matter. What matters is that if 75 million emails hit various outlets, it will compound the impact to Big Tech stocks on Monday.
GO, GO, GO!
So... exactly what the right has been doing for the past several years, in other words, while the left has been burning cities, murdering people, and looting for a couple of decades.
Then there are the selective prosecutions and abandonment of equality under the law.
None of this is new or even unexpected. And everyone will just keep rolling over about it.
68% of what?
If you said 68% of the media, I'd say that's probably understated. 68% of Biden's blood relatives? Maybe.