2rafa
2hr ago
With enough lobbying they can pass laws that say things like “for each half hour spent in court, x lawyers based in local city who passed the state bar must have y billable hours attached to them”.
Lest that sound farfetched, Hollywood writers just got this kind of deal and the studios are far more equipped to play hardball than state congressmen.
2rafa
9hr ago
I disagree, there were various leftist justice reform DAs that won big in NYC, Philly etc. De Blasio was on the progressive wing of the party; he wasn't Chesa tier but effectively welcomed that movement into office.
2rafa
23hr ago
Chasidic views on interracial marriage (and therefore conversion into Judaism, really) are less exclusive than you might expect. All ultra orthodox accept sincere religious conversion as an inherent part of Judaism and there are occasional ethnic minorities.
As with the Amish, though, an extremely high native birth rate means the majority of the population will probably always be of the original stock.
2rafa
2d ago
Interestingly this is at least partly because Australian Aboriginal genes are even more recessive than white genetics.
Looked this up but couldn’t find anything on it. If it is true might be a quirk of their archaic human ancestry.
2rafa
2d ago
And that’s most of what’s necessary. Some kind of soft-kefala where the migrants don’t stay, don’t have or bring over children, and go home at the end of the season.
2rafa
3d ago
Psychological factors are understated. All that needs to happen is that a degree of terror is implemented that scares most of the illegal population.
Mexico - even Guatemala - is not Afghanistan. Enough random, arbitrary and terrifying enforcement and enough will leave. Legal immigration can’t be reformed overnight and Trump doesn’t have the votes in congress.
2rafa
3d ago
Mandatory e-verify doesn’t work because most settled illegals appear to have stolen social security numbers, as discussed above. It’s a fake solution.
2rafa
4d ago
How many nuclear strikes on Israel, are an acceptable price to pay for getting rid of him?
It’s an interesting question. Consider the following points:
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Half the world’s Jewish population lives outside Israel. Most are Zionists. Large reservoirs of highly fecund 6+ tfr Orthodox Jews live in the United States and indeed in Western Europe. It is unlikely that Iran nuking Israel would kill more Jews than the Holocaust, which the Jewish population will recover from in less than 100 years. The question is therefore some variant of “would a nuclear war between Israel and Iran spell the permanent end of (at least this iteration of) Jewish settlement in the Levant?”.
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Rich American and European Jews have the money to fund the reconstruction of Israel, which is possible unless it is overrun. If it is overrun then all reconstruction is impossible, since there are probably no mercenary armies capable of retaking it and even the US likely wouldn’t. However, Iran alone can’t mount a ground invasion of Israel and Iranian proxies have been badly damaged by the recent conflict. The overrunning scenario therefore involves a kind of organic jihad - post nuclear strike - in Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon, marching across into a ruined Israel and taking it. This is entirely possible and that should be acknowledged. However, such a march could be stymied by Western air support in service of a surviving Israeli civilian, military and mercenary force in theory, depending on the global geopolitical situation.
I think the answer is unclear. I don’t believe Israel would invite nuclear war. But that they would lose is not fully certain, even if it is likely for reasons of Israel’s Arab neighbors and Iran’s strategic depth and lower population density.
2rafa
4d ago
Fiscal discipline can only be enforced by the bond market, that is the reality. Since both Democrats and Republicans have borrowed and would borrow, the questions around deficit spending are only these:
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How can we maximize spending to fiscally constrain a future opposition administration/congress?
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How can we allocate the greatest possible funding to issues we care about?
This bill, while far from perfect, mostly accomplishes both. You can’t mass deport without large scale holding camp infrastructure. $50bn or whatever isn’t enough, but it’s a good start. Immigration is the only thing that matters until immigration is solved (AI matters too, but the state is powerless to stop that march of technological progress).
2rafa
5d ago
Ukraine is vastly larger than Gaza and civilians were easily and quickly (and still are) evacuated well behind the front lines where the intense conflict occurs. In Gaza, neighboring countries refused to accept evacuations, and Hamas - unlike either army in Ukraine - is an insurgent force that doesn’t wear uniforms, doesn’t observe any rules of war, and hides in the civilian population.
If the Ukrainian military had melted into the civilian population in the occupied cities where they emerged, daily, from schools, residential homes, hospitals and so on to attack Russians, the Ukrainian civilian casualty rate would be much higher. As it happened, the sides are fighting a conventional war (one Hamas cannot afford to fight, and doesn’t wish to).
While Israel and the US can't take an area the size of a municipality in Gaza against enemies with no resources Russia took the area the size of Denmark in a week against an enemy with 3x larger force.
“The world” is shrieking about modest civilian casualties in Gaza’s dense urban landscape, if the gloves were off the Star of David could be flying off (the remains) of every building in Gaza in a month. The key to that would be a more ‘biblical’ kind of warfare where you go in and kill every single male above the age of 12, which Israel and the US are clearly militarily capable of doing. That they aren’t doing it isn’t a question of capability. (Note, of course, that I am certainly not advocating this.)
Ukrainians in the occupied territories are, as pro-Russians often remind us, just unwilling to resist Russia to the degree that Gazans are Israel.
Arguing against specific highly spurious claims is very different to arguing that intelligence is the only feature of the mind that is inherited. In any case, you might add that the more anti-Jewish side of the DR is actually split between “Jewish IQ is a psy-op, see Unz, myth of American meritocracy, IQ stats from Brooklyn high schools in the 1930s don’t map to Israel” etc and “it’s real but it doesn’t matter because they’re also hereditary cheats, sex pests, clannish narcissists”.
2rafa
8d ago
There are some people who simply cannot be trusted around most of the opposite sex. They’re usually at least moderately, although only very rarely exceptionally, attractive, but they have an intoxicating charisma and can seduce almost anyone. The archetypal siren, rake, Mata Hari, whatever. Only some variant of the Pence rule is going to protect you from them (if targeted).
2rafa
8d ago
My guess is that he just fell in love with her. If he wanted to fuck 18 year olds he could have divorced his wife 20 years ago (or come to an arrangement, like Eric Schmidt, or done that classic rockstar / Larry Ellison / Henry VIII thing and just had a succession of younger wives). It seems more likely that he was relatively happy or at least comfortable in his marriage and was then seduced by Sanchez, who is no doubt a skilled and immensely ambitious operator, and then divorced his wife (likely at Sanchez’ request, and certainly as a consequence of her will given she gave her own texts to her brother who then sold them on to a tabloid) so he could marry her. There was no buffet of 20 year olds to pick from, it wasn’t like that, and the billionaires who do live that lifestyle are essentially plugged into the party circuit, big time nightclub promoters, model / escort agents and so on on the Cannes/Miami/LA/Mykonos circuit with which Bezos was not really familiar pre-Sanchez given he was a nerd who mainly attended sober economics conferences.
2rafa
9d ago
The Israelis are delusional and wrong about regime change. It’s strange that critics of Israel seem to be so heavily invested in Mossad’s infallibility (even ‘October 7th was allowed to happen’ etc). The only way regime change happens in Iran is if the Tehran middle class get fed up enough to make it happen. That will be independent from Israel.
2rafa
9d ago
Nope, Trump did what neocons failed to accomplish during any previous GOP administration over the last 40 years, namely direct, massive US air strikes on the Iranian nuclear program, and he did it over the wishes of isolationists like Carlson and to the approval of the great majority of his base. Framing this as a win for principled anti-intervention rightists is ridiculous.
And Trump didn't keep his intervention limited because everybody was so supportive of it.
Ground invasion of Iran is impossible and externally-forced regime change is impossible without ground invasion. Trump picked the most maximalist neocon option realistically possible, just like when he had Soleimani assassinated over the suggestions of the DoD and most of his own senior advisors.
I had a feeling this was going to end up here when I first saw it. Really, this is just ‘gender black pill’ stuff from a vaguely femcel-adjacent perspective, but not structurally different to the male equivalents (Tony Tulathimutte etc). I think it would be a mistake to read into it too deeply. You can always find good reasons not to trust people. It’s no real surprise that someone who resents men in this way would embrace the transactional nature of ‘sex work’; this may be an advertising strategy, but it is probably not insincere.
2rafa
13d ago
Ok, well let's just take a look at the undefeated Uno Reverso.
Indeed. Suppose Ignatiev were to reply to your comment (and general worldview) with:
“My dear SS, I agree completely. I think all practicing Jews should renounce their religious practice (including, as I have already argued, kosher dining and food preparation), and all ethnic Jews should abandon their cultural particularity. Jews should convert to mainstream Protestant Christianity, the predominant gentile religion in the United States, or practice no faith. They should marry gentiles (of course most already do, but let’s say all of them). All Jewish religious institutions (synagogues, museums of tolerance, etc) should be closed, all religious clothing banned. Those who refuse these terms ought to go to Israel, but those who accept them can remain in America with no further restrictions placed on their participation in society, culture, politics or the economy. Furthermore, any racial agitation by white nationalists towards those former Jews who fully, sincerely renounce and abandon their Jewishness will be strictly prohibited.”
Would you accept his offer?
Because that is the difference between Ignatiev’s position and those of the dissident rightists who borrow his words in this case. He (like all communists) allowed for conversion; even the last emperor of china was converted, after all. You do not.
2rafa
13d ago
Can you explain to me how that's relevant at all to what I said?
(Since you tagged me) It literally serves as an example of him opposing Jewish particularism, which is ultimately what you accuse him of.
2rafa
13d ago
This is just a re-run of the “stunning” surprise justice-reform prosecutor / mayoral wins in some big cities during Trump I. The core of progressive ideology is only temporarily vulnerable to reality-based criticism (for example ‘crime just doubled, the streets are now full of psychotic homeless vagrants, the subway is unsafe, these guys want to defund the police’).
As soon as the issue is even partially resolved, the progressive voter returns to his comforter position (electing candidates like Mamdani) because he never actually questioned whether his own ideas were wrong; his shift to the center was ‘pragmatic’ (fear based), as crime stabilizes he again has the luxury of voting ideologically.
More generally, the Democratic establishment is at least partially responsible for screwing over Adams. Corrupt? Maybe, but there are 50 Dem mayors of major cities over the last 100 years who were more corrupt than him.
“Remigration” certainly isn’t official AfD policy, its advocated by the far-right Höcke wing of the party, not the Weidel center.
2rafa
15d ago
Regime change isn’t possible without a ground invasion which isn’t possible. Posturing doesn’t change that.
I think among the under-25s beards are less cool again (admittedly, I’m not really tuned in to late zoomer discourse) and have certain “millennial soy” connotations for the more online crowd.
Long hair for men comes in and out every few years, it shifts within generations. The early age of millennial cultural ascension (2006-2010ish) often had the men in quite close cropped hair, see early Glee for examples, or alternately the Justin Bieber / emo origin flop across the eyes. By the early 2010s that had largely been replaced by either the side part or the man-bun, which surely counts as long hair. Even the zoomers have already had multiple male hairstyle trends, including the ‘90s DiCaprio center part, the mullet etc.
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