Ben___Garrison
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User ID: 373
Ben___Garrison
7mo ago
Because Republicans haven't been able to find any evidence to verify it despite looking very hard for years now.
Ben___Garrison
3mo ago
There are problems in the enforcement of justice, but it's not nearly as bad as you're making it out to be. I presume you're referring to the Hunter Biden stuff? Well, that's largely symmetrical to Trump's Russia investigation: Lots of smoke, not much actual fire (at least by the president himself), yet partisans whip themselves into a frenzy over the issue since they're getting a maximally damning picture due to their filtered media consumption. Biden could very well face a frivolous impeachment trial like Trump did as well.
Ben___Garrison
7mo ago
They've found evidence that Joe has taken meetings/calls with people at the request of his son, but not that anything ever came of these, or that Joe ever benefitted monetarily. Republicans have had subpoena power for years and have had a full investigation going for at least several months, and still haven't found the bribery part of the whole "bribery scandal."
OK, if you want to quibble about what "had their day in court" means, sure, my statement would be more accurate if it read as "were addressed by the courts" (before being dropped/denied/withdrawn).
I'd then turn around and say you're rewriting history by implying these cases didn't get a similar legal treatment to any other lawsuit.
Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
Agreed. This forum's meta treatment of Christianity is very goofy. You can call trans people delusional and nothing will happen. You can call people in favor of covid lockdowns delusional and nothing will happen. You can even call people you're arguing against delusional as an ad-hominem and nothing will happen. But call religious people delusional and you should absolutely expect to get warned/banned.
Ben___Garrison
5mo ago
Don't worry, I downvoted your reply as well.
it's interesting sometimes to see the tally of up and down votes. Highlights contentiousness in an interesting way
Could still be done indirectly by looking at upvotes on original post, and upvotes on the replies.
Ben___Garrison
5mo ago
Downvoted while correct. This forum should really take out the downvote button entirely since it's just a "boo outgroup" button.
Ben___Garrison
7mo ago
probably the largest bribery scandal in a century.
Assuming there actually was bribery, which, again, is still very much unproven despite months of a Republican led investigation to find evidence of exactly that.
Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
That the West is the villain in Ukraine, despite Russia being the aggressor. Russian propaganda flows freely through Western societies, while the reverse is not true. Russia is scoring more and more wins because of this fact.
Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
would legitimize China's stance against facebook and google years ago
These were already legitimized when China became the only country (barring maybe Japan) that has a tech sector that could plausibly broadly compete with that of the US. If the US doesn't do this, it's just unilateral disarmament. Democracies are losing the propaganda war badly since they're unwilling or unable to use similar tactics that dictatorships like Russia have been using.
Ben___Garrison
4mo ago
My main argument was that the gish-gallop claims were falling on their own merits. That hasn't changed.
Ben___Garrison
5mo ago
Like funding a bunch of wars or something?
Hardly a new phenomenon. The US was in Afghanistan for 20 years. Ukraine aid is ~6% of the Pentagon's budget.
Sure, I trust your explanation is more correct than my simplification.
But the important bit was that it threw gasoline on the fire in terms of money in politics. That said, I still don't think it matters all that much since people overrate the power of money in politics.
Ben___Garrison
27d ago
For your first two paragraphs, I agree challenge can be fun, but I strongly disagree that the challenge I would face would be diminished if other players could opt for an easy mode. That's the crux of the debate here. From your last paragraph I feel like we probably agree on this point. An easy mode would allow more people to experience the games if the difficulty would have otherwise precluded them, and it would smash the elitist snobbery surrounding the games to a good degree.
And furthermore, because enemies are so punishing, it forces the devs to design them to be fair.
Definitely not. I've already responded to your other comment on how these games aren't fair in general. A better lens the "fair" would be "predictable and preventable" that Joseph Anderson has detailed in his video essays on the series. Games like Sekiro nail that concept, while the later bosses of Elden Ring fail horribly. Again, watch the JA critique I linked above for examples of how they do so. Elden Ring is proof that in at least some instances, FromSoft values the elitist snobbery over good game design.
Ben___Garrison
27d ago
I wouldn't say they're bad games per se, but they're certainly overrated on their own merits barring Sekiro.
Obviously, because they are difficult
Nonsense, they occupy a large cultural space because they're needlessly exclusionary, which appeals to a lot of elitists. Difficulty isn't hard to find, just try any challenge runs or speedruns for games you already enjoy. But there's a reason why speedrunning is incredibly niche while the Souls games aren't. People like to watch speedrunners but not to actually do it themselves, while the Souls games sell millions of copies, and it's mainly because of the elitist snobbery the Souls games have wrapped themselves in.
Ben___Garrison
1mo ago
besides the dissident right
It mostly is the dissident right as you say, but you shouldn't just handwave them away. They altered the outcome. They prevented Ukraine aid from being passed. It might eventually pass, but it will come delayed and probably quite a bit less than was originally intended.
Ben___Garrison
6mo ago
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.
Ben___Garrison
7mo ago
They clarified - you're wrong, they are only charging for the first install.
Ben___Garrison
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
10mo 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
11d 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
22d 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
23d 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
1mo 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.
I think this forum should disable/remove the downvote button. It's a legacy holdover from Reddit but it really doesn't fit the theme of the motte. Downvoting increases the intensity of heat while doing little for light. Humans are hard-wired to care about the popularity of their ideas, even people very low on the agreeableness spectrum (which I'm sure accounts for the majority of posters here). People who are routinely downvoted are much less likely to post, intensifying the echo chamber effect.
If a post breaks the rules, reporting it is still the best solution.
If a post is just using bad logic, it's much better to refute that logic with a response than to downvote. There's nothing I find quite as aggravating as making (what I think is) a good point, only to be downvoted with no responses. This doesn't happen nearly as often on this forum as it does on Reddit, but it's still a nuisance when it does occur.
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