That’s fine. How would you expect anyone in a conversation like this to apply taxes? Which city, county and state are you going to use for those calculations?
And neither is the youtuber which is exactly the point I was making. That theyre being a cunt to other people over what amounts to be a minimum wage job.
Being a youtuber does not magically make you not subject to the exact same taxes that everyone else is. They are not taking home all of what they made any more than a mcdonalds worker does. In fact, being self employed means you are paying the other half of the medicare/social security tax not just half of it directly with most jobs.
Please look at usernames, I’m not the person you’re arguing with. I just corrected the person who said people who make $12.50/hr are making $2k a week because that’s absurd. That’s all.
I was the person you responded to. Check the username and:
I did not say 2,000 a week. I said 2,000 a month.
A youtuber making 2k a month is not taking home more money than someone making 2k a month at mcdonalds. They pay the same taxes. Actually the employer pays half of the social security/medicare tax while the self employed pay the entirety of it themselves.
No I really wasnt. You dont understand how taxes work and are apparently under the impression that a youtuber that makes 2k before taxes is making more after taxes than a mcdonalds worker making 2k before taxes. Which isnt correct. And I have explained why that isn’t correct.
And as for the month/week thing, you made it an issue. You dont get to just go “who cares” when youve been shown to be wrong trying to correct me. You were wrong about who you responded to and you were wrong about how much the youtuber actually takes home compared to the mcdonalds worker. Did you let it go or admit you made mistakes? Fuck no! You decided I was the one that made mistakes and got mad. Thats a very childish thing to do and if you are ever going to grow as a person, you need to at least learn when to stop digging. I dont expect you to say “oops I was wrong” I just expect that you learn from what you did and not double down.
PLEASE go back to the original comment I made and which comment I replied to. It said “what McDonald’s worker is making $25/hr” which the commentor corrected after someone told them that someone making $12.50 is taking home $2k/month. All they did was 12.5 x 40 x 4.
And alll I said was, no, someone making 12.50 an hour isn’t taking home anything close to $2k a month. That’s it. No bigger commentary, just pointing out the math was wrong.
No comments about what a YouTuber makes.
People seem to be putting all sorts of shit in my mouth.
Also while I didn’t even venture into this part of this discussion… pretending that the way taxes work for a YouTuber is anything like someone working a minimum wage job, then you’re the one who needs to learn about taxes.
Or are McDonald’s workers out there giving up the standard deduction so they can write off all their “equipment”?
I’d rather get shot than work at McDonald’s. Have you worked a low wage customer facing job? Literally anything is better. I’d rather have children kick me in the balls all day.
True, my point was more about using McDonald’s as a measuring stick is a bad call. Like I’d seriously have to think about it if I have to do one or the other for an extended period.
Well if you get shot at McDonald’s, you’ll get workers’ comp. for a while. They’ll cut you off eventually, pay you pennies on the dollar of what wages you lost. They will cover your medical bills though.
It’s interesting, the YouTuber clearly doesn’t have medical insurance through his job because… well he makes YouTube videos for a living. He was shot, so that was presumably a huge medical expense. I wonder who’s paying his bills? His parents?
So long as you pay something on a bill, you generally don’t have too much of an issue. I can’t tell you the number of people I know that are making $5 a month payments on $$$ medical bills. One of my coworkers and his wife had separate major health emergencies that put them in the hospital within 3 days of each other. She was in for months, he was in for weeks. Their combined bills after insurance is just over $500,000. $5 a month.
I have a feeling I’m going to be having surgery sometime in the near future, and I’ll be joining that $5 crowd, because I’m still getting bills from a host of tests run at the beginning of the year that I’m paying on. I’m pretty much tapped out at this point.
He’s working up his immunity by getting shot with smaller calibers first, by the time he’s making 10k/month, he’ll have himself immune to high-caliber rifle rounds from people that are trying to kill him from a distance.
I mean, I’d argue this should be celebrated, not used as a burn. I get the angle on hypocrisy here, but framing LGBT support as a mistake or flaw, as unintentional as it may be, doesn’t really sit right, imo.
I wouldn’t call it “support” with out learning more.
He owns a bar. He’s a businessman. Who makes profit of vice. And who, apparently, gets off groping tits at a family theater
Same deal with target- neither give a flying fig about lgbtq issues…. They just want to make money. Target by selling merch, this guy by selling a burlesque show.
LGBT support is framed in the context of showing how much of a giant lying cunt Boebert is. I didn’t at all take any inference to it being framed as a mistake or flaw in a negative context from this article or the title. People seem to get rabidly defensive on every position, everywhere, all of the time now.
This is my position, too. I’m pretty sensitive to social homophobia and transphobia, and this headline, to me, is calling out Bobo and not her boyfriend (although I would question his taste). Now admittedly, you’d have to know who Bobo is in order to get that. If it was about AIC’s boyfriend owning a gay bar, that’d literally be a different story. However, I don’t think you can squeeze too much context into a headline without using a queerty or the root style headline like “Fame-hungry homophobe Boebert caught publicly masturbating gay bar owner in children’s musical!”
Honestly, I’m never sure how much of their crap is performative and how much is serious, but honestly even the serious stuff is actually performative.
I didn’t go past the paywall, but I’m not seeing anything against LGBTQ+ people in the headline. I read it like when some male “family values” politician is caught shaking up with another man - it really is the hypocrisy that’s the issue.
Like many of her ilk, Bobert doesn’t really give a shit about the things she screams about; it’s political theater designed whip up the base, and this situation makes that obvious to anyone paying attention.
Lawl my partner and I were talking about a WEEK ago, saying we were surprised and happy that he’s apparently not raped anyone, or at least no allegations have come up.
This article is extremely relevant to that convo bahahaha
"We are not going to let people be targeted based on their race.”
(Except by elected leaders and the laws they pass. Also they’ll be targeting people based on gender, gender expression, sexual orientation, religion, party affiliation, or anything they determine to be “woke” or “socialist”)
I also have no sympathy for him getting targeted for this, when all he had to do, after one of these attacks, is denounce the white supremacy that has taken root in Florida.
Just one little press speech: "I do not condone white supremacy in my state and they will find no safe harbor here."
Whats the old saying, “if it walks like a goose and it talks like a goose, then its a nazi?”
And even if DeShithead aint a nazi himself, well im of the opinion he deserves to be dehydrated and forced to walk across the mojave during peak summer for his actions at gitmo. So I dont really care what his ideology is.
He hired known neoNazis on staff. They made him a nice Nazi aesthetic ad. He has repeatedly been asked to denounce white supremacists like the Nazis boycotting Disney, and has not.
If you cannot read between those bold lines, you are simply illiterate.
Kinda an incendiary headline when it’s just Mastercard complying with the law. From the article: “The federal government considers cannabis sales illegal, so these purchases are not allowed on our systems,” Really the issue is that Marijuana should be legal at the federal level.
When polled, majorities are in support of legalization. If people would show up to vote more than once every 4 years we could make some actual progress on this issue. But since at least half of registered voters sit out every race, well here we are.
Worth noting that even some conservatives support legalization!
Even though it would be sweet if Joe threw on some aviators and said on national television, “420 legalize it bruh.” He can’t. It will require congress to be functional and do something that the average American supports.
And yet I bet I can buy mortgaged backed securities
AND shares in pot companies. How fucking illegal. Maybe the federal government can stop these pot companies from being traded openly considering how illegal it is.
Nah maybe the federal government can stop sucking off Goldman Sachs cock and start looking after the people who it claims to represent and who are paying taxes.
Because they, as a corporate entity, don’t want to mess around with the law over something that won’t personally affect their bottom line in a massively positive manner.
But… it’s cybersecurity. What is a “brief visual and non-intrusive room inspection” even looking for? Anonymous masks? Green terminals with scrolling text? People shouting “enhance” and/or “I’m in”?
Possibly they’re looking for people assembling their sniper rifles, or trying to ensure that no hotel room gets gutted to become some group’s command HQ with 50 amps of electronics with no shielding sprouting from the wall sockets and clean (de)soldering stations set up alongside an electron microscope?
I know what’s gone on in those hotel rooms in past years, and a lot of it is stuff I wouldn’t want to have to deal with as a hotelier.
For those who missed the joke: Payphone hackers (often called phreakers) discovered that a toy whistle from Captain Crunch cereal boxes could easily be modified to play the specific tone that payphones listened for to indicate that a coin had been inserted. Basically, the phone company didn’t know when a coin has been put in, without some sort of signal from the pay phone. And typically, the only lines run to the phone were the actual phone line. So the pay phone would play a specific 2600Hz tone, indicating that a coin was inserted.
Using this toy whistle, you could essentially use payphones for free, and it was entirely untraceable until the company emptied the phone and counted the coins in the collection bin. In an era when cellphones were only for millionaires and were the size of literal bricks the world was almost entirely dependent on pay phones unless you were at home. So this was a major discovery for phreaks, who quickly began experimenting to see what other tones may be used to send signals.
Naturally, the phone companies panicked, and quickly had the cereal company pull the toys from future boxes.
The 5th federal court district is in Texas and is notorious. Most recently they did some shenanigans to keep the federal government from enforcing it’s borders because Texas was playing politics with their troops and occupying federal land to put Razer wire in the border river.
For all of y’all anxiety-pilled people: this is great news. Biden was stuck in negative momentum because his health issues had been exposed and were not going to stop resulting in terrible headlines, which is a problem whoever comes next is not going to have, unless the delegates are somehow stupid enough to pull another dinosaur from below the rug.
More interestingly: now that Biden has pulled out because he’s patently too old, as it was a concern for plenty of voters, this is a golden opportunity to put the focus on the other candidate whose age is a somewhat less obvious but still noticeable issue.
Yeah, but just think of all the clips we can show of Faux News talking heads saying someone in their 80s is too old for President, and do the ol’ switcharoo
It isn’t going to sway the MAGAs, but it could be effective on independents and maybe even some of the people that voted for Nikki Haley in the GOP primaries.
There was a poll that said most people wanted someone other than Biden running. That was the headline, but in the same poll most people also said they didn’t want Trump running either. Well the Democrats did what people wanted… will the GOP do the same? Of course they won’t.
This flips the script in ways we haven’t even thought of yet.
Exactly! We now have a much younger, well-spoken, and intelligent candidate who can square off against someone who probably can’t remember the last time they wiped their own ass. Let’s go, Kamala!
I still I still believe that Biden is more cogent than Trump any dementia patient can rant about nonsense for 2 hours. It takes more brainpower when you can’t just rattle off whatever lies popped into your head 5 mid sentence.
The Republican plan, rather obviously, is to take this election by whatever means necessary - fairly, or if that fails fraudulently, or if that fails by judicial fiat, or if that fails by force.
That’s the biggest reason I don’t even call this a revolution. It’s a coup.
Skop serves as vice-president and director of medical affairs for the national anti-abortion research group Charlotte Lozier Institute and is a member of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists. She is also a plaintiff in a US supreme court lawsuit seeking to revoke the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the key abortion drug mifepristone, which she argues is “dangerous” despite years of evidence showing the drug is safe. She has authored a number of research papers that were ultimately retracted for misleading errors.
We can’t beat far right extremism with moderate politics.
There’s no compromising with people who lie and say anything to get what they want.
We also have to overcome gerrymandering, which SCOTUS just said is legal (as long as the GOP pretends to disenfranchise people for political reasons rather than racial ones). At the same time, we need to overwhelm voter suppression with enough genuine votes that it isn’t effective. Same with the Electoral College, the illegitimate Supreme Court, and the Senate, which gives outsized influence to big, empty Red States and fight against the unlimited flow of dark money in politics…
It can all still be done, but we have to all vote, donate, and volunteer, as well as be unified as you said. My big unity wish is messaging. No one can compete with Fox News because Right Wing media is very good at staying on-message and we’re a “big tent” party, but still; we have to be better at it…
Racial gerrymandering is, but you can say you’re drawing districts specifically to help your party win and that’s not illegal. At least not at the federal level. Your state might have better rules.
I’m sure the slaves would “never be freed”, women would “never work”, black people and woman would never vote", black people would “never have equal rights”, etc.
I would argue that while you’re correct you’re not 100% correct and overlooking a lot of nuances in history. If you want to look at it like that the empire fractured into two, there was a war and the winning side engulfed the other. None of the things you bring up as examples were accomplished with just unity and lobbying, all of these causes involved violence or the threat of violence. Don’t go over simplifying history, a lot of people died for those rights. I by no means am advocating for these liars or violence but history has proven liars like this can be very dangerous and should not be laughed off.
Did you even pay attention to the comment I was responding to? Like how am I suppose to anticipate my response being applied to a completely different argument
But they do t like that it’s legal for other reasons that they know don’t have plausible deniability.
So they claim (against all science) it’s dangerous, and count on extremists judges to pretend they believe it and outlaw it on that premise.
No amount of factual evidence about the safety of the drug will change any of their actions, because they don’t give a single fuck if it’s safe or not.
Moderates always fall for the trap and take them at their word. Which is insane, and at this point it seems safe to say the reason is they have a lot of the same donors, and part of the strings to that money is going along with the dog and pony show even tho everyone involved already knows what the result will be.
They do know that. However, a woman (a fucking doctor nonetheless) who thinks it’s safe for a 9 year old yo give birth is not playing with a full deck of cards. She honestly should have her license revoked. That is straight batshit.
Other things they try to lure moderates with:
“European countries ban it after 12 weeks!”
They of course fail to mention that their 12 weeks is closer to our 14/15 weeks, that you can get one at any hospital, you don’t have to pay for it, and exceptions for that ban are not hard to come by.
“Babies can survive after 21 weeks!”
One. One child made it at 21 weeks. At 22 weeks it’s a bit better but still extremely unlikely. At 23 weeks there is a 25% chance and at 24 weeks there is a 50% chance. But the percentage of fetuses aborted after 20 weeks is 1%. The vast majority of those are due to issues with the fetus like it will die an excruciating death shortly after birth or the woman will die which is absolutely now a thing in states with restrictive abortion laws. The few where that isn’t the case likely could not get one earlier due to expenses or lack of availability in the area or restrictive laws requiring multiple visits.
“Fetuses have a heart beat at four weeks.”
A rhythmic electrical pulse is not a heart beat.
“Women use abortion as contraception!”
Abortion is no walk in the park and not cheap. Much easier to simply use birth control which is what the vast majority of women do.
Most Americans do not want unrestricted abortion!
Yeah. Most people ones do not want unrestricted surgery. Not surprising. The vast majority (~85%) were fine with Roe v Wade staying in place and states only being able to pass laws after the point of viability.
“Jesus hates abortion!”
First, his name is Yeshua. Second, an abortifacient is prescribed for a suspected cheating woman in the Bible. Southern Baptists dios Not even hice a shit about abortion until the late 70s.
The overall goal is obvious to all of us who recognize that access to abortion is necessary. But be on the lookout for anti abortion advocates who try to seem moderate. They are not.
This message is not directed directly at you but if you happen to come across these arguments, these are some easy responses to point out their bullshit. Also mention that since the end of Roe there have been about 65k pregnancies from rape in the 14 states with near total bans on abortion. Super great. /s
Seinfeld has publicly supported Israel following the 7 October Hamas attack, and traveled to a kibbutz in December to meet with hostages’ families. He has been “uncharacteristically vocal” about his support during press calls for his new film, Unfrosted, *The New York Times *reported.
The comedian, who was receiving an honorary degree from Duke, largely stayed away from the issue at the centre of the protests during his speech. At one point, he mentioned his Jewish heritage which was met with applause from the crowd.
“I grew up a Jewish boy from New York,” he said. “That is a privilege if you want to be a comedian.”
Outside Duke’s stadium on the Durham campus, Gaza-supporting students chanted: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.”
That’s the biggest part of the reason, but there’s also the fact that he’s been complaining about how the ‘woke left’ has destroyed comedy. That’s not exactly going to endear him to young adults either.
Also, the whole reason he’s complaining about comedy being destroyed is that he hasn’t been relevant in over 25 years. So even ignoring everything, he’s some boring old dude that hasn’t been that relevant the entire life of most of the graduates. They selected someone that the staff might be impressed by, but not someone that is vaguely interesting for the actual graduates.
Exactly. I enjoyed his stand-up comedy back in the 80s and 90s. I enjoyed his sitcom (although that was mostly down to Larry David), but the world has moved on. Comedy evolves. If you can’t evolve with it, you end up being Don Rickles in the world of George Carlin.
Notebooks full of material is literally something every standup comedian has (or at least had before the smartphone era). I still have a good dozen out of the dozens I used to have.
Curb Your Enthusiasm is hilarious and modern while the most popular thing Seinfeld has put out since Seinfeld was the Bee Movie. I think that shows where the talent is. Even when Jerry was in Curb, he was awkward as he’s not a great on-your-feet type comedian. All the other members of the Seinfeld cast fit in far better than him.
As a 24 year old who spent way too much time watching 90s reruns, Seinfeld was just kinda meh. 3rd rock and married with children were better IMO, also the married with children lingerie scene was my sexual awakening.
Funny, at the time, I thought Seinfeld was better (and more innovative) than either of those. Married With Children was mostly just about being as crass as possible, which has been topped significantly since by shows like South Park and Always Sunny, which broadened their shows to not make it just about “how trashy can we get” and Third Rock… eh. Mostly just weird for weirdness’ sake.
Seinfeld had some pretty decent ideas for a sitcom like the episode taking place entirely while waiting in the restaurant entrance for Chinese take-out or the episode which is entirely set in a parking garage. There just wasn’t TV like that back then.
Also, the whole reason he’s complaining about comedy being destroyed is that he hasn’t been relevant in over 25 years.
YouTuber MovieBob absolutely nailed it when he said in his recent review of the new stupid Seinfeld movie that at this point going “anti-woke” is just a marketing move for older washed up comedians. Most of them probably don’t even give a shit but it’s vastly easier to pander to the crowd so desperate for any validation of their hateful rhetoric than it is to write new insightful jokes that resonate with a culture you’re quickly aging out of.
Of course none of this is to defend Seinfeld; if anything being a manipulative conman willing to pander to the worst appetites in America is arguably even worse than genuinely believing the bullshit in the first place.
Seinfeld is a Billionaire. If I ever had 1% of that, I’d never try to force myself to be relevant and happily accept I’m not relevant anymore.
I’d expect that’s in fact the natural trajectory of being in pop culture, that your time of relevance is fleeting, and plan accordingly. No hurt feelings that no one is lining up for your material anymore, it happens to almost every single person in that field. You only can make your legacy worse by trying to force things, exit on a high note.
And the point of a lot of old comedy was based on shitting on other people. The “woke left” is the kids calling us out on being assholes for no reason.
The ironic thing is that the show Seinfeld was more like IASIP than Friends, in that the characters were mostly shitty people, and the joke was usually on them (even though they similarly often destroyed the lives of people around them.)
Jessica Seinfeld, cookbook author and wife to comedian Jerry Seinfeld, is funding a pro-Israel counterprotest at UCLA—where violence broke out Tuesday night after a mob attacked demonstrators inside a pro-Palestine encampment.
A GoFundMe for the effort, which Seinfeld promoted in an Instagram story this week after contributing at least $5,000, has since made the majority of its donations anonymous. The fundraising page has raised more than $93,000 as of Wednesday and also changed its organizer name and description since launching over the weekend.
“I just gave to this GoFundMe to support more allies like yesterday’s at UCLA,” Seinfeld wrote this week. “More cities are being planned so please give what you can. Donations are annonymous [sic]. We will continue to share our light and love, as proud American Jews.”
An entertaining read that further cements Musk as an honest-to-god unhinged idiot. I’ve seen a lot of people speculate that him buying Twitter and tanking its value was some kind of genius plot, but the simpler explanation is that he’s just unironically stupid and a bad businessman.
The fact that he has another burner account which he uses to get around blocks and hurl insults at others is both really funny and completely expected. I’m willing to bet a signed dollar that he has yet another alt that he uses to lean even further right and say the N-word on a regular basis.
Umm, some things are more important than money, namely, power. He bought twitter because it allows him to silence critics and break up a social media platform that was allowing citizens globally to communicate and take stands against governments.
Another old rich white guy identifying as a gay black man online?.. curious…🤣💯… interesting…true… concerning…WE MUST RECLAIM RHODESIA’S INDEPENDENCE…uhh sorry that was the AI making a post on my account, now as I was saying about population collapse…
It does seem like he’s ignorant on many subjects, but if he is a complete idiot, how did he manage to make the right investments to become among the richest of the world?
Because of dad’s money (it seems there’s no clear information about the money from the mine www.snopes.com/news/…/elon-musk-emerald-mine/)? That’s a good start, sure, but many smart people, with a similar good start or more, try to become richer and don’t reach this level. So what’s the additional element?
Is it really not an acceptable explanation that he had good guts at detecting the bubbles and did multiple smart investments at the right times (early internet website, internet payment, electric cars, low cost space)?
Let’s try to have an opinion of a higher quality than what Musk usually writes on his media, that is to say, not solely based on some strong feelings.
I believe a combination of inertia and “throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks” may be applicable here.
If his recent ventures are anything to go by, he’s an “idea guy” that makes a convincing case of sounding smart enough to succeed. He makes big promises about revolutionizing something, and because of his persona as a successful inventor, investors and fans buy into those ideas.
With support behind him, he’s free to burn other people’s money in the hopes that one of his fantastical projects actually succeeds. And if it doesn’t, just sweep it under the rug like the Hyperloop.
Or, you know, he could always use his capital to fund others’ ideas and then take credit as though they were his original idea, like with Tesla.
Did I fucking stutter? It’s a function of mass of capital + opportunity (Peter Thiel wants your booty hole) = Inertia which breeds either people like you spending time on the defense of the morally reprehensible. Assuming you’re not the man himself, fucker has the right amount of time.
One again, mass of capital + opportunity (luck) = Inertia persistent enough for fucks like you to eat off perpetuity in the hope of scraps.
Please refrain from personal attacks. I understand your point otherwise.
I’m not defending him, I even negatively criticized him two times in my initial comment. I’m defending having a rational opinion about him, but it’s very hard, as you can observe by your own reaction to my questioning.
The fact that not all rats are given a maze with cheese in the middle to run to, should not require explanation to any moderately affected by the human condition person. You are owed basic respect in the form of your thoughts being listened to and your place as a person respected.
You are however, owed nothing, when it comes to civility.
That is a social contract.
One which you strain by repeatedly being contrarian to the point it’s either a sign of extreme neurodivergence (fine, my attitude isn’t normal either), or just disingenuous.
In the case of the later, pound sand. If the former, do you have any actual doubts left as to why people feel this way? Or can I ask you to get the fuck off my sunlight yet, Elon?
You are however, owed nothing, when it comes to civility.
Read the first rule of this community.
Although I don’t think I am owed it, I think it’s a pretty common minimal rule for discussion. So, if it’s not respected, I will just consider we cannot discuss and ignore you in the future.
One which you strain by repeatedly being contrarian to the point it’s either a sign of extreme neurodivergence (fine, my attitude isn’t normal either), or just disingenuous.
I either agree with you or I am neurodivergent/disingenuous/Musk? What kind of thoughts dictatorship is that?
If the former, do you have any actual doubts left as to why people feel this way?
I think I understand why they feel this way: it’s psychological more tolerable to demonize (or call a complete idiot in this case) someone you hate, especially when you are powerless against his misconducts such as destroying a valuable communication platform.
But I still think demonizing him now is as stupid as idolizing him a couple of years ago, which many people here did.
I prefer to fight the hate he uses for his personal marketing with rationality rather than more hate, I think this kind of person just feeds on your hate, even if it’s against him.
Listen Plato. You’re not in the same universe as my point, yet you illustrate yours greatly. I’m the neurodivergent and you’re just being a pedant was the other option in my message.
Ignore me, I have no desire to keep putting plucked chickens before you in the hopes you stop repeating the incompleteness that makes a man.
I don’t mind learning to go around whatever condition you may have, just let me know, so I can try to include it in my understanding of what you are saying.
My goal is not to be pedant, my goal is to trigger discussion where I feel there’s some room for progress, either mine or others’, and see if it happens.
He frequently picked markets where he was bought out for hefty sums and the rest is government contracts. Tesla was the first thing bought that shipped a somewhat usable product and you can see what he’s done to it.
He could have ruled the EV market but he had to ship inferior products, waste money crushing unions, overstate its capabilities, and now Tesla has a bunch of cars they can’t sell.
I think mostly communication, since his multiple frauds cases show he’s not actually good at business, and having some instinctive understanding of what he should say to appeal to the poor uneducated white people who are afraid of falling lower. I feel like in the case of Trump, it’s even more important to not use his populist and hate based tactics.
Look, having nuclear — my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart — you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I’m one of the smartest people anywhere in the world — it’s true! — but when you’re a conservative Republican they try — oh, do they do a number — that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune — you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged — but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me — it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are — nuclear is so powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what’s going to happen and he was right, who would have thought? — but when you look at what’s going on with the four prisoners — now it used to be three, now it’s four — but when it was three and even now, I would have said it’s all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don’t, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years — but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us, this is horrible.
Link it to the second part of my comment, it does sound like crazy to educated or non-indoctrinated people, but it worked incredibly well with his base, as well as almost half of voters. There some kind of skill there, how would you call it?
I would call it a combination of a very well-funded, well-crafted campaign, well-funded and well-crafted by people other than Donald Trump, combined with the momentum that drew and the very American idea that if you worship a rich and famous person, you could get rich and famous yourself.
Donald Trump’s wealth was earned by his racist father and the rest of it was failing upward and being used by everyone from the Mafia to the Republican Party.
That Donald Trump didn’t fund his own campaign and that it was well-crafted by Republican campaign operatives? You really need sources for that? Because that’s true for pretty much every presidential campaign.
Not the funding, but rather that he is not the real leader of his campaigns and political objectives, as I think you imply there’s some people in the shadow using him as a front. I’m talking more than some influence or lobbies. I prefer to read reputable new sources about it.
What right investments? He was born into money and failed into getting anything from his X.com (banking!) website which was bought out by PayPal long after he was fired. The only reason he got anything out of that at all was he’d kept the stocks around.
He “invested” in Tesla so that he could get a cool car (he royally fucked over the actual founders in the process).
Low cost space? Low cost space? Do you live on Mars or some shit? Every one of those “Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly” events cost over one Billion. That ain’t cheap buddy.
most people born into wealth do not flaunt it like Musk or Trump do. They are the exception not the rule.
they do so because of ego. They NEED the attention. Meanwhile, most billionaires don’t go around publicly buying things like that. They do have investments similar, but they do so without appointing themselves as god emperor of the company.
The fact that Musk insists he must be the public face for any company he puts money into evidences extreme narcissism and the belief he is a genius.
Meanwhile. Other than seeing money and being a part time engineer for Space X. He doesn’t have any real direct success for actual labour / work he’s done. It’s his inherited money that seems to have done the bulk of work. Buying in to banking, buying into space x, buying into tesla, buying into X. All essentially ideas by other people who just needed seed money.
You’ve moved to points about flaunting, having an egocentric media presence, and the absence of personal engineering success. I think I agree with those, but those are different points. My point was about how he became that rich, compared to other people with similar parents money, if he is a complete idiot.
My point was about how he became that rich, compared to other people with similar parents money, if he is a complete idiot.
But you’re still wrong. Lots of people who inherited money grew their wealth, without the need to have their face in the media constantly.
the reason we see so much of Musk is because he purposely puts himself in the public. There are more billionaires than just Musk who have grown their wealth without you ever knowing their names. Arguably, there are far FAR more of these no-name billionaires than the Musk type.
As other’s have said, He has used his inheritance to create momentum and a cult of personality around himself, which has helped him make money despite being proven time and time again to be a business idiot.
So Far, He has been removed from Paypal by the board for bad leadership. He was removed from chairman of Tesla for illegal leadership and bad leadership. And all evidence has shown that he has also tanked the value of Twitter.
he has definitely convinced you through his cult of personality that he’s some business genius. Rather than just a loud asshole with lots of money to burn.
without the need to have their face in the media constantly.
That’s still your point not mine, you’re arguing against a point I didn make. I even told you I agree with this one.
You’re using a straw man argument, I never said I consider him a business genius. Just reread what I said, there’s nothing else to over interpret about it to make it easier to shut down.
My point was about how he became that rich, compared to other people with similar parents money, if he is a complete idiot.
You’re lack of understanding about this doesn’t constitute others arguing in a fallacious matter. We are not arguing a strawman but explaining to you HOW Musk got to where he was. Which is in SPITE of his intelligence, not because of it.
You’re arguing your own fallacy based on your own lack of ability to grasp concepts. Congradulations, you’re guilty of Personal Incredulity fallacy:
There’s a third explanation: He’s a fairly bad businessman but Twitter was always expected to lose money, and the purpose of owning it is to use it as a cost center for massive political influence.
I’m not necessarily espousing this theory, I have no real evidence either way, but lots of billionaires buy media outlets so they can direct public sentiment. Twitter, managed correctly, could have been a pretty good way to do that, but even within that lens it has been managed very badly, so IDK
When his name first became popular, I was like others thinking, hey, this guy sounds like a genius, maybe I should pay attention. Then I did pay attention and he ventured into my industry: comp sci and user experience. That’s when I realised he was an utter moron. When you know more about what he’s talking about than he does, it becomes obvious.
His incompetence as a business runner should have been blatantly clear when the SEC had to step into Tesla due to his comments and have him removed from all financial decision making for the company.
He straight up has no idea how to run a business itself and always acts like he’s the full blown god of the companies he claims to run.
Fun story: He didn’t found Tesla as he claimed. He bought in and part of the deal was he could claim as a founder. (founded by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning)
Also fun Fact: He only started Space X because he was ousted from PayPal for being a shitty CEO by the board.
It makes sense. He’s actually been competent, which not many (certainly not I) quite expected, but the media hasn’t reported a lot of his successes, which have been unusually deployed and quite complex to begin with. People don’t understand it. Maybe they’ll vote for him anyway, but it’s not assured, somehow even with Trump on the other side again.
e.g.how he blocked the railway strike at Christmas to save “the economy” first and foremost at the workers expense, but then kept working afterwards to help get most if not all of their demands met (I’m not sure if they got any sick leave though). Right or wrong, in the past that would have been hailed as a “huge success”, but instead we barely heard about it.
Likewise with Gaza he has tried to toe the line - we technically have obligations to fulfill there, but does genocide change that, and if so what is the process by which to do that, and is he engaging in that, or doesn’t Israel have a veto anyway, so what else is he doing that we might want done?
We have depended upon our media so much, to tell us not just what happened but what it means and how to feel about it all. So with it being bought out now by billionaires… it is like our fourth branch of government has become as unreliable as Congress and the Supreme Court.
Not just the media, but perhaps worse, unverified strangers on the Internet though social media. The biggest thing that pisses me off is every time I the lesser of two evils argument spouted of paired with Biden’s handing of something that 100% should fall in the domain of Congress to solve. So may things that historically have been attributed to the President were ultimately created and decided on by Congress and the public attributes way more power to the President than they actually have because of it.
If we want actual support to Gaza we need to push our congressional members to provide that support. Which is laughable because congress can’t even pass a bill that had bipartisan support because half of one floor bends knee to the will of a private citizen. Biden keeps having to overreach his office with executive orders and policies that aren’t backed by law and as such are highly transient and subject to constitutional review allowing them too be thrown out, as well as peace time commander-in-chief powers to do things like supply airdrops or back door old equipment sales to their other countries to affected groups.
The difference between Ukraine and Gaza is that unlike Ukraine, have does not have a unified Palestinian force that the US can safely supply arms to (HAMAS has actively proven that they are not the good guys) and that we’re legally obligated to supply arms to Israel, which we are not to Russia. Biden can only sit loudly at Israel stating that genocide is bad threaten that this could lead to a withdrawal of US support, but he can’t actually withdraw US support. Congress needs to provide a bill for him to sign that does that.
On a side note… I’m fairly convinced that a good chunk of the rhetoric spouted to not vote for Biden likely originated from foreign sources to plant the Idea in people’s minds and get them to repeat it everywhere because on the surface it feels right. The vote any vote not for Biden is a vote for Trump rhetoric probably exists for similar reasons, mostly to help reinforce the thought that both sides are the same because it’s quite easily proven not true and likely increases the odds that someone it’s used to convince to vote for Biden ultimately ends up either withholding their vote in protest or voting for someone else out of spite.
Esp on congressional v presidential power/responsibility. I must admit im rather guilty of this, too. Its easy to hate on our cultures authoritarian tendencies that prevade in the stupidest fucking places, and yet i still consistently think, "wheres that marjuana legislation, Joe? Why arent you passing executive orders to prevent the intellectually challeneged baboon heading Texas from busing his responsibilities to my state? Or at least offer more executive support in handling the influx of ppl? Maybe something to give out more work visas, no?
Reading this tho reminds me, most all of that is legislative tasks. weve just all been brainwashed by years of executive encroachment to where the broken parts of our system behave extra broken.
Keep fighting the good fight. Your words hit hard.
The best way to think of it is that the presidents power is roughly bellcurved relative to how much Congress is in alignment with them. If Congress is completely out of alignment with them they have very little power because congress can pass a vote on what he vetos or issue a stop on any executive action he takes. If Congress is slightly in alignment or out of alignment he becomes able to singlehandedly stop laws and executive actions aren’t likely to get overruled and will have up go under judicial review. If Congress is completely in alignment with him, he doesn’t need to use his veto powers or executive actions and if he does they likely won’t be contested anyway but we’re generally better off with Congress passing a law.
If we all (very justifiably) believe that Trump would truly become a dictator if he wins in November, then it is clear that the president has the ability to wield tremendous power to radically remake our system.
Which means that Bidens failure to act on any given issue is a choice.
If Trump’s administration would radically reshape the country through breaking norms, then Biden could do the same, but for beneficial purposes. We should ask ourselves why he is prioritizing procedural norms over real improvements to Americans standards of living. Why do we accept that The Rules are more important than our lives?
sigh being capable of wielding that much power is not supposed to happen is the point. Donnie dipshits potential to do so is enabled by the same problems that americans have been avoiding facing for years. The answer is not opening the door for the next in line to radically reshape everything they dont like, thats beyond inefficient. Instead, lets avoid opening up such a possibility that is only available to dump bc he wields a cult of personality made up of dinosaurs.
If u would like to pursue direct action rather than wait on electoral politics to change ur life, then i think u will find those are much more easily pursued in Biden’s America v. Trumps. Enough so that taking the small amount of time itd take to vote for Status Quo Joe is worth it. Similarly, your local down ballot choices are also worth checking off based on who is best or least shit. We can effect greater change long term when ur local electoral politics are, for example, funding ur local schools sufficiently.
This sort of communication is incredibly unlikable and causes the median viewer to deeply dislike you and your positions. Which is perfect if you’re trying to confirm to Americans that Democrats are elitists who don’t care about normal people. If, however, you’re trying to persuade people and win elections then you need an immediate attitude adjustment or you need to refrain from such discussions if you are unable to be likable
wielding that much power is not supposed to happen is the point.
Said a different way, drastically improving living standards for Americans is not supposed to happen, quickly or otherwise. Which is deeply unsatisfying and is a perfect argument for a 3rd party candidate
Americans have a consumer mentality. They have no interest in longterm solutions. They want their, very significant, societal problems to be fixed correctly and immediately. If Democrats refuse to use the full power of the federal government to achieve that expeditiously then Americans will vote for someone who claims that they will.
Being smug will not change any of that. We don’t live in the world you want to live in, we live in the real world. If you want to persuade literally anyone then maybe it is more effective for you to behave accordingly
Whos being smug here? Youve boiled down everything i said to absolute nothing, all while ignoring the central thesis that aimless bitching about it solves nothing, and that if ur going to do something about it, then u might as well ensure that the maximum amount of people are capable of living bearable lives under the current regime. Youve also completely ignored my call for unity across the left leaning spectrum. You do all this not because im “smug,” but bc, in this instance, u are a bad faith actor looking to be contentious.
Eta: and calling the problem consumerism is merely blaming the victims.
You’re intentionally (or worse, unintentionally) being incredibly unlikable. RFK and the Green Party could use more online “activists” like yourself
Please stop trying to do anything to help the Democratic Party. Your personality is absolute poison for them winning Michigan Wisconsin, Arizona, and Pennsylvania.
Consider though what “unverified” means these days - the media circus is one of the three main sources that got Trump elected the last time (Hillary Clinton’s corruption, e.g. with the DNC collusion, and Ted Cruz were the other two main ones iirc), so it seems like they have lost the public’s trust?
Therefore if people turn to “unverified sources” - and who even is that really, like aren’t Hank/John Green, Innuendo Studies, Kurzgesagt, CPG Grey, and then on the left the comedians like John Olivier, Jon Stewart, even fucking Bill Maher, and ofc on the right are those like Joe Rogan, Alex Jones, etc.? - can we really blame them, when the “verified” sources ARE lying to us? And keep in mind that people like Donald Trump, Mitch McConnel, Lindsey Graham, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Bohbert, etc. are among the “verified” ones, yes? They are “verified” by virtue of having the seal of approval by authority.
Maybe you mean places like the CDC, FDA, FBI, etc., and while I whole-heartedly agree, many others do not agree. (Also, Republicans like Trump are constantly ordering them to say or not say some things, like removing all words “Global Warming” or “Climate Change” from the official documents, and Yellowstone National Park was even forbidden to collect temperature data any longer - plus look into why doing taxes sucks, and why the post office sucks, it all becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy when these organizations are targeted for destruction and then they get to cite how “unreliable” they are later, as if one action had nothing whatsoever to do with the direct consequences of it.) Meanwhile, in authoritarian communist China and Russia, the “verified” sources could be among the least trustworthy of them all? Now, the USA is not that… we have our own whole other thing going on here, but in both cases people turn to “unverified” sources for the same reason, and imho it is not the presence of the unverified sources that should concern us nearly so much as the absence of good information from verified ones - by which I mostly mean news media, but in some highly specific cases government agencies too, when they are forced to comply by a Congressional order despite the facts, possibly remaining under attack for YEARS until the director is replaced by someone who will be more easily controlled.
Also, of COURSE a lot of this comes from outside sources - I thought this was verified at some point - but also it would be a huge missed opportunity for that particular foreign not to take advantage of that opportunity, and they definitely are not that stupid. Also we do it ourselves to other nations all the time. Water is wet, stones are hard, h8rs gonna h8 and cheaters gonna cheat - at some point I don’t even blame them anymore - or rather I at least cease to be surprised - and start blaming ourselves more for falling for such cheap tricks, over & over again! It is hard to get out of an abusive relationship, I get that, but if we need to do it then we just need to get it done, somehow! Or else we will fall, as a nation - and ngl that has a much better chance of happening now than it did back when Trump ran the first time.
I was mostly using unverified in lacking sources and people not going through and verifying their sources before just blindly believing them. Which seems to happen a lot.
People see Biden did something and don’t look into why Biden did the thing he did then start calling him every because he did the thing he did without understanding why he did it. It’s a vicious circular loop that I’ve seen with pretty much every president we’ve had since I can remember.
Biden seems to be pretty conscious about remaining within the bounds of law so there’s a good chance there’s generally some obscure treaty or other random grouping of legal documents that when all bundled together cause the reaction we see. I like to look up what those are because I find it interesting but I can guarantee the bulk of people in this thread do not.
The TV show Designated Survivor did a good job portraying that IMHO. He had to agonize over every decision and try to find a way to do the right thing in the right manner. But I guess Trump’s real-life antics were more exciting and so that show was too “boring” by comparison, being too intellectual like that, and got cancelled.
We are lazy, greedy, and judgemental. Our “stuff” all pushes us further in that direction - e.g. social media, algorithm based video players, and somehow predating computers bc boomers do it too - yet it is our own fault for choosing to engage in it, when there are choices to pull back instead. And by “we” I mean not just the USA but our whole Western culture, see e.g. Brexit.
Like the audacity for someone who dropped out of high school to claim that they know better than all of the MD and PhD educated scientists + all relevant U.S. governmental organizations too (CDC, FDA, NIH, NIAID) + worldwide ones as well (e.g., WHO), about vaccinations, disease, and viruses that are far too small to be seen with the unaided eye, is staggering. Though I watched some videos like Plandemic and such where the media personality, who are entirely uncredentialed, walked people through the process: “murder is bad, right?” -> “so killing of innocent little babies in the womb is bad, right?” -> therefore somehow equating that to taking the vaccine is likewise equivalent to murder? Brainwashing techniques are strong, especially when delivered from an authoritative source, which causes people to receive things emotionally rather than rationally, and far worse, unquestioningly - despite how e.g. the very Christian Bible itself says “test everything against what you know to be true”.
Then again, the sheeple do not know how! This was done to our culture, so I do take pity, but also we allowed it, and more to the point some of us are working to KILL PEOPLE, e.g. by cutting off access to medical care. It’s not like I want those who do that to simply die, but like… ranked choice voting might be something worth looking into enacting, in the more liberal leaning states that could potentially get it passed? e.g. if a child who does not know how to drive grabs the wheel of the car you are in, you may want to grab it BACK before bad things happen… bc the consequences of a crash could be REALLY severe.
Point of order, we are not legally bound to sell weapons to anyone. The Leahy Law actually bans the sale of weapons to countries or organizations credibly accused of war crimes. The creator of the Leahy Law has publicly said Israel should have been cut off by that law. Former civil servants have said that Israel gets a special vetting process that requires several political appointees to agree Israel is problematic. In contrast to any other country getting a single civil servant.
We are in fact taking great pains to send them weapons illegally.
We’re not bound to sell weapons but we’re bound to provide aid by a combination of Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement (1952) which I can’t find the text of from my phone… Need to wait till I’m near a computer to try again and Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (1991) which I linked elsewhere in the thread.
www.dsca.mil/…/excess-defense-articles-edaDoes explicitly allow the sale of arms to a list of nations from my understanding. This is a huge rabbit hole of laws and then exceptions to laws.
whether I personally agree any of this is right is a different story here
Not likely. The Department of State has been shielding them from Leahy for decades. They setup a special committee just for Israel. To shield them from accountability for things like shooting protest medics on purpose; continuing to settle the West Bank in blatant violation of international law; holding thousands of Palestinians without charge; and just so much bombing of civilians.
Biden’s handing of something that 100% should fall in the domain of Congress to solve. So may things that historically have been attributed to the President were ultimately created and decided on by Congress and the public attributes way more power to the President than they actually have because of it.
But the public is right to do this, particularly regarding international wars like Ukraine and Gaza. The United States has not declared war via Congress since 1942. Yet clearly we have fought plenty of wars since then solely under the command and authorization of the presidency alone. Which means there is 80+ years of precedence of creating an imperial presidency that authorizes Biden to act against both Russia and Israel. He is choosing not to avail himself of the precedent. And genocide is the result.
we’re legally obligated to supply arms to Israel,
Israel is legally obligated not to engage in collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and genocide. Yet, they are doing those acts anyway. The Constitution requires Congress to declare war. Yet Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the War on Terror, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine/Gaza demonstrate that is apparently an illusory Constitutional requirement. Laws are meaningless if there is no enforcement mechanism.
I’m fairly convinced that a good chunk of the rhetoric spouted to not vote for Biden likely originated from foreign sources to plant the Idea in people’s minds
This is undoubtedly true. And it is a sad reflection of the weakness of our system, our historical actions, and the intellectual capabilities of our citizenry that it is as highly effective as it is. Trump will destroy The West if he is elected in November. And plenty of Americans don’t have a problem with that because they don’t understand what it means. Which is a consequence of neoliberal privatization and deregulation of all social programs, including public education.
As Malcolm X said, this is Chickens Coming Home to Roost. And, unfortunately for us who live in the United States today, an innumerable number of Chickens are coming home to roost in our very near future. I wish I had been born in Denmark or Norway - at least their social democratic safety nets would allow my community to thrive as the world burns around us
I wish I had been born in Denmark or Norway - at least their social democratic safety nets would allow my community to thrive as the world burns around us
not to be mean but the mind does age it does not magically stop because your name is Biden he has reached that age
he told those rail workers they could not strike or they would lose retirement and shit
he threatened them with their livelihoods fuck that old crony he promised to raise the minimum wage and fight for us workers
he hasn’t quite the opposite
Silent Genocide Joe and Prosecutor Kamala Harris are not America’s saviors neither is Trump
just older people refusing to let a younger generation take the reins while cashing checks from the corporations same as Trump and making sure the younger people are disenfranchised enough to not to take a stand
fucking sick either candidate get any support with the suffering and misery they have wrought
I can’t disagree with the age argument, these dinosaurs need to step aside and let the world change.
I do want to know what exactly Biden has genocided. The two groups in this world who are driving genocides are Putin’s and Netanyahu’s regimes. Biden has no control over them, and the only group that could enact a foreign policy to do anything here in the US is Congress. So if anyone is complicit in that, it’s our “Currently Genocidal by Inaction Congress.”
I get it though, doesn’t roll as nicely off the tongue.
[Edit: a poster below pointed out that my joke was bad and I should feel bad. ]
Camilla was a poor choice at vp no matter how you swing it given the current progressive opinion on police.
First of all, his name is Herzog. Secondly, it isn’t his regime because he is only nominally in charge due to the president of Israel having limited powers.
Are you under the impression that Israel’s president is like the U.S. president?
Israel has a parliamentary system. The prime minister has supreme executive power. The prime minister of Israel is Benjamin Netanyahu.
Then it’s not a good joke since the U.S. president is the commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, meaning that a U.S. president could absolutely commit genocide. And has done so many times with indigenous Americans.
Absolutely not true. Only for prolonged conflicts… which congress will almost definitely approve of by the time that happens because the military will already be too embedded.
I see, so essentially they would state that it was in defense of the United States because it is was onshore and is there’s nothing Congress could do about it.
That’s actually really horrifying if someone like trump takes the presidency given his current threats…
Article 5 is the one that got invoked by the Hamas attack
As stated in another thread, at this point Biden has done enough to cover against any legal retaliation however, and 100% command a withdrawal of US support as Israel has actually been using the supplies to commit war crimes
That’s only a subsection of our obligations. Two paragraphs up are what I was actually talking about. We have multiple bilateral defense agreements with them which essentially boils down to an attack on me must me treated as an attack on you.
The ways to remedy a bilateral defense agreement depending on the actual agreement (I’m having trouble finding any of the us-isreal ones… So I’m just making assumptions here) usually boil down to supplying military aid or providing military defense.
Essentially the us must deploy supplies or a defense force. I’ll keep digging for the actual text of one of these treaties but it might take a bit because the US state departments site is actually just really badly organized.
He could stop sending a new shipment of the very weapons used to commit genocide with every day and a half.
It might not stop it immediately, but it would at least make it more difficult for Netanyahu’s fascist apartheid regime to keep blowing the shit out of innocent civilians if they have to look elsewhere for the bombs to do so with.
Plus, there’s hardly any way to be more clearly an accomplice to war crimes than insisting on sending weapons to be used to commit war crimes regardless of congressional approval.
First of all, no he isn’t. In fact, it’s illegal for the US government to supply arms that might be used in the commission of war crimes. In this case there’s not even any doubt.
As for the GOP, they’ve already demonstrated that whether or not they try to impeach has nothing to do with reality. Even if they DID somehow manage to make impeachment stick by a one-vote majority, there’s literally no risk that 2/3 of the senate will vote to convict, so that’s not anything remotely resembling a valid excuse to keep contributing to a genocide either.
He actually is in the case that the initial arms shipment was sent, Israel was attacked by Hamas and he had to respond by sending aid. He has gone on record stating that the current war crimes Israel has been committing raise question of the legality of providing further support.
Obviously still remains to be seen if anything will actually come of that though. Words are cheap.
There’s no congressional approval needed as he is driven by treaty to provide arms, if anything he is compelled by Congress to send arms as long as Israel is at war as a US ally due to NATO.
He’s trying to make the argument that Israel committing genocide with those arms is reason to withdraw support, unfortunately the US government moves at a glacial pace on it’s best day to the point that the US military is actually somehow faster. Given the number of Democrats that do support Israel, its entirely realistic that he could get successfully impeached if he failed to comply.
Anyway… Thanks for the civil debate but work is starting so I need to go, I’ll read your next message bit I probably won’t have time to reply.
Cool, sounds good to me. Thanks again, I was finding myself eagerly anticipating your responses because I was definitely learning some new things about why people dislike his handling of the Gaza genocides. You’ve made some really good points. I think he’s made a good enough case at this point that NATO is no longer applicable in the case of genocide. At least with to protect him from retaliation if he did command a stop of US support to a NATO ally.
there’s literally no risk that 2/3 of the senate will vote to convict
I dunno about that - Democrats are not “the same” as Republicans (some might have some ounce of integrity? wow that gave me a laugh, but still…), then too there is his own legacy to consider, and his own personal code of ethics. Look, I know, genocide, but still there is a distinction between content vs. process. And the latter it turns out, especially at a level of power that high up, is pretty damn important. The next President could use that same identical power for a far lesser ideal, and so on it goes and before you know it we have a King, not a President. This is the same reason why guilty people go free, so as to attempt to avoid putting innocent people into jail (I know, sometimes that happens too, unfortunately, but the goal should always be to minimize that).
Anyway, long story short: Repubs can huff & puff & try to blow the Dems house down all day long - and that pack of lies is on them - but what Biden chooses to do, is on him. And he is choosing to do this by the books. Which I kinda respect. If only the American people were not so divided - where half the nation wants to increase the military aid we are sending to Israel!! - then he + Congress could act swiftly. But we are divided so… instead we will not. Though keep in mind that if Trump comes to power, he + Congress will send more aid to Israel - and there’s a not-insignificant chance that we may send more aid to Russia too (you read that right, not just stop sending aid to Ukraine but join with the aggressor there!). Yes, it can always get worse:-(.
I still think Biden should do more. Though I have to admit that I am not knowledgeable enough to know what else he possibly could do.
I don’t find that argument compelling at all without more of a source. As if we haven’t already gone above and beyond in supplying arms and funding to Israel’s government. Why should a piece of paper compel the United States to continue to unconditionally fund a genocide?
Let’s not forget, Biden has gone out of his way to bypass Congress to provide further weapons to Israel. And his administration has repeatedly vetoed any UN resolutions pertaining to the situation.
You can find the entire text of the treaty online btw. Google is enshittified now so I would not know how to search for it, but I do recall that I’ve seen it once:-).
But in general that is simply how America works: Congress passes the laws, then the President enforces those. The line gets blurry when the President suggests things to Congress to pass, like a budget, but ultimately if Congress refuses, there is nothing he can do (his power lies in vetoing laws that are passed, but there is no corresponding veto to anti-block things that they refuse to pass; with only minor exceptions possible e.g. changing how he uses his own budget to change things within solely the federal government - which Israel is not a part of).
This is to prevent a totalitarian regime from rising up, which the founding fathers seemed to fear more than just about anything, given how we started by kicking out the English King, and then we decided to build in protections to ensure that another local one could not rise up from within.
The two that apply here are that arms can be dispersed with only congressional notification and that we’re have multiple bilateral defense agreements with them.
Hamas issued an attack on Israel which triggered the bilateral defense agreements and one way to remedy would be to deploy supplies to the region with congressional notification.
Just imagine the damage to the region if we took bilateral defense to it’s logical conclusion and dispatched actual military aid.
This is not Biden “going around Congress”. This is Congress explicitly granting permission in advance to do it as long as they are notified.
(Worth noting I’ve never looked this deeply into this before so I’m learning about this clown fiesta as well. It goes pretty deep…)
On the bright side, neither President would likely actually do much of anything personally, but rather act as a prop for whatever team they choose to actually accomplish things behind the scenes.
And while I do worry about Biden’s age, I also worry about Trump’s too. What choices are we being offered there even? That ship has already sailed.
To be fair to Biden, he did keep his promise to those railway workers, to stay with them to negotiate better terms. They lost the urgency to have it all done prior to the holiday season, but they gained his involvement and that might even have worked out better for them than if they had tried it alone? But I truly don’t know the details there, b/c while the news media splashed it up every single day when it was inflationary, they dropped it like a rock when he quietly got stuff done in the background.
He has delivered on at least some of his promises to workers. He needs to do more ofc, but also, he has been working towards that goal - e.g. it was REALLY, SUPER, EXTREMELY difficult to have lowered gas prices, and the ethics of how it eventually got done are even more than a little shady but… he managed it? Not everyone drives a car ofc, but both those who need one to get to work and those who buy things at stores should be highly grateful to him, but instead they just want more.
As they should - we all NEED more. And if elected again, he will work towards that, just as he has in the last four years. Though most of the lack of progress is due to Congressional bickering and in-fighting - did you know that the fiscal year for 2024 began back in fucking OCTOBER!? We are now in month number fucking SIX, almost ready to begin number seven, and we STILL do not have a budget for THIS YEAR!!! That is not the job of the President, that is solely on the feet of people like Matt Gaetz and Kevin McCarthy and now Mike Johnson. Speaking of, Trump will do even less for the working-man - he will CLAIM to do more, but he will ACTUALLY do less, just as he did before too, which is the largest part of what got us into this mess in the first place - e.g. with supply lines disrupted b/c of so very many truckers who flat-out died from COVID.
It helps to read between the lines: a President CANNOT simply “raise the minimum wage” - that’s not within their job capabilities - he can only be receptive to and even outright PUSH Congress to do that. Which he sort has done but… see above.
Silent Genocide Joe and Prosecutor Kamala Harris are not America’s saviors neither is Trump
Abso-fucking-lutely. But we still have a choice what to do about it. Though one thing I agree with: Biden and Harris are NOT “the same” as Trump. Bad yes, but nowhere close to equally so. And “support” means different things depending on the context: imagine an abused spouse needing to divorce and get away - remaining there vs. leaving are both “bad” options, but one will result in a much better outcome, eventually, while the other may be suicide. It is not that they “want” to, they HAVE to, b/c the alternative is SO MUCH worse off. I feel your pain - I abso-fucking-lutely share it, but in a way, I suppose I “support” Biden too, as the lesser of two evils. (And even there, my main reservation is his advanced age, which as I mentioned earlier, what choice are we even being offered there at all, when his opponent is even older than him!?)
Thank you for the correction. I keep forgetting b/c Trump is the one in diapers who can barely walk down a ramp, while Biden stumbles while walking up the stairs. Neither can control their tempers and both have slurred speech, though Biden can pull it together occasionally whereas Trump never seems to.
For the job of President of the most militarily powerful nation on earth, they are both older than dirt, though as you pointed out, not equally so.
Read Kegan & Lahey’s “Immunity to Change” book, on people’s unconscious-mind’s mechanism for fighting-off growing-up.
Then let it percolate in your mind for a few decades, while you watch humankind’s process.
I’d now make a law requiring that the top people be Kegan5 unconscious-mind-development ( he calls 3, 4, & 5 something like “socially-based sentience”, rooted in needing to feel liked, “self-authoring” mind, which I call Bulling-BOSS mode, it’s an obnoxious mode male-culture values because it’s so “alpha”.
Youtube’s Wranglerstar & Veritasium are both poster-people for it, 1 in working-class Kegan4 the other in middle/upper-middle-class Kegan4, & both displaying Kegan4’s obnoxiousness.
I spent most of my adult life in it, and wish I could just retroactively slice most of my life from Universe.
“systems-of-systems” mode is Kegan5. )
it’s consistent that if you field a Kegan3 person to be your negotiation-representative, and the other side fields a Kegan4, you’re run-over.
If you field a Kegan5 & they field a Kegan4, you’re run-over.
IF they field a Kegan4, THEN you need equal/opposite bullying, in order that the zero-sum-game not beat your side to shit.
However, IF they have the uprightness to field a Kegan5 & you can too, THEN Win-Win becomes possible.
Young-adults, Kegan3’s ( the Kegan3 stage can continue for the entire rest of a person’s life, from post-adolescence to 100yo or more, but it is mentally/psychically a young-adult stage ), cannot accept that evil is real, the way someone mentally-older can.
Kegan3’s are in the absorbing experience into their unconscious-mind, stage.
Kegan4’s are in the pushing meaning out of their unconscious, “authoring” themselves through that unconscious-pushing-out process stage.
Kegan5’s are in the this is true for them, that is true for these other people, the-other is true for me, and this is how it all fits together stage.
I’d not permit any naive Kegan3’s to rule any major operation, nor permit any zero-sum-game-“validity” Kegan4’s to rule anything important.
That book gives people the means of converting fighting-off-growing-up to actually-successfully-growing-up, and so it is worth many life-years or life-decades, to many.
Nobody in the whole world has any reason to accept that my values have any validity in them, though, that is true.
All who hold that there is nounderstanding which should be prerequisite to authority, well they all outnumber me, don’t they?
shrug
This I’ve found tests to be true, however.
( bonus point:
it has been published that the DreamTeam formation is a team-of-7, with 2 who match the Kegan5 mental-development, 2 who match the Kegan4 mental-development, & 3 who match the Kegan3 mental-development.
The Kegan4’s bursting with ideas, but not understanding all the systems-of-systems gotchas, means the team is more likely to be able to innovate,
the Kegan5’s, if they can do it without demolishing the Kegan4’s morale, can ask questions to corner the Kegan4’s into considering all sorts of things they hadn’t, so they prevent lots of stupid mistakes,
& the Kegan3’s are the “glue” which holds the team coherent & harmonious.
I’m mixing multiple sources together, but they really were identifying the same thing, only each was doing-so without some of the other pieces.
New Scientist had an article on The Dream Team, years ago, Chris McGoff’s book “The Primes” is part of it, the Kegan & Lahey book is part of it, some HBR stuff as well, perhaps some stuff from the managers-of-programmers books, what’s her name, Roth? can’t remember…
fit it together, though, and it fits properly: there is a balance which produces working momentum, instead of institutional-mentality, and that working momentum is based on the substance of the minds of the people in the team, and ignoring the unconscious-mind-development stage … is ignoring the BIG part of each person’s iceberg.
I think the media is reporting Biden’s accomplishments accurately when they happen, however nobody is really interested. The news media (particularly on TV) thrives on controversy, conflict, and violence, even if they have to exaggerate. “If it bleeds, it leads”. Things working the way they ought to simply doesn’t drive attention.
I often joked during the 2020 election that Biden’s campaign should have been “Make Politics Boring Again”. Good governance shouldn’t make headlines. But there are some people who assume that if someone is out of the news, they must be irrelevant.
Oh I do not mean to suggest that they make false statements, just that they have an enormous bias, well as you said, towards providing “focused” coverage in some areas but then virtually nothing else.
So now he is trying to make his case to the American people, and like I guess he is worried (title of the OP) that nobody will believe him, b/c if he did good stuff then surely they would have heard of it (except… that is not the case - he did the good stuff, but they did not hear about it, at least not from the common news media).
And even that is irrelevant in a large sense, b/c Trump is in the news daily lately - but like, somehow that is working for him!? This is where I sigh and wonder if we will even have so much as the farce of a democracy a couple years from now, b/c if that is our mantra - that whatever the news shows is “good”, while facts themselves are, if not “bad” then at least irrelevant? - then we deserve whatever we will have chosen for ourselves, at that time.
And yes, I know - “but they did…!” - and I am countering with “why didn’t we do…?”, like each individual state could implement some kind of ranked-choice voting? I don’t know if that would work for the Presidential election, but if it would help with the members that we send to Congress and the Senate, then while it would take some few years, we could really change things, in less than a decade. But instead, I guess we just… won’t?
Elections aren’t about gaining voters, they’re about getting yours to the polls. Trump constantly in the media fires up his base. Biden’s base doesn’t even like him yet.
As always, Dems are hoping that fear of what the other side would do if they won will drive its base to the polls. But as all the comments here show, I worry that that will not be the case.
e.g. people recall how Biden “slapped” the train workers - not so much forgetting as never even knowing in the first place that Biden stayed with the situation for months to help them get a good proportion of what they had asked for.
If facts do not matter so much to conservatives, who are in possession rather of “alternative facts” and then vote with their hearts rather than heads, so now too it seems that liberals are likewise receiving possibly a different set of “alternative facts”, and may also (e.g. the Gaza situation) vote with their hearts rather than heads.
There’s been a LOT of times someone has said, on lemmy, “man I wish Biden would just do x” only to get responses of “Biden started the process of doing x several years ago, here’s the progress that’s been made, here’s the timeline for completion.”
It’s not that people don’t care, it’s that people literally don’t know.
I do not know the specifics, but some kind of a contract - “provide for the defense against attack” and such.
Ofc you could argue that genocide could invalidate that contract, though much like the outright war crimes happening in Ukraine, you would have to prove that, to a governing body (and again, doesn’t Israel have a veto power there?). Also Biden then loses any negotiation leverage he had to employ the carrot rather than the stick.
Also, there is whatever reason (cough oil cough) that we made the contract in the first place. If gas prices suddenly spike through the roof, Americans will complain bitterly and LOUDLY, and place ALL of the blame onto Biden, with NONE of it going to Israel.
Also, none of this matters really, b/c the job of President entails enforcing the contracts, not making up new ones - that is the job of Congress, who despite the fact that the 2024 federal budget started last October (look it up) STILL has not managed to pass the budget for THIS YEAR, 2024. We are nearly halfway through the ENTIRE YEAR - five months and 2 & 1/2 weeks behind us already - and despite ousting McCarthy and replacing him with Johnson, Congress is still gridlocked. Especially on this matter. And on Ukraine. And on the border. And on literally everything else.
People forget: but it is the job of Congress, not the President, to make funding decisions, like what monies go to what other country - otherwise he is bound to simply enforce whatever contracts were PREVIOUSLY signed, and there is only so much he can do to change that without their approval. This is what democracy looks like: to enforce the will of the people, who unfortunately are a divided nation right now, particularly on this matter where half the nation wants to send aid to Hamas, while the other half wants to send further aid (as in MOAR weapons) instead to Israel.
Ofc you could argue that genocide could invalidate that contract, though much like the outright war crimes happening in Ukraine, you would have to prove that, to a governing body (and again, doesn’t Israel have a veto power there?)
The United States is the global hegemon. We are not bound by any agreement. And, inevitably, our lawyers can find ways for us to act however we want in such a way that it does not technically violate any agreement we are a party to. No one can bind us against our will.
And no, Israel does not have “veto power” before any international body. Certainly not at the UN or WTO
This is my take as well… if you get a hundred hugs and one slap, you’re gonna remember the slap. And selling out the rail workers was one huge fucking slap.
Oh it definitely seemed like a slap at the time… but then as another commenter pointed out here, he got them like everything that they asked for (lemmy.world/comment/8562627 => www.ibew.org/media-center/…/230620_IBEWandPaid). Okay so it took 4-5 months more than was hoped, and in the end they did not get the “7 sick days” that e.g. Bernie Sanders wrote a letter in support of but rather 4 sick days + the ability to convert 3 PTO days into sick ones (which in some sense is better in terms of being more flexible, like if you needed a doctor’s note or something, though obviously is still worse than like 7 sick days plus additional PTO days beyond that).
So my point is that we should be notified of both the successes and the failures, but our biased media seems to be only highlighting the latter, while virtually ignoring the former altogether. That leaves the general American public - who have jobs irl so do not have time to invest MANY hours hunting and rooting out proper information, both pro and con, on every single issue - unprepared to make a fully-informed decision.
So in retrospect… was it a slap & a “selling out” then? He stuck with them until it got done, just as he promised he would. And it did ultimately get done. He did not “abandon” them, he just did it differently. My words here are not a huge ringing endorsement in support of him, but neither are they biased anywhere nearly to the degree that the media is showing?
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