Comments by "" (@timogul) on "Forbes Breaking News"
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That would be terrible, if it were remotely true. Of course, like most things Trump tells you, it's not remotely true. The $700 was the immediate short term relief that congress has authorized FEMA to hand out right after an emergency, to cover food, travel, and housing in the very short term. Much more aid is coming to help them to rebuild, but that will take additional appropriations from congress, and congressional Republicans are currently slowing those processes, so if you want Hawaii to get more aid, contact the nearest elected Republican and tell them to get their act together.
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@lawrence8146 Sure. In 2020, there was a global pandemic that massively disrupted economies all around the world. Manufacturers cut production, oil producers cut production, all on the expectation of reduced demand. In 2021, when people were getting vaccinated and businesses started to open back up, demand massively increased and there was no supply to fill it. Supply chains struggled to keep up, oil production increased at a lower rate than demand, and oil prices rose. Since most global production requires oil for transportation, this raised the prices on just about everything.
So over 2021 and 2022, inflation went up all over the world. Gas prices in the UK were over $7 a gallon, and their inflation was as high as 14%. Joe Biden managed to spare Americans a lot of that, and kept inflation way down what it was in most countries, well below what it would have been under conservative governments like the UK has, but it would be impossible to prevent all the inflation that resulted from the basic supply and demand disruptions that 2021 and 2022 had.
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@eduardopena5893 Even assuming that were possible (it's no, of course), it would also mean cutting off nearly a trillion dollars per year in US trade, and bankrupt thousands of American businesses, big and small.
Drugs do not travel into the US across the desert, they cross at legal ports of entry, smuggled in through various hiding methods in trucks and shipping containers. No "walls" would have any impact on that, and so far, terrorists that enter the county do so via airports, not the southern border (although most terrorists in the US were white Americans that were born here).
We do agree that legal immigration needs to improve, and Democrats have been pushing for that for decades, but Republicans have no interest in it, because they prefer to run on "chaos at the border, be scared!!!!"
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I don't think it's the National Archives' responsibility to track every classified document, their job in this case had more to do with specific documents related to the Presidency. Like they knew that Donald Trump had kept some documents that he should not have, which is why they were trying to recover those, but they had no idea he'd taken so many as he was leaving. I think that classified documents in general would be more the responsibility of the CIA, FBI, and NSA, but even they might not keep track of each one on a 1:1 basis. I suppose that might be a good idea though, check it out, check it in, if it's not checked back in, someone comes looking for it.
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@ComplicatedBot There are too many people coming to our borders for our current systems to process, that is a fact, and we need to be doing more to support them at the federal level, rather than leaving them up to cities to care for. Part of the problem there, which those city's mayors have addressed, is that while they are being processed, they are not allowed to work legally, and changing that could solve the problems. We also need ot be massively increasing the number of border judges we have, so that people aren't stuck in limbo for years.
But the point is, that is NOT an "open border," people are still being caught, processed, and then either deported, or allowed to apply for asylum, same as in any previous administration. Things are just a lot rougher south of the border than they used to be, so there are a lot more people willing to risk life and limb to get here.
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That's not true at all. Whatever problems you think we have now, a default will ALWAYS make things MUCH worse. Think of it like this, you have a good job, you make good money, but you also run up credit card debts, and while you are perfectly able to pay off your credit card bills, and keep doing so for decades at the current rates, the balance is still creeping up a bit. so you decide to just stop paying your bills. Then your credit rating goes through the floor, and your credit rates double, and now you can't keep up with those payments anymore, because it's costing you twice as much to borrow as it used to, and things just spiral completely out of control. The only people who say that we can just default and it's fine are idiots, unfortunately, they hold the House majority at the moment.
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@mharris5047 No, the "well regulated militia" clause is in there because the militia WAS the military at the time, and people needed to be armed for national defense. That became irrelevant once the US developed an adequate standing army. We can agree on weapons of war, get those off the market, but most murders in this country are done using handguns, so not including those would mean condemning thousands each year unnecessarily.
While I'm willing to take any small steps forward that are on the table, I do think that we would be our best nation once we had a pretty much complete ban on firearms. There could be exemptions for reasonable hunting rifles, in a well regulated fashion, and there can be secure shooting ranges where sport rifles and pistols could be stored and played with, but there's really no justification for these weapons just hanging out on America's streets. I mean, that 6 year old who shot his teacher got his gun from parents who claim that they kept their gun safely secured, and why should I trust any other gun owner more than I do them?
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Think of it like this, say you have a very simplified "state," in which there are enough people to justify four districts, and there is one city in the middle. That one city has 60% of the total population and is strongly Democratic, while the areas outside the city are largely Republican. There are all sorts of ways you could divide that up, but in a balanced fashion you would end up with two democrats, one Republican, and one that could go either way. But if you wanted to, you could divide up the territories so that one of the districts was 100% in the city, and the other three were balanced 11% Democrat to 13% Republican, and Republicans could potentially take all three of those, or you could make it so that each of the four districts were 60/40 splits favoring Democrats and they could take all four. How you redistrict matters very much, and nationwide Republican statehouses have stolen dozens of seats that should have gone to Democrats (even after counting the few seats where Democratic gerrymandering have done the opposite).
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@SongBird-Lyrics01 It's certainly a complex topic, but the basic gist of it would be the idea that "white people," however one defines that term to himself, are somehow innately superior to "non-white people" and deserve on average to be in positions of power and authority over them. A "white nationalist" is a person who (regardless of their own race), supports this viewpoint, and promotes the idea of America (or whichever country they choose to support), as being an inherently "white nation," in which white people should always be at the top of the power structures, and in which their country should also be at the other countries of the world.
Tommy was never confused, he just did not like hearing the term "white nationalist" being applied to people that he liked and supported, so he was rejecting the use of the term, however accurate it may be.
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@mrlij6534 ZERO money was "coming back from China." China never paid a dime of his tariffs because that is never how tariffs work. The money Trump handed to farmers to offset what he cost them came out of YOUR pocket, not China's. If your argument is that farmers were happy that Trump gave them your money, he could have just skipped the middleman and given them your money in the first place, and it would have been cheaper all around.
Also, you misunderstand something else, tariffs are not always a bad thing, they are a tool, and when used correctly, they can do something useful. The problem is that if you throw them around recklessly, they do not help, and they have certainly never worked in the way Trump claims that they do. The problem is not that tariffs took place at all, the problem was that they were applied haphazardly.
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No, that's been proven wrong,. If you give more money to employers, they don't spend it on employees, they spend it on shareholders. If you want employers to spend money on employees, you have to specifically require them to. On the other hand, if you give tax cuts to the employees, then they spend more, which increases demand, which causes employers to hire more to keep up with it, so everyone makes more money.
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@seancase71 Again, "the crime worked out" is not a defense against committing a crime. Crimes work out all the time. For example, if you steal money from your company, double that money, and return the amount that you took, they company is not out any money, but it is still a crime and you can still get arrested for it.
The reason this sort of thing needs to be a crime is because you can't KNOW that it will work out in advance. Plenty of people do these sorts of crimes expecting that it will work out, everyone will make money and be happy. But many times they do not. If you only punish the people who don't pay it back, then it gives the impression that "it's ok, as long as you get away with it." The penalties need to apply to the act itself, not to how well it works out.
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@Boomslang55 No, the war started when Russian military forces attacked Ukraine. Meddling in politics is not an act of war, Russia meddles in all US elections, does that mean that the US would be justified in bombing Russia? If Russia is mad at the Us meddling in foreign affairs, then they can try to sanction US businesses or use other non-violent forms of conflict resolution, but at NO point does that EVER justify them invading their neighbors. And if you don't believe me, believe Putin, who when he declared his invasion of Ukraine, tried to justify it by claiming that Ukraine was just a part of Russia anyway, just like Hitler did when he started his conquest of Europe.
Nobody is supporting this war, but Putin isn't leaving any time soon. You seem to imply that the correct decision here would be to just leave poor Putin alone to take over Ukraine and "end the war" on those terms. That is unacceptable. If you want the war to end, then first Putin has to withdraw all forces from Ukraine, as defined by the break-up of the Soviet Union.
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@nibiru9035 So "the number of defensive gun uses that I imagine is something you should consider?" No, I don't think that I will. Proof or it didn't happen.
If you exclude gun iolence involving the drug trade it's still considerably higher than in any other first world country, and those countries have just as much gang and drug related crime as in the US, no more, no less, they just have less murders because they have less guns.
The only thing that is different is the guns.
And yes, "law abiding" gun owners are the problem, since that is where gang members often get their guns. Take away all the "law abiding" guns, and the criminals have a much harder time finding one. Remember, if the old myth that "criminals can always find guns" were relevant, then criminals in those other countries would continue to find and use guns at the same rate as in the US. They do not. It's impossible to get 100% of guns off the streets, but you can massively reduce the number just by making it harder to legally purchase and own them.
As to the reason the 2a was first put into place, it's no longer relevant, we have a standing US army now and no longer need a "well regulated militia" to defend it.
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@IM-tl7qv That response presupposes that murder rates etc. would not be equivalent, for some inexplicable reason. I mean, the slight variations might account for some differences, if the US murder rate were like 20% higher than other countries, you could say "yeah, that makes sense," but FOUR TIMES? What kind of idiot would someone have to be to say "well, different countries and all." And that's just between countries that are relatively similar to the US, like the UK or Australia. The Us murder rate is TWENTY times the Japanese one. We also have to consider relative change, that in counties that once had more guns available, and then at some point reduced their gun access, murder rates and gun crime went down within the same cultural conditions.
In any case, your position has been falsified by any methods currently available to us. All evidence indicates that less guns equals less murder, all evidence indicates that more guns equals more murder, there is NO evidence to support the idea that more guns makes anything better in any way. But they sure are fun toys, right? Pew pew!
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@@TaejongYi India has three times as many people as the US, but only 1/8th the GDP. The GDP is more important in terms of military spending, not population. The EU's combined GDP is less than the US's, even if their population is higher. They DO have a significant army, but you don't just want enough of an army to BARELY beat Russia, like Ukraine has, you want to have an army big enough that Russia doesn't even want to start anything. Claiming that you won't help NATO if they are attacked only emboldens their enemies.
As for "military aid," you do understand that this is as much in the US's benefit as it is Ukraine's, right? We give them our oldest functional equipment, stuff that would have gone bad in a few years if not used anyway. Yes, it's "millions of dollars in hardware," but it's stuff that would have gone to waste otherwise. And then we buy up brand new stock for ourselves to replace it. And all of this is manufactured by US companies, who employ US taxpayers, so the money just goes back into the economy. It's win/win/win for the US.
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@eduardopena5893 Well the points of entry are the only parts of the border that are not currently closed. All other parts of the border are closed and always have been. Anyone attempting to cross those borders is caught and processed. If you don't mean closing those open ports of entry, then what could "close the border" mean, outside of some sort of magical glass dome?
And no, drugs are not smuggled across the desert regions, they are smuggled through those legal ports of entry. If anyone tries to smuggle drugs through the desert areas, they will get apprehended by border patrol. The only people crossing through those areas are people attempting to immigrate to this country.
The cartels do have a lot of interaction with those folks, but only to take advantage of how poorly designed the US immigration process has been. If people could just cross at legal ports of entry and get processed that way, the cartels would have no roll to play, but the need for them to sneak outside of the ports of entry and to "wait in Mexico" for extended periods of time give cartels plenty of opportunity to prey on them.
You are flat wrong about most terrorist attacks coming from outsiders. Check with the FBI on that one.
And no, Democrats do not want unfettered entry and instant citizenship, that is just what Faux News tells you to think so that they can control you through fear of the other. It's a sad manipulation tactic. All Democrats want is humane treatment of migrants, that they are not rounded up and put in cages. Democrats tend to support a path to citizenship for undocumented children, but it would take longer than the traditional nationalization process, far from "instant."
We have a "legal process," but for decades now that process has lagged further and further behind demand from both migrants AND American businesses, so the amount of legal immigration slots needed is far higher than the amount allowed. It is Republicans that have long resisted any effort to fix this, because, again, they prefer you to be afraid of the evil border. If we want to fix the border, we would need to massively increase the amount of legal immigration slots available, by this point probably by thousands of times just to make up for the backlog.
And no, this is not Biden's fault and Trump's policies were not actually solutions. That is just what Faux News tells you to believe. The same number of people would be trying to cross now regardless of who the US president was or what his policies are, all that matters is how we treat them when they show up.
Also, people who cross illegally ARE deported, but we have due process in this country, which means they get their day in court, and Republican efforts to defund border judges have led to massive backlogs, slowing down this process.
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@seancase71 It's an example. In this case, the customer lied to the bank. The bank does have their own due diligence to check into that lie and act accordingly, but that is a process between them and their other customers, it is not some sort of protection to the person lying to them that it's ok so long as they fall for it.
If a customer lies to a bank, and they go along with it, then the best case for the bank is that it is decided that it was reasonable for them to fall for that lie, and so they get off, but in a worse case, they could be deemed negligent, and be sued by investors or have regulators get involved over that. Regardless of how that turns out for the bank, the customer who lied to them is still 100% on the hook for his own actions.
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@snoopsnet8150 Nope. Anything government does badly, it's only because the private sector would do it worse. The government's worst failings are when it failed to prevent the private sector from doing something bad.Government isn't perfect, it's just better than all the other options.
Big box stores did well during covid not because of big government, it's because they had been allowed to build a near-monopoly level of economic power. Remove government restrictions entirely from the equation, and they still would have done just as well relative to the smaller businesses, because people wanted to limit their exposure, and big box and online retailers were best able to provide that option. The government restrictions did not significantly impact that balance, all they did do was limit the 2020 deaths to 600,000 rather than 1,200,000.
Mom and pops were already on their way out, and would have been annihilated decades ago if not for government regulation placing some limits on businesses ability to monopolize. In other countries, with more socialist governments, they have had far more success at limiting the big box stores and allowing family businesses to thrive. Why is that? The top 0.1% didn't get wealthier because of any action on government's part, all government did was funnel some wealth BACK to the 99.9%. The top 0.01% got wealthier because that is all that they do.
Government is not perfect, and it can be improved, but out ONLY hope is in continuing to improve government, not in stripping it down for parts. You're being fed massive lies by elite narcissists who only care about money and power and you're regurgitating them like a naive puppet.
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@kh8655 I can understand why you're confused. Let me try to break it down even simpler. If the goal of the insurrectionists was to take over for themselves. say, to install the Q Anon Shaman as President of the United States by invading the Capitol, then that never would have worked. Eventually the military would have arrested or killed all of them and nothing of any significance would have happened.
But given that a number of members of congress and the sitting President at the time were complicit in their behavior, there were several paths by which they could have claimed "hey, things are weird right now, let's just throw out the votes of the people, maybe let the House decide who gets ot be President, maybe declare martial law, maybe let states send alternate electors, etc." and that might have been enough of a fig-leaf of legitimacy that it would survive legal challenges, especially given Trump's stacked court.
So yes, we did come frighteningly close to an actual constitutional crisis, but it was a LEGAL crisis, not an "armed insurrection" one.
Could - you - understand - that - or - do - I - need - to - type - slower?
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@kh8655 Oooooookaaaaaaaay, VERY slow, "explain it like I'm three" mode, because "explain it like I'm five" mode was apparently too "intellectual" for you. Again, two potential scenarios:
A. Armed insurrectionists try to take over the government in a completely physical and arbitrary manner? No. Impossible, irrelevant to anything. They could try, they would fail, every time. Their guns would accomplish nothing.
B. A criminal President decides to use chaos as a precedent to take semi-legal steps to bypass the standard rule of law? Scarily plausible, but again, has NOTHING to do with the 2nd amendment, because guns could not help with that.
The funny thing is, if the insurrectionists on Jan 6th had been armed, they would have been much less successful. The only way they got as far as they did is because the Capitol police had decision paralysis. They didn't want to shoot "unarmed protesters," so the only officer that fired a shot did so at the last second as they were breaching into the still-occupied House floor.
If the Insurrectionists had come visibly armed, if it was more apparent to everyone at the time that they came to do violence, then the Capitol police would have been much less hesitant to fire back, and the DC PD would have rushed in sooner, the National Guard would have rushed in sooner, and while a lot more people on both sides likely would have died, it certainly would not have gone in the insurrectionist's favor.
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@SenseiSifuMaster Never let the perfect be the enemy of the good. America will never be "perfect," it will always be a work in progress, and that's a good thing. If we take the attitude "we just can't do X until after America is perfect," than that's basically just saying "never do X," and we should at least be honest about that and not pretend we're saying otherwise, right?
Again, we can welcome these people into our country, help them to be productive members of our economy, AND work to resolve all these other issues, they help each other to sort things out, they are not in competition.
Also, I should just point out, from an economic standpoint, that "money leaving the country" is not a bad thing, especially not for Americans. That helps keep the economy in balance and inflation down, while also ensuring that the US dollar is an essential global currency, which has all sorts of benefits to America's overall propriety. Even when immigrants send a portion of their paycheck overseas, they still have to spend enough to live off of, and pay their taxes, so the American economy benefits too. Immigrants add much more economic value than they take.
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@degen83 No, Democrats do care about people and do pass policies that help people more than Republicans, but the nature of politics mean that they can't just magically get everything they want, and often have to compromise with Republicans in ways that lead to less effective results. Also, just because a place is a "blue state" does not mean that Republicans don't hold a lot of local power in certain areas. It's always better to vote for a Democrat than a Republican, but you certainly should try to pick the best available Democrat during the primaries.
As for why "Democrat areas" have "more homelessness," part of that is bad faith reporting, since plenty of homeless people live in red areas. Florida has the 2nd highest amount, Texas the 3rd, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina are all in the top 15 states for homelessness, and I don't think anyone's accused North Carolina of being "controlled by Democrats," since the Republicans there have supermajorities in just about every body at this point, even if they had to steal elections to do it.
Some of it has to do with the weather being better in places like the west coast, so people who are going to be living outside prefer those areas, some of it has to do with the problems in housing availability that I explained earlier (again, not something state government can fix), part of it is because homelessness tends to occur around large cities (since that's where most of the people live) and all large cities happen to be Democratic.
If there is any "good" reason why there could be less homelessness in Republican areas, it's because Republicans sometimes drive them off at the point of a stick, but I don't think anyone could take pride in that level of inhumanity, and surely you would prefer to have homeless people clogging your sidewalk than to know that government "cleared" them in your name, right?
I suppose I shouldn't assume.
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@degen83 It is factually incorrect to claim that in areas where Democrats have significant majorities that they can "do what they want," because there are often other elements at play that tie their hands. I suggest you watch that Wendover video about California, it lays out the various structural issues that make it difficult to get anything done there on certain topics.
And again, no Democratic policies encourage homelessness, that is a perfect example of you making a bad faith argument. You didn't point out any "result of Democratic policies," you just pointed to a homelessness problem, and declared that they were "the result of Democratic policies," without drawing ANY actual connection between the two.
As for the drug problem, you do know that the drugs come through ports of entry, right? The only way to stop that would be to shut down the border to all traffic, would would obliterate the US economy. The previous president certainly never attempted it, because it would be too stupid, even for him.
Seattle is rainy, but also temperate. Rain you can use an umbrella and a tent, it's much better than living in someplace that sees massive snowfalls.
And yes, there was a time when Republicans and Democrats could work together. It was not the Democrats that changed, it was all the Republicans. They became more and more insane, from the Teaparty to the MAGA crowd, and they abandoned all common sense and built their party around racism and other forms of bigotry, and seizing power any place they couldn't win elections. Hopefully, they will eventually turn back into a credible party, but they are nowhere near it now, and anyone incapable of recognizing that lacks ANY credibility themselves. You would have to be living in an alternate reality echo chamber to blame any of that on Democrats.
Look, it's kind of sad, but you just seem to be giving me a laundry list of Faux News talking points, like you have a teleprompter in your head or something. It's pretty pathetic. Break free of Big Brother, and learn to think for yourself. Find the truth behind all these wacky stories they tell you, it will blow your mind.
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@degen83 Again,m you keep saying "laws that incentivize homelessness" but you haven't actually pointed out what such a law might be. I'm beginning to think that you mean "laws that do not drive homeless people to other states" or something. What laws give incentives for being homeless?
And sanctuary cites are a good thing, they help the homeless people who are in the country to better integrate with their communities, rather than having to live underground. The faster they can be part of the American economy and social fabric, the better for everyone, right? What could be wrong with that?
And again, MOST major issues cannot be changed by the state level governments in California, they are handled at the local level. Republicans could make things worse, sure, but Democrats have done about as much as they have the legal authority to do, even if that is not enough. You really should watch that video, then you'd know why you sound so silly to others and why they can't take your seriously.
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@thatamerican3187 You do understand the point of the original gas tax, right? It's because roads cost money to maintain, so the government needs to bring in revenue to offset those costs, and it's most fair to tax the people who drive the most for the wear they put on the roads, right? Well a gas tax worked great for that fifty years ago, because the more gas you used, the more driving you did, but now we're shifting toward electric cars, so the amount of revenue the gas tax brings in is less and less and will eventually be zero, so they need to figure out a new way to pay for highway upkeep. This should not be controversial. Remember that at the end of the day you should end up paying no more than you currently pay, it would just be collected on a different basis.
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@thatamerican3187 "No new taxes" is a stupid argument. There's nothing inherently wrong with taxes. Taxes are just a way to pay for things, and if those things are worth doing, then they should be paid for. Taxes need to be fair to those that are paying them, and the Democrats' proposals are fair. If you want to use the US highway system, then you SHOULD be willing to pay for its upkeep. A per-mile tax is a way to do that.
We SHOULD be moving toward electric cars, there is no rational argument otherwise (aside from increased public transit), so the various related systems SHOULD take electric vehicles into account. There is no reasonable argument otherwise. Drive on roads, pay for their upkeep, period. If you don't want to pay a per-mile tax, then don't drive.
And gas prices have nothing to do with who is in the White House, and ever have.
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@randallgoldapp9510 Biden is a capitalist, but part of responsible capitalism is reigning in the excesses of the free market. Absolute, unfiltered capitalism is just as destructive to society as absolute communism, and no country on Earth practices it. It is responsible governmental policies for the government to spend heavily during a crisis, as they can take on debt much more efficiently than private citizens can. This helps speed up the recovery. You then need to tax appropriately to cover the costs of that spending, which was the flaw in the previous administration. They should have raised taxes during the period of positive growth the Obama economy provided, rather than lowering taxes, which had raised the deficit and national debt.
2. Trump is certainly an excitable speaker, no argument there. He knows how to throw red meat to his base. That doesn't make him a coherent speaker. His speeches are just uncoordinated rambles about his various grievances that rarely stay on topic for more than thirty seconds at a time. The wall with Mexico only even exists because "build the wall" was an easy mnemonic device when he lost his train of thought. Joe Biden has a stutter which affects his ability to speak without a stumble, but he is always aware of the topic of his message and can stick to the theme he's discussing. He is more aware of the world around him than Trump was, and is far less likely to suggest people inject bleach.
As for the campaign, Biden's campaign was more responsible during a pandemic. Trump held a massive rally in Tulsa, and as a direct result, several of his supporters DIED, and who knows how many others spread infection to their local communities. Viral rates in the region spiked considerably. Biden, on the other hand, responsibly avoided doing mass gatherings of people, and instead used the miracle of the Internet to reach millions of followers without needing any of them within 6ft of each other. It would take a special kind of stupid to imply that Biden was the one making the wrong call there.
Trump's policies did not create peace anywhere, he just coasted on Obama's, except in places that he made less stable, and then claimed victories in places where he accomplished very little. There is no place in the world that was better off due to his actions there.
Yeah, I voted for the other guy, and any rational person would.
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King Charles ✔ So your messaging seems confused. All your posts are a laundry list of fake news talking points about Joe Biden, but you actually seem to be approving of his policies, so what are you actually personally disagreeing with? What is driving all this hate? Are you just repeating what you've been told to repeat by the fake news? Who would you have preferred, if not Trump or Biden?
Also, Biden never mass locked anyone in cages. during the Obama administration, when he wasn't in charge, they locked up far fewer people than during the Trump administration. Their policy was to bring people in get them registered for court dates, and then let them go to return when that date comes up, whereas Trump was keeping people detained for months and even years without due process. The Obama administration also only separated families if the parents were charged with actual felonies, like drug trafficking, and put those children into stable environments as quickly as possible. The Trump administration shifted this to stripping children away from their parents and just deporting the parents, often with no documentation to reunite those parents with their children. You would have to be a monster to support something like that, right?
then if we're talking the Biden administration itself, he was working with the hand he was dealt. He was handed the Trump DHS and the Trump facilities and the Trump backlogs of existing immigrants, and you can't sort that mess out overnight. It took them a few months to get things finally organized, which is miraculously fast if you give it any thought, and by this point it's running much more smoothly, with a processing time of only a few days and then they can be resettled to a more safe environment. It's hard to seriously expect more than that.
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King Charles ✔ You seem to be spitting out the same phrases over and over again. Is this some sort of a "sheep checklist" that you keep referring to or something? Do you have any original thoughts? I asked you what YOU personally want. These "concerns" you raise do not seem like anything that you personally care about, they seem like things that you believe would bother other people, if they believed you.
There were more people heading to the border after Trump left office and after covid had slowed them down last year, but it was basicaly just the expected seasonal push. Like I said, Biden could not magically create facilities to hold them, so at one point there might have been a lot of them in ustody, but that was due to the systemic failures that Trump put into place. Presidents are not wizards, they cannot magically create a new country on day one, they have to work with the tools they were given. Within months Biden had been able to turn most of that around though, which is all anyone could reasonably expect. Also, Biden did not build any wall, he just continued existing plans to repair already existing border facilities. He also removed the funding that had been stolen from the DoD for border construction and put it back where it legally belonged. And I don't have any student debt, I paid it off like a decade ago.
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@blksbth1 Your data is incorrect. By a VERY wide margin, red states take more in federal taxes than they provide out, wile blue states give more into federal taxes than they take out. I mean, California alone is the fifth largest economy in the world. Nor for states, for countries. Of the top ten states in terms of federal tax (ie productivity), only Texas and Florida are red. Even leaving out NY and California (whcih both beat Texorida), the remaining six blue states make more when combined than Texorida would.
Then of "debtor states," of the ten states most dependent on federal funding, only one of the top ten (New Mexico) is a blue state, and only five of the top twenty are blue (add Maine, Hawaii, Vermont, and Nevada).
Blue states are unquestionably more productive and self-reliant than red ones.
Btw, you do realize that if red states "cut the cord, you'd have to move, or be trapped on the blue side of the border with free healthcare and social security?
As for the future, here's the future. People are irrelevant to it. Nobody cares where people move, they will not matter to the future. The future is automation. Every job will be automated within our lifetimes, whatever it is you do for a living, nobody will need anyone to do that thing by the end of the century. So we don't need to care where people move, we need to care about what companies can and will do to keep as much money as possible with as little responsibility as possible.
That means ensuring they have no tax havens where they can incorporate with minimal taxes and regulation. If we fail to do that, then you will not only have no salary, but also no food or shelter. If, on the other hand, we can keep corporations accountable to the public, and require that they provide their fair share in exchange for their fortunes, then we can afford to provide you with food, shelter, and a basic quality standard of living, the same as everyone else. Unless you live in a red state, where they won't provide any of that.
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@blksbth1 As for Trump allegations, there are a few in here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2019/oct/19/trump-predator-new-book-fresh-allegations
Trump and Epstein did fall out, but it wasn't over women. I mean, if you don't understand that Trump is a known sex predator by this point, where have you even been the past five years?
" Are you sure you aren't confusing that with Miss America (not teens)? "
I am sure. TEEN USA, not the adult competition. Either way it would be sexual predator behavior.
"As for the racism claim, none of what you cited stems from those individuals being black. "
Lol. "If you can't defend him from racism, join him," I guess.
" Trump basically challenged Obama's citizenry in the same regard. "
Obama was born in Hawaii. That is in America. And nobody seriously questioned whether someone born to American parents overseas was allowed to be President, we already knew that they could be, it was never said as anything but a joke by anyone outside of Republican circles.
"Funny how he was never ONCE considered a racist by anyone until he ran for President as a Republican. "
This is absolutely untrue. He was considered racist, especially after his attacks against Obama. Even when he was somewhat "popular" with black people, it was a transactional relationship. He was a wealthy businessman that could do favors to black people, and they could give him some credibility and fluff his ego. Again, if you didn't already know that, it only indicts your news sources.
Trump was not as open in his racism until after he started campaigning for Republican votes, but if he had been saying the same things in 2005 as he'd been saying since 2016, he would have been a pariah.
" You will see, rather quickly and clearly, that he went out of his way to say that, when referring to the "good people", he was NOT referring to white supremacists,"
Lie.
Do not lie and expect to be taken seriously, particularly if you had to lie to yourself to get there.
You can't read Trump transcripts because he reads in word salad. You need to WATCH Trump speaking. He does sometimes say the right thing, but only in a dismissive fashion, while spotlighting the dogwhistles to his base. IT lets him have it both ways. It's like his Jan 6th speech, "you have to go home, but I love you for trying to overthrow the government (paraphrasing)"
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@blksbth1 It was impossible for Trump to say "there were fine people on both sides" and NOT have been saying that white supremacists were fine, because there were TWO sides, and ONE of those sides was white supremacists. Now if he'd said "there are fine people on one of those sides," their might be some ambiguity, because even though anyone who followed him would know that he meant the white supremacist side there, he could always say, with a wink, that he mean the other side. But no, he said both sides, so he was saying that the white supremacists were fine. Any later statements he might have made to walk that back a bit were just face-saving,the message had been delivered to his supporters that he was on their side.
It is disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
"or at least none that folks on my side of the spectrum seem to hear. "
This is the key part of your response. THIS is absolute true. Everything else is either delusion or deliberate deception.
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@blksbth1 But Trump also said "there were good people on both sides." One of those sides was ONLY white supremacists. You cannot say "there were good people on both sides," without saying "some white supremacists are fine." What he said after that would be irrelevant unless he specifically said that "fine people on both sides" was a mistake, and he never did, even weeks and months later. Anything else he said in that speech was irrelevant, because he delivered the message that matters to his white supremacist fans out there, he had their back.
"THERE WERE PEOPLE PROTESTING THAT WEREN'T WHITE SUPREMACISTS. "
Yes, of course there were, they were on the OTHER side from the white supremacists. If he'd only said "there were good people on the side opposing the white supremacists," nobody would have gotten upset (aside from Trump's base, of course).
If people were there opposing taking down Confederate statues, those people are called "white supremacists."
And of course even white supremacists have the right to protest, but we aren't arguing that they didn't, we are pointing out that the President should not be praising them, calling them "fine people."
And no, the only Violence in Charlottesville was one of the white supremacists rolling over a leftist with his car. The counter protesters had every right to counter protest just as much as the protesters did.
Antifa is too often used as a scapegoat for violence caused by the right.
"For example, can you name several very good things that came out of the last administration that folks on both sides of the aisle should have celebrated?"
I honestly can't. I mean, there are good things that happened during his presidency, but none that I could specifically attribute to Trump's actions, none that would not have happened anyway if any other person were at that desk. Every decision he made was bad, or at least was for bad purposes, like trying to bribe constituencies he clearly didn't care about into voting for him. I'd like to hear your list though. What are ten things that Trump did that left-leaning voters should praise him for?
Was one of them getting the Justice Department to spy on the children of House Intelligence Committee staffers? I don't think you'll find a lot of takers there.
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@bluesmax1336 Yes, they did that, the election results they certified were accurate and fair. That had been determined prior to the certification AND double and triple checked after the certification. There were no actual problems in the Arizona election, just a lot of urban legends about mysterious "voter fraud" that turned out to be complete nonsense. This is why Trump's lawyers were sanctioned in court for bringing up such frivolous claims. If there had been any actual substance to them then they could have easily avoided those sanctions. Same for Georgia , Michigan, Pennsylvania, etc.
As for Hilary, she conceded on election night, and nobody was ever claiming that the results were not legitimate. Democratic arguments over the next few years were about the role that disinformation played in how people voted in this campaign, and it was eventually learned that the Trump campaign colluded with known Russian assets to help Russian social media farmers plant disinformation in key swing districts that Trump needed to win, so without that collusion, he may not have won. But the Democrats did not dispute the actual results of the election.
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@nicholasschrader7179 Based on the evidence, it does not appear to be engineered. IF it first infected humans in the virology lab, that would be an unfortunate accident, but not a crime. The US also had virology labs, these are important things to have because they are what lead to cures, like the Covid vaccine. You research various viruses that humans might encounter so that we understand how they function and how to stop them. We want China to be doing this work, just as we want ourselves to be doing this work and there is nothing sinister about that.
If the investigations indicate that the initial outbreak was in the lab rather than in the wet market, then that is a tragic accident, but one that likely would have occurred naturally eventually, since the virus did exist in the environment. If the Chinese government deliberately covered this up, then they would deserve criticism, but it really wouldn't have changed outcomes in any way.
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@Jeremy-eu9em Well that was my question, because you said that liberals "can't think for themselves" and believe in things "based in his manufactured truth rather than objective fact," but that is conservatives you're talking about, not liberals.
Liberals tend to be much more informed about current events, history, and science than conservatives, conservatives are much more likely to believe in "manufactured realities" such as Q Anon, "stop the steal," "climate change doesn't exist," etc., and tend to be very dismissive of objective facts when it does not fit their narrative. Conservatives tend to be spoonfed lies by networks such as Fox News or OAN, rather than doing any research themselves from credible sources. They are sheep, or they would not be conservatives.
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@tracybarhite1764 Look at a chart of things like unemployment rate, GDP, etc. over the past decade. They just follow a straight line from the 2008 crash through to the present. They didn't "hit those milestones" under Obama because the milestones are the highest point things get, so of course the longer the trend continues, the higher a point you will reach. It's like if someone jogs 1 mile in ten minutes, and then jogs another mile in the next ten minutes, you don't should "That guy is amazing, he reached two miles in the last ten minutes!"
All Trump did was not screw up the trends that were already in place. For him to take any real credit, the metrics would have had to shoot up considerably on his watch, they did not. They just continued as they were already going.
I never loved Hilary Clinton, but there was never a time in which Trump was a better choice. Whatever negatives Hilary may have had, Trumps were far worse.
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@tracybarhite1764 I just know for a fact that whoever they are, they will be better than the Republican candidate, unless the Republican party changes completely over the next three years. A ham sandwich would make for a less harmful president than an acolyte of MAGA.
Look, if your position was that you were a registered Republican, you'd voted party line Republican your entire life, but you voted blue in 2016, or at least 2020 because you knew it was important that Donald Trump not be president, that would be commendable, that would be putting country over party. Millions did, some of them my friends.
But you are telling me that you consider yourself in some ways a Democrat, and yet you voted for the worst possible candidate, not just to represent any value that a Democrat could rationally hold, but just in general for the sake of humanity, and you seem proud of this choice. I cannot understand that level of nonsense.
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@tracybarhite1764 It sounds like perhaps you get your information on the world from untrustworthy sources, because you hint at a number of wild conspiracy theories in there, but the simple fact is that Biden has worked for America's interests his entire life. He has supported policies in the past that have outlived their use, but that were wildly popular at the time he supported them, and did some good at the time when they were put into place. Now, he supports policies that are wildly popular with Americans, and are supported by large majorities, even if not in the Senate. Whatever Biden does or does not accomplish, it is impossible for him to do a worse job than Trump did over the last four years, or what Trump would have done over the next four. There is no rational argument for supporting Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020 (or, God help us, in the future).
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@tracybarhite1764 You seem to have grossly misunderstood the Constitution. It says "no state should be formed within the jurisdiction of any other state or junction of two states, without the consent of the legislatures of those states as well as of the congress. So there is no problem there with DC statehood. Not only is DC not a part of Maryland or Virginia, and therefore would not even trigger any of this, but even if it were, it would only need the approval of their legislatures, which it would likely get.
As for the electoral college, I don't believe that congress can pass a law (short of an amendment) that would abolish the electoral college, but they could pass laws (or state laws) that would make it functionally irrelevant, such as directing the EC to vote the way that the popular vote goes. Overall this would be an improvement, so as long as they do it in a way that meets a strict legal standard, I'm on board.
If Trump did not want to pack the court, he could have re-appointed Garland and allowed him to be confirmed. He did not, which led to a significant imbalance on the court that must be corrected. Do you not agree that the current court is unsustainably activist in nature?
As for if Republicans come back into power, they have already shown that they will grab whatever power they are able to. McConnell even tried to prevent Democrats taking power in January until he got certain concessions. If the Democrats fail to make the best use of the next year and a half, then that will not mean that Republicans will be super nice if they take back the Senate, it will just mean that they will accomplish less for the American people. If and when the Republicans retake the government, they will not hesitate to grab whatever power they can, regardless of what the Democrats do. The simple fact is that Republicans are making every effort they can to enforce a minority government, a government in which even where the majority of people vote for Democrats, Republicans retain the majority of representation. All Americans need to fight against this at all levels, or there will be no democracy left.
I ask you again, you have claimed that you are a registered Democrat, that you support Democratic principles, which ones? Nothing else that you've said supports the idea that you believe in anything democratic or Democratic at all.
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@tracybarhite1764 So you don't actually understand the Constitution, but your diet of fake news has told you that DC statehood is a problem, and you don't know why, so you'd like to to research for you why you feel that way. Makes sense. Part of the problem you're having might be in referring the the "Republican Policy Committee" as an "unbiased article on the matter."
I also don't think you understand how democracy works. It's meant to be a vote by the people, and the majority of the people decide what happens. This is true whether they are in a "big city" or outside of them. People should not have more votes because there's more empty land around them, or have less votes because more people live near them. Each vote should be counted equally. The vote of someone outside a city should could no more than a person down town, but nor should it count any less. That is voting being fair for everyone, not situations in which one person wins the popular vote by over a million votes, while the other person wins the electoral college, and the entire country has to suffer under them for 4 years.
When the Constitution was written, women weren't allowed to vote at all. I bet you support that too.
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@tracybarhite1764 "States" shouldn't have ANY voting power in who gets to be president. PEOPLE should have that power, and the vote of a PERSON in a large state should not count for less than a PERSON in a "battleground state." More people voted for Biden in Texas than voted for him in New York, and yet none of those Texans votes actually mattered, because slightly more Texans voted for Trump, so ALL of Texas's votes went to him (luckily Texas wasn't necessary).
The Electoral College does not exist because it's the best way to do things, it exists as a compromise because when the Constitution was written, we'd just broken away form England, and each state had the potential to just break away as an independent country. The only way to hold them together was to ensure state leadership that they would retain a lot of that same power, it was all about their power. That doesn't mean that's what's best for us today.
Large cities should have no power in deciding who is president.
States should have no power in deciding who's President.
Only the PEOPLE should decide that.
" In the majority of elections the Electoral College works. "
That doesn't mean it is working well. In two of the last ten Presidential elections, the winner of the electoral college was different than the winner of the popular vote. An 80% success rate is NOT a good thing when you're talking about the leader of the free world for the next four years, especially given how catastrophic both of those presidencies turned out. I mean, imagine an America that hadn't suffered from the Iraq war or mass covid deaths in 2020. It's even possible that a different president could have avoided 9/11 and the 2008 economic collapse entirely!
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@tracybarhite1764 My point was that the systems the Constitution set up, all of them, were designed to give State Governments more sovereignty and power within the federal government than would be ideal for the government and people as a whole, because those states did not want to give up power that they already had going on. My point is that the system could have been a lot better than it was, it was not somehow a perfect system at the time of its creation.
The electoral college is not the popular vote, "the popular vote within a state" is not a thing, because state lines are just a random abstraction. I'm not sure where you are confused on that. I mean, say you have two neighboring states with equal populations, one north, and one south, and let's say that 56% of one state votes for Candidate A, and 44% for B, and 54% of the other state votes for B and 46% for A. In that case, you'd get an equal number of Electoral Votes for each candidate, even though in total, 2% more people voted for A than for B. If those states were split East and West rather than North and South, then the Electoral results might have gone in a completely different way, using the same votes!
It is the votes of the HUMANS that should matter, the state those humans live in should be completely irrelevant.
The electoral college is at best an abstraction of the popular vote that is in many cases inaccurate. There is no argument that makes the electoral college in any way as good for Americans or democracy as just using the popular vote itself.
Maybe the electoral college used to work, but given how badly it's mess up the 21st Century, maybe things have changed to make it a less reliable system. Why not remove it?
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@tracybarhite1764 If you thought your point addressed mine, then you did not understand it. My point was not that I was sad about "Texas," or "New York," but that I was sad for VOTERS in Texas that the Electoral College robbed their votes of any meaning because they ever "overruled" by other Texas voters, even though their votes should be relevant to the overall outcome. If a voter votes for Biden or Trump, it should be completely irrelevant how many other people in their state made that same vote, the ONLY thing that should matter is how many total people in the country vote for each candidate.
"My point was that you are for the popular vote nationally, but not across a state ie.Texas. "
YES. Because "the popular vote of who should be president of the country, says Texas" is not a thing that should matter. The only thing "the popular vote of Texas" should matter for is state level contests like governor and senator. For President, "the popular vote of Texas" should be irrelevant, it should be "Steve from Texas" and "Mary from Texas" compared against "Sally from Wisconsin" and "George from Pennsylvania," and all of their votes having equal sway on the outcome.
"You are still confused about how the Electoral College works. The Electoral College doesn't work off a percentage so I'm not really sure where you were going with your state A and B analogy. "
You don't seem to understand how the EC works. Most states are winner-take-all. That means that if one candidate wins a state by a tiny margin, they get 100% of the EC votes allocated to that state. So if a state has 10 EC votes, and one candidate wins that state by 2% of the state vote, he gets 100% of the EC votes. Even in the few states that have proportional splits, if a person won by 2% of the vote, he would still get 6/10 EC votes and his opponent only 4/10, gaining the equivalent of a 20% margin instead of a 2% one.
This distorts the outcome and is undemocratic.
"If we were too elect by popular vote the 4 most populated states are California, Texas, Florida, and New York. "
If we were to elect by the popular vote, the four most populous states would be IRRELEVANT. It would not matter how many more people lived in this or that state. If you lived in Wyoming and someone else lived in California, it WOULD NOT MATTER. You would get ONE vote, they would get ONE vote, you add up all the votes, the one that gets the most votes win, regardless of states. This should be obvious.
"The Electoral College isn't perfect, but the Founding Father's didn't want to have elections by popular vote because they wanted to prevent mob rule. "
The Founding Fathers lived in a time when most people couldn't even read. They didn't trust the general population, and electors weren't even chosen by the people until much later. The popular vote was basically just a straw poll that they could ignore. That doesn't make it a GOOD system, it's the system they had because it worked for their interests. It no longer does. If you believe that YOU deserve a vote, then you should be willing to agree that EVERYONE'S votes should count equally to it.
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@tracybarhite1764 Population differences shouldn't be relevant. Each person's vote should count equally regardless of how many other people live nearby. If more people move into your neighborhood, they shouldn't be able to just divvy up shares of your vote. If you live in California or you live in Wyoming, you should get exactly one vote, 100% equal to any other person's vote. Who do YOU believe deserves less of a vote than you do?
"but the major cities and states with the most population would elect the president while the smaller cities and less populated states would be out numbered. "
No.
That does not make any sense.
It would not be "larger cities" that would vote for the winner, it would be the largest NUMBER OF PEOPLE who would vote for the winner, REGARDLESS of whether those people lived in large cities or in small cities or in less populated areas, and there is no sane argument for why anything else should be the case.
What is your obsession with "big cities?"
Is it because they might vote differently than you would, and you believe that your vote should count more than theirs, and that you should get your way even if more people disagree with you? Well I'm sorry, but that is not how a democracy, not even a functional democratic Republic, would behave. That is autocracy, and we should never aspire to that.
"The majority of the elections here the candidate who wins the Electoral College also has the popular vote. "
And yet in both the 2000 and 2016 elections that was not the case, and America suffered disastrous results over the following four years as a result. There has been no case in which the electoral college results were different than the popular vote and it improved things.
"PS you don't need to repeat everything back to me, I'm well aware of my comments. "
You seem to sometimes forget them, and I want to make clear to you which points I am responding to at the time. IF you say something that is patently false, my response is pointing out why that specific point you made is patently false.
"Also this debate really isn't going anywhere. You've stated your point and I've stated mine. We are never going to agree."
Probably, because I am an American, and you want autocracy.
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@MatthewNGolding Ok, first, my analogy stands, a dog is not a bear just because you find it scary, and a migrant is not an invader just because you find them scary. They are separate things.
Second, they may well be entering other countries illegally, that is up to those other countries to decide. They have no obligation to do what Americans want them to be doing, unless you intend to pay them.
I don't see how any rational person could consider nuclear war a more acceptable outcome than "people who speak Spanish live here now!"
And, again, we have more than enough capacity to include all of these people into our country, they are only a short term issue because decades of foot dragging by Republicans have led to a border court system incapable of processing them quickly enough, so they become burdens on the state until their cases are heard. Once they are fully admitted as residents, it's their own responsibility to find jobs and earn their own way, and they have no problem doing so, ADDING to the US economy. If you believe that migrants are a concern, then I'm sure you supported the bipartisan Senate plan to solve these problems, right?
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@blksbth1 "No...and that you would actually be led to think that way speaks volumes. "
Ok, so then I guess that would be the disconnect. It's impossible to have a meaningful conversation with someone who refuses to accept the world around him. Step one is learning why you were wrong here, and then you can move on to other topics.
"You REALLY think a bunch of unarmed, angry protestors - accounting for less than half of those that entered the building, the rest having protested peacefully - could have pulled off what you just said?"
Yes, but perhaps not in the way you imagine. I do NOT think that they could have used armed force to "overthrow" anything, and that was never the point of it. The point of it was to inject enough chaos into the proceedings that the certification could be delayed or even prevented, and that they could arrange to force a House vote instead of certifying the election results. This would likely have led to the House electing Donald Trump, and while there would of course be legal challenges, but with the current SCOTUS who knows how that would have turned out, and it would at the very least be a mess.
This was the plan, it failed, but it was what those at the top WANTED to happen. Obviously not all of the protesters were in on those details, they were just a distraction. An insurrection does not need to involve any sort of violence, and it certainly does not need to have a credible chance at success, it only requires an attempt to overthrow the legitimate government, which is what was happening.
It is also worth noting that many of the protesters were willing and able to use violence on that day, so while there is no chance of them actually "overthrowing" anything, they very easily could have killed members of congress had they managed to encounter any (again, not all of the protesters, but some within the group).
This is all a matter of public record by this point, and learning these things is your own responsibility.
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@blksbth1 Let me try to provide you an example, to help you understand. Say someone wanted to rob a bank, and they were very popular, so they got a hundred people out in the streets near the bank one day, and he says "That money in that bank is yours, and we're going to get it from them, but go peacefully!" and they march on that bank. And most, but not all the crowd is unarmed, and yes, they rough up the guards a bit, but nobody dies, and they don't get any of the money. Was that a clever attempt at a bank robbery? No. But it was still an attempt at a bank robbery.
But then let's also say that at the same time this was going on, several friends of the ringleader who worked in that bank attempted to do a wire transfer of funds into their own accounts, something that they would likely get caught doing if the bank had been running smoothly, but that they might get away with in the chaos of the action outside. This was the real plan to get that money out of the bank, and it is more clever, but no less criminal. And the people outside are still accomplices to that act, even if they were not aware of the complete plan at the time.
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@blksbth1 Let me try to provide you an example, to help you understand. Say someone wanted to rob a bank, and they were very popular, so they got a hundred people out in the streets near the bank one day, and he says "That money in that bank is yours, and we're going to get it from them, but go peacefully!" and they march on that bank. And most, but not all the crowd is unarmed, and yes, they rough up the guards a bit, but nobody dies, and they don't get any of the money. Was that a clever attempt at a bank robbery? No. But it was still an attempt at a bank robbery.
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@blksbth1 Let me try to provide you an example, to help you understand. Say someone wanted to rob a bank, and they were very popular, so they got a hundred people out in the streets near the bank one day, and he says "That money in that bank is yours, and we're going to get it from them, but go in peace!" and they march on that bank. And most, but not all the crowd is unarmed, and yes, they rough up the guards a bit, but nobody dies, and they don't get any of the money. Was that a clever attempt at a bank robbery? No. But it was still an attempt at a bank robbery.
But then let's also say that at the same time this was going on, several friends of the ringleader who worked in that bank attempted to do a wire transfer of funds into their own accounts, something that they would likely get caught doing if the bank had been running smoothly, but that they might get away with in the chaos of the action outside. This was the real plan to get that money out of the bank, and it is more clever, but no less criminal. And the people outside are still accomplices to that act, even if they were not aware of the complete plan at the time.
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@blksbth1 I know, it's sad how much effort it can take to explain what should be a VERY simple point, but this is the world we live in, and sometimes "explain it like I've five" is being too generous.
To your other points, whatever events took place in the 70s and 80s, that was a long time ago, by people who are no longer a factor in the current Democratic party. Comparing an event that took place four years ago, involving politicians still in office and/or running for office today, to events many decades ago, is sort of missing the point. Compare the two parties today, not over several decades.
As to your final point, several people involved in the attack were charged with seditious conspiracy, which is one of the criminal charges related to insurrection. As to why that specific charge has not yet been applied to Trump, they might be waiting to see how the other cases pan out first. The federal election interference case is working along those same lines, just at a lower tier, akin to "manslaughter" instead of "murder."
These are big, complicated issues we're talking about, and they do not want to be reckless about it. That's why it took years to charge something that would have happened in 2021 to any other person.
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@blksbth1 "You can present your argument to me a zillion different ways, I simply disagree and have ironclad arguments that support my positions. "
No, I get it. If conservatives weren't impervious to reality, then they wouldn't be conservatives. Feelings over facts, I understand. But that doesn't stop me from at least trying.
And no, you do not have a better understanding, you have just successfully confirmed your biases. That is something very different. Really a lot of this stems back to the creation of Faux News, which was one of the first networks to say "it's ok, it's ok, yes, a lot of the things you want to be true, simply aren't, but we'll tell you that you are, so you can point to us and say 'see, I WAS right!'" And then dozens of copycats big and small picked up their lead.
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@urgreatestenemy Yes, I take all that into account. An EV has a larger carbon footprint coming off the lot than a gas car, but the gas car's footprint keeps growing over time, and after less than two years, the EV's overall footprint will be smaller.
And again, a lot of those carbon costs come from inefficient manufacturing processes, so over time those carbon costs will get lower still.
Also, there is NO EV where you "have to replace the batteries every 5 or 6 years." What idiot told you that? EV batteries typically have a 10 year _warranty," and they are rated to last much longer than that. They don't just "die" at some point, they instead just lose a bit of efficiency over time, so if you get a 200 mile range EV, then after 10 years it might only have a range of 180-190, but still plenty for most drivers. If you want to change out the battery you can, but you could keep driving it long past that if you don't need the absolute max range.
And if you do trade out batteries, you can pay off the carbon footprint of the new one in a year or so of driving, and it can be fully recycled, with all that lithium going into making a fresh battery.
I'm afraid that you listed a bunch of fossil fuel industry misinformation that someone must have fed you. Look into the topic yourself, stay away from their propaganda. Don't be their slave.
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@urgreatestenemy I was also factoring in the other forms of pollution.
Were you?
Have you looked into the oil pollution Nigeria has? Pumping, refining, shipping, and more importantly burning gasoline causes FAR more pollution to the globe as a whole, and much more than that directly to the US, than ANY aspect of EVs.
And yeah, recycling the batteries would produce some small amount of pollution, but not that much, a manageable amount (you should look up some videos of battery recycling to see what that involves). It would still be far less than the amount of oil that would be burned by a car driving the same miles.
Also, it sounds like the Natural Gas lobby has wormed their way into your brain with the idea of hydrogen. They like hydrogen because they can make hydrogen out of Natural Gas. The problem there being that while the Hydrogen burns clean, the refining process from Natural Gas produces as much CO2 as driving a gasoline car. You can make Hydrogen using electricity, but that process is much less electricity efficient than EVs, and would be much more expensive at the pump per mile driven. It would not be terribly efficient.
Also, building out a hydrogen infrastructure would be a LOT more work than hooking up charging stations. All in all, if we're all going to be shifting from gasoline cars to some alternative, most drivers should not go with Hydrogen. There are some practical uses for it, mostly in trucking and air travel, maybe for some drivers that travel extreme amounts of miles per day, but 99.9% of US drivers would be better off on EVs, which is why they are the focus.
So if your argument is "nobody should drive cars of any type, then ok, I don't think that's practical, but it would at least be less polluting, but there is NO measure by which gasoline cars work out to be better for the environment than EVs.
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@krankrocker The MSM is not biased against Trump, Trump is just objectively as bad as the MSM portray him to be. It is anyone who presents him in a more positive light than that which is biased. If you call a pile of shit a pile of shit, that is not bias. If you call a pile of shit a bouquet of flowers, then that is bias.
And the Trump campaign did collude with Russia, that was well documented in the Muller report and in the charges against Paul Manafort, for which Trump pardoned him to prevent him facing justice (or flipping on Trump). The only "scam" in that was in how right-wing media tried to hide that from viewers as best they could.
As for Biden's mental stability, at the very least we can agree that he's considerably more stable than the last guy. He has a stutter, which impacts his public speaking, but only an idiot would be unable to tell that Biden is always on top of whatever subject he's discussing.
As for Cuomo, he's the governor of NY. Psaki is the spokesperson for the President. The President really does not have anything to do with specific governors. Questions about Cuomo should be directed toward the spokesperson for the NY governor, not the President.
And as for "helicopter questions," that was actually a clever trick the last administration used, because any time they asked him a softball, he would take a swing at it, while any time they asked him a hard question, he would pretend he couldn't hear them and move on. He did that a LOT. Biden does answer questions on the way to events though, if you haven't seen him doing so, it's probably because his answers were too good for right-wing media to allow it on-air.
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@stevemahoney1733 No, that's what's called a "false equivalency." Knives have all sorts of practical purposes, and present far less of a risk than guns. Even in countries where guns have been outlawed, knife crimes account for far fewer deaths than guns do in the US. I think you do make a good argument though that access to opioids should be more controlled than they have been.
And no, there is no FBI or DOJ data indicating that civilian gun use stops any crime. Those agencies are prevented from accumulating such data due to a bill passed by Republicans in the 90s, presumably because those Republicans thought that scientific studies into the topic would be too good for guns.
Also, gun laws on a city level will never be effective, because people can just drive ten minutes outside those cities, buy a gun in a gun shop, and return to that city without every having to cross a border check. "There is gun violence in cities" is not a rational argument against national gun control, it's an excuse from idiots, for idiots.
Also, Texas's homicide rate spiked massively when they recently reduce their gun control laws. The areas where they have lots of guns and not "as much" gun violence are just due to them being places with low population density, so fewer people are getting into conflict there. On a per capita basis, you're actually much safer in a city than you are in a rural area, but since 80% of the country lives in cities, a high amount of the gun deaths happens there too.
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@nibiru9035 Of course there's proof of a deterred crime. You have a filed police report that someone tried to do a crime, and you prevented it.
If you're talking about "magical crime prevention," the idea that just the thought that a gun might exist reduces crime, well we have definitive proof against that idea. The US murder rate is four times higher than any other first world nation, even though we have 2-100 time as many guns. If the theory worked that "having guns around" actually reduced crime, then the US would be the safest place on Earth, with a murder rate a fraction as much as, say, the UK or Germany. Since it is instead 4 times higher, clearly guns do not have this "magical crime prevention" effect.
And again, owning a gun makes you MORE likely to die to gun violence, not less.
And yes, some criminals will still have guns, but few LESS of them, so far LESS people will be dying. Again, the criminals that live in other first world countries are no less interested in having guns than American criminals are, so if making guns illegal won't keep them out of American criminals' hands, it would do no better to keep them out of the hand of criminals in other countries, and yet, history shows that their gun restrictions DO work, and that taking the guns out of circulation means less criminals have them too, and less murders take place.
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@nibiru9035 And if the US had better guns laws, then he never would have gotten ahold of a gun. Do you think mentally ill people have an easy time finding guns in countries with strict gun laws? Do you think that if gangs have a small stockpile of weapons, they would happily hand one of them to a crazy person who's going to cause trouble and then get that gun confiscated? Crazy people buy guns legally from gun shops, because currently we allow this. Having an armed civilian nearby provably does not stop incidents like that. Taking the gun away from the attacker does.
Did you know that on the same day a killer in Sandy Hook killed 27 people, mostly children, using an AR-15, a guy in China went on a knifing rampage on a busy train platform, and he injured 27 people before being taken down. Take not of that, injured 27 people. None of them died. If you take their guns away, crazy people will still try to lash out, but they are MUCH less successful at it.
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@batmansboxes4936 Nobody is NOT blaming the criminals, of course they are to blame, but you can't get rid of criminals, every country has criminals, but you can make those criminals less EFFECTIVE by removing their guns. I mean, I wish you were right, I wish that there were simple solutions to this, that America's massive amount of guns somehow led to America being safe, but we know for a fact that the opposite is true, that American's guns make us LESS safe. So that being the case, do you continue to cling to fairy tales about "good guys with guns," or do you accept the reality that removing the guns would save American lives?
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@chuckles3265 People who want to murder will continue to try, they will just not be as successful at it without guns. If a mass shooting turns into a mass stabbing, then it becomes much more likely that the attacker will be caught and that the intended victims will survive the attack. There will ALWAYS be people who will want to do crimes, which is why the whole "don't blame the gun, blame the criminal" argument is idiotic. It's impossible to prevent those with criminal intent form attempting crimes. But what you can do is reduce their access to tools that make them EFFECTIVE at it.
And no, we don't need to ban all other devices that might be used as a weapon, because those are not as effective as guns. The goal is to REDUCE the amount of murders, and removing guns would provably do that. In countries like the UK and Australia that passed gun bans, their crime and murder rates dropped. Even today, they not only have fewer gun deaths than in the US, which would be expected, but also fewer knifing deaths. Their TOTAL murder rates went down. If the theory that "well if you take the guns away, criminals would just find some other method" actually applied, then when you removed guns, murder rates would remain flat. We know for a fact that this is not how it works, so that theory cannot be correct.
As for criminals getting guns, again, not true. While some criminals would still be able to get some guns, they would be able to get far LESS of them, so less harm would result. We again know this for a fact from the countries that have tried. UK criminals are no less interested in having a gun than US criminals, and yet still gun crimes are way down in the UK, so clearly criminals do not have unlimited access to guns. Most guns that criminals use in crime are either directly purchased from a law abiding gun shop, or they are directly purchased from someone who bought that gun in a legal gun sale, or they are stolen from someone who legally purchased their gun. If you remove all those legal paths to trade and transport guns, then it becomes MUCH harder for a criminal to gain access to one, especially the more amateur criminals like mass shooters, revenge murderers, and junkies looking to mug someone. Black markets will still exist, but with much more limited supply, and much harder for a person to find.
These are the absolute facts as shown by previous cases in which it has been done. These facts might make you angry, because you really WANT the facts to be on the side of guns, but I'm sorry, the facts are on the side of life, instead.
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@chuckles3265 I'm for any reasonable steps that are available that would reduce the number of guns out there in the world. It doesn't have to be "all or nothing," and we should never let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I can see a reasonable purpose for some access to hunting rifles, and if low-capacity hunting rifles were the only guns available then I think that the amount of crime done with them would be a tiny fraction of what currently takes place. I also see a place for sport shooting, but feel that such guns could be stored entirely in secure facilities, rather than in people's homes.
I see no particular justification for having personal possession of guns in the home, much less on someone's person during a normal day. The theory is that this somehow makes people "more safe," but the evidence does not bear this out, as gun ownership increases the odds of someone dying from a gun, and even though the US has far more guns than any other country, we also have a higher murder rate, which is the opposite of the result if it were true that guns in any way increased public safety. It would be like claiming that covering yourself in meat is a good way to prevent shark attacks.
I don't think that there is any valid purpose for civilians to own handguns (again, outside of the exclusive possession of a secured shooting range).
As for mental health, sure, we could always do with better mental health education and access, that'd be great. I don't think it's the defining issue here though, as while some countries handle mental health better than the US does, it's far from universal even among other first world countries, and I don't believe there is any direct correlation between quality mental health and lowered homicide rates. We do know that in countries that banned firearms and assault weapons there were direct reductions in homicide rates shortly afterward though, so that is a much more clear correlation.
so it's not an "either or" thing, sure do better on mental health issues, and that would help, but plenty of gun violence has nothing to do with mental illness, so that's only a small part of the problem. Getting the guns off the street would have a much stronger benefit.
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@chuckles3265 And yet "responsible gun owners" perpetuate the access of guns to irresponsible people. I don't think that heirloom guns should have to be turned over or anything, but I think that ideally you might have to store them in a secure facility. As I said a while back though, when people talk about gun laws, a common response is "so you're going to try and confiscate my guns? Good luck!" and my response is always that I think this would be counterproductive. I think that it's better to make the sale, possession, and transport of those guns illegal, but never to specifically target anyone for already being in ownership of a gun, I think that would just lead to more violence than necessary. So in practical terms, if you own heirloom guns, then so long as you kept them properly stored, you would be able to keep them, and they would only become an issue if you got in trouble with the law for completely different reasons and they were found in a lawful search of your property.
And as I said, there's nothing wrong with having target shooting at secure shooting ranges. Of course if all you're interested in is shooting with the family, airsoft guns are fine for that. You don't need weapons that can kill someone to target shoot.
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@stevemahoney1733 Of course tyrannical government causes me concern, which is why I don't vote tyrants into office. But I live in a democratic republic, and the point of that is that the government is representative of the people. So love as we don't elect in people who would throw out the results of elections that they don't like, or gerrymander stats so that minority rule happens, or throw insurrections when they don't get the election results they want, we don't need to worry about "government tyrants," because we won't have any. Again, this isn't some hypothetical situation, there are already dozens of countries in the world that have far fewer guns than the US, and are MUCH safer for it, and yet are no less free and fair than the US is. Tyranny happens when a populous is willing to accept it, it has nothing to do with how many guns people have.
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@mharris5047 Hunting is a valid purpose, and there can be limited exemptions for that, even in Japan a hunter is allowed a hunting rifle, but that limited purpose would in no way justify the reckless access to guns currently available in the US. And besides, even hunting is more of a casual sport than a necessity in modern life, bullets cost more than meat at this point.
And no, guns do not provide self defense, owning a gun makes you MORE likely to die, not less.
While I believe America would be better off if practically all guns were unavailable to civilians, I don't believe in an "all or nothing" approach, so any reasonable steps forward that can be taken are fine by me. So long as a new regulation provides some benefit and does not take away existing protections, I'm fine with that, better laws can come later as more boomers die of old age. There is just so much better that we can be doing right now.
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@DeathlordSlavik It's a myth that guns are "often used in self defense." People just feel more comfortable with a gun in their hand, waving it around like a maniac, whether it makes them safer or not. There was an Air Force Veteran in Texas a couple years back that was using his gun in self defense, and was murdered by another guy who was claiming to be using self defense, was convicted of it, and might get pardoned of the murder by the Texas Governor. Both of them had guns, both of them were "suing them defensively," neither would be dead and neither in jail if neither of them had had guns.
Look, people can claim that guns can be used defensively all they want, but they need to back it up with evidence that this actually WORKS. The US has more guns than ANYONE ELSE. If "guns as a defense" actually WORKED, then the US would be the safest country on the planet. Instead, we have a murder rate 4 times other first world nations. How would that work if guns make people safer?
And no, "demographics" has nothing to do with it. Don't buy into that mess, it's just a racist dogwhistle. Plenty of the other first world countries with lower crime rates have complex "demographics," they just have fewer guns. Most of the people who murder people with guns are white anyway. Murder is more likely to occur in urban areas than rural, because people are more densely packed and more likely to come into immediate contact, but plenty of murders happen in rural areas too, it's not like rural people are just "better" somehow.
And I don't agree that a country is somehow "less free" if they are mean to you if you commit violence on your neighbors. "The freedom to shoot others" is not a freedom that I respect or care about. I care about the other freedoms, like fair elections, free speech, anti-discrimination laws, etc., and the other first world countries are no less free than the US in any way that matters.
Also, you appear to MASSIVELY misunderstand Franklin's quote. If we were to apply what he actually meant to gun control, then his argument would be that YOU are the one sacrificing the long term freedom that comes from a nation without guns, in exchange for the short-sighted "freedom" that you feel when you have a gun in your possession. You are trading away ACTUAL safety in exchange for a false sense of security, which is EXACTLY what Franklin was against.
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@DeathlordSlavik Again, IF "guns are good for defense" ACTUALLY worked then the US would be the safest country on the planet.
It IS NOT.
If that ever changes, THEN you can start claiming that guns somehow make people safer, but the evidence indicates that in any country that once had more guns than they do today, removing the guns made them MORE safe, never less.
And no rural people are not safer "because they are armed." Plenty of murders still happen in rural areas, just SLIGHTLY less due to the density of the population there. If you took the entire population of Chicago, and you then took the entire population of the rural areas surrounding Chicago so that you included the exact same amount of people, and you swapped their homes 1:1, so the urban people now lived in the country and the country people now lived in the city, the crime rates in the two areas would stay exactly the same.
"Not having guns wouldn't give us "safety" just slavery."
Lol, most people grow out of that edgy BS by high school. xD PLEASE grow up before engaging in a serious conversation like gun control.
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@DeathlordSlavik All the areas in the country where guns are allowed are still much less safe than countries where they are not. If a criminal has to choose between a target that he knows has a gun verses one that he knows is unarmed, would he choose the latter? Probably, that's a very child-like logic puzzle. But you also have to consider that when a nation makes guns illegal, criminals are much less likely to have guns, so people are much less likely to be a victim of a gun. And if everyone had guns, then that wouldn't mean criminals would be less likely to do crimes, it just means they would be more careful about shooting first. That's the thing, a criminal might avoid people they know to be armed, but if they intend to attack someone who might be armed, they will be much less hesitant to shoot. If they even think you might have a gun, they will shoot first, ask questions later. This is also what leads to much higher police shootings in the US than in other countries.
You present a simple scenario, but the real world is not that simple.
As for the Urban/rural divide, while the death rate in urban areas is 20% higher than in urban areas, you are right that if we ONLY count homicides, the murder rate in urban areas is higher. It's really not by that much though.
And not, they do not have "totally different values," they just have different population densities. Again, you seem to have bought into all the old tired racist dog whistles, hook, line, and sinker.
"Nothing edgy about what I said it is just a simple fact and crying about it wont help you."
Lol.Do you have a vampire cape on when you say things like that? Are the lights out so that you can brood in the shadows? XD
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@DeathlordSlavik No, again, it is more dangerous to live in a purely urban US area than in a country with better gun control. Sorry.
And again, criminals will choose the safest available ways to do crime, but there is no point at which they just go "well, crime is too dangerous, I guess I won't crime now, ./shrug." They will do crimes anyway. So the more guns are out there, yes, the more risk for them, but also, the more risk for their victims, because the more risk the criminal takes on when doing a crime, the less careful they are to not harm the victim.
And yes, without guns, criminals will just use other tools to commit their crimes, and as a result, murder rates go WAY down. On the same day that someone killed 27 people in Sandyhook using a rifle, a man went on a knifing rampage in China and injured 27 people. Let me repeat that, injured 27 people, not one life was lost, because knives are just a much less efficient killing tool than guns.
In countries like the UK that got rid of large sectors of their guns, their overall crime rate didn't go away, but it didn't get worse either, people switched to other weapons, and those other weapons caused less death.
Most of your other arguments seem to be fairy tales invented by the Faux News to explain the world around their audience. "Oh, California decriminalized crime, and the majority of people shot by police brought it on themselves," Lol. I'd hate for you to find out Santa isn't real.
I'm glad that you at least agree that people in urban areas have better values than those in rural areas, given their voting trends. So see, take away the density and they would most likely have considerably less crime, if anything.
"Can't counter what I said so you cry about things being edgy just like how you cry about things being racist. Seems that is all you do when you encounter points that you have no counter for that or you just straight up ignore the points and redirect to something else."
Oh, this is just adorable. xD
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@DeathlordSlavik You do realize that plenty of people still do crime even in countries that are complete warzones and everything is violent, right? People don't do crime "because it's easy," they do crime because they don't see any alternative in their life, because they don't want to starve and be homeless, but can't get any legal work that would pay their rent. Crime is directly correlated to poverty, not to "laziness."
So, again, making crime more risky will not in any way deter crime, if that were true then you would expect crime to have shot up in places that once had guns and then banned them, but that did not happen. All that changes if you make crime riskier is that it causes the criminals to take LESS risks, by shooting first and asking questions later, rather than taking the chance that their intended victim might be armed.
And again, while it is impossible to stop ALL murders, murder rates PROVABLY do go down, since "other tools" are just not as efficient as guns. You can run from a knife, you can block a knife, there are plenty of ways to handle an attacker with a knife that just don't apply to one with a gun. A gun can produce lethal wounds on dozens of people in the time it would take for a knife to cause maybe a couple of wounds that aren't likely to be fatal. You can kill with a knife, but the odds are against it.
So if you have a dozen wannabe murders, and all of them have no trouble buying an AR-15 at a gun shop (as is currently the case), then they can kill a total of dozens, if not hundreds of victims. If, on the other hand, you have those same wannabe murderers, and they have no legal access to guns, then maybe one or two of them can find some sort of illegal gun to use, and cause a few murders that way, and maybe the rest would use knives or bats or whatever other devices they could cobble together, but most of those would probably fail to kill anyone, or at most 1-2, instead of dozens. You can't prevent all murders, but you can save the lives of THOUSANDS by removing the guns as an option.
And you present another fairy tale, the "good guys with a gun" that stop crimes in progress. More gunmen have been stopped by unarmed civilians than have been stopped by other civilians with guns, even in areas where some of the people around were armed. I know the cowboy hero fantasy is fun and all, but please grow out of it, because it doesn't actually make any sense in the real world.
You claim that the values of city people don't make sense, and yet the Tennessee legislature voted to ban drag shows and kick out two black elected representatives (from urban areas) for speaking out of turn, but have NOT yet acted to do anything about the six people murdered using guns in their state. Most of those Tennessee representatives were put there by rural people, because that is how the state is gerrymandered. Rural people could not have a lower ground to be standing in.You're just fine with that, because the swamp is your home.
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@JacobAnawalt I think that in the case of many police involved shootings, the officer was so some degree in the wrong. Not all of them, but there are plenty of cases in which the suspect was unarmed, no threat to the officer, and yet still got shot. Those are the sorts of stories that tend to make the news, because they are the ones in which an injustice has taken place. The stories in which the criminal was clearly armed and dangerous and the shooting was entirely justified don't tend to be considered "news," because nothing unexpected happened there. Dog bites man.
And we do also know from various trials and the open admission of officers that they often plant weapons on shot suspects where possible. Again, this is not every time, but it does happen, so any claim that a suspect was armed needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It would be nice if that weren't the case, but this is the world we live in.
I don't entirely blame police for shooting first and asking questions later, they almost have to, because in the US there is such a high likelihood that a suspect WILL be armed. If they have "an object" on them, it could easily be a gun, and better an innocent suspect dead than the officer, right? But it doesn't have to be that way, in countries that have fewer guns, officer-involved shootings are WAY down.
I don't excuse any criminal who shoots anyone, police or otherwise, they deserve to be held 100% accountable for their own actions, but only punishing the criminals after the fact will NEVER reduce gun violence in this country. Yes, the criminal is responsible for his own actions, but anyone who helped him to get that gun was an accomplice in his actions, and they deserve to be held accountable as well.
Now as for Ukraine, they are at war right now. The Ukrainian government handed out a ton of rifles in the month or two leading up to the war. If the US mainland ever came under threat of invasion, and the US military and police did not feel up to handling the problem, they would have NO trouble issuing M-4s to any civilian willing to fight, and getting them distributed before ANY foreign power could mobilize in force on US soil. There is ZERO need for American civilians to already be armed for war during peacetime.
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@DeathlordSlavik And yet crime in rural areas is not that much lower than in urban areas. Again, it's not that urban people are somehow "worse" in any way than rural people, they are just packed closer together. Take a dozen crabs and put them in a 100ft pen, they aren't likely to fight. Put the same crabs in a bucket, and they might tussle. Really, if anything, if rural people weren't worse than urban people, on average, then there would be a lot less crime in rural areas than there is.
It's also important to point out that the poverty rate in rural areas is not much lower than in urban areas.
And no, we know from actually trying it that "increasing risk" only deters crime so much. You want to have some risk in the system, just to give some incentive to not do it, but the more you squeeze on that balloon, the bigger the other side gets, crime WILL still occur, ALWAYS. There is no level at which you can just make crime stop happening. We're well past that point in the US already.
And we do know that removing the guns DOES, IN ABSOLUTE FACT, reduce the overall murder rate, because, again, it has been tried. Both the UK and Australia reduced access to guns, and as a result, gun crimes went way down, but also ALL murder went down. Knife crimes and other types of murders did not go up to the same level that gun crimes previously filled. Again, there will always be criminals, criminals will always try to do crimes, but without guns, criminals will FAIL far more often.
Btw, I did find some good examples of "defensive gun use." A week or so ago, a Kansas City man shot a young man twice for the crime of ringing the wrong doorbell. A few days ago, an upstate New York woman was shot and killed for the crime of pulling into the wrong driveway to turn around. Just yesterday, a Texas cheerleader was shot for the crime of accidentally trying to enter the wrong car in a parking lot, realizing her mistake and returning to the correct vehicle, and accidentally catching the car owner's bullets as he fired at the several cheerleaders in the car with her. Than God we have guns to save responsible gun owners like these. And that was just within the past week.And all of these were in "rural areas."
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@DeathlordSlavik Again, I'd already countered those, there was nothing left to argue because they were not valid points. You demanding that I counter them does not make them valid.
Did you look into the story with the six year old that got shot? If he had not had a gun, he would not likely have caused as much harm as he did. The same applies to the several other shootings that have happened this week alone. Again, removing guns wouldn't prevent ALL harm in the world, but it would certainly REDUCE the harm caused. I believe I already told you about the case of the man in China where, the same day the Sandyhook shooting killed 27 people, this man in China went on a similarly deranged rampage in China, but since he only had a knife instead of a gun, he injured 27 people, but killed ZERO. It is just much easier to avoid, disable, or survive a knife than a gun.
If "Defense against criminals" were a valid reason for it, then the US would have a lower crime rate than other first world countries. Instead it is higher, even in rural areas. There is NO evidence that American access to guns in ANY way makes ANY Americans more safe than without them.
"Defense against rioters" is not an issue, people have nothing to fear from rioters. America has more of a problem with gun owners causing harm to protesters than it does with gun owners needed to fight "rioters."
"Defense against government" is also a non-issue in the US. We have the ballot box for that. "The government" IS the people in this country. If at some point that changes, and the US military is turned against the people, America's civilian gun owners would be ZERO defense against that, because the capabilities of the US military far overwhelm idiots with their toys. Besides which, if the government ever did become authoritarian, it seems more likely that the gun owners would side with them, rather than against them. I mean, say the Jan 6th insurrection had actually worked and Donald Trump were still in office on Jan 21st, do you really imagine America's gun owners rising up to depose him?
And "defense against invaders" is also irrelevant, because we already have the strongest military on Earth, and the most well armed police forces on Earth, and even if an invading force were somehow able to overwhelm both of those, it would still take months for ANY military on Earth to mobilize against the US mainland, which we would see coming and have time to prepare, allowing the US military to pass out M4s to anyone who wanted one. If Ukraine had time to do this when Russia is right down the road from them, why do you believe the US military would be incapable of doing so?
So that's four attempts to justify civilian gun ownership, not one of them passes muster.
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@stevemahoney1733 I don't believe in news with "sides." I believe in news that is ACCURATE. The middle point between "accurate" and "biased" is still biased. If you take two biased accounts, there is no way to guess where the truth lies, it could be anywhere in between.
I would not object to "defending decorum," if the punishment fit the crime. Expulsions from the legislature are pretty rare, and generally only accompanied by actual CRIMES taking place, not just "general rudeness." If those same standards were applied in the US congress and applied fairly, then half the Republican delegation would have been kicked out already.
And again, citing the source you did as "potentially useful" casts serious doubt on your judgement. Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? Are you aware that most people believe they are of above average intelligence? Do you understand the problem with that statement?
1. There were no false allegations made against any SCOTUS nominees. Which ones do you believe were false?
2. The Republican majority in the Tennessee statehouse determined for themselves that the accusations had merit, and issued a censure. That was his "trial," in so far as the legislature rules provide. There was no actual court case to it. Similar to Trump's impeachments, while they agreed that he did the crime he was accused of, they decided to not punish him for it, while they later decided that speaking out against guns on the legislature floors was grounds for expulsion. They clearly care more about guns than they do that representatives female employees, and this comes as a surprise to no one.
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@stevemahoney1733 But the "source" you provided wasn't any source of news, it was a source of propaganda. That has no value, it is not a "counter" to a fact-based argument. If you had cited a source that was legitimate then that would be something else entirely, but don't come to me with "look at this crazy person I found on the street, he agrees with me, so what do you have to say about that?!"
I say that you are exactly where you started, making an argument with no basis in reality.
I get that it feels nice to listen to people who tell you that what you believe is right. You want to believe something, and they are happy to tell you that it's true. It's like a warm hug. But we live in a real world, and the facts won't always agree with what you want them to be. It's time to put aside childish things, and to live in that real world, where the right wing has been steadily moving further and further away from the facts, and into their own bubbles of delusion. there is NOTHING of value in those bubbles, it's not "half a truth that is important to understand," it is just complete nonsense. It's dividing by zero.
Again, the material was not right wing "because it challenged the left wing narrative," it was right wing because the source YOU cited is a pure right-wing propagandist. ALL he provides is fictional accounts designed to appeal to conservatives. You will find no truth there. It has nothing to do with "the left," it ONLY has to do with reality.
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@no.6243 Look, I know that you've been fed a tall tale by the Faux News, but you owe yourself to look it up yourself. The US gas prices were at their lowest levels before Trump took office, remained relatively stable until spring of 2020, and then started climbing until Jun 2022, when they started to level off again. It had little to do with who the Us president was at the time, since US gas prices are not determined by White House policy, they are determined by the global oil price.
Likewise, US oil production took off in mid 2011 thanks to Obama era policies, and continued at roughly that same pace all through his and Trump's terms, until the industry chose to cut production in spring of 2020. The growth in oil production was actually lower between 2017 and 2020 than it had been between 2011 and 2015.
All the US can really do is either A: beg the Saudis to increase production, which may or may not work depending on their interests at the time, and B: dip into the petroleum reserve, which can work to correct short term supply imbalances, but is bad long term policy.
The only thing a US president could do to significantly change the cost of gasoline would be to nationalize the US oil industry and require them to ONLY sell their oil to domestic retailers, because otherwise they will just sell it to whoever is willing to pay the going rate.
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@randallhughes5687 You don't seem to understand what those words mean. Allow me to explain. A democracy is any form of government in which the power is ultimately derived from the people. A Republic is a representative form of government in which the representation is derived from the people. If the leaders in a nation are not derived from the people, then it cannot be called a republic.
I think the misunderstanding you're having, which seems to be common among the poorly informed, is that when you use the term "democracy," you refer to a direct democracy, which, like a republic, is only one form a democracy might take. In a direct democracy, each issue is voted on directly by the populous, and that is not what we typically have in the US, but that does not make the US any less of a democracy. The only thing easy here is how often you outwit yourself.
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@nonhatespeech You do understand that "transgender care for minors" does NOT mean "surgeries," right?
You understand that?
We can continue this conversation on the shared understanding that "transgender care" does not mean "surgeries?"
The standard of care for trans minors does not include surgical procedures, it is to first pursue counseling, then, potentially puberty blocking drugs, and then, if they are determined to be serious about transitioning, hormone therapy. If this is done right, then no surgical procedures would be involved until they are at least adults. But the Montana law does not merely reference surgeries, which are not happening, it also prevents ALL such care for the children, leaving them alone.
If you are an honest person, if you mean it when you say that you are concerned about living with the guilt associated with passing of legislation that sets these young people up for many regrets in their future, then you would oppose this bill, because you would want to help them avoid the regret of having passed through puberty using the wrong hormones, and growing into a mature adult of the wrong gender.
You have seen interviews of people who transitioned and regretted it. You have not, apparently, seen the interviews of the people who transitioned and had no regrets, who outnumber those people 100 to 1. You are focusing on the exceptions, and leaving the much more common examples to rot. If a child is trans, then it is FAR more likely that they would regret not transitioning into their preferred gender as seamlessly as possible, than it is that they would regret having transitioned.
That's just the reality of the situation.I hope that does not make you uncomfortable, but I think we can both agree that it would be better for you to be uncomfortable about that than for these kids to be left uncomfortable in their own skins.
NOBODY is pushing ANYONE to transition. The only offer on the table is to help people who WANT to transition to be able to do so. And there is no moral argument against that.
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@melissalayson7275 No, I don't like her claims, but it was very different. I suppose you don't understand why, allow me to explain. What she is doing, is saying that her opponent's advertising was misleading, and therefore the voters voted in a way that they might not otherwise. Rightly or wrongly, she is complaining about the messaging, not about the integrity of the election itself. This is similar to claims that Hilary made during the 2016 election.
In contrast, those in the other party often question the integrity of the election process itself, implying that the votes cast do not reflect the intentions of the voters.
Now, after having that explained, you still cannot understand the mile-wide distinction between those concepts, then I'm afraid I've done all I can.
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@scallen3841 They gave up their nuclear weapon stockpiles for the promise that neither the US nor Russia would invade them.
But more importantly, it has nothing to do with "what have they done for us," it has to do with "what is best for US national security," and allowing Russia to snap up Ukraine, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, etc. would not be in US interests, just as allowing Hitler to snap up Poland and Austria was not in US interests.
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@bidencrimefamilymottof-cky953 The treatments you suggest do not work, and are only peddled by con artists targeting the gullible. The info has been "censored" because gullible people are harming themselves by falling for it. If the treatments were effective, then nobody would have any reason whatsoever to hide that information. NOBODY.
As for the survival rate, the survival rate only applies IF you have access to proper medical treatment, it does not mean that you have that survival rate just naturally. Withb proper medical treatment, it is fairly high, but as hospitals are swamped by the high number of unvaccinated people, they become less capable of adequately treating patients. This is what led to the high death rates in NYC early in the crisis. Not only does this lead to higher deaths, but also to higher costs to taxpayers, higher burnout of hospital workers, and increased deaths among people without covid who can't get proper treatment because doctors are way too busy treating stupid people.
Plus, the delta variant has a lower survival rate under even ideal conditions, particularly among younger patients. Hospitals around the country are reporting far more hospitalized young people than they were seeing last year.
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I'm not sure who has been lying to you, but vaxinated people make up only a TINY fraction of those dying and being hospitalized by covid lately. Over 50% of the population has been vaccinated, which means that if vaccines did nothing, then 50% of hospitalized and dying people would be vaccinated, right? Instead, less than a percent of recent deaths have been in vaccinated people, and while hospitalization rates are less well documented, the overwhelming majority of them are vaccinated, so clearly the vaccines are working as intended.
You REALLY need to change up your news sources, take in some other options, because whoever is lying to you is doing you no service.
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@macanocious3000 There are several independent Senators and Congressmen, and third party candidates have gotten at least double digits in the presidential elections too. It's just not easy for third parties, since they would need to independently build up their campaign in all 50 states and get enough votes to get on the general election ballot, whereas the party candidates already have people working in every state to get their names on all the ballots.
And when it comes to congress, we have a majoritarian system, in which the majority party, even with only 51%, has a massive advantage over the minority party, in terms of deciding what even gets started in each side. So even if someone runs as an independent, they would need to join up with one side or the other to determine the majority party, and would need to work with others.
There's nothing technically stopping the UP from having 3, 4, a dozen parties like many European countries have, there's just not a lot of point to it. Instead, we just tend to lump all the left-ist parties, from extreme fringes to centrist, into the Democratic party, and lump all the right-ist parties, from the fascists to the "well, we'll let you do the fascism, but want no part of it ourselves" parties, are all in the Republican party.
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@joeg9112 I voted for Biden in the primary to be my President. I voted for delegates that supported Biden. If Biden decided to step down, I respect that choice, how could I not if I wanted the guy to be President again? If he believes Harris is the best option to secede him, then I respect that choice too. If Biden had won, and had to step down after or something worse had happened, Harris would have been President anyway, I voted for that outcome twice already, so why not continue to accept that outcome?
Again, an open primary would have been nice IF there had been time for it, but FACTUALLY there was not, so this is the best alternative. The priority right now is combating the rise of fascism, and this gives America the best chance we've got of avoiding the end.
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moshegoldberg9685 It's actually not true that "If she were one of the two most popular candidates, she would have finished in the top two." That's because it's a "first and second past the post" system, rather than ranked choice. Basically, anyone who wanted a Democrat had to choose between Schiff and Porter, and clearly more people chose Schiff, so she was at least second most popular as a Democrat, but Republicans would want neither. Of all the people who voted, if you asked them to rank their choices first to last, Schiff and Porter would likely have come out on top (given the electorate), so she is likely the second most popular choice, but the current system would not be designed to test for that.
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@WokkaWokka79 Ok, allow me to predict the future. I do such a search, and it finds a video, and I watch it, and in the video not once does she deny the election results, all she does it point out that there was interference in the campaign process, which is true. And I report that back to you guys, and then you will tell me "oh, well you didn't see the REAL videos, try again," which of course, I do not have time for. So I'm putting it to you, find me one example that YOU believe is true and accurate, so that there can be no disagreement that we are talking about exactly the same material. And then I can point out why you are wrong about it.
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@WokkaWokka79 Let me see if I can't provide you an analogy that you might be able to follow. It's about college football. This year, the Wolverines beat the Huskies, 34-13. Now, if the Huskies coach came back after that loss, and claimed that actually his team had won, or that the score was actually much closer than that, then that would be the behavior that Democrats tend to criticize from the other side. Denial of the facts of the matter, or the terms of the game itself.
If instead he had been critical of how the Michigan coach had been sanctions earlier in the season for shady practices, but not so much that it had really harmed their ability to compete, and felt that the Michigan team probably should have been more heavily sanctioned than they were, then maybe you might view that as being a bad sport about it, but it would still be a significantly different argument to be making, correct? It is not criticizing the legitimacy of the outcome, just criticizing the process that led there.
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In the US, at least, only around 60% of electricity comes from fossil fuels, and most of that is from sources that are more eco-friendly than gasoline. Also, an EV will pay off the carbon footprint of its manufacturing within around two years, and every mile past that is better off than a gasoline car. If you're arguing that people should not drive ANY car, then ok, that's a fair argument to make, but if your argument is that EVs are somehow worse than gasoline cars, no, you're been fed a bill of goods on that one, I'm afraid.
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@wubuck79 You are right about the main benefit of the vaccine, but it does REDUCE spread. It does not prevent it completely, which, when said, some people hear as "it does nothing to prevent spread," but that is not what I said, I said it REDUCES the spread, and there is value to that. If you have a community that is half vaccinated and half not, then the virus will spread around it about as well as if nobody was vaccinated, and all the vaccine would do is save the lives of those vaccinated. But if a community is mostly vaccinated, then the virus will spread around much less. Each time it comes into contact with a vaccinated person, they will be less likely to get infected, and each time that one does get infected, they will be less likely to pass it on, so that adds up.
This is EXACTLY how measles and chicken pox and most other common vaccines work, btw.
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@GaryUSMCvet But, again, according to the 14th amendment, any CHILD that is born in the US is automatically a US citizen, whether or not their parent is. The PARENT can be deported, but the child is a US citizen. Since it is often in the best interests of the child to remain with their parent, they are typically deported along with the parent, but may return to the US at any time, as they are US citizens.
NOTHING in the 14 requires that a child swear an oath of allegiance before being allowed to claim citizenship. That ONLY applies to naturalized citizens, as a part of the naturalization process. Nobody is ignoring the ""And subject to the jurisdiction thereof," it just doesn't mean what you want it to mean.
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@GaryUSMCvet You're arguing my point for me. Yes, everyone on US soil is subject to US laws, because everyone on US soil is subject to US jurisdiction, including newborns, and therefore those newborns are US citizens according to the 14th. If those newborns were not subject to US jurisdiction, then US laws would not apply to them.
"Only American citizens are subject to the jurisdiction (allegiance to)"
See, this is the main problem we're having here, you seem to think that "jurisdiction" means "allegiance to," when in fact, that is nothing like what that word means. Look it up. I get it,, sometimes you get a word wrong and go off on a tangent, but better to learn your mistake and move on than to keep repeating it.
Also, Trumball and Howard do not define "jurisdiction" it is an actual word with an actual meaning that predates both men by centuries. Maybe they got it wrong too, which would be embarrassing to them, but irrelevant to the law itself.
Look, you seem to have no interest in looking up the definition, so I will do it for you:
jurisdiction
noun
ju·ris·dic·tion ˌju̇r-əs-ˈdik-shən
Synonyms of jurisdiction
1
: the power, right, or authority to interpret and apply the law
a matter that falls within the court's jurisdiction
2
a
: the authority of a sovereign power to govern or legislate
b
: the power or right to exercise authority : control
3
: the limits or territory within which authority may be exercised
If the US has a legal right to exercise power against you, then you are under US jurisdiction. Foreign citizens are under US jurisdiction while in the US, US citizens are within foreign jurisdiction while in a foreign country (although the US can certainly argue for exceptions to be made). Jurisdiction has NOTHING to do with allegiance to anything.
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@GaryUSMCvet Ok, so your quote agrees with me.
" that every person [born within the limits of the United States], and [already subject to their jurisdiction], is by virtue of natural law and national law a citizen of the United States."
Any infant born on US soil would be both born on US soil AND subject to US jurisdiction. Case closed.
Of course the case ha already been closed a hundred years ago.
And of course Howard does not get to decide what the law means, only the actual wording that makes it into the law matters. If he wanted it to mean something other than what it means, then he would have needed to use different wording in the amendment itself.
If he wanted to carve out people born to illegal immigrants, then the amendment would need to include language that covered that. It did not.
"Even America Indian children didn't get "automatic" citizenship because they owed (jurisdiction) allegiance to their tribe. T"
No, they didn't get automatic citizenship because Indian reservations are not US property, and therefore, they are not part of US jurisdiction. Again, you seem to be trying to link the words "jurisdiction" and "allegiance," but they are not synonyms. It would be like saying "so when they dribble the ball (refrigerator) down the court. . ." It makes no sense.
There is no such thing as "jurisdiction meaning allegiance to anything." That is a concept that only exists inside your head.
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@Terry-Hesticle 1. Yeah, he's been around a long time, and he's always been progressive for the time that he was in. The same policies that people slam him for today, black politicians at the time thought were a serious improvement. His policies today reflect the reality of today, and that's all anyone should want from him.
2. I'm afraid you bought into some fake news there. If you're talking about Robert Byrd, he was not a leader in the KKK. If anyone should be shamed of him, it should be the people who elected him to Congress for fifty years.
3. Yup, but it was an improvement over previous legislation and largely supported by the black community at the time. Again, he evolves with the times.
4. That is a gross misrepresentation. Some of those facilities were used on a very temporary basis to handle an unexpected flood of incoming migrants, and children were only separated from parents if those parents were being charged with a crime (such as drug trafficking), and then quickly moved to better facilities. The reason people complained about the Trump era policies is that they were detaining WAY more people for FAR longer periods of times, sometimes up to years, and were separating ALL families, often without even taking proper documentation so that parents and children could later be reunited. To compare the Obama era policy to Trumps would be like saying that the US internment camps in WWII were "just as bad" as the German ones.
5. I agree, I just don't see it, because I haven't been primed to by right-wing fake news obsessing over it. It's like with Hillary and her emails, if you repeat nonsense often enough, people start to think "maybe there's an actual story there," but no, it's always just nonsense, no matter how often it's repeated.
And for the record the "least informed demographic" is the Fox News viewer, not young people. And "both sides-ism" only serves to reward the bad actors, because they can get away with anything and you'll just "well, both sides do it" to the problem. No, it's not a "both sides" thing, Democrats are not perfect, but Republicans are measurably worse in EVERY category, and "both sides" just lets them off the hook for that.
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@californiacountry209 You're pro gun because guns are cool, and you don't want to see beyond that. "Defensive gun use" is a joke.
Bad guys use guns to commit crimes, but they have those guns because they buy them legally, or steal them off people who do. If those guns did not exist in the marketplace, bad guys would not have guns. Some would, inevitably, there would always be a black market, but it would be much less likely that your average criminal could find a gun available. The odds will never be "even" because the criminal will always have the drop on you. If they do not, then you are the aggressor.
I mean the facts are simple, in countries with strict gun control laws, ones that have similar crime rates and economies to the US, murder rates, and especially gun murder rates, are a tiny fraction of the US's. If we take the guns off the street, then less people will die.
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@jfangm You have a way to wrest control from the government, it's called "the Ballot box." We did it quite effectively about six months ago. If that's not good enough for you, then you're out of luck, because with or without your pea shooters, you aren't going to "wrest control" from the US government if they don't want you to have it.
As to your other points, The US has a murder rate of 5 per 100,000 people. The UK's is 1.2. Australia is 0.89. The difference in violent crime rates has more to do with how different countries report those stats, since the UK adds in things like "bar fights," while the US tends to only include things like muggings.
As for countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela, yeah, those are awful countries. A lack of guns is not their problem. The US is not Guatemala, Honduras, and Venezuela, that's why so many people from those countries are trying to get here.
State level gun laws are irrelevant, because people can travel outside their reach, buy a gun, and then cross an unchecked border with their guns. This is why nation-wide laws are important. And obviously a state like Vermont, is not going to have the same level of crime as a state that includes a city like Los Angeles in it. Nobody is arguing that "guns = crime," just that where crime exists, easier access to guns causes crime to become more deadly.
"The fact is, the more armed citizens there are, the less crime there is."
This is absolutely not the case.
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Faux Que So then the fault seems to be in how you process information then, in what information you consider "important" and what you discard as "nonsense." You're mixing up the piles.
To take your MSNBC example, MSNBC is also reporting that the Delta Variant is in the US, because it is. But separately, they are reporting that things might get worse in the fall, not because the Delta varient will arrive then, but because Covid follows seasonal flu trajectories, ie "it gets worse in the fall, wherever it is otherwise." So both things are true. Delta is here, and also covid is likely to get worse in the fall, if nothing else changes.
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@billnelson3405 You are insisting on evidence that is much more comprehensive than what you've provided. You say that "opinions don't matter to me," and yet all you've put forth is your opinion on the data. You may be "a scientist," but you're way outside your specialty here.
Here are specific points of disagreement with your assertions:
"Alina Chan, a molecular biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard, said in a lengthy Twitter thread that the Wuhan subgrant wouldn’t fall under the gain-of-function moratorium because the definition didn’t include testing on naturally occurring viruses “unless the tests are reasonably anticipated to increase transmissibility and/or pathogenicity.” She said the moratorium had “no teeth.” But the EcoHealth/Wuhan grant “was testing naturally occurring SARS viruses, without a reasonable expectation that the tests would increase transmissibility or pathogenicity. Therefore, it is reasonable that they would have been excluded from the moratorium.”"
"The University of Iowa’s Perlman told us the EcoHealth research is trying to see if these viruses can infect human cells and what about the spike protein on the virus determines that. (The spike protein is what the coronavirus uses to enter cells.) The NIH, he said, wouldn’t give money to anybody to do gain-of-function research “per se … especially in China,” and he didn’t think there was anything in the EcoHealth grant description that would be gain of function. But he said there’s a lot of nuance to this discussion."
"Perlman told us that he thought Fauci’s response in the May 11 exchange was correct — that no money was given for gain-of-function research. But, he added, there’s a scientific discussion to be had on the benefits and risks of research making recombinant viruses, which involves rearranging or combining genetic material. The politicization of the issue, Perlman said, “doesn’t do anybody good.”"
Basically, YOU think that the research Eco-Health funded meets the definition of "gain of function." People in the field seem to think that it does not. I would trust their opinion over yours.
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@Sam Vimes There is zero evidence to support the idea that Covid-19 was a modified virus. The most likely explanation for it is still that it was naturally occurring and was first located in the wet markets of Wuhan. IF it first appeared in the Wuhan lab instead, then that would still be the result of an accidental breach of a natural virus that they were studying there, as they have hundreds of similar viruses. IF, and we are getting increasingly unlikely here, IF the virus had been manipulated in any way, it still would not have been a part of any program that Fauci played any role in, as the grants that the NIH had there had ended years prior, and the strains that were a part of that study, while of a similar type to Covid-19, were still different enough that it would have been impossible to turn one into the other, so they were completely unrelated.
TL;DR? Fauci had nothing to do with "creating" Covid-19, period. I don't know why people keep trying to insist that he did. What do you have against the guy?
And no, they did not "pre-make" any vaccine. The vaccine process used a variable delivery mechanism, one that had been in development for a long time, but it was designed to be tailored to any sort of virus, and only by plugging the Covid-19 genome into it did it result in the vaccines actually used. They could have done the same thing with any number of similar viruses, so they didn't need "advanced warning" to get this vaccine out.
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@Sam Vimes The idea that nobody should ever be "forced into" doing something that they don't want to do is a perfectly reasonable stance to take, in any society with a population of up to, but no more than, one person.
So long as a society involves multiple people, the effect someone's actions might have on others is also important to factor into decision making. If someone choosing not to get vaccinated or not to wear a mask allows for a virus to spread within the community around him, then that community has every right to require him to do so, or to not participate in that community. If you want to drink yourself to death, that's your problem, if you want to drink and drive, that's society's problem to correct.
And no, the virus is not man-made. That is, at most, a minority opinion of the fringe of the scientific community, the same people who were advocating quack treatments for the pandemic like what the last President was often promoting. I get that it's comforting to have someone to blame for this, but reality is not so accommodating.
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@johnny.d.1930 Yes, government revenue did grow after the tax cuts. And it grew before the tax cuts.
Unemployment fell at the same rates after the tax cuts as before them. The unemployment rate fell an average of 0.6% each year under Obama, from 9.6% when he took office, to 4.87 when he left. It fell an average of 0.4% per year under Trump (counting up to 2020, where it spiked up), from 4.78% to 3.67%. At no point in there did unemployment fall at a faster rate than it had consistently under Obama, especially not directly after the Trump tax cuts.
The stock markets reacted the same way, they continued to rise at the SAME rates after the tax cut as they had before it, no faster or slower (at least until spring 2020, of course). In fact, if anything, you could argue that they had plateaued a bit, but stock markets tend to do that over short terms. It certainly did not rise at a FASTER rate at any point after the tax cuts.
I would like to assume that you aren't making deliberately bad faith arguments here, but at the most charitable interpretation, you seem to be mindlessly regurgitating factoids that some right-wing site told you to say, which cherry pick data to give the illusion of positive benefits, when none actually took place, except for the wealthy people who got to buy more yachts. You need to look into these topics yourself and build a more complete picture if you're going to be trying to explain them to others.
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@lexdunmon7345 Well, on the one hand, it should be one or the other, the mileage tax should only apple to EVs, and writing the law that way would not be difficult, as there are already various taxes specific to certain classes of vehicle. But on the other hand, if they do apply a"double dip" tax, that would not be the worst thing either, at least if it doesn't kick in for another 5 years or so, since ideally people would be shifting to EVs anyway, and increasing the relative cost of an ICE car at that point could only be a good thing, right?
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@CNe7532294 Well, that's much less a "well known fact" and more of a "well spread misinformation." While there is certainly some energy loss in charging an EV (unless you have enough home energy generation to cover it), power plant energy production, even using oil as a fuel, is much more efficient than a car engine, and you also have to factor in the inefficiencies of transporting the gasoline to the gas stations. And this is only a factor at all if the power plant is running on fossil fuels, the more we shift toward renewable sources, the less this will be a factor.
Also, far more of an EV's components can be recycled than what's put into an ICE vehicle's fuel tanks. almost all the lithium in a battery can be recycled, for example, while none of an ICE's gasoline gets recycled. The "Carbon footprint" of building an EV is higher than the carbon footprint of building an ICE car, but only by a relatively small amount, and a couple years of average driving will pay off this "carbon debt" and every mile beyond that will have a lower total carbon footprint than the ICE does.
As for fire risk, yeah, lithium battiers do burn, but you know what else burns? Gasoline. It burns REALLY well, and very explosively. Most Hollywood explosions are gasoline. Lithium fires are persistent, but fairly slow and steady, meaning if you get into a crash, and it does start a fire, chances are you will be able to get out of the vehicle and get well away from it with no harm done. A gasoline car, on the other hand, will explode, likely giving you no chance to avoid it. Also, while raw lithium can combust with water, it is not a factor with finished EV batteries, and you can even put out an EV fire using pumped water.
So while you raise some interesting points about EVs not being perfect, and there obviously still being room for improvement, they are still far superior to the alternative of driving an ICE vehicle under most conditions. You sure did have a laundry list of industry talking points though. . .
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@drganknstein Well, the thing is, people who voted for Biden probably don't watch Faux News, so they don't live in Narnia like Trump voters, and in the real world, those are not the problems that Faux News makes them out to be. There is a significant amount of immigrants crossing the border, but people living in the real world know that this is an issue because Republicans have held up actual immigration reform for decades now, and the border judges necessary to process these immigrants and make them productive members of US society are massively understaffed. People who live in the real world know that Biden has kept fuel and grocery costs lowers than they've risen in most parts of the world post-pandemic, and that those would both be MUCH worse under a conservative government's policies, like they are in the UK. And people living in the real world also recognize that supporting Ukraine IS putting America first, because policies of appeasing authoritarians did not work out in WWII, and won't work out here. The only people pushing us to abandon Ukraine are Putin and his allies. And don't even get me started on Trump himself, he's a literal no-brainer.
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@juliemunoz2762 You want to believe that The 14th "does not provide that illegals who invade our Country and drop a baby here are automatically the parents of a US citizen," yet that is EXACTLY what those words YOU quoted MEAN. They may not have planned for the amendment to result in that, but that does not change the fact that it is the CONSEQUENCE of the 14th amendment existing, and that if that bothers you, the ONLY way to change it would be a new amendment.
"That's not what we wanted to happen" has NEVER been a constitutional challenge.
"The key is “subject to the jurisdiction thereof”: Consider the French ambassador and his lovely young wife stationed in Washington, DC. She gives birth to a child here. Her child was born here. But is her child “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States? No! The child is subject to the same jurisdiction as his parents: France."
The only reason why the children of diplomats are not granted birthright citizenship is because their parents have diplomatic immunity, and are therefore outside of US jurisdiction. An illegal immigrant, on the other hand, IS within US jurisdiction, otherwise it would be impossible for them to be "illegal," since people outside of US jurisdiction are INCAPABLE of committing crimes under US law. If someone was "outside of US jurisdiction," then they could murder someone without it being a crime.
It's also worth noting that even among foreign diplomats, not all of them are granted diplomatic immunity, and if those employees have children in the US, their child would be a US citizen. Of course, they would likely also have dual citizenship with their parent's country.
"They were not “subject to the jurisdiction of the United States” – they were subject to the jurisdiction of their tribes."
Exactly my point. And illegal immigrants are not tribal members, and are therefore subject to US jurisdiction.
"An illegal alien who invades our Country is in the same status as the French Ambassador’s wife. "
This is completely false. Illegal immigrants are NOT granted diplomatic immunity.
"The baby she drops here is “subject to the jurisdiction” of the Country she left."
This is also not true, the baby would not be "subject to the jurisdiction" of any country other than the US, so long as it remained on US soil. It would only be subject to the jurisdiction of the parent's home country if it went there.
"Pursuant to Art. I, Sec. 8, clause 4, US Constitution, Congress may make laws deciding how people become naturalized citizens."
Yes, but also, later portions of the Constitution supersede earlier portions, so in this case, the 14th amendment supersedes Act 1 Sec 8, clause 4. Once the 14th was added, while Congress does retain the right to make laws for naturalization, they are restricted to doing so within the bounds of the 14th, and cannot do anything that would alter what the 14th says without passing a new amendment.
And Professor Edward Erler is an idiot who is telling you what you wish to be true, so you believe him. This reflects poorly on you. Be a better consumer of information.
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@adamh4594 The interests of rural areas are not somehow more important than those of city areas and therefore in need of some special protections though. People are people, the people living in rural areas count exactly as much as those in urban areas, no more, no less.
And urban areas no more "vote as a monoilith" than rural areas do, everyone just votes the topics that matter to them.
Also, people keep complaining about how California is a messed up state, but you know who's fault that is? Local government. It's local county and city councils setting zoning laws that have led to the housing crisis and many related issues, not state level governments where one region overrides another. There's no inherent virtue to "local governance."
"Does it make any sense for the laws decided on in California, to consistently take precedent over the laws the local communities of Rhode Island want for themselves, simply because 'democracy and California has a majority of people'?"
Yes. Obviously. Why wouldn't more people have a larger say in how things get done?
"This very factor is just one of the reasons the electoral college is so incredibly important in America and is a direct influence over our ability to be cohesive."
The electoral college hadn't been relevant to outcomes for a hundred years or more. It was only recently that one party started losing a LOT of popular votes while still clinging onto the electoral college win, and suddenly it's become a Very Big Deal. It's almost like they don't care about "fair outcomes," they only care about winning by any means necessary.
"You see a direct correlation with social cohesion and social order break down."
Not really, there's been a lot more social breakdown in the past than we have today, like during the civil rights movement. Typically, any time when great strides are being made for minority groups, there is a violent and angry protest from conservatives on the matter, and that is to be expected, but it will pass, and America will continue to improve.
I also don't think I should point out that the previous administration is entirely to blame for these divides, not the current one. The current one has been running a very middle of the road administration, he just happens to not be the one that those on the right could be satisfied with.
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@adamh4594 You are misunderstanding the founders. They tried the "loose states under a weak federal" government, and it failed completely, so THEN they wrote the Constitution to REPLACE that idea with a more centralized federal government. Not ALL founders agreed with that, so I'm sure you can find quotes from one or two that felt differently, but the vision they eventually AGREED on involved a strong federal government overriding the states.
Also, just for the record, the word "republic" has nothing to do with "loose states," those are two very distinct concepts. A Republic is just a representative democracy, whether that involves one state, or many. I think the term you mean to say is "confederation," which is not what we currently have.
"Not really. High populated areas consistently vote blue. Rural is often more conservative, but you have a far bigger mixed bag."
You have both progressive and conservative people in both cities and rural areas. The majority in cities tends to be blue, and the majority in areas without cities tends to be red. Rural areas have no "high ground" in this matter, they just tend to vote the way you prefer them to vote.
"And it wasn't local government that entirely messed up this state. It was state government. "
If you actually believe that, then you have been misled. Look into it from better sources.
Newsome is not the reason for SF's problems, their city planning boards are the reason for their problems, LOCAL level control is the reason for their problems.
"One is pro life. The other is pro abortion. Do you honestly think the better situation is where one of those communities dictates how the other lives? "
I think that the people living in those community have to deal with the consequences either way, so I believe in whichever leads to the outcome in which the choice is left to the individual to make. I do not feel that people who want that choice should be abandoned because they happen to live in a state where the majority chooses to deny them that option. Larger scale decision making tends to lead to the best possible outcomes for all people.
"The riots of the original civil rights movement pale in comparison to the riots of 2020."
Wow.
They have really done a number on you, haven't they.
It will blow your mind when you find out the truth.
"The 90's had far more cohesive communities then what we have today."
Then why was violent crime massively higher in the 90s than it is today?
"And you seem to be neglecting the fact that it was conservatives (and still is) that pass civil rights legislation... "
No, it was always progressives that pushed that legislation, and it was always conservatives that fought against it. That's the nature of being conservative. I think you're a bit confused because you're thinking about it as "Republican = conservative," and that's pretty true today, but wasn't always the case. The 1860s Republicans certainly weren't conservative, and a large chunk of the 1960s Democrats were very conservative. It was the progressive wings of both parties that pushed through the civil rights legislation.
"And while he wasn't the boogeyman the left endlessly insists on... he is a crass, boorish man with effectively no verbal filter between his brain and mouth. "
That's a distraction. People do not hate him because he is rude and personally offensive. They hate him because his POLICIES are rude and offensive. They hate him for the HARM that he caused, and insists that he plans to cause if he regains power. Don't pretend that these are trivial reasons.
"He ran on being middle ground, but lets be honest, Biden has no political values other than what his party directs him... he is little more than a failing figurehead."
Then why is the progressive base constantly at war with him? He takes very centrist positions on issues, it's just that the center is more to the left than you want it to be. Pretty much all of his individual policies, if polled in a vacuum, are popular with the majority of Americans, in many cases even with the majority of Republicans. It's only when you bring his name up that the conservatives boo.
I do agree that the issues existed prior to Trump, but he certainly blew them up exponentially. The root cause was the founding of Faux News in the 90s, where they were telling people the stories they wanted to hear, instead of reality, and the right became more and more divorced from reality. Then a black man got elected President, and the Tea Party movement showed up, and large portions of the center and right got very interested in politics, Trump among them. And then Trump became president, and a lot of people got a lot more bold about things that maybe they'd kept to themselves before. He certainly never made anything better.
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@adamh4594 And also again, NOBODY is arguing in favor of a direct democracy. ANY time you head someone saying something like "democracy is at risk," they are SPECIFICALLY talking about ensuring that the democratic COMPONENT of the constitutional republic remains functional and valid. Stop bringing up direct democracies unprompted, it just makes it seem like you don't know what you're talking about.
"In your desire for no electoral college, states wouldn't be represented, nor would their people."
That's not remotely true. The electoral college only reduces representation, it does not add to it. People are represented by the members they elect to Congress, relative to their numbers. People are represented in the Presidential vote by their single vote cast for the candidate of their choice, whether that candidate wins or loses. If a person chooses a candidate that loses the popular vote, then that is their representation in action. Nothing should guarantee them that their candidate wins, if the people decide otherwise.
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@adamh4594 Why would you think Biden is not a moderate? He tends to reflect the centrist American viewpoint at any given time, which gets him in trouble with the progressive base on a fairly regular basis.
And yes, the center is moving forward, the center ALWAYS moves forward. In 1860 "maybe a little less slavery" was a left of center prospect. The center is more to the left today than it was twenty years ago, and it will be more to the left still in twenty years. The progressive fringe is always uncomfortably ahead of that curve, but the curve does eventually catch up.
And like I pointed out, 65% of Americans want to abolish the electoral college, that IS the center. What other views do you think I hold that are NOT supported by the majority of Americans?
And again, just to avoid confusion, a "direct democracy," the one that the founders opposed, is one in which EVERY issue is up to a public vote. everything is decided by referendum. The republic is one in which that same people do not vote directly on every issue, but they do get fair representation in the government. The idea is not to give unfair representation of any one group over any other, it's just to put in middlemen who would ideally not be so caught up in fever that they would swing too wildly.
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@blakerobertson6526 That's a fun theory, four problems with it. One, whether you can register to vote or not depends on the state laws, there is no consistent federal law on the matter, beyond that you can only vote once. Two, some states are harder to register in than others, so if your "permanent residence" happens to be in Texas when you are going to college in Indiana, you might have difficulty registering to vote for the first time without returning to Texas, which might not be an option. Three, there is no reason why a college student can't vote in the place they go to college, that IS legally their residence while they are going there, but certainly there are plenty of states that don't want their college students voting, too educated, so they craft laws to make that more difficult. Four, many of those same states do NOT allow school ids to count as voter id, quite specifically. It's very easy to vote in a democratic state, but anti-democratic states want to make it as unlikely as possible that a person would be able to vote.
Either way, voter ID is pointless.
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@ChuckWortman I think that's a case of diminihing returns, nobody can argue that we haven't put every effort into "stopping importation," and if we doubled the funding for such efforts I doubt we would make significantly more progress on that. What they can get through now, they could likely still get through, so it's just a game of "we'll send $10,000 worth, we'll lose $9,500 worth, but we'll sell that remaining $500 for $20,000 on the street." They will almost always be profitable so long as they are the only option, because junkies are not discriminating customers.
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@urgreatestenemy You're repeating the same talking points I debunked in that previous thread. And so again, I was also factoring in the other forms of pollution.
Were you?
Have you looked into the oil pollution Nigeria has? Pumping, refining, shipping, and more importantly burning gasoline causes FAR more pollution to the globe as a whole, and much more than that directly to the US, than ANY aspect of EVs.
n EV has a larger carbon footprint coming off the lot than a gas car, but the gas car's footprint keeps growing over time, and after less than two years, the EV's overall footprint will be smaller.
And again, a lot of those carbon costs come from inefficient manufacturing processes, so over time those carbon costs will get lower still.
Also, there is NO EV where you "have to replace the batteries every 5 or 6 years." What idiot told you that? EV batteries typically have a 10 year _warranty," and they are rated to last much longer than that. They don't just "die" at some point, they instead just lose a bit of efficiency over time, so if you get a 200 mile range EV, then after 10 years it might only have a range of 180-190, but still plenty for most drivers. If you want to change out the battery you can, but you could keep driving it long past that if you don't need the absolute max range.
And if you do trade out batteries, you can pay off the carbon footprint of the new one in a year or so of driving, and it can be fully recycled, with all that lithium going into making a fresh battery.
I'm afraid that you listed a bunch of fossil fuel industry misinformation that someone must have fed you. Look into the topic yourself, stay away from their propaganda. Don't be their slave.
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@camomaxx Ok, that may be true in a fictional world, but it's not accurate to the real world. They may not be wearing rags, few people do, but they are struggling to survive, and looking for a better life in the US. None of them want to be on tax payer money, they want to work, which is why it's important to process them quickly so that they can. It's no "either/or" when it comes to veterans, we can do both. If you have an issue with how we currently handle veterans, then take that up separately, they are not in conflict.
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@_ben_miller Well, first, "covering this round of avoiding the default" has nothing to do with inflation. Inflation will not go up or down as a result of avoiding the default, it would ONLY go up, and massively, if we don't avoid the default.
And if you're heard this before it's because Republicans have threatened this attack many times over the past decade or so, at least while Democrats control the White House, and each time it is a dire threat, but so far they have not actually pulled the trigger, so the dire predictions did not actually happen. That does not mean that they would not have if they had ever failed to raise the debt ceiling.
You keep talking about you and your family being able to buy food as if that is a given. Tell that to people in 1931.
Again, NOBODY is talking about "using inflation to cover" anything. I'm not sure where you got that idea.
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@mrpool2you176 Yeah, the press in 2016 definitely underestimate the amount of stupid people in the Republican party. They've tried not to repeat that mistake since.
Nothing these "audits" "find" could possibly undermine the results of the 2020 election. The actual audits have all already taken place and found nothing. The current efforts are just fraudulent fishing expeditions, so anything they find that is different is something they constructed themselves, not a problem for anyone else.
The funny thing is, even if they did somehow miraculously find provable, incontrovertible evidence of fraud, that wouldn't put Trump in control, that's not how it works. Biden was already sworn in. At worst he would just be impeached and removed, which would put Harris in charge, and if by any chance she was also implicated and removed, that would put Pelosi in charge. Trump would remain irrelevant to the outcome.
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@ryanelliott6706 The consequences of the leak, if it occurred, were a global pandemic that hurt China as badly as any other country. I think that's about all we can reasonably expect from an accident. Accidents like that are tragic, but they do happen, and if covid hadn't hit us in 2020, it would have hit within a year or two after, it was out there somewhere, and research labs like that are our only line of defense against them. Can you imagine how bad covid would have gotten if we hadn't been studying similar viruses for decades now and had the basis for treatments ready?
And again, the 7 million dead of covid DO matter, but they died to a virus, and the people to be upset with there are those who allowed the virus to spread so carelessly through the US, like Republican governors, or who encouraged quack therapies like Donald Trump.
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@Goulash45 Yes, and that nationalism is bad. Wanting respect is far, wanting sovereignty is not owed to anyone.
As for your gun argument, it is equally wrong, since while guns can be used by people to protect themselves, they are more likely to be used against them, which is why the US has a murder rate 2-6 times higher than any other first world country, which typically have less lax gun regulation. The US has more guns per capita than any country on Earth, so if "guns, on average, protect people," then the US should be the SAFEST country on Earth, rather than the most deadly among developed countries. An US gun owner is MORE likely to be killed by a gun than a non gun-owner. They might help some people, some of the time, but broadly they cause more harm than good.
You should really avoid placing anecdotal evidence over general averages.
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@alab3657 When Democrats block bills, it's because of HOW those bills are implemented. For example, if a bill requires photo Id to get a mail in ballot, how would that work? Would they have to mail their ID in? What if they needed it while it was in-route? Would they have to show up at a building and show someone their ID? Well if they could do that, why would they need a mail-in ballot in the first place? Would a photocopy of their ID work? Well that would be great, if they own a photocopier, but many don't.
If Republicans try to implement a law that includes photo ID, and Democrats oppose that law, that doesn't mean that Democrats oppose photo ID in principle, but it does mean that they see some part of the Republican bill as unfairly excluding a portion of the electorate, whether that's by cost, or geography, or labor required to get or use that ID.
Remember that tons of blue states have photo ID laws too, they are just FAIR ones.
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@alab3657 I'm sure if I goggled those things I would find plenty of cases in which a Democrat was not calling voter ID racist, but was in fact saying that a certain implementation of voter ID is racist, like a system that makes Id that Republicans are more likely to have acceptable, like a gun license, while an Id that Democrats are more likely to have, like a university ID, invalid.
If a Republican introduces a bill, and it does five things, and two of those things have anything to do with ID, and the other four do not, and the Democrats oppose that bill, then ALL Republicans want to talk about is how important voter IS is, when what the Democrats are bothered by are typically the other three parts. Unless the part involving ID is particularly idiotic, like requiring a photo ID for mail-in ballots.
The reason Democrats are so wearing about the ID thing is that there is no reason for it. In person voter fraud, the sort of fraud that IDs might help with, are pretty much unheard of, maybe a few dozen in an election of millions of voters. And they tend to get caught with or without ID. So why bother with ID, when it's "solving" something that isn't even a problem?
Also, insurrection is not about murder, it is about trying to prevent the legal progress of government, say by preventing the certification of the President elect.
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@alab3657 I wouldn't say that any of them were "homophobic," they just had viewpoints that reflected the times. 99% of Americans in 1980 would be considered "homophobic" by 2021 standards, but times change, viewpoints change, and now most of those people have also changed with the times and the views they hold now are more in line with the country as a whole. That is how things should work. Even at the time they were far less homophobic than their peers on the other side of the aisle, and that's all that mattered.
Viewpoints on topics like gay marriage and trans rights have shifted massively in the last decade and a half, and the viewpoints of major Democratic politicians have shifted along with those of the rest of the country. Again, this is how it should work. It's only shameful for those who still haven't shifted along with the country and currently dig into those old viewpoints.
"And just like voter ID which was deemed racist 1 month ago is now good to go. "
Again, it always depends on how it is implemented. IF it is implemented in a way that leads to less black people being eligible to vote than before that law, then it obviously is racist. If it does not lead to that outcome, if it's implemented in a way that results in the same amount of black voter turnout as before the law, then it is not racist. Democrats have never opposed voter ID in principle (although they have rightly questioned the need for it), but they have certainly opposed implementations of voter ID that specifically make it less likely for Democratic voters to have or be able to present the necessary ID, relative to their Republican peers.
That has not changed.
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This is not complicated, guys. some documents clearly leaked, or they would not be upset about it, but some of the documents that claim to be "leaked documents" are not actually US documents, they have been doctored to appear real, and obviously the government would not confirm which are which, since that would tip off our enemies as to which information to act on. This is common misinformation tactics, you release a bit of truth, so that people will believe what you have to say, and also plenty of lies you want people to believe, and those who want to believe those lies will buy them hook, line and sinker.
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@jimconard9341 But if you had looked it up, you would know that the remain in Mexico policy requires the support of the Mexican government, and they have no interest in continuing that policy, regardless of the US position on the matter.
Also, the more inconvenient the US makes it for people to cross the border, ALL that achieves is feeding the cartels and their trafficking operations.
And again, you're right that the actual problem here is the years it takes for their claims to be processed. That is WHY these bills have been introduced to better fund our border systems and allow those claims to be processed expeditiously. As soon as they can either be deported or granted residency, they can begin to ADD to the economy, rather than being a drain on it. This is a problem entirely of our own making, from decades of failed attempts to stop the inevitable rather than manage it.
Also the crime rise in Texas had nothing to do with immigrants, they were local people. The larger issue was an increased availability of firearms due to reduced gun restrictions.
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@jimconard9341 They are the reality at the southern border. Things are rarely simple, and everyone who tells you that there is one simple reason for any geopolitical problem is playing games on you.
Again, cartels take advantage of CLOSED borders, not open ones. When there are open borders, cartels have nothing to gain. They ONLY profit from people needing them to cross a border, or from them being forced to stay in Mexico without support for months at a time, allowing the cartels to prey on them the entire time. You seem to have no actual understanding of the situation, and are just repeating verbatim what you have been told by others to believe.
Again, the volume of migrants is not an issue, it's really not that serious on a historical timeline, given that we now catch and process almost all of them, whereas in the past only around 30% of them would even be encountered by border patrol. The ONLY issue here is that the TIME to process them has gotten longer and longer, and UNTIL they get processed, they are a burden on the state. AFTER they are processed, they cease to be any problem at all.
Also, why would members of BOTH parties engage in a "political stunt" like putting together a bipartisan bill? What would either party gain from that?
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@jimconard9341 I'm sorry that the world is more complicated than you would like it to be, but there's nothing either of us can do to change that, so we may as well agree to live with it.
I thought we were talking about immigration. Yes, cartels smuggle drugs too, but that is a business that has nothing to do with migrants, and generally takes place at ports of call. The more open the borders are to migrants, the less likely drugs are to pass the borders undetected.
No, they do not "vanish" after being processed, they just cease to be a problem. They are either deported (and therefore not our problem) or they become productive members of the community, in which case they are a benefit, not a problem. It is only before they are processed, in which the state has a burden of care for them and they are prohibited from working, that they cause more cost than benefit.
And yes, if fewer people were coming, then we could process them faster, but we can't do anything about that, it's like saying that the problem with Katrina was "there was too much water," as if that helps anything. The people will exist either way, all we can control is how to manage that fact. The fact remains that IF we INCREASE the processing capacity, which is what the administration is working on, then we can handle the current and expected future flows. If we continue to stick our finger into the dam and demand that the water just go away, then it will continue to overflow and cause trouble.
And I'm glad we can agree that there would be no point to the bipartisan bill as a "political stunt." It was just a good faith effort by both sides to find a problem to this situation, until one of those sides decided they preferred to run on the problem instead of actually solving anything.
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@HunterBloodHunterBlood Nope, he tried to stop some traffic from China, but did nothing to halt other travel, and travelers form Europe is where the covid in the US mostly came from. The Dems called him xenophobic because of his obsession with China, which was xenophobic.
Besides which, by the time Trump attempted cut off travel even to China, there were already at least some infections in the US, so a total "no virus gets in" policy was not on the table (although it could have been if he'd reacted when he knew about the virus instead of waiting until the public knew).
So the issue was that he failed to lead from the White House, he failed to say "we've going to do full lockdowns, we're going to have mask mandates, we're going to take this pandemic seriously," instead he more often defaulted to "just let the states decide," which is the worst way to handle any large scale problem.
Governors in predominately blue states did their best to survive the experience, but since infection kept coming and going into their states from red states throughout the pandemic, there was only so much they could do. Kristi Noem held a biker rally. Trump held a campaign rally. Neither went well for the nation as they carried infections all over the country after.
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@melissacoupal585 "Oil independence" is a myth designed to get tax breaks for oil companies, and you apparently fell for it. There is no such animal. The only way to be "oil independent" is to not use oil for anything. So long as you do have a need for oil, you can never be independent, because oil is traded on a global market. US produced oil doesn't cost a penny less at the pump than Saudi oil, and if the cost of Saudi oil goes up, then American producers will charge you more for it. Do you understand this?
The US produces 150,000 more barrels of oil today than it did at any time during the previous administration. We EXPORTED more oil in 2022 than at any point in the previous administration. Gas prices are still high because other oil producing countries have cut production, shale producers have stopped selling at a loss, and two of the major suppliers are locked in a war at the moment. That would be the same regardless of who was in office at the time.
Economists would disagree with you because everything you just said was completely wrong, and you would know that, if you had any idea what any of it meant.
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@melissacoupal585 My point was that what you meant by it does not actually matter in the grand scheme of things. It's a concept that does not actually function.
And no, you are completely wrong about the strategic oil reserve and how it works. For one thing, I was talking about our oil exports TODAY, in 2024, and we stopped drawing down the strategic reserves years ago, but even beyond that, the government does not determine who gets the oil from the strategic reserve, it is just released into the American oil market. If people in that market choose to resell it to a foreign country, that is capitalism, not an act of government. And that is the issue, oil will ALWAYS go to the highest bidder, so whether it is produced here or elsewhere is entirely irrelevant to the price. If any other country in the world is willing to pay more for US oil than Us consumers want to spend, then that oil will just be sold elsewhere.
There is no such animal as "energy independent," UNLESS either A: your energy sources are not tradable, such as Iceland's geothermal, or B: you NATIONALIZE those sources, greatly restricting international trade on them. So far, no US administration has gone that far, so any talk of ":energy independence" is just a smokescreen for handouts to oil companies, meant to fool the gullible.
Also, the Keystone pipeline has nothing to do with energy independence. It was a way to get Canadian oil to international markets, and only benefited those oil companies, not American consumers.
And yes, I am aware of the "petro dollar," but it does not mean what you imply it to mean. It certainly does not mean that the US gets to define global oil prices in any way.
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@crispinfornoff206 Texas does well, but only because they happen to have a lot of oil, not because of anything Texans ever did. As for the rest, they're 27, 35, 33, 40, 36, 24, and 31 in per capital GDP respectively. Not one of them is outperforming the national average. Even Texas is only 16th, behind tiny Maryland.
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@UglyMofo24 Nobody lives in Wyoming. It stands to reason that that they would have lower covid rates than places where humans live. Even so, rates there are rising since the spring.
As for the email from fauci, that was his understanding at that time. Science evolves as new information becomes available, they do studies, they collect data, and their guidance changes to reflect that new data. Early on in the crisis they believed that only n95 masks were effective, but as more data came in, they established that actually, even cloth masks helped greatly, because they would blunt the velocity of the viral particles, reducing their effective range. This has been proven out by multiple studies over the course of the virus, it is a fact, whether you understand it or not.
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@UglyMofo24 The tests done that "show that masks do nothing" were not done by professionals, unless you mean "professional scam artists." The tests done by professionals show that masks do have a positive impact on controlling the virus. Period. Full stop. Do not spread lies to the contrary. I tried linking an article in the Journal Nature on the topic, but Youtube is touchy about outside links. You can look it up yourself.
Also, population sizes definitely do matter when talking about a pandemic, because viruses do not just rise out of the ground evenly, they spread from person to person, so the fewer the people in a given area, and the less contact that those people have with anyone outside their group, the lower the risk of transmission. That's why plenty of red states did better than blue ones early in the pandemic, they just tended to be less likely to encounter infected people. It's not some great victory for their prevention strategies, it's just the expected outcome for rural environments when nothing else is done.
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@calencrawford2195 Right, that's the sort of conspiracy theory silliness I was talking about.
Corporations do hold a lot of power, this is a capitalist society, but it's not as 1:1 as you make it out. It's not perfect, but it is better than the alternatives.
As for Iraq, yeah, that was a bad call. Most Democrats opposed the war at the time, and the few that supported it did so because they were deliberately misled by the Bush administration. It was certainly a mistake, but it was done by a different administration, many years ago.
It would also be unfair to lay everything that happened in that country at America's feet, given that whether the war itself was justified, Hussein was gassing his own subjects, and most of the deaths in the region happened as a result of conflicts between people in the region, not between them and the US military. The US had about as much to do with the majority of the violence in Iraq over the past decade and a half as Austria did with WWI.
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@biggoards2772 1. You're parroting right-leaning talking points without any proof. There are housing problems in America, as there are in most countries, but those have nothing whatsoever to do with immigrants. They have to do with speculative real estate investors. The free market is incapable of solving that problem, since it will always be of more value to them to target wealthy people looking to speculate in real estate than to make affordable housing for people. If the current housing situation bothers you, elect more Democrats to pass legislation intended to incentivize more practical housing.
2. Illegal immigrants are not buying farms, they are working on farms. The sorts of "foreign nationals" that can afford to buy up land get here using the official channels, if they even enter the country at all. So far as the average American goes, it really doesn't matter whether the person owning the land is American or foreign, all that matters is that the land is owned by someone else. Foreign nationals that own land would have significantly less influence over public policy than actual American voters would.
As for people "paying their own way," again, immigrants "pay their own way" more than people born here do, in spite of whatever government benefits they receive. Their existence in your state would REDUCE your tax burden, not add to it.
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@garyoldham4449 You say that you believe "And allowing the human race to evolve gradually. Instead of tyrannical ideologues. . ." and yet we are talking about a case in which a tyrannical ideologue invaded a sovereign nation, claimed several chunks of it for himself, intended 9but failed) to seize the rest of it. No person who can claim in good faith to oppose tyranny can possibly support Russia in this conflict. Whatever your beliefs about Ukraine, you would be honor bound to insist on a 100% Russian withdrawal FIRST, and THEN a consideration of any independence claims for the remaining regions.
Also, Ukraine is a Republic, not a Federation, so I don't know why you bring up Federations.
You say "I don't believe in isolationism. I'm one step above that. Offshore. I don't believe you have to have free trade with a horrible Nation. On the other hand sanctioning a nation only hurts the citizens. So what good is that? It does mean that the nation doing the sanctioning will get a larger slice of the pie."
So you believe in Offshore, but without doing any of the things that would make Offshore any different than Isolationism. So you believe in Isolationism. In any case, both are bad if that's the only tool you have. You need more than that, because the rest of the world still exists, no matter how much you want to ignore it. Allowing problems to fester across the world means that eventually they will come home to roost. Germany never would have invaded France if they'd been blocked from invading Poland. Japan never would have attacked Pearl Harbor if they'd been driven out of China. Waiting until an enemy has conquered everywhere else and is on your doorstep only means it will be too late to get your boots on.
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@SB-to2jp No, a President has no power to declare "this is mine," there are laws that say that ALL Presidential records belong to the National Archives, NO presidential records belong to the President. And while the President does have the power to declassify documents, there is a process to that, which was not followed in this case. Simply wishing that the documents had been declassified does not make it so.
The Christopher Steele dossier was paid for by GOP opponents to Donald Trump in the 2016 election, and later by the Clinton Campaign, but it is important to recognize that the Steele Dossier was not the source of the Trump-Russia investigation, the FBI had already been on the case, and even if the Steele Dossier had been completely imaginary, it would have no impact on the actual collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian agents, which was proved through other sources. I don't know why people keep talking about the Steele Dossier as though it were somehow relevant to anything in 2023.
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@SB-to2jp Again, four of those years, he was president with a corrupt Attorney General covering for him. Even then, the special counsel he'd appointed determined that he'd done wrong and would have been charged with crimes if not for his corrupt AG defending him. And he was twice impeached, and twice had the majority of Senators vote to convict, just not the 60 votes needed. His business was convicted of tax fraud, the one that he 100% controls, but he hasn't personally been charged in that case, yet. His lawyer was convicted of conspiring with him to violate campaign laws and was sent to prison over it, but Trump himself was not charged for his role in that crime, yet. But why do you believe that he won't be, just because he hasn't, yet?
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@seancase71 Sigh. If what you said is right, then why is what Trump did even a crime? I mean, you could try to argue that he was innocent of the crime, but since he was actually found guilty of it, it had to have at least been a crime that exists, right? NOBODY is arguing that this was not a crime, there are only people arguing that he shouldn't have faced any consequences for doing it.
So, we're back to, REGARDLESS of what the bank does, it is illegal to miss-value your assets to the extent that he did. If the argument is that the bank would have been fine giving him the exact same loans had he been honest, then fine, but that is a reason why he should have been honest, not for why this isn't actually a big deal. Again, a crime "working out" does not make it not a crime, that is not how crimes work. If someone steals a car, gets the oil changed and gas tank filled, and puts it back without inconveniencing the owner in any way, that is still car theft.
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@seancase71 I meant nobody serious. Nobody that actually knows or cares about the law. The only people who say that it was not a crime are those who first and foremost want Trump to get off, so of course they might argue that it wasn't a crime, but nobody is doing that from any serious legal perspective, because it's as plain as black and white from the legal code that what he did is a crime.
Again, the best you can argue seriously is that it's a crime that maybe he should have been allowed to get away with, like speeding or jaw walking, if either of those crimes involved hundreds of millions of dollars. And read the second part anyway, there's a lot of good stuff in there, it might help your confusion.
And you keep asking about Mar-a-lago, that one only one of many properties in dispute here, my answer is that I'm no real estate agent, so I would defer to experts on that. The experts believe that he grossly overvalued his properties.
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