Hardkill

I know that women are very interested in erotic novels like 50 shades of grey. Is there a way to bring that into a conversation with a girl you just met?

This is very dismaying.

My parents say that it's not worth trying to start a business because most fail anyways and if you bother trying then you will just end up with a massive amount of financial debt for the rest of your life after failing at it.

How can any aspiring entrepreneur successfully start a new business when there are just way too many huge corporations and monopolies out there that will easily takeover or outcompete any small business? Also, don't you have to have a lot of name recognition or be uniquely gifted at something or have a tremendous amount of luck in order to even have a real shot of running a successful business?

It's not just about my personal life. Most young people are not even demanding the government to give them a great life. They just want the government to protect their individual rights and freedoms and to provide them enough of the basic needs just to survive without ever having to worry about whether or not they are going to make it. How do you tell what you're saying to black or hispanic people living in the ghettos who are still angry about not being able to get out of generational poverty no matter what they do and the fact that they have lately been losing more and more of their losing voting rights?

Then, why aren't young people not seeing that? Why are they still suffering from not being able to afford to rent or buy even a basic home like their parents could in the mid to late 1900s? What about for black and brown people and the working class who believe that things haven't gotten any better ever since the 2008 financial crisis? Why are more than 30 million Americans still suffering from not have any basic health insurance at all or the kind of the drugs and treatment they desperately need?

Have you also thought about joining a movement or organization devoted to taking down corporate greed and eating the rich?

It isn't just progressives who are complaining about the government not having done enough for the people. Black and brown people in the US are upset with the government including the Democrats for not fulfilling enough of the promises they made in 2020. That's why they may decide to just not vote at all for anyone in 2024.

So, what you do think can be done about this? Or do you feel like there is no hope for racial minorities and social justice anymore?

Hamas needs to be held accountable. The Palestinian authority should’ve enforced a checks and balance system to keep Hamas in check.

According to an article by the Hill, "There is a quiet revolution going on among the younger generation in this country, marked by a dramatic erosion of support for America’s constitutional democracy. The younger generation has good reason to be disillusioned with democracy. People in their 20s and 30s have grown up in an era marked by one crisis after another, including the attacks on 9/11, the global financial crisis of 2008, escalating climate disasters, growing economic inequality, and the COVID pandemic." "American government also has seemed paralyzed and/or unwilling to do the things necessary to respond to the everyday problems of ordinary Americans. While older Americans either lived through or knew well democracy’s triumphs, such as Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal or Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, the younger generation associates democracy with polarization and gridlock." https://thehill.com/opinion/education/4302113-young-americans-are-losing-faith-in-democracy-educators-must-act-now/ They have become very disillusioned by the US government, increasingly believing that democracy doesn't work anymore, and feel like there is not much hope for the future. Many are becoming open to the idea of having the country be governed by an authoritarian regime. This is very dismaying and frightening.

He could send a million more soldiers that suck and are very poorly trained. Either way, again, even if Putin and Russia win the fight in the conventional sense, they still totally lost a tremendous amount of economic power, military power, and geopolitical power. Not to mention, the immense amount of lives and military that they've already lost and will continue to lose. Russia will inevitably come out as much much weaker nation than it ever was before.

Except that the Russian soldiers don't have nearly as much morale as the Ukrainian soldiers do. Too many of Russia's well-trained and experienced soldiers have already been eliminated. I don't think Russia really has a lot of strong soldiers left. Also, the Russian military strategies and tactics are more primitive and more disorganized than Ukraine's military. Plus, the Russian military doesn't have weapons that are as good as the ones that NATO has provided to Ukraine. Besides even if Russia ends up winning the conventional war, it will ultimately become a very pyrrhic victory for Putin and his country.

Guys, I've tried taking your advice about not worrying about next year and it's not working. The news about the world just keeps getting worse. I've never felt this fearful or pessimistic about the future as I am now.

As Leo has mentioned before, Pod Save America is one the best independent media outlets on news and left-wing political analysis. It is a YT channel that promotes liberal/progressive activism, but it is much more reasonable and balanced than hyper populist left-wing channels like TYT are. Their other other channel, Pod the Save the World, provides excellent left-wing political analyses on military and international affairs. Also, stay away from Fox News, alt-right info on Facebook, Alex Jones, conservative talk radio, and other right-wing media outlets. Over the past about 3 decades, they brainwashed about a third of Americans throughout the whole country into believing that our country's democracy and freedoms should be replaced by neofascistic values such as ultranationalism, racial supremacy, right-wing populist extremism, authoritarianism, nativism, xenophobia, and anti-immigration sentiment. They have also in great part been responsible for causing the rise of Donald Trump and the MAGA republicans, who are the neofascists hellbent on destroying America. Don't listen to any right-winger or Republican who whines about how the mainstream media and big-tech platforms have been unfair in the way they cover conservatives or Republicans. It's total BS and actually has been such an old line of attack on real journalism that goes all the way back to Nixon in the 70s. The far right-wing media ecosystem as a whole has actually gained more attention, more viewers, and more popularity in American than NYT, CNN, NBC/CNBC, MSNBC, PBS, CBS, NPR, other corporate centrist media outlets, and independent left-wing outlets combined. Since the 1990s, the right-wing media has only been increasingly distorting facts and good-faith analyses. This is also why the left-wing and the Democratic party have in recent years been building up a liberal/progressive media ecosystem that will be able to totally combat all of the misinformation out there put out by the toxic right-wing media ecosystem. Otherwise, America may no longer become a free and fair country at all anymore. MeidasTouch, More Perfect Union, Brian Tyler Cohen, and others like those ones are also great to follow. In fact, all of these left-wing channels need as much support from as many American viewers as they can get for their fight against right-wing disinformation in our country.

Like what happened in the 2022 midterms, this wasn't supposed to happen for the Democrats, given that Biden and Democrats are still the party in power at the national level, Biden's low overall approval ratings, most Americans are still not happy about the economy, most Americans still staying that the country as a whole is headed in the wrong direction, so on and so forth..... But Dems defied conventional wisdom once again! It looks like the Democratic challenger lost the Mississippi gubernatorial race to the incumbent Republican governor, which was expected. However, the Democrats won all of the 5 other key elections nationwide including: 1. Democratic governor of Kentucky, Andy Beshear, who a rising young star in politics nationwide, won re-election by a solid margin. 2. Ohio voted to legalize the possession and sale of marijuana by a landslide. 3. Ohio voted to make the right to an abortion protected by the State Constitution. 4. Daniel McCaffery, a Democratic state Supreme Court candidate from Pennsylvania, won his election by a comfortable margin. 5. Republicans in Virginia not only failed to flip the State Senate chamber (upper house) in the Virginia State legislatures to the Republicans, they also lost control of the House Delegates chamber (lower house) in the Virginia State legislatures to the Democrats. There were also number of wins Democratic achieved tonight such as Cherelle Parker, who just now got elected as the first black female mayor of Philadelphia ever in the history of Pennsylvania and Gabe Amo, a former aide of Biden, who just now got elected as Rhode Island's first Black candidate elected to Congress. This should be considered as a another bad sign for Trump and the Republicans next year in the 2024 general elections.

Did you see the results for the off-year elections tonight? Since 2018, Republicans have kept losing too many elections.

Professor Allan Lichtman, a highly respectable and very sensible professor of American history, wrote a book called "Repeal the Second Amendment: The Case for a Safer America, whereby he elaborates greatly in-depth as to why guns should be outlawed in America. He of course realizes that the chances of the Second Amendment ever being repealed are slim to none in reality. However, there are two major points that he has made with regard to gun right. The first big point he made is that the 2nd amendment was truly never originally intended to allow all American citizens the right to bear firearms. it was originally meant to provide gun rights to only a well regulated militia in the US. However, all SCOTUS ruled in the 2008 District of Columbia v. Heller case, that " the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects an individual's right to keep and bear arms—unconnected with service in a militia—for traditionally lawful purposes such as self-defense within the home...." All five of the conservative justices voted in favor of the case, while all four of the liberal justices voted against it. The scumbag former Justice Scalia was actually the main judge at the time who made that opinion, despite the fact that he was an originalist. I guess that is another example of how hypocritical and corrupt most conservatives in power have always been. The second point professor Lichtman made is that the US federal government should still pass and enforce laws that would tremendously restrict the purchase and use of any firearms in the country. His gun control proposals have included, but haven't been limited to: 1. Gun permit laws - which he says is the best way to reducing gun violence in America. 2. Serious universal background checks - these would have to extend to gun shows, not just to license gun dealers and those with a history of mental illness. 3. Prohibition on assault weapons 4. Controls over high-capacity magazines 5. Controls over ghost guns and gun storage Now, he actually does acknowledge how extremely difficult it is to pass any of these proposals into law through Congress because of those damn Republicans in the House and Senate (and some of conservative Dems in red states in the past who did vote against gun control bills). It's also certainly possible that even if any or all of the proposals were passed into law that the courts could still strike down these laws. However, our best shot (no pun intended) of getting these reformist measures passed into law is if we had a SUPERMAJORITY of Democrats (particularly liberal/progressive Democrats) in both the Senate and House in Congress and a Democratic president. Here's what Lichtman said in his livestream last week on his Youtube Channel after the horrific mass shooting that occurred in Lewiston, Maine about a week and half ago: Also, listen to answer he gave to a question I asked him around the 8 min. and 37 second mark, which was "Yeah, but even we outlawed guns, wouldn't there still be million Americans who will still find a way to illegally buy guns from outside the country?" Lastly, I asked him in his livestream session yesterday, "Even if we had major nationwide gun control laws you have proposed, wouldn't mass shootings still happen from shooters using handguns and pistols?" His response was that gun permits and registrations for all types of handguns would actually still severely limit the amount of the mass shootings just like they have in every other peer democractic nation such as Canada, Australia, UK, Germany, France, etc. 1st world countries and states in the US with the greatest amount of gun control laws have much less gun violence than other states in the US and other countries in the world that have much less gun control laws.

Several Democratic pundits have been sounding the alarm over the possibility of Biden losing to Trump in 2024. James Carville, even recently said that according to all of the polls he has looked at, Trump at this point is currently the betting the favorite because too many Americans still feel that Biden is too old. He said "“The voters don’t want this, and that’s in poll after poll after poll.” “You can’t look at what you look at and not feel some apprehension here.” Carville is worried that there may be lack of voter enthusiasm for Biden if he runs for re-election, which could very well lead to low Democratic voter turnout next year, thereby causing not only Biden to lose to Trump, but leading to the Democrats losing the congressional elections in the 2024 general election. Bill Maher has said that Biden definitely will lose to Trump in 2024. Although, I usually take what Maher with a big grain of salt, especially after his extremely pessimistic prediction on the 2022 midterms turned out to be incorrect. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/17/us/politics/biden-democrats-voter-concerns.html Cenk is still desperately trying to convince people that Biden will definitely lose to Trump in a landslide and therefore should drop out. He's urging Democrats to nominate a corporate Democrat in their prime with great appeal like Josh Shapiro, Andy Bashear, Gavin Newsom, or Gretchen Whitmer for president. I get the worry about all of this and I am still very worried about the Trump and the Republicans possibly winning in 2024, but at the same time, it's crazy to think that Biden, who already beat Trump last time, would not be able to beat him again, especially after everything thing Trump did and the unbelievable amount of indictments he's already had. Not to mention, the fact that the Republican Party had already lost the 2018 midterms, lost the 2020 general election, lost the 2022 midterms overall. Moreover, what about the fact that the Republican party have still been losing an extraordinary amount of special elections since 2022 because of the massive backlash from voters who are still angry about the overturning of Roe vs. Wade and are still terrified of the Republican party's extreme right-wing authoritarian rhetoric and policies? Plus, How about the fact that Baby Boomers and members of the Silent Generation combined made up only about 44% of the electorate in 2020, which was below the 52% of the electorate they constituted in 2016 and 2018? They say that 2024 election will potentially be the very first time that younger voters will outnumber Baby Boomer voters. Of course, there is no guarantee that Biden and the Dems will win in 2024, but how can any Democrat say that Trump has a greater chance of beating Biden than vice versa?

Recently, Cenk announced on social media that TYT is a "mainstream" progressive channel/organization. He acknowledges that he actually made up the term "mainstream" progressive on his own and says that it means being a progressive who is in between that of an establishment Democrat and that of a far left wing person. That means taking progressive stances of someone like Bernie Sanders and pushing for progressive policies that are not too "woke" or too nonsensical. He also says that people like AOC actually come off as too extreme to the left for most Americans (even though TYT just cancelled her for having already endorsed Biden for president in 2024). I think TYT's political positions are sensible progressive stances; however, I think that their rhetoric is really getting toxic now and they are sounding like left-wing populist extremists. Are they "mainstream" progressives or have they really gone off the deep end?

I believe that at this point either Newsom or Josh Shapiro or Gretchen Whitmer or Andy Beshear or Wes Moore will become president within the next decade, unless someone else we haven't heard of before comes from out of nowhere and really tops them all as a candidate. Then again, it's not 100% clear or certain that Newsom or any of the abovementioned potential presidential candidates will end up doing well in the democratic primaries for president until they have been tested under the white heat of a presidential campaign. A lot of people thought that Kamala Harris or Corey Booker would be strong top tier presidential candidates in the 2020 democratic primaries but surprisingly did not do well at all.

President Biden and a growing number of Democrats have now called for a humanitarian pause. I hope Israel eventually agrees to that.

Should they do a temporary ceasefire?

It looks like Israel has agreed to allow at least 100 aid trucks per day to enter into the Gaza: https://www.cnn.com/middleeast/live-news/israel-hamas-war-gaza-news-10-30-23/h_df02b46639b41f5ebd0e6b1b5330ffe6