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Siri, what is wishcasting?

MAGA civil war breaks out over American "mediocrity" culture A MAGA-world civil war erupted over Christmas when a social media post on American culture turned into a pitched battle over race, immigration and billionaires versus the working class. Why it matters: The fight exposes one of the MAGA movement's deepest contradictions: It came to prominence chiefly via the white, less-educated, working class but is now under the full control of billionaire technologists and industrialists, many of them immigrants. It also sets up a tense MAGA vs. DOGE moment that could infect the early stages of President-elect Trump's second presidency. While some want to make America great by restricting immigration and promoting the American worker, others want to cut costs and increase efficiency no matter who does the work. Catch up quick: The skirmishes started Sunday when Trump named venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan as his adviser on AI policy. Krishnan's appointment triggered an anti-Indian backlash on social media, particularly given his past advocacy for lifting caps on green cards. Vivek Ramaswamy escalated the conflict into a full-blown war Thursday morning with a poston X blaming an American culture that "venerated mediocrity over excellence" for the growth in foreign tech workers. "A culture that celebrates the prom queen over the math olympiad champ, or the jock over the valedictorian, will not produce the best engineers," Ramaswamy wrote, calling for a 1950s-style "Sputnik moment" to prioritize "nerdiness over conformity." "That's the work we have cut out for us, rather than wallowing in victimhood & just wishing (or legislating) alternative hiring practices into existence," he said. Between the lines: Elon Musk's X is the town square for the MAGA movement, and by stepping into that square and firmly criticizing American culture — while praising the immigrant work ethic and parenting model — Ramaswamy threw down a gauntlet. Musk spent most of the afternoon trying to defend his DOGE co-leader and explain his argument, framing it as using immigration to supplement, rather than replace, American workers. "Maybe this is a helpful clarification: I am referring to bringing in via legal immigration the top ~0.1% of engineering talent as being essential for America to keep winning," Musk wrote. The problem for many MAGA adherents, though, was accepting the very notion of immigrants telling them America needs more immigration to fill lucrative jobs in America. It revived old tensions around the H-1B visa, which is reserved for people who "perform services in a specialty obligation" but practically speaking has become a crucial tool of Silicon Valley's growth. In some recent years, as many as 75% of those petitioning for that visa came from India, from where Ramaswamy's parents immigrated. What they're saying: "The Woodstock generation managed to build out aerospace, the one before went to the moon, America was doing great. Underlying your post is that we were all living in squalor until being rescued by H-1B's. Then why did everyone want to come here?" right-wing personality Mike Cernovich responded to Ramaswamy on X. "There is nothing wrong with American workers or American culture. All you have to do is look at the border and see how many want what we have. We should be investing and prioritizing in Americans, not foreign workers," Nikki Haley, the former GOP presidential candidate and herself a daughter of Indian immigrants, wrote. "I want the little guy to matter too. Not everyone has $1 million but they still love their country and want to MAGA and close the border," far-right activist Laura Loomer posted. Loomer posted a series of missives throughout the afternoon, calling out Ramaswamy, Musk and anyone else in Trump's orbit who isn't fully committed to closing the borders. Zoom out: The fracture was familiar to anyone who's seen a movement expand — early adopters criticizing the latecomers for bringing different ideas. "Tech bros who took 8+ years to figure out that President Trump is not the bad guy and is in fact, the solution to America's problems, are really out here pontificating to MAGA patriots who figured it out a decade before them?" conservative streaming host Brenden Dilley posted on X. The bottom line: For now the fight is mostly confined to X. But it's sure to raise difficult questions in the coming days about what Trump's administration will mean for immigration, labor and the American worker. It will also potentially settle a looming conflict over who has the most influence in Trump 2.0 — his historic base or his new-found techno-libertarian allies. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/26/maga-civil-war-ramaswamy-musk-loomer-cernovich?utm_source=flipboard&utm_content=topic%2Fu.s.politics

Serious question. If they want to be pedos and do insider trading why project that perverted lifestyle onto others? Sad

The US jumped the shark when it came to guns a long time ago. They are drowning in them and suffering the consequences.

I find a rolled up newspaper on the nose does the trick... That, or ignore...

The rift got its start years ago when Republicans like the Cheney's and others started washing their hands of MAGA and Trump. Take Rex Tillerson for example who took one look at what was happening and who turned tail and got out as fast as he could. List of Republicans who opposed the Donald Trump 2020 presidential campaign "We are profoundly concerned about our nation's security and standing in the world under the leadership of Donald Trump. The President has demonstrated that he is dangerously unfit to serve another term."[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Republicans_who_opposed_the_Donald_Trump_2020_presidential_campaign In actual fact though MAGA chuds can trace their roots back to George Wallace who would be laughing his ass off today if he could see the culmination of his efforts to break things. Wallace's losers wandered off after Wallace crashed and burned and popped up following a populist or two along the way then became the Tea Party movement which the GOP eventually courted. How the ghost of George Wallace hijacked the GOP We are the virtuous ones. They are the corrupt, the stupid, the incompetent, the filthy, the presumptuous, the arrogant. They think they're superior and look down on us. But we know better. They are the fools. We are the real America, America at its best, and the redemption of the country depends on us. Sound familiar? By leading a Wallace-inspired insurgency from within the Republican Party itself, Trump has set in motion a process that could result in the ouster, expulsion, or voluntary exile of much of the party's current bureaucratic, political, and intellectual establishment. This process has already begun, with a series of leading conservative pundits already declaring or implying that they will never support Trump, and some indicating they would vote for Hillary Clinton instead. https://theweek.com/articles/609205/how-ghost-george-wallace-hijacked-gop

It's hypocrisy, but that is the symptoms. The disease is that their policies aren't widely supported. So they use tactics, like name calling, to shame people into supporting their policies. Because they prop up anyone that supports them and destroy anyone that doesn't, they find themselves being hypocritical. The cure would be to intellectually support their policies. However, as I have said enough times before, they are purely emotional creatures. The name calling is all they have.

Millie is about to have a "come to Jesus" moment. Trump's gonna can his fat arse so fast it'll make his cavernous head spin. He'll go on to do commentary on MSNBC or CNN...give speeches to saps who will pay to hear him whine and lie...and will go down in history as a fool.

Hilarious that not even one of the right wingers was able to address the rift going on between the MAGA camps, instead going off on tangents about democrats and fruit pickers, neither of which have anything to do with this thread The new techbro billionaires who have Trumps ear want to bring in more high income global tech talent (not min wage fruit -pickers @West you dumbass) and they look down at the traditional blue collar uneducated MAGAs as dumb jocks who wallow in mediocrity. MAGA is an incoherent assortment of widely different levels of knowledge, agendas, and worldviews with little in common except a hatred of libs so bound to turn on each other. Not true at all. No Democrat or sane person has ever said it’s anti-working class to appoint qualified people to the job. It is anti-working Class to assemble your own oligarchy by appointing a cabinet full of billionaires to run the country and make all the major decisions, as if being an oligarch somehow makes you qualified. The hypocrisy is with the right who obsessed the qualifications of Kamala and of anyone who is not a cisgender straight white male, complaining that they’re not impeccable enough. No amount of post graduate degrees and prestigious previous positions is enough to satisfy the supposedly high academic standards of MAGAs (who themselves have little in the way of education or qualifications) But then when it comes to the clown car of hacks and cranks and grifters Trump is appointing suddenly formal qualifications don’t matter. Suddenly all that matters is that they have “common sense” and “good instincts” which “you can just tell” they have…by using your “common sense” and “good instincts”. No need for a formal education or any established record of accomplishment.

😆. Democrats still don't understand that this nonsense ^^^ is why Donnie won and why the MAGA movement rolls on.. The immigration debate is more complex than just flinging baseless allegations of "racism" to shut down the other side. When you bring in more people to work, it places a strain on a number of things including hospital wait times, education system, spread of foreign diseases ie Covid-19, etc. While the upper class benefit from a larger labor pool and can suppress wages, unchecked immigration is no doubt having a significant impact on inflationary pressures, housing shortages, and many other impacts. But hey at least the Democrats found somebody to work for less than minimum wage picking their fruit for them

How Can Alberta Go and Stay At The Same time? The same way Quebec does, whining and swivelling every step of the way.

Oh they're projecting their crimes on Gaetz and Trump. Thanks for you opinion Mr Goebbels.

If this proves true, this is a big fùcking deal. Don't forget, Miley is the one that refused to allow the DCNG help on J6. Remember, Milley delayed the J6 response to make Trump look bad. A Col on the NG wrote a scathing letter to the House regarding the delays that came directly from Milley. https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/11/bombshell-report-oversight-subcommittee-finds-pentagon-deliberately-delayed/

China’s Xi vows to stop mass killings known as ‘revenge on society crimes’ | AP News ... china says 'hold my beer'. At the end of the day the tool does not make a difference. You get mass casualty events with many commonly available tools like knives and cars and trucks and gasoline etc At the end of the day Anyone complaining about the tool that a killer uses is just delaying the conversation we need to have about people further and further down the road which means more and more dead.

At $62 billion, we're borrowing peanuts compared to GDP. Our situation is doable. At $2 trillion borrowing, the US federal government is not sustainable. ==== Both governments are selling bonds (borrowing) faster than GDP can generate tax revenues: a Ponzi scheme ==== Thank God we have a Canadian dollar.

BS. An angry, low-IQ simp like you just rents a room with a bunch of other potheads. I don't doubt that you'd call the cops if you saw me though. You're such a brainwashed cultist that you think everyone that's white is a nazi.

Kind of a product of their founding. They see govt as an authority while we see it more as a figurehead and service provider.

Nah, it'll look more like a left-wing exodus to Europe, and I'm 100% down for seeing something like that.

Know what's even funnier? He's going to be your next POTUS. Enjoy. Trump likes to keep people guessing. Milley counter-acted that.

No, the argument is that these utopian dreams of fairies and unicorns in so-called "gun free" zones don't work. Bad guys don't care. All you guarantee is that defenseless people will be inside. It is in fact doing something to oppose this madness.

Don't twist and distort what I said. I said I will campaign against Poilievre (not Liberals) as private citizen during the election campaign because I believe he is too much after power and does not have the interest of the country and the nation in mind just his own interest and he has hidden agenda.

Really ^OLD news. Thanks for demonstrating just how out of touch you are. "Col on the NG".... LMAO

FIFY.

😂😂😂😂 Once again Elon’s supposed “free speech” activism exposed as a lie as he spins out into censorsing dictator mode yet AGAIN. This time MAGAs will take notice since they’re the victims, they haven’t minded his shutuppery and deplatforming when someone else was on the receiving end but I doubt they’ll take kindly to it now. Pass the popcorn. False.

Holy crap. I did a search for chud by posts made by you... There are pages of them. "I personally hate that I have to use a provocative term like Chud to describe the fake conservatives who populate this board like potato bugs on the wet side of a rock... BUT... even the best of them delight in calling people groomers, woke, wokies and wokescolds. Those terms are identical to Chud in etymological formation.. except that I have pioneered the term Chud and will continue to use it as it is apt." "All of our Chud friends will likely stop posting though. Too bad." "Can the true conservatives and liberals on here please stop tolerating Chud logic in these discussions ? Thank you." "I am not. That's Chud logic. " "The OP seems to quote some blog and as such is suspect. Shit sources are a Chud thing, a we all know, so let's give some red meat (Read ? Meet !)."

My new favorite politician.

WHoops, meant to comment on this as well You're absolutely right. Again as we so often find ourselves saying the hypocrisy is unbelievable. The left claims to be all about working for the common man, making sure they get a fair shake and deeply caring about what happens to them, only to call them uneducated slobs with no intellect the moment they vote for someone else A black person who decides to vote for republicans is an uncle tom. A woman who believes in conservative principles is a handmaden. It's like they don't even see their own hypocrisy

For sure. They also act as if academic post-secondary education is the only way to actually become educated or get smarter. And that's not true in the slightest. And I say that as a university grad. People can become every bit if not more informed I didn't intelligent outside of formal Academia these days every bit as easy and in fact easier and more thoroughly than they would inside. To be honest the advantage of Academia these days seems to be more about who you meet and the networks you form which will serve you when you graduate rather than anything you learn. It is more about the elite than it is about the educated

I think that the average meat and potatoes lefty was far more invested emotionally in hillary than the current ones are in Kamala. Hillary won her nomination and the left were still riding the high of the first black president which they considered to be a monumental success. Now they had the first woman president and her polling suggested she would win. I don't think they like to come out in nearly as much, she never won a primary or even a primary vote, I think the party was very disillusion when it became obvious that they had been lied to with regards to Joe Biden who they did nominate only a short time earlier. So while I'm sure they're just about as pissed that trump got in, they seem more resigned to it and more willing to accept that it happened even if they are unhappy with the result. So I think things will go a little smoother at least to begin with.

They act as though that is a badge of dishonor. But, what it really is is the blue collar voters realizing that lower taxes, more jobs and lower inflation is a Republican thing that helps them. https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2024/04/09/partisanship-by-race-ethnicity-and-education/ It's amazing how the left loves the middle and lower class, until they don't vote for them. Then their vote means the guy they voted for is scum. Why weren't the democrats they voted for before, scum? They do that with everyone too. Blacks that voted for Trump are stupid/uncle Tom/racist. Hispanics that voted for Trump are stupid/racist. Women that voted for Trump are stupud/sexist/racists. They literally call people names and then expect those people to come back. The Republicans don't do that. They assume they aren't explaining their positions well or are being silenced by the left. It's funny how they never call their voters or the Democrat voters stupid. At worst, they call them low information. Which implies the Republicans aren't getting their message out.

If it is true that he promised to tell the Chinese if we invade, you have to assume he would have told them where. I can't picture a more treasonous act. He would literally be sending our troops into a trap. His actions would have potentially killed thousands. If it is true.

Your question is not based on logic, your saying that DEI practices must be working becasue there is no clear evidence of any failures....But look around there are plenty of examples....The forces is plagued with toxic leadership, since it has not cured this type of leadership it must be continuing with the DEI hiring.... The most critical part of Hiring and promotion based on merit was you were also going to get the cream of the crop, the best man or women for the job....All DEI hiring practices accomplish is to keep the wall charts balanced, you no longer have the cream of the crop in management levels, your promoting a racist ideology, that does not have a business model but rather correcting a behavior long since gone for the most part....the search of excellence is no longer front and center, but rather based on ethnic back grounds... Merit based promotions and hirings has been the practice for thousands of years....for good reason perhaps you can explain how DEI practices are superior to merit based ones...In todays world each soldier is merited against all his peers...ranked form 1 to thousands , if one has to cut the top couple hundred off the top to find a candidate that fits your DEI chart , how is not proof that it does not work...when hundreds of candidates out scored your DEI candidate...How does this system advantageous to use...is it fair ?, does it spark competition ?, it gives a small group an unfair advantage, while slowing merit based candidates down to the point they may stop showing interest in promotion or advancement as there is no reward for that behavior...

ummm no Party affiliation by household income - Religion in America: U.S. Religious Data, Demographics and Statistics | Pew Research Center A we can see from data as late as 2014 (which would definitely include 'maga' types who would vote for trump) the distribution of republican and democrat voters over 100,000 k is almost identical and if anything favours republicans. Ooopsie!!!! why don't you research before you speak?

Not to mention kamala wanted to cancel Christmas. Sad

If this becomes a battle between Trump and MAGA vs Elon/Vivek and DOGE, Trump will win easily, and release his followers on them. Elon and Vivek are their own worst enemies, and it would be like a couple of high ranking German generals trying to depose Hitler at his prime.

That's an outright lie. Back to ignore... BAD poster! 😖. BAD !!!

Agreed. It's anti-politics at it's worst. An attempt to control conversation and eliminate discussion.

Here's a classic example. You cannot argue with what @User Has said, and you refuse to address his legitimate concerns and cannot come up with a reasonable argument so therefore you accuse him of having a mental illness. You claim that his fears are irrational and a product of a paranoia. So you choose to insult and degrade someone rather than address them in legitimate and honest conversation and then you will go on to complain about how myself and others are just too darn insulting for your tastes 🙄 And this is why nobody is respecting you here. You are an ignorant little weasel who tries to pass himself off as a pseudo intellectual when in reality you have the intellectual capacity of a grade six student in the debating skills have a grade three and rather than improve those skills you just simply choose to be obnoxious

I'm not even sure what that means. What I want is for people to be able to define their gender as the gender they identify with. I also think that being more accepting of people who don't fit inside the conventional norms for gender could go a long way to making trans people not feel the need for hormones/hormone blockers and surgery and just be fine with the appearance that their biological sex gives them. What it means is that you want the trans community to define who everyone is and that's just about the stupidest thing anyone could ever want. No, I want individuals to be able to define who they themselves are. I'm not saying that there shouldn't be limits. I know that someone posted a video here of a man who had been driving a car identifying as a cat when asked to provide his license and the police explaining to him how that wouldn't fly if he wanted to keep on driving. There are times and places to identify as things of that nature, and doing it while being pulled over by a cop isn't one of them. Even when it comes to human beings, I think there should be limits to how far one can go in regards to defining people. I think it's universally acknowledged that biological men are better at sports then biology women for reasons that have to do with biology. For this reason, I'm fine with biological women being able to compete in an environment without biological men. But there are many other areas where I don't see any reason why transgender people can't define their gender as the gender they identify with and have that respected by others. Always dangerous when people start thinking of human beings as degenerates. Many groups, from the KKK to the Nazis have followed similar path, and we both know the atrocities they've committed.

You would have chosen "I identify as something else", as you think you are a "cisgender man" when you're really just a man whose been brainwashed by trans activists. No, I wouldn't have, because I identify as a man. I am also a biological man. I also haven't been brainwashed. What I find rather ironic is that until I started to participate in this thread, I was much more ambivalent in regards to a lot of trans issues. As I've pointed out in the past, I was unabashedly for J.K. Rowlings' stance on women and like you, I had thought that saying that defining a woman as someone who identifies as a woman made no sense either. It was only after really getting involved in this thread and doing a fair amount of research on the subject that I had a change of heart. A woman is a word, and a word is what people define it to mean. As I've said many times in this thread, there is a substantial amount of people who now define a woman as anyone who identifies as a woman. You may not like it, but that doesn't change this fact. As to your belief that only women can give birth to human beings, I agree that by one definition of women, this is true. By the definition that people are the gender they identify with, it's not true, as a biological woman who identifies as a man could, in fact, give birth to human beings.

No, they are mob of random people who can’t even agree on what the problem is and have little understanding of how the world works. Trump and his appointees take advantage of their follower’s ignorance and make vague incoherent and contradictory statements which his followers interpret differently according to their own belief. That’s like saying he’s talked about the weather or the economy since the 1990s. Everyone “talks about” those things. But apparently a big faction of the legacy MAGA movement does have an issue with it and they don’t like that the new MAGAs (Musk, Ramaswammy, other techbros amd billionaires) are pushing them aside.

So the plan is turn Bubbas into experts? I think when this brave new right wing backlash backfires it's going to make Jan 6 look like an actual day of love.

America is a racist white patriarchy.

I think if we did we'd be an inspiration to other allies who are feeling cowed by Trump. At the same time and if there's any one other thing we should be doing, it's eliminating inter-provincial trade barriers. Doing so at this time could shake off as much as 15% extra costs to Canadians and act as a very significant hedge against US tariffs. It would also increase our free trade creds at a time when the world need a much healthier alternative to trade wars. Trade barriers and sanctions should be used to influence dictators and other bad actors not to fùck over your friends.

I disagree. Nowadays, we Canadians largely agree. We get along.

Or if it were an "assault weapon" or "high capacity" magazine we would be hearing about how we must pass the assault weapons ban!

I make a few heads explode alright. Not much to it really.

UNfortunately you don't appear to understand how Trudeau Liberals with NDP wrecked this country. High food costs, housing cost out of sight for average person, rampant crime with catch and release, open borders with massive illegal immigration the past five years and all the problems and costs that brought. PP and the Conservatives represent a plan to reverse the mess. Who in their right mind would question that? Except you????

You're welcome Orca Winfrey