As much as I would love to believe that this is evidence of Trump in the throes of cognitive decline, I have to agree. Him standing there and doing nothing for 30 minutes is certainly low energy and cringe-worthy, but it isn’t indicative of any kind of mental breakdown and the media and pundits are latching onto this too hard. The dishonestly on display is a little saddening, to be honest. There’s plenty of things to hate Trump for without having to make up shit about his mental acuity.

Unfortunately, a lot of smart people are under his spell too. I had to listen to the CEO of a medium sized company wax poetic about how he’s a super genius and the greatest boon to human ingenuity in a century, desperately trying to hold my tongue as I rolled my eyes into the back of my skull.

I think he’s an okay businessman. That’s about as much praise as I’m willing to afford him. He’s definitely charismatic enough to convince a room full of investors that the ideas he’s pitching are worthwhile. Part of that is that his passion for these projects are genuine, and when you put somebody in a room with a passionate guy, the enthusiasm tends to rub off on them just a little.

Most of his investments that garnered him his wealth are just him being at the right place at the right time. Getting in on PayPal when Ecommerce was in it’s infancy and partnering with Ebay to take advantage of shopaholics who just couldn’t help themselves. Buying his way into Tesla right when EVs were primed to take off and pushing hard for an economy class variant that could be mass produced rapidly (in an already-made factory that Toyota closed down, no less!). Founding SpaceX and pouring a shit ton of his own money into rocket and aeronautics R&D right around the time the U.S. Government was looking for cheap contractors to take over the space program. I think the only project he miscalculated on was buying Twitter for way too much money when social media was really starting to stagnate.

His politics are fucking weird, though. Him being a Trump nutter is really not helping his “I’m a genius” image. I find his personality to be pretty repugnant. I already didn’t like him because back in the early days of Tesla he pushed all the management to essentially become slavedrivers for the line workers. I live in California near the plant and I had friends who worked there in production that got nearly worked to death, extreme overtime and weekend shifts, few breaks, the only saving grace was the above average pay that kind of kept them trapped in that hell of a job for way too long. Then the whole Thai soccer team incident happened and I was so over him. Haven’t heard anything about him since that has made me feel like he deserves to be the richest cunt in the fucking universe.

Polls are not so much a prediction of the future as they are a snapshot in time and indicative of a candidate’s current momentum.

But you’re right. It’s deeply shocking that this race is even close. If the DNC ever tried to run a candidate as bad as Trump, I’d just stay fucking home or vote 3rd party as a throwaway vote. I hope some Republicans with any shred of dignity or a functioning moral compass do the same on election day. We need real patriots to come together across ideological gaps and reject fascism full stop.

Regardless of it’s performance, it’s astronomically overvalued. Tesla’s market cap is larger than 5 of the nearest rivals combined. The value of their shares doesn’t reflect reality.

But reality inevitably catches up. Their last quarterlies were not looking good. The market is saturated with EVs now and Tesla is going to struggle to attract new customers, especially with the divisive politics of Elon Musk. About the only reason Tesla is still dominant in North America is because they are still the cheapest in town, but that is reflected in the shoddy build quality and bare bones interior.

He did so poorly during the last one that his handlers are sure to keep him away from that debate stage at any cost, especially when it’s so close to the election. They can’t afford to have him say more dumb shit because they don’t have gaffe-prone Joe Biden to grab soundbytes to play on repeat and the news will just report on Trump’s nonsense.

This would be a problem if it were 1924, but we’re living in 2024. The solutions for this are right in front of us and have been for decades. Get all these guys and gals on a secure teleconference and turn the Capitol building into a museum, or renovate it to have smaller private offices.

There, now we can get 10,000 reps in if we need to. The bigger concern is how are they going to decide who gets to speak with that many representatives. They can’t realistically give everybody equal floor time and expect government to be anything other than completely paralyzed. So the number probably still needs to be capped, but it should be capped at a value where whatever the state that has the lowest population sets the value at 1 and every other state divides their population by that number to figure out how many representatives they get.

All the people in Trump’s circle at this point are doing an all-or-nothing gambit hoping that they can seize power if Trump dies or is sent to prison.

Either their career ends in humiliation and shame or they get elevated to the highest office in the land without having to spend the money for it. Some might see that as a good gamble.

Translation: “I got an endorsement and a lot of money from Elon Musk, so I’m giving him a government job as a kickback where he can “regulate” his own businesses to enrich himself even further at the expense of literally every other American.”

Oh man, I can’t see a conflict of interest at all. Nope, no siree.

Is anyone actually surprised that Biden is extremely anti-narcotics given his son’s battle with drug addiction?

Harris doesn’t have the same baggage. If she were at the helm, I think she’d follow through.

I suppose he could dismiss them, but considering he just had two recent attempts on his life, that would probably be unwise to say the least.

The minimum sentence is a hefty fine, but the judge in that very trial already determined that fines do not discourage Trump’s behavior, given the contempt punishment that he ignored, so I don’t think it’s going to be a slap on the wrist for him unless the judge truly is a hypocrite or a coward.

That being said, even if he gets prison for each of his felony counts, he can serve them all concurrently, a maximum of 3 years per count. So he could theoretically be out of prison right before the next election cycle with a year left to campaign for 2028, that is assuming he truly is sentenced immediately after the election in November and it’s not just pushed back indefinitely due to recount horseshit or Trump crazies doing another insurrection.

But there are other trials that are far more likely to result in additional prison time, the most important two being the classified documents case and the Jan 6th case. I have faith that the justice system will eventually follow through with punishing Trump, but the system is set up to slow-walk the rich and powerful to accountability.

USSS won’t just let him get on a plane and fly off to Russia. His security is their top priority, so allowing him to secrete himself somewhere without first verifying his itinerary and securing both the mode of transportation and the destination, would be unthinkable. That means they are reporting all of his movements to local law enforcement. Can’t exactly flee the country in secret when every cop in the state will know his exact position and have eyes on him at all times. If the courts think he is a flight risk, someone involved in the process will know what he’s trying to do and prevent him from going anywhere where it will be hard to get him back again.

A stopped clock is still correct twice a day.

She may not have fucked Trump, but Trump sure fucked her.

Thank you! I think it’s sad how they are so desperate to paint their election opponent in a negative light to score political points that they are pretending she’s the president and is responsible for everything going on. Even in normal circumstances, the president can’t push a magic button and control the price of eggs or gasoline or whatever, but the hypocrisy of blaming Harris for it now is just doubling down on the lie. It was all “Biden did this, Biden did that” right up until he bowed out of the race and suddenly Harris is actually responsible for all that shit and it’s infuriating to see them trying it and even more infuriating to see it somehow actually working on people.

But wait! I thought mail-in ballots were fraud? If only the in-person voting on Nov 5th counts according to Republicans, why is he concerned with people casting their ballots before that date? It’s not November yet, so plenty of time for another debate so Harris can humiliate Trump again.

The duplicity of the Republican party never ceases to amaze me. I mean, I’m not surprised by their nonsense anymore really, I’m just amazed that there are so many people who have been spoon-fed election lies from Trump and they don’t even blink after an about-face like that.

Pussy ass bitch got obliterated and is running scared. Can’t even get a single conherent sentence about policy out of his mouth.

Vote in November and make sure his ass lands in a prison cell.

Aw, but all my other bones are so low maintenance.

I’m not going to downvote you, but, I disagree. Nintendo might have had a leg to stand on if they tried to say Palworld infringed on their Pokemon intellectual property and/or copyright, especially after the mesh controversy, but they didn’t attack them on that. They’re going after Pocketpair for patent infringement on a so-far undisclosed patent. Probably a game mechanic of some sort. Pokemon did not invent the monster collecting and/or battling genre. Dragon Quest predates it by a good margin.

I’d like to see the patent they claim to have. In what way might Palworld be infringing upon their patent that another similar game, like say TemTem for instance, is not? I hate the idea that a fun game mechanic can be patented and locked down by one company for up to 20 years.

Palworld would not have caused the stir it did if not for the blatant “It’s Pokemon with guns!” angle.

This was 100% a fan reaction to the trailer, and not an official stance by the developers at all. That’s obviously what they were going for, but they stopped long before outright saying it out loud and let the consumer make their own inferences.

They have every right to go after them, but I really hope they lose this one. Nintendo doesn’t deserve to have a monopoly on fun creature collecting games.

They’d just blame the Democrats anyway. Republicans thrive in dysfunction because they can convince their low info base that nothing bad is ever their fault.