Felons shouldn’t be disenfranchised in the first place. Not to mention the guy at least had a plausible belief that his probation had ended; it’s not news that the criminal justice system is designed to be complicated and cruel for offenders.
I do appreciate the irony that I am defending a wannabee fascist using progressive logic, though.
Starting with only autopaid non-flexible spending is a good bet, and there are credit cars that will de facto get you an ~3% discount on those categories just for using them.
Remember, all cash rewards / points systems exist to make you spend more money, though. Like the cards, they’re designed to increase your spending. So it’s the same advice – only think hard about it for fixed costs.
Every non-NATO state on the border will be targeted and incorporated either directly or by being turned into a loyal authoritarian state a la Belarus.
And if the US leaves NATO, that undermines confidence in NATO. The alliance will fall. At that point, either the EU will have to step in and supplant it – in which case the US will no longer be even be PART of the mightiest diplomatic alliance in the world, much less influential in it – or else there’s no reason to think Russian aggression will stop endlessly escalating until all-out war between nuclear powers is on the table.
The IRA is a fantastic overall piece of legislation that gives us a fighting chance. Most policy experts agree that it has a lot of very achievable goals – thanks to its structure that offers uncapped subsidies for certain beneficial productions that are estimated to represent well over a trillion dollars in real investment, on top of the fact that renewable energy already out-competes fossil on NEARLY all financial metrics.
And if Biden loses, huge amounts of this progress can be undone by executive action, inaction, and feebleness by a Trump administration. Which he, I remind everyone has pledged to do.
If the bill lasts more than a couple of years, it will build its own constituency a la medicare and become VERY sticky and hard to remove. But it’s very vulnerable right now.
So yeah, as someone who thinks climate is the top issue everyone should be caring about since it represents an existential threat to our entire human race, I think it’s fine for Biden to focus for the next year on winning that election. If he wins that election, most of the very significant progress will get 4 more years to cure – it will be pretty well locked in and indeed many growing industries will be craving more. Rural states seeing major investment for the first time in decades in the form of renewable energy industry will want more. It has the potential to be really transformational.
Plenty of solid reasons to criticize Biden. Climate is not one of them. He’s made progress that is difficult to fathom for people who only have cursory knowledge of the US energy economy.
Really resembles a bill of attainder, to me.
We’d ALL be much better off, and a similar outcome could be achieved, by putting to law strict data security and privacy rules. Plus it wouldn’t inevitably be challenged on very reasonable 1A grounds. But that isn’t as politically possible because so many – especially conservatives – don’t believe in the liberty of privacy.
Boring company/hyperloop is the clearest example.
Literally any subject matter expert on the subject of transportation can spell out a half a dozen things that make no sense/are actively harmful about all the attention and investment these projects got. Well There’s Your Problem has a 3 hour slideshow on the subject, for example. Musk was even caught on the record admitting one of its motivations was to fuck with real transportation projects like California HSR. The whole thing was all-but-provably an elaborate con.
Yes yes, both sides are exactly the same and calling out hypocrisy is somehow the exact same as being a hypocrite. That’s nice, dad, now remember that dinner is at 6.
Yes, they see them as property to be used.
But even in that stupid, dehumanizing framework it still ought to be one of the issues of “parents rights” they love so much. Your child’s privacy being violated is a violation of your property rights. YOU didn’t consent to that child’s privacy being compromised, and they are a thing that belongs to you and can only exist according to your beliefs and rules, so that was an attack on you.
So the real truth is that to conservatives, there is no coherent ethical framework they can turn to to reliably make judgements. It is the politics of being a cruel and obstinate asshole.
Didn’t you know? The right to privacy somehow only protects adults and not children.
Places your bets, which is it:
He isn’t a credible ‘threat’ to Putin, and the state media is letting him get away with some visibility so that he can be crushed in the definitely-not-completely-fake polls in order to preserve the democracy kayfabe. Possibly to achieve a domestic policy goal like getting out of the Ukraine war without losing as much face for Putin.
He is a credible threat and will be dealt with brutally and violently.
He is a sockpuppet. Either of Putin or the next generation of Russian leaders who, in proud Soviet tradition, are going to honor and glorify Putin in his retirement then quietly delete and replace his history and influence with their own.
People really seem to forget that prior to October 7th, Bibi was facing regular mass protests. Accusations of full authoritarianism. He was being condemned for the fact that he was building the most ultra-conservative government Israel had ever seen. Facing multiple political corruption and bribery accusations and MAYBE even looking at future jail time, at least if he didn’t maintain the PM seat and the relative immunity it offers.
The Bibi administration NEEDS Hamas. Without them, they’re just screwed. Only the threat of violent attack from across the border is able to maintain his power. And indeed, he’d even been facing accusations that he was directly sending support to Hamas.
Really, nothing good will happen on the region until the Israeli people follow through on their political duty and vote all these fuckers out, then immediately become partners with Gaza and the West Bank to build Palestine into a functional, modern democracy where its citizens have a chance to thrive. THAT is their recipe for long-term peace and stability. No amount of smart bombs, iron domes, blockades, and border walls will get them there, at least shy of completing the genocide so many in the Bibi administration have said publicly they want.
I sure hope you are right, that this is finally the tide turning… but I’ve seen that tide fail to turn before.
For someone who ostensibly believes in small government, a marriage should be seen as a contract between consenting adults. There is absolutely no reason ANY greater organization, whether the government, the community, the church, or whatever it is, should be making decisions about who can and cannot qualify for engaging in that contract.
This guy’s entire comment is a smokescreen hiding his actual opinion. He invokes the courts jamming it down our throats… that is their job: to limit the activities of government when government overreaches. Bans or restrictions on gay marriage ARE an overreach. A “true” advocate for small government should be happy the courts are telling the government no when it overreaches – but he isn’t happy about it. Because he’s, like most conservatives, full of shit.
The entire thing betrays that he doesn’t actually give a shit about small government. He wants government right up in peoples’ business. He wants you to share your bedsheets with government. He’s an insane, evil fuck because anyone who thinks the government should be involved in restricting marriage at ANY level is an insane, evil fuck.
It is, but not on its own. Only when compared to the larger canon of conservative thought in which these principles are only applied to things they have preference against.
If a conservative doesn’t like it and the federal government is protecting it it’s a states rights issue. If a conservative does like it and the federal government isn’t protecting it it’s a constitutional issue.
There is no well reasoned principal backing these beliefs. It’s merely a facade of justification put on top of preferences.
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The word for people who care about individual liberties is “liberal”.
The right tells us they are not liberal. Believe them.
“ISIS could come in and want to display one, the IRA…basically anybody. You’d have to be content neutral and let everybody.” He then went off-topic to accuse schools of trying to indoctrinate students with ‘transgender ideology.’
Yep, that sounds like a typical conservative. Mind is just a jumble of terrified nightmare-fantasies about the big bad de jour that wanders off into total nonsense without any notice.
No. It isn’t. This isn’t some weak state flailing about. This is a major world power, with a fair amount of material wealth and industry, actively pursuing an evil agenda for the sake of the egos of a few political personalities and fascist, right-wing domestic politics. There’s nothing to pity here.
You have not spelled out a counterargument here.
When someone identifies as conservative, it means they have a strong preference for no change happening (and even undoing more “recent” change, although what qualifies as “recent” usually is viewed through the lens of personal preferences). That’s what it means. You don’t seem to even dispute it. It’s what the word means.
And when a conservative tells you all the other things they AREN’T – as the modern conservative usually jumps to do – believe that those are the values. If they say they aren’t liberal, it means they don’t care about preserving individual liberties. If they say they aren’t progressive, it means they do not want to see progress. If they say they aren’t a socialist, it means they do not care about an egalitarian and pro-social society. And when they say they aren’t a “neo-marxist”… well, that one really is meaningless gibberish, pay it no mind at all.
I feel like you keep bringing up labor unions because you think it’s going to be some kind of gotcha for me, but it super duper isn’t. One of the major reasons we saw such a profound weakening and collapse of labor unions in this country that only (maybe) reversed recently is because the older unions were seen as swinging way too conservative. That they became more concerned with maintaining power and status quo than doing the job of unions. Whether or not that criticism is fair is, I’m sure, a topic of much argument – I definitely think this view was part of a very serious disinformation campaign run by capitalist and ruling class-types to fight back against the working class – but this is certainly what your typical boomer/anti-labor-type will cite as the reason they don’t care for labor unions.
Let’s not forget who “the right” originally was: the conservatives who wanted to preserve the monarchy and stop the french revolution. They didn’t want to change from the old way to a new one. They thought the transition would be too chaotic. They were certainly correct that it would end up being quite chaotic indeed, but if they’d had their way there may still be a fucking divine right king prancing about in court while the people staved.
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