Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
No bio...
User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
They clarified - you're wrong, they are only charging for the first install.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
Not only is the evidence quite good that Joe was involved
Do you have a link from a neutral source about that?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
11mo ago
I'm not a lawyer so my description probably isn't perfectly accurate; The_Nybbler gave a more precise definition. The important bit was that it threw gasoline on the fire in terms of money in politics.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
12d ago
If illegal immigration got worse after Biden undid Trump's policies, why can't Biden just redo them?
Again, he could redo them. He could (and should) reimplement Remain in Mexico to at least reduce the current surge somewhat.
But they're mere bandaids because they don't address the root issues, the most major one being the asylum loophole. The best long term fix would be to remove the asylum loophole, which Trump tried to do but failed since he wasn't willing to do more than executive orders on immigration. Remain in Mexico would be better than the status quo, but it would still be subject to periodic legal challenges, as well as Mexico deciding they don't want to keep all these people and helping them enter the US.
Illegal immigrants!
Sure, illegal immigrants. The point is that calling them things like "animals", or saying they're "coming from shithole countries" is needlessly inflammatory if the goal is to pass substantive policy.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
I don't deny the lock in effect is real and present to some degree, but it's not a way to avoid taxes, only to delay them a bit. Owning stocks is not an end unto itself for most people, they're a vehicle to get returns, either through dividends or appreciation. So yes, they can own the Apple stock for longer, but eventually they'll sell which triggers the full effect of the tax.
Also there are strategies to monetize without triggering gain (eg leverage, death).
The death loophole is bad and should definitely be closed. I'm not sure how leverage could be used to avoid taxes, but it should probably be closed as well.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
Russia is transitioning from authoritarianism to totalitarianism, which typically increases corruption, not decreases it. At the same time, Russia is devoting more resources to fighting the West, so it's entirely plausible that it's becoming both more dangerous and more corrupt simultaneously.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
People aren't "projecting forward", they're just parroting what their biased media consumption tells them. The fact that 80%+ of Republicans were positive about the economy in 2019, but then <20% of them were positive in 2023 is a pretty good indicator. They'll overwhelmingly point to inflation being disastrous and wiping out peoples' earnings, yet official data shows real (i.e. inflation adjusted) wages are up since then. When confronted with this fact, they'll then give very thin evidence trying to say the official statistics are all made up, even on a relatively more rigorous site like this one.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
First, there shouldn't need to be a quid pro quo for initiatives that are just generally good for the country, which Ukraine aid is. We're providing assistance, building up our own withered defense-industrial base for a potential future hot conflict against China, and inflicting losses on an ally of China who has very explicitly stated anti-American and anti-Western views. FDR didn't need to give Republicans a bunch of concessions to fight WW2.
Second, Biden was willing to give concessions on immigration by signing the most conservative immigration bill in a generation, something Republicans were on board with until it looked like it could actually pass, then Trump sabotaged the agreement.
Russian propaganda isn't the only reason why Republicans dislike Ukraine aid, but it's certainly a part of it. I've debated the Ukraine issue a lot, and Russian arguments like "James Baker pinky-promised not to expand NATO eastward" have been prominent, even on this very forum.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
Is there not a lot to criticize? Only in a very binary thinking is criticizing the US some nefarious act and proof of bad will.
I feel like you're being deliberately obtuse here. Of course you can criticize the US or the way that things are done here. But you don't have to go to an adversary country to do that, nor hold them up as an example of where it's supposedly done better. Tucker's examples were bad for other reasons, e.g. cherrypicking and just being wrong about basic facts like Russian inflation being less than the US's. But beyond that, Tucker has had a pro-Russian bent for a long time, so it's a motte-and-bailey to say there was nothing else going on there. He could have taken examples from friendly countries like Japan or Europe, but he didn't. He also could have added caveats explaining how he didn't think the US should be like Russia in most ways but that clean subways were an exception, but he didn't. His entire trip was done to delegitimize the West and hold up Russia as a better alternative. It's why he went and asked softball questions to Putin, giving the leader of an enemy country a high-profile platform to say whatever he wanted to Western audiences.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
2mo ago
I didn't get banned for it, sure, but I sure did get warned for it. It was back on the old site where I said something along the lines of "Biblical literalism is delusional belief in fairy tales" and I got a warning from one of the mods who told me to use the term "superstitions" instead. I can't find the exact comment unfortunately since Reddit is horrendous to search through.
...try calling atheists delusional, and see what you get. Try saying that atheists are treated with kid gloves, and see what happens.
I just hope there'd be some consistency from the moderators. Outside of the mod team, you'd obviously get flak for being wrong, especially if your implicit belief was that Christianity was the alternative, but that's to be expected.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
6mo ago
No because hyperinflation is typically devastating for an economy and can have impacts that take years to resolve. 1000% is Zimbabwe tier.
After several years of regular 2% inflation though, things would mostly get back to normal, minus societal trust issues that 1000% inflation was ever possible in the first place of course. This is assuming that people's incomes mostly kept track with inflation, which usually happens unless there are other economic shocks.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
Isn’t what you described like the definition of bribery. Hunter gets paid and Joe talks to the business associates?
If they were a single person, perhaps. But considering they are in fact two different individuals, things are different. Is Hunter guilty of something? Almost certainly. Is Joe though? If he had knowledge of Hunter's deal and/or if he got payments himself, then yes. But that's critically where Republicans haven't been able to produce evidence despite years of trying.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
Laptop with Hunter saying dad got paid.
There's no solid evidence that Joe got any money despite Republicans aggressively looking for it for years now.
None of it matters that it’s a strong case you will never convince partisans to turn on their only electable candidate.
Correct. Even if it was a slam-dunk case, it still probably wouldn't matter. "Impeachment" has become little more than a press conference with some adornments.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
Balkanization would be terrible, as it would almost certainly lead to foreign meddling and violence breaking out between states like it was a jumbo-sized Yugoslavia.
No reasonable person thinks this would be a good idea. It's shortsighted toxoplasma in its most extreme form.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
Its not maximizing outgroup hatred. Its establishment hatred.
This is a distinction without a difference. Trump's base (and many others!) hates "the establishment"... because they think it's controlled by their outgroup.
Lots of Americans would support basically anyone to rule the US as long as the first thing they did was put DC to the sword and Harvard to the torch.
Agree on the "many Americans want to put DC to the torch", but that's simply because negative partisanship and media negativity bias creates a picture of a terrible amorphous political class that people love to rage against without concrete proposals for how to make it better.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
8mo ago
Do you have a link from a neutral source going over Joe Biden's connection?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
11mo ago
if you claim that the decision "threw gasoline on the fire in terms of money in politics"
I don't understand your point here. The "gasoline in terms of money in politics" was a reference to superPACs. Are you saying Citizens United didn't lead to the creation of superPACs?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
11mo ago
I'm not sure what you're getting at, but the effects are an extension of money = speech, thus allowing for the formation of superPACs and a greater emphasis on money in political campaigns.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
12d ago
The provisions that Republicans want are temporary. The provisions that Democrats want are forever.
All of the provisions that the Democrats received were minor, and they were (as far as I can tell) all temporary, either because they directly expired like the 50K more legal immigrants for 5 years, or because they were minor carveouts in the things Republicans wanted which would expire themselves.
The bill hands Democrats exactly what they want, and enshrines a permanent increase in "legal" unrestricted immigration forever.
Blatantly false. The increase in legal immigration had an expiration date of 5 years. Check the bill summary or even the full text if you think I'm wrong.
Democrats have been calling for years to have an asylum "express lane" where even if the conditions are stricter on paper, anyone coached to tell the right lies will breeze right through the process to a "legal" path to permanent residency and citizenship.
This is what's basically happened in the status quo with Catch and Release, something that the bill would have ended.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
Huh? Nobody's obligated to either respond to an entire post or nothing at all. I called out a bit I found particularly objectionable.
I could easily turn it back on you: why did you respond to MY comment without addressing the issue of whether a statement like "is too stupid to be allowed to vote" should be disallowed or not?
That bill would have enshrined minimal allowable amounts of illegal immigration into law before the proposed countermeasures kicked in, and would have transferred great authority over such enforcement to the discretion of DHS. It was a bad bill that deserved to die.
It did no such thing. It had trigger clauses that would allow the USFG to take measures above and beyond what they're currently capable of doing. The DHS authority is to get around the court clog of the DoJ, which is currently responsible for one of the main loopholes via missing court dates. Here's a good primer. It was the most conservative immigration bill in a generation, and Trump ensured its death for purely self-serving reasons. It makes sense, given he was basically no better than Obama when it comes to actual illegal detainment numbers.
Ukraine is not getting Crimea back, and probably not much of anything else they've lost. The only question is how long it will take for everyone to accept this reality.
Crimea would have been an easier target than the original breakaway republics in Donetsk and Luhansk. Had the UA offensive succeeded in pushing to Azov, they could have plausibly disabled the Kerch bridge, and then the entire southern front would have been a redo of Kherson. If UA retakes the imitative then that's still plausible, although the modern situation so heavily favors the defense that it is indeed pretty unlikely even if the UA does fix its medium term issues.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
Ah yes, the "by 2300 we'll all be Amish" idea. Somehow I doubt this will come to pass.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
There's a big difference between the drive for completing a tough challenge, and being pretentious for having done so. I get that the smug superiority people get is part of the reward for doing the challenge, but it's best not to make that the central premise. For FromSoft titles it very much is.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
1mo ago
The challenges in these games tend to be very fair
Categorically not true. Enemies can attack through walls while you can't. Enemies can attack through each other while you almost never get allies in the first place (at least prior to ER). Grab hitboxes are notoriously terrible. DS2 has a large emphasis on groups of enemies which is the literal definition of unfair.
Then there's traps like the infamous dragon bridge in DS1 that is just terrible game design. Absolutely no indication that the bridge is a trap other than scorch marks (like somehow fire in the past means a dragon is about to attack you in the present). It also comes right after a difficult boss and could easily make people think they're supposed to go somewhere else when you're actually supposed to dodge around the dragon.
You seem to be confused by the terminology. "Inflation" is the rate-of-change. "Price levels" are the absolute number. Inflation increases price levels, such that price levels can remain elevated even though inflation has decreased.
High inflation really is the enemy more than price levels. High inflation skews lots of things and eats into purchasing power if wages don't keep pace. Price levels are arbitrary, and all that really matters is how much stuff people can buy relative to what they could purchase yesterday (or 10 years ago). This more important phenomenon usually gets shortened to the term "real income", i.e. income adjusted for inflation. As per the sources in the OP and stuff like this, real income is up.
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