Youtube comments of (@timogul).

  1. This HAS to happen to other Presidents, IF they break the law like this. Nothing about the Presidency puts anyone above the law.
    1000
  2. "We shouldn't take Trump's proposal seriously because it just wouldn't work." Man, if only we lived in a world where that would ever even slow him down.
    1000
  3. I hate how Wall Street incentivizes permanent growth, rather than just being fine with a profitable business model. "Yes, you made more money this year than you spent, but how much more was it than last year?"
    1000
  4. I love the folks who skipped directly from "this is not a problem and never will be, keep burning coal" to "there is nothing we can do to solve any of this, might as well just keep burning coal until we all die." It almost seems like the only thing they care about is burning coal.
    842
  5. The "three red lines" were a good idea, but they needed to put more thought into how to roll them out, such that eventually companies would have to follow them, but they would have been given enough time to shift their strategies smoothly to that point. Instead, what China did would be like if someone was driving 120mph in a 50mph zone, and then tried to drop to 50mph by slamming hard on the brakes and skidding out. Reaching 50mph was a perfectly good goal, but you need to get there cleanly.
    604
  6. "Elon Musk is the greatest engineer. . . ever." Well. That's a take. . . Why are we listening to these guys again?
    522
  7. I'd really like to see an equally deep dive into school costs. How much do schools spend on teachers, administrators, facilities staffing, real estate, materials, etc.
    455
  8. It's all fun and games until the tentacles emerge.
    435
  9. This is why Netflix is winning, because they mix their shows to play on actual TVs. What they should do is keep dialogue on a completely separate track from other sounds, and allow viewers to raise or lower the volume of it separately to their own tastes.
    421
  10. "How was Ukraine able to do this?" "Well mainly, Russia is just REALLY bad at all of this, and so far only seems capable of murdering civilians."
    399
  11. "Whaaaaaa, the poors are making money, money is only for rich people!"
    363
  12. When life gives you lemons, squirt those lemons in life's eyes!
    317
  13. Anyone who believes this clearly has never read the First Commandment, nor the First Amendment.
    286
  14. Hamas needs to stop hanging out in schools and refugee centers.
    264
  15. Every Trump accusation is a confession.
    234
  16. "I reject the term 'trickle down economics,' nobody's doing that. What we're doing is a plan in which we give money to the rich, and they just keep it, and the poor get nothing. That is a much more efficient method for making the rich richer and the middle class poorer."
    231
  17. Nothing warms the heart like Crypto crashes.
    198
  18. My dad is fully vaccinated and caught covid this fall. He was already immune compromised due to a pre-existing condition, to the point that a staph infection nearly killed him, and yet the covid did nothing. Thank God for vaccines.
    179
  19. Her neighbors should all put up rainbow colored "shame" flags, pointed at her house.
    175
  20. It's disturbing that in the age of digital cinema, where they don't even have to pay for film, they still can't be bothered to do a "second take."
    168
  21. The oligarchs and their minions were displeased.
    165
  22. Given what you said about the best ways to eat this, your meat-shipping friends might benefit from shipping the meat out in chunks about the size of a large steak, rather than in a giant block like that. I get the impression that if you thaw out that entire block you'd be hard pressed to solo your way through it all before it starts to go off. If instead you got several smaller bricks, each of which containing about 4-6 "candy bars," you could thaw each individually, eat off them over a week or so at a responsible pace, and then thaw the next.
    148
  23.  @KrissieMarieEbdane  Still a scam, they also have a shifty record on supporting trees.
    133
  24. Conversely, if it dipped slightly further south to cover Naples too, "southern Italy" would be in even worse shape.
    118
  25. Yeah, if they want to increase government efficiency, step one is nationalizing healthcare.
    116
  26. Yeah, basically the "torture a friend" angle doesn't get used because it's TOO effective. It forces the hero into either failing, OR betraying their friendship, which even if that's the "right" call to make, makes him look bad. It's realistic, but hard to make it work as a net-positive story element.
    115
  27. At some point everyone will just have to accept paying significantly more for delivery. Delivery can be a huge value to consumers that don't want to go out, but paying another human to do a task costs money, and we as a society need to accept that. I do think that the existing companies are a bit too "finance bros" though, and need to stop jockeying for market position or siphoning money up to investors. It just needs to be a simple, low profile system for routing delivery orders, and the bulk of the revenues should go straight to drivers.
    111
  28. I like reddit, and I value the communities there, but the recent situation made me realize that I do not like the people who run the company, and would not mind if they fail. If the people who run reddit actually cared about the communities they unwittingly created, then those communities would defend them to the end.
    107
  29. This is why I am very skeptical of any claims coming out of "aid organizations" from Gaza about what is happening there. They all have to at least play ball with a terrorist organization in order to do their jobs, and any number of them could be true believers.
    104
  30. Imagine if he'd just done everything legally from the start. He could have avoided all of this.
    100
  31.  @jimwerther  For promoting the behaviors she engages in herself, as being "immoral" in others.
    99
  32.  @lukeknowles5700  What makes you think their goal is to make the safest cars?
    95
  33. I think that if Zelenkyy agrees to a peace deal, it has to come with Ukraine entering NATO the instant it's signed, otherwise Russia will just be knocking on their door again later.
    95
  34. One thing I don't get is when people criticize police for wearing riot gear in crowd control situations. That's the whole point of the stuff, to protect them when people in the crowd throw things at them or otherwise attack them. What should they be wearing instead?
    94
  35. "What? I need EVIDENCE?! What sort of kangaroo court is this!"
    93
  36. The US needs to start investing in honey. If we can get enough pots of it sent to Bejing, that can keep them stalled for a bit.
    92
  37. I'm less concerned about when the robots don't need us anymore, and more concerned with when the billionaires that operate the robots don't need us anymore, because that will happen much sooner.
    90
  38.  @666Mordy  The "certain behaviors" she doesn't want taught in schools, wee never taught in schools, so if that's her argument, then she's redundant.
    85
  39. I think this misses the point of "safe zone." "Safe zone" does not mean that Israel is going to take care of them better than Hamas did, it just means that they are less likely to be bombed than they would be if they stayed on top of the Hamas tunnels in the north. This is FAR more warning than Gaza gave their victims.
    84
  40. He knew they were going to be firing rockets at his handler.
    81
  41. Why would anyone need to convince Elon Musk? Who voted for him?
    79
  42. True. I'm all for giving people money to rebuild, but it should require that they not do it in an area that is known to be disaster-prone. Like if you lose a home to a flood in Florida, I'm in favor of charitably making them whole at taxpayer expense, they can get some reasonable bailout, but they should not be able to spend it to rebuild in the same location, they should be required to spend it on a property that is outside of predictable floodplains.
    79
  43. Gold standard is the best one for people who can't do math. They just know "money shiny, money good!" Fiat currencies take too many numbers to understand, make brain hurt.
    78
  44. At the NATO conference, they should just announce that Turkey agreed to let Sweden in and NATO has accepted and Sweden is in and it's done. Then if Turkey complains they're like "why are you trying to go back on the deal now? Stop being silly." If Turkey is going to act like children, treat them that way.
    77
  45.  @BoxdHound  Yes, but when has "certain to be ineffectual" ever proved to be a barrier to Trump? Remember the wall?
    75
  46. If he weren't the worst possible choice for the job, then he wouldn't have been nominated.
    75
  47. Some guy: "Maybe they should just move away form fossil fuels that they don't have?" Some guy gets thrown out window.
    75
  48. The problem with Kassandra is not that she was capable of doing all sorts of badass things, it's that the other characters in the story do not treat her differently. They could tell a story with a female protagonist, but she would have to work twice as half to earn half the respect from those around her as a male character, which is why allowing both was a bad idea, particularly without it impacting difficulty. Also, no discussion of the megalithic statues? I mean, from my understanding of Greek history, they did have some relatively large bronze statues, but the ones I've seen in the game are much more massive than any historical statue (aside from perhaps the colossus) and made of solid stone, which is just unworkable.
    75
  49. Colorado voters: "I don't even know who you are."
    72
  50.  @carlosgaspar8447  Watch her other video which explains how they know this is human caused. Spoilers, they know it's human caused, and it's foolish to try and argue otherwise, given the massive evidence involved.
    71
  51. @ Blizzards rarely destroy things. They are inconvenient, and can be individually deadly, but structures are rarely impacted and most people survive if prepared. Most of the US is relatively safe from catastrophic damage, there are parts of many states that have high risk, but some areas are certainly much higher risk than others, and the taxpayers should not be bailing out those who choose to cover themselves in honey and jump into a bear's den.
    71
  52.  @NoneOfYourBeesWax1  Incorrect, but it's funny you fell for that.
    71
  53.  @raybod1775  It would be higher under Trump.
    71
  54. It's punishment of an organization for failing in its duty to manage those funds responsibly.
    70
  55.  @dubbjones5476  The FBI didn't violate anyone's rights here though. They followed due process, got a warrant, and did a valid search. Who's rights were violated?
    68
  56. Walz went to Bagram while serving on Congress. It was AFTER his time in the military. Get your facts straight.
    67
  57. The thing to remember is that most of this lawsuit and drama predated the war in Ukraine. Yes, after the invasion, Youtube is a lot less friendly to RT, but the causes of all of this were before the invasion, and Youtube was cutting RT a lot of favors on this one. A channel should not have to invade a sovereign nation to get proper copyright consideration.
    66
  58. I think there is value in providing "the other side of the story," but you ALSO need to present "the OTHER other side," ie the actual side. Present the counter-argument, but ALSO present the argument itself at the same time.
    66
  59. They're probably worried that Putin will have them tossed out a window.
    65
  60.  @DOWNUNDER.  And that showcases the intelligence of the Trump voter. Or lack thereof.
    64
  61.  @Tinfoilhat311  This would be more a case of conservative copium. "Yes, we are under water right now, but at least we owned the libs."
    64
  62. Unless the helicopter was going to Epstein's island, and they didn't want that to get out.
    64
  63.  @loftin92  You mean China, I assume. They are the world's ATM.
    60
  64. That really isn't an issue though if you mostly stick to a single mall for your shopping. What does it matter if every mall has a Hot Topic? All that matters is that your mall has a Hot Topic.
    59
  65.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  It remains true that Trump is more likely to cause an irresponsible incident.
    58
  66. It's because people don't want strangers cutting right past their yards all the time, especially if the neighborhood does not have high walls around each yard.
    58
  67. "Russia Russia Russia." YES, Russia, Russia Russia. This is the problem!
    58
  68. What matters is not whether you fall, it's that you get back up again.
    58
  69.  @Kenneth-nx4uv  Was. Ukraine IS a free and independent nation for 33 years, per their agreement. Russia had no justification to invade.
    58
  70. My dad set my mom up with something like that, and when she would take the laptop on trips she would be like "did you transfer everything over?"
    57
  71. If they don't have "bigotry," then what's even the point of being a Southern Baptist?
    55
  72. They essentially are at this point. You go in, grab the items you want, and then self-checkout.
    55
  73. Didn't you watch that video? All of that is pointless fluff. All that matters is productivity. If they aren't a functional unit in the economy, then they have no value. At least, that's what the video seemed to be saying.
    54
  74. Why do the IMF insist on things like austerity in welfare programs? Why not demand austerity in military spending?
    54
  75. If Russia is worried that NATO might attack them on humanitarian grounds, then maybe they could just. . . stop being so inhumane to their own people? I mean, wouldn't removing the pretext remove even the hint of a threat? On point 2, if you view NATO as being "anti-evil," maybe just. . . don't be evil? On point three, when everyone to your west is "a hammer," maybe you're just a nail? The same groups that messed with Russia over the past 300 years tended to be attacking everyone else too. Napoleon invaded Russia, but also he invaded every other part of Europe. Hitler invaded Russia, but also he invaded every other part of Europe. Russia isn't special, bub, you're just the same as everyone else.
    54
  76.  @matthewchick8908  That would also be projection. Thank you for the case example.
    52
  77. @marchofempires7297 Well, it's accurate to everyone elected_by_ Republicans, at least.
    52
  78. Every accusation is a confession.
    52
  79. Yes. It means that you need to get a 4th shot to maintain the same level of protection that you had previously, similar to a lot of vaccines.
    51
  80. Democrats should make this offer "You can choose one, either A: A Ukraine Funding bill that includes a border deal we don't like, but you're on your own if the Republicans come for you, or B: a clean Ukraine funding bill with either no border elements or border elements that Democrats approve of, and Democrats will help you keep your job if it comes to that."
    51
  81. I'm confused, so RFK Jr. supposedly WASN'T a Trump supporter before this? I thought that was the entire reason he was in the race.
    50
  82. "Hitting pause" only delays results. There is no value to that.
    50
  83.  @texajp1946  Russia has already attacked Ukraininan bridges and rail. And refugee shelters, apartments, hospitals, schools, basically anything in Ukraine.
    49
  84. Republicans always gets in the way of politicians serving the people.
    49
  85.  @stanleyzezotarski1443  I've never once heard John Oliver mock moral parents, only parents who CLAIM to be moral while instead actually being amoral.
    49
  86. The sad fact is that automation will render more and more jobs "bullshit" over the coming decades, and therefore fired, until there are none left except for the extreme upper management (who will also be unnecessary, but still employed because they get to decide who gets employed).
    49
  87. Nobody said he could just post $100, the required bond amount is $454 million, that is the amount he needs to find. Should be easier than finding those votes in Georgia.
    49
  88.  @verilyveronica8430 Trump was twice impeached, just not convicted. To paraphrase McConnell on the topic, "Trump did the things he's accused of, and they are high crimes and misdemeanors, but I'm not voting to convict because I want to get re-elected."
    48
  89. 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.
    48
  90.  @swaggery  He's not even a particularly great entrepreneur, he's had a lot of terrible ideas and he's run companies into the ground entirely from his own decisions, he just got particularly lucky with two high-growth powers. His strength is not intelligence, it's just money.
    48
  91. Nope. If Bezos had made this decision months ago, before the process had begun, then fine. But canceling the process now, after they had already made their choice and were writing up the endorsement, is just vetoing their endorsement, plain and simple. It was a Bezos endorsement of Trump.
    46
  92. It's not that hard, China and India just need to stop dumping plastic into their rivers.
    46
  93.  @the0ne809  This is usually the case with populist candidates. They are all fun and games, but have no idea what they are doing, so any successes are pure luck, and their failures are catastrophic.
    46
  94. Well, particularly because their conference rejects everything the Lord Jesus Christ believed in. They prefer golden calves.
    46
  95. Whatever happens with the Fox/Dominion lawsuit would be irrelevant to journalism. There are no journalists involved in any of this.
    45
  96. This isn't even "race to the bottom" anymore, it's just skydiving without a chute.
    45
  97.  @RM-jb2bv  If you think that shoplifting is a bigger problem in Democratic areas than Republican ones, then you've been sold a bill of goods.
    44
  98.  @swinfeflue  It is good that EU froze the funds to Hungary and they should continue to do so until Hungary fixes itself.
    44
  99. Too many Trump buyers on that list.
    44
  100. I'd been trying to pick up a PS5 most of last month, and participated in dozens of "drop events" on Sony's site, Best Buy, Waltmart, etc., and every one of them you were basically in or out of the running within the first second. Not seconds, first ONE second. If you were not placed in a queue at a relatively low wait time, then it was already over, and chances are you would have no chance at a decent wait time after a few seconds. Plus, they don't always announce these drops in advance, so the average person just trying to get one of these things without setting up alerts or whatever, has almost no chance at getting any of those, meanwhile the scalpers are ready 24/7.
    43
  101. US s is not threatening the Solomon Islands with violence. It is entirely fair for one country to put economic and political pressure on another. It is something else entirely to level schools and hospitals.
    43
  102. Because supporting the Trump campaign is their primary job at the moment.
    43
  103. The US policy never changed. We would have Taiwan's back if it came to it. That's always been the policy, spoken out loud or not. "Strategic ambiguity" was never official policy, nobody ever claimed that there was "strategic ambiguity," it's just the term outside observers used to describe how the US government officially discussed the topic. Biden is not chaning the US policy, he's just being more up front about what the policy has always been.
    41
  104. How has this building not been redeveloped? I mean, given the area, I can't imagine they couldn't make 2-3 times as much in rent on the same plot by just rebuilding the place to be no larger than it is, but with more modern features like at least one general purpose bathroom (ideally individual ones), AC, and maybe a shared kitchen. I don't know the full square footage involved, but they should definitely be able to rebuild that into a very pleasant townhouse style single family dwelling, or a nicer dorm-style housing with shared living spaces.
    41
  105.  @RaysNewLife  Just because something worked in the 1800s does not mean that it has anything to do with the modern economy. Are you suggesting we go back to cotton as the main economic driver? Or whale oil?
    40
  106.  @Siyano  Ok, maybe you won't, but then you don't deserve to have delivery. Other people would pay that because they don't want to go through the hassle. Delivery is not some human right, it's a privilege, and it should only be available to those that are willing to pay what it actually costs.
    40
  107. So who did he sexually assault?
    40
  108. So if Trump's company is set up in Argentina, then wouldn't that create a conflict of interest for him running for US President? Wouldn't that make him subject to foreign powers?
    40
  109.  @nerys71  And that's why this is a broken system. The incentive should be toward profitability, rather than growth.
    40
  110. "And this is why grouping things arbitrarily is pointless." It does not matter in the least whether the north or south hemisphere has a higher or lower average anything. It's important to remember that America is only wealthy because it got colonized hundreds of years ago. If it hadn't been, then North America would be no more economically better off than South America.
    39
  111. There are no "political ramifications" to the Durham report. People who already hated Biden and loved Trump think that the report revealed something important, everyone else recognizes that it found nothing of any consequence and will move on with their lives. Zero opinions shifted on anything.
    39
  112. The problem is, a lot of these clowns have clowns for constituents that want them to be doing clown stuff.
    39
  113. "Akin to declaring war?" Dude, you are bombing residential areas right now. That is "declaring war."
    39
  114. It's difficult to do any sort of control on something like this. For one thing, you can't possibly do it blind, because there will definitely be physiological changes to the control group that wouldn't occur if they were outside it, so they will know pretty quickly. For another, it means that they will have life-altering changes that they did not want, and that is cruel to them. I think we just need to do studies that do not involve controls, and judge the outcomes as best we can, relative to people who didn't seek out any treatment, as imperfect as that may be.
    38
  115. Disney: "Oh no! . . so anyway, back to doing our own DEI programs. . ." Seriously, how can they claim that these programs have "cost taxpayers millions," when those "taxpayers" ARE Disney? "How dare the government force us to pay money into programs we encouraged the government to implement!"
    38
  116. "You show up, period!" He's RIGHT THERE, Nancy.
    38
  117.  @mosesmedina9450  The US backed side is the Kurds, who were mostly on the sidelines of this offensive. Now that the Assad regime is out of the picture though, there will likely be some struggle between them and the new guys.
    38
  118.  @Tinfoilhat311  Al Gore isn't a scientist, and his predictions were based on the conditions in 2000, if nothing changed. Some things changed, so the predictions also changed. He was still only off by a few years, not wrong on what the result would be. Why go back to "what Al Gore had to say?"
    37
  119. "Yes, we chose to evolve out of the fascist party instead of just starting from scratch as a completely non-fascist party, but we'd really like for you to ignore that we used to be openly fascist, because now we're more subtle about it."
    37
  120. Because they were the ones to invest in that technology. Free market capitalism.
    37
  121. Still better than the last one.
    37
  122.  @fgerardburke  I guess at some point you would need to transition from one to the other. "Don't expect the value of your stock to improve that much over the next ten years, but we will pay you good money each year for holding it."
    37
  123. I don't get why this port would be preferable to the Suez. Yes, that part of the world is unstable, but no less so than Iraq, and ships would still have to sail past Iran to get there. Not to mention having to unload their cargo and transit it by road, then probably put it back on ships again.
    37
  124. I'm surprised that Alan Dershowitz, well known for being completely wrong about legal matters involving Trump, is also wrong about this one. You would think at some point, people would just stop asking Alan Dershowitz what he thought about things.
    37
  125.  @IronFreee  It's not "ecologists," it's "anti-nuclear folks." They are often enough at odds with "ecologists."
    36
  126. She's getting an evidentiary hearing on several of the charges she made, the rest were thrown out for being silly. The remaining ones will be thrown out after she fails to provide evidence.
    36
  127. Yes, tariffs on imports are a tax on Americans. The foreign countries don't spend a penny of it.
    35
  128.  @markh.876  People interfere in the "normal, healthy process" all the time. They eat too much food, or too little. They exercise a lot, or a little. Were you aware that girls who do intense sports in high school often don't have a full puberty until they take a long break from their sport? There is no "right way" to do this, there is only a "right way for that person." If a person might grow into a man's body, but would prefer to live as a women, then it would be better for that person to go through puberty as a woman than as a man, and fortunately, we have the means to do that.
    35
  129. "But they said I lost! It had to be rigged! Give me my participation trophy!!!:
    35
  130.  @llllllblodllllll  The thing is, if we'd taken relatively small, reasonable steps to move away from fossil fuels 50 years ago, then we would be done by now, and it would all be fine. But they said "no, keep burning coal." If we'd made some slightly more serious choices twenty years ago, things would be fine today, but they said "no, keep burning coal." so now the decisions we need to make will be harsher still, and in twenty more years they will be incredibly harsh, but at some point the bill DOES come due. You can't just keep ignoring the problem and hope it will go away. I don't think we can eliminate fossil fuels immediately, as some protesters want, but I do think that we need to be making serious investments today to prevent MUCH more costly solutions in the future.
    35
  131. In fantasies. In reality, most companies that produce things in the US still have to import large portions of their supply chain, and it would be impossible for US manufacturing to ever fulfill our needs. All this would do is shift more of the imports from China to places like Indonesia (in many cases with such countries just repackaging Chinese products at a mark-up to avoid the tariffs), and raise the prices of US goods. A few Us manufacturers might see increased profits, but not enough to justify the change for consumers.
    35
  132. @ The issue is not that dangerous weather never occurred before the 21st century, the issue is that these dangerous weather events are more and more frequently over the 21st century. A once in a century storm is bad luck. A once in a century storm several times per decade is a pattern.
    34
  133.  @tolowokere  Ok, so that's one example, they supported that bill, which was intended to prevent LGBT-positive discussions in classrooms. And yet, she is pursuing an LGBT life herself. Is that not hypocrisy?
    34
  134.  @ASS_ault  A lot of people hate vegetables, but adults eat them anyway. Because they are adults.
    34
  135. His handpicked Supreme Court told him he was above the petty laws of mortals.
    34
  136.  @t.r.4496  It was "buy one, get 200 free."
    33
  137. Yes, but also, it's important to remember that this trouble is Hamas's fault, not Israel's, and that the people of Gaza chose for Hamas to represent them. It's ok to feel bad for them, but not to use that as an excuse for allowing Hamas to continue.
    33
  138. TL;DR, "Haiti has never been capable of fixing their own problems, but also can't be fixed by outsiders."
    33
  139. Sure are a LOT of people in the comments getting worked up over stars on license plates. This entire issue is hilarious.
    33
  140.  @privateperson702  She was pushing Christian values and moral purity onto others, while engaging in conduct that goes against her publicly claimed values. That would be the hypocrisy.
    32
  141. There need to just be laws against metadata tracking, similar to the thing Apple and Android are doing, with the added caveat that it is required on ALL platforms, including web browsers and the Oculus headsets, and they can ask you for permission, but not tie ANY benefits to agreeing, so no "well, if you want this bonus, you will have to agree first." It needs to be an open and non-coercive request.
    32
  142.  @Tinfoilhat311  Plenty of their predictions have come true. What are you talking about?
    31
  143.  @RaysNewLife  If you knew about the history of tariffs and free trade, then you would know why you're wrong. So do you know why you're wrong or not?
    31
  144. I think they pushed back against that claim with the following commenter pointing out that people are more likely to claim to be satisfied than to admit that they got duped. I think the video gave an overall negative view of timeshares (rightfully so), without being too directly a "hit piece."
    31
  145. But you do at least prevent him from lying. In the end, that's equally effective.
    30
  146.  @tolowokere  That's not what she asked for. I don't know if there is a worthwhile conversation here if you're going to misrepresent what she's asked for. you should look into it first and then come back.
    30
  147. He also had an order to not deport him.
    30
  148. Ah, the "Zap Brannigan maneuver".
    30
  149. It's nice to see the court actually following the laws.
    30
  150.  @dannyajr  Because he'll never put something better and more efficient in his place.
    29
  151. It only doesn't matter if we make at least some token effort at responsibility. If we just took the brakes off entirely then it would implode. That's the issue with the Republican debt ceiling shenanigans. If the US just keeps doing what we've been doing for decades, borrowing where needed and servicing that debt, then it's fine, not a problem, but if Republicans crash us into the debt ceiling then all bets are off and the economy could start to implode, because nobody would trust the US to pay back those debts anymore. Our reputation is all that matters, not he amount of debt we take on.
    29
  152.  @Geraniumpourmonsieur  No, he's not an engineer at all, and a mediocre entrepreneur. He just has a lot of money to spend on hiring people who are better at these things than he is. Sometimes this works out for him.
    29
  153.  @funwithfacts9413 You do realize that the late 80s recession was also his fault, right? It's actually pretty easy to goose up the economy and put out big numbers for a few years at a time, that's no great achievement. What matters is setting up structural changes that will result in improvements over the following decades.
    29
  154.  @Suksass  I doubt that would be good enough for Ukraine. Prior to the war, they HAD such safety guarantees, not just from the US, but also from Russia, as a condition of Ukraine turning over their own nukes. Clearly Russia violated that, and the US did not fully live up to their commitment to defend Ukraine, for sad but understandably pragmatic reasons. I feel like only the NATO Article 5 would be enough to protect them at this point. Or at least something a bit stronger than just a pledge from the US.
    29
  155. She did it to puppies, do you think she'd even slow down for a child?
    29
  156. He has never cared about making sense.
    28
  157. Yup, too many guns.
    28
  158.  @rogvarley6971  Not exactly true. The thing with the national debt is that it's a rolling debt, if we owe $32T today, then we will pay off ALL of that $32T within the next 20 years or so, everyone who loaned us that money will walk away with their promised amount. But also we are likely to take out new debt over that period so that we end up at or above what it is now. So in that sense, plenty of tax dollars go into paying off the debt, we just also take out new debt to pay for the other important stuff. But also, we do spend the tax dollars on things so that we don't need to run up more debt than we currently do. I mean, right now, last year the US brought in $4.9T, and spent $6.3T, so the debt went up by $1.4 trillion, but without those tax revenues, it would have gone up over four times FASTER.
    28
  159. It's always cheaper to travel to other countries than to Disney, it's just not as good.
    28
  160. The headline is misleading. It implies that the issue was the topic question being asked, when the actual issue was that Biden was trying to make a statement and the reporter was interrupting. Do better at your job, Forbes.
    28
  161. Yeah, audioboooks are listening, not reading, but that's ok. "Enjoying a story" is something that can be done through both reading AND listening.
    28
  162. "He's not afraid to tell us what we want to hear, whether it's true or not!"
    27
  163. Answer: "They don't want anyone who will defend the American people form them."
    27
  164. Is Jim offering himself up for contempt for ignoring a subpoena first? Fair's fair.
    27
  165. Bring it, Maggie. Speaker Jeffries will do a MUCH better job.
    27
  166. He says that from a Republican party that refuses to put anything forward with less than entirely Republican votes. I mean, we would have had a speaker weeks ago if they had been willing to put forth a candidate that could get Democratic votes, but they insisted on passing things with ONLY Republican votes. That is a Republican choice to make.
    27
  167. He refuses to go anywhere that "a lie" is somehow "wrong."
    26
  168. And keep trying again until you get the result you want, uh?
    26
  169. Funny that CNBC fell for it though. It's so dumb.
    26
  170. It's sad that you believe this, but that is how cults operate.
    26
  171. Narcissistic sociopaths appeal VERY strongly to sheep. They have infinite confidence, and confidence is all that matters to them, whether there's anything to back that confidence up, or not.
    26
  172. That's a weird way of saying that they're trying to protect an ally from foreign aggression.
    26
  173. Well, they are defensive, not offensive, so they had no active role to play up to now. Their role only begins if Putin crosses the line, and not a moment sooner. Ukraine, however much it outrages everyone, is not across that line at the moment.
    25
  174. Which is a fair point. The one place where I could see a role for affirmative action would be in removing legacy advantage entirely. The thing to keep in mind, however, is that let's say a school does include Legacy admissions, and that means that out of 100 slots, 20 slots are automatically off the table, and they go to white children of white parents. does that mean that it would be fair to offer 20 offsetting slots to non-white students, since those 20 white students got a free pass? Of course not, because if there were 5 white students applying that would be deserving of those slots in a fair contest, they are in no way benefiting from the fact that the 20 legacy students got in, so why should they be punished for the color of their skin? That's the problem when you consider race as a factor, the result will inevitably be racist, even if the goal is to balance out inequality. Deliberate race-based "balancing" only makes sense when you are considering race as some sort of a war, where races are winning and losing based on collective gains. In the actual world, it's all just individuals, one white person gains little due to another white person's achievement, so if ten white people do very well, that's no reason to knock a different white person back a peg to "balance things out." If the problem is certain white people gaining an advantage, then you correct that advantage, you don't try to take away from different people of that same skin color.
    25
  175. I wish we had a president instead of a clown.
    25
  176. The defendant, yes.
    25
  177. Yeah, I figured they were talking about banning payments from Russian agents, which would really hurt the Republican party fundraising.
    25
  178. The oceans would be completely irrelevant in a modern conflict. If anyone who actually posed a threat felt brave enough to attack the US, they could in under an hour, ocean or not.
    25
  179. Yes, because Putin shipped in he North Korean army to help him.
    25
  180. It shouldn't be too hard to find someone. They just need to follow his two credentials. of 1. Promise to do the opposite of their job description, and 2. be a sax offender. So long as they tick all the boxes, it should be easy.
    24
  181. That's why it's important to vote for Democrats instead of Republicans.
    24
  182. The VP really doesn't have a role to play in death row inmates. That's generally more a governor thing.
    24
  183. The point of "discovery" is that they were the ones that connected that thing back to the larger culture. If they "discover" lost ruins in the jungle, then they are the ones that bring those ruins to the attention of the rest of the world. If a ruins just sits in the jungle with nobody to appreciate it, then does it even exist at all?
    24
  184. That's called "Costco."
    24
  185. I suppose that statement is true, Trump does view American darkness as being pretty great. I mean, his coalition is white supremacists and conspiracy nutters.
    23
  186. Naricistic sociopaths can't accept blame for their actions. Whatever they do is Right by default.
    23
  187. He should try it and find out, like that lady in Texas.
    23
  188. Of course he didn't get it from Mein Kamof. There are no pictures in that book! He got it from his campaign advisors that got it from Mein Kampf, and just thought it sounded like something he'd say.
    23
  189.  @Lp78Ch  Oh no, I'm not maga.
    23
  190. @ How are either bad? They are both much more convenient than cashiers. Why do you need to have other humans as servants?
    23
  191. She had a whole video about how one can "do their own research," and then spends every other video proving why that is such a dumb idea, by presenting VERY poorly researched content.
    22
  192. It's only "exposing corruption" if it's true,. You don't get any brownie points for making things up.
    22
  193.  @LegendaryZet  The objective of UBI is "better quality of life for humans." What's the point of people working when businesses have no need for human labor?
    22
  194. And all Elon has is a flamethrower.
    22
  195.  @tolowokere  Nothing before the bill prevented families from discussing those topics. That was not what the bill did. The hypocrisy was that she was engaging in LGBT behavior, while implying that even being LGBT is not something that could be discussed in classrooms.
    22
  196.  @MS-ql8ek  It's funny that you somehow connect that to whoever the US President was at the time, like they determine how the trucking industry works.
    22
  197. If it's about Trump, it's usually true.
    22
  198. Did anyone ask him why he faked working at McDonalds?
    22
  199. To prevent the domestic market from being undercut.
    22
  200. It was thoroughly investigated by members of both parties. Nobody was arrested for trying to investigate it.
    22
  201.  @gad-hp6xm  That's slander about people in the midwest.
    22
  202. He didn't tell them to storm the Capital though, so he's still ahead of you guys.
    22
  203.  @FollowJesusToday1  Someone explain capitalism to this guy, he thinks posters are free.
    22
  204. I keep hearing from Republicans that the administration is "disregarding the laws," but none of them can list a single law that the administration has broken. Also, under US law, when someone is detained, they CAN then be released to await judicial process, immigration law is no different in this regard, so once they have been detained, releasing them until their immigration hearings is in no way against the law. We can't simply detain them until their hearings because the system is too backed up for that. If Republicans want them to be detained until they are deported, then they would need to pass Biden's funding requests for border judges so that we can reduce the backlogs.
    22
  205.  @007kingifrit  Meanwhile, in the US, my parents have months of wait time for most doctors appointments, so they'd be much better off in Canada.
    22
  206. What idiot approved of adding any rule that requires unanimous consent? They had to know that such a rule may as well not even exist for all the likelihood of it being applied.
    22
  207.  @howardj602  Oh, so they should go in shorts and tshirts_until_ the crowd starts throwing things, and then ask them nicely to stop for a few minutes while they put on the riot gear?
    22
  208. I've always thought they should do dietary studies on prisoners. Nothing inhumane, they would all be eating foods that are considered at least as healthy as anything else they would get, but prisoners lead a much more controlled lifestyle, and if they agreed to be a part of a study, agreed to handle their diet responsibly and follow the rules, then they would otherwise get a few extra perks.
    22
  209.  @jemcoop1  Corruption occurs with or without colonialism. If corruption still exists in countries that have not been colonies in many decades, then they are not caused by colonialism.
    22
  210. There is a difference between investing in America's future and giving money back to billionaires. It's important to be able to recognize this distinction. The BBB was important at that time to prevent a recession, and i worked. The US economy did much better than many other governments. Deficit spending is not the end of the world, the US can afford significant amounts of deficit spending, but when we do so, it's important that we spend that money wisely, and not waste it on junk projects or tax cuts for the wealthy.
    21
  211. "If we jump over the cliff, everyone will follow us!" -Nigel Farage
    21
  212. You shouldn't, The Russians just say whatever they like, even if it makes no sense.
    21
  213.  @carlosgaspar8447  But the "small portion of the EMR spectrum" that it absorbs is the HEAT part of that spectrum. Your source on this is wrong, however much he confirms your biases.
    21
  214. "Tariff" is a word Trump knows, and so he uses it, but it's also a word that he does not understand, so he uses it in the wrong places.
    21
  215.  @mikewilliams6025  You agree that those things happened as a direct result of the policies put into effect during Trump's administration, right?
    21
  216. It can be, but only if it's abused. Any tool has the potential for abuse, and that potential for abuse is not always reason enough to never use a tool, it's mainly just reason to use it well.
    21
  217. I'm just impressed that a three year old can type. But tell mommy it's past your bedtime.
    21
  218.  @selonious341  Yup, he was the smoothest brain around. Glad we're rid of him.
    21
  219.  @ltdc426  Not for Republicans, apparently.
    21
  220. Generally, yes, but when an area has a history of building districts against a certain race, you need to put in "lane bumpers" to prevent shenanigans. These states have proven themselves unworthy of being treated like adults.
    21
  221.  @JR-vc4gm  But Finland joined NATO, and Russia did not invade them. If Ukraine had joined NATO, Russia would not invade them either.
    21
  222. Wouldn't help. If we actually cared about children, we'd need better gun control.
    21
  223. Deregulation increases government spending, because the less business is regulated, the more money the government has to spend cleaning up the messes they cause. An ounce of prevention is worth a ton of cure.
    21
  224. The issue is that different tariffs have different outcomes. SOME tariffs are good and reasonable. Nobody is complaining about those. Some are completely irrational, those are the ones being complained about. It's like how it might make sense to require seatbelts in cars, but people might complain if they were suddenly required on sofas.
    20
  225. Trump was the one that pulled out of the debate, what nonsense is this?
    20
  226.  @hrvojelasic5794  But at a historical maximum if you look at the times when mammals were alive. Humans are mammals, so this is relevant to us.
    20
  227. "How DARE there be weather!" -California people problems.
    20
  228. That's what the whole case is about. Solving that two tiered justice system.
    20
  229. What they should do is put someone completely random in charge, like the Australians, or the Danes. Just someone with no particular stake in the region or pressure to be on either side, and their only point would be to keep things running smoothly and build up a local political class worthy of respect. Short of that, don't leave anyone in charge. Just wreck up Hamas, and then leave, let them sort it out themselves. If they arrive at the same fed up solution in a few years, repeat as needed until they cut it out.
    20
  230. Cosmetics companies: "We want that stuff now, don't need more research, just give." Researchers: "But it causes cancers." Cosmetics companies: "We said, we want it now!"
    20
  231.  @jamesbraun9842 Except that it's not impossible to impeach a private citizen, and the vote took place before Trump was out of office, and it could have solved a lot of problems if he'd voted with honor instead of for party.
    20
  232. House Republicans: "But. . . but. . . we wanted to do it behind closed doors and then come out to the cameras and tell people that we'd found BOMBSHELL news from it, when actually nothing of any value was learned."
    20
  233.  @zimpoooooo  Gangs cannot thrive if their local communities reject them. Gangs can only exist if the local communities condone their behavior.
    20
  234.  @SnakeSalmon8izback  Yes, one that actually gave a damn about any life past the womb.
    20
  235. There are certainly all sorts of ways that this could go badly for China if it goes hot. Almost every country in the region does not like them for various reasons, so it would make sense that if they seem at all struggling with Taiwan and the US, these other countries might hop in to fully secure any remotely disputed territories, if not actively aiding Taiwan directly.
    20
  236.  @gsfouroone5045  Unlawfully retaining classified documents and mishandling of defense documents. Basically everything in the Florida case he openly admits to doing, he just claims that he's allowed to break the law (spoilers, he is not).
    19
  237. He got the facts wrong in this video though. He portrayed the 3.4% figure as being for excess covid deaths, when it is actually 3.4% of ALL deaths, ie 3.4% of 10,000, or 350, which is nearly HALF of the excess deaths.
    19
  238. The documents Biden had were nowhere near as serious as those Trump had. Why bring him up?
    19
  239.  @eastphiladelphia8134  It's essentially a religious argument. "God as all the things I like about Him and none of the bad things that He actually does/allows."
    19
  240. She's been a Republican for a decade now. She just wasn't telling people that.
    19
  241. Of course, he's been doing a fantastic job so far. Why wouldn't we be?
    19
  242. Still better than anyone who defends Jan 6thers.
    19
  243. If she won, then she would have gotten more of the vote, not less. That's how elections work, here in America.
    19
  244. But it's important to remember that Ukraine did not start this war, and it is not up to them whether it ends. Both are in Russia's court.
    19
  245. She denounced the terrorist organizations. The issues is that Kennedy was racist toward her.
    19
  246. "I tried to take down the flags but my wife wouldn't let me." And I thought Coney-Barrett was submissive.
    19
  247. The inflation was not caused by adding debt though. The inflation was caused by a rise in global oil prices and shifts in global supply and demand trends over the past few years. If it were based on the US debt to GDP ratio then it would be worse in the Us than in the rest of the world, instead of being better in the US than in most places.
    19
  248.  @jonl.5967  Democrats do not, that's the point.
    18
  249.  @SycoticReaperMk  The difference is that the American colonies were done so by people with the intention to develop new lives in a new place, it was colonized with the intent to live there (not all of them, but enough of them). A lot of other colonization programs around the world is that they were set up like factories to extract resources and send them home, where the head colonizers were just day-workers that fully intended to return home one day, with very little investment toward actually having generations of future offspring in this new place. So America became Europe 2.0, while most other colonies just became mining operations for some other country.
    18
  250.  @Suedenim1999  He can also misrepresent the stats, as he did in this video. That is a factual misrepresentation, not an opinion.
    18
  251. Oh, we're going to vote them out. At least out of the majority.
    18
  252. Can they keep her? Justice for Cricket.
    18
  253.  @WillsLioneltrains  Some people have to work for a living, and election day is not (yet) a national holiday. Fix that, and we can talk.
    18
  254.  @chrispaige8880  I don't think that there's anyone out there who believe that teachers should have absolute authority over what happens to a child. The argument is that teachers are often in a position to help find the best outcomes for a child, by counseling them, providing them access to legal or medical services, etc. Teachers are only one possible route to a child receiving the best possible outcomes IF their parents are failing them. The more options a child has, the better their odds.
    18
  255. It didn't say she killed farm vermin, she killed a family pet dog.
    18
  256. "Please stop talking about how I defend white nationalists, and instead talk about how great the economy's been doing under Biden instead."
    18
  257. I went to school at a general college that had an art program focused towards" art for art's sake" stuff, and as I approached graduation, they gave some guidance on applying for grants and that sort of thing, but there was basically no information on "commercial work." I think that should be essential in any art program, there should be a whole class you need to take devoted to teaching you how to budget your time, and teaching what basic going rates are for all sorts of projects at all sorts of levels. Obviously each job is its own judgement call, but it would at least provide some foundational knowledge.
    18
  258. If it's Biden's fault, then why can you draw a straight line on border encounters from 2016 through 2019 through to 2023? Wouldn't that indicate that the same trend has been pretty steady over that period?
    18
  259. @ There is no tariff on dairy products coming into Canada, because they don't kick in until we hit a certain quota, and we could export twice as much as we currently do and not hit that quota, so the current rate is 0%.
    17
  260. Oh man, this inspired a million dollar idea. Santa for Adults. Yeah, Christmas is more fun when you were a kid and you got all those toys, but now you're old and you don't. So have a company where you place an order, and they will put together a giant box (like the size of what boomers remember a large TV to be), with a bunch of smaller, wrapped boxes, and you can just open it up and see all those wrapped presents, and then inside is stuff. Maybe you could purchase individual items and they would just wrap them for you, maybe you could just give a general theme and they would pick items at random (cheaper), etc., but the point is, you get a ton of mysterious wrapped gifts on Christmas day, just like when you were a kid. Or you could just oder one of these for your own kid and not have to do all the shopping yourself.
    17
  261. This had nothing to do with government aid.
    17
  262. Hersh's story sounds like something Chat GPT would spit out if you asked "how did the Americans blow up the Nord Steam pipelines?" It just makes up random nonsense that sounds plausible if you don't understand any of the facts involved.
    17
  263. Toomey was incorrect though, either in ignorance or malice, and there was no actual good reason to vote against this bill.
    17
  264.  @Tinfoilhat311  Do tell what? Which of the climate predictions came true? Out of hundreds of them? Ok. Sure. What about the Zeke Hausfather study?
    17
  265. This is core libertarianism. "Government should stay our of our way, unless we want them to do something for us."
    17
  266.  @DeffoZappo  A prosecutor does not create the laws, it is their responsibility to uphold the laws that legislators make.
    17
  267.  @RaysNewLife  You were talking about tariffs, which are more outdated as a government funding mechanism than whale oil is.
    17
  268. The thing to remember is that not only does Japan have a fraction of the arable land of the US, but also that land is far less contiguous. It's not just wide open plains (or forests that can be turned into plains), a lot of it's tiny plots of land carved out of mountainsides, layers of 1/4 and 1/2 acres each that you can't reasonably "scale up." They could become sightly more efficient, but they could never come close to feeding themselves.
    17
  269. That wouldn't apply here, they were charging him with legitimate offenses. If holding people accountable for their crimes was against the law then every judge, jury, police, and prosecutor in the US would be behind bars. As well as anyone who put them there.
    17
  270. And to offset Mitch stealing two of the existing nine seats.
    17
  271. Why? He's doing great. It's mainly just loser Republicans "concern trolling" that want him to drop out.
    17
  272. Then vote blue.
    17
  273.  @americanhomeownerwithajob6940  Why do you keep bringing up "the laptop" as if it was relevant? Do you think that "the laptop" should have had more of an impact on the election?
    17
  274.  @sirsurnamethefirstofhisnam7986  Cold is better than hot, because it's easier to make heat than to make cold. When a place is too hot, you're just stuck with it.
    17
  275. Depends on what she's asked. If it isn't about a crime that she did then she can't plead the 5th. Also, this is a civil case, so any time they plead the 5th, it's counted as "yes, we totally did that crime."
    17
  276.  @1ronin907  What does that have to do with anything? Of course it works both ways, but only IF high crimes or misdemeanors are involved, which is not the case here.
    17
  277. They are trying to get an actual answer. It shouldn't be this hard.
    17
  278. Trump: "I would tell zZlynsky that either he makes a deal, any deal, immediately, or he gets nothing. I would tell Putin that he has to make a deal, or we'll give the Ukrainians everything." A smarter man would understand that these two positions are mutually exclusive, and at best would only work if you hadn't just told the entire world this plan on national TV. But of course nobody ever accused Trump of being smart.
    17
  279. Mostly racism.
    17
  280. By lying.
    17
  281. India's unhelpfulness in this is a nuisance, but it is not a threat to the global efforts. They don't have the infrastructure to import as much oil and gas as Europe were, and have no plans to build that infrastructure, or capability to do so within the next few years, so it won't make a dent in Russia's losses.
    17
  282. Sure, but the point is that they wasted that popularity, and plenty of modern EVs match or exceed them on both qualities.
    17
  283. You said "AOC" when you were talking about DJT. He's someone else entirely.
    17
  284.  @stanleyzezotarski1443  More children are sexualized by their parents than they are by anyone outside their home. Why are you using this as an excuse?
    17
  285. What stopped him the last three four times?
    17
  286. If you have, hypothetically, a single dictator for 50+ years, but he is crazy, and changes policies on a whim that can completely upend decision making, then that might be "stable" in the form of who is in charge, but is not "stable" in terms of the rules you have to strategize around. True "stability" would require that the rules are fair and consistent, that if I go in today under a certain set of rules, that those rules are likely to be the same twenty years later, or at least any changes made would be fair and predictable (like a new regulation after a disaster made it clear such regulation was needed, rather than "because The Boss says so.")
    17
  287. Yup, it's the racism. That's why most countries drift toward far right countries. Rather than confront their own responsibility for the problems they face, they prefer to blame it on "certain peoples" instead.
    17
  288. The Constitution says nothing about a conviction. That is not a part of it.
    17
  289. Trump is SUCH a wimp for taking this! Talk about letting other countries just steamroll you!
    17
  290.  @JR-vc4gm  Finland is fine.
    17
  291.  @DontTreadOnMe17  Fauci's emails did not indicate that Fauci lied about anything. Whoever told you that he did is just misunderstanding what he was saying because they are too dumb to understand. He's also fairly low paid for a doctor, he only makes a civil service salary, less than $500K per year, while most doctors with his level of experience make considerably more, and administrators of large hospitals can make millions. The US health care system is a mess.
    17
  292.  @WhyHandleYouTube  Wow, that was a laundry lists of ways to let other people know that you're not worth listening to.
    16
  293. Yeah, it would be the only way to stop them. They brought this on themselves.
    16
  294.  @nestorv7627  You asked how capitalism and workers rights are at odds with each other. The important thing to keep in mind is that "true capitalism" is rarely scene in the world, pretty much every country, including the US, is a balance of capitalism and socialism, like cutting a stiff drink with something milder. Pure capitalism is at odds with human rights because human rights do not benefit capital. Human rights are expensive, and if you can avoid paying for them and still make the same profits, then raw capitalism would avoid paying for them. There is no benefit to capitalism for having human rights beyond the absolute minimum to sustain their needed workforce, and the more they can drive that bare minimum down, and the more they can remove human labor from the equation, they will do so, or they will be failing at capitalism. But in most countries, that was attempted over 100 years ago, and riots ensued, resulting in governments imposing limitations on capitalism to ensure certain levels of human rights. The funny thing is, A lot of "pro capitalist" people point at countries like the USSR or Communist China as an example of "evil socialism," when the reality is that they are examples of "evil authoritarianism," and all the bad outcomes that they point to as a result would be no less true of a 100% pure capitalist system than they are in an authoritarian communist system, the only difference is that the "government" at the top of a 100% capitalist system would claim to be a "corporation."
    16
  295.  @MbisonBalrog  Florida has a lot of good qualities, if not for climate change and poor governance. I can see why people like the generally sunny (if way too humid) weather, it's just soon to be under water, so all of that is beside the point.
    16
  296.  @martinsvensson6884  But we have very high CO2 levels when compared to all of HUMAN history, which is why it is bad for humans for it to be this high. Also, when they pump up CO2 in green houses, that is under controlled conditions, where they manage the plants water supply and heat levels to also be healthy for the plants. That is NOT an accurate ecological simulation.
    16
  297. The techno music? Yeah. They story was a valid one though.
    16
  298.  @trinyyful  Most people are not state employees. This is why it is necessary to have extra days to vote, and there's no reason whatsoever to freak out about that.
    16
  299. Is it required that the poster be in English? I would put it in Hebrew.
    16
  300. The national emergency and security issue is that Donald Trump is President at the moment.
    16
  301.  @R.BOWERS  Right now? Sure. But if the House had pulled the trigger, you would sure as hell notice it when prices tripled and the US started turning into Venezuela.
    16
  302. It almost seems like you're fishing for excuses here rather than accepting the reality in which you don't get your way.
    16
  303. Sadly, I expect them to put party before constitution.
    16
  304. The Democrats have been fairly consistent over the past 30-40 years. It's more the Republicans that have changed in the short term.
    16
  305.  @jeffstrehlow2623  I meant that given how antagonistic China is toward many countries, including the US, if nobody they treated as an enemy did business with them, they would lose most business.
    16
  306. Well, "balancing the budget" really isn't a priority, the issue is just avoiding shutdowns and debt ceiling crises. I mean, yes, the budget tends to be better balanced under Democrats than Republicans, but it hasn't actually been balanced since Clinton was in office.
    16
  307. This topic doesn't have anything to do with gay men.
    16
  308. The microchips are what is important to anyone who isn't China.
    16
  309. "Yeah, we're doing all the stuff they claim, but the important thing to remember is that we don't want you to know that."
    16
  310. House Weaponizing the Government Committee: "Political bias in the FBI is bad." Also House Weaponizing the Government Committee: "These agents that had their security clearances revoked for abusing their positions in a politically biased manner are heroes!"
    16
  311. Yeah, that makes sense. Keep swinging at someone who hasn't been involved in politics for four years now, just because more people voted for her than for him. Sad.
    16
  312.  @jamie59685  Why are all these people from foreign countries bragging about how they only have to wait 6 hours? We get it, the Us sucks at healthcare.
    16
  313.  @monaivory7069  You haven't been paying attention. That is nobody's fault but your own. The fact remains that the videos exist and have been verified to be genuine, whether you are aware of them or not.
    16
  314. And why specifically reference aliens, and not humans?
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  315. Aw. Poor baby.
    15
  316. Hawaii should just work on a subsidized economy, a bit like Alaska. Make it so that all tourism and "wealthy folk" profits are heavily taxed, not so much as to kill those markets, but just enough that the state get a significant windfall from it. Then have subsidy programs, first for all peoples who can prove ancestry on the islands dating back 50+ years, they would get a significant subsidy program. Then secondly for newer inhabitants that live on the island most of the year (as opposed to people with timeshares or vacation homes), and are employed on the island, they would have access to some more modest subsidies, to help encourage foreign workers as needed. As for housing, there would be subsidized housing programs, to provide plenty of affordable housing for everyone, if not in the most beachfront, detached housing they might want. I think this would strike a reasonable balance of allowing the tourism industry to go full steam, while also allowing the locals to live a lifestyle well higher than their productivity.
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  317. Well, you can reverse it, just with a lot less people. What the video is proposing is that they just eliminate the surplus population to achieve the "sustainable culture" they had before colonialism. I can't condone such a massive loss of life, but if that's the message Vox wants to advocate, then that is their business.
    15
  318. Well, "opening people's eyes" isn't really a defense on kidnapping chargers. It's something edgy teenagers say.
    15
  319. The real problem is that they are hard to modify. Most "bad" regulations don't need to be removed, they just need to be tweaked, with some portions removed or replaced with something more specific.
    15
  320. He didn't lie about his record though, so the rest of your point is moot.
    15
  321.  @austinbutler1291  The deal he was offered got kicked out.
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  322. The US has no legal obligation to defend Taiwan. It does have a sacred duty to defend them, in the sense that with great power must come great responsibility, and if the US is going to become so powerful, then we DO have a duty of care to defend the weak from bullies.
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  323. "Don't you understand? This is about showboating for my drooling base, not answering questions seriously!"
    15
  324. Really the law should just be that a rental agreement cannot be for less than one month.
    15
  325. The model for how to govern as a right wing populist is to stay home and let someone else be in charge.
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  326. Yeah, the thing is, cities built up at a time without high speed transit, and were designed so that most people lived within walking distance of where they worked (if maybe a longer walk for poorer people). Then over time, trains and later cars allowed people to work in the city but live out in the country, which was more pleasant, and in response, cities had less and less affordable housing, to the point that many city centers have no housing at all, or at most luxury places that only CEOs can afford, and everyone else has to commute crazy distances. And then the next step was just to build offices out nearer the suburbs, where people could much more comfortably commute. So now there's no point to the city centers. I think cities need to fully reorganize so that businesses and homes for all scales of workers can live side by side, and nobody needs to commute more than a few subway stops and a short walk.
    15
  327.  @sherman_of_the_lake  There have been plenty of people who live life as though they are rich, but if you look into their actual finances, they turn out to owe more than they own. This may be such a case. Owning a billion dollar building does not make you a billionaire if you've taken out a billion dollar loan on it.
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  328. I wish Republicans would stand up to Trump on issues of substance.
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  329. They just weren't operating out of the portions of the building he had access to. It was a fairly large complex.
    15
  330. They don't trust their candidate's ability to win fairly.
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  331. "Sorry, bear with us here, we have absolutely no idea how any of this works."
    15
  332. God wants nothing to do with this guy. He plays for the other team.
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  333. If that were the case, China's export market would crater.
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  334. I will never understand why some people freak out about mask wearing. I started wearing a mask right when the first hints of an outbreak were starting, it just made sense, and I still haven't gotten covid. I have stopped wearing a mask in most situations, because myself and those around me have been vaccinated and the risks are decreased, but if I were going someplace with a lot of strangers from other parts of the country, like a concert, convention, or theme park, I would still wear a mask when indoors. The issue is that some people are comparing the results of cheap cloth masks or "barely" masks, to the results from more serious surgical or N95 masks, which are very different things. The other major issue is that since masks do more to protect others from your breath than they do to protect you from them, masking mostly works when everyone uses them, and situations where the rule is to wear masks but the most reckless people insist on not doing so, it greatly reduces the effectiveness for everyone else. It's part of the reason the US saw ten times as many deaths as countries that didn't have as many idiots running around.
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  335. When Roberts says "ten minutes away," I assume he is meaning "by car." These people would presumably not have cars, so "ten minutes away" would actually be a several hour hike. If he is talking about only a ten minute walk away, say a half-mile or so, then I don't think that would be an undue burden for them to stay there.
    15
  336.  @halfnelson6115  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but school libraries are the LEAST of their concerns if they want to police their children's minds.
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  337. Oh, yeah, of course they're going to disagree with the guy cutting their checks.
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  338.  @michaelreiter503  I think you miss the point of the analogy.
    15
  339. Narcissistic sociopaths appeal VERY strongly to sheep.
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  340.  @privateperson702  I think this bot is spamming this reply to every post for some reason. Still, better than the ones hawking NFTs.
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  341. There generally aren't enough athletes to sustain a trans-only league.
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  342. These vehicles are promoted as being safe to drive themselves, which implies that drivers do not have to be attentive. Also, Teslas make up only a small portion of the overall car market, so even if every single one of them got into a major accident, it would be a small percentage of total crashes. That is not a "win." The question would be, are Teslas more likely to crash than other vehicles.
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  343. Why don't they use "closed loop" brine systems? Instead of using ponds, just pump the brine through solar-heated pipe networks, raising its temperature near to boiling, then dumped into a "finishing vat" that boils off the remaining water and thoroughly dries the lithium, just like the ponds do. They can even capture the steam and re-condense it to send back for more lithium. This is similar to how sugar is made.
    15
  344. If you saw a video like that, someone was playing games with you, but there is real actual video of the events, and they were indeed that large.
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  345. Rubio should tell his boss that.
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  346. The point is that this will make America worse for your children.
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  347. Why should they not cover a story just because it involves Russia?
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  348.  jamesrkarolchyk1440  No, the judge denied his ability to present evidence in the closing, because evidence is never presented during the closing. Trump WAS allowed to present evidence all he wanted during the evidentiary phase of the trial, and he was going to, but chickened out at the last minute. The judge had nothing to do with that.
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  349. No, they have been promoting people to vote him out, which is still the correct thing to do. Those people you cite are opposed to using violence to solve problems and are in favor of gun control that likely would have prevented this person from being armed.
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  350.  @texajp1946  What is the going rate in the Kremlin social media farms these days? Is Putin still paying you?
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  351.  @tjnak  Yup, and consumers benefit from all tax, so it's a virtuous cycle. The important part is to ensure that corporations do not pocket more than they need.
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  352.  @verilyveronica8430  So you agree with the point I was making, but wish that it were not true?
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  353.  @AdvocateHim  It's impossible to say what might set him off. If he felt insulted by some world leader, he has shown no hesitation to react poorly to it. His military leaders had to tell him numerous times that he wasn't allowed to do this or that, and this time, he's picking much more pliable generals.
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  354. "Recount it again until the numbers change!" -an idiot.
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  355. This is why you don't elect Republicans to higher office.
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  356.  @gabor6259  "Hence, an anti-mRNA-vaxxer is closer to a pro-vaxxer than to an anti-vaxxer." That is not how math works. But I'm not surprised.
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  357.  @brushstroke3733  Again, not maga.
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  358. You're just sad that your candidate lost. It happens. If she had only been a little less crazy, she might have won, but then she'd never have been able to get the Republican nomination.
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  359. They need to include him on the same contempt resolution as Hunter.
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  360.  @appslg3phone  "Wherin they reside" is not a condition of being a US citizen. Let me make the 214th Amendment more clear for you. Here is what it means, step by step: Any persons born in the US is a Citizen of the United States. Period. No exceptions. Ever. Any persons not born in the US, but born subject to US jurisdiction (such as on a US military base or something) is also a Citizen of the United States. Any persons not born in the United States, but who is "naturalized" (ie goes through other legal processes to obtain citizenship) is also a Citizen. The "wherin they reside" part is irrelevant to their national citizenship, all that means is that in addition to being a US citizen, that person is also considered a citizen of whichever US state in which they live. This is why a college student can claim citizenship in the state where they attend college. If you want to change any of those things, you would need to pass a Constitutional amendment to do it.
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  361. Yeah, but on the other hand, who cares what Mick Mulvaney thinks about anything? He worked for Trump.That should disqualify him from having an opinion of relevance to anyone.
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  362. Yeah, I get the idea of it, that you wouldn't want a President to just unilaterally jail members of congress he didn't like, but there should be some check. I would say that to override Congress, it should require joint action between the Executive and Judicial, and similarly, to override the SCOTUS, action would need to be taken by the Executive and Legislative, but those mechanisms should exist.
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  363. @ I don't know, with human cashiers I've had things double-charged before, I've never done that when using self-checkout. I've never had a problem bagging my own groceries, but with the other person bagging things, they often make a bag too heavy, or too disorganized, or put fragile items together with heavy ones, etc. I've had far less problems doing it myself. I'm also considerably faster, when you factor in me having to load the conveyor belt and them having to take things off it.
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  364. Don't blame leftists when people choose the right, blame the people who choose the right.
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  365. It depends on likelihood. I mean, if the idea is that people are threatening to commit suicide if they don't get their way, then clearly that isn't a valid argument, but if we are talking about a statistical likelihood that people will commit suicide under certain conditions, then isn't it a good idea to try and avoid causing those conditions? Like say there were a bill to make anti-depressant drugs illegal, even if it can be shown that those drugs currently reduce suicide rates by a given amount, and would predictably return those suicide rates to their previous level. Wouldn't it be reasonable to argue "this bill will lead to increased suicide rates, and that is a bad thing?"
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  366. Most migrants do end up in places other than border states over time, but dumping dozens of people into a location that had no expectation of receiving them will always result in harmful chaos.
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  367. This is because of the electoral college, and some states are trying to change this, but it would be tricky. Actually removing the electoral college would require a Constitutional amendment, which is a nightmare to achieve these days. The other option is to bypass the EC, by having states just decide for themselves to allocate votes according to the popular vote, but that would require a majority of states to agree to do that, and that too can be tricky, especially since they can't all be on one side. Republicans like the EC, because it gives them a higher chance of victory than they would have otherwise, so it's very unlikely that any red states will go along with any change to it.
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  368. He did not, no. Typically American Presidents do not hire based on personal loyalty.
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  369. I expect that the reason it doesn't come up is because it's a known factor that has been accounted for in the existing models, and does not explain the increased temperature of the planet.
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  370.  @thejuan_1999  Seeing pride crap is not unconstitutional because there's nothing in the Constitution about pride crap.
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  371. + @posztoka  Lol, you miss the point entierely.
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  372. So obviously you can never support Trump.
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  373. It's all public record.
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  374. Because Republicans in that state did not pass laws designed to delay the vote count like they did in so many battleground states. Even so, Florida isn't completely done with their vote counting, they are still at 99% reported, they are just done enough that it wouldn't be possible for the losing candidate to make up the difference. States like Arizona had some much closer results.
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  375. Yes, they are leaving the state to prevent the state Republicans from passing a bill that will threaten democracy in their state. That is exactly what patriotic Americans need to do in response to tyranny.
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  376. It doesn't apply to Disney employees, it only applies to employees of the RCID government. I have no idea how many employees they actually have. They have no legal right to tell Disney employees what to do.
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  377. Like she mentioned in her response, they did not ban this care, they only changed their guidance on when it should be used. In those countries, the option is left open for doctors to do what's in the best interests of their patience, which the law under review would not allow.
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  378.  @Luckyrider1958  Nope, tariffs would not reverse that. That's not how tariffs work.
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  379.  @EyeGlassTrainofMind  Braille would be equivalent to reading in the same way that a record player or CD player is "reading" the bumps and grooves to produce sounds. Reading can be a tactile process as well as a visual one, but not an auditory one, because we have a word for that, which is "listening." You can read musical notation, but you listen to a song, you do not "read" a song with your ears. Nobody takes this to mean that you aren't allowed to listen to audio books if you like though.
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  380.  @Marianojoey  Yes, exactly, tariffs are inflation, but deliberate in this case.
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  381.  @lakepal7912  Oh no, I'm not maga.
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  382.  @verilyveronica8430  Not really. What about my comment do you disagree with?
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  383. Yeah, Capitalism is great when balanced by a strong government that is isolated from capitalist influence. On the government side, this requires strong laws against any form of corporate involvement in the election process, no campaign donations, no advertising, obviously no direct bribery, no way for corporations to spend money to curry favor with politicians, before, during, or after their time in office. As for what government needs to do with that power, strong regulations to prevent destruction of lives and public resources, strong taxation policies to balance out the wealth generated at the top of capitalism and redistribute it to the bottom, and social safety nets to protect even those with no economic value. If you can balance the two well, let Capitalism do its thing but restrict the most excessive choices available to it, then it works out just fine. It's like a sports league, you want to let the players play, but if you don't have any rules then it's just quick bloodbath in which most of the players are out of commission by the end of the season.
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  384. This shift isn't as big a problem as it sounds, since automation is allowing more work to get done with fewer people. All that needs to change is that the economic system needs to ensure that an equivalent amount of money comes out of the economy as there used to be produced by several people. Basically, countries need to tax companies more than they do, so that instead of them employing ten people and paying ten people's worth in salaries, they employ five people, pay five people's worth in salaries, and then five more people's worth of salaries to general welfare programs.
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  385. Yup, not "border czar," not to "manage the border," but to negotiate with our neighbors to improve conditions in those countries, which she did.
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  386. It does have a "why do you need this" issue, but I guess if the price is reasonable and you can get an item in under an hour, when vans would take at least a day, or whatever the trade is there, then sometimes it might be worth doing. I don't think the scale works out in most cases though. It would be cool for restaurant delivery though.
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  387. The Democrats do not want it to default. This is entirely a Republican issue. Do not try to paint both parties with the same brush.
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  388.  @bcfortenberry  Republican "Christians" oppose anything Christ stood for in life.
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  389. Loll what a clown car. This is the state of the "Grand Old Party." The Green Party is looking more professional than these guys!
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  390.  @glenndonuts  If they were accurately targeting a terrorist cell, the it was a legitimate operation, regardless of which location it was in. If they were not targeting a legitimate terrorist cell, then what would they even be doing there?
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  391. No, we do not have a wide open border, and no laws have been broken by this administration involving the border, except perhaps their efforts to reduce border crossings.
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  392. TL;DR: "Oh no, she's hot."
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  393. The freedom of the press obviously depends on how favorable they are to the President, as the Founders intended.
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  394.  @red72233  It is not a proxy war, Russia chose to invade a peaceful neighbor, and the rest of the world is supporting their efforts to defend themselves. If Russia had not chosen to invade, which EVERY other country in the world managed to avoid doing, then this war would not be occurring.
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  395. Elect clowns, expect a circus.
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  396.  @suemarrs5283  Think about it. Every time he says "[other person] is/does [a thing]," that is a thing that Trump has already done, or at least would do, given the chance. It is far more likely that Trump has done that thing, than that the person he has talking about ever would.
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  397.  @kentklein6266  That's how Congress works, you spend most of your time in DC, where Congress is. This is true of ALL members of Congress and has been for our lifetimes. He does have a residence in his district though, and spends his off-time there, working with constituents.
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  398.  @CatherinePearl100  Incorrect. Gaza chose Hamas to represent them. It would be like saying that the US military and the US people are not the same thing.
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  399. Well, given her track record, she does seem well qualified for operating his concentration camps.
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  400.  @wanderinggamer5079  Right, it's basically 95% government takeover, 5% aid, rather than 100% aid money, 0% government takeover, which it COULD have been if aid programs actually mattered to them. This way, they can get pliable people to claim that this was an aid package for them.
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  401. Tell me you don't understand how economics works, without saying that you don't understand how economics works.
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  402. It's punitive damages so that the next time Alex Jones, or someone like him, considers painting grieving parents as "actors," they will perhaps think twice. It's the same reason we put murders in jail. That won't bring back the victims either. When people do wrong, they are punished for it, and that makes it less likely that wrong will be done in future.
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  403.  @atedinahalf6288  Frivolous use of the court system needs to be punished, or people will keep[ doing it.
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  404. Jack Smith's announced that indictments are coming. Anyone who did crimes WILL be held accountable.
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  405. He is doing it right now by being supportive of gun control. That is the MOST supportive thing you can do for children and teachers.
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  406. Yup, and like the increasing number of hurricanes, a lot of it has to do with people being idiots.
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  407. Probably not, since he's not qualified for the job. They would just be wondering how he could ever get picked for this role.
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  408.  @slc1923  There's a reason "Florida Man" is a meme. "Floridians approve" has never been a badge of honor.
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  409. Free sneakers.
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  410. Laziness is no excuse. Just because it's cheaper to record the same dialog doesn't mean that it's justified. AC shouldn't be a fantasy game, the franchise originally took their historical setting seriously. The only difference between the setting in an AC game and the real world should be the covert activities of the Templars and Assassins behind the scenes of known history. "AC has never been a historical simulation, and when AC fans complain about historical inaccuracy it's usually only when the developers make playable female characters. They're alright with Ancient Aliens creating humanity as a slave race and Assassins being an ancient order of freedom fighters locked in an endless battle with the Knights Templar who are a prehistoric evil conspiracy controlling the world from the shadows, though. At least there are no cooties there." This paragraph betrays a prejudice that's unwarranted. This is not about having a female protagonist, I've been playing as female protagonists in most of the games I've played over the past few years. I bought a PS4 just to play Horizon on. But if you do have a female protagonist in a historical simulation game, the character needs to be portrayed accurately to that time period. A female character can be an exception to rules, she can behave any way she wants, but that society should react to her presence as that society would react. As I said, part of the draw of this series is that it portrays an alternate depiction of history. The entire point of it is that it should be a history that could have happened in our real world, and we were just unaware of certain aspects. This franchise is not and should not be about "fantasy" where the setting is only loosely related to the real world, that is what God of War is for. If Ubisoft wants to make a game like that, they can, but they should call it something other than Assassin's Creed.
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  411. Republicans: "Embryos are people." Alabama judge: "Ok, then IVF is murder." Republicans: "Well. . . no. . . not like that. . ."
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  412. Which will impact. . . nobody.
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  413.  @anthonyreed480  It's the same in the US, only it takes longer.
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  414. Yeah, if shorting were as simple as "this will probably fail eventually," then too many people would be doing it. It's the fact that you're gambling that the failure will occur soon that makes it risky.
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  415. It "devolves" into a partisan brawl? That was the entire POINT of the thing!
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  416. They already told you it was fake. What would that add?
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  417. Ok, but we're talking about the US government here, which has nothing to do with religious beliefs.
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  418. @kenthalasAT Why do you believe a business should be safe to commit fraud?
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  419. Exactly, it's up to the woman to decide, not anyone else.
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  420.  @willymac5036  I understand that this is what you've been told to believe by Faux News, but it's important to recognize that most major development projects, including every other theme park in the state, The Villages retirement community, various sports stadiums, etc., also have similar "improvement districts" under them. This is not something unique to Disney. The only thing unique to Disney is that they said things that Meatball Ron was not emotionally equipped to hear.
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  421. The "Gaza health ministry" is a part of Hamas, since they are the ruling body in the territory. It's like with Afghanistan, the "Afghanistan health ministry" would be the Taliban at the moment.
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  422. Republicans have NEVER been on the side of people. You're thinking of "Democrats."
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  423. If Josh Hawley were being honest, he would be able to admit that Trump is worse.
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  424.  @DuskFox14th  What about them?
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  425. Yeah, he's probably just repeating something that he heard form his campaign advisors talking about their book club or something. It's unfair to accuse Trump of having read a book himself.
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  426.  @carlosgaspar8447  Heat can come from visible light and microwaves, but not remotely as much as from the infrared spectrum, at least when it comes to solar energy. The point is, the CO2 trapping IR energy is a bad thing. Agreed? Also, asking a panel of climate scientists what percentage of the atmosphere is CO2 and not getting an answer does not mean anything of value. They do not need to know that number off the top of their heads to do their jobs. They can look it up if it's ever relevant to a calculation they are doing.
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  427. He didn't uncover anything though. He just implied that there might be things that could be uncovered.
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  428.  @diminudivadollhaus2097  Also because maps exist.
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  429. "I'm going to appeal to racism, because I know the Republican party."
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  430. Yeah, and those rural areas only make things worse by doubling down on the reasons people are fleeing them, rather than adapting,
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  431. He was going to make it more illegal. Like double illegal. You wouldn't understand, it's a playground thing.
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  432. The "consumability" of an EV battery is massively overblown though. They can last for decades. They do get lower ranges over time, but this happens very slowly, and a 20 year old EV that started with 300mi range will still have 100-200mi range on it, which is still plenty of a lot of drivers. People who need the maximum range can buy newer ones every 10 years or so, and sell the older ones off to people who make shorter trips.
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  433.  @roseclipper  Japan's national debt is 200% of their GDP, they're doing just fine. It's not a problem. What WOULD be a problem is defaulting on the national debt, so let's get that solved, and then worry about the debt to GDP ratio.
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  434.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  I think the only one he played a role in starting was the one in Gaza, but I was replying to the idea that no wars started while he was in office. If we're talking about wars started by the President, then Biden didn't start either either, and in fact ended a few.
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  435.  @ClassicFIHD  Because the debt is not the deficit, it is the total amount owed. If we stopped doing anything at all right now, the debt would continue to grow based on previous commitments. For example, Trump's tax cuts for billionaires blew a hole trillions of dollars deep into the next ten years of US budgets. We raise the debt ceiling so that we can afford to pay off our existing commitments and to pay off the interest on the existing debt.
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  436. Barr, man, you ARE the "cartel!"
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  437. It's not about either of those things. You apparently missed a great deal.
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  438.  @billbillson5082  And the US is not attacking Russia as a result, but Ukraine has the right to defend themselves, and we should offer them full support in doing so. Russia should not be able to just invade any country they like so long as they haven't yet formally joined NATO.
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  439. What about January 6th?
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  440. Donald Trump is a complete joke outside of the MAGA bubble.
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  441. Oh, this will be GOOD. More testimony from witnesses, and more juries finding that Trump was guilty.
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  442. This is why it took us years to get Trump's tax records.
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  443.  @Alpha-ic2us  How are they not?
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  444. That is incorrect. There was no pork added, and they were just looking for an excuse for why thy weren't going to vote on the bill.
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  445. We generally already had the same tariffs that other countries had. These are new tariffs on top of those.
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  446. Yes, this was the plan all along.
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  447.  @mdav30  I think you want it to be simpler than it is. It is very complicated. Yes, it would be nice if we could cleanly hold debate to the more "questionable" edges of it, but the fact is that there are plenty of people even in blue states that try to deny the existence of any trans person, especially any trans person who is not yet an adult, so we can't ignore that those people exist when having a discussion on the topic. I think that there can be reasonable debate around things like sports, but those debates need to keep in mind that some people participating will be coming at it from the perspective that "trans women are just men trying to cheat," and that while these people are idiots, they may also be Senators. The way I figure it, if we're going to debate trans people in women's sports, we need to start from the position that trans women are women, and that any group that is defined by "for women" needs to allow them to participate. So then the question becomes "what is the point of women's sports" in the first place, why is it not just "sports," and if we are going to have two different divisions of "sport," then perhaps instead of "mens" and "womens," there should be some other line drawn as to which people can participate in each.
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  448. That wasn't particularly relevant tho this case.
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  449. "Kidnapping and human trafficking is bad?" -Ron DeSantis, apparently
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  450. It was because at the time she didn't think she would be believed, but then a tape came out of him admitting that he does this sort of thing regularly, and several other women came out with their own stories, and she felt that perhaps she would be believed. A jury did believe her, but as you can see, there are still those who would prefer the word of someone who openly admits to sexually assaulting women over one of his victims, so she had every reason to be hesitant about it in the 90s.
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  451.  @CasualMisinformationSpreader  Certainly more moral and decent than their enemies, right?
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  452. It's the hip new way for kids to say they're mad at their parents. Better than pregnancy, I guess.
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  453.  @tiredox3788  They have a right to be dicks, but nobody has to like that they're choosing to be dicks. I don't see anyone sanctioning India over this, it just isn't worth pissing them off, but like I said, I don't think it causes actual problems here. It's like if someone loses their $100K per year job, and then their friend starts paying them $100 a week to do some odd jobs around the house (if you know what I mean, nudge nudge), it might give them something to eat or whatever, but it's nowhere close to balancing out their old salary.
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  454. But also, they had to go to SeaWorld San Antonio, so, that's still coming out behind.
    12
  455. With what President Musk's been up to, what difference could a shut-down possibly make? What's not already shut down?
    12
  456.  @HeliosHarish7  If a given local government has thousands of home owners, and there is a project that would add a few hundred units, then even if the project is finished and filled by the next election, there will likely be more annoyed nimbys that want to punish the people responsible than there would be happy new residents that would want to reward them with votes. And assuming one or more elections happen in between, there's no way they would keep their jobs.
    12
  457. The thing about progressives is that they are always moving forward toward a better world, while conservatives always stay exactly where they were as teenagers.
    12
  458.  @RUESPEED1  A lot of states allowed early counting of early ballots, which is why they could get results out faster. Other states, especially swing states controlled by Republican governments, made this slower by only starting the counts on election day. They believed that by increasing chaos into the process, it could make attempts to claim election fraud more viable. They overestimated how gullible the American people were.
    12
  459. That's what the taxes are for.
    12
  460.  @kmoses582  Who told you that the weather hasn't been worse lately, overall? Damaging storms have been increasing in intensity over the past few decades, according to all credible investigation into the topic.
    12
  461. + Michael Berthelsen No, Assassin's Creed is about Assassins fighting Templars. There are plenty of other game franchises that are about fighting oppression and control that are also not Assassin's Creed. Asssassin's Creed games are about Assassins (big "A") assassinating political figures to advance the Assassin (big "A") cause opposing the Templars.
    12
  462. I think that if one company did manage to dominate all the current affordable luxury brands, and then shifted them to a slightly higher price, it would be difficult for anyone to take their place. Lower tier companies would struggle to make a product that is considered as good as the others, and even if they did, the audience would view them as inferior. I think that the inevitable result would just be that the price of this market space would rise to that new level, and it could take a decade or more before anyone manages to nudge it back down. How much that bothers you is very subjective, but I think that would still be the reality.
    12
  463.  @bills6009  That's not a reason though.
    12
  464. Yup, this never would have happened if Putin hadn't brought in Korean back-up.
    12
  465. Those prices started going up during the Trump administration. I think you miss the pre-pandemic pricing, which is fine, but has nothing to do with who the President is at the time.
    12
  466.  @importedmusic  The UK health system worked well, until Conservatives came in and started "making it more efficient" (ie, making it cheaper, but actually worse at getting its job done).
    12
  467.  @kingkuts  They send some of their money back home, but spend a lot of it here on food and housing. They add more to the Us economy than they take from it. Has someone been telling you lies to the contrary? Do they control you through fear?
    12
  468.  @PyroGothNerd  How would you be better prepared to determine whether it was real or fake than the news team or the authorities? Wouldn't it be more likely that you would think it was true?
    12
  469.  @DontTreadOnMe17  I have seen all the emails, none of them indicate that Facuis was lying. If someone told you that he was, then they either did not understand the public statement he made, or they did not understand what his email meant. And yes, covid 19 infections started in 2019, that is why it's called "covid 19" and not "covid 20." We didn't know the full scope of covid 19 until later, but we were aware that Something_ was circulating in Wuhan China. This has been public knowledge since last spring. And yes, Trump knew about the virus months before it was a matter of public interest, and if he had taken steps to protect the country at the time, similar to what Obama had done during SARS, he could have saved a lot of US lives. Everything else about your post is conspiracy theory nonsense.
    12
  470. Trump's all over it, at least.
    12
  471. That would involve actually governing. He is not there for that. He's there to play around with Republican grievances.
    11
  472. That might be a valid argument to make, but is not relevant to this particular case, because Disney can directly tie his decision to cancel their development district (and NOT all the OTHER development districts in the state), to their expressing negative views about the Governor. A government cannot cancel an existing benefit as retaliation against free speech.
    11
  473.  @sapphire5559  Access to abortions have been abolished in roughly half the states. The Supreme Court did not directly cause that, but it did allow that to happen. It would be like if a busy intersection once had a Stop sign and you just removed it one day, and accidents occurred. Yes, removing the Stop sign did not cause those accidents, but it did allow them to happen.
    11
  474. Every generation is the weirdest generation.
    11
  475. I'm not sure he does want her dead, he just wouldn't care if she was. But that's what he thinks about everyone who isn't himself, so that isn't unusual either.
    11
  476.  @benw8416  Yup. Can you imagine the idiots objecting to that? Those same folks were the ones in 1940 saying that we shouldn't be supporting England.
    11
  477.  jamesrkarolchyk1440  Yes, that is why Trump didn't want to present evidence, because perjury is more serious than the current charges.
    11
  478. Yeah, like who thinks Afghanistan is in the Middle East?
    11
  479. Yes, the Republican House has been a joke, Elect clowns, expect a circus. I can't wait for 2024 to clean House.
    11
  480. Why? Liz Cheney is one of the most Republican Republicans out there. What was wrong with her, aside from not going down on Trump like McCarthy did?
    11
  481.  @FirstNameLastName-wt5to  It has nothing to do with protecting children from predators. If it did, it wouldn't mention drag shows.
    11
  482. They're moving in the other direction.
    11
  483. That's not how this works though. Those jobs would not come back, because it would be silly for them to do so.
    11
  484.  @residentgrey  She's getting a chance to show evidence. That's what an "evidentiary hearing" means. But of course she doesn't actually have any evidence, so she will choose not to show any.
    11
  485.  @keenfire8151  He claimed that the 3.4% covid deaths was of the 750 excess deaths, when they were actually 3.4% of the 10,000 TOTAL deaths, or 350 total, which made roughly HALF the excess deaths. It made it seem like "unexplained excess deaths" was actually a significant thing, but in a population of hundreds of millions, it was a completely expected rounding error at most.
    11
  486.  @capoman1  Russia does not get to decide whether Ukraine joins NATO or not. Them being unhappy with Ukraine does not justify war.
    11
  487. We did change things for the better though, in 2020.
    11
  488. He cancelled it before blaming the other side for cancelling it. It's how he rolls. He never takes responsibility for his own actions.
    11
  489. No there is not. There is no "wasteful spending" in the bill, it all goes to important covid relief functions that will benefit American citizens.
    11
  490. That would be a matter for Congress, not the Vice President. What do you think the Vice President's job is?
    11
  491.  @jerrystewart7080  The US has had mail-in voting for over a hundred years now. Most developed countries do. Why do you believe that having ID is necessary?
    11
  492.  @OrtusMallum2075  Right, but they were nowhere NEAR as serious as the ones Trump had, and Biden cooperated with law enforcement once he realized he had them, instead of obstructing them. Completely different situations.
    11
  493. Among numerous other things, sure. But mainly he was encouraging an insurrection attempt.
    11
  494.  @jessicabelievejesusislord5207  Cool story, bro.
    11
  495. Well, you can't argue that he's a worse president than Trump was, at least.
    11
  496. To be fair, that's plenty good reason. Trump earned that reaction though his own behavior.
    11
  497.  @King_Nagger  You watch too much state television. Nothing NATO did "forced" any action on Russia's part. They chose to invade entirely on their own.
    11
  498. What's the big deal? It's just a shot. If you ask nicely they might even give you a lollipop, although I haven't seen anyone need one yet because most of them are grown ups.
    11
  499. You can be in favor of trimming the budget, but this is not the time to do that. This is the time to pay the bills we already have. The time to talk about the budget is called "the budgeting process," and that is something else entirely.
    11
  500. He did go to war.
    11
  501. You just talked about the things Obama delivered, not Trump. Trump just claimed he would do those things.
    11
  502. It's kinda funny how any politician even remotely doing their job gets called "a Democrat." Just goes to show where Republican priorities are.
    11
  503.  @billyin4c514  Yes. Exactly.
    11
  504. . . . you do get that it was a joke, right? He too is a chef.
    11
  505.  @chawnslopoke2619  The things Trump promised he'd do. We should all wan tot avoid that.
    11
  506. It's stock footage, they use whatever looks best to the audience.
    11
  507.  @SongMom8  That would be nice, but as an addition to the existing systems, it would fail completely as a replacement for them. And the system will only go bankrupt if they continue to break it. If it had been left alone over the years, it would be doing fine right now. If they restored what they stole from it, it would be fine.
    11
  508. She did a lot more than Trump has over the last eight.
    11
  509. These people actually cared about he job they were doing though, because it was vital, life saving work.
    11
  510. Yeah, any parent that has a gun in their house is 100% responsible for anything that ever occurs using that gun.
    11
  511. It's an interesting thing about "sound," because all sound is just causing air to vibrate in certain ways, and it would make sense that you could create some sort of "music box" that would project a sound exactly like a muscle car, using all "natural, physical motion," but without having an actual massive gasoline engine driving it.
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  512. If you consider this to be "editorializing," then that would be the problem.
    11
  513. "Conservative" and "Authoritarian" have become synonyms in America.
    11
  514.  @JustSomePerson8  People don't actually use them, outside of cartoons.
    11
  515.  @tonybattaglio4625  Because they were not at that base. See, this is why "what I saw with my own eyes" is often a poor judge of what actually happens in the world. You can only ever see 0.000001% of the world with your own eyes.
    11
  516. Yup, they can't fix stupid.
    11
  517. I'm pretty sure it's "WHOM." . .
    11
  518.  @mylanmiller9656  The Democrats always vote the correct way, but only a few of the Republicans occasionally vote alongside them. Sadly, the Republicans have packed the bench with people who put party above the Constitution, while Democrats have made more responsible picks. That's what happens when you pull your list from the Federalist Society.
    11
  519. Lol. Another example of "We demand Biden resign for doing things that Trump did much worse."
    11
  520.  @danielwebb8402  It's no coincidence, Islam is a Judaic religion, same as Christianity. They all have equal religious hold on the region. The Israelis just seem unwilling to share it.
    11
  521.  @aucontraire1986  "Ten minutes after buying a home. . ."
    11
  522.  @xIcyStarzz-yz7my  "Hamas " is not just one person. Some can be in tunnels, others can be in schools, others can be in tunnels under schools, all at the same time.
    11
  523.  @othalabro8663  People are responsible for their own decisions, "cause and effect" does not apply. If leftists say "maybe gay people aren't a bad thing," and someone's response to that is "well I guess I have to join the fascists now," then that's really the problem of that fascist joining the fascists, not of "the left."
    11
  524. They have to know that Evangelicals worship their golden calf now, not God.
    11
  525. No, most whales can more than afford it. "poor gambling addicts" are a statistical blip, because they could not afford to whale for long enough to matter.
    11
  526.  Jacob Grimms  Floyd didn't try to break into an FBI facility and then fight with cops though. He was just straight murdered. That was the problem.
    11
  527. More scary, he has no problems telling the truth under oath.
    11
  528. They have been. This is what that looks like.
    11
  529. "I hear your answers, but what I would like to do is nitpick minor word choices, rather than listen to what you're saying about meaningful issues."
    11
  530.  @slc1923  Sure it is, they just don't seem to be aware that they are.
    11
  531. There are already ways of producing industrial heating using green energy, they just haven't been widely used yet. While I do think that there will be SOME fossil fuel use for a long time to come, things like long haul air travel that are very hard to convert, It's important to remember that it's not necessary to eliminate ALL fossil fuel use, just to massively reduce it in the areas where we CAN. It's like that old meme people pass around of the EV that's run out of charge and is being recharged by a diesel generator, yeah, that one incident is still a wasteful use of fossil fuel, but assuming that this does not happen often, the EV is still way more carbon neutral than a gasoline car that burns gasoline for every mile it travels. The perfect is not the enemy of the good.
    11
  532. @ That's sad.
    11
  533. If his voters wanted someone to work for the people of their state, they would have voted for a Democrat. They just wanted someone to air out their grievances.
    11
  534. Except for all the other ones.
    11
  535. Yeah, but he didn't get anything in return, so that wasn't a "swap," it was just a gift to the Taliban.
    11
  536.  @mydogsbutler  I would expect it would be harder to target a smartphone than a pager. Higher levels of security.
    11
  537.  @mattwilliam3410  That wouldn't help. Removing the guns would though.
    11
  538.  @Robert08010  If a parent chooses to take on the responsibility of removing their child from an accredited curriculum, then they take on the burden of responsibility of proving themselves successful at it. They deserve no "benefit of the doubt" if their child turns out poorly educated. If they do not feel up to that risk, then they should not pull their child from school.
    11
  539.  @HeritageSoftail  Yes, but much less than the billions spent by the previous administration for much less results. It's the job of the US President to spend billions of dollars achieving things that benefit the US people, this is what we elected Joe Biden to do, and it's what he has been doing.
    10
  540. You keep saying "Democrats" when you're talking about MAGA. Democrats have a ton of variety.
    10
  541.  @Gurra_Gforce  How could Florida be any better on that count? Have you seen who they put in charge?
    10
  542.  @mcb00  This is not the case.
    10
  543. "Oh no, don't come after our secret money!"
    10
  544.  @a.taylor8524  He carried weapons of war. He never said he fought in combat, you're mincing words into paste.
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  545. They can decide who to include on the ballot, but only so long as it follows the law. They couldn't just declare some random person ineligible "because we say so." But in this case, the 14th amendment determines that Trump is ineligible to hold the office of President, so they took him off the ballot. If they tried that without a legal justification, then it would be reversed.
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  546. Once the Ukrainians kick Russia out of their borders, Ukraine and Kazakhstan should agree to share that chunk of Russia that's currently between them and just split it down the middle. It would look so much nicer on the maps, and be a fair reparation for all the damage Russia's done so far.
    10
  547.  @joeblow229  That's what people said about the Italians and Irish.
    10
  548.  @thomasjohn6041  No, they provide lower risk relative to their value.
    10
  549.  @taduncan6614  So Russian propaganda would lead fools to believe.
    10
  550.  @jjkhawaiian  The opposite, actually. All those things have been improvising under Brand, when they had been in decline before him.
    10
  551. That's a terrible analogy. Russia was trying to move nuclear weapons into Cuba. They already had a military alliance with Cuba both before and after the Cuban missile crisis. At no point were there discussions to give Ukraine their nukes back.
    10
  552.  @Winterseeker  Ocean CO2 concentrations would reduce over time due to natural causes, IF the atmospheric CO2 stopped growing. There are also methods to speed up that process, but currently, oceanic CO2 is a much less direct problem for humanity, since the direct impacts are less significant (even to oceanic life).
    10
  553. Likely not paid, just people who cared about the topic but weren't students.
    10
  554. It's impossible for both "the Swamp to be on the run" AND "MAGA to be ascendent" at the same time. MAGA is the Swamp.
    10
  555.  @bldlightpainting  Good thing the other founders disagreed with him, right?
    10
  556. The right, you mean. You have the side grounded in reality and then you have the right. The other side of that.
    10
  557. @JackReacher-dc7es Not in the real world though, only in Trumpworld, where fiction is reality.
    10
  558.  @toni6379  No, it doesn't work in that direction, because that argument makes no sense.
    10
  559.  retromancer5693  Have you been talking to Donald again? You know he's lost his marbles.
    10
  560.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  That is not accurate. There were several wars started during his time in office, mostly in the Middle East and Africa.
    10
  561. Well, that's what you get when you indict clowns.
    10
  562.  @juantang0  Gaza attacked Israel last October, murdering 1400 civilians in cold blood, among other crimes.
    10
  563. The Attorney General is almost always released when a new administration comes in, Trump went through three himself. There's nothing odd about that.
    10
  564. @ That helps, but is not a solution to the core problem.
    10
  565. And zero lessons have been learned from history.
    10
  566. Memo back: It's not the taxes that makes your life unaffordable, it's your wages. Blame the company you work for.
    10
  567. We can agree that this is political payback though, right?
    10
  568.  @yoyohayli  Shhh, don't talk about the truth, they can't handle the truth. They aren't used to it.
    10
  569. If you're booed at a Texas GOP convention, then you know you must be doing something right.
    10
  570. US House Republicans "Can we get in on that?"
    10
  571. Well, there are studies, but most doctors are just not set up to handle unique cases. If there haven't already been research doctors that have figured out treatment paths to follow, most doctors just don't have any idea what to do. Answers will come over time, but right now, it's just too new and the data doesn't exist.
    10
  572.  @level_breaded5364  Then a lot of countries would do without IMF money. /shrug
    10
  573.  @drawingdead9025  Yes, 9% does go to the people. And also the other 91% too.
    10
  574. What do you expect it to change to?
    10
  575.  @MS-ql8ek  Then why did gas prices start going up eight months before Biden took office? What did Trump do to cause that?
    10
  576. It's almost like school was out for the summer or something. . .
    10
  577. And yet, read the comments section, there are dozens of children who believe the videos.
    10
  578. Lol, you think anyone respected Trump? He was an international laughingstock.
    10
  579. But if the guy was right wing, and motivated by right wing grievance, then it is also a right wing issue.
    10
  580. The Russians lost far more though, such is war.
    10
  581. Fraud is still illegal though.
    10
  582.  @kylespevak6781  I don't really care what goes on in your twisted imagination. I only care about what happens in the real world, and that never actually happened in any real world. If it ever did, then you wouldn't need any laws specifically targeting drag performances, there are plenty of existing laws against lewd behavior around children that already cover that. All THIS law said was that perfectly acceptable behavior would no longer be acceptable if the performer were in drag at the time. It had nothing to do about preventing lewd behavior.
    10
  583. Folding Ideas did a great breakdown on it, "Line goes up."
    10
  584. Yeah, some people just don't understand how "averages" work, and think "I know some women who will vote for Trump, therefore, it can't be that the average woman is not!" It's sad, but Trump loves the uneducated.
    10
  585. Their age is not the problem. Their choice of political party is. The current GoP is incapable of participating in government as mature adults.
    10
  586. In this case? Trump.
    10
  587.  @Oystein87  So you believe these phrases are facts?: " Most if us btw wants fossil fueld cars." "before the technology is ready." These seem like opinions to me. In my opinion, the technology is ready, at least for the programs government are currently pushing. Also, nobody is arguing against using oil as a raw material, only against burning it as a fuel source. There is still likely to be oil pumped even after 100% EV adoption, at least until it runs out.
    10
  588. "Play genocidal games, win genocidal prizes."
    10
  589. What is important is that books no be removed because a small minority of concerned adults want the book removed. They should not get to decide which books are available to other people's children.
    10
  590. Are you talking about how vote counts tended to shift more blue as more absentee votes were counted up? What's wrong with that? You keep counting until ALL votes get counted, including the blue ones.
    10
  591.  @IlPinnacolo  There are plenty of homes in coastal regions that are not so lucky. It really depends on the area.
    10
  592.  @IlPinnacolo  Well, yes, but the thousands of people who have spent decades researching this stuff have reached the conclusion that these processes are the most significant tipping point among all of these processes. All other elements have been considered and accounted for. Aside from "magic," I guess. If anyone has a competing theory, then the burden on them is to prove that their theory is more likely, not just to cast vague doubts on the existing evidence.
    10
  593. Heaven provided Jack Smith and Fani Willis.
    10
  594.  @mcapple7651  The House Minority Leader is not as useful as the House Usher. At least the Usher knows where the bathrooms are.
    10
  595. Why do people keep suggesting "people who are in the tank for Trump" as the host? Is it because they know he can't win a fair debate?
    10
  596. Alex Jones says a lot of untrue things. Why is this one surprising?
    10
  597. Because there is a Republican majority in the House, and they do what he wants. How is this difficult to understand?
    10
  598. Yes! Vote blue, no matter who, or the Republic is doomed.
    10
  599.  @yapdog  Well, if some random guy on Youtube comments doesn't know what someone does for a living, it must be "crimes," right?
    10
  600. It's been far too long since a conservatives has said or done the correct thing. Probably years at this point. Sad.
    10
  601. Nominate Hakeem Jeffries and get enough sensible Republicans to vote for him to make him speaker. It's as likely an outcome as anything else at this point. Democrats never had ANY reason to support McCarthy in the role. It's idiotic to pretend that they did.
    10
  602. I thought she did that like a decade ago. She certainly wasn't a Democrat.
    10
  603. God forbid Republicans ever get back in the majority. We'd never survive it.
    10
  604.  @jamesbrucker178  Jim Jordan would never do that, because he's pro-groomer, like most Republicans.
    10
  605. The was proven guilty of insurrection during this trial, the Judge found that. There is no need for a guilty verdict for the 14th amendment to apply though, it does not say anything in there about there being an indictment or verdict first.
    10
  606. That's a good tip-off that there is no actual story here, and that it would be irresponsible to report on it. Grassley's "mystery source" is full of complete nonsense, and should not be given any attention. All the "allegations" are just pure fanfiction.
    10
  607.  @tylzzr  The difference is that ABC also has news content and journalists, Fox does not.
    10
  608. This is the main problem I have with FB, they claim to have human employees, but every interaction with them is automated, no matter what. However many humans they employ, they need 100x as many, at least, because their robots just ain't cutting it.
    10
  609.  @mrbaab5932  Yes, they were warned of the danger, that area is on a US watch list as being high risk. But ultimately, it's their choice to go anyway.
    10
  610. He meant that they'd lowered the cots of prescription drugs and solved some of Medicare's funding issues, but he fumbled the delivery because or his stutter.
    10
  611.  @brak1296  That's not why.
    9
  612. Exactly, which is why he was voted out last election and Biden was put in his place.
    9
  613.  @anakides  True. Socialist countries tend to do a lot better than the non-socialist ones.
    9
  614. This topic had nothing to do with the border. It was about an American Citizen Senator attacking an American Citizen.
    9
  615. This is a beautiful take on the ship. So much attention to detail.
    9
  616. "The American people," you mean.
    9
  617. He raised it last time too, and told people he'd made things better. He could install a toilet seat on their face and they would thank him for it.
    9
  618.  @jamskinner  There is a thing called reasoning. Most people are very bad at it, so it can be difficult to convince them of a correct point of view, but VERY easy to convince them of a view that confirms their biases. I like your viewpoint on this, I REALLY wish it was accurate to the world we live in, but unfortunately, it is not, and behaving as if it was would be foolish.
    9
  619. It's not Israel that's holding up aid to Gaza, it's Egypt. If you're going to report on it, report on it accurately.
    9
  620. This is a state case, not federal one.
    9
  621. Russia earned that response through their behavior. The US does not do this recklessly over petty differences of opinion, they do it when a major world power invades another without any justification.
    9
  622. Not really, you still cast your main vote for that person. It just makes the result more accurate to what people really want.
    9
  623. The US does not blockade or attacks ships from Cuba or Venezuela. We could, but we don't. Also, there is no case whatsoever for the Houthi's actions. They are attacking international shipping indiscriminately. These ships have no role whatsoever in the Gaza conflict, the Houthi are just throwing a violent temper tantrum.
    9
  624. This is about the dignity and respect for the woman being told she needs to use the men's restroom.
    9
  625. It was a local golf course on a Sunday, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon.
    9
  626.  @fooboomoo  Well, you don't hire a consultancy firm to say "well that's a stupid idea." You hire them to say "well IF you're going to pursue this stupid idea, then I guess this is how you could do it. . ." They need to be productive!
    9
  627.  @FeelingPeculiar  They seem to have gotten that stuff right, which parts specifically do you think they got wrong?
    9
  628. Nah, These guys got caught and had their security clearances revoked. The system works.
    9
  629.  @Gnrnrvids  He "misread" it multiple times, and it seemed to be driving his entire point. IF only 3.4% of excess deaths were covid deaths, then that might actually be a big deal, since that would mean that 96.6% of the excess deaths were "something else," and what could those be? There might be something important there. But when nearly HALF the deaths are covid deaths, then that is basically just what you would expect to see, nothing unusual there. 350 excess covid deaths, and then the rest are just within the standard margin of error for such a vague estimate as "excess deaths." Remove the "misreading" and he doesn't have a point anymore. Remember that the "written statement" is not his, that is just the officially reported statistic. his entire contribution is the verbal part, him reacting to his misunderstanding of that statistic, and you can tell from the comments that most of the people who watched the video BELIEVE his misreporting of it, rather than recognizing that he got it wrong. Even if he did make an honest mistake, it is his responsibility to correct the record.
    9
  630. No, it's a regulatory body authorized by Congress to fulfill those duties.
    9
  631.  @kimwarburton8490  The problem is that it's not possible to pull CO2 out of either the air OR sea faster than we are pumping it out, using any feasible methods.
    9
  632. Did you see Breet Baier OWN Trump the other day? Wow. Basically tied up Jack Smith's case in a neat little bow and handed it right to him.
    9
  633. But also he's done a lot of crimes, so it's sort of a distinction without a difference in this case.
    9
  634.  @1carus63  Yes, because American Citizens live in the world too. Only a tiny fraction of the relief bill, less than 1% of it, goes to foreign aid, and it's directly to help with the pandemic. For all the people who whine about refugees coming across the border, remember that the easiest way to prevent that is for US foreign aid to make their own countries worth staying in. If Trump had spent his border wall money on supporting the people of Central America, they wouldn't be coming here.
    9
  635.  @FelixBat  The sanctions are not done through the UN, they are unilaterally handled by the member states, so Russia has no "veto power." I actually do support removing Russia from the security council though, on the grounds that they were never admitted in the first place (only the Soviet Union was, and Russia's been allowed to stay out of courtesy).
    9
  636. Well, obstructing justice just makes things a lot worse. There are cases in which the willful commission of a crime is the core problem, but "possession of classified materials" is something that is EXTREMELY common at the higher levels of government, and if everyone who did it got arrested and had the book thrown at them then nothing would ever get done, for either party. The standard tends to be that so long as the documents aren't too serious, and so long as it could reasonably be considered an accident that they ended up in the wrong place, then it's ok.
    9
  637. @ Yup, he definitely does appeal to small children.
    9
  638. "Restrictive" isn't a linear scale. What matters is whether or not the restrictions are applied fairly to all citizens. When restrictions are designed to apply unfairly, or to reduce people's ability to vote, that's when it's the role of the Justice Department to try and fix it.
    9
  639. Also Fable 2's dog. Your dog or the world? Dog, definitely dog.
    9
  640.  @amberfitz-randolph392  Yup, political theater over nothing, just like this Biden situation.
    9
  641.  @randeldaniel5437  Exactly! Biden tried to get the immigration laws improved, but Trump said "no."
    9
  642.  @disalazarg  That is not why Venezuela has issues. You should watch the EE on Venezuela. Also, the idea that "intelligent people do not move on social benefits" is something believe by people who are not in that category themselves. That is why California has the strongest economy in the US. The homelessness crisis has more to do with more people wanting to live there than they have homes to house them. It also doesn't hurt that they have year-round pleasant weather.
    9
  643. The Republicans that abolished slavery became Democrats in the 1960s and vice versa. The Republicans of today would have been the Know Nothing party in the 1800s.
    9
  644. That depends entirely on whether you're watching Russian news or not.
    9
  645. You shouldn't take this as the judge thinking that her case has merit, judges allow very silly cases to proceed on a regular basis. All the judge is saying is that she has made some claims which might not be idiotic on their face, so she'll need to present evidence to back them up. Once she fails to do this, those cases would also be dismissed.
    9
  646.  @The_Kiosk  Oh, sorry. My intention was to point out that Kari Lake's case is nonsense, and justice demands that it go nowhere fast. Bots don't "discourage" election deniers, bots support these efforts to undermine democracy, because that is what benefits Chinese and Russian interests. Of course, "the bots just don't want Lake to win" is exactly the sort of thing a bot would say.
    9
  647. The taxpayers of New York state.
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  648. Trump only speaks in word salad.
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  649. The wall doesn't do anything though.
    9
  650. Too bad, As American tax-paying citizens, we the people support Ukraine. If you don't want WW#, then turn around in your desk and ask Putin to leave.
    9
  651.  @bababababababa6124  This is exactly what the people of Ukraine were saying a week or so before the invasion. . .
    9
  652. Calling it pro-woman would be inaccurate though, because it's actually anti-woman.
    9
  653.  @albusai  No, this is a fairly recent change. Last few weeks, mostly.
    9
  654.  @Fairenough642  So don't order delivery. If it's more than you want to spend, you don't have to spend it. But that's the amount that it MUST cost to be worth doing, so if you aren't willing to pay that cost, then delivery is just not an option for you. You don't get to eat your cake and have it too.
    9
  655. You can find coverage of that story in other pieces. Basically, it's going well so far, aside from the Trump supporters threatening FEMA workers.
    9
  656.  @wadewilson524  That's a misuse of the concepts Orwell was discussing. Orwell was actually arguing AGAINST the same sort of misinformation I am. The problem with 1984 was not that an authoritative voice was telling people what was true, the problem was that the things they were saying were true, weren't actually true. They were presenting misinformation as truth, and THAT was the problem. So long as what is said IS true, there is no conflict. "For instance, if creationism is determined as the “right side” of the debate by whomever gets to be the arbiter of truth , then research or opinion on evolution becomes suppressed. " And? That should be a given, in an actual scientific debate. Nobody should have "opinions" that contradict the evidence without data to back them up. Now, if there were any evidence to support creationism, then it would be a more open debate, but in lack of any such evidence, there is no virtue in enabling those who refuse to accept that they are wrong. "Even on the nuances of climate change, highly qualified scientists have differences of opinion." On minor details? Sure, and rational debate continues on such topics. But on the broader points? No, there are no highly qualified scientists that disagree with the general consensus, and it's a distortion of reality to pretend otherwise.
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  657.  @hamhamc00l87  "Winning" for Ukraine would not involve conquering Russia, nobody is after that, not even Zelenskyy. "Winning" for Ukraine is all Russian soldiers leaving their borders, all hostilities ceased, and reparations for all the damage Russia caused. And this, they will get.
    9
  658. Well, a "nationalist hero," maybe. But he's a national embarrassment to everyone else.
    9
  659. I think for LA, what you would want to do is 1. announce solid plans to build much more efficient public transit networks that would cost a lot of money, 2. announce congestion pricing that starts out negligible but will ramp up over a period of years so that it peaks after the public transit system is planned to be in good shape, then 3. take out loans against that new income, so that they can fund the expansions at a better rate than if they tried to just pay out of pocket.
    9
  660. It comes from the name of a Canadian law that expanded voting rights.
    9
  661. That's because there were no bus-sized drones in New Jersey. Or anywhere, really, they don't make any that big.
    9
  662.  @nickmenza2671  Yup. Trump simps even accuse the other side of projecting, which is itself a projection. It's projectception.
    9
  663. I wouldn't want any kid to feel pressured into changing themselves, but I don't think any really do. The medical guidance is to start with plenty of counseling, and the point of that is to figure out what the patient actually WANTS. They might be offered the option to take certain steps, and be talked through everything that would involve, but no good doctor would say "well, you must get surgery done, and try to convince the patient of that. I know that doctors are not perfect, and that there might be some shoddy doctors out there who would be overly aggressive about such things, but I think that for the most part such doctors only live as boogeymen on right wing social media, meant to scare parents and politicians. I do think that we need to take reasonable good faith steps to ensure that doctors treating potentially trans children are well educated on the dos and don'ts, that before any massive changes are made that the child has received effective medical guidance, but I also think that it's important that these tools remain available for those individuals that WANT to have them, and that proper medical guidance indicates would be helpful to them.
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  664.  @tylerthomas7763  But the way I see it, there is a ticking clock. And we need to respect that ticking clock. Plenty of decisions can wait until someone is an adult. Most surgical changes can wait, assuming that the person is reasonably stable without them. Obviously someone can wait to adulthood to decide to have children, or what job to take, or things like that. But puberty will happen sometime between 10 and 15 (assuming relatively average biology), and that WILL cause permanent changes to them, changes that would be a hideous scar to someone who rejects that gender. So that being the case, it would be cruel to withhold medical treatment from someone that could prevent that. We need to take them seriously. Apply appropriate counseling, make certain that they fully understand ALL sides of the topic, and that the doctors fully understand the patient's mental state and choices, but at the bare minimum they should have the right to hold off on puberty as they consider their options, and to enter puberty on their own terms if that is what they decide. This should be a long process to a point, but not if the purpose of it is to "stall out the clock" and force them into a circumstance that they do not want. The medical treatments should be available if that is what they want.
    9
  665. The pandemic was the match that lit the gasoline puddle though.
    9
  666. Well if Tuberville's on board. . . that's a serious red flag. . .
    9
  667. This will make the debt worse, not better.
    9
  668.  @MrRyan0412  They can ask Hunter about the classified documents in a public setting. He can accurately report that he was completely unaware of them until they become public news. Even if, by some chance, he had been aware of them, he could say as much in a public setting. The only thing he would be unable to do in public is discuss the contents of the classified documents, but there is no need for anyone to do so.
    9
  669. It's not really a "know how" issue, most of their chip designs already come from the US anyway. It's more just an infrastructure issue, they have invested the resources into building complex factories, while we did not.
    9
  670. Why? They're being put in charge of everything.
    9
  671. If you'd watched the interview in question, you'd have seen that he asked her to denounce Hamas and Hezbolah, and she did, and he wasn't having it because he knew for sure that she must not be capable of such a thing, given that she is Muslim. He behaved like an infant throwing a tantrum.
    9
  672. Also saving human lives, but this is not the pro-life party.
    9
  673. I do think that the next step for Amazon is to shift back toward the store model, but in a new way. Have their giant Amazon warehouses, but adjacent to that, have a showroom floor. Let companies with products lease that showroom space to show off large items that people would want to personally interact with before buying, or that would be prohibitive to return. Amazon would be proving them the space to demo their products to the customers. This would be more like an Ikea than a Walmart, something you wouldn't have in every town, but within driving distance for most people. For clothing, they would keep popular stuff in stock, and you could try it on in store. you could also "store order" an item off their website, have it delivered to the store rather than your home, try it on in the store, and if you didn't want to keep it, then it would remain in their custody and they could use their normal logistics to get it to another new customer, rather than considering it "damaged goods." This method could offer a discount to the consumer that the ship to home model would not.
    9
  674. "It turned out, no crimes took place." -Life
    9
  675.  @truthseeker-nv6ny  But, to be fair, they are Hamas supporters. Or at least, their actions speak for them.
    9
  676. Ok, so that should be the deal then. Russia pulls out of Ukraine completely, and once Ukraine is formally entered into NATO, Zelensky steps down. I think both Ukraine and Trump/Putin can get behind that.
    9
  677.  @darwinfinche9959  Whoever said that one officer could not appoint another? Officers appoint others all the time.
    9
  678. They do it in more sensible ways than the US is. It's kind of like if a toddler drives the car through the front door, and then you respond "well all those other drivers do a good job, so clearly driving isn't a problem."
    9
  679. I hope he understands that those minerals are in areas currently held by Russia, so unless Ukraine gets those back, they won't have rare minerals to give the US.
    9
  680.  @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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  681. "We have the biggest crowds in the history of politics-" except for all the other ones. He left the important part out.
    9
  682. But not one worthy of all this outrage.
    9
  683. Bigotry is a hell of a drug.
    9
  684. Yes, it's sad how many Trump fans just can't accept that their guy lost and are willing to stoop to violent means to cry about it.
    9
  685. Due process. It helps to prevent cases of mistaken identity, like the doctor from Lebenon who was recently deported.
    9
  686.  @NoneOfYourBeesWax1  How much of that do you believe were related to Reagan's policies, and, unrelated question, how gullible do you believe yourself to be?
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  687.  @NoneOfYourBeesWax1  I meant that it was incorrect that it improved under Reagan. It improved temporarily during part of the years he happened to be in office. If that argument is too complex for you to follow, then I don't think there's much value to further discussion, but I guess you'd be in plenty of company.
    9
  688.  @AFishBicycle  Or a heart attack. Have you seen how he eats down at Mar-A_Lago?
    9
  689.  @williamkeys6782  You clearly don't know what that word means. Put it back on the calendar.
    9
  690.  @Nicktheguy24  No, seriously, if Trump were to say "on your knees" to ANY of his supporters, they would drop before he could even get the zipper undone, but at least he's out of the White House.
    9
  691. Because he actually did the crimes for which he was punished.
    9
  692. Will it be as memorable as the Nuremberg rally? Is that what they're aiming for when this loser speaks?
    9
  693.  @RUESPEED1  That wasn't the problem either. The problem is that they counted up each vote cast fairly, and the results weren't want MAGA fans wanted, so they had a big baby cry about it.
    9
  694.  @edpeterson2293  And Trump just can't complete an intelligent sentence, period.
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  695. I feel like you have been misled if you believe that was their actual mission statement. That sort of lends credence to the idea that misinformation is dangerous if even you are so easily fooled.
    9
  696. Oh, that's nice of him to offer considerably less than he's legally required to give them. But no, instead he'll give them the entire amount.
    9
  697. If the voters don't vote how you want, ignore them and install your own cronies. That's the fascist way, after all. Look at the comments with all the good little fascists cheering it on.
    9
  698. Yes, but listening to a story is a different thing than reading. Not necessarily better or worse, just separate, like "walking" and "riding."
    9
  699. The two had nothing to do with each other. The existence of USAID did not delay aid to Hawaii by even a second.
    9
  700. Aside from 88 million Americans.
    9
  701.  ralphferley2602  The economy would actually go down, due to the higher inflation.
    9
  702. I wonder if there is a software solution to "reading while in passthrough." Make it so that it can recognize text where it exists, and then instead of just showing the text-covered object as a real time video feed, it could try to take a higher resolution static image of that text, and then project that broadly overtop of the video, so that the words would be sharper and more stable in the frame.
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  703. The point is to make them more convenient to where people live, which wouldn't be a problem if not for fascists.
    9
  704.  @slc1923  Unlike Meatball Ron and his jokester state.
    9
  705. I have one of the original G1 Grimlocks, and it's amazing how similar this turned out, only even better.
    9
  706.  @JimGruver-l9l  5 good reasons to vote for harris? Better economic policy, better foreign policy, better infrastructure policy, better tax policy, better elections policy.
    9
  707.  @aaronandelise  It's not like Ukraine chose this. We help them to fight there, so that we don't have to fight here later.
    9
  708.  @Jerkasoid  They already searched ALL his property, at his request. He had nothing to hide because he is not a criminal.
    9
  709. Accidentally doing the right thing.
    9
  710.  @fordnut4914  No, the Republicans.
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  711. Yeah, this is the problem, people who don't understand how national debts work freaking out about the national debt. The rich will keep getting richer off of their ignorance.
    9
  712.  @benjaminclark7584  Jesus would vote for Biden.
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  713. I don't know if any states allow 15yo to get licenses. It's typically 16. You can get a learning permit at 15.5 though, which requires an adult driver to be in the car, and only during daylight hours.
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  714. I mean, he probably does spend most of his day in a bunker, it would be irresponsible to do otherwise, but it's cool he does these photo ops to let people know he's still there and still fighting.
    9
  715.  @daviddeegan4072  Vaccination reduces the spread of the virus. You getting vaccinated makes it less likely that it will spread to those more vulnerable than yourself, and less likely that mutations will occur that make the virus more deadly. But of course that doesn't make things better for you, so you can't be bothered to care.
    9
  716. Not particularly, no. The medical experts and anyone paying attention always considered that a possibility, and one that really shouldn't bother anyone. Flu shots are annual, after all.
    9
  717. One thing I love is that some Christians will say "you can ignore most of the commandments like not eating pork or shrimp, because Paul said Jesus said so at some point," but then also say "but these ten commandments need to be EVERYWHERE.
    9
  718. @ But realistically, when has he ever not lied? Seems unlikely this would be the first time, right?
    8
  719.  @kg3095  They were mistaken. You can check for yourself. If they didn't have the cheese on their shelves, it wasn't due to tariffs.
    8
  720. Yes, it's called "laundering." Al Capone had plenty of legitimate businesses too.
    8
  721. @ Man, those were simpler times, eh? I'd much prefer to have a President who stutters again over. . . whatever this mess is.
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  722. Yeah, that trend will balance out once Florida is floating.
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  723. On the one hand, the west should not take any aggressive actions, but on the other, you cannot allow bullies to go unchecked, or they will just keep nibbling away at peaceful order until there's nothing left to defend. I think this is a reasonable action on their part. It is their own territory, after-all.
    8
  724.  @richt7525  That's not true at all. It's perfectly possible to fix things without causing permanent damage.
    8
  725.  @thedoctor155  She didn't lie about any of that though. You have just accepted the lies she was debunking.
    8
  726.  @TheMainLead  So Russia would tell you to justify their unjustifiable invasion. Hitler had all sorts of "good reasons" for invading his own neighbors, and his puppets in the UK and US parroted his talking points like you parrot Putin's here. But no, NATO can put missiles on Russia's border all they want, that never justifies Putin invading Ukraine, which isn't even a NATO country. The two are unrelated. It's like saying that you don't like how one neighbor plays his music too loud, so you decide to shoot the neighbor on the other side. How would that make any sense to a rational person?
    8
  727. Republicans: "Books bad."
    8
  728. Yeah, we really need to pass comprehensive immigration reform that would let these guys in without so much drama.
    8
  729. Not every woman who is pregnant chose to get pregnant.
    8
  730. The Tested channel recently did a sponsored video on how cruise ships get made, and apparently all the cabins are built next door and then slotted into place on the ship. You could apply a similar concept to buildings, at least as high as you could get a decent crane.
    8
  731.  @undercoveragent9889  Which candidate was bought by Elon Musk?
    8
  732. I'd take that bet. I bet that they signed Elon's petition.
    8
  733. How would that fix the budget? You fix the budget by reversing the Trump tax cuts for billionaires.
    8
  734. Then he shouldn't have continued with the defamation.
    8
  735. Well, one of those two, at least, but Republicans aren't known for picking leadership based on intelligence anyway, so it shouldn't hurt her.
    8
  736. The children of criminals have the responsibility to hold their parents accountable.
    8
  737.  @joshcourt1393  The same way to handle all imaginary things. You set them aside and embrace reality instead.
    8
  738.  @diobrando6910  They wan to pretend that it's possible to live in their world without acknowledging that the rest of the world exists.
    8
  739.  Chase Parrish  You are the one that said that one million times 325 million = 325 million. You cannot get more moronic than that.
    8
  740. Depends on if Trump pulls out. He usually does, makes the payouts cheaper.
    8
  741. She did say that she didn't support terrorism. That is not what this exchange was about.
    8
  742. Exactly. Biden's doing everything right here, Abbot couldn't be more wrong.
    8
  743.  @FactStorm  It's not equal fault. The fault lies in the hostage takers.
    8
  744.  @rhiannonbittle1454  Yes, or that. Sure. That works too.
    8
  745. Isn't everyone?
    8
  746. It's a misleading way of reporting that only 26% strongly approved.
    8
  747. Did this person do anything to you?
    8
  748. Neither of them have read the Constitution.
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  749. House Republicans had ONE job over the past few weeks, and that is the impeachment power.
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  750. That's because you weren't paying attention.
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  751. It's both. He;s supporting both. Like Jesus would.
    8
  752. This is the thing, there are risks to acting, and there are risks to not acting, so those who say "we should wait until we have piles and piles and piles of research that all say that this is what should definitely be done" are just delaying the process. It's possible that sometimes people act too quickly and that they do a treatment that won't work out for them, but that's true outside the trans community as well, and it's also true that not acting quickly enough has negative consequences. So at the end of the day, "perfect information or nothing" is a terrible standard, we should act using the best information available at the time and continue to collect additional information so that future choices can be even better informed.
    8
  753. But there is a mile wide distinction between not wanting people to illegally cross the border and what Trump is saying.
    8
  754. Perhaps, but the point is to bilge water until we can reach land. Plenty of ships rely on bilge pumps in emergency situations. You're right in that applying a bailout and then actng like you've solved the problem is pointless, but if you combine it with a strategy to fix the systemic issues then it's necessary triage.
    8
  755. She in fact was not.
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  756. The problem is that Trump supporters, like National Socialist supporters, actually believe this.
    8
  757.  @jaredhicks5655  Perhaps so, but again, a society that cannot afford to pay a living wage does not deserve luxury services. If you can't afford to pay a decent rate to delivery drivers, then pick the food up yourself. If you value not having to pick the food up yourself, then pay a fair amount of money for someone to do that labor for you, not just "whatever you happen to have in your pocket at the time."
    8
  758.  @danielwebb8402  They took the existing fascist party structures and reconfigured them into this new party, rather than saying "we reject everything about the fascist party and want to do something completely different." They even kept the logo.
    8
  759. He's only had a Republican education. They don't explain such things.
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  760.  @tolowokere  Nothing about the bill enforces the rights of parents, it only allows them to interfere with schools that they do not agree with, which should not be their right. The school is not there for them, it's there for the children. One parent does not get to dictate the curriculum for an entire classroom of students. If the parent does not like the curriculum being taught, then they can remove their child from that school, not change how the school is run. And yes, the bill limits discussions of LGBT people in classrooms, which we should agree is wrong. There is no reason why entire swaths of humanity should be considered forbidden from classroom discussions. It should also be pointed out that the language of the bill is intentionally extremely vague, so while you might make arguments that it "doesn't do this," or "shouldn't be used like that," the law itself certainly can and has been used to stifle reasonable discussion. "Age appropriate" carries a lot of weight, since some people would consider even mentioning LGBT people to a child would not be "age appropriate." Also, you missed my point if you thought that I expected her sexual acts to be discussed in class, NOBODY is in favor of that, but if she engages in LGBT activities, then she should not be in favor of legislation that prevents that concept from being socially acceptable to discuss. NOBODY is promoting discussion of sexual acts in young student classes, but discussing LGBT people has nothing whatsoever to do with discussing bedroom activities, and it would be disingenuous to pretend otherwise.
    8
  761.  @markburton5292  But that is provably false. We have tried "disproving them with fact," it does not work, because their response is "I see those facts, but I prefer my stories." The question is how do you fight the stories, knowing that facts have proven ineffective.
    8
  762. I doubt the mental fitness of anyone who could vote for Donald Trump, including Donald Trump himself.
    8
  763. "Too Long, Didn't Read." It's basically just slang for "keep it short and simple," and is often used as a preamble to a summary at the end of a post.
    8
  764.  @FireThemAll  Exactly. Any JB appointee would be better for any role in government than any Trump appointee is in any role in government.
    8
  765.  @bradye21playsIndieHorror  Hakeem Jeffries. He got more votes than ANY other candidate until the last round of voting. Both times.
    8
  766. We aren't sending them to help Lebanon.
    8
  767. To be fair, Joni Ernst is easily confused by very common sense things.
    8
  768.  @denisemiller1787  Lol, no, I'm not a MAGA member. Thanks for your concern though.
    8
  769. Can they keep her? Justice for Cricket.
    8
  770. I think the absolute largest thing that needs to be done is to provide large amounts of affordable housing that is within walking/public transit distance from the major businesses. A lot of traffic is generated by low income workers who live well outside of city centers, but those city centers need their employment to function. If they can get to their job without needing to use a road at all, then everyone can drive faster. The more of a city's population is housed more than five miles from where they work, the more traffic you will get, simple as that. A well balanced city is one where most of the population lives close to where they work, and most traffic comes from a relative few that live outside the city, and people moving between leisure activities outside of their normal daily pattern.
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  771. People understand that, they just also understand that outside of a handful of industries that are already manufactured in the US, it is pointless to "re-domicle" manufacturing to the US, since it's impossible to produce those things in the US at a competitive price. It's wasting money to achieve a goal that there is no good reason to achieve.
    8
  772. All you need to do is kneel and kiss the ring of the King, exactly as the Founding Fathers intended.
    8
  773. I would say "don't let the door hit'ya," but that wouldn't be honest of me.
    8
  774. How DARE he point out that Gaetz was talking absolute nonsense!
    8
  775.  @Kody-d3j  Musk spent more than Soros ever did. Why bring up Soros?
    8
  776. Is he nuts? The Democratic party can nominate anyone they choose. He has no say in that process.
    8
  777. Well it all makes sense to people capable of understanding it, but there are a lot of people out there who overestimate their own intelligence, and think that just because they don't understand something, that there must be something wrong with the data.
    8
  778. Definitely. They have a golden cow and everything.
    8
  779. @ No, they save millions of lives, and that is all that they do. They do not "run amok," they spend tax payer dollars in the way Congress assigned them to do, saving lives.
    8
  780. Nope, at least 60% of women disagree with her.
    8
  781. WRAL.
    8
  782. It wouldn't be Youtube, it would be MSNBC. Moderation is done on a per-channel basis.
    8
  783.  @DanBrough  It wouldn't account for the current warming trends though, it's not significant enough. It would be like blaming summer on someone leaving their oven on.
    8
  784.  @Sporxz  Trump was also never legally allowed to have them, the difference was that when asked about them, he obstructed justice.
    8
  785.  @wothin  NATO didn't invade anyone, they just prevented those governments from harming their own citizens. NATO does not rule in either country, nor intended to. That all goes back to "if you're worried about NATO finding your behavior pretext for intervention, then just don't be evil, and they will have no pretext."
    8
  786. You don't seem to know what a drag show is. No, it is not a burlesque show. There can be burlesque versions of it, but that's like saying that kids can't attend "dance shows" because strippers are dancers, or that they can't attend "music performances" because some heavy metal bands are pretty mature. Nobody is in favor of children attending shows in which lewd behavior is taking place, but the types of drag shows that take place for all-ages audiences involve nothing lewd or inappropriate.
    8
  787.  @BeTeLGeuZeX  "Accepting dollars" isn't generally part of a drag show, particularly where kids are involved. I think you're thinking of "strip shows" or something, which is an entirely different type of performance and would not be covered by the law in question. There's nothing wrong with children watching adults dancing around. Performers like the The Wiggles, or the Teletubbies, or various other performers over the years. Why would drag shows be treated differently? There is nothing disruptive to children's "psychology" about watching a drag show. What is disruptive to them is having shootings at their school in which they or their friends die, so maybe we should be more focused on reducing those?
    8
  788. "How dare she say true things about me?!!!"
    8
  789. So it seems that you are incapable of telling what to believe on your own.
    8
  790. Yeah, why wouldn't Elon take questions at his own cabinet meeting?
    8
  791. It is their core tenet.
    8
  792. This is a constitutional republic, and the constitution puts limits on who is allowed to serve in government.
    8
  793. As we elected them to do on our behalf.
    8
  794. Yeah, Trump fans don't get this, they think that the questions were hard to answer.
    8
  795. After Jim Jordan though, right?
    8
  796. Texas and Florida need to turn blue.
    8
  797. The point of a sanctuary city is not that they guarantee free housing there, it's that they won't turn you in to the feds for being there. They might have been able to let them stay if they'd had prior warning so that they could have better prepared for their arrival.
    8
  798.  @Oystein87  You have a lot of fossil fuel propaganda there.
    8
  799.  @Oystein87  And opinions are opinions. You presented a mixture of both, just like oil industry talking points.
    8
  800. "They didn't give us what we wanted" is never a justification for war. Russia chose to invade, that is what broke the peace.
    8
  801. It takes a thief to catch a thief. They target people just like them.
    8
  802.  @farvasstache6532  Nobody is arguing that you should be reading 50 shades to your 5 year old though, so what's the point? Again, parents have no ride to control what books other parents' kids have access too. They can tell their kids to not read certain books, but they should not be able to keep them out of libraries just because they object to the contents.
    8
  803.  @csaa1980  Some get adopted by better leaders who can turn them into quality family dogs. It at least gives the dog a chance at a better life. No dog is hopeless.
    8
  804. It was less that he was found innocent, and more that they didn't think anything he did was worthy of removal from office. It's not like he attempted an insurrection or anything.
    8
  805. This is the last generation in which The People stand any chance of winning against Corporations, and this Supreme Court was hand assigned to make that fight impossible.
    8
  806.  @kmoses582  You didn't say where you got your information either, I don't take that personally. You're counting Cat5s that made landfall at that strength. If you count all cat 5s recorded, there have been 42 total, eight of them being in the '00s, six in the '10s, and four over the past 4 years. That'd be 18 out of 42 over the past 25 years, compared to an average of 9 per 25 years over the previous 75, so basically double the rate. You can look them up yourself if you think I was making the numbers look pretty, they'll paint the same picture however you choose to line them up. Storms in the tropics are more or less a constant, they were always there and always will be, and where they make landfall and what is there to hit when they do will always be random, so it's always possible for one huge storm to hit one soft target and cause a lot of damage. But what we're facing here is that the storms being produced will be stronger than they used to be, and stronger in the future than they are today, just by a bit, but enough to have a massive shift to their potential harm, if they hit the wrong place. Imagine all the cat 1 and cat 2s that will become 2s and 3s and 4s instead.
    8
  807. If the Republicans do retake the house, they can open that permanent Benghazi committee they wanted! Instead of doing anything that would actually help Americans, of course.
    8
  808.  @justinbaker5672  It would be worse under Trump though.
    8
  809.  @LatinoLovecraft  There are far more Nazis in the Russian forces than in the Ukrainian ones. I'll root for the innocent victims here, Ukraine.
    8
  810. He had more experience.
    8
  811. During the Jan 6th time period, it was also used as a support for that cause.
    8
  812.  @wilburmcbride8096  You took the wrong lesson from Old Yeller. Yeller had rabies, he was incapable of surviving. Cricket just embarrassed her on a hunting trip, he could have lived a decade more of happy life if not for her malice.
    8
  813. No, it's not.
    8
  814.  @ColleenKatherineMurphy  If you were on the border right now, you'd know that things have been running extremely smoothly lately, since they planned ahead and got their resources in place to handle the migrants coming in.
    8
  815.  @thebluestig2654  There are plenty of restrictions on eligible voters. You should actually read the bill.
    8
  816.  @middleguy1776  She had much better credentials than any Trump pick for any role, at least. Including Trump's pick for POTUS.
    8
  817. The problem is that only a portion of congress is not representing us, roughly 220 members of the House and as many as 49 in the Senate. You can't only cut their salaries, you would have to cut other ones, which punishes the responsible members just as much as the irresponsible ones.
    8
  818. Also economists. Just in general. People who understand the economy. Those economists.
    8
  819. I do think that it's fair to define a market based on the outcomes. If someone goes out looking for "product X" within a certain price range, and there is only one company that provides that product, then that would be a monopoly on that product, even if other, different products exist. If there are multiple providers of that product, and they consolidate into one, then that is reducing competition within that market. Now whether this is "too much" is more subjective. Also, it's fair to point out that a market like this one is not necessarily easy to shift. If the bags got more expensive, that does not mean that a different brand could easily fill the gap in the marketplace, because they would not only need to build up supply chains to produce those bags, but also design them, AND they would need to build brand recognition, which would be essential in the space. Basically, companies producing "bargain" bags at the moment would not have the wherewithal to launch an "affordable luxury" brand, and even if they managed it, the customers would be slow to accept them. That is a legitimate concern.
    8
  820. Neither was Assad, to be fair.
    8
  821. He charged two people, they were just acquitted because he didn't have an actual case against them. That's what happens when no crimes were committed.
    8
  822. Yeah, they used to be a swing state, but they've gone a little nuts lately.
    8
  823. Yup. "World events."
    8
  824.  @patrickcoyne1292  That's not how taxes work. The voters pick the leaders, the leaders determine how the money is collected and spent, and eveyrone pays their share, whether they agree with those policies or not.
    8
  825. People who actually read the bill.
    8
  826. Elon Musk came into this world with a South African emerald mine, and this is what he chose to do with it.
    8
  827. He'd be inarguably better than the alternative though. Californians had a chance to pick a better candidate, they chose Schiff, so that's who it'll be.
    8
  828. Who do you think Trump works for?
    8
  829. On what charges?
    8
  830.  @noahboday2008  I never claimed that monetary inflation does not exist, I was only pointing out that it is a relatively small part of the current inflationary cycle, which seems to be what most people are concerned about. It's a bit like when people talk about stuff like "solar maximums" in relation to climate change, yes, those exist, and yes, they have some impact on global temperatures, but they are a drop in the bucket when discussing the current record global temperatures. Milton Friedman would agree on that.
    8
  831. And God protect Jack Smith as he does so.
    8
  832.  @KurtElliott  It was entirely legal for Pelosi to pick her committee from both sides. The Speaker picks the committees, anything else is a courtesy. She offered to allow Republicans to pick half, but they only nominated clowns.
    8
  833.  @qvb1201  That's what they said about the Wiemar Republic.
    8
  834. That's a misguided way to look at it though, because it implies that the information people get today is likely to be more accurate, when the reality is that the viewpoint people reach today is likely to be less accurate, since the "20 different viewpoints" they receive are likely to be algorithmically rabbitholed to tend to mostly follow the viewpoint the viewer already agrees with (or the culture of the site agrees with), and most people are in no way qualified to "do their own research" on complex topics, and tend to just find whatever easy answers turn up first in the search results, however reliable those might be. And that's before even getting into professional efforts by Russia, North Korea, China, and Faux News to actively mislead their audience into an altered world view.
    8
  835. All high demand concert tickets should be locked to a cell phone number or something, so that they can't be transferred to a different customer. This should prevent scalping over night.
    8
  836. This should be an open and shut case, it's obvious that this is what DeSantis is doing.
    8
  837. I doubt it, since they weren't engaged in insurrection at the time. Typically things like that are reserved for more serious crimes.
    8
  838.  @ricardogarcia-vi6hv  Yes, the current situation is the consequence of this bad administration.
    8
  839. Why do conservatives always start their posts with "As a Democrat. . ."? But it is good to hear you're voting for Biden, at least.
    8
  840.  @db7213  You're making a false semantic argument there. The point was that capitalism benefits the capitalists, those with the most resources to manipulate the system. It was not that all private individuals benefit. As an example, capitalism might ensure the highest amount of profit for the boss, while at the same time ensuring the minimum amount of compensation for their time for the employees. This satisfies the "private interest" of the boss, but not of the employees.
    8
  841. US Government in the 30s and 40s: "Awkward. . ."
    7
  842. If he doesn't want people to talk about his Nazi ties, then maybe he should just have fewer of them?
    7
  843.  @Chuckvsfrank1232 Yes, by the American voters, as the Constitution intended.
    7
  844.  @AlexM-oq5el  I think that there have been far fewer examples of communism of any sort than there have been of Capitalism. You can point to the most notable examples, like say the US as a success story of capitalism, but for every US, there are dozens of capitalist countries that are no better off than the USSR was, and many of them far worse. The major issues have much more to do with politics than they do with economics. The USSR happened to be an example of an authoritarian regime, and the hardships of their citizens were the result of that authoritarian regime. After they rose to power, the western powers took a stance of "never again (if we can do anything about it)" and would crush any nascent communist state where they could find it. The only ones "allowed" to exist were those sufficiently backed by the USSR to resist western pressures, which meant that A. They ended up following soviet-style policies, rather than forging their own pathways to success, and B. they were economically punished by the west, limiting their ability to thrive as a global power. I'm not arguing that this was necessarily a bad thing, from a political standpoint, the USSR was a serious threat, and denying them influence and support was as vital to global security as denying the capitalist modern Russia support is, but it is important to be aware of this as a reason why it is hard to fairly compare the economic models of capitalism and communism.
    7
  845.  @WAllen-bn1ej  That's irrelevant to the conversation at hand though, since no human lives are ended against their will.
    7
  846. That's rich, coming from someone who gave into the "American Taliban" on Jan 6th.
    7
  847. They're different humans. The intelligent ones are just shaking their heads at the stupid ones who wear the red hats.
    7
  848.  @DanBrough  They would insist this is a matter of opinion, and that all numbers are valid. Why is the math teacher censoring debate by saying that 5 is wrong?!
    7
  849. Americans.
    7
  850. I think Republicans should elect people who can read themselves, so they don't need things read to them.
    7
  851. "I'm with stupid."
    7
  852. They did not create legislation though, they only fulfilled their duties under existing legislation. As I've heard time and again "enforce the laws already on the books, unless Clearance Thomas' sugar daddy doesn't want you to."
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  853. The headline should be "Donald Trump afraid to debate Harris, needs his blankie."
    7
  854.  @edumazieri  The difficulty in removing, or more importantly, tweaking regulations is that you need new votes to get them removed, and there are often not as many people interested in doing that (especially not when it would actually be a good idea to do it).
    7
  855. Do you believe that the laptop should have had more of an impact on that election than it did?
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  856. Could we maybe get a judge who isn't in Trump's back pocket this time?
    7
  857.  @eldenringer6466  Because they offer far more risk to society than they do benefit.
    7
  858. Yes, he was trying to make a statement and the reporter was interrupting him.
    7
  859.  @dongrinolds140  No, it means bigger government, to manage these tariffs.
    7
  860.  @logangodofcandy  The tariffs would not be high enough to make it worth them not importing. You would need something like a 200-400% tariff for that to happen.
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  861.  @LuckyFlesh  Ah, that conspiracy theory. I can hardly keep track which lunatic cult conservatives have fallen into this week.
    7
  862. The Houthis attacked first. If they represent Yemen, then Yemen declared war on the US before the US did anything to them.
    7
  863. Yes, Mickey, people do get arrested for lying to the FBI. That is how the law works.
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  864.  @ImmaTwoPops  The DoJ never considered him a reliable source, but he was offering information, so they had to take it and see whether it was accurate. Turns out it was not accurate.
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  865. Why do you believe people would be more likely to vote for someone who was found liable of sexual assault?
    7
  866.  @AlZack-t7g  When you say "predictions that never happened," you must be referring to ones where the prediction was slightly off the actual reality, but they were still closer than not. They were aimed in the right direction, but just either overshot or undershot the actual result, which is to be expected for long term predictions on so complex a topic. The important thing to keep in mind though is how they were still aimed in the right direction, and how listening to those predictions would still lead to better outcomes than ignoring them. If any prediction was s_so_ off as to be better to ignore it, then it would never be picked up by the mainstream community in the first place.
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  867. Nor does it say that an ex-president is allowed to retain any documents at all.
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  868. I think Harris still has a chance.
    7
  869.  @galazore  That's the theory, but in practice it more often means "leave me alone and I'm going to do something harmful to you, and the government better not try to stop me. Do as you wish, so long as I'm ok with what you do, otherwise you'd better stop it."
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  870. He's working on making Russia great at the moment. He'll get to America eventually.
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  871. Basically, if the courts rule against Trump, and he refuses to abide by that ruling, then anyone would be legally authorized to ignore him and enforce the court's ruling without him, anyone who didn't do that would be an accomplice to his crimes, and eventually, they would all face criminal penalties, except maybe Trump himself, depending on the SC.
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  872. And of course, "master troll" is what the founders intended in a statesman.
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  873.  @bss3869  Nobody's life was ever improved by knowing who Ramaswamy is.
    7
  874. Wow. That's just sad. He's still triggered by something people made fun of him years ago? What an infant.
    7
  875.  @KevinWiley8  Her credential was in failing to make her dog great.
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  876.  @kemradovich2874  By saying that leaders are allowed to do crimes if they want?
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  877.  @coreyb9240  Because the American people are NOT "just getting one check." That is only one part of the bill. American people are also getting things like improved unemployment payouts, food aid benefits to families, funding to keep schools and transit open, a significant child tax credit, vaccine distribution, health insurance subsidies, etc. Basically, the $1400 is the floor of what people get, but the more in need people are, the more additional functions the bill provides for them. Just handing people cash is not always the best solution to a problem, but it can be a part of a solution. But yes, conservatives pushed the Democrats to lower the top-end of the eligibility requirements so that some people will be getting less. We need bigger Democratic majorities in the Senate so we can avoid that sort of thing in future.
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  878. Why would building the canal force discussions on the Montreux convention? Sure, they could charge tolls for people using the new canal, but wouldn't they still be prohibited from restricting travel through the natural routes?
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  879. He's given up on caring about his state.
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  880. It'll be ironic if these guys suffer more consequences for filming comedy skits in a congressional office building than many of the insurrectionists did for doing an insurrection.
    7
  881.  @777alemap  No, it was all checked out and found to be nonsense. Look into the case in which Trump's lawyers were sanctioned because it turned out all the "affidavits" they tried to pass off as "evidence" were full of nonsense and they could not provide any actual evidence to back any of it up.
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  882. It doesn't help at all.
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  883. The American alternatives won't exist though. So you just won't have the thing at all.
    7
  884.  @rosebennett6015  He is working for himself. He is cutting anything that might get in his way. He couldn't spare a second thought for what will happen to you.
    7
  885.  @PatrickMcAsey  Because they want to have sex, but lack access to birth control.
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  886. For finding "rare tools," you could always make an index. Like come up with a name for at least the general areas of the shop where you might store things , and then make a list. Just have that in a spreadsheet, then you can just search the spreadsheet for the name of the thing.and then say "pipe bender? It's in section F3 of the shop." Not the easiest way to do it if you can just remember where you put it, but a good safety net when you've completely lost it.
    7
  887.  @randeldaniel5437  Nancy Pelosi had no ability to prevent the bill going to the floor, Johnson was Speaker at the time.
    7
  888.  @disalazarg  That's the thing though, it's not "tax benefits" or "attracting business" that matter, that tends to only lead to a "race to the bottom" mentality. What is more important is quality education, health care, and other social services, so that people want to STAY in the state, or even move TO the state, rather than fleeing to states that have their act together. Businesses will follow the workforce.
    7
  889.  @bret551  Everyone is pushing for Putin to leave Ukraine, but so far he has refused. He must be dragged to the negotiating table.
    7
  890.  @Robert-fx3ng  Yup, they don't understand, this is a grimdark setting.
    7
  891.  @deegomez4098  No, I'm not maga.
    7
  892.  @manoo422  Well, it's both. The floods are worse, and the terrain those floods go over is also worse, so the result is worse than either effect alone would cause.
    7
  893. Andor was good.
    7
  894. Because this organization was in the "business" of saving lives, and millions will die as a result of this?
    7
  895. Turns out that wasn't Willie Brown in that helicopter.
    7
  896.  @jthomas7904  But we passed a budget earlier. You can argue that we did it wrong, and that might be true, but the fact remains that right now, the debt ceiling is the problem. If we're going to do anything about the budget, it needs to come during the 2024 budgeting process, and has nothing to do with the debt ceiling discussion.
    7
  897.  @SeanD808  America has to pay our debts. Whatever we owe, the debt limit needs to rise to pay that debt. There should not be a debt limit at all. If you want the US to budget more responsibly, that is a conversation for the budget, not the debt limit.
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  898. Yeah, who could praise Trump in a situation like this?
    7
  899. Why shouldn't we feel sorry for them? Wouldn't that be the Christian thing to do?
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  900. Why do you believe he has zero power in Florida?
    7
  901.  @noneshere  Of course they have the right to give it away, they are our representatives. That's the entire point of representative democracies, that we elect people to represent our combined interests. I'm not saying that this particular administration is doing that well, but a well-run administration would be using these funds to keep the economy and citizens stable while we make the changes needed to overcome this problem.
    7
  902.  @AhhhhMyLeg  You say that "the government" continues to overspend, but it is Republicans who drive up the deficit, not "the government." If people would stop electing Republicans, it would stop happening. But you're also wrong that it will inevitably lead to default. The US debt to GDP is only 128%, Japan's is at 266%, and they are fine. So long as we don't arbitrarily default on that debt, it's perfectly manageable. It's not like a bank loan where it "comes due" at some point. Obviously we do want to reduce the deficit where we can, and that will involve hiking taxes o the wealthy and big businesses, but since Republicans refuse to do that, we're sort of stuck.
    7
  903.  @Fairenough642  So you don't order delivery, and you pick it up yourself. It's up to you. That's what freedom of choice is about. Personally, there are a lot of times I would prefer to not have to run out and pick up the item myself. I like having the option to not have to.
    7
  904.  @ComplicatedBot  People need to understand that pointing out when someone is telling a lie is NOT and has never been "censoring" them. RFK Jr. is free to say whatever he likes, but when he lies, people will point that out.
    7
  905.  @argonaught5666  It also exonerated everyone else in the Obama administration and DoJ at the time.
    7
  906.  @youngcrusade840  Florida without Disney is just a garbage swamp.
    7
  907.  @AnneEloiseOfCNY  If you can look around in 2023, and think "you know what, this world needs more Republican victories," then you were never "independent." Your heart and soul is owned.
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  908. I think you meant to say "incite" them. To "indict" them, they would have had to commit crimes, and so far, none of the ones you listed have done so.
    7
  909. You do understand that he is the fascist, and currently being punished for doing fascism, right? It reflects very poorly on you that this would make you more likely to vote for the fascist.
    7
  910.  @DoSe420  "The US" doesn't use anything in particular. All vote counts are done according to state and in some cases local election policies, and if they even use voting machines, they buy whichever ones they want, often the lowest bidder. Some are made in the US, some in other places. Dominion machines were only used in a handful of elections, none of them particularly consequential to the outcomes, but it is a hilarious story that MAGA people invented about them.
    7
  911. Don't you mean Jim Jordan? Strauss really wrecked him back in his college coaching days.
    7
  912. But then they wouldn't have felt like play pretend army men!
    7
  913.  @ClockworkGearhead  It is strictly the other team's fault, but people are to dumb to understand that, so it will just be blamed on him as "the guy in charge when it happened." Too many people view the office of the president as some sort of "wizard" that can just magically control what does and does not happen in the world, rather than just one role in the government that has to handle problems using a limited set of tools as best he can. A debt default would hurt everyone, It would be idiotic to allow one to happen, but unfortunately, the idiots currently hold the house majority.
    7
  914. This was in northern Gaza. There are no refugee camps in northern Gaza. Those are Hamas human shield sites. The actual refugee sites are in southern Gaza, where Israel gave them several weeks to evacuate to. Even if they had only traveled one mile pr day, they would have had plenty of time. If anyone dies in northern Gaza at this point, then it is only Hamas to blame for it.
    7
  915.  @HailAzathoth  No, he's right.
    7
  916. And yet they add more to the tax pool than they take from it. How does that work?
    7
  917. He only looks out for Putin's interests.
    7
  918. . . . that's exactly what "coercion" means. Sheesh.
    7
  919. Washington attacked soldiers, not civilians. You do understand the distinction, right?
    7
  920.  @darriuscole8544  Lol, that is not how math works!
    7
  921. The covid vaccines have been better tested by this point than any vaccine in human history was when it was made mandatory. There is no rational reason to not get vaccinated at this point.
    7
  922.  @Bolsonaro_em_Haia  Then they can ask for money elsewhere, right?
    7
  923. It doesn't, if that's how you state your case. The bigots are the ones that state their case in ways that are antisemitic.
    7
  924.  @xivivix7195  2006. Five years after 9/11.
    7
  925.  @PabloTheThinker  Which would also the the Republicans, given their opposition to any efforts to fix it.
    7
  926. This had nothing to do with that though. Mace was the only one threatening women.
    7
  927. If he wants to fight the subpoena, he can drag it out for months. If they want to talk to him on schedule, why not do it in public? Or are they worried that they won't be able to lie to the American people about what he said afterward?
    7
  928.  @alsatful  But some of those things are not actually crimes, and the "gun charges" they were only able to move forward on because he was willing to offer a guilty plea in exchange for a reduction elsewhere. They did not actually have evidence enough to make a good case on their own.
    7
  929. That's not an "unpopular opinion," it's advocating a war crime.
    7
  930. No, they aren't, because it's not an issue in countries that don't intend to do a genocide any time soon. Which is most countries.
    7
  931. Don't vote for them either way.
    7
  932. Trump's entire political career began with birtherism.
    7
  933. Yeah, within the next few decades it will become impossible to survive outside for more than a few minutes at a time in the summer.
    7
  934. He's blacking out Jan 6th.
    7
  935. He's not ignoring the residents, he's ignoring the cranks. The actual residents appreciate the job he's doing.
    7
  936.  @ZT-vr4wz  There are literally more people in Gaza today than there were when Gaza was formed. Israel did nothing to limit their survival capability.
    7
  937. It's as closed as it was five years ago.
    7
  938. The US is not currently at war.
    7
  939.  @Meltpk  The IDF does not shoot babies in the head, for one thing.
    7
  940. No, he answered poorly. There is a difference, to intelligent people.
    7
  941. They said they wanted to ensure that their citizens were being treated in a dignified manner, which they are not.
    7
  942. The poor state of existing laws is what led to the current situation. The administration is following the existing laws.
    7
  943. This is just a symptom of what I've always hated about the stock market, it's not a measure of what a company IS, it's a measure of what people think a company will be later. I just think it's awful that companies have to chase their stock market price by constantly expanding, even if their current state is doing just fine, profitable and stable, leading to overreaching and breaking the parts of their business that were working just fine. A company's stock price should not drop just because they did as well this year as they did the last.
    7
  944. Oil deposits do not refill, they can just draw from other wells elsewhere. They are not a spherical, self contained bubble, they are a network of caves filled with a liquid, and you can drain all the liquid that is easily available, and declare a well "empty," but then a separate cave nearby can slowly trickle into it, refilling it. This does not mean that the oil is unlimited, it just means that you have multiple finite reservoirs.
    7
  945. Yes, clearly you are confused, but the answer to that is never ot ban it, it's for you to educate yourself and become no longer confused by it. "Why would you be around children? Because those children and their parents enjoy the show and want to be there, same as with any other performance. There's no reason not to. Do the children know it's "dress up?" Maybe, maybe not. Do they know that Barney is not actually a Dinosaur? Maybe, maybe not. They are fine either way. There is nothing "anti-innocence" about any of this, no children are harmed by attending an all-ages drag performance, any more than a child is harmed by attending an all-ages ballet or jazz or Bible school performance.
    7
  946.  @Bluesit32  The followers choose their leaders though, so they are as much to blame. Nobody on Earth has a mandate from Heaven, every leader, religious or secular, is a choice.
    7
  947. Yup, Obstruction of justice and willful possession.
    7
  948. Why is managing a browser so expensive anyway? They don't actually improve in any way, they just continue to work basically the same they have for decades, and all they really need to do is patch vulnerabilities and keep up to date with existing standards so that all the websites keep working. Shouldn't that be relatively simple to do?
    7
  949.  @cheesecake7384  So what was he imprisoned for?
    7
  950. Because the 14th amendment does not specify that they need to be convicted of a crime.
    7
  951. It's not about shaming poor people. IT's about "when you make improvements, what should those be." Nobody is badgering people to go gat a heat pump just to be good samaritans. The two arguments are either 1. if you ARE getting a new heating system, get a heat pump, or 2. if you want lower annual heating bills, get a heat pump. Governments aren't forcing anyone to upgrade, they are just offering some free money if you do so, to help offset those costs.
    7
  952. We can only hope.
    7
  953.  @retard6477  No other country has an economy as large and strong as the US either though. There are plenty of countries with debts 2-3 times higher than the US relative to their GDP that are perfectly stable. Debt like that is only really a burden to smaller, weaker countries that can't ignore their way past it. Most Us homeowners have debts MUCH higher than the US national debt relative to their own income. It's fine.
    7
  954.  @adrianaslund8605  The only ones who made it a political issue were the deniers. Period.
    7
  955. Yes, they want to control us by telling us we can do what we want. That makes perfect sense. How evil of them.
    7
  956. Texas is no better.
    7
  957. Ome on, man. If Republicans cared about the distinction between fantasy and reality, they wouldn't be Republicans.
    7
  958. It's because it's a healthcare treatment. That's why they use that terminology.
    7
  959. It's sad that they couldn't find even ten Republicans in the Senate who would be willing to vote to prevent the US economy from imploding and every one of their constituents ending up in poverty. If anyone ever needed a reason to vote Democrat, this is it.
    7
  960.  @wynonasbigbrowndragon6121  The point is that when the general comes around, there are rarely two valid options, one of them is almost always a Republican. But in a primary, you get to actually choose who will represent you in government.
    7
  961. Well, to be fair, he also supports the insurrectionists that invaded his own office and beat on the police that are charged with defending him, so he really has his head on straight.
    7
  962.  @keenumman1  Nobody is talking about tolerating any degeneracy. This is about LGBT people, not about MAGA.
    7
  963.  @borakaracan6108  You do know that the Rubles they are paying you are worthless because of their incompetence, right?
    7
  964. @ I don't know, I've been using self-checkout for years and I love it. It's something I wanted before it even existed. I don't see how that could possibly change over time. What do you think I'm missing here?
    7
  965. Most things that are shamed and illegal were once perfectly fine and legal, until they became too big of a problem to ignore and they had to stop it. Gambling is just currently in an "f-around" phase right now.
    7
  966. This is the new Republican plan, rigging statehouses so that no matter who the people vote for, they can just declare the Republican the winner anyway.
    7
  967. That's sad, you should get out more, hear some better speeches. I'm sure you'll hear some more when you get to middle school.
    7
  968.  @garryferrington811  How do you think climate change works? The climate is always shifting, and there will always be new data to work with, and new predictions based on that data, which are becoming more and more accurate over time. Someone making a climate prediction over a hundred years ago does not in any way invalidate current models.
    7
  969.  @kmoses582  And that 1780 season would have been far worse if they'd had the climate conditions of 2024.
    7
  970.  @IlPinnacolo  Claiming "appeal to consensus fallacy" is a non-argument when your position is "appeal to whatever the consensus disagrees with." The consensus in this case is not right because they are the consensus, they are the consensus because they are right. You are using fallacies wrong. Stop it.
    7
  971.  @IlPinnacolo  We revise models over time to make them more accurate, but that does not mean that they were "wrong" before, just that they are more correct now. It's like how you can do a two-week weather forecast, and it will usually be mostly correct. That has value. But then one-week in, you have more data, and can refine it to be more accurate, and then 24 hours out you can further refine it to be more correct, and an hour away you can refine it more still.
    7
  972.  @IlPinnacolo  That's really not how predictive models work. some amount of "flaw" is inevitable, and an accepted part of the process. If you were taking a chemistry class, and measuring your results using lab scales, your result likely was wrong, buy at least some amount, and your professor probably accepted that, so long as you were within an acceptable margin of error. That doesn't mean that there is no point to using ANY data because all of it is less than perfect. To your second point, yes, anthropogenic warming is real, and while it could be argued that other, more significant threats exist, this is at least one of the largest, and one that we are in a better position to do anything about than most more threatening ones. It is possible that other things might destroy the planet first, like an asteroid, but it's still worth trying to solve the problems we can, just in case those other problems do not manifest. Many of the other problems in the world are only made worse by ignoring climate change, such as hunger, warfare, and illness.
    7
  973.  @IlPinnacolo  You keep throwing around "debate buzzwords" rather than making actual arguments to support your position. and using them incorrectly, at that. And so you use weather models, you trust those, even though every one of them is wrong. Every one of them will claim that a temperature will be slightly higher or lower than it turns out to be, it will claim that there is a 10% chance of rain, and then either it will rain or it won't. If the weather model was so accurate, then why didn't it just say which it would be? But if you use the weather models then you understand and accept that they have these inaccuracies, that while they are not perfect, they are far better than just taking a guess and hoping for the best. And the same is true of climate models. They are not perfect, but they are accurate enough to base decisions on. When a climate model is inaccurate, it is not completely wrong, it is not the opposite of correct, it is just slightly off, in that it might be a few years ahead or behind of the resulting data. It is still close enough to work with, and far better than working off no data at all. Also, the reason why the warming coincided with the most prosperous period in history is pretty clear, it's because that period resulted from burning millions of years worth of of accumulated solar energy, all over a few centuries. This put those millions of years worth of stored carbon into the air, where it caused heating. How can you not already know this?
    7
  974.  @tinyleopard6741  I think you are being unrealistic as to how these markets work. If Apple's latest phone was 10% more expensive than the previous one, a lot of people would pay that, rather than do without. If every Android phone manufacturer that puts out "flagship their phones raised their own prices by 10%, then the market would pay that. When valid anti-trust situations can lead to outcomes like that, I think it's fair for the FTC to get involved.
    7
  975. He prefers the term "totally tubular." But yes, he's totally rad.
    7
  976. I think it would be more accurate to attribute that to the stubborn than to the obedient. There are many who take pride in doing something incredibly stupid, merely because someone told them not to, and they refused to listen.
    7
  977.  @NO--BS.  We didn't have a Justice Department seven years ago, and the special counsel was only appointed last fall. In that time he's got one set of indictments out, with more to come. Not to mention the seven hundred co-conspirators that have already been convicted. The criminal justice system takes time, especially when the defendant tries to stall as best he can, but justice will be done.
    7
  978.  @Rapturetjmoore  Look it up, how many convictions do they have for people who participated in the insurrection attempt?
    7
  979. But he never committed evil deeds, and the only laws he broke were misdemenors, nothing worth the punishment he's received.
    7
  980. It effects younger populations too, not just the elderly.
    7
  981. Literally nobody wants this to go on longer, except for Putin, but unfortunately, Putin is the only person with any say in how long this goes on.
    7
  982. Plenty of peopel have deferred action on their IRS or state taxes. You just need to present them with a good reason why you need an extension.
    7
  983.  @JeddieT  You asked if there were anybody out there that wants to work without bias and corruption and save this country. AG Garland is certainly one of those. Jack Smith, for another. Without fear or favor.
    7
  984. The media did not tell the judge what to do, the media reported on what the law was, which is what the judge is obligated to follow. Unless he was Aileen Cannon.
    7
  985.  @robwilliams287  He won more primaries than the other candidates. That means that more American voters chose him than chose the other candidates.
    7
  986.  @junyajax  And yet a lot of these products have low profit margins, they couldn't just eat the 60%. They would either pass it on, or go out of business entirely.
    7
  987. They passed a bill to raise the debt ceiling with a lot of string's attached. That is not "passing a bill to raise the debt ceiling." Think of it like this, say you have a hostage situation, a bunch of terrorists have a bunch of civilians locked up with guns to their heads, and they say "We'll let them out, so long as you give us a million dollars and a plane out of here." And then your response to that is "why aren't the police giving them the million dollars and the plane, they agreed to let the hostages go!"
    7
  988.  @timothytaylor9835  I wouldn't mind Republicans moderating it, so long as they were rational people. There aren't any of those left at Fox though.
    7
  989. The problem though is that he is completely bonkers, so the longer you give him to talk, the more convinced any rational person would become that he is completely unqualified to be President. But sure, for a qualified candidate, long form interviews can be a great way to get to know them.
    7
  990. He's a scientist, he was only applying the medically accurate diagnosis.
    7
  991. Well, he's already been held accountable for everything that he is accountable for, which is "nothing."
    7
  992. This is about Trump, not Biden. You must be sleepy.
    7
  993.  @oofballz4328  One not dumb enough to vote for Meatball Ron.
    7
  994. She's such a red ranger.
    7
  995. Probably, Arizona's been up to some shady shit. Probably waiting to see what their fake "audit" comes up with first though.
    7
  996. @ That only applies in metro areas though. Anywhere in 99% of the country, cars are faster. It would take me over an hour just to bike into town, when by car it's about 15 minutes. I almost never even drive into the downtown area, everything I need is in the suburbs and within a minute or two from an interstate. If I did go downtown, there would be parking fees, but the suburban shopping has plenty of free parking.
    7
  997. Nothing can force Putin to push that button except for Putin. It will ALWAYS be on him what he does.
    7
  998. It doesn't apply to cases of legitimate defamation like this one. It would only apply if the case they'd brought was illegitimate.
    7
  999. ​ @bulgingbattery2050  Well, first, stop "voicing skepticism about Sandy Hook," it makes you look ignorant at best, malicious at worst, and benefits no one. Second, it really would depend on your platform and ability to cause harm by speaking on the matter. You saying something has much less of an impact than someone who has a national video program that is followed by hundreds of thousands of completely irrational lunatics who view things like "voicing skepticism about Sandy Hook" as a productive use of their time.
    7
  1000.  @waynehendrix4806  No Alex Jones fan is capable of critical thinking. They just have oppositional viewpoints to the truth. That is not "criticism," it is just childishness. Your family in Danbury was wrong, simple as that. Move on, find better sources of information, learn how to actually think critically about the world, rather than just assuming that everything you're told by "the mainstream" must be wrong somehow. More often than not, the mainstream is 100% correct.
    7
  1001. Negative damage. Millions of lives saved with our dollars.
    7
  1002. Yeah, Ukraine can't join while already at war, and even before that they were quite a bit shakier as a country than Sweden or Finland. In a world where Russia had not invaded, they likely would have joined Nato within the decade, but it would have been a while while they made sure all the paperwork was in order. Once the war started, it was too late, at least until it's over. It would be like buying fire insurance while the firemen are still putting it out.
    7
  1003.  @goblue2155  And the people of Kursk voted to join Ukraine in 1832.
    7
  1004.  @jonunciate7018  Yes, they are called "The Russians."
    7
  1005. That is a terrible translation. Where did you get your poli-sci degree? Trump University?
    7
  1006.  @MadDragon76  We already have one, he just happens to be on the Democratic side. People on the right don't like him though.
    7
  1007.  @randomdudeoti  I know, but if you actually looked into it, then you would know. That's what education is for.
    7
  1008.  @UneducatedEngineer444  Because long distance transit is a problem in need of a better solution. Long distance train rides are way too slow to compete with jets, and wheels can only go so fast.
    7
  1009.  @domusdebellum3042  They've probably just gotten used to Democrats cleaning up Republican messes. They end up having to do it over and over and over again. Clinton after Bush, Obama after Bush, Biden after Trump, it's become a habit.
    7
  1010. People have been complaining about gas prices though.
    7
  1011. Yes, bring him up to you immediately, and then drop him to the pits where he belongs.
    7
  1012. Residential conversion sounds good, but it does take a lot of work, since you need to add in all sorts of plumbing and other features necessary for homes that a business does not need. Also lighting can be an issue, making sure that all the right rooms get windows when you have enclosed rooms rather than open plan offices. I do think it would be a good idea to make "partial conversions" though, more buildings in which a significant chunk of their floors are residential, inside an otherwise commercial building. Ideally these could even include affordable housing options for people who work inside the building itself, perhaps with subsidies from the city/state in the name of decreasing traffic.
    7
  1013.  @425HP  If you believe that, then you have been successfully hoodwinked. Congratulations.
    7
  1014. They still owe that money, now they will just also owe penalties for failure to pay. If you default on a bank loan, because you didn't have any cash and only had bottle caps that you insist are worth a collar each, that doesn't mean the bank lets you off the hook.
    7
  1015. Yeah, if Trump actually wanted to do some good, he could change US tax law so that no matter where an IT company hides their IP, they still have to pay the same tax to America. He won't though.
    7
  1016.  @inktray4913  Ok, thanks for letting us know. Now power down.
    7
  1017.  @Quantitative_Teasing  It is because I understand both simple and complex math that I understand what you got wrong, and your lack of these skills is why you remain wrong.
    7
  1018. They already have NATO at their borders, that ship has sailed.
    7
  1019. Why? That was an official art. It wasn't even dubious, he was attacking terrorists.
    7
  1020.  @kxo1038  What does vaping having to do with any of this?
    7
  1021. It's hard to argue against a narcissistic sociopath. Often wrong, never in doubt.
    7
  1022.  @saularce7957  No, it's the guns. Other countries have just as many people who want to do crimes, but since they have fewer guns, those crimes are not as harmful.
    7
  1023. That's not really how it works.
    7
  1024. If you believe the residents, then this is not happening, because most of the residents say this is not happening.
    7
  1025. It's less a matter of "they took this town, now this town is free!" so much as the town is acting as a geographical marker for how for they have advanced. "How far forward have they gotten?" "As far as Robotyne, wherever that is." The state of the town itself is largely irrelevant for at least a few more years.
    7
  1026. You aren't making sense. If Republicans cared about doing the right thing, they would have put a better bill out.
    7
  1027.  @smiles3005  You do understand that there is a distinction between what a user manual says and how something is marketed toward consumers, right? You get that?
    7
  1028.  @frankgrabasse4642 Yeah, basically, the better the US is doing relative to the rest of the world, the more immigrants come here. So. . . it looks like America's getting better and better under Biden, right?
    7
  1029. Yeah, he thought he'd found "one cool tirck" to getting through the bulletproof glass and was trying to test it out. It seems likely that he wasn't attempting a direct attack right that moment, he was just testing his theory, then ran, and he died while avoiding arrest. If the nail gun had broken through the glass then he likely would have come back with the gun.
    7
  1030. Basically it's like one of those cones they draw on a map to describe a hurricane. We can't be sure exactly where in that cone the eye of the storm will be, we just know that it will be in there somewhere, and also that pretty much everyone in the cone is screwed anyway.
    7
  1031. Yes, but Moscow Mitch was too busy confirming conservative judges to bother.
    7
  1032. SCOTUS: "See, we can still do one thing right." America: "How about two?" SCOTUS: "No."
    7
  1033.  @daviddeegan4072  No, it doesn't work. Only idiots believe that it does. Or trolls.
    7
  1034. That wasn't Democrats.
    7
  1035.  @RoninMinistries  Well yes, that's how life works, things that happen in the future, we will see. . . in the future.
    7
  1036. The point of this tax IS to provide improved services, but NYC's public transit options are actually pretty good by US standards, they just aren't always used as often as they could be. A lot of the necessary investment is just in making sure they stay functional.
    6
  1037. The funny thing is, the same people who point out typos like this probably also voted for Trump, even though he outright lies constantly. I mean, which is worse, right?
    6
  1038. Lol, as if Trump reads his homework.
    6
  1039. When your lies are too big for even lawyers to go along with them, maybe just stop lying so much?
    6
  1040.  @CommonSense-hd4rw  Yeah, but it's not like any of the people she's prosecuting have more integrity than she does, even IF these allegations were 100% true. Every one of them did stuff like this before breakfast.
    6
  1041. That's not reality though.
    6
  1042.  @mananimal3644  I don't think Governor Newsom would want to put a prison anywhere near kids like that.
    6
  1043.  @Jeeps_guns_bbq  The way he did this? Yes.
    6
  1044. Vote for Kamala, to start.
    6
  1045. YES! This is why we need the Senate to pass the Jan 6th commission!
    6
  1046. He sort of can't, since this is a civil case. While he can claim the 5th, the jury can be instructed to understand that this means he's likely hiding something (ie "did you rape her?" "I plead the 5th," "That means his answer is probably 'yes.'"). This is different than in a criminal trial, where if someone pleads the 5th then the jury is instructed to not assume a particular motive or response.
    6
  1047.  @SomeUserNameBlahBlah  Because the Us didn't hurt its reputation by doing that to Russia, it improved its reputation.
    6
  1048.  @kasper7203  I never claimed that the US has guaranteed support for Taiwan independence. No one has. The US has always had support for Taiwanese safety from Chinese aggression, so long as Taiwan continues to tread water. No, Taiwan will not declare independence for four reasons. 1. There are a lot of Taiwanese that don't want independence. They mostly don't want China to take over either, but they genuinely prefer the "ambiguity" to either confirmed status. 2. Even with the Us backing, China might attack them and rough them up a bit before things settled back down. Lives might be lost and property damaged, even if they eventually succeeded. 3. Even if Taiwan became 100% independent without a deadly war, China would be even more hostile to them than before, likely damaging trade significantly. The US would protect Taiwan from attack, but not from economic strain. and 4. The US would definitely protect Taiwan from Chinese aggression, but might not protect Taiwan if they started it. If Taiwan got particularly belligerent toward China, then the US might withdraw support. This is made clear to them via diplomatic channels.
    6
  1049. Yeah, I don't think anyone has tanked the economy and America's standing in the world this fast. A monumental accomplishment.
    6
  1050. I don't know, there are plenty of people who lived through the cold war.
    6
  1051. It's worth noting that free speech does not mean a guarantee of a platform. The speaker in question was always owed the right to talk, but never owed the right to do it on their stage. The university was in the wrong for offering it to her.
    6
  1052. Eh. They could be court martialed and dishonorably discharged, either way works.
    6
  1053.  @constitutionalconservative2689  It remains a fact that if they are legally ordered to follow federal law, and they refuse that order, then they will be court martialed and dishonorably discharged for failing to follow orders.
    6
  1054. It was always an investment in the world's future. It's more cost effective for the US to fight Russian aggression in Ukraine than to fight it in Alaska.
    6
  1055. And the bubbles are full of acid and spilling all over the place, making life worse for Americans.
    6
  1056. This isn't about Universal!!!! They are the ones paying for this piece.
    6
  1057.  @thedoctor155  But the things she said were true. You just don't believe they're true because you were told that they are not, by people who were lying to you. That is your problem, not hers.
    6
  1058.  @Youtuber69428  Yeah, but I live in hope. At the very least I don't feel like allowing nonsense to stew unchallenged.
    6
  1059. "Ew, leisure."
    6
  1060. I love how some people are like "fake, didn't happen" or whatever, because they can't live in the real world if it refuses to do what they want it to.
    6
  1061. Even then, her info is out of date. I have radiant floorboard heating, so five years ago I wouldn't have been able to get a heat pump, because they couldn't reach the right temperatures for that. But over the past few years they've been rolling out pumps capable of higher temperatures, so even my house could get one.
    6
  1062. Man, that movie was amazing to me as a kid, because he was just so clearly mechanical. I loved other movie robots like R2 and 3PO, but they were both pretty abstract, their functions hidden under their skin, whereas even as a kid I could look at Johnny-5 and say "well that's how that bit works." It really inspired me to build my own nonsense little creations, cardboard "robots" stuck to RC cars.
    6
  1063. That's what they said about Britain in WWII.
    6
  1064. Then they should have changed the language of it to apply more broadly.
    6
  1065. This is why people prefer California. Newsom would never put a prison near a theme park full of children.
    6
  1066.  @residentgrey  And anyone with enough brain-cells to actually be an intelligent and mature adult human, sees that if Lake did deserve to win, then she would have won. But instead she lost, because Arizona voters did not want her. And that is how elections work.
    6
  1067.  @DuffyF56  Schumer voted against it so that it could be brought up again, but that is no excuse for the Republicans who COULD have voted to pass it THIS time and chose NOT to. There was no "additional spending."
    6
  1068. The floor is open all day for people to talk, but representatives have a lot of other important things to do, like committee meetings, meeting with constituents, and working on legislation. The floor is usually not full unless there is an important vote going on. This has always been the case.
    6
  1069.  @michaeltru9474 Because they turned all those documents over to the National Archives as required by law, and then the National Archives LOANED those materials back to them for their use. You can't skip steps.
    6
  1070.  @JK_JK_JK  There are 450 million people living in the EU. 10,000 people died that month (0.02% of that population). This was 7% higher than their expected estimates. Half of that 7% was accounted for by covid deaths. These estimates are by no means perfect, it is just a very rough guess based on extremely complex circumstances, and getting within 7% of the actual value is extremely close, much more impressive than weather forecasting.
    6
  1071.  @everysingleone8714  No, the grey bars do not show "excess deaths not related to covid," they showed ALL deaths not related to covid. That means if someone died of anything other than covid, even if a 90 year old died of old age, he would be in that block. "Excess deaths" are not tracked in that chart. There are the expected amount of deaths, generally speaking. Occam's razor.
    6
  1072.  @MsGarnet77  But he is misrepresenting the stats in this video, so he is only making them MORE confusing to the layperson, not less. He is only causing harm here with his misinformation.
    6
  1073.  @MsGarnet77  He may have had good intentions, but he got the very core of his argument wrong. The core of his argument was that there was a significant amount of non-covid excess deaths, and he pointed to several sources that he claimed said as much, but each of these sources said no such thing. Every source he cited showed that covid deaths made up almost half the excess deaths, not the "3.4%" that he claimed. It's possible that he did this out of incompetence rather than malice, but it is still misinformation regardless of how he got there, and he should take the video down and replace it with a more accurate one. Pay heed to the TRUTH, even if it's not what you want to hear.
    6
  1074. @ Who cares what Russia's perspective is on this? Them feeling big sad is no excuse to invade.
    6
  1075. "140 House Republicans need to be removed from office for violating their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution."
    6
  1076.  @thebatonmaster  Because we are supporting our allies overseas, but the US itself is not at war. The amount of money we send to foreign countries is a drop in the bucket of the national budget, and accomplishes more benefit to America than it does harm.
    6
  1077.  @weirdo24-7  It means someone who believes in white superemacy and endorses a state based in white supremacy. That is also how it is used in politics.
    6
  1078. They've shown that if you try to deliver the aid directly, they will attack.
    6
  1079. We have plenty of air defense systems back home. Having them tested abroad means that they are stronger should we ever need them.
    6
  1080. This has been DoJ policy for decades. Why do you think this is a new thing?
    6
  1081. The ATF made no laws here though, they just enforced the laws already on the books.
    6
  1082. No, it's not about "the political establishment being able to dictate who is and isn't allowed to be president of their "democracy"" It's about upholding the Constitution.
    6
  1083.  @johnkabengele4628  This was in no way caused by NATO's desire to expand eastward. There is nothing wrong with NATO expanding eastward. This was entirely caused by Russia invading Ukraine. If Russia had not invaded Ukraine, then none of this would be happening. Russia is the only one making military force against a neighbor here. NATO has not made any military force against Russia, ever.
    6
  1084. They have all been looked at.There was nothing to any of them.
    6
  1085. It's very Trump.
    6
  1086.  @learnlearn9702  Not in this case though. In this case, the defendant is just offended that they aren't arbitrary and capricious in his favor.
    6
  1087. YEARS ago.
    6
  1088. This right here is why we need to fund colleges. We need better people than this in Congress.
    6
  1089.  @thomaskitlica5572  We can at least agree that things would become much worse if her opponent won though.
    6
  1090. Nobody voted against protecting women and children from abusers and sex offenders.
    6
  1091.  @ZombieTomato  But the power to use military power to defend US interests. The US executive determines US military policy. The US has not declared war on anyone lately.
    6
  1092. That's easy for narcissists.
    6
  1093. That's already the way it works. More legislation is not required there.
    6
  1094. They are. There's just nothing to find with Biden.
    6
  1095.  @jake2102  The links between the WHO and China are minimal at best, the WHO have no reason to deliberately cover for China whatsoever. That said, China did restrict the access of their investigation, so the WHO investigators were not able to get as deep into this as they would have wanted.
    6
  1096.  @jonplayscsgo9379  They do it all the time. It's not like any judge EVER said "you can't attend his graduation," they just said that he had to appear in court during the time when the graduation would have happened, because courts do not schedule around your personal commitments. Again, this happens EVERY day to people who are not rich.
    6
  1097.  @squizzlor  This is after seven years. How much longer would you expect it to "drag out" for a "normal person?"
    6
  1098.  @stayfaded69  Yup, that describes the Republicans well.
    6
  1099. EVs are environmentally friendly, and while they don't have a zero carbon footprint, it's much lower than a gasoline car. While it's currently true that EVs involve carbon to produce, and often involve carbon in generating their electricity, this carbon is much lower than what it takes to drive a gasoline car, and most EVs will "pay off" their carbon footprint within two years of use. And of course as electricity generation, transportation, and manufacturing processes become green, this gap will close even faster.
    6
  1100. If they were Russian? Zero. As they are Ukrainian, about 1000 of them.
    6
  1101. Again, criticizing the subject of the video does not meet the copyright definition of "criticism," because it is not criticizing the video itself. If you are criticizing the film-making, the artistic intent, etc., that is fair use. This video and your earlier video about the copyright claim are both fair use on these grounds. Taking the video and using it to make fun of the Musk fans in the video is not a fair use of the material because it is not criticizing the artistic choices of the creator of that video. It is fair to say that you wanted to make fun of the fans in the video, but you would need to pay the copyright holder to be able to do so. People who are around the filmmaker as he films do not remove his copyrights. An easy example of this would be if someone does a documentary about a serial killer, and you take footage of that, and use it to criticize the documentary itself, that is fair use. If you talk about how it handled the story, that is fair use, but if you take footage from the documentary to make your own analysis of the serial killer, not the work of the documentary, but the subject of it, then that is not a fair use. Also, the "market" in Mahlmann's case would not be "people who want to make fun of him," the market would be "people who want his angle on the crash," which is a different angle than the other videos.
    6
  1102. People who want responsible government.
    6
  1103.  @no.6243  Exactly, and that's why we voted him out of office and replaced him with Joe BIden. Since then, Joe's gotten America back on track, and we would be even better off if not for Republican obstructionism along the way.
    6
  1104. Yeah, he created this environment himself.
    6
  1105.  @jcbright502  It will also never be finished because it is stupid, pointless, and way too expensive, but sure, that's another reason.
    6
  1106. There aren't two sides on this one.Not every topic has two sides. Sometimes, there is one side, and any attempt to create an alternate side is just stupid.
    6
  1107.  @jimlewis1332  Jesus wouldn't support anything that is against God. God made these people trans, and Jesus would support them.
    6
  1108. Who told you that? That's never even once been true. Why do you believe someone would tell you such an obvious lie? What would they stand to gain by keeping you angry and ignorant?
    6
  1109.  @jthomas7904  No, raising the debt ceiling is unrelated ot balancing the budget, they are two separate processes. It's impossible to "balance the budget" out of raising debt ceiling.
    6
  1110. Air traffic controllers at every stop light?
    6
  1111.  DT2024-q4k  Do you believe that Oct7 would have happened if not for the Abraham Accords?
    6
  1112.  @mylesleggette7520  Unfortunately, I've heard a lot of stories directly out of the mouths of parents who are in denial over their children's identity. They will swear up and down that their child is "definitely just faking it" or whatever they have to tell themselves, and that they "got over it and are perfectly happy now,," until they have to put that in their child's obituary. Abuse comes in many forms, and a parent does not have to beat their child to cause them harm. There are plenty of parents out there who would be perfectly normal people so long as everything fits into their own world view, but as soon as something steps outside of what they consider to be acceptable, they lose all rationality. I would like to be able to "believe parents," but history has proven that to be a mistake. I think that the standard needs to be "best judgement in the interests of the child." The correct outcome needs to come from a fair consideration of the viewpoints of the child, the medical professionals, the parents, and in some cases judges, but the interests of the child need to come first.
    6
  1113.  @darkcoeficient  Suicide may not be a "natural" outcome, but it is a predictable one. It would be irresponsible to ignore that it happens. You can disagree with me, just know that actual humans die by ignoring their suffering.
    6
  1114. This is next level psychopathy.
    6
  1115. That's not why people are comparing him to Hitler. It's more all their many many points of comparison.
    6
  1116. He's incapable of answering simple questions. He can only speak in the form of an unhinged rant about the small list of talking points that he can keep in his head.
    6
  1117.  @ivancampbell8123  I support Biden, so I don't think that I will.
    6
  1118. The debt ceiling has nothing to do with how much the government can spend. That's handled in the budget process. If Kevin doesn't want the government to spend more, then he can only pass budgets that do not spend more. If he does pass budgets that spend more, then it is the duty of the government to pay those bills.
    6
  1119. This is not what "Gestapo" means.
    6
  1120. The answer being that the Cali's Sec of State did not have two running tabulations, you are misunderstanding something there.
    6
  1121.  @Vearon101  Yes, having someone who was alive during WWII is better.
    6
  1122. I find that "10% for the big guy" is a random catch phrase used by people who watch too much Faux News, the network that outright says that it's bad for business to tell their customers the truth when it's not what they WANT to be true.
    6
  1123.  @asjaosaline5987  Russia has never suggested terms that would involve them returning the land they have stolen. Any outcome in which they get to keep that land is not "peace," it is only "appeasement," and we saw how that worked out for Churchill.
    6
  1124.  @Carter-X  They got additional subsidies to counteract the tariffs, specifically.
    6
  1125. No, he was basically just saying "they call people I like 'white nationalists,' so I refuse to accept that it can be a bad thing." He wasn't getting any definitions confused, he was just refusing to accept the actual definition because it conflicted with his feelings that his white nationalist friends "aren't that bad."
    6
  1126. I love how "Red Ranger Becomes an Adventurer in Another World" highlights and plays with these genre tropes. The main character is literally a "Bonds Ranger," literally powered by friendship.
    6
  1127. Gaza Ministry Hamas. Get it right, headline.
    6
  1128.  @wadewilson524  I think religion is fine, so long as it's not confused with science or acted on in governance of others. If you want to believe in creationism, then find, no harm in that. If you want to present creationism as science, coequal in theory to actual scientific discussion on the topic, then no, there is no place for that.
    6
  1129. This was about USAID, not about DOGE. But you're right, DOGE is a scam.
    6
  1130. If she could end sanctuary cities as the VP, then why didn't Trump do it while he was president?
    6
  1131. The point of the paper was that appropriately applied light will generate more evaporation than the pure heating value of that light alone. It's not that heat plays zero role, or that the result does not heat at least a little, it just means that this process is more effective than just applying an equivalent amount of generic "heat." Assuming that they're right, of course.
    6
  1132. Less than at your typical Trump[ rally, probably.
    6
  1133. I don't know, her "Russian hoax" rant toward the end sort of destroyed any credibility she might have had.
    6
  1134. No, they just both agree that raising the debt ceiling should not be a hostage negotiation. They are both right.
    6
  1135. Donald supports NOBODY except Donald.
    6
  1136. They weren't willing to stand up for what's right. That is what they were hired to do, but they failed in their duties and provided aid and comfort to America's enemies.
    6
  1137. This story had nothing to do with voter ID.
    6
  1138. and also more Americans killed than in WWII. Some people were bothered by that.
    6
  1139. She was elected by the people. Affirmative action played no role in that. Unlike Clarence Thomas.
    6
  1140. Yeah, but on the other hand, who cares what Mick Mulvaney thinks about anything? He worked for Trump.That should disqualify him from having an opinion of relevance to anyone.
    6
  1141. There was no need for her to provide a time and place for it happening, it happened over two decades ago. All she knows is that it did happen, and a jury of their peers agreed that the preponderance of evidence was in her favor on that.
    6
  1142. Started as a joke, remains a joke.
    6
  1143. He was never too old to go to trial. The prosecutor just didn't have a case.
    6
  1144. Yes, but he won't go away, so here we are.
    6
  1145.  @Bryan-Hensley  It's how they intend to pay for their tax rates.
    6
  1146.  @jimb3457  Your sources are incorrect.
    6
  1147. When Putin leaves.
    6
  1148. Well, they would say Russia and China, because that's who they like. But they would be wrong.
    6
  1149. No.
    6
  1150.  @robinperronjones5024  No, the debt limit needs to be increased because the things we're already sending money on, like paying back portions of the existing national debt, require taking on new debt. It's impossible to "cut spending" our way out of the current situation. That is a discussion for a later day. Right now, ALL that needs to happen is the US house passes a clean debt limit increase. Nothing more.
    6
  1151. Of course states will tax EVs to pay for road maintenance costs. This is not some "sneaky gotcha" element, it's just basic economics. EVs will still be much cheaper to drive than gasoline cars.
    6
  1152. Raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with government spending. It's about not shooting ourselves in the face over debts we've already agreed with. If you think the US spends too much, then that is discussed when funding new programs or deciding whether to cut taxes, not when ti comes time to raise the debt ceiling.
    6
  1153.  @PabloTheThinker  "Zero" isn't possible though, so do you go with the better solution that the Democrats offer, or the worse solution that the Republicans offer?
    6
  1154.  @rogvarley6971  I already explained why you are wrong about that. Find a new argument.
    6
  1155.  @painandsuffer  Because the way US debt works is, we basically promise someone "you give us $1000 today, and in twenty years, we'll give you $1050." This is a locked in transaction. If someone bought such a bond 20 years ago yesterday, then yesterday the federal government gave him $1050, fully paying off that debt. And this happens every day, all the debt taken on 5, 10, 20 years ago, is fully paid off every day. But of course because we don't have the tax revenues to pay off this debt, we take out new debt to cover the old, so the overall amount of US debt stays fairly consistent or rising. The only time we had any decent chance of reducing the overall debt was at the end of the Clinton administration, but then Bush made a lot of tax cuts for wealthy people and that blew out the deficit.
    6
  1156. Lol, it's a lunar new year present. :D
    6
  1157. It doesn't have anything to do with the two party system. That's more of an issue in congress. Anyone can run for President that wants to, it's just that the best candidates choose to run as a Democrat.
    6
  1158. If it were made legal, people would no longer go to jail over it.
    6
  1159. Sorry that he's a better President than your guy.
    6
  1160. It really doesn't cost anything. I doubt they have "funding."
    6
  1161.  @loopthetube  I ask you again, do YOU believe it should have been relevant, and why?
    6
  1162. James Coomer is either an idiot or a liar, because the FBI did no such thing. My money is on "both."
    6
  1163. "Without looking at any of the context around it" Maga in a nutshell.
    6
  1164.  @SomeUserNameBlahBlah  Nah. For one thing, there would be people to buy them, just not at a rate that China might want, since they would make less than they spent. Global markets are not stupid, they know a political play when they see it. If a sovereign country plays games with another country's debt, they see that happening and know it for what it is, and would take no position on the overall economic health of that country. Also, even if Treasury did decide to buy those back, which, again, they have no reason to, that amount is a drop in the bucket overall.
    6
  1165. Because Trump fans are lunatics and want to overthrow the lawfully elected President. They do not care about the law if it hurts their feelings.
    6
  1166. Unfortunately for him, his only policy is "say mean things about Kamala."
    6
  1167. It works out great, because those people are liars, and their neighbors are sick of their nonsense.
    6
  1168. Yeah, his supporters are like children, they'll clap and cheer at any insane thin they hear.
    6
  1169. And yet, these Russian agents had millions of followers between them, so apparently not enough Americans are capable of thinking for themselves.
    6
  1170. Elections always take a long time to count. If you've ever seen an election that you thought was counted sooner, it's because it was not close and they could announce that even if all the remaining votes were for the loser, the winner would still win it, so they announce the winner. But they then keep on counting until every vote is counted, because that's how democracy works.
    6
  1171.  @anteveic327  One, most people in your neighborhood ARE strangers, to most people, and two, people from outside that neighborhood could certainly use those footpaths as ell, if they wanted. This is a ridiculous argument.
    6
  1172.  @Coffeepanda294  Well, you argued that they couldn't. If say a group of thieves wanted to sneak around, they could park in one part of a neighborhood, use footpaths to travel around it, and then hit homes that are less traceable to their vehicles. Without footpaths, they would also be able to move through back yards, but would be much more conspicuous while doing so. In any case, if home owners do not want strangers walking beside their homes, then that is their business, not yours. If they choose to buy homes in neighborhoods that prevent such things, then that is their choice to make.
    6
  1173.  @Coffeepanda294  You say it's "basic infrastructure that improves the neighborhood." That is your opinion, and you can use that when talking about your own neighborhood. My point is that it offers both benefits and costs, and that some "neighbors" might view those costs as being of more importance to them than the benefits you are so interested in. As for "strangers," we do have more crime in the US than in some other countries. None of us like that, but ignoring it won't make it go away either. We have to operate under the reality that it is an issue, whether we like it or not. If you want walkability to take precedence over safety in people's minds, then you would need to solve the safety issue first. Also, walkability does not reduce crime, at least not in these broad subruban areas, because criminals tend to operate when people would be less likely to be walking the area for legitimate means. The walkability only eases their access. Criminals would be more likely to be spotted by someone driving a car than by someone walking.
    6
  1174.  @ForexdailytradingsystemsCoZa  Of course the justice system is flawed, but it is flawed in favor of the accused, not the accuser, so if she managed to overcome that flaw and find her position credible by a jury of her peers, then the evidence against Trump must have been substantial.
    6
  1175.  @svgs650r  Well, the jury found that it was impossible to tell whether he'd used a finger or his unit.
    6
  1176.  @cwm2244  Why? Joe's doing great. the economy is hitting record highs, inflation is coming down, how could anyone have done better?
    6
  1177. I hear that a lot of refugees are ending up in Italy, and that Italy seems unhappy about this. But this seems like a perfect opportunity for them. Put in a plan that allows the refugees to take one of these one-euro homes, and then they are required to renovate it fairly quickly. If they do, then they get a fast track to citizenship.
    6
  1178. He does understand that the "news" in Fox News is just puffery, and is not meant to imply that Fox News engaged in actual journalism as pertains to the 1st amendment.
    6
  1179. the one with a "Sexual mental illness" would be her attacker, not the victim.
    6
  1180. The lesson is not to take glee in their suffering, but to push for the same union protections they have.
    6
  1181. And when you look into it yourself, you will find that there are zero bad revelations on the Dominiion side, at least, none worth concerning anyone with.
    6
  1182. The answer to "one of the two must be wrong," is " not really," because while in a world of perfect mathematics, it would be the case that only one is true, in the real world, which is far messier, systemic disruptions break things, even if the underlying changes would not, so it IS true that immigrants are not currently a problem and that removing them enmass would cause massive problems for everyone.
    6
  1183. He didn't do that though. He left those rifles with the Afghan government. The Afghan government were the ones that left them to the Taliban. Not that anyone cares about the Taliban getting a few more rifles when their country is starving to death. The important thing to remember is that none of that would have even happened if Trump hadn't let the Taliban leader out of jail and promised they could have the country back.
    6
  1184. Shopping malls are like a nice, highly walkable urban neighborhood, but one in which a hundred times as many potential customers can conveniently access it, and they are much easier to stock and staff. Also they don't have rain.
    6
  1185. I think the point as they explained it is valid. For one thing, they didn't cite it as the only reason, but merely as one reason that it might be increasing. Second, partisanship is very very very real, and while there are plenty of divisions and diversity within any coalition, viewpoints tend to align across the board. If a person leans left/right on a half dozen or so issues, or very strongly believes in a few, then they will be more likely to also support most if not all the other viewpoints held on that side, because the media that they tend to watch will tend to reinforce that side, the politicians they elect to support their own priorities will also be supporting those other priorities, etc. You might not go in caring about that cause, but over time, you would be more likely to shift toward support of it than someone who is firmly in an opposing ideological camp. Broadly speaking, it likely is a factor here, that as Israel as presented to young people i more about aligning with far right positions, they would flinch away from it, whereas to older generations, their viewpoints were entrenched in prior periods of a more moderate and post-holocaust position.
    6
  1186. Title 42 had nothing to do with "preventing outbreaks," as it was imposed AFTER the virus was already in the country. Title 42 was always about making life harder for immigrants. Covid is still a problem for the nation in general, but incoming immigrants do not add to that problem.
    6
  1187. It's available online, this is just a summary.
    6
  1188. If you watch the video, it explains her reason. It does not justify her decision.
    6
  1189. And also economists. That part remains accurate.
    6
  1190.  @JohnSheppard105  Trump is "on bond" in the sense being discussed. It's not like a bail to stay out of jail type of bond, it's instead that he has to put up the money he owes, until the appeal goes through. If he wins on appeal he gets it back, but until then, it has to stay with New York.
    6
  1191. And any illegaly entry is detained and processed according to US law, and then deported if not granted residence.
    6
  1192. You're confusing things, Fauci did not "fund covid," he funded programs to cure covid and diseases like it. He's in the anti-virus community.
    6
  1193. Yeah, but since most people don't travel long distances on any regular basis, that's why EVs are better for most drivers.
    6
  1194. Millions of Americans won't be, though. Over Christmas.
    6
  1195. @Zaydan Alfariz Unfortunately, in the real world, that would not work, because they have already done everything they can do, and this is the result. Any sort of "scaling back" would mean a reduction in output. They could make Pakistan fair and sustainable again, just with 1/10th the surviving population. China tried that in the middle of the 20th Century.
    6
  1196. The US had reserves like that, but we burnded them.
    6
  1197. And also rip the 20,000 Americans who died last month alone because they hadn't gotten vaccinated yet. That's the important part.
    6
  1198. @ That's not true, service members have the same rights anyone else do. The UCMJ is a separate legal system for within the military, but all their normal constitutional rights do still apply.
    6
  1199. Evergrande's been investing all their money into FIFA Ultimate Teams packs.
    6
  1200. And?
    6
  1201. It's because Musk does not understand what he's talking about, but this never stops him.
    6
  1202. Trump would never appoint anyone committed to the Constitution.
    6
  1203.  @Riley_B2  Peace without security is only a delaying tactic.
    6
  1204. "We have the video that backs up our side, but, um. . . it'll take another few hours to cook. . ."
    6
  1205. It's Fox running the hen house.
    6
  1206. All I want is for them to remove the Facebook linking to their VR headsets.
    6
  1207.  @stayfaded69  Until 2017 he was considered to be "the model Republican" by most Republicans.
    6
  1208. Check into how other countries do it, it's not that hard.
    6
  1209. The Democrats of the 1960s are Republicans today, not the Democrats. Did you entirely miss the party shift? The "Southern Strategy?"
    6
  1210. Well, the difference is that there's no reason not to be tolerant of them, and there's nothing wrong with them doing something like this, so. . . What's the issue, exactly?
    6
  1211.  @RUESPEED1  Yes, I very much believe you when you say obvious falsehoods. Oh, wait, no, I'm not a Fox News viewer, so I don't do that.
    6
  1212. You misspelled Donald Trump.
    6
  1213. The thing is, it only bothers voters who support trump, who says more "racist" things than that at least a dozen times before breakfast.
    6
  1214. Why do you want to disenfranchise American citizens?
    6
  1215. Why would you put any historical artifacts on top of a terrorist base? Did they think that would stop them from blowing the base up?
    6
  1216. Well that's what happens when all you eat is steak and lobster. If you are eating normal things, then it would take several large bags.
    6
  1217.  0 0  Not only did I read it, I wrote it! It was incredibly clever.
    6
  1218.  @justcommenting4981  Right. I personally wouldn't mind a longer video, but there might be algorithm reasons not to make it longer, but at the very least there should be paired videos, "here is the devil's advocate position," and then "here is the actual reason why this is bad." Maybe place them a week apart, but in the first one reference that the second exists (it should already be written before publishing the first), and cite it throughout "as I say in the other video, this might be seen as a bad thing because. . .".
    6
  1219. "We tried to investigate ourselves, but then they fired us for doing that."
    6
  1220.  @Thebuird  Democrats are pushing for things that will allow every legal voter to vote. They are not pushing for anything that would allow for illegal voting to take place. The things that Democrats are pushing for in various states have already been tried in other states without any significant amount of election fraud resulting, so I don't know why you would think that they are bad ideas. It is the Republicans that are "demanding more and more power every day," McConnell demands control of the Senate from the minority position, Republican statehouses are demanding the right to overrule election results that go against their party, and a few months back Republicans stormed the Capitol in an attempt to get their losing candidate back into the White House, rather than respecting the will of the people. Democrats have never done that.
    6
  1221. There's no reason for Judge Merchan to recuse himself though. That's not different rules, that's just a single rule being applied evenly.
    6
  1222. That's not how it works.
    6
  1223. I had some at Disney once, they were quite tasty. I don't know if they would be worth luxury prices on a regular basis, but they are good food.
    6
  1224.  @IlPinnacolo  Of course we have more confidence in predicting the weather three days from now than we have in predicting anything ten years from now, that's not in dispute. But that also does not mean that we don't have enough confidence in the predictions for future decades to act on them. Nobody ended up in worse shape from listening to climate scientists. They are not precise, but they are very useful. And again, you do not need to have confidence in climate predictions down to a fraction of a degree. The results are likely to be off by well more than that, and that's ok. The goal is not to nail the result to within fractions of a degree, the result is that the temperature will be rising, and that this is bad. If the temperature in twenty years is a half of a degree higher or lower than predicted, that really does not matter much, but pretty much everyone agrees that it will be higher than it is today, unless we take steps to change that outcome. Also, I don't have to convince you of anything. You can remain unconvinced. The world will move on with or without your agreement. I would like you to be the sort of person that is convincable on this topic, but there's no guarantee of that, and frankly based on your comments I doubt it's possible. What is correct or not is not defined by what you personally agree to. As to why this process has led to so much prosperity? We are not fully into the "and find out" phase yet. If someone is cold, and they start a fire in their living room, then they will be "the warmest they have ever been" for some amount of time, but eventually that decision will have negative consequences. Right now, the human race is spending millions of years of stored resources. We're burning oil and gas. We're pumping aquifers that take centuries to replenish. We are achieving maximum productivity, but not sustainable productivity. More and more, over time, our efforts to maintain this level of growth will hit roadblocks. The water will cease to be available, the oil will run out, we will need plans for this. More and more land that is currently arable will become impossible to farm. More and more areas that have quality water sources will dry up. Weather will become more chaotic and destructive. Some warm places will become uninhabitably hot. These changes are only getting started and haven't hit their breaking point yet, but we can see that wall quickly approaching.
    6
  1225.  @IlPinnacolo  I don't see the relevance though. Surely we can and should care about future generations of humans, whether or not our relatives would be included in that, right? A better question should just be "do you want humans to be around in a hundred years?"
    6
  1226.  @IlPinnacolo  You're projecting now. Because you had no argument to make on the climate.
    6
  1227. They did their job, and found that no crimes had taken place. It is not their job to attack people who have not committed crimes, that is something that the previous administration never understood.
    6
  1228. He's more competent than his opponent.
    6
  1229.  @et2709  Nope. This was purely a war of Russian aggression and they were in no way justified.
    6
  1230. Yeah, peace for Ukraine can only come with NATO membership.
    6
  1231. Sort of, but it's only half the story, because it doesn't go into why those changes are still a net positive. It doesn't explain the existing costs of not making these changes.
    6
  1232.  @chobiden7770  Which Constitutional amendment discusses bathroom discrimination?
    6
  1233.  @edwardcuevas6974  She was never appointed "head of the border," that is the President and Secretary of Homeland Security. She was just assigned to negotiate with southern countries to help keep their people at home, which she did successfully.
    6
  1234.  @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!!!!"
    6
  1235. Pam: "They're both the same picture."
    6
  1236. Yup, he's shameless in his racism and hate.
    6
  1237. This should have happened over a month ago, when Israel warned everyone to get out of northern Gaza. Of course Hamas would not allow it.
    6
  1238. I need to remember this anecdote the next time I get into an online argument with one of those "roll'in coal" types, "You want to really own the libs? You buy yourself an EV, and then charge it up in the 350w charger instead of the 150x. That'll really steam their grits!"
    6
  1239. Because legal gun sales in this country make it much easier for criminals to get them too.
    6
  1240.  @AndrewTSq  Yeah, the human mind easily falls for scams like that. It's easier to convince someone of a lie than it is to convince them of the truth, you just need to tell them that "that other guy doesn't want you to know this truth I'm telling you," and their mind is yours to own.
    6
  1241. Nobody was "playing gotcha with word games." He was insisting that a common term meant something different than it actually meant. This first happened months ago, and he was corrected on it several times. He had EVERY opportunity to LEARN his mistake and to correct it, but he continued to double down on the error. There was no justification for this. Also, you misunderstand what LLoyd Austin's order meant. It was not "for 60 days," it was "within 60 days." All the order said was that COs were to find a time within the following 60 day in which they could spend one day discussing extremism in their ranks. This was a rational response to a rise in white nationalist associations within some branches of the service.
    6
  1242. No, that is how Trump thinks. In this case, it's merely holding someone accountable for their actions under US law, which is how the system should work. Completely different.
    6
  1243. @ Depends on the season. Right now, Iran is fairly mellow (directly), but if they get annoyed at someone, they have the potential to completely shut off shipping through that corridor, and they've done it before. If Iraq's move were even temporarily successful in diverting a significant amount of trade their way, you can bet Iran would use that as leverage to try and get things going their way.
    6
  1244. They expected him to pick someone qualified. Ok, nobody expected him to pick someone qualified, but it would have been nice.
    6
  1245. Unfortunately, Jesus lost in the last election, so he's out for the next four years.
    6
  1246. Georgia has state level RICO charges on their books. These laws have already been used successfully by this same prosecutor in previous cases. Apparently you are working outside your pay grade.
    6
  1247.  @barrnyroyal1440  You're wrong to say "that's how it's done," it is not. Committees sometimes hold meetings behind closed doors, usually if there is classified material involved (there is none here), but it is NOT something that is usually done before a public hearing. In fact, private hearings are usually done AFTER a public one.
    6
  1248. Yes, it would take significant impairment to support Trump.
    6
  1249. Nah, the children are fine either way. This has more to do with the parents than it ever did with the children.
    6
  1250.  @FirstNameLastName-wt5to  How so?
    6
  1251. I think that even home schooled kids should be required to attend like a "home school camp" once or more per year, where they spend a full school week at a boarding school style environment, taking basic grade level competency tests, speaking with top tier teachers, and hanging out with other students. I think that would go a long way toward weeding out the broken homes. Homes should not be allowed to function as prisons, children should not be treated like chattel slaves.
    6
  1252. It's really not all that complicated, and all a person needs to do is vote for the candidate they want most, then the candidate they like second best, and so on. That's not too hard for most people to figure out.
    6
  1253.  @hvquenzer  Every Democrat is on record as denouncing abortion being available past viability. NOBODY is in favor of that.
    6
  1254.  @danielmaster8776  They didn't lie about him, they lied to you.
    6
  1255.  @rgonzalo511  If I have a full cart, self-checkout is even better, because I will be able to put all the groceries into just the right bag, without having to try micromanaging a human being.
    6
  1256. Same way most successful people do.
    6
  1257. Yeah, one thing that blew my mind to learn was that above a certain level of heat+humidity, any form of "fan" becomes completely worthless, since all that does is cause moving air to evaporate your sweat faster. If your sweat is not evaporating, then it is entirely pointless, so your only options are to apply actual cold to your body somehow, either AC, or ice, or moving to someplace cooler (or at least drier) where you can recover.
    6
  1258.  @I_dont_read_responses  Russia invaded Ukraine. Nothing Ukraine did forced them to do so, they chose to do so. Russia never had any say over whether Ukraine joined NATO.
    6
  1259.  @frankorobinson1540  How would that make any sense? This is always Republicans. Every single time.
    6
  1260. I think leveraged buyouts should be illegal. If you want to buy a company? Fine, you can do that, but the debt has to be on you and cannot be transferred to the company you're buying. The company you're buying would make money, not lose it.
    6
  1261. As an outsider, I can only hope that the Labour party can get their shit together, ditch Corbyn, and get a leader that can lead the people. Britain can't survive as a one-party system.
    6
  1262. I would suggest people bring their dogs, but I wouldn't want to put them at risk.
    6
  1263.  @sharonritchie6365  The point though is that the amount you pay into taxes is a lot less than what Americans pay for private healthcare. A LOT less. Canada has lower avoidable death ratings, higher life expectancy, US has much lower number of physician visits per person, lower number of doctors per patient, I really can't find any ratings in which the US does better than Canada.
    6
  1264. He does appreciate a good liar.
    6
  1265.  @noahboday2008  In the 70s and 80s there were completely different economic factors at play than there are in 2023. Again, nobody is arguing that it can't have an impact on the system, but economics is an extremely complex process, there is no simple-minded "one cool trick" to fixing economies, or everyone would be doing it all the time. Monetary policy is one part of the current inflation people are experiencing, but it is nowhere close to the largest factor in it. Again, it's a global inflationary period due to the factors of coming out of covid and shifts in oil costs and various other factors that have nothing to do with who the US president is at the time, and the Us is actually doing a lot better than most at handling this problem. If you really insist on pretending that monetary policy is the root cause, at least remember that most of that "money printing" took place under the previous administration.
    6
  1266.  @kbl5007  But the current inflation has little to do with the high debt, and the Fitch downgrade had nothing to do with high debt, that came purely from Republican shenanigans around the debt ceiling. The issue was not that the Us had debt, it's that Republicans have repeatedly made it clear that they play games with that debt. So long as the US makes clear that we will not play games with the debt, that we intend to pay ti in full as we are committed by law to do, the rating agencies have no problem with that.
    6
  1267.  @misiknuo  But the fact remains that debt is a good thing and default is a bad thing. Or, at least, the things purchased with debt is good, and running up a debt to do that is better than not purchasing those things.
    6
  1268. @ What are you talking about? Russia has a land border with at least five other western countries.
    6
  1269. They don't know that covid came from these animals, they just know that these animals were in the area that the outbreak was traced to, so it seems likely to them that they were a potential source.
    6
  1270.  @MrSpencerport  There are plenty of businesses that are in desperate need of the labor that immigrants used to provide before the Trump administration muddled up the whole system. US residents don't want those jobs, and never show up for them. Iowa is trying to let CHILDREN work in meat packing plants because they can't find adults willing to do it. They aren't taking jobs that people actually want, they are taking jobs that otherwise don't get done. If you are worried about a Central American migrant doing your job better than you can, then maybe you aren't contributing enough to the US economy.
    6
  1271. Yes, this is how cults work.
    6
  1272. Zack Snyder is definitely a controversial Magnificent Bastard.
    6
  1273. Trump's favorite part of the Bible is the part about him, right before Moses smashed those tablets at his party.
    6
  1274. That's the thing about democracies, sometimes other people overrule what you want.
    6
  1275. 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.
    6
  1276.  @debbierushing723  Trump tried to take the American people's electoral choice away from them. That is the most important thing, because it is where all their other rights stem from.
    6
  1277. There's nothing "inappropriate" about Disney including queer characters in their programming. The only "inappropriate" thing there is people who find that "inappropriate."
    6
  1278. It would make sense for police and fire team dispatch to have access to a map where they can just click to block off various roads as needed to cause these cars to avoid getting in the way. If a fire is happening, they can just block off the nearby roads.
    6
  1279. America does have plenty of quality break makers out there, he was just talking about the more mass produced stuff. One of my local grocery stores has some bread that is as good as anything I had in France, it's just in the bakery section, not the "bread aisle" with the mass produced sandwich loaves. The weirdest thing though is that they sell something called a "baguette," that is nothing like a french baguette, with a very firm, spongy interior, but they also sell "French Bread," which is more like a traditional French baguette.
    6
  1280.  @daviddeegan4072  Out of the 20,000 Americans who died of covid last month, less than 1,000 of them had been vaccinated, even though over half the country had been. I'd say the vaccine is working pretty darned well if it's giving you 20x better odds of survival.
    6
  1281.  @MrBasteDoNotWaste  Why would a culture of brutal efficiency be preferable?
    6
  1282. Doooo ittttt!! Can we get more idiots to resign for nothing?
    6
  1283.  @VuongNguyen-cg6yo  We were never energy independent. We imported more oil under Trump than we do right now. It's impossible for a country to be energy independent so long as they use fossil fuels. As for "no new wars," the US hasn't started any wars under Biden either. Other countries are going to do what they do though. There were 18 wars going on somewhere in the world when Trump took office, 27 when he left office, and 22 today.
    6
  1284. There's no such thing as biological gender. I think you mean "biological sex."
    6
  1285. But on the bright side, stocks in tiny violins have shot way up.
    6
  1286.  @legaleeblonde4310  No, he let him off because he didn't have a case that he could prove in court. He made claims about Biden's competency because he's a Trump appointee that wanted to get some political digs in.
    5
  1287. And tens of millions more opposing you!
    5
  1288. And Trump is right there to make everything worse.
    5
  1289. I wish someone would make a city builder game in which the public actually responded realistically to the chaos you cause by moving things around all the time, and if you tore out one road to build another, it would disrupt the economy for years and people would riot, so you would need to move more carefully.
    5
  1290. It was Republicans that took that money.
    5
  1291.  @AlleLamb  They don't label Palestinians terrorists, they label people who commit and plan terrorist acts terrorists. There is a difference. Why would they have executed this attack if these people were not terrorists? What would be the point of it?
    5
  1292. @seraeggobutterworth5247 Nowhere in the 14th amendment does it say or imply that someone needs to be charged, tried, OR convicted of any crime to fall under the 14th's provisions. In fact, most of those who were disqualified from a ballot under the 14th were never charged, tried, or convicted of anything. The 14th does not say "if they have been convicted of insurrection," or anything of the sort, it only says "if they violate their oaths of office, which Trump did. A judge or other duly appointed election official is constitutionally justified in making such a determination, but of course higher authorities could overrule their determination. But again, legal convictions are 100% irrelevant to the process, I have no idea why so many on the right seem convinced that this is a winning argument for them.
    5
  1293.  @officegirl5735  People in Democratic states earn more money than people in Republican states. It's why their rent is higher. More people want to be there.
    5
  1294. Ok, but that's still not a reason to not point out racism where it occurs, and to encourage people to do less of it. If people are calling out racism, then it is because that thing is MORE racist than the typical "background racism" in nature. It's like radiation, a banana is radioactive, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't have warning signs around nuclear waste sites.
    5
  1295. They do a good enough job of misrepresenting themselves.
    5
  1296. There's no chance of it passing the Senate since he hasn't actually done anything impeachable.
    5
  1297. That's what Trump's mom said to his dad.
    5
  1298. When did he ever lie?
    5
  1299.  @spankyssurprise1361  No babies are at risk here. Nobody's talking about harming any babies. Don't be gross.
    5
  1300. "Make American third world again," I guess.
    5
  1301.  @MrOldclunker  Discussions about Jan 6th would not be privileged, as it was conduct in violation of their duties as legislators. They only have protections when they are operating LEGALLY.
    5
  1302.  @sitnamkrad  What would be the practical benefit of questioning whether 1+1 = 2, without being able to provide any valid evidence to support an alternative result? What would be lost by not having such questions in the public sphere? Also, you are wrong that people who know that 1+1=2 would have no reason to fear those who insist that it's 5, because those people would still exist in the world, getting their orders wrong at McDonalds, installing their appliances wrong, pumping the wrong amount of gas, they would be causing actual harm to themselves and those around them by clinging to their ignorance. Wouldn't it be better for them to just get the RIGHT answer to the question?
    5
  1303. Too many guns.
    5
  1304. Yes, he has a stutter. He will mumble.
    5
  1305. It's been tried. Doesn't work. Removing the guns does though.
    5
  1306. The risk this time is that there were enough stupid Republicans in the House to make the threat credible.
    5
  1307. But I thought early voting was a sin in the Republican party!
    5
  1308. Well, I imagine that they thought that they would get something out of it, the important thing to keep in mind is that they never did.
    5
  1309.  @WalkingNowhere  If it prevents the Republicans from achieving their anti-democratic goals, and no other option would achieve that, how could you call that "cowardice?" They aren't fleeing for their own safety, they are moving to the only location from which it is possible to fight.
    5
  1310. Depends on how clear their motives were, really. If a shooter does have a clear motive, it's typically discussed in detail.
    5
  1311.  @Wreckitralph1976  "Trust Putin" is what Trump says. He's very gullible.
    5
  1312. He appointed groomers.
    5
  1313. The Us can more than support all these immigrants. We've taken in more in the past. The issue is that we don't currently have the infrastructure to PROCESS the immigrants, so they are stuck waiting around for court dates, unable to find work and support themselves, and a burden on the state. If we could increase the amount of border judges and get these people cleared within months of entering the country, they could massively increase America's productivity and be a net positive for all Americans. Blame 20+ years of Republican anti-immigrant policies.
    5
  1314. Does she have that little faith in the intelligence and morality of her peers?
    5
  1315.  @michaelkennedy6415  Not "worse," only "weirder." Each new generation is BETTER than the one that came before it, but in ways that the previous generation does not understand, and so seems "weird." Some people are good at adapting to change, and work to understand younger generations, others lack the mental capacity to grow and adapt, so they insist that younger generations conform to the same culture that they grew up with. Of course that only leads to stagnation and eventually death. There is no "decline" taking place here, unless you refer to MAGA.
    5
  1316.  @theceska8345  He was in the military during wartime and carried a weapon. He carried a weapon in war. And he did serve as a CSM, even if you want to pretend otherwise for some reason.
    5
  1317.  @Balzzack  He had the rank though, which is what he said.
    5
  1318.  @rozenberg314  They should. They have no right to decide what Ukraine does.
    5
  1319. Because he'd gotten it wrong on several occasions, even after having been corrected on it at the time.
    5
  1320.  @Tamamo-no-Bae  Right. Taiwan generally wants to keep things how they are. They definitely don't want China to be bossing them around or messing with them, but they don't have any significant interest in poking the dragon over nothing.
    5
  1321.  @tat2zz68  Individual income tax makes up 54% of total tax revenues. Social Security payroll tax is another 30%. Corporations only pay 9%.
    5
  1322.  @taylorlibby7642  Walz does not do work for China.
    5
  1323.  @itsallminor6133  No, he's right.
    5
  1324.  @danielscarbrough4363  I would never trust Kristi Nome's opinion on which dogs cannot be saved. She should have at least given someone else the chance to do better.
    5
  1325. That probably would be Trump's best defense, but it still wouldn't protect him.
    5
  1326. They would only be willing to pay in rubles, which is basically monopoly money at this point.
    5
  1327.  @healthy2202  Exactly. If we let this go, then a President could do anything and expect to get away with it. Trump's lawyers even said he should be allowed to have his political opponents "silenced" without repercussions.
    5
  1328.  @eddievangundy4510  A jury of his peers listened to the evidence and came to a different conclusion, so according to US law, he did break the law. Factually.
    5
  1329. People voted for Trump based on his European heritage.
    5
  1330. Why would your race be relevant?
    5
  1331.  @lucar.923  Yeah, that was accurate. If you choose to not vaccinate yourself against a communicable virus, you have no right to associate with other people.
    5
  1332.  @carolflann2927  If you knew your history, I wouldn't have to explain how wrong you are.
    5
  1333. This reminds me of that Willy Wonka scene. "Stop, don't, come back. . ." Whatever.
    5
  1334. You mean the last twenty.
    5
  1335. The point is that we need to remove the NEED to raise the debt limit, not to not raise it when we have to.
    5
  1336.  @danielmorton1606  Also the GOP. Might be a fair trade.
    5
  1337. No, that's not the case. The 3rd is enforceable due to the right to vote. The framers of the Constitution never intended the 2nd to allow for violence against the government. They specifically made violence against the government illegal.
    5
  1338.  @Grayson950815  She served with honor in the Jan 6th committee, for one thing. Few Republicans can make that claim.
    5
  1339.  @Hautehead13  You do understand that the term "ghost writer" does not refer to actual ghosts, right? Right?
    5
  1340. I think that Harris would do fine, but I think Biden is a better president, and there does not seem to be any evidence that Joe Biden was involved in any of this stuff.
    5
  1341. TL;DR, "they might have stopped my corruption."
    5
  1342. You do understand that this is how polls work, right? Most people are "never asked" in a poll, because it asks a representative sample of people and then extrapolates from there. You do understand that this is how polls work, right? Please tell me you understand how polls work, my faith in humanity requires this.
    5
  1343.  @Jeroen_Maes  Watch the video.
    5
  1344.  @Forcix  <- Projecting.
    5
  1345.  @Forcix  <- still projecting.
    5
  1346.  @ThePhenom777  Yup, he was definitely not the brightest when he tried to hoard classified documents at Mar-A-Lago.
    5
  1347.  @nas08uk  Look uo "Houthi attacks in Red Sea."
    5
  1348. @ I think they are similar, but distinct meanings. It's like with manga, which is much more often faithfully translated into anime than books are into TV or movies. If someone asks if you've read a given manga, but you've only watched the anime, have you "read" it? No. Do you know how it plays out though? Yeah. I think the correct answer would be "I watched the anime," but if you did answer that you'd read it, it would be a forgivable inaccuracy.
    5
  1349.  @Troelski  I don't know, I listen to videos all the time, particularly when trying to get to sleep. Either way, playing a video without looking at it is not the same thing as playing a reading of a book, the actual medium of it is distinct. They are separate things, even if the content of them is the same.
    5
  1350. Except for the 10,000 who died last week, of course. They did not get over it quick. They got under it.
    5
  1351. That's because the puppy was actually alive when she shot it.
    5
  1352.  @michaeltru9474  No, you can't. But you can share your own personal notes with others if you aren't aware that they contain classified information.
    5
  1353.  @keenfire8151  It's within the first half minute or so. It's the core of his thesis. Just read what is actually on the screen, and then what he says it is, and run the numbers yourself.
    5
  1354.  @JK_JK_JK  I am a bot because I pointed out that he got the statistics wrong? You are a poor judge of information.
    5
  1355.  @MsGarnet77  What did I say that was not true? If you believe in honest reporting of information, and are not a bot yourself, you can answer that.
    5
  1356.  @wade5941  Yes, the report did say "There were 350 deaths registered in the UK involving coronavirus (COVID-19) in the week ending 2 September 2022, down from 505 in the previous week. " It ALSO said that there were a total of 706 excess deaths in that period. So if you do basic middle school math, that's roughly 50% of those excess deaths were covid deaths and 50% were non-covid. The covid deaths made up around 3.4% of the TOTAL deaths in the UK over that period, but in the video, he reports this multiple times as the covid deaths being only 3.4% of excess deaths, rather than accurately reporting that they made up HALF of the excess deaths.
    5
  1357. If their coastal areas have such high humidity, wouldn't there be some way to build some massive, highly efficient forms of "dehumidifier," to suck all this water out of the air and into a practical form? I'm not talking just taking a standard home dehumidifier and making it massive, I'm talking like big towers or something that use shape and materials to naturally suck the water from the air with little to no energy use.
    5
  1358.  @aucklandsadventures  Roughly half of We the People are Democrats and roughly half are Republicans. Choosing the party of the candidate you support does have real consequences, and it's childish to pretend otherwise.
    5
  1359.  @cliffordbodine5834  and also look at all the convicted criminals who came from two-parent households. Hitler had two parents. The point is, having a single parent household does not make someone more likely to commit crimes.
    5
  1360.  @scotgarland7526  We do put human babies up for adoption. Abortion isn't really relevant to that, since that happens before there are any babies involved.
    5
  1361. Why would it be a "conflict of interest" for two people on the same side of a legal case being romantically involved? It would only be a conflict if they were on opposing sides or something, and even that happens from time to time.
    5
  1362. It's impossible for both MAGA and America to have a great day at the same time. For one to win, the other must lose.
    5
  1363. Meanwhile, back in reality. . .
    5
  1364. It's tough, because it's a business that basically only works if you have a monopoly over the customer-base, and yet a monopoly is a bad thing in general, because they could then abuse that. On the other hand, if they did push their limits, customers could always just drop them and go back to shopping/take-out. They really do need to push down to a lower price per unit though, figuring out more efficient shipping methods and packing methods.
    5
  1365. That is what he said in the thirty second clip above, yes.
    5
  1366.  @MK-lh3xd  But that would end the civilian casualties, and then they would have no source of financing.
    5
  1367. Which laws are not being enforced?
    5
  1368.  @LittleIggy2010  More specifically, which laws? To my knowledge, all current immigration laws are being fully enforced.
    5
  1369.  @carmelitakinjo261  Helping Ukraine is WELL within our means AND in our national interests. There is no reason not to do it, unless you're being paid by Putin to claim otherwise.
    5
  1370. Unfortunately, we know it's not that.
    5
  1371. Why?
    5
  1372.  @roninthedestroyer8958  Presidents are no more allowed to take classified documents than Senators are. The fact is though that people at all levels of security clearance tend to accidentally move a minor document or two eventually, and this is not a huge deal. It was only a big deal in Trump's case because it was not "a handful" of documents, it was HUNDREDS of them, many of them with extremely serious classification levels, and that when he was asked to return them, he refused to do so, and also lied about what he had, which is the opposite of what anyone else has done in this situation.
    5
  1373. They seemed to be trying to prevent the downfall of this country, don't you think?
    5
  1374. Now definitely isn't the right time, but any future time would be even worse, so it may as well be now. If after 20 years the Afghan army is not ready to defend themselves, they never will be. I just can't understand why Us soldiers are perfectly able to fight and die to defend Afghan civilians, and Taliban soldiers are perfectly able to fight and die to advance their cause, but Afghan government soldiers just can't be bothered to try.
    5
  1375.  @S62r  Including all the Evangelicals. You can't follow Christ and Evangelicalism at the same time, so they choose Evangelicalism.
    5
  1376. Does your cousin also have a girlfriend in Canada?
    5
  1377. Dems don't actually say that. That's something Republicans say Dems say. Dems only say that certain implementations of voter ID are racist, if those implementations impact some groups more than they do others.
    5
  1378. It's already as closed as it ever was. This is what that looks like.
    5
  1379. That would be illegal, as he's violated no oaths. I think you may have a problem understanding what "constitutional republic" means.
    5
  1380. Well, part of the issue is that the portions of congress that are demanding attention on this topic are the ones intended to "Weaponize government," so it would not be in the people's best interest to humor them. I'm sure that if legitimate requests for information were made by legitimate inquiries, the DoJ and FBI would cooperate.
    5
  1381. No their aren't. Everyone in the hurricane areas is receiving help from the US government right now. The only people who aren't are those choosing not to.
    5
  1382. Companies got mad that people could dislike their trailers. You can turn it back on with a plugin if you like though.
    5
  1383. This is why it's important to remember that people in other countries have no fewer "emotional disorders" than in the US, but they don't have mass shootings, because they don't have as many guns. It's only the Us that has these, because of all the guns. If we could figure out a way to have less guns out there, we would not have to worry about these mass shootings. Anyone who fights against gun regulation has the blood of these lives on their hands.
    5
  1384.  @dem0nchild610  Nope, there was not anything more to it, they JUST voted down a bill to help injured Veterans. Do not buy their lies just because you want to believe them.
    5
  1385. The opposite.
    5
  1386. No, the people in this country are no better or worse than in most. The only difference is that we have way more guns, so we have way more murders as a result. Removing the guns would massively reduce the murder rate.
    5
  1387.  @LyricsQuest  Prices tend to rise higher than the tariff amounts, because that's what businesses do with an excuse. Also, he was talking about a 60% tariff on at least some products. There are relatively few "10% industries" as you put them, most things that aren't made in the US in significant amounts have much higher margin gaps. If the tariffs were aimed at products just on the margins of profitability, then there_might_ be some value to it, but that is not what he is proposing at all. More importantly, the US does not need any of those 10% industries, because we've moved on. May as well cry about the decline of whale oil and canal traffic.
    5
  1388. This is a constitutional republic, and certain powers are delegated to the executive.
    5
  1389.  @imacanoli897  Yup, all we can know for sure is that whatever he does will turn out badly, we just can't know what path that might be or how badly it will go.
    5
  1390. Nobody is in favor of murdering anyone. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. Why even bring it up?
    5
  1391. How so?
    5
  1392.  @bencolwell2260  During four of those years, he was the sitting US president, which presented a lot of complications. After that, as you say, these cases tend to take a while to play out, and part of that is Trump himself delaying things as best his team could manage. This could have all happened a year or two ago if Trump had wanted it to move faster. You can't delay and then complain that it's happening later than it could have. And yes, I do deserve what Democrat politicians are going to do to me, we all do, it will be great.
    5
  1393.  @drzaius1121  If any criminals cross the border, they are detained and deported. That really isn't a factor here.
    5
  1394.  @wyattcole5452  You do realize that ALL the Star Wars movies were about the toys, right? That's where Lucas got paid.
    5
  1395. Yup, a lot are. Roughly 35-40% of voters. Sad.
    5
  1396. She's more qualified than Trump is right now.
    5
  1397. His first name is "Donald," not "Brandon" Trump.
    5
  1398. ​ @leahblake6748  He did not eventually turn them over. They were seized after serving a search warrant, because he had refused to turn them over for many months already, and even claimed to have already turned them over. It's even highly suspected that he still has other documents that he has yet to turn over, but they don't have enough evidence to serve a warrant on it.
    5
  1399. Is there some reason you shouldn't? If there is not evidence to back up these claims, then they would be defamatory, and the people involved could make millions off of it.
    5
  1400. Wow, the Kremlin propagandists are getting lazy in their attempts to seem relatable.
    5
  1401.  @minderbean Dr. Oz was a completely different story, he never lived in the state he was running in. Schiff at least is a California resident, even if, as a member of congress, he spends most of his time in DC.
    5
  1402.  @dontdamnme7271  Says who? Certainly not Jesus.
    5
  1403. He was not in criminal contempt.
    5
  1404. It's less that the times are especially interesting, and more that there are more cameras than there used to be.
    5
  1405. Yes, they have to understand that Trump's voters value their own gullibility more than any other feature.
    5
  1406. Where was she called "the border czar?" Look up the official White House release when she was appointed to negotiate on the border, no mention of that term.
    5
  1407. He was teaching them English and democracy. Now he's going to do the same to Trump supporters.
    5
  1408. This is why people purchase mobile air conditioning units.
    5
  1409.  @king_tut.  Because such bills need to start in the House, and then the Senate can move it forward. The Senate can't act until the House does, and even if they did, it wouldn't matter because the House would still need to sign off on it, which means getting Kevin on board eventually.
    5
  1410.  @jasonyankovec8541  She did. Migrants from the countries she worked with have fallen over the years. There was never a path to completely cutting off immigration from those countries, if it were that easy then why didn't Trump do it while in office? Why did immigration go UP over his four year?
    5
  1411.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  I meant the current one, which was a result of the Abraham accords.
    5
  1412.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  By that definition, Biden has had fewer wars.
    5
  1413.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  Where would he be starting one?
    5
  1414.  @davidbrawner7679  You can find full lists of when wars begin and end, but some of the more prominent ones would be in Ethiopia and Yemen. Again, I'm not arguing that he started them, only that they happened on his watch. None of the last three presidents started any wars themselves.
    5
  1415. As "disrespectful" as Lindsay Graham trying to get thousands of legal Georgia ballots tossed out because they might be voting Democratic?
    5
  1416.  @TruthRISING2024  Well, we just survived four years of that, but it's a good thing that's over and now we have competent leadership in the White House again.
    5
  1417.  @thiskneegrow  nobody is forcing you to put candidates you don't want. If you only want to vote for one candidate, you can do that.
    5
  1418.  @nonyabusiness557  He was deployed to Italy to support soldiers in Afghanistan.
    5
  1419.  @m.schetr7398  He did go though, in 2003. You're talking about a later deployment, which happened after he'd already retired.
    5
  1420. Those are people. The current court does not care about people, they only care about their lavish vacations, and who pays for those.
    5
  1421. There are fewer districts than there are counties.
    5
  1422.  @crazysquirrel9425  But that would give more votes to states that break up into more counties. Rhode Island could break into a thousand counties and get more Congressmen than the rest of the states combined currently get. This is for members of Congress, so you can only have as many districts as you have members of congress allotted to the state by the Constitution. Now, if you wanted to do away with Gerrymandering, you could have a system in which everyone votes in some way, and then the top X amount of candidates get picked, but it's tricky to make that a balanced system that accurately reflects the public, since it would tend to have some wild swings.
    5
  1423.  @indioloco6600  Whatever sins a parent might commit, that's no reason to starve children.
    5
  1424. If only there were someplace US manufacturers could get steel at an even lower price than Bethlehem could produce it at. . . oh wait, tariffs made that impossible.
    5
  1425. Elon Musk: "That totally wasn't a fascist salute guys. . ." Also Elon: "So as I was saying, fellow fascists. . ."
    5
  1426. Yeah, in reality, it's always the gun's fault. If the gun weren't there, nobody would be shot.
    5
  1427.  @User_yhvz  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.
    5
  1428. Where does your rememberance come from?
    5
  1429.  @trajectoryunown  Because she is both. She is also a woman, and can campaign on being a woman, just like Trump can campaign on being an orange.
    5
  1430. "Elon is within his rights to do this, but it is an objective step down in the quality" is basically his motto.
    5
  1431.  @partydean17  No, again, the home team benefits more from people who live there having housing than for tourists to get cheaper room rates. That's just a fact. So what is the best outcome is for people who actually live in the community to have affordable housing, and then once that has already been accomplished, we can talk about Airbnb.
    5
  1432. That's not what they are saying though. They are saying that without adequate access to mental health care, more people WILL commit suicide. That is not a threat, it's just a statement of fact.
    5
  1433. The person who declared him that was a Republican prosecutor, not exactly the sharpest tool in the drawer.
    5
  1434. Or to put it another way, "dumb people misunderstood what Adam Schiff said and think he was wrong."
    5
  1435. The problem isn't so much political parties, it's people who buy into cult behavior. MAGA cultists would be just as dangerous as a third party.
    5
  1436.  @abbyynorman2874  no, the bill does none of those things. What nonsense have you been fed?
    5
  1437. That's just general public speaking. You don't want to try and talk over the audience, because then your next statement will get lost.
    5
  1438.  @theclearsounds3911  But we aren't talking about supressing anything while it's still a matter of scientific debate, or even of suppressing actual scientific debate in any form at any time. What we're talking about is shutting down discussion AFTER the scientific debate has been resolved, shutting down those who will indefinitely refuse to agree with the outcomes of the scientific debate. There are some aspects of climate change that are debatable, but not remotely as many as denier wish there were. It's shuffling deckchairs at this point, the iceberg happened either way.
    5
  1439.  @markburton5292  The point of censorship is not to "lead to enlightenment" but to prevent people being led away from enlightenment. Convincing those who have open minds is a good place to start, but those other people will still exist and can still cause problems, so the question is what to do about them. Preventing them from encountering misleading information seems to be the best available option, and I haven't really heard any effective alternatives. And yes, there were times in which the Earth had more CO2 and was hotter, but that was before mammals existed. Life would continue to exist even if we allowed climate change to run rampant, but most animals currently living on the Earth would go extinct, and humans would find it very hard to survive in most of the places we traditionally have, and I can't imagine any rational person looking at that and going "yeah, that's fine." There can be no rational debate with someone who thinks that way.
    5
  1440.  @snex000  No, he had it about right. The point of Orwell was to never present fiction as being equally valid to the truth. There is an objective reality that should be respected.
    5
  1441.  @theclearsounds3911  Hurricanes are not more frequent, but they are more often larger and more damaging than they used to be. Lives lost tend to be down, but that is due to better route prediction, warning, and architecture to protect people from them, rather than severity. Also, how much more data would you need to be satisfied with their conclusions? What is the data contradicting those conclusions? I get the impression that "more data is needed" would always be your answer unless you were getting results that you prefer.
    5
  1442. Lol, you don't think they cut critical personnel? That's precious.
    5
  1443.  @mrbonjangle  All those books had already been removed from libraries though. The current wave of Republican book bannings was targeting books that were appropriate for children, but contained LGBT content, or content about white supremacy that made certain snowflakes feel bad. There was no justification for that.
    5
  1444. Taiwan would prefer to just avoid starting a war at all, even if they could potentially win it. It would cause too much damage, win or lose. They will only fight if China forces them too.
    5
  1445.  @rose106  Every one of them fits. If they did not fit, they wouldn't have indicted. This is not the Trump DoJ.
    5
  1446. The CDC has been out against obesity for years now. You can find plenty of information about it on their official site.
    5
  1447. Yeah, they would get the dog better training so it would stop doing that. But city folk have morals.
    5
  1448. Yup, Don will tell his followers anything and expect them to believe it.
    5
  1449.  Hortler   The second amendment was man-made though.
    5
  1450.  @brushstroke3733  I already am a Democrat. Like I said, I'm not maga.
    5
  1451.  @fxsrider  But the thing is, big manufacturing jobs don't tend to take place in cities anymore, almost all city jobs are either white collar office jobs, or people servicing those people, so even though manufacturing can't "work from home," that doesn't mean much to cities, it stays out in the suburbs and beyond.
    5
  1452.  @grammernotzi  Nope, voters IDs have nothing to do with illegals, as they couldn't get on the voter rolls in the first place. So give an actual reason, and I'll answer the rest.
    5
  1453. No, it was because Trump's judge tried to dismiss the previous case for reasons that no judge in the country believes are valid, and this is trying to get it back on track.
    5
  1454. It certainly wouldn't help Trump's electoral chances, which is ALL he's ever cared about.
    5
  1455. This is not Putin's Russia, we do not jail people for being in an opposing political party.
    5
  1456. Rail can't reach everywhere, and EVs are a good way to bridge that gap.
    5
  1457. I think it's because Trump is currently involved in a somewhat similar case that has a lot of points of comparison. It would be kind of weird if they ignored that, wouldn't it?
    5
  1458. "Race to the bottom" Businesses will go to the places where they are allowed to be their worst selves. That's why regulation needs to be global, give them no place to run.
    5
  1459. @ Reading comprehension has fallen.
    5
  1460.  @Alwaysonaquest  You do your masters proud.
    5
  1461. The debt ceiling does not involve new spending, it means paying the bill for the things we've already bought and used. If they want to reduce spending, that would happen later, and would affect future bills. Think of it like going to a restaurant, reading the menu, eating your meal, getting the check, and going "the prices here are too expensive, I'm not going to pay my bill unless you lower the prices." Then try going back to that same restaurant later and see what happens.
    5
  1462.  @jimb3457  Yes, those were the excuses that they gave. They were without basis in fact. Gullible rubes were dumb enough to believe them though.
    5
  1463. The Constitution requires that anyone get a fair trial, so police can't just decide what punishment someone will receive. Assuming they got the right person, he should go away for a long time.
    5
  1464. That's the other guy. did you not hear his plans to dismantle the Republic if relectected?
    5
  1465. Ah, a Gamestock devotee, I see.
    5
  1466.  @robinperronjones5024  The increases to the deficit were already added before this, this has nothing to do with choosing to increase the deficit. This is about paying the debts we've already accumulated. Whatever issues you might have with government spending, that is a separate problem for a different time.
    5
  1467.  @robinperronjones5024  No, again, it is impossible to "cut spending" our way out of this. We can discuss cutting some spending, but not as a part of the debt ceiling negotiations. Stop trying to act as if the two topics are related. It makes no sense to do so. Also, I don't think you understand how the federal budget gets allocated. There is some mismanagement and inefficiencies, but less so than in corporations. No system is perfect, this is just better than the alternatives. MOST of the money spent goes towards vital purposes.
    5
  1468. U can definitely tell when it's not.
    5
  1469. What would be the benefit of that? Would it get him out of prison for having committed no crimes?
    5
  1470. He didn't factor in intelligence.
    5
  1471. What is wrong with you guys? It's somehow "dirty" to smell babies now? You have issues.
    5
  1472. "Is he legitimately insane, or just evil?" basically.
    5
  1473.  @markwison4286  They can, but you do that at a completely different part of the process. Think of it like this, you go to a mafia-run restaurant and order $200 in food. When the bill comes, you say that you really only wanted to spend $50, so you're just going to skip the rest of the bill. Now, is that a wise thing for you to do? No. You might not make it home in one piece. If you only wanted to spend $50, you should have only committed to spending $50, NOT commit to spend $200 and then refuse to pay it after the fact.
    5
  1474. That's true enough. Considering Trump a viable option is a sign of insanity.
    5
  1475. Why the hell would someone invite an anti-abortion speaker to a MEDICAL school?
    5
  1476. No, that's not why.
    5
  1477. And yet all the elected Republicans are pandering to that fringe, for some reason. . .
    5
  1478. Well, in a military sense this is true, they couldn't shut off those states completely, but from a practical standpoint, having a convenient land route is very significant to trade and just general quality of life. Blocking off that crossing or putting some sort of other restrictions on it would make life a lot harder for people living in those countries. It would be like what England did to the UK in Brexit.
    5
  1479.  @TheSuperappelflap  The cost of batteries come down as production increases. Nothing comes without a cost, and it's a bit ridiculous to complain that the cost is not "zero."
    5
  1480. @ Why would "china" pay for shipping? You're paying for shipping by ordering a product. That's how it's always worked. Things from China are not cheaper because of trade policy, they are cheaper because the people making them are working for peanuts. Do YOU want to work for peanuts?
    5
  1481. Nobody is talking to kids about sex, and nothing in the new Florida law would prevent them doing so if they did. Discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity have nothing to do with sex itself.
    5
  1482. Conservative women are heavier, on average.
    5
  1483. Trump voters, yes. They call it "the Paper."
    5
  1484. It is the guns, because all the other explanations have already been ruled out. Other first world countries have ALL the same problems you listed, just as much as the US. They just have fewer murders, because it's harder to get a gun there.
    5
  1485. This war started because Russia chose to invade. That is the beginning and end of that story. There is no reason for anyone outside of Russia to be talking about "what could have been done to prevent the war." because the only ones who had any chance of preventing it were in Russia.
    5
  1486. Are they banning seat belts while they're at it?
    5
  1487. How is it under attack?
    5
  1488. None, it's a CR.
    5
  1489. Wow, let's hope you never end up inn HR department.
    5
  1490.  @jaxstax2406  No, if Joe Machin and Kyrsten Sinema weren't trying to stop the bill, it would just pass, and America would be a better place.
    5
  1491.  @JustSomePerson8  Lol.
    5
  1492. You are allowed to smoke, but you are not allowed to expel that smoke where it might be breathed in by others.
    5
  1493.  @vernonsthornburg8791  An intelligent person doesn't have to belittle someone else's intelligence, but that doesn't mean that they can't, especially when it's so obvious.
    5
  1494. Protected from what?
    5
  1495. I don't think financial experts were ever bothered. It was more financial "experts" that had a very nativist economic viewpoint, and objected to foreign debt on principle.
    5
  1496.  @troyb3659  Like Franklin said, "we're a republic, so long as we can keep it." This is the year that tests that.
    5
  1497.  @dr.brinebasterd8982 A constitutional republic is a form of democracy. It's like you're saying "I'm not a mammal, I'm a human."
    5
  1498. The border is secure, in a military sense. Everyone who comes across is detained and processed, there are just a lot of them, and they take time to work their way through the immigration systems. There is no security issue here, just a humanitarian issue.
    5
  1499. Yup, because that's the truth. And the people asking the questions know that, but they also know that their followers are dumb enough not to.
    5
  1500.  @roscoepatternworks3471  I'm not sure what you're getting wrong here. She denounced Hammas, and she denounced Hezbolah. Which group do you believe she did not denounce? Russia?
    5
  1501.  @roscoepatternworks3471  That's what she said. Kennedy didn't like that, because he was trying to paint her as "the enemy."
    5
  1502. Thye don't need to be. They only need to be capable of replacing jobs.
    5
  1503. I know that there's a running list of all the times Trump's said an outright lie, but is anyone keeping a running tally of the times that he's said something criminal, treasonous, or otherwise dangerous, in a completely unfunny way, only for his staff to say "he was just joking" later?
    5
  1504. @ It's your fault if you support the idea that they were "corrupt."
    5
  1505. "I like Water!" -Titanic passengers
    5
  1506. The important thing though, is that outside of fossil fuel propaganda, what you said isn't actually true. That makes a big difference.
    5
  1507. The ones on the right seem much more jazzed about doing a civil war though, which is concerning.
    5
  1508. Why? We already know what happened, and changes are being made. Further congressional hearings would not serve a purpose, it would just be a stage for showboating.
    5
  1509. They aren't pricing themselves out of the market, the tariff is. That has nothing to do with their wine producers.
    5
  1510.  @johnnypines  How much tax evasion do you plan on doing?
    5
  1511. Sadly, only a razor thin majority of Americans are not stupid.
    5
  1512. It wasn't known that he was into that sort of thing at the time Clinton was interacting with him. He was a rich and famous guy, it's entirely possible he was running "one sort of party" with one set of acquiescence, and "another sort of party" with others. Unless there is actual evidence that someone participated in the shadier side of things, or continued to interact with him after knowing the darker side of his behavior, it wouldn't be reasonable to assume wrongdoing.
    5
  1513. Then why can't he remember that Trump praised Walz's handling of the riots?
    5
  1514. Everyone does, history repeats itself on a daily basis. It's not a big deal.
    5
  1515. Well, I imagine investigation and arrests would be up to the local governments wherever they are at the moment, the UN doesn't really have the authority to do such things.
    5
  1516.  @xavierrodriguez766  Gaza invaded Israel this October and killed 1400+ Israelis in cold blood, in many cases after sexual violence. What do you mean that Gaza "did not do anything?" How is that "nothing" to you?
    5
  1517. Do you legitimately not understand? That's sad for you.
    5
  1518. There was no indictment at all. If there had been, THAT would be news. But all Durham had to say was "I could not find the sort of wrongdoing that Trump hired me to find, I suppose because it never existed in the first place, but boy am I disappointed."
    5
  1519. Mainly because he did nothing wrong, of course.
    5
  1520.  @targgthewise2892  Are you talking about Matt Gaetz?
    5
  1521. Russia is the one that invaded an innocent country. America is supporting that innocent country from a Russian invasion. Did you take a bomb to the head?
    5
  1522. @ He's the current President of the US, and the source of too many problems to count at the moment. Why would anyone rational ignore that?
    5
  1523.  @crowwick7652  Just because she was too poor a leader to handle the dog does not justify her killing it. She should have found a better leader who could handle the dog safely.
    5
  1524. If they came armed with tools specific to burglary, the charges would probably stick.
    5
  1525.  @ReeseMoore  Is it "necessary" displaying them in front of children? No more than displaying Muppets or Barney, I suppose, but is it necessary to ban them being performed in front of children? Obviously not. Passing a law that says that you can't do something without any good reason for it makes it a lot harder to do. I definitely agree that too many adults are trying to "project" onto their children what is ok rather than considering that one day, your kid may disclose to you how your "decisions" may have impacted them in a negative way when it wasn't "intended". That is what led them to make this law, and what it's supporters are doing. That's why it was a good thing that the law was rejected.
    5
  1526. Yes, she had no interest in going down on Trump like the people of Wyoming wanted to do.
    5
  1527. That's because there was evidence that he was well aware they were classified material at the time, which is part of the necessary conditions for a prosecution.
    5
  1528. European NATOs: "Yeah, we aren't interested in fighting autocracies, we just want the US to protect us from Russia, that's all."
    5
  1529. People shouldn't need tips in the first place. Vote Biden.
    5
  1530. I would be more bothered if the country invading them had a better track record with this. But they' don't, so I still side with Ukraine.
    5
  1531.  @johnchristman750  Nowhere does it state that congress should make that decision, and in most cases in which it was applied, it was not congress applying it. The Constitution gives states the authority to coordinate their own elections.
    5
  1532.  @dehydratedwater9806  No, he did not offer to turn them over,m he refused on multiple occasions to do so and even lied to them about it. Your memory fails you.
    5
  1533. Yeah! Their "dumbest state" ranking is in serious jeopardy now!
    5
  1534.  @jtracer96t  And the reason that is not an issue, is because they don't have to ask for proof of citizenship, because they are not taking anyone's word on the matter. If someone is not already a legal citizen, then they are not allowed to vote.
    5
  1535. Jim Jordan has put more work into defending corruption than just about anyone else in the House. He's got stiff competition from his caucus though, so I'm not sure he's at the top of the pile.
    5
  1536. Ukraine is beating Russia. Will Russia cause a lot of damage in Ukraine before they are all dead? Maybe, but there's no way they are actually taking the country at this point. They are too weak and incompetent for that, and Putin is too stupid to lead his country out of a paper bag.
    5
  1537. Well, true, the planet does not care if all live on Earth ends, but I think we probably should.
    5
  1538. The problem is that most people believe that are better able to "decide for themselves" than they actually are.
    5
  1539.  @granolafunk6192  Duels are illegal in this century, traveler.
    5
  1540. "Guys? Guys! Come onnnnn! I thought we were all going to be racist douches together! Oh, it's just me now. Typical."
    5
  1541.  @oo--7714  Sure they can, but everyone can still be annoyed by it. I don't think anyone is going to sanction them, since it isn't worth the hassle, but it's still a dick move.
    5
  1542. No, there's no problem, because the person being inaugurated is the lawfully elected president. It's only a problem in those other countries when the leaders being put in power were not lawfully elected. It is sad that defenses like this are necessary, but we didn't have them last Wednesday and you saw what happened. Trump fans are lunatics.
    5
  1543. That is the point of this. That is what the judges were paid to accomplish.
    5
  1544. He is incapable of ending the war without handing it all to his boss.
    5
  1545. It happens in all parts of this country,. because we lack proper gun control.
    5
  1546. Not every issue has two legitimate sides. It is also a failure to pretend that both sides deserve an outcome they like.
    5
  1547. What would that have to do with anything?
    5
  1548.  @georgewood7381  They weren't mayors under Trump.
    5
  1549. Better than a ":border field trip," right? At least a climate field trip has lovely nature to look at. I don't know why so many politicians feel the need to wander over to the border and go "yup, it's a border all right."
    5
  1550. Smith was appointed by the Attorney Genera, like every other special council.
    5
  1551.  @Kaza0kun  It was in the indictment. The crime was election interference.
    5
  1552.  @jocm99  His sentencing is in a little over a month. He won't be going to jail until after sentencing (and he still might end up with a sentence that does not include jail time).
    5
  1553. How is this not an issue? This is not a personal attack, this is an attack on the policies he represents, which will impact regular Americans if he's allowed to implement them.
    5
  1554. People who exist here legally do take precedent. This is doing what's in their best interests.
    5
  1555. No, Biden's fine. It's his opponent that is spiraling.
    5
  1556. McCarthy really works to keep people guessing as to whether he's actually this stupid, or this craven. . . it's really a toss-up. Probably both.
    5
  1557.  @t.daniel5003  A constitutional republic is a form of democracy. People saying otherwise do not understand our political system, or even worse, don't care.
    5
  1558.  @3.7stang63  Yes, collateral damage, because Hamas makes it impossible to target themselves without innocents getting caught in the crossfire.
    5
  1559. I don't know about that. People try this sort of thing all the time, they just get caught, like in this story. What doesn't happen is for this sort of thing to work.
    5
  1560. He's been licking the boots of the crazy wing of his party so far, and will continue to do so as long as they let him keep the gavel.
    5
  1561.  @lisal9829  Thanks. Seriously, these people and their weird excuses for bigotry. . .
    5
  1562. Diplomacy isn't an option because Russia only uses violence. If Russia were open to Diplomacy, then all they would have to do is leave. Problem solved.
    5
  1563. Nobody is required to get a booster, it is still your choice.
    5
  1564.  @cbgamer3557  That's between them and their employer, we're talking about federal law here.
    5
  1565. @ ATM machines are very rarely robbed or otherwise mishandled, at least not the ones attached to proper banks. That's certainly not reason enough to use human bank tellers instead (which also get robbed). As for store self-checkout, there's an argument that they lead to increased theft, but that just seems to coincide with a general trend of increased theft where they bypass the cashiers entirely anyway, so it would be hard to attribute an exact number there. If there is increased theft, the solution is just better observation of the processes involved, but you could still have a couple humans monitoring multiple self-checkout lanes at once, so it's still more efficient.
    5
  1566. @ Well, a few reasons. First, because as a consumer I very much prefer it, just checking out myself without having to interact with a cashier. It's faster, more efficient, and more comfortable to me. Second, any job that a machine is capable of, it should do, to take that burden off of humans. Why drag a plow by hand when a cow can do it? Why make a cow do it when a tractor can? Why force a human to spend eight hours in a cubicle doing mindless tasks, when they could be enjoying their life more? People should not be defined by their productivity. We shouldn't be fighting to keep humans in pointless, unnecessary jobs, just so that they have "a job," we should be working toward a future where people don't need jobs to life a secure and fulfilling life.
    5
  1567.  @ErisRising  Yes, but it's out of the Democrats hands. It is up to Republican voters to solve this mess.
    5
  1568. Elect clowns like this, get a circus.
    5
  1569. That's not how it works.
    5
  1570.  @ChuckWortman  Maybe, but we've tried fighting drugs from the demand side for decades now and it just never works. We could massively increase drug treatment programs, maybe decriminalize drugs so that they are less of a social stigma for people trying to fight addiction, but I think the only real way to combat cartels would be to just legalize and nationalize drug sales, produce and sell them at cost, so that the cartels have no profit margins.
    5
  1571. Well, it wasn't as good as a clean debt ceiling rise, but it was certainly better than anything the House proposed in their first hostage demand.
    5
  1572.  @kmoses582  I don't think that's the case. There's always been bad weather. All that's changed now is that worst weather is more likely than it used to be. It's not a binary process, it's just a matter of risks.
    5
  1573.  @kmoses582  I pay attention.
    5
  1574.  @kmoses582  Well, just as one example, recent studies comparing modern ocean temperatures to historic ones a hundred years ago indicate that every hurricane we've seen over the last few years have been 1-2 categories higher than they would have been if ocean temperatures had been at the 1920s levels. It's not that there would have been less storms, just that they would have been less intense, because they would not have had as much fuel to work with. Without climate change, none of the hurricanes in 2024 would have been cat 5s.
    5
  1575.  @IlPinnacolo  Charity starts at home. I'm a better parent to your kids than you are, we can at least agree on that.
    5
  1576. Yes, protect infants from red states!
    5
  1577. Exactly, it should have been out of the conservative justice's hands.
    5
  1578.  @FentanylFloyd  No, I'm not MAGA.
    5
  1579. Yes, vote blue, no matter who. Jesus would.
    5
  1580.  @csbrooks  If they are vaccinated, of course. Unvaccinated it's lower. But most people are vaccinated.
    5
  1581. Why should she be fired?
    5
  1582. It's sad that you have so little respect for women.
    5
  1583. The US could easily support way more people than this. Immigrants actually add MORE value to the US economy than they remove. The only real issue here is that we don't have enough border judges to supply process their asylum applications in a timely manner, and until that's done, they aren't allowed to work. It's a burden entirely of the GOP's making.
    5
  1584. What goes around, comes around, I guess.
    5
  1585.  @TiredofLies  Oh, sorry, I don't speak MAGA sheep, so all I heard from you was braying sounds.
    5
  1586. Not among voters though.
    5
  1587. "Being useless for hunting" is not a good reason to kill a dog.
    5
  1588. @ Sorry, I was afk for a few hours. I know kids these days have no patience. Ok, for one thing, the naming of it is just terrible. Why not just call it the "preventing violence against women act?" Second, it doesn't seem to do anything that isn't already US law, so the only point I can see to it is vice-signalling.
    5
  1589. No country in human history has managed to eliminate the allure of drug use. I doubt we'll be the first. Instead, it's better to decriminalize it, so that there is no profit motive for criminal organizations, and then focus more on reducing addiction.
    5
  1590. It's not like this is Fox.
    5
  1591.  @thomashton6525  Well, not allowing women into positions of authority, for one. It took them a long time to come around on integration, for another. And of course they don't exactly have a good reputation when it comes to LGBT congregants. I'm curious, in what ways do you believe the SBC are not bigoted?
    5
  1592. What about it? The last time an enemy force crossed the US border was over 100 years ago.
    5
  1593. You must be replying to the wrong video, this is the House committee, they are a joke.
    5
  1594. "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
    5
  1595. Also those who buy anything, like food or clothing.
    5
  1596. If Trump had appointed qualified nominees, they would have been easily confirmed.
    5
  1597.  @charlesbosley6770  I'm sorry it has to be that way, but those on the right have become a total clown car of late. It's pathetic how far they have fallen in only a few decades.
    5
  1598. How is anything Cuomo did more "real" than an attempt to overthrow the US government?
    5
  1599. "I have sold my soul to this cause, so whatever the Good Lord Trump has done, must have been the correct thing to do."
    5
  1600. The one "location" issue that ALWAYS gets me is the DC Metro. There are a lot of shows that take place in DC, but almost all are shot in LA or some other place, and if they use "the metro" then it's the LA metro or wherever they happen to be, and you cannot do this because the DC Metro is a unique aesthetic that is instantly recognizable. It'd be like filming a scene on "the Golden Gate Bridge" that is actually filmed on the Brooklyn Bridge or something.
    5
  1601. F around and find out.
    5
  1602. That's inaccurate. Most people thought he was a buffoon at best, and many more considered him a fraudulent sex offender, given how he has often admitted to being a sex offender and often settled cases involving fraud rather than fight them.
    5
  1603. He was already fired and replaced three years ago.
    5
  1604. The questions aren't hard, the answers are just stupid.
    5
  1605.  @fos1451  It's actually already been done by some states. The solution there is to have "trigger laws," ones which do absolutely nothing, until certain conditions are met, and then they work. So in this case, you pass a law that says "when a certain number of states pass laws that do the same thing, all our EC votes go to the winner of the popular vote." That way, they wouldn't hurt anything until it would actually work. But again, the issue is that you still need to reach that critical mass of states that it would not flip the outcomes, and I don't think we're close to that yet. I think it's unlikely we will be, because the holdouts benefit from the broken system.
    5
  1606.  @Wisdomabovegold  But it wasn't public information, or at least he had more information on the subject than the average citizen. Yes, there was some information about covid before he got his closed door briefing, but he sold his shares after the briefing, not before, so. . .
    5
  1607. What do you believe they should be doing instead? Allow shipping in the area to be attacked?
    5
  1608. Copyright doesn't work that way. It's very specific, you can't copyright "ideas," it has to be a completed work. You can copyright "The Lord of the Rings," but you can't copyright the concept of "some fantasy adventurers go on a trip." So in theory you could have a million AIs writing a million books, but it would still take a lot of output to monopolize "all stories." Not to mention, if someone did write a book you wanted to go after them over, you would have to figure out a way to find out which of your millions of books it was actually copying.
    5
  1609.  @theof4870  He was at least more of a genius than Trump, and that was his opponent, so he was still the correct choice.
    5
  1610. The thing you guys commenting need to understand is that when MAGA conservatives talk about "justice," they don't mean the same thing that other people do, where it is a consequence of that person committing a crime. They just mean "we do not LIKE that person, and want the government to HURT them for us." This is basically fascism in a nutshell. The concept of "justice" to them is more just what most people would call "hate."
    5
  1611.  @chrismaddox9884  The incitement was in other comments he made. Saying "march peacefully" does not negate those other comments.
    5
  1612.  @pepedon1924  Oh, that's simple, "context." This is a complex world, and living in it means juggling multiple complex topics and often choosing the lesser of two evils. If you need that simplified for you, Ron DeSantis is rarely, if ever, the lesser evil.
    5
  1613. The problem is though "where [Exxon] is today," is where Exxon should have been twenty years ago, and then they would be in an even better place today. Instead, Exxon has always chosen to take the most profitable course, even if it's also the most destructive. Every generation, Exxon will shed crocodile tears about how they are better than they were a generation ago, and how they're "just getting started" at doing the right thing, when everyone was telling them to "just get started" a generation previous to that. When will they ever get out ahead of problems and not cause damage that they need to clean up later? If Exxon had started working toward a carbon neutral future two decades ago, then it would be much less stressful to do it today.
    5
  1614. It can work, it just requires corporations be required to fund it.
    5
  1615. The Declaration of Independence is not legally binding US law.
    5
  1616. Yes, but some are perhaps more efficiently applied to a given situation than others. It might balance out in terms of physics, but in real world applications it might make something easier to do than it would be using existing methods, and that's still a win. Assuming it works as claimed.
    5
  1617.  @mindstalk  But most drivers do not live in urban areas, and most roadways are not in urban areas, so most roadways are not designed around urban areas. Suburban marking is not mandated, it's built because the stores want that parking, because that's how they get customers. Only (limited) urban parking is mandated.
    5
  1618.  @glennrishton5679  Really any city is perfectly safe, so long as you stay out of the bad parts of town, the same as any rural area. I mean, you're FAR more likely to be the victim of crime in any red state rural area than you are on the DC Mall or Baltimore Inner Harbor.
    5
  1619. Why do you think they are so involved in the election?
    5
  1620. He hasn't done any treason though. You're thinking of the other guy.
    5
  1621.  @glamdoll313  By assuming that she would support Hamas, and then, when she made clear that she did not, he went on to insist that she did anyway, because that's how he felt she should believe.
    5
  1622. It would be doing 0% better, since the pipeline would not even be running yet.
    5
  1623. Guys, they do press briefings EVERY day. He's not Twittering while taking a dump like the last guy, and that's a good thing.
    5
  1624. We can, do, and should do both. Humans are still humans, wherever they live.
    5
  1625. Yes, vote blue, it might be the last chance you get.
    5
  1626.  @datmanbrooksiehd875  Yes, we take great pride in our support of Ukraine against Putin and his new Soviet Union.
    5
  1627. Slightly less stupid than people who think that "t firing the person accusing you of political bias just proves him right?"
    5
  1628.  @pattitully-chain9708  Yeah, even for Republicans he would make a better choice than anyone on their side. To get the role, he would have to make certain promises to run things on a level course until the 2024 elections, basically just keep the place on auto-pilot, but unlike McCarthy, he could be trusted to keep his word.
    5
  1629. Someone really needs to explain to Manchin that it is fiscally responsible to run up deficits during a crisis to stabilize the economy, and then to work it down during times of prosperity so that things will be stable again by the next crisis. The problems with the deficit is not in wanting to spend money right now, it's that over the last four years they lowered taxes on the rich, blowing up the deficit, rather than drawing down the deficit during a time of relative stability.
    5
  1630. When has it ever not been broken?
    5
  1631. How was he "correct?"
    5
  1632. Inflation in the US is lower than in most of the rest of the world. It's pretty much an inevitable consequence of covid, nothing to do with the President or his policies.
    5
  1633. Because no impeachable conduct took place.
    5
  1634. "We really hope that there's something here, given how much provable crime surrounds the Trump family." "Is there any evidence of a crime?" "Well no, but like I said, we REALLY hope that there's something here, and will continue to use a lot of scary sounding words to say that we have absolutely no evidence of any wrongdoing."
    5
  1635. Depends on how and where they make their money. If they get a multi-billion dollar gift from the Saudis, then there is probably something fishy there. If they make a book deal and write a best selling book that makes millions of dollars, that's probably fine.
    5
  1636.  @cherylmclaughlin8579  No, I don't think we will do that.
    5
  1637. Which remains true. No talking about business went on.
    5
  1638. There was a pandemic going on last year so people were driving a lot less. This should come as no surprise to anyone.
    5
  1639. They both seem like pretty good libraries. The Bible is much more likely to harm children than any library drag show.
    5
  1640.  @TomSmith-ls5rn No, are you?
    5
  1641.  @Distress.  No, it had nothing to do with printing a third of the money supply during the pandemic. That's a nonsense argument made by people who don't understand how economics work (or are knowingly lying to people who don't understand how economics work).
    5
  1642.  @Quantitative_Teasing  That's a misunderstanding of their data. They said that at least 60% of the inflation came directly from supply chain issues, the rest was not attributed to monetary policy though, there are many other factors involved.
    5
  1643.  @Quantitative_Teasing  Nope, that's a ridiculous oversimplification of an extremely complex phenomena. You should look into it form a more reliable source than whoever you have been listening to so far.
    5
  1644.  @Quantitative_Teasing  Which is what you are doing, so you at least agree with me. Luckily for me though, I can do both, because my lifestyle gives me plenty of free time.
    5
  1645.  @Rabbit-v4b  No, "printing money" had nothing at all to do with housing prices. That had to do with supply and demand issues, because people who own property only want to build high value properties that they can make a lot of profit on, and because local zoning boards don't want to approve high density housing in their area, so there is far less low and mid tier housing than there are people who can only afford those prices, and far more high-value housing than people who need to live in them. It has nothing whatsoever to do with monetary policy.
    5
  1646. He might, but not for this. Depends how the other cases go. He's done a lot of things wrong in his life, this is not one of them.
    5
  1647. It's because the riots during the summer were not an insurrection against the duly elected government, attempting to install Trump as a dictator. It was a very different situation, so there was a very different response.
    5
  1648.  @rospencer611  But we've since shifted the economy away from that model. It would cost trillions of dollars to rebuild the US economy to be manufacturing based, and even if we did, we would have to pay people a fraction of minimum wage, and still be producing goods that could ONLY sell domestically because they would costs several times the going rate outside the US "tariff death spiral zone." THERE IS NO REASON TO DO THIS. Now yes, wages have been falling relative to things like CEO pay and inflation. This has nothing at all to do with manufacturing, it has to do with corporate deregulation since Reagan. Manufacturing would do nothing to help with this.
    5
  1649.  @shafeeqdanesh4690  If they hadn't provided weapons to the Mujahedeen during the 80's then it might have led to a longer Cold War, which wouldn't have been an improvement overall.
    5
  1650. Your ability to rate the SCOTUS: zero.
    5
  1651.  @mariocooldude9092  That's what they said about the Irish and Italians. Eventually, the soft boys get over it and everyone moves on.
    5
  1652.  @F4URGranted  Lawmakers probably have to buy tickets for kids and grandkids. Still, a law like that is a pretty specific interference in commerce, and lawmarkers mostly avoid doing something so direct unless there's actual harm (more than just inconvenience and people paying a bit more than they'd like). I wouldn't so much mind if they did get involved, I just don't see it as likely.
    5
  1653. The 14th amendment to the US Constitution.
    5
  1654. Nah, Tiktok is just lame goofs. It's ok whatever happens.
    5
  1655. He didn't refuse to show up. He offered to show up for a public hearing. They told him they didn't want him, so he left.
    5
  1656. If he were anyone else, he wouldn't even have been charged, much less have to plead guilty to a misdemeanor.
    5
  1657. Sad.
    5
  1658. "Now that Hamas is attacking, can we please just let me remove democracy from Israel?" No.
    5
  1659.  @tedcomet3121  1. Trump blocked travel form China when it was already too late. 2. He did not block travel from Europe until much later, even though Europe is where the infection entered the US from ( why do Trump supports always point out that he did a weak travel ban on China as if that somehow solves ALL his pandemic problems?) 3. Liberals did not say that the virus cannot be transmitted between people, the scientific community just wasn't sure yet how the virus was traveling, and confirming human to human transmission is an important part of the process in ANY pandemic, 4. The virus is still most likely to have come from the food market, the lab leak theory is still the less likely theory based on the evidence, and 5. It definitely was racist how Trump went on and on about China, while ignoring every other aspect of the pandemic.
    5
  1660. It is honestly exhausting how much Russia tries to get Trump elected.
    5
  1661. Then he shouldn't have done crimes. "I'm running for office" is not some "get out of jail free" card. Do crimes, face consequences.
    5
  1662.  @FalonGrey  Trump cost more American lives in Syria during his time in office than during the Obama administration, because he pulled them out without any proper procedure or notice. The same would have happened hear, Americans and American allies would have gotten torn to shreds in a hasty withdrawal scenario. Wanting peace is a good thing, but the world is a complicated place, and easy solutions are often messy ones. If he wanted US troops out of those places, then that's something he should have been actively working towards for years, not something cobbled together at the last minute to leave a disaster for the next guy to clean up.
    5
  1663. That's what's known as "fraud."
    5
  1664. 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.
    5
  1665. You know, looking at how those straps look, the most practical way to make a back mount for a Cap shield would be a sort of loose V-shaped rack, such that the straps would sink onto the two prongs and rest there, and it would even provide some friction against falling upward in a tumble, but could still be pulled up and off of them.
    5
  1666. Doesn't work. That plan would crater the economy. You don't like paying $3.50 for gas? Try $25.
    5
  1667. She also put Kavenaugh, Gorsuch, and Barret on the court, who were all much worse.
    4
  1668. It hasn't been government spending that's at issue, we should be spending more. It's been government revenues that have been the problem since the 80s.
    4
  1669. Just because someone calls you a conspiracy theorist, doesn't mean that you aren't one. People claiming in good faith that others are conspiracy theorists are right far more often than they are wrong.
    4
  1670.  Cmore Butts  No, he's right, Mostly. It's actually 24%. The rest is owned by US taxpayers and pension funds.
    4
  1671.  @CanadaFirstMuslim  Well, the important question there is were they planning a terrorist act? If so, they were fair game. Now, ideally you would want to arrest them instead of killing them, but if they believed that they were too well protected to do that safely, then that might not be an option. The alternative plans might have either given the terrorists more chance of escaping, or would have put civilians more in harms way than the terrorists already made them.
    4
  1672.  @ItsMe-yv9jd  that has nothing to do with this situation though. I feel like you're just repeating back what you've been told to say, and that's fine, just understand that none of it is actually true.
    4
  1673. But we can all agree that VD Vance is REALLY weird, right?
    4
  1674.  @mrinfinity5557  It's good that he authorized the missiles because it allows them to strike more military facilities, making it harder for Russia to advance their war. Better question, why do you believe this would be a bad thing?
    4
  1675. That's a moot point though, since he didn't hire 4 responsible,men who can do the job. He hired Republicans.
    4
  1676. Climate change is a more serious concern than all of those, but it's slow and quiet, so it sneaks up on people, rather than being sharp and sudden like an atomic bomb. Like to compare it to nuclear war, such an exchange would kill a lot more people all at once, but the lasting effects of it would settle down a lot faster than climate change is, and over the next hundreds of years would likely end up killing fewer people. Also, nuclear war is entirely avoidable by just choosing not to have a nuclear war, whereas climate change is happening, and would take significant work to stop. As for AI, it's way too hard to predict how that plays out, but could either be terrible or great. There's really not much anyone's planning to "do" about that though. As for asteroids, a big enough asteroid could do more harm than climate change, but we have a pretty good idea that no such asteroid is heading our way, and hopefully we would be able to stop it if we did. We're putting reasonable effort into that possibility. As for world hunger and disease, climate change is the largest contributing factor in both problems, and that will only become worse as climate change gets worse, so efforts to solve climate change helps solve both. So basically, of all the problems facing the world today, climate change is probably the most significant one to tackle. I don't think it's reasonable to spend ALL our resources on it, and I don't think we need to "pause" all other activities because not everyone would really have anything meaningful to add to climate change research, so it's better they do something else, but we should definitely be spending more than we currently are.
    4
  1677. Relevance? Who is a tyrant in this situation?
    4
  1678. I am worried for the civilians, but rightfully blame Hamas for anything that happens to them.
    4
  1679.  @tomsd8656  Also you describe MAGA.
    4
  1680.  @boost1728  Republican, you mean. It's always voting republican that leads to a decline.
    4
  1681. @Dasha-tk3moRussia is only sanctioned as a direct consequence of their own actions. It's like a murderer crying because he gets put behind bars where he belongs. If Russia does not want to be sanctioned, stop doing international crimes.
    4
  1682. The exact "nationality" of international shipping is complicated, but basically, yes.
    4
  1683.  @JMAC479  Get off the ceiling, it's not healthy.
    4
  1684.  @TommyD1213  Yeah, they think that just because they won, it's an open season to bring in the predators.
    4
  1685. Are you offering a donation?
    4
  1686. Well, there are 200-some Republicans in the House that could vote for it tomorrow. GET ON THAT.
    4
  1687. Well, I think "so called freedom convoy" is a bit nicer than "bunch of idiots." Less accurate, sure, but you want to try to be polite to the bunch of idiots.
    4
  1688. Always get cash up front when dealing with Trump, he NEVER pays his bills. Ever.
    4
  1689.  @tensevo  That's not what "rug pull" means, since everyone already knows that some form of road tax will arrive eventually. "Rug pulls" are where you trick people by claiming something that is not true.
    4
  1690.  @solconcordia4315  But then you have too many people agreeing with the incorrect side because they prefer the sound of it. When both sides are presented as equally viable, the truth becomes outnumbered,
    4
  1691.  @mathieusimoneau3358  What do you believe was incorrect about the hockey stick graph? It seems to still be relevant today.
    4
  1692.  @kayakMike1000  But the hockey stick graph has since been confirmed by all other research into the topics, including methods that do not involve tree rings, so the data did seem to hold up. So again, what would your issue with it be? Methodology?
    4
  1693.  @socratesrocks1513  The models of the past were based on nothing changing in response to them. Things changed in response to them, which gave us some time. It's like if a car is driving toward a wall 100m away at 10m per second, and your models predict that the car will hit that wall in ten seconds, so you hit the brakes, and ten seconds later you still haven't quite hit that wall, it's not because the models were wrong. "The simple fact is, so long as over 50% of CO2 (if it IS an issue and, given it was much higher in the past and we're still here, I'm still not convinced)" I want to make sure you understand something. You do understand that CO2 was NEVER higher than it is now within human history, right? No HUMAN has had to live with as much CO2 as we currently have. There were times in Earth's history in which CO2 was higher, but the plants and animals that were adapted to that world are mostly extinct now, and most creatures currently on earth could not adapt to the conditions that would result from that, particularly not in the places they currently live. Higher CO2 would not likely wipe out ALL life on Earth, but it would be a mass extinction, including most of humanity. "So long as the wealthy put out tons upon tons of CO2 with their private jets and yachts (both excluded from EU CO2 taxes, btw), " Look, it's fair to hate the rich, but all their jets and yachts combined are a drop in the bucket when compared to a single rush hour freeway. It would be nice if they stopped that sort of thing, but it is no excuse for other people to not do what they can. "Appeal to authority instead of argument and facts isn't science, " Pointing to the scientific consensus is not an appeal to authority argument, it is an appeal to data argument. You are the only one making an appeal to authority argument when you cite pet scientists who confirm your biases.
    4
  1694. Exactly. Gaza started this war, and this is the consequence of their own actions.
    4
  1695.  @TheGrannyBangerz  There is a mental health problem among American gun owners.
    4
  1696. Yeah, he shouldn't have even had a hearing on this nonsense. There's important work to get done here.
    4
  1697. nobody was cheering about burning or stomping on the flag though.
    4
  1698. They did investigate at the capital protest, and found no evidence of outside agitators.
    4
  1699.  @johnarnold7984  Even if an EV is powered by a fossil fuel, it would still be more environmentally efficient than driving a gasoline car. More importantly, EVs are more flexible in where their power comes from, so as more and more power grid energy comes from renewable sources, more than more EVs will be powered off of them, and building out that EV infrastructure now is how we get to that future point. Also, nobody is intending for every driver to have an EV tomorrow, any more than it would have been possible to have millions of gas car drivers back before gas stations existed. It's a process. By the time every car on the road is an EV, the power grids will have been expanded to handle that base load, just as they have every decade since the invention of electric power.
    4
  1700.  @zuggernautz  Yeah, the important thing is for the people who it would help to have that option available. There will always be outliers, there are still some places where people still use horses as their primary vehicle.
    4
  1701. No, we still had the normal amount of other types of death this year, just 400K covid deaths on top of that.
    4
  1702.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  That's not true at all. Alexander the Great was one of the most successful generals in human history, his gayness didn't in any way limit his reach.
    4
  1703.  @khalilmohammadmirza4070  How many countries has the US conquered, or attempted to conquer over that time? How many as the US claimed to be "a part of the US?" In how many of those cases was neither the US attacked first, nor was the existing regime a violent dictator? Trying to make the claim that "the US was just as bad" is just showing a startling lack of judgement.
    4
  1704.  @mna7308  No, Americans are all aware of that stuff, but none of it was as bad as the activities of Russia in Ukraine. When America engages in warfare, there is a valid justification for doing so, an enemy force worth defeating, a local populous worth defending. That does not apply to Russia. You might not like America, but you have to at least admit that Russia is worse, and that America is a necessary hedge against them.
    4
  1705. Yeah, the bot army is out in force today. :D "WW3!" lol.
    4
  1706. That's not what would happen though.
    4
  1707. No, that's not it.
    4
  1708.  @DanielKelly-iu3dz  They would rather run on a border crisis than actually solve it.
    4
  1709. Biden.
    4
  1710.  @ramellajoe  No, they didn't change any laws. They were just enforcing the laws already on the books, and informed people that they were going to do so. What is racist about my Thomas comment?
    4
  1711.  @David53D  It's not "racial" in nature, it's prioritizing the native population of the island, which I believe is fair. This would be less like "affirmative action" and more like Native reservations (although hopefully a bit better than that). What you suggest wouldn't actually improve the lives of the Hawaiian people, so it sort of misses the point entirely.
    4
  1712. This isn't a socialism thing, this is a fascism thing. Fascism doesn't work whether it's in a socialist economy or a capitalist economy. A balance of socialisim and capitalism works best in a democracy, like in the US, or in Europe.
    4
  1713. If a small business is large enough to be affected by these tax changes, then they are also large enough to not notice the difference. This is still less than what they were paying a decade ago.
    4
  1714.  @ltvanburen8555  It's called "the southern strategy."
    4
  1715. @seraeggobutterworth5247 Due process was done in this case, according to the law. Nowhere in the 14th does it say or imply that a criminal conviction would be required to apply the terms of the amendment, and in point of fact most of the people it was applied to were never convicted of any crime. The "due" process" in this case is for a judge or other official duly appointed to administer ballot approval to make the determination that oaths had been violated. If a higher authority over-rules their determination, then so be it, but that is all it takes to get the ball rolling.
    4
  1716.  @davidchang5265  But she was well known as an activist on the topic. If a school invited a Klan leader to speak, would it really matter whether or not his topic in that speech had anything to do with race?
    4
  1717.  @constitutionalconservative2689  Abbot can declare martial law over the people of Texas during a local crisis. Abbot has zero authority to act against the federal government though. The South already learned that lesson once.
    4
  1718. None, according to available evidence.
    4
  1719.  @newlion7013  It's only fascism when it applies to you.
    4
  1720.  @IXLR82  No, the racists are generally pretty quiet about it, unless asked. It's mainly those opposed to racism that are the loudest. And also Trump, because he has no filter on his racism.
    4
  1721. Sort of the opposite, really. The important thing here is to not have the precedent that judges would be allowed to randomly overturn public health decisions. The "political overstepping of bounds" was on the part of the judge, not the CDC, and that needs to be established for the next time this becomes an issue.
    4
  1722. It's like a "Where's Waldo" where you're looking for someone who won't have covid by tomorrow. . .
    4
  1723. @ Building masonry houses might make them more durable, but they would certainly be much more expensive to produce in the current world. It's honestly cheaper overall to build homes that might blow away every couple decades than to build a full masonry structure of the same size.
    4
  1724.  @AJX-2  So long as Joe Rogan does not make it clear to viewers which is happening, that would be a distinction without a difference. If the goal was just "running with a premise" rather than "blind acceptance," then it would be fine for him to "run with the premise" for a bit to see where it leads, but he would still have a responsibility, at some point in the conversation, to stop and say "no, that's dumb, and here's why. . . " So long as at no point does he actually push back against it, he leaves the impression that he is genuine in his agreement with it.
    4
  1725. They get sent to places that can better take care of them than "the streets of El Paso," either reunited with family members, or placed in foster care.
    4
  1726. No, that's not it.
    4
  1727.  @taylorlibby7642  But the important thing to keep in mind about all of that, is that it's fiction.
    4
  1728.  @Buddymycat568  And what if he'd picked the wrong one? Nothing. He just needed to get lucky, there was no "master plan" involved here.
    4
  1729. It's what he wakes up in the morning to do and the last thing he thinks about before going to bed, unlike the last guy.
    4
  1730. Yeah, I'd like to fully electrify, but currently we use an oil boiler, we have no "ducts" or any place to put them, so the only option we can think of would be to put ductless HVACs at multiple locations outside the house, and that seems like a lot of work. Even with reasonable splits we would probably need at least two full outdoor units, one on either side of the house.
    4
  1731.  @Jay-cp9kd  So what? It's not like his opponent would do any better. He was half the cause of all this.
    4
  1732.  @tat2zz68  No, it had nothing to do with corporate taxes. Nothing whatsoever.
    4
  1733. What are you talking about? There are millions of Democrats along the borders.
    4
  1734.  @Steinerman333  How so? What could I have gotten backwards about that?
    4
  1735.  @zerothm1  I know, right? What are these guys on?
    4
  1736. . . which is imaginary.
    4
  1737. Man, those institutional investors buying up the sunbelt will be in for a RUDE awakening in 10-15 years when those homes plummet in value because the pavement outside is melting in the summer.
    4
  1738. Clearly a better school than you did if you don't understand that transportation is a part of infrastructure.
    4
  1739.  @CHARLES_H_DOLAN_Jr  I agree that the Russian thing is played out, but that hasn't slowed them down any. Putin is still using social media as a weapon.
    4
  1740.  @glenwaldrop8166  There are reasons that temperatures can rise other than CO2. There are cases where CO2 can rise and the temperature can still stay low. All of that has been considered already and ruled out as something happening CURRENTLY. The CURRENT situation is due to rising CO2 levels.
    4
  1741.  @snorman1911  Or so the oil companies would have you believe. Some people make good puppets.
    4
  1742.  @GrammarNaziAUS  But the thing is, a LOT of people owe more than they make in a year. Most home owners have a mortgage that's several times more than they make in a year. Plenty of people have student debt that is several times more than they make in a year. The US government having a debt that is several times higher than the GDP is not a problem. Arbitrarily threatening default on that debt is the problem.
    4
  1743. Any country in which a country might choose to incorporate while not being the place where that company's executives live and work, is a tax haven. There is no reason why any business would be incorporated in a Swiss PO Box other than tax avoidance, so as long as that practice remains active, they are a tax haven. If they want to stop being a tax haven, then stop allowing that practice. I personally think that the larger industrialized countries of the world should join together and sign up to a "tax fairness zone," in which a tax "minimum wage" is set up, with the rule being that if this minimum amount is set at, say, 30%, then ANY business that operates in ANY of these countries will be expected to pay a total of 30% tax to someone. If they just pay that 30% to their home country, then fine, burden covered. If, however, they set up in some tax haven with an 8% rate, and only pay 8%, then they will still owe 22% to someone, and will have to pay it off. That money needs to be passed into the hands of some government, a sort of "you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here" policy. If they're going to be offloading that money anyway, then it may as well go to the country they are physically established in anyway, rather than off to some tax haven.
    4
  1744.  @lyonsmaneproductions3431  Incorrect, only Republicans have been convicted of major voter fraud. They are the party of voter fraud. They just like to pretend they oppose it so they can suppress legal voters.
    4
  1745.  @nencrows_4580  4 years ago is when we scraped off the bull that we'd been covered in for the previous four years.
    4
  1746.  @nansfam8534  This isn't stolen valor though.
    4
  1747.  @geovanialvarez7744  No, bringing production back to the US would not in any way allow small businesses to compete with the big guys. You need significant government regulations to do that, because without it, the big guys will always crush the small ones. US production would only raise prices, there is no world in which it would lower prices. The best case scenario is that the prices only raise a little for made in America products relative to how much they raise for foreign products, but realistically they would both raise by the same amount.
    4
  1748. Nothing in the 14th involved "being found guilty" of anything.
    4
  1749.  @danielmackay8099  Yes, vote blue, no matter who, or there's NO chance of America becoming great again.
    4
  1750.  @JohnB3363  I can't speak for you, but he's certainly done a better job of it than the last guy. Either way, the facts don't care about your feelings, and the fact is that the country is better off for having Biden in charge than Trump.
    4
  1751.  @donnamassey4547  I believe that parents should take care of their kids to the best of their ability, and I don't think that is in doubt here. But I also think that children should not suffer from being born to parents unwilling or unable to care for them, so ultimately the well being of the child should be ensured regardless. If a parent wants to raise their kid, but lacks the resources to do so, then it is both in society's interest, and the moral thing to do, to supplement those resources as necessary.
    4
  1752. If he could get a better deal, he would have. He didn't, because he couldn't.
    4
  1753. But also, this guy was neither Bin Laden nor El Chapo, he was just a dad.
    4
  1754. I have a cousin in France, he was pressured to transfer when his company mostly moved to Germany, but he wanted to stay for family reasons, and it did not go well.
    4
  1755.  @jerometruitt2731  That is not an argument that would be relevant to the billionaires. So long as they can live the lifestyles they are accustomed to, the masses are irrelevant to them, or, best case scenario, a hobby.
    4
  1756.  @Aaron-fo1sy  Section 5 does not at any point say that Congress is the only body able to enforce the 14th. It ONLY says that Congress MAY pass laws supporting the 14th. I don't know where this meme started that section 5 is relevant to the Colorado case.
    4
  1757.  @thatguy7085  Nah, civil servants are mostly great. What's wrong with civil servants? They keep the wheels rolling no matter who's in office.
    4
  1758.  @1Deep43VA  They committed an act of war by attacking US military vessels in the region. They also were not stopping Israeli ships, they were stopping a random collection of ships that had nothing to do with Israel. 15% of global maritime trade passes through those straights, very little of it is in any way related to Israel.
    4
  1759. @ So we agree, listening to an audiobook might be similar to reading the book, but is still distinct from reading the book. That's all I was saying. Also, the written version of spoken word is called "the transcript." It's often the only option for deaf people.
    4
  1760. Why was the host trying to pretend that Trump had benefited the economy? The other two guys were like "no dude, it isn't like that," and he just kept coming back at them over it. Is he angling for a Treasury job or something? There's not a lot of time left for that.
    4
  1761. They did not vote against it "because it protects citizens."
    4
  1762. The books read to you by your parents were a case of them reading and you listening, and that is fine, but if you say that you read that book at the time, then you would be wrong. You listened.
    4
  1763.  @chancelewis6674  A jury of her peers found in a court of law that she had not lied, so it would be defamation to claim that she had.
    4
  1764.  @usnavy-retired9800  Well, you would be totally right, except that it was a fair election, the Republicans were the ones that cheated, not the Dems (this is well documented), but apart from that, yeah, I agree.
    4
  1765.  @residentgrey  If she had won, then she would be governor elect right now, rather than crying for her participation trophy. Maybe instead of pandering to the far right, she should have spent more time appealing to actual Arizonans.
    4
  1766.  @residentgrey  Arizona had their chance to decide whether Lake should win or not. It was called "an election," and Lake lost it. I think what you meant is that some small number of Arizonans are not mature enough to accept that their candidate lost, and are whining about it, but they were overruled by the rest of the state.
    4
  1767.  @residentgrey  "I lost an election" is not grounds to have an election recast. Would you be fighting this hard for Hobbs to get a redo if Lake had won the first time? That is not how elections work.
    4
  1768.  @Tinfoilhat311  But the difference is that when this stuff happened before, it was before humans existed. This has never happened before while humans have been around to see it.
    4
  1769. Obama did not do that in 08 or 12. It was not an issue in those years. It's only become an issue after Dobbs.
    4
  1770. If that hamburger is made of dogs, I'm calling the USDA on that farm.
    4
  1771. He didn't say anything like that. It was all just nonsense about things that don't actually apply to the real economy.
    4
  1772.  @Gnrnrvids  Well, "significant" would be like in the US during the initial covid outbreak, when there were around THIRTY THOUSAND excess deaths per month. Once the vaccines became available those deaths went way down. An 18% increase really isn't unexpected during a pandemic, it's actually pretty low. Australia got off easy because you guys practiced responsible lockdown policies and vaccination policies, so when you did finally open up the actual deaths resulting were a drop in the bucket compared to, say, California. I wish we'd had leadership as good as yours during 2020.
    4
  1773.  @grazynkatodisco4916  No, the data is accurate. It just refuses to agree with your biases. Just because the data is not what you want to see does not make it inaccurate, that is not how science works. Science is about adapting to the data, whatever it might be.
    4
  1774.  @grazynkatodisco4916  The data does not specify vaccinated vs unvaccinated because all that data is not tracked together. Also, there are no specific "excess deaths," you can't say "this person here? Their death was an excess death. That person over there, his was not an excess death." That's not what the term means. "Excess deaths" just means "we expected 9,300 people to die during this period of time based non long term historic data of normal causes of death, and instead 10,000 died, so there were 700 deaths higher than we expected." The "excess deaths" are not special people who died in weird ways. That does not mean that those people died to aliens or werewolves or anything crazy, it just means that they made an estimate, and the estimate was a bit low. No reason to get freaked out about getting it wrong by such a tiny amount, that happens all the time.
    4
  1775.  @bojangles713  It's not defamatory in this case though, since the record is that he did it.
    4
  1776.  @AdamBaums101  The polls are pretty close, and none of them are reliable enough to take as gospel. It could go either way, really.
    4
  1777.  @LucLightWolf121  It's never democrats that do this stuff.
    4
  1778.  @pumpkinheadghoul  You're repeating yourself. I suppose you will continue to repeat yourself even as his convictions pile up?
    4
  1779. The problem is not single parent households. Plenty of the world's greatest people were raised by a single parent.
    4
  1780.  @cliffordbodine5834  Barack Obama, Tom Hanks, Keanu Reaves, Alecander Hamilton, Andrew Jackson, Pierce Brosnan, Barbara Streisand, Al Pachino, etc.
    4
  1781.  @salemsaberhagan  It's still better to act base on our most likely model of how the future will play out, rather than to just coast and hope for the best. Random chance rarely produces better outcomes than intentionality.
    4
  1782. But the doors are less wide open than they were under Trump, at least.
    4
  1783. Neely was not convicted of any crime. Who told you he had been convicted of a crime? What do you believe they had to gain by convincing you that he'd had a criminal conviction?
    4
  1784.  @superraggazio  I do think it was irresponsible to report Hezbollah's take on the matter. Nobody should care what they think.
    4
  1785.  @josephsmith4161  The opposite, actually. Anyone who thinks that the founders would support Trump have no idea what they are talking about.
    4
  1786. @ It's sad that Republicans think this way.
    4
  1787. Unfortunately, the people who vote for them in red districts WANT this sort of circus act.
    4
  1788. He puts political cowardice above the health of the public. It's as simple as that.
    4
  1789. The people of America voted to send money out of the country. Maybe you weren't there.
    4
  1790.  @KevinWiley8  And now she'll repeat her "lessons" on the rest of us. Gravel pit prices are going way up.
    4
  1791.  @KevinWiley8  Thanks. These will be a dark four years, but a light will come.
    4
  1792.  @zs9458  Because their countries are currently too dangerous for them to stay, which is why they leave for America. Again, it's your choice as to whether you want them here, or living safely in their own countries.
    4
  1793. I don't take kindly to threats.
    4
  1794.  @i-love-comountains3850  There is a massive difference if you're trying to equate Israel to Nazi Germany. In Germany, the Jews did nothing, and yet were persecuted. In Israel, they were attacked by Gaza, and are attempting to prevent future attacks to the best of their ability. These two things cannot be rationally compared.
    4
  1795.  @bryanfrye8770  Saving the rest of the world helps to save our country. It benefits us more than not doing it.
    4
  1796.  @sidiov  Being the deciding vote in the Senate is only relevant when it's a 50/50 split. In any case, she executed that role well, right?
    4
  1797.  @TheMajorpickle01  I can get why Turkey would want people to use the toll road, and I get why they would want to force a renegotiation on the treaty. My point though is that if the treaty says "you aren't allowed to mess with the natural waterways," then building a canal would not suddenly allow them to "mess with the waterways if you like." They should still be required to leave those natural waterways unobstructed and allow nature to takes its course. Realistically, if the current average wait time is, say, ten hours, and they do build the canal, and some portion of the traffic decides to pay to use it, then that would actually reduce the traffic on the natural routes, reducing wait times even further, so they might go away completely, causing people to not use the toll lane, causing wait times to go up, etc. ;) But either way, they should never end up higher than they would be without the canal.
    4
  1798. They only determine it for the purposes of the Colorado ballot, they do not determine it for other states. As their secretary of state said, the Constitution also bars people running for president if they were not born in the US, so it would also be against the law to have Arnold Schwarzenegger on the ballot.
    4
  1799. Exactly! "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State. . ."
    4
  1800.  @exi8550  Some of the worst sins have been committed by people who claim to believe in God. Belief in God is never a justification for one's actions.
    4
  1801. "Taking Faux News as if it were the truth."
    4
  1802.  @AndyDrake-FOOKYT  What if she felt you needed to be put down? Do you think she would slow down?
    4
  1803.  @shrimpwithaknife3381  You said "As we slowly devolve into chaos just because some guy in his 90s wants the country to go down with him" That guy would be Kevin. and again, probably only 60 or so. Unless you mean Rupert.
    4
  1804.  @TimT-ey3hp  The 2020 Election was the most thoroughly investigated in US history.
    4
  1805. Nah. Republicans like saying that though.
    4
  1806. He showed to testify and they turned him away.
    4
  1807.  @ForumLight  This has nothing to do with voter ID. What makes you think this has anything to do with voter ID?
    4
  1808.  @npcwill283  Fox goes out of their way to spread conspiracy theories and other nonsense. Fox viewers are considerably less well informed than the average citizen.
    4
  1809. Yes, but also, we should not elect someone to higher office that says things like that, because that would be irresponsible.
    4
  1810.  @johnnyatkins9097  Who said that the truth is irresponsible? If Vance and his boss went with the truth more often, then they wouldn't keep getting into trouble.
    4
  1811.  @Chad-ui5cv  I'm sorry that the facts don't care about your feelings. That must be hard. . .
    4
  1812. The US President is not above the law, nor should he be. That would be a monarchy, which is what we fought to overcome.
    4
  1813. He can't, actually. We have this thing called "The Constitution."
    4
  1814. Yes, Hamas need sot stop their war crimes immediately!
    4
  1815. It's not "because of one problem." It's because the current administration is, factually, on Russia's side.
    4
  1816.  @jacobgates1986  "10% for Trump."
    4
  1817.  @timhouston2408  I think you've been fed a very interesting version of events that do not relate to reality.
    4
  1818.  @randeldaniel5437  Yes, do you?
    4
  1819. Yes. Definitely.
    4
  1820. You don't negotiate with terrorists. The debate/compromise can begin after the debt ceiling has been raised.
    4
  1821. Notes, most likely. During questioning like this, people typically write down what's being said so that they can answer the full question. Also, if questions involve data, then she would probably have a sheet of important figures to work from.
    4
  1822. If congress passed a law to create those grants, it would be illegal to not disperse them.
    4
  1823. Don't insult yourself by saying things like that.
    4
  1824. I think it's better to have a Tabby when there are literal fascists literally at the door. In literally every other situation, Justine is more effective. We need more Justines who are willing to "Tabby up" if the worst comes, and less "everyday casual Tabby's".
    4
  1825.  @kristensmith3079  Why would that be any business of yours?
    4
  1826. Tax changes have to start in the House. Ask Mike Johnson why he's not getting on this.
    4
  1827. no, they are also doing other things. This is only one of the things. It's obviously an important one though.
    4
  1828. In other words, less than 5%.
    4
  1829. The only way to do it would be to massively increase the amount of greencards we offer, to make up for decades of inaction. We're just WAY behind the natural supply and demand equations.
    4
  1830. The base would prefer to live in a fantasy world than in reality. That's why they elected a TV personality in the first place.
    4
  1831. You should watch The Grinch. Same sort of thing, but in a political sense.
    4
  1832. Nah, it's gun control. Other countries have the same mental health issues we do, it's the guns that make the difference.
    4
  1833. I would love to see that happen, it might make the parks a bit less crowded. They have been PACKED lately.
    4
  1834. I'm actually not sure that this is fair use. If he took footage of a launch, and you used it to talk about Elon Musk, that would not be fair use. It would only be fair use if you used it to comment on the video specifically as its own artistic work, outside of discussing Elon Musk or the launch itself taking place. If you're just using the video footage to comment on Space X in general, that is not fair use. Basically, if a journalist films a news story, and you use that footage to cover the news story, that is not fair use. Fair use commentary only applies to commentary of the product that is the video (ie "this video is an interesting depiction of the news story in question"). When news networks use other people's footage of an event to comment on the event itself, they have to pay people for that. Sargon v Akila worked in his favor because he was making comment on her video as an artistic product.
    4
  1835. I always think it's adorable how MAGA people will talk about :"crowd size" as if that's a thing that mattered. If crowd size determined who got to be in charge, then we'd be raising the term limit so Taylor Swift could run for a third term.
    4
  1836. 1. With Ukrainian Troops. 2. Yeah, some of them. 3. It's not his military, he's the US President, not Ukraine's.
    4
  1837. And they do not, so. . . problem solved.
    4
  1838. Lol, I'd hate to see you find out about the Republicans. This would qualify as one of the most cordial statements to come out of their side in years.
    4
  1839. The Russians would be playing the side of Germany in this scenario. Ukraine would be playing France.
    4
  1840.  @kennethjleigh1969  No, that's not why, all members of congress have a residence in the DC area, because that it where they spend much of the year. WORKING. They all also have a residence in their home districts.
    4
  1841. Depends on who the alternative is.
    4
  1842. This is generally the rule, yes.
    4
  1843. Because they keep getting asked stupid questions.
    4
  1844. How is that a loss to the world?
    4
  1845. I think that outside of arbitrary "nope" rulings, AI work should be copyrightable. It's just work, an AI run by a company should be considered no different than a work for hire artist. I think that the "training" issue is a non-starter, if a human can look at a ton of art and learn from them and draw better, then there's nothing wrong with that, so there's nothing wrong with an AI doing it either. The issue of an AI work looking too similar to another work should also be handled exactly like with a human though, so AI might get in trouble for this, just as humans sometimes do. The bright side of this though is that you can build AI "similarity detectors" that can compare a finished piece to every piece on record and see if it is substantially similar, so you can catch these mistakes before they become a liability.
    4
  1846.  @jimlewis1332  Nor is being trans a sin.
    4
  1847.  @dontdamnme7271 Says who?
    4
  1848.  @jsnip6720  Do you actually believe that, or was that just what you're told to say?
    4
  1849.  @BarMagnet  They're already recycling EV batteries. Their core materials are entirely recyclable.
    4
  1850. @ They were spending the money allocated by congress, who were elected by the taxpayers, and that money was being used to save human lives. Cutting USAID won't help with the national debt, their total budget was the equivalent to the taxes you'd pay on a latte. This isn't about the budget, this is just about hurting people.
    4
  1851.  @DanielGibbons-v9k  It's impossible to "scrub references" like that. Members of the media called her that, it was never an official term.
    4
  1852.  @barryrobbins7694  Automobiles.
    4
  1853. She wasn't running for office for most that time, she was just the VP.
    4
  1854.  @doop6769  But he returned them once they were discovered, like Mike Pence did. Most people at high positions in government end up with a handful of documents that they shouldn't technically have, it's not really a major issue. Trump's situation only became an issue because of the massive VOLUME of materials he kept, and how serious many of them were, and how he obstructed justice in trying to keep them.
    4
  1855.  @dreadfuldonkey  You got that backwards. Like Trump.
    4
  1856.  @AmericaFirst47  Which did Biden start?
    4
  1857.  @darkcoeficient  Why? They both have harmful long term consequences. Delaying cancer treatment won't necessarily kill a person, they might survive either way, but it does greatly reduce their odds of survival. Likewise, delaying puberty blockers and forcing a child to go through puberty in the wrong body can increase their chances of death as well. Why take that risk when you don't have to?
    4
  1858. The only thing "political" about this is that if there were no politics involved, he would have been charged and convicted of the crime four years ago.
    4
  1859. He literally can't be worse than his dad.
    4
  1860. No, they're still cleaner, regardless of your energy source. More importantly, they can adapt to the cleaner energy sources, which ICE cars can't. Also, EVs have no trouble starting up at those temperatures, they just keep the batteries heated to a sufficient level to operate.
    4
  1861.  @Zert_McGert  Right,l but the trial comes next, and then the conviction and sentencing.
    4
  1862. The Lord wants nothing to do with Trump.
    4
  1863. You have to understand, Forbes is never honest when it comes to Republicans.
    4
  1864. But Walz DID go to Bagram. That is a fact. He just did it AFTER he was serving in the military.
    4
  1865.  @ERodriguez1941  It could be worse, we could have Putin in charge. Now that is pitiable.
    4
  1866. This is why we need strong governments that have no influence from capital. That is our ONLY hope.
    4
  1867. Going by their reporting on the Trump rallies and his inauguration crowd, Fox News has a reliable problem with basic math. They always add one or two zeros to any situation. But then, I suppose they do already have a ton of zeroes wandering their offices in the first place.
    4
  1868. I never parallel park, I hate it, but you also need to make sure you have sufficient parking garages nearby. My local city is very walkable, but it has accessible parking garages every block or two. I do think it's good to have "quick spaces" that allow you to park for a few minutes, which tend to mean they don't park too close together.
    4
  1869. If 100% of IRS funding went to ICE agents and wall building, then $0 would go to ICE agents or wall building (or anything else).
    4
  1870.  @stevemahoney1733  I feel like you're trying to compare cars to guns, without being aware that cars provide an actual useful function beyond violence.
    4
  1871.  @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?
    4
  1872.  @allylilith5605  No, this has nothing remotely to do with religion, and people making such claims understand neither science nor religion. Science should discriminate based on fact. All positions are not equally valid, accurate positions exist regardless of the messenger. There is no virtue in humoring people peddling lies. Unfortunately, most people are both incapable of differentiating truth from lies, and ALSO believe that they CAN. This is a dangerous combination.
    4
  1873.  @stansman5461  Exactly. It's not complicated.
    4
  1874. Mainstream media called her that. It was never an actual role she held.
    4
  1875. You said "Democrat" instead of "Republican."
    4
  1876. @ Because we need to incentivize housing for housing sake, people should only purchase property that they intend to stay in, so that the market does not get distorted by people only looking to make a buck off the property.
    4
  1877.  @partydean17  Again, there is never a shortage of places for tourists to stay, that vis a solved problem. We clal them "hotels" and they have plenty of rooms available. The issues is that there is not enough places for the people living in the city to stay, so they are not in the wilderness. At the end of the day, if one of the two groups has to go without, it would ALWAYS be the visiting team, not the home team.
    4
  1878.  @ComplicatedBot  Again, no, it is not censorship to correct someone when they are spreading misinformation. That is not what the word "censorship" means, and it is an abuse of the idea. You cannot put out false advertising, for example, and can be sued for defamation. Lies are not protected speech.
    4
  1879.  @chadconstable79  He delayed filling one seat by a record long year on the grounds that it was "too close to an election," and then rushed through a second in record time because "well we've got to get this done before the election." If that is not breaking any rules, then neither is adding four more seats.
    4
  1880.  @wifi961  Yes, but McConnell is the one that broke that by packing the courts with activist judges.
    4
  1881.  @henryhenderson7051  Nobody is demanding that they shelter or feed anyone here. The question being put is whether these people have the right to shelter themselves on public land within that community. All that is being asked of the community is the space under their body.
    4
  1882. The founders didn't consider simply buying the President.
    4
  1883.  @timbaldwin6283  I expect she could probably name the 7 continents, she just wouldn't be able to place every country correctly into them. Of course, several people in the comments below believed "Central America" was one of the continents, so she would probably do better than them.
    4
  1884. It'll be interesting to see the studies comparing the people it didn't work on to the ones it did, and figuring out what's different there. Presumably they have some different causes to their weight, and learning how they differ could help to find solutions for those, and maybe further help others.
    4
  1885. @chrisbirch2002 Tell that to Henry Cuellar.
    4
  1886.  @ginpj5330  Oh, heavens no, I'm not in that MAGA cult.
    4
  1887.  @cb1004  Nobody is in favor of teaching children in school (at least before middle school) about the sexual lifestyles of adults, but the bill, and hoer group, go further than that, and make it difficult to discuss LGBT people existing in any way. That has nothing to do with "discussing sex."
    4
  1888.  @mallynn1223  He just got more votes.
    4
  1889.  @TheSakufighter How would this have anything to do with Trump?
    4
  1890. If this is anything like all his previous "evidence," it's not "evidence," it's hearsay from idiots. But Comer does not seem to be capable of understanding the distinction.
    4
  1891.  @celieboo  Gaza were the ones that attacked Israel. Had they not attacked Israel, Israel would not be attacking them.
    4
  1892. "Bigotry," it's not complicated. Their assumption was that their audience were mature adults, and instead realized that they were marking their beer toward children who cannot accept the existence of trans people.
    4
  1893. I assume by "voluntary," he means "voluntarily cross that border if you want to stay ahead of the bayonets?"
    4
  1894.  @wadewilson524  But, again, that is ONLY a problem is the wrong side is allowed control over the talking stick. If the correct side if given it, then there is no problem at all. I would agree with your position if audiences could be trusted to be able to tell truth from falsity, but history has proven that this is not the case, so behaving as though the audience can be trusted is, itself, denialism.
    4
  1895.  @theclearsounds3911  "An inconvenient truth" was far from the start of anything, it was only a popular presentation on decades of prior science on the topic. The oil industry knew climate change was real and their fault decades before an Inconvenient Truth. The reason "global warming" turned into "climate change" was an attempt to reduce the confusion, because some people out there thought "well, it was snowing in winter, so clearly no global warming," because they could not understand how the climate works. And yes, CO2 is factually pollution. Most things that are pollution exist in nature, and even exist in the human body. What makes things pollution is when they are present in high enough amounts that they cause problems. A little CO2 is good and healthy, we all need a little CO2, the amount we had two hundred years ago. Nobody is talking about removing all CO2 from the world. But too much of anything is unhealthy, too much oxygen is unhealthy, too much water is unhealthy, and certainly too much CO2 is unhealthy, and the current amount of CO2 production is unhealthy, it is more than the Earth can balance out. There have been times when there was higher CO2 in the air, but these periods were less hospitable to human life, so it would not be a good thing to return to those times. Also, some plants grow better at higher CO2 levels, but not when it also raises heat above their comfort levels, or results in droughts. There is no serious scientist who believes that rising CO2 levels will be a good thing on any level. Remember, a 1 degree C temperature rise does not just mean that it will be 1 degree hotter in the summer and 1 degree hotter in the winter than you're used to, it can mean 5-10 degree C temperature shifts in various areas, it can mean an increase in droughts and floods and all sorts of changes to the climate in any given area. It basically means that the places where people live today might become uninhabitable.
    4
  1896.  @argentaegis  If the "arbiter of truth" is not being used well, then those with knowledge on the topic will speak out on it. There would not be any single point of failure here, it would involve multiple potential sources of information each doing their own thing, toward the same goal, similar to getting a weather report. If any of them is wrong, then that would be apparent from the alternate sources. The position being put forth would not just be a single unaccountable individual's viewpoint, it would be the consensus of the scientific community, and if it fell out of line with that consensus, then that would be well covered. The point is not to just declare a "True" position arbitrarily and then only allow that to be said, the point is that once a consensus has been reached, to stop humoring those who refuse to accept it as though they are still a valid part of the conversation. You can talk all day about hypothetical "bad endings," but the fact is that those same outcomes are no more likely with something like this than they already are without it.
    4
  1897.  @theclearsounds3911  No movie should make you skeptical about an entire field of science. Star Wars didn't make me skeptical about astronomy. Whether the movie got things right or wrong is not particularly relevant to the actual science involved. And no, there are no actual scientists who think that elevated CO2 levels are good. There are people paid by the oil industry to wear white lab coats and say that though, sure. And again, people can die of too much water, it is "poisonous" to people in the wrong doses or methods of application. Just because something exists in nature does not prevent it being a pollutant, what determines whether something is a pollutant is how and where it is distributed. If someone were dumping too much water into an area where it was causing as much destruction as CO2 does, then it could be considered a pollutant. "Climate change is making some places uninhabitable? Would you live on the South Pole? Then don't." The point is that it's making large portions of the existing biosphere uninhabitable. It will make most of the American south uninhabitable. It will make most of central America uninhabitable, pushing their populations north. It will make places where as many as billions of people currently live impossible to live in, so even if you're imagining a best case scenario where the new habitable regions are just as nice as the old ones, they would still be different places, and require a billion people to migrate to these new regions within a generation, rebuilding the infrastructure and lifestyles needed to support such populations, and often crossing international borders to do so. That would be a massive disruption to human life. And again, yes, the climate has changed a lot over billions of years, but it has changed more over the last two hundred years than it has over the past two hundred thousand years. Typically it takes thousands or even millions of years for climate to shift as significantly as it has lately. The faster a change happens, the harder it is to adapt to it. Most animal species are unable to adapt that fast, and would just go extinct, rather than more gradually shifting to a new way of life. It's also important to remember that due to the laws of thermodynamics, it is MUCH easier to warm things than it is to cool them, so if everything got colder, that is much easier to handle than if everything got hotter. For example, if the heat and humidity is high enough, sweating does absolutely nothing, and it becomes impossible to survive without constant air conditioning. Meanwhile, people can live well below zero using only thick clothing.
    4
  1898.  @QuantumMechanicYT  You only further support my argument that some people treat discourse as a game that they can "win" with language, which is the exact opposite of a rational scientific debate. Let me ask you a simple hypothetical. Let's say you have a scientific debate between two individuals, person A has the absolute facts on his side, the position he is taking is true, the data supports it, but he is not a good public speaker, he fumbles through his points, and does a poor job of presenting his data in a compelling manner. Person B has a factually incorrect position, the data does not support his conclusions, but he is able to present it in an engaging and selective manner so that people who listen to him might come away with the impression that he is correct. Which of these people do you believe SHOULD be viewed as the "correct" position coming out of the debate? My point is that "both sides just say whatever they like" tends to favor the later, tends to lead to them coming out ahead in the court of public opinion, and that this is a bad thing.
    4
  1899. Men have been in sports since basically sports were invented.
    4
  1900. @ They are moving far too quickly and broadly to be moving carefully. They fired the people responsible for managing our nuclear stockpile and had to scurry to rehire them.
    4
  1901.  @Really........  I think you misunderstand, these cases were about justice. It was only Trump trying to portray them as being about something else.
    4
  1902. But they don't have the right to decide what books are allowed in a library, Period.
    4
  1903. No, because the Us was only attacking valid military targets.
    4
  1904. This House maybe could, but typically, no, because as awful as she is, she hasn't really done much that would count as a crime.
    4
  1905. The cause would be "fascism."
    4
  1906.  @peterponcedeleon3368  Actually, we're mostly just selling off military surplus to Ukraine, and then buying newer, better replacement materials for the US military, making our own forces stronger and pumping billions into US companies and their employees. It's sort of a win-win scenario for the US. Why would we want to offload those benefits to Europe?
    4
  1907.  @ryuninjah  Trump took every paycheck during his presidency, and left the economy in worse shape than he found it. Any economic benefits you might have experienced while he was in office were the result of Obama's policies continuing.
    4
  1908. 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).
    4
  1909. That's really not how anything works. If it were true, it wouldn't be because "he allowed it," it would just be a crime that would be investigated and charges would be made. The problem is that there is no evidence that any of this stuff actually happened.
    4
  1910.  @ryanlutz1216  It would be fair to say that they spend the overwhelming majority of these savings on stock buybacks and c suite pay. The point is that none of it ever goes into middle class employees or lower costs to consumers.
    4
  1911. Why? He did no crimes, and the Supreme Court rules he should return immediately.
    4
  1912.  @davidwork1539  Plenty are, just not her, apparently.
    4
  1913. Wait, the company is called "Forgers," and they were up to shenanigans?! Who would have guessed?!
    4
  1914. I assume sarcasm, but it still matters, because if you build some multimedia empire on an AI generation, and then it ever became public, that could just knock the sandcastle completely out from under you. Very risky.
    4
  1915. Russia is not negotiating. There is no reasonable deal on offer.
    4
  1916.  @csking6377  Misleading content does not need to be intended to be misleading. The more important thing is that it is misleading. I also find that people who wax philosophical about having a "discerning mind" are more often than not the greatest sheep of all, those who have so thoroughly bought into the kool aid that they have become the kool aid.
    4
  1917.  @24killsequalMOAB  Yes, fund the terrible government spending, because it is in your own best interests to do so.
    4
  1918. No, he doesn't.
    4
  1919. They will prove their case, that's their job. The indictment only lays out how they will prove their case in court.
    4
  1920.  @dannyg0824  Ok, but a jury disagrees with you. Besides which, Donald Trump is very public about how he sexually assaults women, this isn't exactly a controversial part of his history. His followers understand and like that he sexually assaults women, or they couldn't possibly follow him.
    4
  1921. No, "Remain in Mexico" didn't actually work well. People continued to cross illegally, the only difference was that they would end up in detention facilities, which was inhumane and more expensive to taxpayers.
    4
  1922. Like PT Barnum said, "there's a sucker born every minute," and like DJT said, "I love stupid people."
    4
  1923. It is possible to have empathy while recognizing that there is no viable alternative. This is the situation Gaza made for themselves when they attacked Israel.
    4
  1924.  @justiniano5338  Applying merit criterium has nothing to do with the current scenarios.
    4
  1925. He has no need for leverage, he is our ally.
    4
  1926. They don't. It's an imaginary problem.
    4
  1927.  @davidpowell3709  If it is so easy, then why is there no evidence of it happening?
    4
  1928. This is similar to Japanese, where "Aoi" is often translated to "blue," but refers to any color to the left and right of "aqua" by western standards, many shades we would call "green," while "midori," is more of a mid-green to yellow-green. But they know what the colors are.
    4
  1929.  @RikSolstice  Oh, sure, "more research is needed," but that's something to push with politicians and research institutions. On an individual level, a single patient with a random general practitioner in middle America is not going to find much luck pushing details onto them, because they just lack the tools to do anything about it. I would say if someone thinks they have long covid, their best bet is to contact their state and federal representatives, letting them know the broad strokes of it and that research into this matters to you, and perhaps also look around into which medical research centers are studying long covid, and contact them to see if your details are of interest to them.
    4
  1930.  @BWolf00  There are lots of dictionaries and lots of definitions. One definition that has been causing issues of late is when it refers to a vaccine conferring "immunity," which some people take to mean that it should make it impossible to get sick from the virus. Meanwhile, the medical community has always used the term "immunity" to refer to "the immune system," which is never perfect, so they understand that when a vaccine "confers immunity," that this means only a resistance to the virus in question, and that this is never intended to mean that it is impossible to get sick from it, just far less likely. Since non-doctors were misunderstanding this fact, in some places the definition has been changed to be easier for them to grasp.
    4
  1931. So says the CCP.
    4
  1932. I always feel it's important to point out that the future of automation is not android frycooks standing at the frier, it's just a factory-style kitchen that moves ingredients to cooking stations and then to the customer in ways that have nothing to do with how humans would do those tasks. It's not "the robot capable of doing everything a human can do, and then being told to cook french fries," it's just "a system that does not require human intervention to produce french fries."
    4
  1933. The headline should read "Giant Baby has a Big Cry."
    4
  1934.  @Bln-f9u  You left out the most important part though! "But only if they are not a fascist." There is never a good reason to vote for a fascist.
    4
  1935.  @craigkilling9021  Defending Ukraine is important to US national security, because if we'd done the same for Poland, we could have avoided WWII entirely.
    4
  1936. Ok, but that's not really relevant to the topic at hand. What we need right now is for House Republicans to pass a debt limit increase.
    4
  1937.  @robinperronjones5024  Ok, fine, let's look into that, but this is not the time or place to discuss such things. First we need to raise the debt limit and get the immediate crisis solved, and then consider the value of various government programs.
    4
  1938. Because that's what the evidence indicates. Why shouldn't we?
    4
  1939.  Gooby Pls  Thanks, you're certainly breaking cliches there yourself.
    4
  1940.  @rogerbritus9378  And yet the problem will continue to exist, complaining about it solves nothing. We either need to be allowing more people in, or we need to figure out how to make them more comfortable in their home countries by solving some of the problems there. IT won't get better any other way. Also, just to be clear, the US economy currently requires more immigrants than we've getting.
    4
  1941. Why?
    4
  1942. How DARE someone learn and grow over time!
    4
  1943.  @hagestad  The price of repairs on an EV are lower than on a gas car because they are much more reliable. These prices will come down even further as more and more mechanics shops become familiar with them, just as the maintenance costs on foreign cars came down over time. The cost of electricity is and always will be cheaper per mile than the cost of gasoline, no matter where you might be.
    4
  1944.  @darkwing3713  Well, VC stuff will grow back again, it's just a temporary pull-back, but it does seem likely that companies will have far less "in office" work in future, and a lot more remote workers.
    4
  1945.  @Kg-yl5vy  You do understand that even if companies did move manufacturing back to the US, you would STILL be paying 2-3 times as much for those goods, right? The whole reason they wanted to outsource in the first place is because things are so much cheaper to produce overseas.
    4
  1946.  @playertwo1516  Tariffs are an economic tool. You don't use them at random, you use them at specific targets with specific goals in mind. In some cases a tariff is a good idea, because it protects an industry that we are already doing quite well, or it puts political pressure on the other country to make a political change that we want. But broad tariffs on consumer goods is not a good idea.
    4
  1947.  P. Doherty  Much like Trump, you accuse others of things that are more true for yourself.
    4
  1948. But he did go to Bagram, it was just after he became a member of congress. Why would your late husband be "disgusted" by that?
    4
  1949. @ If you think we should have more aluminum plants, then we should fund building them. This will not help us get more aluminum plants.
    4
  1950. @ But this is putting America last.
    4
  1951. @ Yes, it is. America only becomes worse due to these actions, not better. It will fall further and further behind the rest of the world, and the world will move on without us.
    4
  1952. Yes. Because that would trigger a direct response from the US, and Russia would be gone within the day.
    4
  1953.  @UPdan  Exactly, so Russia should not attack.
    4
  1954. Yes, but not in the same sense that Republican use. It's still not a very nice way to put it, but it's not election denialism.
    4
  1955. @ That's incorrect, in America, at least within the past few decades, racism has been almost universally on the political right.
    4
  1956.  @angrytedtalks  I did, you were the one spouting nonsense.
    4
  1957. ​ @luigimrlgaming9484  No, a constitutional republic IS a democracy. It cannot be a constitutional republic without ALSO being a democracy. I think that what you mean is that it is different than a DIRECT democracy, which is true, nobody claims that the US is a DIRECT democracy, only that it is a democracy, because it is and always has been.
    4
  1958. Of course lockdowns work for the flu. In fact, normal flu rates are WAY down over typical years due to lockdown measures. In countries where they actually did have lockdowns, like China, the virus was almost completely eradicated. Since we haven't had serious lockdowns in the US, 400k Americans are dead that didn't have to be.
    4
  1959. Yeah, they've never been about small government or freedom. They've always been about big government when it comes to things they want to make law, but "small government" when it comes to anything they don't care about.
    4
  1960. The issue is not that they were partisan, the issue is that they were funded by Russia.
    4
  1961. Everyone knew that. Nobody is weaker than this POTUS.
    4
  1962.  @MoneyMathai  Unfortunately, they love America too much to do that.
    4
  1963.  @x-men69-96  You had the same messes under Trump, the illegal crossings in 2019 were some of the highest to that point. It was just a different year with different circumstances on the ground. If he'd been president the last few years, the same stuff would be happening, only it would have turned out a lot worse.
    4
  1964.  @TheGuitarded1  And what was her argument at that time? What did her opinion say?
    4
  1965. He wasn't open to questions, he was making a statement. Also, there's no chance of WW3, Putin doesn't have the stones.
    4
  1966. He is draining the swamp! He's draining it right out of Florida and into Washington.
    4
  1967. If Crenshaw cares about this country, then he should never vote in favor of a Republican Speaker. We all know that this is where that road leads, nobody can claim ignorance of that.
    4
  1968.  @loopthetube  Sure, the ones he was talking about in Charlottesville, but who cares what they think? And you still haven't answered why you think the laptop should have mattered.
    4
  1969.  Wertdog1975  When they say Trump does something, they have the evidence to back it up. He often admits to doing it on camera.
    4
  1970.  @m.rodrigolemus6224  His bagman, Cash Patel, already paid two of them off.
    4
  1971. "We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing. . . just, don't check our public posts from October 7th, they're a bit 'cringe.'"
    4
  1972.  @PabloTheThinker  If they are allowed, then they wouldn't be crossing illegally.
    4
  1973.  @PabloTheThinker  That's not what it says though.
    4
  1974.  @mattmyers123456  I have, that's how I know that he has the Nazi one, not the "symbol of peace" one. The Nazi one stood for white supremacy and rightwing authoritarianism. What's your excuse for the "SS" tattoo?
    4
  1975. How do you figure?
    4
  1976. If they show a driver's license, but are not citizens, they they won't get a ballot. You aren't just handed a ballot for waving a random ID around.
    4
  1977.  @TexasBornPatriots  The voters had their chance. Now it's their turn.
    4
  1978. It is responsible fiscal policy to provide people relief funds during crisis situations, such as a national pandemic, and to then recover those funds once the crisis has passed. This is a more efficient way to function than to just let the country crawl their way out of a crisis at the natural pace.
    4
  1979. Direct confrontations rarely lead to enlightenment. More often than not, the incorrect argument shouts loudest and appears more confident in its delivery, which is misleading to the dumb.
    4
  1980. Yup, and the White House did this.
    4
  1981.  @Dark_Angel_Gothic_Vampire_0066  See, this guy gets it. Show off how poorly informed Trump voters are.
    4
  1982.  @denkeylee  The McDonalds had been closed down for the day so that the Trump team could rehearse their bits. All the "customers" were Trump supporters playing a role, not actual random customers. You got bamboozled.
    4
  1983. Yup, Donald Trump.
    4
  1984. I think the Muslims tend to view Gaza as the victims in this, rather than as the aggressors, so that would be the opposite of "seeing the truth." I blame their local media for misleading them though.
    4
  1985. A coup attempt is when someone tries to seize power illegally. After losing the 2020 election, Trump attempted to seize power illegally through several different methods. These were each "coup attempts."
    4
  1986. You do realize that abortion and child care are some of the highest priority issues in this election, right?
    4
  1987. And this is why you don't elect terrorists to lead your country. It never ends well.
    4
  1988.  @jamesburke6698  It was Republicans election officials that didn't want to tell who did it.
    4
  1989. This is not difficult, people, Hakeem Jeffries has more votes than any Republican candidate. All he'd need is a handful of Republicans to pick up the spare, and he'd make a better speaker than anyone on the Republican side of the aisle ever could.
    4
  1990. The Beast is the one speaking in that video, and his minions wear red caps across their foreheads that brand them as followers of MAGA-Don.
    4
  1991. Nobody is "induced" to take debt. Having a higher credit limit doesn't force anyone to spend more than they have. Just pay off your credit card at the end of the month, and you're fine.
    4
  1992. I don't think that either of those is true.
    4
  1993. Or so they believe in Narnia.
    4
  1994. There is no chance that a fair audit would turn up any different results than the several other fair audits before it. Everyone involved knows this, so the expectation is that this will not be a fair audit, and that they will arrive at the results they want whether those results are true or not.
    4
  1995. Yup, Trump screwed himself out of that deal.
    4
  1996.  @Eldeecue  Yeah, but they can at least accept that 60%+ of the country, even in strongly red states, is not going to be anti-choice, and that they have no right to make that decision for other people. Nobody is forcing anti-choice people to get abortions themselves, they just have no right to impose their own beliefs on the topic onto others.
    4
  1997. This would not apply to the IRS.
    4
  1998. Imagine if any Republicans were hypocritical enough to complain about this, given the previous administration.
    4
  1999. I almost feel like these things should have little sound systems on them that actually broadcast music, because you can't make them less loud, but you can make them less annoying. I wonder how light you could make an audio system that would broadcast frequencies that would harmonize with the propellers in a way that left the result much more pleasant.
    4
  2000.  @Kaboomboo  Because what the parent wants is not always in the best interests of the child. The best interests of the child is the ONLY thing that should matter. No single entity should have sole, unchecked power over any child's future, not a teacher, and not a parent either. But is a teacher sees something scary, they can report it, if a doctor or judge determines something harmful is going on, they can act on that. Everyone working together can arrive at the best outcome for that child, but "leave it to the parents" is far from the best solution, given that many parents fail their children, either through incompetence or malice.
    4
  2001. She likes that idea. Most of his ideas are awful though.
    4
  2002.  @JohnSheppard105  He wasn't ruled unfit, the prosecutor chose not to attempt a prosecution because he knew he didn't have enough to win on. At no point was any legal determination made.
    4
  2003. Yes, by Trump.
    4
  2004.  @Sneednfeedn  They were "let in" by other rioters. That does not make it ok.
    4
  2005.  @Wolfie1038  Is that what you've been told to believe? Lol. Faux News is a hell of a drug.
    4
  2006.  @pazz6708  It's not even a very good disguise.
    4
  2007.  @davidgmillsatty1900  It happens to fit the reality of the situation. The Republican ticket really is just weird.
    4
  2008.  @davealmighty9638  The "due process" in this matter was the legal cast in Colorado, followed by the series of appeals. That is what "due process" means.
    4
  2009.  @cgt3704  Nuclear power has gotten a lot safer than it was during the Soviet Union.Far more people are harmed by fossil fuels than by nuclear power. Solar is certainly a cleaner option than nuclear, but it is less consistent and harder to build out at the scale needed.
    4
  2010.  @jeffstrehlow2623  That is my point. It's because "Who wants to buy from seller who treats you as an enemy?" has never been a thing.
    4
  2011. That also was not true, but you wouldn't know that if you get your news from the funny pages.
    4
  2012. Don't worry, if the Nazis come to mess with the inauguration like they tried at the Capitol last week, they will be put down. We have learned from history.
    4
  2013. It's really not a problem if you aren't doing crimes, and you can get into a LOT of trouble if you poorly document your business transactions and make "mistakes" on taxes or other documents, so the real lesson is "don't do crimes."
    4
  2014.  @AliciaandChili  We're talking about George Santos. What would Biden have to do with anything? Do you have "Biden Tourettes?"
    4
  2015. The official US response should read "Stop being such babies."
    4
  2016. If there were actually anything worth writing about, they would. But all they have now is "Republican Committee Makes a Number of Unsubstantiated Claims." That's barely a headline, much less an article.
    4
  2017. There's nothing to circle back to, it was a nonsense question that is unworthy of national attention.
    4
  2018. I thought Trump wanted to do these deportations. Why would he want SCOTUS to tell him how he isn't allowed to do them?
    4
  2019.  @bootstrappedfriend1752  Yes, He will. It will be a sad day in Trump Tower.
    4
  2020. I don't think it's a good idea, because it typically ends up meaning that poor people pay a disproportionate share, since they have to spend most of their income to stay alive. You can offset that by picking and choosing which items are taxed high or low, but the more you do that, the more complicated everything gets and the more opportunities for corruption (cutting friends breaks or punishing enemies).
    4
  2021.  @GeorgeDenis.  Not really. The only question at this point is "how much will they lose by."
    4
  2022. That's not how "it goes both ways" works. "Hate" is not considered a fair alternative to "love."
    4
  2023.  @Clownelskiy  That was Russia too. Russia attacked Ukraine in small ways, until that stopped working, so then they attacked in big ways. It was all always Russia.
    4
  2024. @ You prefer teen pregnancy? To each their own, I guess.
    4
  2025.  @josepheridu3322  When do climate scientists opine on non-climate issues?
    4
  2026.  @josepheridu3322  But that wouldn't be a climate scientist opining on some other topic, it would be a biologist discussing biological reactions to rising temperatures (which is still inside their field). Generally in a paper like you discuss, the climate theory would just be taken as a given, and all the biologist would be doing is comparing aspects of the animal in the present to aspects previously recorded, and then perhaps speculating on how and why certain changes took place with that animal.
    4
  2027.  @GavinJones19982  What was the point then, if not "they are doing what we elected them to do?"
    4
  2028.  @dehydratedwater9806  But neither does it provide any cover to Trump. The Presidential Records act required that he turn ALL those documents over immediately, and he did everything he could to prevent that.
    4
  2029.  @Garaceg  What does it do that isn't already the law?
    4
  2030.  @bryanmcfadden4071  You should look up what happened while he was at Ohio State, and what he did to cover it up.
    4
  2031. I don't think that's an accurate quote. How would that even work?
    4
  2032.  @noneyabizz8337  "And then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning, because you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs, so it’d be interesting to check that, so that you’re going to have to use medical doctors with, but it sounds interesting to me. So, we’ll see, but the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That’s pretty powerful."-Donald J. Trump
    4
  2033. That's because we live in a representative democracy, so "who should be in office" is how "what these politicians provide" gets determined. You elect the people who will provide the things you want.
    4
  2034. His constituents elected him though, and he hasn't actually done anything wrong, so that would basically be an action against their oaths to uphold the Constitution. Not that they'd mind that, of course.
    4
  2035.  @pendejo6466  When you have such a massive platform, of course you have a responsibility to use it wisely. I'm not saying he's criminally liable for something a member of his audience chooses to take from him, but he does have a moral responsibility to not put harmful messages out into the world. I agree that it would be nice if everyone were a responsible judge of information, capable of taking in information from multiple sources and be able to sort the quality and junk information accurately, but we know for a fact that real life people do not do this. They either take their news from a single source (more often one that reinforces their biases than one that is accurate), or that even if they do at least listen to multiple sources, either all of them will be biased to suit their beliefs, or that they will just discard all the accurate information and accept all the inaccurate information because that is what they wanted to hear. You would not believe how many times I've run into "enlightened individuals" who claim to get their news from a "wide variety of sources," and yet they come out of it with the conclusion that "well actually, [some completely insane nonsense]." Dunning-Kruger is the great leveler of civilizations.
    4
  2036.  @pendejo6466  Well, I strongly disagree with that. With great power must come great responsibility. If you develop a large platform, then you must do no harm with it, intentional or otherwise. If you are unwilling to handle that responsibility well, then you should abandon the platform. Again, if all he wants is to "just have fun" with his show, then he could totally do that by just not involving guests discussing controversial topics. Plenty of comedy programs just stick to fluff and cause no harm, but if you're going to address serious topics then you have a responsibility to handle them seriously. He deliberately seeks out controversy, and then goes "what, me?" when there is blowback for the things his guests say. At a certain point, ignorance is willful, and inexcusable.
    4
  2037.  @pendejo6466  That is a woefully naive viewpoint. It is completely out of touch with the nature of reality. It's like saying that Karl Marx played no role in communism, it was just "people doing their own thing." You are always responsible for what you put out into the world. Yes, his audience has their own personal responsibility, I hold none of them blameless for their own actions, but Rogan also carries blame for his role in this. Again, if he does not want that responsibility, he can always choose to not use his platform in an irresponsible way. Plenty of others manage that just fine. He's just having a gasoline fight and acts shocked when it blows up.
    4
  2038. Allowing for a change of mind is not "disrespecting Democracy." In 1919, the US amended the Constitution to prohibit alcohol. In 1933, that amendment was repealed. that is not a breakdown of the democratic process, it is the process working correctly. They tried something, and changed their mind. In 2016, the UK voted to leave the EU. If in 2019, the UK still wants to leave the EU, then a second referendum would have the same result, and no harm would be done. If the choice did change however, then "remain" would be a support of democracy, not a violation of it.
    4
  2039. Joe Rogan has never even once cleared up anything.
    4
  2040.  @watsamatau  He did throw it out, he just stopped short of declaring it illegitimate. Pragmatic, but sad.
    4
  2041.  @richardlahan7068  There is plenty of evidence, have you not been paying attention to the Jan 6th committee or to the various trials?
    4
  2042.  @Haterator  The "prove it" phase was the first trial in this case, in which the judge determined that he had participated in insurrection.
    4
  2043. YES! We need to convince Senate Republicans to support he For the People act, which will do that.
    4
  2044.  @brandonllwyd  The fatalities are only disproportionate because Lebanon does not have as good a missile defense structure. If Israel was similarly "offense only," then far more people would have died there over the last year than in Lebanon. You can't let someone just keep taking shots at you because you have a bullet proof vest on.
    4
  2045.  @colincampbell4261  They do, but it is still amoral for them to profit off of Russia's genocide in Ukraine. They have a legal right to do what they are doing, but not with a clean conscience. It is legal, not moral.
    4
  2046. It's kind of hilarious when people say "NATO shouldn't be expanding!" while at the same time, Russia is actively invading their neighbors. Like, what do you think the entire point of NATO is? It's to get Russia to stop invading you. As long as Russia has no trouble invading its neighbors, NATO membership can only expand further and further. If Russia actually wanted countries to stop joining NATO, all they'd have to do is stop murdering people in their countries.
    4
  2047.  Alex Supertramp  Yes. Like when people go to the polls, and their votes are recorded, and the one named Biden gets 81m votes and 306 electoral votes, and the one named Trump only gets 74m million votes and 232 electoral votes, which is less, so he loses and has to go home, because that's how democracy works.
    4
  2048. That's nice. I'm glad we have to welcoming these new migrants into the country rather than trying to drive them away.
    4
  2049. Ex-Presidents are not allowed to retain defense documents under any condition. Ever.
    4
  2050.  @batmangovno  Lol, "race riots." You need to find better news sources.
    4
  2051.  @batmangovno  Lol, like I said, you really need to find better news sources. Yes, there were white nationalists trying to disrupt the peaceful protests and make them appear to be more dangerous than they were, but of those very few that died, a lot of it was white on white, it wasn't a racial thing. In terms of economics, what damage was caused was a tiny fraction of what covid did to the economy. Someone is trying to sell you crisis to make you panicky and more likely to run to them for support. Ask yourself why they want you so weak and sheep-like.
    4
  2052.  @calvinhoward3808  Those weren't "race riots," they were protests against police violence. There is a difference. The only "race riot" in recent memory was in DC on Jan 6th.
    4
  2053.  @qtng  China's emissions are sets to fall this year due to their expansion into green energy projects. I don't expect them to cut off their own nose over this, but they are making the investments necessary to transition to green energy without harming their economy. It's the US that is failing at that (or at least parts of the US).
    4
  2054. In the White House, presidenting.
    4
  2055.  @JamesBarnett-pr9cm  He does take breaks on the weekends sometimes. Not as often as Trump did, but sometimes. But mostly he's just working.
    4
  2056.  @RolandAdams-h4m  You being sent the same pictures over and over on social media does not mean that's what he's been doing the entire time.
    4
  2057. To answer the questions, 1) every previous administration since the invention of air travel, since that's standard US policy. This includes the immediate previous administration. 2) The previous administration certainly did this, when the amount of people coming in exceeded their capacity to hold them.
    4
  2058. We know who's crooked. The House Oversight Committee.
    4
  2059. But also illegitimate, so. . .
    4
  2060. Technically, all drinking water is sewage water.
    4
  2061. The polio vaccine was approved and mandated in less time and with MUCH less testing. When something is "low priority," then sure, you want to take as much time as possible to do testing, but when something is a critical concern, say when it killed 600,000 Americans last year, then you want to get it out as quickly as reasonably possible. The risks to this program were in the EARLY phases. They did skip steps that put early testers at higher risk of complications. If something had been wrong with the vaccines in those early phases, more people would have been harmed by them than in a more measured clinical trial. But once those early phases were done, and it turned out that nobody was harmed by them, there was no additional risk after that point, no additional risk to the general public. As of today, this vaccine has been better tested than almost any drugs are at the time they are released to market, so there is no rational reason to continue to avoid it. Currently, it is only irrational fear and stubbornness that keep people from taking it.
    4
  2062.  @hanrenfighterjet  This is done all the time, but the thing is, cities typically aren't surrounded by "empty space," people own that land, and it's already either suburbs, or farm land in most cases. It also means that if you are building on the least-developed fringes of the existing communities, then it's further away from where people want to be.
    4
  2063.  @TheTrueSonOfFire  Yes, the court of record is where he was found guilty.
    4
  2064. Easy. Situations change, policies need to change with them. This is not rocket science.
    4
  2065. And then the counter-reciprocal tariffs, and so on, until everything is ten times as expensive as it was last year.
    4
  2066. The difference being that Russia and North Korea are bad countries run by bad people, so when they work together, that is bad. There's no hypocrisy to that, it's just common sense.
    4
  2067. That would not be accurate though, since they did not do that.
    4
  2068. I'm really surprised by the number of Teslas I see driving around my local area too. They aren't even the best battery EVs right now.
    4
  2069. Yes, the nefarious thing about this incident was the mass shooter and his ability to get a bushmaster rifle. In Maui, the nefarious thing was global warming.
    4
  2070. They are two separate, but important issues.
    4
  2071. And he was wrong.
    4
  2072. Nah, the only one that needs dismantling is MAGA.
    4
  2073.  @Bellysniffer  Yes, some have them, people who would boycott a sports team over supporting LGBT people, do not. You can choose to be amoral if you want, that is your right, just don't expect anyone to respect you for it. Jesus certainly wouldn't.
    4
  2074.  @H43339  This is what they used to say about the Irish and Italians.
    4
  2075.  @Timewave-Zer0  I agree with him, but that was never the law, so it's not relevant to the topic at hand.
    4
  2076. Because they think that he'll harm people they don't like more than he'll harm them. They care more about harming others than they care about their own self interests.
    4
  2077.  @LAJAP  The machines don't make laws, the people who own the machines make the laws. That's why strong government needs to exist, and needs to be firmly empowered by and for the people, not by and for the wealthy. If that is not achieved, then there is no point arguing about anything else, because it's just shuffling deckchairs on the Titanic.
    4
  2078. That was Mr. Burns. Different sociopathic millionaire.
    4
  2079. If Republicans spend half as much time actually supporting and defending the republic as they do investigating the son of the President, we'd have the debt ceiling solved by now.
    4
  2080.  @WhenTheTreesSpeak  We're talking about the US here, not 3whatever happens in those countries.
    4
  2081. I'm sure they are happening right now. In your imagination. Where they all live.
    4
  2082. Yup, don't side with Russia against the US.
    4
  2083. That is not, nor has it ever been, how the debt limit works.
    4
  2084.  @3234Snipez  Rich, but "detaching from foreign sources" would only make us poorer, because it would pass labor that we'd outsourced onto Americans, and forces everyone to pay much more for the things they buy. There's no path in which we don't end up poorer as a result.
    4
  2085.  @Kayluv101  He is legally required to pay. He can try to avoid paying, but the judge appears to have zero tolerance for shenanigans. They aren't looking to get rich here, they are looking to end Alex Jones using the only thing he cares about, money. It would be pretty sickening if they allowed him to limp away and continue to cause harm to others.
    4
  2086. She is a habitual liar though, I mean that's just a fact. They don't like his daughter because she's a habitual liar that took on a job where her ONLY responsibility was to tell the truth to the American people.
    4
  2087. This is why Trump is firing the whistle blower protections.
    4
  2088.  @haydenisanerd4958  Anyone who's believed they could swoop into a jungle and wipe out any sort of local guerilla movement has been a fool.
    4
  2089.  @IlPinnacolo  What are you talking about?
    4
  2090.  @IlPinnacolo  My point is, there are no variables out there that are likely to completely overthrow the broad outcomes predicted by the current models, not without significant actual changes to the world. The current consensus prediction is what is likely to happen, and it is better to build policy around the likely outcomes than to build around the unlikely outcomes.
    4
  2091.  @kmoses582  No, that would be because you don't pay attention.
    4
  2092.  @saythankyou111  "They" also looked into it during the Trump administration. The government does not work directly for the President a the time, they work for the American people, without fear o r favor. The previous administration never seemed to understand that.
    4
  2093.  @JaimeWarlock  The FTC is an American organization. It is their job to sort out American problems. In any case, I was talking about "flagship phones," the ones on the cutting edge of performance, a similar space to "affordable luxury fashion." "Bargain" models aren't terribly relevant, because they produce a drastically different user experience.
    4
  2094. She never agreed to go on Fox. Nor should she.
    4
  2095. If Trump can hear God, then why does he usually do the opposite?
    4
  2096. Why would you not trust them?
    4
  2097. Yup, Republicans. Sick.
    4
  2098.  @DBMorris  "You're."
    4
  2099. This is why Wyoming doesn't deserve two Senators. They should have to share with neighboring states.
    4
  2100. It was worded in such a way that there were too many good reasons to vote against it. The name certainly didn't help.
    4
  2101. Well, that's too bad, because that would cause more harm than good.
    4
  2102. "Bigotry," of course.
    4
  2103.  @stevenbrown5210  Ask Ukraine, they've done it before, and can do it again.
    4
  2104.  @eodyn7  Russia. It was Russia that invaded Ukraine. The US did not enter either country.
    4
  2105.  @cruisemissileUSA  Eh, I care that it happened as a matter of history, but I certainly don't allow it to define my actions in the present. I would not use the existence of slavery 150 years ago be an excuse to do violence against others in the present.
    4
  2106. Dementia does that. Sorry to hear it. Hopefully we'll have a president who does his job again soon.
    4
  2107. They are handling the migrants coming across the southern border, the issue here was DeSantis's kidnapping and human trafficking.
    4
  2108. Yeah, I'm glad we voted that guy out last time.
    4
  2109. I still want to see a large structure that is four massive towers, linked by skybridges and "ring platforms" around them at every 20-50 floors, with those floors acting as retail/dining promenades, and with certain floors designated for various types of businesses, so that people on upper floors never have to reach the ground floor, as anything they might need could be found within 100 or so floors of them.
    4
  2110.  @richardbrown6565  Finger pointing is usually one of the first things to happen in crimes. You point at the ones who do the crime.
    4
  2111.  @Shane-on5kh  No, they are literally the opposite of the ones who do this. That is the entire point of their existence.
    4
  2112.  @user-be1ij7rp3o  Government money spent overseas brings back double the benefit to the US. The government sends no jobs overseas, the free market does that, and will continue to do that so long as you are unwilling to make sneakers for $0.25 an hour. And the southern border is more secure than it ever has been, there are just a lot more people coming up to it, since their own countries are in crisis and they are in need of help. It would be needlessly cruel to turn them away. If we invested more money into improving their own countries, they wouldn't have to come to the US to live. That's why foreign aid is a good thing. You can't have it both ways.
    4
  2113. But children's safety and well being was never at risk here.
    4
  2114.  @thinkngskeptic  Anyone Musk legitimately wants gone, will be gone. They can throw up pretend examples all day.
    4
  2115. "They won't let me make a plant that is 10% likely to explode! The monsters!"
    4
  2116. @ That's because Trump is a petty child. They weren't.
    4
  2117. Time to break out the popcorn. . .
    4
  2118. He's better than the last guy, at least. He would have just invited them both to the White House for cheeseburgers and then handed them the nuclear football as a going away present.
    4
  2119. Yeah, that one is THE WORST. Let people be happy, start a new romance elsewhere.
    4
  2120. It does point out the hypocricy of those on the right who were critical of BLM.
    4
  2121. Well that's why they're suing them, to stop their evil.
    4
  2122. The world needs to stop being held hostage by dolphins.
    4
  2123. Unconscionable, at least.
    4
  2124. @ Russia started this. Ukraine was allowed to join NATO if they wanted, Russia never had any justification to invade. You do not blame the victim for having something the bully wanted.
    4
  2125. You clearly need to read up on this bill, there's WAY more to it than that.
    4
  2126.  @thebluestig2654  It bans drive-in voting, for one. It also eliminates 24-hour voting, which was highly successful in the 2020 election. It makes it more difficult for eligible voters to get mail-in ballots. There are a few others, but that alone is plenty. You would know all this if you actually read the bill, or at least watched credible news organizations.
    4
  2127. The comments section seems full of people triggered by him being called a "loyalist."
    4
  2128. He doesn't want to be reminded of Nixon? I guess Roger Stone will have to keep his shirt on when they're in bed now.
    4
  2129. Russia: We'll agree to a ceasefire if you agree to give us the areas we currently control and not join NATO. Ukraine: Counter-proposal, If you leave our country immediately, we won't chase you back across the border when you go.
    4
  2130. Who said that?
    4
  2131. You have been misinformed, the law also applies to ALL children in Florida schools, in differing ways, due to the vague nature of its wording and the loose nature of its enforcement mechanisms. Also, NOBODY was "awakening that sexual side of kids," nor asking to. That has nothing to do with what the bill is about. So if you are going to call someone out for not being an "objective news outlet”, make sure to at least be correct on the facts yourself first.
    4
  2132. I think that this law is opposed to the Republican groomers and their efforts.
    4
  2133. @You Tube Are you speaking to us from the distant past? Russia's position in the war has been retreating consistently since last spring.
    4
  2134. Sadly, this is true.
    4
  2135.  @Hickalum  Yeah, but that's an argument against "getting work done," not an argument against green energy or EVs. The heat generated by all of those steps is not zero, but it's still a fraction of the heat it would take to generate that same output using fossil fuels in any way.
    4
  2136.  @leonjiang-kq2qo  That's not a realizstic question though. Of course DC did not plan this, and of course no NATO or ex-NATO soldiers are involved. DC is not in control of this war, nor should they be, it is Urkaine's war. DC only provides them the weapons needed to fight it.
    4
  2137.  @nunyabizness9200  Yes! Replace Trump with Harris! Always!
    4
  2138.  @joewoodchuck3824  But those criminals obtained their guns from someone who purchased it legally, so remove the legal guns from circulation and the illegal ones dry up quick.
    4
  2139.  @mylanmiller9656  What are you talking about? If Kavenah couldn't tell what a woman was, he wouldn't know who to assault.
    4
  2140. While I think most drivers want to reach their destinations as fast as possible, driving is still the fastest way for them to reach those destinations, so no alternatives would actually improve things, other than teleporters or flying cars, I guess.
    4
  2141. That's because of the guns though, the migrants are fine.
    4
  2142. She was right when she said that. That happened in the past, and things have changed since then. Such is time.
    4
  2143.  @ronald3836  If it's a business, then whether their products are "silly choices" to you or not should not be relevant to their anti-trust status. If the market exists, then it should be considered as a market, however little respect you might have for that market.
    4
  2144.  @ronald3836  See, that would be an example of a facetious argument. As you point out, they already have competitors in the same general price range, selling equivalent products. Now, the question is what if ALL car manufacturers in that midtier luxury range, say $70K-150K, were all bought up by a single entity, so that nobody else was producing them, would that not cause some risk to consumers of those vehicles? If they raised the prices by say 10% over what they had before, what would the market do about that? Would one of the even higher end producers like Ferrari step down to making some $70K vehicles? Could lower tier competitors step up to make $50K-80K vehicles that the market would be interested in? It would be tricky.
    4
  2145. What are you talking about? No rights changes hands today. Trump supporters stormed the Capital, which was a disgrace, but they were removed in short order and the election was certified as normal.
    4
  2146.  @rasheedh7043  Russia escalated by bringing in foreign soldiers. This was the response.
    4
  2147. Activism is a necessary part of representation. There can be no choice involved.
    4
  2148.  @biderdoo  To not repeat the four before that.
    4
  2149.  @khornsbyone  No, it's more often the people trying to get it put up who would do well to read it, because they are the ones least following it.
    4
  2150. Congress did. Securities Exchange Act of 1934.
    4
  2151. He gets it, he just doesn't care.
    4
  2152. I can find no evidence to support this claim. There do not seem to have been any lawsuits dropped by Dominion recently.
    4
  2153. That would be defamation, since they did not actually do any of the things alleged.
    4
  2154. The exact opposite of everything you said, actually.
    4
  2155. Yes, he wants security for his people, which Putin has proved he can never have outside of NATO.
    4
  2156. @ Russia does not get to invade people just because they felt "poked." This is entirely on Russia.
    4
  2157. no, but it being true does make it true. They are saying it because it is true, not the other way around.
    4
  2158. I mean, this is literally how skin cancer works. . .
    4
  2159. Honestly, of all the companies that could be donating to campaigns, crypto bros are the least dangerous. I'd like to get ALL corporate contributions out of politics, but I'd much rather candidates be getting money from crypto bros than oil companies or the NRA.
    4
  2160. The thing is though, if Japan and Singapore are exceptions, then certainly the US would be even more of one. Anything Japan can do, we can do bigger.
    4
  2161. "Today, in opposite world. . ."
    4
  2162. It was better than the Trump administration, at least.
    4
  2163.  @linusa2996  And the "peace deal" involved handing Afghanistan back to the Taliban in 2021.
    4
  2164.  @ryanbianchi3118  Because they are registered as a 501c3, and are prohibited form engaging in politics.
    4
  2165. What's wrong with the late night ballots? They typically count them for days after the elections, it takes time.
    4
  2166.  @zachjacobs9917  I mean, the college curriculum I was taking was producing "art for arts sake" artistes, the kinds that put on gallery shows. That wasn't exactly what I was there for, but it was certainly what they were prepping, not mill workers. I'm just saying it would hurt them to add some basic commercial art economics into that.
    4
  2167.  @gherieg.1091  You act like a bot.
    4
  2168. Then why was she the one that passed the bill that would help people, not milk them?
    4
  2169.  @newyorkcity76  Lebanon lost that territory when they attacked Israel in the 60s. It is no longer theirs.
    4
  2170. Eh. . . not really. We always had the means to shoot it down, bullets work fine for that, and while yes, they can overshoot and go on to hit things on the ground, at that altitude they would likely tumble and not hit terribly hard, so as long as you at least tried to avoid aiming toward major population centers when firing, that would not be a high risk. The bigger risk was just that it was actually a fairly huge "ship" under that balloon, and dropping it could cause some serious damage to anything below, and you could not "aim" that properly.
    4
  2171. It's because some Tariffs don't cause problems. The ones being talked about now are the ones causing problems. For example, a tariff on Canadian dairy products would be irrelevant, since the US already produces way more, cheaper dairy than we would ever need. The same is not true of the industries now being tariffed.
    4
  2172. Several parties, including the US, are recommending he not attack Rafah, but ultimately Israel is a sovereign nation and can make its own choices. Nobody can insist they do something different without using force.
    4
  2173.  @camwyn256  Which, ironically, is still better for everyone, including MAGA folks, than being beholden to MAGA folks is.
    4
  2174.  @MUSTAF_AROD_UPYUR_POUPR  Again, how am I "being weird?" To me, it's "weird" how much you guys talk about "being wierd," given that none of you seem capable of explaining what I'm doing that's "weird." That's very "weird" of you.
    4
  2175.  @TomSmith-ls5rn  California's problems have nothing to do with who their US Senator is. They mostly have to do with local level town/county councils.
    4
  2176.  @007kingifrit  Not in America, you can't. There's urgent care if there's an emergency, same as in any other country, but if you want to actually make a doctor's appointment, it can be weeks or months out.
    4
  2177.  @noahboday2008  No, monetary inflation exists, it was just a relatively small component of the current inflationary cycle. Milton Friedman would agree.
    4
  2178.  @RobertL.Peters  Sur,e but the point is that there is no evidence that fiscal policy was a significant aspect of the recent inflationary trend, so it's a bit misleading for people to claim that it was.
    4
  2179.  @misiknuo  Debt is the least of the inflationary factors at the moment, it's just the one that the oil lobby would prefer people to focus on, rather than oil profits. And yes, using debt to create "artificial jobs" is a bad thing, but paying people to provide valuable goods or services to the economy is no "artificial job," so as long as the product of that debt has value to the future of the nation, it is a net positive. The point is, it's impossible for the US economy to run without some amount of deficit under the current circumstances. Reaching a balanced budget would require taxing the wealthy at a level that might be difficult to achieve.
    4
  2180.  @peterii3512  Then why even bother having an ethics clause if there's no chance of actually applying it?
    4
  2181.  @legaleeblonde4310  He's allowed to do it, Thomas said he could.
    4
  2182. This is harmful misinformation. You should not allow cranks like this on your platform.
    4
  2183.  @brentharrington9235  Enemy combatants operating overseas do not have due process rights. This was not a police action, it was a military one.
    4
  2184. Yes, and the people support Disney in this one over Meatball Ron.
    4
  2185. That's sad. I hope you get better.
    4
  2186.  @logangodofcandy  A 60% tariff would not lead to increased US manufacturing, because it would cost more than twice as much to hire an American to do the job, even if you ignored the cost of setting up the facilities. And if we're comparing it to the 10% from other countries, that isn't even enough to get a factory owner to turn over in his sleep.
    4
  2187. How so?
    4
  2188. nobody actually uses it as currency except for scammers.
    4
  2189. Biden also sent billions to help the hurricane areas. The US president needs to be able to handle multiple problems at once.
    4
  2190.  @Cold_Cactus  That's what they said about Vietnam.
    4
  2191. No, do both.
    4
  2192.  @mikerayle6103  They call people at home. Most people ignore such calls, and then later claim that nobody polled them.
    4
  2193. ​ @beanetricemcdaniel6853  There were people dressing in drag when you were growing up, you just weren't aware of them. Now society is better, more welcoming to people than it was decades ago. This is a good thing. People who "jump on" people who are different than they are, are not accepted in the modern world. We are better people today.
    4
  2194. @@history-channel-sk7wm Of course not, they should NEVER be exposed to Republicans. But that's got nothing to do with drag shows.
    4
  2195. That you would make aclaim like that is the antisemitism, since nobody actually is making the claim that "Being against murdering children" is antisemitism. This whole war started because Gaza was murdering children and Israel wanted to put a stop to that.
    4
  2196. That's sad. Most people have more to their life than that. Maybe you could try and find a hobby instead?
    4
  2197.  @chrisdihrberg747  They provided the context. Didn't you watch the video?
    4
  2198.  @Teo317  What do you believe I got wrong?
    4
  2199.  @Teo317  The important thing to always keep in mind though is that Trump is both ignorant on most of these topics and a compulsive liar, so "what Trump said" on any given topic is rarely productive, unless he is openly incriminating himself.
    4
  2200.  @noelleggett5368  Well, the US has been cooperating with several different countries in the Pacific, and there are various treaties floating around between different countries, but I don't believe there is any formal organization at the level of NATO between them. That would be the point, build a "Pacific NATO," and then even if NATO doesn't want to operate themselves, they would be linked through the US.
    4
  2201.  @Bitchslapper316  "insurrection, an organized and usually violent act of revolt or rebellion against an established government or governing authority of a nation-state or other political entity by a group of its citizens or subjects; also, any act of engaging in such a revolt."
    4
  2202.  @geoffreyk6229  None of the changes that Biden made had any negative impacts on the issues you are talking about. Those situations would have occurred with or without Biden changing any policies. His changes are aimed at longer term considerations.
    4
  2203. Not all of it, some is the Chinese. But yeah, a LOT of it is Russia.
    4
  2204. This is different though, they're currently acting in self defense after THEY were attacked. You might instead compare them to Britain, if you're going to use a WWII example.
    4
  2205. More importantly, when they do renovate existing infrastructure, they want to make it MORE convenient to their constituents, not less, so they wouldn't reduce the ease of use of the roads just to add pedestrian infrastructure.
    4
  2206. How would they?
    4
  2207. This is a constitutional republic. People only have the right to elect those who meet the eligibility requirements laid out in the Constitution. Trump does not.
    4
  2208. Well, these baristas could just open their own coffee shops and pocket all the profits.
    4
  2209.  @avenue8822  A conviction in court would lead to jail time or fines. It has nothing to do with congress. Congress is basing their decisions off of their own analysis of the evidence, as the Constitution provides. The Judicial branch is not relevant to the Legislative
    4
  2210. New York taxpayers.
    4
  2211. "So, there is no Russia anymore. Sad day, I guess."
    4
  2212.  @huntercrook7306  That's not how flu shots work either.
    4
  2213. "We don't have any legislative agenda to help this country, so. . . let's just bully the president's children a bit and then take off for Cancun."
    4
  2214. That depends, did you grossly misrepresent yourself to the bank? If so, then you probably deserve the punishment.
    4
  2215. You started off strong but then got the conclusion backwards. The Supremacy Clause means that the 14th amendment DOES give Colorado the right to make the legal decision that they did. There was also no due process violation, as this was not a criminal case against Trump, and his campaign DID have the opportunity to plead their case in this trial, they just lost. That was "due process" in this matter. There is a rumor going around that a criminal conviction is needed to exercise the 14th amendment, that has NEVER been the case. Now the US Supreme Court does have the power to then overturn that decision, but that would be an abuse of power on their part, since it would be a violation of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution.
    4
  2216.  @stefanl5183  It is far easier to corrupt using capitalism than it is to corrupt using government. Nobody is talking about removing every aspect related to capitalism, but it does require oversight and moderation to be effective at producing net positive outcomes for society.
    4
  2217. Or, they are just tired of people making a mockery of the electoral process and continuing to perpetuate the lie that Trump didn't lose the election. They are concerned that the auditors intend to manipulate the ballots and change the results from what the voters decided.
    4
  2218.  @tylzzr  I'm just disappointed in Fox's viewers.
    4
  2219. A debate on Fox is not an invitation, it's a threat.
    4
  2220.  @frederickmalicki550  If you're going to live here, learn English.
    4
  2221.  @robfarrell9104  No, Obama gave you those numbers. Trump was just in office during the years after Obama's economy got started.
    3
  2222. Why?
    3
  2223. What would a wall have to do with anything? It wouldn't stop anyone from crossing.
    3
  2224. And yet that barren area alone gets about 15-20 US senators. Fair. . .
    3
  2225. Always.
    3
  2226. @seraeggobutterworth5247 Due process only applies in matters of life, liberty of property. None of those are being challenged in this case. Due process was served by this decision.
    3
  2227. @seraeggobutterworth5247 The 14a is making sure that the 5th applies equally to freed slaves and other varieties of US citizen. At no point does it imply that a criminal conviction is required to trigger later elements of the amendment.
    3
  2228.  tomcutler165  The 14th amendment does not require criminal charges to have been made. It's also important to understand that the specific charge of "insurrection" is not a necessary component of the 14th amendment in any way, so obviously Trump could not get out of this by claiming "not insurrection" wordplay.
    3
  2229. Sure he is. Both parties have to agree to a set of rules for the debate to take place.
    3
  2230. @ Yeah, he put it in terms that even maga should be able to understand.
    3
  2231. Also, I think the EV used car situation will sort itself out over time. Right now, a lot of it is FUD over battery charge and replacement costs, but both of these have been overblown and will only improve over time. I think within a decade or less EV used prices will be comparable to fossil cars in terms of overall value, there's no reason why someone should have less faith in an EV with 100K miles on it than a fossil car with 100K miles on it. Realistically, a mature EV should be able to run decades longer than a fossil car with equivalent upkeep costs.
    3
  2232. I'm not sure you understand how analogies work. In that story, a boy was crying wolf when there was no wolf. In this case, people are crying Russia, because every time, it is Russia. These are completely different scenarios.
    3
  2233.  @RJL612  Who told you that "a racist doesn't care if they're called a racist?" Lol. That sounds like the sort of thought that goes through someone's head when they're called a racist, "well, I don't want to be a racist, therefore, I can't be a racist." That's not how ANYTHING works, Most of the racists in the world would be bothered if someone called them that, just as most idiots would be bothered to be called that, it doesn't mean it's not true.
    3
  2234. Why? It worked out. They might have had bad motivations, but the results were still for the best.
    3
  2235. Too bad, that's how many are showing up. Nothing you can do about that.
    3
  2236.  @ssuwandi3240  That's not how governments work under the US and Florida state constitutions. It is not "the governor's state," it is the people of Florida's state, and the governor only has power in so far as he is following the rules of both Florida and US law. His actions against Disney are a violation of the US Constitution, among other things. I think the sort of government you are thinking of is a "Fascist Autocracy," which is not what we have in the US. DeSantis certainly wants to have one of those though.
    3
  2237. Come on man, you can do better than "a few minutes of rambling that goes nowhere, and then a smash cut into fifteen minutes of recylced "I don't like hyperloop" footage." We get it, you don't like hyperloop, but your videos on the topic ALREADY EXIST. Just make videos the size that they need to be, use only fresh material in each, reference previous videos for context, but do not recycle them, it just makes you seem cheap.
    3
  2238. The Senate WANTS a border bill, just not the sort that the House can pass using Republican votes alone. It would need to be a bill that passes the House on a bipartisan basis, NOT just a laundry list of Republican priorities.
    3
  2239.  @gravyd316  Unfortunately, conflict in the middle east is bad for everyone, at least until we can get off of fossil fuels entirely.
    3
  2240.  @likewatermusik  You don't understand. Him telling his people that he did everything he promised is just as good as if he'd actually done it. "Reality" is whatever he tells them it is.
    3
  2241. Unfortunately, nobody did anything wrong to fire them over, and they can't just fire them without cause.
    3
  2242.  @southernman2  That would be part of the madness, that you think that way.
    3
  2243. The problem is that Republicans would just latch onto something like this and claim that it represents the entire Democratic party, even though most Democrats are opposed to it, while ignoring that MOST of the Republican party does something worse every single day. Conservative people look for ANY distraction from how horrible their own party has become.
    3
  2244.  @bertstein8590  So you would prefer not to address climate change accurately because you believe that doing so would inconvenience you? That is not how science works. The moral questions are your own to deal with, if you believe that your personal freedoms are more valuable to you than the human lives they would cost, then that's fine, you do you, but you can't have it both ways, the moral cost exists whether you ignore it or not. I will point out though that YOU are the only one suggesting that saving trillions by addressing climate change is somehow "losing our humanity and freedom." Nobody else is asking that of you.
    3
  2245. Money. The incentives were money.
    3
  2246. If he knew what "blunt honesty" meant then he would keep it 100% and tell you that there is nothing to find here. But he does not do that, he keeps stringing you along with empty promises that "we're definitely going to find something on Hunter eventually, and it will definitely have something to do with his father in some way!" But it never will, because that story does not exist in reality.
    3
  2247. @Dasha-tk3moRussia had done bad actions before 2022. They invaded Ukraine in 2014. You don't really have a clue about the conflict at all or what happened leading up to it.
    3
  2248. Unfortunately, Republican state houses have already chosen our House representatives for us.
    3
  2249.  @lescobrandon8443  You didn't have a post in which you confronted the ideology of "vote blue no matter who," perhaps your post was removed. But that would be a foolish thing to attempt anyway, since voting blue is the only realistic path forward at this point. Vote your conscience in the primary, and then vote blue in the general, at least until the GOP becomes a credible alternative. Your flaw in reading comprehension would be to equate a lack of attention with an inability to argue a point. Someone not responding to you does not mean that they are incapable of doing so successfully. Given the evidence so far, it would be best for you to never assume that someone else is incapable of countering a point you choose to make.
    3
  2250.  @rhetorical1488  Israel does have a legitimate claim of self defense, do you not agree? They were attacked by Gaza first.
    3
  2251. Yes, but this is not the problem. The problem is that if a human cannot compete with a machine, then his wellbeing is at risk. THAT is the problem that needs solving, not by hobbling the machine, but by disconnecting "wellbeing" from "productivity."
    3
  2252. Unlike the previous administration, Biden has done nothing impeachable.
    3
  2253.  @awallbroandliljamie  Biden didn't put Americans in Afghanistan, you're thinking of Bush. Biden brought Americans HOME from Afghanistan. Also, the fake news channels are Fox, OAN, and Newsmax.
    3
  2254. I just view the protests as pointless. They aren't going to actually change anything based on these campus protests. Either they look at the situation in Gaza and decide that they need to change policy, or they won't, a bunch of college students chanting about it isn't going to move the needle.
    3
  2255. And it's worked, for those that followed the plan. Obviously no plan can save people who don't want to be saved.
    3
  2256. That's the problem, it's meant to be a debate, not a "which crowd is more rowdy" contest. We're electing leaders, not Wrestlemania stars.
    3
  2257. This is not Putin's Russia.
    3
  2258. No, it's information that is inaccurate.
    3
  2259. I do not think that word means what you think it means.
    3
  2260. Definitely need to bookmark this for whenever anyone talks about "reparations."
    3
  2261. If they wanted to do an underground hyperloop, they would likely still need to line the tunnels with metal. It would be basically the same thing as the above ground version, just with more reinforcement from the ground outside it, less temperature variation, and less chance of impact breakage. On the flipside, any damage that did happen to part of the tube would be harder to repair and would need to be done from the inside. It'd still be impractical, just a bit less so.
    3
  2262.  @jimwerther  The video above. Also, everyone opposes sexualizing children, that is not something that needs an organization to "defend." What "Moms for Liberty" does is attack LGBT people, including children.
    3
  2263. The problem is that the prices of things have been going up, so the same money spent will inevitably get less results.
    3
  2264. This is why unionization is an outdated way of doing things, and what we instead need is a strong federal government to require ALL companies to meet fair standards of conduct, whether unionized or not.
    3
  2265. You need to stop reading Putin's notes.
    3
  2266.  @sitnamkrad  I feel you are being disingenuous now. It's pretty commonly understood that there are a lot of people out there who are "just asking questions" about settled topics with the intention of undermining the settled viewpoint, because they want it to be untrue (in spite of the fact that it is true). The problem is that the human mind is not a perfectly logical engine that responds to logical information in a logical fashion. Human brains are imperfect meat, and react to "Good stories" much better than they do to logic. So presenting misleading arguments tend to lead to people being misled, and no amount of fact or logic can correct for that. So the question becomes, what DO we do about that? Ignoring that reality helps no one. "And second, if people do their jobs wrong, they get fired (or don't even get hired in the first place). You know this. It happens all the time. Even with people who do know 1 + 1 = 2. " Why are you trying to censor them? The only have questions about your insistence that 1+1 does not equal 5. My point is that there are people out there who are just as wrong about major scientific situations, who REFUSE to bow to "authoritative wisdom" on the subjects, and who are in positions where they can exercise power, such as in politics or major corporations. They are wrong, they are unwilling to change their minds regardless of any arguments made to them, and they are causing harm by acting upon their wrong information.
    3
  2267. The problem is there's nobody in the Republican side of the House that would make a viable candidate, so they have to make do with what they've got.
    3
  2268. Or we could just have less guns. That would work too, and it wouldn't cost billions of dollars per year.
    3
  2269.  @JustinRawley  Only when Trump is appointing their heads.
    3
  2270. I think that for a developing nation, their best option would be to build an "EPCOT." I don't mean an actual theme park, I mean that they should build a special "nice place to live" that is separate from whatever chaos the country as a whole might be involved in. They should basically build a tiny chunk of a much more developed country inside of their own, and the only people allowed to be there are the sorts of people who other countries would want to import, the well educated, morally upright, dignified people that you want to cultivate. These "first world enclaves" could keep the local talent in the country and attract foreign talent to help build out the national economy, and then as these enclaves succeed and produce more and more children into these well educated, more affluent families, the enclaves could expand until eventually the entire country is like that (or at least as much as in any other industrialized country). Trying to take a third world country and advancing the entire thing to first world status at once is just too big a lift, you would need a fortune to manage it and even then would be likely to fail because it would be hard to find enough talented and trustworthy people to manage the entire thing out of nowhere. But building a single relatively small town that is up to first world standards should be doable on almost any budget, and then you can just build out from there as resources are available to do so.
    3
  2271. It wasn't pride. Moscow Mitch wouldn't have let an RBG successor get picked on his watch anyway.
    3
  2272. Exactly! This is why these attempts by Republicans to change the rules in their favor must be shut down immediately.
    3
  2273. Because billionaires should not be able to buy governments.
    3
  2274. @ Like cashier unions or something? Maybe. I can't imagine any customers actually being opposed to self-checkout.
    3
  2275. @ What about them? So long as those roles are still necessary, they can still do them. But if we develop more efficient alternatives, like trucks that can unload themselves, robots that can stock shelves themselves, etc., then robots should be doing those jobs as well. Why not? Personally though, as someone who's both worked a register and loaded UPS trucks before, the latter was a lot more interesting.
    3
  2276. Yeah, Hamas must be held accountable for the harm they've caused to Gaza.
    3
  2277. It is, it's called "assault," but it would be extremely difficult to convict on if they were on duty at the time. People give police the benefit of the doubt that if they use force, it was with the intention of resolving the situation with the minimal harm. It's difficult to convince a jury otherwise without compelling evidence. It's possible that these officers will be charged eventually, but this is not the time or place, and rushing to an indictment is not likely to lead to a solid conviction.
    3
  2278. Only in Putin's wet dreams. In reality, they have already decimated Russia's army, and will repeat as necessary until they leave.
    3
  2279.  @esther5857  71% say that in-person voting should be made easier, this bill makes it harder. 69% support mandating early and mail-in voting, both of which this bill reduces. You can't use public polling to support this bill.
    3
  2280.  @rockyledbetter8149  If you remove ways that people are able to cast a ballot, that makes it less likely that they will be able to do so. If you are "allowed" to cast a ballot, but are prevented from actually getting to a polling place, then how is that not tyranny?
    3
  2281.  @soflossy6447  If the Republicans of the state are trying to make it more difficult for the PEOPLE of the state to express their vote, then it is the responsibility of ALL patriots to prevent them doing so. If the Republicans are not afraid of the will of the people, then why pass laws designed to disenfranchise them?
    3
  2282.  @tylerrogers8807  I don't think Finland is leaving. Sorry.
    3
  2283.  @tylerrogers8807  And this is why the west defends Ukraine, to prevent further invasions. If we had taken the same policy when Poland fell, then Dunkirk never would have happened.
    3
  2284.  @michaelkennedy6415  You're using incorrect data analysis. Each generation is actually smarter than the generation before it, we are just using a wider sampling group than we used to use, so it's picking up more low-achieving students than used to be counted at all, which can drive down certain averages. It's more of a methodology issue than it is an intelligence issue. Kids these days run rings around their parents.
    3
  2285. This was defamation though, which is not covered by the 1st amendment.
    3
  2286.  @leroyraatz5650  He never claimed to be a combat veteran though. Many veterans are not combat veterans, many 4 star generals are not combat veterans. That is the great thing about living through times of peace.
    3
  2287.  @keitharmstrong7194  He never lied about his rank, he achieved that rank. That is a fact. He never claimed to have been deployed to a combat zone, also fact. His unit didn't get their deployment orders until after he filed to retire, that is also a fact. His commanding officer has not spoken on the topic, although some other random officer in his battalion decides to speak about about it now to get his 15 minutes. And yes, Vance is the liar, although admittedly not nearly as big a liar as his boss, but then, nobody on Earth is.
    3
  2288.  @SomeUserNameBlahBlah  But again, most countries are not dumb enough to invade a peaceful neighbor like that, so it's a non-issue. The US always had the ability to freeze assets, that was never off the table, but people have always understood that it is a very high bar to cross for the Us to do that. Unless you intend to do something incredibly stupid, you have nothing to worry about. No sane country is even the slightest bit concerned.
    3
  2289.  @khalilmohammadmirza4070  And again, you say "no sanctions downsides," but most countries in the world would NEVER need to worry about those "sanctions downsides," because they have zero chance of doing the types of things that might trigger them. If any foreign entity thought to themselves "well, I don't know if I want to invest in the US, because they might sanction me," then that is a country nobody should be doing business with in the first place. And it's not like alternatives have no risks of their own. Of course they do. They are different risks, but they are still risks, and if you put "the US might sanction me" as something more likely than the risks that other investments would contain, then, again, it would probably mean that you are not a very nice person.
    3
  2290. Walmart.
    3
  2291. I was there, it was wild. I was way in the back, but could at least watch by the screens. :) I remember that even though it was winter coat weather, the crowd heat was enough to just go t-shirt.
    3
  2292. How does this "ruin sports?" Isn't it still about the best competitor winning? Isn't that the point of sport?
    3
  2293. Trump didn't participate in the primaries either.
    3
  2294. Well, the trick is to force them into accepting a deal in which they take care of everyone else, before it's too late to do so.
    3
  2295. Breaking, Sinema is IRRELEVANT, there are FIFTY OTHER Senators in the Senate who can help vote for voting rights if she won't. Ignore Sinema's grandstanding and try to convince at least 1-2 Republicans to do the right thing.
    3
  2296.  @voltaire5427  The "experts" you listed turned in those credentials when they started peddling misinformation. That's the whole point, the reason why experts are generally trustworthy, because they know that if they start making claims that are not supported by valid evidence, as Malone does, then it will undo any work they've put in to building their reputation over time.
    3
  2297.  @markh.876  With a court's permission, children can become emancipated from their parents, so there is a precedent for children being allowed to make their own decisions, when it is a matter of importance. If the child is not able to give consent, then it is important for the adults in their lives, parents and doctors, to make the best decisions for them, and no, "do nothing" is NOT always the best choice for that child. I don't think that parents or doctors should have to accept the casual whims of a child, but they do need to LISTEN to the child in good faith, and in good faith consider that child's perspective on the matter, and come to a conclusion that will support that child's long term health, and "interfering with their normal puberty" often IS in that child's best interests.
    3
  2298.  @Publius-24  Yes, it was a typo. Better than getting the point wrong though, right?
    3
  2299. among other things.
    3
  2300.  @jeffhaddix9508  Many would.
    3
  2301. If judges were intended to actually follow the law, then what would even be the point of appointing Republican judges?
    3
  2302.  @radeon8461  No, that's not how it works, and besides which, even if every one of those documents had been declassified, what he did with them would still be a crime, so I don't know why people keep bringing up the "declassify stuff with his mind" excuse. It would be like saying that a bank getaway driver didn't run a red light.
    3
  2303. @seraeggobutterworth5247 Due Process was done in this case. At NO point was any criminal conviction required in the process, so "he hasn't been convicted of any crimes yet" is 100% irrelevant to this situation. All that is required is for a duly appointed state election supervisor to determine that he violated his oaths of office, and then that decision can be challenged in the court system as it has been. You are making up rules around this process that never existed.
    3
  2304.  @joshbobst1629  The US does limited interdiction when we have reason to believe that a ship is violating international laws in some way. That is not comparable to the Houthi actions in the Red Sea. Also, if you'll read your own article, they were not targeting Venezuela, they were targeting an Iranian ship violating international sanctions. This was authorized under both US and international law. And again, nothing about the Houthi's actions involves "stopping a genocide," they are just randomly firing missiles at any ship that happens to pass by, which have nothing to do with the Gaza conflict. It would be like saying that lobbing grenades into your neighbor's yard was about "solving world hunger" or something. You can agree with their goals, perhaps, but that is irrelevant to the fact that their methods are indefensible.
    3
  2305. @ Any job that can be done by a machine should be done by that machine, freeing that human to do something else with his life. We shouldn't be scrabbling in the mud over "jobs", we should be pushing for systems in which humans don't need jobs in order to lead a healthy and fulfilled life.
    3
  2306. Pat Fallon is easily stunned. A falling leaf will cause him to fall over.
    3
  2307. It would be more like a McDonalds board member claiming that McDonalds violates food safety laws, and reported the wrongdoing to the FDA.
    3
  2308. This is what leads Moses to smash some tablets.
    3
  2309. Nope, the FDA followed the law, and then some. That would not be a valid argument to be making in this case.
    3
  2310. Texas was crying when they had a couple inches of snow.
    3
  2311. And like with guns, really that depends entirely on how you use them.
    3
  2312.  @KronStaro  Right, but his point is that none of the companies who make money off of hydrocarbons BELIEVE this enough to actually spend their own money to find and use this supposed resource. If that does not tell you something, then I'm sorry.
    3
  2313.  @Durzza  Voter ID has nothing to do with non-citizens voting. Non-citizens cannot vote, whether ID is required or not.
    3
  2314.  @jeffb321  Corporations are indeed taxed at 21%, loopholes aside, but combined they only make up 9% of total revenues, while 84% are paid by individuals. Raising their taxes by reasonable amounts would not lead to significant negatives. They would continue to want to make money.
    3
  2315. This will raise the price of American wines too, since they can get away with it, just not by as much.
    3
  2316. Exactly why there needs to be a shared tax rate, so that companies don't race to the bottom, and have to share their profits with the people. Otherwise you end up with those Blade Runner scenarios where everything is run by the corporations.
    3
  2317.  @macielynn7761  They are already enforcing the existing laws. This is what that looks like.
    3
  2318. DeSantis has no grounds to criticize anyone else's response. Florida has been a total mess relative to other states.
    3
  2319.  @taylorlibby7642  How is it not fiction? None of that happened in the real world, at least.
    3
  2320. @ Reality. I'm just pointing it out, I don't make it so.
    3
  2321.  @Graygranma  Could this be related to macadamia nuts?
    3
  2322. No, Russia did. They were the ones that invaded their neighbor. Neither the US nor EU nor Ukraine attacked anyone.
    3
  2323.  @sz5263  NATO could expand to east of Russia's doorstep. There is nothing wrong with that. Russia invaded their neighbor, THAT was the initiation of the war.
    3
  2324.  @thatolddragon5560  What are you talking about? He's already had over 91 indictments. His broken mental state won't get him out of that.
    3
  2325. @ This is why the founders chose to make it a Republic. They wanted checks and balanced against both tyranny and mindless populism.
    3
  2326. The reason for cul-de-sacs is that they maximize the number of housing plots and the yard space for those plots per acre of land. You could put a walking path that cuts between two yards, but then people would be passing through that walkway, past those people's houses, which would reduce the value of those homes. To a lot of people who buy these homes, these factors are much more important than walkability is.
    3
  2327.  @jonovankirk  Yes, Nixon should have been indicted, and would have been, had Ford not pardoned him. It's long been considered a mistake on his part.
    3
  2328.  @ChasingDifferentAdventures  Gasoline cars also corrode and cause harm when stored improperly, that is not an argument against EVs. Also, Teslas are not the only EV on the market. They aren't even the best ones.
    3
  2329. What do you mean? They stopped this attempt at authoritarianism pretty well. So long as you have a functional judiciary, it is a solid check. The only concern is that the authoritarians spent the last presidential term stacking the judiciary with idiots and authoritarians, so the system is currently a bit broken.
    3
  2330.  @joerectifier  Mayors visit other countries all the time. From a professional capacity, it helps build commercial relationships that bring money back to the city. And from a personal standpoint, they are humans too, and can go places. There's no reason why they would be shackled to the city for the duration of their term, no Mayor is.
    3
  2331.  @yolandawilkinson6420  Yes, but there's nothing of value to be gained by listening to Republicans.
    3
  2332.  @StS9LBJ23  NYC is better than the flyover states though. That's just a fact.
    3
  2333. There are already plants to recycle the car batteries, it's a solved problem. As for vehicle weight, they aren't that much heavier, and most parking structures should be more than adequate to support them. At most they might have to reduce the number of parking spaces per floor, which would make sense as they could also add charging docks.
    3
  2334. That's factually incorrect, the Dems aren't adding anything to the debt here. I think you're talking about a different process, maybe the budget process or something?
    3
  2335. It just seems so fiddly. Like everything works on a brand new car, but I just assume that over time things will shift position and wear down and features will be failing left and right because they are no longer doing exactly what they need to do at exactly the right time.
    3
  2336.  @corey552  I would love it if Republicans could remove their mouths from his unit, but they cannot, so we all have to worry about what he might do if he gets back into power, or what sitting Republicans will do to prevent him saying mean things about them. Democrats will let go of Trump the instant that Republicans do, you can count on that.
    3
  2337.  @jimfarmer7811  Oh. You're running on Faux News. Subsidies for electric cars benefit that guy stocking shelves, because it means car manufacturers will be making more and more cars at different model levels, and people buying the brand new ones will be selling their old cars, meaning that the guy stocking shelves can buy used cars at a cheaper price, including EVs that will cost WAY less to fuel than a gasoline car (and also Democrats want him to receive higher wages and better treatment while stocking those shelves). And literally nobody has had to "tear out their gas heaters," that's imaginary. You CAN replace them with a heat pump, and that is more energy efficient, so more affordable over the long run, but you never have to. Also, don't worry about the vegans, they can't hurt you. Meat lovers are way too powerful for that, even within the Democratic party. There will always be meat on the table.
    3
  2338. Oh, great, the next pandemic will finish us off then.
    3
  2339. Don't let the door hit you.
    3
  2340.  @GrammarNaziAUS  Only if the government does not collect sufficient revenues to counter that spending. The solution is not to cut spending, it's to increase revenues.
    3
  2341.  @secretname4190  It is not current to say that debt to GDP was stable after the Trump tax cuts. It may have appeared that way, at first, because the effect of those cuts was timed to accelerate over time, so of course it had minimal impact immediately after the change occurred, but it was always intended to grow over the following ten years, and will produce larger and larger deficits over that period.
    3
  2342.  @GrammarNaziAUS  When the government collects sufficient revenue to cover their spending, like they did during the Clinton administration, then the deficit goes away. It is not possible to cut spending to the point that there would be no deficit, but it is possible to increase revenues to the point that it offsets spending. What "got us in trouble in the first place" was Republicans cutting taxation on corporations and high wealth individuals. If we had the same taxation rates as we'd had during the 1950s, then we would have a budget surplus today.
    3
  2343. You get your information from some pretty sketchy sources.
    3
  2344. Aside from the cases where there actually is nothing to see there, of course. There's nothing to see in most places, so statistically, it's more often accurate than not.
    3
  2345. No US President should be at a table with Putin any time soon.
    3
  2346.  @Rossi593  There are probably cost-calculators out there for that sort of thing. Obviously it's more efficient overall to replace an older system than a newer one, and doing so might not be the best choice for everyone right now, but the point is that when people DO replace their system, as yo apparently did recently, a heat pump system is what they should be moving toward.
    3
  2347.  @Rossi593  Again, in the long term, the households would SAVE money, so the only real barrier is in the short term "getting the money together to make the change." That's where government can play a useful role, providing that up front cost mostly in the form of a low or zero interest loan, as well as a little direct cash as an incentive. I feel like your viewpoint comes from a position of irrational bias.
    3
  2348.  @higreentj  This is basically just how a freeze works. Just buy a freezer.
    3
  2349.  @lyonsmaneproductions3431  Yes, that's exactly what people think when Republicans cry "voter fraud." Thank you!
    3
  2350.  @black10kevin  Perhaps, but the goal is to reduce the number of cars in 'Manhattan (while increasing the alternatives), how else would you do that? Yes, the poor would be "pried out" of driving in themselves, but they would also not need to drive in themselves.
    3
  2351. How would he make a good Democrat? Every view he has is the exact opposite of what any Democrat would want. Are you just talking about his skin color an dhow Republicans would be less likely to vote for him?
    3
  2352. Wait, what's this about "ground rules about hiding behind the 5th amendment?" Are they saying that if he does not agree to appear before them and waive his 5th amendment rights, then they would hold him in contempt? Punishing him for exercising his Constitutional rights, how is that not blatantly against the Constitution? Even asking such a thing should be grounds for expulsion form Congress.
    3
  2353. "Pulling a Trump."
    3
  2354. . . . and others understand US law, and do not call it that.
    3
  2355. How so? The previous FBI picks had nothing to do with the Presidents who picked them. They were just competent at their jobs.
    3
  2356.  @chichora123  No, he didn't.
    3
  2357. The issue is that in a lot of these cases they were paying well above the going rate for sub-par services, which would not make any sense if they were not trying to curry favor. Of course an ethical president would have divested from all those businesses before taking office.
    3
  2358.  @Michael-st9ky  How do you know it was an Israeli drone and not a Hamas weapon?
    3
  2359. They've checked, there is no record of any such transactions.
    3
  2360. My concern for wearing two of theses is "what if they freak out?" What if they decide to obscure as much of my view as possible, or just do some trippy pattern? If it's only one eye, I can still see out of the other and get to a safe location to remove the lens, but if it's both eyes, I could be in serious trouble. Also, do these work even with the eyes closed? That could be rough, not being able to fully "blink." I do love the idea though, and at the right price would probably enjoy having at least one of these.
    3
  2361.  @janicecooley9080  Plenty of men aren't ready to be good fathers. That would lead to a lot of poorly raised children.
    3
  2362.  @USCGMerch.Marine  Not always.
    3
  2363.  @USCGMerch.Marine  Some red state make it difficult to acquire birth control, and yes, the woman sometimes has no choice at all, and those cases need to be considered as well.
    3
  2364.  @davidr7872  Birth. That's when life begins according to the law. It is why you are allowed to vote at 18 years after your birth, and not 17.3 years after your birth. If YOU believe life begins earlier than that, then YOU can choose not to have an abortion, but your beliefs on the matter should not limit a woman's actions.
    3
  2365.  @StephenRichmond89  Yeah, some things can be tricky. The Disney Contemporary has a monorail running through it, but it's harder than it might seem, and even then it's only like 50ft off the ground. I think it's a better idea to build relatively small archology towers, equivalent to a small town, but then you could have multiples of them within blocks of each other if you wanted. On the other hand, if you had a single massive city, then you could also invest in massive "industrial supports," like having entire 50-story towers within it that are just massive freight elevators, capable of lifting entire houses up to a higher level if you wanted, and then broad boulevards along the way that link areas of the building.
    3
  2366. @ No, to protect women from attackers regardless of where those attackers come from.
    3
  2367.  @stephenfunderburk5459  The IRA and the ARP were both hugely effective bills that have brought about all sorts of benefits to Americans. They basically wiped out childhood poverty in America over 2021, until Republicans insisted we stop doing that because too many children weren't starving as much as they used to.
    3
  2368. About what?
    3
  2369. For the same reason people were concerned about his mentor in the 1930s.
    3
  2370. No, the majority definitely don't want McCarthy, they just can't agree on any other person either. They should all rally behind Jeffries.
    3
  2371.  @KaiserBlade  The 2/3 majority of congress to say who is an insurrectionist part does not exist, and never existed. 2/3 of congress can FORGIVE an insurrectionist, but is not needed to declare one.
    3
  2372.  @bigtenfourrubberducky  The woman who was shot and killed by a police officer was ignoring multiple warnings to NOT climb through a broken doorway into a secure area, in which many members of congress were at risk of hostage taking or worse. The police officer was doing EXACTLY what he should have been doing under the circumstances. What would you have had him do instead?
    3
  2373.  @whitechris720  The "due process" in this case was in the initial case brought in Colorado and then the appeals process, in both cases the Trump campaign was allowed to plead its case. That is due process. The 14th at NO point requires or even asks for a criminal conviction on any other matter. It is up for the judge to determine whether oaths were violated, this is NOT a criminal conviction. You can try to call anyone an insurrectionist, just as you can try to call anyone a murderer or a thief, but it would be a misuse of justice if the judge found someone to be an insurrectionist without basis. That is not relevant here, because the person in question had plenty of evidence available for the judge to reasonably find that he had violated his oaths of office. Do the crime, do the time.
    3
  2374.  @jamestoalan3274  They tend to ignore it when Republicans do it, which is most of the time.
    3
  2375.  @1Deep43VA  The USS Laboon was attacked by Houthi drones in December. and another on Jan 6th.and more on jan 9th.
    3
  2376.  @1Deep43VA  Talk about providing a bad timeline. You left out how the ships the Houthi were attacking had nothing to do with Israel, and how the US has a right to defend maritime commerce from all attackers. Israel had nothing to do with that either. Why do you keep bringing up Israel? Also, the Houthi would have killed plenty of people had their attacks been successful. Their incompetence is not a defense. If they genuinely have no intention of killing anyone, then why use live ordnance? The Houthi do not get to dictate whether the US gives weapons to Israel or not. "They didn't do what we wanted" is no justification for them attacking US forces.
    3
  2377.  @JohnSmith-mo4yh  That's not what Yemen is doing though, so what is your point?
    3
  2378.  @bubbiesdad  Youtube does not like links. Be responsible for your own knowledge.
    3
  2379. You don't have to turn them into charcoal, you can just build buildings out of them. Stll, it's super inefficient relative to the amount of CO2 we pump out, trees can never keep up.
    3
  2380. @tidepool7842 That's a popular myth on the right.
    3
  2381. Russia has said no every time, unless hey get to keep their spoils.
    3
  2382. "Prosecutor was mean for me because I'm a terrible businessman and defrauded taxpayers!"
    3
  2383.  @charlessmith4242  They need to justify any additional discovery. If they can't make a case for the evidence they want existing, then there is no grounds for discovery. "I think you did something wrong, I have absolutely no evidence of this whatsoever, give me every document you have" holds up in zero courts.
    3
  2384.  @residentgrey  No, she already had what she rightfully earned. She's demanding MORE than that, and should be denied it.
    3
  2385. It's never happened before. They just do not charge that crime on its own. That charge only exists to be charged alongside other charges, for example if the gun is used in another crime.
    3
  2386.  @bruh.seriously1  But what about in the real world, where none of that is true? Wouldn't the situation be different there?
    3
  2387. He does love the uneducated.
    3
  2388.  @olgaflick2454  Yeah, they've moved on from that phase, long before she did, apparently.
    3
  2389. This wasn't a red-capped Sith rally.
    3
  2390.  DDd-gm8uz  It was the previous administration that moved the Us embassy.
    3
  2391.  @tommytwents8764  I never claimed that covid accounted for 50% of all worldwide excess deaths. I claimed, as the data Dr. John himself was inaccurately referencing noted, that there were 706 excess deaths reported in Europe during that specific time period, and that there were also 350 covid deaths during that period, so 50% of that total. Again, No single death is an "excess death" specifically, that is not how "excess deaths" works as a concept, but since covid deaths would not have been predicted from the actuarial models, we can safely subtract them from the excess death totals and what we have is the remaining overage. 356 excess deaths out of 10,000 expected deaths is within any reasonable margin of error, nothing to get worked up about. Even 706 excess deaths would not be any big deal, that sort of thing would happen all the time pre-covid. "Excess deaths" is only something to worry about when they are well above expectations, such as during the summer of 2020, before we had covid vaccines, and US excess deaths were THIRTY THOUSAND deaths higher than expectations. As for Dr. john "mis-speaking," you can tell from the comments that many people, including it seems yourself, were completely fooled by his "mistake," and believed the words he said rather than the statistics he was referencing, even though the words he said were completely wrong. That is misinformation. If you put up a graph of the truth, and then tell people a lie about that graph that leaves them with a belief that is not accurate to the truth, then that is still misinformation. The misinformation is in the final impression that the material leaves behind.
    3
  2392. Yes, it is exactly because this is a constitutional republic that this is all happening. To uphold the constitution.
    3
  2393.  @richardhampton4382  You're confusing "common sense" and BS here. It's impossible to be energy independent when we're dependent on oil.
    3
  2394. This had nothing to do with Democrats. Russia invaded entirely on their own.
    3
  2395. No, he is just following the law where it leads. It's not his fault that Trump committed numerous crimes that justice requires he prosecute.
    3
  2396.  @bicualexandru246  Everything has perceived value, even gold. Gold has no inherent value to it, I mean if you were on a desert island, which would be of more value to you, a pound of gold or a pound of canned soup? Gold only has value in what things you can buy with it, and likewise a dollar only has value in what things you can buy with it, and just as the amount you can get with a dollar will go up and down based on all sorts of complex values, the amount you can get with a pound of gold will go up and down over time. The only difference is that the value of gold is not terribly agile, it will only rise and fall relative to production, and the relative value of other things, whereas a fiat currency they have ways to adjust the value on the fly by tweaking things like interest rates, so that they can adjust the value of the currency to the right balance between low inflation and economic productivity.
    3
  2397. Well, every case that's finished, he's lost so far.
    3
  2398. He is not a terrorist though.
    3
  2399.  @noizW  While it's technically true that the sun gets hotter over time, that effect is irrelevant at the scales we're talking about. It has been effectively unchanged over the lifespan of life on Earth.
    3
  2400.  @mrman1536  All those effects you listed have already been accounted for, and do not explain the climate change we're currently experiencing. CO2 is the only thing that explains the current warming.
    3
  2401.  @mrman1536  While it's true that a hot bottle of coke will still contain CO2, it's relevant that the mechanisms that trap CO2 in the ocean are different than in a coke bottle. A lot of it does have to do with differences in temperature layers, that cold water sinks and warm rises, that different temperatures of water have different densities relative to greenhouse gases, that basically mean that cooler water traps CO2 deep under water, and as temperatures rise, more of that CO2 can escape into the air.
    3
  2402.  @samuellowekey9271  The dust bowl event was a temporary and relatively localized event based on deforestation in the Great Plains. We understand the mechanisms that led to that, and there are no such explanations for the longer term cycles we're currently experiencing. The current situation was caused by CO2.
    3
  2403.  @samuellowekey9271  No, we currently live at one of the hottest periods of the last ten thousand years, that is not up for debate. There have been places on Earth that have experienced hotter periods, but not the entire planet. The Dustbowl heat wave did have some impact over other parts of the world, similar to how a volcano will impact other parts of the world, but again, over a MUCH shorter period of time than the growing heat from CO2 climate change. This is NOT a case of "this has happened before" (during human history).
    3
  2404. But during the Vietnam War, the Us was at war with Vietnam. Today we are not at war with anyone.
    3
  2405.  @Tell-me-more-75225  That is not how "wars" work. We were at war with the Taliban and with Iraq, but those wars have since ended. The US is not currently at war with anyone.
    3
  2406.  @failureofgravitas  That's beside the point, we were still flying US planes over Vietnam, dropping bombs, and US soldiers were patrolling Vietnam, shooting people, it was, in any rational sense, a war. My point was that there is no such situation at the moment. US troops are nowhere shooting anyone, US planes are not bombing in Gaza. Israel is at war, the US is not. What kids in US get up to has little relevance to the people actually having a war right now. They are fighting for their own survival.
    3
  2407.  @weirdo24-7  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.
    3
  2408. It's not exactly true though. the immunity does not apply to all vaccines, it only applies to the specific ones that HSS offers those protections to, which tend to be critical emergency ones. It basically says "millions of people are dying right now, the best science available right now says that these are safe, so let's use these, and if it turns out there is some problem that nobody knew about, you won't get sued over it." Fair, right? It's also important to note that this immunity does NOT apply if they mislead the public in any way about the vaccine, so if, for example, they had any knowledge of a problem with it, and did not publicly disclose that, then you could still sue them over it.
    3
  2409. I think that you should be able to hunt Elephants for $20,000, but only if others are allowed to hunt you at the same time. That would make things more competitive.
    3
  2410. They did their job, they can't arrest people who haven't actually done crimes yet. Just "having a feeling" that a crime might happen in the future is not something they are legally allowed to do anything about.
    3
  2411. I bag my groceries WAY better than any cashier I've ever had. Also, I've never double-scanned the same item before like they sometimes do.
    3
  2412. But, but, but, Biden killed the US oil industry on day one, right? Right? Man, if the Faux News complex has been lying to people about this, imagine what many other things they have been lying about?
    3
  2413. Biden did not close any pipelines that were in operation when he took office, or would have been in operation by now. The US is producing more oil this year than last year.
    3
  2414.  @dreamshop6071  Nothing biden did reduced our energy independence in any way. We are producing more oil than we were last year. All he did was close production of one oil pipeline that was not up, would not be up today either way, and even if it were up, would only be pumping Canadian oil to be sold overseas, and have nothing to do with American energy. And it was Obama that made us energy independent in the first place, so you're welcome.
    3
  2415.  @whittenbarger9145  That has nothing to do with the matter at hand though.
    3
  2416.  @troyjenkins3886  He got us ZERO peace deals worth the paper they were written on. All he got us was hing hanging out with dictators and accomplishing nothing at all. It is a BAD thing that he stepped foot into NK, and there were more wars during his time in office than there are now. He's consistently awful, and the results DO speak for themselves.
    3
  2417. Well is Lindsay is so concerned, why doesn't HE vote for the bills? One vote is as good as any other, and there are 50 people OTHER than Joe Manchin who could vote for any of these bills.
    3
  2418. Or don't do that and just put Roe back on the books. It works out better.
    3
  2419. Thank you, bye!
    3
  2420. We can do both.
    3
  2421. It's not accurate that demonetized videos do not get shown to people. If you put it on Youtube, it would be shown to all of your 7m+ subscribers. It would be more accurate to just say that you don't WANT to put the video on Youtube because it would not be profitable to you. That's fair, but it's misleading to claim that the video somehow could not exist on Youtube.
    3
  2422. I think you're misusing the term. Holding an individual accountable for his own actions is not bigotry. Bigotry would be holding a people accountable for the actions fo some of them.
    3
  2423. When you hear people talk about the "war on Christmas," this is what they mean. Putin firing missiles at civilians.
    3
  2424.  @BerraLJ  It's not "censorship" to point out medical misinformation.
    3
  2425.  @dantheanimator5072  True, but she also does not support any violent groups, so that isn't particularly relevant here.
    3
  2426.  @derpydino1915  But standing up for a woman's right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy is the right thing.
    3
  2427. What do you think she lied about?
    3
  2428.  @Lifetimehappy24  If the Texas Federal Guard acted against Federal forces then that would be textbook insurrection. Good luck.
    3
  2429. The opposite of that.
    3
  2430. I saw a video the other day about the Flatiron building in New York, the one that's triangular? Apparently they have trouble keeping it filled with offices, but I think it'd make for amazing apartments if they converted it.
    3
  2431.  @TimT-ey3hp  Facts don't care about your feelings.
    3
  2432. How did Jared's failed 666 Fifth Avenue get bailed out when his father in law got elected president?
    3
  2433.  @npcwill283  I blame Fox News and OAN. They are clearly the devil's handmaids.
    3
  2434. There really weren't, none that would be relevant to the outcome.
    3
  2435. Well if anything will help veterans, it'll be longer wait times.
    3
  2436.  @jcbright502  You can look up "dislike button" plugins for your browser of choice, I don't have more detailed information than that.
    3
  2437.  @cutehumor  Pretty much. Bought and paid for.
    3
  2438.  @omega1000-FU  A constitutional republic is a democracy though. You can't have a non-democratic republic. If you lose the democracy, then it is just an oligarchy.
    3
  2439.  @PatrickMcAsey  You asked why people have children. That is why people have children. Now as for why people who have the option to produce children might not produce children, there are a wider variety of options there. In Japan, the primary reason was a workplace culture that encouraged people to spend an unhealthy amount of time in the office, leaving very little time for even finding a partner, much less for being with them afterward. Each country's issues are specific to their own situations.
    3
  2440. @ The point is that "provoked" or not is completely irrelevant. You are allowed to provoke as much as you like. You could make claims that Russia was "provoked" to invade, that is no justification. It was still Russia who invaded, and it is still Russia who has a responsibility to leave completely and pay reparations.
    3
  2441. A fair audit verifies that no lies happened, and Arizona has already had two of those, so case closed. Now a rigged audit just verifies whatever story you want it to tell, and that's what is taking place right now.
    3
  2442.  @WilliamLynch-sd2wd It's not like that's any different than last time.
    3
  2443. Yeah, pretty much. Any majoritarian system tends to lead to a two party system. Parliamentary systems can be a bit more flexible, but typically you just end up with what would be the members of one of America's two parties being their own tiny little sub-party, that just joins up with a larger one to form a majority, so basically the same result.
    3
  2444. I'd love them to try the old Republican playbook anyway, just leave the room, go to cameras, and go "he sung like a canary, Joe was behind the whole thing!" and then the reporters go "you do know that this was a public hearing, and he said nothing of the sort, right?"
    3
  2445. Too be fair, one of Trump's core principles is being unable to distinguish between right and wrong, so this is totally on brand for him.
    3
  2446. Once the changes are through, everything you buy will cost considerably less, since they will cost less per mile driven shipping it.
    3
  2447. The background checks will help, but you're right, they need to make guns illegal across the board to prevent criminals from getting them, since criminals can just buy or steal guns off legal owners.
    3
  2448.  @kb3809  We know from countries that have both drug prohibitions and gun prohibitions that gun prohibitions work MUCH better. They still have as many drugs as America, and still have just as many criminals who like to do crimes and would enjoy having a gun to do them with, but because of their gun prohibitions they have far fewer guns, and far fewer murders.
    3
  2449. I'm sure Captain Planet would have triggered these idiots too.
    3
  2450.  @Grace-o6u8n  The debate was a debate. What matters is what they each did while in office. Biden has made things better, his opponent only made things worse.
    3
  2451. This is not an empire, this is a constitutional republic, and that means following the constitution, even when it falls against Dear Leader.
    3
  2452. No, he wants to push accurate information so that people can take responsible steps to protect themselves and their families. Don't blame the weather man for telling you it's going to rain tomorrow, it's not his fault.
    3
  2453. If russia does ask for peace negotiations, the Ukrainian response should be one word, "leave."
    3
  2454. That's not how these work. They tend to get about 50/59 audiences, it's just that Trump supporters ignore the rules to not hoot and holler, so they sound louder.
    3
  2455. Republicans: "Who cares what the voters think?"
    3
  2456. They are, that's why these four were basically booted out of it, so that the rest could uphold that oath.
    3
  2457. @ Maybe, but it's a tricky balance, because while it might be possible to supply 100% of the country's food needs this way, it would end up being many times more expensive than simply importing the food, and typically there is just no point to that. It makes more sense to build resilient, flexible supply lines and emergency stockpiles than it does to try and force a local industry where it does not make sense.
    3
  2458.  @maddiekits  It's more efficient IF you can produce the food efficiently, but it's typically much less efficient in practice. I don't know the specifics of how the Netherlands does things, but I imagine they still import a lot of things from places.
    3
  2459. It's not Pelosi that's holding this up, ask Mitch McConnell what the hold-up is.
    3
  2460.  @rowstone3019  I don't see why. The WHO is an internationally funded organization, China only paid a tiny fraction of their budget, and if the WHO came out and said "China did it, it was all China and it was all deliberate and etc.!!!" China might pull all their funding, but it really wouldn't impact the WHO's mission, the other countries that pay into it would more than make up the shortfall. It is much more important to them that they maintain their reputation than that they stay on any one country's good side.
    3
  2461.  @Halal_Dan  No they can't. That's stupid. Government IS the citizens. It's the citizens pooling our resources to make things better.
    3
  2462. Well, the minority of the people, at least.
    3
  2463. Would it be possible to use geothermal for desalinization? Like if you can pump water down into a frakked cave and then it heats up and returns as steam, then why not use seawater for that, and fresh water would come up. Of course you would need to use clean fluids so that the water would not be contaminated, and salts would build up in the cave so you would eventually need to either move the caves around or "flush" the brine out of them somehow, but I bet there's some way to make that work for both producing energy and producing drinking water, and maybe producing salt.
    3
  2464. On the one hand, I think that the bar to be able to punish people for speech should be very high, allowing a wide margin of speech, because any system of deciding "good" or "bad" speech can be open to abuse. On the other hand, speech can often lead to criminal acts, so I would also believe in a system of increased scrutiny based on ones speech. Basically, if you tend ot do a lot of hate speech, that might not land you in jail, but it should land you on watch lists and maybe send active surveillance after you, because the speech is indication that you're more likely to actually do bad things. Then of course if there is evidence of an actual criminal plot, they can take appropriate measures to shut it down.
    3
  2465.  @vavictus  Those are all American issues, since America lives in the same world as those other countries, and ignoring them causes future harm to America.
    3
  2466. Yes, tariffs are taxation.
    3
  2467. They will not. They will cost you money. You just won't notice, because the bill they send you will be smaller. Meanwhile, egg prices. . .
    3
  2468. This has nothing to do with showing ID. You should actually read the bill. What makes you thinkthis has anything to do with showing ID?
    3
  2469.  @TheHopetown  Nobody is forced to buy one.
    3
  2470. Now if only he was any good at it. . .
    3
  2471.  @Barrobroadcastmaster  He's not better than a sack of potatoes, because at least a sack of potatoes cannot cause harm. He chooses to actively cause harm to others.
    3
  2472. Yup, Hamas should not station their forces in and around hospitals and other civilian areas.
    3
  2473. "Well yes, it's an awful country run by a psychopath, but. . .. *money!*"
    3
  2474.  @royalroyal2210  I don't believe Putin has ever said that, but it would be funny, yeah.
    3
  2475. If you don't want them to ignore you, then behave like an adult and don't abuse the impeachment privilege.
    3
  2476. Kevin McCarthy has no grounds to speak on facts OR science.
    3
  2477. Where was she trying to mislead the court?
    3
  2478. The groomers are closed right now.
    3
  2479. We live in a republic, not a direct democracy. We elect representatives to make decisions using their wisdom that would be in our best interests, rather than everyone voting on a topic directly. This is as the founders intended it.
    3
  2480.  @ComplicatedBot  The US government made zero dollars off of this. It cost them money to do it, since they had to pay the salaries of all the employees involved. What are you even talking about?
    3
  2481. Another interesting point is that culturally, Japanese people do not like "used" goods, specifically here, "used" houses. If you buy a house, you want to buy a brand new house, not a house someone else has used, which adds to the factor that people do not buy homes with the intent that they will sell them higher later.
    3
  2482. Clearly the phrase "drop in the bucket" is lost on you. Why your focus on the first lady's wardrobe when Russia is bombing schools and hospitals?
    3
  2483.  @johnhoward2337  I find that people who bring up the term "homogeneous population" unprompted tend to be wrong on a great many topics. Has that been your experience as well?
    3
  2484. Exactly, Clearance Thomas has no idea how a bump stock works.
    3
  2485. "Small government, except for all the things we want the government to control."
    3
  2486.  @jimlewis1332  Oh, no, I'm not a MAGA supporter.
    3
  2487.  @jimlewis1332  You were the one that said I was a MAGA supporter like those of Soddom and Gomorrah. I was just replying that no, I am not.
    3
  2488. The best solution is to build mixed use neighborhoods. You don't want to build just massive blocks of nothing but low-rent homes, because those just tend to go downhill fast, since the only people who live there are poor, there are not good opportunities, etc. Instead, you want to balance things out, so you build a large apartment building that includes extremely expensive condos, but also affordable housing for those that need it, and on the ground level you have stores and businesses. This makes sure that goods and services will be available, and that there are reasons for well-off people to care what happens in the community, so it isn't left to fend for itself.
    3
  2489.  @DMilbury  Of course, I'm not maga.
    3
  2490.  @calvinwood7120  What Fox News calls someone is not particularly relevant to anything. The point is that it was never her actual role.
    3
  2491. He's never had problems with his memory, unlike his predecessor.
    3
  2492. That would be illegal for them to do, and they would lose any case they attempted to bring as a result.
    3
  2493. No chance they can drag this out until 2029.
    3
  2494. Yes, a gavel. Donk donk.
    3
  2495.  @graceneilitz7661  Oh? So what would everyone in the region accept?
    3
  2496.  @nathanielbass771  Your math is wrong, prices did not rise because of any increase in taxes, they rose because of an increase in oil prices, which was caused by a reduce in production during covid and a war between two significant oil producing nations. Taxation had nothing to do with it.
    3
  2497. "The first step toward rebuilding this nuthouse is to get rid of all the doctors and nurses telling us we're crazy."
    3
  2498. I don't think it's directed at him as an individual, so all penalties would still apply to whoever is running the company at the time.
    3
  2499. He knows more than his opponent.
    3
  2500. God would weep if that came to pass. Trump and God have nothing to do with each other, and neither wants it any different.
    3
  2501. The report never said that he couldn't be tried, just that they didn't have a case to win, and so felt that it wasn't worth doing. If he was unfit to stand trial, then so would Donald Trump, and we've all seen how that turned out.
    3
  2502. They never denied having it. All they pointed out was that they had investigated the claims in it and found them to be nonsense, and they don't like spreading around unsubstantiated nonsense. The House Oversight Committee loves nothing more than spreading unsubstantiated nonsense though. It's their entire purpose in life.
    3
  2503. He's just embarrassed that he told Putin that his password is "password."
    3
  2504. Generally? Pretty safe. Most of these things stay under wraps until long after they happen.
    3
  2505. "Casuals are people who enjoy games for different reasons than I do." "Not wanting to improve" is no more of a casual mindset than any of the several positions you dismissed as "not casual." If players of Sekiro want to play and enjoy Sekiro, but do not enjoy difficult gameplay, and do not want to "git gud" to overcome said difficulty, that does not make them "more casual" than you, it just means that "difficult gameplay challenge" is not the part of games that they enjoy. Giving them an easy mode takes nothing away from you. If you don't enjoy easy mode, don't play easy mode. It's also worth keeping in mind that these players can watch dozens fo hours of game-news per week, and have been playing games since before you were born, they are not "invading" anything, they have always been in the house.
    3
  2506. It's a luxury option, it's not meant for casual drivers. There are different options available for those.
    3
  2507. Not like the My Pillow guy, of course. . .
    3
  2508.  @Yutani_Crayven  That's true, although if we're talking large scale deliveries, I don't see these drones replacing the trucks. The trucks are becoming electric faster than drone systems are being rolled out, so that's not a shift, and so long as there is no immediate rush, a truck will always be a more efficient delivery method, setting out with dozens of packages at a time, rather than just one at a time. Yes, they take road space, but drones take up air space, and if you took every package delivered in a city in a given day and had them all being delivered by drones, you would have thousands of drones swarming back and forth all day.
    3
  2509. "Let her off the hook" for what? Answering nonsense politically motivated questions about non-issues? Her job is to answer serious questions, not heckling from fake news channels.
    3
  2510. Yeah, but sadly he just quit. Now all that's left is the MAGA clown car.
    3
  2511. Yes, they are sad little snowflakes that are easily triggered by people that don't play along with their fairytales about "election irregularities." They can go back to OAN and have a little cry over the "audit" results and how little anyone will care.
    3
  2512. Yes, it has been established that Hunter is a liar, what's your point?
    3
  2513. How is that "brutal?" Trump will say a dozen worse things per minute.
    3
  2514. It wouldn't help. Gun control would though.
    3
  2515. They just liked Schiff more.
    3
  2516. What does race have to do with anything?
    3
  2517. Why would she?
    3
  2518.  @stevene4dd926  He was promoted to Command Seargent Major before he retired. Since he did retire, it didn't fully go through, but he did obtain that rank. This is a higher rank than Trump ever earned.
    3
  2519. Give a mouse a cookie. . .
    3
  2520. Because it was being reported after the midterms. Why would we have heard about it any sooner?
    3
  2521. How hard it is to close a McDoanlds and film a photo op here your supporters drive up to the window? Anyone can do that, but only the Trump campaign would.
    3
  2522. The ability to declassify documents isn't really relevant to any of the current discussions though. None of the documents in question had been declassified. If they had been, they would no longer be "classified documents."
    3
  2523.  @nibiru9035  And also provide a far less physically capable individual the ability to shoot that other physically incapable person, which is what happens far more often. Personal self defense with guns is a pretty rare thing, outside of NRA myths. If you own a gun, you are more likely to die to a gun than if you do not own one.
    3
  2524.  @stevemahoney1733  But access to guns provably leads to an increase in innocent victims. The US murder rate is 4 times that of any other first world nation, because of our easy access to guns. The idea that guns help civilians to prevent crimes is a myth.
    3
  2525. I used to use the Subs feed exclusively, but for many years now mostly use the front page. That said, I do ignore 80% of what shows up on it and pick and choose the stuff I want to see. I could never stand just hitting autoplay and rolling with it. Tiktok is an abomination.
    3
  2526. He was. Among 49 other states.
    3
  2527. He still might, depending on which information he fed to our enemies.
    3
  2528.  @RandyCampbell-fk3pf  The case you cite would be irrelevant to the documents Trump had, as many of the ones directly referenced were not remotely personal information, they were US defense intelligence. The Presidential Records Act in NO way allows a President to just decide for himself which documents he is allowed to keep.
    3
  2529.  @Randy-jz9ox  Nah, the US GDP is high enough that even $30t is barely anything. Most people have home mortgages and car loans that are MUCH more of their income than that. It'd be all well and good to balance the budget where we can, such as NOT doing the Trump billionaire tax cuts, but there's no reason whatsoever to obsess over it, or to risk not doing important work.
    3
  2530.  @natescode  There was no point at which "An Inconvenient Truth" was considered undeniable fact, it only contained a lot of things that were and remain true, like the movie "Titanic." I have no idea why people keep bringing up a twenty year old film today, where did it touch you?
    3
  2531.  @allylilith5605  Within the context of serious scientific debate? Yes. Within the context of broad public discourse? No, science has absolutely no need for that.
    3
  2532.  @allylilith5605  I think you completely misunderstood what I was saying, while believing confidently that you had understood it, which proved my point.
    3
  2533.  @allylilith5605  A solution tot he problem I described above, that the spread of misinformation causes provable harm to world around us. How do you suggest preventing that harm? I'm all ears for a better solution than to prevent the spread of misinformation in the first place, I just can't think of any.
    3
  2534.  @thatoneguywithahugethang  People don't have a "main heritage." If someone is half German and half Irish they can celebrate both St. Patrick's Day and Oktoberfest. You claim to keep yourself well educated, and yet you are arguing against the candidate of the well educated. Why is that?
    3
  2535.  @thatoneguywithahugethang  Why shouldn't I be ok with people highlighting different aspects of themselves to different audiences? So long as all those aspects are true, what is the problem? Do you believe Trump does not manipulate his audience?
    3
  2536.  @thatoneguywithahugethang  They are the only viable choices, and Harris is the best option currently running. Pete Buttigieg is the best choice, but he's not running this time. It's fine to say that you don't like either of them, but to just give up on the process entirely only allows the worst options to win. Fight for better processes if you like, but don't let that stop you voting blue in the fall as well.
    3
  2537.  @sarzozasarzoza2890  To keep Jim company?
    3
  2538.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  No, he did not, because it's not an actual government role. He gave her a specific job to do involving immigration, and she did it successfully. Look up the White House briefing for the day she was assigned. It's on their website.
    3
  2539. You're conflating two separate issues. The antisemitism has nothing to do with bombings or starving kids.
    3
  2540.  @DarkUncle  But again, it's been well established that raising taxes on the rich factually does NOT lead to any of those "negative consequences" you imply. Businesses will hire and fire exactly as many people, regardless of taxes on them, because they will ALWAYS act to maximize their own profits, and that factor does not care what their taxation rate is. "for example, $559,681 grant for the study of if fish can run on treadmill...." Yes, I'm sure if they eliminated that, it would solve the budget deficit. Fish farming is the great threat facing America today, not companies making billions of dollars in pure profit that pay pennies in taxes.
    3
  2541. I don't see much point to making charging stations that are an "event" unto themselves, not unless they are in the middle of nowhere. I think they should just be conveniently incorporated into existing parking lots and garages. It should not be about "finding a charger," it should just be "going to the business I was already going to, and there is an open charging station there."
    3
  2542.  @partydean17  The people who are enriched only by more and more tourists coming will be fine, because those same tourists will still find plenty of hotel rooms available, they just might have to pay a little more. There are no major cities who lack the hotel infrastructure to support their tourism industry, and where such gaps exist, it will quickly get filled by new hotels, which are a more efficient land use for that purpose. People who "prefer not to stay in a hotel" will just be out of luck, and that's fine. Those businesses would also be able to find cheaper employees to work at their businesses, because those people would be able to live nearby, rather than having to pay for a commute. And yes, I am picking winners and losers here, because people with capital do that too, they just do it poorly, from a community development standpoint.
    3
  2543. @ No, not really. I know kids these days are used to Airbnb existing, but believe it or not, people got along just fine before them, and will get along just fine after. No local businesses would suffer.
    3
  2544. IT seems like nifty hardware, but I would not want to buy it if it's tied into the Meta/Facebook ecosystem. I just want the hardware, not a "walled garden" scenario. I don't trust Facebook keeping track of what purchases I make or where my eyes move around a scene, or whatever. I don't trust if they tell me they aren't doing this, because they are Facebook, and that is all they ever do.
    3
  2545. Nobody's talking about taking guns away from people covered by the 2nd amendment. Members of the national guard would still be allowed their weapons.
    3
  2546.  @joenarbaiz1640  "Prepared to fight in the national defense," What do you think "militia" means?
    3
  2547. It's Joe Biden. He's been a much stronger leader than the last guy.
    3
  2548. If this were a serious request, they would wait for a time when Germany was in better shape to just hand over free money. Right now, everyone needs every penny they can get, so of course this will go nowhere.
    3
  2549. He said he would, he just never actually DID it. Which is basically Trump's motto.
    3
  2550. Why do you believe his academic credentials are in doubt? He's not Jim Jordan.
    3
  2551.  @rustyshackle917  I don't see the comparison at all to manual transmission. They are completely different on a conceptual level.
    3
  2552.  @jerz8289  And eventually, the Tesla will be advanced enough to get you there in one piece. But I guess Tesla fans will settle for "in pieces."
    3
  2553.  @ccobra6813  No, I like a Supreme Court that never rules against the American people. That's not what we currently have.
    3
  2554. This is why China does so well, they are willing to invest in the long term, things that won't have a practical benefit for years or even decades, whereas America has had a tendency to only jump on things that we can get "wins" out of within the current election cycle or business quarter. We need to get better at building for the long term.
    3
  2555. Yes, they are talking about the Hamas health ministry.
    3
  2556. That's what happens in a war. People get hurt.
    3
  2557. I think you meant to say "obscuring the truth." I get it, it's a tricky word, but now you'll know for next time.
    3
  2558. The problem with power companies charging more or less relative to supply is that we'd have to trust them to be honest, to fairly compensate those who do it well, and to not just drive up rates across the board. If rates fluctuate, then it becomes much easier to slip in a few extra charges here and there without getting caught. There would at least need to be MASSIVE penalties, "all profits made via this method, PLUS" type penalties, to discourage unfair dealing.
    3
  2559. Listen to Joe Biden then, that's been his pitch from the start. The only difference is, Biden is actually achieving it.
    3
  2560.  @malebolgia07  He downplayed taking the pandemic seriously, which has led to the deaths of more Americans than WWII, more of them Republicans than Democrats.
    3
  2561.  @asjaosaline5987  There were terms discussed in advance. If Putin is serious about returning Ukrainian soil to the Ukrainians, then no "peace talks" would be necessary. He could have LEAVE, and that's it, war over, nothing left to do but clean up the mess he made. For justice to be served, he would also have to pay reparations, but I don't think anyone believes he could afford it, so I'm sure Ukraine would be willing to settle for "stop bombing us and leave."
    3
  2562.  @Glyff3083  Where do you live that you don't go to court over misdemeanor crimes? Also, this one's a felony.
    3
  2563. Lol, no. The same loons that think RFK Jr. is a viable Democratic candidate probably also voted for Tulsi.
    3
  2564.  @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.
    3
  2565.  @helenhelen133  When did we invade Cuba or Venezuela?
    3
  2566.  @jimwerther  Her actions have led to the implication that LGBT people were morally wrong, in some way. If you don't understand that, then I doubt I can help you.
    3
  2567. It's more just a factor of outliers being difficult to predict by any model. I mean, you could do the same to sports, you could make models that might accurately predict how teams would tend to do over the course of a season, but it would be more difficult to predict cases where they do very well against an otherwise competitive opponent, or do very poorly.
    3
  2568.  @mark15vintage9  There were no mail-in ballots that came in after the deadline and still counted, nor did ballots that come in only go to a single candidate, although one candidate may have gotten more of them than another, since one of them was encouraging voters to not use mail-in ballots. Also, no voting laws were changed without following those states' constitutions. You seem to have a lot of fanciful stories in one reply there. Maybe look into them and see what's come up since you first heard them?
    3
  2569.  @codebloke2200  That sounds convoluted. Wouldn't it be simpler to say "he says things, the audience responds, and then he says the next thing?" Why not talk like a normal person?
    3
  2570. He won because more of the people in your state voted for him than voted for the other guy. I take it that perhaps you didn't vote for him? Apparently the rest of your state disagreed.
    3
  2571. Because there is no actual "pushback" to be had. It's not a two-sided issue. It's just having a debate with a flat earther, there is nothing to be gained, because no matter what you do, no matter what arguments you make, at the end of the day, the world will still be round, and the flat earther will still insist it's flat.
    3
  2572. It was never about evidence of wrongdoing. This changes nothing.
    3
  2573.  @pacifickaihomesllc3605  I think you're confused, nobody was marketing "boys in dresses," they were marketing beer. They were marketing it to people in dresses, regardless of their genders. Who would have a problem with that? Outside of bigots, I mean. The bigots obviously have a problem with that.
    3
  2574. That's ok, we'll let them in anyway.
    3
  2575.  @markburton5292  Perhaps so, but the alternative is ALSO being abused, so the question is, which abuse would be worse? Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
    3
  2576.  @QuantumMechanicYT  Sure, climate deniers still exist in this very thread.
    3
  2577.  @markburton5292  When people talk about "climate change," they aren't talking about those natural processes, they are talking about how the pace of climate change has accelerated rapidly over the past couple hundred years, in ways that cannot be explained through known natural processes. On a geological scale, the climate has been relatively stable throughout the existence of humanity, and it would be best for humanity to keep it that way as best we can. Obviously the Earth will be fine regardless, but that is not the concern of humans.
    3
  2578.  @theclearsounds3911  Then why do the things you say conflict with science so heavily? There is no rational debate to be had about the broad conclusions on climate change. The only actual discussion taking place is about smaller details around the fringe of the topic. The issue is not those discussions, it's the people who refuse to accept even the most settled portions of the topic, like "climate change is human caused" or "climate change is not a good thing." If you aren't addressing that problem, then you aren't addressing the actual topic being discussed.
    3
  2579.  @QuantumMechanicYT  People who say things like "the burden of proof is on the one who makes a claim. . ." in online debates are typically conceding the point while wanting to pretend there is some discussion to be had, so they flood the field with words that give the illusion of reasonability. I made my statement, that was my "burden of proof" from my perspective. If you want additional support for my position, you may ask, but there is no "burden" on me to provide it. I owe you absolutely nothing, nobody in an online discussion owes you anything, and it is unreasonable to pretend otherwise. You only prove my point about how there can be no reasonable discussion on topics like this, because there will always be people who view "gamesmanship" as a valid part of "debate," that the one who best frames their position is the "winner," rather than the one who is actually correct.
    3
  2580.  @homewardboundphotos  So you believe that the climate has not been warming over the past 100 years? That their primary prediction has been wrong? On what basis?
    3
  2581.  @argentaegis  If sources legitimately disagree then none of those viewpoints would be held as misinformation. It would only be in cases where the disagreement is illegitimate, like with climate change, that it would be considered misinformation. You are describing a problem where none exists. The issue that you are ignoring about where science and the public meet is the vital topic of public POLICY. Science often charts a course that policy must follow to achieve the best results, and yet policy is often determined by popular will. If the population is confused on a topic, if they believe the science is more questionable than it actually is, then it can lead to poor public policy decisions. This is a bad thing. We should avoid it. As for conspiracy theories, they need no help. They will exist no matter what. But what you CAN do is reduce the SPREAD of conspiracy theories form one person to the next. If each conspiracy theory is a home grown silo, it's mostly harmless, but the more people SHARE the same theory, the more likely it will cause harm somewhere. There is zero doubt that conspiracy theories have become a much larger problem over the past twenty years of social media, rather than less.
    3
  2582.  @theclearsounds3911  I agree with all your points, and even AFTER all of that has been taken into account, the modern storms are larger and more damaging than they used to be. They have more wind, more storm surge, more force behind them (on average, at least).
    3
  2583. We really need a 28th Amendment: "Clarence Thomas is an idiot, ignore him."
    3
  2584. "Biden didn't fix my terrible plans! It's all his fault!
    3
  2585. Dueling banjos intensifies...
    3
  2586. Last time, the US credit rating got downgraded.
    3
  2587. @ TL;DR, we could go back to "how things were," but that would also mean raising grocery prices by like 200% or more, all else being equal.
    3
  2588.  @drmathias  It was political violence with an intent to change political outcomes, that would be terrorism.
    3
  2589. Wow,m shocker. "Cult leader voted 'most popular' at cult meeting."
    3
  2590.  @matthewderekmiller3833  $0. It's going to Ukraine for them to defend themselves against cowardly Russian aggression.
    3
  2591.  @mattl2843  The Donbass is in Ukraine, Russia is not relevant to that. The Ukrainians were not doing anything wrong there, they were only fighting against separatist forces. Again, Russia has no role to play in that. If Russia did have a legitimate issue, they could take it up with the International Criminal Court.
    3
  2592.  @mattl2843  Ukraine did not invade Russia. That makes them a peaceful neighbor. Russia invaded them though, that makes them war criminals.
    3
  2593. They have to say "possible" until the conviction.
    3
  2594.  @mattl2843  The only risk to the US credit score is Republican threats to default on our loans. Prior to that, the US had a perfect credit rating and could take out loans at almost zero interest.
    3
  2595. Lemme guess, they ll signed Elon's petition?
    3
  2596.  @Juho221  If they want to be a part of Russia? Yes. That is how "emigration" works. That's how it has ALWAYS worked. If people living in Venezuela want to live in America instead, then they head for America, they don't just declare that their neighborhood is part of the US now. And the Crimean population was flooded with Russians after their occupation, it skewed the vote outcomes in Russia's favor, not to mention Russian election bullying tactics that have prevented any fair election on Russian soil in decades. Russia does not hold elections, they hold "confirmations of the thing we are going to be doing anyway." How many elections has Russia had in which the side Putin wanted to win did not win?
    3
  2597.  Hortler   Lol, no, if you already had those writes, the Constitution would not need to lay them out. The Bill of Rights is the list of rights that the state chooses to not prosecute.
    3
  2598.  Hortler   Gun ownership is not a basic right. It's just one that the Constitution grants us, so long as we're members of the national guard.
    3
  2599.  Great White  Lol, God didn't say nothing about any guns. He did say "thou shalt not kill" though.
    3
  2600.  @michealtull9033  Lol, the 2nd amendment has nothing whatsoever to do with guaranteeing the other rights. That is a fantasy invented by gun nuts who think that the government is actually scared of their peashooters.
    3
  2601. Probably the same way Trump is.
    3
  2602.  @christopherpardell4418  That's not true at all. The reductions in fresh water have nothing to do with evaporation, they have to do with shrinking glaciers, reduced rainfall in many regions, and reduced snowpack. The water is still going up, and it's still coming down, it's just doing so in places that aren't as convenient to existing people as they used to be. It's like how Saudi Arabia is seeing less overall rainfall, but also seeing an increase in flash floods. I think you're also referencing that they've found that some of the particulates caused by shipping and air travel can cause cloud formation, which can lead to lower overall temperatures, but this does not involve evaporation, the available moisture is the same either way, it just is less likely to congeal to a visible point without something to collect around.
    3
  2603.  @udderstuff5554  This is why I quit FB a couple years back, they just kept feeding me ragebait and I kept getting annoyed, and I just decided "I'd rather not be annoyed all the time."
    3
  2604. He's created more jobs than the previous administration, even after accounting for the pandemic bounceback. He kept inflation lower than it would have been in a conservative administration. He's been responsible for hundreds of major infrastructure projects across the country that Republican congressman proudly take credit for, even thought they all voted against it.
    3
  2605.  @Vareciaa  As for jobs, we lost around 20 million during the pandemic. We regained those jobs by June 22. Since then, we've added another 6.3m on top of that level point, so those were all new jobs created. If you subtract all jobs lost due to the pandemic from both trump's downside and biden's upside, you still end up with an average of 100K more jobs per month under biden. And yes, inflation spiked, as everyone knew it would over those years, regardless of who would be in charge at the time. This administration kept those figures as low as could be expected though. They became MUCH worse in countries that had conservative regimes at the time. Cost of living always lags behind inflation, but it will catch up over time. It's sad that people can't understand this.
    3
  2606. Interestingly, the whole of Minnesota was never on fire. That was in California, and it was due to climate change. Minnesota had a few isolated fires during primarily peaceful protests, and most of those fires were started by right-wing counter-protesters.
    3
  2607. So basically they are like the US Republicans, a nationalist party with an impotent moderate fringe.
    3
  2608. Yeah, this should be HILARIOUS. Elect clowns, expect a circus.
    3
  2609. It's not legal for anyone to murder their babies, that has nothing to do with anything.
    3
  2610. They must have read it first.
    3
  2611.  @bc5299  He's certainly willing to pay whoever he needs to make that happen.
    3
  2612.  @grammernotzi  See, that's my point, you can't provide any good reason to have voter ID, so why waste time explaining why not to?
    3
  2613.  @grammernotzi  And I gave you my answer on voter ID, that it's completely unnecessary because the existing mechanics work without it. So if you're asking me, that's my position on the matter. Unnecessary.
    3
  2614. That portion of the budget is a tiny drop in the bucket. It would be the American people that would suffer for decades to come if America defaulted. It's like someone burning their own house down and then laughing about how it will piss off the homeowner's association.
    3
  2615.  @princevegeta-son  Well, first, because it would take a preposterous amount of border control money to actually stop illegal immigration, money that could be better spent improving people's lives, and second, because fighting corruption is the right thing to do, and some people care about right and wrong. They are called "Democrats."
    3
  2616. About what?
    3
  2617.  @KWCHope  People in the media calling her a "border czar" does not magically make it an actual title. The White House put out a press release on that day that explained what she was intended to do, and "manage the border" was not one of those things.
    3
  2618.  @TexRay72  Cheeting at scale is already impossible without voter ID being needed. So why have voter ID?
    3
  2619.  @heavyd777  It's not debatable, the death totals are public record.
    3
  2620. PG is not a legal destination, it's a voluntary one.
    3
  2621. There are black nationalists, they are just much fewer in number, and much less dangerous. Also, being a nationalist has nothing to do with having "admiration for the country." That would be patriotism, not nationalism.
    3
  2622.  @JCB576  For Democrats? Yes. For Republicans? NOTHING is not about Trump.
    3
  2623.  @TheMrboskie  No, he wasn't. Why would you think that?
    3
  2624.  @TheMrboskie  You don't get to choose your teachers, they are assigned to you by the school you go to. Also, some people become more and more deranged over time. There was a time when Rudy Giuliani wasn't a complete nutcase.
    3
  2625. It would be misleading to call him a "Biden challenger." The correct term would be "2024 election gadfly."
    3
  2626.  @DamnedSilly  He believed he could use the nail gun to break the bulletproof glass. They report it like a weapon because it's the only thing he actually fired at the FBI office, then he ran. The gun would have been for later IF he'd managed to get inside.
    3
  2627. Ooooooh. Yeah, that would explain why Georgia. . .
    3
  2628. It's a matter of the credibility of the news source. If your source of information is mostly fictional, like Fox or OAN, then seeing on there is no indication that it might be accurate. If you see it on a more credible journalistic source, then it is much more likely to be accurate. They make mistakes from time to time, but rush to correct the record when they do.
    3
  2629. It would not be such a big deal, if he did not have millions of simps ready to follow him. WWII happened "because of one man," and we spent the next 50 years discussing "when should we have acted to prevent that?" Then we've spent the last five years debating "well, that wasn't so bad, was it?"
    3
  2630. Were you going to vote for the guy before hearing that? Honestly? He misspoke far less often and over far smaller things than the guy he's running against.
    3
  2631.  @philwaller4379  One fewer Republican in the Senate is just a bonus.
    3
  2632. Exactly, it's about bigotry, not faces on cans.
    3
  2633.  @Jase-ul5yi  A motto is not a fact. Trump has no interest in "making America great again," he only has interest in Trump. I oppose what Trump is, not his marketing.
    3
  2634. Sadly, red states don't care about insurrection. Most of the Senators that were planning to object to the certification of the election were from Confederate states. Republicans will still win in those areas.
    3
  2635. ​ @chadbrooks9763  Yes, you can do that, and if you do try that, you will get caught and prosecuted. A few such cases happen from time to time, but never remotely close to effecting the outcomes. Did you see how many people got caught trying to illegally vote for Trump last time?
    3
  2636.  @Pinthetic  The DMV does not need your SS #.
    3
  2637. Probably a good idea for the next four year,s but then hopefully we can clean these guys out.
    3
  2638. @TryNDoxMe No, Toomey was the liar in this situation, and you seem to have fallen for his lies. Actually do your research and compare the bills.
    3
  2639. I think they are trying to find an answer other than bigotry, but unfortunately, "bigotry" is the only explanation for the backlash. /shrug.
    3
  2640.  @MamaBearA24  It can interfere with a fair trial. Sometimes people can get off entirely on the grounds that the police or DA oversold their hand and prejudiced the case. Let the case speak for itself in court. It's not about criminal's "feelings," it's about upholding the principles of our Founding Fathers that everyone be given a fair trial. Even John Adams defended British soldiers charged with killing an American, because everyone deserves a fair trial.
    3
  2641.  @fanboyhex1555  He's just doing in real life what he spent his career doing on film.
    3
  2642.  @kcs529  Yeah, some streaming services mix their audio differently than normal TV, so everything is basically "twice as quiet."
    3
  2643.  @Ian-vu4ij  That's wrong too, actually. Plenty of countries are no less free than the US.
    3
  2644.  @dgsrks102030  But they would all be BAD reasons, except for the VERY tiny portion of the population that have a legitimate medical reason.
    3
  2645.  @sterlingcooper3978  The Polio vaccine was mandated less than a year after it was developed. There is no reason to believe that "long term testing" of the covid vaccines would produce anything harmful. The underlying technologies have had plenty of long term testing.
    3
  2646. I would charge by the hour, in advance.
    3
  2647.  @clarkw4028  A republic is a democracy. You need to get your facts straight, missy.
    3
  2648.  @reddragon100  Well, a lot of countries don't like China that much, and also China is getting a little less loose with their money lately, since their economy is tanking.
    3
  2649. If you want any of those things in America, you should vote Harris.
    3
  2650. I don't know why they're even covering this, it's just a normal school day in America. If anyone actually cared about this, we would have gun control laws more like other first world countries.
    3
  2651. The way I think about it is, it took a billion years or more between the point when "life was possible on Earth" and when "we know life existed," which is a REALLY long time. That's "million monkeys writing Shakespeare" time. So a lot of things happened during that billion years that left no record on history, but "life" on some level probably started up millions of times, and then quickly died. And only eventually did life form that was also in the right place and time to thrive, and develop further, and evolve into more complex things. And this probably also occurred several times over this period. And some of those evolved into bigger animals, and eventually one of those attempts at life arrived at a bunch of big animals that were quite strong, and spread all over the oceans, and whenever they encountered a lifeform with a different unique origin, they ate it, and no trace of them was left behind. And then over the last billion years, I expect that unique, base level "life" appeared dozens more times, all over the world, and then was immediately eaten by something a billion years more advanced. It would be like an ant vs. a light saber. So the idea that a bunch of scientists can throw together a petrie dish and stare at it for a few hours, days, years, centuries, and have life emerge in it is absolute nonsense, you could leave that dish alone for a billion years and life might only emerge in it one, and briefly. But the lack of being able to see that happen in real time doesn't mean that it's not possible, or even unlikely in the long run, just that it only occurs over very long periods of time.
    3
  2652. I'm sure Joni showed up at some ribbon cutting or dirt shoveling ceremony for a project funded by "Democratic wins."
    3
  2653. Actually, Russia is 11th cheapest. Cheapest is Venezuela, then Libya, Iran, Syria, basically a lot of petrol-states with sanctions that limit their ability to sell it abroad.
    3
  2654. Nah, just one tier, applied fairly. Unless you are talking about how soft they are being on Trump, because if Trump were anyone else, he'd be in a jail cell right now.
    3
  2655. What would the Lebanese Parliament have to do with anything? Can they stop Hezbollah?
    3
  2656.  @soulife8383  The House just passed a bill that will help to get corporate money out of politics, but it is unlikely to get passed Senate Republicans. Contact your representatives.
    3
  2657. Those things only happen because the legal path to entry is not sufficient to meet demand. Solve the supply issue, and those problems go away.
    3
  2658.  @ArturoGarzaID  Because the legal path to entry only allows in a certain number of people, and that number is far less than both the demand from aspiring Americans, AND industries in the US that rely on immigrant labor. There are plenty of jobs out there that need workers, and American workers do not want those jobs (they do not even show up). I'm not sure if there is technically a cap on the number that can apply for citizenship, but there ARE caps on how many can gain legal entry, and since that is a requirement to get on the path to citizenship, it would be a distinction without a difference.
    3
  2659. No, see, this is different because. . . because it's different, ok? Stop asking questions!
    3
  2660. Good thing you still only get one vote. Assuming no Republican shenanigans.
    3
  2661.  @AmericanRustWorker3369  Again, that is not how raising the debt ceiling works. We've had to raise the debt ceiling every few years since 1917. Trump and the Republicans raised the debt ceiling in 2017. It is about paying off the debts we have already accumulated, not about increasing spending. Spending is determined in the budget process. The people who want to "completely ruin America ,and make America into a shithole third world country" are the ones who want to NOT raise the debt ceiling, causing us to default on our debts instantly, and collapse the entire economy overnight.
    3
  2662. Nah.
    3
  2663. Nah, it just has to do with an inflation and some lackluster movies. It's standard business stuff. Disney isn't down more than most other companies are right now.
    3
  2664.  P. Doherty  TDS only applies to those who believe that Trump is not deranged.
    3
  2665. Where do you think he lives?
    3
  2666. Bikes do not have air conditioning.
    3
  2667.  @TheSuperappelflap  Hydro pumping works in SOME areas, but is not possible in most places, certainly not feasible. We're developing new energy storage mechanisms all the time, and some of those can go into EVs as well, but for the near future, the same batteries that go into cars are the only reasonable storage mechanism for most renewables. I follow these areas closely, and am aware of all the technologies being discussed.It is nowhere near as open and shut as you wish it were.
    3
  2668. Just so you're aware, that was not "a better time." It was just a time in which you were more comfortable, because they were not.
    3
  2669. @ Oh, I'm not maga. I already quit.
    3
  2670.  @weirdshort_YT  So we agree that Russia should not attack the US. Nobody wins.
    3
  2671.  @ricksmith4736  Earth, how about you?
    3
  2672. @ That's incorrect. Patriotism is loving your country, period. Nationalism is believing that your country should dominate other countries. Patriotism is like being a sports fan. Nationalism is like being a football hooligan.
    3
  2673. @ That's close to correct, but "right" is not "keep things how they are," it's "return things to how I believe they used to be." Actually keeping things where they are would be closer to center-right.
    3
  2674.  @angrytedtalks  No, I have demonstrated that I at least have a better idea of what nationalism than you do. If you continue to be confused as to why the rest of the world uses it differently than you do, then you have only yourself to blame.
    3
  2675. Lol, they should have gone to Cancun.
    3
  2676.  @Eight_2_the_tf  "We the People of the United States. . ." "The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States, " "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators." "The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State, elected by the people thereof, for six years;" Need I go on?
    3
  2677.  @dr.ronbagwellthdphd3534  What? No. A Democracy is not "A Democracy is rule by government with no say by the people," that would be the exact OPPOSITE of a democracy. What you described there is an "autocracy," a country lacking democracy. A constitutional republic IS run by the people because it is a form of representation democracy. If a country claimed to be a constitutional republic but failed to have functioning democracy then it would be an "empire."
    3
  2678. Most scientists are barely educated in any field outside their own, and yet convinced that their own field can explain anything in any other.
    3
  2679.  @AHammock  Finland has a larger border with Russia than Ukraine does, and they have already joined. The real problem here is Russia attacking their neighbors, not anything NATO is doing.
    3
  2680.  @Leenasims  You. . . are not presenting your party in a good light.
    3
  2681.  @rogvarley6971  Again, the US pays off a portion of the debt every day, this is the fact, whether you like that or not.
    3
  2682. You're thinking of a different god, he was talking about the one that he follows, not the Christian one.
    3
  2683.  @Mortvent  Other countries have just as much urban crime as we have, it just results in less murders, because the criminals use knives instead of guns, and are therefore less effective.
    3
  2684. @ Not in Russia, so I probably didn't get the same news you did.
    3
  2685. Trump is just sad that her rallies get 100 times more people than his. :(
    3
  2686. @ They invite Fox News though.
    3
  2687.  @roberthiggins8234  Not when banks and pension funds lose trillions in US debt from their balance sheets. There would be collapses left and right, money people assumed they were entitled to, just vanishing. Again, most of the US national debt is held by US entities, not by foreigners, so defaulting on it would harm those US entities much more than foreigners.
    3
  2688. @dunravin Sanctions are a political tool, not an economic one. Nobody ever promised that sanctions would be good for the economy, but they are sometimes necessary.
    3
  2689.  @merce5-au  But you agree that Gaza started this war and is responsible for the consequences of it, right? That Is the history of the situation, after all.
    3
  2690.  @acemusichistory3622  Got one.
    3
  2691. TL;DR, they were grandfathered in.
    3
  2692. Except for all the other ones.
    3
  2693.  @juliemcclimans4992  The victim in this case says that it didn't happen and that his identity is being misused.
    3
  2694. Students should sue the protest leaders for wasted tuition fees.
    3
  2695. That sounds propagandish.
    3
  2696. No reaction to the removal was more embarrassing than the removal itself.
    3
  2697.  @Uldy  You clearly have missed your history lessons, the Nazis were a far right party in Germany. Most German parties at the time had terms like "social" in their name, but the Nazis were actively opposed to the left-wing political parties in Germany. They were pretty much identical to the current MAGA party, their primary goal was "Make Germany Great Again."
    3
  2698.  @mattmyers123456  It may not make much sense to you, but the fact remains that there are a tone of neo-nazis with latino heritage. They view themselves as white, and want to get to persecuting the other minorities. Personally, I don't understand why anyone would become a neo-nazi, but that doesn't mean that I don't accept that they exist. Also, just from a historical perspective, while the Nazis certainly oppressed demographic minorities like Jews and LGBT, they were also the "party of the people,. Their roots came from a country that was in dire poverty due to war debts, most people did have it rough, and they said "we know how to fix it, we can Make Germany Great Again." Most people who actively supported the Nazis were in the lower and middle classes, all they wanted was the right to kick someone else beneath themselves.
    3
  2699. Depends on which citizens you're talking about. While nobody "wants" war, plenty of citizens prefer to support Ukraine over allowing Putin to conquer it unchecked, and understand that "sending money to other countries" is the best way to benefit America's standing in the world and improve the lives of people back home. You're free to want what you want, just understand that what you want is overruled by the rest of us, as the founders intended.
    3
  2700. Same place as her friend Jimmy Hoffa.
    3
  2701.  @AndrewGunner  There is no such a thing as a bad dog.
    3
  2702.  @jcindahouse  She threatened the incoming representative more than the incoming representative has ever threatened anyone.
    3
  2703. @ 4) everyone in the modern world has used touch screens, and they obviously have their uses. I would never object to a touch screen being added to a car, I would only object to it replacing the existing buttons and knobs for common functions. Touch screens are more adaptable than buttons and knobs, so it can be more useful for certain things, like scrolling a track list, or working a map display, nobody questions that, but that doesn't mean it's better for every function, and even on modern smartphones people often comment when buttons are added or removed for things like volume control or home screen access, when technically these functions could be entirely touch-based.
    3
  2704.  @Ranger1PresentsVirtualRealms  It was the founding fathers that took the view that the constitution is a living document. It's the Republicans that take the view that "the constitution says whatever we need it to say at any given time, and then the exact opposite in a different case (without reversing our previous decision)." But again, if you are right, and the conservatives do believe that the constitution should be taken seriously, then they have no option but to decide against Trump in this matter. The constitutional questions are crystal clear on this one.
    3
  2705. They had more evidence on this guy, so it was easier.
    3
  2706. It's pretty much the same as it's always been, other than that the Central and South American countries have gotten worse and worse, so more and more people are leaving them for someplace better.
    3
  2707. Conspiracy to do what?
    3
  2708.  @alexfrideres1198  It is a crime because he was under a legal obligation to return them. Again, if someone told you otherwise, they were attempting to mislead you. NO individual has ANY right to have classified documents in their personal possession. EVER. Trump NEVER had any right to have those documents in his possession, he ALWAYS had a legal obligation to turn them over to the National Archives. It was a crime when he knowingly removed them from the White House, it was a crime when he looked through them and kept hold of them. Every minute he spent NOT doing that was a crime. Now "intent" is a major part of this, if someone unintentionally has classified documents then that is not itself a crime, so long as when they DO realize they have them, they make good faith efforts to return them. That defense is out the window for Trump.
    3
  2709.  @roscoepatternworks3471  Or are you criticizing her for not denouncing the Proud Boys?
    3
  2710. Any time things go badly in a country, the far right surge to make things much worse. It has never, in human history, led to things getting better in the long term.
    3
  2711. This has nothing to do with anyone being "held responsible." They did their jobs well. Being "held responsible" would mean keeping those jobs.
    3
  2712. The interest payments are well within out ability to pay them. They are not a concern, unless we arbitrarily choose not to pay them, in which case everything explodes. Would it be nice to not have any debt and no interest payments? Sure. Would it be better to keep spending and borrowing at the current rates, rather than to cut spending to the point that we paid off the debt? Also definitely sure. Money doesn't grow on trees, we can't pay off the debt any time soon without ruining the country in the process. The money we spend is an investment in America's future, and it is more productive than not spending it.
    3
  2713. Whatever happened to "bootstraps?"
    3
  2714. I'm getting really tired of people trying to accelerate the apocalypse. If you don't want to be here, you're free to go! Stop trying to take the rest of us with you.
    3
  2715.  @shawnsmith3741  It was a bit, all staged for the cameras. The customers were all acting.
    3
  2716.  @tommcgeethree  What do you mean by "hater?" You said you were talking about Donald Trump, the leader of the crime syndicate, right?
    3
  2717.  @AlBaqiTV1  Nope, that's got nothing to do with what I was saying. How would you have gotten any of that out of what I was saying? Nobody moved into anyone else's homes here, even the Hamas terrorists left after they'd murdered all the babies they could find.
    3
  2718.  @Digger-Nick  Yes, because the "single day event" was invading the US Capitol with the intention of preventing the certification of the President, and replacing him with someone else. That is a pretty big deal. As for the BLM protests, the damage and people hurt was mostly by white supremacist agitators, not by the protesters themselves. The Rightist mantra: Ignore. Deflect. Project. Why do you people go out of your way to prove this? Is it deliberate, or just based on ignorance because you choose to believe unreliable narrators?
    3
  2719.  @Digger-Nick  It is hard to say what the specific intention of "the majority" of people in the Capitol was, but plenty of them were there with the intent to delay or reverse the certification of Joe Biden, with many of them making specific violent threats against members of Congress and even Mike Pence. If ALL someone was doing was "taking a selfie," then perhaps that is all they will be charged with doing, but that does not reflect the action overall. I'm sure that there were plenty of random idiots in that crowd who had no idea what others were up to, but that does not excuse the actions of the people who were taking their roles very seriously. You should definitely watch the NYT video showing the full timeline of the insurrection. I'm sure you won't trust their editorial because it does not match the narrative you were fed, but the video footage is the video footage, so at least take that all in and make up your own mind. If you can watch that and hold on to the narrative you've been fed by the fake news, then God help you. Also, some people in that group did have guns, and were charged for having them. That they did not shoot anyone was lucky, but a lack of guns does not equate to a lack of insurrection. Kyle Rittenhouse is a right-wing agitator that was illegally carrying an AR-15 at a BLM protest, shot a man in the back, killing him, and then shooting two more as they tried to apprehend him. That is exactly the sort of "violence started by right-wing agitators" that I was talking about. Had he not been there, not been armed, not fired at protesters, no violence would have occurred.
    3
  2720.  @Digger-Nick  "And Trump telling people to be peaceful is inciting a crowd??" No, Trump telling people to be peaceful was not inciting the crowd. Trump telling people that the election was stolen from them, and that they needed to do whatever was necessary to prevent Joe Biden taking office is what was inciting the crowd. Did you even watch the second impeachment? And of course people "stormed" the capital, they violently attacked the police, sending dozens to the hospital, some with permanent injuries, and broke through windows and doors to enter the building. Watch the footage on the NYT timeline video, it's right there, no editorial.
    3
  2721.  @jcindahouse  I don't think she's maga. I think she was pointing out how they hate real women.
    3
  2722. They will have to pay eventually, with penalties on top.
    3
  2723.  @Beez101  Guns don't shoot by themselves, but shooters can't shoot without guns, so it's easier to take the guns away.
    3
  2724.  @vladtheimpalerofficial  Then why was he publicly promoting right wing causes? Maybe he was one of those "used to be a Democrat, but I voted for Trump" people you find all the time on social media. SO believable.
    3
  2725. We do. And we have. This is the result.
    3
  2726.  @OneMeanArtist  Yup, it's usually Republicans.
    3
  2727. They call them that due to bigotry.
    3
  2728. The simple fact is that everyone will always consider taxes to be too high. It's equally true that they will be unable to agree on which benefits they live under should be removed to lower those taxes.
    3
  2729.  @darthfader733  This story was about how the government shut down the sheep following sheep, and you seemed to object to them doing so. Wouldn't that put you in to "pro-sheep" camp?
    3
  2730.  @Supat2  But it is still the only chance most of humanity has of surviving the singularity. Corporations WILL win, the only chance of that not happening is a government strong enough to keep them in check, and motivated enough to court the will of the people to try. There are a million ways that could go wrong, but it's still the only way it could go right. So fight for the best possible government that is the most dependent on the public that we can make it.
    3
  2731. I think mainly it's just that it's more comfortable, Unlike a fixed microphone position, it allows them to move freely about a space, or from location to location, without having to carefully reposition the mic to best cover the space without distortion. It's the simplest form of production, "pick up mic, start filming," nothing in between.
    3
  2732.  @GregorBarclay  Not necessarily. I mean, there are mic techs in show business for a reason, and even they screw up. If you want the mic to be inconspicuous, you need to feed the cable through your shirt and not snag it on anything. And even then, it might get muffled up in your clothes and make weird rubbing sounds against the fabric, which you might not even notice until re-watching the footage later, forcing you to redo the entire take. And even then you might snag a cable somewhere and have it tug loose if you aren't careful. Keeping it in your hand gives you far more control over it, letting you move it freely as necessary, keep it right near your mouth, and away from anything that might mess up the take. If you don't care about hiding it, and just want to get the take done in the simplest manner possible with the lowest risk of failure, then keeping it in hand is far more efficient.
    3
  2733. Sure they can.
    3
  2734.  @Burgundy64  Well, I expect he would take the 5th on any question that relates to the crimes he's being charged with, that's the entire point of having that protection in the Bill of Rights. But anything outside of that scope I would expect him to be honest about.
    3
  2735.  @MadMax-dp2bb  Hamas attacked first though, murdering civilians in cold blood and kidnapping others. The damage caused by the IDF is only a retaliation to their actions. If Hamas cared about civilian casualties, then they would not use civilians as human shields. It is entirely possible to attack IDF forces without ANY civilian casualties, because the Israelis follow international law and keep their military forces separate from civilian populations. It is Hamas that has made it impossible to combat them without also hitting civilians.
    3
  2736.  @Happydadsgaming94  But not because of Biden, which is what matters. It went up more in the rest of the world, without someone like Biden to keep things in check. Never blame a President just for "being President" during a particular year.
    3
  2737. Nobody is calling out that she didn't do a Fox debate because they are smarter than the people who think that made any sense.
    3
  2738.  @benjamintherogue2421  Millions of years ago there were completely different plants and animals alive, ones more adapted to that warmer, higher CO2 climate. Global warming will not kill ALL creatures, it would just kill off MOST creatures that evolved during cooler periods of Earth's history, such as humans.
    3
  2739. Because legislating those things are what the majority of voters sent them to Washington to do. Most people support legislating vaccines and access to abortion, and BOTH of those are a PART of paying attention to the economy and security. And sending money overseas, done wisely, is the best thing to do for both America's economy AND security. That's why China's been sending a tone of their money overseas over the past few decades. Benefiting other countries makes America's position in the world stronger.
    3
  2740.  @Hero_Of_Time94  China's current problems mainly stem from domestic failures, too much pointless home-building within the country itself. Their foreign policy choices have largely led in their favor, where even if a loan falls through, they get more out of it in terms of political value than the actual cost of the project. For example, a small, poor African country has just as much vote in the UN general assembly as the US does, so getting a dozen or two of those on board means China has an easy time getting their way in UN votes.
    3
  2741. Which library was this? Also, where does one find a "Hustler" these days?
    3
  2742.  @NJ-wb1cz  But regulations are crafted by politicians, and politicians are elected by home owners to represent their interests. One home owner not wanting a footpath near their home should not necessarily get their way on that, but if the community agrees that they prefer a lack of footpaths to having them, then the regulations should reflect that.
    3
  2743.  @NJ-wb1cz  If the community wants that, then it can happen. If the community does not want that, because they don't want the increased traffic and noise such a shop would generate, then they can regulate to prevent it. Find a community that fits your interests. Also, I don't think socialism gives you any more freedom to do whatever you want with your property. Some socialist governments might give more or less freedom in this regard, just as some capitalist systems would. That is not a particularly "socialist/capitalist" wedge issue. It's more of an "anarchy" thing.
    3
  2744.  @NJ-wb1cz  In a democratic society, the government Is the people. The people passing regulations are doing so because they were elected by the people of that area to make policies that they would prefer. If the people in a given area do not like their regulators, they can vote them out. Also, socialism does not mean that you don't own anything. I have no idea where you got that from. As for noise and traffic, while it is possible to regulate that directly to some degree, preventing, say, loud music or something, any reasonably successful business will have a minimum amount of noise and disruption from customers coming and going, you cannot "regulate that out" without making the business impossible to run. Not to mention that it could attract rowdier customers that would care less about following "regulations" of their behavior. You propose solutions that might work in some ideal scenario, but not in the real world.
    3
  2745.  @ghostD0C  Ok, well in America, it does, and I think the video was talking about America.
    3
  2746. It's like they want to prevent it by showing unity in the face of aggression.
    3
  2747. @Dasha-tk3mo So Putin wants people to think. But not everyone is his little minion.
    3
  2748.  @slipknot6789  That's textbook hearsay though. If I said "Slipknot6789 likes em young," that does not make it actual evidence that it is true. It wasn't even Epstein claiming it as fact in a serious matter, it was just an offhand remark to some girl he was exploiting, so it could have just been trashtalking.
    3
  2749.  @OrtusMallum2075  I was talking about the three Chinese balloons that entered US air space under Trump.
    3
  2750.  @tailswinsmore5054  That's what Jack Smith's working on.
    3
  2751. @ What did demolished dams have to do with it? None of them were anywhere near the fires.
    3
  2752. He's dead. He died like 50 years ago.
    3
  2753.  @kw7709  They can renovate it using their own labor. They wouldn't need to install saunas or wine cabinets, they could just patch holes and paint the walls. I suppose they would need low-cost access to basic materials, of course, but that could be paired with work programs so they could earn their way. They could get enough for basic food and to pay for the material costs of the renovation, and then do the house work in between.
    3
  2754. I bet you genuinely believe that. Faux News is a hell of a drug.
    3
  2755. People would have to be real idiots these days to imply that the videos don't exist, given that they have been all over the place and verified by every conceivable source. I'm sure this poster isn't THAT dumb, he probably just doesn't pay attention to the news enough to already know this.
    3
  2756. You can review those programs while they continue to provide necessary work. You paused them to cause harm to people.
    3
  2757.  @sian6894  I think Youtube deleted my previous response, but don't feel stupid that your family is laughing at you, that only tells you that you are much smarter than them, and they want to bully you into feeling that you are less than. Don't allow them to do it.
    3
  2758.  @maylingng4107  We ARE the citizens of America. The majority of them, at least.
    3
  2759.  @BraydenVonMering  Well, to be fair, not all protests are identical. The specifics of the case can be relevant. For example, if the 6th protests had taken place anywhere other than the Capitol, or on any day other than the one certifying the election, then it wouldn't have really been that big a deal.
    3
  2760. Also all Florida politicians, since Florida is much worse.
    3
  2761. That's what they are doing here.
    3
  2762.  @nelsonmiller8445  You reference section 5 as though it were relevant. Section five allows Congress to pass laws as necessary to enforce aspects of the 14th amendment, but it does not exclude all other bodies from enforcing portions of it where they come up. The 14th Amendment has already been enforced by judges plenty of times. Nothing in Section 5 precludes anything done in this case so far.
    3
  2763.  @Nasherrrzzz  Well of course, but even if we forget all that and just take Putin's claims at face value, they are really bad claims. They're the sort of claims Doctor Doom makes about meddling heroes.
    3
  2764.  @winterrising8738  NATO did good in those countries. The people of those countries know that.
    3
  2765.  @berlynify  They aren't in denial, they know how awful a human being is, but they like that. They want such a person to represent them, because that's who they are too. If they were better people, then there is no way that they could vote for him.
    3
  2766.  @mobilusinmobili8321  Win elections, pass laws.
    3
  2767.  @JCW86  Israel has no control over the southern border. Gazans are free to escape in that direction. If Egypt does not allow that, then that is not Israel's fault. There is no burden on Israel to allow the enemy population to cross into their own territory. Again, the fate of the civilians in this case is entirely the responsibility of Hamas to not mingle themselves into the civilian populations.
    3
  2768.  @rainbowodysseybyjonlion  I agree two scenarios, but both in the same workforce. The point is, the jobs in the video are bullshit, all other jobs will also be bullshit within our lifetimes, so no point splitting hairs about it.
    3
  2769.  @jwiki1 If you're going to pick up your life and move, why wouldn't you move to the best possible place you can?
    3
  2770.  @SoldtotheHighestBidder Cool story.
    3
  2771.  @randomhiphop5055  It won't bring back manufacturing though, so that wouldn't be a factor. It would still be much cheaper to just pay the tariff.
    3
  2772.  @iansmith8247  Not much, really. If we can get more Republicans out of the House this year, it will allow the border bill to pass and we can clear out the backlog of people awaiting their hearings, but it will be fine either way.
    3
  2773.  @james8156  Because the 14th amendment says that if you are born in the US, even if your parents are illegal, you are considered a citizen. There's no way to change that without a Constitutional amendment. It is not a problem. There is plenty of room for all of them.
    3
  2774. Trump doesn't have anything other than name calling. It's his brand. He appeals to toddlers.
    3
  2775. You probably shouldn't be drinking Pepsi either, they are no better for you.
    3
  2776.  @DoSe420  The first think I got was "encounters," which is mostly people turning themselves in to apply for refugee status. That's per month though, not per day.
    3
  2777.  @GodAlwaysWins-x7h  That's what he said.
    3
  2778. US to Boris: "Rejoin the EU, and we can talk."
    3
  2779.  @jdgolf499  Gorsuch was actually cited in this case, as he made a ruling that Colorado had the right to enforce federal election laws around eligibility, although this was about birthright citizenship, rather than about violations of oaths.
    3
  2780.  @toddrf  The withholding documents part is a separate crime.
    3
  2781. "It's not a problem with the game, it's a problem with me, I don't understand why other people can't have that perspective." Any you don't have to understand, so long as you accept that they are different people with different feelings on the matter, and that theirs are just as valid as yours. They do not require you to care about getting something you want, all you have to do is care that they care about getting something they don't have, and not get in the way of that.
    3
  2782. This has nothing to do with limiting spending. This is about raising the debt ceiling. Discussions about limiting spending happen after that is done.
    3
  2783.  @randallporter1404  Oh, no, that's not how it works. That's NEVER been how ANY of this works. The ceiling has NEVER determined how much a President can spend, that's determined by the budget. The ceiling only determines whether or not we default on the debts we've already accumulated, which would send the US economy into apocalyptic freefall, destroy every retirement plan in the country, and turn America into another Venezuela. So, now you know. Let's hope Kevin figures it out.
    3
  2784.  @scottbaker4890  They gave clear answer on any topic of substance. What do you believe you didn't get a clear answer on?
    3
  2785. Last time something like this happens, a couple stone tablets got smashed.
    3
  2786. @UCQwZriBPaj7DAzPKF8zNohA I think sometimes these people don't get how "the Internet" works, and imagine that full motion official video channels will be up the instant after something happens.
    3
  2787.  @AndyDrake-FOOKYT  "So" it show s a weakness of leadership and a lack of empathy.
    3
  2788. According to the facts, he'd be right, but obviously according to your feelings. he would not be, so I guess it comes down to which matters more to you.
    3
  2789.  @khushalgandhi5157  From his father's emerald mines.
    3
  2790.  @MrLegendra  He didn't solve any of those problems. Engineers he paid for solved those problems. Those same engineers could have been equally successful had anyone else spent that money on them.
    3
  2791. He would need to do something wrong first, that's how it works in America. This is not Putin's Russia. Not yet, at least.
    3
  2792. Three, isn't it?
    3
  2793. They aren't. That's not what they are arguing for here.
    3
  2794. Unarmed students in every school now.
    3
  2795. Nah, they are doing what the American people out them there to do.
    3
  2796.  @Clownelskiy  It started when Russia invaded Ukraine. Anything that happened before that was in no way a justification for Russia's invasion. Their only valid options were to cope and seethe, never to invade.
    3
  2797.  @luciussvartwulf6630  Except that isn't what happened, so no, she was never legitimately concerned.
    3
  2798. So's Elon.
    3
  2799.  @dehydratedwater9806  Also, the documents were not under Secret Service management, they were all over the building in multiple unsecured locations. If there was any "Secret Service lock" then it only involved some small portion of the documents involved, and if a criminal suspect is subject to a search warrant, you want to find ALL the documents, not just the ones most conveniently available.
    3
  2800. We're at "war crimes" already? It hasn't even been a week!
    3
  2801.  @Garaceg  Noncitizens are not on the rolls in the first place, so what would "removing" them achieve? Does it also remove werewolves?
    3
  2802. That would be incorrect. President Biden has been VERY clear on the debt ceiling issue. Raise the debt limit. That's it, that's the entire issue, solved. All that still needs to be done is for McCarthy to actually DO it.
    3
  2803. The US really needs to have a policy of "_ around and find out." If you go to Russia, do NOT expect anyone to be coming to pick you up.
    3
  2804. 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.
    3
  2805.  @autumnberend828  He is anti-vax though, since he opposes vaxination.
    3
  2806.  @autumnberend828  I did, you offered no contradictory argument, presumably because you knew you could not make one.
    3
  2807.  @SinkingShips1998  To be fair, "who is president" determined a LOT that gets done by those other aspects of government. The founding fathers set up this system to allow the people to choose their representation. Political parties are an inevitable result of any representational body.
    3
  2808.  @Youtubeisafascistcompany  There are lubricants that aren't based on fossil fuels, but you don't need to eliminate fossil products in uses like plastics or lubricants, you just need to stop burning it as a fuel source.
    3
  2809.  @jigc23  Clearly you have led a blessed life if you don't understand how trauma can effect a person's emotions. It's never a consistent feelings, it moves and shifts as you think about what's happened.
    3
  2810. Yup, the fight is not to save jobs, the fight is to save government from corporations, so that they can save humans from corporations.
    3
  2811. Yes. It was "today." And yesterday, and also tomorrow. It is always too expensive for a vanity wall.
    3
  2812.  @turbonerd3075  The district judge had the legal right to make that call, and the Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that he was right and that he MUST be returned to the US (not "maybe," MUST).
    3
  2813.  @daymay1066  He was not jailed for being Palestinian, which indicates that you don't know what his actual crime was, or are afraid to say it. Look into it before discussing the topic.
    3
  2814.  @joestalin2375  I would never do such things, I would never vote for the sort of Republicans you're talking about.
    3
  2815.  @NoName-rl3fh  No election runs perfectly, but the issues in the 2022 election were minor at most, nothing worth freaking out over. They were as much caused by the chaos of the "2 years of Republican freakout" as anything else, because that made it much harder to organize an election. the point is that at the end of the day, everyone who wanted to vote had the opportunity to do so and every vote cast was counted fairly, and that's all we should expect to happen.
    3
  2816.  @FireTiger941  We did hold them accountable in November when we voted.
    3
  2817. Well, he'd have to do a crime first. Then you just charge him with it. Otherwise you'd be talking about "tyranny," and we don't do that here.
    3
  2818.  @Wolfhybrids  Nobody ever learned anything of value by watching Joe Rogan.
    3
  2819. I doubt Spoiler is much of a match against most speedsters.
    3
  2820. We do, actually.
    3
  2821. Part of it is just that because they have to be in the more expensive range, due tot he costs of core components, they aim for a glitzier market with them. I mean, you could remove ALL the technogadgets out of a $60K EV and it would still be like $57K, so why bother? I do think it would be interesting if someone made a very "hipster EV" though, one that used all glass and steel knobs and dials like something out of a 1930s Rolls, even if all of it is ultimately driven by digital inputs.
    3
  2822.  @68wolffden  Of course it will. Where do you think the criminals get the guns from?
    3
  2823. That seems like a place that would be so much fun as a residential space.
    3
  2824.  @cryptarisprotocol1872  We've sanctioned bigger countries in the past. You make the sanctions proportionate to the harm, you wouldn't employ the same massive sanctions on India that are currently being put on Russia since their harm is lower, but it wouldn't be unheard of for various countries to just put out a tariff, or to cut direct government assistance, or just pull one of the many levels connecting the two nations. Like I said, I doubt anyone will sanction India over this, but they obviously could if they wanted to. And yes, the west does need India to counterbalance China, but India also needs the west to counterbalance China. they would prefer to not strain that relationship if they can help it. Sanctions are not the end of the conversation, they are just a part of the process. If someone does something horrible, like invade a neighbor, then you bring down the hammer. If they just annoy you in a meaningful way, then you just give them a little pinch (and this goes both ways, of course, plenty of countries take economic jabs at the US when we annoy them, it's just how the game is played).
    3
  2825.  @oo--7714  Why do you say "kneeling to the west." None of this has anything to do with "kneeling," to the west or to anyone else. This is about taking steps to end Russia's genocide in Ukraine as quickly as possible, and India is working against that effort. "The west" has nothing to do with it.
    3
  2826.  @cryptarisprotocol1872  No, RUSSIA killed 20,000 civilians. Ukraine did not. The war in donbass prior to Russia's direct invasion was a proxy war between the Ukraine forces and separatists backed by Russia. Even adding up all civilian casualties in the region that only amounted to 3400 killed, most of those by the Russia side. I have no idea where you are getting your "20,000" figure, if you are not referencing the numbers of Ukrainian civilians killed by Russia in Mariupol. As for "what is genocide," the definition is pretty clear. "The deliberate killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group" Russia announced that Ukraine did not exist as a nation, that they did not deserve to exist as a nation, and went about obliterating civilian populations without any regard for their humanity. That is genocide. This could not be compared to "collateral damage," because the civilians dying was not an unavoidable consequence of pursuing valid military targets, they were deliberately targeting purely civilian areas. They clearly intend to wipe out Ukrainians as a nation and group.
    3
  2827. Nothing was ever made better by voting Republican. At least not in the last 100 years.
    3
  2828. @ So a blogger who supports Trump will get equal access to a well respected journalistic organization with thousands of employees? That makes sense. Somehow.
    3
  2829.  @YellowSpaceMarine  Audio books are the audio of books. A book read out loud. You could also call them "audio dramas," I suppose, but they are not read, they are listened to. This is fine, but it makes no sense to confuse the two. It honest just seems a bit sad, like book listeners are insecure about how they enjoy their stories and insist that it be called "reading" anyway.
    3
  2830.  @leahblake6748  No they weren't, but it would make no difference if they had been. Still illegal.
    3
  2831. So the people who got the money led more happy lives rather than worrying about making ends meet? How terrible. If only quality of life had as much value as "capital worth." After all, at the end of the day, when they put you in the ground, what matters more, that you enjoyed your life, or that you ended with a lot of money in the bank? The point is that we're going to need a plan once human labor no longer has any value, and humans can no longer be weighed based on productivity.
    3
  2832. When he says "postmodernists don't believe in biology," he means "they do not discriminate against trans people as much as I'd want them to." Peterson just uses "science words" to disguise bigotry. If you call people "post-modernists," it's more acceptable than "non-bigots."
    3
  2833. How DARE the administration try to save American lives!
    3
  2834. Yeah, I've never met a cashier that is better at checking out than I am. The only advantage they sometimes have is that they sometimes know the produce codes, but that's only a fraction of the checkout process and barely slower when I look them up.
    3
  2835.  @funwithfacts9413  And you agree that Biden's first term was even more successful, right?
    3
  2836.  @WatermelOns53  So you're making a semantic argument, rather than a substantive one? You do agree that any improvements under Reagan were temporary and harmful in the long run, but you think that pointing out that they happened is. . . important for some reason? At least we can all agree that the improvements under Biden were more significant.
    3
  2837. Don't be so down on yourself. You deserve better than to let other people know that you found RFK Jr. "intelligent."
    3
  2838.  @echelonrank3927  Communism is not a factor here. Nobody is talking about communism. It's helplessness or taking action to fix the problems, those are the choices.
    3
  2839.  @akulkis  nobody expects the Earth's climate to be unchanging. We're all prepared to adapt to the changing earth. The problem is that the earth is currently changing many times FASTER than it typically does, at a rate that most species, humans included, are not prepared to match. The last ten thousand years of change only raised the temperature very slightly, and the last hundred years or so raised it MUCH faster. "For some reason." Think of it like a car, if you hit the brakes and go from 60 to 0 in twenty seconds, that's relatively comfortable. If you do it in ten seconds, that's perhaps less comfortable, but mostly fine. But if you go 60 to 0 in one second, you aren't likely walking away from that. The speed at which change happens is important.
    3
  2840. The bare minimum. This is why you never vote for Republicans for anything.
    3
  2841. They're probably only saying that because the unemployment is down, and the stock market is up, and inflation is dropping, and basically all the other things that say whether the economy is good or not are firmly in the "good" camp. Talk about biased journalism!
    3
  2842. I don't think the Secret Service would let her do the one thing she'd be qualified for.
    3
  2843. What "keeps adding up?" Nothing + nothing + nothing + nothing, is still "nothing."
    3
  2844.  @Clownelskiy  Russia did not just randomly decide to invade, they did so out of malice. It was never justified.
    3
  2845. It's what I've been waiting for all my life.
    3
  2846.  @christopherbush5317  You don't need senate confirmation for a special counsel. None on the many special counsels that have served have had senate confirmation. That is not a thing.
    3
  2847.  @calliesmith6897  What "proof" are you looking for? There are hundreds of news stories on the topic. What rock have you been living under that you haven't already seen plenty of proof? And the number of nurses that have quit from being forced to vaccinate is like 0.00001% of the total nursing workforce. No hospital is suffering from not having them, and frankly we are all better off that they are no longer near patients. It has absolutely NOTHING to do with hospitals being overloaded, that comes from having far more patients than they have beds in the hospital.
    3
  2848. Even 10% is awful though. The reason retailers would not be likely to pass all the cost over, at least not at first, is because they don't want to drive away customers. They aren't likely to eat all the costs, but they will likely eat a little of it, so as to keep customers on board. Of course, over time, they can even that out, and eventually customers probably would be paying the full tariff and then some.
    3
  2849.  @megadog5743  That's sad. How was it better? Did you enjoy the lockdowns, or the casual racism more?
    3
  2850. Then the UN should put forth a resolution that says "Ukraine attacked Russian airfields, bad Ukraine. . . but also, let's do a UN joint military action to drive all Russian forces out of Ukraine, all in favor?" Let's see how Russia votes. :D
    3
  2851. "Race to the bottom" at work again. Imagine how much better Texas could be if they'd had better governance over the past few decades.
    3
  2852. You keep asking until you get a straight answer.
    3
  2853. Well that's the point of it. It's so they can only afford to go after poor people, not after the rich. The rich get the government they paid for.
    3
  2854. I know you do, but here in America, we don't.
    3
  2855. Gaza is armed by Iran, who have plenty of effective weapons. The only ones targeting civilians in this conflict are Gaza.
    3
  2856. And then once you've heard the words from his own mouth, THEN you can disagree with him.
    3
  2857. @ That's not how it would work, that would be a waste of everyone's time. A successful business is one that can make the best products at competitive prices, not one that can only survive because the best products have been made twice as expensive. Trump can't understand this pretty simple process.
    3
  2858. Banana republic.
    3
  2859. No, it's still "uncorroborated."
    3
  2860. I think you misunderstand the point, the lies are being told to attack him, not to defend him. The truth is the only defense he needs.
    3
  2861. That must have been on the night before as he was falling to sleep.
    3
  2862.  @princesspupcake1269  Nonsense.
    3
  2863.  @farvasstache6532  If it is a public school then it is also a public library. Again, you have no rights to decide what books are available to other parents' children. Also, your "tsking" is misplaced. A parent that tries to get books banned is not "involved in their children's lives," they are just trying to get OTHER people to do that work FOR them. It's like parents that set their children in front of a TV all day, and then demand that the TV not broadcast anything that they do not approve of. And finally, much of the material that has been targeted in red states is not "overtly sexual," it is just material that is no more "sexual" than material that has been on those shelves for decades already, and just happens to involve age appropriate discussions of LGBT relationships, such as a child having two moms. What material does contain sexual content is no different than other sex-ed resources available at the middle school and up level, which can be important for pubescent teens trying to figure out what their deal is. Again, if you don't want your children reading such things, tell them not to. It should not be the school library's job to police that.
    3
  2864.  @drebiz2344  So long as it is in the context of age appropriate sex-ed discussions, what is the issue?
    3
  2865. He was fit to stand trial, they just did not have a case against him.
    3
  2866. @ He was a Republican prosecutor who wanted to get some cheap digs in, when he couldn't make an actual case.
    3
  2867. How so?
    3
  2868. Israel is not attacking America.
    3
  2869. Yeah, if that p[olicy were still in effect, we wouldn't have Fox News or Donald Trump.
    3
  2870. If that were true then they would already have done it a decade ago when the tax rates were higher than they will be after this passes. But you do have a point that the major countries of the world need to crack down on tax havens, because otherwise there will be no chance of surviving the post-labor economy.
    3
  2871.  @xybersurfer  But the goal should be sustainability, that you aren't losing the ability to maintain operations at their current rate. So long as you can do that, that should be plenty. Growth on top of that is great, but shouldn't be necessary.
    3
  2872. @ Nope. Say you have a business that makes sandwiches. You spend a million a year on all the things it takes to run that business. You bring in a million two per year, plenty to cover those expenses with some left over. That, to me, is a success. But if that business were publicly traded, and you had those profits this year, they would want you to make more than a million two next year, even if you didn't actually need that. They would want you to add expenses in the name of increasing revenues, even if you didn't really have a need to expand. I think that businesses can and should expand over time, in most cases, but they should never have to, not when it often leads to them getting over their skiis and crashing.
    3
  2873. Vladimir Putin, say her daddy's name!
    3
  2874. I think the way to solve housing is to implement three policies: 1. Any property that is not occupied at least half the days of the year has a steeply ramping tax burden on it, intended to make it unprofitable to sit on an empty property rather than making it available to people who need it for housing, and essentially forcing them to accept a rate someone is willing to pay. 2. No new commercial development in an area if available housing falls below a certain level relative to demand. Basically, if there aren't enough apartments to fill demand in an area, then you can't get a permit to build new commercial properties until you've met those needs. This could involve split use properties. 3. All residential buildings that are of a certain size (likely around 50+ units), would be required to have an average per-unit cost such that at least a certain portion of the units would be affordable at the local median wage. The goal would be that the more expensive the peak apartments would be, the cheaper or more numerous the affordable units in the building would have to be to balance things out. You couldn't just load up on luxury apartments for the super wealthy. Of course these cheap apartments would also need to meet certain minimal quality levels so that they weren't like a capsule hotel.
    3
  2875. Almonds, mostly.
    3
  2876.  @TeamBTC17  Maybe if conservatives had parents that loved them, there would be less conservatives.
    3
  2877. I think that as EVs become more and more common, there will be quality ways of professionally testing battery health. That way, someone trying to resell one can just get their battery tested and accredited, and people will know what they are getting. Just as a used car comes with some baggage, an EV will too, but if people know what they can expect from a used battery, they will be more willing to accept that baggage for a reasonable discount.
    3
  2878. They aren't wrong though. That's the important bit.
    3
  2879.  @roxyshow123  Every source you listed is pure fake news. You should NEVER trust anything you hear on any of those places. All they do is indoctrinate sheep.
    3
  2880. Russian hero. There's a difference.
    3
  2881.  @H43339  We can afford to take in a lot more than we do, a fully settled immigrant provides more value to the US economy than they take. The only actual problem we face now is that we don't have the border judges available to process all these immigrants in a timely manner. This leaves most of them waiting around for trial dates, prevented by law from seeking work. If they could be processed into legal US residents, then they could start getting jobs and paying their own way in society. If you truly insist on keeping them out of the country though, I'm afraid that the only solution would be to improve the countries they came from to the point where they could stay there. Nobody WANTS to trek through hundreds of miles of inhospitable terrain, a journey that many die on, but they have literally no other option at the moment. Provide them a better option, and they'll stop coming. Until then, it's like the war on drugs, you can't fight the supply, you can only fight the demand.
    3
  2882.  @kasper7203  The US is not pushing for Taiwanese official independence. I'm not sure where you get that idea.
    3
  2883.  @Timewave-Zer0  Sure, of course men have a say in it, they just get a say in their own bodies, not in controlling the bodies of others.
    3
  2884. Or, he's a medical specialist, and knows as anyone who has been following medicine, that viruses like covid tend to see surges in the flu season, due to changes in the weather and human behavior, and he's just trying to make sure that everyone knows that.
    3
  2885. @ That sounds very much like a "you" problem.
    3
  2886. "Why are we not making hiring people whom do not have a right to work in our country a federal offense and if so enforcing those laws removing the incentive to come here. " This is already illegal. You would be changing nothing. "The asilum system was not put into place to allow millions of people to use it as a way to come here" It was created EXACTLY to allow people in need to come here, regardless of their numbers. If you believe too many people are applying for asylum, the solution is not to deny them safety here, the solution is to help ensure that they will be safe in their home countries. " It's no wonder Russia felt safe to attack Ukraine and later encouraged Iran to get Hamas to attack and now China feels embolden to take Taiwan. We are becoming the laughing stock of the world." Yes, four years under Trump and with MAGA Republicans filling congress have really caused damage to the US reputation around the world, but the Biden administration's stronger stance against Russia and China have put both countries on the back foot.
    3
  2887.  @nathandodge665  Don't use big words, they won't understand you.
    3
  2888. There is no "invasion," anyone who crosses is caught and processed. That is not the problem. The problem is that there are not enough border judges to fully process their cases in a timely manner, it often takes months or even years for them to get their claims heard, and during which time they are a drain on the taxpayers. Once they are fully processed, they become a net positive.
    3
  2889.  @Thebuird  I didn't say that the Georgia voting bill was racist. Is that just a stock response you pull from a checklist?
    3
  2890. Someone who engages in or promotes violent activity in connection to right-wing political beliefs such as white supremacy, authoritarianism, nationalism, etc.
    3
  2891.  @CrazyGaming-ig6qq  The problem is that deniers are not rational people. If they were, they could not be deniers. So if you present them with two harsh truths and one happy lie, the only thing they will take away with them is that happy little lie, which they will then spread. Sabine had several strong arguments in this video, and then destroyed it all with the last half of the video.
    3
  2892.  @jimmcneal5292  Burning fossil fuels while also capturing the same amount of CO2 would be a net neutral thing, but we aren't currently doing that, and we have no path to ever get to that point that is easier than just getting renewables to the point where they can handle the load. And photovoltaics do work. Obviously.
    3
  2893.  @TheNebulon  Ok, so take the money away and he can live a happy life on the streets.
    3
  2894.  @JesusHammer  That's overly simplistic thinking for very complex problems. Become more mature.
    3
  2895.  @saxor96  Why would anyone target people with relatively little money to spend? The targets are those who are willing AND able to spend a lot of money.
    3
  2896.  @saxor96  You put way too much stock into some random TED talk. This is a major industry element that long predated this guy.
    3
  2897.  @saxor96  Again, this is a massive game industry, and most of the people involved have never even heard of the guy giving a TED talk, much less seen the talk itself. I don't know why you seem so fixated on it when it has nothing to do with the overwhelming majority of the industry. He may have described the outward appearance of some factors, but that doesn't mean that his opinions are accurate to games he was not involved in. If someone says that "stealth mechanics exist to make you walk slower," that may be true in his game, and stealth might indeed make you walk slower in many games, but that doesn't mean that this is why most devs put stealth in. Why are you so hung up on this ONE case example? Is it because he's telling you the story that you want to believe?
    3
  2898.  @IlPinnacolo  You would seem to look at that situation and claim that there's no point to any of that unless you can be 100% certain of the outcome, when the fact remains that there is a lot of benefit to using the imperfect long range tracking AND to update the results over time as best we can.
    3
  2899.  @IlPinnacolo  I'm sorry, was that a concession on the merits? A bit of a timid way to frame it, but I guess I'll take it.
    3
  2900. ​ @IlPinnacolo  I don't intend to, because you already conceded the actual topic we were discussing, and I have no interest in gossip.
    3
  2901.  @old_toucs6283  Yup. That will probably happen after the water wars.
    3
  2902.  @kayakeraltamaha5720  How would a father kill a gestating child without the woman's consent again?
    3
  2903.  @GreyWolfLeaderTW  No, your statement has all the energy of a red state crowd saying that a woman has no choice by to carry a child to term.
    3
  2904.  @drzaius1121  Pregnancy is not always the result of choices she made.
    3
  2905. Well, if Elon Musk has an anecdote about something then it MUST not be a gross exaggeration of reality. Trying to get on the good side of our new Overlords, eh, Sabine?
    3
  2906. They do pay their share though, so. . .
    3
  2907. He is appointing the radical group to be his ambassador.
    3
  2908.  @doverbeachcomber  The reason people were upset by "all lives matter" is that it was seen as dismissive of the BLM movement itself. Sort of like if there was a hurricane that totaled one city, and someone was saying "all cities matter."
    3
  2909. You can't fix stupid, apparently.
    3
  2910. There's no rush. If anything, we should be pushing to electrify vehicles faster than we currently are. We're looking at a a serious increase in global temperatures over the next few years, we need to move fast. If they wanted more time to do this stuff, then they should have been trying harder forty years ago when people started talking about this. Let's use a simple car analogy, say we're in a car that is headed for a cliff at 100mph, steering is out. we need to hit the brakes. The longer we wait, the harder we need to push those brakes. If we'd started braking years ago, we could do so at a casual easy pace. It's too late for that. Now we need to slam on them. You have nobody to blame for that but yourselves.
    3
  2911. That's factored into the existing models, but yes, it is also a factor.
    3
  2912. Unfortunately, "profound evidence" is about 1/10th as effective as "a cool story."
    3
  2913. Africa got started at the same time as everyone else.The outcomes of colonialism are as much their fault as anyone's. They had just as much potential to fight off colonializers or become the colonizers themselves as anyone else did, but they sat on that potential. It's like that story about the tortoise and the hare, if the hare hadn't taken a break and just kept running.
    3
  2914. No, the main issue is the guns. The other stuff would be a lot less of a problem without the guns. Plenty of other cultures have no less of the things America has, they just have less guns, so their murder rate is lower. But gun fans REALLY want to find something else they can blame that means they can still keep their guns with a clean conscience.
    3
  2915.  @georgigeorgiev891  Well, the guns and "gun culture" tend to go hand in hand though. We have tried letting Americans have guns, and clearly they weren't responsible enough to use them safely, so now it's time to put their toys away. If the NRA really wanted Americans to have guns, then they should have made better efforts to ensure that they ONLY ended up in the hands of people who would handle them responsibly.
    3
  2916. Well, when they are appointed by poor politicians. The better ones would appoint justices that are above such things, as Biden and Obama did.
    3
  2917.  @camomaxx  Deporting them without due process would be against both US and international law.
    3
  2918.  @marijarandelovic8455  They fact checked Kamala equally.
    3
  2919.  @eric3434  The ad wasn't meant to appeal to you, it was meant for fans of Mulvaney. You only heard about it because some bigots got triggered and threw a fit about it.
    3
  2920.  @DirtyRedMuzik  It was though. You might not have been aware of that, but it does not change the reality.
    3
  2921.  @thehammer9599  Well that was my point, "debate" is entirely the wrong word. You can have discussions about science, in which two competing viewpoints are explored in good faith, but doing so in a "debate" format, particularly when one of the participants cannot be trusted to behave in good faith on the topic, is never productive. Hotez even offered to go on Rogan's show to discuss the topic with Rogan, he just had no interest in doing so in a debate format. Hotez and RFK Jr. holding a public debate on this topic, moderated by Jor ROGAN, no less, could never accomplish anything of value. It is guaranteed that regardless of how it plays out, by the end of it Rogan/RFK/Anti-Vaxer fans will leave secure in the knowledge that their team "owned" the other side, what few rational people watch it will leave thinking that Rogan and RFK are complete idiots talking nonsense, and zero opinions will have shifted on the matter.
    3
  2922. @ Then why did you bring it up?
    3
  2923. Do you genuinely believe that Trump thought of this himself? That it wasn't a concept that had already been going around for years already?
    3
  2924.  @nicolasceresoli9121  Men of God didn't have a position on abortion back then. It was fine because the Bible said life begins at first breath. I could see him being a "principled Republican," but he would definitely be a never-Trumper.
    3
  2925. If you had looked it up, you would know that you are wrong.
    3
  2926.  @davidpulido2942  She was never appointed by the President to "handle the border."
    3
  2927. Probably Russian bullets.
    3
  2928. There are no babies involved in this story.
    3
  2929. "Old man yells at Clouds."
    3
  2930. Most economists agree that this IS a good way to run a country like the US. You want to spend wisely, on things that are in the US's long term interests, but there's no harm in increasing the deficit to do so. The US national debt could be several times what it currently is and we would be fine. But defaulting on that debt would ruin us overnight. The only people in favor of a default are Putin and Xi.
    3
  2931.  @thejosh3866  Of course he did. Why else would he have thrown money at RFK Jr's campaign?
    3
  2932. I don't believe that's an accurate quote.
    3
  2933. It always SHOULD be cheaper to drive there yourself. You are paying extra for convenience.
    3
  2934. That's not what the report said though. Are you sure you're remembering it correctly?
    3
  2935. It's really not. It's like 0.00000000000001% of the budget. That is a very small number, even though it looks big.
    3
  2936.  @digimaks  Yes, they can, because each Ukrainian soldier is apparently worth around 10,000 Russian ones. Perhaps more.
    3
  2937.  @ellsworthwhitehead2703  Not in the eyes of his voters. They understand how disastrous more Republicans in the Senate would be.
    3
  2938. GOP clown show clowning again. 🤡 When Schiff runs for Senate in California, he should put "Censured by GOP House" on his campaign posters.
    3
  2939. No cameras are in place 24/7, they only capture things occasionally. Also, the entrance is vertical, so it would not be visible from above. As for the dirt, it's not that hard to disguise the dirt moving, you just pack it in with other stuff, like having a UPS van with 50% packages and 50% bags of dirt.
    3
  2940. Russia does not get to decide what other countries do. The war is because of their lack of self control, not because of anything Ukraine did.
    3
  2941.  @Winswon44  You don't need any laws that prevent law abiding citizens from defending yourselves, but we do need more laws making it hard to buy and own guns, because that makes it harder for criminals to get one too.
    3
  2942.  @bq6162  What do you think is true? All this story says is that the lawsuit searched for people's names in Maxwell's phone records. It doesn't say that they actually found anything, so really it's a nothing burger.
    3
  2943. No, that's not what that means. It means he was picked because he's previously done shady things for Trump and could be expected to do so again.
    3
  2944.  @timesnewlogan2032  That's certainly part of it, and being that odd trapezoidal shape rather than rectangular, but the bigger parts are the stations. Most subway systems have these tight, boxy station platforms. DC Metro stations are these massive vaulted spaces, like a cathedral. And even the above ground station entrances tend to have a specific style to them that is distinct to the DC Metro, often an open escalator well into the ground with a. glass canopy over it. Fallout 3 was one of the few IPs to get this right, since they are based out of the area.
    3
  2945.  @r.r.r.918  That is not accurate. It would hurt the US more than those other countries, or at least hurt the US citizens. Some US businesses might prosper.
    3
  2946. Read the Constitution.
    3
  2947. The US Supreme Court never said that. One of Trump's judges said that, and she was wrong.
    3
  2948. It's called "negotiation." You need to get a majority behind any bill. Most things cannot, themselves, get majority agreement. So you instead put in one thing that 40% want, and another thing that another 40% want, and that gets a majority to agree that the bill should pass. This is how everything works. It's the only way it can work.
    3
  2949.  @Lee-BHC  No, it wouldn't, because they would just never agree on most things. When you put everything together, then every group gets a little of what they want.
    3
  2950.  @Lee-BHC  There are more important things than saving money though. Failing to fund programs mean that important things wouldn't get done, and the value of those programs is more important than any potential cost savings. Also, there are no Skype votes in the US.
    3
  2951.  @Feminocracy  Who else would it be?
    3
  2952.  @tschantz  Exactly. This is exactly why they are there, more convenient to those people. And then there are other boxes that are more convenient to wherever it is you live. You can have more of these boss than you can staffed polling places. This is the point. Why do I feel you still don't get this point.
    3
  2953.  @iDeagles  Nah.
    3
  2954.  @hughheeney3554  And this is why he's failing right now, he got rid of anyone capable.
    3
  2955.  @user-be1ij7rp3o  Tarrifs can work in theory, but that's interfering with free markets. It might mean more crappy manufacturing jobs in the US, but would also mean that everything at Walmart would cost 2-3 times as much. There's no benefit to it. Leave sweatshops to other countries, let Americans do more useful jobs. You're thinking too small mindedly, you need to look at the bigger picture to see America's role in it. I get that you've been indoctrinated to blame foreigners for whatever problems you have in life, but that couldn't be further from the truth.
    3
  2956. @@user66579 Obviously, nationalism has never led to positive outcomes. Germany learned that one the hard way.
    3
  2957.  carlinochoa564 That would be a step in the wrong direction. What we need to do is pass stronger gun laws to get these weapons off the streets.
    3
  2958. The Force is definitely with him.
    3
  2959. While printing money can cause inflation, the US printing money is not a significant factor in inflation. I mean, for all the inflation we've had recently, it was lower than in most of the world, which would not have been the case if the cause were "printing money." It's just an unfortunate side effect of various supply chain problems, both accidental and intentional, coming out of the pandemic and the Russian genocide in Ukraine.
    3
  2960. "A teacher tried to tell my son he couldn't bring his Bible to school to read during free reading time. " No actual teacher ever did that, but fun fan fiction.
    3
  2961. I got more into art than science, but I definitely remember building little cardboard robots after seeing Short Circuit, he was just such a "mechanical" concept, unlike so many robots that were basically just "people in armor," you could see the moving parts for Johnny 5, so why not build your own? Back to the Future was definitely up there too, in fact I think the drive train of my little robot was an RC Delorean. :D
    3
  2962. @ He's not a member of MS13 though, or any other gangs. He's just some dude.
    3
  2963.  @jeffhaddix9508  His statements on vaccination, mostly. Were you not paying attention?
    3
  2964.  @jsnip6720  Or, they understand those topics better than someone who's learned about them from RFK Jr.
    3
  2965.  @SharkVsTree  It would save a lot of their lives and make it much easier to work/learn if we could reduce our school, shooting rates to those of countries with better gun control (ie, basically zero). There are other things we can do involving education, but NOTHING would be even close to AS important.
    3
  2966. YES, Garland DID have nothing to say. "Nothing" is exactly what an AG SHOULD be saying about ongoing investigations, because that is what the law SAYS he should be saying about ongoing investigations.
    3
  2967. "It'll be like a war, but one where they just give up without us even having to try. That's how wars work, right guys?"
    3
  2968.  @fitthickchic6732  This is nothing like what Texas and Florida are like though, since those states ARE prepared for the border crossings they receive with federal facilities intended to house and process those migrants. The people of Martha's Vineyard are doing a BETTER job than Florida and Texas of treating the migrants like human beings, but that does not excuse the recklessness of transporting them there without proper warning so that they could move the infrastructure in place in advance.
    3
  2969. And that's why they are better people than you are.
    3
  2970. Lol, you guys sound like he did something bad that matters, like try to sell US military intelligence to the Saudis or something. Dude tripped, he's fine. Move on.
    3
  2971.  @maceomaceo11  And if we'd hired Biden to quarterback a superbowl, that would be an issue, but we hired him to be President, and he's doing great at that.
    3
  2972. The pipeline never has anything to do with US oil, it was from Canada to the gulf.
    3
  2973.  @LisaLove-m4l  Exactly, and that's why Mace's bill is wrong.
    3
  2974. Yes, but also, there would still be people at the top who own the majority of the shares. It is possible to have a company entirely run by AIs, but their money would still end up in the pockets of the wealth class.
    3
  2975. "Military replies, 'that would be illegal.'"
    3
  2976. You mean "we the traitors." We the people support Ukraine and the US.
    3
  2977. When the amount of evidence rises above "zero." We aren't there yet. Probably never will be.
    3
  2978. Nationalism is always bad, in any form. White and black nationalism are just different flavors of it. White nationalism is the major problem in the US though, given that the number of white nationalists is much higher than other forms, and they commit far more violent acts. That's why it keeps coming up.
    3
  2979.  @Josh93B93  At no point did Ukraine attack Russia. Not even once. Russia had no right to get involved. There never was any "Ukrainian aggression," the aggression was entirely Russian.
    3
  2980. This is misleading. Nobody was ordered to leave Gaza, they were only warned that attacks against terrorist targets would be occurring soon, so staying could be risky. They were also never told that "Rafah would be safe," only that it was not the current target of their actions at that time. Nowhere is safe within a warzone. You cannot start a war, hide your military assets among civilians, and then complain that the civilians lives are at risk. Any civilian casualties are entirely the responsibility of Hamas.
    3
  2981. I would think the most obvious "not a war goddess" reason was Athena. If Aphrodite was a primary goddess in Sparta, but Athena was the primary goddess of Athens, and Athena was more primarily associated with war already, and not coincidentally Athens tended to write the history, then it would only make sense to "castrate" the Spartan's war goddess to highlight their own. Likewise, the Spartans would embrace Aphrodite as a war goddess because that would give them a lady warrior to hang out with Ares, who is not the patron of Athens. It seems like a win/win for both cultures to play into their own narratives.
    3
  2982. Incorrect on several counts.
    3
  2983.  @TheBmco99  No, the infrastructure bill is about getting trillions of useful services to the American people. The corruption is the Republicans trying to obstruct it so that they can maintain the tax cuts for billionaires and subsidies for the fossil fuel industry.
    3
  2984. They didn't make any laws though.
    3
  2985.  @ThePhenom777  Meh, only on planes that were already going that way, it didn't cost the tax payers any money that wasn't already being spent. I find that MUCH less of a concern than Trump's transportation secretary flying her father around to make personal business deals on the side, or conservative mega-donors flying Supreme Court Justices on multi-million dollar luxury vacations.
    3
  2986.  @mrballoonpimp  Not really.
    3
  2987. Yeah, no Republicans.
    3
  2988. This was a great breakdown. I'm surprised nobody has taken advantage of necklaces for compute and battery functions. Putting everything on the goggles themselves make them inevitably heavy, and when they do add compute/battery, it tends to be on a belt back or something. I think the ideal formfactor would instead be a small pack that hangs right beneath the back of the neck, and another small pack balanced on the collarbone, and then a flexible rubberized link between them so that the whole set-up fits loosely around any sized head and drapes lightly across the shoulders, not putting pressure on the front or mack, but on each shoulder instead. Then it would only need a short cable to link it to the goggles, while massively boosting the performance of the system.
    3
  2989. But it's important to keep in mind that neither of those things is a serious issue right now, since they are both fine.
    3
  2990. It is completely impossible for government to function in the interests of the public without the ability to act in a more agile manner than Congress will ever be possible of doing. There absolutely must be bodies that are capable of acting quickly and decisively to fulfill their roles. If every time someone committed a crime, Congress would have to pass a law specifically saying that this specific person was not allowed to break that specific law, it would be impossible to convict anyone.
    3
  2991.  @hansrobzen6007  When "what is happening" is "people from other countries are moving into them?" Then yeah, it's a little messed up to steer against it.
    3
  2992. They should just pause the Football programs for a year or two until they balance their staffing budgets.
    3
  2993. Because he's imaginary.
    3
  2994.  @diegodlv1001  Not everyone at that concert was an adult, or even Israeli. Besides which, the Israelis actually have military bases, there are valid military attacks to take, and if they want to fight a just war, they could limit themselves to those targets. Israel has no option but to attack Hamas where they hide, because Hamas is unwilling to fight under Geneva Convention terms.
    3
  2995.  @zxh  But, again, the Jews in Europe were not at war. They were systematically murdered in a fashion that had nothing to do with war. They are unrelated ot any talk of war. The civilian deaths in Gaza are a tragedy, but they are a tragedy of Hamas' making, since they are the ones deliberately embedding among civilians, and making civilian casualties impossible to prevent. They are victims, not not of the IDF.
    3
  2996.  @diegodlv1001  Gaza has not been under Israeli control, it has, at most, been under blockade. Gaza has been under Hamas control. Also, the IDF did not go to war with Gaza, Gaza went to war with Israel. The IDF only responded to that war. As for false equivalencies, Israle has military bases. If you want to attack Israeli soldiers, you can attack them and hit zero civilians. If any civilian dies due to a Hamas attack, that was entirely deliberate on their part. In Gaza, it is impossible to target Hamas without also hitting civilians. If 90 children die to take out a Hamas operative, that is entirely because that Hamas operative wanted their deaths.
    3
  2997.  @yamakawa511  It's apparently fine. A decently charged EV can keep the heat comfortable for a couple of days. The tricky part would be if the battery did eventually die and needed a recharge, but hopefully roadside service companies will develop better methods of delivering such power quickly to their customers, like fast-charging trucks that can give you 20+ miles of range within fifteen minutes, or portable battery kits they could load into your car to give you that charge and you could return it later.
    3
  2998. Well if they ask him a question related to an ongoing criminal matter then of course he would plead the 5th. That's what it's there for.
    3
  2999. There aren't enough judges to handle it all. Also, a lot of these people don't have smartphones.
    3
  3000.  @SuppressedOfficial  No,m spoken like someone who understand more about math and economics than someone who believes that prices are determined directly by wages, somehow.
    3
  3001. Every day is trans day in Heaven. Every day is everyone's day in Heaven.
    3
  3002.  @danbooher5843 Sure, but trans people are as likely as anyone else to get in. More likely than those who tend to dislike them, at least.
    3
  3003. Lol, who do you think you're talking about here? That's like asking a fish to not swim.
    3
  3004.  @twatts1523  Lindsey is one of 100 Senators. The Attorney General is a serious position that requires serious people. Bill Barr was bad enough. I get your point though, you're speaking in opposites. "Intelligent" and "on the right side," got it. Lol.
    3
  3005. OMG, "man loves his son," what a scoop!
    3
  3006.  @jackmaher4466  A lot of the political polls are paid for by independent organizations though, they are just looking to see what the results are, not looking for any particular result.
    3
  3007. Then people who know more about guns should draft them to solve the problems that the people currently drafting them are trying to solve. But at least the people currently trying are trying, while those who do understand guns seem content with the US having such a higher murder rate than other countries with the same amount of "criminals," and "mentally ill," and whatever other reasons people want to blame.
    3
  3008.  @TheDustyPeaches  The US is an EXPORTER of illegal guns, not an importer, It would be impossible for foreign smugglers to get even 1% as many guns into the US as are already being produced and sold here. Not to mention that even if they could get them across the border, they would mostly be intercepted before actual criminals could get a hand on them. Most mass shooters would have NO chance of successfully finding a black market source for a gun, they just buy them from a gun store.
    3
  3009. Then stop making them right.
    3
  3010. They don't want to get Dominioned into oblivion. But also don't want to stop misleading their gullible viewers.
    3
  3011. I feel like anyone who reaches a certain level of celebrity (especially if they end up as a particular troll target for whatever reasons), should hire a "social media filter," someone who can read through their comments and other social media "trash," and sort out the interesting or useful comments from the awfulness. Trolling comments are much less harmful when they aren't about you personally.
    3
  3012.  @mindstalk  If you're counting suburbs as "metro areas" then you also have to concede that most "metro areas" by that definition are not walkable and cannot practically be made walkable, because they are too spread out for that. Walkability demands a certain level of density that suburbs cannot meet.
    3
  3013. Would it surprise you to learn that this has nothing at all to do with voter ID?
    3
  3014.  @seanmarkham6965  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    3
  3015.  @catfishredneck88  The cult wears red caps.
    3
  3016. Taking money from IRS agents DOES add to the debt. IRS agents are the ones that reduce the debt.
    3
  3017.  @AlleyKatPr0  There are methods of steel production being developed that use green energy, but one important thing to recognize is that even if there are some elements of model life that absolutely require some burning of fossil fuels, this does not apply to a large portion of what we currently burn them for, and if we can trim away all the optional uses for it, while continuing to do the more necessary things, that is still a massive improvement. "We can't stop all of it" is no argument against stopping most of it.
    3
  3018.  @IronFreee  Yes, there are plenty of ecologists asking for more nuclear, because it is less harmful to nature overall. The anti-nuclear movement is more aligned with anti-war movements than it is with ecological movements.
    3
  3019.  @llllllblodllllll  You don't switch off the coal power until you have alternate sources available to pick up the slack, but also, you DO invest in those alternate sources so that they ARE available to pick up the slack. Often, the coal lobby fights against efforts to rapidly develop alternative sources (at most they are willing to take baby steps in that direction, in the name of "helping").
    3
  3020. How so? They are as God made them, after all. It would be a mockery of God to deny them.
    3
  3021.  @johnteets2921  If God made someone Trans, it was because He did not want them to live as their assigned gender, nor to be naturally born into their experienced gender, He wanted them to go on the journey of experiencing both sides, because that creates a unique piece of His puzzle.
    3
  3022. Well I guess they should just start posting all our classified documents on Wikipedia now, to save her the stamps to Moscow.
    3
  3023. Maybe try that after expelling the insurrectionists and conspiracy nutters from the caucus?
    3
  3024.  @waynehendrix4806  What you're experiencing is called "the Dunning-Kruger" effect. Or before that came out, it was just called "self-absorption."
    3
  3025. I'd really like to see someone take one of those race cars where the "car" itself is mostly a pipe framework and the "body" of it is just a thin shell attached over it, and actually build such a shell with solid "golf ball dents" in it, and see how that car performs.
    3
  3026.  @Nurp-lp4vm  Any border bill is also an immigration bill, that is what those words mean.
    3
  3027. I wonder if it would be possible to reallocate California's control mechanisms, like by having less than ten "regions" within the state that each have a lot more control over all the smaller local governments within them. This would allow them to take precedence over projects that have significant regional benefits, but would in some way harm the smaller local interest. I assume this would at least take an amendment to the California constitution, but that shouldn't be impossible.
    3
  3028.  @YouTubeBinge-q1p  We were in more wars during Trump than we are now.
    3
  3029.  @YouTubeBinge-q1p  Yes, and that is why Putin must be stopped here, and not allowed to spread further.
    3
  3030.  @biderdoo  The inflation has nothing to do with tax policy. That has to do with rising costs due to the pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
    3
  3031.  @biderdoo  All of Harris' policies were explained during the DNC and are on her website. If you don't understand them, you just haven't been paying attention.
    3
  3032.  @biderdoo  If you'd read 1984, you would know it was talking about Fox News.
    3
  3033.  @biderdoo  "Accurately," you mean? Yeah, we're like that.
    3
  3034.  @Nola50  They really need to make it available to sue individual politicians rather than "the state." Suing the state just takes money out of taxpayers pockets, and the actual wrongdoers couldn't care less about that.
    3
  3035. How so? Is showing support for trans people an attack against everyone else somehow?
    3
  3036. Only if they interact with terrorists.
    3
  3037. It's really not complicated, you can easily tell followers of the anti-christ by the red cap across their brows, written with his sign, "MAGA," for "Our MAGA Don."
    3
  3038. Same, I want one, but don't want it tied to my Facebook.
    3
  3039. "Lilly is also deeply committed to maximizing profits to shareholders."
    3
  3040. You do understand that WSJ is a conservative-leaning publication, right?
    3
  3041.  @oPEaChzNCaKEo  Because it's faster, easier, your bags end up better organized, and you don't have to deal with people?
    3
  3042.  @audreyhep1274  Lol, no it won't. They're just stringing you along to collect more money for their campaigns. The longer they can convince people that "victory is right around the corner," the more money they can drain from their wallets. It's pretty pathetic, really.
    3
  3043. No, decades of Republican inaction on immigration reform is what led to this issue. It is a supply and demand problem, the demand for visas is too much higher than the supply of them for that to be sustainable.
    3
  3044. The US should come in to protect Ukraine's ability to ship things by sea. I agree that it would be unwise for the US to get involved with directly attacking Russian forces or entering Ukraine, but I think perhaps we could manage to "reverse blockade" Odessa ports, having them clear out the mines, and then US battleships of all sorts just flood the seas around Odessa, allowing shipping to come in and out freely, while making it very risky for Russian naval forces to get anywhere near there, and just make clear that all we are there to do is ensure that food supplies get in and out freely. I think that might be a manageable toeing of the line.
    3
  3045.  @LabGecko  It's called "Sous Vide" cooking.
    3
  3046.  @jimwerther  Well then how do you explain that he made the exact same "In what way was she being a hypocrite? " post in reply to every comment in this thread?
    3
  3047. Lol, yeah. "Oh, I'd better stockpile some rubles, never know when those might come in handy!" -said no one, because why would it ever?
    3
  3048. So far, no.
    3
  3049. No, we aren't on track to default any time soon. The current US debt is very managable compared to most countries. Japan's debt is at over 200%, and they're fine.
    3
  3050. Yeah, it's the basic problem of "the best time to plant a tree was yesterday, the second best time is today,: This is ideally something we already would have been working on for decades now, and it would be ready to go today, but we didn't, so we're only just getting started, and it will take time and effort, but it's necessary time and effort, so no point crying over split time.
    3
  3051. So? What does that have to do with anything?
    3
  3052. @ The name of the bill is prejudiced, and the contents of the bill do nothing to actually change the current law. What purpose does it actually serve?
    3
  3053. If he weren't a coward, he couldn't run on the GOP ticket.
    3
  3054. That's not in the bill though. So if that's their explanation, then it would make them sound stupid.
    3
  3055.  @rafaelalbertotorres8070  The lockdowns had less economic impact than the deaths caused by the pandemic spreading did.Countries where they had much more serious lockdown policies had much less overall economic hardships.
    3
  3056.  @rafaelalbertotorres8070  You're talking about states. All those states are inside the US, and have no checked border between them. You can't compare one state to another because there's basically nothing separating those results. It would be like comparing one side of a soup bowl to the other. Instead, compare countries that had significant lockdowns to those like the Us that half-assed it.
    3
  3057.  @sommebuddy  That is absolutely false. Canada's GDP has risen by over 20% since 2019. As for China, their economy is difficult to get accurate information on, but they had problems far more due to direct actions taken than due to their handling of the pandemic. Where are you getting your numbers from?
    3
  3058. Yup, unfortunately there are a LOT of stupid people out there who think this same way, and will cheerfully elect an authoritarian when given the chance. That's how it turned out in 1932 in Germany too.
    3
  3059. Simple, he doesn't. He is ONLY going for the craziest of the crazies. He might attract Bernie bros though, the type that claim to be Democrats but never vote for any rational Democratic candidate.
    3
  3060. Ah, yes, that was a tough boss. The Emrald and Ruby weapons were tougher though.
    3
  3061. I feel like it would lend a lot of support to your argument if you spent a fair amount of time discussing "anti-woke" historical revisionism, like Florida's attempts to silence discussion of slavery or other "white people can be bad sometimes" topics in schools, and attack on any well researched history that contradicts less well researched "history" as it was understood decades ago. As you say, when new research contradicts old, that is a valid reason for "revising" the history, and yet modern conservatives reject that concept, because the results conflict with the history they prefer. This is no less revisionism than the Cleopatra movie. If you spent a fair amount of time fighting Ron DeSantis and his policies, it would help put to rest any ideas that you have a one-sided agenda in all of this, but if you frame revisionism as mainly something of the left, then it does seem to be a right-wing position.
    3
  3062. "Red wave," lol. More like a red puddle. Someone spilled the MAGA kool aid, clean it up.
    3
  3063.  @WaterspoutsOfTheDeep  It's a walk-out, which is a dignified way to peacefully protest something one disagrees with. It is far better than those people in school board meetings across the country who chose instead to shout threats at the school boards over imagined "CRT" in their classes.
    3
  3064.  @Gyvie-marie  I saw some more on it, they think it isn't possible to do with a hack alone, that would at most cause a tiny fire or something, they had to have physically loaded the pagers.
    3
  3065. So the Houthi aren't attacking shipping in the Red Sea?
    3
  3066. Sadly, bigotry is more powerful than sports. Jesus would be disappointed in your choice. He loved all, including his LGBT brothers, sisters, and others.
    3
  3067. When one of the candidates is an existential threat to the future of the Republic, the other guy is allowed a stutter.
    3
  3068.  @CenterThePendulum  Guns would have done nothing to help the Jewish population in the 1930s, the Nazis would have come for them regardless. Many of them did have guns and fought back, it did not help them. The Ukrainian citizens did not need guns either, until Russia invaded them, at which point the government handed out guns to those willing to fight. That is all that is needed. In the extremely preposterous scenario in which a foreign power invades the US and the military and police are not sufficient to defend us, there would still be plenty of time for the government to hand out M-4s to everyone that might want one, there is NO need for civilians to have a gun in peacetime.
    3
  3069. It's better than Russia has done.
    3
  3070.  @MrMeow-iq7kq  As for why Russia would want debt, because a modern economy tends to work on a rolling debt, you spend the money you have, yes, but then also spend money that you borrow. It's the same reason even rich people put stuff on credit cards. As for why anyone would loan them that money, they weren't expecting Russia to be stupid enough to invade a neighbor like this, so it was a fairly safe investment at the time, and it's also believed that economic ties increase global stability, as you would have to be REALLY stupid to "pull a Putin" like this.
    3
  3071.  @itshardmakinganamefo  It would not be difficult for them to operate separately. They could just declare one small area to be their military base, all Hamas forces and equipment could move there and keep all civilians out. This is what EVERY modern army does. They choose not to do this, because they WANT the civilian casualties.
    3
  3072. Because of the wording of the bill.
    3
  3073. Her opponent is a bigger joke, at least.
    3
  3074.  @MrFfrenchh The world will continue to put up with it because they have no reason not to. Their own governments did similar things to the best of their ability, because that was the correct response to the problems before them. The countries that did not or could not fell further behind. Nobody has to be "forced" to deal with the US, they want to.
    3
  3075. It's because the accidents are only a tiny fraction of the total time spent on the road, and most drivers wouldn't experience anything like that personally. It's like watching footage of people dodging lightning strikes. It's impressive and scary, but not a reason to stay indoors all the time.
    3
  3076. "Couldn't we just load them into wood chippers? Wouldn't that work?" I assume that's his next argument.
    3
  3077. Once Putin leaves, yes.
    3
  3078. That's the problem, he trusts his listeners to be better people than they actually are. They believe themselves to be worthy of his respect, when they are not. It's like giving the car keys to your five year old and just expecting them to know what they are doing and respecting their choices.
    3
  3079.  @Mike-sp7zv  Nah.
    3
  3080.  @Mike-sp7zv  That is a great way to sum up the Joe Rogan podcast!
    3
  3081.  @Mike-sp7zv  Both. The podcast uncritically reinforces harmful biases in the audience, and the audience does a poor job of consuming information in a way that challenges their own biases, and the end result is a lot of people believing completely wrong things, certain that there is someone out there telling them that they are right. It's an echo chamber of stupid.
    3
  3082.  @DirtyRedMuzik  Yup, just shows what you can do when you start off with millions of dollars and the connections that can buy you, whether you personally have any talent at anything or not.
    3
  3083.  @SohLuki503  Again, you aren't making sense. What is "weird" here?
    3
  3084. Russia: "Oh, damn, we forgot to add 'Austria' to the shopping list! We'd better swoop them up while they're still on sale."
    3
  3085.  @Zetirix  If Republicans could be intellectually honest, Trump would never have made it past a primary.
    3
  3086. Most states do not have border walls.
    3
  3087.  @Kannot2023  Trying to micromanage which ways they're allowed to squeeze patients will just be a constant chase that will produce few results. The only real solutions involve ensuring that patient wellbeing comes before profit margins.
    3
  3088.  @namenloss730  Doctors actually kind of hate it here, because the for-profit hospitals and medical groups create horrible working conditions and the pay is not as competitive as it used to be for what you have to do.
    3
  3089.  @mikeevery2459  Who do you believe committed treason, and on what grounds? Outside of those involved in Jan 6th, of course.
    3
  3090.  @joesterling4299  While the dollar being the world's reserve currency certainly helps, it's not strictly necessary, as there are plenty of other countries that have far higher debt than the US and are doing fine. It would take a MASSIVE fall for the US to actually have to worry about debt as an existential threat.
    3
  3091.  @SF2036  I'm just the messenger, my own place in things is irrelevant to the larger facts. Besides what you call "fiscal irresponsibility" benefits the lower classes most of all.
    3
  3092.  @BocaoZ  I think that the more countries in the EU, the better, but it might make sense to have some structure to it so that the wildcards are balanced out a bit better.
    3
  3093. Yup, he's not an ideal candidate, but he is better than anyone who could win a Republican primary in 2024, so we'll go with that.
    3
  3094.  @sethrich2790  Trump says a dozen more consequential lies before breakfast. If lies are what bother you, then Walz would at least be the better of the available options.
    3
  3095.  @marlonestrella5054  "I did not have sexual relations with that couch."
    3
  3096. That's rich, considering the previous one. It's impossible for this to be the dumbest administration in the past five years.
    3
  3097.  @jenniferthomas8804  "Trolling" would be supporting these losers, when they already got their security clearances revoked.
    3
  3098. You do understand "I have a black friend" has never been a valid argument against someone being racist, right? Right?
    3
  3099.  @Budman_4044  Generally, yeah, although I expect that there are some that can't catch or transmit covid, which is why they are doing studies like this to figure out which are more likely. Remember though that these are wild animals captures out in the wilderness, and normally they wouldn't get close enough to humans for transmission to occur, but when you capture and pack a ton of different wild animals in an enclosed area, then of course various diseases will pass from one to the other.
    3
  3100.  @NameUnimportant  Raccoon dogs have nothing to do with crossbreeding. They are not at all related to American raccoons, they just look similar, which is why they are called that. "Raccoon dogs" are closer to foxes in their ancestry, while "normal raccoons" are closer to weasels and skunks. This happens a lot in nature, where two animals that have nothing to do with each other end up looking the same, because, as it turns out in this case, "wearing a mask" provides a competitive advantage, and both species got on board with that.
    3
  3101.  @maxrinehart4177  They should at least take their country back from Hezbollah if they want to live in a safe country.
    3
  3102. "Can we make totally normal things sound sinister by using rhetorical questions?"
    3
  3103.  @davehconner  I know that you don't see why we can't, but that doesn't change the fact that we can't. Even if we could get started producing stuff tomorrow, most products would cost 3-4 times as much in labor as if we got them produced overseas, and we don't currently have people trained to do the work, or factories set up to do the work, so that would take years and millions of dollars per product just to produce something that can be made better and cheaper overseas. Why? If there are better ways to do something, DO THAT. Why keep trying to pound a square peg into a round hole?
    3
  3104. The Palestinians were the ones that started this though, so if the nations of the earth have any obligation to act in defense, it would be in defense of Israel, right?
    3
  3105. What would digital currency have to do with anything? That seems like a dumb issue to lock in on.
    3
  3106.  @kevinpreston5590  There are all sorts of things that would help, to varying degrees. Ideally we would at least implement Swiss style gun laws, or even better Japanese style gun laws. The point would be to have far fewer guns in circulation, greatly reducing the opportunity for criminals to acquire them.
    3
  3107. Inflation is actually coming down. It had absolutely nothing to do with the debt ceiling. Whoever told you that the debt ceiling had anything to do with inflation was trying to control you through fear. You owe it to yourself to break free of their influences.
    3
  3108. I certainly am. If the idiots in the last administration had taken covid seriously from the start, we could have headed off a lot of this and wouldn't have to be so serious about it. Unfortunately, since they didn't, it's become a major public health threat, and it would be irresponsible to not treat it as one.
    3
  3109. Why would anyone care what Ron Desantis thinks about anything?
    3
  3110. That appeals to his base.
    3
  3111. I have no idea how she behaved behind the scenes, when the cameras were not on. All I do know is that when she was in front of the cameras, she did not often enough push back against Trump and the White House's formal positions on the pandemic, in the way that she should have. I understand that there are limits to what she could practically achieve in terms of policy decisions, but she could have more forcefully spoken out when they were peddling nonsense.
    3
  3112.  @d716agq  This is why someone in the industry needs to set up a competitor that competes on "ethics," and then everyone bullies their favorite artist into using them.
    3
  3113. Anyone that believes that Georgia's new voting laws makes it easier for all people to vote and for their votes to count needs to shut off Faux News and do some unbiased research to find out what is actually in the bill.
    3
  3114.  @thewho6749  The priority is US citizens, but we also have other things to do. We can't ignore the rest of the world, because the rest of the world won't ignore us.
    3
  3115. Putin finally gave up on Trump.
    3
  3116. And he did, so it all worked out.
    3
  3117. Who else would possibly be useful to ask?
    3
  3118. Because children enjoy the performance. Why not?
    3
  3119. That's easily solved. Any time you see someone with a Nazi flag in a rally you are a part of, you take their flag away and destroy it. If you let them keep marching next to you with a Nazi flag, then you are marching with Nazis.
    3
  3120. If you believe that this distinction makes his comments better, then you have some serious problems.
    3
  3121.  @Wreakmayhem  He made clear that he was willing to come in and testify, Coomer told him he wasn't interested, so he left. They can't argue he didn't attempt to comply.
    3
  3122. You mean Putin would have conquered Ukraine? Maybe, but then he just would have moved on to the next country on the list. That wouldn't solve anything.
    3
  3123. I assume it's “The foreigner who resides with you must be to you like a native citizen among you; so you must love him as yourself, because you were foreigners in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.”
    3
  3124. He's not the one to be asking. The ones with the hostages don't want to do a deal.
    3
  3125. Unlikely, they weren't attempting an insurrection at the time, so it shouldn't amount to much.
    3
  3126. Can we assume that Jim Jordan's "weaponizing government" committee will spend the next year or two on this one?
    3
  3127. It isn't his fault that the Supreme Court repealed the ban.
    3
  3128.  @Swordoftruth289  There are no NATO forces in Ukraine, only equipment. And Russia were the ones who invaded, so Ukraine is only defending themselves.
    3
  3129. That's what Tiktok has done to them.
    3
  3130. Which natural gas company do you work for?
    3
  3131. And if that person was drunk, and the "man" he was talking about was actually a bear.
    3
  3132. And that would matter if he were a concert performer. Good thing that in politics, votes are what matter, and he fell short of those, and in the justice system innocence matters, and he's never had that.
    3
  3133.  @Sneaky-Sneaky  Only for Putin.
    3
  3134. Well, most of the charges have been dismissed already, so we're most of the way there. I doubt this will go very much longer.
    3
  3135. Depends on how far back you go, I guess.
    3
  3136.  @WilcoxNotreallythere  None of that made any sense.
    3
  3137. That's because cars provide an essential service, whereas things like guns do not.
    3
  3138.  @JohnDoe-q9x  They prevent Russia from moving on to the next country on their list.
    3
  3139. If you think that your house is spending too much money, the solution is to spend less money, not to tell the banks that you've already spent too much and refuse to pay off your loans anymore.
    3
  3140.  @leahblake6748  No, unfortunately whether he declassified them or not, he was still obligated to turn them over to NARA, and it was still a crime that he did not. Also, if they contained defense information, that remains a crime whether they were classified or not. These are very serious crimes.
    3
  3141. It is the gun owner's fault though.
    3
  3142.  @christopherkwit3177  The part that it comes after "a well regulated militia," which would be the National Guard.
    3
  3143. Her statement was not incorrect though. The overwhelming evidence is in support of her position. Alito was just pointing out a few exceptions to that overwhelming consensus, which she acknowledged. It is still generally considered the best treatment overall, just not according to certain fringe reports.
    3
  3144. Your post would be accurate if you replaced "consumers" with "bigots." Their consumers are just fine and had no trouble with this ad campaign. The bigots are certainly triggered though.
    3
  3145. Nobody lost money betting on the craziness of Republicans.
    3
  3146. A Jury of their peers decided otherwise.
    3
  3147. I think city planners and managers need to focus on building "complete blocks." City blocks that within themselves contain a good balance of office buildings, retail, luxury housing, middle class family housing, and "minimum wage" housing. It needs to be designed in such a way that everyone who has a job on that block, is also capable of living on that block. Obviously inefficiencies in the process would mean that at any given time at least some portion of the people there would live or work outside of the block, but at least the potential would be there, and a large portion of residents could be expected to work like that, with many more only working a few blocks away from that. When you instead build situations where middle and lower tier employees have no option but to live long commutes outside of where the office is, it is just pointless inefficiency.
    3
  3148.  @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.
    3
  3149.  @jamiesanderson4052  Laughs in Delaware.
    3
  3150. Yeah, who wouldn't?
    3
  3151. The idea that work gives people meaning is just a way to justify people working for minimum wage. Get money from UBI, get "a sense of meaning" from video games.
    3
  3152.  @MrBasteDoNotWaste  Is growing an economy fast the most important thing?
    3
  3153.  @AJDIAS-ov1zd  No, I meant Neil Gorsuch's interpretation of the Constitution, which would mean that Trump would need to be removed form the ballot. Unless he changes his interpretation to suit this specific case, of course.
    3
  3154. I really think that they need to figure out some way to shift the "rules" of NATO, so that decisions can be less than unanimous, like a supermajority, or perhaps the agreement of a majority + the major players. Anything based on unanimity is just doomed to stagnancy.
    3
  3155. They did already, there was no credible basis for the claims, so no good reason to follow it up. Simple as that.
    3
  3156. Because the judge didn't prosecute, the prosecutor did, and there was a crime, there were victims, and there was financial loss.
    3
  3157.  @Jimboslice911  Nah, any losses in NYC's future come more from a shift away from office working and more toward work form home, which is leaving a lot of offices vacant. This case will have zero impact on New York's economy.
    3
  3158. Those would not be facts, they would be fictions. Learn the distinction.
    3
  3159. They are currently following that legal process. Once it's over, they are either allowed permanent residence or deported.
    3
  3160. Sadly, bigotry is more powerful than sports. . .
    3
  3161. Yeah, although to be fair, it is a bit of a myth that they would ignore fires elsewhere, mostly. Because for the reasons given in the video, ignoring a fire down the street from a home that is insured is just bad for business. Now being properly insured might get you priority treatment, but they would typically at least try to deal with any given fire that is at least vaguely nearby one of their customers.
    3
  3162.  @llryuujinll  There is no expansion needed to adequately cover the area in which the tax applies.
    2
  3163.  @llryuujinll  If they have a car, they can drive to a closer station with more frequent service.
    2
  3164.  @phillippac.7469  I love the "I know nothing so I'll demand you provide me with information rather than providing any information of my own to support my position." Nobody owes you free research Phillipa, read the bill yourself.
    2
  3165.  @georgewood7381  You'll catch up, eventually.
    2
  3166. @ It really doesn't take much to point out the fact that Trump lies constantly, right? It's not like anyone can dispute it without making a joke of themselves.
    2
  3167.  @lulu111593  The survival rate of base covid was 98.3%, IF you received proper medical treatment. Those odds go down significantly if the hospitals are overwhelmed by a wave, as is currently happening in several US states, or if you get the Delta variant, which is more contagious. And that is just considering the survival rate, there is also the damage beyond simple survival, like long term health complications from covid, or just the inconvenience of being in a hospital for weeks or months of painful recovery. Not to mention the strain that this is putting on healthcare workers, or the healthcare costs, or the fact that hospitals overloaded with covid patients then do a worse job at handling every other medical problem like cancer or heart attacks. Also, the sooner we get everyone vaccinated, the sooner we can get past covid. If lockdowns, mask wearing, and other restrictions bother you, then vaccination is the path out of that, and whining about how you don't like those things won't make them go away any sooner.
    2
  3168. They could always substitute Hamas ringleaders from Qatar.
    2
  3169. Obama's term limited, unfortunately.
    2
  3170. How did he put a grandmother in jail? He was never a judge or prosecutor.
    2
  3171.  @user-rv2zu1vb2c  And that's true, he did.
    2
  3172.  @bertrumgang78  Yeah, she seems like a piece of work.
    2
  3173. Because it's not about "who gets hurt worse." It's that they don't want to be hurt at all. It doesn't make them happy if they get hurt, just because Americans get hurt worse.
    2
  3174. He does if you want it to actually work. That's the whole point of the bill, to solve the underlying structural problems at the border, rather than just putting on a show that you're "tough on the border" without actually accomplishing anything.
    2
  3175.  @avenue8822  "decency" and "precedent" have nothing to do with each other. If someone commits indecent acts, then the "precedent" of "doing nothing" would prevent you from upholding decency by holding them accountable for their actions. When Republicans do wrong, Republicans need to hold them accountable. So far, they have shown a shameful unwillingness to do so. There is nothing respectable about that.
    2
  3176.  @gsfouroone5045  The things you are saying seem to be a list compiled by people to deceive you, but the important thing that you need to understand is that none of it is actually true. You need to look into all those claims you're making and find for yourself how each one differs from the actual reality of the situation. You owe it to yourself to not allow those who told you those lies to control your mind through ignorance.
    2
  3177. @ Exactly, it's completely unnecessary. If they commit crimes, they are already arrested and either jailed or deported.
    2
  3178.  @micheleholiday2669  This is typical Republican response, the idea of having an insurance company is all that matters, whether they actually provide insurance or not. They can take your money while times are good and pay back nothing you are owed, and that's fine by Republicans.
    2
  3179. YES! They are fighting to prevent things like this from happening again.
    2
  3180. TL;DR, "Public transit is great when you don't care about convenience!"
    2
  3181. @ We're talking about the US here, not Israel.
    2
  3182.  @J.L.Contracting  So you don't understand how to use Google. That's ok. Get an adult to help you out.
    2
  3183.  @gordon3186  Hitchens is a tool cited by trolls. Nothing more. Maybe less.
    2
  3184. Nobody would be upset if that was what this was about.
    2
  3185. Whoo hoo! USA, #1! We couldn't have done it without Trump and his minons!
    2
  3186.  @iudog5675  Nonsense.
    2
  3187. Because he wouldn't be able to pardon them after they had been charged, even if they had done nothing wrong.
    2
  3188. ​ @PabloTheThinker  The violent crime rate in LA was higher at any time before 2008 than it was at it's recent peak. In the mid 90s it was two to three times higher than during the 2020s. Btw, the LA homicide rate dropped by 16% over the last year too.
    2
  3189.  @danothemano1 No, he did not do the same thing. It wasn't even remotely as bad. People who say things like that just have no idea what they're talking about.
    2
  3190.  @atilax6452  Projection.
    2
  3191. The problems with comparisons to the Jewish ghettos is that it implies that the 1930 Jewish people WERE a serious threat to Germany, and that action did need to be taken to eliminate that threat, which is nowhere remotely close to the truth. This is instead a case where Gaza were the ones that brutally assaulted Israel, and the Israeli response is merely an act of self-defense to prevent further aggression from Gaza. The Gazans are the Germans in this scenario, not the Jews.
    2
  3192. Basically, Trump is just doing everything he can to bankrupt the US within only four years.
    2
  3193. I had a thought for what I think could be a really good mine clearing tool, based on a children's toy. The first step is to build a giant, mostly solid concrete cylinder, with a metal pipe in the axis, similar to a steam roller. Then, build a device that will spin up this cylinder to a high RPM, and then release it, sending it rolling forward up to hundreds of feet on stored rotational momentum. My hope would be that its large weight would set off mines that it passes over, and while it would destroy trees and damage crops and such, it wouldn't cause much permanent damage. If it did set off a mine, it wouldn't likely cause that much damage to the concrete roller, and that damage could be patched relatively cheaply. All the moving parts would stay safely back on the sidelines.
    2
  3194. I don't think he had any direct hand in it, but iy wouldn't shock me if one of the people he appointed to DoD was involved. I imagine that a lot of them were hand picked by the FSB.
    2
  3195. That doesn't make ti right, of course.
    2
  3196. @ I don't think that every worker deserves their job, but I do believe that workers should have some amount of due process and workplace protections. I believe that businesses should welcome this as it leads to a stronger workforce overall. I certainly think that what happened to these workers was harmful to America as a whole.
    2
  3197. Pelosi stepped down from leadership last year. With Biden, he's still doing a great job, so he's old, but it's fine.
    2
  3198.  @shaani7978  At being President, I mean. Every metric has been improving since his policies started taking effect.
    2
  3199. How so? Wouldn't they actually care about this issue on the actual impacts that it has?
    2
  3200. Yup, both are secure and accurate.
    2
  3201. He never gave her that position, because it did not exist. It's just a term some in the media used.
    2
  3202.  @unvaxedguy7198  Of course you can cheat in Florida, but only if you cheat in favor of Republicans, like the Republican state house did with redistricting.
    2
  3203.  @operator6013  It's BECAUSE I can see what is going on in this country that I support Democrats. If you support Republicans, then apparently you can’t see what’s going on in our country that’s on you, you are obviously tone deaf and trust the wrong people. You should fix that.
    2
  3204. He didn't lie, the Trump campaign did collude with Russia during the 2016 campaign. Manafort gave internal campaign documents to a Russian intelligence asset, and then Russian troll farms targeted voters based on that information. That is collusion. I know that Faux News keeps claiming that "there was no collusion," but THAT is the lie.
    2
  3205. Term limits has nothing to do with this. We just need better voters in Kentucky.
    2
  3206. We already do that. This is the result of that.
    2
  3207.  @quellyizagawdmarquel1745  Just because someone does not want to debate, does not mean that they think the other person is right. It just means that they don't believe they can change their mind about it. A "debate" in this case would solve absolutely nothing, even though Hotez is definitely on the right side of the discussion.
    2
  3208.  @Luvurenemy  Representative republics are a form of democracy (if they were not democratic, they could not be "republics," they would be "empires"). I think when you say "democracy" you are only referring to a direct democracy, which is only one subset of democracy. As for how the elections effect outcomes, you elect the representative most likely to pursue your goals. It is an imperfect system, as no representative is likely to cover all your positions perfectly, but it is better than any alternative form of leadership available. I agree though that socialist/capitalist" does not include a lot of other factors though, that was sort of my point, that people often point to failed "socialist" governments, in which the failures had very little to do directly with their economic structure, while ignoring that many "successful capitalist" nations are not that much less "socialist" than the failures, they just had better governments.
    2
  3209.  @Luvurenemy  Yes, there are many socialist countries out there that report relatively high GDP per capita AND higher public happiness than countries with less effective socialist measures. Compare the US attitudes toward their health care system to nations with more socialized, universal health care.
    2
  3210. Like, under a golf cart? Or an aging porn star? Or maybe an elephant?
    2
  3211. What does any of this have to do with tyranny?
    2
  3212.  @Jeeps_guns_bbq  Even the non-violent members of that crowd were actively participating in an insurrection attempt. That's just a matter of fact. As for the "deplorables" comment, that was said in private, not on the floor of congress. And no sitting US representatives called on any citizens to attack anyone, at least no Democrat ever did that.
    2
  3213.  @Tensolin01  Why do you take joy in the pain of others? Do you believe this is the impulse of a good person?
    2
  3214. That would end up with the worst outcome though. Why do that to yourselves?
    2
  3215.  @kh8655  It's sort of a mixed bag, really. I mean, the insurrectionists on the 6th couldn't have just taken over the government for themselves, but they might have been able to tip things in a way that would have allowed Trump to declare some form of plausible stolen government, basically breaking the law in ways that stupid people would not understand was breaking the law. It would have been impossible for the insurrectionists alone to seize power from the government, but the collusion of the insurrectionists, the Republicans in Congress, and the sitting President at the time could have come dangerously close to doing so, in a Reichstag-style coup. That has absolutely nothing to do with the 2nd amendment, it is just an abuse of convoluted legal arguments.
    2
  3216.  @MikeW165  "It's not a crime if you shout to the world that you're doing it." -DJT
    2
  3217. @Dasha-tk3mo And you believing that to be true, is the problem. So long as people continue to believe that, there will be conflict in the region. Alaska was once part of Russia too. Like Crimea, it not longer is, but apparently that does not stop Putin from taking things he does not own.
    2
  3218. She's not there to clean anything up, she's there to make it worse.
    2
  3219. In the words of a wise sage, "why not both?"
    2
  3220. ​ @lescobrandon8443  Your post shows extremely poor reading comprehension. That was not what he said at all.
    2
  3221.  @bradhaley8432  Here's what I think happened. I think you made a post, and then he made a post arguing with you, but for whatever reason it tripped a word filter or something and got blocked, so nobody else ever saw it. Then, when you did not immediately reply to his "sick burn," his feelings were hurt, so he had to seek out validation and beg for your attention, not realizing that you never saw the post, and not understanding that you likely would not care even if you had.
    2
  3222.  @n8spL8  That is inaccurate. Trump did a lot of things by executive order that were thrown out by the courts.
    2
  3223. Ok, except that's not at all true. So what about in the real world?
    2
  3224.  @thew4rrior5code  They are mostly second and third generations Russian immigrants who were doing jobs for American companies in Russia. This was a reasonable thing to do before the war started and Putin just started arresting random Americans for no good reason.
    2
  3225.  @ZonProductReviews  No, unless you are Alec Baldwin, an actor on a set that was handed a weapon he had no reason to believe would be dangerous to fire, because a licensed professional was in position to give him that guarantee.
    2
  3226. For every Justice League, there must be a Legion of Doom.
    2
  3227. Ok, so, doesn't "Twitter" no longer exist? I mean, the company that paid the lawyers, wasn't that company obliterated the instant Elon took over? So the Twitter that existed before Elon no longer exists to file a lawsuit, and the company that existed after that was not the one that paid the money, so they also could not sue. Now maybe Elon could sue the board or whoever for making the moves that they did, but this would have nothing to do with the law firm.
    2
  3228. Nah.
    2
  3229.  @vincentcalderone5956  Yes, sending our tax dollars is good the the US, because in the long run it's cheaper than the alternatives. Also, those tax dollars are spent mostly in the US to pay US workers to produce munitions.
    2
  3230. Why would she come to Fox? It wouldn't be a debate, it would be a Trump rally with Harris standing there to be mocked by the audience. Who in their right mind thinks that would be a good idea?
    2
  3231. No, the illegal part was when they tried to hide the money trail. That was when it became illegal.
    2
  3232. Yes. Don't be sheep, vote out Republicans.
    2
  3233.  @Mr.GameCrazy  If they tried it would be a purely partisan excersize on a purely political basis, because unlike the previous President, Biden has committed no crimes. No American would ever condone such a thing.
    2
  3234. Cartels profit when you make things harder and less legal, not when you make things less painful. Cartels made MASSIVE bank off Trump.
    2
  3235.  @ralphholiman7401  Having a budget and having an honest government are in no way in conflict with each other. Have a budget, yes. ALSO have an honest government, yes. Both problems solved.
    2
  3236.  first last  Nobody claimed they were good at being insurrectionists. Some members of that crowd were considerably better planned, trained, and coordinated though, and were just using the clowncar as a distraction.
    2
  3237.  XXII Elhazaroth Pagangrinder LXXXVIII  Nobody said they were good at it. That doesn't mean that they didn't try. You wouldn't need guns to capture and threaten members of Congress.
    2
  3238. Or people trying to get Elon's money.
    2
  3239.  @elderlymanpoormemorybullseye  Why do you believe rally sizes matter? If that was the defining factor, we would have President Taylor Swift right now.
    2
  3240.  @justinewhite-hadley3138  Inaccurate according to the reality of the situation. We aren't talking about matters of opinion here.
    2
  3241. The thing is, the future absolutely requires reigning in the rich. Otherwise, there is no hope, because they will be able to live 100% of their wealthy lifestyle with only 0.1% of the non-rich population to operate their machinery, and 99.9% of humanity will be absolutely redundant to them. Nobody will need your labor for any purpose, no matter how capable or hardworking you might be, at least when it comes to a modern economy. So "capital flight" needs to be REMOVED as an option, not just something we try to bribe the wealthy to not do. It needs to be completely illegal, everywhere in the world. We need to be wiling to fight wars against countries that provide tax havens, because it's that vital to humanity's future. Governments need to be able to say, without negotiation or compromise, "rich people, you are allowed to be rich, you are allowed to live in a life of extreme luxury, but you must also provide enough back down the chain to sustain everyone else, no exceptions." It's like the Reagan era trickle-down economics, only if it actually worked.
    2
  3242. This is not Putin's Russia. We do not do that here.
    2
  3243. This was so dumb. Their lockdowns were poorly managed, but this is even worse. They should have imported better covid vaccines from other countries, and they should have handled their lockdowns in ways that were less draconian.
    2
  3244. Why would you think that?
    2
  3245. "China gives out tons of free money to poor countries." Poor countries: "Yay!" "China tries to strongarm these countries into doing what they want and cede them territory." Poor countries: Surprised Pikachu face.
    2
  3246. Why wouldn't they target Crimea? They target all the other parts of Ukraine that Russia is currently occupying. It's the only way to get them to move.
    2
  3247.  @joez.2794  That sounds like a good idea, mileage-based taxes are probably the most reasonable way to handle it, since the amount of miles you drive is directly the cause of road wear.
    2
  3248.  @joez.2794  Toll roads are a hassle though, and unless they made every road a toll road, it would disproportionately impact some travelers over others. Toll roads are, at best, only of value when you need to pay off people using a specific road. It would make no sense as an overall policy. I don't think GPS trackers are necessary either though, they can just take your mileage and your state of residence gets a tax based on the miles traveled. The only real downside to that is that it would be a fairly significant lump sum on an annual or multi-year basis, and a lot of people are bad at budgeting, so it might be better to just charge a monthly rate of some kind and then refund it back if you report the mileage is under expectations.
    2
  3249.  @jimwerther  Your claim is absolutely untrue. There have been a few books removed from some libraries that were a bit more explicit than was appropriate, but the overwhelming majority of books cited as "pornographic" contained nothing sexual at all, just a basic existence of homosexual characters or something similarly harmless. My own district recently reviewed 35 books that were flagged by someone as being "unacceptable," and the review turns out only one of them actually worthy of removal. If groups like MfL were actually acting in good faith, and ONLY targeting legitimately pornographic material, then nobody would have a problem with that, the problem is that they use their witch hunt as an excuse to burn plenty of innocent books along the way.
    2
  3250. I've had an issue with my mouse where sometimes it just stops responding, but if I pick it up, flip the on-off switch on it, then it starts working again. I sometimes notice a hair or bit of dirt in the middle of my mouse area, and think perhaps it rolled over that and "got confused" and needed to be re-centered or something.
    2
  3251. Capitalism is one of the most efficient ways to produce economic growth and raw productivity, much like a paperclip AI is most efficient at turning the entire world into paperclips. What Capitalism is terrible at is producing the highest quality of life for the highest number of citizens, UNLESS it's combined with an extra-capitalist mechanism that provides economic rewards for socially conscious outcomes, such as the exact programs he claims are "the enemy." Basically, if you bribe companies to do the right thing, if you make it in their interests to do the right thing, then they will often do the right thing, but raw, "natural" systems do not give companies incentives to do the right thing, and so they won't.
    2
  3252.  @bobbafett1849  That's why Citizens United needs to be repealed. Unions won't fix anything so long as Citizens United remains in play.
    2
  3253.  @darlalove  No, I want a NON corrupt government to be in charge of fair standards, which is why that is what I vote for. Who would you prefer to be in charge, corrupt businesses or corrupt unions?
    2
  3254.  @mathieusimoneau3358  And yet the hockey stick graph proved accurate, and subsequent models also followed the general trends it presented, so however much you might want to quibble about methodology, he arrived at the accurate conclusion, right? Also, just in case you were unaware, the Roman warm period, medieval warm period, and little ice age had nothing to do with climate, as they were localized weather events. The global temperature over those periods was stable, and has been stable since ten thousand years ago. You're confusing "it's winter outside" for "the earth is cooling."
    2
  3255.  @sitnamkrad  What's wrong and what isn't is not a debatable thing, it is based on the facts of the matter. "Who decides it" is the data. If you mean "who gets to approve of the data," that would be the consensus of the field in question. Within modern history, this practice is right FAR more often than it is wrong, and it works out best to follow this practice than to treat all viewpoints as being equally valid. Also, the only way that climate change is sociopolitical is that some people have been convinced to ignore the science in the name of sociopolitical interests. There is no value in humoring these people. They are wrong, they should be treated as such.
    2
  3256. You can't investigate people for things that only happened inside Tucker Carlson's mind. Although I guess maybe we should, it's filthy in there.
    2
  3257.  @Gurra_Gforce  Yes, but what an insult that would be to have Flordian neighbors, right?
    2
  3258. If I were you, and someone had no idea who you were, I would just mention Tested. That's the current thing, promote it. :D The other stuff they can figure out on their own.
    2
  3259.  @wolveslair766  Also poor and middle class Americans who want to make America great again.
    2
  3260. The Democrats passed a bill last Spring. It's still on the table. When you say "almost all of government," you're only talking about Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans that allow him to be majority leader.
    2
  3261.  @jarad0074  Trump has spent hundreds of times more taxpayer money for his own benefit than all previous presidents combined. He doesn't need to take a salary when the government is pumping money into his businesses. It'd be like if a restaurant is claiming that the meal is free, so long as you dump your wallets in a bin as you enter, and don't mind them buying things off Amazon with your credit cards while you eat.
    2
  3262. Especially if you're listening the Republicans.
    2
  3263. If 50 Republicans weren't holding it up, we COULD get stuff done. Remove the Republicans, remove the problem. Balls in your court, red state voters.
    2
  3264. Every president asks congress for appropriations. It's the only way for them to get anything done, under the Constitution.
    2
  3265.  @Clinton-n7x  A stutter is not a mental disability, it's a language issue. It has nothing to do with decision making, only with speech.
    2
  3266.  @Clinton-n7x  That's not how stuttering works. You think anyone decides to stutter?
    2
  3267.  @thegrouchization  Yes, "finding a PS5" is basically a full time job at this point.
    2
  3268. Unfortunately, everything he's accused of doing is exactly why his audience likes him. Because they lack morals too.
    2
  3269. How does Karoline say such obviously untrue statements with such confidence?
    2
  3270. They are mad about this Republican getting hired. They already had plenty of OTHER Republicans on their network.
    2
  3271.  @wisdomrules8474  If you consider them "not Republicans," then have you considered that maybe it's your own definition that is flawed?
    2
  3272.  @wisdomrules8474 What does "Republican" mean to you, outside of allegiance to Trump?"
    2
  3273.  @Mortvent  No, I want to remove the guns, which is achievable and would reduce the murder rate significantly. I'm talking about actual, practical solutions here.
    2
  3274.  @pauld6967  So how many innocent people being "put down" on the assumption that they were guilty would you consider an "acceptable loss?" If you were accused of, say, shoplifting, even though you definitely did not do it, would you accept being "put down" for that crime as just the cost of a society in which people are allowed to have guns?
    2
  3275.  @colejones6325  Guns don't shoot themselves, but people shoot guns, so all we have to do is keep innocent guns away from people capable of pulling the trigger.
    2
  3276. I think you meant "buy cheese."
    2
  3277.  @avus-kw2f213  Onions could also work.
    2
  3278.  @Inkdisc  Dude, which of those top ten countries are you arguing is "basically like the US?" South Africa? Mexico? Columbia? Nigeria? Where do we place for murder rate within the G7? 1st. Now we are 4th among g20 countries, but don't you think we should be better than that? Don't you think we should be better than MORE than just 4 of the top 20 countries? Do you really take pride in just being "better than Russia?" Shouldn't that be the bare minimum expectation? Most of the G20 countries have a murder rate less than 1/6th of our own! There are nearly 200 countries in the world, "not in the bottom 10%" is NOT a point of pride here!
    2
  3279.  @Inkdisc  I'm saying that it's a poor point of comparison. If a country is a failed state, if everyone is in massive poverty and the government has basically given up, then of course their murder rate would spike. It should surprise no one if the US murder rate is at least better than theirs. But the US is a very wealthy, reasonably stable country. Our overall crime rate is more comparable to those among the other G7 nations, it is only our murder rate that is sharply different. We have roughly as many criminals, no more, no less, but we have far more murders because our criminals have better tools. Give me a list of ten countries in the world that_you_ believe are "most similar" to America, in a general sense. Countries in which the society and economy of those countries is the closest to America of any other countries on the planet. I'll give you hint, Venezuela and Honduras aren't even close. We'll see if you're capable of acting in good faith, based on the list you come up with.
    2
  3280.  @dr.burtgummerfan439  "Per the CDC, the average number of people killed in the US by AR15s is somewhere around 49 per year." I believe that number is outdated, it's become a much more popular weapon since the assault rifle ban ended. In any case, over 10,000 people are murdered by guns in general, and AR-15s are the most common weapon used in mass shooting events.
    2
  3281. Nope, Republicans are just that dumb.
    2
  3282.  @randallgoldapp9510  Yes you did. The rest of us voted for Biden.
    2
  3283.  King Charles ✔  Amazing, none of what you just said is true.
    2
  3284.  @randallgoldapp9510  I didn't vote for communism, I voted for Biden, who's a capitalist. And I didn't vote for anyone brain dead, I told you, I didn't vote for Trump.
    2
  3285. Too many people didn't take it seriously, so the curve never completely flattened. The measures people did take helped, but the idiots who refused to adapt ruined things for everyone else.
    2
  3286.  @JeffR---96  Not enough, unfortunately. There were still people rushing off to do whatever was so important, not wearing masks, not social distancing, yelling at anyone who told them otherwise, and spreading the virus around. In the countries were they did actually take it seriously, they got the rates down to practically nothing, but viruses spread exponentially, so once we got to millions of cases, it became practically impossible to control completely.
    2
  3287.  @JeffR---96  Exactly, and Sweden ended up a bit of a disaster, much worse off than their neighbors. They only seemed to be doing well at the very start because viruses don't just "happen" everywhere all at once, they spread around, and it hadn't really spread to Sweden until a few months in. Now though, Whew, what a mess.
    2
  3288.  @squarecracker  The UK is another case of a particularly botched management of the disease. Sweden is not the worst country for Covid in the world, but they are FAR from the best, way behind many of their neighbors. The point is, NOBODY should be looking at Sweden and going "see, they did it right," because they very clearly didn't. And mask definitely do have a significant impact, they just can't solve the problem entirely. Basically, masks, worn properly, reduce the distance that the virus can travel before settling. This is very important to reducing spread. But masks certainly aren't perfect, which is why policies of "well, just wear a mask and then go about your lives" also doesn't work. You still need to socially distance, you still need to avoid indoor spaces as much as possible, you still need to not touch around your eyes or nose without washing your hands first. Masks are like seatbelts. Yes, if you get into an accident then you still might die, but wearing a seatbelt massively reduces that fatality rate.
    2
  3289.  @squarecracker  That's not how pandemics work. They are not some rising tide that impacts all places identically unless you specifically act. They SPREAD, they move around from person to person, so there is no easy way to compare different areas. If everyone did nothing and just "allowed nature to take its course," then it would still grow fast in some areas and barely happen at all in others, due to things like population density, amount of travel between communities, etc. You can't say "well this one place had no restrictions and is much worse than a lot of similar countries, but still not the worst country in the world, so that must work." The evidence is that Sweden would be in a much better place across the board if they had taken the same precautions as their neighbors. That is the takeaway.
    2
  3290.  @squarecracker  But Sweden is not a control group. They are just one example of a method being tested. They might serve as one control sample for Scandinavian countries, in which case the lesson is "don't be like those idiots, they had TWENTY TIMES as many dead as their closest neighbor," but you can't just compare them to wildly different countries and expect the results to make a lot of sense. The bottom line is that restrictions have had a MASSIVE positive impact, and in cases where they have not completely solved the problem, that was more due to poor and lazy implementation, like starting lockdowns too late, ending them too early, and restricting some things while ignoring other major vectors, allowing the virus to spread around the edges of the restrictions. There is nothing about Florida that would indicate that they would not be doing a LOT better than they have been if they had also had better lockdown and mask policies in place.
    2
  3291. I imagine there are a TON of differences, since they have a very different core system in play.
    2
  3292. You mean that the Florida court no longer represents our interests and has overstepped its legal abilities.
    2
  3293.  @patriciakeith6755  Attending a conference is not the same thing as the right to vote. The NRA would not allow anyone to attend their conference while armed, does that mean that gun ownership should be made illegal?
    2
  3294.  @paulbentley1705  It's not about voter ID. Why do you think this has anything to do with voter ID?
    2
  3295.  @nathanenfinger9559  I didn't say anything about voter IDs. Why are you insinuating that minorities are too stupid to get one? This is not about voter ID. And how does CTR factor into this in any way?
    2
  3296.  @kengollon9537  Explain how what is?
    2
  3297.  so what?  It would be nice if Republicans care more about the good of the country they live in than they do about "triggering libs." But unfortunately that is not the world we live in, so until then there's no option but to vote Democrat.
    2
  3298.  @PatrickStar-gm5mg  That's not what the Texas bill actually does though. Maybe you should actually read into it?
    2
  3299.  @PatrickStar-gm5mg  so you weren't aware of the removal of drive-in and 24 hour voting drives that increased voter turnout in the 2020 election? How does that increase vote integrity? It's not like any of those options were any less secure than standard walk-in, bank-hours voting.
    2
  3300.  @2000_mules  A filibuster can be a good thing, when it's used in America's interests. It's only abused when it's used to prevent America's interests. The current situation in the Federal Senate is a great example of the latter.
    2
  3301.  @2000_mules  No, it is wrong only when only one of the parties has an agenda that moves America forward, and the other part has no agenda beyond preventing that from happening. It is disingenuous to try and pretend that the Republican party have a platform beyond obstruction at this point. That is the point of all these voter obstruction methods. They understand that they can't win the majority vote, so they are trying to make sure that they can prevent as many people from voting as possible, and to make their votes count for as little as possible. If they felt that the majority supported them, they wouldn't need to do any of this.
    2
  3302. What world are you living in? Narnia?
    2
  3303.  @Josh_D78  That's not how any of this works.
    2
  3304. Also morals.
    2
  3305. Yup, Putin needs to stop immediately.
    2
  3306.  @Rathkryn  Yeah, but the people who would burn a flag are not the same people who are complaining about Alito flying it upside down. Those are different people.
    2
  3307.  @bmass0828  "bald assertions" is also grammatically appropriate in English, it's equivalent to saying it is "naked," or without context.
    2
  3308. I'm really tired of the argument "you guys had 100 years head start, so we get to burn coal as long as we want to catch up." Nobody got any head start. Everyone had the SAME starting line, and it was tens of thousands of years ago. If any country was less powerful than the US 100 years ago, then that's because they failed at a much earlier date to keep up. It's like if you have a sports game, and the game starts, and one team is really racking up the score, getting dozens of points ahead of their opponents, while the other team just sits there eating the grass. Then, after half time, the other team actually starts to play, and is doing pretty decently, and starts gaining points, but declares that the refs should allow them to cheat so that they can catch their score up to the other team's. No, that's not how it works. It was their fault that they didn't bother to play in the first half, nobody owes them anything in return for that.
    2
  3309. I don't know, she seems like she would have caught the OG trilogy growing up.
    2
  3310. What I don't get is, why do people act like America taking over America is some huge deal, while that is also how every other country in world history took over their own countries too? Like France is what France is because of thousands of years of wars back and forth with neighbors, in which they conquered and were conquered. One country moves in, conquers their neighbor, and claims their land as their own, it's just how it worked for thousands of years. The way the US did it was just more peaceful than other methods, using money instead of violence, unless the conquered peoples chose violence. I mean, hell, if the indigenous Americans wanted their neighbor's lands, they wouldn't even offer them any money for it, they would just slaughter the people who lived there and claim it. National borders didn't even begin to stabilize until around WWII, when the nations of the world decided "ok, we can't keep doing this, let's just stick to the borders we've got here."
    2
  3311. But it's important to keep in mind that he wasn't a gang member at all, MS13 or otherwise.
    2
  3312. You got the names mixed up there.
    2
  3313.  @SirGriefALot  The investigators. various congressional committees and the FBI, anyone who might reasonably investigate such a situation.
    2
  3314. Exactly. If they'd had the same laws in the Us, the death toll would have been so much higher.
    2
  3315. It's easy to grift on Republicans because they are dumb.
    2
  3316.  @ghenttoo  Who knew that social distancing, record high flu vaccine numbers, and mask wearing could reduce the spread of influenza? Oh. Right. Everyone.
    2
  3317.  @ghenttoo  That is not a sign of bravery, it's a sign of ignorance. Announcing that you're going to walk around without a mask on is no different than leaving a bar and announcing that you're going to drive home wasted. There is no virtue in it.
    2
  3318.  @davidbarr4065  What are you talking about? Of course these measures have had an impact on covid. Without them there would have been around 2m deaths by now in the US rather than "just" 400K. The measures the US has taken haven't been good enough, we could have done more and saved thousands of lives by doing so, but they were at least better than nothing.
    2
  3319.  @michaelkennedy6415  Science journalism is hard, and very few places understand the topic well enough to speak on them. The fact remains, society in general has been improving over time, not declining, MAGA excepted.
    2
  3320.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  He's a historical figure from over 2000 years ago. But in his lifetime, he conquered more of the world than any other general in human history.
    2
  3321.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  Malaria.
    2
  3322. It's not an "all or nothing" thing, taking one breath without a mask on will not necessarily infect you. The point is to wear a mask as often as you can, so that there is the minimum amount of time in which the virus might spread to you (or from you).
    2
  3323.  @daleemrick9816  Walz is correct though, he did achieve that rank, he just retired before it went fully into effect. It's semantics to argue about it.
    2
  3324. Exactly, that is why he does not need to debate.
    2
  3325. Most politicians are fine, Putin is something different.
    2
  3326.  @007h13  I don't justify all of the US's actions overseas, I think previous administrations made some serious mistakes, but none of them were AS severe as Russia's. They are not the same.
    2
  3327.  @007h13  I don't think Australia is that old.
    2
  3328. Man, the Church of Satan will have so much fun with this one.
    2
  3329. When did anyone ever elect Hunter Biden, and why do the right care so much about him? It's not like he took two BILLION dollars from the Saudis or anything.
    2
  3330. What did they lie about?
    2
  3331. ​ @jnstruMENTAL  Exactly. Trump said that, and the media accurately reported that he said that. They also accurately reported that a ton of people involved in his past and current campaigns were personally involved in Project 2025, and now that he's been elected, he's been appointing them to high profile positions, so the media was right that he was lying about not endorsing Project 2025.
    2
  3332.  @NWstockoperator  Trump raised the standard deduction, but also raised taxes elsewhere in the plan, so that the benefits basically offset. It's like when grocery stores put something out at half price but then double the base price from what it had been.
    2
  3333.  @brocklastname6682  It would have kept him from losing to the relief pitcher.
    2
  3334. It just means there are no other cases where there was so much evidence of wrongdoing, so don't expect more of these. It's not often that you have such blatant scam artists at work.
    2
  3335.  @MsDancingrannie  It is a big ask to expect any Republicans to behave like grown-ups, but there are fifty of them, and I like those odds.
    2
  3336. Because there are more than 20 times as many people murdered using guns each year as using cars. I mean, if there are as many incidents like that one in Brownsville as there are mass shootings, then maybe we will have to do more about that too, but so far, it's an outlier.
    2
  3337.  @gold_ram_5.780  Because his tariffs were relatively minor at that time, less than we currently have under Biden, and there hadn't yet been an international pandemic.Prices did go up for all goods that involved the things he was specifically tariffing though. His current plans involve MUCH larger tariffs.
    2
  3338.  @devilghostface8798  All that tells me is that you aren't a medical professional, because they've seen plenty. Maybe trust them to know more about medicine than you?
    2
  3339. Because they are always the victim, no matter who they are hurting at the time.
    2
  3340. A common meme from the "ignorance sphere" is "well what about when the sun isn't out and the wind isn't blowing? Lol." This. This is what you do. You build giant batteries using materials that are most efficient at slow, long term storage, you store up the energy when it's in excess, and you spend it back out when it's in drought. A future power grid will be like a series of dams (including, in some cases, a series of dams), in that the "upper reservoir" will be the most stable, slowest forms of energy storage, and rarely even see use, and then bellow that in the chain you have medium speed batteries designed to kick in when the faster batteries are getting strained, and then below that the faster batteries that can activate instantly, and then of course the renewable sources that will power things directly whenever that is an option. Each flows into the next as needed.
    2
  3341.  @electrolytics  Of course the current system requires storage. Have you ever seen "coal," or "oil," or "natural gas tanks?" What do you think those are? And these "impossibly large storage cells" aren't really that big, for the most part they would be smaller than the power plants that they would be taking over for.
    2
  3342. "Are you saying that OAN is not a credible news source?" . . ."YES!"
    2
  3343.  @graceneilitz7661  Well, in my version, I did include anyone who had been living on the island for generations already, not just pre-colonial populations, so there would be white and Asian people included. Also, this is not denying people citizenship, it is not denying anyone things that they would get on the mainland, it's only denying them access to a bonus program designed to allow parity for the native population. Basically if you have a decent job and make money, then you'll be fine either way, but this would be intended to allow the native population to have price parity with people living in, say, Alabama, even if the cost of living on the islands massively increases. How would you do it?
    2
  3344. +rancid pitts "Socialism lite" is socialism. That's what socialists mean when they say "socialism." I think when you say "socialism," you mean what everyone else calls "communism," which is something else entirely. This seems especially apparent since you listed a bunch of communist countries. Communism is different than socialism in two very fundamental ways. First, it nationalizes all industry, which is not a part of socialism, and second, it's typically paired with a fascist government, which treats its citizens as chattel. Socialism is about the genuine welfare of the people, not about the power fo those in charge, so it typically works best with democratic governments that can hold the leadership to account.
    2
  3345.  @madpistol  Ten years ago, $30K was the average, not the premium market.
    2
  3346. Yeah, but guns are the tool which allows a sinner to kill more easily.
    2
  3347. Ironically, he's a better social influencer than he is a tech innovator. Most of what he attempts fails completely, it's just that when you keep throwing enough money at a problem, you get the occasional successes, and those are all people remember.
    2
  3348.  @Absaalookemensch  This discussion isn't about surgery. Also it's a misunderstanding of how those surgeries work.
    2
  3349. That has to be a question during the VP debate.
    2
  3350.  @leahblake6748  Trump had no authority to have them though.
    2
  3351. No, that was not the problem.
    2
  3352.  @mikeauxbig  What would that have to do with anything? Who was disputing that?
    2
  3353. Take a breath McInaney, you aren't paid by the lie. Well, you probably are, but still. . .
    2
  3354. I don't see the argument that this "myth" has somehow "harmed human history." I mean, the "social credit" system you described might work fine on very small scales, and still do in the modern era on such small scales, but there is zero way to make this practical on any scale larger than a Dunbar's Number situation. If you have any community larger than a couple hundred people, you need some sort of hard metric by which to make fair transactions with people you do not know or trust. You can't just give a stranger things in hopes that eventually you will get back an equivalent return, you need to have something you can offer that has a measurable value.
    2
  3355. and also AR-15s.
    2
  3356.  @kaijohnson5033  Exactly, nothing is perfectly safe, so the CDC's position is to take the stance that leads to the MOST safety available within reasonable guidelines. If they push way too hard then it would cause more damage than it helps, but I don't think asking people to wear masks in public is some sort of "bridge too far." I mean, even small children got over that pretty quick. It's the larger children, 18-80, that we have to worry about. Anyway, the size of an airport is irrelevant, again, it's the size of the plane that would be relevant here, and a plane is a much smaller enclosed space than a grocery store. And as I also pointed out, the mix of people from all over the country is also a factor, since covid doesn't just magically appear, it transmits from person to person.
    2
  3357.  @kaijohnson5033  You're assuming people behave rationally at all time. People do not. I mean, if you could accurately track exactly how the virus passes from one person to the next, and you could tell someone "you know, when you took your mask off for three minutes on this day, you infected two people, who went on to infect a chain of 20,000 people, of which 2,000 were hospitalized and 10 died, and here are their names and pictures of their grieving loved ones, do you wish that maybe you'd kept the mask on?" Most people probably would think that keeping the mask on was a good idea, but the virus is way too abstract, it's impossible to tell exactly how many deaths you are personally responsible for, so people put it out of their mind. Also, when something carries a non-zero, non-100% risk, then "if it can't be zero then it may as well be anything" is not a rational response. People CAN choose to take on SOME risk, while still taking reasonable precautions to MINIMIZE that risk as best they can. If people want to get on a plane because they believe that to be of value to them, they can do that, it does not absolve anyone of taking what reasonable steps they can to reduce risks. If some people are narcissistic sociopaths who only care about themselves, then that is unavoidable, but this is why we make rules, to say "ok, you don't care whether other people live or die if it represents even a minor inconvenience to you, you still need to follow the rule if you want the privilege of riding an airplane."
    2
  3358. Typically you cannot collect unemployment if you were fired for cause. If you fail a drug test, for example. This would be similar.
    2
  3359.  @johnchristman750  The 14th Amendment does not say that it is up for congress to decide, it says that congress CAN make laws to support this amendment where necessary, but basic enforcement of it is carried out by the states, given that their elections are a state matter. The 14th has been used at several times to disqualify people form office, and in NONE of these cases was it "for congress to decide." They were ALL decided by judges and state election officials. You are the one making selective reading of the amendment.
    2
  3360.  @tamaraspencer4024  But they were correct in these cases, so what is the problem?
    2
  3361.  @joshbobst1629  Whether you agree with US policy or not, it is illegal under US and international law for Iran to trade their oil, and the US had the right to seize those ships for violating that ban. This cannot be compared to the actions by the Houthis. Also, "sanctions" and "piracy" are two completely unrelated things. And yes, the Houthis say that the shipping they are attacking is related to the war in Gaza, but they are completely wrong about that, so what do their claims have to do with anything?
    2
  3362.  @joshbobst1629  No, "sanctions" and "piracy" are two completely different things. How can you not understand the difference between seizing a vessel full of contraband material, verse firing a missile at a vessel that has broken no laws? You are making yourself seem nonsensical. And again, the ships the Houthis have been attacking have NOTHING to do with Israel. Why do you think Israel is involved?
    2
  3363. @ If you pay someone to do a job, then you are entitled to them doing it well. But if that job doesn't need someone else to do it, then you shouldn't be required to pay someone to do it. Like if all that existed was those mechanical push mowers, and I might hire someone to mow my lawn with one of those, but then they invent a riding mower, and I feel comfortable using my own riding mower to do the job, I shouldn't be required to hire someone else to do it anyway.
    2
  3364. I don't think he is. Besides, that guy's busy napping in court lately.
    2
  3365.  @SuperOdyss  Nope, the FDA follo3wed the procedures. The whole case rests on absolute fantasy, which is why it's getting laughed at by anyone serious. SCOTUS took the case because they are in damage control for the harm they've caused with previous rulings.
    2
  3366.  @SuperOdyss  If they hadn't overturned the Roe precedent, this case never would have happened. Also, the 10th has nothing to do with this.
    2
  3367.  @blargblarg5657  Then you weren't using it to shoot people, just like a rein isn't going to whip anyone unless you use it to whip people.
    2
  3368. No, whatever crazy thing he does, they will rationalize it as something they always wanted in the first place. They always do.
    2
  3369.  @steviedfromtheflyovercount4739  Yes, there is a reason for that. It's called "a joke."
    2
  3370.  @kimberlyaustin6677  Having a Michigan drivers' license does not mean that you're allowed to vote. You would still need to be a legal citizen to be given a ballot.
    2
  3371. An awful lot of people are putting an awful lot of effort into trolling reality lately. . .
    2
  3372. @CNPC News How so?
    2
  3373. You need to find a better source of covid information, one that doesn't get BASIC stuff wrong like claiming that only 3.4% of excess deaths were covid, when the stats he was SHOWING said otherwise. The stats he was showing made clear that it was 3.4% of TOTAL deaths, 3.4% of 10,000, which is 350, or almost HALF of the excess deaths. Mixing up 3.4% and 50% is a pretty big thing to miss.
    2
  3374. Learn what? "Endorse my bigotry or lose me as a customer?" I don't think any companies care about that message. They are better off without you.
    2
  3375.  @Donny_Double_Dip  Oh, one lesson you really need to learn quick is that "Youtube comment sections" are no judge of what is and is not "popular" in general. Just because a lot of commenters are full of impotency rage does not mean that this is how the general public feels about something. Again, Bud wasn't doing anything "political," they just put a popular celebrity in an ad spot. The celebrity happened to be trans, but that does not entitle the bigots to be upset about that. Would you be similarly offended if they put a black person in an ad? Or a Catholic? You can't allow bigots to dictate your actions, that gives them more power than they deserve. Ignore them.
    2
  3376.  @jimlewis2395  Meanwhile, Trump has never laughed.
    2
  3377.  @samename3926  She will debate him. She will be there on September 10th whether he has the stones to show up or not.
    2
  3378.  @DonnaHeck-zm3we  Exactly.
    2
  3379.  @NG-cf7zh  Doing social experiments on unwitting human subjects is cruel.
    2
  3380.  @thematic3893  My boots would not help them. My support can.
    2
  3381.  @primitiveaccommodation  You may not have heard, Russia invaded Ukraine. They are the only aggressor in this, and it was entirely their own decision to do so.
    2
  3382.  @primitiveaccommodation  I don't view you as an honest broker. I do not trust the validity of anything that you choose to show me. What you consider "proof" of your position is merely fantasy. That you choose to believe it is not evidence of anything. Answer me this though, can you agree that more people have died due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine than have died to ANY incidents you might imagine leading up to that war?
    2
  3383. Clearly what happened with that Garuda statue is that someone sprayed it with a bunch of pink goo, and then plugged an NES controller into it.
    2
  3384. Only autocrats who want to defend their own shady practices by promoting the US system as flawed. The rest of the world saw that the American Election system was working fine.
    2
  3385. The conclusions on this video were a bit ridiculous. It compared the employment cost of a fast food worker to the average rent in one of the most expensive parts of the country. Yeah, maybe robot restaurants are great for San Fran, but what about in places where housing costs are much cheaper, and a fast food salary is at least a living wage? Not to mention, this was a very boutique, quirky place making fancy, "made fresh" burgers. That is not the concern, this will not cost significant jobs. What will cost those jobs is when McDonalds is doing this, and they will but turning out $1 burgers, using ingredients that are prepared at a single factory in their distribution area, and the only humans on site at the restaurant are a manager and maybe 1-2 quality control people, instead of the half dozen or more employees it would normally take to fill the same orders. I'm actually ok with this, I think that if a robot can do a job, then a robot should do that job, but it will lead to massive unemployment over the coming decades, and we as a society need to be prepared for that future, for rebuilding how our society functions in a world where 95% of people are unemployed, including Verge vloggers.
    2
  3386.  @RSTactical  Conservatives are so gullible.
    2
  3387.  @shoedogodo_5621  But Taiwan has been independent since 1949l it is no longer a part of China. That is the point. Most of Europe at SOME point belonged to France or Germany or Italy or Sweden, and now is independent of them, but that does not mean that those countries could unilaterally assert their control over those regions TODAY.
    2
  3388. Well of course, he does what he's paid to do.
    2
  3389. I think you got that a little backward, Trump has proven that he IS that.
    2
  3390.  @dantheman6607  No evidence was presented to them. Several of his lawyers were disbarred, and could have presented this "evidence" in their defense, but were unwilling to do so, because providing flase evidence is another crime.
    2
  3391. Kevin McCarthy has no credibility. He burned it all for the sake of power.
    2
  3392. That was responsible of them. This will be a problem.
    2
  3393.  @basilihuoma5300  You seem to have an unhealthy attachment to a car company. They are not your friend.
    2
  3394.  @basilihuoma5300  You don't need to own a Tesla yourself to have an unhealthy fixation about the company. That really makes it worse.
    2
  3395.  @basilihuoma5300  Is that what your script says? The media isn't reporting on crashes by "car brand," they are reporting on how a specific car technology seems to be doing a poor job. If, say, Ford had some new anti-lock brake mechanism, and it was directly responsible for an abnormally high number of crashes, you can bet the media would report on that, as is their job. Accidents happen every day, many more accidents than usual are occurring due to Tesla's particular brand of self-driving mechanism, and this does not appear to be happening at the same rate with other car companies.
    2
  3396.  @Oswald_Thatendswald  That has nothing to do with the topic at hand, this was about a woman being told to use the men's room because she's a minority.
    2
  3397.  @mowich7  There are also ladies rooms though, which this person should also be free to use. Unisex bathrooms might not always be conveniently located.
    2
  3398.  @Oswald_Thatendswald  If she wasn't a minority woman, she would be allowed to use the ladies room like any other woman. She is being discriminated against because she's a minority. We aren't talking about nay men here. Also, this has nothing to do with women's safety, because no women's safety was at risk here. We were not talking about Matt Gaetz being allowed in.
    2
  3399.  @0strich67  If the former guy had handled the pandemic better, then hundreds of thousand more Americans would be in the workforce today, and the economy would not have sunk as low as it had. The shutdowns were necessary due to the previous administration's failure to give any alternative to them.
    2
  3400. It's been documented that some things were said by Hunter, but not that any of that involved crimes.
    2
  3401. Restricting guns also stops gun crimes. This has been well proven.
    2
  3402.  @Buzz420  Harris has more voters though, and that's how we determine electoral outcomes in America.
    2
  3403.  @KeepItReal33  Neither Harris nor Walz support government ownership of the means of production or distribution, at least not more than we already have.
    2
  3404.  @brian_martinez870  He's "a socialist" because it's a buzzword they find scary, not because of any of his actual policies or political stances.
    2
  3405. No, because it impacts US citizens. States are subject to the Constitution.
    2
  3406. "Why don't we just build a community in which you pay a subscription for safety and health and public services?" Surprise government!
    2
  3407.  @JeffF-gc3df  It's the same guy!
    2
  3408.  @AndyDrake-FOOKYT  That is not what a gag order means, no.
    2
  3409. That you think that is a condemnation of your education.
    2
  3410. Hooray! Kevin's House achieves the bare minimum for fulfilling their oaths of office!
    2
  3411.  @juliethernandez2742  If they'd like to send actual gold, then I imagine the banks would be willing to take it. They will just not accept Russian monopoly money.
    2
  3412.  @Spetsop  The sanctions have frozen Russia's ability to make payments in dollars. Russia wants to pay in rubles instead because they want to pretend that the ruble is still a valid currency, but nobody else agrees on that. This is all the fault of Putin invading his neighbor though, and the way to resolve it is to stop invading their neighbor and put everything back how they found it.
    2
  3413.  @Qthekat1984  They didn't change any laws for Trump.
    2
  3414.  @marchebert9813  Redfield claiming that Fauci had excluded him from that discussion.
    2
  3415.  @marchebert9813  What about it? That's a fiction. There was no effort to "shut down dissenting voices," unless you're referring to combating actual misinformation that was being spread at the time, which is basically one of the primary jobs of the CDC.
    2
  3416.  @maniac2079  Yup. Unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there deranged enough to believe in Trump, even today.
    2
  3417.  @robbsclassics  Well, you said that you'd "got right more than you'd got wrong," and then gave a laundry list of the things you'd gotten wrong. ?I think what we have here is a combination of confirmation bias and Dunning-Kruger at work. You think you know more than you actually know, and a lot of what you think you know turns out to be complete gibberish to anyone who actually knows things, but you can't understand that because you lack the resources to do so. I would just recommend finding better sources of information, because whatever you've been using, clearly has failed you.
    2
  3418.  @mcb00  They were not.
    2
  3419. So what he's saying, is that he does not believe that the racist things he's said are racist. This is how most racist people work.
    2
  3420.  @lilybond6485  He wasn't making some vague hypothetical claim, he was claiming that the recent pandemic was deliberately targeted to avoid certain ethnic groups, which is nonsense. If he were merely speaking in hypotheticals, then it would be an entirely different story.
    2
  3421. Ben Franklin was 70 when the Declaration of Independence was signed, and served as the US ambassador to France until he was 79. Jefferson was in his 30s when he wrote the Declaration of Independence, 58 when he took office as President. Washington was 44 when the Declaration was signed, and 57 when he took office. And this was a time when life expectancy was much shorter. Also, the youngest people to sign the Declaration were two 26 year olds.
    2
  3422. I'll slow my meat consumption the instant that they are producing competitive vegetarian products that taste 100% like meat. We're getting there, but we aren't there yet.
    2
  3423. Some people still use horse and buggy.
    2
  3424.  @russell-gt1dy  No, I just grew up in the same area with people who still used horse and buggy, just like ICE car drivers fifty years from now.
    2
  3425.  @ChasingDifferentAdventures  Who lied to you that what you just said was true?
    2
  3426. They've got to lock in all these losses for the state before they all get kicked out next fall.
    2
  3427.  @hellbillyBob  You have too low an opinion of the people of Ohio. They will never stand for this sort of overreach.
    2
  3428. How would this hurt Biden?
    2
  3429. New York taxpayers.
    2
  3430. You do if the hand that feeds you is trying to pull a Kristi Nome on you.
    2
  3431. Voter ID laws don't actually help in any way though. They only make it harder for legitimate voters to vote.
    2
  3432.  @thedoctor155  The Virginia Governor's full comment was “[Third trimester abortions are] done in cases where there may be severe deformities. There may be a fetus that’s nonviable. So in this particular example, if a mother is in labor, I can tell you exactly what would happen,” Northam, a pediatric neurosurgeon, told Washington radio station WTOP. “The infant would be delivered. The infant would be kept comfortable. The infant would be resuscitated if that’s what the mother and the family desired. And then a discussion would ensue between the physicians and the mother.” He was referencing a bill that would only apply to cases in which the woman's health was seriously at risk.
    2
  3433.  @alex-mo8hd  Neither of those statements is true.
    2
  3434.  @mrrod3004  MAGA Republicans are exactly why we are in the mess we're in now, which is why the lesson we've learned is to vote them out whenever they appear on a ballot. Have you learned that lesson yet?
    2
  3435.  @jeanhargis7333  I'm sorry, which point exactly were you asking about? I have said several things in this thread, and any of them could be verified by a single Google search, but I would be happy to explain if you're incapable of doing that.
    2
  3436.  @teresatanyag8237  I don't know why you would want more inflation. Biden's managed to spare us from the higher inflation that other countries have had over the past few years, but sure, if you want it higher, Trump could give that to you.
    2
  3437.  @thrisbt1  The problem is that the US House is currently unbalanced in favor of Republicans, so while we the people want a clean debt limit passed, Kevin and his friends aren't willing to put that up to a vote.
    2
  3438.  @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.
    2
  3439.  @ColonelSanders17  But what if there's nothing you can do that would make you substantially more productive?
    2
  3440. Congratulations. Nobody cares.
    2
  3441. The grand jury did.
    2
  3442. @Elder Tree How should I know why you only see the left bring him up? That's a "you" problem. The right bring him up all the time. I mean, a GOP US congressman in Ohio just resigned because he didn't want to have to dogfight one of Trump's handpicked units.
    2
  3443. @james ahn You do not understand how money works. He blew a massive hole in the deficit with his tax cuts for billionaires. Those costs will add to the debt over years, not immediately, but they are still the fault of his actions. The debt accumulated during the Obama administration came from three sources, 1. giving millions of America better access to healthcare, so. . . good for him (it would have been further improved if McConnell hadn't prevented any modifications to the bill). 2. cleaning up the Bush recession so that it didn't become a second great depression, so. . . good for him, and cover the cost of the wars Bush had started in foreign countries. Sure, he could have ended those sooner, so that's a point against him, but overall, not bad. Spending money is not a bad thing, so long as it is spent wisely. I give Trump credit for what stimulus he did do early in the covid outbreak, he just should have done more in the middle there to keep small businesses afloat.
    2
  3444. The things Biden undid were terrible things, and it is better for America that Biden removed them. America is in a bad place right now because we have too many stupid people who refuse to take the steps needed to work our way out of this pandemic. They just want to be given "life back to normal" without working for it like a Democrat. Democrats are the party of the working man, after all.
    2
  3445. He "fixed" them by removing the Keystone pipeline and the remain-in Mexico policy. That is a fact. I think maybe you thought these things were "good" somehow, which would be dumb. You aren't dumb, are you? Why would you want to leave others with the impression that you believe dumb things? But let's examine it. The "remain in Mexico" policy didn't keep anyone who was going to cross illegally from doing so, it only mean that people attempting to do things LEGALLY were kept just on the other side of the Mexican border for months on end, where they were preyed upon by gangs. It is better for everyone for them to be safely on the US side of the border where their case can be considered, and if invalid, deported back to their home country. The US holding facilities may not be perfect, but they are a hell of a lot better than the other side of the border, and since Biden took office, we're no longer separating families. As for the Keystone pipeline, it would have provided a relatively few number of temporary US jobs building it, but then no more, and Biden's infrastructure package will keep those guys plenty buy for a much longer time. It had nothing to do with "energy independence," it was about getting foreign oil from one country to other countries through the US and its ports. The US itself is exactly as energy independent with or without it.
    2
  3446. Maybe they don't do it around you. Or maybe you're just a poor judge of what is "being or promoting violence." What's your opinion on what happened on January 6th 2021?
    2
  3447. Yeah, because DJT's going to cash out his shares afterward and leave all the investors holding the bag.
    2
  3448.  @jimfarmer7811  Regular trickle down economics is nonsense, because if you give rich people money, they hoard it. But have you never heard of USED CARS? They are a thing. When people have more cars than they need, they sell the old ones, usually for less than the cost of a new car. If you want to buy a new car right now, you can get new EVs that are lower priced than the average new car. If you can't afford a new car and want to buy a used one, you can also buy an EV, and the more new EVs enter the market, the better the pricing on used ones. This isn't "voodoo," it's hard economic fact. And the guy stocking shelves won't need to pay $20K to replace the battery, because the battery it came with will continue to run for 20+ years. They reduce efficiency over time, but not so much that he couldn't get to his job on time. If he ever did have to replace it, it would still be cheaper than what he would be paying for gas in a gasoline car. Now you are right about a lot of apartments not being set up for charging, but that too will change over time. It won't change without investment though. If we waited for "the private sector" to do highways, it would still be dirt roads between most states. The BBB bills involved a lot of investment in charging facilities, and more is needed. Once it's likely that most apartment dwellers have EVs, you can bet that most apartment parking will have charging docks too. Also, what's your creepy obsession with Gore? You do know he's been out of office for over twenty years, right?
    2
  3449.  @lancenorton1117  He only calls judges "Trump hating" if they uphold their oaths to the constitution.
    2
  3450. What did they get wrong?
    2
  3451.  @RyanQuintanapolymath  Yup, that's basically Trump's MO, whether he understands what he's doing or not.
    2
  3452.  @kourtlandperry1698  Yes, the Democratic Party is not three letters like "GOP" is. Also has a lot less criminals.
    2
  3453.  @AHammock Begone, Putin.
    2
  3454. Better than the other guy, at least. Joe might mumble a bit,l but his decision making is at least correct.
    2
  3455.  @luisfabiano2563  It's an infrastructure plan. It's all to do with infrastructure. You just don't know what that means.
    2
  3456.  @luisfabiano2563  " But keep lickin boots beta male!!!! Be a good sheep." This is the most beta, sheepy comment in the thread, Only beta sheep are so concerned with how much of a beta-sheep they are. It's projecting.
    2
  3457. You got the statistics completely wrong. There were 350 Covid deaths. There were 706 TOTAL excess deaths in the week. 350 of those excess deaths WERE covid deaths. That means only 456 of those deaths were non-covid. The 3.4% covid deaths you reported were of ALL deaths, not excess deaths, so 3.4% of 10,000 total deaths, which, if you do the very middleschool math involved, is 350. This is the problem, people presenting themselves as being somewhat knowledgeable while at the same time doing an EXTREMELY amateur job of it.
    2
  3458. And also trillions of dollars. That's the bigger part of it.
    2
  3459.  @neil2444  Well, they literally have more money than they know what to do with, and are just trying random stuff to figure out a way to keep passive income arriving after the oil dries up.
    2
  3460. Yup,. a vote for Trump would be a huge F.U. to anyone who cares about law enforcement.
    2
  3461. We are in that war, and those people who hate the US wear red caps that say "Make America Great Again" and try to overthrow the government when they lose elections.
    2
  3462. It's because the ruling was based on the idea of embryos being people, due to the state's policy on abortion. The narrow specifics of that particular case are irrelevant to that.
    2
  3463. @ This is different because it hit LA proper. California is prepared for wildfires, if this same incident had happened in, say, North Carolina, then it would have gone much worse for them, but this particular fire was an exceptional event, and no reasonable amount of preparation could have prevented it.
    2
  3464.  @pwa8453  No, she's talking about the lower-output pumps, the ones that can't meet the temperatures needed to run conventional water-based heating systems. The higher temperature ones now on the market CAN fill that gap and allow radiative heating systems to work equally as well as they do using other boiler methods.
    2
  3465.  @kellzter  The founders never fought against the concept of government, if they did, why would they turn around and build a new one? They fought against taxation WITHOUT representation, they fought against UNDEMOCRATIC government. They built a system with checks and balances, in which no government official is above the law. The right of the people to challenge government comes at the ballot box, never at the end of a gun. The same people who wrote the Constitution also put down the Whiskey Rebellion.
    2
  3466.  @kellzter  Yes, a vote will stop government agents from illegally entering your property, because they know that if they do so, and their bosses do not punish them appropriately, then the people will vote them out of office. That is what rule of law is about. It is not for private citizens to enforce the terms of the Constitution on their own, it's for the government to check itself from breaking laws, and for the citizens to check a government out of control at the ballot box.
    2
  3467.  @exercitusdei7187  What confused you?
    2
  3468.  @midnighttoker9268  Yes, that is why they wrote the constitution to restrict that government through rule of law. The founders did not all agree on this, but the majority of them, the ones that actually wrote the laws of the land, did agree that civilian violence was not an option, and THAT is what became the law of the land. In that same Jefferson quote, he wrote "Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them," he meant "They will be wrong and ignorant, and try to fight, so we will put them down and set them right." He was basically daring people to try it, not condoning it. He was arguing against insurrection as a foolish act. George Washington was president when the federal government put down the Whiskey Rebellion, so clearly he did not approve of armed violence against the state.
    2
  3469.  @charles3444  You should probably read it again, in full context, not a cherrypicked snippet that you've been lied to about and believe them.
    2
  3470.  @kellzter  If federal agents attempt to enter your home, and they do not have a legal right to do so, then they will be breaking the law, and will be held accountable after the fact. If, however, you choose to fire on federal agents, then regardless of the legality of their actions you have broken the law. There is NO constitutional right to wield force against a government agent.
    2
  3471.  @kellzter  That might have been fair to argue four years ago, but he's since been removed from office through legal means.
    2
  3472.  @kellzter  Also, against the idea that the 2nd is meant to fight a tyrannical government, then why is there no right to oppose the government in the Constitution? Why did George Washington put down an attempted rebellion? Why did Jefferson DARE people to try it and he would put them down for trying?
    2
  3473.  @kellzter  If you want to avoid a future tyrannical government, then vote blue, no matter who. Problem solved.
    2
  3474.  @423GustavBern  The opposite, actually. The taxes are paid by the wealthy to help fund public transit for "the poors," as you put it. It's a redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom, as most taxation is and should be. As for your own vehicle, you aren't factoring in the costs of purchasing and maintaining that car. As for being "cost competitive," most of those truly in need can get vouchers that provide them with free or nearly free public transit, so the system already works in their favor. As for your argument that "everyone would just own a car too because whatever," well that's their business, and they bare the cost burden for that. If people choose to buy pools, that does not mean that the state needs to bend over backwards to make that an economically sound decision. All that the state needs be concerned with is that people have an option available to get them wherever they need to go.
    2
  3475. Gen Z will just sign up to anything they see on Tiktok.
    2
  3476. Any plan for affordable housing can't just be handing out money to buy them, it also needs to include specific policies to promote building and affordability.
    2
  3477.  @debraolson7553  Oh, no, I don't watch Faux News.
    2
  3478. But she has earned it more than anything Donald Trump's ever received, and that's her current opponent.
    2
  3479.  @sonnysmith3244  But also books HAVE been removed from libraries in many red states, so you can't argue that it is not a fact that this is happening. All you are doing is arguing that in addition to that, they are also doing something with the curriculum that is unrelated.
    2
  3480.  @UndeadPresto  Even the babies?
    2
  3481.  @americanhomeownerwithajob6940  What does a laptop have to do with anything?
    2
  3482.  @OptimalOwl  The data didn't ask whether the people felt that the activities they were pursuing were valuable. I gather from your comment that you do not find their activities valuable, but why should your opinion matter to others?
    2
  3483.  @OptimalOwl  But the point is, "it failed to do things that are not relevant" isn't particularly useful data. I doubt it cured any cancer while it was at it either, why bring it up?
    2
  3484. It's looking more and more likely that this will end with Speaker Jeffries.
    2
  3485.  @dawsonpurkett6246  It would never lead to lower production costs than they have overseas, or to lower retail prices, which is what most people would be concerned with. Boxing China out of the equation, whether you agree with it or not, has nothing to do with lowering prices in America. It would only go up. The American producers would raise their own prices to whatever the Chinese products would now costs. I agree that China does not play fair, and that there are political reasons to have very specific, targeted sanctions for that, but it's not going to ever lead to lower prices for American consumers.
    2
  3486.  @webporta-1  We mostly don't send cash to Ukraine, we send surplus military hardware, which mostly goes back into US companies to refresh our own stockpiles with newer and better stuff. The same could not be said for a border wall. Besides which, people would just cross through/over/under any border wall, so it would not actually stop immigration. People will only go around when going around is a reasonable option. If there are no gaps, they will create their own.
    2
  3487.  @webporta-1  So, "war crimes" then. Yeah, that sounds like something dumb enough for a Republican to do it.
    2
  3488.  @cliffy00  There were people in the US at the time that thought that we should leave Britain to their own devices. "wasn't our problem." That certainly would have become our problem eventually.
    2
  3489.  @utah_koidragon7117  But because other gun sales are legal, it's easy for people to break the rules.
    2
  3490. Oh! We found the Soviet bot!
    2
  3491. Yes, abandon the MAGA and repent.
    2
  3492.  @Itsgoooonenooowwww  Yeah, there are probably too many ignorant people out there, but we can always hope.
    2
  3493. The crimes Hunter did were less serious.
    2
  3494.  @kenbivens1901  Yeah, I guess that could explain the MAGA mindset. Sad.
    2
  3495.  @MIKUIEL  Walz did serve though, and didn't lie about his service, so that's a moot point.
    2
  3496.  @redpat8832  Yeah, he said people who did go to war were "suckers."
    2
  3497.  @twofiveb  Nope, fact. "Debunked" in the sense that Trump denies it, but he's a known liar.
    2
  3498.  @crispinfornoff206  Thank you for making clear that he never said he carried the weapon into battle.
    2
  3499.  @crispinfornoff206  You gave a post right there, he never said that he carried a weapon into battle. Did you even read what you posted?
    2
  3500.  @crispinfornoff206  Stop projecting, this entire TOPIC is about "semantic games."
    2
  3501.  @slipperedlobster  Walz never claimed to have been in combat.
    2
  3502.  @crispinfornoff206  Your entire position is a semantic exercise. Was he in the military? Yes, fact .Did he serve in war? Yes, fact. Does your interpretation of his wording match up with his? No, and that's on you. You have nothing BUT semantics here.
    2
  3503.  @MIKUIEL  And Walz didn't use his service to advance any agenda, unless you are talking about politics, in which case, Vance definitely used his service to advance that, as did dozens of other Republican politicians. Walz also didn't lie or embellish his service, he's just been accused of that by bad faith grifters who never would have voted for him in the first place. Nobody who''s being remotely objective here could find fault with the guy.
    2
  3504.  @crispinfornoff206  Operation Enduring Freedom.
    2
  3505.  @crispinfornoff206  A US military base in Italy was a part of the war effort. It's like you're arguing that Britain wasn't at war in WWI because no troops landed there.
    2
  3506.  @crispinfornoff206  But American and British soldiers that worked in England to actively support the soldiers on the mainland WERE "in war." Again, you keep implying that Walz claimed to have been in _combat," and that you are offended he did so, but that is YOUR fault, because HE never made such claims. He is not responsible for your active imagination.
    2
  3507.  @Dorian-k1s  Yes, because you can't talk about Trump without vomitting a little.
    2
  3508. That's because "they" is Russian bots.
    2
  3509. Idiots: "Uh-oh, better go buy another dozen guns!"
    2
  3510. This is spending that money in the US. Where do you think those weapons get made?
    2
  3511. He was removed years ago.
    2
  3512.  @sweettooth4527  If something is legal, it can't be a crime.
    2
  3513. He drew 80 million.
    2
  3514. How dastardly they were to show you a video that you clicked and posted in. . .
    2
  3515.  @scottgibbons5862  He did say to peacefully protest. He ALSO said and did many OTHER things, and it was those OTHER things that were violations of his oath of office, not the part where he said "peacefully."
    2
  3516.  @badlander6369  They only speak honestly about Trump and conservatives, but do not advocate violence as a response.
    2
  3517.  @badlander6369  They don't call him a Nazi, they just point out that he's doing a lot of the same things that the Nazis were doing in the 1930s, which is factually accurate. Do you think they should not be reporting facts like that?
    2
  3518.  @Jeroen_Maes  In other words, you did not watch the video, because the video contained the facts I was talking about.
    2
  3519. Yeah, they need to be seized and sent to Ukraine.
    2
  3520.  @jjkhawaiian  I'm not the one in favor of the tariffs.
    2
  3521.  @TheBane616  Nope, that's not how it would work. US manufacturing would never be able to produce goods at prices close to foreign competitors, and even if the tariffs made the foreign options even more expensive, it still wouldn't sell overseas, so we would be producing ONLY for the domestic market, while our exports would crash. Some tariffs can work if they are extremely precisely targeted at specific markets, but blanket tariffs across the board are never a good idea, and tariffs in general could NEVER make up the revenues of income tax without crippling the US economy in the process. It would be like claiming to make up for the loss of a river by using a bucket brigade. At the end of the day, if you don't want the IRS harassing you about how you lied, then don't lie. Why is that so hard?
    2
  3522.  @votaric  But, again, his efforts to "expand" the business accomplished less than if he'd just left the money in an indexed fund. He LOST money relative to what anyone else could have done with it. Also, he's refused to pay most of the people he's employed over the years. More people have put in a hard days work and NOT been paid for it by him than he's actually employed. He's caused far more harm than good through his actions, that's all I'm saying, I don't know why you'd disagree, when even he brags about doing it.
    2
  3523.  @mindyobeeznis  It is not normal for thinking people to marry or remain married to someone who could support Trump after January 6th.
    2
  3524. It's very simple, MAGA believes that "more rally size = more votes." This makes Talyor 2028 unstoppable.
    2
  3525. Russia unilaterally invaded, neither the US nor Ukraine had anything to do with this.
    2
  3526. How dare Amazon support responsible liability standards! I want to be able to buy dangerous and/or fraudulent products!
    2
  3527.  @mickeyfly6706  No you weren't.
    2
  3528. Republicans "The national debt is our highest priority!" America: "Ok, so I guess we'll need to raise revenues to lower the debt." Republcians: ". . . no. . . not like that. . ."
    2
  3529.  @Clownelskiy  Russia currently occupies at least three regions of Ukraine, as defined under the borders Russia agreed to prior to the war. Ukraine occupies NO Russian territory.
    2
  3530.  @picktheblueone  Are you aware how many women do not report cases like this?
    2
  3531.  @recoil53  Yes, like I said, capitalism.
    2
  3532. So the Republicans are fleeing from the House to the Senate side, rather than standing their feet in the House side? Cowards.
    2
  3533. What did him being VP have to do with anything? A President can't declassify documents either without going through the proper security channels.
    2
  3534. Because that only happened in your imagination.
    2
  3535.  @bodyloverz30  Clearly you've never read the Constitution then.
    2
  3536. Oh, I suppose that Brexit was responsible for that smell even before Brexit, somehow.
    2
  3537.  @dannyg0824  That is not how trials work. Again, the jury decided that he did sexually assault her and defame her, based on the evidence available to them. You can disagree with their verdict, but it remains the verdict.
    2
  3538.  @careercriticalthinker  Oh, you live in Narnia. We were talking about things that happen on real Earth.
    2
  3539.  @bluesmax1336  Linking on youtube is very tricky because of auto-filtering, so my hands are tied there. You can look up yourself the many cases of Trump voters attempting to vote multiple times, or otherwise fraudulently vote. The 2020 election was the most scrutinized and audited election in history, largely due to the Republican's inability to accept that Trump is a loser, but in every case it was found that there was no significant fraud or mishandling, that there was not a single area in which Biden's win was not legitimate. Sorry your team lost, but grow up.
    2
  3540.  @Sporxz  The point though is that no evidence actually exists, so the time to display nothing doesn't really matter much, does it?
    2
  3541. The idea of a trans-specific categories is a non-starter. There just aren't enough of those to form a competitive field, so the outcome would either be "they don't get to play at all" or "they only do a few matches per season and essentially get a participation trophy." There doesn't need to be some exotic solution to this though, they already found one that works, let them compete. Either that or just don't have gender-based categories in the first place.
    2
  3542. Yeah, if not for good people in the government holding him back, Trump just would have done exactly what Putin asked.
    2
  3543. Lol, no.
    2
  3544.  @Maplatter  Based on soviet propaganda.
    2
  3545.  @DuffyF56  I read as much of it as Toomey did. Did you read it to verify his claims?
    2
  3546. You're thinking about red states. This is a blue state we're talking about here.
    2
  3547. The Republican ones. This is not a "both sides" issue, and framing it as such only enables the bad actors.
    2
  3548.  @bruh.seriously1  All of it. Everything you said is only imaginary, so my question ism what about in the real world?
    2
  3549. @ Yes, stop expecting others to do your homework.
    2
  3550. A headline like that one only highlights the need to fight misinformation in online media. NOBODY is defending censorship here, because NO censorship was ever taking place. Far right sources like The Hill seem to think that fact checking is somehow "censorship," which goes to show how little respect they have for journalistic integrity.
    2
  3551. As a hedge against Russian aggression. They have been remarkably successful in defending themselves so far. It's the same reason we picked up Finland.
    2
  3552. Sociopaths bring up "family values" all the time, because they know that it's a thing normal people care about, but they don't understand WHY anyone would care about family values, so they often bring it up in ways that don't make sense. It's basically how the entire GOP functions.
    2
  3553. That must explain why he's so terrible at being a senator.
    2
  3554.  @user-pc1jf7py4i  Nothing. That's why Senator Kennedy is so terrible at his job, he never tries that.
    2
  3555. So, like, MAGA people.
    2
  3556.  @tommytwents8764  No specific death is "excess." "Excess deaths" is only an estimate, in which they predict that X amount of deaths will occur in a given period under normal conditions, and instead more deaths occur than they expected. This is always an estimate and will never be exact, because nothing is that predictable. It would be like if sports bookies expected one football team to beat another by 7 points, and they beat them by 14 points instead, these would be "excess points," but not necessarily mind blowing, and no single scoring attempt would itself be "excess," it was just the total amount. That said, deaths due to covid would not have been accounted for in standard actuarial tables, since "once in a century pandemic" would not be something that happens regularly, so if a similar amount of people died of covid as the amount of unexpected deaths in a given year, then that would sort of explain the situation.
    2
  3557.  @earthstar7534  Yeah, but I think that Campbell will keep spreading his misinformation anyway,. and these gullible toddlers will keep lapping it up, even though the data that contradicts him is right there on the screen if they actually bothered to READ it.
    2
  3558.  @tommytwents8764  No, but I do conceded that I was incapable of educating you on what "excess deaths" mean and why your question makes no sense. You have proven yourself quite immune to critical thinking. Congratulations?
    2
  3559.  @freeroamer9146  No thanks, I've had enough 1984, and don't need to join the Ministry of Truth.
    2
  3560.  @Threemore650  I can't speak to what figures he was using in another video, but it would be safe to assume that he was misunderstanding or deliberately misrepresenting some figures in that one too. "excess deaths" will always be an imprecise science, and at some point in the process covid deaths will likely be rolled into the "expected deaths" calculation, so they will cease to be excess deaths, but the currently reported excess deaths don't seem to be all that alarming.
    2
  3561. . . . in a river. . .
    2
  3562. But more importantly, in the actual world, that is nonsense.
    2
  3563.  @ryancrozier7674  The US does not possess enough fossil fuels to offset the national debt. America's resources are in our people, not in our rocks. In either case, even Saudi Arabia is not energy independent. They are solely reliant on fossil fuels. The only way to get clean, is to get clean.
    2
  3564.  @ryancrozier7674  Exactly, and it's impossible to not be reliant on fossil fuel except by not needing fossil fuel. This is not a production issue.
    2
  3565.  @ryancrozier7674  It's called "reserve cycling. They sell from the reserve when prices are high, and then buy it back when prices are low, which helps to stabilize them. It never falls below the amount we need in case of emergency.
    2
  3566.  @ryancrozier7674  There would be no upside to just holding onto it. The current method makes the most money off the stockpile while retaining it's value as an emergency reserve. What value do you believe there would be in hoarding it? Also, the government doesn't sell "to states" the states have no role in the oil economy. Oil is sold to distributors, and they sell it on to retailers and consumers at the best rates they can manage. There is some argument to be made for nationalizing the oil industry and forcing them to sell to US consumers at below the market rate, but really the harms of doing so would likely outpace any potential gains. Oh, and for the record, no, locally produced oil is not cheaper than foreign oil, at least not enough to make much difference.
    2
  3567.  @jacquirichmond6107  Yeah, that's my point. It's a toss-up so far as anyone can tell.
    2
  3568.  @spocko2181  I don't, actually. Nobody likes a truthteller.
    2
  3569.  @will7its  I think we're speaking metaphorically here, not literally. For the record, I do not support actually removing anyone's tongues.
    2
  3570. @ I help in the ways that are most productive for me to help. They don't need my boots.
    2
  3571. @ Maybe under Trump, but not under a responsible president.
    2
  3572. @ If you knew anything about the Cuban Missile Crisis, you would know the very many ways in which it is not "the same exact thing."
    2
  3573.  @NiccaGeorge  There was no discussion about moving nuclear weapons into Ukraine, nor any need for that. NATO does not just hand out free nukes as a welcoming gift, most NATO countries do not have any.
    2
  3574. @ NATO never signed an agreement that they would not expand though.
    2
  3575. ​@ You didn't ask me any question relevant to the topic, because you conceded the point. I'm not entertaining ad hominems, which you should have learned about in. . . wherever it is you go to school.
    2
  3576.  @michael-x2f5t  Not for another few weeks.
    2
  3577.  @moniqueengleman873  Fox News?
    2
  3578.  @michael-x2f5t  So you think Russia didn't do it? You're useful.
    2
  3579. Not all states have to agree. If they did, we would still have slavery.
    2
  3580.  Mark Bissell  No, I meant the Republicans who are seeking to void a lawfully conducted election because the candidate they chose was not chosen by America. And if you can't see that, then you're too damned ignorant.
    2
  3581. We can do both.
    2
  3582. @ So then you think that since he's not, in fact, a gang member, he should be returned? The Supreme Court agrees.
    2
  3583.  @kimcissell1905  This is the way plea deals typically work. The person pleas guilty to the lesser charge, so that they don't risk him being found innocent on the larger charge. What do you find unusual about that?
    2
  3584.  @larryp5024  It's doing better than most of the world coming out of the pandemic. We'd be in a massive recession right now if we had conservatives in charge like in the UK.
    2
  3585. The way I figure it, puberty blockers and hormones might have lasting long term consequences. But also NOT taking them will have lasting, long term consensuses. If someone wants to grow up to be a woman, and instead "the natural course of things" causes them to grow up with a man's body, that is very hard to "fix" after the fact. Assuming that they continue in their life as a woman, they would be much better off doing so from the start, than doing absolutely nothing until later in life. There is no "neutral state" here, there is no case of "nothing happening," it's always a choice between developing a male body or a female body, regardless of which one would happen if no medical intervention took place, so there is no "burden of proof" that you would need to overcome to choose one over the other. Surgery can generally wait, because those parts are completely non-reversible and won't change over time, but the matter of puberty changes IS something with a time limit on it, and if someone is unable to get such care before puberty takes hold, there will be permanent consequences. That being the case, the only real test to consider is the likelihood that someone will stick with their intended gender. If they are assigned male, and they want to become a woman, and they stick with that and remain a woman for the rest of their life, comfortable in that gender, then the actions they take to affirm that gender will have been justified. It would only be in cases in which they reverse course, and return to being a man (of their own choice), that the affirming care would have been a mistake. So far, such cases seem to be extremely rare, a fraction of a percent of the fraction of a percent of people who even start down that path. Given that the overwhelming majority of those who take significant steps toward transitioning stick with it, then shouldn't that be considered the optimal standard of care? No solution will ALWAYS have positive results, so if the standard is "if anyone regrets their decisions, we can't allow it," then NO medicine would take place, but if the standard is "the outcome in which most participants are satisfied with the results," then I don't think any argument can be made against gender affirming care.
    2
  3586.  @kayakMike1000  Nobody is talking about depleting oceanic CO2 to levels that would harm plants, nor does anyone think the ocean would become acidic. What it IS doing is shifting the ocean's PH balance AWAY from the levels that are HEALTHY for current animals, which will lead to many of them dying, if the heat doesn't get them first. There is no upside to this one.
    2
  3587.  @samuellowekey9271  He's wrong about that though, cyclones and hurricanes have become worse, not better. Ask meteorologists.
    2
  3588.  @samuellowekey9271  No, he does not, if you actually read what he's said on the subject, instead of what you've been told by others that he said.
    2
  3589.  @samuellowekey9271  That is not true. The frequency of severe storms has increased over that period. You are misrepresenting his comments. read his June 2022 paper on Can we expect Atlantic hurricanes to change over the coming century due to global warming?
    2
  3590. We the people disagree.
    2
  3591.  @nannymoon.8  What, you have the same meal every night? I'm pretty sure most Republicans change up their menu options regularly too.
    2
  3592. AI taking away people's jobs is NOT a problem. The PROBLEM is that people NEED those jobs in order to live a comfortable life. THAT is the problem we need to solve.
    2
  3593.  @Card23xf1mw  Yes, BLM protesting was peaceful.
    2
  3594.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  I don't know, man, some people clearly care.
    2
  3595.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  You clearly have never seen a MAGA rally.
    2
  3596.  @Card23xf1mw  That was done by counter-protesters and opportunists though, and largely after the actual protesters had gone home for the night. The actual protests themselves were peaceful. That's the point.
    2
  3597. Well yeah, that's the difference between Republicans and Democrats, Democrats aren't in a cult.
    2
  3598.  @rubbersoulgirl84 Oh. No, that isn't happening at all. Who told you that?
    2
  3599.  @pimpalamac3411  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    2
  3600. They had a less controversial position.
    2
  3601. It's already more closed than it was during the last administration.
    2
  3602.  @yeti2237  He's talking about Russia. They have screwed up every possible decision in this war.
    2
  3603. In before Republicans try to defend this with "a 14 month old isn't a puppy!" they use the same excuse with teenage girls.
    2
  3604.  @webporta-1  Yes, but them being on a watch list does not mean they can have an agent standing outside their door 24/7, nor does it mean that they can arrest them for not having committed a crime yet. Now if this were Switzerland, it would mean that they could confiscate any guns from their house and put them on a list to not be allowed to buy any new guns, and that would have solved the problem, but that is not currently the law in Georgia, so their hands were tied.
    2
  3605. They should have asked Chat GTP to give them an answer, but they were too lazy.
    2
  3606. Yup, basically the MAGA playbook.
    2
  3607. America has never operated debt free. It's just not a reasonable way to run a country of this scale.
    2
  3608. Sociopaths have trouble reading human emotions accurately, they can't understand someone genuinely upset.
    2
  3609. Kevin, YOU are the one threatening default. It has NOTHING to do with Biden. Just pass a clean debt ceiling increase and he will sign the thing no questions asked. Stop trying to twist the narrative here, nobody is buying it.
    2
  3610.  @talkingrock7011  You say that, and yet you are the one that is wrong about it. Maybe you need to do your research.
    2
  3611.  @writeongal  I'm living in the real world. I am saying only facts, you can look them up yourself. Name one active pipeline that Joe Biden shut down.
    2
  3612. One thing I'm curious to see in all of this is, "modern masculinity" seems to be framed as removing aspects of "traditional masculinity" that are somehow viewed as harmful, and also adding aspects ot masculinity that are traditionally associated with femininity. My question is, what aspects should be added to "modernly masculine" frameworks that are not traditionally feminine? Is "modern masculinity" just about men becoming more feminine, or is there a genuinely uniquely male aspect to it that would be retained?
    2
  3613. He still seems to want something along these lines, the final shape of the bill just didn't seem to be fitting the need.
    2
  3614. If a trans person made these same demands, it would be equally problematic. The issue is not whether the person in question was trans or not.
    2
  3615. I think a UBI needs to be paired with strong insurance mechanisms. Most people are terrible at budgeting and saving for a rainy day, so don't expect them to. Pay them an amount per month that is basically what they should expect to spend that month, but than also have money available in case they hit an unexpected snag and need a bit more.
    2
  3616.  @ketotamz5815  Wisconsin's unemployment rate is currently at 3.3%. It's been pretty consistent over the past few years. The national average has been around 3.7%.
    2
  3617.  @jeffreystarcher7007  Well obviously they couldn't have a live debate while he's being Typhoid Mary over there. Nobody wants to die.
    2
  3618.  @bobbiperry5422  That has nothing to do with anything. Biden was perfectly willing to debate, it was Trump that SAID he did not want to do a virtual debate, and there was no other option available once be became a spreader. Don't try to twist this into a Biden problem.
    2
  3619.  @danielarocha6964  It's Republicans that seem to struggle with that distinction.
    2
  3620. That made absolutely no sense.
    2
  3621.  @MrDavis198  Yup, they were exactly as wide open under Trump.
    2
  3622.  @troyjenkins3886  The "Abrams Accord" was literally nothing, just a way for him to get photo ops with his friend Bebe and to help his son get two billion from the Saudis.
    2
  3623.  @MrGgabber  Find "insurrection" in the US criminal code. I'll wait.
    2
  3624.  @bugsbunny8691  Think of it like the opposite of a Baked Alaska. We, close to the earth's surface, will continue to get hotter. A portion of the upper atmosphere, which is already cold, will get even colder. The cooling upper atmosphere does not have much effect at cooling the lower atmosphere, or at least it's more than offset by the rise caused by the other factors. So, basically, we're getting hotter.
    2
  3625. What good are human shields if you can't get their bodies on TV?
    2
  3626. Saying mean things is his only policy though. It always has been. "Policy" is for other people to worry about.
    2
  3627.  @Amalgam67  no, he could issue warrants or get subpoenas, they just had to follow US Law and the Constitution, which means that he could not subpoena people who were in foreign countries, he could not get arrest warrants without probably cause, etc. His hands were tied by rule of law. If this were Soviet Russia, he would have been able to do what Gaetz wanted him to do.
    2
  3628. By calling innocent election workers grifters. Do you want in on that too?
    2
  3629. Lol, what? Who do you think is invading us?
    2
  3630.  @saynotocensorship  So you don't know either. . .
    2
  3631.  @saynotocensorship  You don't know why Trump had 5 different press secretaries. I assume it was because of the lying.
    2
  3632.  @timwhite5647  That does not mean he does not want to have sex with her. I mean, it should. it just doesn't.
    2
  3633.  @LilmissJ111  I would conditionally agree with you on that, that "rational debate" can be a healthy thing, the problem is that most "debate" on these topics are not rational, they are just "storytelling time" in which the side with the coolest story wins the audience, rather than the side with the more accurate position. This is the core problem, the audience cannot be trusted to react correctly to a compelling scientific case, and what do we do about that?
    2
  3634. Yup, they've got nothing on Joe, just rumors and hearsay. It's sad.
    2
  3635.  @masterkeep  Nope, the banks agree, there's nothing on Joe. What banks have you been talking to.
    2
  3636.  @KevinWiley8  Man, South Dakota is rougher than I thought. I'm not shocked though.
    2
  3637.  @kemradovich2874  Obstruction of justice.
    2
  3638.  @kemradovich2874  Nope. He'd be in a trial right now if he didn't have a fake judge.
    2
  3639.  @zs9458  Again, they cannot stay in their countries and improve them because it's too dangeorus there. It's like asking someone to stay in a burning house and fix it themselves. You have to put the fires out first, then you can work on repairs. So that's why foreign aid will reduce refugees coming to the US, if their own countries are stable enough that they can stay there, can work to build them toward a better future, then they don't have to flee to America. We don't allow refugees in on the basis of "well, I just don't much like it here," if they are being admitted as refugees, it is because continuing to live in their home country is impossible.
    2
  3640.  Hook ‘Em  No, red states need the relief bills more than blue states do, and they will be getting more funding from the bill than blue states will. Traditionally, blue states pay for red states to exist, because red states are really bad with money.
    2
  3641.  Hook ‘Em  It is incorrect that Trump's tax cut was the largest working class & middle class tax cut in history. It was only the 12th largest tax cut in US history, and it mainly benefited the wealthy. The working class got relatively minor benefit from it.
    2
  3642.  @crazyeddie1981  No, $200milliin in gender studies does not help against covid. That is why there is not $200m in gender studies in this bill. Who told you that there was?
    2
  3643.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  It goes from the government to the government so that the government can afford to pay for services that the people need, like police, firemen, keeping public transportation running, etc.
    2
  3644.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  That is not what the bill says. It doesn't require schools to spend the money in 2022, it requires that they spend it by 2022. If they have needs today, they can spend it today, but it's basically designed to help provide funding over the course of this crisis.
    2
  3645.  Hook ‘Em  California receives more federal money because they PAY more federal money. California is the 41st LEAST dependent state on federal funds. Each California resident pays the federal government $348 more than the Federal government pays them back. Compare that to, say,Texas, where the average resident receives $1280 more back from the Federal government than they pay in. States like California are paying for states like Texas.
    2
  3646.  @Bass1ne  Everything you just said was nonsense.
    2
  3647. @ He's right though.
    2
  3648.  @motor-head  You misunderstood me, I'm not a Republican.
    2
  3649. We already had the negotiations. "There will be no negotiation on the debt limit." That's the end of that story. If they want further negotiations on the budget, that can happen AFTER they release the hostages, not a moment before. Anything they do before then is is political theater for their base.
    2
  3650. They're a pretty common species in Asia. They have nothing to do with American raccoons, but they ended up looking similar, so the western name for them is "raccoon dog," but obviously they use different names for them in Asian countries. The "Tanuki Mario" in Mario 3 is actually based on these animals.
    2
  3651.  @mxjame546  Most business people do not do this. They might do something similar to this, in much smaller degrees, but nothing this exaggerated and frequent. This is the problem. If there are other businesses you want to go after, then make that case, but two wrongs don't make a right.
    2
  3652. He didn't flip-flop, he just made a procedural move so that they could readdress it later. It would be like if a football team intends to kick a field goal, so they down the ball on one play for better timing and position when they go for their kick. That isn't them "flip flopping" on the idea of scoring points.
    2
  3653. Everyone.
    2
  3654. The Obama-Biden administration didn't invade Iraq for basically no reason though, so they are still ahead of the one Karl worked in.
    2
  3655. They don't get paid much anyway. It would be worth missing that salary to preserve democracy in their state. None of us could hope for anything more from our representatives.
    2
  3656.  @dasikakn  Actually, not every state requires ID, since it's not actually necessary to the process.
    2
  3657.  @edwinarnold4865  The Presidential Records Act actually says the opposite of that. It says that a President can take none of the documents he wants, ever_. It says that _all documents created while he's president are property of the American people, and he is only allowed to BORROW them, if he has the permission of the National Archives, which in this case he never had. Have you read the Presidential Records Act?
    2
  3658.  @Martytroutman  Presidents are not allowed to have their documents. Their documents are the property of the National Archives. They are only allowed to borrow their documents if they get the permission of the National Archives to do so, which he did not have. There is nothing "bogus" about the indictments.
    2
  3659. + The Triggering Lol, are you trying to fill up someone's "idiot bingo" card?
    2
  3660. We only ran out of the stuff that was cheap and easy to get. Now we're pumping the stuff that is more expensive. Once we run out of that, we'd have to make it from scratch, which is even more expensive.
    2
  3661. It matters in reaching a just conclusion. If Putin walks away with any territory then all those lives would have been wasted, and he'll just come back later for more. The only way for this war to end is for Putin to leave.
    2
  3662.  @johnacord6224  That's the problem a general lack of morals in the electorate.
    2
  3663.  @BerraLJ  It doesn't require "training," it only requires reading the documents HE put on screen and using basic middle school math. He claimed that the 3.4% stat applied to excess deaths, when it says right there on screen that it was 3.4% of ALL deaths, not the excess ones. Anyone actually paying attention would recognize that, only sheep who are sucking up whatever he says as gospel would fall for his pitch.
    2
  3664.  @indigojones941  If Texas prevents the feds from removing the wire, it would go against the ruling. Also, if you believe that is how a Supreme court ruling works, then you have no idea how US law functions. "I did a crime" "You are not allowed to do that crime," "ok then, I will do the crime again, you never said I wasn't allowed to do it again," that is not how it has EVER worked.
    2
  3665.  @mostlysunny582  The federal government is abiding by the law. If you don't like the laws they are following, then elect more Democrats so that we can get comprehensive immigration reform passed. And no, states have no right to ignore the federal government when they disagree with it.
    2
  3666.  @metoonunyabidness1391  Yeah, that's the quiet part that they only imply.
    2
  3667.  @chickbowdrie4750  Brainworms, mostly.
    2
  3668.  @OMGiTzSpAnKy  No Democrats wanted him.
    2
  3669. I don't think Kevin is that old. Probably more like. . . 60?
    2
  3670.  @joelrobert4053  But Kevin's the one holding all this up, what would any "Joe" have to do with this?
    2
  3671.  @F_C...  Don't you mean that you remember when more Americans could afford to get their construction and landscaping done, because it was cheaper?
    2
  3672.  @TimT-ey3hp  Facts. Sorry.
    2
  3673.  @TimT-ey3hp  Your lack of acceptance does not mean you haven't lost.
    2
  3674.  @stephenpmurphy591  It's not December.
    2
  3675. Yup, if conservatives voters were capable of thinking for themselves, what would even be the point of MAGA?
    2
  3676. He's at least better than any of the next three.
    2
  3677.  @eyespliced  That would certainly help.
    2
  3678.  @ContinuousRefinement  The lie was the one about the cats and dogs. That was a lie. He and his boss kept repeating it.
    2
  3679. @Bill Randleman Still not a Republican, so no, I'm not the one taking a break from reality. You really need to find better sources of information than whatever it is you're using.
    2
  3680. The guy who was the supposed victim says it never happened. What do you believe he was "guilty" of?
    2
  3681.  @acegood7058  What "Russia thing?" Are you talking about the documented collusion between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian agents, that resulted in Russian propaganda being targetted at the very swing counties that handed Trump the 2016 election? That "Russia thing?" What about it? And Democrats never claimed that the 2016 election involved fraud, just that a lot of Americans were being misled by pro-Trump foreign advertising. Voter fraud is something else, but there was no significant amount of that in the either election .
    2
  3682.  @jacknimble4584  Yep, 2022, we need to move the Republicans out of the Senate so we can actually start getting things done.
    2
  3683.  @jacknimble4584  LOL! "If you want to learn something, watch Tucker Carlson?" LOL! Not one person in the history of the world ever watched an episode of Tucker Carlson and came out with as many brain cells as they went in with. Tucker is nothing but lies and nonsense too stupid to even consider a lie.
    2
  3684.  @ForumLight  Nobody is trying to claim that black people are not smart enough to get ID. Only Republicans make that claim. Democrats point out that the required ID often has associated costs, which citizens sometimes do not have, or that they require taking physical trips to a location that many citizens would have difficulty finding the time or means to go to. Not to mention that the idea of needing to provide your ID with a mail in ballot is nonsensical. That defeats the entire point of mailing in a ballot. Not all poor people are black, and not all black people are poor, but black people are more likely to be poor, so if you means test the vote, then that means more black voters will be harmed by that than white voters. This is a disproportionate impact and anyone interested in fair voting would oppose it. This has NOTHING to do with intelligence, yet Republicans are constantly droning on about "black people too stupid to get ID." Don't try to pass that buck onto Democrats.
    2
  3685.  @AztecSamurai01  It is Republicans that push fear and division. Democrats just want a better life for everyone, Republicans included. That's why blue states pay for welfare red states across the country.
    2
  3686.  @rhiannonbittle1454  If nothing cannot create everything from nothing, then how did nothing create an intelligent and all-powerful being capable of creating everything else? How would it be more unrealistic to believe that the universe would generate a mass of random particles, than to believe that the universe would just generate a guy named "Steve" out of thin air?
    2
  3687. How does that have anything to do with what they were saying?
    2
  3688. How is that remotely relevant to anything?
    2
  3689.  @keshapowell2992  And when you do hear his full context, which you can do, and it is exactly like they said, what is your opinion then?
    2
  3690.  @roseadesjarlais5496  No, we kicked out Trump. Things will be much brighter with Joe in there. He's already done more good in two months than Trump did over four years (mainly by reversing things Trump put into motion).
    2
  3691. Nope. It remains something that only idiots believe in.
    2
  3692.  @webporta-1  That is not true either. You seem to believe a lot of untrue things. I wonder why that is? Poor education? Poor parenting? Poor ability to parse the news you take in?
    2
  3693.  @webporta-1  I'm not a member of the MAGA cult. I do not deny reality like they do, I accept it.
    2
  3694.  @bbcpfghs  But it was self defense, because Lebanon attacked Israel first. You can't blame the victim here.
    2
  3695.  @bbcpfghs  They fired rockets across the Lebanese border into Israel. Of course Lebanon would claim that land they lost in a war decades ago still belongs to them, that's the same excuse Germany used, but I'm sure we're all smarter than to buy that.
    2
  3696. They are locking him up.
    2
  3697. @ Yes, and now they will be much more horrible. Congratulations.
    2
  3698.  @wadecross5369  More people than voted for Elon (and also more people than voted for Trump in his first term).
    2
  3699. The people who were polled clearly did.
    2
  3700. This move harms children though, the side protecting children was the other one.
    2
  3701.  @larsedik Also, the lack of willing partners. . .
    2
  3702.  @janthran  Sure, just not most, which was the topic of the question. Most children born were not specifically sought out, even in a given family only 1-2 children are likely to be sought out, and the rest would be spares. I would guess that of all the children born in a given year, less than 1:5 are intended. That doesn't mean that the remainder are not loved by their parents anyway.
    2
  3703. You mean backward. Unless you're posting from Moscow, in which case, sure.
    2
  3704.  @dannyingram1196  That is not actually true. You have misread the bill.
    2
  3705.  @webportal6659  That was not remotely what I was saying. How did you get that? It's sad that our middleschools don't teach basic reading comprehension anymore.
    2
  3706.  @thomaskitlica5572  None of that is true though.
    2
  3707.  @tamiemontgomery7851  You agree that she's at least better than her opponent though. That's all I was saying.
    2
  3708.  @tamiemontgomery7851  They attempted to, but Johnson rejected it, and Senate Republicans refused it a vote there either.
    2
  3709.  @MikeHunt-no2kt  I love how conservatives have this persecution complex where they think that they get moderated more than others. It's so adorably self-absorbed, like they never got out of middle school and realized that the world does not care about them.
    2
  3710. Gun laws would prevent those stupid parents from having guns in the house though, which would have prevented this shooting (and most of them).
    2
  3711.  @disalazarg  And brain drain is real, it is caused by a lack of proper education, health care, and other social services leading to people leaving for places that have those things.
    2
  3712.  @disalazarg  I'm sorry that you believe this.
    2
  3713. They need to fix "too big to fail." There needs to be laws in place that make it so that if you get "too big to fail," and you fail, then yes, the government will bail out the downstream people that relied on the company, but also, the company would need to correct itself to not get in that situation again, and everyone involved would take a haircut. Companies would not be allowed to refuse such a haircut. It would need to be enough of a punishment that they would not take undue risks, but structured in a way that the penalties don't ripple out into the wider economy in an unmanageable way.
    2
  3714. Why wouldn't she? His border wall is stupid. It would be right to oppose it.
    2
  3715. I don't believe that. If they didn't know he was a sex pest then why would they even have hired him in the first place? It's not like he was qualified for the position he's nominated for.
    2
  3716.  @tebelel7150  Yup, which is why more work would be needed to change that, but this will at least stop some people from getting guns, so it's better than nothing.
    2
  3717.  @jeremyjohnson2422  Yeah, organized crime folks will always be able to find guns, you can never reduce it to zero, but you can reduce it SIGNIFICANTLY, and that's certainly worth doing. Australia's had a lot fewer murders overall since the gun bans, and has a much lower overall murder rate than the US.
    2
  3718.  @huemann7637  People will get shot anywhere, but they get shot LESS in places with fewer guns. Mexico has a lot of their own problems that make them a poor comparison to the US though.
    2
  3719.  @LyricsQuest  But domestic producers cannot have a competitive position in many other markets, so prices would rise considerably, and for no benefit. There's nothing particularly wrong with depending on imports, so long as you have an economy that does not rely on manufacturing. It doesn't put you at the mercy of any other countries, because if one country tried to play hardball, you could just shift to another, which would be much easier than building up a local industry around it.
    2
  3720.  @jammyy  That would depend on whether those goods are available in those countries. Many things are, and suppliers often go to them over China because they are already cheaper. Tariffs would change nothing there. The goods we still buy from China tend to be more "mid grade" stuff, not worth producing in the US, but too fancy to be produced in SE Asia and other countries. Sourcing those items from those countries would require significant investments in factories and training employees (though it would still be cheaper than making them in the US). "Make Vietnam great again," I guess?
    2
  3721.  @jammyy  Certain materials are impossible to source elsewhere, others the issue is that it's impossible to source alternatives at a competitive rate, so prices would go up.
    2
  3722. That's what we're trying to do, but the MAGA crowd are trying their best to stop us.
    2
  3723.  @DoSe420  No, he was right, actually, a consitutional republic definitely is a form of democracy, no question about that. A "republic" without democracy would be called an "oligarchy." For a country to fit the definitely of a republic, ANY form of republic, it needs to have a functional, representative leadership, and that requires democracy.
    2
  3724.  @caddystube  Hey, when Trump competes in a golf tournament at a club he owns, he will win it, regardless of how many shots it takes.
    2
  3725.  @ruthsaunders9507  Yes, and that's exactly why Congresswoman McBride should not be required to use the men's room.
    2
  3726.  @docsavage8640  Lol, yeah.
    2
  3727.  @harrisonwintergreen1147  But he was much more selective in which ones he maintained. A tariff is not automatically a bad thing, but neither is it automatically a good thing, and just throwing tariffs around without being very specific about it is a recipe for disaster.
    2
  3728.  @Grumpyseabee22  They keep track of who has voted and how many times at the polling places. If people attempt to vote multiple times, they get caught.
    2
  3729. You got the wrong thread.
    2
  3730.  @matthewmosier8439  Ok, then you'd better not let Trump back into office, because he'd make both those things worse.
    2
  3731. It was his local golf course on a Sunday. Where else would he possibly be? Church? Lol.
    2
  3732. This wasn't "life saving training," these were militia nuts practicing how to be army men without actually joining the army.
    2
  3733. Definitely wasn't hyperbole. It was just a straight out falsehood.
    2
  3734. Well, he is running as a Republican, so it's at least on brand.
    2
  3735. It sounds great, but I do hope they weather-train these things. I mean Arizona has no snow and relatively little rain and even heavy clouds. They need to cover all types of heavy rain, sleet, snow of all types. We don't want them going "ok, we've got this perfected" and then they ship them around the country and it's like a bunch of Texans on the road.
    2
  3736.  @gamechannel1271  It's better than having no cookie warnings in the first place. There's no harm in crafting a bad legislation, the only harm is in not then fixing or improving it further once you have. Take the existing cookie law as it is, and then add in that browers can add a "no unnecessary cookies by default" option, and websites are required to accept that. It would basically achieve the same result as clicking "no no no" on all the cookie popups, without any of the cookie popups.
    2
  3737.  @ronaldphifer7586  But this is before there are any children involved in the process. That's the whole point. No lives are taken here.
    2
  3738. Forbes should know that Biden has a stutter. He misspeaks sometimes. His opponent mis-thinks, which is much worse.
    2
  3739. Sounds like it would have been a breakaway unit of the Russian military or something that just sort of snuck this one by their superiors.
    2
  3740. What does that have to do with lives lost?
    2
  3741. Waiting for the bill to reach his desk so he can sign it, like a President.
    2
  3742. TL;DR, they hate anything that protects the average American from the wealthy.
    2
  3743.  @maddiekits  In certain applications, I'm sure it is, but one of their primary exports is ornamental plants, dairy, and meat. Food crops make up less than !/5th of their exports. Also, half of their exports are processed products, ie food purchased from other countries, processed in some way (such as turning milk into cheese, or taking fruits off of a boat and putting it on a train), and then sent back out. The Netherlands is also 4th in the world for food imports, which puts it ahead of Japan in that.
    2
  3744. There wasn't a single county in 2020 where the counts did not line up.
    2
  3745. Consumers will pay more due to a tax increase, but by a smaller amount than they will get back in government benefits. It is a net positive for the average person overall.
    2
  3746.  @gottafly2day  Roads, bridges, health care, social security, education, etc. We're moving toward a post-labor society, so if we don't get ahead of the corporations soon, it will be too late.
    2
  3747.  @Halal_Dan  Ah, a conspiracy nutter. Government may not be perfect, but they are the best chance we've got. At least in some states they are still beholden to the people, corporations never are.
    2
  3748.  @gottafly2day  Health care costs were going up every year prior to the ACA, and have gone up less each year since. It would be better if there was a Medicare for all option though. Of this current infrastructure bill, $600B goes into transportation, roads and bridges, modernizing the federal vehicle fleet, upgrading public transit systems, then $200B on affordable housing (a lot of people are concerned about the nation's homeless), $100B to repair water lines and ensure clean drinking water, $100B to modernize school facilities, $100B to get broadband access to rural communities and reduce the cost of Internet access, $400B for aid for caregivers, which is becoming a larger and larger segment as our population ages, and $300B into manufacturing infrastructure so that we will be more competitive in the higher-end product markets relative to China. This will all be paid for by raising the taxes on companies that currently pay very little back.
    2
  3749.  @CallMeByMyMatingName  I'm sorry, I thought you were making a joke in poor taste, but it seems like you legitimately have a problem with how words work. That is a larger problem that is beyond the scope of my ability to correct.
    2
  3750. Russia is responsible for their own actions, they cannot blame anyone else for Putin's impotency.
    2
  3751. Right wing extremists split out into hundreds of sub-movements. Most people have never heard of any specific one until they do their mass shooting or insurrection attempt or whatever their little project happens to be.
    2
  3752.  @Uldy  Wow, you're an easy mark. Too bad I'm not a crypto bot, I could probably make my retirement.
    2
  3753.  @Uldy  Oh, no, I don't watch Faux News. It's nothing but lies on there. But of course they will tell you that it's the other people who are lying to you by telling you about things that actually happen in the world.
    2
  3754. What does Trump have to do with this? He's no longer relevant.
    2
  3755. No, those are not facts or evidence.
    2
  3756. He would have had to lie to congress first.
    2
  3757.  @indioloco6600  Just like in 30's Germany, right?
    2
  3758.  @indioloco6600  What did he say that was untrue?
    2
  3759. She did, she just didn't get what his problem was. Was it because they beat him up?
    2
  3760. Oh, no, they want Trump as the nominee because that's an easy win.
    2
  3761.  @jonSmith-xv6tx  The US national debt is not a problem. There are plenty of countries in the world with debt to GDP ratios many times higher than the US that are perfectly stable. The only thing that can threaten the US economy is Republican threats to default on those debts, which have harmed our credit rating considerably over the past few years, and could continue to do so. If you are concerned about America's debt, make sure to always vote Democrat.
    2
  3762.  @webporta-1  They aren't US states, but they are on the same planet as US states, and what happens in them can cause harm or benefits to US states, so it is in the interests of US states to keep them stable and functional.
    2
  3763.  @The_Kiosk  Exactly my point.
    2
  3764. And this is why people lose money investing, they don't understand economics as well as they think they do.
    2
  3765. @ Those taxes are a drop in the bucket compared to these tariffs. Don't worry about it.
    2
  3766.  @juicebox853  Also record drops in crime.
    2
  3767.  @MikeJones-mf2fw  Presidential historians disagree with you. I'd say they know more about history than you do.
    2
  3768. This is more likely than anything to be the tipping point, as it hits the Republicans in the jimmies.
    2
  3769.  @eightpointcross4947  Exactly. Anyone who can watch a full, unedited long form interview with someone like RFK Jr and think that he's someone worth listening to, has a fool looking at him in the mirror every day.
    2
  3770.  @k333rl  You really think they don't?
    2
  3771. He willfully withheld far more documents of much more serious nature, and obstructed justice in his efforts to get away with it. I thought this was common knowledge.
    2
  3772. I would think that professional companies would just buy whole racks of spare batteries, and then just swap them out as needed to get the job done. Companies that tend to work in the middle of nowhere could either just bring dozens of batteries with them, or bring a large, purpose built "electricity truck" to be recharging batteries on rotation. Likewise, areas where this sort of thing is a common problem could have big battery banks at the sorts of places where you could currently buy bulk ice or propane tanks, and you could just grab a battery and go, replacing it when you're done.
    2
  3773.  @dingus6317  You can keep driving your existing car as long as you want. Older cars get grandfathered in to any regulations, so they should be road legal for many decades to come. Still, it's better to not be putting NEW gas guzzlers on the road, right?
    2
  3774. I think that in less than 100 years, we will not just lose 30% of jobs, but 99.99% of jobs. Pretty much anything a person can do, a machine will be able to do cheaper, so the only people with jobs will be those at the absolute peak of the food chain. Those people wouldn't be technically necessary either, but since they would be in control of what gets done, they would likely insist on retaining their own jobs. Capitalism has worked fine through the 20th century, but if allowed to proceed unchecked, there would become absolutely no reason for those at the top to even CARE about anyone other than themselves. They could just live on private estates someplace, supported by 100% mechanical industry, and let the rest of the world's population go to rot. So that's plan A, and I'm not a fan. Plan B would have to involve some degree of "welfare," some sort of "income as a basic human right," rather than paying people for the amount of benefit they bring into the world. It would not be paying people for their effort, because their effort would be pointless in the machine age, it would just be paying people because to do otherwise would be inhumane. I don't believe in a resource-less economy because while it might take care of everyone's basic needs, every person is different, every person will value different things over others. People might only have a fixed amount of water that they "need" in a day, but those who prefer long showers might want the option to pay extra out of their allowance to get more water than most, at the expense of having less new clothes, or less fancy food, or whatever matters to them slightly less. I think there needs to be some way of tracking trade-offs, so that each person can adjust their life experience to best fit their tastes, without anyone taking more out of the system than anyone else (this is assuming that we still have any degree of scarcity that would require any level of moderation).
    2
  3775.  @havanasyndrome3024  If 6000 went in, then around 6000 will come out. I was basing it on the 1000 reported earlier.
    2
  3776. Can we all just accept that we will find classified documents at the home of anyone who has had sufficient access to them? The issue is not that they exist, the issue would be in trying to obstruct justice and retain possession of them even when ordered to turn them over, like Trump did. So long as people like Pence fully cooperate with the investigations and turn over any documents as requested, it's a non-issue.
    2
  3777.  @Barrobroadcastmaster  That's really more of a "you" problem than anything to do with "Dems." I hope you get whatever help you need.
    2
  3778.  @Barrobroadcastmaster  Wow, and you actually believe any of that? Sad.
    2
  3779. No, it means "being able to vote for your representatives, and having the results respected." I think you're thinking of Republicans, who do mean "the conservative agenda," and are fairly open about not caring whether the outcomes reflect the positions of the people, so long as they are conservative outcomes.
    2
  3780.  @NoobTamer  We aren't giving any money to Russia.
    2
  3781.  @rickycoverrubias6176  They were, before the current government took charge and started cleaning house. In any case, they are far less corrupt than their current enemy, who was responsible for a lot of the corruption in the first place.
    2
  3782.  Juicy Smooliet's Subway Sammich  If you've somehow made it this long without coming across any of Trump's many flaws, then you don't seem terribly capable of learning. It seems more likely to me that you just enjoy his authoritarianism.
    2
  3783.  @thecatthinks  The opposite, actually. I hate Trump because of the things he has done. It's a bit silly to just assume that anyone who sees Trump for who he is and does not like what they see must be blind.
    2
  3784.  @skarin9871  No, my feelings are purely my own. I don't know that I can say the same for you, given how quickly you leap to "indoctrination" as an explanation. Projecting, perhaps?
    2
  3785.  @johncasoni4379  Nobody hates Trump without a reason, there are just plenty of good reasons to hate him. And no, we were in no way better off with Trump's policies. I think perhaps what you mean is that in some ways we were better off from 2016-2019 than we are right now, and in some cases that is true, but that had more to do with Obama's policies than anything Trump did. Trump's policies only made things worse than if he'd allowed things to keep coasting, and Biden has had to spend much of his first term cleaning up Trump's messes and making up for lost time.
    2
  3786.  @mr.raslyon6626  So you prefer Trump because he did not make that joke, while Biden did? And ignoring the many other MUCH more crude jokes that Trump has made, such as calling African countries "_holes?"
    2
  3787. No, only a handful of them ever have. Most of them have stayed as nonsense the entire time. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
    2
  3788. This will be another case of "climate scientists got it wrong," because people are too stupid to understand "they got it wrong because things will be WORSE than they predicted."
    2
  3789. You can't sue the White House. If you could, Trump would have been buried in valid lawsuits.
    2
  3790. Dude, you guys JUST passed a massive tax cut for the filthy rich that blew a massive hole in the budget. You have no ground to stand on talking about "the budget." Repeal that tax cut, then you can start complaining about Democratic spending.
    2
  3791. I don't think anyone wants them to cross, but given that they are going to try to cross anyway, at least some people would prefer they not die or be injured in the attempt. The other side are sociopaths.
    2
  3792. It's not an R&D issue, most of what they know, we already know. The issue is just investment in building the physical locations.
    2
  3793. "Fortune favors roughly half of the brave."
    2
  3794. Just so long as you vote blue in the fall too.
    2
  3795.  @filthiness  Biden did.
    2
  3796.  @filthiness  Trump ignored Palestinians completely.
    2
  3797.  @OptimusPrinceps_Augustus  Anyone who doesn't is a fool, that would be the end of the American experiment. The only people rooting for that are Putin and the CCP.
    2
  3798.  @no.6243  Lol, "Dumb and Dumber."
    2
  3799.  @CC-615  You don't have to go to Berkley for simple wordplay.
    2
  3800. Yeah. I like EVs, and might rent one to try out if I wanted an adventure, but if I just wanted to go to Disney or something and wanted a no-hassle way of getting around, an EV would add too many variables. For now. That will be completely different in 5-10 years.
    2
  3801.  @natalyasturn  Yes, that's all anyone is asking for, equal justice under the law. As for the more serious offenses, I'm not sure if he was talking about his own cases, or the ones being deliberated in Georgia and DC right now. If he's talking his own stuff, there were some other serious financial crimes that the Trump org and Trump's CFO were convicted of, but that Trump wasn't indicted for his role in. Those might be something they are working on but have not yet gotten the evidence together for that case.
    2
  3802. Thoughts and prayers and gun control to prevent the next one.
    2
  3803.  @WrongThink_  Name checks out.
    2
  3804.  @WrongThink_  Oh, I'm not MAGA.
    2
  3805. Donald Trump opposed Project 2025, he just plans to do all the same policies as Project 2025 in the exact same ways.
    2
  3806.  @PitofDoom666  None of that would justify an invasion by Russia though.
    2
  3807.  @PitofDoom666  Russia invaded on their own. The war can end in a minute if they would leave, but they will not.
    2
  3808. That is inaccurate reporting. Most Indians are completely unaware of the truckers.
    2
  3809. It never had a 99.97% survival rate though. At most it was 98.7%, and it's actually gotten much worse for the unvaccinated over time. 1.7% of 1 million people would be 17,000 dead from that batch alone, or four 9/11s.
    2
  3810.  @tomgabianelli4249  It's preferable to being too scared of reality to accept it, and choosing to live in a happy fantasy world instead. Reality can be scary. Grown-ups DEAL with it.
    2
  3811.  @plneet3504  But these covid deaths are PREVENTABLE, which is what makes it tragic when we fail to prevent them. They are IN ADDITION TO the normal amount of deaths you get in a year. More people die of covid in the average month than die during an entire average flu season, and more died of covid last year than died of the flu over the past twenty years combined. Sure, plenty of people die each year from things we can do nothing about, but when we CAN do something about it, we should really try, no? It just seems idiotic not to try.
    2
  3812.  @Kbxbigbro808  Because Elon's Twitter has been a complete garbage fire. It would be impossible to argue that any other option could have been worse for Twitter than Elon Musk.
    2
  3813. But you have to admit that it's still VERY silly, and the Serbians really need to just cut this nonsense out, right?
    2
  3814. Your fellow citizens seem to disagree with you on that.
    2
  3815.  @jimlewis1332  I'm just saying, I'm not like the ones you were accusing me of being like. I was more like Lott's family, welcoming of strangers and defending them from the MAGAs.
    2
  3816.  @jtorwsfwsfy  Well one, not all trans people are homosexual, and two, homosexuality is not a sin, at least not more than eating bacon is. God made them trans and/or homosexual. If he didn't want them to be that way, then they wouldn't be. Trying to change them would be going against God's will. And Jesus's second coming has been right around the corner for over two thousand years now, and always will be. The one thing the Bible is clear on is that you should NEVER assume that it's going to happen any time soon.
    2
  3817. Every interview ever. If you aren't prepared with video footage, do not allow the guest on.
    2
  3818.  @jsnip6720  Told to say that by whatever "sources" you've had in your "research." They got you by telling you the story that you wanted to believe, even if it's not actually true. It's unfortunately very common. You saw one case example "happen before your very eyes," and that's blinded you to the tends of thousands of people who had purely beneficial experiences with that same vaccine for every case that went bad. Most people overrate their own talent, most people believe they are "above average." You might like to think for yourself, but you are apparently terrible at doing so, if this is where that's gotten you. It's like someone who "likes to design their own clothes" and comes out looking like a clown.
    2
  3819. Lol, Harris went form McDonalds to the White House, Trump went from the White House to McDonalds. Still, that is probably the best job for him.
    2
  3820.  @omi_god  There is a difference between mixed use and high density. The buildings should be high density, either way, they should just also be mixed use. And they are no higher risk of natural disaster than any other sort of building, if they are built to modern codes.
    2
  3821.  @BarMagnet  Today? Probably not. But in fifteen years or so, yeah. My point is that the cars people are buying today should still have good resale value for decades to come, at least competitive with gas cars.
    2
  3822. @ But again, even if you believe "insider trading" was going on, these employees had nothing to do with that, they were just doing their jobs, not deciding where the money gets spent or profiting off of it. If you believe that was a genuine problem, then this is still obviously no solution to it.
    2
  3823. @ Even if you disagree with those programs for some reason, they represented only a tiny, insignificant fraction of what USAID did. It would be like shutting down the entire military because you don't like the Blue Angels.
    2
  3824.  @calvinwood7120  Then why did the White House never call her that? There was a whole speech talking about what her role would be, you can read the transcripts of it yourself, at no point is that term mentioned.
    2
  3825. It means "things like believing that Trump will retake the White House any time within the next few years." Now Trump potentially retaking the White House in the next election is at least plausible, if horrifying.
    2
  3826.  @johnverley  He wasn't the clown. The current one is the clown. This is really not complicated. The OP even noted how funny he was.
    2
  3827. It will happen, but for now he's the current Republican choice to lead their party, so he'll probably be in the news for years to come.
    2
  3828.  @kyleanderson1717  Most colonial occupations were done with the intention to benefit the home country, and a complete indifference to the well being of the locals. Then when they left, it was often a rush job to just get their own people home ASAP, without properly setting up the locals to succeed. A contrasting example would be post-war Germany and Japan, where the allies made efforts to support and rebuild those nations, and that when they left them to self-govern, they did so with a solid foundation to work with. It all comes down to intent.
    2
  3829.  @jthomas7904  No, that's not how it works. We have already been spending the "money coming in" to pay down the debt over the past few months, that started earlier this year. But the money coming in can't keep up with the money going out without taking on additional debt, and "hitting the debt ceiling" is what happens when that stops working and there is no other option to pay the next expense in line. There is no "one cool trick" to get out of this without raising the debt ceiling, there is no alternative. Raising the debt ceiling cannot be open to negotiation. If you have a problem with government spending, that's fine, but it has nothing to do with the crisis at hand. It's like complaining about bad wiring while fire crews are trying to put out a business fire, and threatening to withhold their water supply until they agree to update the fire codes.
    2
  3830.  @wolveslair766  I'm sure one of his red-hat supporters can wave him over. If not, Joe can point the way for him.
    2
  3831.  @serfcityherewecome8069  If God hated America, then He would want Trump to lead it. God loves humanity too much to allow that. He was only willing to allow Trump to present an example of what never to allow again.
    2
  3832. That didn't seem to work out when Trump packed the court with three of his own appointees.
    2
  3833.  @kmeier1978  It is court packing when you delay filling one seat by a record long amount and then rush through another in a record amount just to keep them out of the hands of Democratic presidents. If that is fine, then so is increasing the number of seats, dear.
    2
  3834.  @kmeier1978  And this is not court packing either, it's just politics. There have been Court vacancies in the past where Democrats had a Senate majority. Yes, NONE of them held up a nomination as long as McConnell held up Garland. There have been vacancies near the end of a term too with Democrats in The Senate, and NONE of them rushed anyone through as fast as McConnell. You can cry "Democrats would have done it too" all you like, the fact remains that they didn't.
    2
  3835. Yes, this is how cults typically work.
    2
  3836.  @388easymoney5  I think you're confusing your facts there. Biden's situation began when his lawyers found some classified documents and they reported them to NARA. Then they volunteered to have the FBI search for any remaining ones. The documents he was talking with to his ghost writer he did not know were classified at that time, he just wasn't sure. Also, none of those documents were removed from a secure location. As the video pointed out, many were his own personal, hand written notes, they just contained information that was considered classified. Him being a Senator or VP at the time was no different than if he had been President, in so far as these relevant laws are concerned. And again, this is a crime that hundreds of people working on government technically violate to some degree every year, it's just the nature of doing business. Criminal prosecution comes down to the severity and willfullness of the crime itself.
    2
  3837.  @brunopadovani7347  It would be. Currently Republicans do not seem interested in improving their home countries, but that certainly would be one way to tackle the supply/demand curve.
    2
  3838. Oh, stop wetting your panties, Fox. The border's been a mess since Trump started his inhumane policies. This is just the mess of trying to clean it up.
    2
  3839.  @Clownelskiy  Ok, then problem solved, the people of Donbass that want to can leave for Russia and Ukraine can have their land back.
    2
  3840. That's not what they're doing though. They're airing grievances against their bosses because they were bad employees and got reprimanded for it.
    2
  3841. Race to the bottom.
    2
  3842. I will be absolutely shocked if Republicans have the moral fortitude to actually remove him from the House, but I know that they won't, because Power is all that matters to them.
    2
  3843. They still have a way to go if they want to match the incompetence of the previous administration though.
    2
  3844. That is not how the national debt works.
    2
  3845.  @greg11786  Of course, what kind of idiot wouldn't?
    2
  3846. Nah, the Bible says God won't do that anymore.
    2
  3847.  @fallingiguanas6326  Oh. You are legitimately an insane person then. Ok. I guess "Florida man" strikes again.
    2
  3848.  @justincanoy3101  No, his policy was worse than his personality. He's also roughly the same age as Joe and twice as marked by it.
    2
  3849. So John Mulaney does exist in the same cinematic universe you're in!
    2
  3850. No, that's not what happened here.
    2
  3851. He was talking about the Russians. He meant we should have continued fighting until they were dealt with.
    2
  3852. He's already enforcing the existing laws, but there aren't enough judges to enforce them efficiently. Hence the new funding in the bill.
    2
  3853. The latter two depend on retaking the house and a larger majority in the Senate, not who is President at the time. As for getting a more progressive Presidential candidate, only a minority of the Democrats want that, much less the general audience. Most Democrats are centrist.
    2
  3854.  @shannaking4076  Nobody should take pride in a "presser" in which he told hundreds of provable lies. Better to have not done it at all.
    2
  3855.  @shannaking4076  So you share in his dementia.
    2
  3856.  @shannaking4076  You know what? If you can get yourself at least this close to reality, I'll take it.
    2
  3857.  @nancyfox6238  Wait, do yo think that "woman" and "wife" are the same thing?
    2
  3858.  @davidradtke160  True.
    2
  3859. Why would it be a good thing for them to lose more?
    2
  3860. Aside from all the other ones, who are actually pro-American. Lol, this would be like calling Tucker or Elon "pro-American."
    2
  3861. I assume they are using an electric heat pump for the heating and cooling, and electric stoves. So they shouldn't need any "burning stuff."
    2
  3862.  @janetkaradenza4165  Are you arguing that the Republican party is not more pro-Confederacy than the Democratic party? Do you believe that you appear at all credible to others while making such wild claims?
    2
  3863. Southern Italy should build a Venice.
    2
  3864. Sadly, he still might, whether he gets back into office or not. Depends on how many of the documents he took ended up in Russian hands.
    2
  3865.  @KilgorSoS  No, actually, he's right. Everyone has African DNA on some level, since that's where humanity migrated out from.
    2
  3866. And yet Coomer is STILL too cowardly to just let Hunter testify. It's obvious he has no interest in testimony, he just wants to be able to tell lies about what Hunter says behind closed doors.
    2
  3867. They wore masks and mostly did it outside, so the risk was low.
    2
  3868.  @nonyabusiness557  Operation Enduring Freedom. The US was using a base in Italy to support their efforts in Afghanistan.
    2
  3869.  @nonyabusiness557  He never claimed to have been in a combat zone, only to have been in war. He was never in combat, he was deployed in war.
    2
  3870.  @esmereldagreen5747  If that were the case he would be pro-Trump.
    2
  3871.  @nonyabusiness557  He never said he was "at war." He said he was in war, and he was, in Italy, in 2003, as a supporting element of Operation Enduring Freedom.
    2
  3872.  @FortunaeSD  The districts are what determine who ends up filling those seats though, at least in most states. If you get six seats, you will have six districts, and the people of each of those districts will choose one representative to go to Congress on their behalf. I don't know what your issue is regarding cities and rural areas though, they are both fairly represented relative to their populations. How else would you expect it to work? Go by square footage of land or something silly like that?
    2
  3873.  @crazysquirrel9425  But again, why involve counties at all? No county is ever guaranteed any amount of congressmen. So if we're going to "add up the votes" then we would ignore counties entirely and just add up all the votes in the state. Again, in most states the number of available counties has nothing to do with the number of congressmen they get. If you have a system in which "lesser populated counties" somehow get to choose more representatives than "higher populated counties" do, then that would be inherently anti-representational, and go against the core principles of the republic.
    2
  3874.  @crazysquirrel9425  If population is not meant to be the controlling factor, then why is number of representatives determined by population? And again, you are misapplying the term "mob rule." It does not mean the thing you are describing, much less the term "dictatorship." What you are advocating for is a tyranny, a situation in which the minority get to dictate to the majority, which goes against everything that the founders fought for. The city nearest to you does NOT and never will get to dictate what you can and cannot do, but the PEOPLE who live IN that city get to have fair representation in government, and if that means that what they want gets passed over what you would want, then I'm sorry, but that's just how a non-tyrannical government works. There is no fair system in which a smaller amount of people get to have an outsized share in how government functions, just by virtue of where their mailing address happens to be.
    2
  3875. So basically "hail Satan?"
    2
  3876.  @demsareunamerican6800  I think his point was that Trump has claimed that he intends to pull a Neville Chamberlain in this situation. I guess we'll see whether he actually does or not.
    2
  3877. Because he is not a member of MS13. They also didn't say he was Santa Claus.
    2
  3878. The bordr is already as closed as it ever was. Shouting "we want it closed" only shows you don't understand how borders work.
    2
  3879. TL;DR, "No, that's not how words work, but it's ok, you don't have to read if you don't want to."
    2
  3880.  @nvclxud  Yes, but Trump has been the first one to actively assert that he did not in fact lose the election in which he lost.
    2
  3881. Why? What's it hurt at this point? None of the other Republican candidates can win.
    2
  3882. What's wrong with mail in votes? Trump votes by mail.
    2
  3883. When you keep doing enough crimes, people stop caring that you keep doing crimes, and then you can just do crimes without people hassling you over it.
    2
  3884.  @Mr.White10-65  I think you misunderstand, the "free lunch" programs are for children who cannot afford it. It is free to them. The cost is picked up by the taxpayers, because most of them believe it is wrong to allow children to starve. But sure, if you want to raise the minimum wage so that working parents can afford to feed their own children, I'm sure Walz would agree on that too. We can do both.
    2
  3885. Why would it go anywhere? This is a nonsense resolution for nonsense purposes, and the only people supporting it are random trolls.
    2
  3886. @ Yeah, it's not like they don't want to pay the wages that Americans would require, it's that they can't pay those wages without charging $10-20K more per vehicle, and customers would rather buy a cheaper car than that.
    2
  3887. @ Well, the reason we can't bring those products back to the US is because then customers could not afford them and those companies would go out of business.
    2
  3888. @ Oh, I'm not maga.
    2
  3889.  @paulrossi4863  Just in relation. The Greens are still a joke, just not as funny a joke as the Republicans these days.
    2
  3890. Lol, have fun with that.
    2
  3891.  @blakethegreatone2058  Because they can better afford to do so.
    2
  3892.  @blakethegreatone2058  It's sad that you don't think that answers the question you posed. It certainly does.
    2
  3893.  @blakethegreatone2058  Ok then, why do you believe that it is more fair to ask for people who already cannot afford food and housing to pay? Which would you prefer they miss out on, the food or the housing, so that they can pay "their fair share," the same as someone who's basic needs are already more than accounted for?
    2
  3894.  @coreenaburke5378  Right, exactly, which is why we need to do everything possible to prevent innocent guns from falling into the hands of humans capable of pulling their trigger.
    2
  3895.  @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.
    2
  3896.  @thomasfallone744  A business is an inanimate object, and the Supreme Court has ruled that businesses are people, so why not? At the very least, an inanimate object can greatly increase the potential harm someone can cause, so if it's easier to remove the object than to remove the person, why not remove that object?
    2
  3897.  @IM-tl7qv  If that were true, then the countries in which they had taken guns away would have higher murder rates than the US. Instead they have 4 times LOWER murder rates, or better. The argument that removing guns makes citizens defenseless has no merit, the opposite is true, removing guns gives civilians BETTER odds of being safe. Gang crime and knife crime in the UK is nothing on gun crime in the US. A drop in the bucket. You might feel safer if you had a gun in your pocket, but that would be a false sense of security, because when the criminals came at you with their guns, they would be much more likely to beat you than you to beat them.
    2
  3898.  @-First-Last  1996 Dickey Amendment
    2
  3899.  @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!
    2
  3900. @scottishd0g87 Nah. Most people don't want that.
    2
  3901.  @rl192  Here is the direct quote from Biden on Mar 24, 2021: "In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border. . . . "And so, this increase has been consequential, but the Vice President has agreed — among the multiple other things that I have her leading — and I appreciate it — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders." You can read the full transcript for more, but again, he was only assigning her to meet with the leaders of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, to improve their countries in ways that would involve people staying there. And she succeeded at that.
    2
  3902. And in this case, their story and the truth are closely aligned, so if that differs from your story, then that is a "you" problem.
    2
  3903.  @IJUSTWANNAFLYDJIDRONES71  The issue is not "people hiring them" (although the US economy absolutely needs these immigrants to function), the issue is that while these immigrants are waiting for their asylum claim to be processed, they cannot legally work, which make them a burden rather than a benefit to the economy. That is why we need to either massively shorten that process, OR give them work visas while the claim is being processed. None of this would cause immigrants to NOT come to the US, because even living on the streets in the US is better than staying in their home countries. If you want immigrants to stay in their home countries, then it would require significant investment in improving the quality of life there, so they have no reason to seek a better life elsewhere.
    2
  3904.  @RandyCampbell-fk3pf  Withholding documents from the federal government.
    2
  3905.  @RandyCampbell-fk3pf  Yes, exactly, the Presidential Records act is one of the laws that Trump violated.
    2
  3906. Then you aren't going to see anything, because no crimes were committed to indict. Also because the House can't indict people.
    2
  3907. Their bill was not bipartisan, this one was.
    2
  3908. Let me guess, Fox viewer?
    2
  3909. The national debt is not an issue. The US could run a debt 3-4 times the current one without any major problem. The issue is people threatening government shutdowns and debt ceiling crises.
    2
  3910.  @zeitgeistzebra  It might anger or entrench them, but they are already that hopeless, so it does not make anything worse. What it can do is prevent their viewpoints from infecting others. So this is still a net positive, more good done than harm, right? To your second point, it's irrelevant to the topic at hand, nobody is talking about stifling actual scientific debate anywhere. It's a complete non-issue. The general public has no role to play in such discussions, because they lack the foundational understanding to meaningfully participate. It would be like having a policy at an NFL game that anyone in the stands should be allowed to play if they want. They'll only get people hurt in the process. As to your third point, I don't think government should necessarily be the ones mandating any form of misinformation controls, beyond spotlighting deliberate foreign misinformation campaigns like the administration recently attempted to do. I think for the most part it's something that media platforms should apply for themselves. I think that if government did play any role, then it should be a non-partisan civil service position, one that would not be influenced by who is in power at any given time. There should be no political appointees involved.
    2
  3911.  @allylilith5605  Probably, it also seems to have deleted a long post of mine. I'm never sure what the conditions at play are. I agree with you that teaching people how to think is a worthwhile goal, I just don't think it's feasible to teach enough people how to think well enough to solve the problem. The public educational system is far from perfect, but it should be sufficient to preventing Faux News from succeeding, and yet, it remains a popular edutainment channel. It would be fantastic if we lived in a world where it was easy to convince people of the truth, but we don't live in this world, and it would be delusion to behave as though we do.
    2
  3912.  @trajectoryunown  Then what are you doing in this discussion, which is not about policies? And of course there are VOLUMES of criticisms about Trump's policies, but this is neither the time nor place for it. Stay on topic. I think we can both agree that nobody who cares about policies would even consider Trump a viable option.
    2
  3913.  @thatoneguywithahugethang  Well, we have to pick one of them in November, and Harris is the obvious choice. Kamala is not "lying to me" by discussing all aspects of her heritage. The only one lying to me is the one telling me to ignore one of them. At the end of the day though, her heritage is not relevant to me, and I only discuss the topic at all in the context of other people disparaging her because of it.
    2
  3914.  @trajectoryunown  So you just don't like Kamala Harris. That's fine. Vote for someone else in the next primary. But still, she's the candidate America's got this time, so just relax for now. I mean, anyone who would not vote for Harris in this election can't make any claims to rational decision making, right?
    2
  3915.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  I have looked it up, that's how I know that it was never an official term. Look, I get it, when you're immersed in the swamp long enough, you believe that's all there is to the world, but come up for air!
    2
  3916.  @scottwaters998  and all people who enter the US ARE detained and deported, if they are not granted residence under other portions of existing US law, such as the right to asylum. But what the law does NOT say is that they must be detaining until they are deported, that would only apply to people convicted of a serious crime. If their only "crime" was crossing illegally, then it is entirely discretionary whether they remain in detention or are released until their hearing dates. That is US law. If this process does not happen fast enough for your tastes, then support Biden's border bills, which include more funding to allow for faster processing.
    2
  3917. I don't know about that. Sure, things stalled out a bit due to covid, but they've been on a fairly consistent upward trajectory since Obama took office.
    2
  3918. There is only one word to describe people who call Joe Biden a liar, and it happens to be that same word.
    2
  3919. Why make fun of Biden's stutter? I think it's admirable how he's managed to push past it.
    2
  3920.  @nathanielbass771  That's dumb. No, the "tax the rich bill" did not raise prices. Prices raised due to overall inflation in the global economy. The inflation was kept lower in the US than in most countries due to strong action by the Biden administration, but it would be impossible to prevent all of it. You're just looking around for things to blame Democrats for, rather than actually paying attention to cause and effect.
    2
  3921.  @partydean17  I was just thinking that you must work for Airbnb. But no, none of what you said makes any sense or has any relevance to anything I was saying. It's not about the hotel industry, it's about people not being homeless. If you can figure out a way to have affordable housing AND Airbnb, then I have no problem with Airbnb, but in the current environment, it seems to be causing more harm than good.
    2
  3922.  @partydean17  How would "just tax land" solve anything? If anything that would only give MORE incentive to short term housing, because it would be more profitable to offset the taxes. I don't see how that would not just make things even worse. And again, NOBODY is talking about anything that would hurt tourism. That is a non-factor here. Tourism did fine before Airbnb and will do fine after, the only people who care are AirBnb and their minions.
    2
  3923. @ Oh, are you one of those that calls basic taxation policy" use of force?" Ok, I can't discuss things on such an irrational level as that. And again, AirBnb has been around for less than 20 years, this is not some fundamental human right we're talking about here, it's something that's been around less time than Youtube. The world got along just fine without it.
    2
  3924. @@erickanter4090 And the US government does not censor, but fact checking has never been censoring.
    2
  3925.  @raymondcarroll3876  It was already proven by his own words. You remain unconvinced, which is a "you" problem that I'm incapable of solving. You are uninterested in learning, and nobody can help you with that but yourself.
    2
  3926.  @raymondcarroll3876  So you didn't watch the video above? That is what they were referencing. In his own words.
    2
  3927. Sure they are, so long as she only copies the good part and leaves the bad parts behind.
    2
  3928. @ Yes. every time Trump is proven wrong, his fans move on to something else that he hasn't yet been proven wrong on. But of course he'll be proven wrong on that too, eventually.
    2
  3929. @ "Mexico will pay for the wall." That's when he was wrong.
    2
  3930.  @joenarbaiz1640  Just checking that we are on the same page. Yes, people who are not a part of the national guard are not referenced by the 2nd amendment.
    2
  3931.  @Mortvent  The national guard is the modern form of the militia. When the Bill of Rights was drafted, the standing US army was basically non-existent, so the government required that all able bodied men be prepared to become an army at a moment's notice, in case of foreign invasion, such as in the war of 1812. Over the years, the US did develop a standing army that is perfectly capable of defending the US without civilian support, and the role of the "well regulated militia" was formalized into what we now refer to as "the National Guard," a group of people who are civilians most of the time, but trained and ready to be active duty military should the need arise. Anyone outside that structure is not relevant to the 2nd amendment.
    2
  3932.  @dr.burtgummerfan439  The National Guard is the modern evolution of the militia envisioned by the Founding Fathers. Go back to Poli Sci 101 and pay attention this time.
    2
  3933.  @dr.burtgummerfan439  "If "well-regulated" meant, as you posit, "subject to infringement and restrictions", WHY would the next clause state the right shall NOT be infringed? " Context is everything. You cannot read that "shall not be infringed" portion outside of the context of the rest of the clause. If "shall not be infringed" was meant to be read entirely on its own, then why even include the "well regulated militia" portion? They were making clear that the right to bear arms ONLY applied in so far as it was in necessary support of the national defense structure of the time that it was written. As the national defense structure shifted, that purpose also shifted.
    2
  3934.  @joenarbaiz1640  While I agree with you on some points, the portion "being NECESSARY to the SECURITY of a FREE state, " had nothing to do with militias acting as a hedge against the US government. The founders made clear that civilians have NO legal right to use or threaten force against the US government. What that statement refers to is the necessity to defend the freedom of the US people against FOREIGN adversaries. IF, for example, the British came back and attempted to reconquer the US, as they did in 1812, America needed the means to prevent that from happening. The US government Is that "free state" that needed to be secured.
    2
  3935.  @dr.burtgummerfan439  That is a mistranslation by people who would prefer to have guns. It is not an accurate translation from 18th Century speech into modern speech. The accurate translation would be: "Because the US does not have an effective army, the citizenry needs to be prepared as a substitute for that if we must defend the nation from external threat, the right of individuals who are part of this citizen army to own and carry weapons (keep and bear arms) must not be restricted. (shall not be infringed)."
    2
  3936. @@user-yi1pd9nr7v If a crime had been committed, then there would be convictions for it. There were not any, because he could not find any crimes being committed.
    2
  3937.  @drzaius1121  Requiring that something be posted in schools IS teaching it. It is requiring that it be taught in schools that the Christian God is the only god.
    2
  3938.  @pesty4592  "LGBT stuff" is not religion.
    2
  3939.  @carolynm8350  Morality does not require religion. It could be seen as acceptable to post an ADAPTED version of the Ten Commandments, that omits the first, second, and third commandments, but never the entire list.
    2
  3940.  @drzaius1121  Lesson plans are not relevant to the topic at hand. Something does not require a lesson plan to be a part of the school process. Something mandated to be on display in a classroom is being taught.
    2
  3941. It's important to remember that however ridiculous Congresswoman Jayapal might get, there are at least a dozen Republican House members that are even more ridiculous. And that's being kind to the Republicans. Pobody's nerfect.
    2
  3942. No, that's not why. "The rules are the rules, regardless of party," that's the democrat party.
    2
  3943.  @longsleevethong1457  Good job proving his case there.
    2
  3944.  @commentsedited  Not in the real world though, that's what we're talking about here. In the real world, California is 20th overall. Alabama isn't technically last, but it is 44th.Out of 50, if you happen to be from Alabama.
    2
  3945.  @commentsedited  Ok, cool. This will be a good lesson for you. What sources did they use for their information? They cited sources, right? Were any of their sources "Scholaroo?" But anyway, the point we can agree on is that California is at least well ahead of Alabama, and that blue states in general do much better than red states in terms of education, especially K-12.
    2
  3946. Why not? If it's all they can do to defend their constituents, then it is a noble act.
    2
  3947. I'm sure they would have no problem doing so, but it's important to keep in mind that black nationalists are far less of a threat to this country than white nationalists are, because there are far fewer of them and they are not currently engaged in any harmful activity.
    2
  3948. It was where he did it and what motivated him to do it just then and there. Why do you not believe this is relevant?
    2
  3949. If we have to borrow to spend, then raise taxes until we don't have to borrow.
    2
  3950. He makes for a terrible moderator though, because he's too dumb to filter out nonsense. If it's raining and he asks what's doing that, and one person says that it's condensed moisture in the atmosphere, and the other one says it's two giant dogs pissing down from the clouds, he'll go "hey, wow, have you heard about these 'cloud dogs?'"
    2
  3951.  @bunjijumper5345  They are not killing ducks either.
    2
  3952.  @bunjijumper5345  They might be. Why would you think that would make any difference? What we do know is that there is no actual evidence that it is happening, and what accounts have been made seem to be pranks.
    2
  3953.  @bunjijumper5345  Why do you keep bringing up the speaker's race?
    2
  3954. @ That false sense of security is what leads to so many accidents.
    2
  3955.  @ObeseChess  Yup. Cope.
    2
  3956.  @alexejfrohlich5869  But again though, there's nothing about US law that makes two parties inevitable, in fact, they actively tried to avoid it, but it's just the nature of majoritarian systems that tend to lead toward them. There's little practical difference between them though, it's just that if the US government were all forced to join, say, a UK party, then the existing two parties would split into 2-3 groups, but still typically remain on the opposing sides of the same people. The coalitions would all end up the same.
    2
  3957. They already do.
    2
  3958.  @RealisticRobot  You're not as realistic as you imply.
    2
  3959. That was not what was being discussed here. The Article 3 powers were being handled by Article 3 entities.
    2
  3960.  @ccobra6813  Do you mean the opinion of the current SCOTUS? What value could possibly be found in that?
    2
  3961.  @stewhobson9748  Yes, the judge that was deemed "unfit to serve" by the American Bar Association" because she lacked the qualifications for the job, and is therefore extremely likely to be wrong on any legal decision she makes.
    2
  3962. Some people look at a situation and think "that's awful, the government should never have given out all that money in the first place." Other people look at all the good that the overwhelming majority of the funds brought about, and just blame the criminals for doing crimes.
    2
  3963. I really wish this distrust of "a consensus of scientists" did not exist. It would make things much simpler if people didn't just attribute such things to "basically like religion," and actually understood what the term meant.
    2
  3964.  @sergegirard864  You have described exactly the reason why we should listen to the consensus of scientists, because most people do not read the papers, or fully understand them. They are paid to know how to do this.
    2
  3965. That would not be why.
    2
  3966. So basically Dr. Stone.
    2
  3967. No, that was his boss that got the guy fired. Joe was just the messenger.
    2
  3968.  @Sheri77  Yes, because he did a good thing. That prosecutor was corrupt and was acting in Russia's interests. Why would you have wanted him to stay in that job?
    2
  3969.  @danielwebb8402  But again, plenty of other governmental systems have turned authoritarian, communism has just been attempted less often. The lesson is not that communism is bad, it's that authoritarianism is bad, so don't vote for authoritarians.
    2
  3970.  @Pratik4311  And that's why it's never a good idea to listen to Trump, but Biden gets it right.
    2
  3971. Not to mention that the warming also causes bursts of intense cold, because they just shake up the natural weather patterns like a snow globe, so it's not like we'll have "mild" winters in the future, we'll have winters that are sometimes more mild, and also sometimes massive blizzards in places that aren't typically that snowy.
    2
  3972. Republicans REALLY wish that were true.
    2
  3973.  @Redmirage47  Some are, not all. Many require a court appearance. Again though, this one is a felony.
    2
  3974.  @garygolfer3243  The older set knew who his father was, they don't care about Jr.
    2
  3975. They called you that because you were making it out to be a bad thing that they would try and keep inaccurate medical information off their platform. They were right about that.
    2
  3976.  @slushbilly5893  "you're."
    2
  3977.  @mrlij6534  Some farmers still support him because they put other issues over their own economic interests, and also because he gave them government handouts to offset a lot of their losses. Those handouts came out of your pocket.
    2
  3978.  @Mattzilla01  What do you mean? We produce more oil and gas today than we did under Trump. What does "energy independence" mean to you?
    2
  3979. They need to combine "anti-gouging" laws with "anti-scalping" laws to prevent scalping. When it comes to things like graphics cards and consoles, I think that reseller sites like ebay and Amazon should have policies to not allow the listing of these products within 3-6 months of launch. That would cut scalpers out of the major markets and make it harder for them to move their products, and therefore less likely to buy them up.
    2
  3980. Which people are in prison for making a choice that did not harm others?
    2
  3981.  @lambertlum1087 They can't win with the truth, so they have to make stuff up.
    2
  3982.  @tolowokere  To your point 1, no, a parent should not automatically have more rights over their child than their school. The CHILD's welbeing ALWAYS takes priority, so if the parent is acting against the child's best interests and the school is willing and able to better support that child, then the school should be allowed to do so. Again,. it is ALWAYS about the child's welbeing. The bill does not "make allowances" in any sense, it is deliberately designed to put teachers at as much threat as possible. 2. While I agree that parents can protest certain curriculum, that should be a rational discussion with the teachers, principles, and school board, in which the parent does not necessarily get their way, particularly if they are overruled by other parents in the class. The powers granted by that bill go WAY too far in allowing individual parents to dictate the rules everyone else must follow. To point 3, it would be nice if that were the case, but the way the current law was written, there are NO such assumptions that could be made. "Tommy has two daddies" would allow a parent to sue the teacher who said it. 4. The example you gave would be one. Just disucussions that sometimes men marry each other, love each other in the same way that men and women might love each other. NOBODY is promoting discussions of the mechanics of sex prior to sex ed classes. There could also be discussions about transgender people, where it comes up. 5. You don't have to describe your threesomes to your children, but neither should you be implying to them that LGBT behavior would be morally wrong, while engaging in it yourself. Your examples are overblown, and often just books that were included in high school libraries, certainly not books recommended to or even available to elementary students. I don't doubt that sometimes mistakes are made, and that books that appear innocuous might contain some explicit content, but of all the books recommended for banning, very few of them actually end up getting removed by a reasonable process.
    2
  3983.  @churblefurbles  But that's the sort of thing her group is trying to stop. This is the problem.
    2
  3984.  @sanriosonderweg  Nobody here is advocating the Republicans' grooming of children. I don't know what that would even have to do with this conversation.
    2
  3985.  @ananse77  The policies she promotes imply that people shouldn't be LGBT and that it is bad, yes. If it cannot be discussed in the classroom then it would be something "shameful." Anything that would be reasonable to discuss involving a man and a woman, should be equally valid to discuss about two men or two women.
    2
  3986.  @kvasir8931  No, that is not what I was saying at all. Where would you get the idea that this was what I was saying?
    2
  3987.  @dustincaso6781  Bob Menendez hasn't done anything like this, so far as we know. This does not seem like an accurate reference to make. Maybe if you were comparing him to the Trump crime family or something, but not to this situation.
    2
  3988.  @ananse77  Nobody is arguing in favor of discussing sexual activities to small children. That is a weak argument made by weak people. But discussing the existence of LGBT people does not involve discussing sexual activities. It is the latter that people are concerned with. If you believe that parents should have the absolute right to harm their children, then we can just disagree on that one. I believe that is an unconscionable position to take. The child should ALWAYS come first, because they are the ones that will have to live (or not) with the consequences. If you argue that schools do not already have the authority necessary to protect children from abusive parents, then that is what would need changing.
    2
  3989.  @pietropes1322  Nobody is trying to teach kids about sex stuff in public schools. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
    2
  3990.  @ananse77  You say I throw out "ridiculous strawmen," but then you say "Many people are trying to teach about sex and sexuality in schools." What would that be other than a strawman? Nobody is try to teach about sex in schools, at least to younger age groups than traditionally get sex ed classes. As I said to that other person, occasionally a book that is more explicit than it should be ends up in a library, more typically at the high school level than the elementary school one, and if we kept it to ONLY such books then I don't think there would be too much pushback, but those who seek to ban books often include FAR less clear cases than that, in many cases citing a book with NO explicit content whatsoever, only because it has an LGBT or minority author. That obviously has nothing to do with discussions around the concept of LGBT people though, any more than that you can't talk to younger children about what a "man" or "woman" is because you don't want to talk about "how sex works." The two topics are unrelated. You don't teach how sex works between two LGBT people, but you do have age appropriate discussions around the existence of people who love members of the same sex, or who have a gender that is distinct from their biological sex. That is part of "tolerating and respecting ALL people, " and your own comments violate the lessons you say they should be taught. "I listed several parental rights, none of which were a "right to harm". I even pointed out that schools have an important DUTY to report cases of abuse and neglect." Then we have no point of conflict on that topic. The Florida law would interfere in that process, by preventing teachers from getting involved in cases where parents were causing harm to their LGBT children. That is something many view as being a problem.
    2
  3991.  @Zoetherat  Ok, but for people who didn't go to imaginary colleges, that is less of an issue. Most college students go to actual colleges that exist, where that sort of class would never occur, so they don't have the same experiences you do. I think that what we can agree on is that the government should not be telling teachers that they cannot choose to discuss the existence of LGBT people with their students. If you'd received an education at an actual college, you would know why your second paragraph also makes no sense.
    2
  3992.  @Brenda10923  Nobody is trying to tell children what they should be doing sexually though, so why is that on your mind?
    2
  3993.  @tolowokere  A child is not a pet, a child is not property, birthing a child does not give parents rights to do whatever they want to that child. Birthing a child is a responsibility, not a gift. The parent is responsible for raising that kid to be as healthy and happy as possible, they are not allowed to create whatever sort of fiasco they want. Children are incapable of fully thinking for themselves in a mature way, and nobody is talking about giving final decision-making rights to children, adults do need to have ultimate decision-making responsibility until they reach maturity, but that adult does not necessarily need to be a parent, IF their parents have shown a failure to parent responsibly. For example if parents have a religious exception to modern medicine, and their child would die without getting treatment, then that parent's wishes should be overruled by other adults in the room to ensure that the child is protected. To your point 5, NOBODY wants to discuss sexual behavior with children. I do not understand why people keep bringing that up in this thread as though it is something ANYONE is advocating for. Can you explain that one to me? To your point 6, again, having not read the specific works in question, I can take at face value that those specific examples should not be in a school library, at least not below the high school level, and perhaps not even then. I don't believe they were added with any malice though, they were probably just not fully read by the staff and added because they were popular with students or something. Mistakes happen. My point was that such examples are extremely RARE though, exceptions to the rule, and represent a tiny minority of the books being targeted by conservative activists over the past few years. The overwhelming majority of the books being targeted contain no such explicit content. The efforts are opposing the general trend of book banning, not necessarily defending every single book. Also, I hate to tell you, but if a kid has reached the 7th grade without encountering F-bombs then they are going to be shocked to find out that indoor plumbing exists. 7th grade is also typically after sex education classes which would have already discussed such topics.
    2
  3994.  @jimwerther  Afraid not, only got the preamble. Try breaking it up into more paragraphs.
    2
  3995.  @grossguy9570  I think this might be where a lot of misunderstanding is coming from there is nobody "encouraging kids/adults to transition, get gender affirming surgery, take hormones or believe in being trans. " Nobody. There are only people who accept trans youth, and try to help them get the help they want and need. Nobody is encouraging them to be anything they aren't, they just accept it when they ARE. They would still be trans with or withotu that acceptance, but it massively improves their mental health and safety. And yes, unfortunately just because someone is in a minority group themselves does not mean that they support other minorities. It is a factor of human nature that some oppressed try to gain acceptance from the majority by punching downward.
    2
  3996.  @Zoetherat  "What I’m saying is that you do not speak for minority groups, and you do not have the right to claim that your opinions equate to being “for” that minority group, " I am speaking for those that need help. I certainly don't speak for all trans people, but I do speak in favor of policies that would improve the lives of all trans people, and that would harm no one, so why not just do that? Certainly anyone who opposes those policies would oppose that entire group, even if portions of that group were complicit in that opposition. "It's a framework that assumes the progressive position on any issue must automatically be right." Not exactly, it just turns out that the progressive position tends to be right, because the conservative position tends to be "nuh uh!" to any data that they do not like. The Progressive position does not come out of nowhere, it is the one based on following where the scientific evidence leads on a subject. The conservative position is almost never right, once events have fully played out. How ya'll doing on Jim Crowe? So TL;DR, correlation does not equal causation. Progressive viewpoints are not right because they are progressive viewpoints, they are progressive viewpoints because they are right. "You can find plenty of interviews with people who detransitioned on youtube for whom it obviously caused harm. " And for each of those you can find a hundred videos of people who transitioned and benefited greatly from it. Conservatives like to point to detransitioning as if it "debunks" gender affirming care, but it is extremely uncommon, the overwhelming majority of people who transition never look back, so which would be the better outcome, preventing as many transitions as possible, to try to reduce the risks of an occasional detransition, or support people as best we can, to maximize the amount of people who have happily transitioned? Besides which, if we are talking about children, NOBODY supports fully transitioning at a very young age. It's a process, and the more permanent factors of it are not medically recommended until the person is at or very near adulthood. If they spend a few years experimenting with their identity and decide that they don't want to transition, no harm, no foul, they can just go back to how they were. "Affirming" a child does not mean rushing them off to a surgical theater. "However, making an argument from authority selectively (using American institutions that agree with you while ignoring European ones that don’t), is not the same as “following the stance of the medical science on the topic”. " Would you concede that even the "European approach" that you cite is FAR to the left of the "what American conservatives want" approach?" I don't personally have a problem with either the American or European approach, so long as each has their own rational basis, but I do believe it's important to support the child, rather than taking the stance I've often heard from conservatives that they should be bullied into giving up on the whole idea, at least until they are fully adults and/or can run away from home. "In any case, if there’s one thing this discussion hopefully did, it’s demonstrate that believing you shouldn’t give children free rein to self diagnose themselves into sex changes doesn’t mean you hate gays. Then again, you seem like a very dogmatic person, so maybe it didn’t change your mind on anything." You didn't tell me anything I hadn't heard going into this discussion. I don't automatically agree with every single position that comes from the left on these topics, but I certainly believe they are far closer to the ideal path than anyone coming at it from the right. Nobody can see into the future, but the left path is the one most likely to lead to the best outcome for the greatest number, so it's the one I support. This tends to be the case on most topics.
    2
  3997.  @sonofizzy  When did I say she promoted behavior she engaged in herself? The real issue is that she implied it was shameful to engage in behavior she was engaging in.
    2
  3998.  @abbyynorman2874  Not in the real world though.
    2
  3999.  @mark15vintage9  And the state you were talking about did nothing wrong, it was within the scope of their authorization. It did nothing to change the outcome.
    2
  4000.  @mark15vintage9  I understand that they were saying a lot of things that they later lost lawsuits for libel over. What I do know is that none of those allegations ended up being accurate.
    2
  4001.  @chrismaddox9884  The law never says that though. There are many different ways to change voting laws, "voting on it" is not necessary.
    2
  4002.  @chrislambert5571  There was a law suit that found no evidence that any of that happened. Besides which, Dominion was not even involved in any races that mattered. Even if that theory was 100% accurate, the outcome would have been exactly the same.
    2
  4003.  @tyreechiejackstone7379  There was no actual recount going on. All the valid recounts had already been completed and the results certified by the appropriate authorities, according to both state and federal law.
    2
  4004.  @chrismaddox9884  Ok, I asked this before but I'll ask again, which law? You seem very certain that this is a law, and yet no law I'm aware of says any such thing. According to actual law, you can change voting laws by public vote, by bill passed, or by a judicial action, depending on which laws and under what circumstances, and it tends to vary state-by-state. There are relatively few federal laws regulating voting laws, mainly just to prevent discrimination.
    2
  4005.  @chrismaddox9884  Federal Election Commission. Nothing about that says that there needs to be a vote before changing voting laws though. The FEC just monitors campaign finances, not voting laws.
    2
  4006.  @chrismaddox9884  Why do you so confidently state things which are provably incorrect? Again, the FEC ONLY looks into campaign FINANCE issues. They do not have any role to play in how votes get handled. There are other agencies that have some monitoring roles over elections, but NONE of them which require that a vote needs to take place before election laws are changed. Again, election laws can be changed either by a popular referendum, or by an action of legislatures, or by an action of the court system, or even in some cased by executive action, depending on which laws they are and in which state.
    2
  4007. Yup, the fact is that MAGA owns the border crisis now. They are the ones blocking any efforts to fix it. You don't like that? Vote them all out.
    2
  4008. I love how "increasing the supply of available rentals" is categorized as a "win," when the cost of those rentals went up. "Congratulations, it's now possible to rent this apartment! You just can't afford to do so!" The "declines" are only adjusted relative to inflation. A lot of them are also on systems set to automatically escalate, raising every three months, so whichever apartments might be affordable today, will not be within 3-6 months. But sure, cheer about "lower prices" today, while the getting's good.
    2
  4009.  @weirdo24-7  That's entirely possible as well.
    2
  4010. The US is the same way.
    2
  4011.  @TheSakufighter  How would this have anything to do with Trump?
    2
  4012.  @howy41 That's not how it works. We had an election during WWII, and during WWI and during the Civil War. We would have an election no matter what was going on. So again, what would any of this have to do with Trump?
    2
  4013. I have a theory on all of this. We know that poll weigh the raw results to offset various biases in the polling. I think that they are intentionally skewing the results to be as close to 50/50 as possible, because they're tired of people claiming that they were wrong if they definitively name one candidate or the other. If they don't pick a side, then whoever wins they can go "see, it was within our margin of error."
    2
  4014.  @donaldduck3078  I think you miss my point. Refusing to treat trans people with human dignity would be bigotry. Nobody is talking about "degeneracy" here, this is not about Donald Trump. Anyone with morals would know that.
    2
  4015.  Rinogip  True enough. And that's why we kicked his ass.
    2
  4016.  @Donny_Double_Dip  What do you mean "the community" has been associated with children. This is a beer commercial, beer is illegal for people under 21 in the US. And if you don't want it forced down your throat, just don't do a keg stand, you'll be fine.
    2
  4017.  @_Huperniketes_  They really do come out of the woodwork, don't they.
    2
  4018. The funny thing I think is that a lot of the people complaining about them cutting the firefighters budgets are the same people who complain endlessly about "government spending too much money." Well you can't have it both ways.
    2
  4019.  @ammo381  Their leader also used chemical weapons on his own people. Tell me, would you want to live in Syria right now?
    2
  4020. You're thinking of her opponent.
    2
  4021. and that's how you know you're on the wrong side of a topic.
    2
  4022.  @wadewilson524  Why do you keep talking about religion in a discussion about science? What would that have to do with anything?
    2
  4023.  @theclearsounds3911  You're displaying a complete misunderstanding of how science functions, and making my case quite well.
    2
  4024.  @QuantumMechanicYT  Ah, so you're trying to nullify the conversation. This is another tactic often used by those who prefer misinformation to facts, thank you for providing evidence for my position.
    2
  4025.  @wadewilson524  No, it's not at all inevitable. Taking one step never necessitates two. Presenting the worst case scenario as an inevitable consequence of making any change at all is just a recipe for stagnation.
    2
  4026.  @wadewilson524  My point is that "agreement" is irrelevant to the process, accuracy is all that should matter. Again, there's nothing to prevent the next step even if you never take the first, not taking a first step in no way defends against that second, you can leap straight to the second if that's what you want to do. The only thing preventing the second step is "not taking the second step."
    2
  4027.  @markburton5292  So you see, that's the problem, people who don't believe the data because it does not fit their biases, and feel perfectly comfortable with that. You choosing to believe the world is flat does not make it so, and does not stop "the world is flat" form being misinformation.
    2
  4028.  @wadewilson524  Again, those with power often abuse it, and nothing is stopping them from doing that right now if they want to. If they abuse that power, then fight back. But that does not mean that all exercises of power are an abuse, that power should not be used effectively. Again, If such a system is used against the truth, THEN fight against it, but not before.
    2
  4029.  @kayakMike1000  Not if they ARE wrong.
    2
  4030.  @kayakMike1000  Nobody said it would cause global boiling. It's 100 degrees F, not 100 degrees C.
    2
  4031.  @argentaegis  The point of contact should always be flexible, and different sources of information should draw from a variety of points of contact. There should be no single point of failure for ALL information channels, but it should be the natural result that all of these sources would coincide on a consistent outcome. Nobody is talking about censoring scientific journals or colleges from discussing alternate theories, of someone has data disproving an established norm then of course there should be venues for that discussion to take place, it just isn't appropriate for that discussion to take place in the public sphere until the results have been verified by experts, because the public is far more confident in their ability to analyze data than they are capable.
    2
  4032.  @gizmogremlin1872  If they are true now but wrong later, it is the same result as if nothing changes, only more harm is done in the present. This is because if they are wrong later, they will be no less capable of causing harm with their incorrectness regardless.
    2
  4033.  @victorsarachaga7064  Again, I am not arguing that there cannot be scientific discussions on controversial topics, I am only saying that there is no value in publicly discussing such things. You are right that sometimes a flawed argument can inspire a clever solution, among scientists, but it has never once come out of a comment section on social media from random "I know all about this because I read it on a blog" "experts."
    2
  4034.  @BlueAngeluv  Look at Greek statues. Men throwing things all over the place.
    2
  4035. A defensive response.
    2
  4036. This is a given. If he asks for a daily breif after leaving office, just send him a coloring book. He won't notice the difference and will be twice as happy filling it out.
    2
  4037. Yup, this is why all the Trump indictments are happening.
    2
  4038.  @tjmiller5060  OMG! The goose population is diminishing?! In Autumn? When Geese migrate?! Oh the humanity!!!
    2
  4039. What point did he have, if not racism?
    2
  4040. And that statement was true, eight days before Israel was attacked.
    2
  4041. "So long as they come to you with the money, it's ok to violate the Emoluments clause!"
    2
  4042. You do understand that "peaceful protest" does absolutely nothing to defend Trump after his other statements, right?
    2
  4043. It's mainly Faux News viewers that worry about such things, and we're happy to wave goodbye to them. They just won't leave though.
    2
  4044. I love when people are really talented artists at one thing, and then they apparently do one or more other things really well too!
    2
  4045.  @RJL612  The only one who's threatened to put his political opponents in jail is on the Republican side.
    2
  4046. He's gotten crazier and crazier over the years though. That happens. There's no actual evidence to back up his "report," and many of the claims he makes would not actually make any sense, like which vehicles were used or when the actions supposedly took place.
    2
  4047. One thing I'd like to see tested with "AI predicted crime analysis" is, say they think they have a model that can predict where and when crime is more likely to occur. If they then monitor that area more closely than usual, then chances are, they will find more crime there, because they are looking harder. For the study to work well, they would need to ensure that no added attention was brought to the predicted area, and then see how much was found there relative to baseline.
    2
  4048.  @olandir  Yeah, but again, prices would be way higher, and wages would not have kept up. This is just how capitalism works. I think it's better to move toward the most efficient ways of doing things, the important step we've missed though is government holding corporations accountable to the people, to make sure that the people get taken care of, regardless of their productive value.
    2
  4049. If there were anything that she could legally be charged with, there is zero chance she would not have been charged during Barr's tenure. Maybe y'all just need to accept that she never did anything wrong?
    2
  4050.  @ULTRADJ4EVER  Yes, Garland needs to drain the swamp at the DOJ and replace anyone who collaborated with the Barr administration.
    2
  4051. It would require an act of congress. Ask Johnson why he isn't getting the ball rolling. If it got to his desk, Biden would probably sign it.
    2
  4052.  @FirstNameLastName-ib3cp  I love all the "Ex Democrats" on the Internet. Anyone who can say "I used to be a Democrat, but I voted for Trump," was never any sort of Democrat. Unless it was before the 1970s.
    2
  4053. He's also the only one running that nobody's ever heard of.
    2
  4054.  @imthebadguy3225  No, just MAGAs.
    2
  4055.  @bdgil1  Of course they have, it's listed all over the covid data pages. But it's not the ONLY correlation, plenty of skinny people have died of covid too, so covid is the problem that the CDC is focused on.
    2
  4056. They asked for more than 1 million for the border, and they do still need that 60 billion for Ukraine.
    2
  4057.  @mattl2843  Ukraine partnered with NATO because that was in their own self interests and they had every right to do so. None of that gave Russia any justification to invade them. Russia has no say on who Ukraine's friends are. Russia is like an abusive ex-girlfriend.
    2
  4058.  @mattl2843  They posed no threat to Russia, and never attempted to pose a threat to Russia. They even gave up their nuclear weapons in exchange for an agreement that Russia would never invade them.
    2
  4059.  @bugsbunny2944  Not when those laws violate the Constitution.
    2
  4060.  @mattl2843  The amount of money that we give to other countries is a drop in the bucket compared to the overall US budget, and it's money well spent because it heads off future problems that would be MORE expensive to solve. Foreign investment is putting America first. Also, the amount that Americans spend on goods at home has little to do with the national debt, it was mostly related to the drops in Saudi and Russian oil supply over the past few years, and various supply chain issues related to the pandemic. They would have occurred the same regardless of US policy at the time. The only change that US politics has made to that situation is that Biden's policies have allowed the US economy to ride out these problems a lot better than most countries in the world have. It would have been a disaster if we'd had a conservative government over the past few years like the UK had.
    2
  4061.  @Halleyy1057  Right, which is why peace talks are unlikely to happen until after the last Russian troops are back across the pre-Crimea borders.
    2
  4062.  @Juho221  There was never a fair referendum in Crimea because it was done while under Russian occupation. Only once it is back in Ukrainian hands and repopulated with non-Russian citizens could a fair referendum take place. And even in that situation, no portion of a nation has a unilateral right to secede. For Crimea to legally be a part of Russia, the Ukrainian people as a whole would need to have a vote on whether to cede that territory to Russia, and frankly, I doubt they would. If anyone who lives in Crimea wants to be a part of Russia, nothing is stopping them, they can leave for Russia any time they like, but that never gives them the right to take the ground under their feet with them when they go.
    2
  4063.  @Juho221  It was part of Russia for hundreds of years, and then it wasn't. It was part of Ukraine. Russia is not allowed to take it back using force. Again, if the people there want to be part of Russia, they can leave for Russia at any time.
    2
  4064.  @Youtubeisafascistcompany  The problems the mayors of NY and Chicago are having have nothing to do with security. All the people that arrive in their cities have been caught by border patrol, given court dates, and then released until those sates come up. The issue is that the system can't keep up, so those dates are too far out.
    2
  4065.  @michealtull9033  The government fears that the governed will VOTE them out, not that they might take up arms. When the people took up arms against the founding fathers, the founding fathers crushed their rebellion. They did NOT condone insurrection.
    2
  4066.  @michealtull9033  The 2nd amendment was put in because the US did not have a standing army, and needed the people to be prepared to defend against an external threat. It was never intended to be used against the government.
    2
  4067.  @chavvy9074  And again some people tried to do a rebellion during the time of the founding fathers and they put it down. It is not arguable that the US government ever condoned insurrection. EVER. Anyone who felt differently was clearly overruled.
    2
  4068.  Damian  Only if they are part of the National Guard. Any other reading is just flat out ignoring half of it to suit partisan interests. Also, the risk of guns is not that children might encounter one, although that certainly is one issue. The risk guns pose is adults using guns to murder people that they would be unable to murder as effectively without them. The simple fact is that abuse of the 2nd amendment has made America a far more dangerous country to live in than any other country of equivalent economy and society. We sacrifice thousands of humans lives each year so that little boys can play with their toys and have fantasies of self-importance to make up for their impotence.
    2
  4069.  @michealtull9033  Yup. The military is who is authorized to use guns, either the standing army (which did not exist at the time of the Bill of Rights) or the National Guard. This is why the fantasy that armed yahoos are somehow a part of the process. If the US has enemies, foreign or domestic, then the military will handle those. If the yahoos rise up to attack the people's government, and the military are not there to support them, then those yahoos are the domestic enemies they are meant to put down.
    2
  4070.  @chavvy9074  And yet they were in favor of crushing rebellion. They did not put in the 2nd with ANY intention of armed insurrection against the government. It was purely for the national defense against threats TO the government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Anyone who is not a part of that defense is not covered by the 2nd.
    2
  4071.  @Pauldad1692  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," That's referring to the National Guard.
    2
  4072.  Damian  Heller was activist judges distorting the meaning of the Constitution to suit their own political biases. The court has fallen very far over the last couple decades.
    2
  4073.  Damian  Other countries that have more firearm deaths than the US are shitholes that nobody should compare themselves to with pride. Other countries that are WORTH comparing ourselves to have MUCH lower homicide rates than the US, because they have better gun laws. Also, pointing out US cities with high crime rate is pointless, because anyone in those cities can drive five minutes away and legally buy a gun no problem. This is why gun laws need to be national, city-based gun laws are a bandaid at best. Again, if you are a part of the National Guard, the constitution protects your right to be armed for that purpose. If you are not, the Constitution has nothing for you.
    2
  4074.  @Pauldad1692  Right at the beginning: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, "
    2
  4075. Yeah, this is the thing, everyone considers their own gender differently, most people are perfectly happy with their assigned gender, and some of those take it VERY seriously, while others don't particularly care either way, and are just chill about it. Likewise, some people are very uncomfortable with their gender and take it very seriously, while others aren't entirely comfortable, but also are basically fine with it. And some people are in the middle and don't really care either way, while others are in the middle and care very much when people nudge them in either direction. I think that "how much you care about it" is a completely different factor to "what gender feels comfortable," and that there are a lot of people out there who are not exactly "100% on board with their assigned gender," but at the same time aren't that bothered by it either way. When "being trans" comes with the baggage of massive body alterations and massive social stigmas, only those who really care about such things take any significant steps to do anything about it, but when society is more accommodating to trans people, then more "I don't know, maybe" types are sliding into that position.
    2
  4076.  @christopherpardell4418  Evaporation rates aren't falling. Who told you that?
    2
  4077.  @FireThemAll  Poe's Law. These days there are actually people out there who think Trump's picks are qualified for their positions. It's gotten that bad.
    2
  4078.  @elizabethfrownfelter2531  I checked, it was all accurate.
    2
  4079.  @catherinecredle9620  Yes, Pelosi's role was as "the victim."
    2
  4080. This is not Putin's Russia.
    2
  4081. But peace with honor, not a Neville Chamberlain "peace."
    2
  4082. That would not be true though.
    2
  4083.  @leevy6753  There was no false information that was not prosecuted. There is just a lot of information that those on the right wish had been false.
    2
  4084.  @leevy6753  Like the links between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia, for which several of its members were pardoned by Trump to avoid them snitching.
    2
  4085. But not as strictly scrutinized as anything coming out of a Republican's mouth.
    2
  4086. He could have, but he didn't have to, since Redfield was just a political stooge and would have nothing productive to offer to the discussion.
    2
  4087. Those were when Israel was attacking he north. Now that they are attacking targets in the south, the instruction has changed to "move out of the south."
    2
  4088. Your two lines are contradictory. A ten minute run-on sentence is not "complete."
    2
  4089.  @KP-gl1rt  They probably said that because ti was an accurate representation of reality. That is kind of their job, you know?
    2
  4090.  @1USA1st  It's an accurate presentation of reality. That might be hard to recognize if you're more used to conservative propaganda.
    2
  4091. That's how conspiracy theorists think, at least, because they prefer fun drama to the truth.
    2
  4092. @ He signed an update to it during his term. But them on the campaign trail he said that "whoever signed that was stupid for doing so."
    2
  4093. This has nothing to do with mutilating children though. Why would you think that?
    2
  4094. It was already thrown out when they wrote the Constitution.
    2
  4095.  @Voltaire-b8p Nobody is talking about babies here. This still is all "pre-babies."
    2
  4096.  @Voltaire-b8p  And Mifipristone is for under 10 weeks, well before a viable baby exists. This is for pre-baby fetuses only. If a baby can safely be delivered, then it should be, but until then, it is not a baby.
    2
  4097. Well, the Saudis gave his son in law $2 Billion for the work he'd done in the White House, among other foreign payments.
    2
  4098. Term limits would help nothing. If that's all that changed, it would just lead to an ever-rotating list of crazies.
    2
  4099. @ I would be willing to pay a little extra to use self checkout, if I had to.
    2
  4100. You need to find a different doctor, that one is scamming you. I've never had to pay more than $40 for a simple check-up, if that.
    2
  4101.  @kristensmith3079  Why do Republicans?
    2
  4102.  @grammernotzi  I feel it's the more pertinent question. We have fair elections without voter ID, so why are Republicans so obsessed with it? IF someone can give me a good answer to that one, then it might be worth addressing the reasons why not.
    2
  4103.  @jpjp3873  If you went to the polls and gave your neighbor's information, you would be imprissoned. Is that really worth it? The reason to not require it is that there are millions more voters that don't have the required ID than there are people attempting to vote in the way you discuss.
    2
  4104.  @jpjp3873  Since when has ID been necessary to be an American?
    2
  4105. Yeah, it's funny, I've noticed on my car that any day that the temperature drops below like 40-ish degrees, the check tires light comes on, and will stay on, but if the temperature rises above that point again, then the light goes right off and will stay off as long as the temperature is up. I even had one day where it was on, but I had to brake hard because some guy hit the brakes out of nowhere, and that alone seemed to heat the tires enough to flip the light off (it was already a marginally warm day).
    2
  4106.  @mello7889  The United States House is currently run by the asylum. This too shall pass.
    2
  4107.  @jomammayomamma  Full time politicians are necessary to manage this country effectively. Even with their current schedules they don't have enough time to get their work done. Besides which, a "part time politician" system would mean that only landed gentry could afford to play a part, and that isn't exactly "representative."
    2
  4108. What the hell are you talking about? We started hitting ISIS-K targets within the day.
    2
  4109.  @theomen7665  It was, but we fired that guy last fall and replaced him.
    2
  4110.  @theomen7665  Maybe, but there is certainly a better side and a worse side.
    2
  4111. I don't see why this has to be an issue, the peaceful and meaningful solution is extremely simple, China just needs to stop trying to claim things in the Pacific and stop trying to build military bases in other countries. Problem solved.
    2
  4112.  @memepope3644  Plenty of people are insisting that it was official, but at least the two of us can agree on that part. She was never "in charge of the border" either though. That was Mayorkas.
    2
  4113. Yeah, if guns made people safe, then America would be the safest country on Earth. Instead, we're the 17th safest country in the G20, and dead last among developed nations.
    2
  4114.  @kristensmith3079  It's unnecessary and makes it harder for citizens to vote.
    2
  4115.  @onamattapeeya  No, that is literally why.
    2
  4116.  @donnaparrish7638  The evidence says otherwise.
    2
  4117.  @johnkeyberg3476  The opposite of that would be true, but I'm not sure why you said something SO sarcastic without a emoji to let people know you were kidding.
    2
  4118. No, they are here illegally. That is different than being "an illegal." That's the point being made here.
    2
  4119.  @ralphholiman7401  He's right though.
    2
  4120.  @ralphholiman7401  It must be rough to live in a world where it's apparently just you and one other person who disagrees with you, pretending to be every other person in the world. . .
    2
  4121.  @ralphholiman7401  Of course not. "They disagree with me, therefor bot." So, like I said, must be tough to be the only person in the world.
    2
  4122.  @ralphholiman7401  Why would all those people share an account? What would be the point of that?
    2
  4123.  @goosecouple  There's no problem with the fed printing money. It is in no way worse than a credit default. If you think that the fed is printing too much money, then you argue about that during the budget negotiations, but it has absolutely nothing to do with raising the debt ceiling.
    2
  4124.  @michael-x2f5t  Nope.
    2
  4125. Governments can be engaged in retaliatory actions even when they would otherwise have a legal right to take those actions. The important part is intent.
    2
  4126. People who treat children as property do not deserve to have children.
    2
  4127.  @robert-sn2cl  Not according to the data. A lack of effective care has been shown to massively decrease their odds of surviving to adulthood.
    2
  4128.  @neonparadox6967  Yes, which is why it is better for them to not have guns. Countries in which guns are illegal make it more likely for them to be alive in them.
    2
  4129.  @jlpowell51  But the point is that we're working toward an economy in which all aspects of it are green. It's infeasible to do it all at once, so you do each part in phases so that eventually it gets there. If you wait until all aspects are green before anyone's actually making any money off of it, then you'll just keep waiting. Which, of course, is the fossil fuel lobby's preferred outcome.
    2
  4130. @ Yes, it was.
    2
  4131. Why do you believe the US is "unsafe?"
    2
  4132.  @metrork1  I already told you, I'm not a MAGA supporter, I don't watch Faux News. You seem to be incapable of taking in information, which does not surprise me.
    2
  4133. So that would make Wyoming the "middle finger of America" then?
    2
  4134.  @ReaperKezia  No, they are not. That is a false impression by people who are biased against accurate reporting. It's fair to be skeptical of any reporting, so long as you don't let that lead you to accepting conspiracy theories in place of it. It's a good thing to keep an open mind, just don't let your brains fall out.
    2
  4135.  @johnrhardin6460  She can do both, and if she was coerced, then that would be the correct course of action. Lying under oath is wrong. Coercing someone into lying under oath is also wrong, and in many cases an even more serious charge.
    2
  4136.  @OrtusMallum2075  He didn't steal any documents from any SCIFs though. The guy who did that IS going to trial, but he's a different candidate.
    2
  4137.  @OrtusMallum2075  But you said he took them from a SCIF, he did not. The "documents" he had were mostly his own notes of conversations he'd had, or the odd document here or there that he'd received outside of a secure setting. This sort of thing happens all the time in the upper tiers of government, and is rarely prosecuted. It's also a very "speck in my eye, plank in yours" situation, if we're talking about candidates.
    2
  4138.  @untetheredmoon6971  Look at basically any Trump speech. He gives a ton of them and they are all rambling nonsense. "Build the wall" only existed in the first place as something he could remember to say when he got lost.
    2
  4139.  @sadienailedit7467  Well, they didn't know that their candidate would have a stroke months after they nominated him, nor did they expect Republicans to be so petty as to hold that against him.
    2
  4140.  @dr.ronbagwellthdphd3534  If I was President of the United States? Yes. I would make my tax records public, as ALL previous and current presidents have done since Nixon's tax shenanigans, and as Trump promised he would do (but never did). You also leave out that congress has the legal right to demand any tax records they see fit, in their oversight responsibility.
    2
  4141.  ChuckStegall777  No, that would be Republicans projecting.
    2
  4142.  ChuckStegall777  Then why is it that Republicans always seem to be complaining about Democrats doing a thing that Democrats do not do, but that Republicans do? Is that not what "projecting" means?
    2
  4143.  @TG-ff9sp  It's only bad when the other side does it.
    2
  4144. Yeah, I think that the worst "bad faith" arguments people make against electric vehicles are "there is this edge case in which an EV is not as good as a gasoline car," and yeah, that will be true. There are still cases where a horse is a better choice than a car. That does not mean that most people should be riding horses most of the time.
    2
  4145.  @_bando_  You can't claim that R stands for rational when they tend to vote for Trump.
    2
  4146.  @janetkaradenza4165  It's information provided by the Department of Energy, and would be federal law if they were misleading about it. Also I'm sure the current House would drag them over the coals for trying. What's your source that "it isn't?"
    2
  4147. You're welcome, the "consequences": will be that America will improve, as it does under any Democratic administration.
    2
  4148. But it needs to be returned to a federal protection, because states have proven themselves incapable of handling that responsibility.
    2
  4149. You can't. I mean, you can try, but you will fail.
    2
  4150.  @Theendisnear429 Democrats make more money and are more productive.
    2
  4151. Yeah, they at least knew where Trump's documents were, they asked him to return them numerous times. These they had no idea were even missing.
    2
  4152. Still better than any judge added to the courts by the previous administration.
    2
  4153. Her editor did her dirty by not telling her that killing dogs isn't cool these days.
    2
  4154. We would be a third world country if we did not follow the rule of law. This court is following the law.
    2
  4155. Hard to do worse than McCarthy.
    2
  4156.  @sapiensursus3034  I think you misunderstand them. "TDS" is the derangement necessary to believe that Trump is a worthwhile leader. I think some of them just misunderstand what the person they are talking to is saying, and think that they support Trump (and therefore would have "TDS").
    2
  4157.  @justinredacted3358  Basically every speech Trump has ever given. Pay closer attention.
    2
  4158. Matt Gaetz: "I am literally incapable of making the correct decision in any given situation."
    2
  4159. @ But a vital one, because if Ukraine fails, other friends will be next.
    2
  4160.  @Pinthetic  Having a driver's license does not allow you to get a mail-in ballot. You would also need to be legally registered as a citizen.
    2
  4161.  @AlanWoo-p4d  Wouldn't you take the day off when you can?
    2
  4162.  @kellyarnett4062  Mostly, it's because they voted by mail before they died, but such things are caught and removed from the process. Deceased people don't actually vote in any noteworthy amount.
    2
  4163. The speech Trump gave that day really didn't have much to do with it. The actual insurrection activities were mostly at the White House over the previous several months.
    2
  4164. It was not defamation when the media reported on the Trump collusion, because that actually occurred. It's only defamatory if the statements made are not true.
    2
  4165.  @willmont8258 Is that what Faux News told you to believe? And you obeyed?! Lol.
    2
  4166.  @amicableenmity9820  None personally, but people are people, and I don't like seeing people being treated unfairly.
    2
  4167.  @darriuscole8544  You assume that he ever had full equity in the asset in the first place.
    2
  4168. If Japanese landlords worry about people skipping out on their last month's rent, they should just require foreigners to pay an extra month's rent in advance. Then, even if they do, they're covered.
    2
  4169.  @J.Huff76  Perhaps so. Probably has his Fox restraining bolt installed.
    2
  4170.  @americanpatriot5764  The southern border is more secure today than it was five years ago, inflation has been kept lower in the US than in the rest of the world over the past few years, crime is at historic lows (although you wouldn't know it from the reporting in some places), and the interest rates are a necessary PART of keeping those inflation rates manageable. As for gas prices, ask Jared's buddies in Saudi Arabia and Moscow, they would be the ones responsible for that.
    2
  4171.  @ChristopherWoods  That's pretty awesome, I hope to see more like that.
    2
  4172.  @Andy-xx3tt  While all that is true, America is still greater overall. But yeah. it'd be nice if we had free healthcare too.
    2
  4173.  @Ian-vu4ij  That's not how math works. The constitution is one type of document for granting people certain freedoms (but hardly unlimited freedoms). It is a contract that has certain outcomes. That in no way prevents other countries from coming up with a different system that produces as much, or even more freedom than the US has. One could argue that Somalia has a LOT more freedom than the US does, given their constitution of "I don't care what you do, just don't bother us about it."
    2
  4174. Why wouldn't they? We're an open cesspit right now, and will be for the forseeable future. It's the cost of "opening up" way too early and way too loosely.
    2
  4175. @ No, Trump's tariffs apply to American-made cars too, since they get a lot of parts overseas. They are all going up, aside from a few EVs.
    2
  4176. The US version of this is next if Republican statehouses get their way and we can't pass HR1 through the Senate.
    2
  4177.  @Blackandwhitecat-u9v  This is a pandemic. People choosing not to vaccinate prolongs it, leads to more innocent deaths, including potentially people I care about. It overloads hospitals and overworks their employees, and raises medical insurance and taxpayer money spent fighting it. There is no reason why I shouldn't care what other people are doing. Also, since I'm not a psychopath, I do actually care whether other people live or die. Suicide by anti-vax is sad.
    2
  4178. That's not how any of those words work.
    2
  4179.  @melgillham462  A republic is, by necessity, a democracy. A republic that is non-democratic would just be an "empire."
    2
  4180.  @catmonarchist8920  I'm not saying it would be relevant to all countries, but it would certainly be relevant to Pakistan. And it would not involve completely dissolving their military or anything, they would still be left more military than most countries need, it would just be reducing further spending.
    2
  4181. Obeying parents is not the main concern. Doing the right thing is. If a parent is not doing the right thing, then a child has no good reason to obey them. "Disrespect for parents" is not the cause of crime. It's not even in the top five.
    2
  4182. But she's a Neo-Fascist, so that would be telling on yourself.
    2
  4183. Term limits would not help here.
    2
  4184.  @kippwieland6464  Yeah, it really isn't so bad that America's so popular. :D
    2
  4185.  @bsrcat1  Well, regulations and sanctions are two different things. If regulations would require a type of fuel to be processed into a more usable form, and this processing would be expensive, then that might lead to oil companies choosing other sources instead, but sanctions are typically more political than chemical, based on punishing a government for bad behavior. The countries I listed tended toward authoritarian governments, support for terrorism or state violence, or massive economic instability that make large scale investment too risky.
    2
  4186.  @tammyanders991  They didn't though. You've been told that they did, and you believed it, but that's not what they did. And even if you did believe that "he had involvement with gangs," that is no crime, he was convicted of no crime, so he should not be in prison until after he has been.
    2
  4187.  @drawingdead9025  State governments were blasted by the covid crisis. They built their budgets based on reasonable predictions of their expected tax income over a normal year, just as if a regular person bought a house and car based on their current income level. The covid crisis massively reduced their tax revenues, since businesses and taxpayers were making a lot less money, while at the same time their costs increased massively, in that they had to increase subsidies to public services, they had to pay for emergency relief, increased unemployment costs, etc. Of course states need money (and red states more than blue, if you care about such things). So of course it makes sense for the federal government, which can much more easily appropriate funds, to help keep these stats stable through the crisis, so that they don't have to lay off millions of employees and cut vital services like police and fire. Why shouldn't they?
    2
  4188.  @privateuser7  I did already, you can find more answers upthread, but basically it goes into things like enhancing unemployment payouts, keeping schools open and safe, vaccine programs, keeping state governments functioning (so that they in turn can keep policing, firefighting, pothole repairs, etc.), food programs for needy families, etc. You can find breakdowns of what the bill provides online if you don't want to read it yourself or listen to Senate Pages read it for you.
    2
  4189.  @privateuser7  The things I listed cost a LOT of money. You do realize that the CARES act passed last spring was also a $2 trillion bill, and contained mostly the same stuff, right? This is just making sure it continues into the next year as the crisis continues. Obviously I didn't list every single thing the bill does, it was just a sample, but that's where most of the money ends up. A lot of the critics of the bill like to cite tiny things the bill does like foreign aid programs that add up to less than 1% of the total costs. That sort of nickle-and-diming a bill is pointless.
    2
  4190.  @Bears9McMahon  You should probably try finding out some information before you just runoff at the mouth. Only 9% of the money in this bill goes out in direct cash payments to people, but the other 91% goes into other programs that are also covid relief, such as funding schools, funding unemployment benefits, keeping state and local governments solvent, etc. It si ALL covid relief, it is just not all direct cash payments to individuals.
    2
  4191.  @kaysp84 That's what they said in 50 AD. And 100 AD, and 150 AD, and 200 AD, and. . .
    2
  4192. Nah, the Democrats are fine. You're thinking of the Republican party.
    2
  4193.  @nickmalone3143  Nah.
    2
  4194.  @answerman9933  How does that work?
    2
  4195. That's an unrelated topic.
    2
  4196.  @rickreallylikedthevideobut7899  Maybe it's abnormal in your family, but it's normal to the rest of the world.
    2
  4197. The wall solves nothing.
    2
  4198.  @steventyler3582  We don't have any trouble detecting crossings. Anyone who crosses is caught, detained, given a court date, and released until that date comes up, according to US law. Also, the border patrol is better financed today than it ever has been, which is why they catch everyone who crosses.
    2
  4199. It's important to find "news" that tells you what you want to hear, whether or not it's actually true, and to deny any news that tells you truths that you don't want to be true. That's why Faux News does so well.
    2
  4200. The protests were outdoors, the church services were indoors.
    2
  4201.  @donoimdono2702  So you haven't seen any evidence of it either.
    2
  4202.  @AmericanRustWorker3369  Just avoid Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax and you should be fine. Don't let distrust of the last guy spoil your view of government in general. They're not all bad. The vaccine is free, just go to any local drug store and they should be able to hook you up.
    2
  4203. Do you believe that this solves the problem? Why would it be removed from a curriculum?
    2
  4204. We voted that guy out four years ago.
    2
  4205.  @BasedStoner  Just because there is a left wing and a right wing does not mean that they are equally balanced. It does not mean that the correct course is somewhere equally balanced between the two. The rational course is not to say "there's a left side and a right side, so, I don't know, give up I guess," the rational course is to say "there is a left side and a right side, which is closest to the correct course to follow," and then do that.
    2
  4206.  @TenaciousDq  Sure, most people are, but there are plenty of more important topics on which he's actively promoting the wrong side, so it doesn't really balance out.
    2
  4207. This is the only path forward for the Republican party.
    2
  4208. America started it. There were no significant Canadian tariffs before this. Their tariffs are just in retaliation.
    2
  4209.  @harveyhernandez6619  You can find the proof in other stories on this topic, accounts from other doctors who did see Hamas members, evidence recovered from these hospitals, etc. Just because one doctor did not see a crime taking place does not mean that the crime did not take place, only that he did not see it.
    2
  4210. He's taking his classic "yeah I do crimes, wha'tcha gon do about it?" strategy.
    2
  4211.  @KforFreedom  If Trump sets significant tariffs on a good, they can't just eat those tariffs. If a product has a 20% profit margin, for example, and has a tariff higher than 20% on it, then they would lose money on every unit sold if they just ate that tariff. Trump has talked about 60% and 100% tariffs in the past, and you might see companies eating some of that where they can, but it would still lead to 50-100% price increases on those products.
    2
  4212. Loll, definitely a CCP post, no American would ever accuse Donald Trump of being "honorable."
    2
  4213.  @289cobra9  You've been misled.
    2
  4214.  @TheBaumcm  Yes Arizona congressmen spend as much time in DC as Schiff does. It's a clerical issue.
    2
  4215.  @Marcia-k7g You didn't recall him, you held a recall referendum, which is VERY easy to do in California. The voters of the state voted that they did not want him recalled.
    2
  4216.  @TrmpWn460 No, he does not vote in both places like Trump aides have done.
    2
  4217. "We can't argue that he's doing a bad job, so we'll argue that he might not last long enough." His VP would still be better than his opponent though. . .
    2
  4218.  @TheSuperappelflap  We don't need to reach zero emissions. The Earth does sequester carbon at certain rates, so while we need to have a net negative carbon footprint at a global level, that would still allow a fairly significant amount of carbon output, it would just be offset by carbon sinks elsewhere in the system. But again, a lot of the carbon produced in manufacturing and transporting cars and batteries can be reduced over time. For example, green cargo ships would greatly reduce the carbon costs of transportation. Public transport is good for areas where that can be done effectively and efficiently, but that is not true in many areas. There are tens of millions of Americans who cannot reasonably be serviced by public transport, because they are too spread out and it is not worth building public transit in their areas. It's worth noting that while you claim "batteries are bad," most green energy relies on batteries too. Even if you have a 100% electrified public transit network, that would almost certainly require massive batteries to maintain the power to it, as most of the green forms of energy are transient. So, you're completely wrong on all counts. please educate yourself before commenting again.
    2
  4219. Because it would be horrible to America to implement it now, just as it will be horrible to implement in April. Usually when a government wants to cause businesses to do something, they put the deadline one, five, ten years away, giving them time to build the facilities and supply chains to solve the problem. In this case, he's just blowing a giant hole into the ship and telling them to figure it out before it sinks.
    2
  4220. It's an important move to stopping WW3. The point is we don't want Putin to cross over that doorstep. A show of solidarity is important to that.
    2
  4221. @Packhorse-bh8qn And he never claimed to serve in combat, and never claimed to have served as a soldier in Bagram, so on that we can agree he did nothing wrong. So that out of the way, what problem do you have with him now?
    2
  4222. My dad nearly died of a resistant bacterial infection. He's fine now, but was in the hospital for a month and was in really rough shape, until they could find a super-fancy rare antibiotic that worked on this specific strain and that he could tolerate.
    2
  4223. They could try, but it would be illegal and rejected by the Supreme Court. The law is the law, if one side breaks the law and gets punished for it, then that in NO way implies that the other side could just get arbitrarily punished without breaking the law first.
    2
  4224.  @weirdshort_YT  Wait, who do you think IS in favor of Russia attacking the US?
    2
  4225.  @weirdshort_YT  Yes, it was.
    2
  4226. I think that the issue is that too many nationalists consider themselves "patriots," when that is not the case. And too many people who are nationalist conflate their own race with their nation. Certainly nationalist movements are also quite racist.
    2
  4227. Ok, it's not what this country needs, so vote for Biden instead.
    2
  4228. He has said that, yes. As he does things that leads to cuts in all three of those programs.
    2
  4229.  @luigimrlgaming9484  The US is a constitutional republic, which is a form of democracy. If the US were not democratic, it could not claim to be a "republic." That would be an "empire."
    2
  4230.  @juicyg4516  Lol, you consider social media ratios relevant! :D
    2
  4231.  @paulcarfantan6688  I'm not a Republican.
    2
  4232. Which law is not currently being enforced?
    2
  4233. @ But the point is that these apps report to the CCP, not to "friendly people."
    2
  4234. @ Exactly, the Tiktok are making clear how stupid they are, but the jokes on them, because everyone already knew how stupid they were. That's why they made the Tiktok ban in the first place.
    2
  4235. Yup, simps gonna simp.
    2
  4236.  @NealIRC  Not particularly, but what sent your mind there?
    2
  4237.  @ru8e42  Basically because it was spending that was important and needed to happen, even if the money to pay for it was not available at the time. It's like if your car breaks down, and you need that car to be able to get to your job, and without that job you would lose your house. You don't have the money to fix the car, but you can take out a loan at very reasonable rates to fix it, get back to work, and pay off that loan. It is economically better for you to take that loan and fix that car than it is to stubbornly "live within your means," lose the car, lose the job, lose the house, and have to rebuild everything from scratch.
    2
  4238.  @muhammaDEsmustafa  In a pure economic theory, you're totally right. But the important thing to keep in mind is that this is not pure economics, this is also politics, and governments are not people or companies, they are governments. Governments have a lot more flexibility and power to throw around. With a ponzi scheme, the trick is to not let anyone know that it's a ponzi scheme, because once they know, then they will never invest in it. With a government, they understand that there is some "ponzi" aspect to it, but accept that, because they have faith that the government will continue to pay off its debts. The other factor to keep in mind is that buying government debt is not permanent, it's finite. If you get a 20 year bond, you aren't gambling on "will they ever completely pay off the national debt?" That is entirely irrelevant to you as an investor. You are only gambling on "will they pay back this bond in twenty years?" And pretty much everyone agrees that within the next twenty years, the US will be good for it and pay off that bond, no problem. So long as that happens, the investor will have nothing to worry about. So basically, you are right in an abstract sense, but completely wrong in implying that this is relevant to the real world situation.
    2
  4239.  @muhammaDEsmustafa  I'm glad I was able to help you understand how national debts work.
    2
  4240. When the colonialists left Africa, they all retained some contact, as sort of an "estranged uncle" to the country or something, that still has heavy ties in the region, even though they have that troublesome history. What they should have done is a sort of "responsibility swap," and when all the European countries pulled out, they should have swapped that responsibility with other countries, so that like these French colonies would be supported by the UK instead, while former UK colonies would be supported by France instead. That way, the country would get the benefit of a friend in Europe, and the European country would get the benefit of a friend in Africa, without any direct conflict over past mistakes.
    2
  4241.  @JulioBaggins  Only among idiots though, so that's not really that big a problem.
    2
  4242. I'm pretty sure that's their actual voices.
    2
  4243. Man, it's a good thing that reality disagrees with this guy and no rational person would take him seriously. We could be in for dark times if anyone actually believe this nonsense.
    2
  4244. Yeah, the name is mostly marketing, but the bill itself does a lot of great things for America. I can't wait.
    2
  4245. @ The appeals court would be, and then the SCOTUS above that. That's how the US works, the lower courts can make rulings that are legally binding on the other two branches. Those can then be appealed up the chain and in some cases overruled, but in this case, the SCOTUS agreed that he was right to make that initial call.
    2
  4246. @ The US Constitution knew that, as did anyone who'd read it.
    2
  4247. I think you're talking about Trump's guidelines here, "The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued a memorandum on March 13 stating, in part, "Nursing homes should admit any individuals that they would normally admit to their facility, including individuals from hospitals where a case of COVID-19 was/is present.""
    2
  4248.  @jakesitsonatreewaitforshre1852  Again, the $700 is an emergency payout, unconditional, to cover immediate basic expenses. It was NEVER intended to be the ONLY payout people would be getting, and it's idiotic to pretend that it was. The additional funding comes later, after it has been appropriated through congress and they can fully evaluate how much relief each person is due. This is how national disasters ALWAYS work. Why is this coming as a surprise to people now?
    2
  4249.  @scallen3841  Again, it's not a competition. Both get supported as they need. Neither gets supported "first."
    2
  4250.  @TheDustyPeaches  No, that's silly. Who lied to you about that?
    2
  4251. Again? Must be a day that ends in "y."
    2
  4252. Crude oil demand is higher today than at any time in human history. It's just that supply has risen higher than that demand, similar to 2019. Id demand has been falling anywhere lately, it's been in China. It's always important to remember that oil prices are ALWAYS a global value, and the cost of oil in Ohio rarely has anything to do with US policy.
    2
  4253.  Cade Cannon  The thing is though, Trump did lose the state, the people of Arizona wanted Trump to lose, and wanted Hobbs to win. I can't claim that the majority of the state loved her or anything, but they clearly preferred her to the alternatives they were presented.
    2
  4254. Yes, but the odds of dying of covid are still too high to play games with.
    2
  4255. They issue with Cheney is that I respect her integrity, but strongly disagree with her on policy. I basically trust her to do what she thinks is right, but disagree with her on what is right. So while she's the best the Republicans have to offer, I still would prefer a Democrat in any given role, because they would be both respectable and more likely to follow the correct course of action.
    2
  4256. You prosecute based on actual crimes committed, not on political affiliation. So far, there is no evidence of crimes being committed here.
    2
  4257. "Short selling creates liquidity in the market, what if you want to buy, but nobody wants to sell? A shortseller will sell to you." Um, no, that's not how it should work. If nobody wants to buy, then you should offer more money, which raises the price, until someone is willing to sell to you. If nobody wants to sell to you, at ANY price, then that's fine too, nobody owes you the ability to buy into a stock. Besides, who wants to buy stock from someone who is gambling that you'll lose all your money and they'll be able to buy back that stock for less than you just gave them?
    2
  4258.  @truth4004  I don't run, I stand and fight. Like Joe Biden.
    2
  4259.  @jamesyates3140  Eh. I'll take someone who falls off his bike occasionally over someone who doesn't even know how to ride one.
    2
  4260.  @jamesyates3140  He bikes like every week. He only occasionally falls over, as people who ride bikes sometimes do. Trump wouldn't even be able to go in a straight line.
    2
  4261.  @jamesyates3140  Because Trump doesn't know how to ride one. He's afraid.
    2
  4262.  @waynejohanson1083  What does this have to do with attacking Christianity? They are two separate events that both happen to take place on March 31st this year. What is the problem?
    2
  4263.  @LEA-4America  Nobody is mocking Christianity here. Other people can exist without automatically being a mockery of Christianity.
    2
  4264.  @nugenthinking  If you believe that, then you need to read the Bible again, we are ALL God's children.
    2
  4265.  @nugenthinking It's literally what the Bible says. Have you not read it? ALL creatures are God's children. To deny that is to call God a liar.
    2
  4266.  @nugenthinking That may be your intention, but to call me a liar on this is still to call God a liar as well, since you are contradicting His words, whether you believe me or not is not relevant to that fact.
    2
  4267.  @venture.brothers  China can't do it, but they can steal IP form companies that can. And again, the manufacturing is not a knowhow issue, it is an infrastructure issue, you have to actually build these multi-billion dollar plants, and TSMC has, we have not. It's not that other countries can't do it, it's that they chose to not do it, because outsourcing that expensive process to TSMC made much more financial sense than building their own plants. That's the thing about free markets, they flow towards maximized efficiency, but often they get caught up in "best case scenarios," that if everything works as intended, here is the benefit we'd get, but if there are any disruptions to that plan, then it can pile up into massive problems, as we saw a few years back.
    2
  4268. Yup, defaulting on our debts would hut mostly Americans, not foreign countries.
    2
  4269.  @Fck_Your_Psyop  What does that have to do with anything? What's the value in having productive capacity?
    2
  4270. "Brought to you by Universal Studios."
    2
  4271. "This is opposite day" is the Republican motto.
    2
  4272.  @imrael496  When has Bragg ever done that?
    2
  4273. That's the opposite of Mace's bill.
    2
  4274. She has no future in politics.
    2
  4275.  @cherylknight6080  He's the US president. You would prefer Harris to be President 47?
    2
  4276.  @firstlast8258  No, pay taxes to get them their own home.
    2
  4277. He does sound that way, yes.
    2
  4278.  @Jay_Dahl  If we're talking new debt, then a lot of that is. But of course most of the more recent debt is due to Trump's tax cuts for billionaires.
    2
  4279.  @JustSomePerson8  When was the last time you saw someone use a boomerang for a practical purpose?
    2
  4280.  @jeremiasrobinson  Yeah, he might try, I just don't know what he could actually achieve. I think the funniest potential scenario would be, a judge orders that Rudy pay up, Rudy refuses, the judge holds him in contempt, which I think would be a criminal matter, and then Trump pardons the contempt. But then the judge could do it again, because every second he continues to not pay is a fresh crime, so then Trump would have to pardon him again, so then there would be this constant back and forth where the judge is holding him in contempt every day and Trump has to personally sign a pardon for it, until he gets bored and lets Rudy rot.
    2
  4281.  @bernlin2000  So, in your analogy, DJT would be the Emperor. Yeah, that checks out.
    2
  4282.  @2genders-tk2ue  Because he's a much better leader than the guy running against him. Nothing wrong with a career politician, so long as they do their job well.
    2
  4283. But most people do, so they should.
    2
  4284.  @loopthetube  He was talking about skinheads though. He said that there were very fine people on both sides, one of those two sides being skinheads. If there were fine people on both sides, then the skinheads were fine, according to him. The "group there to protest the removal of the statue" were the skinheads, regardless of their hair styles.
    2
  4285.  @karl-niclas_burner  😁 Lol, yeah, that's it.
    2
  4286.  @DoSomDiff  No, he lost in 2020. We;re talking about right now.
    2
  4287. Yup, we could never survive a Trump/Vance administration.
    2
  4288. The ability to purchase guns legally makes it MUCH easier to acquire them illegally. This person would not likely have been able to get a gun in most first world countries.
    2
  4289. Why? He did the right thing here.
    2
  4290. There's a very easy off-ramp. Pull all the Russian troops out of Ukraine. Done.
    2
  4291. Let's not.
    2
  4292.  @alejandromolina5645 Trump is as much a politician as anyone else, he's just also an awful human being.
    2
  4293. Well, they are Republicans.
    2
  4294.  @VTRIGGERS  Why do you believe that's relevant to the conversation at hand?
    2
  4295. It would fit though, right-wing extremists are the biggest national security threat at the moment.
    2
  4296.  @Uldy  Exactly, Republicans. Notice that the Nazi did not bans guns owned by white nationalists, just those owned by "minorities." Of course the US right is subsidized by the NRA, so they just compromised at letting everyone keep their guns and shoot things out.
    2
  4297.  @mattmyers123456  You're confusing logos, that's not the one he had.
    2
  4298. Maybe they could sign up to be a colony of someone. Then the home country would be responsible for keeping them afloat.
    2
  4299. So basically, RFK's argument is "everything Joe Biden is already doing, we should be doing?" Ok, then let's re-elect Joe.
    2
  4300. It's not impossible to replace railroads, plenty of places do it. What makes you think it's impossible?
    2
  4301.  @DanOneOne  Monorails and mag levs are not terribly common, outside of Disney at least, but it's not because it's impossible to move rail lines. Monorails are fairly impractical in most locations, certainly over long distances. The only places they make sense are where you have dense built up environments (or highly complex natural terrain) and it's difficult to tear up houses and buildings and crossing roadways with train tracks, and mainly over fairly short distances. Maglevs only really make sense when you can make a long, straight shot and want maximum speed out of it. Otherwise, traditional rail gets the job done just fine. But if you have a length of railroad track that would make good sense for a maglev track, it's entirely possible to do that.
    2
  4302.  @MsJudi54  Because they stand in opposition to the Constitution.
    2
  4303. That would be a terrible idea for obvious reasons.
    2
  4304.  @kenjikenjikenj  I can't believe that buttons cost money. All sorts of gadgets come loaded with buttons and sell for $10 or less, whereas it's hard to find a touchpad like that for anywhere near that price. I can't believe that on a $50K car they cannot find it in the budget to add $20 of buttons.
    2
  4305. @ You do not, in fact, have to take your eyes off the road to use buttons. At least, not most of them. Obviously you need to be familiar with the vehicle first, but once you're used to it you can reach over and find the right knobs by feel alone. At most you might glance to get a quick mental picture, but it's very different from a touch screen where there is nothing to orient to by touch, and if you even graze the wrong thing by accident then something "wrong" will happen.
    2
  4306. @ @seanplace8192 1) that doesn't change the fact that you don't need to for operating a button based console, once you have a reasonable familiarity with it. There is no touch screen device that I would feel comfortable ever operating blind. 2) Yes, you said that, but that doesn't make it true. The reality is that most people can operate the basic functions of a well designed physical console, once they'd become accustomed to it. In my own vehicle I can operate the fan, heat/cool level, radio volume and channel settings, and potentially more, all without looking at all. There are other buttons that I'd have to glance at to find, but those are the core functions that I'd be most likely to fiddle with while already in motion.
    2
  4307. Mr. Doocy couldn't break a breadstick.
    2
  4308. This would be the first time Schiff is running for Senate. Save that argument for next time.
    2
  4309.  @johnkluge3421  I don't think that's necessarily true. I mean, you should be able to sum up your point in only a few sentences, "the world is getting hotter because there is more CO2 than at any time in humanity's existence and that's because we put it up there over the past 200 years," something like that, but if that's not enough detail for someone, you need to be able to back it up with data, like that statement is.
    2
  4310.  @churesragan6155  God must have put this trial in motion just to get Trump to go to a child's graduation for the first time. He works in mysterious ways.
    2
  4311. Unless they are Trump supporters, they can definitely be fooled all of the time.
    2
  4312. " This nonsense is also why our cars are suddenly $10-40K+ more than they were just 15-20 years ago" No. The reason why cars are more expensive than they used to be is because manufacturers had a chip shortage during covid, which disrupted their ability to produce new cars, which drove up the used market, and it's taken a while for the new car supplies to catch up to backed up demand. This is also the case with the Southern border, if you've been paying attention to that. Also, you don't seem to understand how carbon dioxide works, but no, it does not work like that, at least not in the way that people need it to. The carbon that cars pump into the atmosphere is carbon that has not been above ground for hundreds of millions of years. Plants can't absorb that carbon in any productive manner. You could turn every grassland on earth into a forest, and it would not be enough to account for the carbon dioxide we've put in the air since the industrial revolution.
    2
  4313.  @Jeff_S...  The remaining difference is probably just from general inflation around the world. Everything gets more expensive.
    2
  4314.  @hildeschmid8400  And yet tens of millions did, sadly.
    2
  4315.  @golf869  People routinely purchase homes that cost more than 200% of their annual income.
    2
  4316. Yes, vote in every election, if you're a Democrat.
    2
  4317.  @grantsmythe8625  He's not wrong though.
    2
  4318.  @tymillerdaddy  I think he is ignoring the Russian bots. They all support Trump.
    2
  4319.  @jessh4016  In what way is anyone's "foot on their head?" The US has been pouring resources into the country as best we can. The only interference we've made has been when anti-American forces took over, which would not be in anyone's interest.
    2
  4320. They should have had realtime fact checking.
    2
  4321. When did he ever lie about something? What did you think he lied about?
    2
  4322.  @alexfrideres1198  Refusing to turn over the documents is a crime, actually. If anyone told you otherwise, you should look into what they stood to gain by lying to you about that. You shouldn't let propaganda rule you like that.
    2
  4323.  @roscoepatternworks3471  She was asked whether she denounced Hamas. She answered that she did. She was asked if she denounced Hezbolah, and she answered that she did. How is that "deflection?" That is not what that word means.
    2
  4324.  @roscoepatternworks3471  How far from "no" is "Hamas is a foreign terrorist organization that I do not support?" How is that not a straight answer? Too many words for him to follow?
    2
  4325.  @Jay_in_Japan  Hitler and Mussolini were both leading far right parties that crushed the far left parties in their countries at the time. Of course those on the modern right are rather embarrassed by this, since both eventually lost, so they try to pretend that "they were on the left, actually," while at the same time promoting policies that Hitler and Mussolini would 100% support. Whether you change your mind or not is your own business, I don't hold much hope, because that would require critical thinking skills.
    2
  4326. Under what law would they "do something" here?
    2
  4327. The doink with a lanyard is a local, apparently. Him getting fired from his job was front page news kin the local paper. They have been arresting more and more of these yahoos every day.
    2
  4328. @ Because they weren't fired for cause, they were fired en mass. If the goal was to only fire people who had performed poorly, it would take a lot more time. But they didn't want the job done right,t hey wanted it done fast, because the cruelty was the point.
    2
  4329. Yup, expect too much of Republicans, and prepare for disappointment. Always.
    2
  4330.  @biz1boom  The audacity to not understand that Republicans are disconnected. What does Joe Biden have to do with that?
    2
  4331.  @occasus7964  Oh, no, I'm not maga. Never was.
    2
  4332.  @zachaddington5264  Well, I'm not buying it, because he's a traitor for not testifying during the impeachment hearings and doesn't deserve a penny, but I am curious to hear more reporting on it.
    2
  4333. Russia has already attacked, "provoking them" is no longer something to worry about.
    2
  4334.  @elderlymanpoormemorybullseye  Oh, "imaginary stuff." got it.
    2
  4335. SEC had a lot of catching up to do.
    2
  4336.  @xxxx-rn3yu  Have you tried Weis grocery bread? Their French bread is easily on par with Paris'.
    2
  4337.  @Pa-we1lw  He fakes working at a McDoanlds for actual customers.
    2
  4338.  @randyrenner7643  No, it's true no matter how many times it's repeated.
    2
  4339.  @hahahahahahahahaaaah  In what way did CHOP overthrow the US government? Last I'd heard, we still had plenty of US government, and no CHOP.
    2
  4340.  @Digger-Nick  Nope, Democrats never incited an insurrection, and the investigations into Russian collusion was proven to be true, so. . .
    2
  4341.  @Digger-Nick  The investigations into the Trump campaign collusion with Russia were not finished before he took office. They were carried out over the following years and put into the Muller Report, as well as leading to the Indictment of Trump's campaign manager, who he then pardoned, preventing further investigation into his crimes (which is obstruction of justice). And no, nothing involving Democrats was anywhere near as bad as what happened at the Capitol on Jan 6th. If someone told you otherwise, then you should be asking yourself why they would lie to you like that. The only people "projecting" are Trump and his subjects.
    2
  4342.  @kencurtis2403  The investigations were already concluded and found that there was no evidence. Delaying the certification over imaginary crimes would have been an abuse of power.
    2
  4343. People bullying Hamas.
    2
  4344. The US government has to do a lot of things at once. This is one of them, but other parts of the government are no less hard at work on combating covid.
    2
  4345. He didn't commit any misconduct or fail to follow the law though. This is what "following the law" looks like. If you don't like that, change the laws.
    2
  4346.  @prestonquinn5167  Because they have failed to adequately update immigration laws in decades, so the rate of legal immigration is far below demand from both sides of the border, and the number of border courts available are well below the number needed to process claims in a timely manner, leading to this massive back-up.
    2
  4347. The video headline says that it was in Gaza. The piece says it was West Bank. Which was it?
    2
  4348.  @waynechen852  If we were more like Switzerland then all gun owners would be current or former military, and all ammo would be safely stored away from the firearms. Don't compare us to Switzerland if you aren't prepared to have Swiss style gun control. While having harsher gun control could never make it impossible to acquire a gun, it would certainly make it much more difficult, and most mass shooters do not have the means to find an illegal gun.
    2
  4349.  @westentrance  Ok, so worth bringing up, right? They did also bring up the economy and immigration and other things too.
    2
  4350.  @AppalachianPatriot  Whatever the shooter's mental health concerns, it seems apparent that right wing ideologies frames the direction that he took. Plenty of people have mental health issues, only a relative few of them go on mass shootings, and most of those seem to have right-wing political motivations. Saying that it's "not a right or left thing" only excuses the right wing from the blame that they have earned. We the People are sick of the right.
    2
  4351.  @AppalachianPatriot  "common sense" would be "left wing," the right wing is the other one.
    2
  4352.  @andromedanative6677  No, he did that because Putin told him to.
    2
  4353. Yes, pay your taxes like Franklin wanted.
    2
  4354.  @TruthrConsequences  If you want free speech, do not post on someone else's platform.
    2
  4355.  @georgeritmeester4736  The verb form of "ratio" means that the "ratio" of likes and dislikes on a social media post swing wildly against the poster.
    2
  4356.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  There are always people who object to fighting in a war, but the Ukrainian people overall have given more to this fight than anyone. It's shameful to try and present it the way that you choose to.
    2
  4357.  @mikejezek5214  Nobody is stopping them from leaving for Russia at any time, but nothing gives them the right to keep Ukrainian territory when they go.
    2
  4358.  @rickycoverrubias6176  Exactly, they do have the right to freedom, and they can leave at any time. Literally nobody is stopping them.
    2
  4359.  @mikejezek5214  People too often forget that July 4th only happened because England refused to allow the colonies a vote in Parliament. The regions of Ukraine have full voting power within the Ukrainian government, so that comparison is not relevant.
    2
  4360.  @kristensmith3079  No, I'm not maga.
    2
  4361.  @SandyF_trouble  Born and raised, and won't let maga take it away from us.
    2
  4362. @ They've gotten even more support from Europe, and will continue to do so. They can survive without US support, and I wish them god speed.
    2
  4363. @ What does Trump's approval rating in Ukraine have to do with anything? Zelynsky's is over 50%.
    2
  4364. Yes, they are playing with the food security of the countries that rely on receiving that food.
    2
  4365.  @Bluepilled-c5t  More CO@ would not result in quicker growing plants. It would kill off the plants. Most of the plants we have around today were not around back when there was a lot more CO2 in the air, and would die off if CO2 levels got that high again. We've had nearly a billion years to adapt to changes that will be undone within the next hundred years.
    2
  4366.  @Bluepilled-c5t  I am sticking with reality. It's where all the best data comes from.
    2
  4367. Yeah, he was up to some really shady stuff.
    2
  4368.  @economicprisoner  Are you sure on that? I thought the Disney Springs properties were run independent of Disney. There are a lot of existing companies and solo restaurateurs there.
    2
  4369.  @economicprisoner  Disney definitely does control a LOT of on-property food places, and would be entirely responsible, but Ragland Road is, I believe, not one of these Disney kitchen properties. Disney Springs in general is a much less "Disney" area than most of their properties, it's mostly just a normal open mall, that happens to have easy access to Disney transport.
    2
  4370. This isn't messing with the supply chain though. The supply chain will be ready when the time comes, even if they cry about it every minute before then.
    2
  4371.  @darthfader733  I don't watch Faux News, so I wouldn't know what they are up to.
    2
  4372.  @Supat2  If you believe that it's both sides, then they got you. The government is by the people, for the people, so long as the people elect the right people to lead it. It's the ONLY hope we have in fighting the corporations, so you'd better hope we choose correctly.
    2
  4373. What a sad little snowflake. General Milley is a true soldier.
    2
  4374. Currently, if the US pulled out of NATO, the remaining NATO forces would be around twice as many as the US military.
    2
  4375. Yeah, it's already hurting the agricultural industry that they can't get the workers they need. In some red states they want to put young children to work in meat packing plants because there aren't enough immigrants authorized to work. We need to solve these immigration hurdles so that they can get their work visas and start adding value to the economy.
    2
  4376.  @jeffhaddix9508  People online who say "I was a long time Democrat but am voting for Trump/RFK?etc." were never actually Democrats. Either that or they were "Democrats" back before the Southern Strategy, so. . . Republicans.
    2
  4377.  @keithrobinson5752  I know more about him than any Faux News viewer, because most of what they "know" about him is imaginary.
    2
  4378. Yup, and that's what got Rudy in trouble, politically persecuting innocent Americans.
    2
  4379.  @MadMax-dp2bb  Well if you're going to go back that far, then the six day war was also Israel being attacked first. The point is, the current violence was started by Hamas murdering 1400 civilians in cold blood, including infants, and kidnapping 200 others. Meanwhile Israel only targets Hamas military forces, and any civilians killed in Gaza are entirely the fault of Hamas for using them as shields.
    2
  4380. This is a thing that happened. What is unfair about reporting it?
    2
  4381.  @JCF59  He's already there.
    2
  4382. You point out how each house in a suburb is "bland" because they are very similar, but isn't the same true of apartments? If you have a large apartment building, holding dozens of families, isn't each of their homes no different than the one next door? What difference does it make, other than each suburban home coming with a yard and a lot more space to live in? And sure, you can build fancy craft-built homes instead of prefab ones, but those will cost more, and not everyone can afford that. The whole point here was to provide a house that more families could afford. As for "corner stores," putting a "corner store" in an average suburb would be a bad idea, because they could not get enough foot traffic to sustain their business. Not enough people would live nearby to it at once. That is why car-centric shopping makes more sense in suburbs, although many modern communities are built with a large "commercial hub" within a reasonable walking/biking distance of the homes, for people who choose to visit them that way. A development that started around 2000 or so in our area has a grocery store and dozens of other businesses in a roughly central location to many of the new homes, but you can't build out too many different stores spread too thinly, or none could get enough business to be sustainable.
    2
  4383. It means that the IRS were budgeted a certain amount of money to target wealthy tax cheats, but this compromise deal takes some of that money back, so that Kevin's rich friends will be able to scam the American people again.
    2
  4384. He's not, he brought a state case, and won.
    2
  4385. When has DeSantis EVER had any success? He's losing to Mickey Mouse right now!
    2
  4386.  @KevinBauman  Well, to some extent this is the case. but mainly it's just because walkability is not considered a factor. If a retail area is built, they don't necessarily consider how foot traffic will access it, because everyone, including those within a mile or less, are expecting to drive there and park. I live in an area with some pretty walkable developments nearby, so it does happen, especially with more recent projects, but it does tend to be a mix, because there's not enough retail available to be local to every block of housing.
    2
  4387.  @rogerwilco2  That's for the home owners to decide though, whether they think it would be a problem.
    2
  4388.  @ThomasPublicThuene  Probably closer to 99%, but that only lulls you into a false sense of security so that when criminals pass by, you ignore them. If every person sneaking through your yard is someone who probably shouldn't be there, then you're more likely to be on guard.
    2
  4389. He has a voting record that people can rightfully hold against him.
    2
  4390. You're talking about things that aren't relevant to what she was talking about.
    2
  4391.  mikea9516  They are taking accountability for their own actions, exactly like the previous administration never did. My point was just that it would be hypocritical for Republicans to complain about any minor, incidental slip-ups, when the previous administration was using the Hatch act for toilet paper on a regular basis.
    2
  4392. Depends on whether Biden wins or America loses.
    2
  4393. @b b There is absolutely no evidence of significant voter fraud in the 2020 election. EVERYONE who has looked into the matter has found absolutely nothing. Trump's lawyers were recently found guilty of misusing the court system to push their voter fraud theories and are currently threatened with disbarment for it, and ALL they would have to have done to avoid that would be to provide ANY valid evidence of their voter fraud claims, and they could provide NONE. So how could anyone still believe that any exists? You can dislike the Dems all you want, but there is ZERO chance that they are as corrupt and self-serving as the GOP. The GOP don't even try to hide how corrupt and self-serving they are, they brag about it!
    2
  4394. In the case they are talking about, it was a Trump ally in the DoJ who was trying to encourage states to void the votes of the people and replace them with their own picks for President instead, allowing Trump to be declared El Presidente, despite having lost the election. That would be a coup. That's the whole point of the story above.
    2
  4395. He actually started the process before he left office. It would have been even more chaotic had the Biden team not cleaned up his mess.
    2
  4396.  @PeachWood-j8j  2. At the very least the next administration was able to get out our personnel and all the important equipment. All that we left behind was basically military surplus junk that was too heavy to lug back.
    2
  4397.  @josepha.levesque806  Lol, no, I avoid Faux News.
    2
  4398. Elon's lawyers must be day drinkers, with all the goofy projects he assigns them. If this becomes a thing, rich people making nonsensical lawsuits, then maybe there need to be new laws that would ensure the plaintiff make a huge profit off of each such case.
    2
  4399. "First after Russia" he meant.
    2
  4400. "Nambia."
    2
  4401. There's no such thing as a highschool law student. Law school is a post-grad, not pre-grad.
    2
  4402. No, that is not what it says. That does say something about you though.
    2
  4403. He's a narcissist, he loves the crowds.
    2
  4404. This is what happens when the corrupt SCOTUS says "forget about two hundred years of precedents, all bets are off and you can get a redo on any decision made by a previous court now!
    2
  4405.  @NothingElseMatters777  Over the past few years, the current court has been throwing out previous rulings left and right, so plenty of states have taken that as a reason to start launching new laws that were clearly unconstitutional under previous rulings.
    2
  4406.  @NothingElseMatters777  There have been several others over the past decade or so, and many of them have been life changing for millions of Americans. Get your facts straight.
    2
  4407.  @amanhasnousername1614  You have to understand, if they loved the republic or the constitution, they wouldn't want any of this, but those are just words to them. All they really care about is power, and this court is giving them the power that they don't have i their own lives.
    2
  4408. An American, since Americans are supposed to appoint competent people, not loyalists.
    2
  4409.  @RecklezzCortezz  Why do you think Youtube would pay people to post on Youtube comment sections? What would be the economic case for that?
    2
  4410.  @RecklezzCortezz  I think you're stuck in a loop, tell your operator to reboot you.
    2
  4411. Sad.
    2
  4412.  @MinecraftLively  The penalty needs to be proportionate to the crimes and to the finances of the target. If Trump has billions, then you would need to hit him with a large fine for it to have an actual punitive effect. If the fine is small enough to laugh off, then what good does it do? People will just do the crime and pay the fine.
    2
  4413. The members of the agency are appointed by the representatives of the people, as elected by those people. They only serve for five years. Meanwhile, the SCOTUS is also appointed, and get lifetime terms.
    2
  4414. That's not how any of this works.
    2
  4415. @cc1658 Well, not Trump, obviously, but no reason to assume the judge isn't. There really isn't any profit motive to a case like this.
    2
  4416.  @george344  Putin refused diplomacy,he wanted to conquer. The war would be over tomorrow if he would leave Ukraine, but he has no interest in doing so.
    2
  4417.  @icyunvme2400  America signed a pact to defend Ukraine in exchange for them giving up nuclear weapons. We had a responsibility to defend them.
    2
  4418. Two things can be unacceptable at once. Of course, migrants crossing the border are certainly not as high risk to most Americans as people in their own communities who fail to get vaccinated or wear masks where needed.
    2
  4419. He's used to it. He's lived that way his entire life.
    2
  4420. The right, you mean. And yes, they have.
    2
  4421.  @davidwitherington7689  What nonsense are you talking? California has the highest GDP in the country. It's the 5h highest GDP in the WORLD, if you treated it as an independent country. California gives the federal government $5 for every $1 they get back. Compare that to most red states that are debtors to the average taxpayer.
    2
  4422. But it's better to have to pay that interest than it is to not spend the money on useful stuff. It's only an issue if we spend the money on stupid stuff, like border walls.
    2
  4423. These were grants, not loans. They pay it back in successes against Putin.
    2
  4424.  @eliju-io2mw  He was too cowardly to get into the riot himself, he let his minions do that. His role in the insurrection was from the White House.
    2
  4425.  @davealmighty9638  What do you think led to the initial court decision in this matter, and the appeals process following it? Could that be called "a trial?"
    2
  4426.  @agentrosales  That's always been true though. Any given year, the America of that year is different than the America of five, ten, twenty years prior. Yes, the DJT era of America has been a particularly depressing one, but we've been through worse, and this too shall pass.
    2
  4427. The thing Russia can get here is that their soldiers stop dying while they still have men left in their country. That's more than they deserve.
    2
  4428.  @revertrevertz5438  Nuclear, solar, wind, in that order. Of course, it would have been better if they'd started this decades ago.
    2
  4429.  @cgt3704  Again, far more people have been harmed by fossil fuels than by nuclear, even factoring in things like Fukishima and Chernobyl. There are risks to it, but there are risks to fossil fuels as well, so unless your solution involves removing both in a practical way, you aren't making a compelling case by pointing to the once-in-a-generation failures.
    2
  4430.  @Gaben38  NATO was not involved in Iraq.
    2
  4431.  Zaydan Naufal  There's nothing fishy. They oppose countries that are hostile towards their own people or their neighbors, especially when those conflicts could destabilize their regions.
    2
  4432.  Zaydan Naufal  What is your point? What does any of that have to do with NATO?
    2
  4433.  Zaydan Naufal  NATO doesn't tend to get involved outside of the immediate region of Europe. I mean, even Libya is just a stone's throw from Italy and Greece. Just because NATO does get involved in some conflicts does not mean that they must get involved in all conflicts "just for consistency's sake." I guess if you're worried that NATO might get involved in your country though, just. . . don't attack them?
    2
  4434.  @wothin  Does Russia not still have political hegemony over Georgia? and my point on pretext stands. If NATO has a history of using genuine humanitarian crises as pretext for intervention, then just don't be a humanitarian crisis and they won't be able to use that as a pretext.
    2
  4435.  @wothin  >They are not socialist. Of course they are. And you haven't even made a case why modern Europe would be going after socialist countries in the first place. >People will always judge. Russia also claimed that in annexed Crimea based on humanitarian concerns. The point of pretext is so that one has plausible deniability. Pretext does not add or remove plausible deniability. If the pretext is a valid one, like an actual humanitarian crisis, and the result is that you leave the country better than you found it, then that's fine. If the prexted is some imaginary humanitarian crisis that nobody actually believes existed in the first place, and the result is that you've annexed the country for your own purposes and its conveniently placed sea port, nobody cares that you attempted a pretext. The pretext is irrelevant if it is not valid. It's like throwing a sheet over an elephant and asking people to guess "what could be under there?!" >And yet you protect the USA in their irrational paranoia in case the Cuban missile crisis. Hypocrite is being hypocritical. Different situation, different outcome. There was no paranoia to the US response to the Cuban missile crisis. It was just a different scenario. >Yes Russia is destabilizing things. So what now? The goal should be that in the long term Europe is stable and peaceful. And that's a fair goal, but it can't come at the cost of Russia gaining ground via aggression. Every act of aggression they take must be met with a higher cost, otherwise they will just keep taking two steps forward, one step back "just to stabilize things," and they're still one step ahead of where they were. They still haven't given Crimea back. They still have not pulled out of Eastern Ukraine, and now they are threatening more violence. They need to give back what they have taken if they expect the west to give them any concessions. They haven't even offered to do so. >To give you an extreme analogy, that's like escalating up to a nuclear war and then being happy that it was the "other's" fault, while millions of people died from nuclear war and many are dying because of nuclear fallout. It's like you don't care about the damage from the escalation, you only care about your pride and the false sense of being right. So to continue your analogy, how far is too far, to prevent Putin from unilaterally starting a nuclear apocalypse? Say he takes Ukraine. "No big deal, better to be stable?" And then maybe Lithuania? Not that big a deal, right? Latvia, Estonia? Finland maybe? Sweden, better pick up Norway just to complete the set. Poland, Romania, Hungary, let's leave the Balkans alone for now, but Turkey might be nice. Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, at what point is "stability" not worth saying "maybe don't do that?" We all want to avoid a war, but Putin is the one starting wars. We all want to avoid a nuclear apocalypse, but you can be damned sure that the west won't fire that first nuke. Just because Russia has nuclear weapons and might be crazy enough to use them, that's no reason to give in to their demands. If anything it's a good reason NOT to, because anyone that you fear might use nukes to get their way, is someone you can't trust with any more authority than you have to. >Yes, but can you realistically throw Vladimir in jail without suffering massive damage yourself? No, you can't. It's all cute that you act on principles, but the real world does not work like that. Ok, you've established where you stand. I can barely see you down there. >We talked about the Baltics. You apparently find it totally justified for them to be afraid of Russia invading them back then when they joined NATO. I never claimed that they were justified in being afraid of Russia invading them when they joined NATO. What would that have to do with anything? NATO used to be about the USSR, but since the fall of the Soviet Union it has nothing to do with Russia, aside from Russia wanting it to be about them for some reason. The Baltics joined NATO because it's generally a good club to be in, not because they had any fear of Russia specifically. >Yet you conveniently don't care that the West invaded Russia around the same time ago, with much bigger casualties. Yes, because, again, that was before most of our lifetimes and completely irrelevant to modern geopolitics. >Again, whether you personally think something is justified has no relevance. But my position more closely aligns with that of the rest of the world on the matter, and what the world personally thinks about things matters very much. Again, a bully can get away with a lot by throwing his violence around, but he will always be viewed as a bully, and treated as a bully, and that is not how you make friends. If Russia was less of a bully, maybe all their neighbors wouldn't prefer being friends with Europe.
    2
  4436.  @pauliexcluded1  The NRA would argue that nowhere should be off limits, except for where they happen to be.
    2
  4437.  @mobilusinmobili8321  What would "common sense voting control" be? Is that another term for gerrymandering?
    2
  4438. And the sad thing is, idiots will take from that exchange that Hotez is wrong, because they care nothing about facts, they only care about who the best bully is.
    2
  4439.  @drtyhrmt  No, because this is not the 1700s, and we don't have "duels" when someone says something we don't like. Just because someone challenges you to a debate does NOT obligate you to participate, nor does it cast any doubt on the validity of your position, other than in the minds of idiots. Hotez's case is correct, regardless of who he does to does not debate over it, because the evidence is on his side of it. The evidence is what determines the truth, not "debates."
    2
  4440.  @zack2804  You fall for propaganda really well. You should be proud of how pliable you are. You serve well.
    2
  4441.  @QwertyCaesar  Yeah, this is why we need to have strong governments to enforce that sort of thing on the wealthy. In less than 50 years, we'll be at a tipping point. In one direction, the rich stay rich, but are still required to provide support to the general public, and we all live in a post-scarcity utopia, or in the other way, the rich just keep getting richer, own ALL things, and nobody else has anything because they can provide no value that the rich care to support. We need to be passing laws now.
    2
  4442. You should have checked your email, they were all Trump supporters that had been called in for that role.
    2
  4443.  @dustinnunez5077  It's well documented. They'd shut down that McDonalds for the day, and did rehearsals with the customers before filming them "reacting."
    2
  4444. @ None of that has anything to do with USAID though.
    2
  4445. What about them? Did their Uber get stuck on the way to one of his rallies?
    2
  4446. One piece of information missing here, where else can Europe get natural gas? What are the other sources? I mean, if they can get a pipeline running from someplace that isn't Russia, then they should definitely be doing that.
    2
  4447. This had nothing to do with in-person voting.
    2
  4448. Or by mail! Whatever is convenient for you!
    2
  4449.  @kingofnonation5843  Lol, yeah.
    2
  4450. To claim that Rand Paul knows what he's talking about only reflects poorly on yourself. Don't beat yourself up like that. You can be better than that.
    2
  4451. How dare they fact check when he lies!! What are they, some sort of "moderators" or something?!
    2
  4452. But without the tool, the person could not cause this amount of damage. So since we can't fix people, let's fix the tools.
    2
  4453.  @suzieparis6821  You could always ask. I don't think this is a holiday with any particular traditions to it, the point is just to raise awareness.
    2
  4454. Tl;DR, they don't actually have tariffs that high.
    2
  4455. It depends. If they know that their parents are abusive, they might hide their gender while at home, but still choose to express it in safer environments. It is sad that parents might force a child to do this, but unfortunately not unusual.
    2
  4456. No thank you.
    2
  4457. There were no 300 billion in arms or aid though. Not yet, at least.
    2
  4458. Hypocrisy is the most Republican thing possible.
    2
  4459. "The numbers changed" because new votes continued to be counted over the days, as they do EVERY election. There is nothing sinister about that.
    2
  4460. He means the democratic elements that are necessary to call it a republic. Nobody is arguing it's not a republic.
    2
  4461. @ None of that would force Russia to use a nuke. If Russia used a nuke, that would be them making their own bad choices, nobody would be "forcing" that. Russia does not get to decide what Ukraine, or any other country, does.
    2
  4462. Still better than anyone that the GoP would nominate. /shrug
    2
  4463. "Yes," you mean. That was the bad vote in this case.
    2
  4464. That has nothing to do with the bill in question though. This bill was about banning minority women from their bathrooms.
    2
  4465.  @Tony-723  The remain in Mexico policy was not a law though, it was against US law.
    2
  4466. I think they thrive on people calling them idiots. They WANT to piss off rational people for being rational. It's the same as MAGA.
    2
  4467. You forgot to sign the quote, -Donald J Trump.
    2
  4468. @ There's still no evidence of Joey participating in any criminal activity. Sorry.
    2
  4469. That's a Trump policy, it doesn't apply elsewhere.
    2
  4470. He should step down immediately.
    2
  4471.  @brianjohnston4207  "But is Trump in fact an insurrectionist?" The judge in this case determined that he had violated his oath of office, which is all the 14th requires. No "insurrection case" was tried in Colorado, nor was any necessary under the 14th. no prior outside party is required to decide anything on the matter, only the judge that the case is brought before, and further appellate courts. And yes, the President counts under the 14th, because it does not specify that only the congressional oath counts. Most court cases involve weighing the evidence and coming to a determination. Very few cases are so clean cut that there is no argument whatsoever as to the verdict. That does not mean that such cases cannot function as intended. To have the standard that the 14th could be applied only in cases where it is absolutely unquestionable would completely fly in the face of all past legal precedent, all past uses of the 14th amendment, and all good faith readings of the text of the 14th amendment.
    2
  4472. That's what the Trump indictments are about. Finding that out.
    2
  4473. If President Trump "already did it," then why were more people crossing the border in 2019 than in 2016?
    2
  4474.  @rogerout8875  Don't include me in this. Afghanistan can do whatever they like at this point, so long as they don't involve the US in it. I'm more concerned about the amount of guns the US has, not the amount that Afghanistan has.
    2
  4475. If more people had listened to them the first time, there wouldn't be a delta variant to worry about.
    2
  4476. So you're saying he was there as a spy? That seems convoluted.
    2
  4477. Yeah, it's a no-brainer that Trump has never cared about a life that was not his own. That's like his core truth.
    2
  4478. It is her job as Press Secretary to refer people to the appropriate departments.
    2
  4479. The fact remains that he coasted on the Obama economy, didn't move the needle at all.
    2
  4480.  @philobetto5106  You do understand that time passed between 2019 and 2023, right? That these are different years? I mean, gas was $0.90 a gallon when Carter left office. The point is not to compare 2019 to 2023, it's to compare the actual 2023 to where 2023 would have been with Trump in the White House for the past two years, in which case all those prices would be even higher.
    2
  4481. Factually though, it is. In the real world, at least.
    2
  4482. I do think you underestimate the growth of automation here. IF automation grows fast enough, and IF the Chinese government take best advantage of it, that could offset the more traditional problems of decreasing population. I have a feeling that if China's economy does collapse, it will only be because they were unlucky enough to be only a couple of decades too early for the automation singularity to eliminate that problem entirely.
    2
  4483. It's impossible to be energy independent so long as we have an oil and gas based energy sector. We would need to shift 100% to renewables if we wanted to be independent. We are at least producing more oil today than we were the last time he was in office.
    2
  4484. What does the Bible have to say about women pastors?
    2
  4485.  @ArmonAdibi  That was Paul, not Jesus. Paul said a lot of nonsense, and should best be ignored by anyone who claims to follow Christ's teachings. Christ had no problem with women in His ministry.
    2
  4486.  @kevinrobinson5196  It would be easier to list times when he didn't. I can't think of any off the top of my head though.
    2
  4487.  @josh18230  If it isn't yet on Youtube, then it will be soon enough. It's possible that some new organization has the release rights to the full version and haven't uploaded it yet.
    2
  4488.  @user-qy9tf2im7f  If that didn't post, just do a basic search for "fetterman oz full debate," and click on anything by a reputable news network.
    2
  4489.  @NickApex  I posted the link several times in the replies to this post, if you can't see them it's because Youtube is blocking any links, which they often do. The link I posted was from a local Pennsylvanian news network, it is still up, and it took me all of ten second of searching, so what is your damage?
    2
  4490.  @johnlevine4716  Those people did not care about competency.
    2
  4491.  @Ndbrow1  Yes, but to her credit, her home state is stupid. Trump also lost his home state, by a wider margin.
    2
  4492. Rand Paul couldn't torch anything with a gallon of gasoline and a lighter. It's called a "whine."
    2
  4493. Say it enough times and it will remain untrue.
    2
  4494.  @MariaMaria-sr8zg  Well, historic reduction in crime rates, historically low unemployment rates, historic investment in infrastructure, high GDP growth, most secure border in US history, I mean, can you think of any categories in which he's not the best in the last few decades, at least?
    2
  4495. Because that's just how people look on TV. I mean, you could see from the wide shots that no teleprompters existed, so why ask?
    2
  4496. Yes. Either that, or divest his interests in those businesses when taking office.
    2
  4497.  @miken7629  So how would you interpret people going to a peaceful protest with riot shields, smoke grenades, and gas masks?
    2
  4498.  @miken7629  And what would be the responsible purpose for having them at a Pride march? Context matters.
    2
  4499.  @miken7629  You don't need a smoke grenade to "signal a group," you can use a phone for that. It's the 21st Century. The police had good reason to expect that this group intended to start violence during an otherwise peaceful event. They made the right call to remove them from the scene.
    2
  4500.  @c9bd415  He's had massive failures too. He's just been more lucky than not. There's very little that can be traced back to a good idea on his part.
    2
  4501.  @MrLegendra  Wow, that is cultish.
    2
  4502.  @farzana6676  He was the owner of SpaceX, he can give himself whatever title he likes. I asked you what HE engineered, not what he hired people to engineer for him.
    2
  4503.  @scribble71277  I didn't ask whether he built a rocket singlehandedly, I asked whether he engineered anything singlehandedly, because there have been plenty of engineers this decade who have. My point is that he is being called "the best engineer ever," and yet nobody can point to anything HE engineered, only to things that his company engineered.
    2
  4504. Yes, but that only indicates that you know a lot of idiots. "Birds of a feather," right?
    2
  4505.  @lableak7256  The lab leak theory is not true. Or at least hasn't been proven yet. It is just the less likely of several theories until there is more evidence. In any case, nobody denied that it might have been possible that there was a lab leak, only that it was less likely, which is still is. All that's changed recently is slightly more evidence in its column. The real conspiracy theory there is that the lab actually created the virus or if you want to get even more wacky, that they released it deliberately. There are still some idiots out there that believe that sort of thing.
    2
  4506.  @jasonhohman7702  Because I'm a Democrat, not a sheep Republican, following Trump's ass around like it smells like roses. This country was being stolen from us until we voted the thief out last fall.
    2
  4507.  @Chris-lx5fs  Swing and a miss. But you were so close, as you at least correctly identified the targets of a lot of mass shooters.
    2
  4508.  @Chris-lx5fs  A minority, most shootings do not involve black people. At least not on the side with a trigger.
    2
  4509. Geroge Washington did a LOT of tweeting. It was just on paper back then. Most of it can be found in the National Archives.
    2
  4510.  @personblank338  There is no "sexual content" in these drag shows. They ARE just dance performances. The only ones "grooming" here are Republicans.
    2
  4511.  @personblank338  I can see that you're trying your absolute best to pretend that drag shows are inappropriate for children, but they're not. There is nothing "sexual" about a drag show. Everyone agrees (other than Republicans) that having sex with a minor is wrong, and exposing them to sexual content is wrong, but there is nothing sexual about an all-ages drag performance. NOBODY is advocating for indecent exposure of ANY sort.Why do you believe that anyone is in favor of indecent exposure, to children or otherwise? Why do you believe that existing indecent exposure laws would not be sufficient to stop it if it were taking place?
    2
  4512.  @Dakarn  You have been misinformed. There is nothing sexualized about drag performances in general. A "drag" performance is a dance performance in which the performers dress in exagerated feminine fashions. There is nothing "sexual" about that, but it is a descriptive term, similar to "ballet," or "tap dancing," and is used so that audiences know what to expect. You choosing to insist that there is something "sexual" about it does not make it true. There is no "stripping" going on, at least not in any performances that would involve children. They put ON clothes, not take them off.
    2
  4513.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  What would "a man dancing in front of children" have ANYTHING to do with "reproduction?" Gross. also, NOBODY is "telling you what your children are going to be seeing. NOBODY is pushing for some sort of "mandatory drag show watching." This is ALL about CHOICE. If people CHOOSE to watch drag shows, they should not be PREVENTED from doing so by law. That's all. If anyone chooses NOT to watch a drag show, then NOBODY is trying to force them to.
    2
  4514.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  What is your point? That they should not have been arrested for protesting outside of a school? It would depend on his disruptive they were being. Again, the fact remains that NOBODY is "telling you what your children are going to be seeing. NOBODY is pushing for some sort of "mandatory drag show watching." This is ALL about CHOICE. If people CHOOSE to watch drag shows, they should not be PREVENTED from doing so by law. That's all. If anyone chooses NOT to watch a drag show, then NOBODY is trying to force them to.
    2
  4515.  @TrouserMonkey6971  I was just agreeing with you that she did not represent her state well. Not that this is a bad thing.
    2
  4516.  @Bluesit32  It makes them hypocrites for siding with leaders that openly oppose the values they claim to hold, against leaders who openly support their core principles. No Christian can choose Trump against Biden without themselves being a hypocrite for doing so.
    2
  4517.  @Bluesit32  That is thew worst insult you can possibly make for them. Even I don't believe there are that many people so stupid.
    2
  4518. There are international laws against forcing a group of people to leave a given area within your territory, and largely, this is a good thing. It's becoming more and more apparent though that nationalist independent groups within a state are becoming more and more of a threat to stability. There needs to be some middle ground in which such groups are forced to choose, do you want to stay where you are, but abandon all loyalty to foreign powers and embrace the local national government and politics, OR leave and maintain your allegiance to a different nation without causing disruptions. Nobody should be forced to choose a given option, but they should all have to pick one. I don't see any other way to resolve such tensions, when portions of your country just don't want to be part of that country, but also don't want to leave it. There is no path to them ever being happy like that.
    2
  4519. If milk is unprofitable, then vegan alternatives should be easy, just produce them at a lower production cost than raising an entire animal. If you can't manage that, then you deserve to fail. I would have liked to see as much time spent on comparing fake meat to actual meat as was spent on dairy though, you barely glossed over that category.
    2
  4520.  @dehydratedwater9806  He made way more than that both before and after his presidency. His family made BILLIONS off the Saudis.
    2
  4521. That is not why. It was because Jared was a security risk. Hunter's never had security clearance.
    2
  4522. That's not how it works.
    2
  4523. Eh, it could be better, but it's still better than a lot of other places. Democracy is hard.
    2
  4524. Yeah, and he also forgets that babies (hopefully) grow up to become adults, who get up to all sorts of things. That's why we vaccinate small children, not to protect them as infants (in most cases), but to make sure that they, and the community around them, are protected throughout their lives.
    2
  4525.  @toyotaprius79  But the other guy was implying that Muslims immigrated to Jerusalem over a thousand years ago at random or something, my point was that it was not random, it was as much their holy land as it was to the Jews, they had just as much right to be there, and they lived there for a thousand years before the British handed a chunk of it off to the Israelis, so the Palestinians have every right to defend their home.
    2
  4526.  @akakiiakakievich1646  "Peace talks" have no meaning if they do not restore the pre-war state, and so far Russia has made no indication that they intend to withdraw from Ukraine. Other countries have good reason to want to restore the pre-war state, to prevent FUTURE wars.
    2
  4527. Because he only gets a tiny fraction of the vote.If they let everyone up there on the stage just because, then none of them would get time to talk.
    2
  4528.  @TakeBackOurCountry-RFKJ24  Those are also compelling arguments for not putting him up there.
    2
  4529.  @markwilson4374  The poll you cite did not ask about Kennedy. It said that it wanted to include people IF they cleared the viability threshold. Kennedy is not one of those. If he DOES cross the viability threshold, then he might make the debate. That is on him to achieve, not on the debates to give him a free pass that other candidates don't get.
    2
  4530. It's not "giving it away," it's an investment.
    2
  4531. Yeah, they feel compelled to run for public office as Republicans, and frankly, no child should ever have to be exposed to a Republican politician like that. At least the drag performers are harmless though, and with this law struck down, children can enjoy their performances again.
    2
  4532.  @bobhilbrich6131  The constitution determines which people are qualified to run for President. The 14th amendment specifies that oath breakers are disqualified. Just as with any qualification for office, states can determine whether they believe a candidate meets that qualification, as Justice Gorsuch made clear. A higher court may be able to overrule such a decision, but lower level courts ARE where such decisions tend to start.
    2
  4533.  @harryfarber6435  Trump doesn't know more about anything than anybody else does.
    2
  4534.  @brandonmonroe7050  I think maybe that's it, they want someone in charge that they can know for certain they would have done a better job themselves.
    2
  4535.  @serfcityherewecome8069  Not everyone is born into a rich family and handed millions of dollars to play with as a graduation present. He's lost more money than if he'd just put his trust fund into an indexed fund.
    2
  4536. Mainly because ti would be unconstitutional, and amoral.
    2
  4537. Schrodinger's Biden.
    2
  4538.  @GavinJones19982  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    2
  4539.  @droosyg252  True. "We can't understand it, so you can't either!"
    2
  4540. @ Educate yourself to find out why you're wrong, I won't explain it to you.
    2
  4541.  @JS-ln4ns  No, it just means his audience believes what he says, rather than what he does.
    2
  4542. The US and other countries have been trying to convince Hamas to end this war, but so far, they have refused to do so. there's little more we could be doing without joining into the conflict.
    2
  4543.  @dehydratedwater9806  The presidential records act says that he had no right to retain any of those documents. He had been refusing to turn them over for over two years by that point, not "three days," and it was never up to him what the terms of turning them over were.
    2
  4544.  @sds7995  Covid, I assume.
    2
  4545. I think it's also "the fault" of better quality vehicles than we used to get. A car will run fine for decades now, and not just if you barely drive it or pamper it, they just keep going. This means people aren't desperate for a new car, they are fine driving the ones they have, and if they need something new, they can get a used car for a fraction of the cost of a new one, that will still last for a decade or more.
    2
  4546.  @Chris-ut6eq  I'm not sure you understand how a US election works (generally). The general elections are in the fall, but months earlier there will be primaries, and in those primaries, anyone who wants to can run for either party. The voters of those parties choose who the candidate for that party will be, so it's not "the party" that chooses who the candidates will be, it's the people.
    2
  4547. "I don't want art students to be able to look at my work and be inspired of it to create work of their own. I do want it to be public though."
    2
  4548.  @bigslim4237  Probably a lot less than Trump.
    2
  4549.  @Poorboystoys  Jimmy Carter was a good president, by all metrics. He just happened to be President during a difficult period. That's the nature of the job. It'd be like blaming that bus driver in Speed for "being a bad driver."
    2
  4550. Democrats 4 years ago: Russian agents launched propaganda campaigns in swing states to support Trump over Clinton, but the mechanisms of the voting process were never effected. Democrats today: Russian agents launched propaganda campaigns in swing states to support Trump over Biden, but the mechanisms of the voting process were never effected. They were correct both times.
    2
  4551.  @bryanmcfadden4071  I know enough to know that groomers like that should not be allowed in the US House.
    2
  4552.  @Chris-t2l1x  How do you think such a train would work?
    2
  4553.  @TheGreatAtario  The brain worm hosts do not like this idea.
    2
  4554. Taxes are not being raised for anyone who is not making $400K a year. Are you one of those?
    2
  4555. The Democrats passed relief in May, Mitch McConnel sat on it all summer and beyond. If we had a Democratic Senate there would have been several relief packages over the last six months.
    2
  4556.  @DB8ed  More research will always be handy, but it is possible to generate 100% of our energy needs using green energy right now using existing tech. Is it practical? No, that would require trillions in global investment, but it is possible. At the very least though, we should be taking the practical steps in that direction as quickly as possible.
    2
  4557.  @kp63  The outrage there would be about starting a discussion on Christianity, which is a religion, and teachers aren't allowed to teach religion in a public school. Now if the teacher was using the movie to teach about a balanced diet. . . it would be debatable.
    2
  4558.  @CoercedJab  Huh? How blind are you?
    2
  4559.  @BasebalIShorts.  I've made plenty of arguments, I can't help it if you don't understand them.
    2
  4560.  @alysabrumfield9607  No, he thought about it when he thought about it. Whether a camera was involved is irrelevant to that. Again, it's nice that you have lived a life without any hardship, but not everyone is so lucky. Try to empathize with them, even if you have never felt such pain yourself.
    2
  4561.  @alysabrumfield9607  Ok, so you understand why you were wrong to doubt his emotions. Good.
    2
  4562. Hope you enjoy playing golf rather than getting Americans the Covid relief that they need. I guess it makes sense, you also don't seem to realize that "Americans killed as a direct result of my actions" is also a sport that is judged based on getting the lowest score possible, not the highest.
    2
  4563. No, the solution can't be to just keep doing what he's doing and expecting his audience to be better at critical analysis than they are. There are only two good solutions to this: 1. stick ONLY to guests and topics that do not matter. If all he has on is "fun" guests, celebrities and such that are talking about their own lives and goofing around, without opining about serious topics of the day, then sure, have fun with it, no harm done. OR 2. Bring on a co-host or counter-guest. Bring on someone who can be trusted to know things, bring on an intellectual, and Joe can do his thing, but also there would be another voice in the room, not weeks later, but right that minute, to say "hey, wait a minute, that just isn't true at all," and bring everyone back around to an even keel. They can explain to Joe why he definitely shouldn't be taking certain viewpoints as credible. So this could either be a single really clever and capable person, or it could be a specific guest to each guest he brings on, like if he brings on a pandemic-denier or something, he can also bring on a medical expert to point out every time he gets something wrong. either would work, but "business as usual" causes actual harm to society.
    2
  4564. McConnell has zero ground to stand on when he already packed two seats onto the court that should have been made by Democrats.
    2
  4565.  @Alaskaguys  That sounds like sheep talk. Take your baaa-ing elsewhere.
    2
  4566. And Soylent Green!
    2
  4567. You do realize that most of them don't need their salaries, right?
    2
  4568. I don't understand who you are arguing about. Who put himself above the US people here?
    2
  4569. Maybe, but the thing is, they do have to maintain a home back in their home district and in DC, which isn't cheap. We don't want to make it so that only millionaires can run for congress. Even if we did cut their salaries, that would be like 0.0000000000000001% of the budget.
    2
  4570. Cool. So if someone bumps into you, you're allowed to break their limbs and steal anything they have on them. Good to know.
    2
  4571.  @Ge1Ri4  Even better! But bigger, probably.
    2
  4572.  @Kretenn  There is no US law that says that. Who told you that there was such a law, and what do you think they stood to gain by controlling you?
    2
  4573.  @Kretenn  US law does not say that. US laws says that we cannot touch a migrant until AFTER they cross the border, and that once they do they need to be given due process, which involves detaining and giving them asylum hearings or migrant hearings. Either way, the court systems are backlogged, so it can be months or years before it would be possible for the US to legally deport someone. This is WHY Biden has asked for funding for additional border courts so that the process can be sped up and people can be deported faster.
    2
  4574.  @billnelson3405  He didn't fund gain of function research though, through third parties or otherwise. He funded basic virology research that was being referenced in gain of function research, similar to funding a farmer growing corn might lead to that corn being used in a restaurant somewhere. And even that funding was in projects half a decade ago that had nothing to do with Covid-19.
    2
  4575.  Faux Que  LOL! That is a hilarious story. Can you imagine that there are buffoons out there that actually believe that sort of nonsense?!
    2
  4576.  @randyross5630  Except that 50-60% of Americans do not have naturally acquired immunity, so that's probably why it's not talked about by people who know better.
    2
  4577.  @billnelson3405  The reason the NIH was cited was not because they contributed directly to the research in that paper, but because the general work they had funded in the past was used in the research they were doing. In any case, it's a good thing that the Wuhan lab was researching these sorts of viruses because it led to the vaccines used to deal with covid-19 when it hit. There is nothing sinister about that.
    2
  4578.  @karenlee3372  Here, Karen, I think this video will really help you to sort through this madness: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
    2
  4579. Because they prefer to run on fear rather than answers.
    2
  4580.  @CraZyLiLBoy00  You do know that you've only been told to think it's fake, right?
    2
  4581.  @johnroush237  Except that the 14th amendment supersedes that. It was used during the time of its writing to bar people form office who had never been convicted of violating their oaths. It is not a penalty that requires a conviction.
    2
  4582.  @Haterator  It has for the purposes of this decision though. The 14th amendment does not at any point involve a conviction, and nobody that has been applied to it in the past was convicted of anything. I don't know where Trump supporters got the idea that a conviction was involved here.
    2
  4583. Nobody says you need to get rid of your old car, just that NEW cars should meet a higher standard.
    2
  4584.  @blondejon5538  Those are very specific words from the Constitution. With very specific context. From which you have removed them, rendering them meaningless. Now what the Constitution DID do is give Congress the authority to pass laws that incentivize some things and prohibit others. We the People decide which laws they should pass when we elect them to represent us. We the People support Biden's push for EVs.
    2
  4585.  @residentgrey  It is inappropriate to compare any of this to the Holocaust. In Germany, the Jews did not attack the other Germans, as Gaza did to Israel. Gaza would be the German soldiers in this scenario, and Israel the Allies.
    2
  4586. It would be interesting if Kyoto decided to loosen their height restrictions a bit, but only in a specific area where it was deemed to not disrupt the ambiance too much, and with much more restriction than usual on architecture, so that the end result would be something akin to a "new mountain" of residential and retail space, while from the outside it would just seem like a natural hill community that fits with the local character.
    2
  4587. Less than are lost by the federal government not having a national strategy to fight the virus that has led to over a hundred thousand unnecessary deaths nationwide.
    2
  4588. How so? I don't think I've ever seen her confusing the two.
    2
  4589. There is nothing about a Tiktok video that could not exist equally on other platforms. Removing the platform in this case does not eliminate the speech.
    2
  4590. They're protecting their donors.
    2
  4591. Ukraine isn't allowed to use certain US military weapons in Russia. But now Kursk is Ukraine, so they can use it there. Maybe Moscow will be Ukraine soon too!
    2
  4592. The same number of people would be crossing if Trump was president, everything else would be worse though. The tweets were never the problem.
    2
  4593. Ouch.
    2
  4594. But he would be more right calling himself "radical," and he's her opponent.
    2
  4595. "Can the news be unbiased?" A paid promo by an unaccredited entity that claims to be able to tell you which news sources are biased and is not at all suspicious. . .
    2
  4596. This isn't really a city level issue, the gun laws we need have to be done at the federal level to have any real impact.
    2
  4597.  @norincokid  But they do not prohibit legal purchasing of guns, which is what allows criminals to get them.
    2
  4598.  @68wolffden  Do you think that criminals in the UK have less interest in guns than those in America?
    2
  4599.  @norincokid  Well, I guess now my point would be that comparing a lack of guns to starvation is pretty messed up?
    2
  4600. I think she's confused. It's a bill to PREVENT a partisan take-over of the election system by state Republicans.
    2
  4601. Nobody knows, he just showed up one day and thought it would be fun to be President.
    2
  4602. But that's an extreme outlier. Best not to make policy around those. Most people who think they have a "brilliant thought, yet to be pursued" are just basic idiots.
    2
  4603. That's a pretty serious allegation. If he thinks this is "bigger than Donald Trump," then he's claiming that there are MORE Republicans out there who are guilty of breaking their oaths to the Constitution. This would not surprise me, but it's good to hear a Republican actually taking this seriously, rather than dismissing it as a "partisan" issue.
    2
  4604.  @drsocialist5572  Yeah, no hate for the average Indian person, they are innocent in this, it's just their government pulling this stuff.Same with the Russians really, most of them have no power to stop this war is Putin wants to do it.
    2
  4605.  @njg26.gustav12  Millions of Americans require the government for more than filing their taxes.
    2
  4606. Might, although even deserts in Africa have monsoon periods. Droughts are a long term thing, so a short rain period in the middle might not make up for years of drought, you'd have to measure the amount of new rain to the amount of rain expected.
    2
  4607. Nobody ever made money by betting on Elon Musk to do the right thing.
    2
  4608. That's only because Republican like Cornyn refuse to allow anything in the Senate to come to a vote. If you want Congress to do more, elect more Democrats.
    2
  4609. Just the Republican ones. The Democratic ones are mostly fine.
    2
  4610. Kick Hungary out until they can get rid of Orban and his cronies.
    2
  4611. Yeah, I've heard a lot of "what kind of father talks to his son on the phone?!" coming out of Republicans today. It must be so sad to be a conservative.
    2
  4612.  @jimmcneal5292  Why? If you're going to be buying a car any time soon, an electric is the best option for most people.
    2
  4613.  @anthonycarbone3826  EV batteries last longer than most people will drive a single car (including poor people), and when they are replaced, the costs to do so will be less than the cost savings from gasoline over that period. Now, it is true that the battery costs can be a large lump sum fee, and this might catch drivers by surprise when it happens, but that's just a cultural shift to manage. I expect that we'll soon have good replacement plans for batteries, where you put in a small amount each month to a fund so you'll have enough to replace the battery if needed. It would still end up being less than what you'd be spending on gas.
    2
  4614. Egypt isn't that bad. Yes, they refuse to allow the Gazans to evacuate from the war Gaza started, and yes they limited the humanitarian aid that could enter the country for the first few weeks, but I'd hardly call that "genocide." It's nothing like what the Gazans were doing to their neighbors last month.
    2
  4615.  @de_dustybones  It's not bigotry to point out the reality. It is bigotry to discriminate against trans people, which is what people like Peterson's supporters want to do.
    2
  4616. You can read it yourself if you are concerned. All bills are public record.
    2
  4617.  @Reepicheep-1  Yeah I mean you could build one of these things as a battlefield weapon tower, but it wouldn't be worth it because it would be expensive, short ranged, only work in the daytime (ideally mid-day), and easy to destroy using conventional weapons.
    2
  4618. @ It would probably be a good idea to make it so that when power is off they auto-rotate upward due to gravity, more likely they just freeze wherever they are pointed, which might be bad.
    2
  4619.  @BlueMagic67  There were more wars during his time in office than there are currently.
    2
  4620. Why would they be aggressive toward innocent citizens? That would be an abuse of authority.
    2
  4621. How is this their mess?
    2
  4622. Well, maybe he can visit, if he's nice. He's not really making friends atm.
    2
  4623. Spot the bot.
    2
  4624.  @danjenkins8981  They're better than they were before the election.
    2
  4625.  @nencrows_4580  Why do you think oil prices went up?
    2
  4626.  @JimSutton-t5m  There's a difference between thinking things are great and thinking things are better than they would have been in a 2024 under Trump. We've had a rough eight years, and things are on an upward swing now, but aren't back to where anyone would like them to be YET. That's no argument against throwing the whole country into the bin.
    2
  4627. He has a chance of causing real harm now.
    2
  4628.  @brianpollard3500  That's incorrect, anyone within the US has constitutional rights.
    2
  4629.  @jbp122  Unlikely, no system is perfect, so some amount of waste is pretty much inevitable, but the government still achieves far more good than waste.
    2
  4630.  @Skywest25  Yeah, ultimately it just comes down to the guns, not the trigger finger.
    2
  4631.  @williambutler3469  Those are joke candidates though, not actual alternatives.
    2
  4632. The vaccination was never intended to or advertised as making you 100% immune from getting sick. Most vaccines do not do that. The goal of the vaccine, and what it has been successful at doing, is greatly reducing the impacts of the disease. It makes you much less likely to die, much less likely to end up in the hospital, much less likely to catch it, and much less likely to pass it to others if you do catch it. "Breakthrough" infestions are on the rise because a lot of people who had been behaving carefully, wearing masks, not eating out, social distancing, etc., got vaccinated and just started "living normally," which brought them into direct contact with infected people far more often than they had been. They get sick, and either have no symptoms, or have a mild flu, but if they have a mild flu now, then without being vaccinated they would have ended up in the hospital. If it's so bad that they do end up in the hospital, then before the vaccine they would have died. Getting vaccinated helps significantly, and that's all it's ever claimed to do, which makes it worth getting.
    2
  4633.  @JeffSpicoli007  No, the vax doses work, and is not snake oil. The Snake oil is the various "treatments" that faux-news sites like to peddle, malaria drugs and horse de-wormers and other "treatments" that actually have no effect on covid and cause actual harm to people who try them. But of course the idiots prefer these "treatments" to the actual cures, because they can stick it to the "nerds" that are trying to get them to follow scientific guidance, and because it means they don't have to do anything unless they actually get deathly ill, by this point of course their "treatments" turn out to not work at all and it's too late for them to get vaccinated so they just die.
    2
  4634.  @JeffSpicoli007  Many vaccines require a booster. That does not make them ineffective, it just means that you need to take them as directed. One dose provides slight protection. Two doses, one month apart, provides strong protection, but it does fade over time. Three doses, after around 8 months or so, provides a much stronger protection. To say "it isn't effective because you need multiple doses" is like saying "there's no point to eating food, you just need to eat more later!" I don't want anyone to die, which is why I'm trying to prevent as much misinformation on the topic as possible. The more people hear lies about vaccines being bad or about how horse de-wormers can save them, the more people will die.
    2
  4635. No, because they never did that. That was strawmen that did that.
    2
  4636.  @drtyhrmt  I don't need my arrogant and dismissive attitude to lend my side any credibility, because the facts of the matter are sufficient.
    2
  4637.  @drtyhrmt  It's certainly possible, but not a factor in this particular case, at least. I mean, nothing I've had to say on the matter is unwarranted.
    2
  4638.  @GorillaLoWolfbos  Oh no. So anyway. . .
    2
  4639.  @timl.b.2095  To be fair, their individual effect on the climate is relatively minor, and it's much more important to push for systemic changes than to worry about your own personal impact. One vote for a progressive candidate (in the current political climate) is worth more than pausing an entire four years of personal carbon use.
    2
  4640.  @Tom-zs6bb  Nobody's talking about transferring money out of the US, this will all HELP the US to MAKE money.
    2
  4641.  @Tom-zs6bb  That would be because reading comprehension is not your strong suit then.
    2
  4642. Exactly, and He supports our trans brothers, sisters, and others.
    2
  4643. That's not why.
    2
  4644. Who cares? Most of the billionaire spending goes ot Republicans, why are people always talking about Soros like he matters?
    2
  4645. Yes, they did.
    2
  4646. He just pled guilty, nobody is "above the law" here.
    2
  4647. He's a Catholic in the same way that a koala is a bear.
    2
  4648. "Texas governor is wrong about something" is really a "dog bites man" sort of story.
    2
  4649. It would have been much sooner, but Trump and his judge delayed it at every possible turn.
    2
  4650. Nobody is owed equal coverage just because they announce a candidacy. They have to earn that. There aren't enough hours in the day to give every potential candidate equal time.
    2
  4651.  @melissadeloach8503  No, you aren't.
    2
  4652. It's smart.
    2
  4653.  @Clownelskiy  There was no oppression though, certainly not enough to justify the murders Russia has committed since then.
    2
  4654. I think the issue is that most consumers buy their food from major suppliers, so for veganism to extend beyond the single digits, they would need to figure out a way to become profitable at scale. If a company can't make realistic fake beef that is at least the same price as actual beef, then they don't deserve to be in business.
    2
  4655.  @slshusker  Opinions do not vary. EVERY legal expert believes it was a stupid ruling by an incompetent and unqualified jurist.
    2
  4656. The GOP have already said that they want to prevent any border bills getting through so that they'll have an easier time in the fall.
    2
  4657. Would it be possible to just trade Donbas for Ukraine in total? What I mean is, institute a formal treaty that says, on the one side, Russia gets Donbas, in full, no squirley language, Donbas is just a part of Russia now. But in return for that, the rest of Ukraine becomes fully part of Europe, if not a full EU member, then at least a part of NATO, and/or other guarantees of support and protection that should keep any pro-Russian future off the table entirely. Could Russia agree to that? Could the Ukrainian people accept it?
    2
  4658.  @Nerdofsteel82  this is not true. The vaccine is necessary, according to all the science involved.
    2
  4659.  @RansackTheElder68  no, the test placebo group only got the vaccine after it was shown to be effective. Besides which, we also have the billions of people around the world who haven't gotten vaccinated, and who have suffered worse symptoms and died at a higher rate, so there is plenty of control groups out there to work with. Are you suggesting that there is a psychosomatic component to a respiratory virus?
    2
  4660.  @calliesmith6897  A plastic bubble would be far less convenient than just getting vaccinated.
    2
  4661.  @Nerdofsteel82  Tuberculosis only kills people in third world countries. It kills less than 500 people a year in the US, so it is less of a pressing concern for Americans. Should we do more to help drive down TB in third world countries? Maybe, but that has nothing to do with what we're talking about here. Also, TB IS both treatable and curable. IF you take the treatments. There is no "vaccine" for it because it is not a virus, it is a bacterial infection, and you cannot vaccinate against a bacterial infection, but you can certainly treat it.
    2
  4662.  @Nerdofsteel82  You say "Your information is coming from nowhere but the people feeding you with wrong information. You are wrong." That is projecting, because you are accusing me of something that is true about yourself instead. And again, yes, TB has killed more people globally, but not remotely as many in the US, and we're mainly talking about whether Americans should get vaccinated or not, so what is a problem in a third world country is not relevant. If you do want to talk globally though, over 4 million have been killed by covid worldwide, so WAY more than Tuberculosis.
    2
  4663. Yes, that's why it was important that he be voted out in 2020 and replaced by someone with respect for the Constitution like Joe Biden. Trump has even promised if reelected to persecute his political opponents.
    2
  4664. Also, he's not a brilliant physicist. He's just a geek with a LOT of money to give to other, smarter people to build things for him.
    2
  4665.  @ronclark9724  That's certainly how Putin would do it.
    2
  4666. AND REMEMBER THAT A REPUBLIC IS A FORM OF DEMOCRACY.
    2
  4667.  @Nicktheguy24  No, we voted him out almost three years ago. The current president does have a lifelong stutter, but at least the brain in his head is functioning perfectly well, which is a significant improvement on the last one.
    2
  4668.  @Nicktheguy24  Its a fact. He's had a stutter since childhood, that's a language problem, not a mental problem. His was of handling his stutter sometimes causes him to misspeak. But his MIND is never off pace, he always knows what's going on around him, which is more than can be said for the guy before him. That guy will get on stage and just ramble for hours at a time about complete nonsense, and when he does know what he's talking about, it's a complete lie. I can understand why some people don't understand Biden, and think that he's not as smart and capable as he's proven himself to be, but it makes zero sense to then go "and so I choose Trump instead." There is no world in which Trump would be a better option, in ANY category.
    2
  4669. Well there's no implication that it wasn't grass roots, just that many of these people didn't go to that school.
    2
  4670. The EU is like the flipside of California. California is a state that is large enough to throw its weight around as though it's a small country, while the US is a collection of small countries that throw their weight around like a single nation state.
    2
  4671. Harris spends more time sticking to the issues than Trump does.
    2
  4672. There are no grounds for impeachment though. It's not like he did any of the things Trump did.
    2
  4673. So if you have driven over the speed limit, you would also be "an illegal?"
    2
  4674.  @TheMeanArena That doesn't answer the question. If someone is "an illegal" because they broke a law, then wouldn't all people who have broken a law be "an illegal?"
    2
  4675. That's not true, actually, the medications do work, particularly on people for whom dieting did not. Even if you stop taking it, you don't tend to regain all the weight lost.
    2
  4676. Ew.
    2
  4677.  @kristinahammond-ly4gm  I think the issue is specificity. If you just mean the members of congress responsible for this, then that's one thing, but "government officials" entails the millions of Americans who work in the government, including mailmen.
    2
  4678.  @NJ-wb1cz  Ukraine is better supplied than Russia though, both in quality and quantity. It's not about massing large troop numbers on a single battlefield and having them fight it out, it's about cutting off supply lines and wearing down what forces Russia sends in, until they have nothing left to send.
    2
  4679. YES! Get McCarthy out of there!
    2
  4680. ​ @mvpfocus  Spam accounts proliferate because they are easy to make and tricky to remove without accidentally removing plenty of innocent people. It's negligence, not malice, they just don't care enough to task enough people to chase down every potential spam account and remove it. Elon claimed to want to remove all spambots from his platform, but once he took over, ti only got worse. He just didn't understand the scope of the problem.
    2
  4681.  @mvpfocus  They don't want to have everyone verify at a deep level because 1. it turns off legitimate customers because they don't want to offer that data to the site, 2. it would be less safe for the users, since they would be offering this important data to sites that may or may not be trustworthy to have it, and 3. it would be expensive for them to do, because they would need to track and compare this data. Basically, it's strongly against their interests to bother. The only way that extreme verification would make sense is if it's mandated by government, so that they have to make it work, and if there is a fairly simple way for people to securely verify their identity without spreading their actual personal details around too much. That is a government solution, not a business one (and of course then you get into the people who don't want that level of government involvement, so it's truly no-win).
    2
  4682. If surveyed, he'd probably call that "a defensive gun use," which tells you all you need to know about such statistics.
    2
  4683.  @sergioleone8592  It's not the EU's money and it's not the country's money,k it's the people's money, and the people have elected representatives to spend that money on their behalf. So long as a country benefits by being a part of the EU, they are beholden to follow the will of the majority of EU members. If they don't want that, they can always Brexit, see how well that''s working out.
    2
  4684.  @sergioleone8592  Sure she is. She was elected by the European parliament, which is elected by the people. It is an indirect system, but no different than a typical parliamentary system, in which individual voters have no direct say in who the Prime Minister will be, they just elect a Minister, and those Ministers choose someone to manage things. Basically, if you didn't want Von der Leyen, then your role is to elect MEPs that wouldn't vote for her.
    2
  4685. Japan, maybe, but no way India, not until they resolve their spat with Pakistan. As it stands, they are too dangerous to have a seat.
    2
  4686. Translation: "I do believe that an embryo is a baby, but I think it's fine to kill babies sometimes." Okay. . .
    2
  4687.  @UnitedWeStand2002  No, they are being enforced, this is what that looks like.
    2
  4688.  @fc4633  You started out strong, but then got a little in the weeds. "Separation of powers" had nothing to do with anyone being elected by state legislatures or electoral colleges, for example, that was for different, more base reasons. I think some people these days seem to be trying to move away from democratic principles (strangely enough, it tends to be on the side that lose democratic elections, but it can't possibly be because they want to cling to power anyway, right?) But yes, there is a separation of powers, there just need to be better checks against them.
    2
  4689. Da, comrade.
    2
  4690. @@hockeyrules160 🙌🤲🙏👐🙌👐🙏🔥
    2
  4691.  @buckyyt287  "Because Trump said so" is the only thing they believe these days, no matter how nonsensical.
    2
  4692. Yes. And anyone with a knowledge of history and a functional moral compass knows why it's a problem that he's talking like that about "illegals."
    2
  4693.  @mattl2843  Russia invaded Ukraine for no apparent reason. The US hasn't done that in over 20 years.
    2
  4694.  @Lopez-gd8hy  The US hasn't invaded Cuba in over 100 years though. You can't justify actions in the present by actions in the distant past.
    2
  4695. It was never about control, it was about public safety. Who would benefit from people wearing masks if it did not work?
    2
  4696. Biden has been acting on the border. It's been the House that has failed to do anything about the border.
    2
  4697.  @BatteryAddicted  Well, the Tesla style plug effectively became the standard once they started opening it up, and they did that because the government passed a law that provided incentives for building and operating charging stations, but it only applied to ones that were open platform.
    2
  4698. Ukraine does not have time to worry about Palestine.
    2
  4699. @@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.
    2
  4700. @@TaejongYi Europe hasn't been at war at all. Ukraine and Russia are at war. So far it hasn't spilled into any NATO or EU countries. Nobody is sending troops into Ukraine any time soon, we just send supplies so that they can keep up with Russia. Putin would certainly like the US to stop doing that, be we aren't gonna. Sorry, comerade.
    2
  4701. The law is the law. It's not a "they" thing.
    2
  4702.  @osm131  That would not be what "literally" means then.
    2
  4703. Why is it that every thread discussing a poll, there's always someone who's mind is boggled at the idea that other people answer poll questions?
    2
  4704. What a joke. "sure, if you're telling me some Nazis are racist, then that'd bad, I don't agree with racism, but the other Nazis are fine."
    2
  4705. Nah, they'd be fine. They'd just move to Canada.
    2
  4706.  @drebiz2344  I want my kids to grow up happy and healthy, which requires opposing book bans.
    2
  4707.  @farvasstache6532  I never claimed that adults could use a school library, I only said that it was public, because it is. Schools are public too, that does not mean anyone is allowed to use them.
    2
  4708.  @farvasstache6532  So you seem to be insisting that "public" means " a place any adult can freely enter" then? Ok, try entering a public school to which you don't have a student attending. I'll wait. In the meantime, I'll continue to use the definition of "public" that I was using, as in "owned and operated by the public," which applies to school libraries. And again, you do have control over what your children are exposed to, but not over what material is added to a school library. If you don't want them to read material in the school library, tell them not to. That is the full extent of your reach.
    2
  4709.  @farvasstache6532  Ok, if we agree that parents should have no control over what goes into their school libraries, then I don't see what you were arguing about in the first place.
    2
  4710. It was an open race, so if 60% of the voters were Democrat and 40% Republican, and the Democratic vote split down the middle then it would be 30/30/60 in favor of the Republican. If a large number of Democrats voted for Schiff, there were relatively few votes left to go to Porter. It was fairly likely that a Republican would end up as the second, losing candidate in the general.
    2
  4711.  Rain-on-Water  It's already secure. That is not the problem.
    2
  4712.  @eddieb1995  What do they have to do with anything?
    2
  4713.  @eddieb1995  That's zero times right there. Israel was not in one, and the other was an accident over 40 years ago.
    2
  4714. Because we don't want all the animals and people to die. Well, some of us don't want all the animals and people to die. At the current pace large portions of the map that are currently habitable will become impossible to survive in naturally.
    2
  4715. Just like how the grid wasn't ready for every house to have a TV. How's that working out now?
    2
  4716.  @davemustang8173  Who in the Republican party is "afraid to call out Biden?" In the Republican party, what takes courage is calling out Donald Trump, and Kevin is incapable of that. What takes integrity is being HONEST about Joe Biden, and Kevin is incapable of that as well.
    2
  4717.  @davemustang8173  And you call others "sheeple." Lol.
    2
  4718.  @davemustang8173  You didn't say it needed to be about Trump, you need to be more specific. Ok, let's see, about Trump. . . his son in law got 2 billion dollars from the Saudis after serving in the Trump administration for the previous four years. That's a matter of public record.
    2
  4719. I've heard a lot of "just as good as bacon," but making something that looks vaguely like a bacon strip is the least part of the process.
    2
  4720. Yeah right, they're staying in his guest house.
    2
  4721. It's not complicated, he's just less weird.
    2
  4722.  @Ortho-G  Whether someone read the book itself is irrelevant. The actual problem here is that she shot her dog. You understand that, right? Unless there's a part of the book that says "just kidding about the dog, lol," it wouldn't change anything.
    2
  4723.  @csaa1980  I disagree, but even if it is the case that some dogs are "hopeless," I would not trust Noem to be judge, jury, and executioner of that.
    2
  4724.  @Ortho-G  So she wanted the dog to kill some birds, but because it had killed other birds it had crossed a line and had to be killed? Not to mention that it was only in the position to harm those other birds in the first place because she was irresponsible enough to let him. SHE is responsible for his behavior, if either of them deserved to be put down, it wasn't the dog. And nobody supports taking any baby's lives, why even bring that up? Did she kill babies too?
    2
  4725.  @mikejones3294  Youtube scrubs very little. It would be The Hill's own word filters that would be scrubbing comments.
    2
  4726. Nobody is talking about fair political criticism here, why do you bring it up?
    2
  4727. You could cut the entire State Department and it would make almost no difference to the national budget. If you care about balancing the budget, it would either mean taxing at a rate comparable to other countries, or cutting the military, social security, and medicare, allowing Americans to die unnecessarily.
    2
  4728.  @grandspringdale1564  It absolutely happened.
    2
  4729.  @jkay3161  It hasn't been proven false even once. Haven't you noticed that whites in states that voted heavily Democrat before the civil rights movement started voting heavily Republican after? Do you think that's a coincidence? This video does a good job of explaining it in simple terms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwuFIJlY7fU
    2
  4730.  @nellosnook4454  1. "Traditional Americans" are louder, and also older and more likely to die soon. 2. Woke Americans are larger, and also will still be alive for decades to come. 3. Pander to the woke Americans.
    2
  4731.  @residentgrey  I have no idea what you are talking about by votes being "fortified" or "inadmissible." When ti comes to the 2020 election, every valid vote was counted, every invalid attempted vote was caught and dismissed. It was the most highly scrutinized election in US history.
    2
  4732.  @residentgrey  You aren't making any sense. Your responses read like word salad. What is your point?
    2
  4733. Yeah, but while he was in office, Bill Barr refused to prosecute him, and it took a while for Garland to get moving on it. He'll get his due though.
    2
  4734. @ Nothing he did was positive for the American people.
    2
  4735. @ Whistleblowers can be good, but that does not mean that every whistleblower is good. He is an example of one who behaved irresponsibly, rather than with honor.
    2
  4736. @ I don't think you understand the responsible use of a whistleblower. When it's done responsibly, it's to highlight behavior that is illegal or immoral, and ideally it should be done in a way that causes as little harm to the legitimate purposes of the organization as possible. Nothing Snowden reveled was in the public interest to know, and he did so in a way that was harmful to the legitimate national interest. Just because some whistleblowers do good work does not mean that all whistleblowing is positive.
    2
  4737. The national debt is very little like credit card debt.
    2
  4738.  @dave5254  Yup, that's definitely Coomer in a nutshell.
    2
  4739.  @TJ-zs1pl  Yup! Faux News will be like "how does this keep happening that nobody wants our sociopaths to rule over them?!"
    2
  4740. Is this really the best the New York Post can do? Gaslight us?
    2
  4741.  @kasper7203  The majority of people in Donbass did not want "independence," unless you meant independence from Russian aggression.
    2
  4742.  @kasper7203  Russian propaganda claimed that separatists had the majority, that does not mean that they actually had a majority.
    2
  4743. What's to salvage? Just pass both bills and there's no problem.
    2
  4744.  @Timewave-Zer0  I don't agree with your choices, but I also don't believe in making a law to prevent that choice. You understand the distinction? If you want to judge women who get abortions, that's fine, you do you, what people object to is passing laws to prevent them from getting one if they so choose.
    2
  4745. The hydrogen economy was "plan B" for the fossil fuel industry, since they could just convert their oil and natural gas into hydrogen. It still has value in certain situations, but it was never going to be the main way things get powered.
    2
  4746. This is what Chamberlain said about Poland.
    2
  4747.  @nancyking9033  Yes, that was sad.
    2
  4748.  @blakerobertson6526  Not everyone owns a car or a home. You may not like it, but it remains a fact that millions of Americans do not own the types of ID that voter ID laws require. Another case is that college students often have difficulty getting a valid ID in the state where they currently live, but also have difficulty getting a valid ID from the state where their parents live, due to being unable to get one by mail. It also remains a fact that such laws are not necessary, because that sort of voter fraud does not actually happen in any significant amount.
    2
  4749.  @LAJAP  Maybe, but my point is, what we've got is what we've got. If we're going to bother pushing for something different than we've got, then we may as well push for changes that matter, rather than changes that don't. Pushing for more human cashiers is not something worth the effort. Pushing for humans to not need to be cashiers is.
    2
  4750.  @LAJAP  Sure, but that's entirely separate from the experience at the grocery store, where I know I'm interacting with a machine, and prefer it that way.
    2
  4751.  @purplefanta7142  They're actually doing both. They are approving it officially, for adults, and also extending the EUA for people under 15 (which will take some more approval steps to reach full approval).
    2
  4752.  @Fayegina  Groceries are more expensive than they used to be, that much was inevitable after the pandemic, but if you're spending $100 on one hand of food then you're buying some pretty high-end stuff, so don't talk about it like that's a middle class problem. Normal people will likely spend more than that on a week's worth of groceries, but it would take up several armloads.
    2
  4753.  @hotdjdwray  Well, they were at least somewhat limited by what the law would allowed them to do, so they just couldn't invent the case that Trump wanted them to invent. Since they were limited to only charging people who had actually committed crimes, their hands were tied.
    2
  4754.  @TiredofLies  What do you not understand?
    2
  4755.  @WhenTheTreesSpeak  Their pockets take less than a percent of the taxes, where do you think the rest of it goes?
    2
  4756.  @shanestone8182  Nah, that's nonsense.
    2
  4757.  @bob1505  Yup, and also to Republicans.
    2
  4758. But this is a race card criticism. They are the ones playing the race card.
    2
  4759. Yes, as the Lord said, "vote blue, no matter who."
    2
  4760. Yes, vote with Jesus, vote Democrat! Always!
    2
  4761. It's not partisan, it is the right thing to do. Nobody is stopping you from joining them, the only one making this "partisan" is your choice not to.
    2
  4762.  @Mely83  But it is a consideration, right? That does not mean that their own rights take priority over those of their wife or children, but it should be considered and weighed fairly. While a man being driven to suicide is not reason enough to force an unhappy family to stay with him, it should be reason enough for him to have access to effective mental health care, which is what the State of Montana is threatening to deny to trans kids.
    2
  4763.  @ashdav9980  The Montana bill is designed to cut these children off from the health care that you agree they need. I'm sorry if someone asked you to call them a gender that you didn't want to call them, that must have been awful for you. However did you survive the experience? How draconian of them.
    2
  4764.  @PaulMcElroyWasHere  Exchangeable batteries are not likely the future. Even in China they are losing out to other types of EVs. They are just not as efficient as "internal battery" EVs, and the infrastructure for swapping them out makes the current US EV charging options look as convenient as gas stations. Modern EVs only take 20 minutes or less to fast-charge, and are getting much easier to replace damaged batteries, so that is likely where things are heading.
    2
  4765.  @mcb00  If there were no Hezbollah there, then Israel did not attack it.
    2
  4766. How would it be different if not for politics?
    2
  4767.  @Mythhammer  That's what a True Cultist would say.
    2
  4768.  @BishopStars  Climate deniers gonna deny, that's all they can do, sure. But it's important to ignore them, not let them drag the whole conversation down. We need to reduce the fossil fuel usage if we want to stand any chance of limiting climate change within our lifetimes.
    2
  4769. I think there needs to be government regulation that the charging networks all need to have apps that are interchangeable. It's ridiculous to have multiple competing options that require you to have different apps on your phone to operate. They can have their own software if they like, and maybe offer a slight discount or rewards program or that sort of thing if you have their own app, but whichever app you typically use should at least be able to log in and use the service without too unreasonable a price difference.
    2
  4770.  @robertjonez5  How so? You just write a check, and the bank transfers the money. What's the problem?
    2
  4771. Different time, different situation. We're talking about the present here.
    2
  4772.  @AdjudicatorBrbal  It must be hard to live in your brain.
    2
  4773. They covered it, there just wasn't much to cover, since he didn't actually find anything. They basically reported "he found nothing, and wasted $6m in taxpayer money on a snipe hunt."
    2
  4774.  @truepatriots3860  You've never heard her tell the truth, so maybe the problem is that you confuse fantasy and reality?
    2
  4775.  @ChuckWortman  So long as the profit margins are sky high, the risks involved are irrelevant, because they can always find people with nothing to lose. If you eliminate the profit potential, the whole empire evaporates. How much money is made from illegal liquor sales in 2023?
    2
  4776. She's far more credible than anyone who worked in the previous White House.
    2
  4777.  @saxor96  "They" didn't tell us anything. One guy gave a TED talk, and his philosophy on these things has nothing to do with anyone else. It's just bad business practices to target unreliable customers. The actual whales are the sorts of people that can afford to be repeat customers.
    2
  4778.  @Carlisho  The streamer whales certainly exist, but I can't imagine they make up a significant portion of the market. For every streamer whale there are likely dozens of ordinary people who spend the same or more, not to mention thousands who still spend a decent amount on the game, which adds up. I think streamers add more value in terms of marketing than they do in terms of gross revenue.
    2
  4779.  @saxor96  Again, though, "triggering dopamine" is what games do. Plenty of games, many made before microtransactions, many of them after without any significant microtransactions, use the exact same mechanics to engage players. You can't make these "patterns" illegal without wiping out most of the games on the market. Again, gacha players with legitimate addiction issues are a drop in the bucket. It's not rational to throw out the entire industry just to babyproof games for these few individuals. If they can't handle these sorts of games, then the burden is on them not to play them. If they can't stop themselves from playing these games, then even if these games did not exist, they would be incapable of stopping themselves from playing other forms of gambling that are also available. Also, as regard to skipping, you've got it all wrong. At least in the games worth caring about. They are NOT making the game boring or tedious, because if they did that then people would stop playing it. They need to make the game fun to play on its default setting. But it takes investment to play at that setting, it requires that you play every day, or play many hours a week, to build the resources to level your account. This should not be "boring," because, again, then players would burn out, but it is an investment that not everyone has the time or interest to make. In which case, money can be a substitute, and broadly this works out for all involved. The spenders can advance their accounts with far less time investment, and the F2Ps get access to a much more significant game than could exist without some motivation for people to spend on it. It's a balancing act, to be sure, and not every game gets this balance right, but those that do are some of the best in the industry. In terms of outcomes, this is little different than comparing two different families making a family trip, one of whom spends little to drive cross country, while the other spends considerably more to fly. They reach the same destination and have the same fun there, and the former family might actually have a lot of additional fun in making the trip, but the latter family can get there faster and with less hassle.
    2
  4780. @AlphaMindset-zq5qv Masks did help, where they were used, it's why hospitals still use them today when they have significant local outbreaks. Also, about 1% of the deaths in America last week were due to covid. That's not a lot, but it's not nothing either. It's still around, just less of an issue due to successful vaccination programs.
    2
  4781. @AlphaMindset-zq5qv No, again, I am not MAGA. I want to make America great again, which is why I voted for Biden.
    2
  4782. Fair audits can be a good thing. Partisan audits conducted by fraudsters with the deliberate intent to "find" flaws in the election can only cause problems, not solutions. We have already done fair audits of every part of the 2020 election. They found nothing, so there is nothing to find.
    2
  4783.  Hellocrybaby We call such people "patriots," because they care about this country.
    2
  4784. The oversight committee can't bring any indictments, particularly since no crimes were committed.
    2
  4785.  @muzzletuffgaming6047  The current state of Geography disagrees, but from an objective standpoint there are plenty of other ways to define what the continents should be. It's like how most maps have "north" being "up," for no particular reason. In any case, currently, the list in the above post would be the correct answer to the question, unless in the context of an argument about which ones should count.
    2
  4786.  @larrymelear5446  Elon is President of the US, what are you talking about?
    2
  4787. The delegates to the Democratic convention were the ones who picked her, they were elected by the primary voters to do so. She has the overwhelming support of her party's voters. Primaries are not part of the federal government, they are controlled by the parties themselves.
    2
  4788. What did she do that was not Republican?
    2
  4789. Nobody is "forced" into it, people choose to live in car-centric communities, because they prefer the advantages to the disadvantages. The only people "forced" into a situation tend to be people in urban areas without access to cars.
    2
  4790.  @ScarlettM  Have you tried loading up their website? Many have online shopping that will tell you what aisle the item is on.
    2
  4791.  @rogergeyer9851  Yup, same. And with groceries, right now you can order online and a human will walk the aisles picking up items, bag them, and bring them to your car or send them to your house, but there are some pilot programs where this is handled entirely by robots and it works pretty well.
    2
  4792. Well, he wants people to believe that. But he knows better.
    2
  4793.  @DarenMiller-qj7bu  What would that have to do with this topic? How are the bourgeois involved?
    2
  4794.  @FentanylFloyd  Why bring race into it? Shouldn't the right apply to all women?
    2
  4795. The difference being that slaves are people.
    2
  4796.  @drzaius1121  You can put a child up for adoption and remove them from your body after only 16 weeks of pregnancy? I was not aware of that.
    2
  4797.  @JamieParot  Having distinct DNA does not make someone a person. Twins share DNA, and yet are two people, Cancer cells have distinct DNA, and yet are not a person.
    2
  4798. Republicans like that in a candidate though.
    2
  4799.  @minnietrout814  Nope, the countries I was referring to are no less free and fair than the US is, with democratically elected governments. Guns are not relevant to that.
    2
  4800. Yes, this was discussed in Revelations.
    2
  4801.  @rvh77  Why would she need a script in advance? They didn't ask any questions that would surprise anyone.
    2
  4802. Man, I hated that phase where every celebrity was a cryptobro shill. Nowadays they just hawk sports betting.
    2
  4803. Yes, but then Kevin would lose his majority. By like 50% of the vote.
    2
  4804.  @Lucylou7070 You can read every bill, they are all public record and posted to the government websites.
    2
  4805.  @tyshchenkoyevhen  Sending nukes to Ukraine would not help. Russia knows that if they use Nukes against anyone, nukes would get used against them in response.
    2
  4806.  @tyshchenkoyevhen  I expect that we don't want to send Ukraine tanks more because there would likely be at least some losses, and we don't want to risk US tanks on the battlefield, or allow Russia the chance to "wargame" against them. We prefer providing more "expendable" assets. Ukraine has been doing a great job at employing them though.
    2
  4807.  @philc.411  I'll take a 1pm nap over a 1pm "Tweetstorm while on the toilet, watching Fox News" any day of the week. Biden's gotten more good done in 100 days than his predecessor managed in four years.
    2
  4808. The other option is to just let him keep being a great president, which is what the American people elected him to do. Sorry.
    2
  4809. It's impossible to not be the moderate when magas are on the other side.
    2
  4810. Well, they ask the right questions for finding the truth, which isn't always what the audience wants to hear.
    2
  4811.  @edwarddavis3626  Yup, Vivek views are definitely not acceptable to the founders or to the American people.
    2
  4812. The bigger convictions will come later. Don't forget the dozens of other convictions of Jan 6th insurrectionists though.
    2
  4813. They too, made a horse into a Senator. Well, congressman in this case.
    2
  4814. Literally a two-tiered justice system. Anyone else would be tweeting from a jail cell by now.
    2
  4815.  @For_The_Republic92  Women and children are "an army" now? What cowards.
    2
  4816.  @jeepninja1  It really doesn't have to do with your position, so much as whether you use words that trigger their word filters. Actual position taken is irrelevant, since no human reads this stuff.
    2
  4817.  @rockethito  Np, it's the Internet.
    2
  4818. Now they'll just need to edit that down to a solid half hour of usable footage where he isn't completely rambling.
    2
  4819.  @DoctorProph3t  Right, but with Narcissistic sociopaths it comes effortlessly, which is why they are so good at it.
    2
  4820. What does he have to do with anything?
    2
  4821. You're the ones forcing identity politics into the situation. Nothing Bud did was "identity politics." They just had a popular influencer endorsing their brand, and the bigots flipped their lids.
    2
  4822. They would react like this. This was a real coup and insurrection.
    2
  4823.  @WilliamCBolen  Oh, I think you misunderstood, I'm not MAGA.
    2
  4824. Seriously? What a joke. This is what happens when Putin staffs the White House press pool.
    2
  4825.  @mikefowler301  Sadly, this is true. There are a lot of people with no respect for women, including many women. But that is changing, however much you might try to stop it.
    2
  4826. It's nothing like that, Zelensky is not a racist autocrat. It would be more like Putin asking for more money.
    2
  4827. -In Alabama.
    2
  4828.  @goldenfloof5469  The government already has "gone after them," sort of, just in a positive way. The BBB Bill included a bunch of funding incentives for building and maintaining EV charging stations, but only IF they used the generic standard. This means Telsa gets none of that money. . . unless they open up their charging stations to generic chargers, which they have been piloting in a few locations. It's a little complicated and will take some work, but seems totally doable. Within the next five years or so, you'll probably be able to charge any EV at any Tesla charging dock.
    2
  4829. Unless the person receiving one wants it.
    2
  4830. Yes, which was what Trump promised them last year.
    2
  4831. Nah, that's a simple way to thinking about it. If people want ot "push the boundaries" into a bad place, then they will push those boundaries either way. Never avoid making small, reasonable changes just because someone else might take it to an extreme in the future. Just prevent them when they try to take it to an extreme. The argument you're making only serves to prevent positive changes.
    2
  4832.  @sapphie132  Yes, so when that moment comes, we address it, but not until then. Perfectly valid opinions being marginalized would be bad, but not everyone who believes their opinion to be perfectly valid is correct on that, or should be humored.
    2
  4833.  @thebunz7  You are the attack on women.
    2
  4834.  @eric3434  Exactly, that's how bigotry works. They label anything they don't understand as "the other," and then hate and fear it, no matter how harmless it may be. Their simple minds can't handle new things.
    2
  4835. AG Garland.
    2
  4836.  @marcusmaddox2176  Yes, the current Attorney General. He's moving a bit slowly for my tastes, but you can't argue that he isn't working without bias or corruption to save this country.
    2
  4837.  @ruthsaunders9507  Again though, the wife of a Supreme Court Justice living in the upper middle class suburbs is in no way "in distress." And if you missed the insurrection attempt, then you were not paying any attention.
    2
  4838. How so?
    2
  4839.  @kxo1038  Well, it has managed to leave the US in a much better position than he started with, and much better off than other countries in the world over the same period. I don't know how anyone could have expected more from anyone.
    2
  4840.  @joelellis7035  The Espionage Act.
    2
  4841.  @ItzMeNike  Exactly.
    2
  4842. @SwaxMain4u What kind of jacked-up police do you have out there? We're talking about chickens here. You pay for the chickens and move on.
    2
  4843.  @rndhoody2634  But to say she "stole" it would imply that the idea belonged to him in the first place. It didn't. She can't steal what he does not own, it would be like saying someone "stole" a mall that you happened to be in by them shopping there too.
    2
  4844.  @SigFigNewton  So you would be in favor of like a 200% gas tax? Coal would not be more expensive than the alternatives if environmentalists hadn't spent decades making the alternatives better and cheaper. I'm not against a carbon tax, anything that it's possible to pass, I'm all for it, I just don't think that it alone is the solution here, mainly because I don't think there's any will to pass a tax large enough that everyone decides to not use it.
    2
  4845.  @unfathomablyunfathomable  Yes, but clearly making them illegal does not stop people taking them, and the societal effects surrounding drug crime are far worse than the actual drugs themselves. Even for the drug users, the illegality of drugs makes it harder to seek help. Make the legal channels tightly controlled and non-profit, so that there is no monetary incentive to encourage drug use, certainly promote the dangers of the drugs, and offer treatment plans to help get people off of them, but remove the criminals from the scenario entirely. We've tried it the other way, and it has completely failed.
    2
  4846.  @unfathomablyunfathomable  Yeah, see, you're already further along on this than most.
    2
  4847. If people had taken it seriously from the start, we would have gotten this relatively flat in weeks like some other countries did. Instead some people just laughed it off and made it worse for everyone.
    2
  4848.  Paul Boccuti  Italy had strict lockdowns AFTER they had their terrible outbreak. You can't close the barn doors after the horses have got out. And Sweden had terrible outbreaks, six times worse than their neighboring countries. Where do you get your news?
    2
  4849.  @manictiger  If we just allowed the virus to run its course, three million Americans would have died, and millions more would have permanent disabilities. This is better. We'll still get innate immunity over time, just with less dying.
    2
  4850.  Paul Boccuti  No, Sweden does not have herd immunity. They are nowhere close. Where are you getting your news?
    2
  4851. That wouldn't solve the problem of thousands of migrants arriving each day.
    2
  4852.  @joesmith1574  Brandon never opened the border though. It's no more open today than it was before he took office.
    2
  4853. You can look it up online, the entire text of the bill is public record on government web sites. You can just google it.
    2
  4854. Yes, that is the very stupid way of thinking about it. Why overthink it? Or even "think" it at all?
    2
  4855.  @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.
    2
  4856. "Now?" They've been all-in for years now.
    2
  4857.  @gorillazilla4534  The judge did not ignore any evidence that was actually presented in court under penalty of perjury. No evidence that supports your claim was ever entered. If someone told you that they'd entered such evidence, they were lying to you. Instead, what was entered into evidence was sworn testimony, under penalty of perjury that those "chain of custody" issues had NOT occurred, and that full chain of custody was maintained at all times. The judge can't work on what "the media" says, the judge can only go by what people are actually willing to present in court, and Lake's side was unwilling to perjure themselves by claiming in court the same lies they told you.
    2
  4858. I hate separatists. If you don't like the country you're living in, move. Nothing gives you the right to take the land under your feet with you when you go. The only case in which I believe that an entire region should be allowed to separate is with a fair vote of the population of that area, with the fairly given assent of the governing nation they are attempting to leave, and with NO violence playing a role in either outcome. In so many of these cases their region has been a part of the relevant country for longer than any active members of the "separatists" have even been alive. Move on. There's no reason to fight over something that happened before you were even born.
    2
  4859.  @melissasmess2773  We have electric engines to do that for us. We aren't cavemen. If we were, we'd be voting Republican.
    2
  4860. It is secure. When people try to cheat like this, they get caught. That's what "secure" means.
    2
  4861.  @absalomdraconis  It is true that we are past the point of "no harm," harm is already done and more harm is inevitable over the next few decades no matter what we do today, but we can certainly reduce the future harms by making the correct changes. In any case, any "deadlines" given are typically fairly specific in their intention, "reduce CO2 to X by this date or expect Y temperature rise." These are not deadlines to start moving, these are deadlines to achieve a deliverable, however it might be achieved.
    2
  4862.  @notmysteriousthief4629  Nope, that all takes place well before babies come into the picture. Or decades after, depending on your perspective. Either way, no babies are involved.
    2
  4863.  @GreyWolfLeaderTW  People often use words inaccurately, but in a technical sense, it is not a baby until it is born.
    2
  4864.  @_ben_miller  Tell that to Venezuela, because we'll be in worse shape this time next year if we default on our debts.
    2
  4865.  @_ben_miller  I don't think you understand. Defaulting on the debt would not just be "normal inflation," it would be "breadline inflation." We've never done it before, and hopefully never will. I don't want to live in a third world country. I'm sorry if you do, but please move somewhere else to experience that.
    2
  4866. Sure, so long as they are eligible to hold office under the US Constitution. We are a constitutional republic, not a direct democracy.
    2
  4867.  @rebelman7837  Washington is doing great, and mostly California is too, but they don't have enough houses built for as many people want to live there, so the prices have been going up faster than in most places (not a problem if people wanted to leave the state). I suppose that's not what they tell you on the Faux News though, is it? They probably say "California bad" or something, because they treat their audience like children who are incapable of looking things up for themselves.
    2
  4868. I've learned to never expect human decency of a Faux News viewer. "How dare anyone help other people who are not themselves?"
    2
  4869. Wow, you really start shilling for Republicans at the end there, how could anyone view Texas or Florida as positive role models in 2022? The nicer parts of Baltimore are actually quite nice and safe, you can go to the night spots and stuff with no worries. It's just the bad parts that are a mess, but you pointed out the problem, fixing it costs money, and you need money to spend money, so there really is no solution there outside of some sort of massive external investment of cash, directed carefully. Baltimore is just one of those cities that once had a useful purpose to it, but that useful purpose dried up, and now there is no practical reason to be there, so there is nothing for the remaining people to do. This has happened to towns all over the country, it's just that Baltimore is an especially big one, so it experiences the problems of hundreds of small towns at once.
    2
  4870.  @tat2zz68  It was passed with plenty of votes.
    2
  4871. They reported that 3 in 10 Republicans are idiots, which, at worst is an under-reporting.
    2
  4872.  @miraclesendless2803  I think Twitter gets covered plenty. Maybe too much.
    2
  4873.  @American_Mike  Not an accurate one though, because he didn't say anything similar to that. Is English not your first language?
    2
  4874.  @American_Mike  I think you're using all three of those incorrectly. It's not sarcasm, unless you meant sarcastically that you know that your "quotation" is the opposite of what he believes, but that wouldn't really be an application of sarcasm. It's not satire either, because it's a non sequitur to any point he actually made. Satire would require actually engaging his points directly and challenging them in some way. Instead, your comment just comes out of nowhere, invented from whole cloth. And we've established that calling English your third language would probably be a bit generous. You seem to be using words to mean things in the same sense that the song "Ironic" uses the term "ironic."
    2
  4875.  @Moe-Larry-Curly-Shemp  Well that's a given, nobody has more memory issues than Donald Trump. Nobody in their right mind would claim Biden is somehow worse.
    2
  4876. Lol, so what brain trauma led to the change in mind?
    2
  4877. I think he's selling Bibles to cover his legal bills.
    2
  4878.  @dobsr1184  Trump began his political career with birtherism.
    2
  4879. Everybody's better bug report this every time they see it.
    2
  4880.  @francismarion6400  So you're saying that you believe God created bigotry, and that instead of being bothered by that and working to change it, we should just agree to live a bigoted life?
    2
  4881. That's not how "crime" works. The victim is not "equally accountable" for allowing the crime to take place.
    2
  4882.  @davidwagner9644  The Union HQ was in the Confederate General's house.
    2
  4883. He wouldn't vote for a Republican Majority leader in the Senate.
    2
  4884.  @MrButtlettuce There were more conflicts in the world under the previous administration than under this one. This administration has started no new conflicts, and ended some along the way.
    2
  4885.  @MrButtlettuce That's the smartest thing you've said so far.
    2
  4886.  @bobbob-vw4cc  But your side doesn't believe that men can get pregnant, even though there provably have been pregnant men before, so how would that make sense?
    2
  4887.  @supershayloman961  You do understand that just because something worked in the 1800s, that doesn't mean it would work at all today, right? . . Right? I'll also point out that the farmers LOST money on those tariffs you're talking about. They only survived because the government increased the handouts they were giving them, at taxpayer expense.
    2
  4888. The best way to do it would be to just remove districts entirely, and Louisiana could allow people to vote for the top 6 people they want, ranked choice, and then the top 6 candidates would get in.
    2
  4889. But we know that what RFK Jr. stands for and believes is bad.
    2
  4890.  @GregAlterton  What are you talking about?
    2
  4891. They did. This is what that looks like. If more countries aid in the peace efforts, then maybe Russia will stop invading their neighbor and peace will arrive.
    2
  4892.  @relicpathfinder2800  Trump is not worthy of the respect though.
    2
  4893. "I hate these filthy Neutrals, Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me. "
    2
  4894. this would make sense, if there wouldn't parents out there who would abuse their children if they found out that they were transgender. What matters is not the feeling so the parents, it's the wellbeing of the children. Until we live in a world where parents can be trusted to treat their children humanely, things like this are necessary to protect those children.
    2
  4895.  @scotwells7573  No, but they can change their gender expression to better fit whichever gender they actually are, which is the point here.
    2
  4896. He's not MS13 though. He's just some dude.
    2
  4897. That's not currently feasible. We had that when Clinton left office, but the Bush administration ruined it and made it hard to fix. It would take several consecutive Democratic administrations to balance the budget at this point.
    2
  4898. Trump cost you more though.
    2
  4899. You just have to look to the left.
    2
  4900.  @dr.emilschaffhausen4683  That remains accurate, Joe Biden was not involved in his son's business.
    2
  4901. Generally they give attention to candidates based on their popularity. It wouldn't make sense to give equal airtime to candidates nobody cared about, right?
    2
  4902. I like their Nashiville hot, but prefer Popeyes overall. I wish US KFC would carry some of their Japanese and Korean products.
    2
  4903. But they were on the side of the cause.
    2
  4904.  @regenen  Some would, it would be a very convenient place to live, and for a lot of people, it would be fun. Of course you could come and go as you please, nobody is saying you would be locked in there or anything, just that you should never have to.
    2
  4905. If you believe that he's won the argument without even considering the merits of it, then that tells you all you need to know about why such a debate is pointless. People who care about the facts already know RFK Jr. is wrong, and people who don't want to believe the facts will always believe that he won.
    2
  4906. If Trump supporters did not live in Bizzarro World, they could not be Trump supporters.
    2
  4907.  @repentandbelieveinJesusChrist3  Yup, Jesus would not turn any of these poor people away. He would want us to welcome them all in without any delay.
    2
  4908. The whole "aging workforce" argument is so 20th Century. That will NOT be the problem. The problem will be perfectly healthy and intelligent 18-40 year olds that can't get productive jobs because most productive jobs are done by robots. Even if some humans are still a part of that process, it will be WAY less than the current population of any given country. Any system that primarily taxes the population will become completely incapable of keeping up. Taxation needs to be on CAPITAL, if a company makes money, they pay the taxes that their workforce would have been paying in the 20th Century. Of course any such systems need to happen at a global level, otherwise companies will just race each other to the bottom and incorporate in a barge off the Caribbean coast.
    2
  4909.  @Lee-BHC  "What programs would that be?" In all of government? What sort of nonsense question is that?
    2
  4910.  @George-j6t8d  Nope. You get 35 trillion in debt by passing unfunded tax cuts for billionaires. We had a balanced budget before those.
    2
  4911.  @Lee-BHC  You have a weird understanding of what "proves my point" means, but that doesn't shock me.
    2
  4912.  @visaelvmp  Negotiation is a part of the process. It's why we are a republic. If 40% of the people want one thing, and 40% want another, and enough people can agree on doing both to get it passed, then that's democracy too.
    2
  4913.  @visaelvmp  But when you have 100 members of the Senate and over 400 House members, they all want a lot of things. There isn't even time in the day to schedule individual votes for every item, or even packages of 2-3. This is why they bundle it all together, it massively simplifies the process, and while you might not agree with every item that makes it through the process, It's a part of getting the parts that do matter to most people through.
    2
  4914.  @visaelvmp  Well typically a congressional recess is not like "they go play golf all day at Bedford." It usually means that they go back to their home districts and speak with their constituents. If members of congress have to spend their entire year in DC then they will get out of touch with the people who sent them there. Congress already spends more time in session than most state governments do. I think "single bills" is something that sounds good in theory, but not once you learn how the actual processes work, and why that can't work at scale. It's like thinking that personal charity could potentially solve everything instead of government.
    2
  4915.  @KneelB4NoMan  Yes, that is exactly why the debt is so high. It's been happening over the past fifty years, so it's built up slowly, but if they'd been paying their fair share the entire time, we would not be in debt.
    2
  4916.  @Lee-BHC  You might argue that there is a lot that is not needed, but it can't make up a significant amount of the federal budget, because almost all of that budget is stuff like social security, medicare, and basic military spending. All the "junk stuff" that people complain about is the equivalent of people getting a coffee at Starbucks.
    2
  4917.  @George-j6t8d  And that's the problem. The government signed up to programs on the basis that they would be funded by taxes, but then later governments cut those taxes, so the programs were no longer fully funded. They wanted to have their tax cut victories without causing the pain of people losing necessary programs. So yes, we need to pay for our spending by restoring those taxes on the wealthy.
    2
  4918. @ Being able to break the law and get away with it should not be cheered.
    2
  4919. Why? Because it's imaginary? Things that live in your imagination do tend to be scary, but moving past that is an important part of growing up.
    2
  4920. What about herd immunity?
    2
  4921. Nope.
    2
  4922.  Shitstorm Trooper  The people who elected these representatives elected them to do exactly this when left with no alternative.
    2
  4923.  @nicholasferrante1296  They didn't break any laws. But yes, securing voter rights for their constituents would be worth breaking the law over, if the Texas Republicans force that choice. The Texas voter suppression bill has nothing whatsoever to do with "integrity."
    2
  4924.  @nicholasferrante1296  The speaker of the house issuing arrest warrants does not mean that they broke any laws, it just means he's allowed to arrest them. You believing that it is about integrity just shows that you don't understand that word, it has nothing to do with the facts of the matter. It would be possible for the Texas Republicans to write a bill that is about integrity and does not include the suppressive measures, and the Democrats would 100% support such a bill, but they have chosen not to do that, so the Democrats were left with no alternative if they wanted to defend Texas voters. As for one example? It puts a ban on 24 hour voting, which means that people who work jobs that prevent them from going to the polls during the normal voting hours would be unable to vote. Given that many people did use the 24 hour voting options when this was available, it is clear that this is more convenient to at least some voters, right? So that's one example, how many do you need?
    2
  4925.  @nicholasferrante1296  How many work form 7-7? Too damned many. There are millions of people who have to work two or more jobs, and work more than 12 hours a day. And that doesn't even factor in other responsibilities they might have, such as getting a child to and from school or day care, preparing meals for the family, or if they work at night, being able to sleep during the day. It doesn't harm anything to have polling places open 24 hours to give these people maximum opportunity to vote. I can understand why you wouldn't mandate 24 hour voting accessibility, maybe your community doesn't need that, but why would anyone make it ILLEGAL to offer that service if your local area feels it would be beneficial? Who does that help? You don't "prove that nobody is being suppressed" by making the case that "the obstacles can still be overcome, maybe." That's not good enough. If there are obstacles being placed, that is suppression, even If those obstacles can be overcome. Some obstacles are necessary, but nobody has been able to make a case that these are, so ALL they can achieve is to REDUCE people's access to vote, and that is suppression, and that is unAmerican. And again, there is no such law in the Texas State constitution. The Texas constitution says that the legislature can send police to round up and detain members of the legislature to form a quorum, but it is not illegal for the legislators to avoid this, it is not a crime that they can ever be charged with. They cannot be charged of anything, they cannot be convicted of anything, they can only be captured, transported, and detained, separate from the legal process.
    2
  4926.  @rayxtwo  You do have to prove who you are to cast a ballot. You do not need a photo ID to do that though. You do not need a photo ID to get or use a credit card, or cable, or most other things in life, and those things you do require an ID for, like driving or flying on a place, are not Constitutionally protected. People have been proving their identity without a photo ID just fine, there's no reason to change that now.
    2
  4927.  @rayxtwo  How have people been proving their identity since 1788, when photography wouldn't be invented for almost 100 years? How do you prove your identity when you go to the DMV to get a driver's license in the first place? Typically, people prove identity using documents like phone or electrical bills, maybe a birth certificate or Social Security card if you have one, a paycheck, bank statement, most forms of legal documents can work. If you can fake your identity at the polling place, then why couldn't you just fake your identity to get a driver's license? In either case, making such a misrepresentation is fraud, and you would get in serious trouble for doing so, as many Trump voters found out when they attempted to vote illegally and were caught. I have no obligation to make any sort of deal with you, because you are not Constitutionally protected to receive my money. We ARE Constitutionally protected to vote though, so our right to do so should not be abridged.
    2
  4928.  @rayxtwo  I'm saying that there have always been SOME methods for verifying identity, we've gotten by 200+ years without photo ID, so why is it so vital to have it now? The methods I listed are ones that people can use today to confirm their identity just fine, even if they don't have a photo ID.
    2
  4929.  @rayxtwo  Exactly, in-person fake voting is a non-issue, it requires too much hassle, you're going to get caught anyway, and even if it does work, you only get a couple extra votes out of it, so voter ID measures are "solving" a problem that doesn't actually exist. Mail-in ballots are also not a problem, because fraudulent ballots are caught and tossed out. We've had mail-in ballots since the Civil War, and they've never caused a problem in any election. There was never a time in American history where "everyone knew who you were." There have always been some communities like that, including today, but even in the 1780s there were plenty of communities of hundreds of thousands, so polling places would be dealing with thousands of people they'd never met before. It worked out fine.
    2
  4930.  @nicholasferrante1296  Being capable of overcoming an obstacle does not make it "not suppression." If it makes it less likely that someone will be able to make it to the polls, less likely that they will take the extra steps they would need to take to cast their ballot, then that also is suppression. And yes, the current corrupted activist SCOTUS might say it's ok, but that's no sign that it actually is ok. The Supreme Court is infallible because they are final, not final because they are infallible. This is why we need the For the People act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act passed ASAP, to protect democracy from Republican efforts to undermine it.
    2
  4931.  @nicholasferrante1296  If you seriously believe that they are NOT about protecting democracy then you have handed your brain over to right-wing fake news, and should ask for it back. What about EITHER of those bills is NOT about protecting democracy? And if Democrats lose the House or Senate in 2022, it will be dark times ahead for this country, because the right is more and more embracing autocracy, the right of the few to rule over the many. I'm sad that so many Americans seem to be embracing that viewpoint. It's going to be Soviet Russia all over again.
    2
  4932.  @nicholasferrante1296  If it is an inconvenience significant enough to turn people away from the polls, then obviously it is suppression. Some inconveniences are necessary, but NONE of the inconveniences in the Texas bill are. What is the necessity in banning 24 hour voting? Who does that help? What problems does that prevent? Why do that, if NOT to make it harder for people to vote? "We now have drop boxes, no excuse absentee ballots and early voting, none of which existed where I first became eligible to vote." and not for long if Republicans have any say in the matter. This is the point. We should be making it easier to vote, we should be aiming to get EVERY eligible voter to the polls. The 2020 election had the highest voter turnout in a long time, and we should be celebrating that. Instead, Republicans seem to be taking that as a sign to panic, and roll back all the gains we've made over the years, because they recognize that the majority of voters no longer support their ideas, and that they can only vote if they limit the amount of people who can get to the polls. Remember that what to you might be "a little inconvenience," might be to others "something that makes it impossible." And that is by design. If you limit voting hours, for example, then that might just be "a little inconvenience" in an area with plenty of polling places, where you can just stand in line for a few minutes and cast your vote, but in other places, coincidentally places with higher Democratic turnout, they have fewer polling places per citizen, so the lines last for hours, and in that case you might not be able to fit those hours into your busy schedule, so voting ceases to be an option. Again, WHY? Why is that a thing, if NOT to cause fewer to people vote?
    2
  4933.  @nicholasferrante1296  Anything I claimed to be fact was fact, although a thing does not need to be fact to matter. It's VERY simple, something is suppressing the vote if the vote ends up lower as a result. Easy. If 1000 people voted under a certain policy, and you change that policy, and only 800 people vote under the new policy (give or take for expected changes in voting patterns), then that policy is suppressive. You don't have to accept that for it to be true. Even the SCOTUS decision agreed with that, they just said they didn't care. The point is that it is unAmerican to push for policies that serve no purpose other than to reduce voting. I've asked several times and you have produced no justification for the banning of 24 hour voting, no case in which it would actually improve anything, you've just repeated that you don't care, because it does not matter to you that some people won't be able to fit voting into their schedule (they would probably vote for the wrong people anyway, right?) So I believe in America. We can agree to disagree about that and you can continue to support Republican suppression efforts.
    2
  4934.  @nicholasferrante1296  I hope so too, but we live in troubling times, and I hope eventually we can get back to a functional two-party system. It's sad to see supposed Americans defending voter disenfranchisement on the basis that people "just have to try harder if they want to vote."
    2
  4935. @@user66579 And yet, that's all there is to it, so it's not "reductive," it's just "descriptive."
    2
  4936.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  Child mental health has never been put at risk by drag shows. It has, however, been put at risk by Republican efforts to defund and punish student counseling and teachers supportive of their LGBT students.
    2
  4937. I've shifted out of commissioned art work, but back when I was doing it, I just learned basically how much time a project would take, and my rate was based on getting a quality hourly wage for the work done. If they weren't willing to pay me a decent living wage, then I would just work a different project. Of course, this was at a point where I had enough that I wasn't paycheck-to-paycheck and I had a waiting list of projects to work on that was at least a week or two out, so going another week or two without getting any incoming offers would be fine. If I were hungrier then I might lower by prices a bit. ;)
    2
  4938. Nearly 50% of voters in 20/20 were willing to vote for Donald Trump. They proved that almost half the country will fall for just about anything.
    2
  4939. Lol, that sounds like him.
    2
  4940.  @ncsludgefactory5445  There is a distinction between "saying something that pisses someone off," and "saying things that promote violence and discrimination toward others." What do you believe is typically considered hate speech, but that you do not think should be worthy of that distinction?
    2
  4941. @ You completely misunderstand the point of the Constitution. It was intended to protect the People, both from the government, AND from the people. If someone is using the Constitution to allow people to harm others, as hate speech does, then that is using the Constitution wrong.
    2
  4942. So the bots claim. They are wrong.
    2
  4943. So then don't do this.
    2
  4944. Because he's not up for a role in the EPA.
    2
  4945.  @cubsfanbigmike31  Yup, because that's what Boss Putin wants.
    2
  4946.  @justsaying9443  But those sources were incorrect, because he did not. That tends to happen around Trump, people buying into misinformation.
    2
  4947.  @410kane  Most people don't do a lot of long distance driving, so for most people, having an EV they use most of the time and renting a ICE car for long trips would still be the more economical option, but even for long trips EVs are becoming more and more practical, since the more modern ones can charge very quickly and charging options are becoming more and more common. If you had to make an 8-12 hour car trip, you could break that up over two days, take rest stops at places with both food and charging stations, and get there quite comfortably.
    2
  4948. In other news, Georgia death rates expected to skyrocket in about a two weeks.
    2
  4949.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  Any that they have made. That's how proper journalism works.
    2
  4950.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  And yes, the laptop DID have plenty of reasons to consider it suspicious, and it was indeed irresponsible to report on its contents until they had been verified by the appropriate channels, thank you for another excellent example of good journalism.
    2
  4951.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  You can't argue that there weren't some extremely racist comments made around the covid origins. Why should those not have been pointed out for what they were?
    2
  4952.  @brosco7500  Fun fact, watching Joe Rogan has never led to rational outcomes. Not even once. If anyone tells you "you should watch Joe Rogan to understand this person," then the lesson to take from that is that there is no value to that person whatsoever, nor to the person promoting him.
    2
  4953.  @JosedeJezeus  It would also help if his positions were themselves less idiotic. It's not a communication problem, it's a core principles problem.
    2
  4954.  @willnailer2118  Yes, and my point is that the contents of such an interview would not be useful, since RFK Jr does not have any worthwhile viewpoints to share. It would be like having a long format interview with a carrot.
    2
  4955.  @jsnip6720  If you believe I'm wrong, then you have obviously never listened to RFK either.
    2
  4956.  @tragicrhythm  Right, and this is the core problem that America faces today, too many people are more confident that they are able to sort "bonkers" out from "sense" than they actually are. In reality, they too easily take "confidence" for "accuracy," that if someone seems to know what they are talking about, then they must be right. A lot of their idols are not people who have the right ideas, but instead people who are able to express the wrong ideas with absolute confidence that they are right, and this is far from the same thing. You're absolutely right that the more RFK Jr. talks the less sense he makes, but that just flies right over the heads of most of his fans, because they are just not able to tell what "sense" is.
    2
  4957. Welcome to the dark ages.
    2
  4958.  @elainehinton6876  Which duty of office has he not fulfilled? Did he fail to call in the national guard while the Capital was under attack or something?
    2
  4959. I doubt they were embarrassed that they asked serious questions, even if the person they were talking to was not competent enough to understand them, or honest enough to answer truthfully. Asking questions like that is the role of a journalist.
    2
  4960. They kicked that guy out of thew White House a couple years back.
    2
  4961. It's dumb that this worries some people. By the time "fertility rates" would become an issue to a 20th Century economy, we will already have plenty of AI and robots to handle the gap. A lower population is good, because it will mean fewer unproductive people to support.
    2
  4962.  @timeluster  It could be a nice back-up in times of emergency, like when that one ship got stuck in it, but I can't see it being used commonly.
    2
  4963. If you want to have a secondary tier for athletes that cannot compete against top tier athletes, then you can do that, but if you define those tiers based on gender then you need to let all members of that gender compete in that tier. If you don't want trans women to be able to compete in that tier, then you can't call it a "women's" tier.
    2
  4964.  @Jarzula  She is both. She has always campaigned on being both, because she's always been both. This is not new to anyone, and if this was the only racist thing Trump had said I don't think it would be that big a deal, but it does fit a pattern.
    2
  4965.  @cornpop7176  Why do you believe Kamala's dad is East Indian?
    2
  4966.  @dominator1914  They have literally nothing else.
    2
  4967.  @elee522  The border states have plenty of resources to support them. Texas and Florida are some of the richest states in the country, not to mention the federal funds that go into border facilities. DeSantis and Abbot have plenty of money left over to send migrants all over the country!
    2
  4968.  @chodkowski01  Nobody should be expected to invite strangers into their own homes. Nobody expects that of people living in border states, so I don't see why it would be expected of those living in Martha's Vineyard. You need to set up specialize facilities to care for these people, those facilities already exist in border states because that is where the migrants show up. They are not set up in other areas, so it would be stupid to expect them to be prepared for an influx of additional people.
    2
  4969.  @beinquisitive  What in his resume leads you to believe he is qualified? His main credentials outside of Trumpworld was getting criminals off convictions.
    2
  4970.  @randywl8925  Many of the boxes were stored in a bathroom in his country club. Why wouldn't they search every room on the property? Do you think that Trump was somehow above hiding things in his wife's room?
    2
  4971.  @Sovereign_Citizen_LEO  It can only happen to you if you violate federal law. So just. . . don't violate federal law. Is that really so hard to do?
    2
  4972.  @michellebrown7828  That is what he's said, but that is not actually the case. A former president has no right to those documents, they are the property of the US people. You are thinking of Putin, not an American president. He wishes he were Putin.
    2
  4973.  @baconneggs2406  The only thing about this that was political was how long it's taken. If anyone else had done the same things, the trial would have ended years ago, and he would be sitting in jail already. "politics" has allowed him to delay things.
    2
  4974. When Republicans are "torching" someone, that's when you know for a fact that their victim was doing the right thing. Of course nobody else is "torching" the media for covering that thew "whistleblowers" were not, in fact, whistleblowers, and that they were just really bad at their jobs and whinging about it.
    2
  4975. You are describing Republicans. That is exactly Republicans.
    2
  4976.  @letsreallytalk9482  Not Biden, you're thinking of the previous guy.
    2
  4977.  @maceomaceo11  Neither did I.
    2
  4978. Which is ironic, since this will cost him even more.
    2
  4979.  @Amingoof  What's Tulsi have to do with anything? She's just a random political joke.
    2
  4980. The only answer to any of these questions should be "elections have consequences." Elect clowns, expect a circus.
    2
  4981. Why are Republicans so afraid of Trump campaign members speaking under oath about the election. . .
    2
  4982. Half of them already have, but the other half prevented it passing.
    2
  4983. If he were serious then he wouldn't have gotten the math so wrong. He claimed that only 3.4% of the excess deaths were covid, when in fact HALF the excess deaths were covid deaths, and he'd only just completely misunderstood and misrepresented what the data was saying. The '3.4%" figure was for the 10,000 TOTAL deaths, which would be 350, exactly as reported.
    2
  4984. To be fair, it's a better investment than current health insurance plans.
    2
  4985. ​@ We weren't enemies with China at the time. That came well after WWII. Wait, are you actually defending Japan's actions on the mainland at the time? Dear Lord.
    2
  4986. Lol, how quickly we forget the last guy in the office. Good.
    2
  4987.  @codybrown4649  It has nothing to do with "just allowing citizens to vote." Did you even read the bill?
    2
  4988. If you haven't been polled, then why would you be sick of them? Seems like they aren't bothering you.
    2
  4989. Tuck and roll! Tuck and roll!
    2
  4990. You know what governments should do, instead of giving incentives to the oil industry to play nice with customers, governments should build their own refineries, and refine oil at a fractional profit margin. Other companies can compete if they like, but will not be necessary. They had their shot at it, but dropped the ball.
    2
  4991. I feel like metal shops and that sort of thing should have outlets with hinged plastic/rubber outlet covers, so that empty outlets are fully protected, and in-use outlets would have a little "umbrella" over them that would prevent any sort of debris getting into them. It might not be 100% foolproof, but it would certainly be hard to fool.
    2
  4992.  Matt manning  You're thinking Mitch McConnell. He's a different guy.
    2
  4993.  @ramellajoe  They didn't change the definition of any laws either.
    2
  4994. Yup, zero times. It has been confirmed zero times.
    2
  4995. Studies available tend to run several years behind, because it typically takes 1-2 years for raw statistics to be made available for use, and then the study needs to take place and be peer reviewed, and this all takes time, so outside of emergency situations, you're unlikely to see a credible study that covers the previous year or two. And of course they don't tend to repeat the same study every few years, so if a given study covers a certain period of time, you aren't likely to get a repeat of that same study for ten years or more.
    2
  4996.  @seratoninny  What makes you think that he had anything to do with the inflation rate?
    2
  4997.  @milwaukeesav6699  And they didn't. He stepped out of the race because he declined as a public speaker, not his mental state. He was no longer able to compensate for his stutter as well as he used to, so people were worried he might lose the election, not that he was not capable of doing the job while in office. In any case, his opponent was always worse.
    2
  4998.  @MisterP1234  No, Biden did not do the same thing.
    2
  4999. I know the Us system has its own issues, but I feel like a lot of these Parliamentary systems should at least allow plurality rule, IF the right conditions get met. Like if NO party has majority, and NO parties can form a majority coalition government, then the largest coalition can be the government until the next election, unless a majority rejects that one, in which case the next largest coalition gets a shot. The only way to reach a complete stalemate would be if everyone was so opposed to everyone else that no coalition could even get enough people to abstain to allow them into power. I think the likely outcome in these sort of circular deadlocks would either be a large coalition of most of the more reasonable parties, or even one of the smaller parties taking power because the others recognize that they will be more neutral than any coalition centered on a more hardliner party.
    2
  5000.  @danielstevens3869  You always have the choice to move. It's like being in an apartment and arguing that you have to pay rent to stay there. If you want to live in America and gain the benefits of living in America, then you need to pay taxes to support those benefits. If you don't want to pay American taxes, then you always have the right to leave, but you have no right to claim the benefits of living in this country without bearing the responsibilities as well.
    2
  5001.  @darthvadar2757  Ok, so let's say we do that, we've now lowered the deficit by 0.0000000001%. What is your plan for the other 99.99999999999%?
    2
  5002.  @user-be1ij7rp3o  The FED printing money IS what keeps inflation in check. What made you think that the current inflationary cycle is due to the US FED printing money? If that were the case, then what is your explanation for the Us having LOWER inflation than most of the world over the past few years?
    2
  5003. He's competent, but not guilty, so charging him would just result in another failed case, like Durham's.
    2
  5004. This war has been going on for over three months now, have you still not figured out that the terrorists live in and under residential homes yet?
    2
  5005.  @CityGamer1337  It's not a problem in that none of it amounted to anything. Even if you took every single "irregularity" in the election, added them ALL together, put ALL of them in favor of one of the candidates, and put them all into a single swing state, it STILL wouldn't have added up to enough to switch the outcome.
    2
  5006.  @CityGamer1337  Also, you are wrong about mail-in voting. It's been around since the Civil War, and some states have been doing primarily mail-in voting for years. It only increased in 2020 because there were valid public health reasons why people did not want to go out in public at the time.
    2
  5007.  @CityGamer1337  And you were wrong that mass mail in voting wasn't a thing prior to 2020, because it was. Not AS much, but plenty to prove the system works.
    2
  5008.  @CityGamer1337  It was more investigated than any previous one, and no significant wrongdoing occurred.
    2
  5009.  @CityGamer1337  But there have been dozens of elections since then, all done through the mail, and it's never been an issue. Why is it suddenly an issue now?
    2
  5010.  @italyball2166  If people make speeches filled with racist dog whistles about "certain peoples," and those speeches are viewed as "the best speeches," then the audience clearly has a taste for racism in their speeches.
    2
  5011.  @italyball2166  But the racism is the ease with which people jump to those simple answers, that they are not CURIOUS about the deeper picture. The racism is in not attempting to better integrate immigrants in the first place, not hiring them for decent jobs at a decent wage. The small racism at the beginning of the process leads to problems that provoke harsher racism later, which again leads to circumstances that lead to harsher racism later in an endless cycle, until people choose to stop justifying it and act in spite of their racist justifications.
    2
  5012.  @italyball2166  Again though, if anyone thinks to himself "well, that other party is kinda corrupt, I guess I have to let the fascists be in charge instead," then he's kind of giving the game away there, eh? There really is no correct answer to "why choose facists?" Every answer provided is still a wrong one.
    2
  5013. Nobody is making devastating life altering decisions before becoming an adult though. That would have nothing to do with this bill.
    2
  5014.  @vikinglife6316  I think you mean to address this to the other guy.
    2
  5015. Yes, but silencing prevents the message from transmitting. If an idiot shouts into the void and nobody hears him, then no minds are changed to his cause.
    2
  5016.  @zxh  No, the same cannot be said about the Jews in Germany, since they were not in any sense at war with Germany. It's disgusting that you would try to draw parallels there.
    2
  5017.  @nexypl  Saving the hostages is a secondary objective. The primary objective is the elimination of Hamas, to prevent future attacks. Again, how does Israel eliminate Hamas with no civilian casualties?
    2
  5018. Exactly, both true statements.
    2
  5019.  @Gwyrddu  Under normal conditions, it would be complicated, and they will not let them join while actively at war, but given the extreme risk they are now under, if them joining it part of a peace deal, NATO might agree. And Turkey will allow Finland and Sweden to join, they just need to get their beak wet first. While I think Ukraine could hurt Putin badly, and drive them off for a bit, lead to a "peace deal," if the only thing holding it together is Putin's promise to not invade again, then it will never last. The minute they get the Russian forces back across the border they will start plans for "Invade Ukraine 2," and start building up their forces in preparation for that. Another invasion could come within a year, or at most maybe five. They need some stronger international framework that would keep Putin away for good.
    2
  5020. Well of course. It would be nice to get a Democrat in the seat. This isn't like West Virginia where a Democrat couldn't actually win the seat.
    2
  5021.  @niccolea2086  They went for Trump by like 30 points, I can't imagine a more liberal Democrat that could win that state. I say leave Manchin alone and pick up seats elsewhere. Sinema's got to go though.
    2
  5022. The Norwegians don't seem to mind.
    2
  5023. No he didn't.
    2
  5024. Yeah, "freedom to do what we want you to do."
    2
  5025. No, the "Big Lie" is the claim that there was widespread fraud or irregularities in the 2020 election, despite there being zero evidence that this was the case. The coup attemp described above is verifiable true.
    2
  5026. Yes, but RFK is not one of those either.
    2
  5027. If they're concerned by violence in Eartner Ukraine, then maybe they should just remove their weapons and troops from the region? That would stop the violence almost completely.
    2
  5028.  @adrianscalf9875  It's also from Trump staffers. If you genuinely think they wouldn't implement it when they go into office, then I hope we never have to find out why you're wrong.
    2
  5029.  @av8rr  Ok, if you say so.
    2
  5030.  @ltdc426  I think you're misunderstanding it. The 14th never says that the oath violation has to take place in any specific state. This is a federal officer, the POTUS would also be the President of Colorado and Colorado residents are going to be voting for who the POTUS is. If anyone violates their oaths of office, triggering the 14th amendment, then it makes zero difference in which case that act occurred, it would be on the state of Colorado to determine for themselves whether that person should be allowed on their ballot, although of course the SCOTUS can choose to overrule that finding. Nowhere in the 14th does it say or even imply that a criminal conviction would be necessary first, nor that DC would have to decide on the issue before it applied in any other state.
    2
  5031.  @ltdc426  There is no "punishment" here, this is about whether the person in question is eligible to run in the State of Colorado. Someone who was born in Panama is not being "punished" by not being allowed ot run for President. Nobody is being fined or sent to jail. As it happens in this matter, Donald Trump was determined in a court of law to have violated his oaths, which is not a criminal matter that could be adjudicated in any other setting, and therefore is ineligible to run in the state of Colorado, pending appeals. Again, "criminal conviction" has absolutely nothing to do with the 14th amendment.
    2
  5032.  @notallowedtobehonest2539  The budget was balanced under Clinton in the 90s. Bush decided to break that. Even so, the US debt to GDP ratio is fine, it's half what Japan's is right now, and their economy is doing fine too. "Paying off the debt" is not a serious priority for serious people, it's a talking point intended for idiots who don't understand how national debt works. To serious people, the ONLY issue here was the threat of a default.
    2
  5033.  @prime-mate  It's not the AI that we need to worry about, it's the humans that own the AI.
    2
  5034. You might be surprised to know that this man was lying. Sometimes, videos on the Internet are not entirely true.
    2
  5035.  @johnb8190  No, worse than Biden, worse than a cheese sandwich in the Oval Office.
    2
  5036. That was only a part of the coup attempt. There were many parts to the coup attempt. Besides, even Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor that Trump incited violence on Jan 6th, McConnell just refused to convict him on procedural grounds because he is a coward.
    2
  5037.  @twatts1523  We're talking about Matt Gaetz here. Who are you talking about?
    2
  5038. It's all "in-group/out-group" dynamics. Everyone wants to believe that "their team" is the best, and deserves to beat all other teams, and if "their team" is measurably behind other teams, then they seek to tear those teams down, while if the other teams are catching up to their team, it scares the hell out of them, because they know what their team'd been doing to those other teams, and expects the same treatment back when they're no longer on top. Of course, any single person is a complex Venn diagram of "teams," from skin color, gender, sex, language, nationality, multiple heritages, etc., and each person chooses for himself which of those traits define their "primary team," or how many of those "teams" they root for.
    2
  5039. Putin bluffs every week.
    2
  5040.  @cyphi1  We live in a country where the majority rules, and unfortunately the Republicans have made themselves incapable of wielding power with wisdom, so no rational person can vote for them. It would be nice if that weren't the case, if we had more viable candidates to choose from, but wishing does not make it so.
    2
  5041. They took the threats seriously, but there is only so much they can do about "maybe he'll do something bad in the future." You can't just arrest someone for future crimes.
    2
  5042. I don't believe in purely demand-side decriminalization. That was what Prohibition was in the US, and it didn't work, because drug dealers will always meet demand, and that leads to crime, and it is the drug-related crime that is the real problem, not the use. I believe the best course is total decriminalization, along with government provided drugs for those that need them. Government sanctioned facilities would sell drugs at cost, but only to those with a prescription from a highly regulated specialist doctor (not just anyone with an MD), and the sales of those drugs would go to fund drug treatment and awareness programs to try and reduce the drug use. Remove almost all motivation for anyone to sell drugs illegally by making them legally available at affordable prices. Of course selling drugs outside of these controlled circumstances would be VERY illegal, much more harshly punished than even current laws, so it's a very carrot and stick approach. The point would be that anyone who has a drug problem could do whatever they need to do about that in a relatively safe and legal way, with low chances of overdoses or other adverse reactions, while also making it easier to quit, and harder to get into drugs in the first place.
    2
  5043.  @themightycat7238  Well, the idea would be balance. If you have a drug problem, if you are dependent on them, then you should be able to get a prescription, and then get drugs legally. So if that applies to you, why not do that? But if you don't have a drug problem, then it should be fairly hard to find drugs, and VERY illegal for both you and the dealers, so the risks involved should make that not as worth doing. The idea is to sort of break the "middle" of the supply/demand cycle, to make it so that the "repeat customer" is zero value to drug dealers, which would effectively price them out of the game. I mean if they wanted to play, they could, but their costs would be astronomical, and their returns would be relatively low, so why would they even bother?
    2
  5044. This is why the Nana poll is rarely cited.
    2
  5045.  @nsbd90now  I'm trying to understand the relevance though. I get that not all cross-dressing is drag, but what relevance does that have to the topic at hand?
    2
  5046.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  Nobody is talking about taking children to view ANYONE half naked. What's your point?
    2
  5047.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  Well, what seems to be happening is that there are conservatives who have these twisted fantasies about what a "drag show" is, involving stripping or lewd dancing or something, and think that this is what everyone else is talking about when they say "drag show," when everyone else knows that this is not what a "drag show" is. It's like having an argument about the best quarterback in football with someone that insists that forwards are more important than quarterbacks.
    2
  5048. What would it be relevant what she thinks about this?
    2
  5049. This is not Putin's Russia.
    2
  5050.  @Mark-ee8ud  We have mental health laws, just like other countries do. But what we don't have are the types of gun laws that actually keep guns off the streets. Many of the "gun laws" in the US are either extremely local in nature, which is pointless when you can just buy a gun in a different state, or they are sort of "shifting the deck chairs" around actual gun control, because the pro-death lobby refuses any regulation that would actually do anything.
    2
  5051.  @TheDustyPeaches  You can't magically prevent crime. Every country in this world has some level of crime, and always will. Every other first world country has crime. But the US has way more guns than those countries, so the US has way more murders than they do. If your solution is "magic," then fine, but the rest of us would prefer ACTUAL solutions, and removing guns would actually work. If "legal gun owners" were an actual crime deterrent then the US would be the safest country on Earth, instead, it's got a murder rate six times HIGHER than any other first world country. The facts don't care about your feelings.
    2
  5052. 1. 1880 2. No 3. No 4. The Earth can absorb a certain amount of CO2 over time, and has done, and continues to do, and the results we are seeing factors that process into it. The Earth is not capable of absorbing all the additional CO2 we are currently pumping out in a timely fashion. It would eventually, thousands of years from now, but we wouldn't survive the process. 5. If that were true, then CO2 levels would be stable, rather than significantly increasing, and heat levels would similarly be level. The Earth's plants can't keep up with processing this much CO2, it would take an entire small forest to counteract the carbon produced by a single average American.
    2
  5053. "Skin walker" is English, not Navajo.
    2
  5054. @ As to your study of bike lanes, was this in high density urban areas, or suburbs? I highly doubt that bike lanes make even a dent in the foot traffic of businesses in subruban areas. Also, WHO is talking about street parking? I haven't parked on the street in. . . decades? "Parking" means parking lots, who parks on the street in anything less than a high density urban area already?
    2
  5055. @MackDog777 Yeah, I do think that mixed residential/commercial structures are a lot of fun, and definitely shouldn't be deliberately restricted, but at this point more and more commerce is shifting online and the sorts of small businesses that typically go into such spaces are largely impractical anyway.
    2
  5056. Well, the minority of Americans.
    2
  5057.  @Bruce_Gruesome  Who got an elective abortion at 9 months? Where is your example of this happening?
    2
  5058.  @dr.penguin9412  Abortions past 5 months are extremely rare. The reason to not criminalize them is to allow medical discretion as to whether an abortion is needed to protect the wellbeing of the women. When you criminalize abortions at 20 weeks, then even if you have certain exceptions mapped out, it can become a challenge to doctors trying to care for their patients, as to whether this specific case would qualify. Ultimately though, I don't think that most people would be opposed to a law that required efforts to be made to remove the fetus using methods that are safest for the women while making best efforts to sustain the viability of the fetus, and attempt to keep it alive once removed. What would obviously be wrong would be to require the woman to continue carrying the fetus against her will.
    2
  5059. She isn't exactly "despised" by Democrats, they tend to respect her, they just strongly disagree with her conservative positions. She did vote with Trump 90% of the time, after all. She's also pretty well liked by centrists on both sides, just not by the fringes of the Republican party that decide primaries.
    2
  5060.  @jaydoggy456  It was by 32 points, not 40, and her home state is notoriously dim, so what they do is no real reflection on her. I agree that Liz Cheney does not fit in the current Republican party, but that's because the party has moved away into cloud kuk land, not because Liz Cheney changed away form Republican values. There is no pride to be found in being a Republican in 2023, it's a badge of shame.
    2
  5061.  @robertball3578  No they didn't. You have been had.
    2
  5062.  @anthonyg.4761  But you do trust "random person on social media who says a thing I want to believe?"
    2
  5063.  @anthonyg.4761  But you are listening to the people who are lieing, and distrusting those telling you that they are lieing to you. How does that make sense?
    2
  5064.  @anthonyg.4761  It's you. This is not some back and forth "maybe you're the one that's wrong" situation, this is a clear case of you supporting nonsense in favor of the truth. That's strictly a "you" problem.
    2
  5065.  @maryreis3339  But that was in a different city, over a year ago, and the woman was not Haitian. She was just a regular crazy person.
    2
  5066.  @anthonyg.4761  The problem is that the things he say never turn out to be true, and "partially true" really doesn't count for much when the "untrue" parts are the more damaging elements.
    2
  5067.  @anthonyg.4761  The bit about the Haitians. All of that was a lie.
    2
  5068. Nah.
    2
  5069. Ok, but then it is the role of the legal system to sort that out. There will be false positives in any sort of system, that's expected, but it's better than not havign any such data at all, right?
    2
  5070.  @xCheddarB0b42x  That is exactly how liberty works, I think you're thinking of anarchy, in which case, you would be right, that is not how anarchy works.
    2
  5071. You can oppose the system you're in while remaining inside that system. The point is that you would like that entire system to change.
    2
  5072. It's possible, we haven't heard anything linking her to particular groups yet.
    2
  5073.  @ronald3836  I think that it's fair to define "spaces" within a market, for certain purposes. I don't think "the market" needs to be the absolute broadest possible range, because then basically nothing could be a monopoly unless it controlled ALL commerce. In this case, they are defining a certain price range within the market, as defined by whatever justifications consumers have for agreeing to pay that price. This is actually a more objective criteria than "quality," since "quality" is more subjective than "established retail price." I do think that if one single company already controls a certain band within a larger field, then that should be a higher bar to clear, relative to if there are currently several companies in that space, and you're acting to prevent them congealing into one. Now is "affordable luxury handbags" the most vital issue affecting America today? Of course not, but I do think it's a reasonable test case for this sort of principle, and why not?
    2
  5074. No politicians are sending any money to China. Except for Donald Trump's business.
    2
  5075.  @IronFreee  Read comment sections on any social media topic discussing climate change. The "denial>doomer" pipeline is rampant.
    2
  5076.  @dogbreaththe3rd851  Continuing to burn fossil fuels at the current rates WILL lead to a pre-industrial way of living, just with far fewer options for surviving it. Choosing to do nothing now is like driving 90mph toward a brick wall, and saying "I don't want to hit the brakes right now, because that rapid deceleration would be uncomfortable." Well, boo hoo, but it'll be a lot more "uncomfortable" if you wait.
    2
  5077.  @IronFreee  Yes, you missed that part. I think it's probably because you seem to think "the ecologist organizations" are some united front, when it's actually thousands of different groups with their own varied priories. You might want to check out "Environmentalists For Nuclear Energy," or other similar groups. It's not like you'll find many environmental groups that promote nuclear power as a primary goal, they typically have a different core project, but plenty of them do not oppose nuclear power either.
    2
  5078.  @IronFreee  Again, those are not "ecologists," they are anti-nuclear advocates. Those are two separate things. I don't know why you seem so insistent on conflating the two.
    2
  5079.  @IrishPureblood32 But if He also created people to be trans, so He clearly wants them to be. If He didn't want them to be trans, then why make them trans in the first place? It's not like they ever had any choice in the matter.
    2
  5080.  @johnteets2921  Yes, God made them male and female. He also made them trans or not trans. I don't know what Col Colt would have to do with that, outside of inciting violence.
    2
  5081.  @alejandromolina5645 If you understood the scriptures, you would know why you're wrong about that.
    2
  5082.  @johnteets2921 There is no chromosome attached to trans people, any more than there is a hair color attached to being French. That's not even close to how it works. God tests different people in different ways. Some people He gives poor eyesight, and they have to spend money on corrective lenses. That does not mean that they do not exist, or that they should pretend that they have perfect eyesight and avoid glasses.
    2
  5083.  @jimmywhitlow2012  There are no "sins" involved here though, at least nothing that's more "sinful" than eating bacon.
    2
  5084.  @IrishPureblood32 The facts disagree with you on that.
    2
  5085.  @JonahFisher-oc8mp  If God did not create people who are trans, then they would not exist. They exist, therefore He created them. To deny that is to deny His existence.
    2
  5086. National Schizophrenia Awareness Day is July 25th. You missed Bipolar awareness day, it was March 30th. Trump Awareness Day is April 9th this year.
    2
  5087.  @john-or9cf  Exactly, it's not a big deal like some are making it out to be.
    2
  5088.  @sbffsbrarbrr But why is it a bad thing that he would celebrate both holidays? Is there something wrong with Trans Visibility Day?
    2
  5089.  @gaildrake5940  That's imaginary though. In reality they got a lot more from FEMA. Also, this discussion has nothing to do with FEMA.
    2
  5090. That's what the Dominion lawsuit was about.
    2
  5091.  @Nurp-lp4vm  No, the bill does not do that, but that is what you've been told to believe, and so you do. Collect head pats.
    2
  5092.  @Nurp-lp4vm  It does say "5000 a day," but not in the context you claim it does. If you did read the bill, then clearly you did not understand it, and that's ok. Other people have.
    2
  5093.  @bradj8215  If an average 5000 people per day are encountered at the border, they will close the legal entry points until this backlog can be cleared. There is currently NO such limitation. ALL of these people are still accountable to US laws, so basically, NOBODY is getting in any easier than the current rules, it ONLY makes things more difficult for people intending to cross.
    2
  5094.  @bradj8215  But we can't keep them in Mexico. That is literally im-possible, no matter how "serious" we are about it, no matter how much money is thrown at the problem. We can detain them after they cross, that's about it. So the question is, what to do about it when they do cross? We can't just summarily expel them, because that is unconstitutional, so then what?
    2
  5095.  @bradj8215  The "remain in Mexico policy" did not actually work, it only lasted until legal challenges shut down portions of it and Mexican government stopped helping with others. It would be impossible for anyone to implement it today.
    2
  5096. Only if the Senate Republican also recuse themselves, particularly the ones like McConnell and Graham that are on record as not living up to their oaths.
    2
  5097. We did, he got indicted last week.
    2
  5098. Can we at least agree that Biden wasn't wrong?
    2
  5099. You know that's not how anything works, right?
    2
  5100. That too was Russia invading.
    2
  5101. By buying the candidate that won.
    2
  5102. He was talking about weapons of war at the time, AR-frame rifles.
    2
  5103.  @FuzzyWalrus123  You said earlier that he'd said he carried a weapon to war, not in war. I suppose you misspoke?
    2
  5104.  @kristianstaton6696  Fact is he never claimed to have carried one in theater. Did you misspeak too? Lot of that going around lately for people so hung up on "get every word right!"
    2
  5105.  @biderdoo  He said that he thought that Trump's plan was not as bad as she made it out to be, but that it was still worse than hers. And that's just his opinion, there are other out there who are much more clear on the matter.
    2
  5106.  @Stephanie-ln7rc  Yes she has, you just haven't been paying attention.
    2
  5107.  @biderdoo  I'm sure you don't need me to spoonfeed your information. It is out there whether you seek it out or not.
    2
  5108.  @Stephanie-ln7rc  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    2
  5109.  @biderdoo  You have been sold a bill of goods there, and ate it right up.
    2
  5110.  @biderdoo  Never expect other people to do your research for you, unless you are paying them.
    2
  5111.  @biderdoo  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    2
  5112.  @paperthinpizza  It wasn't Carter that pardoned Nixon, it was Ford. But I agree, there would be no reason for Harris to pardon him.
    2
  5113.  @biderdoo  Never expect someone on the Internet to do your research for you. The evidence exists, it is there for you to seek out, but compiling it is not anyone else's job.
    2
  5114.  @biderdoo  That is an unsafe assumption to make. Why do you believe that other people would want to spend their time compiling research data to provide to you, when they already know it for themselves, and also believe it is likely you will just dismiss any evidence they do provide and continue to believe whatever nonsense you currently believe? Don't you feel like that would be a waste of their time?
    2
  5115.  @biderdoo  Who says I have any responsibility to prove my argument? My argument remains true whether you concede that or not, and I think we both know that you have no interest in conceding the argument regardless of how much evidence I might present. So what would be the benefit? Instead, I just present you with the truth. Take it or leave it. If you're genuinely interested in the truth, then you can look into it yourself, and you would find out why you're wrong, but if you have no interest in the truth, then me spoon-feeding you facts like an infant that you'll just spit up onto your bib will accomplish nothing. But of course this offends you, because you aren't here to learn, you are only hear to waste others' time.
    2
  5116. If we had a responsible House of Representatives, it would have been raised months ago. Unfortunately, we have this clown car.
    2
  5117.  @YankeeDoodle2  No, it's not a religion.
    2
  5118.  @michaelgentry402  And also in the Constitution, which was ratified.
    2
  5119.  @juliomaldonado4028  He also celebrated it in 2021 and 2022. It happens every year, that's how holidays work. It'll happen in 2025 too. The day can be about more than one thing. You can celebrate Trans Awareness Day AND Jesus, just as Jesus would. I doubt you spent all day thinking about Jesus, most people spend time thinking about bunnies and candy and eggs too, and that's fine. Jesus isn't bothered.
    2
  5120.  @davehendricks7023  No, that made no sense.
    2
  5121.  @doremi9  It's not hard to expose RFK's viewpoints being wrong, what is difficult is getting him to ADMIT that his viewpoint has been exposed to be wrong. RFK's viewpoints have been exposed to be wrong time and time again, all over the place, but he will repeat them anyway, and people who want to believe his fictionalized version of reality will continue to take his position over the facts. There is no chance of it shifting minds, because anyone who still cares what RFK Jr. has to say about anything has already given up on the truth and escaped to Narnia.
    2
  5122. They definitely shouldn't be allowed to advertise this stuff on TV. But then, the incoming President used to run a casino, before he bankrupted it, which is practically impossible to do, so. . . I guess maybe they can fix it in four years.
    2
  5123. Why are people who BOUGHT PROPERTY ON THE BORDER confused as to why people are crossing into their land? Don't want people crossing into your land? Don't buy property on the literal BORDER.
    2
  5124. There should be a law that if internal studies find a problem, and the company does not report it, then the company owes the public, in some fashion, the bulk of the profits that they made over that period of time. It should be structured in such a way that it would REALLY hurt, not these measly "$10m fines" on something that made them billions.
    2
  5125. Gold can be melted down! Who would keep gold bars related to a robbery without melting it down?!
    2
  5126.  @SpecialistQKD  There are Republicans on the commission, and would have been more if Kevin McCarthy had taken his role seriously and appointed credible nominees to the position. This is not a criminal trial though, and there are no criminal charges at play here. that would come later, and Trump would have the opportunity to defend himself. Realistically though, there is no credible defense to make for his actions.
    2
  5127. @ He agreed to think about it. Nothing's been signed yet.
    2
  5128.  @JAG8691  There are no NATO proxies in this war. It's a war of aggression by Russia.
    2
  5129. The alternatives are all worse. A vote against Biden under the circumstances would be a vote against America's future.
    2
  5130.  @BasicFolders  Well they aren't claiming to report new facts here, this is a summary of existing information for people who haven't been following the story. Judging by the comments, there are a LOT of people confused as to what all this is about.
    2
  5131.  @cyanogen7582  No, Biden is objectively better. You mean to say "subjectively better," but the facts don't care about your feelings.
    2
  5132. This is why you don't vote for stupid people.
    2
  5133. That was the last guy.
    2
  5134. TL;DR, it's Tik Tok.
    2
  5135.  @eileenlundin6256  That's sad.
    2
  5136.  @audreyhep1274  Another month later, America continue to improve drastically under Joe Biden, and "revolution" is not an inch closer to reality. . .
    2
  5137. That's really not how it works. Tariffs would not encourage manufacturing in America, it would actually go down.
    2
  5138. That depends entirely on how much the US supports an Israel that refuses a two state solution. We would have had it already if not for Netanyahu.
    2
  5139. Yup, she will hold true to her belief in Hypocrisy until the very end.
    2
  5140.  @jamesflamingo3682  Yup, the Republican party just can't quit the guy. Honestly, I wish he'd go away, but so long as Republican politicians keep visiting him and leave while wiping off their chins, he remains a threat to the future of our nation.
    2
  5141.  @IntrovertedOreo  At least 500,000 people died last year that didn't have to if we'd had a stronger leader in the Oval Office. I mean, isn't that enough? If not, he lost an election last year and refuses to fully admit to that, leading almost half the country to live in some fantasy land where the roads are paved with candy and Donald Trump actually won the election. I mean, it's pretty awful.
    2
  5142.  @browncow8422  The only time in which the last President had low entries was during a massive pandemic. That had nothing to do with who the President was at the time. In the previous year, it was higher than any previous time in US history. The core issue is the supply and demand factor though. You can constrain supply in the short term, but it's like putting a dam in front of a river and expecting that river to stop flowing. If the amount of water coming down that river is way higher than the amount you let through the dam, the dam will overflow catastrophically.
    2
  5143. All you need to do is abandon the tubes. The tubes are dumb. But the trains work without them just fine. You don't need to worry too much about safety, you just handle it like roller coasters, you have multiple sidings along the way, and if anything goes wrong then you either move the "scary" train onto a siding, or you move every other train. If it were to be scaled to replace planes, then you would need to have multiple tracks in each direction.
    2
  5144.  @Leo-dd7om  Any particular reason why?
    2
  5145. What Lindsay and his livestock get up to on his own time is his business, but he still needs to vote to get the Build Back Better bill through congress so that it can get to work fixing this inflation!
    2
  5146. He opposed Trump's attempts to flip the results once, that's a pretty firm position on integrity.
    2
  5147.  @DaveL188  Yup. When they get their news from Fox, what can you really expect?
    2
  5148. True, if Hunter were not the President's son, he never would have even been charged with any crimes. So it certainly was "special" treatment that he got charged and convicted like that.
    2
  5149.  @acorn8170  Her crimes were much more extensive. Most of what wrapped her up were ling to investigators and obstruction, whereas Hunter seems to have cooperated. Hunter's violation was relatively minor.
    2
  5150.  @MPHIY17  I meant the bot I was replying to. He says this on every comment in this thread.
    2
  5151.  @momdaugtherduo0204  On Lake's part, yes.
    2
  5152. Yeah, it's kinda hilarious that Republicans are pointing to this as a "gotcha moment," and yet completely forget how every member of the Trump family has had the memory of a gold fish in a blender while on the stand.
    2
  5153.  @marjoriebreslin2995  Exactly my point.
    2
  5154. They block everyone.
    2
  5155.  @UserName-ts3sp  Yeah, Ohio is also slipping into the red, just as several other states have been slipping blue. I don't think any "swing state" can remain a swing state forever.
    2
  5156. He wasn't playing attention, he was playing golf.
    2
  5157. Trump is the one that prevented the border bill from passing. If there are any problems at the border, he owns those.
    2
  5158.  @gracedanielleinchrist  So your argument is that Hamas invaded Israel just to cause a distraction for the US political season? Why wouldn't they have done that during the Israeli political season? That would make more sense.
    2
  5159.  @scottm838  That never happened though, so you remembering it happening is a sign of delusion, not good memory.
    2
  5160.  @habibi-d0z  The whole video was about how personal experiences are lagging behind the actual economic situation, and how people are poorly wired to recognize the reality of the world around them.
    2
  5161.  @habibi-d0z  The government has already done a lot of things to solve the problem you have now, that's why the problem is not 2-3 times worse than you are already experiencing it. When you only see one set of footprints, that's when the government is carrying you.
    2
  5162.  @habibi-d0z  You have not been paying attention, they have done plenty to work on issues at home. Check out the ARP and the BBB bills. They invested more into America's future than we've done in decades.
    2
  5163.  @habibi-d0z  You are right that once the current party retook the House that nothing more got done for America, but that's the platform they ran on. "Do nothing."
    2
  5164. Yes, that is why they have Jessica on, to lose to them. It is what's known in the industry as a "jobber."
    2
  5165. Why do irresponsible journalists keep talking about this "source" that is completely unverified? Don't they teach you to NEVER do that in day one of journalism school?
    2
  5166.  @user-10021  Yeah, but teachers can do a good job of framing what customers tend to be willing to pay for a given level of work. Individual students would have to moderate their expectations accordingly, if they work slower than average, they would need to expect less pay per hour than average. If they turn out low quality work, they need to expect to demand less pay for it than the average, but knowing what the average should be is a good first step.
    2
  5167. Trump's just jealous because he was too senile to do the Correspondents Dinners himself.
    2
  5168. Trump never put America before Trump.
    2
  5169. This would require some anti-trust approval or something, but all the big car companies should get together and form a "Charging Site Committee" of some sort that has the goal of making sure that charging just works everywhere, that charging stations are quality and functional, that there are enough everywhere, etc. Let independent charging companies provide what they want to provide, but also fill in whatever gaps they leave to make sure that they just work.
    2
  5170. Do your trans friends agree that they should be using bathrooms of the opposite gender?
    2
  5171. This is false. Biden send zero barrels overseas. The President of the United States does not control the movement of ANY oil, outside of the military supply chain, at least. If any oil traveled overseas, it's because a US-based oil BUSINESS sold that oil to a foreign oil company, which they do ALL the time and always have, because they are BUSINESSES, and will always sell oil to the highest bidder. The only way to prevent this would be for the government to nationalize the US oil industry, is that what you're proposing we do? Otherwise, this is just the free market economy doing its thing.
    2
  5172.  @ExtremelyRightWing  Yup.
    2
  5173. I think they would probably rank Trump near the top, because they are a joke.
    2
  5174.  @rob6850  Just because you don't understand the bill doesn't mean that you wouldn't like the results of it, much less the American people.
    2
  5175.  @Normal6755  It adds funding for the various programs that keep the border functional. It was written and approved by Republican members of the Senate, why would they do that if it was not a good bill? This is a test.
    2
  5176.  @prague7706  The bill does not do that. The bill prevents ALL illegal crossings. The only time the number "5000" comes up is that IF that number of crossings are reported, they will be required to shut down the legal ports of entry until the backlogs can be cleared. Currently, that would not happen and the ports would remain open. Is that what you want? Anyone who crosses illegally would STILL be held to the same standards that they are today, with detention and processing, and deportation, yes, including the "5000" you are complaining about.
    2
  5177.  @crispinfornoff206  So you agree lockdowns work then, you just don't think America has the discipline to actually carry one out. Also, while there was a silly myth going around that Sweden did well during the pandemic, they actually did far worse than their neighbors, which had more serious lockdown policies, in both public health and economic outcomes. I’m sorry facts don’t care about your feelings.
    2
  5178.  @LukeFG  Inflation was an inevitable result of the economic disruptions caused by covid, as was wildly fluctuating gas prices. The steps we took were necessary, but disruptive, and it will take some time for it to stabilize. This video does a good job of breaking down the current global inflationary patterns and what could be done about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgAGpFaqI30
    2
  5179.  Gandalf Stormcrow  situational price increases is not "inflation." That's just situational price increases. I remember food prices fluctuating wildly last spring too. It happens. The point is that while there is some actual inflation taking place, it is much milder than what would add up to "hyperinflation," and there is no serious long term concern.
    2
  5180. I bet they signed Elon's petition.
    2
  5181. That is not what any of this is about. You do not understand the systems you are trying to mock. It's like someone watching a football game and going "Well why don't they just run the other way? There's nobody guarding the end behind them!"
    2
  5182. The fake news reporter was the one asking the joke questions in the video above, I think you're responding to the wrong clip.
    2
  5183. It's because they are in the Miss Information party. He used to just run Miss America pageants.
    2
  5184. It's mainly because all the mistakes trump have been making are SO much worse.
    2
  5185. Nah.
    2
  5186.  @CaptainMisery86  And if you do have a gun then criminals armed with anything or multiple criminals will still definitely beat you. But you will feel like your pee pee is bigger while they do it.
    2
  5187.  @CaptainMisery86  Basically no criminals get shot by armed civilians. More innocent people get shot by armed civilians who think they are shooting criminals, like that young girl that got shot for accidentally driving into the wrong driveway. And that's before even considering all the people killed by actual criminals.
    2
  5188.  @CaptainMisery86 There is no reliable data to support your conclusions. Those are pure wishful thinking from the gun lobby. If guns made people safer, then America would be, by far, the safest country on Earth, rather than the worst of the first world countries by a factor if around 600%, which is what we actually are. It's also worth noting that the rural/urban crime breakdown you discuss is NO different in the US than in countries without gun ownership, it has nothing to do with gun ownership, it just has to do with the density of populations. More people close together, more criminals and victims interact. There is still plenty of crime in rural areas too, btw, when adjusted for population size.
    2
  5189. No, but this is still not a good way to end a campaign.
    2
  5190.  @nickyjones2709  Nah, it's ok to be both, just don't do genocides.
    2
  5191. So they agree that he could have a political opponent assassinated, so long as he uses official US military assets to do so. Good to know.
    2
  5192. Thanks for this. I'd always seen those Nebula ads, and always wondered how it really worked, knowing about all the other "shady nonsense" from other companies you alluded to in the video. I think it's really great how you actually did it.
    2
  5193. Everybody is tired of hearing about him,. but he stands a very real risk of being president again, so until that stops being true, it's important to keep pointing out how catastrophic that would be to any patriotic American.
    2
  5194. Japan, South Korea, Kuwait, that'd be three other datapoints. Overall, I think that nation building is a good idea, but only if you understand the cultures of the region and adapt to them. The bush administration set up an impossible government in Afghanistan and a generation of Americans paid the price for that. The better solution would have been to either set up a confederacy of regional governments, where each ethnic region was largely sovereign and only had a loose federal state to deal with foreign powers and settle disputes. Either that or we should have just parted-out the country, handing various regions over to neighboring countries that had a shared interests with their inhabitants. Dissolve "Afghanistan" as an entity.
    2
  5195. The problem is he's in good company whit the current House Republicans.
    2
  5196. The idea of electing role via random lots sounds dumb, since most people would be unqualified for most jobs, but it got me thinking. What if you had elections in which a ton of people nominated themselves for the position, each voter can vote up or down on every candidate, and only those who get more up than down votes pass through to the next round, and then there is a random draw to decide which of those would get the job. Ideally, this would eliminate the awful options, and most independents would be less willing to "cancel" candidates without good reason, so most reasonably qualified moderates should make it through.
    2
  5197. He is a weirdo though, so they weren't wrong.
    2
  5198. @ But also Europeans drive fewer miles per year than American do.
    2
  5199.  @speedstyle.  Not by as much though. I wouldn't expect a 1:1 correlation, the more miles traveled, the proportionately more accidents you would expect, Double the miles traveled, quadruple the accidents.
    2
  5200. @ If you believe that, then you believe that.
    2
  5201.  @francescocostanzo8225  But the suffering of bullies is called "justice."
    2
  5202. And for good reason.
    2
  5203.  @Mike-sp7zv  All sorts of things. Biases against medical science, bias against "experts," bias against various groups, the basic point is that Rogan gets people on that express fringe, factually inaccurate viewpoints. If an audience member is listening and those viewpoints don't resonate with them, then they will ignore it, but if those viewpoints do fit what they already want to believe, like, say, "I don't need to wear a mask, actually," then they will wholeheartedly double down on that inaccurate belief. This is why it is important to not allow such things to rest unchallenged, when someone says something that is factually incorrect, it needs to be corrected.
    2
  5204.  @Aristocles22  They are, which is why conservatives are freaking out and trying to change the rules while they still have some power left.
    2
  5205.  @thieupham493  When has Musk ever done anything involving "talent?"
    2
  5206.  @DirtyRedMuzik  He funded companies that did some interesting things, but that was largely due to the people he hired to actually do the work, rather than anything he had to do with it. When Musk takes an active hand in things, it tends to lead to failure more often than success.
    2
  5207.  @DirtyRedMuzik  That just goes to show how silly the capitalist model is, when failures are roughly an even chance. The point is, he's not particularly clever or interesting, he just has a lot of money, and was lucky enough that some of his investments paid off. Twitter is an excellent example of what happens when Musk just does what he wants to do, without enough people telling him to stop it.
    2
  5208.  @DirtyRedMuzik  Actually clever people have a higher than 50/50 success rate. Anyone can manage a 50/50 rate, so the only thing he brings to the table is money. It's also worth pointing out that the percentage of mentally unstable people on Twitter has gone up massively since he took over, even over the first few days.
    2
  5209. No, there is plenty of discussion about the various problems involved in green energy, and plenty of effort in fixing those problems. I think the point people are making is that the existing problems with green energy are still BETTER than the existing problems with fossil fuels, so for right now, shifting to green energy is better than not doing so, and in the future it will be better still as those remaining problems are ironed out. The one thing that would be dumb would be to just stick with fossil fuels until green energy is "perfect," right?
    2
  5210. I don't see why any NATO forces would ever need to "seize control of the gap." I mean, if they wanted to cut off Russian access through it, they wouldn't need to actually occupy that region, they could just use artillery and bombing and various other distance weapons to make that entire pass (or at least the parts where there aren't civilians still there), into a no-man's land. I mean, if NATO and Russia ever came to war to the degree that threatening that corridor would be a serious strategic goal, you could do it from tens of miles within Poland and Lithuania's borders, or even further using less direct means.
    2
  5211.  @SohLuki503  Why do you think it wouldn't be raccoon dogs?
    2
  5212.  @SohLuki503  That doesn't answer the question. We know that Raccoon dogs can transmit covid, and apparently they were in the area, so why couldn't they have been part of the infection vector? You act like this is "weird," for some reason.
    2
  5213. LGBT people cannot kill you by breathing in your direction. That would be the difference here.
    2
  5214.  @Jetairplane  You can't get AIDS through the air. You should have learned this in health class.
    2
  5215.  @philspd473  That isn't how elections work. There was an open primary, and the voters chose him. You just disagree with those voters, but that doesn't make their votes any less valid.
    2
  5216.  @philspd473  A constitutional republic is a form of democracy. You cannot have a republic if it is not democratic. We do not live in a direct democracy, and NOBODY has ever claimed that we were, so I don't know why people keep bringing that up as if it's a point of argument.
    2
  5217.  @Zetirix  Why would they?
    2
  5218.  @kimberlyr.7712  How many times did Jared and Ivanka ride on AF1?
    2
  5219.  @kimberlyr.7712  I don't need Chinese malware on my system, thank you.
    2
  5220.  @megclifton6692  Exactly.
    2
  5221. Biden didn't even run in New Hampshire and he STILL beat the other candidates.
    2
  5222. No.
    2
  5223.  @soldadodecristo2480  Yup, voted in by We the People.
    2
  5224.  @WildTrek  Again, most states, including ones without a union, do not have border walls. Contiguous border walls are VERY rare. Most countries you can just casually walk from one into the other, even in a town.
    2
  5225.  @WildTrek  But like I said, that's extremely rare across most of the world. There are no border walls between most countries in South and Central America, none in most of Africa, none in most of Europe, none in most of Asia. That isn't to say that you're allowed to just cross unchecked, just as you aren't allowed to cross unchecked into or out of the US, it just means that there is no physical wall preventing people from doing so, and it's up to border patrols to catch anyone who attempts it illegally.
    2
  5226.  @nils9853  Nah, Americans do have poor diet and exercise, overall, but that is not what accounts for the disparities in healthcare. The obesity rate in Europe is actually higher than in the US.
    2
  5227.  @007kingifrit  Nonsense. My mom's been waiting almost a year now to line up a cataract surgery, meanwhile in Nepal they can do it in fifteen minutes. You might be able to get in to a GP's office in a few days' time, but if you need any actual work done, it will be weeks out, at least, and perhaps months depending on supply and demand, the US has fewer doctors per person than Canada does.
    2
  5228.  @007kingifrit  But you keep talking about how you have never encountered someone who's had to wait as if this is evidence of anything as it regards to the entire country. If you had been citing actual data then that would be a different story, but your own personal anecdotes are not evidence of much. You think Americans don't have long wait times because you haven't encountered them personally. I know that Americans do because I have encountered them personally.
    2
  5229.  @007kingifrit  So basically, the average wait time is 26 days, nearly four weeks. And that is just the average, so for every patient that only takes a few days to get to a doctor, there is a patient who takes eight weeks. I'm getting the impression that you learned something new here, which is all I could hope to achieve.
    2
  5230.  @007kingifrit  You didn't explain why the study is wrong, you explained why its results might contradict your feelings. The data itself was accurate, and you could find no data that presented a different position on the matter. Why should cities not count, when the overwhelming majority of Americans live there?
    2
  5231.  @007kingifrit  Yes, you said that it did not exclude people from certain groups, but you didn't explain why it should exclude people from those groups, as those people are, as a matter of fact, people. Any examination of American healthcare systems has to take into account all people who use it. There are not two separate systems, there is just the one. People who make use of "the public option" in the US are just using the same health systems as anyone else, all that changes is whether they get some amount of subsidies on the payments.
    2
  5232. This is not true though, so. . .
    2
  5233.  @darrellweist1481  A grand jury does not actually convict anyone, so if they only get a grand jury, then nothing would happen. Grand juries indict people, which then goes to a trial to determine guilt. But I am glad that yo agree that if they actually followed the Constitution, then no punishment would be warranted here. I'm just a little disappointed that you see that as a reason to break the Constitution, rather than as a reason to just leave them alone.
    2
  5234.  @tron3420  What do I get for passing your quiz?
    2
  5235. It can though. Talk to any Republican Senators you might have and urge them to vote "yes" on the Infrastructure bills so they can pass and we can be done with this.
    2
  5236. One should NEVER question Mitch McConnel's commitment to hypocrisy. It's his ONE core value.
    2
  5237. Just a reminder that the Senate GOP has no capability to pass anything into law, so anything that only has their support isn't worth the paper it's printed on. If they would actually like to increase border security, then they would need to negotiate a deal with the Senate Democrats and the White House, something that they have been ordered NOT to do by their dear leader. All this is is a distraction from that fact, intended to fool stupid people into believing that they actually want to fix the border crisis. The Republicans OWN the border crisis now.
    2
  5238. But the point of it was that the prices of things started to rise before the current administration, and yet they managed to bring that under control and reduce that rise in prices. And hiring is far from lagging, we have record low unemployment, so hiring is better than it ever has been. Anyone who doesn't have a job today just isn't looking. Wages are also rising, although they had been stagnant in the previous administration, so they have a lot of catching up to do. Let's hope we don't backslide on alll these gains and return to what this administration started with.
    2
  5239. Well, we drained the corruption out of the US, now it's time to help others do the same.
    2
  5240.  @springflowerblosomnorris9721  Jesus disagrees with you.
    2
  5241. She has a more conservative voting record than most Republicans. It's the Trump supporters that are RINOs.
    2
  5242. They already do thwart those illegal crossings. They catch and process all those who cross illegally. The issue is that Republicans have been defunding border judges for decades now, so the court systems cannot keep up with the current flow of migrants, leaving most of them awaiting court dates for years. If we could process their claims faster, then we could deport them faster, or allow them to start participating in the economy faster.
    2
  5243. They've still got nothing on Trump. He's in a half dozen investigations for every one of theirs!
    2
  5244.  @JuanDiaz-pv1vq  Trump LOVES Putin though. He wants to marry him, but Putin only wants a side piece.
    2
  5245.  @Charles-j6v  No self-thinking individual would be more worried about Biden than they are about Putin, unless they worked for Putin, in which case, yeah, they should be worried.
    2
  5246.  @Joel-s1c6d  I want the police to be held accountable when they do wrong, which they are doing. UNRWA is a different situation entirely, since they are operating outside of direct supervision, and have clearly allowed Hamas to get away with too much on their watch. It is not "a few bad apples," the entire tree is rotten.
    2
  5247. Hermes is young, but also a time traveler. Simple.
    2
  5248. She is at least more serious and fit for office than her opponent.
    2
  5249. Good thing there's SO much better stuff out there. His simps don't care though.
    2
  5250.  @Orclin  Well, I mean it was done by a bunch of idiots for idiot reasons, yes, but it was a very serious coup attempt that could have succeeded. It needs to be taken seriously in that context.
    2
  5251.  @AppalachianPatriot  Since when was a swastika a cartel tattoo? Which cartel is that?
    2
  5252. Can anyone claim that the world would not be better off without Tiktok in it?
    2
  5253.  @Power5  But with most "American made" products, it's not just raw materials that need to be sourced from elsewhere, it's also significant components. Like you might have a car that is "manufactured" in the US, but has dozens of parts to it that are manufactured in other countries. Those would still likely be subject to tariff, and if not, the tariffs would be too easy to dodge and you would end up with projects 99% built overseas and then an American company puts the bow on top and claims it's "American made."
    2
  5254.  @Power5  Right, and I'm just saying, if we aren't talking strictly about "things that come directly form the Earth," then policing which things are and are not "raw materials" would be far more trouble than it would be worth.
    2
  5255. Right after Jim Jordan.
    2
  5256. "Can we all just agree that if my candidate loses, it can't be because fewer people voted for him?" -Republicans. Every time.
    2
  5257.  @SanJacinto23  The US does not have more killers than other first world countries. Our killers are just more effective because they have easier access to firearms.
    2
  5258.  @SanJacinto23  Most criminals get their guns legally, or get them from people who got them legally. Removing the legal guns would remove the pipelines that allow almost all criminals to acquire a gun. It's impossible to stop ALL crime, but you can massively reduce it, so why not do that?
    2
  5259.  @KryptonArcher  The requirements for a Swiss person owning a gun are much more restrictive than in the US, as well as what they can do with that weapon. Their ammo is also much more regulated. "Switzerland as a free guns for all state" is a myth among gun advocates. Look into it more, from people who are NOT sponsored by the NRA.
    2
  5260.  @WrongThink_  Yeah, gas prices started going up under Trump, not under Biden, and started to come DOWN during Biden's term. If the US had been run by Republicans for the past two years, it would have turned out like the UK, with $7 gas and 14% inflation.
    2
  5261. What was your first clue that you were being played? EVERYTHING?
    2
  5262. Well, your skepticism is warranted, and is Weymo ready to immediately roll out in every city? Hell no. But could they be, if permission was given? I think so. I think that they are at the stage where they've proved that the concept works, and while they need some more testing in harsher environments to be generally available in those areas, they should at least get permission to start doing that, and a lot of the other issues you raised were related to the "testing" phase of the project and the current scale of the operations, but would largely sort themselves out once the project was at full production scale. As for public transit, you make the same "death by statistics" arguments you criticized. By saying that you "couldn't find sponsored videos in favor of public transit," obviously there would be none of those, since nobody really stands to profit from public transit systems, so who would be sponsoring it? That doesn't mean those videos don't exist, however, there are dozens of Youtubers on an eternal crusade in favor of public transit. The unfortunate reality is that too much of America's infrastructure is built around single occupancy vehicles, and while efforts can be made to expand public transit options, it's unrealistic to present a future of convenient public transit across the US any time soon. Replacing existing vehicles with autonomous ones is a FAR more feasible prospect.
    2
  5263. He still might, depending on how many of the documents he took made their way back to his bosses.
    2
  5264.  @superameric8  Trump. The number one idiot was Trump. Although he wasn't a doctor, maybe you're thinking about Dr. Atlas? He was barely a doctor either though.
    2
  5265.  @superameric8  This is what scientist do. They give the best information they have at the time, and then update that information as the situation shifts and new information comes in. Early on, there was not much evidence that masks were beneficial, and there was a general PPE shortage because Trump had not restocked the US stockpiles, so his recommendation was that people did not need masks. When more data came in that the masks were effective at reducing the spread of the virus, he updated that guidance. This is exactly what we should want from any medical professional. And I was talking about Scott Atlas, who was a radiologist that for some reason was put in charge of the pandemic response last fall, even though he had no experience, but coincidentally was very supportive of Donald Trump on Faux News.
    2
  5266.  @karenlee3372  The scientists don't get to decide how the world works, they can only report to you how it works. They don't make the rule that everyone getting the vaccine is the best way to save lives, they can only report that fact to you. Whether you care about saving lives is entirely between you and whatever god you believe in. Most gods are pro-saving lives.
    2
  5267.  @karenlee3372  Oh, wow. That's a pretty wild conspiracy theory you've got brewing there. Maybe you could be more skeptical of your sources if you think there's any credibility to it.
    2
  5268.  @karenlee3372  It seems like you are listening to a lot of un-credible "news" sources. Maybe take a break, stop buying into their fantasies.
    2
  5269. Nope, it's just anti-business. Disney's special status in this case is a pretty normal thing that happens all the time when you have a large commercial project. It was never a problem, UNTIL DeSantis made them a political enemy.
    2
  5270. A lot of fortune 500 companies lose more money per year relative to their value than the US does.
    2
  5271. Now imagine you lived fifty years ago, when things were much, much worse.
    2
  5272.  @TheRealRobertG  Well, there were fewer US home owners, far more people dying of diseases that we can now prevent, few fewer college graduates, and that not even adding the Cold War into things.
    2
  5273. They will all be re-elected, they are doing what their voters want them to be doing.
    2
  5274. @@BlackLivesMatter1414 I would feel that at least a better effort had been made.
    2
  5275. Lcal governments should immediately zone the land that hospitals sit on as "medical services," preventing any future development of those properties that is not producing primarily medically-oriented services. They can build any sort of hospital they want there, but it has to be a hospital.
    2
  5276. Probably nothing, by that point there should be plenty of charging stations available and the infrastructure to support them.
    2
  5277.  @Seth9809  "Line goes up."
    2
  5278.  @Spirit451  Crypto transactions are traceable, but also can be laundered. The fact remains that a lot of criminal activity takes place in crypto coins.
    2
  5279. I mean, actual humans are dead here, but sure, "it's just drama." Wow.
    2
  5280. He retired before his unit was schedule to deploy though, so your story makes no sense.
    2
  5281.  @13BGunBunny  I know that you claim to do your own, unbiased research, but if you reach the results you claim to reach, then you are either NOT looking at unbiased sources, or you are lying about the results of your research. And the portion of the Constitution I quoted was Article 1, section 4, Clause 1.
    2
  5282.  @13BGunBunny  Lol, no. That's not how it works. Article 1 is talking about FEDERAL powers. It specifically says that the "legislature" (ie the State government) can set the rules for elections, but that the congress (ie the thing that article 1 is describing) can alter them as they see fit. It's basically saying "States can set their own rules, within the limits of what Congress allows." This is non-controversial understanding of the Constitution. You can find an explanation here if you like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Section_4:_Congressional_elections_and_sessions If you disagree with their interpretation, then you can do additional research, but I would recommend staying away from anyone trying to sell you a bill of goods like "The Congress that the Constitution refers to is the State Congress." They would just be trying to fool you.
    2
  5283. That sounds cool, it should help to clear up all that chaos at the border.
    2
  5284. Well first these guys have to take your job, and then there will be people to pick the fruit.
    2
  5285.  @garyoldham4449  You're really handy with that FSB propaganda, aren't you?
    2
  5286.  @justmyowndogecoin  In America, they do.
    2
  5287. They are treated fairly in the world market. That's what free trade agreements are for.
    2
  5288. What good would that do? Biden could work with Republicans all he wants, but they will still never vote on anything that's worth passing, so what would be the point? If they aren't willing to act in good faith and vote on good legislation, then discussing anything with them becomes pointless.
    2
  5289. That was imaginary though. In the real world, Russian forces were attacking Ukraine in that region first.
    2
  5290.  @Wreakmayhem  He showed up at the House and offered to come in and testify in the House, in an official hearing. Coomer refused to allow him to. That's the end of that story.
    2
  5291.  @jamesgoode9246  What are you doing here then, complaining about a beer ad campaign that had nothing to do with you? Seems like maybe you don't have any sort of "real life?"
    2
  5292. If it were Trump, then it would probably be true.
    2
  5293.  @shannonbolin7641  That does not answer the question, what was illegal here?
    2
  5294.  @shannonbolin7641  Ok, so "nothing?" That's what I assumed.
    2
  5295. So what? That doesn't mean that we want such people in the armed forces.
    2
  5296.  @patriotrvlife-24  But it's important to understand that none of what you say here is actually true. And that matters. It's a consequence of someone who gets all their news from unreliable sources.
    2
  5297.  @Fnaffan2004  I'm afraid not, my point was clear, DeSantis's actions violate the Bill of Attainder principles, as well as the First Amendment. Any law-abiding judge would recognize that on summary judgement alone.
    2
  5298.  @GaryGreen-h8v  I feel like I'm in that South Park episode about the human centipede.
    2
  5299.  @webportal6659  You're describing maga.
    2
  5300.  @webportal6659  I'm not, this isn't Fox News at all.
    2
  5301.  @neshirst-ashuach1881  Just because no changes get called for after making a delay does not mean that nothing was gained. If changes had need needed, that could be significant, and so what was gained was confidence that the bases were covered. Every major space disaster was solvable if they had "wasted time checking things." And zoning regulations have had far more benefit than they've had harm. You can point to some specific regulation that you disagree with, but that doesn't mean that everyone disagrees with it, or that regulations in general are a bad thing. I notice here that you didn't provide any actual evidence to back up these claims, you just asserted your personal opinions as fact. I assume that you don't expect differently from the other people in this discussion?
    2
  5302. Both guys are Trump.
    2
  5303.  @NigelHatcherN  Messier, actually.
    2
  5304.  @nanomachines2985  So you prefer imaginary people over actual people then.
    2
  5305.  @PrivateSi  What are you talking about, a "CO2 dearth?" Global CO2 is at levels that have not been seen since before mammals existed. Do you know what the word "dearth" is? Or are you just "anti-mammal?"
    2
  5306.  @JenniferA886  No power management system is bulletproof. A few years back, Texas lost power because their natural gas pipelines froze. There will always be edge cases in which a power system will fail, so pointing to that possibility and going "eh! see, it fails!" is not a rational argument. A well designed green energy system is MORE reliable than one based in fossil fuels, and like a fossil fuel system, every region has its own strengths and weaknesses (for example a place with a lot of coal might use more coal than natural gas, while a place with a lot of gas might use that over coal). Not all forms of green power generation are ideal for any random location, but there are typically some methods that will work great locally to any given area, the secret is to build them. Beyond that, it comes down to long term storage mechanisms that can store up days worth of local power needs, and then return it to the grid on demand, as well as strong long-range power lines, so that green energy from one coast can be sent to power buildings on the other when needed.
    2
  5307. @ But people can't always choose to live close to where they work, particularly in mutli-income homes. Yes, you could make things worse for people who drive, if that's your goal, but Americans don't want you to make things worse for them, and in a republic, the people have a say in what happens.
    2
  5308.  @shingshongshamalama  Well yes, every driver agrees that things would be better if they were the only driver on the road, but also, every driver prefers that they continue to drive, rather than to reduce traffic for everyone else while their own trip takes much longer by using alternate methods. So if you want to take drivers off the road, step 1 is to build the alternate methods that are faster for every driver than the current system is.
    2
  5309. The opposite.
    2
  5310. They already have that. Anyone who does break the law IS held accountable. Outside of the Trump administration, of course.
    2
  5311. The point of the bill is to prevent them from getting such help.
    2
  5312.  @darthplagueisthewise5145  Exactly.
    2
  5313.  @thepcal9654  You do understand that this is not a thing that actually happens in modern medicine, right? Modern treatment approaches for trans people would not consider such a thing until after they have become an adult and have been on hormone therapy for long enough to be fairly certain about their identity. Nobody's just running around "removing genitals" at the drop of a hat. What are they teaching you over at Faux News?
    2
  5314.  @marieharris1230  You misunderstand, the point of the bill is to prevent trans children from receiving adequate medical care. You need to look into what the bill actually says. It has nothing to do with "mutilation," and if that's what you believe it's about, then I'm afraid you've been fooled. You should look into what they stand to gain by tricking you like that.
    2
  5315. So, wait, if not for the "weaponization of the legal system," what would be happening about all the various crimes that Trump did, many of which he's openly admitted to doing? Shouldn't any fair justice system hold people accountable when thy do crimes like that? Was he just supposed to get off scot free because he'd been president once?
    2
  5316.  @antihypocrisy8978  Ukraine courting NATO had nothing to do with this. Ukraine had every right to be a part of NATO if they wanted. This was entirely on Putin. He is the one who invaded, when he had zero justification for doing so. Don't blame the victim for the actions of a criminal.
    2
  5317.  @luckyluc25  If you believe he has done nothing wrong, then you have not been paying attention. He has just not yet been held ACCOUNTABLE for his actions because of political nonsense. He was twice impeached for his behavior, and Senate Republicans admitted that what he had done was criminal, but they refused to convict him regardless on purely partisan grounds. The only thing keeping him out of jail during his Presidency was that he directly controlled the people who would charge him with crimes, and he told them to not do that. The Muller Report made clear that he had committed crimes, but that Muller believed that a sitting president could only be impeached, not prosecuted for those crimes.
    2
  5318.  @SaintInix  I'm not the one somehow believing that a Kentucky "eye doctor" (who only got his "accreditation" from a family member) has a better grasp of virology than a multi-decade expert in the field who has served seven presidents of both sides and who nobody credible has a negative word against. Call me crazy.
    2
  5319. @Richard Sullivan No, I'm sorry, Fauci's testimony here wasn't a lie, you definitely don't understand what they were talking about if you believe that it was. Rand clearly didn't understand, because he seems to think he made a valid point in there somewhere. If Fauci has any money that was not earned legitimately, then I'm sure Trump would have had Barr go after him over it, because he really hated how much more popular Fauci was than himself. If Fauci was such a problem, Trump had three years before Covid to replace the guy. Trump only hired swamp creatures, and he only fired them if they refused to do illegal things when asked.
    2
  5320.  @hashiramasenju8785  But again, no, the NIH did not fund gain of function research, that was the exact point that Fauci reiterated there. What Rand Paul believes was gain of function did not meet the definition that the federal government uses for that purpose, and/or was not actually NIH funded research. This is how the law works, something is not breaking the law just because you don't like it, the law says what it says.
    2
  5321. Non-citizens were already prevented from voting. He just lost a bill to insist that apples fall from trees.
    2
  5322. Ok, see how that goes. Nobody cares.
    2
  5323. Yup, that's why it's important to vote blue, no matter who, so we don't fall back into that regime.
    2
  5324. It was roughly the same amount as in any previous election. Big deal.
    2
  5325.  @Bitchslapper316  Protest has nothing to do with the insurrection though. Calling the insurrection "protesting" would be like calling shoplifting "haggling."
    2
  5326.  @FalonGrey  Democrats are not opposed to "interference" in the Middle East, they tend to be opposed to how certain Republicans have chosen to meddle. Democrats did not support invading Iraq, for example, or the Saudi war in Yemen. Democrats have always supported engaging with the Middle East in ways that are constructive, however, such as the Iran nuclear deal that Trump blew up. And yes, Democrats tend to support reducing foreign wars, but it needs to be done carefully. We would like to see people on Mars, but not if that means just packing some random people up on a rocket and chucking it at the planet without any real plan as to how they'll survive the trip. NO rational person believes in just yanking troops out of an area with no long term planning.
    2
  5327.  sam ridges  Of course it doesn't. I say so because it is so. If it wasn't so, then I would not say it was so.
    2
  5328. Lol. Can you imagine anyone saying that unironically? What a bunch of clowns.
    2
  5329. Every press breifing headline these days feels like it should end with "this oughta be good. . ."
    2
  5330.  @odinallfarther6038  Well, most people who live there today did not live there before Israel. And of course before the land was Palestine, it was Israel.
    2
  5331.  @MAK10p  So it's the name that matters to you? If they renamed it to Juda then you would accept that it is their homeland too?
    2
  5332. ​ @odinallfarther6038  If you think this only applies to you and to issues that you care about, then you understand nothing about the Internet. Those you disagree with have to struggle with filters just as much as you do, you are not special.
    2
  5333.  @odinallfarther6038  That's called "confirmation bias." Every time it happens to you, it's something special that only happens to your and those you agree with. Every time it happens to those you disagree with, you don't notice.
    2
  5334. @SantaClaraFella But it's still the Trump campaign that feels that discrediting the process is essential to their strategy, so how would this benefit Harris?
    2
  5335.  @PHUCKyoutube689  Do you believe that the laptop should have had more impact than it did?
    2
  5336. He wasn't spending those billions to reduce unemployment, he was spending those trillions to save lives.
    2
  5337. I don't know, I'm not much of a fan of Harris myself, but I think she'd be fine. Certainly better than the guy before Biden.
    2
  5338. This is why Republican policies will never help the middle class.
    2
  5339. US and NATO don't care about Russia's concerns because Russia's concerns are stupid. Nobody should care about Russia's concerns. That would be no excuse for them just invading their neighbors. They do not have a right to anyone caring about their concerns.
    2
  5340.  @jorkad9671  Yes, but it would also involve not eating meet, and that is not a sacrifice worth making in the name of sustainability. There need to be better alternatives.
    2
  5341.  @jorkad9671  If that's your choice, that's fine, I'm just telling you that it's not a choice most people will make, so if the goal is to change how the industry works, there need to be better options than "cold tufurky."
    2
  5342. They still have to pay, just with penalties on top.
    2
  5343. We're currently drilling more than we were under Trump.
    2
  5344.  @Sporxz  The reserves aren't even close to empty, and US crude oil production was 13.4 million barrels a day as of August, when it peaked at 12.9m a day in his last term in office, and was only 11m a day when he left office. Why do you keep saying "embarrassing?" I do not think that word means what you think it means. I think the word you're looking for is "accurate."
    2
  5345.  @wayne-d8g  I wasn't the one who said "drill baby drill" unironically.
    2
  5346.  @barrymaynard6762  Poe's Law. There are too many idiots in this thread to assume that anyone has any idea which way is up without solid evidence.
    2
  5347. @ And so did these African countries, in many case far more investment. It didn't help.
    2
  5348.  @lezgobranden1707 Nah, do you work for Saudi Arabia, like Jared does?
    2
  5349. CEOs suddenly dropping their work week to one hour.
    2
  5350. We did it in November 2020 and we will do it again next November. Never again.
    2
  5351. There would be no United States if we had not begged for help from the French. There is no shame in getting help from others when you need it, there is only shame in denying needed help because of ego.
    2
  5352.  @contractorvegas5384  Well then we all know who you would have sided with in the 40s.
    2
  5353. They should have invited Meatball Ron, he'd have fit right in.
    2
  5354.  @leahblake6748  If you believe that "The only reason he didn't give them back right away is because the people trying to take them did not have the proper paperwork." does not mean that he attempted to give it back to them, then you do not understand how words work. Why do you believe admitting this would lend credibility to your positions?
    2
  5355.  @leahblake6748  So you're making a semantic argument that you did not say those literal words, while I'm making a substantive argument about how the words you said conveyed that message. Why do you believe I should patronize you?
    2
  5356.  @enriquelaroche5370  "If you give a mouse a cookie. . ."
    2
  5357.  @huntercrook7306  No, they work, just not the way you described them.
    2
  5358.  @Rays_Bad_Decisions  These shots do vaccinate, but you seem to not understand what "vaccinate" means.
    2
  5359.  @elropo7093  A flu shot is called a vaccine right there on the label. Because it is a vaccine.
    2
  5360.  @Rays_Bad_Decisions  You don't seem to understand what "vaccinate" means. You can still get measles even after getting a measles vaccine too. No vaccine is 100%. All they do is provide a RESISTANCE to the virus in question. This has always been the case, but some people were misunderstanding that fact, which is why the CDC clarified that position. The covid vaccines do provide strong protection against both infection and the consequences of covid, so there is no reason not to get it.
    2
  5361.  @Rays_Bad_Decisions  The problem is that what you just said is wrong. It's known to produce at least a 50% reduction in infection, higher against the strains it was designed for. I don't know who lied to you that it provided "0% protection." It also provides a 2000% protection against death if you do get infected, which is also part of the immune response. Again, they only changed the definition because some people were too stupid to understand the original. You provided an example of that.
    2
  5362.  @Rays_Bad_Decisions  No, the studies indicate that the vaccine is effective at reducing infection rates and greatly reducing hospitalization and death. And as for why you believe that Pfizer "wants to seal the records for 75 years?" It's because you trust misleading sources of information that tell you untrue things like that. You need to do your research.
    2
  5363. And like last time, you'll get outnumbered by the patriots.
    2
  5364. Well, they are in the White House and Senate, just not in the House.
    2
  5365. Because it's not relevant.
    2
  5366. But, it IS the trans day of visibility. Why shouldn't he mention that?
    2
  5367.  @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.
    2
  5368.  @daexion  The law disagrees with your position that fraud is just "a business deal between private entities." There are entire mountains of laws devoted to handling "business deals between private entities."
    2
  5369. Thanks for the spoilers, I definitely didn't want to watch the competition without knowing who would win.
    2
  5370.  @Homesick4Hills  The House Weaponization subcommittee has no control over the DoJ or AG's office. Unless you're thinking of the Bill Barr DoJ, but that was years ago.
    2
  5371. They should now, but when these guys got arrested it was before the war, when they were theoretically not our enemies. Hell, Trump and Putin were basically finishing each others sentences.
    2
  5372. "He said the quiet part too loud, but yeah, let's do some racism!"
    2
  5373.  @brendolbreadwar2671  Those don't sound like crimes to me. I think he meant Elon wants a pardon for crimes.
    2
  5374.  @taylorlibby7642  I doubt Trump would pardon Hunter.
    2
  5375.  @savedfaves  So if RFK Jr.
    2
  5376. But we're also investing in our grandkids' futures, so it balances out. It would certainly be better than austerity programs like the UK have.
    2
  5377.  @DK-sc4gn  How is buying a house (at a debt) investing in their future? How is going to college (at a debt) investing in the future? The things purchased at a debt are building a better America for them to live in. If we cut all spending today, then America would only get worse and worse over the following decades, as has been the case for pretty much any country that's tried it. If you legitimately are worried about the debt, the solution is not in spending changes, it's in revenue changes. Worry about the multi-trillion dollar hole Trump's tax cuts for billionaires put into the deficit. The ONLY threat to America's future is Republican shenanigans around the debt ceiling, which have already DIRECTLY led to several credit downgrades for the first time in America's history. America can afford a national debt several times higher than it currently is, so long as we keep paying it off responsibly.
    2
  5378.  @blksbth1  Because they continue to watch it. That's an insult to themselves and to whoever raised them.
    2
  5379.  @blksbth1  If they had journalists then they wouldn't "report" stories in the way that they do. The Daily Show is a much more credible source of information.
    2
  5380. You don't see the inhumanity in this. . . why does this no longer shock me. . .
    2
  5381. So says Satan worshipers, at least.
    2
  5382. Let's be perfectly clear, HUNTER saying that he was in a room with his father DOES NOT MEAN HE WAS IN A ROOM WITH HIS FATHER. Hunter can say all sorts of things, that does not make them factually true. I can't believe Republicans want to take this all seriously.
    2
  5383.  @albex8484  Well, that's why I said they should use solar heating for most of the process, but I have to think that containing the water and not have to use trucks to scoop up the lithium salts would make the process much much faster and more efficient.
    2
  5384. @ There's no evidence that it provides better results though. It's just meaner.
    2
  5385.  @MrBasteDoNotWaste  I think I'm fairly materialist, but I also think that these things can function in balance. Progress is good, but it is not itself the goal. We should pursue progress, but we should do so while also paying attention to the human costs involved.
    2
  5386. Why? He's a crackpot. That only indicates that your own judgement is faulty.
    2
  5387. So basically he's proposing 40-50% inflation. Fun.
    2
  5388.  @CubeInspector  OR some Christians just want to eat bacon while still being able to claim that other people are sinners and should be punished, exactly like Jesus didn't want.
    2
  5389.  @zackiej89  It's the core tenet of their faith.
    2
  5390. Yeah, no matter how the stock tanks, on the face of it, this would still be free money for Trump. I just hope that there will be enough regulatory scrutiny and investor lawsuits over this that 100% of his profits and more on top get eaten back out of whatever he takes away from it. Yes, you were able to cash out for half a billion, but here's two billion in fines and lawsuit judgements.
    2
  5391. In 1984.
    2
  5392. What does that have to do with anything?
    2
  5393. Ok. It certainly wasn't zero under Trump, or any previous administration, so I don't expect that to ever happen.
    2
  5394.  @TheRealJoeMama1  Of course it doesn't make it true. It was true before I said it. That's why I said it. Why would anyone say untrue things? Ok, that's not a rhetorical question, why does this show exist?
    2
  5395.  @BillyColeII-dr6dk  They did, you weren't paying attention. There were literally tapes.
    2
  5396.  @Gob-is3sy  So we can agree that they are not illegal migrants.
    2
  5397.  @GramPapnedrac  No, Trump did not do that. He only claimed to do that, which is how he basically operates. He claims to do stuff he didn't do, and simps believe him, because that's what they do.
    2
  5398. I think one of the core elements of Mary Sues that you leave out is that they should be foreign to the established narrative. I think that if you write an original story, like Dragon Ball, then you're free to make the lead as "Mary Sue" as you like without criticism. If you add on to Dragon Ball, like Dragon Ball GT, let's say, and add a new character who's better and cooler than everyone from the original series, then you might face a Mary Sue complaint for it. This is why a character like Rey is much more of a lightning rod for "Sueism" than a character like Luke, because Luke was an original protagonist, whereas Rey showed up, attracted the attention and love of all the old cast, showed off powers and capabilities that the old cast were not as adept with, etc. If the Force Awakens had been the first Star Wars anyone had ever seen, I doubt there would have been any "Mary Sue" claims about Rey, but as a sequel work, the examples are pretty blatant.
    1
  5399. There's nothing inherently impossible about making AC a good movie. They just made a BAD movie of it, because it was written poorly. There are plenty of bad movies out there, that doesn't mean that a good movie couldn't have been crafted from its bones, only that it wasn't.
    1
  5400. I'm really considering this now. I recently got a PC that should be able to handle VR, and liked what I heard about the Vive, but wanted to see what the Oculus motion controllers brought to the equation, and I enjoyed the PSVR demos at Best Buy, so it might be a way to go. I guess it comes down to developer support.
    1
  5401. If I was going to colonize an asteroid like that, I would use a "worm coring" method. I would build a toroid spinning habitat on one end of it, providing an artificial gravity environment. Then I would use standard mining equipment to dig a massive tunnel straight through the center to the other side. This tunnel would be capped at both ends and linked to the existing station, but at first would be a zero-G environment. Then I would head to the middle of this tunnel, and slowly start to expand outwards, taking a cylindrical chunk out of the middle, big enough around to make another cylindrical habitat that could be spun up to comfortable gravity. Once that's going, colonists would have two places to get in some gravity exercise, but still the tunnel would be zero-G. Then you just expand outward from the center, clearing more space and adding more spinning habitat until you have plenty of space for the people to spend most of their time in the gravity areas. Once you have most of the asteroid hollowed to this level, assuming there is more room to expand towards the surface, you do so, slowing down the spinning components and moving new housing into outer rings as necessary, until eventually the whole thing is mostly hollow. Since the spinning components would all be engineered for durability rather than natural, it shouldn't break up. The benefit to this over just building a giant O'Neill cylinder from scratch is that 1. you would be able to constantly mine the asteroid through the development process, making it a revenue-producer from day one rather than a complete money pit until mostly completed, and 2. the rocky shell should provide a strong defense against radiation and impacts, like coating an O'Neill cylinder with massive amounts of armor.
    1
  5402. I think the obvious winner for best anti-zombie would be a medium length war-pike. Yes, it's not the best weapon for fighting humans, but it's ideal against zombies. I'm talking something in the 2-3ft haft range, with a relatively light weight, but substantial 6-inch spike on the end. This should be strong enough and straightforward enough that smashing it into a skull would pierce it from almost any angle, at a reasonable distance. A short ice climbing pick (like the new Lara Croft uses) would probably also be a good idea.
    1
  5403. Interesting point about mistakes, but I do think it just tends to boil down to "everything is because some writer said so." Writers don't set up situations where the die roll is a critical fail so they just scrap the whole idea. If a character makes a mistake, it's not happenstance, it's because the writer made him make a mistake, and writers just don't seem to do that very often. They don't set up situations only to then defuse that situation by an error, unless that error brings greater meaning to the plot. It's like Chekhov's gun, you don't show the gun unless you intend to use it, you don't have the character make a mistake unless there's some larger point to the mistake. Characters do make mistakes fairly often though, if there's a reason. Stragely, Naruto actually does a solid job of countering a few of your points in this one (not that it invalidates them in general, just that it defies them). Tsunade is the 4th Hokage, and while it could be argued that Naruto sometimes sidelines her as the hero does, she is in charge, and while she exhibits masculine traits like massive physical strength, when it comes down to it her most effective role on the battlefield is as a healer. Likewise, Naruto often makes mistakes, like when he had a big showstopper new attack that he was using for the first time in combat, but on the first attempt it sputtered out completely, forcing everyone to regroup and try again. If not for that, the fight would have been practically over at that point.
    1
  5404. To responsible gun owners, think of it this way, how do you "properly secure" a handgun so that your kid can't accidentally kill himself with it? Remove the ammo, keep it locked in a secure safe, perhaps with a trigger lock, in an inconvenient location? Ok, fair enough. But what if you need that gun? What if there's a home invader? How long would it take you to make that gun ready to fire, and would you have that time? Now imagine you did have a "smart" gun, one that could only be fired by you? How could you "properly secure" such a weapon? In a basic holster on the side of your nightstand or couch, fully loaded and ready to fire at a moment's notice. Why is that not seen as an advantage to owning one? It wouldn't even have to be your only gun, you could keep other guns locked away, but having this smart gun loaded and ready would be a significant tactical advantage when you need it most.
    1
  5405. One little, two little, three little-endian. . .
    1
  5406. I enjoyed the movie, but one thing that I'm really tired of is people praising it for it's "lack of male gaze" in the photography. It's totally confirmation bias at work, you see what you expect to see. There was plenty of "male gaze" photography in the film, focus on body parts and that sort of thing, plenty more than you would see in, for example, Guardians of the Galaxy 2. I imagine if you told an unknowing test audience that GotG2 was directed by Patty Jenkins, and Wonder Woman by James Gunn, people would have been praising GotG for its "lack of male gaze," and criticizing Wonder Woman for its "shameful focus on the female body"
    1
  5407. TL;DR, they are huge "Airplane" film fans.
    1
  5408. Don't judge him by the color of his skin, judge him by the content of his character, which is just awful.
    1
  5409. He was willing to plead guilty to his crimes. That is not "above the law." Being "above the law" is all the criminals in the Trump administration that he pardoned for the crimes they did in his service.
    1
  5410. This guy got beat in a state where Biden wasn't even on the ballot. Let's see how Trump does.
    1
  5411. Biden's defense did not rely on presidential immunity of any kind. It was that he hadn't done anything that rose to the standard to justify a conviction.
    1
  5412.  @legaleeblonde4310  I also get posts deleted all the time, it's not related to which side you are supporting at the time.
    1
  5413.  @legaleeblonde4310  Nope, there are no rules beyond what each channel sets, mainly in the form of word filters. You certain words in the same post, whether favorably or unfavorably, and that posts tends to not appear. It does not seem to take sides, except against clearly stating political points. I also find that when other people can say things I can't, it's either just because of the other words I've been saying, or because they were using unicode characters to spice up the words so that hey pass the filters, but really, that's just too much hassle. This is just not a great place to have detailed political discussions because they don't want to hire enough human moderators to actually do a good job. But that's all beside the point.
    1
  5414.  @legaleeblonde4310  It remains true, but if your persecution complex can';t handle the truth, then I guess we're at an impasse.
    1
  5415.  @libertyBuilders  Those were Trump voters. The Biden voters are very much alive because they've been vaccinated.
    1
  5416. Yes, Trump supporters are children.
    1
  5417.  @dianasims6819  It's presented live, there would be no editing involved.
    1
  5418. The "we should be focused on nuclear" people are just bad faith actors that want to do nothing. They understand the same challenges to nuclear you do, so they understand that "focus on nuclear" means "keep burning natural gas for a while longer." They will pursue any and all avenues toward burning more natural gas, since that's who's paying them.
    1
  5419. Is this what Faux News people are talking about instead of about how Clarence Thomas is bought and paid for?
    1
  5420.  @drok7461  I can see why you might be confused. Jared Kushner worked in the White House, Hunter Biden NEVER worked in the White House. Jared actively worked on projects that benefited the Saudi government, and was a failure as a private businessman before he got that job, but was handed 2 billion by the Saudis after leaving office. If that does not bother you, then you have no interest in justice, you only have an interest in political victory.
    1
  5421. I was just complaining about how hard it is to shop for a "good" USB charging cable. No way do I need a $100+ one, but it would be nice to have one that actually just works. Amazon is just flooded with "trademarked named" offbrands though.
    1
  5422. I'm wondering, if you wanted to make a batter that had low sugar content, but a good crust, could you "apply" a skin late in the process? Is there some sort of "chocolate syrup" or "sugar water spray" that you could brush or pour or spray on top of an already half-cooked tray of brownies that would create a crust, without significantly impacting the taste of the core of the brownie.
    1
  5423. It was never about control It was always about a virus Fixed it.
    1
  5424.  @lulu111593  You are misunderstanding how medical data is tracked. If someone has covid, and ends up spending months in a hospital due to covid, and then dies, while in the hospital due to covid, their cause of death will be listed as covid, but will also include things like "organ failure" and "oxygen deprivation" in the report. This does not mean "it wasn't covid's fault! Leave poor covid alone!" Covid IS still THE cause of death, it's just that they make specific note of the exact mechanisms that led to that outcome. If someone gets shot through the heart, and dies, and they put "heart failure" in the coroners report, that is not evidence the shooter can use that "the bullet didn't do it."
    1
  5425.  @lulu111593  You are buying into flat Earther nonsense. Be better at being a human.
    1
  5426.  @lulu111593  Old enough to know that the Earth is not flat, and that pandemics happen sometimes. It is comforting to think that there is some grand plan, that everything happens for a reason and if something terrible happened it must be the fault of someone, because then you can blame that person and hold them accountable, but a lot of things in the world just happen, and nobody is to blame for them, there can be no "justice," you just have to try and handle the consequences as responsibly as possible, and burying your head i the sand is not responsible.
    1
  5427. It's weird the things Republicans get horny for these days, but I guess I shouldn't be surprised.
    1
  5428.  @EdoggCentral  Right, which is why more needs to come in. Either way though, it's always better to continue spending at the current rate, or higher, than to slow spending. That's the important part.
    1
  5429.  @beefninja7555  Lol, no. You know he'd only make things much worse.
    1
  5430.  @user-rv2zu1vb2c  What was his policy? "Put grandmas in jail?" How did that get passed?
    1
  5431.  @bertrumgang78  Oh, she was jailed for violating pandemic restrictions? Well that's completely different. Good riddance.
    1
  5432.  @letmedoit8095  I've never seen a tankie defending Cuba before. Most of them seem to think it's bad because of communism or something.
    1
  5433.  Cmore Butts  You can look up how much of the US national debt is foreign owned, it's public information. It's not some secret that takes actual work to ferret out.
    1
  5434.  @jesusrivera2970  There's no reason to believe that Hunter had access to those documents, or that those documents were serious in nature, like the many many more documents at Mar-a-Lago have been shown to be. More importantly, the moment that Biden had reason to believe he might have classified documents, he invited the FBI in to do a search and find them, whereas Trump instead spend months lying to investigators and attempting to hide and retain his classified documents, even after having been served a subpoena for them, which is basically the opposite of what Biden did. I don't know what your point here is. Are you making some sort of "don't worry about the plank in my eye, worry about the spec in yours" argument or something?
    1
  5435.  @amazinggrace602  NARA says that neither Obama nor Clinton kept documents. They turned all their documents over to NARA, and then legally checked out what documents they wanted access to. That is nothing like what Trump did, and if you have been told to believe otherwise, then ask yourself what they stood to gain by controlling your mind like that.
    1
  5436.  @krisjones4051  You have been lied to. The President cannot "constitutionally do whatever he wants with documents." There are several laws on the books that specifically make clear what a President is NOT allowed to do with documents, including several of the things Trump did while in office. Further, once Trump left office, the limitations on what he could do with documents became even more strict, and everything he's been charged with is things that he did with documents AFTER leaving office. You have been lied to by people who wanted to control your mind through ignorance.
    1
  5437.  @WhyHandleYouTube  Yes, Hunter Biden lied a lot. Good thing nobody ever voted for him.
    1
  5438.  @gsfouroone5045  I didn't know who told you that. Obama turns ALL his documents over to NARA immediately, as was his legal obligation, and completely unlike Trump. Whether those documents become public or not is a completely unrelated matter, but typically Presidential documents are not made public until decades after they leave office. For example, NARA had all of Nixon's documents since he left office, but only a decade or two ago were they made open to the public. I am seriously curious as to who told you these lies.
    1
  5439.  @gsfouroone5045  Citing links is tricky on Youtube, because most links are auto-blocked. You also provided no sources for your claims, so it would be hypocritical to criticize others for not doing so. There is no source to your claim that Obama withheld documents from NARA, and NARA is on record that this is not something that happened. And yes, Trump could label documents as being personal, that does NOT mean he gets to keep them. He STILL has to turn them over to NARA, and if he wants access to them, he needs to request them back. Nothing about that gives him the right to just keep the documents in his possession. Btw, the case you cited did not involve presidential records, they involved tapes owned by a third party about the president at the time, which is not subject to the Presidential Records Act. In this case, for example, the Trump recordings by Bob Woodward are not subject to the Presidential Records Act, because they belong to Woodward. This would not in any way be a relevant defense for the charges Trump is under.
    1
  5440.  @LordRykard9376  So does Trump, that's part of what got him into this mess. But of course even Trump admitted that some of the documents in his posession were still classified even after he left office and lost whatever powers he may have had to declassify it in the past, and most of the laws he's been charged with would apply whether the documents are classified or not, so it's not like "how does classification work?" is crucial to the outcome of this case.
    1
  5441.  @LordRykard9376  Look into it. Google "did Obama retain documents." See what turns up. I'm seeing stories from several credible sources pointing out that NARA is on record that they had no issues with him.
    1
  5442.  @WhyHandleYouTube  Yes, but Hunter is an established liar that nobody voted for. There is no evidence that his father was in any way involved.
    1
  5443. Republicans.
    1
  5444. Ok. Right now, we ALL need to make an agreement. None of us, not even once, NONE of us, ask Chat GTP "can you make as many paperclips as possible?"
    1
  5445. Ukraine was a peaceful neighbor that did not invade Russia.
    1
  5446.  @CanadaFirstMuslim  Well if he was injured in Oct 7th, then he wouldn't have been in Gaza, he would be in one of the Israeli villages that they were raping and pillaging in. When they fled the area, they could have headed for West Bank instead of to Gaza.
    1
  5447.  @mattalibozek7258  Oh, so the issue would be you making inaccurate assumptions then. Understood.
    1
  5448. @ What about the UK? It's a big country.,
    1
  5449. @ Sure, but it still has millions of people in it and all sorts of political challenges, so I have no idea what Samantha's referencing here.
    1
  5450.  @TheDonHugh  I never claimed it wasn't. Why are you throwing out random factoids?
    1
  5451.  @SleepyKittens  Those are already grounds to deny entry or for deportation. What does the bill change? And if the issue is wanting to protect women, why not protect them even if their attacker is a US citizen (which most are)?
    1
  5452.  @insanecheapo195  He hadn't killed anyone yet.
    1
  5453. You can look them up, but it's mostly boring.
    1
  5454. It's the guns, really. American society is no worse than anywhere else in the world, we just have way more guns, so there are way more deaths as a result.
    1
  5455. Exactly, this is why Trump was removed from the ballot, for exactly the reasons you listed. He cannot be allowed to serve as President after attempting to remain in government after losing the 2020 election.
    1
  5456. @No Echo You can walk in human excrement in any state, especially the red ones.
    1
  5457.  @anovino1992  Yes, people in Democratic states make more money, which increases the cost of living, because Democratic states are more productive than Republican states. The blue states make up the overwhelming majority of the US economy. California alone makes up more of the economy than almost every red state put together. Housing costs in California are indeed very high, partly because the jobs pay better, partly because the weather is better than almost anywhere else, and party because their local level governments have more control than the state government, which leads to a lot of NIMBY policies preventing affordable housing, but you can't argue that people don't love living in California, right?
    1
  5458.  @anovino1992  I assume you don't either, or you would know that California has a population of nearly 40 million people. Twice Florida's. Clearly they are doing something right.
    1
  5459.  @NI-gy2ml  No sarcasm needed, if you actually look into it, Demcrats are the ones trying to keep people safe, and Republians are the ones blocking them at every step.
    1
  5460.  @NI-gy2ml  I see you don't follow politics.
    1
  5461.  @jamesmedina3271  This is America, we don't have one of those.
    1
  5462.  @jamesmedina3271  None of those people are Communists, and Bernie Sanders isn't a Democrat. Who told you otherwise, and why would you believe them?
    1
  5463. Wouldn't want to have anyone watching the hen houses when the foxes move in.
    1
  5464.  @fanboyhex1555  No need to bring race into it.
    1
  5465.  @fanboyhex1555  You were the one that said "darker empire." I can't think of anything else you could possibly mean, given that he's supporting the light side of the Force here.
    1
  5466.  @ScriptRizoh  I know, right? I don't think he gets it.
    1
  5467. TL;DR, it's because they limited it to 20 items or less and need to expand the part of the store that has them. I LOVE self-checkout, where it's available. It's much faster and I bag my groceries better than they do.
    1
  5468. Bidenomics is why the inflation is not as high now as it would be if Trump had been president for the last three years. You work with what you got. It would be nice if Biden hadn't inherited a pandemic and a war in Ukraine that shifted global markets in unavoidable ways, but he certainly handled it better than the previous administration could have.
    1
  5469.  @Kody-d3j  Nope, there were a lot of things that were important to people in that bill. Just because not all of it was important to you does not make it bad.
    1
  5470. City level laws are largely irrelevant. They need to be nation-wide to actually accomplish much.
    1
  5471.  @brianmccardel182 Criminals don't obey laws, but if you take the legally purchaed guns off the streets, then most criminals won't be able to get one either.
    1
  5472.  @dangerousdylan6262  Where did it come from before it was illegally acquired?
    1
  5473.  @langhamp8912  This is why it needs to be illegal to sell guns into the public at all.
    1
  5474.  @ericw9702  Different problems require different solutions. Making legal gun sales illegal would be an effective way of solving gun violence in America.
    1
  5475.  @langhamp8912  I think gun fans just don't care that more guns = more deaths. They just don't want anyone taking their toys away, even if this provably leads to avoidable deaths.
    1
  5476. Garland is not on the supreme Court because McConnell did not uphold his oath to the American people.
    1
  5477.  @andrewandrew4970  For real most of the time. That's the point.
    1
  5478.  @trishgels  Comments are filtered on a per-channel basis based on certain words. Figuring out which words are causing it can be a real hassle. It happens to everyone.
    1
  5479.  @J.L.Contracting  You don't know how to use Google?
    1
  5480. @ I answered the question, I just didn't do his research for him. Nobody is obligated to do unpaid research, if he doesn't know who's taken aipac funding, then that's his problem to sort out, not somehow mine. It's really not hard to look up.
    1
  5481. @ But AIPAC is a lobbying group, not a branch of government, so they are not relevant to the US government.
    1
  5482.  @gordon3186  It's not on either to do research on demand for the other person. If there are things you don't understand, it's on you to look that up. You can ask others to do your work for you, but they always have the right to refuse. At no point did I offer you any free labor.
    1
  5483. @ Ok, I promise to, as soon as he makes one. So far it's just been rhetorical puffery with no actual substance behind it. I would be more likely to answer a legitimate question or critique, rather than just an apros pro of nothing demand for research material.
    1
  5484.  @amoskowitz0103  We did replace the Vegetable in Chief, in 2020. We have a better president now.
    1
  5485. @ That's most of these folk's entire paycheck.
    1
  5486. . . . in addition to all the other things.
    1
  5487. There isn't a crime to fit what the banks did here, there was one that fit what Trump did though, which is why he was prosecuted.
    1
  5488.  @iudog5675  If his supporters hadn't attempted an insurrection, and plan to do so again in the future, then I wouldn't worry about it, but there are a lot of those idiots still out there, so it remains an active threat to this country.
    1
  5489.  @Research_theTruth  MLK did not believe that white supremacy did not exist. White nationalists have poor character, we are judging them for their poor character, not for the color of their skin.
    1
  5490. . . . how is that a change?
    1
  5491.  @donut3946  It's not how they typically work, no, but the DoJ also doesn't typically work how Trump has claimed he wants to use it, so new answers are needed.
    1
  5492.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  That would be a war crime.
    1
  5493. Any time I have to boil water on a stove or pressure cooker or any other device, I tend to microwave it first so that it doesn't take as long.When I need water for tea I just throw a mug in the microwave and I'm good to go.
    1
  5494.  @PabloTheThinker  There was a 3% decrease in violent crimes since 2022.
    1
  5495.  @PabloTheThinker  That's pretty significant in terms of public policy shifts. The point is, it's improving, not getting worse, so that's a good thing.
    1
  5496.  @XenonOrion  It would be impossible for hunting to sustain even 1% of America's current population. Even "gardening" would not be sufficient. Large scale agriculture is necessary to support large communities.
    1
  5497.  @PabloTheThinker  That's the plan.
    1
  5498. I don't understand though, if there is end to end encryption allowed, then how DO you catch child predators and terrorists? Couldn't they just use those functions to act outside of law enforcement's ability to stop them? What is the solution that would allow law abiding citizens to keep their discussions private, without also allowing criminals that same opportunity?
    1
  5499.  @harbingerofwarx995  I think that what you suggest would make it MUCH harder to catch them, since it would eliminate a lot of the ways that they are currently caught in the act. Personal responsibility is all well and good, but it's insufficient to dealing with a society of more than a few hundred people. When there are so many possible attack vectors, it is impossible for "personal responsibility" to solve anything, you need a community response to such problems. It would be like if an invading army shows up, and the mayor goes "everyone just take "personal responsibility" for dealing with the army. That's a recipe for getting pillaged, and is EXACTLY the defensive strategy favored by the predators.
    1
  5500.  @harbingerofwarx995  Exactly, and government is that community responsibility. If the neighborhood watch can monitor everyone's lives to the degree that is sufficient to catch predators, then obviously so to can the police.
    1
  5501.  @harbingerofwarx995  I would prefer privacy invasion over home invasions, so long as it's reasonable in nature. I think there does need to be oversight in how data is collected and used, but I don't see a problem with scanning content distributed over the Internet for clearly objectionable material. If you don't want that material scanned, don't send it over the Internet to others. And again, communities cannot self police. Most people are not capable of acting in a police capacity, more than communities can "self doctor" or "self engineer." This is why we have professionals to fill these roles. "Self policing" is both ineffective and prone to higher injustice than anything professional police forces have been accused of.
    1
  5502.  @clray123  This IS how we caught criminals for the entire history of humanity, but until recently, people could not securely communicate over long distances like they can today. As technology gives people new tools to commit crimes, the laws need to keep up to catch them in equally novel ways.
    1
  5503.  @clray123  Yes, that's what we're discussing here, following the evidence to the crimes. If the evidence exists primarily in encrypted Internet communications, then how do you suggest one "follow" it? Or would you rather that they just not follow the evidence back to you, or whoever? And again, your comparisons to "totalitarian regimes" are spurious,.Nobody had a problem with totalitarian regimes because they put away too many child predators. The problem with totalitarian regimes is that they would use their surveillance to punish politician opposition and other innocent people. The data collection was NEVER the problem, it's entirely what you DO with that data. When there is evidence of that, then we have an issue.
    1
  5504. The border is already as closed as it ever was.
    1
  5505.  @LuckyFlesh  they say "Glowiesayswhat?"
    1
  5506. The election system is updated with every election. There are constant improvements to how it works, or in some cases steps back if it's working too efficiently for Republicans to accept.
    1
  5507.  @jimk9769  Do you mean how they didn't want Trump getting everyone sick? That's not some "liberal conspiracy," that's just common sense. They could have just held the debate virtually, MOST people are interacting virtually these days, it's not a big deal, but Trump was scare he wouldn't be able to ramble during Biden's time without getting his mic cut.
    1
  5508.  @jimk9769  Biden doesn't need a teleprompter, he stomped Trump in the first debate without one. I don't know why you guys seem so obsessed over the idea that in a virtual debate both candidates will have questions asked to them virtually.
    1
  5509.  @Makrangoncias  If it's heavy enough, that shouldn't be a huge problem, but also they could use alternating layers to it to give it some play.
    1
  5510. Fox News has no standing to decide how the media "should" respond to this. Fox News will inevitably overreact to this. Whatever you might feel about Biden having a few classified documents in his possession, remember the attention Fox didn't give to Donald Trump having HUNDREDS of classified documents, which he REFUSED to give back when told to do so, and LIED about having them. Those are the actual crimes.
    1
  5511. Nowhere is Joe negotiating with the terrorists. He's only pointing out the best overall solution to these problems, regardless of what the terrorists do.
    1
  5512.  @gravyd316  The pandemic was after that leader left office. The guy who was in office during the pandemic had no idea what he was doing (not with the middle east, and not with the pandemic either). All his administration did was make a war like this almost inevitable, because he was claiming to be pursuing peace, while at the same time enabling Netanyahu's policies that were only throwing gasoline onto the fire.
    1
  5513. The Biden administration wants peace more.
    1
  5514. Congress should just pass a law of "one price only." If you sell a drug in America, you must sell it at a single retail price, no "rebates," or "discounts" or other shenanigans. It can be whatever price you feel you need, you could set it as high as you want, it would just need to always be the SAME price regardless of customer. Obviously incredibly poor people could still get the drug at no cost to themselves, but it would prevent these companies from gaming the system and charging some customers more than others.
    1
  5515.  @SpeedRacer.No11  Innocent until proven guilty is a court standard. It has nothing to do with you or me. I will just based on the preponderance of evidence, and her defendants are guilty as sin from where I stand.
    1
  5516.  @southernman2  That's not how anything works.
    1
  5517. Messing with their salaries has nothing to do with anything.Most of them came in wealthy and will leave wealthy, they aren't there for a paycheck.
    1
  5518.  @goodtoGoNow1956  Well,l I'm sure there are the shameless grifter types on the fringes, but for the most part I don't think many of them are in it for the salaries. It can be expensive to maintain a home back home and a home in DC, to travel back and forth, and that's why they do get a decent salary, but I've always found "cut their salaries" to be a stupidly simple answer to a complex problem. From a "fixing the budget" perspective, it's not even a grain of sand on the beach of the total budget, and from a "get Congress to shape up" perspective, I don't really think it would have much impact.
    1
  5519. More wall would not help though.
    1
  5520. They all get held up by the puppet strings of their donors.
    1
  5521.  @IronskullGM  Well, for those 50 years it was assumed that Roe would stay in effect forever, because what lunatic would actually remove it? A bill was not necessary until now. It was more a political talking point for those on the right that they wanted to remove it, and a minor point at most on the left of "well, if you let too many of these idiots in charge, they might remove it." In an ideal world, it would have been a complete non-issue to both parties and Roe would have just remained in place forever, but we don't live in an ideal world, and now this is happening.
    1
  5522.  @mattm402  Well, a few reasons. 1. there was no need for it. It was assumed by most that Roe would remain in place. It was only Republicans fighting to change that. 2. Democrats have rarely had a filibuster proof majority, and even when they did, it was razor thin, and at least a few of those Democrats are anti-choice. While you could look at raw numbers and pretend that they "had the numbers," in reality, they never did. If, on the other hand, the congress accurately reflected the will of the American people, there would be more Democrats, and they would have had the votes for it. But again, until this week, it was not necessary.
    1
  5523.  @mattm402  Again they had the votes for some things, but not for others.
    1
  5524.  @IronskullGM  Roe worked perfectly well until an activist court made law by overturning it, removing a Constitutionally protected right from half the population. If there had been the votes in congress to make the Roe protections permanent, they would have, but they never had enough to overcome a filibuster in the Senate. This is a problem with how the Senate is structured.
    1
  5525.  @DarthVaderTheSithLord  No, only people who misunderstand the Constitution believed that.
    1
  5526.  @DarthVaderTheSithLord  Read the Roe opinions and get back to me with more specific questions, I don't even know where to start with explaining where you might have gone wrong on this one.
    1
  5527.  @DarthVaderTheSithLord  Roe was overturned because conservatives appointed bad judges, not because it was not a fair ruling.
    1
  5528.  @hounddog2952  Yup.
    1
  5529.  @truth4004  It's considered a good thing among Republicans, at least. They hate the truth, so they flock to whoever will tell them that everything they want to believe, is true. This is how Faux News got so big, they'll tell any lie that makes their viewers smile.
    1
  5530. China and the US are not fighting over the sea. China is fighting their neighbors over the sea, and the US is preventing it from being a bloodbath. If China didn't keep starting problems, the Us would not even be involved.
    1
  5531. I just happened to have one of these since childhood, and it was always really fun to use for crafts. Very comfortable.
    1
  5532. Yes, they were studying Sars viruses, and Covid 19 was a very similar, but completely unrelated strain of that family. The research they did in 2016 was very important to us getting a handle on the covid 19 outbreak though.
    1
  5533.  @paulbarclay4114  Quite serious. If it weren't for studies into previous viral strains, we wouldn't have been able to get an handle on covid, and millions more would have died. It's important to not make viral research seem somehow "sinister," because it's necessary to stay ahead of the curve.
    1
  5534.  @paulbarclay4114  You do realize that most of the words you just said were wrong, right?
    1
  5535.  @paulbarclay4114  You're the one trying to insist that a SARs virus is a "bioweapon," for some reason. Do you even know what a bioweapon is?
    1
  5536.  @paulbarclay4114  If you're talking about covid-19, the evidence is that it was not created through genetic engineering or gain of function, and there is definitely no indication that it was released deliberately. Even if it did leak from the lab somehow (which is still the less likely scenario), it would have been an accidental release, since in that scenario a number of researchers got sick. If they'd intended to release it they could have done so in a way that wouldn't have harmed themselves, right? That's just common sense. Now, if you're talking their previous research, they had done some experimentation on SARs strains that had nothing to do with the covid-19 strain, and did enhance their transmissability, but they also neutered their actual harm, so even if those strains had escaped into the public, nothing would have happened. It's important to do that sort of research because it allows them to get ahead of the natural evolution of the viruses and plan out countermeasures. And I would never accuse you of being high-intelligence or difficult to manipulate, since all you've done so far is parrot idiotic conspiracy theories spread by the Faux News as a distraction from the actual pandemic we're all living in.
    1
  5537.  @paulbarclay4114  Thousands of researchers have analyzed the virus from around the world. They would have no shared reasons to lie about their findings. What they have determined is that the covid-19 virus does not have any evidence of the methods used to tailor viral traits. The only people who claim that the virus was in any way modified by humans are those on the fringes of the scientific community, the nutters and conspiracists.
    1
  5538.  @paulbarclay4114  Any "researcher" you can find to back your position is just copy-pasting the same conspiracy theory nonsense and is completely discredited. But people choose to believe them anyway because they prefer the lie that agrees with their own worldview to a truth that is scary and inconvenient. You are just another obvious troll. You are either too dumb to realize you are being told what to think, thinking it and then telling other people to think it because its what you think you think, or you are even worse, a disinformation agent. Either way you have not said one thing that cannot be easily refuted, and it's not even worth responding to. Paul Barclay Paul Barclay 4 hours ago @Tim Ogul You are just copy pasting the garbage conventional narrative for every "researcher" you are referencing I can show you PHDs from around the world who will totally refute your garbage narrative. You are just another obvious troll. You are either too dumb to realize you are being told what to think, thinking it and then telling other people to think it because its what you think you think, or you are even worse, a disinformation agent. Either way you have not said one thing that cannot be easily refuted, and it's not even worth responding to. You aren't worth the effort. As soon as you spout conspiracy theories, you automatically disqualify yourself from any discourse. But let's try it anyway. So you say that I should find Steven Quay impressive because he founded a therapeutics company. One that seems to be delivering snake-oil "treatments" to covid and breast cancer, without any reputable results. I'm sure he would have nothing to gain by becoming a "hero" to the types of people who chase snake-oil treatments rather than "main stream" drugs that actually work. Worked out for the My Pillow guy. It certainly had nothing to do with how his article came out right as his companies stocks were tumbling because their flagship drug failed its clinical trials. And Richard Muller isn't even a medical researcher, he's a Physicist. Quay may have a PHD in biology, and may know a lot more than I do, but I'm not putting my own expertise against his, nor should you. I'm putting the expertise of thousands of OTHER experts in the field, each with equal or higher credentials,m who DISAGREE with his conclusions. You can pick an idea out of a hat, and I'm sure you could find at least one person out there with a diploma who would support that position, that does not make it right. That is not science. The science involves actual research in the fields, and a consensus viewpoint that a significant amount of the scientific community agrees is true. Keith Grehan and Natalie Kingston wrote an article debunking his general claims on the subject. If this WERE true, then the scientific community would WIDELY hold this position, and not just the fringe crackpots that run snake-oil companies.
    1
  5539.  @paulbarclay4114  You showed me the OPINIONS of a scientist who runs a failed snake-oil company, and his physicist friend, and then I showed you the position of two ACTUAL scientists who pointed out why what he had to say was nonsense. You are not "out-sciencing" me on this one.
    1
  5540.  @paulbarclay4114  So, out of curiosity, why do you believe that a physics professor would be at all relevant when discussing covid-19? Do you also ask your doctor about car troubles? Or your mechanic for legal advice?
    1
  5541.  @paulbarclay4114  He doesn't need to be "discredited," he has no accreditation whatsoever in the medical community because HE IS NOT A MEDICAL DOCTOR. Do you think that a professor of creative writing should chime in on the "origins of covid" debate too?
    1
  5542.  @paulbarclay4114  I posted science that explained how he was wrong. The article by Keith Grehan and Natalie Kingston. You didn't seem to care, because you've found your pet scientist who will tell you what you want to hear, so that you can ignore the thousands of other scientists that say the opposite. If you're being treated like a child, perhaps you should be asking yourself why people would view you that way.
    1
  5543.  @paulbarclay4114  Also, "testifying before congress" is no high bar. Just because they ask you questions doesn't mean that what you say actually matters. I mean, hell, Rand Paul is often the one asking questions, and he has less credibility on medical issues than a bathroom sponge.
    1
  5544.  @paulbarclay4114  You must have misread the article. It directly said that Quay's assertions that the virus was somehow unlikely to arise from nature were completely false, and that by making them, he showed that he really does not understand the subject matter (which makes sense, because it is not his area of expertise). The two authors of this article are both more experienced in the subject than he is. So, you presented a single scientist who disagrees with everyone else on covid. I presented two more qualified scientists who have debunked your scientist's claim. The ball's in your court. Do better science.
    1
  5545. Every country was stolen from someone.
    1
  5546.  @casinoroyal93  Because the items don't belong to them, they belong to the museum.
    1
  5547.  @heypachuco1991  No, America won those states in war, just as the Mexicans won them from Spain, Spain won them from the Aztecs, and the Aztecs won them from other tribes in the area. If Mexico wants them back, they know where to find us. It'd be nice to pick up Cancun and Baja.
    1
  5548. I've heaqrd many other bots express this position over the years. Maybe bots just don't get called?
    1
  5549. Also, it makes you look like a clown.
    1
  5550.  @curvinwenger8024  They can't vote though.
    1
  5551. I have an idea of what to do with Africa. All the reasonably stable countries should all sign up to a pact. The nature of it would be that cultures within the pact can negotiate to divvy up the land differently than it is, to better reflect cultural groups, but the important part is that these final deals must be openly agreed to by both parties, similar to a divorce. 2-3 countries might horse-trade between themselves to get borders that better work for each population group, alongside other concessions. But the most important part of the pact is that once a deal is made, it is binding, and whole it can be re-negotiated politically, there would be stiff consequences for breaking any part of the deal or any aggression, and ALL signatories to the deal would be responsible for enforcing it, so if one country decided they wanted a bit more land and invaded another, wham, every country in Africa comes down on their heads.
    1
  5552.  @Haris1  Hopefully it would lead to more stability in the region, by establishing borders that will not result in conflict. I would think that countries that frequently have violent conflicts would welcome something intended to settle the problem once and for all, by establishing borders that all significant parties can agree to and then saying "ok, this is it, no more or you're completely screwed."
    1
  5553.  @jonathanodude6660  Well genocide would obviously not be allowed, that too would call down the hammer from the other nations. Smaller groups may not be entitled to have their own lands, but larger ones that cross multiple country borders could get multiple countries to split and reform into shapes that better reflect their populations.
    1
  5554. This aged poorly. . .
    1
  5555.  @pimpalamac3411  They asked her about fracking. She made clear her views on the topic.
    1
  5556.  @pimpalamac3411  And if you believe that stance makes sense then you're probably easily fooled anyway. Probably maga or something.
    1
  5557.  @pimpalamac3411  And if you believe that stance makes sense then you're probably maga or something. Sad.
    1
  5558.  @pimpalamac3411  This sounds like something a maga would say. Sad.
    1
  5559.  @JakMakes-z5o  Reality has a "liberal bias" to most conservatives. When Trump was fact checked on ABC, that was considered :bias," rather than "the basic job of a moderator and/or journalist."
    1
  5560.  @operator6013  How so?
    1
  5561. Less expensive, you mean. The EVs are less expensive per mile and in maintenance cost, so goods will be less expensive. But sure, cry about it.
    1
  5562.  @jenniferburton1711  The current generation of EV trucks claim a 500 mile range, and they are likely to improve on that over time. As for ranges longer than that? It's possible that there would be no EV solution there, and that diesel would still be necessary for the long haul scenarios, but even just cutting them out of the short and medium distance routes would be a MASSIVE improvement, right? And the long haul scenarios are not hopeless, companies can continue to figure out better methods for making long haul EVs work, either by improving the range on a single battery, making the charging/replacement of a battery as quick and convenient as filling a gas tank, or even just changing out the trucks at intervals like a pony express. In the long term, I expect prices to go down, not up, because once they work out the logistics of it, the underlying costs will be way lower.
    1
  5563.  @ktt8237  Well, better to get started now than later, right? Look, this is a plan for 13 years out. If we're already at 2034, 2035 and the systems show no signs of being ready, do you really expect that nothing will get done and the economy will be allowed to crash into a wall? Of course not, that's never how these things work. If the changes are not ready by then they would of course delay or alter the requirements so that things can continue to move, but it's important to set these targets now and expect the industry to TRY and meet them by the deadline, because that's the only way that there is any chance of them getting there.
    1
  5564.  @ktt8237  the bottom line is, it will cost the average consumer considerably less money over the long term. If they have to pay anything more, it would come in up front costs, which is why many states are offering rebates and loans to help balance out those initial costs. But long term, better for everyone.
    1
  5565. Yup, first they would have to find some actual evidence of wrongdoing, but since none exists, all they can do is fume.
    1
  5566. Say what you want about Biden staying in, but Trump is also still in it, and that's a joke.
    1
  5567. @ Nobody is taking advantage of the US though. That's not what any of this is about.
    1
  5568. They don't need cards, they are not an adversarial party!
    1
  5569. Nope, they'll accurately report that he got fewer votes.
    1
  5570. Just out of curiosity, you consider attempting to steal an election from over 80 million Americans to be basically no different than "tearing the label off a mattress?" Man, you must take your mattress labeling VERY seriously.
    1
  5571. Yup, exactly what any intelligent person would assume would happen. Of course Covid would reduce the rates of other similar conditions.
    1
  5572.  @HighFalutinTootin  The 2nd amendment has nothing to do with that. The founders never provided or intended any legal method of using force against the government. Insurrection is ALWAYS illegal. If you dislike the government you have, there is a revolution every two years, at the ballot box. Put aside childish fantasies of using violence to enforce your will over the American people.
    1
  5573.  @YankeeDoodle2  Corruption how? What is the corrupt part of this?
    1
  5574. The fraud has already been exposed. The Republicans responsible for it have been sued or arrested over it already.
    1
  5575.  @robertgeorge1810  Of course I know what I've talking about. I'm talking about all the election fraud committed by Republicans in the 2020 election. They caught the guys!
    1
  5576.  @quellyizagawdmarquel1745  Right, but who can you not question? I'm not understanding your point. I mean, if there is someone where if you question them, you get thrown in jail, then that would indeed be tyranny, but I can't think of any examples of that in the US. If you just mean ":if we question established science without any evidential basis for doing so, then people will treat us like idiots," well I'm sorry, that would not be "tyranny."
    1
  5577. Sure, ok. Get.
    1
  5578. That wasn't an error, it was part of the plan to pay back their sugar daddies.
    1
  5579.  @Luvurenemy  That's not how "human rights" works. Your argument is akin to "of course the King cares about human rights, he's a human," no matter how tyrannical he may be toward humans who are not himself. When people talk of "human rights," it does not refer to specific subsets of humans, it refers to ALL humans, so while capitalists certainly do look out for humans that they see in their mirror, the system does poorly at looking out for any other humans.
    1
  5580.  @Luvurenemy  Well, the problem with your argument is that it's nonsense. Most places that have socialized medicine also allow some degree of private health care, they just ensure that nobody goes without treatment due to lack of funds, which is what any moral person should want, and they ensure that the healthcare is managed as efficiently as possible. The US spends more per patient than in any country with socialized medicine, and yet achieves worse outcomes than them. There can be no claims made that it is somehow "better," except for those with investments in health care companies. Your arguments that consumers have any influence on healthcare are sermons about an imaginary reality. People do not "negotiate" on healthcare decisions, they do not make them as rational consumers, they pay whatever the cost would be to save their own lives, OR they undercut their own health because they are unable to do so. Healthcare is not a "commodity" that can be traded on a free market.
    1
  5581.  @Luvurenemy  As to happiness, I'm just pointing out that by what standards are available, people in many socialist countries appear to be content with their lives there, moreso than those living in more capitalist countries, as well as having better performance in more directly measurable categories like public health. You are right that there are many variables to juggle and ALL of them need to be considered in a fair evaluation, I'm just pointing out that there is no such fair evaluation that leads to the conclusion that socialism is a bad thing.
    1
  5582. What's wrong with the other 46%?
    1
  5583.  @beigefox6579  It's mostly bots.
    1
  5584.  @snoopsnet8150  Biden isn't raising taxes on anyone in the middle class. He's raising taxes on the wealthy and on wealthy corporations, as needs to happen to stabilize the massive and growing wealth gap. As Benjamin Franklin once said, " those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." He was speaking in favor of the government's ability to levy taxes when put to the defense of the public good. If you don't want to pay taxes, then nobody is keeping you here, you don't have to live in a country that collects taxes. I hear Somalia's nice.
    1
  5585.  @snoopsnet8150  They've done studies, companies do not raise prices significantly in response to higher taxes. The benefits the American people get out of those taxes are far more than anything those companies would do with that money. The simple fact is, as we move toward the 22nd century, that the natural progress of corporations is to concentrate more and more of the world's wealth into the hands of fewer and fewer people. You are not even close to ever being one of those people. There is nothing you can do to stop them. The only hope that human civilization has is for government to claw back some portion of that money and make sure that it works to keep human beings alive. Praying to the corporate gods to give you relief will get you nowhere, they do not notice your sacrifices in their name. But government, so long as we maintain it as a democratic republic, at least, does care about your vote.
    1
  5586.  @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.
    1
  5587. Yes, Putin needs to leave immediately.
    1
  5588.  @ricky5505  "Give a mouse a cookie."
    1
  5589.  @drtonyfoochie4895  None of that is true though. That's just what Faux News has indoctrinated you to believe.
    1
  5590. He's both.
    1
  5591.  @66littlejimmy  Yes, it's ending a pregnancy before a human life is created. Do you know what it is?
    1
  5592.  @dp9629  I feel like you are trying to make a semantic argument, like you want me to list a state, and then you will so "no, actually, you can get an abortion there," even if the rules in place makes it impossible for women to actually get an abortion there, either by making it impossible for clinics to operate or by only making abortion theoretically possible before a women could even realize she was pregnant. There are currently 8 states in which the laws have made abortion unavailable to women in that state within any reasonably margins, another 9 in which similar bans have been blocked temporarily by the courts or are planned to go into effect soon, and another 7 in which there is a time-based ban that would prevent many women from seeking an abortion after they realize they are pregnant. The short list of full bans with no exceptions are Alabama, Arkansas, Missouri, South Dakota, and Wisconsin.
    1
  5593.  @WAllen-bn1ej  Fetuses are not yet babies, and do not yet have a will. It would be like claiming that felling a tree is done "against its will." You need to possess a will to have something be done against it.
    1
  5594.  @66littlejimmy  Of course it's not already a human life, it hasn't been born yet. I mean, do you track your age from the date you were born on, or the date you were conceived?
    1
  5595.  @dp9629  I disputed the facts of your argument because your "facts" were in error.
    1
  5596.  @66littlejimmy  It is no species yet, because it has not yet developed into a living organism.
    1
  5597.  @Time4Project2025  You have biological components at 6 weeks, but cannot function outside of the womb yet, so are not yet an independent organism. Most people, including most pro-life people, do not support the abortion of viable fetuses, but most people do believe that the right to abortion should exist for non-viable fetuses. Nobody is in favor of harming premature babies.
    1
  5598.  @Time4Project2025  It exactly means that pre-birth are not alive. Yes, there is a grey area in between alive and not-alive, that it true of all things, but pro-choice people tend to err well on the safe side of that line, very few people support third trimester abortions except in cases where the woman's life is at risk and/or the fetus has no chance of viability due to extreme complications. On the other end of the spectrum, many abortion bans that are not outright total bans can have cut-offs of a month and a half, pretty far from six months.
    1
  5599.  @Time4Project2025  I think people should have respect for nature, but that always needs to be weighed with respect for other people. Your stance seems to paint the life of the woman as irrelevant, that if she becomes pregnant, she should have no options over the next nine months of her life but to continue to support this fetus. I don't believe that is an acceptable demand to make of anyone. I do not believe that abortion should be taken trivially, I don't believe it should be done "for fun," and I don't believe that anyone seriously holds the view that it should be "fun," but it is sometimes necessary to allow the woman in question to continue her life un-pregnant. Until there is an alternative to abortion that would allow the woman to no longer be pregnant, abortion is the best option available, and should be protected. I should also point out that most current "fetal heartbeat" laws are not based around an actual medical heartbeat, they are based around certain components of the heart becoming active. It's more of an appeal to emotion than anything scientific. People also like to pretend that their cats can talk.
    1
  5600.  @Time4Project2025  We can encourage responsible practices, but should not be banning abortions. Banning abortion won't cause anyone to be more sexually responsible, that is a completely unrelated topic. It's fair to discourage people from having abortions, so long as you still respect their choice to not behave as you would choose for them to behave. Your beliefs should not limit their choices.
    1
  5601.  @karami8844  Not in an abortion. Abortions take place before any human babies exist. They do not have any "will" to be against.
    1
  5602.  @Tensolin01  Big Twice fan? I tend to prefer Can't Stop Me.
    1
  5603.  @Shinobi33  All of them. Anyone who steps out of line in MAGA world gets slapped back into place. See the current House "leadership."
    1
  5604.  @dougconllin3006  No, it just means no guns. Those other things are fine because people don't do mass shootings with them.
    1
  5605. It's not really that big a problem. Apparently minorly classified documents end up in the wrong place all the time. These were not nuclear secrets or anything. There was only a big deal made in the case of the Trump documents because 1. There were a LOT of them, way more than could reasonably be explained as an accident, 2. they were reportedly much higher security information, like defense documents, and 3. he had been repeatedly asked for them, and on multiple occasions refused to hand them over, and/or signed an affidavit that he had turned all of them over, and yet still had them. THAT was the actual crime involved in that particular case. If Trump had only had a few documents, and they were mostly harmless, and he'd turned them over immediately when requested, then that would have been the end of the story.
    1
  5606. This seems to have more to do with political speculation than it does with gaming. Do they even play Fortnite? Also, the Nvidia trade would not be a conflict of interest, since it was already public knowledge that it was happening before they made the trade. Any public trader could have made the exact same moves with the exact same results. "Insider trading" would be like Georgia Senator David Purdue, who was making medical industry trades based on insider knowledge of the covid pandemic before it was made public, while at the same time downplaying covid concerns in public. Is this channel starting to migrate into one of those trash alt-right "own the libs" channels?
    1
  5607.  @richardcrow6465  Yes, and the "pony" in this case would be the House "Weaponizing Government" Committee.
    1
  5608.  @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?
    1
  5609.  @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.
    1
  5610.  @kh8655  I only call them insurrectionists because they SAID they were attempting an insurrection when they were attempting an insurrection. The FBI are not arresting them on those charges because that would be much harder to prove in court than the many other charges they are being arrested on. Ultimately though, it isn't even up to the FBI, and if the Justice Department decides to charge some of them with insurrection, they can. I could try to explain the "quasi legal" route that Trump and his allies in congress were attempting to use to overturn the election results, but you couldn't even understand the simple part, and this would be WAY over your head.
    1
  5611.  @boost1728  Why does Texas have some of the most crime in the country?
    1
  5612.  @boost1728  You mean "the redder the state."
    1
  5613.  @boost1728  Yes, but not nearly as bad off as Florida, Texas, Arkansas, Alabama, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North and South Dakota, Ohio, West Virginia, Georgia, etc.
    1
  5614.  @boost1728  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  5615.  @kateofone  Not the Christian Jesus though, he taught the opposite of that.
    1
  5616.  @williamhutton2126  The only people who say "violently flipping tables" are money lenders. Nobody was harmed in his flipping of tables.
    1
  5617. Yup, he needs to stop dancing around the topic and make clear that Trump has ZERO place in America's future.
    1
  5618. Ok, that's fine. What's the problem?
    1
  5619.  @mt.shasta6097  "Nambia."
    1
  5620. Yeah, I've heard a lot of 6th graders that are better debaters than Trump.
    1
  5621. @Dasha-tk3mo Russia had done bad actions before 2022. They invaded Ukraine in 2014. You don't really have a clue about the conflict at all or what happened leading up to it. And if you believe the Russian economy is strong, well, a sucker is born every minute.
    1
  5622. They can do it against a president because they SHOULD do it against any of us, IF we commit the crimes he did. That is the point of rule of law, that it applies to EVERYONE, INCLUDING a president.
    1
  5623.  @cathysmith8947  They chose to be better than Republicans, us usual. :(
    1
  5624.  @cathysmith8947  Choosing not to charge Jordan does not mean that they can't point out the hypocrisy of it now. If one person decides to turn the other cheek, that gives you no right to hit them again. You don't like it, consult the Bible.
    1
  5625. Yes, sadly it means that there are those in the Trump administration that might go after him for made up charges.
    1
  5626. Why is he in a maximum security prison right now, even though he's never committed a felony?
    1
  5627. I'm glad he's finally speaking out against MAGA. It definitely is a cancer on the American soul. When the Republican party can eject the entire MAGA wing from it, we can get this country back on track.
    1
  5628.  @SenseiSifuMaster  But immigrants each add more value to America than they take, so there is no conflict between supporting those who choose to make America their home, and ALSO supporting the homeless and veterans. Nothing prevents us doing both. I mean, homelessness does not come from a lack of homes existing, there are enough homes in America to house every person in it and then some, they are just not always affordable to those in need, which comes down to speculative real estate investment and poor development planning.
    1
  5629.  @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.
    1
  5630.  @Bshiddy  Closing the border would only make things much worse. It would make it harder for US employers to find labor (since native born Americans are provably unwilling to do the jobs they need done), and it would lead to more illegal immigration, because nothing will stop people from wanting to enter the US. "Close the border" is a stupid solution intended to satisfy stupid people. We can do better than that.
    1
  5631.  @degen83  That has nothing to do with having Democrats in charge though. That has to do with housing prices being too high in that area, which is due to speculative real estate and locals resisting affordable housing being built in their neighborhoods. You have to put people somewhere, and if you have nowhere for them to go, they end up on the streets.
    1
  5632.  @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.
    1
  5633.  @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.
    1
  5634.  @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.
    1
  5635.  @garyrentschler6082  Exactly, Dem controlled Houses never do this. They ONLY pursue LEGITIMATE fields of inquiry. This is the problem, when the Faux News paints Democratic inquiries as being illegitimate purely because they are attacking "their guys," their audience is dumb enough to buy it, and then they think that ALL congressional inquiries are equally illegitimate. That's not how it works. One side pursuing matters from a legitimate, fact based position does not somehow legitimize the other side to just engage in political circuses "to be fair about it." The law is the law, if a Republican breaks a law, the House, whether led by Democrats OR Republicans, should act to investigate the matter. If a Democrat does not break any laws, nobody is justified in treating them like a criminal.
    1
  5636.  @lescobrandon8443  Have you tried looking at the thread in a private window? Sometimes when a post is removed, you can still see your own post there, but nobody else can see it. To the rest of us, I see one post from you that says "Just don't vote for those outside your area," then the next post that's visible says "So, you couldn't counter me?" I should also point out that almost no posts are removed manually, so "neutral tone" really isn't a factor, the mod bots don't care about "tone." It would typically get removed for having certain keywords in it. It's hard ot predict and hits posts from the left, right, or anywhere in between. In general though, nobody has to respond to you, and a failure to respond is not conceding the discussion. This is all entirely voluntary. There's no value in trying to "rush a response," it only makes you seem weaker and more insecure in the value of your position. People who know they are right don't require validation from others. As to the rest of this most recent post, it's an extremely naive view of politics. Like it or not, party has much more value than individual merit. Most major functions of government are determined by majorities. The current House speaker only exists because Republicans hold a five seat majority in the house. If Democrats held those seats, we would have an actual Speaker right now. It is typically a better outcome to elect a ham sandwich that will caucus with the party you support, over anyone on the opposing side, It would ONLY be safe to vote for a Republican if they swore to caucus with the Democrats, and could be trusted to honor their word. It would be nice if that weren't true, it would be nice if the GOP was more than a punchline at this point, but that is not the world we live in, and to pretend otherwise is to live in Narnia. If and when the GOP recover from the MAGA, that might change. So until then, choose the best possible Democratic candidate in the primaries, sure, but when the general election comes along, the Republican candidate will not be a valid option.
    1
  5637. Biden doesn't have any illegal border policies. You're thinking of the Trump administration. They had several.
    1
  5638.  @n8spL8  Illegal aliens are illegal, but Biden's border policies in response to illegal aliens are legal policies.
    1
  5639. Yes, if the Trump administration had treated covid seriously from the start, then we could have headed off hundreds of thousands of deaths. There needs to be accountability for their failures.
    1
  5640. I don't think it's stupidity as much as amorality.
    1
  5641.  @occasus7964  She wrote it in her own book.
    1
  5642.  @isaiah3872  Her views about killing puppies is an essential qualification to any job position.
    1
  5643. A flaming, bird strike.
    1
  5644. Yes, he is. Do the crime, pay the time.
    1
  5645.  @ttt5205  Meh, an artist that gets demoralized because someone else can do better is not worth bothering with. I've been a working artist for over twenty years now, and there have always been TONS of better artists than me. It's just the nature of the business. People who have art in their souls will produce art regardless of what attention they get from others for it.
    1
  5646.  @ttt5205  As I said, I've been a working artist for over twenty years now. AI art is a thing, and will continue to be a thing, and will only get better and better at what they do. Artists just need to accept that and move on.
    1
  5647.  @ttt5205  I'm not responsible for whether artists get demoralized or not. That's up to them. Artists don't have to accept AI art, but the world doesn't care whether they accept it or not, it's going to happen with or without their acceptance, so it would be healthier for them to accept that and move on. I don't "defend" AI art, it does not need my defense, I only point out the fact of its inevitability, and the wastefulness of pretending otherwise. Regulation would do nothing, because it would be impossible to get those regulations passed everywhere, and the places where you can use AI would swiftly outpace those where it was not allowed. Even if you somehow banned the use of AI artwork, you would still get people using AI to generate art, and then manually reproducing that are in a method that couldn't be distinguished from original art, while still requiring no human talent or inspiration. It's basically no more useful than the people who smashed industrial looms in the 1800s. Change is coming whether you agree to it or not.
    1
  5648.  @ttt5205  But again, if it slowed the use of AI in the US, that would do nothing to slow its use in other parts of the world, and those parts would be pumping new art out at a much faster pace. And yes, I argued that AI should be copyrightable, because there's no reason why it shouldn't be. That's not "defending" it, it's just stating a plain fact. Also, I don't personally use AI much myself, I've used Chat GTP a few times. I personally don't like the current state of the output, I just know that it will get better. Why do you feel that you can't win the argument without taking it personally?
    1
  5649.  @ttt5205  You have provided no argument, beyond "it would make artists feel sad." A lot of things make people feel sad, but that doesn't mean that holding up progress is worth doing.
    1
  5650.  @ttt5205  As I said, you can present no arguments beyond "AI would make artists feel bad." None of those are actual arguments against AI or copyright of AI, they are just complaints about how you don't like it.
    1
  5651.  @ttt5205  You keep repeating that YOU think certain things are legitimate concerns, without presenting any credible case as to why they would be credible concerns. The "litigation" thing is not an issue, because an AI "character mill" pumping out millions of images cannot credibly copyright every possible combination of character designs or something. That's not how copyright works. I don't see any novel form of litigation that could arise from AI artwork. And you use your ignorance as a defense all the time, even if you don't realize it.
    1
  5652.  @ttt5205  AI can indeed create derivative works, just like humans can, and do. This is nothing novel. AI is actually better equipped to identify and correct derivative works than human artists are. You can't use these to "falsely accuse" someone of copyright violation, any more than you could do with hand drawn art, and people who made a habit of making such false claims would get in significant trouble. There are Youtube channels devoted to tracking pre-AI frivolous copyright claims, and the trouble people eventually got into by making a habit of it. AI changes nothing about this, aside from perhaps making things better. AI can indeed produce art at a faster rate, but the court systems only move so far, and we don't yet have AI lawyers, so the number of cases that could be brought remains about the same.
    1
  5653. Sad.
    1
  5654. They showed up and said what they were paid to say, nothing particularly "brave" about it. They'd already had their security clearances revoked before any of this happened.
    1
  5655. I mean, it's going to continue so long as there is Hamas. If people want it to end soon, then make there be no Hamas to fight, and then they can stop.
    1
  5656.  @quyenvong5334  That's not what happened to Trump at ABC though. Why would you think that's what happened?
    1
  5657.  @userjoe4321  How many times has Trump done an interview off Fox lately?
    1
  5658.  @userjoe4321  I asked about interviews. Trump's done a ton of interviews with his friends on Fox, where they try and lead him away from saying anything senile and still fail, but he hasn't done an actual interview with another network in ages.
    1
  5659.  @userjoe4321  I was talking recently, like during the same time that Harris has been running. She has been as clear about her policies and what she brings to the table as Trump has, the only difference being that hers would make America great again, while his would destroy it.
    1
  5660.  @userjoe4321  You do understand that "border czar" is entirely a term made up by the faux news, right? Her actual role was to go to southern countries and negotiate ways that they could keep more of their people back home, and she was successful at that. They do tell you that on Faux News, right? Right?
    1
  5661.  @userjoe4321  You do understand that "border czar" is entirely a term made up by the faux news, right? Her actual role was to go to southern countries and negotiate ways that they could keep more of their people back home, and she was successful at that. They do tell you that on faux news, right? Right?
    1
  5662.  @userjoe4321  You do understand that "border czar" is entirely a term made up by the right news, right? Her actual role was to go to southern countries and negotiate ways that they could keep more of their people back home, and she was successful at that. They do tell you that on right news, right? Right?
    1
  5663.  @userjoe4321  You do understand that "border czar" is entirely a term made up by the fake news, right? Her actual role was to go to southern countries and negotiate ways that they could keep more of their people back home, and she was successful at that. They do tell you that on fake news, right? Right?
    1
  5664.  @userjoe4321  You do understand that "border czar" is entirely a term made up by the right, right? Her actual role was to go to southern countries and negotiate ways that they could keep more of their people back home, and she was successful at that. They do tell you that on right, right? Right?
    1
  5665.  @userjoe4321  You do understand that "border czar" is entirely a term invented by the right news, right? Her actual role was to go to southern countries and negotiate ways that they could keep more of their people back home, and she was successful at that. They do tell you that on right news, right? Right?
    1
  5666.  @userjoe4321  Some of them. That's why migrants from those countries declined over the last few years. Unfortunately, more and more people will keep coming, we just have to figure out how to incorporate them better than we have been. Either that, or invest a LOT more into improving living conditions in the global south.
    1
  5667.  @userjoe4321  The Biden policies aren't that much different than Trump's, aside from taking out the intentional cruelty parts. And again, Kamala is not responsible for managing the border. That is a role that the right-leaning press assigned to her.
    1
  5668.  @userjoe4321  The current policies aren't that much different than Trump's, aside from taking out the intentional cruelty parts. And again, Harris is not responsible for managing the border. That is a role that the right-leaning press assigned to her.
    1
  5669.  @userjoe4321  The current policies aren't that much different than the previous ones, aside from taking out the intentional cruelty parts. And again, Harris is not responsible for managing the border. That is a role that the imagination-based side of the press assigned to her.
    1
  5670.  @userjoe4321  What was the source of that quote? Because the actual White House transcripts of that announcement are available if you look it up, and he never claimed that Harris was in charge of the border itself, he said that she was being sent to talk to our southern neighbors to discuss with them ways to reduce the number of people leaving their countries. Which she did, and did successfully, since migration from those countries has reduced over the past few years. She was never given responsibility for the border itself or for overall immigration policies, that is the role of DHS.
    1
  5671.  @JMAC479  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  5672.  @JMAC479  No, again, I lack the derangement that would cause someone to think Trump is worthy of praise. I wish them peace with their delusions.
    1
  5673.  @JMAC479  Again, not maga. You have some reading comprehension issues.
    1
  5674.  @JMAC479  But maga continued to cause those problems. Who else is to blame for the things they do?
    1
  5675. He does have a tendency to only nominate sex pests.
    1
  5676.  @TommyD1213  Yeah, it's silly. Just because they won the election, they think it's an open market for predators.
    1
  5677.  @jemccauley  So long as the Senate allows a recess, which they may not.
    1
  5678.  @NathanFrenchAttorney  Republicans: "We need to stop the groomers." Demoracts: "Ok, let's do that, let's hold them accountable for their actions." Republicans: "No, not like that..."
    1
  5679.  @KingZNIN  Not all protest is pointless. Not all protest has a point. Each case is individual.
    1
  5680.  @ExcessInModeration  I never claimed to. Drugs are for fools. Don't be a fool, don't do drugs.
    1
  5681.  @WTF_BBQ  Inflation is going down. It peaked. Also, what war?
    1
  5682.  @jasonburris334  The border is more secure now than it ever has been. If you ever thought the border was more secure before, it's only because you weren't paying attention. Cartels do not slip across the border at the checkpoints that migrants use, they smuggle goods through official ports of entry.
    1
  5683.  @WTF_BBQ  Because it only peaked a month or two ago. It's obviously higher than it was before the covid price spikes, prices are higher all over the world right now. But they will be coming down over the next year or so. It could be a lot worse, most countries had MUCH worse inflation than the US, but thanks to liberal policies we managed to keep it down. The UK conservatives left them with a 14% inflation rate and $7 gas! Prices are unlikely to ever drop to quite what their previous value was, economists view deflation as being even worse than inflation, so it's more that they will level off, and wages will increase to compensate. It will reach the point that your paycheck will be able to afford you the same items that you used to get.
    1
  5684.  @WTF_BBQ  Good, then the Democrats are the party to go with, because the Republicans never accomplish anything of value, while the Democrats get __ done.
    1
  5685.  @WTF_BBQ  It's more what economists are saying. Economics Explained just did a pretty good video on it. I mean, it's impossible to predict the future, and things might change, but the TL;DR is that the global inflation was caused by supply chain disruptions caused by covid, which made supply low relative to demand, so people jacked up prices, and now the supply has basically sorted itself out, but of course if people are willing to pay more for something, why not charge them more for it, that's just capitalism, so businesses kept their prices higher than they needed to be and just racked up record profits. But since the underlying issues are gone and the Fed have been raising interest rates, they are unlikely to continue to rise.
    1
  5686.  @WTF_BBQ  The "two sides of a coin" story is invented by the bad actors to disengage people from the process. It's never been true. There are good and bad sides here, and if you don't support the good side then you're supporting the bad. I'm not saying Democrats are perfect, nobody's perfect, and they will make mistakes, but they are at least trying to do the right thing, which is more than can be said for Republicans. Supporting Democrats is the best way you can support your family (at least in terms of politics). For example, over 2021 Democrats ended child poverty using provisions in the ARP, and that would have continued into 2022 and beyond if not for Republican obstructionism. As for the migrants, immigrants ADD more to the US economy and to the federal budget than they take, so long as they are allowed to work and pay their taxes legally.
    1
  5687.  @darknesswithin2136  It was going up, but over the last few months it's been stabilizing and starting to come down. The economy is complicated, it won't fix itself over night, but it's getting on the right track. In any case, we can all agree that things would be MUCH worse if we'd had Republicans in charge over the past two years.
    1
  5688.  @darknesswithin2136  Things got bad because of the global inflation caused by covid. That had nothing to do with who the US president was at the time. What the US president DID do was keep that inflation LOWER in the US than in most countries, and help our people to get through it BETTER than in those countries. If we'd had conservative leaders like in the UK, we'd have 14% inflation like they do, and $7 gas.
    1
  5689. This is the Republican House, they don't actually do work for the American people, they just do whatever makes for good Faux News headlines. If people actually wanted Congress to get stuff done, they should have elected more Democrats.
    1
  5690.  @ralphholiman7401  We had a balanced budget coming out of the Clinton administration, but Bush passed tax cuts that blew that up completely. Obama drew down the deficit significantly during his time in office, but Trump blew it up again with his own tax cut for billionaires. The lesson to all of this is that if a balanced budget matters to you, you will ONLY get it with Democrats in charge. I hope you vote blue next time. There's nothing inherently "dishonest" about having a deficit though, any more than it is to take out a home mortgage, or a car loan, or a student loan. If you are taking on debt to make things better for people, that is an honest and worthwhile investment in the future. It's only a bad thing when that money is wasted, like with the Bush and Trump tax cuts.
    1
  5691.  @GardenisLife  The US has a GDP of 23 trillion. The US carrying 30 trillion in debt is no bigger a deal than a normal person who makes $50K a year holding a combined home mortgage and car payment of $65K, or a house making $100K having a total debt of $130K. How many US homes do you believe fall into that category? And the US is even safer than that, given that the US has many more tools to ignore debt obligations than the average person. It is not a problem. It was never a problem.
    1
  5692. That would take a constitutional amendment. They can't even get the Equal Rights Amendment passed these days.
    1
  5693. Yeah, so long as you pay the cover.
    1
  5694. The latter. It would be the latter.
    1
  5695.  @ghernandez2263  But myocarditus was still insignificantly small and caused no lasting harm to anyone. It was also commonly occurring in people who caught the virus naturally without being vaccinated. So the lesson there is, myocarditus was NEVER a reason to avoid getting vaccinated, for anyone. Ever.
    1
  5696.  @jeffhaddix9508  Unfortunately, sometimes even reasonably intelligent and well informed people, as they get older, can lose touch with reality and drift off into cuckoo land. This is such a case.
    1
  5697. Context is everything, and always has been.
    1
  5698. In what context? I don't think there was anything "safe" about this story, and the effectiveness of the bushmaster is hardly a positive factor.
    1
  5699. The "failures" are due to underfunding. The only solution to that is to solve the funding issues. It's impossible to solve the problems without first solving the funding issues, which is exactly how the GOP likes it, because they can control their minions via fear.
    1
  5700.  @jamesmiller7457  And they need record amounts of money to solve record problems. Not to mention that they have been consistently underfunded for decades now, so they have fallen further and further behind the amount that they would need to operate efficiently. Not to mention the previous administration squandering money on wasteful projects like ineffective border walls. All I can say is, you can't complain about the border unless you're actually willing to solve it.
    1
  5701. Why is it that conservatives don't know what a woman is? I mean, I can guess, "lack of experience" seems most likely, but it sure is odd.
    1
  5702.  @nocturnallust4145  Republicans cast more illegal votes in that election than Democracts did, it just wasn't enough to overcome the legitimate votes.
    1
  5703. That would be a miscarriage of justice though. This is not a Trump judge, this is a real judge.
    1
  5704.  @ThePetersondean  It wasn't, but it kinda is now that Trump was re-elected. He ran on making it one.
    1
  5705.  @embramorgan6720  I didn't see any of the questions you asked, how could I answer them?
    1
  5706. That's basically a prerequisite for being in the Trump administration.
    1
  5707. Let me guess, conservative? They tend to have the most trouble with that question.
    1
  5708.  @jonjohnson3865  It's sad that you don't even know what a woman is.
    1
  5709. Which law?
    1
  5710. Duh. Only lawyers can speak during closing arguments. If Trump wanted to speak, it would need to be during the evidence phase.
    1
  5711. Republicans, perhaps, but no Democrats currently serving or on the ballot committed insurrection.
    1
  5712.  @trinhbrule5439  The executive branch has fairly broad discretion as to how to enforce most laws. Of course, abusing this power can get them in trouble.
    1
  5713. That was determined to be illegal, so he can't. The new border bill would lead to a more productive solution to the problem, but Republicans blocked it because thyeb prefer to run on chaos than on solutions.
    1
  5714.  @L-Train0ne  Trump was far from the lowest immigrants. They were higher in 2019 than at any point in Obama's administration.
    1
  5715.  @L-Train0ne  Except that there were more border crossings in 2019 than at any point in the previous administration. . .
    1
  5716. ​ @jimconard9341  I was just pointing out that the Trump administration was not particularly great at handling the border. They were just a pretty ordinary example of "more of the same," aside from the concentration camps, of course. The issues at the border have little to do with who is President, and more to do with conditions in their home countries over time.
    1
  5717. Lol, no. None of that is true. Where do you even get this nonsense?
    1
  5718. I dislike Trump, and think that he should be removed from the ballot due to his participation in insurrection, but I do think that your version would be too open to abuse. If ONLY an accusation is needed to keep someone off the ballot then it would be all too easy for a Trump-style DoJ to just indict their opponents at will. Just because the Biden case is behaving responsibly does not mean that all administrations would. It is important to remember though that the terms of the 14th at no point require any sort of criminal conviction, only a determination that oaths of office were violated, which could be applied by a judge if necessary.
    1
  5719. Maglev trains and hyperloop have nothing to do with each other. Hyperloop is a gimmick, but maglev trains actually work. In theory, at least. You don't need to put them into a tube. I do think that high speed trains will be the future of travel though, because there doesn't seem to be a good way to make high speed planes that doesn't involve burning fossil fuels, but trains certainly can be powered by green sources. The tubes are pointless though.
    1
  5720. Raising the debt ceiling is not about authorizing additional debt, it's about paying for the bills we already have. If you think the government is spending too much, the debt ceiling is not the place to have that fight, that would be in the budgeting process.
    1
  5721.  @animatedadventures7927  No, the lockdowns were good, they just handled them poorly. People who needed medical treatment should have gotten that treatment even during lockdowns. They should have gotten ahold of the better vaccines that western countries had, rather than stubbornly sticking to their own. They should have ensured that everyone had plenty of food and other necessities, there are ways to handle this stuff a lot better than they did, but the idea was a sound one. Lockdowns worked great for Australia, because they did them right.
    1
  5722.  @animatedadventures7927  Then more people die. I would prefer fewer people die, but that's just me.
    1
  5723.  @animatedadventures7927  Again, the lockdowns do work if they are well managed, like Australia's. They kept a lockdown policy in place until they had over a 90% vaccination rate with the effective vaccines, and then opened up. The result is that for a country with a population equivalent to the state of Texas, they ended up with around 10% of the total covid deaths that Texas did (almost all of which were after opening up, of course). Nothing can prevent all death, obviously, but reasonable strategies can massively REDUCE the deaths, and isn't that something worth chasing? Also, "gain of function" has no relevance to this story.
    1
  5724.  @animatedadventures7927  That was debunked nonsense. You've fallen for a real whopper there. That sort of casts your other comments into more doubt.
    1
  5725. But then why would those countries need to have people in them?
    1
  5726. How does people wearing masks have anything to do with the midterms? You do know that you're allowed to vote Republican, even while wearing a mask, right?
    1
  5727.  @YUMLiberalTears  That doesn't answer the question. Do you not know either?
    1
  5728.  @YUMLiberalTears  That still doesn't answer the question. How does people wearing masks have anything to do with the midterms?
    1
  5729. Unlikely, they are too common and low risk. No point monitoring them.
    1
  5730. No she didn't. Why do you think that?
    1
  5731.  @markwred  IRS agents only go after people who cheat on their taxes. Do you cheat on your taxes?
    1
  5732.  @markwred  IRS go after people who cheat on their taxes. "Everyone" has nothing to worry about.
    1
  5733. And they should believe the FBI over these randos. Why shouldn't they? Because you would rather believe these guys? That is not how facts work.
    1
  5734. And yet people live in the South.
    1
  5735.  @thatamerican3187  I know that's what you've been fed by the Faux News, but it's important to understand that that is not true. The bill is full of important things for growing the economy and making it work better for people like yourself. As for why Chucky doesn't read off each thing and have it voted on individually, 1. a Republican filibuster would prevent it, and 2. that would be incredibly inefficient. Passing the bill as a single piece is far simpler.
    1
  5736.  @thatamerican3187  You believe that to be true because that's what you've been fed by the Faux News, but that doesn't make it true. You need to do better research.
    1
  5737.  @thatamerican3187  I'm basing my position on the stated goals of the Democrats writing the bill, obviously the bill is not fully written out at the moment because they are negotiating something that they can actually pass. I have no more reason than you do to assume there would be anything objectionable in the bill, but House and Senate members will be able to read it before voting on it, and the public will also be able to read the bill in full once it is completed. This is how legislation typically occurs.
    1
  5738.  @thatamerican3187  But it wasn't voted on on Thursday, which implies that all negotiations are NOT over, you see? Anyone paying attention would know that negotiations are constant, because NONE of the Republicans are doing anything useful, and two of the Democratic senators that are absolutely necessary for passage have conflicting positions on various aspects that they do and do not want to see in the bill (neither are working in the interests of the American people or their states, but they are at least more productive than any of the Republicans). As for the portions you point out, what are your objections to them? They sound like a road usage fee pilot program, which will likely be necessary in the near future. What objection could you have for that?
    1
  5739.  @thatamerican3187  Democracy is what happens at the ballot box, not what happens once the election is over. The things that happen within the halls of Congress are called "legislating," and this is how legislating works. I have no idea what point you're trying to make with those quotes, they don't seem to add up to any sort of coherent theme, they are just "things some people have said at once point." Also, you still haven't explained what your problem is with sec 13001.
    1
  5740.  @thatamerican3187  Democracy is the thing that happens at the ballot box. You know, the part where you go in and vote for the people who are going to represent you in various roles? Then, once the election is over, those people chosen go out and do whatever job they were hired to do, in this case, legislating. If they do a job you approve of, then you vote for them again the next time around. If they don't, then you vote for some other guy. Come on, this is basic high school civics class stuff. And you still haven't explained your issue with section 13001. You were the one who brought it up. Why?
    1
  5741.  @thatamerican3187  What nonsense are you talking about now? I have no idea what those words are supposed to mean in that order.
    1
  5742.  @thatamerican3187  Again, you aren't making sense. Slow down, form a coherent thought, try again. And also, you still haven't explained what your problem is with section 13001. Why did YOU bring it up in the first place if YOU don't know why?
    1
  5743.  @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.
    1
  5744.  @thatamerican3187  So you believe that roads just magically create and repair themselves. Ok, nice fairytale you've got there.
    1
  5745.  @thatamerican3187  So you don't have any substantive arguments and concede the debate. GG.
    1
  5746.  @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.
    1
  5747. Because there's no actual evidence of any of this, just completely nonsense claims made by unreliable sources.
    1
  5748. and yet Fox News still has a Youtube channel. . .
    1
  5749. There's people claiming to be Haitians on social media.
    1
  5750.  @ricardogens9834  Yes, it is "so called" by the organizers. Inaccurate, but "so called." And no, your "analogy" was offensive for even making it. You are presenting yourself as a lesser person for doing so.
    1
  5751.  @ricardogens9834  That means very little, considering the speaker.
    1
  5752.  @ricardogens9834  Yes, it suits you.
    1
  5753.  @logiwogi8938  Nope, that wouldn't apply either. He's following the legal letter of their decision, one could argue that he's going around the spirit of it, but not for personal gain or power.
    1
  5754.  @Doomzdayxx  How about we go with "a sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government." Tell me how the legal representative of the US government is capable of achieving such a coup? Particularly if we're talking about the Supreme Court, who is not the Head of State at all.
    1
  5755.  @logiwogi8938  Their legal opinion was that it was fine to do this. Then Kavenaugh, in agreeing with that opinion, said "but if it wasn't ending in a few weeks than I would have voted against it." So clearly he is making the point that he doesn't think it should be extended, but legally his supporting opinion does not actually carry any legal weight, the decision of the court, the part that carries any weight, is that it can continue. Now realistically, someone will sue over this or something and it will go back to the Supreme Court and then they will likely have a 5-4 decision against the extension, and then it will get shut down, but until then it is better for America that people are given time to collect their owed rent relief payments and pay off their rents, rather than get evicted and be homeless. And who knows, Kavenaugh might even be ok with this, since his assumption at the time that he made his ruling was that enough people would get their relief payments to no longer make the moratorium necessary, but it has turned out that the payments are taking longer than expected, so an extension might be in line with even his opinion on the matter.
    1
  5756.  @aquilamflammeus5569  Nobody benefits from strengthened ties to China.
    1
  5757. It's like those Fisher Price toy car dashboards. Kids just like having knobs that click and buttons that tap, and horns to honk.
    1
  5758.  @illzalith8301  Fun fact, it doesn't, and if it tried to, that would be hypocrisy.
    1
  5759.  @sawsanmohammed1513  But the point is that "revenge against the father" is inherently a bad thing, the "Ham" example. There is no justification for taking vengeance out on people where both sides are 5+ generations removed from the actual crime.
    1
  5760. Yeah! I mean, Trump wasn't able to GET anything out of them, and both countries got worse for America's interests during the Trump administration, and when they were in a room together Trump hopelessly fawned over both of them, but he could at least honor them with a Presidential visit, which is more than Biden has done!
    1
  5761. The Us also currently has a coalition government, consisting of the Democrats, and Joe Manchin.
    1
  5762. The majority of Americans voted for his opponent.
    1
  5763. Space is just "The Sea." Or, depending on where you live, "The Desert," or "the Forest."
    1
  5764. She has a more conservative voting record than most Republicans. It's the Trump supporters that are RINOs.
    1
  5765.  @terrygain1343  Yeah, Republicans be crazy, uh? Nobody can survive a Republican primary who deserves to hold public office.
    1
  5766.  @terrygain1343  One election, he lost the second one by several states and several million votes. He even lost the popular vote in the first election, so he's never actually be elected to anything by a majority of voters. Now sure, he has the majority of Republicans behind him, but that's not saying much. Also, Trump was never falsely accused of Russian collusion, he was only accused of collusion that his campaign actually committed. But that aside, I agree with you, it is political suicide for her to speak the truth in the party of lies.
    1
  5767. You guys have to understand, Republicans don't prosecute people for crimes, they LIKE criminals. They only want to prosecute people for believing differently than they do, like "being LGBT" or "wanting equal treatment under the law."
    1
  5768. Why not both?
    1
  5769.  @conorkoesterman6769 I doubt they will charge an added tax on electricity, at least not one balanced to make up for the current gas tax. I think it's just an oversimplification, "oh, they tax gas now, and electricity is like the gas on an EV, so they will charge the electricity." There are better ways. The whole point is to have people pay a fair amount for the amount of wear they cause to the road surfaces, and since almost all gasoline pumped to consumers is used for that, taxing the gas is a fairly efficient thing to do. But tons of electricity is used for non-car things, and charging everyone higher electricity prices makes no sense. I think that if they did tax electricity," it would be more directly at commercial fast chargers, and maybe a separate meter on home EV charging docks that would record how much juice went directly into the EV, rather than into the house. You could presumably cheat this, as you can cheat most things, but it would probably be a hassle, and a small enough tax to not bother. The alternative is to not tax the power at all, but to instead tax things like mileage. I mean, on a modern gas car they check the mileage every few years at an emissions test, just do the same thing with EVs, you report your mileage annually, and they charge you based on that.
    1
  5770.  @tensevo  Yup, the fossil fuel lobby plays hardball like that. They need to keep people addicted.
    1
  5771. Don't worry, just make sure to vote Democratic in the mid-terms and they won't be able to mess up anything.
    1
  5772. Biden will blame himself for things he's done. This is not one of those.
    1
  5773. Hating an individual for his own actions is different than having an entire race of people for the actions of a few of them. Try to figure out why.
    1
  5774. Tax shelters shoukl be made non-viable. If a company operates in the US, then they should be required to pay at minimum the US tax rates, regardless of where they incorporate. If the US has a 35% rate, and another country has a 12.5% rate, then they should be required to pay the US a 22.5% rate if they want to continue operating here. And maybe a 1-2% extra on top of that, just to give them incentive to incorporate in the US and only pay 35%, instead of incorporating elsewhere and having to pay 36%.
    1
  5775. It's not a problem for anyone who doesn't want to do a genocide.
    1
  5776. Why are you accusing Bud Light customers of being the sorts of bigots that would have been bothered by this ad campaign?
    1
  5777.  @ianhomerpura8937  Unionizing government employees is only important when people keep electing Republicans into positions of power. The simple solution to that is to stop electing Republicans into positions of power.
    1
  5778.  @dsmkrotj4990  Better than "less government oversight" does, at least. Government oversight is what allows unions to exist at all.
    1
  5779.  @dsmkrotj4990  Like I said, government isn't perfect, but it's still the best hope we've got. The corporations are even worse.
    1
  5780. No, it is not. It's the other things going on that are antisemitism.
    1
  5781. Ukraine has been open to negotiations from the start, it has always been Russia that refused to negotiate.
    1
  5782. Trump does not care about the American people, he only cares about power.
    1
  5783. Why are you triggered?
    1
  5784.  @dadananda  And yet, 1+2=2 was true the entire time, and anyone who claimed it was was right, and anyone who claimed it wasn't was wrong. You can always create more evidence to support a position, but that doesn't mean that you should ignore the obvious conclusions until more evidence comes along.
    1
  5785.  @raydrexler5868  This is my point.
    1
  5786.  @sitnamkrad  I will point out to you that the United States has some of the strongest freedom of speech protections in the world, and even those ONLY extend to what the government can do about speech. There is ZERO protection against what Youtube can do to your speech. They can censor your posts however they see fit, and there's absolutely no legal remedy to that. Your only recourse is to convince them that it would be in their monetary best interests not to.
    1
  5787.  @sitnamkrad  Nope, nobody is preventing any evidence. NOBODY is advocating any censorship that would in any way impact the scientific process. The only censorship being discussed is over actual misinformation (ie NOT evidence of factual things) in the public sphere, where it is irrelevant to science.
    1
  5788.  @sitnamkrad  Again, "evidence censored on Youtube" is not relevant to anything. Science does not take o,ace on Youtube, they can censor whatever they like and the actual science will be fine. Once the science has produced actual outcomes, then those can end up on Youtube, without needing to fight for attention with misinformation. Also, the science does not get involved in cost/benefits analysis, the science only presents the costs and the benefits, and then people can argue as much as they like about whether it is worth it.
    1
  5789.  @sitnamkrad  No, meaningful science does not take place everywhere. No Youtube comment section has solved or even contributed to any scientific topic. Now people on Youtube educating the public does provide a valuable service, but ONLY if their information is ACCURATE. One person spreading misinformation can cause more harm than ten people spreading facts could offset. This is why it's important to cut misinformation. "They will not be allowed to say to the public "hey, your government is planning X, Y and Z, if you don't like this, you may want to reconsider how you vote". " NOBODY is suggesting that this should happen. Nobody. The ONLY case in which such a post might be censored is if the government was NOT "planning X, Y, or Z," and in which case, we would want that to be corrected.
    1
  5790.  @sitnamkrad  Science does not take place in the Youtube comment section. No meaningful science has ever occurred there. Science communicators have value, but ONLY if their content is accurate. If it contains misinformation, then it causes more harm than good, so correcting misinformation is vital.
    1
  5791.  @sitnamkrad  Also, NOBODY is in favor of preventing anyone from saying that "your government is planning X, Y and Z, if you don't like this, you may want to reconsider how you vote," UNLESS it is not true that the government is planning X, Y, or Z, in which case, there would be no practical benefit to anyone saying that, because at best it would be misleading.
    1
  5792.  @sitnamkrad  We're past that phase though. The old way of doing things no longer applies, so comparisons to the days of leeches are completely irrelevant to how things are done today. Also, nobody is saying that valid science cannot challenge valid science, just that people should not claim to have valid science in the court of public opinion before first finding agreement among experts in the field. Science was never changed for the better by convincing the public of something, it was changed by convincing the scientists.
    1
  5793.  @sitnamkrad  As to your second point, nuclear power is not NECESSARY to get off of fossil fuels, although it would certainly be beneficial. The science on that is in complete agreement, there are no dissenting scientific viewpoints on the matter. There are, of course, ideological viewpoints that consider the known costs of nuclear to not be justified by the benefits, and that is an opinion, there is no disagreement on the science though. Likewise with "what to give up," that is a matter of opinion too, not science. The science is in agreement, "if you do X, then Y will result." It is up to human opinion which Xs they are willing to do in order to achieve the result they want, but that has nothing to do with science. It would only be misinformation if they claimed that X would not produce Y because they would rather not do X. They are free to not want to do X, so long as they are honest about Y.
    1
  5794.  @sitnamkrad  Yes, posts being removed is annoying, happens to me too. If it helps, such things are more often because the person who posted the video made a filter than because youtube did.
    1
  5795.  @oljaycan7061  And also Alexei Navalny.
    1
  5796. You want him to read the report to you because you can't do it yourself?
    1
  5797. Probably because it's not relevant. Remember, that's just something Hunter said, which has been his pattern, implying access to his father that he did not actually have, for his own profit. Nobody voted for Hunter though.
    1
  5798. @robertstallard7836 Yeah, but like, if they don't know, they don't need to know.
    1
  5799. Yup, Republicans can't get over their TDS, they just can't pull their lips loose from him.
    1
  5800. One question I have is, some say that in theory there should be just as much anti-matter as matter in the universe, and so it's weird that it seems that we have all this matter and no clear anti-matter. My question is, what does anti-matter look like, and how do we know that what we're seeing IS matter, and not anti-matter? With the gaps between galaxies and superclusters, is it possible that some of them are entirely anti-matter, and we just don't notice because they are a long distance from the other galaxies that are matter? Would an anti-matter star look different than a matter star at a distance?
    1
  5801.  @thomabow8949  I'm just wondering what large scale amounts of anti-matter would look like from a distance, like how would we know that what we see through a telescope is NOT all anti-matter? My assumption was that a ball of anti-hydrogen would look like a ball of hydrogen, so a sun made entirely of anti-particles would look like a sun made of normal matter, and the only difference would be that they would react poorly to meeting. If so, then it could be possible for half the galaxies we see are almost entirely anti-matter, with no significant amounts of matter around them to react against them, just as we believe our own galaxy is almost entirely matter.
    1
  5802. At no point did the US cause any of this. Russia invaded, that was 100% their own doing.
    1
  5803. @Abe Tsenoh Independents make up a relatively small portion of the voting electorate. It's not about voting for someone who is exactly like you, because everyone is different and if you got in someone exactly like you, then millions of other people wouldn't be getting someone exactly like them. The point with representative democracy is to elect people most likely to vote in your best interests, and whoever you happen to be, the answer to that would be the Democrats.
    1
  5804. @Abe Tsenoh People who don't vote don't count. You've got to step onto the field to be relevant. It's ok that you don't support Trump or Biden, but the majority of Americans support one of the two. That's kind of my point, someone needs to fill these roles, and if you got someone who supported the policies you value, then they would not be supporting the policies that more Americans value. People who look at democracy and see that they aren't getting their own way 100% of the time and feel like that means it's broken don't understand that this is democracy working as it should. "I get what I want" is a policy that works perfectly well only for population sizes of no more than 1.
    1
  5805. @Abe Tsenoh Ok, so find one and run him. If he's as popular as you seem to believe, he would win. The problem is, if 60% the country likes one policy, but half those people disagree vehemently with the other half about some other policy, then half of those people won't vote for a candidate with any stance at all on that second issue, which leaves that candidate with only 30% of the vote.
    1
  5806. @Abe Tsenoh " Support for universal healthcare has above 80% approval, a majority even among republicans." Right, but a large chunk of those people are Republicans, and wouldn't vote for a Democrat who was promising to actually get Universal Healthcare done, and so they'll never have it. Until you can convince them to vote for a Democrat, their tacit approval of universal healthcare is completely toothless. Also, Biden lost Florida because Cuban Americans though he was "too socialist," even though he wasn't actually all that socialist. America has a definite anti-socialism bias that runs strong until the Cold War generation dies off. Until then, just vote for Democrats to keep moving that needle forward as fast it reasonably can in a divided country. "Candidates like Andrew Yang or Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard or Mike Gravel, can't garner widespread support despite their popular policy positions because of the DNC/RNC, " Nah, they just aren't that popular. They all got to the debates, they all had plenty of time to make their case to the American people, the American people did not want them. If any of them had actually gotten the nomination, they would have cost to Trump by about 55/40. Now, it's fair to argue that the two-party system isn't great, but it's not really the fault of either of those parties, it's the fault of the electoral system itself. First past the post systems make two parties almost inevitable. It won't be until after we have some sort of ranked choice voting system that a third party candidate would be even remotely viable, and even then there would still likely be two parties that win most of the time. "Even if a candidate with solid policies does build a massive grassroots campaign like Sanders did, they'll just toss the vote via black box voting machines like they did in the 2020 primaries, " Lol, ok, now you've lost all your credibility by going into SCP territory.
    1
  5807. @Abe Tsenoh Exit polls are an inexact measurement,. They only catch a portion of the people voting in certain areas, not every voter in every area. This is why we have actual polls. If the exit polls and the actual polls to not match up, that is a flaw in the exit polls, not the actual polls.
    1
  5808. "You know those centuries of progress we've made as a society? . . well let's just 'revisit' that. . ."
    1
  5809.  @bird4816  Depends on the specific implementation of it. The principle is a sound one, that there should be mechanisms to offset systemic bias and present a chance of fair outcomes, even in cases where the deck has been stacked against people for most of their life.
    1
  5810.  @bird4816  Well if you say so, how could anyone argue with such a well reasoned argument?
    1
  5811.  @bird4816  Everyone agrees that skin color should not be a factor, but anyone looking at the situation honestly would be able to say that skin color often has been a factor in where people end up, and it would not be "racist" to try and correct for that injustice. I mean, if you have eight red balls and eight blue balls, and you want to narrow that down to eight balls in total, ideally four of each, and the first sorter removes three of the red balls and only one of the blue, leaving twelve left, then what should the next person do? The first person clearly discriminated in his selection, but if the second sorter was more "fair" and only pulled out two of each color, then the unfair actions of the first sorter would be locked in, leaving the unfair result of three red and five blue. If, on the other hand, the second person sought to correct for that imbalance, then his own actions would also be discriminatory, but it would result in the more fair outcome of four and four. Wouldn't that be preferable? Assuming that you want fairness, at least?
    1
  5812.  @bird4816  Exactly. Those who work hard and show merit should be rewarded, and that's exactly what affirmative action policies do. It makes sure that people who show effort are rewarded, even if where they started from was well behind their peers, while reducing the odds that people who don't show hard work and merit get rewarded just because they started out well ahead of their peers.
    1
  5813.  @bird4816  That's not actually how it works though.
    1
  5814. @confused algorithm Everyone in the history of time thought the end of the world was right around the corner, and yet thousands of years later, it just keeps going. You aren't special.
    1
  5815.  @Syllaren  Yeah, but we'll manage. Arthur Isaac does some fun videos on futurist topics, and one be brought up was the idea of the post-apocalypse where everyone devolves to an earlier stage of human development, and he made a compelling case that this wouldn't really last, because humans are smart, and there are enough humans that know how things work that so long as enough survived to carry on the species, most likely they would be able to rebuild a modern society within generations at most. A series called "Doctor Stone" explores a similar premise, a group of modern humans reverted to stone age technology, and having to rebuild it all from scratch.
    1
  5816.  @Sunrvester  Yup, all the power, none of the responsibility.
    1
  5817.  @celestinejacobs2270  That's not how post filtering works. It's automated and tends to hit everyone from time to time. Your viewpoints aren't particularly special.
    1
  5818.  @FuzzBucket69  Less people would die. The US has a murder rate four times higher than any other first world country, because of all the guns.
    1
  5819.  @jcpenny3606  You could always just remove the guns. I mean, other countries have schools, malls, places of worships, and anywhere where people crowds up, but they don't have mass shooters, because they don't have the guns for it.
    1
  5820.  @spacemanspliff7983  Those countries have no fewer freedoms, they just have less murders.
    1
  5821.  @Mr_Swigward  No they don't.
    1
  5822.  @jcpenny3606  But guns make things MUCH easier to carry out. I mean, you can run from a knife. Bombs are complicated, and a lot of wannabe bombers just end up blowing themselves up. I mean, in the countries where they don't have as many guns, it's not like they have way more bombings to make up for it, they just have less dead people, period. Again, it's not like other countries have 1/4 the gun murders but 4x as many "other murders" than the US, they have exactly the same "other murders" as the US, just far less of the gun murders, so that the TOTAL amount killed is 1/4 as many. And I mean, just as an example of the difference it makes, on the same day that the Sandy Hook shooter killed 27 people, a guy in China went on a knifing rampage in a crowded area, and he injured 27 people. Injured, there were ZERO deaths. You can't prevent 100% of crimes or even murders, but you can massively reduce them, and isn't that worth doing?
    1
  5823.  @Mr_Swigward  No they don't, look it up. . . probably from better sources than you have been using so far.
    1
  5824.  @Mr_Swigward  Well now you're talking about hate speech, that's something different than "opinions posted online." Do you believe that hate speech is more important than the lives of thousands of people per year? Personally, I would be fine doing without it.
    1
  5825.  @Mr_Swigward  "Hate speech is a term applied to hate speech. It's generally not even close. If there's something that was determined by a court of law to be hate speech, that you don't think should really count as hate speech, I think it's far more likely that your standards are poor than that theirs are. And no, fascists love hate speech, that's basically their whole deal. It's the anti-fascists that oppose hate. We're getting distracted though, the point is not hate speech or the lack therefore, it's that access to guns leads to higher murder rates, and how to prevent that. Other countries have managed to figure it out, and if the best argument against that you can come up with is "they also have less hate speech," then I don't know what to tell you.
    1
  5826.  @Mr_Swigward  No, fascists don't police people's speech, fascists beat LGBT people and minorities. If you think "fascism" means "policing speech" then you have had a very poor education. You seem like the perfect mind for tyranny. I bet you would be chanting "Make Germany Great Again" just like all the others in Nuremberg.
    1
  5827.  @JustinRawley  The FDA is not under the thumb of phrama, they just don't have many options available other than to approve or not approve various drugs. Ideally we would nationalize the phrama industry, but that would take an act of Congress, not anything that regulatory agencies could do about it.
    1
  5828.  @InquisitorBoomBoom  This is the role of government, to make sure that people are taken care of, whether they have value to the economy or not.
    1
  5829. It's not necessary. When people try to cheat, they get caught already. We don't need more methods for stopping them, because the existing methods already work.
    1
  5830.  @kevinjackson1893  Yes, Republicans are making the future a bleaker place to live in, and anyone who is not worried about that is a fool.
    1
  5831.  @kevinjackson1893  In what way do you believe it is not true?
    1
  5832.  @kevinjackson1893  But you believing that what I said was untrue is really more a problem of your ignorance than it is with anything I said. I guess you need to do some research if you actually believe that what I said was not true.
    1
  5833.  TFUSION  Are you saying that Kevin is, or that you are? It's hard to tell from your phrasing.
    1
  5834. Republican Party: "New phone, who dis?"
    1
  5835. He doesn't intend to take it back. That's his policy. In fact, if you make under $100K then you got a massive tax cut for this year.
    1
  5836. "House believes US government should not default on our debts and send the economy into a self-inflicted bottomless debt spiral that will make Greece look like Switzerland. . . Senate Republicans unconvinced."
    1
  5837.  @desireelee5390  He's been quite up front about it, including in the previous campaign and before. It's become more of a factor over the last decade, but it's been something he's been dealing with his whole life.
    1
  5838.  @gilbertsandoval1888  Hey, Chat GTP could beat any actual Republican.
    1
  5839. I doubt he cared what Harris was saying, he saw the threat to democracy with his own eyes, like most people.
    1
  5840.  @АндрейЕфимов-в8ю  Australia does ok, doesn't it? But it can't alone balance out the averages on the other countries.
    1
  5841. The actual costs of education have increased faster than the increases in funding. For example you tend to need one or more computer per student these days, whereas they used to be purely a donated thing, a dozen or two per school.
    1
  5842.  @archaicsage4803  The thing is though, he couldn't possibly have had the highest rated news program in the world, because he never had any news program. He had a talk show, and nothing on it was true, but it supported the biases of his audience. Nobody ever got broke by telling people what they wanted to hear, it's how all confidence scams work. If people wanted "truth," they would look elsewhere. What they want is to be told that what they believe IS the truth. And nobody speaking truth can do that for them.
    1
  5843. And the thousands of other Americans killed this year by US citizens.
    1
  5844. You can turn up the volume, or turn on the closed captioning if you're hard of hearing. It's ok, my dad is getting older too.
    1
  5845. Mainly because it's a sign that Musk bought the US government.
    1
  5846. I would rather have me on a camera in front of me than some other human messing with my groceries.
    1
  5847. @ Yeah, that's a fair choice. I just think a lot more people prefer self-checkout, at least among younger people, and that sentiment will only become more and more common.
    1
  5848. @ I feel the same way about stores without self-checkout, except that the nearest alternative is like 15mi away and I can't be bothered.
    1
  5849. Look, rump clearly has bills to pay. Winning elections comes with a price tag.
    1
  5850. The important thing to always keep in mind is that "UAP" does not mean "alien." It only means "something we don't know what it is." If "something" crashes, and they go to see what it is, then that is a "UAP retrieval operation." That doesn't mean that what they find is aliens, it could just be a weird civilian drone, or some foreign spy craft, or just a meteor that broke up in a strange way.
    1
  5851.  @wisdomrules8474  Joe Scarborough was in that clip, he was a Republican congressman from Florida. Also Michael Steele from Maryland, who was a former RNC head. Then there's Nicole Wallace, who ran John McCain's presidential campaign. I think there are others too, but those are the more significant ones.
    1
  5852.  @js43168 In what way would this improve their ratings?
    1
  5853.  @wisdomrules8474  Scarborough was elected by Republican to represent them in congress. Steele was the Republican nominee for governor before his party elected him to lead them. If these are "not Republicans" to you, then have you considered that your definition of "Republican" is flawed?
    1
  5854. I doubt they're going to overturn the Presidential Immunity decision any time soon. It will take some replacements for that.
    1
  5855.  @colejones6325  The change can largely be attributed to a shift in American gun culture, largely driven by the NRA. It was a push to see guns not as a tool, but as some "symbol of freedom" or whatever, and people arming themselves in a paramilitary fashion. It caused far too many guns to be purchased into the American markets, which allowed them to end up in the hands of criminals.
    1
  5856. Yeah, the same folks that say that if you trespass in this country then that alone should be enough to lock you up forever. . .
    1
  5857.  @nick4942  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  5858.  @SmokeymcJoint420  Of course children get a choice, once they become adults.
    1
  5859.  @metalgearsalad1204  If he wants to carry the baby, he can. Nobody's trying to stop him.
    1
  5860.  @fractal1133  When you talk about "100 live abortions a year," are you talking about people who went in for elective abortions, or are you talking about cases in which the mother's life was at risk and/or the fetus had no hope of surviving in the long term? I can believe that in the latter cases the fetus could survive for a few hours or so, but that's a very different thing from implying that 9 month pregnant women are just walking into facilities and going "abortion please," and the doctors go "sure."
    1
  5861.  @Blewburry  Criminals don't follow laws, but they are impacted by them whether they want to be or not. Criminals in the UK or Australia would like to have a gun just as much as one in the US, but the guns aren't available, so they don't get any, so they cause less harm. Removing the guns saves lives, which is what the land of the free is all about, securing life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. You can't do that when your face has been blown off by an AR-15.
    1
  5862.  @Inkdisc  This year's statistics are a work in progress, and hard to compare reliably to other countries that track data differently. Also, is Venezuela the country you want to compare yourself to? "At least we're better off than Venezuela?" Do you know what sort of a nightmare that country is right now? I'm comparing us to other first world countries, not to failed states. If you want to take comfort in being better than Honduras, then I don't know what you tell you, but I'm going to keep trying to bring us up to parity with our other g7 neighbors.
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  5863.  @Blewburry  Yes, but the same law that allows you to have that gun also make it possible for him to have a gun, and he is more likely to shoot you than you are to shoot him. You may feel safer owning a gun than not being allowed to own a gun, but it is a false sense of security, because the fact is that you are much less safe than if guns were illegal. Having a gun in the home makes someone MORE likely to die to gun violence, not less.
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  5864.  @joenarbaiz1640  At no point did the Founders grant citizens the right to use force against the government. The constitution specifically lays out in several players that insurrection against the government is a crime. There is NO provision anywhere in US law that is intended to allow citizens of the United States to use force against the US government. If the People disagree with their government, the place to settle that is at the ballot box.
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  5865.  @Inkdisc  I'm ONLY using the gun homicide statistics. I am not including the suicide statistics, but you are right that guns do increase the effective suicide rate as well. But again, to be clear, when I am making comparisons here, I am ONLY talking about one person killing a different person. It is in this statistic that the US falls so far behind our peers. " trinidad, mexico, the philippines, the bahamas, and panama. all considered 1st world countries like the us and all far above it in gun violence. a" Ok, so that is five countries, not ten, I assume you could not find ten that would fit a pattern you wanted to support, but no, I would strongly disagree that any of these countries would be within the top 30 countries that are "similar to the US." Mexico would likely be the closest of that bunch, but even it is a massive stretch, given their massive geographic and political challenges. I mean, Trinidad? Bahama's? You're comparing the US to tiny little islands with GPDs less than 1/10th the US? You don't believe that there are fairly significant differences between them and the US that might factor into their crime rate? I can see that you have conceded my point, but are too cowardly to say as much. That's fine. That's why gun owners need their guns, after all.
    1
  5866.  @joenarbaiz1640  Yes. Now read mine again.
    1
  5867.  @joenarbaiz1640  Then which "tyrranical government" were you referring to? Were you talking about a state government, like in North Carolina or Georgia? I'm pretty sure the founders did not approve of revolt against those either. As for foreign threats, I don't think they much made a distinction between whether those governments were tyrannical or not.
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  5868.  @Mortvent  Australia is an island the size of the united states, most of it desert. It's fairly easy to smuggle things into the country by sea. Also, most items smuggled in and out of the US do so through the ports of entry, not through the open desert. The myth of "the open border" is just Faux News propaganda designed to inflame people. Again, the US exports guns, we do not import them, and if that reversed, the imported weapons could never keep up with the current supply.
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  5869.  @Blewburry  People breaking into homes with the intention of hurting people are extremely rare. Even home invasions in general are extremely rare, but in the cases where they do occur, they mostly just want "stuff," they don't want to increase the heat on themselves by adding assault or murder charges, so if you just leave, they will not harm you. Your stuff is insured, and not worth more than the lives of your family. I get that the cowboy fantasy is strung, the idea that when your family is in danger you can get out your Red Ryder BB gun and take out Bart and his gang, but the reality is that this is unlikely to ever happen, and that if it does, it won't go the way you hope it will, so to say that everyone needs to just accept tens of thousands of American deaths per year, because you really want to cling to that childish fantasy, is just being both ignorant and selfish.
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  5870. That reflects poorly on your sense of judgement. Good thing you aren't running for anything.
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  5871.  @zacharybibb1141  But, again, anyone who could look at Doctor Oz and go "yeah, he should be a senator in 2022, when the country is going the way it's going," is displaying poor judgement.
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  5872. A nationwide handgun ban.
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  5873.  @Cyd99  The law isn't there to make him follow it. The law is there to make the person who legally purchased the gun he acquired to follow it.
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  5874.  @tdbomba8496  We don't go around hitting our heads against things.
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  5875.  King Charles ✔  There's a bunch of other things that aren't true. Do you speak anything that isn't fake news?
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  5876.  @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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  5877.  King Charles ✔  What's your point. He's a grandpa, he talks like a grandpa. If he was addressing a young man and said "you look like such a little gentleman," would that also bother you? Maybe your perspective has been skewed because the previous president sexually assaulted minors? not everyone is a pervert like he was.
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  5878.  King Charles ✔  I don't want a President that's more progressive than Joe. I wanted a moderate Democrat, and I got a moderate Democrat. If Joe didn't get the nomination, I wanted Bennet or Buttigieg. I guess anyone with a "B" for a last name.
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  5879.  King Charles ✔  Biden is old, but he is not a part of Jim Crow, and certainly no part of the Klan. And obviously he's not a fraction as racist as Trump. Biden was fighting for black civil rights since his early days. Some people today look back on some of his stances as being behind the times, and from today's perspective, they are, but he isn't taking those positions today, he was taking them decades ago, when they were pretty progressive. Biden is always a man of the present. He does not advocate for things that people will believe in thirty years, he advocates for things that people believe right at the moment he says them. The Biden of today is the Biden of today, not the Biden of thirty years ago.
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  5880.  King Charles ✔  Klan leaders support all sorts of people, often as a trolling action because they know it causes more harm than good. Biden rejected that endorsement, and that's all that matters. Trump is definitely much more racist than Biden by any reasonable measure. It's possible that other Democrats would have done better for black people than Biden, but Biden will do plenty for them, and certainly more than any Republican. Biden got the nomination, largely due to black voters, so they made their call, who am I to argue they made it wrong?
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  5881.  @blksbth1  There is a certain amount of "race to the bottom" happening, companies want to go to the states that ask the least responsibility from them, which is why we need better national standards. It's like that international minimum corporate tax that the G7 are doing. The fact is though that red states rely on blue states for their survival, most of them pay back in taxes much less than they take in from the federal dole, so beggers can't be choosers. I don't want to hear from welfare queen states that the blue states are somehow "doing it wrong."
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  5882.  @blksbth1  Biden has done numerous town halls and answered every question well. He does have a stutter which can cause him to stumble as he speaks, but it's obvious to anyone with half a brain that he knows fully what he's talking about and recovers quickly. That is obviously much better than Trump, who just spends hours rambling about his grievances and knows nothing about substantive policy. Ask him a tough question and all you'll get out of Trump is some line about how the press is mean to him or somebody ones said something insulting, or "build the wall." If you thought you were voting against a communist when voting against Biden then you truly are an idiot. Or brainwashed. Both? ;)
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  5883.  @blksbth1  It's been established that Trump did that sort of thing with Jerry Epstein. Trump's even bragged about walking in on the Miss Teen USA dressing rooms while they were half-naked (not on accident, even). Joe Biden's been with one woman for over 40 years now. Trump has had three wives and numerous affairs during their marriages. It's kind of gross how you want to make his interactions into something sexual. As for Trump's racism, he took out a full page ad to get five black men lynched for a crime they didn't commit, he constantly peddled the "maybe Obama wasn't a natural born citizen" nonsense, even after becoming President, he said that there were "good people on both sides" of a white nationalist rally, do you seriously need more?
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  5884.  King Charles ✔  Are you legitimately upset that Biden is not doing enough for black people, or is that just something you believe that other people should get upset about?
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  5885.  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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  5886.  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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  5887.  @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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  5888.  @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)"
    1
  5889.  @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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  5890.  @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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  5891. Oh, she's the smartest, just not always the most electable.
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  5892. This whole discussion is so stupid. It's a 20th Century problem being projected out into the 21st. Stop. Yes, there will be fewer people, but no, this is not a bad thing. AI is rising up to take the place of billions of human workers. Robots will rise up to take the place of billions more. By 2100, there will not be a need for ANY human labor, and the only people with "jobs" are wealthy people who control the machines and keep themselves "employed." Now of course the systems currently in place are designed so that people are required to provide value in order to get paid, but THAT is what needs to be changed, NOT some push to make more babies. Fewer people is great, because fewer people are needed. All we need to do is ensure that all the people we DO have get taken care of REGARDLESS of their economic value.
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  5893. Just like how Dr. Oz reminds me of Prince Farquaad.
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  5894.  @nightstalker6444  I'm pretty sure I've only heard Republicans complaining about early voting in the past. Also, only Republicans multiple-vote.
    1
  5895.  @nightstalker6444  But multiple voting is mostly done by Republicans.
    1
  5896.  @nightstalker6444  But they are the ones that vote multiple times.
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  5897. If we wanted to move slower, then we would have had to get started much sooner, because the end-date is not flexible.
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  5898. It would probably be a good idea to shield your ankles. Like just build a metal (or practically anything) curve that is bolted down behind your legs and is about as high as your thighs, so that if anything gets hit, it would be that. It might slow down the whip, but it would at least protect you on failures.
    1
  5899.  @JeffR---96  I would prefer we actually get the virus under control. The more we allow it to spread, the more variants will appear, which make vaccines less effective for everyone. People saying "we can chill out now" are the same idiots that were saying "we can chill out now" last spring, and look how that turned out. If, instead, we continue to take it seriously now, then we CAN chill out by next year. If we continue to be casual idiots about this, then it might last for years more.
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  5900. "Wacky" would be the scientifically accurate terminology in this situation.
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  5901.  @NewCreationRedeemed  It only took a few hours for Senate pages to read the bills out loud. The bill has been in a mostly complete form for several days now, giving Senators plenty of time to read the bill for themselves, or for Republicans senators to have a staffer read it to them. Reading the bill out loud on the Senate floor does not provide any useful function, nobody in "the world" actually sits there and listens to the whole thing, and if they do, God help them.
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  5902. This is the Republican party in a nutshell. They are the miscarriage.
    1
  5903. Yes, they have. Why does this bother you?
    1
  5904. What does Mar-A-Lago have to do with anything?
    1
  5905. How so?
    1
  5906.  @featherruffler1285  That doesn't answer the question.
    1
  5907. @CNPC News But the important thing to remember is that the things you're talking about are made up, whereas Covid has killed over 400,000 unvaccinated Americans since after the vaccines have been available to the public. If those people had been vaccinated, they would still be alive today, but idiots tricked them into dying instead.
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  5908. I remember my launch PS1. I used some of that clay-like poster sticky material to jam up the button so that I could open and close it at will. Very simple compared to a PS2 "latch trigger card". Are you going to do a video on those?
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  5909.  @PatrickStar-gm5mg  Why are you glad that's a part of the bill?
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  5910.  @anniehopkins8470  First, I don't think you're correct that requiring IDs is automatically racist, and I'm not sure why it would ever be sexist, but it can obviously be implemented in a way that harms some voters more than others, and that might lead to racist intent and racist outcome. It all depends on the wording of the particular bill, such as the one in Texas, which does have racist intent and outcomes. Second, voter ID is a Republican priority, the Democrats are not citing that as the primary reason they are opposed to most of these bills, so it's a bit baffling as to why defenders of these bills keep responding with "voter ID isn't a problem!!!!," when that isn't responding to the argument being made at all. Democrats tend to be more opposed to measures by Republican states ot allow their legislatures to throw out the results of an election if it does not go their way and substitute the results with their own picks. Democrats also tend to oppose measures to restrict the time and places that people are allowed to vote, making it less likely that they will be able to do so. Those are the issues Democrats actually care about. Voter ID is a sideshow to that. And obviously, NO Democrat would ever even consider intelligence to be a factor here, ONLY Republicans claim that certain communities are somehow "too stupid" to be able to get voter ID, and how dare "Democrats suggest that." The reasons Democrats actual cite is hard data that black communities are less likely to already have the required IDs (since they are more likely to live in urban areas where driving is not required), and are less able to get to places where these IDs can be acquired, or to afford them when they do. This is not to say that NO black voters can get these IDs, or that ONLY black voters will not have them, it is just to point out that it has a disproportionate effect.
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  5911.  @2000_mules  His state IS less oppressive than Texas is intending to be with this new law. The important thing to keep in mind is that similar laws can have different impacts in different communities. A "no mail-in ballot" law, for example, would have much more of an impact in a place like Alaska, where it's hard to get around, than in a place like Rhode Island, where everyone is within walking distance. The laws of Delaware work better for the people of Delaware than the laws of Texas are aiming to work for the people of Texas, but if Delaware decides to further improve their voting system, I'm sure the President would not oppose it.
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  5912.  @nathanenfinger9559  You should actually read the bill, because it does many other things. If it had been allowed to pass in the last session, it would have allowed the legislature to throw out and replace the votes of the people if they didn't like the outcome, but the Democrats' walk-out prevented that part, at least.
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  5913.  @soflossy6447  What is wrong with emotion when it's in service to the common good?
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  5914.  @anniehopkins8470  How can an implementation hurt some voters more than others? Well, say you have a voting area in which there are 1000 people. 500 of those people live in an urban area, and 500 of those people live in rural areas around it. Of the 500 rural voters, almost all of them already have a driver's license, because they have few alternatives to driving if you want to get anywhere. Of the 500 urban people, some of them do have driver's licenses, but many of them have no need for one, because they can walk or take public transit to where they need to go. So if you just implement a "everyone now needs a valid drivers license to vote" bill, then that can make it so that suddenly, through no fault of their own, a larger percentage of the urban population would be ineligible to cast their Constitutionally mandated vote, while far fewer of the rural voters would be in that position. That is a disparate impact. Now how can you correct for that? Well getting a valid Id sometimes has a cost involved. If you need one anyway, this is usually considered the cost of being allowed to drive and is ok, but you should never have any cost to be able to vote, so there needs to be some form of completely free valid voter ID that is available to all voters at request. and of course to get such an ID, people typically have to go to an authorized location, such as the DMV. For people driving there, this is typically no problem, but if you don't drive, or live a busy life, then getting to the DMV, particularly during office hours, might be impossible, so there would need to be methods to get a valid ID without leaving the home, ideally at 24 hours a day. So long as such methods are available, you can have an ID system without it causing disparate impacts. And of course you can't require ID of a mail-in ballot, for obvious reasons. This is not really a very important issue though, since fraudulent voting is a non-issue. It accounts for maybe a few hundred votes per hundreds of millions cast, NEVER enough to flip the results of any contest higher than "dog catcher." It would not make sense to implement a system that would potentially lead to thousands of eligible voters being unable to cast their ballot, only to prevent dozens of illegal ballots from being cast. That's just "cutting off your nose to spite your face." "The entire basis of this "voter ID is racist" argument is predicated on democrats seeing minorities as "less capable", " This is absolutely untrue. Find me evidence of even ONE prominent Democrat making this case. The issue is not that anyone is "less capable" in terms of intelligence, it's just that some people's circumstances place them in a position where they have less access to certain services. If it were about intelligence then obviously Democrats wouldn't have a problem with it, since Republican voters are. . . not terribly gifted in that category. I mean, 70m-some people voted for Trump last year. LAST YEAR. If voter ID disenfranchised stupid voters, Democrats would be riding high. And I'm sorry, but I have FACTUALLY only ever heard Republicans saying "Democrats think black people are stupid," as a reason that voter Id is not a problem. I have never once heard a Democrat raise this point, or any point that could reasonably be confused for that point.
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  5915.  @soflossy6447  Yup, that's Republicans in a nutshell.
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  5916.  @soflossy6447  You said "weak, pathetic, and almost always the wrong decision," that's Republicans in a nutshell, right? Sorry, this is a 90-post thread, I can't be sure exactly what you were replying to, but I assume I got the gist of it.
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  5917. It's a professor's job to teach. It's like saying you've never heard of a doctor who made money doing anything other than their "medicine" gig.
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  5918.  @testodude  A professor teaching students IS applying his knowledge in the real world. If you mean someone active in business or government economic policy, plenty of professors work in those jobs before or after being professors. That doesn't mean that lifetime professors are somehow "worse" though.
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  5919. It would have been filed much sooner if the Trump Justice Department hadn't told the NYDA to back off the case while he was in office. But now, justice will be served.
    1
  5920.  @phatplates  What, do you think he didn't do what he was charged with? What would lead you to believe that he didn't do what he was charged with?
    1
  5921.  @HotMustard420  Oh, thanks, I'm good. Haven't had a MAGA hat on yet. It really is sad though how many people are deranged enough to think that Donald Trump, the punchiline of Manhattan, is a viable candidate for President of the United States. Who could possibly hate this country that much? Outside of Putin, of course.
    1
  5922.  @1985cjjeeper  What would that have to do with anything? Trump is not being charged with having had an affair. Also,you seem completely confused as to what cases she was actually a part of. She had sued TRUMP for defamation, not the other way around, and she never signed anything stating that the affair never took place. You need to find better sources of news than whatever you've been using.
    1
  5923. We did, but then Trump got elected again, so we're back as square one.
    1
  5924.  @tobind6190  You said the democrats need to help make America great again. We did, by voting her Harris. It's impossible to do that with Trump in office.
    1
  5925. Why couldn't they make a detergent pack where one of the "lobes" of it is made with a very weakly melting material, while the other two are made with a much sturdier material that would take about 20 minutes of hot water to melt? Then the one pack could last the entire process.
    1
  5926.  @Bitchslapper316  The barge was in the port.
    1
  5927.  @Bitchslapper316  When Russia is attacking your port, it doesn't particularly matter what they specifically hit with their attacks, the issue is, who wants to WORK at a port that Russia is firing missiles at?
    1
  5928.  @Bitchslapper316  They explained that the port was attacked by a Russian missile strike. What more do you expect? It's a warzone, so getting specific details, much less B-roll of it, can be difficult. Why do you consider this coverage "poor?"
    1
  5929. I am impressed by your persistence in continuing to try and pass your history class, even though you must keep getting Ds. One day, you will get a C, I'm sure of it. I'll even give you a tip to help you on your way, right now we are nowhere close to the Soviet Union in the 90s. I think you would have more luck finding analogies to Germany in 1932.
    1
  5930.  @johnbarry3275  But the political and economic situations of the Soviet Union had absolutely no relevance to the US in 2023. EVERY country grows and shrinks and grows again over time, that is not unusual, nor is it a sign of imminent collapse. People have been saying that America is on the brink of collapse and referencing historical examples to back that up since 1780. So far, they have all been wrong. Again, the closest historical analogy to the present situation is 1932 Germany, where the autocrats had suffered a political defeat, but maintained a sycophantic base of support, and rebuilt power until eventually they regained power. It did not go well for Germany, but we have a chance to prevent the same from happening to America.
    1
  5931.  @tubedore None of my arrogance is unwarranted. Unlike those in the MAGA cult.
    1
  5932. Most of them are running to be the running mate to the loser of the 2024 race.
    1
  5933.  @aaronandelise  No.
    1
  5934.  @bmass0828  If it was all over the news you were seeing, then you should probably figure out what is wrong with your news sources.
    1
  5935.  @Kehvan  Not the people who are upset with Alito flying the flag upside down.
    1
  5936.  @Rathkryn  Is there any evidence of that? Someone actively supporting people burning flags, and then complaining about Alito's flag? I don't buy it.
    1
  5937.  @bmass0828  So you're presenting evidence in support of my position that no such people exist, and they exist only in the imaginations of people who can't make good faith arguments? Because I've certainly never been in favor of flag burning, so to use me as an example only shows that you don't care about the quality of the evidence you present.
    1
  5938.  @Itslilmoist  The burden is to prove that something does exist, not to prove the negative. The burden would only be to prove the negative if evidence of the positive existed.
    1
  5939. Reshoring manufacturing jobs is not a good idea done poorly, it is a dumb idea done poorly. There is no point whatsoever to re-shoring most manufacturing jobs,l if they can be done cheaper overseas, then it is better for everyone that they be done overseas. We should not be scrambling in the mud over manufacturing jobs, we should be ensuring that Americans do not NEED manufacturing jobs to live a quality life.
    1
  5940.  @lexpox329  Yes, but obviously we can't just wait around for that to happen. For one thing, by the time dino juice got super expensive, like $6+ per gallon in the US, if we didn't already have the green infrastructure to support things, then people would just have to pay those crazy prices for a decade or more as the industry caught up. It's impossible to make a green shift over night. For the other, if we made no investments in green projects, then green vehicles would still cost the equivalent of tens of dollars per gallon, and it would take forever for oil to get that expensive. We need to invest in green tech to improve it and drive costs down, so that they can meet the oil tech in the middle. So obviously there will be a point where switching to green energy will become inevitable, but we want that transition point to be as smooth as possible, so that everyone barely even notices when the line flips.
    1
  5941. That's the issue, Mace is trying to ban her from the appropriate restooms.
    1
  5942.  @Uldy  No, That's just what the Faux News will tell you when they choose to ignore the motivations of right wing extremists, all while promoting to you the same messages that right wing extremists talk about amongst themselves. It's almost as if they want right wing extremists, because they know that they make for good simps.
    1
  5943. What they need to do is take data like this, and figure out the best "untapped potential" areas in the country, the best locations where they could support populations with millions more people (easy access to food and water, low weather risks), and then provide federal programs to "build up" these areas, offering free housing and infrastructure so that people can comfortably move from their current cities to these new places. Now that so much of the productive economy is based off of computer stuff, you can build that infrastructure out anywhere you want, the only limitation is that you would want to have a place where everyone would move there.
    1
  5944.  @johngoodspeed3585  It would be a good idea though. Once the communities are established they would be self sufficient from there, and the start-up costs would be more than made up for in tax revenues. Remember that every person who moves from a place like Texas or Florida to a more stable place would end up costing tax payers thousand less in "disaster relief" funds in future catastrophes.
    1
  5945. Migrants tend to add more to the economy than they take away from it. The only thing that would prevent that is policies that make it difficult for them to apply for work until their cases are processed. As for more official methods of immigration, the government is not authorized to hand out enough work visas like that, and that is the fault of Republicans in congress that refuse to move forward on such legislation. It's led to this being the only alternative.
    1
  5946.  @MrJrsdts  There';s no evidence of Joe taking any money from anyone.
    1
  5947. It turns out that societies in which only criminals have guns have MUCH lower homicide rates, because FEWER criminals have guns.
    1
  5948. Yes! Martha! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f60DPvPwBts
    1
  5949.  @quinntinmann  Lol, no.
    1
  5950.  @harshitrawat811  What the hell are you talking about? Russia has been committing genocide right this minute. NATO has not done ANYTHING.
    1
  5951.  @banano24  Yugoslavia was committing genocide at the time, NATO moved in to protect people. If NATO was interested in taking over Russia, NATO would have taken over Russia by now.
    1
  5952.  @quinntinmann  Your statement would only make sense if your world view was defined by soviet propaganda. Break free of their bubble.
    1
  5953.  @banano24  I said Russia is committing genocide because Russia is committing genocide. I would not have saaid so otherwise. And NATO bombing of Yugoslavia ended their genocide of the Albanians. What else should they have done under the circumstances?
    1
  5954. Trumps were much worse, and he's not in jail. Not yet, at least.
    1
  5955. People have done that, they're pretty amazing. EVs have a lot better performance.
    1
  5956. See, this is an excellent example of how the public does not understand how climate change works. They think "it's cold winter!" means that climate change doesn't exist or something, not realizing that "it's cold in winter" is a part of climate change.
    1
  5957.  @deker0954  Climate change alters weather patterns. The climate is the overall structure in which weather happens.
    1
  5958. After the Democrats retake the House.
    1
  5959. @ How could he be more American then?
    1
  5960. The prosecutor in this case was a Republican, who is clearly no friend of the President's.
    1
  5961.  @randomdudeoti  It's not a crime to have classified documents, it's a crime to "willfully retain them." The issue in Trump's case was that he knew he had them, knew they were classified, was asked to return them and refused. And that's really just the start of the crimes, but that's already worse than anything Biden was even accused of doing.
    1
  5962.  @carlitos2k2  Yes it was, Russia just wants to pretend otherwise.
    1
  5963. I think it would be fine for the tax thing to work such that you could donate into a non-profit entity that would develop something, and then later commercialize it, BUT any amount of money given to them under non-profit terms would have to not count as an "investment" of any kind, meaning there would be zero return on donations. If money is given on the expectation that they might make back money later, then that is business money, not non-profit money, and should be taxed accordingly.
    1
  5964.  @jetmech9287  Money doesn't have to be issued by a state, it is just a form of exchange currency.
    1
  5965.  @jetmech9287  Ok, it may not count as "cash" by the definition the IRS is currently using, but it would still be a "thing of value," which means that it should be picked up somewhere in your tax filings, as an investment, for example. It doesn't just vanish into the ether. The point is, either the IRS definition of "cash" would be expanded to cover digital currencies, or they would make more clear which portion of the tax code would apply to digital currencies, such that having $50,000 in Bitcoin would be taxed in some fashion.
    1
  5966.  @jetmech9287  Yes, if you buy a work of art, it goes on your taxes. Typically sales tax is what applies, although if you eventually sell art at a higher value than you paid, you need to be aware of both values and pay capital gains tax on the difference. Your signed baseball would be taxed at 28%+ if you sold it, although it's worth pointing out that the IRS isn't likely to come after people for selling a few small value items. Again, I'm not sure what crypto is classified under, but I expect it would be something along the lines of stocks. If by some chance the current law does not cover crypto, then it can be changed so that it does, and it probably should be. Now, as for transactions, you can get in a lot of trouble if you try to cheat the system. If, for example, you want to sell a house, and so you get the person to "pay" you in diamonds. Just because he handed you diamonds and not cash does not mean that this is not income and does not need to be reported. I'm no tax expert, so I'm not exactly sure where you would need to report that, but it would go someplace in your taxes that you acquired something of value. Bitcoin does not have arbitrary value, because there is a market for it, and therefore a market value. You have to consider market value for tax purposes, not whatever value you put on an item.
    1
  5967.  @jetmech9287  But the point is, when you do sell it, you are accountable to paying capital gains on the difference between the buy price and the sell price, so it is listed in your taxes. Bartering is taxable, and if you try to use bartering to avoid paying taxes on a transaction, that is called "tax evasion." Here is an article covering that: https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/expert-insights/irs-cautions-bartering-transactions-are-taxable-transactions Here is an IRS page on it: https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/four-things-you-should-know-if-you-barter And no, the value of bitcoin is not arbitrary because it has a market value. I have no idea what that value is off the top of my head, but let's say it's $50K. If I gave you three Bitcoin, I could not declare that this value is arbitrary and that I only value it at $20, and therefore you only owe taxes as if I gave you $20. We would both have to use the market value of what 3 Bitcoin is worth, so we would have to register $150K for relevant tax data.
    1
  5968.  @laurijoemerick9188  Yeah, turns out they had nothing to do with it. Of course, try telling that to a MAGA supporter, they are unteachable.
    1
  5969.  @laurijoemerick9188  You use terms like "TDS" unironically.
    1
  5970. Yeah, it would have been helpful if they'd actually broken down the numbers on a place like that. Instead of "a cup of coffee is sold for X," add in "and it costs Y amount in raw materials, and the prime location costs Z amount per month in rent," etc., breaking down exactly how much money should be left over at the end of the day, after all necessary costs are factored out.
    1
  5971. Would there be any practical benefit to essentially putting a multistage rocket into a tube? Like instead of having multiple "bursts" along the path that fire in both directions down to the barrel, what if you put say ten "stages" behind the projectile, each stage being an explosive and some sort of "seal" that would prevent gasses from shooting back down the barrel. To keep it ruining the barrel it could perhaps be like a non-Newtonian fluid or something that would expand and seal the barrel but then quickly collapse or burn out to be easily cleaned for the next shot. By putting all the fuel on the projectile itself, you don't need to be quite so precise about when and where each fires.
    1
  5972.  @sixpackchad  I suppose that's true.
    1
  5973. He would have to do a crime first, this is not Putin's Russia.
    1
  5974. It isn't even about serving the will of the people, it's just about serving their own self interests.
    1
  5975.  @martingindulis5310  I don't think Schiff is "in charge" of anything, he's just one Congressman, speaking from his own perspective. Hakeem Jefferies is the current house Minority Leader, and the most likely next speaker.
    1
  5976.  @michaelkennedy6415  I only spoke as anyone does who cares about truth. You don't have to be a liberal to recognize the corrupting influence of MAGA, it's why there are so many former Republicans who have gone to war to retake their old party from the lunatics. If you are a MAGA, then you have justly earned any disdain you might receive through your own efforts. A better person could never support any MAGA-supportive candidate for any reason. Instead of blaming others for looking down on you, rise up to a level where they no longer have to.
    1
  5977.  @michaelkennedy6415  I find that conservatives tend to enjoy "debate" formats, and value their outcomes, but generally, any debate between a "liberal" and a "conservative" just degrade into bullying tactics on the part of the conservative, in which they shout down their opponents and use logical fallacies to give the illusion of strength, and therefore are declared "the winner" by conservative audiences that value strongmen over intellectual honesty. Public debate is just a poor format for finding the actual truth of an argument. One thing I've long wished for is a "truth debate," one not based on throwing ammunition at the other side as rapidly as possible until the time runs out, and instead one with the format that each side has a team of knowledgeable people, each time a question is posed they are given time and access to materials to research the question fully and form a counter argument, and then these counter arguments are read dispassionately by a moderator, rather than being delivered as a rhetorical flourish. The goal would not be to determine who is the better master debater, but who has the most valid POSITION.
    1
  5978.  @wakeupsheeple513  Nah, I'm not one of those MAGA sheep.
    1
  5979.  @leroyraatz5650  Because he was a soldier who was actively training people in weapon use. That was his role. He was a specialist in heavy field artillery, sharpshooting, and grenades.
    1
  5980.  @keitharmstrong7194  Yes, Keith Kelly is lying, because he has political motivation to do so. Plenty of high ranking military officers have fallen to the dark side.
    1
  5981.  @daleemrick9816  He is a "military people." Some military people are pro-maga and lie like their boss does.
    1
  5982.  @ralphlee6386  Vance was in the green zone, behind a desk. That is no more "combat" than Italy was.
    1
  5983.  @jackli6592  They could, there would obviously be consequences though. Geopolitics and economics are very situational, you can't say "because this happened here, this will also happen the exact same there." Every set of circumstances is specific.
    1
  5984.  @007h13  I don't think you understand what the term "penal colony" means. Perhaps you should brush up on your history.
    1
  5985. Why would someone pay protesters? That makes no sense.
    1
  5986. That's because that number is not measurable on a daily count. The number of people who have had significant side-effects in total are less than the number of people who die to covid each day.
    1
  5987. Why do you think he would be thinking about that?
    1
  5988.  @mr.poon.tang.92  How so? They seem pretty normal to me. They don't get up to shenanigans like the previous one.
    1
  5989.  @mr.poon.tang.92  Lol, the fact that you still believe that is mind boggling, but whatever, some of you are beyond help. Reality could pile a mountain of evidence in your face, but your ignorance will remain eternal.
    1
  5990.  @Autumaestheticc  Maga is a hell of a drug.
    1
  5991. It's not like the US government does any business with China, it's all "the free hand of the market" at work. If you shop at Walmart, you're part of the problem.
    1
  5992. Celebrities have always been considered important. That's how Ben Franklin helped us win the war.
    1
  5993. That would be worrying if the person in question were a Republican, but this was a Democrat, so there's no reason for concern. Only Republicans cheat.
    1
  5994.  @timtaylor9633  No, Democrats are pretty straightforward about how they don't cheat. It's easy to be honest when you've done nothing wrong. It's only Republicans that lie about their cheating.
    1
  5995.  @timtaylor9633  What nonsense word salad was that?
    1
  5996.  @timtaylor9633  No, just gibberish.
    1
  5997.  @timtaylor9633  Yup, the Republicans are a clown car and a half.
    1
  5998.  @timtaylor9633  Oh, heaven's no. You wouldn't caught me dead voting for any Republicans.
    1
  5999.  @timtaylor9633  Yup, a pack of raving monkeys these days, that's why it's impossible to vote Republican with a clean conscience.
    1
  6000.  @mkaberli614  Yours is more stupid though, like Trump.
    1
  6001.  @NWstockoperator  Wow, a whole 2%? Wow. "Doubling" made it seem a lot more than 2%, huh.
    1
  6002.  @NWstockoperator  Lol. You are useful.
    1
  6003.  @brycelupo7120  I think some people are still being hurt by inflation, but also I think a lot of people don't understand that Biden has helped fix that, and actually think he caused it somehow, which is just dumb.
    1
  6004.  @NWstockoperator  No, the increases to standard taxing elements clawed back most, if not all of that "doubling." That was my point, that the total amount people ended up with was not significantly better than what they'd already had, even if they are not good enough at math to figure that out.
    1
  6005.  @NWstockoperator  Most couples made more than 24K though. Almost as many household made over $200K as made under $25K. People making under 25K likely wouldn't be paying federal income taxes with or without a standard deduction kicking in.
    1
  6006.  @tjlift22  They would have had even less under Trump, that's my point.
    1
  6007. TL;DR, it's his money. That's never been a question.
    1
  6008. I think that he might invade, but that Crimea is a bad example. He needed Crimea for a direct strategic purpose, to ensure passage through the Black Sea. He wants Ukraine under his thumb, but that is much less vital to Russian interests, so he is less likely to take the risk. He still might, it's just less likely to follow that pattern.
    1
  6009. I can agree with you on the minute hand. The hour hand is much less useful though. Now that we have modern pixel-based clocks, it might be interesting to explore more graphical solutions, like have an "hour hand "that is just a color bar that shifts from orange to bright blue to orange again during the day and orange to black and back during the night, with an icon that covers that distance (so noon/midnight" would be dead center), and then as the daylight cycles shift the portions of color would shift accordingly (the center would always be 12). And then the minute side could just be a vertical progress bar that fills and then empties like an hour glass. Both would have numbers for more precision, but they would be faded out a bit into the background, not the focus.
    1
  6010.  @WarRior-rn4kb  I do agree with this, I do not think that all communities are moderated well, and I do think that there should be methods for communities to adjust the moderation staff if they dislike how they operate, but this can be tricky to do, since it would be important to prevent "brigading," with roving bands of trolls hijacking communities with relatively small populations. There would need to be all sorts of breaks and safeties in any "mod impeachment" options. My point was just that I've lost a lot of respect for those at the top, given how they responded to reasonable community protests. They basically took the attitude of "we own this company and can do whatever you want," which from a legal standpoint is true, but from a community-building standpoint is disastrous (as Elon is learning on his little project).
    1
  6011.  @jacquelinel1618  Well, it is a balancing act though. When everyone is allowed to say anything with no checks and balances, then all you will be able to hear is madmen screaming, and no proper discourse can take place. Any reasonable community requires some level of moderation to limit the spam and nonsense that could make the useful conversations impossible to find. This becomes double true in a world with AI chat bots that can produce large volumes of seemingly normal conversation at will.
    1
  6012. Most of America's history can be defined as people trying to get democracy past conservatives.
    1
  6013. The costume is irrelevant, the data supporting his position is what matters.
    1
  6014. Well, Trump was just found liable for sexual battery and defamation, so that's one. I'm sure his other cases will be coming up in short order.
    1
  6015.  @rattnroll84  I wasn't the one who named it that. They should figure that out themselves. The point is, they can't call it "women's sports" if they are going to exclude trans women.
    1
  6016.  @angelajohannsen8662  It's wrong and anti-transgender because it does not recognize that trans girls are not boys, they are girls. So if you have a category exclusive to girls, then it needs to include trans girls as well. Angela, can I assume that you are a woman? If so, would you be upset if there was an activity that said "all women are allowed to participate, except for Angela Johannsen, because we don't think she counts?"
    1
  6017.  @cyberprince_aah  If the rule is "you have to be a woman to participate," then trans women meet that rule just fine. That is the point. If the rule is meant to be based on something other than gender, then they can't call it "women's sports."
    1
  6018.  @scott5669  But plenty of men are not as big as plenty of athletes that you would agree are women, so if the biggest, strongest women out there are able to compete without having to face the biggest, strongest men, then why wouldn't the men that are weaker than those women also be allowed to compete in a tier where they don't have to challenge those biggest men? If you're going to have a second tier of competition, and you are going to base access to that tier on the gender of the participants, then you need to accept ALL members of that gender, including trans people.
    1
  6019. @Highly _Offensive If Usain Bolt were a trans woman, then she would have as much right to those records as any other woman. Why wouldn't she? People don't "decide" to be trans just because of sports, at least not in the US.
    1
  6020.  @rattnroll84  That's not how anything works. Just because you don't understand the how it works, does not mean that it's magic.
    1
  6021.  @rattnroll84  Again, there's nothing "unfair" about it. "Fair" would just be to let everyone compete at once, and whoever is best, wins. If you're going to break down individual categories, and say "this group only competes amongst themselves," then you can't exclude members of that group just because you don't like them. You can't say that black women aren't allowed to compete with white women, or that trans women aren't allowed to compete with cis women, if it's called "women's sports," then ALL women need to be allowed to play.
    1
  6022.  @cyberprince_aah  If they are a trans woman, then they are a woman, so any category that defines itself as "women" would include them. This is not difficult. Why does this baffle you?
    1
  6023.  @rattnroll84  Ok? So? Figure out a way to separate them that does not discriminate between trans women and other women. If you call it "women's. . ." then it needs to include trans women in it. This is not hard. I don't know why you find it so confusing.
    1
  6024.  @cyberprince_aah  If you gave me an apt analogy, I must have missed that post. None of the stuff that popped up in my notifications made much sense. This latest post, for example, it's just a word salad ramble that doesn't actually make any argument. Let's go back to basics, there are trans gender people out there, and the consensus of the medical research into the topic is that the healthiest thing for them is to be accepted as the person they believe themselves to be. This does not necessarily apply to every medical condition, but it does apply to being transgender. If you believe that it would be unfair for a trans girl to be able to compete with non-trans girls, then why do you not also agree that it would be unfair for a trans girl to not be able to compete with other girls? If there is a category that is defined as "for girls," the it has to include all the girls, including the trans ones. Otherwise, you're just picking and choosing. If a little girl can only win by eliminating all the competition from being allowed to participate, then how can she claim to be "the best" at anything?
    1
  6025.  @cyberprince_aah  Ok, we can consider that trans athletes should have their own playground, a sort of "segregation," if you will. It wouldn't work. Ok, now that we've considered that, the question is how to best incorporate the trans youth in our communities, and allowing them to participate in the sports that are attached to their gender seems to be the best option for that. Again, no "cismales decide to become trans women." That's not a thing. If they were trans women, then they were always trans women, whether they'd realized that about themselves or not. It's not a choice, you can't just turn it on or off at a whim, it's a core aspect of who you are. Is it "unfair" for someone with certain typically male biological traits to complete with women? Is it unfair for a 6'5ft tall teenager to compete in a league where the average height is 5'5? Is it unfair for a male swimmer to compete when his arms are disproportionately large relative to the human average? Is it unfair for one athlete to spend as much time in the gym as another and come out with larger muscles because they process nutrients more efficiently? Sports are never fair. Every competition will include people who have biological advantages over their competition, and that's before we even factor in things like access to food, time available to train, access to advanced machinery and techniques, sports are NEVER fair. So to use "fairness" as an excuse to exclude trans girls from being able to participate in sports is ridiculous, unless the intent is to make those girls feel excluded. So, again, so long as the category is defined by gender, so long as it is a "women's" category, then it needs to include ALL women, even those with biological advantages like most Olympians have. This goes doubly for non-professional sports, where the only thing on the line is "fun."
    1
  6026.  @cyberprince_aah  Oh, I thought It was obvious why segregating trans athletes would not work, but I guess I can dumb it down for you if it was less obvious to you. There aren't enough of them. Trans people make up less than 1% of the population, and many of those have no interest in being athletes. A typical school district will have thousands of female athletes, enough to provide full teams at every school, but would likely only have one or two trans athletes in any given activity, so it would be impossible to build any sort of competitive field. The whole point of amateur athletics is to allow people to compete with each other. Segregating trans athletes is no different than banning them from sport entirely. And of course trans women use women's restrooms, where else would they go? "Yes, this is unfair, this is exactly why I said that males are far more superior in strength than women, the science supports this," But again, it is not just a "male vs female" issue. You can take ten men, plain old ordinary men, and have them do the EXACT same diet and workout routine, and some of them will come out of that with more effective bodies than the others, just because of slight differences in their biology. Again, no two men are identical, there are always differences. Yes, if you "put in the work" you can improve your potential as an athlete, just as trans women need to put in the work to be great in their sport, but there is no amount of effort that can make up for an equal amount of effort plus talent. The top athletes in the world worked hard to get where they are, but that does not mean that any random person could have achieved the same results if they'd taken every identical step along the way. Sport is never fair. Sport has an illusion of fairness, you have the same number of people on each side, you have the same starting line, etc., but each athlete has their own natural strengths and weaknesses to deal with. Michael Phelps was born with longer arms than most humans, that does not mean he should not be allowed to swim. A trans woman may have been born with stronger muscles than most other women, but that does not mean she should not be allowed to compete. Also, nobody is arguing that cismales should be allowed to compete in women's sports, only trans women. If a cismale attempts to compete in a women's sport, then that would be fraud.
    1
  6027. @ Those not in power have no resources which those in power will need.
    1
  6028.  @WhyHandleYouTube  He just believes that peace can be found at the bottom of a jackboot.
    1
  6029.  @User_J9000  Lol, no. Russia has been invading their neighbors since 2000, and the west has been telling them to cut that out. Outside of that, the west has made every effort to get Russia to calm the hell down and learn to play nice with others. That's why Germany got so into Russian natural gas, because they figured that if Russia had strong financial ties to Europe, maybe they would stop kicking their neighbors around like they owned the place. And yet Russia continued to kick their neighbors. Because that's what bullies do.
    1
  6030.  @RasenSchwanz  You mean Yemen? That's a Saudi Arabia thing, not NATO. NATO has nothing to do with that.
    1
  6031.  @RasenSchwanz  Again, NATO is not involved in Yemen. Comparing that to Putin's invasion of Ukraine is just gross.
    1
  6032.  @RasenSchwanz  Again, that is not the fault of western countries, that is the fault of countries in that region. Those countries have purchased weapons from western countries that were intended as a defense against Iran, and many of those western countries, including the US, have scaled back their access to those weapons in response to their actions in Yemen. In any case, at no point did NATO get involved in that conflict.
    1
  6033.  @RasenSchwanz  They sold them according to policies they already had in place, but have been scaling back their sales as the conflict intensified. The point is, NATO is not personally involved in the conflict, even if countries that they are allied with are.
    1
  6034. They didn't ask. I bet she would have gotten that one right.
    1
  6035. Yeah, because Germany has never had an issue with long knives before this. . .
    1
  6036. Trump didn't get that many votes, it was closer to 75m.
    1
  6037. The system I've always supported is "government managed capitalism." Let capitalism determine what people want and how to get it to them, let government ensure that they do so in a way that is responsible to their employees and responsible for the customers. set the lanes within which the businesses can operate to prevent them engaging in corrupt or destructive practices that "the hand of the market" cannot effectively curtail, but so long as they stay within these rules, they can play as they see fit.
    1
  6038. Only maga ones.
    1
  6039.  @1Deep43VA  They are holding global trade hostage until the world gives in to their demands. In no world would that make them "the good guys."
    1
  6040.  @QwikKota  Really depends on what you give them the power to do. If you give them power to make sure that everyone gets to vote, that's a good thing.
    1
  6041.  @rhuttrho88  I think maybe you misunderstand the point of election laws? This isn't about anecdotes.
    1
  6042.  @MsDancingrannie  "Both sides"ism only favors the worst actors. It's fair to expect Democrats to do better, but that should never be taken as an excuse for the Republicans to be as horrible as they are. I mean, 48 out of 50 Democrats are on the right side of this one, 0 out of 50 Republicans are on the right side of this one. Complaining about the 4% of Democrats that are failing right now is missing the point entirely.
    1
  6043. The current interest is manageable. The interest after a default would not be though, so China and Russia are salivating over the idea that we might shoot ourselves in the head like that.
    1
  6044.  brucesanders1070  Good news! Biden's proposal reduces the deficit by more than the Republican's plan does! So if you want deficit reduction, tell your House members to vote for Biden's proposal.
    1
  6045.  @d.l4055  Tariffs are a tool, and there ARE reasonable, legitimate uses for them. Trump does not understand this though. It is impossible to create tariffs that would function in the way he wants, without devastating the US economy. This does not mean that all tariffs are a terrible idea, it is only specific to this plan.
    1
  6046.  @MRick-cd1kr  They don't, actually. There have been studies. Increasing taxes on corporations does not lead to rising prices, generally.
    1
  6047.  @MRick-cd1kr  Not according to math, which is what is generally used in discussions of economics.
    1
  6048. @Mcvennison The flu vaccine is annual. The measles vaccine you take twice in the first year and then a booster a five years old. Lots of vaccines work on multiple cycles. It is not a problem. The point of it is that it works during the period that it works, and then you upgrade it as necessary. This is a new virus, so they won't have the ideal scheduling worked out, but we do know that it provides significant protection over not getting it, so there's no reason not to.
    1
  6049.  @DATHJSTR  And nobody takes a dozen covid vaccines either, it's currently three, maybe four, but it's a new virus, so we're still learning the ideal schedule for it. Some people have to take insulin shots every day, a covid shot every few months is no big deal.
    1
  6050.  @YouREsoBEAUTIFUL00  Well, it's a novel pandemic. There's nothing particularly normal about any of this, but in terms of medical treatment, it's not terribly unusual either. The point is, you get your two shots and then your six month booster, and then after that, we see what the medical guidance is at the time and follow that. A baby could do it. And they do.
    1
  6051.  @shawnawesome7770  We don't need to take those because people back then took diseases seriously and all got vaccinated. Today, not enough people take it seriously, so the virus is allowed to continue to spread and kill people. Good point.
    1
  6052.  Chad Thomas  Well like I said, the measles vaccine requires three doses, and the flu shot is once a year. This is a new disease and the vaccines for it are likewise new, so we're still figuring out what the expectations are. The current vaccine is still effective against the strain of the virus that it was designed to fight, but newer strains are different, and it does not work quite as well, which is why we need to step it up. But the point is, that you should get your vaccines and booster, because that makes you less likely to pass the virus on to others, and much more likely to survive it.
    1
  6053.  @OgSauce23  It's an injection vaccine. I think there was some development on an oral version, but I don't think it's ready yet.
    1
  6054.  DonkeyKick Bonk  Dehumanizing people for doing the right thing is one of the first step the pre-WWII Germans took as well.
    1
  6055.  Chad Thomas  So you are inventing a fictional reality that supports your natural biases rather than accepting the reality we actually live in. This would be ok, except that this sort of fantasy lifestyle is causing actual harm for actual people. They do keep track of "natural immunity," and no, it is the vaccine that makes people 20 times more likely to survive than being unvaccinated.
    1
  6056.  Chad Thomas  Pointing out that those who refuse to get vaccinated are causing harm to those around them and prolonging the pandemic is not "dehumanizing" them, it is just pointing out that they are factually harming others. That's a bit different take then "maybe cannibalism good?"
    1
  6057.  @restinwalken  Each type of medication is different. Some people need to take insulin every single day. Splitting hairs about which medicines have which durations is pointless, all we need to know is that currently it is recommended to take three doses at a one and then six month interval, and then maybe more in future, no big deal, even if that rate does somehow increase. There's literally no reason not to. Also, it's a far better than 37% immunity rate. It's closer to 50% to prevent infection entirely, and 2000% to prevent death if infected (and also prevent more mild symptoms, but that's harder to quantify).
    1
  6058.  @xxdarkqueenxx6664  Everything in life is an experiment, that's how science works. If you've ever eaten food you've been part of an experiment. You work with the best information available at the time you make a decision and then adapt as new information comes in. If you wait until "all the information is in, then the universe is over and there's nothing left to do.
    1
  6059.  @brasstacks1696  That's because what you're telling them is that you aren't understanding what the truth actually is.
    1
  6060.  @xxdarkqueenxx6664  Yes, exactly. WAY too many people are way too stupid to understand that pretty simple point. We ALL protect EACH OTHER.
    1
  6061.  @brasstacks1696  Incorrect.
    1
  6062.  @brasstacks1696  Your reality is fake news and propaganda. You’ve been deceived and bought it hook, line and sinker. Sadly, part of that is that you believe in projecting yourself onto others.
    1
  6063.  @brasstacks1696  Nope, I’ve seen enough projection from people like you. You support the traitors of this nation, enough said. You are just projecting that fact onto your enemies instead.
    1
  6064.  @devilghostface8798  That's inaccurate. The blood clots were in three people who got the J&J vaccine back when it first came out, and they solved that problem and have had no cases since. There is no reason not to get vaccinated, your risks are much much higher from covid than from any complications related to the vaccines. It's like not wearing a seat belt because you are worried about it pinching.
    1
  6065.  @MichaelErnest666  Yeah? What's the big deal?
    1
  6066.  @mattjuckett9327  Currently, not the covid vaccine. Maybe at some point in the future, the covid vaccine. If so, then you should take it every three months. Why not?
    1
  6067.  @noliesrebuild8254  You seem to have missed the part where the vaccines greatly REDUCE your chances of getting COVID, and greatly REDUCE your chances of spreading it, and make you MUCH less likely to die from it. Since this reduces the odds of spread all around, the more people that are vaccinated, the less likely that any of them will get it. It is never 100% impossible, but that's not the point. The point is to take what steps we can to REDUCE the spread.
    1
  6068.  @mynineandi  You just described a vaccine. That is exactly what a vaccine does. That is ALWAYS what vaccines have done. It reduces the chance of catching and spreading the virus by at least 50%. It reduces your chances of dying if you do get it by 2000%. This is what vaccines do. Is the the most effective vaccine ever? No, especially not against the variants that have emerged since it was formulated, and they are working on a new version that is better adapted to those just like they update flu vaccines, but it still provides a significant defense even against the new strains and there is no reason not to take it. Nothing is being withheld or misrepresented, at least by the government.
    1
  6069.  @claudiaturcoman1271  Yes, too many people have yet to get caught up on their vaccinations, but they need to wake up and get down to the local pharmacy ASAP.
    1
  6070.  @noliesrebuild8254  The vaccine is effective against omicron. It is not AS effective as it is against previous strains, which is why they are developing an updated formula, but it still provides significant protection against even omicron over not being vaccinated at all. There is no reason not to "force the mandates." Everyone should get vaccinated. Nobody can even articulate a reason for not having the mandates beyond "whaaaaaa! I don't wanna!!!!"
    1
  6071.  @variantways2704  The pharma companies aren't trusted, but the vaccines have been fully tested and met approval, so they can be trusted. Pharma companies get up to shenanigans, but they also produce wonderfully effective products, and if they had scammed people over these vaccines they would be bankrupted over it. Whatever protections they might have require that they be 100% honest, if they were dishonest at all, they would be screwed.
    1
  6072.  @variantways2704  No, they have been scientifically proven to be VERY effective, as death rates among vaccinated people were up to 20x lower than among unvaccinated people in the same environment. That was against the alpha strain though which is what they were developed and tested against. The vaccines are less effective against the omicron strain, but still much more effective than nothing, especially when boosted. They are currently developing a version that is more specific to omicron, and people should take that when it's available.
    1
  6073. Yes, Joe Biden. Trump only cares about Trump.
    1
  6074. The experts aren't right because they are experts. The experts are experts because they are right. No expert makes a claim and expects people to believe them purely because they have credentials. There is valid data to back up their claim, and that data will be available to you, so you can verify their claims. If they don't happen to repeat that data every time they make a claim, it is not because they are hiding it, it is because that is a lot of material to repeat over and over again, but that does not mean that it does not exist. Unfortunately, most of the audience is intellectually incapable of understanding the data itself, so they require someone to tell them what it means, and that someone is likely to be another expert. In general, it is a good idea to take comments made by actual "experts" at face value, because it would harm their credibility if they made claims that could be disproven. If they remain a credible expert, then they tend to have made a lot of claims that were backed up by the science and stood up to scrutiny, as is the case with Doctor Hotez, and that means that what they do say is extremely unlikely to be false. If, on the other hand, someone has a long track record of making false claims, like RFK Jr., then it is safer to dismiss their claims, in general.
    1
  6075.  @BooRadley452  So is everyone else, stop bragging.
    1
  6076.  @vickils9571  That is incorrect. There were controlled trials. They found the vaccines to be safe and effective. That is just not the outcome that some people wanted to hear.
    1
  6077. Stop giving Trump ideas!
    1
  6078.  @Janiix89  that's just the worm talking, don't listen.
    1
  6079.  @Demmrir  The American people want moderate Democrats, not Sanders Democrats.
    1
  6080. Humans are the only species with the potential for a conservation mindset, but we're hit or miss in applying it.
    1
  6081.  @timothyandrewnielsen  Well, Earth's climate has always changed, but it has changed more over the past two hundred years than it typically does over the same period of time, and without any natural reason that is apparent. There are unnatural explanations for it though, so that is the most likely explanation.
    1
  6082.  @grantbaker371  Large portions of the continuent are uninhabited, but that does not mean that they could be inhabited. They often lack the water resources necessary to support a large population. Water is a much more significant resource than land.
    1
  6083.  @grantbaker371  The continent is peppered with bodies of water, but almost all of them have been tapped for one purpose or another. Aquifers that took thousands of years to fill have been drained in less than two hundred. There are a few places where we could build larger reservoirs meant to trap water over decades-long cycles of boom and bust, but for the most part, water resources will always be a limiting factor, and many of the places with few people in them today will always have few people in them, because they cannot support larger populations. The US population will continue to grow, to some extent, but mostly in urban areas where resources can be managed more efficiently.
    1
  6084.  @grantbaker371  But, again, most of America has been exploited to its maximum potential, or at least with the aim of producing the same goals. You could perhaps replace some crops with more efficient ones, that sort of thing, but there are not massive amounts of space that are not currently being used for some economic purpose, outside of reserved ecological areas. Two interesting programs to me are "Why Wyoming is vastly emptier than Colorado" by Real Life Lore (spoilers, it's water resources), and also, the Ken Burns films on Buffalo, which go into how massively we've already shifted the Great Plains, and how risky that can be. TL;DR, water resources are going to be an issue, because the places with abundant water lack other elements that would allow them to exploit that water, and many other places are going to fall further and further behind their own water needs. Even the Mississippi was facing short term water issues, who knows how long that might continue.
    1
  6085.  @grantbaker371  Nah, truth is everywhere, most of what you hear is true, whether it's helpful or not. We do need to make sure that government is independent of corporations though, and beholden to the will of the voters.
    1
  6086.  @Etennete  Citing sources in Youtube comments can often be hit or miss, but a simple google search will turn up plenty of credible responses. This is not controversial science, it's been well documented since long before trans issues were a hot topic. There have been advocates in womens' sports that it might be a good idea to not encourage girls to do sports in their later high school years, so that their bodies can fully develop before college, because giving them incentives to go 100% from adolescence through college will leave their bodies less developed than their peak potential.
    1
  6087.  @Canbilly2  How so?
    1
  6088.  @Canbilly2  Adjusting nutrition levels is literally "screwing with someone's biology via chemicals." That's all food is, chemicals. And of course gender dysphoria is an exception, as cancer is, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't adequately treat patients that actually have it. And no, it's not a mental disability. Check the DSM-5. I get that some people want it to be considered a mental disability, but these people are not doctors and should not be listened to, because the evidence does not support that position.
    1
  6089.  @sidvicious6505  My point was that the actions some people take to participate in sports at a competitive level can lead to a delayed puberty, which catches up to them if they take a sufficiently long break from training. There are all sorts of ways to deliberately or accidentally alter how a human body develops, this is just one of them, and for those for whom it is prescribed, it provides a better quality of life than they would otherwise have. So what business would that be of anyone other than that patient?
    1
  6090.  @amentco8445  I give the power of a caring government over a family that has clearly stopped caring more about their child than they do about their own comfort. If the parents actually care about their child then government never needs to get involved, but when parents fail, it's better for government to get involved than for that child to go without.
    1
  6091.  @amentco8445  I don't know what you mean. I never claimed that there was a mystical means to stop anything. There are certainly scientifically effective methods of stopping all sorts of biological processes. To which specific one were you referring?
    1
  6092.  @Canbilly2  As is the idea that trans-supportive treatments can be harmful to the patients. The overwhelming majority of patients suffer no harm from them and go on to lead happier lives than they would otherwise. There are fewer trans people who received appropriate trans supportive care and later regretted that than there are female gymnasts who had delayed onset of puberty as a result of their sport. So, yeah. . . exceptions to the rule.
    1
  6093.  @21area21  That may be convenient to the results YOU want to see in others, but it is extremely harmful to other people. "Normal" is what is normal for the PATIENT, not what is "normal" to YOU. If a patient feels that the hormones their body produces make them feel bad, then it is "normal" for them to alter those hormones to reach a state that THEY are comfortable with. YOUR comfort is completely irrelevant to that. What we know is that trans people ARE "natural," they occur in nature spontaneously. So what do you do about that? We have the choice to either allow them to take the steps that would make them comfortable with their own nature, or we can choose to punish them for how they were born by forcing them to accept whatever standard we find acceptable for them. I certainly know which Jesus would choose.
    1
  6094.  @UlexiteTVStoneLexite  The cruelty is the point. The magas only care about causing harm to people.
    1
  6095. Unfortunately, I don't think the Republicans are willing to clear out the rot. They could do it tomorrow if more of them would be willing to resign, but they prefer power to integrity, so they will need to be voted out.
    1
  6096.  @TheOneSeanPool  But a bump stock DOES allow the firing of more than one round per pull of the trigger. And yes, if you put a robot on the gun that pulls the trigger faster then that would be a machine gun, because in that case, "the trigger" would be whichever mechanism YOU pressed to tell the robot to shoot. "The trigger" is the interface between the human and the device, so whatever you stick in between that, if the human only has to do one step and it results in multiple rounds being fired, then the mechanical unit is a machine gun.
    1
  6097.  @sakaikearse6128  That's the way it's intended to work, yes, but unfortunately the current court has been bought and paid for, so their ruling lack credibility. Anyone who has knowledge of semi-autos knows that a bump stock turns it into a machine gun, with the human body acting as a part of that machine. It's semantics to claim otherwise.
    1
  6098.  @TheOneSeanPool  The humans are always a part of the system though, this is just trying to define a loophole in which the human only executes a single trigger pull, but the machine itself bounces against his finger multiple times, and Thomas is claiming that this is "multiple trigger pulls," When the finger is an inanimate object in the scenario, then it cannot be claimed to be a single pull. You could put a stick in there and the gun would empty its magazine.
    1
  6099.  @TheOneSeanPool  So your argument is basically "if Congress had wanted fewer dead children, then they should have worded their law better to account for a device created decades later?" Has the matress store come to offer you a commercial deal?
    1
  6100.  @timothyavendt677  So, exactly why Clearance was wrong on this, because a bump stock is NOT "on pull, one shot." a gun with a bump stock attached is "one pull, however many shots you have in your magazine." That is a machine gun, and the ATF got it right.
    1
  6101.  @timothyavendt677  Wrong, one pull, as many shots as you have in your magazine. That is the ONLY purpose to a bump stock.
    1
  6102.  @Jeff-sl8xz  I don't know what you're talking about, but an AR-15 platform rifle has a standard magazine of up to 30 rounds, and can have extended magazines of up to 100. And yes, the rounds fired by an AR -15 make much larger holes in the body than some other types of ammunition, leading to much higher fatality rates. These are all good reasons to remove them from the market, and at the very least to take what steps are available to reduce their lethality.
    1
  6103.  @timothyavendt677  Why? The actual definition applies here. You pull the trigger once, and multiple rounds get fired. That IS the definition.
    1
  6104.  @drdesign6049  You understand that you are arguing semantics, and that people will die due to this argument, right?
    1
  6105.  @drdesign6049  I did make a substantive argument, you ignored it and preferred one base don semantics instead. In the meantime, people die. That is also a substantive argument, because all lives matter.
    1
  6106.  @drdesign6049  You don't have to be worried about being arrested by the ATF though. All you have to do is not own a bump stock. That is not remotely hard to do.
    1
  6107.  @drdesign6049  I believe that it is actually illegal, when you're not trying to tie yourself into knot with "yes, you can kill dozens of kids by just pressing the trigger down once, but it's not actually 'one operation of the trigger if you really think about it this way. . ." I'm much more concerned with the people who will actually die in between now and when this gets fixed than I am about anyone who gets arrested for owning a bump stock. I have always cared about murder victims more than any bump stock owners, and I always will.
    1
  6108. I think it's possible for capitalism to be ethical, but only under two conditions: 1. The capitalist company is wholey owned by one or more parties that are committed to an ethical path, and that ignore potential progress in cases where it would be unethical to pursue it. Basically, a "benevolent monarch" company structure. or 2. The company's charter specifically codifies ethical conduct as taking priority over productivity and growth. If a company is publicly traded, they have a fiduciary duty to increase value for their shareholders. If, however, they have a very public and legally binding charter that places growth as being in third place to ethical treatment of employees and ethical management of the planet, then investors would be well aware of this going in, and would be investing with the intention of furthering these ethical goals, as much as generating profits.
    1
  6109.  @graye2799  What would guaranteeing stable job prospects have to do with any of this? If anything this would make their job prospects more at risk.
    1
  6110.  @graye2799  Not really, since it also means fewer customers, and also the immigrants aren't really in competition for jobs that your kids should have any reason to want. Besides which, by the time your kids are in the workforce, it will all be AI anyway, and neither those kids nor immigrants will have jobs. If we're scrambling in the mud over "who gets jobs," then we're fighting the wrong conflict.
    1
  6111.  @graye2799  What I'm saying is, if you raise your kids right, they should never be in competition with a migrant worker for a job. The migrants "taking up those jobs" is not bad, because it means that those jobs are getting filled, which means that the goods and services provided by that job are taking place, which is better for you and your children than that job being vacant would be. As for why I'm against deportation, it's because it's handled in an inhuman manner. I'm not against all deportation, when it follows proper procedure and due process, but I reject the policies of the incoming administration, because I think it's important to treat humans humanely. And again, "the labor market" is irrelevant, it will be reduced to zero within our lifetimes, certainly within your child's. Again, if we're fighting amongst ourselves about "labor" then we're missing the point entirely.
    1
  6112. @ 1. What I'm saying is, if you raise your kids right, they should never be in competition with a migrant worker for a job. The migrants "taking up those jobs" is not bad, because it means that those jobs are getting filled, which means that the goods and services provided by that job are taking place, which is better for you and your children than that job being vacant would be.
    1
  6113. @ 2. As for why I'm against deportation, it's because it's handled in an inhuman manner. I'm not against all deportation, when it follows proper procedure and due process, but I reject the policies of the incoming administration, because I think it's important to treat humans humanely.
    1
  6114. @ 3. And again, "the labor market" is irrelevant, it will be reduced to zero within our lifetimes, certainly within your child's. Again, if we're fighting amongst ourselves about "labor" then we're missing the point entirely.
    1
  6115. @ If there were enough Americans to fill those jobs, then migrants would not be necessary. The simple fact is that it is American workers who have decided that they do not want to do those jobs.
    1
  6116.  @graye2799  If they were higher, people couldn't afford to hire them. The cost of housing is already too high. You can't raise the wages of construction, so you just need to figure out what to do with the current wages for construction.
    1
  6117.  @graye2799  If there are less people competing for housing and goods, then that means less money to spend on building and producing/selling goods. The industries that have been making money in America have mostly not been those benefiting from migrant labor. I'm not sure where you are getting these ideas.
    1
  6118. @ I don't understand your question. Reducing immigration certainly does hurt the working classes, if that's what you were talking about.
    1
  6119. @ Again, housing is already too expensive, nobody can afford the cost of building going up, so that is a fixed amount. Everything that changes needs to take place with construction wages remaining flat. If there aren't enough people willing to work at the current wages, then the result is not wages going up, it's just fewer projects getting funded, and more homeless people. As for migrants somehow lowering housing prices, probably not, because the housing they could afford was not housing that other Americans were trying to get into. There is plenty of housing in America for everyone in it to have a roof over their head, the problem is that a lot of the available housing is not in a location or of a type that the buyers are interest in. As for why the working class often votes this way? They are very manageable by the elites, so manageable, they don't even notice it.
    1
  6120.  @graye2799  All costs add up, and removing migrants will also make materials more expensive, leaving less money for construction workers. You might be right though, wages for construction workers might indeed go down as a result of removing migrants. I hadn't fully thought out the situation. Thanks for informing me.
    1
  6121.  @graye2799  Again, the wages won't increase, stop pretending the wages would increase. So come up with a scenario that happens in the real world where the wages won't increase and stop talking about "well, if Aslan the Lion comes back then that would sort everything out." Also,m how would people have "more spending power" when everything is more expensive due to tariffs? You aren't making a lick of sense here. When the cost of materials go up due to tariffs and increased labor costs on the materials side, and the cost of the finished building can't go up, then the cost of wages would have to go back down to balance things out.
    1
  6122. @ You're looking at the systems too simply, only looking at one part of it at a time, rather than the whole thing. There is a demand for housing, yes, but there is also a limit to how much people are willing and able to spend. If you reduce supply, then the simple answer is that this increases profits because it is less than demand, but the more practical result is that it just prices people out of the market, and fewer people are able to obtain housing, or they have to make do with worse and worse options. Housing prices are already too high, you cannot raise that number significantly. So if you reduce the supply of workers, that does not lead to higher wages for the remaining ones, it just leads to fewer total projects, which means fewer homes to go around, which means fewer people with homes. And there is no long term gain to the sorts of tariffs being discussed here. It will only lead to increased prices for US consumers, while the rest of the world laughs. Many construction materials are made in the US, but the prices on those will go up due to the increased labor costs of producing them. Those materials we get outside the US will go up, either due to Trump's tariffs, or due to taxes that other countries put on them in retaliation for his tariffs. And of course in a feedback loop, the US produced products will get hit by a second price rise, because even if something is "produced" here, it often has costs that would involve foreign imports, such as needing precursor materials, parts, and machinery produced overseas. The costs will all go up. There will be no benefits to it. It is only a bad thing, unless you are one of America's enemies, in which case, it's the best possible thing. It's the US dunking on their own basket.
    1
  6123. @ Ok, what's your point?
    1
  6124. Co the CCP would have you believe.
    1
  6125.  @randallching3900  Yeah, I really do wish you guys luck. I do think it can work out for both sides of the equation, so long as everyone works toward that goal.
    1
  6126. God willing,t hey';re both great.
    1
  6127. No, money to Ukraine AND Maui. And maybe also Florida, but they'd probably just spend it on drugs.
    1
  6128.  @TedCruz2028  If he supported our troops, he wouldn't be blocking their promotions.
    1
  6129. The rise of stupid.
    1
  6130. There are deer that live in my backyard sometimes, I could "harvest" them from my back porch if I wanted. The numbers are up and down, but we tend to average around a half dozen each year, and up to a dozen in the area. Haven't hit one with my car yet, but you do have to be careful, one rolled under a rail fence once after power-sliding across the road in front of me. There was also one with a broken leg that would hobble around the area for a year or two. And of course you "detect" some dead ones off the side of the road when on walks. I don't think there's anything wrong with people who are hunting because they need deer meat to live off of, or if they live off of selling that meat, but I do think that it's a bit sketchy if they are content enough in life and just choose to spend their free time putting an end to the life of animals. I mean, isn't that typically a warning sign in children? I do think that "harvested" is an overly pleasant euphemism though. Say they were "hunted" or "killed," own your decisions.
    1
  6131. The ONLY way they could get this to work is if they manage to save Ukraine in whole. IF they can end the war with ALL of Ukraine's 2012 territory restored and generous rebuilding funding, then that would be a sign to the world that being a US ally is worth it. But short of that, I don't see why any major countries would want to invest in an America that is now so unstable, rather than investing in themselves.
    1
  6132. It's been decades of inflation since then though.
    1
  6133. Nope, it's going to be working on roads and bridges that millions of people use each day. You should do your research.
    1
  6134.  John Doe  Exactly, so that is what this bill and the other Infrastructure bill are trying to address. The existing programs are only good for minor maintenance, like potholes and whatnot, it takes a serious investment like this to handle a new bridge or something.
    1
  6135.  John Doe  I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. The US has some seriously crumbling infrastructure and it will take a lot of work to fix it. What do you propose as a solution, if not this?
    1
  6136.  John Doe  That isn't an answer to the question. What is your alternative to achieve the goals this bill sets out to achieve?
    1
  6137.  John Doe  Obama did not raise taxes on Americans, the money that the government took during his presidency went into the same programs as prior and later administrations. Obama's personal wealth came from several very successful book deals he made between becoming a Senator and today. None of it came form the government or anyone involved in government, beyond his Presidential salary and pension.
    1
  6138.  John Doe  As for government, people in red states tend to believe government can't fix their problems, but that's only because they elect Republicans, and Republicans are uninterested in fixing their problems. Government is never perfect, but it is better than the alternatives, when it is staffed by people who care about solving problems. You can find them on any ballot by the "(D)" next to their name.
    1
  6139.  John Doe  No politician gets a seven figures salary, but I definitely am in favor of shutting down lobbyists whenever possible. You know who isn't in favor of shutting down Lobbyists? Conservative politicians and judges who block such legislation when Democrats propose/pass it. Ever hear of Citizens United? Immigrations certainly isn't a problem in the US, immigrants are necessary to offset an aging population and a workforce that is uninterested in manual labor. Without immigrants, the agricultural sector collapses, as does much of the service sector. People were whining that a $15 minimum wage was "too high" for service industry jobs, but if you wipe out immigration, we'd be looking at $20 to flip burgers. None of that answers the infrastructure question though. We were talking about an infrastructure bill, and you said that this was not the right way to fix it. So the question to you was what is the right way to fix it?
    1
  6140.  John Doe  You may remember that, but it's been a long time since that worked out. There were more kids back then to take those jobs so there was a higher unskilled labor supply, and inflation was a lot lower. $3.75 in those days would buy a lot more than $10 today, and less than 1/5 of minimum wage workers are under 25. Things change. Republicans have kept Democrats from raising the minimum wage to keep up with the time, and of course businesses mostly don't raise wages any higher than they have to. The solution, as with most problems, is to elect more Democrats.
    1
  6141.  John Doe  I was alive while Clinton was President, but I also was old enough to remember that the Republicans controlled the congress and prevented him from accomplishing a lot that he wanted to. A President alone cannot achieve much without control of the house and a Filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, since the Republicans are the party of do-nothing.
    1
  6142.  John Doe  No, a fool following any party period is called a "Republican." My position is based on the fact that the Democratic party pursues policies that I agree with, that the Republican party has proven themselves unfit for public office, and that there is no alternative in this two-party system (and just ignoring that fact is a complete waste of everyone's time).
    1
  6143.  John Doe  They delete my comments too, all the time. It's not really a partisan mechanic, they seem to delete most posts with links to outside content, and sometimes based on certain keywords. I think individual channels can set up their own censor-list, because some police words that others don't. "Not following parties" is just a child throwing a tantrum. We have a two-party system at the moment, so you are either following one, or you are following the other, or you are accomplishing nothing. If the two-party system bothers you, then encourage methods of ranked-choice voting and different ways of distributing House seats, but for the most part, there is no chance of the two-party system changing any time soon. Crying about it won't help anything.
    1
  6144.  John Doe  Well of course you don't see my comments get deleted. They were DELETED. By I know they were deleted, because I typed them, and then they weren't there. Their censoring system isn't that complex, either you were including links to something and they didn't want outside links, or you were saying some word that's on either their kill list or Bloomberg's. Comments that do get deleted are typically within seconds, well before any human could actually read your post for context. You can have a perfectly rational comment that includes one "kill word" in a completely appropriate context, and it will vanish instantly, or you can post something truly horrifyingly vile, but avoiding all their casual trigger words, and it will sit around just fine for hours, at least. Not that I recommend anyone do such a thing.
    1
  6145.  John Doe  And I sort of expect any reasonable moderation would not take kindly to threats of genocide, so. . . maybe that's the difference?
    1
  6146.  John Doe  Oh, what does it look like when you're reading a comment and it's deleted? Is there an animation?
    1
  6147.  John Doe  Democrats didn't create LGBTQ people, they just support people who God created that way. Fighting against them won't make them stop being gay, it will only hurt people. Adn Gay people don't "destroy families," their families are as strong, in many cases stronger than non-LGBTQ families. There's nothing "Nazi-like" about Cancel culture. The Nazis murdered people. All Cancel Culture does is prevent you talking shit on Twitter.
    1
  6148.  John Doe  Well, if a post took days to weeks to get removed, then that was probably because the person who made it was saying something vile.
    1
  6149.  John Doe  Anyone who is worried about the "gay agenda" and that gay people can somehow turn straight people gay, is just gay themselves, and not comfortable with that fact. It happens. Maybe just learn to love yourself and not worry about what makes other people happy?
    1
  6150.  John Doe  Again, if "cancel culture" bothers you, then maybe advocating genocide is not the best option? How can someone say "you guys are being Nazis" and also "and I've got a Final Solution for you." in the same thread?! Sorry, cupcake, but progressives will outlast you all. We always do.
    1
  6151.  John Doe  It must make you really sad then that we live in a world where words are winning and force is not getting you the goals you want.
    1
  6152.  John Doe  Independents are pro-Democrats. That's why Democrats have consistently got the majority of the votes in the last couple decades. A lot of military don't particularly like Democrats, but they are at least loyal to the country, so if the country elects Democrats, they will follow Democratic orders. A country in which the military just decides to ignore the elected government is called a "Dictatorship," and nobody wants that. The thing is, Republicans hate Democrats, and their primary political goal is "*not* whatever the Democrats want," but the Democrats actually try to accomplish things, and the world the Democrats will create is better for everyone to live in, including Republicans, so I'm fine with that.
    1
  6153. Yeah, but other countries have just as many people with mental problems as the US, but have less mass murderers, because they don't have the guns. The guns are the problem, not the mental health issues.
    1
  6154.  @Noneya-bw5gm  That's not the case.
    1
  6155.  @morpheusjones4753  It probably would be in Biden's best interests to cut off all contact with Hunter, but unlike Trump, Biden actually loves his children. Those oin the right HATE family values.
    1
  6156.  @lemme_phister  The difference being that the 91 charges have mountains of evidence to support them, while there is currently no evidence of wrongdoing on Biden's part.
    1
  6157. Everything the right accuse others of, is an admission.
    1
  6158. To answer the question "Are gun owners garbage people?"
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  6159.  @Tyler-zs9il  A third party wouldn't help, because both the other parties would still be upset if that candidate won. A lot of people complain about "the two party system," but the fact is that there are more people who are either Democrats or Republicans than there are who would vote for an actual third party candidate. I guarantee you that if there were a candidate who 100% aligned with every one of your political beliefs, they would be at least partially out of step with 99.9% of voters, and completely out of step with at least 50% of voters. That's just how it is. There is no such thing as a candidate that everyone agrees on. The best it ever gets is like 65%.
    1
  6160.  joshschmidt3841  An insurrection is not defined by "property damage." An insurection is defined by its attempt to overthrow the standing government. Jan6 was not an insurrection because Capital property was damaged or police were injured. It was an insurrection because it was part of an effort to block the certification of Biden and installed Trump in his place, which is unconstitutional. The actual attack on the capital was mainly a distraction from the actual insurrection going on in the Congressional chambers.
    1
  6161.  @DeathB4Dishonor2300  Right, because fewer than 5% of the population combined are actually in favor of the Green Party or other smaller parties. They are a non-factor on the national level, but yeah. nothing is stopping third parties from existing and running.
    1
  6162. The federal government does help, they round up all the people crossing and process them.
    1
  6163.  @jeffhaddix9508  I didn't say that.
    1
  6164. I can trust that they are basing it on science, but I also think that it is woefully naive, it is trusting people to behave responsibly when they have spent the last year that they are literally DYING to behave as irresponsibly as anyone will allow them to be. We may be at the point where some people can safely go without masks, but we're not yet at the point where those who are still unsafe to go without masks can be trusted to keep their masks on when other people don't have to.
    1
  6165. It was because Trump took off with pallets full of documents that the National Archives were expecting, they knew those documents were missing, they asked to get them back, and they were refused on multiple occasions. Biden did not do that. So that is the difference.
    1
  6166. That's not how a "spy balloon" works.
    1
  6167. Yup. Trump often did a LOT better in polls than he did in the actual race, so in reality he should be far more behind than it currently appears.
    1
  6168.  @nencrows_4580  That was because he didn't actually do any good things. He just claimed to be doing good things, and hos subjects believed him.
    1
  6169.  @TwinGoats  So you're saying that an argument against Roosevelt was that things were better in 1929 than in 1933?
    1
  6170.  @johnmiller3494  Yeah, it'll be Hakeem Jeffries next year, problems solved.
    1
  6171.  @debraolson7553  How is "my ignorance showing" by dropping facts on you that YOU apparently didn't know. Isn't that your problem?
    1
  6172.  @BlotRorschach  The Abraham accords accomplished nothing, and in many ways led to the current conflict in Gaza. What do you believe they achieved?
    1
  6173. Yes. She answered that one. And all the other ones. Were you not paying attention?
    1
  6174.  @NicoleMorgan  You don't like her answer, but she did answer the "reporter's" question. I'm sorry she used more words than you could follow.
    1
  6175. To be fair, Trump could unilaterally attack Canada and his supporters would eat it up.
    1
  6176.  @jacobew2000  And the AR-15s. A good portion of the bedrock under the roadway to hell is just pure AR-15. at least along the route leading from America.
    1
  6177. They don't want any conservatives that are not also white.
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  6178. It's not perfectly safe to not wear masks elsewhere, but it is safer. All public health policies are a balancing act between 100% safety (but really inconvenient) and really convenient (but really unsafe). The current standard is that while people should wear masks in public, it's not generally necessary that they do so. Travel complicates the situation though, since 1. you're in a confined space with the same people for longer, meaning you're more likely to all get whatever any one of you might have, and 2. you're traveling with more people from outside your own community, meaning even if your community didn't have an outbreak before, they will when you get home. You understand how this is different?
    1
  6179.  @kaijohnson5033  Again, it's not an "all or nothing" thing. If you wear a mask during most of a flight, but take it off occasionally, that does not invalidate the times where you had it on. You're adding risk, but you still may have prevented infection from occurring during the portion where you were wearing your mask. It's like speeding in a car, following the speed limit all the time is good, breaking the speed limit occasionally adds more risk of a crash, but just because you might speed some of the time does not mean that you may as well speed all the time. And yes, N95 masks are what is recommended, and everyone should have free access to them if they need them, but other types of masks are still better than nothing. But yes, get an N95 mask, especially if you're going to be flying. And again, even IF you personally believe that masks are completely worthless, there is literally no reason to not wear one, so just wear it and stop being a petulant bother to those around you.
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  6180.  @AdamSmith-gs2dv  The circuit judges will be looking at the merits of the case. "Urgency" really isn't relevant here. All that will matter in that case was whether Mizelle had grounds to strike down the CDC guideilne, which obviously she did not.
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  6181.  @kaijohnson5033  But you're misunderstanding how virus works. It's not like if you breath some virus out into a plane, that you've instantly and inevitably doomed everyone in that plan to infection. You have just expelled a certain amount of viral particles. Those viral particles would then move around a bit through the cabin, settle on surfaces, and eventually die. IF those particles get close to another passenger, and IF they do not have their own mask on (or it manages to bypass those filters), then the particles might enter their body. And if it does, those particles might lead to infection, or might be fought off before it reaches that point. The more particles, the more frequently they come into contact, the greater the risk. Too many people seem to view infection as some absolute binary thing, either you're 100% safe or 0% safe. It's instead just layers of risk, and no matter what you do (short of staying entirely away form any infected person), you will never be at 0%, but you will also never be at 100%. Wearing a mask increases your protection, getting vaccinated increases your protection, those around you doing these things increases your protection, but it is never 100%, and it is never 0%. If passengers all wear their masks 100% of the time, then that would be the lowest risk of transmission, but if they all take their masks off for 10% of the time, especially if they stagger that a bit, then their risks have gone up, but they are still nowhere close to 100%. And personally, I rate someone who would put "a very small complaint" like having to wear a mask over the life of another human as "trash." It is a fact that thousands of people are dead specifically because someone chose not to wear a mask. You cannot claim that your "minor inconvenience" is more of a burden than their life was worth. So anyone ATTEMPTING to make such an argument is absolute garbage, and there is no defending them. People whining over minor inconvenience can claim NO moral equivalency to people "whining" in an attempt to save human lives.
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  6182.  @TheDragonageorigins  You'd think so, right? I mean it sounds right, doesn't it, that if you raise taxes on businesses, then they'll just jack up prices, right? Except we know for a fact that this is not what happens, they don't raise prices, or at least not more than they would under normal conditions. After all, there was a massive corporate tax cut recently and they certainly didn't lower prices, right? The fact is that the companies will just set the prices to as high as people are willing to pay, and if they aren't willing to pay more, then they won't raise the prices. If they are willing to pay more then they will jack up the prices whether you raise taxes on them or not. Very few businesses are so on the margin that raising their corporate taxes would put them out of business, instead they will just not buy-back as many stocks, or not pay as massive a bonus to their executives, but so far as the average employee or customer, those prices are baked in either way.
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  6183.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  None of what you just said is true.
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  6184.  @DanHovarter  Sure! This should answer all your questions on taxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfmUrw0gDiU It's a pity that elementary school education doesn't do a better job of teaching basic economics like that, but at least now you can no longer claim ignorance!
    1
  6185.  @hannahramirez5448  Yes.
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  6186.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  I don't need to know a single thing about you or your business. What I do know is that covid is not 99% survivable (it's closer to 98.3%), and Democrats did not politicize it. Republicans politicized it by resisting the moves we needed to take to save lives. Had they not done this, there would be 500,000 more Americans alive today. Treating a deadly pandemic seriously is not "politicizing" it. That is just the bare minimum that anyone should expect from a functioning Republic. We expected too much when Trump was at the head of it.
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  6187.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  On how masks help prevent the spread of the virus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y47t9qLc9I4
    1
  6188.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  On how covid deaths are recorded and why "pre-existing conditions" does not mean it isn't a covid death: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/debunking-the-false-claim-that-covid-death-counts-are-inflated1/
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  6189.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  It's a youtube video that explains what the scientific evidence shows. There is plenty of scientific evidence to back it up.
    1
  6190.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  And yes, certain irresponsible media downplay the covid risks because they want to support the Republican politicization of the virus. It has led to hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths.
    1
  6191.  @ZepFan01-rs5xc  I don't know the context of the photo you're talking about, but it's possible that the reporter was directly talking to people, while the cameraman was staying far enough back that it was less of a risk. Or perhaps the reporter was just trying to show a good example to the public. That is not some "gotcha" moment that you seem to think it is. Hangovers have not killed 600,000 Americans. Yes, many people who get it only have mild flu symptoms, or no symptoms at all, but it still kills twenty times more people than the average flu season, even AFTER taking serious measures to reduce that number, and leaves others with long term disabilities. It may be a joke to you, but that does not mean that it actually IS a joke to those that get serious cases of it. Some people have had the flu, you can see tracking of it on CDC sites. There were around 400 flu deaths in 2020-2021 season. The flu rate is much lower than in a normal year, but that is because 1. a lot more people got flu shots this year than normal, and 2. the same sorts of things that reduce covid risk ALSO work against the flu, so since a lot more people were staying home, not going to mass gatherings, etc., a lot less people got the flu. This should not be surprising to you. If we handled every flu season the way we handled covid, then we would see similarly tiny numbers, but since the flu has a MUCH higher survivability rate than covid, it would not be worth taking such extreme measures. There are only 20-30,000 flu deaths in a normal flu season, I'm not sure who lied to you and told you "400,000." The CDC also predicts how many "expected deaths" each year will have due to normal circumstances like old age and card crashes and that sort of thing, and 2020 had roughly 400,000 deaths above that expected amount, meaning around 400,000 MORE Americans died last year than any reasonable expectations could account for without factoring in covid's impacts. And are you SERIOUSLY trying to spread the Big Lie too now? Geez, I really hope you're a Russian plant at this point, because I'm tired of believing that Americans can be this stupid.
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  6192. The war doesn't really care who the US president is.
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  6193. It was the Gun Control Act of 1968.
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  6194. This right here is why Republicans can never be allowed into power/. They don't want to "undermine" the Republican candidate by making American lives better. Meanwhile, in 2020, Pelosi did everything possible to improve American lives, like a RESPONSIBLE representative.
    1
  6195.  @atedinahalf6288  They represent significantly different ideological stances that will define which laws get passed and which do not. That's far from "meaning nothing."
    1
  6196.  @atedinahalf6288  That would be the Republicans.
    1
  6197.  @atedinahalf6288  Why do you fall for that illusion? Does it make you feel better to feel like you have no responsibility for how things turn out?
    1
  6198. @seraeggobutterworth5247 The reason the 14th starts with a due process clause is ONLY to ensure that this clause is applied to ALL US citizens (including the former slaves), where the original only applied to some of them. This is how laws often work, if something is currently in the law, and you want "the same thing, only slightly different," then you have to write that new version in, and the most recent version overrides the previous one. It does NOT mean that there is any "bonus due process" that applies to people in violation of the later 14th amendment clauses.
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  6199. @seraeggobutterworth5247 Due process does apply in Trump's case, and he's received due process at every phase. I think what you mean is that you believe that a criminal conviction is necessary before the 14th can be applied so someone, and no, that has never been the case. Every person who has been rejected from a ballot due to the 14th amendment was someone who had not been convicted of a crime prior to that. It was never a factor. The "due process" under the 14th amendment is a case along the lines of the "Norma Anderson, et al. v. Jena Griswold" case we've already seen, and the subsequent appeals process. The 14th NOWHERE says that a person must be "convicted of the crime of insurrection," or anything of the sort. It ONLY says that the person must have violated their oaths of office, which is a determination left up to election officials and judges to make, not a criminal proceeding.
    1
  6200.  @johngiesbers9811  Exactly, just as Donald Trump is disqualified by his violation of his oaths of office.
    1
  6201. @ That may be true, but it only represents a small portion of customers. I think that stores should tend to have at least one manned checkout lane, or at the bare minimum enough staff watching the self checkout to basically take over when needed, but I think that the overwhelming majority of shopping trips will not need that level of interaction, so that should not be the default experience.
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  6202. @ I'm not paranoid about making mistakes like that. If it's a reasonable error, they shouldn't try to arrest you over it, they should just ask you nicely to correct it. You should only be arrested if you get belligerent over it. And I'm not saying that there can't be human contact, just that it doesn't need to be a part of commerce. If you want to interact with people, you should be able to do so, but nobody should be required to interact with you because they need to pay for food.
    1
  6203. When fascists are in charge.
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  6204.  @WalkiTalki  School Board members are typically elected by their own local people, not appointed by the governor. He removed members that represented the people in that district, and replaced them with people that that district would never elect. If that does not bother you, then you've found the problem.
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  6205. It seems like the best value on this one could be as a platform for testing technologies that could hopefully be scaled up. If you could build a plane the size of a 747, or even 1/2 or 1/4 that size, that can use these sorts of efficiencies, that could be a game changer.
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  6206.  @Chaddy_D  Klan members also believe their cause is righteous. That doesn't mean that it is. No babies are harmed by abortion. Abortion exists before babies do.
    1
  6207.  @jkeezy93  This is not "he let someone use a company car," that would be fine. What he did that was illegal was give a bunch of fringe benefits to employees without paying the necessary taxes on those benefits. Any legally operating company can just give company cars to people, pay taxes on that appropriately, and be totally fine. Because they aren't idiots.
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  6208. Well I'm glad to see Republicans finally standing up to this attempted subversion of democracy. . . wait, what? . . They're still cravenly supporting the Big Lie so as to not piss off their lunatic base? Sad. I remember when this was a two-party country.
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  6209. I know "because magic" is an unsatisfying answer, but it certainly could be an issue of "because magic AND science." Think of it this way, there are the White Walkers and all those up in the north, right? So perhaps the natural cycle there is a relatively normal Earth seasonal pattern, but when there are periods in which the White Walkers are "feeling powerful," they naturally lower the temperatures up there by only a few degrees, and that could create a natural climate cycle like the Atlantic Conveyor, which then transports colder weather down to the lower parts of the globe. the result would be that "natural winters" would become even colder, and "natural summers" would be suppressed to the level of just "a slightly pleasant January day," until this magical ice-box effect settled down, at which point natural seasons would resume. And perhaps since they typically have particularly long summers in the first place, maybe their "natural winters" would be a lot milder than in most of America, more of a "California winter." Now the scariest aspect of this is, what if these periodic magical cold snaps were necessary to maintaining a balanced climate, and that without any White Walkers to occasionally cool things off, the climate would actually get warmer and warmer over the next few centuries, until everything becomes uninhabitable?
    1
  6210.  @jerryfick8547  The US had an election during the Civil War. The only time someone threatened to pull an election due to a crisis, it was in 2020.
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  6211. Elections were held during the civil war. Whatever happens overseas, the election will take place and the winner will be inaugurated.
    1
  6212.  @GoonyMclinux  Ok, that's fine, they shouldn't be part of a military force then, so it's a good thing we learned that now.
    1
  6213.  @GoonyMclinux  Nobody's asking them to stop protecting the country. What Abbot is doing is not protecting the country, its protecting his polling numbers.
    1
  6214.  @morphergaming0531  Nobody is directing immigrants to come to the US. They come to the US because they want to have a better life, the same as all the millions of other immigrants and immigrant's descendants that make up America.
    1
  6215.  @Dgafsranger  So basically anyone who stays in Texas would just loose health care and social security. Ok, have fun with that.
    1
  6216.  @RadRat1978  Lol.
    1
  6217.  @johnwarden3880  No, just procrastinating.
    1
  6218. Ok, but can we stop pretending that Biden was wrong?
    1
  6219. GOP members have no right to talk about the border if they won't pass the bill to solve it. They own the border crisis until they actually act to solve it.
    1
  6220. Because it would not work.
    1
  6221. Just Republicans, really.
    1
  6222.  @why-jw3od  The silent majority is irrelevant, because they don't do anything. They only matter if they vote.
    1
  6223.  @jokesonyou1253  That isn't true though. I mean, it would be a big deal if it were true, but it isn't, so it's not actually a big deal.
    1
  6224.  @Ministry-Of-Truth  Those were a different party. They would all be Republicans if they were alive today. You forget the entire history of the Civil Rights movement. Most Republicans do.
    1
  6225. It's an insult to all women to claim that all women support your bigotry. Most do not.
    1
  6226.  @beetle442002  Well sure, the person is always responsible for thier own action, but of course guns make it easier to shoot people than if you don't have a gun, so while guns don't kill people, people kill people, people with guns are more effective at killing people, which is why we shouldn't let people and guns come together. But sure, guns can exist just fine, so long as we don't let any people near them, no worries.
    1
  6227.  @Bjorick  What did I say without fact or evidence?
    1
  6228.  @idraote  Not enough of geopolitics is determined by how smooth the lines on the map end up.
    1
  6229.  @JamesC785  Of course they get to choose, but only after their cities have been leveled, their civilians have fled to other countries, and been replaced with invading soldiers. If the invading soldiers vote to join up with these other countries, then that's just democracy at work. I mean, fair's fair, right?
    1
  6230.  @troublemaker1778  They can continue to live there, if they like, or they can move elsewhere. That's the nice thing about a free society, you're allowed to leave any time you like.
    1
  6231.  @troublemaker1778  People living in a region never get to decide which nation that land should be a part of. That is above their pay grade. Ownership of territory is done at the nationstate level. If they don't like being a part of the nation they are a part of, they can ask that nation for the option to secede, as Scotland did in the UK, but they never have a right to just unilaterally break away from the larger nation. The land they are on is owned by ALL the people of the nation, not just by the people currently standing on top of it. The people are free to leave as they see fit, but they have no right to take that land with them when they go.
    1
  6232.  @troublemaker1778  Again, IF the governments who legally control a region choose to allow that region to break off, then that's fine. But if that region decides against the wishes of the larger nation that they wish to secede, then they can secede their own bodies, but not the land under their feet. As for "organization the ethnic groups right," that's never perfect, because while there are often majorities in a region, and "historical roots," there are rarely any perfectly clear lines to be drawn, and as much harm has been caused by attempting to do so as good. This is why when the African countries gained independence from colonial powers, they agreed among themselves to avoid redrawing the borders wherever possible and just try to make the existing countries work. Good people do not need ethnically pure populations, they can take a jumbled mix of different ethnic cultures and work together to build a strong country out of it.
    1
  6233.  @guselsub6877  Kazakhstan and Ukraine are already their historical lands.
    1
  6234. There was a good video I saw a while back on Guga Food where he marinaded steaks in pineapple puree for varying times, and I believe it was an hour or so made the steak pretty great, but the longer it cooked, the more "zombie-like" it ended up, and after a full night or so it looked and reportedly ate awful.
    1
  6235.  @UnkklRico  Where have you been the last eight years?
    1
  6236.  @tammyscott3706  Hopefully, yeah.
    1
  6237.  @davidpowell3709  The video was incorrect. That should not be surprising, given the source.
    1
  6238. Ted Cruz having some idea about games is just such a monkey's paw. The thing is though, government is the only hope the consumer has to avoid microtransactions in future games, because without government intervention, microtransactions are way too profitable for game companies to avoid for long. Right now it's just a battle of retreats, we can maybe fight off certain microtransactions in certain games, but only in the short term, and at some point the games without microtransactions, and the fairly predatory ones at that, will no longer exist.
    1
  6239.  @chrishavill6458  I don't think you understand how these systems work. Inflation has nothing to do with this, and you wouldn't want inflation to reverse anyway, because it would just mean that the economy would collapse and people would be out of their jobs. What you want is to have a very small amount of inflation.
    1
  6240.  @gyn6131  Can you find me a source for that? I can find no evidence that corporations pay any portion of employees' income taxes. Are you sure you aren't just thinking of withholdings? Workers and employees do split the payroll tax, but payroll tax is only 30% total, so if that's split 50/50, then that would just be 15%, which, added to the 9%, would make the corporate contribution HALF of the individual income tax portion. Even if employers payed 100% of the payroll tax (which, let's be clear, they do not), it would still be 15% lower than income taxes.
    1
  6241.  ralphferley2602  But it's important to keep in mind that none of that is actually true of the real world.
    1
  6242.  @gyn6131  Employers don't pay anything into witholdings though, they just collect the employee's money so that he doesn't have to do it himself. Employers only match the payroll tax, which, as I explained, is a lot smaller. So, again, using 2022 numbers, employee income tax paid for 54% of the total tax revenue, this came 100% for employees, 0% from corporations. Then 30% came from payroll taxes, this came 15% from employees, 15% from corporations. Then 9% came from taxes on corporate profits. Then there were 7% in excise and "other" taxes, things like fees, tariffs, and inheritance. So adding that up, 69% of the total tax revenues came directly from employees, and 24% came from corporations, plus as much as 7% on each since depending on how that amount gets divided. In NO calculation do the corporations end up paying more. Now that you understand that, I'm glad we can agree that you were wrong and move on. As to your next point, there have been plenty of studies on this, and no, when taxes are lowered, corporations do not invest in growing things, they just buy back stocks and do other things to enrich investors. Companies ONLY spent money on improving the business when the business conditions are good, and that is BETTER achieved by giving more money to employees, so that they spend more. Basically, any tax cut to lower income individuals is worth several times the value of any tax cut to corporations or the wealthy.
    1
  6243.  @gyn6131  So, again, once ALL the math has been accounted for, private individuals pay 69% of the tax revenues, and corporations only account for 24%, roughly 1/3 as much. That's all I was saying. And again, history shows that raising taxes on corporations has no downsides and ONLY upsides. When you give corporations more money, they don't :invest" it in ways that benefit the average person, they "invest" it in things that pay off CEOs and shareholders, and nothing improves for the average American. Corporations have ZERO interest in "sharing with their employees," and will only "share" with them the bare minimum that it would take to get them to come in to work the next day. No more, no less, no matter how much windfall they are provided. It is pure fantasy that "give corporations more money, and good things will happen for ordinary people," but most small children grow out of such fantasies. On the OTHER hand, when you RAISE taxes on the corporations, the average citizen benefits significantly, from either lower taxes for themselves, or for improved services from the government. It's win-win. Those are according to the facts, at least, I can't speak for your feelings on the matter.
    1
  6244.  @gyn6131  So, again, once ALL the math has been accounted for, private individuals pay 69% of the tax revenues, and corporations only account for 24%, roughly 1/3 as much. That's all I was saying. And again, history shows that raising taxes on corporations has no downsides and ONLY upsides. When you give corporations more money, they don't "invest" it in ways that benefit the average person, they "invest" it in things that pay off CEOs and shareholders, and nothing improves for the average American. Corporations have ZERO interest in "sharing with their employees," and will only "share" with them the bare minimum that it would take to get them to come in to work the next day. No more, no less, no matter how much windfall they are provided. It is pure fantasy that "give corporations more money, and good things will happen for ordinary people," but most small children grow out of such fantasies. On the OTHER hand, when you RAISE taxes on the corporations, the average citizen benefits significantly, from either lower taxes for themselves, or for improved services from the government. It's win-win. Those are according to the facts, at least, I can't speak for your feelings on the matter.
    1
  6245.  @gyn6131  So, again, once ALL the math has been accounted for, private individuals pay 69% of the tax revenues, and corporations only account for 24%, roughly 1/3 as much. That's all I was saying. And again, history shows that raising taxes on corporations has no downsides and ONLY upsides. When you give corporations more money, they don't "invest" it in ways that benefit the average person, they "invest" it in things that pay off CEOs and shareholders, and nothing improves for the average American. Corporations have ZERO interest in "sharing with their employees," and will only "share" with them the bare minimum that it would take to get them to come in to work the next day. No more, no less, no matter how much windfall they are provided. On the OTHER hand, when you RAISE taxes on the corporations, the average citizen benefits significantly, from either lower taxes for themselves, or for improved services from the government. It's win-win. Those are according to the facts, at least, I can't speak for your feelings on the matter.
    1
  6246.  @gyn6131  Corporations are not entities that serve people. You're thinking of "government." Corporations are entities that use people make money for shareholders. They never intentionally help people, they only help people as much as is strictly necessary to meet production goals. This is why if you give a corporation more money, they will not translate that to higher wages or hiring more employees, because the wages and employees they have are already calculated to best meet their production goals. If you want them to increase wages or hire more employees, then you need to raise market DEMAND for those things, which you do by giving the CONSUMERS more money. This has all been tested and determined to be a fact, whether your feelings agree or not.
    1
  6247.  @ThisisKyle  No, the judge incorrectly determined that the CDC did not have the authority to do what they did. That's what you expect to happen with a judge who had had no courtroom experience and was deemed "unfit to serve" by the American Bar Association, but was appointed in a lame duck session anyway. She has no legal merit, only political.
    1
  6248.  @ARMY-ep6fz  Lol, did you know that Trump is still trying to convince people to reverse the results of the 2020 election and put him back into office? Still?! What clowns.
    1
  6249.  @stewhobson9748  The unbiased reading favors the CDC mandate. The reading as done by a judge deemed "unfit to serve" by the American Bar Association is that the CDC was wrong, but I wouldn't put much stock in that.
    1
  6250.  @jenningsmills5398  That's incorrect. CDC guidance has generally been appropriate to whichever phase of the pandemic we were in at the time they gave it. Primarily most of the complaints that I've been hearing are that they encouraged one thing one month and then a different thing later, as if this is a bad thing, but it's not. That's how science works. You make the best recommendation using the evidence available at the time, and then as new evidence comes in or the situation on the ground changes, you update that guidance. Someone following every CDC guideline throughout this pandemic would be MUCH better off than someone who hadn't.
    1
  6251. @AmericaIsWorthIt What would lead you to believe that I support Putin? He's an idiot. And the courts should be a hedge against government overreach, but that is only IF qualified candidates are chosen for the job, and the previous administration failed at that. The judge in this case was deemed unfit to serve by the Bar Association, yet got slammed through anyway. The CDC obviously has authority to issue mandates, it's one of their core functions.
    1
  6252.  @WrenchLord  I don't think the issue was whether it was a Trump or Biden appointed judge, it was that the judge overruled a CDC mandate without any real consideration of the case. If they allow that judgement to stand then it would throw any future mandates into question. I don't see what sort of "double standard" would be at play here.
    1
  6253. While you're on the topic of breads, why are grocery store "banquettes" NEVER anything resembling an actual baguette? They are always these thick hard shelled, spongey yellow interior things. Then you can get "French bread" in some, which is a baguette! The "French Bread" at my local Weis is the best brand I've found locally.
    1
  6254. The world has been going through more than two wars at once for basically all of human history. We're currently somewhere around 13.
    1
  6255.  @Donny_Double_Dip  Well, the only people "getting political" here are the people suggesting boycotts. Bud certainly didn't "get political," they just hired a popular young influencer to do an ad with their product for her target audience. What's "political" about that? That it made bigots cry? So what?
    1
  6256.  @Donny_Double_Dip  Ok, so if a child is trans, why do you not believe they should be supported? You do know that trans youths have a much higher suicide rate than the general population, and that supporting their transition greatly reduces this, right? Why would you prefer that they die than that they bother you by being alive and trans? Also, if you wanted to call a black person the n-word, and they asked you to not call them that, would you be offended that they are " forcing you to speak a certain way?" I mean, if we're being honest with each other, I'm sure your answer would be "of course," but I do think that society in general has moved past that point, as they will on this topic. Bigotry is a constantly moving goal post, what was seen as bigotry fifty years ago is often seen as "ridiculous" to even modern bigots, just as their own bigotry will seem ridiculous to bigots fifty years from now. That does not make it right. Get ahead of the curve, rather than behind it.
    1
  6257.  @megabuster3940  Well that was what Bud was doing here, they were marking their beer to a different market than you. What's wrong with that?
    1
  6258.  @jimlewis2395  But clearly nothing nearly so wrong as with Donald Trump, right?
    1
  6259.  @jimlewis2395  You do realize that they delete posts by liberals too, right?
    1
  6260.  @jimlewis2395  Yeah, good for you, you aren't special.
    1
  6261.  @jimlewis2395  If they deleted one of my comments, would you be able to see it?
    1
  6262.  @jimlewis2395  So how would you know whether they deleted any of my comments or not? I'm trying to lead you to understanding on this, but it's like talking to a grape.
    1
  6263.  @robertkennedy5374  How so?
    1
  6264. @ Why shouldn't they pass the cost on to consumers? It's not their fault the costs went up.
    1
  6265.  @thomash4950  Not when that's what the law says it is.
    1
  6266.  @chodkowski01  Yeah, perhaps if DeSantis had planned this better and coordinated this with the local government in Martha's Vineyard, they could have set up the infrastructure to support these migrants, but of course he's completely incompetent.
    1
  6267. TL;DR: No, but they're having fun, so why not? Let kids be kids.
    1
  6268. @Dasha-tk3mo Lol.
    1
  6269.  @primitiveaccommodation  Did you somehow miss Russia invading several of their neighbors over the past couple decades? They are still in the middle of one of those. The US had nothing to do with it.
    1
  6270.  @primitiveaccommodation  Who cares what happens in Putin's imagination? In the real world, none of that happened, and that's where the rest of us live.
    1
  6271.  @primitiveaccommodation  But again, only in Putin's imagination. Why listen to someone so clearly deranged?
    1
  6272.  @primitiveaccommodation  It did not actually happen though, and you have just been tricked by what you believe to be "proof." Also, Youtube deletes a lot of things, don't brag.
    1
  6273.  @primitiveaccommodation  It did not actually happen though, and you have just been tricked by what you believe to be "proof."
    1
  6274.  @primitiveaccommodation  You mean when Russia was bombing them? Other than that, fiction.
    1
  6275.  @primitiveaccommodation  You mean the multiple Russian missile strikes on the city?
    1
  6276.  @primitiveaccommodation  You are referring to the multiple Russian missile strikes on the city, killing dozens and injuring hundreds?
    1
  6277.  @primitiveaccommodation  I don't see any video, nor would I watch one you wanted to post. Other than the Russian missile strikes against civilians, the only other thing I can find in Odessa is clashes between pro-Europe and pro-Russian protesters. Nothing that would justify military aggression from Russia.
    1
  6278. Still better than people who take firearms as a leisure activity though, right?
    1
  6279.  @Tatiuska100  What's your point?
    1
  6280.  @alundavies1016  Again though, if a brick built home would survive without significant damage, then timber frame houses likely would as well. Depends on the type of natural disaster one faces though, brick would survive better against fire, but areas of significant fire risk are fairly specific. There are already pushes in fire-heavy areas to use more fire-resistant cladding, at least.
    1
  6281.  @alundavies1016  The government doesn't put military bases into those states to pump money in, they put them there because those states get two Senators and it is often conditional for their votes on some other important project. A lot of companies are moving to states in the south that are awful for their employees, because those states offer significant tax incentives. Race to the bottom is bad for everyone.
    1
  6282. They don't have prompts or earwigs at debates.
    1
  6283. ​ Matthew Huszarik  Probably not many places, but there are plenty of places where the employment cost vs cost of living are much closer than in downtown San Francisco. That was my point.
    1
  6284.  @2davivadiva  Conservatives apparently think it's a documentary or something, even though the guy the film is about says that it's mostly made up. I mean, the guy I was responding to wasn't just throwing out a "fun movie to watch," he was suggesting it as a reference to real world problems. May as well reference Mission Impossilble, or the Barbie Movie.
    1
  6285.  @AJWOZ2595  Human trafficking is a serious problem,. it just has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
    1
  6286. The laws in those states have specific rules as to when and how people can be added or removed from a ballot. Biden got out well before those ballots were finalized, Kennedy did not. It's not that complicated.
    1
  6287.  @allsawitcoming1503  They are each public record, and you can look them up. Obviously you wouldn't expect me to do that for you.
    1
  6288.  @Outlaw1103  By having a law that says when people can add or remove names from the ballot, and then enforcing that law fairly to all parties.
    1
  6289. They probably want to challenge the case in hopes of future profits.
    1
  6290. And also Loving V Virginia, of course. . .
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  6291.  @ustmissouri8029  The President can shut down the legal ports of entry, but that would do basically nothing to stop people crossing illegally. There's not much that can be done to actually prevent that, and once they cross, they are owed due process before deportation, which is where the hold-up is. This is why they've asked for more funding to speed up the deportations.
    1
  6292.  @arcticgoddess  Officers have absolutely zero right to deport anyone. That would require a court hearing.
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  6293.  @steeler4life  The wall was a pointless waste of money though. It was a good thing to stop wasting that money.
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  6294. Taiwan was a part of the China that existed prior to 1949, but that china no longer exists and has no claims. The country called China that was formed during 1949 has no claims on Taiwan, which is an independent Republic. There are some Taiwanese who want to reunify with China, but they are in the minority. If and when there is Taiwanese support for a reunification, it can happen, but that has nothing to do with the mainland. If you live in Taiwan, but want to live in China, then your best bet is to move.
    1
  6295.  @renegade7370  And yet, Taiwan has remained independent for longer than most people have been alive, so whether they signed a peace treaty is mostly a formality. Anyone trying to consider Taiwan "Chinese territory" is flat out ignoring the wishes of the people of Taiwan, why would anyone do that?
    1
  6296.  @renegade7370  No, it is a fact that Taiwan has been independent since 1949. What was the last order that China gave them that they accepted? China refusing to agree that they are independent does not mean that they are not. This is also not a "both sides" issue. The only one at fault here is China, for failing to respect Taiwan's independence. Taiwan has done nothing to them.
    1
  6297.  @renegade7370  I read what you said, you were just wrong. I can't help you with that.
    1
  6298.  @user-zy9nd2ei2j  Independent Taiwan is that island off China's SE coast. It hasn't been under mainland control since the 1940s. That is what "independent" means, it means that when the mainland tells them to jump, they say "no thanks." If Texas were more like Taiwan, then it would be independent. It's not. China has zero say in the matter, they can "declare" whatever they want, that doesn't make it true.
    1
  6299.  @mikejan6083  The fact remains that Taiwan has been independent since the 1940s though. If China tells them what to do, and they do not listen, then they are not a province of China. Sorry if this confuses you, but that's really your problem.
    1
  6300. With all the effort you've put into making white bulbs blue, have you considered making blue bulbs "less blue?" I mean, for every method of getting a quality blue tint onto a white bulb, there has to be that many and many more for taking those overly bright blue LED bulbs and tinting them to pull back those tones, dimming them a bit, warming them a bit, making them "look nicer." There are far more "makes things slightly dingier" materials to work with than there are "make things extremely vibrant colors" materials.
    1
  6301. You can't argue that she isn't more qualified than her opponent though, so what would it matter?
    1
  6302.  @MikeHunt-Ertz  Her opponent is Donald Trump. There's practically nobody less qualified than he is.
    1
  6303.  @MikeHunt-Ertz  I don't think there's anyone less qualified than her current opponent. Can you think of any?
    1
  6304.  @jot8000  Perhaps that is true in your imagination, but not in the real world though, where the rest of us live.
    1
  6305.  @jot8000  That's what they tell you on Faux News, to protect your feelings, but the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  6306.  @kaischmidt8030  It's about as good as "CEO of Boing," or "CEO of Enron."
    1
  6307.  @jot8000  One day, you'll realize it.
    1
  6308.  @jot8000  Oh, not, I'm not a Faux News viewer.
    1
  6309.  @jot8000  It's sad that you mistake fantasy for clarity.
    1
  6310.  @jot8000  Projection is a common tool of those on the right. Any accusation they make is an admission.
    1
  6311.  @independentears  What did Biden not say that he should have?
    1
  6312.  @independentears  But it's true whether I say it or not.
    1
  6313.  @jot8000  Projecting again. . .
    1
  6314.  @jot8000  Again, I'm not maga, I don't speak "baas."
    1
  6315. I like how the Post puts "laundered" in quotes to dodge libel claims, since they know as well as we do that that is not how actual "laundering" works.
    1
  6316.  @johnpoole8321  What are you talking about? He took his presidential salary every year he was in office. He also made more money form foreign governments while in office than all previous presidents combined. And that's not even counting the $2 billion Jared got from the Saudis for services rendered while in office.
    1
  6317.  @no.6243  I don't think he's maga. But yes, the magas tried to break all the rules. They just got caught.
    1
  6318.  @justiceiscoming7563  No evidence was presented to them. Several of Trump's lawyers were disbarred, and could have presented this "evidence" in their defense, but were unwilling to do so, because providing false evidence is another crime.
    1
  6319. ​ @justiceiscoming7563  No evidence was presented to them. Several of Trump's lawyers were disbarred, and could have presented this "evidence" in their defense, but were unwilling to do so, because providing flase evidence is another crime.
    1
  6320.  @dixonmopar2129  Republicans have the most trouble defining a women. They get it wrong constantly.
    1
  6321.  @mowich7  Again, the bill had nothing to do with protecting women spaces, since it only excludes minority women from them. It would be like saying that a bill supporting whites only restrooms was intended to "protect women's spaces" from nonwhites entering them.
    1
  6322.  @mowich7  These same arguments were used about bathrooms in the 60s, it was no more true back then.
    1
  6323.  @aprilrae6551  So you're saying what Johnson did here is illegal? Or it is no longer illegal to discriminate against minority women?
    1
  6324.  @bigverybadtom  That's really not at issue here. The issue here is the right to use the bathroom being taken away from some minority women.
    1
  6325.  @bigverybadtom  I'm sure that would not bother the GOP House members. They are used to it.
    1
  6326.  @Caliconservative  Wow, we've found someone who thinks YT likes are representational of reality. Let me guess, you think "crowd sizes" matter too?
    1
  6327.  @jimlincoln1283  I don't watch CNN. The death tolls in the US were some of the worst in the world. We've had 1,800 per million people so far. Canada had 700 per million. Norway had 148. Japan had 115. Germany had 1000. The only countries that did worse than us were countries run by idiots like the UK and Brazil, who followed the same "open up and just pretend everything's normal" strategies that people kept insisting the US should, and that half the US basically did. Trump cutting off travel to China was completely pointless, the virus got in from Europe, not China. What he should have done is had nation wide mask mandates, a stricter initial lockdown (_with_ the financial backing necessary to keep people and businesses alive during them), more efficient testing programs so that we could actually do contact tracing, and mobilized manufacturers to produce medical supplies faster. It's also worth keeping in mind that in 2020 Biden did not have access to the US intelligence data that Trump was offered, but squandered trying to pretend that the virus didn't exist.
    1
  6328.  @gold_ram_5.780  A larger population does not make covid unmanageable. There are plenty of countries in the world that has smaller populations than others, but saw worse covid outcomes because they handled it poorly. Sweden, for example, had 10 million people but 1400 cases per million, Germany had 83 million people but only 1000 deaths per million. Of the other countries in the world, India has four times our population, but only 1/9th as many deaths per million (although that looks likely to climb). Indonesia and Pakistan are only slightly lower population than us, but have 211 and 102 deaths per million respectively. And of course we would have had a vaccine, Trump didn't do anything special there, he just let the medical professionals do what they would do under any president. The only difference there is that Biden would have had an actual distribution plan, so we would have gotten to where we ended up in March by January or so, and gotten to where we were in June by April.
    1
  6329.  @jeremygilbert7989  I sometimes listed the total populations, it does not change the results. Dead per million is PER million, that is the MOST charitable way to view things. if I were to use the raw numbers then the US comes off looking even worse, because we have the absolute highest death toll of any country. How would you prefer to frame the US's death tolls in a way that you don't think is a disaster?
    1
  6330.  @bp.8334  First, it could have taken years to get a vaccine, nobody knew how quickly we would have an effective one available, especially Trump. Second, Biden was not President until January, so while he was running, he did not have access to US intelligence about the origins of the virus or medical developments at the time, unlike the sitting President at the time. He can't be expected to have known things that nobody else knew.
    1
  6331.  @jeremygilbert7989  In terms of Deaths per capita, the US is 17th's worst in the world. That is absolutely NOTHING to cheer about, given that this means we are worse than about 150+ other countries. It's like cheering about barely getting a "D" grade because it wasn't an "F." And most of those countries that did worse than us were scrappy little Eastern European countries, hardly the gold standard for "of course they would come out ahead of the US, but we beat them anyway." The UK did slightly worse than us, but that's because they, like us, were shackled with a government that insisted on denying there was a problem as best they could, doing the bare minimum when forced into it, but then "ok now, back to work" as quickly as possible, which would lead to another shut-down. I have been following the UK case very closely, and it was a mess on basically the same lines as the US. Pointing to other countries that also had it bad is no excuse for the state of the US. We COULD have done so much better with the resources we had available to us, and falling short of THAT is what is the problem. You claim to be using statistics, but you're only abusing them to pretend nothing is wrong, when the realities have a LOT of details that the raw statistics cannot cover. The nature of the virus does not just scale linearly with population size, some tiny countries had a terrible run with it, some tiny countries had basically no problem. Some fairly large countries had a terrible time, some fairly large countries did basically as well as could be expected. Both rich and poor countries did better or worse than average, there is no common statistical "fact" as to how each country could be expected to perform. What it ultimately came down to is POLICY, and the US policies during the height of the pandemic were terrible.
    1
  6332.  @chip-fftt5493  There still isn't open travel between the two countries. The sick ones cannot travel.
    1
  6333. Why do you miss mean tweets?
    1
  6334.  @honeybeee20001961  No Christians support Trump, just people who claim they are.
    1
  6335. The important thing to remember is that most people who take polls don't watch Fox News, so they aren't aware of all the fiction that you are.
    1
  6336.  @Buzz420  You aren't looking in the right places then, because if you were looking everywhere, you would realize why you're wrong.
    1
  6337.  @jcindahouse  What's wrong with price protections? Do you like inflation?
    1
  6338.  @Buzz420  How so?
    1
  6339.  @Buzz420  I asked a question, "how so?" Are you saying that you were lying when you said I was being paid? Because I'd honestly like to know if there's some money coming my way that I don't know about.
    1
  6340.  @Buzz420  So I was right, you have no idea what point you were trying to make, you were just angry that you couldn't actually dispute what I was saying.
    1
  6341.  @jcindahouse  In what context? The whole point of having a government is to establish rules we agree to live by, so of course I'm fine with the government setting such rules and enforcing them, so long as they are reasonable.
    1
  6342.  @jcindahouse  Common sense reasoning. Again, I'm only pointing it out, it exists with or without you and me.
    1
  6343. Well, way to cash in on the rubes, I guess. NFTs are 100% a scam, it's just some people really enjoy getting scammed. It's nothing like an original piece of art or a collectors card, because those assets have unique properties that are a result of their construction and history. NFTs have nothing unique to them, all you are getting is a receipt for your purchase of nothing. They are more like those sites that let you "name stars in the sky," or "buy a plot of land on a planet nobody owns."
    1
  6344.  @ronmoore6598  There are no children involved in this matter, it is all taking place between consenting adults.
    1
  6345.  @adom9463  Roe found otherwise, and was precedent for decades, until the Federalists attacked.
    1
  6346.  @Leo_dont_shoot_video  That's not how it works. Why do you believe that's how it works?
    1
  6347.  @ronmoore6598  Yes, between birth and the age of maturity. We aren't talking about any children here, unless you are talking about children who become pregnant and are prevented from getting an abortion.
    1
  6348.  @adom9463  Supreme Court precedent is, according to the Constitutions, a Constitutional right. What I dislike is how the Federalist Society and their finances bought the court they wanted, against the clear will of the American people.
    1
  6349.  @adom9463  When did I ever claim that it was not a right? Of course it is. The right to self-determination. And it is the will of the American people, who by a super-majority support the woman's right to choose, part of the reason why every state that has put the question to the popular vote has gone in that direction. I believe that you are the one substituting your own opinions for some higher consensus viewpoint. And it's a well documented fact that the Federalist Society has hand picked the last half-dozen or so judges added to the bench by Republicans, with the openly expressed intention of overturning roe. This is no "theory," it's unquestionable fact. People's values are not wrong because they disagree with me, they disagree with me because their values are wrong.
    1
  6350.  @ronmoore6598  Oh? So a child is one year old three months after being born then? Again, nobody is dehumanizing humans here, but neither is there any point to humanizing non-humans.
    1
  6351.  @ronmoore6598  Well, I hate to tell you, but basically nobody other than yourself tracks people's ages like that. According to US law, as well as practically all historical and religious systems, including Christianity, your age is tracked by the date of birth, not the date of conception.
    1
  6352.  @ronmoore6598  Yes, science and medicine agrees with me. And there is no effort by US law to change people's age to reflect their date of conception instead of date of birth. It's just you who thinks that. Stop trying to rope others in with you.
    1
  6353.  @DavidHalko  Not really though.
    1
  6354.  @DavidHalko  Not really though. And the important part to remember is that even if those stories you heard were true, they would STILL be better overall than burning natural gas to produce the same amount of energy, right?
    1
  6355. Only a few degrees of warming on a global level can have massive consequences. It does not just mean that your daily temperature will be slightly warmer and that's the end of it.
    1
  6356.  @kennethmays8059  I know she didn't through her own words. She was too weak a leader to handle the dog, and so she chose to kill it. If she had found it a new home, we never would have gotten this story.
    1
  6357.  @Buddymycat568  Not particularly. The odds were in his favor.
    1
  6358.  @alwilson3204  What "insider knowledge?"
    1
  6359. TL;DR, because they did not have credible evidence that he was hiding more documents than he was providing, like they did in the Mar-A-Lago case. Without such credible evidence, they would be unable to get a warrant under the 4th amendment.
    1
  6360. To "decimate" a foe, it means wiping out one out of every ten men. The Russian forces have literally been decimated. Now we're just going for the double-deuce.
    1
  6361. Blockchain cultists incoming. . .
    1
  6362.  @paulsheil6669  That's. . . not a thing.
    1
  6363. @ What would that have to do with anything. Do you think that the existence of rich POCs means everything is fine now?
    1
  6364.  @collidgemart7959  It's still better than on the other side of the aisle, right?
    1
  6365. There are people that believe that covid was "definitely" a lab leak, when the reality is that it's only the less likely of several possibilities. There is currently more evidence supporting that theory than there was a few months ago, but it's still not a closed case, and more research is needed. The Conspiracy Theory version would more be the idea that it was somehow deliberate.
    1
  6366. We just had a election to determine that. It did not go well.
    1
  6367. Here's the important thing, there is a difference between 'fair use' and 'monetization". The H3H3 suit proved that his reaction video was fair use, which means that you cannot make copyright claims against it and he is allowed to post those videos under US law. This does NOT mean that you are guaranteed a right to make money off of such a video. If Youtube wants to prevent monetization on react videos then they have every legal right to do so. Hell, they could demonetize ANY videos for ANY reason, it is their platform. We can agree or disagree with their decision, and complain or support them, but it's still ultimately their choice. That said, my preferred outcome on this is that they should have ways to share monetization on these videos, so that you can make react videos, and you can get some money for them, but also the original author would get money for it. But that's up to Youtube, they can do that or not.
    1
  6368. Why does "Joe" keep getting roped into this story by right-wing news, when it is entirely a "Hunter" issue? Joe had nothing to do with it. Sure, Hunter promoted himself as having connection to Joe Biden, but Joe Biden never actually did anything on his behalf. And it's just false "journalism" to imply that Joe Biden removing that Ukrainian prosecutor had anything to do with Hunter or his business partners, when that was never Joe Biden's call in the first place! That was an Obama administration decision, because the prosecutor in question was a corrupt Russian asset.Joe Biden's ONLY role in that was in carrying out the administration's orders, AND YOU KNOW THAT. So why are you lying to your audience? do you genuinely think them stupid enough to believe you? Wouldn't it just be easier to be HONEST with them?
    1
  6369.  @r3dpowel796  Ruble is artificially propped up by temporary Russian shenanigans, its actual value has cratered.
    1
  6370.  @Spetsop  Putin started this war, it has nothing to do with "the West." The war would not happen if Putin did not CHOOSE to invade, and it ends the second Putin CHOOSES to leave. Anything else is pure fiction. The peaceful solution to this is Putin goes home.
    1
  6371.  @r3dpowel796  Probably six months or so, given that nobody is actually trading on it. Moscow can basically claim it's worth whatever they say it's worth, and nobody bothers to correct them since nobody is actually trading it for anything.
    1
  6372.  @Spetsop  Again, Putin invaded Ukraine. Prior to Putin invading Ukraine, there was no war, or any reason to have a war. Putin can leave Ukraine any time he wants. If he does. nobody is likely to chase him back across the border. This war is ENTIRELY caused by Putin, and will only end when Putin decides to put everything back how he found it. If you believe otherwise, then I'm afraid you are the victim of misinformation. And lazy misinformation too.
    1
  6373.  @Spetsop  Ok, then what is the alternate theory? Imagine that Putin had never invaded Ukraine. What would be the state of Ukraine today? Would they still be at war? If so, with who? Who would have fired the first shot there if not Putin? You keep claiming that this war is not entirely Putin's fault, and yet I cannot think of any way in which this war would be occurring without Putin invading Ukraine.
    1
  6374.  @r3dpowel796  And, again, nobody cares. The ruble is still monopoly money.
    1
  6375.  @r3dpowel796  Exactly.
    1
  6376.  @Spetsop  Ok, but none of that would lead to there being a war unless Putin invaded. Also, at no point, past, present, or future, was there any legal means by which either Crimea or Donbas would be a part of Russia. The only way that could happen would be if Ukraine as a whole decided that could be the case, no unilateral decision within those regions justifies their annexation into Russia, that is not how international borders work. Anything that Ukraine does within their own borders, including Crimea and Donbas, is none of Russia's business.
    1
  6377.  @Spetsop  But the point being, there is no legal mechanism for Crimea or Donbas to separate from Ukraine and join Russia without Ukraine's permission. no matter how you slice it, what Russia did was illegitimate warfare against Ukraine at every step of the process. At no point were any of their actions justified, and it is entirely correct, by any reasonable standard, for the rest of the world to stand in opposition to their aggression. Right?
    1
  6378.  @Spetsop  Again, both Crimea and Donbas are legally recognized as part of Ukraine, and have been since at least the fall of the USSR. Whether that changes or not is no business of Russia's. In no way would it in any sense justify Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Ever. Putin CHOSE to invade. Had he not invaded, there would be no war with Russia. It is entirely 100% Russia's choice that this it the state of things, and it will be entirely 100% Russia's choice to return the stolen lands to Ukraine and leave. Nobody is to blame for this other than Putin.
    1
  6379.  @Spetsop  And if the west were attempting to invade Ukraine, then that would be a problem, but they are not. They are attempting to help Ukraine fight off Russian aggression, which is a reasonable self-defense role. If a one nation invades a peaceful sovereign nation, it is the responsibility of the global community to assist them. Again, if Putin had not invaded Ukraine, there would be no war. If Putin withdraws all his troops from Ukraine and compensates them for damages, the war ends. This is an entirely one sided conflict, Putin vs Ukraine. And no, "the people living on a land" never get to decide which country they are a part of. That is not how anything works. The people living on the land are the part of the country that they are a part of. If they don't like that, then there are exactly three options available to them. 1. Deal with it, 2. Petition the government to agree to let them go, as was the case with Brexit or Scottish independence, or 3. LEAVE. That does not mean that they get to take the ground under their feet with them when they go, but if they don't want to live in Ukraine, nobody is stopping them from leaving Ukraine. At no point do they have the right to unilaterally claim the ground beneath them though. That is not how it works.
    1
  6380.  @Spetsop  I'm sure that's what the Kremlin is telling you, but it's nonsense. The West is not using Ukraine for any purpose here, they just want what Ukraine wants, for Russia to stop murdering their citizens. If Russia left Ukraine alone, so would the West. The US has only invaded countries that were supporting terrorism and/or harming their own citizens. By any reasonable perspective, that would not apply to Ukraine (although I'm sure Kremlin propaganda disagrees). The US has also never claimed any of that foreign territory for ourselves, as Russia has done with Crimea and made efforts to do with the rest of Ukraine, prior to getting their ass kicked. In case you did not notice, Scotland petitioned for and received the right to a referendum on Scottish independence in 2014. This was a legal process, and the result was that they decided to stay. Had they voted to go, they would have been allowed to do so. They may again have a referendum next year. While Russia claims that such processes took place in Crimea, these were not fair elections and did not take place with the permission of the country as a whole, so they do not count for anything. Crimea was seized through military occupation, nothing more. Again, if anyone in Crimea or Donbass prefers to live in Russia than in Ukraine, they are free to move to Russia any time they want. At NO point are they allowed to move the land under their feet into Russia with them without the permission of the people of Ukraine.
    1
  6381. There is another story that I would like you to bring your expertise to as a follow-up to this, Australia's handling of the covid outbreak. Gun control advocates often bring up Australia as an example of what not to do, because they claim "it leads to tyranny!!" and cite things like Australia's covid lockdowns and quarantine programs as "evidence" of this. From my perspective, I think their measures were reasonable, and that they appear to have saved a lot of lives, but it would be nice to have a clear video breakdown to point to of what they did, what they did not do, and what impact it had on their covid rates, relative to what it could have been if they had not done so.
    1
  6382.  @buckfiden9913  Yes, this is exactly the sort of nonsense I was referring to.
    1
  6383.  @SeanWinters  Donald Trump.
    1
  6384.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  This was the argument they used in Germany n the 30s. History clearly agreed that they were on the right side of things.
    1
  6385.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  But both sides are not equally right and wrong. The maga folks are on the wrong side, whether they accept that or not. If they wanted the truth, there is no way they could be a part of the maga party. They elected a guy who is notoriously the biggest liar ever elected to public office. Why would they do that if "truth" was something that mattered to them?
    1
  6386.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  I disagree with those promoting the beliefs of the Germans in the 1930s, and I will continue to do so. I do not apologize for that. I make the point not because I disagree with them, there are plenty of people who I disagree with that are not like that. But in this case, I am disagreeing with them for following those pre-war German philosophies. I also disagree with Mao's policies, so you're right that it would be inaccurate to claim that I'm like Mao, but we're talking about maga here, not Mao.
    1
  6387.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  The maga crowds are not nearly as different as you imply. Why do you believe so many experts in the field have been calling this out for years already? Also, it's the maga folks that make everything about race, dei, and blm, those on the left are just trying to live their lives. They would be the Jewish people in that scenario, not those coming after the Jewish people. Remember that the party leading Germany at that time also came after black and LGBT people in their country, not only Jewish people. Also, if you believe that maga people do not judge by race or gender, then they have truly captured your mind, because that is the furthest thing from reality. Obama never claimed "vote me cuz im black," and nobody who didn't care about race would claim that he did. He encouraged ALL people to vote for him because he was the better candidate.
    1
  6388.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  The maga crowds are not nearly as different from he Germans as you imply. Why do you believe so many experts in the field have been calling this out for years already? Also, it's the maga folks that make everything about race, dei, and blm, those on the left are just trying to live their lives. They would be the Jewish people in that scenario, not those coming after the Jewish people. Remember that the party leading Germany at that time also came after black and LGBT people in their country, not only Jewish people.
    1
  6389.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  Also, if you believe that maga people do not judge by race or gender, then they have truly captured your mind, because that is the furthest thing from reality. Obama never claimed "vote me cuz im black," and nobody who didn't care about race would claim that he did. He encouraged ALL people to vote for him because he was the better candidate. I never claimed that Trump said the opposite either, but he wouldn't have to.
    1
  6390.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  The maga crowds are not nearly as different as you imply. Why do you believe so many experts in the field have been calling this out for years already? Also, it's the maga folks that make everything about race, dei, and blm, those on the left are just trying to live their lives. They would be the Jews in that scenario, not those coming after the Jews. Remember that the party leading Germany at that time also came after other minorities and LGBT people in their country, not only Jews.
    1
  6391.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  The maga crowds are not nearly as different as you imply. Why do you believe so many experts in the field have been calling this out for years already? Also, it's the maga folks that make everything about race, dei, and blm, those on the left are just trying to live their lives. They would be the Jewish people in that scenario, not those coming after the Jewish people. Remember that the party leading Germany at that time also came after other people in their country, not only Jewish people.
    1
  6392.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  The maga crowds are not nearly as different as you imply. Why do you believe so many experts in the field have been calling this out for years already? Also, it's the maga folks that make everything about race, dei, and blm, those on the left are just trying to live their lives.
    1
  6393.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  Remember that the people in charge of Germany at that time were very much opposed to DEI and BLM, as well as many other groups that are opposed by maga.
    1
  6394.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  So you have no actual point here?
    1
  6395.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  Remember that it was the 1930s German party that opposed all the things on the left that maga opposes today. If DEI and BLM were active in Germany at the time, they would have been the first to oppose them.
    1
  6396.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  You didn't "debunk" it at all. It remains true. Germany didn't have any wars from the 1920s through to 1936. They hosted an Olympics in the middle of their reign.They didn't have any wars, until they did.
    1
  6397.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  It is maga who attacks dems for having races and genders that they don't approve of, not the other way around.
    1
  6398.  @ImTheGuy-mt1lw  Also, it i only maga making an issue of people having genders or races that they don't approve of. Dems accept ALL people.
    1
  6399. Nothing about NATO justified a Russian invasion. The war only happened because Russia invaded.
    1
  6400. Nothing about that justified Russia's invasion.
    1
  6401.  @AshleyBidensBathTime  That's not why, it's because his puppet lost the last election, so he had to move to plan B.
    1
  6402.  @garyrentschler6082  We are no longer in the cold war. There ere also no plans to put US nukes in Ukraine. There are already plenty in other countries that neighbor Russia.
    1
  6403.  @buyingsummons8542  America did not invade Cuba during the Cold War. Do you believe we should have?
    1
  6404.  @buyingsummons8542  The US did not invade Cuba during the missile crisis. Do YOU remember the Cuban missile crisis? Apparently not.
    1
  6405.  @buyingsummons8542  Exactly, the US did not invade Cuba, just as Russia should not have invaded Ukraine.
    1
  6406.  @garyrentschler6082  There are already US nukes under 300 miles from Moscow, and the Russian Navy already has to pass through a NATO country if they want to leave the Black Pond.
    1
  6407.  @lindasandel7304  According to the Russian bots, this gives us all the excuse we'd need to invade Moscow.
    1
  6408. How does one "praise China?" I thought they were a secular nation. They have a "praise" gesture?
    1
  6409.  @LastKnightGaming1988  Falsifying business records in an attempt to influence the outcome of an election.
    1
  6410.  @clonewarsfan777  Trump was the one that did crimes. "Biden and all the rest" didn't do any crimes.
    1
  6411.  @kristypiits8982  It wasn't "magic," it was the law. They became felonies because they were connected to election interference.
    1
  6412.  @lisaac9477  Stormy Daniels was there because she was the one that they paid hush money to, and she was being asked to explain to the jury why they would want to pay her hush money. It was other witnesses that covered the other aspects of the case.
    1
  6413.  @Qthekat1984  If the news told you to say what you're saying, then you trust sources that are not worthy of your trust.
    1
  6414.  @dragon091327  Then only the wealthy would want to be politicians. We need to pay politicians a fair wage so that it attracts the best candidates.
    1
  6415.  @rshoe1023  Get his what? He's already getting his, he's being a President.
    1
  6416. "Someone said something inaccurate about Fauci" Your response "I see this as just another peice of evidence in the myriad of evidence against Fauxi." You clearly are a good consumer of information.
    1
  6417.  @honestyhurts2480  Yup, unfortunately, so much of the audience is indoctrinated on Faux News that they believe that they should take horse dewormers and anti-malarials to treat covid, and few any accurate medical information as the enemy.
    1
  6418.  @robbsclassics  Ok, you you're wrong about a lot of things. Why would this surprise me?
    1
  6419.  @robbsclassics  Here's the thing with free speech, you are allowed to say what you want. And then I am allowed to say that what you just said is nonsense. That is ALSO free speech. Nobody was ever preventing anyone from saying what they wanted, but if what they were saying was incorrect, then the responsible thing to do was to include a fact check on that and point out that it WAS incorrect. And if what they were saying was harmful medical advice that was killing people if they followed it, then the responsible thing to do would be to get them to stop spreading that misinformation. Don't you agree?
    1
  6420. Well what's the use of you? What practical purpose could Biden talking to you serve?
    1
  6421.  @kevinjenner9502  Sure, "Kevin."
    1
  6422.  @deannaartzbennett244  No, he was not citing a peer reviewed paper from an esteemed medical group, you just wish that this was the case, for some reason that probably has nothing to do with it confirming your own beliefs, right?
    1
  6423.  @deannaartzbennett244  An yet you are supporting RFK Jr., known to spread conspiracy theories. There are idiots on both sides, and I do not care which side of the political spectrum an idiot happens to land on. If you did watch the full video, you would know that he was implying that Ukraine had bio-weapons facilities, for example, which is complete nonsense.
    1
  6424.  @AnneEloiseOfCNY  What is the name of the "scientific article" so that I can verify the original source. I can find nothing listing any such article.
    1
  6425.  @deannaartzbennett244  Yes, I watched it, it was entirely full of nonsense. He claimed that Ukraine has bio weapon facilities, and that the US was "ethnically targeting" bioweapons. Are you actually trying to defend this insanity?
    1
  6426.  @deannaartzbennett244  You do understand that a "bio research lab" and a "bio weapons lab" are two COMPLETELY different things, right? Right? EVERY country has bio research labs, they are vitally important to preventing diseases. You need local labs to be studying diseases circulating in the local area, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. Trying to portray that as being a "weapon" is pure Soviet propaganda.
    1
  6427.  @deannaartzbennett244  Of course they aren't new, and most major countries develop them, although mainly just to be aware of how to stop them should the enemy unleash them. The point is that Ukraine had no such facilities, and that bioweapon facilities had nothing to do with the recent pandemic.
    1
  6428.  @deannaartzbennett244  Ok, so you AGREE that RFK Jr. is spreading conspiracy theory BS, you're just offended that people are pointing out the racist portion of his BS conspiracy theories, and now your mask is off.
    1
  6429. The DoJ is on top of that. They will bring Trump's corrupt administration to justice, don't worry about it.
    1
  6430. This is what I did with that white/blue dress meme.
    1
  6431. This is not Putin's Russia, we do not jail people for political reasons here.
    1
  6432.  @Bobbysheresomewhere  Only a fool would think that there is a reason why, given that she has committed no crimes.
    1
  6433. Oh! I saw this in the documentary game "Watch_Dogs."
    1
  6434. Telling stores "it's your responsibility to sort this out" is the WORST way to do this, because it means that the responsible stores will be out-competed by the irresponsible ones! Have they never heard of "the prisoner's dilemma?!"
    1
  6435.  @jasonriddell  So I take it you're saying that you think an electric boiler would be enough to heat my house? Maybe. I guess I'll look more into it. From what I'd heard, they just had trouble reaching the consistent water heat level needed to do radiant heating.
    1
  6436. That's because Trump would have misused it, as he had been doing. It was wise for Democrats to not give Trump that money in 2018, but he is no longer in office, so it's time to provide that money.
    1
  6437.  @ColleenKatherineMurphy  There was no "remain in Mexico agreement." That was just the unilateral policy of the US. Sadly, it violated US an international law though, so now we have to try other things. That would remain true regardless of who the President is right now.
    1
  6438.  @ColleenKatherineMurphy  When was such an agreement signed? I can find no evidence of it. The only evidence I can see of any interaction with Mexico on the topic was during the Biden administration.
    1
  6439.  @brpixels  I think it'd be fine to let people who want ICE cars to keep driving them, but only if they can figure out a way to not produce emissions while doing so. I think the ideal solution would be that once there are enough EVs available that nobody is "stuck" with an ICE car against their will, increase the gas tax to 100% or higher, so that people who want to drive an ICE car can continue to do so, but they will also be contributing into funds to help mitigate the harm they are causing to others by doing so.
    1
  6440.  @russell-gt1dy  Well, electric cars have "been a thing" since 1910, but they weren't terribly practical until fairly recently, since the battery range would be like 5-10 miles on a charge. the current ones can easily cover most people's daily driving needs and then some. As for where the electricity comes from, it depends on where you live. In the US it's currently 06% fossil fuels and 40% renewables, but that balance is shifting rapidly. Eventually it will all be renewables, and it's important to build out the infrastructure to support that. It's not like there was a gas station on every corner when the Model T was first introduced, that process takes time. It's also important to keep in mind that even if an EV is charged off of fossil fuel, that is cheaper and more efficient than gasoline.
    1
  6441. "Why This Lake is the Deadliest in the World". . . bees.
    1
  6442. Narcissistic sociopaths do very well in the Republican party, because sheep flock to people who seem confident, whether they are right or wrong, and nobody is more confident than a sociopath.
    1
  6443. But that wouldn't be true, most of us are fine with stuff like this. It's just a sad little minority of people who can't get past it. Eventually they'll die off though, it's just a waiting game.
    1
  6444. What do you think was wrong about the Mayor being out of the country at the time?
    1
  6445. @ But none of those are facts. She was not warned, she didn't reduce water flow, and she didn't tell the fire fighters to stay home. So given that none of those things are true, what else would be a problem?
    1
  6446. @ Those things don't seem to have anything to do with whether she takes a trip or not. What about her taking that trip prevented or even delayed any of that other stuff from happening?
    1
  6447. @ The post you're replying to was in response to mizmac's claims, which were factually in error. My response to your post began with "those things don't." I can understand if you don't like the current mayor, and maybe you should not have voted for her, but the majority of the voters did, and she's certainly at least doing a better job than the current President. If both were to leave, I suppose that would be a fair outcome.
    1
  6448. @ I'm just not a paid troll against her. Have you seen the comments in this thread? They make her out to be some sort of a monster for taking a promotional trip. Compared to what's going on in the White House right now, that's literally nothing.
    1
  6449.  @laryjohnson5736  No, Gaetz is the child predator.
    1
  6450. They already have been. They did their jobs according to the laws on the books.
    1
  6451. Biden has been held accountable, he was elected by a wider margin than in the 2016 election, and will be reelected by an even wider margin. That is holding him accountable for his actions.
    1
  6452. Man, this imaginary administration would be such a garbage fire at all levels.
    1
  6453.  @MRick-cd1kr  Exactly, the right wing violence that happened against the B L M protests would definitely count as terrorism.
    1
  6454.  @optimal8155  Well, "freedom of speech" only limits government, it does nothing to limit corporations.
    1
  6455. I'd never seen it before with the church in the foreground, and I LOVE how it just looks like the tower is trying to squeeze its way into the picture.
    1
  6456.  @yolandawilkinson6420  Yes, those people are called "Republicans," and nothing of value has ever been gained by listening to them.
    1
  6457.  @breakfast00club..11  Per-capita crime rates, education rates, income levels, health outcomes, pretty much any category you'd care to track.
    1
  6458.  @krystingrant6292  Could be worse. You could be a Republican.
    1
  6459. I don't know about that. The covid information that turned out to be true was the stuff that the authoritative sources were saying was true. The stuff that people were "not allowed to question" turned out to be nonsense anyway, like horse disinfectants. If anything, people distrust of authoritative sources cost hundreds of thousands of American lives.
    1
  6460. It's been Republicans that have been blocking legal immigration for decades now, creating this bottleneck in the system. If millions show up and you're only willing to allow thousands to enter legally, then the rest will spill across in their own way.
    1
  6461.  @DS-lk3tx That would only make things worse. We need more visas, not less.
    1
  6462. What are you talking about? He's consistently been at 33-40%, double any other candidate, and no significant drops in any recent poll. Which poll do you believe he's under 30%?
    1
  6463.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tend of millions of American citizens who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? "making it more difficult to cheat" is a non-issue, since it's already basically impossible to cheat. a handful of people tried to vote fraudulently for Trump, but they got caught already.
    1
  6464.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tens of millions of American citizens who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? "Making it more difficult to cheat" is a non-issue, since it's already basically impossible to cheat. Also, there is no responsibility for citizens to prove their identity to vote. When the Constitution was written, there were no forms of ID.
    1
  6465.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tens of millions of American citizens who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? "Making it more difficult to cheat" is a non-issue, since that's already not a concern. Also, there is no responsibility for citizens to prove their identity to vote. When the Constitution was written, there were no forms of ID.
    1
  6466.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tens of millions of American citizens who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? There's no need for it. Also, there is no responsibility for citizens to prove their identity to vote. When the Constitution was written, there were no forms of ID.
    1
  6467.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tens of millions of American voters who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? There's no need for it. Also, there is no responsibility for citizens to prove their identity to vote. When the Constitution was written, there were no forms of ID.
    1
  6468.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tens of millions of American citizens who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? Also, there is no responsibility for citizens to prove their identity to vote. When the Constitution was written, there were no forms of ID.
    1
  6469.  @ScottCleve33  The majority, sure. But there are still tens of millions of American citizens who do not have such proof of identity in their possession. Should they just not be counted? "Making it more difficult to cheat" is a non-issue, since that's already not a concern.
    1
  6470.  @ScottCleve33  Also, there is no responsibility for citizens to prove their identity to vote. When the Constitution was written, there were no forms of ID.
    1
  6471.  @ScottCleve33  And that is their right. They do not need to have an ID, and should not need one to cast their ballot.
    1
  6472.  @ScottCleve33  And they have that right. Nothing in the constitution claims that the right to vote is limited by having a government-issued permit to do so.
    1
  6473.  @ScottCleve33  Nobody can say "sure, I'm a citizen, let me vote." That is not how voting works in the US. Have you ever voted in the US?
    1
  6474.  @HeidiDaviz  The truth is that migrants are allowed to vote in some local elections, but their ballots do not include any national candidates, and they are not allowed to vote in national elections. That is the truth. If you were expecting more than that, you will be disappointed.
    1
  6475. I think that the simplest change an "urban mall" project could make to balance with the community is to NOT build a parking lot or garage into the land plot itself. Instead, build it about one block diagonally from the mall, with convenient road-crossing mechanisms, such that mall visitors would have to walk past multiple intersections and at least two block-lengths of traditional urban fare before they get to the mall itself, and on the way back. It's slightly less convenient, but should not be overly burdensome.
    1
  6476. Fair.
    1
  6477.  @i.k.8868  I don't think that's true. They taste ok, but not on the same level as cow milk.
    1
  6478. I think that's only because this really isn't a big deal, and only seems like a big deal because Republicans would rather talk about Hunter than about the $2 BILLION that Jared got from the Saudis for services rendered while his dad was in office.
    1
  6479.  @TrueBlunty  I would, if she did lie about being border czar. She did not. She never was that. That was a term invented by Faux News. The only official role she had was to negotiate with southern countries to try and keep more people back home there, and that effort was actually successful. Your other story there sounds equally nonsensical. Maybe find better sources of information than. . . whatever it is you've been swimming in.
    1
  6480.  @TrueBlunty  I would, if she did lie about being border czar. She did not. She never was that. That was a term invented by Fox News. The only official role she had was to negotiate with southern countries to try and keep more people back home there, and that effort was actually successful. Your other story there sounds equally nonsensical. Maybe find better sources of information than. . . whatever it is you've been swimming in.
    1
  6481. ​ @TrueBlunty  I would, if she did lie about being border czar. She did not. She never was that. That was a term invented by those on the right. The only official role she had was to negotiate with southern countries to try and keep more people back home there, and that effort was actually successful. Your other story there sounds equally nonsensical. Maybe find better information than. . . whatever it is you've been swimming in.
    1
  6482. The opposite. Trump didn't follow through on any of his campaign promises, other than removing the right to abortion and tax breaks for billionaires.
    1
  6483.  @zorro8871  MAGA ONLY votes for Groomers, like Donald Trump. The GOP is the party of groomers. If the idea of groomers bothers you, vote Democrat, always.
    1
  6484.  @alex-mo8hd  Democrats work for voters.
    1
  6485.  @toddknight2059  We're working on it. The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys have already been convicted, and Trump and his cronies are next in line.
    1
  6486.  @teresatanyag8237  Two separate issues.
    1
  6487.  @italiannn16  Oh, no, I'm not a Republican.
    1
  6488. Also, he didn't do anything wrong.
    1
  6489.  @gothivore277  You don't agree with his policies, that's fine, it doesn't make them illegal.
    1
  6490.  @scottmerrick4086  Take it back from whom? America?
    1
  6491. Because they keep telling them things they don't want to hear.
    1
  6492. Well, DA Bragg is working on that, though for different crimes.
    1
  6493. Do an episode on Falcon and the Winter Soldier! Is it possible to lift a truck using meaty human arms like that?
    1
  6494.  @johnruge1218  The "censorship" here is entirely on Youtube's part, and is not based on the content of the messages, but on simple word filters. Some words trigger an auto-moderation, and it applies to posts regardless of their political leaning.
    1
  6495.  @wesleyturner1979  The Internet was never protected by free speech. The first amendment only applies to the government and their ability to censor speech. It has never applied to social media platforms. You can say whatever you like if you own the platform, but if you want to talk about things on Google's platform, you have to play by their rules. Agree or disagree.
    1
  6496.  @johnruge1218  Google's shareholders. What does that have to do with anything though? I mean, "X" is owned entirely by Elon Musk, and that place is a garbage fire.
    1
  6497.  @ColonelSanders17  Ok, but nobody will pay you to do that thing you want to do, because they can get that same labor for free. So then what do you do?
    1
  6498.  @ColonelSanders17  Well what service do you got? I guarantee a machine will be able to do it better and cheaper than a living wage within the next few decades.
    1
  6499.  @rickjustus6416  And the last two years is when things stopped getting done. What a coincidence.
    1
  6500. You're thinking of three years ago. We kicked that guy out.
    1
  6501.  @stephenjenkins7971  I don't know about that, America's immigration policies are some of the harshest out there (outside of third world police states). It obviously wouldn't help to make them more harsh, but we could do a better job of making the process more efficient, with more immigration judges to clear asylum cases faster so that these people can become productive members of the community as quickly as possible.
    1
  6502.  @stephenjenkins7971  Did you see when the previous president was separating children from their families with no hope of ever returning them? That was pretty brutal, even by UK standards. That said, the US has a total population of over 300,000, so as a proportion of the total ppulation, it really isn't that much. The US isn't even in the top 5 of countries in the world when it comes to per capita immigrant populations. Canada has more, as does Australia.
    1
  6503.  @stephenjenkins7971  Kicking the kids back out with their families would indeed be more humane than kidnapping them from their parents under false pretenses and leaving them in detainment centers for months, if not years. I am proud that people want to come into the US, it's how the US existed in the first place. All we need to do is make it a more efficient and less chaotic process.
    1
  6504. @sinside318 I have hear a lot more "creakiness" issues about them. With this one it seems to take the fiddliness to the next level though, more fly-by-wire elements, more "trust me bro" mechanical linkages, like the windows apparently need to retract and then return every time the doors open! I can't imagine that there won't be at least some trucks within 5 years where some part of that fails and either the door jams up or the window shatters against the frame when it opens.
    1
  6505.  @sammich8616  None of what you just said made any sense or was in any way relevant to this discussion.
    1
  6506. Yes, fixing those policies was a good thing. Why do you believe otherwise?
    1
  6507. No, you just seem to think that the "Remain in Mexico" policy and the Keystone pipeline were. . . good things? That would be the "lie."
    1
  6508.  @1986BassHead  Yes! Vote out the Republicans in the Senate so they won't be able to pull this mess anymore.
    1
  6509.  @Er-sv5tn  Yes, Obama made a lot of money selling books, not selling political favors like the Trump crime family.
    1
  6510. Well, this is what we get when someone buys the government.
    1
  6511. So pick one and give them immunity.
    1
  6512.  @Raynecolwell  What does that have to do with anything? Nobody's taking about being "more dependent."
    1
  6513.  @therealwewin  Oh, no, I don't watch Faux News myself. Bad for your mental health.
    1
  6514.  @JohnGeorgeBauerBuis  Okl fair, I was talking about MODERN Republicans. Ones that had actually been alive within our lifetimes. Lincoln and Roosevelt would both be Democrats if they were alive today, and if anyone accused them of being Republicans, they would punch that person in the face.
    1
  6515.  @B_Bodziak  Why not the current DNC?
    1
  6516.  @gold_ram_5.780  Money does keep coming in, but the treasury has already been doing what it can with that money for months now. June 5th was the date where they predicted they could not keep doing that because the amount coming in would not be enough to cover all that needed to go out.
    1
  6517.  @jimfarmer7811  Gore has no connection to the Biden administration. You've been scammed. Also, Iowa is going to be a victim of climate change itself, NOT of efforts to fight it. Weather will be a lot less predictable over the coming decades, and crops will suffer for it. If we'd gotten started on this stuff forty years ago, things might not have gone so badly.
    1
  6518.  @B_Bodziak  Biden gave them very little. More than anyone wanted, FAR more than they deserved, but with the current House, they are just dumb enough and irresponsible enough that their threats had to be taken at least a little seriously. Still, if the Democrats controlled the house, then none of this would have happened at all, so it's hard to blame them for it. As for the Presidential election, neither Bernie nor AoC would be likely to carry even half as many states as Biden. They are very popular with progressives, but not remotely popular with centrist voters. Like it or not, this country is left of center, but just BARELY, it is not in favor of hard-left policies, however much the progressive caucus wants to pretend that it is. Biden does have his issues as a candidate, but unfortunately, nobody else in either party is a better candidate at the moment. There are a few people who might get there if they can up their brand recognition and credentials, but a bloody 2024 primary fight wouldn't really accomplish much. Also, never-Trumpers are also "never-DeSantises," since he's just as bad in most ways that matter. There would be a space for a truly moderate Republican to outperform Biden, but so far none of them are running, and those that are running are aiming squarely for the MAGA base, because they can't win primaries otherwise.
    1
  6519.  @personblank338  This is a situation that required both branches to work together. If the House decided to pull the trigger on America's future, then it becomes completely irrelevant who has the Senate and White House. This was a manufactured crisis ENTIRELY of the Republican's making, it would never have happened with a Democratic House.
    1
  6520.  @grayisgood  "We are happy to serve the people! (on a platter, to the wealthy)" -Republicans.
    1
  6521.  @JayceeGenocide  Nah. Democrats aren't perfect, but they at least get things done that are in the interests of the poor and middle classes, rather than ONLY the wealthy.
    1
  6522.  @Wes-b7v  If you think that Judge Cannon is in the dem's pockets, then that is a special kind of "special."
    1
  6523.  @webportal6659  No, I meant NOT a maga judge.
    1
  6524.  @webportal6659  No, NOT a maga judge. One of the pre/post maga ones.
    1
  6525.  @webportal6659  No, most of Cannon's decisions were struct down by a largely conservative appeals court, full of Republican appointees. Maga judges are a whole different level of crazy from simply "conservative judges," and frequently refuse the follow the law or Constitution.
    1
  6526.  @webportal6659  Then why have most of her decisions been thrown out by a heavily conservative Florida appeals court? Are they not following the Constitution or the law when they laugh her rulings out of their courts?
    1
  6527.  @webportal6659  It's been on multiple rulings so far, and likely on this one. There isn't a single credible legal scholar who believes that her decision here made any sense.
    1
  6528.  @crispinfornoff206  I doubt that would help.
    1
  6529.  @MikeJones-mf2fw  That's an inaccurate statistic, the US rate was 98.5% at the height of the pandemic, but either way, it meant that millions of Americans died unnecessarily, and there's no guarantee that the next one will not be worse.
    1
  6530.  @finkalo  It seems that he believed he could use it to breach bulletproof glass. I don't think anyone is claiming he intended to go on a shooting rampage with the nailgun itself. Given that he also had an AR and armor, he seems to have just been testing his theory and then would come after them with the gun if he could get inside.
    1
  6531.  @RyanQuintanapolymath  Except that the FBI never did have any memo, leaked or otherwise, that designated any patriots as "militia violent extremists," so that's a moot point. Trump starting fires through ignorance is no more excusable than him starting fires deliberately. He, or at least those around him, know that his actions have led to violence, and yet instead of any amount of contrition, he just continues to double down on his madness.
    1
  6532.  @dh1639  That's what the k9 unit is afraid of.
    1
  6533. If people wanted stuff to get done, they would never vote for Republicans.
    1
  6534. He got more votes than Trump because so many people wanted to vote against Trump. Also because there are more voters in total today than during Obama's term in office. Basically, the vote totals go up almost every election, give or take elections where people are particularly excited or apathetic.
    1
  6535.  @markjsram  Yes, I am telling you that 23 million more people turned out to vote this last election, because the population has grown by 23 million people since 2010 (look it up), and because people were highly motivated, on both sides, to see their candidate win. Also, states did a much better job in 2020 of using mail-in balloting programs than in previous elections, which allowed a lot of people to vote that may have had difficulty making it to the polls before. Of course Republicans see that as "a problem" because "the wrong sorts" voted for the "wrong candidates."
    1
  6536.  @bgblight  It's fair to say that a lot of the people who voted for Biden did so because anyone is better than Trump, especially the Republicans that voted for him, but a lot of people genuinely support Biden too. He has a high approval rating compared to other Presidents at this point in their term, which is saying something given how radically polarized the country has become.
    1
  6537.  @markjsram  When the size of a population grows, the number of people who vote also grow. This should not come as a shock. . .
    1
  6538.  @bgblight  Again, ANY President would have done as much, if not more to get the vaccine manufactures, Trump gets no special credit for that. It was just something he managed not to mess up. It's also always been sound fiscal policy to spend during a crisis. Trump should have spent more during the height of the pandemic, but McConnell would not pass through the House relief bills. Now what did harm us there was Trump's previous tax cuts for the wealthy, which gave America less resources to work with during a crisis. The responsible path is to spend during crisis, but also to tax during times of low stress so that you can recover from the spending. Basically, run up a credit card bill to fix a broken car, but then pay off that bill before the next crisis. So basically, your argument is, if Trump had done a better job being President, the American people would not have fired him? Well, yeah. Maybe. But that doesn't mean anyone owes him anything. If he'd wanted the job, he should have been a better President.
    1
  6539. Rand Paul is misrepresenting the Israeli study. The Israeli study said that people who had "natural immunity" should get the vaccine, because it greatly increases their level of protection.
    1
  6540. That would be unreasonable. Less than 0.1% of migrants commit crimes, and migrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than Americans born in this country. It would be impossible to predict which of them might possibly commit a crime in future.
    1
  6541. Violent crime is committed by immigrants at a much lower rate than by people who are born here. It would be unreasonably to punish millions of migrants for the crimes of a small handful.
    1
  6542.  @Misanthropacifist  Asylum does not just apply to persecution.
    1
  6543. You have to find the "facial hair bros" comic strip. It's everything you might hope.
    1
  6544. I don't think the price gouging is a the end of the chain, the retailers, and is more at the bottom and middle of the chain, like food processors, and most importantly, the oil industry the fuels it all.
    1
  6545.  @GrammarNaziAUS  Did you not read what I said? It is clear that you didn't.
    1
  6546.  @GrammarNaziAUS  You seem to be focused very much on "why are you arguing with me," as if any of this were somehow personal. I am arguing the topic. If we agree on that topic, then we have no disagreement.
    1
  6547. At no point did Joe "set the borders wide open." They are less open than they were during the previous administration. There are just more people arriving to process.
    1
  6548. He's using conservative math, which doesn't make sense in the real world.
    1
  6549.  @jypsridic  If you think this sort of fire happens every other week, then why has it never happened in any of our lifetimes? Many of the houses burned were over 100 years old. California is plenty prepared for ordinary fires, just like Texas is prepared for 40 degree days, but this is an exceptional event, just as the winter storm in Texas was exceptional. Of course neither will be exceptional anymore.
    1
  6550.  @jypsridic  This is my point, California is prepared for wild fires, and without that level of preparation, this all would have gone much worse than it did, but there is no reasonable level of preparation that would have made a significant impact here. The main problem was the high wind speeds early on, which prevented pretty much all efforts to combat the blaze. Sometimes nature just does its thing.
    1
  6551.  @jypsridic  So Florida is not prepared for hurricanes? Japan is not prepared for earthquakes? No city on Earth is impervious to extreme natural disasters, the best you can hope for is that they can reduce the damage, which California has done in a way that no other state could manage.
    1
  6552.  @jypsridic  That's what's you've been told to believe, but is wrong. Stop being so easy.
    1
  6553. Pandering is Fox News's bread and butter, after all.
    1
  6554.  @LB-zt1js  That's certainly possible, but at least they pander to people who want truth in journalism, rather than people who want happy little lies.
    1
  6555.  @Heretic-007  Your delusions aren't truth. Fox News is on record as saying that they are an entertainment company, not a news company, and that they frequently lie to their viewers when the truth is not what they want to hear. If you want happy little lies that confirm your biases, Fox News is a safe space for you to hide from the world in. If you want to see the world as it actually exists, you would have to look elsewhere for that.
    1
  6556.  @apostolakisl  Right, that's what's changed in the last few years, they make heat pumps that can produce above 200F.
    1
  6557. So any Republicans out there wondering where your relief check is, remember that it's always Republicans trying to keep it from you.
    1
  6558.  Daniel Bea  Not on you though, so who cares?
    1
  6559. Lol, that'll be the day.
    1
  6560. It's impossible to ban jokes on the Internet.
    1
  6561.  @DemonKingTyler  The constitution is designed so that "bad government" gets voted out in the next election cycle. It specifically forbids using violence to overthrow the government.
    1
  6562.  @kellzter  The Whiskey rebellion thought that they were fighting a Tyrannical government. George Washington disagreed. The founders did not intend to allow ANY armed rebellion against the federal government that they built. If you are concerned about tyrannical government, then the answer is simple, do not elect Republicans to positions of power. They cannot be tyrants if they are not in office.
    1
  6563.  @kellzter  If you want to avoid a future tyrannical government, then don't vote for tyrants.
    1
  6564.  @midnighttoker9268  But the 2nd amendment nowhere says that the people have the right to use violence to settle disputes. It only sets up the national militia, since at the time we did not have a standing army. It became obsolete once we had a standing army capable of protecting us from foreign threat. If they had intended it to justify insurrection, they would have just SAID that. If your argument is "the people have a right to rebel, but only if they can beat the government," then one, they can't, so you've just mooted the entire 2nd amendment, and two, that just sets up "might makes right," which is the exact OPPOSITE of the Constitutional Republic the founders built. Also, France seemed to "fight back" perfectly well without a 2nd.
    1
  6565.  @kellzter  Yes, the people have a right to bear arms, so long as they are pat of the well regulated militia (ie the National Guard).
    1
  6566.  @smugfrog8111  Yes, the founders built the constitution to avoid ever having such things take place again. They had NO intention of a second revolution, they got it right the first time.
    1
  6567.  @midnighttoker9268 The national guard is the militia, it's what the local militias evolved into over the 1800s. And no, you collecting your friends is not a "well regulated militia," it's just a bunch of randos. Militias have no right to operate within the US without federal approval to do so. And at the time the Constitution was written, there was no standing army capable of defending our borders, nor any plans to create one. The only way for our nation to defend itself from foreign threats was to maintain the "civilian soldiers" of the militia to join into the federal forces if needed. That was the entire purpose of the 2nd. Again, the founders had NO tolerance for revolt against the Constitutional order they built, they designed the Constitution to never need such a threat. Even if MAGA wins the next election, America will survive them, and it's not like America's gun owners are likely to help with that anyway.
    1
  6568.  @kellzter  Activist court got it wrong, like Dred Scott. There have been plenty of those over the last few years and we can expect plenty more until the Federalist Society members get off the bench.
    1
  6569. I don't think that's at all an accurate description of the program. What were you watching?
    1
  6570.  @quackula9190  How so? Did you understand the point of the change?
    1
  6571.  @423GustavBern  Again, the rich paying those taxes subsidizes the public transit for everyone else. It's it the rich paying more, to the direct benefit of the poor, as all taxation should work. And again, if you WANT to own a car, you still can, but there's no reason why the government should subsidize your luxury purchases, so long as they provide adequate public transit to your location. If you don't currently have access to public transit then that is what needs to change, rather than making it cheaper for you to own and operate a car. As for "just make cars easier," no. Cars are just a less efficient way of doing things, and while the current US infrastructure is built around them, that is something we should be moving away from, not subsidizing at any level. Government investment should be in the efforts to move away from cars in as many places as possible. There is no reason for a car to exist in Manhattan where public transit can reach every corner of it already. Park outside the city and take public transit in. That's what I already do when visiting local cities because it's much easier than finding convenient parking.
    1
  6572.  @derekh1593  They rejected "help" prior to the assault on the capitol because they did not want to give the impression that they were "overreacting." It was a choice, and turned out to be a faulty one. As soon as the mob did start attacking capitol police officers, they began actively requesting help immediately, and the White House refused to authorize it for several hours. THAT is what you should be paying attention to. DoJ offered them ZERO assistance during the incident, and in fact rejected multiple requests from the Capitol Police, members of congress on both sides, and neighboring state governors from both sides. Tell me why that is?
    1
  6573.  @derekh1593  Oh, you have been misinformed. That was early reporting on the event and didn't get all their facts straight. You should look up some later reporting to get a bigger picture on the numerous requests made to the DoD for support that were all ignored. The Jan 6th committee has some excellent footage.
    1
  6574.  @derekh1593  You are apparently very easy to lead around by the nose. You have nothing but Faux News talking points, and seem to actively ignore all outside information that would contradict your conclusions, even the sworn testimony of Trump administration employees.
    1
  6575.  @derekh1593  You are citing sources that people who watch a lot of Fox often cite, because they know that actually citing Fox directly is never taken seriously. You are ignoring all the many sources that directly contradict the sources you are citing, or provide added context that blows up the arguments you are attempting to make with those cherrypicked quotes. The facts remain: 1. The crowd was Trump supporters, seeking to maintain Trump in office, against the will of the American people. 2. The crowd inflicted violence against police officers, and actively threatened violence against members of Congress should they be found. 3. Trump was aware of this, but personally did nothing for several hours, and when he did act, it was an extremely flaccid response. 4. Congress and many other groups sought DoD approval for National Guard troops to enter the Capitol, and yet it did not arrive for many hours after it could have arrived had the DoD given immediate approval. Anything else you've said has just been an attempt to distract from those facts.
    1
  6576.  @BeKindToBirds  9 times out of 10, Iran is considered the Western edge of the Middle East. Occasionally some people will try to include other countries, but it's not generally accepted. Anything's debatable though if you insist on debating it.
    1
  6577.  @JohnDoe-do3fm  To an extent, but any wall is really only as good as your capacity to man it, since any wall can be breached within a relatively short period of time, or scaled in almost no time. So as long as there are enough forces to monitor every part of the wall and apply necessary defenses to at-risk areas, you can slow incoming threats enough to muster those defenses, but if you just build a wall and leave it there, people will get through with very little trouble. Really a good system of towers and watch fires work about as well, at least outside of deflecting casual border skirmishes.
    1
  6578. While I agree that Republicans should never be allowed near kids, it's difficult to enforce for various reasons. You have the right idea though.
    1
  6579. Does Rand Paul understand that kids have parents? That if kids go to school, they bring Covid back home with them? Does he understand how viruses work?
    1
  6580. Why don't they just do like in Venice or the Netherlands, and put a full barrier across the river opening, that only deploys under high-seas conditions?
    1
  6581. That's a self defeating argument. Burying yourself in bull won't improve anything.
    1
  6582.  @nencrows_4580  Why do you think that happened?
    1
  6583.  @janehandpants1968  How so? What reasonable voter would find fault in her actions there?
    1
  6584.  @DavidChenoweth-c8e  Exactly, this is why Trump is un-electable.
    1
  6585.  @joeycrooker1282  The Democrats are the ones looking out for the children. The Republicans are the ones looking to groom children.
    1
  6586.  @Mr_Swigward  Nobody is doing that though. Nobody is advocating for that. All anyone wants is to be able to discuss the realities that homosexuals and trans people do exist, might be the teachers, the parents of students, or the students themselves, and what that means. Gender confusion is bad, which is why it is important to help trans children understand themselves and not ignore it.
    1
  6587.  @Mr_Swigward  And that would be the appropriate thing to do if that child is trans and the teachers have indications that the parents are not supportive of their child's identity. What would you have them do instead in that sort of situation? If parents aren't teaching those things, then how are they meant to learn?
    1
  6588.  @FunkyCigarette  I'm not a Republican.
    1
  6589.  @FunkyCigarette  Why would any judge be interested?
    1
  6590. Democrats do more for people than the GOP does, but they don't care about that, they just want to hurt democrats, and voting for Trump would do that.
    1
  6591. I feel like there should be a law that any time a company guarantees anything, they would need to backstop it with insurance through a licensed insurer, with the terms basically being that if the company does go out of business, every customer that they promised a guarantee will instead be covered by that insurance company (who in a case like this would then outsource to some local alternative solar company). It would cost these companies more, but is worth having for anyone that claims to provide a long term warranty.
    1
  6592. Oh no! Well I guess that'd be worth tossing out the democratic process over. . .
    1
  6593. Libertarians are authoritarian when they don't get their way. They just don't want other people to be in charge. What they say and what they do are two completely different things.
    1
  6594.  @sonnysmith3244  And as I explained in that thread, that is not what the book does, and it's misleading to present it as doing that.
    1
  6595.  @loopthetube  That's because Trump's campaign colluded with Russia.
    1
  6596.  @stevepest4143  I did, I disagree with it though.
    1
  6597.  @Schrodinger_  I was reading between the lines.
    1
  6598.  @TheThreatenedSwan  So?
    1
  6599.  @pk7ghalm23  I made the post a month ago. Nobody suspected "some random crazy that nobody had heard of," but apparently the Republicans were that dumb. I suppose that shouldn't have been too surprising though.
    1
  6600. Thing is, even if it didn't catch anyone by surprise, it would have changed history, because even if both sides had it, the option of using it would have taken sides that lost in history, and given them an edge they could have used to tip things in their favor, whereas before they might have lacked the resources to win with conventional means.
    1
  6601. Yup, the MAGA cult loves wallowing in their own waste. It only makes them happier. Good thing they are a minority party.
    1
  6602. Florida Republicans: "Climate change is a myth!" Also Florida Republicans: "Why is all this climate stuff changing?!"
    1
  6603.  @Kevin-s7s  You misunderstood him several times on video. That is different.
    1
  6604.  @12344567ist  No, he did not, 1234.
    1
  6605.  @Kevin-s7s  Yes, they are idiots. Don't pay attention to them, most people don't.
    1
  6606.  @Kevin-s7s  Yes, pay no attention to those bots. They benefit nothing.
    1
  6607. "Do you want the truthful answer?" He never has one.
    1
  6608. Republicans: "We're not a democracy, we're a constitutional republic!" Constitution: "Traitors aren't allowed to hold political office." Republicans: ". . . no, not like that."
    1
  6609. I think Democrats are only reacting like this because Musk is trying to destroy the American state. Probably if he weren't doing that, they would have reacted differently.
    1
  6610. Term limits solve absolutely nothing. Just vote Democrat in the next election.
    1
  6611.  @maryschultz7141  Then you'll keep getting bad leaders who make government not work, and then continue to blame "government" for those problems, when the real problem is people who vote for Republicans.
    1
  6612. That's not how anything works.
    1
  6613. The Democrats have a fully practical solution, it's always just been an issue of Republicans not wanting to support those solutions, because they don't want to allow immigration. Meanwhile the economy requires those immigrants to function, so they also cannot stop the flow of illegal migrants. So instead they just grandstand on the issue without actually doing anything. If you want to solve the border crisis, you will never get that from Republicans. The only solutions involve electing more Democrats.
    1
  6614.  @tedlewis309  The problem is that Republicans have held up proper immigration reform for decades now, so the amount that we allow in legally is WAY below both the supply and the demand side of the equation. If you believe that the answer is "they should come in legally or not at all," then the first step to that has to be to MASSIVELY increase the amount of legal immigration slots per year.
    1
  6615.  @beegeefan4ever  And that's why we don't elect Republicans.
    1
  6616. There is nothing in the 14th amendment that says you have to have been charged or convicted of a crime. Most of the people the amendment was passed to bar from holding office were never charged or convicted with anything.
    1
  6617. Well, when everyone in the building has been fully vaccinated, they can drop it, but apparently they aren't there yet.
    1
  6618.  @cliffy00  The people who wanted to let Germany win.
    1
  6619. I'm sure that if a teacher suspects that a parent will abuse their children for bad grades, and yet cannot call CPS on them, they would still be careful about how they discuss that child at parent/teacher conferences. The whole point of those conferences is to help the child to do a better job in school, it is not about telling a parent everything.
    1
  6620.  @MrDude667  That's my point. The mandate is bad, and it's a good thing that CA is fighting to remove that mandate.
    1
  6621.  @GemstonePhilosophy  They have a duty of care to their students. If they feel a student is beating beaten at home, do they not have any responsibility to do anything about that? What matters most is the best interests of the children.
    1
  6622.  @GemstonePhilosophy  You're drifting back into your nonsense misconceptions about how gender works. Suffice it to say that you're wrong, and that it is unhealthy for children to be beholden to the irrational viewpoints of people who can't even properly do their research into the subject. And again, a teacher assuming that a parent might abuse their child, and handling that parent under that assumption, is not a "lack of due process." That would only apply if they were to take criminal proceedings against them. It seems you understand the constitution even less than you understand gender.
    1
  6623.  @GemstonePhilosophy  How so? I think I addressed your point clearly. Parent/teachers conferences do not exist for the benefit of the parent, they exist only to support the student, and teachers have no obligations at parent/teacher conferences other than to let the parents know things that might benefit the student. If a teacher believes that sharing certain information would cause harm to the student, then it is best for them to not share that information with the parents. That applies to ANY information that might cause the parents to bully their child, whether that be "bad grades" or "gender identity."
    1
  6624.  @GemstonePhilosophy  It's not a "laser focus," it's an acknowledgement that the child exists, and is who they are. If the child is expressing a gender or sexual identity in a way that is significant enough that the school board would require the teacher to tell the parents about it, then sure;y it is also important each that the teacher should have discretion as to whether that is wise. It's the school board that decided that it was important that teachers MUST tell the parents, so if anyone has a "laser focus" in the matter, it would be them.
    1
  6625. Natural gas lobbying bots: "Release the hounds."
    1
  6626. That would have been harder to do if the House Weaponizing Government Committee hadn't gone all-in on this guy.
    1
  6627.  @utah_koidragon7117  Wherever she got the gun, it was there because someone had purchased it legally at some point. The harder it is to purchase guns legally, the harder it is to find them on the black market.
    1
  6628.  @utah_koidragon7117  There's plenty of evidence that making it harder to purchase guns legally makes it harder to buy them illegally. In most first world countries, guns are mostly illegal, and in those countries, their criminals commit far fewer guns crimes than in the US. Is that because they are law abiding citizens that would never acquire a gun illegally? Of course not, it's because as much as they might want a gun, they can't find one when they are illegal. Most guns used by criminals in the US were purchased legally in the US, and then if not purchased legally by the criminal, they were illegally sold off or stolen into the criminal supply chain. Remove the legal guns, remove the illegal ones too.
    1
  6629.  @utah_koidragon7117  There's plenty of evidence that making it harder to purchase guns legally makes it harder to buy them illegally. In most first world countries, guns are mostly illegal, and in those countries, their criminals commit far fewer guns crimes than in the US. Is that because they are law abiding citizens that would never acquire a gun illegally? Of course not, it's because as much as they might want a gun, they can't find one when they are illegal.
    1
  6630.  @utah_koidragon7117  Most guns used by criminals in the US were purchased legally in the US, and then if not purchased legally by the criminal, they were illegally sold off or stolen into the criminal supply chain. Remove the legal guns, remove the illegal ones too.
    1
  6631.  @utah_koidragon7117  Almost every gun used by a criminal in the US was either purchased legally by that criminal, or was bought/stolen off of someone who did. Remove the legal guns, remove the illegal ones too. Common sense.
    1
  6632.  @mikeyaeger9279  Yes, but also FEWER of the criminals having guns, so the net result would be that people would be MUCH safer than they are today, like in Australia or the UK.
    1
  6633.  @utah_koidragon7117  It's just facts. The US is several times more dangerous than any other first world country, because we have more guns. Take those guns away, and it would be much less dangerous for everyone.
    1
  6634.  @utah_koidragon7117  It's just facts. The US is several times more dangerous than any other first world country, because of the availability of guns. Take those out of the picture, and America becomes much safer for everyone.
    1
  6635.  @stefanl5183  Ok, but most people still can't do that, and anyone who tried to make their own and sell them would be easier to catch, so the amount in active circulation would still be relatively small.
    1
  6636. If voters were not financially illiterate, then they would understand why voting for Republicans is never in their interest.
    1
  6637. None of the above, because Hunter Biden is neither an elected official nor active duty military.
    1
  6638.  @sproctor1958  So far as I understand it, he does not operate as a lobbyist, so that rule should not apply. It's a pretty gray area rule though, we'll see how it plays out.
    1
  6639. Fortunately, they are still below 45% total, it it doesn't matter if they unify.
    1
  6640.  @JohnB3363  I do know it. You don't seem to. That's the problem. Guns do not save lives, gun owners claim that they do. There are NO valid statistics on the matter, because congressional Republicans made it illegal for the government to collect such data. What we do know for a fact is that America has far more guns per capita than any other first world country, AND has an overall murder rate several times HIGHER than any other first world country. The very simple to understand fact is that if guns made people safer, then America would be the safest country on Earth, rather than the most dangerous among first world nations.
    1
  6641.  @JohnB3363  I do know it. You don't seem to. That's the problem. Guns do not save lives, gun owners claim that they do. There are NO valid statistics on the matter, because congressional Republicans made it illegal for the government to collect such data.
    1
  6642.  @JohnB3363  What we do know for a fact is that America has far more guns per capita than any other first world country, AND has an overall murder rate several times HIGHER than any other first world country. The very simple to understand fact is that if guns made people safer, then America would be the safest country on Earth, rather than the most dangerous among first world nations.
    1
  6643.  @JohnB3363  We can't take away those cities though, because they are as much Americans as you are. Their lives matter just as much as yours does. Also, your statistic is wrong. Firearm mortality is much higher in red states than they are in blue cities, overall. The states with the highest gun mortality are Montana, Wyoming, Oklahoma, Tennessee, etc.
    1
  6644.  @Surannhealz  The money billionaires have comes from everyone else. Of course it's their business trying to get it back.
    1
  6645.  @JesuslovesRudy  He probably is, but it still doesn't hurt to clear up the confusion.
    1
  6646. "-IF you intend to do crimes while there."
    1
  6647. So what would help the situation with Russia? Certainly not just letting them take whatever they feel like taking. I would argue that the only way to help the situation with Russia is to put a hard stop to their ambitions in the region. The longer we drag that out, the more people get hurt.
    1
  6648.  @TrickShepherd  If you give a mouse a cookie. . .
    1
  6649.  @fritzvolz1640  Nobody has threatened Russia's borders. Russia is the country that is not respecting the borders of their neighbors. They have ALWAYS been the ones to cross first.
    1
  6650.  @fritzvolz1640  Yes, and Russia is the one crossing other people's borders, so they are the problem.
    1
  6651.  @fritzvolz1640  The only people crossing borders here is Russia.
    1
  6652. He might be your President, but he won't be America's.
    1
  6653.  @Bubba_Grimm  The fascists are the ones who tried to overthrow the government. The people stopped them.
    1
  6654. Other countries can't prevent migrants from leaving. That's not how borders work. Anyone is free to leave at any time. And it's not border police we need, it's border judges so that they can process asylum claims faster and get these people into the workforce.
    1
  6655.  @fredgarvinMP  He certainly violated others, frequently, so you were lucky there. Better to go with someone like Biden who won't violate anyones.
    1
  6656.  @Delpix722  Yup, the Republicans provide simple answers for simple minds, whether they actually work or not, while Democrats only offer long winded plans that lead to actual improvement.
    1
  6657.  @JohnB3363  So. . . people living in the real world then? People who haven't had their brains scooped out by Faux News?
    1
  6658.  @JohnB3363  Yes, people who live in the real world.
    1
  6659.  @JohnB3363  Oh, I don't watch Faux News.
    1
  6660.  @vibaj16  That would only work if the system were working though. If the system were broken or hacked to bypass such controls, then no "safety measure" could work, other than physically removing it from your eye, which is not something you want to rush.
    1
  6661.  @Nerudah  Yeah, I don't, although I worry about it if I was driving or something.
    1
  6662. Gaetz is the swamp.
    1
  6663. He wasn't.
    1
  6664.  @giggity8249  That's what you've been told to believe, at least. Good sheep listen to what they're told.
    1
  6665.  @josephsmith4161  Currently? None, but I've been fully vaccinated. The CDC dropped masking recommendations like a year or more ago. Also, Trump had nothing to do with the vaccine, it was produced by the CDC. All he did was not get in the way for it and then take credit at the finish line, and then fail to get it delivered properly until after Biden took office. And yes, MAGA supporters are sheep.
    1
  6666.  @corrineanders6373  He pled guilty to that felony, and a first time, non-violent felony typically gets a light sentence. Really, if Hunter Biden were not the president's son, he likely would not have even been charged, because most people aren't.
    1
  6667. Wow, this is some Alex Jones quality nonsense. Maybe provide a little more context to what he was actually saying than a two second soundbite.
    1
  6668.  @FirstNameLastName-wt5to  So you exclusively vote Democrat then. Good.
    1
  6669.  @andrewenriquez3138  No, it's literally NOT about that. Who lied to you and told you that it had anything to do with that? What do you believe they stood to gain by controlling you like that?
    1
  6670.  @andrewcanoy1708  Nobody is stripping in front of kids. What led you to believe stripping had anything to do with this?
    1
  6671.  @bobbuilder5902  How so?
    1
  6672.  @JoeyJoJoJr0  That is not what the video shows. You are inventing a narrative to justify your own bad behavior.
    1
  6673.  @crispinfornoff206  When did he say he carried weapons into battle?
    1
  6674.  @alexwavves7756  Just because Trump is a liar, doesn't mean everyone else is. Stop projecting.
    1
  6675.  @crispinfornoff206  That's twice you misspoke. He said he carried it in war, not to war or into war. The point being that it can be easy to get a few particles wrong and it's not worth getting worked up about like he said a bunch of wight supramacists were "very fine people" or something. His point was that these were weapons designed for warfare, which he had used while in the military, and they had no place on America's streets. Can we at least agree on something simple like that?
    1
  6676.  @perrywinkle8183  Biden and Clinton were honest about it. Trump lied and continues to lie about why he did not serve.
    1
  6677.  @MIKUIEL  Did JD Vance not talk about his own, much lesser military service? I've heard a ton of politicians mention their military service. Many of them are Republicans. And Walz is right on gun policy too, while many of them are not.
    1
  6678. Like "Build Back Better?" Sounds good.
    1
  6679.  @dionprather3589  Why would closing the border improve anything? We need more people.
    1
  6680.  @micahlukac7885  There have been a great many institutions that have been done away with because they could not do the job they were intended to do.
    1
  6681.  @WaterspoutsOfTheDeep  Well, US law would be what is relevant here, but the Bible also believed life begins at "first breath." But yes, it is a subjective determination, there is no objective fact of when life begins, so, again, nobody would have the right to impose on you what you could do with your body just because their beliefs are different than yours. Also, "god given rights" appears nowhere in the US Constitution. It is a purely secular document that firmly separates church from state.
    1
  6682.  @WaterspoutsOfTheDeep  That isn't how it works. Moral rights are decided by people, and they change all the time. What "good, moral Christians" did centuries ago would be war crimes today. Things that we consider moral today might be considered heinous crimes in a generation. You can believe that the laws that govern your actions are received from a higher power, but that does not give you the right to impose them onto others. Also, your third paragraph about "science" is not describing actual science, it's describing "pseudo science," which is religion wrapped in the language of science. None of the things you claim there are accurate to actual science.
    1
  6683. I don't think she's angling for the VP role just yet,
    1
  6684.  @StephenRichmond89 Generally, yeah, but "cost effective" is relative. So long as you have plenty of room to spread out as much as you like, it is not cost effective to build to this level of density. On the other hand, if you had a country with very little footprint to work with, and you need to get more and more out of every square foot, then building up is the only way to do that (aside from building down, which has its own issues). And you can't just build super tall, thin towers, because you run into issues where the elevators become super inefficient to use, and people end up "trapped" on the upper floors because it takes an hour to reach the ground, so if you're going to build tall, you also have to build wide in some way, and spread out goods and services so that people don't need to travel all the way to the ground most of the time,
    1
  6685. Red: References Leverage Me: Yes.
    1
  6686.  @MikeKayK  Yup, and then take another bite at that apple in 5-10 years when you've had time to resupply.
    1
  6687. @@seditioncase5848 So Putin should be rewarded for invading a peaceful neighbor? The Neville Chamberlain approach to geopolitics? That works out well. . .
    1
  6688.  @PD-yd3fr  I'm not flying to Ukraine, I'm supporting them through supplies, the actual fighting is up to them.
    1
  6689.  @MikeKayK  The west is giving Ukraine everything they reasonably can. There really isn't much more that the west could provide outside of nukes.
    1
  6690.  @MikeKayK  That's what they gave out at first, since that's what they had to give, but they have been ramping up production on other things. Ukraine is never getting the absolute top of the line hardware like F-35s, but they don't need those anyway. Western countries can't just give away their own militaries, and are spending BILLIONS of dollars building the supplies being sent to Ukraine as it is. It is up to Ukraine to use those resources well.
    1
  6691.  @MikeKayK  This is not a "two sides" issue. Putin invaded unilaterally and without justification. He has to put everything back where he found it if he wants Russians to stop dying. He does not get to keep anything he took. Imagine if that's how life worked, if someone could walk into a store, take $500 in merchandise, get caught, and then go, "look, let's not drag this out, I'll give you back $400 of this stuff and we'll both go home." And then, of course, come back tomorrow to repeat the process.
    1
  6692.  @Jasper118  Better regulation of the wealthy, rather than just giving them more tax cuts.
    1
  6693. The Lord says "more gun control."
    1
  6694. @ This bill doesn't protect anyone's daughters. What would daughters have to do with anything?
    1
  6695. That's called the "dunning-kruger effect."
    1
  6696. With a source you need to use them carefully. Skim all the info they bring, look into it, but NEVER take ANY of it as 100% gospel. A source is just a hint toward the facts, not a guaranteed truth.
    1
  6697. His name sounds as American as yours does. That's the cool thing about America that makes it America, and not France.
    1
  6698.  @cindyholloway7441 There will always be "most common" names, that does not make any of the "less common" ones any less American. Most people named "Smith" had family that came into this country with some other name, and were just handed "Smith" at the door because the immigration officer could not spell. You say that people from other countries have different cultures as if that is some sort of a bad thing. Where would America be if it were not influenced by other cultures? We wouldn't have hot dogs or apple pie! And sure, people who can't pronounce "Ramaswamy" probably shouldn't be voting, but they do, and there's nothing illegal about that. And yes, it would be great if Obama could run this time, but unfortunately, he's term limited. Biden will do fine though.
    1
  6699. Yeah, not that "free speech" is actually any sort of defense on these charges. As other lawyers have pointed out, you have a free speech right, but not if in doing so you are committing a crime, for example "using free speech" to pull a con, or "using free speech" to plan a bank robbery. The "speech" Trump has been charged with is him planning to commit crimes, such as to defraud the public, or to subvert an election. He's not being punished for speech, he's being punished for those crimes.
    1
  6700. Well that's no good. However people feel about Biden, Harris would not be better at the head of the ticket. If Biden steps out, the question is who do we put at the top of the ticket, not who we put in the second slot.
    1
  6701.  @markcook3570  Different people do different things. Imagining that Joe Biden is as bad as Trump is just fooling yourself. If Trump's behavior makes you ashamed to vote for him, then vote for someone else.
    1
  6702.  @tarag2705  To be fair, the average Faux News viewer is actually less informed about the world than someone who gets no news at all, so they probably ARE ignorant of all of this stuff, and thing all Biden does all day is fall off bikes that one time, because Faux News has it on loop.
    1
  6703. I don't think they do get free shipping. If any businesses you're dealing with offer free shipping, then that would mean that they are the ones paying the shipping cost, as a way to encourage sales.
    1
  6704.  @SuperErickelrojo  Why would you give a Nobel prize to "nobody?"
    1
  6705.  @SuperErickelrojo  That was a movie made by a politician over twenty years ago. Why does it keep coming up at all?
    1
  6706.  @SuperErickelrojo  I haven't given Al Gore any money, nor do I plan to.
    1
  6707.  @SuperErickelrojo  Those prices have to do with the fossil fuel industry, not with climate scientists. Some of the largest spikes came in the 70s, well before Al Gore made a movie.
    1
  6708. I've never understood why there is nobody in Japan that runs a simple "I will read and correct your English" service. Anyone with basic native English skills could do it, they wouldn't even need to know Japanese! It could be for like $1 per line, or a subscription if you do it often enough, and they would just read the J-English and go "nope, that isn't right, here's what you say instead."
    1
  6709. No other credible candidates are running.
    1
  6710. Both.
    1
  6711. Ultimately it should be between patients and doctors, which is why a broad ban on the treatments is a bad idea.
    1
  6712.  @platanous  But puberty blockers would be pointless on adults. That's the whole point of taking them.
    1
  6713.  @phill.2924  But what would be the point of puberty blockers on adults? Do you understand how dumb you're sounding?
    1
  6714. If Republicans suddenly couldn't make false claims about immigrants, then what would they even have left to do?
    1
  6715. Trump never closed the border, and it would be illegal to do so.
    1
  6716.  @wrightstudiosllc  Yes, dead people and re-run ballots were not counted.
    1
  6717. @ The TDS is strong with them. They are so de-ranged as to believe Trump is fit for office.
    1
  6718.  @Ministry-Of-Truth  No 1860s Republican would be a member of the current Republican party, they would all be Democrats, and no 1860s Democrat could win a modern Democratic primary, but they would be rockstars in the Republican party. The Parties trades positions on racial issues in the 1960s. Modern Republicans are Republicans in name only.
    1
  6719. Not as a part of this bill, but at some point in the future it will likely be necessary, since the revenues from gas taxes are going down and down over time.
    1
  6720.  @undercoveragent9889  Worked out for Skynet, why not for billionaires? And if anyone in the electorate is robots, it would be Republicans. Look what they voted for.
    1
  6721.  @undercoveragent9889  Worked out for Skynet, why not for billionaires? And if anyone in the electorate is robots, it would be maga. Look what they voted for.
    1
  6722.  @undercoveragent9889  Worked out for Skynet, why not for billionaires? And if anyone in the electorate is robots, it would be maga. Look what they just did.
    1
  6723.  @jerometruitt2731  They might have human servants if they like, but they wouldn't need any if they didn't. Robots could do all that.
    1
  6724.  @bryonpav  Most new problems are just old problems with a fresh coat of paint.
    1
  6725. Yeah, take back your party from these MAGA lunatics. Become a repectable second party again, like in the 00-. . . the 80-. . .. the 70-. . . like in the 1860s!
    1
  6726.  @geraldwatts5492  There are professors that make for poor teachers, mostly in research fields, but it's hard for a PHD to get a teaching role at a university without some actual talent at passing on knowledge. There are way more PHDs than there are teaching roles, and there are way more lucrative opportunities in the private sector for most PHDs than teaching.
    1
  6727. They shouldn't ban foreigners, they should just ban mangy fratbros.
    1
  6728.  @grben9959  The riot itself was only a PORTION of an insurrection activity. The actual insurrection was those involved in trying to decertify the election results and use the House ti install Donald Trump instead. the riots were mainly a distraction to allow the actual insurrection to take place. Luckily, both failed.
    1
  6729. And Grassley has made clear that there's nothing substantial to the document, so there's no reason to care whether they get it or not, unless what you want is political dirt to wallow in like little piggies.
    1
  6730. He did everything within his power to make America a worse country than he found it. Ol'Scratch owes him a Bourbon when he gets there.
    1
  6731. "Why do you make me hit you?!"- says many a wife beater. . .
    1
  6732. Who let either Serbia or Kosovo OWN JETS?!
    1
  6733.  @seneca983  But this was a region that had a lot of internal conflict, and that would have plenty of neighbors to protect them from external threats, so maybe put away the toys so they don't hurt themselves?
    1
  6734.  @seneca983  But they have shown that they are less trustworthy to have them. If one of their neighbors attacked them unjustly, then other neighbors could act in their defense. They don't need to have jets themselves.
    1
  6735.  @seneca983  You keep trying to make the case that they should just be treated like any other country in the region, and I would say that this is true, IF NOT for how they had a war a few decades back and are doing petty BS like this license plate issue, and cannot agree that their neighbor even EXISTS. Children don't deserve dangerous toys. In the meantime, if someone attacks them, Nato can defend them. If they decide to attack someone else, that's their problem.
    1
  6736.  @seneca983  "By this logic none, of the ex-Yugoslav republics other than Slovenia and North Macedonia should have jets." Ok, twist my arm on it. "How would you do that anyway? What would you do if they refuse to give up jets?" Cut off trade. "Nato doesn't have an obligation to defend them. They have no reason to trust Nato here." They could if NATO made a deal with them to that effect. We've done it in the past.
    1
  6737.  @seneca983  "The reason you gave was being at war a few decades back. When Yugoslavia broke up, to my knowledge only Slovenia and North Macedonia managed to become independent without fighting." Yeah, and I agreed with you. "That would be an excessive measure. It would only impoverish innocent Serbian civilians and make peace more difficult to achieve without any real benefit." That would only happen if the Sebian government found jets more important than their people, and if their people let them get away with that. Economic sanctions are a good way of achieving a goal without fighting. "It's at least unclear if Nato members would sign up for that but at any rate they don't enough reason to trust Nato." That's really their problem.
    1
  6738.  @seneca983  "It's not a stretch to imagine that both the government and the people wouldn't want to be totally vulnerable, especially considering that past conflicts are still very much in living memory." Then they make their bed, and they have to eat it. "It's also a problem for anyone wanting to enforce some kind of no jets policy unless they don't care at all about causing misery to ordinary people in the Balkans." Again, you would enforce it economically, not militarily, and the misery to the ordinary people would be of their own making, since they could make it stop at any point by just giving up the jets. I'm sure they would even be fairly compensated for them, so they'd come out ahead. I don't know why you're arguing this as if there's a rational position on your side of the discussion. This is not a two-sided issue.
    1
  6739.  @seneca983  People need to be responsible for their choices. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. "That's what I was talking about. You'd thrust misery in the form of poverty unto ordinary citizens." No, their leaders would be doing that, by preferring jets to fixing those problems. "I could say the same thing to you. Has any politician or diplomat who has been working this issue considered your idea to be a good one?" How should I know? Most probably don't care. But that doesn't mean it isn't the right course of action.
    1
  6740. Everyone has contempt for Speaker Johnson.
    1
  6741.  @InGODweTrust007  "The enemy of my enemy is my friend, even if that makes both of us trash."
    1
  6742.  @InGODweTrust007 Who minds being questioned? I'd just like to hear a better quality of question. Also, who argued that censorship was a good thing? Your comments seem random and not at all in reference to anything I said.
    1
  6743.  @InGODweTrust007 You're.
    1
  6744.  @erikschuster4293  Every single 1860 Republican would be a Democrat today, and every single 1860 Democrat would be a Republican today. Don't try to take credit for the efforts of people over 100 years ago, stand behind your own record today.
    1
  6745. The Biden policy turns out to be more successful than the Trump policy, at least.
    1
  6746. It's not the media doing it, the media is doing a great job here. The issue is the Republicans lying to people.
    1
  6747. Nah, it's been tried, but it doesn't work well. Incoming EV options can allow you to charge to full in about the same time as getting a tank of gas, that's the solution here.
    1
  6748. Daddy Putin was not pleased that he didn't seal the deal.
    1
  6749.  @Jeroen_Maes  The facts I was referencing was that the video pointed out several "facts" asserted by Hersh in his blog post that seem to not actually be the case, or at least would be extremely unlikely, which casts doubt on the validity of the reporting. We don't know for certain who did this, and it's possible that it could have been just about anyone, but the story Hersh gave about how it was done is very likely extremely wrong.
    1
  6750.  @chalinofalcone871  I don't see how the Vatican has anything to do with it.
    1
  6751. Disney are just baiting him into doing something blatantly illegal against them, so they can sue for billions. And Meatball Ron will stumble face first into that briar patch.
    1
  6752.  @ljthompson3011  Yes, but Russia pays to have their minions spread false news reports on any numbers of subjects all over foreign social media. It's important to be aware of this and not buy into their shenanigans.
    1
  6753.  Cl1nton Body count  You have been misinformed. Russia blew up plenty of purely civilian targets. There may have been one or two soldiers in some of them, there is a war going on after all, but that would in no way justify blowing up a school full of children or a hospital full of patients, as Russia does. You really need to find yourself better sources of information than you have been using.
    1
  6754.  @whisperedoaths6203  Only from the viewpoint of soviet propaganda.
    1
  6755.  @MrX-il2jt  Russia social media platforms provide nothing worth caring about, much like the rest of Russia. What is your point?
    1
  6756.  @brianhill1546  I doubt you do either, but out of curiosity, what do you think such a "line" would be? And on what product?
    1
  6757.  @KnittyKitty215  Nope, it doesn't work that way.
    1
  6758.  @cw6136  Of course AI can take over manufacturing jobs. AI has already taken over a huge number of manufacturing jobs, and it's only getting better and better at it over time.
    1
  6759.  @votaric  He became a billionaire by being given a billion dollars in real estate by his father. If he'd just put his inheritance into an indexed fund he would be richer today than he is now.
    1
  6760.  @votaric  But the properties he inherited is what made him his billions, through no fault of his own. Again, if he'd just put that money into the stock market, no effort needed, he'd have MORE money today than he made doing all the various other things he's done in his life. It ALL came from daddy.
    1
  6761.  @TheBane616  Nope, because it would cost billions for them to build those new factories, years for them to build up the workforce needed to staff them, and even once they did, their products would cost more than people currently pay in the US, AND they would be impossible to sell in any other market, because they would be so much more expensive. There is just ZERO point to it. People in America should not be producing things that other people are willing and able to produce for pennies. People in America should be doing better things with their lives than that. Also, when was this period of "no or low tax?" Because the 30s-70s were generally considered to be a prosperous time in America, and taxes were much higher back then than they are today.
    1
  6762.  maryjane9842  But in the real world, that is not the case.
    1
  6763.  @Mrobvious777  It works out for the average person better than any other system that's been tried. Nobody is truly free, under any sort of system. Those with the most money will always have power over those with less, no matter the form of government. But the US government, at least when run by responsible Democrats, works better in the interest of the people than one run by Republicans, or most governments out there.There are a few countries out there with more effective systems, mainly in Europe, but not many.
    1
  6764.  @ClockworkGearhead  Which ones haven't been arrested?
    1
  6765.  @smoothtwh  Nah. You're right to be concerned about Republican gerrymandering in a lot of states that tip the odds heavily in their favor, but the actual voting process is, at least, secure.
    1
  6766. Does not apply in this case, the Judge's verdict that he was guilty of insurrection was him being proven guilty.
    1
  6767.  @kjnoah  This was the trial. The judge found that he had participated in an insurrection and violated his oaths of office. But the 14th never says that there needs to be an indictment or conviction, and the politicians it was applied to right after it was passed were never charged with anything.
    1
  6768.  @kjnoah  It was a lie that there was no insurrection, yes. Faux News wants to control people's minds.
    1
  6769.  @duckaroobonzai2648  But a state can decide whether someone is eligible for their state's ballot, based on both state and federal law, which is what happened here. As for the federal level, that will go up to the SCOTUS, and it will come down to whether they uphold the Constitution, or not.
    1
  6770.  @kjnoah  That would be even worse. If the SCOTUS declares that they will ignore the Constitution when it works against their own political interests, that would be a disastrous move for a constitutional republic to make.
    1
  6771.  @kjnoah  He was not tried in the judicial process, he was impeached in the Congress, totally separate jurisdiction. When Mitch McConnell explained why he was voting against conviction, he made clear that Trump could be tried separately in the court system. Similarly, you can try someone for the same crime in both state and federal courts, regardless of the outcome of each trial.
    1
  6772. Further proof that he's a terrible businessman.
    1
  6773.  @phillippac.7469  Fortunately, that's not how anything works. They are private businesses that can censor or not as they see fit, and also not publishers. If you are reading or posting on Facebook or Twitter, they decide whether they want to provide a platform for you or not. If you do not want to be subject to their rules, then you can read or post on a different platform.
    1
  6774. Because this was someone he voluntarily married and failed to divorce.
    1
  6775.  @MrJerryUltra10000  Supporting Trump after Jan 6th shows a deficiency of morals, intellect, or both, that no self-respecting person could overlook.
    1
  6776.  @MrJerryUltra10000  If they support Trump after Jan 6th, then it shows a bankruptcy in either morals or intelligence. That should not be ignored.
    1
  6777.  @MrJerryUltra10000  It shows a bankruptcy in either morals or intelligence. That should not be ignored.
    1
  6778.  @MrJerryUltra10000  No, I meant people who still support Trump. I'm sorry, I should have made it simpler, I forgot my audience and that is on me, not you.
    1
  6779.  @mindyobeeznis  I think sometimes conservatives misunderstand what "tolerance" means. It means being accepting of people who behave differently than you do. It does not mean accepting that some people want to take your rights away from you and just rolling with it.
    1
  6780.  @mindyobeeznis  If the Trump administration had succeeded, they would have removed the voting rights of 80 million Americans.
    1
  6781.  @JohnB3363  Yup, political rallies are irrelevant, all that matters is that people show up to vote.
    1
  6782. This guy happens to be 100% correct though. I don't know about the other guys who said it, but this one is accurate.
    1
  6783.  @michaelwilson9921  To answer your question, look into "The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model."
    1
  6784.  @michaelwilson9921  RAND is not a part of the US government, they are an independent thinktank. Russia were the ones that unilaterally invaded, they are responsible for their own actions.
    1
  6785.  @michaelwilson9921  You do know that RAND is not a part of the government, right?
    1
  6786.  @ocrajoe3057  It's weird that the same people who complain about the US support of the overthrow of the prior corrupt government in Ukraine often also complain about "corruption in Ukraine." It's almost like they have no idea what they're talking about. And no, Ukraine never wanted to be a part of Russia again, that you would say that indicates that you have no interest in a good faith discussion on the topic.
    1
  6787.  @ocrajoe3057  But their claims of independence were irrelevant, because they were not recognized by their nation. States cannot unilaterally secede from their nation, they require the agreement of the REST of that nation. The fact that their claims were supported by other Russian puppet states is meaningless. The people of those regions are free to leave at any time if they no longer want to be a part of Ukraine, but they have no right to take any land under their feet with them when they go. And again, the only role the US played in this situation was by supporting Ukrainian efforts to prevent Russian attempts to corrupt the Ukrainian government. Was that not reasonable?
    1
  6788.  @ocrajoe3057  After the fall of the USSR, Ukraine was Ukraine. Those were the internationally recognized borders. Russia has no legitimate claim to change those borders. Those regions had no legitimate option to vote to secede without the permission of the rest of Ukraine. Again, the people of that region are free to leave Ukraine any time they want, they are just not free to take Ukraine's land with them when they go. Putin has been attempting to take land from every country in the region. If you believe it's fair for any country with people of Russian ancestry in it to declare independence from their actual country, then do you also believe that Mexicans in Texas should be able to declare that Texas is part of Mexico now?
    1
  6789.  @ocrajoe3057  During the break-up of the Soviet Union, Ukraine became an independent state, and its official borders were internationally recognized. After that, nobody had any rights to modify those borders without the consent of the nation of Ukraine. Anyone who lives within those borders is free to leave if they do not wish to remain a part of Ukraine, but they have no right to take the land under their feet with them when they go.
    1
  6790. @Tattle Boad That online sales should have responsible liability protections?
    1
  6791. @Tattle Boad Yeah, but I don't agree with the guy in the video that this is necessarily the case. I think it's a good idea to have more accountability in online retailers.
    1
  6792. And yet he's doing a better job of it than the last guy, so what was his excuse?
    1
  6793. While I don't defend a single thing about Trump's position, or certainly not his moves in Syria, it's also preposterous for Macron to have anything to say about it. If he'd wanted to protect Syria, why weren't French troops in Syria to defend those positions? Trump pulling out shouldn't have left the area wide open for attack from a NATO ally, there should have been plenty of other NATO forces in the area to provide cover.
    1
  6794.  @ADifferentBias  I'm saying they should have been there from day one. They shouldn't have needed to "swap out" for US troops, they should have been there on the same day US troops arrived. Why was it the US's responsibility to act as a buffer, when the problem was right on Europe's doorstep? I fully disagree with Trump's casual stance on NATO, but he's actually more bullish about it than most European NATO members, because the US still contributes the overwhelming majority of NATO's forces. Holding NATO members to a 2% GDP commitment is nothing, it should be at least 2.5%
    1
  6795. Are you taking about the Patriot Front idiots that were marching in DC this weekend? Yeah, what a sad little bunch of losers.
    1
  6796. I really wish physicists would stop pretending their opinions about the climate matter.
    1
  6797.  @mickeyfly6706  That would be a VERY silly reason, and more supports my case that you never were.
    1
  6798. They can't win though, and someone is going to be president at the end of the process. If voting for someone who can't win allows someone much worse to win, then you have harmed yourself.
    1
  6799. Well, the problem is that both are Republicans, so who could expect better of them?
    1
  6800. He's not in office, he'll have his chance.
    1
  6801. @ I sometimes say I was listening to a video, if that's what I did. If I didn't see what was happening on the screen, it wouldn't be accurate to claim I'd watched it. I don't fault people for using either though, it's a "white lie."
    1
  6802. That's because Trump took more vacations. You're leaving out all the golfing he did on weekdays.
    1
  6803.  @shanxieddie  "Give a mouse a cookie. . ."
    1
  6804.  @Clownelskiy  Did they offer to leave Ukraine as a condition of negotiation?
    1
  6805.  @cleverkittn  There are no Ukrainian or NATO forces in Russian areas right now. So if that's the condition, it's already been met.
    1
  6806.  @cheefkeef8749  The peace summit was for those allied against Russia to determine how to achieve a just peace. It was not a negotiation. That will come later, once Russia withdraws.
    1
  6807. Only if Republicans hold it up, otherwise the impeachment efforts will be over within the week. It's something that needs to happen before American can move on. Trumpism needs to die so that American can live.
    1
  6808.  @OHOHOHCOME  Why would I be the one angry that she couldn't tell the difference between his finger and his. . . other parts?
    1
  6809.  @terrestrialradio  Bill Clinton was never found liable of that. His relationships were consensual.
    1
  6810.  @terrihilder8217  The jury was deciding whether he had committed the crime or not. He couldn't be criminally charged because of the statue of limitations, but the results would be the same.
    1
  6811.  @picktheblueone  So you don't understand how often women don't report these sorts of crimes for fear of exactly the sort of backlash she received.
    1
  6812.  @terrihilder8217  So you're saying that even though he did it, he likely would have gotten off if it had been a criminal trial?
    1
  6813.  @OHOHOHCOME  I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed. Idiocaracy came early.
    1
  6814.  @terrihilder8217  Trump refused to provide DNA to test against until after the deadline. That is why.
    1
  6815.  @dennisferguson9129  Ok. The US produces more oil today than it did while Trump was in office.
    1
  6816.  @Marbeem444new  A jury disagreed with you. They found her allegations credible.
    1
  6817.  @Marbeem444new  You believe him, that's really more of a "you" problem than anything. The jury believed the evidence against him.
    1
  6818.  @Marbeem444new  Real victims brag about getting justice for the crimes against them all the time. Where have you been?
    1
  6819. Such is capitalism. If they were in a socialist economy, they would still have jobs.
    1
  6820.  @recoil53  You just described capitalism.
    1
  6821.  @recoil53  Well, the distinction is that capitalism always works that way, whereas socialist systems only might work that way, depending on how they are managed. Basically, you can run a socialist system like a capitalist one in which the people at the top are essentially the same as CEOs, but that typically only works in an authoritarian socialist system, like China or Russia. It is also possible to run a democratic socialist system, in which those in power are legitimately at the whims of the public, in which case, it is more likely to produce a more equitable system. It's basically the best possible option.
    1
  6822.  @juriscervenaks8953  That's not true at all. You have some really messed up misunderstandings about economics.
    1
  6823.  @juriscervenaks8953  Pretty much everything, really. I think your primary misunderstanding is how "power" works. Power WILL exist, it is inevitable. someone will hold it. If you remove "government" from the equation, that does not mean everyone gets to do whatever they want, it just means that the strongest get to decide what everyone else is allowed to do. In a capitalist system, this means that the wealthiest corporations get to decide what everyone else has to do. In a lack of government, corporations become a defacto government. Pretty much every government regulation of businesses exist because at some point, businesses tried to do that thing, and it went poorly, so a law was made to prevent them doing it. If you remove government, they just go back to doing that thing. There is zero difference between an authoritarian soviet state and an authoritarian capitalist state, the "bad" part of that is not the economic model, it's the authoritarian government. Businesses will NEVER be under the control of the people, so in any system in which businesses are allowed free reign, they will reign free. Governments might not be under the control of the people, depending on how they function, but it's at least possible for them to be under the control of the people, and so that is the outcome that everyone should be fighting for at all times, to ensure that government is as accountable to the people as possible. As they say, "democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other ones," and that includes "anarcho-capitalism."
    1
  6824.  @JB-kk4pv  The one that is democratically elected.
    1
  6825.  @freshmclovin4593  He was allowed to read classified documents while VP. We don't know the full circumstances of how they ended up in his offices, Biden himself might not even have been involved in putting them there, we'll see what the investigation turns up. Keep in mind, if Biden didn't want to be transparent about this, then none of us ever would have heard about it. They could have just hid or destroyed the documents and nobody would ever have known, because the archives were not looking for them. This is only a story because Biden did the right thing and turned the documents in, unlike Donald Trump.
    1
  6826.  @kaktus_sanchez  Or so your soviet schoolbooks would tell you. The reality is that Russia was the aggressor in both Georgia and Ukraine. Putin made clear that he believed he had the right to conquer Ukraine and absorb it into Russia. No country is safe from Russian aggression, particularly any former Soviet states. The reality is that Russia has NO right to ANY territory outside of its post-Soviet borders. The Russian Empire is dead and will stay that way.
    1
  6827. Then maybe you should stop genociding your neighbor, right?
    1
  6828. The reason they put that lab there in the first place was to study viruses in the region so that we could be prepared for if humans got infected with it. It's like how there are labs in Africa that study ebola.
    1
  6829.  @redrich7679  Just because the numbers scare you doesn't mean they aren't real. We prefer living in reality to hiding under our blankets and hoping the mean virus will pass them by.
    1
  6830.  @savedbytheblood316  No, it's actually the Republicans' fault. The Democrats pay for the things they do, then when the Republicans take over, they remove all the funding for it and declare it a fiasco.
    1
  6831.  @funnyharleyman  Like Trump supporters did in 2020?
    1
  6832.  @jinka6171  Lol, Vance couldn't win a dog catcher's race.
    1
  6833.  @jinka6171  I wasn't running, but nobody voted for Vice President anyway.
    1
  6834. The thing with Apple is that this is not a surprise. Hoeg Law went over some of their license agreements, and if you put your products on the App store, you get their payment processing for free, But you owe them 30% for any money you make on there, so basically they aren't claiming to get any money from their payment processing, the fees are just what you owe them for being on iOS. The payment processing is just a "convenient" way for them to collect that money with less hassle. :D I mean, you can disagree with that cut, but it's what they charge.
    1
  6835. Well, on the one hand, when you are electing a single individual, a President, then the better system is a a ranked choice voting system, where you vote for like 3-5 people in order, and if your first choice doesn't win then maybe your second or third would get a boost and win. This is a system mostly likely to give the candidate that most people can tolerate, but least likely to give you the one you want most. Of course you do need to have one person in charge for some roles, just to be able to take decisive action in times of crisis. Parliaments are fine when you have months to debate a topic, but not when someone needs to make a call in ten minutes. Another issue to consider is that while the US is split into Republicans and Democrats, there are significant factions within those bodies, centrist Dems, socialist Dems, fiscal conservative GOP, methhead lunatic GOP, etc. If we were a different country with a different system, you would have the same basic outcome, the only difference being that instead of two parties, you would have a coalition of the 2-3 parties that contain the people who are currently considering themselves Democrats. You would have, say, Joe Manchin, Chuck Shumer, and Bernies Sanders in three different parties, but they would all caucus together to form a ruling coalition. It's kind of a distinction without a difference, really, and no real advantages to it. The disadvantage is that it can lead to chaotic scrambles for the more fringe representatives that often lead to stalemate and dysfunction.
    1
  6836.  @chrischreative2245  The US is a democratic republic. The democracy is a VITAL part of that. And no, democracies don't devolve into dictatorships, non-democratic republics do. People who say "the US is not a democracy, it's a republic," tend to support authoritarians like Trump and DeSantis.
    1
  6837.  @chrischreative2245  We changed that in later amendments to the Constitution. Government is an evolving process. And yes, despite the why you choose to frame his actions, DeSantis is an authoritarian. He is just an authoritarian who happens to do the things you want done and not do the things that would personally bother you. And sure, Disney liked being able to keep their park open during the pandemic, even if it wasn't the right thing to do at the time. But then they spoke out against the governor's homophobic bill, and the governor punished them for that, and that's the topic we are on right now, how he abused the mechanisms of government to punish free speech. That is completely separate from anything he was doing prior to that.
    1
  6838.  @bodyloverz30  We are a democratic republic. The "republic" part would be entirely pointless without the "democratic" part functioning effectively. "No taxation without representation." Without a fair democratic process, the entire point of what the founders were fighting for would be meaningless.
    1
  6839.  @bodyloverz30  Oh, we're talking about the US polticial system in this thread, not the French one. Well, now you know, and knowing is half the battle.
    1
  6840.  @bodyloverz30  Yes, but in the post discussion that you wandered into, we were discussing how that related to the US political system, and as defined by the US Constitution, the US is a democratic republic. Without the democracy, it would not be a republic. I'm not sure what about that confuses you.
    1
  6841.  @RB-kr1ww  You should vote either way. Chances are your preferred candidate would not win even under proportional voting, but it is still better to ensure that the worst candidate loses.
    1
  6842.  @deltasquared7777  No, Biden is objectively superior to Trump in every possible metric. It isn't even close. It's not some "both sides" issue. He might not have been your favorite candidate of all, but pretending that we are not markedly better off for having him in the White House than Trump would do nothing but cast doubt on your own judgement in leadership.
    1
  6843.  @deltasquared7777  No, that would be inaccurate, this leads to the inescapable conclusion that you have poor political judgement, and that regardless of the voting mechanics you prefer, your preferred candidate would be unlikely to win any election.
    1
  6844. Well, the difference there is that Hillary and Joe did not commit actual crimes, while Republicans commit lots of crimes. It would only be unfair if the Democrats also committed crimes.
    1
  6845. When have we ever done this?
    1
  6846. The Stasi surveillance was not bad because it was surveillance, it was bad because they USED that information to persecute people. Collecting information is neither good nor bad, it's all about what you DO with information.
    1
  6847. TL;DR, water canons.
    1
  6848. He never ruled out the lab leak, but he did believe that the wet market was the more likely scenario, as many agencies continue to believe. Why do you seem to be so invested on the lab leak alternative being the correct one? It really doesn't make a lot of difference at the end of the day, they both had the same results within the first few weeks of the pandemic.
    1
  6849. Every region has weather they're not prepared for. If you don't have the infrastructure in place to deal with it, then it hits hard. Floridians freak out if there's ice on the road.
    1
  6850. Google is rarely useful anymore, since search results favor "optimized" pages, which are not always accurate pages.
    1
  6851.  @Chris-lx5fs  Far less than there are white shooters.
    1
  6852.  @careercriticalthinker  I'm sorry you found reality too tough for you and had to retreat into fantasy, but the grown ups are having a serious conversation here about a serious topic. Scoot back to the children's table with your little conspiracy theory sites that will tell you all sorts of interesting fantasies to keep you entertained.
    1
  6853.  @dbutler9319  Or, "you folks" seem obsessed with that particular shooting because it did involve an apparent member of a marginalized community, while most mass shootings are far right extremists, and you'd like to ignore those as best you can. If the Nashville shooter had motivations that in some way reflected left-leaning concepts, then we should learn about that as the investigation continues, but it is not a valid "whataboutism" here.
    1
  6854.  @jello8562  I don't think anyone is trying to portray the Nashville shooter as a "victim" in this situation. I'm not sure why you seem so worked up about that, when we're talking about the more recent shooting in Texas. Let that other case work itself out.
    1
  6855.  @jello8562  Most of the people not exclusively talking about the more recent shooting are trying to deflect away from it, because talking about different shooters is more comfortable to them than talking about the majority of them being right-wing extremists. they want to poke at the exceptions, to avoid discussing the rule.
    1
  6856. Elon Musk thinks there should be a Russia-Ukraine truce? Why didn't anyone else think of that?! It's almost like Russia has no interest whatsoever in leaving Ukraine any time soon, and Putin does not care what Elon Musk thinks. "Wishful thinking does not end wars," Lol, the irony.
    1
  6857. It would have been wrong to not certify the fair elections in Arizona. It is the responsibility of member sof congress to uphold the Constitution.
    1
  6858.  @kevincowart542  You do realize that what you said was nonsense, right? There were no issues with voting machines in Arizona. Hand counts turned out the same results in multiple recounts. Who lied to you about that, and why?
    1
  6859.  @mindimartian9821  Well whether Arizona was "well run" or not, the results are not in doubt, at least. of course the Cyber Ninjas are choosing to shut themselves down rather than to comply with Freedom of Information requests, so clearly they have nothing to hide. . .
    1
  6860.  @kevincowart542  All the ballots were legitimate. There is no reason to believe that any of them weren't. You just seem unwilling to accept that Trump is a loser and always will be. Grow out of that.
    1
  6861.  @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.
    1
  6862. They would give this same coverage to Neville Chamberlain.
    1
  6863.  @PJxBuchwild  Kari won't win because the election wasn't rigged. If it had been rigged, she would be the Governor-elect right now, but she's not. It's pretty obvious to anyone who isn't a partisan hack.
    1
  6864.  @charlessmith4242  What difference is relevant here?
    1
  6865.  @elcajondavid1  Because Hobbs' opponent came off like a lunatic election denier, and look, it turns out that was correct, because here she is election denying again. Arizonans clearly did not want that. Nobody wants that. Why are Republicans so consistently shocked when voters don't want that?
    1
  6866.  @MyerShift7  There's already mountains of evidence against Trump. Half the things he's accused of he openly admits on social media that he did those things, he just doesn't think it's a big deal to commit federal crimes. Leftists respect evidence, they just also don't do as many incriminating things.
    1
  6867.  @cameroncooper9501  Lake was the racist candidate. Are you suggesting she was running against herself? That would explain a lot.
    1
  6868.  @elcajondavid1 Yes, there is a good reason. They are babies. Their candidate lost and they cannot accept that, so they will continue to cry cry cry until they get their way. Well sorry, that is not how elections work, you don't get a participation trophy. If you want to win elections, put forth candidates that appeal to the majority of the population. I do agree with you on one thing though, nobody would vote for an old corrupt fool, which is why America voted for Biden instead.
    1
  6869.  @elcajondavid1  Lol, no. Trump is the old corrupt fool, Biden may be a few years older, but he's a lot less corrupt and foolish than Trump. And yeah, Biden told everyone what he was going to do, and the majority of Americans wanted him to do that, which is why they voted for him, and then he did that stuff. That's how elections work. And if your argument is "Republicans who don't get their way will cost taxpayers millions in lawsuits, so you better give them what they want," that's not how elections work, that is how extortion works, and I have no patience for it.
    1
  6870.  @cameroncooper9501  It's kind of funny how the same people who call Democrats "racist" for electing people like Biden, likely voted for Donald Trump themselves. It's almost like they don't care about "racism" in the slightest, they're just angry that their candidate is a loser.
    1
  6871.  @elcajondavid1  Agreed, low IQ voters voted for Trump, and many continue to support him. Biden voters had, on average, much higher IQs. And obviously Joe is much less corrupt than Trump, that isn't even a serious question. Trump was the most corrupt president in US history. There is no evidence of any corruption in the Biden administration.
    1
  6872.  @nickmagrick7702  She's right though. Every human has some natural advantages and disadvantages when it comes to sport. If you take a dozen different people, train them exactly the same from birth, you will get completely different results out of them. Obviously to be a pro athlete you need to work hard, but you also need favorable genetics. Hard work alone won't get you to the top. So in that way, she is totally right, it has never been fair, it has never just been about "who tried hard enough." The winner has always been a balance between "baseline genetic potential" x "amount of time and effort spent developing that potential" x "methods used to do so." If any one of those things falls short, then the athlete would fall short of the peak human potential. I mean, this much should be obvious just given how record times in objectively measures sports have improved steadily over time, as athletes have become better and better optimized to the task. If sports were "fair," then one would expect all times to have plateaued decades ago, once the basics had been worked out.
    1
  6873.  @nickmagrick7702  Well, the point is that you cannot use "fairness" as an argument against allowing trans athletes, since whatever unfairness they might bring to the table is no different than what unfairness Michael Phelps or Shaquille O'Neal bring.
    1
  6874.  @nickmagrick7702  But trans people are born with being trans. It is something they are born with. They don't choose that. I'm beginning to think that you are making bad faith arguments here.
    1
  6875.  @DuffyF56  How is that proof of anything other than Republicans playing games?
    1
  6876.  @DuffyF56  No, it's still just games. It's just giving baby his candy so he stops crying. If it were about "principle" then Cruz and Daines wouldn't have been fist bumping like two frat boys after a date rape.
    1
  6877.  @DuffyF56  Of course it will, because they already played their stupid games and won their stupid prizes. The Democrats got one over on them, so they retaliated by getting one over on the veterans.
    1
  6878.  @missourivalleyarms4264  The Democrats weren't playing any games here. They voted for the bill, it was the Republicans that voted against it. All Democrats were doing was passing legislation that benefits America's veterans.
    1
  6879.  @missourivalleyarms4264  Democrats did not "sneak in" anything, that spending had been part of the bill for over a month already, Toomey had been publicly arguing against it for over a month, but other Republicans had not indicated that they would vote against the bill until the voting actually started. The spending in the bill is a good thing, because it prevents later congresses from leeching the funding out of the programs the bill is designed to support, as they often do with other bills. The gaslightling came entirely from Republicans trying to claim that they had a principled objection here.
    1
  6880.  @DuffyF56  The things that Republicans wanted removed had been a part of the bill for a month already, and they did not indicate that they were going to vote against it until the vote was taking place. It is not bad legislation, it only ensures that future congresses won't leech the funding out of the bill, rendering it useless, as they often do. It is unlikely that anything will be removed when they bring it up for a second vote, but it will likely still pass, because the Republicans played their games already and there would be no point to stringing it out further.
    1
  6881.  @missourivalleyarms4264  Everything you just said was nonsense. Why is it so hard to just accept that you got duped and move on, lesson learned? Why do you have to try to distract yourself from that fact instead? Show some maturity. Grow.
    1
  6882.  @missourivalleyarms4264  I don't bow to anyone, I'm no MAGA cultist. I just respect the president we elected for doing the job we hired him to do. Again, the rest of your rants is complete nonsense. I did fear November, because the party in power does tend to lose seats and gas prices were high, but then the Supreme Court kicked the Republican party in the nuts and handed Democrats the 2022 election cycle, so I'm not worried anymore. When a sheep bears its fangs, know it for the wolf that it is and never let it near the flock again.
    1
  6883.  @missourivalleyarms4264  Hey, the bill passed! With no changes! Looks like it WAS just Republicans playing games after all!
    1
  6884. Lol, Rand Paul, RAND PAUL, is talking about Fauci making this personal? Rand's done nothing but lie about Fauci for the past two years! What a buffoon.
    1
  6885. You do understand that the NY AG has no relationship to the White House, right?
    1
  6886. Yeah, they can't be a Marjory Taylor Greene, the Dems won't stand for that nonsense.
    1
  6887. He hasn't been derelict in any of his duties though. He's followed the laws as passed by congress. This is what that looks like. If you don't like the result, pass different laws.
    1
  6888.  @jillfoley6834  He's not in prison because he hasn't broken any laws, and unlike Putin's Russia, we do not jail people in this country just because we disagree with their politics.
    1
  6889.  @ahrdee3041  The Senate would be unable to convict since there is no case on which to convict him.
    1
  6890.  @dustinbarlow1623  Nope, none of that is illegal or impeachable. It's important to remember that immigrants are MUCH less likely to commit crimes than people born here, so punishing all migrants for the actions of an insignificantly small number of them would be inhumane. Also, drugs that cross the border do so at ports of entry and have nothing to do with immigration.
    1
  6891.  @dustinbarlow1623  @dustinbarlow1623 Nope, none of that is illegal or impeachable. It's important to remember that immigrants are MUCH less likely to commit crimes than people born here, so punishing all migrants for the actions of an insignificantly small number of them would be inhumane.
    1
  6892.  @dustinbarlow1623  Also, drugs that cross the border do so at ports of entry and have nothing to do with immigration.
    1
  6893.  @dustinbarlow1623  But in Texas, which isn't saying much. Have you seen Texas?
    1
  6894.  @dustinbarlow1623  You don't have any other posts. My points remain unsmacked.
    1
  6895.  @z33r2  And he is keeping the homeland secure, at least as well as any previous person to hold the role. He Is protecting the borders from illegal entry, anyone who enters illegally IS being caught and booked. That is his job.
    1
  6896.  @dustinbarlow1623  Maybe see if it's still there on a non-logged in window, I'm not seeing it. To address the point you raise here though, 1. prosecutions are DoJ, not DHS, so you'd have to take that up with a different secretary, 2. Child Trafficking cases fell under the Trump administration, not Biden.
    1
  6897.  @z33r2  But the important thing to keep in mind is that there are no laws that he is not obeying. He is obeying ALL the laws. He is doing his job. The reason the report says otherwise is because it was writing by people who don't understand the law, and don't care about the law, so "the law," to them means "we don't like the guy." That is not how the law works.
    1
  6898.  @z33r2  Exactly. Once you do look into the topic you'll understand why this is the result of decades of Republican attempts to keep the borders open and chaotic, so that they can control their voters through fear. Democrats have instead favored actually solving the immigration issues, by allowing in numbers of legal immigrants that keep up with demand, and having the resources to process immigrants at a reasonable rate. In any case, there's really not much that a Secretary at DHS can do than to follow the laws, as Mayorkas has done.
    1
  6899.  @z33r2  Right, that would be the issue, ignorance. That's what's driving a lot of this, people not knowing how the border works and offloading their brains to Fox News. The point is, the same rules are in play as there ever were, there are just a lot more people coming these days because conditions in their home countries have gotten so bad lately. All we can do is prepare for them as best we can, and Republicans fight us on that.
    1
  6900.  @z33r2  Right, the issue is that more people are coming, because conditions in their home countries have deteriorated. All we can do is deal with it as best we can.
    1
  6901.  @TjayK2  Crime is also more prevalent in red states. And red states take in more federal money than they put out, they are not "neglected," they are just irresponsible.
    1
  6902.  @Cattildo  You talk to lame people though, so who cares what they have to say. Find better people to talk to.
    1
  6903.  @Cattildo  It's strange that you bring up "minorities" as if that somehow improves your argument, rather than making you seem racist.
    1
  6904.  @Cattildo  Nothing wrong with you interacting with people you would refer to as "minorities." But there is definitely something wrong with you using them in an attempt to win an argument by pointing out that you consider them "minorities."
    1
  6905.  @Cattildo  And I'm saying that your homies being Brazilian does not lend them any extra weight. They can be wrong about things too. I never told you to get new friends, just to stop bragging about how "minority" they are like that's something people should care about. Again, YOU are the one making this racist. The saddest part is how you don't seem to realize this.
    1
  6906.  @monicasilvia688  No, he didn't.
    1
  6907. Nah, that's not necessary.
    1
  6908. What's with the headline? It implies that he SHOULD have debated that imbecile. There is nothing to be gained by debating idiots, all you do is lend them credibility by participating.
    1
  6909.  @l.w.paradis2108  Do you know what "eminent" means?
    1
  6910.  @l.w.paradis2108  So you don't know what "eminent" means then. I'll give you a hint, it has nothing to do with what you just said.
    1
  6911.  @l.w.paradis2108  So you can look up the word, but still not understand it? In no way is RFK Jr "eminent."
    1
  6912.  @l.w.paradis2108  Nobody is respected in toxic tort litigation. Whatever past accompl9ishments he may have had, he's long sense lost touch with reality. This happens to people sometimes. There are numerous once famous scientists and other important figures that at some point just went off the loony bin, and Kennedy's stances on vaccines are entirely without merit.
    1
  6913.  @l.w.paradis2108  But the point being, you used it incorrectly, to refer to someone who does not fit that definition by any reasonable standard. The word you would more correctly have used is "crackpot."
    1
  6914.  @l.w.paradis2108  Uh oh, you're stuck in a loop. Tell your operator to reboot.
    1
  6915.  @l.w.paradis2108  What would that have anything to do with the topic at hand?
    1
  6916.  Laurie Sarno  Trump on the Charlotteville protesters: ""you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides."" He's been very clear that he appreciates the support that white supremacists give him. He's also frequently added fuel to birtherism conspiracies against both Obama and Harris.
    1
  6917.  @AverageBrethren  Nobody ever claimed you were a white supremacist, only that Trump appreciates his white supremacist and they make up most of his base.
    1
  6918.  @rxz1  Really stuck it to me with that one.
    1
  6919.  @AverageBrethren  It's true though. Most of his base IS white supremacists. If they weren't white supremacists, they would have no reason to support him, because he's just awful in all other aspects.
    1
  6920. It's still WAY less common than straight people shootings, and also WAY less common than any sort of shooting in other first world countries. The issue is the guns, not gender identity.
    1
  6921. There are far more shootings by straight people though. The issue is the guns.
    1
  6922. @ "Global average temperatures will rise over the following years."
    1
  6923. I can understand and respect not wanting to do a lot of explaining and recording on the day this was filmed, but it might have been nice to do some post-production voiceover commentary of the timelapse. Just a suggestion.
    1
  6924. This is what they're talking about in the Faux News bubble instead of about Trump's indictment? Sad.
    1
  6925. That's an inaccurate headline. The Whtie House is not "on defense," they are only righteously outraged at this childish behavior. The people of Martha's Vineyard, however, is proving that they are better than Floridians by treating the migrants like human beings.
    1
  6926. I say charge him and require his lawyers to publicly make the case that he's too senile to know what's going on in the world.
    1
  6927.  DDd-gm8uz  The previous administration were the ones that moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.
    1
  6928. Democrats "we'd just like for everyone's votes to be counted." Republicans: "But then we'd lose! You're against democracy!"
    1
  6929.  @VishnuIITMadras96  Why? What's happening there?
    1
  6930. "Debunked? I don't know the meaning of the word!" -Don He literally doesn't.
    1
  6931.  @FredrickTesla  No, it remains "it never happened." Joe Biden had no involvement in Hunter Biden's business. Hunter Biden certainly wanted his clients to think that his father was involved, but there was no actual involvement, and nobody ever voted for Hunter so who cares what he did?
    1
  6932. Obama was the one that told Joe to remove that guy, it was in US interests to do so, since he was a Russian agent. Joe was just following orders, as a VP should.
    1
  6933.  @donaldduckthekiller6726 Why would I care what you think?
    1
  6934.  @donaldduckthekiller6726  This does not seem like the sort of thing a rational person would do, but judging by your name, I can see you're far from rational.
    1
  6935. Nah, this is just a Wednesday. We've given up on stopping school shootings.
    1
  6936. That's overly optimistic. Most people alive today will be unemployed before the traditional retirement age, because there will not be jobs hiring human employees.
    1
  6937. I mean. . . you do understand that people live outside of NYC, right? I mean, you can build a walk-in business with a ton of walk-in customers in dozens, if not hundreds of cities. It's not like "Manhattan or mail-order."
    1
  6938.  @Gnrnrvids  There are not "significantly higher excess deaths" though. There were 756 out of 10,000 total deaths. That's a blip. "Excess deaths" is not some perfectly accurate number, we don't know that exactly so many people will die in a given month so any single death on top of that is some dramatic mystery. "Excess deaths" is just an estimate based on general trends. The actual outcome will always be off by a few hundred or more, so 400 or so excess deaths not explained by covid is not anything to get concerned over. I should also point out that he carried on this misunderstanding to "the other charts," showing big scary gray bars of "excess deaths not covered by covid," when actually those gray bars were ALL deaths, excess or otherwise, so this seems to be a mistake he makes often. Maybe check his previous videos to see if it's something he often does. And any government agency that makes an error makes very clear that they correct the record. They just get accused of "making errors" far more often than they actually do. The data itself is already out there, if he just wants to make the data available, that's a good thing. But the entire point of his video was to provide MISLEADING commentary on that data based on his MISUNDERSTANDING of that data. Most of the people who watched his video left it knowing LESS true things than they knew going into it. That is a bad thing.
    1
  6939.  @MsGarnet77  Reports that excess mortality are significantly higher than would be explained by the pandemic are all coming from conspiracy nutters. The actual medical reports, like the one he cited and misrepresented, do NOT say that, because that is not actually happening.
    1
  6940.  @dizzywilliams3557  Yes, exactly. It is misrepresenting the data for him to claim that covid deaths were only 3.4% of all excess deaths, when the actual statistics he was showing made clear that the covid deaths were HALF of the excess deaths. They were 3.4% of ALL deaths, 3.4% of the 10,000 TOTAL deaths over that period. They were half of the 706 excess deaths.
    1
  6941.  @tommytwents8764  Depends on the number. If 30,000 excess people were dying per month like during the summer of 2020, then that would certainly be a cause for concern, especially if you didn't already know that around that many had died of a novel virus that wouldn't have been accounted for in the predictions. But if it's only a few hundred out of 10,000 deaths, no, that';s no cause for concern, because that's within the expected margin of error of the estimates. There's never going to come closer than that on a regular basis. It's a vague estimate based on long term trends, not a precise process.
    1
  6942.  @jfryer485  I don't know what math you're working with or what point you're trying to make here. I guess the only thing that we can agree on is that covid is a terrible virus that has killed a lot of people, and it's great that we have safe and effective vaccines to confront it, since all deaths have dropped considerably in areas that have been effectively vaccinated.
    1
  6943. @reverendjim Oh, that's nonsense. Whoever told you that was lying to you in an attempt to control your mind. They apparently succeeded. Learn to be a better judge of information.
    1
  6944.  @addiumuppicus5738  If he were an actual doctor, that would matter.
    1
  6945.  @AnniePA1960  Plenty of people do die along the way, but the least America can do is not make that risk higher.
    1
  6946.  @johnchristman750  No, that's not what I meant at all. "Disregarding the constitution" is a thing that Republicans do. All they know how to do with a constitution is wave their little copy of it around without ever reading it.
    1
  6947. But there are plenty of examples of the books being removed from the libraries, so it would be lying to argue that this is not something that is happening.
    1
  6948.  @sonnysmith3244  But none of the books in question were inappropriate for children, they just contained subject matter that as few as one person in the community did not like, such as the poem read at one of Obama's inaugurations. NOBODY is talking about books that are inappropriate for the student's age range here. And no, I'm afraid that you have been misled by social media. The book in question was only available in middle school libraries, and sex-ed curriculum have been a part of middle school education for at least the last thirty years, so there would be nothing that is not age-appropriate about that. If a parent does not want their children reading that material, then they should tell their child not to, but I hate to be the bearer of bad news, the child will find it regardless of whether it is in the school library or not.
    1
  6949.  @sonnysmith3244  I think you misunderstand the point of the book if you believe it is intended to teach them, while teenagers, how to hook up with adults. That would be silly. The purpose of that tiny portion of the book was to explain how adults hook up with each other. Also, if you believe that middle schoolers would NEED a book like that to figure out how to hook up with anyone online, well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but. . . The portion I was talking about as "sex ed" was the portion referring to the mechanics of sex acts, which is biology. I will note that "Sex ed" is not a purely biological course, at least it wasn't when I was taking it decades ago. It was also sociological, it was discussing people's feelings, why they might pursue sex, what you should do if you don't want to be pressured, that sort of thing. It's about preparing teens for a world where people will want and expect sex from them, where they might want and expect sex from others, and how to avoid sex that they do not want. It's overall a great idea, and has greatly decreased teen pregnancy and STDs, in the states that take it seriously, at least.
    1
  6950.  @ryancrozier7674  What?
    1
  6951.  @ryancrozier7674  Nope, the US is already producing more oil than we were four years ago, it doesn't help. So long as there is a global market for oil, that is where producers will sell it, so the only two options are to nationalize the oil industry or make them irrelevant. Also, this administration DID invest significant resources into financing energy tech, and that would presumably continue under the Harris administration, but not if she loses.
    1
  6952.  @ryancrozier7674  It's called "reserve cycling." He sells off a portion of the reserve when prices are high to keep them lower, and then when the prices drop, he buys it back. and of course it never drops to a level that would actually be concerning. At the end of the day, we have the same reserve, but it helps to stabilize prices when OPEC+ tries to mess with it. Again though, it would just be better if we didn't need oil to run things.
    1
  6953. He never said either though. Maybe you just have poor hearing.
    1
  6954. Jesus would cheat to keep Trump out of office, because his values are so anti-Christian that Chris could never accept it.
    1
  6955.  @peace137bro  Trump's phone call to Brad Raffensperger.
    1
  6956.  @bojangles713  A jury found that he was lying when he claimed he hadn't raped her. The jury in this case is likely to do the same.
    1
  6957.  @Rathkryn  no, the record is not that he did not do it. The record is that he was lying when he said that he did not do it. For Trump to win this case, he would have to prove to this new jury that he did not do it, and he's unlikely to succeed at that, given that he did it.
    1
  6958.  @Rathkryn  No, the jury found that he sexually assaulted her and defamed her for claiming otherwise. There was no settlement to that case, it went to a full verdict. They did not find him liable of rape, because they could not be certain whether he used a finger or his member, given their relative similarity, but this is not a declaration that he was innocent, because this was not a criminal case. "innocent until proven guilty" does not apply here, as this is not a criminal case either. This is a defamation case, and in the Us we have freedom of speech, which means that you can say anything you want about a person, and the burden of proof is on them to prove that it is definitely false. The only way that there would be a defacto judgement that the claim was false would be if there had been a criminal case and he'd been found innocent. This has not occurred.
    1
  6959.  @rcjabroniyup4959  Lol, that's what the maga folks are going to believe, isn't it? They just can't accept that their guy has such a low approval rating.
    1
  6960. What a human urine puddle. Someone get a mop.
    1
  6961. What do you mean? They are bring the swamp TO Washington.
    1
  6962. See, when people ask "why are gas prices so high?" This is why. Oil companies run up the prices on the potential that something might happen, and then never lower them at the same pace. It's not because "Biden is mean to the oil companies," it's because they are greedy.
    1
  6963. Just the ones elected by Republicans.
    1
  6964. I'm gonna call it right now, Trump's going to bend the knee and give Putin Crimea and the Donbass, and then Ukraine is going to refuse and keep fighting using European aid, which will step up.
    1
  6965. It's almost like. . . the way they were already doing it. . . was the right way to do it.There's no point to processing chocolate in Ghana if they do not have the infrastructure to do so efficiently, they should just push to get a fair wage for the farmers and leave it at that. If they want to build factories, build them around products that they can efficiently produce.
    1
  6966. @GREYMAN10 So your scientist invented stories that confirmed his biases, and told them to people who wanted those biases confirmed, even though they are contradicted by the actual data? Thank you for making clear the problem with "misinformation can be fought with more information. There is a sucker born every minute.
    1
  6967.  @AlgorithmicApostasy  I think you don't understand metaphor.
    1
  6968.  @AlgorithmicApostasy  It's not about actually removing anyone's tongues. Nobody is actually proposing we do that.
    1
  6969.  @rutessian  Ok, yes, gold does have practical purposes, but we were discussing it as a currency, and that's sort of the problem. When you use gold for currency, then you aren't doing practical things with it, it's just sitting around doing nothing. The point is, most people are not going to be printing circuits with it or anything, they just want something they can spend to buy groceries with, and in that regard, fiat currencies are better than gold backed ones.
    1
  6970.  @dimmadometv  Fiat currency is tied to economic factors, allowing it to more flexibly adapt to economic forces. Massive inflation only typically happens when a country mismanages those tools. It is preferable to be able to adjust the value of a currency than for it to be based on forces outiside of a nation's control. If you want to horde a commodity, then you can always do that, but it's not in a country's best interests to make that their national currency.
    1
  6971.  @DarknessProphet  Reports that claim the dollar amounts have increase "40-80%" are made by idiots who do not understand how economics works (or liars attempting to fool those who don't know how economics works). The actual amount of dollars did not increase that much. What happened was that in 2020 the Fed shifted how they were reporting money that already existed in the world, they had previously not been including money in certain types of banking accounts in the "big number" that people look to for "how many dollars exist," and they changed that, which made "big number go up," and the graph charting that big number got a huge spike on it, but that wasn't actually new money being created out of thin air, that was just money that had already existed in the economy being counted in a different way, similar to if you had a ton of coffee cans full of coins sitting in your house and you converted those all into dollars. It was always money that you owned, you just hadn't accounted for it.
    1
  6972.  @yanntsala414  Why should the value of a currency be based on natural resources?
    1
  6973.  @yanntsala414  But what if gold loses value? If a country has a very shaky economy, gold might be more stable, but if a country has a reasonably stable economy, that isn't really a concern.
    1
  6974.  @yanntsala414  Nah, modern fiscal policy works better than gold for that, it's more flexible. People act like there weren't economic disruptions under the gold standard. The Great Depression was on the gold standard. Being off the gold standard makes it easier to weather genuine economic hardships, not more difficult.
    1
  6975.  @yanntsala414  but in those circumstances the currency is pointless anyway. It's not really a concern that is relevant to a first world economy or its currency. If the dollar collapsed to the point that nobody would give you a Coke for it, then nobody would be giving you any gold for it either, gold standard or not. Ultimately, all any currency is backed by is faith that the issuing country is good for it. Gold is irrelevant.
    1
  6976.  @yanntsala414  Anyone CAN make a currency with the same value as the dollar and exchange by faith without nothing backing up that currency. It's called "Bitcoin." Anyone can do it. All they need is that the person buying the currency from them for dollars has faith that the investment will work out for them. Maybe they're right, maybe they're wrong. People who choose to sell things for US Dollars do so because they have faith that the transaction will work out to their benefit, that the US Dollar is worth what they are giving for it. Generally speaking, this will work out for them. All transactions are relative, and all transactions are based on faith. There are no absolutes. If you buy $1000 in gold today, and then tomorrow someone discovers a football stadium sized solid gold nugget, your gold will be worth less than $1000. You had faith in the value of gold, it did not work out for you. Nothing is certain.
    1
  6977. You are no Democrat.
    1
  6978.  @BFusey  He's right though, the US did not invade Cuba, they just blockaded them for a week or so.
    1
  6979.  @stealth2951  Except that NATO never signed any agreement to not expand, so. . . Just remember, ALL the deaths in this conflict are entire the fault of Russia. That's really all you need to keep in mind here.
    1
  6980. @ You claimed that NATO signed an agreement with Russia to not expand. No such thing exists.
    1
  6981. @ Nothing in the 1990 agreement claims that NATO will not expand, and even if it had, he wasn't authorized to speak on behalf of NATO.
    1
  6982. @ And European countries have been invaded by Russia over that period more than twice, what's your point? It's also worth noting that both of the invasions of Russia happened over 80 years ago, while Russia's invasions of their neighbors are much more recent.
    1
  6983.  @capoman1  So your argument is, if someone wants something from you, and you do not agree to give it to them, they are justified in assaulting you?
    1
  6984.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  Too bad. Russia declaring a "bright red line" does not give them the right to invade anyone. If I declared a "bright red line" that my neighbor isn't allowed to have lawn flamingos, that doesn't mean that if they put in lawn flamingos I'm allowed to annex their pool.
    1
  6985. @ At no point was Ukraine going to be getting nuclear weapons, but there are already more than enough nuclear weapons pointed at Russia to obliterate it dozens of times over. Why do you being up nuclear weapons when it has nothing to do with the topic at hand?
    1
  6986.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  You lose the substance of the argument, so you take it personal? Like Putin?
    1
  6987.  @oxanasmith6512  Ukraine is not responsible for Putin's insecurities either. Ukraine is its own country, Putin has to solve his own problems within his own borders.
    1
  6988.  @oxanasmith6512  Yes, Russian forces and separatists in the region were attacking Ukrainian citizens, but they at least had some plausible deniability at the time. In any case, Ukraine did not attack Russia directly until after the full invasion.
    1
  6989. @ They were separatists actively attacking Ukrainians before Ukraine attacked them. It was a valid police action. Russia had no lace to get involved. They were treating their minorities with respect, that had nothing to do with the war. The war happened because Putin wanted ownership of Ukraine. Nothing more than that.
    1
  6990. @ I'm aware of what Russia would tell you about those things, but I'm also aware that nobody should listen to Russia about anything. The fact remains that even if everything you claimed was true, that would still be no justification for Russia to invade. If they felt they had legitimate claims, they could take it to the UN or to the international criminal courts. Make a case of it. They instead chose to murder Ukrainian civilians. This was not the right choice. One is CLEARLY better here, the one that did not invade the other.
    1
  6991. @ I'm aware of what Russia would tell you about those things, but I'm also aware that nobody should listen to Russia about anything. The fact remains that even if everything you claimed was true, that would still be no justification for Russia to invade. If they felt they had legitimate claims, they could take it to the UN or to the international criminal courts. Make a case of it. They instead chose to invade their neighbor. This was not the right choice. One is CLEARLY better here, the one that did not invade the other.
    1
  6992.  @oxanasmith6512  Or, perhaps the actual situation was not as bad as Russia presented it to be. You do understand that their goal was to take Ukraine for themselves, why do you assume that they are reliable narrators? The one thing that Russia did not try was to walk away. There are plenty of people in the US of Mexican descent. In many cases, these people have been mistreated. Do you believe Mexico would be justified in using that as a pretext to annex Texas? I am not taking an absolutist view that one side is always bad and the other always good. I am taking the rationalist viewpoint that the evidence indicates that Russia has always taken the worst stance in global politics. They have the potential to be good, they just choose not to be. It is not absolutist to recognize reality for what it is, it would be idealistic, at best, to imagine a world in which they are better than they actually are, and present that as though it were fact. In the reality of the situation, this is entirely Russia's fault, and they cannot achieve any gains as a result of it.
    1
  6993.  @oxanasmith6512  So your argument is that it's ok for Russia to invade because they thought they had more military power than Ukraine. Nice. Again, Russia is not entitled to get what they want just because they once had a formidable military. It would not have been better for Ukraine to just give up their future in exchange for temporary peace.
    1
  6994.  @oxanasmith6512  So you concede that Russia had no justification for war, but instead switch to a pragmatic, "Ukraine should have just done whatever Russia wanted to avoid the war." "If only the UK had surrendered to Germany, the entire war could have been avoided. They should have been more pragmatic."
    1
  6995. @ Russia wants to retake the Soviet Union. If the other countries do not agree, they have no right to do so. It would be impossible for any Ukrainian President to achieve peace with Russia without giving up the country's future. Russia would not settle for a free Ukraine. Russia attempted to take all of Ukraine, they only failed. They are incapable of advancing faster than they have, because they are weak. Russia invaded Finland, and got kicked back out. Finland joined NATO to prevent them trying again.
    1
  6996.  @oxanasmith6512  Finland certainly has no trust that Russia will leave them alone. Why is that? If Finland can join NATO, why not Ukraine? Ukraine is no closer to Russia than Finland is, and Ukraine, like Finland, has never attacked Russia, so why are they not allowed to be part of NATO?
    1
  6997.  @oxanasmith6512  Ukraine did not do the things you claimed. Perhaps some people within Ukraine did some of those things, but those people were accountable to Ukrainian law, not to foreign assault. Ukraine is certainly a better country for its Russian people than Russia is to its own people, is that an excuse for people to invade Russia and depose Putin? As for Russia's security concerns, they are not valid. There is zero chance of any outside country attacking Russia except in self defense or the defense of another nation. So long as Russia does not wage war, there is no chance of war being waged against them. Ukraine being allied with the west in no way changes the military calculus, Russia would be hopeless in any such conflict whether Ukraine is allied with the west or with them. This never had anything to do with security, it only had to do with power and control. They wanted to control and benefit from Ukraine's peacetime state. That choice is not theirs to make, it is Ukraine's. If they want to be allied to Ukraine, they should have done so using gifts, not threats. This is entirely black and white, you just choose the wrong side of it.
    1
  6998.  @oxanasmith6512  Sure. I'm just unsure how anyone could possibly be confident in any other position. This is a very clear-cut case of an unjustified invasion of a foreign country, for which the only just remedy would be a total withdrawal from its borders, and reparation for the damage caused. How can anyone not get fully behind that?
    1
  6999. Unfortunately, he's term limited.
    1
  7000. Wait. Are the Tesla models intentionally S3XY?
    1
  7001.  @leob4403  If humans weren't "playing god," we never would have left the trees.
    1
  7002.  @leob4403  A building can't collapse if you never build it, but also it is within our power to repair buildings so that they don't collapse, and so that is what we should be focused on. there's no reason to live in the mud when we have the capacity to do otherwise.
    1
  7003. Prevent there from being firearms in the house.
    1
  7004.  @pamelakingrry1177  That's not really relevant to the conversation though. Thousands of people lose their lives each year to guns. The same laws that allow your family to be around guns are what allowed those deaths to happen.
    1
  7005.  @bone-snypa  Right, due to ignorant people that prevent gun laws. In first world countries with stronger gun laws, they have a fraction as many homicides as the US.
    1
  7006.  @ch4osaeternum74  Europe is not a country, but it would be correct to say that the countries of Europe have lower murder rates than the US, because they have better gun laws.
    1
  7007.  @ch4osaeternum74  Generally when comparisons get made, they are on a per-capita basis. Population size differences would be irrelevant. Also, Europe as a whole has a population twice that of the US. I get where you are going, it's just that your arguments do not work, because no matter how you try to massage the statistics, the US has higher homicide rates than other first world nations, even after controlling for ever variable that is not "access to guns."
    1
  7008.  @ch4osaeternum74  I'm not treating the continent as one entity, but I am saying that you can compare the two, and your claims that one cannot are nonsense. I will further claim that you can compare the US to individual similar countries within Europe, and the US still falls behind in terms of public safety. If guns made America safer then the US would have one of the lowest murder rates in the world, rather than by far the highest among first world nations. "Demographic diversity" has nothing to do with it, that's just a dog whistle. It's the guns.
    1
  7009. It's because Floridians are particularly dumb. Other states had higher populations of smart people.
    1
  7010. But Democrats are in favor of gun control. It's the OTHER party that opposes it.
    1
  7011.  @beacarr9652  That adds up to zero votes, since none of them can vote. Why don't they teach civics in elementary school anymore so you guys would understand this?
    1
  7012.  @beacarr9652  That adds up to zero votes, since none of them are able to vote. Why don't they teach civics in elementary school anymore so you guys would understand this?
    1
  7013.  @beacarr9652  That would add up to zero votes, if they are here illegally. Why don't they teach civics in elementary school anymore so you guys would understand this?
    1
  7014.  @Tailionis  No, I mean Russia. There are a few others, but none as "opposite day" as Russia.
    1
  7015. ​ @drzaius1121  Nope, none of those Republicans would be members of the modern Republican party. They would all be Democrats, because back then, they were the liberals, fighting against the conservatives.
    1
  7016.  @drzaius1121  In those days, the Republicans were fighting against the conservatives.
    1
  7017.  @drzaius1121  The Republicans of that time would be Democrats today.
    1
  7018.  @patrickmccarthy7877  He was found liable of defamation and sexual assault, that stuck. He'll probably lose the other one too. Most of the other stuff he's been involved with, he just settled rather than losing at trial, which is hardly a "win." The criminal charges haven't even started yet.
    1
  7019.  @sofamiller7133  The cases he lost did not have prison time as an option. The currently running cases will.
    1
  7020.  @sofamiller7133  Sexual assault and defamation. That is the only crime he's been charged with so far where the case has gone all the way to a verdict, so the only case that has completed, he lost.
    1
  7021.  @user-tz6to3hc3k  Not all charges involve jail time as a punishment. the sexual assault case he lost only had a monetary penalty.
    1
  7022.  @patrickmccarthy7877  You don't have to believe me. His rap sheet will speak for itself in a few years.
    1
  7023.  @sofamiller7133  Keep coping. The fact remains that every cases that has gone to verdict, he's lost. There are more cases coming.
    1
  7024.  @user-tz6to3hc3k  Because he committed crimes, and that's how justice works. If people are allowed to get away with crimes just because they have a cult behind them, then the entire criminal justice system breaks down.
    1
  7025. Cruise people are too dumb to fail.
    1
  7026.  @Whitefangbioweapon  We can, we have, and we will.
    1
  7027.  @dfernandez3482  81m Americans know that "America First" involves more than just what happens within our own borders.
    1
  7028. Pobody's nerfect.
    1
  7029. We catch people who come across, the border is protected. The issue here is that Abbot wants to prevent people from coming across, even if that means killing them in the process.
    1
  7030.  @lowboyyy  Unfortunately, this committee only causes weaponization of government. They haven't spent ANY time looking into how the government was weaponize by the previous administration.
    1
  7031.  @lowboyyy  If Hunter weren't the President's son, he never would have even been charged.
    1
  7032.  @lowboyyy  Under these circumstances, if he were not the son of a president, nobody would be taking any of this seriously. If America was a country that took gun regulation seriously, we wouldn't have six times the murder rate of any other first world nation.
    1
  7033.  @notboblowski0624  Will do, someone has to offset the MAGA simps.
    1
  7034. And yet Florida is a viral cesspit because of DeSantis's complete mismanagement. He's put "doing business" over lives.
    1
  7035. I bet that the insurance company solution to this is that they want the right to offer insurance that is cheaper to consumers, but that also does not pay out due to the most common natural disasters, so they end up being mostly worthless (but the company still gets their monthly dues).
    1
  7036. ​ @marcospatrick7431  I was talking politics. We voted Trump out of office, and will continue to do so. Always.
    1
  7037.  @marcospatrick7431  Why are you so obsessed with genders? Be whatever gender you want. Nobody cares.
    1
  7038.  @specialagentorange4329  That's because your wallet is dumb, and doesn't understand macroeconomics. It probably thinks that the US president just decides how much money will go into it, rather than having to navigate the actual conditions of the world during his term in office, and that you could just compare, say, 1934 to 1929 and declare one president better than the other based on how everyone's doing at each time. You, being a smart human, know much better than that, right?
    1
  7039. Yeah, way more than you'd think. They identify with the "white" side against other minorities.
    1
  7040. What war?
    1
  7041.  @JaneCurtright-zs1lr  Joe isn't at war right now. There were more wars during the Trump administration than there are today.
    1
  7042.  @carlosgaspar8447  True. Not sure what point you were making there, but yeah, sunscreen has nothing to do with heat.
    1
  7043.  @mrman1536  No, that's not how the atmosphere works. Nor how coke works.
    1
  7044.  @samuellowekey9271  Not really. The prediction is that storm surges will be significantly more damaging, rainfall from the storms will increase by 15%, cat 4 and 5 hurricanes will increase by 10%. There may be fewer total storms (this is uncertain yet), but the ones we do have are expected to be worse.
    1
  7045.  @cameronhoward99  Infrared is the part of the spectrum emitted by hot objects. It carries heat well, which is why it is intentionally used in cooking and other modern heating processes, and it makes up more than half of the sun's output, and even more of that output that makes it to Earth's surface. I was perhaps being a bit flippant with my answer, but it was entirely accurate.
    1
  7046.  @mrman1536  About what?
    1
  7047.  @mrman1536  I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific, this is a long thread and there have been a lot of posts made to which you could be referring. Ask a specific question, receive an equally specific answer.
    1
  7048.  @mrman1536  That is not a specific question, so I take it you don't know what you're talking about either.
    1
  7049.  @cameronhoward99  Ok, I agree on that, what I believe I was discussing was someone claiming that CO2 could not be a big deal because it mainly absorbs infrared light, and less so of other wavelengths. My reply was that infrared made up much of the relevant heat energy in this system, so that alone can be more than enough to make it a very serious greenhouse gas. Was there something about that with which you disagree?
    1
  7050.  @cameronhoward99  But "precision" isn't particularly relevant. The point is that it is already bad and getting worse, and NO reliable model indicates otherwise. So whether it gets worse faster or slower really makes little difference, we still need to do something about it. And no, there is no "economic suicide" involved, that is an invention of the fossil fuel industry. The plans proposed by politicians are remarkably conservative. The only thing more conservative is "do nothing," which I suppose is your preference? And I'm sorry if you feel that dealing with the consequences of climate change would be cheaper, because math says it would be much more expensive, and I'll trust math over your gut. Basically, your gut is batting a zero on all of your points, I'm afraid.
    1
  7051.  @cameronhoward99 Solving one individual problem might be cheaper than solving climate change. But solving one individual problem does not solve ALL the problems. Solving ALL the problems is much more expensive than solving the cause of them. Anyone who thinks they have a plan to "ride out climate change" in a more efficient way than reducing it is just forgetting a bunch of factors. As for the costs of converting over, your estimate is much higher than it actually would be, and leaves out that a lot of those changes will be coming whether anyone deliberately plans for it or not, like most people WILL be driving EVs in 15-20 years, without needing any particular push to do so, and the grid will adapt to that. You also MASSIVELY underestimate the cost of sea walls. For $1T you could probably build a sea wall for one relatively small coastal region, but it would come nowhere close to covering the US east coast. I am beginning to think that you just have some "control" obsession that is warping your view of things. Climate scientists are not out to get you, they are out to solve a serious problem.
    1
  7052.  @sparkofgenius3372  I don't think that they do. I think maybe you only speak for yourself here.
    1
  7053.  @agsdjklshadsabn  Better than the alternative, at least.
    1
  7054.  @agsdjklshadsabn  The world had just as many problems back then, and would have just as many problems now, plus new problems related to having Trump in charge. You just don't appreciate how many problems Biden has solved for you.
    1
  7055.  @acorn8170  The alternative was a joke to these guys and they rolled all over him. They just weren't threatened by him because they knew he was always in their pocket.
    1
  7056.  @agsdjklshadsabn  I think you don't understand that time moves forward in a straight line, and that events take place regardless of who the President is at the time. No year will be identical to any other year.
    1
  7057.  @agsdjklshadsabn  Ok, explain to me how the President would be directly responsible for any particular thing that is "going wrong" right now. The way I see it, all the bad stuff was coming regardless of who the President was, and if anything, he's only improved conditions. Also, the invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with the US, that was entirely on Russia.
    1
  7058.  @flammableelmo4966  They can be wealthy AND happen to be right in this case. It's not "shilling" to point out when someone is legitimately in the right.
    1
  7059.  @flammableelmo4966  No, that's a dumb argument. I am disagreeing with the 1%ers the back DeSantis.
    1
  7060.  @Dustin-yc4lx  I don't think he should be "hung," just put in jail for a while. I don't think anything he did rose to the level of a capital offense, it was just all really terrible and justice demands some level of accountability.
    1
  7061. I think she was aware of that.
    1
  7062.  @cappehnkrunch  It's not the app, it's word filters. It is annoying though.
    1
  7063.  @TheHunter128  That's not remotely true. Most successful protests are lawful.
    1
  7064.  @Jaderian87  But the point is that we had boots on the ground and planes in the air. You're choosing to play word games here. But fine, let's do it your way, "the US is not currently 'in police action' with any other countries" either.
    1
  7065.  @TheHunter128  "No such thing as non-violent protest?" What nonsense are you talking?
    1
  7066.  @Jaderian87  No, the war in Iraq concluded. We have troops there in the same way we have troops in Germany and Japan to this day. Having active duty troops deployed around the world is not a bad thing, they put out small fires so that they never become bigger ones.
    1
  7067.  @ashwinnaidoo796  Incredibly misinformed if you think the US is.
    1
  7068.  @longsleevethong1457  Less so than white nationalists though, right? They are the milqueiest.
    1
  7069.  @bamafan3435  Is "nonstoic" the term sociopaths use to refer to normal humans?
    1
  7070. Hey, can someone answer, how come when anything happens, certain people bring up George Soros, as if he were involved somehow? Why is he such a random boogeyman to nutjobs? He's like their Batman.
    1
  7071. He's laughing all the way to jail!
    1
  7072.  @IDriveHackneys  Only active Presidents can pardon anyone. This is like his "declassifying stuff with his mind" situation.
    1
  7073.  @yvonnewalesuk8035  That's not a "conflict of interest" though. Their interests were aligned. An undeclared relationship would be something different, it might be some level of professional misconduct, but had nothing to do with the case itself. It would basically be like if a lawyer got arrested for drunk driving. Yeah, bad on them as a person, but irrelevant to the cases they were handling.
    1
  7074.  @yvonnewalesuk8035  Yes, a conflict of interest IS exactly that. And this situation included no conflicts of interest, since the two parties interests were never in conflict. What interest would one have that was in conflict with the other? They are both working together to prosecute the same defendants. Again, a "conflict of interests," only occurs when they have different sides in the case. " A prosecuting attorney arrested for drunk driving leading a case against someone else accused of wrong-doing is okay with you, but that's a dodgy line to tread in legal terms." Not really. That's not how the law works, "This lawyer is morally imperfect, therefore he has no right to charge me for my crimes" is nothing like how the law works. Lawyers are expected to hold to standards of ethics,. yes, but that is separate from their specific duties toward a particular case. They do not have to be morally superior to the people they are charging, that would just be a nice bonus. Besides which, the people she's prosecuting are guilty of MUCH worse. I mean, her primary defendant cheated on every wife he's ever had, including with his future wives.
    1
  7075.  @yvonnewalesuk8035  I meant that he cheated on wife 1 with wife 2 (his future wife), then on wife 2 with wife 3 (his future wife), and then with wife 3 with various other women. It's currently unclear whether there will be a wife 4, but I was not factoring that in. My point was, glass houses. . . Also, nothing about what I say has to do with the qualifications of a prosecutor, she did not make that argument, I did, so the idea that you would claim that as a reason she should not be allowed to do her job tells me that either you are being dishonest about being a magistrate, or were terrible at your job.
    1
  7076.  @yvonnewalesuk8035  I said that you were either dishonest or were terrible at your job, and it's subsequently either borderline slanderous to claim that your colleagues respected you, or an indictment of their own judgement.
    1
  7077. What's the nature of the Saturnine orbits around the moons? Too unstable to bother with, or do they actually sort of work? Why I ask, is, if we were at the point where we were just throwing colonies all over the solar system, could you build a colony station that is in a vertical orbit around the moon, so that it would then pass above and below the ecliptic as it orbited. You could presumably also put the station into a vertical orbit around Saturn itself, one designed to be far enough out that it wouldn't bump into anything along the way.
    1
  7078. What did they do to reduce the water supply? Why was it not just that there was not enough pressure in the system to handle the demand?
    1
  7079. Maybe, but this has nothing to do with fixing that.
    1
  7080. It was the Christian thing to do.
    1
  7081. @RusaForever Then why are Ukraine kicking Russia's ass at every turn? Your post seems completely out of touch with reality. Russia is going down the drain as we speak.
    1
  7082. Exploiting human misery is the only thing the Republican party stands for anymore.
    1
  7083. Ok. . . yes, maybe, but also he had a gun, and that was the problem here.
    1
  7084.  @pathfinderlight  What evidence is there of Joe committing any crimes?
    1
  7085.  @donnastokes-manning6175  Yup, the bought and paid for Trump Supreme Court.
    1
  7086. How DARE he ask those who can afford to pay? Also, why does CNBC hire people who don't understand what "marginal tax rate" means? What sort of idiot would suggest "cap your salary at $400K?
    1
  7087. About time. The Republicans have been clowns for decades. Don't treat them as serious participants if they are unwilling to behave seriously.
    1
  7088. Some of them do. Most are just running to be his running mate when he loses in 2024.
    1
  7089.  @DarthestWiffiest  In what sentence did he misspell "combat veteran?" I don't see any words in his posts that look remotely similar to "combat veteran," unless you're implying that the military is a cult. I would strongly disagree with that assertion.
    1
  7090.  @DarthestWiffiest  Oh, I'm not a MAGA supporter. Thanks for your concern though.
    1
  7091.  @DarthestWiffiest  You did imply that I was a crayon-eating MAGA supporter, I was only making clear that this was not the case. Did you have anything of political substance to add, or just kindergarten name calling?
    1
  7092. Only the doctors who lied about it. And they deserved it.
    1
  7093.  @ubatool  Nope, being straight, white, male, or loving America has nothing to do with you being bothered. You being an idiot is why you're bothered by Trump facing consequences for his crimes.
    1
  7094. I would hope that if they try to roll back the Trump tax cuts in their first term, then they would at least make it conditional. Pass the law such that "the tax cuts will get rolled back once the economy is in a good place," in very basic terms. That way they can eat their cake and have it too, they get the law locked into place such that it would be difficult to repeal it, but also don't cause immediate harm by removing stimulus during a downturn.
    1
  7095. And they have been. The people are Martha's vineyard have proven that they are just better people than those of Florida.
    1
  7096.  @ziejm  Were you not paying attention? They were not "screaming for help," they had the situation covered, but clearly they were not prepared for all these folks to be coming out of nowhere, so it will take time to set up the systems to properly manage them. This is not how you treat human beings. You prepare for their arrival FIRST, and THEN you send them. If DeSantis had any idea what he was doing and had provided a week or two's warning, this would have been a non-issue. He's just really bad at governing.
    1
  7097. So apparently "Citizens councils" are idiots. Who could have guessed?
    1
  7098. Louis Rossman is a joke though. He's just dramadramadrama on any topic.
    1
  7099.  @groverfan1389  It was Bush's fault that the national debt doubled under Obama, due to the costs of bailing us out of the recession his administration caused, and paying off the wars that his administration started. Obama actually reduced the budget deficit considerably during his administration, but the US government is a large ship to turn.
    1
  7100.  @groverfan1389  To be fair, Republican predecessors have a track record of leaving huge messes to clean up. I don't blame Bush for anything that he was not directly responsible for, nor do I blame Trump for anything he was not directly responsible for, but it would be silly to pretend that each president starts with a clean slate and is 100% responsible for everything that happens once they take office. All they can do is react to the hand they were dealt.
    1
  7101. Well, people like Pence and Biden volunteered to allow them to do this. Short of that, the 4th amendment would require the FBI to get warrants, and "well, they might have documents" is not enough to get a warrant, so it isn't likely going to happen across the board.
    1
  7102. But now they've bought the White House, so they won't have to worry about that stuff.
    1
  7103. Maybe that's the message, maybe the Evangelical church is a failure, and the religions practiced more in other countries do a better job at deflecting bullets.
    1
  7104.  @ladybug591  Actually, the national debt is mostly on the back of Republicans. They keep cutting taxes on billionaires without cutting spending accordingly. This has been true of basically every Republican administration since Reagan. The deficit has been reduced under every Democratic president. The only way to fix this mess is for the people to vote for less Republicans. Not that the national debt is actually a problem, mind you. It would be 2-3 times what it is now without actually harming anything.
    1
  7105. "But oh noes, the Democrats are coming for you hamburgers! The Faux News aren't lying to you about that at all!!!"
    1
  7106.  @ItsCrap97  No DoJ prosecutors were working on that case, it was a state case.
    1
  7107. Trump was the one that released the Taliban leaders from prison and told them they could have the country back in 2021. Why is he blaming Biden all of a sudden?
    1
  7108.  @raymondadkins6503  Businessmen would only benefit the interests of business, which are in direct conflict with the interests of humans.
    1
  7109. How could you do a whole video on the cost of games, and not mentioned how the cost of the physical media itself dropped drastically in the 90s? Cartriges were very expensive, and continued to get more and more expensive as developers plugged new features into them. Discs, by comparison, cost almost nothing. That's why the costs dropped significantly, the starting price of the media dropped a lot (and also shipping costs a little).
    1
  7110. They already crossed the finish line. There's nowhere to go from here, because there was no crime to impeach over.
    1
  7111.  @GeneElder.R027  Beating Dear Leader senseless at the ballot box.
    1
  7112. How do you "handle homelessness?" I can't think of anywhere on Earth without homelessness.
    1
  7113. ​ @TerryLay-sn9gg  Trump was president for four years, when did he solve homelessness?
    1
  7114.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  That does nothing to solve homelessness.
    1
  7115.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  Nope. People would still be homeless in equal or greater numbers. Or dead, I guess.
    1
  7116.  @SC-pe9ir  And he's doing things that have improved the situation, and not made it worse. Homelessness is generally a local leadership issue though, and most local governments' solutions to it are "well they should live in someone else's town." "Designated camping areas" sound good on paper, but where? Any place close to the active parts of town would be disruptive to the use of that town by others, and any area on the fringes of town would be impractical for the homeless to use, and they would tend to ignore it. These are complex issues that are too often just used for lazy soundbites.
    1
  7117.  @SC-pe9ir  But again, most of the land available for those purposes is either of other value to the city, like public parks, or it is far enough away from the city that homeless people would not use it. Do you think that public parks should be given over to homeless camps? Or should federal lands miles past the suburbs be given over to the homeless, understanding that few if any would actually go there? Everyone has lived somewhere, and no matter where someone lives, they have witnessed the homeless problem not being solved, because there is nowhere on Earth where it has been solved. A lot of things are being tried, some well-meaning, others indifferent, others cruel, but Newsome's have not been worse than most, and certainly not so bad as to undermine his governance in general.
    1
  7118.  @SC-pe9ir  Ok, so what's one location in San Fransisco that you believe should be turned over to homeless encampments?
    1
  7119.  @Raytheprodigy21  You haven't been keeping up, there was a recent tragic story in which a relief convoy was attacked and there were a lot of civilian casualties caught in the crossfire.
    1
  7120. I don't think Trump was ever getting money from him, his money comes from Putin.
    1
  7121.  @jamiehill3621  They keep saying that "big guy" thing even though it's already been thoroughly debunked. I think because they genuinely don't care what is real or not anymore.
    1
  7122. They wish.
    1
  7123.  @timpaull9340  300.
    1
  7124. "The city" never builds anything, property developers do, and they choose to build luxury condos because those sell for more money than they can make off of affordable housing. The only way to get affordable housing into the city would be for the city to cut special tax deals to developers to make housing that is available at low costs specifically to low income people.
    1
  7125. Fort Derrick says "new phone, who dis?" Apparently there is no Fort Derrick.
    1
  7126. So Clearance Thomas does not understand how a bump stock works.
    1
  7127.  @Bob5mith  If he understood how a bump stock worked then he would understand that it can fire multiple rounds with a single depression of the trigger. That is its entire function.
    1
  7128.  @Bob5mith  I'm not Clearance Thomas, but yes, he does.
    1
  7129. Huh. As someone who's been playing since launch, I've never spent any of the Fragile Resin they've given out, much less purchased any. I've never felt a need to. The resin-gated content is not the fun part of the game. I think this is just a shallow misunderstanding of what the game is. Yes, once you've completed all the available content, you won't have more than a half-hour or so per day of play time, but that's fine, it's not intended to be an "all day, every day" sort of game. Use that time on other things.
    1
  7130. @It is I Dio! Well, some people like to play a single game 8+ hours a day, every day. Genshin will not be the game for those people. I do not like "grind," I do not like repetition, I like unique content, stuff that you do ONCE and then that's it. Genshin provides more of that content than most other games out there, more than any game, really, so because it does that, I am satisfied. I play it for 6+ hours a day for a few days when new content drops, and I love that. And then once I've cleared all that new content and I'm back to "the normal stuff," I only spend an hour or so per day clearing out commissions and daily resin and that sort of thing, and then I log out and do something else with the rest of my day, and I love that too, because I wouldn't WANT to spend any more time than that doing repetitive content. YMMV.
    1
  7131. @It is I Dio! It sounds like you don't enjoy the game, which is fine. Millions of other people do enjoy it though. I've played a lot of other RPGs, and mostly what they have for "endgame content" is either PvP, or "raid" type content, neither of which interests me. I would rather the game not waste my time with repetitive dungeon grinding, so Genshin works for me better than, say, FF14. YMMV.
    1
  7132.  @lactris6567  How is that a problem? Sounds more like a solution, really.
    1
  7133.  @lactris6567  Heard of it, but why?
    1
  7134. The way carbon offsets should work is that if you produce carbon, you should need to offset double the amount of carbon you produce. And the end user should be responsible for whether the scheme works out or not. If you claim to have offset 1000 tons of CO2, and then it turns out that scheme did not work, then you should be on the hook for any benefits you may have made by claiming to have offset that carbon, unless you can reinvest into some other project.
    1
  7135. The border is already secure though, everyone who crosses it is caught and processed.
    1
  7136. So basically, they are following "The Trump Doctrine?"
    1
  7137.  @romanpolanski4928  Yes, but it's impossible for everyone to try charging that quickly, so that's a moot point. By the time that it is possible for everyone to charge that quickly, the grid will have grown to handle that level of demand, as the grid always does.
    1
  7138. The government is protecting all of us from a few backwards idiots that want to overthrow the government that WE elected. The government has nothing to fear from everyone else, these troops have nothing to do with the normal American who will be at home on inauguration day.
    1
  7139. Why don't they just drop the emergency oxygen masks at the beginning of the flight? If everyone has a self-contained air flow, they shouldn't be spreading the virus to anyone.
    1
  7140.  @felcynchannel840  But nick said he was convicted in 2021 of attacking a woman. That is, as he put it, "a flat out lie." Doesn't he deserve to find out who told it to him, and what they stood to gain by misleading him like that?
    1
  7141.  @Bitchslapper316  Nick didn't claim he assaulted her, he claimed he was CONVICTED of assaulting her, which is a very different thing. Aren't you curious who lied to him about something like that? Merely a claim that he might have assaulted someone is nothing like an actual conviction.
    1
  7142.  @EranRicos  I did correct him with the right info. Neely was in fact NOT convicted in 2021 of assaulting anyone, or of any other crime. That is the correction. But it is important to figure out who has been misinforming him, and why they were doing that. Aren't you curious who stands to gain by convincing innocent people that Neely was convicted of a violent assault?
    1
  7143.  @Bitchslapper316  Intent matters, but only in the distinction between "murder" and "manslaughter." Killing a person is still illegal, even if it wasn't your intent at the time.
    1
  7144.  @roygbiv9038  Nobody has the right to "Defend themselves" from threats. You only have the right to defend yourself if someone poses a credible threat, and takes action to harm someone.There is no indication that Neely posed a credible threat to anyone, or took any action to harm anyone. "I was scared" is never a justification for lethal force. People are too easily scared for that.
    1
  7145.  @Bitchslapper316  I can't find any source for the claim that he was jailed for assault, other than the New York Post, which is a tabloid and not a reliable primary source. The closest other course I can find is a local news channel that claimed he was in an "alternative-to-incarceration" program and had no jail time. In any case, I think that we can agree that a homeless person pleading guilty to something in return for a reduced penalty is in no way evidence that he actually did the crime. If only guilty people went to jail then we'd lose a large chunk of our prison population.
    1
  7146.  @Bitchslapper316  If he was so dangerous, then why would the DA even offer him a non-jail penalty on a "clear cut" assault charge? It sounds like a lot of his "scary history" was a bunch of nonsense. When people live on the street and can't afford anything but a public defender, they get wrapped up in a lot of legal trouble, that doesn't mean that they deserved it. And like you said, even if he was entirely the person people claim him to be, it would not justify putting him in a choke hold.
    1
  7147.  @jeffreystarcher7007  I do not trust Trump's doctors. He has a habit of picking doctors that will say what he wants them to say, and signing them up to NDAs. Having an MD doesn't mean they are infallible, he put a radiologist in charge of his infectious disease response, instead of, you know, an infectious disease expert or something.
    1
  7148.  @seanstinchfield-mp2xm  There have been mail-in ballots in every election since the Civil War.
    1
  7149.  @toma6838  All the claimed "extra votes WERE accounted for. There were no actual extra votes, just wishful thinking by a losing party.
    1
  7150. They spend it on things that benefit Americans more than the taxes they pay in though.
    1
  7151. @Mellow4202 I totally agree with you that loopholes should be closed that allow corporations and the wealthy to dodge their tax responsibilities. There's a simple answer to that, put more Democrats into office. That said, income tax is factored into salary overall, so it balances out. It's not like if income tax were abolished then everyone would make the same amount of money and pocket the difference, if not for that expected drain on people's wallets, companies would just pay them less, so effective income would stay flat (eventually, this would obviously take time to balance out). Again though, whatever amount someone puts into the tax revenues, they make back much more than that in government benefits, whether they recognize that or not. If they put more in, they would make even more back.
    1
  7152.  @moabman6803  I think that in theory, some loopholes can be a good thing, but I think that it's gotten a bit out of hand, and many of them do not benefit the American people more than they cost. As to specific examples, the nationalized health care programs are more efficient than the private sector ones for those who can use them, and if they were all nationalized then we would all be getting better results at lower prices. As for other examples, we haven't been conquered by foreign enemies yet due to military spending, and we have roads and electrical grids due to infrastructure spending. It's a whole lot of different programs, but America is far better off today than if the government had cut spending.
    1
  7153.  @josephsmith4161  Yes, because the founders would side with Democrats.
    1
  7154.  @gregking6698  Hamilton was a much smarter man than Trump though, so when he did it, it was actually clever. Also, Hamilton was never President.
    1
  7155. About that "bullet time" thing, it seems to me that they could reduce a lot of the "disconnect" of it by adding a "ghost movement" element to it. Like let's say that in realtime, you can move your arm 12 inches to the right in a second, but in the simulated slo-mo, you can only move your arm 4 inches in that time. Make it so that the "real" virtual arm, the one with substance, only moves those 4 inches, but have a translucent "ghost" virtual arm that moves the full distance in real time. If you then stop in place, then two seconds later the "real" arm would catch up to the "ghost" one. This would both maintain your sense of body-presence, and also show where the virtual arm is trying to go at its own pace. It would also help with that mechanic of "moving with the bullet time," since you could see the difference between the two and better judge the right pace.
    1
  7156. Spotify just needs to play hardball with both customers and record companies. Make clear that the current model is not sustainable, and that it would be WAY too much effort for any competitor to duplicate what Spotify already has, only to fail itself, so everyone just has to agree with some major changes if they want to maintain anything like what they are currently getting. Basically, flip the table. The model that they need to shift to is to do away with "unlimited streaming of all music" entirely, as well as massive blanket payments to music labels. Instead, while you would be able to listen to any random song a few times without limitation, enough to get a taste of it or to satisfy a curiosity, if you liked it enough that you'd want to listen to it dozens of times, you'll need to pay some sort of fee somewhere. This might be paying a standard purchase price to own that one song forever, or it might be to purchase a plan that allows you to stream any songs by that artists, or it might be a plan that allows you to stream any songs of that genre, or by a particular record label, etc., and then record labels would get a cut of any packages that they are a part of, relative to the value users place on their content (ie, if there is a "pop music" package, and one record label's content is played twice as much as another's, then they would get twice the cut for each person who owns that package).
    1
  7157. This is some peak Putin propaganda.
    1
  7158.  @piratelechuck1911  It's propaganda when Putin pays people to spread it on social media, and then other people spread it further because it confirms their biases.
    1
  7159.  @piratelechuck1911 No, it's propaganda when it's spread by Russian bots.
    1
  7160.  @piratelechuck1911  No, it would be propaganda if it's spread by Russian agents.
    1
  7161. If Trump supporters believed in "evidence," they wouldn't be Trump supporters.
    1
  7162. Enough of them do, yeah.
    1
  7163.  @Josh-fz9rh  "R's" next to their names.
    1
  7164.  @ImAskinGOD44givenessHowAboutU  Even worse would be knowing god, and worshiping the orange one instead.
    1
  7165.  @ImAskinGOD44givenessHowAboutU  So basically the opposite of the guy the Republicans worship then.
    1
  7166.  @MsMichele50  I think He revealed the truth even before the 2016 election, but his followers don't care.
    1
  7167.  @southernman5839  People just believe that's what will happen under Trump because that's what Trump says he will do if elected, and it's consistent with his past behavior.
    1
  7168.  @troyjenkins3886  You're wrong there, there were more wars under his administration than there are today. The "Abrams Accord" was literally nothing, just a way for him to get photo ops with his friend Bebe and to help his son get two billion from the Saudis. It was a joke to anyone with a single clue about how global politics work, which mean that his entire flock bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
    1
  7169.  @troyjenkins3886  You're wrong there, there were more wars under his administration than there are today. The "Abrams Accord" was literally nothing, just a way for him to get photo ops with his friend Bebe and to help his son get two billion from the Saudis.
    1
  7170.  @troyjenkins3886  You're wrong there, there were more wars under his administration than there are today. The "Abrams Accord" was literally nothing but a photo op.
    1
  7171.  @troyjenkins3886  There were more wars under his administration than there are today. The "Abrams Accord" was literally nothing, just a way for him to get photo ops with his friend Bebe and to help his son get two billion from the Saudis. It was a joke to anyone with a single clue about how global politics work, which mean that his entire flock bought into it hook, line, and sinker.
    1
  7172.  @troyjenkins3886  Nope, it accomplished literally nothing. Israel was not at war with any of the people involved in that process, the people they were in conflict with did not sign it. It would be like if a "peace deal" were negotiated between Ireland and Finland. Congratulations!
    1
  7173.  @russellmania4542  Stockholm syndrome.
    1
  7174. Macron is an idiot for trying to appease Putin. Too bad that his political opponents in France are even more idiotic, so he's still the best they can offer. At least nobody else will listen to him.
    1
  7175. I was afraid that Republicans might be as dumb as you portray here.
    1
  7176. Probably because of context, the same reason anyone else would.
    1
  7177.  @Allenlong69  Trans victims are often the target of a hate crime, while trans shooters are typically no different than any other type of shooter. I assume that would be the context.
    1
  7178.  @Allenlong69  Why would you imply that they are? There's no evidence to support that conclusion. If they did, they would still be no different than other shooters that do hate crimes, just fewer in number. There is plenty of evidence of trans people being the victims of hate crimes, however, including the admission of their attackers. As for why a shooter picks a particular target, it is typically some place that resonates with them due to prior negative experiences. This is true of all shooters, not just trans ones. Churches seem to be a popular target among all sorts of shooters. Ultimately though, the issue here is not the gender of the shooter, it is the weapon they have access to.
    1
  7179.  @Allenlong69  Not by my logic, no. By my logic, there is actual evidence that they are victims of hate crimes, so that is not a topic for rational debate. And yes, the problem is that humans have access to the weapons. I suppose I can agree that the weapons would not cause problems if they could be kept out of the hands of humans. Or robots, I suppose. There is no effective way of keeping them out of the hands of "bad humans" without also keeping them out of the hands of "good humans," as the American experiment on the matter has proven.
    1
  7180.  @Allenlong69  I don't think anyone is taking such statistics, which is why there is little to no evidence to support the idea that these are hate crimes, and therefore it would be irresponsible to imply that they are. And targeting any religious institution could be a hate crime, so long as it can be determined that the motive was toward the religion itself, rather than directed at the congregation or structure itself. Not all attacks that take place inside religious structures are motivated by religion. I also think that there's little value in releasing manifestos or really any personal information about shooters. They want attention, don't give it to them. In any case, the mentally ill are no more likely to commit acts of violence than anyone else, the issue is not the mentally ill, the issue is access of anyone to firearms, and that is what we need to be working to prevent. Stop the guns, stop the shootings. I think people just want to talk about the mentally ill because they actually want to keep the guns. It's not like other countries have fewer mentally ill people, they just have fewer guns.
    1
  7181. It would also be a conservative meltdown, since if they did that, it would mean that they were completely ignoring the Constitution, and upholding the US Constitution is kind of a big deal to real conservatives.
    1
  7182. And don't let the door hit ya!
    1
  7183.  @TODDIMELLENTHIN  Seriously, none of us want her back.
    1
  7184.  @turkey0165  On Jan 6th there was both a riot and an insurrection. The riot was cover for the insurrection attempt. There is nothing about the word "insurrection" that requires any sort of military equipment to be involved, you can do an insurrection entirely on paper. All an insurrection requires is an attempt to undermine and replace the lawful government, which the Trump administration was doing.
    1
  7185.  @frankw7091  The Trump campaign got due process in this case, they just failed to make a compelling case, which makes sense, given that their client was guilty. But, again, the 14th amendment at no point requires a conviction for anything.
    1
  7186.  @frankw7091  His campaign filed an argument against the original court case. They were denied. They were given due process in this matter. You are just upset because due process did not lead to them getting their way, but that is not how the court system works.
    1
  7187. They don't think it will fix everything, but they do think it will fix some of the problems people are having. That is why there are many other components to the relief bill that work to fix various other Covid-related problems, and the door is open to additional bills if that is insufficient. It's like the CARES act last year, that was never intended to be a permanent fix, it was intended as a short term boost to keep people afloat, with the intention of passing several more similar bills over the course of 2020. It was only the Republicans in the Senate that kept future bills from moving forward.
    1
  7188.  @Alive120P  And we're handling all that too. We cam walk and chew gum at the same time. I mean, do you think gas prices would be better if we were not supporting our allies right now? Lol.
    1
  7189. Putin isn't offering, he intends to keep the territory he seized. He could end the war in a minute if he just left Ukraine.
    1
  7190. This is why we need guns to be illegal. People think they are the "good guy with the gun", when really all they are is murdering people. If guns had been illegal, neither of these two would be dead OR in prison.
    1
  7191. What are you talking about? They are still moving forward on the bills.
    1
  7192. Not that this is especially relevant, but I did learn that you can braid things that are still together on both sides. The technique I saw was in a video about leatherworking to make a braided bracelet, but in which both ends are solid pieces. You cut slits down the middle, and then there's a technique to fold the pieces in and out, and end up with a braid.
    1
  7193. It's been DoJ policy for decades, including under the previous administration.
    1
  7194.  @samspade8830  Sure. Yours hasn't? Have we fallen into a recession like most of the world has over the past few years? No. Thank Joe for that.
    1
  7195. True, this is why all the Republicans need to be moved as far away from government as possible.
    1
  7196.  @willhall640  It's true that Democrats had too much faith in the responsibility of the Republicans in the Senate, but we've learned that lesson, and are taking the process out of politics and into the court system.
    1
  7197.  @patrickmaloney1810  Sexual assault, fraud, withholding government documents, obstruction of justice, electoral interference, seditious conspiracy, etc. There are frankly a LOT of them.
    1
  7198.  @AddTomatoes  The only "politics" involved in these prosecutions is that if he were not a former president then it wouldn't have taken them so long to get their ducks in a row. Only a fool argues that he did not do the crimes with which he's been charged, most of his simps just think it's ok for him to do crimes because they lack any standards.
    1
  7199. America's debt isn't currently a problem though, Israel is, at the moment.
    1
  7200. The US is not at war with Gaza. They will need to talk to Netanyahu.
    1
  7201.  @Kitkat1-i9p  That's how Faux News indoctrinated their viewers to think, but it isn't accurate to reality. There was far more productive disagreement and discussion in the Democratic House than in the Republican one, all without the sort of fiasco that was the last month.
    1
  7202. We had a real investigation, and this is what it turned up. I think what you mean is that you need a witch trial, that will find the results you want, whether they are true or not, whether they follow the law or not, and I'm sorry, but we don't live in Soviet Russia, so you will not get that here.
    1
  7203. The fewer people, the better. We;ll have way more people than jobs within the next few decades, once the robots take most of the jobs.
    1
  7204. " Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Anyone claiming to tell you what the future will bring is not of God or Jesus.
    1
  7205. Wow, Fox, you're easily triggered. He's right though, the strain that infected New York and the rest of the East Coast/South came from European visitors, not Chinese ones. If we're going to single out the place we got it from, that would be Europe.
    1
  7206.  rockn roll  There were some cases on the west coast, but the way viruses work is they don't just grow evenly, they spread from points of contact, so the more points of contact, the quicker is spreads. We know based on DNA sampling that the outbreaks on the East Coast came through Europe, so if Europe had never gotten it, or those infected people had never come to America, the US still would have had outbreaks, but the spring ones would mostly have been on the West Coast, and outbreaks in the eastern states would have happened later, and perhaps been more manageable because there would have been more time to prepare for them. I don't blame Europe, a virus is a virus, I just think it's silly to "localize" a pandemic in the first place.
    1
  7207.  rockn roll  Quite possible, or a European on business/vacation. Realistically it was probably dozens of people, given how quickly it spiked in NYC. Either way I don't blame the people who brought it one bit, they were probably asymptomatic and would have no way of knowing. This was a federal response issue, not the fault of any individuals just going about their lives.
    1
  7208. Yeah, if you want results, you'll never find it in the Republican party. The only thing they know how to do is block results.
    1
  7209. The first few minutes are good information that I want to share, but the middle bit complaining that you aren't getting Google hits is not worth my friends' time. Edit things down to a tight five.
    1
  7210.  @zheyuanhuang7716  Yes.
    1
  7211. It is if you attack Jewish people or their culture while doing so.
    1
  7212. "Oh, but if they just cut congress' salaries or whatever then that would fix it and they wouldn't need to raise the debt ceiling" -idiots.
    1
  7213. Working for Faux News is tough, yeah. they will just keep asking stupid questions.
    1
  7214.  @saynotocensorship  I'm terribly sorry. My words must be too big. I'm not accredited for working with Faux News viewers and others with special needs.
    1
  7215. Jayapal only exists to make other Democrats look bad, much like Boebert on the Republican side.
    1
  7216. I think after they sell through the initial batch, they should put out a "non-weeb version" of the vehicle, that has all the came core engineering, but in a frame that is more standard in shape and content. Something that looks more like an F-150.
    1
  7217. I feel like any project like this should be done in stages. Have the government buy up all the necessary land, then start with a stable core, the government buildings they need, some housing of all levels, a functional city of maybe tens of thousands, but nowhere near where they hope for it to grow, but arranged in such a way that it's easy to expand outward without breaking anything. Then, once the city exists and is standing on its own, investment should appear, and the city can expand outward to fill what gaps exist.
    1
  7218. Yes, but the 14th amendment never says that anyone needs to be charged with insurrection for it to apply. It's not even possible for someone to be charged with insurrection, as that is not a crime under US legal code.
    1
  7219. I think there is a balance to this, they should not ban/remove such content, but they should definitely make it much less discoverable. It should never be sent automatically to anyone, it should only be available when directly sought out.
    1
  7220.  @LilmissJ111  I think there is danger in anything. I think that the danger posed by controlling misinformation is lower than the danger posed by allowing it to spread. The thing is, if "the wrong people" are in charge, they can do either that they want, so the argument over which is better is moot. The important factor is to not allow "the wrong people" to get in charge, and then while "the right people" are in charge, act to prevent misinformation from spreading. I do think that reasonable debate has value, that most speech should be protected, but I think that anything taken to extremes is destructive, including free speech, and that at a certain point in the conversation, you need to close down the debate and concede that any minds not already changed have no intention of being changed and that the battle has already been won by one of the sides. This is the core problem, a lot of these wars have already been decided by any reasonable measure, but the other side will zombie on forever because they are unwilling to concede under any circumstances.
    1
  7221.  @mattmcgoo  He remembers grievances. That's how mental deterioration tends to work, you can't focus on the here and now, but drama lasts forever, rattling around in there.
    1
  7222.  @GlennShook  Nah, Biden's mind is fine. He has a stutter that he's having a harder time covering for, so his word choice sometimes gets muddled, but he always stays on track at the topic at hand. You can tell real deterioration when they weave from topic to topic randomly and never get out a full topic, like the last guy.
    1
  7223. We did vote on it. The people who are fine with it won that election.
    1
  7224.  @Curiousitymatters  "Truth" rarely has anything to do with it, comments get filtered based on word choice, regardless of the position they take.
    1
  7225.  @Beerkunstock  But the primarily pro-Trump cheating did not actually change the results of the election, so it's not particularly relevant here.
    1
  7226.  @jimlewis2395  When you live on the ceiling, everyone else looks like they're upside down.
    1
  7227.  @user-lv8cv8sv2f  No, Gordon's sources are valid. It's people who believe otherwise that are looking at the wrong news sources.
    1
  7228.  @user-lv8cv8sv2f  Nobody has sworn under oath that they witnessed voter fraud. If they had, then maybe some of those legal challenges would have been upheld. People only claimed to "witness voter fraud" in the "court of public opinion," which is in no way legally binding, and none of them were willing to do so under penalty of perjury. Not one. Not even after numerous parties offered massive cash rewards to do so.
    1
  7229.  @KevinWiley8  Even Asian countries have moved away from eating dogs, and would never dream of killing a pet.
    1
  7230.  @KevinWiley8  When was this? It's a process, it hasn't reached everywhere yet. But even so, this wasn't in China, this was in one of the Dakotas.
    1
  7231. It was added during WWI when we took out loans to participate in that war, as a way of appeasing isolationists. It has never made any sense.
    1
  7232.  @kemradovich2874  Of justice.
    1
  7233.  @kemradovich2874  First of all, it was a very real crime, second of all, they charged him within months of havign seized the documents, so it was nowhere near statute of limitations, third, it was always a federal crime, fourth, the "judge" is a she, but you're at least right that she has no right to judge, and would never be there if not appointed by an irresponsible president.
    1
  7234.  @kemradovich2874  The SCOTUS decision does not apply to any of Trump's current charges. The immunity only applies to official acts, and none of these were official acts.
    1
  7235.  Chase Parrish  If each citizen got 1 million, that would be 325 trillion dollars, which would be 150 times as expensive as this current bill.
    1
  7236.  @godschild9329  And if you need help catching up to the evil in this world, we can continue this conversation. It sounds like you probably do.
    1
  7237.  @bobgriffith1810  Read the bill, all of it is covid relief. Stop listening to the fake news in your head.
    1
  7238.  @kdiddy1310  Lol, yes! You sound exactly like one of those Trumper idiots!
    1
  7239.  @coreyb9240  Did you read the bill? Which portions of it do you believe won't help Americans? Do you believe that the child tax credits won't help? That the payments to state and local governments won't help? That the vaccine funding won't help?
    1
  7240.  Sensei Tony  Well how can I ever recover from that burn?
    1
  7241.  @sofa_sith_lord6772  Helping other countries is taking care of our own, because we all share resources. This bill spends 99% of its resources purely within the US, what harm is there in spending a little money to help out our neighbors too? At what point is America "good enough" that you think a little charity would be justifiable?
    1
  7242.  @howardwoods342  You said "Democrats," but then went on to perfectly describe Republicans. Perhaps you just have the two parties confused? If not, you're even more confused than that.
    1
  7243.  @letstalk.2020  The omnibus spending bill was something else entirely. This bill is the covid relief bill, and it is all about fixing problems caused by the pandemic.
    1
  7244.  Hook ‘Em  There isn't. Why do you think there is? Who is lying to you?
    1
  7245.  @talache7  That's why we need to be more careful in how we distribute foreign aid, it does not mean we should not be distributing it at all.
    1
  7246.  Hook ‘Em  Only 1% of the money is going overseas. We can afford that.
    1
  7247.  @zs9458  Again, staying there is not an option, they would die. If you want them to stay there, then first their country needs to be made stable, and THEN we can worry about them "staying there to improve things."
    1
  7248.  @talache7  It's all important stuff. I don't see the point of trying to figure out whether school funding or child food subsidies would be "more important," it all needs doing.
    1
  7249.  @letstalk.2020  Yes, but this bill is NOT an omnibus bill. Failing to pass this one would not lead to a government shutdown, it would just not lead to the American people getting the covid relief that they need.
    1
  7250.  @iamatexan4334  0% goes to Hunter or the Big Guy.
    1
  7251.  @letstalk.2020  You're sort of conflating terms here then. There are bills that are "must pass," that without passing them there is either a government shut-down, or the military gets defunded, or something like that. This is not that, there are no such strings in this bill, and if it fails to pass, there just wouldn't be covid relief that Americans need. If you don't want there to be covid relief, like the Republicans, then you can just not vote for it.
    1
  7252.  Hook ‘Em  California gets a lot more for their spending than Texas does. Their power doesn't go out in a stiff breeze, for one thing.
    1
  7253.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  Beyond a certain point, people aren't the best way to spend money. There are important services that need to be funded.
    1
  7254.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  You didn't get to skip paying taxes, but because so many individuals were out of work, made less money, or lot entire businesses last year, total tax revenues were down massively, so the federal government needs to help make up the difference.
    1
  7255.  Hook ‘Em  No states kept their schools closed last year. A lot of school systems kept in person schools closed, but that does not mean that their expenses dropped considerably. They still had to pay for the teachers, they still had to pay upkeep on the buildings (whether they were using them or not), etc. Overall cost of schools was up significantly over a normal year, and at the same time tax revenues were way lower, so the funding that would pay for a normal year just wasn't there. That's why added funding is needed.
    1
  7256.  @whatsgoodmyguy4391  Out of curiosity, what do you believe the government gets out of "having money they aren't spending?" Like why do you believe that New Jersey would want to accumulate $1b that they aren't spending? What would they get out of just having it, sitting there?
    1
  7257.  @lotwizzard1748  No, I'm very informed, which is why I know that a lot of what people are saying in this thread is complete nonsense that they probably got off of right-wing "news."
    1
  7258.  @tammiea8552  "why do we have to pay foreign aid to countries so people would "stay"?" Because otherwise they will come here. I thought Republicans didn't want that.
    1
  7259.  @dehydratedwater4803  " Giving our taxpayers money to foreign governments helps no one but those politicians." It really depends on how the programs are run. If it's just throwing money at their government and hoping for the best? Yeah, it's likely to be misused. If it's a specific program to address specific issues? It can have a massive positive impact.
    1
  7260. What does her race have to do with anything?
    1
  7261.  @cobrabeebop  And this is why people don't take the outcry over DEI seriously.
    1
  7262. The regulations should be change to cap the total charge involved in the transaction, not just a cap on the commission fees. The delivery services can describe their charges however they want, but the amount they personal pocket should be capped to never exceed 15% of the restaurant's bill.
    1
  7263.  @johnp139  I am a potential customer. That makes me a part of their transactions.
    1
  7264.  @rickhale4348  Sure, but also, the Marvel movies are good, either works about as well.
    1
  7265.  @rickhale4348  Exactly!
    1
  7266. The simple fact is that places that have trouble getting water often lack the level of humidity needed to make water condensers effective. Places where you can collect water "out of thin air," it's typically massively abundant. The only way that I could think of an aerial condenser system being a good idea would be at sea, where you could build a massive scale condensor project to collect moist sea breezes, ones that would be unlikely to turn into useful land rain on their own, and then dumps that water into storage tanks to be transported inland where they need it. You could perhaps do this in the various seas around the Middle East, for example.
    1
  7267. Being a neutral buffer country did not work out for them, it led to Russia seizing their territory. They need to be in NATO to prevent that, because Russia cannot be trusted to be neutral.
    1
  7268. The opposite is true, as is usually the case when someone is indoctrinated on Faux News.
    1
  7269. No, it's not a "both sides" situation. The Republican party has corrupted itself into a laughing stock. It's been building steadily over time, each generation more of a parody of the last, and the migration from the Tea Party movement to the MAGA movement was the last step into lunacy. They are completely unworkable at this point. The Democrats are doing the best they can, but do not hold the majority in the House, so this is the situation we're left with. Vote for more Democrats, it's the only answer.
    1
  7270.  @Sheworkshardforthemoney  Yeah, Florida's gross now.
    1
  7271. The opposite is true. Republicans across the country are campaigning on rigging future elections. It would be ignorant at best to pretend that Republicans are in favor of maintaining the republic.
    1
  7272.  @CoercedJab  That might be true in a different time, but right now the Republican party is a threat to anyone who cares about being able to vote again in the future, and that threat needs to be dealt with before any other considerations matter. You might have problems with how the election systems work, and it might be a good idea to change some of them to make them more fair and representative, but you would need massive Democratic majorities to make that possible in the first place. You can't rationally act as if you exist in a world that is not the one we actually live in.
    1
  7273.  @carmelitakinjo261  We're already helping other countries within our means and without compromising US citizens' welfare. That's called "being a Democrat." McCarthy fails at doing that. His caucus fails even worse. Nobody ever learned anything of value by listening to McCarthy.
    1
  7274.  @IrishAnnie  They fixed the surge at the border. It will take a little time to take effect, but it's handled.
    1
  7275.  @bryanfrye8770  The Biden Administration has asked for $12 billion to get Maui residents made right too. It was part of the budget that MAGA Republicans were fighting. Currently, they have to work within existing FEMA budget funds, so they have given $12m in aid so far, but hopefully they can get more than that through the Republican House.
    1
  7276. While The Line is ridiculous, if I were designing their public transit, it would use multiple overlaping train lines, rather than just one. There would be an express line that only rockets from one end to the other as fast as they can manage (probably more then 20 minutes), and then another line that stops maybe 5-10 times over the course of the trip, something reasonably long distances in between, and then a third line that stops at every single stop, with multiple trains to avoid long delays. In practice, if you wanted to travel to someplace a bit inside from the far end, your best bet would be to take the express to the opposite side, then take the medium train to the first stop back, and then take the local to the next stop in, which would be much faster than any line that hits every stop.
    1
  7277. I do think that trans-humanism is inevitable, even if the current proponents are more of a sideshow act. When the Cyberpunk game came out, it really made me consider, if I could, would I replace significant chunks of my body with completely mechanical parts, without a medical need to do so? I don't think I would. Even if it made me faster or stronger, I don't think I would get robot limbs. I've always wanted to have a neural computer interface, but they would need to have REALLY effective firewall capabilities before I could trust my brain to a computer network. Like it would just need to be a solid physical barrier between the actual internal mechanisms and the more external side of things, which could only be breached under VERY medically controlled circumstances. None of this "if you plug in the wrong USB stick then hackers could go to town in there."
    1
  7278. I don't see how that would help, they are not like guns or anything.
    1
  7279. Nobody is arguing that drag show attendance is mandatory, only that it shouldn't be prohibited. No children should be required to attend drag shows, but if they want to go to one, there's no reason to stop them.
    1
  7280. It would be negative amounts of money. It cost negative amounts of money to end Trump's border policy, and would have cost trillions if Joe "finished the wall." And it also would have accomplished nothing.
    1
  7281.  @ErroneousMonk1  The evidence there was already presented, and several of the 2016 election campaign staff were charged and convicted and pardoned for their participation in it. His fans do not care though.
    1
  7282. Apologizing for doing what's right should never be considered "the better option."
    1
  7283.  @RichRocketMan  Not to mention that he raised the debt ceiling several times already without ANY preconditions. . . while Trump was President.
    1
  7284. It's not a security threat if he does not say anything of security concern. Politicians at any level are allowed to just talk with other people, and their conversations are not monitored. So long as they do not discuss any state secrets or anything, that's not a problem. That's how Trump got in trouble though.
    1
  7285. He had no answer because it's impossible to calculate something like that. The answer is somewhere between ""enough" and "some." It would definitely at least HELP though, right? And you're right, follow the money. The money is in the fossil fuel industry, and always has been.
    1
  7286. I wish every time someone says "Hillary claims she won the election," they are immediately fact checked, because that simply is not true.
    1
  7287.  @jamesmiller3098  They didn't add to any laws though, they just enforced existing laws.
    1
  7288.  @BillyColeII-dr6dk  The Supreme Court made this decision because Thomas likes his free luxury trips. And no the ATF did not make any laws.
    1
  7289.  @drdesign6049  They did not argue a different definitely than what Congress enacted. The ATF definition meets the terms used in the law.
    1
  7290.  @timothyavendt677  Yes, enough is enough, they should not be legal, because they cost lives and serve no function worth those lives lost.
    1
  7291. What are you doing in this story then? You should be on Faux News.
    1
  7292. This video is missing the part where it provides alternative ways of producing beef that are less carbon-intensive. Don't present problems without solutions.
    1
  7293.  @aidancahill9924  Well then what's the point in even bringing it up? It is what it is. No since worrying about problems that can't be solved.
    1
  7294.  @aidancahill9924  That doesn't solve anything at all. If I were to do that, then I would be eating less meat, and what kind of hollow existence would that be?
    1
  7295.  @aidancahill9924  You aren't offering any practical solutions. The best you've offered so far is "don't breathe."
    1
  7296.  @aidancahill9924  Everything in moderation. Only a fool would eat too much, or too little meat. A balanced diet is vital.
    1
  7297.  @aidancahill9924  So far there hasn't yet been any alternative source developed. There have only been crude prosthetics. You might be able to survive off those, but you can't truly live off them.
    1
  7298.  @aidancahill9924  Man cannot live on nutrients alone. You seem overly obsessed with a lack of meat. All I'm doing is eating it as a part of a healthy and balanced diet.
    1
  7299. Who's he pissed off, other than the Narnia crowd?
    1
  7300. If you aren't a Russian citizen, this does not apply to you. If you are a Russian citizen, get to work already.
    1
  7301.  @gregorymalchuk272  How much money can we afford to allocate to the consequences of our allies losing? It would be more, how much more would you be willing to spend to help out our enemies?
    1
  7302.  @sidiov  Which bills in the Senate did she vote for that passed with Republican majorities?
    1
  7303.  @inthefar-queue6270  You're projecting. The Republicans' efforts are to "keep Republicans in power, in any way or means possible, "legal" or "illegal"." The Democrats are only trying to defend our constitutional republic from their efforts to do so.
    1
  7304. As an artist, "orange, but darker" is still orange. Brown is "warm colors, with less saturation," warm colors diluted with other tones to diminish its color "purity." It's worth noting that to generate "natural" shadows in an image, you want to avoid just making an orange "darker," but instead making it "darker, and also more red." This tends to look better.
    1
  7305. I mean. . . I voted in person for every primary and election since I was 18, until this latest primary, which I mailed in. I definitely prefer to vote in person, normally, but in the current situation, it just makes more sense to vote mail-in, and it's pretty unconscionable for anyone to try and make that harder or more inconvenient.
    1
  7306.  @RollerSkatinSAGActor  I don't think Dems hate IDs, most have them, I think they just understand how pointless they would be, and that there are twenty million voters who don't have one, yet still deserve the right to vote.
    1
  7307. It's shocking to find that some parents actually love their children.
    1
  7308. The same thing Germans were afraid of in the late 1920s.
    1
  7309. Then she shouldn't have married a criminal who justified a search warrant.
    1
  7310.  @roninthedestroyer8958  It's no less illegal for a president to take just one document than for a senator to do it. But it does happen sometimes. The point is that Trump took hundreds, perhaps thousands, with far higher risk to national security.
    1
  7311.  @webportal6659  The FBI "manufactured" the photos by taking pictures of the crime scene. There is nothing remotely wrong about that. Trump is not in trouble because of any photos the FBI took, he is in trouble because of the documents HE had, that they were taking pictures of. Nothing about the photo process is being used against him.
    1
  7312.  @bobbrossify  Then why are Pence and Obama not in prison? They also had classified documents. If you handle as many classified documents casually as those at the top of the political spectrum, one or two of them are likely to fall in with other stuff eventually. Usually it's just like the menu to a state dinner or something. It CAN be extremely serious, if they are the types of defense secrets that Trump had, but they aren't always.
    1
  7313.  @edwinarnold4865  "Classified documents are classified documents" shows a clear misunderstanding of classified documents. Some are very serious information, others are just things that don't really matter much, like an itinerary for a trip that happened ten years ago that would have been important before that trip happened, but irrelevant any time afterward. It matters very much what the actual contents of the documents are, if we aren't just talking about a slap on the wrist "you shouldn'ta done that" punishment.
    1
  7314.  @edwinarnold4865  The Presidential Records Act actually says the OPPOSITE of that. It says that a President can take NONE of the documents he wants, EVER. It says that ALL documents created while he's president are property of the American people, and he is only allowed to BORROW them, IF he has the permission of the National Archives, which in this case he never had. Have YOU read the Presidential Records Act?
    1
  7315.  @Ladybug-lz5un  Obama was not allowed to retain any of his documents. All of his documents are property of the National Archives. He was then able to request that some of those documents be loaned to his Presidential library, which is the legal way to do something like that. The problem Trump had is that he did nothing legally.
    1
  7316.  @dewizle5026  The supreme court did not say that it wasn't a crime.
    1
  7317.  @Ladybug-lz5un  Obama was not allowed to retain any of his documents. All of his documents are property of the National Archives. He was then able to request that some of those documents be loaned to his Presidential library, which is the legal way to do something like that.
    1
  7318. Imagine if Japanese "whale research vessels" actually did some research, rather than rapidly butchering them up for market.
    1
  7319. Nah, actually "nuclear winters" aren't that bad, it could never keep up to the CO2.
    1
  7320. I think this is mainstream media.
    1
  7321. HAD.
    1
  7322.  @AndrewGunner  Anyone who's had a 1 year, 2 month old dog knows that it sure is a puppy. But then Republicans have always had issues with telling what's an "adult" or not.
    1
  7323.  @NemesisDawn  That didn't happen, actually. Also, even if it had, he certainly didn't write a book bragging about it.
    1
  7324.  @elleaubry3772  Hey now, hey now. . . if we took guns away from people too irresponsible to handle them we'd have. . . almost no gun owners left! Someone please think of the gun manufacturer's lobby!
    1
  7325.  @NemesisDawn  Not in the real world though, which is where we're talking about here. Sure, whatever you want to believe happened in Narnia, go ahead, but we're talking about grown up stuff right now.
    1
  7326.  @sburns2421  It may have happened someplace, it just had nothing to do with Fauci.
    1
  7327.  @sburns2421  You're drawing some really tenuous links there, compared to "shooting a puppy in the face with a shotgun held in your own two hands because he embarrassed you in front of your friends." People are "defending this guy" because even you admit he didn't do anything wrong. The better question is why are people attacking this guy?
    1
  7328.  @sburns2421  And it remains a fact that "Fauci's beagle puppies" was never a thing. That's all I was saying. It was just drama brought up by gullible idiots.
    1
  7329.  @sburns2421  NIAID was not involved in that Tunisian study at all. I had nothing to do with Fauci. Why is it important to you to blame Fauci for this personally?
    1
  7330. Clearly this will never stop Fox from going to him for legal hot takes. He's team Trump after all.
    1
  7331. Yes. Her checks cleared.
    1
  7332. The GOP OWN the border crisis now. If they want to hold up any efforts to fix it until after the elections, then they own anything that happens until then.
    1
  7333. Why would he have to know the other people at the table? He knew his son. He was there to see his son. That's all that was relevant to him.
    1
  7334.  @JohnB3363  What do you not understand?
    1
  7335.  @JohnB3363  Why should the Vice President not be having dinner with "random people?" He's not a robot, he's a human being. Vice Presidents can have dinner with whoever they like. I mean, when the previous president was in office, he would have dinner with TONS of random people, including foreign spies, and nobody seemed too bothered by that. His son was eating dinner at a restaurant, and that son's father went over to that table to visit with his son. Why do you have to pretend some sort of "sinister motives" to that?
    1
  7336.  @JohnB3363  Sorry, I live in America. I think maybe you're confused because you watch too much Faux News, where they report out of Narnia instead.
    1
  7337.  @JohnB3363  Well, I suppose you don't want to admit to being in a Russian troll farm, and I can't blame you. Putin must be inconsolable now that his favorite toy is out of office.
    1
  7338.  @JohnB3363  I did answer your question. The answer to your question is in the posts above. I don't know how it is in Russia, but in the US, Vice Presidents have no limitations on who they can have dinner with. That has never been an issue.
    1
  7339.  @kazedcat  I think if they attempted any deliberate shenanigans that were contrary to the purpose of the treaty, that the foreign powers would really put the screws to them to clean up their own messes.
    1
  7340. @ Except in all the ways that matter.
    1
  7341.  @ghask4318  Because statistically, people of color are less likely to have the ID required than white people are. Also because voter ID is completely unnecessary in US elections.
    1
  7342. The easiest ways to do crimes is to buy the government.
    1
  7343. Trump said a lot of things that didn't happen.
    1
  7344.  @10thletter40  How so? Ineligible is ineligible, and the state decides what is eligible and ineligible.
    1
  7345.  @reverands571  If the time comes when you consider "moving away form nuclear plants because they aren't being maintained," then there' no point moving anywhere, because that's after game over.
    1
  7346. The damage caused by nuclear plants and their waste products would be a blip when compared to the damage caused by global warming. Anything that could survive the latter would likely manage fine with the former.
    1
  7347.  @desitterspace2127  I think that it would be an injustice if the Colbert staff were treated that way, since they were not involved in any insurrection at the time. Nobody is denied legal representation though. Everyone gets a public defender at least.
    1
  7348.  @desitterspace2127  They were involved in an insurrection against the people of the United States though. They are getting nothing that they have not earned from their actions.
    1
  7349.  @Bill32H-it3sv  Nah, the two have nothing to do with each other. Plenty of open democracies have no major religious aspects, and plenty of authoritarian regimes are heavily religious.
    1
  7350.  @johnjaso1349  Yes, Biden is also trying to prevent the Republicans from destroying our country. They certainly try to stop him though.
    1
  7351. The idea of "endgame automation" is that they literally would not CARE what you do. They would build ONLY things that rich people want to have, they would control the entire supply chain, and nobody would be bothering to produce anything for the average person at all. Whatever happens to you would be none of their business.
    1
  7352.  @nicholasschrader7179  Better than the right trying to steal all sense of reality by peddling conspiracy theories as if they were fact, right?
    1
  7353.  @nicholasschrader7179  I would consider it an unproven allegation that is currently being investigated, although whether it first appeared in a lab or in a wet market isn't particularly important.
    1
  7354.  @nicholasschrader7179  It's my way of saying exactly what I said. Do you disagree?
    1
  7355.  @nicholasschrader7179  I don't know that I would call it a "conspiracy theory," it really depends on how much detail is involved and how "certain" the person is in their argument. A conspiracy theory is one that has way too little evidence to support the conviction of the person holding it, and is too in conflict with known facts of the situation. As it stands we don't know with any degree of certainty whether the virus first infected in a lab, but there is some evidence to support that argument, so it would not be a conspiracy theory to consider it. We can say with reasonable certainty that it was not a "manufactured" virus, since it does not contain any of the elements that such a virus would have, so it would be a "conspiracy theory" to claim that China was responsible for the creation of the covid strain. I'm sorry if specificity bothers you, but most of the real world is complex, and simplistic answers typically cannot accurately convey a situation. Conspiracy theories are so dangerous because they offer simple (if incorrect) answers to complex problems, and simple answers are much more appealing than the truth.
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  7356.  @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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  7357.  @Jeremy-eu9em  Everything you just said applies far more to conservatives than to liberals. Are you sure you haven't just confused the two words?
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  7358.  @99.6survivalrate4  Yes, I am calling conspiracy theorists a name, because they are silly, and deserve to be called names. If they would like to not be called names, they only have to stop believing ridiculous fantasies.
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  7359.  @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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  7360.  @californiacountry209  I believe Russia helps Trump win in 2016 because it's been rigorously documented that Russia helped Trump win in 2016. Why would you not believe that? And what I want is for America to be a safer place. It is my home, and it can be better.
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  7361.  @tracybarhite1764  Did you vote for Trump? If so, that's exactly what you voted for, whether you want to accept that or not. I know that there are some conservatives who are somewhat rational, but I'm sorry to say, you are massively in the minority of the conservative movement. They did a poll recently that says that over half of Republican believe Trump actually won the 2020 election. You just can't defend the party when that's the case. I really do hope that Republicans can clean up their mess and become a genuine second party, but it is not looking good for them right now.
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  7362.  @nicholasschrader7179  The primary information inside it has been backed up by numerous other sources over the years, so I think it's at least mostly reliable, though I haven't read it myself so I can hardly vouch for every possible detail, why? Do you not?
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  7363.  @nicholasschrader7179  Why? What aspects do you take issue with, and why do you believe that it matters? I honestly haven't thought about the Steele Dossier much in years, much less brought it up unprompted.
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  7364.  @99.6survivalrate4  Yes, Russia helps Trump win in 2-16 and tried again in 2020, but that was never "a conspiracy theory." Yes, Trump tried to get Ukraine to dig up imaginary dirt on Biden because he was scared, but that wasn't a "conspiracy theory" either. I don't know what ever happened with that laptop business, but nothing actionable was involved so who cares? And everyone knew that the origin of the virus was in China, it wasn't planned though, that would be a conspiracy theory.
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  7365.  @nicholasschrader7179  I don't think that Russia helped Trump; based on the Steele Dossier, I know Russia helped Trump based on solid investigations by the FBI, CIA, and NSA that proved that they did, with receipts, convictions, and pardons. The Steele Dossier is largely irrelevant to anyone outside of conservative news sites.
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  7366.  @tracybarhite1764  If you voted for Trump, then you voted for everything that comes with it. No conservative politics could EVER be worth that. Trump may not have been a "career politician," but he was certainly worse than any "career politician" on the Democratic side of the ledger.
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  7367.  @nicholasschrader7179  Paul Manafort gave internal Trump Campaign documents to Konstantin Kilimnik, who works with Russian intelligence, that let them know which counties the Trump campaign was microtargeting with advertising, areas that Trump won, and needed to win to get an electoral college victory. Russian social-media farmers then bombarded people in these districts with advertising designed to get them out in favor of Trump, or to discourage getting out for Hilary Clinton. They employed similar tactics in the 2020 election, although this time with no established ties to the Trump campaign, and with far less success.
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  7368.  @nicholasschrader7179  Nope, it's all been thoroughly investigated by professionals in the intelligence community and proven out. That's not how a "conspiracy theory" works. If it sounds to you like a conspiracy theory, then it would only be because your own information sources are faulty.
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  7369.  @tracybarhite1764  A lot of that is inaccurate. Trump did nothing to improve the economy, he just inherited Obama's. It continued upward at the same pace Obama left him. I can understand people liking conservative policies, but none of that could ever possibly exclude voting for Donald Trump under any circumstances. Even if his opponent is a tentacled space alien, you vote for the alien, he's less likely to feel you up in a dressing room stall. You can claim to not agree with everything he said and did, but you voted for him, so your actions speak much louder than your feeble words.
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  7370.  @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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  7371.  @tracybarhite1764  It is a fact that the Obama economic expansion continued through the Trump administration and that nothing he did actually improved the economy though. The opinion would be whether or not you still liked him in spite of that fact.
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  7372.  @Jason28282  That depends, are the herd of sheep chanting "build the wall" or "lock her up?" I don't speak sheep because I don't watch Fox or OAN.
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  7373.  @Jason28282  And yet Trump just continued the economic recovery that Obama built, and didn't add anything to it.
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  7374.  @tracybarhite1764  The economists who believe that tax cuts and deregulation benefit the economy as a whole have been thoroughly discredited over the last few decades. The Dow Jones was at its highest under Biden, not Trump, btw. I think there were very few things that the Trump administration actually did right, and a lot of that was either by accident or because "the deep state" managed to slip it past him. None of it adds up to justifying the harm he caused, and continues to cause, and no candidate in the 2016 election would have made for a worse four years than he produced. If you voted for Trump, then you are a "red no matter who" type, and that is disastrous for this republic in the current environment.
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  7375.  @tracybarhite1764  If you've voted for Democrats but still thought that Trump was worth voting for then your standards are incomprehensible. That does not help make you appear rational. If there were any two elections in the past 50 years in which it was absolutely essential to vote Democrat, it was 2016 and 2020. Ok, 2024 too. Three.
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  7376.  @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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  7377.  @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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  7378.  @tracybarhite1764  "Family business deals in China?" If you're worried about Biden over that, but not worried about Trump's personal shady business deals all over the world, then I could not have enough bridges to sell you.
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  7379.  @tracybarhite1764  Biden's family is MUCH different, most importantly because the actual president Biden has zero role in them, and that's who we voted for. Everyone has weird relatives, Trump's are only an issue because they work in the company that he financially benefits from, and because he gave them high profile government jobs and benefits that they were in no way qualified for. It is NOT a "same situation" by any rational stretch, and presenting it as such only reduces your credibility further. You do not seem to be taking positions that make any sense here. You claim to support Democratic principles on some level, what Democratic principles did Trump advance while in office?
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  7380.  @tracybarhite1764  I can be honest and say that no, Democrats do not undermine democracy, unless you mean that they sometimes promote policies that some people don't like, which would be one of the hallmarks of democracy. "Undermining democracy" would mean calling an election in which you don't like the outcomes "illegitimate," and claiming that it was "stolen" just because millions more people voted for the other candidate. It would mean continuing to pretend that there was fraud, even after all reliable sources have gone over the elections with a fine toothed comb and proven that there was none. "Undermining Democracy" is rigging the electoral process in ways that make it as difficult as possible for people to vote, particularly those likeliest to vote against you, and Gerrymandering districts such that even if the majority of people in a state vote one way, the minority somehow ends up with more seats. That is Republicans. Republicans do that. It is not a "both sides" issue. Trump will continue to live rent-free in my head so long as he continued to control the Republican party, and so long as that party remains relevant to the US political process. We can both hope that ends as soon as possible.
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  7381.  @tracybarhite1764  The Democrats are not trying to destroy the Constitution. If anything, there has been more attempts to do so from the Republicans, such as the activist court redefining the 2nd amendment to exclude the "well regulated militia" clause, or defining a corporation as being "a person" in the eyes of the 1st. The Democrats have been trying to defend the Constitution from their efforts. As for myself, you've yet to point out anything that the Democrats have done wrong, so what should I be defending here? All you've done is make vague assertions that wrongdoing might be going on somewhere. How am I supposed to work with that?
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  7382.  @tracybarhite1764  There's nothing in the Constitution preventing DC statehood. There were 37 states added after the Constitution. There's nothing in the Constitution that prevents the way the electoral college functions from changing, it has already changed several times. There have already been laws like the Civil Rights act that put restrictions on states voting rights, and states have recently proven that they are unworthy of that responsibilty if they are going to disenfranchise their own citizens. Trump packed the Supreme Court when Merrick Garland wasn't given a vote in the Senate. Norms are meant to be broken when they work against the people they are meant to protect. The filibuster isn't in the Constitution either, it was only first used as a voiceless opposition to a bill within my own lifetime. So far, you haven't mentioned anything the Democrats want to do that would not make America a better place for Americans. For all your protests, you really don't seem very "democratic," much less Democratic. Why do you claim to be even a tiny bit a Democrat? Do you mean a pre-Civil Rights Dixiecrat?
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  7383.  @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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  7384.  @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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  7385.  @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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  7386.  @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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  7387.  @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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  7388.  @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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  7389.  @tracybarhite1764  I totally get your point. You want smaller numbers of people to matter more than larger numbers of people if they happen to have big yards, and especially if they agree with you. We barely survived the result of the 2016 election, and can't survive another like it. That's why it's important to shore up democracy within this safe zone. It's like that clip I showed you pointed out, it can take less than a decade for a democracy to fall to a totalitarian state, all it requires is good people to allow right-wing zealots to rig the system in their favor. If the few can outvote the many, democracy falls.
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  7390. The MLB: "Oh no! . . . so anyway. . . ."
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  7391. Star Trek was on every platform. It's one of the only Beta tapes I own.
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  7392.  @iraqman5456  The US had more of a role in funding and training the Afghan Army, so if US funding is the deciding factor, the Afghan Army should be steamrolling the Taliban. Anyone in the Taliban that the US had any involvement with probably died years ago. At the time that the US was supporting them, it was the just cause in the region, overthrowing the Soviet occupation. It was the Taliban's fault that they abused that support afterward.
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  7393.  @iraqman5456  The US has no control over which forces are available in a given region. We only had the capability to support the ones that had the means to tackle the greater threats.
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  7394. If he were serious then he wouldn't have gotten the math so wrong. He claimed that only 3.4% of the excess deaths were covid, when in fact HALF the excess deaths were covid deaths, and he'd only just completely misunderstood and misrepresented what the data was saying. The '3.4%" figure was for the 10,000 TOTAL deaths, which would be 350, exactly as reported.
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  7395.  @miller-joel  Reality decides what is "misinformation." Like when you say that only 3.4% of the excess deaths are covid deaths, that is misinformation, because the reality is that 3.4% of the 10,000 TOTAL deaths were covid deaths, or 350 total. He just completely misread the statistics to you and you apparently believed him instead of the actual statistics. Medical misinformation costs lives.
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  7396.  @BerraLJ  OR "something" is not going on and everything is operating exactly as any rational person would expect it to during a pandemic and a war and all sorts of other things we know are happening in the world, and yet some people insist on chasing shadows because it makes life feel more dramatic.
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  7397.  @mironoleszczuk5660  I think that those mistakes were very central to his thesis. He seemed to be presenting a case that there were an unusually high amount of excess deaths unrelated to covid, when the fact is that the number of excess deaths unrelated to covid is exceptionally low. 350 excess deaths is practically nothing in a population of 400 million. Remember, "excess deaths" it not some hard figure, it's a VERY basic estimate, more like an almanac report than a weather report. If you're ONLY off by a few thousand deaths out of 400 million people, then that is a good week. During the middle of 2020 in the US it was closer to THIRTY THOUSAND excess deaths per month. There are no serious "questions" to be had about "how covid deaths are tracked" or any of that. That was all settled out years ago. The only people going on about that these days are crackpots who just want to believe in ghost stories and alien abductions.
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  7398. Most of those countries have not earned representation on the council though. The whole point of it is to include only the members with the most dangerous militaries and economies.
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  7399. Standing up for what is right is a very different thing than standing up for what is wrong. Standing up for what you believe in is not always admirable, and it would be foolish to draw such false equivalencies.
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  7400.  @derpydino1915  Not all people who get pregnant had consensual sex. That ten year old girl in Ohio certainly didn't. Many states that now ban abortions do not have any exceptions for rape, nor plans to add any, and even if they did those would still be practical bans, since access to abortion services would tend to be impractical if it ONLY applied in cases where they could prove they were raped. Doctors that performed such abortions and women that seek them out would constantly be harassed over it. And plenty of women that get pregnant did take reasonable steps to avoid pregnancy, like taking the pill, or using condoms, but these are not 100% effective. There are practically no women that routinely get abortions, outside of satirical comedians. But at the end of the day, none of that matters, because a woman can be as promiscuous as she wants, and it is still not anyone's right to tell her that she has no option but to carry a fetus to term. You can disapprove of her lifestyle all you like, that never grants you ownership over her. Again, it's fair to reasonably criticize behavior you consider "irresponsible," but at no point should you be able to prevent a woman from getting an abortion well before any viability period.
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  7401.  @derpydino1915  1. And I pointed out why you seem to think you're saying the right things on this issue, but are clearly out of touch with the reality of the situation. What does "if they were raped, they should be able to get an abortion" mean? In a magical fantasy world, it would mean exactly that, that every woman who is raped would be able to get an abortion, no worries, but we don't live in a fantasy world. In the real world, several states outright ban abortions even in cases of rape. Even if they correct that eventually, or we are talking about states that currently have rape exemptions, it would still end up being impractical, since aggressive anti-abortion law enforcement would be constantly targeting these women and the doctors that treat them on the grounds that "maybe they weren't raped, maybe they're trying to trick us," and it would CERTAINLY lead to a great deal of drama for both, to the point that operating a facility that offers abortions in the state would be unworkable. Plenty of states have been working toward EXACTLY that "dream" for decades now, up to this point trying to work around Roe to do so, but now completely unshackled. Again, the point is that women should not have to be raped to be able to seek an abortion if that is what they choose to do. Your decisions should have no impact on their ability to make that choice and see it through. 2. Again, pills and condoms are effective, but it still leads to tens of thousands of unintended pregnancies each year. Yes, some of them they decide to keep the baby, but sometimes they do not, and that is their choice. No, your apparent scorn for their sexual behavior never justifies preventing them from getting an abortion if that is their decision. 3. Getting an abortion is also a form of "taking responsibility for their actions." It is not the choice you would apparently make if you got pregnant (although really I kind of doubt that), but you do not get to make the choice for them. You can disapprove, that's fine, but not prevent them.
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  7402.  @derpydino1915  2. Why does there "need to be a limit?" You would like there to be a limit, but there's clearly no need for one. Again, in general it's not a problem that actually comes up in the real world though. Also, ALL abortions are "out of pocket" It's been illegal for decades now for taxpayers to fund abortions in any way. Did you think that taxpayers were paying for abortions? 3. But abortion has nothing to do with murdering anyone, it takes place in the process before anyone exists to be murdered. That's sort of the point.
    1
  7403.  @samename3926  This was before social media. Do you doubt that she did?
    1
  7404. she might win by a landslide, but it's likely at least some of the states will be close.
    1
  7405. So long as they are eligible under the US constitution, yes, which is the point of this matter.
    1
  7406. No, she means when you start a family. That's why she said that.
    1
  7407.  @drzaius1121  Nobody's talking about harming children though. Why bring that up out of nowhere?
    1
  7408.  @drzaius1121  Nobody's taking any lives here.
    1
  7409.  @drzaius1121  They only get charged with double homicide if the state in question has poorly written and executed laws.
    1
  7410.  @Ask-Jesus-for-the-Holy-Spirit  Federal law applies to ALL states, and they have the right to enforce it when it is ignored. Have you not seem the FBI handling cases entirely on their own? They coordinate with local law enforcement out of convenience, but there is no legal need to do so.
    1
  7411.  @lynnmarie2962  Of course not. Abbot does.
    1
  7412.  @randym3982  I'm saying that don't have a right to reject federal law. They were ordered to stop, they are interfering with federal forces, this is illegal to continue. What does Texas do with people who break the law?
    1
  7413.  @randym3982  What? Illegal immigrants can't vote. What are you talking about?
    1
  7414.  @tlw6932  Oh, no, I'm not a MAGA supporter. Thank though. They definitely do have that TDS.
    1
  7415.  @randym3982  The Democrats are currently the legal executive branch, it would be impossible for them to do a coup right now. It is insurrection to go against their lawful orders.
    1
  7416.  @randym3982  Migrants do not have the right to vote, I don't know what you're talking about.
    1
  7417.  @tlw6932  Thank you, that's a true compliment.
    1
  7418.  @IMaximusDMI  Replacing what is cut is not respecting the ruling at all. If they said they would respect the ruling, then they can add "lying" to their list.
    1
  7419. It's a balancing act. You can only print money if you do so responsibly. It's like using a credit card. It's money you don't have, but so long as it's within a reasonable amount relative to the money you do have, it's fine.
    1
  7420.  @FKCENSORSHIP  The dollar has gained value relative to other currencies around the world. I think you mean that there has been inflation since then, which is a standard part of a growing economy. I wouldn't say that the US has always been responsible in how it prints money, but it's been responsible more often than not. It's fair to criticize specific examples of wasteful tax cuts or spending, but not to make broad claims against the entire concept of printing money.
    1
  7421.  @lameetcalice3845  Nah.
    1
  7422.  @lameetcalice3845  Meh. I haven't been in debt in years. I'd prefer to live in a modern economy than to live as a primitive, but if you disagree, you're free to give up the Internet and move into the woods any time you'd like.
    1
  7423. @Administrator8497 Germany lost in the east for the same reason that France did, the cold weather. His forces got starved out and had to pull back, leaving a power vacuum that Russia could exploit. Not to mention that they had the thread on their western front to deal with. Russia provided a solid distraction for the western front, but they could not have won the war alone, and it was really Germany's fault for dragging them into it before first securing victory in the west.
    1
  7424.  @lameetcalice3845  Ok there, Tsukasa Shishio. You are speaking on the Internet right now. I guarantee that you are incapable of building from raw materials whatever device you are using to do that. The factors of modern life require a modern infrastructure to produce it. Division of labor, global supply chains, industrial manufacturing. Sure, people can life with far less, but most modern people do not want to live with much less. You're free to make your own choices, so long as you recognize that others have just as much right to make different ones.
    1
  7425.  @lameetcalice3845  Talk about a strawman argument. . .
    1
  7426. Biden would have to do crimes first. That's how the law works.
    1
  7427. Trump is currently running for president, and he is encouraging House Republicans to not fix the border, so yes, it IS Trump's fault, objectively.
    1
  7428. This is why elections matter. So long as Texans keep thinking it's ok to vote for Republicans, these mass murders will just continue to happen.
    1
  7429. TL;DR, "It was part of the heist."
    1
  7430.  @sebastiancaballero8666  Their kid was a minor, not an adult, and he was able to kill people because they were negligent.
    1
  7431. Generally, yeah. There's a need for those positions.
    1
  7432.  @Draffut2003  In most of the cases we're discussing, they are paid minimum wage, it's just that most Americans would not be willing to do their job for minimum wage, and prefer to find other types of work.
    1
  7433. The law you cite would not apply, as they are not fleeing justice. That law would only apply to people attempting to flee justice. Also, even if it did apply, it would only allow those people to be extradited to the border state where they entered, not back to some other country. Also, despite the inflammatory language the right prefers to use, there is no "invasion" taking place by any legal definition of the word.
    1
  7434.  @MatthewNGolding  Again, these people are not fleeing justice. They have been given court dates and are patiently waiting them out. Nobody is fleeing anything. Who told you they were "fleeing" something? It would also be an abuse of the law for someone to be brought within 100mi of the border by a government official and then attempt to apply the 100mi rule against them. That would be that government agent's fault, not their own. And no, there is no invasion. You are using that word incorrectly. Migrants can NEVER constitute an :invasion." An invasion is an actual legally binding term that requires a military force of some kind, behaving in a violent manner. You might cite a handful of criminal elements, but they do not represent the general migrant population, and should be treated individually for what crimes they commit.
    1
  7435.  @Qthekat1984  Of course I can deny it, given that it factually is not an invasion. It's like calling a dog a bear just because it looks scary to you.
    1
  7436.  @MatthewNGolding  Ocean waves are also not an invasion. Also, we are nowhere near over capacity. We could handle several times our current population. the only current issue is that we don't have enough border judges to process them efficiently. Also, it is no other country's responsibility to say "The US has had enough, go home" to the migrants. If we want them to do that, we would need to pay them to do our work for us.
    1
  7437.  @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?
    1
  7438.  @bretling  Such as? I stand behind the points I've made, if you have a compelling argument to the contrary, I'm listening, but it sounds more like you just don't like what you don't understand, which tracks.
    1
  7439. It looks nice, but that "dashboard" is a complete joke. What savings is there in having no dashboard? I'm not looking at the center console to see what speed I've going or what the charge is doing.
    1
  7440.  @TimT-ey3hp  The already proved that, the election was the most heavily investigated in US history, and there was no evidence of significant issues.
    1
  7441.  @TimT-ey3hp  They already proved that he got 81 legit votes. No more need to do so.
    1
  7442.  @dianeambrose683  Well then it's also important to point out that Hatians don't eat cats in December either, that's just something being spread among stupid people.
    1
  7443.  @dianeambrose683  Yeah, but they also do not eat cats in December, so why claim that they do?
    1
  7444.  @dianeambrose683  Well what was the point then, other than that Haitians don't eat cats, yet Republicans are pretending that they do for some totally not racist reasons?
    1
  7445.  @dianeambrose683  Well what was the point then, other than that Haitians don't eat cats, yet conservatives are pretending that they do for some totally not racist reasons?
    1
  7446.  @dianeambrose683  Well what was the point then, other than that Haitians don't eat cats, yet conservatives are claiming that they do for some totally unracist reasons?
    1
  7447.  @dianeambrose683  Well what was the point then, other than that Haitians don't eat cats, yet some people are claiming that they do for reasons that clearly have nothing to do with race?
    1
  7448.  @marjoriecentore9072  They have, it's just all imaginary because none of it every actually happened.
    1
  7449.  @bryanthanos  There is no reason to believe that ballot harvesting would lead to significant amounts of fraud. It would be a federal crime to mishandle collected ballots, and would not be worth the risks involved.
    1
  7450.  @bryanthanos  No, why would I? It helps get those ballots turned in. The whole point of mail-in ballots is to get them turned in, and in person collection is one way of doing that.
    1
  7451.  @bryanthanos  There is a reasonable middleground before "Let's just have no rules."The 2020 elections went off without a hitch, let's just use those rules, or something that works even better for voters.
    1
  7452.  @bryanthanos  And that would be fine, so long as voter ID is applied in a way that is fair to all voters, it is not a problem. The problem with recent Republican bills is not voter ID, it is all the other things those laws do, such as allowing Republicans in the state to throw out all the people's votes and pick a winner of their own if they don't like who the people picked.
    1
  7453.  @bryanthanos  Did you even watch the video? They list the unequal provisions RIGHT THERE.
    1
  7454.  @bryanthanos  Most people disagree with you on that. Obviously they wouldn't name it the "stick it to black people" bill, the discriminatory elements are coded so that they seem perfectly reasonable to people who don't understand legal terminology or how voting in Georgia tends to operate in practice, but if you do understand those things, as a judge in the case would, then you would recognize that it will lead to lower voter turnout among black voters, and if that is the result, then it is a discriminatory law.
    1
  7455.  @bryanthanos  I wouldn't need to explain it to the judge, judges are smart enough to understand that without needing their hands held. Think of it like this, say you live in a state in which every school gym has a set of 3ft high stairs, and that's the only way into the building. Now, you feel like discriminating against people in wheelchairs, but obviously you wouldn't make a bill that says "people in wheelchairs can't vote," that would be discriminatory! But what if you wrote a bill that said "all elections must take place within school gyms," knowing that this means people in wheelchairs would have great difficulty entering the building? It would have the effect you wanted to achieve, but at no point does it actually even mention the people you are trying to discriminate against. That is what the Georgia law does, it does not say "and this is to make it less likely that a black person will vote," but it does make it less likely that black people will vote, by instituting policies that make it harder to do the things that black people more often do when voting. This was explained in the video above, and any judge will understand this to be the case.
    1
  7456.  @bryanthanos  Again, you need to watch the video, they go through how this bill impacts black voters in Georgia more than it does white voters, as a matter of practical impact. Judges are smart enough to understand that. Poll taxes did not say "and so black people can't vote," they just made it less likely that black people could vote, because black people were less likely to be able to pay them. The new Georgia laws are designed on the same principle, find out how black people tend to vote, and then make those things arbitrarily harder to do. You do not have to understand this, it remains true whether you understand or not. The facts don't care about your feelings. It is also fair to point out that it wasn't Democrats who claimed that the 2020 election was the safest and fairest in US history, it was Republicans who claimed that, because it was true. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEYvOTvqlFs
    1
  7457.  @bryanthanos  If a law disproportionately affects a certain demographic then that is EXACTLY what the Civil Rights Act is meant to prevent. You are absolutely right that context is what matters. According to Georgia Repbulicans, the 2020 election was the most successful and fair in Georgia's history. Why would that require sweeping changes to how things are done that would make it more difficult for thousands of Georgia voters to cast their ballots? The only "problem" with the Georgia 2020 election is that Georgia voters picked the wrong guy to win it, and that's what the Georgia Legislature is seeking to "fix."
    1
  7458.  @bryanthanos  Trying to justify a racist outcome is not the same thing as the rule not being racist. Even if you want to pretend that the lawmakers did not have racist intent, that is irrelevant to the outcome of it, and it's the outcome that is relevant under the law. IF you care about the lawmakers snowflake feelings, and think it's mean to call them "racist," then sorry, I'm not sorry, I'm calling a spade a spade here. But whether they're called "racist" or not, the law has a disparate impact, and that means that it is open to this sort of suit.
    1
  7459.  @bryanthanos  That is not how the civil rights act works. Most of the Jim Crow laws did not in any way specifically call out any particular race, because that would be facially unconstitutional. The point of the Civil Rights Act was to target those laws that did not say "so black people can't vote," but that had the impact of "and black people voted less often than they otherwise could have." Obviously this is open to interpretation, but that's what judges are for, and this case is right down the lane of "intentionally and obvious disparate impact." I notice that you've shifted to a "whataboutism" defense though, since it's become clear even to you that the Georgia laws will be struck down.
    1
  7460.  @bryanthanos  Ok, but we are not talking about that law, we are talking about this one. You really need to do some research and look up cases where the Civil Rights Act has been employed in the past. It is not remotely as narrow as you insist it is, and it is not remotely as burdensome to prove that it applies as you insist that it is. If it were as narrow as you keep insisting, then it would never have functioned in 99% of cases that it successfully struck down. If you believe it does not apply in this case, then prepare to be disappointed in the outcome.
    1
  7461.  @bryanthanos  Again, it is not about the quantity of access, it's about whether that access is fairly distributed. I'm not sure why you keep trying to pretend that you don't understand this. It takes a great deal of effort to fake that level of ignorance.
    1
  7462.  @bryanthanos  They ruled that the current laws are not sufficient to present harmful changes to how people vote, which is WHY we need better voter protections like the For the People act. And also probably a more balanced SCotUS. It's always important to remember that the SCotUS is infallible because they are final, not final because they are infallible, and they've certainly given plenty of examples of that principle in recent memory.
    1
  7463.  @bryanthanos  They did NOT rule that "one of the election integrity measures are suppressing votes of any particular demographic." They ruled that they do not CARE if one of the "election integrity measures" are suppressing votes of any particular demographic, because they rewrote the wording of the Civil Rights Act to suit their own purposes. Again, the Supreme Court makes bad rulings when bad people are on it. Look at Dred Scott. Again, this is just a reason to pass better Voting Rights laws so simple that even Alito can understand them, and balance the make-up of the SCOTUS to undo the cheating by the Republican party over the last few years.
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  7464. Tl;DR, Dunning Kruger
    1
  7465. We do both. None of this is taking away from any Americans in need. If you don't think Americans are currently getting what they need, then elect more Democrats, so that Republicans can't block such programs.
    1
  7466. That would be acting against the American people. It would be treason.
    1
  7467. No such thing happened. You might be thinking of oxy, which is a different drug, and that case was intended as a settlement that would give billions to the victims. It's fair to agree or disagree with the settlement offered, but it was at least well-meaning.
    1
  7468.  @loldotsarefun  They are similar drugs and have similar harmful impacts. I don't think there is anyone in government who is not committed to doing what we can to fight these drugs.
    1
  7469. No, they are Trump allies. He wants to let them win their war.
    1
  7470.  @davidwhitten3596  Also true, like Russia.
    1
  7471. Sociopathy is a hell of a drug.
    1
  7472.  @KforFreedom  He is though. He knows that, why don't you?
    1
  7473. It's because Fox is not a credible news organization. It's the same reason there are no debates on Hallmark Channel.
    1
  7474.  @furiousapplesack  What alternative do you suggest? How else could they take out Hamas, if Hamas insists on embedding among civilians?
    1
  7475.  @FactStorm  Two wrongs do not make a right, and if the IDF were willfully killing civilians, there would be no justification for that, but that's not the case here. They are attacking terrorists, and civilians get caught in the crossfire because those terrorists make it impossible for it to be anything else.
    1
  7476.  @FactStorm  Civilian casualties should be avoided, but are sometimes necessary to secure the peace, IF the opposing force embeds their military assets among them. That is why doing so is a war crime. Hamas has Israeli hostages, they also have 2 million Gazan hostage, and anything that happens to those hostages is the fault of Hamas.
    1
  7477.  @FactStorm  But Israel also has military bases, valid military targets to attack. Also, while you might be able to get away with attacking a group of Israeli soldiers and hitting some civilians in the process, how could that possibly justify shooting an infant on the ground with a rifle? Was he a soldier too?
    1
  7478.  @furiousapplesack  Well that doesn't solve anything then. Hamas would continue to do war crimes. Get them to stop, and the IDF stops by default.
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  7479.  @BBB-rd2qi  If you were a Democrat for 40 years, and 2022 is the year in which you feel comfortable voting for a Republican, then that says nothing remotely good about your intelligence or morals. This is an election in which NO intelligent and moral person could vote for any Republican. Also, it is not "Biden's gas," it is the oil companies. They are the ones doing this. Biden has done everything that a president can to keep their actions in check, which is why the US gas prices and inflation are LOWER than in the rest of the world right now.
    1
  7480.  @Ibugsbunny713  If they wanted to protect democracy then they would be voting for Democrats, because the Republicans have openly vowed to destroy it. If you actually know people who claim to be Democrats "switching parties" right now, then they are remarkably stupid people.
    1
  7481. @Bill Randleman Again, you keep confusing me for a Republican. I am not a part of the MAGA cult. Do you have some form of aphasia?
    1
  7482. That would be dumb foreign policy.
    1
  7483.  @viv2824  Yes, "The United States." The US is always the primary beneficiary of foreign aid, because we spend money to make money. To complain that the US spends too much money on foreign aid is like complaining that McDonalds spends too much money on ingredients.
    1
  7484.  @viv2824  You're not looking at the bigger picture. You're seeing the ingredients go in, and then assuming that the food coming out has nothing to do with it. US foreign aid increases global stability, creates markets for US businesses, creates foreign investment back into the US, it's all a long term positive, but it's all very complicated, so small minded people don't understand it.
    1
  7485.  @viv2824  That's not how it works. It's not "the US government sends them money, and then they send the US government money back." It's "The US sends money to do a specific thing there, and that thing getting done makes billions for US businesses, who pay taxes and pay employees in the US."
    1
  7486.  @viv2824  Oh, I'm hardly the only one smart enough to understand it, MOST people get this. It's only a relatively few "special" people that are incapable of understanding the simple process. They see the truck pull up to the Mcdonalds, they see the people walking out with food, and they marvel over why McDonalds would bother with those ingredient trucks, when they can obviously just produce burgers out of thin air.
    1
  7487. In the US it's mainly white supremacists.
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  7488. Because this is not evidence, it is only hearsay, which is not admissible in court. No actual evidence exists, since no crime took place.
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  7489. Not exactly. It's generally considered that it was a pretty close ruling, with several of those who voted in favor of it being on the fence, and if it was going to be a 5-4 decision, then one or more of them might have flipped to the other side of it instead. Once it was inevitable, why not go along with the majority? It was also believed that Alito was the one that leaked the draft decision to the press, which helped to lock in the conservatives votes, because if they had backed out after that it would have been a much bigger story for them.
    1
  7490. Yup, can't trust a school district that does not protect trans kids.
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  7491.  @johnchristman750  In what way?
    1
  7492. I doubt that. I think he just cares for the millions of other people living in this country who are called that, who never killed anyone.
    1
  7493.  @user-ef3nu1eh7z  I don't think it would be accurate to claim that the police lean toward the accused just because they follow the Constitution. If the police don't do their job and treat the suspects properly, then the case might get dismissed. We live in a nation of laws, and the agents of that state have to follow those laws. Otherwise we just have thugs.
    1
  7494.  @user-ef3nu1eh7z  I don't think it would be accurate to claim that the police lean toward the accused just because they follow the Constitution. If the police don't do their job and treat the suspects properly, then the case might get dismissed. We live in a nation of laws, and the agents of that state have to follow those laws.
    1
  7495.  @johnhoran9840  The terms you use to discuss people does matter though. It's like how Trump supporters don't seem to like being called "White Nationalists."
    1
  7496.  @sl4983 Nobody said that there was anything wrong with being a white patriot, any more than there's anything wrong with being an immigrant.
    1
  7497.  @sl4983  And similarly it would be an issue if the white patriot was also a white nationalist.
    1
  7498. He's at least better than anyone in the last administration, right?
    1
  7499.  @jeanlannes4396  There is no mass immigration plan though. So I guess that's where your confusion come from.
    1
  7500. What business is it of Biden's what Trump's best friends get up to?
    1
  7501.  @ninatrabona4629  The drive behind plastics had little to do with workers. It was mainly about finding a use for oil production byproducts so that less of the process was considered pure "waste."
    1
  7502.  @improvisedsurvival5967  It's responsible for a lot of poullution and other harms to your standard of living. There are upsides, of course, but that doesn't mean people should not be critical of the downsides too.
    1
  7503.  @johngray3449  There are other sources of sulfur if we need it. Even if we did need oil to produce sulfur, we could extract that resource without pumping any dangerous chemicals into the air or water supply. Again, the overall argument is against using oil in the ways that we have, burning it into the atmosphere. This does not mean that we would need to abandon ALL uses of oil, IF there are environmentally sound ways of processing it.
    1
  7504.  @crispinfornoff206  That wasn't the part where he was calling for an insurrection. Most of that he was doing behind closed doors, when he was telling Pence to behave illegally during the certification process. The crowd was mostly just a distraction from the actual heist.
    1
  7505.  @rayintulsa4709  You mean the Trump crime family. They are the ones under indictment. The Biden family haven't done crimes like that.
    1
  7506.  @acegood7058  If you're still waiting for proof then you haven't been paying attention, Paul Manfort was indicted for colluding with Russian agents, and only got off on Trump's pardon. All the proof was in the Muller Report, but Senate Republicans refused to live up to their oaths of office because it would make Trump look bad. Also, Biden is not lifting any sanctions on Russia, he's adding them. Where do you get news from?!
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  7507.  @rhiannonbittle1454  So are you arguing that the Devil created God? To what purpose? If nothing can't create everything form nothing, then how did nothing create an all-knowing, all powerful being from nothing? An all-knowing, all powerful being would be something.
    1
  7508.  @rhiannonbittle1454  The Bible has been wrong LOTS of times. People who don't think the Bible has ever been wrong are just themselves wrong. And again, if God created the universe, then what created God? If God didn't need anything to create him, if he always just existed, then why would the universe need anything to create it? Why couldn't it just always have existed too? Also, the Bible doesn't say anything about "people on the left," except for the New Testament, which was entirely about someone firmly on the left and his disciples, fighting against people on the right.
    1
  7509.  @rhiannonbittle1454  Claiming the Bible has never been wrong does not make up for the very many times that it has been wrong. What about the great flood story, which never actually happened, and was taken from the story of Gilgamesh anyway? The Bible was obviously wrong about that part. Of course some people would prefer to say that the story told in the Bible is more true than the actual fact that it isn't true, but that's just them lying to themselves.
    1
  7510.  @rhiannonbittle1454  That's like saying that everything in Harry Potter is the true history of the Earth. When the facts don't actually line up with what a book says, you cannot consider it "true." And no, science does not "agree that everything had to be created." The scientific position is that no act was needed to create the universe or anything in it. Oxygen is an atom. It is created when helium fuses together in the hearts of stars, and then spread throughout the universe. The helium is made when hydrogen is fused together. The hydrogen was made when small particles were fused together. Again, if the contents of the universe could not appear out of nowhere, then neither could God. If God could appear out of nowhere (or "always exist"), then so too could the universe. It is more likely that the universe as we know it would exist than for an all-knowing and all-powerful being to exist.
    1
  7511.  @rhiannonbittle1454  Give me a time the Bible has predicted the future and been right, in a way that is not open to interpretation.
    1
  7512.  @rhiannonbittle1454  The Bible was written after most of the that. It's pretty easy to foretell things that already happened. My history book did that, and I doubt it was blessed with divine revelation. And it certainly did not foretell any of the modern nations, unless you mean by using extremely vague wording that could be used to fit anything that might happen. Actual prediction of the future are SPECIFIC, not something like "a great empire will rise to the east," or whatever, which can apply to ANY future nation.
    1
  7513.  @rhiannonbittle1454  There are fragments of parts of what are in the bible that have random phrases that if you really want to you could use to describe empires that are rulling today, but you could say the same thing about Harry Potter predicting the rise of Donald Trump. they did not "write what is happening now," they wrote things that could apply equally to every time and place. the same passages you might point to and say "see, that's talking about America!", scholars 100, 500, 1000, 2000 years ago were saying "see, that's talking about England, the Holy Roman Empire, the Roman Republic, etc." In 500 years time scholars will point to those same lines and declare with absolute certainty that they are talking about the Empire of Mars. That's the nice thing about vague wording.
    1
  7514. Cutting their salries would not cover even 0.000001% of the debt payments. It is not the problem. The problem is Republicans holding American lives hostage.
    1
  7515.  @jeffreygunn3530  I would name my lectern "Podium," just to mess with pedants.
    1
  7516. I doubt that there will be significant amounts of US soldiers in Ukraine any time soon. It would likely be more naval and air power being involved.
    1
  7517. Because Trump has promised to use the DoJ against them, and given his choices so far, he cannot be trusted to behave responsibly.
    1
  7518. The incoming president has promised witch trials.
    1
  7519.  @NoNotMe0000  None of his trials were unwarranted. That's like comparing apples to OJs.
    1
  7520. The attacks on her come from the right, not the left. The left attackes her husband.
    1
  7521. They could find plenty of evidence looking back after the fact, but leading up to it they couldn't know what was a serious threat and what was just Hamas fan fiction. If they jumped at every threat of violence then they would be chasing their tails all day.
    1
  7522. Yeah, but that was, like, months ago. Why have a memory? Live in what they tell you to remember, that's how Newspeak works!
    1
  7523.  @Hazaroth-ws1yl  No, he is still on Trump's ticket. He never admitted for falling for the propaganda.
    1
  7524.  @johnnyatkins9097  No, he avoided telling the truth in the video above. Like I said, if he had told the truth then it would have reflected much better on him.
    1
  7525.  @zynathera8140 He's incapable of doing so, because he's a narcissistic sociopath.
    1
  7526. I hope that what Ukraine does is not move any military forces into the city itself, leave it completely unoccupied, and go around to try and continue the attack on the Russians. If they occupy the city, it will just give an excuse for Russia to carpet bomb the place or commit other genocidal acts against the mostly civilian population.
    1
  7527.  @dsquared341  But Trump was the Republican president, and the GOP still support him unquestioningly to this day. "That was only Trump" would only be a valid argument if the rest of the Republicans rejected him. Currently Trump IS the GOP.
    1
  7528. "Right to disconnect" is good, but there should be mechanisms for workers and bosses to negotiate when those hours take place. Both would have to agree for the hours to fall outside of normal business hours, and bosses could get in trouble for pressuring strange hours without a specific business reason. So for example, a boss and worker could negotiate that the worker be 100% available from 2-6am, because that business does work overseas that needs to be done during that window, OR the boss and worker could agree that 2-6am is actually the best time for the worker to be working just because both of them are night owls that like it that way, but the boss would not be able to place pressure on the worker to agree to a 2-6am schedule just because he prefers working at that time. The latter point would be tricky to structure though.
    1
  7529. Can you imagine what a terrible life you'd have to lead to be in any way positive about making the case that the President can do anything he wants and it shouldn't be grounds for removal from office?
    1
  7530. RFK Jr. isn't a candidate for president though.
    1
  7531.  @zen_nabu  Not really though.
    1
  7532.  @thecoolestofthe834s2  Yeah, that would be bad, if that's what was happening. Instead, the people in those regions are getting tons of food and water and other emergency relief, and over the following months will get thousands each in assistance for rebuilding, not to mention the millions that will be spent on rebuilding infrastructure.
    1
  7533. It'd be funny if a bunch of rich Australians just bought up a ton of high quality real estate and then let people just live there rent-free. They couldn't resell or sub-let the property, it would just b for living in, but it would cost them nothing.
    1
  7534. Nonsense.
    1
  7535.  @SuperMutant2099  He's talked to several Presidents of France over his time in public service, it would not surprise me in the least if some of those meetings blurred together. Trump couldn't tell you who ANY foreign presidents are, other than Putin and Kim.
    1
  7536.  @jackster2568  Not excuses, context.
    1
  7537.  @markhartung  Biden agrees on that. He even allowed the case against his son to continue, despite how politically motivated it was.
    1
  7538.  @TedHill-97  I certainly don't think it would be ok to bring fake charges, but that has nothing to do with these cases.
    1
  7539.  @markhartung  If Biden pardoned Hunter at this point, I wouldn't fault him for it, but it could go either way. Hunter did commit crimes, nobody really denies that, but they were offenses that typically don't get charged in the way that these were. They were making an example of him and pushing the law to its limits in a way that would be unlikely to happen to someone who is not related to a public figure. They were also, of course, far less serious than the charges against Donald Trump. Can we agree that the Jack Smith cases should all be allowed to reach their full conclusion in court like Hunter's were, rather than being interfered with by the incoming administration?
    1
  7540.  @markhartung  If biden pardoned Hunter at this point, I wouldn't fault him for it, but it could go either way. Hunter did commit crimes, nobody really denies that, but they were offenses that typically don't get charged in the way that these were. They were making an example of him and pushing the law to its limits in a way that would be unlikely to happen to someone who is not related to a public figure. They were also, of course, far less serious than the charges against donald trump. Can we agree that the Jack Smith cases should all be allowed to reach their full conclusion in court like Hunter's were, rather than being interfered with by the incoming administration?
    1
  7541.  @markhartung  If Hunter was pardoned at this point, I wouldn't fault him for it, but it could go either way. Hunter did commit crimes, nobody really denies that, but they were offenses that typically don't get charged in the way that these were. They were making an example of him and pushing the law to its limits in a way that would be unlikely to happen to someone who is not related to a public figure. They were also, of course, far less serious than the charges against Donald Trump. Can we agree that the Jack Smith cases should all be allowed to reach their full conclusion in court like Hunter's were, rather than being interfered with by the incoming administration?
    1
  7542.  @markhartung  If Hunter was pardoned at this point, I wouldn't fault him for it, but it could go either way. Hunter did commit crimes, nobody really denies that, but they were offenses that typically don't get charged in the way that these were. They were making an example of him and pushing the law to its limits in a way that would be unlikely to happen to someone who is not related to a public figure. They were also, of course, far less serious than the charges against the incoming president. Can we agree that the Jack Smith cases should all be allowed to reach their full conclusion in court like Hunter's were, rather than being interfered with by the incoming administration?
    1
  7543. Then stop watching Faux News like The Hill. Find more credible journalism like the NYT or WaPo.
    1
  7544. "COP26 Sounded 'Death Knell For Coal Power'" . . . cool?
    1
  7545. You started off in the hole by saying you were a fan of RFK Jr. Why should anyone care what idiots think? Continue to eat paste, the rest of us will be moving forward without you.
    1
  7546. Sad thing is, it's impossible to tell whether you're talking about RFK Jr or Trump.
    1
  7547.  @RMBlake007  No, he really doesn't speak truth on much of anything. He speaks nonsense about a lot of things though.
    1
  7548.  @dialechim4368  Sure, what does that have to do with anything?
    1
  7549.  @dialechim4368  Maybe you could tell me why it would be terrible for the government to have exclusive legal use of force. That's one of the primary functions of a government, to employ force only as the society determines it should be used. Some criminals could still obtain guns, but as we know from the examples of other first world countries, gun bans do work, if guns are illegal, it is much harder for criminals to obtain guns, FAR fewer criminals have them, and those guns that are used in crimes are much more often "criminal vs criminal," rather than the murder of innocents. I mean, in pretty much every mass shooting case, the shooter obtained their weapons legally, or got them off of someone who had, so if you removed that legal access to guns, the "casual criminals" would have a much harder time finding a black market source for them. And people do sometimes shoot police stations and military bases, like the Fort Hood shooting, but the issue is that it's impossible to adequately protect EVERY location. We know for a fact that removing the guns would massively reduce the amount of shootings. There are some idiots out there who say that the solution to the problem is somehow "more guns," and yet the US already has way more guns than any other country, and yet also has four times as many murders, so clearly the evidence points to the opposite. If "more guns" were the answer, then the US would already have a murder rate that was less than half of any other first world country, rather than four times higher.
    1
  7550.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  The gun regulations we have are not as efficient as in the other first world countries. Having "some" laws is pointless if they don't cover the actual use cases that prevent the problems. The gun regulation that would have prevented this crime would be the assault weapons ban of 1994. Ideally, it would go further, to prevent handguns as well, that would save far more lives, but would also be harder to get passed. The point is, if there were less guns on the streets, like in other first world countries, there would also be less murders.
    1
  7551.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  1. Yes, murders decreased dramatically since the passage of the 1994 assault weapons ban. They have been increasing dramatically ever since that law was allowed to lapse. Obviously, these are complex issues, and you can never 1:1 tie broad outcomes to any specific changes to the law, but the overall trend is that removing legal guns from the streets correlates to reduced murders, and allowing more guns correlates to increased murders. I mean, you have to squint REALLY hard to try and imagine a picture in which "more guns" turns out to be better than "less guns." 2. Ok, you do you. Personally, if someone is doing something right and it leads to better results, I think I'd have to be pretty damned ignorant to say "no thanks to that, I'm doing it my way instead!" Don't do something because another country is doing it, do it because it's the right damned thing to do. 3. Well like I said, "ideally." Changing the constitution is very difficult, and therefore unlikely, but I think we can agree that we would at least be better off for it. So short of that, we should do whatever we CAN do to reduce the guns on the streets, right? And as to your final question, yes, at the time it was written the US had no standing national army, so in case of foreign invasion, the average citizen needed to be prepared to join up in national defense. That's why the 2nd amendment makes clear from the very start, "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State," It was never meant to apply outside that context, and largely became irrelevant once the US shifted toward a more professional army.
    1
  7552.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  Personally, I think 30 years for possessing a firearm is a bit much, but they should at least be able to confiscate it and have a penalty harsh enough that good people would not do it. A short prison sentence should be plenty, at least for a first offense. And sure, in a perfect world without criminals, everyone could have guns and it would be fine, but it's easier to solve the gun problem than the people problem. I mean, all those other countries have just as many "bad people" at the US does, but those people can cause less HARM because they lack the tools to do so. Getting the hardware off the streets is something that can actually be DONE. Saying that "we should just prevent all criminals" is just an excuse to NOT do anything productive. As to the Constitution, you do realize that the Bill of Rights WAS a "change to the Constitution," right? Changing the Constitution was an important part of the process. It's just become impractical to do these days because there are too many stupid people.
    1
  7553.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  Why do you say that I "like the criminals, but hate the hardware?" I'm in favor of reasonable penalties for committing a crime, but unreasonable penalties don't lead to a decrease in crime. The US already imprisons more people than any nation on Earth, if harsher prison times were the solution, then we would not have four times more murders than other first world countries. The point is to get the guns off the streets, that is what would stop this violence. Most mass shooters never had a previous offense, so harsh penalties for gun possession would do nothing to take them off the streets. And I answered your question about the 2nd amendment, it was created because at the time the US did not have a standing army, so they needed citizens to be prepare for national defense. This became redundant by the 20th Century, similar to the 3rd amendment. And the reason the Bill of Rights was added was because they realized at the time that the base Constitution was not sufficient and needed additional elements. It has been added to and removed from many times over the years, but the rules were written at a time when there were only 13 states and far fewer people, and it's since become practically impossible to get any new changes made to it. The equal rights amendment was passed by congress in 1972, and yet is still not ratified because it fell a few states short of full ratification. There are just too many stupid people.
    1
  7554.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  Oh, you just don't understand US history or the Bill of Rights. I can see why you would be confused.
    1
  7555. How would that work, exactly? Who is paying the tariff?
    1
  7556. @ Why would they pay a tariff on a virus? Who's buying the virus?
    1
  7557.  @comatoseps1382  It's a better answer than anyone else has offered so far.
    1
  7558.  @TexasBornPatriots  The people of Ukraine.
    1
  7559.  @Melodikiller  No, I just don't view it as a reason to shut down the government, since the total amount of their compensation is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of even a single day of government shut-down. If you don't like that they did that, then don't re-elect the ones who did it, but that's never a reason to shut down the government.
    1
  7560. It can be, depending on how you frame the discussion, or in how you express the position. The video goes into that.
    1
  7561. If that were the case, then most of human history would have no children, because young people today have brighter futures than could possibly be dreamed of by 99.99% of humans ever born.
    1
  7562.  @PatrickMcAsey  Most children aren't wanted in advance, but once the ball gets rolling, it's often too much hassle to stop it.
    1
  7563.  @Mishotaki  Depends on how much random crap you have, and how often you use each item. If you have enough stuff that you can't take it all in at once and know what you're seeing, and if you have plenty of items that you only use every few years, then it is a good idea to have ways of keeping track of them. The initial set-up is a bit of a hassle, but less than a day's work even in a space like Adam's, and once you do it once, then you only need to log new items into the system and remember to put things back where you found them.
    1
  7564.  @netwiz9868  I think that they are certainly trying. If they were allowed to run unchecked, they certainly would.
    1
  7565.  @ZakAttack_11  They leveled a school because that's where Hamas was operating out of. that is a war crime. Open your eyes and don’t be a bigot.
    1
  7566.  @ZakAttack_11  Exactly, Hamas was in violation of the Geneva Convention, which is what made this a valid strike.
    1
  7567.  @JeffEbe-te2xs  No thank you.
    1
  7568. Where is Bill Gates involved in this?
    1
  7569.  @iotanb1772  I don't think that's what "analogy" means. There are not relevant points of comparison here. If you wanted to make an analogy in English, it would make more sense to pick a person or group that was more similar to Hamas, like "Putin" or "The CCP."
    1
  7570.  @iotanb1772  Nobody said they would, just that Bill Gates was not a relevant analogy here, and you haven't been able to explain why you thought he would be.
    1
  7571.  @iotanb1772  So you're saying it was a bad analogy, which was kind of my point. You could have made a much better one if you understood how analogies work.
    1
  7572.  @iotanb1772  No, that was the problem, they don't relate in any way. You agree on this. That's why I said that you could do a lot better.
    1
  7573. That's why no democrat does.
    1
  7574. Scott can always be trusted to shill for the devil in any argument. I appreciate his consistency.
    1
  7575.  @mrarcher9095  But also the Republican party supports racism, and opposes efforts to combat racism, at all levels, so it is valuable for a Republican candidate to recognize that.
    1
  7576. Unfortunately, I live in a blue state, with blue representation, who are already on the right side of this, but with no po3wer to change it. Equally sadly, the red states are filled with people who do not care, and that's why their states are red.
    1
  7577.  @Centurion305  Was this back when Trump was trying to get the Central Park Five executed?
    1
  7578.  @thomaskitlica5572  We can agree that they would be much worse if her opponent won the election though, right?
    1
  7579.  @notNefon  Or what.
    1
  7580.  @minutesnippet  Was that the intended point of that law?
    1
  7581. The Facebook thing is a dealbreaker to me, but as soon as they remove that policy, I'll consider this one.
    1
  7582.  @SpydrXIII  Yeah, but it was their first try, and they accidentally created a majoritarian system.
    1
  7583. I think you mean that the congressmen trying to attack the Bidens should be run out of town, and you would be right there.
    1
  7584. It's a shame that Pompeo lacks any credibility and could say that the Earth is round and I'd still fact check it just in case it had suddenly gone flat on us.
    1
  7585. Poll are notoriously inaccurate these days, since a lot of voters do not answer poll questions. The only accurate poll is the ballot box.
    1
  7586. The people convicted of voting multiple times were all Trump voters.
    1
  7587. Who?
    1
  7588.  @mikeleader9594  Apparently not Duh. You mean Trump?
    1
  7589. Yeah, this is why so many of Trump's lawyers get disbarred.
    1
  7590. Assuming everyone is sincere in what they want, couldn't the Connecticut group make an agreement with the Texas group that if they get their way, the Texas group would get a slice of their cut, essentially making it a better deal for them?
    1
  7591. The Florida red wave is a sign that they are behind. If they were truly great, their water would be blue.
    1
  7592. It's a trip wire designed to prevent Trump from attacking witnesses, which no defendant has a legal right to do. It would only be a "tripwire" if Trump is too immature to control his own mouth. Are you saying he's mentally unfit?
    1
  7593. They're only reporting on the story.
    1
  7594. Biden was under orders from the Obama White House to get that prosecutor replaced because he was a corrupt Russian agent. It was not Joe Biden's call.
    1
  7595. I don't see how that would help. They aren't like guns.
    1
  7596.  @zingerman11259  Most knives are designed for other purposes though, like cooking, or crafting, and it would be difficult to frame a law to only ban the ones designed for killing. Because which, the difference between the two would be largely insignificant. If we compare it to something different, like firearms, with those there are very extreme differences in their lethality, and it is much more effective t ban them than any knife ban could ever be. Could you imagine the death toll on this incident if the attacker had been in America, where guns are easier to acquire?
    1
  7597. None of the above, there is no good in the GOP at the moment. Just wait for the general to vote for Biden.
    1
  7598. Right-wing hucksters sponsored by Russia. . . surprised Pikachu face?
    1
  7599.  @edwarddickson7731  Electricity isn't free, I don't know where you heard that. It's just a lot cheaper than gasoline, and always will be. Cheaper is better, it doesn't have to be free.
    1
  7600.  @CH-wm6wo  Basic arithmetic.
    1
  7601.  @CH-wm6wo  "Simple mindedness" is believing that oil is a sustainable resource.
    1
  7602.  @CH-wm6wo  Such as who? I'm having trouble what point you're attempting to make here.
    1
  7603.  @CH-wm6wo  So you don't know what your point is either. . . . that checks out.
    1
  7604.  @CH-wm6wo  I agree that two different people can arrive at different conclusions, but that does not mean that both conclusions are equally valid. In many cases, one, or even both of them can be wrong. You assert that California made their diesel ban in "bad faith," I disagree. We might not understand their intentions the same way though. To me, I believe their intention is to give all players involved the incentive to get moving on this, quicker than they might with no direction from the state at all. I feel that this will encourage truck manufacturers to move faster in developing and iterating on electric trucks, to meet what they can expect to be highly increased demand over the 2030s. I feel that this will encourage infrastructure to ensure that California can provide the necessary power, knowing that there will be a market waiting for it, and for charging stations to be built, knowing that customers will come for it. I feel that all of this will make it more likely that California will have majority EV trucks on their road by 2050, if not sooner, than they would have without this step. Now if, in the case that innovation does not meet up to expectations, and by the early 2030s California is nowhere near ready to move away from diesel trucking, then I'm sure the plans would be adjusted via new legislation, as is often the case. But it's still a good idea to set that target and stick to it as best they can manage. And I'm sorry if I misunderstood your point, but please read back through your prior statements, they were all vague "You got something wrong" comments, without any specific points being made, so I could only guess at what your actual intentions might be. If you want people to take your arguments in good faith, then you first need to actually mack an argument that can support itself. Do not make vague posts and then blame the other person for not understanding your position.
    1
  7605.  @allegory7638  I don't see what the 2020 elections had to do with the price of things going up, they would have gone up a lot more had those elections turned out differently.
    1
  7606.  @CH-wm6wo  Appointed members of government are appointed by elected members of government. This obviously has some level of democratic inefficiency to it, as you have appointed members that do not reflect modern values, like the current US Supreme Court, but they are at least ultimately the result of the votes people have cast. I see no reason to believe that the current make-up of the California Air Resources Board would be vastly different than what the people of California would elect into that role, if given the opportunity. As for Lithium's sustainability, these are good questions, but not rhetorical ones, we have answers to those. The lithium in batteries is 100% recyclable. It is entirely sustainable, at least in the near term. There are already companies in place that collect spent lithium batteries and are in the process of recycling them. Recycled lithium is currently more expensive than "fresh" lithium, but that too will shift once the easier sources of fresh lithium become less available, and once recycling methods scale up. We might reach some point at which we won't have as much lithium as we'd want to do everything we want with it, but we would never run out of it, and any concerns around that would be much further off than the demise of all fossil fuels. Not to mention that lithium is not the only way to make a battery, and new formulas are being invented all the time. As to national security, there are no concerns there. Yes, some of those materials come from unstable regions, but the same is true of oil and gas, and there are lithium mines in the US that are currently being scaled up. Currently a lot of processing is done in China, since that makes the most economic sense right now, but if there were ever national security reasons to pull out of China entirely, they could be processed elsewhere. Also, modern lithium batteries are moving more and more away from cobalt as a component. You are right that some modern techs do not involve mandates to encourage their development, but that doesn't mean that such mandates are not sometimes of benefit. Sure, we could continue to burn fossil fuels until they ran out, but that would cost the taxpayers trillions of dollars to mitigate the damage it would cause. It's much cheaper and more effective to get off that train before it crashes into a wall, right? These questions have ALL been thoroughly discussed among good faith participants, and conclusions have been reached. These are the results of that conclusion. The only "discussions" that remain are with bad faith actors who refuse to be convinced on any answer but their own. You cannot have good faith discussions with the "turtles, all the way down" crowd, and attempting to do so is a waste of time. Forgive me saying so, but it's flatly idiotic to claim that the mandates are about perpetuation of government. I can think of no more "bad faith" an argument than that from anyone simultaneously claiming to not be of simple mind. If all a government wanted was power, then they would propose simple, populist solutions to problems, not inconvenient ones. They would promise that everything you want to believe is true, that everything you want to have, you deserve to have, and it's the mean immigrants keeping them from you. Nothing about this diesel truck proposal has anything to do with "perpetuation of government," because while it is the right thing to do, it will only harm the approval of government more than it secures it. That's why we elect government though, to do what needs to be done, not what is most popular. If popularity was all that was important, then a direct democracy would serve better than a republic, but the founders chose against that.
    1
  7607.  @CH-wm6wo  The Supreme Court isn't supposed to make policy, but for the past decade or so, they have in actual fact made a lot of policy changes. More than the legislature, really. But that's neither here nor there. If you're speaking against appointed jobs in total, well, the founders considered many such roles important, they would not see a problem with how they are used today. Besides which, this is a state board, which is outside federal control. And like I said, even if that board's members were elected by the citizens of the state, they would probably arrive at the same conclusions, because those are conclusions the state broadly supports. And of course the government isn't getting smaller, the size of the population has grown much larger, and the responsibilities of government have gotten so much larger. I mean, people complain about "the border" all the time, and it's obvious what the issue there is, there are too few appointed immigration judges to handle the amount of migrants coming to the border in a timely manner, so they just pile up, awaiting their hearing dates, rather than entering the natural economy and becoming productive Americans. We need much bigger government, not "smaller." It's also important to recognize that the free market is NEVER in the people's interests. The free market is in the best interests of those relative few at the TOP of it, for example the fossil fuel lobbies that promote the benefits of those products and pay people to put negative spins on pro-environmental stories on social media. Government is the only hedge the people have against big businesses. I mean, don't get me wrong, there is a children's fairytale that "the customers" control the market and if they want or don't want something that businesses will bend to their whims, but I assume we're both too old to buy into that sort of nonsense, right? And no, a "good faith actors" is not someone who "agrees with my conclusion," a good faith actor is one who does not present a nakedly idiotic position as if it is reasonable. There are plenty of people in this world who I disagree with on issues big or small, but I can respect their positions, because they are grounded in reality, or in reasonable differences of opinion. But there is no rational argument to be made that the California Air Resources Board passed a change like this as, what, some sort of arbitrary exercise of power, just to say they did it? Of course not, again, one would have to be EITHER a complete imbecile OR a liar to make such a statement, there is no third possibility there. You can disagree with their decision that it is good policy, but there is no reason why they would make such a decision other than that they believe it is important to reduce the use of diesel trucks as quickly as can reasonably be achieved, and that they believe that this action will lead to that outcome. Trying to gin up any other reason for it is nothing but "dogma."
    1
  7608.  @CH-wm6wo  Thanks, we'll need it, because there is a LOT of fossil fuel industry lobbying money out there trying to confuse people. I mean, they jacked up prices over 2021, causing all that inflation everyone's been up in arms about, AND turned record profits AND then blamed "liberals" for it! How rich is that? :D
    1
  7609.  @danielzhang1916  Education and healthcare are much much more important than "jobs," because working online is a legitimate option these days. Plenty of washed-up communities have made deliberate efforts to court telecommuters. In case you haven't noticed, a lot of people have been moving out of cities over the past few years, because they can get "city" jobs while living on a nice multi-acre lot and three bedroom house, rather than in a studio apartment. There's nothing objectively bad about rural or city in and of itself, but it's nice that people have that choice. Also, most factory work these days is skilled labor, it requires decent education and health care to function. It's impossible to make cheap junk in US factories and turn a profit, the only manufacturing that can work in America is high end, quality manufacturing, which requires quality employees.
    1
  7610.  @danielzhang1916  You didn't say "working online," but that doesn't mean that it's not a fact. "Working online" is the biggest growth sector right now, and for the forseeable future. People do not move to an area because "it has jobs," they move there because its a nice place to LIVE. If you're building for manufacturing then you're building for the 19th Century, not the 21st.
    1
  7611.  @disalazarg  When people move from Canada to the US, they don't move to red states. Also, plenty of people are moving to Canada as well, it's a pretty open back and forth. Immigration is up there. "Better economic opportunities" is mostly an outdated term, and will become more and more so over time. This is a relatively recent change, so plenty of people haven't yet realized this in their personal lives, but the fact remains. I'm not saying that it's a terrible thing to find job opportunities in the local community, it's just not the most important thing. When you build a thriving local community, one with the services that draw in people from all over the country for a better standard of living, then local businesses will grow organically to service these people. It's not so simple as luring in some big company to drop a factory in town anymore.
    1
  7612.  @disalazarg  You have apparently been absorbing a lot of fanciful sources. I'm sure that's fun for you, but it's led you pretty far astray from reality. Also, Canada will likely do pretty well over the next 40 years, because the "habitable zone" will shift more and more northward, and previously inhospitable parts of the country will become equivalent to the US midwest.
    1
  7613. Can't fight stupid.
    1
  7614. What are you talking about? This is "working the problem."
    1
  7615. There are many different problems in the world to keep track of, all at once. It's never just one thing. Also, it's more cow burps that are an issue.
    1
  7616. That question was already asked and answered years ago. The prosecutor in question was a corrupt Russian agent, and the Obama White house wanted him to be removed to get Ukraine back on track as a free and fair democratic country. Joe was just following orders when he did so.
    1
  7617. Why do you believe that? Have you seen him at town halls, interacting with crowds? Joe Biden always has a complete grasp of where he is and what he is doing. He just has a stutter that he's lived with his entire life, which causes him to stumble on his words from time to time. There is no shame in that. At least he doesn't have dementia like Trump.
    1
  7618. He also said that anyone who dies in war is a sucker, and that the Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor, because the people who receive the latter are usually "messed up."
    1
  7619.  @hazenknoch2849  So you're sitting this election out?
    1
  7620. We don't have an open border. The people who were killed by the Mexican cartel CROSSED that border. What sort of idiot is this? What sorts of idiots would elect him?
    1
  7621. @ Ok, if that helps you deal with the world around you, then I guess it doesn't hurt anything. Just don't let it cause you to make irrational decisions.
    1
  7622. Man, they really just need to have some sort of treaty summit or something. "No more chaos on either side."
    1
  7623. You do realize that anyone who may or may not have killed Jesus already died thousands of years ago, right? Right?
    1
  7624. The US also has a much higher percentage of murder than in any other fist world nation. I'm sure the two have nothing to do with each other. . .
    1
  7625. He was going to cut military aid before that, since his Daddy told him to.
    1
  7626.  @larrymelear5446  Do you disagree?
    1
  7627.  @anselanokayan9978  I don't have one, I was talking about Trump's.
    1
  7628. @ Putin's not that kind of Daddy to Trump.
    1
  7629.  @Claire_H  I think it would be a bad idea to try and confiscate guns door to door, Amercian gun owners have shown themselves to be too irresponsible to be trusted to do so in a peaceful manner. I think if they ever did do a more comprehensive gun ban, it should just make it illegal to possess, buy, sell, or trade guns, so that no new guns enter the market or legally change hands. If people who already have guns want to keep them illegally, then nobody would be coming for them over that alone, but if they got caught up in some other legal problems and a gun was found then they would get into a lot more trouble for it.
    1
  7630.  @theresagomez2605  Yeah, they're the only ones that need them.
    1
  7631.  Truth Teller  We have background checks in some places, but there are loopholes that allow skipping the process in certain cases.
    1
  7632.  Truth Teller  What would that accomplish? That happened six years ago. Let it go.
    1
  7633. The problem is not with the election system, the problem is with children in grown-up suits running for elections and then not being able to accept losing them. No "system" can fix that.
    1
  7634. "How can we support and defend the Constitution of the United States without offending Dear Leader?" You cannot do both. The United States is under attack from the sitting President. Choose which one you care about more.
    1
  7635.  Raizen21S  None of what you said makes any sense in the real world. Do your research.
    1
  7636.  Raizen21S  No, they are not. They are a rational response to a national crisis, America locked down during previous pandemics, and it was responsible to lock down during this one. Countries that did have a national lockdown policy largely got over covid months ago.
    1
  7637.  Raizen21S  A lockdown doesn't suspend your constitutional rights. It is a public safety measure. A lockdown has nothing whatsoever to do with your first amendment rights, you're still entirely free to speak and express yourself as you see fit.
    1
  7638.  Raizen21S  https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/05/15/national-quarantine-constitutional-261165
    1
  7639.  Raizen21S  Who is telling law enforcement to arrest people for getting together with their families? Where is your source on that? And read the article I posted. Yes, A1 does say that you have the right to peacefully assemble, but there are still limitations on that right already. For example, you have the right to free speech, but not the right to shout "fire" in a crowded theater, or to make death threats, or to lie about people. The right to peacefully assemble can be restricted when those assemblies pose a threat to those attending or those around them. This has been upheld by the Supreme Court. And IF an authoritarian (like Trump) were to abuse this privilege to restrict our rights in a way that wasn't justified, then it would make absolute sense to rebel against that abuse of authority, but having a national lockdown DURING A PANDEMIC is no abuse of authority, it is the President using his authority as it was intended, to protect the national welfare.
    1
  7640.  Raizen21S  So far the only people arrested in Maryland were for throwing massive parties of 50+ people, which was reckless and stupid beyond belief, and well justified in arresting them for that. And this was after direct warnings to not do this again. I fully support my Governor in doing that. They are not arresting people for visiting their families. As for Trump, he's currently attempting to overthrow a lawful election because the results did not go his way. Previous to that, he sent police and teargas on peaceful protesters so that he could have an awkward photo op in front of a church that he does not attend. He has also repeatedly advocated for violence among his supporters, "beat that guy up" sort of talk, supported police violence, gave pardons to Blackwater child murderers and other violent thugs, and his administration repeatedly ignored lawful subpoenas from Congress for information or interviews with his staff.
    1
  7641. The thing that's annoying these days is that their headlines are always direct quotes of a lie, but they don't say in the headline that it's a lie, so it makes it seem like the headline is true.
    1
  7642. "Being an asshole is bad for diplomacy." Whoda guessed?
    1
  7643. I think he only blames Trump because Trump is actively preventing the border problems from being solved. To be fair, that does make the border crisis Trump's fault.
    1
  7644.  @Balnisgoofyaf  You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. Their balls are kept in his pocket. So it's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done. This has nothing to do with who is president at the time, if you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7645.  @Balnisgoofyaf  You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. Their balls are kept in his pocket. So it's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done.
    1
  7646. ​ @Balnisgoofyaf  You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. It's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done. This has nothing to do with who is president at the time, if you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7647. ​ @Balnisgoofyaf  You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. If you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7648. You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. Their balls are kept in his pocket. So it's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done. This has nothing to do with who is president at the time, if you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7649. ​ @Balnisgoofyaf  You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives.
    1
  7650. ​ @Balnisgoofyaf  Trump still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. Their balls are kept in his pocket. So it's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done. This has nothing to do with who is president at the time, if you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7651. @SarahLaidlaw-ns6co Trump still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives.
    1
  7652. ​ @SarahLaidlaw-ns6co You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has influence over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently heads the House of Representatives.
    1
  7653.  @Balnisgoofyaf  So it's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done. This has nothing to do with who is president at the time, if you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7654.  @Balnisgoofyaf  Fox News' word filters prevent me from telling you how wrong you are, but you know that already.
    1
  7655. You act like Trump has completely vanished or something. He still exists, he still has control over the Republican party, and the Republican party currently controls the House of Representatives. Their balls are kept in his pocket. So it's impossible for anything significant to change on the border if Donald Trump is telling his minions to refuse any progress on the border, which is what he has done. This has nothing to do with who is president at the time, if you want the border situation solved, the ONLY way to achieve that is to vote out these cowards and replace them with Democrats.
    1
  7656. Italy elects the fascist party. Fascist party is friendly with Putin. Shocked Mario face.
    1
  7657. The While house should just cut all federal handouts to red states. They would collapse within weeks.
    1
  7658. Biden crushed Phil in New Hampshire when he wasn't even on the ballot. Let's see how Trump does with that in the fall.
    1
  7659. Like an AR-15 or other high power, high rate of fire rifles.
    1
  7660.  @smilesnow4593  An AR-15 is both an assault weapon and a long gun. Plenty of definitions for things overlap, such as ice cream being both a "frozen food" and a "dessert." "Assault weapon" is a fairly broad term that refers to weapons used by military forces. Specific laws have more specific definitions as to which weapons do and do not quality, and there is no law that says "assault weapons are banned" and leaves it at that, they ban various specific features.
    1
  7661.  @smilesnow4593  Well, what did the Founders intend? What was the firing rate of an 1800 musket? Faster than that, I suppose.
    1
  7662. He has the votes of idiots everywhere.
    1
  7663.  26AccountsRemoved  Why is that trouble? They'll both still lose at the end.
    1
  7664.  26AccountsRemoved  "Lol," most popular?" What sort of Faux News are you soaking in? Gin? Trump is certainly most popular in the Republican party, but overall has lower approval ratings than Biden. RFK Jr. can't even get about 5% in polling, he ONLY appeals to crackpots and nutcases. Trump will lose because the American people are tired of his BS, and RFK Jr will lose because he's insane.
    1
  7665.  26AccountsRemoved  I answered your question. Can you not read?
    1
  7666.  26AccountsRemoved  Yes, I did. I don't know how much more I can dumb it down for you to understand, but if you were to explain what you're missing, I could give it a try.
    1
  7667.  26AccountsRemoved  Yeah, I think it's less that conservatives are too dumb to understand how the world works, but more like they are not mature enough to accept a real world that works in a way that they don't like. They're like those robots in Westworld, show them something they don't like and "it doesn't look like anything to me." But it's certainly possible that it's an intelligence thing too.
    1
  7668. Regularly, every year.
    1
  7669. "Red states are good for businesses." . . . until you exercise your free speech rights.
    1
  7670. I would think that from a pure mechanics perspective, you would want a sort of chainmail "mullet" attached to the back of that, since the weight of that would help to balance out the weight at the front and make it less front-heavy.
    1
  7671. IF you truly believe that Trump is a better decision maker than Joe Biden, then that is a crippling indictment of your own decision making.
    1
  7672. It's been a constant factor since Kevin's party took over.
    1
  7673. @oldmancigars1869 I meant the whole five months.
    1
  7674. That's what you get for being a wolf in a pack of sheep. Learn to "baaaa" like the rest of them.
    1
  7675.  @mattm402  And that's a misleading way to imply that 68% would prefer it to not be legal in most cases, which would also be untrue. The point is, avoid using statistics in a way that seems prejudicial. The accurate way to describe this topic is that the overwhelming majority of Americans believe that abortion should be legal at least up to the third trimester, and in extreme circumstances when past that point, right?
    1
  7676.  @mattm402  But the important thing to remember is that we only "went to there" in the imaginations of crazy people. In the real world, we stuck with "rare safe and legal," until last week, when we shifted to "the same amount, only more dangerous, expensive, and potentially illegal."
    1
  7677. Lol, Gaetz just had no idea how law enforcement works. :D "Why didn't you subpoena that guy in a completely different country, outside of US jurisdiction?" What a clown. 🤡
    1
  7678. There need to be international treaties, equivalent to the Geneva convention, that obligate dam builders to ensure that those downstream always get their fair share.
    1
  7679.  @ttemp2631  You can sometimes get countries to sign on to treaties in exchange for other things. Obviously China would not benefit from such a treaty directly, but if say a bunch of their trading partners said "sign on to this treaty or we cut back our trade with you," then it might be in their interests to do so. Most of the specific goals in international deals primarily benefit one side, you always need to figure out ways to make it worth the other side joining on.
    1
  7680.  @ttemp2631  You have to handle it in the right way, but there are plenty of cases where China has made trade concessions where it was put in their interests to do so. They don't take kindly to overt threats, but if you hand them a carrot and a stick, they know what to do with them.
    1
  7681.  @ttemp2631  This is my point. Declaring that "there is no way China would ever agree to this" is inaccurate, they would obviously be unlikely to agree if they got nothing out of it, but there are certainly benefits that they might value as much as the water rights they would be negotiating away. Keep in mind that in times of non-drought conditions this would amount to basically no problem at all, since it would only kick in once water levels dropped to a certain level of scarcity.
    1
  7682.  @ttemp2631  The way I see this, it should be a global thing, it should be a treaty that hundreds of countries all sign on to, to guarantee water rights around the world. It might be part of a larger package that include other rights that China would care about, or it could be a thing where various other countries nudge China into signing onto this because they get something completely unrelated they want. I could not tell you what that would be, I just know that every country has their levers, and people who follow china much closer than me know which would be best in this situation. I'm not saying that they could definitely get China on board, I just don't see how it would be impossible. They value their autonomy over the upper Mekong, but they also value a lot of other things, both things they have that could be taken, or things they don't have that they want, big and small, and there would be a deal to be made here. I just see water rights as a major issue coming into the back 3/4 of the Century, and it would be a really good thing to get everyone on the same page.
    1
  7683.  @ttemp2631  This is how international diplomacy has always worked. I'm not sure what you find so baffling about it. You get people to sign on to some agreement that is clearly against their own interests, because in return they get something that is in their interests. Someone just needs to make them the right offer. They clearly have not done this yet. Why are you arguing?
    1
  7684.  @ttemp2631  Yes, but nobody can GET their own interests if we accept that everyone is chasing their own interests, because EVERY interests that benefits one side also harms the other. If nobody would ever agree to a position that was not in their own interests, then nobody would ever agree to anything. So that's why you need to line things up on each side of the balance sheet so that they are good for both parties. I want an apple. The store does not want to give me an apple, because then they would have less apples! Why would they ever give me an apple? The store wants my money. I don't want to give them my money, I want to keep my money, why would I ever agree to just give a store MY money?! But. . . if I agree to give them some of my money, and they agree to give me their apple, then I would have an apple and they would have my money, and we would both be satisfied with that arrangement! So this is how all diplomacy works, "here is what I want, even knowing that you don't want to give me that thing, but what DO you want that I could give you so that you would agree to give me something that you don't want to?" China clearly would prefer not to give up sovereignty over the upper Mekong, no doubt. Nobody has yet made them an offer that they would accept yet, or they would have accepted it, no doubt. But there are clearly things that China wants, and if someone offered China one of those things in exchange, they might sign on. Just because it hasn't happened yet, doesn't mean it would never happen in the future. What are you not getting?
    1
  7685.  @ttemp2631  And my point was that this is the sort of issue where the international community should get together and bring in the offers that would work, not just for China, but for all the potential holdout countries. Ethiopia might be disadvantaged having to follow water rules, but there are plenty of other things they might want that they would exchange for that.
    1
  7686.  @jonathanwaters2624  To be fair, I'm sure there was a mass shooting in Memphis at some point in recent memory, there are mass shootings everywhere, all the time. Because of Republicans.
    1
  7687. Oh, stop being such a big baby. If you want to be treated with respect, then restore your citizens' voting rights.
    1
  7688.  @bryanb3352  People who would have voted under the old rules, but will not be able to vote under the new ones. You should read the bill. It makes it less accessible to vote in Georgia. That is the entire point of the bill. If they didn't want to reduce voter accessibility, they could have just. . . not done anything.
    1
  7689.  @bryanb3352  People who can't vote during business hours. People who are standing in line at a polling place and pass out because nobody was allowed to get them any water. People who want to do a mail-in ballot but don't have access to a photocopier. Again, if the point is not to prevent people from voting, then why pass the bill in the first place? Why not just leave things as they were?
    1
  7690.  @bryanb3352  If you believe that voting hours haven't changed, you need to re-read the bill. They have been restricted to business hours. And yes, it directly stops people from being given food or water while they wait. Absentee voting should DEFINITELy be allowed even if people are physically capable of going to the polls. Until the 2020 election this was a non-issue since the Civil War, and many states have had no-reason absentee voting, and even majority absentee voting. There is no reason not to. It was only an issue in the 2020 election because one of the candidates knew that his opponent's voters intended to vote absentee more than his own did, so he started whining about it. The bill does nothing to improve election integrity, there was never anything wrong with election integrity. It has never been legal to bribe people in line to vote, that has never been at issue.
    1
  7691. Florida always has to be first in jumping over that cliff. Headline should probably read "Florida Man: Florida To Become 'First State To Officially Recommend Against COVID-19 Vaccines For Healthy."
    1
  7692. That's awful. I'm glad you made it out.
    1
  7693. It seems to only be conservatives that want to defund law enforcement. I wonder why? . .
    1
  7694.  @HFFCANADA  I never implied that it wasn't, I was only pointing out that the separate powers are defined by the constitution, not at the direct whim of individuals.
    1
  7695. Passing gun control laws would make it harder for the shooter to get a gun, and therefore he would cause a lot less harm.
    1
  7696.  @marktwaine9344  If the shooter's father had bought the gun for himself, had it in their house, and the shooter had been able to take it from him, would that have been illegal under existing law?
    1
  7697.  @Barbara-ne6vc  Did this person ask you to leave, or was that just something you chose to do?
    1
  7698.  @3orion33  The stalls do have doors on them, you know. A woman's right to use the ladies room is more important than a woman's right to keep women they don't like out of the ladies room.
    1
  7699.  @ruthsaunders9507  They shouldn't, and they have no reason to.
    1
  7700. He's right, we need to be building toward the world in which nobody has job, but that's ok, because nobody needs them. I've been saying this for years already.
    1
  7701. Who told you to think that?
    1
  7702.  @jdingle8885  It was in response to an even odder statement to make, in a thread that did not involve Lebron James, so the question remains, "Who told you to think that?" Also, what do you believe they stood to gain by fooling you like that?
    1
  7703. The only states where Republicans picked up seats were the ones that DID have election rigging. In the fair elections, they lost, as it should be.
    1
  7704. Sure. The entire world contracted ALL their OWN economies, just because they hated the orange man THAT much. That is a theory that makes sense in a rational person's brain. . . oh, what has Faux News led us to?
    1
  7705. The voluntary part is that you're free to leave the country, not that you're free to take American resources without paying.
    1
  7706.  @PumpkinKingXXIII  I think you misunderstand what "voluntary" means. It does not mean, in this context, that you cannot be punished for failure to pay. The US law is that failure to pay taxes IS a crime, which they would also swear to under oath if asked.
    1
  7707.  @PumpkinKingXXIII  But that's not the context which applies here. It remains a fact that failure to pay your taxes is a crime, for which the government has the right to pursue you.
    1
  7708. That's not how anything works. If lawyers are allowed to lie without any consequences then it's impossible to have honest trials. "My client couldn't have done it, he was on the moon at the time, talking to Darth Vader."
    1
  7709.  @bestprice1776  Poor cons haven't realized yet why they should be crying too. But they will eventually. It just takes them longer.
    1
  7710.  @bestprice1776  Poor cons haven't realized yet why they should be crying. It'll take them longer to catch up.
    1
  7711.  @bestprice1776  Poor maga haven't realized yet why they should be crying. It'll take them longer to catch up.
    1
  7712.  @bestprice1776  Maga folks will catch up eventually.
    1
  7713.  @mrjth10000  Republicans are the ones that typically do fraud. It's projection.
    1
  7714.  @mrjth10000  Donald voters are most often the ones doing fraud.
    1
  7715.  @mrjth10000  The people who voted twice were voting for Trump.
    1
  7716.  @SoundofSilence492  Early voting is great, which is why Republicans try to reduce it as best they can get away with. The more methods are available, the better, because it allows accommodation of as many potential hurdles as possible.
    1
  7717.  @lakepal7912  I'm not arguing that there aren't plenty of methods. I'm arguing against efforts to reduce those methods.
    1
  7718.  @MoeDoe1  There are millions of Americans that don't have an accepted ID. There is no reason why they should need one.
    1
  7719.  @TommyVercetti-z2u  If someone's shift is during the middle of the day, then in many locations the polls either would not be open on either side of their shift, or there would not be time to travel there and vote before/after their shift, or, even if those worked out for one individual, if hundreds of people were forced into that choice at every polling location, then the lines would become unmanageably long. The more options are available, the better.
    1
  7720.  @kaischmidt8030  I don't think that's the case, but mail-in voting has been a thing since the Civil War.
    1
  7721.  @amg4897  And yet it's Republicans trying to prevent citizens from voting. . .
    1
  7722.  @thomasbell7033  Those are good options, so long as we still have them. Republicans are trying to reduce them.
    1
  7723.  @Lucinda_Jackson  Many of the states that do not have such rules are the troublemakers. Have you not seen cases in which the lines to vote can take hours?
    1
  7724.  @richardberwager6785  No, it's Republicans that cheet.
    1
  7725.  @MadRelique  No, he would not have gone away. Not one of his supporters would have shifted. They would still believe that the result was unfair, because it was not the one that they wanted. Voter ID would have done nothing there.
    1
  7726.  @Lucinda_Jackson  There are millions of American voters without a valid ID, and not everyone is in a position to get one, even if there are methods to obtain them for free. Perhaps they can't get to the location where they are offered, or they do not have the documentation they would need to provide to get one. Look into the matter.
    1
  7727.  @Thuggshaker  Yes, it must be rough, and yet it applies to tens of millions of Americans.
    1
  7728.  @Kaymorgan6969  In some cases, employers actively try to thwart their employees voting (if they do not agree with how they assume they will vote). Such employees are often scheduled specifically during election hours, while "desirable" employees get the day off. It can be hard to prove actual malice in such cases.
    1
  7729.  @Lucinda_Jackson  It would be nice if people would take you to the DMV, and in some places that might be an option, but in others, it is not. In many cases, it's easier to get to the polls than to the DMV, because there are dozens of polling places for every DMV office, and they are often more centrally located.
    1
  7730.  @TommyVercetti-z2u  The integrity of the election is not in doubt though. So the question is, why make it harder for people to vote?
    1
  7731.  @MoeDoe1  Just because everyone you know is a certain way, does not mean that the same is true of everyone. You can look into the specifics for yourself, but the fact remains that millions of American voters do not have the Id required to vote in their state. In most cases it just comes down to nothing else they do in their lives requiring such an ID. I doubt most people would have an ID if not for the requirement for driving, and many people do not drive.
    1
  7732.  @TommyVercetti-z2u  Just because you keep getting recommended such videos, does not mean that any of them actually happened. Be a better consumer of information than that. In reality, people voting like that are extremely few and always caught, because the systems are more efficient than you give them credit.
    1
  7733.  @MoeDoe1  Plenty of people don't have drivers licenses, and don't buy products which require an ID. Far more than vote illegally. You can say that IDs are needed all you like, that doesn't make it true. We already have election integrity without them.
    1
  7734.  @bdickinson6751  The founders disagree.
    1
  7735.  @MoeDoe1  But again, you not wanting to believe we have election integrity doesn't change the fact that we have it already. The facts don't care about your feelings. Asking for an ID to vote isn't asking much of people who already happen to have one, but it is asking too much of the millions of Americans who don't, and again, entirely unnecessary because it will not lead to even a 0.0001% change in illegal votes cast.
    1
  7736.  @MoeDoe1  The amount of actual fruad, if you added it all up and put it into a single election in a single state, wouldn't be enough to flip the results of a dog catcher election. It's not worth worrying about. Sadly, we have a whole generation of Republicans conditioned to believe to their deepest, blackest hearts that there is more than that, despite all evidence to the contrary, and there doesn't seem to be anything that can be done to fix that. This does not change the fact that it is not an actual problem, and that causing harm to "solve" it is only causing harm.
    1
  7737.  @Kaymorgan6969  I'm not making excuses for myself. I vote. I'm just saying, there are people out there who do not have that luxury. This is a fact. Republicans are trying to remove more and more existing options, and opposing any improvements to the system, further limiting the number of people who are allowed by them to vote.
    1
  7738.  @MoeDoe1  The amount of actual fruad, if you added it all up and put it into a single election in a single state, wouldn't be enough to flip the results of a dog catcher election. It's not worth worrying about. Sadly, we have a whole generation of people on one side conditioned to believe to their deepest, blackest hearts that there is more than that, despite all evidence to the contrary, and there doesn't seem to be anything that can be done to fix that. This does not change the fact that it is not an actual problem, and that causing harm to "solve" it is only causing harm.
    1
  7739. ​ @MoeDoe1  The amount of actual fruad, if you added it all up and put it into a single election in a single state, wouldn't be enough to flip the outcome of a dog catcher race. It's not worth worrying about. Sadly, we have a whole generation of people on one side conditioned to believe to their deepest, blackest hearts that there is more than that, despite all evidence to the contrary, and there doesn't seem to be anything that can be done to fix that. This does not change the fact that it is not an actual problem, and that causing inconvenience to "solve" it is only causing inconvenience.
    1
  7740.  @Kaymorgan6969  Around twenty million voters do not have a valid voter ID for their state. If even 1% of those people ended up not voting as a result of voter ID laws, that would be a bigger change in the election results than ALL the cases you're talking about combined. That is what needs to be stopped, not "IDless voting."
    1
  7741.  @Kaymorgan6969  The point is that there is not enough fraud to justify even slightly inconveniencing anyone to "prevent it." Plenty of places do not have voter ID, and have statistically insignificant amounts of fraud, so everyone should agree that voter is not necessary.
    1
  7742.  @MoeDoe1  The amount of actual fruad, if you added it all up and put it into a single election in a single state, wouldn't be enough to flip the results of a dog catcher election. It's not worth worrying about. Sadly, we have a whole generation of Republicans conditioned to believe to their deepest, blackest hearts that there is more than that, despite all evidence to the contrary, and there doesn't seem to be anything that can be done to fix that. This does not change the fact that it is not an actual problem, and that causing harm to "solve" it is only causing harm.
    1
  7743.  @bkh5746  No you don't, it depends on the state.
    1
  7744.  @mikeywiser7707  Unless, you know, you need money to live or something.
    1
  7745.  @mikeywiser7707  That's easy to say for someone who doesn't need their job to live.
    1
  7746.  @mikeywiser7707  Or not.
    1
  7747. It wouldn't help.
    1
  7748.  @opossumsrawesome6860  The facts don't care about your feelings. It would not help.
    1
  7749.  @darrenc8455  Well, it's true, she can only make it happen when she has the power. She doesn't have the power right now.
    1
  7750.  @darrenc8455  I would say "stop talking about yourself," but that would be a childish remark. Instead, I'll just urge you to be better than you have been.
    1
  7751.  @outofthetrash5925  "Brandon" could not do it either. All the President has the power to do is sign legislation that reaches his desk. If Mike Johnson gets the bill through the House, and if it gets through the Senate, then the President can sign it. If Mike Johnson won't do it, then maybe Speaker Jeffries will.
    1
  7752.  @outofthetrash5925  Well, we'll see. We can sure;y agree that of the two of them, she's more likely to get ti done than he is.
    1
  7753.  @monica62888  When did this "vote" take place? Tips were always taxable.
    1
  7754.  @PettyCrow-n9c  So you believe that if she called Mike Johnson, the guy who couldn't even get the BORDER BILL through the House, that he would drop everything to help a Democratic candidate's agenda go through? How naive you are. . .
    1
  7755.  @PettyCrow-n9c  Do you REALLY think that Kamala could just call up Mike Johnson and he would go "yes ma'am!" the bill will be on the House floor immediately ma'am!"
    1
  7756.  @Warrior99980  That's not really how being a vice President works. She's played a role in all sorts of issues, and I'm sure they'll be talking about that at the DNC, but it's really more of an "advisory" role, so they can't really do much directly. they have no actual power.
    1
  7757.  @blksbth1 "They" don't do it. That's why you vote for "them" instead.
    1
  7758.  @blksbth1  Of the cases you listed above, which of those involved the peaceful transfer of power between one administration and the next? Forgive me if I am misremembering this, but so far as I know, none of those cases involved such a thing. I feel like you're picking at examples that have some minor surface similarity to the actions of the insurrectionists, but with none of the actual context that made their actions significant. You do understand that there was a very serious and plausible attempt to keep the sitting president in place long after inauguration day had come and gone, don't you? You understand that this was FAR more serious than any of your examples? Apple and oranges?
    1
  7759.  @blksbth1 Of the cases you listed above, which of those involved the peaceful transfer of power between one administration and the next? Forgive me if I am misremembering this, but so far as I know, none of those cases involved such a thing. I feel like you're picking at examples that have some minor surface similarity to the actions of the right, but with none of the actual context that made their actions significant. You do understand that there was a very serious and plausible attempt to keep the sitting president in place long after inauguration day had come and gone, don't you? You understand that this was FAR more serious than any of your examples? Apple and oranges?
    1
  7760.  @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.
    1
  7761.  @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.
    1
  7762.  @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.
    1
  7763.  @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.
    1
  7764.  @blksbth1  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.
    1
  7765.  @blksbth1  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 part of that act, even if they were not aware of the complete plan at the time.
    1
  7766.  @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.
    1
  7767.  @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.
    1
  7768.  @Freeeeeeeedoooooooom  Policy decisions, mostly. You can look up the Presidential historians that Biden cited if you want a more detailed breakdown.
    1
  7769.  @Freeeeeeeedoooooooom  The presidential scholars came up with a pretty good list, I wouldn't want to step on their toes.
    1
  7770.  @FlameBlue9016  The pandemic happened during the Trump years. You're misremembering.
    1
  7771.  @aprileskofski769  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  7772.  @kaylacarpenter272  Why?
    1
  7773.  @logoutandrew4569  Things were worse under the first term of Roosevelt than they had been before the 1929 stock crash. That does not mean that it was because Roosevelt was doing a bad job. Biden has put us on the path to grow out of the pandemic. Without that, things would feel MUCH worse for years to come.
    1
  7774.  @seancollins9745  Not according to reality though. Sure, if all you watch is Faux News, you'll think everything is awful, but in reality, everything is on an upswing right now.
    1
  7775. It's not plural, it's only Putin.
    1
  7776. It could be both, but they have to call it a shooting until more direct information about motives comes out.
    1
  7777. Probably due to MAGA/Putin supports in the House.
    1
  7778. Why do Republicans seem to think that indicting people from crimes they did is "wrong," while at the same time there is now an entire House committee built around investigating "crimes" that are entirely made up?
    1
  7779. It's not a realignment, she was always like this. She was just trying to skim Democratic votes while she did it.
    1
  7780. The Washington Examiner is not a valid news source.
    1
  7781.  I'llJustMakeA NewAccount  Exactly! This is exactly what Trump does, he paints various enemies as "big bad wolves" and the sheep just flock to him.
    1
  7782.  @robertjustman1817  I'm not sure you understand how viruses work. "regular covid" is not "dissipating," it's still there and still just as much of a threat to people who haven't gotten vaccinated, it's just that this newer variant is more contagious, so it's survival of the fittest, it spreads faster and infects people before "regular covid" can reach them, so it spreads through the community faster.
    1
  7783.  @tsvetan2137  The point of gain of function research is to find CURES for diseases that are LIKELY to transmit to humans naturally in the near future, as covid-19 did. Without gain of function research, we would have been less prepared when covid-19 did arise. There is nothing sinister about gain of function research when it is done for virology purposes.
    1
  7784.  @savannah505  They have not lied about numbers, and have not silenced any doctors or scientists, although they have pointed out when doctors or scientists try to lie to the public, which is what we should want from them.
    1
  7785.  @britlynn3943  If you believe that he is somehow a bad guy, then you need to do more research, and not on conspiracy theorist websites.
    1
  7786.  @britlynn3943  I can only know that your research has been insufficient if it has led you to the conclusions you have reached. Keep trying until you come to more accurate ones. Fauci is honest. The position he takes does change over time, but it does so in response to NEW EVIDENCE. If a person looks outside and says "We won't need an umbrella today," because there is not a cloud in the sky, and then a few hours later looks out and says "I guess we should get an umbrella today," because the sky is now dark and cloudy, that is not him "lying" in either of those two cases, it's just him responding to new information. I've looked into all the claims of "Fauci lying," and at no point do I see any evidence that he believed differently than he said at the time, or that he should have known better than he did at the time. The positions he took were the responsible guidance based on the available evidence.
    1
  7787. Businesses have been growing anyway though.
    1
  7788. It's not a law, since it doesn't have the votes to pass. It's just a wish list intended to distract stupid people.
    1
  7789. The headline is misleading. He didn't create any problems at the border. Decades of Republican refusal to pass immigration reform caused this. They prefer to run on the chaos because their voters live in fear.
    1
  7790. So what would your alternative be? Only so many people can fit into that room, there is only time for so many questions to be asked. If your argument is that the people in that room should not be reporters that work for established journalism outfits, then how would people be chosen? Picked randomly from the general population? Line up outside all week just to be first in line? What method do you think would actually produce better results than journalists picked by free market capitalism?
    1
  7791. Biden only has to be better than the competition, which he obviously is. Don't compare him to the Allmighty, compare him to the alternative. Obama's term limited.
    1
  7792. They probably can't be prosecuted, since the administration dismantled the whistleblower channels, and they would have the legal right to blow the whistle in cases like this.
    1
  7793. @dkrawk8309 Check the news. You'll be embarrassed.
    1
  7794. That would go against the UCMJ.
    1
  7795. The problem is that lately there have been massive back-ups at ports of entry due to decades of inadequate resources. This makes it an impractical option, so migrants are trying to get in any way they can. You're right though that we should be massively increasing the number of migrants we process at the legal ports of entry each day, so that we can get through the backlogs.
    1
  7796.  @marksprague1280  Well, tow problems with that argument. First, we are more than capable of absorbing all those mouths to feed, even if they were "useless." We could take in ten times as many migrants as currently attempt to enter, and we would still be fine. Second, they aren't "useless," far from it. Immigrants typically produce more economic value than people born in this country. Each one is a net positive to the US economy, and therefore SAVES you tax dollars. The only way that they could be harmful is if we do not process them in a timely manner, preventing them from working legally, which is why we need to invest more into border courts.
    1
  7797. Thoughts and prayers and gun control to prevent the next one.
    1
  7798.  @opossumsrawesome6860  It wasn't a lack of guns that caused those harms, it was "make Russia great again."
    1
  7799. A 200% tariff leads to 200% prices? How does that work? Simple Arithmetic?!
    1
  7800. He really does need to put effort into "what's next," figuring out what the country would become after his death. Otherwise it would just be like colonial Africa, where everything was fine until the colonial governments left, but then the state would completely implode because there were no traditions of governance that could hold it all together.
    1
  7801. Of course there would be, because the people who didn't vote for him are fricking lunatics. Did you somehow miss the news last week when they invaded the Capitol Building?
    1
  7802. Corporate interests are getting ready for the post-labor economy. If they win, then they will have no reason to give anyone any money and can live in luxury without any of us. They have to lose for anyone else to live.
    1
  7803. Better to have liberals jumping the gun than conservatives jumping to guns.
    1
  7804.  @Timewave-Zer0  And then liberals corrected themselves when new information came to light. What's conservatives' excuse?
    1
  7805. It is sharia law, this is what sharia law means.
    1
  7806. He never even read the ones he got while President, and post-president the only use he could have for them is selling the intel off to Russia.
    1
  7807. They already do that. This has nothing to do with that.
    1
  7808. A lot more CO2 enters the atmosphere than refrigerants though, so in practice, the CO2 is the larger concern.
    1
  7809.  @BROU-bb2uc  What's your point? It would take every square foot of this Earth covered in trees to eat up the CO2 we've added over the last century, and that process would take decades if we planted every one of those trees today. If we did that, where would the people live?
    1
  7810.  @BROU-bb2uc  Look it up.
    1
  7811.  @BROU-bb2uc  Do the math.
    1
  7812. Sorry, that was rude of me. You can't do math. I'll do it for you. It would take at minimum 31 trees, grown to maturity, to offset one ton of CO2. Since the industrial revolution, we have put around 2.3 Trillion tons of CO2 into the air. So that would mean it would take at least 71.3 trillion trees, grown to maturity, to offset the CO2 we've produced so far, not even counting future emissions. That would be 183 Amazon Rainforests worth of trees. It would take 1.1 trillion trees just to offset last year's CO2. That would be around three new Amazons planted from scratch.
    1
  7813.  @markwilson4374  The Zogby poll was done for the Kennedy campaign, it shouldn't be a shock to anyone that it says what he wanted to hear. Even it did not say that more people wanted Kennedy than Biden.
    1
  7814.  @RJDebeau  He got the poll he paid for. Even if didn't show him getting any significant amount of the vote in a three way race, only if Biden dropped out.
    1
  7815.  @RJDebeau  He got the answers he paid for.
    1
  7816.  @mca_a1131  I prefer to avoid echo chambers.
    1
  7817. But Trump is PROMISING to politically persecute and abuse power in our justice system if elected. Why would you think he would improve anything when he promises to make it much, much worse?
    1
  7818. As she should.
    1
  7819. Yeah, unfortunately, since the Bidens haven't actually committed any crimes, there is nothing they really can do, other than make baseless political attacks, so that's all they have been doing. Now if the Bidens were only more like the Trump family, there would be plenty of things to indict them on.
    1
  7820. Why is Dead Philips being covered? He's more of a joke candidate than Ramaswamy.
    1
  7821. Jayapal is an anchor on the party. I mean, she's better than most of the Republican party, but that's a very low bar. Her constituents can be much better than this.
    1
  7822. It's because the so-called "whistleblowers" were politically biased actors that obstructed investigations into Jan 6th, took money from Donald Trump's bagman, and went on Russian state TV to deliver propaganda. these would be legitimate concerns to any patriotic American. You would be better off asking what Jim Jordan's motivations were for inviting them to testify. Reeks of evil.
    1
  7823.  @AN-nt2bz  The Durham report was pure political fan fiction by a Trump report. There is nothing "substantial" in it. If Durham had actually found anything, there would have been indictments. He found nothing.
    1
  7824.  @danielaustin2766  There is no job in America that you are not allowed to quit. If they don't want to work for the FBI, they are free to quit at any time.
    1
  7825. Well, that's exactly WHY it is a bad idea to require teachers to tell their parents. Thanks for providing the excellent example!
    1
  7826.  @jht3fougifh393  It has nothing to do with "believing an ideology," it's about acting in the best interests of the children. Some parents "have the ideology" that it's ok to marry their children off at 9 or less. That does not mean that we should just shrug and say "well, it's their kids, they own them." Also, just a point of fact, being trans is not a mental health issue, it's just a state of being. It's not in the DSM. Their are some conditions in the DSM related to trans people, but only if they are facing serious distress as a consequence of it, which is only ever made worse by parents that do not support them.
    1
  7827.  @edwardmitchellrealty4327  That may be your belief, but it is irrelevant, because it is not true. If you want to guide your own life by that belief, then that is your business, but you have no right to impose that onto anyone else. It's also VERY important for you to recognize that the increased risk of self harm does NOT and has NEVER come from a child accepting their trans identity, it comes from them being conflicted about it and feeling rejected because of it. If a child is trans, and you try to bully them into being "normal" instead, that will NEVER reduce their risk of self harm, it only makes it much, much higher. A trans child who has even one supportive parent is 40% less likely to harm themselves. And yes, gender dysphoria is a condition in the DSM, but not all trans people have gender dysphoria. The "dysphoria" aspect is that they are troubled by their trans identity, that it is causing them stress. If they reach a point of acceptance of their identity and are happy with who they are, then they no longer have gender dysphoria, even if they remain trans. What "changed" was more research into the topic leading to better understanding of it. At one point, medical science thought that leeches were good treatments, that does not mean you can point to outdated medical guides and go "see! They get it!"
    1
  7828. That would be unnecessary additional langauage. If they intended it to be non-optional, then they would have said "The Senate must try all Impeachments." The senate has the power to try impeachments. They choose whether to exercise it.
    1
  7829.  @gojobuddy  For good reason.
    1
  7830.  @willcox4561  If you had, you would know why you are wrong.
    1
  7831.  @hahmed1178  Why do you believe that it's "clearly a bioweapon?"
    1
  7832.  @GoGo-cr4mo  I don't think that idiots should need to be bribed into protecting themselves and their neighbors.
    1
  7833. The contents of the bill are entirely public domain. If you want to see or hear it, then just read it.
    1
  7834. TL;DR, sanctions don't work because China and Russia do not have a problem supporting criminals when everyone else won't. I believe that sanctions need to have a cascading impact to them. If we decide to sanction Russian Oligarchs, for example, then we not only sanction them, but we sanction any company that does any business with them, and any that do business with those businesses, etc. There should be no way to effectively funnel support to a sanctioned entity without the entire chain being outside the global market.
    1
  7835.  @Icehater  The problem is, Ukraine cares about human lives.
    1
  7836.  @davidking4779  Don't worry, we voted out Trump, so there's no chance of them taking away the vote nationwide. There are a lot fo states at risk though, which is why it's important to pass the For the People act to prevent that.
    1
  7837.  @davidking4779  No, those people already don't vote, so they are a non-issue. The new Republican bills are designed to take the votes away from people in Democratic-leaning areas so that Republicans can win elections even if a minority of Americans agree with them. The For the People act is meant to prevent that.
    1
  7838.  @davidking4779  Unless they have difficult acquiring that ID. More importantly, NOT requiring voter ID is not allowing any significant amount of people to vote illegally, so why bother with it? I mean, if having voter ID prevents even 100 legal voters from voting, but only prevents 2-3 illegal voters from voting, then do you think that was worth doing? But the voter ID portion is not the problem with the new Republican voter suppression laws anyway.
    1
  7839.  @davidking4779  The Republican laws are not about suppressing illegal voting, they are about suppressing legal voting, because in the last election Americans legally voted to remove the Republican presidential candidate and they did not like that. The new rules are designed to reduce voting in traditionally Democratic parts of states, and to allow Republican officials in states to overturn election results that displease them. Illegal voting is not a problem in the US, it never has been. The conservative Heritage Foundation tracks voter fraud in the US and over the past twenty years had been able to find almost none, certainly not enough to change the results of any election. There will always be some people who want to commit crimes, but at a certain point, the attempts to prevent a crime cause more harm than the crime itself. Like you could prevent theft by preemptively jailing ALL citizens, but would that be worth it? As I said, if there is practically no voter fraud already, would reducing that to zero be worth it if it means that ten or a hundred or a thousand times as many perfectly legal voters find themselves unable to exercise that right due to the new restrictions on how and when they are able to do so?
    1
  7840. Lol, "if we were ever attacked, I don't think NATO would be there, " the US is the ONLY country that NATO has responded to an article 5 obligation for! How dumb does he have to be to not know that? How dumb does he expect his minions to be that they would not know that?! As for rhe the border, Biden is working to fix it, but he needs congressional action to do so. Trump would prefer the border to stay in chaos until the election, because he cares more about power than he does about the American people.
    1
  7841.  @KimKincaid-mc9ht  Trump is not in jail awaiting sentencing. Even if a suspect is out on bail, they still have to show up in court every day for the trial, if that's the standard in that jurisdiction.
    1
  7842. What's the relevance of that?
    1
  7843.  @EugeneLorey  Ok, so no relevance.
    1
  7844.  @EugeneLorey  I'm sorry to hear that. Putin should feed you better. Maybe switch sides?
    1
  7845.  @EugeneLorey  I'm sorry to hear that Putin does not keep you fed. You should probably switch sides.
    1
  7846.  @EugeneLorey  I think you're stuck on a loop. Tell the operator to reboot.
    1
  7847.  @jeremyhall2727  There's more nuance than that. The Democrats support Israel's right to exist in peace, and supports defensive tools to allow them to defend themselves against attack, but also tries to calm down their more aggressive efforts as best they can. The Republicans just want to bring on the Apocalypse.
    1
  7848.  @SeaJay_Oceans  Probably the same reason as "build the wall" existed.
    1
  7849. You know how sometimes you ask yourself "is this one a bit too dark?" No? You don't do that? Maybe consider it. . .
    1
  7850.  @CallMeByMyMatingName  You should look up the definitions for the words that confuse you. I'll leave you this hint, in the English language, words often have multiple meanings, and native English speakers are adept at figuring out which meaning is intended from the context.
    1
  7851. It would depend on the practical harm caused by denying string theory. If it actually caused harm to people, maybe.
    1
  7852. They should have let Russia dissolve into smaller states. Why not. It's not like being one huge state is working out for them.
    1
  7853.  @Maverickgouda  Well, I mean my theory is that if the fraking method is an efficient energy producer, then in theory you could frak it using foodsafe chemicals, create the "hot rock" conditions, and then it's just a matter of pumping salt water in and collecting clean steam at the top, letting that steam condense naturally into water. You would need to do this in an area near sea water, obviously, but unless I'm missing something, if you can put all those pieces into place then the desalinated water would become "free," and then the energy produced by the steam turbines would also be "free," outside of maintenance and minor efficiency costs. I mean, it would be "free energy and water" relative to other energy and water production methods, at least. :D Now maybe fraking wouldn't even be necessary, so long as they could find a place to dump the salt water that would get it to boil, and in which the resulting steam would not carry any unusable byproducts.
    1
  7854. "Found out," as the Faux News often does, and then it turns out, no, he wasn't any sort of Democrat and he voted for Trump.
    1
  7855.  @davidanalyst671  No, I'm pretty sure he was talking about the Olympics.
    1
  7856. It used to mean something either way, but Republicans are determined to debase the process, just as they have about every part of the Constitution.
    1
  7857.  @fallenkeith5885  Well, Republicans do, because they want to dilute the crimes of their Dear Leader, and make them seem like "just what anyone would do," rather than a unique blemish on American history.
    1
  7858.  @cannonfodder4812  There were several crimes mentioned in Trump's impeachments. Were you not paying attention?
    1
  7859.  @cassthompson3386  Can you explain why you believe my responses are "confused?"
    1
  7860. Strangely, they do love each other in the Fate universe. It's a massively weird version of the story, but while she did casually cheat on him, she did love him and when Hephaestus died in some war, and it caused her to never love again. I guess you could consider it an "open marriage."
    1
  7861.  @mjt1517  What they've "brought forward so far" is literally nothing. If they had anything that actually existed, they would have presented it in a court of law. Instead all they have is made up fairy tales that they know better than to present in court because it would open them up to perjury charges.
    1
  7862.  Raizen21S  Yes, Trump's "evidence" mostly comes from the ass.
    1
  7863.  @Amboyblue  There is no evidence, there is only rumors of evidence. If Trump had any actual evidence he would have presented it in any one of the dozens of lawsuits his campaign filed and lost for lack of any evidence. Claiming that something happened is not evidence that something happened.
    1
  7864.  Raizen21S  The SCOTUS case did not take the case due to standing. There were numerous other cases where the Trump lawyers were ASKED by the judges to present evidence, and yet they could provide none. There is NO evidence, there is only rumors of evidence.
    1
  7865.  @merkkenem  You sound like a shill. The lack of evidence is obvious if you're not a brainwashed FSB member. We already came for your ass in November, we're done now.
    1
  7866. Racism, mostly,. like in your post.
    1
  7867. Putin is uninterested in negotiating. This is not a "US isn't doing enough" problem, it is a "Putin wants to take Ukraine" problem.
    1
  7868. Any solution that allows Putin any concessions is only putting us on that path to WW3.
    1
  7869.  @shelleyshelton33  Puppet to whom?
    1
  7870. Man, this comment sure didn't age well after the 2020 election. But you were right, after leaving office all his various crimes came to light and are now under indictment.
    1
  7871.  @sharischultz24  The impeachments already concluded years ago. The Republicans refused to convict for political reasons.
    1
  7872.  @YankeeDoodle2  Sexual assault.
    1
  7873. If things went as the founding fathers intended, then Trump would have been impeached at least twice now, and be sitting in jail for his role in an insurrection attempt.
    1
  7874. Lol the one Trump endorsed lost! What a loser!
    1
  7875.  @drzaius1121  You seem to be posting a few examples of migrants that have committed crimes in the US. A handful of migrants that have committed crimes, out of millions who have crossed, those are pretty great numbers. It seems that these migrants are MUCH less likely to cause crimes than those who are already in the country. We should get more of them.
    1
  7876. Lol, Republicans will NEVER care about the American people as much as they do "owning the libs." They are entirely a grievance-based party, not a governing party.
    1
  7877.  @US_HORIZON_WATCH.1143.8  The border is more secure today than it ever has been, and Biden did not intend to build any more border wall, but if Federal law requires it, then it would be breaking the law not to. Someone telling you what they intend to do, and then having to do something different due to circumstances changing is not "lying." It is only lying if they say something that they know to not be true at the time they say it, like most of what Donald J Trump has said over the years.
    1
  7878.  @rolandsmith4394  Again, nobody can point out anything that he lied to congress about. "Telling them truths they don't want to hear" is not "lying."
    1
  7879.  @glockdude5472  It's only sensible to elect a Democratic glass of water over a Republican. It would be less likely to cause ham. Sad that the Republicans have so bankrupted their party, but nonetheless true.
    1
  7880. This is probably true. This is exactly what the people sent to hell would see when they look around, because those people hate Democrats so much and having to deal with these imagined Democrats is the best way to torture them. Luckily, the Democrats'd never find a Republican in Heaven, so it's not a problem.
    1
  7881. "How dare you ask relevant questions about us breaking the law?!" How could anyone working for Trump accuse anyone of "mental impairment" with a straight face?
    1
  7882. I remember having both one of those antique style "indoor" lamps, and a more modern camping lantern that we used to use if the power went out, but for the last decade or so we've had much more effective LED lanterns.
    1
  7883.  @PanduPoluan  True enough.
    1
  7884. Exactly, like Joe Biden. Definitely not Trump or DeSantis.
    1
  7885. I used to have a really lame one of those, but it was always a pain in the ass. Now I either just shovel what driveway I need, or I have a sort of plug-in "snow weed wacker" thing that is like a smaller version of one of those at the end of a stick. It works pretty well at breaking stuff up, but it only shoots forward, so you need to plan your moves.
    1
  7886. Wow, I have to admit to being tricked by the premise on this one, but I get the point now. It does make me interested in seeing a stationary plane take off using headwinds though. It would probably be impractical at full scale, but I bet it could be done in a wind tunnel with a small model plane. Just have it be sitting there with no wheels, and then when the wind tunnel speed meets its takeoff speed, it should lift. I guess this would just be a kite though, now that I mention it. :D
    1
  7887. Yes. Doing so makes him look good to his clients so that they give him more money.
    1
  7888.  @VangelisFilms  But again, "PER Hunter." There's no evidence whatsoever of Joe biden getting ANY money from his son. If at any point his son said something like "A million for me, and a million for my dad," well guess what? Hunter made two million that day. Good thing nobody ever voted for him.
    1
  7889.  @wysetech2000  Of who?
    1
  7890.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  He has zero allies, he only has enemies, servants, and masters.
    1
  7891.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  Nope, 35-40%. The rest oppose him. Same as always. A bunch of random yahoos does not help your case.
    1
  7892.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  A handful of black people are "on your team," but their votes don't count more than the 99.99% of black people who are not.
    1
  7893.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  A handful of randos is not "the entire community."
    1
  7894.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  Those are both red states. What relevance would they have to anything? You understand that the actual election hasn't started yet, right?
    1
  7895.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  You realize that the actual election hasn't started yet, right?
    1
  7896.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  No, some of the polls favor him, particularly exit polls for Republican primaries, but in general he's losing.
    1
  7897.  @Noconstitutionfordemocrats1  Who cares if anyone likes Haley? She's irrelevant.
    1
  7898.  @webporta-1  Exactly. If we ignore Russia now, then we'll have to plan another D-Day in a few years. You can't just ignore the rest of the world.
    1
  7899.  @marclehman1032  I'll not.
    1
  7900.  @annscott900  That was Neville Chamberlain's philosophy, at least. . .
    1
  7901.  @NateDogg2888 That really doesn't work out, due to politics. It's hard to get a majority to agree on any one topic, which is why you need to bundle several things together, so that everyone gets something that they want out of it.
    1
  7902.  @annscott900  The war in Ukraine has significant bearing on America, it's just more complex than some people are capable of understanding. This is about playing chess, while some people can only think in checkers. If you are still confused, you might want to research the book "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."
    1
  7903. If the claims turned out to be true, then that would make him look even worse. This only makes sense if the claims are not true.
    1
  7904. The UN broken when Russia and China got a vote on the Security Council, and when China started to buy out the votes of the global south to support their interests in the General Assembly. The fact that the United States does not get 50 votes, and yet Africa gets 54, unbalances the entire system.
    1
  7905. That's because Abbot's shenanigans have caused this to be the first time that the border isn't secure. Until now, anyone who's attempted to cross it have been caught and processed, but who knows what's going on under Abbott.
    1
  7906. The question itself was something completely unrelated to anything of value.
    1
  7907.  @gobblesnot  It depends entirely on their credibility. The only accusations against Biden have either lacked credibility (like Tara Reade), or were so minor as to be insignificant, like patting someone on the head or shoulder. There is nothing of substance to chase down.
    1
  7908. Someone who supports a white supremacist nationalist ideology. I mean, you can just look this up.
    1
  7909.  @christianlibertarian5488  While I agree that undue influence is not exclusive to capitalism, capitalism is extremely capable at it, and it is capitalism that is the most significant threat if left unchecked, since capitalism itself only cares about profit to the exclusion of all else. And I strongly disagree that governments have no role to play in distributing resources equitably. They exist to enforce the conditions that a society agrees should be enforced. If that means no wealth redistribution, then that's fine, but in many cases it is considered a good thing to take more from those who can afford to do so, and to provide more to those without the resources they need to survive. The rules of a society need to adapt to the conditions on the field, to ensure that by the end of the game, everyone comes out of it ok.
    1
  7910.  @CaptainBuggyTheClown  Now we just need that in Padme meme form.
    1
  7911.  @The_Kiosk  Ok, have fun with that. And "the evidence has been shown," wherever such evidence existed. There is no evidence that has not had its day in court. Most things that are pointed to as "evidence" in the faux news are things that are not actually true, and would perjure the lawyer if he tried to offer it in court, which is why lawyers do not actually do that. They could have, they chose not to, so as to avoid jail time. Your job is to convince Americans that actual Americans are as crazy as to believe in these nonsense election theories, which makes them sad to believe that their neighbors could be so dumb. I don't buy it. Putin can go to hell.
    1
  7912.  @The_Kiosk  I was speaking more broadly of the whole "election denialism" movement. Lake's "evidence" will also had its day in court, if her attorneys are willing to produce it under penalty of perjury. Really it just comes down to a bunch of Republicans demanding their participation trophies because the people did not want them. The Russian bots support the election deniers, because they want Americans to be as broken as the Russian public.
    1
  7913. The Syrian government should give the Kurdish regions complete independence, in exchange for a promise that they will give them decades worth of oil for free, enough to help fund the reconstruction. I think that would work out for both parties.
    1
  7914. Why would they move from one shithole state to another? If they are going to build another park, it should be in a better state.
    1
  7915.  @joshuakramer5661  Staying on the sidelines is also a choice. Money has to exist someplace. Is that in treasuries? Maybe. Is it in the stock market? A Bank? A mattress, gold? Each of these places carries some amount of risk. There is the risk that they will fall in value relative to what you started with, there is a risk that they will not grow in value as quickly as inflation. These are all risks. There is no safe outcome, only "less unsafe" outcomes. Most of the places in which you could store money carry more risk than US treasuries even amid this "chaos" you talk about. Many of the ways people "sit on the sidelines" would likely ALSO be harmed by any effect significant enough to damage US treasuries. If the US bond market collapsed completely somehow, then most other world currencies and other investment vehicles would crash just as hard. Even China does not want the US economy to crash, because that would hurt China even more.
    1
  7916. TL;DR, it was the natural gas lobby.
    1
  7917. People like to point out that there is an infrastructure burden to electrify everything, and conveniently forget that the gasoline infrastructure costs WAY more to develop, expand, and maintain, and that's not even including the cost of the oil itself. It's also important to point out that the Biden administration wanted to earmark more of this cost into their BBB plan, but could not get those approved due to fossil fuel lobbyists like Joe Manchin and the majority of Republicans. This is what prevents America from catching up to China.
    1
  7918.  @wyw201  No, why do you ask? That seems like a weird thing for someone to have on hand. You can look it up though if you like, global subsidies to the fossil fuel industry were at over one TRILLION dollars last year, and that's just pure government handouts, on top of their actual profits, which were over four times that amount. If we can afford to spend a trillion dollars each year on subsidizing the more profitable industry in human history, then I think it shouldn't be hard to afford spending at least half that much per year on improving the power grid and building out more sustainable energy sources, right?
    1
  7919.  @wyw201  It's interesting that you think that providing a model to back up a claim is NOT weird. Where do you think this is? We are in the comment section of a Youtube video, not a court of law or a senate hearing. Who misinformed you that "pages of research" was a reasonable expectation in an online discussion? They must have been a complete idiot. I'm glad you at least agree that the costs involved in building out this electrical infrastructure is negligible when compared to the costs we're already spending to support the fossil fuel industry. That's all I was saying.
    1
  7920.  @wyw201  So if you feel that mounds of documentation would not even be expected in court or official government proceedings, what would possess you to think that they would be expected in a Youtube comments section? And I didn't hear any substantive disagreement on those points, so I'm just going to assume that you don't have any. You don't have to want to agree, but you're apparently incapable of substantively disagreeing, which is good enough to me.
    1
  7921.  @wyw201  And I answered your query in a way that anyone should expect, that I obviously had no such documentation prepared as reading materials. If I had any, I obviously would have placed it in the initial post. I don't know why you keep coming back to this irrelevant position, when we have no points of disagreement on my core thesis.
    1
  7922.  @ericeandco  Not really, by and large the Democrats are much more ethical than the Republicans, especially when it comes to doing their jobs. There are exceptions, of course, just fewer of them than with the Republicans, and taken more seriously by the Democrats.
    1
  7923. He's outing himself as the threat within? This comes to the shock of no one.
    1
  7924.  @flowergirl-pp7vz  And that is a threat to everyone on this globe. Or in orbit, I guess.
    1
  7925. I think that the US should offer aid, and without ANY political conditions, but with VERY strict process restrictions. By that I mean, there should be zero demands of "you need to change, Taliabn," because this is not the time or place for that, people's food should not be conditional on political agreement. But the aid the US provides should be ONLY food, no money or other things that could e easily sold for money, and it must be personally distributed by a third party group, probably not US troops because that would be a mess, definitely not the Taliban, but some other country that both sides can agree are not going to cause any stress. The Taliban would be required to ensure their safety throughout, but these aid groups would distribute the food to make sure that everyone in need gets some. If the Taliban agrees to this and then disrupts the process or allows any aid workers to be harmed on their watch, then there would be serious repercussions. Maybe they could also air drop stuff.
    1
  7926. People pleading guilty for a reduced sentence does not mean that they actually did it, it just means that they believe it would be riskier to take the case to court. When the court rejected the plea deal, it means he has to be presumed innocent until the end of this trial.
    1
  7927.  @onangelwings462  If you believe you've seen such a video, then you have fallen for a deep fake or something. You need to reevaluate your life choices.
    1
  7928. And neither did Trump.
    1
  7929. They don't give them questions before the debate, but anyone who seriously follows politics can rattle off a list of a dozen or so questions that would almost certainly be asked in some form during the debate, so they will not be surprised. That is not the point of a debate.
    1
  7930. So, maybe my physics is wrong on this, but if you put an object in geostat orbit, it will circle the same spot without falling, right? But if you put it in a slightly lower orbit, wouldn't it slowly fall towards Earth? Wouldn't it be possible to find an orbit at which it would naturally fall slowly to Earth, but then get constantly blasted away from Earth by the solar pressure, counteracting that gravitational tug? It wouldn't even need to be constantly over the target, only maybe 12 hours a day or less, so maybe it could have a "wobble cycle" where it drifts out of position during the daytime and back into position at night.
    1
  7931. Does housing need windows? Why not maximize space by building structures where dozens of units per floor are fully "inside" the walls, with no windows, but that use more modern techniques like lensed light-wells to bring in light from the outside, and perhaps some form of projections to give the illusion of outside views. Even Disney is apparently exploring the idea of rooms with "artificial windows" for their Star Wars themed hotel.
    1
  7932.  @troymiller885  !
    1
  7933.  @djpaperplate  Bots manipulate like ratios easier than they do comments.
    1
  7934.  @djpaperplate  Yup, the Obama economy was good while it lasted, but it coasted to a halt while Trump was in charge, and then of could the pandemic. Still, Biden's got things back on track, so it should be back to normal within the next year or two.
    1
  7935.  @djpaperplate  No, he'll get things back to Obama-era glory, before Trump broke it. You do understand that it takes a bit of time for anything a President does to kick in, right? The first few years of Trump's term were mostly "Obama's stuff," the first few years of Biden's term were mostly "Trump stuff." It's only over the past year or two that Biden's decisions have actually kicked in, and they've been doing a great job of correcting the damage. Also, how can you say " Lets not waist(sic) another 4 years on someone with 'limited mental capacity,' while advocating for Trump?
    1
  7936.  @djpaperplate  No, he'll get things back to before 45broke it. You do understand that it takes a bit of time for anything a President does to kick in, right? The first few years of 45's term were mostly "44's stuff," the first few years of 46's term were mostly "45stuff." It's only over the past year or two that 46's decisions have actually kicked in, and they've been doing a great job of correcting the damage. Also, how can you say " Lets not waist(sic) another 4 years on someone with 'limited mental capacity,' while advocating for 45?
    1
  7937. They can't even manage to send money to our allies in need. The Republican House is a complete laughing stock.
    1
  7938.  @rexxer2792  Not all public housing programs fail, but the failed ones always stick out in people's minds. The points is to learn from the mistakes and do better the next time.
    1
  7939.  @crispinfornoff206  Yeah, but that's because living in red states is so awful that the property values are low.
    1
  7940.  @rexxer2792  I wasn't talking about the ones you were talking about. There are currently 1.2 million Americans living in public housing of some type. It doesn't even need to be directly financed public housing though, it can also be tax incentives and other programs designed to encourage developers to build affordable housing, and/or to make existing housing more affordable for people. These sorts of public/private systems tend to be most effective. For example give a developer permission to build high value residential or retail projects, but only if they also build a certain amount of affordable housing. You do need to try and establish some amount of accountability in tenants though, so that criminals and drug addicts are not grouped with honest people.
    1
  7941.  @TheChopf26  Trump is less likely to do it than Harris, since he's in the pocket of billionaires.
    1
  7942. Trying to build habitats on a rogue Earth would be pretty dumb. If we had the tech and the time to plan, it would be much better to abandon Earth for a more stable life around the Sun than to stick with an Earth that had no sun.
    1
  7943. If Republicans really wanted to get rid of Obamacare, it would be easy to do. Pass something better. As soon as some better version of it was on the books, it would automatically replace Obamacare. Instead, all they've ever attempted was to REMOVE medical care for tens of millions of Americans.
    1
  7944. Have they checked in the Saudi royal palace?
    1
  7945.  @urgreatestenemy  Eh, I'm sure they get plenty of flight time in simulators, but you do need to take an actual plane up form time to time. That doesn't mean it's fine for everyone else to keep driving gasoline cars without consequence. Let's not play "whataboutisms" here.
    1
  7946.  @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.
    1
  7947.  @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.
    1
  7948.  @blondejon5538  I don't see a post from you before the one in which you said I wouldn't answer your questions. If you made one, Youtube must have removed it for some reason. I answer any questions posed to me. It's not as though any of you have posed questions without solid answers to them.
    1
  7949.  @Kosher_Slider  Coal only makes up 20% of the US electricity production, and much less in many other countries. I don't want to insult your intelligence by pointing out that this is not what "most" means.
    1
  7950.  @TheHopetown  Again, you don't have to buy an EV if you don't want one. Plenty of people don't have cars. But if you currently drive a car today, then there should be an EV in the same price range as a new car of a similar model, and will get you wherever you need to go.
    1
  7951.  @TheHopetown  What part of "Again, you don't have to buy an EV if you don't want one. Plenty of people don't have cars. But if you currently drive a car today, then there should be an EV in the same price range as a new car of a similar model, and will get you wherever you need to go." did you not understand?
    1
  7952. I'm thinking that there would be a place for a vehicle that 1. Is durable enough that it's really hard to destroy, 2. fast and adaptable enough that it can cover hundreds of miles a day over rough terrain (perhaps with alternate treads that can work better in different environments), and 3. has a relatively few powerful long range missiles. It needs to be fast and durable enough to barrel deep behind enemy lines with nobody able to stop it, fire its long range missiles as deep into their territory as it can get, and then run back to safety and reload. It should never have boxing matches with enemy forces, should never stop moving in enemy territory for more than a few seconds at a time, and should be durable enough that most of the munitions that can hit it, can't harm it.
    1
  7953. Yup, Russia keeps trying to slip their agents into the Ukrainian government, and Ukraine has to keep swatting them down. The only one crying over this is Putin.
    1
  7954. Guilty of what?
    1
  7955. Why do you believe voter ID matters?
    1
  7956. @@ShannonBarber78 And if they do complete the work they agreed to then you also don't pay them, if you're MAGA.
    1
  7957.  @shmobiden6860  61% of Republicans believe that Row should be the law of the land, considerably higher if you're talking the country as a whole. Democrats support that.
    1
  7958.  @shmobiden6860  That would be nice, but unfortunately Republicans have corrupted the electoral process in many states, so that even if 60% of the people of the state vote for Democrats to represent them, their legislatures and Congressional seats go to a majority of Republicans instead. Then those Republicans vote for bills that the majority of their state reject. Not to mention that the primary process has become so horribly skewed that only the most radical Republicans can get the nomination, and then many more centrist Republicans will vote for them in the general out of blind party loyalty, even if they do not actually reflect many of their own values. This is not a functional democracy, and Republicans only continue to make it worse.
    1
  7959.  @idahoterritorymotorsportsv9374  There are far fewer left wing extremists in the Democratic party than there are right wing extremists in the Republican party. The US Democratic party is actually fairly far to the right of most other countries in the world, closer to their conservative parties in most aspects. It is only the faux news that tries to paint the Democrats as "super lefty," so as to move the goal posts further to the right. If this were a football game, the posts would be in the parking lot by this point. Also, Democrats have much more tolerance for "people with different beliefs than their own" than the Republicans do. That tolerance ends when people try to use their "different beliefs" to oppress others. If your beliefs say that you have the right to deny service to someone because of their sexual orientation, for example, then yeah, any right-minded person would take issue with that. Mainly, it just sounds like you don't know many Democrats, and only know what the faux news tells you to think about them.
    1
  7960.  @shmobiden6860  Maybe so, but the fact remains that they did that in only a handful of the races in which a complete lunatic won the Republican nomination, and the fact is that regardless of campaign ads, Republican voters actually voted for these nutbars. They can't blame Democrats for that.
    1
  7961.  @shmobiden6860  If she does win, then it would be likely one of her other primary opponents would have won instead, and none of them would have been better than the Democratic candidate. The fact remains that this falls entirely at the feet of Republican voters.
    1
  7962.  @nfsfanAndrew  Liberals did respect the 2016 loss. Clinton conceeded on election night, rather than attempting an insurrection. We didn't like the results, but we accepted them. Abrams did too, once the final counts were in. Everyone agreed that dirty tricks played a role in how she lost, but it was an election that was legally confirmed, so everyone accepted the eventual outcome. Same with Al Gore, he conceded the election once the Supreme Court made their decision, even when in actual fact he had won that election, and we all would have been better off with him as President in 2001 than Bush. So you are 0 for 3 on "Democrats are maybe as bad as Republicans" here. The fact is, Democrats are nowhere near as bad as Republicans.
    1
  7963.  @shmobiden6860  So. . . it's looking like none of the radical Republicans that Democrats supported in the primary have won their seats. Really the only pick-ups the Republicans got were in areas where they rigged the maps in their favor during the last gerrymandering period. So I guess the lesson is, "if you can't beat'em, cheat'em."
    1
  7964. Well it would be a lie to say that the Burisma deal has no impact on Hunter, but it would also be a lie to claim that he did that because of Hunter, when Joe was just doing what the Obama White House TOLD him to do, in America's national interests. That it in some vague way benefited his son was just coincidental, but it did happen.
    1
  7965. If he were Trump, he would have done a lot of crimes by now, but since he's Joe Biden, he's done no crimes, and in America, you can't put people in jail unless they do crimes first.
    1
  7966.  @thecatthinks  I think you're confused. What you meant to say is that you don't even know. I know what "the things" I was talking about are, you were the one that apparently does not know, because you apparently only get your information from Faux News and they hide reality from you there. If you were abetter informed person, then you would also know, but I never claimed that I was going to educate you. Never confuse your own ignorance for the facts being unavailable. They are out there, but it is up to you to actually learn.
    1
  7967.  @SME5724  Yup, Republicans don't care if re-electing Trump would end the American experiment, they just want the world to burn if they don't get their way.
    1
  7968. Yes, because this is exactly the sort of thing that we wanted from him.
    1
  7969.  @GenocideWesterners  My tax money will pay for missiles that will die for Taiwan. This will largely be an air and sea battle, and china doesn't have anything that can get within striking distance of a US asset.
    1
  7970.  @jamesbaurus5928  Nobody uses an Orwell quote unless they're going to take it out of context. Otherwise, it would make them look bad.
    1
  7971. This is why "race to the bottom" policies hurt everyone. You shouldn't be able to find places where taxes are lower, taxes should be the same everywhere, based on the individual. Otherwise, the wealthy will all just congregate in the places where they are least accountable.
    1
  7972. The "very fine persons" thing wasn't a misquote either, but you've been to|d to believe that, so so you do what you're to|d.
    1
  7973.  @MattMusicianX  "Editors' Note: Some readers have raised the objection that this fact check appears to assume Trump was correct in stating that there were "very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville incident. That is not the case. This fact check aimed to confirm what Trump actually said, not whether what he said was true or false. For the record, virtually every source that covered the Unite the Right debacle concluded that it was conceived of, led by and attended by white supremacists, and that therefore Trump's characterization was wrong. "
    1
  7974.  @MattMusicianX  Check the "editor's note" in the fact check.
    1
  7975.  @MattMusicianX  I had the same problem. But the point is that he did say that the white supremacists were very fine people, and then he later in the rambling speech walked those statements back. But first he DID say it.
    1
  7976.  @MattMusicianX  No, I'm saying that Trump DID say that the white supremacists were very fine people, until he walked that back. So he DID say it, and anyone claiming that he said it ARE accurate. Even the Snopes article makes that clear in their editor's note.
    1
  7977.  @MattMusicianX  You need better reading comprehension then.
    1
  7978.  @MattMusicianX  Read the transcript. He literally said "Excuse me, they didn't put themselves down as neo-Nazis, and you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. "
    1
  7979.  @MattMusicianX  And one of those two sides is white supremacists, so if there are fine people on both sides, the white supremacists were fine too. This is not difficult.
    1
  7980.  @MattMusicianX  And one of those two sides is white supremacists, so if there are fine people on both sides. . . This is not difficult.
    1
  7981.  @MattMusicianX  And one of those two sides is white supremacists.
    1
  7982.  @MattMusicianX  One of those two sides is white supremacists, so if there are fine people on both sides, the white supremacists were fine too. This is not difficult.
    1
  7983.  @MattMusicianX  One of those two sides is white supremacists, so if there are fine people on both sides. . .
    1
  7984.  @MattMusicianX  And Forbes won't let me do the math for you. You'll have to figure it out. It's frankly sad that you've managed to fail this far.
    1
  7985.  @MattMusicianX  I'll try to give you a hint, one of the two sides was white supremacists.
    1
  7986.  @MattMusicianX  You AGREED that he said "But you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides," in which one of those sides was white supremacists. I don't know what you think you're arguing about.
    1
  7987.  @MattMusicianX  Right, so we're in agreement, he said that there were some bad people there, but he also said that there were very fine people among the white supremacist side. That's all I'm saying. I mean, there were factually two sides involved that day, the white supremacists, and those opposing them, those were the "both sides."
    1
  7988.  @MattMusicianX  One of the two sides was the white supremacists though.
    1
  7989.  @MattMusicianX  One of the two sides was the wight supremacists though.
    1
  7990.  @MattMusicianX  You can't say "both sides were good" without also saying that they were good, since they were one of those sides.
    1
  7991.  @MattMusicianX  He might have said that there were bad people on the wight supremacist side, but he Also said that there were fine people on the wight supremacist side. That's all I'm saying. Also, it would not be the first, or even the hundredth time that he'd forgotten what he'd said seconds earlier. It's sort of his thing.
    1
  7992.  @MattMusicianX  You are the one that is insisting that "both sides" does not include one of the two sides. If he meant to say "there were very fine people on *the other side,*" he could have said that. But he said "both."
    1
  7993.  @MattMusicianX  But everyone on that side was a wight supremacist. That's the entire point of them showing up in the first place. Are you saying that he was just saying they were "very fine people" without having any idea who they were?
    1
  7994.  @MattMusicianX  I'm not sure what your misunderstanding is here, but everyone on that side was a wight supremacist. That's the entire point of them showing up in the first place. Are you saying that he was just saying they were "fine people" without having any idea who they were?
    1
  7995.  @MattMusicianX  I'm not sure what your misunderstanding is here, but everyone on that side was a wight supremacist. That's the entire point of them showing up in the first place.
    1
  7996.  @MattMusicianX  I'm not sure what the misunderstanding is here, but everyone on that side was a wight supremacist. That's the entire point of them showing up in the first place. Are you saying that he was just saying they were "fine people" without having any idea who they were?
    1
  7997.  @MattMusicianX  Are you saying that he was just saying they were "fine people" without having any idea who they were?
    1
  7998.  @MattMusicianX  Everyone on that side was a wight supremacist, that is the entire reason they showed up.
    1
  7999.  @MattMusicianX  So we agree that he pointed to the side that was made up entirely of those people and said that at least some of them were very fine. This is all I'm saying.
    1
  8000.  @MattMusicianX  I would never claim that there is a "good one" and a "bad one" of those. Trump said that, so you'd have to ask him what a "good one" looks like. I would say that there are certainly some who are worse than others, more violent or aggressive in their beliefs, but we should be able to agree that everyone on that side was a bad person, even if Trump cannot. This is my point.
    1
  8001.  @MattMusicianX  When you lose on the merits, you switch to ad hominem attacks. Why is this not surprising to me?
    1
  8002.  @MattMusicianX  And remember, the "context" of his statement was an event in one one side was WS, and the other side was opposing WS. And he said that both sides included fine people. That would include the WS side. That's all I was saying.
    1
  8003.  @MattMusicianX  But he would be factually incorrect if he thought that not everyone on that side was a WS. So are you saying that he was wrong? At least we can agree that he did say that there were fine people on the WS side of things, even if that was because he didn't understand who was in each side when he made that statement.
    1
  8004.  @MattMusicianX  You need to look up the event. The entire purpose of it was to promote a WS cause. Nobody other than WS had any reason to be on that side of the event, so yes, that entire side was WS, to varying degrees. Also, my goal has been consistent here, to clear up your confusion. It's your confusion that has shifted around throughout the thread, so I've needed to address different points to steer you back on course. Once we can agree that Trump did say that there were fine people on the WS side, then we can move on. Also, have you taken your own advice? It might help you (aside from your nonsense book club recommendations).
    1
  8005.  @MattMusicianX  Yeah, you strike me as very "independent." I'm sorry that I have no interest in your book club.
    1
  8006.  @MattMusicianX  If you spend any time defending Trump, for any reason, then you have lost all credibility.
    1
  8007.  @MattMusicianX  Interesting that you believe that's the only appropriate response to him. I prefer to vote. But the fact remains that the man himself is indefensible, and anyone who finds himself in a position to try to defend him is making a fool of himself.
    1
  8008.  @MattMusicianX  You presume that you've ever had an important point.
    1
  8009.  @MattMusicianX  Do you think that has anything to do with anything I've said? Do you think it would reflect well on you to express that you think that?
    1
  8010.  @MattMusicianX  No, you accused me of being an extremist. That you equate that to a "confession" says more about you than it does about me. I also never claimed or implied that credibility has anything to do with which "side" you're on. Credibility is independent of sides, but choosing the wrong side in certain situations can impeach your own credibility. If you choose to support falsehoods, then you cannot be considered equivalent to one who does not.
    1
  8011.  @MattMusicianX  No, again, you accused me of being an extremist. That is not how "a confession" works. Do you really think that there can be no possible resolution to Trump's existence other than the one you've promoted? How sad that this is how far the GOP have fallen. Be better. Get out and vote, as the founders intended. The answer to Trump is a Harris victory in November.
    1
  8012.  @MattMusicianX  It was the former, if you're curious. Also, now that you've got me curious, how much over 40 are you?
    1
  8013.  @MattMusicianX  So why do you think you're older than me?
    1
  8014. He was a private sector lawyer for seven years, and was very successful at it.
    1
  8015.  @ruhtra-k  2001-2007.
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  8016. There's no reason to not just landfill it all, it just needs to be done responsibly, so that 0% of it ever escapes back into the environment.
    1
  8017. That's sad. Well, at least we can agree that he's a hell of a lot better than the last guy, right?
    1
  8018.  @jamiescot3658  Of course he means the traitor Trump. Who else could he mean?
    1
  8019. It's misleading to use quotation marks in a headline, and then a person's name, if that person never said that thing. I would point out that this is "journalism 101," but I'm sure that would confuse editors at The Hill.
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  8020. So how does it feel to be a leader in a failed party that can't legislate a "puppies are nice day" bill?
    1
  8021. True. Not enough safeguards were put in place to prevent Trump from doing crimes while he was in office. He showed how weak the US system was at defending itself from someone intending to take advantage of it. :(
    1
  8022.  @FastEddy1959  Trump's economy just coasted on the trends started by the Obama economy. Economically it was Obama's third term, aside from the various screw ups like Trump's tax cut for billionaires and the pointless tariffs on US businesses. Trump's foreign policy had no advantages, it only weakened relationships that we'd maintained since WWII and gained absolutely nothing. There were no advantages to lower taxes, it only raised the deficit and the national debt, and lower taxes on the wealthy are in no way "fair." Poor and minorities did not fair better under Trump, they just fairred well as the economic recovery Obama put into place continued to operate. Then a lot of them died because Trump flubbed our covid response. Also, you're thinking of Trump when you say "He showed us what it looks like when a corrupt president weaponizes various branches of the government (IRS, FBI, etc.) against his political opponents. " That is all stuff that Trump did, never Obama. What you're doing there is called "projecting." "Crimes? Cover-ups, corruption, and theft were the hallmarks of Obama’s administration. " Nope. Nobody in the Obama administration did anything criminal, whereas the Trump administration was riddled with indictments, and would have gotten more, given that all the oversight and watchdog groups were calling out their corruption left and right, but the corrupt Barr Justice Department would not actually prosecute any of the Trump Administration crimes because they were appointed to be corrupt themselves. I do at least agree that Trump will go down as our worst President, because of weak-will, indecisive, & ineffective management.
    1
  8023.  @CineSoar  And these sorts of clips, while common, are actually on pretty shaky legal ground. It really depends on context, and using a small amount of a movie to comment on how that movie handled race would be fair use, but using that same clip just because it made a funny joke that dunked on the previous clip would not be fair use, and could be claimed if they wanted to bother. It's important to keep in mind that a lot of the things Youtubers get up to is well into a gray area of "not allowed, but not worth the hassle." This is definitely a "talk to a real lawyer" sort of situation, from the sounds of it.
    1
  8024.  @CineSoar  That's where it gets shakier though. News organizations have been successfully sued in the past over using a photo or video shot by someone they did not pay, because it "told the story" that they were trying to tell. That is not allowed. It is why you can purchase B-Roll on the Internet, so that you can use it to illustrate points without violating copyright.
    1
  8025.  @AnonyMouseYGO  Yup, with the Trump crowd, the corruption is already inside the house. It IS their entire house.
    1
  8026. Yeah, we're coming into a holiday weekend, the stuff that won't matter for months can wait until next week. Way to bum people out.
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  8027. That's because this has never happened before and Biden never profited from his stint as VP.
    1
  8028.  @reneebowen7745  Joe's still made $0, aside from his presidential salary. Sorry that he's not as corrupt as your guy. Maybe just, stop following the corrupt guy?
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  8029. Basically, the Dao is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us; it binds the galaxy together.
    1
  8030. This is what Fox is being sued over.
    1
  8031.  @algorasm2565  The problem is that no actual evidence has been presented. People like Powell and Guiliani claimed that they had evidence, when it was on TV and there was no risk of accountability, and they were given multiple opportunities to present that evidence in a court of law, but they never actually did so, because presenting false evidence in a court of law is a crime, and they were just barely smart enough to know that. If any actual evidence did exist, then they would have presented it in court. Why do you believe that they chose not to?
    1
  8032.  @tsim4139  Yes, Republicans tell you that government is broken, so people elect them, and then they break government. Meanwhile, government when run by Democrats actually works for the people, as the founders intended.
    1
  8033. Exactly. Trump was in the wrong because he refused to turn the documents over, while Biden turned them over immediately once he found them.
    1
  8034.  @doop6769  You can't argue Trump's case, because the records act would require he turn those documents over.
    1
  8035.  @leahblake6748  Trump did not eventually turn them over. They were seized after serving a search warrant, because he had refused to turn them over for many months already, and even lied about having already turned them over. It's even highly suspected that he still has other documents that he has yet to turn over, but they don't have enough evidence to serve a warrant on it.
    1
  8036.  @jacobsider4453  The scientific citations support that position though. I'm sure she included such citations in her brief, that was only a summary of the brief.
    1
  8037. So you are advocating CPS remove trans children from transphobic parents and put them into foster care? I don't know about that, it may be for the best, but I think there would be a lot of pushback to it. I think that this is a reasonable middleground, allow the children to stay with their parents, but do not increase the risk to them by letting them know their child is trans until the child leaves their house as an adult and/or chooses to tell them.
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  8038. There was no claim that he was "incompetent to stand trial," only that the prosecutor thought he had a losing case, which was true. All the rest is just right-wing spin on it.
    1
  8039.  @KeepItReal33  You didn't read it, you only listened to what Faux News told you was in it.
    1
  8040.  @KeepItReal33  You did not read it, apparently. You just believed what you were told.
    1
  8041.  @KeepItReal33  So on what page does it say the words "incompetent to stand trial?" That would be a legal determination, one which is typically outside of prosecutor's hands.
    1
  8042.  @KeepItReal33  I asked for a page number. It's a "fact" that you cited, you should know exactly where to find it, because when I read the document, I found no such thing.
    1
  8043.  @KeepItReal33  So what's your point? He is old, and in the opinion of the prosecutor, he has a poor memory, but Ivanka said "I do not recall" dozens of times in her own depositions, and Trump forgot that E Jean Carol was not his ex wife. At no point in the report did he say that Biden was incompetent to stand trial, if that were the case Trump wouldn't be facing 91+ indictments.
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  8044. Yes, it's sad how the Republicans have politicized them for their own gain. This should not have been an argument, both sides of the aisle should have supported the CDC's decisions.
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  8045. Nah. They might take some donations from just about everyone, but that doesn't put them in their pocket. They still have to earn the votes of their constituents. The real issue is that red state Republicans are accurately Representing the will of their idiot constituents.
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  8046. But if everyone's in prison, then who will make the food?
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  8047. Have the Senate announced when they are going to find him innocent yet?
    1
  8048.  @321CatboxWA  And also Republicans, since you can no more "let the people vote on things" in red states either. I mean, North Carolina just guaranteed Republican supermajorities in their elections even though they are a 50/50 state.
    1
  8049. Yeah, I love Katie Porter, but we can be better than the Republicans here. You aren't making anyone regret their votes.
    1
  8050.  @ComplicatedBot  It was a direct response to your comment, that is not what "deflection" means, unless you mean "directed right back into my face."
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  8051. If Graham held to his own word, then this wouldn't even be an issue because he wouldn't even be holding a vote for another few months. But he is a liar, so here we are.
    1
  8052. It's like how they say most car accidents happen near home. When you're out and about, you're being careful, but once you know you're close to home, you tend to relax and let off the adrenaline, and might miss something you would have noticed if you'd been at max alert.
    1
  8053.  @beng2307  Right, but now's no time for goofing around. If you want to be able to vote again, you'll need to get it right this time.
    1
  8054. Why does the headline make it seem like Chip Roy had a valid point? Who cares if more migrant children are coming? So long as we take care of them, and don't throw them in pens like the Trump administration did, it's not a problem. If they are worried about the conditions the children face before they enter the US, then the solution to that is to improve the legal immigration process so that they can get here without involving the cartels. It's Republicans that make that harder, not Democrats.
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  8055. When was she ever in it? All she ever was was the person that Republicans could point to and say "I'm not a Republican, they're awful, I'm an independent, I like Tulsi Gabbard." Anyone who ever supported Tulsi was a Republican all along.
    1
  8056. You were making some sense, and then face-planted on the last paragraph. It's like accurately diagnosing a heart attack and then prescribing an amputation.
    1
  8057. Russia are the Nazis in this scenario. Ukraine would be France.
    1
  8058.  @shamanbhattacharyya9285  I meant in WWII. Keep up.
    1
  8059.  @budprepper3811  Just like the Germans used Putin's justifications for war in the first place.
    1
  8060.  @superdave7241  No, it's about holding him accountable for his criminal wrongdoing. Why do you believe he should be allowed to do crimes when most people are not?
    1
  8061.  @superdave7241  Oh, no, I don't even watch Faux News.
    1
  8062. Yes, when will they just accept that half the country are ignorant, amoral people who will worship that golden calf no matter how many tablets anyone smashes?
    1
  8063.  @omaralfadhel1720  There aren't any other Democrats running though.
    1
  8064.  @jeremymitchell9970  But Trump would have done worse, like he did in Syria. This is the issue, there are no better candidates running.
    1
  8065. ​ @filthiness  Exactly, Biden. Trump ignored the Palestinians.
    1
  8066.  @no.6243  Where do you get sharp marbles? You should return those, they sound dangerous.
    1
  8067.  @alexandradacunha3221  He probably is, but it's worth pointing out how dumb his position was anyway.
    1
  8068.  @Trump_Is_Your_President  You would understand if you just stopped taking the alternate reality drugs that you're on. Keep in mind that Faux News viewers are actually LESS well informed about the world than people who get no news at all. Break out of Narnia.
    1
  8069.  @ZombieCartmanYT  There has been inflation between spring of 2020 and today. This is a global factor due to supply chain issues and gas prices rising during and after covid. It started under Donald Trump and continued under Biden, and some people choose to blame Biden for it. But the important thing to keep in mind is that Biden has kept inflation LOWER in the US than in other first world countries, some of which had double or more the inflation that the US experienced. It would have been a lot worse if we'd spent the last three years under a conservative government like the UK had, where they had 8.2% inflation, compared to 3% for the US, and have $7 a gallon gasoline. Also, the debt and homelessness were higher than ever under Donald Trump too, these are things that will likely continue to rise under every president, but if they are things that bother you, then keep in mind that both rose MORE under Trump than they did under either Obama or Biden. Trump's tax cuts for billionaires blew a massive hole in the deficit that will cause consistent debt increases over the next decade or more.
    1
  8070.  @WhyHandleYouTube  Hunter Biden lies about things. It's hilarious that you take "things Hunter said" as if they are evidence about his father.
    1
  8071.  @jesseowens1492  Just a reminder that Biden's approval rating is higher than Trump's, and that has always been the case. It does not matter who your imaginary friends vote for, all that matters is who real people vote for, and more of those vote for Biden.
    1
  8072.  @ZombieCartmanYT  Lol, inflation in the US was NEVER at "100%." Inflation in the US peaked at 9% in 2022, but has since fallen to 3%. Again, GLOBAL inflation went up over 2020-2023, in EVERY country. GLOBAL gas prices went up between 2020 and 2023, in EVERY country. Biden kept both BELOW the level seen in most countries. Biden did not "shut down any pipelines," he cancelled production on a FUTURE pipeline that even today would not have been pumping oil. It had ZERO impact on oil prices, which had started to rise six months BEFORE Biden took office. But as they say, a sucker is born every minute, and then they turn on Faux News for their marching orders.
    1
  8073.  @doncourtreporter  What nonsense are you talking about?
    1
  8074.  @doncourtreporter  So you don't understand it well enough to explain it, you just do what you're told.
    1
  8075.  @milionephrem489  True, it's mainly due to Faux News convincing their viewers to live in a fictional Narnia where everything they want to believe can be true.
    1
  8076.  @ralphmalone7865  I'm glad that you're doing well, but you would have been doing better under Republicans, because Democrats kept those things LOWER than they would have been under Republicans. I mean, look at the UK under a conservative government, their consumer goods and gas prices skyrocketed compared to in the US.
    1
  8077.  @ralphmalone7865  Ok. . .
    1
  8078. No, it's the same rationale applied to both. If Joe Biden had done any of the crimes Donald Trump did, he'd be in jail by now, but fortunately for him, he hasn't done any crimes.
    1
  8079.  @hughjanus5518  There was plenty of evidence of corruption in the Trump administration. There is zero evidence of corruption involving Joe Biden. There is evidence of corruption involving Hunter Biden, but nobody voted for him, so who cares? You can't impeach someone who does not hold public office.
    1
  8080. That's not how the actual laws work though. Under the actual US laws, this was all fine.
    1
  8081.  @natalyasturn  While it's true that the Trump Justice department delayed the indictment, the statute of limitations is not a factor in the charges that DA Bragg brought here. Those would only apply to the misdemeanor versions of the charges, these are the felony versions, as they were linked to his campaign. If you understand that he committed these crimes and abused his position as President to avoid conviction on them, then you should be pleased to wee the wheels of justice finally in motion, right?
    1
  8082.  @hpotter2954  Of course he can't, but there are existing laws on the books that have felony versions of these crimes, and that is what Trump committed, so that is what the DA is charging him with, instead of the misdemeanor versions. It's not magic, it's just the legal system. I bet Trump wishes it were magic.
    1
  8083. I think that obviously it would be possible for every country in the world to be "developed," but it's very unlikely that we'll move from here to there, and it wouldn't mean that everyone would benefit. A "world in which every country is developed" would just mean that the tops of each country are more leveled out, and also the bottoms of each country is more leveled out. It would mean that the less developed countries would need to have at least a few companies based in them that could compete with a US Fortune 500, and therefore most likely the US would have fewer than they do now. It would mean that the bottom end of the existing developed countries would need to fall further, so that you could hire people to work in factories in America for the wages that Vietnamese factories currently pay, and they would take those jobs. Again, not likely this would ever happen, nor would it be desirable for a country like the US, but in theory there's no reason that stratification would need to exist between nations, even if stratification is inevitable between economic castes.
    1
  8084.  @medicbabe2ID  The destruction and fires are caused by reds. Voting blue gets the reds out of office.
    1
  8085. Every Jurassic Park toy should include one "human to scale." If they wanted to be super cheap about it then it could just be a punch-out card or even just printed on the box, so long as it is at the right scale.
    1
  8086. You're right and wrong about the "niche." Thing. Elden Ring is not a niche, but also, the "Souls Masochist" is still a niche. The person who genuinely enjoys the brutality, is still a niche. The "most played" audience is not there for that, they are there because of the other aspects of the game, and the "git gud" mentality harms their enjoyment of it. Now, to "difficulty sliders," I agree that plenty of other games handle difficulty clumsily, but nobody is asking for a bad implementation of it, nor should From provide one. That doesn't mean that every implementation would necessarily be bad. "Leveling up" is not good enough, however, as leveling even using cheese tactics is far too grindy, and "playing normally" will never get you there. The "boulder trick" is way too grindy, and the better methods involve beating either Radahn or Godrick, and if I could do that, I wouldn't need to grind for levels. And then the scaling that leveling provides is not sufficient, even maxed out leveled and geared characters are not tanky enough to survive most encounters without learning "proper" tactics. A good difficulty option in this game would be to just make it so that "intended level" characters would be tanky enough to survive many "OHKO" hits from a boss without dying even once. The boss would have their full skillset, they would play identically, all that would change is the consequences of failing a skill check. Instead of failing one attack combo meaning you would need to restart that fight entirely, it would just knock you on your ass and you'd get back up and keep fighting. "Playing well" would require exactly as much skill as in hard mode, but "playing well" would not be necessary to complete a challenge. I hope I'm clear here. If you've seen one of those "not get hit even once" playthroughs of a game like this? Then what I'm talking about is a version in which if one of those players played it on this "easy mode," and did as well as he usually does, then the results of his playthrough would be identical to if he were playing it on normal. The boss would do all the same attacks, he would avoid them as usual, nothing would appear to be different, because the fundamentals would be identical. But if he were less skilled, and he started taking a bunch of hits, then in the normal mode a few of those in a row would add up to a wipe and rest, whereas in the normal mode, a few of those would be fine and the fight would continue. This would require no changing of AI or anything complex, it would jsut be tweaking things like HP scaling or Damage Negation to values several times higher than in the live game. I assume basic modders could do this will little effort, and I'm sure From could do it with even less. Combat difficult aside, while this game seems to have more checkpoints than previous Souls games, they still end up placing respawn points WAY too far from bosses in many cases. If losing a bossfight caused you to respawn within seconds, exactly outside the boss room, then it would be FAR less annoying than if it places you a thirty second run past several enemies and an elevator ride away from the boss. Placing stakes of marika right outside of a boss room would go a LONG way in this game, and while this sometimes happens, it is not remotely universal. So that's what I want to see 1. better ways to level up that don't require hours of pointless grind, 2. an optional method to scale damage at a much stronger effect than the current ingame scaling, such that even the toughest bosses aren't one-shotters, and 3. more Stakes of Marika, right up against the fogwalls. Btw, my current Elden Ring experience is that I'm at level 55, have unlocked the entire map up through the Capitol, but have not year beaten a Demigod. I've beaten a few midbosses and gotten to phase 2 on Renella. I really enjoy a lot about the game, but I really hate how the combat works and am very frustrated that I won't be able to continue exploring this world until I beat at least two of the bosses, each of the ones I've fought being able to oneshot me at least some of the time. I want to be able to play and enjoy it without needing that. I don't want to take anything away from people who enjoy Elden Ring for how it is, but I also want to enjoy it as much as they do, and I do not care a single bit about "it being against 'the point' of the game." I do not like that point.
    1
  8087. The 2.5m figure was for "if we did nothing." We did not do nothing, so the number did not reach that high. What you're saying would be like if your house was on fire and someone said "if you do nothing, that house is going to burn to the ground," and then the firemen come and put out the fire, so you only lose a room or two, and you say "see, it didn't burn to the ground!"
    1
  8088.  @hillbilly8915  Social distance and masks didn't stop the spread, but it definitely reduced the spread massively. It would have worked much better if there weren't so many yahoos out there that didn't wear their masks or socially distance as often as they should. It was only not as bad as it could have been because people took those measures, but it could have been much better still. By the time this peters out, probably around 700,000 or so Americans will have been killed by it. If we had done absolutely nothing and just "lived our lives," that would have been closer to 2-3 million. If we had taken this more seriously, as some other countries had done, and had better lockdowns, more mask use, better contact tracing, etc., we could have easily kept the death count below 100,000.
    1
  8089.  @finalfantasy1912  Well, Russia is going to do that, that's their problem. All that matters is that US support to Ukraine continues. Keep in mind that most of what we send them is not in the form of cash, it's in the form of military hardware.
    1
  8090.  @opossumsrawesome6860  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  8091.  @Sal-gh1se  No, again, I'm not maga. Why do you keep implying that I'm maga?
    1
  8092.  @-dirk-65  It's impossible to end illegals crossing the border though.
    1
  8093. @Nick Bernath How could it cost less than a negative number?
    1
  8094. Lol.
    1
  8095. They subsidize gas there. The US is actually much cheaper than most parts of the world, it's over $7.50 a gallon in the UK, over $5 in most of Asia, almost $9 in Norway.
    1
  8096.  @ChrisParkens  Yup.
    1
  8097.  @ErroneousMonk1  It's punitive damages, it's going back to the taxpayers to discourage people from lying in future.
    1
  8098.  @ErroneousMonk1  That's not what punitive damages are. Punitive damages are just penalties applied for the purpose of discouraging reoccurrence. In this case it's relevant because the violations of the law were serious enough to warrant them. To explain it like you're five, he committed crimes, and if the punishment was negligible, then why not commit more crimes in future? So the punishment needs to be serious enough that it would not be something he would want to repeat.
    1
  8099. You mean he's got wings?
    1
  8100.  @Takusman  It was two billion. Jared got only 2 billion for allowing the death of an American.
    1
  8101. Clown car Kevin's House gonna clown. Anyway, did you guys see Bret Baier OWN Donald Trump the other night? He basically built Jack Smith's entire case for him and sent it over with a bow on.
    1
  8102.  @PitofDoom666  No, this would be a murder attempt. It is Russia attacking them. That is not their fault.
    1
  8103.  @PitofDoom666  Again, it was entirely a war of choice by Russia. They invaded. Nobody forced them to, no war would have taken place had they not. It is entirely their war. Ukraine is only defending themselves from pointless aggression.
    1
  8104.  @shonemumy  How so?
    1
  8105.  @PitofDoom666  YT deletes posts on both sides. But yet, Russia attacked Ukraine, Ukraine did nothing.
    1
  8106.  @Isaiah53-h9v  It is more likely to escalate to W W 3 if Putin is allowed to keep Ukraine. You are making the same arguments Neville Chamberlain made.
    1
  8107.  @Isaiah53-h9v  You are making the same arguments Neville Chamberlain made. It did not work out for him.
    1
  8108.  @Isaiah53-h9v  Are you there right now risking it all for Putin yet?
    1
  8109.  @scratchpenny  It's called "jobbing." They want to present a conservative viewpoint, so anyone they hire to present a left-leaning viewpoint will be a rodeo clown intended to make the conservative actually appear reasonable and stable by comparison. It's a fairly common trick, because conservatives on their own sound like lunatics.
    1
  8110.  @skyjuiceification  Yup, all lunatics.
    1
  8111.  @kevinlee8477  And obviously, that would be no excuse to not do everything that we can to prevent preventable deaths. I mean, nobody at a murder trial has ever gone "well yeah, I killed that guy, but 7500 people die each day, so, you know, not a big deal, right?" At least, not successfully.
    1
  8112.  @kevinlee8477  The war on PREVENTABLE deaths, which everyone should be a part of.
    1
  8113.  @kevinlee8477  Well, the unvaccinated are dying at a rate twenty times higher than the vaccinated, so hundreds of thousands of American lives have been saved by our vaccination programs already. If everyone had gotten vaccinated, that would have saved at least a hundred thousand more by now. All those deaths were preventable. Again, the point is not to prevent all death, that's an unreasonable goal. The goal is to save the lives we CAN save by not acting selfishly or stupidly.
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  8114. The federal government is going to retaliate against the jury in New York that voted their Dear Leader guilty of a crime?
    1
  8115. Lol,. this didn't age well.
    1
  8116. Only there is no teacher.
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  8117. Unfortunately for the weaponizing government committee, there isn't.
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  8118. Yeah, unfortunately there are still a lot of Trump voters out there, but don't worry, the Biden voters will keep them outnumbered.
    1
  8119.  @markf19  Like Clearance Thomas, you would be wrong.
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  8120. Says who?
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  8121. Just checking, do they say "US citizen charged in killing of. . ." when non-immigrants kill someone? Because that's most of the time.
    1
  8122.  @al-du6lb  Why? The person is dead either way. I feel like highlighting someone's immigration status just makes people think immigrants are particularly threatening, somehow, when in reality they are far LESS likely to commit crimes than the people already here.
    1
  8123. Their questions were fair and reasonable, given the topics under discussion at that briefing. What do you think they should have asked as well? "What would you like to talk about?" That is not a productive question. They should be asking for answers to the questions that their audience would have, and they did that. They really should have been more pointed with their questions and follow-ups.
    1
  8124.  @randybutternub031  Out of curiosity, which minority people in positions of high authority do you believe were not "DEI hires?
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  8125.  @AB-wf8ek  Yeah, although "copyright squatting" is a lot harder than patent or trademark squatting. You can't just spit out a million different characters and then claim ownership over anything "substantially similar" to their designs. The works would need to be published in a significant manner, such that the future person who might run afoul of the copyright could possibly be aware of them. It would be a lot of work. You would also have to register each one, which would cost you money, and you would be unlikely to get that money back.
    1
  8126.  @AB-wf8ek  Well, I don't think "The AI says so" will be admissible in court, at least not any time soon. I think that there will be tools for AI to determine "substantial similarity," if there aren't already, but that these will just be "suggestions," rather than absolute fact. That is, if you use one, it might look through ten million pictures and go "I think this one looks like that one," but ultimately, a human would have to look at the two and agree that they do, rather than just accepting that as fact. Likewise, if an AI missed a connection, but a human showed two similar images and made their case, "the AI didn't catch it" is no excuse. But then on the other hand, a lot of people take things like DNA evidence, lie detectors, handwriting analysis, and other things as being more 100% proof than they might actually be, so having an AI back you up would probably be strong in a court case.
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  8127. That's not remotely true. Hunter did all of that himself. Did Hunter use his father's name to get access to these people? Of course, but Joe Biden was not involved in that, it was entirely on Hunter. Unlike when Jared Kushner got $2 billion from the Saudis for services rendered while he was in the White House.
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  8128.  @ElizabethS519  Do you honestly think that doctors are recommending this based on money? You do understand that they would not get paid here, right?
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  8129.  @ElizabethS519  While it's true that for-profit medicine is bad, that is not really relevant to the matter at hand, since this is not a profit-driving type of medicine. The doctors in this case are concerned with their patient's well being, not profits.
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  8130.  @rickzalman4136  You say "only." Where does any of that say "only?" It presents an example, but nothing in there rules out other options. He was talking to straight people about what they should be doing, if He'd been talking to a gay person, He would have used different words, right?
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  8131.  @JonahFisher-oc8mp  People have free will, but they also have natures that are outside of their control. When God makes someone trans, He makes them with a nature that is uncomfortable in their assigned gender, incapable of living a full life in that form. No trans person has the option to choose to not be trans. They do have free will, in that they can decide what to do about that, but they do not have the choice to simply not be trans, that is no more how it works than you could choose whether to be a giraffe or not. Free will has its limits.
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  8132.  @JonahFisher-oc8mp  People have free will, but they also have natures that are outside of their control. When God makes someone trans, He makes them with a nature that is uncomfortable in their assigned gender, incapable of living a full life in that form. They do have free will, in that they can decide what to do about that, but they do not have the choice to simply stop being who God made them to be, that is no more how it works than you could choose whether to be a giraffe or not. Free will has its limits.
    1
  8133.  @je862 Oh. No, that's not remotely correct. Nobody chooses whether they are trans or not. They either are, or they aren't. All they get to choose is what they do about that. If you love them as God does, then respect that fact of nature.
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  8134.  @deborahlauterbach6156  It's not like Biden is not celebrating Easter. Of course he is. He is just also celebrating this other holiday that took place the same day (whether he'd mentioned it or not). Why not? Nothing about Easter says that it has to clear the calendar of all other events. Do you also get offended if someone mentions Hanuka when it is overlapping with Christmas on the calendar?
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  8135.  @Ziva_15  There is no sin to being trans. God gave us free will, but he also gave us natures. You cannot choose whether you are attracted to men or women, You cannot choose whether you are a man or a woman. When God makes someone to be trans, they have zero choice in that matter, it is not something that anyone is capable of choosing, they are who they are. Their freedom to choose only comes after that, to choose what to DO about who they are. Do they choose to pretend that they are not how God made them to be, and live a life of secrecy and shame? Or do they live as god made them, trans?
    1
  8136.  @Ziva_15  God has created trillions of people, each of whom is different. Many of them are male and many of them female, and some of them re trans, and they are also in His image and also perfect. There is no single human form that is more perfect than any other. A person born blind is perfect, a person born with three limbs is perfect, they are all God's children. If either of us has the devil whispering to him, it would be the one who believes that God wants them to persecute others for how God made them, which would be the opposite of Jesus's teachings. It's ok, the Devil is a tricky one, and he often speaks in was that are appealing, but resist his temptations towards hatred and division. God does not make mistakes, he creates paths for a reason. When God creates a trans person, it is because He wants that person's journey in life to involve being trans, to experience a broader spectrum of human experience.
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  8137.  @Ziva_15 It is not "ruining" the body you were given any more than getting an eye transplant or an organ transplant or any other useful medical procedure. It is changing your body, and so long as it's in a way that improves your quality of life, God approves. There is no reason to believe that being trans is somehow "against God's plan." When God made someone trans, then that WAS his plan. You are choosing to second guess His wisdom in doing so. That is on you, not on Him. God created us perfect in His image, EACH of us different, some men, some women, AND some trans.Who's more in God's image than someone without a firmly defined gender?
    1
  8138.  @Ziva_15  And I for you. It can be better than you assume.
    1
  8139.  @Sjdhfjhdbd  Nope. They are born however they are born, male, female, whatever in between.
    1
  8140.  @Sjdhfjhdbd  Apparently there is an in between. It's much less common, and a lot of people hide it when it happens to them, but we know now that it does happen, around 1% of the time or so.
    1
  8141.  @coup-contrecoup  Oh, I'm not maga.
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  8142. Cruel and unusual.
    1
  8143.  @jsnip6720  All experts do agree that vaccines are not always perfectly safe, but the important part to remember is that they ALSO agree that an approved vaccine is MORE safe than NOT taking it. Right? Nothing in life is perfectly safe, that can't be the standard that we hold things to. Any food item on the shelf has some risk of causing harm under some conditions, so if we just wall ourselves off in a padded room until the outside world is perfectly safe than we will accomplish nothing. Modern vaccines are tested to the point at which they are determined to be safe enough that further testing will cost more lives in delaying than it is likely to save. The, after they are put into action, further testing will continue to take place along the way. There is zero net benefit to "further safety studies" prior to approval than are currently applied, because every month spent on "further safety studies" will produce less and less chance of discovering actual problems with the vaccine, and every such month will lead to lives lost from people who would have survived had they taken the vaccine. Take the most recent pandemic, it has been three years since the vaccine was distributed to the majority of Americans. In that time, there have been no serious complications related to it, and it has dropped the death and complications rate of the disease down to almost nothing for those vaccinated. For every month that the vaccine rollout had been delayed, thousands of American lives would have been lost unnecessarily. Why would you prefer that outcome?
    1
  8144.  @omi_god  Where do you get "mixed use = more people" from?
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  8145.  @BarMagnet  Who claimed that? Electricity will always have costs, they're just lower costs than gasoline.
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  8146.  @BarMagnet  Poe's Law.
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  8147.  @BarMagnet  Making the cars heavier is not a problem if it also makes them cheaper and cleaner overall, which EVs do. It's not the weight of vehicles that is a problem.
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  8148.  @zwerko  Yes, but even though EVs are heavier, they are still more efficient and clean to drive than a gas car. Their flaws do not outweigh their benefits. Bikes are lighter, but have the disadvantage of being slower, less comfortable, and require pedal power. As for EV longevity, an older gas car is likely to have significant engine problems that will make it far less reliable than when it was brand new. To keep it driving, you would have to put in thousands of dollars in cleanings and replacements. If you're willing to spend that much money, you could also afford to replace an EV battery, but like I said, that is an option, because not every driver requires the same amount of range out of their vehicle. Every vehicle choice has tradeoffs, things that it does better or worse than the alternatives. For most drivers, the advantages of EVs are far stronger than the disadvantages.
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  8149.  @BarMagnet  I am assuming a grid run entirely on renewables, which we will eventually have. You keep bringing up carts, well a simple lesson is, "don't put the cart before the horse." You don't imply that EVs are bad just because the grid is not yet entirely renewable, because that only makes it harder to get us to 100% renewable grids. You build out both at once. If we ignore EVs entirely until the grid is entirely renewable, then we would be setting back EV adoption by 20 years or more. If we instead build both out at the same time, then EV adoption will grow over the next couple decade, AND renewable grids will grow over that time, and both processes will feed off of and support each other to speed up both timetables, rather than trying to run them concurrently. And already, even with a partially fossil fuel grid, an EV is better than a gasoline car, and that will get better and better and better every single year as renewables continue to claim more of that market. The only people that benefit from your strategy is the fossil fuel lobby. Funny, that. And recycling lithium batteries is not cheap, but it isn't unreasonably expensive either, and will only get cheaper as it scales up. Oil cannot be recycled at all, so lithium still holds the edge there.
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  8150.  @BarMagnet  There are places where batteries are used on the grid for large scale load balancing. In some cases this has been going on for decades. There is no mystery to the process or concern that "it might not work," we know for a fact that it works, we only need to implement it. To use your analogy, we have ten people, and we have five pieces of bacon and five eggs, and also ten bowls of oatmeal. We can get more bacon and eggs for tomorrow, but not unless there is proven demand for them, so if nobody eats bacon and eggs today, then there will be no more bacon or eggs tomorrow, but if five people eat it today, then they will be happy today, and there will be more bacon and eggs available tomorrow, enough for everyone. As for "encouraging consumerism," consumerism is going to happen either way, there is no practical approach to "discouraging consumerism." All we can do is influence what gets consumed.
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  8151.  @BarMagnet  Consumerism isn't going anywhere though. If your original bacon and eggs analogy had any relevance to anything, it would be to your own argument about consumerism.
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  8152. @ Look it up.
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  8153. @ If they were giving money to organizations run by members of congress then it would be because the bills Congress passed required them to do so. Why should the employees following the laws they were given take the fall for something like that? If it is money laundering, you don't need Elon for that, that's what the DoJ is for, charge the people responsible.
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  8154. @ The issue is not that they're out of a job, they will find other jobs which likely pay better. The issue is that now nobody will be doing those jobs, and those were vital jobs for millions of people. Think of it as if a county hospital were closed and now that county had no medical services available.
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  8155.  @DanielGibbons-v9k  Ok, so we agree that it was never a position that she held. That's all people are saying. She had one specific role relative to the border, and she did that one job successfully. Nobody is arguing that people in the media never called her that.
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  8156.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  Her job was to get the numbers down from a few specific countries. She got those numbers down. What was Trump's excuse?
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  8157.  @MynewTennesseeHome  Exactly! Plenty of people called her that online, even though it was never an actual role she had. It's easy to find people calling her that, impossible to find any official source giving her that title.
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  8158.  @MynewTennesseeHome  No, he did not.
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  8159.  @JacobsNews  "President of the Senate" is a position with relatively little power. it casts tie breaking votes and has a ceremonial role in confirming election results, but unless there is a tie, they basically do nothing.
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  8160.  @markwhite8332  Trump would certainly know.
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  8161.  @markwhite8332  A younger one, at least.
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  8162.  @calvinwood7120  Again, read the comments, plenty of people are claiming it is. Plenty of people are claiming it was something Biden called her, even though he never did. That is what is being fact checked. The fact remains that the only mandate she was given was to visit our neighbors and negotiate with them, which she did successfully. The "expanded role" that you discussed was placed on her from outside the actual administration.
    1
  8163.  @calvinwood7120  Again, the only ones who "anointed her with a title" were the press, mostly on the right. The While House never "anointed her" beyond "Vice President. She was given a job to do, and she did that job well. That job did not come with a title attached. Also, anyone who claimed that she had responsibilities on the border was wrong, the official release describing her role did not include any elements of the border itself. Pointing to media sources that got something wrong in no way reflects poorly on this administration itself.
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  8164.  @calvinwood7120  Hey, that's my line. Get your own.
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  8165.  @calvinwood7120  I have one, I'm not MAGA. Keep up.
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  8166.  @HarryRectem  You are speaking nonsense.
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  8167. Russia had to empty their prisons to find people willing to fight.
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  8168.  @dingus6317  Yes, something you won't often encounter in the Faux News bubble, I know. Don't worry, it's not as scary out in the real world as they want you to believe.
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  8169.  @jerelwright1665  Yup, MAGA in a nutshell.
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  8170. The Biden administration solved most of this with the ARP, but Senate Republicans insisted they stop.
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  8171. I wonder, you mention that some players have an online credit score, does EVE Online have "ratings agencies?" That might be a worthwhile occupation for someone, researching various traders to find out their trustworthiness, so that other players can ask you whether a deal is reliable or not. Of course then your own credibility would need to be bulletproof.
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  8172.  @Tonezno  You missed the point entirely, like Dear Leader.
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  8173.  @TheLuigiSwag  Exactly.
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  8174.  @ryanruffer9961  Trump does that plenty well himself. He doesn't need help.
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  8175.  @lockwoodpeckinpaugh9252  They expect Biden to be as corrupt as their guy, and are constantly flabbergasted when he just isn't.
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  8176. Hot Take: Homer was the Kevin Feige of the Greek heroes.
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  8177. That's not what a show trial is. This was just a normal trial. Announcing a candidacy for public office does not make you immune from the justice system.
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  8178. Simple fact remains that ANY factor by which they could disqualify Omar, would equally apply to disqualify half the Republican caucus. Aside from her race, of course.
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  8179. That would depend on your local election laws. If you want a receipt, then you should get your local government to pass a law that provides one. I don't believe that it would be able to show which candidates you voted for though, since if it did, it would open people up to harassment, such as MAGA "poll watchers" hanging outside poll stations and demanding to see who you voted for, and then using violence if you voted for the "wrong person."
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  8180. Nothing Harris has done or will do is half as radical as the things he's promised to do if reelected.
    1
  8181.  @jmjfanss  No, I was right, and you know it. Sorry if the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  8182. It is illegal to trap your property, and you are legally liable for anyone harmed by such traps.
    1
  8183.  @KubaRootz  Well, they went in with the wrong intentions and poor planning. I think we can do better than that. It's certainly better than any of the alternatives.
    1
  8184.  @jeff__w  It's possible, but "Arab countries" are far from a monolith, Palestinians and their allies may not accept the Arab countries that the west would want to align with any more than they would Israel or America in that role. There are always agendas, a country like Saudi Arabia filling that role would be a proxy move against Iran, for example.
    1
  8185. I remember 20 years ago in college being baffled by this. Just seems like a pointless waste of time and effort. Stick with AD and BC like everyone else in the world. It just seems like it's trying to confuse people, add to their mental workload by breaking established customs arbitrarily. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. It's not like "CE" doesn't mean "after the birth of Christ as it was at one point understood," that is still the zero point of that scale, so what's the point of renaming it? If the point is to separate it from Christianity, then you would also need to move the start date to something else, like the formation of the Roman Empire, or the coronation of Charlemagne, or the battle of Hastings, or the Declaration of Independence, or whatever. So long as it's still currently "2024," there's no reason to not use "AD." It just means "AD."
    1
  8186.  @jthomas7904  Again, they can balance the budget during the budget process, but it cannot be part of the debt ceiling discussion, because that sets unreasonable conditions for this crisis. It's like going into a bank with the intention of getting a loan from them. Even if you think it would be fair for them to give you that loan, you can't put a gun to the bank manager's head and demand he give you that loan. The debt ceiling needs to be raise WITHOUT conditions, and then there can be negotiations about balancing the budget, WITHOUT hostages in the room.
    1
  8187.  @jlateralus21  No,. that's false, the Trump tax cuts did not raise revenue. Wealthy people do not spend more just because they pay less taxes, they just accumulate more money. Their spending continues at the same pace regardless. Don't buy into Reagan era tax fantasies that have long since been proven false.
    1
  8188.  @nathanielbass771  The estimate would be based on the conditions at the time the law was passed. If economic conditions got worse since then, then the realized losses would end up being higher than the estimates. None of this was sales tax, of course, since the Us does not have a national sales tax.
    1
  8189. The thing is, ICE users are too dumb to understand "this won't happen in the real world," they prefer extreme outlier situations (while ignoring all such situations that relate to ICE vehicles, like the more likely event of their own batteries dying in the cold).
    1
  8190. "Just War" typically only applies when you're the one starting it. Taking up arms in necessary defense of yourself or others is almost always considered just. So the real question is, under what circumstances could it be just to attack an enemy who has not first attacked you or those near you? And there are cases, but it's always subjective. Typically, a just war would be one in which the enemy you're attacking is so oppressive to their own people, so passively destructive, that allowing them to continue would cause more existential harm than that caused by a successful military campaign. This was the rationale for the Iraq War, and could have been just, IF it had been executed better, but ultimately was a waste all around. Realistically, very few wars of aggression end up being justified.
    1
  8191.  @rp3741  But she wouldn't typically be the one making public speeches on them, or having the final say. Most VPs who become president end up with very different terms in office.
    1
  8192.  @rp3741  The VP only has the deciding vote in the Senate, IF the other 100 Senators tie. Any time she has been placed in that position, she has made the correct call. Outside of that, it's a largely ceremonial role, and while she can advise the president, she would not be responsible for any of the choices he made.
    1
  8193. Yes, but don't worry, the Dems will put the Stalinists in their place. Vote blue, no matter who, or the reds win.
    1
  8194. This assumes the Trump administration has balls in the first place.
    1
  8195. Exactly, they were never our friends in the first place. This is nothing new.
    1
  8196.  @shakespeare127  They're typically presented live.
    1
  8197.  @patriciamccutcheon3357  Oh, no, I'm not a red hat myself.
    1
  8198.  @patriciamccutcheon3357  You watch too much Faux News, apparently.
    1
  8199.  @seveglider8406  His supporters don't care.
    1
  8200.  @patriciamccutcheon3357  I don't know, either too smart or too moral to just go along with the red hats like a good little sheep.
    1
  8201.  @nonhatespeech  They couldn't do so without it being public knowledge. People have clocks.
    1
  8202. Yes, Biden has problems with pubic speaking. This is well documented.
    1
  8203. @ Ukraine is already spending everything they can defending the world from Russian invasion. The least we can do is give them our spare military hardware. Also, Europe has massively decreased the amount of oil and gas they get from Russia, but it's difficult to turn off quickly. They need to rebuild alternate supply routes.
    1
  8204. @ Crimea is a part of Ukraine though. The people are free to leave for Russia if they want, but they have no right to take the ground underneath them with them when they go.
    1
  8205. @ Then why is his approval rating so much higher than Trump's?
    1
  8206. @ There was never any agreement with Russia that NATO stay out.
    1
  8207. They are being held accountable. That is what their salary is for, to pay them for doing their job.
    1
  8208. I can't imagine Amazon wants this, I expect it's someone else doing it for some reason. But damn, is it weird.
    1
  8209.  @kmeier1978  They haven't been delayed as long or as short as under McConnell though. I mean, delaying a nomination by a few months is hardly the same thing as delaying it by almost three HUNDRED days.
    1
  8210.  @kmeier1978  "Packing" is any time you stretch the rules to suit you, rushing or delaying. It isn't just appointing multiple judges in the natural course of events. And Obama got through two judges in eight years, McConnell pushed in three of them in four years. If Garland had gotten in, nobody would have minded Trump putting Gorsuch in as his mid-term appointment, and wouldn't have even minded much if he'd put Berrett in at the end, but the hypocrisy of massively delaying Obama's appointment on the grounds that "the people have a right to decide whether they want Obama or Trump's choice almost a year from now," and THEN to argue "but we really need to rush this one through in record time right before Americans can decide they want Biden to make the choice instead of Trump," sorry, that's just beyond the pale. Stow the crocodile tears about American democracy.
    1
  8211. That's an inaccurate headline. They soar to 72% in the year 2022, which is regardless of who is President at the time. It has nothing to do with who happened to be President in the years following the double hit of Trump and Covid.
    1
  8212. The issue is that the people who own these buildings paid a fortune for them, and couldn't get the returns they need if they permanently leased them out at a tiny price. I do think they need to drive traffic though, so they need to figure out some sort of tiered lease pricing, like offer a really good deal on the short term of the lease, set to raise significantly after a year or two.
    1
  8213. Lol, while you guys are covering this, the other networks are covering how the Catholic Church abused 2000 kids. I guess this really is the "pro-groomer" channel.
    1
  8214.  @s3v3n3  That's because "the topic at hand" is silly, and grooming is a serious topic. But then, Fox News and their regular viewers always take the sides of groomers.
    1
  8215. A few thousand more like that and he might catch up to Donald Trump.
    1
  8216. Unfortunately, that's the reality that the Republicans have created. When the Republican party is declaring from candidate to candidate that if elected they will rig elections and ignore the outcome of elections that don't go their way, they can't be considered a viable option. If we want to go back to a true two party system, the Republicans need to eject the election deniers and election riggers from their party, but that doesn't seem likely.
    1
  8217.  @leahblake6748  No, Trump did not have the authority to have them, even if he had "declassified" them. Ex-Presidents do not have any right to keep those documents whether they are classified at the time or not.
    1
  8218.  @teekay_1  Yes, the special counsel said that he could not win the case on the grounds that he did not have enough evidence of wrongdoing to convince a jury. How he framed that is his own personal opinion, and irrelevant to anything else. The special counsel believes that some laws were broken, like Mike Pence did, and plenty of others in government who were not convicted of this crime, but there was not enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing to convict.
    1
  8219.  @teekay_1  If the Special counsel had a case, he would have brought it. He didn't, but he also wanted to rough up the Democratic candidate for President, so he said what he said. That doesn't mean any rational person should listen.
    1
  8220.  @teekay_1  Again, Trump is more senile, and he's a party to numerous cases. The prosecutor in this case CHOSE not to proceed because he had no case, he's just making excuses to make this political. The document is not fact, it is the opinion of the Republican prosecutor that wrote it. The fact is that he couldn't make his case.
    1
  8221. ​ @teekay_1  And again, that Special Counsel was a Republican appointee chosen specifically to ensure that no favor was given to the President. And boy howdy did he show it. The Counsel did not believe he had a case that he could bring a conviction in, so rather than bring charges and fail, like Durham did, he punted, but he made sure to kick Biden in the shins on the way out, classy guy that he is. That's all there is to it. If Joe had done anything wrong, he would have been convicted of wrongdoing. An accusation not even worthy of an indictment is nothing.
    1
  8222.  @nosale777 My point was, what Biden did was not a big deal, relatively speaking. He got the punishment he deserved.
    1
  8223. What would "war" have to do with anything? War typically costs the US more than it benefits.
    1
  8224. She's better than the alternative, at least.
    1
  8225.  @ca6360  The Laptop was Hunter's not his father's, and there's no indication that it contains anything that would incriminate the President in anything.
    1
  8226.  @frankdayton731  I mean, that would certainly help, sure, but short of that, you would need something like the evidence against Trump on similar topics, like actual paperwork describing such transactions, trustworthy people testifying under oath as to what went on, things like that. So far, the "FBI document" just seems to be a random person saying "I think Biden did shady stuff," without any evidence to back up those claims, and without the person involved having any credibility to make such a claim. People report UFOs and lizard people all the time, that does not mean they should be listened to.
    1
  8227. If a car hits a pedestrian, it is far less often a case of "a driver killed a pedestrian," than it is a case of "a person wandered into the road and Darwin got involved." A pedestrian has far more options to avoid being hit than a car does to avoid hitting an expected pedestrian. Road rules require that everyone follow them.
    1
  8228. That's why we voted him out of office in 2020.
    1
  8229.  @TiltyfishPoker  Why, do you have orange hair?
    1
  8230.  @seandelaney1700  What would that be?
    1
  8231. Like pickled herring and vegimite.
    1
  8232. Funny thing, most "former Democrats" are just Republicans who want to be taken seriously, and know that "current Republican" never can be. I can't put an ounce of faith in anyone claiming to be a "former Democrat" in 2022, that's like saying you were a "former Republican" in 1864.
    1
  8233.  @mabarrgv54  And see, that's basically the Republican party in a nutshell.
    1
  8234.  @Rob-iy2rt  That's dumb. Stop hitting yourself.
    1
  8235.  @mabarrgv54  Nah, I'm fine. You should see the other guy.
    1
  8236.  @mabarrgv54  You were the one that was triggered, so I guess you don't own a mirror. Probably for the best.
    1
  8237.  64 Tbird Mama  It was Trump that started the child separation policy that put the children into cages for months at a time. During the Obama administration, children were only separated if their parents were being arrested on a criminal matter, and were placed into more stable environments within days. It is pathetic to try and compare the two situations.
    1
  8238. Well, the issue is that there was no "sworn testimony to chain of custody failures." If there had been, it would have been presented as evidence, but they had no evidence to present. You've just been told that such evidence exists by shameless grifters, just as they claimed that such evidence existed in the 2020 election (but of course NEVER in any situation that might open them up to perjury charges).
    1
  8239. I got a pressure cooker/air fryer recently, and I wonder if this recipe could be adapted to go faster if I were to airfry instead of pan-sear, and then pressure cook the rest.
    1
  8240. Why would Zelensky want to be involved in any peace process involving Trump? He just wants to give the country away to Putin.
    1
  8241. Much worse. It will make Bidenomics look like Christmas by comparison.
    1
  8242. @ In six months they will have forgotten what they said today and have moved on to new talking points about how "breadlines are good, actually."
    1
  8243.  DT2024-q4k  A lot of the conflicts we've seen over the past few years are the direct result of Trump's actions. Do you believe that the war in Gaza would have happened without the Abraham Accords?
    1
  8244.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  Global politics are about more than just what happens while you're in office, it also has to do with the long term effects of your decisions. Biden didn't start any wars either, but he does not seem to get credit for that.
    1
  8245.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  Ok, if that's what you mean, then the only one would be the Gaza war. But again, none started under Biden, and he even ended some.
    1
  8246.  @sirfer6969  The war only exists because of Putin. It will only end when Putin decides to end it. It has nothing to do with what the US president wants.
    1
  8247.  @WDiCT9mW  That's completely inaccurate. There are no nato employees operating in Ukraine. The weapon platforms are operated by Ukrainians who have been trained to use them by Nato forces.
    1
  8248.  @sferrin2  🤡
    1
  8249.  @sferrin2  🤡
    1
  8250.  @dingerling9017  Well, "life" applies to those children regardless of their parent's ideologies. If a doctor says that a child has cancer, the parent going "lalala, I can't hear you!" is not an effective treatment plan. A child doesn't just magically stop being trans just because their parent doesn't want to believe it. I do believe that we need to expect a high burden of evidence to make permanent medical decisions without the agreement of the parent, but I don't believe that the parent's agreement should be absolutely necessary if they are acting against the interest of the child. And I CERTAINLY do not support applying transgender medicine to children without the child's approval, and nobody else does either. But if the child makes a sincere case that they are transgender, and the doctors and psychologists involved in the case agree that this is a serious case, then why should that child not at least be able to take puberty blockers and hormones to grow up in the body they want to have? Yes, it will change them drastically, but that is what is best for them. Doing nothing would also change them drastically, and in a way that they would suffer from for years to come.
    1
  8251.  @dingerling9017  Biology isn't ideological. Natural biological development can be an illness if it causes a decreased standard of living. Cancer, for example, is natural, and biological. If you can treat the condition and improve quality of life, then you should do that. We don't have pills that can make someone into Superman. If we did, we would have to consider the ethics of providing them to patients. We DO have treatments that improve the lives of trans people, and it would be unethical to withhold them on bad faith ideological grounds, such as "I don't accept that you are the gender you claim to be." The evidence does not support the idea that this is "a phase," all research into the topic indicates that while some kids do have a phase where they explore the idea of being a different gender and grow out of it, those that are serious about it tend to stick with that new gender for the rest of their lives. The medical position on the topic is that no permanent medical intervention should take place UNTIL they are serious about it, there are no situations in which a child goes "I think maybe I'm trans," and the doctor goes "ok, we'll schedule the surgery for Monday," that's NEVER how this works. Before any permanent steps are taken, the child will undergo years of therapy, and if they are not certain that this is what is best for them, nobody will pressure them into choosing otherwise. But if they ARE serious about it, if the choice is between growing into the body that will make )them_ happy, or into the body that would make you happy, then why do you believe it is in their best interests to please you?
    1
  8252. Cool.
    1
  8253. What do you think about that new meta-material that supposedly filters liquid water from the air? Seems kind of legit, since it's not cooling water vapor into liquid so much as just skimming the water molecules out of the air.
    1
  8254. They believe in the free market, so long as the free market does not say anything mean about them. Then it's time for authoritarianism.
    1
  8255. Worked out for the British.
    1
  8256.  @Clownelskiy  The people of Donbass were free to leave for Russia at any time. Nothing that happened there justified Russia's actions.
    1
  8257. You know, while I agree that this is a stupid idea across the board, there are much more effective ways to design something that does basically this thing. Step 1 would be to have a large, permanent structure, don't build a tower using bricks, just build a large, permanent building that is maybe a couple hundred meter tall. You could even put people in it, or use it for nuclear waste storage or something. Hell, maybe make it a water tower, doesn't matter. Then, instead of using moving cables to move the bricks up and down, you use elevators on the edges of that building, perhaps dropping at a slight angle. then, bricks would be moved to the edges of the building, and moved away from the edges to make space. So effectively, the life cycle of the bricks would be that a brick would move up to the side of the building (either self-driving our using conveyor rollers), and then an elevator would drag it to the top, and then it would be rolled over to the center of the building, as new bricks shift into position. This way, the elevator mechanisms would never have to move, the bricks would not be swinging around, the tower itself would be architecturally stable, and every brick could move from maximum to minimum height for max efficiency. It would still be pretty dumb though.
    1
  8258. This has nothing to do with war. You're not "reading between lines," you're "scribbling fanfiction into the margins."
    1
  8259.  @garyh.7282  He was just talking about expanding US production. How do you translate that into NOT expanding US production?
    1
  8260.  @boycottdisney2024  no, not the entire system. Just these guys, which is why they had their security clearances revoked. The system works.
    1
  8261.  @boycottdisney2024  I have, that's how I know that these partisan witch hunts never go well.
    1
  8262.  @AmericanCaver  How so? Have you looked into what they did that got their clearances revoked? They give every impression that these "whistleblowers" are exactly the sort of "biased FBI agents" that the committee is trying to find, they just happen to be biased in favor of conservatives, so they appear to be heroes on the right. "We want bias in the FBI, we just want it for our side."
    1
  8263.  @backwoodtheg341  Are you talking about Giuliani?
    1
  8264. The families were the ones defamed, for being accused of being actors pretending that their dead children were somehow fictional. Alex Jones was doing nothing that was remotely of any value to those families.
    1
  8265.  @bonnenaturel6688  All "unusual happenings" have been adequately investigated and nothing actually unusual was found. But that will never satisfy the conspiracy theorists because that is not the answer they want, so they will continue to "ask questions" until the end of the world. It's basically like a three year old.
    1
  8266.  @electrified0  Nobody can accuse Biden of moral impairment, and accusing him of mental impairment is more telling on the accuser than the accused.
    1
  8267.  @easyenetwork2023  Tell that to Marjorie Taylor Greene and the various other insurrectionists in the House. "Doing his job" is irrelevant to Republicans, none of them "do a job" under the best of circumstances.They just need butts in seats.
    1
  8268. Q: "Why did traffic increase massively?" A: "Too many people."
    1
  8269. Well, they're more secure today than they ever have been, but it's impossible to completely seal such a massive land border.
    1
  8270.  @YOUARESOFT.  You clearly haven't been reading many MAGA posters.
    1
  8271.  @YOUARESOFT.  That's where you find the dumbest comments on the Internet, in MAGA posts. If you thought what I was saying was incorrect somehow, then the nonsense they post would absolutely blow your mind.
    1
  8272. I like how conservatives think this is somehow "owning the libs," when really it's just the Texas taxpayers picking up the bil for transporting them instead of the federal taxpayers.
    1
  8273.  @jolaharvel7852  My point being, it's Texans paying to move them, not people in the other states. If not for Abbot generously donating Texan money to transport them, they would be transported by the federal departments at the expense of all taxpayers. Immigrants actually bring more money INTO any community they end up in than they take, so they're great to have wherever they end up. Also, I think it's important to point out that Biden doesn't "have to deal with" immigrants that are dropped off in DC. Those would be the responsibility of the Virginia, Maryland, and DC local governments. The federal job began and ended when they were put into federal detention centers in Texas.
    1
  8274. Well, Trump is very well liked by MAGA Republicans, he's just equally as disliked by everyone else. He has the highest disapproval rating of any general election candidate. He lost to Joe Biden by more votes than Hilary lost to him.
    1
  8275. Yeah, they had way too much faith in the Senate Republicans to uphold their oath of office. Suckers.
    1
  8276. The problem isn't that they can't recycle clothing, it's that they would rather throw it away than sell it to people for less than a small fortune. Plenty of people would happily take and wear the clothing as it is, but then how could they justify charging hundreds of dollars for dozens of dollars in fabric and labor?
    1
  8277.  @tea3ali  No, he's obviously just pointing out that it is them, like always.
    1
  8278.  @jeromyzwiers1452  Lol, no, I'm no MAGA member!
    1
  8279.  @tomhenderson7972  Where was Gutfield four years ago when things were SO much worse in the White House?
    1
  8280.  @tomhenderson7972  Exactly. So why do people keep bringing them up?
    1
  8281.  @jerroldrieger5345  I think it is a major problem on the right, misunderstanding how "evidentiary processes" work. They're constantly declaring opinions as facts, and imaginations as "proof," while at the same time dismissing actual evidence of wrongdoing within their own party.
    1
  8282. He was never offered a just peace. Russia has refused that.
    1
  8283.  user-wj6dt5bq3w  When a country invades another, they are owed absolutely nothing. A just peace can only be reached when they return ALL gains they may have made over the course of the war. If you allow Russia to keep what they seized, they will only return for more later, and perhaps from other countries.
    1
  8284.  user-wj6dt5bq3w  If Britain had "made peace" with Germany by allowing them to keep France, then they just would have conquered Britain a few years later.
    1
  8285.  user-wj6dt5bq3w  Society has moved on from the time when we allowed countries to seize territory through violence and keep it. Apparently Russia is behind the times in more ways than one.
    1
  8286. Most people, including the judge in this case, are unqualified to effectively analyze the data themselves. Like they say in the legal profession, "a person who represents himself in court has a fool for a client."
    1
  8287. Yeah, it's like building a massive dam that holds back an entire lake, and provides power to the local community. If you just blow up that dam, what do you expect is going to happen?
    1
  8288.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Yeah, they work great. Why wouldn't I?
    1
  8289.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  There are none so far, nor any reason to believe that there would be, and those risks would apply to any medical treatment. If we held off taking medications until after decades of long term studies, then that would make losing millions of lives without ANY benefit. There has been far more research into this vaccine's long term effects than were done on the polio vaccine, but I doubt anyone regrets taking it.
    1
  8290.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Gross.
    1
  8291.  @phillycheezcake5571  If it caused them to survive the rabies, then yeah, definitely. Wouldn't you? Vaccines help people survive diseases, that's what this one did too.
    1
  8292. He's given several.
    1
  8293.  @veromikes  Ah, so "no true Scotsman."
    1
  8294. Loll Republicans are panicking because they know how disastrous it would be if Trump got a second term, but are too cowardly to say it out loud. :D
    1
  8295.  @glendabrasda-cj5dt  Because the people to which he owed money did not get their money. That is what happens when someone does not pay their bills.
    1
  8296. Who ever elected Hunter Biden to any position? Why are people talking about him so much, and not about Baron Trump?
    1
  8297. Cool, Biden voters.
    1
  8298.  @jwlarocque  Personally, I love self-checkouts, though my local grocery has recently made theirs more of a hassle to use.
    1
  8299.  @Timewave-Zer0  You know there were many "un-alive attempts" on Hitler too, right? That's not some magical "not a Nazi" card.
    1
  8300.  @demetriusjames9535  Harris spends more time talking about her policies than Trump does about his.
    1
  8301.  @demetriusjames9535  She directly talks about her own plans, in addition to Trump's. She can do both, while Trump can offer nothing.
    1
  8302.  @krankrocker  But those complaints were already addressed, it's old news. It was fair to report them before they were addressed, but pointless to rehash them. But I guess the Republicans love rehashing things that didn't turn out how they wanted.
    1
  8303.  @flyboy7588  She's at least better than anyone who worked in the previous White House.
    1
  8304.  @krankrocker  I was on this planet during the Trump administration, it was a pretty awful place to be. When did Democrats rehash anything? The issues Democrats were focused on were things that never got properly "hashed" at all. And yes, those events are forgotten when they turn out to be bonus. If they turn out to be valid, like with Cuomo or Bill Clinton, then the MSN has no trouble continuing to cover them until they get results.
    1
  8305.  @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.
    1
  8306.  @flyboy7588  Psaki wouldn't want to shine Kaley's shoes, you never know where those things have been.
    1
  8307.  @flyboy7588  Man, Harvard must be regretting giving a degree out to someone who brought such shame to their institution. Really devalues their degree. And gas prices have nothing to do with who is President at the time. Gas prices are up because of increased demand due to covid restrictions lifting, so if you're mad about that, tell your governor to put the restrictions back. And for the record, I did not vote for the dementia-riddled old cadaver, Donald Trump. Only an idiot would do that.
    1
  8308.  @krankrocker  My goal wasn't for you to agree with me, you're too far gone to agree with anything that exists in the real world. Your soul has been bought and paid for by the fake news you serve.
    1
  8309.  @krankrocker  The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to trick sheep into thinking that they were "the real independent thinkers, because they refuse to follow person A, and instead follow person B."
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  8310.  @krankrocker  Lol, "Marxists?" Seriously? In the 21st century? Wow.
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  8311.  @krankrocker  . . . You do understand that the Cold War is over right? We won it? Why this new "red scare" McCarthyism? There are fringe radicals everywhere, there are people who legit want to set up a Communist country, but they hold ZERO power in the Democratic party. They are treated like. . . say, Marjorie Taylor Greene in the Republican Party, or Lauren Boebert. None of Biden's polices or any that he would support have anything to do with Communism. Take off the tin-foil hat. People tried to take over our country on Jan 6th, and they FAILED. Don't let them worry you any more. We elected the useful idiot out of office last year, and God-willing, he'll never be back.
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  8312.  @krankrocker  You don't have to wish, I am right. You've just been drinking the kool-aid too long. Come up for air and join the rest of us in the real world.
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  8313. My basement freezer had an issue yesterday where ice had built up on it to the point that it blocked the door, which I think led to much more ice building, because the top shelf was just a solid ice block filled with food. I defrosted it with a hair dryer, but we did lose at least some of the food to being too exposed to the open air.
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  8314.  @fallingiguanas6326  Georgia IS corrupted, which is WHY the DOJ is fighting back to remove that corruption. They will sue Arizona eventually too, given what Arizona's been up to.
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  8315.  @fallingiguanas6326  "We're going to shit in our pool so nobody else will get in" is not a rational strategy for life.
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  8316.  @fallingiguanas6326  You do understand that federal law supersedes state law, right? If the federal government passes something, then what DeSantis passes to "block" it is irrelevant.
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  8317.  @fallingiguanas6326  States are not allowed to chose whether they comply with federal law or not. You don't seem to understand how any of this works.
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  8318.  @fallingiguanas6326  Lol, no there aren't. There are certainly lunatics that like to play pretend about stuff like that though. It's fun to imagine.
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  8319.  @fallingiguanas6326  "FL" rejects nothing. The current Republican administration in FL rejects a lot of things the Biden admin is doing, but their power extends only so far. They have no power to reject anything the federal government is authorized to do there, including checking election laws that violate the Constitutional protections or federal laws.
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  8320. Of course he has the right to run. He will just fail because the voters have no interest in him.
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  8321.  @Shtinamin  The police reports say that it's likely a hoax, because nobody is willing to go on record with these claims.
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  8322. Where are all the Ukrainian tractors asserting dominance?
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  8323.  @digimaks  Is that what the soviet propaganda is calling the unexploded Russian munitions that Ukrainians are having to pick up everywhere? If you're trying to imply that Russia is doing Ukraine any favors, they could do a really big favor and just cut out the genocide and go home.
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  8324. They can influence a former US president, I don't think hiring a few actors on fiver is outside their wheelhouse.
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  8325. It's the scientifically accurate term, in this case.
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  8326. He's been ready for peace since the start of this. It's Daddy Putin who wants war.
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  8327.  @pumpkinheadghoul  Democrats are constantly overestimating the moral character of Republicans, true enough. Obviously if Republicans were less corrupt then he would be in jail already, but they aren't. You did skip his loss in the defamation and sexual assault trial though.
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  8328.  @user-ti5rb1mx5x  Why do you believe that?
    1
  8329.  @ps-0245  "You're."
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  8330.  @johngatsby1473  The only people who want to codify baby murder and sexually deviant behavior are Republicans. Did you hear about that Missouri rep who was fighting to keep it legal to marry 12 year olds in the state?
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  8331.  @Summerdee223  Nah. It's the extremists on the right that cause the messes, and they make up the majority of their party. The extremists on the left are harmless. "Both sidesism" only benefits the worst actors, don't fall prey to it.
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  8332.  @attilamarics3374  The war was already declared by Putin. They can't do a "double war." It's all just one war.
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  8333. It's in the byline. Joe Biden's been writing articles on political matters since before you were born.
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  8334.  @DrinkKool-Aid  He's term limited.
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  8335. I assume someone's made one of those cat carriers into a PC case?
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  8336.  @shannaking4076  Why wouldn't you? What's the harm?
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  8337.  @joseph_6283  What good is that when he only lies in response?
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  8338.  @Jenna-ok9wb  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
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  8339.  @jlorde8838  Which question was a trap question? Because he gave 162 lies during that one press conference.
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  8340.  @shannaking4076  Donald Trump just said that the Medal of Freedom is better than the Medal of Honor, because the latter is only given to people who are "n very bad shape, or dead," whereas he gave the Medal of Freedom to people who are very healthy.
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  8341. ​ @shannaking4076  It was during a speech he gave last night. I'm sure it wouldn't be difficult to look up.
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  8342. TLDR, He loves the uneducated, and wants to produce as many of them as possible.
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  8343.  @G_GO0NO  You can't do gun control on a city level, it would need to be national to have any significant effect.
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  8344.  @derrickmonares3865  Most criminals either buy their guns legally or they buy/steal them off of people who bought them legally. If you remove the legal guns, then almost no criminals would be able to get guns.
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  8345.  @iColHax  "Assault weapons" is the term used for weapons designed around military applications, even if modified for civilian sale. I think you're talking about "automatic weapons," which would be something else.
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  8346.  @derekturner3272  How about Japan? I'd love a free ticket to Japan. You do make a good point though, the problem with all of those countries is the same, it has nothing to do with civilian firearms, and it has to do with those countries embracing the "make [country] great again" mindset, and ruin following.
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  8347.  @derrickmonares3865  Since most criminals acquire their guns through legal channels or second hand, removing access to those legal channels would also prevent the criminals from getting guns.
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  8348.  @targgthewise2892  If an audit would actually prove or disprove it, then election deniers would admit by now that Trump lost the state in 2020. But they can't, because that isn't the answer they want to hear. There is no need for an audit because there is no reason to believe that any fraud took place. How often do you believe the IRS should audit your taxes?
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  8349.  @targgthewise2892  Again, if audits worked, then Republicans would admit that Trump lost the 2020 election, because that's what the audits showed. But audits don't work, because Republicans are only looking for the answer that they want, and the truth is never good enough. Leftists have no problem with good faith attempts to investigate legitimate fraud claims, but right wing election denial-ism should never be confused for good faith attempts, and only waste taxpayer money and put American voting systems at risk due to mishandling by unqualified Republican "auditors." Millions of dollars in perfectly good election equipment has needed to be thrown out due to Republican tampering.
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  8350. That's not true though. US debt to GDP is lower than a lot of other countries. We could have a debt several times higher than it is. The ONLY threat to America's debt stability is when Republicans threaten to not raise the debt ceiling, which has directly led to several credit downgrades and made it more expensive for America to pay off our debts in future. BRICS is irrelevant and always will be.
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  8351. That's incorrect though. US debt to GDP is lower than a lot of other countries. We could have a debt several times higher than it is. The ONLY threat to America's debt stability is when Republicans threaten to not raise the debt ceiling, which has directly led to several credit downgrades and made it more expensive for America to pay off our debts in future. BRICS is irrelevant and always will be.
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  8352.  @jefferytokarsky1930  Lol. Yeah, huuuuuuge difference. Lol.
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  8353. Because nobody WANTS Mexico or Canada to lose more.
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  8354. Because they have a minority in the Senate and not the White House, so any deal that gets through should be at most 1/3 Republican stuff. This one was like 60/40 Republican stuff, and they still wouldn't take it. That is not how "negotiation" works. Also Republican ideas on the topic are bad.
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  8355.  @BROU-bb2uc  Lol, yeah, "Dominion" won it by having voting machines in one district that wasn't even competitive. Somehow. Meanwhile, in the real world, Biden just got more votes than Trump did, and Trump's simps are too weak to admit that.
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  8356.  @janetkaradenza4165  Yes, but that was over a hundred years ago,l and they would vote Republican today.
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  8357.  @janetkaradenza4165  Abraham Lincoln would be a Democrat if he were alive today, and Jefferson Davis would be a Republican. Lincoln was a liberal progressive, it's just that the parties had different positions back then than they do today.
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  8358. Well, they like Schiff more. She probably would have won if he hadn't run.
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  8359.  @TheNaturalust  It's more often the channel doing it, not YT.
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  8360.  @TheNaturalust Not really, there's no feedback mechanism, but I know from experience that certain topics are much easier to discuss on some channels than others, which indicates it's not a universal issue on YT.
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  8361.  @TheNaturalust YT themselves don't seem to have any agenda in this, other than that they want to reduce drama, and also provide channels with tools to moderate their own channel's content, but some go too heavy-handed with that tool.
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  8362.  @sjent  "The problem" would be every person who can get CV getting it within the next couple of months, massively overwhelming the health care system, leading to far more deaths among those who could potentially be saved and absolute social chaos as the bodies pile up. The current system is working, not as well as it might have in an ideal scenario, but way better than nothing. In NY, the curve has flattened out, hospitalizations are down, deaths are down, and both are likely to keep falling so long as people follow the rules. This is good. It means that NY hospitals are staying within a sustainable range where everyone who needs treatment can get it, leading to the minimal amount of fatalities and social disruption.
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  8363.  @sjent  Yes, and 3% of the population (of the US) is 9 million people, which is about 8 million more people than the healthcare system can sustain at any given time. "US has one of the highest infection rates in the world. But i guess if its "working" for you..." Like I said, in the part that you quoted, "not as well as it might have in an ideal scenario." When Trump completely dropped the ball on the run-up to all of this, we were left with a wide variety of bad endings. The route we took is one of the better available paths from that terrible starting location. Obviously we would have been much better off if we'd started in January to ramp up supplies and jump on early infections, but that ship has sunk. Now it's about what should we be doing about it NOW, and the current policy of "stay at home" is the best way of reducing further damage. "COVID is fairly mild virus, so most of those who could be infected got infected, rest got scared and take basic precautions like washing their hands. " Lol, no. Only a tiny fraction of New York has been infected so far, If not for the lockdown, most of them would have by now, and the numbers would be at least ten times worse across the board. Yeah, at some point it would burn out, but not before killing a LOT more people. We know from experience that places with poor social distancing got hit the hardest relative to their circumstances, like in New Orleans and Florida.
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  8364.  @sjent  "All those people would not get infected and develop symptom at the same time. " Not at the exact same time, no, but we know for a fact that this virus moves FAST when left unchecked. Italy got hit fast, New York got hit fast. New York is already ABOVE its normal capacity and barely within its emergency capabilities. And that's WITH weeks of social distancing. If they had stopped that early, then they would be way over any possible capacity to deal with it. Plenty of other communities all over the country are similarly swamped. Yeah, even if we fully opened up not everyone would get sick literally at the same time, but this is a virus that takes about two weeks to present, and then, for the people hit hardest, will persist for about 3-4 more weeks, so cases tend to pile up. If we opened up, hospitals across the country would be over capacity within a month or so of that and plenty of people would die as a result. "Then how US end up where it end up, if it was such a better available path ?" BECAUSE we got such a shitty start, BECAUSE Trump did nothing for the first crucial months. If we'd been banning travel earlier, stocking up on testing kits earlier, stocking up on PPE earlier, if he hadn't disbanded the anti-pandemic taskforce so they would be on top of things sooner, if there had been nation-wide shelter orders sooner, we could have kept the cases low like in some other countries. The problem with a viral outbreak like this is that things snowball, if they start to get out of control, then they get VERY out of control VERY quickly. Think of it like a building fire. Ideally you want to put the fire out early, when it's small enough to douse with a small extinguisher, and if you do that, great. But if you don't start dealing with the fire until half the place it lit up, then you don't have the option of just making the problem go away, you need to use extreme measures to salvage any of the structure, and there's no point complaining about water damage or that it's inconvenient you had to miss your favorite show because those asshole firemen made you evacuate the building while they dealt with it. "Its equivalent of putting a tourniquet on persons neck to stop nosebleed. " No, it's the equivalent to putting a tourniquet around their arm to stop an arm bleed from bleeding them out. More accurately, it's a medically induced coma. Sometimes you have to knock a patient out to give their body time to heal. "How do you know that is was lack of social distancing that was to blame ? " Ok, what's your alternative explanation to why a place like New Orleans would see massively higher rates of the virus than other places, coincidentally right after having a massive street party? I'm open to ideas.
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  8365.  @sjent  "And there are other countries, states and cities that were not. You are presenting exceptions as a rule." No, I'm presenting the rules as the rules. Viruses don't come out of nowhere. They don't just spontaneously erupt everywhere simultaneously. They travel. They have a point of origin. So in any given region, there's nothing at all unusual about them having zero cases for long periods of time, because someone who has the virus has to travel there. And it's possible for outbreaks to contain themselves, because the people who have it just naturally socially distance, and it sputters out. But in the cases where A. multiple people have had the virus, and B. the people around them did not maintain social distancing, the virus erupts out of control and within weeks gets all over the place. Always. Every time. "So youre saying that despite imposed social distancing, it makes no difference ? That perhaps there are other factors involved ?" That's not even close to what I'm saying. You aren't paying attention. What I am saying is that without social distancing being implemented, NY would be WAY WAY WAY worse than it is today. Remember, viral outbreaks have lag. If you start doing a good thing today, then it will have very little impact on infections for a couple weeks, and very little impact on deaths for weeks after that. But that impact will eventually arrive. And if you do something bad today, it won't fix anything tomorrow, but it will make things better in a few weeks, and even better weeks after that. If NY had instituted the current social distancing guidelines two weeks earlier than they did, then instead of ten thousand deaths as of today, they might have been able to keep it to only hundreds, or even dozens. If they had instituted social distancing two weeks later than they did, then they would likely have had fifty thousand or more deaths by this point, but whichever they did, it would have seemed to make almost no difference for a week or two after. "Thats the problem. If you dont open up it may crash economy and many more die as result long after virus is gone. There is no good solution." There is no good solution, but opening up is the worse one, because the cost of "crashing the economy" does not result in more people dying than opening up would cause, even in the long term. The people dying from opening up would crash the economy either way, at least this way saves more lives. "If we did this and if we did that does not qualify as viable explanation. Being smart after the fact does not negate the fact that US response to the pandemic was really bad." I'm not saying the US response was good. The Federal response was, is, and will remain fucking awful because we have a muppet in the White House. I desperartely wish that weren't the case. But we're talking about the lockdown, and the lockdown has nothing to do with the federal government. The lockdown was caused by STATE governments, and the lockdown HAS been an effective measure taken to do whatever they can to slow things. Obviously this would have been more effective with better federal leadership, but that ship has sunk, so we're all left doing the best we can here, and the best we can do, for the time being, is to stay in lockdown. "in US itself people need money to feed themselves, to pay their bills. Businesses need revenue to continue to function." This is where government needs to step up. They need to provide people with the money they need to feed themselves until this is over. They need to provide businesses the money they need to tread water until this is over, so that when it is over, they can pick themselves back up and keep running. Like I said, this is like a medically induced coma, and if you put someone into a coma, but then just ignore them for weeks, yeah, they'll die, so you need to give them an IV drip of nutrients to keep them alive. We've gotten some of that so far, but we definitely will need more. I'm not saying they won't fuck this up, I don't trust them that far, but if they manage it well, it's the best path forward. "Really, right after ? You dont see the problem with this statement ? Like the fact that virus has up to 2 weeks incubation period ?" I factored that into my example. By "right after" I wasn't referring to "minutes later," I was referring to "after the incubation period had had the time to display impacts," which is how it actually happened. "Florida, for example, is a retirement state. And elderly are the highest risk group when ti comes to this virus." Yes, but it's not the elderly in Florida that turned out to be a specific issue for that state, it was spring breakers, who not only caused outbreaks across the state ( outside of retirement communities), but also spread it to their home/school communities when they returned.
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  8366.  @sjent  "And they have. We are not talking about some remote mountain village. Hundreds of people travel between states any any given day. It is extremely probable, statistically speaking, that at least some of them will be carriers." Yes, but it takes time. A few people entered the country with the virus before February. A few more after that. And they didn't evenly distribute, they landed largely in coastal areas, international airports. They interacted with people working there. This is a SLOW virus. It's a mean one, but slow, it takes a week or two to be noticeable, another week or two to put people into the hospital, and another week or two to kill, so the lag time between one person showing up and having a noticeable impact can be fairly long. It will reach those random rural areas, but it takes time, and the better everyone socially distances, the less likely that someone who happens to be a carrier will happen to go to a certain place, and happen to bump into people, who will happen to bump into other people. Without social distancing, if everyone is just going about their business, it spreads faster, but can still be hard to notice for weeks or even months in some places. "Except that world is not uniform and in different places it will manifest differently. So one carrier in state A will have different result that another carrier in state B. Boiling it down to just social distancing is fairly stupid. Especially considering how weak this virus really is." It's not "weak," more people have died from it already than in an entire year of the normal flu, and that's with aggressive measures to try and slow it down that we normally don't bother with. I hardly even ever get a flu shot, much less socially isolate myself. This virus is a serious killer, it's just a slow moving one. It's Jason, not Alien. "Its not even presumption, but pure assertion. There is no way of knowing that." Nonsense. "Good thing ? What good thing ? I see idiots wearing masks thinking it will save them. Completely oblivious to the fact that virus can enter thru the eyes." Well, yes, no, and maybe. One, virus is unlikely to just float directly into your eye and infect you that way. It's possible, but highly unlikely. Where the risk lies, is that if you get it on your hands and then touch your eye, that's a higher risk. Now wearing a lame face mask doesn't do a great job of protecting you from getting the virus, a really nice one can be fairly significant, but what even a lame mask does is limit the amount of virus you spread, since we know that this spreads before you even know that you're sick. So that's why it's socially responsible for you to wear a mask, not so that you don't get sick, but so that if you are sick and don't know it, you're less likely to spread it. Wearing the mask typically doesn't mean that you spread no virus, but it does reduce the range and volume of virus you could put out into the world, making it less likely for someone else to come into contact with it. Reducing likelihood is important. "After 2008 recession suicide rates jumped by at least 20%. And that is just one factor out of many." I would rather have people choosing to take their own life than people choosing to live be unable to because they got this virus. I do not care about suicide rate statistics. Bump up suicide hotlines and social services to try and minimize that effect as best they can, but if ten people taking their own lives saves one person willing to fight to live, then I'm all for that. "You must understand that this money is not coming from reserves, but simply new green paper is being printed. It is not covered by anything and will directly translate into even more debt. " You were the one just talking about suicide rates and the danger of a bad economy. Yeah, it drives up debt, and yeah, it would be nice if we had more of a cushion, if the Republicans had not driven us so far into debt before this started, but at the end of the day, "more debt" is still the better outcome than "the cost of not spending our way out of this." The US can sustain WAY more debt than even what we currently have, IF we put it to good use. Paying to mitigate the damage of this outbreak is a better use of that debt than a ton of other nonsense we've spent debt on over the past few decades. "They tried that during Great Depression, where factories were manufacturing cars and those cars then went directly onto scrap yard, to keep things going. Did not work out that well." That seems dumb. I would not pay businesses to do busywork, to make junk. I would either assign them to make things that we do need, like medical equipment, or I would just pay them to do nothing. Yeah, pay them to do nothing. He's some money to pay off your monthly expenses, so that you don't go bankrupt, but since your costs are lower than usual too, you don't have to keep the machines running or buy new materials, this should keep you afloat until it's time to move again. "Except that US is not self-contained economy. Not to mention that this IV is full of nothing but saline. US has no reserves." The US doesn't need reserves. It operates on a fiat currency which it controls. People are buying up treasury bonds like nobody's business. The US could run up tens of trillions of debt and we'd be fine. Obviously we shouldn't run up more than necessary, but in this case, it's necessary.
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  8367.  @sjent  "Death toll of OCVID-19, with all the number fudging is closing on 200k(realistically its probably around 40-50k, if that). Death toll of flu, at any given year is between 300k and 650k. Worldwide." I think you're missing the forest for the trees there. The flu is an endemic issue, it's already everywhere at any given time. CV is a novel outbreak, it started in one location and had to spread outwards from there, so it hasn't hit everywhere that it's going to hit yet. Numerous countries and regions have instituted historic lockdowns to slow the spread of CV, further reducing its impacts. You should not look at those death totals as a sign for relief, you should be concerned at how bad it is even though we're taking every measure possible to reduce it, and how much worse it would be if we just "let it happen." "COVID-19 can bypass mucous membrane as easily as it can get into your thru nose. It can be transferred by touching infected surface or by coming in contact with airborne droplets." Yes, but you're more likely to encounter the droplets by inhaling them than you are by just standing there and bumping into them. It's an active vs passive interaction. Again, we're talking odds here. And you can NOT get infected just by touching an infected surface, you need to touch that surface and then touch your eyes, nose, or mouth before disinfecting. You could technically get elbow-deep in a soup of CV and not get sick from it, so long as you kept it away from your airways and washed thoroughly afterwards. It is not bloodborne, it cannot pass through your skin, it needs to get directly into your lungs. "I dont even know what to say on that. I thought this whole discussion was on how to minimize damage." It is about minimizing damage. I can't be responsible for the choices of people who WANT to die. If I can save their life, I will, but if they are saying "you let that covid patient die or I'm going to cut my own throat," I choose the person who wants to live. If you tell me "course A will lead to more innocent people surviving this disease, but also lead to more people taking their own lives," then I will tell you, then that's the course we're taking, and we'll try to invest in suicide prevention as best we can, but ultimately it's their choice. "Its not just Republicans. This has been going on for past 40+ years, under various administrations. Its US Government in general, as institution." Don't pay attention to the presidents, pay attention to the congresses. If you track government spending and revenues over the decades, it's Republicans that tend to run up deficits. They tend to cut taxes to the bone while not cutting spending. Democrats do tend to raise spending some, but only on things that are actually worth spending on. If not for Republican priorities, the budget would be in a much healthier place, with less debt, and what debt we had would have gone to more useful projects. "Fiat currency that is rapidly losing it extremely inflated worth, as many countries are weening themselves off dollar." Nah. Remember how in 2008 Wall Street was "too big to fail?" The US is bigger. If the US "failed" it would devastate the global economy, and that will remain true for at least decades to come, and everyone knows that. Even much smaller countries are big enough that the global economy won't allow them to go under. It's a non-issue. National debt is a completely different substance than personal debt, and cannot be considered as if they are similar. It's like comparing plants to animals. Here' some info about recent Treasuries action: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/04/07/treasury-yields-edge-higher-as-investors-hope-for-coronavirus-slowdown.html
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  8368.  @sjent  "Question is, does stalling economy, that may lead to deaths of hundreds of thousands, worth to save maybe tens of thousands." In this actual situation? Yes, because if we're dealing in hypotheticals, then we have to accept that we would not be "saving maybe tens of thousands," but "maybe saving millions," because that's the hypothetical high end on this, the "if we did nothing" end. You're looking at the end results of extreme countermeasures and saying "well that wasn't so bad," completely ignoring how much worse the data indicates it would have been without those extreme countermeasures. There is no rational argument that "the cure is worse than the disease" in THIS case. "It always starts and ends with president. Federal budget is something that involves intricate back'n'forth between all branches of government." Not really. Presidents typically send congress a budget proposal, sure. And if the Congress is friendly to him, then that's what might end up on his desk, but if congress is hostile to him, then it won't look anything like that, because the budget proposal has no legal power. Congress has way more direct control over what does and doesn't make it into the budget, all the president actually gets to do is either veto it or not, so at the end of the process, he very often doesn't get a lot of what he wants, and has to swallow a lot of what he doesn't if the congress is hostile to him. Back to the point though, if you check the data, Republicans are MUCH more likely to run up deficits during periods of economic stability than Democrats are, while Democrats are much more likely to balance the budget. "Obama printed huge amount of money and wasted it on completely irreverent feelgood crap." Nope. Obama balanced the budget much more than Bush or Trump have done. The biggest spending blowouts from the Obama administration, which overshadowed the rest of it, was in the immediate aftermath of Bush's recession, where massive spending was needed to offset a much larger depression. That was a cure that prevented a larger disease too. "And there is nobody capable, not to mention willing, to bail US out." The US is. That's the point of large scale national governments, they are self-sustaining. They can't go bust. They don't need the same sorts of "bailout" that businesses or individuals need. They just refuse to die, and so it becomes. You just don't understand how global economics functions and are using overly simplified analogs.
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  8369.  @sjent  "Have to ? I dont have to do anything of sorts." Ok, perhaps I should have been more clear. You would have to if you wanted to claim to be making a rational and consistent position. "In fact it seems that they are grossly overestimated, by the factor of 100 at least." NO. That is the entire point! The intention of those projections was not sto say "this is the amount of people that will DEFINITELY die, no matter what." The point of those projections was to say "this is what would happen if we just behaved normally and went about our lives". The fact that we've come in under those projects is not a sign that they were wrong, it's a sign that we did things right to avert that outcome. A common analogy that I've seen, and which mostly applies, is "oh, it looks like our fall has slowed down, I guess we can ditch these parachutes now." Yes, right now we are below those projections, but only BECAUSE we have been "behaving weirdly" in response to the virus. As soon as we start "behaving normally" again, we start heading back towards what those projections said would happen. It wouldn't be quite as bad, because we stalled out a bit of it, but it would be a lot worse than if we kept up the pressure. "Many countries that do not have those countermeasures in place or have them in far milder state, also have fairly low infection and death numbers." Different countries, different circumstances. Some countries just didn't have a lot of international travel in the first place. Some do have a lot of cases but don't have a lot of testing so it's not as apparent. Some WILL be as bad as the US, but it just hasn't hit yet. The other factor is that these outbreaks grow exponentially, not linearly, so if a country jumps on top of things immediately, they can keep things mellow, while if they catch things even a week later, it can spiral out of control, even if both are doing the exact same things once they get going. The California Bay Area, for example, jumped onto their outbreak faster than most, and all else being equal their rates are TINY compared ot most places that have had an outbreak. But sure, maybe you know better than all the people who's job it is to understand these things, Mr. Dunning Kruger. "In addition to that it is a well known fact that countries like US have policy that forces medical personnel to mark anyone who died with COVID-19 as of COVID-19. To greatly inflate numbers and justify those extreme countermeasures." Lol. No, wait, people are dying. This is no time for lols. "Despite the fact that you yourself say that president can veto budget, you them state that president does not have much power over budget ? Do you know what logic is ?" Because the veto is a binary. Presidents have tired line-item vetoing before and it was declared unconstitutional, so basically they have to take it or leave it, and at some point, that means they need to take it to keep things running. It can be politically disastrous if a President vetos an otherwise more or less ok budget that passed both houses of Congress. Yes, the veto power means that the budget can't be completely offensive to the President's goals, but also he has little power over adding specific things he wants or trimming things he does not, beyond what Congress chooses to offer him. "Again, contradictions is same paragraph. So did Obama balance budget or did he overspend ?" He balanced the budget. The deficit he inherited went down considerably during his term in office. "Running up an enormous deficit and debt that made literally all presidents before him, combined, looking like extremely conservative spenders." Almost all the deficit spending he did was in his first year, cleaning up the Bush recession. Most economists believe he should have spent more during those early years which would have gotten us out of the recession faster. "Except that it is not. If US government is so "self-sustaining", then why it cant balance it budget for over 40 years ? Its the opposite of being self-sustained." Because balancing the budget wasn't the goal, growth was, so instead of balancing the budget, they spent that money on growing the economy. Not always in the most wise ways possible, sometimes in extremely dumb ways like the Trump tax cuts, but at no point did they attempt to balance the budget outside of the Clinton administration. It is worth pointing out that the budget WAS balanced after Clinton until the Bush tax cuts and wars blew it out again. We hadn't yet recovered the entire national debt or anything, but we would have if he'd just left things alone for a decade or so. "Greece is a perfect example of how one good hit can collapse this house of cards. " No, Greece is an AWFUL example because they DON'T control their own fiscal policy. They are part of the EU, and their monetary system is linked to the Euro. This means that they CAN'T "print their way out" of a problem like the US can. If they were independent, then they could have coasted right through that crisis. Now I do believe in the EU, and think that ultimately they should continue to grow and improve it, but they need to do a better job of protecting their member states in situations like that. It's basically like if a US state went bankrupt, which can happen. Their options for handling that are much more limited than the entire US has.
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  8370.  @sjent  "Riight, because there are only two positions - yours and the wrong one. " There could be others, but the one you were making at the time was not one of those. "Except that those "projections" were based on nothing." They were based on scientific analysis. That's how projections work, you use the available data and plot out where past experience would indicate something will go. This is like when they predict the path of a hurricane, and there are multiple models that all point in the same general direction but you don't like their answers so you pencil in your own and claim "it's all based on nothing." https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/D9r2X8iagrE0Q70AO9Q2BiEqvqA=/0x0:2678x1785/1200x800/filters:focal(807x730:1235x1158)/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/65193692/1172289651.jpg.0.jpg "There is no reason to believe that those projections had anything to do with reality to begin with." Yes there is. "Real numbers are unknown and effect that those measures had on virus are unknown as well. but more we learn about this virus, more it becomes clear that those projected numbers are nonsense." No, again, the projected numbers were accurate, and remain accurate, IF we did nothing. Because we acted, it cut into those numbers. It's like if you have a crowd of 100 people, and a bus is barreling right for it, and you "project" that if the bus plows into that crowd at full speed then it will kill 35 people (I made that number up, but a scientist could arrive at a better calculation based on things like speed and momentum and fluid density and their result would be scientifically valid), then that would be the initial projection. Now, if that bus slowed down, causing it to impact the crowd with less force, allowing more people to get out of the way before it reached them, then far fewer people would die. That does not mean that those initial projections were wrong, just that the conditions that they were basing it on had changed. "Now all of a sudden you are on board with idea that those things cant be estimated with any degree with accuracy. All while being convinced that those measures were effective in US." I believe that they can be estimated accurately based on a given set of facts. "If we do nothing, X." "If we lock down, Y" "If we lock down this week, Z1," "If we lock down next week, Z2." Every country has their own circumstances, so every country needs to be predicted separately. Even individual states and counties need to be predicted separately, and you need to update those predictions based on how people change in response to the predictions. The virus doesn't change, it's behavior is the constant, but people are very flexible in reacting to that virus, so you always have to adapt the models as you go. The predictions are still important though as a way of letting people know where the current course will lead them. "Define "tiny" and what are those "most places" ?" https://s.hdnux.com/photos/01/11/56/04/19325186/21/420x0.jpg "Closest Obama came to balanced budget was deficit of 442 billion in 2015. Only two people had it higher. Trump - that guy puts Obama to shame with his rabid spending. And George W Bush with 459 billion in 2008, and it was highest deficit when he was in office." But Obama did reduce the deficit he inherited from Bush. I mean that's the thing, you can't just wave a wand and balance the budget, it's a giant ship that turns slowly. You can't just say "well we're going to stop spending any money now," because the entire country would implode. If you want to reduce the budget you need to do it slowly over time so that necessary services continue to operate. The changes Bush made made it impossible to balance the budget in only eight years, but Obama did bring the budget closer to balanced than where he found it. He made it better, not worse. Then Trump blew it up again. "There was this thing called dot-com bubble, that went off like nuclear bomb in late 2000. It damage is comparable to that of 2008 recession(6.2 trillion for dot-com and 6 trillion for 2008), yet Bush did not go on a spending spree and his deficit remained fairly reasonable capping at 290 billion. Comparing to Obama 1.5 trillion it was pocket change." One, the Bush tax cuts caused a long term deficit problem, not just a one-year deficit problem. A lot of the deficit in Obama's term would not have existed without thos Bush tax cuts being in place, but it's a lot harder to get tax raises passed than tax cuts. Two, Bush's policies led to the 2008 recession that blew up the economy during most of Obama's first term. Three, you don't seem to be factoring in Bush's $700 billion TARP program. Again, a president doesn't get to just decide how much the deficit should be in a given year, so year-on-year figures only tell part of the story. The bigger part is what structural changes they apply, and how those changes impact the next years and decades.
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  8371.  @sjent  "You cant be seriously comparing predicting hurricanes with predicting spread of a virus. " True, Hurricanes are much harder to predict. Way more variables. "How stupid do you need to be to push this narrative ? Whole notion of projections is that they are just a guess. Claiming that they are accurate, without having any evidence to support this claim, is nonsense." If they were just guesses, then they wouldn't be projections. Projections are based on data analysis, that "based on what we know now about this virus, and based on what other, similar viruses have done under similar situations, the current virus is likely to do X." They aren't just pulled out of thin air, they are calculations based on prior trends, the same as hurricane predictive models. The only real difference is that while hurricanes are completely outside of human control to modify, viral projections can be greatly impacted by human interaction with them. The initial models were based on expectations of "if no changes are made to confront this virus," and now, since drastic efforts were made to confront it, the outcomes have shifted relative to the projections. It's like if you have a car driving towards a wall, you can calculate "I project that in ten seconds we will hit that wall with a force of X Newtons," but then if someone sees that, and hits the brakes, the projection is no longer accurate, the car might not hit that wall, or hit with less force. That does not mean that the projection was wrong, just that you're trying to insist upon it a goal that it never had. "In this case, there is no way to predict how many people will die." Sure you can. Not 1:1, obviously, but you can get a ballpark figure. You can estimate the force at which the first people would get hit. You could project how quickly the bus would slow down and how much force would be inflicted on people behind them. You could then take that force data, and using prior data collected on what X amount of blunt force does to a human body, and you could come up with a reasonable estimate of how many people would die from such a collision. Let's say that figure was 6. Would the actual result be 6? Probably not, but it'd likely be within the 3-9 range. It wouldn't likely be "none" and wouldn't likely be "20" either, assuming the methodology was reasonable. ". If bus were to slow down, if would still hit with force, due to it mass, that would kill most people in it direct path, but as it would start weer off and tumble, it would have far greater path of destruction, in addition to that it would be sending everything it hits flying in different directions, resulting in numerous impacts all around it." A bus is not a bullet, it will not "tumble" upon impact with some humans, especially at low speeds. Humans aren't likely to even get it to tip over, much less roll. "Did you miss that little line on this chart that says "US average" ? Bay area is not tiny compared to most places, its just that few places are far above average." One, the Bay Area is still way below that average. If that were all there was to the story, their result would still have been significant. Two, the US average takes into account tons of places that have had few to no cases, because they are too far separated from outbreak locations. They will likely get hit harder at a later date. Remember that this is a virus, it grows exponentially from outbreak sites, it doesn't just spontaneously grow linear everywhere at once. Areas with little to no exposure are likely to remain with little or no cases for long stretches of time, and are less likely to ever get that bad. The Bay Area is a "likely outbreak location" given its significant international exposure, climate, and population density. There's every reason to believe that they would have been one of those "far above average" locations if nothing had occurred to alter their trajectory from the "natural" state. That it kept the curve low should be seen as an anomaly to any rational observer. If you disagree that the standard social distancing/lockdown methods are responsible for that outcome, you should at least have an alternate theory beyond "just because." Btw, this is a nice short video about how some of the more recent visual aid graphs functions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-3Mlj3MQ_Q It explains why certain comparisons may seem misleading. "Bush, total deficit over 8 years - 3.293 trillion. Obama, total deficit over 8 years - 6.781 trillion." I feel the need to repeat, the deficit is not just the amount spent during a given year, it is STRUCTURAL. A President cannot EVER say "I will just decide to spend X money this year." That's not how the Federal budget works. A President is obligated by decisions made by previous administrations that the US will spend X amount of dollars over the next 5, 10, 20 years. Untangling that is a lot of work. When Obama took office, the US was obligated to spend trillions more over his administration, and if he'd done nothing at all, then that's what would have happened. Over his tenure, he reduced that amount each year. What is important to track is what structural changes they make to the budget, what revenues they add or remove, what costs they add or remove, and by that mesure, Obama cut costs to the federal budget over his tenure. "Only ? Hitler rebuild Germany in 5 years. Into power that swept over most of the Europe. Granted Germany was neck-deep in debts, but at least he had something to show for it." I would prefer not following Hitler's example. "Did you knew that due to US debt-oriented economy it experience financial crashes about every 15 years ?" These crashes have nothing to do with government spending, they have to do with Republican policies of low Wall Street regulation. Democrats have put forth numerous proposals to fix this, but can't get it past Senate Republicans. "I would prefer that government would not be involved in such activities in general." I would prefer ti too, except when it is needed, in which case they need to do it to prevent even worse alternatives. I mean ideally we would be better regulating big business so that they can't get themselves into such precarious positions in the first place, but if they are about to tumble over and crush the economy, then it's better for the government to bail them out (ideally with enough strings attached to prevent it happening again later), than to just allow the crash to happen and drag the economy out of the rubble.
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  8372.  @sjent  "When it comes to viruses, it is impossible to predict their emergence or how they will evolve." No more impossible than hurricanes, so long as you don't factor human behavior into it, which is why the predictive models were based on :if we did nothing," and why they deviated significantly when we "didn't do nothing," and will go back to the nightmare scenarios if we "stop doing anything." "True. Except that predictions for COVID-19 could only be made based on similar viruses, like same SARS, as i have mentioned previously." And also based on how they acted in China early in this, and updated to reflect how they have behaved around the world since. "As it is done intentionally to promote panic." To what purpose? Are the scientists super villains to you? In it for the lulz? "Hurricanes generally follow same pattern, with little deviations, while virus can mutate and everything goes out the window. We cant even accurately predict it spread." Viruses don't mutate in ways that would make them terribly unpredictable, any more than minor fluctuations can send a hurricane left when it might have gone right and it ends up thousands of miles off course. Viruses mutate over a period of years, and that typically only results in a change to how well immunized people who already had it are. That's irrelevant to the current situation. Predictive models have nothing to do with such mutations, they are based on evaluating the transmission and lethality rates of the existing virus, and then extrapolating from there, and so far the predictive models have been accurate, so long as nothing was changed about the target location. Predict the course of a bowling ball and how many pins it'll knock down, fine, but then remove several of those pins from play before the ball reaches them, and the result will be entirely different, that does not mean that the prediction was wrong. "This example is completely rubbish, as aside of the fact that "car" exists we know very little about it.We dont know it size, speed, composition, load, mass, etc. Very little of relevant data is available." In my example I'm assuming that we know the physical properties of the car and the road surface well enough to make accurate predictions. That's part of the initial premise. Likewise, when the Covid predictions were made, they were based off of data out of Wuhan, and the data being used has held up under subsequent investigations. It does have the infection rate the models were based on, it does have the lethality rate the models were based on, and the models remain accurate in situations where social distancing was not applied and cases were emergent. "You clearly do not understand physics. Even slow-moving object can flip if it hits obstacle under right conditions. For as long as there is enough force and a proper vector." There would never be enough "force" or "vector" in a crowd of people to flip a slow-moving bus. The only way that a bus would flip like that is if there were something significantly sturdier and smoother than a mass of people, like an actual ramp, applied to only one corner. People will just slow it down. "Its not a movie or game where you can just mow down zombies in hundreds." But neither is it a movie of a video game in which any random collision results in the vehicle doing a backflip (which in movies typically requires springs, mounted explosives, or cables). "And... ? Majority of areas are below that average, as few areas are far above it. This is how averaging works." Keep reading. . . It is way below the average AND it has all the conditions that would put it ABOVE that average if they were not behaving effectively. If some tiny town in the middle of nowhere is below the average, that is no surprise, there are plenty of reasons why no outbreak would occur there. When a major, international city with known outbreaks is way below the average, there is a reason for that beyond random chance. If you cannot accept that very simple premise then I cannot accept that you are acting in good faith. "And it has. For three months. If you think that it will take it a year to reach it peak infection rate, then you are a moron." Again, depends on social distancing. If we'd done nothing, it would have reached its peak in most places over the previous and following months. Because of social distancing, the peak has flattened out for now, but is likely to plateau for many months to come. If we stop social distancing, we might reach that peak within the next couple months again, but, again, at much higher infection and fatality rates. "Simple fact is that most people already got it and got thru it without even noticing it." In some places, yes. In the US as a whole, you must be joking. If you actually believe that to be the case, then I am sad for you. you have a rough year ahead of you. "No, there is not. Places with significant international exposure, population density and climate are dime a dozen. Bay Area is not some unique hub for travel, all roads do not lead to SF." That's my point. It's not unique. It has a similar profile to major cities like LA, NYC, DC, NO, Chicago, Seattle, etc.,*and yet* it has maintained a MUCH lower Infection rate. It is WAY below the US average, and while obviously large portions of the US would be below that average, common sense would indicated that the low end of that average would be made up of communities with smaller, more isolated communities that have has few incoming cases. They aren't "below the average for a major metropolitan area," they are "below the average that includes the middle of Kansas." It's also worth keeping in mind that this is based on imperfect testing. The Bay Area has had more testing than most areas, so what cases they do have, included on that graph, would more accurately reflect the reality of their situation, whereas a lot of other communities "below the average" have seen little to no actual testing, so their actual rates, not reflected on that chart, would trend significantly higher. "That study from Stanford, where they tested people and a huge amount of people were found to already having antibodies for virus, without actually being officially infected, kinda shows how little we know about this virus. Or how (in)effective those "counter-measures" are." I think you misunderstand what is happening there. Those people had been infected, they just did not display symptoms. That's one of the things that makes this virus so dangerous, that people can "look fine" but still be contagious. Ebola, by contrast, is a lot less risky as a pandemic, since if you have enough Ebola going on to be infectious, you look like a hot mess and are easily contained. "No, hes not. In fact every next president tends to trash a lot of what previous president started. Obama joined Paris Agreement, Trump said "fuck that". Dances around taxes is a goof example as well - democrat rises them, republicans slash them." They can try to change things, but typically that takes an act of Congress, and some things are easier to manage than others. Again, the President can't just decide to ignore previous budgets, they can only take action to change them. In many cases, backing out of a previous deal costs more than staying in it. "Here we go again. Every president, on both sides, has given ground and helped banksters. Yet some morons still try to pile it all on Republicans." Because when it happens during a Democratic president, he only did it because Republicans in Congress held major priorities hostage if he didn't agree to those changes, like when they try to shut down the government unless they get their way. It's always the Republicans that get the ball rolling, all Democrats have ever been guilty of is not stopping them when something more immediate was needed. "No. Period. Once government gets involved, it will always go downhill. At first it may seem good, but further it goes, worse it will get." Lol, government is the only hope we have against the corporations. They may not be perfect, but they're all we've got. Even you agree with that, noting that government hasn't done enough to thwart the big bangs and Wall Street. Well, without any government intervention, there would be even less standing in their way. "No. Again. This mindset is exactly what causes those problems. At first those businesses are doing whatever they want. and avoid paying taxes. But when things get hard, they just expect taxpayers to bail them out. It always seem to go in one direction." I agree, but it's still better to bail them out than to allow them to collapse, in some cases, at least. Now that doesn't mean that you should let them just go back to business as usual, there should be iron strings attached to those bailouts to limit their ability to do it all again. The Democrats imposed some of those onto the most recent bailouts, and wanted to impose more, but the Republicans fought them on it tooth and nail, and nothing could get passed without passing the Senate. I have zero sympathy for the businesses themselves, but a lot of innocent people would get caught in the crossfire if they were just allowed to implode, and the rich people who build, invest in, and run those businesses would walk away with millions either way, so allowing the business to die would not be punishing them in any practical way.
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  8373.  @TruthRISING2024  Lol. That's a great parody of those sorts of idiots!
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  8374. There's no stripping going on though. Nobody is advocating in favor of having strip shows with children around. Is that what you thought it was about? That there was stripping going on? What idiot told you that?
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  8375. Yup. But this is not an invasion, since they are not invading, they are just immigrating. People immigrating is not an invasion.
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  8376. Can someone answer this, what is the Republican obsession with "going to the border?" Like, what is the point of that? This is 2023, we have the Internet on phones these days, what benefit is there to actually going to the border, looking at it, "yup, that's a whole lot of dirt," and then coming back to DC? I would take any Democrat willing to FIX the border over any hundred Republicans just wining about building walls.
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  8377.  @debbydeloach  Yes, too many Republicans in the pool certainly dilute our greatness.
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  8378.  @blksbth1  They can always choose to be better, they have made the choice not to be. That is not how bigotry works.
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  8379.  @briopalumpus8676  What do you mean? Don't white people enter a room with "So I'm white, and. . ."
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  8380.  @KilgorSoS  It remains a fact that humanity started in Africa and migrated out of there. I'm not sure what led you to believe otherwise.
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  8381.  @KilgorSoS  He's not the world's greatest expert, you just WANT him to be, because you want to believe what he had to say. The known science is that all known hominid species on Earth originated in Africa a few million years ago, and spread out from there. Then Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved in Africa less than 100,000 years ago and started to spread out from there. Modern humans can contain trace amounts of DNA from other hominid groups like Neanderthals, but can also ALL trace their roots back to the Homo Sapiens that expanded out of Africa in this second migration. What do you believe is inaccurate there?
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  8382.  @KilgorSoS  I don't know who you're talking about or why you believe him. The known science is that all known hominid species on Earth originated in Africa a few million years ago, and spread out from there. Then Homo Sapiens Sapiens evolved in Africa less than 100,000 years ago and started to spread out from there. Modern humans can contain trace amounts of DNA from other hominid groups like Neanderthals, but can also ALL trace their roots back to the Homo Sapiens that expanded out of Africa in this second migration. What do you believe is inaccurate there?
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  8383.  @KilgorSoS  I don't know who you're talking about or why you would think he's right. The known science is that all known hominid species on Earth originated in Africa a few million years ago, and spread out from there. Then Hmo Sapiens Sapiens evolved in Africa less than 100,000 years ago and started to spread out from there. Modern humans can contain trace amounts of DNA from other hominid groups like Neanderthals, but can also ALL trace their roots back to the Hmo Sapiens that expanded out of Africa in this second migration. What do you believe is inaccurate there?
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  8384.  @KilgorSoS  I don't know who you're talking about or why you would think he's right.
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  8385.  @KilgorSoS  The known science is that all known hominid species on Earth originated in Africa a few million years ago, and spread out from there. Then Sapiens Sapiens evolved in Africa less than 100,000 years ago and started to spread out from there. Modern humans can contain trace amounts of DNA from other hominid groups like Neanderthals, but can also ALL trace their roots back to the Sapiens Sapiens that expanded out of Africa in this second migration. What do you believe is inaccurate there?
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  8386.  @JohnnySalami6  Yup, he is. Can't do a debate without his security blankie.
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  8387.  @bk_8338  She has. What questions do you have that she hasn't addressed?
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  8388.  @FrankLucas3  Trump hasn't done any liberal networks yet, just neutral ones. There aren't any conservative news networks at the moment, only conservative entertainment networks.
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  8389.  @bk_8338  I asked you what question you wanted answered, I take it your answer is that she answered every question you could think of?
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  8390.  @bk_8338  I asked you which questions she hasn't answered. Apparently you answered "none?"
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  8391.  @bk_8338  She answered that one during previous interviews, the circumstances have changed since she first took a position on the topic, so her position on it changed, as it should for any public servant. This isn't something new, she changed positions on the issue years ago, why does it keep coming up today?
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  8392.  @bk_8338  Sorry, my previous answer got eaten. It's pretty simple really, the situation changed, so her view about the solution to it also changed. This was all over four years ago, of course, so there's no reason to bring it up today, right?
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  8393.  @bk_8338  Sorry, my previous answer got eaten. It's pretty simple really, the situation changed, so her view on what to do about it also changed. This was all over four years ago, of course, so there's no reason to bring it up today, right?
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  8394.  @bk_8338  Sorry, my previous answer got eaten. It's pretty simple really, the situation changed, so her view on what to do about it also changed.
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  8395.  @bk_8338  I'm sorry, my previous answers keep getting eaten. It's pretty simple really, the situation changed, so her view on what to do about it also changed.
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  8396.  @bk_8338  Literally any answer I offer gets eaten by Forbes. That should tell you all you need to know.
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  8397.  @bk_8338  Forbes won't allow me to answer your question. That should answer your question.
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  8398.  @bk_8338  No answer I give you survives more than a few seconds.
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  8399.  @bk_8338  I'm answered you at least twenty times. None of them took.
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  8400.  @bk_8338  I have tried to answer, but Forbes.
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  8401.  @bk_8338  She said what she believed at that time, then the situation changed, so what she believed changed, as any rational person should expect.
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  8402.  @bk_8338  Every answer I attempt gets "Forbesed."
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  8403.  @bk_8338  If you can see this post, it was because it was not deleted, for once.
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  8404.  @edgarnapiza8163  I can, yes, but Forbes won't allows it to post.
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  8405.  @RidgeRunner-lz5ko  When Democrats spend on things, it's on things that benefit America more than the costs involved. That is a good thing, like taking out a mortgage to remodel the house and increase its value. There is nothing wrong with that. The problem is that we then need to pay those bills, and yet any time Republicans gain enough control over the process, they cut taxes on the wealthy, so that less money goes in to pay off those debts than was coming in before. During the 50s and 60s, when America was on the rise, the corporate tax rate was around 50%. It's now less than half that, so half as much money is going in to pay off that debt. Likewise, the top tax rate, which only impacts those making half a million each year, dropped from 91% to 37%, and doesn't even cover a lot of the ways rich people currently make their money. So that's why the national debt has risen, Republicans refuse to pay America's bills.
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  8406. And still the House Weaponizing Government Committee has ZERO implicating the President. The only one lying here is Hannity, when he claims that Joe Biden had anything to do with it. Hunter was obviously playing off his father's position, but his father never had anything to do with it. Constantly claiming otherwise will never fool anyone with half a brain.
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  8407. I imagine that the reason people forget it ever happened is because it only happened in a dream that you had, and people tend to forget their dreams shortly after waking up. In the real world, Obama never bombed any hospitals in Iraq.
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  8408. But she paid for his campaign.
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  8409. Republicans put a LOT of faith into "events." They seem to think that if they can attract a cheering crowd, that this means anything in electoral politics. But if you add up everyone who ever attended one of their events, it never amounts to enough people to carry even one swing state. If "how many people showed up to my rally" was how elections were decided, then we'd have President Taylor Swift" right now.
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  8410. DeSantis did, he kidnapped them from Texas.
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  8411. Unfortunately, Johnson is a Republican. He's on the other side.
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  8412. Whaaaaaa? Reeeeallly? . . Noooooo. I am shocked!
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  8413. Yup, climate denialism has just evolved into climate nihilism. I do like your stance of "The best way to combat misinformation is with new information, but I don't like the new information about human psychology, so I'll stick with the misinformation that I prefer." Very consistent.
    1
  8414.  @james4k154  "One more recount, then all those hidden Trump voters will definitely appear!"
    1
  8415. This sort of thing happens all the time to other people, it just doesn't make the news, because it happens all the time. Things only make the news if they are interesting.
    1
  8416. Same thing.
    1
  8417. You talking about JD Vance?
    1
  8418.  @shreder75  Yeah, Vance is weak.
    1
  8419.  @shreder75  I don't know, I guess he just chooses to be? You'd have to ask him.
    1
  8420.  @shreder75  You didn't ask for examples. If you want an example, what about his response to a reporter that asked him "what makes you smile?"
    1
  8421.  @shreder75  It is an example, come on bucko, you can do it!
    1
  8422.  @shreder75  So you didn't find his response creepy? Interesting. . .
    1
  8423.  @jenniferlynF  Yes, he did. I'm sorry the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  8424.  @anthonybelvin2085  I said it was a higher rank than Trump had ever earned.
    1
  8425.  @anthonybelvin2085  Except that those were not lies, you were just watching a channel that wants to do your thinking for you.
    1
  8426. His addiction is one of the core pillars of the charges against him. If you don't bring up his addiction, then the prosecution has literally no case to make here.
    1
  8427. Just a reminder that Netanyahu is Trump's friend, not Biden's.
    1
  8428. How'd he end up there?
    1
  8429.  @crazysquirrel9425  But county lines are not based on population, so while "locking the lines in" would prevent deliberate future shenanigans, it would not account for the fact that most states have county lines that have nothing whatsoever to do with their populations, and therefore couldn't possibly make for representative districts.
    1
  8430.  @crazysquirrel9425  The state is not owed any representatives. the PEOPLE are owed representatives, so if the representatives are not chosen by a fair representation of the PEOPLE of the state, then that is no longer a republic. Mob rule is something completely different, that is a direct form of democracy in which individuals rule on each issue, rather than electing representatives to settle specific issues for them. Should a city like Chicago run roughshod over their entire state? That depends entirely on the population of Chicago relative to the rest of the state. If there are more people there, then yeah. That is what it means to live in a republic, and not some form of tyranny.
    1
  8431.  @crazysquirrel9425  Again though, those are owed to the people of that state, not to the state itself. In America, government is people, by the people, for the people. "A city" does not get to decide anything, the people of that city get to decide. A state does not get to decide anything, the people of that state get to decide. It is a representative form of government, so the people choose people to represent them, but if they lose that right, if the people in government do not fairly represent them, then that is tyranny, plain and simple. Now representation does not mean that you will always get what you want, it only means that you have as much of a say in the outcome as any other single person. Cases in which two people say "no" to you is not tyranny against you.
    1
  8432.  @crazysquirrel9425  Again, "Chicago" never gets to "dictate" anything. The PEOPLE of Chicago get to decide things, because they make up MOST of the state. The square footage under their feet is completely irrelevant to that.
    1
  8433. ​ @crazysquirrel9425  People tend to say "tyranny of the majority" when they don't get their way on something, as if that's a bad thing. They forget that "tyranny of the minority" is far worse. Ideally, the majority will use their power wisely to chart a course that most people can agree with, but they are certainly better able to arrive at that outcome than any other system. You just don't deserve to have your way if you can't get a majority behind it. Also, there is nothing whatseover in law that gives congress any sort of "3/5th rule" as you put it. both branches of congress run on a strictly 50+1 voting system. You might be referring to the filibuster, which was NEVER an intentional element of law, it was just a custom of the Senate that came from unintended flaws in their debating procedures that they've decided to keep. Raising the bar does not empower the minority, it only leads to permanent stagnation. It's a system that only favors those who want nothing to get done, and inevitably thwarts those who actually want to make America great again.
    1
  8434.  @demsareunamerican6800  I don't think he is maga.
    1
  8435. They probably got angry with you because of how wrong you were. The Nazi ideology obviously has very little to do with leftist ideology, and to claim otherwise only indicates a significant misunderstanding of one or both. I think both, in your case.
    1
  8436. You've been listening to too many Russian bots if you believe that.
    1
  8437.  @mytube8985  Old enough to see Republicans slow walk this issue for decades to prevent Democrats solving it.
    1
  8438.  @LazySillyDog  Well, Trump got fewer votes in both the popular vote and the electoral college which, under the rules of our Constitutional Republic, makes him the loser.
    1
  8439.  @LazySillyDog  There was no actual evidence of foul play, even Trump own lawyers admit making that clear to him. All there were was fairytales he and his friends made up to protect his ego.
    1
  8440.  @sproctor1958  Recent exit polls are mostly Republican voters, who are provably not that bright.
    1
  8441.  @sproctor1958  The recent exit polls were Republican voters. We can't expect too much of them.
    1
  8442.  @eziokill9112  The documents were found, but were turned into authorities. That was the end of it, from the Biden team's perspective. It's only coming out now because now is when reporters found out that it had happened. How could they have reported on it before becoming aware of it?
    1
  8443.  @sonnick  The reporters were unaware of the story earlier than this. How could they report on something they didn't know?
    1
  8444.  @sonnick  Right, it wasn't a news story until reporters found out about it. From the government's perspective, this was all settled in November, and that was the end of it.
    1
  8445. That may be how the Trump crime family handles things, but it's never been how Joe Biden rolls.
    1
  8446. We do not jail people for holding opposing political viewpoints in this country. This is not Putin's Russia.
    1
  8447.  @robotpizza  Well of course we put people in jail for lying under oath, but that would have nothing to do with Schiff. I have no idea what "secret information" you're talking about. Is this about Trump illegally retaining classified documents that the Saudis wanted, and also coincidentally getting multi-billion dollar deals with the Saudis? Nothing Schiff did could be considered "treason," by any reasonable stretch of the imagination. It's not like he incited an insurrection or anything. That definitely would be treason, and should be charged.
    1
  8448. You're talking about Republicans? Yeah, they are pretty sick, disgusting, demented, and wrong, and we do need to educate children to avoid them at all cost.
    1
  8449.  @DM-sy4hg  Also, there are plenty of great things about the Biden presidency, he's kept inflation down, for one thing. That you don't seem to already know this indicates that you tend to watch a lot of Faux News, and have fallen for their lies about his job performance.
    1
  8450.  @DM-sy4hg  Why do you believe I'm not good at voting? I've voted successfully in every election for twenty+ years now, and I haven't once accidentally hit the "R" button. How many people can claim the same?
    1
  8451.  @DM-sy4hg  If you believe that Biden has been doing terribly, then you have been misinformed as to the causes of whatever hardships you face in life. Just understand that whatever you are experiencing right now would have been much, much worse if Republicans had controlled any part of the government over the past two years.
    1
  8452.  @DM-sy4hg  Why?
    1
  8453.  @josedorsaith5261  What? I posted like three comments on the threads that were at the top when I watched the video. That's spam to you? You need to get out more.
    1
  8454.  @josedorsaith5261  Really? Where can you see something like that? In any case, most comments I make are in response to people arguing with me about something or other, so I wouldn't be shocked if I had hundreds of posts over the lifetime of the channel, but it's not like I'm making low effort spam posting.
    1
  8455. Man. I have absolutely ZERO use for one of these things whatseover. . . I still kinda want one though.
    1
  8456.  @bigp2930  If you're happy being lied to, then that's your own business.
    1
  8457.  @Newsongsingingal  It's sad that you believe this.
    1
  8458.  @bruh.seriously1  Trump praised his handling of protests in Minneapolis.
    1
  8459.  @indioloco6600  It's a sin to allow ANY child to starve. Christ made no distinction between the children of one parent and another, He believed in ALL life.
    1
  8460.  @Mr.White10-65  Raising the minimum wage raises all salaries above it too. I think that you misunderstood that I stated a fact that can't be disputed.
    1
  8461. They will keep coming until they are stopped.
    1
  8462. She's just a troll.
    1
  8463. When you have nothing, distract. -Republican Party
    1
  8464.  @jamesm2214  I think it's more sad than funny.
    1
  8465. ​ @fa1keino25  The government never labeled him as an insurrectionist, that was pundits. As for why he wasn't charged with insurrection, it's because that would be a much harder case to convict on than the many other charges that were filed. Prosecutors don't like to bring cases that they aren't certain they can win, even if they think it's likely the suspect is guilty.
    1
  8466.  @negativex6026  Yup, Thomas and Alito. You're forgetting Canon though.
    1
  8467.  @jamesm2214  You don't get to vote to break the Constitution. That's the whole point of having a Constitution, it prevents mob rule.
    1
  8468.  @Steve-yr5vi  Oh, this should be fun when they're laughed out of court.
    1
  8469.  @Cucumberflavoredmustard  To be fair, those people were Trumpies though. The inmates running the asylum does not turn them into doctors.
    1
  8470.  @Cucumberflavoredmustard  And yet, Donald Trump was elected US President, not once, but twice, and he never had anything but name calling. That was his entire brand.
    1
  8471.  @Cucumberflavoredmustard  And yet, Donald Trump was elected US President, twice, and he never had anything but name calling. That was his entire brand.
    1
  8472.  @Cucumberflavoredmustard  They voted for him. They are responsible for their own actions, are they not?
    1
  8473.  @Cucumberflavoredmustard  Also, it was not over half of my fellow Americans, it was closer to a quarter. Still too many, but not half.
    1
  8474. @ No, that's not the problem. The problem is that the market is shifting and they didn't stay ahead of it.
    1
  8475. They already have been found accountable. That's what the election was about, finding them accountable. It just turns out that they haven't done anything bad. Now what we need to be focused on is holding Donald Trump accountable for his various criminal activities.
    1
  8476. Of course Obama knew, he was the one who ordered Joe to remove that corrupt Russian prosecutor.
    1
  8477.  @b-radsadventures6846  Thanks, I try.
    1
  8478. The dam border Is closed. Always has been. That's why there's still water in Lake Mead.
    1
  8479. Yeah, it's dumb to suggest that NATO expanding into Asia "supports Putin's narrative that NATO expansion forced him into Ukraine," the opposite is true! Pulling back from a decision to avoid pissing off China or Putin is only ACCEPTING their false narrative that NATO expansion can be a justification for war. It NEVER was. NATO can expand all it wants, NATO can expand to include every country in the world that is not Russia or China, and that would NEVER justify either of those countries attacking a neighbor.
    1
  8480. They don't ask, because they already know the answer.
    1
  8481.  @RobinDale50  But Trump didn't declassify the documents that were found at Mar-A-Lago, the ones reported as "classified" were all still classified. Also, in the case of many of them, they would be illegal to possess whether "classified" or not, because the pertained to US defense secrets. So far, Pence hasn't been accused of having anything like that.
    1
  8482. No environmental group called you about your detergent, that was probably about something else.
    1
  8483. Kier Starmer. .
    1
  8484. Lol, neither country is in any position to take on NATO any time soon. Russia can't even beat Ukraine! Finland alone would destroy them.
    1
  8485.  @bigrig8539  I don't believe there is any evidence that is true.
    1
  8486.  @blakethegreatone2058  But those government taxes go to pay for things that need to take place to have a functional society. I mean, Walmart would not exist without the government paying to keep their workers alive. Any "hard working small business owner" would not have a functioning business if not for millions of dollars in government support that allowed that to happen, whether he's aware of that or not. So somebody has to pay for that, and it only makes sense for people to pay that cost based on their ability to afford it. Those who are the furthest from lacking the basic needs to survive should carry the heavier burden.
    1
  8487.  @blakethegreatone2058  Well, if that's how you prefer to live, you can move to a country like Somalia, where they don't pay such fees. You don't deserve to take advantage of the benefits of living in America without paying your fair share though.
    1
  8488.  @blakethegreatone2058  Are you saying that you would be fine with Americans living like that? What is Putin paying you to say things like that, because no American could believe such a thing.
    1
  8489.  @m.a.r.1125  No, your chances of making 100K a year would go up, because you would have more customers that were able to pay into however you make your salary. Improving the lives of the lower and middle class cause the economy as a whole to rise with it.
    1
  8490.  @blakethegreatone2058  I'm sorry, I thought that when I was talking about the bare necessities, that you were mature and intelligent enough to understand what I meant without having to "explain it like you're five." But you made clear this was not the case, so I elaborated. Ask stupid questions, get stupid answers. Again, if you don't want to pay your fair share into building America into the country it is today, then you are not entitled to the advantages of living here. If you want to live in a place where there are no taxes, then move to a country that has no taxes. It's not difficult.
    1
  8491.  @blakethegreatone2058  The only difference between us is that you're too ignorant to realize how reliant on government you are. You take it for granted that you have roads to drive on, that the people you interact with have a basic education, that the medical system does not collapse for lack of funding. Being reliant on government funding has nothing to do with being lazy, most people reliant on government funding work harder than you do and always have. You're just too ignorant to understand that. you also do not understand how authoritarianism works. It is not, nor has it ever been, an elected government making rules for the people to follow. That is not authoritarian. Authoritarianism is when UNelected people insist that they should have their way in spite of what the people want, and attempt to seize power anyway. The funny thing is, it's the authoritarians that have convinced their idiot followers that it's democracy that's the authoritarian ones, because their followers are just that dumb.
    1
  8492.  @dylanharnettmarshall9700  Mandates are a vital part of proper vaccine programs. Most vaccines are not fully effective if you are the only one taking them. They require a community level of immunity to function. Basically, one vaccinated person in an unvaccinated community is likely to still get sick, half the community being vaccinated is still likely to see more than half the people sick. Almost all the people being vaccinated ends up with almost none of them sick. When the anti-vaccine movement started, measles cases jumped massively, because even a few weak links lead to outbreaks.
    1
  8493.  @ghernandez2263  But not actually harmful to anyone, and therefore not any reason to not get vaccinated.
    1
  8494.  @ghernandez2263  Polic vaccines and covid vaccines are similar enough as to make no distinction. What difference do you think there is there?
    1
  8495.  @YO-SUPER-HYPER-ULTRA-MEGA-MAGA  There has been no significant rise in deaths among young people. In many cases, Faux News stories pointed to some young athlete dying as if it were related to vaccination, and then it would turn out that kid died in 2017 or something. It was ridiculous.
    1
  8496.  @ghernandez2263  You're not listening. You can make a lawsuit over anything, that does not mean that the lawsuit has any merit. They will mostly get thrown out. The NIH has made clear that while there are reports of minor heart problems shortly after vaccination, these are not lasting or likely to cause serious harm. There have been no related deaths or long term damage, it's just a temporary fluctuation in some cases.
    1
  8497.  @justinreilly1  Everyone everywhere is "pro-safety-science," that's not a point of contention. The point of contention is that there are people who will see a fully tested product and say "test it more." And if more testing is done, and it comes back that the product is safe, they will say "test it more," and they will continue to do that until the end of time, because they have no actual interest in "safety testing," they are only interested in having their biases confirmed that the product is unsafe, despite all evidence to the contrary. The most recent vaccines have been distributed to billions of people with no significant side effects, and yet there are still those out there that consider them "untested." They have already received more testing than any other vaccine has ever had prior to full release. But that will never be enough for those determined that they just don't want the vaccines.
    1
  8498.  @dylanharnettmarshall9700  Well, first, the mandate side is not his ENTIRE position, so even if someone agrees that mandates should not exist, that does not mean that RFK Jr is cleared of being a nutbar. Second, name me one vaccine that is actually mandated. One in which there are no exemptions, no options, you are absolutely forced to take it or jailed. Three, Have you ever heard the term "no shirt, no shoes, no service?" Same applies to vaccination. If someone does not want to get vaccinated, that is their business. If that person wants to engage in polite society, then they will have to meet certain minimum standards of safety. If they want to drive, they will need a license and follow road rules. If they want a home, they will have to meet various building and property management codes. If they want to ride on a plane, or be hired by a company, they will need to follow the rules that these companies believe keep their other employees safe. If they don't want to follow those rules, they don't need to access those privileges. One would have to be a fool to point to the recent pandemic as an example of "this working poorly." The countries that took pandemic safety and vaccine adoption more seriously than the US did saw MUCH lower death rates over the course of it. I would view that as a total win for mandates, wouldn't you? Frankly, if someone agreed with me about anti-vaxers and yet took the stand that vaccine mandates are a bad thing, then I would view them as morally worse than the anti-vaxers, since they should at least know better, and are choosing evil.
    1
  8499. . . . What the hell does Jussie Smollet have to do with any of this?
    1
  8500. You didn't describe any sort of solution, you just described that "the problem moved to a new location." That is no solution at all. "Solving the homeless problem" means "getting these people someplace safer than being homeless."
    1
  8501. "If you don't let us do genocide in Ukraine, then we might have to use nukes."
    1
  8502. Then you should tell Putin to stop sending his people to die in Ukraine.
    1
  8503.  user-wj6dt5bq3w  The Kiev Coup was the Ukrainian people tossing out the Russian puppets. The US was not involved.
    1
  8504.  @AshleyBidensBathTime  If Russia built a base in Mexico, the US would not attack, they would just sanction Mexico and the country would collapse on its own.
    1
  8505.  @nibiru9035  Got it right the first time, don't need another shot.
    1
  8506.  @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.
    1
  8507.  @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.
    1
  8508.  @stevemahoney1733  Like I said, gun control can't work on a city-by-city basis, because you can just drive ten minutes outside of town and buy a gun and then drive back with no border checks. It needs to be on a national level to have any value. And no, for the most part, guns have no practical purpose. If there are good faith efforts to limit access to guns to only what practical purposes they do have, like hunting, then that can be an exception to the gun regulations. Even Japanese hunters are allowed to own hunting rifles, but most of the guns on the US market serve zero practical function, they are just toys. Deadly toys.
    1
  8509.  @JuggoJuggo  You don't "get the guns." You just make it illegal to sell, own, or transport them. Done. No new guns legally enter the marketplace, nobody can walk into a gun show and buy one, most gun crime would vanish right there, since a lot of criminals buy their guns legally right before the crime. As for people who already own guns, they can keep them, so long as they are responsible with them and keep them well hidden. No warrants would be issued to come and take any guns, the only way you could get in trouble is if you came to police attention for some other crime and they found you in possession of a firearm, in which case there would be serious charges. It would probably just be simpler to turn it in voluntarily.
    1
  8510.  @stevemahoney1733  The same thing that happened in Australia, you have a covid death rate 1/10th as high as in the US. You're welcome.
    1
  8511.  @nibiru9035  I'm thinking that every provably occurrence has authorities contacted. If you have no more evidence than "defensive gun use MIGHT happen, we don't know," then I totally agree, we don't know, so we can only stick to the data that shows that the RESULT of defensive gun use is that the US has a 4 times higher murder rate than any other first world country, so clearly it does not work at scale. You can't claim that "defensive gun use" as a valid reason to keep having guns around when it provably does not work at reducing murders and crime. And I also share your skepticism of authoritarian governments, which is why I use the power that the Founding Fathers gave us to avoid that, and I vote for non-authoritarians.
    1
  8512.  @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.
    1
  8513.  @nibiru9035  and you have completely missed the point our founders made if you believe that.
    1
  8514.  @JuggoJuggo  What do you see wrong about having 1/10th as many covid deaths? If American had followed the same policies as Australia, then around 700,000 additional Americans would be alive today. Why do you find "tyrannical" about that?
    1
  8515.  @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?
    1
  8516.  @nibiru9035  And yet there are many other countries in the world that have banned guns, and the sad fact, for you, is that IT WORKS. Their murder rates dropped significantly, crime did not rise significantly, and they have no less free and fair a society as we do. IT WORKS. So unless you can make an argument set in real world facts for how it doesn't work, you're just arguing over fantasies of how you think it could fail.
    1
  8517.  @stevemahoney1733  Police and military will always have some amount of guns, but of course if the civilians are less likely to be armed, then the police will less often use guns against civilians. In the first world countries where they have banned civilian firearms, not only are their murder rates much lower than in the US, but also incidents of police violence are much lower, since the threat to their own safety is greatly decreased. It's a win-win.
    1
  8518.  @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.
    1
  8519.  @Praise___YaH  Yes, Jesus is in favor of removing guns too.
    1
  8520.  @Praise___YaH  Yeah, Jesus. You're talking about Jesus. You're just using a different name for him, which is fine, since "Jesus" wasn't technically his actual name anyway, that's just the Anglicized version of his name, but same guy.
    1
  8521.  @Praise___YaH  Weird, ok. but basically, you could just word replace everything you just said with "Jesus" and it would be the New Testament story about Jesus, so why focus on the name?
    1
  8522.  @chuckles3265  But the stricter rules greatly reduce the amount of guns available to criminals. I would not mind if US gun laws covered the same situations as in the UK and no more than that. Even in Japan hunters are allowed to have guns, they are just tightly regulated. That's fine. We just need to have way fewer guns in the US than we currently do, and not the most commonly used ones in violent crime. Instead, you have states like Florida that try to make it so that anyone can have any gun they want any time, any where, which is clearly a reckless strategy in the country with 4x the murder rate of any other first world nation, even though we already have way more guns than they do.
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  8523.  @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.
    1
  8524.  @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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  8525.  @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.
    1
  8526.  @stevemahoney1733  Yes, and that resulted in Australia having 1/10th the death rate the US had, so why would any rational person NOT want that? And guns had absolutely nothing to do with it. American could have done the same thing, we just had dumber leadership at the time.
    1
  8527.  @nibiru9035  That's what I said, a democratic republic. They mean the same thing. You do know that they mean the same thing, right? A "Republic" that lacks democracy is called an "empire." It's what happened to Rome after Caesar.
    1
  8528.  @chuckles3265  You should be aware that the only thing that put social security and medicare at risk is decades of Republican efforts to undermine both programs, by borrowing money out of what were intended to be isolated trust funds to support them, and by slashing the programs intended to fund them. If that bothers you, if you want them to be stable and functional, then there is a very simple solution to that, never let Republicans near the budget. The current system is a mess because it allows the pharmaceutical companies to play customers off of each other like rats in a bucket, instead of what they do in other countries, which is the government negotiates prices that are a tiny fraction of what we pay here.
    1
  8529.  @nibiru9035  And yet both terms apply to the United States of America, so they can't be that different. It's just that conservatives seem to reject the "democracy" part that the founders relied on. You do know that they had an entire revolution that was entirely about the right to vote, right? Right? "No taxation without representation" ring any bells?
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  8530.  @Froby2378  I don't believe that America's problems are unsolvable, and it's a patriot's duty to try and make America the best it can possibly be. To take all of its strengths and build on them.
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  8531.  @nibiru9035  Lol.
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  8532.  @Froby2378  Agreed. What does that have to do with anything?
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  8533.  @Froby2378  It will massively REDUCE the amount of harm they cause though, as we know form other countries where they've tried it. You're right that it's impossible to prevent ALL crime, there will always be people who are trying to do crime, and of course we will continue to arrest them when they do, but by removing the easy access to guns, we can reduce their options for causing trouble. Instead of having 4 times as many murders as any other first world nation, we could reduce that to twice as many, or at least three times as many. that would be thousands of American lives saved per year. Isn't that a good thing?
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  8534.  @stevemahoney1733  Yup, the answer to that is "they definitely do work, but it needs to be on a national level, because obviously doing it piecemeal will have minimal impact."Thanks for pointing that out.
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  8535.  @stevemahoney1733  I hear you, and I agree, gun control definitely does work, but only on a national level. There is plenty of evidence of that. If you take the guns off the street, gun violence plummets, and murder rates in general definitely fall. We can agree on that. The only thing that we're lacking is the political courage to actually pass such regulations.
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  8536.  @nibiru9035  No, the history just does not match the fiction that you want to believe. There is no value in fictionalizing the past.
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  8537.  @randommexican5664  No, that's not the case. Immigrants commit crimes at a much lower rate than native-born Americans, and plenty of other first world countries have lots of immigration too. The US does not have more crime than other countries, we just have more murders because guns make murder easier than if you don't have them. Also, in the Czech Republic, you can't get a gun unless you at least pass a licensing test and meet the valid criteria, which is not a rule in the US. There are less than half a million Czech gun owners, compared to tens of millions in the US. They also restrict more types of firearms than the US does. also, owned guns must be registered with the police
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  8538.  @anatomicalx9355  No, they don't. Owning a gun makes you more likely to die of gun violence than not owning a gun. The US had many times more guns than any other first world country, and yet four times the murders. If civilian gun ownership actually worked to provide protection, then the US would have a lower murder rate than countries with less guns, rather than many times higher. To claim that a gun is useful for protection is like claiming that a catapult is useful for transportation.
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  8539.  @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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  8540.  @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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  8541.  @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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  8542.  @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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  8543.  @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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  8544.  @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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  8545.  @stevemahoney1733  Ok, well yes, Tennessee kicked those members out because they were black, and spoke out of turn, but I was being a bit polite about it. It sounds like you've gotten yours news about it from a particularly stupid echo chamber though if you believe that they "took over the house." Lol. And yes, if they had been Republicans, the outcome would have been very different, nothing would have happened to them.
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  8546.  @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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  8547.  @DeathlordSlavik  Yeah, they do that.
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  8548.  @KolossusB  So because the NRA chooses to make the problem unsolvable, we should just accept gun violence? NOBODY, literally NOBODY is talking about NOT putting responsibility on the criminals. Literally ZERO criminals have been allowed to walk on the defense of "but the gun was so easy to get, I had to use it!" But we've tried "punishing the criminals," we've done more of that than any country on Earth, and we know that it does not work. the only thing that we know definitely DOES work is to make it harder for criminals to find guns. Nothing is stopping us from solving the gun violence problem EXCEPT for stubborn Republicans more concerned about being able to play with their toys than they are about human lives. The "pro-life party" indeed.
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  8549.  @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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  8550.  @DeathlordSlavik  And in other news, a 6 year old just got shot because her basketball rolled into a neighbor's yard, but sure, guns are fine.
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  8551.  @DeathlordSlavik  Again, I countered your points, you just prefer to keep your toys and allow six year old girls to be shot over basketballs than to stop playing with your toys. There is no argument to be made that guns in civilian hands are "necessary" or even "beneficial."
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  8552.  @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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  8553.  @stevemahoney1733  Do you believe that these are a fair and balanced representation of events, or do you believe that they would be products of a right-wing narrative to justify their expulsion? If the former, do you not agree that this would reflect poorly on your judgement? Also, do you know that the man who lead their expulsion proceedings was, at that time, up on disciplinary charges for sexually assaulting an aide, and that nothing would have been done about that had it not later leaked to the press? Talk about Hypocrisy.
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  8554.  @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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  8555.  @stevemahoney1733  You say that "unsubtantiated ideologies" need to be challenged, and yet your OWN position is an unsubstantiated ideology. Clean your own house before going after others. And the video you presented WAS from an absolutely right-wing source. Why do you believe there would be anything valuable about listening to someone presenting, as you call them, "unsubstantiated ideologies?" Both-sidesism benefits no one. Don't listen to the crazies. The truth is not some middle ground between two crazies, and you won't get closer to the truth by listening to crazies and guessing at where their crazy viewpoints overlap. The truth is the truth, it is based in fact, not ideology.
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  8556.  @stevemahoney1733  Yes, if it came from a reliable narrator, and not a known right wing propagandist. Do you have any credible sourcing for whatever claims you want to make against them? Why do you believe that I should consider your source, even knowing that he is untrustworthy?
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  8557.  @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.
    1
  8558.  @DeathlordSlavik  That's what flat earthers say about people who believe the world is round, which is what you are doing here. Btw, Politico just put out a good article that notes that gun deaths and gun violence are much higher in red states, mainly in the Deep South region, than they are in any other parts of the country. The national homicide rate is 4.1 gun homicides per 100K, the rate in the Deep South is 6.8. Places like New York and LA are actually lower than that national average. But, of course, if you don't like that report from "round earth," you can continue to live on your flat one where "guns are an urban problem."
    1
  8559.  @urmantaqi3253  He definitely is!
    1
  8560. Ok, but then you can't just tell them not to, you have to provide a humane alternative.
    1
  8561. I fully expect that "AR glasses" will always have a little dimming to them, that's fine. Having sunglass levels of tiny while outside should be expected, and with "balanced dimming" they should show UI elements like Star Wars holograms, and then also have the option to dim to full black if they want higher resolution data. The ability to turn this on and off as needed is plenty of flexibility. The "typing" wristband seems like it will leave people in the dust if they can't touch type. If you don't have fixed patterns of how you type, it does nothing. I do think that there will also be a wider social acceptance of VR goggles. They will be about as "normal" as glasses were 100+ years ago.
    1
  8562. That wasn't what they said at all. That wasn't even close to what they said. Did you even pay any attention?
    1
  8563. @ChefCreations101-e3m Then stop attacking him, he's our future Vice President.
    1
  8564.  @Kirsdarke  Again, he fired for retirement BEFORE any word had come about a deployment, so how could he have "fled" deployment? Are you calling every man who served and then moved on with less than 25 years under their belt a coward? Because their units certainly got deployed at some point after they left.
    1
  8565.  @Kirsdarke  EVERY person who has EVER served and left the military "filed before the order to deploy was given." The point is that while he certainly knew his unit would be deployed eventually, as would be the case for ANYONE who left the military, he was not aware of any specific deployment when he filed to leave. And it wasn't like he was just leaving the military to go on vacation, he was leaving to run for Congress, which is an equally valid career path. Why disparage him for that? Tell me, were you planning to vote for him before this came up, or were you planning to vote for Trump and Vance, who have always been worse?
    1
  8566.  @ajdubbya  The misunderstanding that he believes the Cali's Sec of State had two running tabulations. I can't know how she arrived at that misunderstanding without further details, but it is not something that actually happened, so there must have been some sort of misunderstanding for her to believe that, unless you are implying that she was acting in deliberate bad faith.
    1
  8567. They might, but that would be a shame, since it would mean ignoring the plain reading of the Constitution.
    1
  8568.  @stevehill3373  It's a media shorthand term, that does not make it an actual government role.
    1
  8569.  @rl192  Who said she was never called that? The point people were making is that it was never accurate to call her that.
    1
  8570.  @rl192  But the fact remains that it was never accurate, because she was never "put in charge of the border." You can find the White House transcript of the briefing in which she was given some duties related to immigration, and what it does, and does not say.
    1
  8571.  @rl192  When was she given that authority? Certainly not publicly. In public, she was only given authority to visit our neighboring countries and negotiate with them to improve the conditions there. Her role had nothing to do with the border itself. Where did you hear that she was granted the broad powers you're talking about? What was the date of that?
    1
  8572.  @rl192  Read the White House transcript from the day they mentioned it. No "border czar," no "full power of the President." You are massively exaggerating her role, as did plenty of people on the right, because they wanted her to fail at their imaginary position. If you only get your news from unreliable sources, then don't expect others to consider you well informed.
    1
  8573.  @rl192  You didn't read it. I understand. No, what I said was she was given A job, which is different than the job that you believe she had, and in the job she actually had, she succeeded. And again, NOBODY denies that the press called her that, so I don't know why you keep insisting that they have.
    1
  8574.  @dougyates7218  Inflation is rising at a manageable rate, considering the economic crisis we just went through, and the socialist agenda is the only hope we have of surviving the century, so I think we're doing ok. But you are right, if Trump had not passed that massive tax cut for billionaires, inflation would be much less of a problem.
    1
  8575.  @dougyates7218  Nope, it'll only get better over the next few months and years. Biden's only gotten started. Cuba is not socialist, they are Communist, that's something that no Democrat is attempting to do. Socialist countries are more like Norway, where they have an overall higher standard of living than the US and the people are happier.
    1
  8576.  @IJUSTWANNAFLYDJIDRONES71  Ok, then they will keep crossing the border. Look, you can't have it both ways. You can either give them a good reason to not want to come to America, or you can figure out what to do with them when they get here.
    1
  8577.  @HS-cf4lb  Well hey, that's at least a better argument than "build a wall. Like, a really big one, or something." I don't think there's really much support behind invading the lower Americas though, even among Republicans. It would also cost a LOT less money to just help them be less terrible places to live.
    1
  8578.  @webportal6659  You said "democrats," when the Republicans are the ones that block every helpful action. Republicans never even attempt to do anything other than block helpful actions (and weaponize government against their political opponents),
    1
  8579.  @djkennd2  I have no idea what a border donkey is or what barriers were meant to do to it.
    1
  8580.  @residentgrey  Most fentanyl enter the country through ports of entry, on planes, ships, or smuggled in cars. Basically none of it comes across the open desert regions, because it's too risky. There's also little evidence to support the idea that people are being trafficked across the border. Most trafficking in the US happened between individual states, not between the US and other countries, or they just enter through legal ports of entry. If anything, the tighter border security has increased the ability of traffickers to move people through legal ports of entry, because the border patrols are too busy handling innocent migrants and don't have enough time to weed out people who are up to no good.
    1
  8581.  @tommyd.6265  Nobody was speaking of weed. Only fools do drugs.
    1
  8582.  @residentgrey  Yes, people are being trafficked through legal ports of entry using faked documentation, just as they were during the Trump, bush, and Reagan administrations. This has not changed much under Biden, and is unlikely to change much. And if you were actually paying attention to Border Patrol and the Coast Guard, you would know that they disagree with you, but the ones you have imagined definitely support whatever it is you want to believe, I suppose. This is why most Faux News viewers are less well informed than people with no access to news at all, they've constructed their own little Narnia that has no relation to the world outside.
    1
  8583.  @IJUSTWANNAFLYDJIDRONES71  Exactly. If you break the law, you go to jail.
    1
  8584. I'm just waiting for fighter aircraft to get "bits" that they could use in combat, perhaps with a dual-crew fighter in which the second guy operates 2-3 semi-autonomous drones, just giving them basic orders and directly piloting one if it was close to a clean shot or something.
    1
  8585.  @Theendisnear429  Joe didn't withold any documents. As soon as some were found, he invited the FBI over to search for more, as was his legal responsibility.
    1
  8586.  @doubleooh7337  Their bill does not secure the border. It's just better at fooling gullible people into thinking that it would.
    1
  8587.  @doubleooh7337  The House version would not secure the border though.
    1
  8588. ​ @doubleooh7337  You seem to 100% buy into the world of imagination that Faux News spins for you. Have fun with that.
    1
  8589.  @doubleooh7337  You seem to 100% buy into the world of imagination. Have fun with that.
    1
  8590.  @doubleooh7337  That's what they tell you to believe, at least. A good little minion.
    1
  8591. I actually really liked that original design, and wish it had been kept. I get that it was falling apart, but just rebuild it better, same design, but more functional from an engineering standpoint. If I would make any changes, it wouldn't really be to the permanent design of it, I would just break up those open spaces above by adding features like trees, maybe some decorative arches or thin walls with murals, which would shade in the summer and break up the wind in the winter, while also keeping the sight-lines more interesting and distracting.
    1
  8592. Yeah, they are shamelessly right-wing these days. They try to slant everything in their favor.
    1
  8593.  @MindzEnt  No, they're firmly to the right. All their headlines and thumbnails are designed to present a story in the most positive side for the right, and most negative to the left. If they present something that seems left-leaning, it's because the reality is REALLY left-leaning.
    1
  8594.  @DarkBladeFury-xc8jh  But you seem to pay attention to the less credible for some reason. . . why?
    1
  8595.  @absalomdraconis  It was not, which is why I pointed out that it was not.
    1
  8596.  @allylilith5605  Ok, so we're in agreement then, most people are both incapable of differentiating truth from lies, and ALSO believe that they CAN. This is a dangerous combination.
    1
  8597.  @allylilith5605  Nobody is arguing that models should not be questioned and improved though. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand. This is about what the public discourse should be, and the public plays no role in improving models. If we agree that most people are less capable of filtering information for themselves, then it becomes important to filter that information for them, so that they are not misled by misinformation. We agree on this, right?
    1
  8598.  @allylilith5605  I ask again then, what is the solution? If you can't provide one, then we have no option but to continue with one that can work. Quarantine.
    1
  8599.  @zeitgeistzebra  If they are civil service then they are just hired and fired like normal works, not appointed, not elected. They just go to work and do their jobs like millions of other civil servants. If they abuse their power or overreach then they get fired. There are always risks to such things, and it's fair to point them out, but not to pretend they occur in a vacuum. The risks this poses are less than the risks of doing nothing and allowing misinformation to spread without opposition. An actual scientific debate takes place mainly between scientists with knowledge in the field, using actual collected data. A truly talented amateur who has actual data to support his theories could also contact the other scientists privately, such as by sending an email. They discuss amongst themselves and release peer reviewed papers to express their conclusions. If they can't convince other experts in their field that their idea have validity, then there is no value to trying to convince the public of it. As for "the fate of the Internet," the kooks likely will scurry off to whichever part of the Internet will have them, and that's fine. Better there than interacting with polite society. That would mean less chance of "rabbit holes" where somewhat normal people are exposed to lunatic positions and become more and more radicalized. The smaller these people's reach, the better, right?
    1
  8600. The only images of Jack Smith in this video are stock footage from much earlier in the case. Russian trolls do come up with amusing terms for people though.
    1
  8601. Daddy Putin is mad that he didn't seal the deal.
    1
  8602.  @thatoneguywithahugethang  Nah.
    1
  8603.  @trajectoryunown  So long as Donald Trump is still on the ballot, that is an irrational argument, and you should not expect anyone to take it seriously.
    1
  8604.  @thatoneguywithahugethang  Is that like "build the wall?"
    1
  8605. Because they know that the people don't the audit went in knowing that Biden won, so why else would they be doing the audit at all if they did not intend to lie about their results?
    1
  8606.  @wingman3570  Lol, no. Don't be stupid, stupid.
    1
  8607. Gain of function is just the middle step of the process. They take viruses that are likely to come into contact with humans and they poke at them to see whether they might be a threat to humans if they mutate in certain ways. Basically like "if we put a mustache on it, does it look like Ted Lasso now?"
    1
  8608. The only thing that McCarthy cares about is power. He would sacrifice a baby on an alter if it would keep him in the Speaker role.
    1
  8609.  @susy590  But they had much more of a leg to stand on than this committee has against Hunter, right? They would be ahead by at least a shin and an ankle.
    1
  8610.  @dianabias3024  Jim Jordan was "there," he was serving in congress at the time. That was not the issue. The issue was that he was promoting a fraudulent slate of electors and promoting the insurrection attempt that the riot was a distraction for.
    1
  8611.  @dianabias3024  What is this word salad?
    1
  8612.  @foreverlearn3866  Whatever video you're talking about is in no way official. Nobody is arguing that there weren't people calling her that, only that it was never accurate.
    1
  8613.  @foreverlearn3866  She handled the role she was given regarding immigration successfully, because migration from those countries has reduced. It was never her job to handle all aspects of immigration, that is the job of the President and SoHS.
    1
  8614.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  Which people did they "pick up and fly in?" Are you talking about the ones flown from Texas to other states? That was the Florida governor, for some reason. And no, it was never her job to "handle the border." That was the job of the President and SoHS.
    1
  8615.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  You're trying to change the argument. Nobody ever argued that she was never called that. Obviously she was, mostly by those on the right. The fact check is that it was never a role she actually held.
    1
  8616.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  The position Biden gave her had nothing to do with "border czar" though. Harris was given the role of negotiating with three of our southern neighbors, no more, no less. Anyone claiming she had larger responsibilities regarding immigration than that is wrong. And "most libs" are not claiming she was never called that in the media, they are saying it was never accurate to call her that, which remains a fact. I said HE did not call her that, because he never called her that.
    1
  8617.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  But she was not placed in charge of that policy area. She was only given a narrow mission within that policy area. At no point did she have any authority over the border itself or US border policy. That was not her role in the administration.
    1
  8618.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  Nope. That's what you were TOLD was "straight from Biden's mouth" by people you really shouldn't be listening to. If you'd actually bothered to check what Biden actually said, it had nothing to do with the border itself, he was sending her to negotiate with three of our southern neighbors to improve living conditions there, end of story. Harris succeeded at that task. The words out of Biden's mouth can be found on the White House webpage. I'll wait.
    1
  8619.  @ItsJustMe-nq1dg  Joe Biden, March 24, 2021: ". . . In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border. . . . "And so, this increase has been consequential, but the Vice President has agreed — among the multiple other things that I have her leading — and I appreciate it — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders." She was meant to deal with their borders, not ours.
    1
  8620. Joe Biden, March 24, 2021: ". . . In addition to that, there’s about five other major things she’s handling, but I’ve asked her, the VP, today — because she’s the most qualified person to do it — to lead our efforts with Mexico and the Northern Triangle and the countries that help — are going to need help in stemming the movement of so many folks, stemming the migration to our southern border. . . . "And so, this increase has been consequential, but the Vice President has agreed — among the multiple other things that I have her leading — and I appreciate it — agreed to lead our diplomatic effort and work with those nations to accept re- — the returnees, and enhance migration enforcement at their borders — at their borders." She was meant to deal with their borders, not ours.
    1
  8621.  @jholeify  No, not them either.
    1
  8622.  @jholeify  Yes, but after they look into it themselves, they should come to the decision that it would be a bad idea, because that would be accurate. You are making them sound like white nationalists or something. That would not be a selling point in America.
    1
  8623.  @DoSe420  That's not what's been happening here though.
    1
  8624.  @criptard  "Both sides"ism only rewards the worst actors. Rewards the Democrats for being better, then push for them to improve too.
    1
  8625. Nope, just right-wing conspiracy theories. If they were "reporting news" then they would have made clear that Joe was not the one who decided to get that prosecutor removed, Obama was, and Joe was only the messenger. The video made it seem like it had something to do with Biden's son.
    1
  8626.  @sproctor1958  Yes, but that's how confirmation bias works, because for every wacky theory that turned out to be true, there were thousands that remains wacky. And Faux News kept reporting on all of them nonetheless.
    1
  8627.  @sproctor1958  Sure. The problem is that a lot of people think they are better at this than they actually are, and they just wander further and further into the woods, the confirmation bias piling more and more on top of itself until, they look up and find themselves in Narnia, where they totally believe dozens of different things that have no basis in actual reality. Things like this story, as presented by this WSJ opinion columnist.
    1
  8628. If Putin wants to reuinify the Russian world, maybe he should offer to surrender to Ukraine and let them be in charge. They did come first, after all, and have the stronger military.
    1
  8629. Women are standing up for themselves and putting a stop to this insanity. All three women on the Supreme Court voted against this insanity. The majority of women vote against Republicans.Now we just need the majority of men to join them.
    1
  8630. And neither of them have done anything impeachable. The one that should be impeached is the previous President. He did actual crimes.
    1
  8631.  @scottwaters998  Following orders is no excuse for breaking the law, but no laws were broken, so following orders would be an excuse in this case, if one were needed.
    1
  8632.  @scottwaters998  Asylum is based on need, regardless of where that need arises. How do you think the Irish got here? Most people immigrating to the US were in economic need. Also, they have ZERO obligation to "stay in the first safe country," Republicans just made that up and their minions are too dumb to look it up themselves. As for why people think the border is wide open? Because that's what they hear on the news, and they don't understand it well enough to argue. The immigrants in New York and Chicago were detained, and then they were released pending their hearings, exactly as US law dictates.
    1
  8633.  @claudiuskeat8336  An open border would mean that they aren't detained when they cross. They are. The border is no more open under Biden than it was under Trump. There has never been a time in US history in which NO people crossed the border illegally. Almost no countries can manage a zero border crossings policy. An "open border" would mean that people would just be allowed to cross through the ports of entry without processing, and that is not what is happening here. You should maybe go back to school and get your definitions right.
    1
  8634.  @scottwaters998  I have read it, that's how I know what the law actually is, and why it is not what you claim it to be. Now it's your turn to read it.
    1
  8635. Hopefully. They can certainly use it to fight off Putin and his illiterate thugs.
    1
  8636.  @jessicaa8038  No, that's not what's happening. Those discussions are still taking place. The student protests are not a part of that discussion.
    1
  8637.  @JBBost  No, anyone who is arguing that concerns over rising antisemitism are unreasonable is arguing in bad faith.
    1
  8638.  @thrashtronaut999  Because Hamas was using that facility as a shield. Whether it worked or not is irrelevant, the fact is that Israel would not have bombed it had Hamas not been using it. They were the ones who broke the law.
    1
  8639.  @jessicaa8038  They are (exercising their first amendment rights), in most cases, but even though they have the right to do something, actions have consequences, and they are responsible for those consequences. If their exercise of first amendment rights is causing harm to others, then they bear moral responsibility for that harm. There are different ways to discuss this topic that do not lead to antisemitism, public protests are an imprecise tool that lead to collateral damage.
    1
  8640.  @jessicaa8038  I don't believe that every person involved in the protests is antisemitic, or is expressing antisemitic viewpoints, nor is any serious person making that claim. I do think that some participants in these protests are antisemitic and/or are expressing antisemitic viewpoints, and that the inevitable chaos of a public protest provides these people cover for their actions. I further believe that the public protests accomplish nothing of any value toward their stated goals, while at the same time there is an active rise in antisemitic content, so that is what we need to be focused on preventing, however one feels about the war Hamas launched in Israel.
    1
  8641.  @jensonee  So you believe that hate crimes on Us soil are "a distraction" from students having camp outs in the quad? This is what people mean by "antisemitism is on the rise."
    1
  8642.  @spiritualpath8888  I don't have so large an ego as to think that the world has much of an opinion of me at all.
    1
  8643. No, the other way around. He's doing this because they "loved" his wallet.
    1
  8644.  @no.6243  Yup, it was simple, he allowed the Obama era oil policies to continue and gas prices continued to fall at the exact same rate that they' been doing under Obama. At least until spring 2020 when oil companies chose to cut production on their own. That's when the gas prices started to ride, six months before Biden took office. Then of course, in addition to the various other challenges to oil prices, a war started in a region with several of the largest oil providers, which drove prices higher again, but they've largely stabilized. Can you imagine how bad it would be if US oil production wasn't higher under Biden than it'd averaged under Trump?
    1
  8645.  @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.
    1
  8646.  @insanefun1  I prefer to do all my own thinking, which is what sets me apart from MAGA.
    1
  8647.  @insanefun1  The border was and remains secure. Nobody crosses it without being caught and processed. I think some people misunderstand "secure" to mean "nobody ever crosses it," which has never been the case.
    1
  8648.  @lorimenshew2033  None of that made sense.
    1
  8649.  @Gearhead409  You're projecting. . .
    1
  8650.  @melgillham462  When do you believe he said that? Do you believe that it reflects well on your own mental capacities that you believe that happened?
    1
  8651.  @carolbatchelder1  No, my opinions are my own, based on an accurate understanding of the facts. If I wanted opinions fed to me, I'd watch Faux News.
    1
  8652. Legally, it would be your responsibility, but ALSO, if you were doing it under duress, those placing you under duress can ALSO be at fault for it. Hence the lawsuit.
    1
  8653.  @caelachyt  The OP was saying that you shouldn't give tax cuts to the rich, like Republicans do. Democrats do not do that.
    1
  8654.  @mwhatley64  If I'd intended to say "Democrats," I would have spelled it correctly, unlike Republicans.
    1
  8655.  @mwhatley64  Butter to be funny and right than unfunny and wrong, right?
    1
  8656.  johnsmith-fh5zm None of that would have helped here.
    1
  8657. She means a federal handgun ban, which would have prevented this.
    1
  8658.  @RalphWilliams-r7s  If he did his time, he was punished according to the law. life in prison for minor offenses would be cruel and unusual. You can point to the occasional criminal who was released and did something serious afterward, but you also have to consider the hundreds of other prisoners that were released and lived a positive life for decades after.
    1
  8659.  @dangerousdylan6262  They would be less likely to find a gun if it were illegal. That's the important part. It wouldn't stop 100% of gun violence, but it would stop like 95% of it, which is plenty.
    1
  8660.  @basedfemboi9401  Not that much smarter than most. These are not complicated ideas.
    1
  8661.  @asdfasdfasdf4746  Because she has a history of showing nudes of him around, and nobody has to put up with that.
    1
  8662.  @genesispuredeaf2390  After Jim Jordan.
    1
  8663.  @genesispuredeaf2390  1. In the current House? Of course not, because they are hypocrites. I'm only pointing out that they would need to charge him first if they didn't want to be hypocrites. 2. No, it's not a defense, the defense is that there is no justification for the contempt charge, given that he has made clear that he is willing to appear before the committee, just not in a closed session in which they are likely to doctor his responses to suit their base's desires. and I also know why the charges were not brought up against Jordan, because Democrats are better than Republicans. You know that too, which is why you seethe all the time.
    1
  8664. This is a constitutional republic, the constitution disagrees with you.
    1
  8665. Yeah, soldiers embedding in civilian infrastructure is a war crime.
    1
  8666. The modern methods of bread making are different, but they are not less healthy than the "more traditional" methods. Just because something has been done for thousands of years does not mean that those methods are better than one invented a few years ago. People have been running for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet speed records are being set every year by more modern training and equipment methods. Science is a good thing, not a bad thing. That said, yeah, a mass produced, long shelf life bread is not optimized for peak taste, so it isn't likely to be as good for casual eating as a fresh baked artisan bread. Duh. But there is a cost to that, so buy the artisan bread if that's what you want, or buy the mass produced stuff if that's fine for your purposes. Why the bread shaming?
    1
  8667. Yup, "I am so tired of these nonsense questions from idiots." America's right there with her.
    1
  8668. You almost had a good point, and then you had to muff the landing. Pity.
    1
  8669. Just to brainstorm a flow battery car, why not combine flow and normal batteries? Have a small scale LI battery that can be used to "super boost" the car, allowing for high acceleration, but use the flow battery for low acceleration situations. The LI battery could even be charged by the flow battery. That shouldn't be too hard to manage if the tech works. And as for fueling stations, they wouldn't need new fuel piped in, at least not in huge volumes, because you'd be "trading" fuel. You'd be pumping charged fuel into the car, yeah, but you'd also have to pump spent fuel out of the car, and the fueling station could recharge that spent fuel to make it fresh again. You'd be trading their ability to constantly pump electricity off the grid for the car having to store energy on the go. They might lose some total fuel over time, but would need to be topped off much less often than a gas station.
    1
  8670. If the assertion is that without affirmative action, colleges would just "go back to being all white," then that implies that white people are naturally more qualified than non-white, which is a flatly racist argument to make. This is not a complicated situation, admissions should be based entirely on merit. Period. White and non-white students would gain entry entirely on the merits of their achievements and potential. If a school is found to not be admitting students based on merit, if, say, they give unfair consideration to white students, then that would be grounds for a legal fight over discrimination.
    1
  8671.  @richardarriaga6271  No.
    1
  8672.  @richardarriaga6271  That's not why.
    1
  8673.  @partydean17  Yes, but only short term, whereas long term housing is more needed. Typically areas have enough short term housing to meet demand, and the only thing that alternatives would be providing is a better price. Short term housing tends to be less essential than long term.
    1
  8674.  @partydean17  Maslow's hierarchy of needs.
    1
  8675. ​ @partydean17  Who's "using force" here? And again, tourism will be fine, stop trying to make "tourism will be harmed" happen, it's not going to happen. I'll also point out that there's no "monopoly" here. You don't need room sharing to have competition for existing hotels, if you want to be a hotel, you can just make a new hotel. People still do that all the time. You just can't do it on a per-room basis in what is intended to be long term housing properties. I took a glance at the land tax thing and it seems like one of those "simple answers" that is actually just stupid, but appeals to people who don't think too hard about things.
    1
  8676. @ Who's "using force" here? And again, tourism will be fine, stop trying to make "tourism will be harmed" happen, it's not going to happen. I'll also point out that there's no "monopoly" here. You don't need room sharing to have competition for existing hotels, if you want to be a hotel, you can just make a new hotel. People still do that all the time. You just can't do it on a per-room basis in what is intended to be long term housing properties. I took a glance at the land tax thing and it seems like one of those "simple answers" that is actually just "simple," but appeals to people who don't think too hard about things.
    1
  8677.  @partydean17  Again, taxation is not "use of force," and it's silly to describe it in such terms. Don't be overly sensitive to being called silly if you insist on behaving in a silly manner. Eliminating Airbnbs might reduce competition in the hotel market, but there is already plenty of competition in the hotel market, and there is still room for more players to enter that market and increase competition without needing airbnbs, so this is not a problem. But what you choose to dismiss is that having Airbnb's also increases the cost in the housing market, making it more expensive for people to find housing, and this impact is FAR more significant than anything that could possibly occur in the hospitality industry. It's like complaining that something might negatively impact the snack food industry, while it would also have a significant positive impact on nutritious meals for all. Even if so, that is a small price to pay.
    1
  8678. E2E encryption didn't even exist until a few decades ago, how is it suddenly a "human right?"
    1
  8679.  @anteeko  In a sense, but so too has been the ability to decrypt those messages. It's never been an absolute protection.
    1
  8680.  @chlorobyte_projects  Well, that's your right, but personally, I don't believe in removing people's free speech rights just because I disagree with what they have to say. People are entitled to privacy, but not in public spaces, like the Internet.
    1
  8681.  @chlorobyte_projects  I certainly don't use the Internet to do crimes, so what would I have to worry about?
    1
  8682. China certainly wants that, so I'm sure their lackeys are working on it.
    1
  8683.  @danielstadden1149  That these are necessary functions of government, and while the House Republicans are certainly stupid, they are slightly less stupid than it would take to do that?
    1
  8684.  @epants8507  How so?
    1
  8685.  @jeffhaddix9508  Again, fact checking when someone is spreading misinformation IS NOT CENSORSHIP. That is not what that word means. That has never been what that word means.
    1
  8686.  @jeffhaddix9508  The government was never telling social media platforms to remove tweets that they did not like. All they did was flag foreign misinformation campaigns so that the social media platforms could point that out to their readers. Why would you not want them to do that? Unless you're working for the foreign troll farms yourself, of course.
    1
  8687.  @raymondcarroll3876  Yup, Faux News created a post-truth world, and Trump supporters refuse to live in the real world anymore.
    1
  8688.  @jakeroberts7435  Reality determines what lies and the truth are, don't shoot the messenger.
    1
  8689.  @johnpatrick1647  If you don't recognize how that is racist and anti-sematic, then you are saying more about yourself than anything else.
    1
  8690.  @johnpatrick1647  You are misreporting the situation. a TRUMP judge said it was a problem in the government dictating to social media companies what is allowed and not allowed to be said, even though in actual fact, NOBODY in the government was dictating to social media companies what is allowed and not allowed to be said. Trump judges are notoriously incompetent and corrupt, so you can never cite one of their rulings as a support to an argument, except in the negative.
    1
  8691.  @jakeroberts7435  What do you have against fact checking false claims? How else are people supposed to know what is true, and what is just made up nonsense? There are plenty of stupid people in this world. Did you know that Faux News viewers are actually LESS informed about the world than people who get no news at all?
    1
  8692. Well, I mean, it's not just "top Democrats," it's pretty much everyone. He IS responsible in a lot of ways for the Covid-19 spread, both form ignoring the early warnings, downplaying the risks at almost every phase of the process, not ramping up our medical supplies when it was time to do so, removing the virus-fighting programs that Obama put into place, and constantly undermining basic health recommendations like wearing masks in public. It's an absolute fact that the US would have far far far fewer cases than we've had if there were any responsible individual in the Oval Office right now.
    1
  8693. That is not why.
    1
  8694.  @randallhughes5687  Well be honest, do you REALLY believe Trump thought of this himself? He doesn't even know what "a tip" is. It's just an idea that someone on his staff told him people had been asking for for years, and he brought it up at a speech. There's no reason why both campaigns can't do it.
    1
  8695.  @loridenise5639  Do you believe Trump has ever tipped anyone? He doesn't even pay his lawyers.
    1
  8696.  @randallhughes5687  What does hiring IRS agents have to do with taxing tips?
    1
  8697.  @randallhughes5687  I asked what hiring IRS agents had to do with taxing tips. They are completely separate topics.
    1
  8698.  @randallhughes5687  She's running for public office. She's SUPPOSED to be pandering for votes. That's the entire point!
    1
  8699.  @randallhughes5687  As to the tax agents, enforcing taxes IS about easing taxes. When IRS agents catch people breaking the law, that saves money for the American tax payers. The more criminals get caught and are forced to pay their fair share, the less of the burden YOU have to pay. Adding IRS agents will probably save law abiding Americans more money than this tipping issue does.
    1
  8700.  @randallhughes5687  Avoiding taxes is theft. Taxation is about paying the dues that we've agreed to pay in order to benefit from living in this country. If you don't want to pay rent, then move somewhere else.
    1
  8701.  @randallhughes5687  But We the People overruled you. That's how it works.
    1
  8702. ​ @randallhughes5687  Everyone gets a say in a democracy, and a republic is a form of democracy. We can't be in a republic without being in a democracy. The reason government does the things it does is because We the People elected people to represent us, and those people took those actions. They are ultimately responsible to the people. Just because you do or don't want something is no guarantee that you will, or should get your way, if the majority of your fellow citizens disagree with you. You do not get to decide which aspects of government do or do not apply to you, if you don't want to follow the laws, your only valid option is to leave.
    1
  8703.  @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.
    1
  8704.  @randallhughes5687  But again, you can only validly change the laws with the consent of the people. You can't decide that a law should be changed, you need to convince We the People to go along with your change. My statement was intended for cases in which the people do not support your position, such as on taxation.
    1
  8705.  @randallhughes5687  The facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  8706.  @randallhughes5687  Which of my statements was a "blue talking point?" Was it "this is a republic, not a democracy, because I don't understand how republics work?" That's more of a red talking point. How about the "taxation is theft" one? Or the one about the wolves. Come to think of it, have you said anything that isn;t a red talking point? Have you thought anything that isn't a red talking point? Now I'm not so sure. . .
    1
  8707. How much does it cost to refurbish an Elon Muck video to cover a different aspect of his company? If you factors out the re-used B-Roll footage, this would be, what, a 5-7min video?
    1
  8708.  @ejakathebeast  No, again, that is not how a threat works. It is not people going "do this or I will kill myself," it is people saying that as a matter of fact, doing this will cause more people to commit suicide. It's like if they made seatbelts illegal. It would not be a "threat" to claim that this would lead to increased deaths, it is a fact. It's not that "if seatbelts are illegal then more people would die as a form of protest," it's that if seatbelts were illegal, it would result in more deaths because they would no longer be there to HELP PEOPLE.
    1
  8709. @ Exactly. It has nothing to o with truth, and nothing to do with maiking America great, it only has to do with making liberals feel bad, and yes, it does make liberals feel bad for America to go down the drain, so they keep winning.
    1
  8710. @ They already negotiated. The previous deals were the results of that negotiation. There's nothing to negotiate here.
    1
  8711. The Dems have done more about the border than the Republicans ever did. But more people than ever are trying to get in because their own countries are becoming less and less survivable due to climate change, so it's more noticeable. If Republicans actually cared about reforming the system, we would have had this all worked out decades ago, but they don't want to fix it, they want racists to vote for them by complaining about the issue constantly. If you actually want the border crisis solved, then help ensure a Demcoratic supermajority in the Senate and House.
    1
  8712. The increases at the border have nothing to do with security. "Security" is how they CATCH all these people doing the stuff they do. If border security were weak, then you would never hear about it because the people crossing illegally would not be caught.
    1
  8713. Faux News WILL NOT STAND for having their viewers returned to reality. It's Narnia or nothing!!!!
    1
  8714. He was from El Salvador before he was from Maryland, so he's both.
    1
  8715.  @JoseMorales-sw4uc  "The mark was dumb enough to buy it" is not a defense against fraud.
    1
  8716.  @Mortvent  It is important to understand the intent of the rights as they were written at the time, and to apply them to the modern realities based on that. I'm not proposing some arbitrary change in how the law is interpreted, I am pointing out how it has always been interpreted, until relatively recently when NRA lobbying has distorted it in people's minds. I understand that you can't please everyone, and I'm sure that there will be those who will insist on interpreting the rules in the way that allows them to do whatever they want, but all that actually matters is how the law is actually interpreted, and that is what needs to be updated. Ideally, we would be able to get a clean amendment passed that would remove all doubt in the meaning of the 2nd, but I hope you're aware that this country is currently far too polarized to get such an amendment ratified. They can't even get the Equal Rights Amendment passed! But that's no excuse to do nothing about tens of thousands of Americans lives lost unnecessarily. We need to take what steps we can to prevent that, even if it means taking the toys away from gun owners.
    1
  8717.  @mommamomma3607  Of course they aren't. Heck, the last President was just found liable for defamation and sexual assault. Nobody is above the law, that's the whole point of the system of checks and balances that the founders put into place. True, the previous administration and their cronies stretched those systems to their limits, but they didn't manage to break them, not yet, at least. If any crimes are found, the guilty will be brought to justice.
    1
  8718.  @deekang6244  Pride flag, yes, Hammurabi code, yes, Quran, no.
    1
  8719.  @repentjesusiscomingsoon1529  That's what they've been saying for two thousand years now. What are the odds that now is when they're right? Don't get so full of yourself.
    1
  8720.  @paulettechatman4604  Trump believes in nothing other than Trump.
    1
  8721.  @franksaldana6570  And requiring that the words "Thou shalt have no other gods before me" be printed in a government facility IS establishing and promoting that religion.
    1
  8722.  @EricCartman915  Yes, although you couldn't pass a law requiring that it be placed in schools.
    1
  8723.  @EricCartman915  I'm not arguing that we should.
    1
  8724.  @louisgiardina8918  He allowed his sons to MANAGE his businesses, but he retained ownership of them. Also, they were his sons, so hardly an independent body. Can you imagine if Joe Biden had left Hunter in charge of ANY of his finances?
    1
  8725. Weird flex.
    1
  8726. I think you mean that he speaks with the loud and angry minority that lose elections.
    1
  8727.  @JW-do2wc  He quoted his book while on the campaign trail, and once that was pointed out to him, he doubled down on it. He's promised to wield his second term much like was done in Germany at the time.
    1
  8728.  @JW-do2wc  Now, this is not he 1940s Hitler we're talking about, of course, this is the early 1930s Hitler. Trump would need a second, indefinite term to get to the really big ideas.
    1
  8729.  @doctordemento965  Yes, on the opposite end of Alabama's (this joke will lose any of Tuberville's voters).
    1
  8730. ​ @commentsedited  I think I may have found the source for your claim, there was a "Scholaroo" study in 2022 that made that claim. Seems suuuuper reputable with a name like that. If you actually did your research though and looked up reputable sources, it's 20th.
    1
  8731.  @commentsedited  And yet Scholaroo is the source of the figure you cited. It's there data set that produces that specific result. Any other "sources" I can find that provide that number, including ones posted in this thread, are just of articles quoting Scholaroo's figures, which you would know, having checked what the source in those articles was before citing them as a secondary source. And yes, the federal government does not track that, but there are plenty of organizations that do make some attempt to do so, some more credible than others. The reason the government does not track such figures is that they feel it is more "gamesmanship" than practical, since each state controls their own education systems anyway. There is no practical reason for the federal government to care whether one state is better than another in education, since they have no authority to really do anything about that.
    1
  8732.  @commentsedited  KUSI news cites Scholaroo as their source, which any idiot would know because they say so right up front. So if KUSI News is your source, then your source is actually Scholaroo, which is what I said yesterday. You are very confident for someone so often wrong. This is not a virtue. As for Florida, it used to be a swing state, and they're still coasting off of previous investment from Democrats. They're only 14th in K-12 though. It's not that there aren't any red states near the top or blue states near the bottom, just that most states near the top are blue and most states near the bottom are red. In K-12 education, 12 of the top 20 states are blue states, 8 of the top 10, and all of the top 5. The only two red states in the top 10 are Indiana and Utah.
    1
  8733. Any problem can be solved if you throw infinity money at it, but if you throw infinite money at every problem, then people complain that you're wasting taxpayer money. There is no win/win solution here. Yes, it turns out that the path they took led to more fire damage than the alternatives, but if these fired had happened six months later, nobody would be talking about how that reservoir had saved the day, they'd just be should that they spent twice as much as they should on the repairs.
    1
  8734.  @Goulash45  There are more white nationalists out there than you seem to think. Certainly not the majority of the country or anything, but way more than is healthy for the country. White nationalists make up the number one terrorist threat to the US, way more than any other groups out there. They commit far more acts of terrorism on a fairly regular basis, including an attempt to overthrow the US government and install their leader as President a couple years back.
    1
  8735. TL;DR, because she's always been a right-wing grifter, even while trying to siphon votes from actual Democrats.
    1
  8736. I think circle cities look neat, but the plot shape tends to be impractical if you move toward the middle. I think "squared circles" work better, where the outer ring-road is circular, and the central plot is circular, but the middle ringroads are squares, and only the four cardinals are straight radials. The other major roads are just grids that cut between rings, so most of the plots are rectangular.
    1
  8737. I wonder if you could surround hydrogen tanks with a thin layer of oxygen, water, or some other chemical that would bind with free hydrogen in a harmless way, to prevent it just wandering off on its own. It would still be lost energy, but at least not polluting.
    1
  8738.  @chadconstable79  The Republicans have already broken the system with their court packing. Fears that they might break it more in the future are pointless. If they don't want court packing, then give the Democrats back two of the existing Republican seats and we'll call it a day.
    1
  8739.  @nancyheck918  Lol. Please tell me you don't actually believe that.
    1
  8740.  @nancyheck918  I have also studied government, that is not the issue. The issue is that you are presenting lunatic conspiracy theories. You should get that looked into by a medical professional, because it is not healthy.
    1
  8741. He did fall though. Did you not watch the video?
    1
  8742. When was this?
    1
  8743.  @bunjijumper5345  It is hateful to say that, since it implies that they are killing ducks, which was never true. Only hateful people believe that it was true.
    1
  8744.  @bunjijumper5345  No, it's racist that people are claiming Hatiains are doing these things without evidence. Anyone making such claims is racist for believing that they are true and spreading those rumors. The race of the speaker isn't relevant, only what he is saying. So I ask you again, why do you keep bringing up the race of the person speaking?
    1
  8745. TL;DR, it was to make it harder for Optimus Prime to hide.
    1
  8746. @ Currently, its self-driving function is more of a suggestion than an actual functional mode.
    1
  8747. Biden can't sign what isn't sent to his desk. The moment Kevin sends him a clean debt limit raise, Biden will sign it.
    1
  8748. He only thinks this because he knows math. That doesn't scare Trump supporters!
    1
  8749. @ Nah, you can vote for whoever you want. They are just very unlikely to win. The only way to change that would be some sort of ranked choice system.
    1
  8750. @ No, it's a choice between one party that is clearly superior to the other, or the Republicans. That is a perfectly valid choice to make.
    1
  8751. They're better than he maga crowd, at least.
    1
  8752. Republicans: Embryos are people Alabama: So IVF is murder Republicans: Wait. . . not like that. . .
    1
  8753. So. . . nothing. "A guy left the FBI a crank call, and there was nothing to it." Isn't that what we've been saying for months now? Also, why is Faux News reporting this as if these claims have merit? Do they think that little of their audience's intelligence?
    1
  8754. He's not the most popular, that was Obama, Biden's just the one who's gotten the most votes in history. But he also had the most votes against him, and those people are NUTS. They just committed insurrection to prevent his election from being certified, it's no stretch to believe they'd do something crazy at the actual inauguration too. It's sad times we're living in, but this is an appropriate response.
    1
  8755. How did anything he said endanger anyone?
    1
  8756.  @RealisticRobot  None of what you said justified her actions. If she was too poor a leader to train the dog, she should have passed it on to someone more capable.
    1
  8757.  @RealisticRobot  No, it doesn't. These are all correctable behaviors, if you are a better leader than she is.
    1
  8758.  @RealisticRobot  They were trying to get the dog to hunt animals. They were annoyed that it was hunting the wrong animals. Maybe don't try and get it to hunt animals? There have been plenty of dogs in the world that behaved very viciously in the wrong circumstances, such as "while being around Kristi Nome," but are perfectly fine when in a loving home. It's sad that you can't understand that.
    1
  8759.  @ccobra6813  Exactly, it's a ruling against the people, because the people who are accused of SEC violations are people who have been stealing from the people. It wasn't an "improper judge" until this bought and paid for court said so. They are the "improper agency."
    1
  8760.  @ccobra6813  I don't believe in guilty until proven innocent, but I also believe that they receive due process through the current SEC mechanisms. That is where their guilt or innocence is determined. Removing that process will lead to far more guilty people not being held accountable than it ever will innocent people getting a different outcome. Each of those guilty people is someone who has stolen from your pocket, unless you are one of them (and even then, probably).
    1
  8761. There doesn't need to be a law relating to a specific treatment or procedure, the laws governing the CDC allow them to take broad steps in preventing infectious diseases. If they have determined that face covering masks are part of an effective virus mitigation strategy, then they can mandate their use.
    1
  8762.  @stewhobson9748  Nope.
    1
  8763. One thing that annoys me about all of this is, regardless of how incompetent Trump's actions were on this, there was always a simple solution. If European armies had had their forces in Syria in equivalent numbers to the US, then the US could do whatever, and Turkey still couldn't have moved in, because that would have meant steamrolling a bunch of Brits, French, Germans, etc. What were they doing? Never put all your eggs in the Trump basket, it has massive holes in it.
    1
  8764.  @minsapint8007  They weren't jazzed about having US troops either. It wasn't really their call, under the circumstances.
    1
  8765. All he wants in a VP is comfortable lips.
    1
  8766. But Trump still has the responsibility as US President to get him back.
    1
  8767.  @carbonking53  Why? What's he got to do with this?
    1
  8768. And this is why Trump can never be allowed in the Oval Office again. He has no idea how any of this works.
    1
  8769. Yeah, Stephanik should also resign, but these College leaders were just incompetent in being unable to be clear on their stance against genocide.
    1
  8770. We definitely need to put more money into mental health facilities, but unfortunately, Republicans too often defund them.
    1
  8771. Yes, but when there isn't enough evidence to prove a crime has taken place, innocence is presumed.
    1
  8772.  @tommas2674  Well I never! I literally never.
    1
  8773.  @androsc1418  Not the one Trump has a rally in in New Jersey, that one only held 20K people, and only reached about 30% capacity. Sad.
    1
  8774.  @emteller2945  He has a stutter, it sometimes gives him difficulty with public speaking. This is well known already, and has nothing to do with his actual knowledge of events. Besides, his opponent in the election is FAR worse at remembering things. He can't even remember his own wife.
    1
  8775.  @CornPoppe-io5wc  Nobody ever claimed he wasn't fit for trial. All the report claimed was that he thought he had a losing case, which was true. The rest was purely flavor text from a Republican operative who wanted to help his team in the election.
    1
  8776.  @1ronin907  That would call your own fitness into question then. There are few people less fit for the presidency than Donald Trump. Neither I nor Biden are on that list. Probably even you aren't on that list.
    1
  8777.  @chess1458  I don't think there would be much to be gained from a debate. Trump is a bully, whether he is right or wrong on a topic, he is loud, and to a certain sort of simple mind, that is just as good as being right. If there were a debate, they would both get names wrong, they would both have some sort of ramble to fill time, but Trump would be louder and more confident in his position (regardless of its quality), and so his fans would declare him the winner without question. He would still be the less competent candidate at the end of the day. If Trump were such a great debater, why did he run away from every primary debate?
    1
  8778.  @chess1458  If it were just Trump's "personality and demeanor" that were at issue, then people would get over that. We've had unlikable politicians before. The issue is that his policies are often inherently cruel, and his decision-making is erratic and harmful to national security. He's incapable of acting in anyone's interests but his own, and in cases where those interests do not align with Americans, he effortlessly throws us under the bus.
    1
  8779.  @maciek8159  Biden does put America first. He's handling the border better than the previous administration, there are just more people arriving in 2024 than in 2019.
    1
  8780.  @biderdoo  The corruption on the left is insignificant when compared to the corruption on the right. Why even bring it up, other than a "whataboutism?"
    1
  8781.  @biderdoo  There are no cases of "Brandon talking to dead people." I have no idea what you're talking about with that one.
    1
  8782.  @biderdoo  Again, there have been NO such cases. Are you sure you aren't misremembering events?
    1
  8783.  @biderdoo  You're the one imagining the President talking to ghosts. Maybe you're just confused. When they show him at a press conference, and he's talking to people you can't see, those are reporters, they are just standing off camera.
    1
  8784.  @tuanvu2169  Yep, "criminals" and "not criminals." The criminals always get treated more poorly.
    1
  8785.  @tuanvu2169  Yes, but he actually talked to the current President of France, and was just confused on the name. It's something plenty of people do all the time. Donald Trump thought that a picture of E Jean Carrol was his ex wife.
    1
  8786.  @boscobeans  Well, just for a few, his policy to separate children from their parents without keeping track of the link between them, which led to some children still not yet returned to their parents. Another was how he left our allies in Syria to die. For another, he nominated Supreme Court justices that have since been dismantling American's rights left and right.
    1
  8787.  @aaronthenorm5400  Santa Claus.
    1
  8788.  @Sporxz  That's an easy one, "MAGA."
    1
  8789.  @fightfish3265  Hey, maybe you know, I can't figure that out, when did anyone elect Hunter Biden? Why do so many people indoctrinated on Faux News seem obsessed with the guy?
    1
  8790. You don't need to cut social welfare programs, you don't need to issue more debt, you just need to raise tax revenues. If everyone does it, companies would have nowhere to run.
    1
  8791.  @bvanderford  Might not be a terrible idea. Maybe just massively increase hotel taxes (including to air B&Bs), with limited exemptions for business purposes. Likewise increase taxes on cruise ship docking.
    1
  8792. and this is why Republicans cannot be allowed anywhere near positions of power until the party has reformed its authoritarian impulses.
    1
  8793. That was Obama, Biden was just the messenger.
    1
  8794.  @Sheri77  If you believe that, then you are missing context. The White House wanted to remove that prosecutor because he was corrupt and working in favor of Russia. They sent the Vice President to deliver that message, which is what he was talking about in that video. It had nothing to do with his son, and was never the Vice President's call to make on his own.
    1
  8795.  @Sheri77  You're missing context then. It was the White House that made the call, Joe was just the messenger.
    1
  8796. This is why Biden's BBB bills involved massive investments in US lithium mining and battery production. The Trump administration let China eat our lunch by ramping up their battery production capabilities behind his back, Biden isn't making the same mistake.
    1
  8797.  @dingus6317  Most of the lithium coming to the US comes from Chile, in mines owned by a company out of North Carolina. There are more US-based mines being developed in California though.
    1
  8798.  @niki75  The American parties swapped their positions on slavery in the 1960s. The current Democrats have no relationship to the 1860s Democrats, just as the current Republicans have nothing to do with the Party of Lincoln.
    1
  8799.  @SirAlric82  The Democratic party predates communism. How could it "evolve from" communism?
    1
  8800.  @SirAlric82  Oh, ok. But in any case, wouldn't it be better to evolve out of the communist party than out of the fascists? I mean, outside of the Soviet and Chinese versions of it, they have been largely harmless. Communism only tends to go wrong when combined with authoritarianism, Fascism is inherently bad by its very nature though.
    1
  8801.  @danielwebb8402  Oh, this is just a massive misunderstanding about what "authoritarianism" means. It does not mean "someone tells me what to do." It means "someone tells me what to do and I have no say in the process." You can have democratic communism, which is very different than authoritarian communism. The problem with the communist governments in history were that they were built around authoritarian power structures that funneled power and authority to elites at the top. That is a problem with authoritarian power systems, not with communism, and really isn't even technically "communism" by the definition of the term, it was just a misuse of the term. Cuba is also an example of an authoritarian version, largely as an offshoot of the Soviet model that dominated the middle 20th Century. If, on the other hand, the people can freely vote, freely elect people to represent those interests, then it is not an issue. Everyone would be required to contribute, but the systems to manage those people and determine how they contribute would be in the hands of the people. Personally, I don't favor a fully communist system but it is still highly misunderstood, largely due to the influence that Russia and China have had on the conversation.
    1
  8802.  @SirAlric82  Plenty of non-communist countries have also devolved into totalitarian dictatorships, like Mussolini's Italy, or Hitler's Germany. Even the US had a brush with that a couple years back. Also, the meme that "communism killed more people" is a bit nonsense, don't make a fool of yourself by spreading it. Authoritarian killed those people, not communism, and authoritarianism is the big killer. The point is, communism is an economic model, not a political model. Most of the states you discussed were some degree of communist politically and some amount of authoritarianism politically. It was the authoritarianism that got them into trouble. Full on communism has never been fully implemented on a national scale, and is probably impractical at that level, but there are plenty of socialist nations out there that are doing as well or better than their less socialist neighbors. Successful countries tend to be a balance of factors, not fully one thing or another.
    1
  8803.  @SirAlric82  So your argument is that even though "their ideology" has never been attempted before, "their ideology" must suck because other ideologies with the same name failed? That makes total sense. I don't think it was at all a coincidence that so many communist countries went bad. I think that it was geopolitics. I think that the first communist country was Soviet Russia, and that most other countries in the early 20th Century were rabidly anti-communist, to the point that they elected people like Hitler and Mussolini to keep the communists out. any country that did attempt to go communist was ruthlessly crushed by outside powers as best they could be. This meant that what communist countries did emerge tended to be politically aligned with Soviet Russia, at least in their formative years, and as they say, "lie down with dogs, wake up with fleas." No communist nation has yet formed that was not ideologically founded on Soviet Russia as a base, and that is no communism at all. It's also worth pointing out that many of the capitalist nations that the west supported in the Cold War were no less authoritarian and harmful to their own public than the Soviets. It was the right call to make at the time from a geopolitical standpoint, but no basis on which to judge the efficacy or fairness of a political ideology. As to your second point, there is no political system on Earth that can allow people to say "no, I don't want to do that." No nation in the world functions like that. Everyone must follow the rules of the nation they are in or face punishment for it. The difference between a good nation and a bad one are that in a good nation the rules and punishments are both faith and supported by the people in general, but there will always be some who would prefer not to follow them. Here's a simple example of how it works. Say you have an apartment of nine people, and it's gotten a bit messy. The majority of the roomates agree that they would prefer it cleaner. Now, you could go with anarchy, anyone who wants o clean can, and anyone who doesn't has no obligation. That would only lead to the lazy people doing no work and the more responsible ones taking on an undue burden. You could go with authoritarianism, one person dictates who cleans what, forcing everyone else into compliance (and realistically giving himself a lighter load, although that is not strictly necessary). And then there would be the democratic communist approach, which is that everyone discusses among themselves what the chore schedule should be and votes on the outcomes, such that some of the lazier ones might not want to do their assigned task, but they are required to do so by the consensus of the group, everyone does their fair share, everyone shares the benefit of a cleaner apartment. What is "authoritarian" about that?
    1
  8804. Are we also getting the transcripts from Trump's interviews?
    1
  8805. Yeah, this guy has zero patriotism.
    1
  8806. Surprised Pikachu face How did anyone expect this to end? It was a dead-ended witch hunt from start to finish.
    1
  8807. Well of course they are laughing at Russia. Russia is a joke right now. China's not doing much better, but at least they weren't dumb enough to invade their peaceful neighbor.
    1
  8808. "Oh, I don't want to actually fix it, I just want to complain about it to make my political opponents look bad."
    1
  8809.  @Pratik4311 Yup, this is why we can never support Republicans and their scare tactics. The future can be a great place, so long as we don't deliberately drive it into the ground like they want us to.
    1
  8810. Easily. Geography isn't typically a required course.
    1
  8811.  @stinky60096  A lot of people just get on a plane and go, and couldn't point out the place on a map. All they know is the pictures of what it will look like when they get there.
    1
  8812. I don't think that's the reason. I think it's the misinformation that is killing people that they view as a problem.
    1
  8813. When Republicans vote to raise the debt ceiling, the Democrats unanimously vote to do so with them, because they understand that it is the adult thing to do. When Democrats try to raise the debt ceiling, Republicans go "well what can we get out of it?" It's not a "both sides" issue.
    1
  8814.  @rjtheripper931  And yet it remains a fact. There is one side that is responsible, and one side that is irresponsible. The divide is between the two.
    1
  8815.  @rjtheripper931  Like what? What did we agree to that we aren't sticking to? Who is even the "we" in that scenario?
    1
  8816.  @rjtheripper931  When did they say we weren't going to make new aircraft carriers? We do need new ones from time to time, and for what it can do, it's really not a bad deal. At the same time, Biden pulled out of Afghanistan, and we were spending enough per year in Afghanistan to cover the costs of just under four of those new aircraft carriers, which should last decades.
    1
  8817. "But we don't want to pay our fair share!!!!" We really do need to figure out how to leave the wealthy nowhere to flee with their money before automation makes ALL labor redundant.
    1
  8818. New York is already in a much better place than most of the states in the US right now, especially the ones with Republican governors like Georgia and Florida.
    1
  8819.  @HashiAkitaPuppy  New York got hit first, when we really didn't know much about what was going on. They acted, they flattened the curve, and their rates today are far lower than in most parts of the country. Florida has no such excuses, their outbreaks came much later in the process as a result of them rushing to reopen when we knew that would not be a good idea, and they are only continuing to climb. Your argument is like those people early in this virus that were saying "it's no worse than the flu" because they were only comparing the results of the first couple months to an entire flu season's worth of deaths and pretending it would not get worse. It got worse. New York had bad initial outcomes because they got hit early, if they hadn't had their first major outbreaks until the summer, like in many red states, they likely would have only had a few thousand total cases.
    1
  8820.  @James-r2y9o  Not my Royal Dansk cookies!
    1
  8821. It's because Republicans in those states passed laws that made it harder for votes to be counted.
    1
  8822. Ukraine and Taiwan: "No thanks."
    1
  8823.  @jakeeasterwood3204  Is that what they tell you on Faux News? They shouldn't give medical advice, they don't know what they're talking about.
    1
  8824. Trump appointed a LOT of stupid judges, so it's become literal Russian Roulette at this point.
    1
  8825. Why should they? This is within the President's national defense rights.
    1
  8826.  @Redmirage47  Yes, a misdemeanor is a felony when it is in furtherance of another crime, so in this case, it is a felony. I'm glad you could keep up.
    1
  8827.  @Redmirage47  Yes, like someone who actually knows what he's talking about. How about you?
    1
  8828.  @melissadeloach8503  Philips undermines himself perfectly well. Fox News gives him better coverage because he better serves their interests.
    1
  8829.  @melissadeloach8503  There are few networks less reputable than Fox. They just like chaos, not news.
    1
  8830.  @melissadeloach8503  Fox is never more reputable.
    1
  8831. Man, that world leader poll. "We choose evil" -Serbians. Not a good look, guys. Not a good look.
    1
  8832. What's with the clickbait thumbnail? Even the Republicans admit that there is nothing to this memo, they just want it so that they can use it as a political tool.
    1
  8833.  @Carter-X  They got bonus subsidies on top of the historic subsidies, because otherwise Trump would have bankrupted them.
    1
  8834.  @enotdetcelfer  US farmers don't pay the price of tariffs on their exports, importers in other countries would. But US agriculture having tariffs applied to it means that the farmers are able to sell LESS of their goods, or if they do, they have to sell it at a lower value to make it still worth importing. The farmers make less, but China does not make more.
    1
  8835. NATO already has an 830 mile long border with Russia. That's longer than the Texas border.
    1
  8836.  @codyvandal2860  Neither of those were US invasions. One was a Cuban insurrection, and the other was a Venezuelan insurrection.
    1
  8837.  @codyvandal2860  That's not correct, it's closer to 1/3, which is actually a bit less than we should have, considering relative population sizes.
    1
  8838.  @codyvandal2860  You said "military forces." US troops total 1.33 million troops, out of a total of 3.5 million, so more precisely, the US only makes up 37% of total NATO forces. The US does spend more money on military stuff though, almost all of it made in the US, employing US workers, and going back into the US economy, including much of the equipment bought by other NATO members.
    1
  8839.  @codyvandal2860  You're drifting off topic. Could it be that you don't actually care how many of NATO's soldiers are American in the first place?
    1
  8840.  @codyvandal2860  What's your basis for the 90% figure? I would agree that the US has a larger navy and air force than most of the EU, but it's not like the rest don't contribute. The US Navy is only slightly larger by number of ships than Sweden, Finland, or Italy, though we do dwarf other countries in total aircraft. Again though, the US chooses to spend more on military hardware than most countries believe is reasonable, and that's our choice. Neither party pushes for significant military cutbacks when they have the power to do so.
    1
  8841.  @codyvandal2860  Ok, so what's your point then? What should change about that?
    1
  8842.  @IronskullGM  I'm pushing a system based on credible leadership. I would like nothing more than for the Republican party to become a worthy alternative to the Democrats, but that is not the world that we currently live in. They have sold their souls to the MAGA cult, and there's nothing Democrats can do about that. It would be irresponsible to insist on treating them as a credible alternative when they have not earned that privilege. If and when they have "drained the swamp" and kicked out all members who supported the Big Lie, THEN they can be treated as a potential alternative to the Democrats again. They cannot deserve it a moment sooner.
    1
  8843. Well, the state department didn't allow it to happen, because it did not actually happen. It exists only in the fever dreams of Faux News hosts and their sheep.
    1
  8844. They are blaming the person, but nobody operates in a vacuum, and if we only blame the person then it's just a game of "whack-a-mole," wait until AFTER someone has shot a bunch of kids and then have a good cry about it. If we'd like to actually stop some of these attacks, then we need to get ahead of them, figure out why these people are doing these things, and stopping them from being able to, by either identifying potential shooters in advance and heading them off, or by preventing them from gaining access to the tools they would use to carry out the attacks.
    1
  8845.  @Steve-ps6nq  Why would a shooter being trans be relevant to anything?
    1
  8846.  @youngwt1  "People should be more disciplined" is no solution. That is just seying "let the scalpers win." I can choose not to buy from scalpers for the rest of my life, and broadly speaking, I intend to, but that doesn't stop me from being harmed by their behavior by having less product on the market for me to purchase. Depending on the personal responsibility of others is setting myself up for failure, I prefer systemic solutions that benefit the average consumer at the expense of those who would choose to take advantage of them.
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  8847. "It's not crime if you launder the money!"
    1
  8848.  @drzaius1121  That's being arrested for possessing a controlled substance, one which could only be obtained through illegal channels. Those illegal channels are the source of significant violence in this and other countries. If not for people purchasing the drugs, that violence would cease. That said, I do believe that decriminalization is a more practical strategy than the current one.
    1
  8849.  @SylvainSybaris  Nobody's saying babies don't have a right to live, that's irrelevant to the topic at hand. Nobody's talking about babies here.
    1
  8850.  @GreyWolfLeaderTW  We aren't speaking Old English, we're speaking modern English. The use and meanings of terms change over time, and there is no value in sticking to archaic definitions past their prime.
    1
  8851. This is what makes Trump work. Stupid people who reject anything that tries to tell them what they don't want to hear.
    1
  8852. That doesn't look like Karine.
    1
  8853.  @R74-b7p  you should look it up. All of those things happened due to Obama era policies that continued during the Trump administration. If Trump made any changes to them, it was only to make them worse. The economy Trump inherited did pretty well for him though, because his followers are too dumb to follow economic data and only glace up to see who's in charge then the results arrive.
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  8854. Getting prepared for November 6th, apparently.
    1
  8855. What nonsense have you been listening to? Biden is one of the few world leaders standing up to Hamas right now.
    1
  8856.  @BattleAxeRX  But you also need to apply at least a tiny bit of common sense here. It would make no sense whatsoever for Biden to be in support of Hamas in any way, given the firm stance he's taken against them. It would be like claiming that he's pro-China or pro-Russia like Trump was.
    1
  8857.  @Tony-x8z1n  What do th tunnels have to do with anything? Do you think Joe and Hillary were out digging tunnels?
    1
  8858. @BOBBRADLY-gh3dh Lol, Trump and his family does business in China. He talked a big game, but did nothing to stand up to them. In contrast, Biden placed the most crippling sanction possible on China by denying them access to high end computer chips, Invested in US production of such chips, and made clearer than ever that we support Taiwan against Chinese expansion. If Trump genuinely hates the CCP, then he was completely incompetent at doing anything about it.
    1
  8859.  @jimwerther  Lol, sometimes, yeah, but there's typically a workaround. Remember that it's primarily word/phrase filters at play, and that it's the channel, not Youtube in general. It is an awful system though, since they need to give better feedback as to what you're doing wrong.
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  8860.  @tolowokere  Well so my point as regards to parents is that the ONLY points of contention in this matter are cases in which the parents are not putting the best interests of the child in mind, while the schools are, and bills like these seek to prevent the schools from helping those children. It's possible that an individual at a school might also fail a child, but there are far more checks and balances to that process than there are with individual parents. A teacher that oversteps in these regards are far more likely to be caught and punished than a parent is, and teachers are far more likely to be responsible individuals, since they have sought out and trained for this profession. There are many good parents out there, but also plenty of people who just ended up with that role, so on average, teachers are better equipped for this stuff. "I'm not sure what else to tell you; I can only be the bearer of bad news." that doesn't answer my question though, why do so many people in this thread say things like "small children should not be taught about sexual behaviors," as though there is any effort to do otherwise? It seems like they are implying that there IS some effort to discuss such things with small children.
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  8861.  @Zoetherat  If you wanted to be taken seriously, then you should have come up with a more believable story than the "brainwashing liberal college" nonsense. I will also point out that you can be black and also support white supremacists. Being "a thing" does not mean that your viewpoints do not support hate against your own demographic. An LGBT person who opposes the rights and acceptance of LGBT people is not somehow better, or an excuse for those who share their viewpoint to say "see, that person says what I want to hear, so you must be wrong! " And yes, I believe that a child who identifies as trans should be affirmed. There is no harm to it. It is not a "left wing" stance, it is the stance of the medical science on the topic, and it is only political in that those on the right oppose that stance, so those on the left have no choice but to counter that opposition in favor of the children. Ideally, neither side would oppose it, but here we are.
    1
  8862.  @Zoetherat  If you wanted to be taken seriously, then you should have come up with a more believable story than the "brainwashing liberal college" nonsense.
    1
  8863. ​ @Zoetherat  I will also point out that you can be black and also support white supremacists. Being "a thing" does not mean that your viewpoints do not support hate against your own demographic. An LGBT person who opposes the rights and acceptance of LGBT people is not somehow better, or an excuse for those who share their viewpoint to say "see, that person says what I want to hear, so you must be wrong! "
    1
  8864.  @Zoetherat  And yes, I believe that a child who identifies as trans should be affirmed. There is no harm to it. It is not a "left wing" stance, it is the stance of the medical science on the topic, and it is only political in that those on the right oppose that stance, so those on the left have no choice but to counter that opposition in favor of the children. Ideally, neither side would oppose it, but here we are.
    1
  8865.  @squattingheads  That's not really relevant to the topic at hand though, nobody was trying to discuss sex of any kind in kindergarten.
    1
  8866.  @tolowokere  The issue is that while you list several forms of child abuse that you agree are child abuse, you left out other forms that you seem to not agree with, such as suppressing an LGBT child's identity. You may not agree on that, but it remains true regardless that the more supportive those around that child are, the more likely they are to survive to adulthood. Ideally the parent is a part of that, but if, for whatever reason, they can't be, then we should all want teachers to step up as best they can. If a teacher reasonably believes that making a certain revelation available to a parent would lead to that student coming to harm, then they should withhold that information. It should not be their duty to spy on children for parents that may not have that child's best interests in mind. "I provided you with a list of sexually-charged books that were in school libraries, and even assigned as homework to 12 year-olds. When I was a child, homework qualified as part of a teaching curriculum. The good news is that at least one of these controversial books (Gender Queer) has now been pulled out of high-school libraries across the country, with some exceptions like Maine. Bear in mind that this book even has cartoon panels showing characters sucking the p3nis of another character. The images weren't even blurred, nor even the sex organ completely hidden. " High school and middle school students are not elementary school students though, which is often the goto example people keep bringing up. Don't you find that disingenuous, at best? Even thirty years ago there were references to sex in books I was assigned in high school, and in books I read in middle school. Nowadays this material is much more commonly available to students regardless of schools, so it does not shock my conscience that vague references to it might be available in older age classes. I believe that perhaps some classes go too far, and that the time and place to address that is respectfully at school board meetings, but I feel that the rhetoric far outpaces the reality, that many of the "solutions" conservatives come up with are sledgehammers where scalpels would do, and create massive cultures of fear among teachers for even reasonable discussions, rather than only targeting the more explicit examples you reference. Do you not agree that book bans have attempted to remove books with NO explicit sexual references? Do you not agree that bills such as the one in Florida might be applied in an overly board manner, resulting in an innocent teacher having to endure significant hardship before it would be resolved? I doubt that you'll fully agree with me on the intended outcome here, but can't you at least agree that nationwide conservatives have been taking this all much too far?
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  8867.  @JB-is4gt  There's nothing wrong with Gender ideology or CRT being taught by teachers though. That is different than teaching sexual acts. You DO understand that this is different than teaching sexual acts, right? Right?
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  8868.  @tolowokere  " I remember saying something about a teacher casually mentioning that "Tommy has two daddies," and harshly punishing any bullying (if and when it happens), and ultimately leaving further discussions on the matter to the family. " And that's a nice little example of something that you think would be fine with you, but that teacher could still be attacked under the new Florida bill for "not being age appropriate" or whatever. Again, the terms of the bill are extremely vague, and even if the teacher is eventually exonerated, the mere hassle of the process is enough to chill rational discussion. There need to be better checks and balances against the powers that the new law offers to parents to outright prevent abuse of it. "I might be reaching, but I think you're talking about situations where a parent's ideals might butt heads with a child's sexuality or gender identity. If that's the case, then there really is no easy solution." The easy solution would be to allow a teacher to step in and fill the gap. That is part of their role in society. I don't think that it would always be necessary to fully separate the parent from the child, but teachers should at least be able to counsel the child about what they're going through, or point them toward mental health professionals that could do so, and without triggering the parent into interfering. What is vital is that the child receives as much support as is possible, while causing the least disruption as can be possible. A requirement to notify the parents goes against that. "Second, as if the last point wasn't muddy enough, severe disagreement have always existed between parents and their children (especially teenagers) even outside LGBT-related topics. A" Yes, and historically teachers have ALWAYS served as a potential outlet for that. Not every troubled child finds a supportive teacher, but there are millions of stories of kids with a rough upbringing that have found a supportive teacher that helped to alleviate their home life issues. Why should that lifeline be pulled if the child happens to be LGBT? I don't think that teachers should have any obligation to provide aid and counsel that they might not be able to provide, but I certainly don't think that they should be prevented from doing so if they can. "2b) Spying? If my child is caught drinking whiskey under the bleachers, or displaying some serious anti-social behavior (not just simply keeping to himself), then it is their absolutely their duty to inform me!" I don't agree that it's an absolute duty. I think that it should be up to the teacher's discretion. IF the teacher has reason to believe that reporting the behavior would cause the student more harm than good, then I think that's a fair course of action. In general I would agree with you that it would tend to be for the best to inform the parent in such a situation, but there are certainly outliers in which it would result in more harm. To bring it back to a more relevant example, there are far more cases in which telling a parent about potential LGBT situations involving their child might trigger them into causing harm, so I believe this should always be left for the teacher to gauge what they believe the best course of action is. The teacher can't shield the child from the parents finding out on their own, but they should have no obligation to help them find out. "3) Did I miss something?" I feel this entire paragraph is being disingenuous in response to the topic. I have no time for it. "b) Honestly, what on earth just happened?! If anyone had told me just five years ago that I would actually be debating whether its appropriate for minors to have access to sex-charged reading material, I would have rolled my eyes and said that it would never happen. Yet, here we are." Same. We had far less access to sexually charged material back when I was that age, and still managed to find plenty of it, so the idea that we're still aghast at the idea in 2024 is baffling to me. " Had they gotten those books out of the schools long ago, they would have been able to easily deal with simple smoldering embers. " as I said, if those more explict examples existed, it was because nobody knew that they were there. How would they have "gotten them out years ago" if they didn't know? "This scandal is the myth that should never have come true -it should have stayed a myth. With any luck, people can still bring back the "scalpel," as you put it. But, just as importantly, the sooner more schools recognize that this an actual fiasco, and not some Alex Jones inanity, the sooner they can break the momentum of specific conservative activist groups. " Even if every point of fact you raised happens to be true, you are still blowing this WAY out of proportion. It's no "fiasco" or "crisis," it's at most some minor issues to correct over time. Nobody's been actually harmed by this, until teachers and school boards became under threat by conservative radicals.
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  8869.  @brentgolder2155  If she is engaging in sexual acts that involve another woman, it would be inaccurate to describe that as "straight."
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  8870.  @tolowokere  To your point 1, yes it';s vague, and no it is unlikely to be successfully challenged, because I don't believe there is anything unconstitutional about it. Laws are allowed to be vague. The only solution would be to elect fewer Republicans and get the bill changed. Yes, if a teacher is charged frivolously they can fight it, and potentially win their case, but the act of having to fight it is ITSELF a punishment for which they will receive no compensation under this law. It's basically giving bad faith parents the right to ruin any teacher's life at their own whim and with no consequences for doing so. More importantly, the bill itself is not necessary and serves no function that is needed, which is why people opposed it, and why there is no reason to defend it. 3. You seem to be reaching back into the distant past for this one. I was talking about the last fifty to one hundred years or so. I would be shocked if you've never encountered people who speak highly of teachers they've had that helped them through a difficult time in their life. It's a fairly common occurrence. Again, teachers do not have a duty to fill this roll, but many choose to, and their students' lives have been all the better for it. And yes, sometimes schools do fail their students, and that's sad, but that's no reason to tie their hands to PREVENT them helping where they CAN. Pointing to examples of schools that neglected their students is no argument in favor of forcing them to neglect their students. As for cases of actual teacher abuse, do you really think this new law will do anything to change that? If a teacher is willing to commit evil acts, then they will violate this law as well. This law only has teeth against teachers who were intending to do the right thing. It should also be important to remember that parental abuse is FAR more common than teacher abuse. It happens, and should be punished when caught, but it is no excuse for attacking the entire institution of teaching. 4. I agree that if a child is in such a precarious situation, then it will likely to end poorly, and yet, unfortunately, it happens every day. And if the teacher does feel that it would be a good idea to remove the child from the parent, and they can convince protective services to do so, then perhaps they should, but sometimes there is not enough actual evidence to support that result. My point is that the teacher should have that discretion to apply their own experience and common sense to any given scenario, to use their own best judgement. Whatever the parent finds out, they can act on as they see fit, but it is not the teacher's responsibility to tell them anything that they don't already know, if the teacher does not believe that knowledge would be in the child's best interests. Again, ONLY the child's interests matter here. To your point 5, this topic is not about you. You have to be aware of the other arguments being made from both sides of it. 6. When I was in 9th grade, around thirty years ago, one book I ended up reading off an assigned reading list was called The Persian Boy, and was about a young slave to Alexander the Great, and discussed how Alexander had sex with his male friends (as well as female). I don't recall quite how explicit it was, but for the 90s I did find that quite shocking. Even so, I don't think that was an inappropriate book for children of that age, especially now, and it certainly wasn't the most explicit material available to me by that point. I'm sure fifty years ago it would have been scandalous to have a book in which an interracial couple was depicted, but times do change. In any case, such disagreements are relatively few and far between, exceptions, not the rule, and each case can be handled using existing methods of talking to teachers, principles, school boards, and if necessary elections to replace them, but there is no need for the sort of national outrage that has resulted, much less laws like the one in Florida. The existing systems are quite capable of handling any disagreements on curriculum.
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  8871.  @tolowokere  I see only a part 1, if there were additional parts. I understand the frustration. To your first point, it would depend on how "heathcare services" would be defined. If it means discussions that the teacher and student have had around LGBT topics, then that would be a problem. If it only means actual medical procedures, then that is already covered under existing law and needs to updates. Which "healthcare services" do you believe are not already covered under existing law? "If the parent is sure that the teachers are harming the child, and the teachers are sure that they are helping the child, then they will have to drag that out into the light. " Again though, the one unalienable factor is not the parent, but the child. It is what is best for the child. If the parent has a plan that they think is right, and the teacher has a plan that they think is right, then neither should be required to run it by the other, they should each pursue their own plan individually. Objectively, there is no way of knowing which is the more correct path. If either results in harm, then existing mechanisms can account for that. I think you are ignoring a large gray area in this discussion. As you have pointed out, actually removing a child is an extreme measure that can be both difficult to execute and have repercussions to the child. It would be nice if all foster care options would be better than their own parents, but that too is no guarantee, so I think you agree that this should be avoided if possible. Can you not imagine a scenario in which an LGBT child would face emotional or even physical abuse at the hands of a parent if their true nature came to light, and yet so long as they maintain that secret, they could continue to live a relatively carefree life within that household? In such a case, would it not be better for the child to keep their head down until they become an adult and can move out and live their own life, rather than launching into that conflict as a child? In most cases, if a teacher reports their concerns to authorities, nothing would happen, because the bar for that is extremely high. Mere suspicion that such things might happen is not enough of a justification to have a child removed from custody, but it should be enough of a justification for a teacher to not light the match. Shouldn't teachers have that much discretion? That even if they don't have enough to solve the problem, they should at least be allowed to not make it worse? "Concerning point 3: Reaching? You made a claim on how schools "historically" have been. How was I supposed to know you were focused on 20- 30 years ago? " Because going back 100 years would be bonkers. We got SO much wrong 100 years ago that it's impossible to sort out. "Now, I grant there are real life heart-warming stories similar to Coach Carter or The Dead Poets Society , but I swear that there was nothing commonplace about them. " If you had a relatively stable home life and fit in well enough, then you would personally be unlikely to bond with any teachers, but not everyone is so privileged. Do not imagine that your own life experiences are particularly relevant to other people. If you haven't experienced it yourself, and cannot empathize with those who have, then just understand intellectually that vith does occur often enough among people who need help managing their lives. "3c) Couldn't I just as easily say the following: yes, sometimes parents do fail their children , and that's sad, but that's no reason to cut them out and PREVENT them helping where they CAN. " Completely different scenario. Nobody is passing a law preventing parents from getting involved. If a parent is willing an able to get involved in a positive way, nobody is getting in their way. "As for cases of actual teacher abuse, I really do think this new law will be useful in frustrating that. Laws against theft and murder have not eliminated either stealing or deliberate killing, but its consequences (among other things) certainly enter the minds of would-be perpetrators." But the new law does not make it any easier to catch or prosecute cases of actual teacher abuse, it ignores that entirely. All the new law does is target well meaning teachers who are trying to help their students.
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  8872.  @tolowokere  Oh, wait, I see the part 2 now, it just didn't send me a notification for it. Let's see. . . "To put things in perspective, what is an 8th grade math teacher going to find that detectives, child psychologists, and a search warrant won't find? " You put WAY more faith in those systems than anyone who has even heard of those systems has for them. It is not remotely so simple as you make it out, and you should simply not discuss such topics until you have looked into them more thoroughly. "When a child performs in a match, who are they more likely to desire praise and approval from? Ms. Parker, who happens to be their homeroom teacher, or their moms and dads?" Ideally their parents. But if their parents are unwilling or unable to offer such praise, then a teacher is certainly far better than nothing. Nobody is arguing that a supportive parent is not the best possible scenario here, but it would be irrational to pretend that all parents are supportive. If the parent IS supportive, then there is very little chance of their interests and the teachers' coming into conflict at all. "Children typically look forward to going home, and normally feel most at ease within their family. " In a healthy household? Sure. But millions of children in this country have a less than ideal household environment, and you can't just ignore that this is the case. You see to have a really hard time imagining people who are different from yourself, or from what you want them to be. You state things as though they are objective certainties, when the reality is that they are just how you experienced them. "With that in mind, a case where the child isn’t being harmed but may still have some difficulty with a parent, then resolving the issue with that parent present MUST be done" That's between the parent and the child, but the teacher should not have to act to make that happen. If there is a scenario in which this never gets resolved until after the child leaves home and can make their own choices, that still does not mean that it can never happen, the parent is still alive, the adult child can still reach out and discuss the issue in a way that is more likely to be productive, since the child is no longer dependent on the parent. Nothing here is preventing the child from involving the parent if they want, or the parent finding out on their own, but the teacher should not be required to force the issue if they don't believe that would likely lead to a positive outcome. "You almost make it sound like we're talking about a power outage or poor air conditioning at a local school." Those would be more serious concerns, sure.
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  8873.  @tolowokere  1) again, I asked you to explain what "healthcare decision" you thought that school might be having with a student that is not already covered under existing laws. Can you not provide any? If not, then we can agree that the new law was not necessary here, and is only likely to be abused to call topics parents don't like "a healthcare decision." Vagueness. 2) You say it would be bad to treat the child as a football, and then propose they put the child in the middle of a field and start kicking. If the teacher believes that a direct discussion with the parent would be productive, nothing is stopping them from having one. If the child wants to bring it to the parent's attention, nothing is stopping them. But if neither believe that the parents would be willing or able to have a productive discussion on the topic, then they should not be required to involve the parent. Again, the child's best interests take precedence. I'll put to you, how do you feel it should best be determined that a parent's knowledge of a certain situation would be more harmful to a child than helpful? By just telling them and rolling the dice? 3) Again, the system has NEVER been as efficient as you pretend it to be. It is not a perfect system in which the only two options are to "remove the child from the parent" or "allow the parent to just do whatever, I guess." As YOU argued in previous posts, there can be harm to removing a child from a parent, and it is an extremely difficult process to execute, so even if the teacher did believe that is the correct course of action, it would be extremely messy and likely to end in failure. It is NOT always the best solution. 4) You were the one that implied that referencing schools in living memory was somehow odd, and that we should be referencing pre-industrial education or something. You were bringing up private tutors! 5) why should the teacher's actions not be to their own discretion? Most things in people's lives are left to their own discretion. Anything that a teacher could do that should not be left to their discretion, such as harming a student, was already covered by existing law. As to your second point here, yes, schools are sometimes bad, nothing about the new law would fix any of that, and if the school is unwilling or unable to help, then the children attending it would find no support there. This is sad, but outside the scope of what we're talking about. What we're talking about is the cases where the school WANTS to help, and you advocate for preventing them doing so, while I believe they should be allowed the chance. Basically, we should be providing the most options for success here, if the parents are on board, great_. If they aren't, but the teachers can help,. _great_, let them do that!Give the kid the most options to achieve a positive outcome. If _all those options fail, then that's unfortunate, but at least we can say they had their best shot. Right?
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  8874.  @sonofizzy  The actions she promotes for school systems imply that LGBT relationships like hers are less valid than straight ones.
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  8875.  @tolowokere  1) that doesn't answer my question. I think we can agree that a law should not exist without some justification for it, some actual problem that has not already been solved by existing methods. So provide an example of a specific situation that exists, in which the previous laws would not resolve the situation effectively, but this new law would. What do you believe is a "health care situation" that a school might find itself in, not covered by preexisting law, but covered by this new one? 2) I disagree. Plenty of LGBT people went through their young adult life without their parents being aware of it. Parents often know very little about their teens' lives. If a teen WANTS to come out to their parents, nothing is stopping them. If they DON'T want to come out to their parents, then they have two options, to either hide everything about themselves and just live a hollow existence until they move out, OR live their full lives outside of the home but not bring it up while at home. Is there risk to that? Sure, but there are risks to basically anything worth doing. I really hope we can come to agree that teachers should never be put in a position in which they are required to INCREASE the risks to that child by telling the parents. 3) As I said several times, public schools sometimes fail their students, and in such cases, nothing about the new law would help with that. All the new law does is take the cases where the public school ISN'T failing its students and requires them to fail those students. There is no perfect outcome, you cannot let the perfect be the enemy of the good. All you can do is NOT reduce the potential positive outcomes. 5c) Again, sometimes schools fail students, the new law does absolutely nothing to solve ANY of those problems. If we were discussing ways to improve schools, to make them less likely to fail, then this would be an entirely different conversation. But since we are not, all of that is completely irrelevant to the conversation we are having. In the cases where the school system is already failing the child, then unfortunately, that child is on their own, and nothing about the new law fixes that, so for the purposes of this discussion, we have to set all those cases aside, and focus ONLY on the cases in which the school system is not currently failing that student, in which they are providing some measure of support that they are not receiving at home. This new law does nothing that would improve the outcomes for any students, so it has a gross positive value of "zero." But then we have these other cases in which the student would receive help from their school environment, and this new law would prevent that help from occurring, so that is taking a gross positive result and turning it into a gross zero result, resulting in net negative results overall. To put it more simply, it ONLY makes things WORSE than they otherwise would be. Can you present ANY scenario in which it would actually cause a practical improvement?
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  8876.  @tolowokere  1) Ok, I've asked several times, and you've still yet to provide a single example of a "medical discussion" that a teacher could have with a child that they should be required to disclose to parents, and which was not already sufficiently covered under existing laws, so I can only take that to mean that there is not one, which was my point. Do we also agree that it is bad policy to add a new law that serves no additional valid function, particularly when the vagueness of the wording could allow it to be applied in bad faith to completely unrelated situations? 3) Again, we are only talking about a case in which the child does not feel comfortable coming out to their parents. One in which the teacher also believes that this would not end well. In such a situation, why do you give neither of them the benefit of the doubt? That is two checks at play, why do you believe they would be more likely wrong than right? We know that there are plenty of cases in which this HAS gone poorly, and in almost all of them, those involved could have predicted that based on their own experiences with those parents. I think it's disingenuous to pretend that this is a situation where one should assume a positive outcome in cases where everyone who actually knows the parents believes otherwise. It seems to be a case of insistent blindness to reality. And again, teachers are not perfect, but neither are parents. MOST abuse of children comes at the hands of their own parents. So your stance seems to be "assume that the parents will always work out, and teachers fill in the gaps," my position is, "let parents parent at home, let teachers parent while at school, if they WANT to cooperate, nothing is stopping them." I feel this has the best chances of a positive outcome, even though nothing is guaranteed. I suppose we might be talking past each other on this, so I'm going to lay out a number of potential outcomes to a parent finding out that their child is LGBT, and I would like you to weigh in on whether you view that as a "successful" outcome that should be sought out, or a "bad" outcome that should be avoided. A. The Parents love and support their child, however they may be, and will help them however they can. B. Previously warm and loving parents are willing to tolerate their child, but are far less loving and supportive than they were before finding out. The following few years will be less happy for all than if they had not known. C. The parents are furious and verbally abuse their child, attempting to bully them into being different in some way. D. The parents attempt to push their child into harmful treatments to "correct" their behavior. E. The parents physically assault their child, even though they had never done so before. F. The parents kill the child. Which of those would you consider an acceptable outcome, and do you not agree that the child can reasonably predict which outcomes are more likely? That a teacher might from previous interactions with the parents? Assume that prior to this, the parents were apparently warm and loving parents, with absolutely nothing that could merit the attention of protective services. 4) I say "sometimes" because tens of millions of students attend school every year, and the overwhelming majority of them have at worst a "neutral" experience there, many of them having very positive experiences. I'm by no means excusing the negative outcomes, work to solve those where we can, but the law we're currently discussing has absolutely nothing to do with that, so it's a moot point for this topic of discussion.
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  8877.  @tolowokere  1) I asked you to provide SOME justification for this new law's existence, since you seemed to believe that it was a positive step. To do that, you would need to be able to provide at least one situation in which the existing options would be insufficient, but the new bill would resolve it. You gave a lot of vague talk about how a law might function, but none that was relevant to this specific law. I asked for one example. You could provide none, so I take that as agreement that the new law added nothing of actual value. Or do you want to disagree just for the sake of disagreement? 3) So to point B, yes, it is a false form of happiness, but the choice for that should still be with the child, not the law. Would the child prefer the false happiness, or the more genuine coldness? That should be up to them. There should be no legal requirement that a teacher force either outcome upon them. Again to points C and F, if you believe that a teacher's vague concern that these things might happen is grounds for the state to remove the child from that home, then you have NO idea how the protective services system works. It NEVER works like that. You see it as a very binary thing, that if the teacher has concerns about the parent, then they can just snap their fingers and the child is removed from that home and placed into a perfectly loving foster household and everyone lives happily ever after. The real world is NOTHING like that, so it's foolish to plan based around your fictional worldview. In the real world, you would need significant evidence of current abuse to remove a child, and even then, they are not likely to end up in a significant better situation. IF it's possible to maintain a more neutral status quo, then there is ZERO question that this would be in the best interests of that child. If teachers report "potential future abuse," then that would, at best, accomplish nothing, and at worst, trigger the parents into doing actual, present day abuse before any state authorities could successfully act on the tip. In the real world, if a teacher has a reasonable suspicion of potential further abuse, "reporting the parents" is unlikely to have any positive outcomes, so why do you keep going back to that one? 4) I already negated this argument, try to keep that in mind for next time. Also, I have absolutely no idea how your Great Britain information would relate to any of this. Teachers cannot control what family situation a student might have, ALL they can control is how they interact with the students they have, and with their parents. All I'm saying is, their responsibility should NOT be to "report to parents, no matter what," it should be "report to parents, IF they believe that would be in the best interests of the child."
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  8878.  @tolowokere  1) I agree that parents should be informed of health care issues that current laws already would have them informed of. I am suspicious of the wording and functions of the new law because I believe it would be used frivolously to address situations that are not valid "health care concerns." I do not believe that the new law adds anything of value, and creates potentially negative outcomes. The existing laws do not require any "reinforcements." 2) I believe teachers should do what they can to help the child, using their best judgement. I believe that my point was that the existing mechanisms around child protection would not allow a teacher to remove a child from their parent under the medium-bad circumstances we were discussing, nor would that severe an outcome necessarily be ideal in the first place, but I DO believe that teachers should be able to help children without such extreme measures. You are the one advocating that their hands should be tied, "work with the parents openly, or remove them entirely, nowhere in between." Again, the priority is the best outcome for the child. If the child wants to involve the parents, NOBODY is recommending a situation in which they are unable to do so. If the teacher wants to involve the parents, NOBODY is recommending a situation in which they are unable to do so. But if neither the child nor the teacher feels that involving the parents would produce a positive outcome, then there should be nothing that forces their hand on the issue.
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  8879.  @tolowokere  1. Ok, so then we're in agreement that this was bad legislation. If the only positive role it has is to "reaffird" laws that were already sufficient to the tasks, and the tangible harm it causes it to LGBT students and their teachers, the downsides are clearly all that there is to it. Why did that take so long? 2. Your first paragraph could be turned around the other way, what if the parent gets things wrong and it goes poorly? You say "someone else's child," which again implies that the child is baggage, something that is up to the parent's unquestionable whims, and how dare anyone else have a different opinion? "Sorry. I messed up. But I really thought I was helping?" Or, "I'll do a better job next time?" Keep in mind that the parent is MUCH more likely to screw this up than the teacher. The ideal situation is for BOTH to pursue their best ideas, which gives the highest chance of at least one of them getting things right. "WE DON'T NEED TO IMAGINE HOW BADLY THIS CAN TURN OUT --WE ALREADY HAVE EXAMPLES NOW. " and all those existing cases are already handled by existing laws, no new laws, or "reinforcement of existing law" is needed for those. There are no NEW examples that require NEW laws to address. And ok, a teacher is, at best, a stopgap. Good. That's plenty. That's all the child needs at that moment, a stopgap. Something to make their life bearable until they become an adult and can make their own life choices outside the home. It's certainly better than requiring that they make things worse. Also, who's suggesting that the teacher get involved in their private family life? It's not the teacher's job to sort out estranged parents. All the teacher would be doing is helping the STUDENT while that student is IN SCHOOL.
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  8880.  @tolowokere  1) Again though, the new law CAUSES new harms, in that its language opens teachers up to attacks that would not have existed under the previous laws, while you agree that it ADDS nothing of value, nothing that did not apply under previous law, so we are in agreement that it is a net negative, whether you choose to complain about that fact or not. 2a) Yes, you did indeed say those things. And then in later arguments you took stances that were in complete conflict with that, so at some point in there, you were being disingenuous. 2b) Nobody is arguing that the family is not the safest place for a child to live. The alternative systems tend to be particularly poor. My point was that families are more likely to cause harm and abuse to a child than teachers are. So again, if we're talking about giving one or the other the benefit of the doubt, teachers would win. And of course the better that family life is, the better for the child, but that is a variable completely outside of the scope of this conversation, since we are only discussing the cases in which that relationship has failed the child. Cases in which the parents have not failed the child would not be a factor here. 2c) Not really. Home schooling can have extremely mixed results, and tends to end up with very odd adults. 4) Again, if "it would collapse" then that collapse is inevitable anyway. There is no outcome to the situation in which it would not collapse. So the only question on the table is, "should teachers be legally obligated to cause the collapse as soon as possible, OR should they have the choice to delay that collapse, potentially up through the child leaving home and being capable of making their own choices?" Those are the only two options within this scenario, any other options would not be relevant to the topic at hand.
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  8881.  @tolowokere 1) The "part of the bill" is in how it is executed. It allows lawsuits against the school by parents, ones who may not fully understand the laws or be acting in good faith when they make a claim. This is too dangerous a tool. You say that you do not approve of people suing over "billy has two daddies," but NOTHING in the law itself fails to allow for that. If you happen to be on that jury, then great, maybe they'll get off, but it will still represent an undue burden on the teacher and school to even have to humor such a case. As for other problems, it prohibits using pronouns that do not align with a person's sex, which can be harmful to both teachers and students. 1b) you keep raising this point, and I have never once disputed. I have only repeatedly pointed out that this is no defense of its existence. My point is that it adds nothing of value we agree on that as you cannot provide a single example of a beneficial change, and that it causes new harms, I hope we can agree on that, and therefore, it is a net negative overall. 2b) Then I think you misunderstand what "the family is the safest place for the child" means. It would baffle me if this were the case, since it is not THAT hard to understand, and you otherwise use such big words. It means ON AVERAGE the family is the safest HOME environment for a child. It is not meant to say that every home is the safest place for that child, or that other temporary locations, such as a school, could not be a more safe place for the child, only that of the housing situations available to a child, the family home is likely to be the safest available. We are not discussing such safe homes here, they are irrelevant to the conversation we are having. We both agree that safe homes are good for the kid, and in such cases, they would never come into conflict with teachers, so the new law is not at all applicable. It ONLY applies to cases in which the home is unsafe, and in which the teacher has a valid reason to avoid involving the parents. We are discussing the homes in which there is some potential for harm, in which they may be safe under the current circumstances, but could become unsafe if the child's LGBT nature was revealed to the parents. This is a situation in which is it impossible to bring protective services into play until the bad outcomes have already started, but in which it is possible to "run out the clock" by not causing this conflict until after the child has graduated and left this home. Do you understand the words that are coming out of my keyboard? 4) I'm not sure what you mean here about "new parents arrive." Like a different kid also has problems with their parents? This is not hard. All a teacher has to do here is NOT tell things to these parents. This easy, not even an inconvenience. This is not some elaborate cloak and dagger that takes a great deal of effort to maintain, ALL we are discussing here is that the teacher knows a student is LGBT, perhaps helps to counsel them and connect them with other support mechanisms, and does not inform the parents of this. That's it, job done, moving on. A teacher could presumably do this for every student they ever teacher, if it were somehow necessary. Informing the parents would be considerably more work. Will "discretion of the teacher" eventually lead to controversy? Sure. I don't view that as the worst outcomes here. The worst outcomes is students dying. Leaving it to the discretion of the teachers is less likely to lead to that outcome. Of all the outcomes out there, "leaving it to the teacher" offers the best chance of success for those kids. The parents can do whatever they want at home, using whatever information they can glean while at home. The teacher can act as they see fit (within existing guidelines of responsible conduct), within the bounds of the classroom, and not be required to share any information with parents that they do not choose to share. In cases where the child wants the parents involved, they will be. In cases where the child does not want the parent involved, but the teacher believes the parents will be fine, they can choose to involve them, but if both the child and teacher are concerned about the parents reaction, then the choice most likely to lead to successful outcomes would be to not involve the parents. They are more likely to be right about that than they are to be wrong, IF that is what they both believe. Why would they believe that if they were completely wrong?
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  8882. So you mean they should stop being Jewish? The Germans tried that, a lot of people decided that was a bad idea.
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  8883. @ What about it?
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  8884. EVs are the future, but hybrids are the present, at least for a lot of American drivers. The changes that need to happen, will happen, but haven't happened yet.
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  8885.  @debbievinsant4610  Trans adults DO protect kids, that's their entire message, that trans kids should be protected from people trying to cause them harm. And it has nothing to do with "sexual preference."
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  8886.  @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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  8887.  @EyesWide-Open  Ok, read the bill. It does not do those things. Proved.
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  8888.  @robertmclean9737  Biden doesn't need any defense, since he did nothing wrong.
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  8889.  @donsims1941  You got that story a bit wrong, Joe Biden did not do that, President Obama did that, because the prosecutor in question was a corrupt Russian asset and was working against US interests in the region. Biden was just acting as his messenger in that. Hunter wasn't relevant to any of it.
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  8890.  @donsims1941  Obama had the prosecutor removed. His VP was just the messenger. Hunter was not relevant to it.
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  8891.  @donsims1941  Joe did not make the call on that one, the President he was working for did. Joe was just the administration's messenger. It had nothing to do with Hunter.
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  8892.  @mark15vintage9  You easily believe what you're told, don't you?
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  8893.  @mark15vintage9  I didn't watch Faux News after the election, I understand that they were saying a lot of things that they later lost lawsuits for libel over. What I do know is that none of those allegations ended up being accurate. And the state you were talking about did nothing wrong, it was within the scope of their authorization. It did nothing to change the outcome.
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  8894.  @mark15vintage9  I didn't watch Faux News after the election, I understand that they were saying a lot of things that they later lost lawsuits for libel over. What I do know is that none of those allegations ended up being accurate.
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  8895.  @chrismaddox9884  Which federal law? There is no such federal law. Who told you any such law existed? And why?
    1
  8896.  @nerthus4685  It is only Republicans that prosecute people who do not commit crimes. Then they project their feelings of guilt onto others.
    1
  8897.  @nerthus4685  The other way around, I'm afraid.
    1
  8898.  nickevans2724  Well, it's a mix of both things. Biden obviously crushed him in the popular vote, but he won in the electoral college too, and even if EVERY nutso theory the Trump campaign made had been true, he still would have lost both votes, so there would be no rational path to victory for him.
    1
  8899. More kicking the dead horse, but what about that method they're trying that is based on meta-material filters that supposedly just "pull" water out of the air physically rather than phase-shifting it?
    1
  8900. In a case like this, it sounds like rather than use something like batteries, they should use something like large scale water storage. Build high altitude water reservoirs, fill them using pumped water during periods of peak sunshine, and then drain them through generators during periods of weak sunshine.
    1
  8901. It was no more secure then than it is today. The worst time at the border was in 2019.
    1
  8902.  @mitchwilley5011  But you are the one who currently believes inaccurate information. Have you considered that perhaps you owe it to yourself to seek out better sources?
    1
  8903.  @mitchwilley5011  I pay my taxes, you can have whatever you're owed of them.
    1
  8904.  @mitchwilley5011  Oh, you can go with just about anyone that it's in hard storyteller mode. AP, Reuters, PBS, BBC, DW, just make sure to double check it against multiple sources at once, see what sources they cite and check their reliability, etc. It really isn't as hard as those on the right make it seem.
    1
  8905. The many more residents agreeing with the mayor.
    1
  8906.  @Man-t6w7o  They interview all sorts of people. There is nobody willing to go on record that this is actually happening, it's all pranks and people reporting things they heard from a neighbor's cousin's dentist.
    1
  8907. It is good enough for me as a voter, given the topic of the question. I would expect nothing more than that.
    1
  8908.  @megadog5743  ⛑🤡
    1
  8909.  @vincentmeadows1  👲🤡
    1
  8910.  @marccampbellsr1085  Who's Kareem?
    1
  8911. $0. And no.
    1
  8912.  @sm1tty031  No, my name is Tim. It's right there. But you're welcome.
    1
  8913. What are you talking about? Biden's given tons of speeches. Are they just not been covered on what passed for "news" in your household?
    1
  8914. That's what you'd believe if you were indoctrinated on Faux News, hence the defamation lawsuit.
    1
  8915. It looks very neat, and I'd want a device that works like this, but not as an iOS product. I would need an Android version, or some other more open operating system.
    1
  8916.  @marcot4863  Not two valid sides. Facts don't have multiple "sides," they just have the fact, and "people who are wrong." This is such an issue, there are not valid "sides" on the issue, there is the data, and there are people who refuse to accept that data.
    1
  8917.  @ThuhOthers  Any "audience" who is still "undecided" on this topic is too dumb to care about. They will be more easily convinced by Rogan and RFK's confident BS than they would be by Hotez's "scientific mumbo jumbo." If you want to know hotez's position, then it's all available, all the studies into the matter are public record and you can look them up yourself. If what you actually want is an hour or so of Rogan and RFK shouting him down and telling you lies that sound cool, well, too bad.
    1
  8918.  @marcot4863  Democrats and Trump, you mean. Nobody ever once accused Trump of saying something that happened to be true. At least, not in good faith.
    1
  8919.  @merriemerrie7378  I still make a better medical professional than any of "America's Frontline Doctors."
    1
  8920. Putin's election already took place. He got 150% of the vote.
    1
  8921.  @ryans1623  What does that have to do with anything?
    1
  8922.  @ryans1623  Oh, everyone would. Same as during any other war. People voted during a pandemic. What bunker did you crawl out of?
    1
  8923. @DiasDimona So Harris then. Yeah.
    1
  8924. @DiasDimona Disaster relief money has nothing to do with foreign aid money. Both will get however much we choose to give them. It's not a competition.
    1
  8925. ​@DiasDimona Again, ALL the money that Americans would be getting, they are getting. They are not getting one penny less than they would be without the foreign aid money. The administration is requesting MORE money from congress, but they are the ones holding things up. Also, the previous administration was the one that moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and arranged for them closer ties to the Saudis, which was part of what led to the recent conflicts in the region.
    1
  8926. Assad is still there. They would be returning to death.
    1
  8927. No.
    1
  8928.  @Itzonleme  He died decades ago.
    1
  8929. Yeah, Capitalism is good, but ONLY in moderation. Only EVER in moderation. Unregulated capitalism is just serfdom with more steps. Capitalism is the most efficient way to create the best products and services, but only IF everyone has to play by the same rules of fairness. When people are allowed to lie, cheat, and steal along the way, then those become the most efficient options and wipe out all the rest. So you need to have a strong government that provides regulations that the markets must follow, and failing to follow those regulations need to involve penalties harsh enough to prevent people breaking those rules. Secondly, Capitalism is great at making money for those at the top, but horrible at taking care of anyone not at the top. Government is necessary to ensure that capitalism provides any outcome other than "making more money." But so long as capitalism is well regulated, it is a highly important way of driving innovation and improvement.
    1
  8930. The writers of the show are on record that they have no idea how "lawyering" works, and could not be bothered to hire anyone who did. Instead of hiring a lawyer or paralegal to advise them, they just chose to wrote relatively few actual legal cases in their lawyer show.
    1
  8931. Joe doesn't have a business.
    1
  8932.  @charleserb8514  He doesn't live like a billionaire, he lives like a millionaire, which he is. His "government salary" is pretty substantial, typically $100K-$400K for the past 40+ years, it adds up. After he was a VP, he sold some books and gave some speeches and made a few more million,, but he's never been "Mitch McConnell rich" or anything. If he were doing crimes, he probably could have gotten two billion from the Saudi's like Jarred did and start living it up.
    1
  8933.  @gyn6131  It would not incentivize them enough though, so they would still import them, they would just charge consumers more for them. In practice it would add up to around 40-50% additional inflation.
    1
  8934.  @Spoon101  Yes, but it's companies paying low wages that puts the pinch on the workers, not the tax rates.
    1
  8935.  ralphferley2602  But prices would rise more than that. They need to for the tariffs to function. It would just lead to people buying less stuff, so US companies would be selling less stuff, and hiring less workers, so more workers would go on unemployment, which would cause them to need to raise the tariffs more to cover them. Why is income somehow magically immune to taxation?
    1
  8936.  @jjkhawaiian  The people who have read those books are all laughing at you.
    1
  8937. It's not the result of authoritative sources, it's the result of people not LIKING what those sources are telling them, so they reject it out of hand and substitute their preferences. There really is no way to prevent this, such people will always cling to any alternative to what they don't want to accept. It's called "denial."
    1
  8938.  @absalomdraconis  No, that's not how authoritative sources are defined. I hate to tell you, but you've been misled to believe this by "alternate sources" that seek to control you mind by gaslighting you into an alternate reality in which you can only trust them. You're also misusing the term "appeal to authority." That argument would only apply if you were trusting a source entirely on their title, not if you were trusting them on the basis that they had valid expert knowledge. Trusting a doctor because they have a medical degree and are basing their decisions on established medical practices is not "appeal to authority," it is just "expertise."
    1
  8939.  @sampeacey4854  Yes, or to put it more simply, "stupids gonna stupid."
    1
  8940.  @ToyaXoXo Very few children are immaculately conceived. There have only been a few dozen examples, most of them predating medical science. Most children born are the result of deliberate attempts at procreation by one or more of their human parents.
    1
  8941.  @evalenasbabys  That's a very fair point, Gaza was massively overcrowded, and there was really no good reason for them to continue having babies. There was already no place to put them.
    1
  8942. He got what she paid for.
    1
  8943.  @pacifickaihomesllc3605  MOST celebrities used in beer commercials have teen followers, that can't be a reasonable bar for it.
    1
  8944. @Carterb92 That isn't accurate, she does identify as a woman.
    1
  8945.  @trapiconti4001  What mental problems do you believe Mulvaney has? I can't find any evidence of her having any established mental conditions, at least, no more than most people who appear in beer advertisements.
    1
  8946.  @jerrymillerstein  It was the balance the budget. And they only reduced the LAFD budget by like 3%, that's not "defunding" it.
    1
  8947.  @jerrymillerstein  Not in the real world though. In the real world they hired based on merit, and funded the department adequately. These fires were not prevented by previous leadership, they just never occurred under their watch. If they had occurred, they would have turned out the same. This was not a matter of leadership or budget, it was a matter of climate change and bad luck.
    1
  8948.  @jerrymillerstein  I get it, you want to believe that, but the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  8949.  @jerrymillerstein  Yeah, I wish you luck in managing it.
    1
  8950. Why should anyone care what Russia wants?
    1
  8951. They are following the Hamas terrorists where they go.
    1
  8952. This court does nothing but reduce the ability of The People to stand up to Corporations. They serve their masters well.
    1
  8953. However funny this may be, it is still wrong.
    1
  8954. His personal philosophy is hypocrisy.
    1
  8955.  @Gty576  Disney was already paying higher taxes than other equivalent companies. They had the RCID RAISE their taxes in the district to fund improvements in the district. DeSantis fooled his flock into believing that Disney was paying less taxes than they owed, because he knew that they were stupid sheep who would not actually look into it themselves and would just eat their gruel like they were told.
    1
  8956.  @ammo381  They don't need homes. They need a leader of Syria who will not murder them all at the earliest opportunity. Building homes across the border is irrelevant to that.
    1
  8957. And that remains true, Joe Biden had nothing to do with Hunter's business dealings. His son might call him up while he was having a business meeting, but they did not discuss business then or after, so what Joe said is true.
    1
  8958. Yeah, but unfortunately, there are a lot of stupid people out there who vote Republican.
    1
  8959. They get paid medical leave.
    1
  8960.  @johninflorida8634  Waiting period for what?
    1
  8961.  @johninflorida8634  He's not "scamming," he's taking care of his medical condition, which is what all people should do.
    1
  8962.  @residentgrey  Nope, that's not how "crime" works. "I don't like what they are doing" is not a crime. They have broken no laws, and under US law, that is what would constitute a crime. This is not Putin's Russia where you just arrest political opponents for no reason. They have to do crimes first, like Trump and his co-conspirators did.
    1
  8963.  @pleidieswilson6627  Ok, what crime? Which law did they break? Surely you can name one.
    1
  8964.  @residentgrey  I take offense at that, I would NEVER defend MAGA Republicans.
    1
  8965.  @residentgrey  I asked for one crime that they committed, you cannot list one crime?
    1
  8966.  @HairyBottom  Who told you he was a Democrat? Why would a Democrat be posting right wing nationalist views? You aren't making sense.
    1
  8967. Traced back to Twitter, apparently.
    1
  8968.  @DM_Curtis  It's simple math. If one side is right, and the other side is wrong, as is usually the case on most topics, then if the incorrect side is silenced, there is no harm, and if the correct side is ignored, that would cause harm, so at the end of the day, all that really matters is that the correct side is listened to and the incorrect side is not, true?
    1
  8969.  @carrierichardson6619  The thing is, one person doing what they can within the reach of their own arms is all well and good, but these are systemic issues that require systemic changes, and one person who is doing all the wrong things, while promoting public policy that makes all the right changes, is worth thousands of individuals doing the right things on their own.
    1
  8970.  @jeremybasil241  What do you have against Bill Gates? What has he ever done to you?
    1
  8971.  @wadewilson524  How so?
    1
  8972.  @sbearly  The "cultural war" is a tool used by the corporations to distract you from interfering in their profits.
    1
  8973.  @davidpalk5010  How so? What do they omit?
    1
  8974.  @theclearsounds3911  Yeah, that happens.
    1
  8975.  @Bladieblah  And that's why it's important to make sure that the side that controls the "truth" is trustworthy themselves. But of course if anyone wants to use such power maliciously, there is nothing more to stop them doing so right now than there would be after having more significant anti-misinformation policies, so my point is that this is no argument against having stronger anti-misinformation policies.
    1
  8976.  @Fistbeardthepirate  No, I'm saying that bad actors could do that no more easily after such a change than they could now. People with ill intent already have tools to change things, if Elon does not like someone on Twitter, he can just shut them down, for example. Removing misinformation from platforms does not provide any extra power to bad actors, they would have no additional options. It all comes down to how it is actually used. IF they choose to use it to suppress valid information, THEN it is time to do something about it.
    1
  8977.  @QuantumMechanicYT  "I never denied that. I denied that I was a member of that subset of people." You do an excellent job of simulating one, then. " Scientific debates, the real ones, happen on technical terms, not for the public, which wouldn't even have the background to understand the first equation." Agreed, but far too many people believe differently, and think that any random yahoo has equal standing to experts in the field, so long as they present an entertaining argument. "Why is it a bad thing? Why should what a flat-earther (or a climate-denier) say actually have a measurable effect on the minds of policy-makers " I agree that it shouldn't, but I;m not blind to the fact that it does. Yahoos vote too, and often elect other yahoos. Some are only cynically pandering to their base or to lobbyists, some are true believers. The more support their yahoo viewpoints gain, the worse the outcomes. Misinformation tends to create rabbitholes, in which people are drawn into more and more fanciful alternate realities. Again, you can meet many of them in this very comment section. You can argue that it "always happened," and to some extent it has, but the Internet makes it much more accelerated for all sorts of reasons than ever before in human history, just like climate change.
    1
  8978.  @TyrianHaze  Man, I would love to live in a world where you could prove a liar a liar just by telling the truth. That would be fantastic. In the real world liars have entire TV networks calling themselves "Fair and balanced" for providing such lies to a hungry audience. In the real world, telling the truth to a liar results in them accusing you of lying, because they would prefer to cling to their biases. In the real world, no amount of "truth" is sufficient to defeat a good story. So the best way to combat lies are to quarantine them from the gullible.
    1
  8979.  @gizmogremlin1872  Nobody should be handed such power on a "because we say so" basis. All such decisions should involve a large body of consensus on hard data. I don't think there is anyone who believes there should be a single person who rubber stamps "fact" across all of media, but each media platform should have people who's job it is to seek out the accurate viewpoints on a given topic and then exclude the inaccurate ones in situations where they can lead to harm. Again, I feel like you are trying to strawman the concept rather than steelman it. And I will also again point out that if anyone currently wants to abuse power to silence opposition on their platform, nothing is really stopping them from doing so, so nothing would change about that if they moved toward using such tools responsibly. If bad people want to do bad, they can do bad, with or without a higher involvement of fact checking and blocking of misinformation. ALL that would change is less misinformation.
    1
  8980.  @kayakMike1000  Not really though, which is my point.
    1
  8981.  @markburton5292  You can show how and why a conclusion is arrived at without promoting the incorrect conclusions as well. Also, if the average person were capable of being able to read and understand then we wouldn't be having any of this discussion. This discussion only exists because the average person has PROVEN themselves incapable of that, and it would be proving my point to claim that we should behave as though they are more capable than they are.
    1
  8982.  @markburton5292  No, that is not how science is done. Incorrect ones are eliminated and ignored, unless there is something of value to learn from them. If a conclusion is completely wrong, there is little value in repeating it.
    1
  8983.  @markburton5292  You described how the scientific process works among scientists, and that Is how it is done, and how it is proposed to continue doing it. At no point in that process was "and people discuss it on Youtube" a constructive element. That can wait until AFTER the scientists have done their work and arrived at an answer. The comment section plays no role in the science.
    1
  8984. How is this news?
    1
  8985.  @tonyd3057  So the same press agencies that could get access to the President before Trump can still get access? They aren't restricting their access?
    1
  8986. @ "Pravda" Media only.
    1
  8987. @ He gave press conferences. They weren't as frequent or as rambling as Trump's, but he gave them about as often as most Presidents.
    1
  8988. It wasn't politics that did that, it was the oil lobby.
    1
  8989.  @BlueAngeluv  Nothing was said about them competing with women, but there are plenty of mixed gender athletics as well. The US got the silver in the mixed relay.
    1
  8990.  @matthewhowe3727  How is anything related to sports more of a threat to women than roe v wade? More women are impacted each year by the Dobbs decision than participate in any form of sports.
    1
  8991.  @foshizzlemanizzle4753  It is, actually. How about you?
    1
  8992.  @foshizzlemanizzle4753  I don't know the gender of the speaker. One shouldn't assume such things. Also, there are no women-only events in which men are participating, so that would be a moot point.
    1
  8993. The Republicans can't find the "whistleblower," presumably because he doesn't want to get charged with lying to the FBI.
    1
  8994. Sometimes it's the Chinese, but yeah, mostly Russia. They have the most interest in getting their man back in the White House.
    1
  8995. I mean, if we did it, cool, but it doesn't seem likely that we did.
    1
  8996.  @LKCLifer  He didn't exactly say that, but I'm sure that's what you've been told to say. In any case, he would be right if he had said that.
    1
  8997. @ You mean when he sends Trump there? With his multiple affairs?
    1
  8998. @ She was right though. I'm sure Jesus approved. He was much the same as her, as a preacher.
    1
  8999.  @ralphowen3367  Except that Trump routinely goes against all the teachings of the Bible, so if we're meant to just assume that, in spite of that, God secretly gives him his seal of approval, why would that same logic not apply to Xi of China? Or to Joseph Stalin? Can't we just listen to what Christ says, and consider a leader worthy based on the examples Jesus set? We can't determine whether or not Trump will be allowed into Heaven, but we can certainly judge whether he should be allowed to rule us.
    1
  9000. @ Yup, although when Jesus did it, he was preaching good, and only caused division among those opposed to good, whereas this is the opposite situation.
    1
  9001. So he's doubly a coward and a traitor then.
    1
  9002. The material for it does not exist.
    1
  9003. Nobody every obtained joy from eating a vegetable.
    1
  9004. That's what the fascists want people to think.
    1
  9005.  @CangKoots  No, these literally WERE the plans of the Trump administration when he left office. All Biden did was negotiate an additional delay so that we could get our troops and equipment out.
    1
  9006.  @DirtyRedMuzik  How so?
    1
  9007.  @UpstateofMind2324  Trump's plan involved leaving much MORE of the equipment. That was one of the changes the Biden team made. The only stuff we left behind was junk.
    1
  9008.  @UpstateofMind2324  All of that was part of the original plan. All that changed was that we got MORE of the equipment out than was originally planned.
    1
  9009. Military aid from the US wasn't used to target Moscow, they used other resources for that. Not that anyone in the Us would particularly mind either way, Moscow should get attacked at least as much as Kyiv is.
    1
  9010. Finally, it was medical malpractice that Hamas and their doctors took this long. Israel told everyone to get out of northern Gaza over a MONTH ago.
    1
  9011. Maybe, but that would require Trump to admit to having done all the crimes he's accused of, at least.
    1
  9012.  @BrandenH-O051  Because it would be unlikely that he could continue the case when the defendant decides whether he has a job or not. If this situation were reversed, if a democrat were taking office and the previous administration had been investigating him, then it would be no problem, the case would continue to a verdict, but Trump has no interest in justice, only in "just us."
    1
  9013.  @Phantomplasma430  If he pardoned her, then she admitted her guilt. You can't pardon innocent people, only guilty ones.
    1
  9014.  @Phantomplasma430  There is no chance of him getting disbarred, that is not something the Trump administration could do.
    1
  9015.  @BrandenH-O051  It's really not up to him whether he's allowed to continue or not. He is a public servant, and the incoming administration has the legal right to remove him from duty, whether he's right or not.
    1
  9016.  @Really........  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  9017. Well, it is a shame that Fox is allowed toexist, sure, but so far they haven't broken enough laws to get shut down.
    1
  9018. "Except for all the other ones. . . ok, Trump is arguable."
    1
  9019.  @loudharley6926  Mostly they just go to MAGA rallies together.
    1
  9020.  @billbillson5082  We can't let Putin threaten nuclear war as a reason to get his way in a temper tantrum. If that worked, then he could just absorb all of Europe on the grounds of "well if we tried to stop him, he'd nuke everything." We need to behave as though he will only use nukes when nukes are used against him, and if he's dumb and amoral enough to think otherwise, then he won't last long afterward.
    1
  9021.  Milk Thistle  Why would that be hilarious? That sounds tragic. Also, Russia are the Nazis in this scenario, but I agree there, zero support for Putin and his Nazi allies.
    1
  9022.  @pocolol8424  Nothing the US has done is in any way a justification for Russia invading Ukraine. You can have those arguments elsewhere, but they are not relevant here. Russia owns its own mistakes.
    1
  9023.  @fakewarfakewar  Name checks out.
    1
  9024.  @leafdesi5967  You have apparently been very misinformed. None of what you said it accurate. Look into it further.
    1
  9025. @Von Gröger Actually, it might make sense for Russian reparations to include handing Ukraine the territory east of Ukraine to the border with Kazakhstan, north of Volgograd. That way, instead of having that little spike coming off the bottom, Russia would have a smoother southern border. It would really help stabilize the region, since Russia would no longer have a reason to get involved in the local politics of the Black Sea and Caspian Sea states.
    1
  9026.  @zappa1723  Anyone who says that are a "former Democrat" in 2023 means that they were pissed off that Democrats put the Civil Rights Act into law and joined the other dixiecrats in flipping to the Republicans. If you aren't a Democrat today, then you were just never a very good person to begin with.
    1
  9027. Doesn't work. /shrug
    1
  9028.  @pappy451  Yeah, and? That doesn't mean that putting more effort into a bad idea will work better. You can't push a rope up hill.
    1
  9029.  @THEBUTCHER1911  And also they aren't eating the ducks or geese either, so there's that to consider.
    1
  9030.  @stickman787  Yes, totally with you, Trump should not be lying about his campaigns involvement in Project 2025. It's all very clearly documented. It's also an objective reality that crime is down in the US. I'm sorry if the facts don't respect your feeling sand continue to exist in spite of them. That must be so hard on you. I guess, you'll just have to learn to accept a reality that is not what you want it to be?
    1
  9031.  @stickman787  Yes, totally with you, Don should not be lying about his campaigns involvement in Project 2025. It's all very clearly documented. It's also an objective reality that crime is down in the US. That must be so hard on you. I guess, you'll just have to learn to accept a reality that is not what you want it to be?
    1
  9032.  @stickman787  The people who worked on it at the Heritage Foundation were former Trump staffers, and many involved in the project are still involved in his campaign and his current transition team. None of the policies that are called for in it are in conflict with the policies of his previous administration or the things he'd claimed he'll do in the next one. Him claiming that he does not support it does not mean he won't do everything in it once elected.He claims a lot of things that turn out to be false. Where do you live that you think crime is way up? Because it remains a fact that it's down overall.
    1
  9033.  @Chris-c1b8d  The last government shutdown was in 2018.
    1
  9034. No, it just wasn't a crime, so there was nothing for the FBI to do with it. Their job is to prevent and prosecute crimes.
    1
  9035.  @gund89123  Hunter broke the only law that matters to MAGA people, "we don't like him." That is how fascism works.
    1
  9036. It's an impeachment in search of a crime, which does not exist. It's hilarious that people who eat only Faux News compare this to Trump's two impeachments, where even the Republicans admitted he did crimes worthy of impeachment, but just refused to indict anyway over political grounds.
    1
  9037. Russia is a pretty great place for Russian agents to retire.
    1
  9038.  @saikyomogresurrect  That's not true, actually, Russia's murder rate is higher even than America's (and America's is pretty awful when compared to most of Europe, so you know Russia's is bad).
    1
  9039. I will never understand why baked goods were used as a unit of force. It's like measuring air travel speeds in units of "Unladen Swallows."
    1
  9040.  @thomaslanham3863  That's cult talk. "He must be right, because he said it."
    1
  9041.  @nonyabusiness557  Why was he asking the question?
    1
  9042.  @thomaslanham3863  He lacks integrity. If he had integrity, he would be a completely different person.
    1
  9043.  @nonyabusiness557  Sorry, I'll try slow this down a bit. Why was the answer to that question of any value?
    1
  9044.  @nonyabusiness557  Nony, do you know what an "ad hominem" question is?
    1
  9045.  @nonyabusiness557  I think that you, like Kennedy, are misunderstanding what she was saying. I think that it would be generous to say that this was due to a lack of intellect, rather than to a lack of morals.
    1
  9046.  @nonyabusiness557  She supports freedom for the Palestinian people, but not the violence used by groups like Hamas. Do you believe that all maga supporters should be held accountable for the violent actions of the Proud Boys?
    1
  9047.  @nonyabusiness557  Has Trump condemned the hate speech of his supporters? Or did he say "there were fine people on both sides" (one of those sides being hate speech)?
    1
  9048.  @nonyabusiness557  Has Trump condemned the hate speed that he uses?
    1
  9049.  @nonyabusiness557  Did Trump denounce his own comments about Hatians during the debate?
    1
  9050.  @nonyabusiness557  Criticizing an individual for his own actions is not what "hate speech" means. And I take that as a "no," Trump has not denounced his own hate speech from the debate. That's what I thought.
    1
  9051.  @nonyabusiness557  So that is a "no, Trump did not denounce his hate speech during the debate." What about Vance? Did he denounce his own hate speech?
    1
  9052. @ Well, for one thing, cutting the budget is not necessary to prevent the government going under. We could continue to take on debt for decades to come without any serious concern. For another, this administration is raising the deficit by giving $60K to every billionaire, they are not lowering the deficit. The government might go under over the next four years, but it would have nothing to do with the debt or deficit going into this term.
    1
  9053. @ That's not how anything works.
    1
  9054. @ I think you misunderstand, I'm not maga.
    1
  9055. @ I'll point out that government workers likely have a better grasp of the federal budget than you do. They just understand that it accomplishes important things for the country. It doesn't matter that the country has a massive debt, because it doesn't hurt anything to carry that much debt. All that matters is that what money we do spend is spent wisely, and that we tax the wealthy at an appropriate level.
    1
  9056.  @richardfarris2227  What are you even talking about? We just lost the latest one. It happens. His approval rating since is tanking though, so a lot of regrets going around.
    1
  9057.  @magesalmanac6424  Nope, the problem has nothing to do with people using plastic, I mean,m no American's plastic is involved in the process. It's just a matter of properly disposing of the plastic waste we do generate.
    1
  9058.  @EbonySaints  Nope, there's no reason to cut back on plastic use in the states, because here it can be either recycled or landfilled, either of which is fine. It's just a matter of not dumping it into rivers. Tryning to "reduce plastic use" in developed countries is just greenwashing.
    1
  9059. That's why they need to start building them now, so that ten years from now, when this change is about to come into effect, all those resources WILL be ready for it.
    1
  9060. What is this obsession with "visiting the border?" Does anyone think that accomplishes anything? We spend hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to fly staff over there, they wander around, say "yep, that's a border alright," and then fly home? So what? All the important work on the border can be done just fine from Washington, or at most by sending a trusted aide to check into things, much more affordable than sending a VIP. I think that if she does go, they should call up the President of Mexico, and have him head to some nice place on the other side of the border. Then bring a few official border checkpoint guards, whatever they need to make this officially within the rules, and go to just on the other wide of one of Trump's impenetrable border walls. Then Harris should climb over the wall (again, with an official border check involved), and have a state meeting with the Mexican President over various border issues, then when they finish, she climbs back over and flies home. I bet their President would love the idea.
    1
  9061.  @Thebabeinthewood  No, she's been campaigning. Biden has still been the President. He spends less time at the beach than Trump spent golfing.
    1
  9062.  @dreichert1438  I don't think many of her supporters are Republicans, but I definitely agree, don't support the M-A-G-A.
    1
  9063.  @dreichert1438  You are talking about the MAGA, for all her faults, I don't think she's one of those.
    1
  9064.  @dreichert1438  You really think that things were better in 2020 than they are in 2024? Sad.
    1
  9065.  @0786AHA  Common sense, not. . . water?
    1
  9066.  @0786AHA  Now you have a problem with Hydroxide?What's this war on chemistry?
    1
  9067. @DrWho2025 None of that is accurate though, which was my point. The border was no more closed, there were more wars than there are today, and he didn't keep inflation down as well relative to the global rates. Biden did all of these things better than he did, even though he was facing much more serious challenges. Don just coasted on Obama's coattails.
    1
  9068. @DrWho2025 I think you missed my point. The border was no more closed during the previous administration, there were more wars than there are today, and he didn't keep inflation down as well relative to the global rates. Biden did all of these things better than he did, even though he was facing much more serious challenges. Don just coasted on Obama's coattails.
    1
  9069. ​@DrWho2025 The border was no more closed, there were more wars than there are today, and he didn't keep inflation down as well relative to the global rates. The current president did all of these things better than the previous one, even though he was facing much more serious challenges. Don just coasted on his predecessor's coattails.
    1
  9070. Did someone explain to him that this is not something a President can do? Has he ever read the Constitution?
    1
  9071.  @noneya8217  Putin had already stopped transmitting the gas through those pipelines before they were damaged, so your comment should read "Only Russia would cut the gas supply to countries in the winter."
    1
  9072.  @vikinglife6316  He never actually said he would do that. He said he would get the Nordstream 2 pipeline project cancelled by the German government, but never claimed to actively destroy it.
    1
  9073.  @noneya8217  The only ones proposing war are Republicans. The Democrats just laugh at them, because they are stupid.
    1
  9074.  @noneya8217  Why? Because I have more in my head than just Putin's talking points?
    1
  9075.  @vikinglife6316  But remember that Nord Stream 2 was not in operation at the time. Nord Stream 1 was the one that was in active service before the war. So he was only talking about "ending" a pipeline that had not yet gone into service. He was in frequent contact with Germany and felt confident that he could convince them to do so. At no point did he suggest blowing it up, just shutting it down. What was unreasonable about that? Also, why would it be a bad thing if he had blown it up? It would have been carrying gas from Russia. As for Seymore Hersh, his report is fully of factual inaccuracies, and seems to be nothing more than fanfiction about how the US might have done it if they wanted to, rather than how it actually was done. For example, when the navy was "doing drills in the area," they were never anywhere near where the pipeline explosions were. The only one intent on claiming the US did it is the Russians, and their allies.
    1
  9076.  @SK-bw2cv  He was specifically referencing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in that statement because that was the question he was answering. If you did not understand that context, then now you do know, and knowing is half the battle. Yes, he talked about "stopping it," because it was not in operation, and he intended to stop it opening, but at no point did that imply violence. And feel free to take a random blogger's word over my own, but try to fact check his report, and you'll see how many factual inaccuracies it contained.
    1
  9077.  @vikinglife6316  Biden has been in constant conversation with Germany, it's what Presidents do. The German government cancelled the Nord Stream 2 project on Feb22, 2022, over six months before the pipelines were attacked. And no, detonating the pipeline would not be a "war crime." War crimes are Putin blowing up schools and hospitals in Ukraine. You have a flawed understanding of both US and international law if you believe Biden could be jailed for this, even if he did what you believe he did. Also, it would be idiotic to claim that Biden has lied more than any other politician, when the previous occupant of the White House lied more in four years than all other Presidents combined, including Biden. You can find a full list of his THOUSAND of provably false statements.
    1
  9078.  @SK-bw2cv  Germany was not effected by the destruction of the pipelines, Putin had already cut off gas flows through them weeks earlier. No gas was getting through them before the explosions, no gas after, nothing had changed there.
    1
  9079.  @Scorpion-my3dv  So basically, he's telling you what you want to hear, so you can't trust any source that contradicts him. Yup, typical Faux News simp. That's why they have the policy of ONLY reporting what their audience wants to hear, regardless of the truth.
    1
  9080.  @vikinglife6316  What's with the projecting? Just because you can't get Trump's taste out of your mouth doesn't mean that others are doing the same. Again, Faux News are the ones that have SAID that they do not want to tell their audience the truth if it's not what they want to hear. They have no respect for your intelligence, because you do not deserve it.
    1
  9081.  @SK-bw2cv  No, that's not remotely what I'm telling you. Why would you think that's what I was telling you? Did you actually read the words I said, or did you just invent some that sounded better to you?
    1
  9082.  @toastedmatt9387  Truly the ChaGTP of superpowers.
    1
  9083. Term limits are irrelevant. The problems with congress are more structural than that. The primary issues we're having involve gerrymandering in House seats, and the structure of the Senate giving more Senators to states with fewer people in them and fewer Senators to states with more people in them.
    1
  9084.  @woodywood3388  Having Senators be old doesn't hurt, people elected them in because they represent people's interests. Younger people are not necessarily any better at the job.
    1
  9085.  @fenwan2405  While there is some truth to the idea that electing a very successful black president mobilized racists to lose their mind and elect an autocrat to replace him, that's more a sad indictment of the Republican party than anything else. It was still a good thing that Obama was elected overall.
    1
  9086. But competition has driven down prices relative to inflation, so they can no longer afford to operate at the same margins they used to.
    1
  9087. That's half the truth, at least, but this makes it seem like the governments are the problem in the scenario, when it's important to remember that if the government weren't there at all, then those same rich people could just skip the middleman and do whatever it was they wanted to do in the first place and nobody could stop them. Even a government that is too friendly with business is better than no government at all, since they can at least stop the worst excesses that they could never get past the public. But the rest of your point is correct, which is why it is important to ALWAYS hold government accountable for their actions and punish them when they give business too free a hand.
    1
  9088. This was the main issue. Yes, he was a source, but when you get information from a source, you can't just run off with every word they say, you need to research and back up everything so that you are using intelligence WISELY. To the Weaponizing Government Committee, ALL they cared about was finding political dirt, no matter how unreliable, so as long as he was saying something they wanted to believe, they were ALL ears, and how dare anyone question it? This is not using intelligence wisely.
    1
  9089. What would that accomplish? She's the one that passed a stimulus bill. The one that needs removing is Mitch McConnell, which wouldn't even put it up for a vote in the Senate.
    1
  9090.  @williammorris4327  The money in the Democrats' bill was necessary for carryign the country through this period, not "pork barrel."Yes, we do have trillions in debt due tot eh Trump/McConnell tax cuts, but this is the most important role of government, to spend money during economic recessions, and then to tighten the belt during periods of economic surplus. The Trump administration squandered that role, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't take the necessary steps to carry this country past Covid.
    1
  9091.  @williammorris4327  I don't think you understand how the national debt works. The debt rose during Obama's term due to two things, the ongoing effects of the Bush era tax cuts, which put us on a deficit trend after Clinton's surplusses, and then necessary stimulus to offset the Bush economic collapse.Had he not spent that money, we would still be in a massive recession today. That is the responsible thing to do during a significant economic downturn, as it is the responsible thing to do this year. What was NOT responsible was what Trump did during his first term, which was to inherit Obama's rising economy, and decide to cut a massive tax cut to the extremely wealthy, paid for on the backs of the middle class, when the responsible play would have been to raise taxes on the wealthy to pay down the deficit. Basically, he ran up the nation's credit card when we had money to pay it off, so that now, when we need to be putting money on the credit card to cover necessary expenses, we already have this huge balance. It's still better to keep running up that card than to do nothing though, unfortunately.
    1
  9092. That's not "passing the buck" that's just facts. BIden has asked congress to pass bills that would give him the funding he needs to do more on the border. Congressional Republicans have failed at that, so he's doing as best he can with the tools currently available. If you care about the border, elect more Democrats, Republicans will NEVER get it done, because they prefer to have it as a talking point than to actually solve it.
    1
  9093.  @kristydiep752  You're thinking of Trump. He's the one with multiple fraud convictions. Harris was a person who prosecuted such criminals.
    1
  9094.  @kristydiep752  She isn't the one convicted of fraud.
    1
  9095.  @marcush42  That's not how it works. Mike Johnson would need to introduce it, which he would not need her involvement to do.
    1
  9096.  @JennyReads  That was a terrorist attack. He was still president at the time.
    1
  9097.  @jimmorrison9656  Yes, by Trump and his allies, that is the problem.
    1
  9098.  @Wreckitralph1976  We do know it, that's why the US has a murder rate 6 times higher than other first world countries.
    1
  9099.  @gregordawgbin5227  The Founders are still crying about that one in their graves.
    1
  9100.  @Wreckitralph1976  We do know it, that's why the US has a homicide rate 6 times higher than other first world countries.
    1
  9101.  @colleenc9286  It wasn't a false flag, they were Trump supporters. Do you really think Democrats would allow themselves to be convicted of crimes just to produce some sort of hoax? How gullible are you?
    1
  9102.  @gregordawgbin5227  The B L M Protests were also under Trump.
    1
  9103. ​ @colleenc9286  It wasn't a false flag, they were Trump supporters. Do you really think Democrats would allow themselves to be convicted of crimes just to produce some sort of hoax? How pliable are you?
    1
  9104.  @gregordawgbin5227  The Summer of Love was also under Trump.
    1
  9105.  @colleenc9286  No, Democratic governors sent in the National Guard three hours before Trump authorized it.
    1
  9106.  @colleenc9286  It wasn't a false flag, they were Trump supporters. How pliable are you?
    1
  9107.  @colleenc9286  The governors sent the national guard to DC hours before Trump allowed them to enter. He was the one holding things up, because he was hopeful things would turn out in his favor.
    1
  9108.  @gregordawgbin5227  He offered national guard the day before. They weren't needed the day before. On the day OF, when he sent his people to assault the capital, and people were begging him to send help, when governors sent troops to the border and asked permission for them to enter, he did nothing whatsoever for over three hours. THAT is what matters. Whatever you imagine they "wanted" to happen is irrelevant to the fact that it was Trump supporters who DID it, entirely on their own.
    1
  9109.  @drmathias  Yes, because the Republican Senate cheated to allow him two extra Supreme Court picks.
    1
  9110. Well, hopefully not that many Jan 6thers will try to run for office after having violated their oaths to the Constitution. I don't see how it could be a major problem.
    1
  9111.  @garyK.45ACP  It would be sad if the Supreme Court ruled against Colorado, since it would make clear that they put partisanship over the Constitution, like most Republicans.
    1
  9112. So can you use that "microphone" to disable Cybermen?
    1
  9113.  @BrenQ99  Ok, fair enough, let's put it to a vote, before moving on Johnson's removal.
    1
  9114. The Republican House formed a committee to "weaponize government" against their political enemies. This is the result of that. Elections have consequences.
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  9115.  @imthebadguy3225  No, only MAGA folk, who make up less than 40% of the country.
    1
  9116.  @imthebadguy3225  Putin owes you gas money. Tell Trump to take it out of his checks.
    1
  9117.  @imthebadguy3225  Or you could just get Jared to take it out of the 2 billion the Saudis gave him, whichever.
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  9118.  @imthebadguy3225  I'm not a Trump voter. That's something a Trump voter would do.
    1
  9119.  @imthebadguy3225  You should double check that, because all those stories turned out to be complete nonsense.
    1
  9120.  @imthebadguy3225  True the Vote even admitted in court that they made it all up.
    1
  9121.  @imthebadguy3225  Tru the Vote admitted in court that they made it up.
    1
  9122.  @imthebadguy3225  They admitted in court that they made that story up.
    1
  9123. CA is suing those trying to do "government control" to make them stop.
    1
  9124. This is a great opportunity to cut loose some of the weakest links. Good riddance. Don't need you.
    1
  9125.  @RoyalChucksta  Or to focus on the 100% covid.
    1
  9126.  @wildmouse5888  But we can agree that people should not smoke, right? At least with many other forms of drugs, they are contained to the person using them, rather than projected outward to those around them. I remember back when everywhere smelled like tobacco.
    1
  9127.  @alphaboy1872  The CDC pushed the vaccine to ALL groups, which was the appropriate course of action to take. There is no reason to not get vaccinated. Part of a responsible vaccination strategy is that ALL people participate, so that a herd immunity develops. This is why measles made a comeback over the last twenty years, due to some idiots choosing to not vaccinate their children. We never achieved that with covid because not enough people got vaccinated.
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  9128. They should rename it to "BRICSA," the A being the US.
    1
  9129. They're working on that too, but I think the fitness and readiness of our armed forces is also a big deal.
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  9130. No, that's what would happen if they did not raise the debt ceiling. This preserves the future.
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  9131. On the one hand, yes they should be covered. On the other hand, the drug companies charge WAY too much for them, and it would bankrupt us to just shell out that fee. The solution is to produce and distribute it at cost.
    1
  9132.  @marcmalonzo566  And yet there is no evidence of "the Big Guy" ever getting anything, much less 10%. But the Trump family did get two billion dollars from the Saudis.
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  9133.  @mattl2843  But the important thing to remember is that this was entirely fiction, created by soviet propaganda and believed only by idiots. In the real world that never happened, and Russia invaded a peaceful neighbor. Even Putin made clear at the start that he considered Ukraine a part of Russia.
    1
  9134.  @mattl2843  But the important thing to remember is that this was entirely fiction, created by soviet propaganda. In the real world that never happened, and Russia invaded a peaceful neighbor. Even Putin made clear at the start that he considered Ukraine a part of Russia.
    1
  9135.  @mattl2843  But the important thing to remember is that this was entirely fiction. In the real world that never happened, and Russia invaded a peaceful neighbor. Even Putin made clear at the start that he was attempting to conquer Ukraine and absorb it into Russia.
    1
  9136.  @mattl2843  But the important thing to remember is that this was totally made up by Russia to fool people. They do this a lot. In the real world that never happened, and Russia invaded a peaceful neighbor. Even Putin made clear at the start that he considered Ukraine a part of Russia.
    1
  9137.  @stephenpmurphy591  It's not December.
    1
  9138. So this is just GW2 Tribulation Mode?
    1
  9139.  @Nunyabidnuz  It's not a nuke excuse any more than "they got my lunch order wrong." Putin will cry "I'll use them!" at any opportunity.
    1
  9140. How would that work? They aren't like guns where there are clear methods for effectively banning them without restricting practical uses.
    1
  9141.  @kernelscout3077  Yes, that's the sound knives make!
    1
  9142.  @continuedtraining3917  Must not have been a very good one then.
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  9143. ​ @AllenNicholson-ug5fc  Gun bans definitely do work. The other first world countries that have them have MUCH lower homicide rates than the US.
    1
  9144.  @cipherdourdan2328  Definitely does work, always has. Guns are much harder to deal in than drugs, so the first world countries that have stronger gun laws than the Us have MUCH lower homicide rates.
    1
  9145.  @bphilbac  What would that have to do with anything? You choosing not to use a gun to cause harm does nothing to prevent others from choosing to cause harm with it. The point is to prevent them from accessing such weapons, not what you would do with one.
    1
  9146.  @kernelscout3077  The point is not what sane people will do with them, but the harm that they can do in the wrong hands. It's impossible to keep them out of the wrong hands without also keeping them out of your hands too.
    1
  9147.  @AllenNicholson-ug5fc  They do work though. That's just a fact.
    1
  9148. and yet they have blocked many other laws that they disagreed with, whether they were unconstitutional or not.
    1
  9149.  @TheRealestHi  That one already happened in 1812. We won and moved on, built a standing army, and made all further preparation by civilians irrelevant.
    1
  9150. And Trump admits he is himself.
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  9151. Probably not. If the government offered a $1 gas rebate, then gas stations would just raise the price by $1. The gas prices are only the way they are now because the oil companies want it that way.The "problems" that the oil industry cite are not actually preventing them from lowering gas prices today, they are just their little pet peeves.
    1
  9152.  @_blank-_  People are allowed to care about some things more than others. This in no way justifies Russia's actions here.
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  9153.  @askeladd60  No, NATO is not hostile to Russia, and Ukraine is a sovereign nation, allowed to join ANY military alliances it wants. At NO point did Russia have any justification to invade them. They CHOSE to invade them, because they wanted them to remain under Russia's power. It did not work out.
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  9154.  @askeladd60  Russia feeling scared of NATO does not give Russia a free pass to just murder Ukrainians as they see fit. They OWN their choice to do so. At NO point was Russia "free to invade" ANYONE.
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  9155.  @Juho221  And yet Crimea was still a Sovereign part of Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union. If Russia wanted it back, they could make a fair offer to buy it, or go through proper Ukrainian legal channels to have a referendum, as happened with Scotland a few years back, but NOTHING justifies their military occupation of the area, and no state is allowed to unilaterally secede from another without the consent of the full state as a whole. Also, the value to Ukraine is that it is part of their contiguous landmass. It has no land border with Russia. Crimea being a part of Ukraine gives them more contiguous sea access. More importantly, even IF Crimea is "useless" to Ukraine, it is still a part of Ukraine, and no country is allowed to seize part of another country, no matter how "useless" it might be.
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  9156.  @Juho221  I pointed out how Crimea has significant value to Ukraine, but more importantly, because Ukraine allowed Russia to steal Crimea, it emboldened Russia to attempt to take the rest. Russia can't be allowed to gobble up "a little bit, not even an important part" of their neighbors. They are allowed to take NONE OF IT. So Ukraine will continue to kill Russia cannon fodder until they have ALL their territory back, and THEN they can negotiate for peace.
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  9157.  @Juho221  Sure they are. They'll have them back by this time next year. The only question in doubt is how many dead Russians they'll have to step over to get there. Chances are, "a lot." There can be no peace without reclaiming their lands first, because all that would be would be an invitation for Putin to come back later when he's had time to re-stock. This MUST be a TOTAL defeat for Russia to prevent future aggression.
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  9158.  @Juho221  Ukraine is gaining ground consistently. The current conditions are not there for a serious push in either direction, but the weather will change, and then Ukraine will start advancing again while Russians keep dying and dying until they run out. If Putin decides to use nukes, then he's done. Russia's done. He might, but that's out of anyone's hands. Again, "Putin might be stupid enough to use nukes" would not justify allowing him to keep Ukrainian territory at the end of this, because then the ONLY lesson to be learned from this conflict is, "if I invade a place, and threaten to use nukes, I'll be allowed to KEEP IT," which will just mean he'll invade someplace else within a few years, and keep going until he's put down. Total defeat for Russia is the ONLY peaceful solution to this conflict. ALL alternatives only lead to more war in the future.
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  9159.  @Juho221  Again, if "Putin might use nukes" is allowed to be a reason to not oppose him, then we may as well just hand him Europe and the rest of the world right now and skip the middleman, because he'll keep taking a bite off that apple so long as it doesn't kill him. Ukraine is unlikely to gain ground over the winter, but they are unlikely to lose it either, and will continue pushing forward in the spring. They will have no trouble surviving the winter, even if Putin inhumanely cuts their power. The more he tries to harm civilians, the worse it will backfire on him. Russia was clearly not in the state for THIS invasion, given how badly it's gone for them, and yet if they are allowed to walk away from it with territory gained, then that will have been a long term success for them. They cannot be allowed to have gained ANYTHING from this little adventure. If "peace" were declared today and the borders settled at their current locations, then Russia might not invade again tomorrow, or even next year, but within the next few years they would go "you know, I think more of Ukraine is actually Russia" and just swoop right into it again, maybe better prepared that time. They did it when they were allowed to keep Crimea.
    1
  9160.  @Juho221  Putin didn't have support this time. That's the nice thing about having an absolute autocracy, it does not matter whether you have support or not. Ukraine is not going to conquer Russia or anything, but it's easily within their power to drive every Russian soldier out of Russia, and that's what will have to happen before peace talks begin. Whether Russia "capitulates" at that point is up to them.
    1
  9161.  @Juho221  If Putin didn't have absolute power within Russia then he would be gone already. He is not fit to serve, and that was clear from the moment the war started. Either way, Russia must leave ALL Ukranian territory, even those portions that they unilaterally claim are "part of Russia," or more and more of the former Soviet Union will find itself "part of Russia."
    1
  9162.  @Juho221  They seem to be doing a great job of it so far. What are their options? The ones that aren't smart enough to leave just get covered with dirt.
    1
  9163. ​ @Juho221  Because "compromise" now only leads to future "compromise" in future, just as "compromise" over Crimea led to Putin deciding that maybe Donbass was part of Russia too. And Kyiv, of course. Russia cannot be allowed to take portions of Ukraine and then get to KEEP them as "compromise." Russia will dig in, and those will be their own graves, so that's convenient for everyone. The weather will slow Ukraine's progress over the next few months, but no more than that. There is no path that would allow Russia to hold them off through the entirety of next year.
    1
  9164.  @Juho221  And that's why Russia should leave Ukraine, but until then they will just keep dying over a piece of land that they had never seen. I get that Putin is scared, and that he has his little social media minions working to buy him an escape route, but there is only one, and it is across the pre-2014 Russian border.
    1
  9165.  @Juho221  I think it's more likely to work than that "compromise" is likely to lead to a stable peace. When you negotiate with terrorists, it only leads to more terrorism.
    1
  9166.  @Juho221  The distinction between a war crime and terrorism in this case is semantic, at best. I don't work with "hopes," I work with practicalities. If they choose to escalate, they choose to escalate. If we just allow them to gobble up their neighbors without support so long as they don't use nukes, then there won't be anything left either way. We have no choice but to assume that they won't be stupid enough to use nukes at any point, and be prepared to flatten Russia to the ground if they do anyway.
    1
  9167.  @Juho221  Rather dead than living in an oppressive dystopia, yes. Always.
    1
  9168.  @Juho221  That's a recipe for permanent oppression. The best way to prevent oppression is to cut it off before it sets in. Look, I get who cuts your checks, but this has got to be soul devouring work, yeah? Why not just get out of there to some other country? I hear millions have gotten out already.
    1
  9169.  @Juho221  Uh-huh. . .
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  9170.  @Juho221  So what?
    1
  9171.  @Juho221  Well, to be fair, I wasn't the one advocating that Putin should just be allowed to go around taking a bite out of any country that looks appetizing and then go home with the "compromise" of allowing him to keep it.
    1
  9172.  @Juho221  You have repeatedly called for allowing Russia to keep territory that it has claimed.
    1
  9173.  @Juho221  See, and that's how it will end up for Putin too, they just need to keep advancing and killing more Russians.
    1
  9174. This IS securing the border. The border is already as secure as it ever was, the only issue now is a paperwork backlog.
    1
  9175.  @Youtubeisafascistcompany  If you think the NYT agrees with you, then you misread what they were saying and took your own argument from it.
    1
  9176.  @thedirty530  More officers are not needed, the policing situation is handled. It's more courts that are needed to process them.
    1
  9177. Trump Inc.
    1
  9178.  @AmandaWaldron-g1b  The only god he has a personal relationship has orange skin and a combover.
    1
  9179. Never underestimate the bigotry of the average Bud Light drinker.
    1
  9180.  @humbirdms2784  About what?
    1
  9181.  @chavvy9074  and without the government declaring that it would not infringe on that right, people would not have it. They do not have it in countries with no such laws.
    1
  9182.  @chavvy9074  Without the second amendment, the government could take guns however they saw fit. The existence of the second amendment puts a limitation on their ability to do so. Again, just because you can do something does not make it your right to do so. A right is something granted by a society.
    1
  9183. That's sad. I hope it at least recieved the traditional response of "and a F### Donald Trump to you." in return.
    1
  9184.  @jack-of-all-trades1234  Yup, Muslims aren't the only ones passing "sharia law" bills.
    1
  9185.  @francismarion4450  Portions of it, obviously. It all depends how seriously you take it.
    1
  9186.  @francismarion4450  Like eating shellfish. Obviously no Christian eats shellfish these days.
    1
  9187.  @francismarion4450  What does that have to do with anything? It's in the Bible.
    1
  9188.  @francismarion4450  When did Christ ever say that women couldn't be pastors?
    1
  9189.  @stevealexander8010  Do you believe that a black person has any right to criticize you for calling them the N-word?
    1
  9190.  @KrB12345  . . . you do understand how "math" works, right? That 15 is much more than 5? That the current House majority is only 5 seats? That the Republicans would not have the majority if not for their gerrymandered seats? Both sides are clearly not "just as bad." I don't believe in unilateral disarmament, if one side is cheating, I don't expect the other side of go "aw shucks, guess we'll just have to take the L and let them be in charge," so I fully demand that Democrats gerrymander as often as possible so long as Republicans continue to do it, but ALSO Democrats are actively pushing for legislation that would make gerrymandering illegal for everyone, so they are unarguably on the moral side of this issue.
    1
  9191.  @Bitchslapper316  Yes, but Democrats do it LESS than Republicans do, and if no gerrymandering were taking place at all then Democrats would control the US house, and have much better positions in almost every statehouse than they currently do, so it's not a "both sides" situation. Republicans just like to point out the fewer examples of Democratic gerrymandering as a "whataboutism" to distract idiots from their own gerrymandering. Unfortunately, there are a LOT of people too dumb to actually look into it themselves and just go "oh, ok then, I guess the Democrats are the bad ones."
    1
  9192.  @DaichiR40  The only "body cam footage" I've seen was of a woman from a different part of the state from several years ago, who was not Haitian. The "calls to the police" were anonymous and when they tried to follow up on it the number was delisted, so it seems to have been a prank. There has been no actual evidence to support these claims.
    1
  9193.  @CineSoar  I'm not investing in one of these companies or anything, I'm just saying that IF this works as claimed, then it MIGHT have practical applications. As for the energy cost of generating that green light, I was thinking that a more efficient method would be to take white light from the sun, and use a specific prism to split off the wavelength needed for this process, while deflecting all the other light in a different direction. Then you use this green light to evaporate water, and the other light is used to power some different process, such as photovoltaic, or solar heating, or just growing plants perhaps, whatever could be efficiently housed in the same facility. The best solutions are ones where you figure out how to make the most out of ever "waste" aspect. Also, I don't believe that the claim was that you needed only this very specific wavelength to see any benefit, I believe they were claiming that this was the most efficient form of their process, but I think you would still see some gains the closer and closer you got to it, even if you didn't check every box.
    1
  9194.  @CineSoar  Look, again, neither of us are in any position to debate whether it works as claimed or not. Either it does or it doesn't, we can't know that from here. If it doesn't, then any further point is moot. If it does, then there can be discussions about how it might be used. As I said, I'm not running out to spend money on this idea, and don't think anyone should, that IS "wait and see." As to the economic feasibility of a project like you describe there, I could see it maybe working out. It would use less space per gallon of water processed than "just pools" and would produce more energy as well. It would be taking the incoming sunlight and putting it all to use in the most efficient ways possible, so gaining the maximum benefit. Major operations are often undertaken just to get an added 5-10% efficiency gain, so 300-400% seems massive if you can achieve it. And I would think that things like prisms, while a potentially significant up front cost, should at least be low maintenance.
    1
  9195.  @CineSoar  If the process is, let's say, twice as effective, then you would get the same evaporation benefit out of only half as large a pool. The remaining space that you would spend on an electrical generator or some other "light spending" facility would then pay for itself in whatever benefits it provided. Basically, if you need clean drinking water, and you need electricity, then this sort of facility would produce both, and it would do so in a way that is more efficient than if you didn't combine the two. So why not do that?
    1
  9196. If people had taken it seriously early on, we wouldn't be in this mess.
    1
  9197. TL;DR, "no."
    1
  9198.  @FireThemAll  Exactly. Any Biden appointee would be better for any role in government than any Trump appointee is in any role in government.
    1
  9199.  @mnguardianfan7128  Make polio great again!
    1
  9200.  @brushstroke3733  Man, I wish Trump supporters were willing to do that, a lot of them actually think that Biden's time in office went poorly. Lol.
    1
  9201.  @brushstroke3733  Man, I wish Trump supporters were able to do that.
    1
  9202. They caused fewer deaths than if they did nothing, and cause more deaths than if they had taken the virus more seriously.
    1
  9203.  @dyllinroberts1442  Any poverty and depression was caused by the virus, not by steps taken to minimize the virus. No country that practiced some form of "ignore the virus and it'll go away" policy ended up in a better place than the US in any metric. Things like lockdowns and social distancing policies saved lives, and if we did anything different, it would NEVER be "less of that," it would be "more of that," AND "more policies to SUPPORT people during those times so that they do not have poverty." The issue was not that the covid conditions made it irresponsible for many small businesses to remain in operation, the issue was that the government did not provide enough policies to allow them to stay shut down without putting the survival of the business at risk. That's one of the core functions of government during a crisis, to bridge people over to the next phase of things. The fact remains that the death rate in 2020 rose well above the death rate it had been predicted to have based on "normal conditions" prior to 2020. The amount that the death rate rose by was roughly equivalent to the number of people who died from covid. Covid was the difference. Everything else stemmed from that. Obviously it would be nice if we could have just made covid magically go away, but government cannot do that, government can only handle problems using real world tools.
    1
  9204. Well here's the solution that uses the "carbon neutral fuels." Stockpile carbon neutral fuels. Like the issue is that we definitely need to drastically reduce CO2 right now, immediately. Carbon neutral fuels going right back to market wouldn't really help with that. On the other hand, more traditional methods, like just planting trees, is inefficient, too slow. So what about Step 1 being building these plants and chugging down as much CO2 as possible. Make that "neutral fuel," sure, but don't sell it. Just stockpile it, build a massive lake of the stuff someplace. Let the CO2 level drop lower and lower, until it reaches a relatively safe place. Meanwhile work on other ways to reduce emissions, and naturally sequester CO2 like plating more trees, get it so that the Earth is in balance again. then they can start to sell off their carbon neutral fuels, which coincidentally would be even more valuable, since traditional fuels would be much less common than they are today. This might take decades, but governments could cover the difference, paying into producing the fuels, on the basis of getting paid back when the fuels are eventually sold. Alternately it could just be taken as a long term investment, like a Bond. Invest $1000 today in carbon neutral fuels, and expect to make $5,000 off of it in 20-40 years, as well as helping the environment.
    1
  9205.  @john_in_phoenix  If that's how you want to see it. Didn't go over well for the people of South Vietnam that wished to stay independent though.
    1
  9206.  @jybrokenhearted  Oh, I'd say there are well more than three times as many potential terrorists at a Trump rally than at a Biden one.
    1
  9207. One company should start building a sort of "pre-fab" conversion kit, similar to how cruise chips install new rooms. Build kits that are designed to fit in a standard office space (correct ceiling height, for example), and then have multiple "blocks" of apartment that can be combined into a total space. So like you would have an open concept bedroom intended to press against the existing windows, an open concept kitchen, a bathroom built into the side of an open concept space that is as wide as the other elements, and then a variety of "spacer" blocks that can be fit between these core blocks to match whatever dimensions the space affords. So for example, if the bedroom is 4m across, and bathroom segment 3m across, and the kitchen segment 4m across, but the space available was 20m, you could then place 1-5m segments in between each to fill the remaining 9m, and this could be closets, living rooms, etc.., or just open space to be used however they wish. You could mix and match these pieces how you like to achieve an apartment that fits the space you have and the style you're looking for (within reason). You could either line them up in a row, or place several of them together to make a larger apartment. These would also be designed to be broken down into pieces that would fit in a standard freight elevator, and since they are pre-fabbed off site and fit into relatively narrow configurations, they would be very cheap relative to custom building everything on site. It might not meet the tastes of the high end luxury crowd, but it should work great for lower and middle income housing that cities need.
    1
  9208. What does that have to do with Israel?
    1
  9209.  noahpatterson5667  Where are we counting Donald in that list? Before or after?
    1
  9210.  @JLethal-oe8lj  Biden never acted on what Trump wanted to do. he just bathed with` his kids.
    1
  9211.  @youtubecensors5419  Who siad it was like molesting a child? It's still extremely creepy. As for molesting, there are numerous other women that have credibly accused Trump of molesting them, including at least one that was determined by a court of law to have happened (most of the rest he just settled for large payouts instead of going to trial).
    1
  9212. It's sad that being indicted for paying off a porn star during an election is actually a positive to Republican voters, but they aren't the "party of trash people" for nothing.
    1
  9213.  @bigtime9589 Most smaller corps do not benefit from Trump's tax changes. The ones that do are mainly just shell corporations used by the wealthy to protect their assets, rather than productive members of the community.
    1
  9214. Yes and no. Yes, the Concorde only flew over the ocean, but that's because that's the only place it was allowed to fly, which made for very inefficient and unprofitable routes. If the Concorde could have freely traveled over land at full speed, it would at least be more profitable than it actually was. Now, whether that would be good enough? Unclear.
    1
  9215. He looks cute, but sounds terrifying. Like a horde of bees. A swarm of those things would be nightmarish.
    1
  9216. @ The President is required by law to fly him back and release him on the same temporary legal status he had before getting arrested.
    1
  9217. @ Exactly, that's the point, he's not a gang member, so why is he in prison right now without trial? We don't allow that in America.
    1
  9218.  @jeffreybrown1847  And neither does Trump, apparently, but he still has a Constitutional duty to faithfully execute the court's order and get the man back. Biden could have done it.
    1
  9219. @ His oath was to FAITHFULLY execute the Constitution, not to "ask once and then give up." He's spent more time on his golf game this weekend than he spent trying to fulfill his legal obligations. At the very least he should point out to El Salvador that this man was no terrorist, just a man who had never been convicted of a crime in either country. That's less than the least he's obligated to do. Why do you use terms like "human trafficking terrorist" that have nothing to do with this matter?
    1
  9220. This just goes to show, any system that requires unanimity is nonsense. There needs to be at least a little wiggle room to rule out psychos.
    1
  9221.  @angelicchandler8275  Just because you are conservative and get censored doesn't mean that they are targeting conservatives. They also censor liberals. It's just like YT. You notice when it happens to you, and think that's being applied unfairly, but are unaware of when it happens to the other side too.
    1
  9222.  @Nunya-t4b  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  9223. ​ @angelicchandler8275  Just because you are conservative and get pruned doesn't mean that they are targeting conservatives. They also prune liberals. It's just like YT. You notice when it happens to you, and think that's being applied unfairly, but are unaware of when it happens to the other side too.
    1
  9224. Good, accountability is important. Unlikely Trump's attempts to "punish" Obama-era officials, this will only apply to Trump-era officials who actually committed crimes and broke existing regulations.
    1
  9225.  @leevy6753  Like the links between his 2016 campaign and Russia, for which several of its members were pardoned by their boss to avoid them snitching.
    1
  9226.  @leevy6753  You want me to make a list for you? It's not hard for you to look up yourself, and I'm sure that would convince you more than anything I could say on the matter. It's not like this isn't all a matter of public record.
    1
  9227. Yeah, but the easy ability to legally purchase guns makes them much easier to acquire illegally.
    1
  9228.  @morbward8281  Fewer, because the shooter would not have had a gun either. Active shooters being disabled by armed civilians are extremely rare, and having armed civilians on the scene actually increases the risks of civilians being shot in the crossfire.
    1
  9229.  @Hecklefishfearthecrabcat  Yup, it's only maga types that pull these shenanigans.
    1
  9230.  @343Films  "Redfield became the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on March 26, 2018.[15] He was appointed to the post by President Donald Trump, after the president's first appointee, Brenda Fitzgerald, resigned in scandal.[16] "
    1
  9231.  @parisjessica8281  It's just a bit hypocritical that the same people who failed to convict Trump for the crimes he did are trying to impeach Biden officials for things they never did.
    1
  9232. I would be very interested in getting one of these IF I were able to firewall them off from Meta's data collection when I want to, like hitting "private mode" on a browser. I think it's ok if they take note of my purchases within their own storefront, but feel uncomfortable at the idea that they might be collecting data when playing a game or using some third party application that has nothing to do with them. If they put in bold text promises to respect that privacy then I would grab one of these in a heartbeat.
    1
  9233. No.
    1
  9234. The traitors against American Citizens are in Mar-A-Lago. There is nothing about traitors to be found in this document.
    1
  9235. But Joe Biden didn't take anything form anyone, and Hunter Biden is not a politician. The wealthy and corrupt politicians are on the other side.
    1
  9236. Whaaaa. Meanwhile, they failed to impeach Donald Trump. TWICE. So who cares what they think about the sanctity of the Senate?
    1
  9237. Mexico: "There's lots of mountains, so it's hard to make things work." Meanwhile, in Japan: "So anyway, we just decided to make the third biggest economy in the world."
    1
  9238. I can see why this wouldn't work, but I would think it would be easier to just build a very "agile" cargo pod that is designed to perfectly fit inside of a large modern cargo plane, serving a very similar function. Instead of detaching an entire part of the fuselage, you could just have the equivalent of a cargo container, loaded up with stuff, that can be rolled into a plane's cargo bay within minutes in one operation, then dumped out of it in minutes too. It would slightly reduce the maximum carrying capacity, but probably not by much.
    1
  9239.  @residentgrey  So basically "because my team lost," it must have been rigged." Yeah, that's basically what I was saying. That's nonsense.
    1
  9240.  @residentgrey  There is no evidence that anything was "rigged." The only people claiming that "it was rigged" are poor losers who can't accept that their candidate is a loser. I'm sorry, but their tears are not "evidence" of anything.
    1
  9241. Some did. I don't think all of them did though.
    1
  9242. Yeah, but his people kinda suck, and Biden was duly elected by the majority of the AMERICAN people.
    1
  9243.  @MyITRcom  It applies in this case, legacy media covers actual news, so legacy media covering something generally means that it is an irrelevant story. At the very least it would not imply that the story does matter.
    1
  9244. Yup, MAGA is rot within.
    1
  9245. I don't think most MAGA folks are newcomers.
    1
  9246. "Smoke'em if you got'em."
    1
  9247.  @twixt999  How so? Was he going to do this before he got into a political pissing match with Disney? If Biden passed an executive order that removed various legal protections from Fox News, but not from any other group, would you argue that this would not be political?
    1
  9248.  @VenomSnakee  If Disney can make the case that this was politically motivated, then any other defense of it would become irrelevant. Even if a rule can be justified on its merits, if it is created for a corrupt purpose, it cannot be considered valid. Disney does not need to defend their stance on LGBT people in any court of law, that would be irrelevant to their case here.
    1
  9249. TL;DR, he's paying back favors.
    1
  9250. This is why Dems keep trying to add in rules to prevent taking on too much risk, and Cons keep repealing those rules.
    1
  9251.  @FishFace1776-mi7ce  Praise both of them, like Biden 2024!
    1
  9252. We had that, but then the Republican SCOTUS removed portions of it and Republican congresses removed others.
    1
  9253.  @kellietaylor9913  A parent's rights end at the well being of their children. That's why children are taken away form abusive parents. If what a parent wants would cause harm to their child, then it is in humanity's best interests that the well being of the child take priority. Also, nobody is talking about surgery for children, that is not what this bill does.
    1
  9254. When they find any evidence of his father committing treason, probably. I wouldn't bet on any such evidence existing.
    1
  9255. Well, I think both knew that possession of the documents was illegal, Biden just didn't know that the documents he had were classified, whereas Trump was well aware that they were.
    1
  9256. Nothing in the 14th involves anyone being tried or convicted of anything. Trump's convictions will come later, but are not relevant to this process. Trump was removed from the ballot because he violated his oaths of office.
    1
  9257.  @DieFlabbergast  Trump did a lot more than "behaving recklessly" though. You need to catch up with all his other indictments. I think you misunderstand the point of the Jan 6th riots. It was NEVER that they posed some sort of military threat to the US government, obviously they could be wiped out effortlessly if it came to that, and yes, some of them fully intended to take members of congress hostage and cause other harms to them individually, and that would be tragic, but not particularly a threat to the nation itself. But the actual harm of the Jan 6th riots were that they were a DISTRACTION from the ACTUAL insurrection attempt taking place. The ACTUAL insurrection attempt was to delay the certification of Biden as President, and to present a false slate of electors as an alternative, to lay enough confusion that the congress could refuse to certify Biden, and throw the question back to the House, which would then elect Trump as president. THAT was the insurrection they were attempting. The purpose of the crowd was just to create enough confusion that they could get away with their primary goals, similar to staging a riot outside of a bank so that you can clear out the vaults in the chaos.
    1
  9258.  @JB69.  There is no need for a conviction or even an indictment under the 14th amendment, it is up to the determination of judges. The "trial" in this case was the exact trial we are currently discussing, "Norma Anderson, et al. v. Jena Griswold," that WAS the due process under a 14th amendment complaint.
    1
  9259. I will say, if you have a vertical cylinder "cup" like that, then "half a cup" or "1/4 cup" might be easy enough to estimate by eye, but if you have a tapered cup, or even worse a "bowl" cup/spoon, then estimating 1/2 or less of a full measure would be ridiculously inaccurate. If you have a rounded bowl and you fill it "halfway to the top," that's probably more like 1/3 of the volume. If you fill it to "1/4 to the top" then that would be more like 1/6-1/5, because the bottom part has less volume than the top part. It would take a very precise eye to accurately offset this.
    1
  9260.  @presidentpotato222  Well yeah, he had all sorts of resorts, which again saw a lot of foreign investment while he was President. Really though most of his money stemmed from cash and real estate left to him by his father. If he had just put that money into an indexed fund it would have made him more money than he actually earned. So I guess "how'd he get so rich?" He was born that way.
    1
  9261.  @presidentpotato222  You should look into it. He was handed millions in cash and a massive real estate portfolio to play with. The dollar value of his fortune has grown from this over time, but slower than the stock market has, so he hasn't really added value to it.
    1
  9262. @ The name and the contents of it. What would make anyone vote for it?
    1
  9263. @ That doesn't answer the question, it's just a cry for help.
    1
  9264. "Knock knock, Mr. Real Life Lore? Flower delivery!"
    1
  9265. People care about preventing the next one.
    1
  9266. Only if they are liars and beneath her.
    1
  9267. In the late 90s I remember having these electric typewriters for sale at a store I worked at. Don't recall one ever actually moving though.
    1
  9268. He was convicted for helping Trump do the exact thing he's been charged with. If that wasn't a crime, then he never would have been convicted for helping. That's his relevance.
    1
  9269.  @MichaelRei99  There was a jury in the E Jean Carrol case he lost. They found that he lied when he said he hadn't raped her.
    1
  9270.  @dlbracer56  In this term of congress, McConnell held the entire body hostage until he got favorable terms, even though he was required by the Constitution to hand control over to the Democrats.
    1
  9271. I think it really is beautiful. Some of the details may be unnecessary, but on the scale of a building, it all blurs together anyway. At a human scale, it has a very classy silhouette.
    1
  9272. Democracy?
    1
  9273. ​ @deegomez4098  There's no evidence of that. More cheating tends to go on in red states.
    1
  9274.  @jpjp3873  If you went to the polls and gave your neighbor's information, you would go to jail. Is that really worth it? The reason to not require it is that there are millions more voters that don't have the required ID than there are people attempting to vote illegally.
    1
  9275.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to throw their lives away just to cast an extra vote are too few to care about, far less than the millions without an ID. And no, having an ID is not necessary in this country, we aren't China.
    1
  9276.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to go to jail just to cast an extra vote are too few to care about, far less than the millions without an ID. And no, having an ID is not necessary in this country, we aren't China.
    1
  9277.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to throw their lives away just to cast an extra vote are too few to care about, far less than the millions without an ID. And no, having an ID is not necessary in this country, we aren't the CCP.
    1
  9278.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too small to care about, far less than the number of voters without ID. We do not need IDs in this country, this is not the CCP.
    1
  9279.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too small to care about, far less than the number of voters without ID. We do not need IDs in this country, this is not China.
    1
  9280.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too small to care about, far less than the number of voters without ID. We do not need IDs in this country, this is not Bejing.
    1
  9281.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too small to care about, far less than the number of voters without ID. We do not need IDs in this country, this is not Chiina.
    1
  9282.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too few to care about, far less than the number of voters without ID. This is not Chiina.
    1
  9283.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too few to care about, far less than the number of voters without ID.
    1
  9284.  @jpjp3873  We do not need IDs in this country, this is not China.
    1
  9285.  @jpjp3873  The number of people willing to do that are too few to worry about, far less than the number of voters without ID. We do not need IDs in this country, this is not China.
    1
  9286. It's not accurate to say that Youtube would not promote the video, it would. You just choose not to put it on Youtube. That is your choice, but please be honest about such things in future.
    1
  9287. Did they confuse him for that police officer that murdered that guy?
    1
  9288.  @jerrypeal653  While being choked out by a cop on his neck? That seems unlikely.
    1
  9289.  @theworldisnotcool9685  Even if you were right about that, it would still be Derek's fault, since he was preventing him from receiving adequate medical attention. Even an overdose is treatable.
    1
  9290.  @theworldisnotcool9685  Where?
    1
  9291.  @waynegough6621  But again, defaulting on the debt would make EVERYTHING much harder for decades to come. NO Americans would EVER benefit from it. The only people who benefit from it are Putin and the CCP, which is why their agents are hard at work to convince Americans to jump off this cliff smiling. Hopefully, the House Republicans are not as dumb as they look.
    1
  9292.  @Jay-jj7tj  Hunter was very clearly using his father's position to drum up business, but that's not illegal. More importantly, his father had nothing to do with it, and his father is the one people elected to public office.
    1
  9293.  @csking6377  That wasn't what I meant at all. Were you trying to mislead people?
    1
  9294.  @csking6377  I have discerned that your comment is misleading. That was easy.
    1
  9295.  @csking6377  Your comment does not need to be in the video to be misleading, nor is there any reason for me to do something that you want me to do. You aren't paying me, and I'm not offering.
    1
  9296.  @leinie6683  No, they treat their audience as intelligent enough to know that it does not matter what b-roll they use.
    1
  9297. I feel like Hydrogen is mostly pushed by Natural Gas shills who want a foot in the green energy market. I don't think it's worth even starting to invest in Hydrogen infrastructure until there is a reliable method of producing hydrogen at the scales needed at a price per unit way lower than could be achieved using natural gas as a base product. Otherwise, it will just end up being a greenwash for natural gas.
    1
  9298.  @YvetteB.  We aren't reinvading. We're just blowing people up that mess with us. We can do that all day.
    1
  9299. Somewhere, probably, but it's too complicated for a soundbite. I imagine there's a report on it available.
    1
  9300.  @theomen7665  No, the Democrats are working as best they can to craft a positive future for all of us. The Republicans are doing their best to stop them. If the Democrats do not impress you, it's only because you haven't seen what they would have achieved without that obstruction. There is some truth to the idea that party control swings back and forth, but that certainly isn't deliberate on anyone's part, it's just a natural counter-reaction effect that being in the losing position tends to galvanize the people to get out and vote more than if they feel they are in the winning position, and many in the middle don't really understand the stakes and just blame the present on the actions of the party currently in power (whether or not those problems were the fault of previous administrations).
    1
  9301.  @10thletter40  It does help, but is not entirely necessary. Every country in the world has some degree of illegal border crossings. But you are at least partially right, that we have an unhealthy immigration system that forces too many to cross illegally if they want any chance of getting in. If we had better paths for legal immigration, and if our neighbors were in better shape, then it would cut down their numbers considerably.
    1
  9302.  @jackshrader4161  You're thinking of Trump, he's the senile one. Biden just has a stutter. It impacts his speaking ability, causes him to occasionally stumble in his word choice, but it's obvious to anyone with half a working brain themselves that he always knows 100% of the topic he's discussing and what point he's trying to make. He's participated in numerous town halls and interviews fielding questions off the cuff and always gives an appropriate response. Compare that to Mr. Coffeffe, who can't even ramble his way through a fifteen minute speech without going off on random tangents about his various grievances.
    1
  9303.  @jackshrader4161  The doctors all agree that Trump has dementia and that Biden's mental health is fine. I did say that "anyone with half a working brain themselves that he always knows 100% of the topic he's discussing and what point he's trying to make," so I guess we've established what you're working with.
    1
  9304.  @jackshrader4161  No, doctors that have reported on the topic. There have been numerous experts in the field that have gone on record about Trumps cognitive decline, even though typically they avoid doing on on people they have not examined in person. If you think that Biden does as well, then you simply don't understand how a stutter functions, or aren't paying attention to how perfectly he stays focused on the topic at hand. You seem to just be falling into Biden Derangement Syndrome, something which tends to effect people who watch too much Fake News like Fox or OAN or Newsmax. Educate yourself better on how stutters function and how Biden's coping mechanism for it functions, you'll learn a lot.
    1
  9305.  @jackshrader4161  I say it because it's true. You deny it because you can't handle the truth and prefer to live in a bubble of lies. The rest of us can't join you there.
    1
  9306. This has nothing to do with protecting our country, it's about causing harm to innocent people.
    1
  9307. "We will pretend that there is something criminal going on involving Joe Biden until you believe it, and refuse to be honest with you about it."
    1
  9308. Trump promises to do things that would tank the US economy. Trump does those things. The Markets tank. Surprised Pikachu face.
    1
  9309.  @TheEngineerJason  No, Democrats would potentially vote for a Republican, IF there were a qualified candidate. It's no fault of Democrats that Republicans have culled such candidates from their party over the last few decades. There could also have been a compromise position, in which Republicans offered a somewhat reasonable candidate, Scalise, let's say, along with various assurances that certain Democratic priorities would get a fair shot at a vote. The continuing resolution to keep the government running, only passed with some Democratic votes, for example, and that is what got McCarthy kicked out. There would have been no benefit to the American people for Democrats to save McCarthy from his own party though, as he had routinely shown himself to be an untrustworthy steward. If he'd wanted Democratic support to maintain the speakership, then he would have needed to be a better Speaker.
    1
  9310.  @Kitkat1-i9p  But can you name anyone on the Republican side of the aisle that would make a better speaker than Jeffries? Of course not. This is the problem. The Republican party needs to fix their own bench of they want to be taken seriously.
    1
  9311.  @MadDragon76  Over the past four years, the term "RINO" has shifted from "person in the Republican party who does not have conservative values" to "Person who does not swear absolute fealty to Donald J Trump." When Mike Pence is considered a "RINO," you know the Republican party is well and truly a zombie.
    1
  9312.  @anthonythomas1504  I know, the truth hurts when you're so used to Faux News' happy little lies. Still, better to live in the real world.
    1
  9313.  @dcain4855  Again, I'm not a Faux News viewer.
    1
  9314. Trying to help his buddy Trump again.
    1
  9315. Exactly, they try, but get caught, because as it turns out, voter ID is not needed.
    1
  9316.  @TexRay72  Only Republicans need to cheat, Democrats just vote. Cheating at scale is already impossible without voter ID being needed.
    1
  9317.  @TexRay72  Cheating at scale is already impossible without voter ID being needed.
    1
  9318.  @heavyd777  Nope, conservatives died at much higher rates.
    1
  9319.  @heavyd777  Actually, no, it was mostly conservatives.
    1
  9320.  @mick8888V  Yeah, this is the problem, most lay people are completely unequipped to understand scientific data, even if you put it right in front of them. It all blurs out. And yet they also don't want to listen to "elites" trying to "tell them what to do," so they reject any doctors trying to explain the data. Instead, they listen to any two-bit huckster who sounds like he knows what he's talking about and is willing to tell them what they want to hear, usually that it's ok to do nothing and that everyone telling you otherwise is out to get you.
    1
  9321. She brought her puppy-hunting costume.
    1
  9322. HOW WAS THIS NOT THE MOVIE?!
    1
  9323. Well, four Proud Boys who tried that just got convicted of Seditious Conspiracy, as the Founders intended. The People were fed up with their insurrectionist nonsense.
    1
  9324. they did read the legislation, that's how they know that they'll win their lawsuit. The government isn't allowed to directly target laws at specific companies or individuals.
    1
  9325.  @g-foxgaming5710  That's not how the law works.
    1
  9326.  @g-foxgaming5710  Most parents aren't under that impression. Only the crazy idiots are under that impression. Most parents know that it's the Republican party that is about grooming children.
    1
  9327.  @onamattapeeya  No, I used the word "literally" correctly. That was literally literally why. Can't get more literal than that. And this was one decision by one exceptionally poor judge who is the laughing stock among other judges. It is being appealed, as is the correct decision under the circumstances, and her ruling will inevitably be overturned.
    1
  9328.  @onamattapeeya  Of course not, but repeating the truth multiple times can sometimes help it to sink in to a thicker mind. Is it working yet?
    1
  9329.  @onamattapeeya  Yeah, I'm not maga either, but there do seem to be a lot of those around.
    1
  9330.  @onamattapeeya  Tulsi was never a "real Democrat." Anyone who could look at Trump and think he is remotely acceptable as a candidate for any office is a DINO, and nobody wants them.
    1
  9331.  @onamattapeeya  Tulsi was never a "real Democrat." Anyone who could look at maga and think they are remotely acceptable as a candidate for any office is a dino.
    1
  9332. ​ @onamattapeeya  Anyone who could look at maga and think they are remotely acceptable as a candidate for any office is a dino.
    1
  9333. I think it's probably because they're an authoritarian state? Isn't that the main issue?
    1
  9334. Hospitals are never legitimate targets, even if it were a US military hospital it would not be a valid target. The Geneva Convention protects ALL medical staff and patients, even if they are military.
    1
  9335. What they should do is move every single person out to some other country, where things are less of a mess. Then companies can come in with professional workers and machines, and mine all the resources, and then distribute out a stipend to all the Congolese in the other countries, so they would make a lot more there than they would back home AND be able to find work in that new country if they preferred. Then, once all the mining is done, they can come back in, having experienced a generation or two in more stable countries, and likely picked up a lot of new skills.
    1
  9336.  @TheMrboskie  Who went to him for advice?
    1
  9337.  @TheMrboskie  During which hearings? I can't find any examples of this.
    1
  9338. Why were these UNRWA workers cooperating with Hamas targets?
    1
  9339.  @MAK10p  What other reason would the IDF have to attack the place? They attack only Hamas targets.
    1
  9340.  @MAK10p Why else would this attack have occurred?
    1
  9341. Let's watch Republicans vote it down again because they prefer to run on chaos.
    1
  9342. Anyone who EVER thought that the Trump team cared about our military was just fooling themselves.
    1
  9343. Why would she need to know what continent Belize is on? Is this a geography bee? At least she isn't making up countries like Donald was.
    1
  9344.  @davepeesthepool  And plus they know that Democrats are too responsible to play this game when there is a Republican president, so they can use it to claim ransoms from Democratic administrations, knowing that there will be no equivalent exchanges under Republican presidents, so they get to run up the score.
    1
  9345.  @goosecouple  Facts.
    1
  9346. Will there be a follow-up about Jeanne's role in the Trifas Grail War?
    1
  9347.  @Alberto-p7p  It's been about two weeks since they sent the evacuation order. This is a distance of at most 15 miles, much less for most people. They could have moved HALF a mile per day and still been out of there by now. They could push hospital beds out of northern Gaza by this point. I do think that the IDF should actively send in resources to evacuate every hospital in Gaza, but anyone who can get to a "refugee camp" could also get to "not in northern Gaza" by now. And they would have better access to food, water, and other necessary services. Not great, since Egypt is blocking access, but better than in the north, at least.
    1
  9348.  @ethicsfirst3388  It's not "guilt by association," it's "a sign of a complete lack of solid judgement." If someone has chosen to work for Donald Trump, then that is a sign that they completely lack both ethics and intelligence. Why would you listen to anyone lacking in both of those traits?
    1
  9349.  @ethicsfirst3388  That's not what "guilt by association" means." "Guilt by association" means that you hold someone accountable merely for being related or near someone who did wrong, say holding a father accountable because his son did a crime, or holding someone accountable for a crime their friend did, when they had no idea that their friend was doing that crime. This is NOT "guilt by association." This is holding people accountable for the choices THEY made, the decision THEY took to work for Donald Trump, which reflects poorly on THEM because THEY made that choice KNOWINGLY. That is not "guilt by association," that is just GUILT. IF you had any ethics, you would recognize that.
    1
  9350.  @ethicsfirst3388  Well look, if someone is just a grunt-level worker in a Trump-related company, I do not judge them for that. Work is work, and working at a Trump hotel is no different than working at any other hotel. And if someone is a career civil servant who just happened to work in government during the Trump administration, I don't judge that either, civil servants don't get to choose their boss. But anyone directly appointed by Trump, anyone who directly set out to work under him after he ran for President? They are responsible for making that choice. A person of sound mind and good conscience could not have made that choice. Ethics is taking responsibility for ones actions. Preaching that people should not be held accountable for their actions is no form of ethics. No side can claim to be ethical while condoning the platform or actions of Donald Trump.
    1
  9351. Elon Musk as spent tens of millions on this election so far. Why is it unusual to believe that state actors would not blow tens of millions to bias the "polling" of these betting markets?
    1
  9352.  @dennistyler9852  When did she ever help open any borders?
    1
  9353. That's not how impeachment works. You shouldn't impeach the President just because he kicked your candidate's ass.
    1
  9354.  @jht3fougifh393 Exactly. It's a parent;s responsibility to raise their kids in a healthy environment, it is not a parent's right to raise their children in an unhealthy way if that's what the parent would prefer. The rights are for the child, not for the parent. So if a parent is unwilling or unable to raise their child in a healthy way, then it is the responsibility of the rest of society to take what steps are necessary to protect that child.
    1
  9355. Yeah, they need to make clear how many children will die because of this law.
    1
  9356.  @harrylippidardo  Exactly. Thank you. And the only thing that reduces those risks is getting them the effective treatment that this bill intends to outlaw.
    1
  9357.  @aquariandawn4750  You could sue over that, but you would need to convince a jury that the incident with the puppy took place, as Carroll was able to convince a jury that Trump's attack against her happened as she described it. If you feel your case has merit, as she did, then you should try it.
    1
  9358.  @aquariandawn4750  I understand that there are some people who will never believe that Trump does the things he openly says he does. These people are idiots, but there are apparently as many as 74 million of them out there. But for the rest of us, it's a pretty common sense outcome to the case, so why would anyone be bothered who is not a member of the cult?
    1
  9359.  @kenbeebug5211  He gave a deposition, but that is different than actually testifying in court. He was too afraid to actually take the stand.
    1
  9360.  @kenbeebug5211  He goes back to New York all the time though. That probably wasn't it.
    1
  9361.  @kenbeebug5211  He seems to be going back a lot.
    1
  9362.  @kenbeebug5211  Oh, he loves talking in front of people when he can lie to them, he does that all the time, like he did tonight. What he hates is talking to people when he's expected to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He has a severe allergy to that. Half the things that have gotten him into trouble are cases where he adamantly refused to tell the truth, the other half are the things he was lying about.
    1
  9363.  @kenbeebug5211  He does do a lot of crimes. . .
    1
  9364.  @joe5923  Yeah, southern Panama is "honorary South American." :)
    1
  9365. You won't be losing any human rights.
    1
  9366.  @neonparadox6967  Wow, that's a sad worldview. What was even the point of being alive for the hundreds of thousands of years in which NO humans had firearms?
    1
  9367.  @neonparadox6967  Nobody's talking about banning bows or swords, although there were certainly plenty of periods in human history in which it was illegal to own those as well.
    1
  9368.  @neonparadox6967  Yes, and also considerably more deadly than the previous ones. That's why people want to ban them. There is no human right to own the deadliest weapons possible. There's no human right to own any weapons, any more than there is a human right to murder.
    1
  9369.  @swishiestmetal6215  Nobody ever accused him of being intelligent, that is just what his plan was.
    1
  9370. And people claim Republicans are "pro-Constitution". . .
    1
  9371. Putin has no interest in negotiating. He intends to keep what he's stolen so far.
    1
  9372.  @robertstuckey6407  Street cars only work for dense urban environments. There is still a street car track that runs through my local city, I would not want it to be the only way to get around.
    1
  9373.  @samsonsoturian6013  While this is true, public transit does not need to be profitable, it only has to be useful. The road network is less profitable than the rail industry.
    1
  9374. Why is Jeremy Corben? He seems to serve no other function than to be an Albatross around Labour's neck that prevents them from accomplishing anything they might want. What is preventing him being replaced with someone who could actually achieve goals?
    1
  9375. @ That's because you haven't looked into it.
    1
  9376.  @DirtyDog995  Please list the names of every person in the Milwaukee phone book.
    1
  9377.  @LAHCAH  The only issue there is the ones that have not yet been processed because we don't have the border judges Democrats have been trying to get. Once they are allowed to hold jobs, they will, and put more money in than they take out. It's a problem of conservative policies.
    1
  9378.  @jackrabbit1704  Yes, but again, ONLY because their hearings are delayed because of conservative mismanagement of border resources. Once they are allowed to find work, they do, and they pay back everything they were given and then some.
    1
  9379.  @josephwallis8965  All those countries have better healthcare outcomes than the US. They spend less on medicine than the US does and they get better results, so they seem to be "coping" just fine. Their systems are not perfect, but that is typically due to conser vatives undermining those programs because they don't like them.
    1
  9380.  @josephwallis8965  All those countries have better healthcare outcomes than the US. They spend less on medicine than the US does and they get better results, so they seem to be "coping" just fine. Their systems are not perfect, but that is typically due to some deliberately undermining those programs because they don't like them.
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  9381. Why does he not send letters demanding the immigration status of the dozens of other murderers each day? It's not like immigrants are any more likely to kill people than native born citizens. I feel like this is just scare-mongering.
    1
  9382. Hamas is currently Palestine in Gaza, as they are their elected representations. That might not reflect the wider diaspora, but that diaspora is not relevant to the topic at hand, as they did not invade Israel.
    1
  9383.  @Amongus-xh3rf  It's because the government of Gaza literally elected them to be their government, and the members of the Gaza government are also members of Hamas.
    1
  9384.  @kampfy6443 The 10,000 casualties are entirely Hamas's fault. They are the ones that build their facilities so close to civilians that it is impossible to target them without collateral damage. Israel does not do this, there is no reason to attack Israeli civilians because their military is not found there. Also, Israel told everyone in the areas they are attacking to evacuate WEEKS ago, and gave them more than enough time to walk that distance. Anyone still there has either taken their fate into their own hands, or is a hostage of Hamas, in either case, not the fault of Israel.
    1
  9385.  @geraltrivia9565  Ok, their choice, but you can't blame the IDF for the consequences.
    1
  9386.  @dannyygraf  Hamas are not strong, they just have 300mi+ of underground tunnels and bases. This makes them difficult to isolate.
    1
  9387.  @CMP-st5wh  But when a state elects a KKK member for Governor, that state is KKK.
    1
  9388. I don't like the tone of this video. It says things like "when there are solar storms, the new tech is less efficient," but that leaves out that such things are rare, and they are much much much more efficient otherwise. You need to look at the overall outcomes, not the outlier situations. Now what is true is that farming is becoming less and less viable at small scale, mom-and-pop farms, but the same is true of ALL aspects of life, why should farms be an exception? To me, if there are more efficient ways to do things, then we should always do it that way, to produce things most efficiently. It's AFTER that decision that we figure out how to make those most efficient methods work out for actual humans. Figure out a plan for how humans do better when farms do better, rather than blaming the farm equipment for making farms "too efficient."
    1
  9389.  @JoeJaJoeJoe  But the point is that the global supply chain still would have been in a worse place without these changes to the industry. Less food was being produced before these changes. So if you're producing twice as much per year, and yet you lose 10% of that due to some outlier situation, you're still ahead by a wide margin overall.
    1
  9390. Sure. "There was no 'creepy perving out on a young girl on national tv,' and frankly anyone who thinks that there was is saying more about their own. . . tendencies than anything to do with the President."
    1
  9391. The Line sounds dumb, but I do want to see a mega-structure that is four immensely tall buildings, linked every 20-50 floors by a broad connecting open air promenade, and the 2-3 floors above and below this promenade level would be mostly commercial structures, like a mall, with the goal being that every 20-50 floor unit would contain every element that someone might want to use every day, like plenty of places to eat, basic shopping, etc. Then, within every 100-300 floors, you could find at least one of any resource that you might want to use several times a year, like doctors of various kinds, salons, more specialty stores, etc. And then of course there would be office space and perhaps even light industrial spaces on the middle floors between promenades. The goal would be to design it so that someone living in or above the middle floors would never have any need to leave the building itself, everything they would need to be doing would be available somewhere within a hundred or so floors of their apartment. Of course you could leave if you wanted, but it would be more akin to leaving town on a trip, rather than just leaving your house for work or to buy things. By building it as four towers with bridges between them, it allows for fresh air, much more light reaching the interior spaces, and a lighter atmosphere.
    1
  9392. No, presidents are not above the law, which is why this process was allowed to proceed to its conclusion.
    1
  9393.  @TrillReese  Trump had no authority to declassify documents without proper procedure, Trump is on record saying that he never declassified them, and even if he DID have that power, some of the documents he had were defense-related, which is ALSO a crime that nobody can magically make go away. Even a sitting president has no power to change that.
    1
  9394.  @metrork1  Oh, no, I'm not a MAGA.
    1
  9395.  @metrork1  Nope, I have more information than you do, at least. What information do you believe I'm lacking?
    1
  9396.  @metrork1  Also, it's "you're."
    1
  9397.  @Del-Scent  I see Faux headlines occasionally in my Youtube stream, they are generally very misleading. This is a Forbes thread, btw, though I grant they aren't that much better if you're looking for actual news.
    1
  9398.  @kayakeraltamaha5720  I'm not that bothered by imaginary threats. The Klingons don't frighten me either.
    1
  9399. This seems kinda one sided. I mean, yeah, there were some negative problems, but they are still WAY ahead of where they were before the changes. I mean, there are hundreds of additional people alive today for every death that could be blamed on the canal systems. Do their lives have no value? They should obviously take steps to compensate for the problems, but just "returning everything back to how it was" is not an option, because then what would you do with the millions of people that the country could no longer support?
    1
  9400.  @mrkwells4  Yes, the Russian-run news networks are also bad.
    1
  9401.  @ReaperKezia  no, they are not "literally all the same," that is your own biases at work. Sure, all networks have some degree of bias, nobody is perfect, but the bias of a network like CNN is tiny when compared to the bias of a network like Fox. I do not hate Republicans because of anything CNN does, I hate them because they vote for people like Trump and McConnell that promote policies that harm American citizens. I hate them because they would rather support the Big Lie that their preferred candidate won than to move forward on policies that the majority of Americans support, and that the majority of Republicans would benefit from. I hate Republicans because they hate me.
    1
  9402.  @icecoat009  You are the one preaching ignorance. Where do you get information from, if not credible reporting? Some rando on Youtube or Twitter? Why would he be credible to you? Is it just because the things he says are the things you would prefer to be true?
    1
  9403.  @mrkwells4  In the land of the blind, the two-eyed man wonders why they keep bumping into walls, but it probably has something to do with watching too much Fox News.
    1
  9404.  @mrkwells4  The Republican party would not exist without stupid as hell fools to vote for them. They have literally no one else left.
    1
  9405.  @mrkwells4  You have done nothing but throw insults, so I have no idea what thoughts you might have, but based on what you have said, I have to assume that you have no thoughts that did not originate on Fox/OAN/Newsmax/some blogger who copies off of them. My thoughts and opinions are my own. I do my own research, fact check anything that seems suspicious though multiple sources, first hand sources wherever possible. I take nothing at face value and question everything, but main stream media sources tend to get things right far more often than they get them wrong, and are right FAR more often than the right-wing media sources or alt-right "independent" news sources do. Just because the lies you believe in are different than what the mainstream media is saying does not mean that they are better. A lie can circle the world before the truth can get its pants on.
    1
  9406.  @mrkwells4  Ok, so what is one source of information that you do trust? Unless you are just imagining how the world might work, your view of the world must come from somewhere. Where is that?
    1
  9407.  @ReaperKezia  Local news can be biased too, especially if it's part of the Sinclair Broadcast group. It's important to filter bias for yourself, if something seems unlikely, research it from multiple sources and compare what they say, what seems more likely. CNN may not be perfect, but comparing them to Fox would be like comparing a rainy day to a hurricane. They are in no way "equally biased," and it slaughters your credibility to pretend otherwise.
    1
  9408. He can't be truthful.
    1
  9409. Then stop electing Republicans into office. It's not difficult.
    1
  9410.  @OrtusMallum2075  But you said he took them from a SCIF, he did not. And every member of congress at that level or the White house misplaces a document here or there, that's not a big deal. Happened with Pence, happened with a lot of people. It's not like he did all the crazy stuff that his opponent did.
    1
  9411.  @OptimusPrinceps_Augustus  He was thinking just fine, better than Oz. He just couldn't speak well, because he had a stroke, and it reflects poorly on your own intelligence that you don't understand any of what I just said.
    1
  9412.  @AD-mq9yh  There are people out there "concern trolling" him, implying that he's unfit to run or hold office, because they would rather have Doctor Oz in the Senate. These people are therefore showing that they are much less intellectually capable than John Fetterman.
    1
  9413. @Meatman419 It reflects poorly on your mental state that you are unable to tell the difference between someone who has cognition problems (which means he "don't think good"), vs someone with speech problems (which means he "can't talk good."" Democrats are just smarter than to make that mistake. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't, and think Trump was a credible candidate for public office.
    1
  9414. @Meatman419 Not compared to Einstein, but compared to anyone who would consider voting Republican in 2022? Of course every Democrat is smarter. Low bar though.
    1
  9415.  @AD-mq9yh  It's ok to feel bad for the guy, but not to use that as an excuse to vote against him. And the reason that people would choose Dr. Oz over Fetterman is because they are less intellectually capable than Fetterman, and they don't like how me makes them feel dumb. There is no good reason to vote for Doctor Oz in the 2022 election, he's running as a Republican candidate.
    1
  9416.  @twodog4220  I voted against the senile candidate in 2020, I voted for Biden, not Trump. And there's nothing wrong with voting for a stoke victim, plenty of people have strokes. It's incorrect and curel to claim that he's "incapacitated," he's fully functional, outside of his speech abilities, which are not necessary to serve as a Senator. It's like you're saying that people shouldn't have elected Bob Dole because his arm didn't work well or something.
    1
  9417.  @AD-mq9yh  Unfortunately, yes. There was a time when voting Republican was a valid option, they were a party that, while often wrong, were at least deserving of respect. But the party has been taken over with insurrectionists and election deniers, it has become a cult devoted to supporting the person of Donald Trump wherever he leads, and it would be ignorant and irresponsible for anyone to vote for that party until that changes. They need to wander the desert for 40 years, or until they manage to drain their swamp and excise the tumor of the MAGA cult.
    1
  9418.  @AWholeTuesday  I'm not aware of that one.
    1
  9419. I use a plug-in blower that is shaped a little like a stand-up vacuum and just spits the snow back out the front. It's fine for light snow and with a little effort can handle larger snow easier than shoveling it, at least.
    1
  9420.  @factsdontcareaboutyourfeel7204  When Republicans commit crimes, other Republicans call them Democrats, because they lack integrity.
    1
  9421. Stop telling them their fairy tales aren't real! It's all magas have in their little lives!
    1
  9422.  @BenDunRong  What's the problem? I was agreeing with the OP, those with nothing to hide, don't promise the American people their tax returns and then fail to deliver them for six years.
    1
  9423.  @dr.ronbagwellthdphd3534  That statement is factually incorrect. All four of them released their tax returns. Biden just released his 2021 returns this April, among similar returns for the past 22 years. You can look them up right now. You have been lied to, and you should ask yourself why they thought they could get away with lying to you about such things.
    1
  9424. Pelosi never said the headline though, that was The Hill that said that.
    1
  9425.  ChuckStegall777  Then why do Republicans constantly project their own vices onto Democrats? If they know better, why do it?
    1
  9426. Spoilers: He clearly did need the history lesson.
    1
  9427.  @donaldpate1863  All businesses! Boycott everything! Eat bugs and sleep in the woods!
    1
  9428.  @FREEMAN....  They are not targeting the Christ, they are targeting the Catholic church, which is a body of humans, not God, and which have been responsible for numerous perversions.
    1
  9429.  @FREEMAN....  Again, no, they are not targeting Christ through His servants, they are targeting those who takes Christ's name in vain, who abuse His authority to commit sins on the Earth, like the thousands of cases of child abuse by the Catholic church currently under investigation in Illinois.
    1
  9430.  @jmjorapronobis1328  If it were Christ's church, they would be abusing far fewer children. Unless you're arguing that Jesus is a groomer.
    1
  9431.  @jmjorapronobis1328  And that's what these "nuns" are protesting, the abuses of the human sinners within the Catholic church.
    1
  9432. "LOL."
    1
  9433.  @paulao7022  You're misgendering Trump. He identifies as male. But you're right, everything he stands for is against Christian beliefs.
    1
  9434.  @SheilaHammond-uv9je  That's not how anything works. Joe was the deciding vote, not her.
    1
  9435.  @SteveFrench_420  Lol, "Elon doesn't spew propaganda," imagine being so stupid!
    1
  9436.  @janetkaradenza4165  Then why is oil production higher today than at any point in the last administration. That doesn't make sense.
    1
  9437.  @janetkaradenza4165  The gas price at the end of 2020 was UP 35 cents a gallon from its minimum, which was in March, right as the pandemic hit. THAT was the only cause of any drop in gas prices, that during lockdowns, there were far fewer drivers, so global demand was way down relative to supply. As soon as things started opening up, the price started to rise again, so the only way to argue that they would not have continued to rise under Trump would be if you assume that we never would have opened up again if he were still President. Also, that wasn't the lowest price I've seen in my lifetime, not even close. It was slightly lower in 2016, while Obama was president, and was about half as much during the Bush administration and before that, so it was only "the lowest in your lifetime" during the Trump administration if you are less than seven years old.
    1
  9438.  @Sparks00psn  There's an ongoing war between two of the worlds major oil producers (one of whom being Trump's friend and the other a US ally), and also oil producers around the world slowed oil production when covid hit, and then didn't ramp it up as quickly as they were able, because they prefer to sell at a higher price whenever possible. It's called "capitalism." What's your excuse for the current prices?
    1
  9439.  @Sparks00psn  There is currently a war going on between two of the world's major oil producers, and also the rest of OPEC would prefer to keep prices higher, so they cut production when demand fell, and then didn't raise it back up as quickly when demand returned. Lower supply relative to demand, higher price.
    1
  9440. States do not, in fact, have a right to self defense under US law. Only people do, like the people trying to cross the border.
    1
  9441. So. . . they looked to see IF the Clintons' names were in his phone? Why are you not reporting this as "nothing of value was found?" You make it sound like this was news.
    1
  9442.  @papapsych2746  You are not paying attention, apparently.
    1
  9443.  @jacknature5981  That's a philosophy that benefits the most evil.
    1
  9444.  @hangten1904  Putin has invaded their entire country. It is unreasonable to expect them to evacuate their country just because someone's penis is so very tiny.
    1
  9445.  @papapsych2746  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  9446.  @Leo_dont_shoot_video  The Constitution does not say that.
    1
  9447.  @Leo_dont_shoot_video  Yes, if the Federal government does not pass a law on something, it is left tot he states, but conversely, if the federal government does pass a law on something, then it takes precedence, and more importantly, if the constitution protects something, then states cannot override it.
    1
  9448. Yeah, but unfortunately, those dead and sleeping make up the majority of the Republican party. :(
    1
  9449.  @ItsAWonder-jz1nd  Yup. Low information voters flock to the right.
    1
  9450. That's something different.
    1
  9451.  @foreverlearn3866  He was not a biden/Harris supporter, he just didn't like Trump, like most Americans.
    1
  9452.  @booboo8577  What did that have anything to do with what I said?
    1
  9453.  @booboo8577  So nothing then? Just "something, something, Cuba, booo?" Yeah, that's about what I figured.
    1
  9454.  @Theendisnear429 Democrats make more money and are more productive than Republicans. Red states are debtor states.
    1
  9455.  @Theendisnear429 Democrats make more money and are more productive than Republicans.
    1
  9456. ​ @Theendisnear429 You do know that Democrats make more money and are more productive than Republicans.
    1
  9457.  @Theendisnear429 Democrats make more money and are more productive than Repub.licans.
    1
  9458. I'd just like to find shoes that I can walk comfortably on my toes, rather than striking with the heel. My natural footfall is to just keep the heel barely touching the ground, but pretty much any show forces the heel into strong contact with the ground.
    1
  9459.  @chrisjenkins203  "Oh no, a partisan Republican said mean things about him, is he fit for office?!" Of course he is. Don't be so gullible.
    1
  9460.  @chrisjenkins203  The report is not "facts," it is opinion, as presented by a Republican operative. If he has unkind things to say about the President, that's his opinion, but there is very little actual fact in the document. But I agree with you that it would be beyond reprehensible to vote for Donald Trump, not just for his mental incapacity, but also his moral failings.
    1
  9461. That'll be rough, they don't have one to find.
    1
  9462.  @Warpig8814  nobody loves that, but it has nothing to do with Democrats being in charge, and only an idiot would blame them for it. That's who we get in these messes in the first place, Republicans wreck the joint, so people replace them with Democrats, Democrats show up to a wrecked place, so they start to fix it, but it would obviously take some time to work, people say "hey, everything's wrecked!" and vote for Republicans again, who then coast through a term or two in which the things Democrats did have started to pay off, and then they wreck the place again.
    1
  9463.  Balls Mahogany  If they replace Cornyn with a candidate that GOP voters like more, than that gives the Democrat a better chance in the general, because chances are he will be a complete lunatic.
    1
  9464.  Balls Mahogany  Your name is "Balls Mahogany." I mean, as drag names go, it's fine and all, but it's a bit rich to accuse others of drama.
    1
  9465. I mean, that's not happening, but it's nice to see them "working the refs" like this, and it's at least not as irrational as the "change nothing, roll coal" idiots.
    1
  9466.  @banic8576  I'm not even in the bar you're at.
    1
  9467.  @banic8576  I'm not wearing a MAGA hat either.
    1
  9468.  @banic8576  MAGA hats don't work for anyone. Unlike masks.
    1
  9469.  @banic8576  MAGA hats work for no one.
    1
  9470.  @thex-files2468 How do you believe Hamas can be defeated then?
    1
  9471. You can't trust AI videos of Biden, apparently.
    1
  9472.  @ryanruffer9961  Depends on whether the negotiations involves how much they get to "love on" the hostage.
    1
  9473. He never lied in Congress though.
    1
  9474.  @benhunter8551  You sound like a true Faux News viewer. Enjoy Narnia, the rest of us have to clean up y'all's mess.
    1
  9475.  @benhunter8551 Who's that?
    1
  9476.  @shotak5771  How would I be "proven wrong" on this?
    1
  9477.  @JackieDaytona1776  Hypocrisy is mostly on the right though. If people on the left want to do something freaky, they will just do it, and tell you it's ok if you do it too. When Republicans do freaky stuff, they try to arrest anyone else who does it.
    1
  9478.  @Tina-pj4lg  Yup, we can't allow these Republican groomers near our kids.
    1
  9479.  @megabuster3940  I don't call people bigots to help my argument, my argument stands on its own merits. I call them bigots because that is the accurate term to describe their behavior. It's no different than calling someone a "doctor" for performing surgery. And I do understand why they did not appreciate this stunt, Bud tried to do an ad campaign using a trans influencer, and bigots are triggered whenever a trans person is visible to them, like a cartoon bull seeing a red cloth. And yet trans people exist, so society can't just tiptoe around that fact to avoid triggering bigots. The responsibility is on the bigots to just stop getting triggered when they see trans people. If they weren't getting upset at the mere presence of a trans person in advertising, then they would not be bigots (well, they could still be bigots, just for different reasons).
    1
  9480. Yup, just like LA saved money by defunding the fire department.
    1
  9481. If we did not punish things like obstruction of justice, then people would just obstruct justice all the time, making it much harder to prosecute the underlying actions. There is no rational argument against taking obstruction of justice seriously.
    1
  9482. I don't think that the models are predicting faster equatorial heating, so much as that the heat levels there will be higher than closer to the poles. Like Europe might become more tropical faster than the middle heats up, but as the middle heats up, it will shift from tropical to "unlivable." Europe might indeed heat up faster, or alternately even face an ice age, because a lot of its local climate is based on the Atlantic convection currents, which can get warped by climate change in ways that are complicated and difficult to predict.
    1
  9483. Anyone who thinks Joe Biden lies more often than his opponent is a poor judge of character.
    1
  9484.  @lorimenshew2033  Joe Biden is far more religious than the previous guy, but being religious does not mean forcing your own beliefs onto others. Joe Biden goes to church and prays regularly, but he does not insist that others do so. The US Constitution has a firm separation between church and state.
    1
  9485. @ Not enough though.
    1
  9486.  @CameronsCookingChannel  There's zero chance of the US debt getting paid off though. Anyone telling you that their goal is to pay off the US debt is either a fool, or thinks that you are enough of one to believe them. The current plans INCREASE the debt more than any previous administration.
    1
  9487.  @targgthewise2892  It would be hard for everyone. It would be the end of the American experiment and a return to monarchy.
    1
  9488.  @targgthewise2892  Biden never did any of the things Trump was impeached for. You're an example of exactly the sort of projection I was talking about. "Dear Leader did it, therefore his enemies must have done it too." That's not how it works. Biden only did the things Biden did, which were not the crimes that Trump did.
    1
  9489.  @Zach-ju5vi  You're projecting again. What you MEANT was that you could list dozens of Biden and Obama policies that positively effected Americans, and you can't say the same about Trump. But I get it, Faux News is a hell of a drug.
    1
  9490.  @kwick8693  Memories are short. We'll have to right like hell to keep Georgia in Democratic hands over the next election cycles. The Democratic base will trend towards apathy when it's not an actual full blown crisis on their doorsteps.
    1
  9491. Unfortunately, Republicans do not care. All they care about is power.
    1
  9492. This is what happens when people elect Republicans.
    1
  9493.  @chadbrooks9763  That's because you were born here and they already have you on record. They know that you are allowed to have a ballot and so you get one. That does not mean it would be so easy if you were not owed one.
    1
  9494.  @GeorgeBowling-te2xk  The last election has been thoroughly investigated by Republicans and they could find no evidence of non-citizens voting successfully.
    1
  9495.  @davidpowell3709  Republicans have been looking everywhere for evidence for years now, they just aren't finding any because it does not exist to find. The existing laws already prevent noncitizens from voting. People get turned away all the time, what doesn't happen is people getting away with it.
    1
  9496.  @madcowking  They don't need to check ID because it's not necessary. If someone tries to vote with a false identity then they will get caught and prosecuted. It's not worth it.
    1
  9497.  @davidpowell3709  They have been looking for evidence of it for decades now, they just can't find any because it does not actually happen. It's like Bigfoot, only with less evidence that it's real.
    1
  9498.  @kellyarnett4062  Well the question is, which matters more, that invalid votes are tossed, or that valid votes get counted? I think it's fair to say that what is most important is that all legal votes get counted. So if you make a change that catches a handful of votes that shouldn't be counted, but in the process it means that hundreds of legal voters are unable to get their votes counted, then can't we agree that this is a bad change? That's the trouble with a lot of the plans Republicans have had lately, they, at most, block a handful of votes that would never matter in any election, but in the process, hundreds, sometimes even thousands of legitimate voters are either unable to vote, or at least have to go through a lot more hassle to do so. Why? What is the benefit to that?
    1
  9499.  @RonGinnings-gi6je  If there is, then why does it not actually happen? If it existed, then wouldn't it happen?
    1
  9500.  @Garaceg  Tax identification numbers are for different purposes, they have no relevance to voting. You cannot vote simply because you have one. Same with driver's licenses. Just because you have some form of "official government ID" does not mean that you would be allowed to vote, you need to actually be a legal citizen to be put on the voter rolls. If anyone tried to vote as you in a different state, they would be caught and rejected. There are already systems in place to de-conflict voter rolls from different states. Ironically, it is often red states that opt out of participating in such systems, rather than blue states.
    1
  9501. Don't lose hope, it's not 50%, it's closer to 25%. The about half the country didn't vote.
    1
  9502.  @enidankavon  New spending does add to the debt, but that has nothing to do with the debt limit, which is based on covering existing debt obligations. Again, if you want to cut spending, that's part of the BUDGET process, not the debt limit process. Also, your analogy is flawed in the sense that the US is more than capable of taking on WAY more debt than we currently have. I mean, Japan's debt to GDP ratio is TWICE what ours is, and they're fine. We could probably have 3-4 times as much debt as we do without causing any real trouble, UNLESS we refuse to raise the debt limit and default on our existing obligations, in which case, the US and global economies would both crater. America's economy is reliant on everyone trusting the US to always pay our debts, to be STABLE. If we lose that, there's no coming back, and we go the way of Greece.
    1
  9503. @TryNDoxMe Wow, that's a hell of a gish gallop. I can tell you are throwing out all that irrelevant nonsense because you know that Toomey was lying and needed a distraction. I accept your surrender on the merits. gg.
    1
  9504. @TryNDoxMe Democrats have plenty of credibility with anyone who is credible. They only lack credibility to those on the right who are so thoroughly indoctrinated on Faux News that they reject reality and substitute it with their own.
    1
  9505.  @thatswhatshesaid.literally737  Executive orders can't appropriate money. They need funding to actually change policies more than they already have.
    1
  9506.  @crusaderACR  Their lights are kinda bluey. At least in the teal range.
    1
  9507. In theory, those could both be good things, but the House Idiot Caucus has some REALLY terrible ideas as to how to achieve those goals that would destroy the country in the process. It's like if you're in a car and it's driving too fast, maybe slow down a little, but maybe don't do a handbrake slide into the oncoming traffic to "slow down as fast as possible."
    1
  9508. It really depends on what the secret is about. I assume in the case of the person you're talking about, the thing that he wanted kept secret was something illegal. That has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
    1
  9509.  @taags  Well, it is a fact that people who get their news from Fox News are actually LESS informed about the world than people who watch no news at all. They create their own little echo bubbles in which everything they want to believe happens to be true, and everything they'd rather not believe is just "misinformation from the leftstream media." Of course, reality just keeps on moving without them.
    1
  9510.  @jamesgoode9246  I do not see a comment from you directed toward Thundersub. Perhaps Youtube removed it for content reasons?
    1
  9511.  @Vaul.  Yup, it's not surprising that bigots are rude people, it's sort of expected.
    1
  9512.  sambankman-zelensky9691  Nothing. You dig your own graves. It's not our responsibility to help.
    1
  9513.  sambankman-zelensky9691  No, that would be the worst thing for you. That is what you want, but not what you need.
    1
  9514.  sambankman-zelensky9691  I'm afraid not.
    1
  9515.  sambankman-zelensky9691  I don't need any help to do what you want me to do. You are bad at understanding how to be helpful.
    1
  9516.  @BigFootTheRealOne  Depends on if your dad is VP and you're trying to impress them.
    1
  9517. The House has had the opportunity to fix the border for months yet, but they choose not to, because they want to have chaos leading into the election. The President can only do so much when the GOP care more about winning elections than they do about border security.
    1
  9518. Yes, but that was over 100 years ago, this is happening today. The distant past is never an excuse for actions in the present.
    1
  9519.  @ioannisAss  Yup, it was ok back then, but we've moved past that sort of thing still being acceptable.
    1
  9520.  @ioannisAss  Why would we separate them against their will? They've been a part of America for over a hundred years.
    1
  9521.  @DavidHRyall  No, people that are vaccinated are less likely to get it than people who are unvaccinated, and nobody who is vaccinated gets long covid without first getting sick with covid from elsewhere.
    1
  9522.  @mantisfistproductions  "Curious," sure. . .
    1
  9523. Yes, remember, she could not tell whether he used his finger or his other thing. Whatever it was, it was too small to tell the difference.
    1
  9524.  @terrihilder8217  What's your point? She got justice eventually.
    1
  9525.  @terrihilder8217  Exactly. Guilty.
    1
  9526.  @terrihilder8217  Yup, found liable of sexual assault. Justice.
    1
  9527.  @terrihilder8217  Exactly, That's how it works. She got her justice when he got his.
    1
  9528. We didn't start the fire! It was always burning since the world's been turning!
    1
  9529.  @lgobi9649  Voting for Republicans is NEVER in your family's best interests. Unless you are a Trump kid. Kushner made 2 billion off the Saudis by voting for Trump.
    1
  9530.  @curtisleeyork1978  So you're saying that Putin would end the war and go home just because his puppet got back into the White House, or are you saying that Trump would surrender the country to him?
    1
  9531.  @darriuscole8544  If he takes out a $1B loan using a $1B building as collateral, then he would have $1B cash. But if he then SPENT that money, say applying it to cover a bond, then he would no longer have that cash, and would have negative equity on the property, so he would have nothing. $0B. It is fair to suspect that this has happened to some degree across all his assets, borrowing money against them, spending that money on things he cannot recover, and ending up with a net negative balance, or at least one much lower than "he owns these assets" might imply.
    1
  9532.  @PD-yd3fr  He was allowed to make a defense, he chose not to, so the judge moved the case forward. That was his own fault. And everyone knows that because it was in the news at the time. It's pretty common stuff and not at all an excuse here. Actual corporations are not bothered, because they do not do crimes. The only ones claiming to be bothered are those that enjoy courting the conservative base in public.
    1
  9533.  @PD-yd3fr And yet the banks he did business with won't loan him the bond money. Banks would tend to be pretty hesitant to admit to being swindled out of millions of dollars, it's not good for business. That doesn't mean that they actually do think everything was fine. As for the "empty office space," that's not a New York thing, it's happening in all cities (and in suburban office parks). It has nothing to do with politics, it's just capitalism. Employees got the option to work from home, and realized how much better that is for them, so business are having a hard time bringing employees back.
    1
  9534. Capitalism, basically.
    1
  9535. I mean, malls are dying, but only because audiences have moved more toward online shopping and big box stores. They are just inefficient as shopping experiences, since you need to travel physically to multiple stores, whereas big box stores have it all in one place, and online is even easier. This is why what malls remain need to justify their existence as social hubs, rather than as pure retail environments, yet it is the retail commerce that justifies building such a place at all. Yes, you want to simulate some amount of nature, but that's a small part of the overall experience. If the choice was between "remove all the fake trees" or "remove all the rides and food options and other entertainment value," the former would be the easy choice to make, but why choose?
    1
  9536.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Is that what he told you? And you believed him?
    1
  9537.  @Videogeek95  No, he means by turning it into a tyranny. That is what he's SAID he would do.
    1
  9538.  @J.Huff76  Why do you think someone on Youtube would necessarily create their own content? Does everyone you know have to be a little entertainer?
    1
  9539.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  I do know how to keep count, which is why I know that more wars were going on five years ago than are going on right now, you apparently just weren't able to keep count. It's fair to argue that the current war in Gaza was a direct result of Trump's policy decisions in the region, further antagonizing the Palestinian people. No new wars have started under Biden, and he pulled us out of Afghanistan.
    1
  9540.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Biden's created no division, any division is created by people who just refuse to listen to anyone but their golden calf. And no, more wars started in 2017 and 18 than in 2021 and 22 (data on later years isn't available yet). Sorry.
    1
  9541.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  It is a fact that the southern border is more secure. You can look up the stats. And it is a fact that inflation has been kept lower in the US than in the rest of the world. It would have been much higher with someone else in office over the past three years.
    1
  9542. True.
    1
  9543. Then we'd better stop Putin here so that it never gets that far.
    1
  9544.  @rickycoverrubias6176  That's what Neville Chamberlain said. It didn't work out well for him in the long run.
    1
  9545.  @Ian-vu4ij  They do not have a US constitution, but apparently they do not need one to be just as free as Americans.
    1
  9546.  @Ian-vu4ij  So then countries don't need the US constitution to have them, That was my point.
    1
  9547. How so? It's pretty straightforward. The Houthi are attacking Us and other merchants traveling through the Red Sea, the US has a responsibility to stop that.
    1
  9548. @ Increases to production costs increase the sale price. . . I really shouldn't have to explain this to an adult.
    1
  9549.  @mlawiltj923r  Yes, most wealthy people would prefer sales tax to income tax, but for anyone making less than a few million a year, it would end up costing them MUCH more to live.
    1
  9550. @ Sales taxes are only better for consumers than income taxes if they make more than a few million per year.
    1
  9551. @ Having some sales tax in and of itself isn't terrible, the US already does too, just mostly on a state level. I was just arguing that you can't then use that to lower income taxes, because for sales taxes to pick up the revenues from income taxes, it would triple or more the price of anything you bought. Basically, some consumption tax is good, but it is inherently regressive, since poorer people need to spend most of what they make just to get by, while the wealthy spend less of what they make on necessities.
    1
  9552. Nah, they don't mind people sneaking in, they just mind people trying to leave.
    1
  9553.  @bluelagoon1875  People say the same about The Lord of the Rings." They are probably more accurate than you are.
    1
  9554.  @BWolf00  Ok, so let's break down the various things that you've gotten wrong here. There have definitely not been "40-50% breakthrough cases," at least not in terms of serious illness. Less than 15,000 vaccinated Americans have been hospitalized in total, even though more unvacicnated people than that die each month. More unvaccinated people are in the ICU yesterday than have EVER ended up in the hospital after being vaccinated. The vaccines you listed are no more effective than the covid ones, and outbreaks have been becoming more frequent with those diseases with the rise of anti-vaxxers, because herd immunity is a necessary component of an effective immunization policy. So long as people are encountering unvaccinated people in their daily lives, the virus will continue to spread. The more people get vaccinated, the less it spreads.
    1
  9555.  @BWolf00  Or, you can just agree that you are misunderstanding what the definition has always meant.
    1
  9556.  @thedeadbaby  And in sixty years people will say the same about the covid vaccines, but if people had said "smallpox vaccine, well, I have natural immunity, I don't need it," then we would still have smallpox going around today. Vaccines are only as effective as people taking them. 20,000 Americans died of covid last month, almost every one of them unvaccinated. The covid vaccines have saved over a hundred thousand lives so far, and would have saved tens of thousands more if everyone had just gotten vaccinated. That is what matters.
    1
  9557.  @Blackandwhitecat-u9v  I'm worried about the various causes of human death, but covid is a pandemic that is currently a massive cause of death and is easily PREVENTABLE, so that's why it bothers me that people are actively DEFENDING covid from harm.
    1
  9558.  Joe Blows  Yes, this is worse than polio. The only people "brainwashed" are those promoting vaccine hesitancy or "just ignore the lion in the room" attitudes.
    1
  9559.  @BWolf00  Well it's not a huge concern if someone tests positive for covid but has no serious illness from it. 20,000 Americans died last month alone because they were unvaccinated. If we could get more people vaccinated and prevent those deaths, there's no reason not to. The purpose of the vaccine is to prevent serious illness and death. And of course the unvaccinated have a bearing on the effectiveness of a vaccine. Again, herd immunity is a vital component. The more unvaccinated people are in a community, the more the virus can spread within it. NO vaccine is 100% effective at preventing spread of a virus on an individual level. It is only due to the multiplicative effect of the entire community being vaccinated that the effectiveness becomes significant. This is why vaccine mandates exist, because there is no way that one single person can "do what's right for them" and become immune to viruses, it takes an entire community effort. And yes, it is possible for herd immunity to be achieve without a vaccine, but with a disease like covid that process would involve millions of dead Americans. There is ABSOLUTELY NO POINT to taking that long and deadly route when we ALREADY have a vaccine. It's like your house is on fire, and only one room is burning, and the fire department shows up ready to put it out, and you say "no, no, let's just let the fire burn itself out. I prefer the natural solution to your 'water.'" Yes, the fire will go out eventually, but only after a LOT of completely avoidable destruction.
    1
  9560.  @WYO_Cowboy_Joe  Freedom for the sake of freedom is pure ego and hubris. That is NOT what this country was founded on. If it were, the founders would not have made laws in the first place. The founders believed in responsibility, the founders believed in rational limitations on freedom. George Washington required every one of his soldiers to vaccinate for small pox, and at the time the treatment to do so was FAR less understood and dangerous than the covid vaccines. You do not support freedom, you support freeDUMB.
    1
  9561.  @davesunhammer4218  The vaccines have already received full testing before emergency approval. Nobody is forced into testing them, they were all volunteers.
    1
  9562.  @AdamTMJester  Twenty times more people died of covid last year than die during a normal flu season. You can talk about "it's not so bad" all you like, but you can't dispute the fact that 20,000 Americans died that DIDN'T HAVE TO if they had just gotten vaccinated. Or if you don't care about human life, just think of the massive cost to YOUR tax dollars from covering their medical costs. Unvaccinated people cost BILLIONS of dollars over this summer alone, and would not have if they had been vaccinated. I have no idea why people push anti-vax arguments outside of a genuine desire to see as many people as possible die. There is NO rational reason to "be skeptical" at this point. Any reasons people might have are entirely irrational.
    1
  9563.  @doodoobutter4406  It's the nature of Youtube, apparently.
    1
  9564.  @BWolf00  Ok, overly simplified example. You have a room with 20 people in it, and over the course of an evening, people will move around the room, talking with different people, such that not everyone talked to everyone else directly, but most of them talk to someone who has. And let's also imagine that we have a very rapidly acting virus that is communicable almost instantly after infection, and has a fairly high infection rate on its own, since this is just a simulation. Now if none of them are vaccinated and one of them enters the room with an infection, he talks to a few groups of people directly over the course of the night, those people talk to others, and very quickly almost everyone in that room has been infected. Now in a second attempt,half of the people have been vaccinated with a vaccine that is maybe 50% effective at preventing spread, one infected person enters. He talks to the same people, but of those, only 75% of them get infected (half of the vaccinated population). They mingle with other guests, but still in each group only 75% get infected, so only 75% of them spread to others. The chances are higher of at least a few people in that group never interacting with anyone who had been infected, so their own immunity is irrelevant. Now in a third attempt, everyone is vaccinated. He talks to that first group, only half of them get infected, so when they split up to mingle, half the groups they talk to don't get any infected people. By the end of the night, a large portion of the room would never encounter a person who had the infection, because each time it "bounced" from one group to the next, there would be fewer people infected. And now let's add "time" to the mix, let's say that since this virus is so rapidly infecting, it's also rapidly killed off, it only lasts in each person for half an hour, so people who were infectious early in the evening have long since stopped being infectious by the end. But let's also say that you can get reinfected by two hours later if you encounter the virus again. In this scenario, Group A would all be infected, same as normal, because the virus would just keep bouncing around. Group B would also likely see a lot of bouncing, less, but still a lot. Group C would see significantly less though, because each "bounce" would have less people in it, and by the time people from earlier in the night met up with people who were infected in the middle, it would have worn off from them. It's highly likely that by the end of the night, nobody in that group would have the virus active. Of course this is a sped up version of how a virus moves around within a community, but the basic rules apply, they would just happen over months rather than hours. Worst case, the more vaccinated people you have, the less of them die. Medium and highly likely case, the higher percentage of the population is vaccinated, the less the virus bounces around, and the more people in the group never come into contact with it. Best case, this happens often enough that the virus dies out completely, with a period of no matching pairs of "actively infectious" and "able to be infected" people coming together. This is how herd immunity functions. The more immunized people exist within a community, the less a virus spreads within it, beyond just each individual member's personal immunity.
    1
  9565.  @jesan733  It's incorrect to say that there's "no alternative to capitalism." Now some people view capitalism as broadly as "any system in which you can buy and sell goods," which is a bit silly, of course those will likely stick around in some form, but it's always worth discussing how much flexibility capitalism is allowed to have in a positive society. It's not about removing all aspects of capitalism entirely, it's about deciding where to prune to achieve the best results.
    1
  9566.  @jesan733  No, thousands of particular rules for different products is often best, because that means that each is specifically tailored, rather than one size fits all. The main problem with regulation in general though is that there is often one side that opposes any regulation, and therefore getting any passed is a significant undertaking and often involves compromising it to the point that it does not do what it was originally intended for. But then you don't have the option to fix it later, so your only options are to "keep using this flawed regulation" or "remove it completely and go Wild West." In situations where you have one industry where they added one regulation here and another there and it adds up to hundreds of regulations that get complicated, would it be better to just streamline those down to a smaller number that handle the same goals or at least are better written to cooperate? Sure, but if one party opposes ALL regulation, then it becomes impossible to get such a change passed, the only thing they would agree to is removing all the old ones, not replacing them with something better. Pretty much every problem America faces today can be traced back to conservatives blocking the known solutions.
    1
  9567. No, they blame Trump for what Trump does. Trump hates being held accountable for his actions.
    1
  9568.  @tonygonzales9147  Attack on Titan, apparently.
    1
  9569.  @hymns4ever197  That depends, do you watch Faux News?
    1
  9570.  @robertkroberjr.157  Yup, Trump wasted a lot of money on that rust pile.
    1
  9571.  @clarkw4028  I haven't said anything that was untrue. Nobody lied to me, or at least, nobody got away with trying.
    1
  9572.  @melgillham462  The term "republic" has nothing to do with individual liberty. You could have a republic with no individual liberty or all sorts of non-republics with more individual liberty than the US currently has. I don't know where you got the idea that the two were synonymous. We currently live in a republic, which is a representative democracy. I think when you say "democracy" you are referring to a direct democracy, which is different.
    1
  9573.  @Balnisgoofyaf  They pop up on my Youtube feed sometimes. That doesn't mean I actually trust anything they say.
    1
  9574.  @Balnisgoofyaf  I don't know, he's hard to read, but I don't think he's a MAGA supporter. You might be right though. We can't let them regain power or they'd do exactly what you said.
    1
  9575. It's almost like when people shout random questions at someone as they're heading someplace important, they don't catch the question being asked. I can't think of a President in recent memory who answered every question shouted at them.
    1
  9576.  @Bolsonaro_em_Haia  Not on their own, but if it's an explicit condition of the loan, then they have a serious choice to make. Groups like the IMF need to insist on it, "we aren't going to loan you money if you're going to spend a huge chunk of what you already have on bombs."
    1
  9577.  @henrybn14ar  The UN.
    1
  9578.  @reddragon100  And?
    1
  9579.  @reddragon100  This is my question.
    1
  9580. People need to stop expecting Putin to be able to stop the hackers operating out of Russia, he's impotent to do anything about them. If this were in America, we would have those guys cleaned up within a week or two, but America is a much stronger and more competent nation than Russia, with much stronger leadership. The leadership in Russia is extremely flaccid, Putin just can't be expected to have even basic control over what happens within his borders. Perhaps if Russia gets stronger leadership they could manage something like cyber-security, but I doubt they will be able to any time soon.
    1
  9581. I love how even Forbes is like "Vance and the Trump campaign are such a wreck that Walz should have hit them harder."
    1
  9582.  @chrisgriffith9252  But the important thing to keep in mind is that not all parents DO have the best interests of their children in mind, and in some cases what the parents think is in their children's best interests, they are wrong about. So the ultimate arbiter of what is right or wrong for a child should never be "whatever their parent wants." IF there is a situation in which what the parent wants would be harmful to the child, it is the responsibility of the society around them to protect that child from their parent's intentions. That is the entire point here, the school district's rules required that parents be involved, whether that was in the child's interest or not. Without that rule, which is the goal of the lawsuit, teachers would have the discretion to avoid involving the parents if they determined that it would not be in the child's interest. Keep in mind that if the child wanted the parent to know, then there is nothing preventing them from telling their parent, but nothing should force the teacher to tell the parent if they do not believe that is for the best. As for larger societal implications, if a parent is wrong, if a parent is cruel, if a parent is even just misguided, then bullying the child into listening to them no matter what does not lead to a better society. At best it would only lead to an authoritarian society, at worst it leads them to reject ALL forms of authority, since they have been told "even though this person was in the wrong, you MUST listen to them anyway," and that is a patently stupid idea that only a stupid child would accept without question. Parents need to EARN their child's respect, not demand it. Now as for your deflection, no, your views on trangender children are bigoted nonsense, and an excellent example of the reason why these teachers and their freedom to act outside of the parent's wishes is absolutely necessary to protect children.
    1
  9583.  @chrisgriffith9252  Oh, no, I'm no Republican groomer. I oppose Republican groomers.
    1
  9584.  @chrisgriffith9252  Sure, but so too are bad teachers. If you think about it, a lot of parents don't even want to be parents, they just ended up in a situation where they had a kid, whereas teachers actually went to school specifically to be capable of teaching children, so odds are, they are much more invested in doing a good job of it. Parents that harm their children certainly are the exception, but they do exist, and that is why teachers need the flexibility to handle each parent as they come. If a teacher believes that a parent is mature enough to discuss their trans child in a responsible manner, then I'm sure that teacher would not hesitate to tell the parent, because getting the parent on board would help the child immensely. But if the teacher believes that telling the parent would result in that parent bullying the child into submission, then it would be irresponsible of them to tell that parent, wouldn't it? That's the point of this suit.
    1
  9585.  @chrisgriffith9252  No adult ever "encourages" a child to be trans. Either the child is trans or not, you can't change whether they are or not. All you can do is support their decision or bully them out of it, and what we want is adults in their lives, ideally, their parents, to be supportive, as that leads to the best overall outcomes. If the parents are not likely to be supportive, then it would be harmful to the child to involve them. NOBODY is encouraging any form of "mutilations."
    1
  9586.  @ncard00  This can help, but it's still inefficient to be moving massive populations of people back and forth, when they could just live closer to their destination.
    1
  9587. I think democrats would be more likely to find both countries on a map than republicans would. Maps are too hard for most of them.
    1
  9588. Putin escalates things constantly. Ukraine needs to fight back. Why are people always whining when they do? Is it because they are on the Russian payroll?
    1
  9589.  @robertrynard7397  Possibly. It really mostly does depend on how cheaply a functioning android can be produced, but I kind of have the feeling that most major industrial automation will take place before "affordable androids" are on the market. Another factor here is industrial consolidation, like mom&pop stores becoming Walmarts becoming Amazon warehouses, a hundred stores in one. Likewise, restaurants will likely consolidate, like a KFC/Tacobell, so that a single facility with a single largely automated kitchen could service a dozen drive-through windows and fill the needs of every fast food customer within 10-20 miles, and the food would be just as good as we get today. At least, they could be.
    1
  9590.  @robertrynard7397  The problem though is that most businesses already pay below the living wage for lots of low-skill labor jobs, which means that the state is already picking up part of the cost of keeping those workers alive. So the question is, would it be in the best interests of the state to jack up minimum wage to a livable wage, so that everyone who works 40 hours a week can survive on that labor alone, even if that means that businesses would cut half or more of their current low-skill employees and automate them? Or would it be better to continue to allow businesses to pay a poverty wage so that they employ as many people as possible, even if the state is actually covering most of their living expenses and they are basically working for no good reason? Personally I feel that if a robot CAN do a job, then it is better for everyone involved that the robot do the job and that the human find something else to occupy his time, while his needs are met either way. Require that every job pay a living wage or nothing, but that the profits of getting rid of employees would be offset by a higher tax burden. And I mean a lot of this is already happening, Taco Bell just came out with a two story, four drive-in bay test store in California that can pump through customers. It's currently got a standard human staff, but a building like that would be much easier to "factory-ize" than a standard one. And plenty of grocery and online retailers have built their massive warehouse systems with some variety of bot that moves products around the place, and all the humans do is pick up the item at the end of the chain and put it in the shipping box, a step that would be easier to automate than a general android. You don't even have to replace every human, but right now, you could either have 100+ small stores in a town that each carry niche goods, run by 250+ employees over the course of a week, OR you can have one big box online warehouse delivering the same products to the same customers, and it would only require a dozen or two humans managing a bunch of automated processes.
    1
  9591.  @robertrynard7397  Well, like a modern grocery, they have automated teller machines that people use themselves instead of a human-run checkout lane. That allows a dozen customers to check out with only one human monitoring the situation, instead of at least 3-4 tellers to manage the same customers in the same time, and there is still room to scale that situation up. Conversely, a modern grocery post-covid often allows online curbside pick-up, in which you pick the foods you want, then a human worker wanders the shelves with a cart, picking items then sending them out front for pick-up. A humanoid robot could do this, but it would be inefficient. The more efficient system would be to just skip the store entirely and just ship directly from a warehouse sized space, where non-humanoid robots roam the shelves. Even inside a grocery store, it would be less efficient to have a biped humanoid robot pushing a cart, than to have a cart-shaped robot, like a giant R2-D2, that roams the aisles and picks out the items people have ordered. Designing a factory process to do a thing does take some development work, but for a multi-billion corporation, you only have to do that work once, and then make minor tweaks over time to change menu items. The time and cost this would take would be equivalent to the training time spent on human workers. This doesn't mean that every McDonalds would switch to automated over night, but it does mean that some of the new McDonalds being built would be, and then over time as old ones are closed or remodeled anyway, they could choose to invest in a couple hundred thousand in new kitchen equipment, to offset half a million a year in staffing costs over the next 10+ years. If you're going to be buying new kitchen components, then buying ones that can work themselves would not cost that much more than buying the normal kind, and less than buying the normal kind AND a handful of humanoid robots to operate them.
    1
  9592. I would like to see someone (most likely NASA), make a small scale "Bolo station." It would be one crew compartment that is maybe 3-5m cubed, then a long high tension line to a central pivot point, and then another long line out to either a second, equivalent facility, or just empty ballast, maybe a spent piece of space junk or whatever they can get a hold of. The point would be that it would be equally balanced across the center point, and then you would just spin the whole thing up so that the crew compartment would be spinning fast enough that it could provide 1G. Ideally the central area would have a "spool" of wire that it could play out in both directions, allowing the diameter of the system to be changed at will, and they could run basic human functionality testing at any combination of speed and distance. Could you get 1G at a diameter of 50m that people would be comfortable with? Would a 100m diameter be more comfortable? Would 0.5G be better? Or would 0.3G be "good enough" without causing any noticeable problems? You could test out all the possible combinations by adjusting the line and speeding up or slowing down the rotation, without having to build entire facilities for each test. The only tricks would be in having a strong enough wire that you could fully trust it at those stresses, and also making sure that both sides moved in perfect sync, otherwise it could wobble off course.
    1
  9593. Daddy Putin will be mad at Trump.
    1
  9594. Blockade Iceland's harbors to prevent their importation of graphics cards! :D
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  9595. The US is the only nation that NATO has responded to an Article 5 call for assistance. They literally came to help when called. NATO is not a part of the Red Sea situation because nobody has asked them to be, although several of our NATO allies are participating independently.
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  9596. I bet there are people who would read that and think that "100%" means to take ALL the money from them, rather than it just being slightly more than 60%, because they don't know how percentages work.
    1
  9597. Nothing, so why bring it up in a discussion about antisemitism?
    1
  9598. You left out "Actual Love." You only described Love as a way that a villain might abuse the love of a subordinate to get their way, but really plan to betray them in some way. But a villain can actually love a minion, and treat them well, as a romantic partner, while both are involved in being villains to others. This would sort of veer into "shared motivations" territory, but is still worth keeping in mind. Some of the best villains are human enough to still care about some people.
    1
  9599.  @Misty25939  It was Trump that refused to drop out.
    1
  9600. This is what you get for asking voters what they honestly think, answers you don't want to hear.
    1
  9601. Why didn't it cause the fall of the Republic the last several times this has happened?
    1
  9602.  @mr.s9783  It was packed over the last administration when McConnell never had a vote on Garland and rushed Barrett's nomination through.
    1
  9603.  @KM-zn3lx  Lol, what?
    1
  9604. That's because the Republican party is in the wrong more often, so it makes more sense to break with them. Really the question should be "why don't they break with the party more often?"
    1
  9605.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  There are plenty of serious crimes to convict Trump over, they don't need to play with this sort of nonsense. Trump does $40K bribe scandals for brunch.
    1
  9606. No credible canddiates are running against the sitting president. There were also no Republican debates in 2020.
    1
  9607.  @berganmay  He is currently the Republican front runner. if Anyone has TDS, it's them.
    1
  9608.  @melissadeloach8503  Nobody's running against Biden either, at least nobody more credible than those running on the Republican side in 2020.
    1
  9609.  @berganmay  This argument will make sense the moment that Trump no longer has influence over the Republican party. Not a second sooner. Good luck with that.
    1
  9610.  @liberalismisaids9564  "Defund the police," no.
    1
  9611. Why single out black women in particular? Shouldn't all women have that right?
    1
  9612.  @elizabethmuhleisen357  Yeah, unfortunately, a lot of people are indoctrinated on Faux News, which tells them that the nonsense they are saying is actually true, so they firmly believe it, rather than looking into the issues themselves and realizing the truth.
    1
  9613. Exactly, because they are understaffed. That's why Biden increased their staffing, so that they'd have the resources to go after the rich.
    1
  9614.  @bsrcat1  Well yeah, the oil industry sucks, but that's a whole separate topic from the discussion on sanctions. Again though, the US sanctions on Venezuela were due to the politics of the country. Now it's possible that if those sanctions had been lifted, the oil companies would still avoid buying and processing the oil that comes from there, for whatever reasons they may have, but that isn't currently the primary reason. I also don't believe that there is oil so sour that it cannot be refined into something that would meet the same clean air standards as any other type of oil. The only difference would be the cost of processing it to that degree, which might mean that a gallon of ready-to-go gasoline that came from a barrel of Venezuelan oil might cost. . . $1 or more higher than a gallon of gas from sweet crude, I don't know, some amount that the businesses would write off as "too much hassle. . . for now." Those sorts of problems tend to go away when other factors become an issue, like how shale oil is way too much hassle unless the price of oil climbs high enough. Also, we have a solution to oil. Electric cars (or public transit, if you want to push further than that). I have a gas car because I drive very little, but if I drove regularly, I would definitely get an electric at this point, and they are only becoming cheaper and more effective over time. The only way out is through.
    1
  9615.  @bsrcat1  A lot of American oil has sulfer in it too, gulf oil, Alaskan oil, Canadian oil, etc. It is possible to process out. It may not be cost effective to do so all the time, but it could be cost effective depending on shifts in demand. I'm just saying that currently the issue is more political than it is chemical. Electric cars would not have been practical in the 70s, the battery technology was not there yet. If you went to GM in the 70s and said "here's 100 billion dollars, make an electric car," then by the 80s there still probably wouldn't be a car that could get 50 miles to a charge. There are plenty of green technologies that we could have been pursuing faster, and perhaps it would have been possible to have reached today's point by 2000 or so, but EVs still would have been a hurdle. Supply chain disruptions are wild, but they are an inevitable part of an efficient economy. It is better for an economy to run efficiently over several decades and then have one or two years of chaotic supply chain disruptions than it is to have decades of inefficient production. I mean, it's better to be spending 10% more for manufactured goods for a couple of years than to spend 20% more for them every year because they are produced domestically rather than in cheaper labor markets. There is no effective way for the US to be a major manufacturer anymore, that cannot be our economy.
    1
  9616.  @censorshipleadstothenwo1237  Obstruction of the investigation. Joe Biden unknowingly had a handful of documents. The instant he became aware that he had such documents, he TURNED THEM OVER, and authorized the FBI to do a search of his property to make sure he had them all. With Trump, he knowingly took HUNDREDS of documents, stored them improperly in a resort that was OPEN TO THE PUBLIC, was ORDERED to return them by NARA, REFUSED to turn them over on multiple occasions, moved them around so that he could claim that he'd turned them over when he had not, swore that he had turned them over when he had not, and then they had to get a warrant to search his property, which is how they found all these documents that he had retained. If you can't spot the differences in those two situations, then congratulations, you've earned your sheep badge.
    1
  9617.  @Godzilla-r9d  There is no evidence whatsoever of Joe Biden being a criminal. There is only evidence that his son did some illegal stuff, which he pled guilty to. Nobody voted for Hunter Biden, and Hunter was never a member of Biden's white house, unlike Trump's children. Why shouldn't we pivot to the actual serious criminals?
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  9618.  @brianmclaughlin4419  Rupert's really done a number on his audience.
    1
  9619. Yeah, Trump is too soft. He's used to only going on media that knows how to cup him in just the right ways. He can't take it when the audience is not friendly to him, evne though that represents over half the country.
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  9620.  @DDENZY  Depends on the context. What Republicans call "reverse racism" often isn't racism at all.
    1
  9621.  @bonanzatime  The color of his skin has nothing to do with it, and also, the word you're thinking of is "moot." If someone's point was mute, then you'd never know it.
    1
  9622.  @bonanzatime  Wow. That's extra dumb.
    1
  9623. no, they did not act under the federal whistleblower act. They could have, they chose not to do that. Just "going to congress to report it" is not actually protected under the whistleblower protections if you don't follow proper procedure.
    1
  9624.  @BWolf00  He was better able to correct for it when he was younger. His coping method is to shift to a different word instead of struggling with the one he was stuttering, which you can detect in his earlier speeches if you look for it, but as he's aged, the "other word" is less likely to make sense, so it's become more noticeable.
    1
  9625. That's certainly what the Dominion lawsuit made clear. Faux News is shameless in spreading lies and their demonic agenda, so long as it gets the bigots to show up every night.
    1
  9626.  @berealz9701  Not as bad as Texas, at least.
    1
  9627.  @Fredflinstone23  "You're."
    1
  9628.  @jamesdoakes4956  Only 1% of the total bill's costs are going overseas in any way, and it's all to things that are useful to American interests. Foreign aid is often the most effective use of American spending, it saves money on wars and helps to bring benefits to US business. The other portions of the bill that are outside that "9%" solve exactly the sorts of problems that you're highlighting. They increase and extend unemployment benefits through august, they help to fund various small businesses and state governments so that they don't have to lay people off, they help provide various services around the country that otherwise people would have to spend out of pocket to do the same things, etc. That's the point, the direct cash payout is only a small part of what this bill is doing for covid relief.
    1
  9629.  @tinadoty5406  The Constitution says that it IS their job to make laws. That is the entire point of the Legislative Branch. And yes, We the People ARE in control of the government, WE are the ones that elect them to represent us, and to pass the laws that we believe would benefit us. Over 75% of the country, over 64% of Republicans support this bill, WE the PEOPLE want this.
    1
  9630. @John “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government”, and the people did that in November when they elected Joe Biden and the current crop of Congressmen. When the people want something different than that, they will elect different people.
    1
  9631.  @craigcherry876  They are passing a bill that only helps Americans. It is this bill. Less than 1% of the money in the bill is going overseas, and that money is going to support US interests in those countries.
    1
  9632.  @craigcherry876  If the money was given out only in cash, then yeah, it would be $15K, but giving out cash is not the only, or the best way to help Americans through this. The other funding in the bill is for helping things that Americans need, like keeping schools running, keeping public transit running, helping businesses to keep people employed, etc. As they say, "give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day, invest in building a thriving local fishing industry and he can have solid employment and a livable wage for years to come."
    1
  9633.  @xeverlastingxchaosx9679  "Them" are the Republicans.
    1
  9634.  @thatman4752  No, I'm just prone ot typos.
    1
  9635.  @Bears9McMahon  Wrong again, stop drinking the red Kool-Aid and actually do your research.
    1
  9636.  @soulife8383  Seeing the bill being read is not needed to know what's in it. You can read the bill yourself if you like, or find plenty of summaries of it from much more reliable sources than the one you're referencing there. "reading the bill out loud" is just "wasting everyone's time."
    1
  9637.  @dudemynameisdebo  "Homie If I was speaker of the house when Mitch said he was for stimulus I would have called his bluff given him a bill and he would of opposed it lol. " They tried that. He opposed it.
    1
  9638.  @drawingdead9025  We are a democratic republic, which is a form of democracy. We are not a direct democracy, but we are a democracy nonetheless. And the fascists were the ones who invaded the Capital on January 6th, attempting to install their own fuherer over the duly elected President of the United States. Don't forget it.
    1
  9639.  @drawingdead9025  Of course the schools lost money during covid. They still had to pay the same staff (unless they laid them off, which we don't want them to do, so we give them money so they don't have to), and they then also had to renovate the buildings so that they would be as covid-safe as possible (new AC units, maybe outdoor class set-ups, plexiglass sheeting, masks and etc.), they need to improve broadband access so that students can better distance-learn, and then you have to figure in that state and local governments had greatly reduced tax revenue over 2020 than they had budgeted for, so if the school system's budget was say $20m, and the government only took in $12m of that, then they would need money from outside to cover the difference. The current bill has around $170m that is being sent directly to schools, and then additional funds being sent to states that might go to schools, if that is where the most need is.
    1
  9640.  @erichamilton8952  "Only a dumbass would pass a bill with out knowing exactly what is in it." That's why it is the senator's job to read the bill first, not the Senate Clerks'.
    1
  9641.  @drawingdead9025  The funding will be going more to red states than blue states, and blue states like NY and CA will be the ones paying for that. You're welcome. This bill is not "baling out pensions," it is covering the massive budget shortfalls caused directly by covid. So many people out of work, so many businesses not open, state revenues dropped massively, and they need a cash infusion to make up for that, especially, the red states, which are not as good with their budgeting as the blue ones.
    1
  9642.  @drawingdead9025  "Natural disasters are not 'on the rise' unless you redefine the term 'natural disasters'." There are more wildfires, floods, droughts, hurricanes, and blizzards than there typically are, unless you would like to redefine natural disasters to not include those.
    1
  9643.  @tonycollinsworth7393  "Yeah $2 trillion and lesson 9% of it goes to the American people that’s a hell of a bill that sounds to me like Bull" 99% of it goes to the American people, you dropped a "9."
    1
  9644.  @drawingdead9025  95%+ of the bill is about covid relief to the people. That is the reality. Anything else you may have heard on the matter is fiction. The 9% of the bill that is direct cash to people is not the only form of covid relief the American people need right now.
    1
  9645.  Grampa Genuity  From the way you're talking, it sounds like whatever sources of news you are using are far less reliable than the mainstream media. Just because something you hear aligns with what you want to believe doesn't make it more true than something you don't want to believe. "citizen journalists" are no less likely to lie to you and serve their own interests than mainstream media, and far less accountable when they do. Be skeptical, sure, check the facts from original sources if you like. But don't eat garbage just because it's fed to you in a way that looks appealing.
    1
  9646.  @drawingdead9025  "Cut everything but actual 'relief' to people and you can get it passed with 100% GOP support. Every single democrat voted against an amendment to do just that. " Which amendment was that? Who proposed it?
    1
  9647.  @mikehunt6747  " Democrats still can’t get over Trump being elected." Republicans still won't admit that Trump lost, How sad is that?
    1
  9648.  @dudemynameisdebo  "They didn't he asked for a standalone bill to send checks to Americans which was a Bluff Pelosi should have called." No, that just would have been petty gamesmanship. The American people needed to get more than that, they needed the full package that was being proposed, so if they'd just passed the checks, that might be a minor media victory for Democrats, but it would be a loss for the American people, and they did get what they needed after another couple weeks.
    1
  9649.  @dudemynameisdebo  And yet they are delivering on exactly the sorts of things that I would want them to deliver on if they were wanting to help me, so if the result is the same, why should I care how they got there?
    1
  9650. Apparently she's in good company, since most of the people in the comments who are sure they know where it is, are wrong.
    1
  9651. There were plenty of black lesbians before her, and it's not accurate to claim that there is a human being in that womb. It's not a human being until it is born.
    1
  9652. If the ethnic Serbs want to be in Serbia, why don't they just. . . go to Serbia? It's right there. People are hiking all across Central America just to get into America, and they're getting kicked back out. If people want to move to Serbia, I don't think it would be any problem. I don't see how any of this would work out for them in any other way.
    1
  9653. The problems you list are ONLY problems because the system forces people into those more risky attempts to enter the country. If we had better clean and legal paths of entry, then none of that would be happening.
    1
  9654.  @chullx2219  Their parents were alive at the time though. If the rest of them don't want Hamas in charge, then they should do something about that. How is that Israel's problem? Again, Israel is bombing Hamas, not civilians. If any civilians gets harmed during that, it's Hamas's fault for throwing them in front of the bombs.
    1
  9655. Yup, God is right there with Biden in supporting the trans community. He doesn't mind at all.
    1
  9656.  @JonahFisher-oc8mp  Sure, but the point is, it won't happen this year, or 50 years from now, or 100 years from now, or a thousand years from now either. The ONE thing Jesus had to say on the matter is for you to not worry about when it.
    1
  9657.  user-ce2np6se4h Exactly my point.
    1
  9658.  user-ce2np6se4h  Exactly my point.
    1
  9659.  user-ce2np6se4h  Exactly.
    1
  9660.  user-ce2np6se4h  Agreed, this is my point.
    1
  9661.  @coreyb9240  I didn't ask why Senators should read the bill, I asked why it should be read aloud on the Senate floor. Senators should be able to read the bill for themselves, on their own time, like we can, or, if they are Republican Senators, they could have a staffer read it to them, but that's no reason to take up the entire Senate's time.
    1
  9662.  @AClRCLEOFLlGHT  Wow, you cram a lot of assumption into two paragraphs. I'm just asking why Ron Johnson can't read well enough to read the bill himself. I mean if I wanted to read it, or you wanted to read it, we could just read it, why does he need a Senate clerk to read it for him and waste everyone's time. Is there something he's not telling us?
    1
  9663.  @AClRCLEOFLlGHT  People who changed their votes didn't change it because they came to some revelation after hearing it, they did so because it gave the opposition time to whip votes and pull elbows and convince people to change their mind. Most people do not even listen to the bill being read, including Ron Johnson himself. That is not the point of the reading, the point of the reading is to waste time and bore everyone. Anyone with practical objections to the content of the bill could READ it themselves, unless they are Republicans, in which case they could have a staffer read it to them without wasting the Senate's time. Bills should be long, they are important, and intentionally short bill just lead to loopholes and legal challenges, because you said a thing that could be taken multiple ways, rather than making it perfectly clear what it does, and does not mean. If we're going to be spending $1.9 Trillion taxpayer dollars, I expect the bill to be clear on how that money is to be spent.
    1
  9664.  @Youtubecensorsrepublicans  How so?
    1
  9665.  @Youtubecensorsrepublicans  You actually believe that you're right about that, don't you? That's so sad. Tips have ALWAYS been taxed, she never cast any vote on the matter. What would lead you to believe that she did? Who lied to you about that, and why would you believe them?
    1
  9666.  @RaoulasaurasRex  The science does not indicate that, it would be a statement of faith, not science.
    1
  9667.  @hagestad  Who told you that tiers were a bigger problem than emissions? Did they have black stained hands?
    1
  9668. Yeah, they never learn. They just keep sending money to Republicans.
    1
  9669.  @KenJackson_US  Generally speaking, they are far less gullible than Republicans. I mean, they don't vote for Trump.
    1
  9670.  @steventyler3582  But it's important to remember that that "estimate" is in the minds of crazy people, not based on any actual numbers.
    1
  9671. I like how you put "ban" in quotes, as though it isn't legitimately a ban. Peak Faux News, guys.
    1
  9672.  @b3notafraid960  That's impossible. Any sound can be replicated using electric methods.
    1
  9673.  @b3notafraid960  If it's just an audio file playing through a standard speaker, sure. But if you purpose build a speaker unit to have the same acoustic properties as an engine revving, then there's no reason it can't produce identical sound. All a speaker is is a membrane being vibrated, but if you get the size and material properties of that membrane right, and put it in a shaped enclosure like a horn, then the sounds it produces would be identical to the sounds hat an engine makes, including the volume and "feeling" of it. and I wasn't saying it would necessarily be worth having, that's up tot he driver to decide, I'm just pointing out that it's possible.
    1
  9674.  @b3notafraid960  Well the reason it "can't be real" is because the real version is harmful to the environment. If a fake version can provide the exact same experience, without causing as much harm, then why not go that route? Personally, I don't need that sort of engine noise, but if people want it, they should get it.
    1
  9675.  @b3notafraid960  Oh, so you're a crazy person. Say no more.
    1
  9676.  @b3notafraid960  But that would still involve burning diesel fuel, which is still bad, unless you're a crazy person that doesn't believe that that's bad because the crazy says not to. Yes, CO2 is good for plants, but it's bad for animals, and we are animals, not plants. The plants don't need any more CO2 than we were getting before cars existed.
    1
  9677.  @b3notafraid960  But that would still involve burning diesel fuel, which is still bad.Yes, CO2 is good for plants, but it's bad for animals, and we are animals, not plants. The plants don't need any more CO2 than we were getting before cars existed, and that excess is what's bad.
    1
  9678.  @b3notafraid960  Diesel fuel may be more efficient than gasoline, but it is still less efficient than not using any fossil fuel. The point is to not use any, at least in areas where we can help it. Cars are an area where we can help it. Comparing one gas to another is meaningless. What matters is the effect they have. The amount of CO2 we have now is at a level that hasn't been seen since well before humans existed, and most life on Earth is not adapted to live in that world. I don't know who you've been listening to that tells you this is all fine, but you really owe it to yourself to stop that immediately. Nobody is talking about removing ALL CO2 from the air, just to reduce it to levels before industrialization. Plants got along just fine like that, don't worry.
    1
  9679. It's funny that Republicans consider "the people vote, and their votes get counted." to be "cheating."
    1
  9680. I notice it's not on Truth Social. Nothing is.
    1
  9681. And?
    1
  9682.  @MichaelHartle-l7z  I haven't seen any evidence of that. What evidence have you seen?
    1
  9683.  @Kurtiscool123  I'm sorry, I don't speak Republican, and I don't think Google offers a translate option.
    1
  9684.  @JBeatsbutnugs  Well that seems even more Republican than the last.
    1
  9685.  @deadlyta  What's fishy? That a lawyer would leave one job and get another? Boy, don't look into where the lawyers from the previous administration ended up. . .
    1
  9686.  @angelvalle6515  It's not "backwards." Lawyers move in and out of the private sector, in and out of different jurisdictions all the time. They tend to follow the most interesting cases. Think of it this way, there is NO mechanism by which an Attorney General could compel a DoJ employee to switch jobs like that, so if it wasn't something he wanted to do, how would they make him?
    1
  9687.  @drewdrew7968  Yes, and so far, not one answer has been given, so I'm left to assume that there is none. And no, it was not a demotion, it was just a shift from one job to another.
    1
  9688.  @billydemol8817  That's not how government works. You can't just slip a bonus under the table like that, the accounting offices would eat you for lunch. Actual government is WAY more boring than you imagine it to be.
    1
  9689.  @donoimdono2702  The first two are common knowledge, and there's nothing wrong with either. I'm asking for evidence that there was some for of official plot involved here, beyond it just being what this guy wanted to do next in his own career. If ALL that people have is that a lawyer left one job and gained another, then I'm sorry, but that's not a thing to be concerned over.
    1
  9690.  @LeighChambers-de7cp  All of these guys were Trump supporters. You can't get further from the right side of history than that.
    1
  9691.  jaydon simmons  Nope, raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with allowing the government to spend more. That happens in the budget process.
    1
  9692.  @gibbostation_7758  Nope, not even a little bit. Raising the debt ceiling is about cover the costs of paying our debt obligations. "Government spending" happens in the budget process.
    1
  9693.  @gibbostation_7758  The government spending money effects our debt, sure. But that's the budgeting process. It has nothing to do with raising the debt ceiling. Raising the debt ceiling is just paying off the debt we already have. Again, it's fine to argue that the government should be spending less, it just has nothing to do with this topic.
    1
  9694.  @user-ej2wr5bg2v  Well, it's a "choose your own adventure," so you get to decide for yourself! Did he A. Choose to pay off the bill he'd committed to, in which case yes, he went home with his family, or B. declare "My debt ceiling is $50 and I'm not raising it, that's all you're getting!" and live with the consequences? Let's all find out this fall on "The US Senate."
    1
  9695.  @AmericanRustWorker3369  If you believe that Biden did not win the election, then you just frequent bad sources of information that have lied to you. You may not follow "main stream sources" directly, but the sources you do have seem to be even worse. Some random person on social media is not a credible source of information. This was the cleanest and most secure election in US history, and has been vetted up and down. There is absolutely zero chance that Joe Biden lost it. Why do you believe that you were told, and accepted, the lie that he had not won it fair and square? What is it about you that leads you to buy into cult-like thought patterns, and how can you avoid that in future? Perhaps this could help you gain some perspective?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
    1
  9696.  @duweydang  Well, it's true that they cost tax dollars, but the point is that there is no out of pocket cost to the individual, so no reason not to get one. And yes, big pharma sucks, which is why the government is trying to pass Medicare price negotiations in their infrastructure package.
    1
  9697. Hunter Biden certainly traded off of his father's name. That was entirely Hunter's problem. Joe Biden played no role in it, and nobody ever voted for Hunter.
    1
  9698. States are subject to the US government.
    1
  9699. Chancellor Palpatine said much the same thing when it was his turn.
    1
  9700. It's not a double standard, it's just that one side does a lot of actual crimes that deserve to be prosecuted, and the other side does not and is only targeted as a distraction from all the crimes. The Republicans are the ones doing all the crimes.
    1
  9701. In/Spectre Yuki Onna. Best Yuki Onna.
    1
  9702. @ That's all any of us can do.
    1
  9703. Regular citizens do it all the time. Some get charged, some don't, depending on how intentional and how reckless it was at the time.
    1
  9704.  @BasedStoner  Also the stakes are extremely high, and there aren't two legitimate sides to the discussion, so it's a bit misleading and insulting to humanity to imply that it's a both sides" problem to deal with.
    1
  9705. @ I wish that were true, instead, they win elections and dismantle the government.
    1
  9706. I feel like in the modern era, if the people of a region vote to break free, then they should be allowed to do so, but at the same time I think that the path forward is more unity. This unity should come because people want it though, not because it is imposed on them. I also think that the EU needs to pass a rule that if any portion of an existing member state breaks free, they are automatically granted some level of EU membership, just at a lower power level than a full nation until they can meet the requirements an outside nation would need to pass for entry.
    1
  9707. Flying flags has always been a cancellable offense. It just depends on which flag. Fort McHenry got cancelled in 1814, they wrote a whole song about it.
    1
  9708.  @terribedford7729  Several people have been charged and convicted of "Seditious Conspiracy," which is insurrection. Several others are currently on trial.
    1
  9709.  @Time4Project2025  The meanings of symbols change over time. We do not currently live in 1775.
    1
  9710. Nah, nobody really expected better of her. If she had integrity, she wouldn't have run as a Republican in the first place.
    1
  9711. Yeah, that';s fair. Trump fans tend to hoot and holler no matter what nonsense flops out of his mouth, which influences how viewers at home take in his comments.
    1
  9712. So you're saying the "fix" is in? Why is this a shock to no one? Trump paid for that court.
    1
  9713. The tube is dumb, but the rest works fine without it.
    1
  9714. There doesn't have to be a deal. You can just choose not to fire the missiles.
    1
  9715. Shhhhh! Move north first, and then drive down Texas property values!
    1
  9716. Durham found nothing at all, Trump "Crime of the Century!" Classic Trump.
    1
  9717. WWI.
    1
  9718. Wouldn't the way to balance out EVE's stagflation issue be for them to make it so that small, solo player units would be cheap, while big, whale units would be very expensive? That way, whales would be motivated to use their precious resources wisely and fight over new ones, but in a way that still allows plenty of "waste" at the lower end of the economy, people could just go nuts with the smaller resources since they are so affordable.
    1
  9719.  @HowMoneyWorks  Yeah, you'd probably just have to draw a line at which the price jumps considerably. The whale units would still be desirable enough that people would put in the resources to get them, but there would be plenty to work with practically at the affordable level. It would just firmly draw the line between the $20K cars and the $400k cars.
    1
  9720. How is she expected to declare him a traitor when he's a national hero to her bosses at the Kremlin?
    1
  9721.  @CryptoKevin  No, they pay the tariff at Walmart, when the item is priced several times what it is now.
    1
  9722.  @BrianM-44041  China doesn't use child labor, although their overall labor conditions are certainly not great. The major cost savings though is just that the cost of living is lower there. We can't replicate that in the US. They can afford to pay people $1 an hour and those people can go home and live off that dollar. That would be impossible in the US, because there are enough people making middle class incomes that this is where the prices of things are based.
    1
  9723.  @Kg-yl5vy  The problem is that there is no scenario in which it balances out in America's interests. If manufacturers pay American workers to produce cheap manufactured goods, then the prices of those goods would have to rise to above what those employees could afford. There is no scenario in which America could become a home for cheaply produced basic goods again, there is always some aspect of the US employee's life that would be on balance worse off than they are today if that was a route we tried to force. If the US does any manufacturing, then it would need to be in high skill, high value products like computer chips and solar panels and cars and that sort of thing, not socks and toasters. Ultimately though, the US should not be a manufacturing nation in the 21st Century, we've left that role behind, and that is a good thing for Americans. What we need to do is figure out how to feed people who are not needed for manufacturing jobs. We have the money for that, we just need to distribute it fairly.
    1
  9724.  @Kg-yl5vy  Also, you say that you believe in a free market where competition is king, you do understand that THIS market is the result of that? Tariffs are the opposite of a free market, because it's putting a thumb on the scales and saying that some companies should be competitively priced with others, even if their production costs are 2-3 times as high. You can claim to support free markets OR tariffs, never both.
    1
  9725.  @KforFreedom  No, it's not "part of the negotiating," it's simple math. They can't charge less than it costs them to get to the customers, and customers can't afford to pay more than a certain amount. The math will never work out on most products. There can only be negotiation when the sell price is higher than the manufacturing price, which is not what would happen here.
    1
  9726.  @Kg-yl5vy  Well, keep in mind, within our lifetime, there will be no human labor anymore, so that's the world we need to be preparing for anyway. Moving Heaven and Earth to try and let Americans make drinking straws for ten times as much as China makes them is a massive waste of time and effort. Let's be clear, this was never a sound economic theory, it was only a way to sound "mean to China." because his audience likes when he sounds mean to China, even when his policies make no sense.
    1
  9727.  @Kg-yl5vy  Within our lifetimes, human labor will be unnecessary to the economy. We have to be prepared for that phase. Efforts to boost US manufacturing is a short term gain, at most, and not worth the hassle.
    1
  9728.  @Kg-yl5vy  What nonsense are you talking about? We have plenty of resources to support everyone, whether they are productive or not. All we need is the political will to make it happen.
    1
  9729.  @jankoodziej877  Right, but obviously it would not benefit us in the long run to try and copy their model.
    1
  9730. The reason Europe is supporting Ukraine is the same reason that Europe should have supported Poland and Czechoslovakia in the 1930s. They don't want to be next.
    1
  9731. By pointing out why people are misinterpreting that video, sometimes intentionally. Here's a video in which the Republican election official in Georgia explains what the "ballots under the table" was about, and why it was not at all illegal or shady: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEYvOTvqlFs
    1
  9732. There have been tons of politicians that got sent to jail for their crimes. buddy Cianci, for example. The problem is, most of those that the Republicans want "put in jail" never actually did any crimes, and we don't put people into prison merely for being in the opposing party, not in America.
    1
  9733. . . . bone marrow? Even the comics addressed that problem.
    1
  9734. Why? The Russians are the ones that run the largest social media disinformation farms.
    1
  9735.  @RayJackson88  Trump would do it if he could get it past Congress.
    1
  9736. LEVELS!
    1
  9737. "Ai have a hard time drawing hands" Professional artists: "Same."
    1
  9738. I had a thought about the "Monkey-selfie" story. So ok, a picture by a monkey can't be copyrightable, but wouldn't it be possible to "create" a copyright for it? Like if you "Andy Warhol" something, convert one work of art into something else, then so long as you manipulated that image sufficiently to avoid derivative work claims, you could copyright that, right? So if you wanted to use the "Naruto" photo, you could just take the original, modify it in some way such that it is distinct from the original (but perhaps in a way that would not at all diminish its charm), and then only punish that version of it to the world. Then you would have the copyright over that original work, and since the animal or AI or whatever in question had no rights of its own, it could not be challenged as being copyright theft. It's basically "stealing from an imaginary person." Of course if anyone got ahold of the original, unmodified version, then they would be free to use that as they see fit, so lock it up tight or destroy it if it matters that much to you. Wouldn't that work?
    1
  9739. Cool imaginary thing Hunter did! You belong on Coomer's committee!
    1
  9740.  @AndrewTubbiolo  Yeah, but still, they need Sam's help to invent new things to chase Hunter over.
    1
  9741. More rational than believing that they are out to get them for no apparent reason.
    1
  9742. The people voted for the swamp though.
    1
  9743.  @DavidJones-ke6kt He's right though. It's Republicans that prevent actions at the border. They wouldn't have anything left to run on.
    1
  9744.  @vickimccormick8220 Incorrect, but thanks for trying.
    1
  9745.  @noneyabizz8337  sounds like the other guy is the one with TDS. TDS is being incapable of accepting that Trump and his supporters are deranged.
    1
  9746. It's way higher than that.
    1
  9747.  @RevTwelveEleven  I am not sure what point you're making. Yes, MAGA people worship the Father of Lies," but what does that have to do with the topic at hand?
    1
  9748.  @buddymartin7923  Again, it was not "better for the many" back then, and the good of these groups comes at ZERO expense to others. Why not good for both at the same time? Also, while mental health issues are a serious problem in this country, they have nothing to do with the topic at hand, which is the status of LGBT people. While some LGBT people do have mental illness, it's not significantly higher than among the general population.
    1
  9749.  @buddymartin7923  By and large, LGBT people live MUCH more decently than non-LGBT people. I mean, you can find videos of drag story hours where the LGBT people are just politely reading stories to children, and there are non-:LGBT people shouting obscenities and white supremacist chants at the children, which of those two groups do you see as "acting decently?" What have LGBT people ever done to you?
    1
  9750. @Packhorse-bh8qn He actually didn't though. He made different statements that people confused for him saying what you wanted him to have said. This confusion mainly occurs among people who never would have voted for him anyway, so it's not actually a problem.
    1
  9751. @Packhorse-bh8qn But again, he didn't make the claim. You are implying that he made the claim. His wording was unclear, but that shouldn't be a life-ruining offense. In this thread alone I've seen dozens of people insist that he said things he did not say, if they can misspeak, why is it "a fiasco" if he does? It's not like he made a definitely inaccurate claim, like "I fought in war": or something. It's all just semantics, and only matters to people who would never have voted for him anyway. Nobody who could vote for Trump or Vance cares about this country in the first place.
    1
  9752.  @beachgirl5316  It would indeed be political theater if the SCOTUS rejected the case, but if they do their jobs and uphold the Constitution, then they would have no choice but to uphold this decision.
    1
  9753.  @arnoldberk2809  Biden didn't give any money to Iran that he was not legally required to give them. It would have been a violation of his oath of office to not give them that money. What he did do was squeeze a lot of positive stuff out of them in return, unlike when Trump just let the Taliban leader out of jail and handed him the keys to the country with nothing in return.
    1
  9754. They should just make it illegal to have vapes taste good. They should only be allowed to be sold in very specific, medicinal flavors. That way, people trying to quit smoking would put up with it, but any new vapers would be grossed out.
    1
  9755.  @eaglerider1826  It's not democrats accusing them, it's people that they interacted with. Most sexual assault cases will have no proof to them beyond witness testimony, but that does not mean that they should not be taken seriously and fully investigated. If the claims against Kavenaugh had been fully investigated we might be in a much better place today.
    1
  9756.  @eaglerider1826  Oh no, the Matt Gaetz claims had plenty of evidence to support them. A Republican committee believed they were credible.
    1
  9757.  @robinblades600  Yep, maga.
    1
  9758.  @eaglerider1826  Oh, no, the gates claim was credible. The Republican committee investigating it believed so.
    1
  9759.  @harrywan2604  Why would "china" pay for shipping? You're paying for shipping by ordering a product. That's how it's always worked. Things from China are not cheaper because of trade policy, they are cheaper because the people making them are working for $1 an hour. Do YOU want to work for $1 an hour?
    1
  9760.  @def-po8tu  People who care about America first would care about this, because this is putting America last.
    1
  9761.  @def-po8tu  Yes, fiddling while Rome burns.
    1
  9762. @ Nope, we will be in worse shape, because no good will come of this. Things will only get more expensive or become unavailable to Americans, meanwhile the rest of the world will continue to live in the 21st Century.
    1
  9763. Well it is extortionist, but that's how this administration rolls. They govern it like a Jersey "family business."
    1
  9764.  @sp4lg  The only one eager for war here is Russia. Everyone else is trying to get them to stop.
    1
  9765.  @Titoscudd  Yes, the Us can provide weapons to Ukraine to strike inside Russia, since Russia attacked Ukraine first, it's only fair.
    1
  9766.  @vy3334  Because Russia does not want to be leveled, which they would be if they attacked any NATO countries. If they don't want to be attacked, then they should stop attacking Ukraine and leave. Russia has NO claims of defense so long as they are engaged in a war of aggression. If a man is beating his ex in the streets, and another map gets involved, the first cannot claim self defense.
    1
  9767. Why do you say "Trump will beat Biden in a debate," when Biden beat Sanders in a debate? I thought you liked Sanders.
    1
  9768. Yup, Republicans will obstruct any positive motion, so we need to retake the House and get a super-majority inn the Senate.
    1
  9769. They've done that already. The deficit is after the waste and fraud was removed. The issue is that they need to raise revenues.
    1
  9770. Nah.
    1
  9771.  @coolezum  He is a patriot, just for a different country. His actions work against America's interests.
    1
  9772.  @coolezum  I know at least as many facts as you, and I assume a great many more on top of that. Trump got a lot of good Americans killed with his reckless foreign policy, when he handed Syria over to Russia he got more Americans killed than during the entire time they were there prior to that moment, as well as screwing over our strongest allies in the region. Most of what you speak of is conspiracy theory nonsense that has nothing to do with patriotic Americans. The only ones with "TDS" are those who don't understand how brainwashed he's made you. Trump is deranged, as is anyone who fails to recognize that.
    1
  9773.  @coolezum  Well that sounds ominous. Nothing of any importance should happen over the next 30 days, unless Trump intends to do something illegal. Again.
    1
  9774. They chose to go with their own home-made vaccines that are not as good as the ones used in other countries, that's why this is a problem for them.
    1
  9775. Well, if Republicans didn't want failures like this, they wouldn't vote for Republicans.
    1
  9776.  @notmypotato3730  He always wins when he doesn't need a majority. So long as he only needs 43% of the vote, he's fine.
    1
  9777. There is nobody so ignorant or self-absorbed as to not get vaccinated in 2021 who is worthy of serving in the US military.
    1
  9778.  @melissadavis7234 Faux lost a massive lawsuit about that stuff.
    1
  9779.  @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.
    1
  9780.  @melissadavis7234 Ah, I can understand then. If you're living under a rock, then you probably would believe some pretty crazy things.
    1
  9781.  @melissadavis7234  We were talking about you. Again, I live above the rocks, where we have actual news, not Faux News.
    1
  9782.  @melissadavis7234 We were talking about you, not me. Keep up.
    1
  9783.  @melissadavis7234  I meant "we" as in you and I. You asked what planet I lived on, and I replied "earth, and asked where you lived. You replied "Earth, under a rock," which made sense, given your comments.
    1
  9784.  @tivmego  Election denialism would involve denying the results, denying the legitimacy of the election itself. Porter has not done that. She accepts the outcome of the race, accepts that it was fairly managed by the election officials. Her only point is that she believes that the nature of the campaign was stacked against her, and that's a fair point to argue, one completely different than the types of arguments that election deniers tend to make.
    1
  9785.  @Lyaworski123  That isn't at all what I said. When do you think I said "because she's a Democrat?" What would that have to do with it?
    1
  9786.  @tivmego  Yes, the term "rigged" does not imply a denial of the validity of the outcome, exactly.
    1
  9787.  @tivmego I've had an education, that's how I know how words work.
    1
  9788. They live in an alternate reality of Fox News, where everything they wish were true, probably is.
    1
  9789. It would be inaccurate to claim that are "as many" racists on the left. There are some, certainly, but FAR fewer, and the right builds their entire policy agendas around racism, while the left does not. It's not a "both sides" issue.
    1
  9790. @ If that's true, then why is the current US administration highly racist and implementing heavily racist policies? Are they also socialist?
    1
  9791.  @desertrat9554  What about her?
    1
  9792.  @BanditZRaver  I think the important thing to keep in mind though is that while it's entirely possible for a liberal to be racist, it's far less common than on the right, and the policies of liberals are not as racist in nature.
    1
  9793.  @MythicBoone  Why would you think of that? What sense would that make?
    1
  9794. Clinton eliminated the deficit, it's just that Bush brought it back again.
    1
  9795. When Trump was in that helicopter, was he heading for his buddy Epstein's island?
    1
  9796. Yes, this is why we shouldn't allow misinformation to spread, because once they pick up a bad idea, they are more likely to dig in on it than to change their minds.
    1
  9797. He is wrong though. They are an anti-terrorist entity.
    1
  9798.  @SadaK-tr6dm  Those are all the fault of Hamas, for using those places as human shields, rather than fighting in the open like Israel does. At no point has Israel targeted civilians, but they have no control over Hamas's actions.
    1
  9799.  @caroljohns7871  But non-citizens are still not allowed to vote in federal elections. If they sign up to vote and are not legal citizens, they do not get a ballot.
    1
  9800.  @tammy5926  They are not voting and it's been proven that they are not voting. Any that try to vote, either deliberately or accidentally, gets their ballot rejected. It is not a problem.
    1
  9801. Maybe they should stop trying to prevent people from voting? Maybe that would help them to join us in the 21st Century?
    1
  9802.  @jesussaves33  A constitutional republic IS a democracy. If it lacks a functional democracy then it cannot claim to be a "republic." That would be an "empire" instead.
    1
  9803.  @hshsgjakanss  Constitutional republics ARE democracies. Only idiots don't know that.
    1
  9804. This is a biased headline. The headline should be "Senate Republicans Obstruct Bill to Preserve Democracy."
    1
  9805. They don't need that stuff, the stuff they have is already better, and shipping it from Afghanistan wouldn't be worth it. You do realize that we got all the useful stuff out before we left, right?
    1
  9806. The purpose of the SEC, as authorized by Congress, is to handle legal matters involving finance. This Is the appropriate agency for such actions.
    1
  9807.  @DAVIDKAMEN-xj7rg  So you just don't like that they perform their job effectively?
    1
  9808. Yes, it was called the "southern strategy." The Democrats of his parents became Republicans. The Democratic party is better off without them.
    1
  9809. How is this poking anyone?
    1
  9810.  @juicyg4516  Tell your operator to reload you.
    1
  9811.  @RobertO-vu4xb  Different "theys."
    1
  9812.  @jlvv_1  No, that's not why.
    1
  9813. AI can definitely replace you. Not yet, of course, but within your lifetime. How? First by copying you. You and other online influencers. It will create a Vtuber that uses an Unreal 5 avatar that looks photorealistic, acting out videos that are very similar to yours. If the video does well, they make more. If it does poorly, they combine it with traits from a different creator and try that, adding and removing traits to see what works best, until they get something that takes off. humans will be unable to compete.
    1
  9814. See, here's one of the bots now. . . :D
    1
  9815. He was impeached for purely political reasons, not merit. If they wanted it to be taken seriously, they would have needed to have actual grounds for impeachment first. "We don't like the guy" is not grounds for impeachment.
    1
  9816.  @123chargeit  There does tend to be more crime in urban areas because they have more density, more criminals and more targets per square mile, so more crime takes place, but rural areas aren't that far behind, not as far as one might expect. Murders are actually higher in the Deep South than in any other part of the country. Plenty of shoplifting occurs in red states, it just doesn't get reported on as often, because that wouldn't drive the narrative that "you're better off under Republicans than under Democrats" that the Faux News knows you want to believe.
    1
  9817.  @Settiis  Yes. Chicago is a city of 2.7 million people. Their crime level is higher than a rural area of equivalent population, but not by much. It just gets a lot more news coverage on Faux News, because they control their audience through fear of "those awful cities." It's still safer to live in Chicago than in the deep south.
    1
  9818.  @keybored67  What do you mean? Shoplifting is just as big a problem in con counties as in dem cities. Why do conservatives seem to be unaware of this? Is that what the Faux News is telling you to control your view of the world? That cities are a worse place to live or something?
    1
  9819.  @marcuslinton310  I've been using self checkout for years now, and I like it, especially when I have a full cart of stuff to go through, but my local store definitely does need to expand their self checkout area. Right now, it takes up less than half as much space as the classic style checkouts, when it should take up the majority of that space. The more self checkout kiosks are available, the more people can use them at a time.
    1
  9820.  @Kevin-l9y1u  That seems like a lot of money to give to a child. None, so far as I'm concerned. How many children have you given that to?
    1
  9821. Yeah, like with Maga, they were entirely about identity politics.
    1
  9822.  @rojodevo2724  The flu and covid are two different things. Covid is a type of virus that is similar to a flu, but calling them the same would be like saying that a football team and a soccer team are "basically the same thing." Covid cases are reported as covid cases and flu cases are reported as flu cases and they are not used interchangeably, but flu cases are down because the precautionary measures people take to prevent covid infection are just as effective at stopping the flu, so it is transmitting a lot less than usual this year. Also, to address something you raised in a previous comment, touching your mask is NOT a serious issue with covid. This is because (unlike some diseases), covid cannot enter the body through your skin. It can only enter through your nose, mouth, or eyes, and has to reach your lungs to settle in. This means that your hands can be filthy with covid, and that's ok, so long as you don't bring your hands anywhere near your nose, mouth, or eyes. So while it is important to wash your hands before eating or touching your face, touching your mask really isn't an issue. I find it's simplest to just imagine that my hands are hot lava while I'm outside the house, don't get them anywhere near my face from the moment I leave to the moment I return, and then wash up as soon as I get inside.
    1
  9823.  @rojodevo2724  Accurate though.
    1
  9824.  @rojodevo2724  No, as usual you misunderstand. What I was accurate about was that the flu virus and covid are two separate diseases, they are each tracked separately by the CDC, the flu is down relative to normal years due to the measures we've taken to fight covid, and touching your mask doesn't make the whole concept of the mask pointless because you can't catch covid by mask touching, but you can catch it by breathing in the virus, which is why moral people wear masks.
    1
  9825. It's funny how many people think this is already how it works, that we need to "drill more here" to lower prices, when that's never been how it works. All "drilling more here" does to prices is that it raises overall global production, which lowers overall global prices, but it's always those global prices that determine the price at the pump, whether the oil min the tank comes from the Gulf of Mexico or the Persian Gulf.
    1
  9826. The Biden administration is investing in AMERICAN production of EVs and EV components, NOT China. It's Josh Hawley that wants China to be the Ford of the 21st Century.
    1
  9827. Barr should be disbarred for obstructing justice.
    1
  9828. Half the country are not a death squad, they just vote for candidates that support death squads.
    1
  9829. Well, the "report" in question was nonsense, so there's no reason for anyone to read it. A child's book report has more value to national security.
    1
  9830.  @joesterling4299  That was never true. It was just a fantasy they pitch on Faux News for gullible rubes.
    1
  9831.  @Boogbama123  Ok, let's do that, allow the country to crater, China and Russia to take over the world, and then, maybe after a century or so, something new will grow from the ashes. Or not, whatever. We could just keep doing what we're doing and everything would be fine. Honestly, I think I would prefer that to living in Mad Max world, but I guess to each their own.
    1
  9832.  @rudradevsingh228  The recent spending you claim was "not justified" was justified though. The US would be in MUCH worse shape today if we had not made those investments. You can argue around the fringes of those programs, that some of the money was wasted or mismanaged, because these were emergency efforts that were rushed out with minimal preparation, and that much is true, but it was better to get water on the fire and put it out, even if it left more of a mess than strictly necessary. Really, the spending was not the problem at all, the problem was the Trump era tax cuts for billionaires, which deeply cut into the funding that would have paid off such spending more. During the early Trump administration, the economy Obama put into place was returning dividends, things were booming, and that is the time when the government should raise taxes and recover from the spending needed to escape the Bush recession, but instead Trump chose to double down on those policies and continue to further goose the economy, rather than balance the budget.
    1
  9833.  @rudradevsingh228  Ok, lets go through some of your misconceptions, in no particular order. One, oil. The US produces more oil under Biden than it did under Trump. The US president doesn't control how much oil the Us produces though, that is controlled by companies, and it's companies that chose to cut oil production in 2020 and slowly raise it back up. The oil price we pay is the global rate, regardless of how much the US produces. If the global price of oil is high, then US producers will sell that oil at that high price on the global market, rather than selling it at a lower price to Americans. If global suppliers cut their production, then it is impossible for the US to produce enough oil to balance that out and keep prices low, and even if it were possible to manage that in the short term, we would only run completely out of oil faster, as it is a finite resource. The ONLY way that the US could potentially get to dictate what the US price at the pump would be, would be if we fully nationalized the US oil producers, required that they ramp production higher than they would want, and required that they only sell this oil to US retailers at cost. Any "free market" solution would keep oil prices exactly where we saw them. This would require some act of congress to achieve, and would ultimately be a bit pointless, since, again, we would just run completely out of oil faster. So TL;DR, The US government does not get to decide what gas prices will be, and never has. Now, to the Obama solutions to the Bush recession, they may not have worked as well as their projections, but they did WORK, in that the economy improved at a reasonable rate. No serious economist believes that we would have seen those gains without the actions taken, or something equivalent. It's possible that they could have done a better job with it, but "doing nothing" certainly would have been worse. You may be disappointed in the economic growth over that period, but it was certainly better than nothing, or an actual decline. Obamacare was a net positive, as it provided tens of millions of Americans with insurance, but as you noted, it was sabotaged at multiple points by Republicans, and as they controlled enough of congress after that, it became impossible to make any changes to it to perfect it. Large scale legislation is rarely perfect on the first try, that does not mean you should not do it, it only means that you need to be ready to correct the errors through future legislation. Republicans only insisted on "repeal and replace," which was obviously worse (particularly since they offered no valid "replacement"). Sweden was a failure. Their death rate was considerably higher than their neighbors who locked down responsibly. There is no valid argument to be made that "lockdowns were bad somehow," as it has been shown across the world that countries with more responsible lockdown policies than the US experienced far lower death rates and better economic stability. And of course we should not cut Social Security or health care spending, we only need to make sure that these programs are PAID FOR. If Social Security had been left alone as it was original designed, it would be fine right now, what stresses it currently has came from Republicans raiding it like a piggy bank to fund their own projects while also lowering taxes. If you devour the funding mechanism of a program, surprise surprise, it has trouble remaining solvent. Restore the funds the Republicans stole and it's back on track.
    1
  9834.  @Red-Check-Mark  Democratic spending is fine. We should be spending more than we currently do. When Democrats propose non-emergency spending, they include methods to pay for it. The problem is that when Republicans gain power they kick those payment methods out from under the program and then suddenly act shocked at how "recklessly spending" it is. Their idiot base eats this up, because they are too dumb to understand what just happened.
    1
  9835.  @sten260  When Democrats propose spending, they do that. They pay for their spending, but then Republicans knock the revenues out from under the programs and then complain that they add to the debt. Slashing social security would be a terrible idea, it pays for itself just fine, other than Republicans raiding the payment mechanisms for it.
    1
  9836.  @muhammaDEsmustafa  It said a whole lot of "something" to anyone capable of understanding basic economics. That is indeed similar to Bidenomics, which has led to a massively successful economy, just one that happens to be taking place during a difficult time in human history.
    1
  9837.  @muhammaDEsmustafa  We're having a discussion about the economics of political systems right now, and my argument is the correct one, for which you can provide no reasonable counterargument beyond lazy ad hominems.
    1
  9838.  @davidcolletti7136  Yes, that's factored into the process. We pay off that interest every single day. It's not an issue.
    1
  9839. @ Exactly. No Christian could support this man.
    1
  9840. Never, that would make no sense.
    1
  9841. Man, this post from 2020 aged well.
    1
  9842.  @douglasrowland9986  That's not a relevant comment to the topic at hand. There is only one goose in this scenario.
    1
  9843.  @JulioBaggins  Well, that's true, but there's not a lot that can be done about it. Idiots will continue to vote for the reds, we just have to outnumber them.
    1
  9844.  @DoSe420  I doubt it'll change any votes.
    1
  9845. Nope.
    1
  9846.  @lookup.3047  "Why did those greens taste so good?" "Lard."
    1
  9847. Yup, they're definitely biased in favor of Republicans and Trump. If the FBI were just doing their jobs and following the law, Trump would have been arrested years ago.
    1
  9848.  @robertmorrison2926  You invested poorly then, because the stock market has gone up under Biden, not down, so if you'd just had an indexed fun or something, you would have made way more money than whatever idiot-stonks you put them into. That is not Biden's fault.
    1
  9849.  @scallen3841  No, Biden did not at any point say that Congress has to approve money sent to.the Ukraine first. Who told you that, and what did they stand to gain by keeping you ignorant?
    1
  9850.  @beverlylargent5580  Of course the war helps no one, but there's nothing that can be done about that. Putin started it, and he's the only one who can end it, but he has no interest in doing so.
    1
  9851.  @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.
    1
  9852.  @scallen3841  What do I expect Russia to do about an expanding NATO? Absolute nothing whatsoever. That's all they had any right to do. Ukraine can be friends with whomever they want, Russia has zero say in the matter. And of course Russia would take more than Ukraine if there were no pushback. They are already working on taking Belarus the same way they attempted with Ukraine, and have already seized portions of Georgia. What about Russia's actions over the past few decades would lead any sane person to think that they had any restraint? And yes, you are the bad guy for not supporting Ukraine, just as people were bad guys in the 1930s for not supporting eastern Europe from the Germans. Sorry if that bothers you, but there's nothing I can do about that, it's YOUR choice to be on the wrong side, and only YOU can fix that.
    1
  9853.  @scallen3841  No, there's no chance of US boots on the ground. Zero. You're buying into soviet propaganda there. At the very most you could have US aircraft getting involved in some way, or perhaps US missile strikes from outside the country, but even that would be massively unlikely, given that we want to avoid the fighting spilling outside of Ukraine. In any case, it is still better to continue the war in Ukraine than to allow Russia to gain ground from it, because they will NEVER stop coming so long as they keep advancing each time. Fighting the war in Ukraine now PREVENTS US boots from being needed to defend Finland and the Baltic states in the future.
    1
  9854.  @scallen3841  I would provide very little value on the battlefield. The Ukrainian people are willing and able to fight for themselves, what I do is help to make sure that they have the weapons capable of competing with Russia when they do so.
    1
  9855. If you want America first leadership, vote blue, no matter who. If you vote red, you'll only get "Trump first" leadership. America isn't even a distant third to them.
    1
  9856.  @jacobew2000  Guns in civilian hands don't do anything to save lives, or liberty, and prevent the pursuit of happiness more than they ever help it.
    1
  9857.  @tammyc2852  Ukraine is currently at war with a foreign invader. Guns can be very useful in a case like that, but the US is not currently at war, and therefore does not need any civilian firearms.
    1
  9858.  @Mark-ee8ud  His the other guys in that scenario also have guns? Because for each case like that, you have cases like the three from a couple weeks back where people with guns "saved themselves" from perfectly innocent teenagers who'd just knocked on the wrong door or pulled into the wrong driveway.
    1
  9859.  @tammyc2852  Exactly, a lot of police violence can also be stemmed back to civilian gun ownership. In countries where the people police are confronting are less likely to be armed, there are far fewer police shootings. When suspects are very likely to be armed, then of course police need to err on the side of protecting themselves and their fellow officers.
    1
  9860.  @Mortvent  No, the other countries actually "coddle their criminals" a lot more than the US does. The US incarcerates more prisoners than any country on Earth. They have just as much "criminal culture" as the US has, they do just as many crimes, they just have fewer murders because those criminals don't have guns.
    1
  9861.  @jacobew2000  Britain's police have always been armed, they just have to use their guns less because the criminals are less likely to have guns.
    1
  9862.  @tammyc2852  "Pursuit of happiness" does not mean "allowed to do whatever makes you happy." If what you enjoy doing allows harm to come to others, then your happiness needs to be weighed against theirs. I'm sure that removing guns would make some people less happy, but it would also allow millions of others to live without the fear of gun violence interrupting their lives. To get more specific, even in Japan, hunters have some access to hunting rifles, and the same can be allowed in the US, because the sorts of hunting rifles Americans have used for generations are not responsible for most violence in this country. Sport hunting can be allowed as well, although it's far from necessary. You don't need a rifle to kill a cow, and if you need an AR-15 to kill a deer, then you aren't owed that deer's life.
    1
  9863.  @Mortvent  You need to learn more about how AR-15s work. They are magazine fed, which means you can install magazines of ten rounds or more without needing to reload. They also fire high velocity ammunition that tends to blow massive holes in people, whereas most guns make smaller, more survivable holes. All guns have the potential to be lethal, but AR-15s are more likely to be lethal than most. If it were possible, it would be better to restrict legal firearms to small fixed magazine weapons, and in ammo types that are sufficient to dealing with game, not intended to be lethal on the battlefield. And of course such weapons would need to be authorized and handled with care.
    1
  9864. What did she do wrong?
    1
  9865. @ You repeated those comments elsewhere, they were all incorrect there too. Who told you that stuff and why did you believe them?
    1
  9866. Why do conservatives always confuse a bias toward reality as a "left-wing bias?" Oh, yeah, because they live in a fiction created by Faux News and view reality as "left wing spin."
    1
  9867.  Constitutional Republic🔺The Corrector  Found one!
    1
  9868. @ They told about how Russia invaded Crimea, and then invaded Ukraine. Did you miss that? Who invaded Russia before that?
    1
  9869.  @olgabayne5247  Crimea was Russian a long time ago, just as Moscow was Ukrainian a long time ago. Currently though, that's irrelevant, since as of the fall of the Soviet Union, Crimea is a part of Ukraine, and Russia AGREED to those borders. They can't change their mind about that. All the other stuff you reference is completely irrelevant, Ukraine did not attack Russia, Russia attacked Ukraine, that is the beginning and end of the story. Everything else is just a distraction. Nothing that goes on within the 2012 borders of Ukraine is an excuse for Russia to attack them.
    1
  9870. Da comrade.
    1
  9871. He certainly knows how to use it.
    1
  9872.  @papawheelie5576  If they ban the mandate, then some kids won't wear masks, and then they will infest the other students, and the teachers, and kids will infect their parents. This is not a good thing if you love this country.
    1
  9873.  @papawheelie5576  Oh. . . dear. . . you haven't heard. Only around 49% of the population has been vaccinated so far, and there is currently a MASSIVE pandemic in the US that is effecting the unvaccinated population. Hospitals are swamped in states with poor vaccination rates. everyone is current at risk. I'm glad I was able to point you in the right direction. The death rate is currently a lot better than it was during the height of the pandemic, because there are so many people who got vaccinated, but it's still stupidly high, and the infection rate shot up by five times since June, so the death rate will likely climb again too over the next few weeks. Too many stupid people. Too many stupid people.
    1
  9874.  @papawheelie5576  Covid only has a 99% recovery rate when you receive proper medical treatment, which is difficult when hospitals are overloaded. That's why NYC had such a high death rate early on, because so many people got it all at once. It does not have a 99% survival rate under natural conditions. Plus, that figure is outdated, the Delta variant seems to have a higher case fatality rate, especially among younger groups. You need to stay on top of things. It's like you're betting on sports using last years' teams.
    1
  9875.  @peterponcedeleon3368  What did you have trouble understanding? If you have any actual questions, I'd be happy to answer them, Knowledge is power.
    1
  9876.  Cade Cannon  Yeah, she's a very telegenic and charismatic candidate, she very much appeals to the sort of people who think "rally size" should be indicative of voter turnout. She just also happened to be screwier than a sack full of squirrels, or at least played one on TV, and that didn't go over well with the majority of the state, who are apparently rational.
    1
  9877.  @yewtubedislikebutton3056  I think maybe you're hogging all the "regards."
    1
  9878.  @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.
    1
  9879. 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.
    1
  9880. It's so sad that you seem to believe this. Narnia must be very scary indeed.
    1
  9881.  @redfurydubstep  The reality in which Josh Hawley causes far more harm to this country than good. The opinion that Josh Hawley is a positive influence can only exist outside of the reality in which we actually live. Faux News reports from that fictional reality.
    1
  9882. All they need to do is vote for the best candidate and Jeffries can take up the role.
    1
  9883. Having natural gas as a backup for cooking can be achieved with a small propane tank. You wouldn't need a permanent hook-up for that.
    1
  9884.  @lawrence8146  Exactly, and that's why you should never vote for Republicans. Democrats know what a woman is, and don't need to ask.
    1
  9885.  @MeederTom  There's nobody better running, in any party.
    1
  9886.  @Squashmalio  Nah. Fun imaginary world you live in though. I could totally agree with you that there are probably some very capable people out there, but they need to be able to get themselves into the public spotlight. It's not the media's job to hunt them down and force them down the public's throats. Plenty of people got airtime during the last primary season, but if they didn't appeal to the voters, they didn't get very far. Part of the job is being able to appeal to a large swath of the public. This has actually been a lot of the talk lately, in that DeSantis is trying to run for President, and Faux News even seems to be behind him, trying to make a case for him instead of Trump, but the polling and donors seem disinterested. The media can help a good candidate to get attention, but they can't force the public to take a candidate that they don't actually want.
    1
  9887.  @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.
    1
  9888.  @Locke42485  That would be incorrect. It reflects poorly on your own judgement that you would say such a thing.
    1
  9889.  @lawrence8146  Trump uses a golf cart to get around and has a shit score. Trump also reads off teleprompters any time he isn't rambling gibberish. Biden has a stutter that causes him to sometimes rush his speech, but anyone paying attention can tell that he knows what he's talking about. Trump, on the other hand, never knows what he's talking about, words just keep coming out, and so long as they are hateful enough, his audience loves him for it.
    1
  9890.  @lawrence8146  You say that you try to stay within the confines of the English language, but then you make things up to suit your own feelings, like defining a woman as an "adult human female." Those CAN be women, but are not always women, and not the only type of woman. It's like saying that a football player is someone involved in the NFL. Some people involved in the NFL are football players, some are not, and some people that are football player are not in the NFL. Don't misuse words and then claim to have an ideological purity stance on "how words work." Facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  9891.  @Videogeek95  But March 31st is Trans visibility day. It has been for over a decade. It has nothing to do with Christianity. Again, how does this "attack" Christianity? Jesus would approve of it. Really, if anything is an "attack on Christianity," it would be those attacking Biden over this.
    1
  9892.  @Videogeek95  In what way does this in any way harm Christianity though? Jesus supports His trans children.
    1
  9893. Basically Johnny Knoxville.
    1
  9894. It wasn't illegal though.
    1
  9895.  @ClarisseRockinThatBow  Sure. I was just pointing out that he can't be prosecuted for it, since it wasn't illegal.
    1
  9896.  @blksbth1  He didn't interfere with a congressional act though.
    1
  9897.  @bradhill1099  He didn't interrupt a vote in Congress though, that vote continued as it had been. Now, if he'd pulled an alarm in the Capital itself, that might have turned out differently.
    1
  9898.  @ihave35cents95  Red states could never survive on their own. They require blue states to bail them out.
    1
  9899.  @Michael-ub9ws  I said that the US could do it by investing in the infrastructure. I never said China could.
    1
  9900. The GOPs in the Senate aren't the problem, it's the House that's broken. Kick out the RINOs like Jim Jordan, MTG, Matt Gaetz, Laruen Boebert, etc.
    1
  9901.  @RonGinnings-gi6je  Lol, I'm not maga.
    1
  9902.  @JennaRight  If you ask Republicans "only when Democrats do it." I mean, they're treating these guys as heroes, when their actions in the FBI were only a few steps short of treason.
    1
  9903. I love how that room is like 50% fine, and 50% complete disaster area. :D
    1
  9904. It's impossible to tell, there is evidence for either, but anyone telling you that it definitely came form one or the other is just trying to spin a story for you. The position of the intelligence community is always that one or the other is more likely given the current evidence, but that either is possible.
    1
  9905.  @larry6601  No, Disney's success had nothing to do with having "special privileges." That's a lie that was told to you by the Faux News to keep you compliant. Look into it.
    1
  9906.  @gunslinger2566  This isn't about DeSantis going after the groomers in the GoP though, this is about him going after Disney, which has nothing whatsoever to do with the GoP groomers. So why are you bringing the GoP groomers into this?
    1
  9907.  @jimbeam2705  It's all well and good that you don't like Groomers, so vote DeSantis and the other GoP groomers out of office. That has nothing to do with Disney though. They oppose the GoP groomers.
    1
  9908.  @PherPhur  That assumes that logic can cross the bridge to Republicans. They think with their guts, not their heads. They want to hurt the homeless, not help them in any way, even if it works out the best for themselves too.
    1
  9909. Yeah, they're willing to punish all of Trump's subordinates for the crimes he was a part of, but are too scared to go after Trump himself.
    1
  9910. @Jeph You're asking too much! They're only Republicans!
    1
  9911.  @viviansutherland1175  Lol, what? The Trump administration has been the most corrupt in US history. So far the Biden administration hasn't had any corruption at all. Where did you get the idea that they were "corrupt?" Was it Faux News? They are on court documented record as openly lying to their viewers to get ratings, nothing you hear on that channel should be taken as anything more than fan fiction.
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  9912. NGSA: "And so I took this personally."
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  9913. I would think the most obvious "not a war goddess" reason was Athena. If Aphrodite was a primary goddess in Sparta, but Athena was the primary goddess of Athens, and Athena was more primarily associated with war already, and not coincidentally Athens tended to write the history, then it would only make sense to "castrate" the Spartan's war goddess to highlight their own. Likewise, the Spartans would embrace Aphrodite as a war goddess because that would give them a lady warrior to hang out with Ares, who is not the patron of Athens. It seems like a win/win for both cultures to play into their own narratives.
    1
  9914.  @EaglePicking  Denying that they are trans is denying a fact of their existence. It is denying a part of their identity. I'm sorry if it offends you that it is not ok to offend them, but that's how human culture works. You don't get to decide who they are. Now, you may see it as a mental condition, and that the effective treatment is to deny that and make them into how you would prefer they be. They disagree, and since they are the ones involved, their position on the topic is more important than yours. You can decide for yourself how you want to treat your own gender issues, you do not get to decide for others. And if we're leaving both you and the patient out of the equation, the medical community that has explored this topic ALSO disagrees with you, and has determined that whatever causes transgenderism, the best treatments involve acceptance and support, not attempts to "reverse the condition." Most people trust their position on the topic over "random dude on the Internet," so I'm afraid you're out of luck on that one.
    1
  9915.  @omp199  We also need to agree that trans people are not in need of being convinced that they are not trans. As Sabine points out early in the video "sex" is one thing, and it is clearly biological. "Gender" is something else entirely, and while often related to sex, is NOT itself biological or objective, it is a factor of subjective personal experience. Your refusal to accept this does not mean that everyone else has to stop and wait for you to catch up with the rest of the class. While you may remain unconvinced, the medical community has long since moved on, and at some point, "random person on Internet" is no longer relevant. Get on board with the established science or get ignored.
    1
  9916.  @EaglePicking  We do understand people in Redstates, that's why we know that they are backwards. If they weren't backwards, they would have different viewpoints than they do.
    1
  9917.  @mdav30  "As for trans women in sports, to me the way you are answering it unfortunately ignores biological issues totally in favor of social definitions." That was not quite my intention. Let me put it like this, "women's sport" is not a biological distinction. It is, in objective fact, a "social definition." It is defining the category based on society, not based on biology. Now, that is a different argument entirely than whether the average biologically female person has different traits than the average biologically male person. So my point is that so long as we have a category of "women's sports," it must be held open to all people who are women, including trans women, however, we can discuss whether it makes sense to have other categories of "second tier sporting events" that are focused around the biological limitations that women might disproportionately suffer from. The simple fact is that as Sabine pointed out there is no "typical human," there is also no "typical athlete." Each has their own assortment of traits, and most who rise to the top are absolute freaks, with bodies capable of things impossible to 99.99% of the population, regardless of time and effort. Every successful athlete has some biological edge over their competition, and "high testosterone" is only one of those. If we want to define a version of "women's sports" that does not allow most trans women to compete, then we can do that, but it cannot be along lines so reductive as "all people who are women, except for trans women," because that is a sociological definition, not a biological one, and is nakedly prejudicial. It would instead have to be based on objective biological factors that are relevant to performance in the sport, such as current hormone levels, and other chemical traits, and such rulings would likely allow some trans athletes to participate, while some non-trans women would be excluded based on their biology. Personally, I believe there is no point to involving ANY of this discussion at the sub-collegiate level, if any primary school girls want to play a sport, you let them, no exceptions. It's all about fun and teamwork.
    1
  9918.  @omp199  So far as I know, there currently are no major sports, certainly not in the US, that are segregated based on sex. They are only segregated based on "men's" and "women's," sports which are terms of gender, not sex.
    1
  9919.  @omp199  The UK also segregated based on gender, not sex. They have "Women's football," not "female football." And no, your imagined definitions of ""woman" meaning "adult human female" are not the actual definitions of those terms. Did you even watch the video, Sabine gave solid definitions of both "man" and "woman" that ARE accurate to the actual definitions of the term. So long as anything is referred to as "men's/women's " it is NEVER referring to sex, it is ALWAYS referring to gender. You are quite free to use words in different ways if you want to, but when interpreting the words of another person, you obviously have to interpret their words using the actual definitions of those terms and not by your own; otherwise, you will misinterpret what they are saying. Likewise, if they want to be understood by others then they would have the burden of using the actual definitions of those words.
    1
  9920.  @EaglePicking  If you truly understood American conservatives, then you would know how wrong they are. There is no good to find there, and pretending otherwise only enables their bad behavior.
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  9921.  @EaglePicking  "No, their position is not the correct position just because it is theirs. The correct position is the one that is true, not the one that dysphoric people feel good with." I agree entirely with what you say there, although I suspect not with what you believe your point is. Their positions is not correct because it ts theirs, but it is theirs, because it is correct. The correct position is the one that is true, and the one that is true is that they are the gender they identify as. It just happens to also be the one that makes dysphoric people feel good (not that all trans people are dysphoric). In any case, the reality is that trans people are right. It's just who they are, all credible evidence is that this is the case, and the best thing for everyone is to accept that and move on. It si a complete waste of time to try and fight it, and always will be. All you can do is cause additional harm, and you will never get any closer to a world in which you are actually right.
    1
  9922.  @omp199  Again, it's not magic, it's science. They aren't correct because they say so, but they are correct, and they say so because they are correct. I get that it makes you uncomfortable to accept who they are, but that has nothing to do with whether they are who they are or not. They will be who they are with or without your permission, the ONLY thing you have the power to do is to make other people's lives HARDER. You CHOOSE to do so. You don't have to. You choose evil. You don't have to.
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  9923.  @EaglePicking  I don't entirely agree with your framing of it. We have to accept people's genders based on self-perception because decades of research into the matter, supported by centuries of prior evidence, indicates that this provides the most accurate results. There's literally no reason to not accept people's genders based on self-perception, since there does not seem to be any more accurate tool than self-perception. Now, to your examples, you do understand that most prisons are full of rapists, right? There is nothing unusual about that. Now obviously we should try and reform prisons such that known rapists are kept separated from any potential victims, but this has nothing whatsoever to do with whether anyone is transgender or not. Generally speaking, trans women are no threat whatsoever to other women, and the idea that trans women might go around sexually assulting them is more of a bogey-man on the right than an actual problem. The funny thing is, most of the people screaming bloody murder about the possibility of trans women rapists, actually VOTED for Donald Trump in the 2020 election. So clearly they have ZERO problems with rapists. As for sports, as I said, there can be discussions as to what divisions we want to have in various sports, but if we CHOOSE to define those divisions based on GENDER, such as "women's sports," then we would need to allow ALL women, including trans women, to participate in them. If, on the other hand, we choose to use biological distinctions to separate out the various divisions, then some amount of trans women and cis women would be excluded from that division. "I don't choose to do this to hinder people with gender dysphoria, but simply to safeguard women and truth." Why lie to others? If you were actually right, you could be honest about yourself, like trans people are. Instead you have to pretend to be a better person than we both know you to be, in some pale attempt at credibility.
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  9924.  @EaglePicking  And you are bringing up prison rape as a distraction from the topic of trans people. What's your point? All I was pointing out is the fact that nobody who voted for Trump has any credibility on the topic of rape. And no, Biden was not credibly accused of rape, anyone who would claim otherwise has clearly been indoctrinated with nonsense and lost all credibility. "Is Isla Bryson a woman, now that he self-identifies as one?" I don't know who Isla Bryson is or their story, but if they claim to be a woman, I don't see how it would be any of our business to claim otherwise. "What is to stop any male rapist from self-identifying as a woman and going to a jail full of possible future victims?'" My question to you is what is to stop a male rapist from going to a male prison and raping there? Or a cis woman rapist from being sent to a female prison and raping there? What would be the difference? Rape is rape. The lesson there is not to treat trans people differently from cis people, it's to treat rapists differently from other people, and keep ALL rapists, regardless of their gender or sexual orientation, away from ANY potential victims, regardless of gender or sexual orientation. And yes, that also means keeping Trump out of the White House. "Or are they, as I've been told before when asking such questions, "bad faith questions"?" They are indeed that as well, since you are holding this up as a case of trans rights, when the case you raise is, even at the most generous, an extreme outlier, and even if you consider yourself 100% justified on that particular example, it would have zero relevance on the larger topic of millions of trans people who are NOT convicted rapists in a prison setting.
    1
  9925. That's not how national debt works.
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  9926. Never be in Haiti and you won't get kidnapped in Haiti.
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  9927.  @marcleach6167  Watch Legal Eagle's video on it. Several of the things Trump did in this case were crimes.
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  9928. This entire issue is an imaginary crisis. We don't need more people, because by the time those people are old enough to join the workforce, the workforce will have no need for them. We're at or near the peak of human population sizes, the future will be defined by smaller and smaller populations of wealthier and wealthier people.
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  9929. When have they not told the truth here?
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  9930. @dunravin But the important thing to remember is that it's impossible for locally produced equivalents to rise, and also pointless, so we can't factor that into some sort of theoretical "positive outcome." All the outcomes here will be negative ones.
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  9931. Which law is not being enforced?
    1
  9932.  @samhampton9139  I'm asking which laws are not being enforced. You're saying that laws are not being enforced, which ones specifically are you talking about? So far as I understand it, every immigration law currently on the books IS being enforced.
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  9933. A pardon wouldn't be relevant in this case, as it was a civil verdict, not criminal.
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  9934.  @alliet.7582  How is that Israel's fault again? Are they forcing Gazans to pump out babies? That sounds like more of a Hamas thing.
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  9935.  @davegaming6564  The only ones putting anyone in America at risk of authoritarianism are wearing MAGA hats. It's absolutely true that civilians would stand zero chance against the US military if it came to that, but it would never come to that under Democratic leadership.
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  9936. You started out strong, that "I did my own research" was a joke, but then you said that those reasons are gone, when they are much stronger than ever. Most people who claim to have "done their own research" are complete idiots spouting nonsense. Most people on the Internet are completely incapable of doing their own research effectively, they just feel that whatever conclusion they reach, it must be the right one, because it's the one they think is true. It's good to point out to people how they should do their research, but they won't, they will just continue to spread their flat earth nonsense on any number of topics.
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  9937.  @Bls-of1ld  Biden is better than most, certainly better than the guy he replaced. You not liking him does not change the facts.
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  9938.  @acemusichistory3622 Probably pretty bad, the whopper is the worst of the burgers. What would that have to do with anything though?
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  9939.  @vattghern7592  Russia? I don't know about that. What would their angle be here?
    1
  9940.  @patriciabock4299  These are pretty pricey colleges, I imagine that people who go there have pretty decent resources for camping supplies.
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  9941.  @gm-zz8so  Talk about a scapegoat, you bring up someone completely unrelated to anything.
    1
  9942.  @NPC13377  He lives only in your head, so stop thinking about him, and he stops being a problem.
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  9943.  @NPC13377  I'm just saying, in all these random cases where you evoke a "Soros," it has nothing to do with the actual human, who is pretty benign.
    1
  9944.  @NPC13377  These are college campuses. They are naturally inclined to do this sort of thing. It happens during every major social conflict. There's no "grand plan," it's just a whole bunch of people with similar ideas, helping each other out, whether you agree with their stances or not.
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  9945.  @hudson3535  Considerably older.
    1
  9946.  @Jacen777  I don't believe it's illegal to smoke while pregnant either, although it's certainly not recommended. Fetuses aren't considered to be people in so far as existing smoking laws go.
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  9947.  @Jacen777  This was the bargain the devil made with evangelicals.
    1
  9948.  @NewEnglandboy453  The tyrants are the ones opposing gun regulation. Do you really think that if the tyrants had won on Jan 6th, that Am3erica's gun owners would have risen up to depose them? Of course not.
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  9949. I doubt he is, but his father loves him regardless of his trespasses, because he is a good Christian. Unlike Republicans.
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  9950.  @josephcioppa1943  Only in the dreams of Republicans. They only wish that Biden was even 1/10th the criminal that Trump is. Sadly for them, he is not.
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  9951.  Wertdog1975  I asked loop and I'll ask you, do you think that the laptop should have impacted the election, and if so, why?
    1
  9952.  @transparentglazier  Do you believe that it should have changed the outcome of the election though? If so, why?
    1
  9953.  @transparentglazier  You are talking about the potential difference it could have made in the outcomes. That is irrelevant. I am asking you if it SHOULD have had any difference in the outcomes, and if so, why do you believe that?
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  9954.  @arleneartuso4271  That's not the case. Anything about Trump IS fact checked, and it only gets reported on if that fact checking bares out. It's not a "both sides" issue.
    1
  9955.  @loopthetube  That happens, keep trying with different phrasing.
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  9956.  @sem4502  But it turned out that "the big guy" wasn't on the take for any amount of money, the congressional investigations proved that, so if people had thought that he was, that would only have misled them! Also, Biden's finances are a matter of public record, he got his money from book deals and public speaking engagements.
    1
  9957.  ContentEnjoyer-gm3ky  So your argument is that all of America's thousands of teachers are somehow suspect, so you're going to vote for the guy found guilty of sexual assault. . . sure. . .
    1
  9958.  @sem4502  But it turned out that "the big guy" wasn't on the take for any amount of money, the congressional investigations proved that, so if people had thought that he was, they would be sad when they found out the truth. Also, his finances are a matter of public record, he got his money from book deals and public speaking engagements.
    1
  9959.  ContentEnjoyer-gm3ky  So you believe that all teachers are more suspicious than the convicted sex fofender. . .
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  9960.  @loopthetube  Again, you keep talking about how you think that it would have changed the outcome. That does not answer the question as to whether it should have. This is my point, do you think that people's choice should have been impacted by the contents of that laptop, and if so, why?
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  9961.  @williamabaker12  I check into stories from both sides. The simple truth is that negative stories about Trump DO usually bare out, not all, but almost all of them, certainly all the ones reported on by credible news outlets. It is also a fact that most of the things that Trump and his allies claim turn out to have no evidence to support them, and all "evidence" presented is just a circle of hearsay in which one of them points to another and he points to another and he points back to the first, with none of them having any actual evidence to support their position.
    1
  9962.  @loopthetube  Ok, so there you go, there was no good reason to involve the laptop in the discussion. Also, you seem to have misunderstood, it turned out that there was no corruption. At least not of the President.
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  9963. What we in America learned when Trump won was that when you tell racists that they're ok, they get SUPER racist.
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  9964. Ok, so Harris then.
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  9965.  @hughjanus5518  He was saying we should decide on a meritocracy. There is no meritocracy in which Harris loses to her opponent in this race.
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  9966. You ever thing maybe Putin's pulling an Ozymandias here? Turning himself into the big bad, just so that he can bring Europe closer together to oppose him? I mean, sucks for Ukraine and Russia either way, but it would be better than just "he's a narcissistic sociopath who's lost his mind."
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  9967. Shortage is what's causing the inflationary prices.
    1
  9968. Aw, baby tired himself out and finally did his job.
    1
  9969.  @garygolfer3243  No, the 2020 stuff was certainly violent, it was just the counter-protesters that were violent.
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  9970. Closing the border would cost the US half a billion dollars per day. That would be idiotic.
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  9971. Well, Putin is very dumb, so he does not understand this. He wants to be allowed to commit genocide, so he views anything that would make it harder to commit genocide as "an escalation."
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  9972.  @keithd2284  They're anti-missile missiles. They aren't meant to be used to hit things that aren't incoming missiles. Unlike the missiles Russia uses, which his hospitals, schools, and power facilities.
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  9973.  @keithd2284  Ukraine is dependent on US support, and the US does not want them using them offensively. If Ukraine did end up using them offensively, the US would stop sending more. Either way, it's a better option than allowing Russia to keep blowing up schools, hospitals, and energy infrastructure during winter, right? I mean, Ukraine could use the missiles to fire into Moscow and it would be well justified by Russia's actions to this point. They won't, but they would be justified.
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  9974.  @keithd2284  Ah, I see, Kremlin propaganda. Again, Russia has earned any damage they suffer from this point on. If they didn't want to be in a war, they should not have started a war. If they want peace, all they have to do is stop fighting and leave Ukraine.
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  9975.  @keithd2284  Interesting word salad there, comrade.
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  9976.  @keithd2284  That's entirely up to Putin, he started the war, he's the only one who might use nukes, and if he does, there's nothing we can do other than ensure that Russia is so irradiated that they can never do it again. No sense worrying about it either way. And yeah, I hear the vodka rations are being extra generous to get people through this.
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  9977.  @keithd2284  I guess that's important to stay in character. Whatever they give you to help you get through the shift, I guess. Without the US helping Ukraine, Russia could possible have taken them over. That might have "ended the war," but no rational person could consider that a just end to the conflict. If the alternative to war is :just let Putin do whatever he wants," then we might as well hand over the rest of Europe tomorrow. Nothing that the US did in any way made this war worse than it would have been without Us involvement. Every escalation was entirely on Putin for entering Ukraine and refusing to leave.
    1
  9978.  @keithd2284  Again, there would have been a war either way, Putin wanted dominance over Ukraine. The US has nothing to do with that. And I agree with you that you've been doing this for generations, but the US will always be ready to stop you, comrade. Historically, the Us and their allies come out of it better than Russia and theirs.
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  9979.  @JohnB3363  Unless they are asylum seekers, in which case crossing the border and asking for asylum is the legal method of doing so. If we could better process people crossing through the ports of entry, they wouldn't have to go around them. So long as we don't efficiently manage the ports of entry, they will continue to go around them. It's basically a supply and demand issue that Republicans have been failing at for decades.
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  9980.  @JohnB3363  To say that an asylum seeker that crosses outside a port of entry is committing a crime would be like saying that someone who uses a weapon in self defense is committing a crime. Seeking asylum is an affirmative defense to illegal entry charges. And "waiting in line" is not a viable option, since the system is so backed up due to decades of Republican mismanagement that "the line" is essentially infinite. I would agree with you that they should wait in line AFTER we have fixed the system so that they would only have to wait, at most, a few hours before getting in.
    1
  9981.  @JohnB3363  If you use a firearm in self defense, it is still assault. It is only "legal" in the sense that self defense is an affirmative defense against assault, so the result is that you are unlikely to even be charged, or convicted if charged, assuming that you can make your case that it was self defense. Likewise, seeking asylum, which is legal, is an affirmative defense against illegal entry charges. If you are approved for asylum, then you are innocent of having entered illegally. You only believe that Tom Homan was right because he confirmed your biases, not because he actually was right.
    1
  9982.  @JohnB3363  Yes, just as someone found firing a gun at someone else shall be subject to a criminal penalty. But in both cases there are affirmative defenses that one might use against such a penalty, such as self defense, or in the case of illegal entry, seeking asylum. What about this is so difficult for you to follow?
    1
  9983.  @JohnB3363  You keep repeating that as if I have not already addressed it several times. Yes, if you cross the border then you have committed a crime, exactly as how if you fire a gun at someone you have committed a crime, but LIKE in the latter example, there are affirmative defenses which would ERASE that crime, such as a valid asylum claim. Also, every person they encounter IS arrested, they are just then released on their own recognizance until their trial dates, because we do not have the facilities to permanently detain them. Handcuffing would be pointless as they are not flight risks. I can't think of any reason you would handcuff them, other than just to be cruel and unusual about it. As for whether they get approved for asylum, that comes later, if they are not, then they are deported, but they are owed due process either way. If you would like them to be in the country for less time, then approve the Biden request for more border judges so that these cases can be processed faster. As to why they might not show up for court dates, perhaps they have been sent halfway across the country from those courts by a Republican governor? Now as for the demographics of the asylum seekers, what would them being young men have to do with anything? It seems to me like they would be ideal asylum candidates, as they would be most directly targeted by gangs and have the best reasons to want to escape them.
    1
  9984.  @JohnB3363  I should also note that your statistic was invented. In reality, asylum seekers are roughly 50/50 men and women, and 30% of them are young children. I'm not sure who told you otherwise, or why.
    1
  9985. Democrats have plenty of wins to run on. House obstructionjsm over the last two years hasn't prevented all of the things Democrats wanted to give to American taxpayers, just most of it. The answer is to prevent that obstruction.
    1
  9986.  @alejandromolina5645  Da, comrade.
    1
  9987.  @its.zoeybeth  Oh, no, I'm not MAGA.
    1
  9988. I was thinking, couldn't you just make a "bolo station?" Just build a station of the same size as the ISS, and similar basic size, but designed like a cone, with all the interesting stuff "floored" at the flat end. Then build another one, and put a transit tube between them that's like 300+ meters long, with a docking bay in the center. This way, you could get the thing spinning at a rate that would provide reasonable false gravity at both ends, but the total mass would be a fraction of a full ring station, probably somewhere on the order of an ISS and a half, or at most 2-3 ISSes, and most of that fairly generic tubing. There are fragility issues, a broken tether would be very dangerous, but it should work, and you could even get advantages in catching and launching objects from the endpoints for bonus speed.
    1
  9989.  @simonfisher2239  Presumably the same Faux News that Congressman Coomer was watching.
    1
  9990. You are in favor of holding Jim Jordan in contempt of congress for ignoring his subpoena, right?
    1
  9991. The sad thing is, climate change deniers will look at this and say "see, the science was wrong," and not see "BECAUSE the science was being MORE optimistic than reality."
    1
  9992.  @klontjespap  I'm not misrepresenting anything, there are people who deny that climate change is occurring (although less of those each year), and also people denying that it's human caused (although less of those each year), and also people who deny that there's anything we can do about it. I have been talking to them in the other video's comments. They seem to think that the science on the topic was wrong, and apparently they were, it was just worse than they thought, not better.
    1
  9993. "Meanwhile, conservatives not bothered by disgusting CNN town hall, because they are equally disgusting people."
    1
  9994. I mean, to be fair, it's usually Joe Manchin tanking good legislation, so I can see why this one would have caught him off guard.
    1
  9995.  @VTRIGGERS  You're projecting.
    1
  9996.  @VTRIGGERS  I'll answer that question when you explain what relevance is has to James Coomer.
    1
  9997. It's weird how "normal" it's become that Russia just owns the Republican party. We've gone from them being "cold warriors" to "well, as long as the check clears."
    1
  9998.  @cynthiacook1646  He was just not biased in the direction you would prefer.
    1
  9999.  @aaronwilcox6417  They don't have to prove their algorithms, the burden is on Fox to prove that they produced incorrect results, and there is no evidence to support that claim.
    1
  10000.  jamesrkarolchyk1440  It's a constitutional republic, which means that we follow rule of law. There are various laws about who is and is not eligible to run for public office, and if any candidates fail to meet that standard, they are removed from the ballot. This has always been the case.
    1
  10001.  @Sey_Moore  Yeah, but fair outrage, because they are colluding with Russia to brainwash USA. I mean, is that their primary goal? No, but it is RT's, and Youtube allowed RT to continue existing on their platform, even after RT broke Youtube's own rules. Youtube's handling of copyright is messed up and something needs to force them to build better, more consistent, more fair practices, maybe this will be a part of it. At the very least, a channel like RT should not get any advantages that some rando Youtuber does not get.
    1
  10002. Good. Don't lie to the FBI.
    1
  10003.  @DanOneOne  Well, again, it depends on the situation. Real Engineering just did a fantastic video on maglev, there are some cases in which it is financially viable, but in most cases, trains work fine. And as I said, monorails are rarely practical, except in extreme situations, and are more often only there for tourism purposes. But again, in neither case are the railroads their enemy.
    1
  10004.  @DanOneOne  Well, you said "This mirrors the optimism of converting everything to monorail or maglev... until they realized that it's impossible to replace the railroads..." and my point was just that those are not competition for railroads. They don't exist to replace railroads. They are something separate.
    1
  10005.  @realitywave  Think about who you are talking to though. Don't expect too much.
    1
  10006. And nobody said that it was.
    1
  10007. No, we kicked him out three years ago. He's retired to Florida.
    1
  10008. @ Can you use the touchscreen entirely by feel though? You can with a physical console. I feel like you are just trying to defend the vehicle you own.
    1
  10009.  @seanplace8192  1) that doesn't change the fact that you don't need to for operating a button based console, once you have a reasonable familiarity with it. There is no touch screen device that I would feel comfortable ever operating blind. 2) Yes, you said that, but that doesn't make it true. The reality is that most people can operate the basic functions of a well designed physical console, once they'd become accustomed to it. In my own vehicle I can operate the fan, heat/cool level, radio volume and channel settings, and potentially more, all without looking at all. There are other buttons that I'd have to glance at to find, but those are the core functions that I'd be most likely to fiddle with while already in motion. 3) So what? If they are common enough to be predominately featured on a touch screen, then they would be buttons and knobs people would be likely to hit regularly. If they are options that are as rare as you claim, then they would probably be hidden on a touch screen, and impossible to find when needed. Buttons would still be better. I would be LESS bothered by a car that had a mix of the two, with buttons and knobs for both very common and very emergency functions, while also having a touch screen to control less common and important functions, but all buttons would still be better. 4) everyone in the modern world has used touch screens, and they obviously have their uses. I would never object to a touch screen being added to a car, I would only object to it replacing the existing buttons and knobs for common functions. Touch screens are more adaptable than buttons and knobs, so it can be more useful for certain things, like scrolling a track list, or working a map display, nobody questions that, but that doesn't mean it's better for every function, and even on modern smartphones people often comment when buttons are added or removed for things like volume control or home screen access, when technically these functions could be entirely touch-based.
    1
  10010. @ 3) So what? If they are common enough to be predominately featured on a touch screen, then they would be buttons and knobs people would be likely to hit regularly. If they are options that are as rare as you claim, then they would probably be hidden on a touch screen, and impossible to find when needed. Buttons would still be better. I would be LESS bothered by a car that had a mix of the two, with buttons and knobs for both very common and very emergency functions, while also having a touch screen to control less common and important functions, but all buttons would still be better. 4) everyone in the modern world has used touch screens, and they obviously have their uses. I would never object to a touch screen being added to a car, I would only object to it replacing the existing buttons and knobs for common functions. Touch screens are more adaptable than buttons and knobs, so it can be more useful for certain things, like scrolling a track list, or working a map display, nobody questions that, but that doesn't mean it's better for every function, and even on modern smartphones people often comment when buttons are added or removed for things like volume control or home screen access, when technically these functions could be entirely touch-based.
    1
  10011. @ 3) So what? If they are common enough to be predominately featured on a touch screen, then they would be buttons and knobs people would be likely to hit regularly. If they are options that are as rare as you claim, then they would probably be hidden on a touch screen, and impossible to find when needed. Buttons would still be better. I would be LESS bothered by a car that had a mix of the two, with buttons and knobs for both very common and very emergency functions, while also having a touch screen to control less common and important functions, but all buttons would still be better.
    1
  10012.  @MrJoker-  Yeah, Republicans oppose anything Christ stood for.
    1
  10013. Because the price of gasoline has never had anything to do with US oil production levels.
    1
  10014.  @jamesmooney8933  No, it's pumped out of the ground, and the price Americans pay at the pump has always been based on the global oil price, regardless of where that oil came from.
    1
  10015.  @michaelarens2046  What's wrong with his political agenda?
    1
  10016.  @michaelarens2046  Nothing wrong with that, so long as he is doing good for the American people, which seems to be the case.
    1
  10017.  @Marcia-k7g  You didn't recall him, you launched a recall campaign, which was an extremely low bar in California. The voters of the state voted that they did not want him removed, and so he wasn't.
    1
  10018.  @Marcia-k7g  In Narnia, maybe, but not in the real world.
    1
  10019. Yup, never expect human empathy from a Republican. If they had human empathy, they couldn't be Republicans.
    1
  10020.  @TheJmac82  This is the entire reason there is a "debate" on climate science, because the deniers are too stupid to understand why they're wrong, and too stubborn to accept that there is something they don't understand.
    1
  10021. I don't think it's fair to consider congestion pricing "disincentive to driving." Traffic is ALREADY a disincentive to drive. People who choose to drive are already deciding that inconvenience is worth putting up with. ALL congestion pricing does is price OUT the poors. It's just a way to allow business and the wealthy to benefit from roads, and not poor people.
    1
  10022. Probably because he fights against modern medicine.
    1
  10023.  @robbyrdog  Trump doesn't know anything other than who he is.
    1
  10024.  @phillmccracken4219  Yeah, TDS would probably explain your behavior. Sad.
    1
  10025. If we call everyone who works for a foreign government a "foreign asset," then that would rule out practically all of the incoming president's administration, including himself! Putting American first CAN'T be a standard we insist on here.
    1
  10026. I'm just waiting on the point when mainstream economists realize that within fifty years, "human labor potential" and "productivity" will be completely decoupled.
    1
  10027. I think Biden's step was reasonable, given that it would only apply for less than 24 hours under his watch, and it would make more sense to maintain the status quo until the Trump admin had their chance to do something. Now whether we agree with what Trump does, we'll see.
    1
  10028. But the important point here is that Joe Biden was not actually involved in any way, and whatever Hunter got up to is irrelevant, since nobody voted for him.
    1
  10029. I really hate it when writers can't sustain a healthy relationship. It's why they broke up Peter and MJ in Spider-Man, they just couldn't stand them both just being happy together. There is definitely less drama about a successfully happy relationship, so it reduces the available drama, but in most cases you can just write a good story that doesn't rely on that romantic drama to sustain it.
    1
  10030.  @Blaze_1961  The 14th amendment bars anyone who's served in government and violated their oaths of office from serving again.
    1
  10031.  @danstory4286  No such woman was picked. I think you misunderstood her answer. I think you also know that.
    1
  10032. Yup. Just stupid people hitting themselves.
    1
  10033.  @Steven-vh6fg  If Trump ordered these troops to do anything other than defend the inauguration, that would be an act of treason, completely illegal, and the military would refuse that order, as is their duty, and immediately place him under arrest. He should probably avoid that.
    1
  10034. Well, Republican voters seem to like him, and until the Supreme Court decides on the issue, he has a right to run in the election. Biden'll beat him, of course, but he'll run anyway.
    1
  10035.  @GBass011  How would someone vote if they're dead? That doesn't make sense.
    1
  10036.  @Bob-bb3ur  I don't think most places offer 60 days of early voting, it's usually only a few weeks, but early voting in general is good because people lead busy lives, and often can't get the time off to go to the polling places on election day. The more time that's available, the better. Why not?
    1
  10037.  @montamiddleton9318  It would be ignorant to claim that everyone is capable of voting on election day, not unless we made election day a national holiday (which many want to do, but for some reason, Republicans oppose it).
    1
  10038.  @trappedcat3615 That would be incorrect though. The White House made the right call on this one. I will agree with you that if they wanted to do things wrong, as you suggest, then they would have done things very differently.
    1
  10039.  @poppystars9005  There currently is no House of Representatives, due to Republican mismanagement. THAT is the emergency.
    1
  10040.  @poppystars9005  It does constitute an emergency that would allow for emergency authorization though.
    1
  10041. You didn't even show Fate's Enkidu!
    1
  10042. Yes, "The Lord of the Rings."
    1
  10043. Trump did worse than this, he was impeached over it, but the Senate Republicans refused to convict, not because they did not believe he did the crime, but just because they were worried about their own re-election.
    1
  10044.  @PinoyPewAtbp  Exactly, he loves the uneducated!
    1
  10045. Conservatives often have trouble telling what a woman is.
    1
  10046.  @algoner4421  I don't think so, no.
    1
  10047.  @alsatful  He signed a form saying that he wasn't a drug user at that time, which may have been true. It did not say that he had never done drugs, if it did, almost nobody could get a gun. Also apparently it was Hallie that ditched the weapon, not him. Hardly the first time a gun has been misplaced. Or the millionth.
    1
  10048.  @alsatful  Oh man, if "someone else misused my gun" was a criminal offense under US law, that would be a massive game changer! Let's hope that's the verdict! The fun thing about this whole case is that nothing can stick to Hunter without making gun control advocates VERY happy.
    1
  10049.  @alsatful  Again, if leaving guns unattended were a crime, there would be millions more gun owners currently in jail. As for Hunter's "easy way out," it's important to remember that if he wasn't the target of political enemies, he never would have been charged for this if not for some other crime being involved.
    1
  10050.  @alsatful  Duh.
    1
  10051.  @alsatful  I'm genuinely amused here. Do you seriously want to pretend that the Hunter Biden case was not politically motivated?
    1
  10052.  @alsatful  I am saying that if ALL gun crimes were prosecuted to the level that Hunter Biden's case has been, then that would be great, but they aren't, and it would be disingenuous to claim that they are. Like I said, if every person who had done what Hunter has been accused of received the default penalty for doing so, there would be millions of additional Americans in jail right now, the kind that say that they are "law abiding gun owners" on social media.
    1
  10053.  @alsatful  No, and if all of them were treated like this one was, then there would be millions of gun owners in jail. But I don't think it's just to treat some people differently than others. I am unable to bring myself to pretend that you do not understand the political nature of this investigation.
    1
  10054.  @algoner4421  You have been told that lying like this is common. It is not common, or acceptable. Also, there are very few people who cannot articulate very good reasons why he was a terrible President.
    1
  10055.  @troyb3659 Nah, most of the time it's a non-issue. It's only relatively recently that there have been forces attempting to actively dismantle the Constitution. They got enough pieces on the Supreme Court, and now just need to retake the White House.
    1
  10056.  @troyb3659  Well, they aren't actually ever close to achieving it, at least. I'm sure there are always some who try, they just never come so close to controlling the necessary levers.
    1
  10057. You know, you're allowed to post videos on Youtube, even if they get demonetized. Plenty of content creators do this, so you don't have to worry about "content not working for Youtube." You can just put it out anyway.
    1
  10058.  @ThePetersondean  Nobody did that though.
    1
  10059. How many progressives are on the staff at Reason TV?
    1
  10060. He didn't have any influence, it was not his idea. Joe Biden was only acting on the orders of the Obama administration to deliver the message. The US government wanted that prosecutor out because he was a corrupt agent of Russia. Of course the right-wing media always lays this out as if it were entirely Joe's idea to something something involving his son. What their audience should be asking is, why do they feel the need to lie to you, and why do they believe you're dumb enough to eat it up?
    1
  10061.  @psykoticninjaentertainment5097  This was not an example of it. Biden was not the one making decisions here, he was just carrying out his orders from the Obama White House.
    1
  10062.  @KevinSmith-dq9tz  Exactly, that's what the VP's salary is for, to carry out the orders given to him by the White House.
    1
  10063.  @nancyking9033  "The Big Guy" is also Hunter, in this scenario.
    1
  10064.  @nancyking9033  There is no indication of any quid pro quo here.
    1
  10065.  @nancyking9033  Nope, there's no evidence that Joe Biden every made a penny off Hunter's adventures. The Big Guy was also Hunter.
    1
  10066. Well, Jared got 2 BILLION dollars from the Saudis for services rendered, and the Trump companies continue to make hundreds of millions from them. But this is pretty well known, so anyone who actually opposes corruption in government could never vote for Trump.
    1
  10067. That shouldn't be necessary, nobody actually believes Zelensky started the war, outside of the Kremlin and their agents.
    1
  10068.  @thepervertedmonk2353  Right? I think some of the people in the comments are just a lost cause, but I really am curious what they think he was lying about.
    1
  10069. I still use a 20 year old version of Photoshop. It still works on Windows 10. It has a few minor glitches here and there, but I've learned to work around those.
    1
  10070. This is true, but the racists won't want to hear it.
    1
  10071. Yeah, Trump's actions were criminal because he refused to hand over the documents as requested by the National Archives, and then lied in a sworn statement claiming that he'd already given them all back. None of that applies to Pence or Biden, who did not have their documents requested and turned everything in as soon as it was discovered. A lot of people don't understand this distinction so they few the Biden and Pence stuff as "just as bad," somehow.
    1
  10072.  @alexfrideres1198  That's an interesting recitation of the various lies Donald Trump has said about the documents, yes, but the important thing to keep in mind is that none of those things are actually true. If they were, he would not be in any trouble, but since they are not, in actual fact, true, he is in a considerable amount of trouble, at least under US law. They were not declassified because they still had their classified markings. If they had been declassified, under US law, then those markings would not exist. Even if they had not been classified, they contained defense information that a civilian is not allowed to have possession of, whether a former President or not. And even if they had not been classified and had not included US defense information, they were still presidential records, which means that they never at any point belonged to Trump, they belonged to the National Archives, this entire time, so Trump had NO right to have them in his possession, ever. And no, Mar-A-Lago is not any sort of secure facility, Chinese spies came and went down there, as he kept it in operation as a club where randos ate dinner every night. Putting government documents in Mar-A-Lago is not somehow "just as good" as keeping them at the White House. He would have been allowed to bring some documents there WHILE president, but still was required to return all of them once his presidency ended. So he's screwed six ways to Sunday on that. And I'll ask you, do you know what "continuity of government" is? Because your statements seem to indicate that you don't.
    1
  10073.  @alexfrideres1198  Ok, since we've already covered and agreed on the several reasons why Trump's actions were illegal, let's discuss the unrelated topic of "continuity of government." That's the term used to describe plans for the management of the government to continue operating, even throughout potential disasters that could disrupt its normal operation. Of course, since all of Trump's problems occurred years AFTER he played any role in "continuity of government," it would have absolutely nothing to do with the matter at hand. So why does the topic interest you?
    1
  10074.  @alexfrideres1198  Well? What relevance did you think "continuity of government" had to all of this?
    1
  10075.  @alexfrideres1198  Continuity of government has nothing to do with Donald Trump though, since his presidency ended two years ago. There would be no legal way for him to extend his term beyond Jan 20th 2021. If there were some sort of crisis that had prevented Joe Biden from taking the office, then Nancy Pelosi would have become president. Again, what do you think any of this has to do with Donald Trump?
    1
  10076.  @alexfrideres1198  That's completely irrelevant. "Continuity of government" has nothing to do with normal "crises." It ONLY applies when the actual functions of government are disrupted, and ONLY for so long as that disruption remains. For example, during the Jan 6th insurrection, there was a "continuity of government" issue, but it was 100% resolved and finished by later that night when congress returned to session. Again, I ask you, what would any of this have to do with Donald Trump in 2022?
    1
  10077.  @alexfrideres1198  Also, this shouldn't need pointing out, but the US President has no legal authority to "extend his term" via executive order. That would require a Constitutional amendment.
    1
  10078.  @alexfrideres1198  But we aren't talking about fiction here. We're talking about the actual real world, and in the actual real world, none of that is true. He didn't "deploy the national guard," nor would he be authorized to do so even if he'd tried it. You are just talking pure nonsense that sounds like plausible policy only to someone who has no idea what they're talking about.
    1
  10079.  @alexfrideres1198  The President can only deploy the national guard under specific circumstances, and under limited restrictions. None of those apply here. The fact remains that he did NOT deploy the national guard, much less that they are somehow still deployed today. The documents you are talking about (the ones that do exist, at least) have nothing to do with the situation you describe. I believe I understand what you are trying to say here, you are presenting a fictional scenario in which Trump deployed the national guard to seize power in an illegal authoritarian coup, but my point is that none of that happened. Ever. Biden was sworn in as president in January of 2021, he has been the commander in chief since that point, and Donald Trump has been a private citizen in Florida. I don't know who lied to you, but you owe it to yourself to find out why they felt the need to keep you ignorant.
    1
  10080.  @alexfrideres1198  There are Federal Community Directives 1 and 2 exist, but they are just standard continuity of government functions. I can find no evidence of any additional directives, and none of them involve some sort of martial law takeover. In any case, no such takeover occurred at any level. And again, "winter whitehouse" is a nickname, NOT any official designation. And even when it was in use, it ceased to be relevant on Jan 20th 2021, when Donald Trump left office.
    1
  10081.  @alexfrideres1198  No, there's no martial law in DC. The national guard came in from the neighboring states for the night of Jan 6th, cleared out the Capitol and restore order, but after a few weeks they were entirely gone. End of that story. Again, "continuity of government" does not apply here. Joe Biden was sworn in, Donald Trump went him a private citizen, just like every President before him.
    1
  10082. Who goes 6 miles on a BIKE? Do they even make a bike with air conditioning or heating?
    1
  10083.  @roscoepatternworks3471  Who is causing the violence then? Because she denounced Hamas, and she denounced Hezbolah, which groups did she did not denounce?
    1
  10084.  @roscoepatternworks3471  She denounced Hamas, and she denounced Hezbolah. Which group do you believe she did not denounce? Russia?
    1
  10085.  @SP95  That's the opposite of true though. Look it up. Far right governments inevitably doom spiral, while under left leaning governments, countries tend to improve their economies and societies. I know that's not what they teach people on Faux News, but it's still a fact nonetheless.
    1
  10086.  @Monkechnology  He thought that Hitler and Muscolini were "left wing," when they pretty much define the right.
    1
  10087.  @Monkechnology  Stalin was right-wing. Why would you think he wasn't? He was a strict authoritarian, that's pretty much the definition of right-wing politics.
    1
  10088.  @Milfhunter_404  ISIS not caring about international law does not mean that we shouldn't.
    1
  10089. It's all they know how to do. If they actually had any idea how government works, they'd be Democrats.
    1
  10090.  @mrrey8937  Well, ideally we wouldn't need to have one party rule, but the Republican party shot themselves in the face and where we are. Ideally, they will sort themselves out, drain the MAGA swamp, and actually start to be a governing party again (although it's been decades since we've seen that), but for now, it's just too irresponsible to vote any of them into office. It would be like deputizing children and handing them loaded guns.
    1
  10091.  @fauxque5057  Well, even just controlling the House gives them an unfortunately level of power. They can run House committees to mud rake with, and they can prevent vital legislation from happening because it needs to pass the house first. They can't pass new laws that would cause new harm, but they can cause harm via neglect.
    1
  10092.  @blaylock1978  If he is a Republican, then he's probably a true Republican.
    1
  10093.  @methatis3013  So far it sounds like he's a true Republican and never-trumper.
    1
  10094. Ok Putin.
    1
  10095. @ Robots are a part of the future. You have robots to do the manual jobs, you have AI to handle the non-manual jobs and to control the robots. The point is that within our lifetimes, there will be no role for human labor, and so that's the outcome we need to be working toward, how to ensure that billions of humans can still live a comfortable existence in that world.
    1
  10096. @razberrycuddles22 He said there were fine people on both sides. One of those two sides was the Nazis. He was saying that some of them were fine people.
    1
  10097.  @rigg4146  If you watch the full clip, you've know that he plays "two mean things and a nice thing," rather than fully condemning them. Why can't he just say the condemnations, without "fine people on both sides?"
    1
  10098. But then Faux News wouldn't have anything to air.
    1
  10099. There's no need for Esperonto, we already have English for that.
    1
  10100.  @REYIV  Exactly, nothing is stopping anyone from learning English.
    1
  10101.  @REYIV  Learning other languages can be useful, but only as useful as where those languages are taught. If I want to spend time in France or Japan or China, it might benefit me to learn those languages, but why bother picking up a language that is less likely to be spoken than English no matter where I go? It doesn't hurt to pick up a second language, but so long as at least one of them is English, everyone can communicate.
    1
  10102. I do think that the best way to handle the drug crisis is to just price the dealers out of the system. Make it so that the absolute cheapest and legal way to get drugs is at a public provider, so that there would just be zero margin for any street dealer to compete. There's no other way around it, people are going to people, however much you might wish otherwise.
    1
  10103. Why do none of the comments say "I am Grut" yet?
    1
  10104. If we do hit the point that making new batteries is cheaper than recycling, then it would likely only be temporary (until the easy resources run out), so the solution would be to stockpile the dead batteries in a place that they're easy to get at, so that once that bubble bursts, they can come back and start recycling again without too much hassle.
    1
  10105.  @nothingtosee314  they can indeed arrest you for the threat alone, and if they had he would already be back out on the streets and fully armed well before this shooting took place, because the punishment for a minor first time offender would be relatively minor, and in the US it would be hard to bar him from having access to firearms. If this were Switzerland, on the other hand, they would have removed all guns from his household.
    1
  10106.  @nothingtosee314  What about his father? Could they have prevented his father from owning a gun? Also, "conditions of release" are generally if they get a deal for a reduced sentence, if he's served his time, there is basically no condition on releasing him beyond following the same laws as everyone else. I don't even believe he would have been charged with a felony, so he wouldn't even fall under convicted felon restrictions.
    1
  10107.  @nothingtosee314  What laws that apply in Georgia would have allowed them to confiscate the firearms from this shooter's home prior to the shooting, and prevent them from legally acquiring a new one?
    1
  10108.  @nothingtosee314  I don't believe his threats could be considered "domestic violence," unless he was openly threatening family members. And again, that would only work if his father were also convicted. It would also require that the maximum possible sentences be applied, which is unlikely for a minor first offender. Hindsight is 20/20, of course, so we'd like to think that every possible lever would get pulled in this case, but that is not how the law generally works, and if it did, people would be crying "tyranny!" over it.
    1
  10109.  @nothingtosee314  You might not call it tyranny yourself, but if it they did throw the book at him every time that a troubled teen came up on law enforcement's radar then you can bet the NRA would get involved to cut that out. Can't have people taking guns away from people, how would they continue to make record profits? And the thing is, most gun owners with children fail no less than this father did. Certainly more than enough of them to lead to catastrophe. They may not explicitly buy the weapon for their child or even give them official permission to use it, but if a gun is in the house, the child will have access to it, especially if it's not safely locked up, but even if it is, there are all sorts of ways most teens would be capable of getting it if they wanted to. The only way to keep guns away from troubled teens is to not have them in the house at all, and any rules that would have prevented this teen from having access to a gun, IF consistently applied to the standards necessary to prevent him having a gun, would also apply to hundreds of thousands of other households, because sadly, "teen mouths off online" is extremely common, even if only a tiny fraction of them ever actually do anything about it.
    1
  10110.  @nothingtosee314  Most gun owners believe they are very safe with their weapons, and yet tens of thousands of accidents happen every year, and plenty of guns get stolen. "safe storage" is more likely to be inadequate than not. Lockpicking lawyer has a whole series of videos on supposedly "safe" storage devices that can be busted into with a stiff breeze. As to your question, it's very simple, the safest home is one without a firearm in it. If guns kept citizens safe, then America would be the safest country on Earth, rather than the least safe first world country by a mile. A gun owner is more likely to be harmed by a gun than a non-gun-owner, and more likely to have someone in their household misuse the gun in a harmful manner than to successfully use that gun in self defense. If you are concerned about the safety of your family, they would be more safe in a country where guns are illegal than you could ever make them in a country which would allow you to own a gun.
    1
  10111. It's called "parody." Also, Trump is the one who is trying to destabilize and hamstring our ties to NATO. Maybe he should remember who our allies are.
    1
  10112.  @tylerc7336  I have done my research, that's how I know that Trump has been destabilizing our relationship to NATO. Maybe you should do some research.
    1
  10113.  @tylerc7336  That has nothing to do with this. He can make that case without alienating and endangering our allies.
    1
  10114. Communism is not on the ballot. Right wing authoritarianism is though.
    1
  10115.  @maverick1956hk  No, they got it right.
    1
  10116.  @inhimwelive3951  Oh, no, I'm not MAGA.
    1
  10117.  @taylorlibby7642  I would take it for a joke, if it wasn't in line with everything else he says. When a mob boss jokes about having someone killed, you don't sleep on that.
    1
  10118. I like the idea of arcologies, but they need to be carefully designed. "The Line" sounds dumb. There is an arcology I want to see made though, based around the concept of four tall towers about on the scale of the original Twin Towers, all linked at every 50 floors or so by open or semi-open promenade rings, allowing you to easily cross from building to building without having to travel more than 50 floors. You would have food and commercial spaces on the 1-2 floors around these promenades, making them similar to a mall, and commercial/light industrial spaces would be in the middle-most floors between these bridges (ie floors 25-ish, 75-ish, 125-ish, etc.), so furthest from the bridges. I assume that the housing nearest the promenade levels would be in most high demand, because they would be most convenient and get the best light, while those directly under the promenades would be the lowest value, but the goal would be so that nothing you would need in an average day would be out of reach within +- 50 floors of your apartment, and no service you would need on an annual basis would require you to leave the building, so plenty of people would stay in the building just a much as a New Yorker might stay inside the city.
    1
  10119. God want's nothing to do with that, if he ever regained power, he'd have the other guy to thank for it.
    1
  10120.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  Broadly, yeah. We're still on that path he warned of, though efforts made to combat climate change have at least helped. It would have gone a lot more smoothly had more action been taken 20 years ago though.
    1
  10121. As for what the film got right? It got right that climate change is happening (which was more controversial at the time), and that greenhouse gases were a major contributor. I think some might argue that the specific numerical predictions were slightly off, but that would be like complaining that a seven-day weather forecast claimed that it would snow in the afternoon, and it actually started in the morning. Any prediction of the future will become less and less accurate on specifics over time, but the general direction of it remained accurate.
    1
  10122.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  And it might have been iceless by 2013, depending on how things went. Instead it took another twenty years or so, but it was still a valid prediction to make. The ice levels certainly have been falling considerably, and the north pole was completely ice free for several summers now. This is my point though, you're quibbling over the smaller details of his predictions, rather than the broader implications. Also, did you not see the videos of New York in October?
    1
  10123.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  You misunderstand NASA if you believe that.
    1
  10124.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  You're not permanently underwater, yet, but NYC is much more prone to flooding than it once was, and that will only get worse over time. A lot of it depends on how fast glaciers melt into the ocean, but there is not a lot of room to play with there.
    1
  10125.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  Yup. "By observation (of laypeople)" is science's greatest enemy. A lot of flat earthers use that same argument. By observed data, sea levels have risen around 4 inches over the past thirty years, and the waters around NYC are no exception. That's not a huge amount so far, but a lot of the available ice has not yet melted. If major permaice in areas like Greenland, Antarctica, and the Himalayas melt, then seas could rise rapidly. This is part of the problem, these changes can happen very quickly once they really get into gear, because they feed off of each other as they go. For example, the artcic seas have been seeing less and less ice cover in the summer over the past few years, which in turn causes them to be even hotter still, since bare sea water heats up faster than snow covered ice does, and then it sheds less and less of that hear each year.
    1
  10126.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  "Which years" what?
    1
  10127.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  I never claimed the entire arctic, just the north pole. You can get cruises up there.
    1
  10128.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  Like I said, you can take cruise ships to the arctic today. Within the next decade or two they expect the entire arctic to be ice free in summer.
    1
  10129.  @-astrangerontheinternet6687  No, not a "cruise in the arctic," a cruise to the POLE. In a boat.
    1
  10130. Yup. This is what happens when people elect Republicans to public office, when they've proven themselves time and again too irresponsible to wield it with integrity.
    1
  10131. I don't like the idea of a nuke, but if a 50 Gigaton nuke could work, then could we instead just use a literal 50 gigaton conventional bomb? Like just a literal mountain of TNT or equivalents? There would be some toxic residue, but I think less than a nuke would do.
    1
  10132. ​ @darkone292  He started before any of them though, his entire political career started with him saying mean things about Obama, and then he won the nomination by saying mean things about his opponents. It's ALL he's ever had, but it's a message that appeals to high school bullies who have never gotten anywhere since.
    1
  10133.  @joeg9112  Biden pulled out and the elected delegates nominated her. That's how the process works when a candidate leaves the race. The Republicans should try it some time.
    1
  10134.  @joeg9112  In the primaries, voters elected delegates to represent their interests in the convention. Those delegates nominated Harris, which reflects the support of the party. Why are you upset, when the Democrats are not?
    1
  10135.  @joeg9112  You should read your own post history. You would apparently be surprised.
    1
  10136.  @joeg9112  I don't know what you're rambling about. The reaction among Democrats was largely positive. Of course there would be some people who disagreed, but most considered Harris to be a better option this fall than Biden. It would have been nice if Biden had decided to drop out earlier, so there could be an open primary, but it was too late for that after the debate. What would you have preferred?
    1
  10137.  @joeg9112  Nonsense, there was never time for an open primary. Have you even seen America do an election? That's not how any of this works. An open primary would have taken six months or more to set up and complete, and then there would need to be a convention, and then the campaign for the general, you aren't making ANY sense.
    1
  10138.  @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.
    1
  10139.  @joeg9112  If you don't want to vote for Harris, you don't have to, but most Democrats seem to want to do it, and that is their choice. What I think has bearing in that you were asking how I felt about it. My choice matters exactly as much as yours. Nobody is choosing for you. As I said, an open primary would be preferable, but there is LITERALLY no time for that process to take place under US law. Who would you prefer to vote for in the fall? You do always have the option of writing that candidate in.
    1
  10140.  @joeg9112  I never believe in allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good. This is the best scenario that is available right now, and so it is the one I support. Someone refusing to drink water until they pass out because it is not wine is a fool. I ask you again, who did YOU want to vote for in the fall? Do you even have a point behind this beyond "tear everything down for no other reason than because it exists?"
    1
  10141.  @joeg9112  You didn't answer my question about who you wanted to vote for in the fall. I have a feeling you don't have an answer. Also, Biden picked his successor four years ago when he picked her for VP, and then 80 million people voted for him.
    1
  10142.  @joeg9112  You still haven't answered who you want to vote for in the fall. Why should I care what your opinion is on politics when you apparently don't actually have one?
    1
  10143.  @joeg9112  You still have no opinion. That's the saddest possible answer.
    1
  10144.  @joeg9112  Better than literally nothing, which is all you have. At the end of the day someone will be President next year, and the ONLY thing that matters is getting the best person into that office that we can. "Nothing" is literally worthless. Nothing can be more pathetic than your position.
    1
  10145.  @joeg9112  No, making your own mind up would be great. Give that a try. Go ahead, I'll wait. Make up your mind. But so far, I've asked, and you've given no answer.
    1
  10146.  @joeg9112  Well, following any direction is better than having no direction at all, so until you can show yourself capable of charting your own course, ANY course, then "I'm listening to that guy" is not a worse course to have, especially when "that guy" is the one we'd elected to lead us before, and planned to do so again. So again I ask, DO you have a choice, or do you just believe that doing nothing is somehow useful to anyone?
    1
  10147.  @joeg9112  Again, SOMEONE is going to be president. If you have no opinion as to who that person should be, then you have literally no relevance to this conversation. You say I am lost, but you are just sitting down in a desert and waiting for the end, rather than being willing to head in ANY direction at all. That is the worse possible choice. Other than Trump, of course.
    1
  10148.  @joeg9112  Why do you keep talking when you've proven you have literally no point?
    1
  10149.  @joeg9112  An empty vessel has no value. Again, if you want to contribute, then explain who you wanted to vote for in the fall. I already have a pick, whether you like it or not. Catch up.
    1
  10150.  @joeg9112  "I need directions cause I am so lost. You are wise and I will do whatever you say. My life is a blank canvas waiting for you to guide me, to mold me, to enlighten me with your wisdom. Thinking on my own is so hard." -Joeg9112
    1
  10151.  @joeg9112  No, the tears must be yours.
    1
  10152.  @joeg9112  Tell your operator to reboot, you're stuck walking in circles because you lack motivation.
    1
  10153.  @joeg9112  Again, you have NO direction, so whatever you claim about me, you are automatically worse.
    1
  10154.  @joeg9112  Again, your argument MIGHT have some validity if you had any direction of your own. But since you have nothing, your arguments are like the blind man shouting at the one-eyed man that he should blind himself and join the rest just sitting in place, waiting to die.
    1
  10155.  @joeg9112  Why are you quoting me when you are speaking from your own heart?
    1
  10156.  @joeg9112  Again, I have asked what your direction is, and your response was that you have NONE. If you had a direction, then this would be a different conversation, but since you admit to having NONE, there is no point to you.
    1
  10157.  @joeg9112  I'm doing the best I can to provide you direction, but you won't take a step forward. Repeating yourself is just sad. You're sounding like Trump at once of his rallies.
    1
  10158.  @joeg9112  Sad.
    1
  10159.  @joeg9112  "I need directions cause I am so lost. You are wise and I will do whatever you say. My life is a blank canvas waiting for you to guide me, to mold me, to enlighten me with your wisdom. Thinking on my own is so hard." - joeg9112
    1
  10160. That cartoon would portray God as being extremely dumb. If He's all knowing, then He would have sent the cure into someone who would have grown up and actually produced it, or at least sent multiple copies. More fetuses and infants die to natural causes than to abortion, so if he's just going to fire one baby out into billions and hope for the best, that's a really terrible strategy.
    1
  10161. But this is not data we're talking about, they are models, which are simulated data. They are only as accurate as the model itself, so if the results are outliers, it is more likely a fault in the model than it is a fault in the others.
    1
  10162.  @MrMezmerized  But sometimes it is the appropriate response to be dismissive of something, when it is inherently faulty. A new model might be better, but ti also might not. You would need other, independent models to support those conclusions to view it as a significant challenge to existing ones. It is entirely possible to use new data and new methods, and for there to be flaws in the methodology that lead to wildly inaccurate results.
    1
  10163. The idea that "when you have infinite time, life loses all meaning" was explored really well in the last season on The Good Place.
    1
  10164. No, this is not what "election denying" is. She is not denying the results, she is just complaining about how the campaigns messaged to voters.
    1
  10165. If only members of the Trump administration would do less crimes. :(
    1
  10166. Nothing about the gag order is relevant to whether Trump testifies or not. All the gag order does is prevent him targeting court workers for hate groups. If Trump's testimony involves targeting court employees, then he is doing a bad job. If anything requires Trump to target court employees, then he is doing a bad job.
    1
  10167. So be fair, any time someone from the right starts talking, it's nonsense, so there's nothing to be gained by listening. They've trained people to ignore them over decades.
    1
  10168. He's just doing what his Daddy tells him to.
    1
  10169.  @roxannebarton9740  No, I don't watch Fox News.
    1
  10170.  @nunyabizznus2216  Yup, which can include lying to people about where they are going to what the circumstances are, which is what DeSantis did.
    1
  10171.  @lisas1175  No, because that was a legal governmental action. What DeSantis did was a purely political stunt with no backing in law. There are no state or federal laws that authorize governors to transport migrants across state lines, there are plenty that allow the federal government to do so.
    1
  10172.  @lisas1175  Don't watch CNN. Why do you think that I do?
    1
  10173.  @lisas1175  Not according to the actual migrants. Many claim they were being told that they were going to Boston, or they were offered compensation for travel that they never received. You should look deeper into this story, you've apparently missed a lot of it.
    1
  10174.  @roxannebarton9740  I didn't speak of any networks, other than Fox. Did you know that Fox News viewers are actually LESS informed about the world than people who receive no news at all?
    1
  10175.  @lisas1175  It's impossible to close a border of our size completely, but the current border crossings are no different than they were under Trump. Everyone who tries to enter is apprehended and processed. If they have a valid asylum claim, then that is considered, and if they do not, then they are deported. What is the problem that you need solved here?
    1
  10176.  @roxannebarton9740  Who's word are you taking for that, the kidnappers, or the victims?
    1
  10177.  @roxannebarton9740  no, again, they have done studies. Fox News viewers know LESS than people who have no news at all. That's not a guess, it's a fact.
    1
  10178.  @roxannebarton9740  Is that something they tell you exists on Faux News?
    1
  10179.  @roxannebarton9740  Considerng that the actual studies show that Fox News is likely to leave you less informed about the world than when you started, I'm afraid I'll have to take anything you believe to be "facts" with a grain of salt.
    1
  10180. The American People ARE the Dems.
    1
  10181. "My black friend said it was ok to say it. . ."
    1
  10182. Trump has never had a crowd that was even a fraction of the size he wanted. Most Trump things are smaller than he claims.
    1
  10183. It's impossible to meaningfully attack America.
    1
  10184.  @JaysRandomnessChannel  Yes, it was fiction, and made no sense relative to the real world.
    1
  10185.  @JaysRandomnessChannel  Yes, and it was still silly back then, but only more silly now. No foreign power would be capable of getting even close to the US mainland in one piece.
    1
  10186. This is the only appropriate response.
    1
  10187.  @cd5642  The issue with allowing states to vote on it is that many red states have rigged their legislatures so that regardless of how the people vote, the Republicans will remain in charge, and do whatever they want.
    1
  10188.  @cd5642  40% get to have a voice, but they do not get to impose their voice upon the other 60%. Nobody is forcing anyone to get an abortion, if the 40% don't want to have abortions, then nobody is trying to take that choice away from them, but that does not mean that they get to prevent the other 60% from getting an abortion if they choose.
    1
  10189.  @cd5642  "If a state is 80% pro life, how were those citizens heard under Roe? " Because that 80% still ALWAYS had the choice to NOT get an abortion. Nobody was ever coming for their rights. What more did they need? " We live in a Republic, which gives those who live differently outside of cities a voice." That's not the point of a Republic. It is not a "cities vs rural" thing. A Republic is just a representative form of democracy, meant to allow more professional politicians to make decisions, rather than putting each issue up to an individual vote. The point of a republic is that the people in power reflect the interests of their constituents though, and if they fail to do that, then they are failing as a republic.
    1
  10190.  @cd5642  I understand how pro-life people feel, I just disagree that their feelings should get their way.
    1
  10191.  @cd5642  Oh, and as for the electoral college, it was created in the 18th Century, they were trying it out. The fact that nobody anywhere has bothered to repeat it probably indicates it was a bad idea, right?
    1
  10192. In most of the world they survive supermarket shootings by having gun control. It's much easier and more effective.
    1
  10193.  @torpedospurs  China is responsible for their own decisions to antagonize their neighbors.
    1
  10194. Whoever designing the planes for this model, they should design them with replaceable batteries, so that people could get into a plane in New England, and it could hop down the coast or across the country with multiple stops, but without them having to get out or wait for more than a few minutes at each airport. This would be slower than flying non-stop from NY to LA, but a lot faster than any land route, and if fuel prices made long haul flights too expensive for most, then it would be a minor inconvenience to take maybe 6-12 hours to make that trip. Still no easy answer for oceanic flights though.
    1
  10195.  @eranb66 And yet their parties ar ein coalition with the ultra war mongers, so they are also responsible.
    1
  10196. Translation: "He wouldn't agree to give a loaded shotgun to every kindergartner, so no Republicans would ever vote for him."
    1
  10197. But Trump is the traitor. Unless you're Russian, I guess.
    1
  10198. Why would you vote for Trump if you don't care what he wants?
    1
  10199.  @TruthrConsequences  Stop using such big words, you'll scare him.
    1
  10200.  @elderlymanpoormemorybullseye  All you just did was point out that you don't know what the term "cognitive dissonance" means.
    1
  10201.  @elderlymanpoormemorybullseye  In what way are any of my comments dissonant? I'll point out that repeating yourself is not building a case, although I guess if you listen to Trump long enough that fact would get washed out of your head.
    1
  10202.  @elderlymanpoormemorybullseye  So you don't know what the term "cognitive dissonance" means. That's all I was saying.
    1
  10203.  @Sporxz  How so?
    1
  10204. It's at least funny. "Do unto others," right?
    1
  10205.  @barrackobamar  Ok, I'd like two baguettes then, please!
    1
  10206. Just another reminder that however Manchin and Sinema vote, there are also 49 Republicans who ALSO vote against America's interests, so the important thing is to vote them out, like we did in the last election.
    1
  10207. I don't think the bias in the justice system would hurt him here, he and McConnell created that bias.
    1
  10208. I was thinking, a good way that we could get Russia to play ball on grain shipments is missiles. Or lack of missiles. Recently we started sending Ukraine these HIMAR missiles that are really cool, and have a range of 50mi. We plan to keep sending more. But we also have OTHER missiles we can give them with a range of almost 200 miles. Russia probably wants to avoid that. So why don't we make a deal with Russia? They let Ukraine trade grain completely in peace, leave Odessa completely alone, or else the instant they screw that up, we start sending Ukraine the longer range missiles.
    1
  10209.  @MundaneVideos-qm6jx  More honest politicians actually show up at a WORKING McDonalds and serve ACTUAL customers, not just plants. But of course, Trump can only interact with plants, because real people do not like him.
    1
  10210.  @Nghe-gi-hay-zay  If he'd "actually done the work" then he would have served actual customers, not plants.
    1
  10211.  @GodMadeDrums  He was serving plants, not actual customers, yet made it APPEAR to gullible voters that these were just regular people responding naturally to him being there. How can you accept that deception?
    1
  10212.  @MundaneVideos-qm6jx  If he wasn't serving the general public, then what would even be the point of having people "drive up to the window" and ACT surprised to see him there? If he was too scared to serve actual customers then he shouldn't have done the photo op in the first place.
    1
  10213.  @antondial5326  And yet apparently plenty of people got fooled by it. Trump loves the uneducated.
    1
  10214. I've said it before and I'll say it again, repeatedly, but the AC games bade after Syndicate should have been a separate franchise, a full-on historical fantasy game that throws accuracy and AC lore out the window and not try to relate to the previous franchise.
    1
  10215. They only say that on Faux News. Because that's what they're paid to say.
    1
  10216. @ Exactly, maga is entirely about cruelty.
    1
  10217. @ They were spending the money allocated by congress, who were elected by the taxpayers, and that money was being used to save human lives. Cutting USAID won't help with the national debt. This isn't about the budget, this is just about hurting people.
    1
  10218. @ What about their anti-tuberculosis program?
    1
  10219.  @PaulyDeeee  You are asking me to name one of the millions of people saved by them? Where would I find that person's name? You aren't making any sense.
    1
  10220.  @lucymurmer2874  Exactly, maga folks have no human emotions, so they laugh at the suffering of others.
    1
  10221. @ Just because members of congress did not educate themselves on the topic, doesn't mean that USAID was not saving lives.
    1
  10222. @ The Tuberculosis aid is in addition to the DEI initiatives and support for LGBT people. That's all good work. They were doing what Congress passed laws telling them to do. It was all important work, whether it was work you personally agreed with or not. Even if you believe that some of their programs were unnecessary, the answer is not to fire the people working there and shutting the entire place down, it would be to move them away from those programs and toward the other programs that even Republicans can agree with. No matter how you might feel about LGBT people, do you believe removing those programs would be worth thousands of people dying of preventable diseases?
    1
  10223. The kids will be fine. They'll be orphans because their parents will die, but the kids will probably be fine.
    1
  10224.  @ME-iy8cj  I don't think that is it. Why do you disagree?
    1
  10225.  @fluseint.1303  They aren't efficient at anything other than killing civilians though. They fail at anything else.
    1
  10226.  @MultiWilliam25  Oh, it's not, in any way, but they're having fun.
    1
  10227. It would be nice if he assaulted the global economic order on behalf of the people, but instead he does it on behalf of the wealthy, which is the opposite of what the world needs.
    1
  10228.  @alienbotfarm187  You're thinking of Republicans. Don't vote for them. You're right, they are liars.
    1
  10229.  @jasonburris334  No, the vote counters say that instead of voting for vote for more inflation and constant violations of their constitutional rights, most Americans voted for Democrats instead, and they say that because it's true.
    1
  10230.  @patriciaburkell8024  That would probably be poisonous. That sounds like the sort of thing Republicans drink because they believe in snake oil rather than science.
    1
  10231.  @patriciaburkell8024  That's because those "reports" were fictional, aside from the ones that made clear that Ivermectin had no positive effect whatsoever, and was only being sold by snake-oil salesmen to gullible rubes.
    1
  10232.  @lorireed8046  That sounds scary, good thing your numbers are made up and don't reflect actual voter numbers. Those right-wing fantasies were debunked YEARS ago. The fact that you aren't aware of this indicates that you are a poor consumer of information.
    1
  10233.  @patriciaburkell8024  Exactly, that's why it would be particularly stupid to recommend it as a topping.
    1
  10234.  @patriciaburkell8024  Again, that's a food item. You're recommending something toxic as a food item. How dumb are you?
    1
  10235.  @patriciaburkell8024  What you "prefer" doesn't have much to do with chemistry, but I guess you wouldn't understand something like that.
    1
  10236.  @patriciaburkell8024  He would probably be very ashamed of you then.
    1
  10237.  @patriciaburkell8024  If your uncle was a green beret, then he took an oath to preserve and protect the Constitution, and the American people. You are threatening Americans' lives, and threatening the Constitution that he swore to protect.
    1
  10238.  @prestonquinn5167 Nobody opened the border. The border is no more open today than it ever was.
    1
  10239.  @prestonquinn5167  No more illegals that attempted to cross did so over the past three years than at any other time. It was just that more were coming to the US over the past couple years due to worsening conditions in their home countries. More people come, more people cross, more people get caught and processed, that's how it worked under the previous administration, that's how it works today.
    1
  10240.  @prestonquinn5167  No more people that attempted to cross did so over the past three years than at any other time. It was just that more were coming to the US over the past couple years due to worsening conditions in their home countries. More people come, more people cross, more people get caught and processed, that's how it worked under the previous administration, that's how it works today.
    1
  10241. Nobody disputes that fact, but nor is it relevant.
    1
  10242. Yes, they could havr arrested all those white nationalists that were causing violence around the BLM protests.
    1
  10243.  @Dodsodalo  That's a serious misunderstanding. Populists never give a shit about the populace, they are most often sociopaths. They only care about being popular. They will "listen" to get an idea of what people want, and will then attempt to deliver on what people want, whether or not it is what they need, and whether or not it is even achievable. Populists are the parents that let their kids eat ice cream for dinner, not the ones that raise happy and healthy children. Populists don't care if half their population dies in a fire, so long as the other half keeps cheering their name.
    1
  10244. That's not relevant to the bill in question.
    1
  10245.  @rayiskool444  By allowing in fewer immigrants? Yeah, maybe, but it's what Republicans seem to want, so it's a necessary compromise.
    1
  10246. When Putin stops interfering in Ukraine, then maybe the west will consider not interfering in Ukraine.
    1
  10247. You mean the priorities that congress ordered them to fund?
    1
  10248.  @Faceless_420  No, unintelligent people don't blame guns.
    1
  10249. Yes, and that's why Trump and his red coats need to lose.
    1
  10250. The Republicans have no plans other than attacking Democrats.
    1
  10251.  @HeritageSoftail  If you mean Trump, you'd be right, but he's not my president. If you mean Biden, no, he's making wise investments that are already paying off for America's future, as we elected him to do.
    1
  10252. I can understand not caring about this one way or the other, but it is more reasonable to be triggered by having to choose between "male" and "female" bodies if that is not how you want to identify, than it is to be triggered by the game not explicitly defining whether "body type A" is male or female. If you want to play as a character that "is like you," then you can just pick a body Type A. Problem solved. No more problem exists. Why the drama? Body type A is just how they label the body that has a male-typical physique. It's still in there if you want to use it, nobody is taking anything away from you. Relax. And games generally don't face too much backlash if they don't phrase things this way, especially if they are older games from before when trans people were really considered by the general public, similar to how movies that used certain racially charged language decades ago are generally still allowed today, even though currently you cannot use such terms. If a game chooses to have a "male/female" selector, most people would be fine with that, but if they choose to do something else, that's fine too, and a bit more inclusive to people who do not identify as male or female, or who might want a "Type A" body while still considering themselves "female," or whatever. It hurts literally no one to give these options where a developer chooses to do so. Also, it is factually true that some men give birth. Not men like you or I, obviously, nobody is arguing for "magical thinking biology," but there are men who were born with fully functional uteri and kept them around, and are therefore still able to give birth. Dozens of them do so every year, it's not a matter of controversy, so long as you understand what is being discussed.
    1
  10253. If there's one thing Republicans love to support, it's corruption.
    1
  10254.  @JohnM-sw4sc  That's not what the people voted for though.
    1
  10255.  @JohnM-sw4sc  Again, the people did not vote for those representatives. The representatives gave themselves power regardless.
    1
  10256.  @JohnM-sw4sc  Again, no, the people voted for Democrats. The Republicans said "we don't care, we will put Republicans in anyway."
    1
  10257.  @sbffsbrarbrr  Some people did vote for them, just fewer people than voted for Democrats. But the Republicans put systems in place so that even if fewer people vote for them, they get more seats, so they get to make the decisions, including about how elections take place.
    1
  10258.  @GoodAvatar-ut5pq  The thing is, if people only get their information from the Faux News, then they basically end up living in Narnia, up is down, war is peace, Trump is a stable genius. It's sad.
    1
  10259. Sending the children of idiot parents to private schools only improves the public schools.
    1
  10260. RFK is better than Trump, sure, but that's a very low bar. He is nowhere close to being as good as Biden in any category though.
    1
  10261.  @RichardBoderman22 Ukraine is too busy defending themselves to run bots. You're thinking of Russia.
    1
  10262.  @markimel4947  The NATO members are already committed to Ukraine's defense, what would this change, really?
    1
  10263.  @markimel4947  But article 5 was called during the war in Afghanistan, and yet most NATO members did not have significant boots on the ground there, and that was fine. They supported the US efforts in other ways. Likewise, nothing would obligate NATO members to send soldiers into Ukraine, it is more likely they would use planes and ships, which would still be a massive help to their efforts.
    1
  10264. Every MMO Youtuber should have a little loop of Asmongold reacting in the bottom corner of every video. It would save time.
    1
  10265.  @anti-rioter-15  Again, that's a per-channel thing. Some channels are more open than others.
    1
  10266.  @LulaMae21  Well, spam, maybe, but that's a different thing entirely than content censorship.
    1
  10267. Death pre-dated "diversity".
    1
  10268. Why haven't they made a transforming stealth fighter? Like, not into a robot or anything nuts, but just from a "flying wing" stealth vehicle into a "acrobatic fighter jet?" If they need vertical fins for aerobatic stability, why not make some that can compress flat when in cruising flight, and pop open when in combat? That way, the jet could travel around with maximum stealth, and then if detected shift into a more combat-friendly mode (while still being hard to lock onto).
    1
  10269. I wonder, with the talk on "upper class" vs lower class and the "food desert" phenomenon, has anyone done a study in which they just directly provide an over-abundance of healthy foods to a poor household, and see how that impacts their health? Like make sure that their fridge is stocked (via free deliveries) 24-7 with fresh vegetables, prepared or effortless to prepare meals with quality ingredients, etc., for a period of months or years, and see how (presumably) their health would improve over that time. They can eat as much or as little as they want, they would just never be without those healthy alternatives.
    1
  10270. "Haha, you think those trips were the problem? You don't even know how many trips Daddy took me on!"
    1
  10271. There are an awful lot of Republicans that hate the truth.
    1
  10272.  @rickycoverrubias6176  Well you can't have it both ways. They can leave Ukraine if they want to, they have that freedom, nobody is stopping them. They can live in peace in Ukraine, they have that freedom, nobody is stopping them. The only thing they have no right to do is hand land over to other countries. That is not their land, that is the people of Ukraine's land. They would need Ukraine's permission to turn it over to other countries.
    1
  10273.  @mikejezek5214  So do they send those Kremlin talking points to your email, or. . .
    1
  10274.  @mikejezek5214  Most people hate their boss, stop bragging.
    1
  10275.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  No, but you are spreading them, why?
    1
  10276.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  The fact that SOME Ukrainians don't want to fight is not at all a terrible thing. That is a fact in EVERY country that has EVER fought a war. There is no country on Earth that has had a 100% voluntary mobilization of its citizens in a war, why hold Ukraine to that standard?
    1
  10277.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  Yes, but in reply to my comment, you chose to spread Russian misinformation about Ukraine. Nobody forced you to do that, unless someone is forcing you to do that. Is someone forcing you to do that?
    1
  10278.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  No, I have an actual life, so I don't check my Youtube comments every second. To answer your question though, you are presenting the people of Ukraine as being unwilling to fight to defend themselves, when the fact is that they have been fighting active duty for over two years now, and are continuing to do so. It's misleading to imply otherwise. Also, Biden never called for the dismissal of any Ukrainian officials, He was just the messenger for the White House in that matter.
    1
  10279.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  Again, you seem to have bad sources if these are the conclusions you reach, much like your sourcing on Biden.
    1
  10280.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  You seem to be a fan of Russian psyops.
    1
  10281.  @CherylSlater-tp8if  No, I'm just uninterested in stories by countries on international watch lists for killing journalists who tell the truth too much.
    1
  10282.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  You might as well go down your whole list of talking points so you can meet your quotas. Why frame it as a call-and-response?
    1
  10283.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  Perhaps that was someone replying to me. I don't ask that question because it's a silly question. We don't need to send people over there, particularly not random civilians, we are sending them weapons so that they can defeat Russia using their own soldiers. We stop Russia there so that we don't have to fight them in Finland.
    1
  10284.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  I think your algorithm broke or something, that wasn't a complete thought.
    1
  10285.  @BrushyBill-eo5og  They aren't remotely similar conflicts. Ukraine was a country that was invaded by a foreign power, and all we are doing there is supplying them with the means to fight back. How is that in any way similar to Afghanistan?
    1
  10286. Trump is much better liked by Republicans than they are, but has a near 70% disapproval rating among the general public, which is much higher than anyone on that stage. Not that any of them are that much better.
    1
  10287. Why would the GOP want votes to block witnesses? If President Trump did nothing wrong, wouldn't they want to stack as many witnesses as they could get to prove that?
    1
  10288. Term limits would not make anything better and in many cases would make things worse. People who don't need to be reelected have nothing to lose.
    1
  10289.  @lawrencemarocco8197  That only encourages them to think about getting jobs as lobbyists after leaving office. I would prefer to give them more pensions in exchange for a ban on getting jobs in certain fields that would encourage corruption while in office.
    1
  10290.  @frankoramerez4536  Aw, you almost had a good point there but then you ruined it with Big Lie nonsense. What prevents elections functioning correctly is Republican efforts to Gerrymander and to disenfranchise voters so that even when they fail to get the majority of the vote, they still gain in power.
    1
  10291.  BigFATGOPLiars Cult  Reading too much Heinlein, are you?
    1
  10292.  @fenwan2405  You already posted in this thread. Maybe try a different thread.
    1
  10293. @ Who told you that Ukrainian news was saying that?
    1
  10294. TL;DR: "The wind shifted."
    1
  10295. What did she say that was not true?
    1
  10296. You're thinking of Trump, not Biden. Biden's never made government "work" for himself or his family. He only makes it work for the American people.
    1
  10297. They aren't, actually. There's no such thing as a "biological man." That's a sociological term, not a biological one. It would be like saying that something is a "football bat."
    1
  10298. ​ @warlans6924  I'm sorry, the facts don't care about your feelings, and the fact remains that it is a sociological term. Society has existed throughout human history, and the terms "man" and "woman" refer to someone's gender, not their biology.
    1
  10299.  @warlans6924  Again, the fact is that it is not. You FEEL that it should be, but that does not make it so. Gender is a social construct that defines the roles people play in a society. Different societies apply different gender roles, often binary, but not always. In some languages, even inanimate objects have genders, even though they obviously have no biological basis for it. The fact remains, Man and woman has never been a biological term, not inherently. Some people think about it biologically, which I understand does not mean these definitions were based in biology. Biology makes people, sociology defines their places in society.
    1
  10300.  @warlans6924  I think you misunderstand how the world works. The world is made up of all sorts of different cultures and belief systems, understandings of how the world functions, and terms to describe these things. The fact that you did not understand that gendered terms were sociological terms twenty years ago does not make it a fact, it is just a belief you had. The fact is that cultures all around the world, for thousands of years, have had different beliefs on the matter. Biology exists, but biology has no genders, because that it a term from a completely different field. You may as well be talking about "currency exchange" being a biological process. If men were so obviously distinct from women as you imply, then people would not have so much trouble differentiating between the two. Some men lean into cultural understandings of "manhood" and look very obviously masculine. Others do not, and look much more culturally feminine. In some cases, men have natural biological features that would make it difficult for them to appear feminine, in other cases, their natural biological features are much less associated with masculinity. Plenty of men and women look similar to the other gender without any effort on their part to do so. And that's before we even get into transgendered people. The simple fact is that biologically, there are differences only in sex, not in gender. Sociologically, the current western society has set up certain cultural expectations for what is appropriate for a man or woman, but these expectations have shifted constantly over the years, and are still shifting today. You imply that you want to cling to a certain viewpoint, and that can be your position on the matter, but it won't be the position of society in ten, twenty, thirty years, because society always moves on.
    1
  10301.  @warlans6924  I'm not assuming that gender is a sociological term, I'm stating it as fact. You can claim otherwise all you like, the facts don't care about your feelings. You're trying to conflate gender and sex, but these are two different terms with two distinct meanings, similar to how a "sport" and a "game" are two different things, even though many things in the world are both at once. We agree that in most" cases stating a sex and stating a gender have the same outcomes, but there _are exceptions to that, and most of the conflict arises from people unwilling to accept the legitimacy of those exceptions. Just because something is rare does not mean that it does not exist, or should not be given the respect we would give anyone else. Sex is biological. Gender is the role that a society chooses to apply based on that sex. If you insist that the two words are identical in all respects, then why even have both? It remains a fact that men and women are not distinct in obvious ways. There are cultural assumptions as to what men and women are meant to look like, and some look very much like that archetype and others look very different from that archetype. Have you never looked at a woman and mistook her for a man before? Or looked at a man and mistook him for a woman? If you claim that you haven't, then it could only be because you didn't even realize it. I'm not sure what you meant by boys and girls. They're just preadolescent humans. In western society, we currently choose to distinguish between them based on gender roles, but that wasn't always the case. Even 150 years ago, little boys often dressed indistinguishably from little girls, and nobody really bothered with the distinctions until they became older. Not all societies even have terms for male or female children, just "children." Children do have a biological sex, but that is distinct from their genders.
    1
  10302.  @Bluepilled-c5t  I did, that's how I arrived at the correct answer.
    1
  10303.  @Bluepilled-c5t  Well, there are two factors there, the direct impact, and the indirect impact. Directly, it would take many times the current CO2 levels to be directly toxic to the plants. Indirectly though, plants wilt at too high a temperature, so if global temperatures returned to the level they were at before all this CO2 got put away in the Earth, most plants on earth would be unable to survive it. And that's not even factoring in the lack of water.
    1
  10304.  @Bluepilled-c5t  How so?
    1
  10305.  @Bluepilled-c5t  Ah, magical thinking. "I don't want to believe it's true, therefore it's not true."
    1
  10306.  @Bluepilled-c5t  Well, think about it some more until you realize that it would actually be likely. You didn't think hard enough, apparently.
    1
  10307.  @Bluepilled-c5t  Sure you do. There are tons of straight lines in nature. What about basalt crystals?
    1
  10308. It is cheaper though.
    1
  10309.  @PerryKobalt  Sure, but, you know, you don't have to spend anything.
    1
  10310.  @aw2584  Yeah, but, like, you get to keep the cash.
    1
  10311.  @bvbxiong5791  Because it's smoother to handle bets using simple, easy to read tokens than using stacks of random paper money?
    1
  10312. It was over land before that, so it could have killed people if shot down.
    1
  10313.  @bryanjones664  "Watch out, we might be dropping a bus on your roof. Sorry."
    1
  10314.  @bryanjones664  Better still though, let it pass over the ocean, where it won't land on anyone at all.
    1
  10315.  @bryanjones664  I don't think it was ever in the rockies. It came down to the east of the rockies, I think.
    1
  10316. No, this was not "election denying" she wasn't questioning the legitimacy of the outcome, only that she felt the campaign season was stacked against her.
    1
  10317.  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.
    1
  10318.  @piratelechuck1911  No, Hilary never did any election denying. She conceded the night of the election.
    1
  10319.  @piratelechuck1911  She did not do any election denying. She conceded on the night of the election.
    1
  10320.  @piratelechuck1911  There are no videos of her denying the legitimacy of the election. What you are pointing at is not election denialism.
    1
  10321.  @piratelechuck1911  What I said is factually accurate, don't try to project onto others.
    1
  10322.  @piratelechuck1911  But you are the one asserting things as fact which never actually happened, that would be your ignorance, and it would be projecting to claim that it is my problem.
    1
  10323.  @piratelechuck1911  Ok, I'll give you a chance here. You say there are videos. Tell me ONE time and date in which she gave a statement in which she was denying the validity of the election. ONE. I can look it up myself, watch it, and see for myself that she was not in fact denying the validity of the election, but was instead just complaining about the political interference that led to that result, which would not, as a matter of fact, be "election denial."
    1
  10324.  @WokkaWokka79  Exactly, she's not an election denier because she isn't denying the validity of the outcome. I feel like maybe you don't actually understand this, even though you just said it. I think your misunderstanding just comes from not understanding the term "election denier," and applying it to cases that are not that.
    1
  10325.  @WokkaWokka79 The difference being that she never denied the results or legitimacy of the election. It's really not as complex as you seem to find it. The never "denied" anything.
    1
  10326.  @piratelechuck1911  I stay pretty up on politics, and I've never seen any such example, so if you're leaving it to me, then I'm declaring it never happened. You seem to believe that it did happen, you claim to have numerous videos showcasing this, so I'm giving you the opportunity to prove me wrong here. Ball's in your court, ONE example, one specific date and location in which she is on record as denying the results of the election. This should not be hard, given the claims you've made.
    1
  10327. ​ @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.
    1
  10328.  @piratelechuck1911 So there IS no example of her denying the election results. That's what I was saying.
    1
  10329.  @piratelechuck1911  I asked for one date and location. You were unable to provide one. How do I have any option but to assume that no such example exists? It's not like I was unwilling to search for it, I would have had to do so, but I need to know that we will be talking about the exact same example, so you can't then deflect with "oh, but there are others that are better." But you can't even offer ONE that supports your cases, so you have no case.
    1
  10330.  @WokkaWokka79  I asked for a location and date, so that I could view her full, unedited comments. You provided video titles that paraphrase her comments. If any of those videos do contain her saying such things, then watch the video yourself, find out the date and location in which she made those comments, and I can look that speech up.
    1
  10331.  @piratelechuck1911  So, again, you are incapable of providing a single example to support your case. And you wonder why nobody takes your arguments seriously.
    1
  10332.  @WokkaWokka79  So you can't provide a single example either. I rest my case.
    1
  10333.  @WokkaWokka79 I asked for ONE date and location. You could provide none. All you provided were the titles to stories about her, which is not what I asked for.
    1
  10334.  @piratelechuck1911 And people who are afraid to use their real names are probably in Russia.
    1
  10335.  @piratelechuck1911  And yet, you still mock others for having more courage than you do, which sounds awfully Russian to me.
    1
  10336.  @piratelechuck1911 What is your point here, now that you've conceded that there are no examples of Clinton denying the election results? Just pure personal attacks?
    1
  10337. ​ @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.
    1
  10338. no, that was the fault of the Trump administration, but it had nothing to do with the story at hand.
    1
  10339. Would a site like Yelp be liable if they promoted a restaurant as containing allergen free foods, but then the restaurant had an allergy incident?
    1
  10340. Like they showed in 2022, the only way Republicans can gain seats is by stealing them. The more seats they can get with fewer votes, the better their chances of maintaining the House.
    1
  10341.  @JusticeUS1776 IVF is in no way the opposite of abortion, it's just abortion with extra steps. Approve of both, or neither.
    1
  10342.  @rikubrown8109  As I said, "they'll cry about it every minute until then."
    1
  10343.  @darthfader733  I would prefer that people operate in a shared reality, whether that wake-up call comes from the government or private sector. So long as what the government is saying is TRUE, I see no reason to disregard it. People who would call something like this "Orwellian" would make Orwell vomit.
    1
  10344.  @darthfader733  He's not wrong though, it IS pretty sus to advocate for Russian psy-ops.
    1
  10345.  @darthfader733  What would you call it then? Russia attempted to spread misinformation to Americans. America caught them and shut that operation down. You seem to imply this is. . . bad? Somehow?
    1
  10346. See, Twitter was working perfectly well. What else would any rational person want from them?
    1
  10347. The one I hate is when the villain needs to acquire X Macguffins, and the heroes race them to each one, but fails each time (or wins temporarily but then get them stolen at the end), and in many cases they acquire Macguffins that would have been more hard for the villain to acquire without them. They unlock the vault so that they can get the item but the villain just waltzes in and grabs it.
    1
  10348.  @pdgarciac  That's wrong, actually. Congressmen are just as subject to subpoenas as anyone else. Nobody is above the law. You're thinking of dictatorships. As for "how it works," first, Jim was not subpoenaed to appear before his own committee, so that it a moot point. Where would he sit? The same place as any other witness, in the witness seat. This happens ALL the time. How do you not know this?
    1
  10349. Well the Republicans certainly can't win on quality, so it's really the only card they have left.
    1
  10350. This is why Biden requested funding to pay for border courts, so that we could get these people processed and productive in the economy. It's the Republicans that want to keep them on the dole.
    1
  10351. I don't think that's an accurate quote.
    1
  10352.  @fagreed3938  Yes, it sucks that Russia was foolish enough to invade Ukraine, but it would suck worse to allow them to do so. Everyone else just has to do their part until Russia is driven completely out of Ukraine, which might take until next year.
    1
  10353.  @fagreed3938  Oh, I'm not Russian.
    1
  10354.  @fagreed3938  It could be worse, I could be in Russia right now.
    1
  10355. Just the maga ones.
    1
  10356. Why would anyone "defend" the Democrat decision to remove Kevin McCarthy? That was not even a question. Not their circus, not their clowns. It is not up to Democrats ot "save" the leader of the OTHER party. Democrats had no responsibility to the REPUBLICAN leader. They elected Hakeem Jeffries to lead them. If Kevin had wanted Democratic votes, then it was up to them to make that a decision that would have benefited the American people, but over his brief tenure, McCarthy gave Democrats NO reason to trust him.
    1
  10357. So it sounds like what the LA area needs is to invest in one of those secondary water systems that can push seawater to hilltop reservoirs in an emergency. Because this will happen again.
    1
  10358. The solution as I see it would be to balance property taxes with the "value" of the housing. Basically, on a given plot of land, with a given "market value" to that plot, you would pay the highest possible taxes on that property by having a retail property there, and you would pay the second highest for having high priced luxury housing, but more more affordable housing you had on the property, the lower the property taxes would be. So a retail or luxury apartment building might offer more raw revenues than affordable housing, but the taxes on it would be much higher, so it should offset that. If they wanted to do balanced housing, with a little of both, then that could work to help offset the taxes as well. I see this as "win/win," since it not only encourages them to do the right things, since that would be as profitable as any other option (or at least closer to even), and also, even if they just double down on luxury/retail, the added tax revenues would be used to offset things.
    1
  10359. If you take an objective look at this interview and do come to the conclusion that this is a hit piece than I really worry about the future of this country. Sadly, too many people are willing to buy into complete nonsense, so long as it's the opposite of what "everyone else believes." They're more interested in feeling "special" than they are about accuracy.
    1
  10360.  @jays1079  "How dare you let people know what I said in public?!"
    1
  10361.  @Buttcakes15  All vaccines that are approved by the FDA for any purpose have gone through safety studies. So you're correct, there is no reason to have a debate about that.
    1
  10362.  @Buttcakes15  Yes, that would be bad, but that's not done. Instead, what they do is test the vaccines before releasing it to the public. That's like making sure that the game is well patched before it goes gold.
    1
  10363. They could cut the governor's salary to zero and it would not even cover 1% of the funding needed. It's a silly argument for silly people.
    1
  10364. Ukraine: "So what're you gonna do about it? Invade our country and attempt genocide on out people? Too late for that one."
    1
  10365. The children suffer for the sins of their parents. They should not have been born into that place.
    1
  10366.  @mrFreakingGamer  Oh, I'm not a Republican, don't worry.
    1
  10367.  @jeremymitchell9970  Exactly, those are all cases where Biden is a better choice than the Umpa Lumpa.
    1
  10368.  @theoelliott5944  What is unfair about their coverage? This is a wacky story and they are reporting that it is wacky, that seems evenhanded to me.
    1
  10369.  @theoelliott5944  There aren't two sides to this one though, not two credible sides. The only actual side on this is that it's wacky to believe it could happen, regardless of how many people are stupid enough to fall into that camp. If 3/10 Republicans believe the Earth is flat, then it is not "unbiased journalism" to give the idea that the Earth might be flat 30% of the coverage. "Unbiased journalism" in that case is merely to point out that 3/10 Republicans are stupid.
    1
  10370.  @theoelliott5944  Common sense grants me that right, although I can see how that might seem confusing to those who lack it. Gender is a social construct, so society can define it and redefine it as they see fit. Numerous cultures have considered multiple genders beyond the binary. I have no idea what you mean about math being white supremacist. Are you talking about how they have an aversion to learning it? Also, "maths?" What are you, British? I don't call Republicans stupid because they disagree with me, plenty of people disagree with me on various issues with completely rational reasons for doing so. I call Republicans stupid because they believe many things that only stupid people could believe. They aren't the only stupid people out there, but they certainly make up a disproportionate amount of the stupid population.
    1
  10371. Elena Kagan, I believe, but there could be more recent examples.
    1
  10372. That's ok, you're outnumbered. That's how democracy works.
    1
  10373. This is not a democracy, it is a constitutional republic, and the constitution says that Trump is ineligible to hold US office.
    1
  10374. Just because most things Trump does are crazy stupid, doesn't mean that they all are. If he'd done this, it likely would have been praised.
    1
  10375. TL;DR "Everything about this story is dumb. Denmark is being silly."
    1
  10376. What kind of a silly question is that? The Houthi are the ones "expanding this conflict," the US is just trying to stop them.
    1
  10377.  @MarioFanGamer659  Yeah, but The point is that they seem fine with "standardized housing" when it comes in the form of a hundred single family units with a single wall wrapped around it, but a hundred single family homes that take up several blocks is somehow the end of the world. My parents once lived in a "pre-fab town" like that, and apparently one of their neighbors bought up two adjacent homes and built an underground tunnel connecting them. That's thinking outside the box. :D Pre-fab architecture gives people a minimal option for acquiring a home of their own, and there's nothing wrong with that. If you have more money than that, then you can spend it to add on or even replace the original structure, you have options, but not everyone has that level of money, and that shouldn't keep them from ever owning a home where alternatives are available.
    1
  10378. @ No, Made in America won't be any cheaper, it's just that made elsewhere will be going up slightly faster. It will all be going up. Constantly and until the next administration.
    1
  10379. @ The price per gallon for gasoline is higher today than it was this time last year.
    1
  10380.  @brianbalfour9616  Where are you seeing cost of living tracked on a monthly basis?
    1
  10381. @ Yes, why do you believe prices are going down, when the fact is that they are going up?
    1
  10382.  @brianbalfour9616  Well the Consumer Price Index is 5% higher, year on year.
    1
  10383.  @Exxeron-ob3tv  I'm not contradicting myself, both points are true. Nothing will be cheaper. It will all cost more than it does today. It's just that Made in America will be slightly less more than other products. I do not care what the relative price is between MiA and not MiA, I care about what price I have to pay, and this will mean that I will have to pay more. Also, this would only apply to cares where the MiA option exists, which is not the case for many of these tariffs.
    1
  10384.  @Exxeron-ob3tv  Have you ever had a point? Other than your head, I mean?
    1
  10385.  @Exxeron-ob3tv  So, nothing then. That's what I figured.
    1
  10386. Like the other migrants, he would have been detained and deported back to Mexico.
    1
  10387.  @kieferclarkf1674  That's what Fox News tells you, but it isn't actually true. Look it up from a more reliable source.Keep in mind that illegal immigrants aren't allowed to vote.
    1
  10388.  @kieferclarkf1674  You are the one that is believing it when people lie to your face. That is what "drinking the kool aid" means. You can be better than that.
    1
  10389. No, illegals have ATTEMPTED to enter the country in the millions, and been detained by border patrol. Some are deported immediately, others are held in detention for some amount of time, others are processed and allowed to enter the US. Very few illegals actually just swoop in without being processed, far less than at any time in US history.
    1
  10390.  @kieferclarkf1674  What, where have you heard otherwise?
    1
  10391. Well great, now Reedy Creek is going to have to invade Tallahassee.
    1
  10392.  @kaligreen3846  We already make our own wine. It sells perfectly well without tariffs.
    1
  10393.  @kaligreen3846  Because it tastes different. It's like asking why need a Wendy's if you have a Burger King.
    1
  10394. @ Why not? What difference does it make whether the company is American or not? The American companies do just fine without protectionism. If you want to buy America, then buy American. That doesn't mean that they should be the only reasonable choice.
    1
  10395. The Trump era policies would not accomplish anything, migrants were higher under Trump than in any previous administration. To actually solve things, Biden needs to get funding to increase the staff, not just make proclamations.
    1
  10396. The specific reason this one is unfair while the other one was fair is that this one is being conducted by an openly biased actor with zero experience in this field, using techniques that he has not explained and that nobody understands, and at one point involving pens capable of altering ballot results. Your question is like asking what difference there is between having a fully trained and licensed doctor perform open heart surgery vs. having your cousin Steve, a registered plumber, do it instead.
    1
  10397. We have grown more under Biden than under Trump.
    1
  10398.  @Ziegfried82  The US can afford it though, so that argument isn't really relevant. And the EU is also doing their part, that is also not a valid argument. I will concede that not all pro-Russian people are Russian themselves, others are just blandly racist.
    1
  10399.  @EconomicWarfare  He pretty deliberately attacked them on numerous occasions. DeSantis has nobody to blame for that but himself.
    1
  10400. @ "But also he gets to keep everything he already took."
    1
  10401.  @lynmccord4911  The Bible. It had a whole chapter about those who worshiped golden calves. People should read it sometime.
    1
  10402. Most of them, really. More than in most states, at least.
    1
  10403. He is, but unfortunately Republicans refuse to unite under anyone but themselves.
    1
  10404.  @stuartkim4857  Watch the video.
    1
  10405. Oh, that's not what this is about. We can't get any of those jobs back. American jobs aren't and should not be in manufacturing anymore. That's not a bad thing, it's a sign of a developed economy.
    1
  10406. Young people are just edgy. They don't like "neutral" or "moderate" candidates, they want "aggressive" candidates, and some lean toward those on the left, some on the right. What really matters to them is that the person has passion to get things done. Whether those things are good or terrible. If the right wing parties are more exciting, while the left wing parties are more boring, then the right has an easier time attracting young people. Eventually though, they grow out of those childish viewpoints.
    1
  10407.  @maracohen5930  I'm against the government having a say in what happens between a patient and her doctor, as is 60%+ of the population. The US is a representational republic, but that is a form of democracy, and if a "republic" does not accurately represent the will of the people, then it is no longer a republic, it is an autocracy like North Korea. As for vaccinations, if you choose to put the lives of others at risk by not being vaccinated, then that can and should have consequences. Your argument here is like saying that it's your right to drink as much as you want and then drive, because "it's your body." Well you can drink as much as you want, but if you then choose to drive then you are putting others lives at risk, not just your own, and that is when it is the responsibility of the state to step in.
    1
  10408.  @maracohen5930  Yeah, one thing I learned from the covid pandemic is that the bar for become a nurse is a lot lower than I'd assumed. There were a lot of them out there spreading some really nonsense conspiracy theories that anyone with a high school education should be ashamed to have fallen for.
    1
  10409.  @maracohen5930  And yet you seem to have an extremely reckless view on public health, so your various accolades only seem to cast doubt on the people that gave them to you, rather than support your position. As it turns out, there were no actual risks to the vaccines, they have been better tested than almost any drug on the market, and their benefits, even to people who had previously had covid, far outweighed any risks. There was no rational argument to be made against everyone getting vaccinated, and people trying to make an argument only outed themselves a idiots. I mean, just look at Australia.
    1
  10410.  @maracohen5930  But the research showed that getting a vaccine was ALWAYS beneficial, even against later versions of the virus, and even for people who had already been infected. I mean, someone claiming to be a medical professional should already know that.
    1
  10411.  @Lawlzinator  What happened then?
    1
  10412.  @m6a1u57  I don't expect conservaivs to suddenly embrace reality. It's still worth pointing out when they are wrong about things though.
    1
  10413. "Sorry for making America great again without you."
    1
  10414. Wouldn't that invalidate any evidence in the evidence lockers, allowing a ton of criminals to walk?
    1
  10415. Why would anyone expect any learning to go on when talking to Trump nominees? If they had anything to teach, Trump would not have them.
    1
  10416. I get that submarines and ships wouldn't want to send out active pings, because it would give away their positions, but why not employ remote "ping drones?" Just have tiny remote submersibles, just a battery, an engine, a computer, and a pinger, that is designed to travel away from the sub a good distance, then send out pings on demand, and then return to the ship when it needs to recharge. The location it takes relative to the ship could be random each time, but since the ship would know it, it could then triangulate based on those pings accurately. Since the enemy sub would not know the location of the pinger, it would not be able to make much sense of the data it offers. A large sub could operate a dozen or so of these, stuck to the outer hull like lamprey.
    1
  10417. Man, this isn't the MGTOW version of feminism, it's the Incel version of Lesbianism. It's basically "those women don't want to have sex with me, they need to fix themselves and get lesbian!"
    1
  10418.  @fgerstm2069  It really depends. If Disney just does not appeal to you, then of course it would be easy to find something you would prefer. But if the "vibes" of Disney do appeal to you, then it's really hard to find someplace better. The main value Disney has is "density," that everything is all really close together. You can walk from one country to the next in World Showcase, or from Frontier Land to Tomorrow Land in minutes. IF you go to any actual global location, then you might go to one famous building, but then it would take 30-90 minutes to get to the next, and they take much longer to wander around, you spend as much time doing something uninteresting in that place as you would waiting in line for a ride at Disney. For all the inevitable delays that are part of the Disney experience, you will still take in so much more fun experiences per day than you would just about anywhere else. Unless, of course, you just don't like Disney in the first place.
    1
  10419. But he's the one causing it. He's the one blocking any efforts to fix it until Dear Leader returns. If not for Mike Johnson, this would already be solved.
    1
  10420. How is this news?! Everyone already knew that about Kennedy, that's why his constituents elected him!
    1
  10421. They should just give Congress an ultimatum. Say "if we maintain this route across the Northwest, we will lose $X per year. You will pay us $X per year, or we will close it down." And of that for all the long distance lines, with specific breakdowns as to what that would cost each state along the route. Then run ads in those states, letting their people know that this is happening, and who is responsible if the bill doesn't pass. I'm sure they could get train-friendly politicians to put the bills on the floor for them.
    1
  10422.  @heatshield  Ok, well let's handle the first cases first, and then we can consider more recent ones.
    1
  10423. "Please clap. . ." -Jeb Bush
    1
  10424.  @Skillz_251  I don't think that people realize that the border is more closed now than it was under the previous administration.
    1
  10425.  @andrewczski1969  2016, you mean?
    1
  10426.  @bryanoliver5550  Not today, Putin.
    1
  10427.  @TheOffkilter  And this is the core problem the Republicans face. They've enabled the crazies for so long and so gerrymanded their own districts that they can't win without them, which forces them into more and more self-destructive positions. The only true hope for the Republican party is to accept losing enough elections that the crazies understand that they get NONE of what they want without letting their representatives represent ALL the people.
    1
  10428.  @Sandworm72  Not particularly relevant to the current case, of course.
    1
  10429.  @Sandworm72  Because it's the right thing to do when your family has done crimes. A moral person stands up for the truth.
    1
  10430. Next election, voters should remember that ALL the Republicans chose to keep Santos in the House, when offered the chance to expel him. If they ever claim that they don't support Santos being there, this was the moment to put their actions where their words went, and they failed. How could any one trust anything else they might say?
    1
  10431.  @hudson3535  My homework told me that this is true, at least at the time I said it. I believe that there were later votes, after this one.
    1
  10432. If anyone's getting mad about this one, just remember that Trump will do worse every single day of the next four years. That should help keep things in context.
    1
  10433. @@Mhael_Logain Sure, I think there are a lot of people on both sides of the aisle that have had some interactions with him, so it really comes down to either taring them all with the same brush (which isn't really fair), or assuming innocence until there is evidence of actual wrongdoing. But sure, if people come out of this with the position "neither Bill Clinton nor Donald Trump is a viable choice for President in 2024," then I suppose that's ok.
    1
  10434.  @jgamer2228  But Donald Trump is a prolific sex offender, so it would more fit his typical pattern.
    1
  10435.  @slipknot6789  It's possible, we just have no more evidence of it today than we had last week.
    1
  10436. It was the taxpayers that were directing the AG to take Trunp to trial. It was a ballot issue.
    1
  10437. Dead people only voted for Trump, but they got caught.
    1
  10438. @b b I do hold the truth in highest regard, which is why I am disgusted at GOP attempts to lie about the 2020 election.
    1
  10439. He doesn't want to get shot, so He stays away from America. I can't blame Him.
    1
  10440. Instead of inductive charging, why can't they build some sort of magnetized cable charger? Like you pull over a port and a cable rises up, magnetically links in, charges it, and then ejects and retracts? That would be more mechanically complex, but could still be pretty automated, and should be much more electrically efficient.
    1
  10441.  @chrispaige8880  Lower. 77% of children that are victims of abuse were abused by their own parents, so it would not make sense if that somehow magically did not apply to Homeschool environments.
    1
  10442.  @PeachWood-j8j  Trump was the one that released the Taliban leaders from jail, and told them they could have the county back in 2021. The withdrawal plan was developed while he was in office. By the time he did all that, no other option was viable. At the very least the next administration was able to get out our personnel and all the important equipment. All that we left behind was basically military surplus junk that was too heavy to lug back.
    1
  10443.  @PeachWood-j8j  @user-if2dm3uw3f 1. Trump was the one that released the Taliban leaders from jail, and told them they could have the county back in 2021. The withdrawal plan was developed while he was in office. By the time he did all that, no other option was viable.
    1
  10444.  @PeachWood-j8j  1. Trump was the one that released the Taliban leaders from prison, and told them they could have Afghanistan back in 2021. The withdrawal plan was developed while he was in office. By the time he did all that, no other option was on the table.
    1
  10445.  @PeachWood-j8j  You're imagining things. Not in the real world.
    1
  10446. Ti does have two big problems, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy.
    1
  10447.  @WeAreItt  It was past the statute of limitations to do a criminal charge, or she would have done that instead.
    1
  10448.  @henryroman5415  The dems and the media weren't aware that it had happened at the time.
    1
  10449.  @anniecrouch2410  It was verified by the Department of Defense, which is who would verify such claims.
    1
  10450.  @kenlagernes4669  How would the DNC know about something like that? The source was the DoD.
    1
  10451.  @mjkpanda  Lol, no, I'm not a Trump voter. What would make you think that I was one of those MAGA sheep?
    1
  10452.  @kayaccornero969  It is true.
    1
  10453.  @anniecrouch2410  Who told you that lie?
    1
  10454. Nobody's being politically prosecuted though. He's only being prosecuted for crimes he did. That's not what "political persecution" is.
    1
  10455.  @MrBelvedere-c5f  Sorry to burst your bubble, I'm not a MAGA sheep.
    1
  10456.  @trickydicky2908  Not a Joy Reed fan, but at least she's better than anything on Faux News. Did you know that the average Faux News viewer is less informed about the world than someone who gets no news at all? Scary.
    1
  10457.  @ZT-vr4wz  I have yet to see any evidence of Israelis doing even a fraction of the things Hamas were doing. Israel mainly just bombs stuff.
    1
  10458. I think the future of machines is less in "androids," and more in just factories and server farms that are designed to not need humans or human-looking anything. I don't imagine we'll have human-looking androids working behind McDonalds counters, instead we'll just have McDonalds that are mini-factories, with nothing in the kitchen being designed for a human to operate, but rather for it to carry the food from fridge to packaging in a series of assembly-line steps, and to the customer, it would just be a matter of either using a touchpad, mobile ordering, or voice recognition to place an order, and then pick it up as if from a complex vending machine. I think most things will be like that, and humanoid robots will mostly just be for things like social interaction purposes.
    1
  10459.  @dragonbeardable  They would have though, if that had been a part of the wider cultural discussion back then. Society changes over time, and political parties are a reflection of the culture. We've learned a lot more about trans people over the past few decades, so these have become much more serious topics of discussion than they once were. The Democratic position is still the one based in morality and respect for human beings.
    1
  10460.  @atedinahalf6288  No, democratic comments also get removed at an equal rate. You just don't notice, because they have been removed.
    1
  10461.  @jimwerther  That isn't quite true. The Democratic platform has continued to advance as society has continued to advance. You could argue that the GOP's has remained largely the same "No to all of that," but that would ignore the impact that the tea party and later fringe efforts have had on the party, undermining the electoral process and drifting more toward authoritarianism, and also cozying up to our foreign adversaries. There is a good reason that dozens and dozens of former GOP office holders and political figures have abandoned the party and endorsed Democrats against GOP candidates.
    1
  10462.  @atedinahalf6288  Yup, they fed the beast when it got them more and more votes from the bottom of the barrel, but when the bottom of the barrel made up the majority of their party, they suddenly realized that it was nothing but swamp anymore.
    1
  10463.  @tracezachdaniels4264  "Make America worms again!"
    1
  10464.  @tracezachdaniels4264  That's "RFK Jr's" platform. We're on to him.
    1
  10465.  @tracezachdaniels4264  We don't want any worms telling us what to do, thank you very much.
    1
  10466. It's important to remember that fentanyl has nothing to do with migrants.
    1
  10467. It's important to remember that this has absolutely nothing to do with immigration.
    1
  10468. Yeah, fair. Or at least they elect clowns.
    1
  10469. Hunter wasn't being at all careful. He was showing off who his father is in an attempt to make money off that. The important thing though is that Joe Biden had nothing to do with Hunter's business, and his participation in the call was entirely "hey son, how 'ya doing?"
    1
  10470.  @lonniebeal6032  Yeah, if this were Putin's Russia they would be in Siberia by now, but fortunately for them, in the US, you have to actually break laws to be put in prison, and since Joe didn't break any, he's safe.
    1
  10471. "Foods with ominous auras."
    1
  10472. It is sad that people actually care about this story. It's such "nothing." It's not like he took $2 Billion from the Saudi's like Jared did. Who even elected Hunter for anything anyway? Why is this news to some people?
    1
  10473. "Sore Losers" basically sums up the entire Republican party.
    1
  10474. The police that actively support and coordinate with these groups are trash and should be removed from the force, but I can't criticize police for not actively confronting them either, since in most cases they do have a tacit right to be there and to be armed, and confronting them only increases the odds that violence will escalate and that people will be hurt. That aspect is not the fault of police, it is the fault of local laws that allow open carrying of firearms during protests, and the fault of SCOTUS that seems increasingly wiling to condone such practices.
    1
  10475. Ok, so you argue that a mister is faster in the abstract, but can you effectively use misters with salt water? Wouldn't that leave massive salt deposits someplace in the mechanics that would be a mess to keep cleaned up? If you could more efficiently evaporate water that is in a "pool" style situation, then I think it might be easier to collect the left over salt and other particulates as you go.
    1
  10476.  @robyoung-pl1gq  That would support goldbud's statement.
    1
  10477. Weird. Then how has his administration accomplished more than Trump's?
    1
  10478. They aren't going to subpoena their boss! Lol!
    1
  10479.  @dezznutz3743  Those are nice sentence fragments.
    1
  10480. Because it is dangerous, and there is no excuse for potentially killing people just for crossing the border illegally. Arrest them and deport them. It's not hard.
    1
  10481. It's probably a 50/50 mix of each, roughly speaking. I'm not sure why you would be so interested though.
    1
  10482. It's too critical for that.
    1
  10483. 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.
    1
  10484.  @darcihoudeshell2588  Everything I said is a verifiable fact. If you believe that this means I am delusional, then have you considered perhaps you are the one looking down from the ceiling?
    1
  10485. "We" means the administration. She did not say that she had been there as VP (although I believe she has been there as a Senator).
    1
  10486.  @legaleeblonde4310  The fascists are in the previous administration, not the current one. The current administration is ant-fascist.
    1
  10487.  @legaleeblonde4310  If you understood the constitution, and were being honest with yourself, you would agree with me.
    1
  10488.  @tdnd7237  It hadn't come up.
    1
  10489.  @510Redneck  There's a lot going on in this country, there are plenty of topics that have been kicked around for decades before there is enough popular support behind them to push them to the front of the line. If it's that important to Trump, why did he not get it done during the 4 years he was in office? It had already been kicked around before he was elected.
    1
  10490. Biden: LoL.
    1
  10491. Things can never be normal so long as maga still holds power.
    1
  10492.  @Slingbld  Rachel Levine is far more qualified than anyone Trump has appointed.
    1
  10493. The gas prices started going up under Trump.
    1
  10494. They were also lower under Obama.
    1
  10495.  @RecklezzCortezz  There are way too many videos on Youtube for that to be remotely profitable. Engagement happens naturally, why rent the cow when you can get the milk for free?
    1
  10496.  @KaiserBlade  2016. Gas prices were 7 cents lower than they ever were under Trump.
    1
  10497. Your information is outdated. Or at the very least soon will be. They now make heat pumps that produce more than enough heat to work with any existing infrastructure. While it's true that this even recently was not the case, progress moves forward.
    1
  10498. Has anyone tried to attach some sort of generator to a tall building's mass dampener mechanism such that as the building sways, that energy is converted into electricity?
    1
  10499.  @MinecraftLively  It's a reasonable interpretation of the laws as written.
    1
  10500.  @MinecraftLively  It's only "new" in the sense that every case is unique and needs to be calculated uniquely. It's not "new" in the sense of being unusual for a case like this one. Which similar cases do you feel were calculated differently?
    1
  10501.  @MaxRacional  Risky financial behaviors put the entire economy at risk. Think of it like this. Say you have a bank, and they are really nice guys. They just give out loans to anyone without really paying attention. High risk, low risk, they don't care, you will get that loan. Now so long as that works out, it works out. IF all those loans make good, then the bank is fine, everyone is fine. But what if it doesn't? What if the debtor screws up, doesn't pay back their loan, and the bank loses money? Pile up enough of those and you can crash the bank. So if the bank is at least trying to do a good job, but you lie to them and make them think you are a safer risk than you are, then even if you do pay it back, you have added risk to the system by committing fraud. If we allow that to happen, "so long as they don't fail," then it will only encourage eventual failure. Most regulation is based on making it unlikely for a crash to occur, not just hoping for the best.
    1
  10502.  @MaxRacional  The public can be the victim. If someone lies about financial information, then even if that eventually works out, they have added risk to the system. We can't allow crimes "so long as nobody gets hurt," because then people will get hurt.
    1
  10503. They did a poll on who won the election. It was called "the election." Joe Biden won it by 1.3%.
    1
  10504. More importantly, the suspect used a gun.
    1
  10505. Was this recent, or many years ago?
    1
  10506.  @maskedrebel9670  So I guess the argument is that it wouldn't make sense for someone's views on immigration to evolve over thirty years?
    1
  10507. Manchin is so dumb. He "tried everythign he knew how to do," and yet didn't no how to say "yes?" It's SO easy! A baby can do it!
    1
  10508. @SHEEP HURTER Nope, it would have improved, actually.
    1
  10509. @SHEEP HURTER It can, in some cases, but the way the government has been and plans to in future would not cause any noticeable inflation. The sticker shock people are experiencing right now is entirely due to supply chain disruptions caused by covid and various "reopening" efforts, not anything to do with fiscal policy or government debt.
    1
  10510. @SHEEP HURTER Possibly, and that might cause additional disruptions. The pain people are feeling at checkout is vary real, it's just that government did nothing to cause that. The ARP passed last spring has helped with that a bit, with things like the child tax credits that Manchin just scuttled for next year. The economy is likely to be unstable for the next couple years, and the proper role of government is to pave over those instabilities with government money so that they have as little impact on the average person as possible.
    1
  10511. Any area that is so high risk that insurance companies refuse to ensure it, should not be a place people are allowed to build.
    1
  10512. We need to end the for-profit pharmaceutical industry. It just does not make any sense. It should all be nationalized, with all drugs being sold at production cost, and all research funded via government grant, with vital life-saving medicines taking priority. "It's not profitable" should never be a reason for anything involved in medicine.
    1
  10513. That was the previous administration.
    1
  10514.  @ITS-yk5ky  Biden invited the FBI to search his place. That's how it's supposed to work.
    1
  10515. I agree on the regulatory aspect, for anything to claim that it's "meat" or "beef" it should come from an actual animal, but if they can make this product well, then they should be able to market it under a brand like "cultured beef" and people would still buy it.
    1
  10516. Aw, someone's looking to get some attention, how adorable. Is he trying to be the next Tulsi?
    1
  10517.  @scruffydog52  His salary? Yes. Other than that? No.
    1
  10518. ​ @thomashosking385  I think it's just a "criminal justice" motivated case. Some people say "well why this guy, and not other people," and that's a fair argument, so long as you're prepared to hear an answer that you might not like. The answer is that given that this guy was a controversial president for four years, and all sorts of criminal investigations and journalistic inquiries turned up mountains of evidence of wrongdoing, it would be malpractice for a prosecutor to ignore that and fail to chase it down, wherever it leads. Most companies do not have these mountains of evidence just laying around, making an eyesore of itself. So while politics may have played a role in some of the attention the company received over the past few years, I don't think that the prosecutions were political at all, they were just proper justice at work, under these unusual circumstances. If you want an example of a purely political inquiry, look at the biden family.
    1
  10519.  @soniadouglas-e7g  Yup, that pattern being that they get personal attacks made against them for doing their job.
    1
  10520.  @jeffhaddix9508  And then the worms attacked and he went off to cloud cuckoo land.
    1
  10521.  @jeffhaddix9508  Whatever causes he has fought for in the past, he's since shifted toward fighting imaginary causes, with imaginary solutions, instead of actual causes in the real world.
    1
  10522.  @Daniel15391  Not on this topic. Perhaps you should look into it and figure out what led you to that assumption.
    1
  10523.  @Daniel15391  Ew, no. It's awful down there.
    1
  10524.  @jerrygil1965  It seems to be the case. Frequent Faux News viewers seem to live in this alternate reality in which the things they want to believe, are real, and things they don't want to be true, aren't. This is why Faux News viewers are actually less knowledgeable about the world around them than people who get no news at all, they have negative news literacy. It's sad.
    1
  10525. How could the US have ended the war?
    1
  10526. @ You aren't making any sense.
    1
  10527. Supreme Court Justices should understand the Constitution better than Alito.
    1
  10528.  @billhuff131  Conservatives tend to have more trouble understanding what a woman is than any liberals.
    1
  10529.  @billhuff131  It tends to be people on Alito's side that have trouble understanding what a woman is.
    1
  10530.  @Mad-genius  That would definitely be an improvement.
    1
  10531.  @sian6894  That's how vaccines work. Neither of you died.
    1
  10532.  @jimjohnson7681  Well, I can't speak to their specific situation because I don't know them. Was he tested frequently throughout, or are they just assuming "he didn't get it" because he didn't show symptoms? If he didn't have symptoms, then he was just an aymptomatic spreader, and frequent contact with him would likely be where she got it in the first place. Many people who get covid are asymptomatic, that isn't some huge deal. Being vaccinated protects you against the vrius, but it never claimed to make it completely impossible for you to get sick. If you spend enough time around infected people, chances are you will catch it, you will just have milder symptoms and are MUCH less likely to be hospitalized and MUCH less likely to die from it. You are also LESS likely to spread it, though if you are living in close contact with someone they are likely to catch it either way.
    1
  10533.  El Mero Mero  You were lucky. Vaccination requires herd immunity to be fully effective. Plenty of vaccinated people have gotten measles when there have been significant outbreaks in their area. The more people are vaccinated in a community, the less effectively the virus spreads between them, but NO vaccine is 100% protection. Vaccination programs require that combination of individual protection and herd immunity to be fully effective.
    1
  10534.  @sorrycharlie5773  Why?
    1
  10535.  @MinhNguyen-pk9qk  They are much less likely to be infected than your average unvaccinated American, and as you say, they are mostly huddled together, not going out shopping or eating out, so they are much less likely to spread the virus to any Americans than other Americans are. Plus, they all get vaccinated, which makes them both less likely to infect others AND smarter than an unfortunately significant number of Americans, so I would really rather have them in the country than those choosing not to vaccinate. Wouldn't you?
    1
  10536.  @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.
    1
  10537.  @Sneednfeedn  They were let in by Oath Keepers who smashed through windows and opened the doors for them, that is still illegal trespass, and it was still acting as a distraction for the insurrection the White House and their supporters in Congress were attempting. We will get over it when all the participants have been held accountable for their actions.
    1
  10538.  @Sneednfeedn  they were "let in" by other members of the insurrection that get in ahead of them and have already been convicted for their crimes. We will "get over it" when everyone, including those in the White House at the time, are held accountable for their actions on and before that day.
    1
  10539.  @maylingng4107  From Putin's lips to Satan's ears.
    1
  10540.  @Wolfie1038  The video footage supports my argument. You have been told that it supports yours, and you believed it, because you are easily fooled.
    1
  10541.  @Wolfie1038  You do know that those doors open when you push on them for three seconds, right? That is what the video shows.
    1
  10542.  @Sneednfeedn  But the issue is that they were all acting as a distraction for the insurrection attempt by the White House. nobody wants every single person there to be charged with insurrection, but those who were actually trying to overthrow the government should be. It would be like if a flash mob were used as a distraction for a bank robbery. You might not charge every one of them with robbery, but you would at least want to convict the robbers.
    1
  10543. These are neat. but thy just seem to be toys for the rich, so that they don't have to wade through traffic like some pleb. I doubt there would ever be enough of these that the average person would take one regularly, and they are not replacing any current technology with something more energy efficient, they are just creating a new market for rich people to play in.
    1
  10544. They are only following the US Constitution. Do the crime, do the time.
    1
  10545. Hopefully, yeah, but I worry they will wait too late to do so.
    1
  10546.  @bg5561742  When were Democrats EVERY against vaccines? Show me some evidence of that.
    1
  10547.  @cliffy00  I trust them to want to make money, and not want to be sued into oblivion for pushing a product that wouldn't work or was dangerous on this scale. If they make +30B+ from vaccine sales and then it turned out there was anything wrong with it, they would stand to lose twice that, and the government would be the first to collect. But I'm not concerned that there is anything wrong with the vaccines because they have been vetted by all sorts of unrelated agencies that could not possibly have a shared interest in misleading anyone, and have also been given to more people than most drug tests ever see without any serious complications, so it's basically a non-issue outside of the tinfoil haberdashery.
    1
  10548.  @cliffy00  You can't sue individually, but if there were significant side effects then the government would sue (and do a much more effective job at it than your lawyer could ever hope to). Also, they are only protected form unintended side effects, so if they did deliberately cut any corners or sweep anything under the rug, that would blow their shield wide open, terrible idea for them to risk. And again, we don't have to trust them, because their product has been verified by numerous independent sources already. I'm no fan of big pharma overall, I think that the industry should be nationalized and all drugs should be funded via grants and sold to the public at cost, but they manage to do miraculous work when they set their mind to it, and by all reasonable indications the various covid vaccines are safe and effective, at least when compared to the virus itself.
    1
  10549.  @lizadivine3785  Military are already required to get plenty of vaccinations. This is just one more.
    1
  10550.  @lizadivine3785  Nope, it happens from time to time when the situation is serious enough. The only corners cut were in red tape, not in medical procedure, and the only added risk was to early testing volunteers, because they were overlapping some steps that could have led to problems there (but didn't). They were fully tested before the emergency authorization, and have already been given to more people than any clinical trial in history, with very minimal side effects. Full approval might happen by the fall, but waiting that long would be a complete waste of time and lives. The polio vaccine was approved within a year of testing, and it's already been a year since the covid vaccines entered testing. Everyone in the world got the polio vaccine.
    1
  10551.  @lizadivine3785  I understand that they are different vaccines, the polio vaccine was definitely more risky than this one, yet they still approved it only a year after testing began on its use. That was my point.
    1
  10552.  @lizadivine3785  Hospitals hire dumb people to work grunt jobs sometimes, it happens.
    1
  10553.  @lizadivine3785  Well, you were the one that asserted that you "worked in a hospital," even though your pushing tabloid rag arguments as to why you should ignore the actual doctor and nurses who KNOW how medicine works and are begging people to stop dying of "stupid."
    1
  10554.  @bg5561742  Find me some evidence of Democrats being against the vaccine? Democrats were in favor of vaccines the entire duration of the pandemic. Where do you even get this stuff?
    1
  10555. Well, I guess they could make it legal, but also if they also make hitting pedestrians legal, and frankly, I don't think it would be worth it.
    1
  10556. Not more disgusting than Trump though, right?
    1
  10557.  @krschu00  Yeah, but Harris didn't want him, so he went with the worst of the two evils instead.
    1
  10558.  @TimeBomb014X  That would be "the imaginary party," and yes, that is RFK's biggest enemy. Those brainworms really did a number on him.
    1
  10559.  @davidgmillsatty1900  Yes, independent candidates are extremely unlikely to succeed, because they lack the mobilization efforts necessary to compete with either party in terms of getting their names on ballots. RFK obviously had no chance regardless of that, because very few people wanted him. I can't really think of anyone today who could run as an independent and win.
    1
  10560.  @davidgmillsatty1900  Just because someone registers as an independent doesn't mean that they'll vote for any random "independent" candidate. RFK was never a candidate that even 10% of the population would support, much less over a third. When an election comes around, most independent voters will chose candidates that are of one of the two major parties, they just don't want to commit in advance. This is the problem, there are very few people in the world that are qualified to be President, AND popular enough to win an election, AND not already affiliated with one of the two major parties to the point that they would run as their nominee. RFK would never ever ever be it. Also, I don't think you understand what the term "polymath" means. I'll give you a clue, it's different than "wizard."
    1
  10561.  @UnrulyRantLord  You could fit the topics he understands in a thimble.
    1
  10562.  @davidgmillsatty1900  Kennedy was doing single digit numbers with independents. You can't win elections that way. I don't know what you're saying with your other point, neither Stein nor Yang ever came close to Biden or Clinton.
    1
  10563.  @davidgmillsatty1900  No, it's single digits without weighing. The funny thing is though, even if you went with your imaginary math that implies that he deserves three times as many votes as he'd actually get, he would still fall short of either of the other candidates. and ok, I agree with the facts of your point on the EC, but not with what you imply that to mean, as there's no reason to believe that Kennedy's EC results would be any more productive than his popular vote results. the simple fact is that not enough people agree with his message to matter. There is no math in which the outcome is that Kennedy comes out ahead.
    1
  10564.  @davidgmillsatty1900  You can argue that maybe voters would vote differently if they were sure their candidate would win, but they can never have that certainty, so as long as the system is first past the post, you will get tactical voting. That would be the only way to make an Independent candidate truly viable, to shift to ranked choice voting or other methods in which the choices are not so binary. In any case, Kennedy would never be 40% of the people's first choice, not even 20%. He was an extremely flawed candidate that only appealed to very fringe voters, in a race in which, until Harris joined it, both sides had very strong "dislike" ratings.
    1
  10565. $0, they just reported on the accurate situation.
    1
  10566.  @odin.8048  No, they get paid to find out the facts and report them, whatever they might be.
    1
  10567.  @odin.8048  How much do you get paid to say that?
    1
  10568.  @odin.8048  Not interested. Whoever's currently paying the bills, they over-spent, because this is lazy even by Russian social media shill standards.
    1
  10569.  @truthseeker-nv6ny  They did have a point.
    1
  10570.  @michaelfoster-qw2tw  Most wars.
    1
  10571.  @italex827  Where?
    1
  10572.  @cariwaldick4898  But at the moment, Palestine has started a war against Israel, one which requires the defeat of Hamas to prevent future conflict. Until that war is resolved, "supporting Palestine" is only providing aid and comfort to Hamas.
    1
  10573. It would be impossible to build and maintain a wall that would cover the entire border, and wherever that wall ends, that is where people would cross. "The wall" is a distraction intended for stupid people.
    1
  10574. The thing I hate about rapture ideology is that it is just an excuse for irresponsibility and nihilism. "Who cares if we leave the Earth a cratered wasteland, that's going to happen anyway and God will pick us up before WE have to face any consequences for our actions!" Find me an evangelical that takes climate change seriously, for example.
    1
  10575. Yeah, the Saudis can literally buy any event they want. And have.
    1
  10576.  @hunterphung3638  While no system is perfect, the overwhelming majority of spending is on things that we need, and waste or abuse only account for a tiny fraction of the overall spending. Of course, it was higher than usual during the previous administration, but the Biden administration brought that under control. Even in cases where a program is "wasteful," it is often still better to take that risk than it is to not do it at all. For example the PPP had a lot of people abusing it, but at the same time, failing to do it at all would have devastated the economy. It was better to allow that some people would try to cheat than to not provide the benefit at all.
    1
  10577. But the natural gas industry wants to launder their gas into hydrogen! Won't someone think of the fossil fuel companies!!!
    1
  10578. As in most cases, Fox News is living in Opposite Land.
    1
  10579. Yes! Vote blue, no matter who.
    1
  10580.  @harrylippidardo  No rational person could vote Republican in the current year.
    1
  10581. Washington attacked soldiers, not children.
    1
  10582. It seems that it's the Republicans who are constantly in fear of everything, they are also just in denial about it.
    1
  10583. That's not how jail works, you need to do a crime first.
    1
  10584.  @davealmighty9638  The 14th amendment at no point claims that any criminal prosecution is necessary. and most people excluded under the 14th were never convicted of anything. All it requires is that they are found to have violated their oath of office, Trump was found to have violated his oath of office.
    1
  10585.  @random_violence7927  Incorrect. Several people involved in Jan 6th were charged and convicted of Seditious Conspiracy, which is the US criminal charge for someone who is involved in an insurrection attempt. There is no Us law called "insurrection," just as there is no US law against "stealing" or "killing people."
    1
  10586.  @TheMrboskie  Depends on the case. If this is a criminal trial of Trump min relation to his conduct on Jan 6th, like the one the Special Counsel is currently conducting, you would be right, and that is how that case is being handled. But if we're talking about a case in which the 14th amendment is being used to determine his eligibility to appear on the ballot, then none of that is relevant, since the 14th amendment does not require any criminal convictions to be applied, and in fact most of those that it has been applied to never had any criminal convictions.
    1
  10587.  @TheMrboskie  Did did say that. He ALSO said and did many OTHER things. It is those OTHER things that were part of his involvement in an insurrection attempt.
    1
  10588.  @random_violence7927  Trump's primary business has been convicted of tax evasion though.
    1
  10589. The US is not at war at the moment. Congress has no say in what wars take place between other countries.
    1
  10590. Yup. Nobody could have predicted that this clown would actually win an election, but here we are.
    1
  10591. Yep, Republicans have been running on nothing but rumors for over a decade now.
    1
  10592.  @TomFranklinX  Renewable energy will not be more expensive than fossil fuels for long.
    1
  10593. @Superbooooo This it true, the only problem being that there is no wise way to use fossil fuels, so we're back to it not being as good as renewables.
    1
  10594.  @darkfool2000  It is true that a lot of chemical products come from natural gas and other fossil fuels, and will continue to do so, and literally NOBODY is talking about doing away with those, so I'm not sure why it's even entered the chat. The discussion on the table is about using natural gas for ENERGY, and what alternatives there might be for that. And it turns out, there are a lot of great ones.
    1
  10595.  @hyprostic  Fusion is great. If it worked. Which is doesn't. Everyone agrees that if we can figure out fusion then it would be awesome, and plenty of groups are working on it, but there is no guarantee that there will be practical, street level fusion tech in ten years, twenty, or even ever. If and when Fusion is available and practical, everyone will switch to it ASAP, but until then, we need to be planning what to do using the tech that is actually available.
    1
  10596. @Superbooooo If we're only talking about chemical products though, the overall demand would be WAY less than if the fossil fuels are ALSO providing energy. Nobody is talking about cutting out the chemical uses of fossil fuels (not all of them, at least), just the energy uses that are easily replaced. Why do some people treat negative comments about fossil fuels as if it's a yo mama joke? Is natural gas yo mama?
    1
  10597.  @revertrevertz5438  No, all of them bring results. Renewables currently make up more of the US's energy than nuclear, or coal.
    1
  10598.  @revertrevertz5438  Wind and solar are quite reliable, if you build them properly.
    1
  10599.  @revertrevertz5438  They have wind and solar in Antarctica. They don't freeze unless you don't bother winterizing them for some stupid reason. I'm not sure where you live, but a few years back, the US state of Texas had a big blackout. Why? Because their NATURAL GAS pipelines froze up! And because they had removed themselves from the national power grid, otherwise their neighboring states could have offset their power load. It just goes to show, avoid putting Republicans in charge of anything, right? :D Anyway, no, wind and solar can work regardless of weather, IF the system is designed reliably. You need to ensure that you have strong battery facilities (not necessarily a generic chemical battery, but some form of energy storage), that can hold onto energy accumulated during peak periods so that you can spend it during lower periods. There are all sorts of projects being developed to store energy like that, and which is best for a given area depends on the local conditions.
    1
  10600.  @revertrevertz5438  Well like I said, the problem in Texas had nothing to do with any windmills, it had to do with their natural gas.
    1
  10601.  @revertrevertz5438  Yes, because they planned poorly. The lesson is not "wind energy bad," it's "plan ahead, weatherize your infrastructure, maintain active energy links with neighboring states, and have enough grid-scale storage to effectively back up your renewables."
    1
  10602.  @revertrevertz5438  Again, the problem in Texas was with natural gas, not with wind, so while you can argue that renewables are not perfect, fossil fuels aren't either, so unless you're advocating that we just go back to the pre-industrial age, renewables are better than the alternatives.
    1
  10603.  @revertrevertz5438  The windmills did function equally as well as the natural gas pipelines. Their failures were not some inherent failure of wind power, but failures in Texas energy management and production. If they had built their wind turbines to the same standards they use in Canada, they would have continued to operate just fine. They chose to cut corners, and because of their failures, the windmills did not function. Your example is a bit like that meme of the guy jamming a stick into his bike tires and then blaming someone else for falling. You understand that, right?
    1
  10604.  @revertrevertz5438  And you don't get it, the windmills would never have broken in the first place if they had just built them well, so "the windmills that were poorly constructed broke" is no argument against wind power in general, it's just an argument against Texas's lackluster infrastructure in general. Texas' windmills would have worked fine if they had been as well built as they are in, say, Michigan. Again, your example is nothing more than that meme of the guy jamming a stick in his own bike tire and then blaming someone else for it.
    1
  10605.  @revertrevertz5438  If the windmills had been in operation then they would have helped to cover the demand. Obviously the ones installed would not have been enough because they did not install enough, but they could have. It's entirely possible to use combinations of renewable tech to completely cover the US power needs, it just takes that investment into doing so. Complaining that the windmills in Texas did not cover the load of the power outage would be like if a stadium lost power and they hooked up a portable gasoline generator to it and it was not sufficient to power all the lights, and then declaring that it was impossible for gasoline to work as an energy source. You get out what you put into it, and can't expect more than that. And Europe, while they have invested in some renewables, have not yet invested enough to cover their needs. It's a process and they aren't nearly finished yet. They would be as bad off if all their windmills got destroyed as if their natural gas supplies got cut off, both have become an essential part of their energy grid.
    1
  10606.  @winterrising8738  That is a viewpoint only held by crazy people though.
    1
  10607.  @wothin  >You mean troops? By that definition NATO still has troops in Serbia. No, I don't mean "by troops," I mean "do they have the local politics under their thumb?" That seems from the outside to be the case. NATO has peacekeeping troops in the Balkans, but they do not act to control the politics of the region, only to prevent violence. >Wow. You really don't get what pretext means. Pretext just means "good sounding excuse", I wasn't saying that they could not find any pretext, I was saying that if Russia did not create humanitarian crisises, then NATO could not use "humanitarian crisis" as their pretext. They would at minimum need to find another, perhaps less plausible one. Of course, the whole point is moot since NATO is not invading Russia unless Russia continues to invade its neighbors, and even then it's extremely unlikely. Basically, if Russia does not start problems, NATO won't finish them. So don't start problems.
    1
  10608.  @wothin  >Crimea happened, because there was a chance of Ukraine joining NATO. Ukraine considering joining NATO had nothing to do with Crimea happening though. Crimea happened because Russia wanted control over Crimea. They had no right to have such control. If Ukraine wanted to join NATO, including Crimea, then they had every right to do so, Russia never had any justified say in the matter. >Sure it is the best course of action for the countries joining. It's also the best course of action for Russia to try to stop them from joining. But that does not mean that Russia has any right to intervene. Just because something is in your best interests does not give you a right to do it. If any country wants to join NATO, that is none of Russia's business. They can use peaceful methods to encourage countries to not do that, like giving them money or something, but at no point would violence or the threat of violence be an appropriate response.
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  10609.  @wothin  >It had much to do with it. The whole thing was about Ukraine going closer and closer to the west, and thus also eventually NATO. But there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. They are entirely allowed to do that. Nothing about that would justify invading Crimea. EVER. > One could also argue that NATO had no right to invade Serbia, but they did and they used their own pretexts. Not remotely equivalent. They do not currently occupy Serbia or unilaterally consider it a part of NATO. They went in to solve a humanitarian crisis and then left them to their own devices once that had been resolved. You literally cannot compare the two things responsibly, and it's a bad faith argument to try it. >All that could have been avoided if NATO listened more to Russia. Sure it certainly would have hurt their pride, but in would have been the better long term strategy. No, all could have been avoided if Russia just accepted that no part of Ukraine belonged to them. "If you give the bully what he wants, maybe he'll stop punching you" is no compelling argument. The bully is still always the bad guy, not the victim for not doing enough to appease him. > The only way Russia has Georgia under control is in the sense that unless Georgia gives up their claims on Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they are most likely never joining NATO or the EU (except if Russia collapses, though then this could be maybe even worse for Georgia). Plus they more or less force Georgia to spend their already rather small budget on their military than on their economy, thus making it even harder to meet EU requirements. Oh is that all? Well that's barely political hegemony at all! >NATO forces enforced the unilateral independence by Kosovo on Serbia. How on earth is this not "an act to control the politics of the region"? Helping a region that wants independence to attain that independence is not "control," and certainly not comparable to the actions Russia has taken to unilaterally carve out "independent states" as Russian satellites. It's hard to tell whether you genuinely believe what you are saying or are just presenting convenient talking points to defend the indefensible, but if the former, you have some serious judgement issues. >Russia does not care whether it is officially invaded by a NATO task mission or whether those NATO members use the existing NATO infrastructure and coordination to invade Russia. But, again, nobody is invading Russia, so that point is moot. Russia is quite literally not WORTH invading. The costs of doing so under any scenario would never be justified. Russia is ONLY at any military risk if THEY are the aggressor and violence is the only way to stop them. >Russia would gladly prefer if it could reduce the likely threat of NATO invasion diplomatically, but that was not listened to back then. Again, for those in the back, Russia does not get a say in who joins NATO. If a country wants to join NATO, that in NO way justifies Russia doing "whatever it takes" to prevent that. If a country wants to join NATO, then Russia can ask them nicely not to, or offer them positive benefits for not joining, but is in NO way EVER justified in violence against them.
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  10610.  @wothin  >I mean, we can also play your naive "pretext game" or "on paper" game. Crimea after all declared unilateral independence before Russia asked them. Lol. You don't actually believe that. Making bad faith arguments adds nothing to the discussion. >Again, you can repeat your pretext all you want. In the end of the day, NATO was used offensively, and "strangely" directly after the USSR dissolved. The message whether intentional or not is clear. Again, not all pretext is equal. A justifiable pretext is not an excuse for an unjustifiable pretext. By that argument, ANY action could be justified under ANY circumstances, which is simply unworkable. >Well, I don't care. I care about Europe being stable and not about winning on some hypothetical "morality war" on who was more morally just. Stability as a result of capitulation is not always the ideal outcome. Neville Chamberlain agreed with you, and it helped lead to WWII. If you allow bullies to just keep taking without consequence, then they will just keep taking until there is nothing left. A just peace requires resistance to evil. Again, nothing Ukraine EVER did or threatened to do or implied that they might do was EVER justification for Russia's military actions within their borders. >The USSR for example appeased the USA in regards to the whole Cuba missile thing. It helped out, and a potential nuclear escalation was avoided. The USSR did not "help out" anyone. They were putting nuclear weapons in Cuba, which is what CAUSED the crisis in the first place. That they removed the problem they caused is no cause for praise. >All polls show that most Crimeas want to be part of Russia. So yeah. Lol, seriously, I know you're kidding here, but it really cast doubt on your credibility on the whole. The thirteenth striking of a clock is not only alarming in itself, but also that it casts doubt on the previous twelve. >Nobody was invading the Baltics either, yet they were afraid of Russia invading them. Russia is not the Baltics. There is no fair basis for comparison. You would have to be quite the lunatic to believe that the west is likely to invade Russia within the forseeable future. >Sure thing, Russia will base their national security on some "trust me bro" logic. This is how the entire rest of the world functions. It's not hard. >The USA was also under no danger to be nuked by Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis, as long as the US did nothing aggressive, so then why was the USA so afraid, that it wanted to even invade Cuba? The Soviet Union was much less trustworthy than the US. They were not equivalent forces in this. Pretending that they were equivalent benefits nothing.
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  10611.  @wothin  >I also do not believe that NATO mainly went to Kosovo out of humanitarian reasons. Why not? What other reason could they have had? They stood to gain nothing, and gained nothing. > So I gave you something similar naively. It is not similar at all though. You are comparing apples to golf balls. >Ah, and so who decides what is "justifiable" now? the same thing that always decides what is "justifiable." Morality. Anyone can justify to themselves that their own behavior is fine, that does not mean that everyone else must agree with them on it. The point is that if one person does something, and has a valid pretext for it, and everyone agrees that he was justified in doing so, then if a second person does something very different, and declares "but pretext!" and everyone responds negatively to that, that is not hypocritical, it is just a value judgement. Some things are justified, others are not, and this has always been the case. >I waited until you come with this default uninformed "WW2 appeasement" thing. But Kudos to you, it took somewhat longer than expected. It's entirely accurate to your argument though. In some cases, what a bully hopes to achieve is not worth the cost of standing up to him, but there must be some sort of response or the bully will just keep bullying until nothing is left. The bully is NEVER justified in his actions under these circumstances. >if you looked at a world map at that time, it were France and the UK who took and controlled everything, as they had colonies in almost every part of the world. We have become less and less supportive of empire and colonialism over time. The modern standard is to not permanently annex anyone, but rather to remove autocrats where necessary to allow the people of a country to thrive on their own. >"oooh but the USSR does not has to be afraid if it is not aggressive thing", Exactly. >Look and when I say something which you do not like, you simply deflect. I have addressed many positions you have taken that I do not like. I only laugh when the positions you take are laughable. >And now you are arbitrarily deciding what one can compare. Moving the goal post. That is not what "moving the goal posts" means. You tried to make an unreasonable comparison point. I pointed out that this comparison was unreasonable. You use a football analogy, you were making the case that what works in high school is just as valid in the NFL. The NFL is not high school. >One could have also argued back then that one would have to be a lunatic to believe that Russia would invade the Baltics. One could, but one would be an idiot to do so, as Russia has invaded several of their neighbors over the past decade. It's entirely possible that Russia would invade the Baltics if they thought they could get away with it, although I don't think anyone seriously believes that would be their immediate next step. Maybe after Ukraine. >Yes, they were not. The USA had back then much more nukes than the USSR AFAIK, around 12 times. So the USA was much more threatening. They may have had more nukes, but were less likely to actually use any of them, because they were a more responsible world power. The USSR was an oppressive government that had no friends beyond those that they controlled via force. The US was economic allies with most of the world at that time. There was no risk to Russia beyond what risk they created themselves. It was only their aggression toward the west and their oppression of their own people that posed any risk to Russia. If Russia had released the soviet states to their own independence and stopped involving themselves in military conflicts, then the entire cold war would have evaporated.
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  10612.  @wothin  >They basically dismantled the last vastige of Yugoslavia. And? What did NATO gain from that? All they did was set the country up on its best possible footing moving forward and sent it on its way. They didn't turn it into a little puppet-state or anything. >They are quite similar. Nope. Saying that does not make it so. >You are still a teenager, aren't you? Who decides what is moral? Everyone. Pretext only matters if everyone agrees that this pretext is a valid one. You can't just do what you want, declare "pretext!" and expect everyone else to be fine with that, or declare them "unfair" if they think your pretext is nonsense while another guy's pretext was accepted. >You have to know why somebody does what it does. And Russia always was very loud about it. You can either ignore and dismiss it or you can try to address it. I'm not arguing that Russia doesn't express reasons for their decisions, I'm only pointing out that their reasons are almost always bad ones that boil down to "we would like to do bad things, and these guys were in the way of us doing those bad things, so we had to knock them over." You can accept that these are the reasons they claim, without accepting that these are valid reasons for their actions, and can respond negatively to their actions. >Russia is whether you like it or not powerful enough to do stuff which will bother most of Europe. So what is more important? You feeling of moral superiority or the actual stability on the ground? "Stability" that requires allowing Russia to seize more and more territory and concessions by force is not "stability," any more than allowing a forest first to continue unchecked is "stability." "Stability" is Russia stops starting problems. So long as Russia starts problems with their neighbors, it is responsible to push them back to where they were before they started problems, not to just accept that they get whatever they want. If they want to advance and grow as a country, then they need to do so using peaceful methods, not military methods. If they cannot do this, then they do not deserve to advance. >You laugh, when you can't respond. It's a protection mechanism in humans. I laugh when it is a kinder response than to believe that you were serious. It is the only way to avoid the sorts of ad hominem attacks that you make, to assume that you are more capable than some of your statements would indicate if read straight. >You did by arbitrarily saying something is unreasonable because you don't like it. I never arbitrarily said anything was unreasonable because I didn't like it. I said it was unreasonable because it lacked reason. >If it were so unreasonable, you could easily simply point to the logical inconsistencies, but as always you simply use pointless talking points, by acting "upset". This is a debating falsehood used by bad faith actors. "I have said nonsense, but I refuse to accept any response you make to it, and therefore declare that you cannot respond to it, therefore, I win." Junk in, junk out. Expect nothing otherwise. >The West has also invaded Russia over the last decades. Nonsense. The west has not touched anything within Russian territory since WWII, and that was Nazi Germany, the side that NATO was fighting AGAINST (including the post-war West Germans). No current NATO government has ever invaded Russia. Again, there is ZERO credible threat of the west setting a single foot into Russia militarily. The ONLY military risk to Russia from NATO forces is IF Russia unilaterally attacks a neighboring country and NATO deems it necessary to intervene (or, I suppose, any other country, but their neighbors seem to be most at risk, since Russia _constantly attacks them already_). Even such a justified, defensive war is extremely unlikely, and is particularly unlikely to cross onto Russian territory. Total war just isn't done anymore, particularly with nukes on the table. >So when the USA, a country which increased their nuclear arsenal from a few hundreds to 25.000 within 10 years, puts nukes next to the USSR, it's no biggie. Because they are "responsible", even though they were already unhinged enough to use them. But when the USSR puts nukes next to the USA, it's apparently the aggressor. Exactly.
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  10613.  @wothin  > You seriously ask what the west has from finally destroying the last vestige of a socialist state in Europe? Yes? You don't have a serious answer? NATO hasn't gone after Norway or the Netherlands yet. >Pretext just means that this is the "official reason" for the actual geopolitical goal. Whether somebody agrees is a different thing. And that goes back to my original point, that if the west does something on the pretext of "humanitarian crisis," then they are still going to be judged based on whether people agree that their intervention was justified. If there is not an existing humanitarian crisis for them to intervene in, then they cannot use that pretext, so it's always best practices to not do humanitarian crisis'. Also, just because NATO uses a pretext and it is viewed as a justified action, does not mean that other people can claim that same pretext in a very different situation and be justified in being offended when nobody accepts their rationale, ie, there has never been a valid justification for anything Russia has done in Ukraine. >Their reasons boil down to that they are super paranoid about the national security. They will, whether you like it or not, do everything to reduce that threat. And again, "irrational paranoia" is never a valid argument. If they are that paranoid, they need to seek professional help, not invade their neighbors. Nobody on the world stage should go "oh well, Russia is insane and using that as an excuse to murder people in their neighboring countries, but they're just paranoid. . . what time is football on?" If Russia is trying to do bad things, then their reasons for doing so become largely irrelevant to whether outside forces should act to prevent it. >What NATO did was a very dumb thing. Instead of using Russia's fear of NATO expansion to force Russia to always play ball, because that way they could have avoided their biggest fear, NATO did the dumbest thing. In the current timeline Russia's main way to stop NATO expansion was to create frozen conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine, because looking in the past, if that did not happen, NATO would have expanded into Ukraine and Georgia. Considering how much Russia's government is willing to suffer for their national security, it would be rather easy to make Russia play ball most of the time, with NATO expansion being only a threat. But no, emotional people like you prevailed. I thank god, that during the cold war, people like you were not in power. That would be an extremely convenient narrative for Russia, if it were true. "Just never get in their way and let them bully their neighbors all they want, because if we get involved it will just "destabilize" things. Well when Russia is trying to prevent their neighbors form joining NATO, that is destablizing things. It's not like there was a way to make Russia less paranoid, if NATO had retreated from the region, they just would have insisted on even larger retreats. Maybe let Russian forces occupy Poland, just to make sure Germany doesn't get too close or something. There never would have been a point where Russia would have been satisfied that they were safe from invisible "western aggression," and in the process, those neighbors would have been irrevocably harmed. If Russia chooses to invade Georgia or Ukraine, that is NOT the fault of NATO for being nice to those countries, it is NOT the fault of those countries wanting to be nice to the west. It is ENTIRELY the fault of Russia. Your argument is terrible. It's like saying if Vladimir got divorced from his wife, and they had been separated for years, and then he found out that she was dating some other guy, so he went over and beat her up. Your response would have been "well, she shouldn't have dated anyone, that would only piss off Vladimir," when the only appropriate response is "throw Vladimir in jail." >If that threat was not present, except if they were aggressive, then Russia would do everything to not be aggressive. Oh, it's cute that you think anyone believes that. >Yes and this is 7 decades ago. Considering people like to bring up that the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia all the time, which was 5 decades ago, this is not far off. I certainly didn't bring it up. I don't think I've ever heard anyone bring it up. I brought up how they invaded Georgia and Ukraine, both within the last ten years. How often has the west invaded Russia within the past 20? 30? The last time the west invaded Russia was before Putin was born. >No current Russian government also invaded Baltics, it was the USSR government. Yet the Baltics are afraid. Why? What will your mental gymnastics be in that case? You were the one that brought up the threat of a Baltic invasion, I pointed out that I don't think anyone is seriously concerned about it. People are much more concerned about Russia invading the countries that it is actively invading. >Before the USSR collapsed there was also "NO WAY" NATO would be ever used offensively, yet after the USSR collapsed NATO was started to be used offensively. This is just such a bad argument and we've already been over "why" multiple times. Stop trying with this nonsense. NATO's humanitarian interventions are NOTHING when compared to the Russian annexation of their neighbors. You can't justify the latter by pointing to the former. Ever. Move on.
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  10614.  @wothin  Social democratic countries are a form of socialism. I get the impression that maybe you meant "communist" countries, which is a very different thing than "socialist" ones. And Kosovo was after the Cold War was over. Nothing NATO did there was a strategic advantage to them, beyond that a stable and peaceful country is better for everyone. >The USA was super paranoid that it threatened to blockade and even invade Cuba. Yes it did do that, but it was not super paranoid, it was pragmatic. The Us could not allow Soviet missiles in Cuba. Again, the US and Soviet Union were not "equivalent." You cannot insist on "well if the US did something, then the Soviets could do it too and it should be ok." The Soviets were a despotic autocracy with a history of conquering and occupying their neighbors. Until they allowed the satellite states to go free, they could not claim political legitimacy with the west. >You say that NATO's offensive use was valid because of a "valid pretext", others say it was not valid, as there is nothing objective about whether something is "valid" or not, except your own conveniently chosen criteria. Nobody says that the NATO pretext was not valid, unless they are acting in bad faith to pursue an anti-NATO agenda. >Not sure what you are trying to accomplish by using a strawman argument. I notice you are highly emotional on that topic and you try to appeal to emotions the whole time, but what is the point to misrepresent my point? Do you just need to vent? You were advocating that the west should just capitulate to Putin's demands and allow him control over his neighbors, whether they like that or not. It is a fair question, how far do YOU believe is too far? There is no reason whatsoever to believe that Putin would just be satisfied with Georgia and Ukraine, how many countries do you believe he should be entitled to absorb, before the west should intervene? >That's as silly as saying that just because the USA invaded country X, they want now to invade every country in the world. I mean it's a good tactic for fear mongering however and works on the uneducated ones. We can talk about that once Russia pulls out of Georgia and Crimea. Until then, Russia is still permanently occupying territory of their neighbors, against the will of the legitimate governments of those countries, which puts them significantly behind the US in moral standing. > You have this naive "the West == good guys" syndrome. You live in a bubble. You have this irrational "the West != good guys" syndrome. You live in a bubble. >Let me guess, you will now find to excuse those official policies? Let's see your mental gymnastics. The "official policies" are intended as deterrents, to not officially rule anything off the table, so that nobody pushes their luck. In terms of actual practice, however, it is far less likely that the US would ever push that button without a reasonable belief that someone else had pushed theirs first. You can believe otherwise, you would just be wrong to do so. > You probably do not even realize how laws and states work and on what principle they operates. PS: It's mainly based on "monopoly on violence". I know, I know, not very romantic. That's just an anarchist nonsense viewpoint that is only actually true in autocracies. I am sorry that wherever you live has made you feel that way about government. While it is true that the government had a "monopoly on violence," in a democratic government, they use that monopoly power to exert the will of the people. Only the government is allowed to use force, but the government can only use that force where the people have indicated it should be used. Obviously it would be impractical to do a national poll in each specific instance of necessitated violence, so policies are formed and representatives are chosen to make those decisions in the moment, but this all flows from the decisions of the voters that these are the people who should be setting and carrying out those policies. Ultimately the people are responsible for the choices of the government. >Eastern Europe, especially the Baltics, Poland etc, definitely joined NATO because they wanted to have a guarantee against Russia. Well fair enough, that's their business, but either way, NATO is a good club to join, and its purpose is no longer specific to Russia. It's basically like the UN, but with teeth, its goal is to ensure stability in Europe by ensuring that any minor violence against the weak will be met with massive violence by the strong. If Ukraine had already been a part of NATO, none of this would have happened. If Russia had been a part of NATO, this would not have happened either. Russia is currently the only real threat to peace in the European theater, and that is entirely of their own making. >Also, it's irrelevant whether it's behind your life time. Most of Russia's population are on the elderly side, for them that is rather close to their lifetimes, as well as the effects of WW2 were rather relevant for most people alive today in Russia. The security of Ukraine should not be hostage to Russia's senility. I understand the situation, I just don't accept your attempts to justify Russia's activities. They have their reasons. Their reasons are terrible and they need to stop trying this.
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  10615.  @wothin  >Simply no. They are still strongly capitalist and none of them say they are socialist. Most countries are a mix of capitalist and socialist elements. Going to either extreme tends to work out poorly. the point being, there would be no reason for NATO to directly target a country because of socialism. >I was not. That you interpret that from my comments simply says that you are emotional about that topic and you simply want to vent. No, it was literally the argument that you were making. >Russia is as much occupying Georgia as much as the USA aka NATO is occupying Serbia. >And in case of Crimea, the majority supports Russia. At least that was the case before Corona. So you agree that Russia won't pull out of those countries and allow them to continue how they were before the Russian invasions then. This is why the world has no trust in Russia. >I do think the West is as everybody else, entities with their own self-interest and geopolitical goals. Of course the West has its own self interest and goals, and is not purely benevolent and self-sacrificing, but the goals that the west pursues tend to much more often be in the best interests of the people of an area than Russia is. They are much less likely to cause unnecessary harm. Russia has invaded two of its neighbors in the past decade and occupied their territory, however you want to apologize for that. The west has not done this. They are not perfect, but they are very certainly better, and that does make them "the good guys," in relative terms. >And who decides who should be part of the government? The consent of the governed, in a democracy. The people vote for representatives, and then those representatives, and the people they choose, end up in government positions. If the representatives make choices that the people disagree with, then they are replaced. >Why should anybody have power to decide what jurisdiction I'm under? They don't, you have the freedom to leave at any time. But if you live within a society of more than one person, then the other members of that society have a say in what goes on there, and can agree among themselves on rules that might curtail your actions. If you dislike these rules, you can either convince them to change their minds, or find a different community that follows rules you prefer. There is no other way to manage populations of people larger than one. > Maybe me and my town want to secede. Hm, would your democratic governments allow that? I think not. Why is that? Because of monopoly on violence. You can try to declare independence, but after a certain time after you paid no taxes, they will invade your new country. You and your town do not own the land under your feet, that is shared by the entire nation. You are free to leave, you cannot take your land with you. If you want to secede and take the land of your region with you, you do not need the consent of the government to do that, you would need the consent of the people of the rest of the country to do that, and the government would just be carrying out their will. >Yes, and you'd like to escalate it further. If becoming allies with their neighbors causes Russia to "escalate," then that is entirely Russia causing problems, NOT those nations getting friendly with their neighbors. Do not blame the ex-wife for being beaten. >But they won't. You can either try to compromise and actually achieve something positive in the long term OR you can play this childish morality game, feel morally righteous but achieve nothing in the end or in the worst case only higher probability to conflict. There is no rational compromise here. Either Putin gets exactly what he wants, or he will keep coming after it until he does. Anything else is temporary posturing. There is no point in playing the game of "oh, if only we appease him now, that will solve the problem," there is no evidence of that, and quite a lot of evidence to the contrary. No, the west must not take the first military action against Russia, but neither should they condone Russia taking unjustifiable military action against their neighbors. It is dangerously naive to believe otherwise.
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  10616.  @wothin  Since you can no longer defend Russia's stance in this, you have shifted to gaslighting and deflection. >You are moving the goalpost. It all started with me simply saying Russia has reasons to distrust NATO and now it became, whatever this weird train of excuses and moral posturing is. But the point is that Russia never had any reason to distrust NATO. They can definitely trust in NATO to oppose them if they attempt to conquer their neighbors. Beyond that, they have absolutely no reason to fear NATO, unless they become such an utterly failed state that NATO might need to intervene to protect their population, in which case, NATO is not Russia's problem, Russia is. >You act like the west supporting various civil wars around the world did not harm many people massively. Postures shift over time. The Cold War was a much more dangerous period, and one that we'd like to avoid shifting back to. The west did sometimes make moves that we don't look back on with pride, but by and large the actions of the west were at least better than those of the Soviets of the same time period, and in service of preventing the Soviet Union's continued expansion. So long as the West in general was a free democracy, and the Soviets were an autocratic and oppressive state, it was in the world's interest to keep as much of it out of their hands as possible. Again, within the last decade, Russia has invaded two of its neighbors and retains claims in both. The West has not. When Russia pulls out of those regions and compensates them for their trouble, THEN we can talk about moral equivalency, not a moment before. >And why? If my little village does not want to be part of that government, why should we be forced? Just a little thought experiment for you. "A village" is not a person. A person is a person. If YOU do not want to be a part of that government, then YOU are free to leave it and go somewhere else. If every person in your village wants to leave that government, then every one of them is free to leave and go somewhere else. But the people of that village do not own that land, the sum total of the people of the nation own that land, and if you want to remove that land from the people's control, then you need to gain the consent of ALL the people, not just of the people currently living on that land. If you don't want to play anymore, you can go home, but you don't own the court. >You do not have the freedom to leave at any time. Unless you actually refer to physically leaving the country, which then amounts to "Kosovars could simply move to Albania if they wanted to". True. Although it's worth pointing out that many autocratic regimes make it difficult, if not impossible for their citizens to leave, as was the case with the Soviet Union. Now if the external society determined that unacceptable human rights violations are taking place within a country, they might choose to intervene, or if you want to push to legally change the laws of your land then you have the right to do so, but at no point can some smaller unit of a society unilaterally declare himself exempt from the rules of that society, while remaining within it. So long as you are within a society, you must follow the rules that this society has made for people living there. This is only a problem in cases where the rules are not made by the governed. >What if that was not one town, but 2 towns who wanted to secede and form the same countries? What about 3, etc? Hm. There would need to be enough to gain a majority vote of the entire population, OR that the majority of the entire population agree to let them go, OR that some outside organization felt that it was necessary and justified to recognize the separation. Recognizing separatists is extremely rare, and typically boils down to the ruling regime making things absolutely intolerable for the separatist group, and seeing no way to resolve that within the existing leadership. It is not typically "we just don't like the laws here because we're special." >In the end it is Europe's problem. And I prefer a save and stable Europe. You probably would prefer Europe to be burning down, if you could get the the chance to feel morally superior. No, I would just prefer a safe, stable, and FREE Europe, over one where every decade or so another country is "safely and stably" absorbed into the Russian state. >Not sure what "rational compromise" even means. Compromises are compromises, they are neither rational nor irrational, it's a give and take kind of thing. If Putin creates a crisis, gains ground, and then "compromises" by giving some, but not all of it back, that is not a rational compromise. It is not always rational to just give a person half of whatever it is they want, otherwise you will just keep losing half of what you have until nothing is left. Rational compromises are when you give some reasonable concession in return for reasonable concessions from the other side. So far Putin has offered nothing at all, beyond "I probably won't do more bad things right now." >The initial topic was simply that Russia has reasons to be afraid of NATO and they will try to not let them expand any further around Russia. And the fact remains that they have no reason to be afraid of NATO, unless they intend to start more wars. Maybe they are afraid, but it would not be a rational fear, like the fears their neighbors have of Russia. If WW3 breaks out, that is Russia's choice, there is nothing that anyone else can do about that.
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  10617.  @wothin  >That's basically you simply dismissing Russia's fear of NATO. Yes. I dismiss it because it is irrational. They should be treated as adults, if they do terrible things on the basis of an irrational fear, then they deserve no respect for doing so. They deserve no concessions. >I mean feel free in doing so, but that brought us the current Russia situation in the first place. No, the current Russia situation has nothing to do with a fear of NATO, it has to do with a lust for power, for regaining control over Eastern Europe. That would remain even if NATO disbanded. None of this would be happening if Russia were not determined to be considered a major world power, a status which they have not earned by merit. ONLY Russia is responsible for the current situations, not Russia's victims. >Now you are looking for excuses. As expected. Now who's living in a naive fantasy. You insist on absolute perfection from the West if they claim any sort of moral legitimacy, while defending any sort of barbarism out of Russia. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. The west is not perfect, but it IS better. > I think that the West's "achievement" of bringing back slavery to Libya and basically damning 7 million people to live in a failed state is much worse than whatever Russia did to Georgia and Ukraine. But that's only because you have a very biased take on both situations that is strongly out of step with reality. If you lived in the real world, you would not believe either of those things. >Why should I leave or my village leave or the collection of villages? That is entirely your choice to make. If you live within a society, then you should always have the choice to leave it, or to follow its rules. But a society is unlivable if people are allowed to partake in all of its benefits without having any rule of law. That is an impossible state of being. Every society needs the right to determine the laws that govern it, and if you are unwilling to follow that laws, then it is better for you to leave it than for everyone else to just have to put up with you not following those rules. Land is not a person, the land is owned by the overall population. A person owns his land, but only within the rules of his village. A village owns its land, but only within the rules of its state. A state owns its land, but only within the rules of its nation. A nation owns its land, but only within the rules of the world. If a village wants to leave the country they are a part of, they are free to do so as individuals, but if they want to take the land of that country with them, then they require the consent of the country in total. >So according to your argument, all separatists or people who want to have a changed government, should simply leave the country? That's one option, Option A. Option B would be to work within the system to enact change, such as convincing the majority of their country that they should be allowed to separate, or by changing the laws of their country such that they feel no need to separate. In either case, they need to achieve consent from the people as a whole. Option C would be to appeal to an external agent to help them achieve independence, but this should be avoided in almost all cases. It should only be used when the government is intolerably oppressing them in their current state, and recognizing their independence would be preferable to accepting the population as refugees. >, all the Ukrainians who did not want to be part of the USSR, should have simply left the USSR? After all they should have asked every person in the country first and if others did not agree, they were out of luck? Two problems with your analogy. One, people were not allowed to leave the USSR. Those who attempted to do so were often killed. If the USSR has an open emigration policy, then sure, leaving would have been a valid option. Second, the USSR was not a true democracy, it was an autocracy, so the rule of the government did not represent the will of the people within that government. If a nation of three million people must follow a rule because a dozen guys said they had to, then sure, they have a right to revolt. If three million people must follow rules made by the people that the majority of that population chose to make and enforce rules, then those that choose to break the rules are not going against some faceless bureaucrats, they are going against the will of their fellow citizens. Government is only valid as an expression of the will of the people. >"The external society"? You have weird ways to refer to "the West". I was speaking broadly. It's a situation that has come up thousands of times over human history, and "the west" was only one potential example. >What gives some outside organization the authority to decide that? You are simply looking for ways to basically say "if the West decided that". Outcomes are basically determined by the agreement of the world at large, "the west" and all other parties. There are dissenting viewpoints, of course. >But according to your logic, all those Kosovars could has simply leave the country. You are not very consistent. Geopolitics is very complicated. There is no "one size fits all" solution, only reasonable guidelines. What is appropriate to one scenario, with all its complexities, might be completely inappropriate to another. >Again, Russia does its aggression to stop Ukraine and Georgia joining NATO. Again, Russia would do the same Aggression regardless of NATO, their issue has nothing to do with NATO, it has to do with Ukraine and Georgia preferring to be allied with countries other than Russia. Now if your argument is rather "Russia would not be doing this if Ukraine and Georgia agreed to do their bidding," then that may be true, but in no world would it be just to enslave those countries to Russia. >You dismissing them won't change anything. That behavior led to the present day situation. So again you can be proud of yourself of what your thinking achieved in Ukraine and Georgia. Again, NOTHING led to the present situation OTHER than Russia's insistence that their neighbors bend the knee. No actions by Ukraine, Gerogia, or anyone in the west contributed to what is happening today in any way. The ONLY actor here is Russia, it is ENTIRELY their responsibility, always. The ONLY way to stop this is for Russia to just. . . stop. That's it. That's all there is. >So beforehand you you did not think the Baltics were justified to afraid of Russia, but now you do claim that they are justified. If the Baltics had used their fear to justify ATTACKING Russia, then I do not believe their fear would justify their actions. If they used their fear to seek admission into NATO, an organization they would have every reason to join with or without that fear? Fine, that's their business. Personally, I don't think their fear would have been justified decades ago, and I don't feel that they are immediately at risk from Russia, but if Russia continues to absorb its neighbors without resistance from the west, then Russia would be knocking on their door eventually. I state my position as I believe it to be. If you question that position from a different angle, then I will consider the question from that angle, and might expand what I believe on the matter. This is how a rational discussion should function.
    1
  10618.  @turtlefrog369  Firefox is the only one anyone cares about though.
    1
  10619.  @mobilusinmobili8321  What would voter IDs have to do with anything? In person voter fraud is basically non-existent and mostly done by Republicans. If you actually want to tip the balance away from the actual voters, you need to cheat, like Republican gerrymandering that won them the House this time.
    1
  10620.  @mobilusinmobili8321  What would voter IDs have to do with anything?
    1
  10621.  @mobilusinmobili8321  How so? Voter ID would be irrelevant to the outcome of any election, unless you mean that it might disenfranchise people who don't have the required IDs.
    1
  10622.  @mobilusinmobili8321  That makes zero sense. How many people have died last year due to "mass voting?" And you still haven't explained what Voter ID would accomplish. You just throw it out there as if it's a solution to something, when there's no problem that it fixes.
    1
  10623.  @BeTeLGeuZeX  Yep.
    1
  10624.  @dontworrybout2664  Yes, Nazis are very supportive of oppressing LGBT people, which is why they must be defeated.
    1
  10625. It's called "existing in capitalism." Everything goes back to money eventually.
    1
  10626.  @Paulftate  You mean Republicans support China and the CCP with their politics. The Biden administration has really stuck it to China over the past few years, taking a more firm stance on Taiwan than any previous administration, and increasing American investment into technologies that the Trump administration surrendered to China.
    1
  10627.  @drtyhrmt  Hotez accused RFK of spreading misinformation because, at the time, RFK was spreading misinformation. There would be nothing to be gained by a public debate about that, because RFK would continue to spread misinformation, Hotez would continue to point out that it is misinformation, and RFK would continue to insist that it's not. What changes? If it were easy to "step up and prove it" then we wouldn't have gotten this far, because the matter has already been settled to any reasonable observer. Right now, it's only the lunatic fringe that are following what RFK has to say on the matter, and NOTHING can convince them to change their minds, because that would assume that had minds to start with.
    1
  10628.  @kfiyaaa  Nowhere on Earth is safe, even less so during a war. Nobody could reasonably expect to be made perfectly safe. The goal is for it to be LESS likely to be killed there, but there are never any guarantees.
    1
  10629.  @firdavsmustafa2032  The poor conditions inside Gaza are entirely the fault of Hamas using it as their base. You can't fire rockets into a neighboring country and then just expect everything will be fine. Israel has the right to defend themselves from Gazan attacks, past and future. Also, you have apparently been misled by false news reports. There is plenty of video evidence sent by Hamas themselves of them sexually assaulting women on Oct 7 and then murdering them. There have also been reports from some released hostages that they were mistreated, although perhaps not all of them were. In either case they were hostages, which is still completely unacceptable, however comfortable their conditions.
    1
  10630. "Independence from sanity," -Brainworms 2024
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  10631. @Glenn Rini They can build machines to repair machines. Machine operators were always necessary when machines could not think for themselves, but when they reach a certain point, there's no problem they won't be able to resolve.
    1
  10632. @Glenn Rini It's already happening, to some extent. It will happen in most areas within the next couple decades. I'm not talking like humanoid robots walking around with little toolboxes and workman hats and fiddling inside other machines with screwdrivers, I'm talking about factories designed with modular parts, and if one part is not functioning, a special forklift-ish robot would wander over, remove it entirely, replace it with one that works, carry the broken part over to a repair station (or shipping pallet) where a multi-armed repair device can service it into working order again or just junk it.
    1
  10633. Head of the ATF doesn't make policy. He will not be going after any "law abiding citizens." He will only be going after people who break the laws that Congress passes.
    1
  10634. I don't like the sign that this would send, and I wish that it would not be necessary, but you never know, given how the incoming president has promised to harass any public officials he disagrees with.
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  10635. If it hits the bottom, there is no hope of America crawling out of it within the century. We would become Venezuela overnight. Of course, this is what Putin pays people to encourage us to do.
    1
  10636.  @daytonasayswhat9333  When did anyone ever say that they were?
    1
  10637.  @Aint_no_senators_son  Better spelling errors than anything the House Weaponizing Government Committee has produced.
    1
  10638.  @georgedavidson7878  He was allowed to defend himself, she was just not going to engage him on it. If you believe that he was not making a fool of himself with his own response, then that would actually work to his advantage, since it went un-debated, but of course any reasonable viewer would see what a fool he was and then move on.
    1
  10639.  @DumbBaby  I do understand. That's why the OP's ignorance was confusing to me.
    1
  10640.  @georgedavidson7878  That would be ANY timestamp in which she cut him off, because he never said anything important.
    1
  10641.  @kayakMike1000  Consensus is based in empirical evidence though. In a scientific discourse, empirical evidence is presented, and then the experts in the field judge the validity of that evidence, and determine a position on it, either accepting or rejecting that argument.
    1
  10642. @ Zero rational common sense people voted for him. That was one of the ways you could tell whether a person was a rational common sense person.
    1
  10643. You're thinking of Trump.
    1
  10644.  @66fastbackguy  Again, you say "she," but you're talking about Donald Trump, the previous President. I don't think he identifies as female.
    1
  10645.  @66fastbackguy  I'm not assuming anything, vote for who you want to vote for. I'm just pointing out that the things you're saying are about Trump, not about Psaki.
    1
  10646.  @66fastbackguy  But you said "Trump's focus is hiding hot dogs beyond his lips .." I mean, you misspelled some of it, but you seem to do that.
    1
  10647. It would be ok for them to hire on a Republican, but nobody that has been complicit with the activities of the party over the last few years. Nobody who went along with the recent nonsense has any right to a public platform.
    1
  10648.  @willmiadykes7748  America's safety has nothing to do with the amount of immigrants we have. Immigrants are less likely to harm you than other Americans are. If you worry about safety, then work on better gun regulation. If you've given up on helping America, then I guess you'd have to move to Japan.
    1
  10649.  @browncow8422 I've made my point quite clearly, and it is far more rational and serious than those put forth by the other side.
    1
  10650.  @ISpitHotFiyaa  That assumes that there are other states that are better than the one they were leaving. Sometimes that distinction is irrelevant.
    1
  10651.  @MalikaBourne  Maybe, but the fact remains that many spend months traveling harsh terrain to reach the US. The least we can do is offer them a home for coming so far.
    1
  10652.  @Nash0303  For now. That's a symptom of decades of Republican laziness on the border issue, underfunding border judges. The bipartisan plan would have fixed that, but it got killed in the House. If you care about the border, make sure to vote out Republicans.
    1
  10653.  @Ma.Mal-  People have never needed "an excuse" to vote by mail. Your excuse is "you want to vote."
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  10654. On the one hand this is probably good, since it will allow us to see more about how Russia tried to get Trump elected in 2016 and is continuing to do so for 2020, but on the other hand it will probably get some American agents killed because it will reveal sources and messages, but on the other other hand those agents are probably already dead because Trump just told Putin about them on one of his phone chats years ago.
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  10655. My theory on the Banksy piece was, doesn't that display case backlit? It seemed to glow, and was VERY thick, so my assumption was that it was in a backlit windowbox frame. If that's the case, then it could be plugged in, and that would keep the shredder powered. Short of that, I can't imagine he could have A. gotten away with a frame that size, and B kept the shredder powered.
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  10656. Short term, it's an annoyance, but long term, these men will get girlfriends, get children, grow up, and become Democrats.
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  10657. That's what we hired them to do, play with our lives, and win, rather than lose.
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  10658. Yup. Because RFK Jr's an idiot and debating him would only drag down the other participant. When you wrestle with pigs, you both end up covered in mud.
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  10659. The trial for that is coming up, Judge Canon is working through pre-trial motions.
    1
  10660.  @roninthedestroyer8958  Oh, they couldn't build a case on him, lack of evidence. Turns out that like many cases of classified documents, there was no provable willful malice, and the quantity and quality of the documents was not sufficient to bring to trial.
    1
  10661. They are still useful, especially for people with compromised immune systems. The vaccines have greatly reduced the overall death rates, but the infection rate is incredibly high.
    1
  10662.  @Tibbyfnp  Yes, but removing the tools is easier than removing the user.
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  10663.  @marylingerfelt6537  Violent crime in the UK is much lower than in the US. IT seems to work out.
    1
  10664.  @maxxmarino6500  Yeah, if guns were even a fraction as useful as opiates, gun users might have a point.
    1
  10665.  @maxxmarino6500  Guns take innocent lives far more often than they defend them. If guns actually worked as a net positive defensive tool, then the Us would have fewer homicides than any other first world country, rather than 6 times as many, or higher.
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  10666.  @maxxmarino6500  Guns take lives far more often than they defend them. If guns actually worked as a net positive defensive tool, then the US would have fewer homicides than any other first world country, rather than 6 times as many, or higher.
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  10667. Nah, it's not that sort of holiday. It's just about trans people showing the world that they exist.
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  10668.  @SoldtotheHighestBidder Ok, but what did any of that have to do with the topic at hand? Why not post it on a thread about healthcare?
    1
  10669.  @Dane-xv7go  Glass is much heavier and more expensive though, so there are tradeoffs.
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  10670.  @ScottCleve33  That's not true, actually. It's a bogey-man story being spread among parents of trans teens. There are no teachers out there trying to "turn perfectly ordinary kids," that is not a thing. Teachers are not perfect, and even more parents are imperfect, which is why it's important to handle things on a case by case basis, rather than a blanket rule that parents must be informed.
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  10671. If your neighbor is Russia and they have four times the military you do? Sure. If your neighbor is Canada and you have twenty times the military they do? Nah, we don't need Billy six-pack and his toy collection. We're doing fine here. But by all means, if you want to use guns, Ukraine could use you right now. Unless you're a coward.
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  10672.  @TheCharleseye  I don't own a gun or claim to want to use one. I would say that anyone who claims that they need a gun to defend freedom from tyranny, but is unwilling to step up when the time comes, then that would be a hypocrite.
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  10673.  @TheCharleseye  So then what was your point? In case you don't know, the comment you made closely paraphrased a portion of the US constitution that is often used by idiots to justify unregulated gun ownership, completely forgetting the "well regulated" portion of the amendment. I suppose that could have been accidental on your part. In any case, in the US civilian gun ownership is unnecessary, and in fact largely detrimental, since we have a standing army more than capable of defending us from threats both foreign and domestic.
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  10674.  @TheCharleseye  A) It's not naive when you have a military capable of beating any other military in the world twice over. In the US, an armed citizenry is pointless, at best. They only need it in Ukraine because they are a smaller country with a very dangerous neighbor on their doorstep B) The gun ownership is contingent on the aspect of the well regulated militia. It was in a time where the US regular army was basically non-existent, and they did require an armed populous to supplement that in times of need. That has long since no longer been the case. If they intended private gun owership for a purpose other than that, then why even include the well regulated militia portion at all? Or why not include other reasons for gun ownership, such as "personal protection" or whatever, if those aspects were also important? Every word in the amendments has a purpose, and words that were left out were left out deliberately too. C) I think there's plenty of support for the idea that the US military is outsized, but it's an unfortunate necessity in the world we live in. There is no other force sufficiently large to cover the slack. As Teddy said, "walk softly and carry a big stick," if the Us did not have that big stick, there would be a lot more situations like Ukraine where bullies tried to get their way. I fully support the other NATO countries expanding their own militaries to the point that the US can reduce ours a bit, but that step has to come first or there would be a power vacuum. Also, while the founders did not want a large standing army, that changed quickly after 1812. Temporary armies are not very effective in serious situations. An army that only mobilizes when needed would be pointless in most modern situations. Even if we did employ that model, it would in no way justify civilian gun ownership. In most countries that do employ some form of "trained civilian army,": the weapons themselves are still stored in military facilities, and only handed out when soldiers are needed. D) You're correct that the US has problems other than gun ownership, although conveniently the same party that is most defensive about gun ownership is also the one most opposed to fixing socioeconomic strife in any productive way. The thing is though, the US socioeconomic strife is not higher than a lot of our allies, and yet our murder rate is much higher. And the US suicide rate is not higher than many of these countries either, and yet the murder rate is much higher. The difference is the guns. Just the guns. Take the guns away, there would still be crime, there would still be suicides, but there would be a lot LESS of them, like in other US-equivalent countries with better gun control policies. It's also important to be careful when comparing "crime rates" in different countries. For example the UK considers a friendly bar fight in which nobody was seriously injured as "violent crime," whereas the US only records pretty serious incidents. The UK murder rate is only around 1/5th of the US one though. And nobody wants to "keep cities the way they are" in terms of crime, there have actually been many policies that have helped in that regard and even with recent spikes crime is WAY down from when I was a kid, but it's an unfortunate reality that when you have high density areas you get more crime, and when you have high economic inequality you get more crime, and when you have these factors together, it gets even worse, so cities will always have more crime than rural areas. This is not a fault of the good people who life there, it's just an unfortunate reality. It's worth keeping in mind that on a per-capita basis, there is plenty of crime in rural areas too, it just gets more spread out so it attracts less attention. It's actually 20% safer to live in a city than in the country. But you're right, it's important to work on laws like the build Back Better plan that help solve these problems, an also to pass more gun laws.
    1
  10675. @ Yes, that's why he abdicated the presidency to him.
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  10676. @ This isn't doing anything about that though, they're going to raise the debt.
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  10677. @ Due process still applies either way. This is not due process.
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  10678. @ Exactly. Due process.
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  10679. It sounds like he did crimes and has earned a punishment for them. This is a guy who didn't do any crimes though, so I'd rather have him in the country than your uncle.
    1
  10680. @ What would MS13 have to do with anything? He certainly was never involved with them.
    1
  10681. @ He wasn't in MS13 though.
    1
  10682. Yup, no woman is safe around Republicans.
    1
  10683.  @firebird68cougar69  They were there last Wednesday, they promised they would come back, they might come back.
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  10684. She is just the worst.
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  10685.  @amishpat5201  Why does that matter?
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  10686.  @Catscratchfever4u  What are you talking about?
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  10687.  @carolynmoore796  Ukraine is using the money to defend themselves against Russia, so that Russia will not continue to gobble up Europe.
    1
  10688. Become a nation within the G20 or so.
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  10689.  @tnuggyz  Good governance.
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  10690.  @xavierdaume2757  How so? It was Republicans that killed the border bill. If there had been Democratic majorities, it would have passed.
    1
  10691.  @Joncenalol235  It's a sad thing when you live in Narnia, and genuinely believe that up is down and right is wrong. Break free from the Faux News echo chambers.
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  10692.  @Makewomanfemaleagain  If you want to do that, then that's fine, but that's not how I choose to help. I choose to help by paying my taxes and supporting that those taxes go toward programs that would improve their lives.
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  10693.  @gregbuckley7596  You should probably read the Constitution.
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  10694.  @GaryUSMCvet  People have already cited the 14th amendment in full, but some of you were having trouble understanding what it mean, so I was rephrasing it in a way that I had hoped even a five year old could understand. Which part still confused you?
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  10695.  @bowwinkle6651  They call them "anchor babies" because they are racist toward immigrants, not because it is accurate.
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  10696.  @GaryUSMCvet  All persons within the US borders or under US influence (such as being on a Naval vessel, for example) are subject to our jurisdiction. There is nothing about that which serves as an ":escape clause" from the birthright portion. This has already been settled for over a century. As to your quotes from Trumball and Howard, how could that be remotely relevant? We're talking about an infant. How would an infant born in the US be "owing allegiance to anybody else?" Illegal aliens are not citizens, but if they have children in the US, those children would be, that's all we're talking about here. Nothing in the 14th amendment claims or even implies that the children of non-citizens are exempted from it, or eligible for exemption from it.
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  10697.  @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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  10698.  @GaryUSMCvet  But, again, any child born within the US IS subject to the jurisdiction thereof. Any person within the US is subject to the jurisdiction of the US regardless. "Subject to jurisdiction" does not mean what you seem to want it to mean. The 14th amendment says absolutely nothing about "the child of US citizen parents." I'm sorry that this is not working out for you, but it never will.
    1
  10699.  @GaryUSMCvet  "Jurisdiction" has a legal meaning, and that meaning is legally binding. IF the authors of the 14th amendment intended something else, they should have used different words. I'm sorry if this is emotional for you - get out of your feelings.
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  10700.  @GaryUSMCvet  Yes, I have not questioned the fact that parents here illegally can be deported. Having a US citizen child does not grant the parents citizenship, and never has. And of course the US has jurisdiction over them, if they did not, then the US would be unable to deport them, because the US is only allowed to act upon those within its jurisdiction. If illegal immigrants were considered to be "outside of US jurisdiction," then you couldn't even give them a speeding ticket, much less hold them in detention. The more you talk, the more convinced I am that you haven't even bothered to look up what the word "jurisdiction" means.
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  10701.  @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.
    1
  10702.  @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.
    1
  10703.  @GaryUSMCvet  Again, he does not get to decide what "jurisdiction" means. The amendment says what it says, if he meant it to say something different, then he would have needed to change the wording. "Things a Senator says" have nothing to do with the law. "You disagreed with the fact I stated American Indians didn't get automatic citizenship because the US had no jurisdiction. Yet went on to recognize jurisdiction when it suits you. Jurisdiction " The US does not have jurisdiction over tribal lands, because they are considered to be sovereign territory. A person born on tribal lands is therefore not subject to US jurisdiction at the time. A person born on US soil IS subject to US jurisdiction at the time, and would therefore be covered under the 14th. There is no link between jurisdiction and allegiance. If you believe that there is, you are wrong. If Howard or Trumball believed that there is, they were wrong. The law remains the law whether they made a mistake in writing it or not. They do not get to decide what words mean.
    1
  10704.  @SandcastleDreams  If someone is not under the jurisdiction of the US, then they cannot be here illegally. It is only possible for someone to commit a crime if they are under our jurisdiction. If an immigrant is not under US jurisdiction, then they would be here legally.
    1
  10705.  @juliemunoz2762  "You're."
    1
  10706.  @SteveLomas-k6k  That's what he's talking about. The point is to build energy storage mechanisms, so that when the wind is blowing or the sun is out, they store up energy, and then when those sources aren't working, the battery sends energy back into the grid. There's no more sustainable energy than wind and solar.
    1
  10707.  @michaelcavalier8750  Energy storage costs are coming down constantly over time though, as new methods are invented and projects are scaled up. It also depends greatly on what scale you're working with, storing it inside a house will be more costly than storing it in a larger scale facility, the same as with power generation. It might be that green energy will have higher costs than some forms of fossil fuel, but the overall costs are much lower, when you factor in the costs of mitigating the environmental damage of fossil fuels. We're on track to spend trillions of dollars over the next decades in cleaning up the mess of using fossil fuels to this point.
    1
  10708.  @SteveLomas-k6k  True, but that is because the other power plants already HAVE battery storage. They call it "oil/coal/natural gas," but it's basically just a way of storing solar energy so that it can be applied back to the grid as needed. It would not be efficient for them to produce power 24/7 and store the leftovers in batteries, it's far more efficient for them to just ramp up production as needed and then cool off when not needed. But what is efficient for them is not necessarily efficient for other production methods, which is why energy storage is more important to many forms of green energy. This is not a problem, it's just a part of the process.
    1
  10709.  @SteveLomas-k6k  Nobody is doing that though, so it's not actually a problem. What we are doing is putting away the toys of our childhood and moving toward more mature methods of achieving the same results. Candy tastes good and produces a LOT of calories per dollar, but that doesn't mean that you should eat only candy. a more balanced diet leads to healthier outcomes.
    1
  10710.  @SteveLomas-k6k  Well, that would be the problem then, you see the situation completely differently from how it is. If you can figure out how to fix that part, then the rest should all fall into place. Also, it's important to remember that fossil fuels get far more handouts than any green energy project, so if they are so "self sufficient" why do they need so many handouts?
    1
  10711.  @SteveLomas-k6k  That is certainly what they tell you to think. Dig deeper. Be your own person.
    1
  10712.  @SteveLomas-k6k  That is certainly what the lobbyists want you to believe, even if it's not actually true. Alternative energies produce the power America needs, without harming our present and future as much.
    1
  10713.  @SteveLomas-k6k  I'm sorry, I really can't help you if we aren't even operating on the same planet here. Fossil Fuel producers receive significant subsidies, and not for "green energy projects." Norway is mostly run on hydro-electric power these days, and most of them drive EVs. They export their oil, because there is a profitable market for it. There certainly are parts of the world that turn significant profits off their green energy projects as well though, especially as the electrical grids become modernized to better transmit that electricity over long distances to people who need it.
    1
  10714.  @SteveLomas-k6k  You're talking about oil like it's a religious artifact, not a resource. Nobody denies that oil has a great deal of value, even green energy proponents are open about the benefits of fossil fuels, but you also need to be honest about the clear downsides to certain uses of it, including "burning it for heat." The argument has never been "oil is worthless," the argument is that oil has long term costs that are worse than those benefits, when it is used improperly. EVs are also profitable. Yes, there are subsidies to them, but the subsidies make up only a fraction of the overall cost. They are just designed to get over the hump of expanding the market and scaling up production, so that we can have a majority EV landscape within ten years rather than the twenty or thirty that it might take to develop organically. And again, there are countries that have gotten rich on wind and solar, and there will be more of them in future as energy markets expand to make it easier to transport raw electricity over longer distances. I'm being honest about oil, why can't you be honest about green energy?
    1
  10715. @ The majority of Americans don't want Kennedy anywhere near the healthcare system.
    1
  10716.  @vasagowarlock8460  That would be the majority of Americans then.
    1
  10717. I drive less than five miles per day, on average. I still need a car to actually get anywhere, I just don't go anywhere all that often.
    1
  10718.  @kommisar.  If parents aren't comfortable with their daughters using the restroom without them, then they can go in with them, but that shouldn't prevent minority women from using the ladies room.
    1
  10719.  @mowich7  It has nothing to do with that. The bill specifically targets minority women.
    1
  10720.  @Caliconservative  What would that accomplish?
    1
  10721. Most of them already started out millionaires, it's expensive to run a campaign. A lot of others have made money from selling books.
    1
  10722. Biden's been handling his responsibilities and duties exceptionally well. What nonsense world are you living in?
    1
  10723. She stood beside US citizens to defend illegals, you mean.
    1
  10724.  @Tony-723  The "remain in Mexico policy" was breaking the law, it was an executive order that went against US and international law for refugees. Biden stopping it was following the law.
    1
  10725. Trump does have a history of hiring foxes to watch over henhouses.
    1
  10726.  @RJL612  "Border crossings per day" would include all the many perfectly normal and legal border crossings that happen each day, like people going to work on the other side of a border town, or trucks coming in and out of the border filled with products.
    1
  10727.  @RJL612  Ok? They probably are. Under both US and international laws we need to consider such claims, and if they have merit, they obviously should be allowed to stay. It would sure help if we could help keeping the local countries from being so awful.
    1
  10728.  @harleydavidson2218  I think you misunderstand, I'm not a MAGA Republican.
    1
  10729. Why's he so soft on crime? He thinks murder is ok now?
    1
  10730. @ I am a person, not a corporation.
    1
  10731.  @GodAlwaysWins-x7h  As they say, a sucker's born every minute. Eighteen years later they register as Republicans.
    1
  10732.  @PIndyJones  I think you're replying to the wrong post or something. Nobody was.
    1
  10733. The real issue here is basic supply and demand. Even if we take them at their word that these trips would become economical if they were flying hundreds of passengers per flight, ten times per day, how many people actually want on those flights? They would need to have 100% occupancy, or at least close to it, and there just aren't that many passengers who want to go from A to B on most of these routes. In a realistic, post-pandemic industry, they would likely end up flying at 50-75% capacity a lot of the time, and probably far less than 10 per day, so there would be no way for them to reach their scaling goals.
    1
  10734. He knows who cuts the checks.
    1
  10735. Peace under Russian puppets is no peace.
    1
  10736. Yeah, because iuf the Afghan army wasn't ready to carry their own water after only 20 years, then they would definitely get it down after 21. Or 22. . . maybe 23. . . 24. . . . .
    1
  10737.  @brianjohnston4207  Most constitutional scholars agree on this point, the few who do not are politically motivated to do so, like Trump's lawyers. Of course the current SCOTUS is also packed with Trump operatives, so it will really come down to whether they uphold the Constitution, or uphold MAGA. It will be a real test for the constitutional republic.
    1
  10738. What's the first commandment? Then what's the first amendment? You'll figure it out, I believe in you as much as you believe in ghosts.
    1
  10739.  @christopherbice862  Yup, it's really pretty clear, no elaboration needed. NO state involvement in religion.
    1
  10740.  @christopherbice862  It pretty clearly does say "no state involvement," "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;" Placing the ten commandments in a government facility is establishing it as a state-sponsored religion.
    1
  10741. Yes, cashiers should be replaced because it's better for customers and for the cashiers themselves, not because of profit margins.
    1
  10742.  @rogerout8875  Ok, nobody cares though. We're done with Afghanistan. We should have been done 15 years ago, but Bush went in with no plan.
    1
  10743. The Republicans voted to keep him in the House. He was already under ethics investigation that was going nowhere because it's a Republican-led committee. This made nothing move closer to expelling him. What it did do was shut down the motion on the floor to expel him now. So he's still in there, because every Republican voted to keep him there.
    1
  10744.  @allencapps4622  The guy he beat in the last election doesn't even know how to ride a bike.
    1
  10745. I think it's fine for some people to be rich, but I think there should be limits. At a certain point, money should be forced back into improving things for everyone else, rather than just hoping that somehow that money will find its way to a productive purpose. Plus, the future will be automation at all levels, within the century, 99.99% of the world's population will be unproductive, and if we accept that all the benefits of productivity belong to those at the top and they can do what they want with it, then 99.99% of the population will have nothing.
    1
  10746. How often do you drive from Louisiana to California? That seems like a long drive regardless of vehicle.
    1
  10747.  @RiVer-Parish  Well so why would you need a car that could drive Louisiana to California? If you didn't feel like your daily driver were up to the trip, you could always rent.
    1
  10748.  @vockski3173  And yet, New Zealand.
    1
  10749.  @arthas640  Yup, Faux News is All.
    1
  10750. Republicans have been talking about this for years, and so far NO Republican plan has been put forth that would be an improvement on Obamacare. Of course there are small changes that could be made to improve it, Democrats support these changes, it's Republicans that oppose passing them. They just want to break the parts of Obamacare that work.
    1
  10751. Lol! What are you even reporting, New York Post?! Have you given up even pretending anymore?
    1
  10752. Those are the Democrats he means. The Strom Thurmond types.
    1
  10753.  @Art_Martial  Ancestors, you mean? The current GOP are the ancestors of those 1960s southern Democrats, before the parties shifted.
    1
  10754.  @AshleyBidensBathTime  And yet, Trump inherited the Obama economy and rode it through to 2020.
    1
  10755.  @Genesis-ef1jt  It depends on if it is willful. Obviously if someone goes into a bank, takes money that they know is not theirs, and leaves with it, that is a crime. If, on the other hand, they go into a bank, ask for $1,000 of their own money, are handed $2,000 ($1,000 of that being the bank's money), and walk out, only realizing later that an error had occurred, then if they return that money they have committed no crime. If they fail to return the money, then that would be a crime.
    1
  10756.  @toddrf  The issue is not whether someone is a Democrat or not, it's whether they complied with the law to the best of their ability, or not. The issue is, Republicans often break the law, and Democrats are far less likely to do so. Then the Republicans try to paint false equivalencies to distract the gullible away from their guilt. It's called a "whataboutism."
    1
  10757.  @toddrf  The party affiliation is not the issue, the issue is whether the crime was actually committed or not.
    1
  10758.  @ZephyreWasHere  He didn't steal them, he had them lawfully in his roles as a VP and Senator. He just forgot to return them after. Stealing requires intent, which is what they have no evidence for at the moment.
    1
  10759.  @lebohangmohapi8605  Exactly, two separate potential crimes, but they lack evidence of intent for the crime Biden was accused of, so they don't have enough to prosecute on. Meanwhile in the Trump case, they have far more evidence of ill intent AND he opposed justice in fighting the charges, unlike Biden. This is why the two cases are clearly different to any rational observer.
    1
  10760. They often do, but you need to sort through them all to find the truth, like his various indictments.
    1
  10761. Nobody better is running though, and Obama is term-limited.
    1
  10762.  @greetingsearthlingspluto6666  Wow, that's a laundry list of Faux News you've got there. You might want to do something about that.
    1
  10763.  @robertdefrank2550  Well that woudn't improve anything.
    1
  10764.  @thejuniorseas7683  The allegations against Joe Biden have no serious claims to them, that is the difference. How is the investigation into sexual allegations about Josh Steiner going at the moment?
    1
  10765.  @evbbjones7  It is nonsenseical when all the allegations stem from Putin-simping political actors or are just "he put his hand on my shoulder" BS. There are no serious or credible accuasations of misconduct, so the only people taking this story remotely seriously are those who have a political axe to grind against the President. It's frankly gross, especially when many of them voted twice (or more times) for someone who has actually sexually assaulted multiple women.
    1
  10766.  @richfarfugnuven6308  He puts his hands on people's shoulder's in a friendly manner. Stop making that out like it's some form of "sexual assault" or something. Grow up.
    1
  10767.  @notavailable9919  I just don't soak myself in right-wing fake news, so I'm not told repeatedly that imaginary things are true until they start to sink in. You can be better too, just turn off the nonsense.
    1
  10768.  Jimolee's YT  Showing videos of him hugging people and laying his hands on their shoulder, hardly a "grab'em by the pussy" moment.
    1
  10769.  @zorro8871  Tara Reid is a Putin-simping crazy person. She has zero credibility on any matter.
    1
  10770.  @richfarfugnuven6308  Tara Reid is a crazy person. She thinks Putin is a great leader. The explanation is that crazy people gonna crazy.
    1
  10771.  @notavailable9919  Best to avoid ALL fake news, but the majority of it is on the right. So long as you avoid Fox, OAN, Newsmax, or any of the various websites and social media accounts that parrot their nonsense, you should be fine.
    1
  10772.  @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.
    1
  10773.  @censoreduser7753  There are not seven credible people who corroborate her story and most of the people who knew her at the time say that she said different things and is a massive drama queen. Her claims are only "credible" to people who want them to be. That is not how justice works.
    1
  10774.  @censoreduser7753  No, you can tell the cult members because they have red caps across their brows, emblazoned with "MAGA" for "our-MAGA-Don."
    1
  10775.  @zorro8871  Yes, Tara Reade's claims are not credible. People can lie about things, big shocker.
    1
  10776.  @thejuniorseas7683  So why is the Josh Steiner sexual molestation investigation stalled? Why have I not been hearing any news on it lately?
    1
  10777.  @jfreeman1689  He's only called "creepy Joe" by his political opponents, and it tells me that they are scared of how well he's doing at making this country great again, and want to distract from that with nonsense. It's sad.
    1
  10778.  @snowfox4704  No, you can tell the "slaves" because they have red caps across their brows, emblazoned with "MAGA" for "our-MAGA-Don." I just don't take nonsense stories seriously because they are nonsense stories.
    1
  10779.  @jfreeman1689  Nope, the people who voted multiple times were Trump voters. You can look up their arrest records.
    1
  10780.  @jfreeman1689  The pandemic is already IN the country. You're at more risk of getting infected by someone who came from Florida than you are to get it form someone who came from south of the border. Immigrants are not a serious problem facing this country right now, and it's a bit comical what a hysterical fit the fake news is having over "the border crisis."
    1
  10781.  @Terry-Hesticle  I find that "former liberals" tend to be the crazies right-wingers. They just want people to think that that are somehow impartial moderates as they spread right-wing conspiracy theories. Let me guess, Tulsi Gabbard fan? Or maybe Bernie? Or maybe some other hopeless non-candidate? And yeah, there was a lot of racism in the past, and Joe Biden was not some shining beacon that was above all of that, he was just what a progressive moderate would be expected to be at that time, and that's ok. He grows and changes over time the same way the rest of the country does, and that's great. The only people who are a problem are the ones that fall behind the times and try to hold back progress.
    1
  10782.  @jfreeman1689  Because apparently "creepy" appeals to the sort of mouthbreathers that care about that sort of thing.
    1
  10783.  @jackroy6524  I can do this all day.
    1
  10784.  @timramey5405  That sounds like a "you" problem.
    1
  10785.  Moff Diskust  The ones that he has that would disagree with me would be doing so for attention seeking or political ends, not because their claims had any merit, and I'm ok with that. If there were valid claims to make, he was completely out of office for four years. Plenty of people came out to accuse Trump of sexual assault while he was President and actively using his office to punish his political enemies, but they did so because he actually sexually assaulted them, which is why they took it more seriously than made-up stories about Biden.
    1
  10786.  @snowfox4704  No, you can tell the "slaves" because they have red caps across their brows, emblazoned with "MAGA" for "our-MAGA-Don." I just don't take nonsense stories seriously because they are nonsense stories. People who are slaves to their "freedom tools" are the most enslaved of all.
    1
  10787.  @evbbjones7  Someone wasn't paying attention. The claims against Trump were credible. Only an idiot would try to paint some sort of false equivalency here.
    1
  10788.  @snowfox4704  No, you can tell the "slaves" because they have red caps across their brows, emblazoned with "MAGA" for "our-MAGA-Don." I just don't take nonsense stories seriously because they are nonsense stories. People who are slaves to their "freedom tools" are the most enslaved of all.
    1
  10789.  @notavailable9919  Reality's bias is showing. I'm just reporting on it.
    1
  10790.  @evbbjones7  There's no need for an investigation into Biden. It would be like wasting time with further investigation into the long-settled 2020 election. It would just be a pointless political distraction that would never arrive at the conclusion that his opponents wish were true, wasting taxpayer money in the process.
    1
  10791.  @notavailable9919  No, dude, "Tim," it's right there.
    1
  10792.  @notavailable9919  Or, millions of Americans can agree on different subjects. I mean it's not like I'm mindlessly parroting Tucker Carlson or something idiotic like that.
    1
  10793.  @notavailable9919  Totally.
    1
  10794.  @FaintAura  Stay classy.
    1
  10795.  @richfarfugnuven6308  I've never agreed with "believe all women." I find that philosophy too simplistic. I go with "treat all allegations seriously, but accept the truth." They've looked into the allegations against Biden, and none of them have been remotely credible. That should have been the end of this, almost ago now. But of course we've since learned how hard a time Republicans have with accepting a loss.
    1
  10796.  @klokoloko2114  Potentially, but it would be hard to prove defamation, the bar is extremely high in the US, given the first amendment. It would not be worth the trouble, and discovery could get messier than it would be worth to get a final result.
    1
  10797.  @cynicaldude4369  There was no "poor woman pushed against a wall" by Biden. You're thinking of Trump. He did that.
    1
  10798.  @richfarfugnuven6308  Well so far I've only ever heard of one person who accused him of anything actually sexual, and she was a total kook. Anyone else who has "accused" him only did so of things like putting his hand on their shoulder or patting them on the head or some other nonsense, just generally friendly behavior. He is obviously a very physically friendly guy, like a big friendly dog, but it's nothing sexual to it. He's not like feeling people up or anything. I can see why they might be annoyed when he does that and now he knows that he should avoid that sort of thing in future, but I'm not for a second bothered that he did it, and frankly I can't believe that most people are actually bothered, considering that the loudest voices against him voted for the rapper-in-chief instead of voting for Biden.
    1
  10799.  @Terry-Hesticle  No, you can tell the "brainwashed simpletons who have forgotten history" because they have red caps across their brows, emblazoned with "MAGA" for "our-MAGA-Don." Either that, or they liked the burning of the Reichstag and don't mind repeating it.
    1
  10800.  @Terry-Hesticle  I know, but I manage to push through it anyway.
    1
  10801.  @crapOnYT  What are you talking about? I don't think she's even met Trump.
    1
  10802. All of them. So zero.
    1
  10803.  @justrollwithjesus  See, that's what a "non-answer" looks like. So I'll ask again, were there any issues of substance that you feel you didn't get an answer on?
    1
  10804.  @scottbaker4890  That's not a question, I asked which question you asked that didn't get answered. Can't think of even one?
    1
  10805.  @galinasvistun6855  More like pre-school teachers trying to herd a distracted child.
    1
  10806.  @whatnextincomo  Asking the same question until you get a proper answer is just basic journalism.
    1
  10807. The concerning optics were the Trump fans having a little insurrection attempt last week. Right now, they're trying to prevent them from trying again like they warned they would.
    1
  10808.  @DoSe420  That is what I said. I wasn't talking about the 1944 implementation, obviously, but Trump invoked it AFTER covid was already epidemic in the US, purely to cause harm to migrants. It had nothing to do with protecting Americans from covid, since Americans were far more likely to catch it from someone from Florida than they were someone from Central America.
    1
  10809.  @DoSe420  "Super spreader events" are like Republican political rallies and stuff. These migrants are much less likely to spread covid than your average Trump or DeSantis rally. There is no "power grab" to any of this, if anything the American response to covid has been far too light-handed. A million Americans died because of it, when we could have saved most of those lives if Republicans had taken a less limp-wristed approach at the start. I mean, Australia is the same size as Texas, and yet only saw 16,000 total deaths, whereas Texas had 92,000. Weak Republican governing got 70,000 Texans killed.
    1
  10810.  @jeefsquaa  Covid killed more Americans in 2020 alone than the cold and flu did over the previous twenty years COMBINED. Calling it "like the flu" was just a lie invented by Republicans. And of course legal immigration isn't impossible in theory, but in practice conservatives have created laws that greatly limit how many people can legally enter the country, well lower than the amount that want to enter and well lower than the amount that the US economy requires, and for decades have blocked any efforts to expand that, so you're right that it's possible to fix it, but ONLY by replacing sitting Republicans with Democrats.
    1
  10811. Sissy.
    1
  10812.  @Sporxz  I checked, it turns out it was true.
    1
  10813. Lol, South Dakota selling off their national guard troops to the highest bidder. What a fiasco.
    1
  10814.  @jonbbbb  Does anyone actually believe that Trump would betray Putin by helping Ukraine if they decided to "move first?" What a wasted investment would that be? And what would "move first" even mean? Ukraine is already willing to cut a deal with Russia, that deal being that Russia leave Ukraine and the war is over. For Ukraine to do anything else, they would need to propose a compromise, and what would that mean? "You can keep what you hold, war over?" That would obviously be terrible for Ukraine. "You can keep that bridge you built, but get out of the rest?" That would be fine for Ukraine, but Russia would never agree. There is no such thing as "moving first" in the negotiation, it is a process to reach some sort of peace deal, and the two sides are too far apart in what they want for that to happen as quickly as Trump wishes it could be. Both sides might be willing to make AN offer right away, but neither side would make a REASONABLE offer, or accept an unreasonable one. Realistically, Trump would just accept whatever offer Putin put on the table as being "the fair deal, take it or leave it, Ukraine," and would view any offer Ukraine put on the table as "not good enough, offer the boss more than that."
    1
  10815.  @user-mf9wg6jq5f That's not how this works. Russia unilaterally invaded Ukraine. If Russia gets to keep anything that they've taken, then they will have been rewarded for invading a peaceful neighbor, and will just do so again later. They cannot walk away from this war with any gains whatsoever. "what they get" out of the negotiation is that Ukraine stops killing Russian soldiers before Russia runs out of them.
    1
  10816. That was a slip of the tongue. It happened, but most people understood that and moved on. Some are too slow though.
    1
  10817.  @andrewczski1969  That's not how a "freudian slip" works though. Do you actually believe that he did befriend shooters? If so, which ones? Rittenhouse?
    1
  10818.  @Vertekmaster  I couldn't name a single person I worked with thirty years ago. Not even my bosses.
    1
  10819. How DARE European powers just follow the existing national boundaries that the Turks had been using in the region for hundreds of years! That's the cause of all of this! What the Europeans did, I mean, not what the Turks did, or what the people of the Middle East constantly do to themselves. But the Europeans. Definitely their fault. It's almost like "borders" have nothing to do with it, and that it has far more to do with sectarian divisions that can NEVER stabilize, because wherever the lines might get drawn, one side will insist that they own territory held by the other. ALWAYS.
    1
  10820. Good thing nobody ever voted for Hunter then, and he was never a member of the Biden administration, like how Jared was in the Trump administration before taking two BILLION dollars from the Saudis for services rendered in the White House. Is the House Weaponzing Government committee going to be looking into that one eventually?
    1
  10821.  @user-qy9tf2im7f  That's nonsense. Youtube does not scrub actual news videos. Maybe you've been looking for it on shady channels.
    1
  10822.  @phoenixblanco3892  I don't believe there is "deliberate suppression" here, so much as just a coincidence of how Youtube algorithms tend to work. They tend to prefer short form videos over long form, so short clips tend to rise to the top over long clips, regardless of quality or contents. It also tends to take more time for long form videos to be uploaded to the platform, and more people tend to watch short videos than long ones, so the short ones get more views early, which push them up in the rankings again. I don't think that Youtube is doing anything deliberate to "scrub" credible full copies of the debate, it's just how their algorithms tend to work for ANY sort of content.
    1
  10823.  @phoenixblanco3892  That's a fun little conspiracy theory you've got there, shame it isn't actually true. Why do conservatives always seem to have a persecution complex about these things? Do they understand that liberals get hit by algorithmic results and post-removals just as often as conservatives do? Liberals just don't get as butt-hurt about it when it happens.
    1
  10824. The important thing about adding bike lines is to not remove any of the existing car lanes, because cities don't have enough lanes for cars as it is. Maybe have a combined bike/pedestrian lane? Or maybe have "flex lanes," where 6am-8pm they are car lanes, when traffic is higher, and then any other time they are bike lanes?
    1
  10825. Why would you "regas" LNG? Just pump it where it needs to be in liquid form, and let it provide natural cooling until the ambient air can warm it to gas form.
    1
  10826. If someone engaged in a criminal conspiracy to get a pardon for their actions, wouldn't that itself be illegal? And then even if that conspiracy would be pardoned, wouldn't that still be illegal, creating a sort of "infinitely illegal" situation?
    1
  10827. That's some AI word salad.
    1
  10828. What would they have in common? Cheney is actually a credible politician, RFK Jr. is a lunatic.
    1
  10829.  @johnlevine4716  Well look at the evidence. If her state were less stupid, they would not have voted her out. You were the one that pointed out the evidence of their ignorance.
    1
  10830.  @JonnyBadmoon  I don't support it, but it's imaginary, so that's ok. I also don't support Easter Bunny terrorism, just in case you're worried about that too.
    1
  10831.  @JonnyBadmoon  Oh. You don't understand what "incite violence" means. I'm sorry, I assumed I was speaking to an educated adult. My fault, this is the Internet after all. I'm sure you'll grow up to be a responsible adult one day, but until then, probably best to stay out of politics.
    1
  10832. They did, but they've been earning it back since Biden was inaugurated.
    1
  10833. Only if it's based on false information.
    1
  10834.  @SpaceOden74  Oh, no, I don't watch Faux News at all.
    1
  10835.  @SpaceOden74  Would it help to tell you, or would you just dismiss them for not being Faux News? When you live in an information bubble, everything else seems "fake." Get out of it.
    1
  10836.  @SpaceOden74  Ok, I suppose this can be a test of your ability to act in good faith. I try to take in a variety of news sources, some AP or Reuters, PBS, TL;DR News, Phillip Defranco, NBC, CBA, ABC, it's really not hard to do so long as you avoid the deliberate misinformation sources like Faux or OAN.
    1
  10837.  @SpaceOden74  I don't trust any sources that have lied to me in the past. Some places have gotten news wrong in the past, but very rarely and not due to malice, and they correct the record without needing a court order to do so. The sources I avoid are those that do lie to their audience on a regular basis, and without any remorse. So far, this has not led me astray, the things I have believed based on my own analysis of the information has tended to be true more often than if I were to ignore those sources, and MUCH more often than if I were to listen to the sources I ignore. "Cult behavior" is anything that would lead one to think that the current Republicans are remotely an acceptable option.
    1
  10838. Yeah, but still better than the alternative, in every case.
    1
  10839. If the Russians do have that theory, then that would be a massive insult to Russian science. As for why an oil field might "refill itself," they are not like giant fuel tanks that we fully explore, they are holes deep in the ground that liquid comes out of until it stops coming out. We mostly have to guess at the actual structures in there, but there could easily be a case where a pocket of oil exists, and they empty out that pocket to the point that it no longer flows smoothly, and declare it "empty," but there is another pocket of oil nearby that slowly seeps into that now empty cavern, slowly refilling it, and allowing it to flow again. This is not an infinite process though, it's just one finite reservoir refilling another, until both are depleted. Besides which, "whether oil is finite or not" isn't the actual problem, the problem is the harm caused by burning it, and that would exist even if oil were somehow infinite.
    1
  10840. Joe gave more money to Americans than Trump did.
    1
  10841. Bold of them to assume that the defendants know that 2+2 = 4.
    1
  10842.  @scottallen7212  It's amazing once you can learn about the world around you once you break your mind free from Faux News echo chambers.
    1
  10843.  @jonathanzuniga1844  Yeah, thye probably won't like you.
    1
  10844.  @phillycheezcake5571  If you restrict yourself to only your personal experiences, then you can only ever know less than 0.001% of the world around you. That is a deliberately ignorant way to live. Don't take any specific source at face value without checking it against multiple other reliable sources, but also do not dismiss credible sources just because they conflict with your feelings on the matter.
    1
  10845.  @phillycheezcake5571  The inflation is certainly real, it's an obvious consequence of various world events. It's just a lot worse elsewhere, and there's nothing that could have prevented the underlying causes of it. As for crime, there certainly is a lot more reporting of crime lately, there just isn't as much actually happening. I understand that you want to find ways to continue believing what you want to be true, in spite of what actually is true, but it's just not healthy.
    1
  10846.  @phillycheezcake5571  Well, what it means is context. It would have been impossible to have zero inflation, when prices are going up around the world. That's just how economics are. The best we can do is mitigate those effects, which they have done. It would have been much worse under the previous administration. You can't look at five years ago and say "why are things different now than then," as if life hasn't happened in between. It would be like someone in 1932 looking back at how things were better in 1928, and then blaming Roosevelt for that. And I have no single source, nobody should. My stats come from a wide variety of sources, something difficult to post on Youtube, because Youtube. But you owe it to yourself to ALSO find better sources than whatever it is you've been using so far.
    1
  10847.  @larryredecker6612  If you believe that, then maybe you should become better informed?
    1
  10848.  @kskeel1124  Yes, many of them.
    1
  10849.  @kskeel1124  The opposite, actually. The previous administration was riding on Obama's coattails, until they broke it. Then the current administration had to get things back into shape.
    1
  10850.  @ShizawnSanders  No, I'm just better informed than you. You can fix that.
    1
  10851.  @DimitriosChannel  Yup, bots be clicking.
    1
  10852.  @Percival-kl9yy  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  10853.  @foreverlearn3866  He was taking notes to keep track of the various lies he had to correct when it got to be his turn. He still missed a bunch of them, like when Vance credited Obamacare for one of his relatives getting health care, but implied that Trump had anything to do with that, when he accomplished nothing while in office.
    1
  10854.  @foreverlearn3866  Vance was pumping them too fast to keep up with. Walz is a teacher, soldier, coach, congressman, and governor, not a stenographer.
    1
  10855. Supreme Court Justices should know that the Constitution prevents state religion.
    1
  10856.  @ajm-wu6wd  Mostly that was white nationalist counter protesters and other people seeking to exploit the chaos caused by the protests. The actual BLM protesters were typically not involved.
    1
  10857.  @miken7629  I was asking about the smoke bombs. What would be the peaceful purpose of a smoke bomb in a protest? Why prepare for violence when the situation would not be violent without your presence there?
    1
  10858.  @БолдсайханБатчимэг  Maybe we could offer them the same deal Ukraine got. If they turn in all their nukes, then we will guarantee never to attack them, just as they guaranteed to never attack Ukraine. Just as they did.
    1
  10859. Israel should not be giving out food aid to Gaza, they cannot be trusted to go without a Hamas attack.
    1
  10860.  @khushalgandhi5157  He didn't build Paypal. He was just partners with some of the people who did. In fact, if they hadn't kicked him out, he likely would have crashed Paypal. He "fixed Tesla" by pumping a fortune into it, which is what they needed, money. Nobody needed him. What did he invent, on his own, no other credits to it? What is one object that is entirely attributable to him?
    1
  10861.  @khushalgandhi5157  His partners created Paypal, he always ruined it if they hadn't removed him. Tesla succeeded because he pumped in the money they needed to reach a viable scale. What products has he personally created, not people he worked with, hm alone?
    1
  10862.  @khushalgandhi5157  His partners created Paypal, he almost broke it if they hadn't removed him. Tesla succeeded because he pumped in the resources they needed to reach a viable scale. What products has he personally created, not people he worked with, hm alone?
    1
  10863.  @khushalgandhi5157  His partners created paypal. Tesla succeeded because he pumped in the resources they needed to reach a viable scale. What products has he personally created, not people he worked with, him alone?
    1
  10864.  @thrackl3  I would be extremely skeptical of anyone who's worked for him, mainly because many of them still work for him, or might find it bad for their future careers to antagonize the riches man on Earth who fund a lot of projects in their field. Of course they are going to talk him up. The question is not how they glow him up, the question is, what contributions are directly attributable to him, beyond funding.
    1
  10865.  @jay-1800  He's gotten very lucky, but none of his choices were particularly clever. He just had the money available at the right time and place.
    1
  10866.  @farzana6676  Bezos's project started much later, and a lot of the best employees had already been hired by Elon. You're sounding cultish too.
    1
  10867.  @DineshKumar-cp5qq  The point is that none of his successes can be attributed to any particularly clever choices on his part. Conversely, many of his failures can be attributed directly to choices he made, like Twitter.
    1
  10868.  @DineshKumar-cp5qq  Again though, the failures can be directly attributed to decisions he made, against wiser counsel, while the successes cannot be attributed to any particular decision he made, other than to throw money at the problem. Can you list ONE product that HE engineered?
    1
  10869.  @DineshKumar-cp5qq  So you can't think of ONE thing he engineered?
    1
  10870.  @DineshKumar-cp5qq  What are you talking about? Single engineers build things ALL the time. DaVinci built things, Tesla built things, composers at least write sheet music themselves. If someone says "write me a symphony," and then someone else writes a symphony, that does not make that first person "a great composer."
    1
  10871.  @DineshKumar-cp5qq  Plenty of modern inventors create their own projects. In any case, I would take ANY item he invented, ot something where he said "I want a spaceship that can take off and land like in the 50s movies," but where he actually worked on the schematics himself, did any of the actual work himself. I'm skeptical of anyone claiming to be an engineer that would spend money on a hyperloop project.
    1
  10872.  @mclovin2123  Do you honestly believe he played any technical role in its development? Oh, that's so adorable.
    1
  10873.  @mclovin2123  Without those mines, he would not have been able to invest in his first companies. Without those, he wouldn't have had the money to invest in later companies. Those investments were all he ever accomplished.
    1
  10874.  @mclovin2123  Lol, ok. One's born every minute, I guess.
    1
  10875.  @aaaaaa-ru3tv  Tesla got things done at Tesla. He paid their bills for them. A lot of the decisions he takes credit for at Tesla, such as going all-in on automated production, actually hurt their growth.
    1
  10876.  @tricorn  That sound very cultish.
    1
  10877.  @humbleindian6303  Or, around 30% of the country is Trump supporters, and he has a business that he doesn't want to annoy 30% of his customers. It is interesting though that someone would fear retaliation from a US President. Almost makes it seem like that candidate is unfit for office.
    1
  10878.  @Jozope  Just because his name is on the patent does not mean that he played any role in its creation beyond paying the bills.
    1
  10879.  @Jozope  So how would that be a "great invention?"
    1
  10880.  @Jozope  Poe's Law, check the other comments. :D
    1
  10881. Sorry, I should explain, "birds of a feather" refers to the old saying that "birds of a feather flock together," which means that similar birds often fly together. Like how idiots often hang out together, talking about nonsense conspiracy theories.
    1
  10882.  @lableak7256  But the "lab leak" theory hasn't turned out to be true, not yet at least. It remains what it always was, one theory among many.
    1
  10883.  @lableak7256  I'm sorry, I do take threats to overthrow the US government seriously, regardless of the hour. Capitol police didn't take it seriously on Jan 5th, and look how that turned out for them. A lot of them ended up in the hospital.
    1
  10884.  @lableak7256  Are you a minor? How was I meant to know that? I just thought you were stupid. I'm sorry for the confusion. You really shouldn't be on after midnight on a school night though. Middle School is rough. Get an education, it'll put you well above most Republicans.
    1
  10885. A seasonal flu kills 1/20th as many people.
    1
  10886.  @bikeman1x11  Lol, no, that's not how it works. If someone died of heart attack or cancer or whatever and covid was not the primary cause of death, then it would not be listed as a covid death. over 400,000 more people died in 2020 than were predicted to die of "normal reasons" prior to that. If not for covid, how do you account for those extra deaths? A sudden and unexplained rise in cancer rates?
    1
  10887. And getting weaker every minute they keep this going. . . Tick, tock Putin. . .
    1
  10888. That would be irresponsible of them.
    1
  10889. Well you guys had better get out now, your governor's closing down the state.
    1
  10890. This is how it looks when the DoJ operates without fear or favor. They go after Ds when there is evidence to support it, and they go after Rs when evidence supports it.
    1
  10891. The one thing you can count on in life is that anything Google starts, they will cancel soon after.
    1
  10892. Imagine if Trump hadn't pulled out of there and left our allies to die. We'd have had that whole situation taken care of by now.
    1
  10893.  @nancybbailey1975  Because problems ignored overseas lead to deaths back home.
    1
  10894.  @Tigerman1138  The NRA playbook. If they can convince enough people that mass murders are "normal," then it would become impossible to pass the sort of gun legislation that has worked to keep murder rates much lower in other first world countries than in the US.
    1
  10895.  @Drunkgamer904  At no point are any kids putting any money into any thongs. What a sick imagination you have.
    1
  10896.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  Youtube comments typically auto-block posting links, because they are often used in scams. It does not matter what the actual content of those videos are. And again, if three parents got arrested for protesting outside of a school, it had nothing to do with the content of their protesting, it was because of the way they were behaving during those protests. Nobody can take from that "well maybe they had a point." And again, NO children are "forced" to watch a drag show, the parents always have the choice to exclude their children form those activities. I remember back when I was in school there were parents who didn't want their kids doing Halloween stuff, that's fine. Now what IS taking away parents' authority over their own kids is if someone makes a bill that prevents ANYONE'S children from seeing content that they don't approve of. You can control what your child see,s but that gives you NO right to control what OTHER parents decide for THEIR children.
    1
  10897.  @ColleenKatherineMurphy  Border crossings are down this week over last. They have it under control at this point. I'm sorry if that doesn't fit your need for outrage, but it's the truth, and you would know that if you weren't watching so much Faux News.
    1
  10898. Well, yes and no. Could the state use more water to keep? Sure. But flash flooding causes a lot of damage, and if it all comes at once, and is not well absorbed into the soil, then 90%+ of that water could be right back out to sea within a week or two without accomplishing any good. You want to have long term sustained rainfall so that it can slowly seep into the ground, not a whole bunch of it all at once.
    1
  10899. "Can't lose a debate if I don't show up."
    1
  10900. The war will end the moment Russia leaves.
    1
  10901. @ Would you consider surrender to Russia to be "peace?"
    1
  10902. Shouldn't someone called a "Health Secretary" know that this is not how viruses work? The "spike" from reopening this week or last week won't be very noticeable for another few weeks, it takes a while for them to build momentum. They also won't be uniform, since different areas will have different infection vectors. Some will get hit hard and fast, some might take a little longer to blow up, but it will happen eventually.
    1
  10903. And Jesus prays for the rest of you to catch up to the hold-out.
    1
  10904. But it will make it a lot harder for them to find guns to do it with.
    1
  10905.  @JP-dw1fp  No, disarming the law abiding has nothing to do with control or power, it's a matter of making the country a safer place. There are plenty of countries in the world that have far fewer guns than the US and far more freedom. Guns are completely unnecessary to freedom. All we need to do to ensure freedom is to VOTE, and not elect wannabe tyrants like Trump (see Germany 1920's to 1945).
    1
  10906.  @californiacountry209  You do understand that those statistics are nonsense made up by people who are pro-gun, right? I'm sure it feels good to have your own preferences validated like that, but it's not actual reality. Actual defensive gun use is practically non-existent, and most of what is reported is just people waving guns around because they heard a noise in the dark, or pulling a gun on someone who posed no threat to them and that person ran away (as any sane person would). Plenty of people have been murdered on the grounds that the shooter "felt threatened," and those murderers probably considered it "defensive gun use."
    1
  10907.  @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.
    1
  10908.  @davidmoore3479  Our forefathers lived 250 years ago. Times change. They set up what was, at least up through last January, a stable democracy. It no longer needs citizens to be armed, because they have a military to protect them from without, and a ballot to protect them from within. Our forefathers did not intend the people to have the right to armed revolt, and in fact put down such a revolt within their own lifetimes. If you don't like the people in charge, vote for someone different. If people people vote against you, then you don't have any right to override their votes with guns.
    1
  10909.  @davidmoore3479  They are a tool, but they are a very dangerous tool that cause more harm than good. Dynamite is a tool, you can do a lot of good work with dynamite, but dynamite is also a controlled tool, because you can cause a lot of harm with dynamite too. Guns should be controlled like dynamite.
    1
  10910.  @catalinacustomclassics6957  It's ok, you can't keep track of all the regurgitated talking points. That's not the role of sheep. Just "baaa" wherever you can, as loudly as you can, nobody expects anything more.
    1
  10911.  @frostriver4547  Colion Noir is an idiot. Criminals are way easier to handle when they don't have guns.
    1
  10912.  @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.
    1
  10913.  @Jason28282  What are you even talking about? There are dozens upon dozens of stable, democratic countries that have better gun control than the Us and none of those "slaughtered millions." Hitler wasn't a problem because he confiscated gun (he didn't even confiscate them from most Germans), Hitler was a problem because of white nationalists, like Trump is. Don't put nationalist fascists in power and they won't be an issue.
    1
  10914.  @webportal6659  Wasn't counting the particle, I suppose. At least he didn't forget paying for his girlfriend's abortion like Herschel Walker.
    1
  10915.  @webportal6659  I am not a Trump supporter.
    1
  10916.  @webportal6659  No, you described the typical MAGA cultist, and I am not one of them. Democrats have nothing to do with MAGA.
    1
  10917.  @webportal6659  Who's projecting? You perfectly described a MAGA supporter, but as I said, I am not one of those so it did not apply to me, or to Democrats. MAGA supporters are mostly Republicans, so perhaps you were the one "projecting" by claiming that Democrats were.
    1
  10918.  @gaylebordeaux7632  It's actually fairly common, outside of the MAGA cult.
    1
  10919.  @antonioball8549  That's not accurate either. You are at least right that "stunting growth" is generally not used as a reason to not take medications that have an otherwise positive effect on the patient. Everyone should be advised on possible side effects, but ultimately the choice should be up to the patient.
    1
  10920.  @antonioball8549  If they are children, then their parents would be involved, as would their doctors. Can you give a justification for putting the choice in the hands of politicians? Because I cannot.
    1
  10921.  @antonioball8549  It does not stunt growth as its main purpose though. Why do you keep making claims that are not relevant to this situation? The primary purpose of it is to help children who are dealing with gender dysphoria.
    1
  10922.  @antonioball8549  I think you need to find better sources on that Swiss story.
    1
  10923.  @antonioball8549  Well humans should have control over their own life decisions. Puberty causes irreversible changes to a person's body, so if those changes would be harmful to a person's future happiness, they should have the option to delay that until they decide whether they want those changes at all. Plenty of adults who have been in that position as teens have decided that they would have led a happier life if they'd had that choice, so why remove it? You are not listening to the actual humans impacted by this decision, you are just deciding that you know better than they do about how their life should go.
    1
  10924. Unfortunately, past precedent has shown that Trump supporters are too immature to attend debates.
    1
  10925.  @Heretic-007  I don't hate Christians, I'm just disappointed in those that claim to be "Christians," while at the same time acting AGAINST everything that Christ stood for. No Christian could also be a Republican at the same time.
    1
  10926.  @marquisemiddleton8155  They insult those who take the Lord's name in vain, not God.
    1
  10927.  @jaymessandman6301  Yes, what Christ preached, and what the LGBT community and their allies embraces, and what the anti-LGBT community fights against.
    1
  10928. No, it got taken off the table for two years. Now, after that, I'm sure Republicans will try to use it again, but hopefully we can get them out of the House majority by then.
    1
  10929.  @strayexk7157  Well, they could have just eliminated the debt ceiling at any time, but Republicans like to keep it around so that they can hold Democrats hostage with it. Since Republicans know that their own voters are dumber than Democratic voters, and don't understand the debt limit, they feel comfortable threatening it, knowing that the Democrats will always be responsible enough to not let them create a default. Unfortunately, so many of the current House are SO stupid that they don't even understand that this is a game, so they view shooting the hostage as a viable outcome, which makes things much more dangerous.
    1
  10930.  @strayexk7157  The problem is not the "two party system," the problem is that too many people vote for Republicans. Even if those Republicans were not part of a "two party system," they would still get elected, because slightly less than half the country is morons.
    1
  10931.  @DTGill28  Different regions use different techniques, it would be likely that Hamas would not be working with top of the line practices. As for the materials, they can degrade very rapidly if they are not properly protected from the elements.
    1
  10932.  @birdsinparadise3113  These are different ones though, those have already been accounted for.
    1
  10933.  @birdsinparadise3113  According to anyone who's actually looked into it, as opposed to people who just make assumptions without evidence.
    1
  10934. Impressive, but you better watch out, because I hear Ukraines getting in a new shipment of John Deeres, and we all know how well they were already doing.
    1
  10935. Well, one would hope that he would go as far as it takes to bring him to justice, right?
    1
  10936. Man, the Musk Sniffers aren't going to like this one.
    1
  10937. Fictions like Blade Runner and Hunger Games are actually BETTER than the post-automation reality, because in those worlds, human labor is still used. The reality would not be billions of humans living in slavery conditions, it would be billions of humans just being left to rot, completely ignored by the ruling class. A Capitalist society would not require a UBI, because it would not require workers to buy things. The current system requires people to buy things so that the company makes money so that it can pay its CEOs, so that they can then buy expensive stuff made by people. If you have full automation, the wealthy do not need people to produce their goods, so they can just cut out the middleman entirely, and instead of paying workers so that workers can buy their products, they just do not CARE about those workers, and they make the products the RICH need directly. They also wouldn't actively fight the poors, they would just separate themselves. They would move to islands and other enclaves for which the poors would have no means of accessing them, and wait for the poors to die off from natural causes.
    1
  10938. If you're trying to do a Flywheel pandandrum, couldn't you use a mechanic like in that funny meme about putting a stick into a bicycle and it falls over? Build the flywheel with a few carveout slots that go all the way through it, and then ram a metal rod (mounted firmly to the primary wheel assembly) through one of those slots while it's in motion, which should transfer its motion to the primary wheel, right? Pretty violently though. :D
    1
  10939. The sad thing is, Trump supporters will see all of this as a good thing, somehow.
    1
  10940. Well, there would need to be at least one example of credible evidence, and so far we're left with zero, so, no prosecutions yet.
    1
  10941. What do you mean? Biden has done more to help Americans than most presidents. He would have done more if there were more support for his policies in Congress.
    1
  10942.  @theredboneking  Iraq? I don't think that's accurate.
    1
  10943.  @theredboneking  Babylon is in Iraq though.
    1
  10944.  @theredboneking  Babylon is literally in Iraq. That is a fact. You can find photographs. You can go there yourself if you like.
    1
  10945.  @theredboneking  I don't know any Mr Ss, but what would that have to do with anything?
    1
  10946.  @theredboneking  And at the time the Bible was written, many Jewish people, including prophets, had been killed in Babylon during the Babylonian exile. It is a physical place, in Iraq. Again, they have tour groups to see it for yourself.
    1
  10947.  @theredboneking  Why do you believe they would refer to Jerusalem as "Babylon," when people at the time would have been well aware that Babylon was another city entirely, and would also know that Jerusalem was called Jerusalem? If they intended it to refer to Jerusalem, why not call it "Jerusalem?" I feel like you are trying to impose your own preferences onto the Bible, rather than accepting the words as written. This would make it "false prophesy." I would also point out that Jerusalem was not a particularly "great city" at this time, Rome was, so even your theory here would be misguided. If it's meant to refer to the modern word (which would be a huge stretch), Jerusalem is pretty much inconsequential when compared to cities like New York, LA, Tokyo, Shanghai, etc. It's much more of a "small town" than Balbylon was in the early ADs. I feel like maybe you just have something against Jerusalem that you are trying to work out here.
    1
  10948. The people you're talking about also vote against any programs that "help Americans in need," like the Build Back Better bill, so they aren't worth listening to.
    1
  10949. Exactly, Hamas MUST be stopped in their systematic destruction of the Palestinian people.
    1
  10950. 4th dose: Vaccine-terrified are TRIGGERED!!!!
    1
  10951.  @nw1858  That wouldn't explain why the unvaccinated are dying of covid at a much higher rate than the vaccinated though, nor does it explain why there isn't any significant increased risk of blood clots among vaccinated people.
    1
  10952.  @nw1858  But you are the one not listening to the truth. You only listen to the crap that random strangers on the Internet tell you. You really need to go to a credible news source. Most people do not die of covid, so not being vaccinating and not dying is not a sign that the vaccines are unnecessary. Covid has killed over a million Americans. If all those people had been vaccinated, the death toll would have been lower than 100,000. There would have been hundreds of thousands of Americans enjoying their lives with their family, rather than being dead right now. Just look at Australia.
    1
  10953.  @nw1858  You have been told to misunderstand how data reporting works. 224 MILLION Americans are fully vaccinated, not to mention those in the rest of the world. If the vaccines posed a statistically significant risk then that would be obvious by now, but there haven't been any significant rise in any possible problem areas. Yes, people who have been vaccinated have continued to have heart conditions and such, because most people have been vaccined, so most people who would have already had a heart problem either way continued to have a heart problem after being vaccinated. The rates of those problems did not rise in any noticeable way. The reporting systems just say "report if anything bad happens to you after you get vaccinated," and then they look into that to find out whether it was related to the vaccination. So far, there has been no link found whatsoever. If any link were found, they would pause and potentially stop further vaccinations, as they did when there was a potential issue with the J&J vaccines. The solution there was just to monitor patients after they got the shot and see if they had certain symptoms, and if they did there was a simple treatment and nobody has died of it since.
    1
  10954.  @nw1858  Republicans in Georgia and around the country are currently supporting a Senate candidate who paid for his girlfriend's abortion, so if abortions are "baby killing," then Republicans are openly supporting a man who paid for his child to be murdered. Matt Gaetz is being investigated for his role in a child sex trafficking ring. Donald Trump often bragged about being able to go into the Miss Teen USA pageant dressing rooms while they were changing because he owned the show. And most of the people found to have voted illegally in the 2020 election did so for Donald Trump, and plenty of currently running Republicans claim that they will do what is in their power to overturn the results of elections that don't go their way. If you don't like pedophiles, Baby killers, Vote manipulators, Racists, or War mongers, then you cannot support any current Republican candidate. The Democrats oppose all of those things. That is the simple fact. If you stand with Republicans, you unquestionably stand with evil.
    1
  10955.  @nw1858  Nobody "made" the virus, it is a naturally occurring virus. There are several different vaccines made by several different companies. And the companies that made the vaccines don't get to control the data on who might get hurt by it, that data is collected independently of them. If there were any significant harms caused by the vaccines, it would be public knowledge by now, and not just on conspiracy theory boards.
    1
  10956.  @nw1858  really, get your head out of the sand. You don't listen to anything that you don't like or what? Matt Gaetz is being investigated. The crime he was found innocent on was a completely different crime than the child sex trafficking one. They are currently not attempting to prosecute it, but the central allegation that he paid for a 17 year old to go on a sex trip with him have not been disputed. Donald Trump may have his sound bites manipulated in some cases, but it remains a fact that he did actually say that in real life. You can't just pretend that every negative thing said about the guy is some media fabrication. Everything you've been saying is nonsense. You really need to go look somewhere else for your information. All these things are not even backed up by documents or video or anything unless it's been manipulated. I guess yours too dumb to understand this or it'll burst your little fragile bubble if you find out anything different.
    1
  10957.  @nw1858  The Gatez thing you were talking about has been over for a while. The Gaetz thing I've been talking about, the child sex trafficking, was still ongoing through at least last month. At that point it was leaked to the press that the DoJ might not choose to move forward on an indictment on the grounds that they couldn't find enough evidence to make it a slam dunk case, but that's a far cry from "innocence." Also, the guy blackmailing him was a Republican fundraiser, not a Democrat. I'm not sure who lied to you about that or why you would believe them. Either way, ti was unrelated to the actual charges against Gaetz, the man attempting blackmail was only claiming (falsely) that he could get a pardon for Gaetz's crimes if he got paid. and yeah, Swallwell was unknowingly sleeping with a Chinese agent, and when he found out, he broke off all contact with her, as a responsible party would. Donald Trump had plenty of Chinese agents all over Mar-a-Lago, and his response was to leave top security clearance documents lying all over the place. If you can support Republicans, you are, by definition, anti-American, because if they win, America is already gone.
    1
  10958.  @nw1858  Most of your posts are blocked too. Most posts get blocked when they discuss these topics, on both sides, because the blocking algorithm can't figure out what case people are making, only what words they are using. You will still see your own posts though, since you make them. Again though, the Republicans are the proudly anti-American party. They want to replace our democratic republic with an authoritarian state. They want to make it so that partisan state legislatures can overrule the voters if they don't like who they vote for. If the Republicans win the next election, there might never be another that could be considered free and fair. We might go Hungary.
    1
  10959.  @nw1858  Again, YOU can see your posts because they are your posts, just as I can see every single one of mine because they are my posts, even though you report that you cannot see them. Try this little experiment, count up the number of posts you have in this, or other threads. Then open the video in a "Private window," where it won't be logged into your own Youtube account. you should notice that at least some of your posts have vanished.
    1
  10960.  @nw1858  You confuse being manly with being stupid. Real men aren't afraid of a widdle shot in the arm. Every real man is fully vaccinated. Only the little girls are left unvaxed.
    1
  10961.  @cyndybutler7330  You got outvoted.
    1
  10962.  @anthonyg.4761  Well no, but that's not how republics work, you don't always get what you want, if you're overruled by everyone else. They are doing what the majority of voters wanted.
    1
  10963.  @anthonyg.4761  Well, on the one hand, there is some accuracy to that, particularly if people only get their news from a Murdoch company. But on the other hand, there is far more information available than at any time in human history, so it would be fair to say that ignorance would be their own fault.
    1
  10964.  @anthonyg.4761  I don't know what to tell you man, facts are facts.
    1
  10965.  @anthonyg.4761  Wrong.
    1
  10966.  @keithm9337  No, they just have different constituents that disagree with you.
    1
  10967. Lol. He really is living inside his own reality bubble, uh?
    1
  10968.  @greg5011  Yeah. We've had to learn to never again underestimate the stupidity of the red sheep.
    1
  10969.  @Ruffington_Roast  Ukraine did not do that though, so it's a moot point. Can you justify Russia making hit list on their own citizens? Because that definitely did happen.
    1
  10970.  @berniegordon6338  The bar for invading another country is VERY high. If that other country attacks over the border, for example. Or if the other country's actions are so dangerous that the entire global community agrees that something must be done. What is clear is that in THIS case, there was no legitimate reason for Russia to invade Ukraine.
    1
  10971.  @jessicamason2526  Russia had "elections" in which they murdered or disqualified every opposing candidate first. That is not actually an election.
    1
  10972.  @cheefkeef8749  If Americans in Mexico were being mistreated, they should probably move back to America. It's not America's business how American expats get treated in other countries.
    1
  10973.  @cheefkeef8749  Has the US invaded Russia over Russia's treatment of Americans in Russia? Should they?
    1
  10974.  @cheefkeef8749  NATO being in charge of Crimea is no threat. They are already in charge of Turkey.
    1
  10975.  @Clownelskiy  You need to learn your history if you believe Russia was not involved until that late in the game. Russia has been involved for decades.
    1
  10976.  @berniegordon6338  Yes, Russia would need outside permission to invade a sovereign neighbor with any degree of credibility. There are no "Russian areas of Ukraine," those are just parts of Ukraine. The Russian parts are outside of Ukraine. If any area with people of Russian descent in them are counted as "Russian areas" then they could just spread at will into any country that allowed Russian citizens to move there. Should the US invade Russia over their treatment of American athletes and journalists?
    1
  10977.  @Ruffington_Roast  No, I am not pro-Putin.
    1
  10978.  @Clownelskiy  Again, if the people of Donbass or Crimea want to leave Ukraine, they can go at ANY time. NOBODY is keeping them there.
    1
  10979.  @jimlewis2395  Again, I am not pro-Putin. Why do you keep claiming that I am?
    1
  10980.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  I agree that for Putin, this was all about stealing territory, but that does not mean he can be allowed to keep it. If he is allowed to take territory using violence, then he will only continue taking.
    1
  10981.  @Clownelskiy  the land belongs to Ukraine. You can continue to live on it as a Ukrainian, or you can go someplace else, but nothing gives you the right to take that land from the Ukrainian people without their permission.
    1
  10982.  @Clownelskiy  If you have to go back generations to make your case, then you have no case. The borders of Ukraine were defined with the fall of the Soviet Union, and Russia signed treaties accepting those borders as defined. If you own a house in Donbass, then you have the right to sell that house, you do not have the right to hand the land under that house over to the Russian government. If you want to continue living in Ukraine as a Ukrainian, you can. If you want to move to Russia and live as a Russian, you can. If you want to convert a portion of Ukraine into Russia, then I'm sorry, you have no right to do so.
    1
  10983.  @dehydratedwater9806  How so?
    1
  10984. If Kari Lake ran on that and failed to deliver, then it might be a reason to recall Kari Lake, but Hobbs never promised those things and the people who elected Hobbs never expected her to do those things (mainly since both are federal responsibilities, not state), so why would the people of Arizona recall Hobbs?
    1
  10985. @ Yup, back in the day they used to call that "cutting off your nose to spite your face." But I'm sure that's also somethign kids do on Tiktok these days.
    1
  10986. I love how when Chinese billionaires are "too rich," they tank their own stock, rather than, I don't know, donating some of their money to charity or something.
    1
  10987.  @AgeofCraccadilliaassent  What's unconstitutional about the Fed?
    1
  10988. He's stuck between a rock and a hard place. The issue is that he is 100% conservative. He is the opposite of a MAGA RINO. This means that even though Democrats respect his integrity, they have no interest in voting for him, because he supports policies that are the opposite of anything Democrats would want. But then on the other side, Republicans might agree with him 100% on policy decisions, but his failure to castrate himself before MAGA is a non-starter for them, so he's got no future in that party either. It's sad.
    1
  10989.  @Krix6426  Yeah, sadly the Republicans have made a mockery of the flag over the past few decades, and have brought great shame to it. People are sad to see flags now, because of how many Republicans have flown the flag in support of their hateful rhetoric.
    1
  10990. That's not terribly relevant, as neither of their cases involves anything dealing with the presidency itself.
    1
  10991.  @leahblake6748  Except that Trump did not have the authority to have the documents, and Biden turns his over voluntarily.
    1
  10992.  @leahblake6748  According to the Presidential Records Act, which says that ALL documents must be turned over to NARA immediately, no.
    1
  10993.  @TimT-ey3hp  Yes, exactly. That party morphed into the modern Republicans.
    1
  10994.  @TimT-ey3hp  Yup, that's the party that evolved into the modern Republican party.
    1
  10995.  @pauldow1648  I guess like Lauren Chen and Tim Pool were doing.
    1
  10996.  @luciussvartwulf6630  Unfortunately, there are some errors on every election day in the history of America. This is not itself a big deal. There is no reason to believe that the errors on this particular election day led to any significant amount of Republican votes not getting cast eventually, but generally, Democratic areas are much more often hit with long lines and faulty equipment, if you're keeping score. Also, the issue with polls staying open in Maricopa did not prevent anyone from voting. The issue was only with the tabulation machines, not the voting machines, so people could still vote unimpeded, and their votes were counted later. No voters who attempted to vote were turned away or slowed down by these errors, and their ballots were all counted. There was no voter suppression here, this was not Georgia or Florida.
    1
  10997.  @luciussvartwulf6630  No, I have a quite consistent definition of it. "the voter machines had some errors that resulted in no fewer Republican votes being counted" would be nowhere close to the deliberate efforts by Republicans to reduce Democrats' access to the polls to any rational mind. But of course we are not dealing with rational minds, are we.
    1
  10998.  @luciussvartwulf6630  Except that we know for a fact that they were able to vote, if they did vote that their votes were counted, and that if they chose not to, that was entirely their own business. The fact remains that the only documented problem was the vote counting machines, but that because of that, polling places were collecting all the votes up to be counted later, which they were. If you cast a ballot in one of these polling places, it WAS counted. None of the issues prevented votes from being cast. I've read some articles that some Republicans were telling other Republicans NOT to vote, because they did not trust the voting systems. That is entirely their own problem, not the state, and certainly not Democrats'. Also, at no point did any judge "prevent them from voting or their votes being counted." The voting process was allowed to continue non-stop as the law allows. Republicans sought to extend the voting time beyond that point under Arizona law, but there was no legal justification for doing so, as they were perfectly capable of voting within the existing time limits. This is not remotely comparable to Republicans REDUCING voting hours BELOW the previous limits, making it harder to vote than it was before. You are presenting a false equivalency here, either deliberately, or because someone else told you to. And let's be honest, Kari Lake voters are inherently unreliable narrators, she ran on a platform of election denial-ism, so "Kari Lake voters are reporting voter fraud" is about as valuable a report as "Putin claims Ukraine is being mean to them." "Public statements from a great number of republicans" has lost all meaning after the "2000 Mules" nonsense. You might as well say "I've heard form the Elf on the Shelf" that Arizona Democrats are up to no good."
    1
  10999.  @luciussvartwulf6630  My basic stance is that any reasonable person has every reason to believe that they are liars, considering that they intended to vote for a candidate who's primary campaign position was "I will tell you the lies that make you feel warm inside." It would be extremely misguided to not assume that they are liars until given evidence to indicate otherwise, right? And no, "the same logic" couldn't be applied to Democrats, because Democrats have never engaged in the sort of behavior that Republicans have over the last two years. Hillary Clinton conceded the election on election night, Trump still has not fully conceded. NOBODY questioned the integrity of the 2016 election results. The only questions about the 2016 election were what role Russia played in influencing how people voted in it, and it turned out that the Trump campaign did collude with Russia to influence the vote in several key districts, without which Trump would have lost. That should be shocking, but of course Republicans are immune to shame. But that is not election fraud, the people who were tricked by the Republican propaganda still cast their votes in a fully legal manner. Also, "being there in person" is a terrible reason to trust someone. Just saying. Someone "being there in person" in no way makes them less likely to lie about what happened there.
    1
  11000. Well of course they can do whatever they like after turning 18, but this is about their quality of life too that point. The rate of self harm among trans youth is much higher than the average, and providing them with proper support can massively increase their quality of life and reduce the risks of self harm. While in an ideal world, it would be parents that provide this necessary support, we do not live in an ideal world, and there are parents out there who would cause harm to their own children if they knew that they were trans. In these cases, it is the responsible thing to do to not inform those parents, which is why teachers need the discretion to make that choice.
    1
  11001.  @40daydreamer77  That's not how gender works, but that misconception that gender is somehow linked to chromosomes (when actually, those are only relate dot biological sex), seems to be fairly common among those who don't understand trans people. This is an excellent example of why a teacher could potentially harm a student by telling their parent about their gender identity.
    1
  11002. Or they could be a part of the solution, instead of a part of the problem. That too is an option, and a better one for the American people.
    1
  11003.  @Whatsa-jaguar-now  Look up the US lithium production in the Salton Sea.
    1
  11004.  @Whatsa-jaguar-now  That's current production level, not potential production level. We do need to ramp up production, but that's what the investments the Biden administration have made are for. The previous administration let China eat our lunch on battery production, but Biden won't let that happen.
    1
  11005. That's not even counting the $2 BILLION that Jared got from the Saudis for services rendered while he worked in the White House.
    1
  11006. Well, he is Trump's contact with Putin.
    1
  11007. It's almost like it's not actually a big story at all, and is mainly just used to fill airtime so that a certain network doesn't have to cover Donald Trump supporting white supremacists.
    1
  11008.  @BurkBernard Ok, fair point.
    1
  11009.  @JohnSheppard105  But he needs to be on bond within the next couple weeks. That's what's being discussed.
    1
  11010.  @JohnSheppard105  He can't pay off the fine since he's submitted a filing that says he does not have it, and he does not want to, since he wants to appeal the decision.
    1
  11011.  @1MSTRACIE  Yup! It's an investment in our future.
    1
  11012.  @1MSTRACIE  Exactly, an investment in our future.
    1
  11013.  @GavinJones19982  I was just saying that I'm not maga like you asked.
    1
  11014.  @GavinJones19982  You asked me if I was maga, I said that I was not.
    1
  11015.  @GavinJones19982  You literally said, and I quote, " are you [maga]? 😂"
    1
  11016. The "common sense" side of any argument is the one that Democrats take. The Republican side is whatever the opposite of their position is.
    1
  11017.  @RoastPost  If you are "about to switch sides" in fall of 2022 then you were never on the Democratic side in the first place (or maybe you were a Dixiecrat, I have no idea how old you are). Declaring that you're "on the fence about being a Democrat" in 2022 is like declaring you're "on the fence" about being pro-allies in 1939.
    1
  11018.  @RoastPost  Do you feel like it's a "threat" that you might choose to vote for the Republicans? Plenty of idiots do, you won't be alone, but it's basically like threatening to shoot up heroin. Do what you want, it's your vote, but it's leading this country down the wrong path.
    1
  11019.  @RoastPost  I never commented on your race, I don't know why you would think it was relevant.
    1
  11020.  @RoastPost  Well age might be relevant because there were a lot of people who were Democrats in the 60s that switched parties to the Republicans, some of whom still claim to be Democrats today, even if they always vote for Republicans. The point being, this is the time for any rational person, on either side of the aisle, to vote blue no matter who. The current Republican party have shown themselves to be completely incapable of holding public office, even many long time Republican politicians agree on that. They cannot be allowed to continue corrupting the American political process, and need to be voted out of office until such time as they can put forward credible candidates at all levels. Anyone "on the fence" right now is just outing themselves as having no idea what is happening in the world or what anything means. The excuse to live "on the fence" died on Jan 6th. And you never raised any valid points for me to address.
    1
  11021. @ Not in practice though, since the Canadian tariffs largely weren't actually applied. It's like how on paper they had a 300% dairy tariff, but in practice not one penny of tariffing took place there, because there were quotas involved that were never met. Check out the Plain Bagel's video on the topic.
    1
  11022. @ You'd have to ask those provinces, I guess. They were probably trying to protect some local industry. I'm not saying that all their tariffs necessarily were sensible, there are always a few silly ones in there, I;m just saying that all of them were more sensible than this.
    1
  11023. In before the new state does exactly the same stuff the old state did, because that's just how business works.
    1
  11024. Or, just pay to have a few judges added to the bench, like the Federalist Society did. That's much easier.
    1
  11025. How would that be relevant?
    1
  11026.  @dehydratedwater9806  The presidential records act says that he had ZERO right to retain any of those documents. If you believe otherwise, you have not read the act. He had been refusing to turn them over for over two years by that point, not "three days," and it was never up to him what the terms of turning them over were. His ONLY responsibility was to turn them over immediately and without question, as Pence and Biden did. Also, the documents were not under Secret Service management, they were all over the building in multiple unsecured locations. If there was any "Secret Service lock" then it only involved some small portion of the documents involved, and if a criminal suspect is subject to a search warrant, you want to find ALL the documents, not just the ones most conveniently available.
    1
  11027.  @dehydratedwater9806  The presidential records act says that he had ZERO right to retain any of those documents. If you believe otherwise, you have not read the act. He had been refusing to turn them over for over two years by that point, not "three days," and it was never up to him what the terms of turning them over were. His ONLY responsibility was to turn them over immediately and without question, as Pence and Biden did.
    1
  11028.  @dehydratedwater9806  The presidential records act says that he had ZERO right to retain any of those documents. You have not read the act. He had been refusing to turn them over for over two years by that point, not "three days," and it was never up to him what the terms of turning them over were. His ONLY responsibility was to turn them over immediately and without question.
    1
  11029. Why are Republicans so weak on crime?
    1
  11030.  @dasjagdschloss8357  "Prejudice against people based on their race, or perceived race." The far right are also really into other types of bigotry too, of course. "What do we hate? What have you got?"
    1
  11031.  @andreaslahmberg5641  Yes, that's certainly something a racist would care very much about, because they see "their people" as inherently different than "other people," rather than them all just being "people."
    1
  11032.  @thomasgrabkowski8283  That's not a thing.
    1
  11033.  @thomasgrabkowski8283  Yeah, racists.
    1
  11034. "Why do we keep bouncing from one crisis to another?" Because some people continue to vote for Republicans.
    1
  11035. And they wonder why nobody cares what the flyover states think.
    1
  11036.  @JLMAX22  If the person attempting to vote is not a legal citizen, then they will not be on the voter rolls, and will not be able to get a ballot. If they pretend to be someone they are not, they will get caught. Nobody is allowed to vote without being a legally registered citizen.
    1
  11037.  @Garaceg  Non-citizens are already not on the voter rolls, because they are non-citizens. Does it also require that they remove vampires from the voting rolls?
    1
  11038.  @jtracer96t  Why do you believe that it's been happening, in spite of the fact that it has not?
    1
  11039.  @jtracer96t  Because "proof of citizenship" poses an undue burden on actual citizens trying to cast their ballot, and is not necessary to solve a problem that does not actually exist. Most people do not carry proof of citizenship wherever they go, and many people do not have proof of citizenship in their possession, even if they are citizens. You do understand this, right?
    1
  11040. Yes, because the prosecutor they removed was a corrupt Russian agent, and it was important to US interests to see him replaced with someone more trustworthy.
    1
  11041. Why would you platform this dangerous idiot?
    1
  11042.  @jaymorgan6247  I don't see what was "ad hominem" about it, I was legitimately impressed. He types so well for someone born after the Trump administration. Even if it was dictated, that's still impressive, and nobody should try to take that away from him.
    1
  11043.  @NWstockoperator  The inflation started under Trump and Biden brought it under control. The US has started no new wars since Biden became president, but has no control over when other countries elsewhere in the world choose to start wars. And the border is more secure today than it was under the previous administration, there are just more people who want to immigrate to the US than there were back then.
    1
  11044.  @Poorboystoys  Biden? Sure. He's one of the most successful Presidents in US history. The other side just really hate that though, so they make fun of him relentlessly.
    1
  11045.  @Rick-ux5ku  This statement shows poor judgement.
    1
  11046.  @Rick-ux5ku  Because the correctness of someone's position is completely independent of their willingness or ability to defend it. "They did not defend the position, therefore it must not be true" is just a recipe for being wrong, early and often.
    1
  11047.  @Rick-ux5ku  "You're."
    1
  11048.  @Rick-ux5ku  I never claimed to have special needs qualifications, I can only do so much.
    1
  11049.  @Juice1993H  Who did? I haven't been "demolished" by anything so far.
    1
  11050.  @Juice1993H  Ok.
    1
  11051. WSJ tends to be pro-Trump, in general.
    1
  11052. The Chinese said "may you live in interesting times." Americans say "MY time is the MOST interesting time!" Everyone wants to believe they are special and essential to history. Almost everyone is wrong.
    1
  11053.  @NateTheGnat  But clearly not what causes it, if you believe Biden is responsible.
    1
  11054. They should take those military trucks with the bridges on the top and use them to bridge across the Rio Grande in the places where razor wire has been put out.
    1
  11055. The problem is that we live in a country with laws, and so far there doesn't seem to be evidence of laws being broken, so their hands are tied. If this were Putin's Russia, Hunter would be in jail years ago!
    1
  11056.  @supertrouperJC02  The Trump campaign did collude with Russian agents. This was never "debunked," it was only lied about by Fox "News." Alsol Hillary never "walked around saying she won in 2016," she acknowledged her defeat the day after the election. All she points out is that she would have won if not for Russian interference, which is true. There is NO election fraud in the 2020 election, and it is not "under review" by any credible sources. It's manufactured confusion by the Trump campaign to fool the gullible, nothing more. The election has been certified in pretty much every state by this point, which means there is no doubt as to the outcome.
    1
  11057. @UCyXvNL9K0pb-x_YrxxhQwoA No they did not.
    1
  11058.  @supertrouperJC02  The "evidence" of fraud was laughed out of court because it was all nonsense. It was never worth reporting on.
    1
  11059.  @supertrouperJC02  No, no "actually dead" people voted in PA. Or at least not except for the usual "already dead" people, where they sent a legitimate ballot and then died. Here's a good video from TL;DR about how "dead people voting" is typically misreported: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rrmggu_fBbo Even if there were 8K fraudulent votes, which there were not, Biden won by ten times that many, so it wouldn't have altered the outcomes. As for the "600K votes" part, that is nonsense. There is literally no evidence that this took place. It's just a fairytale that Giuliani invented. You can easily look up fact checking on that one, only idiots fell for it. There is no fraud, and there is no harm in ignoring things which do not exist. Also, I think they took down "You Tubes" posts because he was doing shenanigans with his username. They don't tend to remove posts based on the content of them being bullshit.
    1
  11060.  @supertrouperJC02  Here's a fact check from Politico on the 600k figure. Like I said, if that isn't a good one for you, you can google up a dozen other fact checks that point out the same things. There was nothing irregular about any of it: https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/nov/13/rudy-giuliani/giulianis-false-claim-more-600000-unlawful-votes-p/ " does that mean we disenfranchise 73 million patriots that voted for Trump and believe strongly that there was based on legitimate questions that at least deserve an answer?" We aren't disenfranchising anyone. Those people voted for Trump. Their votes were counted. That was them being enfranchised. MORE people voted for Biden, and their votes were counted too. The only people seeking to disenfranchise anyone are those seeking to nullify those votes. It is not "being disenfranchised" when you lose an election because more people voted the other way. We HAVE allowed all proper legal processes in this case, all credible claims HAVE been fairly assessed, and what you're seeing is the result of that, Biden's win being certified in every relevant state, just as Trump's was in 2016, even though plenty of Americans were unhappy with that outcome, and America suffered greatly as a result. "The conservatives watched for 4 years as democrats tried to impeach a president that THE PEOPLE voted for! " They impeached him for doing crimes, not for winning the election. If he hadn't done crimes, he wouldn't have been impeached.
    1
  11061.  @supertrouperJC02  Like I said, if you don't want to listen to politifact you can google it yourself and find dozens of other sources saying the exact same thing, the "600K fraudulent votes" story is entirely fantasy. Period. PA is tating nothing of the sort, PA is stating that Biden won. And yes, Trump is either a witting or unwitting Russian asset. That does not mean that he's from Russia, most assets were born in the country they are working in, Trump is definitely from America, but the things that he does are more in Russia's interests than the US, Russia has worked very hard to get him elected and re-elected, which would be odd if they didn't want him to have the job, and there are numerous contacts between Russian agents and members of the Trump campaign, many of which were undisclosed, prosecuted, and found guilty on. I mean, it's a REALLY bad look. Trump was impeached for obstructing justice in looking into those issues. As someone who claims that we "should be looking into cases of fraud," you seem awfully defensive when that fraud was perpetrated by Trump.
    1
  11062.  @supertrouperJC02  1. That was one judge who "went rogue." She is not an authority on the outcome. Her actions will be overturned by higher courts in due course. In any case, even if things got completely absurd and the GOP stole Pennsylvania away from the voters and handed it to Trump, Trump would still lose 286-252 . /shurg 2. There is no evidence that China has done anything to get Biden elected. No actual evidence. Conspiracy theories can invent anything they want to be true, of course. He certainly has never received a single dime from China personally, unlike Trump, who has recieved considerable amounts of loans and direct payments to his businesses from Kremlin-tied Russian oligarchs. 3. I have no doubt you've been drenched in misinformation on this topic and have no idea which end is up on any of it, but sorting through it all would take way more time than it would be worth. Suffice it to say, everything you think is true on this topic, is wrong, and reality does not care about your feelings on the matter.
    1
  11063.  @supertrouperJC02  "Former Commonwealth Court Judge Robert Byer tweeted Wednesday night that the commonwealth’s highest court will likely act quickly (and is designated to hear any Act 77 challenges, anyway). In the meantime, McCullough’s order is unenforceable – meaning DoS could choose to proceed with certification or wait for the outcome of their appeal, Byer wrote later in an email." This wouldn't even still be an issue if most people weren't at home on Thanksgiving vacation.
    1
  11064.  @supertrouperJC02  https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/527838-pennsylvania-supreme-court-strikes-down-gop-bid-to-stop-election?fbclid=IwAR2RJNsjM5iNaiebACvEZMk7Pt9yx0kfeWjXVsxl6bw8yp32TwsrrBrpsLQ Look, you can choose not to trust CNN if you like, but you can't do that while at the same time choosing to believe sites like Fox News or Infowars or whatever outlets you are getting your news from, because they are overtly hostile to reality. However often you think CNN has been "caught lying," Trump and Fox News have been caught lying a hundred times more often. Maybe a thousand. The list of Trump's lies is impossible to read it's so long. You cannot claim to value the truth while also expressing the viewpoints that you do.
    1
  11065.  @supertrouperJC02  This, btw, is a quote from the Trump nominated appeals judge that struck down the lower court ruling you were cheering about earlier: “Free, fair elections are the lifeblood of our democracy. Charges of unfairness are serious. But calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.” Appeals Court Judge Stephanos Bibas
    1
  11066.  @supertrouperJC02  I think the problem is that you "watch the hearing yourself and decide for yourself," but given the conclusions you've reached, you do not have the legal training necessary to differentiate between what is credible evidence and what is nonsense. The Trump campaign has produced no credible evidence of any of their claims, and no, these things do not "need to be investigated" if there is no credible evidence that there is a problem. Just accusing that something bad happened is not grounds to throw out or even slow down the voting process if there is no actual evidence that something bad happened. Anyone can just claim that martians rigged the election for their lizard king overlord, that does not make it a fact. I can claim that Big Foot and the Loch Ness Monster were spotted in lake Erie with a sack containing ten million ballots that were all for Trump and signed by people who have been dead since the Civil War, therefore all Trump ballots should be discarded, but that doesn't mean anyone should actually pay attention to that nonsense. Most of what you allege here is nonsense. You believe it to be true because it supports the outcome you want, but it is complete fabrication. The events you describe never happened in any form. The only reason we are in disagreement that "election integrity matters" is because while you say that, your own stances on what should be done conflict with that. My position is in support of election integrity, your positions undermine it by chasing fairytales.
    1
  11067.  @supertrouperJC02  " In fact, the legislature has the authority to take back their electoral votes. " No, they doi not. Anyone who has told you this was either ignorant of the law, or lying to you.
    1
  11068.  @supertrouperJC02  Yes, but also, in addition to that Constitutional clause you cited, Pennsylvania law requires that their legislator just send the electors that the state voted for. They do NOT have the legal right to disenfranchise Pennsylvania's voters and just pick whomever they want. If they wanted to have that right, at minimum they would have needed to pass a NEW law to that effect BEFORE the election. If anyone has been telling you otherwise, then they were either ignorant of the law or lying to you. Btw, here are two videos by Legal Eagle, talking about Trump's various lawsuits, and why they are all nonsense. The most recent one is first, and covers things like the most recent challenges you cited, as well as addressing the "eye witness accounts" claims: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-nblE8ps2M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha7iWECm_8E He is certainly not unbiased in this, I make no claims that he is, but he is informative whether you agree with his opinions on the matter or not. The TR;DL on that is that most of the "eyewitness accounts" boil down to people claiming that they "heard someone say that maybe they were doing something shady," but that is not actually "witnessing" anything, that is just hearsay, and regardless, the Trump campaign never presented any actual evidence in a legal setting, because if it was fabricated they could get in legal trouble for that. Instead, they just put it out in public, where there is no burden of proof. They only lie in places where they won't get in trouble for lying, and in places where they would get in trouble for lying, they have nothing to say. I'm trying my best here and it's clear I could say anything it doesn't matter because you're hung up on the Trump campaign propaganda.
    1
  11069.  @supertrouperJC02  Ok, we need to be clear here, which "hearing" are you talking about? Are you talking about the one before the Pennsylvania legislature? That's not a legal proceeding, there is no "outcome" to that. It's just an airing of grievances. It's not like anything that happens there would lead to a change in the outcome of the 2020 election. If we're talking about the court cases, which one specifically? What's the name on the case? It's also important to note that there is not one count in which there were not Republican watchers present. Individuals might have wanted to be "watchers," and were kept out because they did not meet the qualifications for that role, but that is not the same thing as the count not being watched. Not everyone who wants to be a watcher is allowed to be. "And Of course they don't just pick whomever they want, the point is that the legislature has the authority to set the ground rules for the election process. " They do. Before the election. Which was almost a month ago. It is too late for them to do anything about that now. " Those ground rules which were set before the election were broken, therefore giving them the authority to declare the election unconstitutional, " No, the rules were not broken, and no, even if they were they do not have the authority to just declare the election unconstitutional and pick whoever they want instead. "Likely the Electoral votes wouldn't go to Trump if they win, they would just be removed for Biden, and if this is followed up in a few key states," Except that none of that would happen, and if by some chance it did start happening, no patriotic American could possibly support it. That is the definition of tyranny. " This happened with John Adams, so there is a clear precedent." Electoral laws have changed massively since John Adams, the argument you're making is equivalent to saying we should throw out all African American votes because when Franklin Pierce was elected they didn't have the right to vote. Precedent becomes invalid when the underlying systems that precedent were based on have shifted.
    1
  11070.  @supertrouperJC02  Votes were not "injected into the system" that is not "proven." If it were proven, then there would be consequences. Instead it was merely asserted without any evidence to support it, outside a court of law. That is pretty much the opposite of "proven." Did you watch Crhis Kreb's interview on 60 Minutes? If you are worried that votes got "entered into the system" that might not match the actual votes cast, don't worry, that did not happen. In any contested area, they have done hand recounts of paper ballots, and the hand recounts ended up at the same numbers the digital ones did, so no "magical votes" "appeared out of nowhere." They were just perfectly ordinary votes being properly counted the way votes are meant to be counted. Even IF there were some evil "USB drive conspiracy" that had led to massively incorrect outcomes in the early votes (which there was not), the hand recounts would have shown such a discrepancy (which there was not). "Not only that, they all shut down voting early, which was against the rules the legislature gave, and in the middle of the night uploaded these massive vote counts for Biden" You make it sound sinister that they continued to count legal votes into the late hours, and then uploaded their results as they finished up for the night. That's just the process, there is absolutely nothing sinister about that. It is working how everyone intended it to work, including Republicans. You're only bothered by the results in Democratic Cities because that is where Democratic votes typically do come from. The old joke is that there are no red states or blue states, there are just red states with blue cities, and it only depends how big those cities are relative to everything else. Obviously the bulk of Biden's votes would come from cities and urban suburbs, and ALSO because Democrats take the pandemic more seriously there were always going to be a lot more mail-in votes for Democrats, which were the last to come in. EVERYONE expected that whatever the election day votes brought it, it would only tend to lean more toward Biden as the mail-in ballots got counted. The only thing that was even in doubt would be whether it would swing enough toward Biden to offset what Trump got on election day. It turned out it was.
    1
  11071.  @supertrouperJC02  "and not due to any constitutional amendment, meaning legislature still has authority to lay the grounds for an election. " They have federal authority to do that, yes, and they could have, BEFORE the election. Which was a month ago. They did not. So now it's too late to change it. They can't change the rules now even if they wanted to. Patriots don't try to rig elections when they lose. 75 million Americans voted for Trump, but 80 million Americans voted for Biden, and they wouldn't stand for being force fed Trump either. Patriots do what we did in 2016, accept that the American people, for whatever reasons, chose differently than we did, and that this is how elections go. If Trump supporters cannot accept that, and try to "rise up," they will just have to be put down. We did it in 1865, and we can do it again if necessary.
    1
  11072.  @supertrouperJC02  You were the one suggesting that Trump voters were engage in armed rebellion if they don't get their way. I was only pointing out that if they tried, they would lose. Again. Liberals don't want a war, but allowing Republicans to steal the election away form the 80 million Americans who voted for Biden would be even worse. Allowing tyranny to succeed through subservience is no solution. No crimes have been committed here, at least not by liberals. You don't get to send people to jail just because the American people voted differently than you wanted them to. That is not how democracy works. 74 million voted for Trump, 80 million voted for Biden, Biden gets to be President next year, Trump does not. It's that simple. Do you do this with sports too? If your favorite team loses 21-18, you demand that they be given more time to run up the score?
    1
  11073.  @supertrouperJC02  "All conservatives and even Trump has said if the people elect Biden, while they may be wrong, then so be it. " Ok, good. We're done then. Unless that's all a lie that really means "it is not possible for Biden to have won, so we will keep throwing temper tantrums until you agree with us that he did not win, and then I will continue being President." That is not going to happen.
    1
  11074.  @supertrouperJC02  I'll leave you with one last video by Folding Ideas that I hope might help you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
    1
  11075. The drug companies should be nationalized, have their research funded by direct grants for purpose, and their drugs sold at cost. People's health should never be a commodity.
    1
  11076.  @CharlesCoderre-yv1cu  No, the USSR was pretty awful. You need a better history education.
    1
  11077.  @CharlesCoderre-yv1cu  A lot of which already comes from government grants, which they then turn around and sell the drugs to people who need them at massive mark-ups. Pharmaceutical development does cost a lot of money, but Americans are already paying that money AND paying massive salaries to CEOs, AND paying dividends to shareholders, AND paying marketing, etc. Cut out those middlemen. Just fund all research based on government grants, focused on the areas most in need of funding. Instead of developing drugs that will be most profitable, the ones that they can get repeat customers on for a lifetime, work on drugs that are the most effective, that best solve a problem in the most expedient way possible. The current system works pretty well in many ways, but also has a TON of inefficiencies that are around making the most money for the company rather than providing the best value to consumers. What is not profitable is not done, even if it is important. That can change.
    1
  11078. That's just because he's pro-groomer, like most Republicans.
    1
  11079.  @bryanmcfadden4071  There aren't any groomer Republicans left in the White House at the moment, but there were a few years back. We The People fixed that.
    1
  11080.  @noneyabizz8337  If you don't understand what it said, that's fine, most people don't, but at the very least, a lot of Trump supporters thought that is what he meant, because calls to poison control went up massively, of people suffering from ingesting bleach. He should at least have been more clear. Or clear at all. But of course he's mentally incapable of being clear.
    1
  11081.  @ryancrozier7674  Exactly, elect Harris. Trump will NEVER care about working Americans.
    1
  11082.  @ryancrozier7674  Not voting has zero impact.
    1
  11083.  @ryancrozier7674  People voting wrong in 2016 had a massive long term impact. If it happened again, it would be even worse. I suppose if you want to see the world burn, you know what to do.
    1
  11084.  @ryancrozier7674  Voting.
    1
  11085.  @ryancrozier7674  No population is ever unified on anything, unless it's like a war of survival or something. Anything too large or abstract it's impossible to get everyone behind any single side on it. But that's ok, you only need to get a majority.
    1
  11086. You must have missed the memo, that guy got voted out three years ago. He';s currently under multiple indictments for his crimes.
    1
  11087. "I'm with stupid."
    1
  11088.  @bigjdickinson5500  No, it just says something unfavorable about yourself.
    1
  11089.  @petitio_principii  It's difficult to say who would win in a more complex voting system. If it were a straight "everyone runs at once, but first past the post," then that would tend to give Trump an advantage, as it did in the primaries, since while only around 38% of the electorate actually like him, they are LOCKED IN, whereas the 60%+ that don't like him tend to disagree with who they prefer as an alternative. If it were ranked, that might still benefit Trump, since while he would get a lot less 2-3 votes than other candidates, he likely would get the most 1s, and it would depend how the votes are summed up. It would be interesting as a test case, to take a group of representative voters and run them through both a standard mock election and a ranked choice one, and see how that goes.
    1
  11090.  @OffGridInvestor  That was a stroke though. It was well understood that he would regain his speech capabilities, and his mental faculties were untouched. The same is obviously not the case for RFK.
    1
  11091.  @markleavitt3297  In multiple interviews. He makes constant claims that he believes they have insufficient testing and might not be as safe as the medical establishment claim.
    1
  11092.  @markleavitt3297  I'm sorry, I can't dumb it down to your level.
    1
  11093.  @markleavitt3297  He's wrong.
    1
  11094. I mean, here's the thing, I want a metaverse, I want to do ll the things Facebook wants me to do with it. I just do not trust Facebook with this space. It's like Disneyland, I like Disneyland, I would want to go to Disneyland, but not if it was run by an adjacent meat slaughtering plant, and they also produced "Soylent Green." I want to play in that metaverse future, but not if Facebook is running it. Not if they can read my data, use my data to serve ads to me, etc. I don't want them in my head like that (some with Apple, btw). I want to get a Quest VR, but never will so long as it's tied in to a mandatory "meta" account. I want to just use it on Steam or something. If I had hardware with no financial ties to Facebook, then I might use a Facebook VR chatroom or something in it, assuming it was designed well, I just don't trust them with the "whole package" infrastructure. Nobody does.
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  11095. I think CEO salaries are out of control. Nobody needs that much money. I think that any pay above a certain amount should just be taxed at 100%, so companies can pay their CEOs more and more money as bragging rights, but without those CEOs taking home inhuman amounts of money, and that money would be put to better use.
    1
  11096. There are no Democrats for Trump, only bots.
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  11097.  @PaulCHarris  For now. But that's only until they can build robots that can do the work for them, then they can just produce anything they need without human labor and leave the rest of us to rot. That's the endgame. Besides which, even now, no billionaire gives workers a penny more on the basis that he needs them to spend money so that he can make money. Instead, they want the OTHER billionaires to pay their workers more, so that they can buy his products, while the first billionaire pays as little as he possible can. This is just a race to the bottom.
    1
  11098. It has nothing to do with showing ID. Nothing. I don't know why that's all Republicans talk about.
    1
  11099.  @MartyMcHighh  It would be nice if Republicans care more about the good of the country they live in than they do about "triggering libs." But unfortunately that is not the world we live in, so until then there's no option but to vote Democrat.
    1
  11100.  @Deborahmarie1217  Well, gas prices are determined by the free market, not by Presidential policies, so who's to say how those will go any time soon. According to the economists, inflation should also be fairly temporary, it was spiked by the "return to life" after covid, but they don't expect it to be higher than normal over the long term. As for inheritance, that's never really been much of an issue for anything less than the super-wealthy, there is some tax on that, but not an unreasonable amount. When Republicans talk about removing "the death tax," they're only talking about a tax that applies to multi-millionaires. Anything below that, they don't give a shit.
    1
  11101.  @davidheathcoat3408  Nah, the debt is fine. The only threat to our economic stability is when Republicans play games with the debt ceiling.
    1
  11102.  @open2012  It's more cow burps that are the problem than their farts. But farts sounds funnier to five years olds and Faux News viewers.
    1
  11103.  @Youtubeisafascistcompany  Then long term you need to shift the machines' designs so that the next generation hardware CAN use synthetic lubricants, because no matter what fossil fuel materials will eventually run out, but that isn't happening any time soon. In the meantime, NOBODY is arguing that we stop using fossil materials as lubricants, so I'm not sure why some people insist on bringing that up as a strawman argument. All that is being asked is that we stop BURNING it as fuel.
    1
  11104.  @residentgrey  You do understand that fossil fuels harm more people every year than all the combined nuclear power accidents ever have, right? Even if we were running Soviet nuclear power plants it would be safer for everyone than to continue to burn fossil fuels at the rate we are, but we don't even need to do that, because more modern nuclear plants are much safer than the older ones.
    1
  11105. But what if you don't like using gravy?
    1
  11106.  Glockhead1  So you see my point.
    1
  11107.  @samesryals6952  At least slightly less clueless than any Republican on that committee.
    1
  11108. They already exclude vested interests, political ideology and "religious" green zealots. I think what you mean is that "once the oppositional studies can exclude vested interests, political ideology and "religious" coal zealots, we might be left with only accurate information."
    1
  11109. I wonder if they intend to burn the ship down if they don't get their way in November. If they lose the elections, will they just shut the government down over Christmas and New Years until the new guys take over in early January?
    1
  11110.  @KellyR1313  Neither, I get paid for art, mostly.
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  11111. Yeah, she would be the porcelain teapot in that scenario!.
    1
  11112.  @no.no.4680  If a browser improvement would make it so that a certain page wouldn't load properly without it, then that should have to be open source, something that any other browser could implement without serious difficulty. If Chrome is implementing features that impact how the web is displayed, then that is an abuse of Google's monopoly position.
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  11113. This is why you elect Democrats. They do not play around with the faith and credit of the American people. If he wants to cut spending, do so without taking the US economy hostage.
    1
  11114. Yes, sadly the Republicans have strayed too far from this country to be trusted with power. That needs to change. They need to expel the corruption from their party, root to branch, so that we can return to a functional two-party system. Unfortunately, they seem to have no interest in doing so.
    1
  11115. Sweden should pass a "Banning Anti-Turkish Protests because Erdogan has a Tiny Penis and is Tired of People Pointing and Laughing" bill. But in Swedish, probably.
    1
  11116.  @pendejo6466  Nope.
    1
  11117.  @barrydeck7300  So long as evangelists are only presenting their viewpoints as religious, rather than scientific, then I allow them a very wide margin to be wrong about things. But if someone is presenting something as real, then they have an obligation to accuracy.
    1
  11118. Being anti-genocide would be pro-semitism, it would be siding with Israel.
    1
  11119. You just described the Republican playbook. "Break the law all over the place and then declare any attempts to hold us accountable for those criminal acts as 'political,' so that nobody trusts any form of justice anymore, and only listens to DearLeader."
    1
  11120.  @bigtenfourrubberducky  Oh, no, I'm no MAGA cultist. I think you misunderstood me.
    1
  11121.  @dddz961  Congress will be there with him during the ceremony. It's to protect everyone involved in the inauguration. The insurrectionists will likely be a thread through the inauguration, and possibly for some time after, which is pathetic, but better safe than sorry.
    1
  11122.  Jason herrera  Some would be wrong, they aren't keeping anyone from leaving. Why would some even think that? What would be the point?
    1
  11123.  @mopar0IIII0jeep  There has been no violence over the last four years due to the results of the 2016 election. Trump had a very boring inauguration that was much smaller than either of Obama's.
    1
  11124.  @mopar0IIII0jeep  The destruction surrounding the Trump inauguration was not at the inauguration itself, and was not remotely as significant as the insurrection at the Capitol. You're comparing molehills to mountains.
    1
  11125.  @mopar0IIII0jeep  But again, you're drastically misrepresenting the situation. For one thing, a few broken windows and trashed cars isn't REMOTELY the same thing as violently invading the Capitol Building during the election certification. I mean, it would be idiotic to even try to compare those two situations. For another, those protests lasted a day or so, not four years. While other protests have taken place over the past four years, as have taken place EVERY year during prior administrations, the protests were not about illegally replacing the sitting president, they had other, unrelated purposes. While people certainly disapproved of Trump and protested against his activities, it was not with the goal of illegal insurrection. And it's also worth noting that there were no fewer people protesting Obama's presidency. Peaceful protest is an important part of American democracy, and occasionally you get a handful of people that are bad actors in such crowds and cause damage, but that is a VERY different thing than the insurrectionists that turned up last Wednesday and have threatened to return, and any rational observer should understand that distinction. It is not "turning a blind eye" to point out the difference between a yapping chihuahua and a snarling jackal.
    1
  11126.  @mopar0IIII0jeep  Whatever you're experiencing in the NW is a local issue related to local problems. Work on solving those and the protests will die down. They are not wide spread and AGAIN did not involve insurrection against the US as a whole. Have they even invaded the statehouse with the intention to replace the governor with an alternate pick yet? No? Then it's not the same thing. And no, nobody was trying to "set fire to the courthouse," they were just protesting outside of it because Trump had sent a motley crew of DHS scraps to surround the thing, and those rando were attacking the protesters in turn. As soon as the DHS thugs went away, so did the protesters.
    1
  11127.  @richardbarton5910  You can't do both. Either Trump illegally ignored the order or he rightfully upheld it, which was it?
    1
  11128. @ They ruled he was not MS13, because he was not MS13.
    1
  11129. @ Who told you that? Lol. No, none of that is accurate.
    1
  11130.  @richardbarton5910  Nope. Three COEQUAL branches of government. Judges are equal in power to the President, so long as they are acting within their responsibilities.
    1
  11131. @ The order was to return him to the US. That was the order.
    1
  11132. @ I think you misunderstand, the judge ordered that the man be returned to the US. That order takes precedence over anything that the White House wants, at least under US law. The White House is now legally responsible for bringing him back, and would be breaking the law for failing to do so.
    1
  11133. @ I think you misunderstand. The SCOTUS ruled that the lower court was correct to insist that he be returned to the US. It would be illegal to ignore that.
    1
  11134. @ The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the order was not obsolete and must be followed. You are acting on your feelings because you don't sympathize with the humans involved in this story, and are obsolete.
    1
  11135. @ There are multiple rival gangs in El Salvador. That does not make him a member of any of them. You are misusing the English language here.
    1
  11136. ​@ He never claimed that they were rivals to a gang that he was a part of, because he was never part of any gang. His father was a cop. You are inventing a story here to support an unjust outcome. Have you considered just NOT supporting the unjust outcome and seeking justice instead?
    1
  11137.  @urbanlibertarian2520  But you are presenting a biased an inaccurate view of the facts, either intentionally or because that's what you've been told and you didn't bother to actually look into it yourself. You are not, in fact, presenting the facts. As for what should happen next, he is in a Salvadoran super-max prison, despite having committed NO crimes. Do you believe that is a reasonable outcome to this? Even if you believe that he should not be in this country, at the very least he should be free to live a peaceful life there, right? But that's irrelevant to the law, and the law says that not only should he be freed from prison, but also he should be returned to the US, receive due process under the law, and maybe get deported at the end of that process. And if the Salvadoran president doesn't agree with that, then it's the president's legal responsibility to convince him.
    1
  11138. ​ @richardbarton5910  He got in trouble for driving on a suspended license. All misdemenor stuff, nothing that any moral person could justify sending him to a max security prison over, right?
    1
  11139. @ He got in trouble for driving on a suspended license. All misdemenor stuff, nothing that any person could justify sending him to a max security prison over, right?
    1
  11140.  @richardbarton5910  They weren't HIS rivals, they were rivals to each other. His family was caught in the middle of all that so he left for America to get away from them. He's lived her for a decade now without hurting anyone.
    1
  11141. @ So you believe it would be ok if he sent your family to a foreign prison without any criminal charges.
    1
  11142. @ The methods for someone to "legal himself" are particularly difficult, especially given that the most recent President "unlegeled" a buch of people who had "legaled themselves." So it makes perfect sense that someone would just try and keep their head down and live a good life, hoping for the best. Sad that we can't just have convenient methods for doing this that we can trust a child in the White House won't trow out in a tantrum. As for your family, don't assume they are safe. Trump said he doesn't care whether you're citizens or not, if he doesn't like you, to El Salvador you go. I would take this man as an American over anyone trying to deport him. He is a better man than any of them. I don't expect you to be sympathic, you've gone too far for that. That's how these things work. You're humanity is in the past.
    1
  11143. ​@ The methods for someone to "legal himself" are particularly difficult, especially given that the most recent President "unlegaled" a bunch of people who had "legaled themselves." So it makes perfect sense that someone would just try and keep their head down and live a good life, hoping for the best. Sad that we can't just have convenient methods for doing this that we can trust a child in the White House won't trow out in a tantrum.
    1
  11144. @ As for your family, don't assume they are safe. Trump said he doesn't care whether you're citizens or not, if he doesn't like you, to El Salvador you go. I would take this man as an American over anyone trying to deport him. He is a better man than any of them. I don't expect you to be sympathic, you've gone too far for that. That's how these things work. You're humanity is in the past.
    1
  11145. @ What would any of that have to do with him getting sent without trial to a Salvadoran prison? What sort of monster would think that's a fitting punishment for "living and working and raising a family peacefully?" How is he not better than you, who wants to harm him? And yes, in Trump's interview today he said he does not care whether someone is a citizen, if he doesn't like them, they're gone. They've just got to figure out how to get away with it first.
    1
  11146. @ Oh, no, I'm not maga. I appreciate the condolences to those who are though they need it.
    1
  11147.  @richardbarton5910  But you'll agree that he is at least better than any of the Americans that are fine with him being in prison right now, right?
    1
  11148. @ Well, you may lack sympathy for others, but I still have sympathy for you, and hope you find a way out of this hole.
    1
  11149.  @richardbarton5910  That's the nice thing about sympathy, it's caring for others, even when they don't care for themselves.
    1
  11150.  @richardbarton5910  I do care, I just don't know how to save any of you. I think it'll take rock bottom, if that.
    1
  11151.  @richardbarton5910  The facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  11152.  @richardbarton5910  Again, I didn't expect you to. Lack of empathy is your burden to bare. I still wish you hope in getting past it though.
    1
  11153.  @richardbarton5910  I will be as in favor of you and your family being returned to America as I am of Garcia being returned, assuming you haven't been convicted of any serious crimes.
    1
  11154. They actually have done several studies that show that they work, you have just not been paying attention. There have been no credible studies indicating that they do not work.
    1
  11155. @Todd Bardell That was not a credible study, it was a political piece. The actual studies show the opposite.
    1
  11156.  @RobinDale50  There were studies on viruses that were not covid, but not all viruses are the same. When tested against covid, it was found that masks did reduce community transmission rates.You don't need a hazmat suit, you just need an N95 mask (and even cloth masks worked against earlier variants, but are less effective against the more recent ones).
    1
  11157. @Todd Bardell Data that the CDC has taken in from many different credible sources around the world. It all indicates that responsible masking policies do help to reduce community transmission of covid. I mean, it's fine that you don't LIKE that result, but it doesn't mean the result is invalid.
    1
  11158. @Todd Bardell Mandated places do not have more cases though.
    1
  11159.  @TheRealRusDaddy  That's misinformation!
    1
  11160. If there were any crimes to be found here then there's no way Hunter would have survived Trump's DoJ. This is all just an attempt to fabricate "whataboutisms" to bring up whenever it's pointed out that Jared Kushner took 2 BILLION dollars from the Saudis for services rendered during the Trump administration (not to mention the numerous other grifts done by Trump administration members and family members).
    1
  11161.  @wrenchaholic_  A few Republicans, yeah. Primarily though, it's hard to get into Congress without already being rich, so most of them can just coast on their existing investments.
    1
  11162. Durham tried, the juries laughed him out of court because he didn't have any actual case. You can't just invent a crime just because you want there to be one. This is not Putin's Russia, as much as Putin's agent tried to make it one.
    1
  11163.  @JohnHefter-o1g  They do provide protection to people though. They are the first and best line of defense, and all that most people will ever need.
    1
  11164. There were more wars under Trump than under Biden.
    1
  11165. There were more wars over his presidency than under the current one.
    1
  11166.  @randomdudeoti  The poorest don't pay taxes. Tax cuts would not benefit them. The only problems with social security and other welfare programs are that Republicans started stealing money from the funding mechanisms decades ago. Put that money back in and they'll be fine. Direct welfare programs are the most efficient way to support those on lower income.
    1
  11167.  @bcrouch2626  It was sort of meant to be part time, but there was a lot less to do back then. Nowadays they can't even get through all their jobs within a full calendar year. It would be impossible to have congress meet less often than they currently do and still function as a nation, at least, not without removing Republicans from the process.
    1
  11168. Someone needs to make a home croissant machine. You put dough in one end, and a block of butter in the other, and it just rolls things back and forth like a printer until they are properly layered and ready to cook.
    1
  11169. "If actual Joe Biden won't say anything criminal, we'll invent things for him to have probably maybe said." -Faux News
    1
  11170.  @arturoeugster7228  I watched a really good Nova series recently that went through all the processes of how Earth changed over the billions of years, step by step. It is true that at one point the atmosphere was mostly carbon, and it was an unlivable hellscape, similar to Venus. Then most of that carbon got eaten up by algae or sequstered in water or rock. The Earth constantly produces SOME fresh CO2 through volcanic activity, and also constantly gobbles some amount up via plants and animals and other natural processes. Most of the time, this process is in balance, so that no more CO2 is added than the Earth naturally eats up. Occasionally it tips one way or the other and causes an ice age or a "deadly hot" period. In many of these periods human life, much less most animal life, would be incapable of surviving outside. The period we were living through 200 years ago was relatively stable, and would have continued to be stable for the foreseeable future, all the natural mechanisms were in check, but human industry took oceans of carbon that had been harmlessly stored underground, and through it into the atmosphere, hundreds of thousands of years worth of "natural CO2 emissions" over a period of decades. and this has tipped the balance and offset all sorts of natural processes. Even if we stopped all production today it would take a century or more for the natural balance to restore itself, and it will take even longer the further we allow it to go wrong.
    1
  11171.  @dariohernandez9167  That says the rates are 50% higher than they'd expected, not that 50% of the population has them. Also, that study was in the UK, not the US.
    1
  11172.  @dariohernandez9167  Why do you believe they would want more people than necessary to be vaccinated? Also, it's worth keeping in mind that even with effective herd immunity, it doesn't mean that people without the anti-bodies are entirely safe, it just means that they are a bit safer than they would be if their neighbors were not better people than them.
    1
  11173.  @billnelson3405  But, again, they did not bypass government prohibitions, the steps they took were entirely above board and normal. They are only being considered "sinister" by people who are determined to find someone they can blame for a natural disaster, ideally one who isn't Dear Leader Trump.
    1
  11174.  @billnelson3405  It seems like you're really deep into this one. Maybe this would be helpful research? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
    1
  11175.  @billnelson3405  Ah. You know just enough to be convinced that you have nothing to learn. That's the most dangerous kind.
    1
  11176.  @randyross5630  I'm sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about, but it sounds like rambling nonsense. Maybe do some research from credible sources, and remember that just because something claims to be "a medical paper" does not mean that it is a serious, peer reviewed study that is actually credible. Any idiot with a degree from the Bahamas can put out a "medical paper." If the "medical papers" you are reading contradicts the assessment of the medical community as a whole, then that is generally a sign that the paper is trying to sell you a bill of goods.
    1
  11177.  @billnelson3405  Which point?
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  11178.  Faux Que  I've read all about these topics. That doesn't mean that I buy into nonsense conspiracy theories. You are aware that sometimes people say things that are not true, right? Particularly on Faux News and OAN.
    1
  11179.  @billnelson3405  I found that this article does a good job of addressing those points: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/05/the-wuhan-lab-and-the-gain-of-function-disagreement/ The gist of it is that while there is some debate as to what is "gain of function," the general consensus is that what specific projects the NIH and Eco-Health were funding did not meet the definition of "gain of function" that the US moratorium covered, and that all Us funding was appropriate within US law at the time. As for Covid-19, it is still considered to be natural in origin, and any speculation to the contrary is still unproven, just a possibility. It is not a result of the often-cited NIH/Eco-Health projects, in any case. You definitely would benefit from watching the youtube video though.
    1
  11180.  @karenlee3372  If getting vaccinated is against your religious beliefs, then perhaps consider a different religion? The better ones would prefer that you live.
    1
  11181.  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.
    1
  11182.  @randyross5630  It's important to keep in mind that a lot of the people who are vaccinated are also in the group who have had the virus, so you can't just add those two groups together. We also don't know how effective just getting the virus is at preventing future infections relative to the vaccines. It's important to get the vaccine whether you've had it or not. Also, those media outlets you named were NEVER against the medicines that actually save lines. At most they were against quack treatments like Hydroxychloroquinne, which never worked, and continue to not work. They only pointed this out so that idiots would not take these drugs and harm themselves. Because too many people are idiots, it made it harder for people who did need these drugs, like Lupus patients, to get the drugs they actually needed.
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  11183.  @billnelson3405  You're repeating yourself. I have read what you said there, and repeat, the general consensus is that the research that the NIH funded in Wuhan _did not meet the definition of "gain of function." Again, the article I cited above explains this all in detail. Did you read it? What do you disagree with?
    1
  11184.  @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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  11185.  @karenlee3372  Karen, you're repeating your conspiracy theorist nonsense. You said all that already, and while it's still funny, there are stupid people on the Internet that might think that there might be some truth to it. You could be harming people by saying that sort of thing without a "/s" tag.
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  11186.  @tasmico1  It is not true that 50% of the US population has gained natural immunity, even even if that were the case, we need to get above 80% total immunity for herd immunity to be effective. Remember that many people who got the virus also got vaccinated, so you cannot simply stack those two numbers. Also keep in mind that while vaccination rates are over 50% for adults, they are much lower when you factor in teens and children, and they can still spread and mutate the virus. We're not out of the woods yet. We also do not know how long catching the virus protects you from it in future. It seems to be at least six months, but could be less than a year without boosters.
    1
  11187.  @tasmico1  No country in the world is currently at the level of herd immunity that it is an effective strategy, even countries that have actively attempted it like Sweden or Brazil. All the got out of it was more dead people. Herd immunity requires 80%+ immune populous, and even after the recent vaccine drives, the US is still well short of that.
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  11188. @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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  11189. @Sam Vimes Scientists at several universities disagree over what the best toothpaste is. more scientists at more universities agree with me, and the "more" is the important bit to take away from that.
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  11190. @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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  11191. @Sam Vimes hydroxychloroquine and zinc have been shown to have no effect on Covid-19, and have known side effects that make them too dangerous to just take unless you do have one of the specific things it DOES treat (none of which are covid-19). The vaccine had been proven to be safe and effective. I'm not sure why you are so bothered by the vaccine, but it is not a rational argument.
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  11192. @Sam Vimes Except that Fauci is not at fault, and did not do this, and any sane world is aware of that fact.
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  11193. @Sam Vimes Two different Chinese defectors have not come out with evidence, and our government could not "lock them down" if they did exist. Whatever news sources you have that are telling you this nonsense are just unreliable narrators, probably the same one that told you that Malaria/lupus drugs would be effective against Covid. Stop listening to stupid people and you will become less stupid yourself.
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  11194. @Sam Vimes So far, most of your posts peddle conspiracy theories that are mostly only believed in fringe news outlets. Like the only thing I could find about "Chinese defectors" is a now debunked rumor that some Chinese spymaster defected in February, but guess what, still in China. That's the sort of story that tends to start on Epoch News, which is run by a Chinese cult.
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  11195. @Sam Vimes Except that we know for a fact that those treatments do NOT benefit covid patients, so it will never be "found" that they do. This is my name, I'm the only Tim Ogul in the world. I stand by anything I say, even if it somehow turns out to be proven wrong eventually. That's what science is about, changing viewpoints as new information becomes available. Even Fauci was willing to give treatments like you described the benefit of the doubt, until the data came in that people who took the drugs did not do any better than people in the control group, and had increased risk of complications.
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  11196. @Sam Vimes I'm very rarely on the wrong side, and when I am, it's because later information came out that changed the data.
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  11197. @Sam Vimes I mean, the posts will be here for as long as Youtube keeps track of them, but I will have forgotten you existed within a week or two.
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  11198. @Sam Vimes Oh, so now you've switched from just being wrong about things like medicine to full blown "apocalyptic conspiracy theory." I figured that would happen at some point. I'm sorry, I really can't help you when the delusional world view has set in this deeply. The best I can offer you is this. Maybe it will help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
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  11199. @Sam Vimes I have not defended anything on religious grounds this is a discussion about science. And no, Bill Nelson has not presented significant facts, he has presented supposition. I just pointed out how that does not add up to fact. You hearing the same conspiracy theories does not lend them any weight. Yeah, plenty of people have said that covid is man-made, plenty of people believe in UFOs or that climate change isn't man-made, that does not make them right. It is not some "revelation" that they believe things that are not true. I say what I do because I believe that's what the evidence supports. Why do you pretend to espouse these conspiracy fringe talking points? Doesn't it get tiring? Or do you get pleasure from lying to people?
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  11200. @Sam Vimes Again, I am not a religious person, unless you count "reality" as a religion.
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  11201. @Sam Vimes That is not how a religion works. I'm not sure that you know what that word means.
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  11202. Well it'd bve pretty easy to stop the war if you just handed Putin everything he wanted, but no rational person would do that. So Trump would do that.
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  11203.  @mhollman8650  Because the Republicans are the ones to blame for this, since Democrats will not try to hold the American economy hostage like they do. If Democrats had the majority then the debt ceiling would have been raised months ago without any hassle.
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  11204.  @watsamatau  There's no problem with contesting an election when there are legitimate grounds to do so. the more recent problem is Republicans who refuse to accept that no reasonable grounds to challenge the results exist, and just keep challenging and challenging anyway, like a toddler.
    1
  11205.  @watsamatau  No, nothing like what the Democrats did to Trump. When did the Democrats ever do anything like that to Trump?
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  11206.  @atedinahalf6288  The Republicans cheat far more often and on a larger scale than Democrats do though. The only seats Republicans picked up this year were ones in which they rigged the game in their favor, like Florida rigging House districts so that Republicans had an advantage. I don't want to take away any right to question an election, but people need to be mature enough to accept answers that they don't want to hear, like "the election was fair and you lost it." So far, Republicans have not shown such maturity lately.
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  11207.  @joestalin2375  You're totally right, the Nazi party would be for banning the Democratic party, just like they were for banning the left-wing parties in Germany at the time. That is why we must oppose the Republicans like we opposed the Nazis.
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  11208. Lol.
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  11209.  @christopherkucia1071  "We the People" is not "you and the people you personally know," it is the WHOLE people of the United States, and the people of the United States voted for this. If you "researched" any of my points and found them to be false, then your "research" was likely on sites funded by the fossil fuel industry, because the information I provided was fully accurate in the real world, without bias. Then you seemed to devolve into random conspiracy nonsense, which rather quickly eroded whatever credibility you may have started with.
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  11210. "It's like one of the early ones, not one of the later ones."
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  11211.  @residentgrey  Yes, hezbollah is also an Iran-backed terror group attacking Israel.
    1
  11212.  @residentgrey  Yes, Hezbolla are also a problem.
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  11213. I do suspect foul play. God clearly wanted no part of any of this and too a Hand in things.
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  11214. On what charge?
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  11215. What is he thinking?! That there's some sort of "national holiday" this weekend, and that we should be "celebrating America" or something? Ridiculous! Now is the time to speak of serious things, like troop draw-downs several months from now!
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  11216.  @garypayne423  Lol.
    1
  11217.  Defund Democrats  The Federal plan was never sufficient to the problem, and continues to be insufficient. It was muddled by the President publicly countermanding the recommendations of his experts, such as refusing to use and discouraging the use of masks, even when it became more and more clear how vital masks are to the process, or when he constantly promoted Chloroquin, even after it was understood that it offers no positive benefits. If the Federal response had occurred even two weeks sooner than it did (which was entirely possible because the White House was aware of this issue months earlier), the result would have been a hundred thousand less people dead, because viruses grow exponentially, and shutting it down early means massive shifts to the eventual outcomes. If the federal response had been to convince red state governors to treat their Covid response as seriously as New York did, then there wouldn't have been these massive surges they've seen over the past few months, and states like Florida and Texas would only have had a few thousand cases by this point. Instead, the White House was pushing for "everyone to open back up!" which led to the current situation.
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  11218.  Defund Democrats  Your comments on hydroxychloriquin disqualify anything else you might have to say.
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  11219.  @tombabcock4967  No, you misspelled the Democratic party, not sure why you used the noun, rather than the adjective, but here we are. I was talking about the Republicans though, the gag gift of a party that is currently yucking it up in the House.
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  11220.  @kirkanderson7007  Exactly. The Democrats, at any age, are proving themselves more mentally healthy than even the youngest Republicans.
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  11221. Wouldn't it be possible to use some sort of special mirror or prism to split green light off from sunlight, but also deflect it away toward some other device, like a solar panel or solar heat collector? Or even just toward some plants that would not need the green light anyway. Maybe you could even build solar PV cells that are transparent to only green light, and the green light would pass through to the water.
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  11222.  @see-rious-ley  I was asking for an example. Where, specifically, did she confuse the two?
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  11223.  @JamieRawles  So you can't provide even one specific example. I;m not surprised.
    1
  11224.  @tessmoore3762  So many things wrong with that statement. One, very few of those crossing the borders were "criminals," most are migrants legally seeking asylum. Second, she's the VP, not the President, so she had no role in "letting" anyone do anything with the border. Third, the Trump administration allowed more people across the border than the Biden administration, relative to the amount that attempted entry.
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  11225.  @tessmoore3762  So many things wrong with that statement. First, very few of those crossing the borders were "criminals," most are migrants legally seeking asylum.
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  11226. ​ @tessmoore3762 Second, she's the VP, not the President, so she had no role in "letting" anyone do anything with the border.
    1
  11227.  @tessmoore3762  Third, the Trump administration allowed more people across the border than the Biden administration, relative to the amount that attempted entry.
    1
  11228.  @tessmoore3762  So many things to correct with that statement. First, very few of those crossing the borders were "criminals," most are migrants legally seeking asylum.
    1
  11229.  @tessmoore3762  Third, the Trump administration allowed more people across the border than the current administration, relative to the amount that attempted entry.
    1
  11230.  @tessmoore3762  So many things to fix with that statement. First, very few of those crossing the borders were "criminals," most are legally seeking asylum.
    1
  11231.  @tessmoore3762  Oh, and finally, none of what you said indicates that she had any trouble distinguishing between citizens and aliens, which was your original claim.
    1
  11232.  @tessmoore3762  Third, the previous administration allowed more people across the border than the current one, relative to the amount that attempted entry.
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  11233. I was thinking, "why don't they just make stickers?" And then they made stickers!
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  11234.  @kennethrohloff7535  Gag orders are by their very nature a limitation on first amendment rights, but the law has traditionally determined that some limitations are necessary, for example, punishing someone for lying is a violation of their first amendment rights, but we believe that's better than just allowing defamation to run unchecked. If he chooses to attack witnesses, then something must be done to prevent that, hence the gag order. They have been VERY lenient in applying it so far, any other defendant would have been held in contempt and jailed already for the existing violations. Nobody is above the law, all he has to do is stop breaking the law, and no punishments would be incoming.
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  11235.  @kennethrohloff7535  But, again, a defendant should not be allowed to attack or intimidate witnesses. A fair judicial process is a necessity, and the ability to attack witnesses undermines that. Trump and his lawyers can say ANYTHING that they want in the courtroom, where it is actually relevant to their case, they just can't take that battle into the streets. Now, once the trial is over, the gag order will be lifted, and he can say whatever he likes about the witnesses, and he certainly has no shortage of defenders who are already doing that work for him, but while the trial goes on, there is no rational basis for allowing him to direct his enemies toward witnesses. And no, the jury are not sequestered. They are told not to watch news coverage, but that's about it. That's why one already left, she was harassed for agreeing to be a juror.
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  11236.  @kennethrohloff7535  But, again, a defendant should not be allowed to attack or intimidate witnesses. A fair judicial process is a necessity, and the ability to attack witnesses undermines that. Trump and his lawyers can say ANYTHING that they want in the courtroom, where it is actually relevant to their case, they just can't take that battle into the streets.
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  11237.  @kennethrohloff7535  Now, once the trial is over, the gag order will be lifted, and he can say whatever he likes about the witnesses, and he certainly has no shortage of defenders who are already doing that work for him, but while the trial goes on, there is no rational basis for allowing him to direct his enemies toward witnesses. And no, the jury are not sequestered. They are told not to watch news coverage, but that's about it. That's why one already left, she was harassed for agreeing to be a juror.
    1
  11238.  @kennethrohloff7535  Hence the gag order, because Trump repeatedly has attacked witnesses in this and previous cases.
    1
  11239.  @Wolfhybrids  Yes, there are a lot of stupid people out there.
    1
  11240. The US never targeted civilians, especially not medical facilities. Civilians often got caught in the crossfire where the US was targeting active terrorist cells, but the civilians were never the target like the Russians are doing.
    1
  11241. It can be both.
    1
  11242. Can someone explain why conservatives seem so worked up over this one murder, and not about the thousands of other murders this year? What's special about this one?
    1
  11243. This has been needed for a long time. The alternative is just companies rushing to the cheapest tax shelters and hoarding all the money for their own benefit.
    1
  11244.  @Halal_Dan  If we do that then the companies just get richer and richer and everyone else just gets poorer and poorer. That would be foolish.
    1
  11245.  @toom8rs15  People should work in their own best interests and companies should too, but it's the people's best interests to limit corporations so that the overall system works in the people's best interests. It's like having a sports league, obviously each team wants to do their best to win all the time, but if any one team structures things in a way that no other team can compete then that just results in a boring game for everyone, so the league tries to set up rules so that all the teams are at least somewhat competitive. Similarly, in business, each company will try to set things up in a way that they make the most money and pay out the least, but it's the role of government to ensure that they pay back their fair share to society, and to stay on an even playing field with others.
    1
  11246.  @Halal_Dan  A truly free market will NEVER work in your advantage. Unless you are already CEO of a billion dollar company, if you are fighting for a "free market" then you are a sheep to them.
    1
  11247.  @toom8rs15  If you believe that, then you are one very misinformed individual. Good luck out there.
    1
  11248.  @toom8rs15  Fun fact, people most likely to call others "sheep" are those who are sheep themselves, and can't understand what people thinking for themselves actually means. they typically just watch Fox News and parrot whatever they hear there.
    1
  11249. I think they're kind of stuck, because they probably could make a browser that performs better than alternatives, but then they might get in trouble for abusing an "inside track" and not fairly competing with other products. It's like they have to deliberately firewall themselves off from the OS side to ensure fairness.
    1
  11250. There was none here.
    1
  11251. The DoJ.
    1
  11252.  @oneofmany1087  Oh, no, that's a completely misunderstanding spread among idiots. The 2nd Amendment had NOTHING to do with allowing citizens to use violence against the government. The Constitution specifically makes it clear that violent insurrection is a crime in several places, and the founding generation put down the Whiskey Rebellion themselves. If you aren't satisfied with the government you have, then the founders wrote the method to solve that into the Constitution, it's called an "election" held every two years. Vote the Republicans out of the House and this stuff will stop happening.
    1
  11253. That's a pretty weak headline. It should be "Fifty Senate Republicans Vote Against Democracy." That's more accurate to the situation.
    1
  11254. Yeah, it required electing Harris. It will be all swamp, all the time for at least the next four years.
    1
  11255.  @johncampbell5333  Immigrants are spread all over the country. Were you not aware of this? Plenty of immigrants take advantage of sanctuary cities and states that are not directly on the border. I get that you want them to be as morally bankrupt as Texas and Florida and for their offer of sanctuary to be hollow, but that just wouldn't be the truth.
    1
  11256.  @chucksgrace3225  If they can find a place to put them, sure. I mean they can't exactly shack up in people's houses, the space in question would need to be a public space that was set aside for migrants, like the billions of dollars worth of such federal facilities in Texas and Florida.
    1
  11257. Hey now, wait a minute, are the GOP flip-flopping on their stance on rape now?! This has been one of their most defining principles! They just woke up this morning and decided they didn't like it anymore?
    1
  11258. She's shoooting. . . her pets.
    1
  11259.  @clayed3311  Whether it's allowed or not is irrelevant to whether it is moral. I'm not saying she should be arrested, just disqualified from public office by the voters and their representatives.
    1
  11260.  @roboparks  Stop slandering farmers.
    1
  11261.  @tlw6932  That's not the radical part. Were you that easily distracted by shiny objects?
    1
  11262. It's not complicated, Republicans think that anyone on the other side should be in jail, whether crimes were committed our not. This is how autocrats work, and is the opposite of how Americans work.
    1
  11263. I had a beta as a kid, but only well after the battle was lost, and we just got it as some yardsale find or something (probably around 1990 or so?) and only watched a few random movies on it (the only one I remember is Star Trek TMP). Our primary recorders well before and after were VHS.
    1
  11264. And I'm sure you are a disappointment to him as well.
    1
  11265.  @68wolffden  Not true. Criminals in countries like the UK are no less interested in having guns than US criminals, but there are far fewer shootings because they can't FIND one there. You don't have laws because you expect criminals to follow them, you have them because it makes it much harder for criminals to succeed.
    1
  11266.  @norincokid  Straw purchases are illegal, but they are stocked via legal methods. In countries where it's harder to buy a gun legally, it's also MUCH harder to find a gun illegally.
    1
  11267.  @noahwil7195  Exactly. So long as some people can just legally buy something, it's much harder to prevent any particular group from accessing it.
    1
  11268. Sadly, as ridiculous as this story may be, it was still the most accurate thing on Tucker Carlson in years.
    1
  11269.  @eddiebruv  Exactly, they have journalistic integrity, he just spouts nonsense.
    1
  11270. As long as she gets her bag, the "Republican candidate gift" will have been a success.
    1
  11271. Yeah, this is the problem. Pretty much every person who says "do your own research" is wrong about the position they are trying to take.
    1
  11272. Neither of them is any good, but Pence at least stepped up when it mattered. Vance would never.
    1
  11273. I think what needs to happen is that McCarthy gets ousted, then they fail to replace him with any other Republican option, and then Democrats and a handful of sensible Republicans agree to put Jeffries in charge, but only in a limited role where he doesn't purse anything overly partisan and just passes sensible, non-controversial things like "keeping the government running" with bipartisan votes until the Democrats can retake the House and end this nonsense season.
    1
  11274. They're democratic, that's how they result in the candidate that the majority of Democrats prefer.
    1
  11275.  @michellebrown5672  I was, she didn't seem to understand the bill. It doesn't say that states can't do their own thing and set their own rules, it just sets a floor beyond which they can't make the rules worse. Like if a state is already doing these things, great, they're fine. If they want to make it easier to vote than this, then great, they're fine too. It only kicks in if they try to make it harder to vote than this bill requires, in which case, they should stop that.
    1
  11276.  @yehimstone5492  Yes, the For the People act does make is harder for illegal votes, although illegal votes really aren't a concern in the modern political system. They account for well less than 0.01% of the total votes cast, and have never been in a position to flip the outcomes.
    1
  11277. If the definition of metric units is defined by physic properties, and the definition of an imperial unit is defined by a certain amount of metric units, then those imperial units are no less defined by the original physical constants, you just need to fun the conversion as to exactly how long it takes light to travel 1 yard in a vacuum. Metric might be better for engineering, but feet and inches are so much easier to work with in cases like human height than meters or centimeters. There needs to be a metric unit that is roughly one foot long.
    1
  11278. He pays well, at least.
    1
  11279.  @jahanzebsalman9289  Why not?
    1
  11280. He was following the federal guidance at the time.
    1
  11281.  @tiredox3788  Everyone would like to look out for their own country. The actions the US is taking are hurting the US economy. The actions the EU is taking is hurting the EU economy even more. War profiteering is an amoral business, and India is taking advantage of the war lowering the prices of Russian oil, at the expense of the people of Ukraine. They are allowed to do that, but NEVER with a clean conscience.
    1
  11282.  @cryptarisprotocol1872  You are running on soviet propaganda here, not on reality. There is absolutely no justification for Russia's genocide in Ukraine. However you feel about "the west," this is not a moral way to resolve those conflicts.
    1
  11283.  @cryptarisprotocol1872  I can find absolutely no reference from the UN that Ukraine killed 20,000 civilians, anywhere, at any time. I have no idea who told you that figure, I assume Soviet propaganda, but it does not seem to be true. I blame the killings that actually DID happen on Russia because Russia is the one that did those killings. THAT the UN DOES back up. And when Putin makes jingoistic comments about how Ukraine does not actually exist in the speech announcing the invasion of Ukraine, after which they deliberately target schools, hospitals, civilian apartments, and civilian bomb shelters, it's hard to make the case that this is not genocide. Other things can also be genocide, but this is one of them too.
    1
  11284.  @cryptarisprotocol1872  The Soviet Union is gone? Tell that to Putin, because he clearly doesn't think so. He insists that every part of the Soviet Union belongs to Russia, and that it is a genocide-worthy offense for them to be friendly with other countries. the problem with the Soviet Union had nothing to do with their economic model, the problem with the Soviet Union was their authoritarianism, and that is alive and well in Russia today. Putin is no better than Stalin. And if you believe "Russia was not present in Donbas between 2014-2021" then clearly the Soviet propaganda has worked on you. Also, Ukraine does not fight in their cities out of choice, they fight to DEFEND those cities from an invading force. If they were not in those cities, then Russian forces would swoop into them and rape, loot, and murder the population as they have in every other city they have occupied so far. The military forces generally stay separate from the civilian structures, but that does not help the civilians any. Most of the civilian targets hit by Russia had ZERO military presence, and those that did only had a few token soldiers around, never enough to justify missile strikes. A maternity hospital with hundreds of civilian patients and a few soldiers is not suddenly a valid military target. This is 100% a "Russia is bad here" problem. I don't know why you want to pretend otherwise, unless you are acting in deliberate bad faith on this.
    1
  11285. Way to bury the lede there, Fox "news." The important part of that story is that Joe Biden never discussed any BUSINESS during these calls, it was just Hunter calling his dad and then showing off to his friends how his dad was VP.
    1
  11286.  @njg26.gustav12  Why is that relevant?
    1
  11287. Tariffs will only make us poorer. There is no path that leads to us becoming more rich off of them.
    1
  11288. The maga tried though, they just got caught.
    1
  11289. Only because the magas were caught.
    1
  11290. If any man was willing to take estrogen just to be a bit better at sports, that would be pretty sad. Losers like you are no good reason to keep trans girls from being able to compete.
    1
  11291. Because there is no open southern border.
    1
  11292.  @SlyFan-mp8dc  The border is no more open than it ever was, outside of when the Trump administration was running illegal polices to persecute refugees and tear families apart.
    1
  11293. The previous congress was one of the most productive in US history, but once the Republicans retook the House everything ground to a halt.
    1
  11294.  @crissd8283  No, that's not how it works.
    1
  11295.  @crissd8283  No, that's not how it works. That's how people who fear government works, because it reinforces their biases that the "government is out to get them." It's sad. The fact of the matter is, California has been in a drought for a while, and that drought will likely continue even if there is a temporary period of heavy rains. But during the period of heavy rains, those can cause immediate concerns like flash floods and mud slides, and government needs to be responsive in protecting people as best they can and helping to clean up afterward. There is nothing sinister going on there.
    1
  11296. It seems to me like their efforts to repopulate are too little, too late, and that they should have just stayed the course with depopulating. As it stands, they'll just end up with a lot of old people AND a lot of babies, neither of which are producing. Better to just accept a period of pinch in which there are way too many old people, and then eventually they will be dead and you'll be left with a balanced population again.
    1
  11297.  @Llortnerof  Yeah, but they already have a ton of people, so it makes sense to bring that population down a bit over time. You would want the replacement rate better than under the one child policy, obviously, but maybe somewhere more around 1.5 or so? "Less than last generation, but not by a huge amount?" One thing did occur to me though, they said in the video that replacement rate was "number of people per woman," ie 2.1 per 1 woman would be the goal, but China has a distorted gender balance due to the one child policy, so if they are sticking with the metric of "per woman," then the problem would actually be much worse when relative to the actual population.
    1
  11298.  @blksbth1  Ok, Eisenhower wasn't awful, but he did have an awful VP. So I guess we can compromise with "Nothing was ever made better by voting Republican. At least not in the last 50 years."
    1
  11299.  @JoeMama3006-7MM  Lincoln was a Republican, but he would be a Democrat today. They were the progressive party of their time. This flipped around the 1970s.
    1
  11300.  @JoeMama3006-7MM  Lincoln would be a Democrat if he were alive today, as would all the members of his party at the time.
    1
  11301.  @blksbth1  No, that's not true at all. That's just what conservatives tell you to think. It's pointless "both sides"ism.
    1
  11302.  @JoeMama3006-7MM  Lincoln would vote blue today.
    1
  11303.  @calvinroyals6463  Democrats all believe in our Republic more than anyone with an "R" next to their name.
    1
  11304.  @calvinroyals6463  All Democrats believe in our Republic more than those who aren't Democrats.
    1
  11305.  @coltongropp1465  That's incorrect. The founding fathers never intended a 2/3 majority for basic legislation, only for Constitutional Amendments. The current filibuster situation is an accidental "bug" from a rules change that came later. Also, it has been the stated goal of the Republican party to stonewall almost anything Democrats try to pass, that is their intent, EVEN in cases where 70%+ of the American people are in favor of something. There can be no justification for such childish behavior. Democrats are doing nothing wrong here, it is entirely the fault of Republicans, and their voters need to take responsibility for that.
    1
  11306.  @apatriotfirstanamericansec6010  No, Democracy is majority rule. Always. I think maybe you mean that Direct Democracy and Representative Democracy are two different things, which is true, but both are majoritarian systems, the only difference, assuming that both are functioning as intended, is that representative democracy concentrates that authority a bit so that the people directly wielding that authority can form more expert opinions on the matter before deciding. They still need to remain reflective of the intent of voters though.
    1
  11307.  @apatriotfirstanamericansec6010  Democracy is majority rule. Always. That is the point of democracy. If you had looked up majority rule, you would know that, unless you were looking it up under unreliable sources.
    1
  11308. @ If there's one thing that this White House has a track record for, it's for inviting swindlers rather than professionals as often as they can.
    1
  11309.  @valeriemckinney4658  The AP is probably the most regular news station on the planet. What news stations do you consider "regular?"
    1
  11310. @ If there's anything they know how to do well, it's to invite swindlers instead of professionals.
    1
  11311. Character is a function of the job. You want someone that can be trusted to make good decisions, since that is the entire job of a President.
    1
  11312. What would Hunter have to do with any of this? He doesn't have access to classified data. He isn't even in government.
    1
  11313.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  Unlike Ivanka and Jared, Hunter Biden has no role in President Biden's administration, no security clearance, and no access to classified material. He is completely irrelevant to anything.
    1
  11314. He's not unfit for trial, the prosecutor just couldn't make a case against him.
    1
  11315. Unfortunately. Trump won, so that's irrelevant.
    1
  11316. Or at least an AI narrator.
    1
  11317.  @pogo1140  "How dare! Won't someone think of their 401Ks?"
    1
  11318. "Defund the police bad!" -Republicans, supposedly
    1
  11319. No, the President can definitely NOT retain any document, classified or otherwise.
    1
  11320.  @ASS_ault  I spent most of my young life traveling the world. Why do you ask?
    1
  11321.  @ASS_ault  What would other countries have to do with wearing masks? Masks are effective regardless of which country you're in. In Japan, they often wear masks just for flu season.
    1
  11322.  @cancanjaker1620  There are currently several major countries with higher debt to GDP ratios than the US but that seem to be relatively stable. One of these is Japan, who couldn't pose a military threat to Guatemala.
    1
  11323. If they weren't gullible, they couldn't be Republicans.
    1
  11324. Sure they did. And they reached a guilty verdict.
    1
  11325.  @armyaquatix  Impressive. Relevance?
    1
  11326.  @armyaquatix  You still haven't explained the relevance yet. I mean, Jared made $2 billion, with a B, so what?
    1
  11327.  @armyaquatix  Just a point of fact, "Matt Gaetz said so" is never evidence of anything.
    1
  11328.  @armyaquatix  District attorneys often run on being "tough on crime" and bringing known criminals to justice. There is nothing unusual or wrong about that. Why do you bring it up? And yes, federal law does supersede state law, but that has zero bearing here, because at no point did a federal case supersede any state cases here. The mere existence of similar federal laws does not prevent a state law from being used. If the federal government did want to bring this case, they could, but they have bigger fish to fry.
    1
  11329.  @armyaquatix  But these were felony charges, and charged at the state level. There was no federal component to this case.
    1
  11330.  @armyaquatix  How so? A criminal got charged with crimes that he did, and was convicted by a jury of his peers for having committed those crimes. What is "improper" about that? Should the criminal have been allowed to get away with it?
    1
  11331.  @kitko33  Exactly. Government is playing the role of the responsible older sibling, on behalf of the voters.
    1
  11332.  @JR-tr1df  And if you applied that same care and attention to a 2024 EV, it would work equally as well for you in 2059.
    1
  11333.  @JR-tr1df  Ok. And? What is your point?
    1
  11334.  @JR-tr1df  Who's arguing otherwise though? That's entirely beside the point. Poor people will continue to drive whatever they have until they no longer can. But people who are buying a new car, should probably buy a new EV instead of a new gas car. And people buying a used car should probably buy a used EV instead of a used gas car. And people who do buy an EV instead of a gas car will end up spending less over the lifetime of that vehicle than if they'd gotten a comparably priced gas car. And if government can provide incentives that make it more affordable for people to make that upgrade, more's the better.
    1
  11335.  @JR-tr1df  Ah, yeah, I've heard some models can't handle conversations with multiple back and forths. A few posts in they forget where the conversation started.
    1
  11336.  @Think-dont-believe  How much water you use to brush your teeth would depend on where your local water supply comes from. It might be a supply issue if your local water sources is limited, or it might be an energy cost issue if the water is pumped using electricity. Either way, it's better to avoid being wasteful, right? I have no idea what you think that has to do with heating systems though. Nobody brought up teeth brushing but you. Don't start none, won't be none.
    1
  11337.  @KafeinBE  You do understand that NOBODY on this planet has "a refrigerator that they can't run because their wind turbine isn't working," right? That's what batteries are for. The batteries keep things running when wind or solar is not adding power. Why is this such a difficult concept for some people to understand? And no "fossil fueling our way out of this" is a solution only promoted by the fossil fuel lobbies and their useful fools.
    1
  11338.  @KafeinBE  Nobody powers a refrigerator off a wind turbine. You power it off a battery charged by a wind turbine. It works better than powering it off a gas plant.
    1
  11339.  @dzcav3  My definition of "most people" would be "most people." As in "the overwhelming majority of people purchasing a car." To go through your case examples, Renters who do have a car but do not have access to a garage with charging accessibility will need to consider their charging options. In many cases, they would be driving relatively short distances, so could just charge up once or twice a week in a relatively short amount of time. People who take long trips regularly might prefer a gas car, but this does not apply to most people. If they do take a long trip in their EV, it's generally doable in a reasonable amount of time, charging while eating a meal or stopped at a hotel for the night. It does take some more planning at the moment, but isn't an actual problem. Less frequent trip takers could also just rent a car for the short time they would need it. Poor people would save money over the long term by buying a used EV, which can cost less than $10K. The up front costs might be higher than for a gas car, but that's where government assistance can bridge the gap. Even the "high prices" of public chargers is well less than the cost at gas stations. And of course the availability of charging options will only improve over time, soon enough even apartment dwellers will have convenient access to charging, and charge times are reducing drastically, so using a public charger will take about as much time as filling a gas tank. In any case, "most people" are outside of all of those categories.
    1
  11340.  @chriswalford4161  Maybe, but also, their excesses typically don't add much to the overall carbon cost, since there are fewer of them. It might be interesting though if there were a sort of "carpooling fee" on flights (primarily to well served areas, so as to not be cruel to people in remote areas), that would add significant taxes on any flight that has less than a certain number of people on board. This would still allow for private jets, but would make them far less economical for casual trips, and the revenues generated could be earmarked for mitigation efforts.
    1
  11341.  @I-have-a-brain_and-use-it  Oh, no, you're wrong about "heat." Or at least misguided. Yes, everything humans do generates "heat," and it would be more efficient to generate as little as possible, but the heat generated by humans directly, things like stoves and home heating and all that, is completely negligible on a climate level. If we had 100% green energy then we could afford to keep everything as hot as we like it to be and on a global level it would make no difference. The issue is the CO2, because the heat it generates is magnitudes more than the heat form stoves or boilers. The sun is POWERFUL. Think of it like this, it's a bit like having a glass box that's 10ft to a side, set in the middle of the arctic. If it's night time, and you light a match in there, and keep lighting new matches as they burn out, it would take forever to get that room up to a decent temperature. But leave that box out in the sunshine and it can reach a cozy temperature within hours.
    1
  11342.  @I-have-a-brain_and-use-it  CO2 might be relatively weak, but there is enough of it that it causes a pretty massive outcome. I mean, this is not guess work at play here, they know how much is up there and how much effect it will have, and that adds up to "the bad stuff we're seeing right now." I haven't looked into the greenhouse effect H@O has, and you might be right that it is more, but if so, it was a factor that was in equilibrium, and has not changed significantly, so the CHANGE in outcomes is due to the CO2. It would be like if you were outside on an 70 degree day, sun is shining, and then you put on a heavy coat. Obviously the sunshine has a bigger impact on your warmth than the heavy coat, but the addition of a coat that you didn't previously have would make a massive difference to your personal temperature. And again, the raw heat generated by ALL human activity has been accounted for, it does not come remotely close to enough to account for the changes we're seeing. The sun IS that powerful. As to your discussion of "Gasses other than CO2," I think that's semantics. Those gasses are largely generated as a byproduct of the same processes that are traditional referred to as "CO2 emitters." Yes, when discussing the topic to laypeople, the media will typically keep it simple and only refer to the most basic element, but it's not like the science isn't also keeping track of all that other stuff. Methane, for example, is certainly considered a major green house gas. It is more technically accurate to say "Green House Gases" rather than "CO2," but it's also a longer term, and in practice makes little difference to the discussion. The answers are the same either way. Also, the "break even" point for an EV to be better for the environment, ALL factors considered, is around two years, for the average driver.
    1
  11343.  @I-have-a-brain_and-use-it  I made a longer post that got eaten, but the TL;DR of it was that everything you've said, in so far as it's accurate, has already been factored into the discussion, and what you see is the result. CO2 might not be the most harmful gas per unit, but the ADDED amount over the past centuries is what is tipping the natural balances and cause the change in outcomes. The actual heat energy generated by human activity is a drop in the bucket compared to the shifts in the greenhouse effect. Also, an average EV pays off it's entire environmental harm within two years, it's not some enormous grind.
    1
  11344.  @noelwalterso2  But in terms of actual numbers, the heat pump is more efficient than the gas heater, if your house is built for it. Those numbers will only get more favorable as gas prices increase and electricity prices fall.
    1
  11345.  @noelwalterso2  Gas prices will inevitably rise, because it is a non-renewable resource. Electricity prices will inevitably fall because it is an unlimited resource. Right now, a large portion of the electrical market is still tied to fossil fuels, and the prices for it rise and fall at similar rates, but green sources continue to expand, so supply will continue to rise. It will never be super cheap, because industry has no interest in over-supplying the market, but it will easily outpace fossil fuel alternatives.
    1
  11346.  @chinesepopsongs00  The thing is, as more and more EVs hit the used market, "the cheapest car" will be more and more likely to be an EV, especially if you are factoring in your long term energy use, and even if you have to use public charging. An EV is likely to outlast that 1984 car of yours, since they have fewer parts to fail. And of course more and more locations will be getting local charging, such as outside apartments. I'm not arguing that EV is the best choice for every driver in 2025, but it is the best choice for most drivers in 2025, especially if buying a new car, and everyone should at least seriously consider how an EV would work out for them.
    1
  11347.  @stephenchico2418  Just because someone tries to pass a bill does not mean that it is imminent. People try to pass radical bills all the time just to make a point. If it doesn't actually get to a president's desk, it's probably not an issue. Also, while baseboard heating didn't used to work with heat pumps, now it does. You probably could have gotten a heat pump system installed for the same cost as the gas one, but with lower annual costs. Bummer.
    1
  11348.  @mdw0ng  I don't think Gaza has any other states bordering them than Egypt and Israel, and neither of those is as genocidal as Gaza itself.
    1
  11349.  @mdw0ng  You seem to have a great deal of difficulty with "context." It's rather essential to any adult conversation.
    1
  11350. I don't believe that the story Johnson was going for should have been told within a canon Star Wars movie. If he wanted to tell that story, it should have been in an unrelated "parody" project.
    1
  11351. He asked her a question. She gave him an answer that he was not prepared for, and so he accused her of actually believing the opposite to what she claimed under penalty of perjury. He was shouting at her at the time, as well.
    1
  11352.  @dantheanimator5072  You may have seen one portion of the answer to one question, but not her complete answer. He asked her whether she condemned Hamas. She said, in plain English, that she did. He asked the same for Hezbolah, she replied, in plain English, that she did condemn them. She also expressed that she found the question itself insulting, which we can agree was entirely true, but she certainly answered the question, or at the very least made best possible efforts to do so over his shouting at her.
    1
  11353. That would be Jared Kushner getting 2 billion from the Saudis. Even the worst that Hunter's been accused of would be peanuts in comparison, right? And nobody ever elected Hunter anyway, so he's not really even involved in "politics."
    1
  11354.  @MiyagiNariyoshi  If those views were opposing medical best practices, as was the case here, then censoring those opposing views would prevent people from getting misled and causing harm. Nobody is talking about censoring harmless content.
    1
  11355.  @MiyagiNariyoshi  No respected doctors were impacted, only people pushing outlandish fairytales. They also were never correct, not at the time, and not in hindsight, they were just misunderstood by those who wanted to believe those fairytales. The medical best practices at the time were the correct actions to be taking.
    1
  11356.  @hungflo3271  China is China, they will do their own things, nobody is defending their actions and they have nothing to do with what happened in the rest of the world.
    1
  11357.  @MiyagiNariyoshi  Oh, no,, nobody worthy of respect got pruned, some of them had phds, but that doesn't mean they actually knew what they were talking about, and they certainly didn't "turn out to be right."
    1
  11358.  @hungflo3271  What goes on in China has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
    1
  11359.  @hungflo3271  Nope, they have their own practices which have no relation to what goes on here. It's comparing apples and hand grenades.
    1
  11360.  @MiyagiNariyoshi  I already know that stuff. This is not my first rodeo. It turns out it's all junk. The "prominent md's" are just cranks, and the "studies" don't really qualify as scientifically valid. I'm glad you understand that now.
    1
  11361. Tune in to Faux News any night of the week.
    1
  11362.  @Javas_Dream  The bill allows in fewer people than were allowed during Trump's term.
    1
  11363.  @richardclifton4120  I was answering the question of where to find MUCH better examples of gaslighting.
    1
  11364.  @richardclifton4120  They debunk ignorance.
    1
  11365.  @richardclifton4120  What have I said that is not objectively accurate?
    1
  11366.  @richardclifton4120  No, i meant objectively, and that too was accurate.
    1
  11367.  @richardclifton4120  Ok, so what did I say that was inaccurate, in your world?
    1
  11368.  @richardclifton4120  So you have no specific points that I made that you could offer as being inaccurate, and are just crying about it? I again point out that nothing I said was inaccurate.
    1
  11369.  @paulrolfes  a lot of people are saying I'm wrong, not one of them can point to anything I've said that's wrong. They just like to tell it to themselves as an article of faith, since they know the facts can't back that up. Sad.
    1
  11370.  @richardclifton4120  It was in response to the OP of this thread, I was telling him where he could find a better example of gaslighting. I'm sorry if that went over your head, I forgot my audience.
    1
  11371.  @richardclifton4120  I get that they don't believe me, but what gave you the impression that that lent them any credibility? If you're indoctrinated to believe down is up, then the person telling you that the ground beneath your feet is not the ceiling sounds like a liar, I suppose. I don't need your "Donald Trump Prize," but for reference, you convince someone that they are wrong by using reliable evidence to the contrary, not by shouting "you're wrong" at them until they get frustrated at your barking and leave.
    1
  11372.  @richardclifton4120  And still you can offer no substantive argument. Name-calling and schoolyard bullying is your only tool. Sad.
    1
  11373.  @stevesanzari7294  He's certainly made American greater than when he took office. As for "bringing it together," that isn't really possible so long as the other side preaches hate.
    1
  11374.  @NateC147  It's a play on words, I'm sorry you were not equipped to understand. I was talking about the propaganda network of the Republican party, the one that has been found in studies to leave its viewers LESS intelligent than if they receive no news at all.
    1
  11375. Here, this should help make sense of that sort of thinking: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
    1
  11376. Well, there's another election in two years and we can vote the "House Weaponizing Government Committee" out.
    1
  11377.  @lourdespaz7890  Inflation is lower in the US than anywhere else in the world right now, unemployment is at record lows, wages are up, GDP is up, pretty much every economic indicator is an improvement over when he took office, which is particularly impressive, coming out of a pandemic.
    1
  11378.  @saberswordsmen1  He did say Europeans will always support Ukraine. That may not necessarily include Hungary.
    1
  11379.  @IsomerSoma  Not anymore. They made their choice.
    1
  11380.  @saberswordsmen1  It used to.
    1
  11381.  @Infinitystar225  It once was.
    1
  11382.  @saberswordsmen1  Sometimes people aren't Scotsmen either.
    1
  11383.  @Infinitystar225  Nobody said that it did. We're talking politics, not geography.
    1
  11384.  @saberswordsmen1  Sure it is.
    1
  11385.  @saberswordsmen1  And yet "Europe" is still a political entity, just as "America" is.
    1
  11386.  @saberswordsmen1  I mean what people say when they say "America," just like I mean what people say when they say "Europe."
    1
  11387.  @saberswordsmen1  I am only speaking the literal truth.
    1
  11388.  @saberswordsmen1  I'm speaking of Europe as a political concept, not everyone chooses to join into that concept. Some people insist on being outside of it, regardless of their geographic location.
    1
  11389. Well, there are still several members of Congress and the Trump administration that are under investigation for various crimes, but such things tend to take years to work their way through the system. I mean, this Durham investigation was investigating things that happened seven years ago, and the 2020 election was only two years ago.
    1
  11390. It will certainly make clear that the Trump Supreme Court has zero interest in the US Constitution.
    1
  11391. AND all their political coverage is heavily slanted in favor of Republicans. Always. So if they're scared enough to make Democrats look good, it must be serious.
    1
  11392.  @user-be1ij7rp3o  That is incorrect. I mean, there's some truth in there, but the conclusion you reached from it is nonsense.
    1
  11393.  @user-be1ij7rp3o  It may make sense if you live in a fantasy world created by the Faux News, but it does not apply to the REAL world that we actually live in. You owe it to yourself to find better sources of information, ones that talk about the real world, not Narnia.
    1
  11394.  @johnny.d.1930  Spending does increase the deficit, as does reducing revenue. Republicans reduce the revenue going in, which raises the deficit far more than spending does. The idea that tax cuts lead to businesses improving is a fairy tale that the wealthy will tell you so that you do their bidding, it has no basis in fact. The economy grew at the same pace after Trump's tax cuts as it did before them, nothing changed there other than that the deficit grew. The hundreds of thousands of jobs would have been created with or without the tax cuts, because businesses do not hire based on tax cuts, they hire based on demand.
    1
  11395.  @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.
    1
  11396.  @johnny.d.1930  So your argument would be that you being human trash would instead be an objective reality? I suppose I can't argue with that.
    1
  11397.  @johnny.d.1930  I was just replying to your argument that there is no such thing as "your truth," there is only "the" truth. You were the one making the claim, I was only saying that I could not argue with it.
    1
  11398. Because the FBI does not want to spread misinformation to the public. The House Oversight Committee is likely to present this as "an FBI document that says mean things about Biden," rather than HONESTLY pointing out that the FBI does not believe any of these claims are true. Nothing good can come of this.
    1
  11399.  @ozonelayercake  Incorrect, they are both true. Why would you think the first statement is false? Do you know the first thing about Joe Biden? It's that he cares.
    1
  11400. @ Ukraine has nothing to do with the US's financial troubles though, that was all Trump's fault.
    1
  11401. They didn't figure it out until the early 2000s, when the rise of video games provided the necessary clue. They'd crossed a zone boundary, and the textures and models for the first set of animals just wasn't loaded in for this zone.
    1
  11402. They would both be better off without the baggage of the Republican Party around their neck.
    1
  11403. It's a bummer that they can't figure out some combination that provides a "middle man" on this one. Like you wouldn't need a battery that could continuously power a car, you would only need one that could charge a capacitor at least once every 24 hour, so that it would have enough charge to drive say 30-60 miles, then be at work for 8 hours, building charge, then drive 30-60mi home, and charge overnight for the next day, all without needing grid energy.
    1
  11404. If Dominion were guilty of anything, then Fox would not have folded.
    1
  11405. I think you meant "persecuted." You can't "prosecute" someone unless they commit an actual crime, and Joe Biden has not. You can certainly persecute anyone you like though.
    1
  11406.  @sudilos1172  The 20,000 are the ones who died of covid. The people who died of other things because they couldn't get into hospitals are tracked separately. Your post seems to indicate that you get your news from untrustworthy sources.
    1
  11407.  @dgsrks102030  No, I KNOW that they weren't vaccinated. People who die of covid that have been vaccinated are recorded as such. Since vaccination began, only 4,000 vaccinated people have died of covid. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of unvaccinated people have died of covid over the same period. If those people had been vaccinated, almost none of them would have died.
    1
  11408.  jim Jordan  Of course not! Me saying it doesn't make it true. It being true is what makes it true. I only say it BECAUSE it's true.
    1
  11409. Texas has more Democrats than most Red states put together.
    1
  11410. Those rights are limited by public health emergencies, such as a pandemic. If one person's rights to religion conflict with another person's right to live, then the right to religion comes second.
    1
  11411. I do strongly believe in building modern urban areas in the underdeveloped parts of the country, but this is definitely not the way to do it. You can't abuse regulations to get what you want, or try to bully people into selling, you offer them a generous amount, and accept their answer either way, and move on. Using tactics like this make them the bad guys.
    1
  11412. I have always wanted an Easy Mode in Souls games, because I've wanted to play them, but found the original design too frustrating to enjoy. The articles in question might poorly define this debate, but I think it's definitely worth having. I have hope that Elden Ring might be better for players who want to play more casually, since you have more versatility in how you can upgrade, and do better at overcoming it. I just hope that this leveling process would not be excessively slow or boring. Just clearing the map should provide plenty. I watched a streamer I follow playing through one of the story bosses in the test, the one with the energy weapons, and he was having a hard time with it, but eventually beat it. I respect his skills and if he was struggling like that, I doubt I could complete it, but also, he was massively underleveled so he needed to strike the boss dozens of times, and I'm hoping that I would be able to just outlevel that encounter and be able to phase the boss with only one or two attacks. I think that the primary difference between what I've seen of Elden Ring and other Soulslikes is that so far, the save points seem to be more generous, putting you much closer to the fight that killed you, so "runback" is less of a hassle. This is my most serious concern, because I can handle dying a dozen times to a boss where I spawn right outside and can run right back in, but HATE situations where dying to a boss even a few times would force me to run back through a winding, thirty second or longer path. This "repeated tedium" aspect just drains any fun out of the title for me. In any case, I think that the game should always be tuned more for its current audience, the people who want this "hardcore" experience or whatever, but I also see no harm in providing alternative paths for those that would prefer it. There is no conflict there. To each their own.
    1
  11413. The West is offering more support to Ukraine than we do to most of our allies, but we won't be turning over our most sensitive technologies to a foreign country. The West is by no means "holding back" here, aside from not getting directly into the war themselves.
    1
  11414. Sadly, you can't rule out "stupid voters," and they love Trump as much as he loves that they love him. They are a powerful demographic.
    1
  11415.  @danjenkins8981  They're better than they were when Biden was elected.
    1
  11416.  @nencrows_4580  The gas prices started going up under Trump. They are set by global oil prices, and don't really have much to do with who the US President is.
    1
  11417.  @nencrows_4580  They started going up before the election. They are based on global oil prices, not who the president is.
    1
  11418.  @user-ja47aukn2  I don't think either. Why do you ask? Similar question, which party is repeatedly defending the right to marry children?
    1
  11419.  @danjenkins8981  I don't see why you think wars or not being able to afford things would be good. Biden hasn't been involved in starting any wars though, even got us out of a couple, and he's made it easier for Americans to afford things than if Trump were in charge right now, despite the global inflation going on at the moment.
    1
  11420.  @danjenkins8981  It seems like you are the one with no idea what's going on then.
    1
  11421. Why would you be paying a fuel tax?
    1
  11422.  @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?
    1
  11423.  @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. . .
    1
  11424.  @CNe7532294  To your point about EVs ending up in landfills, some will, just as many ICE cars do, but most of their components, especially the batteries, are fully recyclable, so even 30 years from now, plenty of 2023 EVs will still be on the road, either with replaced batteries or just making do with their reduced range, and plenty of others will have been converted into some other use.
    1
  11425. Lol, Trump always brags about how he can just kiss random women and they'll let him, but he couldn't even get his contracted wife to kiss him!
    1
  11426.  @WilcoxNotreallythere  "Them." Yeah, wouldn't want to be acused of antisemitism there. . .
    1
  11427. When it comes to a MAGA, putting your hands in front of your eyes can make you vanish. Anything is possible.
    1
  11428. Exactly. Vote blue, no matter who.
    1
  11429.  @brianpollard3500  That's not how the Constitution works. It applies to ALL people within US territory or custody. Basically, if US law enforcement can touch someone, then the Constitution applies to them.
    1
  11430.  @brianpollard3500  Nope. They are under the rules of both. They still retain all their constitutional rights.
    1
  11431.  @targgthewise2892 Look it up. Clinton balanced the budget. Obama brought the deficit down by more than any previous president. Both Bush and Trump RAISED the deficit significantly on their watch. If you want a balanced budget, elect Democrats. Of course, the Republicans will lie to you about that, and idiots will believe them without actually looking into the numbers, because they can't understand the numbers.
    1
  11432.  @edwardcuevas6974  The US had a national debt way before we left the gold standard. The gold standard had nothing to do with balancing the budget. Who told you that the gold standard was relevant to anything? The US economy would be a joke if we'd stuck to the gold standard.
    1
  11433.  @williammarr1303  And we like the Democrats to spend that money on their pork barrel bills because those benefit America and its citizens, which is why we vote for them.
    1
  11434.  @stevepest4143  The US credit rating ONLY dropped because of Republican shenanigans around the debt ceiling. That's it. The credit rating agencies had NO problem with the rising national debt, they ONLY had problems with MAGA Republicans playing chicken with America's financial responsibilities. Even so, there is no chance of US debt becoming unmanageable any time soon.
    1
  11435.  @ModelLights  Every time the government shuts down, millions of Americans face unnecessary hardship in their lives, as they have to go weeks without paychecks or other benefits that they have budgeted their lives around. It costs tax payers hundreds of millions to start things back up again once they're done. There is NEVER any benefit whatsoever to a government shutdown, it is America punching itself in the face.
    1
  11436.  @edwardcuevas6974  So. . . 1789? That's a pretty long time. Most countries run a national debt, it's an efficient way to do it. Most households also run at a debt, with a mortgage, a car loan, and/or student loans. It is more efficient to take on responsible levels of debt to fund growth, rather than to "live within your means" and stagnate as your neighbors accelerate past you.
    1
  11437.  @edwardcuevas6974  Why? Why make things objectively worse for everyone?
    1
  11438.  @aoeuclements That would change the entire meaning of the post, since Bidenomics actually worked.
    1
  11439. His VP pick.
    1
  11440.  @jamilifunk6199  Because Biden is a highly capable President currently that has decades in public service and has already won a presidential election with more votes than any previous candidiate? Meanwhile, RFK Jr. and whatserface are complete nobodies with terrible policy positions?
    1
  11441.  @JeffSpicoli007  The flu vaccine requires an annual booster to maintain efficacy. The chickenpox vaccine requires two doses, one at 1 and another at 4. The Measles vaccine takes two doses, one at 1, another at 4. The Polio vaccine takes four doses, at 4, 6, and 12 months, and another at 4 years. There are others. Look up "why vaccines require multiple doses," and "vaccine schedules for children" for more.
    1
  11442.  @JeffSpicoli007  You haven't been required to take a polio vaccine because we have eradicated polio because previous generations vaccinated against it. I gave you a list of several vaccines that require boosters, as well as a way for you to look up more. You chose to nitpick about whether or not the flu vaccine "counts" as a booster. Lol. The MRNA vaccine IS a vaccine, it is just one that operates in a different way than some other types of vaccines. There are many different types of vaccines that each function in their own way. Your immune system does NOT protect sufficiently against covid, that is why a vaccination is necessary to arm your immune system against it. Your body is not "99.97% effective against covid," it is closer to 98.3% effective, and that is nowhere near good enough when covid is endemic, because that would lead to over 6 million Americans dead (not even counting repeated cases). The vaccines give you a 99.999% survival rate, which means millions fewer dead, which is what most of us want to see. If you do work in the health care industry, then we are in worse trouble than I'd thought. Hopefully it's just janitorial.
    1
  11443.  @JeffSpicoli007  And again, I don't care where you mop floors at, the fact remains that the vaccines are safe and effective. As for the efficacy rate, the data seems to indicate that vaccinated patients make up only 0.2% of the people who have died from covid since vaccinations have been available. Considering that over half the population has been vaccinated so far, the expectation if the vaccine did nothing would be that half the dead patients would be vaccinated people. So the difference would be the difference between 50% and 0.2%, which would be 250 times reduction in the death rate of vaccinated people. You can find a good article on the New York Times on the subject. Maybe you'll find this helpful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8phTmPTnG0&t=380s
    1
  11444. They should just put anyone who attends into mandatory 14 day quarantine.
    1
  11445.  @Tom-zs6bb  If you'd looked at the problem for more than three seconds, you might have found a better answer to that question. That's the problem, short attention spans.
    1
  11446.  @ruschein  Well, if everyone just did what was in their own long term self-interests, then the issue would be solved. It only became "political" when oil companies convinced team red to work against their constituents.
    1
  11447.  @echelonrank3927  "Dealing with the warming as it comes" is completely impossible for most people on Earth, not to mention the animals. "Dealing with it as it comes" will have massive and permanent consequences in the best case scenario. It will also cost MUCH more than solving it right now. There is no argument to be made that "dealing with it as it comes" is not a stupid argument for stupid people.
    1
  11448.  @ruschein  Even if we're only talking "to the end of their personal lifespan and nothing else matters," most people currently alive would benefit from taking climate change seriously. But then, a lot of people don't save for retirement either. Likewise, the same people saying "climate change is fine!" are also often complaining about how people from hotter countries keep showing up at our doorstep. . .
    1
  11449.  @echelonrank3927  What? That's not how climates work. If you're asking "who's stupid," the answer would be the one asking that question, apparently.
    1
  11450.  @ruschein  Some are though, so it's a person-by-person situation.
    1
  11451.  @echelonrank3927  If you used your own brain, and came to the conclusions that you're sharing with us, then something clearly went wrong. Either get it repaired, or trust someone that has a working one. It can't be any of the people you've been listening to so far.
    1
  11452.  @echelonrank3927  Most people just have accounts for commenting on videos they watch. My "substance" is in other projects than "Youtube influencer." Now did you have a question of any substance, or are you all form and no substance?
    1
  11453.  @echelonrank3927  Well Youtube wouldn't exist without an audience, I'm not sure what your point is.
    1
  11454.  @echelonrank3927  But user engagement is also important to Google, since it means people are more active on the platform. If the comments section had no value to them, I'm sure they would shut it down, since it likely costs them a lot to keep operating in terms of moderation and traffic.
    1
  11455.  @echelonrank3927  You clearly have no idea how these things operate.
    1
  11456.  @echelonrank3927  Ditto.
    1
  11457.  @echelonrank3927  Sorry to hear that. Must be rough when you can't think for yourself.
    1
  11458.  @echelonrank3927  Ah, I thought even chat GTP could handle idioms. Again, sorry for expecting too much.
    1
  11459.  user-ce2np6se4h  Sure, but that has nothing to do with the topic at hand.
    1
  11460.  user-ce2np6se4h  If God didn't make people trans, they wouldn't exist. Are you denying that God exists?
    1
  11461.  user-ce2np6se4h  Yeah, God created us as man and woman, but He also created some of those men and women as trans. So what's the problem?
    1
  11462.  user-ce2np6se4h  Nobody every claimed that male and female don't exist as concepts. Almost half the world is male, almost half is female. Nobody argues otherwise. But there are exceptions, and we shouldn't try to bully them into being who they are not. I choose to reference God as being male, but if you would prefer female or neutral, then I wouldn't try to argue with you, that is a personal distinction to make.
    1
  11463.  @its.zoeybeth  The Bible says nothing about trans people, other than that they should be loved and supported. If they are trans, it can only be because God wanted them to be, it's not like they have any choice in the matter. Also, you need to work on your bible study, Genesis 22 had nothing to do with LGBT, Romans 1 also had nothing to do with LGBT, it only discussed unnatural relations, not natural ones like being LGBT.
    1
  11464.  @its.zoeybeth  You should find a better preacher then, I guess, one more in line with Jesus' teachings.
    1
  11465.  @its.zoeybeth  It's ok, plenty of people get led astray by people claiming to speak for God. Look at Jonestown. Or Joel Osteen.
    1
  11466. Lol, how dare they assume Trump reads.
    1
  11467.  @yougottrolledbythebest8117  Nah, Libertarians are just Republicans dressed up like coyotes instead of wolves, because they don't understand how a proper disguise works.
    1
  11468. I can't imagine Israel causing random pagers to blow up, that would make no sense. There would have to be some other cause for this.
    1
  11469. Lol.
    1
  11470. Nah, that's a false equivalency.
    1
  11471. I'm not overly isolationist about such things, but I don't think the US should get involved militarily if it stays a strictly internal dispute in Niger. If Niger invades another country like Russia did, then that might be justification for war. As for the other ECOWAS countries, I do think it's important for African nations to try and settle their own regional conflicts without relying on outside help, but it would be fair for western nations to provide at least as much support to them as Russia has.
    1
  11472. I agree with your overall point, but the focus on metacritic scores is a bit pointless, because customers often rate out of hate ("I hate this game, 1 star!"), whereas even the most honest reviewers tend to be "critical" about a product ("it had a lot fo flaws, and here they are. . . but it at least managed to do a few things right. . . so 4 stars"), so critic reviews will almost inevitably be higher than player reviews on any remotely controversial title. I do think that critic reviews tend to skew high, but player reviews often skew way low, and the reality is more often somewhere around the 60-70% mark in between the two.
    1
  11473.  @missesha6869  what are you talking about? Illegal immigrants increased under Trump. He talked a big game about it, but accomplished very little (other than filling concentration camps with kids).
    1
  11474.  @Simplydelicious2  So you're saying he's like a spoiled puppy? Any attention is good attention? I suppose there's some truth to that, but he's a peril to the nation, and ignoring him accomplishes nothing. What solution do you recommend that would actually work?
    1
  11475. It was written by Republicans.
    1
  11476.  @mrs.lilianfetters1432  Bragg hasn't actually gotten any money from Soros, not that this will stop Trump from yammering on about Soros like he's relevant.
    1
  11477.  @bangdollarsign  Sadly, that seems to be the case, because if they actually cared about the corruption of money in politics, Republicans get twice as much dark money funding as any Democrat.
    1
  11478.  @TECHNICIAN-13  That's not how "irony" works. Kamala calling Trump a Nazi is just. . . accurate.
    1
  11479.  @Haulin-iron_eatin-sammiches  She never claimed he was as bad as Trump.
    1
  11480.  @tonysmith2045  But it's an accurate opinion that accurately reflects the facts of the matter. If it quacks like a duck. . .
    1
  11481. Unfortunately, Republicans are too dumb to understand why this is different. They will see a lion and a house cat and call them equally dangerous.
    1
  11482. Charmy!
    1
  11483.  @adamchance3828  In theory, House Oversight would be one of those, but the current House has been taken over by partisans. They are uninterested in "corruption," they are only interested in "ways we can harm our political opponents." They are like the House Weaponizing Government committee.
    1
  11484. If they aren't going to give the administration billions of dollars, then they can't do anything, because they don't have the funding to do it. This is how government works.
    1
  11485. The opposite, for the most part. The DNC follows the science.
    1
  11486.  @marthacanady9441  But mask mandates are unpopular. If the DNC followed political expediency, then they would pander to people like the Republicans do and say "masks off, y'all!" But the DNC is more responsible than that, and are willing to tell people to eat their vegetables even if they would prefer ice cream for dinner.
    1
  11487. So you also know that he DID go to Bagram as a member of congress, and that this is what he's talking about, right? Right?
    1
  11488.  @ospee2004  He was found liable of sexual assault and defamation. The other charges are pending.
    1
  11489.  @levismith7444  Why don't you?
    1
  11490.  @wolveslair766  A President's good faith decision while in office, even if deemed inappropriate, is not "breaking the law." The way the US system is designed is that Congress passes laws and the Executive enforces them, and then the Courts determine whether those laws are valid. If every time the other two branches got something wrong, it became a criminal offense, then it would be impossible for anything to function.
    1
  11491. Trump is more of a Dooku.
    1
  11492.  @fanboyhex1555  I don't think he's actually MAGA. He seems on the right side of things.
    1
  11493. Where was there a "debate" here? Science is not a debate, it's an investigation. You do research, you report the results of that research. There is nothing to "debate." If someone presents research, you can't just say "well, I don't know about that. . ." and be considered to have presented an equally compelling argument.
    1
  11494.  @purplealiencookies7416  I don't think that's possible, you could only possibly get smarter than you are right now.
    1
  11495.  @purplealiencookies7416  See? If you would consider the source more often, then you wouldn't have so much ground to make up.
    1
  11496. I think that in most wealthy countries, there should be a massive tax on home ownership, but this tax is waived on your primary residence, so most people who only own one home would see no difference. For those with multiple homes, it would become very expensive to hold onto them. For rental properties, there would be a significant tax for those too, one that scales up based on the value of the property, but one designed to be offset based on the number of affordable housing units provided, so the more people they have actually living in apartments at an affordable price, the less impact that tax would have, whereas the more people they try to get to pay high rates, the higher the taxes would climb.
    1
  11497.  @todortodorov940  I know that land/home ownership taxes are nothing new, but those are things that landowners already deal with. Here I'm talking about additional taxes on top of that which are specifically designed to put an economic pinch on those who use residential property in a way that is not in the best interests of people actually living on that property. Basically, I would want it to be structured in such a way that it would be unprofitable to manage residential property in a way that is not affordable to residents.
    1
  11498.  @todortodorov940  I saw a thing on Monaco once where they build these buildings with multi-million dollar apartments, but also have to include a certain number of apartments for the poorer people who's ancestors lived there, and it balances out on the basis that they make so much money off the rich that they can afford to not make money off of a certain portion of their apartments. I think that's the best way to balance these sorts of things, figure out what the profit potential is for a given area, and figure out how much profit would be "well worth chasing even if it's less than the maximum," and then only allow them to build on that land if they commit to a model where they make plenty of profit, but willingly cut into that profit a bit to provide a certain amount of affordable housing too. If they agree, they make a lot of money. If they don't agree, they get nothing.
    1
  11499. But less radical than any dozen things Trump says during his speeches.
    1
  11500.  @Akanoyoru  Yup, he said to himself "who cares if he's Hitler, he wins elections!"
    1
  11501.  @antoniodelrey164  A candidate earns coverage by being popular enough that there is an audience for them. No random person is owed air time just because they choose to run. They need to get support for their campaign on their own merits.
    1
  11502.  @melissadeloach8503  Why do you ask?
    1
  11503.  @melissadeloach8503  I meant that you aren't "we the people," you are "me, a person." You don't get to say what "we the people" want or deserve. "We the people" disagree with you. And I never said anything about the media telling people how to vote. You can vote however you choose. But that does not mean that the media has to provide equal platform to every candidate, regardless of quality. They have their own freedom of speech rights to platform whomever they want. If a given network is not platforming candidates you like, then you are free to not give them your business, but they owe you nothing.
    1
  11504.  @antoniodelrey164  Most people who run for President start out with significant name recognition through their previous works, like as a governor or congress person or some other role. You build up to that. Once they are famous enough, people want to hear what they have to say, and media will book them because their audience will appreciate it, not out of some "obligation" to platform any random stranger that can print out a "name for President" sign. You don't debate Dean Philips for the same reason you don't negotiate with Kim Jong Un, he hasn't earned it, and it only lends him legitimacy that you bother to speak with him.
    1
  11505.  @antoniodelrey164  He was a governor in Georgia though, which is more than this guy can say for himself. Ross Perot paid for his own campaign and built up at least some base before the media really started paying attention to him. He earned whatever results he achieved, whether that sits right with you or not. There are dozens of Democratic politicians that have built a bigger national profile than this person. What do you believe makes him more deserving of air time than they are? Just because he wants it?
    1
  11506. No, this is not an example of that. They turned the job over to a partisan Republican operative who made his best effort to find evidence of wrongdoing, but could find none, because none existed.
    1
  11507.  @dickjohnson8011  Because the Republicans were doing crimes and the Democrats were not. Different circumstances, different outcome. If the circumstances had been the same, like between Biden and Mike Pence, then the results would have been the same.
    1
  11508. It's not contagious.
    1
  11509. Yeah, it is pretty pathetic how far the House has fallen in less than a year. It will get better next year though.
    1
  11510.  @johnconway9882  Well, I mean, as much as the Republicans REALLY wish that Joe Biden were even a fraction as bad as their own candidate, the facts remain that there is no indication that Joe Biden was at all involved in his son's business, despite his son's frequent efforts to trade off his father's name. That reflects poorly on Hunter and those he was in business with, but Joe's fine.
    1
  11511.  @vjsuxujrix9245  There is tons of evidence of Trump crimes. A lot of it has already been presented in the indictments against him.
    1
  11512.  @akakiiakakievich1646  Ukraine did not break the treaty, Russia did.
    1
  11513. But to be fair, Jim Jordan is an imbecile, and anything he says is generally the opposite of the reality.
    1
  11514. This is why most people are really bad at understanding public policy. They see numbers that would be huge in their daily life, and can't understand how that actually breaks down to very small numbers at an individual level.
    1
  11515.  @PherPhur What does that have to do with anything?
    1
  11516.  @PherPhur  Ok, I just thought it was a weird example to use. Billionaires in general make more money per day off interest than most people make in a year.
    1
  11517.  @slshusker  Where was anything I said a lie? I'm not sure you understand what that word means. Makes sense if you are maga.
    1
  11518.  @christopherbush5317  You do not have to seek approval from congress. Congress granted that approval already in the form of the Special Counsel statues. If they required congressional approval for each appointment, then that would be a part of the statute. It was not. Also, the special counsel approved in this case is being fair and impartial. Almost annoyingly so. If he was a Bill Barr type these cases would have reached convictions already.
    1
  11519.  @Dirtyharry70585  There is nothing about US law that requires a special counsel to be employed by the Justice Department prior to the appointment, MOST special counsels come from outside the DoJ, as in most cases they are retired lawyers or judges.
    1
  11520.  @slshusker  Then you were wrong. The word you were looking for in that case was "none." In English, it has a completely different meaning than the word you used.
    1
  11521.  @WillCrump-e5x  No thank you.
    1
  11522. "This 'Biden family' fanfiction we're writing is so compelling, you've got to read it!" If only they had any actual evidence, rather than just fantasy and hearsay, but then, Faux News does not operate on "evidence," which is why they lose so many defamation suits.
    1
  11523.  @NickyM1964  Biden was right, he was eliminating bad policy. Nothing changed about border security, only in how we would treat people who had already crossed it and been detained.
    1
  11524.  @mytube8985  HR2 would do nothing to solve the problem. The bills that Democrats have proposed would, the Republicans have blocked their passage.
    1
  11525.  @mytube8985  I have, have you? It is a mess. It "solves" non-existent problems, and does nothing for the actual problems at the border. It is just there to get Republican voters wet.
    1
  11526.  @mytube8985  It's called the "Secure the Border Act of 2023," Like most Republican legislation, it fails to live up to the title.
    1
  11527.  @mytube8985  What? I answered you.
    1
  11528. You're thinking of the previous administration.
    1
  11529.  @vernonbowling5136  They're not wrong though.
    1
  11530.  @midnighttoker9268  The amount of immigrants coming to the US has absolutely nothing to do with US law or immigration policy. They come to this country because their home countries have become more and more unlivable, and the US is their best hope at living the kind of good life any Christian would want for them. You can't cause fewer immigrants to come to the US, all you can do is figure out how best to care for them when they get here.
    1
  11531. This is evil.
    1
  11532. The New York Post is not a valid source. Find better sourcing for your stories.
    1
  11533.  @Ioannikios174  People aren't dying in the streets, they are dying in the hospitals, where apparently you don't see them.
    1
  11534.  @Chris-df1zr  New York does not have more deaths. They had more deaths at the very beginning of this when they got hit all at once by a massive spike and nobody knew best practices to resolve it, but once we learned more about the virus they got it under control and have had lower rates since. It's also important to keep in mind that Florida under-reports their covid figures to make DeSantis look good.
    1
  11535.  @renaissancestatesman  Yes, but you only say that because you're wrong.
    1
  11536.  @Chris-df1zr  Yes, but, again, Florida undercounts, and most of New York's deaths were in the spring, before we knew how to manage the virus and it quickly ballooned out of control. Florida's major outbreaks happened much later, when we did no better, and yet DeSantis chose to ignore that advice and let his people die.
    1
  11537. Not as much as they would have if the House wasn't controlled by Republicans.
    1
  11538. Yes, it's still wacky. The evidence still isn't there to support the idea that the virus was even in the Wuhan lab at any point, but doesn't at all support the idea that it was "created" there. It was created in an animal.
    1
  11539. The US has had our own station since the 90s, we just let other people stay there too.
    1
  11540. I don't think AI lawyers are there yet, but they certainly will be within our lifetimes. There will be a point in which human lawyers will be no more capable of beating an AI at court than they are beating them at chess. The only thing that would prevent AI lawyers taking over would be protectionist laws to arbitrarily disallow their use.
    1
  11541. You misspelled "McCarthy." It doesn't even have a "B" in it.
    1
  11542. In the game of monopoly, nobody wins.
    1
  11543. Every Ukrainian that dies as a result of this is on Trump's hands.
    1
  11544.  @Nerdofsteel82  Your information is out of date. The Delta variant is far more transmissible and lethal than the previous strain of the virus, as evidenced by the spiking infection and death rates across the country. The "proven medications" people take about are mostly snake-oil sold by vaccine deniers to gullible idiots. Let me guess, you're hyped about the horse dewormer? Or the malaria drug?
    1
  11545.  @Nerdofsteel82  You are projecting.
    1
  11546.  @RansackTheElder68  "HCQ" is an anti-malaria and anti-lupus drug. It is effective at treating those conditions (although it does have dangerous side effects and should never be taken except as a last resort), but it is NOT at all effective against covid. You would be better off taking Coca Cola as a treatment, because it would be no more effective, but less harmful. The only people lying about HCQ are snake-oil peddlers trying to push false hope or make a quick buck.
    1
  11547.  @calliesmith6897  They are trying to push the vaccine because more Americans were killed by Covid last year than in all the wars of the 20th Century combined, and they'd like to stop that happening. They're pushing it because hospitals across the country are spilling out into the parking decks and doctors are massively overworked and they'd like to stop that happening. They are pushing it because they care more about your life than you do.
    1
  11548.  Sub Versive  No, those 600,000 would not have died without covid. They only died because of covid. I mean, sure, statistically, a few thousand of them would have died of something, a car crash or a heart attack or whatever, but over 400,000 more Americans died last year than pre-2020 estimates expected to die of "normal stuff." Covid was definitely the cause of the massive increase in deaths.
    1
  11549.  @kimklim3267  I don't know your mother, I can't elaborate on her. But yes, covid has killed at least 600,000 Americans so far, and has had significant long term side-effects for many of those who have come down with it and survived it. Those side effects are still being studied.
    1
  11550.  Kulture City  You misspelled "Free-Dumb." It is not freedom to say no to the vaccine, it's free-dumb.
    1
  11551.  @calliesmith6897  I am providing you no proof because you've shown no willingness to accept proof. I have no doubt that you would dismiss any evidence I provided, so what would be the benefit to me in doing so? Less nurses does mean less care, but less care is not what is causing the hospital overloads, too many patients is the problem. You could double the nursing staff in the Us and it would do nothing about that. The hospitals are better off without the unvaccinated nurses because they will be less likely to spread the disease to non-infected patients and staff, and also because if they are too dumb to get vaccinated, then they are likely too dumb to safely treat patients. I'm trying to save the lives of as many Trump supporters as possible. It is the Trump supporters that are charging at that cliff as fast as they can manage, and catching up innocent people along the way. Plenty of other diseases have been around this, but none of them have been remotely this dangerous in over 100 years. The issue is that we could be saving a lot more lives than we currently are, if only there weren't so many stupid people out there struggling against the medical science. Also, Cuomo did not "murder any NY elderly." The death rate in New York elder care facilities was equivalent to in any other state. It just hasn't been reported that way on the "Faux News" because he's a Democrat.
    1
  11552.  @calliesmith6897  We have been pursuing all ptions for treating covid, it's just that many of the options promoted by the Faux News, like horse de-wormers and malaria drugs, have proven to be completely ineffective treatments for covid. There are treatments like monoclonal antibodies that have been used, but they are not as effective as the vaccines, so intelligent people promote BOTH. And how is some random person supposed to "replicate the studies" of a multi-billion dollar company? The studies have been peer reviewed and double checked by all the relevant organizations, there is absolutely NOTHING that you could possibly bring the to table.
    1
  11553.  @alext.9033  They are not. You can sue them. If the vaccine companies lie about the vaccines or in any way commit misconduct, then you can sue them. It only protects against side effects that nobody was aware of. Basically, if any vaccine maker knew that there was any reason anyone should not be taking their vaccine, and hid that data from the public, they would be obliterated in court.
    1
  11554.  @calliesmith6897  Other countries are pushing for vaccines as hard as they can. Most of them cannot get access to the vaccines because they are not as well off as America is. In countries that do have access to the vaccines, they are getting higher vaccination rates than the Us, because they have a lower stupid population than we do.
    1
  11555.  @calliesmith6897  We don't need Covaxid or Covashield, we have plenty of Pfizer, Moderna, and J&J to go around. There is absolutely no benefit to approving additional vaccines at this point. Why do you believe that the US should spend the time and resources approving these other vaccines? Do you think more people would take those?
    1
  11556.  @RansackTheElder68  HQC is not safe, it causes heart arrhythmia in many people. It is only "safe" when taken under a doctor's care, and for conditions that it effectively treats. It does NOT effectively treat covid, so however much of it you do take, you will be no better off with covid than you would be without it. I don't know why some people are so intent on pushing it, but maybe you should be looking into who that benefits. . .
    1
  11557.  @RansackTheElder68  Yes, the new vaccines are safer than taking an anti-malarial drug for Covid, when the anti-malarial drug has more dangerous side effects and does not protect against covid. Also, if you are worried about the MRNA vaccines, then just take the J&J one, that is not an MRNA vaccine, it is a "real vaccine" by whatever nonsense definition you want to use.
    1
  11558.  @TheMattj88  The money isn't in selling the snake oil, the money is in being "the guy who promotes the snake oil alternatives," which has a lot of money and power behind it. Have you seen how much gullible idiots have donated to or attended paid rallies for people who promote snake oil treatments that "the medical establishment don't want you to have?" There's a lot of money to be make in quack medicine, as I'm sure you well know. Wink wink.
    1
  11559.  @RansackTheElder68  HCQ is as dangerous as I think it is, which is why it should only be taken when necessary. Most drugs have risks attached, so they should only be taken when the thing they cure effectively is worse than the side effects. That is the case with the Covid vaccines, which are extremely effective against covid, and have relatively low risk to them. It is NOT the case with HCQ, which is NOT effective against covid, and therefore the risks it poses are nowhere near worth taking. Malaria is a virus, but that does not mean that a drug that is useful against one virus is equally useful against everything else. It would be handy if that were true. The covid vaccine will not protect you against malaria, I suppose it's fair to point out. I have no idea why you are latched onto some fringe drug when safe and effective remedies are available free of charge, but that's your business. The doctors and scientists that push these fringe theories are not "well respected," they are quacks. It is not that hard to get a medical degree from some mail-away program and start portraying yourself as a "medical expert," just look at Rand Paul. But when they are pushing products that are contrary to what most doctors believe is safe and effective, you have to ask yourself why they would do that, and what they stand to gain. If you cannot see what that would be, then you are not looking deep enough.
    1
  11560.  @RansackTheElder68  Yes, HCQ Was and IS recommended for people who might get malaria, because the risks it poses are not as bad as the risks of getting malaria. This is how drugs work. But the risks it poses are NOT worth taking for covid, since it does nothing in preventing covid. And it only has a relatively dsafe track record because relatively few people ever take it. If as many people took it as have been vaccinated over the past six months, then a lot more people would die from it. The CDC has changed nothing. And of course you are participating in the mass psychosis/social obedience training scheme, you're pushing HCQ, which means that you have been mass conditioned into social obedience by the conservative Faux News industry. Keep baaahing like the good little sheep that you are.
    1
  11561.  @jackd.benisi5356  You're speaking nonsense. Look into that.
    1
  11562.  @quantumthuglife4444  Anything that happened before the current generations were born is no longer relevant to the present. Anyone seeking to use events from decades ago to justify their actions in the present is a fool.
    1
  11563. No, "gas" when it comes to cars just means what the UK would call "petrol."
    1
  11564.  @tomholy  No, I mean, in the US, "gas" just refers to "gasoline," at least in relation to cars. The various other "gases" have no practical relation to cars, because they are just stupendously impractical for various reasons, and mainly only promoted by fossil fuel industry shills like PERC.
    1
  11565. It is a funny thing. Republicans want to throw the book at Hunter for doing something that they insist up and down should never be a crime. Meanwhile, the Biden administration is fighting to keep the law on the books, even if that means sending his sun up the river. It's almost like Democrats believe in the rule of law, and Republicans only believe in ruling.
    1
  11566. The FBI and DOJ knew that no crimes took place, which is why they allowed it.
    1
  11567.  @zerotwo7319  I'm not saying that everything about China's policies is a good thing, but these three rules seem like good rules to have, or at least something close to the right rules. You want to have limitations on over-leveraging to avoid "too big to fail" situations. It's good to have rules to prevent companies from taking on an unsustainable level of debt, and a lot of Chinese real estate had basically become a Ponzi scheme.
    1
  11568. @Yoyo’s guide to China Well, if any of that is true, if their goal is to shut down the private players and centralize it, this would still be a dumb way to do it. If that was what they wanted to do, then Step 1 would be to put a fence around the developers, the first laws made would be ones that essentially say "you can't send your money overseas or pull it out of your companies or do anything else that would allow you to get away, you're stuck with this situation." THEN Step 2 would be implementing plans to allow the bubble to be carefully deflated. If they do this successfully, then they get to keep something by the end of it. If they crash and burn, they lose everything.
    1
  11569.  @zerotwo7319  Even in the US there are various regulations on banks, some say too many, some say not enough, but they do limit how much debt they can take on relative to their capital on hand, and that sort of thing. Interests rates are just "fiddling with the valves" to achieve short term adjustments, but there are more structural limits in place as well.
    1
  11570. @Manjinder Singh Politics.
    1
  11571.  @davidpowell3709  Because it implied that this was not already a solved problem. It's basically a "stop white people from killing and eating babies" bill.
    1
  11572. They should build hydrogen ones where the cabin is designed to be a detachable glider/autorotor with a heat shield so that if a fire occurs in the top part, the bottom can instantly detach and drift away from it without damage. I think that would be worth the lift potential from hydrogen.
    1
  11573.  @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.
    1
  11574. In this country, we don't send people to prison who have not committed any crimes. This is not Putin's Russia.
    1
  11575.  @NirtyDigger5  One, he would have no role in any invasion, that would be the role of the Defense Secretary, and Two, there is no invasion.
    1
  11576.  @Davmartin-kp1yq  Probably, but it's still worth setting them straight.
    1
  11577. The Chicago story was apparently blown way out of proportion. It was just people using their cars inefficiently, not a fault in the cars themselves. People will learn how to adapt to bad weather, the same with gasoline cars.
    1
  11578.  @DaveCompton5150  It's just growing pains. More people than that run out of gas on the highway, and that's a hundred years after cars became "normal." People will better learn what to expect from their cars and how to get them operating like they want them to. Also, both the range of EVs and the availability and efficiency of charging stations will go way up over the next decade.
    1
  11579. Isn't this the primary value of crypto? That you can do crimes with lower chances of getting caught? What did anyone expect?
    1
  11580.  @dreichert1438  New York and California should not decide things for the rest of the country. WE THE PEOPLE of the states of New York and California should decide. One person, one vote.
    1
  11581. Most people forget a lot of their geography classes. A guy above seemed certain that it was in South America, and that people would be dumb for getting that wrong.
    1
  11582.  @Momula101  Again, someone above seemed confident it was in South America. I really think fewer people know where Belize is than you think. It's like Nambia.
    1
  11583.  @joe5923  So they were doing that back in the 80s? I thought it was supposed to be some new thing.
    1
  11584.  @MarkDaniels1  Well, the Republicans can't get the taste of his dick out of their mouths, but he's still largely irrelevant, and couldn't get more than 40% of the national vote, so he's basically gone.
    1
  11585.  @adm22531  And that was proven in 2016, with disastrous results. Things have been better since Biden replaced him. I mean, you could argue that the Republicans could field someone better, but from the looks of it. . . no, they apparently can't.
    1
  11586.  @transwomenarentrealwomen290  I wish I was, but your username indicates that you're the one who is delusional. I mean, imagine the sort of bigot one would have to be to let their bigotry DEFINE who they are as a person.
    1
  11587.  @steveholmes5438  There';s a tape of Trump discussing wanting to sell the documents he has, but being worried about doing so because they were still classified and he knew that he couldn't declassify them using his mind like he tells his supporters he can do. It's unclear whether he actually did sell those documents or not though.
    1
  11588.  @jaba8625  #1 Healthcare premiums doubled since Obama was in office too, healthcare premiums keep going up, that's a health care company thing. They would be a lot lower if Republicans did not consistently block Democratic efforts to reform the healthcare system. #2 It is vital that everyone have insurance. Covering the uninsured is part of what drove up prices under Trump. Again, Democrats have a solution for this, it is Republicans that are blocking it. #3 Good. #4 No company cuts labor due to business taxes, and no company hires because taxes are low. Businesses hire people when they need people to make more money, and fire people when they have more people than they need. Unemployment is at a record LOW right now. Businesses can't find the workers they want because everyone already has jobs. All low corporate taxes do is transfer the tax burden from them, to YOU. #5 The IRS, FBI, and ATF won't be at my door any time soon, because I don't do crimes. If people ARE doing crimes though, I, as a taxpayer, WANT those guys showing up at their door. #6 The only people he pisses off is Republicans, and he does that by not being the guy they wanted. There's nothing he could be doing to make them like him, and that's fine, because they don't deserve someone that they like. As for the rest of the world, Biden is extremely popular in other countries, except with Putin and the CCP, who I guess is what you meant by "a lot of the world."
    1
  11589.  @chadwood4412  My point was, Biden is better than the last guy. I've backed that up any time it's been questioned.
    1
  11590.  @Eclipsis17  If I have smooth brain, then what would that make you? Frictionless?
    1
  11591.  @Sacred_Fire  How is he not? What kind of question is that? It's like asking "How is Jesus better than Satan?"
    1
  11592.  @chadwendt8702  Well, you're right, not in the Faux News fantasy land, but in the actual world, we're far better off today than we were three years ago.
    1
  11593.  @chadwood4412  They did find him guilty of sexually abusing her though, which SHOULD be something any moral person would be bothered by. They only couldn't find him guilty of rape too because his victim was unable to tell whether he actually stuck his dick in, or just his finger, and can you really blame her for that?
    1
  11594.  @tn-titan6159  Trump's approval rating is lower. If the GOP had fielded a better candidate in 2020, they might have actually won.
    1
  11595.  @THEREareTWoGENDERS2  Incorrect. That can be your belief, but that does not make it so.
    1
  11596.  @Sacred_Fire  You can't answer, so you answer with a rhetorical deflection.
    1
  11597.  @chadwood4412  He's settled most of the cases thrown against him, because he could not win them. She chose not to settle because she wanted a courtroom verdict. Trump is well on record that he sexually assaults women. He is proud of this fact. If you believe that he does not sexually assault women, then you are calling him a liar. If you do understand that he sexually assaults women, and are fine with that, then you lack morals. Which is it? The simple fact is, everything alleged against Trump is true. That's why so many things get "thrown at him," because he does SO many crimes to catch him doing. And why does the same not apply to Biden? Because Biden does not do those crimes. Simple as that. Justice is not "both sides get punished equally," justice is "both sides get punished for the crimes they DO."
    1
  11598.  @Sacred_Fire  That's what you did. Typical Alinsky tactic.
    1
  11599.  @Sacred_Fire  You didn't ask any questions for me to answer. People who did ask questions, got answers. All you seem to do is distract distract distract.
    1
  11600.  @Sacred_Fire  And that was an answer to the question you asked. Ask a broad question, expect an equally broad answer. If you want a more specific answer, then ask a more specific question.
    1
  11601.  @selonious341  Long as you're buying it.
    1
  11602.  @Sacred_Fire  And again, you focus on method, not substance. I told you if you asked a more specific question, you'd get a more specific answer, and yet, you seem to have no more specific question, so I take it you accept my answer that Biden is superior to Trump in all relevant ways.
    1
  11603.  @Sacred_Fire  So, again, you have nothing real to say, so instead of admitting that, you return to distraction.
    1
  11604.  @tn-titan6159  Still better than the other guy. You'd think the GOP could field someone who could do better.
    1
  11605.  @Nicktheguy24  You could, but you would be completely wrong if you tried that, because it wouldn't actually be true. That would be the difference. Reality exists, you don't get to just decide what reality you want to live in. The reality we all currently share is the one in which Donald Trump is morally bankrupt, and completely incompetent, and in which Biden is intelligent and capable (stutter aside), and morally sound. Now Trump followers can like him anyway, because he tells them what they want to hear and appeals to their racism and ignorance, but they don't get to pretend that he's NOT ignorance and amoral. They don't get to live in some Narnia where "actually he's a stable genius." If they try to claim that, then they will get called out on it, every time, because that's something most kids grow out of by middle school.
    1
  11606.  @THEREareTWoGENDERS2  Yes, you are. But you don't have to be.
    1
  11607.  @chadwood4412  I think you misunderstand his stuttering condition. Stuttering is caused by an over focus on getting the word you want to say out right, leading to freezing up. The method he practiced to compensate for his stutter is to instead force himself to pivot off the word he was intending to say, and onto a different word. Most of the time, this is unnoticeable, but more and more often now, the word that he springs to as a replacement doesn't fit his original intent, and is noticeably "wrong." Even though this is the case, the overall direction of his speech can remain on target and continue to return to his core principles, which shows that his active mind is handling things just fine, even if his words fail him. Compare that to a typical Trump speech, in which he will just ramble on and on about innumerable grievances until someone pulls him off the stage, with with no clear points. Did you know that "build the wall" exists primarily as a mnemonic device, something he can whip out when he's completely lost his train of thought and just wants to "reset" the speech? I think it would be great to get a better orator into the White House, like Obama, but he's term limited right now. That not being an option, I prefer someone who thinks well, and feels well, over someone who can't think or feel at all.
    1
  11608.  @chadwood4412  Again, you misunderstand what he said. You just want to believe that there is a world in which Biden is less mentally capable than his opponent, and maybe such a world does exist, but it's not this one.
    1
  11609.  @THEREareTWoGENDERS2  I know, right? That's why we voted him out of office in 2020 and elected Biden instead.
    1
  11610. I wonder, would there be any mechanical benefit to having in-wheel motors, but with much taller wheels than normal (like 150-200% as tall as a normal tire)? I assume that the reason wheels are at their current size is because when you steer you have to turn those wheels, and larger wheels would need more space to pivot. But what if you could control the speed of each wheel, and make the "outside" wheel spin faster than the "inside" one, couldn't that allow you to steer without turning the axis as much?
    1
  11611. It was probably because he didn't do anything wrong, and the current minority party has integrity.
    1
  11612.  @HoangDoge235  Hush money is legal, unless it is in the interests of changing the results of an election. That's what he was convicted of.
    1
  11613.  @acekelly1000  Several of them were Fox viewers and one of them OAN. Any one of those could have hung the jury if they'd thought Trump was innocent.
    1
  11614.  @acekelly1000  Several of them were Fox viewers and one of them OAN. Any one of those could have ended the trial if they'd thought Trump was innocent.
    1
  11615.  @DsjdjdkdkffkfdmsldlKq  I don't think there's evidence to support your claim. In cases where there is such evidence, they do get prosecuted, like john Edwards.
    1
  11616.  @Tatchko  I think he's one of those "sovereign citizens," which means "if you throw enough legal terns into a sack and scatter them on the floor, that is as good as a valid legal argument."
    1
  11617. Why would we have military bases named after traitors? Which one will be renamed to "Benedict Arnold?
    1
  11618. I feel sorry for people with six fingers. Now everyone will think all their pictures are AI.
    1
  11619. You are also radical then.
    1
  11620.  @hotpocket5501  Sad.
    1
  11621.  @Mustapha1963  Well, people you've been told are "professional agitators" have been at these schools. Now whether they are or not, or whether they are just people who care about these issues and would like to see them resolved, depends on how much you want to believe.
    1
  11622. Epcot's Mission Space, only more expensive.
    1
  11623. Yup, Biden. Trump just wants the US to be dependent on Saudi Arabia, that's why they gave his family over two billion dollars.
    1
  11624. "Because Faux News told me liberals didn't want me to do something" is the primary motivating factor of conservatives these days. If Faux News said liberals wanted people to not jump off bridges, half the country would be in the water by the next morning. And the world would be a better place.
    1
  11625. "Give a mouse a cookie. . ."
    1
  11626.  @vandalorianvandalorian4769  As I said, I don't wear one most places anymore because I've already been vaccinated, but in situations where it makes sense, it makes sense.
    1
  11627.  @deathmetal271  That seems to be a Holocaust reference. You do understand that this has absolutely nothing to do with the Holocaust, right? And that even making such a comparison is antisemitic?
    1
  11628.  @susettesantiago5509  Hard to say. Hate crimes against Jewish people have been up in the Us over the past few years. The point I was making though is that it has absolutely nothing to do with mask wearing, and it's insulting to the history of the Holocaust to imply any similarity between the two.
    1
  11629.  @susettesantiago5509  Less Americans died in WWII than died due to covid. As for exact figures, you can look those up as easily as I can, why are you asking me?
    1
  11630.  @KevinRyan-MouthAlmighty  Why do you say "in both cases," when there is zero truth to that. Nobody was beaten or arrested over failure to wear a mask, and the only "injury" caused to them was by their own failure to protect themselves from a virus. The issue with "yellow stars" was NEVER that "people are being forced to wear an item of clothing that they don't like. Not even a little bit. The issue with the yellow stars was that it was to single out Jewish people specifically so that they would face persecution without their country for no reason other than their birth. That has NOTHING to do with mask wearing during the pandemic. Do you get similarly irate over "no shoes, no shirt, no service?"
    1
  11631.  @sufyb6432  Not really. I mean, 1. a lot of people still didn't wear masks at all, or used them sarcastically, so the virus still would have passed between them, like it currently does among the unvaccinated. 2. nobody ever claimed that they were 100% effective, or needed to be, they help. Two people wearing masks in a room, one sick and one healthy, them wearing masks does not make it impossible to transmit the virus, but it does reduce the odds. It means that out of 100 situations in which the virus would pass from one person to another if neither wore masks, there would be some portion of those people who would not get infected if one or both were wearing effective masks. So the better question is, why not wear a mask where you can, when it helps?
    1
  11632.  @blueskiesforever114  See, this is the sort of politeness we need out of chat bots. Yes, thank you for self-identifying.
    1
  11633.  @RighteousRage  The flue is a lot more mild than the pandemic was. More Americans died from the pandemic in 2020 alone than in 10+ years of flu deaths, and that was after being much more careful than people are about the flu. Extraordinary threats require extraordinary responses. On top of that, there is an effective flu vaccine, which we did not have for the pandemic until after Biden took office, and also, in some places, they do wear masks during flu season, and it does work, but that's more of a personal choice thing, since, again, the risks are MUCH lower.
    1
  11634. Because then you would not know who to vote for, because you could not predict how the candidates would respond to problems. Parties give you some idea of what a politician is likely to do in the future.
    1
  11635.  @diluzo Yeah, but we live in the real world, not in some fantasy where that happens.
    1
  11636. It's called "setting a good example." There are still idiots out there who don't wear masks.
    1
  11637. The Democratic party is voting for Kamala Harris.
    1
  11638. It's because they are running for "VP candidate on the losing ticket."
    1
  11639. That's because solving the problem is against the interests of the fossil fuel industry, and they have a lot of willing servants.
    1
  11640. The fossil fuel lobby is well paid.
    1
  11641. What are you talking about? In the previous administration, members of the President's staff were openly discussing attempts to overthrow the constitutional republic and install their boss as President even after his term had expired, in the Oval Office, and the President was in the room at the time, and apparently he had no idea that this was happening right in front of his face! By that standard, this sort of miscommunication is nothing at all.
    1
  11642.  @Tony-k9i  I was not aware that Trump's felonies were on tape, but the other evidence was plenty to convict.
    1
  11643.  @Freyja123  Republicans tend to do much worse. This is the problem.
    1
  11644. If they crossed illegally, that would already count against any "standard" immigration attempt in the future, but it would be irrelevant to an asylum claim.
    1
  11645.  @acr8615  You weren't paying attention, these people are picked up and processed by border patrol. They are officially registered, just by the federal government, not by the local police. Nobody crosses the border without getting caught.
    1
  11646. Hydrogen can be good in certain places, but it's really being pushed by the natural gas lobby, because they can convert their natural gas into hydrogen, and want to use that to "green wash" it. Hydrogen itself is clean, but producing it using natural gas is extremely dirty. I think that if countries start to move toward hydrogen as a battery, they also need to pass laws making it illegal to use hydrogen produced using fossil fuels. If they are not prevented from doing so, natural gas producers will keep trying to slip it into the supply chain.
    1
  11647. When has "Rand Paul says. . ." ever been followed by anything of value?
    1
  11648.  @MinecraftLively  I think you copy-pasted it from another post, but my answer there was also true, that the punishment was appropriate relative to the scale of the business. If you fine a hot dog cart ten million dollars, that is unfair. If you fine a billionaire a few hundred thousand, that is the necessary amount for the penalty to have any meaning.
    1
  11649.  @MinecraftLively  They aren't particularly new theories. And you're disagreeing with the OUTCOME, so whether you focus on the ruling or the penalty phase is just semantics.
    1
  11650.  @butterchickenandnaan  She ran on the grounds of holding him accountable for his wrongdoings, which is the duty for which she was running. It would be like saying "it was political" for a dog catcher to promise to catch stray dogs.
    1
  11651. What, like invading a peaceful neighbor?
    1
  11652.  @texajp1946  Not with Russia though, and Russia has been funding the "opponents" in that "civil" war the entire time. If Russia had not gotten involved, there would have been no fighting.
    1
  11653. He has fully executed his oaths of office. He's also the duly appointed and confirmed DHS Secretary, so that would not be "impersonating" anything. And no, he's not in dereliction of any of his duties, he's faithfully executed them.
    1
  11654.  @williamdozier5190  None of what you just said conforms to actual reality, you're making my point for me.
    1
  11655.  @williamdozier5190  I agree, because you would be incapable of holding up your end of it. Which was my point in the first place.
    1
  11656. On my standard freezer, the rubber seal on one corner has some sort of crimp in it that keeps it from sealing completely, and you can feel that the top of the fridge door is so much colder than it should be due to air falling from that corner above.
    1
  11657. Ironically, the reason we don't have election results on election night is mostly because of changes made by Republican statehouses to prevent early ballot counting. It's impossible to count every ballot within 24 hours.
    1
  11658.  @marygraceviramontez4669  The money they are giving away on migrants is a drop in the bucket compared to the amount that they give away to Americans.
    1
  11659.  @lindanorris2455  They aren't allowed to. That is a non-issue.
    1
  11660.  @Musicman-y7v  The important thing to keep in mind is that just because that plan worked out for you, does not mean that it would work out the same for someone else. Each person's body is different and the same plan does not work for everyone.
    1
  11661.  @icykenny92  "Calories in, calories out" is outdated science. We've long since learned that the body retains calories in an uneven manner that can be impacted by all sorts of things. Reducing calories can often help, but it is not usually a complete solution.
    1
  11662.  @lettheflamestakeover7374  Science says no such thing. You misunderstand how science works.
    1
  11663.  @lettheflamestakeover7374  I'm not a science denier. You are just using the term wrong. You probably think that it's possible to be a Christian maga.
    1
  11664.  @Musicman-y7v  I'm not making excuses, I'm pointing out the fact that the situation is more complex than you give credit for.
    1
  11665.  @esQmo  Because Russia wanted to control Ukraine.
    1
  11666. @ Russia invaded Ukraine.
    1
  11667. @ That was the appropriate response to the nonsnse that was coming out of Trump's mouth.
    1
  11668. @ We either pay to defend Ukraine today, or we pay more to defend Alaska in a few years.
    1
  11669. @ Ukraine had nukes when they were part of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union broke up, they decommissioned their nukes in exchange for security guarantees from both the US and Russia. Russia broke those guarantees. If you want to argue that the nukes did not belong to Ukraine because they were from the Soviet era, it would be more accurate to claim that all of Russia's nukes actually belong to Ukraine, since that's where much of the technology was developed.
    1
  11670. @ Because Euronazis did not invade Ukraine in 2014, Russia did.
    1
  11671. @ Do you smell burnt toast?
    1
  11672.  @trent20817  Didn't seem so fine during the blizzard a few years back. Don't seem so fine with all the shootings going on over the past few years as gun laws have gotten looser and looser. Don't seem so fine when people have to flee to other states to get abortions. Texas is a mess. It's just a mess with a lot of oil money propping it up.
    1
  11673. Carol is 5th. It was Mar-Vell, Monica Rambeau, Genis-Vell, and Phylla-Vell (both Mar's kids, he gets around).
    1
  11674. That doesn't help anything. They don't care.
    1
  11675.  @LarryaproudU.S.citizen  Nope. Most members of congress are loaded. Their salaries don't matter much to them. Even the ones that aren't that rich can afford a few extra weeks without. It's a non-issue.
    1
  11676.  @davecalabrese4486  You might not consider mailmen to be government officials, but their paychecks do. The federal government is the largest employer in the US. Not paying government employees means putting 2% of Americans (at least temporarily) out of work. Again, if you just mean congress, then you need to be more specific on that. And leave the President out of it, he's got nothing to do with these shenanigans, this is all the House Republicans.
    1
  11677. Well of course he does. It would find out bad things about his party.
    1
  11678. It's possible. I also expect that the Ukrainians can capitalize on Russians moving their troops back and forth to pick them off on the roads.
    1
  11679.  @NJ-wb1cz  But as we've seen, the Russian troops are terrible at their job, so the Ukrainians' theoretical inexperience is irrelevant. What they do have is far superior weapons provided by the west, in more or less limitless supply, while Russia is quickly running out of things to massacre civilians with.
    1
  11680.  @benjaminlehman3221  Why? Just because it is one Republican prosecutor's opinion that a Jury would find him sympathetic has no bearing on his actual capabilities in the office. There is no indication that his actual mental faculties are failing, and at the very least they are superior to any of his 2024 opponents.
    1
  11681.  @markg0410  Whatever decline you believe Biden is in, it's important to remember that Trump is far worse, so there doesn't seem to be a superior alternative on the table. Likewise, Trump is unlikely to pick a VP candidate worthy of licking Harris's boots. Biden is old, he's not running any marathons, but I don't need that out of a president. All I need is someone who won't make the Supreme Court any worse than it already is, and who can sign bills passed by a Democratic congress and veto bills passed by a Republican one. That is what will make America great again.
    1
  11682.  @henryg3313  Biden knows where he is, he just has a speech disability that causes him to fumble his wording sometimes. Roosevelt was one of our greatest presidents and he did it from a wheelchair. I don't mind a president who stumbles sometimes, so long as he makes the right decisions for our country.
    1
  11683.  @markg0410  Whatever decline you believe Biden is in, it's important to remember that his opponent is far worse, so there doesn't seem to be a superior alternative on the table. Likewise, his opponent is unlikely to pick a VP candidate worthy of licking Harris's boots. Biden is old, he's not running any marathons, but I don't need that out of a president. All I need is someone who won't make the Supreme Court any worse than it already is, and who can sign bills passed by a Democratic congress and veto bills passed by a Republican one. That is what will make America good again.
    1
  11684.  @henryg3313  Roosevelt led the country through the depression and WWII from a wheelchair, a few stumbles don't bother me any, and he is at least more aware of where he is at any given time than the guy running against him. Right?
    1
  11685.  @markg0410  Whatever decline you believe he has, it's important to remember that his opponent is far worse, so there doesn't seem to be a superior alternative on the table. Likewise, his opponent is unlikely to pick a VP candidate worthy of licking the current VP's boots. The President is old, he's not running any marathons, but I don't need that out of a president. All I need is someone who won't make the Supreme Court any worse than it already is, and who can sign bills passed by a Democratic congress and veto bills passed by a Republican one. I care about America enough to want that. Do you?
    1
  11686.  @markg0410  " I do not need an administration that hampers growth, allows crime to rule the streets, and offers handouts to illegals. " Excellent, then I'm glad Joe has your vote. America has grown more over the last 4 years than under the previous 4, crime has come down more over the last year than in decades, and the border is more secure today than it has ever been, despite far more people arriving to attempt a crossing.
    1
  11687.  @henryg3313  How is that relevant to the topic at hand? The only candidate who's brain isn't working is on the other side.
    1
  11688.  @markg0410  " I do not need an administration that hampers growth, allows crime to rule the streets, and offers handouts to illegals." Good, then you support the current president, because the economy has grown more under his watch than the previous one, and crime has fallen more over the last year than in decades.
    1
  11689.  @markg0410  If you were better informed, then you would know I'm right. Luckily, that is a solvable problem. Come back once you have.
    1
  11690.  @markg0410  Aw, someone has Facebook and thinks making personal attacks is a substitute for being right. How adorable.
    1
  11691. @BriFiConnections He has a speech impediment. This is nothing new. He often gets names wrong, but he's referring to recent talks he had with current world leaders, not with dead ones. You just want to make that into something bigger than it is, forgetting that his opponent does the EXACT same thing, ALL the time.
    1
  11692. The WSJ made every effort to make this benign situation seem sinister. They left out that Joe Biden played no role in deciding to remove that prosecutor, he was only the messenger of the Obama White House. If they had provided more context, more people in the comments would understand what a non-story this is.
    1
  11693. How is that where your head goes?
    1
  11694.  @hudson3535  Oh, I'm opposed to Gaza, I just find it kinda creepy how you jumped to immigrants on a completely unrelated topic. You should probably get that looked at, it's not healthy.
    1
  11695.  @hudson3535  I'm pretty sure I'm at least half as old as you are, grandpa. That didn't give me "immigrants" Tourettes.
    1
  11696. Unfortunately the current House is not in a position to investigate anyone for corruption. The corruption is already in the House. Maybe we'll get something better in two years.
    1
  11697. I don't think that works, rerouting it is simple enough. It would require basically LOTS of countries banning Russia from the Internet, so that the sources they could use to enter it would get tighter and tighter.
    1
  11698.  @mvpfocus  "The Internet" doesn't really have "paying customers." It's more like a highway network, it just exists for anyone that can use the onramps.
    1
  11699.  @mvpfocus  Of course governments need to step in, businesses exist only to make money. And again, the financial conflict of interest is not that they want these bad actors on their platforms, it's that the costs of preventing them are higher than it would be worth to them. Negligence, not malice. Don't blame the scorpion for stinging. That's why you need an external entity to keep them in check if you also want them to serve the public good.
    1
  11700. ​ @mvpfocus  I do think there is a noteworthy distinction. Your way implies that they want the bad actors there, that they feel that these add profit to their brand. I don't believe that's the case, I think that if they could snap their fingers and insta-ban all of them without any collateral damage, they would. I just think that it's much more complicated and expensive than that, and so they decide it's not worth the costs. I don't think social media is worse than any other form of business, they all need a leash to be a productive part of society.
    1
  11701.  @mvpfocus  You didn't read what I said.
    1
  11702.  @mvpfocus  I tend to agree, I was just pointing out that your previous post has been made irrelevant by the one I put before it.
    1
  11703.  @mvpfocus  Well, yes, because your last four posts have added zero to the conversation, so there was little to return.
    1
  11704.  @mvpfocus  No, I think I covered it several posts ago. and you didn't have an intelligence response, so I guess that was the end of the conversation proper. I don't know what you're doing now.
    1
  11705.  @mvpfocus  Nah, spell checking is a waste of time. Having well formed thoughts is more important.
    1
  11706.  @mvpfocus  Conflating correct spelling with intelligence is a bad sign.
    1
  11707. The first part of the video reminded me of an issue that comes up in the gaming space all the time, that poorer countries often have access to legal ways of buying a US $70 game for much much less than that, which is fine, but then people outside those countries are able to use VPNs and other methods to get those same games at the cheaper pricing, which then causes legal battles with providers that say "you aren't allowed to do that," and then governments that say "yeah they can and you have to allow it," and then maybe the companies that were willing to sell their games for cheap decide not to do that anymore. the worst part is the gray market key-resllers that profit off of this as well. It's a tough thing in the globalized, highly digital world that digital products are basically olnly worth what people are willing and able to pay for them, and in theory getting $5 out of someone could can't spend more than $5 is better than nothing, but not if it costs you $65 from someone who could have spent $70 but is cheap and tricky.
    1
  11708. HR2 wouldn't work, but pass the bipartisan compromise!
    1
  11709.  @bobhilbrich6131  He didn't handle it the first time. There were more migrants in 2019 than during Obama's time.
    1
  11710. Yeah, Trump is incapable of accepting it when voters don't like him.
    1
  11711. Fani is prosecuting the sinners. That is her job.
    1
  11712.  @wayne-d8g  Well, the goal is to keep them in.
    1
  11713. Actually, this is the OPPOSITE of Orwellian. Orwell was talking about people SPREADING misinformation, not people CORRECTING misinformation. If people are spreading public health misinformation, it is vital that the government fight back against that. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have died over the last couple of years for no reason other than their own belief in medical misinformation. They were killed by their own willful ignorance.
    1
  11714.  @JohnB3363  You clearly aren't aware of the fanciful tales of "defensive gun use" that the gun lobby trots out.
    1
  11715.  @JohnB3363  More than you, apparently.
    1
  11716.  @JohnB3363  And yet you still get your statistics wrong, so apparently "what you know" is more fiction than fact. Don't brag about knowing more about Narnia than others.
    1
  11717. I hate when anti-EV people make the argument "China invested more than us in EVs, so we should just give up on the idea entirely!" That's not how global competition works!
    1
  11718.  @roberth4395  He doesn't want peace, he just wants Putin to not be mad at him. If he actually wanted peace, he knows the only way to achieve that is to drive Putin out of Ukraine.
    1
  11719.  @sergioleone8592  Again, that's not how the system works. You vote for your MEP, the MEPs vote for the President. You vote for MEPs that will support a President that you would support. If they vote for someone you disagree with, then vote them out next time. And who said I do not hold the people of Hungary accountable for the PM they chose? As for "legitimacy," Von der Leyen is president of the EU, which is a higher position than the leader of any country within it, just as the President of the US is above the governor of any given state. This should not be difficult to understand.
    1
  11720. We need to get Ukraine some of those maximum range HIMAR missiles.
    1
  11721. So TL;DR, climate change is increasing the odds of alternating wet and dry seasons, increased chances of the exact circumstances that caused this fire, and therefore it's likely to repeat every few years.
    1
  11722. They never had to raid his house because he invited them in to search it. They only raided Ma-a-Lago AFTER requesting the documents for several months and being stonewalled. The only "double standard" is that they did not put Trump in handcuffs that night like they would have if anyone else had tried that.
    1
  11723. Faux can't have people on staff who feel upset about violence against liberals. Violence against liberals is their entire brand!
    1
  11724. Are Putin's agents at Fox upset that his country is in the hotseat now?
    1
  11725. Right, but apparently they can agree to hand over a country that does not belong to either of them, for some reason.
    1
  11726. @ Nah. Russia invaded their neighbor. "The west" is just supporting them, as "the West" supported Britain against Putin's predecessor in WWII.
    1
  11727. @ So far, the only country under attack is Ukraine.
    1
  11728. So long as they're good ideas, why not?
    1
  11729.  @hughjanus5518  Trump didn't propose it first, it's been going around for years already. And the reason to not support he man is because most of the things he supports are awful. It would be like supporting a wolf for the role of "guard dog" on the basis that he's pretty good at herding sheep.
    1
  11730.  @hughjanus5518  Also, what does hiring IRS agents have to do with anything? You say that like it's somehow a bad thing.
    1
  11731. The only hope for humanity's future is that we can 1. build governments that are completely independent from corporations, 2. that these governments are democratically elected, and 3. that they are willing to turn companies upside down and shake them until enough money falls out to cover everyone else. Otherwise, there is zero hope.
    1
  11732. @ I said in America, not in Texas.
    1
  11733. The House Weaponizing Government Committee certainly has. The rest of the government is doing the People's work.
    1
  11734. Leaking classified information at this level is a serious enough problem that it would never be worth it for the "PR value" alone. This was probably just someone in the chain who had anti-Israel sympathies and wanted to mess with them.
    1
  11735. If California had a governor like her, millions more would have died.
    1
  11736. It's possible that they will give the wrong answer, because they do not understand the complexities of border security, but if they give the correct answer, then it would be that yes, the border is more secure now than it was under Trump, there are just more people arriving and being detained.
    1
  11737.  @Balnisgoofyaf  This is no different than what these laws would look like under Republicans, other than that they would be separating children from their parents. The same amount of people would be showing up and crossing either way. Trump was not "better" at anything, he was just the President during a different set of years. Fewer people showed up.
    1
  11738.  @Balnisgoofyaf  It would have been the same under Trump. It's not like he did anything "better," he was just president during years in which fewer people were trying to cross. Time moves forward.
    1
  11739.  @PauletteWinters  But it's at least more secure than it was five years ago.
    1
  11740. Not Every one, but there is a LOT of overlap. The "white" in "white nationalist" does NOT refer to the skin color of the person holding those believes, there are plenty of latino white nationalists, and even a few black ones. The "white" in "white nationalist" refers to "white supremacist ideology," so a white nationalist is someone who supports a nationalist policy rooted in white supremacist positions. It is a flavor of nationalism.
    1
  11741. It's kinda bonkers that you have a communist country that doesn't have a quality social safety net. The ONE thing that a communist country should offer is economic security, that no matter what, your needs WILL get taken care of. Instead they just seem to have all the downsides.
    1
  11742. This story was about Biden, not about his opponent.
    1
  11743.  @MichelleWilliams-di2pf  The facts deny that. Now his opponent, on the other hand, ouch. Age has hit him HARD.
    1
  11744.  @AngeloP0203 Talk when your president knows how to ride a bike.
    1
  11745.  @piratesteve5  Raising the debt ceiling has nothing to do with balancing the budget. If you believe the government is spending too much, then you have that fight in the budgeting process itself. not when it comes to the debt ceiling. There is NO responsible argument for playing chicken with the debt ceiling, it is purely theater or ignorance, often both. Also, you might not like Biden or Harris, but look who they were up against. They each run mental circles against the previous Republican nominee.
    1
  11746.  @piratesteve5  So you are saying that the solution to Democrats investing too much in America's future is to burn America's future to the ground by nuking our entire economic system? Seems a bit like curing a cold by amputating the head.
    1
  11747.  @johnr.timmers2297  The US national debt is not like household debt. It does not "come do," it is constantly paid off in a rolling fashion.Ideally we want to reduce its size over time, but you do that through the budget process, not the debt ceiling process.
    1
  11748.  @piratesteve5  Read the ARP and the Build Back Better plan.
    1
  11749.  @paulqruel9290  I paid off my student debt a decade ago, and don't watch CNN. Nor do I have TDS, I think he's a buffoon and voted for the other guy last year, as did the majority of voters.
    1
  11750.  @piratesteve5  Why do you believe that they are terrible? They are making plenty of investments in the future. They are building new bridges, and repairing existing structures and roadways across the country. They are lining nobody's pockets for "shit that won't get built," they are paying to get actual work done. I do not understand where this nihilism comes from.
    1
  11751.  @piratesteve5  The bills say they are investing in things. Maybe you should read the bills.
    1
  11752.  @piratesteve5  Again, I have read the bills. I like the infrastructure and other beneficial programs they contain. Which do you disagree with?
    1
  11753.  @piratesteve5  Again, a ton of it is going to infrastructure, you should probably read the bills before commenting on them. Why would Republican governors and congressmen be cheering about how this bill is funding specific road and bridge projects in their home states if that wasn't actually in the bill? As for student loan forgiveness, that's a complex issue. The argument to be made is that federal student loan programs distorted the amount it cost to go to college, it's certainly much more expensive today than when I went or my parents went. Is debt forgiveness the best long term solution? Maybe not, but I do think it's fair to do something to help balance the current generation's costs with those that came before, and that the long term health of the system needs to involve some form of reduced base tuition. It is better for the US economy for the government to assume those debts than for an entire generation to be burdened with them. You keep saying that you disagree with the bills, but present really weak attempts at actually pointing out parts of the bills that are bad in any way. Seriously, what don't you like about them?
    1
  11754.  @piratesteve5  You keep saying that there's nothing going to infrastructure, which is just patently untrue. Why should anyone care what you say when you are so untrustworthy? I mean, you can oppose it or not, that's just your opinion, but the facts are the facts. You aren't entitled to your own facts.
    1
  11755.  @piratesteve5  Nothing in the bill is earmarked for "contractors who are never going to use the money to build what they are contracted to do." It's all earmarked toward actual projects that will get done. I mean, it's bills like this one that led to things like the interstate system and most of the major bridges in the country. You can pretend that nothing in the bill will actually get done the way it's framed, but that's not a valid criticism of the bill's contents, that's just nihilistic cynicism on your part. You claimed that you don't like the bill, but now it seems you've just shifted to "I don't like my own imagination about the bill," and frankly, that's a "you" problem.
    1
  11756.  @piratesteve5  I don't need to you say that the bill contains infrastructure, you are not relevant. The bill contains infrastructure whether you say it or not. I have no idea what you think you stand to gain by pretending otherwise, but the only thing it accomplishes is to make you seem foolish to others.
    1
  11757. And yet, when the American right is in charge, they do all the things that the Nazis did. What they say and what they do are two different things.
    1
  11758. Only because the federal government gave no leadership. If the White House had been more serious about this from the start, more governors, especially in red states, would have reacted a lot faster than this. Also, if Trump had not turned away thousands of free testing kits early on, we could have been testing a lot sooner, which would have reduced the spread. There are all sorts of things, big and small, that a more responsible administration would have done that would have reduced the spread.
    1
  11759. Just because he got beat badly doesn't mean it wasn't a debate, it was just one that he lost.
    1
  11760.  @violoncelo1000  How many of those events were not immediately proceeded by an attack from those regions against Israeli civilians?
    1
  11761.  @violoncelo1000  I take that to mean that you agree that each of those events was proceeded by an attack on Israel from those areas, justifying a response. I didn't watch the video you mentioned above, nor do I care to. I don't like Netanyahu, and certainly do not support him across the board, but I believe that whoever was in charge of Israel right now, it would be their duty to remove Hamas before moving on to any other priorities. Anything less will only lead to further violence, as your list shows.
    1
  11762.  @residentgrey  Then you are only hearing lies.
    1
  11763.  @violoncelo1000  I answered you.
    1
  11764.  @violoncelo1000  I already answered your question. Now you answer mine, which does not require you to watch additional videos. Of the list provided, how many of those occurred WITHOUT a previous attack against Israel?
    1
  11765. "Don't pass what you actually want, we'll just off3er you a tiny bit of what you want, and then repeal it the instant the abortion protections are off the ballot."
    1
  11766.  @wildfire9280  I'm generally not a fan of direct democracy. If we're learned nothing else from maga, it's that people are dumb. Representative democracy is better, the people get a say in who is in charge, but people in charge are at least more likely to be wiser than the people voting for them, and can also access specialized knowledge that the public cannot, so they are more likely to make the correct choices. No system is perfect though. I wouldn't mind some tweaks, removing the EC, removing state districting, going to ranked choice voting, consolidating a few of the emptier states, etc., but it's still better than destroying the whole thing.
    1
  11767.  @wildfire9280  Like what would be a Athenian check that would improve the current system? Also, while some amount of corruption seems inevitable in basically any functional form of government, so long as the democratic election of representatives would be fair, the representatives are limited in how corrupt they can get away with. It's mainly just making a little extra money off the top of things, which is fine in the big picture, so long as they also do their work for the American people. It's still better than not having them at all.
    1
  11768.  @danielortman2534  Realistically, the R or the D will have more consequence than anything else that individual might do while in office. That's a necssary outcome of a representative system with posts determined by majoritarian positions.
    1
  11769. Few fewer Christians are beat for their faith than any other religious group, even though there are more of them to beat. It is a made up problem. If religious intolerance is a problem to you, then maybe focus on the people actually being harmed over their religions.
    1
  11770. "I don't see this ending well." The Trump administration motto.
    1
  11771. The plane didn't have any reflective surfaces pointed toward the crowd.
    1
  11772.  @kathleenalbright3908  The bottom of the plane was not that reflective. Also, the people in the crowds were, for obvious reasons, kept well back from the plan, so they would appear very small in any reflections you could see there.
    1
  11773.  @lavarharper  You do know that people use their phone differently, right? Some may not have been recording, others might have been zoomed in more or less than others, and they would all be pointing at slightly different angles, so if you see an image of people filming on phones and they are all identical, that is sus.
    1
  11774.  @robertthomas7239  No, it *did * get followed up on by the FBI, they just found that there was nothing actually there to find. A lack of evidence doesn't necessarily mean you need to keep digging, it sometimes means that no evidence exists.
    1
  11775.  @robertthomas7239  It was well documented, that's what Wray was talking about when he said they followed the procedures for it and found nothing of value. Why would you think it wouldn't be followed up on?
    1
  11776.  @Moleetov  I think that I'm right and they aren't because of the actions they have taken to make the case for that conclusion. If you have not reached a similar conclusion, then you have not been paying attention.
    1
  11777.  @Moleetov  I believe that all legislation should be moral.
    1
  11778.  @Moleetov  Russia can "warn the world" not to do something all that like. That never justifies an invasion. Ukraine has the right to make friends with whoever they like, Russia never gets a veto on their rights. Also, I have no idea where "East coast USA" is in Russia, but it's nothing like the one in the actual US, I assure you.
    1
  11779.  @Lopez-gd8hy  Maybe not, but that still does not give Russia or North Korea ANY right to attack their neighbors. They can seethe all they like, they just can't fire missiles.
    1
  11780. We can only hope he finds one.
    1
  11781.  @dirkbester9050  From what I've heard, the Rivian models tend to be very good at what they do, but they don't yet cover all the varieties of EV. I think Teslas were good when they were the only ones making a good faith attempt at a commercial EV, but I think that whichever type of car you're looking to get, there's probably someone else out there that makes a more reliable and/or affordable version of that vehicle.
    1
  11782.  @franklong6269  I don't think that's true. I think that they did make the best for a brief period around five years ago, but plenty of others have caught up and surpassed them in terms of quality. Now it's more about brand recognition and sunk cost.
    1
  11783. Real Engineering just did a video on it. Seems like it's working so far, but you know, marketing.
    1
  11784.  Kroh13  Yes, we know what happened. Biden won.
    1
  11785.  @kaischmidt8030  That's not how elections work. Trump tried, but failed.
    1
  11786.  Ken G  Everyone should be analyzing his speech, and it will already include more lies than anyone else could possibly invent. He was the lying-est President in history.
    1
  11787.  Ken G  If Trump manages to get through an entire speech with only five lies, it would be his first.
    1
  11788.  @shur7318  I think you misunderstand, I'm opposed to Trump. So clearly I do understand what success looks like feels like and more importantly how it contributes to society when it’s for the Good of all without out devious intentions attached to the actions itself. If I didn't understand those things, I might be dumb enough to believe Trump is a good idea.
    1
  11789.  Ken G  I helped vote Trump out of office, which saved the soul of this nation. That was a massive success.
    1
  11790.  Ken G  When have I ever cared about women's sports?
    1
  11791.  Ken G  Lol,. that should be a hoot. At least he's taking the Republican party off the ballot.
    1
  11792.  Ken G  Lol.
    1
  11793.  Ken G  It'll be great when he runs again, because he'll beat the other Republicans in the primary again, driving up Democratic engagement, so the Senate and House will both lose more seats and Trump will lose the presidency again by a humiliating margin like last time. The Democratic party is fine. They're arguing with each other over matters of substance, not about whether insurrection and racism are maybe a bad thing like the Republicans.
    1
  11794.  Ken G  What "irreversible damage"? Democrats are solving covid, getting the economy back on track, and building a green energy revolution.
    1
  11795.  @alhambrabiker1476  Irrelevant to to conversation at hand.
    1
  11796. Fake burgers is all well and good, but they need to make quality steaks too.
    1
  11797.  @elizabethferguson7002  So what? All that means is that China is making interest off of our bonds. It's not like a bank loan where they could "call it due" or something. That's just America improving on China's dime. Also, 1/2 a million acres is only 0.01% of US farmland. Ooooh, scary.
    1
  11798.  @ericzhou-y4t  You have not been paying attention then. China gives money to practically every poor country on Earth, WAY more than the US does. It's why they get their way so often in places like the UN where each country gets one vote, no matter how insignificant.
    1
  11799. @@TaejongYi That wouldn't make sense though,m since they already pay for their own defense. Why would he say that if it did not apply?
    1
  11800. @@TaejongYi Europe pays less than the US, but so does everyone else. We can't expect them to keep up with US spending, only the US can manage that. Also, they have been spending as much on Ukraine as we have. They just signed off on a $54 billion aid package.
    1
  11801.  @ericzhou-y4t  Ok, but what I meant is that China dumps TONS of money into other countries around the world. The dollar is the world's currency, but China is the world's bank.
    1
  11802.  @ericzhou-y4t  The US debt is by Americans for Americans, it has nothing to do with the rest of the world.
    1
  11803. @@TaejongYi It benefits the US that we have the largest and strongest military, and that we can be trusted to defend our allies. I'm sorry if you can't see that. It benefits Asian countries at risk that the US is strong in defending Europe from aggressors. If the US allowed Ukraine to fall to Russia, Taiwan would be next. China is waiting for that signal.
    1
  11804. @@TaejongYi Good game, comrade.
    1
  11805.  @ericzhou-y4t  Portions of the debt are held all over, but almost all of it is held by Americans. The rest is just chump change. Again, it's no worry that the debt is as large as it is, we could have double or triple as much. We shouldn't waste this resource, but neither is there any reason whatsoever to implode the economy just to avoid more debt. Austerity benefits no one but America's adversaries.
    1
  11806.  @ericzhou-y4t  More than that, political good will. It's been what the US has been doing for decades now, although much less since the end of the Cold War.
    1
  11807.  @ericzhou-y4t  Nah, the US could print a LOT more money before causing significant inflation. We've already kept inflation down much better than the rest of the world has, and China doesn't exactly have the money laying around to send either, they print money too.
    1
  11808. But then the question remains, without censure, how do you adequately combat misinformation? We know full well that a 1:1 "misinformation vs facts" rarely works, so what do we do instead?
    1
  11809.  @MCsCreations  Right, so since it's impossible to convince them, then at the very least it can be a good thing to prevent them finding misinformation in the first place. By silencing one idiot, you quarantine them from infecting thousands more.
    1
  11810.  @MCsCreations  The problem is that there is a massive difference between a valid scientific debate and "pop debate" between random people on the Internet. If actual scientists are debating a topic in good faith and using accurate data, then it can have productive results, but too much of what is mislabled "debate" on the Internet is just one side presenting a well reasoned and supported case, and the other side giving a cool story, and the audience siding with the cool story. That is of no benefit to anyone. If someone presents a compelling scientific position, then there is ZERO value to "well, but maybe you're wrong?" If they are wrong, then the only value would be in finding EVIDENCE to contradict their position and presenting that, but too many prefer to hear "well maybe you're wrong" on a topic they don't want to be true, and just accept that as a valid counterargument, which breaks the entire concept of "productive debate."
    1
  11811. The Democrat bailout is exactly what helps the American people.
    1
  11812. Well this explains a LOT.
    1
  11813.  @kingwilly8041  No, again, everything that's happening here is just following the law. In some states, it's past the date at which someone's name can be changed on the ballot. There is no "unequal treatment" here, just different circumstances.
    1
  11814. US military bases and embassies count as US soil for legal purposes. Children born on US military bases are considered to be natural born US citizens.
    1
  11815.  @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.
    1
  11816. The current Republican party is defined by hypocrisy.
    1
  11817.  @Cmunic8  Yeah, Maga often put their own false idol over the teachings of God, which is breaking the first amendment.
    1
  11818. "Make things worse?"
    1
  11819. It's not the legal system, it's Indiana voters voting in a Republican DA, even knowing that he's a Republican.
    1
  11820.  @343Films  Yeah, but unfortunately it's a byproduct of people watching too much Faux News. They live in an alternate reality where up is down and down is up.
    1
  11821.  @norman_5623  Yep.
    1
  11822. Yes, people should not have elected Republicans to public office.
    1
  11823. I think that you're factually incorrect in saying that Youtube would not show people the video if you posted it here. They show plenty of videos discussing similar topics, and they do show up for people, particularly if they already subscribe to that channel. You should really give it a shot, rather than just assuming (incorrectly) that the video would not be shown to people.
    1
  11824.  @simondewitt7161  Because they pick up the checks.
    1
  11825.  @stayfaded69  There's a reason one of Trump's friends has a Nixon back tattoo.
    1
  11826.  @phatplates  Not most of them, but they are inclusive of drag show members, because there's no good reason not to be.
    1
  11827.  @The_Greipist  But they do love Russia.
    1
  11828.  @spideraxis  That's self-defeating.
    1
  11829.  @phatplates  You can find more GOP politicians in drag than you can Democratic ones. There's nothing wrong with supporting drag performers though, is there?
    1
  11830.  @The_Greipist  When has Donald ever said a single negative thing about his daddy in Moscow?
    1
  11831.  @The_Greipist  That was quite polite of him, compared to how everyone else talks about Putin. "Please daddy, don't invade your peaceful neighbor." Meanwhille, everyone else is actually doing sanctions, while Donald was shaking Ukraine down to get political favors out of them.
    1
  11832.  @The_Greipist  I'm not blaming him for that, but he was extremely favorable toward Putin throughout his presidency, even denying US intelligence reports if Putin told him otherwise. Besides which, Putin was already acting against Ukraine during his presidency, even if he had not yet fully invaded. The US congress directed the US to provide weapons and other aid to Ukraine to build up their defenses, and Trump demanded personal political favors from Zelensky before allowing the congressionally mandated aid package to go through, until a whistleblower called him on it and forced his hand.
    1
  11833.  @Toler_ance  How do you propose they fight Hamas, if Hamas embed themselves around children?
    1
  11834.  @RebeccaHK-hn6yg  Yes, the IDF attacked it.
    1
  11835.  @babliabubakar250  No, it is a fact that Hamas embed their soldiers in schools and hospitals, you just don't seem to mind this.
    1
  11836.  @MIC2077  Republicans.
    1
  11837. They all have documents. They got them as soon as they entered.
    1
  11838. I think they should just have a "sales tax for billionaires," where if they determine someone to have a net worth in the billions, then anything they spend money on is taxed at 100% or so. Buy a latte? That'll be $5. Buy a yacht? That'll be a hundred million. Billionaires are too good at claiming that money they make isn't really money they make, but it should be harder to claim that they didn't actually buy or rent something.
    1
  11839. And MAGA simps are just dumb enough to do it.
    1
  11840. @ Nah, the mor ons are why we lost. Too many of them, like in that movie.
    1
  11841.  @colleenc9286  No, less than they had against Trump. Much much much less. Mountains less.
    1
  11842. Nobody who knows the ten commandments can defend this decision. What is the FIRST commandment?
    1
  11843. Ideally, sure, but you can't solve homelessness by punishing it, you can only solve it by correcting the underlying problems. The bill in question does none of that.
    1
  11844.  @adamh4594 I largely agree with the points you make, but why do you say things like "ruled by the cities," as if the cities are some sort of "entity?" Why not say "ruled by the CITIZENS of those cities, who outnumber those in the rural areas?
    1
  11845.  @stevennunez6013 The electoral college isn't a significant factor to the Republic, it was just put in because in after the war there were 13 states of wildly different sizes, and the smaller ones didn't want to be counted out. There is nothing actually good about it, in the grand scheme of things, it was just a necessary compromise of the best outcomes for the sake of unity.
    1
  11846.  @blksbth1  You misunderstand what the founders were saying about majority rule. They clearly did not oppose the concept of majority rule, because so many of their concepts are based on it. What they opposed was direct democracy, in which the entire populous voted on an individual topic, because that would more often tend to lead to people being tricked into one side or the other (like with Ohio's recent ballot referendum and the very confusing language of it). The Founders clearly wanted a fair REPRESENTATIVE democracy though, in which the people would elect wise men to make the actual decisions for them. The representatives make the decisions, and the electorate chooses the representatives. If they genuinely feared majorities, then we would have VERY different mechanisms than we have today, such as not determining House control via a majority vote.
    1
  11847.  @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.
    1
  11848.  @blksbth1  You misunderstand if you think it is because "orange man bad." It's a bad system because it fails to accurately represent the American people. Attempts to sidestep the elector collage have gone back decades before that. This wasn't the first election in which the candidate who lost the vote still ended up winning the White House. If it were a Democrat who had done that the right would be screaming bloody murder about it. You've seen what they do when they lose both the popular AND electoral vote.
    1
  11849.  @blksbth1  If you believe that the right supports the Constitutions even when it is not in your favor, then you really need to learn about the Federalist Society. The right has zero interest in the Constitution itself, they only want to cherry pick and distort cases in which they believe it already supports what they want to do, and ignore the rest. Just look at the recent discussion over the 14th. and yes, you are the bad guys, because you support Trump, who is a bad guy. You don't get to support Vader and then claim to be on the right side of history. And if you believe that the left is more violent than the right, then you have been fed a bill of goods and swallowed it. Do better.
    1
  11850.  @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.
    1
  11851.  @blksbth1 "You honestly cannot make a case for the right being more violent than the left if you've been paying ANY attention and NOT getting all your information from single-sided news outlets. " Wow, this statement is probably the platonic ideal of the term "irony."
    1
  11852.  @adamh4594  Biden was actually rated 14th best president by presidential historians, based on his accomplishments in office. And his approval rating remains higher than his opponent's.
    1
  11853.  @adamh4594 And again, no, it is factually incorrect to claim that violent crime is higher today than in the 90s. If you believe otherwise, it's because the news you watch TALKS about it a lot.
    1
  11854.  @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.
    1
  11855.  @adamh4594 Why do you believe my views are "radical?" They are perfectly down the center viewpoints. I think you have a really distorted viewpoint of where the center is.
    1
  11856.  @adamh4594 You do know that 65% of Americans are in favor of removing the Electoral College, right?
    1
  11857.  @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.
    1
  11858. ​ @adamh4594 Ok, first thing's first, YT doesn't censor much themselves, most of that is done by individual channels setting their own filters. Second, these filters often block comments critical of "the man" on the other side as well, it is not a partisan thing, unless you happen to be on a channel that likes it that way. I often have to retype my replies multiple times to get one to stick, and it often involves calling either candidate by some euphemistic term. It can also help to break up one post into several, because I have had cases in which a single post was blocked, but in two halves it went through. I am genuinely curious to hear what issues you think I am outside of the majority of the country on.
    1
  11859.  @adamh4594 We are only in this problem in the first place because Rupert Murdock committed to feeding an audience only what they wanted to hear. The world was a much more rational place to live in before that. Stop trying to present that as a problem from the left, it is entirely a problem of the right. Again, the word filters cut BOTH ways, you only seem to notice it when it impacts you, and assume that it does not equally apply to the other side. This is factually wrong.
    1
  11860.  @adamh4594  We are only in this problem in the first place because Rupert committed to feeding an audience only what they wanted to hear. The world was a much more rational place to live in before that. Stop trying to present that as a problem from the left, it is entirely a problem of the right. Again, the word filters cut BOTH ways, you only seem to notice it when it impacts you, and assume that it does not equally apply to the other side. This is factually wrong. This is my second attempt to post this reply, just so you know.
    1
  11861.  @adamh4594 Btw, I take it that despite your frequent protests, you in fact cannot think of any issue in which I would be outside the US majority. This is what I thought.
    1
  11862. I would think that the best use for a hypersonic missile would be one that spread-fires when it nears the target. Like fly hypersonic to as close as you possibly can at those speeds, then slow to a more manageable speed, then open up and spray dozens of small missiles in all directions, each of which would be flying ballistically in the direction of the target area using the speed they'd acquired, and then could have their own fins and thrusters to reorient toward the target. This provides the advantage of getting all this firepower to the general area of the target very quickly, and then the "spread and regroup" tactic would make each smaller missile harder to confront. I would think it would be best used on things like airfields and ships, where a lot of small explosions would wreck up the joint.
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  11863. Jon should get Trump to agree to do an interview with him, but then when Trump gets there, and no offense Jon, they swap him out for Pete Buttigieg.
    1
  11864. Thqat is not why he cut off the Afghan talk. Only an idiot could look at Joe Biden and think he's smarter than Joe.
    1
  11865. Nah, we can support more humans than this, we just need to do it with less fossil fuels.
    1
  11866.  @gaia7240  No, people building stuff does not remove water from a river. What removes water from a river is a lack of rainfall caused by climate change. If a normal amount of rain fell, the river would be fine, regardless of the number of people.
    1
  11867.  @gaia7240  If it was going to the sea then it would be in the river. It's not in the river because it didn't land on the ground in the first place.
    1
  11868. How is this news? It's following the CDC guidelines. Everyone is supposed to wear a mask in mixed indoor gatherings.
    1
  11869. That's how the media works, if they get a story wrong, they correct it later. They weren't entirely wrong though, at the time it came out, they reported that they could not verify the contents and therefore it would be irresponsible to report on it until they could. Later, when it had been established that it was legitimate, they reported on it. I don't see how any of that was the incorrect action to take under the circumstances.
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  11870.  Rain-on-Water  It's not "wide open" at all. People who cross it get caught and processed. That is what "secure" means. Now if you mean that you want less people to arrive seeking asylum, then you would have to solve that by making the countries south of the border more habitable. That's not something you can solve at the border itself.
    1
  11871.  @Fyoutube-ry1se  For every million or so people who cross, one of them might do a crime. It would be impossible to filter out the ones that might do a crime in the future, and it's ignoring the fact of the millions of people who wee born here that would commit crimes. It would be a silly argument to say that we should prevent all immigration on the grounds that maybe one of them will do a crime.
    1
  11872.  Rain-on-Water  Crime has fallen more over the past year than it has in decades. There was a peak in crime in 2021, after a very low year of border crossings (for obvious reasons that had nothing to do with who the president was at the time).
    1
  11873.  Rain-on-Water  Ok, then people will keep coming, and we can't stop that. And when the come, they will have to receive due process under US law, which means they will have a day in court months or even years after they arrive. The only thing we can do about that is to increase the number of judges handling those cases so that we can speed up that process, which is what the administration has been TRYING to do. Who is stopping him? I'll give you a hint.
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  11874. He's been in the GoP for decades now. That is all they are capable of.
    1
  11875. I think that things like memory and processing speed are factors of intelligence, and should be part of any test of human intelligence, but they are definitely not the only factors, and should perhaps just be one branch of a multi-response IQ. Like instead of testing many things and then having a single averaged score between them, you would test memory and processing speed, and those would be two scores out of 3-5 total scores that would make up your total "IQ." Different people would excel in different branches, but like the Decathlon, those that excel in most or all of them would rise higher than those who excel only in some (but excelling in any is beneficial). I also think that checking people's knowledge of real world facts is largely irrelevant to "intelligence," since a very intelligent by uneducated person would not know things, while a fairly dumb but determined person can remember a decent amount of facts. I think that memory testing for IQ should be to read a page or two of completely made up nonsense, essentially a page of Lord of the Rings, only not anything that has existed in fiction before, and then being quizzed about that without being able to check back at it. In that sense, real world knowledge would be largely irrelevant, and it would be about them being able to retain complex knowledge and process it, even if they are starting from not knowing anything about it.
    1
  11876.  @Monsuco  This whole story was about them attacking the US.
    1
  11877.  @omega1000-FU  No they aren't.
    1
  11878.  @bluesrocker33  What do you think inflation has to do with any of this?
    1
  11879.  @eddieb1995  It was an accident, and more importantly happened over 50 years ago. Are you seriously trying to claim that we should consider Israel as bad as Russia, because they accidentally sank a ship 50 years ago? Russia has invaded an ally currently.
    1
  11880.  @Attmay  Nah, that's not how anything works.
    1
  11881. Actually, no, the second amendment had nothing to do with arming the populous for the purposes of insurrection. The same people who wrote the constitution PUT DOWN an armed insurrection a few years later. The purpose of the second amendment is because the US did not, at the time, have a standing national army, so they wanted citizens prepared to act as an organized militia force to defend the country from external threats in times of need. That's it. It was not about personal home defense, and it certainly wasn't about the people being armed so that they could rise up against their own government. Period.
    1
  11882. So. . . B-More is totally a concern troll, right?
    1
  11883. I'm just waiting for the very last human to go "oh, an AI could do my job too." I figure we're alt least ten years from there.
    1
  11884. It'd be a start, but there's a lot more to it.
    1
  11885.  @heidenburg5445  Maybe, but soon enough it will be impossible to survive without air conditioning, so it needs to be enclosed.
    1
  11886. I agree, we should just have an open border policy. If people want to enter the country, we should do background checks to make sure they aren't on any criminal watch-lists, and that they aren't carrying any contraband in, but if they come in peace, then why have some sort of "cap" on how many are allowed in? America went most of its life without any such system in place, and it worked fine. We wouldn't have nearly so many Irish or Italian people in this country if we'd had the current immigration laws in place.
    1
  11887.  @prinzezzqtpi5437  If Republicans knew what a "Jesus" was, they couldn't be Republicans.
    1
  11888.  @marksprague1280  We're nowhere near those population levels, much less likely to reach them any time soon. The US could easily sustain a population 3-4 times our current one. You are right that there are ways in which we are using resources faster than we should, but those are to maintain industries not to maintain people. We could be using more sustainable farming methods than we are, sure, and we should do so, but we have NO trouble providing plenty of water for people to live off of. If your argument is that we should be taking water management more seriously, then sure, I'm on board with that, but you seem to be arguing against allowing in migrants, which is a completely unrelated topic.
    1
  11889.  @marksprague1280  Everyone is against allowing hordes of foreign criminals. Foreign criminals get detained and deported. That is a solved problem. What else have you got? Also, there has been zero decrease in standard of living due to population increase. Any loss of standard of living has been due to wage stagnation due to decades of "Reaganomics." There is zero correlation between a reduced standard of living and immigration, the correlation has to do with Republican policies of sending more and more of the nation's money up to the rich, and away from everyone else. Nothing we do about immigration will fix that. If you are bothered that your standard of living has decreased, elect more Democrats.
    1
  11890.  @61shirley  Yes, but those were different life forms that had different biologies. The animals currently on Earth, including humans, would be incapable of surviving at those CO2 levels. The other issue is that the rate of change is faster than most animals are capable of adapting to, so instead of just getting slightly better at dealing with higher temperatures each generation until they are ready to deal with Jurassic conditions, they would either need to get ready within a few generations or die, and most creatures can't keep up with that pace. Some life would survive, and might eventually evolve into new and interesting things, as the various birds and mammals replaced the dinosaurs, but it would still be kind of nice to just keep the current species around, right?
    1
  11891.  @61shirley  It is still hotter today than during the "Roman warming" or the "medieval warming," and on track to get much warmer still.
    1
  11892.  @61shirley  Well, we'd be saving MOST of the Earth. Yes, SOME life would flourish with or without us, but MOST of the species currently on the planet would die off, and we'd be left with some of the plants, some of the insets, some of the lizards, and that's about it. Personally, I think it would be a good thing if humanity weren't the cause of the largest extinction since the Permian-Triassic. Don't you? And I don't know what you mean about the Romans growing grapes, there was a localized warm period in Europe during Roman times, but worldwide it was nowhere close to modern temperatures. I think maybe you are confusing "weather" and "climate."
    1
  11893. Just hypothetically could you get the back end to fly? I was thinking about this when you said "a front wheel drive with a spoiler." Would it be possible to take a front wheel drive car, and up a spoiler on it with aerodynamic lift properties rather than downforce, such that at high speeds the rear wheels would actually lift completely off the ground? What sort of disastrous effects might this have on steering? ;)
    1
  11894. Lol, can you imagine someone saying that unironically?
    1
  11895.  @firstladyshine  They don't know what you intend to write off, but they don't have to. Most people don't itemize anyway, they just take the standard deduction and move on. A simplified process would just involve them sending you a bill, "You owe $X, the standard deduction would be $Y, reducing the total to $Z." Then you could either click "Ok," and pay that, OR you could click "Itemize deductions," and go through a checklist of potential deductions that you would add in, and it would recalculate the total. They already do a lot of this on their existing tax filing systems, it's just surrounded by a lot of other complicated stuff that mostly won't apply to you.
    1
  11896.  @firstladyshine  Sure, but that's step 2. Currently, the way it works is that it's the taxpayer's responsibility to do ALL the work, to enter ALL the data (and to figure out which data is relevant to their own taxes, like whether they are a farmer or clergy), and then once they are done, the IRS tells them if they caught them getting anything wrong. But for most taxpayers, most of that stuff is irrelevant. For most, they could just provide a starting value, "we think you made $20K this year," and you can correct that if you think they got it wrong, then you can either pick the standard deduction or add in individual deductions. They could frame it as a series of simple questions, "do you do this?" "Did you do that?" "if so, how much did you spend on it?" etc., and factor those answers into the result, rather than having this huge form of cryptic names and boxes that you mostly end up leaving empty, but need to double check with the instructions to see what that box even means. For most taxpayers, they could just start it up, click "ok" a few times, and be completely done in minutes, because all the weird exceptions would never apply to them. For others, they might have to click through a few extra questions and check boxes to cover some exceptions to their taxes, but it should all be very simple and straight forward. Only the very rare exception would need to be going through every option in the list, because they have such a complicated financial history that all sorts of things would apply. If it makes things super simple for most taxpayers, that's a good thing.
    1
  11897.  @firstladyshine  Educational purposes. A lot of people don't understand what's possible.
    1
  11898. Every person has an equal right to respect and dignity. Your example does not make any sense.
    1
  11899.  @Siva_S  More ability for people to be true to themselves, whoever they happen to be.
    1
  11900.  @Xhw3288  Thinking for yourself generally leads you to being liberal or conservative, at least in total. If you don't understand this about yourself, then that is a "you" problem.
    1
  11901.  @Siva_S  Exactly. So progressives value that, and conservatives do not.
    1
  11902.  @Siva_S  See, a sense of humor, that's also something conservatives lack. I think because it requires empathy.
    1
  11903.  @Moonhermit-  The infrastructure work could be done in one year, IF we put the investment in to do so. It would be more economical to spread those changes out over five or ten years, but that's by no means unachievable. Any current delays are only due to a lack of will to implement them.
    1
  11904.  @davidc1878  Again, "getting public easements" is part of the will to actually get stuff done. Streamline the process. Knock stuff over. Solving the grid problems is a NECESSARY step, so let's treat it as such, and not a "we'll let the invisible hand of the market figure things out."
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  11905. Thank you to that boy with the camera!
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  11906. I would think this is a case where the easiest route would be a coastal highway. Just build all the parts in chunks and carry them over by sea to be installed.
    1
  11907.  @Hobbsdad  I know that they are built in many different ways, depending on the necessary conditions. I know that pre-fab roadways are not common, but given the concerns about the rain making it difficult to pour concrete on sight, pre-fabbing it might be more effective, and given the concerns over significant elevation changes and jungle, just avoiding that completely might be the better course.
    1
  11908.  @Loj84  Fair enough.
    1
  11909. It was past the statute of limitations for a criminal case.
    1
  11910.  @ORIGINALFBI  They changed the laws to allow victims of such crimes to seek some measure of justice. I believe that changing the law to extend the limitations on a criminal trial would have gotten a lot more pushback from institutionalists. Remember, this extension had nothing to do with this specific case, it wasn't even on the radar until well after the extension took place. Also, just for the record, the civil trials DO require evidence, just as in a criminal trial.
    1
  11911.  @giacomovaninetti6976  And this is the problem.
    1
  11912.  @chemicalfrankie1030  Preventing collapse.
    1
  11913.  @johnlynch1353  I get that, I'm just saying that it's a bad system, or at least a system that companies should not have to be a part of all the time. Rewarding growth can be good, if a company has plenty of room to grow and good reasons to do so, but at some point a company reaches a pretty stable place where the best option for all involved is for them to pause, or even completely stop all growth and just continue to do what they're doing at a stable pace, so there needs to be some sort of "off ramp" from the eternal growth strategy.
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  11914. We did not say he was.
    1
  11915.  @tonyblackmon4200  YOU think he misrepresented his service because that suits your interests, but HE did not misrepresent his service at all. Nothing he said was not true.
    1
  11916.  @codebloke2200  He did not claim to come back with PTSD. He only claimed to have SPOKEN to people who did, which was true.
    1
  11917. "I can understand why on a human level that sounds. . . awful." -poorly regulated capitalism in a nutshell.
    1
  11918.  @davemustang8173  "The Earth is an oblate ovoid."
    1
  11919. TL;DR, it's because Republicans have clamped down on immigration, leading to not enough people in the lower-wage categories.
    1
  11920. I find it hilarious that a lot of people who can't stand Fani Willis because she's so damned smug, also support a certain Umpa Lumpa candidate for President. . . I wonder what the difference is between them. . .
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  11921. They never tried to hide it, charges only go toward criminals, as the Constitution and rule of law indicates.
    1
  11922.  @jts9120  The DoJ are working on it.
    1
  11923.  @junme1389  Corporations do everything that government does, only worse. They are very efficient at making money for upper management and investors, but HORRIBLE for everyone else. Government is the only hedge against corporations doing everything that conservative conspiracy theorists think "government" does, but they don't actually do.
    1
  11924.  @jts9120  There are less than 75m, and most of those are not violent psychos, so yeah, they can handle them.
    1
  11925. What's the problem? He said he was at Bagram, and he was at Bagram.
    1
  11926. It depends on if their parents love them or not.
    1
  11927. In the House? Relatively high. They're idiots working on an entirely partisan basis and facts are irrelevant to them. In the Senate? He wouldn't even get as many votes to convict as Trump did, probably less than Bill Clinton even. and of course if we had a House made up of grown-ups, it would never have even gotten this far. Vote for clowns, get a circus.
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  11928. Because most people do not like to see actual violence on broadcast TV.
    1
  11929. The SCOTUS insulted themselves by their own decisions.
    1
  11930. I don't think it's misinformation, but it is an attempt to distract people from the actual topics. Politicians going to Davos are not the problem, and not some implied argument against doing things about climate change.
    1
  11931. Right. Intelligent highway design is never to just make everything wider, because people always need to get off eventually. Intelligent design involves splitting those arteries up in a smooth fashion, so that people going to point C are routed away from the people going to point B, and everyone gets where they are going without clogging up everyone else.
    1
  11932.  @grandspringdale1564  We were talking about race relations. In terms of race relations, pre-civil rights the Southern Democrats were the party of segregation. After the Civil Rights movement, while many existing southern Democrats stayed in the party, and continued to hold segregationist viewpoints until they retired or died, incoming Democrats did not, and incoming Republicans would pick up that banner and run with it. This doesn't mean that every aspect of the two parties flipped, just on issues of race. As of 2021, the Republican party is the party of suppressing black people, and the Democratic party is the party of equal rights for all. Republicans do like to keep a token or two around so that they can claim that they have black friends, but their actions speak louder than their words.
    1
  11933. Most parents do not keep track of their childrens' businesses. It's no surprised that Joe Biden wouldn't have any idea what Hunter was doing with his own money.
    1
  11934.  @yvonne5784  Trump "knew nothing" about things happening in his OWN company and OWN presidential administration. There is no evidence that any of this stuff was at all related to Joe Biden, so there's no reason why he should know about any of it. You understand that much, right?
    1
  11935.  @agustintorres4608  First, religion is a choice, while being a member of "an alphabet group" is an inalienable quality of who a person is. They cannot change it. Second, it depends on the form of mockery. Plenty of comedians make fun of "alphabet groups" without any significant backlash, because their jokes are not an attack against those individuals, they are just having fun (which is completely separate from those who make attacks and call it "just having fun"). With humor, context is everything, and the concept of "hypocrisy" really doesn't apply.
    1
  11936.  @BasebalIShorts.  When did Jesus ever speak out against LGBT people?
    1
  11937.  @BasebalIShorts.  They obviously aren't wrong either though. And of course whether they are right or wrong is none of your business, so long as they are happy.
    1
  11938.  @kimberlycarey5104  When has that ever happened?
    1
  11939.  @residentgrey  Yes, the other side was doing deplorable things, plenty of people got caught and prosecuted for voting twice for Trump, but the point is that none of that made any DIFFERENCE in the OUTCOME. If you added every scrap of attempted fraud together, and piled ALL of it up in a single state, in favor of either of the two candidates, it would still not add up to enough votes to actually flip that state. It's not relevant.
    1
  11940.  @williamclemens4882  No, it is not, and does not.
    1
  11941. Well nobody ever expected carbon capture to be "economical," for it to be something that the "free market" would handle. But given the trillions that climate change will cost in keeping people alive, government investment in carbon capture (or something equivalent in impact) is cheaper than the alternatives when the "product" is human lives saved.
    1
  11942. @ Alexander Vindman.
    1
  11943. ​ @clareornias1120  Mass surveillance isn't an "enemy" action, if it is being done to DEFEND Americans. It was upholding that same oath you cite. Can you provide any evidence that this information was used to harm law abiding citizens?
    1
  11944. @ And if he'd brought that stuff to the appropriate authorities then that would be one thing, but instead he exposed all this information to our enemies, in ways that undermined national security. The NSA was listening in on foreign agents, and sometimes those foreign agents were speaking with Americans. That is their job, that is the purpose of their agency, as granted to them by Congress. They aren't some made up agency like Doge.
    1
  11945.  @relicpathfinder2800  If they're dying of thirst? Yeah. I'll also call the police on them and make sure that they are handled, but I would never want to contribute to them dying. Of course, I'm not a Republican.
    1
  11946.  @Astrogator1  But those same problems you listed with batteries also apply to fossil fuels, and much of hydrogen production, for that matter. You are right that there are no "magical" solutions, but there never have been, and yet history advances. You don't chase "magical" solutions, you just go with solutions that are BETTER than whatever the current option is. Batteries tend to be better than hydrogen in most applications, but there are currently some places in which hydrogen works better, at least as a complement to batteries.
    1
  11947.  @grahamstevenson1740  I think that even if Li-ion can't be beat on density, it could still be possible to beat them in overall usefulness through other means. For example, if other batteries are about as good, but much cheaper or longer lasting, that would make them viable in a lot of applications. Also if a battery could more safely charge at much higher speeds, that could be good. Like if a car had half the range of a current vehicle, but could charge in 2-3 minutes at a fast charger or under an hour from a more basic charger, then a lot of people would prefer that.
    1
  11948.  @BLUELEADER78  No, Biden did not do that. The US government, led by Obama, threatened to do that, because the prosecutor in question was a puppet of Russia at the time. Biden was only the messenger in that situation, and none of that was illegal, unlike what Trump did during his administration.
    1
  11949.  @residentgrey  That may be what you want to believe, but the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  11950.  @wolveslair766  What are you talking about? There were at least nine Jan 6th insurrectionists convicted on Seditious Conspiracy, which is the US law that is charged in a case of an insurrection. The word "insurrection" is not actually a US law, similar to how someone is charged with "Larceny" rather than "stealing."
    1
  11951. Is "Derivatives" what they are calling Liz Truss now? Savage.
    1
  11952. Texas is in many ways worse than Florida. If Disney moves, they need to move to a state that's better than either of them. Maybe one in the mid-Atlantic states.
    1
  11953.  @justlisten1  Because the corporate taxes and regulation is lower in Texas, which is often better for their short term bottom lines. That doesn't really apply to a theme park though. It would be bad for business if a Disney park featured a classic "Texas mass shooting."
    1
  11954.  @tomasgomez7083  It's had a few good years lately, but that won't last as the state gets hotter and hotter, and as they continue to pass more and more ridiculous laws.
    1
  11955. The politicians are our representatives. An attack against them is an attack against all of us. In November the American people voted to determine that these were the people we wanted to represent us and to write and enforce laws in our name. The insurrectionists last week were trying to steal that right from us by installing their own people instead. We cannot allow that to be considered acceptable or we will lose everything in this country.
    1
  11956.  @danielaustin2766  These aren't actually whistleblowers though, they went through none of the legal whistleblower procedures. They are disgruntled employees who had their security clearances revoked for inappropriate actions while on duty. They are only being called "whistleblowers" by the committee because they was telling them the story they want to hear.
    1
  11957. Why are people still arguing about land that's been held since 1967? When does "common law" apply?
    1
  11958. I've considered getting hearing aids or something, but not too seriously yet. My hearing in general is still good, quite good when things are quiet, I just have a terrible time picking up conversations in high noise environments, apparently much worse than those around me.
    1
  11959. I actually won a giant bear on the bottle ring toss game when I was a kid. Totally luck, of course, and a pain to transport back home. ;)
    1
  11960.  @LenOliver-yz6os  More than the current migrants are, at least. But you're right that most immigrants, especially of the current batch, cause less crime than the people already here.
    1
  11961.  @TJ-zs1pl  How so?
    1
  11962.  @TJ-zs1pl  Yup! Blue wave.
    1
  11963.  @JackArkitekt  Lol, keep dreaming. The only seats Republicans pick up are the ones they rig.
    1
  11964. The idea of mag-leving up a hanging vehicle is insane. I would never want to ride such a thing. IF they wanted to mag-lev up a whupperthal, the better way would be to just have a traditional repelling maglev over top of the rails, lifting the entire vehicle up. That way, if the mechanisms fail, it just grinds back down onto the rail.
    1
  11965. Yes, because he would want to make a case of one of the very few crimes committed by immigrants, and ignore the thousands killed by non-immigrants, and the millions of immigrants that don't commit crimes. Because he's racist.
    1
  11966.  @janellestuckey8477 So that's how you know what sort of people they are.
    1
  11967.  @kasper7203  Not enough Taiwanese want to rejoin the mainland for it to ever happen democratically. "Some small portion want to reunify" is never a justification, if they want to be part of China, they can always move to China.
    1
  11968.  @kasper7203  Well, not anymore. That was a long time ago.
    1
  11969.  @kasper7203  They would be wrong though. People are wrong all the time.
    1
  11970.  @monksoup669 Speaker Nancy never tore up a government record though, on TV or otherwise. Donald Trump did it often though.
    1
  11971. Lol, this was all so stupid.
    1
  11972. It means that he would not be personally aware, so if he said "no," he might be wrong about that. This is why communications offices exist, to keep track of this stuff.
    1
  11973.  @jmakc3541  That's not gaslighting, that is just explaining the facts.
    1
  11974.  @waldoparsnip1025  No, as they are, which liberals TRY to explain to you.
    1
  11975.  @jmakc3541  You would just hand your personal emails over to people who hate you without any good cause? That seems dumb to me.
    1
  11976. Wait. How can you have an opinion about literature without having read One Piece?!
    1
  11977.  @MisterRubbertoe  It doesn't bother them because it's racist (it's really not), it bothers them because it's said by a Democrat, while Democrats hold them accountable for their much more racist statements.
    1
  11978. @Alwaysgetsdeleted Account There are pay-fors in the bill. The pay-fors are the parts the Republicans want to remove from the bill, because they want to "print money." The bill as proposed by the Democrats would be fiscally responsible.
    1
  11979.  @timmythehydra7481  Exacty. I mean, the bills are massively popular with the American people, so why should we let Senate Republicans logjam the whole deal? Put American first.
    1
  11980. You never were. No Democrat would be that dumb.
    1
  11981. He's that guy with the adds promoting the Democrats' covid relief funds, right?
    1
  11982. Rasterization performance is irrelevant. Existing cards are already "plenty good" at rasterization performance. All that matters is how they compete at raytracing, and if they aren't bothering to compete on that, then they aren't bothering to compete at all.
    1
  11983.  @Timewave-Zer0  I agree that others can choose not to get a booster, not that there can be no consequences for doing so. If their employer does not want unvaccinated people in the office, they don't have to employ them. But, again, I do not support a law that would require people to be vaccinated, nor is there any effort to do so.
    1
  11984. Exactly, Obama was exactly as crooked as Biden, 0%. Unlike Trump, who was 95% crooked.
    1
  11985. Nobody is asking for "congress to do nothing." The Democrats want congress to do something. The only issue here is that Republicans are trying to LINK border stuff to the Ukraine funding, which is unacceptable, and also that the things Republicans want to do about the border will not actually HELP the border problems. If you want to solve the issues on the southern border, then pass Democratic plans to solve those problems.
    1
  11986.  @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.
    1
  11987.  @blakerobertson6526  And that was in one state, but in a different state your experience would be entirely different. The problem is the states that choose to make things worse than that. I also don't know how old you are, but they have made things a lot harder over the last ten years than they were when I was in school.
    1
  11988. They already are.
    1
  11989. Same answer as last time, the future of cars is not hybrids, the present of cars are hybrids, because people/infrastructure is not ready to comfortably take that leap yet. In future though, these will not be issues. The transition point is when charging options become so convenient that hybrid owners find themselves never picking up gas, and then when they buy a new car, they decide to go full electric. Also, "new options" will always be picked up by the wealthy first, because this is both easier for them and more profitable for the people making them, but then those early adopters re-sale their vehicles into the used market, which is where the lower classes can get one, until the market is large enough that the new cars are affordable too. This is all well understood, solved economics problems.
    1
  11990. That was just an AI metahuman. Maybe.
    1
  11991.  @HopeLess249  But do they say "US citizen" in the hundreds more cases where a US citizen did it? What did immigration status have to do with it?
    1
  11992.  @HopeLess249  But in America, the overwhelming majority of people killed are killed by US citizens, so my point is, why bring up immigration status, when it is irrelevant to the case?
    1
  11993. $0, apparently.
    1
  11994.  @thesun-N-moon8885  Like what?
    1
  11995. Or, as any Trump fan would remind us if this had been Hillary or Biden, it's probably a brain tumor.
    1
  11996. Neither does Trump.
    1
  11997. Like it or not, both CNN and ABC are fair moderators. Too favorable to Trump, really. Anyone who believes Fox would be a fair moderator does not deserve to participate.
    1
  11998. They didn't.
    1
  11999.  @vade137  From what I can see, "Covirnaty" is just the official brand name of the covid vaccine people have already been taking, and which was just fully approved. Now that it's shifting from "emergency authorization" to "fully approved," they rebrand the thing, but it's the same drug. The "three months" is the time it takes to do all the printing and other nonsense involved in relabeling the product.
    1
  12000.  @vade137  Because that's what you do when you market a drug. Like look at any drug commercial, they will say something like "Dupixent (dupilumab)" The "Dupixent" is the brand name, it is something they have Trademarked and market to the public. The "dupilumab" is the "inside the company" name for the drug itself, which they tested it under and all that, but they didn't bother any marketing push until it was actually approved, because a lot of drugs fail at approval, so the "Dupixent" part of the name didn't even exist until then. So now that the Pfizer vaccine is approved, they are allowed to market it, there will be commercials on TV promoting it just like the various other drug ads. But what are they going to call it, "the Pfizer vaccine?" No, they want to have a specific trademarked brand identity for it. That's just how marketing works. Anyway, the "point of FDA approval" had nothing to do with the Biden administration, it is just what drugs do when they are submitted to the FDA. Full approval was always something they were working towards, it just involves a lot of red tape so it takes a long time to wade through, which is why they got the emergency authorization after the testing turned out positively.
    1
  12001.  @vade137  In July, 25,000 Americans died of covid, only a handful of them had been vaccinated. At that time, over 50% of the population had been vaccinated though, so if "the vaccine didn't work," then half the dead should have been vaccinated people too, but they weren't. If the vaccinated population had not been vaccinated, it seems likely that in July there would have been around 40-50,000 dead instead of 25,000, while if everyone had been vaccinated, then there probably would have been less than 1000 dead. The vaccines are not perfect, nor has anyone ever claimed that they are. They are not meant to make people completely 100% immune to the virus. What they do provide is a serious defense against the virus, greatly reducing transmission, infection, hospitalization, and death. You hear about the "breakthrough" cases because they are unusual, when the reality is that the overwhelming majority of those in the hospital are unvaccinated. Getting a booster of the vaccine is not terribly unusuall, most vaccines require multiple shots. Look at childhood vaccine schedules, you'll see that most of the vaccines you have to take 1-2 shots when around 1yo, and then another shot around 5 or so, and that's what provides a strong lifelong protection.
    1
  12002.  @vade137  Lol, "the numbers sound made up," no, they aren't "made up," they're the actual numbers recorded. The number of people who die is much higher than it would be if people were less reckless about it. If you haven't heard of mass burials then you haven't been paying any attention at all. Funeral homes and crematoriums have been overloaded lately, look it up yourself. They don't exactly track "people that get sick and get better," because that's a really complicated thing to keep track of. What they do track is numbers of people who have been newly infected and people who actual die, so if you'd like you can make a rough calculation based on that, but the point is that thousands of people are dying, and there's no reason for most of those because if they'd been vaccinated, they would have lived. Also, the case of nursing home deaths were misreported on certain Faux News stations. What they did wrong was labeling people who died in NY hospitals that had come from nursing homes as "hospital deaths" instead of "nursing home deaths," but the actual number of nursing home deaths was not higher than in other equivalent states. It certainly didn't lead to more deaths than otherwise. It wasn't "more people dead than reported," it was just "the places where people had died" being misreported, so not really relevant to anyone outside of New York. As for people who have gotten sick and survived, why "celebrate" that? I mean, it's good for them, yeah, but wouldn't it be better if they hadn't gotten sick at all because people took better care of themselves? It doesn't do anything to reduce the number of people killed by the pandemic. If we're going to throw a party every time someone doesn't die, we'd never get any work done. As for people who survive having antibodies, the research so far indicates that surviving covid gives far weaker protection than the vaccines, and it wears off much faster than even without the booster. There is no reason for businesses to consider previous infection as some sort of alternative to vaccination, it's the vaccination status that is medically significant.
    1
  12003.  @vade137  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOLxn-r2tkk
    1
  12004.  @vade137  It really doesn't make you "think about the fiancial bonuses hospitals get for diagnosing COVID and using Ventilators" unless oyu are a bit silly and conspiratorially minded. The covid death stats are high in the US because the US has a particularly high number of stupid people, relative to other parts of the world. I mean, our adult population is only 67% vaccinated, even though the vaccines have been available for months now. A lot of people refuse to wear masks unless absolutely forced to do so, and even then whine like babies in a crib about it. Hospitals would like NOTHING more than to keep people OUT of the hospitals, the people who work there are EXHAUSTED by all of this. It's also worth keeping in mind that the US has much better testing and medical treatment than in most third world countries, so plenty of people who die there of covid aren't adequately recorded as such. They just die. Not to mention that they don't have as much urban population density or international travel as the US does, so the virus does not spread around as rapidly there. I mean, they don't have idiot biker rallies where they don't wear masks and then split up all across the country to infect those communities like we do. I really wish that we weren't more likely to die of covid than in other countries, but that would require having less stupid Americans that want to pretend that nothing is wrong and that they can just act like "business as usual" and it will all totally work out. The Doctor you cited is just not a particularly trustworthy one. He panders to an audience that doesn't want to believe that things are as bad as they actually are, and he tells them what they want to hear so that he can make money off of their ignorance. It really makes you think about why he would do such a thing, when it leads to thousands of unnecessary deaths. . .
    1
  12005.  @vade137  You need to listen to the words being said, not just look at the pictures. The words are the important part. Whichever undertakers you are talking about, they were either lying to you because they are promoting the conspiracy theories, or they were extreme outliers. It's not like there was a 10x increase in overall deaths, several million people are expected to die each year, and "only" 600,000 additional Americans died last year than were expected, so it's not like they would be overloaded all the time, but it was still 600,000 Americans that didn't have to die if their fellow Americans were less stupid, and they still did pile up in situations where an area had an extreme spike like Florida is seeing today, and New York was getting early last year.
    1
  12006. @William Larney You are either really good at satire, or really bad at spelling.
    1
  12007. @William Larney There was actually a fairly standard amount of reported medical malpractice last year. Who told you that there was none? They were lying to you.
    1
  12008.  @zatoichi3652  The "99+% survivability rate" exists only on right-leaning social media. It unfortunately does not exist in the real world. The actual survival rate is closer to 98.3%, and that's with proper medical treatment, which becomes impossible when hospitals are overflowing with patients like in Florida. More Americans have been killed by covid than from EVERY war America has participated in during the 20th Century. Almost all of those could have been prevented if right-leaning people took the virus as seriously as left-leaning people did. That should bother you. If we had taken the virus seriously early on, if everyone had gotten vaccinated as soon as it became available, then things would be largely back to normal by today. The current situation is entirely the fault of "life back to normal NOW" types.
    1
  12009.  @vade137  I am "carrying water" for no one, other than the American people. I am only telling you the unvarnished truth of the matter, in the hopes that you will stop spreading misinformation that is costing American lives. Of course, who knows, maybe that's what you're being paid to do, and if so, I guess, find a better job? The pandemic isn't "neatly sorted by age groups," that's just how it is reported. It does effect older age groups more, because the things it does to the human body are things that older bodies are less capable of handling, but it's not like if you are one year older than your risk shoots way up or anything like that, it's just that when you collect data you write it out in categories, so the "31-40" age group and then the "41-50" age group would see a huge jump, but if you just looked at the "40-41" age group you wouldn't see a huge jump right there. The problem was that people were never really "on board with" the CDC. They were willing to listen for a few weeks, but then the pandemic wasn't "solved" yet an they got bored and antsy, and they wanted out NOW, even though it wasn't safe to do so. That, unfortunately, is not how it works. You can't just "quit pandemicking" because you aren't having fun. It's like children on a car trip, "are we there yet? are we there yet? are we there yet?" No, we are not there yet, sit down, shut up, and be patient.
    1
  12010.  @coronavirusisacommunistchi845  Amazing. None of what you just said is true.
    1
  12011.  @vade137  There is nothing unusual about the malpractice numbers OR the flu numbers during 2020. Both are exactly where anyone would expect them to be. I don't know why people keep saying things like "have you seen the cake sales numbers? Wow, if anyone knew about those. . . wow. . . omg." You act like you've discovered some hidden secret, when really you're just staring at numbers that you lack the understanding to accurately interpret and declaring that they are the missing puzzle piece. Why do you have to make people feel so depressed about how stupid the people around them are by letting them know that you exist? And for the record, the total US death count for 2020 was roughly400,000 people higher than it had been predicted to be based on expected causes. That accounts for the people who died of covid almost perfectly. There is no revelation there.
    1
  12012.  @vade137  Again, the video wasn't the important part, you needed to listen to the AUDIO. The AUDIO was telling you that Florida's mortuary services have been overloaded by the recent wave of patients. That should have also been common sense, but you were for no apparent reason rejecting the fact that thousands of people have been dying over the past couple months. Willful ignorance is still ignorance. I am not "insulting you," I am being honest with you. If you take that as an "insult" then perhaps make my comments less accurate. I only repeat what appears to have not sunk in the first time. If you were a better student, I would not need to try so hard to educate you. The vaccine is free. You are paying nothing to get it. It is nowhere near monthly, and there's no reason to believe it ever would be. You are spouting nonsense for no discernible reason. Your blind distrust of any media source that does not tell you what you want to be hearing is a "you" problem, not a problem with those of us living in reality. Just keep worrying that the birthday cake cartels are out to drain your blood or whatever it is that lets you sleep at night, but stop spreading this misinformation to others and prolonging this pandemic.
    1
  12013.  @zatoichi3652  Why do you believe it should bother me that the public be expected to take public health measures seriously? It should bother you that 500,000+ more Americans have DIED as a result of people not taking covid seriously. Does it bother you?
    1
  12014.  @vade137  You're making up more stuff now. There is no "patent history" on covid-19. There is data on OTHER SARS-based viruses, which is COMPLETELY different. That's like arguing that if Ford had a patent on an F-150 from 2005 then if Toyota released a Corolla in 2020 that had airbag issues, Ford must be responsible because the F-150 is basically the came as a Corolla. What nonsense are you talking here? Why do you insist on repeating lies? What do you find important about misleading people about covid?
    1
  12015.  @zatoichi3652  So if people want to drive drunk, you say they should be allowed to do so without any penalties?
    1
  12016. @Rhetoric That isn't "data," man. That's misinformation. The ACTUAL data is that 2/3 of the people under 50 who died in the UK were UNvaccinated. As in they had not got the vaccine. Now the other 1/3 were vaccinated, but since most of that country is vaccinated, it's not unusual for some of them to get covid. Maybe get your news from better sources of information than some idiot's substack?
    1
  12017.  @zatoichi3652  If you want that to be your stance on the matter, then it can be, but it is not the one that I am advocating. I don't believe it would be necessary to ban alcohol, but it should still be illegal to abuse it, such as driving drunk. Likewise, if you are in public without being masked and vaccinated, then you are likely to spread the virus to others, just as a drunk driver is likely to hit people, and so it is in society's interests to prevent that. I don't WANt the government telling me or anyone else what to do, what I WANT is for them to do the right thing ON THEIR OWN. But since we, as a country, have proven ourselves INCAPABLE of doing the right thing on our own, it has become NECESSARY for the government to ensure that the right thing be done. If you don't want the government telling you that you have to wear a mask and get vaccinated, then the best way to ensure that is to wear your mask and get vaccinated.
    1
  12018.  @zatoichi3652  There are no significant long term side effects from the vaccines. The list of long term side effects from covid are much longer. And yes, the government has the right to tell you what to do. It's part of living in a society. If you don't want the government telling you what to do, then move to a place without a government. I hear Somolia is nice this time of year. This is not about you or your health. If all anti-vaxxers did was die off, I would be fine with that. Survival of the least stupid. But this is a PANDEMIC, and that means that anti-vaxxers cause OTHER people to get sick, and I refuse to allow innocent people to die for the right of anti-vaxxers to be as stupid as they insist on being. Get the vax. Period.
    1
  12019.  @j8thgen479  Plenty of people "with immune systems" have died from this virus, Justin. While people with comorbitities are at more risk, that does not mean that those without them have none. And besides, it's not about you. There are others with those comorbitities out there, so if you can do your part to ensure that they don't get sick, then you can take pride in that. I promise you, it will feel better than the shame of knowing that all you did during this pandemic was make things worse for everyone. And I think you misunderstood the recent CDC discussion, they do not say that vaccinated people spread just as much as unvaccinated, only that they still spread some. So long as you wear your mask and socially distance, you can prevent the spread of the virus to those around you. I saw a meme that I think is perfect for this moment, it went something like "What if in a year or two they discover that masks did absolutely nothing to protect against the virus, and they were just playing us like fools for wearing them? I'd feel great, because I knew that either way, I was at least trying to protect people as best I could." Do your best. And as for the CDC and WHO "changing their stories?" That is EXACTLY what we should WANT them to do. That is how science works, it does not have the answers, it has questions. Questions are good. The CDC gave the best guidance it had AT THE TIME at the start of the pandemic. This was a new virus and there was very little data to work with. As more research came in, it might seem that a certain strategy was helpful, so they would recommend it. If even more research came in, those strategies might not have been that important, so they would remove that guidance. That's fine, it's better to do the best you have with the information available than to do nothing at all. Don't be afraid of questions, OR of answers that you don't like. Also, I just gotta lol, "nobody in this thread is a conspiracy theorist!. . . Why do we always have to say “yes master” to the government ? If you’re a useless puppet than ok," Lol.
    1
  12020.  @j8thgen479  I called people conspiracy theorists because they refuse to accept the answers to their questions if those answers do not line up with their conspiracy theories about "big government being sneaky." If the answer is "there is a pandemic going on and it's in everyone's interest to get vaccinated and wear masks," they would prefer to ignore that answer and continue to believe in their conspiracies. Asking a question is ONLY of value if you're prepared to listen to the answer, otherwise it's just an excuse to not behave responsibly. As for masks, you're missing the point entirely. Like I said, the point of scientific advice is to act with the best information we have, collect MORE information, and then ADAPT to that new information. Fauci did say masks don't work, EARLY in the pandemic, when we didn't KNOW what we do now. At the time he said that, masks were in extremely short supply, medical professionals could not get what they wanted because the Trump administration had failed to replenish the emergency stockpiles and were buying up available stock away from the doctors who needed them. At the time he said that, it was the best advice based on what we knew at the time, that it was not necessary for the average person to wear one. In the weeks and months that followed, more data came in, and that data showed that communities that had consistent mask wearing DID reduce community spread. The point of the mask on your face is not about making you immune to the virus, although it does provide some protection there, it is more about protecting others from the air coming out of your mouth, which might be infected or not. So then Fauci updated his guidance based on this new information, so people should be wearing masks. Then a few months back, with the data showing that vaccinated people spread the virus less than unvaccinated people, the CDC gave the guidance that fully vaccinated people did not need to wear masks, but still could if they wanted to. I believe that this was mostly driven by a desire to provide an incentive for people to get vaccinated, but too many unvaccinated people took advantage of this to say "well then I don't need to wear one either!" which is a bit like someone in a car saying "well if people on foot don't need seatbelts, then obviously I don't either!" I personally think this guidance was a bit naive on their part, but it is what it is. Then the Delta variant started hitting the US, hospitals started getting overrun, the death rate rose above 2020 levels in many red states, and the guidance changed to "ok, not enough people are getting vaccinated, so I guess we need to wear masks again." So that's where it stands today. You don't have to trust Fauci on that, you can look up the data yourself.
    1
  12021.  @tonys32948376  Lol.
    1
  12022.  @silveriver9  You're looping, it breaks the illusion.
    1
  12023.  @johnfeng4374  Yes, presumably they discovered that someone had died of it before we were even aware that it had gotten out of China.
    1
  12024. ​ @dennischiu272  If the person had said "$100 a week," that would have been reasonable (before or after covid, bth), but "$100 per hand" is unrealistic for a person buying normal grocery store food.
    1
  12025.  @hawk-du1yl  Ok, so what foods would you put into a single grocery bag that would add up to $100 at today's prices?
    1
  12026.  @hawk-du1yl  Ok, so which items would you be buying to fill a $100 grocery bag?
    1
  12027.  @hawk-du1yl  How would you fill that grocery bag?
    1
  12028. He was hired by Trump to find dirt on Democrats. The only thing Biden did was stay completely out of his way the entire time.
    1
  12029.  @utooslow  Well yeah, it's not their job to invent things, it's their job to discover the actual TRUTH, like they did in the Trump investigations.
    1
  12030.  @billmM3605  Yes, but Trump did crimes. The Dems had evidence of his crimes and presented them at his impeachment trials. The Republicans in the Senate admitted he did those crimes, but chose not to convict him for partisan political reasons. That has no relevance to anything currently going on in the House, since the people they are targeting with the forces of government didn't do any crimes. This isn't a game, "your side investigated the crimes committed by our side, so we should get the right to pretend crimes were committed by your side" is not how any of this works.
    1
  12031.  @tristineckhoff2843  They found plenty of actual crimes, and made their case during the impeachment hearing. Senate Republicans agreed that Trump was guilty of the crimes he was accused of, they just refused to remove him from office over partisan political reasons. It was shameful, but only for Republicans. The Democrats did everything that we should want them to be doing, standing up for the rule of law.
    1
  12032. The thing that I hate is the shallow idiots who hear a story like this and think that it will all work itself out and be fine, because they can't wrap their head around the idea that "one part of the world getting colder" does not balance out "everywhere else getting warmer." It's like they've never seen the back side of an air conditioner.
    1
  12033. Hey, Expo 82! My dad worked at that one!
    1
  12034. Fauci knows what he's talking about. So that would be one.
    1
  12035. @Josh Pandola The emails do not say what you seem to think they say.
    1
  12036.  @RiverBottomBoys.  "Masks are ineffective" was what the data at the time indicated. It was his job to tell us that. Over the next couple months, more data came in about coid that indicated that masks did have some benefits and it was good public policy to implement them, and he said that too, as he should. Science isn't about knowing what the Truth is at any given moment, science is about seeking the truth and replacing outdated information with new information as it becomes available. Someone is not a liar for saying what they understood to be true at the time they said it, even if later information contradicts it.
    1
  12037. Yup, "towards the criminals."
    1
  12038.  @tjwallis7948  It is true. If people are doing crimes, those crimes are being investigated. If people are not doing crimes, then they are not being investigated. I know Trump hasn't been indicted yet, but he will be, don't worry.
    1
  12039.  @SkyrimCZtutorials  Lol, no they didn't, there weren't even that many Nazis to kill! Rightists in both Italy and Germany certainly killed an awful lot though.
    1
  12040. But only to foolish people.
    1
  12041. Well, that's only because he hasn't done anything wrong.
    1
  12042.  @boprocco  Probably, but still worth pointing out.
    1
  12043. How can a Secretary of State be "testosterone challenged?" What would that have to do with anything?
    1
  12044.  @ritatharp5238  Ok, that doesn't change the reality though. The facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  12045.  @jlove4eva1234  How often is that relationship relevant to ANY government business? Is there any contract that would have been different had he not been related to her?
    1
  12046.  @jlove4eva1234  The reason the new stairs cost $30 is because it was an art installation in the Times Square station, intended to be a tourist attraction. There is no indication that any of that money went to anyone linked to the MTA through illegitimate ties.
    1
  12047.  @jlove4eva1234  Well, my friend is the President of Space, and he says your friends are liars. He often sees them at the imaginary friends bar, laughing at you.
    1
  12048.  @JohnS-il1dr  For the most part, but it's the Republicans that cause the problems, many of which can last for decades.
    1
  12049.  @triparadox.c  Like a true civilized human, you mean.
    1
  12050.  @triparadox.c  MAGA sheep tend to be more anti-government, because governments break up their corporate overlords. Many of them don't even realize that the corporations ARE their overlords, because they work through agents like Trump and Faux News.
    1
  12051. The science has been tested and verified, and the results of that testing and verification has been published. The "religion" of anti-vaxxism refuses to accept those scientifically determined results, because they fail to confirm their religious dogma. RFK is the one presenting faith-based arguments in this situation.
    1
  12052.  @MassiveMania  As politics works, McCarthy made several public promises to Democrats over the years in an effort to get their support for things the Republicans wanted to do. He later went back on those promises. That would be the "backstabbing" in this case. At no point was he ever a "friend" to Democrats, but he was supposedly at least someone that Democrats could work with, as Republicans could work with Pelosi. He was not a good person.
    1
  12053. Hey, if they didn't want Nazis on their ticket then they wouldn't have nominated Nazis in the first place. Respect the will of the Republican people!
    1
  12054. How's that "let's not support Harris because of Biden's Israel policies" working out for you guys?
    1
  12055.  @Colossus-Tone  Who's more qualified though?
    1
  12056.  @Kevin-lv9qi  The left isn't playing DEI though. So it's just the right doing nonsense, as usual.
    1
  12057.  @Soma81  Intelligent people would never vote Republican. The Republican party is the home of the ignorant. They all just follow their golden calf, and that's why they need to spend 40 years wandering the desert to repent.
    1
  12058. Not really.
    1
  12059. If Republicans had a sense of humor, they would recognize what clowns they'd elected.
    1
  12060. He was in court because he got rounded up with people looking for work. They determined that he could legally stay in the country and he built a life here.
    1
  12061.  @fartface5172  Because it will greatly improve the lives of the majority of Americans? Isn't that what they are there to do?
    1
  12062.  @fartface5172  paid family leave, child care relief, universal pre-k, elder care, expanded broadband, and I expect there will be even more positive things as they bring the bill into its final form. But I can't imagine why anyone would be partisan enough to oppose any of those things.
    1
  12063.  @fartface5172  Like what?
    1
  12064.  @fartface5172  So. . . like what?
    1
  12065.  @MrFrinZy  "It depends why the bill was passed to outlaw antidepressants. We, as individuals and as a society, must weigh our decisions. " I agree. IF there were a valid reason to outlaw antidepressants, then that could con considered, but my point is that you'd still have to WEIGH that reason against the increased likelihood of suicide, and determine which outcome is worse, right? So in this case, we know that denying trans children appropriate access to care will increase their suicide rate, AND that it will accomplish nothing of value, so it's purely a lose/lose situation. There is no reason to do it.
    1
  12066.  @tacticalmattfoley  That's a flawed argument though. We aren't talking about banning the methods, we're talking about taking steps that would reduce the MOTIVE. Your argument really doesn't apply to the case we're discussing. Yes, if you remove tall buildings than people who want to kill themselves will find a different method, but if there are proven techniques to reduce the desire to commit suicide, then there is obviously value in employing them, because in that case, the suicides won't occur at all.
    1
  12067.  @hydrolito  True that some medications can increase suicide risk, and those are labeled as such right on the bottle. Doctors need to take care prescribing those. I was talking more about the brands specifically designed to address suicidal ideation.
    1
  12068.  @nonhatespeech  Yes, there are many underlying factors at play, but given that trans people commit suicide at a significantly higher rate than other people who have all the same other "underlying factors," it seems pretty clear that being trans is a significant factor here, and that since supportive treatment drastically reduces those suicide rates, that it is an effective way to treat the condition. I mean, you can ignore those facts, but you can't do so while claiming to be a moral person acting in good faith. Pick.
    1
  12069.  @tacticalmattfoley  And "removing dangerous objects" is not a concept that is relevant to this current topic. Nobody is arguing in favor or against "removing dangerous objects" relevant to this issue. It's like arguing that pineapple pizza is bad. Yeah. Yeah it is. But not relevant.
    1
  12070.  @Mely83  To your point 1. If the father is not getting at least partial custody, then typically that is because he has behaved in a way that would put the children at risk in his care. Yes, children can be better off in a stable two parent household, but at no point would that obligate the parents to stay together if one of them is unhappy in the relationship. Have you head Steven Crowder's recent comments on the topic? He seems to imply that he wishes he had the right to FORCE his ex-wife to stay with him, against her will. Obviously that would be an insane world to live in. 2. I believe that people should have access to the care they need. If the individual can cover that, then they should, if the insurance company can cover that, then they should, if the state can cover that, then they should. At no point should someone in need of care go without for lack of money. Health care should not be considered a "luxury" that is only available to those with means.
    1
  12071.  @mrplow2843  The plans that Republicans are trying to make law in several states make it harder for many legal voters to cast their vote, either by making it harder for them to get a mail-in ballot, or harder to reach an open polling place. If Republicans did not want that, then all they would have to do is leave things alone. Instead, they are deliberately making things worse.
    1
  12072.  @lunaticker6842  For one thing, the Bush v Gore recount was a completely different standard. That was ONE swing state that was within a few hundred votes. For Trump to have won, it would have meant over ten thousand votes being off in several different states at the same time. Sometimes a recount is warranted, sometimes it is not. That is not hypocrisy. Besides which, the 2020 election has already seen ten times as much scrutiny as the 2000 one, and found no significant fraud or errors, so potential crisis averted. As for "Trump is not my President," you do understand that that is rhetorical, right? No Democrat said that literally, as in they did not believe he legally was the president from 2017-2020. All that meant was, they did not vote for him and did not like that he was President. Only Republicans are delusional enough to pretend that Trump actually is still President. And Jan 6th was an insurrection. They were not "invited in," they got in by breaking windows and beating police officers with Blue Lives Matter flags. Any claims you may have heard of police "inviting them in" are nonsense. DO your research, and avoid untrustworthy propaganda sites when you do so. As for parties, I don't believe that any candidate is 100% in lockstep with their party in all things, that's not the point of parties. Parties are about many individuals aligning around a shared platform. One candidate might care more about civil rights than most of his peers, another might care more about the economy than his peers, another might care about health care more than his peers, but so long as they all mostly agree on the core interests of a given party, then they agree to tend to vote together in most situations. By aligning to a party, it helps voters to know which candidates will tend to support the issues they care about. I don't agree with Democrats on every issue, and certainly not to the degree that they push the issue, and I don't always disagree with Republicans on certain topics, but the Republican party have shown themselves to be incapable of governing, so I really don't have any option but to vote for the party capable of taking them off the board, until such time as they get their act together. Then we can consider maybe voting for one of them individually.
    1
  12073.  @lunaticker6842  Oh, and you seem to be confused on another point on Jan 6th. You said "the insurrectionists didn't hurt a single legislator," that is not for lack of trying. That was because the Capitol Police were able to hold back the protesters long enough, at the cost of their own bodies, that they were able to EVACUATE the congress of legislators. No insurrectionist ever came into contact with any legislators. If they had, it is highly likely there would have been violence, and many there were loudly proclaiming their intention to do so. And NO, this is NOT a "regular occurrence." People peacefully doing sitins WHEN allowed into the building is a completely different thing than breaking into the building by force and beating cops. Democrats have NEVER done that. Not even ONCE. If you feel that we're being "played," then join the side not trying to play you.
    1
  12074.  @kennethsnyder9236  This isn't the 1980s, it's easy to run a campaign from your own home these days, and there was a pandemic going on. Why do idiots act like it's a big deal that Biden was not having large in-person rallies?
    1
  12075. He might eventually even get to double digits. Unlikely though. What's more dangerous is that he spreads harmful misinformation to gullible rubes on social media, and that needs to stop. There's no chance of him getting the Democratic nomination, but anti-vaxers have killed more Americans than the Germans did in WWII.
    1
  12076. It was a raid on three terrorists. People calling it an "assassination" are in support of terrorism.
    1
  12077. He set up the economic recovery from the Bush recession that continued through most of Trump's term. He passed healthcare access for all that millions have benefited from greatly, despite all efforts to dismantle it. It's true that McConnell's senate prevent him from accomplishing as much as he could have and should have, but he still managed to accomplish more than most presidents.
    1
  12078. Charismaniacs can be dumb, if they're happy puppies. If they are evil, and dumb, but really LOVE what they do, you sometimes can't help but root for them living out their best evil life. :D
    1
  12079. Just in terms of practicality, moving from "they have nuclear power plants" to "they can build nuclear bombs" would be quite the undertaking, a matter of years, and very obvious to anyone keeping an eye on them. Also, as far as I know, the "how to do it" part is actually pretty well known, I think any country on Earth can find instructions these days. The hurdle is more that it takes some fairly large and specific machines and resources, so it's both very expensive and hard to do secretly. If the US wants them to have nukes, they would be better off just handing them a few. That said, I don't think the Us would view it in the best interests for ANY new county to join the nuclear powers. Yeah, they are a hell of a deterrent, but they also raise the stakes massively is someone on either side makes a mistake.
    1
  12080. I think it's because she wasn't linked in any way that would be relevant to the public interest.
    1
  12081.  @curtisjeffries9640  Exactly.
    1
  12082.  @curtisjeffries9640  No, I get it. There's no proof of any wrongdoing here, just wild insinuations.
    1
  12083.  @mohammedkhaliq1475  Well, you're close, but you got a few things wrong, so let's work through that. For one thing, if you have a problem with the government spending, that's a matter for the budget process, not the debt ceiling process. The debt ceiling has nothing to do with changing how the government spends. For another, "printing money", at least in the way it's currently being done in the US, does not cause inflation. The current inflationary cycle is a result of the covid pandemic and is global in nature. It's actually doing BETTER in the US than in most countries.
    1
  12084.  @networknomad5600  You've been listening to too much Faux News, apparently.
    1
  12085. @eric kanter You make a worse Youtube commenter than you did a congressman, and that is a very low bar.
    1
  12086. Brain worms are a terrible thing.
    1
  12087.  @GreenWitch1  You would think that, but people criticize Biden for his stutter ALL the time. It's really the thing hurting his campaign the most right now.
    1
  12088.  @ilyaskus5613  It is when America's enemy is calling he shots in the White House.
    1
  12089. So. . . a "tied on pocket" was. . . a purse?
    1
  12090.  @ZombieTomato  As was the case here.
    1
  12091. Standing with Ukraine IS standing with America,. The only people who don't stand with Ukraine are Putin's allies, paid or otherwise.
    1
  12092.  @lina77770  Yup. Brexit.
    1
  12093.  @Mythhammer  I never claimed to not understand you, I just disagree with you. For example, you claim that wind and solar are not "base load" sources, but they can be, in a responsible system. You just use various energy storage devices to stockpile the electricity produced by wind and solar, and then you can recall that energy on demand. We have these technologies, we're just in the process of scaling them up to meet the demand.
    1
  12094.  @Mythhammer  No, you just prefer propaganda that reinforces your own biases, even where it contradicts the science.
    1
  12095.  @Mythhammer  More government funding is thrown at fossil fuels than at energy storage, but the industry will come along just fine on its own merits. Renewable methods are gaining ground on the industry at record paces. Nobody serious is arguing that we should lower our standards of living, but we do need to invest future development in green energy, rather than continuing to dump it down oil wells.
    1
  12096.  @thisguyhere1  Climate deniers will always seek out their own strawmen, we don't need to concern ourselves with them.
    1
  12097.  @Simon-hb9rf  Scientists can talk amongst themselves all they like. If they have valid scientific positions, then those will be heard. If they have nonsense positions like the guy Tucker was talking to, then they will be laughed at, as they should. But there is no value in them speaking in a public forum about their nonsense, because the only change it can make is to confuse people. There is no value there.
    1
  12098.  @BishopStars  But the fossil fuel use is what leads to the climate change, so that's like saying that the real problem is not forest fires, it's that everything gets burned.
    1
  12099.  @BishopStars  Depends by how much we reduce it, but either way, reducing fossil fuel usage is a non-negotiable part of the process.
    1
  12100.  @BishopStars  It doesn't need to be reduced to a negative number. The earth soaks some carbon every year. It just can't keep up with the current rate of production. If we stopped using fossil fuels immediately, things would sort themselves out over a few decades. I don't think that's practical though, so we'd have to settle for just "less than we currently use," but even that would help. The more we can hit the brakes, the slower we'll crash. We probably can't avoid all of the consequences of climate change, but we can still avoid the worst case scenarios. We should also work toward actively removing carbon from the air, to help the planet speed things up, but there's no current technology that would allow us to just keep pumping carbon and it would be fine.
    1
  12101. If it benefits Americans, no shit those three are against it.
    1
  12102. It will eventually, but we're far from there yet. The death rate is down from January, but still a 7-day average of 400.
    1
  12103. @ Putin in power has changed everything.
    1
  12104. Yeah, I throw out my pods. I like the Nespresso because it ends up tasting good.
    1
  12105. No, the funny part is that some people actually believe them when they say that.
    1
  12106.  @captainz9  True. I think it's more efficient from the perspective of the chargers to not have to install and maintain card readers, but it's still something that should be available.
    1
  12107.  @thomasroath3457  It wasn't 2 trillion. You probably heard that the same lace that lies to you about other things to control your mind through fear. Break free of them. And Alex Jones does not get to decide what to pay, the courts decide that, and if he refuses to comply, he can have all his assets seized and even face jail time.
    1
  12108.  @Deatheater4444  Settlements are typically done BEFORE a verdict, not after, and is entirely their choice to agree to. They already got a verdict for 20 times that much, so it would not make sense for them to accept a much lower amount. They might not get the entire amount they were awarded, but they will walk away with every penny Jones currently has, and a lien on all his future earnings until he does pay off the total amount. They don't care about the money, they care about Jones NOT having money. And no, this will not be overturned on appeal.
    1
  12109.  @jasondashney  They might donate some or all of the money, but they are under no obligation to. A lot of them have already spent a lot of their own money in gun safety advocacy, and likely would spend a large chunk of this money on continuing those efforts. The point is that they are more interested in punishing Jones for his actions than they are in personal gain.
    1
  12110.  @jasondashney  Of course not. They are "asking for the moon" as you put it because Jones has made a fortune off of his gullible audience. Taking a few million off of him would accomplish nothing, he's shown no remorse for his actions, and no indication that he will stop spreading similar lies in the future. He even continued to attack the Sandy Hook families as the trial went on. So the amount that they were seeking was an amount significant enough that it would actually cause a change in his day to day standard of living. They don't want him to be able to ignore the amount as a "cost of doing business." The more money a person has, the higher punitive damages need to be to have any value whatsoever. You understand this very simple point? If all they wanted was the money, then taking the $50m probably would be the simplest answer for them. It's more than they would personally need, and take much less time to acquire.
    1
  12111.  @thecatthinks  Trump is currently running for President, and the GOP, who control the House, are too scared to go against him. Stop talking about him as though he isn't a clear and present danger.
    1
  12112.  @thecatthinks  He is still a clear and present threat though.
    1
  12113.  @hughjanus5518  But that's because the Republicans have no morals. If they did, then they would recognize that Canon, Thomas, and Alito have done wrong.
    1
  12114.  @Time4Project2025  Yes, they were the victims in those riots.
    1
  12115.  @Firebirdnation  Feminist women would know that they both have a 50/50 right to either put up the flag or not, and the fact that he's a Supreme Court Justice and this represents a conflict of interest, so the merits of the case would weigh on his side. Feminists have no problem calling this one in favor of taking the flag down.
    1
  12116.  @Time4Project2025  Yes, on the victim side. They hold peaceful demonstrations, and then get attacked by conservatives. There are no cases of LGBT protesters instigating violence.
    1
  12117.  @ImmaTwoPops  Also because he was paid off by conservative activists.
    1
  12118.  @sd5371  They would cause less harm to kids than anyone picked by De Santis. Let the voters decide whether to remove them and who to replace them with.
    1
  12119. If the form of nationalism they support does not involve white supremacy (explicitly or implicitly), then they would not be "white nationalists" in this sense, but being a nationalist in general is still not a positive trait to have. Any form of nationalist party, like the CCP, or the WPK, are still bad news.
    1
  12120. @@LincolnLloyd No, a nationalist is not "love of country." That is a "patriot." A nationalist involves other things, which typically cause more harm than good.
    1
  12121. @@LincolnLloyd Yes, people who identify as ":nationalist" and promote nationalist policies, tend toward authoritarianism and reckless disregard or even malice toward those outside "the nation." Patriotism is all well and good, defense of your home from external threats is fine, but "nationalism" is moving well past that.
    1
  12122. @@LincolnLloyd That's one hell of a run-on sentence you got there.
    1
  12123. @@LincolnLloyd . . . yes? The longer this conversation continues the more convinced I am that Chat GTP is on the other end of it.
    1
  12124. @@LincolnLloyd That's what Chat GTP would say.
    1
  12125. @@LincolnLloyd Hallucinations seem common among your people.
    1
  12126. @@LincolnLloyd At least the crypto bots have a pump and dump scheme to promote. What do you offer the world?
    1
  12127. @@LincolnLloyd Projecting.
    1
  12128. @@LincolnLloyd This is what the world becomes in the age of AI.
    1
  12129. @@LincolnLloyd This is why Democratic governance is essential. Humans could never survive in a Republican future.
    1
  12130.  @AndySaenz  I can only take Sarah Sanders at her word that she is a liar, why do you doubt her?
    1
  12131.  @amicableenmity9820  So wouldn't that go against Jennifer's argument that defending yourself would get you in trouble?
    1
  12132.  @curvinwenger8024  Done.
    1
  12133. You're talking about shopping malls, those have struggled. Big box stores are doing great, and will likely outlast all other types of stores. I do think that they will rely on online shopping synergy though. The physical store of the future is basically a showroom for online shopping. It's a place for you to go if you want to try on or handle a product before buying it, but they have a massive warehouse that also services the local online shoppers. These big box stores will likely be far outside the cities, since they need to have efficient access for large trucks to keep them stocked, and to delivery trucks for the online shopping. Smaller local stores might be appealing in theory, but they cannot compete in practice, because the deliveries to and from them are far less efficient, and people would rather pay less to get something same-day delivered than to pay more to go to the store and pick it up themselves. I will also note, that the urban area you showed was likely hotter than that parking lot, since cities are heat islands. Yes, even with trees.
    1
  12134.  @ryann4904  They do though.
    1
  12135.  @ChuckWortman  Maybe, but we've tried fighting drugs from the demand side for decades now and it just never works. We could massively increase drug treatment programs, maybe decriminalize drugs so that they are less of a social stigma for people trying to fight addiction, but I think the only real way to combat cartels would be to just legalize and nationalize drug sales, produce and sell them at cost, so that the cartels have no profit margins. So long as the profit margins are sky high, the risks involved are irrelevant, because they can always find people with nothing to lose. If you eliminate the profit potential, the whole empire evaporates. How much money is made from illegal liquor sales in 2023?
    1
  12136.  @matthewpray9226  So your plan is to basically go to war with all of South America? Good luck with that.
    1
  12137.  @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.
    1
  12138.  @haydenisanerd4958  A lot of things get deleted, it rarely means anything in particular, and often seems random.
    1
  12139.  @haydenisanerd4958  Well clearly the same thing would find the same results each time, but the specific contents involved can be random. I once had a post that kept vanishing, so I split it into two consecutive posts, and they both stuck, exact same words involved. The algorithm is complex and mysterious.
    1
  12140. Trump is currently actively complaining for Republicans to block any efforts to fix the border. That is not in the past, it is right now.
    1
  12141. A far-left Democrat lost to a centrist Democrat in an all-blue district. This is not a big deal to Democrats, the seat will stay blue. The Democratic party is made up of all sorts, but the majority of the party, as is the majority of the country, is centrist Democrats. It's the other party that has serious problems to deal with, as their lunatic fringe have completely taken over the party.
    1
  12142. Etymology and definition are separate things.
    1
  12143.  @heraclesreborn  I'll repeat, "Etymology and definition are separate things."
    1
  12144.  @saxor96  But the point is, most whales are those who can afford it, and those who can't are the extreme outliers, a drop in the bucket. You can't baby-proof the world.
    1
  12145.  @saxor96  How would you prevent alcoholics from buying alcohol?
    1
  12146.  @saxor96  Ok, but we aren't talking about children, they can't afford to whale.
    1
  12147.  @saxor96  When a child overspends in a game, the parent can recover that money. It is a mess for all involved and game companies would want to avoid that wh3enver possible, purely out of their own self-interest.
    1
  12148.  @saxor96  But my point is kids are irrelevant to this conversation, since everyone agrees that they should not be involved.
    1
  12149.  @saxor96  So, again, how do you prevent adult gambling addicts from playing these games, without involving non-addict adults?
    1
  12150.  @aeverton2877  Game companies would know the number, because they would see people spend hard to a certain point and then stop completely. They would view each such case as a failure.
    1
  12151.  @aeverton2877  But what I'm saying is that the collateral damage is a negligible part of the process, and basically difficult to avoid. Any player that would ruin himself over a gacha game was not going to otherwise lead an uneventful life. He would have found some other way to gamble his money away. Gaming cannot be held hostage to such people.
    1
  12152.  @saxor96  I didn't ignore any of the relevant bits. Most of the stuff you talked about was just basic gameplay, ways to engage players. What even are games but "flashing lights and colors?" Gacha games tend to very clearly display their odds, because they are required to by law in some jurisdictions. As for "pay to skip grins," I can see why that can seem annoying, but it does allow for a fair balance, where free players can still access everything over time, but people with more money than time can shortcut some of that and get right in. This provides value to those able to spend, without taking anything away from those who can't.
    1
  12153.  @saxor96  Again, "a casino does it" does not make it inherently bad. Disney was doing a lot of things casinos do before Vegas really got big. Again, "player engagement" is practically indistinguishable from "dark methods" or whatever you call them, and you've yet to offer actual suggestions of how to protect gambling addicts without making things considerably more difficult for the 99.999% of players who are not.
    1
  12154.  @saxor96  Again, games have been "manipulating the player into continuing to play" for as long as videogames have existed. The same practices that people point to as "manipulative" about a F2P game are also there in classic AC games.
    1
  12155.  @saxor96  Ok, it doesn't have dailies, but are dailies really that big a problem to you? I like having dailies in live service games, they keep me actively engaged so that I don't trail off. With other games, once I "finish" them and move on, it's hard to bring me back in when more content comes out. Of course the burden is on them to make the overall experience worthwhile, but so long as I enjoy the game, and so long as the dailies are not an unreasonable time sink, I really don't have an issue with running dailies. Also, older games had plenty of "near impossible tasks" to them, they just didn't offer a way around them.
    1
  12156.  @saxor96  So you agree that they definitely did have nearly impossible tasks, you just don't agree that we should care. I will say that live service games that DO roadblock content with "nearly impossible tasks" are just bad games. The good ones do not do this. Bad games exist, that doesn't mean that all games are bad.
    1
  12157.  @saxor96  Not really. I play games like Genshin and FGO, and they don't have any impossible tasks. What higher challenge tasks they do have tend to be completely optional side content, and can still be cleared without spending money. I feel like a lot of your argument is based on second hand information, other people telling you that a game or game mechanic is bad, rather than practical first hand experience. I also feel like you draw arbitrary distinctions between "games you like" and "games you don't like." At the end of the day, games have to make a profit for them to continue making more, so mechanics designed to make money are not automatically somehow worse than mechanics that do not make money. The distinction between "good" and "bad" is far more nuanced than that, and based in how specific mechanics add up to a whole game.
    1
  12158.  @saxor96  That's. . . nonsense. You aren't describing Genshin Impact at all. No boss mats you need should be on bosses you can't fight, there are higher quantities of drops on higher level bosses, but you should always be able to get plenty, and that's an issue that would only even matter to your first few characters. You should rapidly be at the point you can farm any endgame boss. Spending money isn't even a factor here, since you literally CAN'T spend money on those materials. You also don't need "broken 5*s," since the 4\*s available work just fine. And if you do want a few good 5*s, there is plenty of free currenty and a pity system, so even F2Ps are GUARANTEED to get the 5*s they might actually want.
    1
  12159.  @saxor96  Again, no, if the boss dropped a material that you needed to reach the next level, then the character you currently had was perfectly capable of beating that boss. You just weren't playing well. In all the years I've been playing Genshin, you are literally the first person I've heard express this issue, and I'm not even a particularly good player myself, so I understand difficulty frustrations in principle. As for Constellations, most characters are fine without any, especially the 5*s. There are certain 4*s that need higher constellations, but that's sort of assumed everyone will get there eventually, and/or you don't actually need what that character offers. I've been playing since launch, have a very large roster of characters, and have only directly pursed a single c1 character, and that was not because it was necessary, I had run her for almost a year by that point without it, it was just a neat QoL bonus that I really wanted. And as for the pity, you just go into it assuming bad luck. Go in with enough currency to hit double pity, and hope for better. My point is that even if you do hit double pity EVERY time, you would get enough of the specific characters you want to enjoy the game with, GUARANTEED. the only chance is in how much more than that you might get.
    1
  12160.  @36paris  Most whales are rich though. They don't necessarily have a "problem," they just have enough money that they don't care about spending thousands of dollars on a game, any more than you would find it ridiculous to spend $5 on a coffee.
    1
  12161.  @36paris  Also, rich people are just as likely to have addiction problems as anyone else. They are just better able to cope with them because they have more money to spend.
    1
  12162. Legislation written in the House is not worth the paper it's written on. It needs to be passed into law first. Biden IS fully enforcing all laws passes into law.
    1
  12163. I love the idea of "the guy prosecuting us is not qualified to do it, so please stop him from prosecuting us." Any idiot would want an unqualified person prosecuting them, unless they were scared.
    1
  12164. How many times did Ivanka say, under oath, "I do not recall" during her recent court appearance? Is she senile?
    1
  12165.  @IlPinnacolo  Well, yes, but the thousands of people who have spent decades researching this stuff have reached the conclusion that green house gases are the most significant tipping point among all of these processes. All other elements have been considered and accounted for. Aside from "magic," I guess. If anyone has a competing theory, then the burden on them is to prove that their theory is more likely, not just to cast vague doubts on the existing evidence.
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  12166.  @IlPinnacolo  Well, yes, but the thousands of people who have spent decades researching this stuff have reached the conclusion that green house gases are the most significant tipping point among all of these processes. All other elements have been considered and accounted for. Aside from "magic," I guess. If anyone has a competing theory, then the burden on them is to prove that their theory is more likely.
    1
  12167.  @IlPinnacolo  Well, yes, but the thousands of people who have spent decades researching this stuff have reached the conclusion that green house gases are the most significant tipping point among all of these processes. All other elements have been considered and accounted for. Aside from "magic," I guess.
    1
  12168.  @IlPinnacolo  Claiming "appeal to consensus fallacy" is a non-argument when your position is "appeal to whatever the consensus disagrees with." The consensus in this case is not right because they are the consensus, they are the consensus because they are right. You are using fallacies wrong. Stop it. We revise models over time to make them more accurate, but that does not mean that they were "wrong" before, just that they are more correct now. It's like how you can do a two-week weather forecast, and it will usually be mostly correct. That has value. But then one-week in, you have more data, and can refine it to be more accurate, and then 24 hours out you can further refine it to be more correct, and an hour away you can refine it more still. You would seem to look at that situation and claim that there's no point to any of that unless you can be 100% certain of the outcome, when the fact remains that there is a lot of benefit to using the imperfect long range tracking AND to update the results over time as best we can. My point is, there are no variables out there that are likely to completely overthrow the broad outcomes predicted by the current models, not without significant actual changes to the world. The current consensus prediction is what is likely to happen, and it is better to build policy around the likely outcomes than to build around the unlikely outcomes.
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  12169.  @victoriaroberts1620  How did murder even get into this? Who's murdering anyone here?
    1
  12170.  @kayakeraltamaha5720  But here you're talking about a case where the women was at least attacked as well, which is itself a crime. Why shouldn't the perpetrator of that attack face justice?
    1
  12171.  @kayakeraltamaha5720  I think it would depend on the state of the pregnancy at the time. If the fetus was not viable, then no murder took place, but if it was viable, then perhaps murder charges would be in order. In either case, it would not be up to the biological father, it would be up to the state to pursue charges.
    1
  12172.  @scottstevens2752  If you don't know by now, then you're unlikely to understand anyone trying to explain it to you.
    1
  12173.  @wildlifeathome  Your comment shows how blind Trump supports are.
    1
  12174.  @bartbarton3082  So you're saying Trump won't make it to the election? Eh, we can all hope.
    1
  12175.  @scottstevens2752  Poe's Law, man.
    1
  12176. @AlphaMindset-zq5qv Oh, no, I'm not MAGA. Easy mistake.
    1
  12177. @AlphaMindset-zq5qv People surviving is proof of nothing, Covid never had a 100% fatality rate. Most people who get cancer survive, but that is not evidence that "cnacer is not a problem," the people who don't survive are still a problem.
    1
  12178. @AlphaMindset-zq5qv Also, the flu is tracked completely separately, flu deaths are roughly 1/3 of covid deaths, after vaccination.
    1
  12179.  @bartbarton3082  I think you mean Trump. But yeah.
    1
  12180.  @moabman6803  Trump wouldn't wear a mask himself, because it would smear his make-up. That did not set a good example. Also, he and his friends tended to oppose lock-downs, even though they were effective. It tended to be governors and mayors that had to implement them, which was less effective than a responsible national approach.
    1
  12181.  @rickjames4031  "Your."
    1
  12182.  @Theyhateusandwedontcare  No, not always. They use them in surgery sure, but most nurses and doctors do not use masks outside of surgery. I unfortunately had to spend a lot of time at various hospitals over the last year though, including several periods in which there was a more significant uptick in local cases, so I can tell you that while most of the time they stopped wearing masks most of the time, when these upticks were happening they all started wearing them all day long, no exceptions, and visitors were more strongly encouraged to wear them than otherwise. Also, if a patient actually tests positive, then everyone in the room with them is required to wear masks until they are fairly sure they're no longer contagious. Those are just hospitals though. What do they know?
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  12183. Never confuse the terminally online with hard truths, they can't handle it.
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  12184.  Hellocrybaby Because they are patriots and care about this country. Yes.
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  12185. Lol, they are winning it every day. The goal is not to destroy Moscow and take over Russia, although it may take that to end the war. The goal is just to get all Russian forces out of Ukraine and then end hostilities.It ends when Russia stops trying to get in.
    1
  12186.  @godhand6510  That's what the Faux News has indoctrinated you to believe. It doesn't happen to be true, of course, but it is a funny little fantasy.
    1
  12187. Sadly, too many of them are Fox News viewers, and don't.
    1
  12188. Oh, that wasn't even the start of it. He was a rambling mess. His supports like that about him though, they want someone weak and pliable in the White House.
    1
  12189. Nope. There are other ways to keep track of that.
    1
  12190.  ralphferley2602  If you don't know how many people you have, then you can't plan ahead for how much services will cost or how many people they need to be prepared for. This is why we have things like the census.
    1
  12191. Generally, anything reported in the mainstream news is already all over Russian social media. It's a connected world.
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  12192. @ Oh, I'm not maga.
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  12193. Nah, Fauci is not science, he just informs the public about the science. That is only a threat to those who prefer to peddle misinformation.
    1
  12194. This is why countries need to come together to force companies into accepting local tax rates, rather than allowing them to use tax shelters. The current model will become unsustainable once human labor becomes irrelevant to the process.
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  12195.  @alliwishis_2  I assumed it was just "she disagreed with the golden calf, occasionally."
    1
  12196. But Kevin, your boss Trump said Putin was a really cool dude. You aren't disagreeing with the fuhrer, are you?
    1
  12197. One thing I noticed is that many NYC buildings have "gaps" in the middle of them, mainly for regulatory shenanigans. It would be interesting if they put wind turbines in there, so they would at least be useful.
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  12198. I have a feeling like this could happen to most cities in Japan if they let things tilt too badly, but that Kyoto is safe. It just has too much cultural heritage to it for it to completely collapse. I feel like even in a worst case scenario, public and private investment from outside would ensure that tourist areas were well maintained and accessible and the tourism industry would be maintained (pandemics aside), and a more "normal" urban lifestyle could always grow out of that seed.
    1
  12199.  @XgiannettoX  Exactly. Biden managed to keep inflation in the US WAY lower than in countries with conservative governments like the UK. The dollar has been extremely strong against foreign currencies.
    1
  12200.  @drzaius1121  When it's carried to term, yes. Not before.
    1
  12201.  @GreyWolfLeaderTW  Because born children are people, fetuses are not. This should not be a controversial statement.
    1
  12202.  @mc6jumper891  Traditionally, Republicans cheat much more often and on larger scales than Democrats. I think maybe you've been indoctrinated by Republican efforts to win elections with fewer votes, and demand a participation trophy any time they lose?
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  12203. The military could only be used if there were an actual military invasion, not just a bunch of civilians trying to immigrate peacefully. The military cannot be used on US soil for police actions.
    1
  12204.  @JamieParot  Duh, babies are alive and human, nobody is arguing otherwise.
    1
  12205.  @drzaius1121  Yes, of course they are children once they are born. And what do you do about the cases in which it is not a result of choice (which is actually far more than the 0.01% you cite)?
    1
  12206.  @GreyWolfLeaderTW Actually, pro choice people are more likely to support newborn children and their mothers than pro-life people, statistically speaking.
    1
  12207.  @SBone-td6ey  There has never been a time in history when "everyone thought so" on any topic. There is always disagreement, today is no exception.
    1
  12208.  @FentanylFloyd  More Forbes censors.
    1
  12209.  @FentanylFloyd  Raised her?
    1
  12210.  @FentanylFloyd  Of course it's what she said.
    1
  12211.  @JamieParot  Pro-choice people tend to be more opposed to killing humans than pro-life people, ironically enough.
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  12212.  @FentanylFloyd  What type of stuff? You realize you're not making sense to other people, right? Is this a bit?
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  12213. I very much enjoy some mobile games, even for all their faults, but I have NEVER been so broken inside that I've believed that they make the game "even" between F2P and whales. The whales are always WAY ahead, no question. I still play some of these, because I feel that what F2P do get is worth playing, but this Diablo game is fundamentally cracked, and everyone needs to be up front about that.
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  12214. Wyoming is all well and good, but no way do they deserve two Senators and more than half a Representative. We need to do some state consolidation.
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  12215. This is Obama, not Trump. You're talking about Trump.
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  12216.  @socraticmethod-man9808  I don't think they legally had the option of just distributing the money however they saw fit. I mean, if they had that option, they could have converted it all into pennies and just carpet bombed Tehran with them or something else passive-aggressive like that. They were obligated to give the money to the recognized government at that time.
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  12217.  @YousAHunter  Yes, Trump helped Iran get nukes by pulling out of the Iran deal, providing us with zero benefit, and allowing Iran to kick out the international observers that were preventing them form developing nukes. Trump played us all. Biden does want to get back into the Iran deal, but of course any deal is a negotiation, and he wants to try and angle for better terms first. We would still be in a better place without blowing the deal up in the first place.
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  12218.  @YousAHunter  I don't agree that they weren't abiding by the deal, but even if they weren't, we lost what monitoring capability we did have when Trump blew up the deal, and gained nothing in return. If they were doing anything before that, they are at least doing much more of it now that they don't have to hide anything.
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  12219.  @YousAHunter  You say that, but I can't find any evidence to support your assertions. Which intelligence agencies?
    1
  12220.  @YousAHunter  I looked, which countries were they and when did this happen? The only reports I've heard of Iran being dodgy were after Trump bailed on the deal.
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  12221. "But Hunter Biden tho!" -idiots
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  12222. They don't mind when Americans are killed by guns, so long as they are American guns that do it. They care more about American guns than about American lives.
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  12223.  @marksprague1280  If Republicans understood the Constitution, they would have left the Republican party, like a lot of people already have. It's the party of dead ends now.
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  12224.  @Bookworm51485  It's worked for plenty of other countries.
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  12225.  @marksprague1280  That would still be the Republicans.
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  12226.  @minnietrout814  The problem with Uvalde was the man in the gun inside the school,. who took most of his shots before anyone arrived. The police and leadership in the area had little to do with the outcome.
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  12227.  @minnietrout814  Oh, your information is way outdated. There certainly WERE a lot of Democrats in the KKK, but that was 60 years ago, and most of those are dead now. When the Democrats supported the Civil rights amendment, those Southern Democrats in the KKK stopped voting for Democrats, and the Republicans actively courted their vote. It was called the "Southern strategy." CURRENTLY the KKK members are all Republicans. They certainly didn't vote for Obama or Biden.
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  12228.  @minnietrout814  Without the gun, the man would not have been able to kill those children. On the same day that the Sandyhook killer murdered 27 people, a man went on a knifing rampage in China and inured 27. Injured. Not one person died, because he did not have a gun. First world countries with stronger gun laws do not have the mass murder problems we have in the US. It's the guns.
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  12229.  @babyt556  You know what would stop school shootings completely? Take away the guns. "Buzz doors" and such are just a bandaid on an open wound.
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  12230.  @babyt556  The KKK were Democrats before the 1960s, then they all switched to the Republican party. In the present, the KKK vote for Donald Trump, because he supports their values.
    1
  12231.  @marksprague1280  Again, the KKK members all started voting Republican after the civil rights movement in the 60s. Do you really think KKK members didn't vote for Donald Trump in both elections?
    1
  12232.  @pallen49  I don't think you're right about that, the Republicans typically oppose supporting trans kids.
    1
  12233.  @rvh77  She does have a habit of speaking from her stump speech, but that isn't terribly unusual for politicians. It doesn't imply that she got the questions in advance. If anything, having the questions in advance would have let her come up with more specific answers to them. Also, CNN is a news channel, Fox is not. There's no basis to compare the two.
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  12234. I don't know how we'd get from here to there, but I really think the whole Israeli area needs a total overhaul. 1. Remove all of historic Jerusalem from the "state of Israel," and make it a UN protectorate state, a bit similar to the Vatican in that it would be outside the control of the local politics, and would be administered to be free and open to all people of all faiths. 2. Design a constitution that firmly enshrines religious liberty and protections for all, to ensure that NO religious or racial bias could be tolerated in any direction. 3. Set up small enclaves within the country that have firmly theocratic governance, one Jewish, one Muslim, with strict regulations preventing any sort of military build-up within their borders, again, on a Vatican-esc model. This is just to ensure a "Safe haven" for both religious groups within the region. 4. The rest of the country would have to migrate to a fully democratic nation, one in which the majority rules, whether Jewish or Muslim, and again, in which it is firmly unconstitutional to persecute either group, regardless of who holds power at the time. No more "settlements," no more "enclaves (outside of the three very small ones noted above), just a normal, functional country in the region that is free and fair to ALL people within it.
    1
  12235.  @mikemyers7539  There would still be like 212 members. That's more than the House started with.
    1
  12236.  @mikemyers7539  The Republican members, sure, but there are plenty of Democrats in the House too, just not currently a majority of them.
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  12237. That's because he never deserved one. He's been crazy for years now.
    1
  12238.  @kathym.248  Nah.
    1
  12239.  @KeshavJoshi-f8y  The voters decided that they don't like him.
    1
  12240.  @bobbymcbobby616  The Harris campaign talks about policy all the time. You have not been paying attention.
    1
  12241.  @kristinab1078  The Democratic party had primaries. Biden won them all by a wide margin. RFK Jr. could have chosen to run in those primaries, but he chose not to. The same applies to candidates like Bernie Sanders. "The DNC" did nothing to him, Democratic voters just did not want him.
    1
  12242.  @bobbymcbobby616  I don't fault them for discussing their opponents' flaws. They are the opponent, after all. Like Biden said, don't compare me to the almighty, compare me to the alternative. When someone is going to be elected, it's important to understand the flaws in the opposing side.
    1
  12243.  @tyshchenkoyevhen  It means that if we sent Ukraine the US tanks, and they used them against Russia, then Russia could test out their weapons against them and see how they do against US tanks. This is useful information to learn, just as this invasion taught us how worthless Russian tanks were in the face of Javelin missiles. The US would prefer to not give them that opportunity, and realistically, US tanks would not likely make a huge difference to the war, since they wouldn't support Ukraine's tactics that well.
    1
  12244.  @MattMusicianX  Trump lived through the Obama economy and foreign policy. He failed to move the needle on either while in office. Also, Trump is the one who is promoting Hitler's policies, not the other side.
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  12245.  @MattMusicianX  Trump lived through the Obama economy and foreign policy. He failed to move the needle on either while in office.
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  12246.  @MattMusicianX  No US president has started anything in those countries. Those are all cases where the countries in question started conflicts their their neighbors. In any case, Trump certainly did not make anything better in any of them.
    1
  12247.  @MattMusicianX  The US is not involved in most of the conflicts you listed, and what role we do play is mainly drone strikes against terrorist cells (which have happened under each of the past three administrations). The US has not put boots on the ground in a conflict zone since the Bush administration.
    1
  12248.  @MattMusicianX  Try breaking free from the magas, that should solve both of our problems.
    1
  12249. Many countries have open borders. It's not an issue. Having a national border does not mean that you need to prevent people from crossing it.
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  12250.  @camomaxx  There is absolutely nothing in international or US law that says you can't travel through multiple countries to claim asylum, MOST asylum seekers around the world travel through multiple countries before settling down. And in many cases "because you're poor" is an acceptable reason to seek asylum, because if you are unable to meet your basic needs in a given country, then that is an asylum-worthy reason to leave it. Again, if you don't want these people coming to the US, then the only way to do that is to help make their home country, OR countries along their way, livable enough that they can stop and stay there instead. You can't just expect them to NOT want a better life for themselves and their children.
    1
  12251.  @camomaxx  One, you can claim asylum because you are poor if that has led to an inability to survive in your home country. Two, there is ZERO need to do that in the first country you arrive in, you just made that up because you want it to be true. and as for applying to enter the US, that would be a great idea, but due to Republican stonewalling over the past few decades, we currently do not offer nearly as many immigration slots as people trying to enter, so for most migrants, it is literally not an option, so they have to resort to plan B. If you want to reduce illegal immigration, there are only two ways to do it. 1. Make conditions better in their home country so that they don't need to come here to survive, and 2. massively increase the amount of legal visas given out so that more people who want to enter legally are allowed to do so. There is no solution in which less migrants enter the US.
    1
  12252. Yeah, maybe, but also a narcissistic sociopath who;s vision for America is directly at odds with both the founding fathers and the current American public.
    1
  12253. The only hope for the Republican party is for good people to not vote Republican until they realize this. So long as they think they can still win elections while courting crazy, they'll never stop.
    1
  12254. The people voted for more inflation and that's exactly what he's going to give them.
    1
  12255. TL;DR, people are bad at math, Republicans doubly so.
    1
  12256.  @TrumpWon2020  There have been several people, mostly among the Oathkeepers, that were charged with seditious conspiracy, which is the legal charge one makes against insurrectionists. You have been poorly informed.
    1
  12257.  @sn3ak3r58  And also weapons violations and seditious conspiracy. Mostly on the small fish for now though, since the DoJ likes to build up from the small fish to the top. Still, it's like fish in a barrel at this point, with so many crimes to go around.
    1
  12258. Who is "they" that "sincerely claim that purging all opposing figures from public life is "'defending democracy?'" Are you sure that you aren't conflating unrelated individuals or viewpoints?
    1
  12259. Another thing companies should be working on is "casual productivity." Figuring out how to build a factory or something that is actually practically useful, but that can turn on and off almost instantly, and only needs to operate when power is available. In that way, when there is excess power in the system, this facility could make something that takes a lot of energy. When power is low, everything would completely shut down. Obviously this would not be as productive as a 24/7 operation, but it wouldn't necessarily need to be, since it would be more efficient (using only "excess" energy), and would also need to be relatively low human-resource, just people checking in from time to time to make sure everything is running, rather than having a bunch of humans wandering around that would have nothing to do when the power is not available. If they can manage this sort of project well, then it would be a much more efficient use of variable resources than any form of storage.
    1
  12260. They commit crimes at a lower rate than US citizens do though. . .
    1
  12261.  @For_The_Republic92  You mean working aged men? What about them? They're looking for work to pay for themselves and their families back home, same as it's always been. There are also plenty of women and children too.
    1
  12262.  @For_The_Republic92  Oh, so you're talking about people you imagine, not the actual people crossing the boarder. Ok.
    1
  12263.  @elizabethv7411  Many of these schools already have guns and security, and there are still shootings. It does not help. The solution is to take the guns AWAY form the criminals, not to add more guns to the scenario.
    1
  12264.  @pinkerproductions7420  But, again, the mass shootings still happen, they still lose lives before the armed security can get involved, there's not even really evidence that they lead to less lives taken than if they just call the police when the incident starts. What does prevent almost all of these events is to make it impossible for the shooter to get a gun in the first place, so that's where our focus should be.
    1
  12265.  @pinkerproductions7420  My point is that armed security is an extremely ineffective and wasteful way of solving the problem. There are much more effective, much less wasteful ways of achieving better goals, so why not just do that instead? Also, school shootings, sadly, not that rare, about one or two per year. What we do know is that there have been schools with armed officers present that did not have sufficiently different outcomes than without them. As for gun control methods, if the previous assault weapons ban had been in place, the father in question would have been unable to purchase the weapon used in this shooting. Most of the weapons used in the past ten years of school shootings would not have been available to the shooters. And if we went further than that and had at least Swiss style gun laws, nobody in that household would be allowed to own a firearm, on the basis of the perceived risk to the community. That is not currently legal under Georgia''s laws, but that can be solved. The root cause in all these cases is the gun, for lack of the gun, they would be far less effective, and that is the problem that is possible to solve, rather than trying to solve "human nature," something we've failed to do for thousands of years. I really wish that people would be more honest, and instead of pretending to believe that "the criminal mind" could be solved if only we tried a little harder, that they just want to have guns and genuinely do not care how many lives are lost in their name. As for the FBI, they did what they could within the bounds of the law. I would be far more worried about the idea of taking "pre-crime" actions against people who might do a crime in the future, than I ever would about removing their access to weapons. And underscores before and after a word.
    1
  12266.  @pinkerproductions7420  That is a lot I did refute your claims about defensive gun use. It does not work. There is no evidence that it significantly reduces the death count in these events, and the only evidence we do have is that it definitely does not prevent the deaths from happening at all. What does work? Removing the guns. So why not do that instead? As for your argument that the costs could be offset by making school budgets more efficient, that too would be wrong. If you are able to make school budgets more efficient, then that's great, but hat money should still be rolled back into improving our educational experiences, not into buying more guns and paying people to use them. I would rather be paying teachers to teach than to be soldiers. Also, claiming that other countries have "higher" school shooting rates only works if you adjust for populations to such an extent that one or two events balances out against ten to twelve in the US. That is never good statistical practice, since it leads to extreme outlier situations. If you have no option but to make such a comparison, then the correct answer is to say that there is no data at all. As for your claims about the assault weapons ban, the fact is that most recent school shooters acquired their weapons legally, or stole it from someone who did, so if legal ownership of such weapons did not exist, it would have been less likely they would be able to acquire one. Yes, criminals will seek out illegal means, but that does not mean that they will be successful. Do you believe that criminals in the UK or Japan would have any less interest in having a gun if they could? And yet their homicide rates are much lower per capita than the US, because while their criminals want to have guns, and commit no fewer crimes than in the US in which a gun could come in handy, it is much harder for even criminals to find a gun in those countries, since legal guns are not available to them. And my point in raising the Swiss was that they have much more effective gun laws than the US, and they would have allowed actions to be taken in this case which likely would have prevented the shooting entirely. Also, even if the FBI had prosecuted him for making threats, it likely would not have prevented this shooting. The punishments would have been relatively minor, given that he was himself a minor, it was a first offense, he did not have a serious record, etc. I know that there is this fantasy that "the bad guys get locked up and never cause harm again," but things have never worked that way, and never could. I should also clarify that my position does not come from not understanding your own. I understand your position as well as you do, I just further understand the many reasons why it is wrong. If you have further questions on the topic, I would be happy to answer them.
    1
  12267.  @pinkerproductions7420  I don't have one.
    1
  12268. @sam rut Lol, you don't even know what a woman is!
    1
  12269. Have they tried inventing a new kind of worm that is completely harmless but distracts immune responses?
    1
  12270. Bing.
    1
  12271. Well of course not, he's too chicken.
    1
  12272.  @Rapturetjmoore  Some plead guilty, because they were guilty of the crimes they were accused of. Others took it to verdict and were found guilty by a judge or jury. The point is that there have been over 700 people convicted for their role in the insurrection, and Trump will join them. It's like any mafia prosecution, you start with the foot soldiers, and work your way up the chain to the top.
    1
  12273.  @zappulla4092  Yeah, but it took four years off between 2017 and 2021. They did absolutely nothing to hold Trump accountable for his actions, so the clock didn't even start until after Garland settled in.
    1
  12274.  @glennmandigo6069  Lol.
    1
  12275.  @umpire29  "Insurrection" is not a criminal charge in US law. The criminal charge you're looking for is "seditious conspiracy," which means "doing an insurrection." As of this moment, nine people have been convicted of Seditious Conspiracy, mainly footsoldiers in the insurrection attempt. The Big Man is up next.
    1
  12276.  @justonetime112  Clinton was never charged with anything because she didn't do crimes. The same does not apply to Trump.
    1
  12277.  @rogerthomas169  Where have you been for the past three years?
    1
  12278.  @JohnSmith-zw6tr  No, they don't, plenty of comments in support of Israel get through. Whichever posts of yours may have been deleted probably just used some term or phrase that have been filtered on this channel. It's also important to remember that most filtering it determined by the channel itself, not by Youtube in general.
    1
  12279.  @JohnSmith-zw6tr  I highly doubt they use AI to analyze context, that would take too much compute time. The filters do involve phrases, but would likely be triggered by just certain combinations that you were using. In this case, there are probably certain sensitive terms that they don't want to see in direct relation to Israel, but do not include those terms if directed toward other countries.
    1
  12280.  @JohnSmith-zw6tr  Yeah, they can be touchy about that. But again, there's no intelligence, human or otherwise, behind it. It's just simple filters.
    1
  12281. No, you imagined it three years ago, and insisted that your imagination was right. What we know now is the same as what we knew back then, that it's possible that it escaped a lab, and it's possible that it came from wt markets, and that we don't know which of those is true.
    1
  12282.  @rockethito  Because people prefer lies that confirm their biases to the truth. People who insist on conveying accurate information are always annoying.
    1
  12283.  @SeaJay_Oceans  And that would be the "conspiracy theory" part. There is no evidence of artificial manipulation, and there is no evidence to support the idea that there was anything "intentional" about any of this.
    1
  12284.  @SeaJay_Oceans  That's all nonsense though. I mean, you DO understand that everything you just said if fiction invented to control you thorough fear, right?
    1
  12285.  @SeaJay_Oceans  You're blathering nutter fanfiction. There's nothing "adult" about that.
    1
  12286.  @SeaJay_Oceans  And you enjoy your little Goosebumps books about massive global conspiracies to put fluoride in your toothpaste or whatever. .
    1
  12287.  @John-w4o1t  Nobody who has consulted with Robert Kennedy on anything has come away a wiser person.
    1
  12288.  @John-w4o1t  No good ever came of consulting Robert Kennedy. The living one, at least.
    1
  12289. The information collected by the Israeli Ministry of Health says that everyone should get vaccinated immediately.
    1
  12290. I am an artist. Art can be therapy. Publishing art into the world is another matter entirely. If Ye wants to make art of violence against his ex's boyfriend, that's fine, and possibly even healthy, but if he wants to make that art public in a way that Davidson would see it, that's a threat, art or not.
    1
  12291. Manchin shedding crocodile tears about the high price of gas and inflation, meanwhile he shills for the oil industry that is entirely RESPONSIBLE for those high gas prices and inflation!
    1
  12292. He wasn't arrested 40 times for assault though. He was arrested for various other things, which is common for homeless people. He wasn't convicted for anything, which indicates that those charges were all likely very weak.
    1
  12293. @@carolinehudson5996 That is not a capital offense.
    1
  12294. Well it's all a single voting process, so the final tabulation takes about the same amount of time. They run the first vote just like normal, and then if that doesn't have a definite answer they run those same numbers through a second time, so it would probably only take minutes to do, and so on. It shouldn't take more than an extra hour to complete.
    1
  12295.  @timjohnson1199  Not as bad as these anti-EV idiots though, right?
    1
  12296.  @darcihoudeshell2588  That's what the Build Back Better plan is for, to build out that energy infrastructure. Remember that when the first cars were on the road, Carl Benz's wife had to buy kerosene from a pharmacy because gas stations didn't even exist! Infrastructure builds out to meet demand, but there's nobody who says that it's impossible to build.
    1
  12297.  @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.
    1
  12298.  @phillmccracken4219  Again, ALL of those things added up do not make an EV worse over its useful lifespan than an ICE car. You talk about all sorts of diesel equipment being used to make it, as if those diesel equipment are not a part of the problem that EVs are working to solve. Those too will be replaced with EVs as the market expands. Yes, some amount of pollution goes into putting an EV on the road, but it is LESS pollution, including EVERY possible source of it that you can come up with, than would go into building and driving an ICE car over the same distance. So unless the alternative you are insisting on is NO cars of ANY sort, EVs are still the best option available.
    1
  12299.  @barrymaynard6762  Truth hurts, sorry.
    1
  12300.  @ArchesBro  Definitely good advice. Let's not do that .Let's hold people accountable for their actions, not just for "something we disagree with."
    1
  12301.  @surojsarkar6054  I'm glad you like me that much.
    1
  12302.  @hismajesty6272  Sheep like to dream that they aren't sheep by "bucking the trends" and "being unique. . . just like everyone else." Conservatives are followers, plain and simple. They flock to "strongman" types that project strength and confidence, because they lack it in themselves. They look to the biggest bully in the room, hoping that he will protect them, when all he will actually do is continue the cycle of bullying.
    1
  12303. Why do criminals get so much more attention if they are immigrants than if not?
    1
  12304. What about EV charging payment? Elon's expanding Tesla's charging footprint by letting everyone else use it, maybe he could make it so that Twitter users can use Tesla chargers easily, merge the Tesla and Twitter apps, etc.
    1
  12305. The Republicans only elect sociopaths, so they have literally no shame about lying. "The truth" is whatever they want to believe.
    1
  12306.  @DrScopey2  Most celebrities have fans who are underage, if that were the standard, then NO celebrities could be allowed to endorse beer. Clearly this hasn't been a problem before now, so why is this particular influencer a problem, if not "because bigotry?" The woman in question is 26 years old, and has plenty of fans in their 20s. Bud was trying to expand their market in that age bracket, 21-30 year olds who are fans of Mulvaney. Are you equally incensed by the Corona ads with Snoop and Samberg?
    1
  12307.  Pat Luxor  How so?
    1
  12308.  @batalay  If it cost you money then you were shortselling or invested with shortsellers. Don't do that.
    1
  12309. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. If Republicans don't want to be taken to task for threatening the debt limit, then they should not threaten the debt limit.
    1
  12310. It's less about her story, and more about her judgement.
    1
  12311. Aw, look, Kristi's in her puppy hunting costume!
    1
  12312. Term limits would solve nothing.
    1
  12313.  @anthonysisinni908  Except that you can never convince voters to follow that advice in sufficient numbers. Change has to come through policy, not wishes that voters would vote better.
    1
  12314.  @1980Shadowwolf  That really depends on how far below you choose to get. I mean, obviously Dems can look down on Trump voters, right?
    1
  12315.  @michaeleli3891  There are already those in congress being investigated for insider trading, such as Tommy Tuberville, Roger Marshall, Rand Paul, Cynthia Lummis, Mo Brooks, Dan Crenshaw, and various others.
    1
  12316. Lol. A sucker is born every minute, and then 18 years later, they register as a Republican.
    1
  12317. I think that it can be reasonable to have laws that allow the seizure of large amounts of cash, if there is reason to suspect it's involved in a crime, but I think that there need to be reasonable and convenient ways to recover that money by signing an affidavit that it is not involved in criminal activity, and it's vital that none of this money ends up in the hands of law enforcement. They can't have an incentive to do this beyond "defense of law and order," because that just leads to corruption.
    1
  12318. $144 a week? That's nuts! They should be making at least twice that!
    1
  12319.  @AK-47ISTHEWAY  Oh, that's pretty good then. Nearly $3K a month? Cool work, if you can get it.
    1
  12320.  @logiwogi8938  The "summer protests" were a protest. It was mostly peaceful, and it was justified. Most of the violence involved came from right-wing counter-protesters (according to police records, at least). In any case, none of it involved invading the US Capitol during the election certification, so it's really apples and orangutans.
    1
  12321.  @AN-gh6jf  Because it's harder to level insurrection charges than the things they have been charged with. As more people are convicted of more minor offenses, and flip to reduce jail time, they will be able to compile stronger evidence of intent and be able to charge the more serious actors.
    1
  12322.  @MrLaughingcorpse  They were using the flagpoles and signs to beat police officers. That is not how "peaceful protests" work.
    1
  12323.  @logiwogi8938  If when you say "the kid who was defending himself with and AR15," you mean "the kid who shot someone in the back with an AR15 that he was not legally allowed to possess, and then shot more people as they tried to apprehend him," then yeah, that was one of the right-wing agitators who was doing violence at the protests and had no role in being there. As for the rest, I think you have have fake news sources. You should do your research and find out for yourself why your examples are nonsense.
    1
  12324.  @logiwogi8938  Again, no left-wing protesters invaded the US Capitol during the confirmation of the Presidential election results. It is a bit ridiculous to try and compare that to ANYTHING that was done by BLM protesters. It only shows that whatever fills in for a "news" source for you is fake news, and you deserve to be better informed.
    1
  12325.  @logiwogi8938  You REALLY need to watch the NYT video breaking down the full timeline of events. Nobody was "let into" the building, it was insurrectionists who broke down windows and doors and then opened other doors for their fellow insurrectionists.
    1
  12326.  @georgigeorgiev891  The gun culture has no interest in being changed, best to deal with the guns.
    1
  12327.  @Dutchbrother07  I don't think it's reasonable to compare developed countries to under-developed ones in this context. There are all sorts of reasons for violent crime stats to be different between those countries. If you're going to be comparing violent crime, it makes sense to compare us to countries that are "mostly like the US, except that they don't have guns." And if we make such comparisons, their overall murder rates are far below the US, not just their gun murder rates, although of course the gun murder rates are down more.
    1
  12328.  @Dutchbrother07  The FBI do not estimate those levels of defensive gun use. Those numbers come from pro-gun lobbies. In reality, defensive gun use is a tiny fraction of overall gun crimes in the US.
    1
  12329.  @Dutchbrother07  It's to exclude co0untries that lack basic rule of law because it would be silly to do otherwise. If you don't believe that the US can reasonably be compared to countries like Australia or those in central Europe, then you have too low an opinion of America to have a valuable viewpoint on gun safety. The areas of the US with gun violence have no less crime than in places like London or Sydney or Paris, they just have more murders, because their criminals have guns.
    1
  12330.  @Dutchbrother07  It's also worth keeping in mind that US rural areas ALSO have higher murder rates than those of other developed countries, it's not just "those mean cities" that they tell you to fear.
    1
  12331.  @Dutchbrother07  Well you have to consider rates on a per-capita basis. Obviously a zone with only 50K people in it will have fewer total murders than a zone with a million people in it. But per capita, rural murder rates aren't much lower than in "mean old cities," and that applies anywhere in the country, not just whichever areas you decide are "much worse than where you live." My point is, the access to guns allows for a much higher murder rate in the US than in other countries. It's not a "people problem," it's a "weapon access" problem.
    1
  12332.  @Dutchbrother07  So you would say that the US is basically exactly like Mexico? That we should count ourselves lucky if any stat is better in America than it is in Mexico? It's not "racist" to be honest about the realities of the world, and most of the other countries in the Western hemisphere do have far less developed economies and far less stable governments, in many cases due to deliberate action by the US. However they got that way, it still leaves them poor examples to compare to the US in terms of overall crime and violence. I know that you know this full well, but you prefer to pretend otherwise, because you can't defend the fact that guns have caused higher murder rates in the US than in Europe. And yes, physical beatings cause more deaths than rifles, but not more than guns in general. You can't eliminate ALL murders, but you can greatly REDUCE them, and isn't that worth doing? Some people will still find a way, but generally those with murderous intent will be less successful. When people go on a rampage with a gun, there are often death tallies in the double digits. When they go on a rampage with a knife, there are often injuries, but far fewer fatalities. As to your whole bit about "tyranny," it's nonsense. Dozens of countries around the world have no more tyranny than the US, without needing any guns to secure that freedom. And if it came down to it, America's civilian gun owners could do nothing to stop the military, and if we're being honest with ourselves, we both know that the gun owners would more likely side with the tyrants than against them.
    1
  12333.  @Dutchbrother07  1. Guns cause higher murder rates than not having guns, because more attempted murders become completed murders. They don't cause more people to want to kill, they do cause more people to be successful at it. The fact remains that if guns were a net positive, then America would have a lower murder rate than European countries, not a higher one. European countries have just as many inner city drug dealers as the US does, with just as much interest in causing harm to others, they are just less successful at it. And London is going better than any US city, they have a murder rate about half of Chicago's, and less than states like Alabama or Mississippi. 2. fatalities in the double digits are rare, but when they do happen, it is usually due to guns. Removing access to those guns would still save lives. 3. Your little fantasies are irrelevant to the fact that guns cause more harm than good in America. They are irrelevant to protecting our freedoms, and yet they cost thousands of people the freedom to live each year. There is no rational defense to keeping them, it's all just babies crying over their toys being taken away. But thank you for pointing out why an armed insurrection would never be NECESSARY, the US military would never participate in such a thing.
    1
  12334.  @Dutchbrother07  European countries have violent crime rates roughly equivalent to the US. There is no reason to believe they have any fewer people with murderous intent than we do. They just have fewer successful murders, because they lack the tools to do it as efficiently as in the US. Also, nobody is talking about a "slightly higher murder rate," the US murder rate is six times higher than the UK's. That's more than "slightly." And again, "self defense" cases are a drop in the bucket compared to gun murders. (I believe we’ve talked about this yet you haven’t seemed to have processed that information) And again, London has a lower murder rate than cities like Chicago.
    1
  12335.  @Dutchbrother07  You are very bad at using sources if you believe what you said.
    1
  12336.  @Dutchbrother07  Reread your source and tell me why YOU think that THEY think there were "60K to 2.5m defensive gun uses. It will let me know whether you are dishonest or incompetent.
    1
  12337.  @Dutchbrother07  But there are 500,000 gun crimes, so those are still a problem. My point remains. The simple fact is this, if guns DID solve more problems than they cause, then the US would have a LOWER murder rate than other first world countries, rather than a murder rate several times higher. There is no evidence to support the idea that guns save more innocent lives than they end.
    1
  12338.  @poison1874  Dumb people often do this. Then they vote Republican.
    1
  12339. Does he realize he already won the election? The country he's destroying is the one he already bought!
    1
  12340. Just so long as that is not used as an excuse to ignore the best information available.
    1
  12341.  @csbrooks  Right, the Chinese vaccine is junk (ironic considering that the conspiracy nuts think they masterminded this or some nonsense), which is why China's deaths rates are so high, essentially none of them are vaccinated by the standards of western countries. If they'd had the same vaccination rates as Australia, with proper vaccines, this wouldn't have been an issue.
    1
  12342.  @dbsti3006  Yeah, it does effect the younger population way less than the older, but that doesn't make the younger population complete immune to it. They still need to take care. About six times as many younger people died of covid than die during a typical flu season.
    1
  12343. I thought it was a cool idea, but I have to admit that the "vacuum depressurization" issue stopped my hype dead. I just don't see a way around that. It just seems like one of those idea that sounds good on paper because it would work in a perfect world where everything worked perfectly all the time, but it completely implodes (literally) if even tiny, inevitable things go wrong. I think they should just focus on more standard mag-lev trains that would be cheaper and more efficient, while still being plenty fast.
    1
  12344.  @paulshields1883  Only if it happens far enough from the carriage to dissipate. Even in the best case, it would cause massive damage that would shut down large chunks of the line for a significant amount of time. It's the sort of thing where if you really put a ton of effort into redundancy and foolproofing it and that sort of thing maybe you could make it work, but the effort to do so would never be worth the returns, relative to what you could accomplish putting that same effort toward more practical technologies. Like to make a reliable hyperloop would probably cost more to build and maintain than having ten times as many miles of more reliable and extremely fast high speed rail alternatives.
    1
  12345. So is this confirmation that Trump DELIBERATELY left Wheland in Russia?
    1
  12346. Yeah, the whole family, but the rest will get their day in court eventually.
    1
  12347. Wait, are you talking about in America? Lol.
    1
  12348.  @kbrown5218  We aren't sending US troops over there, we're just sending weapons. If actual US forces got directly involved in any way, it would likely only be aircraft and support teams, similar to in the middle east over the past decade. There would be zero rationale for a buildup of main infantry above existing numbers, we won't even need the ones we've already got.
    1
  12349.  @kbrown5218  No, there is no path that would lead to a US draft.
    1
  12350.  @kbrown5218  Again, there is no path that would lead to a US draft. Sorry. US infantry will not be a factor in this war.
    1
  12351. What did he do wrong? He did his job of coordinating the pandemic defense as best as anyone could be expected to do. What more would you have expected?
    1
  12352.  @silverice-cv4ob  Yeah, probably. But an especially dumb one to keep parroting Faux News talking points in 2023. .
    1
  12353.  @bongeggs  Yes, Biden would not let them run things like their new servant will.
    1
  12354. Tl:DR, he's not, but Republicans have "hunter Biden Tourettes," so he'll find his way into any discussion that involves at least one Republican.
    1
  12355.  @bigmac2752 Russia does not get to invade their neighbors, regardless of what NATO does there. Ukraine is allowed to be friends with NATO and Russia has zero say in the matter. Russia invaded Ukraine, that is the beginning and end of that story, there is no excuse for their actions. Also, just for the record, NATO does not want to put nukes in Ukraine, and has ZERO need to put nukes in Ukraine. If NATO wanted to nuke Russia, they have plenty of capacity to do so without needing Ukraine in any way. Only dumb people think that's something that matters.
    1
  12356.  @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.
    1
  12357.  @camomaxx  Yes, but my point is that in the REAL world, none of what you just said happens. So I really don't see how your fanfiction should fit into policy decisions.
    1
  12358.  @camomaxx  No, "real world" meaning outside of your small conservative bubble. The world according to the facts.
    1
  12359.  @camomaxx  Nothing wrong with "conserving America," so long as you understand that this means conserving that America is always growing and changing, adding new people to the mix.
    1
  12360.  @camomaxx  The right attacks the 1st far more often than the left does. As to the second, that's no longer relevant to anything.
    1
  12361. What would lead you to think that the government "does not care about protecting kids?" The government is the people, the government is elected by the people to represent them. Are you saying that people in general do not care about protecting kids? While I can agree with you that these legal tools can be used for purposes outside of reducing inappropriate content involving children, it is also a fact that a lot of these encrypting tools ARE used to disguise such materials, and that it would be a good idea to have methods of piercing that veil.
    1
  12362.  @fullaregrets5015  Wow, chat GPT is getting lazy. Usually it could at least deliver a paragraph. Now it's just "u r bot."
    1
  12363. Why should he be charged with lying to congress? He never lied to congress. That would be an authoritarian abuse of power.
    1
  12364.  @kriskros91  Ask AT&T.
    1
  12365. Tsk, tsk, tsk, "toxic masculinity" at work. :D
    1
  12366. @ Again, it does not show any sort of priority. These are two completely different organizations that have nothing to do with each other. It's like blaming Pizza Hut because you Big Mac was cold.
    1
  12367. @ Ok, but that has nothing to do with USAID. The people responsible for those things had nothing to do with USAID. The people at the top gave no less attention to Hawaiian infrastructure or disaster management because of USAID.
    1
  12368.  @sapphie132  Well that isn't necessarily a bad thing, is that path is the correct one to go down. It would only be an issue if the path was a bad one, and traditionally, the "I have a different opinion" crowd promotes the wrong paths.
    1
  12369. Worked out for North Korea.
    1
  12370. Worked out for the Kim family.
    1
  12371. No, immigrants work harder than native born Americans, and commit less crime. But, you know, racism, so I guess we aren't allowed to let them in.
    1
  12372. But only to a point. It would have been completely worthless if we'd allowed Europe to fall.
    1
  12373.  @donnayeager2703  Why?
    1
  12374.  @ULICKMAGEE  Well, at least you're self-aware about it. Most MAGA sheep aren't.
    1
  12375. @@worthhaithcock2807 So far, nobody has given any reason that what I said was wrong, they just seem to believe, deep in their hearts, that what I said can't be true. And yet, there's no reason to believe that AG Garland is not working to save this country without bias or corruption. He's certainly not Bill Barr. Maybe get your heads out of the Faux News bubble sometime?
    1
  12376.  @johnholliday5874  If that's what you think, then you are a fool, because people like me were opposing the MGGA crowd in the 1930s, and continue to oppose the new MAGA generation today. It was the MGGA crowd that was putting people into box cars.
    1
  12377.  @scooterp7009  Then why did Trump appoint him?
    1
  12378.  @regulusmine2336  Orange man bad, yes.
    1
  12379.  @regulusmine2336  Yes, principles before personalities. Orange man bad. We get it.
    1
  12380.  @regulusmine2336  Well, you said orange man bad, I agree. Principles over personality. I mean, you can't be in favor of both principles and the orange man, right? The orange man is the opposite of principles.
    1
  12381.  @regulusmine2336  But nobody could rationally disagree with it, right? You'd have to be an idiot to think that "principle" has anything whatsoever to do with the orange man. He's a narcissistic sociopath, the only "principle" he recognizes is "me me me."
    1
  12382.  @dpirkl4560  Who is?
    1
  12383.  @crashthecat  Not really, you can just apply for work during a Democratic administration, and they would hire you. They're looking for anyone who would do the job without fear or favor.
    1
  12384.  @crashthecat  Nah, just have a career behind you of doing good work. I mean, as an appointee, you just need experience in the sorts of jobs that would give you relevant qualifications for the role. As an elected position, just start at a small scale and work up. I mean, look at Katie Porter, she's one of the most popular members of Congress, and she was just a law professor.
    1
  12385.  @crashthecat  So why would you assume wrongdoing, without any evidence of it? That seems stupid.
    1
  12386.  @douglaswalters7920  Why would you think that? He's certainly at the very least less biased than Bill Barr, and he was only a few years ago.
    1
  12387.  @livinglife1089  Nah, term limits only encourage corruption, since people don't need to worry about reelection and can just get their bag and go home. It also leads to people being less qualified, since by the time they figure out how the job works and how to do it well, they have to leave and get replaced by someone who has no idea what they're doing. Term limited governments are governments of idiots, for idiots.
    1
  12388. YES!. He rubber-stamped the GOP attempts to overthrow the election results, and needs to be kicked out of the Congress immediately.
    1
  12389. Unfortunately, in the age of Faux News and MAGA, it has become an entirely left wing value. But I agree with you that it shouldn't be.
    1
  12390.  @pinupdoll97  On the one hand, sure. On the other hand, the parties can wield a lot of power, and if one wins out over the other, there may no longer be elections. There's really little merit in sticking to the sidelines these days.
    1
  12391.  @thestonedandstripped  Maybe so, but it still meant that people using it during that period were making a certain statement.
    1
  12392.  @DirtyRedMuzik  That was probably one aspect of it. They thought all sorts of crazy things at the time. Many of them still do, which is why it's so worrying.
    1
  12393.  @ruthsaunders9507  It was in the front lawn of a Supreme Court Justice in the DMV., There is absolutely no purpose to using flag code to signal distress, you just call the police like a normal person.
    1
  12394.  @ruthsaunders9507  Exactly. So it was not a "distress signal," it was a "supporting the insurrection" signal.
    1
  12395.  @bmass0828  Nobody is saying that it's not ok to use this as a form of protest. That would be a free speech argument, and everyone agrees that both Alito and his wife have the right to say whatever they like. The point being made is that if they speak out in favor of the insurrection, then he is displaying bias on that topic, and should recuse himself from any cases involving it. You DO understand that this is what we're talking about, right?
    1
  12396.  @bmass0828  Roe was the law of the land. There was nothing wrong with being in support of it. Comparing that to the insurrection is just a bad faith argument. As to your other argument, the speech he chooses shows that he is BAD at his job. A doctor has the free speech right to make claims that illness is caused by witches, but should a hospital not fire a doctor who makes such claims on the basis that it shows a lack of capability to do their job? Freedom of speech only means that the government cannot punish people for what they say. It never means that there can be no consequences whatsoever to what you say.
    1
  12397.  @bmass0828  Again, it was the law of the land, there was no reason to overturn it, so her being in favor of it was no reason to recuse herself from it. You're comparing apples to hand grenades, they are in no rational way similar. I feel like you have just been hurt by people no longer taking you seriously after you expressed some seriously heinous viewpoints. I'm sorry that actions have consequences. Instead of doubling down and stubbornly insisting that you were never in the wrong, perhaps reflect, and become a better person.
    1
  12398.  @bmass0828  But again, access to medical care is something literally incomparable to insurrection. And yet you are trying to compare the two points as if that is a rational thing to be doing. And also again, NOBODY is arguing that he was not allowed to fly whatever flags he wants. He could fly a confederate flag, or a swastika, that is legal under the first amendment. But that does not mean that he should not be accountable for such behavior, that it should not impact his ability to serve in the role of Supreme Court Justice. I'll ignore the ad hominem stuff, you've apparently had a rough day.
    1
  12399.  @bmass0828  You must have missed the insurrection. The "protest" was only a distraction for it. Inside the House, various members were trying to convince Pence, at threat of violence, to discard the votes of we the people, and replace them with the votes of the House members. That was the insurrection attempt. Anyone who can support such an affront to the Constitution has no place in any aspect of US government. And no, the actions of that day were nothing similar to "peaceful protest a few months earlier," unless you're making such a claim in bad faith.
    1
  12400.  @DirtyRedMuzik  Why do people who are wrong on the Internet feel like other people just have lists of sources queued up and sitting around, ready to display to others at a moment's notice? Is that something people actually do? Seems weird to me.
    1
  12401.  @DirtyRedMuzik  Too much Fox News, probably.
    1
  12402. I will say, I think you're only half right about humanoid robots. While it is true that "machine looking robots" are much more efficient at most industrial tasks, and an "office robot" is likely just an algorithm on a PC rather than a humanoid at a desk, there are still some use cases for humanoid robots. the first and most obvious is that humanoid robots can be more comfortable to interact with humans, we just like to anthropomorphize anything that will be interacting with humans on a regular basis. The second is that a humanoid robot is more flexible in adapting to a world made for humans. That is to say, a car factory robot is better at making cars than a humanoid one, but the humanoid one can move from role to role easily (assuming those roles were intended to be performed by humans), whereas the car factory robot would be designed around a single task, and need to be rebuilt or at least reconfigured to handle any other task. The smaller the scale of the job, the more of an issue this becomes. While I do believe that within our lifetime we will have McDonalds that are like little factories, in which ingredients travel along a conveyor belt to produce the items we order, in the shorter term, a humanoid robot could slide into the existing kitchen and prepare food the same way a human would. Of course, the more the physical world is adapted to be convenient for robots, the less humans would even be capable of participating in it.
    1
  12403. I could see how you could use "extremely slim gaps" if we were talking a consistent distance, like if the vanes stayed extended the entire time, but I don't understand how it would ever work with constantly shifting vane lengths. If it only barely touched at the two apogees, it would still be grinding against the walls the entire rest of the rotation. If you're trying to say that it would precisely extend and retract to the exact size needed at ever possible millisecond, I just think that's extremely unrealistic. It might be possible for a multi-million dollar gadget that needs to be very precise and worth using it for that, but never something that could be scaled down to a commercial auto. One possible solution I could think of though would be if the vanes themselves were geared in some way so that they just automatically extended and retracted as the unit spun, similar to one of those antique toys with a wooden crank that causes four blocks to extend and retract as you crank it. I think perhaps there would be a lot of strain in such a system, however, and it might be difficult to get the extreme tolerances needed.
    1
  12404.  @kxo1038  Good, then it's working out. If not for Bidens' policies, your life would have been much worse off by now, given the various challenges the world has faced over the past few years.
    1
  12405.  @piratescove4  Yup, the Faux News has warped people's minds. They live in some Narnia where "Trump good, Biden bad," and can't even recognize the real world anymore.
    1
  12406.  @kxo1038  And the value of those dead presidents in your pocket would have been much lower today without the live president currently in office to keep inflation lower in the US than in most of the world over the post-covid period.
    1
  12407. Whether the earth is flat or not was never decided by a debate, it was decided by presenting evidence to the contrary. The evidence about vaccine safety and efficacy has already been presented, the science has been settled, and just as there are those who continue to insist that the world is flat, despite the evidence to the contrary, there are those who continue to oppose despite the evidence to the contrary. No "debate" will ever change their minds.
    1
  12408.  @mariekuijkenhistoricallyaw2598  No, it is not. Who lied to you and said that "science is a debate?"
    1
  12409.  @AlbatrossRevenue  Joe Rogan is not mentally capable of moderating an actual scientific debate. He's too gullible for that. And it seems like you are the one with no idea what "scientific debate" means, because it does not take place in a one on one public discussion, it is much more abstract than that, a discussion using articles and papers and studies, not any sort of live argument. Again, all of Hotez's points are publicly available. There is no need whatsoever for "a debate" on the subject. The only "benefit" to doing so is too allow bad faith actors to claim that RFK and Rogan "won" by out blustering Hotez, and using "more science words with confidence," even if their actual position is completely discredited.
    1
  12410.  @AlbatrossRevenue  I think I made a good argument for why Rogan can't moderate a debate, he's not intellectually capable of it. If you tell him two truths and a lie he will now believe three new things are true, and will tell his audience the same. If audience, of course, is no better. Joe Rogan is incapable of "pulling facts up in real time," he'll just google it and spit up whatever his first result is. Those are not always "facts." Again, all the actual facts in this matter are ALREADY available, nobody needs Joe Rogan to "look them up" during a debate. You do realize that the "Bohr-Einstein debates" you found on goggle do not refer to them going on a radio show hosted by an MMA commentator, and arguing out their points in public, right? The Bohr-Einstein debates refer to the two men writing papers with competing viewpoints on a topic, and the merits of their position being determined by the quality of their research, not their public speaking ability. This happened over a period of YEARS. At no point did the two men get on the same stage and then argue back and forth at each other until someone "won." Again, THE DATA ALREADY EXISTS, if you want to have a "Bohr-Einstein" debate on the topic, IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING.
    1
  12411.  @AlbatrossRevenue  If you think that Rogan appropriately fact checks comments made on his show, then either you do not watch his show, or you do not understand how fact checking works. He ha allowed TONS of misinformation to be fielded on his show without correction. As to your comments on the "Bohr-Einstein debates," you prove my point about reading the first thing that you google and only skimming a surface level understanding of it, and assuming that you know the full picture. Again, while both Bohr and Einsteing presented at that conference, and their positions were in conflict, making it a debate of sorts, it was NOTHING similar to a "Joe Rogan debate," there was no back and forth. It was just one side presenting their case in full, then the other side presenting their case in full. It had NOTHING to do with the style of debate being discussed here, and again, if that is the sort of debate you want, a " Bohr-Einstein debate," then WE ARE ALREADY WITNESSING THAT. The only problem people seem to have with that is that in the actual debate, the anti-vax side has no leg to stand on, so they hope to change minds by fighting in the court of public opinion, using fiction to fight fact.
    1
  12412.  @AlbatrossRevenue  I know that you said "Rogan could pull up sources." And I agreed that he could. I just pointed out that this would not HELP anything because he's incapable of UNDERSTANDING those sources. Are you telling me that you believe that if Hotez said "check with [this paper]" and Rogan looked up some 30 page paper full of medical jargon, you trust that Rogan would be able to interpret that data in real time and come to the correct conclusion? Have you ever SEEN Joe Rogan? The fact that you keep saying "move the goal posts" to refer to me clarifying my position in response to your confusion as to my original meaning, only goes to highlight why you are incapable of handling an actual scientific debate. ACTUAL science LOVES people who clarify their position in response to challenges. That's the entire POINT of a scientific debate. I'm sure that Hotez would "move the goal posts" in the same way multiple times during any such debate, because his goal would be explaining the truth of the matter, and your reaction proves how absolutely pointless that would be, given Rogan's audience. You make a perfect case example.
    1
  12413.  @AlbatrossRevenue  But my point is that a poorly moderated debate leans toward the better public speaker, not toward the facts. The one who makes the most confident presentation would win out over the one who was more ACCURATE. I have zero doubt that Hotez has more accurate facts on his side than RFK Jr., but I have strong doubts as to whether he could be more convincing in his arguments to a Joe Rogan audience. So then what would be the point in having the debate? RFK would not present "cogent rebuttals using data," there is no data to support his side, he would just craft argument that confirm the biases of the audience, which has long been determined to be more effective than "facts" when dealing with lay-people. As for my point, you got it half right. Yes, for one thing, I do not believe that a useful scientific debate can take place on JRE, nor that his audience is at all interested in one. They do not want to learn facts, they want to hear their biases get confirmed for them, for those who disagree with them to get "owned," and that will be the inevitable outcome, regardless of "facts." But also, I stand by the point that the sort of debate we are talking about here, a live debate on a radio show, has NO value in science. Here is a debate format I would like to see though: Both sides would have a team of experts, so that they would have a wider spread of knowledge. Questions and answers would be submitted in writing, and read out by an intelligent neutral moderator, to remove any charismatic bias of the speaker. When the turn passes from one to the other, there is a break of up to several hours, during which they can research an accurate response, with access to any information they might need to do so. But you're right, your argument here is absurd. Which, again, is why I have little faith that a JRE debate could hold any value. It isn't about seeking the truth, it's about engaging in absurdity.
    1
  12414.  @lm4112  It would be a drop in the bucket in terms of actual scientific research. Not worth it.
    1
  12415.  @l.w.paradis2108  Hotez offered to go on Rogan's show and have a discussion, but not a debate. Rogan refused, insisting it would be a debate, or nothing. And again, there is really no point to even discussing the topic on the Joe Rogan Experience, it's a matter of format and appropriate gravitas.
    1
  12416.  @l.w.paradis2108  How do you believe that contributes to the conversation? Don't you believe that a response like yours supports the point I was making, rather than disputing it?
    1
  12417.  @l.w.paradis2108  I couldn't have summed up my point better than to point at that example. "Why should Hotez not debate RFK Jr on the Joe Rogan Show?" That post there.
    1
  12418.  @l.w.paradis2108  Hotez created and tested an effective, patent free and low cost vaccine that is saving lives in the developing world. That is more medical science than Kennedy has ever done. Kennedy is just a crank with irrational delusions that happen to confirm a lot of people's biases.
    1
  12419.  @somacoma2219  “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will administer justice without respect to persons, and do equal right to the poor and to the rich, and that I will faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon me under the Constitution and laws of the United States." If they fail to administer justice without respect to the person in question, to do equal right to the poor and to the rich, or to not faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties required of them, then they would be in violation of their oath of office.
    1
  12420.  @joelellis7035  President Trump was authorized to have those documents, while following protocol for handling those documents, only while he was President. Whatever permission he might have had to hold those documents ENDED on Jan 20th 2021. It was completely impossible for him to both have those documents in Summer of 2022 AND for that to be legal. Also, "classification" is irrelevant, the nature of those documents themselves would be a violation of the law, classified or not.
    1
  12421. @ That's what the invader would tell you, at least, when he was breaking the Minsk agreement.
    1
  12422. @ Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  12423.  @NigelHatcherN  They're better off than they were thirty years ago.
    1
  12424. Don't use such big words, CNN! The Rand Paul fans won't understand. What you should have said was "Fauci OWNS Rand Paul."
    1
  12425.  Christopher L  Rand Paul did not present evidence, he presented material he believed to be evidence, but as it turns out, no, it was not. Here's the thing, if Fauci is wrong here, if he was lying, then what he just did is a serious federal crime. If Fauci is indicted of lying to congress in the near future, and convicted on it, then I guess you and Rand were right. If not though, then no, he was not lying, he just had a different understanding of how infections disease research works than some rando on the Internet, and it leads to a difference of opinion. Who's right, the expert with decades of subject matter experience, or the Internet rando? I guess we may never know. . .
    1
  12426.  Christopher L  So you don't believe that a group of atomic scientists might not have as good an idea about virology research as the nation's most experienced and highly regarded virology expert? On what grounds? Fauci continues to deny the lab leak hypothesis because it continues to be the less likely alternative. He has expressed more openness to the idea (within the context that it would still be an accidental release of a natural virus), but he, like most others, continues to believe that the wet market is the more likely ground zero.
    1
  12427.  Christopher L  But the thing is, laypeople are in no position to judge the quality of highly complex scientific evidence. An article can sound very credible, use a lot of fancy words, present an argument that makes a lot of sense to someone that has no idea what any of these words mean or how they actually work, but still not actually be terribly compelling when you do understand the topic at hand. The article in question is one position, and the writer of the article has a checkered past with the scientific community, but it isn't necessarily more credible than the alternate position that most of the expert seem to believe. I would agree with you that one should be skeptical of those who have something on the line, and IF Fauci were the ONLY one holding these viewpoints, the sure, definitely sus, but it's actually the view held by a pretty large majority of scientists, most of whom have zero skin in this game. The only ones who seem to be contrarian on this are the ones who do have something to gain by proving wrongdoing, either because they have a grudge against Fauci, a grudge against China, a grudge against "expertism," etc. Maybe look at "who stands to gain" on both sides of this. Fauci really doesn't have much to gain here. It's pretty cut and dry that whether you agree with him or not on the nature of "gain of function," he did not lie about this, because he is accurately reporting the NIH findings. If you could somehow find evidence that the NIH made a mistake here, that would be on them, not on Fauci. And if it turned out to be the case that the Wuhan lab had somehow created covid, that still wouldn't be on Fauci, since it would have been a program he'd had no knowledge of. So why would Fauci lie about it? As for Luc Montagnier, his allegations were proven to be incorrect. That doesn't completely rule out the possibility that it was man-altered, but even if it was, it was definitively different than he believed it to have worked. Again, you can find "a scientist" or "a group of scientists" to support ANY crackpot theory. You can find scientists that believe the Earth is flat and aliens built the Pyramids. A white lab coat alone is not good enough, but if there is a consensus across the organizations that tend to study things like this, it tends to be correct more often than not.
    1
  12428.  Christopher L  Luc Montagnier had some early achievements, but he has a very questionable record. He's gone on to back some extremely questionable science that is not supported by experts in the relevant fields. This happens sometimes, especially as people get into their later years. Again, his declarations on the origin of covid have been soundly debunked: https://www.europeanscientist.com/en/big-data/no-sars-cov-2-does-not-contain-hiv-genetic-code/ Again, it is not the role of laypeople to throw scientific evidence at each other, we have no more means to determine the value of advanced scientific evidence that we would to debate advanced cooking techniques or advanced auto repair without having spent the time and effort building up those skillsets to a professional standard. All we are in any position to do is to judge the quality of the people who hold various positions on the issues, and decide which one's positions we believe on the matter.
    1
  12429. Well, duh. Who ever thought it was Constitutional in the first place? did they not read the Constitution?
    1
  12430.  @catlover4479  I'll give you a hint of where to check, there's a bit called the "Bill of Rights," look at what the first one says.
    1
  12431. No, corporations are doing that by not paying workers enough to provide those services for themselves. All Democrats are doing is trying to lengthen that whole "cradle to grave" process. If corporations actually cared about "small government," they could solve the problem by just doing all these things themselves without government requiring it of them.
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  12432. They don't reject negotiations, they just never show up to one. They are unwilling to come to the fair conclusion of "leaving Ukraine." The ball is ENTIRELY in Russia's court here, there was no war until they chose to invade, the instant they leave, the war ends.
    1
  12433.  @snipman8067  Because the OP mentioned "wasn't trainable for hunting purposes" as though that were relevant. Now if the dog was too aggressive to live with her, that's fine, nobody says she has to keep it, but that doesn't mean it's ok for her to shoot it either. She should have found a better leader for that dog than her household could provide.
    1
  12434.  @snipman8067  Living on a farm is even less of an excuse, because there is plenty of land to keep the dog away from people or farm animals, and entire communities built around raising animals well. Just because she was too weak a leader to control the dog does not justify killing it.
    1
  12435. @ I was asking what you meant when you were responding to me though.
    1
  12436.  @doves5457  You mean Republicans. They human traffic people.
    1
  12437. @ The current administration are not democrats.
    1
  12438.  @510Redneck  That's not how "President of the Senate" works. You really need civics class.
    1
  12439.  @Steve83B  "Carbon offset" programs are more often than not a scam, just a way for people to keep burning gas without the guilt, which is why fossil fuel companies lobby them so hard. Using existing methods, it is impossible to actually offset the carbon we're currently using, and there are no theorized methods that could keep up. The costs of switching to EVs are MUCH lower than the costs of not doing so, both at the global level, and the individual level.
    1
  12440.  @SigFigNewton  Carbon taxes are probably not the answer, not unless we invent some SERIOUS global cooling tech as well, either by removing industrial amounts of carbon from the existing air, or using some other method to make things cooler at a rate faster than the green house effect makes them warmer. Outside of that, a carbon tax is not an answer because it is still outputting carbon, and we need to stop that entirely as quickly as possible. Unless the taxes are SO massive that everyone stops using them voluntarily because it's just way too expensive. Of course carbon industries LOVE carbon taxes "as a solution," because they get to keep doing what they do.
    1
  12441.  @SigFigNewton  Ok, so get it past Joe Manchin and I guess we're getting somewhere.
    1
  12442. Yeah, we'd be a lot better off if not for Trump's wasteful tax cuts for billionaires.
    1
  12443. So far, the other side hasn't, so why should the Dems?
    1
  12444.  @rockyracoon3233  The Constitution got that one wrong. Wyoming can get their two Senators back when DC gets theirs.
    1
  12445. That's still pretty racist though, implying that it was a bioweapon that specifically targets people based on race (and therefore doesn't target people of other races), when there is no evidence whatsoever to support any such claim.
    1
  12446.  @vegetapt9144  Organized crime cna ONLY exist where the locals allow it to exist by their compliance. I am not saying that citizens should confront gang members themselves, but they must cooperate with law enforcement to the fullest, reporting any criminal activity whenever they encounter it, even if it's their own relatives involved. Gangs thrive because any time the police try to arrest them, the locals go "I ain't seen nothin."
    1
  12447.  @unfathomablyunfathomable  Yeah, you can't solve drug problems from the demand side of things, which is why the better solution is to de-criminalize drugs and make them available at prices that undercut any profit potential from drug dealers. Then they just have no reasons to do drug crimes.
    1
  12448.  @targgthewise2892  The parties swapped positions on civil rights in the 60s. Lincoln would be a Democrat today.
    1
  12449.  @chobiden7770  Nobody's talking about keeping men out of women's private spaces here. This is a bill about keeping minority women out of restrooms.
    1
  12450.  @CarlClements-f7j  That's revisionist history, the party swap obviously happened.
    1
  12451.  @chobiden7770  This bill is about keeping minority women out of those spaces though.
    1
  12452.  @CarlClements-f7j  You should learn more about it. Vintage Space recently did an excellent video explaining it, some of it I knew, but a lot of it I hadn't known before. I'm sure you would learn a ton.
    1
  12453.  @elawson1991  Yeah, but I still try to lay out the facts where I can. You might not convince the person you're arguing with, but at least if someone else comes along they will see that there's a good answer to whatever questions were being posed.
    1
  12454.  @lcnoneya2621  Dumb Idiots Don't Understand Viruses Don't Care About Your Feelings
    1
  12455.  @manictiger  Nonsense. You're much more likely to survive today than you would have been a hundred years ago, and they much more likely to survive than two hundred years ago. Yes, viruses adapt and overcome hurdles, but we adapt faster. Had we done nothing about covid, three million Americans would have died instead of what will probably end up being 1/4 of that (and we could have cut it down much lower if not for idiots not taking this seriously). We will not be weaker the next time something like this comes around, we will be STRONGER, and BETTER able to overcome it than we were this time around, just as today we are much better off than we were when the 1917 flu hit us, and they much better off than when the Black Death hit.
    1
  12456.  Paul Boccuti  They have double the population, but six times the cases. There is no metric by which Sweden is a success story here. https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/89017
    1
  12457.  @ravlucianus3005  It was a failure of both Republican governors AND the federal government. Yes, if all the governors had done their jobs well, they might have been able to make up for Trump's failures, but if Trump had done his job better, they would not have needed to work so hard. We needed federal coordination of this effort, instead we got "I'll leave it up to the governors,"
    1
  12458.  Paul Boccuti  Six months ago, nobody was saying that Sweden had herd immunity except for crackpot "news" sites that lie to conservatives. Any news source that told you Sweden ever had herd immunity, ditch them immediately, they lie to you.
    1
  12459.  Paul Boccuti  Norway has had 86K cases and 648 total deaths. Sweden has had 744K total cases, over seven times as many, and 13,262 deaths, or TWENTY times as many deaths than Norway had. As for Denmark, they had 225K cases, so about a third, and 2,399 deaths, or around 1/5th. No, Sweden is not "winning."
    1
  12460.  @ravlucianus3005  It is the federal government's job to protect and defend the American people from enemies foreign AND domestic. This virus is such an enemy, and it is the federal government's job ot defend us. If your state did better than your neighbor, congratulations, many red states did poorly, but viruses don't care about state lines, they care about things like population density, and yes, that means "blue" areas with more people in them tended to get hit worse. That doesn't mean that the policies in red states were better for anyone. People in res states carried infection to plenty of blue states along the way.
    1
  12461. @William Morgan "Every last one of us could have worn masks and social distance or even just stayed in our homes 24/7 for 2 weeks, what do you think would have happened after? The virus just magically disappeared and we would all have been saved thanks to the masks God's? " Yes. That is EXACTLY what would have happened. The virus only has a contagious period of around 3 weeks or so. If everyone who had the virus stayed away from everyone who didn't for long enough, then the virus would not have spread any further. Unfortunately, a bunch of yahoos decided to just "go out and live their lives," so we've had to deal with all of last year.
    1
  12462. @William Morgan " I don't like masks because i know it makes zero difference and i also don't think anyone has the right to tell anyone else what to wear." But they definitely do make a difference, and you choosing not to wear one puts everyone else at risk. Do you believe that people should be able to drive drunk because it's "their car and you can't tell them what to do with it?" When someone's actions puts others at risk, you CAN be told not to do that. It is part of the responsibility of living in a society with others. If you don't want anyone to tell you what to do, then don't live in a place where other people are.
    1
  12463.  @jonathancejamartinez816  You can look up why Fauci and the CDC said those things at the beginning of the crisis, and why their view changed over time. It basically came down to two factors. 1. The data was not in yet. This was a new virus, and it was unclear exactly how it spread. They did not know that masks were as effective at preventing the spread as later studies made clear. and 2. there was a massive PPE shortage because Trump had not refilled the national stockpiles, so doctors were having a hard time getting the masks that they absolutely needed to do their jobs. In that case, it was better for individuals to not hoard masks that they needed, when the science wasn't yet there to say that normal people benefited from them too. When new information came in, the position changed to adapt to it, that is how science works. What you should take from that is "now that they know more, I should listen to what they are saying now, rather than what they were saying then."
    1
  12464.  Paul Boccuti  The Swedish economy fell at about the same rate as the rest of the world's did over that period. They are in no way better off for their policy. And yes, the flu is decreased because Covid got a lot more people getting their flu shot, and because the flu is transmitted very similarly to the flu, so people wearing masks, social distancing, not going out much, obviously that would reduce flu transmission as well. Why wouldn't it?
    1
  12465. Migrants ARE required to be vaccinated to enter the country. What's the issue?
    1
  12466.  @cynthiamartin2197  "Cruel and unusual," we have a whole constitution saying we should be better than that.
    1
  12467.  @TothelastMan  No country does any better than this. Try again.
    1
  12468.  @philipnacevicius3661  I don't know what you're asking for. Are you asking for countries that handle their border worse than thee US? Mexico, for one. But like I said, nobody handles their border better.
    1
  12469.  @EricDeanCampbell  Well, a lie is just as good as the truth if it's what you prefer to believe, right?
    1
  12470.  @dncbot  Hopefully, yeah. There's really no helping the "skeptics," they are an evolutionary dead end.
    1
  12471.  @ItsAllFake1  The sicentists got it right, as for governments, it depends on where you live. Australia and New Zealand, A Plus. The, it was really a state-by-state basis, and that's no way to run such policies.
    1
  12472. You say that these are "the best models," and imply that removing them is arbitrary, but is it not equally possible that these are outlier models? That these simulations are extremely complex, and that they might be accurate up to a certain point, but then hit some sort of exponential screw-up that throws them off? It's similar to how Newtonian models are extremely accurate at predicting the movement of objects, until you reach things where quantum effects are significant, at which point those models are no longer reliable at all. If a given climate model makes certain assumptions about certain values, and is accurate so long as those values remain true, then it is still possible for it to become very inaccurate if those values grow out of that range.
    1
  12473. Lol, that's awesome.
    1
  12474.  @saxonanglo3956  That wouldn't help with anything, as migrants typically do not enter the US on transportation. Also, Mexico is directing nobody toward the US borders, people choose to come on their own, because they know that America is better than Mexico.
    1
  12475.  @anngee7813  The statistics don't bear that out.
    1
  12476.  @lesliea.6440  Then Hungary should not have the benefits of EU membership until that is fixed.
    1
  12477. No, "skepticism" would not be the appropriate term, since skepticism indicates an open mind. Any actual skeptic on climate change that spends any amount of time researching the problem would quickly agree with the broad consensus viewpoints. It is only after the actual skeptics have been filtered out that you are left with the denialists (whatever they choose to call themselves), who refuse to accept any outcome in which the climate science is correct. This is no longer "skepticism," it is dogma.
    1
  12478.  @gorillazilla4534  No, they testified to vague suspicions that chain of custody might have been at issue. Republicans tend to do that a lot, making hearsay argument about how they saw someone who might have been "up to no good," without any evidence whatsoever that they actually did anything illegal, and acting as if it's proof of anything. There was no actual evidence, including testimony, that chain of custody had been broken, and sworn testimony by the election officials that it had not been. Also, there were no problems with the paper strips in the voting machines, at least none that impacted the outcome. The issues you discussed did not prevent votes being cast, it only prevented them being read in at the polling place. They were securely stored though and counted later, essentially the same process as drop boxes. There is no evidence that anyone who attempted to cast a ballot was unable to do so, or that their vote was not counted. And of course I'm fine with the candidate running for office overseeing the elections, since that happens in MOST elections involving the re-election of a State's Attorney or whatever the equivalent role it. So long as they can be trusted to do their job professionally, as in this case, there's no reason for concern. The only concern would be if the person in question was an election-denier conspiracy theorist, as were many Republican candidates in this election cycle. Hey, look, you just say what Faux News tells you to think, right down to the "independent thinker" bit. You aren't brainwashed, you're just an "independent thinker," who just happens to think the same as every other Faux News drone. It's like the new "goth kids."
    1
  12479.  @gorillazilla4534  You don't have to watch Faux News to be indoctrinated into their alternate reality. You just happen to have no original thoughts that Faux News did not put there, even if you got them through a game of "telephone" with other people in the middle. The saddest sheep are the ones that don't recognize their own pen.
    1
  12480.  @gorillazilla4534  You got indoctrinated before you watched the trial. No person of sound mind could have watched the trial and came to the conclusions you did. You saw what you were told to see. I wish you well in de-programming yourself.
    1
  12481.  @gorillazilla4534  And again, all the witnesses for Lakes side did not see anything actually criminal either, they just saw things that they thought were "suspicious," and given that they are unreliable narrators, that is basically worthless testimony. The fact remains that there was no evidence of actual chain of custody issues presented at the trial, nor any indication that such evidence might exist.
    1
  12482.  @gorillazilla4534  No, but "elections with broken machines in 60% of precincts and no chain of custody for ballots" are not things that actually happened in Arizona, so that's literally neither here nor there. I don't claim to be "a resistance," I only claim to support free and fair elections, even when they lead to results that I don't like. Republicans should try that some time.
    1
  12483.  @gorillazilla4534  Again, your interpretation of what the trial showed is wrong, so either you have been misinformed by others about its contents, or you are a poor judge of what is shown to you. Lake's team did not make their case, they only IMPLIED that a case might exist, for which they only had hearsay to support it. If you very much want to believe that Lake should have won the election, I can see how that might interest you, but that does not make it the truth.
    1
  12484.  @gorillazilla4534  If their had been actual evidence, the case would have gone differently, but there wasn't. You just have a poor standard of what is actually "evidence."
    1
  12485. EVs are the future, but the market had gotten a bit ahead of their skis. They definitely do need to sort out how things like the used market and the repair/replacement costs. This is an inevitable growing pain, NO new product has secure knowledge of these conditions, but it might be nice for part of the government investment in EVs to be things like guaranteeing a certain buyback price for EVs at ten and twenty years (lower than one might hope for, but more than they would fear), and guarantees that essential components like batteries could be purchased at reasonable prices over those periods. The other credible issue is the accessibility and ease of use of charging stations, and while these are much better today than they have been, there is still plenty of room to go before they are as much of a non-issue as the availability of gas stations. And of course broadly, with or without EV adoption, the US and many other power grids need to be significantly upgraded, to allow more efficient energy transfer over long distances, to provide the flexibility that an electric future requires.
    1
  12486.  @lashlarue7924  More floods, for one thing.
    1
  12487.  @lashlarue7924  I'm not factoring in black swans. I'm working from the standpoint of likely outcomes to existing trends. Obviously if someone invents Mr. Fusion in the next few years, that would become the future. Still electric though.
    1
  12488.  @lashlarue7924  You plan for likely scenarios. It's the only rational course of action. Then you adapt to unlikely scenarios as they happen. It is likely for a powerful earthquake to happen in a place like California, so you build homes to be earthquake resistant. It is unlikely for one to hit Pennsylvania, so if you built PA homes to those same earthquake standards, you would be wasting trillions of dollars on improvements that would almost certainly never be necessary. If on the off chance such a quake did occur, it would not vindicate those who pushed for those standards, they just happened to be very "lucky" in the poor decision they made. If you invest in every high risk bet, then you will lose far more than you'll ever gain.
    1
  12489. @JCC An individual has a right to self determination. If they don't like where they live, they have the right to move someplace they like better. But they never have the right to just take the land under their feet with them, that land does not belong to them, it belongs to the people of that nation.
    1
  12490.  @karimd.2176  Yeah, but we've evolved past that by this point, the US colonies revolted from the British because they weren't allowed a vote in Parliament. If they'd had fair democratic representation, they would still be a part of the British Commonwealth today. When you have the right to vote as a method of having your say in government, you lose the right to lash out with violence instead. The length of time that "an ethnic group" exists in an area is entirely irrelevant to anything. All that matters is people, and people have only been alive for at most around 100 years. Nobody has any right to be upset about something that happened before their birth as anything more than a historical situation that should perhaps not be repeated. Nobody owes anything to someone living for anything that happened prior to their birth.
    1
  12491. The Hessians were soldiers for the British army, not civilians.
    1
  12492.  @Somedude72  It's not meant to make sense, it's meant to fool Russians, which is easy.
    1
  12493. It hasn't quite been "too late" yet because we did do things, and those slowed down the harms. But they did not stop them completely, which is why more action is still needed. But yeah. they were right that if we had done nothing in 1989 it would already be too late. Good point.
    1
  12494.  @martijn8554  This is sort of true, but not really. There are points at which it can become impossible to bring things back around. I mean, the "cost" is all relative, is "a world in which some few humans survive (not you or your descendants, of course, but a few rich people in domes), but nothing exists in nature" a "bad ending?" To many it would be, but I suppose that's subjective. If the goal is to prevent that outcome, then there are points at which it becomes gradually harder and harder to do so, and also points at which it leaps to much harder levels.
    1
  12495.  @macmcleod1188  I don't think it's entirely hopeless yet. There will certainly be challenges in the future, that much is unavoidable by this point, but we're still within the range of tolerable challenges, at least. Whether we push into "intolerable" challenges or not is still on the table. And we did do things, not as much as we've promised to do, but better than we could have done. You lament that we're at 41 gtons of carbon instead of the planned 26 (or even better, less), but if we'd completely ignored the issue and just continued on with business as usual, we'd likely be at 80+ by now.
    1
  12496.  @macmcleod1188  Climate nihilism benefits no one. Other than the fossil fuel lobby.
    1
  12497.  @scabcrawler632  You have been misinformed. He died from having a knee on his neck for eight minutes. Whatever drugs may have been in his system was secondary to that. If he had not been held like that, if he had been able to receive medical treatment, he would be alive today.
    1
  12498.  @sirsmokey710  That's not what the medical examiner said.
    1
  12499.  @adudedisguisedasadudeplayi8491  What makes you think that I like that he died? I just wish that he wasn't warped by Trump's falsehoods into someone who would waste his own life like this. I would prefer that he be alive today.
    1
  12500. President Biden just got back from a successful G7 summit with a 13 hour time difference. He's fine.
    1
  12501. Biden did that in 2021, but then the Republicans blocked his attempts to continue it. If you think more needs to be done, we need to retake the House and get enough seats to clear veto threats in the Senate.
    1
  12502.  @SylvainSybaris  This is a silly argument.
    1
  12503.  @StackinGreene  Because some states have poorly written and executed laws.
    1
  12504.  @_ben_miller  I don't think you understand inflation. Inflation is a negative factor, not a positive one. You don't want deflation, but you also want to keep inflation manageable, like the US has done relative to other countries over the past few years.
    1
  12505.  @_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.
    1
  12506. It's pure poison for the covid virus, at least. That's sort of why they made it.
    1
  12507. So you're telling me, that just because McCarthy attacked Democrats at every turn, lied to their faces about deals he made with them, and stood for everything Democrats opposed, that they wouldn't bail him out when his own party turned on him?! How dare they! So anyway. . .
    1
  12508.  @robwilliams287  Yeah, but Obama is term limited. Personally, I liked Bennett in the last election cycle, but he didn't have the brand recognition to go national. Inslee and Newsom have potential, but it wouldn't be the best time for them to run.
    1
  12509.  @Lonewolff87  Trump fans are rude people. If they were good people they couldn't be Trump fans. Biden fans vote.
    1
  12510.  @rebelman7837  So in your case it's more of a "grass is greener" situation, eh?
    1
  12511.  @terraholdingco  So you're advocating for a "race to the bottom" model, where states should charge less in taxes and offer less to their people as a result, but ultimately that only makes things worse for everyone. Yes, the government tends to take more money per person in blue states, but the result is that the blue states are much better places to live than red states. Smart people understand this, but not everyone is smart, so they just see the bill, and not what they get for that bill. Oh, and red states pay less in federal taxes because they make less revenue. They pay the same RATES as in blue states, they just don't make as much money.
    1
  12512.  @rebelman7837  And yet, factually, that would not be the case, so you see how that fallacy works. /shrug
    1
  12513.  @rebelman7837  Millions of people aren't leaving their states though. Around a half million left California over the past couple years, but that's out of a population of 39 million, so that's not a big deal. Washington lost 3,600 people, that's barely a high school football game audience. I don't know why those on the right seem obsessed with such figures. Meanwhile, they are both states where a lot of great stuff is happening, so if certain people want to leave, that's their own business. The states are better off without them, right?
    1
  12514.  @rebelman7837  I don't see any evidence of that. Wendover did a good video about some of the structural changes that make California complicated, they do have some serious issues with speculative real estate and local zoning boards making it difficult to create affordable housing, but they are still the 5th largest economy in the world, bigger than the UK, France, Italy, or Canada, so I think they'll probably do fine in the long run.
    1
  12515. TL;DR, shameless racism.
    1
  12516. So the GOP Won't be holding up the border bills so that things will be easier for Trump in the fall? The GOP WILL pass the border bills NOW so that Biden can sign them into law? Good to hear, there has to be a first time.
    1
  12517. Not at all.
    1
  12518.  @hajsh67  Democrats aren't necessarily geniuses, they are just much less likely to be idiots. "Both sides" is a lie we tell ourselves too, it's no more "right" and no less "lazy" than the people you're criticizing. While it's true that there are some radicals on each side, the radicals dominate the conversation on the right, while on the left they are mostly kept to the fringes. The left aren't the ones launched faux audits of an election lost six months ago, or trying in multiple states to reduce the number of people voting each year. The left never invaded the capitol with the intention to capture and potentially kill lawmakers in an attempt to install their own leader as president. If you look at the current reality and think that both sides are equally to blame, then you're not looking hard enough. Do better.
    1
  12519.  @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.
    1
  12520.  @mr.stepdaddy2259  I think maybe you are replying to the wrong person.
    1
  12521. It is a good thing, so long as we build in systems to make sure that everyone is taken care of, regardless of their value to the economy. If a robot can do a job, then no human should have to do it, but also no human should go homeless or hungry just because nobody has any need for their labor.
    1
  12522.  @RM-jb2bv  Yes, it's because in the US, Republicans have convinced their people to give all power to "The Corporation," and the corporation literally never cares about humans. In countries where this is not the case, they have much higher levels of happiness. The corporations are doing great though. There really aren't other options though, AI WILL take over all white collar jobs within the century, and machines WILL take over all blue collar jobs within the century, this is unavoidable, so the only question that remains is "what will happen to all the people?" The corporations know what to do. Liquidate.
    1
  12523. Yup. "Not at all."
    1
  12524. Google needs a dedicated "no Pinterest" button.
    1
  12525.  @mountainghost5044  Yes, exactly, find the transcript of what Biden said during the interviews, and it will be clear what he did and did not remember.
    1
  12526. But they can only speak in bad faith arguments, so of course they will continue to raise the "so you're saying protest is antisemitism" arguments. If they were actually knowledgeable and nuanced, then they wouldn't even be protesting.
    1
  12527.  @4_vaccuum_salesman_of_marr944  "Aspirsions." And the title is accurate, Antisemitism is rampant, and Campus protests are not helping.
    1
  12528.  @lynxminx4  I do think it's fair to say that the anti-Israel protesting has provided a lot of cover to more open antisemitic behavior, would you not agree?
    1
  12529.  @lynxminx4  But it is reason enough to be careful HOW you express yourself about the war, and to try to avoid doing so in ways that might be co-opted by bad actors. For example, causing chaos at universities.
    1
  12530. Neither of those would have solved this problem.
    1
  12531. Republican run states get larger bailouts than Democrat-run ones, paid for by taxpayers in Democrat-run states.
    1
  12532. They are full maga now.
    1
  12533. Those weren't "government overreach" though. They were just cult wackjobs getting themselves killed. It was no different than Jonestown. People who looked at that and saw that as "well I guess I need a gun to protect myself from the government" have way bigger problems than "government overreach."
    1
  12534. So your argument is "there are already plenty of legal pathways, but they are choosing to take these more dangerous methods because. . . reasons?" Don't you think that if the legal pathways were open to them, they would take those instead? They take the more dangerous routes because the safer routes have been closed off to them, mostly due to Republican policies over the past few decades to reduce legal immigration.
    1
  12535. Taxpayers, for allowing him to get elected. This is why it's important to vote.
    1
  12536. Yup, elect Republicans, and things only get worse.
    1
  12537. I think he's hawking Bibles to cover his legal bills at the moment.
    1
  12538. China collapsing may be an inconvenience for everyone, but it would still be better than allowing them to continue as an authoritarian state.
    1
  12539. Sure, why not? It's all going to crap anyway, might as well get your kid out of the mess.
    1
  12540. Or so an antisemite would say.
    1
  12541. There can be no peace that involves Russia retaining control over their captured territory. That would ONLY lead to future war. This needs to be a TOTAL failure with ZERO gains made for Russia, so that they know that war is not "an acceptable cost to achieve our goals."
    1
  12542. You clearly did not pay attention to what they said. Not much has changed here, they just believe that one of the two possible scenarios is the slightly more likely of the two right now. It's still not certain either way.
    1
  12543. @Seek and Destroy Again, it's possible that it came from a lab leak. Everyone with knowledge on the topic seems to agree on that and always has. And it's also possible that it originated naturally and spread due to Chinese animal-hunting practices. We don't have any proof one way or the other for either option, we just have a lot of speculation as to which is was, and different groups have come to different conclusions as to which they think is more likely than the other. The only thing that would be "misinformation" on the topic would be to insist that either option is definitely true. Why would you not trust the CDC? Is it because they refuse to tell you what you want to hear?
    1
  12544. @Seek and Destroy No, the CDC has not "contradicted themselves" on covid, they have made recommendations based on the best information available at the time, and then updated their recommendations as new information became available. That is exactly what they SHOULD be doing. What would you prefer, that they stick to their original recommendations even if we later learn new things that make those recommendations less accurate? How stupid would that be?
    1
  12545.  @JBguitar-cj8pc  I did no such thing. SOME people saying it was a lab leak were racist or xenophobic, especially the ones implying that it was deliberate, but a lab leak was never off the table, even among CDC officials, They just didn't believe it was the most likely answer, and felt that it was inappropriate to run with that possibility as if it was fact. That remains true. And nobody is denying that they covered stuff up, that was part of the reporting from day one, if you'd been paying attention. It was well known even in spring of 2020 that they had been aware of the pandemic spreading around Wuhan as early as that fall, and had been quiet about reporting on it until the story became too big to hide.
    1
  12546.  @ryanelliott6706  The thing is, "they" never said that. Faux News TOLD you that "they" said that, because it benefits Faux News for you to hate and fear "them." What "they" have always _actually said was "we don't know exactly how it first spread, it could have escaped a research lab, but there is no available evidence that it did, and there is good reason to believe that it originated in a wet market, so the available evidence makes it more likely that this is the origin of the virus." That has always been "their" position. The only "racist conspiracy theory" in all of this were the nutters that thought the Chinese did this intentionally somehow, or that covid was a product of weapons research or something.
    1
  12547.  @ryanelliott6706  Like I said, Faux News told you that's what "CNN and MSNBC" were doing because by owning your fear of others, they own you. You've admitted as much during the Dominion trial transcripts. They just slice and dice actual news coverage to imply that people are making claims that they were not actually making. Look up the original sources of the clips they showed you and watch them in their full context. The mainstream media covered what news there was on the potential of a lab leak, but there really wasn't any. Still isn't. It's just considered to be a valid possibility, and some groups consider it to be slightly more likely than the wet market theory. The only "fringe, debunked, conspiracy theory" is that the leak was intentional, or that it was the result of some secret weapons program.
    1
  12548.  @ryanelliott6706  It is still a conspiracy theory that the virus was "made" in a lab in China. There's no reason to believe that. The Wuhan lab was one studying viruses that already exist. That's what most of your quotes there were referencing.
    1
  12549.  @ryanelliott6706  You're the one reading out Faux News talking points as if they are gospel. Let me ask you this, why do you personally believe that it matters whether the virus first spread from a wet market or whether it escaped a virology lab? Everything that happened after that matters SO much more.
    1
  12550.  @ryanelliott6706  They died from covid. That's the important bit. Whether the first case was in a wet market or a lab is irrelevant to that. And China is not a democracy, we know that, why would we expect them to be open about this when they BS over so many other things?
    1
  12551.  @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.
    1
  12552.  @ryanelliott6706  I don't support the CCP in any way, I think their treatment of Hong Kong and their own people is abyssal, and that their economy is a house of cards, but that's neither here nor there. We're talking about a pandemic here, and while it's been well documented that it originated in China, it's a virus nonetheless, a natural disaster, and their only real fault in its handling was in not informing the global community of it faster, which I noted many posts ago. What more do you expect?
    1
  12553. It could be higher, but that's only the known cases.
    1
  12554.  @mattt5006  That is not true. Dems did not say that.
    1
  12555. What we know is that he has no past dealings of concern. What has been claimed by his political enemies is that he did something wrong,. but there's no reason to believe any of that nonsense.
    1
  12556. Cool! Cheaper apartments for everyone else. That isn't "leaving the city dimmer," it's leaving it even better!
    1
  12557. Except for all the other times.
    1
  12558. They may not be able to pay in cash, but they could give Europe free gas instead.
    1
  12559. Lol, DeSantis can't afford chat GTP.
    1
  12560.  @francismarion6400  An awful lot of Christians claim that the Bible does support their bigotry though. Your argument is with them, not me.
    1
  12561.  @francismarion6400  Not my point, my point is that those abusing the Bible toward bigoted ends, like the SBC, are actively causing harm, and that should stop.
    1
  12562.  @DemonKingBadger  "How were they victims, they didn't fight back enough?"
    1
  12563.  @thisismyyoutubecommentacco6302  The loan was repaid, but at a more favorable rate than if he'd been honest, so they lost money on those loans. And again, even if he repaid the loan, the potential that he might not puts the system at risk. You aren't allowed to lie about something "so long as you get away with it." As to your example, if an appraiser overvalued your home, then you would not be at risk for using his valuation. The issue in THIS case is that no such independent appraisal was done, the company made their own inaccurate appraisals.
    1
  12564.  @QuestionAllHarmNone  There have been relatively few modern wars won this way. It is a poor strategy in the long term.
    1
  12565.  @MojaveWrangler77  The US has already done all they can to get Russia to pull out. All they can do now is ensure that Ukraine has the weapons to finish it themselves.
    1
  12566.  @danieldevito6380  Sure you can. Why do you think you couldn't?
    1
  12567.  @MrButtlettuce  There were more conflicts in the world under Trump than there are under Biden. Biden has started no conflicts while in office.
    1
  12568.  @MrButtlettuce  There were more conflicts in the world under the previous administration than under this one. Biden has started no new conflicts, and ended some along the way.
    1
  12569.  @HiveMind629  Yeah, if Republicans wanted the border fixed then they could have just allowed the Democratic plans to do so pass years ago. They prefer the border to be in chaos because it makes their numbers go up when racists get scared.
    1
  12570.  @cruisemissileUSA  Not as much as Republicans support MAGA.
    1
  12571.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  Oh, then no such person exists. The Democratic Socialists aren't even really a party in the US. They're mostly in other countries. And Donald Trump is only a "mogul" in his own imagination. And fraudulent documents.
    1
  12572.  @liamsdad33  Lol, nobody wants Vance in the While House.
    1
  12573.  @liamsdad33  Who voted for Vance?
    1
  12574.  @liamsdad33  Biden beat Trump by more than Trump beat Harris by. Who was Biden's VP?
    1
  12575. Meanwhile, in the US, Republicans want to import ALL of this.
    1
  12576. I don't think they are pro-maga here.
    1
  12577.  @Tyrone-r2u  Dems are so rarely proven wrong though. Usually it's just someone shouting their opinions at them as though they are facts.
    1
  12578. Well, too many people watch Faux News. If they were better informed, they wouldn't be so surprised when reality happens.
    1
  12579. Well, unfortunately, there weren't enough adults to pass a more permanent budget, there were just enough to get this passed, which is better than nothing. We need to elect more adults next time and fewer Republicans.
    1
  12580.  @rdf256  I don't think we are ok with that. We push back at any failures in the system. The public school system is not perfect, but at least has checks and balances that home schooling does not.
    1
  12581.  @flmacphee1158  Teachers are more likely to know what's better for kids than their parents, at least. They are better educated on the topic. It's like how a doctor is more likely to know what's wrong with you.
    1
  12582. Yes, but not all sensitive documents are classified.
    1
  12583. Nobody is. All Ukraine deals are public facing, we give them money to kick Putin's ass for us.
    1
  12584. They didn't censor anything, they were required to post that by a Republican administration, even though there was no actual data to support that position and they did not believe it to be true. As soon as they were no longer required to post it, they removed it.
    1
  12585.  @mikeh3084  There's a pretty good reason for anti-gun groups to exist, they are pro-life.
    1
  12586.  @redonk1740  They were required to post that for political reasons, and took it down as soon as they were allowed to do so, because it was never accurate.
    1
  12587.  @mahaffer71  The CDC never did a study into the matter because congressional Republicans made it illegal for them to do so. The quote above was only referencing a debunked 3rd party study from the 90s,m and was only on the CDC page because they were politically required to put it there for a while.
    1
  12588.  @mahaffer71  No, the CDC never did a report. The CDC posted a short statement on their website due to political interference in their duties, but they NEVER did any work on the topic themselves.
    1
  12589.  @redonk1740  It's important to keep in mind that in America, many gun owners own multiple guns, and only one is needed to cause an incident. Raising the total number of guns in circulation and comparing that to the number of incidents is pointless, what matters is that the number of incidents is much higher in the US than in equivalent countries where they have far fewer guns. The goal with any gun control is not to have criminals "be nice" and turn in their guns. The point of it is to cut off their supply of guns. If they cannot purchase them legally, and cannot steal them from legal gun owners, then the supply of guns in the criminal markets would drop massively. We know this for a fact, given that it's already occurred in many countries. And your "low estimate" of defensive gun use is only a "low estimate" by someone intending to produce high estimates. It's like asking a football coach what his "low estimate" of his team's victory will be. The Gun Violence Archive counts actual cases of defensive gun use, and they tend to be more in the 1,500 to 2,000 per year range. And owning a gun increases your chances of being a victim, since you're less likely to take more safe methods like avoidance, and because the same laws that allow you to own a gun allow the criminals to acquire one. Also, comparing guns to cars is another weak argument, since cars provide much more value to society than guns do. Look, there is a very simple statistic we can use here, results. If guns make Americans safer, then the US overall violent crime rates and murder rates would be the lowest in the world. Out massive amount of guns would completely squash any attempt by criminals to do crime. Is that the result? No. Instead, our violent crime is, at best, equal to other countries, no safer due to gun ownership, and our homicide rates are 6 times more or higher, the worst in the developed world. Solve that problem, and maybe having guns will be ok, but since guns clearly have not solved that problem, they are clearly not the solution.
    1
  12590. "But climate change isn't real guys!"
    1
  12591. I feel like your more regular viewers tend to enjoy the "oddball" stuff like the mystery man video, but "cataclysm!" videos tend to attract more views from casuals, people who just see a thumbnail and click.
    1
  12592. Da Comrade.
    1
  12593.  @daniellephilp8619  If this is a valid case, then charges should be filed. His opponent was found guilty of sexual assault, that's how these things should go, if there's merit to it.
    1
  12594.  @RogerSutton-pz8lf  Do you mean about Walz? I can't find any criminal charges against him. Oh, you meant Trump. Yeah, plenty of charges there.
    1
  12595.  @MSW613  Oh, heavens no, I don't watch Faux News. In the kingdom of the blind, Faux News is king, but to everyone else, they are just a bunch of fools.
    1
  12596.  @anthonyturner6399  You can lead a horse to water, but at the end of the day, he's just a horse, and it's unreasonable to expect him to think,.
    1
  12597.  @anthonyturner6399  Ok, have fun with that. Hope you brought some snacks.
    1
  12598.  @JoeMamma-er1op  Thanks for having faith in me.
    1
  12599.  @anthonyturner6399  You're hallucinating again. Tell your operator.
    1
  12600.  @CuuchieMonster  Putin started this war. He can end it by leaving. He does not get to have an opinion about "escalation" until he does leave.
    1
  12601.  @ВерующийАтеист-п8м  According to reporting, they are fighting Ukrainians in Kursk. Not _well, they are getting obliterated the same as the lazy Russians, but they are on the front lines.
    1
  12602. Why won't the media just accept that people this stupid exist?
    1
  12603.  @MrJerry8159  What "science" does not agree? Someone claiming to have "science" to back up their position, which happens to disagree with the overwhelming majority of other scientists, does not mean that their answer is "science" and that people should take it seriously. The actual science on the topic indicates that these vaccines are extremely safe and effective. Someone "looking into it" on the Internet does not mean that the answer they find will be valid. You can "look into" all sorts of things, but if your sources are untrustworthy conspiracy sites, then the "results" you arrive at will be nonsense. The facts definitely do favor getting the shots, regardless of whether you want that to be true or not.
    1
  12604.  @foreignidea5696  I haven't heard anyone seriously talking about a 4th shot, but if so, so what? What's the harm in that? People get flu shots every year, if it is as effective against covid as it's been so far, I would have absolutely no problem getting a shot every year or so if that's what's needed to maintain it. It';s like you're saying "sure, you go out and get a hair cut, but -where does it end?!_ You might have to end up getting another hair cut in 6, 8, or 12 months later!!!" Boo hoo.
    1
  12605.  @foreignidea5696  The survival rate was actually 98.3%, and has since fallen due to the Delta Variant.
    1
  12606.  @foreignidea5696  What? A 98.3% survivability rate is nothing to cheer about. That would mean around 6 MILLION US dead by the end of this (not even counting repeat infections, which we know will happen, so the eventual death rate would likely be much higher). Why allow those deaths to happen when there is a simple way to avoid it? You have a much higher chance of surviving a car trip than you do of surviving covid, but that doesn't mean you should go without your seat belt. The problem is that this is a communicable disease, it spreads from person to person. As a vaccinated person, I am much safer than I was before that, but I'm not 100% immune either, and nobody every claimed that I would be or would need to be. If I can change my survival rate from 98.3% to 99.999%, then why wouldn't I do that? Why wouldn't you? And if we allow the virus to spread around among the unvaccinated population, then not only will it continue to overload hospitals, reducing the standard of care for ALL Americans and driving up insurance rates across the board, but also it allows mutations to take place which might make the current vaccines less effective and put us back at square one. Why would anyone who is not an enemy of America want that?
    1
  12607.  @MrJerry8159  If your "best immunologists and virologists," are telling you not to get the shot, then that are not good immunologists OR virologists, they are just people telling you what you want to hear, and you are eating it up like the sheep that you are.
    1
  12608.  @foreignidea5696  There is no shame in you observing your own health risks. The shame is in you doing it poorly and putting those around you at risk from your own inadequacies. And yes, the overcrowded hospitals are because they are having to treat hundreds more patients than they were ever designed to treat. This is a problem. You're also not accurately describing how covid deaths are handled, you are not listed as a "covid death" if covid was not the primary cause of death. Yes, there might be other things wrong with you, but those things would not have killed you if you had not had covid. This is why 2020 had 400,000+ more dead people than they had predicted based on "normal causes." And yes, there are definitely things that, if you get them, are deadlier than covid. The difference there is that these diseases are either less contagious, or harder to treat. Yes, cancer is a big killer, but you cannot spread (most) cancer person to person, certainly not as easy as covid, and there are not safe vaccines for cancer. If there were a cancer vaccine, you'd be damned certain I'd take it. Natural immunity is a thing, but even if you get sick with covid, the natural immunity you get from that is not as effective as the vaccines, it too wears off over time, and that's if you survive the initial infection, which is far from guaranteed. The vaccine, on the other hand, has an almost certain survival rate, so it is the MUCH safer options. Communities that have attempted "natural immunity" strategies like Brazil or Sweden have been devastated as a result. And again, you choosing to die is certainly your own business, except that this is a societal issue, so you choosing to die might also result in taking the lives of those around you, who might then take the lives of those around them, and it will add to our overcrowded hospitals, add to our health care bills, and potentially lead to more mutations, you you choosing to die IS causing harm to others.
    1
  12609.  @MrJerry8159  I can't say that I know more than they do. But I can say that I trust the larger number of top docs who are more recognized than them. It's kind of like if I was watching two football coaches, and one of them was the coach of a small, noncompetitive college, and the other was the coach of a major tournament-player college, and the latter one gave an opinion about football strategy, and then dozens of other high-tier coaches chimed in that they totally agreed with him on it, then I couldn't claim to know more about football than the coach at the smaller school, but I would certainly listen to the advice of the major coaches instead. Just because you've "looked around," and you've found people who will give you answers that are different than what the most credible sources are telling you, does not mean that these new sources you've found are right. Your sources are telling you what to hear because with controversy comes profit. They could not cut it in the mainstream of their field, so they are instead staking a claim as an "alternative" to that mainstream, which is less profitable than being great at the mainstream version, but more profitable than failing at the mainstream, which was the only option available to them.
    1
  12610.  @MrJerry8159  I am making no assumptions. You have expressed that you have arrived at a certain conclusion that is incorrect. There are many ways that you could have arrived at that conclusion, some simpler than others, but the fact remains that the conclusion you arrived at is an incorrect one. There are not "thousands of doctors sounding the alarm and being silenced." Whoever told you that was lying to you. What doctors are "sounding the alarm" are either quacks who genuinely believe in voodoo science, or they are hucksters attempting to get attention off of counter-culture "medicine" practices. In either case, there is no benefit to paying them an ounce of attention. You have "read and seen" a lot of nonsense being put out by people who are either ignorant of reality or are deliberately misleading for various reasons. No accurate source would validate your position on these topics. FIND BETTER SOURCES OF INFORMATION. The real "sheep" in this one are the ones who are told to do something they don't want to do by those in authority, told to stay inside, told to wear a mask, told to take a vaccine, and they say "well I don't want to do that, there must be some other way," so they poke around on the Internet until they find someone, anyone who will tell them "you're right, the way they are telling you to do it is not the right way, you should do this instead!" and they just buy that hook, line and sinker, because it's exactly what they wish were true. Reality is rarely what you want it to be, that doesn't mean you can just substitute it with any alternate reality that you choose. Also, Youtube thumbs are a REALLY dumb way to gauge the accuracy of medical information. If you take nothing more away from this conversation, let that be the main one. That and the FIND BETTER SOURCES OF INFORMATION.
    1
  12611.  @MrJerry8159  But I really have looked at the CDC with an open mind, and my open mind tells me that they are far more trustworthy than some random crackpot I found on the Internet. I am a contrarian at heart, I question EVERYTHING, I take nothing at face value or without question. I question everything that I hear and I look into anything that might be fishy and determine the most likely truth involved. When I have come to the result that all the credible sources say one thing, and all the sources that disagree are fringe lunatics and scam artists, then that is because all the credible sources say one thing, and all the sources that disagree are fringe lunatics and scam artists, not because I haven't done my due diligence. It's easy to just accept that the thing you WISH were true were the truth, and to say "see, I found someone on the Internet who agrees with me that I should be doing exactly what I want to be doing!" But that isn't the truth. Someone telling you what you want to hear should be the LEAST trustworthy answer you get. The doctors you follow are not "brave," they are pandering. They are cowardly. They are saying what a certain subset of the population WANT to hear, because they have no value otherwise. If they are doctors at all (which in many cases they are not), they are making a lot more money by peddling nonsense than they ever would by actually treating patients ethically or doing credible research. The only news sources that support their efforts are fringe "Faux News," sources that are paid for by oil tycoons, The Russian government, or Chinese cults. You have decided to not trust "the mainstream," and therefore open your arms wide to anyone who will tell you the opposite of what "the mainstream" has to say. That is not wisdom, that's ignorance. Sometimes the "mainstream" gets things wrong, that doesn't mean that the other side is right. As for "prohibiting free speech," there are a lot of stupid people out there, and a lot of people are being misinformed. They have had to put out alerts to stop people form taking horse dewormers in potentially lethal doses, because various "alternative news outlets" have been telling people that this horse dewormer will cure them. I WISH so badly that we lived in a world where more people could tell the difference between the truth and a lie, but we do not, so when people are trying to spread information that is causing literal deaths, I do think that it causes more good than harm to reduce their reach as best we're able to do so. I really hope you can escape the cult you're in before it's too late. Think for yourself.
    1
  12612.  @MrJerry8159  I have the upmost respect for extremely credible experts in the medical field. YOU are the one that has repeatedly dismissed them. The only people I have been dismissive of is the crackpots and hucksters that have been selling people snake-oil, and telling them "don't trust those extremely credible experts in the medical field over there, I got my medical degree off a cereal box, and I know better, because I'm telling you that you don't have to be inconvenienced like those medical experts are saying you should be." You seem trapped, and that saddens me, but there's only so much I can do to help. I really hope that you learn to be a better consumer of information, and to be more questioning of your sources and their motivations.
    1
  12613.  @MrJerry8159  McCllough is currently being sued for misrepresenting himself as a Baylor employee, and is a cardiologist, not an epidemiologist or immunologist. He has zero knowledge relevant to covid, the vaccines, or other treatments. His specific claims have been widely debunked. Have you looked into him? You seem to have a lot of misinformation in there. Let's see. Yeadon never worked at Pfizer on infectious diseases and hasn't worked for them in over a decade. He has no inside knowledge or medical expertise that is at all relevant to these vaccines. Based on his more recent antics, he seems to have gone well off the deep end into nonsense-land. That happens to people sometimes, and it is sad. Malone did not invent MRNA tech, he just claims that he did for the attention. There are dozens, if not hundreds of scientists who have built up mRNA research over the years, and Malone is considered on the fringe of that field. The fact that most of the REST of them completely disagree with his assertions should be more compelling to you than the fact that he is going against them. Karen Kingston's story has also been thoroughly investigated and debunked. None of what she claimed about the vaccine was accurate, but she was never a scientist in the first place (and she left the company DECADES before they even started on this research), so she clearly misunderstood what she was looking at. This is what I mean, confirmation bias. You pick the sources of information that agree with what you want to believe, rather than listening to the 10, 100, 1000, 100,000 equally or superiority qualified people saying the exact opposite. Why do you do that? Why do you believe the larger group of voices is less credible than the fringe elements? They are not "people showing documentation and evidence," they are people waving around papers at a TV camera and claiming that it is documentation and evidence. Well anyone can do that, I can wave a sheet of papers around and claim that it's evidence of aliens or whatever, that does not make it actually evidence. The fact that someone like you seems to buy into their nonsense only highlights the need to make clear that this stuff is misinformation. Do better fact checking before spreading these views to others. It only takes a few minutes to learn ANY of this stuff.
    1
  12614.  @MrJerry8159  So we're back to confirmation bias, "you trust the sources you trust because they are the ones telling you what you prefer to believe," even though they are all untrustworthy. Facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  12615.  @Mark-no1vb  Yes, that is the topic of this video. Trangender kids.
    1
  12616. @ It would be ineffective to get any "deal" that did not involve a restoration of their territory and a defense against next time. What do you think he should do, and why do you believe it would work for his country?
    1
  12617.  @XxneonskylinexX  Whether you agree with the hostage taker's demands or not has nothing to do with whether it's justified. You can agree 100% with what Kevin wants to get out of this, that's still no excuse for him holding YOU future hostage to get them. If you believe America should spend less than it currently does, then that's fine, but that's a discussion to be had during the budgeting process. It has nothing to do with raising the debt ceiling. Also the number of times the debt ceiling gets raised is not a relevant amount of information, because they raise it by different amounts each time. You could raise the debt ceiling 100 times per month, or you could raise it once this year and not need to do it again for 50 years, all depending on how much you raise it by. The point is, you should never not raise it when it needs raising.
    1
  12618. @ None relevant to this situation though.
    1
  12619. Nobody was lying here. Everything she said was accurate.
    1
  12620. I thought that "thoughts and prayer" were "action?" I mean, sure, it's never actually stopped the next shooting, but actually removing the guns would take legislation.
    1
  12621. He was better than the alternative. Still is.
    1
  12622.  @TrentSLucas  No, have you?
    1
  12623. ​ @TrentSLucas  But you were able to get one, right? So that's still a loophole. If legal gun sales were not the cause of gun violence, then the US would not have six times more murders than any other first world country. The root cause is too many guns.
    1
  12624.  @TrentSLucas  But you were able to get one, right? So that's still a loophole. If legal gun sales were not the cause of gun violence, then the US would not have six times more murders than any other first world country. The root cause is guns.
    1
  12625.  @TrentSLucas  But you were able to get one, right? So that's still a loophole. If legal gun sales were not the cause of gun violence, then the US would not have six times more murders than any other similar country. The root cause is too many guns.
    1
  12626.  @TrentSLucas  See, this is what I;m talking about. You aren't taking the problem seriously, and you aren’t trying to find a root cause to the problem. You may own guns that have never killed anyone, yet, but they could be stolen tomorrow and used in a crime, or someone in your household could have a bad day and use them in a crime. Nearly every gun used in a crime in the US was purchased legally in the US, "until something happened." The root cause is the guns. If we want to solve gun violence in the US, then we need to start by removing the guns.
    1
  12627. It certainly is despicable that Trump would run ads of photos and video he took at Arlington like that.
    1
  12628. That would be Donald Trump, I don't think he was mentioned in this story.
    1
  12629.  @MRick-cd1kr  Why do you believe that ABC was in the tank for Kamala? How do you think a football game would go if each side got to pick a ref? How does that make sense to you?
    1
  12630.  @MRick-cd1kr  There have been debates with conservative moderators in the past. The problem is that over the past few years, a lot of people accepted as "conservative" are also fully into cloud cuckoo land, and incapable of moderating a spelling bee,much less a presidential debate. I mean, can you name even one conservative who would be even halfway competent to moderate a debate?
    1
  12631.  @MRick-cd1kr  You genuinely believe that Mark Levin would be capable of fact checking Trump in real time?
    1
  12632.  @MRick-cd1kr  Why do you say that like it's a bad thing? If you had liberalism you would be showing off too. It's nothing to be ashamed of like magaism.
    1
  12633.  @MRick-cd1kr  Magaism is like Christianity, only with Trump at the center of it. Also, Harris does not need fact checking, she handles that herself.
    1
  12634.  @MRick-cd1kr  What would Harris need to be fact checked on? She wasn't talking about eating cats or other such nonsense. And if you haven't heard any magaists proselytizing, then it's only because you haven't recorded your own voice.
    1
  12635. Biden's deported more than Trump did.
    1
  12636. Trump said dead soldiers were suckers.
    1
  12637.  @Homedepotorange  Nope, the current budget and existing debts is way to high to rationally deal with by using spending cuts alone, nor tax increases alone. It needs to be a little of both, very carefully handled, over a matter of decades.
    1
  12638.  American Medusa  It's true either way. Most of Trump's appointees were eithe rprofoundly unqualified for any sort of government service, or they knew exactly what they were doing because they worked for a business that would profit off of them destroying the government agency to which they were assigned. It was the rare Trump nominee that was remotely appropriate for their position. And he fired all of those anyway.
    1
  12639.  @ScottWaa  You're talking about inflation. Are you aware of all the things that Biden did to keep that inflation down? There are a lot of countries that have had it much worse over the past few years.
    1
  12640. They exist, there are just a lot less of them, and they don't do as much terrorism as white nationalists, so it doesn't come up as often.
    1
  12641.  @BARBARAKOHUTH  For every Ilhan Omar in Congress, there are four dozen Republicans more foolish, and five dozen Republicans less moral.
    1
  12642.  @jesseallerdings7050  Yup.
    1
  12643.  @jesseallerdings7050  Oh, then you would be wrong. But thanks for proving mine.
    1
  12644. It's not possible to do that though. It's like that argument that people should just cut out Starkbucks to balance their budget, when their salary isn't enough to cover their rent.
    1
  12645.  @SomeCanine  No, it doesn't, and that's bee proven many times already. Austerity only leads to decline.
    1
  12646.  @roxannebarton9740  "Tyranny begins where rule of law ends." Trying to get political opponents locked up for crimes they did not commit is the definition of tyranny.
    1
  12647.  @AndrewTSq  No, that's why it was as close as it was. If not for the idiots, Biden would have won 81m to zero.
    1
  12648.  @bq6162  Did you want it to be more than that?
    1
  12649.  @garypeterson9745  I think you're repeating hearsay there, not evidence.
    1
  12650.  @josemorrasge8100  If you believe that, then you are a poor consumer of information.
    1
  12651.  @Qthekat1984  You misplaced your decimal point. He was right 0.0099% of the time.
    1
  12652.  @bq6162  He said Jones was talking about this a long time ago. There is no "this" to be talking about, because the new information does not actually say anything. All it says is that the lawyers against Maxwell searched her phone for a bunch of prominent people. It says nothing about them finding anything involving them.
    1
  12653.  @brianlain4164  Ok, name ten things that Alex Jones said, was mocked for at the time he said them, but turned out to be accurate in the end.
    1
  12654.  @Qthekat1984  That's something Hunter said, yes. There is no evidence that this was not merely a lie to get himself an extra 10%. There is no evidence of Joe Biden ever receiving "10%."
    1
  12655.  @janicesellers3618  You're half right. A huge part of this country despises Joe, yes, but they are not "sane," as you put it. Those same people actually like Donald Trump, who is objectively worse in every possible way, so how could anyone regard them as "sane?"
    1
  12656.  @MS-mr4zm  Ok, you argue that he has a 70% accuracy rating. I've asked people to give me ten examples of things that Jones has said which were controversial at the time, but turned out to be true. So far, nobody has been able to list even ONE such example. Can you?
    1
  12657.  @juanio7036  A "conspiracy nut" s the same thing as a "liar." It means "propagating things which are not true."
    1
  12658.  @chrisp9046  You believe that, this does not make it true, however. I asked for things that are true. Chemical runoff from agriculture has been an ongoing issue, and widely acknowledged by the mainstream scientific community, but the magical thinking Jones applies to it is where he dips into fantasy. It certainly has no link to gender related topics.
    1
  12659.  @barefootkid592.0  You do realize that if you added together every single person who attended a Trump rally, they would not have been enough people to win him even a single swing state? If the US President was determined by "how many people attended their rallies," then we would have President Taylor Swift right now. Democrats don't attend rallies, they attend polling places.
    1
  12660. Yes, but these are not judges. Wrong branch.
    1
  12661. He did do that. But he also did many other things that were part of an insurrection. The one does not cancel out the other.
    1
  12662.  @tmayorca8770  I didn't say anything that was not true. You might not like it, but that is not what "lying" means. "The truth" is not just "what you want to believe."
    1
  12663.  @jeffw1267  It wasn't that sort of insurrection. They were trying to decertify the rightful President and then use the House Republicans to declare Trump president instead. The violent mob was mostly a distraction. There was never a plan to violently overthrow the government, that would not have worked, they needed to be more subtle than that.
    1
  12664.  @jeffw1267  Also, just to be clear, several of the insurrectionists were arrested with guns on them.
    1
  12665. So it IS a fact that Gorsuch was not wearing a mask, even during the Omicron surge? THAT is the story here. He should do better than that. He has a responsibility to the American people.
    1
  12666. Then why would they be paying money to influences our dumber citizens?
    1
  12667.  @tersymatto  Would I prefer lower gas prices? Sure. Would electing Trump have provided lower gas prices? Nope, so what does gas prices have to do with anything? As for what Biden's done since getting into office? Let's see. . . he took a vaccine distribution system that was struggling to get supplies out where they needed to go, and ramped it up so that anywhere that needed a shot could get one. He passed relief aid that is the greatest reduction in child poverty in a generation. He made a bunch of executive orders that rolled back the disastrous executive orders that Trump put into place, like turning national parks over to developers, and rolling back safety standards. He took a disastrous border situation that the previous administration left him and turned it around, reducing the turnaround at border checkpoint facilities to under 72 hours. The stock market is up 15% since he took office. And ALSO he's been harder on China than Trump ever was, if that's something that matters to you. And that's all within the first two hundred days. All Trump managed within that timeframe was to work on his golf game.
    1
  12668.  @tersymatto  You were paying $1.89 in 2020. You are paying $3.09 in 2021. That would remain true regardless of who was President at the time. Gas prices have everything to do with complex economic realities across the globe, the US President doesn't just declare the price of gasoline. And no, the executive orders did not cost jobs, at least, not more than a few short term jobs that were causing long term harm. It is better for them to find work elsewhere than for them to be doing that work. Inflation is within standard amounts and likely to reduce soon, there is no reason to panic over short term pricing shifts. It's like when toilet paper was impossible to find last year, it'll settle down. Also, the most covid cases in the US are in red states that have poor vaccination rates and social distancing policies, it has absolutely nothing to do with the border. You're much more at risk of catching covid from someone from Florida or Missouri than from Mexico. And if you're struggling to feed your children now, imagine how much worse it would have been under Trump without the child tax rebate.
    1
  12669.  @tersymatto  We've had a tough few years. Biden can't make that go away over night, but he's working on it. You would definitely be in a worse place if Trump had remained in office. Presidents are not wizards, they cannot just wave their hands the instant they enter office and completely solve all the problems on their desk. Actual change in government takes years, and the rollout of the RSP has actually been faster than anyone could reasonably expect from an incoming administration. Whatever struggles you have right now have nothing to do with Joe Biden, they are just a natural consequence of conditions that Trump had in place before he left and that are just working their way through the system. That's how administrations work. If you are telling me that things are not working out great for you right now, then that is all the proof you need for how badly Republican administrations mess things up.
    1
  12670.  @tersymatto  Some people did, some people didn't, but if you aren't enjoying the past six months, then you clearly would have hated the first six months of Trump's second term, because they would have been exactly the same, only you would have had less.
    1
  12671.  @tersymatto  Trump said a lot of nice things to American workers, but did practically nothing to actually benefit them. Anything that happened while he was in office that benefited American workers were just the natural results of the economy in motion. Trump did NOTHING to lower the cost of gas, except maybe approving the murder of a US resident by a Saudi prince, but either way, that would have been a temporary price decrease and has nothing to do with current pricing. Again, I'm not sure why I need to repeat this, US gas prices have nothing to do with who is president at the time, Presidents do not set the gas prices. This is not Soviet Russia, we have a free market economy. There are a few things that Presidents can do to temporarily shift gas prices, but it's irresponsible to do it "just because," because there is a cost to doing so. Presidents should only directly mess with gas prices when there is a genuine crisis, like a pipeline blows and we'd be looking at $6 a gallon otherwise or something. Trump did not secure our borders, and border migrants have nothing to do with covid. Again, your chances of getting infected by someone from Florida are MUCH higher than of your being infected by someone from Mexico. The vrirus is already inside the house. And Biden did NOTHING that would have changed the price of milk in your house. Again, if the price of milk in your house is higher than you would like it to be, you have Trump to thank for that, because we're still steering our way out of the messes he caused. As for "Obama built the cages," no. At least not in any way that matters. Obama did build some detention facilities that children ended up in, yes, but that is not what people were critical of Trump for. If children come across the border, you have to put them somewhere, and if a lot more than you have space for come across, then sometimes those facilities will not be the highest quality. Nobody is blaming Trump for that. At first. The problem with Trump was his policy of separating families, taking children away from their parents, even if the parents had committed no crimes other than crossing the border, and often without any documentation to allow the families to be reunited. Then Trump would keep these families in these facilities for months, and even years. Obama never did that, and neither is Biden. Under both of them, separations only occurred if the parents were facing serious criminal charges, and children were moved to higher quality facilities or foster homes within weeks. Your argument would be like if you had a 6ft high pile of garbage in your yard, and someone complained, and you go ". . . yeah. . . well. . . I see a soda can over in yours, so who are you to judge?" Here's a good video on Trump vs. Biden's China policies, judge for yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxakBsMHvw4
    1
  12672.  @tersymatto  If the news you've been watching has told you that "Anyone who was a democrat is now moving towards being a republican," then what you have been watching is fake news. Do not watch news that would tell you that. The reality of the situation is that since Biden has taken office, some members of the extreme progressive caucus have been annoyed at Biden for being too moderate, but that obviously isn't pushing them any closer to Republicans, the moderate Democrats and independents love Biden, giving him one of the highest approval ratings in recent memory for a President at this point in his term, and moderate Republicans and right-leaning independents have been shifting toward the Democrats, because the insurrection attempt, elevation of Q Anon supporters within the party, and continued efforts by Republicans to undermine the fundamental principles of democracy have turned them off the party. The only people left for the GOP are the radicalized lunatics. "And yes, Trump did lower the price of gas by creating jobs with the key pipeline. " Nope. The Key Pipeline was not in operation, and wouldn't have been for years. It had ZERO impact on the gas prices at any point in Trump's term, and would not have had any impact until 2023 or so. No moves relative to the Key pipeline impacted current gas prices in any way. Gas prices went up and down because DEMAND for gas shifted as people reacted to covid and the conditions it caused, as well as various other unrelated situations, like the Suez Canal blockage. That is how gas prices work. And as for "jobs," the pipeline would have led to a few thousand temporary oil jobs, an absolute drop in the ocean when it comes to "American jobs." Ten times more jobs than that are created in ANY given month. If you had friends working on that pipeline, then it may have had a significant impact on your circle of friends, but that is not the case for 99.999% of Americans, and I assure you that actions that Trump took cost jobs for far more Americans across the country, and that actions Biden is taking with his infrastructure program will create ten times as many jobs, if not more than that, and in constructing things that are good for America.
    1
  12673.  @tersymatto  By the way, I'm aware that it was a typo, but I love the term "arching the news," because that's a brilliant way of describing how conservatives have been handling the news lately. "Grr, news, why do you have to report on a reality that scares and confuses me? Curses! I will destroy you!"
    1
  12674.  @tersymatto  Again, you "living a much easier life" is not representative of all America. A lot of Americans had it harder than you and your friends supposedly did, sorry to say. And several things that Trump did were "good" in the short term, but "bad" in the long term, like taking steps that juiced the short term economy (like maintaining low interest rates past where it was wise to do so), but in an unsustainable way. It would be like if your friend took out a massive credit card loan and was buying you all fancy food and trips and stuff, you'd think "hey, this is great!" but then when it came time to pay off those loans, things would get much, much worse. Biden is investing in the future, Trump only doubled down on the present. Again, NONE of the "troubles" you've pointed out are a consequence of anything Biden has actually DONE. It's like you are blaming him for it raining outside while he was President. I feel the need to repeat in the hopes that it sinks in, Presidents are not wizards. They do not create the reality of everything that happens while they are in office, so just because good things happen to you while one guy is President and bad things happen to you while another guy is President, does not mean that it has anything to do with that President. Bad things will happen and good things will happen, all that is relevant to a President is what their actions have caused. I get that nothing will change your mind, but that's really a "you," problem. Facts don't care about your feelings, and the fact is that America is better off today than it was under Trump, it will be even more improved by the end of Biden's term in office, and most Americans are pleased with Biden's progress, whether you are one of them or not. All your claims of "disliking" Trump are irrelevant so long as you pointlessly cheerlead for the guy.
    1
  12675.  @tersymatto  And my point is that Biden IS making all Americans living better, more than Trump was, at least. If that hasn't trickled down to you or your friends just yet, it will. Every person's life has ups and downs, and if yours is in a "down" phase at the moment then you have my sympathies, but that has nothing to do with Trump and nothing to do with Biden, and at some point you'll get out of it. In the meantime, things are better overall under Biden, and will continue to get even better.
    1
  12676.  @tersymatto  Well now you're just looping. I answered that question multiple times already.
    1
  12677.  @tersymatto  But "people you know" is a VERY small sample size within a country of 300 million people. It's possible that the people you know are struggling more now, and I hope that doesn't last long, and we can rest assured that their struggles have nothing to do with anything Joe Biden has done so far. It sounds like some of them work in infrastructure projects, so they should be getting great work out of the recent Infrastructure bills. The only thing we know for sure is that long term everyone will be better off due to Biden's policies than they would have been with four more years of Trump. This will be an important decade for making sure that the planet doesn't burn to a crisp with us on it, and we couldn't have wasted those four years on more populist nonsense that did not actually accomplish anything.
    1
  12678.  @tersymatto  Why do you keep rolling back to high gas prices? I already explained how that has nothing to do with who is President? As for the rest, look up the ARP. If you have children, you should already have received money from that, not to mention the covid relief money. The infrastructure bill has taken a long toime to get past Republicans in the Senate (which is why we need less of those), but it is being passed soon. Again, whateve r"pinch" you're feeling at the moment can't be because of anything Biden did, because it's too early for any of the things he did to have an impact. If you don't like where you are at right now, then there's a guy in Mar-a-Lago that you can blame for that.
    1
  12679.  @tersymatto  But a country is like a cruise ship. It takes a long time to turn. You keep complaining about conditions right now, and I keep telling you that the things a President can do in six months generally have little impact on what happens to you right now. The first six months of Obama's administration was mostly defined by Bush policies working their way through the system. The first six months of Trump's was mostly Obama's policies, and the first six months of Bidens, in terms of everyday pocketbook issues, is still mostly due to Trump era policies. This is a fact of EVERY Presidency. It will take time for any changes Biden made, for better or worse, to have any impact on your daily life, just as it took time for any move Trump made to have a practical impact on anyone. And again, gas prices are not set by the President, these are not "Biden" prices you're seeing at the pump, they are "2021 prices," and you have the oil companies to blame for them, not the person in the Oval.
    1
  12680.  @tersymatto  All I do is speak the truth. If you don't want to be convinced by it, that's on you.
    1
  12681.  @tersymatto  Do you acknowledge the point I made that the conditions that exist right this minute are not due to the policies that Joe Biden implemented, because ANY act a President takes can take months, or even years to filter into the wider economy? Like you have mentioned gas prices on numerous occasions, even AFTER I have pointed out to you that a President does not control gas prices, and that the gas prices would be identical today under Trump as they are under Biden. If you refuse to accept these facts, then further discussion is pointless, because you are insisting on living in an imaginary world, where Presidents can wave a magic wand to do anything they like, and therefore anything that exists during their presidency is because "they did it." As for "most people feel worse off?" Where are your statistics on that? Most people felt worse off when Joe Biden took office than they did a year earlier (while Trump was in office). Biden's approval rating is over 50% (higher than Trump's ever was), so most people feel Biden is doing a good job, and it has barely moved since he took office, when typically it falls (Trump's fell by 10%), so he's doing better than most at convincing Americans that he's been doing a good job. By all standard tracking metrics, the US is doing better today than it was six months ago, for whatever that might be worth. Now maybe you feel worse off, maybe most of the people within earshot of you are too, but this is a country of 300 million people, "people you know" is not a valid sample group. Again, I wish nothing but success for you and the people in your social circle, but the success of the country cannot be measured on your personal success or not.
    1
  12682.  @tersymatto  We've been over the Keystone Pipeline. Yes. He cancelled it. Yes, that is a good thing overall. We don't need that foreign oil. No, that has NOTHING to do with the gas prices at the pump today, because the Keystone Pipeline wasn't pumping oil and wasn't going to be pumping oil for years to come, so if it ever had any impact at the pump it would be years down the line. The gas we had in our pumps before Biden was elected didn't come from Keystone, and the gas we had at the pumps after Biden didn't come from Keystone, and even if gas eventually did come from Keystone, it wouldn't go to US customers, it was going from Canada to foreign buyers, we were just the highway for it. Again, gas prices at the pump today have more to do with increased demand due to more people out and about than this time last year, combined with the standard fluctuations of oil prices due to all sorts of factors around the world. If you had friends that were involved in the pipeline, then they might need to find other options, but they should not have trouble doing so, and the Keystone jobs were always temp work anyway. There are good ways and bad ways to spend money, the Keystone Pipeline was a bad way. As for "can I prove people aren't worse off?" I'm not exactly sure how anyone could prove such a thing, but like I said last time, Biden's approval rating hasn't dropped significantly and is over 50%, so at least 50% of Americans think they are doing ok right now. The general economic metrics, the things economists and sociologists use to measure trends all seem to be in the positive, so the evidence is that people are generally doing ok. Can you prove that things are terrible, beyond "I think things are terrible and my friends do too?"
    1
  12683.  @tersymatto  Well, it's a mixed bag really. People were getting out more, for a few months at least, but you're right that the number of unvaccinated idiots out there has sent people back under cover. Still, overall, there are far more people out and about, even in "cautious" areas, in August 2021 than in August 2020. I mean, my parents never left their home from last April through early this year, outside of medical emergencies, but since getting vaccinated, they at least get out and meet friends or go shopping at about the pace they did pre-pandemic, they just might be a bit more careful about it. Now that's just an anecdote and not necessarily representative, but it does seem to be the case overall, since movie theaters are at least open and seeing better numbers than they did through most of 2020, just as a broad reference. The US has always had a mix of domestic and foreign oil. US oil production went up during Obama's presidency, and hasn't gone down under Biden, so that's not relevant here. Even oil produced domestically is not handed for free to US gas pumps, it is a business, so if a US oil producer can make more money shipping their oil to some other country than to sell it to Americans, then they will do that. The price of oil at US gas pumps is just a factor of the overall global oil economy. You should look into it, because there are great videos out there on how the oil supply works. Typically, the President has zero influence on gas prices. The only two cases in which a President can influence gas prices is if A: he opens the national oil reserve, which can drive down prices in the short term, but this is bad because then it means we will have no reserve if there is a true crisis, so it should only be used in a true emergency, not just "I'd rather not pay $3 a gallon." and B: he can cut deals with major oil producing nations that they would up their production, which drives down costs, but this is bad for those countries because it's basically wasting their money, so they would require some pretty hefty "payments" from the US, like letting them get away with murdering US residents or something. Typically it's just not worth it. In any case, that also has nothing to do with current gas prices. Again, I have given you the reasons why the gas prices are not as good today as they were a year ago, you just do not want to hear it because you would rather be able to blame Biden for it.
    1
  12684.  @tersymatto  I tried to post a link to an article, but Youtube killed it. Just google "Fact check: Rising gas prices due to high demand and low supply, not Biden's policies" from USA Today, they address your points and cite sources.
    1
  12685.  @tersymatto  Presidents cannot wave a wand and fix inflation. The inflation rate went up more over Trump's presidency than under Obama's. Inflation actually dropped to its lowest level in ten years during 2015. It rose more during Trump's first three years than it did during any of Obama's last term (obviously it dropped in 2020, what with the world imploding and all). Six months is way too early to judge inflation, but there's nothing Biden could have done about it in so little time. And being an unvacinated idiot is still just being an idiot. There is no non-idiot reason for you to not trust it, you just want something to fight. Don't expect anyone to respect your drunken choices.
    1
  12686.  @tersymatto  You weren't paying less. At least you weren't paying less than you were before Trump took office. Now you might be paying more today than you were in December, inflation is hard to judge over such an immediate timespan, but again, that wouldn't be due to Biden's actions while in office, Inflation is a complex beast and no President has the power to wave a wand and "fix" it. We'll have to see how Biden's inflation rates perform over his first term as a whole. Economics is hard. I recommend the "Macro & Money" Youtube channel, he does a good job of explaining how lots of economic systems work in an understandable manner. https://www.youtube.com/c/MoneyMacro/videos
    1
  12687.  @Bigfish105  He was involved in the illegal documents case, and not on the side of the American people, among other things.
    1
  12688.  @johnwong5317  True, 45's administration also did this sort of thing.
    1
  12689. Yeah, but. . . the coffee my Nespresso makes tastes good and is much easier than fiddling with a French Press or drip pour or whatever. It's a good system for a realistic person.
    1
  12690. What is this nonsense? Why would Judge Merchand's daughter have anything to do with anything? If Gaetz actually knew or cared anything about the law, he would know that the Attorney General has nothing to do with New York state cases.
    1
  12691. This is coming from a channel that has made it their BRAND to "stop people from believing what they see."
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  12692. It's fair to say that all of the bad parts of the Nazis were firmly right-wing, at least.
    1
  12693. This is why I love Salmon Globe commercials.
    1
  12694. And also Donald Trump. "The most thing since segregation and Donald Trump." And also Kanye West, he's also pretty racist.
    1
  12695.  @boxelderinitiative3897  Yup, they're definitely NPCs.
    1
  12696. Nobody tries to change the sex of any 6 year olds. Surgeries along those lines are generally not recommended until a person is an adult, and even more minor surgical processes are not really done until late teen years, and even then, only in very serious cases of distress.
    1
  12697.  @quantisedspace7047  Lol, kinda. :D It'd be more like a dozen or more DS9's stacked on top of each other though.
    1
  12698.  @NeilD1  The science is true regardless of belief, but people are more likely to act on belief than they are on science, so "what people believe" tends to be relevant to any practical considerations. This is a case where some people believe what RFK Jr does, regardless of the actual facts of the matter. The "debate" you refer to has already happened, nor between RFK Jr. Joe Rogan, and whatever yahoo they got to argue them on a talkshow, but instead between actual scientists using actual data, and it's long since been settled. Anyone interested in the evidence is already aware of which side won decisively. There would be no benefit in re-litigating those arguments. Once a matter has been settled, and without any compelling new evidence, what reason would there be to continuing to humor the losing side?
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  12699. It's because no Independent voter could possibly consider electing Trump, so Harris is a good alternative.
    1
  12700. Yeah, if you give people a ton of money, and then stop giving them a ton of money, they only remember that you stopped giving them money, not the tons of money you already gave them. People can be jerks like that.
    1
  12701.  @childrenoftolkien  Yes, that is what breeds white nationalists. Every one of them is a "race victim." The sooner they go away, the better for everyone.
    1
  12702. It is pointless for the US to become a manufacturing nation again. It is unsustainable because we can never have labor as cheap as actual manufacturing nations. The US should not waste resources pursuing a manufacturing strategy, and should instead invest in making America work for Americans without manufacturing.
    1
  12703.  @jeffrejr1  Nah, America mastered manufacturing in house over 100 years ago. But then we continued to grow past manufacturing, and let other countries do it for us. Now, for no rational reason, we're trying to get it back.
    1
  12704.  @freshevansGloryBeToYah  If that's not the reason why, then what is?
    1
  12705.  @UnkklRico  If so, he at least hires much better staffers than Trump, so the country is still in better hands.
    1
  12706.  @UnkklRico  Oh, I'm not maga. I do wish them hope with their TDS though. We all do. The world needs them back.
    1
  12707. They've done that already, neither made money from foreign interests while in office. Only Trump.
    1
  12708. Synonyms are fun.
    1
  12709.  @roscojenkins7451  I think you're talking homonyms. Or slant homonyms, at least.
    1
  12710.  @roscojenkins7451  That would be a non-sequitur.
    1
  12711. Partisan liberal media tells the truth though. It's partisan conservative media you need to watch out for.
    1
  12712. He's running as a Democrat and they can't handle it.
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  12713. You also don't remember groceries being an extra $140, because Biden kept inflation lower in the US than it got in other countries over the part few years. The inflation is global, not national.
    1
  12714. Only Donald J Trump is stupid enough to ever take "Putin Says so" as a credible source.
    1
  12715.  @Lee-BHC  Because, again, there is a lot of important stuff that needs to get done but would have trouble getting 51% of the vote in both houses if it was on its own. This is why you bundle things. Our spending is fine, much less than most companies, outside of military spending. We just need to tax properly.
    1
  12716.  @Lee-BHC  But again, if 40% of the people think one thing is important, and a different 40% think that a different thing is important, and each is voted on separately then both will fail and 80% of the people will be sad. If instead you bundle the two proposals, then both pass and more than 50% of the people are happy. Scale that up to hundreds of different issues with different constituencies, and you get the federal budget. The "voting on each thing" process is what happens leading up to the overall floor vote, in which everyone gets together and decides which elements should be in and which elements should be removed from that budget bill.
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  12717.  @George-j6t8d  Of the federal budget, 24% goes into health insurance, 21% goes into social security, 13% goes into defense, 7% into veteran benefits, 10% of it is interest on the debt run up by previous Republicans. That's 75%. The remaining 25% is all a little here and there, almost all of it being something very important to someone, so there's no way you could shave off even 25% of that without making life hard for millions of Americans. The deficit is too big because we don't tax effectively. Back in the 50s, we taxed both the wealthy and corporations at much higher rates than we do today, particularly when you keep in mind that a lot of what both of them make in a year isn't even taxed at all, due to various dodges. If we kept them accountable, they could easily fund the US government. The US revenue to GDP ratio is more than ten percent lower than the global average.
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  12718.  @George-j6t8d  Of the federal budget, 24% goes into health insurance, 21% goes into social security, 13% goes into defense, 7% into veteran benefits, 10% of it is interest on the debt. That's 75%. The remaining 25% is all a little here and there, almost all of it being something very important to someone, so there's no way you could shave off even 25% of that without making life hard for millions of Americans. The deficit is too big because we don't tax effectively. Back in the 50s, we taxed both the wealthy and corporations at much higher rates than we do today, particularly when you keep in mind that a lot of what both of them make in a year isn't even taxed at all, due to various dodges. If we kept them accountable, they could easily fund the US government. The US revenue to GDP ratio is more than ten percent lower than the global average.
    1
  12719.  @George-j6t8d  1. Of the federal budget, 24% goes into health insurance, 21% goes into social security, 13% goes into defense, 7% into veteran benefits, 10% of it is interest on the debt run up by previous Republicans. That's 75%. The remaining 25% is all a little here and there, almost all of it being something very important to someone, so there's no way you could shave off even 25% of that without making life hard for millions of Americans.
    1
  12720.  @George-j6t8d  2. The deficit is too big because we don't tax effectively. Back in the 50s, we taxed both the wealthy and corporations at much higher rates than we do today, particularly when you keep in mind that a lot of what both of them make in a year isn't even taxed at all, due to various dodges. If we kept them accountable, they could easily fund the US government. The US revenue to GDP ratio is more than ten percent lower than the global average.
    1
  12721.  @George-j6t8d  I think that politically, cutting into the 75% programs would be a hard sell, and the current president elect has promised not to. I think that realistically, there is very little that could be cut from those programs that would not cause more harm than good. Is there waste and inefficiency? Yes, no system is perfect. Does to cost more to track down and eliminate that waste than the waste itself causes? Also yes. These are not simple problems with simple solutions. A government orders of magnitude smaller than the current one would be a failure. I do nt want an America that is a failure.
    1
  12722.  @George-j6t8d  And no, the tax cuts did not come with eliminations of loopholes, they were just handouts to the rich. None of these tax cuts have made more money back than they cost taxpayers, they have only caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. And it has always been Republicans that increase the deficit. Democrats have been the only ones to balance the budget.
    1
  12723.  @George-j6t8d  And no, the tax cuts did not come with eliminations of loopholes, they were just handouts to the rich. None of these tax cuts have made more money back than they cost taxpayers, they have only caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. And Democrats have been the only ones to balance the budget.
    1
  12724.  @George-j6t8d  And no, the tax cuts did not come with eliminations of loopholes, they were just handouts to the rich. None of these tax cuts have made more money back than they cost taxpayers, they have only caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer. Demacrats have been the only ones to balance the budget.
    1
  12725.  @George-j6t8d  And no, the tax cuts did not come with eliminations of loopholes (not ones that rich people needed, at least), they were just handouts to the rich. None of these tax cuts have made more money back than they cost taxpayers, they have only caused the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.
    1
  12726.  @George-j6t8d  You're easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grift. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12727.  @George-j6t8d  You're easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got five bucks back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12728.  @George-j6t8d  Some people are easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12729.  @George-j6t8d  "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12730.  @George-j6t8d  You're easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12731.  @George-j6t8d  It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12732.  @George-j6t8d  You're easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got five bucks back in change off a twenty.
    1
  12733.  @George-j6t8d  You're easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers.
    1
  12734. ​ @George-j6t8d  The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12735.  @George-j6t8d  Forbes will not allow me to tell you why you're wrong. That should be all you need to know.
    1
  12736.  @George-j6t8d  You're easily distracted. "oh look, a multi-million dollar loophole! Ignore the trillions we're shuffling to our donors." The 2017 cuts gave pennies on the dollar to most Americans compared to what it handed the wealthy. That is a net loss in overall benefit. Some of them were foolish enough to think that it was a gift, rather than a grifft. Whatever "benefit to the economy" it might have is never more than the cost to the taxpayers. It's like someone being proud as punch that they got $5 back in change off a twenty dollar bill.
    1
  12737. Yeah, this has ALWAYS been the problem, not that some "rogue AI" will choose to destroy the world, but that corporations without any need for labor will choose to remove labor from the equation. I don't think that this is a terrible thing, no human should ever have to do work that an AI could do better, let that human live free! But he also needs to be taken care of. If we do nothing, if we allow the "invisible hand" to control things, then in fifty years there will be handfuls of trillionaire families that run literally every commercial venture on the planet, and then everyone else is literally worthless, not a single modern task provided to them, and if they do have any sort of job, it's because those at the top have allowed at least enough resources to the masses that they can maintain a pre-industrial economy. The ONLY hope for humanity's future beyond the wealthy few is that we build up government structures now that require corporations to reinvest in the public good, not out of generosity, but so that they don't get nuked. Yes, the 0.1% can get wealthy and have their yachts, but they also have to keep paying back down to the bottom, whether they need any work done or not. It's not "trickle down," it's "wring them out."
    1
  12738. The administration can dispute the judge, but they can't ignore him. They would still have to wait for that dispute to be decided before they would be allowed to move forward.
    1
  12739. Still not even a tiny fraction as bad as every single Trump rally.
    1
  12740.  DaddyGirl  Inaccurate statistic, btw. The covid mortality rate in the US is 2.2%, and that is entirely relative to access to quality medical care. As cases surge and hospital capacity gets overwhelmed, the mortality rates skyrocket. States with idiot governors like North and South Dakota have some of the worst mortality rates in the world right now.
    1
  12741. @ That's the opposite of the truth. Herd immunity requires that the overwhelming majority of people get vaxed. When large portions of the population don't get vaccinated, then even the vaccinated populations are at greater risk. The best option is for everyone to be vaccinated, no matter how mentally incompetent they may be.
    1
  12742. @ What eggs? You have eggs where you live?
    1
  12743. Pretty soon conservatives will have nothing left that they aren't boycotting. They're basically boycotting the modern world at this point (which I suppose is no surprise).
    1
  12744.  @rayxtwo  How would either of those things prevent the voter suppression bill from passing?
    1
  12745.  @nicholasferrante1296  If they vote "no," the bill still passes. If they do this, the bill does not pass. Their voters want the bill not to pass, so they want their representatives to do the thing that causes the bill to not pass. This is that thing.
    1
  12746. That's impossible to do. Think of it like this, you're in a car, that car is traveling 70mph toward a brick wall, and it's 10ft away from that wall. Now it's fair to argue that you should have hit the breaks much earlier, but we can't change the past, the car can't possibly stop within 10ft, so either that wall needs to go away, or you're hitting it.
    1
  12747.  @ChronoSquare  Oh, no, I'm NOT a Republican.
    1
  12748. The reporting on this is inaccurate, that is NOT what he said. He said nothing about Trump having that authority. He indicated that he was willing to listen to Trump, if he thought Trump had a viable plan, but if he had no confidence in Trump's plan, he did not indicate he would follow it anyway. That is not ceding any "authority" to Trump, it's just being cooperative.
    1
  12749. The problem is that no such facts exist. This is not Donald Trump we are talking about. Also, Comer is lying to any idiot who will not look too hard into it when he claims that the FBI showed Biden taking a bribe, since that never actually happened, and that's what the FBI told him.
    1
  12750.  @jaynewest5038  Yup, but since he was kicked out and Biden elected to replace him, we've been managing to undo the damage he caused and get back on track. It's taking time though, just as it took time for Obama to recover from the Bush presidency. It always takes time to recover from Republican leadership.
    1
  12751. How so? Congress tends to hate DC, and would not care if there were a lot of immigrants there. It would only hurt DC residents, who have done nothing wrong.
    1
  12752.  @EOJ111  Most targets of hate speech do nothing to make themselves hated. That's the problem. Hate speech is when people hate without any justification.
    1
  12753.  @boogiewoogie9770  What was to blame for the Holocaust? A rise of populist nationalism.
    1
  12754.  @78md74  That is a misunderstanding of the Constitution. It is not intended to defend hate speech. It is intended to defend controversial speech, yes, but not all controversial speech is hate speech.
    1
  12755.  @terryt2728  Those that disagree often also dismiss Trump's obvious dementia.
    1
  12756.  @78md74  And many who have read it do not understand that there are still reasonable limitations on those things, that the law takes an "open mind, but not so open your brain fall out" philosophy.
    1
  12757. Hasn't he been supporting Trump this whole time?
    1
  12758.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  There are fewer conflicts under the current administration than there were under the former one.
    1
  12759.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  We are. As is the Biden administration. They provide the best chance of reducing both current and future wars. It's disingenuous or foolish to claim otherwise.
    1
  12760.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  The facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  12761.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  No, the fact would be that Biden is the more peaceful choice.
    1
  12762.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  I'm not a Faux News viewer, so I live in the real world instead.
    1
  12763.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  My argument is that the data backs up the position that there were more wars started during the previous administration than under the current one, and that a lot of the conflict during the current administration can be traced back to mistakes made by the previous one.
    1
  12764.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Are you talking about how Trump let the Taliban leader out of prison and told him that he could have the country back in 2021? That country?
    1
  12765.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  It was relatively stable before he did that, but yes, he did set them back over a decade of progress, like he threatens to do to the US.
    1
  12766.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Oh, ok. There was no such thing. I guess that's all there is to say, really.
    1
  12767.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Afghanistan was improving slowly but steadily, and would have continued to do so if the US had continued providing a minimal level of support. The decision to release the Taliban leader and turn the country over to him doomed them and wasted every penny the US had spent to that point. That's the reality of the situation.
    1
  12768.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  I think you've been misinformed. Afghanistan was improving, life for the average person was massively better than it had been before 2001. The Taliban certainly hadn't changed their minds, but they were contained to the fringes of the territory by US military support. That state could have continued indefinitely if not for 🍊's promise that they could have the country back. Societal change is a generational thing, it can't happen overnight. You need to hold a stable situation long enough for people to grow up in that world and become adults, and for the people who believed in the old ways to become too old to fight about it anymore. Also, there was no $81B lost anywhere. Why do you keep saying that?
    1
  12769.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Again, it is a FACT that millions of Afghan people adopted more American lives while we kept the Taliban away from them. The fact that they were unwilling to die to defend that way of life does not mean that things did not change. Given a few more decades, they would not have had to spend their lives to fight the Taliban, because the Taliban would have eaten themselves up.
    1
  12770.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Oh, are you talking about our military surplus junk that we couldn't be bothered to pick up? That was not a problem. We got all the important hardware out of there well before the withdrawal. They could keep the rest for all it mattered.
    1
  12771.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  As I said, generational change takes literal generations to take place. You can't make such changes over night, you need to have entire generations of kids raised in that new reality. And nobody wanted the junk we left behind. It's standard practice when we leave a country that we've built a significant presence in. It is not a problem. Why are you crying about it like it is?
    1
  12772.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  Well, again, by the end, US lives lost were extremely few. The US troops in the region were mainly just support for the Afghan troops that did most of the actual fighting by that point. They just didn't have faith that they could hold without that ongoing American support. The benefits of doing so outweighed the cost to America. We lost fewer troops in Afghanistan in total than we would lose in a single day in Vietnam, this is just a much weaker generation than those that came before.
    1
  12773. Always remember, if Project Veritas ever posts anything, then the reality is the exact opposite. That is their purpose.
    1
  12774.  @publicenemy31007  Also read Tress of the Emerald Sea, it's a really fun book.
    1
  12775.  @julianriveracarrera3344  What?
    1
  12776.  @jacobrogers2214  But there is no better ship out there. /shrug
    1
  12777.  @jacobrogers2214  While I generally agree that the US should pay down debts in times of surplus, like during the first few post-Obama years, instead of writing tax cuts for billionaires like the previous administration did, it's not strictly necessary that the US be in any rush to pay down debts, we can just keep running up debts until we're 2-4 times as leveraged as we are, and that's fine. All that really matters is that what we do spend money on has a net positive effect.
    1
  12778.  @jacobrogers2214  But the point is that John is still better off overall that the government is doing these things with his tax dollars than if they were not. Also, your assertions as to how much government spending would equal how much inflation are nonsensical, the actual inflation generated is fairly negligible, relative to other inflationary factors. Would it be better if the government could spend every penny they currently spend without having to pay any interest on debt? Sure, but that's magical thinking, that's not a possible scenario. So the debate is between whether the government should spend that money in spite of the interest fees, or whether that money should never get spent at all, and overall, it's better for everyone that the money gets spent, so long as it's being spent toward positive goals.
    1
  12779.  @marsryo6569 The ONLY thing that threatens America's credit rating is Republican shenanigans around the debt ceiling. So long as there are no Republicans involved, the rating agencies have absolute faith in the US government's ability to pay off debt even 2-3 times its current level. Paying down debt would cause more harm than good.
    1
  12780. As it should be.
    1
  12781. Headline: "Liberals are hypocrites!" Actual story of the video: "Liberals do much better than Republicans, but are not quite perfect. How dare they?!"
    1
  12782. Man, things would be so much easier if Republican could read.
    1
  12783. The carbon footprint for doing all of this is less than the carbon footprint of continuing to make and drive gasoline cars. An EV "carbon pays" for itself within a couple years of operation, an improved power grid does as well.
    1
  12784.  @incogspectator3042  Including ex-presidents, who must turn those documents over to NARA immediately.
    1
  12785. I do think that there will be some form of "freak sports," in which any advantage you want to use would be allowed, but I do agree with Sabine that we're getting to the point where "natural sports" is probably off the cards, however one might feel about Trans athletes. We already have pro athletes that use all sorts of exotic training methods that would be very expensive to duplicate, and genetic modification is right around the corner, so whatever physical human sports we do have in a century likely would be some variation on X-Men, Or they go the alternate route and require genetic manipulation of the athletes, so that you must fall within certain baseline physical ranges to compete, regardless of "how you were born." Like there would be an absolute height restriction on basketball players, whether you were born to be 7'5 of not, you could not play.
    1
  12786. Unfortunately, it's been proven that humanity is incapable of successfully separating the real facts from the chaff. "Cool story" beats real facts any day of the week, to the average audience.
    1
  12787.  @lawrencehalpin6611  Yup. "Ok, you say to do this, but I can think for myself!" led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths in the US alone. You could even track the number of deaths by whether a given county voted for Trump or Biden.
    1
  12788. He does, it's self defense in their case, since Gaza attacked first.
    1
  12789. You misunderstand. It would have been, but they fixed it.
    1
  12790. TFW your car has higher latency than your PS5. . .
    1
  12791. It was Will Rogers.
    1
  12792.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  They didn't say he was a Russian spy, that is how his supporters framed the story. They only reported that his campaign had ties to Russian spies, which is a fact. And yes, every news agency that covered the Smollet story ALSO covered when it blew up. Both parts of that story were reported responsibly.
    1
  12793.  @patrickf4037  Why? This is a serious topic.
    1
  12794.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  They reported the story responsibly using the information available at the time. As more information became available, they reported on that information responsibly. That is how responsible journalism works. If one network reports on a rumor, and another doesn't, the second one is STILL the better journalist, even if the rumor eventually turns out to be true.
    1
  12795.  @truthdealer1827  Rightists are the weird ones though.
    1
  12796.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  They did have good information, it just turned out to be inaccurate. They retracted that story, rather than continuing to double down on it like Trump does.
    1
  12797.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  The information they had was accurate, it just wasn't the full story. The things they reported on were true, it just later came out that there was context to the story that they didn't originally have. Misinformation is when the information itself is inaccurate, like the Dominion story. And yes, rumors reported on my right wing sources tend to all flow in directions that slander those on the left. This is no shock to anyone.
    1
  12798.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  The information they had was accurate, it just wasn't the full story. The things they reported on were true, it just later came out that there was context to the story that they didn't originally have. Misinfornation is when the information itself is inaccurate, like the Dominion story.
    1
  12799.  @SeiyaSoiya-un4jj  They got a portion of the story, and that portion was a valid news story to cover, based on what was known at the time. When new information came in, they evolved their reporting to include that new information. How else could they possibly function?
    1
  12800. This president is weak. Biden could have gotten him back.
    1
  12801.  @charlesharris9965  No judge ruled him to be an MS13 member. A judge said that he thought he was, but that is not a legal ruling, since he was not on trial for being a gang member. And again, he was rightfully concerned that the gangs would attack his family because his father was police, there was never any indication that he was himself a gang member. The claims that he was in a game came from an informant who had never met him, and who's story does not add up. You would know all of this if you had looked into the story you were told. The SCOTUS ordered that he be returned to the US and given due process. The President is legally obligated to comply with that ruling.
    1
  12802.  @curt7140  No courts ruled that he was in any gang. Sorry you were misinformed.
    1
  12803. @ Yes, there was no actual evidence to find him to be a gang member in any legal sense. The Supreme Court agrees on that. You are saying that their rulings indicate that he was a gang member, that is not what those rulings meant.
    1
  12804. @ Not personally, do you?
    1
  12805. @ I hate to tell you, but that's not actually accurate, but you've been told to repeat that to anyone you can, and so you do.
    1
  12806. @ El Salvador is not subject to the dictates of a US court, but the US President is, so he has a responsibility to get this guy back from them. Maybe try tariffs, he seems to think that can solve anything. Either way, "I asked him, he said no" is not nearly good enough. At the very least they should cut off their entire aid program until they make this right.
    1
  12807. It can, but only if we take action now to remove as many Republicans as possible from the House, Senate, and White House. Otherwise the 21st Century won't even be able to compete with the 18th.
    1
  12808.  @jsnip6720  That depends, since most of the "idiotic people who let the media tell them what to think" believe themselves to be "free thinkers" who "make up their own minds about things," when really every word out of their mouths was said by Faux News or Alex Jones or Joe Rogan or some other idiot just days earlier. They have the most homogeneous minds in human history, but since they are told to think that these viewpoints are "free," they believe they are free. It's Orwell at work.
    1
  12809.  @jsnip6720  People who have been harmed by legitimate vaccine injuries are an insignificant fraction of the people who's lives have been saved by the vaccines. Nothing in the world is perfect, but vaccines save thousands, even millions of lives for every person who is in any way harmed by them. Everyone knows this, so promoting messages that imply otherwise provably costs human lives. If America did not have as much vaccine hesitancy as we do, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved over the last few years alone. Why do you believe these deaths are a good thing? again, if you have "done your research" and reached the conclusion that current vaccine practices are "bad" in some way, then you are bad at research.
    1
  12810.  @jeffhaddix9508  His implications that the current standards for vaccine testing are not sufficient, or that taking vaccines is somehow less safe than not taking them.
    1
  12811.  @luciddream2033  They are unfounded, they just have a shade of plausibility, like flat earthers. He has his reasons, everyone has their reasons, but that does not mean that anyone else has any reason to respect his reasons, because they are dumb ones that cause more harm than good.
    1
  12812.  @TacticalBeachBum93  I think there has been a misunderstanding. I am not a member of MAGA.
    1
  12813.  @rileysob17  I thin you misunderstand the science. A placebo control study has nothing whatsoever to do with safety. Nothing at all. A placebo control study is to determine efficacy, not safety. For safety studies you don't need placebo controls, general population controls are plenty. So long as the trial group does not suffer higher complications than the general population, you can consider the drug to be safe. Vaccines do have placebo trials in the short term though. Long term though, it would be unethical to run placebo controls, because what that means is that you would be condemning that group to die. They would be going around, thinking that they'd done the right thing and gotten the vaccination they needed, when in fact they had no protection at all, sacrificial victims to the alter of kooks. When dealing with life-changing vaccines, placebo controls should only be used in relatively short term studies to make sure that the vaccine is more effective than doing nothing, but once that's been established, any moral person would want to vaccinate everyone possible.
    1
  12814.  @rileysob17  Did your reply get deleted? I have not seen it.
    1
  12815.  @rileysob17  I'm not seeing your post then, the last one I saw from you started with "My Friend. The vaccine claim is simple. . ." Then I pointed out why that was wrong.
    1
  12816.  @rileysob17  The basic gist of it is that vaccine testing DOES include placebo trials prior to approval, but those are mainly to test efficacy. It would be unethical to run placebo trials long term, because it would cost the lives of participants needlessly.
    1
  12817.  @rileysob17  With vaccines it's always going to be a balancing act. Yes, the longer you wait to release it, the more likely you are to find a potential problem (IF one exists, and usually there is not one), but ALSO the longer you wait, the more people die from not having gotten the vaccine. If we'd waited another year in 2020 then there would be over a million more dead Americans than there are today. Once a vaccine has gone through the existing testing processes, the odds of finding any new problems through additional testing get lower and lower, so that is the balance point at which it would cause more harm than good to hold off on releasing it. And I disagree with you on the second point, the unethical part would be to tell someone that they are vaccinated, when they have not been because they are in a control group. So long as everyone is choosing to take or not take the vaccine, they are responsible for the outcomes. NO amount of testing would ever be sufficient for some people, but indefinite testing just means more and more lives lost to ignorance. The "truth and transparency" you seek is already available, btw. You just don't like the answers they give. If you believe that those are reasons to support RFK, then he's already "won" those things before he even got started, and his entire crusade has been nonsense.
    1
  12818. Vinoly is secretly a super villain.
    1
  12819.  @davidwarren3433  The Great Depression had nothing to do with wars. It was halfway in between the two world wars.
    1
  12820. Yeah,. how would anyone on Faux know what a journalist even is? They've probably never met one in person.
    1
  12821. Who should run in his place?
    1
  12822. In terms of leadership? Obviously.
    1
  12823. Pete Buttegig is if anything overqualified for his cabinet role.
    1
  12824. Nah, they aren't Trump lawyers. They're doing their job without fear or favor, as they swore an oath to do.
    1
  12825. @Negus Negast Ok, what term would you use for it? Ideally one that has roughly the same numbers of syllables so that you can use it in the same sentence structures.
    1
  12826. @Negus Negast Well, all laws are technically "crime control," to some degree, but gun control is specific to the availability of guns to criminals.
    1
  12827. Wow, that's a take. I guess "I absolutely stand behind the statements I made" doesn't mean much to you?
    1
  12828. It's true. Johnson has accomplished nothing. He's just a bench-warmer for Speaker Jeffries.
    1
  12829.  @try2justbe  Sea travel is generally more efficient than rail, where available, so anything aiming for the North Atlantic or Western Europe would likely be faster shifting back to ships at some point. Not to mention anything heading across the Atlantic.
    1
  12830. Yup, Republicans just can't get past racial issues.
    1
  12831.  @sneakytacos773  Conservatives have always been the snowflake. Their entire brand is about being snowflakes who can't handle a world that does not conform to their own tastes.
    1
  12832. Simple, if Warframe as it currently exists would come afoul of these regulations, then they would need to patch the game to remove the elements that would run afoul of these regulations. Problem solved. Point 2, "EA couldn't survive not having loot boxes!" It's not like these regulations would happen over night. They would be given plenty of warning and could adapt their business models to compensate. Point 3 "But if their stock prices change, they could get in trouble with the shareholders!" Everyone knows what the deal is, they aren't infants. If profits tank for "no apparent reason" then shareholders might flip out and want to know why that happened. If profits drop due to the inevitable consequences of a publicly known regulatory change, shareholders would expect that, it would be baked into their predictions, the stock price would likely fall, but there would be no "investigation" over it. The industry would move on.
    1
  12833.  @WastelandWanderer1216  There are probably some Platinum options that can still exist under this proposed law. I do think that the "no P2W" portion is the thorniest, and could cause the most issues if it's overly broad, but that's why we need to contact our Senators and make them aware of the pitfalls.
    1
  12834. That's not how it works. Joe Biden would have had to do something wrong to be impeached, at least in America.
    1
  12835.  @urbanlibertarian2520  I don't have any specific candidates in mind, but I would want someone who had more law enforcement experience, and government experience outside of the Trump White House.
    1
  12836.  @markdegloria4038  It's mature comments like that which make people think Trump supporters are not babies.
    1
  12837.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  Everything I said here was accurate. I'm not maga.
    1
  12838.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  It's ok if you disagree. The facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  12839.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  My point was that he was not qualified, for the reasons I listed. Do you have a reason to disagree? Did you look into his track record? What makes you think that he is qualified?
    1
  12840.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  I would say it will be funny when the scales fall off your eyes, but nobody will enjoy the next four years once they really get rolling. I'll just get "I told you so" out of the way now. And for the record, if Joe did believe that "his cronies" were actually guilty of anything, he could pardon all of them right now. If he leaves office without doing so, then he isn't worried, and shouldn't be.
    1
  12841.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  I'm afraid you seem to have been researching in the wrong places then. Do better next time. you may have found something that claims that it will do well for you, but you definitely missed where it will all boomerang back and destroy anything you've built up. It will at best produce some short term spikes before a massive crash, but I'm glad to hear that you actually wish ill on your fellow Americans, it helps to know it's swamp all the way down and not just a good person who's confused.
    1
  12842.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  Nah, I'm just a patriot that is sad to live through America's final years.
    1
  12843.  @pathtopeaceministry6777  If I wasn't a patriot, I could be a maga with a clear conscience. It's only because I love this country that I will be sad to see it fall.
    1
  12844.  @TheRedRaven_  Those were documents that should not have been in Trump's possession. They took pictures to document the evidence. What do you believe they did wrong there?
    1
  12845.  @baconneggs2406  The only thing that was political about this was all the special treatment that Trump has gotten. If he had been a private citizen who had done all these things, his trial would have ended years ago and he would be sitting in jail already and for the next couple decades.
    1
  12846.  @michellebrown7828  That is what he's told you, but that is not actually the truth. A former president has no right to those documents, they are the property of the US people. You are thinking of Putin, not an American president. He wishes he were Putin.
    1
  12847. @ They are humans and I don't want to talk to them. Besides, why pay a human to stand in a cublcle all day when a robot can do it just as well? Set them free to live a better life!
    1
  12848. The headline says Biden when what it says is about his opponent.
    1
  12849.  @daviddestefanis2989  And that's why they are not going to do that, but they are leading the push for everyone to do it. The alternative, in the meantime, is "popular vote" method, where the winner of the national popular vote gets ALL the EC votes for the state, regardless of how the state itself voted. This would effectively make no difference for Democrat states, since the Democrat candidate always wins the popular vote.
    1
  12850.  @joshliam26  Well, it's possible for the GOP to win a popular vote, they just haven't managed it in over 20 years. They would have to change their platform significantly, and that might lead to a revolt from the base.
    1
  12851.  @joshliam26  If the GOP wanted to win the popular vote, they would need to change their entire party platform. It would no longer be the current GOP, it would be more like the GOP of 100 years ago.
    1
  12852.  @spacetoast7783  Yes, but when red states use this system to filter all those votes to the Republican candidate, that allows that candidate to win. You are right that the EC doesn't HAVE to be used to override the popular vote, but the fact remains that it is a tool that is currently being used to override the popular vote. And there is no good reason for such a tool to exist.
    1
  12853.  @brutishfossil5022  I think you missed the point then. No, the ones suing are fighting against the evil rule.
    1
  12854.  @brutishfossil5022  Again, what is most important is the well-being of the child, and if informing the parent would likely lead to harm to the child, then teachers need to have the discretion to avoid telling them. You know as well as I that not all parents are good people. There is no "morality check" on child birth.
    1
  12855. "People who don't like electric cars are very vocal about that," that's because that's what their oil industry bosses pay them for.
    1
  12856. Kids are just very into antisemitism these days. Probably a Tiktok thing.
    1
  12857. When did they overreach?
    1
  12858.  @lordemed1  Well obviously when Trump was president, I thought we were talking more recently though.
    1
  12859.  @SiLoMixMaster  The WSJ is an entirely Republican project. They would not put anything on that was not Republican.
    1
  12860. @ This paper only hires Republicans.
    1
  12861. That is what Youtube Premium is for, it's the "take my money and don't ad at me" option. The free version has ads.
    1
  12862.  @nadinenturo7553  What do the dolphins have to do with Iran?
    1
  12863. How could they "find more evidence on Biden every week" when they haven't even found ANY evidence yet? All they find is more wackos claiming that evidence exists, just like Sasuatch and the Loch Ness monster, but there is more actual evidence for both of those than there is of Joe Biden's supposed "corruption." This is what weaponized government looks like.
    1
  12864. If this isn't a case for jury nullification, then that term has no meaning.
    1
  12865. Mitch McConnell is incompetent, as are all the currently serving Republicans, but Blake Masters lost his election because he looks like The Joker and is in some ways actually worse, not because of Mitch.
    1
  12866. This is not Soviet Russia, we do not do that here.
    1
  12867. This would be great if they weren't devout hypocrites. But of course they have no principles, so it's irrelevant and they will do what they want.
    1
  12868. Not so long as Republicans are in charge. They prefer to run on this chaos than to actually fix it.
    1
  12869. The Republicans would prefer to run on the chaos than to actually solve anything. Replace them.
    1
  12870.  @Dantana424  Because he didn't open the border when he took office. It's less open today than it was before him.
    1
  12871.  @Harryball-h9b  Because the Senate filibustered things. At no point did he have a filibuster-proof majority.
    1
  12872. The rich.
    1
  12873. "You can't hold us accountable for our actions because then we will abuse those laws in future" is a dumb argument to make, because Republicans will just abuse those laws in future regardless of anything Democrats do. the past several decades have been a long chain of Republicans threatening Democrats not to do something or the Republicans would abuse it later, and then the Republicans abusing that thing the first chance they got whichever way the Democrats decided. Hold people accountable for their actions ALWAYS, including when they try to illegally abuse that authority.
    1
  12874. Well, they can't argue against that. They'll try, but they can't in good faith.
    1
  12875. Aside from his anti-vax stuff, he seems to be running on Joe Biden's platform.
    1
  12876. What is the number of people killed during peaceful protests?
    1
  12877. So basically, not all that many people died during the protests relative to how many people die under general circumstances (roughly 40 people are murdered using a gun every day), and those that did die mostly died to someone with a gun, and in many cases were either killed by one of these armed "counter protesters" or were one of those "counter protesters" themselves?
    1
  12878.  @XxSTGgamingxX  I read the things you posted. The numbers added up to a drop in the bucket when compared to the normal amount of people who die each day from gun violence, so it's really not a big deal. And the deaths that did occur mostly had to do with the people who came armed to the protests, either being shot by police or shooting at protesters. Maybe you should read what you posted.
    1
  12879.  @XxSTGgamingxX  You said it was 43 victims, over like six months of protests. over 40 people die EVERY DAY to guns alone under normal circumstances, not even counting other types of violent crime. So while these specific areas might have seen an uptick in violence, in the grand scheme of things it's not remotely a big deal. A "100% increase in shooting" is not some great catastrophe, it just means that it doubled. That's what 100% means. That means that if they average 2 shootings per week, it doubled to 4. Big deal. You're hysterical over nothing here. Now it's true that America has a gun problem in general, and we definitely need to get guns off the street as best the laws will allow, but the protests really aren't the problem there.
    1
  12880. Typically, it is, at least when they pay back what they owe in full. Usually it isn't even charged as a crime at all. If Hunter Biden hadn't been the President's son, he would never have been under any scrutiny at all.
    1
  12881.  @umpire29  If he confessed tomorrow, I would believe that, but so far, there has been no evidence of wrongdoing, just a bunch of hopeful little beavers expecting to find some right around the next corner. It's sad. Maybe just grow up and admit that Joe isn't a criminal like Don is?
    1
  12882.  @zoobrizz  Yeah, that's something Rand Paul continues to insist on getting wrong, lol.
    1
  12883.  @nw1858  Incorrect.
    1
  12884.  @nw1858  I don't "worship" anyone, I just respect credible information, not the messenger.
    1
  12885.  @nw1858  I don't watch CNN. I click on their Youtube videos sometimes,. as do you, obviously, but I do not consider them to be a primary source. They are at least better than whoever it is feeds you your information, because the things you believe to be true are complete nonsense.
    1
  12886.  @nw1858  Again, I'm not taking CNN's word on any of this, any more than you are. I don't know why you think I would.
    1
  12887.  @nw1858  They happen to be right in this case. It is not right because they are CNN, CNN is reporting it because it is right. If CNN were wrong, then they would be wrong, but that does not apply to this case. CNN reported that Trump won the 2016 election, does that make that wrong too?
    1
  12888. Well, whether Biden stays in or not, I don't think Harris is an option. I think she's up to the job if she ends up there, but she can't win the race on her own. If Biden does drop out, they would need to find someone else to stand a better chance than he does.
    1
  12889. There are just too many stupid, self-absorbed people in this country. This should not even be an argument.
    1
  12890. If you'd actually worked in government you would know how untrue that is. Government workers have good unions, you would probably get in trouble, but probably not be fired, even if you took a week or more off.
    1
  12891.  @JustDoingChelle  Ah, so you're a persona then. Fun bit.
    1
  12892.  @carmiethompson2676  My point was, it would be pretty much impossible to fire a government employee over a few missed days. Worst case they would get slightly lower performance reviews.
    1
  12893.  @carmiethompson2676  Austin is still better than anyone who was appointed by Trump to any position. You're making a mountain out of a mole hill.
    1
  12894.  @JustDoingChelle  Right, a persona. That's cool, you do you, If I may make some notes though, it's a pretty played out core though. The whole "I used to be a Democrat, but the rise in authoritarianism has pushed me into their arms" bit is just SO cliche at this point. It's basically the stock character of the Internet comment sections, even though no such actual humans exist. Maybe try to pick something a bit more realistic.
    1
  12895.  @JustDoingChelle  See, that all came from a chatbot list of talking points. It's not FUN. It's not original, it's not human. Sure, "an actual previous Democrat thinks that Trump, Desantis, or Ramaswamy might be a viable candidate for public office." Sure, that's a hilarious satire, but it lacks any sort of realism. It plays your hand too quickly. If you want anyone to believe you, you need to present a more plausible premise than "caught brain in a cuisinart and now I think Ramaswamy might make a decent President."
    1
  12896.  @JustDoingChelle  Look, you say things like "You can't possibly buy into his dellusional stories," and yet you ALSO claim that you're torn between the three stooges, so which of those things are true? They can't possibly both be true. You can dislike Biden if you want, but you have to at least admit that he's more on top of it than any of those three you listed.
    1
  12897. Neither of them had a right to those documents though. The Presidential Records Act is clear on that.
    1
  12898.  @leahblake6748  According to the law, no, he was required to turn all the materials over to NARA immediately, like all other ex-presidents.
    1
  12899.  @user-op8fg3ny3j  I don't believe that's the case, but I would like to see a more thorough look into that. Just because India and China go at it does not mean Pakistan would get involved, there would be little to gain by doing so. Also, it would be highly unlikely that any of the powers in the region would use nukes, because China knows they have far more to lose by doing so.
    1
  12900.  @biancacox8630  Racism, mostly.
    1
  12901. If Grossberg didn't intend to mislead people, then why would she even work for Fox News in the first place?! It'd be like a pilot that's afraid of heights!
    1
  12902.  @chrisquinn394  Loving your country is not "nationalism." That is "patriotism." Believing that your country should be in charge of all the other countries is nationalism. And even if you are a nationalism, being white won't necessarily make you a "white nationalist," that term refers to people who promote a white supremacist form of nationalism, in which not only is America in charge of the world, but also white people are in charge of that America.
    1
  12903.  @Goulash45  That isn't what nationalism is.
    1
  12904.  @Goulash45  Yes, it's how you interpret an extremely simplistic definition of a very complex political term. Look up a much LONGER definition of what the term means and where it comes from, what policies it was associated with, a dictionary definition is only a starting point for understanding what a term means, not an end point. People who point out that all Nationalism is bad are not using the world wrong, they just have a more complete understanding of it than you do.
    1
  12905.  @Goulash45  That is the kind of shallow take I was expecting from you. And Assyrian nationalism is bad for the same reason all nationalism is bad. It promotes policies of antagonism toward those seen as "outside" of that "nation." Why do you believe that it is not bad.
    1
  12906.  @Goulash45  It only appears that way to you because you are objectively wrong about it. It's a matter of perspective, like flat Earth arguments.
    1
  12907.  @Goulash45  Nationalism is always bad. In SOME rare cases (completely irrlevant to US politics), the local nationalists are less bad than the alternatives. The worse alternatives, in many cases, are ALSO nationalists, btw, just a different flavor of them. It's like in Ukraine, there was a nationalist faction of Ukrainians that frequently came to blows with the more mainstream factions before the war. Then Putin invaded, and the nationalist factions rallied in defense of the nation and put their lives on the line against the Russians. Does that make their nationalism a good thing? No, but they are still better than the Russian invaders. Assyrians do not need nationalism, all they need is governments in their region that adequately respect their rights as individuals within those nations.
    1
  12908.  @Goulash45  Again, you are misusing the term. You do not need nationalism to be treated with respect. Most people in the world get along just fine without nationalism. As I said, if you happen to live in a country where they do not respect the rights of a group, then nationalism might be a lesser evil, but it is still an evil, still worse than not being a nationalist. Obviously US white nationalists can't even use that excuse.
    1
  12909.  @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.
    1
  12910. @ Yes, good, that is what the word means. Now how does that apply to the current situation?
    1
  12911. @ Japan did have a choice, they could have stopped invading their neighbors. Japan has no more oil today than they had in 1940, but they seem to be doing fine.
    1
  12912. @ China was our ally at the time, while Japan was an aggressor state. It was a good thing that the US was supporting China and cutting off supplies to the Japanese war machine. Do you not agree?
    1
  12913.  @michaelreiter503  You do understand that failing to protest Ukraine now will cost the US more in the long run, right? "America first" means protecting Ukraine in the present. Imagine how much money would be spent if we'd dumped money into Poland in the mid 1930s to stop Germany in their tracks.
    1
  12914.  @michaelreiter503  You do understand that failing to protest Ukraine now will cost the US more in the long run, right? "America first" means protecting Ukraine in the present. Imagine how much money would be spent if we'd dumped money into Poland to stop Germany in their tracks.
    1
  12915.  @teslaquake4748  Less cruel than what Japan was doing to women and children at the time, so it was still a net positive.
    1
  12916.  @michaelreiter503  It would have if it had been spent wisely. If Poland had gotten and used the money as well as Ukraine has, the rest of WWII never would have happened.
    1
  12917. Why didn't Biden throw paper towel rolls at the Hawaiians like Trump did at the Puerto Ricans? It doesn't matter that Biden directed the necessary federal funds to support relief efforts and rebuild, unlike Trump, what matters is what paper products he's willing to personally throw at the problem!
    1
  12918. The concern is that they are tampering with the ballots to achieve the results that they want, or that they will just announce the results they want whether they find actual evidence of it or not. These results have already been double and triple checked, so there it nothing to actually find here. The concern is that they won't take the truth for an answer.
    1
  12919.  @peterhofman7188  Dead people only vote for Trump. The people who voted for Biden to win were all alive at the time.
    1
  12920.  @noticedruid4985  That's factually untrue. You can look at the record, there have been people arrested and charged with voting in the name of dead people, and they all voted for Republicans. There is zero evidence of dead people voting for Democrats. As for the rest, Democrats have always supported the idea of every eligible voter voting because. . . that what "democracy" means. It's right there in the name. Republicans, on the other hand, want as few people as possible to vote, because so many of the people don't want Republicans to win. Every American citizen should be automatically registered to vote, as is the case in many countries and already in many US states, and everyone who is eligible to vote should have the opportunity to do so without overly inconveniencing them. Numerous Republican-leaning states had "no condition" mail-in ballots as of a few years ago, and it was never a big deal to anyone until Trump decided to whine about it.
    1
  12921.  @sillywillie5076  Covid does not have a natural 98% recovery rate, that is only after medical intervention. If the virus had been allowed to run rampant, then it would have peaked before we had developed effective treatments for it, and it would have overwhelmed hospitals, preventing access to the treatment needed. A great example for this is New York, where you can see that their infection rate spiked last winter, like most states did, but their death rates spiked last spring, because they got his too hard and too fast back then to handle it. People taking covid seriously is what allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to survive it, and the death toll could have been a fraction of what it was if more people had taken it seriously from the start.
    1
  12922.  @Twowolf101  If you believe that hospitals were empty then you are getting your news from untrustworthy sources, and should be questioning why they were lying to you. Most hospitals were at capacity throughout this crisis, many of them well over capacity. If Trump had done as good a job as Obama at handling pandemics, then he would have gotten a second term, like Obama did.
    1
  12923.  @danl5592  Probably the "tinfoil hat variant."
    1
  12924.  @carolgale  The emergency facilities were often under-used because they were only admitting people who had tested positive already, and testing was a mess at the time. Many patients that could have gone to them ended up in hospitals instead. That doesn't mean that the local hospitals were not overwhelmed by the amount of people they were taking in. Further, there was a shortage of PPE, a shortage of equipment, and we had not yet learned the best practices for treating the virus. The monoclonal antibodies, for example, are very effective at helping people to recover, and were not developed until the fall.
    1
  12925.  @carolgale  The drugs you list do not work and never did. It was a good thing that the FDA did not approve their use, as people would have used them otherwise and may have gotten much worse.
    1
  12926.  @carolgale  If you know two people who were given those meds and they got better, then you know two people who would have gotten better regardless, and just got medications that cost them extra and could have had dangerous side effects. They got lucky. There have been numerous studies on these drugs and it was determined that they do not improve your odds of surviving the virus. The CDC has NOT come out in favor of those drugs. All the CDC has done is reported that the number of adverse reactions to those drugs have doubled in 2020 compared to previous years, because more people were taking them. Do your research.
    1
  12927. @We Todd Things are better for everyone than they were this time last year.
    1
  12928. @We Todd I do not think that word means what you think it means.
    1
  12929. He's only a "billionaire" in the dreams of children.
    1
  12930.  @Aesop531  But he stretched it to what they call in the legal world "a stupid conclusion for stupid people," rather than any logical conclusion.
    1
  12931. When they have a reasonable suspicion that there are documents he hadn't turned over yet. I mean, just to present a slightly related case, it took them months after Trump lied to them repeatedly about having classified documents and they had a source saying otherwise before they conducted a raid on his property and found that he had lied to them and mishandled classified documents.
    1
  12932. We have a border though, it's just better patrolled and managed than it was under the last administration.
    1
  12933.  @liamp.8826  If you believe Trump had the most secure border in history, then you are living in your own alternate reality. The data shows the opposite of what you claim, but you wouldn't know that, because you don't look for data, you only listen to what the fake news says like a good little sheep.
    1
  12934.  @liamp.8826  I don't think any Democratic senators were doing such a thing, but the data out there does not support the case you were making here.
    1
  12935.  @MrMavstar  You can do your own research, I am not your keeper.
    1
  12936.  @liamp.8826  The data itself might be valid, but might be presented in a way that supports an inaccurate narrative, only showing half the story, for example. Which Senators are you talking about here?
    1
  12937.  @MrMavstar  If you couldn't find it, then you just weren't trying hard enough. Do better. Seriously, everything is "eli5 it to me!" around these parts. . .
    1
  12938.  @MinhNguyen-pk9qk  Because it isn't worth my time. If the people I'm arguing with were convinced by things like "data," then we wouldn't be arguing. So all that might happen is that I spend time finding links to valid sources and providing them in a way that Youtube doesn't go agro on, and then they will say "it doesn't look like anything to me," and go on with whatever tirade they were already on. What's the point? So I'll just point out that the information is there for them to find, and if they want to make an effort at self improvement, that's their business.
    1
  12939. CBS should sue him for defamation.
    1
  12940. It's all because Apple prefers walled gardens that they can trap their users behind. If you can buy a fancy charging dock rig and just swap out the phone to an Android and have it still work, then why wouldn't you?
    1
  12941. The current system that leads to a 5:1 red majority in a close to 50/50 state.
    1
  12942. We're in the "find out" phase.
    1
  12943.  @Harem__King  Yeah, anyone who would trust RT as a source on anything is just showing what an idiot they are.
    1
  12944. How does this relate to the story of the human turning into something even better? Like the classical stories of heroes becoming gods, or characters becoming dragons, faeries, aliens, cybernetic minds, etc.? These can sometimes be a similar exploration of humanity, but from the opposite perspective of the idea that "human is the best state."
    1
  12945. This is what Faux News tells you to believe, at least. The facts tell a very different story.
    1
  12946. Gain of function is never a goal. Where it is used, the goal is to provide cures for likely "next step" infections.
    1
  12947. @M S There have been numerous animal species that have had covid-19, what are you talking about? The point made early on is that the "lab leak" theory was the less likely scenario, and there was no evidence at the time to support it. There remains only circumstantial evidence for it.
    1
  12948.  Bidenzz Diaper  You seem to be speaking gibberish.
    1
  12949. @M S Yes, China is stonewalling evidence, but that doesn't mean that any random conspiracy theory becomes instantly valid just because there isn't evidence to support it. Besides, we can tell from the structure of the virus itself that it does not seem to have anything to it that would not exist in nature.
    1
  12950. @M S It is not remotely shocking that there was not a single animal found in the wild with covid. It is a NOVEL virus strain, if it were common enough that you could just stumble onto it, then it would have been infecting humans years ago. The wet market theory is based on the idea that similar viruses commonly circulate among some animals, and that one of these animals came into contact with other animals that they would not encounter in the wild, but would encounter in the chaotic conditions of a wet market or a feeder facility to one. Then animal A infected animal B, and in animal B's immune system the virus was able to mutate into something that was infectious to humans. If this were the case, then there would not be some massive population of infected animals in the wild to find, and even if there were, they would be who knows where, thousands of miles from the market. The actually infected animals would likely have been sold and eaten months before covid became publicly known to be a problem, and in the meantime, the infection rates would be slowly increasing among humans in the area. Anyone expecting to find some population of covid-19 bats somewhere, and declaring victory that we haven't, is just missing the point entirely. As for "Chinese scientists speaking out?" There's a lot of fluff to that idea. I've seen several cases of right-wing news outlets picking up stories on "this major Chinese figures is speaking out," or "this major Chinese figure disappeared!" and it's a big news story for days or weeks among the conspiracy theory crowd, but then they just turn up again elsewhere, because they don't have an Instagram they are logging into every day and weeks do normally go by in which they are not visible to the public. And there has also been at least one Chinese scientist that has led weight to the conspiracy theories, but who is being paid by a rich right-wing guy, so her motivations are a bit suspect. There does not yet seem to be anything credible from that line of discussion yet.
    1
  12951. Capitalism.
    1
  12952. Bum or not, he's the sitting US president, so some media coverage is necessary.
    1
  12953. That's not how anything works. I mean, if RFK believes those statements are defamatory then he could sue Hotez and have his day in court, but nobody is owed "a debate on an insane radio show" whenever someone disagrees with them. Wrestle with pigs and you both get dirty.
    1
  12954.  @teetrevor  Name who?
    1
  12955.  @Nonnormalnorm  This won't lead to inflation rising, and will provide value to most Americans. This investment in our future has been needed for a long time. If you are worried about inflation, then repeal the Trump Republicans' massive giveaway to billionaires.
    1
  12956. "Popular" narrative amongst bots.
    1
  12957. the felonies were actual significant crimes. This was not.
    1
  12958.  @gameragodzilla  You can apply existing laws to ban things that did not exist when that law was written, IF they meet the qualifications listed under those laws. Bump stocks would meet that criteria, IF you understand how they work.
    1
  12959.  @jamesmiller3098  They didn't add to the law, they just informed the public that the existing laws applied to a technology that didn't exist when the laws were written. Would you rather they just start arresting people without giving that fair warning?
    1
  12960.  @jamesmiller3098  They had the legal right to apply this rule until Thomas' sugar daddy told him to say they didn't.
    1
  12961.  @TheOneSeanPool  That is not how a bump stock works. Bump stocks cause the gun to fire repeatedly by only pulling the trigger once.
    1
  12962.  @TheOneSeanPool  And that definition applies to guns with a bump stock attached.
    1
  12963.  @gameragodzilla  A bump stock allows for the firing of multiple rounds with a single trigger pull though. That is what it does.
    1
  12964.  @TheOneSeanPool  It is nonsensical that you believe you are telling me that this is not the gun firing multiple times per trigger pull. You DESCRIBED the gun firing itself multiple times off a single trigger pull. You pull the trigger once, the gun handles the rest.
    1
  12965.  @TheOneSeanPool  I will only accept a Supreme Court decision if it does not involve the corrupted judges, as should be the case for any fair-minded American.
    1
  12966. Does Georgia have SLAPP suits? If so, this guy is going to get SLAPPed SO hard.
    1
  12967. You would think that once all the people who were alive when the item was taken are long dead, the statute of limitations would have passed. Items cannot "belong" to a given region indefinitely. They belong to whoever has them.
    1
  12968.  @gman20031  Biden didn't claim to have gone down in a helicopter to Epstein's island with Willie Brown.
    1
  12969.  @mrballoonpimp  If I'm a "bully," we can at least agree that Donald is a morally worse and less intelligent bully, right? Pobody's nerfect.
    1
  12970.  @mrballoonpimp  Agreed, so we need to make sure Harris wins.
    1
  12971.  @mrballoonpimp  Exactly, so Trump cannot be allowed to win.
    1
  12972. They tried to pass it several months ago, the Republicans shut it down.
    1
  12973.  @Antwill_2  Then why does he always say that the Constitution says the opposite of what it actually says? You would think that an expert on Constitutional Law could at the very least get questions about the Constitution correct.
    1
  12974.  @Antwill_2  He did read it, and then ignored entirely what it actually said, because it did not fit what he wanted it to think. Nothing Dershowitz said about what the 14th amendment means was actually reflected in the Constitution. It does not only apply to the Civil War, it does not require Congress to be involved, it does apply to the President, he made all of that up entirely out of thin air.
    1
  12975.  @Antwill_2  Watch the trial and come back to me with more specific questions that can be answered quickly. Nobody has time to write up all the things he got wrong. Nobody owes you that effort.
    1
  12976.  @Antwill_2  So you don't know either. I was just checking.
    1
  12977.  @Antwill_2  And you could not come up with a more specific request than "provide a report on the entire Trump impeachment trial." What makes you believe that anyone owes you a response to so broad a request?
    1
  12978.  @Antwill_2  Oh, this is a good teachable moment for the Internet. Never confuse "won't" for "can't."
    1
  12979.  @Antwill_2  No, that's not why. You see my point. When you assume, you make an ass of yourself.
    1
  12980.  @carlsanders7824  Nope.
    1
  12981. That's why Trump is being indicted, and why DeSantis is a step away from crossing Bill of Attainder laws.
    1
  12982.  @wazscupfishes  The MAGA cult, you mean? Yeah, every one of them in handcuffs for the damage they've done. The DoJ is at least off to a good start though, yeah?
    1
  12983.  @canman5060  I think your info is a little outdated. That was certainly true a few years back, but they've cleaned house since then, and restored the Justice Department to what it should be. Now they only go after actual criminals for doing actual crimes, rather than just targeting political enemies like the previous administration.
    1
  12984.  @canman5060  But the important thing to keep in mind is that is something that only happened in your imagination, which is completely different than Trump's crimes, which happened in the real world. Too many MAGA cultists lose track of that distinction.
    1
  12985. Can't win a Democratic primary, but also can't disappoint his Russian donors.
    1
  12986. They can when it presents a potential harm to others. This is why businesses are allowed to drug test.
    1
  12987.  @tiffanysmith3210  There is no serious risk of contagion with HIV in the workplace. It is not airborne, unlike covid. It is a stupid comparison to make. To you it might fall into the same category, but that's really a "you" problem, because it doesn't fall under the same category under the law. It falls under a different category. This isn't even about government mandates, this is about employer mandates, so it would be between you and your employer.
    1
  12988.  @Bryan-Hensley  They aren't giving TB tests, they are requiring proof of vaccination. TB may be a dangerous virus, but it is also extremely rare in the developed world. Businesses might require TB testing, and would be allowed to do so, IF there were a TB pandemic going on at the same scale as covid. But there isn't. Boom.
    1
  12989. They represent the community, it probably would have been nice for them to have made some statements there.
    1
  12990.  @tiznip  No, he's not qualified, because his experience is surface level at best, and mainly just resume padding.
    1
  12991.  @leswallis8158  Oh, no, I'm not maga.
    1
  12992.  @glenmiller452  Actually, she did.
    1
  12993.  @andrewp7509  Yeah, Trump's nominees are all jokes, and we're the punchline.
    1
  12994.  @hughjanus5518  I don't think that had anything to do with her losing, that was more about a rise of ignorance in America.
    1
  12995.  @Bigfish105  No, he's not.
    1
  12996.  @tiznip  The current guy was a Assistant US Attorney , then an associated attorney general, and had received the Justice Department's highest award for refusing an illegal order. He was well respected by people on both sides of the aisle for his service to this country, and was not a joke like Patel.
    1
  12997. Never-EVs: "EVs use colbat, which is mined in awful ways." Us: "Yes, that's why we need to buy more of them, so that there is more demand for cobalt, forcing more responsible mining practices.
    1
  12998. I provides more value to the American people being sold at scrap prices than being used for its intended purpose. That's sort of the problem with the wall in the first place.
    1
  12999. This is why I love Biden, he tells it like it is. It's also better than Trump offering to swallow Xi's hog.
    1
  13000. Why would anyone listen to a word that Baghdad Bob has to say on anything?
    1
  13001. He's much more radical than her though, so since they are opponents, she should still beat him.
    1
  13002. In the most "I'm not a racist, but. . ." fashion. "I don't support racist Nazis, but what about the non-racist ones?"
    1
  13003. Couldn't they just make supportive gloves that would back up all the pulleys without getting too much in the way? I know climbers often like to use as little "gear" as possible, but this is a health gear, not a performance enhancer gear.
    1
  13004. Because the truth hurts.
    1
  13005. Biden made his money form book sales and speaking engagements in between when he was in office. He released all his tax records, so it's all well documented already.
    1
  13006.  @azedel7151  Well, I guess their camps will be a change, so there's that.
    1
  13007. He's only more favorable to voters.
    1
  13008. This is why polls exist, because "random crank on Internet says so" is rarely reliable.
    1
  13009. Why not just shift their economy over to a pure USD system? Just separate the oil sector from all other portions of the economy, so that most people's day to day activities take place as if they just lived in a normal country without any oil, aside from that they have low taxes because all the government projects and vital entitlement programs are state funded?
    1
  13010.  @novinceinhosic3531  I don't think that's necessarily the case. You just run 99% of the government and economy exactly as if the country had no oil, just run it normally and let it be as successful or unsuccessful as though the oil never existed. But then, layer on top of that that the oil is being produced and processed and sold, and that money is handled in a completely separate currency, and is gifted back to the public in terms of public investment and services. It would essentially be like a country without oil that is receiving a large amount of "foreign aid" from a friendly external country. I'm not sure whether it would make more sense for the oil or the regular economy to run on USD, or maybe even both, but clearly the current strategy isn't working.
    1
  13011. Reading and writing work perfectly well for describing the things that they mean. But just because you aren't "reading" something does not mean that you are not experiencing it, learning from it, engaging with it, etc. There are already plenty of words to adequately describe these concepts, all we need to do is use them appropriately to the situation. The appropriate verb for audiobooks is "listening." You read a book, you listen to an audiobook, and either is fine.
    1
  13012.  @bartonlee3594  You know, much as I hate McConnell, I think he's as on board with sanity on this matter as anyone else, it's just Kevin and his band of lunatics here.
    1
  13013.  @ClumsyCars  Punishing innocent people for the crimes of those around them should always be viewed as a bad thing in any just society.
    1
  13014.  @danielstevens3869  The millions of illegals add more to the US economy than they take. What problem do you have with them?
    1
  13015.  @darthvadar2757  "Foreign financial support" is still less than 0.1% of the deficit, and provides more benefit to American citizens than it would to not spend that money. And gold-backed currency? What kind of idiot told you that would be a good idea? None of your "solutions" would actually fix _anything," and most of them would only make things much worse. It sounds like you got fed simple ideas for simple minds. Be better than that. Educate yourself. Look into each of your proposals, and find out why each of them would lead to disaster. It's not that hard, you just need to have an intelligent and inquisitive mind. Don't just eat what you're fed.
    1
  13016.  @PLINKER  I don't know what you're talking about. Congressional wages have always been determined by Congress, since the first Congress, and are all voted on in a public manner, you can look up who voted for and against it. Their wages generally aren't considered to be anything "controversial" outside of groups that are anti-government in the first place and just take the attitude that they want to cause pain to people who serve in government. It really has no impact on the federal budget, so it's not really something that concerns me.
    1
  13017.  @lancebrightmire1653  Yeah, or at least have a more balanced stipend program, so that 1. there would be guaranteed affordable quality housing in the DC area, 2. they could have unlimited personal travel to and from their home district, and 3. they would have a reasonable housing stipend for maintaining their home in their home district, above and beyond raw salary.
    1
  13018.  @PLINKER  I just think it's a pointless argument. Taking away their salaries or benefits is not going to make any of them appreciate those privileges more, if they go into office thinking that their constituents don't deserve those things, then their constituents clearly voted for Republicans and got what they voted for. If you want people in office that care about their constituents well being, then you need to vote for Democrats instead, simple as that.
    1
  13019.  @kool4209  Better than the alternatives though. A better civilization wouldn't form in my own lifetime.
    1
  13020.  @PLINKER  Well, then you've done what you can. Unfortunately, about half the country chooses "stupid," so here we are.
    1
  13021.  @timothybender7383  There are plenty of benefits to living in America, why do you think so many people show up at our southern border wanting to get in? It may not be as free a country as some parts of Europe, but it's still better than most countries in the world, and it's easier to work to tidy up what problems remain than to start over from scratch.
    1
  13022. The flyover states will love it. Boomboomboom! Thanks Elon!
    1
  13023.  @HouseDracul  Oh, you were talking about Donald Trump. Yeah, treason.
    1
  13024. That's not remotely accurate to the reality of the situation though. He never "suppressed different points of view," he just shut down objectively wrong misinformation that was spreading around. You can't have a "different point of view" about a fact. The only "crimes" were the snake oil salesmen attempting to grift off of the pandemic.
    1
  13025.  @granolafunk6192  There were a lot of people in white lab coats spreading misinformation during the pandemic, mainly to profit themselves. "America's Frontline Doctors," for example, was a group put together to scam people into buying snake oil and made millions off of gullible idiots. As for who got banned from social media, that had nothing to do with the government, that was just those social media platforms deciding as private businesses who they wanted as customers.
    1
  13026.  @wolveslair766  Well yes, there are the Democrats, and then also there are the groomer Republicans. My point was, I don't think this bill was intended to support he groomer Republicans in any way.
    1
  13027. Well, at least his approval rating is still higher than Trump's.
    1
  13028.  @josedantesbaez5  About what?
    1
  13029. She was talking about Trump supporters. She wasn't wrong, obviously.
    1
  13030.  @Skullmanog  Then she wasn't talking about you.
    1
  13031.  @Renzy-LuLu  What Hillary gets up to in your imagination is nobody's business but your own.
    1
  13032. There wasn't voter fraud through mail-in ballots though, at least not enough to make a difference in any of the races, so removing mail-in ballot access just makes it harder for citizens to vote.
    1
  13033.  @michaelairheart6921  Yes, Biden did get more votes, mainly because there were more Americans alive than in any prior election, and because their desire to remove Trump from office got people out to the polls. Why do you believe that Biden wouldn't have gotten the most votes in history under those circumstances?
    1
  13034. Just in case anyone's heard any insane ramblings lately, a handful of USPS workers were charged with failing to deliver mail, which included something around 100 total ballots, out of tens of millions cast in 2020. Obviously this made no difference in the outcome. Elections results "swung in the middle of the night" in a lot of cases because some states prevented officials from counting mail-in ballots before election day, so they had to wait until the polls closed, and that process took longer than getting in the same-day votes. When they did this, they were not sending the media a running rally of each vote cast, they would count up the ballots they had until they had finished going through their entire pile, and then send those results off to the media, often right before going home for the night, so yeah, the results would swing wildly when that happened, as anyone would expect to happen. No, Detroit did not have 300% voter turnout, they had 50% voter turnout. Trump won Florida and Ohio, but they have been trending redder for years now. There is nothing unexpected about that. They were once "battleground states" but have since shifted into "leaning red" states, just as states like Virginia and Georgia are shifting more into "leaning blue" states. It happens. There is nothing unexpected about this. Trump did get a significant amount of votes, but Biden got more votes, and the person with more votes is the winner. There is nothing unexpected about that, although I guess you could be forgiven, since Trump also got less votes than Hillary Clinton, but still won that one. And plenty of Republicans did switch to Biden, whether you know them or not. We call those people "patriots," putting country before party. Election workers did not "scan in ballots multiple times," but even if they had, it would not have mattered, since those results were recounted multiple times, and if there had been incidents of faulty counting, it would have been discovered. Instead, for all the recounts, there have been no sizable discrepancies, and in some cases Biden actually picked up a few hundred votes in the recounts. Biden did win, and there are no significant discrepancies. The only people who believe that there were any significant flaws in the 2020 election are people who get their news from inaccurate sources.
    1
  13035.  @DirtyCiv  In the context of global security, not giving NATO the money it needs to be effective is exactly what a Putin ally would do.
    1
  13036.  @DirtyCiv  That sounds like Russia propaganda. Of course we have an obligation to aid Ukraine, not only because we signed a deal agreeing to do so in exchange for them surrendering their nukes, but also because if we allow Russia to devour any country that is not in NATO, it only makes it harder to defend NATO. Also, it's not Republicans that call for increasing US oil exports.
    1
  13037. Wrong video.
    1
  13038. MAGA Republicans is a slur outside of the Narnia bubble.
    1
  13039. It is in mature company.
    1
  13040.  @darthmalagus  Trump's campaign manager gave internal campaign documents to a known Russian intelligence asset. Russian social media farms then targeted specific swing districts with anti-Hillary content leading up to the election, and if Trump had lost those districts, he would have lost the election. Was that "collusion?" I guess you decide on that one.
    1
  13041.  @duncanbauer7309  Those same "some" would consider a white robe with a pointy hat to be a "badge of honor." That doesn't make them right.
    1
  13042.  @petersmith6145  That's not Bidenomics though. Bidenomics is what kept the price from getting higher than that.
    1
  13043.  @richardclifton4120  Man, if you knew the actual economics figures right now, you would be so embarrassed.
    1
  13044.  @carolbatchelder1  I never said that I did.
    1
  13045.  @smeff099  Russia is gaining inches here and there along some portions of the map, while losing feet in others. in general, progress is on Ukraine's side. Russia is not even remotely close to "marching on Kiev."
    1
  13046.  @smeff099  Why expect that Russian propaganda would admit that they aren't getting anywhere? Also, I did not assign that goal, the person I was responding to did.
    1
  13047.  @smeff099  I don't even know what point you believe you're making.
    1
  13048.  @smeff099  Again, I have no idea what you mean by "Russian goal." Russia has invaded Ukraine with the intent (sometimes expressed openly, sometimes obfuscated) of conquering the country outright. Short of that, since they seem very short of that, they seem at times willing to settle for "merely" seizing several chunks of the country, as they have already declared somewhere around 10-20% of Ukraine as "part of Russia." They have of course at times sent troops into as much as a further 60% of Ukraine, and bombed civilian targets indiscriminately in any part of Ukraine they can reach. Now, what are you talking about?
    1
  13049.  @CityGamer1337  It's not a problem in that none of it amounted to anything. Even if you took every single "irregularity" in the election, added them ALL together, put ALL of them in favor of one of the candidates, and put them all into a single swing state, it STILL wouldn't have added up to enough to switch the outcome. Also, you are wrong about mail-in voting. It's been around since the Civil War, and some states have been doing primarily mail-in voting for years. It only increased in 2020 because there were valid public health reasons why people did not want to go out in public at the time.
    1
  13050.  @CityGamer1337  It was more thoroughly investigated than any election in US history, by people determined to find as many problems as possible. They could find NONE of any substance. Every theory they had as to where problems might exist turned out to be nothing.
    1
  13051.  @CityGamer1337  It was more thoroughly investigated than any previous election. They found nothing of any substance. There was nothing to find.
    1
  13052.  @thrall1342  But, again, modeling clouds accurately is not relevant to climate models, so that's a non-issue. Why do you raise it as if it were an issue?
    1
  13053.  @chingron  CO2 is both a cause and effect, but it started as an effect, and the "effect" side of things is the much larger and ongoing problem.
    1
  13054.  @thrall1342  Because the outcome would not shift the overall models being discussed. They are an interesting topic to discuss in their own right, but not something that would impact the more important discussions going on around the climate. In so far as the answers of cloud models might have an impact on overall climate models, that has already been factored into the existing models.
    1
  13055.  @chingron  So who told you to say that. If you believe the answer is "no one," then you're in deeper than I thought.
    1
  13056.  @thrall1342  That's ok, you have no intention of changing your mind anyway, so what difference should that make to me?
    1
  13057.  @georgeturner2374  Ok, but that isn't actually true. The temperature increase from CO2 is quite significant, and explains the current outcomes we're seeing. So given that what you're saying isn't true, why should anyone care?
    1
  13058.  @thrall1342  I did try with honesty and good faith, and the way you responded to it told me all I would need to know about how far that could get me. You are not open to having your mind changed, you just wish you were seen as being less gullible to others because then they might listen to it. If you were willing and capable of addressing this topic in good faith, then you would not be taking the positions that you have, because you would know them to be irrational.
    1
  13059.  @thrall1342  And I already explained why that would remain the case. If you were capable of understanding and willing to act in good faith, you would not have responded as you just did.
    1
  13060.  @thrall1342  I can't answer that one for you. Why you do all this is your own business. All that I hope we can agree on is that you could be better than this if you chose.
    1
  13061.  @thrall1342  And my point is that it wouldn't make any difference, because if you are capable of understanding, then you would already understand. If you already understand and are unwilling to say that you do, then you never will. You have given me no indication that you are participating in good faith, so why should I?
    1
  13062.  @thrall1342  See, you proved my case. If you were willing and able to learn, you would have already done so. You're not a child.
    1
  13063.  @thrall1342  I'm not playing games. I'm only interested in having a serious discussion on the topic, and so far, you have given no indication that this interests you.
    1
  13064.  @thrall1342  I am here to talk about the climate, not to play word games with you. I have not "failed" in a game I have not attempted to play. If anything, you are only reinforcing my previous point that you are not engage in the topic in good faith, since you seem to believe your semantics game to be an equally valid avenue of discussion. I don't understand how you believe discussing anything with you would be of value to anyone else.
    1
  13065.  @thrall1342  There's a difference between "can't" and "chooses not to." The sooner you understand that, the sooner people will stop finding you so weird.
    1
  13066.  @thrall1342  My opinion on climate change is worthless to you because it does not confirm your biases. I have had no illusions about you "coming around" on the topic. This is why I do not pretend otherwise. Your misconception is in thinking I care whether you remain wrong or not. The facts don't care about your feelings. The world spins with or without you knowing.
    1
  13067.  @thrall1342  On that I can agree with you, which is why I find it so offensive when people enter these discussions more interested in winning some nonsensical semantic battle over "who the master debater" is, rather than actually discussing the topic at hand in good faith.
    1
  13068.  @thrall1342  Yes, exactly that offensive. If the other person is not going to engage the topic in good faith, then what value could there possibly be in behaving as though they were? It would be a wasted effort to prove a case to someone who has no interest in paying attention to the actual merits of the argument.
    1
  13069.  @Batmansboots  It does make me sad how many people are dumb enough to continue supporting Trump. America should be better than that.
    1
  13070.  @mikemoviel7833  The Supreme Court only has nine members, and six of them are conservative, half of them placed there by him due to shenanigans.
    1
  13071.  @sarad2376  I do know what I'm talking about, that's why I said what I said.
    1
  13072. Most votes tend to miss a few members, unless they are extremely important and tight and they drag every single member in.
    1
  13073. "If you leave, then we'll let you stop blowing us up." -Hamas, apparently.
    1
  13074.  @magnasquids7864  If they could avoid that problem in the first place, then they would have, but instead of avoiding the problem, they choose to claim immigrants are the problem instead.
    1
  13075.  @unknownzzz5115  I was talking about people who are concerned about demographics shifts. Those are called "racists."
    1
  13076.  @gaia7240  Racism would be hyper focusing on negative things done by people outside the "proper" race and ignoring all the many people who do not engage in these negative behaviors, and all the people who engage in these behaviors who are of the "proper" race. You've just provided an excellent example of how racism works.
    1
  13077.  @gaia7240  But natural born Italians also break the law, often immigrants who commit crimes are doing so at the direction of Italian gang leaders. And the overwhelming majority of foreign nationalities do not commit any crimes, so to blame crime on foreign nationalities would be racism. The racist response is "more foreigners are coming in, these demographics are troubling," the non-racist response is "more foreigners are coming in, we need to make sure that our systems are set up to provide them a decent standard of living and incorporate them fully into Italian culture, so that they have plenty of better opportunities available other than crime."
    1
  13078.  @gaia7240  So we agree that "the demographics are worrying" is an inherently racist position to take? I'm confused what you're arguing about then.
    1
  13079.  @gaia7240  Because it's blaming the members of immigrant groups for problems that are mainly the problem of the hosting nation, rather than addressing the problems of the nation itself.
    1
  13080.  @gaia7240  Well now you know that it is, and can try to be better.
    1
  13081.  @gaia7240  Well, you now know that it's racist to be "concerned about demographic trends," especially when crime rate has fallen pretty steadily in Italy over the past decade. It seems like the local press is just snow-jobing people with "immigrant panic."
    1
  13082.  @JaxDianne  Yes, the results of that is that the odds of regretting that decision are MUCH lower than the odds of regretting NOT doing it. Thank you for pointing that out. It should also be pointed out that nobody is talking about surgical intervention on kids, that has nothing to do with this bill.
    1
  13083.  @JaxDianne  It's not the only thing outlawed by this bill though, and surgery is only ever uses in extreme cases of distress, when NO other option will work. For 99% of trans youth, surgery will wait until adulthood, or at the very least until mid teens when they have already been living comfortably in their new gender for years already. If ALL this bill did was limit surgical intervention to that standard, it would not face as much backlash.
    1
  13084.  @JaxDianne  Then maybe create a sports league for only females. What would that have to do with anything?
    1
  13085.  @dalejohns2758  If I were ignorant, I would be on the other side of this.
    1
  13086. The game physics that bothered me most was in Destiny, where you could got to the moon or mars but the gravity was basically identical to Earth, because they handwaved that as "space magic made all the planets and moons have Earth gravity." No thank you, Traveler.
    1
  13087. Yes, only the mentally ill could support Trump.
    1
  13088. Why would he be worried? The US recession will be great for Russia.
    1
  13089. Why are conservatives trigged by this? It's just showing respect for other human beings. Ohhhhhh, that's why.
    1
  13090.  @UmbilicaLashed  It's because I live in the real world that I can recognize Narnia when I see it.
    1
  13091.  @UmbilicaLashed Who's arguing that we don't have borders? Is that what they've been telling you in Narnia? That there are people saying we don't have borders?
    1
  13092.  @Julia68yt  If you can't hear what they are saying, then it wouldn't matter whether you think they're idiots or not, the views they believe could not infect you regardless.
    1
  13093. This isn't Fox, they don't do the propaganda.
    1
  13094.  @jnstruMENTAL  And then he appointed everyone involved in Project 2025 to do Project 2025, so who's lying here?
    1
  13095. It's been examined in far more detail than there is any reason for it to be. The problem is that the "criminality" that Republican wish existed, never actually existed to find, so there is no amount of "looking harder" that will ever satisfy them. They should address the plank in their own eye before worrying about the illusion of a spec in the Democrats' eye.
    1
  13096.  @nexypl  Shooting an infant in the head has nothing to do with "soldiers."
    1
  13097. People must be held accountable for their own actions. If the right finds this inconvenient, then perhaps they should stop causing trouble.
    1
  13098.  @MrRedsjack  If Hitler wanted to avoid war with Britain, he had a pretty shitty plan in bombing the shit out of them.
    1
  13099.  @axeblue  I don't think that's true. They don't want to let in too much chaos, but they've allowed in plenty of "iffy" countries before. The only thing keeping Ukraine out in the past was their instability, which is still there to some degree, but is certainly better than it was, and while I feel like under peaceful conditions, NATO membership would still be 5-10 years away, I feel like the major NATO countries would like to include Ukraine in NATO on an expedited basis just as a bulwark against further Russian aggression.
    1
  13100.  @Anashadk  I mean, Ukraine can't afford to pay for anything right now, they will be a debter nation for the next decade or more as they try to recover from the harm Russia has caused them, but they definitely could allow US and UK bases in their territory, at those countries' expense, and those bases would certainly give Russia additional pause. I think it would be funny if we "pulled an Afghanistan" on that, and decided that we would not actively fight if Russia invaded again (although ideally we would), but instead the US forces "abandoned" these bases, along with all sorts of weapons that we would hesitate to give to the Ukrainians, "whoops, I guess they get a full wing of fighter jets and long range missiles, hope they don't use those against Russia or anything. . ."
    1
  13101.  @Anashadk  I think a remote self-destruct sounds good on paper, but would potentially be disastrous. I mean, what if some enemy hacked the codes on those things? They could just blow up a military base over the radio. I do think that some devices could be designed to disable themselves remotely, like fighter jets or something could have sensitive components just fry, but even that might be hard to do in a way that would not cause them to fail when needed. Ukraine is doing well right now, they are beating the Russians on every front, and they have effectively limitless supplies from outside, whereas Russia is losing more and more of their warfighting capability. The long game is in Ukraine's favor, not Russia. I don't think there is much that the west could do to "speed things up" short of actively invading Russia, which nobody wants to do for fear of escalating the conflict to other regions.
    1
  13102.  @gabriellakadar  I see that meme a lot. I don't think people understand that this would still be better than just driving a gasoline car under normal conditions.
    1
  13103.  @LeperMessiah01234  That would be a lot less efficient though. You wouldn't need to carry that generator around most of the time, so it would just be a huge amount of dead weight. It would be like a truck that carries a five gallon gas can everywhere because they might forget to get gas. It's a "stupid tax," I guess.
    1
  13104. In what sense are they not "running wild?"
    1
  13105. He says that like Republicans borrow less. Most of the national debt was done by Republicans, because the Democrats put in reasonable revenues to pay for their programs, and then Republicans just knock those out from behind, and then whine about "unfunded spending."
    1
  13106. When they say "eliminate fossil fuels," they mean to stop burning it as FUEL, not to stop using it to create petrochemicals that are not burned into the atmosphere. So long as the materials are processed responsibly, it is not a problem. But you do make a good point that we need to figure out alternate sources for all of those things too, once the fossil fuels run out completely.
    1
  13107.  @thebreakdown3793  His "green policies" create jobs, they don't cost them. The people telling you that they cost jobs are those that make billions of dollars off of very few jobs.
    1
  13108.  @thebreakdown3793  I know more people that work in the green field than that work in the fossil fuel industry. Hopefully over the next few decades that gap will only continue to grow. The US currently employs 3m+ in green energy fields, while the fossil fuel industry only employs around 1m, and most of those jobs are lower paying and more dangerous to the worker's health. The more we can phase those out, the better.
    1
  13109.  @thebreakdown3793  Your quick google search turned up inaccurate information, likely from biased sources. Try another quick google search, check different sources. And yes, some green energy production methods can be inconsistent, but we're building better and better ways of storing that energy for later use. Besides, fossil fuel energy can be inconsistent too, as Texas learned last week. The fact is, continuing to burn fossil fuels at the current rate will only make things worse for everyone over the next century. The faster we draw down our fossil fuel use, the less damage it will cause, and the less we'll need to clean up later. "just keep burning it until we run out" is not a solution. There will likely continue to be some fossil fuel use for decades to come, because there are some things that only it can perform efficiently, but there are plenty of areas in which we can greatly reduce the amount that we use, and we should take every opportunity to do so.
    1
  13110.  @thebreakdown3793  No, gvreen energy had nothing to do with Texas's problems. Green Energy was only a tiny fraction of Texas's power grid, and they had more than enough peak fossil fuel capacity to keep things running without it. The issue in Texas was that their natural gas lines froze over because weak regulations meant that they didn't have to meet the sort of cold weather standards that other states do. Of course, blizzards like that will get more and more common as climate change continues, so they'd better get in shape fast. Not to mention that Texas's green energy products only failed because it too was poorly managed. If they can keep windmills running in Antarctica, they can keep them running in Texas during a snowstorm. As for smog, smog is only a symptom of extreme local pollution, but that's not th major problem. The major problem is greenhouse gases, which are largely invisible, but produce terrible weather impacts. If we continue on the pace we're at now, we can expect way more extreme weather over the next century, with highs way above 100, more deep freeze cold snaps, more storms and hurricanes, more droughts, basically most places will get a LOT worse to live in. The biggest issue is that it's a self-fueling cycle past a certain point. It's like we're coasting a car down a hill, but the longer we weight to put on the brakes the harder it will get to come to a stop. What we don't do today will take twice as much money and effort to fix tomorrow. Just as an example, there is tons of methane trapped in the arctic tundra, and as that ice melts, the methane goes up into the air, where it just makes things hotter, releasing more methane, and so on. There are a lot of different impacts like that.
    1
  13111.  @thebreakdown3793  Not believing in climate change is irrelevant. It is happening whether you believe in it or not, and we need to be taking steps to reduce it as best we can. As for wind power, natural gas and other fossil fuels could have handled that load if they hadn't been frozen over, AND wind turbines would have worked had they been properly prepared for the weather, so it was entirely a problem of "Texas's energy infrastructure is not prepared for climate change because they probably don't believe in it either," rather than a problem of "green energy not as good as non-green energy." Every problem Texas had last week was because they chose to "regulate themselves." Other states regulate better than Texas, and are better insulated against those sorts of problems. Nearby states and even cities in Texas that are off the Texas power grid survived the exact same weather just fine.
    1
  13112.  @thebreakdown3793  Again, you not believing in climate change is complete irrelevant, nobody care, least of all climate change, because it's going to keep effecting you whether you choose to believe in it or not. And Texas was a series of "mistakes" based on a fundamentally wrong ideology that deregulation is a good thing: https://www.wsj.com/articles/texas-electric-bills-were-28-billion-higher-under-deregulation-11614162780
    1
  13113.  @thebreakdown3793  I'm not sure why you think anyone cares that you don't understand climate change and can't even tell the difference between "climate" and "weather." Some people believe the Earth is flat, you do you. But the rest of us have a lot of work to do to keep this planet livable, so if you see a President pushing green energy, that's why. You are just irrelevant to that.
    1
  13114.  @thebreakdown3793  Do you really think you're open to being convinced? Or were you just hoping someone would go a few rounds with you about how Bigfoot doesn't exist? I mean, if you're genuinely curious about climate change, you're on Youtube, there are TONS of educational videos available to you. I just watched one by Joe Scott about potential carbon sequestration methods (and why that is important). I mean, you aren't paying me anything, so I'm not going to lead you by the hand through the wonderful world of knowledge, but a little self-education never hurt anyone.
    1
  13115.  @thebreakdown3793  Ok, fair enough: Watch these and bring back any questions you still have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuGCJJUGsg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JDcro7dPqpA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5scez5dqtAc
    1
  13116. I wish America had a Cordon Saniaire" around the fringes of the Republican party, like basically the House and Senate members.
    1
  13117.  @ermin2248  It's not ideal, but they forced it upon themselves by embracing the crazy.
    1
  13118. It's not hard. Literally ALL it would take is Mitch McConnell putting it on the floor, OR the other Republicans removing him as Majority Leader. Either would work.
    1
  13119. Fox are hardly Democrats.
    1
  13120.  @jacksongreen611  It's been well documented by fact checking organizations. Trump can fit more lies into a single press conference than most people use in a lifetime.
    1
  13121. If Hamas did not want people bombing their schools, the they shouldn't have put their facilities inside them. Is that not a simple fact?
    1
  13122.  @RobinDale50  When they tried to hide the money trail, by having Cohen make the payments off book. If they'd just done it openly, it wouldn't be a crime.
    1
  13123. Using magic!
    1
  13124.  @diegojines-us9pc  Hunter has already offered to plead guilty to some of his crimes, he's not really claiming to be innocent, but at the same time, he is currently on trial, so he can't say anything that would hurt his defense in those cases. But yes, Trump is also guilty of many crimes.
    1
  13125. It's impossible to make DEI claims against Harris, because she has unquestionably more merit than Donald Trump.
    1
  13126.  @tankj1346  The US pulled Americans out of Ukraine for concerns that Russia might invade. If Russia is worried that Russians in Ukraine might get hurt because Russia might invade, then they could pull the Russians out of Ukraine too.
    1
  13127.  @tankj1346  Lol. No. Putin wants to invade because he didn't like that Ukraine preferred to align with western Europe, and wants to keep them firmly in the Soviet Union. There is no justification for any of this.
    1
  13128. God wants no more to do with Trump than Trump wants to do with God. Leave God out of whatever you've got going on here.
    1
  13129.  @PC-tc5je  God's spoken for himself. Trump fully admits to going against everything He claimed to stand for. Nobody can claim to follow God while chasing the golden cow.
    1
  13130.  @sunizzo  Did you watch the video? Have you seen his policy positions? Have you seen anything about him that does not support that conclusion?
    1
  13131.  @sunizzo  I'm afraid I don't have the time in my life to annotate specific examples for your benefit. If you can watch him in action and not reach that conclusion for yourself, then I would assume that any information I could provide you on the subject would just be dismissed as "not good enough." If you are unwilling to put forth the effort to meet me halfway on this one, then why should I carry you?
    1
  13132.  @sunizzo  Yes, that was my intention, to tell you what you needed to know. You get it.
    1
  13133. I'm the same way with Cartoon Network.
    1
  13134.  @deepprey2776  Oh, you're silly.
    1
  13135.  @drtonyfoochie4895  If you say so. You seem very reliable.
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  13136.  @drtonyfoochie4895  Well, if they are being given phones, that's great, but I just don't see any evidence for it. The only thing I can find is that ICE is giving migrants very limited-use devices that allow them to track that migrant's movements and allow them to call them, but that are not able to make personal calls or surf the Internet or do all those other things. It's basically like those pucks restaurants hand out when you're waiting for a table. Not everyone gets one though.
    1
  13137.  @rapsheets4993  Ok, if you say so.
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  13138.  @underwaterfae  Some do, some don't. It can't be assumed that they would, policy can't be made on the assumption that they would.
    1
  13139.  @rapsheets4993  Would your phone plan work in Mexico while you're waiting for permission to cross the border?
    1
  13140.  @rapsheets4993  and migrants can afford to keep their phone plans active in Mexico with no money? That's impressive, I wish we had something like that in the US.
    1
  13141.  @koriifaloju2051  I like the idea of geothermal, but I do think we need to be careful with the "enhanced" solutions, because they have similar concerns to fraking in how they undermine the local rocks. Okalhoma will be one giant sinkhole at some point. :D
    1
  13142. Is there really anyone out there dumb enough to not think that DeSantis's moves were retaliation? Why the quotation marks? It's just a basic fact.
    1
  13143.  @rolandotillit2867  We can't switch 100% to Electric cars tomorrow because we haven't been investing into it, but if we had been investing into it 10-15 years ago, then we would be ready today to do so, and if we invest enough today, then we will be ready for it 5-10 years from now. That's the point, Exxon spent decades doing the worst things possible because it was the most profitable, and now they want brownie points for doing the bare minimum to be "less bad." Exxon has made outrageous profits over the last few years, they should be posting losses. They should be spending more money than they make toward fixing the harm they've caused, to make up for the profits that they'd been making while fighting against the climate change discussion.They did wrong. They owe a debt more than "we'll do slightly less wrong over time, while maintaining high profit margins."
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  13144.  @rolandotillit2867  That's just because you have not done your research. You'll get there eventually, as Exxon did.
    1
  13145.  @rolandotillit2867  That's possible, but it's no excuse for them to not be effective and to not have concrete plans, because they should have been working on this stuff decades ago.
    1
  13146.  @rolandotillit2867  What is? We're talking about Exxon here. You are not making sense.
    1
  13147.  @rolandotillit2867  I don't care about any particular investors, what I care about is what the company as a whole does, and what the company as a whole does should involve making up for the harm they have caused over the past several decades by fighting against climate reforms and behaving irresponsibly with their greenhouse gas emissions.
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  13148. Any agent of the US government can make that determination, but of course that's subject to review and due process at higher levels. In this case, the courts reviewed it, then it was appealed to the state supreme court, and then the US supreme court. Once they decide on the issue, it would be considered settled law, whether they get it right or wrong, at least until a later SCOTUS takes up the case.
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  13149.  @ltdc426  Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch disagrees, he says that states have standing to decide who appears on their own ballots, according to their own interpretations of both state and federal laws. Colorado could determine OJ's guilt if he did the crime in Colorado, just as they can determine whether Trump can appear on the Colorado ballots or not. Now, they cannot determine whether he will appear on the California ballot or not, that would be up the the California courts. And yes, the 14th has very loose interpretations. It covers any violations of oaths of office, which is why in Trump's case it really shouldn't be that controversial.
    1
  13150.  @ltdc426  I explained the due process in the 14th amendment. It was in the trial held in Colorado, and the appeal to the Colorado Supreme court. I feel like we're going around in circles here, what is not sinking in for you? Also, what does the 8th amendment have to do with anything?
    1
  13151.  @ltdc426  The 8th amendment does nothing to allow executions. If anything it is to tell people that you aren't allowed to do executions in most cases. So I'm afraid you've done a terrible job at explaining why you think the 8th would allow for unilateral executions without an underlying crime.
    1
  13152.  @ltdc426  You believe that I am embarrassing myself by asking for clarification of your point on the 8th amendment, which you apparently are unwilling to provide. I will have to assume that you don't understand what point you were trying to make either, but are not mature enough to admit that, so you are trying to insult your way out of the conversation with an illusion of dignity. Why not just be mature and own up to your failings? That alone would make you a much better person than Donald Trump.
    1
  13153.  @Robert-er5wq  I think he was just repeating the talking points Faux News indoctrinated him to believe.
    1
  13154.  @m6a1u57  Where does the 14th list a crime? Also, crimes are not defined in the Constitution, they are defined by the Legislature. Also, Trump was never acquitted of any criminal charges. That was 0 for 3. Where do you even get your news?
    1
  13155. They're good at reciting dogma, bad at investigating facts. Give them a list, and they will read it. Give them a problem to solve, and they will cheerfully chase their own tails all day.
    1
  13156.  @bthemedia  Because there are limits to what they can get away with. The government can't just invent money out of thin air, it need to take out loans, meaning that people need to be willing to accept those loans. Currently the US is a very low risk investment, so plenty of people do at very reasonable rates. If the US switched to some sort of "magical thinking" approach, where they made no attempt to pay off debt, then they would quickly lose their ability to take out those reasonable loans. That said, at the current pace, the government could double or even triple the national debt without any serious issues.
    1
  13157.  @notallowedtobehonest2539  The DEFICIT was balanced under Clinton. We were bringing in more than we were spending, and if everybody had left that alone, then the national debt would have come down over time. Bush tilted the balance back toward deficit spending, as all Republicans do.
    1
  13158.  @SuppressedOfficial  Not really. Prices are determined by the cost of labor. When labor is irrelevant to those prices, they stay low.
    1
  13159. There was no virus in New York's Chinatown at that time. The virus in New York came from European visitors, not Asian ones, so New York's Chinatown was no more dangerous than Little Italy.
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  13160. That would be the bigger story, yeah. I mean, there's basically nothing to this one, other than "we REALLY want to believe there's something shady going on here, and that Joe Biden is connected to it. We have no evidence, but report on it as if we did."
    1
  13161. Nah.
    1
  13162.  @brianoleson9224  Nah. We've got no chance of that, even with Kevin's shenanigans. The only risk we faced was that the House would send us toward default.
    1
  13163. I HATE these ads SO MUCH.
    1
  13164. If we allow Maga to rise in the US like Gaza allows Hamas to rise, then that may become the case, but until then we will fight to avoid it.
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  13165. This doesn't mean Project 2025 won't happen if Trump gets elected, it just means they are going quiet until after the election. If he did win, they would pop right up again and start the hole program up within the first hundred days.
    1
  13166.  @danbooher5843  Well, sure, but trans people are as likely to be there as anyone. More likely than anyone in a MAGA hat, at least.
    1
  13167.  @EddieFelson777  Well if I'm not, then I'll at least be in good company. I'll save your spot.
    1
  13168.  @EddieFelson777  Just remember that trans people follow Christ's teachings better than those who hate them. Have a nice day.
    1
  13169. Nope, Jon Stewart got it right. It was Republicans that did this. Fox News is the one trying to hide their shame. Shumer did not cause this, the Democrats voted in favor of the bill. It was 25 Republicans who had voted for the bill months ago and chose not to vote for it this time that are to blame. Toomey is wrong, and he knows he was wrong. He is saying that because he knows that there will be people stupid enough to believe him without actually looking into the details, and that Fox News hires those people.
    1
  13170.  @truthlikevelcro5689  Nope, the people who were doing the violence had ties to right-wing causes and militias, none of them had ties to left-wing groups. I'm not sure who lied to you about left-wing people starting it, but the question you should be asking is why they would lie to you about something like that, and if they would do that, why you should trust them on anything else?
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  13171.  @truthlikevelcro5689  Lol, "Mitch McConnell is a RINO," do you know how silly you sound right now? It's also worth keeping in mind that Trump appointed McConnell's wife as Transportation Secretary, so what does that make him?
    1
  13172. Which will come first, the Hyperloop, or the 100th Thunderfoot video about Hyperloop repeating the exact same script?
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  13173.  @twigsagan3857  Wow, I bet nobody ever thought of it that way! No, wait, medical professionals have thought about it that way many decades ago and have been researching it since, and have realized that this is not how it works, that "gender" is actually a thing in human beings, and that some people feel more strongly to one gender than another, and it may not fit their biological sex. I feel like you aren't ev3en trying here. Did you even watch the video, which made clear that this was a thing?
    1
  13174. Well that's a special sort of stupid.
    1
  13175. Very cool. I was thinking it could maybe use a little "collar" of something like mini-syrofoam balls or something that make it look like clouds of sand exploding around its neck as it emerges.
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  13176. Well, most get deported, if they don't have a legitimate asylum claim, but given what a mess certain countries are becoming, they really have no option but to try and immigrate to the US. We really need to be putting more of an effort into stabilizing South and Central America so that people can stay there.
    1
  13177.  @angelaleblanc6584  What, you want to make him sizzle?
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  13178.  @akbarshoed  But the fact remains that the war started with Russian attempts to take over the country, after they swore by treaty to never do so.
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  13179.  @Muskieangler  Ukraine wanting to join NATO was never a justification for a Russian invasion. I'm not sure why you think it could be.
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  13180.  @Muskieangler  You do understand that "Putin making demands" does not mean that blame for the war goes to those who don't listen to his demands, right? He had no right to be making any demands of Ukraine.
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  13181. ​@ Russians had no reason to be in eastern Ukraine in the first place. They should have stayed on their side of the border. Also, the Cuban missile crisis was during the Cold War, and involved the placement of nukes, not merely Cuba being allied with Russia. Cuba was allied with Russia before and after that crisis, and the US never invaded them. If we apply the Ukraine standard to Cuba, then the Us would have fully invaded and annexed Cuba.
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  13182. @ It does not matter what Putin's demands were, he still had no right to get them. He can ASK, and he can offer peaceful incentives, like trade negotiations, but at no point does him having desires justify an invasion if he does not get what he wants. How is this so hard to understand? Also, there were already Soviet military bases in Cuba before and after the missile crisis, yet the US never invaded. Their red line was nukes, and only nukes, and there was never any talk of returning Ukraine's nukes. To your second point, if you are talking about Ukrainians living in eastern Ukraine, no, Ukraine never shelled them, except for active separatist military forces. If you take up arms against the government, they have the right to respond, right?
    1
  13183. @ Exactly, so Ukraine joining NATO would be no excuse for Russia to invade them. They might not like it, but that is not a justification for war. And again, if separatists in Eastern Ukraine took up arms against the government, how is the government not justified in defending against them? If they want to leave Ukraine, they are free to do so at any time, but they are not allowed to take the land under their feet with them when they go.
    1
  13184.  @Muskieangler  Nope, nobody was being shelled at all until after the separatists took up arms. Don't be silly here. And say what you will about Yanukovych and how that went down, there was an election held afterward, and the people decided who they wanted to lead them, and now that person is the recognized democratically elected leader. If the people had genuinely wanted Yankovych to stay in power, or someone like him, then that's who they would have elected. They did not.
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  13185.  @Muskieangler  You've been eating good on the propaganda, I see.
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  13186.  @Muskieangler  You believe that because of your propaganda, but that does not make it actually true. Find better sources. And again, even pretending everything you claimed was true, none of that would justify the Russian invasion, so you would still be at square one.
    1
  13187.  @Muskieangler  Yes, looked up and then dismissed as propaganda because you can also look up the context around those points. You were citing far-right bullies as a source! You are the clapping seal, you only believe that being a clapping seal is the correct thing to be. And again, even if we pretend everything you said was true, that would STILL not be a justification for Russia to invade, so you would still have nothing.
    1
  13188. @ All Russia had to do was not invade. That was simpler. How did they fail?
    1
  13189.  @Muskieangler  How is it not how it works? Russia always had the choice to not invade. At no point did anyone else's actions force them to invade. They were never attacked. Them being upset at how things turned out is no justification for violence.
    1
  13190. ​@ I'm glad you agree. Now you can stop trying to spread Kremlin denialisms.
    1
  13191. @ I'm glad you agree. Now you can stop trying to repeat Kremlin denialisms.
    1
  13192.  @Muskieangler  If Trump negotiates a "deal" that does not involve restoring the land Putin stole, then the war will just continue without the US. I'm sorry to them that we failed them in November, but they'll have to continue to defeat Russia without us.
    1
  13193. @ If Trump comes to any "deal" with himself that does not involve the return of all occupied territory, then Ukraine will have to continue the war without the US. They don't need us, but I'm sorry nonetheless.
    1
  13194. @ If Trump comes to any "deal" with himself that does not involve the return of all occupied territory, then the war will continue without the US. Pity.
    1
  13195. @ One thing we can be sure of, is that nothing has ever been sorted out by Trump.
    1
  13196. Putin bluffs CONSTANTLY. He's threatened escalation every week or two since he started this war. Nobody;s buying it.
    1
  13197.  @DogmaticNonsense  Oh, no, I'm not MAGA.
    1
  13198.  @bizarrocker  It's the only hope America has.
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  13199.  @dottiefrashure8457  In the 2020 election, the overwhelming majority of cheating was done by team red. On the other hand, even if you added up all the cheating by both sides and cast all those votes for Trump in a single swing state, it would still not add up enough for him to have won that state.
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  13200.  @christophergolden5297  Yup, MAGA folks have them bad.
    1
  13201.  @ZombieWarfare552  Sadly, this may be true.
    1
  13202.  @mattg2306  Of course nobody should vote for a specific party "just because.' People should vote for a specific party because the alternative may mean never getting to have their vote counted again. "The right person for the job" is the one that will not increase the odds of a Republican speaker or majority leader, because America can't survive more of this nonsense. Again, I wish that weren't the case, that the Republicans were a viable party, or that "right man for the job" Republicans would commit to caucusing with the Democrats if elected, but we don't live in that world, and it would be irrational to pretend that we did.
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  13203.  @Finraen  I'm not sure why you think I disagree with you, you've given plenty of good reasons why the Republicans have, over the last couple decades, proven themselves incapable of governance. Take the situation at the border, they are currently avoiding any sort of solution to the border crisis, because they believe it will help their electoral chances in the fall, regardless of the effects on the American people. Also, you seem to forget that it is the Republicans who have their own media empire publishing inaccurate information about the state of the world. Were you even aware that Faux News viewers are LESS accurately informed than people who get no news at all?
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  13204.  @Finraen  The founders didn't want a direct democracy, but they set up a system of representative democracy. We're trying to keep hold of it today, despite Republican efforts to undermine that.
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  13205.  @James-pr4bf  What do you believe the ratio of governors means? You do understand that the state of Wyoming has fewer people than the city of DC, right?
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  13206. There's no reason for two Dakotas. Even put together, they're barely worthy of statehood. They should just combine the two into a single state, called "West Dakota."
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  13207. The Russian regulars aren't any better though. The only thing the Russian army seems good for is mass artillery strikes against civilian areas until there's nothing left worth fighting over, and then swooping in to plant a flag.
    1
  13208.  @hristokolev6016  Yeah, but still all the Russian forces combined don't add up to much. All they can do is bomb civilians. Ask any more of them and they wet the bed, so. . .
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  13209.  @themightycat7238  I tend to agree. The balancing point is to find a way to not drive drug users underground, to not encourage crime, but also to not "normalize" drug use in such a way that people take drugs who otherwise wouldn't. Some people will always take drugs, but there are plenty of people who could go either way, and ideally you would also be keeping as many of those people off drugs as possible.
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  13210. Maybe they're just scared enough of the incoming Greater Depression that they will pause shilling for Republicans for a while and start reporting the news.
    1
  13211. Most people use both sides. Using only one side would be weird. Like Popeye or something.
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  13212. Immigration is a fully federal issue, there isn't much states can do on their own.
    1
  13213.  @k.k.marriott5901  Unfortunately, it's a fact.
    1
  13214.  @k.k.marriott5901  No, it would be a terrible idea to have dozens of border state each deciding what their own border policies should be, who is and is not allowed to enter the US and under what circumstances. Directing the national border is really something that should only be done at the federal level, otherwise you'd have yahoo governors just shipping immigrants willy-nilly across the country and it would be a huge mess.
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  13215.  @carllangner48  It's still a defensive war, since Russia started it. It will ALWAYS be a defensive war until it ends. But offense is a necessary part of a defensive war, because otherwise you're just slowing down how quickly you'll lose it.
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  13216.  @leonjiang-kq2qo  Do you? You're the one presenting the less rational position, so the burden would be on you to provide at least some evidence that it is happening, before anyone else would be burdened to prove otherwise.
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  13217. There are no colleges owned by the federal government. Even state colleges aren't actually owned by the state, there is just more state funding to them. They are still private businesses.
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  13218. This is why the media won't cite Nana poll. They only cite credible polls with valid methodologies.
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  13219.  @Mark-ee8ud  according to the latest data, less than 800 Americans per year are murdered using a car (that's actually the number of the "other" category, which would mean that the actual number is probably a tiny fraction of that. Meanwhile, 10,000 Americans were murdered using guns. It's much easier to avoid being murdered by a car, so if all people who intend to do murder using a gun are forced to use cars instead? Ok. I'm fine with that. Better than that they use a gun.
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  13220.  @TheDustyPeaches  No, that is where you are wrong. I'm not sure who told you that America imports guns across the southern border, but it's factually incorrect. America EXPORTS guns across the southern border. We only import people and some drugs (although most of those come through ports of entry). Smuggling guns is much more complicated. Guns that enter the hands of American criminals are either purchased by them legally (as is most often the case), OR they are purchased legally by someone they know and then straw-sold to them, OR they are stolen off of someone who had legally purchased it. There is NO need to smuggle weapons into the US, we already have twice as many as ANY country in the world. Remove the legal guns from circulation, and it cuts off the criminals' access.
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  13221.  @TheDustyPeaches  American companies don't have to sell to illegal sources. They sell to legal sources. Then those legally sold guns are either stolen, or sold off to an illegal source second hand. Remove the legal method, the illegal methods dry up.
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  13222.  @jacobew2000  It remains true that cutting off the legal sources cut off the criminals. Criminals in other countries want to have guns just as much as US criminals, but they can't get them, because their supply is much more limited. I'm not saying that it would prevent 100% of illegal guns, obviously some illegal guns would still find their way into the wrong hands, but much less than is currently the case. Most mass shooters just legally buy their guns from a gun store, as do most "crime of passion" murderers. If those sources were removed, then there is very little chance of them ever finding a black market source, and any attempt they made to do so would likely get them caught by catfishing police, taking them off the street before they hurt anyone. As for gangs, they would likely end up with some guns, as gangs in other countries manage, but they would be more careful with them to avoid losing them, and most gun violence would be within the gags, not involving civilians. A few hundred hand made guns is irrelevant when there are thousands sold by reputable manufacturers each month. Even adding all that up, it would be far less than what we currently have, across the board. This isn't hypothetical, this has ALREADY been done in countries that are otherwise very similar to the US, and we know that it works.
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  13223.  @jacobew2000  Innovating is good, but stubbornly heading down the wrong path just because it's the one you picked is nothing to admire. When we try something and it works, great! When we try something and it fails, then we need to try something else. Clearly civilian gun ownership has failed the US, because otherwise we would be the safest country on Earth. Gun bans would work fine, if they were well constructed. Of course people would work around them to some degree, but the amount of guns would drop and drop. Australia did it, the UK did it, it's not a problem.
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  13224.  @FirstnameLastname-yc2mt  Romans 13:9.
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  13225.  @wecanonlywish9194  But this is a secular country, prohibited from expressing religious faith in a government function.
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  13226.  @FirstnameLastname-yc2mt  So if you think you're following the commandments, while failing to follow the golden rule, then you aren't following the commandments.
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  13227.  @wecanonlywish9194  Did you know that a great many Christians are rainbow flag holders? Even Jesus celebrates pride month.
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  13228.  @wecanonlywish9194  But the Chaplain of the Senate does not specifically promote any particular religion, and promotes many different religious traditions. This new law specifically mandates ONE religious tradition over others.
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  13229.  @wecanonlywish9194  What are you talking about? We are a secular society. Religious people of many denominations are a part of that society, but the society itself is secular.
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  13230.  @wecanonlywish9194  So gay people are exactly as sinful as straight people who have sex. Ok, I guess they can live with that. They're still Christians. As he said, "let ye who is without sin cast the first stone."
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  13231.  @wecanonlywish9194  So they would be no better or worse than straight people who have sex? I guess that's fine. Either way, a lot of them are just as Christian as you, and Jesus loves them just as much as He does you. "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone."
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  13232.  @wecanonlywish9194  So they would be no better or worse than any other people who have sex? I guess that's fine. Either way, a lot of them are just as Christian as you, and Jesus loves them just as much as He does you.
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  13233. Thebn you should have elected her President, then she would answer to you. Instead you elected Biden, and she answers to him.
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  13234. The aid to both countries is basically a drop in the bucket compared to the budget.
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  13235. Why would Obama have any reason to care? It had nothing to do with him.
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  13236.  @tonythebomb4147  He made a few million off of book sales, but not much else. It certainly wasn't like the people who worked in the Trump administration that got billions in shady deals with foreign nationals or anything like that.
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  13237.  @tonythebomb4147  Nothing I said in there was opinion. It was all objective reality. Reality is not an opinion.
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  13238.  @tonythebomb4147  According to reality, as reported by me. Everything I said can be fact checked at any other source based on planet Earth.
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  13239.  @tonythebomb4147  Again, this has nothing to do with opinions. You do understand the difference between a fact and an opinion, don't you?
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  13240. New York had the worst of it because it's a highly concentrated population and it got hit first before anyone knew what was going on. What happened in New York was almost inevitable (short of a better federal response early on). But NYC is way BETTER than the US if you only track the stuff that happened after that initial spike boiled off. New York did things right, kept doing things right, and it WAY better than most parts of the country, given how tightly packed it is. The parts that "are doing better" is only because they aren't as densely packed, don't have nearly as many people coming and going to spread it around from outside, and didn't really get hit by it until there was more infrastructure in place to handle it. I mean, in terms of deaths, florida is currenly having dozens, up ot a few hundred deaths _per day," whereas New York has been below 15 per day since mid summer.
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  13241.  @Protect_all_ljf3forms  That's what they said about the Civil War.
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  13242. Look up his other video about his previous cars and their state when he sold them off. Most EV owners I've heard from moved on to a new car way before their batteries were at any serious risk. You need about ten years of really hard use, or 2-3 times that of casual use, for it to be a concern. You save way more on gas and maintenance costs in between, even if you choose to replace the battery rather than replace the car along the way.
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  13243.  @aserta  Well, I'm just talking about a specific figure. It's up to them to set what standards they want. If they want zero negativity, then that's their right, and they can instruct their filter to remove all negativity. I agree that it would be healthier to be a bit less harsh than that, and leave in negative but at least somewhat constructive commentary, but a lot of content creators get some really awful stuff in their feeds, and there would be no benefit to leaving that sort of thing in.
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  13244. ​ @janetkaradenza4165  I am not a fan of "retaliatory racism," but I don't believe that this qualifies. The result is STILL a net negative to black people, not a net negative for white people. Louisiana is 33% black, and yet only one of their 6 Congressmen comes from a majority black district. 2/6th of their representatives coming from majority black districts is only fair, right? "Retaliatory racism" would be if three or more of those districts were made majority black, to correct for the decades in which black people were even more disenfranchised. Having two majority black districts is barely breaking even. And no, supporting a balance of the scales in no way validates the racism of the past, you defending unequal outcomes is what validates racism of the past, because that is exactly what they were doing.
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  13245. The Russian agents in the Conservative media are doing their job well.
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  13246. @ People in the suburbs want to take cars though. You can ask them yourself. They don't want to have to walk for an hour or two to reach a store. What you mean is that you don't want them to drive, which is something else entirely. People who actually don't want to drive live in walkable urban areas instead, which is also an option, just one that plenty of people do not prefer. As to parking, are you legitimately claiming that without zoning laws, suburban commercial developments would have LESS parking than they currently do? How? Why? Businesses want BUSINESS, and to do that, their customers need to be able to park outside. No developer would build a strip mall on a plot of land with no parking, because no businesses would want to move into that space, knowing that they would not get enough traffic to pay their rent. It's possible that such regulations exist, but if so, they would be redundant, and probably just a holdover from other times. As to density, that's generally determined by the community itself. If they want higher density, then they will elect people who will provide it. If they do not want higher density, then they will elect people who will block it. It's their choice to make.
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  13247. @ You have that option. Move to an area with walkability and high transit access. These places exist. It's unwilling to expect the area you live in to conform to how you would like it to be, rather than choosing the area that best meets your preferences.
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  13248.  @BreadPickles  Yes, but that's because that's what the people of that community want. See, that's the difference, you being in a community does not give you the right to change how that community functions, but that community has the right to determine how it functions. If the majority of your community does not want what you want, then your two options are to either live with it, or find a different community that better suits your preferences. Either is entirely possible. Also, it's a misunderstanding to think that the high cost of housing in those areas is caused by a lack of availability, it's rather the other way around. Those areas are only viable because they have high costs of living. They require high value occupants to be profitable. If you took a low density, unwalkable area, and you "revitalized it" to be a very walkable area, then the cost of living in that area would skyrocket. You don't like cars, so building places that are accessible to cars is bad for you, but that's very different from it being bad for most people.
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  13249.  @BreadPickles  Yes, supply and demand is what led to the current balance of drivability and walkability. And I'm not talking about utility costs, I'm talking about business costs. There are two types of "walkable" areas, there are high quality walkable areas that are clean, have access to a ton of food and shopping options, high speed and convenient public transit, etc. Then there are low quality walkable areas, where you have little option but to walk places, but there are relatively few good food or shopping options, dingy conditions, and minimal public transit. The latter is easy to achieve, but the former requires a high-income local population, because you are losing long distance traffic in exchange for high quality close in traffic. If you do not have a critical mass of high quality local traffic, then you cannot turn a profit, local businesses go under, and you end up with a food desert area. IF you try to build a high quality walkable area, then the cost of living will automatically rise to meet that needed amount. It's impossible to "increase supply" your way out of that problem, because if you ever did build sufficient supply of high density housing to overcome that curve, the result would be a short term period of lower housing costs, but then the least efficient of those neighborhoods would start to die off due to lack of revenues, and become low quality neighborhoods. Highway infrastructure may be expensive, but it also allows not only for the transit of the goods that even dense urban areas rely on, but also it allows customers to reach thousands of businesses spread across a hundred mile range or more. It costs more, but provides more in return.
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  13250.  @BreadPickles  Europe built their communities differently than in the US. You could rebuild the US to be more like Europe, but it would cost more than it took to grow Europe into that organically over the last century, and the public would not AGREE with you that this is what they want. Supply and demand plays an obvious role in housing prices, but as I said, it it not a system that you can abuse to get the outcomes you want with no downsides. If you build more supply than there is demand for it, then that would drive prices down, but at the cost of unsold units, and therefore commercial failure for the people building it. When you build housing to match demand, then the cost of highly walkable areas will always be more expensive per square foot than lower density options, so there will always be that trade-off. This exists in Europe just as it does in the US. Your argument about small businesses is entirely wrong. Small businesses fail because bigger businesses can outcompete them on economies of scale. Since the bigger business can stock more items and sell more items, they can charge less per item and still turn a profit. It is impossible for small businesses to keep up with this without someone putting a thumb on the scales in their favor. People aren't more likely to spend more in a walkable area, because while they might not visit as many stores, they are more likely to spend more in the stories they DO visit than in a walkable area, because they are more likely to pick things up from several departments of a large store than they are to enter several different smaller stores. The infrastructure costs issue is a real one, but it's one that the public has decided they are fine with. They would prefer the current model, and the associated costs, over a more concentrated model. Higher density communities would be more efficient, but efficiency isn't everything. I'm glad you're engaging with people that have opinions different from your own. These discussions are important to have and we aren't having enough of them. I just think we should build our society that has something for everyone, and that does include people who want to live in high density, walkable areas. But many don't. And we obviously can't build walkable, high density areas outside of the downtowns of our biggest cities, because then those areas would become "downtowns of our biggest cities."
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  13251.  @BreadPickles  European cities make unaffordable choices too. That is a result of poor decisionmaking, not walkability. It is possible to budget drivable communities to be balanced, and most already do this. It's the exceptions that stand out, and that is the fault of their own poor choices, not their lack of walkability.
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  13252. @ Most American cities are not bankrupting themselves either, and some European cities are. The lesson is not that walkable, high density communities are viable and low density, spread out communities are not, it's that poorly planned and managed communities fail and well managed ones do not.
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  13253. @ Two thirds of the population disagrees though.
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  13254. @ As for parking, yes, many parking lots are mostly empty a lot of the time. This is not a bad thing, because at the times when they do have more than expected customers, there is space for them. If a parking lot is mostly empty during the highest volume periods, then the core business is not doing well, and in many cases they will add additional retail space attached to that parking lot. Again though, for the most part, the parking available to a business matches the demand for it, and under no scenario would you see significantly less parking space than you currently do, because the businesses could not operate with less. Maybe the regulations are better than I thought if they get it so right. Out of curiosity, if you believe that businesses would put in less parking than they do, and that "regulations" are the only reason for the existing amount of parking, what incentive do you believe there would be for local governments to require MORE parking than the consumers actually need? What is the benefit to them in having an unused parking space? Wouldn't local governments have every incentive to ensure that every square foot of land were put toward a productive purpose? A wanted parking space is of value, but an unwanted parking space would have no more value to the government than it would to the business.
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  13255. @ Subrurban areas are no more likely to be financially insolvent than high density urban areas are, have you seen the finances of the major metropolises lately? Any area has the potential to be insolvent if they make poor decisions, but plenty of both urban and suburban areas have managed a balanaced budget. Strong Towns has a particular message they want to promote, so they cherrypick examples that suit their case, this should not be unexpected. As to your comment on parking lots, so is an apartment building a waste of space when people are at work and it is mostly empty? Pretty much ANY land use will be unused for a significant amount of the day, that does not mean that it lacks value when it IS fulfilling its function. Now ideally you can use parking space efficiently, have vertical garages rather than large lots where possible, perhaps put solar panels over them so that they can also generate energy. Obviously design them in ways that drain efficiently, etc. There are good and bad ways to handle this, but parking in and of itself is not a bad thing. At the end of the day, walkable towns do exist. You can move there right now if you want. You already have that choice. The only thing you currently lack is for ALL communities to be walking-dependent, and that's something that I doubt America will do any time soon.
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  13256.  @BreadPickles  I'm not saying that the low density infrastructure problem does not exist, only that it is a manageable problem. It is a negative to such communities, but urban communities also have negatives, and any community will need to balance negatives and positives. Sprawling communities do have higher infrastructure costs per resident, but these costs can be managed by a responsible government. A poor government will fail to manage these costs, but the same is true of high density urban areas. I'll also point out that urban areas are not more solvent on a residential level, they are only more solvent because they currently have higher density of businesses. As more and more businesses have shifted to work from home policies, this advantage has become less and less viable. Again, car-centric design has clear negatives to it, as does walking-centric design. You seem to personally prefer the negatives to walking, and that's fine, but one is not objectively better than the other. It all just comes down to which set of pros and cons you prefer. Most Americans prefer the pros and cons to driving over the pros and cons to walkability. Maybe that will change, but you have to meet people where they are, not where you are.
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  13257.  @BreadPickles  With car-centric design you can use your cars to travel places easier, meaning you don't have to get out in bad weather as much, you can carry larger amounts of things home with you, you can make short trips faster, and you can make longer trips that would be completely impractical on foot. You can conveniently reach a much wider radius of goods and services. And plenty of communities manage their budgets without any more external support than cities get. I think part of your confusion is that you look at a purely residential area, and consider only the value of the residences within it, rather than also considering the overall economic value of the people who live there. For example, if a suburban community sends people into a city to work, then shouldn't the money those people produce in that city return back to the suburbs where they live?
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  13258.  @BreadPickles  Oh, and I forgot to mention the other benefits of car-centric design, like housing that is cheaper per square foot, housing that typically offers many more square feet of space to work with. Yards for each home that you can tailor to your interests. A bit of distance from your neighbors so they are less likely to negatively impact your experience with noise or other drama. Probably some others that I'm not considering.
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  13259. @ Bikes can be faster for some short trips, but for example it takes me five minutes to drive to the store from my house, including traffic lights, but it would take me over half an hour by bike, without air conditioning, and with far less cargo capacity, so I'd need to make more trips. But we are talking "Car-centric design" here, if a place is car centric, then traveling it by car tends to be much faster on anything more than a very short trip. If the infrastructure is intentionally inefficient for cars, then that's more the fault of the infrastructure than the car. The more people prefer to move by car, the more cars will be on the road, so the more adapted the environment needs to be for those drivers. It makes no sense to make life inconvenient for people. And yes, you list a bunch of potential negatives to cars, I'm not arguing those don't exist, I'm saying that people WEIGHT those pros and cons, and more of them PREFER the balance of car ownership over the alternatives. You don't have to agree with them, you just have to accept their right to not agree with you. And yes, a lot of those are the benefits of suburbs, but suburbs cannot function without cars. I live near a pretty walkable suburban area, one in which at least some of the community can reach a lot of food options on foot, and that's all well and good, but I doubt anyone in that community lacks cars, because they likely have jobs that require a car to reach, and want access to the many stores that are outside that community. Suburbs are inherently too spread out to be completely self-sufficient as a walkable unit, they need to have the flexibility that cars provide. And no, suburbs did not predate cars. Unless you mean those built around train lines, which did exist, but tend to have ceased being suburbs by now, because the city grew up around them. It would be inefficient to run a rail line out to every suburban development these days. That time has passed.
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  13260. @ Lots of suburbs are bankrupting themselves. Lots of dense urban areas are too. Again, both are a function of poor management, not an inevitability. They need to raise taxes or lower spending to stay within their means, although as I pointed out, it's unreasonable to expect them to function on real estate taxes alone, and they should get some portion of the economic value their residents provide back.
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  13261.  @BreadPickles  To your first paragraph, the things you mention as "downsides" are things that are necessary to have a large numbers of cars. I think every driver would agree that everything would be better if they were the ONLY driver on the road, with no other drivers taking up space, but that's an unreasonable expectation. If everyone who wants to drive is able to, then the infrastructure has to take them all into account, and if you build roads in a way that supports only 50 cars per minute, when 100 cars want to pass through there each minute, then ALL of those cars will end up having a bad time of it. This is far from impossible, and MOST road systems handle this just fine. The worst problems out there come from road networks that were originally designed 50+ years ago, around completely different traffic conditions and with far less understanding of traffic management, and have since been jerry-rigged as best they can, but are still far from the most efficient designs possible. The same is true of many rail networks, of course. Also, the 1/3 of Americans that prefer to not drive are already not driving. They would not be "removed from the road" they were never there in the first place. The amount of people who currently drive but would prefer not to would barely be a statistical blip. That isn't to say that you can't convert some people from driving to other methods of transportation, but you don't achieve that by making driving intentionally more annoying, you do it by providing legitimate alternatives, like building out rail networks. If people can get on a train from near their house and skip a two hour commute, they might. If you add intentional annoyances to expand their two hour commute to a three hour one, then they will just be annoyed any time the topic of "walkability" comes up, and vote accordingly. And yes, if you are building a suburb, you can build them to be both walkable and car accessible. I mentioned the one near me that I think does a good job at this. But you can't make it too unfriendly to cars, because if all the workers and school buses set out in the morning, you can't have a three hour back-up because you're trying to funnel things through narrow, winding lanes. You need to design the traffic flows around the peak traffic requirements of the area. Buses and trams can sometimes work, but often run inconvenient schedules for most people to work around, and/or are massive cost to the community. You talked about suburbs not being able to pay their own way as it is, if they had to also fund convenient bus routes that would blow out any chance of sustainability. And if you are genuinely making the argument that people should have options, then I have some excellent news for you. You, yes you, currently have those options. There are already communities that meet your needs, out there, in America, as we speak. All you need to do is move to one. The more people move into them, the more that will get built.
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  13262.  @BreadPickles  Well again, quality walkability is necessarily expensive, It's a tripod, "walkability, quality, affordability, pick two." If you're asking to have great walkability AND have it be cheap, then sorry, that's out of anyone's control. It'd be like drivers complaining that they don't want to drive, because they'd prefer a chauffeur, but it's too expensive. Drivers already pay the costs of their driving in terms of gas taxes, home taxes, and income taxes. You could argue that some of that cost is carried by people who do not themselves drive, but the same is true of pretty much any tax or government program, it's just inefficient to try and calculate every person's exact "fair burden" down to the penny. By and large, the costs and benefits of car ownership are distributed more fair than most programs. Comparing Amsterdam to most US cities is silly, and demeans us all. European cities are fundamentally different in their overall design than most US cities, as they were built up on centuries of history. It would be possible to rebuild American cities to be more like their European counterparts, but would cost a LOT more money to do so (making the resulting housing even less affordable), and it needs to be done by expanding rail options first, not by making car options worse as a first step. As to your point about lanes, it is true that simply adding lanes is not always a solution, although it is often a solution in many cases. Once you reach a certain number of lanes, you do get diminishing returns from adding more, but the actual solution there is to build entire alternate routes to reduce traffic on that first route, and also to increase the efficiency of offramps to reduce choke points. If you try to funnel too much traffic into a single off ramp, it will cause congestion no matter how many lanes you have, but if you have efficient methods of peeling off traffic much earlier in the process, it flows much more smoothly. As I noted above, many of the worst traffic areas suffer from having built their infrastructure many decades ago, and so the overall big picture shape of them is not an efficient way to distribute the traffic that flows through them. This is not an inevitability of cars, it's just poor planning that is difficult to adjust for. The same problem can happen with rail networks, or even with pedestrians in some places, such as stadiums. But I agree, the best way to help pedestrians is to advocate for the changes that don't come at the expense of drivers.
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  13263.  @BreadPickles  You keep listing negatives to car use, and for the most part, I don't disagree that those negatives exist. I don't think that they would come as a surprise to most Americans. I just think that most Americans agree that the benefits of car use significantly outweigh those negatives. It's not that people are making poor choices for themselves, it's just that the choices that work best for them are not necessarily the choices that you would want them to make. Trains will always be more efficient at cars for carrying passengers from one location on their route to another. Trains will also always be more expensive to build and maintain that single route than an equivalent highway route, and far less flexible at delivering passengers directly to their destination than a car is. The benefit to cars is that drivers can start at a location relatively far from a major arterial highway, they can all meet up at that highway, travel along it to a point near their destination, and then split off from the highway to drive to a point at, or very near to their destination, all without even exiting their vehicle. Outside of dense urban areas, it's very difficult for rail networks to compete with that even in ideal hypotheticals, so while I do think we can and should be doing more than we have, I don't foresee that ever resulting in a less car-centric overall environment, without some major black swan changes to the way people interact with the world. As to suburbs, as I've said, it's complicated. Everyone agrees that it would be nice to live in a suburb without any cars driving around. . . so long as they could still drive wherever they wanted. It's difficult to design a suburb to have the maximum amount of walkability and nature and comfort, as if cars weren't even a factor, while also having the infrastructure to allow all the occupants to get to work without massive traffic jams. You want to try and divert major traffic as far from the housing as you can manage, but without causing it to take an extra ten minutes of weaving around to enter and exit the community. There are ways to manage this balance, but it's never going to be the best at both factors, it's always going to be a compromise. And you can also build these suburban communities to be self-contained, with enough businesses and food and shopping to sustain at least some portion of the community's population at least some of the time, but again, this is never perfect, and the more of his you have, the more expensive the community would become in order to sustain all of these businesses. You could not achieve this with very low housing costs, because the businesses would go out of business. I think that a lot of suburban areas built within the last few decades have been designed to be walking and bike friendly, but it will always be a balancing act, and it will always come at a cost.
    1
  13264.  @VVilde36  The speed limit is still under 50 pretty much anywhere that pedestrians should exist. When it comes to interstates though, why slow cars down unnecessarily? If you're traveling 100 miles, that could make a 20 minute or so difference.
    1
  13265.  @alab3657  Democrats did not call voter ID "Jim Crow 2.0." They called things like the Georgia bill "Jim Crow 2.0." The major problems with the Georgia bill were not about voter ID.
    1
  13266.  @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.
    1
  13267.  @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.
    1
  13268.  @alab3657  Ok, find me a quote of any one of them saying that blacks are literally too stupid to get ID and I'll concede the point. I find that unlikely though. Again. I think it's more often that they are opposing bills that include voter ID provisions that negatively impact traditionally Democratic voters more than they impact traditionally Republican voters. As for gay marriage, the entire country shifted on that one, and most now approve of it. That wasn't a bunch of people coming out of nowhere who already approved of it, it was people who 40 years ago didn't approve of it who changed their mind, because 40 years ago they didn't know any gay people, but over time they met more and more and realized that they were ok, and deserved to be able to marry who they wanted to marry, so their view on the subject shifted accordingly. Democrats represent the people of today, Republicans try to represent the people of 40 years ago.
    1
  13269.  @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.
    1
  13270.  @Dr.Sharron  No, I meant the poorer areas, which do tend to see increased crime, just like the poorer rural areas. My point was just that the nicer areas, the places any tourist would want to go, are safer than rural areas.
    1
  13271.  @sunshyne07fl80  What would that have to do with anything? Having migrants in your area is not a bad thing. We were talking about crime, and when it comes to crime, migrants are far less likely to commit crimes than people born here.
    1
  13272.  @Agent_Frank_Horrigan  NYC used to be dangerous. It really hasn't been since the 80s though. Their murder rate is very low when compared to red state rural areas. Comics are set there because comic offices are there, and they wrote what they knew.
    1
  13273. This was a staged event, all the "customers" were Trump supports called in specifically. Why are you not reporting this?
    1
  13274. There couldn't be a debate on Fox because they are not a reputable news organization.
    1
  13275. I mean, let's be honest here, it's not like Trump even CONSIDERED taxes on tipping as a concept. Someone on his STAFF thought it would be a good idea and told him he should do it, so he did. And it was a good idea, so of course Harris would be on board with it. Why not?
    1
  13276. And also because his actions fit the definition of the English word "insurrection."
    1
  13277.  @yehimstone5492  Probably not, but if he did, that wouldn't be saying much. It is South Carolina.
    1
  13278.  @Bruce_Gruesome  In which case was a viable fetus terminated without the health of the woman being at risk?
    1
  13279.  @hvquenzer  They do give straight answers on the topic, you just don't like their answers, because they include words like "the life of the woman," and adult women do not matter to you.
    1
  13280.  @brandonjosey-wq2wv  If anyone attempts a "post birth abortion," then they would be charged and convicted of attempted murder in any blue state.
    1
  13281.  @MrBeetsGaming  He did, in fact, say that there were good people on both sides.
    1
  13282.  @ChristopherGaines-i3k  "PBA" is a myth. That's what anyone would find if they did their research.
    1
  13283.  @dr.penguin9412  "Viability" in the case of a fetus would mean that they could survive without being attached to another human. It does not mean that they need to be able to get a job. If a fetus can be removed and receive medical treatment that would allow it to survive, then that would be viable, but if removing it from the womb would make its survival impossible, then that would be non-viable. No woman should be required to carry a fetus that does not want to do so.
    1
  13284.  @dr.penguin9412  "The concept of life" is a philosophical question, and you interpretation of it should never override the interpretation of a women carrying a fetus. Viability is a measurable concept. As to why it's "considered a double homicide," it often isn't, and where it is, that's usually just a poorly structured law that nobody's bothered to repeat yet. The better question is that if you do believe that a fetus counts as a human life, then why are no women successfully prosecuted for murder for having an abortion? That should be a slam dunk, every time, If your assertion is valid.
    1
  13285.  @Bruce_Gruesome  I have still not seen an example of a 9th month elective abortion. Just because something has not been criminalized does not mean that society is ok with it. Generally, laws are not made unless people are actually doing that thing, and the law is needed as a deterrent. If you are claiming this is a problem, then you need to find actual cases in which a woman received an elective abortion at 9 months, and that nobody was punished for it. Even without specific laws on the books, murder laws would generally apply if the fetus is viable, in any state.
    1
  13286.  @dr.penguin9412  Because Bacteria can feed itself and replicate itself without external intervention.
    1
  13287.  @dr.penguin9412  It can take in food, air, and water to sustain itself, yes. It can't acquire those resources itself, but they can be provided. It does not need to be biologically attached to another organism to survive.
    1
  13288.  @dr.penguin9412  If a fetus is alive, then it could be removed from a woman and survive the process. Until it is capable of doing that, it cannot be considered "alive." Generally, that is the legal distinction used. In most jurisdictions, when "double homicides" are processed, it is when the fetus is viable, or at least the suspect had reason to expect that it was.
    1
  13289.  @dr.penguin9412  Again, which state has actually allowed it? Where is that example? A state not having a law specifically prohibiting something does not mean it has been "allowed." It's generally considered at least 24 months for a reasonable shot at survival, legislating around extremely unlikely outcomes is a recipe for disaster. And as I said, the law should err on the side of the health of the woman and the medical opinion of her doctor, to avoid cases where both the woman and doctor agree that an abortion would give her the best chance of a healthy outcome, but the doctor is concerned that it might not qualify for whatever carveouts the state's law allows. We've already had plenty such cases over the past few years, in which women suffered and in some cases had irreversible damage.
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  13290.  @dr.penguin9412  So you can't provide ANY examples of the "problem" that you believe is in dire need of fixing, and yet you want to endanger the health of millions of Americans just to get that change made. Come back when you have actual examples of a problem, and not just hypotheticals. Oh, and who's to say 4 months is too soon? Doctors. Maybe listen to them. A fetus having the general shape of a person at 4 months is meaningless when they don't have functional organs. Just because something looks vague human does not mean it is one, you're stuck in the anthropic principle. You can have your own views on what constitutes "life," and that can drive your own choices about your own body, but your views on life should not justify harm to other people.
    1
  13291.  @dr.penguin9412  I'm sorry, I replied earlier, but it apparently did not take. My answer is that doctors consider around 24 months to be viable. Viability in a legal sense would be based around what is likely, not what is maybe possible. You don't build law against edge cases. Again though, if you can't provide any examples of this actually happening, then it is not actually a problem. You don't build law around things that are not actually happening, and which there is no likelihood that it would happen. Again, something not being explicitly illegal in a state is not necessarily a problem, I thought "small government" was a good thing?
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  13292.  @dr.penguin9412  Also, adult women are people. They have fingers and toes, eyes and ears and noses, all the bits. They have rights, and those rights should matter. A fetus is not a person just because it has the general shape of one. It does not have functional organs yet.
    1
  13293.  @jaydoggy456  The same applies to Faux News, the only difference is that the ones that get their information from MSNBC or CNN are more likely to be correct. No shame in actually knowing things, Republicans should try it some time.
    1
  13294. Yeah, they should have just been honest that she could not tell whether he'd used his finger or his. . . other thing.
    1
  13295. Yeah, dumping nuclear was just dumb. They should have kept nuclear rolling along until green energy systems were fully in place. The risks and waste products of nuclear are SO much less than the alternatives.
    1
  13296.  @AnthonyBurton-k8i  How so?
    1
  13297.  @AnthonyBurton-k8i  It doesn't help less qualified people get jobs, it helps ensure that qualified people can get jobs, even when they might otherwise get overlooked. In no way does it lead to a less competitive workforce.
    1
  13298.  @AnthonyBurton-k8i  That may be what your feelings say, but it's not accurate to the reality of the situation. In reality, the best candidates do get hired, unless you're imagining that the best women or minority candidates can't possibly be better than white male candidates for a job. DEI is at least as merit-based as the previous systems, and the results speak for themselves. Productivity improves.
    1
  13299.  @AnthonyBurton-k8i  And yet, the best candidate is hired at least as often under DEI as under the previous systems, so that indicates that the previous systems didn't actually sort by merit either. The numbers don't lie.
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  13300. @ And yet the newer models create a more effective campus community that helps all students to prepare for their future careers. It's shown that if you have an overly segregated campus, it leads to less qualified candidates, like in the current White House.
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  13301.  @lwinner1  It was on the news as a hoax they were debunking. It was never on actual news as an actual story that was happening. If you think it was on the news, then you are watching children's cartoons and calling it "the news."
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  13302.  @anthonyg.4761  Why not blow it off as BS, when it is, in fact, BS? I've heard all sorts of crazy things about Haitian people over the last week, none of which turns out to hold up to even basic investigation. So why even consider it in the first place? What would be the benefit of getting worked up over such nonsense? Do you just enjoy being scared and angry at ghosts?
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  13303.  @anthonyg.4761  I think it was rather that the point went right over yours.
    1
  13304.  @maryreis3339  and when police looked into that 911 call they found the number had been delisted, so it seems likely that it was a prank. Someone making a 911 call does not mean that what they say actually happened.
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  13305. TL;DR, because he's afraid of getting whupped again.
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  13306. So. . . "never," you're saying.
    1
  13307.  @heatherhall7899  Exactly. Most Republicans re too stupid to understand why Trump caused more harm than good. they just saw the tail end of the Obama economy as Trump drove it off the cliff, and then Biden's efforts to get things back in shape, and think Trump was somehow responsible for anything good.
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  13308. Yeah, but that's kinda true of just about anything.
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  13309.  @xCheddarB0b42x  If you weren't setting off red flags in the first place, then you wouldn't likely end up in court at all. Again, though, it's better to catch the criminals and have a few innocent people that need to explain themselves, than to allow the crimes to continue without opposition. You can never have a perfect system, but this is better than the alternatives.
    1
  13310.  @clray123  Who is arguing in favor of "guilty until proven innocent?" I was just arguing in "investigate before proving guilt," which has always been the criminal law standard in pretty much every civilization.
    1
  13311.  @clray123  So a police officer should not drive around keeping his eyes out for potential crimes in progress? They should just stay in the station until a crime has already occurred and been reported to them?
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  13312.  @clray123  The Internet is the public. We aren't talking about anything that's happening on your property or in your bedroom. That said, if there is evidence they are seeking on your property, they can get a warrant for that. If they get a warrant to access P2P encrypted data, how would they go about accessing it?
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  13313.  @clray123  Nobody's talking about private conversations in your device, this is about conversations BETWEEN devices over the INTERNET. And again, if they get a warrant to search your house, then they are able to enter and search their house. If they get a warrant to read your encrypted messages, then how do you believe they would be able to do that, without some access to do so?
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  13314. 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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  13315. Yeah, but then he got removed and replaced by Biden, so it's better pretty nice since then.
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  13316. It was horrible when Trump did that. The Biden administration cleaned it up within their first few months.
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  13317. They look a lot uglier in color. It's sad when the fiction is better than the truth.
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  13318. You've never heard of the Great Emu War? This war is fairly standard, really.
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  13319. It's misleading to cite EV batteries as an example of "green washing." They are still net positive when compared to ICE vehicles, even when you factor in the costs of battery production. Something having a manufacturing cost does not automatically make it a harmful product, if that manufacturing cost is lower than the thing it is replacing. What is with all the videos negging on EVs lately?
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  13320. @ADD8 MAGA candidates run AGAINST America's interests and were willing to use the Constitution as toilet paper if it meant Trump would get four more years as a dictator. That is what is wrong. They claim to want "good things for America," but every one of their policies is actually harmful to America. It would take a special kind of idiot to not recognize that.
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  13321.  @charlesmartin1121  Trump likes dumb people, after all.
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  13322.  @JohnDoe-ew3xt  No, Trump committed treason when he went against the US Constitution in fall 2020/Jan 2021. That's sort of what caused all this mess.
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  13323.  @Electricslam77  What a self-burn.
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  13324.  @Electricslam77  "The best you got" was a joke about banging old ladies. Why should I need to bring my A-game to a grade school fight? Hit me with a serious political argument and I'll respond in kind. Behave like a rude child, and be treated accordingly.
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  13325.  @ronald3836  Well, the "established retail price" would be the setting before the change in question had been made. The point is that if a merger takes place, and it leads to worse outcomes to the consumers of that product category, then that is a bad thing. Obviously it would be on the FTC to show that any price ranges were not strictly unrelated market forces like supply chains or inflation. I don't think that this case specifically singles out specific logos, I think it is based around a certain swath of the market. Anything significantly more expensive would be considered a separate market, anything significantly cheaper would be considered a separate market. Not all products would have such cleanly defined bands of pricing, but luxury fashion certainly does. Again, YOU can argue that the distinctions that the market makes for these products are not relevant to you, and therefore should not be considered as relevant, but the fact is that these market conditions exist, whether you agree that they should or not.
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  13326.  @ronald3836  Well, the "established retail price" would be the setting before the change in question had been made. The point is that if a merger takes place, and it leads to worse outcomes to the consumers of that product category, then that is a bad thing. Obviously it would be on the FTC to show that any price ranges were not strictly unrelated market forces like supply chains or inflation. I don't think that this case specifically singles out specific logos, I think it is based around a certain swath of the market. Anything significantly more expensive would be considered a separate market, anything significantly cheaper would be considered a separate market. Not all products would have such cleanly defined bands of pricing, but luxury fashion certainly does. Again, YOU can argue that the distinctions that the market makes for these products are not relevant to you, and therefore should not be considered as relevant, but the fact is that these market conditions exist, whether you agree that they should or not.
    1
  13327.  @ronald3836  Well, the "established retail price" would be the setting before the change in question had been made. The point is that if a merger takes place, and it leads to worse outcomes to the consumers of that product category, then that is a bad thing. Obviously it would be on the FTC to show that any price ranges were not strictly unrelated market forces like supply chains or inflation.
    1
  13328.  @ronald3836  I don't think that this case specifically singles out specific logos, I think it is based around a certain swath of the market. Anything significantly more expensive would be considered a separate market, anything significantly cheaper would be considered a separate market. Not all products would have such cleanly defined bands of pricing, but luxury fashion certainly does. Again, YOU can argue that the distinctions that the market makes for these products are not relevant to you, and therefore should not be considered as relevant, but the fact is that these market conditions exist, whether you agree that they should or not.
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  13329.  @CPU9incarnate  But if their actions essentially eliminate a market, then that would still be a monopolistic action. The basic principle is that if a business leverages their market position in such a way that it harms consumers, and they would be incapable of making such a move without the strength of their market position, then that is something that anti-trust regulation should be capable of tackling.
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  13330.  @CPU9incarnate  The important thing there is "no particular reason." There is usually a reason. That reason would be relevant to the categorization. And if one business leaves a market, but other businesses fill the vacuum successfully, then I doubt any case would be brought. But if a business with significant market leverage effectively eliminates a market, and nothing exists to fill that vacuum, then that would be a matter for anti-trust. Some people treat Capitalism as some Platonic ideal, like it "just works," perfectly and without human intervention. That everything will somehow just naturally settled to a level that is ideal to all people. The reality is much messier than that, and applying policy to the ideal rather than the reality is just a recipe for disaster.
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  13331.  @CPU9incarnate  Agree to disagree, I guess.
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  13332. Flash once got shot in the back of the head, and instantly went into time stop as a reflex, and then moved out of the way, but this didn't start until he actually felt the bullet. I think when a speedster is running coast to coast, in a second it is mostly a blur to them. It wouldn't feel like only a second to them, but it might only feel like minutes. When they are traveling through an area like Nebraska, with wide open roads, they might perceive it as only a split second, while when moving through a major city on the highway it might feel more like thirty seconds or more of making sure to avoid traffic, and having to run through down town would be even more focused. The more attention you have to pay, the slower it would feel.
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  13333. Well, it's at least as closed today as it was before he took office. I think that was his point.
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  13334.  @glamdoll313  What do you believe she said in support of Hamas?
    1
  13335.  @nonyabusiness557  Do you know why Trump can't condemn his own hate speech during the debate?
    1
  13336.  @nonyabusiness557  He repeated inaccurate stereotypes about Haitians. He still has yet to apologize, and his sidekick is actually supporting such behavior.
    1
  13337.  @nonyabusiness557  Why are you concerned about other people saying hate speech, but ignoring your own hate speech? Why do you believe that anyone should care what you have to say on the topic?
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  13338. Well, they are allowed to take as much land from Russia as Russia has taken from them. It's only fair.
    1
  13339. I don't think it's remotely accurate to say that we've made them feel comfortable. Certainly Faux News has not.
    1
  13340. This should just be the new IQ test. If you believe that Trump will be reinstated as president, you're given a free padded hat and a pass for the short bus.
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  13341. Because he is not attacking witnesses.
    1
  13342.  @Watch_Tashi  Yup.
    1
  13343.  @seesharper8913  Anyone who chooses to do the wrong thing because they feel that the person promoting the right thing is "doing it wrong" is both an idiot and amoral. "I just don't like those eco-friendly types" is NEVER a valid excuse for inaction. and no, it's not a "both sides" issue, it ONLY became political because the fossil fuel lobbies chose to pay one side to stop all action against them.
    1
  13344.  @IronFreee  Because the point is that "ecologist" is not some monolithic group. It is possible to be "an ecologist" AND be anti-nuclear and it is also possible to be "an ecologist" AND be pro-nuclear, and both types exist. Nobody gets to decide who is or is not allowed to be "an ecologist" and nobody is allowed to decide what other ecologists believe in, but because there are ecologists on both sides of this issue, it would be inaccurate to portray "ecologists" as a general term as being anti-nuclear. So why is it that you insist that it be treated that way?
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  13345.  @Jim-tv2tk  When was "an imminent ice age" ever a thing, outside of oil industry board rooms?
    1
  13346.  @MrStubbs8157  You present it as though the changes we made did not help. If we had not made those changes, then things would have been as bad as today, but 15-20 years ago, and by today would have been several times worse. Yes, as we made certain things more efficient in the developed world, more and more of the third world started to build up and consume more power, but that would have happened with or without the efforts toward efficiency, so it was still a positive thing that we did it. We would still be in FAR worse shape had we not. Energy efficiency is not the enemy of progress, we can have efficient travel, and efficient package delivery, and all the great things people expect us to have, AND be energy efficient and carbon negative. They are not mutually exclusive. We just need to make the investments to GET us to that point, and if we'd made more of those investments twenty years ago, then it would have made the whole process faster and cheaper. We will ALWAYS need more energy than ever, but there's nothing that says that energy needs to come from carbon.
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  13347. There's no tangible proof that it's true either, so why trust it?
    1
  13348.  @johnteets2921  There are no "sins" involved here though, at least nothing that's more "sinful" than eating bacon. And if He didn't create people to be trans, then they would not exist. They do exist, therefore, God created them. They are a minority, yes, but that doesn't make them any less valid. There are more transgender people in the world than there are Inuits, and yet Inuits exist. There is no chromosome attached to trans people, any more than there is a hair color attached to being French. That's not even close to how it works. God tests different people in different ways. Some people He gives poor eyesight, and they have to spend money on corrective lenses. That does not mean that they do not exist, or that they should pretend that they have perfect eyesight and avoid glasses. If God made someone Trans, it was because He did not want them to live as their assigned gender, nor to be naturally born into their experienced gender, He wanted them to go on the journey of experiencing both sides, because that creates a unique piece of His puzzle.
    1
  13349.  @jimmywhitlow2012 There are no "sins" involved here though, at least nothing that's more "sinful" than eating bacon. And if He didn't create people to be trans, then they would not exist. They do exist, therefore, God created them. They are a minority, yes, but that doesn't make them any less valid. There are more transgender people in the world than there are Inuits, and yet Inuits exist.
    1
  13350.  @johnteets2921  There is no chromosome attached to trans people, any more than there is a hair color attached to being French. That's not even close to how it works. God tests different people in different ways. Some people He gives poor eyesight, and they have to spend money on corrective lenses. That does not mean that they do not exist, or that they should pretend that they have perfect eyesight and avoid glasses. If God made someone Trans, it was because He did not want them to live as their assigned gender, nor to be naturally born into their experienced gender, He wanted them to go on the journey of experiencing both sides, because that creates a unique piece of His puzzle.
    1
  13351. ​ @johnteets2921  There is no chromosome attached to trans people, any more than there is a hair color attached to being French. That's not even close to how it works. God tests different people in different ways. Some people He gives poor eyesight, and they have to spend money on corrective lenses. That does not mean that they do not exist, or that they should pretend that they have perfect eyesight and avoid glasses. If God made someone Trans, it was because He did not want them to live as their assigned gender, nor to be naturally born into their experienced gender, He wanted them to go on the journey of experiencing both sides, because that creates a unique piece of His puzzle.
    1
  13352.  @jimmywhitlow2012  There are no "sins" involved here though, at least nothing that's more "sinful" than eating bacon. And if He didn't create people to be trans, then they would not exist. They do exist, therefore, God created them. They are a minority, yes, but that doesn't make them any less valid. There are more transgender people in the world than there are Inuits, and yet Inuits exist. And yes, transgender and transexual are two different things, but the term "trans" refers to transgender people.
    1
  13353.  @johnteets2921 There are no "sins" involved here though, at least nothing that's more "sinful" than eating bacon. They do exist, therefore, God created them. They are a minority, yes, but that doesn't make them any less valid. There are more transgender people in the world than there are Inuits, and yet Inuits exist.
    1
  13354.  @alejandromolina5645  Not on my side. You can disagree, but that would only make you wrong.
    1
  13355.  @nugenthinking  Exactly, you can't contradict God's own words on the matter, so there's no point arguing.
    1
  13356.  @rickzalman4136  Those are behavioral issues, not issues central to their nature. I should also point out that most of those people cause harm to others, while trans people do not. Again, there is no sin to being trans, they are simply living as they were made.
    1
  13357.  @rickzalman4136  The difference being, those people have a choice in whether they commit those actions. Trans people have no choice in whether they are trans or not.
    1
  13358.  @IrishPureblood32  It's not a psychological issue, according to psychologists, at least. It's a general biological one. The treatment involves acceptance of their being trans. Alternate theories more often tend to lead to bad outcomes, so they are not recommended.
    1
  13359.  @rickzalman4136  People who believe they are trans at one point and then decide that they are not and reverse course are extremely rare, a fraction of a percent of trans people. This is an outlier result, and should not confuse people into not accepting the overwhelming majority of trans people who do not reverse course. ANY situation will have outlier results, they are not justification for marginalization.
    1
  13360. "Aside from all the other ones."
    1
  13361.  @ashot8794  Q relies on you being uneducated sheep that only listen to conspiracy theory nonsense. If any of Q's followers were educated, they would recognize him for the charlatan that he is. Also they would know what the word "charlatan" means.
    1
  13362. Oh neat, a Q&A with Trump's Daddy!
    1
  13363. They do, they found out that there were no financial crimes here. Republicans will never accept that.
    1
  13364.  @crownuk4867  You have seem people claiming to have evidence. If it were actual evidence then it would have been presented in a forum where they would be held accountable for lying about it. But of course there is a sucker born every minute, and eighteen years later he votes Republican.
    1
  13365.  @LEA-4America  I don't personally think that heterosexuals need a visibility day, since they are far more accepted in society, but you want one, push for it to happen. The existence of Trans Visibility Day does nothing to prevent a hetero visibility day.
    1
  13366.  @amandapeluso4217  Then there is no risk of nuclear war, I'm glad we've solved that problem.
    1
  13367. The problem with the House is that a lot of the people who elected them are idiots though, and they are doing what they were put there to do. Look at Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gaetz, for example.
    1
  13368. Trump is father to a lot of illegitimate things, but IVF is not one of them.
    1
  13369. @ No, it was imaginary. Nobody just got $750 from FEMA and that was the end of it. The $750 was the amount that FEMA was mandated by congress to hand out immediately, to cover immediate expenses like food, clothing, and shelter in the first week or two. Everyone ALSO got further coverage based on the specific damages they incurred. This is new, before, they wouldn't even get that $750.
    1
  13370. Because it's no longer an issue. "nobody gives 2 shits about that" is the perfectly appropriate response to be having about it while everyone is instead focused on more important things.
    1
  13371. @ Toppling other governments has nothing to do with USAID. That would be the CIA.
    1
  13372. @ That has nothing to do with USAID though.
    1
  13373. @ Wrong agency.
    1
  13374.  @class.C  You think that being an ally means they have to give us stuff? That does not sound like an ally to me, it sounds like a vassal.
    1
  13375.  @rasheedh7043  They were taking a measured approach. There was of course disagreement on this from both sides, but it's the choice they made.
    1
  13376. If Biden were the governor of Texas,. there would be no problem.
    1
  13377. Trump: "Who is this 'Pence' guy?"
    1
  13378. Putin was mad that his plant got kicked out. I guess we should just give Putin whatever he wants so that he doesn't get mad at us. No, wait, that would be bad.
    1
  13379.  @maxryan9052  How could Zelensky possibly get a US plant? How would that even work?
    1
  13380.  @maxryan9052  What leads you to believe that Trump had the fear or respect of anyone?
    1
  13381.  @alrightyoreilly19  But nor does it justify those consequences. The right thing to do is still the right thing to do, and it's still wrong to punish that, even if the letter of the law says that you're allowed to.
    1
  13382. They changed their minds because Trump told them to. It had been fully negotiated by both parties before that.
    1
  13383.  @carolmcelheny2752  I did.
    1
  13384.  @bradj8215  If an average 5000 migrants per day are encountered at the border, they will close the legal entry points until this backlog can be cleared. There is currently NO such limitation. ALL of these migrants are still accountable to US laws, so basically, NOBODY is getting in any easier than the current rules, it ONLY makes things more difficult for migrants.
    1
  13385.  @bradj8215  But we can't keep them in Mexico. That is literally impossible, no matter how "serious" we are about it, no matter how much money is thrown at the problem. We can catch them after they cross, that's about it. So the question is, what to do about it when they do cross. We can't just summarily deport them, because that is unconstitutional, so then what? And for the record, it didn't work the way you seem to think under the previous administration. That's just what he claimed it did.
    1
  13386.  @bradj8215  But we can't keep them in Mexico. That is literally impossible, no matter how "serious" we are about it, no matter how much money is thrown at the problem. We can arrest them after they cross, that's about it. So the question is, what to do about it when they do cross. We can't just summarily deport them, because that is unconstitutional, so then what? And for the record, it didn't work the way you seem to think under Trump. That's just what he claimed it did.
    1
  13387.  @bradj8215  But we can't keep them in Mexico. That is literally impossible, no matter how "serious" we are about it, no matter how much money is thrown at the problem. We can catch them after they cross, that's about it. So the question is, what to do about it when they do cross. We can't just summarily deport them, because that is unconstitutional, so then what?
    1
  13388.  @jimconard9341  Look it up, you'll find out the places where you're wrong here. The one part that you did get right is that the asylum backlog is insanely long, and that's why a border bill is needed to clear up that backlog.
    1
  13389.  @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.
    1
  13390.  @jimconard9341  Of, first, the Mexican government was not "forced" to do anything, they were bribed into it, bribes that they no longer feel are worth it. If you believe that Trump could reactivate the deal at his whims, then I have a bridge in Baltimore to sell you. Also, Joey has already imposed harsher tariffs than Trump did, he just directed them at our actual enemies rather than at our allies.
    1
  13391.  @jimconard9341  Of, first, the Mexican government was not "forced" to do anything, they were bribed into it, bribes that they no longer feel are worth it. If you believe that Trump could reactivate the deal at his whims, then I have a bridge in Baltimore you might be interested in. Also, Joey has already imposed harsher tariffs than Trump did, he just directed them at our actual enemies rather than at our allies.
    1
  13392.  @jimconard9341  And the increased flow in 2021 had to do with the reduction in the pandemic, not with changes to US border policy. It was basically just two years of traffic all at once. And we would have no problem absorbing these people if they were processed in a reasonable manner. Previous immigration waves were MUCH higher as a percentage of the existing population. Immigrants ADD to the economy, not reduce it, and commit crimes at LOWER rates than the existing population, not higher. You just don't want them to stay here.
    1
  13393.  @jimconard9341  And the increased flow in 2021 had to do with the reduction in the pandemic, not with changes to US border policy. It was basically just two years of traffic all at once.
    1
  13394.  @jimconard9341  Oh, and it's worth noting that the Mexican government will not reinstate the remain in Mexico policy, no matter what a current or future US President might want, and that Joe has implemented much harsher tariffs than Donald did, he has just directed them toward our enemies, rather than our allies.
    1
  13395.  @jimconard9341  Oh, and it's worth noting that the Mexican government will not reinstate the remain in Mexico policy, no matter what a current or future US President might want, and that Joe has implemented much harsher tariffs than Donald did.
    1
  13396.  @jimconard9341  The flow was decreased during the pandemic because there was a pandemic. It started dropping before any US policy changes took place. It started coming back up again once the initial lockdowns started to end and people were traveling more freely. Changing conditions in various southern countries was also a major factor, given that people coming from some countries grew more as others fell. You can generally track how many people will show up at the US border by how political and economic situations are developing in those countries, and many of them were hit harder by the global recession than the US was, because they didn't have a Biden at the helm to keep things running smoothly. and no, Mexico has no interest in doing the remain in Mexico policy again. I'm sure that we could get them to do it somehow, either through force or through bribery, but the cost of doing so would be FAR more than the benefit of it to the US, unless you are taking the stance that immigration is the worst possible outcome, which would be silly.
    1
  13397.  @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?
    1
  13398.  @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.
    1
  13399.  @jimconard9341  I'm well acquainted with the word filters. 1. 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.
    1
  13400.  @jimconard9341  2. 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.
    1
  13401.  @jimconard9341  3. 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.
    1
  13402.  @jimconard9341  4. 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.
    1
  13403.  @jimconard9341  1. 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 drug smuggling can succeed.
    1
  13404.  @mikeguderjohn9105  Their own words. McConnell said straitout that he did not intend to live up to his oath of impartiality, and has been coordinating with the White House on this, which would make living up to that oath impossible.
    1
  13405.  @azaleagirl6275  Yes, and all the crooks are being accounted for, the ones that got indicted last week, and their co-conspirators. A lot more of those will end up in the Georgia indictments.
    1
  13406.  @kernelpanic251  Unfortunately, yeah, but that is why so many countries are now rushing to join NATO before it's too late. We are at least helping Ukraine as best we can without joining the war ourselves though, so it's not like we just completely left them to die.
    1
  13407.  @thomashasty2936  Well, aside from rape, but the statue of limitations was up on that one for criminal charges. He's currently under indictment for fraud charges, and will likely be convicted on those, the other more serious charges are still ongoing.
    1
  13408. Unfortunately, half the voters get their "news" from Narnia, so they literally do not see any of this.
    1
  13409.  @brookingsbeachcomber  The wall didn't help though. They just go over it.
    1
  13410.  @brookingsbeachcomber  Joe's deported more than Donny did.
    1
  13411.  @mike-xn1qj  The Berlin Wall was only 96 miles long. The US southern border is 1954 miles long, which is larger. Walls only function as a short term deterrent IF they are very heavily guarded. There are not enough people in the US to adequately man a 2000 mile wall. Notable, they did not build ANY wall between the East and West German border, which was shorter.
    1
  13412.  @mike-xn1qj  Walls are like dams, they can slow the passes temporarily, but eventually the flow will return to the pre-barrier rate. They can NEVER reduce the flow permanently. You build a wall and it might slow the flow for a few months while people figure out the best way to go around it, but eventually they will have plenty of methods to do so, and the flow will resume at the previous level. All barriers do is empower the cartels, because when people need special routes in, the cartels will always have them, whereas when they can enter through ports of entry, they have no reason to get involved with cartels. Also, more people attempting to cross the border today get caught than ever before. In the early 2000s, most people attempting to get across did so without getting caught at all, now almost all of them are caught and processed. If you actually want to solve the problems at the border, then we need more border judges to process claims, so that those with legitimate claims can get work visas and start contributing to the economy, while people without legitimate claims get deported.
    1
  13413. ​ @mike-xn1qj  Walls work like dams. They can slow the flow in the very short term, until they figure out the best ways around it, but they can't stop the flow completely, and eventually it will always return to pre-wall levels. Supply and demand.
    1
  13414.  @mike-xn1qj  Walls only benefit cartels, because when it's difficult to cross, good people will need help to get across, and only cartels will provide it. If people can cross at ports of entry, then cartels have no power.
    1
  13415.  @mike-xn1qj  Also, the Great Wall of China failed too.
    1
  13416.  @mike-xn1qj  Building walls only serves the cartels.
    1
  13417.  @mike-xn1qj  Walls only benefit gangs, since they mean that good people will need help to get across, and the gangs are the only ones offering. If they can cross at ports of entries, gangs lose all power.
    1
  13418.  @mike-xn1qj  I said that a wall would not work to solve this border situation. That remains a fact. The existing portions of wall, which have been there long before the previous administration, were plenty to serve the function of diverting casual crossing, but beyond that it's diminishing returns, and can never actually solve anything. And again, China's wall failed. It's not that it's impossible to build such a wall, it's just that it would never be worth the cost, and would be impossible to keep adequately maintained. Again, the entire border between Egypt and Gaza is smaller than the city of Manhattan. You really need to learn your geography and history.
    1
  13419. Weren't people whining about getting Pandas in to sniff paper ballots to see if they came from China? Nothing will satisfy the loonies, they will always have some excuse or another as to how their idiot couldn't possibly have actually lost the election.
    1
  13420. I think you misunderstand, the corrupt Republican states are called "red" states, because of all the blood. The blue states are doing fine, relatively speaking.
    1
  13421.  @RubyCampa  Good thing you're outnumbered, because that sounds awful.
    1
  13422.  @cabinfevernanna5897  No, just an honest one. I'm sorry if the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  13423. What's not to believe? Did all the people Trump brought over vote for him?
    1
  13424.  @drewgoin8849  Same place all their numbers come from, imagination!
    1
  13425. Second worst.
    1
  13426. I think we've learned what we could from the pandemic, and the next pandemic that comes along we'll be better prepared, just as previous outbreaks had better prepared us for this one. That's all we can reasonably hope for, right?
    1
  13427.  @chrisschibel6013  Right, it was more likely just a natural infection pattern. If it had been an accident of some kind, then China would have been better on top of shutting it down than they ended up being.
    1
  13428. The problem seems to have nothing to do with cars, but with pedestrians. Don't cross the street! That's for cars!
    1
  13429.  @moth5799  Well, what if your destination is on the other side of a gator-filled river, would your answer be "swim anyway?" No, you go to the nearest safe bridge and cross there. If people choose to cut across, then they are putting themselves at risk. These roadways are not built for pedestrians, and that's ok.
    1
  13430. @Null Pointer Pedestrians are jumping off buildings and blaming the ground for hitting them.
    1
  13431. Wouldn't the best solution to safe pick-up of cargo be guylines? There should be a fairly simple way that an airship could drive close to a target, drop four or more guylines with drogues at the end, which could be driven by small vehicles over to giant winches, which could drag the vehicles down to the ground evenly, avoiding both the control and lift issues. Yes, it would require infrastructure investment at the hubs, but the same is true of current shipyards, and I don't think these things would be as expensive as their heavy cranes, or maintaining runways.
    1
  13432. Lol.
    1
  13433.  @Ultima742  If that's how you choose to define yourself, I won't argue.
    1
  13434. @ That's imaginary though, research is your friend.
    1
  13435. @ Exactly, if only you would give research a try.
    1
  13436. @ He's allowing a foreign country to kidnap an American resident. Just bending over for them and taking it.
    1
  13437. @ But now he's legally required to get him back, and he's impotent to do so!
    1
  13438. @ That's a likely excuse. Trump is legally required to get the guy back, are you suggesting he would just ignore the Supreme Court like that?! He's failed, but trying to save face by claiming he doesn't actually want him back anyway.
    1
  13439. @ The courts ruled that he should not be deported and must be returned to the US. That is the current law, however much you might want it to be something different. Let go of the TDS.
    1
  13440. So Governor Youngkin is another pro=-groomer Republican? I'm not surprised.
    1
  13441. The video explains where this information comes from, apparently the DoE monitors some labs, so that's why they have any conclusion on this matter at all. You should still get your medical information from the CDC though, as they are the ones monitoring the virus itself.
    1
  13442. Yeah, the war should be over soon. Putin is weak.
    1
  13443. Yes! The border under Biden is running way too efficiently and as it should! He should return it to the disaster that we had under Trump were children were pulled from their families and kept in prison camps for years at a time. That worked so much better at being an inhumane torture chamber.
    1
  13444.  @gailcotter4228  The aid accomplishes much more than that.
    1
  13445. @ Nope, that had nothing to do with cost of living. It's only going to get worse from here.
    1
  13446.  @aljirou29  So let's say that there are two commentators, A and B. If a foreign government goes to one of them and says "spread our message and we will give you money," and they do change their message, then would you agree that is foreign interference?" Now what if instead, A was saying things against that country, while B was already saying things positive about that country, and so that country just gave loads of money to B, allowing them to improve the quality of their program and expand their reach over A. Would that be foreign interference?
    1
  13447. Nah, it's a dumb point, for dumb people to hear and go " SUCH A GOOD POINT," because THEY treat knowledge like religion, "up for debate" and may the most charismatic speaker be considered true.
    1
  13448. Meanwhile Trump wants to have them competing with people in China making shoes for $1 an hour.
    1
  13449. They don't let you into the Republican party unless you prove that you're a beta, and that includes Trump himself.
    1
  13450. People keep calling this a coup. It wasn't a coup. It was a TOUR GROUP. They were just tourists, like any other. Why are people making this out to be such a big deal?
    1
  13451.  @thewizardcat9934  Yeah, but a lot of tour groups get called "insurrections," it's just something that happens to tour groups sometimes.
    1
  13452. Lol, this is a pretty silly scenario. It's not like even the county breakdowns would matter. Yes, the Republicans are more spread out, but the Democrats are more concentrated. Even in majority Republican counties, there are plenty of Democrats living there, so there really would be no "lines" in this conflict. A Republican/Democrat conflict would instead tend to break like this, one party has official political control of America. Members of the other party believe that they have "gone too far," but cannot change things through democratic means, so they rebel. The majority of the military would not split directly on partisan lines, but rather on the righteousness of the rebel cause. If the rebellion was generally viewed as illegitimate, then few would join it, even if they shared the party of those leading the rebellion. If the rebellion were considered legitimate, then few people would rise in defense of the establishment, even if the establishment was their own party. I think in most likely scenarios, a Republican-led civil war would be doomed to overall failure.
    1
  13453.  @jighjightsegha755  He also bankrolled the campaign of the sitting President elect and many members of congress.
    1
  13454. As someone who's been reading comics over 30 years now and gone through a lot of positions on this topic, the one thing that I can't get past in the modern era is just how literally IMPOSSIBLE it would be to maintain a secret identity in 2024. I mean, at minimum you would need to have a full body, intentionally misleading costume that never breaks, voice editing, paranoid roundabout ways to convert from civilian to hero, etc., otherwise, your villains would inevitably figure out your identity eventually. Between voice analysis, facial recognition that could work with even a Batman style cowl, finger printing, DNA testing from any blood or hair samples, video cameras everywhere, etc., if anyone REALLY cared who some masked person was, they would be able to figure it out, no question. So, basically, what's the point in trying?
    1
  13455.  @rmsgrey  Yeah, but when he gets hit by a literal lightning bolt every time he transforms, a villain that could collect all video footage around every unusual lightning strike could figure out that the same kid is found running to and from those areas, and would likely at least be connected.
    1
  13456.  @rmsgrey  Well, making that logical leap isn't that hard either. When Shazam show up someplace, you just use cameras to trace backwards to the last place you can see him, and even if you don't catch him changing on film, you could probably notice the lightning bolt in the area (which he wears on his chest anyway). You'd only need to do that once or twice to notice a pattern. Not every villain could manage all this, of course, but there are tons of "super genius" villains out there that should have no problem doing this sort of thing, and either use the info themselves, or sell it off to other villains.
    1
  13457.  @FuzzyWalrus123  Yes, and I did.
    1
  13458.  @FuzzyWalrus123  He never said he carried weapons to war though.
    1
  13459.  @FuzzyWalrus123  He did serve in Operation Enduring Freedom. Not in a battlefield role, but, again, he never claimed to have served in a battlefield role.
    1
  13460.  @FuzzyWalrus123  He never claimed to carry weapons to war, you are misspeaking about that. If you can misspeak about it so often, why not cut him the same slack?
    1
  13461.  @codebloke2200  I can't find any story about Walz claiming to have PTSD from being at war. Perhaps you misunderstood something, or more likely was told he said something he did not. The nearest I can find is a 2007 hearing in which he was telling families that he served in OEF, which he did. He spoke about how the military was counseling returning soldiers, not claiming that he was himself suffering from PTSD.
    1
  13462.  @FuzzyWalrus123  In 2018 he said that he carried weapons in war, not to. What he meant to say was weapons "of" war, but there's no point arguing over semantics. The point is that he served our country with valor both in and outside the military.
    1
  13463.  @FuzzyWalrus123  You said that he said that he carried weapons to war. Clearly you misspoke. Allow him the same courtesy. And he was in war, he served in Operation Enduring Freedom. He was never in battle, but he never claimed to be. Neither was JD Vance.
    1
  13464.  @FuzzyWalrus123  He was called up in Operation Enduring Freedom. He worked in a support base in Italy. That WAS part of the war. It was not a battlefield position, nor did he ever claim that it was, but it WAS part of the war, and he was in it.
    1
  13465.  @FuzzyWalrus123  Are you saying that he didn't?
    1
  13466.  @FuzzyWalrus123  But he WAS mobilized as part of an ongoing war. If a soldier was assigned a gun in England in 1942, could you reasonably argue that they carried a weapon in war? Again, he NEVER claimed to have participated in battle or be in a war zone. How finely do you have to split hairs here, when his opponent is the biggest liar in human history? It takes "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?" to a whole nothing level.
    1
  13467.  @FuzzyWalrus123  You misspoke AGAIN. He NEVER claimed he carried a weapon to war. He claimed he carried a weapon in war, and he did do that, because he was deployed as part of a war operation. That is a fact. I'm sorry that the facts don't care about your feelings. He NEVER claimed to have been in battle or be deployed to a combat zone, so to act outraged that he had said things he never said is on you, not on him.
    1
  13468.  @Stephanie-ln7rc  You're thinking about the reds. The blues are opposing the communists.
    1
  13469.  @HealthySolutions632  No, I meant last chance to have the country. The next Trump administration plans to scrap it for parts.
    1
  13470.  @biderdoo  The Biden admin ended two wars. The US has not entered any wars over their time in office.
    1
  13471.  @JimGruver-l9l  She is running against Trump. This entire election is a comparison between the two candidates. She is the better choice because of all the many many ways she is better than him.
    1
  13472.  @biderdoo  Yes, exactly, they call that "project 2025" today. Vote blue, or we get 1984 in action.
    1
  13473.  @biderdoo  The WSJ is a far-right rag, why would anyone take their personal opinion seriously on anything? Also, why do you have to get gross when talking about her, when her opponent is objectively a far worse human being?
    1
  13474.  @biderdoo  The WSJ is a right rag, why would anyone take their personal opinion seriously on anything? Also, why do you have to get gross when talking about her, when her opponent is objectively a far worse human being?
    1
  13475.  @TheTonyEd  Ah, I see, you are just poorly informed. Maybe don't trust the faux news to tell you what to think and look it up yourself.
    1
  13476.  @Paige-Turnner  Yes, raising the debt ceiling does not fix the problem, but NOT raising the debt ceiling makes the problem MUCH worse. So you raise the debt ceiling, that part is not negotiable, and then, if you still see a problem, then you fix that problem, likely through the budget process. There is no world in which not raising the debt ceiling makes anything better.
    1
  13477.  @furiousapplesack  The IDF attacked it.
    1
  13478. The Us could not end this without actively attacking Russia, which would only escalate before it ended it, and opens up significant risk of nuclear war. There is no easy solution to this, outside of Putin just pulling out.
    1
  13479. He knew the same as everyone else, that VP Biden's "illegal activities, bribes and schemes" existed only in the imaginations of Faux News pundits.
    1
  13480.  @YankeeDoodle2  Ok, explain why you believe that, beyond just that you disagree with them and don't want them to do what you don't like?
    1
  13481.  @michaelgentry402  Bill of Rights, first amendment, first line. They literally made it the first thing.
    1
  13482.  @michaelgentry402  What do you believe it means to require a poster be placed in every government-run school that reads "Thou shalt have no other gods before [the Christian god]?," specifically? Is that not the government establishing that as the state religion? How else should one interpret that phrase?
    1
  13483. Why? What if we agree with them?
    1
  13484.  @firehawk6911  Oh no, I'm not maga.
    1
  13485. There can be no threat to democracy greater than allowing an established autocrat from taking it over. Germany learned this in the 30s. The 14th exists for a reason, traitors have no place holding public office.
    1
  13486. Yes, this is why the rich must be lest with no place to run. If we keep just letting rich people and corporations "nope" off to some tax haven each time they're asked to pay their fair share, then that's what they will continue to do, and all the world's wealth will just end up on an island somewhere, while the rest of the world just drifts into poverty.
    1
  13487. @Jeff Furrow Agreed. Irrelevant to my point, but totally agreed.
    1
  13488. If someone wanted to "conquer social media platforms," all they would need to do is design an algorithm that priorities "joy" over "engagement." Don't feed people stuff that made them angry or that was misleading, feed them stuff that people enjoyed. Have a system that lets everyone label how a post made them feel, and seek out the ones that made them feel "happy." If someone constantly says posts make them "happy" which also got a ton of "angry" responses, maybe devalue that person's feedback a bit in the outcomes. Also devalue the "cheap" happy stuff a little bit, not entirely, show some puppy and kitty pictures in there, but if there's not a balance then that's all anyone would see. And frogs. :D
    1
  13489. Yup, if it doesn't confirm your biases, what's even the point? Better to go what Faux News, where they will tell you exactly what you want to hear, every time, rather than bothering with "the truth" like some "media outlet."
    1
  13490. If they do, they will make billions off the open and shut lawsuit after they get it back.
    1
  13491. Non-citizens are not voting, and nobody wants them to. Also, we should all oppose China and Russia influencing our elections. Unless you work for them.
    1
  13492. Date labels may be wrong, but I also have come across expired food, and I do not want to buy it. A lot of food cannot be smelled before buying it.I want fair warning that a food item might be less than stable. If they are going to change the labeling, I would want them to add a range to it. Instead of "sell by May 5th 2023," make it "ideal freshness to May 5th 2023, but likely safe through July 5th 2023." That at least gives me fair warning that even if I bought it on May 12th, it will probably be fine even a month after that. Of course they would need to have a law that prevents the company labeling it that way from getting in trouble if it ends up spoiled before that. And of course if they do that, they also need to ensure that companies do not cheat their expected dates just because they can't get in trouble over it. So it gets complicated.
    1
  13493.  @dorianshadesofgray He is a christian. Much more Christian than his opponent, who is selling Bibles to pay for his sexual assault conviction.
    1
  13494.  @juliomaldonado4028  It's always been on March 31st. It just happens to share the day with Easter this year. Jesus would approve, because He loves trans people as He made them.
    1
  13495.  @juliomaldonado4028  Biden didn't declare ut trans day though. It already was. He just made note of it. And again, both Jesus and the Lord would have no problems with this. Not really sorry if you don't like it.
    1
  13496.  @juliomaldonado4028  If you don't think that I understand, then tell me what I'm not understanding. Can we at least agree on the following points? 1) Trans Awareness Day has existed since 2009 and has always been on March 31st, Biden did not choose to create it or put it on this date. 2) Biden has publicly celebrated the day every day of his presidency so far, this year is no exception. 3) Many Christians celebrate multiple things on Easter Sunday, many of which have nothing to do with Jesus, so celebrating this as well is no burden on their faith. 4) Jesus loves His Trans children just as much as he loves you, and welcomes any efforts to celebrate them. Such efforts do not take away from Him in any way, since celebrating His children is celebrating Him. 5) People who do not understand that do not truly follow Christ. I assume these are non-controversial points? So what am I not getting here?
    1
  13497.  @juliomaldonado4028  I was trying to summarize. You did say that it had been around before earlier, I did see that, but then you also kept saying that he'd "declared" it today, as though that were some new development, rather than just a continuation of the existing holiday. I don't understand what your point is if you agree on that. What problem do you have with Biden celebrating both holidays that take place on the 31st?
    1
  13498.  Daniel von Strangle  Yes, we will stop for one fucking day. On November 4th.
    1
  13499. So here's an interesting point, the solar system is mostly "flat", right? I mean, it's not completely flat, but most things fall in a generally horizontal plane. So if you're in Earth orbit and fire something "outward," then it might hit some other planet or ship or whatever on its way to the edge of the solar system, and then maybe boomerang back and make another pass, and so on. But what if you fire "up" or "down?" If you're in Earth orbit and fire "up," then it would keep going "up," until eventually it might be pulled back "down" toward Earth's orbit by the earth and sun, although presumably if it did again cross the solar system's plane it would be further inward by that point? So I suppose it would not make it impossible to hit other targets, but I do think that firing up and down would reduce the odds of hitting things greatly, since those projectiles would stay out of the standard shipping lanes for almost their entire lifespan. That being the case, perhaps it would make sense for one of the "Geneva conventions" of space warfare to be that battles take place in a "vertical" orientation, or at least that battleships first fly above/below the plane to fight horizontally (like higher than the top of the sun's sphere), which would at least cause shots to travel diagonally once gravity takes hold.
    1
  13500. It was Republicans that banned feeding people in line to vote.
    1
  13501. Having a debate would in no way help the pro-vaccine movement, because no mater what evidence he presents, RFK and Joe will continue to ignore it, and continue to treat their own nonsense conclusions as being equally valid, and their stubborn insistence on their own ignorance will be very compelling to their followers, who prefer a completely wrong position, defended confidently, to an accurate position, defended using boring numbers. That is how all confidence games function.
    1
  13502.  @nwbw217  Same reason he won't debate RFK, they are both crackpots and "debating them" would change nothing.
    1
  13503.  @Poodlepuffin So are every red state, in every case .But God bless them they keep trying.
    1
  13504.  @RFJersey  Mandates should also have been at the federal level.
    1
  13505.  @RFJersey  I'm as ok with that as I would be with state governments taking away my rights. I believe that in public health emergencies it is rational to take steps to reduce lives lost, and that if there had been more federal mandates, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved. Don't you view that as a positive thing?
    1
  13506.  @RFJersey  Everyone is. The only point of disagreement is on "which rights." Generally, if it's necessary to save lives, then it is better than taking a hard line stance that anyone can do whatever they want without consequences.
    1
  13507.  @RFJersey  When it is not involving a communicable disease, yes. But in that case, it might limit the options available to you.
    1
  13508.  @RFJersey  You don't have to, that's fine.
    1
  13509.  @daltonkorab2270  Well then why bring them up now, as if they are relevant to what is happening at the moment?
    1
  13510.  @daltonkorab2270  How so?
    1
  13511. Yeah, really all stores need to move online. It's so much more convenient.
    1
  13512.  @brianmclaughlin4419  Well, the Chinese care, since it gave them easier access to our state secrets.
    1
  13513. Who banned Easter?
    1
  13514.  @tinyvr7036  More people means more money for the average American.
    1
  13515.  @tinyvr7036  All of them, really. Rich, poor, in the middle. No survey necessary, it's basic economics.
    1
  13516.  @tinyvr7036  Crime is the lowest it's been in decades, and homelessness has always been an issue, but it's being worked on.
    1
  13517.  @Davmartin-kp1yq  Well, it is a fact that crime is down, not up. Sorry if the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  13518.  @johnanon658  "They" didn't do that. It had already been trans day for 15 years.
    1
  13519.  @shanghunter7697  It's probably nice there, they have much better weather. Never really been though, outside of a stopover at LAX. I also don't typically drink tap water, since the well is a bit sketchy. What relevance does this have to the topic at hand though?
    1
  13520.  @shanghunter7697  Many of the smartest people in the country live in Cali, I don't see how smarts would factor into it. I just happen to live elsewhere. Plenty of Americans do. If I had a particular reason to live in California, I don't see why not.
    1
  13521.  @flaccidego4291  Not really.
    1
  13522.  @miorosa318  If you actually watch journalists, they DO say "alleged" about Trump when it is referencing things that are only alleged. They only drop the "alleged" in cases where he has actually been convicted, or where the public evidence is insurmountable. Of course, Trump does so many crimes that they probably do make mistakes from time to time. And I can't think of anything Trump has been alleged of that has turned out to be false, can you?
    1
  13523. Yes, if only he were inhumanly cruel, he could solve the border crisis! Why does he have to treat human beings like human beings, knowing that it will just encourage them to behave like human beings? Why does he oppose the Republican Final Solution?!
    1
  13524.  @boofert.washington2499  Of course we can afford it. It's a drop in the bucket compared to the tax cut for billionaires the last guy put into place.
    1
  13525. It seems neat, but they need to make one that can be used outside of the iOS ecosystem. I want an Android version or better yet, Windows.
    1
  13526. MAGA bashing would not be a Hatch Act violation. MAGA is a clear and present danger to the US, and a valid topic of official White House communication.
    1
  13527. It's been 20 years of the same story, because Republicans refuse to get anything done on the border. They prefer to just use it as a campaign wedge.
    1
  13528. I love Oreo cookie, but not the white cream in them. Too fakey. I used to get the Nabisco wafers sometimes, which is basically the chocolate with no creme, but they are more expensive. Now I get the dark chocolate Orea Thins, which have much more chocolately goodness relative to the cream.
    1
  13529. I REALLY wish they would just let you use the interface from the previous versions. My new computer forced me to use Windows 11, but there is no button you just make it look like Windows 10 did. Why not? That should be easy to do!
    1
  13530. You mean he poked his head into the bubble and got stung. The overwhelming majority of Americans are supportive of the gun control bill he's working on.
    1
  13531.  @SpecialistQKD  If he broke federal gun laws already on the books then he would have been charged before Trump left office.
    1
  13532.  @SpecialistQKD  If the Googles is telling you otherwise then the Googles is wrong. Simple rule of thumb to go by, any Democrat who got past Jan 20th 2021 without being charged of a federal crime by Trump's DoJ, has not committed any federal crimes.
    1
  13533.  @SpecialistQKD  They are investigating the gallows, although really that was more of a showpiece than a practical device. More important is investigating the people planning and coordinating the attempt for Trump to remain in power, and that is the purpose of the Jan 6th commission.
    1
  13534. And when you don't have significant permitting processes, then people die, because corners get cut.
    1
  13535. I think the ads themselves are good, but the funding of the project is pretty sketchy, and I worry that they might be trying to attract people with the message of the commercials, but then start to rabbit-hole people into more extremist views. The Hobby Lobby guy is supposedly linked to this campaign.
    1
  13536. Putin will agree, he will just violate it.
    1
  13537. Let's not pretend that they aren't going to just hand Trump's Daddy whatever he wants.
    1
  13538.  @jeff5279  Exactly. A vote for Biden is the only rational vote to make, at this point.
    1
  13539.  @henryrayos2449  The "threat to democracy stuff" is true though. It's in his platform. They are just accurately reporting on it. What matters is whether that bothers you or not.
    1
  13540. My dad went to a one-room schoolhouse in the 1940s and 50s, rural PA.
    1
  13541.  @glidercoach  Neither of those things are true.
    1
  13542.  @karljermunson9910  What would that have to do with anything? Nothing is turning back the clock to before 2020, regardless of who the President is.
    1
  13543. But saying that the gun was not responsible is like saying that the car crash would have happened with or without the car.
    1
  13544.  @Michael-s8i  Of course it was the person behind the gun that was responsible, but the fact remains that if he did not have that gun, he would not have been capable of doing what he did, and removing the guns from the equation is much easier to do than removing the people behind them.
    1
  13545.  @Michael-s8i  Nobody's ignoring the second amendment, the National Guard can keep their guns as the founders intended.
    1
  13546.  @Michael-s8i  Under US law, however, the "well regulated militia" is only the US National Guard. Anything else would not qualify.
    1
  13547.  @Michael-s8i  I did, that's how I know about the "well regulated militia" part. They even wrote the Militia Act of 1792 to define what a US militia was, in case anyone got confused, and it's since been updated several times. I notice you cite several recent decisions by the activist court. These should be disregarded, as they disregarded the Constitution in their rulings.
    1
  13548. @ Which treaty do you believe NATO broke?
    1
  13549. What have they ;lied about?
    1
  13550.  @m6a1u57  I'm pretty sure "terror" is right there in the name.
    1
  13551. We all know Trump's plan, "hand Ukraine to Putin, so that he can move on to the next country on his list in peace."
    1
  13552. They were not based on any scientific report. They were based on conspiracy theorist fan fiction in the for of a "scientific report." Something calling itself science does not make it science.
    1
  13553. Who rationally claims otherwise?
    1
  13554.  @themadscientist40k  Oh. Yeah, that would check out.
    1
  13555. "I have appraised myself and found no wrongdoing."
    1
  13556.  @Melikegames3100  There are no US bases in Ukraine, that did not stop Russia invading. Anyone who believes they are safe from unprovoked Russian aggression is a fool. Also, what would distance to Moscow have to do with anything? EVER? If it came to such warfare, no part of Russia would be safe from attack, even if there were NO NATO presence in Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania. Moscow can be hit from the US just as easily as from any of those countries if there is a need to do so. NATO could occupy a small town right down the street from Moscow, fill it with all their best weapons, and that would make no strategic difference to Russia's overall safety. It's idiotic to believe that Russia invaded Ukraine over any reasonable justification, Putin SAID why they invaded, they invaded because they consider Ukraine to be a part of Russia, and reject any attempt for Ukraine to make friends with anyone else. Well Russia never had any right to decide such things.
    1
  13557.  @baiwuli6781  That's why everyone jumps in at the same time. :D
    1
  13558.  @zadovrus1624  What would that have to do with anything?
    1
  13559. Yes, which is a form of democracy, so if someone is attacking those democratic values, they are attacking the republic.
    1
  13560. A win for hypocrisy everywhere. "Embryos are people", except where it's inconvenient to us.
    1
  13561. Probably zero. Why would you think otherwise?
    1
  13562.  @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.
    1
  13563. ​ @browncow8422 You've been told to believe that is the case, but that is not the reality. Biden had enforced the laws we have, this is the result of that. The increased numbers of migrants are due to decades of attempts to suppress the natural demand, combined with increased pressures in their local countries forcing them out. It was higher under the last administration than the one before it, and will likely be higher still under the next. Also, there is nothing remotely illegal about releasing migrants before their hearing. It is the standard practice, actually. Who told you otherwise, and why? and of course the solution is simply, raise the supply of visas to meet demand. Problems solved.
    1
  13564.  @browncow8422 1. You've been told to believe that is the case, but that is not the reality. Biden had enforced the laws we have, this is the result of that.
    1
  13565.  @browncow8422  2. The increased numbers of migrants are due to decades of attempts to suppress the natural demand, combined with increased pressures in their local countries forcing them out. It was higher under the last administration than the one before it, and will likely be higher still under the next.
    1
  13566.  @browncow8422  3. Also, there is nothing remotely illegal about releasing migrants before their hearing. It is the standard practice, actually. Who told you otherwise, and why?
    1
  13567.  @browncow8422  4. and of course the solution is simple, raise the supply of visas to meet demand. Problems solved.
    1
  13568.  @browncow8422  2. The increased numbers of people showing up are due to decades of attempts to suppress the natural demand, combined with increased pressures in their local countries forcing them out. It was higher under the last administration than the one before it, and will likely be higher still under the next.
    1
  13569.  @browncow8422  4. and of course the solution is simple, raise the supply of legal entries to meet demand. Problems solved.
    1
  13570.  @browncow8422  2. The increased numbers are due to decades of attempts to suppress the natural demand, combined with increased pressures in their home countries forcing them out. It was higher under the last White House under than the one before it, and will likely be higher still under the next.
    1
  13571.  @browncow8422  4. and of course the answer is simple. Increase the supply of visas to meet demand. Problems resolved.
    1
  13572.  @browncow8422  2) The increased numbers are due to decades of attempts to ignore the natural demand, combined with increased pressures in their homes, forcing them out. It was higher under the last decade than the one before it, and will likely be higher still under the next.
    1
  13573.  @browncow8422  4) and of course there is a simple answer, increase the supply of visas to meet demand.
    1
  13574.  @browncow8422 4) And the only way to fix the immigration issue is to meet demand with supply. Period.
    1
  13575.  @browncow8422  Yes, I spent numerous attempts trying to get my own post to stick, and could never figure out how to get one of my points to go through. It's just the nature of the beast. What I would like to see done is some combination of A. greatly increasing the convenience of legal entry points so that every person showing up on our southern border can enter at a reasonable pace and have their case heard and processed fully within a month or less, and B. working to improve countries to our South to the point that they are viable alternatives to moving here, to reduce the demand for incoming migrants. And no, it is NOT ilłegal to release people claiming asyłum, they’re NOT required to be detained and kept in custody. I don't know who told you that or why you believed them. Also, it is against federal and international law for BP to stop illegal crossings. They have no jurisdiction until people actually cross the border. Once they do cross the border, they are required due process under the law, so they cannot be deported until they have their day in court, and due to backlogs, that can take months, or even years. Nothing has changed about that under the current administration, except that the previous one was putting these people into camps. Deportations under the current administration are consistent with the previous one, there are just more people arriving, because the reasons why people would want to move have increased. Țrump had the highest, UNTIL there was a pandemic, which was the ONE time during his administration that it actually dropped. It had nothing to do with him or his policies.
    1
  13576.  @browncow8422  The previous admin's remain in MX policy was struck down by federal courts, it would be illegal for the current administration, or future administrations, to use it. It only lasted as long as it did due to the pandemic, which was again, outside of any president's control. Biden's policy is no different than Obama's. And I think you misunderstood what I was saying. Obviously we have the ability to guard the legal ports of entry. If you show up at the port of entry, they can deny you entry, and they currently already do that. My point was that if we are talking about outside of that port of entry, if we are in the middle of a desert somewhere and a BP officer sees someone approaching from the south, they can't just legally push them back. If they are on the southern side of the border, they have no legal right to touch them, and if they are on the northern side of the border, then they have a legal obligation to detain and process them, which involves giving them due process. They have no capability to "stop" them, and never did. And no, there is no federal law which says the president may prohibit the entry of any people for any reason for any time period. There never was. Those are laws that are outside of a president's control. Do we have an obligation to let everyone in? No. But we do have an obligation to due process, which takes time, during which time they are a burden, so it is in our best interests to speed up that processing time and that is what the administration is trying to do. Long term, there is no solution to just ignoring the issue and hoping they go away, they will keep coming, and we need to figure out actual alternatives that work for them, or they will never stop. You can tell them that you don't want them, that is not their problem. But is it harmful to America that they come? No, not really. It is currently a problem, because most of them get stuck into a legal limbo in which they are not legal residents, but if we can resolve that backlog, get them fully incorporated into the country in an efficient way, then they will only benefit America's future, just as previous waves of immigration have.
    1
  13577.  @browncow8422  Well, that certainly is a simple minded solution to a complex problem that would never actually work in the real world, but at least we have a currently smarter president than that.
    1
  13578.  @browncow8422  But none of the previous presidents strategies actually worked, they were just a bandaid. The current president is using the SAME strategy, in the short term, at least, and people don't seem satisfied with the results. It never will work, people will continue to come, in larger and larger numbers, and yelling at them to go home won't slow them down any. That's just a toddler tantrum attempt at an answer, "I'm not happy, so WHAAAAA!" We need better answers, ones that actually treat them as human beings with their own goals in this process, and figuring out a way to make life better for them, while improving America in the process.
    1
  13579.  @lindaschipansky4429  Presidents for the past few decades have been trying to solve the immigration issues, at least through Bush, but congressional Republicans always blocked efforts to do so, because they held positions of "let fewer immigrants in," rather than "how do we efficiently handle the immigrants we need and are getting?" This is the result of their deliberate inaction.
    1
  13580. You keep complaining about "group think," but you aren't presenting a valid case for your position. You argue that we should not be focused on fossil fuels, but if not, then what PRACTICAL changes should we be focused on? Reducing fossil fuel use would help to slow and eventually reverse climate change. That is a valid path forward. What alternative path do you see? What could we start doing today, using proven technologies, that would have at least that much impact? We all need to get behind SOME path for that path to actually HAPPEN. Discussing a topic in endless circles is only a recipe for changing nothing.
    1
  13581. They are allergic to fact checking, unless ordered to by a court.
    1
  13582. It's not really in his jurisdiction, but he might pardon him if it came to that.
    1
  13583. The wall would have zero impact on this.
    1
  13584. On the one hand, this is definitely a good thing and better than keeping people on the street, but on the other hand, this is a very inefficient way to house people. You could give them apartments this same size that would house over twice as many people on one floor alone, not to mention that you could have 2, 3, even more floors stacked on top of each other. I certainly wouldn't want them to take this away without providing something better, but moving forward they just need to focus their resources on building larger scale housing concepts.
    1
  13585.  @RR-on4sk  Well, the solution is to not worry about that and build them anyway. It's silly to build these tiny house communities when a "small apartment" community could house so many more in so much less space.
    1
  13586.  @johnarnold893  200mph is still 1/3 the speed of a passenger jet. That would still take the better part of a day to get from New York to LA.
    1
  13587.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  Tell my you get your information from Faux News without saying you get your information from Faux News. This is why Faux News viewers know less about the real world than people who get no news at all.
    1
  13588.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  Projection. . .
    1
  13589. Just got an idea. A mentor who trains a student, to become the mentor's mentor. Like the mentor knows that in the near future he's going to get blank-slate amnesia, a curse or disease or something, but he's still a badass, he'll just be a braindead badass. So he trains a student to know everything he knows, then gets wiped, effectively dying, and then the student has to regurgitate all that knowledge to rebuild the mentor into the actual proper chosen one hero that the world needs. :D
    1
  13590.  @HELLO7657  Well, they are already using rail, but there are limits to what the rail network can transport efficiently, especially when most of their customers are across the black sea. I don't know what their exact trade routes are, but I assume it's something like a short train ride to Odessa, then ships that can hold dozens of train-loads of goods that go through the Black and Mediterranean seas to either North African ports or through the Suez canal to East African ports, or around to the west African coasts, etc. If we cut out the black sea portion then they would at minimum have to move things by train through some European links to some European ports before getting things onto ships, in addition to the normal trade in that port. It's certainly possible to transfer some amount of food that way, but supply chains are typically designed to be very precise, to have enough capacity for what they need and not much more. Look at the chaos at the SoCal ports last year when their normal operations got disrupted. Opening up Odessa for trade would certainly allow for a higher volume of food to pass through.
    1
  13591.  @michaelsimarmata5880  I get that there is risk here, but I feel that given that this is a strictly humanitarian play, Russia could be convinced to not provoke anything. If they really wanted WW3 then they could just fire into any NATO country or attack Ukraine when they know a NATO dignitary is in the country, but they avoid doing this, so we have to assume that they want to grab as much as they can while avoiding WW3 AND avoiding NATO coming directly at their war in Ukraine. I feel that so long as the US ships are completely non-aggressive, Russia would not attack them. It is a risk, but I believe a reasonable one.
    1
  13592.  @michaelsimarmata5880  Maybe, but for this specific purpose, they might. They are a NATO country, after all.
    1
  13593.  @AlisaCatnys  Why not? It's chock full of useful and important stuff. What don't you like about it?
    1
  13594. This is not discourse.
    1
  13595. Yes, the script which he wrote, and gave to his handlers to hand him when he needed to read it.
    1
  13596. Lol, Mickey is wearing DeSantis's balls on a necklace. Serves him right for going after the mouse.
    1
  13597.  @glendapass4613  The video is about Raffensperger, I assumed that's who you meant. Is that not who you meant? Who did you mean?
    1
  13598. I took a Trump vaccine on November 3rd.
    1
  13599. You don't have to say "too soon to tell," you can just tell your viewers "no, there's absolutely no reason why they would," they are probably ,mature enough to handle the truth if you just TRY sometimes.
    1
  13600. That's not a good sign.
    1
  13601.  @skyewatson6204  The issues with the Japanese economy are completely separate from their level of national debt.
    1
  13602.  @SkiddlyDoo  They're saying it's not a problem because it's not a problem. The US could sustain a national debt 2-3 times the current level without any problems at all, possibly even more than that. The ONLY thing that is causing risk of a financial crisis, the ONLY thing, is congressional Republicans playing games with the debt ceiling, deliberately risking a default. Remove that problem, and there is no problem.
    1
  13603.  @SkiddlyDoo  It does not matter who owns the national debt, it is not like a bank mortgage where it can just be foreclosed on, it is a rolling debt where people agree to be paid off at a specific time, and that is the end of the story. From the perspective of the US, it is completely irrelevant whether that debt is held by a US government branch, by a private Us citizen, or by a foreign citizen, it is the exact same thing. No credible economists have claimed that the US would default at 200% D-GDP, because there's no reason why that would happen. So long as we can continue to pay off the interest on that debt, and we obviously could then it continues to flow. And let's not forget, a lot of people talking about the economy have no idea what they are talking about. Some people believe that the Federal Reserve printed 3 trillion dollars in 2020, when anyone actually paying attention to such things would know why that is a silly thing to believe. And of course the investments made to get us out of the pandemic did not have a significant impact on inflation, that was caused by supply chain issues and oil producers manipulating the cost of oil. So long as we have a fossil fuel based economy, that will remain a problem.
    1
  13604. Are you talking about the actual Nazi?
    1
  13605. Meanwhile, Trump lawyers go down in disgrace every single night. And then they get up, wipe off, and head home.
    1
  13606. "This video sponsored by Street fighter 6."
    1
  13607. They did not present any evidence of actual wrongdoing for him to rule on.
    1
  13608.  @pay-tray-it4897  no, it had been asserted, without evidence, that the chain of custody had been compromised. It was never concluded, because that would have required presenting evidence, which they did not have. And yes, the printing of the ballots n some areas was incorrect, and that led some to believe that their votes would not be accurately counted, but as it turned out, this was not the case and they were all accurately accounted for. And yes, Hobbs went above and beyond to ensure the integrity of the election, but no amount of integrity is good enough when those like Lake do not get their way. "How could it possibly be a fair election if I didn't get my participation trophy!" is the battle cry of the modern GOP. There is NEVER any satisfying them, so beyond a certain point it is just throwing good faith after bad.
    1
  13609.  @pay-tray-it4897  The sword testimony of those who had first hand knowledge was that there were no chain of custody issues. The best Lake's side had was people who claimed that they maybe saw something that they thought might be suspicious, it was hearsay evidence, not actual evidence of a crime. That's what a lot of "fraud evidence" turns out to be, "I saw people walking around with a box, I bet those were illegal ballots!"
    1
  13610.  @pay-tray-it4897  Yup, Biden kept that inflation a lot lower than in other countries. We only had around 7% average inflation this year, while in countries with Conservative governments like the UK they had DOUBLE that. Thank God we didn't end up with someone like Trump in charge, eh?
    1
  13611.  @pay-tray-it4897  See? Now if only we could get Republican candidates that were equally sensible.
    1
  13612.  @allencapps4622  The recession would be much worse if we currently had Donald Trump to deal with on top of it. Biden's efforts have kept the worst of it away from America, if we'd had a conservative government like in the UK, we would have twice as much inflation right now, like they have.
    1
  13613. And the funny thing is, nobody noticed. Turned out they were irrelevant to the process.
    1
  13614.  @johnnymaccool9828  Just because someone has a PHD does not mean they cannot be bought by the fossil fuel lobby.
    1
  13615.  @tjfarmer9380  He didn't list any actual crimes though. There is no legal requirement to keep migrants detained until deportation.
    1
  13616.  @Ericah81  You saying so does not make it so. The actual law completely disagrees with you on that.
    1
  13617.  @Qsmithu4c  What have Democrats lied about?
    1
  13618.  @scottwaters998  None of those were "lies" by Democrats though. If you were listing lies by Republicans, then sure, add those to the list.
    1
  13619.  @WanderlustCity  So conveniently true.
    1
  13620.  @TwinGoats  In theory, sure, but irrelevant to the current reality.
    1
  13621.  @SuperOdyss  And climbing fast.
    1
  13622.  @wohendumwing3ee9  Trump was President in mid 2020.
    1
  13623.  @melissacoupal585  Why do you believe that, when anyone who understands basic economics would disagree with you?
    1
  13624.  @BlotRorschach  Nope, Biden's energy policies had zero negative impacts, and in fact have helped to keep prices lower than they otherwise would be. I mean, how much higher do you think oil production is in this administration over the last one?
    1
  13625.  @eaglerider1826  So you blame the pandemic for slowing Trump's economy, but not for the hole that Blden had to dig us out of? Obviously it's a complex issue, but my point was, it's not so simple as "things were like this one year, and like that another, therefore, it's all the President's fault."
    1
  13626.  @BlotRorschach  How much more oil do you believe the US produces today than it did over the last administration?
    1
  13627.  @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.
    1
  13628.  @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?
    1
  13629.  @melissacoupal585  2. 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.
    1
  13630.  @melissacoupal585  1. "Oil independence" is a myth designed to get tax breaks for oil companies. 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? 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.
    1
  13631.  @melissacoupal585  1. "Oil independence" is a myth designed to get tax breaks for oil companies, and you apparently bought 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?
    1
  13632.  @melissacoupal585  1. "Oil independence" is a fairy tale designed to get tax breaks for oil companies. 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?
    1
  13633.  @melissacoupal585  "Oil independence" is imaginary, designed to get tax breaks for oil companies,. 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. Understand?
    1
  13634.  @melissacoupal585  1. "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 global oil, and if the cost of global oil goes up, then American producers will charge you more for it. Do you understand this?
    1
  13635.  @melissacoupal585  1a. "Oil independence" is a myth designed to get tax breaks for oil companies, and you apparently fell for it. There is no such animal.
    1
  13636.  @melissacoupal585  1b. 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?
    1
  13637.  @melissacoupal585  1a."Oil independence" is a myth designed to get tax breaks for oil companies.
    1
  13638.  @melissacoupal585  1b. 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, and you will ALWAYS pay the going rate for it.
    1
  13639.  @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.
    1
  13640. Yup, he was just following the Obama administration's orders to remove that corrupt prosecutor, and he got the job done, like he always does. Nothing more to see there.
    1
  13641.  @UserName-ts3sp  You never want to go full Missouri.
    1
  13642. You don't get out much, uh? It's ok, not everyone does.
    1
  13643. Trump can't win of "lies" are taken off the table.
    1
  13644.  @gregordawgbin5227  Sure, but what does that have to do with anything?
    1
  13645. I can understand that there were things that she couldn't say without getting removed from her position, and that maintaining that position had some value as a check against Trump's more dangerous impulses, but that doesn't excuse the actions she did take to publicly suck up to Trump and his insane viewpoints. She should have at most been "no comment" when asked to defend broken systems and idiotic policies.
    1
  13646. I think confiscating guns from people would be a bad idea. Just make it illegal to sell, possess, or transport them. The rest would sort itself out eventually.
    1
  13647.  @MLTPLMGZ2006  Well, that's what having a republic is for, some people say yes, some people say no, and the majority decides which happens.
    1
  13648.  @MLTPLMGZ2006  No, spoken like someone who cares about human life.
    1
  13649.  @tiffanybroce7855  A constitutional republic is a form of democracy. Decisions are made by our elected representatives, and those representatives are elected by the people, so if the majority of the people want gun control, then we should get gun control. The second amendment doesn't even apply here, because we are not discussing the National Guard's access to firearms.
    1
  13650.  @tiffanybroce7855  Yes, and within the constitution they have a lot more leeway to limit access to firearms than they currently use. For example, there was a ban on assault weapons up until fairly recently that would have prevented the weapon used in this (and most) school shooting.
    1
  13651. That's not the case here though, the case was that they didn't have enough evidence of criminality to convict. This does happen all the time.
    1
  13652.  @Yooper2024  The documents were removed when he had a legal right to remove them. They were simply not returned when he was no longer authorized to have them. This sort of thing happens ALL the time in government, at ALL levels, and is typically not a big deal, unless the volume is enormous, or the actions were willfully harmful to US security. As to the ghost writer, he wasn't allowed to see anything that was known to be classified, certainly nothing harmful to national security, he was only allowed to see things like a letter between Obama and Biden, which would be useful to any book writing process.
    1
  13653.  @johnson12183  I doubt there was much overlap, the two protests seem to be on opposing ideological sides here.
    1
  13654.  @gracedanielleinchrist  So, like 2016, 2012, 2008, 2004, etc.? Ok, I guess so.
    1
  13655. It's a shame that almost half the country will think that this is actually a serious topic, because they mostly get their information from Faux News.
    1
  13656.  @theepicricemaker6611  Well RFK has problems MUCH deeper than any stutter. With Biden at least his decision making abilities are all in order.
    1
  13657.  @scottm838  Nobody in the Trump/Biden debate did a good job.
    1
  13658.  @ryanbianchi3118  There are specific non-profit categories for political action groups. Heritage Foundation is not one of those, however. Now if they lost their 501c3 status, they could perhaps refile themselves under a different category, but it would be at least more honest.
    1
  13659.  @ryanbianchi3118  Maybe, but they should still have to follow the proper procedures. Even if an organization is theoretically eligible for some form of tax exempt status, if they are filed under a specific one, they are obligated to follow the rules of that category. If they don't, they can be criminally liable.
    1
  13660.  @ryanbianchi3118  Because they are classified as a 501c3, which should not engage in political campaigning, and yet they engage in political campaigning. Even if there are other classifications that they might qualify for that would allow them to do political work, it would still be wrong for them to engage i politics as a 501c3. You seem to be struggling to understand this. Why?
    1
  13661.  @ryanbianchi3118  So you're taking the "if we do the crime in public, it's not a crime" defense of their behavior? Their actions clearly "directly or indirectly participate in, or intervene in, political campaigns." Also, the IRS lets a lot of things like that slide. They try to avoid getting too political, so they tend to take a "best possible face" approach to such things. There are plenty of non-profits that don't really deserve their category if you follow the letter of the law on the matter, but you know that if the IRS did crack down on it, the faux news would have a field day about "big government being mean to conservatives."
    1
  13662.  @ryanbianchi3118  I have a feeling that you want to be right on this one, even though we both understand that you're wrong, so you'll keep asking for an unreasonable level of detail for an online discussion until I stop replying. Let's just established right now that I have no burden to provide information at your request and continue on from there.
    1
  13663.  @ryanbianchi3118  Nope, that's never been the deal. We're discussing things on the Internet. Neither parts has any right to discovery. You are responsible for your own education, nobody is responsible to provide education to you. The sooner you understand that, the sooner people will stop thinking you're weird (as a disclaimer, I cannot guarantee that people will stop finding your weird).
    1
  13664.  @ryanbianchi3118  This is not a debate. It is an online discussion. There are no rules beyond the platform's terms of service. What would make you think this is a formal debate of any kind? Where are the moderators? Do you see them?
    1
  13665.  @ryanbianchi3118  Sure, I'm secure that the evidence supports my position, and if you were equally secure in your own then you wouldn't have to bed for data, so I think we both agree on the facts of the matter.
    1
  13666.  @ryanbianchi3118  I have. That was not good enough for you, nor would any evidence ever be, so I skipped to the endgame. We both know I'm right, we both know that you're incapable of saying so out loud, so we're moving on as if you were a mature adult.
    1
  13667.  @ryanbianchi3118  I made my case to my own satisfaction. If I didn't make it to yours, that's ok, you haven't made your case to my satisfaction either. The point is, nobody in an online discussion owes you any time spent on research, and they never will. Keep asking if you want to keep being disappointed.
    1
  13668.  @ryanbianchi3118  I said that I was aware of clear examples, not that I had them available to present. Normal people do not maintain databases of information, ready to present to others at a moment's notice. Stop being weird. If you don't know enough about the Heritage Foundation to know why I'm right, then it would be your own responsibility to educate yourself on them.
    1
  13669.  @ryanbianchi3118  I am broadly aware that they have engaged in such behavior over previous decades, but do not have specific times and dates at which this took place at hand, because normal people would never have such things. Stop being weird.
    1
  13670.  @ryanbianchi3118  I said clear examples exist, not that I had them at hand to present to you. You were the one asking me to present them. Let's be clear, there is a ground truth to this situation. EITHER they have engaged in political activities, or they haven't. One of those is objective reality. I have encountered enough evidence to believe that the former is true. You claim not to have. One of us is objectively right, and one objectively wrong. I asset that I'm objectively right, but you are allowed to disagree. But I think we both know that you cannot do so in good faith. And yet you continue to pretend. That is what is so weird.
    1
  13671. @nothanks9503 Maybe, but the point is, if we just completely ignore the middle east, then gas prices would go way up. So long as the US has an oil-based economy, we need to work to maintain stability in the region.
    1
  13672.  @recabitejehonadab2654  And that was true when she said it. Nobody can predict the future.
    1
  13673.  @larrybird8619  So you're saying America's enemies would raise gas prices unless their puppet gets reinstalled?
    1
  13674.  @happybike3823  Because America is more oil based than most, since we have a much broader country that has far less rail transport. Also, the US has chosen to shoulder a larger proportion of the world's defense needs, because this allows us to get away with all sorts of other financial shenanigans. If not for the US army, we'd be the UK right now.
    1
  13675. @nothanks9503 Oh? So you think that a significant rise in oil prices would not have a negative impact on the US economy?
    1
  13676.  @RizzleyBearRobins  This isn't an outcome, it's only a step in the process.
    1
  13677.  @happybike3823  There's no authority needed to be the world's defense. We just are. Also, the US cannot supply its own oil, at least not in a capitalist system. The US already exports more oil than at any time in US history, but the price of oil is determined by the global oil price, because if someone else is willing to pay more than American consumers, the oil companies will sell to them instead. The only way that US oil could be completely independent of other countries (for a couple decades, at least) would be to fully nationalize US oil production, and make it illegal to sell any of it abroad, so that US oil producers would have no option but to sell it to US customers at whatever rate they could get. I really don't think that's a realistic outcome though.
    1
  13678. @nothanks9503 For as many years as we've got.
    1
  13679. You mean the House Republicans. And yes, they show clear disrespect to the American people. Daily.
    1
  13680.  @Youtubeisafascistcompany  There is no bill at the moment, they are currently discussing what the contents should be. The issue is that the Republicans will reject any efforts on the Border because they don't want the problem solved until after the election.
    1
  13681.  @Youtubeisafascistcompany  Security is not an issue here. The border is no less secure than it ever was. The problem is that we haven't been able to process the immigrants as quickly as they've been arriving, which leads to backlogs.
    1
  13682.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  Perhaps, but they are still owed due process under US law, so they get their day in court to make their case. The problem is that the courts are so backed up that this can take a year or more. This is WHY the administration is pushing for additional funding so that they can process claims faster.
    1
  13683.  @biggusdickus9148  Immigrants add more to welfare programs than they take, and they only take jobs that Americans do not want. The economy needs them to take on those jobs or they will not get done. There is no downside.
    1
  13684.  @CondorSkyGhost  That's a lot of soviet propaganda you have there, comrade.
    1
  13685.  @biggusdickus9148  Then why aren't you working those jobs? Because employers put out offers and nobody shows up. Unemployment is at a low.
    1
  13686. In the real world? About as much as switching to the mithril standard will.
    1
  13687. Clarence Thomas is corrupt?! I am SHOCKED by this completely out of nowhere revelation that wasn't widely known for years already!
    1
  13688. Putin doesn't have the stones.
    1
  13689. They have already, years ago.
    1
  13690. No, they know that you are, that's why they are trying to explain it like you're five. I take it that was still too complex?
    1
  13691.  @dougdimmadimsdale9571  Why not?
    1
  13692. What's wrong with the 3AM ballots? They tend to come rolling in later into the night.
    1
  13693. It sure is a shame that people who don't do crimes don't go to jail, but this is America, not Russia.
    1
  13694. Here is the map I would like to see: 1. Take each individual polling place, or at least as granular a data set as we can find. Color a dot for each polling place that is shifted red/blue in exact proportion to the votes case, so you would almost never see pure red or blue, and see purple on a 50/50, magenta on a 60/40 red and plum on a 60/40 blue, etc. 2. The white balance of the dot would also be based on the population density of the dot, so a dot that represents "the most people" would be a very deep color, while a dot that represents fewer people would be closer to a pink/lavender/baby blue. This would, I believ,e result in a "heat map" style map that is mostly purple with arcs of magenta and plum, dashes of red and blue, and would be more vibrant along coasts and around cities, while being more washed out in the more rural regions, and I believe that would be a more clear snapshot of where the people are at.
    1
  13695. They probably want to end this war so that their families will not be murdered by Hamas in future.
    1
  13696. That's the whole point of this, to stop Putin''s war. To end it.
    1
  13697. @ Why?
    1
  13698.  @harleydavidson2218  It really doesn't take as much time as you seem to think, but then I don't have to sound out every word to understand it.
    1
  13699.  @JMurph2015  Well, the plug itself is a general standard, and that's a good thing, but I'm talking more the availability and quality of stations. There should be a unified trade organization that makes a point of guaranteeing the quality and availability of stations, to minimize "no stations nearby" and "broken stations" issues as best they can. The free market is currently doing its thing, and it's a bit messy. That might settle down eventually, but it might take a long time to get there.Right now, there is not enough activity in the market for competition to actually exist, people use the stations that exist in the place they want to charge. I feel like this is a situation where there needs to be an organized, "monolithic" solution for the time being, until the basic needs are all covered, and then after that there can be competition to "do it even better than that."
    1
  13700. That would be a pretty extreme outlier condition, given that 99% of the people who die from covid since vaccinations have started have been unvaccinated. Either you are lying, or your peer group has been extremely unlucky, like "everyone I know has been struck by lightning, so it must be pretty common" unlucky.
    1
  13701.  @DianaRik  Lol, neither of you realize that you're talking about yourselves!
    1
  13702.  @DianaRik  Yes, exactly, you're a pack of clowns.
    1
  13703. I saw a news story on "why is toilet paper hard to find" that noted that TP comes in both "household" varieties that come in those 8-packs of small rolls, and "industrial" rolls that are individually wrapped but the size of of a lawnmower tire. The issue was that with nobody going to work anymore and people not going to public venues as much, those places did not need industrial rolls anymore, while at the same time more people were crapping at hope, so they needed more household rolls. But the factories couldn't just pull a level and switch from one to the other, they were two completely different production lines, so they were stuck being unable to keep production up. I once saw something of a compromise at my local store a few months back, a giant roll of paper towels that was about four times as thick as the normal rolls, like basically as wide as it was tall, which was probably some industrial spin-off or something.
    1
  13704. Difference being that Fetterman has had a stroke that impacts his speech, while his actual decision-making is entirely intact, whereas Walker believes that he's a cowboy sheriff because he has a costume badge and paid to his one of his many illegitimate children murdered.
    1
  13705.  @camomaxx  While it's true that they are not comparable, you got them backwards. Walker is the one that is incapable of stringing thoughts together, Fetterman just has trouble with speaking due to his recent stroke. If you can't understand why that distinction matters, then I'm afraid I can't dumb it down for you any further. Also, Fetterman never paid to have his own child murdered like Walker.
    1
  13706. Why? He wasn't spreading lies like Trump's lawyers.
    1
  13707.  @ginagold6507  Biden's garage was a secure property. Mar-A-Lago was a public club that was frequented by Chinese intelligence.
    1
  13708. "I don't know anything about Project 2025, I'm just going to randomly pick everyone involved in it out of a hat when forming my cabinet."
    1
  13709.  @ExtremelyRightWing  You should look into this yourself, since Jim Jordan and the Faux News won't tell you. One was helping to cover for Jan 6th insurrectionists that the FBI were trying to arrest, one did an unauthorized interview with Russian state media, and NONE of them went through actual legal whistleblower channels. Among other things.
    1
  13710.  @mikepjersey  You seem to think that it was somehow not a big deal that the Trump 2016 campaign was cooperating with Russian agents to help him win that election. Is that because the Faux News told you not to worry about it? That does not mean that it was not a serious concern. Don't let them control your mind like that. Think for yourself.
    1
  13711.  @julia1100a Anyone who's read Noah's story would know that this can't be the days of Noah.
    1
  13712.  @julia1100a  Yeah, but all that already happened thousands of years ago. We're well past all that already.
    1
  13713.  @julia1100a  Neither are most people who claim to be. They just believe in the version of the Bible that agrees with what they already want to believe. You can find support for any crazy idea in the Bible if you twist it hard enough. I mean, look at Evangelicals. They actually think that Jesus Christ would approve of their behavior!
    1
  13714.  @julia1100a  When have I sought to "justify" anything? I try hard to life a life that does not need to be judged.
    1
  13715.  @julia1100a  It's not hard to live a more valid life than an Evangelical.
    1
  13716.  @julia1100a  I never claimed that you were an Evangelical. I was talking about Evangelicals, and you chose to respond to my comment on the topic. You were also the person who questioned the inherent validity of my actions.
    1
  13717.  @julia1100a  Again, the Noah story itself makes clear that there will never be another. Anyone claiming otherwise is calling God a liar.
    1
  13718.  @julia1100a  " I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut off by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth." -Genesis 9.
    1
  13719.  @julia1100a  Those are not the words of Jesus, those are the words of Matthew.
    1
  13720.  @julia1100a  So your argument is that in those passages, Mathew was telling us that Jesus was calling His father a liar. So which of them do you believe?
    1
  13721.  @julia1100a  That does not answer my question. Which of them do you believe was lying?
    1
  13722.  @Just-Human  Yeah, but so what? Most Democrats are fine with plastic. Why are you bringing it up?
    1
  13723.  @Wolfhybrids  Yeah, but we're talking about environmental policy, not whether you can "live on the streets." So what would that matter?
    1
  13724. I haven't heard any flag burners commenting on this case. Where have you?
    1
  13725.  @MasoPrism  People have a constitutional right to burn flags if they want, but they are also held accountable for whatever message they are sending with it.
    1
  13726. @ That wasn't what they were saying no to.
    1
  13727.  @rianepperson5094  How would you feel if the bill was called "preventing violence against women by Trump supporters act," which would actually protect more women than this current bill, if passed. Do you believe that an act like that should pass with unanimous support as well? If no, why not put that bill on the floor?
    1
  13728.  @getbrainseeds  You do understand that there are more Republicans in California than in Texas, right? It's often the blue states in which the reds act out the most, because they can't get their way legitimately.
    1
  13729. ​ @getbrainseeds  You do understand that there are more republicans in California than in Texas, right? It's often the democratic states in which the republicans act out the most, because they can't get their way legitimately.
    1
  13730.  @getbrainseeds  You do understand that there are more conservatives in California than in Texas, right? It's often the liberal states in which the conservatives act out the most, because they can't get their way through legal means.
    1
  13731.  @getbrainseeds  You do understand that there are more conservatives in California than in Texas, right?
    1
  13732.  @getbrainseeds  Just because a state has a majority of liberals, doesn't mean there aren't more than enough conservatives to cause trouble.
    1
  13733. Only after the House ignored 200 years of House precedent though, so fair's fair, right?
    1
  13734. Answer: "Our allies have always been more concerned with how Donald Trump handled classified documents than they eve have about Joe Biden."
    1
  13735.  @kb9gkc  Everybody knows who really won, Joe Biden. There are just a lot of people who don't like that.
    1
  13736.  @kb9gkc  That's sad. The majority of generals and admirals believe that Trump is a threat to the republic's future. Why do you believe that military people are drawn in by Trump's lies?
    1
  13737.  @kb9gkc  That's sad. The majority of generals and admirals believe that Trump is a threat to the republic's future. Why do you believe that military people are drawn in by Trump's misdirections?
    1
  13738.  @kb9gkc  This is what those generals and admirals signed onto a publicly published letter to tell me.
    1
  13739. The Republicans are always the ones pulling this stuff.
    1
  13740.  @maverick3677  Lol, you misunderstand, I'm not MAGA.
    1
  13741. Unfortunately, none of those qualities are valued by the modern Republicans.
    1
  13742.  @RichardTClark396  In what sense? What did she do that was as unAmerican as the Jan 6thers?
    1
  13743.  @hollowhammer3526  It was mostly Republicans that voted for Trump, not Democrats. Don't blame us for your mistakes.
    1
  13744.  @PikachuPromo  I think you mean the Republican party, but yeah, that would be right. Total mess over there.
    1
  13745.  @rob6850  It wasn't intended to. What would be the point of that?
    1
  13746.  @crispinfornoff206  The policies in the US were less effective than in most places, because a lot of people ignored them, and a lot of places didn't even have them. Such policies can't work well when they are piecemeal. But compare it to a place like Australia, where they had much more serious lock-downs, and they had MUCH fewer casualties over the pandemic.
    1
  13747.  @crispinfornoff206  NIH agrees with my take. A simple google search proves you wrong. Sorry not sorry.
    1
  13748.  @crispinfornoff206  I think the problem we face today is that people take "ratioed in the comments" as evidence of anything, and that they don't understand how peer reviewed studies actually work.
    1
  13749.  @ayojoy1443  But my point is that Canada is doing 20% better than they were doing before the pandemic. So that may be "bad" to you, but it's at least better.
    1
  13750.  @darkgalaxy5548  Germany is doing a lot better than Sweden. A more clear comparison is Norway and Finland, who are also doing better than Sweden.
    1
  13751.  @sommebuddy  Were you not aware of that?
    1
  13752.  @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.
    1
  13753.  @crispinfornoff206  It's really not a matter of people "fleeing blue states," at least not in any significant numbers. That's just sort of a narrative being carried on the right. If anything, population growth in states like Texas is more due to immigrants than anything else.
    1
  13754.  @crispinfornoff206  It's really not a matter of people "fleeing blue states," at least not in any significant numbers. That's just sort of a narrative being carried on the right.
    1
  13755.  @crispinfornoff206  It's really not a matter of people "fleeing blue states," at least not in any significant numbers. If anything, population growth in states like Texas is more due to immigrants than anything else.
    1
  13756.  @crispinfornoff206  It's really not a matter of people "fleeing blue states," at least not in any significant numbers. Population growth in states like Texas comes more from outside the country.
    1
  13757.  @crispinfornoff206  I haven't yet said anything that's false, it's just different than what you've been told. So what does that tell you about what you've been told?
    1
  13758.  @crispinfornoff206  You do understand that repeating "you've been debunked" over and over is not actually how "debunking" works, right? You haven't "debunked" a thing I've said, you've just noted that it doesn't line up with what you've been told, which doesn't surprise me in the least. The solution there is for you to find better information than you have been using to this point.
    1
  13759. Or so Putin would tell you.
    1
  13760. They should get some massive sales increases in the future, due to Tesla effectively leaving the marketplace.
    1
  13761. It's the US's decision whether to continue to funnel billions of dollars into Israel's budget though. They don't have to do what they say, but there are obvious consequences to not doing so.
    1
  13762.  @sirrathersplendid4825  Currently? Yes. But I think they should be able to make sure shell transactions illegal as well. I was just watching a video about the Alex Jones trial, and the decision in that case had a lot of "anti-loophole" wording to it, to try and prevent shuffling assets away from where it could be accessed by the plaintiffs. I think that if congress really wanted to seriously stop this problem, they could involve wording that would prevent any chain of liability that could be broken and escaped. As an aside, I also think that this is why recent SCOTUS decisions weakening the power of federal regulators to decide things on their own is so dangerous. These systems are way too agile for congress to keep up with them using legislation alone, which is why they need to legislate executive branch actors the power to move on their own to solve these loopholes in realtime.
    1
  13763.  @Duke_of_Prunes  Depends on whether it had to do with a decision Trump or his advisors made that was against best practices at the time.
    1
  13764.  @Big_Boss14  I am out of the cave, which is why my position tends to be better informed than the rest of you in there.
    1
  13765.  @carlbeaudry4142  Then it's fortunate that we decide Presidents democratically, and not "whoever Carl likes."
    1
  13766.  Gandalf Stormcrow  You have been misinformed. We are nowhere near "hyperinflation" at this point.
    1
  13767.  @JakeSummers2424  Google deletes my comments too, they just tend to filter out various keywords and many links to outside web pages. It is annoying, but not uneven.
    1
  13768.  Gandalf Stormcrow  Yes, but it's entirely among the unvaccinated, which is why the majority of the covid deaths over the past few months have been in counties that voted for Trump, and very few of them in counties that voted for Biden. Also, Trump did not make the vaccine, he just didn't get in the way of them doing so. But if him taking credit for it gets you to take it yourself, then sure, Trump whipped it up in his bathtub or whatever.
    1
  13769.  @Big_Boss14  Nope, you're just not using accurate statistics. Where did you get them from?
    1
  13770.  Gandalf Stormcrow  No, the CDC and FDA cut the red tape, Trump just didn't STOP them from doing that. Any president in office at the time would have done the same.
    1
  13771.  Gandalf Stormcrow  I refuse to accept the false reality you insist on, because it conflicts with the actual reality that the rest of us live in. You can join us when you're ready, but don't try to drag us down with you.
    1
  13772.  @Big_Boss14  Government hasn't really done anything different under Biden than under Trump though, so if the oil prices are due to policy decisions, they would be Trump policy decisions.
    1
  13773.  @chrisflach5911  It didn't wait. It's been moving fairly steadily throughout. But changes in the availability of the covid vaccine and changes to covid restrictions have led to changes in how people get out and about, and this has led to pricing changes. They will settle down over time though. Nothing Biden did increased energy prices. I mean, the Keystone pipeline wasn't carrying oil and wouldn't for years down the road, it would have zero impact on current prices in either direction.
    1
  13774.  @chrisflach5911  This video explains it better than I can. I wish you luck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VgAGpFaqI30
    1
  13775.  @chrisflach5911  As for your "economic theories," no, they aren't accurate. Republicans do have a habit of recklessly cutting taxes, without actually reducing spending, which drives up deficits, but the economy under Trump was just a continuation of the economy under Obama, it did not raise more than it was already raising.
    1
  13776.  @Big_Boss14  The Paris agreement has no impact on your current gas prices. It is about making sure that your children don't have to walk around in space suits.
    1
  13777.  @CuriosiPress  20,000 people died in America last month. Almost every one of those deaths could have been prevented if those people had been vaccinated. If you feel that covid is being used as a distraction, and if that bothers you, then the best way you can solve that is to take that ball away from them by making sure that you and everyone you know is vaccinated, and practices safe masking and social distancing policies for your area. We can move past all this when we're past all this.
    1
  13778.  @CuriosiPress  I hate to tell you. . . the covid is already in the house. Whatever risk immigrants might pose, Floridians pose ten times that risk. If you want us to hate and fear immigrants, then maybe get America's vaccination rate above 90%, then infected immigrants might actually pose some sort of risk. Also keep in mind that immigrants get vaccinated, so that then makes them safer than Floridians.
    1
  13779. That's Vance in a nutshell. His boss wouldn't hire anything else.
    1
  13780.  @LearnWithVikram7  Yup.
    1
  13781. It seems like any government like this, where coalition governments might be necessary, should have some sort of back-up rule, that if after a certain amount of time no majority coalition can form, then a plurality government can form, the largest collection of people formed within X amount of time is put in charge until the next election, even if they only total 30% of the vote or less. If any other coalition can form that can challenge them, they can do so, which should prevent excesses.
    1
  13782. I'm not sure what you mean? Are you saying like if the Democrats did a four year investigation into a topic that was entirely made up, and found nothing of value, that this would be news? Yeah, probably, but only because Democrats don't do that sort of thing. That's a Republican thing.
    1
  13783.  @newyorkcity76  It was Palestinian territory, many many decades ago, but they lost it when the various Arab states invaded Israel in the 60s. There's no sense in continuing to pretend otherwise. Germany used that excuse in WWII, and nobody bought it then either.
    1
  13784. ​ @newyorkcity76  You do realize that over 2/3 of the Israeli people were born within Israel, right? They aren't from "someplace else," they are native to that land.
    1
  13785.  @newyorkcity76  So, how many of those people are still alive today? People who were born in Israel are no more "immigrants" than those you call "Palestinian."
    1
  13786.  @newyorkcity76  How many people who moved there before 1950 do you believe are still living there today? Again, most of the people who live there were born there, they are as native to that land as any Palestinian.
    1
  13787.  @newyorkcity76  It means they have equal claim to the land as other people living there at the time. Again though, you go back over 100 years, what does that matter to the present? Do you believe someone who never lived within the borders of the Palestinian mandate should have more say in the future of Israel than people who were born there and have lived there for fifty years or more?
    1
  13788. Living up to her reputation as the second worst candidate to get a significant amount of the Republican primary vote. She is only "qualified" when put in contrast to Donald.
    1
  13789. What does that have to do with taxing tips? The IRS agents are there to chase after rich people cheating on their taxes and to help normal people get their taxes processed efficiently.
    1
  13790. The FAA wouldn't want to risk going after their new boss.
    1
  13791.  @nathanboss9126  They are raising the debt limit because we already have trillions in debt obligations, and if they don't raise the limit then we cannot pay off those debts, causing us to default and America's credit rating to explode like the Hindenburg. When the Republicans raised the debt ceiling in 2017, the Democrats all voted alongside them, because raising the debt ceiling is ALWAYS the right thing to do. If you are concerned about government spending, you fight that battle elsewhere.
    1
  13792.  @beeweb1137  Exactly my point. Only an idiot could fail to see that defaulting on a 29 trillion dollar debt would be "a bad."
    1
  13793.  @nathanboss9126  "Repaying the debt" really isn't how national debt works, it's not like a home mortgage, it's more of a rolling system where we pay off old loans and take out new ones. And yes, Biden spent heavily coming out of a crisis situation, which is the responsible role of government, the government helps keep people afloat when the natural economy would bankrupt them. The only problem there is that the Trump tax cuts for billionaires had blown a hole in the budget, that is what raised the national debt ever higher and would continue to do so for decades, so that is what needs to be scaled back if you're worried about the debt.
    1
  13794.  @nathanboss9126  Exactly, trillions of dollars were spent because of a pandemic, and not because of the nearly 80 year old, dementia-riddled man that we voted out of office last fall when we elected Joe Biden. Although that other guy's tax cut for billionaires certainly added more to the national debt than anything Biden's done.
    1
  13795.  @johnjohnsin3762  You aren't doing the math right though. Let me pose you a simple math problem, common core elementary students should be able to solve this one. Say you have two people, and on Monday, one of them gets to decide what the company's budget will be, and on Tuesday, the other guy gets to decide what the budget will be. On the first day, the guy bought $20 in supplies, and also negotiated a contract for soda machines that would cost $10 per week on a two year lease. The guy on Tuesday spent $200 on a new printer. Of the two of them, which spent more of the company's money?
    1
  13796.  @goosnavslakovic4908  Look, would it have been better if the last four years had been more responsible, and had "stored up our nuts in the summer" rather than feasting on them? Sure. But it's still better to spend out of a crisis situation than not to. Every dollar we spend today (towards a practical cause) is two dollars we make back tomorrow. These are things that need to get done, and the sooner they get done, the better. If we just go into austerity until we've "balanced the budget," then we'll fall decades behind the rest of the world and never catch up.
    1
  13797.    Why not? He is the other guy.
    1
  13798.  @johnjohnsin3762  It is what's called "an analogy." Look that up and try and figure out why I assigned you that math problem. Also, there is absolutely no reason to believe that Biden would be spending at the same rate on a quarterly basis. He passed emergency aid relief packages to account for the harm caused by the previous administration during the covid outbreak. That was not an ongoing program.
    1
  13799.  @goosnavslakovic4908  Shutting down small businesses while bigger ones could operate was not ideal, but was also unavoidable. Bigger businesses could get the job done under pandemic conditions, smaller businesses, mostly, could not. That is where responsible government steps in to cover the shortfalls. It was not a bad idea to shut down segments of the economy that were high-risk during a pandemic. It was a bad idea to hold up government relief packages through the last half of 2020 in the Senate. Rumors of hyper-inflation have been greatly exaggerated. We're fine. Gas prices in California are due to perfectly understandable market trends, not some worrying economic boogeyman.
    1
  13800.  @goosnavslakovic4908  Price levels fluctuate due to all sorts of things, they don't necessarily indicate a dangerous economic situation any more than a stomach ache is a sign of cancer. The economy during Trump's earlier years were goosed, but even then they were only following the trends set up by the Obama administration. You can draw a straight line from when Obama started pulling up from the Bush recession through to the covid hit in 2020. And again, gas prices are just WEIRD, there are certain things to look at, but it's impossible to pin down exactly what gas prices "should" be at any given time. There are more people out than there were last year, if not more than in 2019. But then you also need to factor in that oil companies adjusted their production based on assumed demand, so no point pumping more oil than you think you need. You have to consider that the pipeline hack disrupted supply lines. You have to consider that oil prices often go up based on speculation of the future, or based on demand elsewhere in the world. The price of oil right here, and right now, is just a really bad way to gauge anything other than the price of oil right here and now. The current price of crude oil is lower than it was during 2018, and currently the national gas average is $3.19 a gallon, which isn't the highest isn't been.
    1
  13801.  @nathanboss9126  Yes, but AGAIN, he is not expected to spend the same amount each quarter or something. He spent what NEEDED to be spent WHEN he needed to spend it. It's like if someone spent $800 repairing their car, and you say "well if he spends $800 every week, that would really add up!" Well yeah, but he's not going to be doing that. Also, Republicans could have won that recall if they had only put up someone on their side who wasn't a lunatic. They seem to have a problem doing that, I wonder why. . .
    1
  13802.  @goosnavslakovic4908  It only "depends on who you ask" based on the intelligence of who you ask. There is no reasonable argument for keeping "business as usual" in operation during the pandemic. Mail order businesses are just naturally much more competitive options during a pandemic, and even without any government intervention, business would have been way down from normal, due to customers not trusting the businesses. It is a fair application of rules that have a disproportionate consequence, which is why the government should take steps to offset those consequences, by compensating people disproportionately effected. There's really not much that a restaurant can do to "adapt" to a global pandemic untouched. They can just shut down, but then they have fixed costs and no income. They can switch to take-out only, but that is definitely lower profit margins. They can remodel their interiors to be as "covid-safe" as possible, but that can get expensive, and even then guests don't often trust those measures, and business is still likely to be well down from normal. There is no real way to do it right, only "less bad" options. Meanwhile, the things that Amazon does basically just work without much hassle for them. It was "lucky" for them, but nothing sinister about it.
    1
  13803.  @nathanboss9126  What would make you imply that Larry Elder is not a lunatic? He believed in no minimum wage, would repeal mask and vaccine mandates during an active pandemic, and he has supported many fringe theories about voter fraud, rather than accept election results that don't go his way, although he was at least willing to concede his own loss.
    1
  13804.  @nathanboss9126  So you see why Larry Elder is a lunatic, you just took the "if you can't beat'em, join'em" route. I chose not to.
    1
  13805.  @goosnavslakovic4908  It's a balancing act. Many customers are conscientious. That's great, overall, but bad for businesses, because it meant that even if businesses stayed open, they wouldn't get the customers they would need to actually thrive, but would still have the costs of staying open, so that's a catch 22. And then there are the people who aren't conscientious, who would "business as usual" if they were allowed to, and would slow the recovery for everyone else and lead to the avoidable deaths of thousands (some people actually care about that sort of thing). And of course on the business side, they don't want to go out of business, so if there only options are "business as hard as we can, even if we know that it's unsafe and bad overall," or "go out of business," then they might choose the former, which is why we should not put them in that position in the first place. Covid obviously does not have a "low death rate," it has a horrendously high death rate, more deaths per month than the average flu season, even after vaccines became available. It was obviously vital that we took what steps were taken to mitigate the virus, and that anyone who opposed that was either ignorant or actively malicious. Fighting wealth inequalities and corporate consolidation is a good thing, but you don't do that over a pile of burning bodies. You take the steps necessary to save lives, and you fight wealth inequality and corporate consolidation via taxation and regulation. Those are the free market doing exactly what it is designed to do, covid restrictions may have caused short term pain for small businesses, but they were already being choked out by the status quo.
    1
  13806.  @beeweb1137  But you do understand that the debt ceiling has no relationship whatsoever to "taking away their credit card," right? That these are nothing like each other?
    1
  13807.  @mike4139  "Raising the debt limit" and "raising the national debt" are two completely different things. You do not seem to understand the basic elements of this topic.
    1
  13808.  @nathanboss9126  He was only "a good candidate" for people who vote for lunatics though, which is the majority of the Republican voters, but the minority of Americans, and well in the minority in California.
    1
  13809.  @mike4139  Obama was term limited though, and Biden was better than most of the other Democratic contenders, and all of the Democratic contenders were more of a man than Trump is, including the women.
    1
  13810.  @nathanboss9126  We agreed on what makes him a lunatic, you just said that you liked those things.
    1
  13811.  @goosnavslakovic4908  There is no specific difference between "businesses" and "corporations," but scale allows the big corporations to be more agile. If they need too throw money at a problem, they have the money to throw. The market shifted to mostly mail-order, and big corporations were better positioned to handle that. Nothing in government was preventing a small business from doing exactly what Amazon was doing, but the free market conditions put them at a serious disadvantage in doing so. I mean, "how are competitive businesses staying open any more responsible for the spread than corporations like Amazon? " This question doesn't even make sense. Customers, man. If you buy something from Amazon, then it is delivered to your door, and you never have to interact with another human, making it impossible for you to get infected that way. If you go to any physical location, then you take on certain risks of getting infected. There are things a business can do to reduce the chance of infection, and if they are open, they should definitely be doing those things, but it can never be as safe during a pandemic as mail-order. Nothing from government ever prevented ANY business from operating as a mail-order business, it's just that most businesses are not set up to do this effectively. "Business has unsafe practices? It will show through revenue. " That's not good enough. This cannot be a "free market situation" where businesses that do wrong get punished by the consumer. This is a PANDEMIC. It's measured in LIVES, not in REVENUES. The purpose of shutdowns and imposed safety requirements were to control the spread of the virus, any impact that had on a business's ability to turn a profit was inconsequential to that. You cannot make the argument that "a business is allowed to put its customers at risk as much as it wants, and if they don't like that then they won't shop there," because some people will shop there, but their decision to do so does not only impact themselves, it impacts everyone ELSE in the community. That's the problem with a pandemic, a pandemic cannot just be a "personal responsibility, everyone takes their own chances and suffers their own consequences" situation, because each person's behavior impacts far more people than just themselves. If you choose to be reckless, that does not only harm you, but it can harm dozens, hundreds, even thousands of others. And please, do not try to pretend that the pandemic is not a big deal. That's impossibly ignorant, you CANNOT make that argument in good faith. More people die to covid every two days than died on 9/11. It killed more people last year than a normal flu season, a normal year of car crashes, a normal year of gun deaths, and a normal year of suicides combined. It killed more than the combined US death toll of EVERY US war other than the Civil War. IT IS BAD. STOP TRYING TO PRETEND IT WASN'T THAT BAD. It just makes you look stupid, or evil. The government is not giving major corporations any money that they aren't also giving to smaller ones. Should they exclude the larger corporations from the relief packages? Maybe, but that would be government getting involved in business, and could get complicated from a legal and bureaucratic standpoint. This does do little to solve wealth inequality, and it is not attempting to. That is on the back burner right now because there are more pressing concerns, like saving human lives. When there is a house fire, you don't worry about the water damage, you put out the fire. We'll get to wealth inequality later.
    1
  13812.  @beeweb1137  The 29 trillion is from budgets, but "not raising the debt ceiling" doesn't do anything about that. All it does is cause us to default on our obligations and send the country on an immediate debt spiral that we won't recover from in our lifetimes. I'm not saying that debt is not a problem, I'm saying that this is a preposterously stupid way of reacting to it. Think of it like this, let's say that "bankruptcy" doesn't exist, that if you personally rack up a lot of debts, then you are stuck with them, and if you can't pay them, then everything you have gets taken and you go homeless until you can pay it back. Now in this situation, you have racked up $100,000 in debt. Was that responsible of you? Probably not, you shouldn't have done that. But you have. And you've been paying the interest on that debt just fine, you have been making your payments, you can continue to make your payments and stay stable indefinitely. Nothing is stopping you from at least keeping this current situation going. But you decide, for no particular reason, to stop paying the interest on your debts. So the bank calls your loan due, you can't pay, they take all your stuff and now you're homeless. How is that improving anything for you?
    1
  13813.  @nathanboss9126  You see what I mean?
    1
  13814.  @goosnavslakovic4908  It is good for city officials to order in-person businesses to lock down. That is a good thing. It is a thing that should be done when there is a pandemic. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with them doing that. In an ideal, Democratic world, though, the federal government would have funded more help for small businesses so that while they were shut down they would be more financially stable. But they still should have shut down. Probably for a lot longer than they did. Period. And yes, there is some risk to the employees at a warehouse, but it is much easier to mitigate those risks to those employees than it is for EVERY business across the country to responsibly protect EVERY customer. With a warehouse shipping business, you only have to worry about the exact employees within that facility. With open season on small businesses, you have to worry about millions of retail employees and hundreds of millions of customers. And again, if a small business wanted to operate as Amazon did, working entirely through mailorder, there was NO "shutdown" on that, nothing was stopping them. They just could not operate an in person business, because there was a pandemic going on. As for Walmart-like businesses, I agree that in a perfect world, they would have been closed too. But that would get complicated. The basic rule was that "grocery store" style businesses could stay open, because people NEED to eat, and those are the most efficient way for most people to get food. Home grocery delivery can get a bit complicated at the current time, and ordering all groceries to close would cause logistical nightmares to prevent starvation. Ideally the alternative would be what China did, provide free food delivery to every resident of Wuhan until the virus got under control there. But we really aren't set up for something like that, especially on a national scale. Of course ideally, a Walmart could keep their grocery side open but be forced to close down their non-grocery services, but that also would get complicated. Perhaps we should plan ahead better for next time and have such rules in place. "So the "some people" who shop there, who make a risk for themselves, will not be enough to keep those stores open, " Maybe. Eventually, but what about in the meantime? They could keep operating like that for months, at the least, and all during that time they would be posing a public health risk for others. It's like arguing that drunk driving should be legal because eventually they'll hit a tree or something and take themselves off the road. No, you act preventatively. "I'm sorry, but can you provide me with a plausible scenario where a reckless person suddenly endangers thousands of people?" Sure. One person is sick with covid. He goes to a "tyranny free" store where dozens of likeminded people ignore all regulations. Most of them leave the store sick. They go home to their friends and family, and get most of them sick. They are also likely covidiots, and each frequent other businesses and services that don't take precautions, and now we're into the hundreds. These people also go to places where more careful people are, like grocery stores, and even though the more careful people take every precaution, no precaution is 100%, so if they encounter lots of infected people, their odds of getting sick increase. As the hospitals fill up with covid patients, they can no longer care for the patients that come in, and people with heart attacks go untreated. That is how thousands die from one idiot. And the measures the governments took had a MASSIVE impact on the death rate. It would have been well over one million by this point had we done nothing. It could have been as low as 100K if we had done more, and sooner, or if more people actually LISTENED.
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  13815.  @nathanboss9126  When someone is standing on their head, they marvel at how everyone else is walking on the ceiling.
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  13816.  @nathanboss9126  Shouldn't that be reason enough to not want someone in charge of you?
    1
  13817.  @mike4139  That's an oddly specific question coming from someone that I do not know.
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  13818.  @goosnavslakovic4908  Ok, yes, if one person is unsafe and everyone else is perfectly safe, then chances of spread are low. But in a more realistic scenario in which dozens of people are unsafe and hundreds of others attempt to be safe but sometimes make mistakes, then spread occurs, and each person that behaves unsafely is that "one" person who infects dozens of others, who infect dozens of others, who infect dozens of others. The point is, that one person should never have been that one person. And again, short of staying at home 24/7/365, which was impractical for most people, there was no way to be perfectly safe. Even following all the available best practices only improved your odds. If we had a world in which all businesses stayed open and things were as "business as usual" as possible, but everyone, even the most covidiots of covidiots, followed every rule properly, maintained perfect social distancing and mask use and all that, the virus still would have spread to some level within the community. And of course you can't make policy based on ideal cases, you have to make them based on realistic amounts of rule-breaking. Covidiots are why we can't have nice things. As for "self segregation," it really doesn't work like that. Sure, you might have "blue areas" in which most people follow the rules, But there will always be overlap, in which one of the stores I go to might have all "blue people" shopping there, but then some of those people go to a place where some red people shop, or maybe some of the employees do, or maybe some of the delivery people who delivered produce to the store do. Or maybe they have family members that do. If there is "no rules" behavior going on within a community, or even adjacent to a community, then it will have some consequences for everyone. This is why it's important for rules to be as broad as possible and cover as large an area as possible, so that there is as little transmission as possible. Also, don't take early results as a sign of any great thing. It is a pandemic, it doesn't suddenly appear everywhere at once, it spreads. It literally wasn't in most places for the first few months. People were totally wasting their time by being careful in most communities. But of course they couldn't know if they were wasting their time until it was too late, so it was better to do the right thing, even if it turned out to be unnecessary, than to not do it and there's a massive outbreak. But by the summer and fall it had reached just about everywhere and become endemic to the local communities. Still some places though where it just so happened that no infected people had passed through, and they were bragging "I don't do anything different and nobody around me's gotten sick," which is nice, but also irrelevant to anyone in a community with active spread. I would never argue that all government entities handled everything perfectly, but I think that most of them were trying their best, and that most of the policies that got the most complaints were the ones that were the most necessary. Even in the California recall exit polls, the majority of voters thought that Newsome handled covid well, and a large chunk of those who thought that he didn't thought that he'd been too loose. I don't think that the government's reaction caused any significant shift in wealth disparity. The rich might have gotten a bit richer, but they were on that track already. If covid had never happened, the business landscape would have looked exactly like this in no more than a few more years of expected progress. The ONLY way out on that is regulation and taxation, and we need to be doing that anyway.
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  13819.  @nathanboss9126  No they didn't. Even if a Democrat cast a vote in the bottom half of the referendumb, they would have voted for a different candidate. Anyone who said they voted for Larry Elder was no Democrat of any sort.
    1
  13820.  @nathanboss9126  Of course you don't need to be a Republican to see who is the better candidate. In that election it was Gavin Newsome. If it wasn't Gavin Newsome, it was probably one of the other yahoos that ran against him, maybe that guy form San Diego, or the one with the bear, but it definitely wasn't Larry Elder. There had to have been at least one Democrat or Independent on the list that a Democrat would have voted for instead of Elder. I mean Elder would have likely won in that pool regardless, since that's the one that the Republicans wanted, but why would any Democrat have voted for him over the other options? What does he support that Democrats would support?
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  13821.  @goosnavslakovic4908  Yes, he definitely opened up prematurely, but my point is, the lockdowns and other "harsh" programs were at least the right direction, if not perfectly executed. And yes, New York and California were hit earlier than a lot of other places, for all sorts of reasons.
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  13822.  @beeweb1137  I'm not sure what you're talking about. The current US national debt is only 130% of GDP. That's not great but it's by no means catastrophic. Japan's at 234% at the moment, China is at 270%. For a major world power, that is entirely sustainable. Having high national debt is not actually a problem, so long as the things that you purchase with that debt are worthwhile things. It is only an issue if you waste that money on things we don't need, or if you aren't adequately taxing the wealthy to keep revenues up. Failing to raise the debt ceiling does not prevent them from budgeting in new debt, that is not how any of that works. What it does is prevent the government from COVERING those EXISTING obligations, so that our entire economy, and likely the world economy, all collapse, making it much LESS likely we will ever be able to handle our debts. I don't see how anyone can view that as a positive thing. Again, if you feel that the US is spending too much, that's fine, but the debt ceiling is a terrible way of dealing with that. It's like saying "I'm getting a bit fat, better take a knife and carve out a few pounds of belly fat." If you feel the US is spending too much, then the time and place to have that fight is during the BUDGETING process, cut programs, don't approve new ones, that sort of thing. Reduce the amount we commit to spending, rather than demanding that we default on things we already owe.
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  13823.  @beeweb1137  No, I was talking about the whole picture. But the point is, HOWEVER you feel about the amount that the US currently spends or it currently owes, threatening the debt ceiling is ALWAYS an incredibly stupid and suicidal way of making your point. There is NO excuse WHATSOEVER for doing so. EVER. ANYONE who does so is either completely ignorant as to how the debt ceiling functions and has no place in government, OR is a malicious actor seeking to actively harm America. Period.
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  13824.  @beeweb1137  Again, that's not how it works. We need to keep paying the INTEREST on the debts we've already accumulated. *If you want the government to "stay within their limits," then the TIME to have that argument is in the BUDGETING PROCESS, and has NOTHING to do with the debt ceiling. I am really not understanding why this is taking you so long to understand, I have gone well past "explain it like I'm 5" territory. Think of it like this. Say you have a comfortable nuclear family, with a home and car loan that is slightly more than you make each year. That's clearly an unsustainable burden on you, right? I'm sure you would NEVER be so irresponsible than to take out a mortgage that is MORE than you make in a given year, right? So anyway, you also have a ten year old daughter, and you promise her a car for her 16th birthday, and college tuition when she graduates. In this scenario, the house and car would be your "debt," and the car and college would be your "unfunded liabilities." Now you can question the wisdom of having taken those loans and made those promises all you like, what's done is done. So this year, years before even you have to buy that car and tuition, you have to pay your home loan payment, and you declare "no, I would rather not, I have taken on too much debt." Even though you totally could pay what you owe, you just choose not to. So the bank forecloses on your house and car, repossessing them, and ruins your credit rating for decades to come. You have gained absolutely nothing, are unable to provide a home for your family, and certainly won't be able to get your kid that car or tuition later. Congratulations on your wise financial decisions. If, instead, you just continued to pay your debts to the bank, then you would continue to live i a nice house, continue to be able to drive to work, etc. Now maybe at 16 you wouldn't be able to afford that car, or at 18 you wouldn't be able to afford that tuition, and you might need ot have difficult talks with your child about alternatives, but those "unfunded liabilities" are far LESS of a problem than defaulting on your ACTUAL debts TODAY. And yes, it is irresponsible that we have to keep raising the debt ceiling, but the solution to that is not to actively play chicken with going over the cliff, the solution is to REMOVE the debt ceiling so that it no longer looms over us. The debt ceiling is not there for any GOOD reason, it was put there in 1917 by isolationists that didn't want us in WWI. It is a stupid relic of the past.
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  13825.  @beeweb1137  No, the budgeting process is NOT based on "how much they can spend." They can budget for as much as they want, they do not even CONSIDER the debt ceiling when budgeting. Refusing the raise the debt ceiling will not in any way constrain their ability to budget in more spending, all it does it cause the US to default on our existing obligations, blow up the national debt, and send the economy into a freefall. Why do people keep trying to frame that as if there are any positives to that?
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  13826.  @beeweb1137  But, again, you are completely misunderstanding what the debt ceiling is and how it works when you say things like that. It does not work the way you want it to work. It never will. Pretending that it does is not living in the reality we share.
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  13827.  @lynefauteux3566  But there would be no legal right to shoot it down if it wasn't over US air space at the time, so they had to wait. Also, the Trump administration didn't even find out that balloons crossed into their air space until during the Biden administration, so I'd say the Biden team were pretty quick on the draw by comparison.
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  13828. God approves.
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  13829. That would make no sense. Biden did not do any of this. It would be like punching someone because someone else stubbed your toe.
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  13830. Anyone can make up imaginary quotes, but this is not Faux News. What Obama actually said was that the government should pay its bills, which means that the debt limit would never be HIT. He NEVER claimed that we should allow the debt limit to be reached, which is what the House Republicans are doing. It's like the difference between someone saying "you should go easy on the brakes so you don't wear them out," when there's still plenty of room to come to a safe stop, verses insisting that you stay off the breaks as a brick wall rushes toward you.
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  13831. "Won't somebody think of the chimney sweeps!"
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  13832. That wouldn't be accurate. The correct term would be "immigrant."
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  13833.  @igorm6944  Why it IS the correct term. "Invader" wouldn't apply, since there is no army involved, no attempt at conquest.
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  13834. No, you're thinking of the last guy. This one hasn't done any impeachable crimes.
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  13835. @bobbleheadbob They don't take a vow of poverty, so long as the way they make their money is legal and legitimate, I see no harm in it. I would rather see qualified public servants making money in legitimate ways while in office, than I would them being pious paupers while in office and then suddenly making billions after they leave office, like Jared did. That seems FAR more suspicious to me. Besides, most people who enter congress are already fairly wealthy, since those are the only sorts of people with the means to take the time off and seed money needed for a successful political campaign. Not to mention that it's quite expensive being a member of congress, since you need to have a home in your home district AND one in DC (which is VERY expensive), and have money to travel around with (some of which is paid by the government, but not all). I just don't see any value in expecting members of congress to be poor. All I expect is that they obtain their money through legitimate means.
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  13836.  @melissadavis7234  Why? What would be the benefit of them being arbitrarily poor until they leave office?
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  13837.  @melissadavis7234  If you had done that, then you would know why I had the right position on this topic all along. There is no rational basis for expecting members of congress to take vows of poverty. All that would create is a congress made up entirely of extremely wealthy people, who could afford to not make any money over long periods of their life, while spending hundreds of thousands to maintain their position. It makes zero sense. Do your own homework, and then come back with an apology for not understanding this the first time.
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  13838.  @jacleesx2022  So Faux News would have you believe, but that's only because if their entire audience chipped in they couldn't come up with enough shared brain cells to send a three letter text to anyone.
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  13839. I remember seeing this level of speculation, there just wasn't anything to back it up like there is in this case.
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  13840.  @Michael_Dominik  How could it be covered if it hasn't been released yet? I'm sure if there were actual news to cover on it, then they would be covering it.
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  13841.  @Michael_Dominik  You said that the reason was that it "cut's across the media's narrative," whatever that might be, and yet there is a FOIA request for it, which is part of the media. The media can't report on what they imagine the manifesto to contain, that would be Faux News, not actual news. The media can only report on the manifesto once it is made available to them by the police. As for why the police have not released it, that is their problem, not "the media's." Presumably they had some case they wanted to look into first. As for when the shooter is a right wing white guy, as is so often the case, they often have a very public diarrhea of hate speech and other such nonsense, the shooter in this case reportedly has Nazi tattoos on his body, so there is much more to report on there. And as for Nashville, the media "shifted away" because the story shifted away. They had reported all the details on the shooting itself, there was no new information to report and no reason to repeat the details they had already reported, if you want to hear their old reports again, you can look those up. But the expulsion of the two black representatives was a new story, so of course they covered that too. They will move on from this shooting too, as the next shooting comes, and the one after that, and the one after that, and the hundreds more we will have this year alone, all because Republicans can't stop fondling their guns.
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  13842. The US is a net exporter of grain. The Ukrainian grain was going to feed people in Africa who will now starve.
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  13843. Well, Trump certainly tried it while he was in office. The thing is though, this is not political. He actually did the crimes for which he is charged. It would be political if they didn't hold him accountable for them like anyone else.
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  13844.  @bigswampy6073  Yup, he lives rent free in the minds of conservatives. Everyone else has to clean up their feces.
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  13845. Putin's just waiting for his agent to get back into office so he can really get to work with his plans for Europe.
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  13846.  @scottcomstock4964  Yes, completely unlike that. You have been grossly misinformed about the BLM protests, and don't seem to understand that the violence surrounding those protests were caused primarily by right-wing counter-protesters, not by the left-wing protesters.
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  13847.  @WaterspoutsOfTheDeep  You believe that CRT is being taught in schools because that is what you have been indoctrinated to believe, but it is not true. CRT is a college level subject, and is only being taught at that college level. The lessons being described as "CRT" by the right are not at all related to actual CRT, and are just normal American history and sociology topics that are completely uncontroversial to a rational person.
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  13848.  @dunnlean9041  But she hasn't actually done any evil? And obviously not more evil than Trump's done, so that's a bit calling the kettle black.
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  13849.  @noahnp1558  Did you not follow the investigations? They found lots of things. The only reason he was not convicted of impeachment is because the Senate Republicans refused to fulfill their oaths of office when Trump was on the line, and the only reason he was not charged of crimes while in office was because Trump's DoJ decided that sitting Presidents were immune from criminal prosecution. He's not immune any longer though. . .
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  13850.  @dunnlean9041  People who believe that Clinton did anything wrong only do so because they are sheep to the fake news. If she had actually done anything wrong, she would have been prosecuted years ago.
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  13851.  @rushyscoper1651  I'm pretty sure doctors use cellphones now.
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  13852.  @Vareciaa  Well, compare the documents cases. With biden, he still had a handful of mildly classified documents from his various times in office. With trump he deliberately packed up an entire guest bathroom's full of highly classified defense intelligence, and then spent several years trying to play keep-away from the government agency tasked with recovering them. Anything biden can do wrong, trump can and will do worse.
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  13853.  @tammyorton6356  It doesn't matter whether they believe in Jesus or not. What matters is what people who claim to believe in Jesus do with their lives. If people are going to invoke Jesus' name as a justification for their own behavior, then shouldn't they at least be following Jesus' teachings while doing so? Ideally, an Atheist would follow Jesus's teachings, and typically, most do, better than many Christians do, but if someone is going to weird Christ's name like a weapon, they had better at least be using it right. Also, you are yourself completely misunderstanding Jesus' teachings. He would NEVER agree with you that "do unto others" entitles ANYONE to ignore the hardships of others. "do unto others is not some bare minimum standard, where if you view someone as treating others poorly, that gives you license to treat them poorly. "Do unto others" means that REGARDLESS of how someone else behaves, you should treat them as you would want to be treated. You are taking the Lord's name in vain by attempting to invoke Him falsely.
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  13854.  @Liberalismisadisease809  Sodom and Gomorrah had nothing to do with LGBT people. It had to do with rapists, like Donald Trump. And yet a lot of the people who complain about "woke culture" (which the Bible does not have any problem with), also claim they would vote for Donald Trump, someone who personally embodies everything the Bible stands against.
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  13855.  @unitedhearts1341  The only people "sinning" in this situations are those who are trying to oppress LGBT people for being as God made them.
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  13856. The Chinese government is corrupt, but religion has nothing to do with it. There are plenty of atheist countries out there with higher quality control and corruption standards than China.
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  13857. The whole point of magitech is that it's applying scientific principles to some element that does not exist in the real world. I'm not going to argue that it does exist in the real world, but if it did, magitech could be the result. It's like when we discovered radioactivity. This was a "whole new trick" that science allowed us to apply in all sorts of ways. The idea of magitech is to just posit one fantastic element, a fuel source that does not seem to exist in reality, and then extrapolate all the potential uses of that discovery. Now, as to your theory that the Hextech crystals are "anti-matter," what if it is not a chunk of pure anti-matter, but a complex "antimatter mineral?" By that I mean, what if there were some method that produced a large blue crystal that, if separated out into individual atoms, would be like 99% "something," and 1% "anti-something," but in which the crystalline latices and the electromagnetic charges of the atoms were such that they didn't actually touch, that each anti-matter particle was caught suspended in between several matter atoms, unable to come into contact with them. In this case, the crystal would be completely safe (when properly handled), since the outer surfaces would be entirely normal matter, Carbon, let's say, but perhaps there would be better atoms for this purpose. If, however, you destabilize this relationship, by fracturing the structure of the crystal, or less catastrophically by using EM fields to extract some of the anti-particles from the lattice without directly touching them, then you could harness power from the crystal.
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  13858. How is it about power? What power is there in mask mandates?
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  13859.  @iamnotpaulavery  Are you like twelve? Who looks at a medical mask mandate and thinks "FORCED CONFORMITY!"
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  13860.  @pamelajohnson737  People who are familiar with George Orwell are called "Democrats." People who may have heard of Orwell but don't understand his work call themselves "Republicans."
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  13861.  @UglyMofo24  I'm not the one acting like mask mandates are somehow "oppression." Can't get more daft than that.
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  13862.  @UglyMofo24  One, only an idiot could think that the masks cause more harm than good. Two. "Symbolize control?" What nonsense is this? You think they have mask mandates just to "tag" that they were able to get people to do it? I think you're thinking of MAGA hats. The masks serve a legitimate healthcare purpose, and the only reason ANYONE mandates their use is because the situation on the ground indicates that it will SAVE LIVES to do so.
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  13863.  @UglyMofo24  And yet places that have weak or no mask mandates tended to have much more community spread. Of course masks work to reduce the spread of covid. That are not 100% effective, nothing is, but they do provide a significant reduction in spread, because they reduce the "muzzle velocity" of the covid. They also aren't particularly hard on the lungs, since many occupations already required much more serious masks during extremely strenuous conditions even before covid, and people survived that just fine. What kind of sissy do you have to be to think that a cloth face mask is somehow too much of a burden for you to shoulder?
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  13864.  @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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  13865.  @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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  13866. That's what we're worried about?! Your poor judgement! What we need is for you to be much less confident about those guardrails.
    1
  13867. We need to figure out a better way of regulating guns so that we can get them off the streets without all this dancing around terminology. That said, whatever methods are available to make it more difficult for guns to reach American streets, the better. The second amendment gets people killed and that needs to stop.
    1
  13868.  @Floridarollin  The CDC does not say that. The CDC has no data on that because the CDC is not allowed to collect data on that due to congressional Republicans passing a bill to block them from doing so. At one point they had a statistic on one of their pages, at the direction of Republican administrations, but it did not reflect any actual scientific study into the topic, it was basically just a number pulled out of thin air. If you would like there to be evidence of defensive gun use, then you would need to authorize the CDC to actually study the topic. Now if we're talking actual facts, tens of thousands of Americans are killed by guns each year, more than in any developed country. It is an absolute fact that if America did not have guns that there would be fewer murders here, not even considering all the accidental and suicidal deaths caused by guns. Nothing would bring the murder rate down to zero, but we could definitely lower it considerably if we could get guns off the streets, as they have in most other first world nations.
    1
  13869.  @Floridarollin  Again, the CDC did not do anything there, it was a reference to one bad study from the 90s, but that was the only data to go on because, for some reason, Republicans did not WANT the CDC to do ACTUAL studies into the subject. Weird right? If the actual data would show that defensive gun use was a great thing, you'd think Republicans would WANT the CDC to study it, wouldn't you? And yet they passed an entirely law to BAN them doing so. Weird. Weird. . . And again, guns do not prevent genocides. Nazi Germany had very high private gun ownership, and yet they had some of the worst genocide in the western world. Civilians with guns do not prevent bad governments, free and fair ELECTIONS prevent bad governments. Again, the fact is that guns kill Americans, guns do not protect Americans. Stop coping.
    1
  13870.  @SinistralRifleman  It's ok to think that guns are cool and also to recognize that they are dangerous to a civil society and should not be as easily available as they currently are. Wolves are cool, most people should not own one, and most people who think they should own one are the least capable of doing so safely. Guns are currently highly restricted in the UK, and yet there is an excellent Youtube series filmed out of the Royal Armory on various historical firearms and how they are used in pop culture, very similar to this one. I think that even if we could get laws passed that would prevent most guns from entering civilian hands, there can still be caveats for museum pieces and private collections that are stored responsibility and in a way that would not allow them to be used in violent activities.
    1
  13871.  @Floridarollin  Disregarding empirical data does not refute anything, but I haven't done that. I disregarded a flawed study from the 90s that had terrible methodology and proved nothing, yet is often cited by gun-lovers because it tells them what they want to hear. Just because something claims to be "empirical data" does not mean that it is so. You need to be a better consumer of information, better capable of separating out quality data from fairytales. And Germany did not strip the guns from the society at large, they had a relatively high civilian gun rate, that did not protect the Jews from the holocaust. The problem in Nazi Germany was not "they came for people's guns," it was "they came for the Jews, and nobody stopped them." Realistically, the ones who would "come for the Jews" are more often the ones WITH the guns, not the ones trying to take them away from people. And the Chinese communist takeover also had absolutely nothing to do with civilian gun ownership. You just seem to be throwing out "a bad thing happened" events as if gun ownership or lack thereof played any role whatsoever in it. Even today, communist China could be overthrown in a single night IF the people rose up to do so, without needing to own a single firearm. There aren't enough guns in the entire Chinese army to stop them. Access to firearms is not what keeps them in line, it is that they lack a will to fight back.
    1
  13872.  @Floridarollin  That points out another important point, that while some revolutions in history have been done by good people toward positive ends, civilian gun ownership has ALSO led to numerous cases of revolutions that do NOT reflect the good people of the nation. The communist takeover of China and Russia, the Nazi takeover of Germany, all of these were caused by civilians with guns. For every nation in which guns played a role in leading to a positive and democratic future, there are a dozen nations where civilians with guns led to despots and destruction. I mean, what do you believe would have happened if Donald Trump had been successful in 2021, and remained in power? Do you really believe that America's gun owners would have risen up to depose him and restore democracy, or do you believe that they would be more likely to actually support his takeover? It would be disingenuous to pretend that gun ownership and virtue go hand in hand, when often enough, the opposite is true.
    1
  13873.  @jerry9535  That was not her job. Her job was to make deals with southern countries that would reduce long term immigration from those countries, and it did reduce long term immigration from those countries. She was never assigned to the border itself.
    1
  13874. So, according to the Joe Biden quote you cited, he was right, he never did speak with his son about his business deals. If he happened to have non-business conversations with people his son worked with, there is nothing wrong with that, nor nothing contradictory to what he said. Why does the WSJ seem to be implying that there was wrongdoing on Biden's part here, when they know that there was not? How gullible do they believe their audience to be, and why choose to mislead them like that?
    1
  13875. TL;DR, because Fox News tells them not to, and they obey,.
    1
  13876.  @rdf256  But the school rates are still far far lower than the home rates. 77% of child abuse is done by parents.
    1
  13877.  @AGuy-s5v  Gun crime is way up in Texas lately. The overwhelming majority of gun deaths per capita are in red states, mainly in the South. Gun bans on a city level are pointless when you can just cross an unchecked border with one. National gun bans are known for a fact to work though.
    1
  13878.  @AGuy-s5v  "The CDC" says nothing on the topic, because congressional Republicans banned them from collecting actual data about guns. A CDC webpage once cited a thoroughly debunked lobbyist study because a Republican administration required them to. If you conclude from that that the numbers are on your side, then you must have a roaring bridge portfolio. An average of 1,575 people are murdered by gun in Texas per year. In the entire state of Illinois, only 1,363 die per year from gun violence. That is less. And again, local bans don't accomplish much, because you can freely cross in and out of those areas. In COUNTRIES with gun bans, otherwise equivalent to the US, they have 1/6th or less as many murders. Guns KILL, they do not save lives.
    1
  13879.  @CaptainMisery86  You provided "numbers," but not actual data, since those numbers do not relate to the real world. AGAIN, the countries with fewer guns have MUCH lower MURDER rates than the US. If guns made Americans safer, then America would have LOWER murder rates, not HIGHER. You prove to me that fewer Americans get murdered than in first world countries with stronger guns laws, and THEN you will have an argument, not a moment before.
    1
  13880. Nancy Pelosi never had any authority over a situation like this, she was Speaker of the House. She has even less authority now. Why bring her up?
    1
  13881.  @SkrillGive-f6f  It's sad how far education has fallen in this country.
    1
  13882.  @johnhoran9840 In the real world, there is nobody who is more of a liar than Trump. You don't get that news living in Narnia though, so I can sadly understand your confusion.
    1
  13883.  @briancrawford69  Oh, no, none of that stuff turned out to be true. People got played.
    1
  13884.  user-mv8dm6zs6j This was a senatorial election. It had nothing to do with the problems in California at the moment. Those would be for city council positions.
    1
  13885.  @AutomatedPersonnelUnit_3947  I doubt the Social Democrats were even a factor here, they don't even poll in the double digits anywhere.
    1
  13886.  @rw2452  But, again, the tariffs are not in effect, no American dairy product is currently being tariffed, so apparently they are not keeping American products off their shelves.
    1
  13887.  @rw2452  Nope, they aren't tariffed. The tariffs exist on the book, but only after a certain quota is reached, which it never comes close to. So any US dairy products sold in Canadian markets are being sold tariff free, or at least they were until recently. If you haven't seen American products on your shelves, it was for reasons that had nothing to do with tariffs. I haven't seen Canadian dairy products on my shelves either.
    1
  13888. @ 1. Nope, they aren't tariffed. The tariffs exist on the book, but only after a certain quota is reached, which it never comes close to. So any US dairy products sold in Canadian markets are being sold tariff free, or at least they were until recently.
    1
  13889. @ 2. If you haven't seen American products on your shelves, it was for reasons that had nothing to do with tariffs. I haven't seen Canadian dairy products on my shelves either.
    1
  13890.  @rw2452  But the point is that we never come close to hitting that quota, so the actual tariff is zero, and no existing products have been tariffed.
    1
  13891. @ The result being that no American dairy products are actually tariffed in Canada.
    1
  13892. Sadly, we live in a country of laws, and no jury could convict him on treason charges when he's never done any treason. It would also be unethical to just charge him with crimes that he did not commit. He never even provided aid and comfort to the Jan 6th insurrectionists. The DoJ's hands are tied on this one by the Constitution.
    1
  13893. He's going to say he didn't do it and Trump will believe him.
    1
  13894.  @adjwindu70  Yes, aside from the genocide. Hopefully.
    1
  13895.  @MrMeow-iq7kq  Well, it was understood that they were bullies, but the western powers underestimated their complete ignorance. It was of course assumed that they might threaten, might lend aid to terrorists, poke around the edges of an actual invasion and maybe use leverage and spycraft to corrupt countries into choosing to join Russia, the more "civilized" method of invasion, but honestly until this year nobody believed that they would just full-on swoop in there and start massacring civilians like that.
    1
  13896.  @MrMeow-iq7kq  Ah. "Edgy cynic." Don't worry, things get better after middle school.
    1
  13897.  @MrMeow-iq7kq  We've had wars this entire time, there has been no year without any wars, but the major powers have managed to avoid serious war in Europe for most of the last half-century, which is a step in the right direction. The major powers have agreed to avoid wars of aggression, and to not consider conquest a valid way of expanding territory. Except for Russia. Russia's too dumb. People expected Russia to be less dumb, because they were themselves not that dumb.
    1
  13898.  @Kedatgahbelu12  The creditors have no standing to sue the US government. It is Russia that did not pay them. Think of it like this, say you own a food truck, and you take out a loan, knowing that with the money you make from that food truck, you can make the loan payments. Then say you murder your neighbor's family, and the police impound your food truck. Suddenly, you aren't making money off that food truck, and can't pay off that loan. You can't then tell your creditors to sue the police who took your food truck, it is still you who is on the hook for that loan you took out, regardless of what the police did to your food truck.
    1
  13899.  @RWZiggy  They did not pay because the people they were paying did not receive the money in a format they were willing to accept. If you owe a bank $100, and you show up with a wheelbarrow full of turnips, which you claim are worth $100, and declare your debt paid, that does not mean that you actually paid your debt. Russia is responsible for paying the money in the format that was agreed to (USD), and "Europe" has nothing to do with it.
    1
  13900.  @RWZiggy  No, that's the thing, it is ALWAYS your responsibility to make sure that the money gets where it is going. "I sent it off" is never an excuse for the money not reaching its destination. If you send it to Wells Fargo and they choose not to send it on, you have not passed off that responsibility for them, YOU still get in trouble for the money not arriving. Now, you might be able to sue Wells Fargo if they violated their terms of service (I do not believe anyone has violated their terms of service in the matter of Russia), but YOU are still responsible for the payment reaching its destination, and the people who were supposed to get that payment have no standing against Wells Fargo because they do not have a financial relationship. If Russia sent a payment to EuroClear, knowing that EuroClear had no intention of passing it on, then that is still Russia's problem, not EuroClear's.
    1
  13901.  @RWZiggy  Nope, you're making things up. Russia has not paid until the final destination of their payment takes receipt of it. Period. If the middleman is faulty in some way, that is a separate issue to Russia not paying their creditors. In this case, the middlemen were living up to their obligations under the law, given the sanctions against Russia at the time. If, for example, you wire money to Wells Fargo to pay off a bank loan, but the FBI have contacted Wells Fargo and placed a freeze on your account, then Wells Fargo would not be in the wrong for holding on to that money until the situation changes. Russia is currently being sanctioned. They know this. the burden does not fall to anyone other than Russia. They know this.
    1
  13902.  @RWZiggy  The legal opinions on the matter agree with me, aside from those put together by Russian propaganda.
    1
  13903.  @bbattoir  The money made on tariffs is far less than the money lost from other parts of the economy as a result of those tariffs. The treasury still ends up with less money.
    1
  13904. Spot the bot.
    1
  13905. It's been well reported that Obama was the one who wanted that corrupt prosecutor removed, since the prosecutor was a Russian agent. Joe was just following orders.
    1
  13906.  @legaleeblonde4310  I agree, but it's the law now.
    1
  13907. Unfortunately true, but that's what Faux News has led to. At least Trump lost the last election and is likely to lose the next, but too many red states are dominated by crazy Republicans.
    1
  13908. What a coincidence. Who watches the watchers? Nobody that wants ot keep their jobs, apparently.
    1
  13909. How was that the mayor's fault?
    1
  13910. Yeah, he has slips of the tongue from time to time. That's far better than his opponent, who has slips of the brain. He may mix up their names from time to time, but it's at least always clear which one of them he considers and ally, and it's the opposite of his opponent's.
    1
  13911.  @jdur7987  Why would it suit them in this case?
    1
  13912.  @daddydiy9008  That's not the case at all. When was the last time a US military unit set up inside a school or hospital? While there might be some adult civilians who work on an active military base, or a base might have homes for families and schools for their children someplace on it, these structures are kept well away from valid military targets, so one would have to deliberately target the civilians to hit them.
    1
  13913.  @itshardmakinganamefo  This is the modern world. Everyone is expected to behave according to modern standards of warfare. IF they choose not to, then the consequences of that fall on them. Nobody said they should be allowed to win, only that they MUST fight according to the Geneva Convention regardless. And yes, you live BY a military base, not in the middle of their military facilities. If someone chose to attack that military base, you would be completely safe from harm, unless they were using weapons FAR larger or less precise than anything the IDF has ever used.
    1
  13914.  @daddydiy9008  You're comparing this to attacking recruiters and firefighters? What nonsense. The IDF is attacking active battlefield forces. When legitimate military targets exist, there is no justification for attacking tangentially related "targets" like you propose. But when a military shelters ALL their operations in and among civilians, where is one supposed to attack? What do YOU believe the valid military targets are to eliminate Hamas?
    1
  13915.  @daddydiy9008  No, which is why it was a warcrime for Hamas to embed within them.
    1
  13916.  @daddydiy9008  It's a warcrime because of the Geneva Convention. It is illegal to embed military forces and assets within civilian populations. This is different than soldiers just generally living among civilians while off duty, that much is fine.
    1
  13917.  @daddydiy9008  You've confused Chat GTP. The issue is not a military base within civilian areas, the issue is Hamas building into schools, hospitals, and other off limits structures. If Hamas only had their facilities NEAR civilian areas, then there would have been zero civilian casualties so far. At least on the Gaza side.
    1
  13918. I'm kinda hoping this is a Rope-a-Dope. Like they bring him in, get him to go under oath, and then he tells them, straight up, "here is all the juicy details I have on the Donald Trump case, here's ALL the things he did, and here's ALL the times that the Trump Justice Department interfered with the Manhattan DA's case, and I'm not just saying this in a press conference, I'm saying this to Congress, where it would be a federal crime if anything I was telling you were a lie."
    1
  13919. 1,500 Americans died of covid yesterday. Nothing happening at the border is a "crisis."
    1
  13920. When he comes back from the Inaugural address, someone needs to leave an engraved sign on the resolute desk, "That's Not How Anything Works." He needs to be reminded of that statement after every thought that dribbles through his brain.
    1
  13921. I don't think that would be a concern. I think he just values Austin's contributors and it would be a shame to replace him.
    1
  13922.  @WetNets75  Look, I know you want him to be fired, for. . . reasons, let's say, but that doesn't mean that he should.
    1
  13923.  @WetNets75  No, I agree with you, he hasn't done a thing wrong before this, an exemplary service record, so it would be dumb to kick him out over this.
    1
  13924.  @jeromyzwiers1452  We voted that administration out two years ago. Stop re-litigating the past.
    1
  13925. And then, in a few years, when Social Security is irreparably broken "gee guys, are you still whining about that?"
    1
  13926. I don't know. my local town passed a law that stores can't use plastic grocery bags anymore, and while I had been taking reusable bags to the store for years already, and still do, most of the time, I am still just out somewhere and don't happen to have my bags with me, and want to buy something, and it's a hassle to have to just juggle everything in my bare hands like some sort of caveman because there isn't another option available. I think it's nice to encourage certain best practices, while still having a board range of options.
    1
  13927. I thought this video was going to be about Fox News. It was just about a pointless vacuum. So, only a little about Fox News.
    1
  13928. Because that would be much more expensive and much less useful.
    1
  13929. It does not prevent it, but it does greatly REDUCE it, and that's plenty good enough. -CDC
    1
  13930.  @timekeeper2538  Considering that the risk of either is basically zero, and WAY lower than your personal risk of dying to covid, you passing on the vaccine does not speak well of your intelligence, and certainly does not speak well about your morality.
    1
  13931.  @anniehopkins8470  The CDC never said that. According to the CDC it DOES reduce both your chances of contracting it, AND your chances of spreading it to others if infected, which has a compounding effect on community protection. It is not 100% protection from getting infected, which is what some people insist that it must be for them to care, but it does still provide significant reduction in transmission, which is plenty for any reasonable person to care.
    1
  13932. So, out of curiosity, if China and the US did come into conflict, how many minutes would it take for the US to disable all of those pipelines?
    1
  13933. Trump supporters tend to watch a lot of Fox, so they live in Narnia.
    1
  13934.  @shadowfax88  We voted out the most old and corrupt President three years ago. The current one's doing great.
    1
  13935.  @sec9788  And this is why Republicans keep losing elections. They propose inhumane policies like yours, and America is too moral to accept that.
    1
  13936.  @oldsrocket8841  It is Donald Trump that twisted the phrase "make America great again" into a bad thing by attaching it to his monstrous and idiotic policies. It's Orwellian Newspeak of the highest order. Joe Biden did more to actually "make America great again" in his first three months than in Trumps entire failed term of office.
    1
  13937.  @waldo2600  Of course we are better under Democratic rule. However bad you might think things are for you right now, I guarantee you they would be much worse if Trump had been in office the past three years. Look at the conservative government in the UK over this same period.
    1
  13938. The mandate is an important part of it though, since one person wearing a mask does not become 100% immune to infection, it requires everyone to participate. Wearing a mask reduces the amount of virus that might reach you, but more importantly reduces the amount of virus that you might spread into the world, and both together are necessary to reduce community spread. If only the responsible people wear masks, that helps, but not nearly as much as if everyone does.
    1
  13939. So, the way I understand it, if you had a ship that could travel through normal space at 2x the speed of light, and you wanted to travel to a location 4 lightyears away, you could do so, and it would only take two years, and then you could return, and it would also only take two years, and the result would be that from the perspective of Earth, you had been gone four years. From your own perspective being on that ship, I expect things would get weird, since if you reached exactly light speed, then your perception of time should be that it freezes, that the entire trip takes zero time (which would make it hard for the ship to brake when it gets where its going). But if you could move even faster than that, if your velocity was double the speed of light, equally distant from the speed of lick as "no motion" is, then what would you perceive? Would you believe that the trip would still take no time at all? Would you believe that the trip would take a full two years, because the further past light speed, the time dilation shifts in the opposite direction? Would traveling at 3x light speed cause the person on the ship to perceive time passing twice as fast as on the outside?I can't imagine how perception could occur in reverse.
    1
  13940. A good judge would never have made the ruling that led to this appeal in the first place, but the judge in question was deemed "unfit to serve" by the ABA.
    1
  13941. I would get them to put that in writing. And then frame it.
    1
  13942. Yup, the House Weaponizing Government Committee should be ashamed of themselves.
    1
  13943. I don't know why anyone is surprised that a partisan conservative prosecutor made partisan political remarks in his report. That's what they ALL do, going back to Ken Starr. It has nothing to do with the President's fitness.
    1
  13944.  @jame8618  What's the traffic like during rush hour? Does it flow well?
    1
  13945.  @koleso1v  You mean the republican party, and that was only around ten years ago they did that.
    1
  13946. When were they discussing the Trump indictments? I must have missed that.
    1
  13947.  @chadbizeau5997  If the US shut off the Colorado river, Mexico might have a problem with that.
    1
  13948. Well, mainly just do not defame others. This is a lesson those on the right seem to need taught time and time again.
    1
  13949.  @francescocostanzo8225  Who does? I haven't heard that term applied to this case.
    1
  13950.  @AHammock  So you're saying he'll just let Putin eat Ukraine? I' m sure that's what he's been paid to do, which is why we cannot allow him the chance.
    1
  13951.  @AHammock  So you're saying he'll just let Russia eat Ukraine? I' m sure that's what he's been paid to do, which is why we cannot allow him the chance.
    1
  13952. He gave a middle finger to Democrats years ago. Nobody cared.
    1
  13953. One trick with "shared experiences" would be syncing people across a distance. Like watching a movie together would be tricky if you didn't have the movies at the same place. There should be a feature to sync video files by like overlaying a countdown and when it hits zero both players hit a button to signal that they saw it, and then it slows down one of them so that the other can catch up.
    1
  13954. The funny thing is, a lot of people who don't trust the FBI, do trust Trump, for some reason. Lol.
    1
  13955.  @davidedwards2323  Would you trust Trump? Would you trust Fox?
    1
  13956. I worry that it's already too late to avoid the capitalist dystopia outcome. We needed to completely excise money from politics decades ago, but now, there's basically no chance of that happening.
    1
  13957.  @Mike-sp7zv  I believe that when someone says something that is untrue, then someone equally engaging should be available to present the accurate rebuttal. If someone makes claims that the earth is flat, then instead of the only response being "huh, that's interesting to learn," there should be someone there who can make the case using evidence that the world is not actually flat, so that people aren't left with the impression that maybe it is flat. There are a lot of stupid people out there that are easily misled when they only hear the incorrect side of a situation.
    1
  13958.  @jacobtuttle4311  I'm talking about Joe Rogen listeners, and to compare them to five year olds would be mean to five year olds. And yes, they might not want to hear that, nobody likes to be informed that they are stupid, but that doesn't justify doubling down on that stupidity. As they say, "stop hitting yourself."
    1
  13959.  @jacobtuttle4311  Yeah, but the important thing is whether they learn from that, or keep hitting themselves. It may be rude to call someone an idiot to his face, but that's nothing compared to him continuing to be an idiot, and the harm he can cause while stupid. If you hand someone a lighter, and they use it to start uncontrolled fires, then you stop trusting them with lighters. They have proven to you that they cannot be trusted with that responsibility. It's too bad if they are "offended" that you no longer trust them with lighters.
    1
  13960.  @jacobtuttle4311  So you agree that they are essentially children and need to be treated as such, rather than treating them like adults that can be considered responsible for their own behavior. This is my point.
    1
  13961.  @jacobtuttle4311  And it would not be my responsibility to "save" an adult from their own childish behavior, so if you are insisting that I have some burden of responsibility to "raise these idiot kids right," then you are, in fact, AGREEING that they are idiot kids. And I have looked inward, which is why I do NOT misrepresent things or spread falsehoods without correcting myself. Also, you know what children do? Call people "fascists: for telling them not to play with matches. Adults know what a fascist is, and know it's not that, and don't trivialize the term by using it so loosely. If they don't want to be treated like children, then the responsibility is on them to not behave like one. Who's providing them the lighter and the fuel? Joe Rogan, which is why we'd like him to kindly stop doing that.
    1
  13962.  @jacobtuttle4311  I didn't do anything, but Youtube works in mysterious ways, so it wouldn't shock me if they hid it. I think you're trying to use projection here, a "you're as bad as they are for pointing out how bad they are" thing, or something, but then 3what would that make you? At the end of the day, accountability matters, and they are the ones doing actual harm. If my pointing out that they are doing harm hurts their feelings, then that is too bad, but in no way comparable to the actual harm they cause to the world. Again, it is not my responsibility to be eternally nice to them no matter what their actions are. If you believe them to be adults, then expect an adult level of self awareness. If you cannot expect that of them, then you are agreeing with me that they are large children. And again, I don't think anyone is less intelligent than me, beyond what they themselves prove through their actions. If they believe the earth is flat, then I will believe myself more intelligent than them, that is not a failing on my part. Treating people like they are your inferiors is wrong, unless it is accurate, and statistically, half the people out there are below average. There is no benefit in pretending that all "facts" are equally valid, whether they happen to be true or not. Actual facts beat imagined facts, and enabling idiots benefits no one.
    1
  13963. We had that already. His followers wear his mark across their brow, a read cap that reads "MAGA" for "Our-MAGA-Don."
    1
  13964.  @timd729  This is what Faux News and alt-right youtubers will tell you, at least, because that's how mind control works.
    1
  13965. How so? They are very different potential crimes.
    1
  13966.  @hillbillybeerdranker6678  Not unfair enforcement though. It's enforcing the law the way it generally is, letting off minor offenses with a warning while charging more serious offenses with stronger punishments. If all laws were enforced 100% in every case, then people would be buried in debt from speeding tickets.
    1
  13967.  @mastick5106  The measured approach would be the one followed by Democrats and most left-leaning governments around the world. If you like measured approached, find that party in your own country and vote for them.
    1
  13968.  @mastick5106  Ok, what policiesdo Democrats support that is not measured? You said "[a middle ground between] move full speed ahead with green energy and trust that we can work out problems as we go, or stick completely with fossil fuels until green energy is perfect?" That perfectly described the Democrat's strategy, doesn't it?
    1
  13969.  @mastick5106  New vehicles will likely be zero emmissions by 2035 anyway, they're just putting it in writing. If by some chance the market has not already met that goal as 2033 rolls around, they would likely delay that implementation, but in 2024 it's a perfectly reasonable goal to shoot for. It took less time between "we should go to the moon" and "one small step." I'm pretty sure we can pull this one off. Now "doing it wrong" would be mandating that all new cars be EVs by 2025. That would be an unreasonable target (but still a good idea, if you ask certain communities). There really isn't time to slow walk this stuff, that could have happened if we'd started twenty years ago, but it's too late for that now. You have to take aggressive actions, but ones that are achievable, THAT is the balanced approach. Doing anything less than that is basically doing nothing and hoping it all works out. What do you think "too aggressively conservative" would be on this topic? Mandating that by 2035 all new cars must run on coal?
    1
  13970.  @mastick5106  I'm not citing any particular study, but I don't think it's unlikely, given the growth in EVs, combined with likely rises in fossil fuel costs, and expanded EV technology. My point is, 2035 is not an unreasonable goal to set in 2023. As for the "lithium bottleneck," it is already in the process of being solved, the mining and processing facilities necessary are already being built and will be available within no more than five years. Also factor in that alternate batter chemistries are also being developed, so cars built in 2030 and 2035 will likely have something significantly different, but will still benefit from the growth in EV availability over the next decade, since they will still use the same charging infrastructure. EVs do have some issues in cold weather (as do ICE cars), but they are definitely solvable problems. There have been great videos done on some recent problems people had in Chicago recently, and how those problems are completely avoidable. The more comfortable people get with EVs, the less likely such things will occur, the same as with ICE cars. I mean, Norway is one of the biggest buyers of EVs, so the cold doesn't bother them anyway. As for the power grid, we need to expand the power grid with or without EVs, and that too is an ongoing process. The power grid in 2023 couldn't handle everyone driving EVs, but the gasoline network in 1923 couldn't handle everyone driving automobiles, that's ok, it expands to meet demand. There's nothing preventing the power grid from keeping up. As to your last point, I'm not sure what you mean. They've modeled out what we can expect if people continue to drive cars at the current rates, that's plan A, and they've modeled out what would happen if we stopped all CO2 production now, that's plan B, neither of them terribly good, any plan to reduce CO2 production would fall somewhere in between, but modelling any specific program to do so would be difficult, because it's too small a part of a larger effort.
    1
  13971.  @mastick5106  I think my previous response was disappeared. I solved all your questions though, lithium supplies will be fine, new batteries might not even need it, cold is entirely manageable, and the power grid can and must be expanded to meet rising demand, so basically, it would be impossible to go all electric by 2025, but entirely feasible to do it by 2035.
    1
  13972.  @mastick5106  I'm going to split this up in hopes some sticks: 1. I'm not citing any particular study, but I don't think it's unlikely, given the growth in EVs, combined with likely rises in fossil fuel costs, and expanded EV technology. My point is, 2035 is not an unreasonable goal to set in 2023.
    1
  13973. ​ @mastick5106  2. As for the "lithium bottleneck," it is already in the process of being solved, the mining and processing facilities necessary are already being built and will be available within no more than five years. Also factor in that alternate batter chemistries are also being developed, so cars built in 2030 and 2035 will likely have something significantly different, but will still benefit from the growth in EV availability over the next decade, since they will still use the same charging infrastructure.
    1
  13974.  @mastick5106  3. EVs do have some issues in cold weather (as do ICE cars), but they are definitely solvable problems. There have been great videos done on some recent problems people had in Chicago recently, and how those problems are completely avoidable. The more comfortable people get with EVs, the less likely such things will occur, the same as with ICE cars. I mean, Norway is one of the biggest buyers of EVs, so the cold doesn't bother them anyway.
    1
  13975.  @mastick5106  4. As for the power grid, we need to expand the power grid with or without EVs, and that too is an ongoing process. The power grid in 2023 couldn't handle everyone driving EVs, but the gasoline network in 1923 couldn't handle everyone driving automobiles, that's ok, it expands to meet demand. There's nothing preventing the power grid from keeping up.
    1
  13976.  @mastick5106  5. As to your last point, I'm not sure what you mean. They've modeled out what we can expect if people continue to drive cars at the current rates, that's plan A, and they've modeled out what would happen if we stopped all CO2 production now, that's plan B, neither of them terribly good, any plan to reduce CO2 production would fall somewhere in between, but modelling any specific program to do so would be difficult, because it's too small a part of a larger effort.
    1
  13977.  @mastick5106  And that would be the problem, you give too much credit to the overly pessimistic sources, which renders your conclusions inaccurate. If we followed that philosophy, we'd still be using horse and buggy right now, waiting for them to figure out how to make cars work at scale. On the bright side though, I suppose global warming would be about half as bad.
    1
  13978.  @mastick5106  I'm just saying that's why your perspective is off kilter. I agree with what you said that we should follow the middle path between pessimism and optimism, it's just that you are failing to live up to that standard by hewing exclusively to pessimism.
    1
  13979.  @mastick5106  Ok, so let me ask you this, you have opposed even modest efforts to aim toward green energy options, what would YOU consider to be a reasonable middle ground policy toward green energy projects? What should government be doing today to advance a green energy future? How do you think we should get to carbon neutral by 2050? Also, for the record, I hand wave away nothing, I was only pointing out that those potential problems you listed had already been solved.
    1
  13980.  @mastick5106  You opposed the 2035 target, which was an EXTREMELY modest effort, since it was over ten years out and easily amended if necessary. It was basically nothing at all, unless it worked out, in which case it would be great What would you have preferred? Fifty years out? "Probably the biggest difference, though, is I don't see the need to get to carbon neutral at all," Well there's your problem. You can't hold a "moderate" viewpoint if you can't even start with a basis in reality.
    1
  13981.  @mastick5106  And hence the need to combat misinformation. If even you can be mislead by it, and if no amount of "more information" is enough to correct for that, then how can any of this work? If "more information" actually worked, then we wouldn't be having this conversation, so the question becomes, "how can we fix this without blocking misinformation?"
    1
  13982.  @mastick5106  So what information are you lacking, to have arrived at incorrect conclusions, and be convinced enough of them to argue about it? Why do you believe that your own a study into the topic has picked up information that EVERYONE who does this stuff every day of their lives have missed? Doesn't it seem more likely to you that perhaps you missed something that they understood better?
    1
  13983.  @mastick5106  Good to know, everyone is wrong, except for you, who has ":done a little statistics," and therefore knows better than all of them. Makes sense, I should really listen to you instead. and no, there are not "many top scientists" who disagree on this, there are at most a handful of cranks and industry shills. Their results have no validity, they just confirm your biases. You agree with the cranks and shills because you want them to be right, not because they are right.
    1
  13984.  @mastick5106  I'm sure that you and the fossil fuel industry scientists are right, and that the other climate scientists that outnumber you 100 to 1 are somehow completely wrong. That makes perfect sense, if you don't think about it.
    1
  13985.  @hackarma2072  My point is in a military sense. Obviously from the western perspective the current ideal would be to just maintain the status quo, a calm and stable civilian land route. My point was that the video posited a "what if NATO tried to seize it?" Scenario, and that my response was that they would have absolutely zero reason to do so during peacetime, since there would be no practical advantage to it, and it would be unnecessary during wartime, since they could just deny Russia access to it without needing to occupy it themselves. So there is no scenario in which NATO would have a reason to occupy the gap. Now Russia might have a reason if they wanted to apply aggression to their Baltic neighbors, in which case, as I said, the NATO forces could just bombard them back out without needing to physically occupy the area.
    1
  13986.  @HeadsFullOfEyeballs  I view that as more of a commerce issue than a military one. If they blocked passage through the gap to the Baltic states then that would be inconvenient for TRADE, it would impose a civilian burden on those states, and NATO would have to respond to that, but it would not be a significant military advantage. If Russia were to ever pose a military threat to the Baltics, to the point that NATO responded with force, step 1 would likely be to decimate Kaliningrad's naval bases and conquer that region, ignoring the gap itself entirely. That would reopen their land routes to the north, and even without any land routes, they have plenty of air and sea access to defend that entire region from Russian aggression. There is no actual strategic necessity to the region, it's purely political posturing on Russia's part.
    1
  13987. You do understand that covid is not a sexually transmitted disease, right? You don't have to mate with something to catch covid from it.
    1
  13988. They are defending our borders, by making sure that our enemies don't get anywhere near them. Would you rather they defend our borders like Ukraine and Israel do, where civilians get caught in the crossfire?
    1
  13989. They are defending our borders, just at a distance.
    1
  13990.  @yehimstone5492  Harris is not involved in the border, and never was.
    1
  13991.  @gdc3084  Like Iraq and Afghanistan?
    1
  13992.  @clever_mag_smart5655  If they don't take over Austria before they join NATO, the price of acquiring them will only go up!
    1
  13993.  @clever_mag_smart5655  So said Ukraine. . .
    1
  13994.  @tobetheanswer  So you're saying he'd endorse Trump.
    1
  13995.  @Jetairplane  Yes, getting sneezed on could get you killed if they had covid and weren't vaccinated. Good point.
    1
  13996.  @Jetairplane  I'm not sure you understand that metaphor. The "kool aid" in that metaphor was poisoned by a death cult. In this case, "drinking the kool aid" would be following the advice of the death cult that is "anti stopping covid from killing people."
    1
  13997.  @TomSmith-ls5rn  That really isn't how government works. The Federal government does not have absolute authority over states, state level government does not have absolute authority over local areas, especially in places like California with decades of precedent and state constitutional blocks. Things like the housing crisis are entirely at the local levels, in which local councils determine which sorts of buildings can be built, and give priority to luxury apartments and single family dwellings, rather than the high density affordable housing that the population actually needs. This is one of the largest solvable problems that California currently faces, and there's little anyone above that level can do about it, at least not without a major overhaul to the core systems.
    1
  13998.  @philspd473  Again, we DO have a democracy. We have a constitutional republic, which is a democracy. If the democratic component of that is broken in some way, then it ceases to be a constitutional republic, and would instead turn into an autocracy. Now, if anyone were arguing that "our direct democracy is at risk," then you might have something to quibble over.
    1
  13999.  @philspd473  Why, does she say that we have a direct democracy, or just that "our democracy is in peril?"
    1
  14000.  @philspd473  Never heard of that act. Looking it over, I see nothing objectionable to it. Why don't you like it? Why do you claim "I dodge that one" when this is the first I'm hearing of it and see no reason to care about it one way or the other? What does this have to do with your previous points?
    1
  14001.  @philspd473 2012. It seems to be about allowing the US State Department to pick up the old role of the USIA. What would that have to do with anything?
    1
  14002. They can't claim to be different things when Hamas is the official government of Gaza.
    1
  14003.  @X4zerm4n  Gaza is the portion of Palestine that is relevant at the moment, as they are the ones currently at war with Israel. There is no direct conflict between Israel and, say, the Palestinians of New Jersey. Or at least, not on Israel's part. If your view is "I support Israel more than Gaza, but not more than other Palestinians," well, ok, but that's a pointless position to take.
    1
  14004.  @X4zerm4n  But in that one poll, they literally preferred Hamas, not Palestine, to Israeli Jews. Hamas is not particularly relevant to the West Bank.
    1
  14005. This guy was acting director of OMB during the Trump administration. That doesn't count for anything. A circus clown would know more about the job. Why was he even invited on the show?
    1
  14006.  @Zetirix  So "no good reason." That's what I assumed.
    1
  14007.  @Zetirix  Exactly, Trump and his supporters are completely incapable of intellectual honesty. Or even just either one of those two things.
    1
  14008.  @Zetirix  Tulsi was never right about anything.
    1
  14009.  @michaelmcclurg9698  They are opposed to Trump, so they are the anti-lie candidates.
    1
  14010.  @brianrutherfield9233  Of course not, the facts decide that. I'm just reporting on them.
    1
  14011.  @brianrutherfield9233  Ok?
    1
  14012. We should be doing secondary sanctions on countries that continue to do business, but do them in a fair way, give significant advanced warning that these sanctions will be coming and that they are avoidable if those countries halt their trade with Russia, and provide them financial benefits over what they usually have for not doing that.
    1
  14013.  @Welgeldiguniekalias  We could force them to stop buying from Russia, or at least make life a lot worse for them if they did, but that would probably cause more harm than good. But yes, the priority is to stop them reselling goods to Russia, so that would be the focus on the sanctions. If we have reason to believe this is what they are doing, then we could cut off ALL exports into their countries.
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  14014. So far there's no evidence of wrongdoing on Joe Biden's part, the suspicion is entirely on his son. At the very least we can agree that nothing Hunter's been accused of is anything as bad as what Jared Kushner is known to have done on the record.
    1
  14015. Apparently. . . poorly.
    1
  14016.  @juliemunoz2762  Where have you seen plans for any border walls in Ukraine? That would make no sense.
    1
  14017.  @WildTrek  China does have a big wall, which does not go along any of their current borders. They do NOT have walls across most of their actual borders. Neither do most of their neighbors. The only countries with actual significant border walls are North Korea and South Korea, which is less of a "wall" and more of a "mine field," because they are still technically at war. The point is that "border walls" are fairly uncommon, both in the modern world and in world history. They are by no means vital to maintaining a national border. Gaza currently has a border, but only because it has a total circumference of less than 40 miles, it would be impractical if it were hundreds of miles across. Walls can make sense so long as they are just controlling relatively small places, but there are practical limits to their effectiveness. The wall in China you mentioned earlier was famously breached all the time.
    1
  14018.  @twodog4220  Spitting nothing but facts here, I'm not sure what bothers you about that.
    1
  14019. I hope Canada doesn't do any retaliatory tariffs, because they don't need to, and because if they do, he can just point at those and blame them for the hardships Americans will face. Without those, he has nobody else to blame.
    1
  14020.  @paulpaul8126  That's because cost of living is higher in the US. All wages are higher, for equivalent positions.
    1
  14021.  @007kingifrit  You live in a bubble, a lot of people do. You only encounter people who might think differently than you when you're online, so you think they don't exist in the real world, whereas those people are just living in a different area, where they similarly have trouble believing that people like you exist. For the record, this is a pretty well balanced area, it's just that there are far fewer doctors than their are patients, which is the case in most parts of America.
    1
  14022.  @007kingifrit  So you know I'm right then.
    1
  14023.  @007kingifrit  There are around three hundred million people in the US, how many of those are you personally aware have or have not had to wait to get healthcare? Is it more or less than a million of them?
    1
  14024.  @007kingifrit  But you are using your anecdotes of "people who didn't have problems" in an argument to say nobody has problems. I am pointing out that people do factually have problems, not just in the example I presented to you, so while I am willing to take your examples in good faith of cases where it was not a problem, if you take mine in equally good faith then the conclusion we have to agree on is that problems do exist. And yes, Americans tolerate a wait to see a doctor every single day, it's just that many Americans go years without any significant medical problems, and they just go to their regularly scheduled appointments or maybe hit up an urgent care, so they don't have much experience with actually getting "on demand" medical treatment, and trust the anecdotes they hear or experience from many years ago when things were better.
    1
  14025.  @SusCalvin  Why would that be better? It would only lead to higher death rates in the states that opted out, like we're already seeing with similar situations. It also means higher costs overall, since individual states doing something is less efficient than doing it at the national level.
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  14026. @ Trump'd pardon you for that though.
    1
  14027. That's not her job. She is the Vice President. Her job is to not die for four years. The Southern border is fine, much better than it was during the Trump administration. You just have a bunch of Republicans throwing fits because they don't want any immigrants.
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  14028. I don't think it tracks to a bell curve. Where have you seen that?
    1
  14029.  @drawingmomentum  That doesn't explain why it would generate a bell curve though. What are the X and Y axis of this graph?
    1
  14030. Well, the interesting distinction is that government hearings are under oath, so if they told you what you want to hear, they could get prosecuted for lying to congress, whereas people can tell you what you want to hear all day long on The Hill, without any penalty for it not being actually true.
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  14031. I find it hilarious how MAGA simps think crowd sizes are in any way related to votes cast. If that were the case, then we'd be deep into Taylor Swift's second term.
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  14032.  @voteredsaveamerica  The secret to being the best at lying is for the things you say to actually be true. Biden has mastered this, while Trump only pretends.
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  14033. So basically, make it legal for a Presidential campaign to openly cooperate with a foreign adversary to the United States? I don't see how anyone would want that, other than China, Russia, North Korea, Iran. . . which do you work for again?
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  14034. @calencrawford2195 Wow, for someone " uninitiated in this whole political talk," you sure do have a TON of random conspiracy theories handy! Maybe. . . go outside or something? Get a breath of fresh air? The thing to take away from this story is that no wrong-doing took place, and nobody needs to be defunded here. It's just a few idiots in the House playing games on open mics.
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  14035. @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.
    1
  14036. That's Marvel, different branch of Disney.
    1
  14037.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  I doubt that would apply in this case. It would find nothing of value.
    1
  14038.  @IreneCampos-tk2vd  I'm sorry that I don't buy into your headcanon.
    1
  14039.  @TingTing-f4q  If the House Oversight Committeee gave Biden and Wray the same treatment that the previous congres gave to Trump, then that would mean leaving him alone, because he hasn't done anything wrong, unlike Trump, who committed many crimes. Justice does not work with "if you punish one side, you need to punish the other just as much," it works with "anyone who does crimes, regardless of which side they are on, gets punished, and anyone who is innocent, does not."
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  14040.  @ck1234k  That's because Trump is a rogue. At best. Democrats treat him how he deserves to be treated, nothing more than that.
    1
  14041.  @sharonolson5782  It already has been investigated completely. The result was that no crimes took place.
    1
  14042.  @TheDancer819  I believe allegations based on evidence. The more evidence is available, and the more credible the sources of those allegations, the more credence I give the theory. The fact is that there is TONS of evidence that Trump committed various crimes, most of it from extremely reliable sources. Therefore, it is logical to conclude that Trump likely committed those crimes. To the contrary, there is very little actual evidence that Biden did anything wrong, mostly hearsay and innuendo, and/or coming from extremely sketchy sources like known Putin simps and "anonymous whistleblowers" that have been debunked by the agencies trusted to look into their claims. The "double standard" would be to believe the rumors against Biden and to not believe the claims against Trump, not the other way around.
    1
  14043.  @randydowell7646  It's sad that supporting and defending the Constitution of the United States has become a partisan Democratic idea these days. This is the world Faux News has created. Orwell knew.
    1
  14044.  rodneyhoward9450  Imaginary people? Nothing compared to the thousands of actual right wing thugs.
    1
  14045. They are easily misled by fake news.
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  14046. How so? Aren't they on the wrong side of this issue?
    1
  14047.  @Rabbit-v4b  The problem is that they did not build nice houses that the market could afford, they built houses that the market could not afford, leaving too many people without any affordable housing. The issue there has absolutely nothing to do with monetary policy, and everything to do with "real estate for the purpose of turning a profit, instead of with the purpose of housing people." It's a failure in the incentives and penalties for producing real estate that meets public needs or failing to do so, and occurs regardless of what the Fed gets up to.
    1
  14048.  @noahboday2008  Nothing the Biden administration has done has driven up the price of oil. It started to climb during the Trump administration and continued at the same pace during Biden's, until the Russian genocide in Ukraine drove it higher, and then sanctions have dropped it back down a bit. Biden's "crazy spending" has all been on net positive programs, like eliminating child poverty over 2021, and necessary infrastructure improvements. That is GOOD government spending, as opposed to border walls and tax cuts for billionaires. Biden has also done nothing to bottleneck any supply chains, that was entirely caused by pandemic-related chain disruptions and climate change. Again, government spending literally doesn't matter, at least for the US, so long as that spending is done in a way that creates benefits relative to the investment.
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  14049.  @RobertL.Peters  At no point did I say that 40% was attributable to monetary policy. I said that even according to the person I was talking to's report, 60% of the inflation was directly attributed to supply chains. The remaining 40% was not necessarily due to monetary policy though. The people whining about monetary policy today are the same people who always whine about monetary policy, because they have complex conspiracy theories about how monetary policy "really works" and want people to invest in whatever nonsense they invest in instead. Again, if the US inflation were largely due to monetary policy, then why is inflation as bad or worse in so many other countries over the same period of time? Also, while you seem to blame "the Biden administration," it's important to remember that most of the monetary policy moves were made under the Trump administration, before Biden took office. And no, illegal immigration in no way contributes to inflation, you just seem to have a "word salad" view of economics, "whatever things I don't like, THEY'RE to blame!"
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  14050. Zelynsky should accept Trumps' apology for his poor behavior.
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  14051. Well, looks like stonks will be up in Russian mail-order brides, when there are no men left in the country.
    1
  14052. Most of the country dislikes Trump, I think the people voting for Haley would prefer to win in the fall, rather than just win the primary.
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  14053. Wouldn't it be best to build a full Tungsten "exoskeleton," and then fill that with bismuth for weight?
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  14054. It's not "congress," it's House Republicans gumming up the works. They break government so that people will think government is broken. If you don't like broken government, don't let Republicans anywhere near it.
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  14055.  @peterii3512  So I'm back to my original point then that it was stupid to add a rule like this at all if they were doing it in a way that was unenforceable.
    1
  14056.  @Vercixx  This sort of "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours" stalemate is exactly the predicted response of any unanimous system in which the benefits of the voting parties are at risk.
    1
  14057.  @Arcaryon  They US have been dealing with those exact same issues for 200 years now, and it's a pain in the ass, but it's still worth doing. The important thing is to design the rules so that the ones doing most of the heavy lifting also wield most of the power. The smaller states benefit by being under the umbrella of the bigger ones, and getting the perks associated with membership, but shouldn't also be able to wield significant power in the decision-making process if they aren't contributing significantly. The US messed this up a bit when putting its founding documents together, and it sounds like the EU did too, but it's always fixable.
    1
  14058.  @Arcaryon  There is more to that than I can properly respond to, but know that I read it. :D
    1
  14059.  @damnedmadman  Everything is bad when taken to extremes, and also bad when not taken as far as it should be. The sovereignty that a person has from their own government has value, and the sovereignty that one nation has within a collection of nations has value, but the strength and unity that a person can gain from their nation, or that a nation can gain from a more unified community of nations can often outweigh those benefits. "Sovereignty" is not itself a counterargument to an external group seeking to impose some level of control. It's always a trade-off, and the question becomes, is the value that sovereignty is providing as beneficial as the value that cooperation would provide?
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  14060.  @damnedmadman  The "crazy wannabe dictators" are on the "pro-sovereignity" side of things, that's what started this whole discussion. It's the anti-dictators side that is trying to reign them in, because dictators should not be allowed within the EU. The point is, the EU as a loose collection of entirely sovereign states is somewhat useful, but the EU as a single united entity would be much stronger in the world and provide much more benefit to its member citizens. They should not achieve this through armed coercion, but through free democratic consensus.
    1
  14061.  @damnedmadman  Make up your mind, you argue that people without a right to vote is bad, but that dictators are good.
    1
  14062.  @damnedmadman  But most of the bad that Hitler accomplished was after he'd suspended basic rule of law. It's entirely possible to elect an awful person, but most of the worst crimes come after they've dismissed free and fair elections to hold them accountable for it afterward. A monarchy isn't necessarily a bad thing, unless they lack the mandate of the people they rule, and suppress free speech and protest. If the people of a country genuinely approve of a monarch, and that monarch follows basic rule of law and human rights principles, there's no reason to do anything about that, but, again, that has nothing whatsoever to do with the specific cases we've been discussing.
    1
  14063.  @damnedmadman  "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the other ones." Democracy definitely has flaws, no question, they are just far better than autocracies. If you have an autocracy that miraculously has perfect leaders that care for the public? Great, it works out. If you miraculously have a Democracy in which you picked perfect leaders that care for the public? Great, it also works out. If you have an autocracy where the leader is terrible, there's basically nothing that can be done about that, and historically this is most often the case. If you have a democracy where the leader is terrible, you can vote for Biden instead.
    1
  14064.  @damnedmadman  Reducing the power of government does not benefit the citizen, it only benefits the corporation. "The government should be reduced in power so that I have more" is a great philosophy for any population size less than or equal to "one," but completely fails with any larger population. For any group of people larger than that, you need a strong governmental system that can make sure that the strong cannot prey on the weak. A democratic government may be flawed, but a lack of one is even worse.
    1
  14065.  @damnedmadman  Are you legitimately promoting Hong Kong as a success story? In 2020? As a beacon of freedom?
    1
  14066.  @SMRT79  The current Republican candidates are bad for any number of reasons, mainly due to either criminal activities, authoritarian ideologies, or other policy positions that would make them unfit for office. There aren't currently any third party candidates that have the name recognition to make them viable in enough states to win an election, and there are unlikely to be any. I'll vote for the best candidate that is likely to win, it just so happens that for the past couple decades, that person happens to be a Democrat.
    1
  14067.  @marlonestrella5054  He said that, right there in the video. And he never claimed to have been part of those protests, just that he had been there when they were happening, which he believed was the case.
    1
  14068.  @marlonestrella5054  Like a normal human being.
    1
  14069. "Globalization" is a boogeyman on the right-wing conspiracy blogs, responsible for everything from lower wages to gum disease. It's just a necessary part of the present and future, the only trick is doing it well.
    1
  14070. People have become very cynical about how motivated idiots will be to just do the right thing because it's the right thing. When people show you who they are, believe them.
    1
  14071. Sure, everyone does, but Biden committed no crimes and there's no reason to believe that he did. The right just keep pumping out rumors and conspiracy theories as a distraction from all the many crimes that their own side commit on a regular basis.
    1
  14072. Why don't thy just build more full-cycle plants? Instead of pumping brine back into the ocean, pump it into salt pools, and let them continue to evaporate into sea salt, which can then be sold off (and also that evaporating water would increase humidity in the local area). I would also imagine that they could be more efficient if they used pumps to raise the water high up, and then allow it to drop through the desalination tubes, and then pump the resulting water out of the way, allowing the water pressure caused by the height difference to cause the pressure needed.
    1
  14073. That's what Trump's missing. He's incapable of making a good faith effort to help anyone.
    1
  14074. It became illegal when he tried to hide the money trail for the payments.
    1
  14075. She has a more conservative voting record than most Republicans. It's the Trump supporters that are RINOs.
    1
  14076. TL;DW: For tax purposes.
    1
  14077. Yup, this is the problem, the Republican congresses that raided the Social Security trust fund to pay off their donors.
    1
  14078. The Republican congresses were the cause of that.
    1
  14079. I don't mess with these sorts of tools, but if the issue with a Dremmel is the lack of a foot pedal, why don't they just make a foot pedal? I mean, with modern tech it should be very cheap and easy for them to put out a wired, or even wireless foot pedal for their devices.
    1
  14080. It would be, in a normal year, but this is not a normal year. Remember "lock her up?"
    1
  14081.  @donut3946  The people in the DoJ wouldn't let him do it last time, so he's getting different people this time.
    1
  14082.  @METALKILLSemosNpunks  Whether any bias or crime exists there is irrelevant to this committee. They are not looking for actual corruption or bias, they are trying to find some excuse to deflect away from various crimes that the FBI have been lawfully and responsibly investigating, and they will platform anyone who will support their conspiracy theories. I am all for serious investigations into accountability, but that will never happen on a committee with Jim Jordan in charge of it.
    1
  14083. That isn't really a relevant distinction though.
    1
  14084. I think Pelosi will be fine either way. She doesn't really care about her salary. I think Salary issues are more for people who have to maintain a family home back in their home districts, as well as a home in DC, and not everyone in congress is wealthy enough to maintain that without assistance.
    1
  14085. "There is no such thing as 'assault weapon,' that's just a made up term." . . They are ALL "made up terms,." There is no such thing as a "pistol" or a "rifle," those are just "made up terms" used to refer to certain types of guns, there is no such thing as a "gun," that is just amade up term to describe metal pounded into a funky shape. An "assault rifle" is whatever the law defines it as, and it is perhaps the case that the definition used in the previous ban could be updated to better reflect the current situation, but it would still be a good idea to have a ban in place to restrict sale and ownership of AR-15 and equivalent firearms.
    1
  14086. The difference between Ramaswamy and Biden is that Biden's policies will actually TAKE us to those better days, whereas Ramaswamy's will lead us into the desert.
    1
  14087. Yeah, but it turns for shit.
    1
  14088.  @robertallen7025  If a Republican understood what an American should be, then they wouldn't be a Republican.
    1
  14089.  @H43339  Because that would be both illegal and extremely destructive to the US economy. The US economy requires a significant number of new immigrants each year to sustain it, and billions of dollars in trade cross the border every week. Even Republicans don't actually want to close the border, they just want to complain about "open borders."
    1
  14090. She wouldn't likely get that many votes. Democrats respect her as a principled and intelligent person, certainly capable of being president, but her policies are WAY far off from what Democrats actually want. It'd be like having a great chef that only cooks dishes that you don't like. She'd be better than anyone currently running on the Republican ticket, but shouldn't count on too many Democratic votes if she runs.
    1
  14091. Actually, she's the opposite of a RINO. She's a "Republican in all but name." There's nobody more Republican than her in the entire current party. Certainly none of the MAGA types.
    1
  14092.  @legaleeblonde4310  Who's telling them about it first?
    1
  14093. Sadly it's become increasingly common for these nationalist hate groups to attack peaceful protests.
    1
  14094. and over much worse potential crimes!
    1
  14095. International shipping is vital to US interests. If your perspective is "don't worry about what goes on in the Red Sea," then don't complain if gas prices rise to $4 a gallon.
    1
  14096.  @rhetorical1488  It does, actually. The Houthis have also attacked US military vessels.
    1
  14097. Only a couple hundred more and he'll have almost as many as the last guy!
    1
  14098.  @eemoogee160  Well, he has a lot of racist viewpoints for someone who "isn't" racist, and at the end of the day, that's a distinction without a difference.
    1
  14099.  @eemoogee160  I'm sorry, I had been discussing a different topic and the lack of context caused me to confuse the two. RFK's comments did not involve white nationalists, they involved implications that the pandemic was somehow "intentional" in targeting specific ethnic groups. This is not actually true, neither in that it was at all intentional in its function, nor that it effects the groups he named any less than other groups. Why would he state such an argument to others if not to intentionally mislead them into believing that it was true?
    1
  14100.  @eemoogee160  I can respect honesty, but "honestly, I'm an idiot who believes idiotic things" is not a strong selling point for a Presidential candidate. He might be a perfectly nice person, but you wouldn't want him running anything.
    1
  14101.  @eemoogee160  Not really. Certainly not RFK, because even if he genuinely wanted to, he's not actually capable of doing it. Really no President is, it would require law changes, which means also getting a supermajority of Senators and half of the House on board with it, so electing an "ideal President" who promises you the moon, just to twiddle his thumbs for 4-8 years is dumb. Instead elect a President based on an ability to manage a stable government through his term.
    1
  14102. He certainly is the Democratic candidate for pro-Trump Republicans.
    1
  14103. This is the sad part, more conservatives like Putin than love America these days. He's the sort of autocrat they can let get behind them.
    1
  14104.  @dinaf1409  Yup, and that's why Trump can't be allowed a second term like Hitler was.
    1
  14105.  @Charles-j6v  There is no damage from the current administration, you're stuck in 2020 with the previous administration.
    1
  14106. If it's a room temperature superconductor, what's with all the levitating? Why don't they just attach a wire to one side and a wire to the other and test the conductivity? If it's zero. it's zero.
    1
  14107. Where were you four years ago when actual crimes were happening?
    1
  14108.  @rickyallred8838  Gas prices started to go up under Trump, Biden leveled them off and strated bringing them back down, but it's important to remember that gas prices are set by the global oil price, and has very little to do with who the US President is at the time. But you've been told to suck on Trump's teet, and so that's what you choose to do.
    1
  14109. Spending money we don't have is not what caused inflation. That's a myth.
    1
  14110. People who cross illegally are not eligible to vote.
    1
  14111.  @Joel-s1c6d  Gaza is extremely hard to hold accountable, because it is a "state" run entirely by terrorists. For the past 10+ years, Israel has not been able to effectively investigate stuff like this, they only had intelligence data. Now that they are actually IN Gaza, they can investigate the claims personally. When the state is run by terrorists, and the only way to operate there is to work with those terrorists, then the only valid option is to NOT operate there until the terrorists are gone.
    1
  14112.  @Joel-s1c6d  If they cannot do their work without playing ball with terrorists, then they should just not operate in that region.
    1
  14113. Evil as he is, Putin's lies at least cynically advance a purpose. Trump's lies are just stupid.
    1
  14114. He was aware that some of the documents existed, he was not aware that they were classified, apparently. Others he was completely unaware of. Sometimes documents are poorly labeled. Not always , but sometimes. If he obtained the documents in good faith (ie, he had legitimate VP reasons for having them), and then forgot that he had them, then that is not a crime. If these had been clearly labeled, then it is unlikely that he would not be prosecuted.
    1
  14115.  @lebohangmohapi8605  Context.
    1
  14116.  @85thenameless  It's only Republicans demanding participation trophies these days.
    1
  14117.  @85thenameless  Republican girls do that too. And Republican boys. And Republican nimbys. They are the worst because they hate themselves too.
    1
  14118.  @85thenameless  Lol, no, I didn't even vote for Trump.
    1
  14119.  @85thenameless  You asked, I answered, no, I did not vote for Trump. Do you need any help?
    1
  14120.  @85thenameless  You keep implying that I voted for Trump, but like I said, I did NOT vote for Trump. I don't know what keeps confusing you on that point. It's pretty simple, maybe you are too?
    1
  14121. The Rivian design style seems like "What a sci fi movie would make for a space rover." The thing looks like the Thundertank or something.
    1
  14122. Same place.
    1
  14123. So. . . Monkey D. Luffy.
    1
  14124.  @libbytaylor84  They can be, under certain circumstances, but in this case SCOTUS said he'd be immune. so whatever.
    1
  14125. America needs to invest more in long term planning, not just in things that can get results before the midterms. Otherwise countries like China will just keep eating our lunch.
    1
  14126. That's not why.
    1
  14127. He already did that yesterday. What more can he say?
    1
  14128. Vivek got beat in a half dozen debates by "none of the above."
    1
  14129.  @paulstubbs7678  Maybe, or maybe it's bottomed out for a bit and will take another shock to go lower. That's the risk. It's easy to say that certain things should collapse at some point, maybe even to say that they should collapse "soon," but it's hard to know whether they will collapse significantly within a few weeks or at most months.
    1
  14130.  @namenloss730  I don't think Tesla's going to crash significantly any time soon.
    1
  14131.  @namenloss730  Eh, no more so than most companies. The underlying product is fine. Better than hydrogen, at least.
    1
  14132. At no point did the US want Russia to invade their neighbors. I don't know who told you that, or why you were gullible enough to believe them.
    1
  14133.  @alienbotfarm187  No, the Ukrainian people did that. The US was just fine with that, since the previous administration had been bought by Russia.
    1
  14134.  @YankeeDoodle2  Less autocratic than Russia, certainly. If Russia is worried about Ukrainian Democracy, maybe they could leave the country and stop the war, so Ukraine could suspend martial law.
    1
  14135.  @YankeeDoodle2  He was democratically elected as President. He's been serving as president since, and is extremely popular with both his own people and around the world. More importantly, he has not invaded any of his neighbors, unlike Putin.
    1
  14136.  @juanerikestrada8286  Ok, but what does that have to do with covid? People who vape can get respiratory illnesses, plenty of that happened before and after covid, but that has nothing to do with covid.
    1
  14137.  @kxo1038  Reports about what?
    1
  14138.  @williambenner701  Sure, and that's a possibility, but remember, the Wuhan lab was there to study the various viruses found in that region.
    1
  14139.  @PineappleBaconPizza  What is your point? They think it was transmitted from raccoon dogs. The reason that bats and pangolins were part of the conversation is because there were traces of bat genetics in the initial covid strains, and pangolins are known to allow other similar viruses to "jump species," so it was believed that at one point in the chain of infection, they were involved, but that doesn't mean that they were the immediate link between "wild creatures in the middle of nowhere" and "humans in Wuhan."
    1
  14140.  @DGoldy303  Jan 6th was a failed coup, because everyone involved was an idiot, but it was a serious attempt to overthrow the government.
    1
  14141.  @CantusTropus  No police officers were killed but plenty were attacked, dozens were put in the hospital, one of them LOST AN EYE. Anyone who suggests that this was "non-violent" is an idiot.
    1
  14142.  @Orclin  Coups do not require violence. You can have a 100% peaceful coup. All a coup requires is that the lawful government is overturned in favor of an illegitimate one. All a coup attempt requires is that they make an effort to attempt to do that, which they did. It was a coup attempt, there is no debate on that point.
    1
  14143.  @dwavenminer  Nobody in Portland was any threat to the US government, and a coup attempt does not need to be violent. The Jan 6th coup attempt was not about violently seizing control of the government, it was about preventing the confirmation of Biden's electoral win, and instead illegally confirming Trump as the winner of the election, which would, if successful, be an overthrow of the lawful government. Why do people think guns are somehow a necessary component to a coup attempt?
    1
  14144.  @Gorilder  Several Jan 6th rioters were arrested on Capitol Grounds with weapons, including firearms. A coup attempt does not need to require violence, it only needs to attempt to overthrow the legitimate government. They were attempting to replace the legitimate President, Biden, with an illegitimate one, Trump. This was a coup attempt, no matter how much of a failure it was at actually succeeding.
    1
  14145. Why do you assume that they haven't?
    1
  14146.  @vladtheimpalerofficial  Source?
    1
  14147. Yup, because the Republicans and Trump are so often to blame for things, and Biden is an honest man who tells it like it is.
    1
  14148.  @SandyCheeks63564  The federal reserve is appointed by the President, and help to balance inflation. Without them at work, things would have gone more like in Turkey.
    1
  14149.  @AgeofCraccadilliaassent  That has nothing to do with the Fed's role. Where did you get that idea?
    1
  14150.  @Luckyrider1958  Democrats had nothing to do with this though. This was just capitalism. Most of it happened under Nixon and Reagan.
    1
  14151.  @Power5  In your opinion, that may be true. In actual fact, no, it is not a "raw material," and there is no easy way to split that difference. It would lead to mountains of red take and a massive increase in the size of government to police such claims, for no benefit.
    1
  14152.  @Power5  I doubt that would be a factor, it would still be a massive shift to how things operate that would take decades to settle into place, and would likely lead to much worse outcomes in every possible way. So why do it?
    1
  14153.  @Power5  I'm not concerned for the corporate profits. Boo hoo for them. I'm concerned that people would not be able to afford things anymore. And for NO good reason whatsoever, because this benefits no one.
    1
  14154.  @Luckyrider1958  Straight As, actually, why do you ask?
    1
  14155.  @Luckyrider1958  And? What's your point?
    1
  14156.  @noahmartin3057  The purchasing power of the dollar has fallen over time. This is not a bad thing, because wages are intended to keep up with this. The goal is never to keep the purchasing power of the dollar the same, the goal is to keep the purchasing power of someone's wages the same. In so far as the purchasing power of wages have fallen, that has nothing to do with the Fed, that is entirely due to businesses under-paying employees.
    1
  14157.  @noahmartin3057  Well look, the current inflationary spike has nothing to do with the fed. It's much worse in other countries, that the Fed have no influence over. The Fed is doing what they can to get inflation back down to reasonable levels. Too much inflation is definitely bad, everyone agrees on that, including the Fed, and rich people. But most economists agree that some inflation is good, 1-2%, because that means that if you just hoard money under the mattress, it loses value, and thing swill only get more expensive later, so you should probably buy things now. It keeps the economy moving at a steady pace. If your dollar could buy twice as much tomorrow as it does today, then why spend it today? That leads to economic stagnation, where nobody is buying, so nobody is selling, so nobody is producing, so nobody has jobs. So the "value of the dollar" is lower than it used to be, and it always will be, unless things go terribly wrong. But this does not matter. All that actually matters is that the value of an hour of work remains steady or improving, and that has nothing to do with the Fed, it has to do with business. The value of an American worker's labor has never had anything at all to do with actions of the Fed, it has had to do with policies that allowed businesses to shift money from workers to management and shareholders. And as for two-worker households, that again had nothing to do with the Fed, that had to do with women entering the workforce. When you have twice as many employees, the value of labor goes down. This is inevitable. I don't know why anyone would think the Fed has any say in the matter.
    1
  14158.  @DaytonaRoadster  Our needs have changed since then. If your argument is that we should go back to dipping candles to light our homes, then. . . that's a take, but I doubt you'd get much support for it. But if the goal is to maintain our current standard or living or better, that would require at least some level of globalization, and significant globalization if we want to keep purchasing power roughly the same as it currently is.
    1
  14159. #Sponsored? Anyway, I think that the most considerate way that a phone data plan can work is to just allow you to pay for data as you go, rather than having to pick a plan in advance and punishing you for going over. If you only use 1GB, you only pay for 1GB. If you use 8GB, you pay for 8GB, but without some sort of "penalty" attached. I like the security of "Unlimited," but probably would rarely go over other benchmarks.
    1
  14160. Trump would not be eligible to win an election if he'd already won two in the past. Something does not add up about your math.
    1
  14161. I love how Vance has become his "explainer in chief." He just keeps getting questions about whatever Trump just said, and then he has to go "well, when he said 'I'll do the abortions myself, anyone in the audience want one?', what he really meant was. . ."
    1
  14162. While it wouldn't be good for long distances right this minute, the easy assumption is that charging resources will drastically improve over the next ten years, and by the time you are guaranteed to find charging anywhere you look for it, I see this as working quite well for long hauls. Charging cycles should match up pretty well with rest stops drivers would be taking anyway, so you would say drive for 4-5 hours, take a lunch break that would allow you to charge up a bit, drive another 4-5 hours and take a sleep break while it charges to full, repeat.
    1
  14163. Why some oppose NATO: "They are Krelmin plants." This is not a left/right thing, the Kremlin is an equal opportunity shopper. Just look at Trump.
    1
  14164.  @stevefraioli4838  Whoa, whoa, don't use such big words, you're losing Alex.
    1
  14165. How so?
    1
  14166.  @robertslugg8361  Yup, that was "make Germany great again" in action.
    1
  14167.  @kevinpreston5590  From places where casual criminals can acquire them.
    1
  14168.  @KryptonArcher  You should educate yourself then, because Switzerland has much more strict gun control than the US does.
    1
  14169.  @BaxterBlue  Nothing about America's freedoms require guns. The other first world countries are no less free than America is, they just have fewer homicides.
    1
  14170.  @BaxterBlue  Gun ownership has nothing to do with civil liberties.
    1
  14171.  @KryptonArcher  Whichever source you looked it up on was unreliable then. Find better sources. Really "the first thing you saw" is rarely the best source available. Learn to be a better researcher.
    1
  14172.  @KryptonArcher  Also, the Swiss watch the same shows we do, typically dubbed.
    1
  14173.  @PrisonPreacher  Well, for one thing, most criminals purchase their weapons legally, so cutting off that option will take a lot of guns out of their hands. Second, most guns in the black market were either purchased or stolen from people who bought them legally, so removing those from the market further narrows their options. Once the sources are removed, any time a criminal is caught with a weapon, it would be removed from circulation, and over time, almost none would be left.
    1
  14174.  @PearlMagnolia  Laws work well, when they are well designed and carried out. We know this from the many other countries that DO have these laws, and have far fewer homicides as a result.
    1
  14175.  @kamwickw933  Really, Germany in the 1930s only went wrong BECAUSE of civilian gun ownership. The democratic government there was overthrown by civilians with guns, and that's when the problems started.
    1
  14176.  @PearlMagnolia  Would you rather be attacked with a machete or an AR-15?
    1
  14177.  @KryptonArcher  You need to look more into the Swiss legal system if you think the story you're presenting is accurate. They have much more significant limitations on gun ownership, gun carrying, and ammo access than you are claiming. It's possible that you are only looking at one tiny portion of their legal codes, and think that it supports your position, but are ignoring all the other legal codes they have surrounding gun possession.
    1
  14178.  @321hair  That would only make things worse.
    1
  14179.  @KryptonArcher  No, I'm saying that your interpretation of them is incomplete. You are clearling missing a few things, like how tightly ammo is controlled, or how open and concealed carry permits are extremely limited, or how you are required to report any stolen or misplaced weapons, and all transfers of ownership are carefully tracked. Also, many types of weapons that can be purchased in the US would require special, discretionary permitting. Also, there are strict limitations on safely storing your weapon, rather than just suggestions.
    1
  14180.  @kevinpreston5590  Men can get pregnant, if they are trans. That's not "ideology," it is biology.
    1
  14181. Yup, never expect intelligence from a Faux News audience, and you'll never be surprised.
    1
  14182.  @anlasma7942  Yeah, the same people who complain that the US shouldn't be "world police" also typically complain when the US doesn't step in to solve some military crisis that we have no natural part in.
    1
  14183.  @WrongThink_  Gas prices started to rise under Trump and continued to rise at that same pace under Biden. That really had nothing to do with who was US President at the time, since gas prices are always determined by the global price of oil. It obviously had nothing whatsoever to do with "yanking permits" or whatever, but I bet there are idiots out there who are gullible enough to think that's the reason why.
    1
  14184.  @Giving-spirit  You seem to be posting anti-homeless rants in several posts that are not talking about homeless people. Are you a landlord or something? The real problem is not homeless people, it's real estate speculators and people who purchase homes to put up for rent rather than selling them to people, such that housing prices have gotten insane. If we could reduce the average cost of housing, then we wouldn't have nearly as many homeless people.
    1
  14185.  @Giving-spirit  Of course homeless people are intelligent, why wouldn't they be? They just lack homes, they aren't stupid. But they also aren't a problem. The problem is the conditions leading to them being homeless in the first place.
    1
  14186.  @lastditch727  Oh, I'm no MAGA supporter.
    1
  14187.  @hiyo585  I dislike war, that is why I dislike traitors.
    1
  14188.  @jaartisjones5713  Yes, although that doesn't necessarily mean that we need to send soldiers into Ukraine. After all, article 5 was called in Afghanistan, and NATO members did respond to help the US, but many of them did not send even a single actual soldier to fight. That's fine, so long as they support the efforts in other ways. I think if article 5 were called in Ukraine, the most likely course of action would be a further flood of weapons to Ukrainian forces, the use of US and European aircraft to fight Russian air forces and bomb their land forces, the use of NATO missiles and artillery from neighboring counties, but I don't think deployment of NATO ground troops would happen right away, if at all.
    1
  14189.  @lastditch727  How so?
    1
  14190.  @MorbidMind123  I can't say that the CCP is doing no bioweapons research, but if they are, it had nothing to do with covid-19. Whether covid-19's first outbreak was in a wet market or in the Wuhan lab, it would still have come naturally from animals, and if it did come from the lab, it was one that was researching unusual strains of viruses so that they could act to prevent them in humans. If not for the work of labs like the Wuhan one, we would not have been able to develop the vaccines as quickly as we did, and this thing would still be killing tens of thousands of Americans per day.
    1
  14191.  @MorbidMind123  I know what the Wuhan lab was participating in, it was the study of viruses so that they could better develop cures. Labs all over the world work on that sort of thing and it's a necessary part of the process. That's not all the research they do there, and the funding from US sources was working on entirely separate research projects. In any case, it had nothing to do with Covid-19, since Covid-19 is not a gain-of-function product.
    1
  14192.    See my response to @SuperUber1101 . He gave us the best information he had at the time, whether or not that turned out for the best. Even if he had told everyone to wear a mask a few months earlier, that alone would not have made a massive difference, what with all the other complete policy failures going on at the White House (such as not taking the virus seriously months before that).
    1
  14193.  @jeffmcintosh6967  I only hold others accountable for the consequences of their own choices. It's only someone else's fault if they are at fault.
    1
  14194.  @walkinaxyl  Disinformation.
    1
  14195.    no, Trump was, and Birx did not push back against it often enough or forcefully enough.
    1
  14196. There are quite a few right-wing extremists with Latino roots. There are several white supremacist groups led by people with Latino names.
    1
  14197. If they can scrub CO2 externally, wouldn't it just be easier to add oxygen externally as well? Bypass the lungs entirely? Just have a mechanical rig that pumps oxygen into the blood and removes CO2 from it.
    1
  14198.  @marcostar57  They were worse, you just weren't aware of it. Nostalgia goggles are a hell of a drug.
    1
  14199.  @republica13  Well, it could go either way, for better or worse, depending on whether democratic government beats corporations or corporations beat government. My only point was that right now is still considerably better than it was 50 years ago by any objective metric, and likely to continue to improve for at least a few more years, beyond that, who can say? There have been people predicting the end of the world since the beginning of the world, and they always claimed it was "right around the corner."
    1
  14200.  @kingkuts  Again, even if they get government support, they still have to ALSO spend their own money, because that support does not cover their expenses. This is not an unknown topic, it's been thoroughly researched. Immigrants add more money to the US economy through their efforts than any benefits they may get to help keep them alive while they do so. They are purely a net positive for the US. There is no reason to flip out about it.
    1
  14201.  @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.
    1
  14202.  @Robert08010  And my point is that being a parent does not give you an absolute authority over your child's education either. They are not your slave, they are their own person, and their future come before whatever you might want for them. Parents should have reasonable leeway in how the child is raised, but there also need to be checks and balances to protect children from irresponsible and malicious parenting.
    1
  14203. @@BlackLivesMatter1414 The kids are human beings, not property. Their well being comes first, not their parents' wishes.
    1
  14204.  @chrispaige8880  Schools are accountable to the voters.
    1
  14205.  @Robert08010  Why do you believe that parents have a right to abuse their children if they want? Do you not recognize those children as also being humans, deserving of human rights?
    1
  14206.  @Robert08010  Parents have a responsibility to raise their kids well. They do not have a right to raise their kids poorly. The future of the child ALWAYS takes precedence over their feelings.
    1
  14207.  @Robert08010  The more eyes are on the problem, the more likely the best solution will arise. If the child ONLY interacts with their parents, then it makes it much more likely that the parents who want to abuse their children will get away with it. If the child also interacts with other students and teachers, then they will be more likely to report abuse. Teachers do not get to unilaterally decide what happens to a child, but if they see warning signs, then they can involve medical professionals, police, the courts, etc. as appropriate, and between them they are more likely to arrive at the best outcome than home schooling.
    1
  14208.  @Robert08010  I definitely am approaching it from the point that more eyes IS definitely better than the child's parents, because that is a fact. Again, 77% of abused children are abused by their parents, and while most parents are perfectly fine, there are enough bad parents out there that it is vital that there be a "second opinion" on their parenting, alternate discussions to determine whether they are good or bad at their job. Again, "what the parent wants" comes a distance second to "what is in the best interests of the child." The child is not property, the child is a human being.
    1
  14209. District judges have authority under the US Constitution.
    1
  14210. How about the Supreme Court? "To this day, the Government has cited no basis in law for Abrego Garcia’s warrantless arrest, his removal to El Salvador, or his confinement in a Salvadoran prison. Nor could it."
    1
  14211.  @chadhaire1711  Just the facts, ma'am.
    1
  14212.  @Youll_Love_It_At_Levitz  The fact is that there should be plenty of charging stations, based on previous infrastructure adjustments and common sense. There is no good reason to believe that with over ten years warning, the industry will be incapable of building the necessary infrastructure. It would take a special kind of idiot to assume they would just sit on their hands for the next ten years.
    1
  14213.  @corybarrett2394  It doesn't take a faith in government, it takes a faith in business. People will be making a ton of money by building the electric infrastructure that we need, the charging stations won't be built by the government, they will be built by capitalism.
    1
  14214.  @ian6695  You should be paying more attention to developments in clean energy production and storage then. There are methods involving wind, solar, and geothermal that can help. Nuclear can be a part of that too. I expect there will still be fossil fuel powered electric plants past 2036, but the point is that we're building the infrastructure to move away from those fossil fuels, that as the plants change over, the cars will automatically benefit from that. Besides which, an electric car, even if charged using fossil fuel sources, is better for the environment than an ICE car, since the power plant scale processes are more efficient than millions of cars on the road can ever be. Also, more and more agricultural equipment is moving to electric as well, it's cheaper to maintain and fuel.
    1
  14215.  @kennethvance8896  There's some, millions of people already drive EVs in Cali alone, but there is certainly room for improvement. But this is set for over ten years from now, and EV charging options have grown massively in the past ten years, and on an upward curve from here, so by that point, it won't be an issue.
    1
  14216.  @ian6695  Desalinization plants are not energy, they are water. They cost energy and are not a good idea except in places where there is no alternative for basic water needs. Even when California was in drought, they had enough water to work with, they just needed to be careful with what they had.
    1
  14217. Yes, Jesus would want us to take in as many of these migrants as come to us, and ensure that they are well cared for.
    1
  14218.  @dustinbarlow1623  I'm just saying what Jesus would want, if you've maybe read the Bible, he's pretty clear about it.
    1
  14219.  @johnniebravo3513  Still better than his competition though, right?
    1
  14220. They're hiring them to dig the trenched they will be put to rest in.
    1
  14221. Simple facts. Russia started the war, only Russia can end the war, and they can end it at ANY time. It is ALL Russia.
    1
  14222.  @Clownelskiy  Russia did, when they invaded. There was no war prior to that.
    1
  14223.  @Clownelskiy  That was also Russia attacking.
    1
  14224. ​ @Clownelskiy  Who downed Malaysia flight 17?
    1
  14225.  @Clownelskiy  They didn't consider it a war zone at the time, and none of the HONEST participants in that conflict had access to anti-aircraft weaponry. Only Russia could had the means to murder civilians like that.
    1
  14226. Man, you really need to catch up wiht the news. Yes, all of that was true three years ago, but we elected an entirely different guy since then!
    1
  14227. We talk about those a lot. A lot of that discussion is about how conservatives misunderstand and misrepresent those amendments about as much as they misunderstand the 14th.
    1
  14228.  @Spirit451  And yet Crypto is still used primarily by scam artists and criminals. Honest people have no use for it.
    1
  14229. He promised anything it would take to get votes. Anything. It's really not working out.
    1
  14230. Hotez developed a low cost, patent free vaccine that was used by the developing world. He's about as "anti-big-pharam" as you can get.
    1
  14231.  @bobjohnson1633  No, when that happens, it means that you are misunderstanding what the study was demonstrating, but have enough of an exaggerated sense of your own intellect that you believe you caught a flaw that the peer review of the study somehow missed.
    1
  14232.  @merriemerrie7378  There is certainly pressure and politics in how SOME studies get conducted, but the results undergo peer review, and they aren't under the same limitations, so if there are flaws in the methodology, they will come to light. Studies are unlikely to be wrong, so much as they are likely to look into things that are of interest to a particular company or other sponsor, and ignore topics that aren't as valuable to them. But Bob Johnson's point was nonsensical, that a study would "demonstrate one thing and the conclusion is completely different." That never happens. If a study announced a conclusion that was in contradiction of their OWN data then they would get laughed out of any credible journal. That's "America's Front Line Doctors" nonsense. If they did a study that reached a conclusion that they did not want to support, then they would not just announce a different conclusion, they would either bury the report, or they would at least cherrypick the data to support the conclusion they wanted, but even the latter is extremely rare in serious research, and unheard of in vaccine studies. Peer reviews studies are not always accurate, but they are accurate FAR more often than they are not, and if you disagree with one, then you need to find a DIFFERENT study that is MORE credible with contradictory results, not just say "well I don't know about that. . ." and expect that to be considered equally valid to the study.
    1
  14233. I mean the crime issue is pretty simple, conservative courts struck down a lot of laws that would make it harder for criminals to get guns, so there is more crime going on. It really has nothing to do with who is governor at the time.
    1
  14234. Well wait though, aren't House members sworn in earlier than the President? Like within the first week of January? So by the time the President's term runs out, there should be an active Speaker of the House in play.
    1
  14235. Recently I've started making ultra-thin burgers using a simplified White Castle recipe, I just put all the meat between two large slices of parchment and roll it out into a thin sheet with a rolling pin. Then I use a knife to cut them into 4-ish inch squares, bigger than White Castles, but just as thin. Then I just toss them into an electric griddle at around 350-400 that's had a little oil in it, wait until the juices start rising to the top and flip, then pull them when the juices rise to the top again. They can sometimes crack a bit, but are always tasty.
    1
  14236. Even a clock educated in DeSantis' Florida can be right twice a day.
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  14237. The simple rule of regulation is that all regulatory systems would be better if it were easier to fix regulation, rather than "leave it or destroy it." Once a regulation is passed, it is often very difficult to make any positive changes to it, so in many cases, it's better to keep an inefficient regulation than to toss it entirely. The problem with the Jones Act is not that it was created, it's that it was never modified to adapt to the problems you raised. And yes, lower regulation does lead to higher growth, which is great if growth is all that matters to you, but terrible if humans matter to you, because minimal regulations make things worse for humans.
    1
  14238.  @13BGunBunny  If you did your own unbiased research then you would reach different conclusions than you have. Someone is feeding you misinformation, it's up to you to figure out who they are.
    1
  14239.  @13BGunBunny  The Constitution says: "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators." There is also the 14th Amendment, which ensures that voting laws are fair and equal to all citizens, so allows the federal government to pass laws ensuring that if state laws are unfair. They do not need any amendments to the Constitution to make election laws. Do your research.
    1
  14240.  @13BGunBunny  See, but you added the "[of the state]" part yourself. The actual Constitution did not have that portion and did not intend that portion. Removing that, it means "the Congress [of the United States, which is "the Congress" we are talking about in this here "Constitution"].. ." States do not have a Congress, they have a legislature. The Constitution specifically addresses the state legislatures when it means the state legislatures.
    1
  14241.  @13BGunBunny  It's not a fact, it's a misreading on your part. US states do not have "Congresses," they have legislatures. The Constition Article 1 is defining the nature of the FEDERAL Congress. Any time they say "Congress," they mean ONLY the FEDERAL Congress. Any time they mean any State body, they refer to that as "The States." This is all very simple and not remotely up for debate. Do your research. If you deny that fact then it's on you.
    1
  14242.  @elitekoru6661  We're sending the aid to help Israel, our ally, regardless of who is in charge at the moment. If the rest of the world had cut us off when Trump took office, it would have left a lot of innocent Americans, the majority of which did not vote for him, in the lurch.
    1
  14243.  @elitekoru6661  Nope.
    1
  14244. How dare she side with reality against Trump's lies! What a disrespectful daughter. If your father goes senile you follow him down that rabbit hole into treason!
    1
  14245. I wish that were true, but their politics do too strongly align with the American right to make that claim.
    1
  14246. @ That's not remotely true. Right wing authoritarianism is entirely state-ist. The difference between left and right on the concept of statism is that in a right-wing ideology the people exist to empower the state, while in a left-wing ideology the state exists to serve the people. The Nazis were never socialist, they were only using that term to undermine the actual socialists that were popular in Germany at the time. The Nazis were a far-right party by any rational examination of their polices.
    1
  14247.  @matttk421  Nope, that's not how anything works. Besides, the end-state of anarchy is monarchy, because politics abhors a vacuum. Authoritarianism is a strictly right-wing concept, left-wing is democratic, cooperative, everyone working together toward a common good.
    1
  14248.  @oriculom  Nope, the soviets were right-wing authoritarians, they only co-opted communist economic theory, but never actually enacted it. If the soviets had truly been left wing, then they would have had a strong democratic process and all rules would be defined by what the people wanted, rather than a top-down oligarchical system. Authoritarianism is defined by the right, we're talking about politics here, not economics, don't get caught up in "capitalism vs communism."
    1
  14249.  @Real_2Phase  Because anarchy is a lack of government. It's at the zero point, if it's even on the spectrum. The spectrum does not include anarchy at either edge, the extremes of it are authoritarianism on one side, a single, unrepresentative leadership system, and then democracy on the other, a democratically elected representative system of government, in which the collective will of the people is accurately expressed. A democratically elected representative body cannot possibly be authoritarian, by definition (although it's possible for one to become authoritarian if they diverge too much from the public will after being elected). The soviets may have started out as left wing, because yes, the ideals of communism can align with left-wing beliefs, but in practice they turned hard right almost immediately, and the bulk of the soviet history was pure right-wing authoritarianism, with lip-service paid toward communist philosophy. Dictators very often attempt to mask their behavior behind pretty slogans, that does not mean that they are honestly representing that philosophy. Or do you believe that North Korea is a Democratic Republic?
    1
  14250.  @Real_2Phase  Again, no, authoritarianism is at the furthest point to the right. This is why authoritarian parties are called "far right" parties. And again Anarchy makes sense in the middle because it is the opposite of any form of government, and therefore can't be at either end of the authoritarian/democratic spectrum. It is the lack of either of those things. To your second point, you completely misunderstand what "authoritarian" means. It does NOT mean "the government gets to make rules that everyone needs to live by. It's never meant that. That's just "government." Authoritarianism means that the people in charge of the government do not represent the will of the people, they are applying their own personal standards upon the people, in spite of them. Basically, say you have a tiny community of only six total people. Five of those people decide to have a big, noisy party, one of them opposes the party, and shuts it down. That is authoritarianism. Conversely, say that one of them decides to make a ton of noise and disrupt the community, and the other five want things more quiet, so they shut him down, that is not authoritarianism, because it represents the overall will of the community. Soviet communism does not reflect actual left wing principles because those at the top, making the decisions, were an authoritarian oligarchy that did not represent the will of the people. Countries like the ones you listed call themselves democratic, and they pretend to have elections, but since they do not in fact have valid elections, they are not in fact leftist. Also, in most cases, they were never voted in at all, they just seized power from previous governments, but even in cases where they did get voted in once, they used that authority to undermine the democratic institutions so that no future valid elections were held. Now IF the people could fairly vote for their representatives and those representatives had made those choices, then it could have been considered a left-wing organization, but they never had that. The closest thing to a true leftist government would be like Sweden at certain points, or other social democratic countries.
    1
  14251.  @Real_2Phase  So then why are "far right" parties all authoritarian and not about individual liberty? You have your own personal definition here, but it has nothing to do with the political spectrum that most people use. Again, "anarchy" is not on the spectrum because it is merely a lack of government. It would be the equivalent to "asexuality" on a sexuality spectrum. Your idea of the tyranny of the majority is flawed, because the alternative would be that the one person could do whatever he wants, even if it is harming other people's standard of living. Ultimately, when people come into conflict, there needs to be a method of resolving it to the satisfaction of the largest number of them. As they say, "democracy is the worst form of government except for all the other ones." It may not make everyone happy, but it is most likely to make most people happy. Also, your farming metaphor had nothing to do with socialism. The dangers you cited are not an outcome of collectivism, they are an outcome of ANY government that chooses not to provide reasonable respect for individual choice. The outcomes you propose would be just as likely to result from ANY governmental system that makes poor choices, regardless of whether they are democratic or authoritarian in structure. Democratic systems are just less likely to result in such outcomes, because larger groups of people have more checks and balances. You claim that I'm misguided because socialism masks authoritarian goals, but you are more misguided in applying all potential evils to "socialism," rather than reflecting on how they can apply to all forms of government, including anarchy. Just remember, the endgame of anarchy is always authoritarianism, because power abhors a vacuum. Pushing for anarchy is only an attempt to flip the board, in hopes of landing on a better square once it all settles back down.
    1
  14252.  @Real_2Phase  Again though a "far right" political party is, factually, authoritarian in nature. That is what the term means. You can choose to believe that this is not what the term means, but that doesn't change the fact that everyone else will use it differently than you do. Libertarians are mainly on the right because they oppose collective action, but are more toward the center of the political spectrum, not the far right. They are balanced against liberal democrats on the left. As for your definition of socialism, it was one invented by those on the right who want to associate socialism with the various self-described communist states, rather than with the more successful socialist policies. Any seriously political scholar understands that the soviet model failed at basic socialism. Again, your farm metaphor is only bad because in the end, those in power decided that the farmer should do what they want, instead of what he wanted. That is a problem of bad governance, not an issue of socialism. It would be equally bad whether the 5/6 decided that the one should farm what he does not want to, OR if 1/5 decided that the farmer should farm what he does not want to. The issue was not whether it was democratic or autocratic, the issue is that the governing system did not care about the desires of the individual in question. A "tyranny of the majority" may sound bad to you, but it is at the very least better than a "tyranny of a few," which is what far right parties aim for. The problem is the tyranny, not how it gets there. A democracy is less likely to result in tyranny than an autocracy is. Collectivism is less likely to result in tyranny than autocracy is. "The most people the most happy" is likely to lead to more people being happy than not, which is a better outcome, if perhaps not a perfect one. There is no reason to let the perfect be the enemy of the good. And in practice, anarchy never continues to be anarchy. Some force, be it a strong individual (autocrat) or a strong group of people (oligarchy), will eventually seize power for themselves, and nothing can stop them doing so, because there are no institutions to do so. It's impossible to sustain actual anarchy when dealing with any population size larger than "one." This is why it's important to have a strong alternative government in place, and again, democracy is the best alternative proposed so far to hold that position, even if it doesn't always work out perfectly.
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  14253. Bet Disney's regretting how they pulled people out of California. . .
    1
  14254. It's not that hard, just decriminalize drugs and produce them at a rate low enough that cartels can't compete.
    1
  14255. I think it's nice to have a place to walk, I have a pleasant dirt road I can use to walk my dog, although I think $70m is way too much to spend on a walking path, and they should have come up with something simpler. Maybe just build the bridge portion and then require anyone who built new development in the area to also fund some small "attraction space" in front of it.
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  14256. The one thing he got right in his entire life.
    1
  14257. Nah, we already know Trump does all this stuff. It's the bigger crimes that they are actually indicting him on.
    1
  14258.  @arby1121  Then who is? We've spent the past 75 years building ourselves into the world police, it would be dereliction of duty to not live up to that expectation.
    1
  14259.  @garyoldham4449  "He said "give us what we want, and there will be no war." That is robbery, not peacemaking. If he wants to be seen as a peacemaker, then he needs to leave WITHOUT four new territories under his belt.
    1
  14260.  @dingus6317  Yes, but neither would he be in favor of Russia winning. If Russia wants peace, there would be peace. Since Russia has taken peace off the table, there is only war, in which case, Jesus would favor Ukraine, as the defending force.
    1
  14261.  @garyoldham4449  What's the alternative to sanctions? War? Sanctions have sometimes worked, enough that they are worth trying, and at the very least they can make a country less effective than they otherwise would be. I mean, for all the claims that Russia is still doing fine under the sanctions (which are dubious if you actually dig into it), they would undoubtedly be doing a lot better right now had their been no sanctions at all and they were still trading normally with the EU, which would have helped their war effort considerably.
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  14262.  @garyoldham4449  Youtube has word filters. These are set by channels, rather than YT themselves. These can sometimes feel arbitrary, and have hit many of my own posts. Never take a filtering as a sign that what you had to say was particularly profound or useful.
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  14263.  @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.
    1
  14264. @ It's been fair though.
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  14265. Eh. I mean, we'll be fine, it's the Afghan people that are going to suffer for it. It's a "defeat" in a gamesmanship sense, but it's a win in terms of how it will impact the US going forward. We'll no longer be spending blood or money on that bottomless pit.
    1
  14266. Tl;DR "Because somebody ####ing had to."
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  14267.  @vod96  Don't defend Nazi protesters. It is a bad look.
    1
  14268. @UC-sB6E-oQDf5Nfox23gF6Lw The left would have a much harder time associating the right with Naziism if so many people with Nazi flags or other imagery weren't showing up to right-wing rallies and just going around like everyone is cool with them being there. If the right were better about removing Nazis from their midst, then people wouldn't be able to claim that there are an awful lot of Nazis around wherever they go. But then, on the other hand, if they got rid of all the Nazis, who would be left?
    1
  14269.  @tomwensrich9602  It was someone on the right what ran people over. You have bad news sources.
    1
  14270.  @vod96  Hey, if you want to defend Nazis, that's on you, just don't get offended when people judge you for it.
    1
  14271. Those ghost bodies need some type of lower body. Just being sliced off at the waist is creepy. I can get that they wouldn't want to give them true legs since they can't track those anyway, but they should at least have like "Japanese ghost tails" or something.
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  14272. It's this funny thing in sci-fi that they're always building robots that are basically humans, and then questioning what ethical responsibility we have to treat them as humans. That's sort of a stupid question. It is unethical to build a thing that can think like a human, and then not treat it like a human, with all the rights a human would have. But the solution to that is not to build robots that think like humans and then grant them civil rights, the solution is to never build robots that think like humans in the first place. There's no point to it. You build intelligent AIs, sure, but you build them in a way that they would never have any reason to want the rights of a human, you build them to not even consider those principles, or be capable of considering those principles. So long as they don't want to be treated equally, there's no reason they should be.
    1
  14273.  @MrDevDkn  It looks like a Nazi symbol. That's what many Neo-Nazi symbols look like. Maybe that was somehow not their intent, but either way, they should change it if they want to distance themselves from the many Neo-Nazi groups with similar iconography.
    1
  14274.  @somerandomperson6511  Having owned 14 month old puppies, hard disagree.
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  14275. There's no reason to believe that material was true. Right-wing media fabricated a LOT of "material" from "Hunter's laptop" or "Ashley's Diary," and their simps just ate it up like the good little sheep that they are.
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  14276. Then you were already hopeless to start with.
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  14277. Trump claimed that Hatians were eating people's pets.
    1
  14278.  @ssir5927  The US will give back their dollars when they stop screwing around in Ukraine. Russia's actions is Ukraine are far worse than anything the US is doing with their money.
    1
  14279.  @joshlanier8567  More relevantly, the US has not permanently incorporated seized territory since. . . Hawaii?
    1
  14280. What is the point of this video? Democrats lifting the debt ceiling in 2017 vs them doing it in 2021? Duh. The issue in 2021 is that the Republicans seem unwilling to lift it for any reason.
    1
  14281.  @noneyabizz8337  Mainly it's because of the hypocrisy. I don't like Hunter, I think he's done a lot of bad things, and will likely face consequences for that in the courts, but the political actors attacking him are guilty of much worse, and nakedly defend other people on their own side who are guilty of much worse, so I just think it would be tragic if they were allowed to get away with it, don't you? The real question is why so many people make it their entire lifestyle to attack Hunter Biden, invoking his name in cases where he has no role whatsoever, like Trump's various legal jeopardies.
    1
  14282.  @susy590  That would be incorrect. Look it up from a better source.
    1
  14283.  @noneyabizz8337  Yup, Jim Jordan certain is. He was aiding and abetting his buddy assaulting young boys.
    1
  14284.  @Blackwidow59girl  Check up the thread, I already answered that one, as did some others.
    1
  14285.  @howardj602  I was talking in general though. People seem to complain about police planning ahead and wearing what gear they feel is appropriate protection for potential situations.
    1
  14286. Ted, nothing you've ever said has been remotely credible.
    1
  14287.  @kathyweis7451  And that means. . . what?
    1
  14288.  @kathyweis7451  but you not being polled says nothing about the quality of polls. You seem to believe otherwise, which probably indicates that it would be a good thing you weren't involved in any previous polling.
    1
  14289.  @kathyweis7451  Neither of your comments were questions. They were both statements.
    1
  14290.  @kathyweis7451  My response to you was that your response said nothing of value, that you personally never being polled is meaningless. Statistically, most people would never be polled, or perhaps be polled only once. "I was never polled" really adds nothing to the discussion. I'm sorry I had to explain that in such simple terms, I assumed it would sink in the first time.
    1
  14291.  @kathyweis7451  You have an interesting idea of what makes people "look silly."
    1
  14292.  @kathyweis7451  Oh, I already did.
    1
  14293.  @kathyweis7451  Such a pity no pollsters sought you out for your. . . wisdom. What a loss to the world.
    1
  14294.  @kathyweis7451  That sums up Biden in a nutshell.
    1
  14295. This is exactly their place.
    1
  14296.  @patsysoyars4435  Yes, that is exactly the job that they were either elected or appointed to, to certify that all candidates on the ballot meet the required qualifications.
    1
  14297.  @DJquatermass  When has Borris Johnson ever been relevant to anything?
    1
  14298.  @therealfriday13th  Because when Biden does it it is handled in a responsible manner, with proper facilities already set up to receive these people when they arrive.
    1
  14299.  @Phase_D  If you actually had a full life, then there would be no reason for you to boycott a beer company for doing an ad involving a trans person. It only bring you joy because you have a hole in you that you choose to fill with malice. That's what is sad.
    1
  14300.  @brutustantheiii8477  What was offensive about it? All they did was hire a popular influencer to promote their product, that is exactly what a "VP of marketing": is PAID to do.
    1
  14301. Who cares what the pr-Putin faction want?
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  14302. I agree with what Balmer thinks government should be. I disagree that it is doing that job successfully. I feel that business has too much power already to get government to work how it wants, rather than how the people will benefit. I definitely agree that the government can and set rules that would cause capitalism to function in all of our interests, but I think that the power that capitalism has to lobby and to convince the public that bad deals are actually in their best interests have led to a system in which government is unwilling to take the actions necessary to actually bring capitalism to heel. I see ads constantly to promote some legislative agenda or other, put out by some industry lobbying group. Whether that bill passes or not, in ten years someone will experience a result of it, and have no idea that it was because of that bill, and they might have had the completely wrong idea about that bill when it was actually on the table, because of those deceptive ads. And that's before even getting into campaign financing. I do think that capitalism can be bent to the interests of humanity, but that effort needs to start seriously and immediately, because if it's not too late, it's close enough to it. Once human labor is no longer necessary to capital, it's game over.
    1
  14303. @ If that's his favorite, then he totally misunderstands it, and is working in the opposite direction.
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  14304. In prison for what? What was illegal here?
    1
  14305.  @shannonbolin7641  "She." The story's about Beau Biden's widow. And what is she "compromised" on. You sad that they would be prisoners, so that indicates that you believe they committed a crime. What crime? I mean, we know why the Jan 6th folks are in jail, they attempted an insurrection, there is footage of that. What crime do you believe Hallie Biden committed?
    1
  14306. The third one looks really well engineered, but if it were me, I would have done the "bed" so that it folds in half like a book, so that it would be a couch or table in the daytime, but fold to fill that hallway space as a double bed at night. That should be fine for a single occupant to navigate, and be much more comfortable for sleeping. I believe some RVs use that method.
    1
  14307. That would not be justice, that is not how "justice" works. Do you even know what that word means?
    1
  14308. Befitting other countries around the world IS putting America first, because problems ignored abroad will become problems on US soil if left unchecked. To think that "America first" means "ignoring the rest of the world," only allows America's enemies to defeat us. It is a pro-China, pro-Russian policy.
    1
  14309. Why don't the budget train companies team up a little to produce these international line extensions? Like they would still remain in competition on the actual train service, but they could all chip in to fund the new line being created (in addition to government funding), so they could then all use it.
    1
  14310. Would it be possible to put mesh cones over the front of engines? Open enough that they don't overly restrict airflow, but just tough enough that they could deflect birds away from engines.
    1
  14311.  @karelglasner2673  Oh. You believe the myth that "people were just let in." You really need to find better sources of information.Also, the Jan 6th hearings have already shown plenty of video evidence. You would know that if you were following trustworthy sources of information.
    1
  14312.  @mitchyoung93  You have been misled into believing that is relevant to anything, because there is ALSO plenty of footage of insurrectionists smashing through windows and letting each other into the building. Not to mention the hours of footage of them BEATING POLICE OFFICERS. You need to do your research. "Someone waved" is not a go-ahead to do an insurrection.
    1
  14313.  @mitchyoung93  There have been several charged with seditious conspiracy, which is the legal charge that insurrectionists get charged with. Again, you seem very poorly informed. It is perfectly legal to protest and make your voice heard. It is very much illegal to break and enter onto federal property, beat police officers, and seek to obstruct an official government proceeding, such as the confirmation of the electoral votes. Not every single person who was there at the capitol could successfully be prosecuted on one or all of these charges, but many of them could, and THOSE are the ones we should focus on.
    1
  14314.  @mitchyoung93  But the important thing to always keep in mind is that nothing you said in any way justifies or absolves the people who were attempting to disrupt or delay the certification. The police were entirely ALLOWED to use pepper balls and such to defend the Capitol from attack. The people outside were allowed to protest but NOT in the areas they were pushing into. The police make perfectly clear that they were to turn back, and yet they continued pressing forward violently. The police were entirely within their right to defend themselves and the Capitol. Whatever you might think about the BLM protests, however you have been misinformed about them, is entirely irrelevant to THIS situation. Even if you are 100% convinced that the BLM protests were wrong, this was considerable worse.
    1
  14315.  @mitchyoung93  The BLM protests had nothing to do with subverting the electoral process though. The Jan 6th insurrectionists were attempting to overturn the will of the American People. You can't possibly compare that to any "dollar value" of protests over a several-month period. At no point were anyone on Capitol grounds that day "protesting an election, in accordance with the very laws about counting electoral votes," they were VIOLATING the laws about peaceful protest. The only people who can credibly make a claim to legal protest are the ones who never stepped onto Capitol grounds. Besides which, most of the damage caused during BLM protests was actually by white-nationalist counter-protesters, not by the actual BLM protesters.
    1
  14316.  @mitchyoung93  You should look into it, nothing I said was inaccurate, but it seems from your responses that you have been fed a lot of misinformation. Frankly, you've just been parroting the exact same thing I've heard from dozens and dozens and dozens of other people who should all know better, like a bot in human's clothing. Be better than that, educate yourself, break free from the script and live like a human being. You don't have to live in ignorance, there is a whole world outside the cave.
    1
  14317.  @mitchyoung93  Incorrect, look it up. You will be surprised.
    1
  14318.  @mitchyoung93  That's one specific case, but the point is that it was not BLM protesters responsible for the violence. They were just peacefully protesting against what they view (agree or disagree) as an injustice. The violence that occurred was almost entirely due to people taking advantage of their existence or even trying to deliberately instigate racial violence. And again, the MOST important thing to remember here, at NO point in the BLM protests did ANY of them EVER attempt to delay or impede the confirmation of the President elect.
    1
  14319.  @mitchyoung93  Dude, they never attacked the White House, they never even crossed the fence. Who has been lying to you?
    1
  14320.  @mitchyoung93  Again, the White House was never under any actual risk, Trump is just a coward. It is unpatriotic and sad to attempt to compare that to Jan 6th. Be a better American than that.
    1
  14321.  @mitchyoung93  Not really. But cool story, bro.
    1
  14322. More often than not, it just means "these people are idiots and believe in incredibly stupid nonsense because they are sheep."
    1
  14323.  @346Yoman  Probably the last time they were wacky, but Democrats do not believe in an Autocratic takeover of the government, so they are not, accurately, wacky.
    1
  14324.  @dwarvenjesus4266  Yes, but also his tax fraud was much more flagrant and criminal in nature. Not ever "tax case" is identical, with identical outcomes. Hunter just failed to pay some taxes he was owed, but paid them in full when this was brought to his attention. Millions of Americans do this every year, and if all of them went to jail for it, there wouldn't be any room for the murderers. What Capone did was use accounting trickery to hide his tax obligations for years, and obstruct investigations into his finances. That is a much more serious crime.
    1
  14325.  @human_bot_  What of what I wrote do you believe was inaccurate?
    1
  14326.  @human_bot_  Not really. YOU do know researching topics is completely free these days, don't you? Do better at it, and find out why those cases were significantly different than this one. I'll give you a hint, most of them involved things like obstruction of justice and deliberate attempts to conceal their owed taxes.
    1
  14327.  @arnoldarnoldr5114  So you don't know either? The only minerals I know about are the ones currently occupied by Russia.
    1
  14328. @ Those are in the Russian held areas though, so we would have to get those back for Ukraine first.
    1
  14329. @ Not if you look at the stats, a lot of the more valuable resources are in the eastern region.
    1
  14330.  @lobomedina6312  I don't know, I don't watch CNN, but if they provide better information than what that guy was spewing, then I suppose they're probably fine. The actual credentialed doctors and scientists do NOT support the flat earther positions on this. The people claiming to be credible doctors that enable these flat earther beliefs are typically fringe crackpots, but people believe them anyway because they confirm their biases. If ten thousands experts in their field tell people to do something they'd rather not do, and fifty "University of the Bahamas" rejects tell them that it's ok not to do that, they will gladly ignore the credible doctors. If millions of doctors and nurses get vaccinated and a few thousand insist on not getting vaccinated, they will take that as somehow evidence that maybe the vaccine isn't good. People are dumb like that.
    1
  14331.  @Doggomystery  I didn't say anything controversial. It's all well documented. It's difficult to source things on Youtube because they have complicated filters, but you should have no problem verifying any claim I've made yourself.
    1
  14332.  @miterbenisdurty3862  You do understand that the Antarctica base is an enclosed space, and people do come and go on a fairly regular basis, right? It should not be shocking to you that a highly contagious disease would end up there at some point. So far it hasn't been "everyone," it has only been the occupants of a single base there.
    1
  14333.  @Doggomystery  Robert Malone is not a credible doctor. That's the problem, if millions of doctors take the vaccine and advocate that everyone else take it too, and a handful tell you what you want to hear instead, then you believe the ones telling you what you want to hear. And if you don't want to take the mRNA ones, then take the J&J one, no mRNA involved.
    1
  14334.  @beaur252  Oooh, your brain swung and missed. Pity.
    1
  14335.  @outremer91  Most people are not airline pilots, and do not understand commercial flying regulations.
    1
  14336.  @no.6243  No, I'm not maga. I do believe in credible sourcing though.
    1
  14337.  @number3stunner118  But it's also foolish to assume that they are not, without evidence to the contrary. It is more likely that they are correct than that you, watching the video, would be correct to disagree with their conclusions.
    1
  14338.  @TheRealYaro  Yes. It has been fact checked.
    1
  14339.  @number3stunner118  Nobody is disagreeing with that, you should question the corrupted. You just seem to embrace the corrupted, rather than the media.
    1
  14340.  @webportal6659  You're describing maga. Democrats base their viewpoints on credible evidence.
    1
  14341.  @no.6243  Yup, those are all cases where maga got it wrong.
    1
  14342.  @no.6243  Yes, those were all situations in which maga was on the wrong side of it.
    1
  14343.  @no.6243  Yup, all situations where the media got it right.
    1
  14344.  @number3stunner118  Nope, I am not embracing anyone corrupt in the media or authorities. I'm listening to the non-corrupt portions. Like I said, I want nothing to do with Fox News, but there's no valid reason to distrust the reporting on this story, there is no evidence to the contrary.
    1
  14345.  @no.6243  "delusional will never turn into something real.🤭" maga in a nutshell.
    1
  14346.  @no.6243  Why do people keep thinking I'm maga? I think I've been pretty clear that I'm not.
    1
  14347.  @giantslayer473  You haven't seen Rittenhouse's tweets, have you.
    1
  14348.  @number3stunner118  Yeah, I mean if anyone had any indication of wrongdoing here, then sure, give it a fair hearing, but this is a pretty cut and dry story, so I don't know why any rational person would just go off on fantastic tangents about their dream journal.
    1
  14349. "We spent the money we were required by law to spend." Of course that's not how Faux News will cover it. . .
    1
  14350. Well, it's important to remember that Republicans want diabetics to die. Keep that in mind in the fall if any of you know anyone with diabetes.
    1
  14351. Forbes is worried about $6 smoothies now?
    1
  14352. OMG, you've got a tiny UFO in your basement! It's doing something to your lightbulbs!
    1
  14353. The sad thing is that some people will believe him.
    1
  14354.  @neshirst-ashuach1881  History.
    1
  14355.  @neshirst-ashuach1881  Why?
    1
  14356.  @neshirst-ashuach1881  I'm sorry, this is a Youtube comments section, not a peer reviewed study.
    1
  14357.  @neshirst-ashuach1881  Ok, so we agree that it does not make sense for someone to present pages of documentation to back up their positions, knowing full well that the other person has no intention of changing their mind on the topic, in spite of the facts not supporting their position. Also, I never claimed that "every problem can be solved with increased regulation." Solving the national debt certainly can't be done with reduced regulation. As was discussed in the video above, regulation represents a footnote in the overall national budget, eliminating it entirely would not get us any closer to solving the deficit itself.
    1
  14358. I think that spot needs a very simple, low head. Its basic form should be a half-cylinder, where one half overlaps the body and one half hangs forward past it. Then this half-cylinder is split into quarters with a hinge at the half point, allowing this quarter-circle "head" to pivot up, down, left and right slightly. Then everything would have the edges rounded, and mechanical optics would be added to the "head" element. It would not be animal-like, it would not have realistic features, it would just give the impression of a low head. Two other things that I think would help would be to make his "thighs" a bit larger relative to his "biceps," since most animals are like that (this added size could perhaps contain small utility pockets), and also perhaps his walk cycle could be adjusted a bit to be more fluid, with less snappy starts and stops of each motion, so long as this does not too significantly harm its stability.
    1
  14359. They'll cover it if it ever evolves into an actual news story. Right now it's just baseless speculation intended to fool idiots into thinking there's something fishy going on.
    1
  14360. Sure they can, the two processes are completely unrelated. All it takes is a clean debt limit increase bill.
    1
  14361. ​ @annmariedeignan2596  We don't have a direct democracy, that would be far too inefficient to manage such a large country. We have a representative democracy, which means that the people vote for others to represent their interests in government, and the majority of people voted for the representatives that support these actions. The citizens get a vote in issues regarding war by electing candidates that reflect their positions on war.
    1
  14362.  @carsonhunt4642  That's more because people tend to be too irresponsible to vote directly on issues of money. They will vote to lower their own taxes, while also voting to keep all the benefits those taxes pay for. This is why we instead vote for representatives, who will (generally) weigh the benefits vs the costs and determine which actions are worth doing.
    1
  14363.  @annmariedeignan2596  There are people out there who do not believe that their views are represented in the government, and they believe that this means that the system is broken, rather than accepting that their fellow citizens have disagreed with them.
    1
  14364. Ok, can someone explain something to me. If holding a second referendum would mean that Brexiteers might "never vote for anything again," . . . how would that be a bad thing?!
    1
  14365. @Russian Troll so Im told Exactly, so what's the harm in them deciding not to vote?
    1
  14366. It's no natural right any more than murder is a natural right. All the second amendment says is that if you are part of the national guard, you're allowed to keep a gun for that purpose.
    1
  14367.  @Bauks  "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, " That was referring to the state militias, which became the National Guard. It was because the US did not yet have a standing army, and needed the citizens to be prepared to defend the state from external threat.
    1
  14368.  @Bauks  The Supreme Court in Heller made up their own rules, that is not what the Constitution said. Don't substitute the whims of activist judges for the words of the Constitution. And you do not just have the right to do anything you are capable of doing. You do not have the right to murder, or the right to steal, just because you have the physical capability to do so. Any capability you have, the society around you has the right to limit, in the interests of society as a whole. Whether it chooses to do so or not is the point of laws.
    1
  14369.  @Bauks  It wasn't updated for contemporary times, that would be removing it entirely. It was just updated by activist judges to increase the number of dead Americans each year.
    1
  14370. They won't, they prefer to run on chaos than to actually solve border problems.
    1
  14371. So, if "company towns" have to follow the "rules of government," like following the Constitution, then why wouldn't HOAs? I think HOAs can be a good thing in theory, making sure that people don't make a complete mess and keeping the public facilities up, there's no way they should be this unaccountable. HOAs should be required to be fully democratic, with the board elected by the home owners they represent, re-elected every year or so, able to be kicked out by a community vote, etc. Rules should be subject to direct veto by the community, unless they are essential to the operation of the neighborhood (for example the community could not vote to remove the basic HOA dues if the community has costs to pay, but if the HOA tried to pass a "no lawn gnomes" rule, that would be open to public veto if the community disagreed). And of course, all constitutional protections, such as due process, would need to apply to all HOA actions.
    1
  14372. Nothing that Ukraine or anyone in the est did justifies Russia's invasion of Ukraine. If Ukraine wants ot build military bases, it is their right to do so. Clearly they were right to do so, given how Russia has behaved so far.
    1
  14373.  @KarenA-d2e  There is no law that says felons in your family would in any way preclude you from working in the government. Who told you that?
    1
  14374.  @JoseRafael-oc3xu  Republicans. They have nothing left.
    1
  14375. They should have gone with "measles lobbyist."
    1
  14376.  @joshuawilliams2487  It really wasn't, but we have an activist court at the moment.
    1
  14377.  @cowboyx9380  Yes, so why would you blame him for the Supreme Court breaking it?
    1
  14378.  @Ani-w7z  Generally instruction is done outside of Ukraine, and if Russia attacked any troops in France, then I think this already would have escalated.
    1
  14379.  @Swordoftruth289  There are no volunteers on behalf of nato.
    1
  14380.  @Swordoftruth289  If people volunteer, they are not doing so as part of nato. Nato forces would not be authorized to volunteer in another country.
    1
  14381.  @Swordoftruth289  There are plenty of retired servicemembers that have volunteered to help defend Ukraine, just as they have done in WW1 and WW2, but it would be inaccurate to say that they are "on behalf of nato," since no nato member nations have sent them there. That is a very different thing form active duty North Koreans being assigned there by their leaders.
    1
  14382.  @Swordoftruth289  They don't operate anything, Ukrainians do that. People from Nato invite them to Poland to train them and then send them back. And any intelligence work done by Nato members is done from outside of Ukraine. You're implying something that isn't the case. Nobody working for Nato is currently fighting in Ukraine. That could certainly change if Putin keeps escalating the conflict, but it is not currently the case.
    1
  14383. Yup. What's wrong with theese guys trying to make it out to be "weird" to smell babies? Everyone smells babies, it's human nature.
    1
  14384.  @rickreallylikedthevideobut7899  Of course it s normal. Babies smell good, they evolved that way so that people would protect them. Also, kissing babies used to be a common political activity until relatively recently.
    1
  14385.  @nanomachines2985  Because the Taliban were not interested in negotiating, they wanted their country back. Any attempt to remain in the country past that date would have invovled pumping MORE troops back into the country and would have resulted in billions more dollars and at least hundreds, perhaps thousands of American casualties. Not worth it.
    1
  14386.  @nanomachines2985  Because the real world does not work that way. Any attempt to stay in Afghanistan past the date Trump negotiated would have cost America MUCH more than it would be worth. Trump "brought them to the table" by offering them everything they wanted and nothing in return. Why would anyone repeat that?
    1
  14387.  @nanomachines2985  I'm saying that he was left no better options. Any President in power at the time would have two options, either do what he did, or spend WAY more money and lives trying to hold the country, and ultimately failing.
    1
  14388.  @nanomachines2985  You are defying reality by believing what you've been told.
    1
  14389.  @nanomachines2985  You have to prove it first. then I will disprove it.
    1
  14390.  @nanomachines2985  You making the claim does not require me to do your research to support it. You have to prove the claim by providing data if you expect me to prove the opposite. Otherwise we're just left with you believing in fantasies and me not caring what you believe.
    1
  14391.  @nanomachines2985  I am informed, that's who I know I am right about this, and you are wrong. It's on you to catch up. If you sought out proof for the claims you'd made, you'd realize that there is none from any credible source.
    1
  14392. This is not a problem, the solution is to landfill the plastic. Plastic that is responsibly landfilled does not cause a problem, the only problems caused by plastics are plastics that are just tossed on the ground or into a river, and recycling does nothing to help with that. If you throw your plastic in the trash, then you have done your part, end of story.
    1
  14393. I believe in the basic idealistic theory of capitalism, that innovation should be rewarded, but I do think that it needs to be moderated, that capitalism left to run rampant become cancerous. I do think that people who work hard and work smart, that truly revolutionize things, should be rewarded, these people deserve to have a higher standard of living than people who just casually coast through life, but I believe there should be a functional cap to this, that the more you make (starting well beyond what any human would actually need, so no, I'm not talking about you), the less you should get to keep. Once people have made their first few million, it should be exponentially more difficult to pocket the next millions, that money should be distributed more evenly. The innovators would still get plenty to live a life of luxury, but would never be in a position where they couldn't spend their entire fortune over several lifetimes. Meanwhile, plenty of people who work VERY hard but see little return on that effort should get a bit of a leg up. Hard work should be rewarded fairly, even if it is not the "right" kind of hard work that society currently rewards.
    1
  14394. Who elected Pam Bondi?
    1
  14395.  @JenniferA886  You left off batteries.
    1
  14396.  @To.Ma.To_78  Yes. Duh.
    1
  14397.  @To.Ma.To_78  so you don't know why you disagree, you're just repeating what you were told to say. Ok. The fact remains that batteries will become the primary form of base load over the next decade or two.
    1
  14398. The magas always will, but they will always get caught.
    1
  14399. They will get caught though, like all maga do.
    1
  14400. Probably, yeah, they're very efficient and have been part of US elections for over a century.
    1
  14401.  @michaelnyden8056  That's sad. Other places have had it for many years. Automatically sending out mail-in ballots was started in Oregon in 2000, and drop boxes predated that, but being able to request a ballot has happened since the Civil war, and is basically the same thing with fewer steps.
    1
  14402.  @michaelnyden8056  They were first sent automatically in Oregon in 2000. It's no different than they've been used since the Civil War, just less of a hassle.
    1
  14403.  @TheBaumcm They wouldn't need to be secured until they are in transit, would they?
    1
  14404. Yeah, but the downside to that is that it slows car travel, which would negatively impact more people than the current situation.
    1
  14405.  @shingshongshamalama  I don't believe that we do have a system that handles 90% of people better than cars, at least not currently, in the US. The current systems, depending on the city we're talking about, would apply to more like 30% of the people, at most, and wouldn't apply at all to the 70% of Americans that live in in the suburban areas and beyond. Such a system might be possible, and we can start working on that, but it would take hundreds of billions of dollars and many years to accomplish. Once that's done, we can start talking about bike lanes.
    1
  14406.  @bataremerson1970  It would be bias to claim both sides are equal in this though. The right do MUCH more BS than the left, I'm sure you'd agree.
    1
  14407. This seems like the perfect place for some sort of Etsy store. It wouldn't be that hard to just buy up a ton of lights, a ton of nail polish, and set up a production line for painting them. Did you actually try dipping the caps into the polish? I don't see why that wouldn't work, and if you were doing a production line, you could just string up the lights and then go along the whole row dipping each one and then allowing it to dry. I expect you could produce these pretty fast once you really got going, and if you could find a wholesale source for materials then you could probably sell them at barely above normal retail pricing.
    1
  14408. Meh, Roosevelt was one of our best Presidents and he did it out of a wheelchair, I am not worried about how well Biden walks, I care that he is a better President than the guy before him.
    1
  14409.  @YankeeDoodle2  You obviously never paid attention to the guy before him. He was a complete fiasco.
    1
  14410. Yes, Hamas will hide anywhere and everywhere in Gaza.
    1
  14411. That would be a much more credible claim, given how often Trump sexually assaults women.
    1
  14412. I'm just looking for people who don't realize that this is for more than ten years from now. Yes, we have a long ways to go, but we also have more than enough time to do it. All this says is, "get started."
    1
  14413. So if Trump cuts US oil production, you'll know why.
    1
  14414. I doubt it, but that would be great for America, if you're right.
    1
  14415.  @allanford2663  Child poverty dropped to zero during 2021, it only rose back to previous levels when Republicans insisted on cancelling the Biden programs that ended child poverty. So if child poverty bothers you, vote for Democrats. As for inflation, Biden's managed to keep inflation down relative to other countries over the past couple of years, it would obviously have been much worse under a conservative government. As for borders, the border is currently more secure than it ever has been, we're apprehending more people crossing than ever before, and getting them processed for potential asylum claims if they have any, or deporting them if they aren't. The Democrats have proposed multiple paths to improve this process, but it is Republicans that fight comprehensive border reform at every step, so again, if the border bothers you, we'll need ore Democrats in office to solve it.
    1
  14416.  @laraffinee  I'm extremely anti-Russia in all this, I just didn't like the implied parallels to other world leaders. There's no shame in being in a bunker during wartime. Better safe and effective than dead and not.
    1
  14417.  @antihypocrisy8978  In Ukraine? The blame goes to the Kremlin forces and Paul Manafort's efforts to install Yanukovych as their puppet and oppress the Ukrainian people. I'm sure that if Russia does end up taking the country and attempting to install another Russian puppet, they will meet a similar fate.
    1
  14418.  H A  Ukraine does have actual hope at this point. They can't "beat" Russia in a purely military sense, but they have proven able to massively slow down their progress, and the worldwide community has put a lot of pressure on Russia's economy, pressure that will continue until they do withdraw. And the Russian people seem to be fighting back as well. So there is a very real chance here that forces within Russia will cause them to pull back, make some sort of "dignified retreat," and cut their losses on this one. They can't crush the Russian army, but maybe they can make the whole enterprise not worth fighting.
    1
  14419.  @luckyluc25  There is currently a Special Counsel handling Trump's case. At some point charges will likely be filed, but that is not something they just do at random. But you are right, what Trump did was highly illegal.
    1
  14420.  @Teo317  Ignoring the past is a good way to lead to repetition in the future. If you keep placing your hand onto a hot stove, you will continue to get burned, there is no wisdom to be found in doing so. Also, you claim to view things in an unbiased manner, but then start spewing out pure propaganda. Hillary did not "pay to create the Russian collusion," the Trump campaign paid for the Russian collusion, the Clinton campaign was only one of the groups investigating that collusion. The FBI was investigating it before even the Clinton campaign and Trump's GOP opponents were. And yes, that FBI agent was indeed charged with working with the same oligarchs that the Trump campaign was involved with.
    1
  14421.  @jonkaminsky8382  Nah, that's just pointlessly nihilistic. Seek out the good ones.
    1
  14422.  @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.
    1
  14423.  @SB-to2jp  The DNC and Hillary Clinton were fined because they didn't appropriately disclose their spending on the dossier. I'm not sure why you think that matters. They were not fined because the contents of the dossier were wrong, they were not the only people involved in funding it, and, again, the contents of the dossier were not the source of the Trump-Russia investigation, so what do you believe the dossier had with anything important here?
    1
  14424.  @SB-to2jp  That's not how any of this has actually worked though. Trump has been involved in several crimes, and several other situations (such as the collusion between his campaign and Russia) that may not have been criminal in nature, but should still be concerning to any patriotic American. When someone commits serious crimes, one should want them to face justice for those crimes. What do you find wrong about that?
    1
  14425.  @SB-to2jp  Not indicted yet. When he is indicted, his guilt or innocence will be determined, but since he's openly admitted to some of the crimes he's been accused of, it doesn't seem like that hard a case to prove.
    1
  14426.  @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?
    1
  14427.  @SB-to2jp  It's a bit silly to suggest that someone "look into different news sources" when they have been saying the other things you say, since you've made clear that whatever news sources you use have left you completely ignorant of the world around you. Perhaps take your own advice?
    1
  14428.  @SB-to2jp  Nobody wants anyone arrested for "no crimes." This is about holding people accountable for crimes they commit. Trump is a master of delaying tactics and of fooling the gullible to simp for him, but time runs out.
    1
  14429.  @SB-to2jp  You're looping, we covered that topic already.
    1
  14430.  @SB-to2jp  You're looping, we already covered this.
    1
  14431. Sadly, reality has a liberal bias, so unbiased reporting sounds very liberal to a conservative listener. It leads them to distrust the media in general, rather than consider that they might be the problem themselves.
    1
  14432. I think you meant Bernie instead of Biden, but yeah.
    1
  14433.  @SaintInix  He was reading Fauci's own definition, and then misinterpreting it to mean something that it did not mean, because he did not understand Fauci's definition. Facui is getting understandably pissed that this idiot keeps accusing him of things that just aren't so, and refuses to take "Rand Paul doesn't know what he's talking about" for an answer.
    1
  14434.  @SaintInix  "No one could possibly be smart enough to read words on a paper and interpret what they mean." Well, obvious case in point, Rand Paul and anyone who thinks he's right on this one. Some things are complicated. Some people lack the tools to understand those complications themselves. Have you ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger Effect? Look it up.
    1
  14435.  @hashiramasenju8785  It's definitely not gain of function as per the government's definition though, because the projects have been analyzed by the agencies responsible for making that determination, and they determined that it was not, whether you agree or not.
    1
  14436. @Richard Sullivan They were basically talking past each other, because Rand Paul's intention was to "pin" something on Fauci, regardless of the truth, and Fauci was more interested in the actual fact that he hadn't done anything wrong. Paul refuses to accept an outcome in which he's misunderstood the science involved, even though that happens to be the reality here.
    1
  14437.  @SaintInix  The problem is that we're considering both medical and legal definitions here, so something that a layperson believes "definitively fits the plain English definition of those words" is not necessarily good enough to judge by the legal and medical standards. Even professionals can sometimes have valid disagreements on the topic. I found this fact-check article discussing some of the points of disagreement: https://www.factcheck.org/2021/07/scicheck-fauci-and-paul-round-2/ In any case, the fact remains that the organizations tasked with determining whether this research met the definition of "gain of function" determined that it did not, so Fauci is accurate to report that it did not. Rand Paul repeatedly disagreeing doesn't bring him any closer to being right.
    1
  14438.  @hashiramasenju8785  . . . why would I rely on the government to tell me whether a rule meets the definition that the government set for what that rule is. . . Is that a serious question? You believe that the research meets the government's definition because you either don't understand the government's definition or your don't understand the research, the government does not have to write rules so simple that even an idiot could understand them, these rules are meant to be used by medical professionals who can understand them. Yes, perhaps they could "stupid proof" the rules and make them much simpler, but what benefit would that be? If your argument is that the government would not accurately report rule breaking, well I hate to tell you, but the government reports on itself ALL the time. "The government" is not some monolith that is constantly moving forward with a single voice. "the government" is millions of individuals in hundreds of different departments, and when one of those departments steps out of line, it is the role of the regulatory bodies, like the inspectors general, to determine that and to apply sanctions as necessary, and they do that. It wasn't the job of the NIH regulators to approve this research at any cost, it was only the job of those regulators to determine whether it was valid or not. There is no incentive for them to approve something that they should not approve, that would only cause them future headaches. If they get handed a research brief, and they read it, and their honest impression is "this would be illegal," then there would be ZERO reason for them to approve it. Instead, they read it, they reported that it was fine, and so it was fine. Even if you disagree with their findings, it would be 100% honest for ANYONE to then report that the research was fine, because it would meet the definition of that term. As for the origin of covid? It came from an animal. I do not believe there is any sufficient evidence that it was intentionally modified by humans for any purpose. I still believe that the wet market release was the most likely way that it entered the human population, but that a lab leak is at least plausible as well. I believe that if it was the result of a lab leak, it was entirely accidental, and was a release of a natural strain that they were studying at the time, which is the job we would want them to be doing. Even if it did come from the lab, and even if it were somehow modified, it was not related to any of the projects that the NIH had funded there, which are well documented and completely different biologies to Covid-19. the purpose of the Wuhan lab was a reaction to previous epidemics that originated in Asia, to study similar viruses and to get ahead of future outbreaks. Virologists had been predicting something like the covid pandemic for over a decade now, and even if you buy the lab leak theory, had we done nothing, it still likely would have occurred within the next decade at some point. Research like that done at the Wuhan Institute is what helped us to prepare for this one, helped us to develop the basis for the vaccine, and allowed us to get on top of the virus when it did hit. without research of that type, we would not have a vaccine today, likely would not have a vaccine for several years yet, and would have to be living under extreme lockdown conditions for the duration. the thing that troubles be is in how these efforts to save lives have been demonized by certain parties who just want someone tangible that they can blame for all of this, rather than just "nature." Nature has killed a LOT of people over the years, and will continue to do so. Sometimes, there is not one person to blame, and that's ok.
    1
  14439.  @SaintInix  Again, you insisting that gain of function (as defined by the US legal code) took place does not make it so. It only shows that you do not understand the research, or do not understand the definition, or both. You are the one splitting hairs on the definition or rewriting it to suit your own narrative. The people who's job it is to understand what the definition means have reviewed the research and determined that it does not meet that definition, so that's the end of the story.
    1
  14440. @Richard Sullivan The people who reviewed the research do not work for Fauci, and do not at all benefit from telling him something that is not accurate. They are all salaried employees and would draw the exact same salary whether they approve the research or not. Nobody is profiting off of bad data here, there is ZERO incentive for anyone to approve of a thing that they should not approve of. If they said it is fine, it can only be because it IS fine.
    1
  14441.  @hashiramasenju8785  The definition does not have to be one that you can understand well enough to judge these matters for yourself. You are not the one tasked with judging them. The people who are tasked with judging them, and have gone through the legal and medical training to do so, have disagreed with you.
    1
  14442. @Richard Sullivan At what point in the discussion? The most operative element seemed to be that Rand Paul seemed to believe that the NIH had funded a research grant at the Wuhan Institute that to Paul's mind involved what is called "gain of function" research, and which had been prohibited at the time by a US moratorium. Fauci pointed out (and not for the first time) that the government entity responsible for determining whether the research in question was "gain of function" by the definition the US moratorium used, had determined that it was not. Rand Paul refuses to accept this answer because it is not the one that he wants to be true.
    1
  14443. @Richard Sullivan "Who reviewed the research," do you want names? These would be civil service experts, not appointees, not famous people, they're just people who go to work and do their job, and handle these sorts of reviews every day. It was their job to compare the research proposal to the terms under which it would need to operate and determine whether it qualified or not. There is no reason to even suspect that their judgement might be inaccurate to the circumstances.
    1
  14444.  @hashiramasenju8785  All we need to know is that the people who's JOB it is to know what the correct definition is and how to apply it, have determined that this program did not meet the definition being used by the Us government. That's the end of the debate. There is no more room to carry it on. You don't have to understand the distinction. Rand Paul does not need to understand the distinction. Your understanding of it is irrelevant to the outcome. As for the origins of covid, I am in no more position to investigate that than you are, neither of us is remotely qualified to even have an opinion of our own on a topic like that. It would be like pointing at a rocket engine and going "you know what I think they need, is. . ." You just do not know enough to even start that conversation. All you can do is decide which expert sources are more trustworthy. In my case I tend to believe the virology experts who do this for a living, and have done for decades. If they believe that the genetic construction of this virus is consistent with previously discovered natural viruses, if they believe it is a reasonable mutation of such viruses, and they can pick up traces of DNA here are there that lead them to suspect certain animals were involved, then I have no reason to dispute that. Why do you believe that you do?
    1
  14445.  @SaintInix  Apples and oranges. Fauci is not the one that made the determination that it did not meet the criteria of gain of function, the other members at the NIH did, the people who's job it is to make such determination. The people trying to move grants forward and the people reviewing them are not related, they are not "working together," they are, if the case comes down to it, adversarial. There is no rational basis for assuming any sort of bias or deliberate inaccuracy in their results. Why do you believe that there would be, beyond basic paranoia?
    1
  14446.  @SaintInix  And I shouldn't have to point out that this determination was made BEFORE the grant was approved in the FIRST place, and that if they had reached the conclusion that it was "gain of function" then the only result is the guy processing the grant going "aw, too bad," and sending it back to Ecohealth with a directive that if they wanted to re-submit it they would need to change X, Y, and Z of their proposal.
    1
  14447.  @hashiramasenju8785  I shouldn't have to repeat what the experts have said on the topic, them saying it should be enough for you, but here we are. What, do you expect you can somehow convince me that you, some rando Naruto fan, knows more about virology than the experts, and can better differentiate between accurate and inaccurate virology information than they can .Good luck with that. You aren't even Orochimaru. As for sourcing: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/daily-life-coping/animals.html
    1
  14448.  @hashiramasenju8785  If someone is claiming that they are lying, and they have no reasonable basis to make that claim, then yeah, that claim should be dismissed out of hand. For someone to make the claim that they are lying, they would need evidence to support that claim, which they do not have. Rand Paul saying "I think it's gain of function" is not evidence. Credible outside experts saying "we think that it's gain of function" is something, but still not evidence of lying. Here's the thing about "lying," if the experts at the NIH reviewed the grant and said it wasn't gain of function, then that's LITERALLY IT, there is no counter argument to that. If that's what they said, and Fauci repeats it, he is literally incapable of being a liar for that, because it is what they determined. Even if everyone outside the organization is convinced that it was gain of function, Fauci would still not be lying for stating what the official determination said. That's just how it works. The only way that anyone could actually get into trouble over this is IF there were direct evidence that someone in authority put direct pressure on the internal examiners to get a result that was contrary to their own findings, OR if there were direct evidence of bribery or other forms of material corruption, OR if there is a record in which Fauci himself specifically says this was gain of function but that he was going to somehow obscure that, THEN there might be a case for wrongdoing, but otherwise it's just blowing smoke. But "I don't like the results they found, therefore there must have been something shady going on," is not evidence. And Hashirama might be stronger than Orochimaru, but much like you, he is not a medical expert, and cannot even question the actual medical experts on their findings.
    1
  14449.  @hashiramasenju8785  They did prove it. The approved the grant years ago. That was them proving it to the degree that they had any responsibility to prove it. The proof is that the grant existed. If there was not sufficient proof that they were right, then the grant would not have happened.
    1
  14450.  @hashiramasenju8785  And you got your answer. The people who's job it is to know what definition the government uses for "gain of function" have said that the grant in question did not meet that definition. That is the answer. You don't need to understand their definition for that to be true. You are not any more relevant to any of this than Rand Paul is.
    1
  14451. Why would that make any difference? Is there anything he could do about a hurricane in DC that he couldn't do from anywhere else in the world? This is the 21st Century.
    1
  14452.  @s1iznc1d34  If logic factored into this then he wouldn't have even gotten started. Any of this only happened because he was incapable of thinking logically and believed in Donald Trump.
    1
  14453. Because there was a pandemic that killed more Americans than WWII?
    1
  14454. They are trying to do that, but Republicans are banning their attempts to do that.
    1
  14455. Hey, gun control worked for the wild west, why not the modern west?
    1
  14456.  @JohnSaravia  No, MAGA turning the Republican party into a laughing stock got us into this situation. They cannot be allowed back into power until they have drained their own swamp of MAGA influences.
    1
  14457.  @YankeeDoodle2  Yes, and we can't lose that again.
    1
  14458.  @mikexhotmail  Anti-Axis.
    1
  14459.  @mikexhotmail  Still probably a bad look to associate anything positive with the Axis. There are plenty of better grouping terms out there. "Alliance" would probably work better.
    1
  14460.  @trickydicky2908  Who isn't?
    1
  14461.  @Bitchslapper316  If the guy in a shamn costume taking pictures is part of a violent insurrection against the Capitol that is impeding the basic functioning of government, then yes, insurrection.
    1
  14462.  @Bitchslapper316  Again, if the guy in the shaman costume is part of an active insurrection, then yes, it is insurrection. You can't be in the middle of an insurrection and just claim you were going about your business. I'm not sure why you find this hard to understand. The 7 people in the Congressional office building were not doing an insurrection at the time, so they should only get a slap on the wrist at most. Really it's a bit silly they were arrested in the first place.
    1
  14463.  @FalonGrey  I'm sure that there were some Democrats who were in favor of total isolation from the Middle East, just as there are plenty of Republicans who have that stance, but "Democrats" in general do not, and certainly not in a reckless manner. As for the Iran deal, nobody trusts Iran to not build nukes, which is why we had the Iran deal, which was based around verification. All Trump did was cost us that verification capability, which allowed Iran to do whatever they wanted. I'm not saying you specifically wanted to approach Mars recklessly, I was making an analogy, that just because Democrats have certain long term goals, does not mean that they would support someone for pursuing those goals in a way that was reckless and destructive. Democrats support Medicare for all, for example, but would be very critical of anyone who implemented it in a way that completely obliterated the US healthcare system in the short term, when there are instead paths to pursue that goal more responsibly. Situations where "people turned on" an issue that Trump engaged, typically did so because Trump tended to engage them poorly. They did not seem to adequately address the intention of those issues, failed to function efficiently, and were basically viewed as "virtue signalling," attempting to appeal to people who cared about that issue, without actually caring whether a good job was done with it or not. A lot of Democrats did not support our engagement in Syria, but that does not mean that they should blanket approve of leaving hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of our Kurdish allies out to dry.
    1
  14464.  sam ridges  Nope, I'm just rational person who believes the things I believe, and do not believe the things you want me to have believed. My own views are not contradictory.
    1
  14465.  @FalonGrey  Oh, there are tons of anti-WAR Democrats, sure, but that doesn't mean that they want to end the wars badly. Even Biden is facing a lot of criticism from some on the left for how his withdrawal from Afghanistan will impact women and those who allied with us. Mainstream Democrats generally thought that it was a mistake for Bush to invade Iraq, and that we should try to get out of there, but also typically believed that we needed to do so carefully. They would not applaud a chaotic and rushed withdrawal. And again, the Iran deal was not about allowing them to have a nuke, that was what Trump's policy was. The Obama Iran deal was about preventing them from getting one by enforcing strict scrutiny. There was no further development during Obama's term, it was only after Trump blew up the deal that their progress started up again. Obamacare did not raise the price of your friend's medication, greedy pharmaceutical companies did that, and would have done so with or without Obamacare. What Obamacare did was ensure that millions who didn't have healthcare had it accessible. Now Democrats were not satisfied with where Obamacare started, and tried numerous times over the years to improve on it, but were shut down consistently by Republicans. If you want Obamacare improved, then contact congressional Republicans and make sure they step out of the way. "You like Trump? Then you're a buck tooth, racist, inbred, mentally disabled, NAZI, bigot who hates brown people. " Hey, Democrats do NOT think that about people who support Bush or Trump. I don't think any of them think those people are "buck toothed." But yeah, the rest is spot on. Very self-aware of you. If people were polite and progressive enough, then they wouldn't put an "R" next to their name.
    1
  14466.  @davidwhitten3596  How many died when? Over the pandemic? I think it's up to 600K at this point.
    1
  14467. The real President Trump can never live up to the imaginary one that lives in the hearts of his cultists.
    1
  14468. He is a true conservative, this is what a true conservative looks like. But Ohio would be better off with a true liberal instead.
    1
  14469. By weight? Yeah, I guess.
    1
  14470.  @williamroper5422  Well, those will probably show up over time. It's a process, they first have to identify the bodies, I heard one of them had her face blown clean off, so that might be complicated. Then they need to inform the families and all that, and then maybe the families would provide a photo for the media to use, but the media want to be respectful to not discuss victims without the permission of the families.
    1
  14471.  @odinallfarther6038 That's likely not why.
    1
  14472.  @odinallfarther6038  Ok, so then we can expand on your earlier thoughts, "To establish who rules over you ask who and what you may not question or state ." . . . "everyone, basically, regardless of what they are talking about."
    1
  14473.  @MAK10p  Ok, fine, if you want to be pedantic about it. I'll amend my previous comment. We can now consider it to read "Well, most people who live there today did not live there before Israel. And of course before the land was Palestine, it was Juda."
    1
  14474.  @MAK10p  Exactly, so going back into the distant past is pointless, everywhere belongs to everyone if you go back far enough. What matters is that for the lifetime of most Gaza residents, Israel has been Israel, not Palestine.
    1
  14475.  @ShaquillaShanum  What would that have to do with anything? Why would a Bible have a map anyway?
    1
  14476.  @odinallfarther6038  It's typically not entire concepts that are banned, but rather the use of certain specific words, and sometimes combinations of words. It's also a per-channel basis, not across YT as a whole. I've noticed on one channel that if I use the names of both US presidential candidates in the same post, regardless of context, it tends to be vanished. They aren't trying to promote any particular world view, they're just trying to downplay controversy.
    1
  14477.  @ShaquillaShanum  I don't know or care who father rick wiles is. Anyway, Palestine became Israel in the mid-1900s, many decades ago, countries change over time, just as Iran and Ireland did. Also, Golda Meir died in the 1970s, before most current Gazans were born.
    1
  14478.  @odinallfarther6038 Facts remain facts.
    1
  14479.  @odinallfarther6038 Nope, just facts. Based on reality.
    1
  14480.  @odinallfarther6038  I wasn't the one who made that claim, it was someone who was responding to me who did. I too questioned why a Bible would have a map in it. Were these Bibles for children or something? Picture Bibles?
    1
  14481.  @layinlow77 Typically in response to hostile actions from the Palestinian side. The more they attack, the more they lose.
    1
  14482. Pretty much, Kevin is in their pockets.
    1
  14483. Probably because they've never incited any violence. People getting butthurt because they want things like healthcare for all is not "inciting violence."
    1
  14484.  @victorysaber1608  Lol, literally none of that is true. You're living in a world of nonsense.
    1
  14485.  @victorysaber1608  Lol.
    1
  14486.  @Gelathius  Lol.
    1
  14487. @SantaClaraFella Why do you think this sort of shenanigan would benefit Harris? She is not the one pushing election conspiracies.
    1
  14488. @SantaClaraFella Exactly, so since the fraud does not exist, the efforts to convince people that it does only seems to benefit the Trump campaign, since like with the last time, they want to convince people that they should be declared the winner, regardless of the outcome.
    1
  14489.  @mannycalavera121  How so?
    1
  14490. Minnesota.
    1
  14491. @ Are you arguing that if they lose an invasion, it somehow stops being an invasion?
    1
  14492. @ There is no amount of words that justifies an invasion. It remains Putin's responsibility that he invaded.
    1
  14493. They have extremely biased headlines and thumbnails. They are like Faux News , only lazier.
    1
  14494. Republicans are nothing but a roadblock. If there's anything the American people need, you can be certain that the Republicans will be there to stop it. Always. This is not news. This is "dog bites man."
    1
  14495. Americans don't like people bothering them in stores either, but the stores do it anyway.
    1
  14496.  @davidwhitten3596  On the American Rescue Plan. Now if jobs are what you care about, make sure your Senators help get the Infrastructure plan through the senate fast. That would create a ton of quality jobs.
    1
  14497.  @davidwhitten3596  No, I meant the 100% that went to supporting Americans though the covid crisis.
    1
  14498.  @davidwhitten3596  No, 100% going to actual covid relief. Your definition of "covid relief" is just too narrow. Is relief to state and local governments whos budgets were hit by covid not "covid relief?" Is increasing the child tax credit so that parents can better take care of their families not "covid relief?" Is expanded unemployment benefits not "covid relief?" Is direct payments to individuals to cover their expenses not "covid relief?" Is money to support small businesses that were hit by covid not "covid relief?" Everything in the bill in some way helps to cover the costs that covid had on the economy and on people's lives. I'm not sure which elements specifically you think are "covid relief," but the correct answer is "all of it."
    1
  14499.  @davidwhitten3596  Yes, obviously the Trump tax cuts for the wealthy drove a massive hole in the budget, but you have to spend money to make money. A major reason that it took so long to get out of the Bush recession was that they did not provide enough stimulus spending in 2009. We can't make that mistake again. It is the responsible role of government to pave over the gaps in the economy, to make sure that everyone has what they need in times of crisis, and then to recover from that in times of plenty.
    1
  14500.  @davidwhitten3596  The recession was last year.
    1
  14501.  @davidwhitten3596  If another recession comes then we'll take the steps to deal with it, so long as McConnell doesn't block those efforts in the Senate. If he does, well we'll just need to get a few Republicans out of the Senate, I guess. Economic downturns come and go. I see no reason why we would have one any time soon though, despite your insistence.
    1
  14502. Yes, and 20 of those videos were false. How many more do you need?
    1
  14503.  @DanielC-m7j  Sur eyou do, because even if you don't buy it, others are, and if they are paying more, it drives up whatever prices you are paying too. Supply and demand.
    1
  14504.  @DanielC-m7j  That is how it works, actually. When foreign products are tariffed, the domestic products also raise. It's 101 material.
    1
  14505.  @TheTruth-13  No, the US does not do the same.
    1
  14506.  @Srbenda126  No, Ukrainian soldiers are not hiding in schools and residential areas, that's just what Russian state media wants you to believe.
    1
  14507.  @tonyporter6712  We dropped the nukes over 75 years ago, the pilots who did so are already dead. Knowing what we know now, we would not drop those bombs today. Standards evolve over time. The current standard of warfare is that you do not indiscriminately bomb civilian targets.
    1
  14508.  @Srbenda126  Putin opposes nothing other than people not paying enough attention to him. He is an infant with a gun, dangerous, but also pathetic.
    1
  14509.  @Benjamin1986980  And the answer to that question is yes. Glad we can move past that and start working toward solutions.
    1
  14510.  @tyronetrump1612  Including yourself, apparently, because that's not how it works. "Printing money" can reduce the value of the dollar, but the pitiful implosion of the economy hurt it far more. If we'd had a robust stimulus package in early summer to keep the economy stable through covid, yes, those costs would add up, but the confidence that we were working our way past this problem would leave the economic impact rather neutral. Basically it would be a show to the rest of the world that "we were good for it." Instead, by basically doing nothing about both the economic issues AND the virus, and allowing it to run rampant through the country, the rest of the world saw us for the shitshow we'd become, and that has caused some issues.
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  14511. What taxes?
    1
  14512. If this were the Trump administration, then there likely would have been merit to the accusations.
    1
  14513. Everything scares you. If you weren't so easily terrified, you couldn't be conservatives.
    1
  14514. TL;DR, "Orban is a joke, but a lot of people are laughing along."
    1
  14515. It would be interesting to make a hybrid battery system. Like take the current storage space in a 300 mile Lithium battery car, and cut that down to maybe 150 miles to 200 miles worth of lithium ion battery. Then fill the rest of the space with Indium battery, giving it a range of maybe 50 miles or so on that battery. Why? Because this way, you should still have plenty of Li range to get around, most people would never have to charge outside their homes because 100mi+ per day is more than enough, but IF you run out of charge, you would be able to go to a charging station and be back on the road in minutes, rather than taking a longer time to charge. This should ensure that you would be able to get back home with minimal wait times, which should negate a lot of the "range anxiety" drivers might have. It wouldn't make long range trips that much more practical, since you would end up having to hop from station to station a bit much for that, but ti should help to make the concept more comfortable for local driving.
    1
  14516. Give him a few hundred million dollars and I'm sure he could get the same type of women Don does. Better, probably.
    1
  14517.  @shack8110  Well, it depends, did they do crimes? If they want to do crimes, they probably should be worried. But if they didn't do crimes, they'll be fine.
    1
  14518. So higher prices at the store then. Fun.
    1
  14519. This is far right media, in case you were unaware.
    1
  14520.  @GirtonOramsay  Sure, but nobody would care.
    1
  14521. Incorrect. There were ballots placed under the table in some counts, but only because that is the place where ballots were being stored when they checked out for the night. There was nothing underhanded about it.
    1
  14522. It would cost too much to feed people then. Food prices would rise 3-4 times over existing levels.
    1
  14523.  @GirtonOramsay  Well, my mom's worked in food banks before, and at least some of it does get there, but I imagine not all of it. It's very hard to balance though, Groceries certainly don't like buying food that they can't sell, but at the same time you need to have the food available when people want to buy it. It's impossible to perfectly match supply and demand when dealing with perishable items.
    1
  14524. That's because Israel has a much better vaccination rate than the US. The vaccine is not a 100% shield against infection, it is primarily a way of reducing the death rate.
    1
  14525. At least until it becomes too late to swap him out, then they go all-in on Joe.
    1
  14526.  @ohnoao9847  Those are clouds. Planes leave water vapor in their wake as they pass, and clouds form around them. This is just how planes work. You can look this up, it's common knowledge to even small children.
    1
  14527. You mean the Putin agent who fled to Russia?
    1
  14528. If it would be possible to make a vest that could wick away body heat, process it, and eject it in any way, resulting in a body core that is 70 degrees on a 90 degree day, then someone should manufacture it and make a few billion dollars.
    1
  14529.  @andremarques3317  Maybe, but that's true of ever country. Every country has had troubled periods. At some point, people need to take responsibility for their own actions. Even on an individual level, having bad parents is not usually counted as an excuse for a grown adult committing a crime, much less blaming their great-great-grandparents. If countries like Japan or Germany can move forward, Africa has no excuse.
    1
  14530. @ Maybe, but that's true of ever country. Every country has had troubled periods. At some point, people need to take responsibility for their own actions. Even on an individual level, having bad parents is not usually counted as an excuse for a grown adult committing a crime, much less blaming their great-great-grandparents.
    1
  14531.  @Abyssinian_0  If a country is run by a dictator, there really isn't an option to deliver aid in a way that does not get skimmed by the dictator. It's either do what you can, knowing that only a portion of it will get where it's needed, or do nothing at all. China is popular on the continent because they don't care and just pay the dictators directly.
    1
  14532.  @mrdeebo313  Maybe it could be, but it would still require integration into the self driving cars' systems for it to actually do anything, so they would still need to cooperate. That said, this is an industry that wants to justify itself, so the burden is on them to ensure that they are not a burden on existing systems. They are much better positioned to develop such a tool than individual first responder programs would be, and in the long run, it would actually be a lot CHEAPER for them to develop it themselves, since if left to police and fire departments, each of them would arrive at their own solutions, and the self-driving cars would need to adapt to ALL of them.
    1
  14533. Electric cars are actually great to have during a power outage, because you can some or all of your appliances off it for days, depending on the model you get. It's also easier to set up emergency charging locations where people can recharge their cars and then return home to power the house again, than it is to reconnect the entire power grid.
    1
  14534.  @Anita..  Better than gasoline though, when those run out of gas, you're stuck, and most can't power a house at all.
    1
  14535. . . . in what world is this news? "Private citizen chooses to wear mask in public." Personally I put my mask on when I leave the house and don't bother taking it off until I get home. Why not?
    1
  14536.  @favoureds11  The Constitution leaves the door open to kick people out just because you don't like them. It is then the responsibility of Congress to NOT do that. The only people who have EVER threatened to do that have been Republicans, aimed at Democrats. This is not such a case.
    1
  14537.  @stalker7892  I misread that as "to account for their dereliction of duty for not castrating Trump," but honestly that holds up too.
    1
  14538. Poe's Law!
    1
  14539. What is the distinction?
    1
  14540. What part of "the Trump Justice Department told the NY DAs to back off while he was in office" do Republicans not understand?
    1
  14541.  @keithcampbell7820  It wouldn't be part of the indictment, it's not relevant to the legal case. It is, however, important context for the timeframe of when they chose to file their case.
    1
  14542.  @scottyflintstone  States, unfortunately, often choose to pass bad laws that do not respect the rights of their citizens. We can already see that many states are passing laws against abortion. In 2022.
    1
  14543.  @joeylamack3197  But the problem is that they are passing laws that harm their own people, and when states choose to pass laws that cause harm, then the federal government should step in to tell them "cut that out," as they did with Roe. The current Court rejected that responsibility.
    1
  14544.  @joeylamack3197  States are passing laws for abortions.
    1
  14545. It's not a competition. We can be doing both. If you are seeing a problem that has nothing to do with immigration, then push to solve that problem. The solution has nothing to do with immigration.
    1
  14546.  VegieT-be9su Where'd that list come from? Who gets that?
    1
  14547.  @contractorvegas5384  Yes, because they have common sense.
    1
  14548.  @contractorvegas5384  Different war, different circumstances. Palestine is the "Russia" in this scenario, they invaded first.
    1
  14549.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  I can only speak for myself, but I am passing on how the international community judges these things, how Russia will be held accountable for their actions. Who are you to judge how much the rest of the world chooses to give to Ukraine? They support their cause, and believe it is a better investment in their own futures to fight this war here, than to wait until it spills out to the rest of the world later. It is their money to spend, not yours.
    1
  14550.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  Yes, and they are doing so by supporting Ukraine.
    1
  14551.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  There are certainly some people who do not support Ukraine. They are in the minority though. Outside of Ukraine and Russia, there are a lot more important things going on in the world, so there are a lot of other reasons that various politicians gain and lose favor. I also have no disrespect for people who do not wish to personally fight in a war. hundreds of thousands fled Russia at the start of the war too. I have great respect for those who make the choice to fight on the battlefield, but it's not for everyone. There's nothing wrong with that.
    1
  14552.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  Russia invaded Ukraine. The people of Ukraine have every right to do whatever they can to solve that problem Russia created. If that offends you, then help to get Russia out of Ukraine, so that it is no longer a problem. Why do you seem to not blame Russia for this problem that is entirely caused by Russia? If you do live in a former Soviet country, then the war in Ukraine might be the only reason why those are NATO planes flying by you, rather than Russian plane dropping bombs.
    1
  14553.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  And yet Russia was the one who invaded their neighbor, so they are the criminals in this scenario. And again, they would be bombing your country to, if nobody was willing to stop them. And my comments get deleted all the time too, you aren't special.
    1
  14554.  @FunnyBunny-pd5xx  And if Russia had been allowed to take Ukraine without foreign support, they would already have moved on to your country by now, and you would be the one fleeing to someplace else.
    1
  14555. Their electricity bills might go up a bit, but their gas prices will go WAY down. People will end up spending a lot less overall than they currently do, unless they don't own a car.
    1
  14556.  @KarnivorActual  Part of the plans are to produce more electricity using other sources. The rolling blackouts will certainly get better, once the power grid catches up to demand, as it has always done in the past. This should be obvious.
    1
  14557.  @KarnivorActual  But, again, less than their gas prices. Overall, they will be paying less.
    1
  14558.  @blakethegreatone2058  There's also a 100% chance that gas prices will rise over time, as the cost of extracting it goes up and up, so if your argument is "energy prices will be higher in future," yes, they likely will be, but gas prices will always be higher. As for the cost of the EV itself, I get that you've been told those things, but it's important to keep in mind that they aren't actually true. You can buy a brand new EV for less than the average cost of an ICE car, and you can get used ones for much less. Those prices will only go down over time. Nobody needs a charging port to charge their car, you can plug it into a standard home outlet, which will be slower than if you get a dedicated port, but should provide plenty of charge per night for most daily drivers. Even if you do invest in a higher speed charging port, that's a fairly minor one time cost. As for the cost of replacing batteries, unless you get into a major accident, your battery is rated for ten years, I have no idea where you got five, and even at ten years, it's not like a lead battery where after ten years and a day the car just won't turn on, the battery just gets less and less efficient over time, so at ten years and a day, your 300 mile battery might be a 275 or 250 mile battery. At 20 years it might be a 200 mile battery. It should continue to function at some level for 30+ years. If you absolutely require the maximum possible range, then you might have to trade it out occasionally, but you can sell the old one off to places that recycle them or re-use them for home storage, or use it for home storage yourself. And that's keeping in mind that your average maintenance costs will be much lower over the life of the vehicle, since it has far fewer parts that break down than an ICE, no oil changes, engine overhauls, mufflers, etc. Over the life of the vehicle, you will spend a LOT less driving an EV.
    1
  14559.  @SethHainly  Sure, there will likely be some sort of taxation on EVs to pay for highway maintenance, but it won't add up to more than the current cost of gasoline.
    1
  14560.  @blakethegreatone2058  Yes, on average EVs are more expensive, but that's because a lot of them are start-ups, so they pursue a luxury market first, build up some capital, and then spread out into the budget market. So of the cars being produced today, most of them are luxury cars, and relatively few of them are "budget" vehicles, but just because that is the case, you aren't obligated to buy a luxury EV if you typically buy an "average" car, and the fact remains that there ARE EVs on the market that are cheaper than the average ICE car, so if you are in the market for an "average" car, you CAN find an EV at that price. That's all that matters, from a consumer perspective. And again, you do NOT need a special charging port for an EV, not in most US homes, at least. For example, an Ioniq 5 can charge to full in 58 hours on a level 1 charger. "But 58 hours is a long time!" Yeah, but that's from zero to full, that's 200 miles of charge. Do you drive 200 miles a day? If so, you probably would need a level 2 charger, which can charge the car in 5 hours, but MOST drivers do not drive 200 miles per day. If you only drive 100 miles per day, then it would take less than 24 hours, and if you drive 50 miles per day, it would take less than 12. Plenty of US drivers don't drive significant distanced every day, so they don't need more than that, but of course you do need to consider your own situation. In either case, setting up a level 2 charger is not a huge expense overall. And again, you were wrong on the batteries, or at least were presenting a bad faith argument about them. The point is that while they do degrade over time, it's not an issue that most drivers will need to worry about, and those who do would be spending more cost fueling and maintaining their ICE vehicle than they would "replacing batteries." EVs are cheaper over the life of the vehicle.
    1
  14561.  @blakethegreatone2058  Well of course the cheapest EV is more expensive than the cheapest gas vehicle. Who would expect otherwise? But I was talking about the average price, and you can find EVs that are lower than the AVERAGE new car price, which is $48K. There are plenty of EV models at below that price, you listed two of them yourself. I was just pointing out that when you said the average EV price was higher, that was due to the average EV being a $100K+ luxury vehicle like a Rivian or higher end Tesla. If you're in the market for a budget EV, you can get one used for under $10K. Right now, 2023, perhaps even that is outside of your budget, but prices will come down over time as newer models release and economy of scale factors into it. There used to be a time when the cost of the cheapest cars on the market would be the equivalent of hundreds of thousands in today's dollar. That changes as the market expands. " Also, if you buy a used electric vehicle it will need much more work than a gas powered car to get it running. " That's not remotely true. A used EV, on average, will require ZERO work to get going, you just get in and drive. EVs are much lower maintenance than an ICE car. If it's over ten years old and you absolutely require its maximum range, then you might need to replace the battery, and that would be expensive, but most drivers will not need to do that, so it's a moot point. "and if I get the faster charger I do more damage to the batteries and will have to replace them sooner. " Again, you exaggerate. Yes, faster charging will cause the battery to degrade faster, but YOU DON'T NEED TO REPLACE THE BATTERIES AS OFTEN AS YOU IMPLY. You just don't. That's not a thing. It's like saying that you need to completely replace the engine on an ICE car sometimes, which is true, but it's not an expense that most drivers will need to worry about. An EV that only charges off a level 1 charger might have a battery that lasts 20-30 years, while one that charges entirely off of level 2 chargers might last 15-25, but either will last "long enough" to get the full value out of that vehicle. If you're so concerned about getting a level 2 charger, that is still only adding a couple thousand bucks to the cost of the car, which in the grand scheme of things is not a lot. If you are driving more than 27 miles per day, then you would make that up on gas savings in the first year alone. Look, I get that right now, in 2023, EVs are not the right solution for everyone. I can't promise you that YOU getting an EV today would be the right choice for you. But we can at least agree that of the millions of drivers on the road, the EV would be the better choice for MOST of them today, right? The ones that don't have to drive massive distances every day, and that have the set-up to charge them efficiently overnight. As for everyone else, that too will change over time. Within the next ten years, there will be EVs with longer ranges at more affordable prices, there will be more and more charging spaces anywhere you could possibly want one, and many of those could charge your car to full in minutes, just like a gas station. The overall costs will come down, the overall value will go up, and meanwhile ICE cars will just get more and more and more expensive to operate, as gas prices continue to rise.
    1
  14562. Cowards.
    1
  14563.  @rabbitramen  Prosecutors aren't paid extra depending on the outcome of a case. They just get paid their salaries like anyone else.
    1
  14564.  @erics3737  This sort of financial crime isn't exactly a common occurrence. Nobody is budgeting off of cases like this one.
    1
  14565.  @Tijuanabill  They aren't "handing it out," they're going to use it on the taxpayer's interest. I hear there's a problem with unhoused migrants, for example, they can use it on that. It'll do more good than the wall did.
    1
  14566. But more importantly, Biden got zero money, which is less than $7.8M.
    1
  14567.  @woowoo5651  If you oppose spending more, that's fine. When it comes time for Congress to pass budget legislation, then that is where that goes into action. You tell them "don't put $100B into the budget for that because we don't need it, put that back." That is the time to raise such complaints, and it's perfectly fine to do so. But that has absolutely nothing to do with the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is that we've ALREADY ordered the food, we have ALREADY eaten the food, and now you are saying that we shouldn't pay the bill. That is NEVER the responsible option, and can ONLY lead to economic chaos, NEVER to anything that would in any way EVER be a positive thing for the US. The Senate Republicans know this full well, they are just playing stupid games and hoping the Democrats will waste their own political capital to prevent us winning stupid prizes. Do not enable this childish behavior.
    1
  14568.  @woowoo5651  Poe's Law, man.
    1
  14569.  @leahblake6748  Wow, you have been completely fooled. How sad.
    1
  14570.  @valeriericksmithlovett428  I love how so many of you are claiming that a president has the right to unilaterally declassify anything, because that is what you have been told to believe, but I wonder what you will say when someone raises that argument in a court room and the judge laughs at them for doing so.
    1
  14571.  @Kitkat1-i9p  He probably has a few somewhere, but if he found out they existed then he would turn them over.
    1
  14572.  @leahblake6748  That's the part I was talking about, that you think what you're telling others is true.
    1
  14573.  @leahblake6748  The part about thinking he tried to give them the documents, but for some reason didn't manage it. The process this all went through was well documented, if he had ANY intention of giving the documents back, he had over two years to do so. He would have to be pretty incompetent to keep failing that long.
    1
  14574.  @targgthewise2892  Not exactly, and also, it would still be illegal whether he declassified them or not.
    1
  14575.  @leahblake6748  Read your previous posts then. I can't help your poor memory.
    1
  14576.  @jimwheeler6094  A vivid imagination.
    1
  14577.  @leahblake6748  "The only reason he didn't give them back right away is because the people trying to take them did not have the proper paperwork." -Leah Are you?
    1
  14578. In a shocker to no one, GOP Lawmaker is an idiot.
    1
  14579.  @gladtech4740  Doctors do good though. Guns do not do as much good as doctors do. If doctors killed as many people as guns, while providing as few benefits, you'd be right that doctors would be illegal.
    1
  14580.  @joshmiller8663  The "of the people" part is contingent on them being a part of the well regulated militia, otherwise, what would even be the point of the first statement? "The people" in that context are "the people of the militia," ie, the national guard.
    1
  14581.  @kevinpreston5590  And when the definition of a militia shifted over the years, the group of people it applied to also shifted.
    1
  14582.  @kevinpreston5590  Militia used to mean everyone. Since 1792, militia only meant the formal State Militias as defined by that act, and as of 1916, it means the National Guard. Weapons should only exist to defend the people of the nation from foreign threat, as the founders intended.
    1
  14583.  @kevinpreston5590  Then why did they write the laws that way? If they didn't intend it that way, they could have left the militia element out entirely, or not updated the definition of what a "militia" is within a few years of drafting the Constitution. What do you believe they meant, if it wasn't what they actually said?
    1
  14584.  @kemradovich2874  Right, so he's voting for Biden. The Constitution destroying side is the other one.
    1
  14585.  @henrylivingstone2971  Yeah, you need an audience for your products. Americans on average just don't care that much, they aren't going to go out of their way to visit a bakery every day, or even necessarily once a week, so it's hard for a baker to produce enough volume to be viable if they aren't in a very concentrated area.
    1
  14586. Yes, and that will take electing more Democratic presidents to replace the current SCOTUS.
    1
  14587.  @enriquelaroche5370  The difference being that this was in the 1800s, and over the past 100 years we've tried to build a more stable and peaceful world in which conquest is an unacceptable practice. The 2014 borders of Ukraine are the borders accepted by international law. Any changes to those borders must take place with the full consent of Ukraine.
    1
  14588.  @enriquelaroche5370  In what sense is the US occupying Syria? We don't even have a military presence there. If anyone is occupying Syria, it would be Russia.
    1
  14589.  @enriquelaroche5370  You mean like how they were "invited" by Ukraine? Again, the US is in no sense occupying Syria.
    1
  14590.  @enriquelaroche5370  They have troops there, but that is to fight terrorists in the region. It is not occupying the country itself. That would be Assad. Now, if the US claimed that Syria was sovereign US territory, then that would be an occupation.
    1
  14591.  @enriquelaroche5370  Syria was a war zone before US involvement, and harbors terrorist groups. The US is fighting those forces. You can't compare that to sending troops into a peaceful nation, and it belittles your own position to try it.
    1
  14592.  @Rays_Bad_Decisions  No, it's not that. If you understood as well as me, then you would understand that vaccines have never been 100% protection in and of themselves, there has never been a vaccinate that allows you to just hang out with unvaccinated, infected people and have zero chance to get infected yourself. It is always just a protective layer. It's like a bulletproof vest, you can still get shot through one, it just REDUCES the chances that you will. They changed the definition to make it more clear to stupid people what it had always meant to smarter people. Smarter people meant that "immunity" just meant "trigger an immune system reaction," not "makes it impossible for your to get sick."
    1
  14593.  @Rays_Bad_Decisions  It's factually correct that it provides 2000% protection. You are twenty times more likely to die if you are not vaccinated than if you are vaccinated.
    1
  14594. See, this is why you don't put the bills up one at a time, because none of them pass. Together, strong. Alone, weak.
    1
  14595. When you can tell how slowly Russia is moving entirely buy how few of their people are dying per day. . .
    1
  14596. The only thing "selective prosecution" about any of this is that if Trump were any other person, he'd have been charged years ago for this stuff, and convicted by now. Since he's an ex-president, they dragged their feet as long as they could on it.
    1
  14597. Ok, but, "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater," eight words, takes a few seconds to say, what's the alternative? What's a different phrase that can be used to convey the accurate principle that some speech is not protected, in roughly the same amount of space?
    1
  14598. They aren't. They are detained and processed. If they don't have a credible asylum claim, they are deported.
    1
  14599. Sure, so long as you don't interact with the public in any way. If you do interact with other people, then your risk of infecting them with a deadly disease is obviously everyone's business.
    1
  14600. The NYP is rarely accurate, so any time they get something like that right, it's worth encouraging them.
    1
  14601. This is why "unions" are a 20th century solution to a 21st century problem. Unions only work so long as labor has value. As soon as labor can be removed, it will be, unions regardless. The only solution can be in the form of governments that prioritize people over corporations, and ensure that if a company is making billions of dollars, and yet not employing thousands of workers at a living wage, then they will still be required to pay into allowing thousands of humans to live.
    1
  14602.  @l.w.paradis2108  The drugs are not generally indicated according to certain political reports. They are generally indicated according to doctors. That's what I was talking about. The reports Alito was citing were not about medicine, they were crafted by politicians to support their public policy decisions. And the brief provided information that was correct when they sent it in, and continues to be correct. Alito disagrees with the brief, but that does not make it "incorrect."
    1
  14603.  @l.w.paradis2108  The drugs are not generally indicated according to certain political reports. They are generally indicated according to doctors. That's what I was talking about. And the brief provided information that was correct when they sent it in, and continues to be correct. Alito disagrees with the brief, but that does not make it "incorrect."
    1
  14604.  @l.w.paradis2108  The drugs are not generally indicated according to certain political reports. They are generally indicated according to doctors. That's what I was talking about.
    1
  14605.  @l.w.paradis2108  And the brief provided information that was correct when they sent it in, and continues to be correct. Alito disagrees with the brief, but that does not make it "incorrect."
    1
  14606.  @l.w.paradis2108  No, again, the lawyer's brief was correct, in so far as the doctors are concerned. It is not agreed with by some politicians though.
    1
  14607.  @jacobsider4453  The scientific citations support that position though, and I'm sure she included such citations in her filing. You can't expect a summary to contain all the details, that is not the point of it.
    1
  14608.  @l.w.paradis2108  The drugs are generally indicated by medical professionals. Some politicians disagree. That does not change what "generally indicated" means.
    1
  14609. So. . . her staff is upset that she is the vice president?
    1
  14610. Yes, but it's more expensive and not as good at the jobs people use plastic for.
    1
  14611.  @kristins8438  no, the only part that was relevant was the months leading up to the insurrection where he kept telling his idiots that "the election had been stolen" and that they had to stop it. A few "but don't be too mean about it" statements are nothing exonerating here.
    1
  14612.  @c3surfop  Not half as disgusting as trying to overthrow the US government. If you want to be disgusted by something, be disgusted about that.
    1
  14613.  @c3surfop  No, who's John Sullivan? . . ok, I just looked him up, he seems like some random yahoo in the mix who got charged with the rest of them. What about him?
    1
  14614.  @c3surfop  Ok, but what about him. There were a lot of people like that at the insurrection. It was a meeting group for all sorts of crazies. That was the problem. Like Trump said "be there, will be wild."
    1
  14615. This has nothing to do with protecting women though. They are fine either way. If anything, she is the one attacking women here.
    1
  14616. She should, but instead she's attacking them.
    1
  14617.  @cynthiacook1646  Factually, you would be incorrect about that. The facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  14618.  @cynthiacook1646  That was my point. The fact is, you were factually wrong.
    1
  14619. Republicans: "Anything in the name of authoritarianism."
    1
  14620. It's got character though! Still as it's a restaurant, if I owned that property, if I wanted to do some business, I would ask myself "what is this place worth 'in good times?'" If it's $40,000 a month or whatever, ok, that's the baseline. I would tell a customer, "you lease out this space right now, and you pay me, I don't know, $25,000 a month, even $15,000 a month, something fairly small but better than nothing, but something they could afford to keep up with, but that is contingent on the lockdown levels. It would go up as the restrictions lift, but I would lay out how and when it would go up in advance, and I would say that I'd cap the price at maybe $35K for at least five years, some amount less than the going rate, some deal like that, to say "you invest in this deal now? It'll work out to a good deal for you for a few years at least." I bet they could make more money that way than just leaving it vacant.
    1
  14621. No, passed in the senate is basically signed into law, since the Senate is what is currently holding up most things. Now if it had only passed the House, that would be a different story.
    1
  14622. "Vote third party!" Like in 2016, when if the people who voted for Jill Stein had voted for Hillary, we wouldn't have had any of this mess. Yeah, third party, good call. . .
    1
  14623.  @DREAMLANDSLEEEP  Hilary wouldn't have dismantled Obama's pandemic response programs. There is no chance that things would in any way have been worse under Hilary than they are under Trump.
    1
  14624.  @DREAMLANDSLEEEP  Lol. 1. "He dismantled the pandemic taskforce because there wasn't a pandemic happening" is not an excuse! It's like saying "he ripped out the fire alarms because there wasn't any fire going on." The entire point of a pandemic taskforce is to be PREPARED when a pandemic DOES happen. If Obama's pandemic planning had still been in full effect, we would have had much better information to work with when this was just starting to be an issue in China. 2. Trump's "taskforce" was a joke, and was set up well after most other countries had started their own responses, and Trump largely ignored their recommendations anyway. Hilary would have started preparing for this virus in December, not April. He is doing a HORRIBLE job at managing this crisis. There is still no national lock-down, there is still no national plan for effectively distributing medical supplies to those who need them, all he does is complain about how governors are doing a better job than he is, and pushing snake-oil drugs to people.
    1
  14625.  @DREAMLANDSLEEEP  The governors certainly know better how to handle their problems than THIS White House, but if there were an actual President in the White House, then the federal government would be able to do a better job of managing a national crisis than 50 independent governors. For example, instead of each Governor having to compete to get medical supplies on the open market, bidding up the price against other states, an effective federal government would buy up all the medical supplies that the entire country needs, using defense appropriation rights to get them at minimal prices, and then use military supply chains to distribute them to the states as needed. This would be better for all governors than the current model, and many governors have been asking the Trump administration to do this for months. It's unfair to compare the US to the EU, because the EU is a loose confederation, not a full country as the US is meant to be. They do have an extremely weak central government by design, and nobody expects the US federal government to behave as weakly as the EU's. As for job losses, it's a necessary part of this. Better that they be unemployed than dead. The role of the Federal government should be in helping businesses and employees to stay financially stable over the course of this crisis, so that when the public is ready to open up again, they can pick up where they left off. The current administration is dropping the ball on this though, focusing more on big business and stock markets than on small businesses and employees. The House Dems have had to fight tooth and nail too get even modest provisions past the Senate, and even those the Trump administration is trying to cheat by firing oversight. "Opening up the economy" would be a disaster, because those curves that have been flattening out over the past week or two would take right off again, and we'd be right back where we started. There can be NO "opening of the economy" until either A: there is a vaccine, or B: actual active cases of the virus have dropped into the tiny digits, and testing options are everywhere, such that if any one random person is found to be infested, they can immediately be isolated, and everyone they met tested and isolated, so that everyone else can go about their business without spread. There is a VAST VAST difference between a responsible reaction to a crisis and a "fascist takeover." If a policeman tackles someone just for insulting him or something, that would be a fascist response. If a policeman tackles someone to prevent that person being shot or caught in an explosion, it's saving his life. Context is everything.
    1
  14626.  @DREAMLANDSLEEEP  Most of them, sure. But a lot of people DO die. over 30,000 Americans are already dead because of this, and this is just the START. Even if we stayed fairly locked-down, there will likely be 10-20K more dead by the end of this. If we did "open up" any time soon, that number would jump to hundreds of thousands. The early projections weren't wrong, they were just based on the assumption that we wouldn't lock down as successful as we have. If we failed that lock-down, the original projections would kick right back into effect. And again, it is the government's job to PREVENT people "starving to death" during the crisis. This situation is like a medically-induced coma, you knock the patient out so that they can get over whatever their condition is, and then wake them back up. If you don't feed them intervenously during that, then yeah, they would die, and that would suck, which is why you don't do that. So yes, we need the shutdown, and yes, it needs to keep going on, but also yes, while the shutdown is on, it is the government's responsibility to keep everyone fed and make sure that they don't get kicked out of their houses and basically keep the wheels running at their minimum levels, so that when we do open back up, everyone is alive and well and ready to do their jobs again, and those jobs are still there waiting for them. It may be "bad for the economy" to keep in lockdown, but it's also "bad for the economy" to lose 100K+ Americans. Even if they did just "open things back up," the economy would be in the toilet for the next 18 months because any rational American would STAY in lockdown voluntarily, not going to theaters, sports, restaurants, etc., because they don't want to be one of those 1% that die, or to carry that disease to friends and relatives that might be one of those 1%. We don't have a lockdown because of AIDS because AIDS is FAR less contagious. If you see someone on the street with AIDS, and you manage to not fuck them, then you'll be fine. Covid isn't super contagious, but it is plenty contagious, just being in the general area of someone who has it is plenty, so having a bunch of people hanging out together is bad news. Admittedly I haven't been following EU news all that closely lately, but I seriously doubt that this will "set back the EU" any. EU countries are acting independently because that's how they are currently set up, but that's not a rejection of the idea of the EU, and might eventually lead to even closer bonds between them as they analyze what worked and what didn't about this crisis. It's quite possible that countries like Spain and Italy would have been in better shape if they'd had more direct intervention from other members of the EU.
    1
  14627.  @DREAMLANDSLEEEP  Again, it's the government's responsibility to not only enforce the shutdown, but also to make it tolerable. If they fail at either, they fail at both. We currently have an awful government, that's the fault of 2016 Bernie Bros, but we have to make do with what we've got, because none of the alternatives are good. Hopefully you live in a State that is at least trying to offset the awfulness of the Federal response. Even if it all breaks down and people go out and get themselves killed in spite of the lockdown, spreading it out makes things better because it means the hospitals are not rushed. NY is in an OK place at the moment. They were on track to be in an awful place next week, but their measures slowed that down. If they stopped doing their thing today, they would be in that same awful place in a month or two, that's how this works. By slowing things down as best we can, we keep people from rushing the hospitals, leaving them better able to not only handle the incoming CV patients, but also handle normal medical issues like cancer and injury. "You may think I'm selfish idiot, but I would rather die young and free than live long life of imprisonment." Oh, don't be dramatic. Even worst case here we're talking a year or two of watching Netflix and eating delivery food, go ask Britain during the Blitz what hardship is like. More likely we can get the case load down to low enough levels that we can partially reopen within the next few months, but we can't jump the gun. It's like a house fire, you have to put out all the flames, because if you only put out a few and then move back in, they will just come back. "So if most people would responsibly stay in voluntary lockdown why do we need the government to do it? " Because the ones that wouldn't would still be a problem. They would still be getting sick, putting pressure on the system, carrying things around, etc. Etc's like how relatively small numbers of anti-vaxers can screw things up for everyone else. We live in a society. "Also if most cases are asymptomatic and most people would get it and therefore gain some form of resistance, the assumed second wave would not be as impactful as the first. " Depends on how it happens. If it happens six months from now after the virus has slowly spread through the community, maybe, but if it happens in one month because people rush to the streets again, it would be at least almost as bad as the first wave, because there would still be way more people who aren't immune than immune people. " At this point herd immunity is in my opinion the best shot we have until there is vaccine which is not even 100% sure we ever will get one. " And yet every country that tried a "herd immunity" response worked out fine. For about a month. And then they became a clusterfuck. Herd immunity is a good long term strategy, but you need to build it up carefully, not just "everyone get sick right now!" Also remember that we'd still be talking around 100,000 dead Americans taking that approach, maybe you, maybe your parents or grandparents. I'd rather not burn mine on a pyre just to get the economy going again. Also, as far as vaccines, we're almost certain to get one, and we'll know that we have it relatively soon. The thing about vaccines is that the long part is not so much finding it, as testing it. We don't want a vaccine that totally works, but also totally kills 10% of people, and then rush that out the door, which is why they take a year or so to test. If there never is a vaccine, then sure, herd immunity will be the eventually result, but we still want to spread that out over the next year or so, so that the system can handle the process. Think of the country like a patient, if you give a cancer patient their entire cycle of chemo drugs all at once, they WILL die, which is why you spread it out over days or weeks, so their body can make the changes it needs to slowly. Whatever changes we make her, they can't be rushed, and doing so will just harm the patient.
    1
  14628.  @DREAMLANDSLEEEP  Well, fortunately for all of us, Trump has no authority to "open up America." He never even closed it in the first place, even though he should have. It's the governors that decide, and most of them don't plan on reopening until at least the middle of next month, if that. Now some idiot Red State governors will reopen (some haven't even closed things yet, even though their states are riddled with virus), and their states will suffer for that, but I'm lucky to not be in one, and at some point neighboring states can just close their borders and ride out the idiots. It's sad, but there's nothing we can do about it. Also, there's nothing wrong with the WHO here. They've just been scapegoated by Trump and his lackeys because Trump is incapable of accepting responsibility for his own failures. It's possible that they could have done something a bit better here or there, but there was no malice or genuine incompetence there, and any failing they have were only a drop in the bucket compared to the failings of the Trump administration.
    1
  14629.  @sircoolbox  I imagine there are conservatives out there that are that dumb, yeah. It' not like they will run out, if they sell more, they just make more. That's how businesses work. But unfortunately, many conservatives are too dumb to understand that.
    1
  14630.  @jamesgoode9246  That would be a complete misunderstanding of what the term "bigot" means then. What do you believe that it means?
    1
  14631.  @johnhalloran0727  That's fine, by what reason would you have to do so, outside of bigotry? This is my point, bigots are going to engage in bigotry, that comes as a surprise to no one, but that does not mean that anyone should care what they think.
    1
  14632.  @johnhalloran0727  Ah, "projection." Mature people can internalize criticism and try to become a better person. If conservatives were not "labeling people" and more importantly persecuting them, then we would not even be having this discussion? Do you think that there would have been any negative response to Bud hiring Mulvaney to do a sponsorship if Mulvaney had not been trans? What would the argument against the sponsorship have been in that case?
    1
  14633.  @andresmcjr  That's sort of the problem. The bigotry IS the Republican base.
    1
  14634.  @johnhalloran0727  So you concede that this argument is entirely based in conservative bigotry, and have moved on to ad hominem attacks, that's all I was saying.
    1
  14635. By whom?
    1
  14636.  @theworldisnotcool9685  Man, you turn in early. Is that when they turn the lights out?
    1
  14637. How old are you, five? Even then, Biden is beating him by every metric.
    1
  14638.  @ryanmathis8286  No, not for any of those reasons. Maybe you're thinking of Democrats? They do that stuff. The Republicans are the opposite of that, the "anti-anti-fa" types.
    1
  14639.  @seancase71  The banks are responsible for their own due diligence, but that would have nothing to do with the matter at hand. "They should have locked the vault tighter" is no defense against bank robbery, at best, BOTH the thief AND the victim would have some separate liability issues, but they are not off setting.
    1
  14640.  @seancase71 He is not responsible for the bank's fiduciary duties. That is their responsibility. But he IS responsible for reporting the facts to them honestly that is HIS responsibility under the law, and he failed it on multiple occasions. If the banks' investors want to come after them for making risky loans, that is possible, but it has nothing to do with Trump's role in this. There is no outcome here in which Trump, given his actions, does not bare his own share of the blame. Stop fishing for one.
    1
  14641.  @seancase71  I'm not sure that there is any law that the banks broke by which the State can go after them. It would likely be a shareholder issue, or a regulatory body, but honestly, banks are too complicated to fight over something this small. They could try, but I fully understand why they would not. Banks have done a LOT worse. That in zero ways defends Trump's actions, because that's not how "crime" works. Again, the clear and deliberate wrongdoing was on his part, on their part it was, at most a bit negligent. It's like if someone leaves their car unlocked and it get stolen. Should they have done better? Yes. Does that make the car theft not a crime? No. Do the crime, pay the time.
    1
  14642.  @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.
    1
  14643.  @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.
    1
  14644.  @tyslink  People can maybe keep it out of the headlines for a Youtube video though. I managed to avoid Deadpool spoilers all weekend.
    1
  14645.  @tyslink  Given how they time it out with overseas delays though, best practices is to not place spoilers in headlines and thumbnails until after the prime time broadcasts. Instead of saying "women's team wins gold," you would say "How the women's team performed" or something equally neutral. Then, if people choose to click on that, they would find out the results. In live TV broadcasts, they will typically say "if you don't want to know the results, turn away now."
    1
  14646.  @tyslink  I posted it on an ABC News story, in hope that the editors of the ABC News Youtube channel might see it and do better at their jobs, but if you can get the entire Internet on board, that would be great.
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  14647. It's a shame that no wrongdoings took place that would justify all this whining. Republicans were really looking forward to a nice Republicans tradition, where you get everyone in town out to watch you murder someone on the suspicion that maybe they were up to something, Unfortunately, America just isn't like that these days, you have to actually have committed a crime for there to be repercussions,m which takes all the fun out of it when the other side refuses to do crimes.
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  14648.  @oldiesaregoldies3511  To be fair, the Republicans do want to wipe out half of all life. They tell me so all the time. Quite openly.
    1
  14649. I think he knows what a yes/no question is, there just wasn't an accurate yes or no answer to that question. Either one would be misleading.
    1
  14650.  @gibbletronic5139  Or, he just didn't actually do anything wrong.
    1
  14651.  @Davmartin-kp1yq  But it's important to keep in mind that neither of those things is actually true.
    1
  14652.  @davebrown6552  He is not an employee of congress, he is an employee of the executive branch.
    1
  14653.  @davebrown6552  Yes, and the population voted for his boss to appoint him, to implement policies along these lines.
    1
  14654.  @davebrown6552  Congress is not his management. Their questions are not asked in good faith, they only want to present his administration in a bad light for political purposes, and went him to give them sound bites. He's answering any questions of legitimate value.
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  14655.  @scottryall  No, that is not perjury, because it's possible for someone to be aware of something at one time, and then later to forget it. Also, if he had been guilty of that crime, then they should have added it to the charges against him, it was not.
    1
  14656.  @scottryall  Perjury does exist, but generally does not apply to "I don't recall." I mean, if it did, then Ivanka would be in jail right now. Perjury mainly applies to when you state a fact that you know to be untrue. In any case, I looked into the claims Hawley made about Mayorkas, and it turns out none of what he claimed would actually be perjury. Each time Maykorkas made a statement, it was a valid statement to be making for someone in his office, and mainly boiled down to being unable to comment on ongoing investigations.
    1
  14657.  @scottryall  The border IS secure, according to the standards of his office. It's at least as secure as it;s been during US history. You can think that's not good enough, but that wouldn't be relevant to a perjury charge.
    1
  14658.  @scottryall  Again, a qualitative opinion is not "misinformation." In any case, the FACT is that the border is more secure today than it was four years ago. Whatever opinion you have about that is your own business.
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  14659. That's not really the case.
    1
  14660.  @nosuchthing8  He was running as a Republican, and they lack the morals to care.
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  14661. Are there any countries where they have two major parties, and a bunch of smaller ones, and instead of forming a coalition between the largest party and the fringiest parties on their side, instead the two big parties form a coalition, in which both get a reasonable portfolio, with the winning party taking the PM and most important positions? That seeems like how things really should work.
    1
  14662.  @CatWithAHat2HD  To be clear, I wasn't making any argument specific to German politics, and wouldn't know enough to get into specifics if I wanted to. I was just talking of parliamentary democracies in general, where, from what I've seen of recent history, if there are say 4-5 significant parties, then the frequent result is "largest party forms coalition with the 5% nutters on their fringe to reach 51%," rather than "largest party forms coalition with second largest party," or even "largest party forms coalition with smaller reasonable party that is closer to the other side of the aisle." I just feel like in a situation of less than a complete majority, the impulse should be to balance the political forces, rather than to grasp further outside of balance.
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  14663. But more importantly, which group had more total shooters, since more total shooters is more total shooters, regardless of their demographics.
    1
  14664.  @Gamerad360  Why would per capita matter? More people dead is more people dead, the demographics of the shooter does not change that status.
    1
  14665.  @Gamerad360  Why would per capita matter? More people is more people. It's the people that matter.
    1
  14666.  @Gamerad360  None of that is relevant to the topic at hand though. I suppose I should have clarified, why would per capita matter _here? _ More people is more people.
    1
  14667.  @Gamerad360  There's no "bias" at play here though. More people is more people. If more people of a certain group do a crime, then that is what matters, that more crimes are being done, not whether there is some group with a smaller amount of people who do less crimes. The group that does the most crimes total is the one to keep an eye on.
    1
  14668.  @Gamerad360  No, you're being illogical. We're talking about lives here, each one counts exactly as much as any other. Ten lives is more than three lives, regardless of any demographic data on them.
    1
  14669.  @taylorlibby7642  Why are you caring what Hunter Biden thinks about things though?
    1
  14670.  @brendolbreadwar2671  Nobody is suing him over not hiring illegal immigrants.
    1
  14671.  @taylorlibby7642  Actually, they aren't, but you've apparently been told to believe that they are. It is illegal to hire illegal immigrants in the first place, so it would be instantly dismissed if anyone tried to bring that up as a legal case.
    1
  14672.  @taylorlibby7642  I did some quick looks into it, and the closest thing I can find is a suit about him discriminating against legal immigrants. There's nothing about illegal ones that I can find.
    1
  14673.  @taylorlibby7642  Ok, what did I get wrong on that then?
    1
  14674. You need a bill to better fund the border services so that any changes you make will actually work. Simple "declaring" the border closed does not actually do anything.
    1
  14675. Because it would be perjury.
    1
  14676.  @patriciagray531  Depends on the nature of the case. If it's a bench trial, and you don't present a defense on the merits, then yeah, they can move straight to the penalty phase. If the Trump team or Giuliani's team thought they could argue the merits, they could have.
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  14677.  @joelyates2404  If you're saying that the US should not run up credit card debts either, well ok, but we already have, for over 150 years now, and the debt Biden inherited was created by the actions of every president before him. It's impossible to pay it all off in a single presidency, not unless we sold every red state to the Chinese or something (and even then, they probably wouldn't be worth much).
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  14678. He's not that picky.
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  14679. I don't think Russia is doing that, they are more directly murdering civilians.
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  14680. It's already benign in its initial form. It causes no harm to anyone. Taxes would only go up for the extremely wealthy, and only to amounts that they can easily absorb.
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  14681.  @williamdozier5190  No, the rich do not already pay their fair share. The bottom 50% do pay their fair share, typically in the form of sales taxes and state taxes. They cannot afford to pay more than that because they can already barely make ends meet. The rich have no such problem, you could take away 99% of what they make and they would still have plenty to live off of. I am by no means suggesting that overall tax rates should be that high, but they could be without the rich being in as bad a place as the bottom 50%. Nobody "worked and succeeded" on their own, everyone who succeeds in life does so on the back of the society around them, providing access to infrastructure and customers, access to education, and more often than not access to parents that foot the bill of their early life. Yes, some people who are rich have worked very hard in life, but plenty of people who are poor have worked much harder, so "hard work" is in no sense the determining factor there. No one is entitled to be as rich as the top 0.1%. No one.
    1
  14682.  @williamdozier5190  the bottom 50% do not pay federal income tax, but that's ok, they cannot afford to. The rich can.
    1
  14683.  @williamdozier5190  It isn't about who pays the most, it is about who pays the most relative to what they can afford. Nobody has earned ten million dollars, not in the history of this world has anyone EVER actually earned ten million dollars, ever actually accomplished anything that is worth that much. Plenty of people have been given ten million dollars, but that does not mean that they earned it any more than someone flipping burgers at McDonalds. If we get too wrapped up in people "earning" what they get, or being "owed" what they get, that will be disastrous in the post-labor economy. We just need to get over that entire idea already.
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  14684.  @williamdozier5190  Everyone does help to push the wagon. The CEO of a company can never be given a $50m bonus if not for hundreds, or thousands of workers putting in overtime to make that happen. Unfortunately, a rising tide does NOT lift all ships equally, and those at the top tend to claim the majority of the benefits for themselves before allowing anyone else to have anything. THEY are the "parasites." The actual people doing the work are the ones they feed on. And again, your attitude will not do you any good when you're out of work because we're in a post-labor economy. You'll need to get on board with the idea that people deserve a decent quality of life whether they work for it or not, because within our lifetimes, nobody will have the option of working for a living.
    1
  14685.  @williamdozier5190  And that's why it's the government's job to make sure that businesses are accountable to the people. Wealthy people do not create jobs, customers create jobs. Wealthy people are just the middleman between customers and actual workers. Wealthy people provide the least value in that system, and yet claim the majority of the profits.
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  14686.  @williamdozier5190  You're the one that things wealthy people create jobs. Nothing could better prove you know nothing about business than that.
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  14687. @@TheGreatEric02 The GDP of California alone is more than every Red state put together, if you leave out fossil fuel extraction money.
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  14688. So you're saying Kevin would just run off to Russia or something? I don't think that's terribly likely. It would be catastrophic for America either way though.
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  14689.  @Peggy-h7m  Oh, they hate him over there, because he's been REALLY bad for their business over his Presidency.
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  14690. Oh, man, I would SO dig that up. That sounds SO tasty.
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  14691. Good luck building a jury without anyone who's family has had health insurance conflict.
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  14692.  @sherwood786  That has NEVER been how science works. Science is not determined by debate, science is determined by EVIDENCE. The evidence is all firmly on Hotez's side here, debating would add nothing to it.
    1
  14693.  @jamesray8771  In which case did RFK "win litigation against experts?"
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  14694.  @DK-sc4gn  You just agreed with everything I'd said. Thank you.
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  14695.  @DK-sc4gn  The US began federal deficit spending in the 1700s. It's gone up and down, but it was always a factor. But you are right, every time Republicans get any amount of power, they leech the revenues that the Democrats established to pay for their programs, and the deficit balloons. One of the largest swings was when Clinton balanced the budget, and then Bush nuked it. They have dug us into quite the hole, but it's still better to tread water and maintain current levels of spending than to just stop swimming and drown. Also, your description of the debt is confused with things like household debt. The US pays back debt EVERY DAY. That is how it works, it is a rolling process in which everyone who invested in America 5, 10, 20 years ago, gets payed back today, and then new debt is taken on to help pay for that. There is never any need to "pay off the debt," that is never a reasonable goal to have. It'd be nice, sure, but as you say, completely unrealistic, at least for many decades to come. The goal is just to keep the additions to the debt reasonable, and to make sure that they generate more growth than they do burden. Most companies work this way, mind you, they have remained in debt basically the entire time they have been in operation, up to hundreds of years, and it's fine, because they continue to pay off their debt obligations, and continue to grow as a company by spending that debt wisely.
    1
  14696.  @eugenefirebird8938  So you think that your grandkids would prefer to live in a third world, Russia-style country that has zero debt, than to live in a top of the world, US style country that has a really large and pointless number on a spreadsheet somewhere?
    1
  14697.  @lenrowzarow1221 Capitalism's just a democracy in which some people get millions of votes and some people get no votes. Like in communist China.
    1
  14698.  @blist14ant  Deadly.
    1
  14699.  @db7213  Because in a capitalist system, those with capital have far more power to achieve their goals without it. Business owners have far more capability to enforce the wages they want, or hire someone else willing to take those wages, than employees are able to press for the wages they want. That isn't to say that there is never a fair balance between those concerns, but that is by far the exception to the rule. In a democracy, it's one person, one vote, so a fairly constructed democracy has a core incentive to do what is best by the largest amount of people. In a system defined by capitalist motive, it's instead "one dollar, one vote," so those with more dollars get more of a say in what the outcome will be than those with fewer, and that does not tend to lead to favorable outcomes for those without.
    1
  14700.  @iBlindPanic  Abuse of market power is one of the core pillars of capitalism. Capitalism will NEVER have a problem with abusing market power, that's a feature, not a bug. You're thinking of socialism, which is what countries use to prevent capitalism from abusing market power.
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  14701.  @stefanl5183  Beg all you like, it remains true. In a democratic system, candidates are at the end of the day beholden to voters. They can get away with some things, but at some point, they would lose elections for differing too far from what the public wants. Corporations, meanwhile, have no accountability to the public. Basically, a corrupt government representative may allow a company to get away with something that the public would not want, but if you removed that representative from the equation, then the company would just do that exact same thing without any chance of accountability, so while it is possible for corruption to exist within a government, it is less likely. "Therein lies the fallacy! Who do you trust to conduct the "oversight and moderation"?" A fair media, accurately informing the public, and a public that is capable of voting based on that information. Again, imperfect, just better than the alternatives. "And who decides what a "net positive outcome for society" is or is not?" The nature of reality. If more people are better off, better positioned on the hierarchy of needs, then that is a higher net positive. "there's no guarantee they will make the best choices, " There are never any guarantees, no perfect system exists, but, again, this is better than the alternatives, because it reduces the potential problems, and increases the potential checks against them. If you have police, there is potential that they will behave corruptly and cause harm, but that potential is lower than what would be caused if there was no accountability for criminals at all. "Even if the one size fits all solutions they come up with benefit the majority, there will still be many who's liberty and freedom of choice will be taken away." Such is the nature of society. It is impossible for large groups of people to all live "perfectly free" lives, because every person's action impacts those around them. Anyone who believes that they "live completely free" is either blind to the barriers around them, or is thoughtlessly oppressing others in the process. In any society of more than a single individual, there must be some negotiation on what people are and are not allowed to do, and the challenge is coming up with the most effective and agreeable version of that.
    1
  14702.  @tylzzr  The mainstream media is more professional and accurate than Fox though. You can't reasonably compare the two.
    1
  14703.  @freedomfirst0421  If you want economic data from Bizarro Earth, check with Fox. :D
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  14704. Worrying about how labor moves around is just shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic. Any companies benefiting from cheap labor today will just get dominated by automation tomorrow, it's a short term issue at most. All we REALLY need to worry about is keeping corporations hostage to governments, so that when they do well, everyone else MUST do well, rather than it just being wishful thinking on the part of Republican economists. Forget US labor, worry about the US government revenues, make sure that they get their cut from the corporations, and then pass that on to US citizens, whether they provide useful labor or not.
    1
  14705. But just to be clear, it is still against federal law, regardless.
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  14706.  @christaylor4477  That's unnecessary. I don't know why conservatives keep suggesting this as if it makes sense. My roll in this is to elect people who will make sure that these immigrants can receive affordable housing of their own. Nobody is asking ANYONE to keep these people in their own homes.
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  14707. I'm sure she was more faithful than Trump was. I doubt anyone could be less faithful than Trump.
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  14708. That's certainly Fox New's strategy. The actual news channels just report the news as it exists. If that makes some people appear to be "demons" to you, then maybe they aren't such great people.
    1
  14709.  @scottrickhoff4184  I was talking about your proposal to not raise the debt ceiling. That would destroy the economy for generations. Universities has nothing to do with anything, Federal spending on universities makes up an insignificant amount of the budget. You could cut all of it and it would make zero difference to the national debt, but it would greatly harm a lot of students trying to get an education.
    1
  14710.  @gregparrott  Right, but you can concentrate that solar energy using mirrors and lenses to use less surface area, and you can do it in areas where maybe giant open pits would be a bad idea. At the very least, instead of the water evaporating into the air, you can recycle it, collecting it at a near-boiling level and sending it back down to pick up new lithium, retaining a portion of the heat from the process. I'm not saying it would "cost nothing," but it should be considerably faster and have less overall cost to it than the giant pools. It just takes more cost to set up in the first place. Also, as far as sugar goes, they tend to add a lot of water into the process before they then take it back out. The intermediate process is very liquid.
    1
  14711.  @gregparrott  But you can use the space more efficiently than just large flat pools. You can direct the receivers at the sun as it moves, you can place them in ways that use the land space more efficiently, you can place them in places unsuitable to large, open pools, etc.
    1
  14712.  @gregparrott  If your 2 was correct, then why do professional solar installations bother with rotating solar panels?
    1
  14713.  @gregparrott  I don't disagree with that, but my point is that by angling the panels you can get more energy out of the sun on average than you can with a flat surface, because you are capturing the maximum amount of its energy at any given moment.
    1
  14714.  @mateusz5318  I don't think the method I'm suggesting would be significantly more expensive than the current model. It would have slightly higher start-up infrastructure, but once built, it has basically the same operating costs. If they had much higher production values, it should more than pay for itself.
    1
  14715. Uh-oh, NYP, Bezos is coming for your jobs!
    1
  14716. If scientists are talking to each other, then it should be expected that reason will carry the day, but the general public is incapable of understanding scientific discussion at that level. They will insist on their own biases regardless of the facts, and there can be no compelling enough argument to convince them of reality.
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  14717. Oh, so they added GW2 Griffon flight.
    1
  14718. I would think that the best thing to wear would be a knee-length pancho with a gutter along the bottom to direct the water toward the sides, and a drawstring belt threaded through the waist, so that you can keep it loose for casual movement, or conveniently draw it in tight if you need to do work in it.
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  14719. We still don't know how serious the Biden documents were. They could have been relatively mundane stuff. At the very least he did not keep them in a public clubhouse where Chinese spies are known to hang out. Each of the Biden locations were relatively secure.
    1
  14720. There should be a consumer protection rule that a company cannot list an item's "regular price" as a value unless it has spent at least half the time on the market at that price. They can charge whatever they want, but the "regular price" should always be a price it usually is.
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  14721.  @tat2zz68  Exactly, and this would add another 40-50% on top of that.
    1
  14722. I think Clarence Thomas would actually side with Trump, not against him. It's likely to be 5/4 either way it goes though. It depends how many of the court's Republicans are willing to put the constitution before party.
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  14723.  @BirchBlock  That would be nice, but unfortunately the court has been grossly broken by the Federalist Society, and they are currently just an engine to pump out conservative policy decisions, regardless of the constitution. But yes, let's get back to the SCOTUS you wish we had, elect more Democrats and it might happen.
    1
  14724.  @alanlinfield8207  Clarence Thomas will side with his sugar daddies every single time. The constitution has nothing to do with it.
    1
  14725. If they survive that long. The research indicates that kids who need but do not receive gender affirming care are much more likely to commit suicide before becoming adults.
    1
  14726. Unfortunately, without proper medical treatment as children, they might not survive to adulthood. The standard medical practice does not involve anything permanent before adulthood anyway, but it does involve support that this bill outlaws.
    1
  14727.  @KathleenMcCormickLCSWMPH  No moreso than puberty does, and considerably more harmful in cases where they are prescribed. All medical treatment can have side effects, but what matters is whether those are worse than the condition they are treating.
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  14728. He's not claiming anything that isn't true.
    1
  14729. I think the "electric car" generation is going to get skipped, at least for single owner use. I think that before the majority of drivers switch from gas to electric, the culture will shift from "owning a car" to "borrowing a car." Self-driving cars and lyft-type services will make it so that instead of taking on the hassles of car ownership, there will just be fleets of self driving cars in the area, and you just call one up to take you from A to B, then it goes on its business. You'd pay more per trip, but a lot less in terms of maintenance, and there's no point just having a car sitting there most of the day and night when you only need it for an hour or so per day, if that.
    1
  14730. Dancing Spot is a lot of fun, but to take it to the next level they need to add some smoothing between animation cycles, and they need to add a little "idle animation" to him, because the most "uncanny" part of him is how he's perfectly still and then starts moving instantly. If he was constantly bobbing ad swaying a tiny amount, and then smoothly moved into a sequence of broad actions, it would seem much more natural.
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  14731. No, that is nothing like what actually happened. Try again, do better.
    1
  14732.  @OXXXG  Jesus disagreed.
    1
  14733. New York City is charging a toll on people traveling through their own territory. New Jersey: "Why aren't we getting money from that?!"
    1
  14734. I don't think he said that. Where did he say that?
    1
  14735.  @jighjightsegha755  They told that in a different story, this story is about the most recent event.
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  14736. @Viking-Inquisitor No, they are separate concepts. Anyone who uses them "interchangeably" is using one or both incorrectly. People use terms wrong all the time though, isn't it ironic? Don't you think? The only thing that has changed in recent memory is that people who's sex and gender differ are more visible than they once were, so that conflict has become more of an issue than it once was. I mean, it used to be that if you pointed at someone who was female, and said she was a woman, you were almost certain to be right about that, nowadays it's slightly less likely to be accurate.
    1
  14737.  @Renee5322  Who knows? It was probably very long ago. The point is, sex and gender have distinct meanings to them, like "color" and "hue," or "sound" and "vibration," and while sometimes you can use them interchangeably to refer to a single subject, there are also plenty of cases where one is applicable and the other is not.
    1
  14738.  @thetruth7118  Two sexes, although there are some chromosomal anomalies that don't perfectly fit either. Gender depends on the society we're talking about, some have up to five, the US basically recognizes three at the moment. The more important thing is that sex and gender do not always correspond to each other.
    1
  14739.  @Renee5322  Incorrect. John Money was born in 1921, the term "gender" was used WAY before that.
    1
  14740.  @thetruth7118  No, a birth disorder is something that happens as a part of the pregnancy, a chromosomal anomaly is genetic. And no, I wasn't saying that we should have whole new categories due to chromosomal anomalies, I was only pointing out that they exist, so there are some people who biologically are not exactly male or female. This is something entirely separate from gender and transgender people, however. As for what the other genders are, again, it depends on the society in question. A gender is a role one plays in a society, so many societies choose to break down those roles based on traditional assumptions of sex, but others involve alternate roles outside of that binary. In the US, a "neutral" gender is generally accepted, neither man nor woman, and in other cultures, there are other distinctions, usually involving having some aspects that are generally associated with men, and others generally associated with women. If that sounds complicated, that's fine, most of that is only really necessary from an anthropological standpoint, all MOST people need to understand is that a person's gender is not necessarily aligned with their sex, and that if they tell you that they are a certain gender, it is generally best to just accept that, rather than argue with them about it. As to your later point, people started to better understand gender over the mid 20th century, and that understanding has become more and more complete over time, but the concepts have existed since humans have walked the Earth (not counting other animals). There have always been "traditional roles" that people select into, often along lines based in biological sex, and there have always been people that did not fit into that specific grouping.
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  14741. @Viking-Inquisitor "Can you misgender an animal?" Sure, people do it all the time, referring to a dog or cat as "she" when it's actually a he, or vice versa. Now, would that animal be offended? probably not, it's an animal and is unlikely to understand English. But people are people, and can be offended, so it's best to avoid doing so whenever possible.
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  14742.  @jamesgiannone1819  Nothing will prevent her from doing any sports. She just might not win as often. Statistically though, trans girls are barely a blip, so chances are she will never be in the same event with one.
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  14743. @Viking-Inquisitor Theoretically an animal could transition to another gender, humans are animals, and we can, but other species generally aren't considered to be sapient, so it would be unclear to us whether they had or not. You would determine an animal's gender by paying attention to the role it plays among other animals, and whether it behaves like the typical male or female of their species. There is no objective, universal definition of "femininity," that is defined interdependently in each culture. I mean, in some, wearing a skirt or dress would be considered "feminine," while in plenty of others, all men wear a skirt or dress. This is the whole point of "gender" being a social construct, it is about being a part of the social niche that feels right to you, even if it does not fit other people's expectations based on your body shape.
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  14744. @Viking-Inquisitor I don't think most pet owners ever know the gender of their pets. They just assume one, and that's what they call them, and that's basically fine, since as near as we can tell, the pets don't mind. If we were aware that pets did mind being misgendered, then of course any moral person would want to avoid doing so. Well most animals are not capable of making biological changes based on gender, like humans can with surgery or hormone replacement, but they can behave in different ways. Remember, not all trans people choose to get surgeries, or even take hormones. they just behave in the way that makes them most comfortable. Other animals could do this as well, if they felt a need to do so. I also don't think most animals care what gender other animals are. They have much more limited understanding of the world than humans do, even less than conservative humans do. I'm really not sure what the point of this discussion on animals is though.
    1
  14745.  @ty567100  Yup.
    1
  14746. Clickbait title. The point of the video is not that "We Can't Reduce Wealth Inequality With Taxes," it just means that the metric you're using to determine inequality is not a useful metric of actual inequality. Then it goes on to say that Income taxes, which are not the only form of taxes, cannot manage generational wealth. That is what wealth taxes are for. Taxing both extreme wealth and income is necessary to balance out wealth inequality. Cut off the source, and drain the swamp.
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  14747.  @catherinequigley569  This happens in mob trials too. The fact remains that Trump overvalued his properties, and this is against the law. What is the problem with following the law instead?
    1
  14748.  @russell-gt1dy  So?
    1
  14749.  @johnhoran9840  Russia fakes their economic data, and you bought into it.
    1
  14750.  @wildfire160  Nope.
    1
  14751.  @TheRealJoeMama1  You're projecting. I told the truth, you told the fairytale version.
    1
  14752.  @clintcava1344  You do understand that Trump was blacklisted from most banks because of his habit of defaulting on his debts, right? The ones that took him were the few left that would do so, mostly for shady reasons. Nobody was fighting over his business.
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  14753. Planes should start to price tickets like restaurants sometimes do with seafood. What's the ticket cost? It costs "market fuel rates."
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  14754. The Republican's court packing plans already destroyed civil liberties. At worst, the Democrats could only improve things.
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  14755. What is with Russia's idiot idea of having referendumbs during an ongoing war? "We polled all the Russian soldiers occupying the region and they thought this area should be part of Russia, so I guess we have to take it. Democracy at work, am I right?"
    1
  14756.  @carlosdominguez8909  How would that work, grammatically?
    1
  14757.  @Gob-is3sy  So we can agree that they are not illegal migrants, they are just migrants that you do not want.
    1
  14758.  @Gob-is3sy  That's not how the law works.
    1
  14759.  @Gob-is3sy  Again, the law disagrees with your interpretation of it.
    1
  14760.  @Gob-is3sy  But the law disagrees with you on that.
    1
  14761.  @Gob-is3sy  The law disagree with you on that too.
    1
  14762.  @Gob-is3sy  But in this case you're neither. You are only correct in how you feel, but the facts don't care about your feelings.
    1
  14763.  @Gob-is3sy  In this case, you would be neither.
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  14764.  @ansc6472  I prefer to try and keep America great. A lost election should not mean loss of hope.
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  14765. That would be a huge mess. It would take decades just to get us back to where we are today. Nobody has time for that. Except Putin and the CCP, of course.
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  14766. The US Constitution says otherwise. They did not want traitors to be re-elected to public office after the Civil War, even though the people of those states might support them.
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  14767. White Castle, if you're listening, PLEASE open a place in Maryland! I'm tired of being in the tiny-burger doldrums!
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  14768. Are there any governments out there where, instead of the majority picking a leader and that leader picking all the ministers, it's instead a case where each minister is somehow chosen independently by the parliament? In a case like this, a parliament might elect a very leftist defense minister and also a very rightist health minister, for example, combinations that would be unlikely if all the choices were picked by a single party.
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  14769.  @davepx1  I sort of agree, although not completely. You do need a central executive to handle the big picture decisions and the snap decisions and to basically make sure things run smoothly, when a giant deliberative body is way too slow for that. Even for cabinet roles, it does help to have one person in charge, just in case. But it could still be that each role is picked by the body to fill that role, rather than just being a secondary choice by the executive they picked. Instead of voting for "Geoff and all his friends," you would be voting for Geoff, and then picking the other roles based on who you think would be best at them, even if they conflict in a lot of ways. And I do think that civil servants should have a lot of power, but still, the whole point of democracy is that people vote for their representation, so if ultimately most of the real decisions got made by civil servants then the people wouldn't have much role in it. The voices at the top need to be directly responsible to the people, even if the civil servants are more capable. :D
    1
  14770.  @davepx1  I think that having committees with vague and undefined roles is a recipe for disaster, since they would likely just squabble over every aspect. You would also be more likely to have people with completely incompatible viewpoints on certain topics. I think it is best to have specific people with specific roles, so that you know that if the topic is Transportation, this one person calls all the shots, and if you don't like it, then you have to replace him. And you also never need to worry what his position is on Defense, because he has nothing to do with that.
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  14771.  @davepx1  Well there will always be checks and balances, lower level employees that will balk at completely irrational actions, and the larger parliament being able to remove people that cross the line, so the extremes of behavior should not be too big a concern in an otherwise stable system. You can't underestimate the value in having one person with responsibility though, that can make the calls. It's much easier if one person can decide what they want, and then if everyone else completely disagrees then they can fight back, but typically everyone else will be ok with it, and just wouldn't have moved on it without a push.
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  14772.  @justcogitating  A debate really isn't the best place to look, the White House site puts out more detailed briefs on all they've accomplished.
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  14773.  @The_Sage_of_Rage  He did, it was just less noticeable. The coping mechanism he has for stuttering is that instead of getting hung up on getting one word out, he deflects to something else entirely. This is why he would occasionally just say the wrong thing in the past. As he's gotten older, he's less and less able to do this on the fly, so he can get stuck trying to get out what he means to say. Again though, this is purely a language issue, not a cognition issue like his opponent has.
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  14774.  @The_Sage_of_Rage  I think that every presidential campaign needs to have debates between the candidates. I just don't think that they are terribly good ways to judge them overall. I think it's better to judge them by their actions in office.
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  14775.  @alphaspartan  Context. It's one of many concepts that Republicans can't seem to grasp.
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  14776.  @eileenm.1413  How did you lose money under Biden when the stock market went UP more under Biden? How terrible were your investments?
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  14777.  @The_Sage_of_Rage  That's exactly what stuttering is. The point is that the decisions he makes are correct ones, while the decisions that the previous one made were poor ones. Of the two of them, Biden is the better option.
    1
  14778.  @alphaspartan  He is hard to follow in this format. What matters more though is that he was right, the fact is that things HAVE improved under his watch, and that is what matters to Americans, not how well he is able to explain that. Would it be nice to have someone with a better gift for gab? Sure, but I don't consider that a priority over sound policy decisions.
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  14779.  @The_Sage_of_Rage  And Cons are great at projecting. Anything negative they say about others, is an admission about themselves.
    1
  14780.  @puffito23  And he did so by stealing from your children and grandchildren to get his wealthy friends a much much larger tax break. But have fun with your 1.5%.
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  14781.  @larriehowatz-oo5cr  What would a Chinese bot have to gain by endorsing the candidate who's most effective at keeping China in check?
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  14782. Aileen can't help it, she just doesn't have any idea what she's doing, and never should have been given this responsibility in the first place. You don't put a child at the wheel of a bus and then blame them when it crashes.
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  14783. If Trump didn't want so many indictments, then he probably shouldn't have done so many crimes, right? I mean, look at Joe, he didn't do any crimes, so he's had no indictments. It's really not that hard to manage.
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