nochules
1yr ago
Remember "used" covers a broad definition of things. Somebody saying "I'm going to kick your ass" and the other guys saying "Unlikely because I have this gun" counts. I doubt that there would be a bunch of people lying about that, but if there were they would probably be canceled out by people lying in the other direction by not admitting they used the gun they were not allowed to legally have for self defense.
nochules
1yr ago
Well this gets more to the question being bad rather than the answer 44% of Black gun owners gave being bad. Still the finding that half again as many Black gun owners feel that they used their gun defensively is an interesting point, regardless of whether you or I would agree with what they did counts as a "use".
nochules
1yr ago
I suspect he is trying to deflate the "Republicans want to ban all abortions" attack from the Democrats and make abortion less of an issue in the midterms. Talking about abortion distracts from the economy and other issues that he probably sees as more favorable at winning over independents. The fact that his bill will never pass makes it almost a complete freebie too.
nochules
1yr ago
On CNN the headline is: White House says Covid-19 policy unchanged despite Biden's comments that the 'pandemic is over'. First sentence: (CNN)The Biden administration is largely downplaying President Joe Biden's comments declaring the coronavirus pandemic "over," suggesting his remarks signal a continuation of the White House's evolving stance toward the pandemic over the past few months.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/19/politics/biden-covid-pandemic-over/index.html
nochules
1yr ago
I suspect they subscribe to Conquest's Second law that "Any organization not explicitly and constitutionally right-wing will sooner or later become left-wing" so they feel they need the over the top conservativism to avoid just becoming another liberal dating site.
nochules
1yr ago
In that article Scruton was arguing against an educational model focused on only teaching “relevant” things, as defined by the worldview of the teacher. So he was adopting their framework when saying that there is benefit to teach “irrelevant” things. I highly doubt he actually believes that those things are irrelevant in the broader sense.
nochules
1yr ago
The definition of “used” is that the FairTax has already been paid on it, or that it predates the existence of the FairTax. So not much of a loophole.
nochules
1yr ago
I guess it would be the same reason you don’t say all your employees are actually unpaid volunteers, but they have access to an off-shore account that happens to have money put into it every two week, so you don’t have to pay the payroll tax.
nochules
1yr ago
I think one of the key things here is that the spending bill allocates money not just generically to "border protection" but rather to fund specific things, and some Republicans oppose the things that were being funded. For example:
Congressman Troy Nehls (R-TX-22) homed in on a portion of the bill that prohibits the use of funds set aside for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “to acquire, maintain, or extend border security technology and capabilities, except for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing.”
I suspect Nehls and Raskin differ greatly on what their definition of "border protection" means, which will make finding something they can both agree to very difficult.
nochules
1yr ago
An important piece of context here is that she has made a seemingly false claim about a police interaction with her children before. She claimed that police officers pointed guns at her children while serving a search warrant on her house. That was not shown in the body camera video that was released by the police department, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
nochules
1yr ago
I throw out mail that is addressed to the person that lived at my house before me. Not three times a day, but at least once a week. I'm sure there are plenty of similar things that could get my count up.
nochules
11mo ago
1939 is widely considered to be the best year for motion pictures in history. But nearly all of the films (Gone with the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Of Mice and Men, etc) were based on a novel or other previously published material. Mr. Smith Goes to Washington is the one of the few notable original works. I suspect that truly original works have always been the exception rather than the rule, but it is the exceptions that stand out. I suspect that the number of sequels/reboots has increased while the numbers of films based on written media has declined, rather than cutting into the original works. But just a guess without digging into it.
nochules
11mo ago
I think by the time you have an “enemy” then you are past the point where the steelman and weakman are of any real value to you. They seem most useful as tools for picking which side of the fight you should be on.
nochules
11mo ago
What I am saying is that if you are a local lord and one of your advisors say that you should back the Lancastrian claim since Henry VI is the rightful king and your other advisor says you should back the Yorkist claim because white roses are prettier, you don’t just say that the argument in favor of Lancaster are stronger. Instead, you say that this Yorkist claim is a weakman and I need to figure out the strongest possible Yorkist argument to see if they are actually correct before I make a decision. Once you are flying the Lancastrian banner and have a Yorkist castle under siege you don’t need to invent Yorkist arguments, since there will be plenty of them flying at you.
nochules
10mo ago
I had several imaginary friends when I was little, but I never thought of that as being an unusual position. I'm not sure how much media I was consuming when I was 3-4, but I certainly wasn't talking to people about what society thought was normal for me at that age.
nochules
10mo ago
I'd guess it is more that changes in the way children were raised eliminated the need for it, or something along those lines rather than it being a "fad". Two people who were kids in the 90s say they didn't. I was a kid in the late 70s/early 80s and had one. I'm not sure the ages of the other people who had or didn't have one but it could point to a generational difference.
nochules
10mo ago
I suspect that the Congressional nomination process for service academy applicants complicates the role of race in admission and that is a separate issue from traditional college acceptance processes.
nochules
9mo ago
Right, but this is about what to do with the exceptions not the usual. What I am basically saying is that if an Asian-American from California gets rejected and an African-American from Georgia gets in, the system for how it happened is different for Harvard than it is for West Point and trying to come up with a one-size fits all for both situations is a more difficult than just trying to fix the non-military schools.
nochules
8mo ago
I have found “I see what you did there” as an effective way to acknowledge that you understand that a joke was told without having to commit to a judgement of the quality.
nochules
8mo ago
This is very interesting to me as I see picking blue as the obvious morally correct choice. Maybe that is just my military background coming through, I don’t know. So my options are pick blue where there is a chance that everything will be fine, or pick red where I will selfishly be fine but I will kill all the morally correct people. Easy choice of blue for me.
nochules
8mo ago
Because in my values system choosing to help others is better than choosing only to help yourself. Even if everybody brings their own lunch, I will still offer people some of mine. If people eat all my lunch and I starve to death I would hope that it would be a comment on their greed, and not my stupidity.
nochules
8mo ago
Well that is certainly one way to read it. I just wanted to be nice and make sure everyone else had enough to eat. But if you do not understand that I'm not surprised you don't understand why I would take blue either. Or really any of the choices I've made. But nevertheless I would still take the blue pill on the off chance it keeps you and everyone else alive.
nochules
8mo ago
I was in the Iraq War, so I have some experience with putting my life on the line to help protect the other people that also choose the blue pill. Now granted maybe it would have been better off if we all just took the red pill and stayed home in that particular case, but in a general sense I stand by the choice I made.
And I feel confident based on knowing the sort of people that I met in the military and talking to first responders etc that many of them will pick the blue pill instinctively because that aligns with their values. And so I will pick the blue pill consciously because I want to help save them, even at my own risk.
You may not know anybody like us, but people like that do exist.
nochules
8mo ago
I full understand that if everybody picked red then everything would be fine. I also fully understand not everybody will pick red, because not everybody thinks about things the same way that you do.
The situation is there are people that will die and you can vote to save them or vote to kill them. Those are the only realistic choices.
I would caution strongly against using a polygraph if you have any regards for the person being interrogated at all. It is by no means a pleasant experience, physically or psychologically. This is by design, since the point is basically to make you uncomfortable and play mind games with you until you admit the thing that the person ordering the polygraph wants you to admit to (or whatever other secret it happens to flush out) or the interrogator runs out of tricks.
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