ViperMan

You can absolutely be critical of Israel without being an anti-semite. That's not what anyone is saying. But, to your point. October 7th gave Israel (not the Jews) the right to displace every single Palestinian from Gaza forever. That action, supported and enabled by Iran, and undertaken by Hamas foreclosed a two-state solution permanently. And I said as much shortly after October 7th. It also gives them the right to overthrow the government of Iran.

I didn't reference an AI (not chucking spears), but on the right I feel the anti-semetism has more to do with Jesus being "killed by jews," which enables it as an effective wedge. It's also right in line with the conspiracy-addled right which thinks everything is under the control of some ultra-powerful cabal of jews.

The plan is fiscal dominance. The Fed will serve its primary function by allowing the US government to continue to borrow money at below the true inflation rate in order to suck value out of prior labor. This will enable the government to continue spending unencumbered by financial reality. And it will also force workers to continue working. There is no escape.

@Negat0ry, if you know we used to have tax rates that high, then you also know that nearly no one actually paid taxes at those rates. Or if you don't, then you just consumed a "fact" and regurgitated the sound byte. So I don't know why you referenced it other than to imply that you think increasing taxes on billionaires will solve all our woes. I'll spare you the suspense though, it won't. And for many reasons. I'll give you two practical ones. First, mostly because the amount of "money" you think billionaires possess is actually tied up in capital assets - things that produce income or enable other people to be productive (factories, websites, logistics facilities, buildings, digital networks, communication infrastructure, supercomputers, etc). The second reason, and most important one, is there just isn't enough juice to squeeze from them. Meaning, if you confiscated all the wealth of all the billionaires it wouldn't cover the fiscal outlays and promises our government has made. Those are practical reasons. Those are mathematical reasons. Those are logical reasons. Those are reasons you should be able to buy into regardless of your political affiliation. I won't try to convince you that there are additional moral reasons you shouldn't confiscate wealth, but it'd be a waste of time - not only because you come from a different moral and ethical perspective, but because it doesn't matter on a practical basis - we can't get there from where we are. Your suggestion (assumed solution) won't work for practical (mathematical) reasons. Which, by the way, is why I think you promulgate a moral position. Yes dude, I believe that people should be able to stay rich forever. And honestly so do you. You don't think you do though, because you can't (or haven't) conceive of a world in which money keeps it's value and relative wealth means relatively less. I mean seriously dude, do you honestly think that every generation should start from zero? Like what's the point from a humanity-centered perspective to force individuals to have to suffer and grind from square one? I suspect you'd say "fairness" and "opportunity." I want fairness and opportunity in our country for everyone as well. Those are two things I think you and I would agree on, and I'm sure we just disagree about the mechanism, and honestly, that comes from just a different fact-pattern that you and I see. Problem is though, you have a math problem to address. You can moralize about it all you want, but the numbers don't work. You are right in that the $30 (15) million dollar exclusion is a lot of money, and you're also right that the crux of the problem doesn't lie in a few 'outlier' farmers who are able to pass on their $100M dollar farms to their heirs. Rather, the core problem is much broader and more subtle than that. The problems we have are all underneath the surface, and exist in ways most of us never think of or pause to consider - i.e. the wealth transfer mechanism that is social security, wherein it transfers my present day wages to the sons and daughters of people who bought homes in the 1960s and 1970s. Boomers, who are consuming end-of-life care and consuming dollars which my labor produced. These people should be putting their homes on the market in order to generate the 'income' they need to eat and to pay for their medical care. Instead, the government provides them with income and medical care (from me), and then when they die, their kids inherit many millions of dollars - much of it being MY MONEY. So in some cases it functions purely as a pass-thru mechanism from one set of people (produces) to another (consumers). I think you would agree that is an unintended and let's just say, sub-optimal, outcome of SS. I point at something like this because it's but one of an innumerable set of problems and dynamics which when they operate at scale, create all the problems you and I lament. You want a solution, and so do I - I respect that. You just haven't identified the problem yet.

Ooorrrr, we could you know, stop putting all the old-people on welfare. Social security (in certain cases) functions to allow old people to stay in multi-million dollar homes in lieu of selling them. Homes which are then passed on to their heirs largely tax free. So, social security really functions as a wealth transfer vehicle from present-day workers to the descendants of property owners. We're not going to fix that though. So in a case like this, I could see an "estate" tax as being a legitimate recoupment of social security paid out which allowed someone to stay in their home until they died. Oorrrr, we could do the same thing for people who absorb massive medicare dollars in lieu of paying for their own healthcare. Orrrrr, we could stop the infinite deficit spend binge we're on, which will irrevocably result in continued and runaway inflation. Or yeah, I guess we could just take people's property too. I would have zero issue with people's estates owing taxes on income they claimed during their lives which they want their estates to pay after death. I'd have a major issue though, with just confiscating people's inheritance who aren't net minuses. I'd just rather it be characterized as a recoupment tax to identify it as a bill owed for benefits received. Most estate taxes are not "that." Is the article you reference the "Summer Slide" series?

There is an element of the right that is highly susceptible to anti-semetic propaganda. He clearly fell victim to it. Ironically, this aligns people who fall for it with leftist elements. It's an extremely effective attack vector.

@Negat0ry @Pooter @Sua Sponte @gearhog You naysayers are something else, man. I'll tell you what. It doesn't matter if we can't install a democracy in Iran. If we turn them into Afghanistan, we win. Because they don't have nukes. Last time I checked, they already want to destroy us and our friends, so the bit about them becoming jihadis is a red herring. They're already jihadis. They already hate us. We didn't need to bomb them to achieve that. WhAt's ThE pLaN?? The plan is to destroy their government. This is specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic. I'd be far more concerned if I was hearing soothing sounds of "hearts and minds" and "girls' schools" and the like. Do you guys honestly think there was a different path forward? If you do, I'd love to hear it. And ISIS? Yeah, I remember ISIS. The terror group we bombed the shit out of? Yeah, where are they now? Oh that's right. Their caliphate is gone. Finished. Accomplished almost entirely with airpower. You people need to get it through your head that war is the state of human nature. It will never end. There will never be world peace. We will always be at war. Get over it.

Welp, here we are. Seems to me that we're learning better ways to wield our power.

buT tHe sUpReME cOUrt iS cONseRvatIvE

re: Mamdani and NYC Yes, in some ways NY is getting their just deserts, but it's also sad to see, as NY is a great city that much of my family hails from. While some in NY are getting what they deserve, others are merely collateral damage and serve as useful targets in the Left's quest to achieve a communist utopia. I'm mostly just tired of misanthropes running the world, but hey, there's nothing new under the sun.

Dude, @brabus and @Lord Ratner already took you to school over this, but one thing I'll pile on with: that document was signed with a fake name. Now, I understand the necessity to protect underage victims, but you may as well have produced a document that was signed by Bert and Ernie. As others have stated: you will have a lot of us supporting you once these allegations are substantiated. Until then, this is just more political mud-slinging.

What juicy nuggets are in there for us to digest? Give us the download. Is Trump an alien?

@Lord Ratner and @brabus already nailed it earlier. What we are seeing is useful idiots being useful. Yes, people have a right to protest and to have their voices heard, but in active law enforcement operations, law enforcement has the authority - which is something that people on the left just do not accept or comprehend. I'm not sure which. People have chat-grouped, reddited, or otherwise brained themselves into thinking that they can do whatever the hell they want and label it protesting and hence somehow legally insert themselves into some sort of "referee?" position that gets to be there calling balls and strikes, but then who also get to lightly skirmish at will when the play isn't going according to their own rule set? People have mistaken rights with license, which is a distinction that you're supposed to learn while writing civics essays in junior high school. Both Renee Good and Pretti appear to be people who never matured past their teenage rebellion years. Should either be dead? No. Do they deserve to have been killed? No. Did they engage in actions that led directly to their tragic, but justified deaths? Unfortunately, yes. I understand and accept that law enforcement is made up of people. People are imperfect. I see frat all the time in the sim. Thus, if I were to engage in such a protest, if things started to go sideways, I would immediately be completely compliant and non-threatening. You wouldn't see me struggling on the ground with 4 other officers while I was armed with a handgun. But this is also instructive as to the actual tactic and strategy being employed by the Left. Push things just far enough into the grey zone, that you provoke a violent or emotional response. Thus, Good and Pretti have done well, and served their purpose for the Left. Unfortunately, just like in 2020, this is part of a larger, coordinated operation meant to destabilize and delegitimize the government. The Federal government is helping somewhat, but then again, so is the Minnesota government. @Negat0ry is not worth responding to directly. The false equivalence between what Kyle Rittenhouse did along with whatever happened in Charlottesville is null and void right out the gate. No such struggles with law-enforcement took place. Even the terrorist MFer who ran over people at that protest in VA (useful idiot) surrendered peacefully. The difference is stark and could not be more clear. On the right, you have a true, grassroots, non-violent, response to the state abdicating its law-enforcement responsibility; the other is communist agitation which is apparently being sanctioned and coordinated by members within our government.

There's also a lot of state-induced (and insurance-company induced) "You're not allowed to say that or recommend that because it's off script" imposed on the medical field. Not that I think that's its biggest problem, but it's certainly there.

Better us than Russia / China. Like it or not, this action opens up the possibility of getting things straight in this part of the world and countering negative influence by multiple malign actors.