The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
8hr ago
For the same reason as why you want to cut the top off your power economy by having rule of law and a constitution, presumably.
The analogy makes no sense. An absolute ruler is an absolute ruler because he has power over his subjects; he's directly taking away their autonomy. Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos being wealthy does not rely on making J. Random Janitor poorer.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
8hr ago
Bezos's wealth does not cause anyone to be poorer; there's no "strangling" of the bottom of the economy by the top.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
16hr ago
Capgains taxes are fine, and even desirable if you want to lower or stabilize the gini coefficient.
And why would you want to cut the top off your economy?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
1d ago
Why should Trump fight at all for a country he knows best as a source of graft for the Bidens?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
It's a common mistake, but "misogynistic" does not mean "someone women do not like".
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Fails to counter; that claims women care mostly about physical appearance, not that they don't like losers.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
By any standard but a circular one (that is, he was popular with women therefore not a loser), I think he was a loser. I mean, he's in and out of jail and/or psych hospitals.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Do you know what women don't like? Losers.
I present you the Parable of Henry.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Absolutely massive protests that erupt every couple of years.
Iran has almost 90 million people. A small minority would be massive. Even assuming the protests weren't stirred by Western intelligence agencies or even by the regime itself to draw out its enemies.
They try to obtain nuke. That is actually good enough reason for regime change or preventive nuclear strike.
No, it isn't, not unless you want the US to actually be the evil hegemon it is often claimed to be.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
Few people in Iran supports the current regime.
Why should I believe that?
And if they do reconstitute - you kill them again. Until they are tired of dying
I'm not sure why I, or the United States, should care so much. If they did anything significant enough to the US I can see killing them until whoever replaces them includes "don't fuck with the Great Satan" among their policies, but other than that, such a policy seems pointless.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
2d ago
You only need to summary execute couple of Ayatollah and decimate the revolutionary guard - the people of Iran will do the rest.
Where "the rest" is anoint a few more Ayatollahs and reconstitute the guard, and hate America even more with even better reason?
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
3d ago
Dying from something easily preventable is also a stupid way to go.
Depends on whether the cost of that prevention would have been too high. It's easy to prevent death via recreational mountaineering -- don't do it -- but I think you'll find that to be a rather unpopular position among mountaineering enthusiasts. Similarly, it may be easy to stay inside when the sun is out, but the cost of doing so is high regardless.
Why not advise kids to smoke tobacco, too? They probably won't get lung cancer, and the benefits of nicotine are that they won't get fat and will have better focus!
It's a reasonable question to ask, but I think if you added up the pluses and minuses you'd find smoking is a negative on balance. Not just lung cancer but COPD and a host of other diseases which debilitate as well as kill, plus stinking like smoke and having cravings for cigarettes.
But maybe I'm wrong; my mother was a lifelong unrepentant smoker, though it did kill her in the end.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
3d ago
The Israel-Hamas (plus Hezbollah) war is already in part an Israel-Iran proxy war. They didn't so much kick a hornets' nest as overstep a very fuzzy line. And Iran getting its back up over the inviolability of an embassy is pretty amusing for those of us who remember 1979.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4d ago
Hard to say. Not a lot of movement since 2009, but there's a lot of confounding factors. But we keep getting more and more expensive features added in the name of safety.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4d ago
The problem is the safetyists have no brakes. Nothing's ever "safe enough".
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4d ago
Seems too small to reliably overwhelm air defenses. Perhaps an attempt to let Israel know that Iran really thinks Israel overstepped the boundaries of this proxy war they've been fighting. Nothing says "cut that out" as sincerely as high explosives, after all.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4d ago
Looks like it takes effect in 2028. I think it was supposed to be this year.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
4d ago
California has outlawed home generators, which means New York will be next, and then the country. So it's darkness for everyone.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
5d ago
Yep, I've only been to Pittsburgh a few times but the first time (in 1993 or so) I ended up in some decayed industrial area near one of the rivers and had a hell of a time finding my way back. (At night, naturally)
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
5d ago
If you put enough density of turbines and solar panels - chances that there won't be enough trough all of the areas are quite slim.
It's rather high. Not only is all this in the Northern Hemisphere (so winters with weak and short sun are correlated), but we frequently get storm systems which cover massive areas of the US and Canada with clouds
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
5d ago
Yes, that's my point. These "reasonable man" tests are presented as a way of softening a Draconian-appearing rule such as "if you buy a gun for your child, you're responsible for any murders he commits" or even "if you have a child you're responsible for any murders he commits". The problem is the "reasonable man" test only gets applied when something bad has already happened, and the reasoning of "if something bad happened, the parenting must have been unreasonable" is irresistible to juries. And thus people learn that if you don't want to risk going to jail for murder you just don't buy your kid a gun full stop -- or you just don't have a child.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
6d ago
The problem with "reasonable man" tests is they get evaluated in retrospect. It's easy to rationalize that a "reasonable man" would have acted differently if you know how things turned out.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
6d ago
Convicting Assange of treason in the US should be absolutely impossible, because he's not an American citizen or even permanent resident, and never has been. He owes the US no duty of loyalty. That doesn't mean it actually is impossible of course, but 18 USC 2381 doesn't disagree on the requirement.
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
Espionage, on the other hand, can be committed by foreign nationals.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
7d ago
Ah, Amanda Marcotte. Thus demonstrating that a bad penny always turns up. She used to be rather commonly mentioned on Scott's "Things I Will Regret Writing" posts.
I suppose there's a bound, but there isn't a fixed amount of things of value, which is what your argument relies on.
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