I really wish the media would stop spouting this tripe about lots of jobs, rising wages, and economic growth. None of those things are actually happening in ways that benefit average people.
I got a new job that came with a 25k raise last year and the only reason we can afford to eat 3 good meals a day is we started a garden where a lot of our food comes from and I started making most things from scratch, doughs, jam, oat milk, next is peanut butter.
The cheapest loaf of shitty bread at the closest store is $3. At the next closest store 40 minutes away it’s $2.50. What the fuck happened to $1 store brand bread that was fine enough and not almost rock hard by the time you get it.
It’s the acme brand plain white loaf, it’s probably been about 6 months since I went in the bread isle but that bread is horrible by the time you buy it, at least at my store, and really only good for toast.
When we were buying bread we would buy something with family in the name? Which was the next cheapest one at around $4-5 for a plain white loaf.
This is by design. Inflation is designed to make you work harder to justify a raise that barely keeps your standard of living intact.
More profits for your boss, same standard of living (or lower) for you…
Inflation is wildly out of control now, but even pre-pandemic, the central bank’s 2% target inflation is designed to make you work harder for nothing in return
2% inflation isn’t designed to hurt workers, it’s meant to encourage investment in the economy. It helps workers and people who are net borrowers.
If you are a net borrowers, you pay that back with future dollars. Inflation reduces the value of future dollars. Let’s say you get a 3% raise but inflation is 3%. Your boss is being stupid and you basically didn’t get a raise.
But if your mortgage is $2,000 per month, you now have 3% more money to pay it off. That’s because your mortgage doesn’t increase with inflation. So the inflation helps you pay off your loans.
It’s the same with businesses. Investors could either loan money out or invest directly in businesses. Higher inflation makes them more likely to invest in their businesses, because money sitting in the bank loses value due to inflation. This causes them to hire more people.
2% is a good sweet spot that encourages borrowing and investing in businesses, but isn’t too high. Obviously the problem now is that inflation remains above 2%, and there has been no relief from past increases. It would be much better if minimum wage was increased to help out people at the bottom deal with them.
my mortgage does go up with inflation because the central bank raises rates to fight inflation, and i live in a stupid country where a 25yr amortized mortgage isn’t really a 25yr mortgage… you need to renew it every 5 years at whatever interest rates the banks dream up.
Yep, the CEO of our multi-billion dollar company recently sent an email congratulating everyone on a job well done and record profits this quarter, yet our department laid off everyone they newly hired and cut all our hours. My boss said he’s worked here for 30 years and he’s never seen cost cutting like this. It’s disgusting.
As someone working for a small business owner, I sure as fuck wish the economy would boom so my wage could go up as well. We just don’t have any customers with expendable income, and our products are on a “wanted not needed” priority. If I had the capital to start my own, more successful, business, I would.
We haven’t had an actual budget that wasn’t a continuing resolution since what? The 90s? I don’t think any of them are even actually capable of governance anymore.
It’s not that I think veterans are better people or anything. It’s just that if I were to literally risk my life for some organization (such as the US government), I would expect that organization to show some fucking gratitude when I need help.
I really don’t see why making their own decisions to risk their lives for money makes them any more deserving than a single mother or what have you
In fact, you could argue that the single mother is more deserving of everyone’s help because all she did was exist; she didn’t participate in destabilising half the planet
I’m probably not the best person to make this point because I would never join the military, but if anyone is joining for the money, they’ve got to be monumentally stupid because the money isn’t that good, especially for what they have to deal with. People join because they want to “serve their country” and be part of something larger than themselves. They don’t see themselves as destabilizing the planet or anything like that–quite the opposite.
I don’t see military service as particularly noble, but it’s what people in the military are taught to, and more to the point, it’s the truth according to the US government. I’m just asking for Congress to legislate as if they believe their own propaganda. Well, really I’m asking them to take care of everyone in need, but if they would at least serve the people who served them, it would be a start.
MANY people join for college tuition and medical care. The number joining out of sheer patriotism or wanting to “serve their country” is much smaller than you think.
The media loves to mention it for sympathy points but I think it’s only being brought up here to point out the hypocrisy of the right who often speak highly of veterans in public but really don’t give two shits about them.
Your take is so far off the mark. Conservative voices have screamed for decades about supporting the troops as some form of projected nationalism. This was all just fine until Trump came along and started being horrid to veterans, especially those who were captured, injured, or killed. Then Conservatives started becoming directly hostile towards veteran families.
The point here is that Conservatives chanted the chant but never got behind making life better for veterans. The person you are responding to simply pointed out this discordance.
I clicked the last story and it made truly me sick to my stomach. I had to skip through the details halfway. I’m angry and sad, and I am once again confirmed in my belief that I will never, ever want to live in the US. There are so many of these stories, and for so long now, and yet nothing has changed. The country is morally bankrupt.
You can not have sex with your employee or employer. The power dynamic ensures it can never be totally equal and there will always be some duress. If someone holds the power over your finances including your health insurance, saying No is never that simple.
I never thought of it that way. I always thought of it as “don’t shit where you eat” because I ain’t at work to make friends. I’m here to get shit done.
It’s both, really. After some misadventures in my youth, I have refused to engage romantically with anyone in an organization I’m employed by. “Don’t shit where you eat.” As I have moved up to supervise others, it goes doubly so for people within my chain of command. That would be highly unethical.
Essentially, one is practical advice and the other is a matter of ethics. If you follow the first, the ethics are easy.
I think it’s healthy to have clear boundaries with coworkers, they are not the same things as friends.
That said I spend 41 hours a week working, no way I’m not going to socialise with my coworkers. If I don’t make any friends after several years of working at a place I feel I have done something wrong.
Numerous times, and I may have even paid attention once or twice. I generally don’t do anything involving harassment because its wrong and immoral, because having relations with coworkers is not what I consider morally acceptable due to the risks to anyone involved in such an affair and in general, against my own moral judgement.
I don’t get this. How is this democratic? I think it’s already ridiculous you have to go through all that trouble just to be able to vote on a random work day, and now they remove people who are already eligible to vote? The fuck.
In my country (Europe) when you reach 18 years of age you receive a letter that you’re obligated to vote whenever the next election rolls around. Elections are always on Sundays and it’s very easy to give permission to someone else to vote for you in case you have to work. Voting also never takes more than half an hour.
How do you pretend to be a democratic republic and make it so discouraging to vote?
I don’t understand it either. What’s the purpose of making voting so difficult? Is it to keep the less fortunate and less abled from being able to have a voice in elections?
I’m in the US but my state does mail-in voting by default, so you get plenty of time to research and make your vote choices from the comfort of your own home. We also have automatic voter registration through our department of motor vehicles. I think either a system like your country has or my state has should be the standard across the US, but unfortunately it’s not.
The mistake you’re making here is assuming that the Christofascists are acting in good faith. They’re not, and never have been. The entire point is to keep the “wrong” sort (read: anyone who isn’t one of them) from standing in the way of imposing their tyranny on everyone else.
Voter disenfranchisement is a powerful weapon of the Republican party. It’s one of the key reasons why much of the south is the way it is despite attempts otherwise to address it.
You assume that the USA is a democracy. They is your mistake right there. The us is a failed democracy at best, never really was one at worst. It’s all pretence and showmanship but in the end everything is rigged and corrupt as fuck
It’s all pretence and showmanship but in the end everything is rigged and corrupt as fuck
Right because Trump winning is what the “rigged and corrupt” “deep state” wanted to happen. /s
Things aren’t ideal but they’re far from rigged. There’s corruption but anywhere people and power are involved you’ll find someone trying to carve out more than their fair share.
If you’re trying to make a point that the electoral college is messed up, yes. If you’re trying to make the point that that’s an example of things being “rigged” and “corrupt”, I think you’re way off base for what actual rigging and corruption looks like.
Also, he did win the first election, which is what I’m talking about. If things were truly rigged and corrupt, Trump would’ve never been president. I shouldn’t have to qualify that with “in 2016”, but if it helps that’s what I meant.
Ohio is a state, one of 50. Each is different with voting. Example: In Colorado one can just mail in their ballot or drop it off at ballot collection boxes scattered across the state that are under video surveillance, or vote traditionally on voting day if one wants.
Treat states like an EU country, basically. Also, Ohio sucks, in general.
It isn’t. The Republicans have seen that the more people that vote, the more elections they lose. A healthy political party would use this fact to reexamine their views and the policies they support/oppose. (For example, reduce the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and focus on budgetary conservatism.
The Republican party isn’t a healthy political party, though. So instead of changing to reflect what the voters want, they are trying to change the voters. Since they can’t force voters to support what they (the Republicans) want, the Republicans are trying to change WHO is a voter.
If you support what they want, then congratulations. You’re a legitimate voter. If you oppose them, then you’ll be stripped from the voting rolls and will have roadblocks erected to prevent you from getting your voting rights back.
Greene has already proposed removing the votes of Democratic voters who move from a blue state to a red one until they “learn the states’ values.” (I.e. Learn to vote Republican.)
There is a legitimate need to purge voter rolls. But it’s supposed to be done after elections, when people have time to respond and keep their registration if there was a mistake.
In the US voting is tied to states because of the electoral college. So if you move to another state you are supposed to register there and drop off the rolls in the state you came from.
Done correctly purges are of people who haven’t voted in that state in the previous presidential election and any election since. This means you have to go years without voting to get purged.
Purging voter rolls right before a contentious ballots of course is not good. And leaves no confidence it was done in good faith
I went to one meeting of Republicans. They accused the nearby mountain town of stealing their water by having trees. Of note, that mountain town is surrounded by a national forest. I don’t ever need to subject myself to that again.
The corporal, who alerted police to the collision, was not injured. He was not suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and was not given field sobriety tests.
Why does this make me think the corporal that hit the victim was drunk driving?
Where’s the confusion? They protested the notion of drunk driving several times – many more than necessary. Protesting is like eating pasta. You can’t do too much of it.
“by the way, I didn’t shit myself at a party while wearing white pants so if anyone tells you that it’s a lie” -Someone who definitely shat themselves at a party in white pants
Yeah bro he got like 56k per year with no rent, and there are no expenses in jail am I right? Plus I bet he probably only got his shit pushed in a couple times for it, he was loaded.
Your assigning way more to my statement than is there. If I hand you 800k and you don’t have a staggeringly huge amount of debt, you are not poor, by definition. Regardless of what travails you went through, how shit your life was before then.
Because whether or not you are poor is not a description of how good or bad the events of your life have been to you, but how much money you have.
While I also hold this suspicion, there is fairly little evidence of this.
However, I’d say the biggest evidence is that it was literally the 50th anniversary, down to the same holy day, of the last time Palestine forces attacked Israel. The fact that Israel didn’t at least have some sort of elevated defense last Saturday is absolutely unforgivable. This is not quite a smoking gun, but definitely at least gun smoke.
There are two possibilities I see. Either Israel knew it was going to happen, and let it, or they didnt know. Both are unfathomably irresponsible, and unforgivable.
Israelis should be tearing their own government apart for their ineptitude and/or treason, and likewise, Palestinians should be tearing Hamas apart for being so stupid and impotent.
Instead, Netanyahu just consolidated an emergency mandate with the support of his opposition on the cabinet, widened the right wing majority on the Knesset (israeli congress) and is about to commit a US sponsored genocide.
Something to the effect of 90% of Israelis hold Netanyahu accountable for this. He'll stick around through the unity government to see the war to its end, but his political future is absolutely dead after this.
No matter what the facts on the ground are, Israel is an incompetent and poorly governed state. Based solely on the demographics and economics, the average Israeli is far more to blame for the current state of affairs, than the average Palestinian — the average Israeli has been alive over a decade longer than the average Palestinian, and the average Israeli is about 20x wealthier than the average Palestinian…
More than 2/3’s of Gaza’s population https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_State_of_Palestine, and the vast majority are not only poor, but poorly educated. Only a few % of the population are over 65. Most developed economies have an over 65 population of 10-20%, including Israel… The stats aren’t much better for the West Bank. Essentially, 99% of the Palestinian population have lived their entire existence under Israel’s apartheid rule — segregated in either Gaza or the west bank.
Contrast that to Israel, which is a wealthy, well-educated, developed economy; that have maintained similar demographics with the rest of the developed world, and actually far exceed the USA in most statistics related to quality of life and standard of living.
When will the world stop acting like an impoverished, uneducated, largely illiterate non-state — that isn’t even recognised by most of the world — populated by children and young adults… Should have it’s shit together and act with more wisdom and humility than a rich, educated, developed country; governed by middle aged adults and boomers?
Egypt warned them days before, the USA has confirmed the warning by Egypt. Hamas has released training videos showing the paratroopers training with flying gliders. Yair Lapid released a video in September warning the government was ignoring intelligence signals.
Egypt warned them days before, the USA has confirmed the warning by Egypt.
I’m not so sure on this, I think the US politicians that said this could well be repeating the same single source we’ve heard. Egypt didn’t officially say that they notified Israel, either, that came from a source within Egypt’s intelligence services. It may well be true, but I just wouldn’t rate those statements as good evidence - as far as I’m aware no one from within the US intelligence community has confirmed it.
You often see reports after a successful attack that “so-and-so warned such-and-such about this-and-that days before attack”, but they almost certainly get dozens of warnings a day from lots of sources. Some are right, some are wrong. The attacker only has to be lucky once. The defender has to be lucky every time.
That’s not to say that Israel won’t capitalise on the chance to flatten Gaza, because I browsed /r/combatfootage and have eyes, but I think they’d rather not have hundreds of Israelis held captive and over a thousand dead.
but I think they’d rather not have hundreds of Israelis held captive and over a thousand dead.
I think the average Israeli wouldn’t want that. I also think the ultraconservative faction (which includes most of the current govt) is celebrating this opportunity to seize more land.
It’s not the land that’s worth it to them (because of 150km² of bombed out city is pretty worthless). They don’t need it.
They just seem to like the idea of the Palestinians no longer having it.
Fully agree with you on that
Like that will somehow restore their reputation with the Israeli voters they failed to protect.
Sigh… I wish I could be as confident as you there. The far right voters will see it as a victory, and the rest depends on how well they spin the propaganda
I think calling their lack of preparation for something that hasn’t happened in 50 years suspicious is a stretch, regardless of whether or not there was an anniversary.
It’s not that it’s not happened in 50 years, it’s that it’s the anniversary of an event and it’s a big anniversary. Instead of a slightly raised security presence, it was markedly reduced. The US has heightened security every year on key holidays, and the US does’t have such an immediate threat right next door. Meanwhile Israel is generally more militaristic as a nation with mandatory service. The lack of defensive forces present on the day is just ludicrous.
I personally haven’t seen any actual evidence that it was intentionally reduced for the anniversary specifically. That would be more suspicious if you can provide proof.
There have been plenty of sources that said forces had been moved away from Gaza to the West Bank. In fairness though there were some diversionary attacks by Hamas in the West Bank, also, but many of the gates that were breached seem to have been completely unguarded. Perhaps telling, there has been very little mention of casualties to Israeli defense forces, or even details about where they engaged with the insurgents during the initial attack.
I’m not going to pretend like I know the ins and outs of Israeli military defense, but none of this sounds like damning evidence. I’m not as eager to jump straight to the “Bush did 9/11” equivalent.
Hamas was also left to run amok for 5 hours and at the end of that were able to cross back over the border with hostages.
How on earth is one of the worlds most powerful militaries caught with it’s pants down that badly and how were they not able to organize some kind of a response in 5 hours?
At the very least you’d have expected them to ambush them on the way out and rescue the hostages. They have fleets of drones for pete’s sake, they could have taken out every single one of those terrorists with drones to spare.
It makes no sense whatsoever, unless of course they let it happen as a casus belli to once and for all deal with the Palestinian problem.
I see your point but it doesn’t tell me that they intentionally allows an attack to happen. US intelligence had some warnings about the 9/11 attacks but didn’t act effectively on it. Incompetents no doubt but that doesn’t mean they ignored it intentionally to allow the attack to be more sucsessful.
It’s the sort of thing there will probably never be hard evidence for, but the circumstantial evidence is in favor of. The symbiosis between HAMAS and the Israeli far-right has been known for years. Here’s an old article on the topic: www.nytimes.com/…/israel-gaza-battles-hamas.html
This is also one of the best things that could have happened for Netanyahu right now, as it props him up in power during a period of wartime and allows him to continue staying out of jail.
Yeah, I have no doubt it’s a good thing for Netanyahu(fuck that guy). Both the Iseali and Hamas leaders stand to benefit from this situation. It seems like Hamas wanted a big backlash as well. While it does seem to get a few other Terrorist groups in the area to celebrate and do some smaller attacks popular opinion outside of the Muslim world is heavily in Israel’s favor. Until it is obvious that they are targeting civilians specifically they will keep that support. Hamas is the most legitimate government that Gaza has and Hamas turned a large portion of the buildings in Gaza in to legitimate military targets.
I’m not gonna allege specific knowledge of this attack, but there is plenty of evidence that Netanyahu and his cabinet saw continued provocations by Hamas as a key to retaining their power.
Whether he did anything to make it happen, an attack like this was very much on his wish list.
a columnist at Israel’s Ha’aretz newspaper unearthed evidence that Netanyahu has intentionally propped up Hamas rule in Gaza — seeing Palestinian extremism as a bulwark against a two-state solution to the conflict.
“Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state has to support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas,” the prime minister reportedly said at a 2019 meeting of his Likud party. “This is part of our strategy — to isolate the Palestinians in Gaza from the Palestinians in the West Bank.”
…
This is why Netanyahu reportedly saw Hamas rule in Gaza as something of an asset. So long as the Palestinians remain divided among themselves — Hamas in charge of Gaza and the moderate Fatah faction in power in the West Bank — then a peace agreement is likely impossible: You can’t come to a negotiated settlement without a unified negotiating partner. The terrorist threat Hamas poses, on this thinking, can be managed; the endless blockade and periodic military operations, euphemistically called “mowing the grass,” can keep the danger posed by Hamas within acceptable parameters.
How aggravating it must be to be a prosecutor and have all the info indicating how guilty this man is and yet seemingly half the nation calls you a liar. Strange gas lighting on a national scale
You know, if these schools are going to refuse to pay teachers enough to live on, maybe they shouldn’t be so uptight about where those teachers get their supplemental income from. 😒
Worrell had been on house arrest after court records show he complained about the treatment at the Washington D.C. jail. The federal judge allowed him to await sentencing while on house arrest.
Maybe stop treating right-wing terrorist extremists with kid-gloves?
The cops moved barricades for these terrorists. They took selfies with the terrorists. The cops held the hands of terrorists who were leaving the capital so that they didn’t fall while they were going down the stairs.
During the BLM protests in Pittsburgh we were on our knees with our hands in the air when the cops started shooting.
The reason the system didn’t support Trump’s overthrow of democracy is that in Biden they saw someone who was competent enough to get us through the pandemic and back to working for the masters but would never give us any sort of actual power. Trump was bad for business unless you were in his inner circle.
They probably don’t mean with lead. The cops had a fondness for pepper spray balls, which incidentally they also shot at peoples faces when they’re supposed to shoot the ground. Many people lost eyes or other things to police violence during those protests.
I’m so glad there is a ‘block this person’ option on jerboa. It’s no use trying to reason with these people, just block and let them talk to the void forever.
This, Conan has always been infinitely funnier, and he still has employees that followed him from the Late Night show that seem to love working with him
Conan acts like that to get a laugh because he isn’t like that at all as a person and everyone knows he is joking. You won’t ever see Fallon or Corden be that way on camera because it’s really how they are in everyday life off camera.
Exactly. It’d be painfully obvious how horrible these guys are if you got to see how their staff reacted, should Fallon or cordon ever decide to do Conan’s “remotes.”
Speaking of, even with the guy that conan was always the “hardest” on in those remotes, Jordan Schlansky, you would see him break on occasion because even he knew that they were taking part in a bit. Man, I miss conan.
I go back and do a full-remotes rewatch at least once a year. They’re all fuckin gold. But my favorite is the one where he catches onto a secret email chain of employees so they can get to any free food before anyone else. That one is just so goddamn perfect
I’ve never heard of anything saying Conan was inappropriate to them while working for him. He seems like one of those bosses that let’s people do there works and get a way with shit here and there.
I’ve loved Conan for decades, but a certain point the bits with him and Jordan Schlansky started to make me uncomfortable. Like yeah, he’s a weird, possibly neurodivergent guy who does odd things that are funny and Conan wanted to make a bit out of it and obviously Jordan was on board. But as it progressed Conan did seem to get a little mean at times, and when you have a national platform like that, you aren’t just being silly-mean to your quirky buddy, you’re opening the door to making it acceptable to ridicule people with autism spectrum disorder.
He’s not abusing an autist. Jordan plays in to it as much as Conan plays in to being mean. Listen to Jordan on Inside Conan. It’s entertainment. Jeremy Clarkson doesn’t try to fix everything with a hammer; Steve Martin and Martin Short aren’t in jealous competition with each other; Gordon Ramsey doesn’t SHUT IT DOWN!
Yeah… that’s exactly what I said. He’s ribbing his buddy. BUT every single thing he’s making fun of in Jordan could be seen as an autistic trait. When sweet old, aw shucks Conan O’Brien has a running gag where he makes fun of autistic traits, it harms people on the spectrum.
Then you should be upset with Jordan for pretending to be “on the spectrum”. *EDIT TO ADD: Conan is mocking Jordan’s stilted, self-protective camera persona.
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