They really didn't. It was a dog and pony show under the belief that he would not make his way back into power. The dems/reps did not want to set a precedent of holding a president to account for doing terribly illegal things. They didn't intend to actually do anything to prevent this.
I'm not sure I entirely agree with that. I wonder if the Democrats didn't delay prosecution until late 2023/early 2024 in order to have it be a headwind against Trump running again.
If so, they have been well-paid for that bit of "strategy". Trump was able to delay the cases long enough that the election came first, and now he has immunity at least while in office.
> I wonder if the Democrats didn't delay prosecution until late 2023/early 2024 in order to have it be a headwind against Trump running again.
I think they didn't realize the moment the country was in. They put a judge in charge of the justice department when we needed a bull-dog prosecutor. It was a bad choice.
Unfortunately Goodhart's law has rendered official inflation measures borderline useless, as anyone who has been shopping for food for the last decade can tell you.
Taking your example in good faith: Gold is four times as expensive today as it was at this time in 2015. Has food seen a 4x increase? No, right? So gold is volatile on a level way beyond inflation. QED.
Are CPI measurements difficult? Sure. It takes a bunch of expert eggheads and a lot of shouting to come to consensus. Still better than trusting some kind of magical commodity market to tell you.
> Gold is four times as expensive today as it was at this time in 2015
easy to explain. Gold has a supply constraint. More demand causes prices to rise. When you have a currency following a heavy inflationary trend, people buy Gold, so the price of Gold goes up.
People buying gold speculatively as an inflation hedge is exactly the opposite of gold being a source of stable value, though. Gold is "inflating" far, far faster than currency (edit to clarify: far faster than currency-valued goods; gold "interpreted as" a currency is deflating catastrophically), you just pointed it out!
There are a shocking number of gold-happy nerds on this site who are going to be shocked and horrified the next time it crashes (which is has, and will again). The nonsense the largely-partisan smarter-than-thou media you're watching is feeding you is nonsense, and at some point you're going to discover that via great suffering.
You don't even need to trust CPI alone when looking in history, where things have evened out a bit: we have historical short-term bond yield data, even the yield curve: people bidding on short periods with the safest debtor expecting changes in nominal value.
Not to suggest CPI is redundant, there's a reason why central bankers read it after all. For one, it's the most timely data they have. But it's impossible to nudge it year after year -- accumulative error -- without it become obviously decoupled from other data, including the long-term bond market data. It just so happens commodities are the wrong yardstick.
> American parties always seem to maintain party discipline over their members, forcing those with other views to either remain silent, or leave.
I mean, why wouldn't they? If you ran a party, and one individual seem (from your perspective) to hold opinions that goes against what you and others believe the party is for, wouldn't you also want them to leave your party?
Shouldn't be that hard of a problem really, if we could accept that people change beliefs and opinions as life goes on, and if you have more than 2 political parties as real options, people could be a bit more diverse and nuanced with their spoken opinions.
If you ran a party, and one individual seem (from your perspective) to hold opinions that goes against what you and others believe the party is for, wouldn't you also want them to leave your party?
I have run and worked for businesses in which dissenting views were important to our success. I don't personally find your argument persuasive.
But I do know people who find that kind of thing very persuasive: I think it would most appeal to the type of person who believes that groups of people should be managed in a strict hierarchal manner, with the people on top managing things for their own benefit.
And—confirmation bias alert—IMO that's absolutely what both of America's parties do, and why it is difficult for their voters to get even of a fraction of the benefits that the donors (who may donate to both parties) enjoy.
Recently the democratic party intentionally granted just enough votes to let a budget pass. That was, as far as I can tell, identical to the same thing they wouldn't vote for weeks prior.
I think they can handle ideological differences. You just need to be able to radically change your vote by fiat of the party leadership.
That's a weird way to describe "enough democratic senators dissented from the party line to let a CR pass".
Unlike the republicans, the democrats have never been able to maintain that kind of tight control over members. The CR didn't pass because "democrats" chose to let it. It passed because the republicans were able to individually influence 5 additional democrats to change their votes, in addition to the 2 who had always voted for it.
The kind of tight control that the republican party has had recently is very new and hasn't really happened before in the US.
The ones that voted for it were all magically the ones that were either not seeking re-election or ones that are not up for election the next term.
This is a hell of a coincidence.
I don't mean to call out the Democrats as the only one who do this (on HN you simultaneously can't point out a party for something because then somehow you're being partisan, but you're also damned if you don't give an example, so it puts you in a tough spot). Just a most recent thing I've noticed.
Up until recently even on HN Schumer was nearly universally damned for letting it happen or being behind it in his capacity as a minority leader. Perhaps without evidence, and perhaps baselessly. But it's telling that as soon as I point it out in a slightly different context, then suddenly it's an opinion worthy of greying out.
>Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, continued to face criticism from members of his own party after he reversed course and allowed the stopgap spending bill to come to a vote.
It's obviously not a coincidence. I don't see how it is any kind of evidence for taking orders from above. People who don't have to face their voters any time soon (or ever) obviously have more leeway on making deals they might not like.
Passing a CR has required 60 votes in the senate since 1974. Despite this, and 60-vote majorities being very rare, shutdowns remained rare and typically very short for a very long time. This was not because the parties got together and made a deal; it was because it was common for senators in both parties to make side deals across the aisle to support their own pet projects. Having the discipline to force the senators of a party to not make such deals is something that only the republicans have managed, and only very recently.
People are angry at the democrats for being weak and a mess, but that is the normal state of affairs in US party politics.
Where "constituents" means "money-weighted interpolation of opinions from constituents, corporations, and politically active non-constituent HNWs alike."
So the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory should have locked all the factory exits themselves? Keeping the employees from taking breaks was definitely the thing that made the owner happy.
Who exactly would you say is maintaining party discipline?
In 2012, Mitt Romney was at least nominally the leader of the Republican party as their Presidential nominee.
Nowadays, Donald Trump is clearly attempting to maintain party discipline, but I don't think anyone has ever been able to maintain discipline over Donald Trump, not even before he was their President or Presidential nominee.
Your comment reminded me of James Traficant, the former congressman of Ohio. He went to jail for bribery, and then came out of jail suddenly caring about prison inmates. I've seen this in a few other, former elected officials, who have gone to jail.
Some people are incapable of having empathy about an issue or a group of people unless they have a personal connection to that group or issue. You see it in politicians who are anti-gay rights until they have a child who comes out as gay (e.g. Rob Portman).
"As the father of a daughter, I understand the need for feminism that I ignored as a son, brother, playmate, classmate, friend, neighbour, landlord, tenant, lover, teammate, colleague, report, supervisor, and fellow citizen."
That's a particularly icky formulation of personal connection, because it has overtones of paternity as property rights.
But the real issue here is his party. It's gone from 'economically conservative with preference for free markets, austerity, and military solutions' all the way over to 'Populist with slavish devotion to a fascist leader and a reactionary cause'. Romney now looks like a liberal compared to his party. We haven't had a party this bad since the know-nothings, federalists and the whigs, all of which self-destructed, and we haven't had a leader this bad since Andrew Johnson. It would be fun to think about what would have happened differently if we weren't on the brink of losing our democracy and/or being regressed back to 1890.
I'm paying for my search engine now. I'd pay for Firefox if Mozilla wasn't a fucking clown car of an organization at the business level. I have a deep respect for the engineering team there, but the bean counters running the place should long ago have been ousted. It's the same cabal paying themselves exorbitant salaries and driving completely inane initiatives that nobody wants (see pocket, now AI). I'm not giving them a dime until they get their corporate shit together and I'll be disabling whatever crap they're shoving into Firefox.
Oh I agree 100%. I also play for my search engine so it's definitely not a lack of interest in doing so. I agree with your point as well. Get rid of the money vultures in the C-suite who are paying themselves exorbitant salaries and hand that money over to the Firefox devs. Give them the runway necessary to bring on more developers that would give Firefox the attention it needs to keep up with Chrome/Chromium and maybe start playing with the idea that if you want the latest updates when they release you pay for the browser. If you don't need immediate updates you'll get the deferred releases under a 1-2 month delay or whatever they deem fit with security fixes obviously being backported to keep those who refuse to pay happy enough to not abandon the browser entirely.
Targeted tariffs in combination with robust industrial, economic, and monetary policy can be effective in incentivizing certain types of production to remain in, grow in, or return to a country.
Blanket tariffs on entire countries or indeed the entire world amounts to a massive tax increase on your entire populace unless you can somehow start producing everything yourself immediately.
There is an argument that it's primarily being used as a cudgel to give the US an advantageous starting position in trade negotiations, but that seems to be a post-hoc explanation/justification.
Even moreso than guns, the automobile industry has been waging an incredibly successful propaganda campaign for over a century now equating the ownership and use of a personal automobile with freedom.
It's because it's being peddled by the same "oh, I know how we'll use government to fix this problem that isn't top 10 on anyone's list" types who's in previous generations gave us unwalkable cities, unaffordable housing, and the modern urban-suburban hellscape.
While individual points are supported or resisted individually and by individuals, when you sum it up on a population level it's like a gut reaction against listening to someone who's lead you astray before.
Basically the people pushing changes lack the political and cultural capital to see them through because the capital was wasted for naught in decades past.
I live in Chicagoland. Nothing is stifling it except state government itself. I don't want to get on my high horse, but I actually have a choice and it is bad enough now that I opt to drive on a highway. And that is the 'good' mass transit example.
FWIW, I originally came from an old EU country. Mass transit was the way to move around and let me assure you that the government is not better there. The issue is more cultural than anything else.
I would argue that it's cultural specifically due to the decades of lobbying and back-room deals. Yeah, the government isn't helping things because it's beyond their ability now. It would take a similar decades-long approach to shift course, and cost gobs of money.
Eh, I guess I am talking to militant anti-SUV people.
Allow me to rephrase:
- Your environment imposes restrictions upon you
- Even if you can control your actions, optimal choice is to move within those restrictions
- Doing things that attempt to move outside those restrictions are not optimal
- Some people choose the optimal path
- Some people are upset that the optimal path is chosen
Good grief, why am I bothering with nonsense so early?
> Doing things that attempt to move outside those restrictions are not optimal. Some people choose the optimal path.
Optimal for what?
> Some people are upset that the optimal path is chosen.
Person A chooses the "optimal path" (according to whatever definition of "optimal" A has) for their benefit. Their "optimal path" puts person B at risk and forces them to deal with unwanted costs and changes their environment. Do you think that person B is wrong to be upset about the choice of person A or not?
<< Do you think that person B is wrong to be upset about the choice of person A or not?
Oh boy. I am not responsible for you. By this tirade, you only demonstrate to me you are willing to make suboptimal choices so that you can feel better about yourself. That is cool, but don't drag me down with you.
By your logic, each time you breathe out CO2, it forces me to deal with unwanted costs and a change to my environment. Can you hear how ridiculous that argument is at its core?
Can you hear yourself and realize how ridiculous your reduction ad absurdum is?
Let me help you: taking your analogy to the other extreme, and it seems like you shouldn't be mad at anyone if they decide to light up a cigarette in an elevator.
I am not mad. At best, I am disappointed as I let the someone go by themselves as I don't get on the elevator. For every choice, a consequence. It is absurd that you think your response was a reduction at all.. Honestly, if you are on my side, please stop. You are explicitly not helping.
> disappointed as I let the someone go by themselves as I don't get on the elevator.
Ok, so you think that people are expected to just step down and be quiet about it. Others would certainly complain and rightly so.
Also, while you might feel okay about taking another elevator, we can not tell people "if don't like your pedestrian-hostile and accident-prone environment just go move away, or stop being a pedestrian".
I say "people are justified about being upset, because they end up facing the consequences and bearing the risks of the choices made by others" and you somehow imply am I saying this is an argument about "forcing" anything?
That is a seriously bizarre conversation. Peace out.
That's pretty crazy. I've been on reddit since its inception and have never been banned from pics despite having posted on all kinds of unsavory subreddits over the decades.
If I cared about it. I might want to find a set of subs which when you simultaneously post in will result in largest number of bans. Would be interesting experiment. Exactly how many posts you need to get banned from largest number of sub-reddits...
If you're at the point where you have been vetted and allowed to post on r/Conservative, you've gone way past mere "association." This isn't like some board game forum where you can just create an account and start posting. r/Conservative (probably with good reason) has a long and very active vetting process before you're allowed to post there, and only posts that conform to their ideology stay up. So getting banned for participating is a little more than just "guilt by association."
You need to send a photo of your FSB / KGB id to be able to get recognized as a true conservative from USA + you need to post the propaganda of the day
Really depends on who the mods are. I got two bans on reddit:
First one:
In a programming sub, as there was over 10 years a rather known bug. Typical discussion goes off and using the bug as a example of issues that never get fixed in the language.
Short term sub banned for breaking the rules. The stated "broken rule" was one of those very broad one's where you can hit any discussion with. Appeal the ban, stating that my comments are based on facts. Pointed to the github, the 10 year long discussion. No answer beyond "you are perma banned for breaking the rules".
Got private contacted by one of the main developers of the language, as he noticed my banned status and was unable to get a answer from me.
We gone over the bug in PMs. Bug got assigned to somebody and fixed. Thanks for fixing that 10 year old bug.
That was my first experience with mod overreach. But that did not undo the ban for "being right".
Second one:
In a specific country sub, i noticed there was factual proven misinformation. Corrected the user in a lengthy post, with multiple links to news articles. Short term ban by a mod, for "misinformation".
Appealed the ban, got into a whole discussion with the sub mod. Told him that he is using his own opinion, not the facts. Stated multiple times my news sources from my post (not entertainment news but professional news), inc reuters.
Stated that he is not following the rules by using his person opinion as basis for the temp ban and asked for escalation of the ban review. Asked to show what rule i broke (never got a answer beyond his personal opinions).
Other mod came in, stated that i "attacked the mod" by asking for a escalating of the review, and by accusing the mod of not being neutral (i mean, using personal opinion vs official news websites = your not neutral).
Perma ban ... Kafka lol. As you can guess, never got a answer to what "misinformation" that i broke.
/Insert slap head emoji ...
What did the mods gain? Maybe that short dopamine hit for "winning" by banning somebody. Sounds more like losing if you need to ban based upon your opinion, and not the facts, but hey...
O, made new account, and back on sub. Never got banned again. Did i change my posting behavior. Nowp ... If i see misinformation, i come with receipts (links to actual reputable news articles).
Its like, what do you gain? Its just power tripping people that love to mod. There are good mods out there but a TON of them are just nasty dopamine junkies, that want to "win arguments" with bans.
Are there not concerns with burning up multiple agglomerations of metal, plastics, and ceramics the size of a small car in the upper atmosphere every day?
Modern end-of-life satellite designs are made to cause "rapid disassembly" very high up in the atmosphere to trigger high friction on as many individual components as possible - down to fasteners. This promotes completely re-entry burn up of everything so what reaches the surface is dust that settles back down to the surface (or ocean floor) and eventually gets compressed into rock (over millions of years). Basically back to where it came from.
Remember orbit is not like a flying airplane. Those things are going so fast friction forms a plasma that eats away at the object as it decelerates. If you can expose more surface area that effect will eat away at much more of the object. So you design it to have through-bolts or other fastener designs where the outermost portion of the fastener burns off quickly, allowing the whole assembly to rapidly disassemble and vastly increase surface area.
The deorbits are controlled to occur over nonpopulated areas (i.e. the middle of the ocean). I don't think it amounts to much of a concern, compared to, say, the sum total emissions of all factories, power plants, ships, airplanes, and vehicles.
The deorbits are controlled to occur over nonpopulated areas (i.e. the middle of the ocean). I don't think it amounts to much of a concern, compared to, say, the sum total emissions of all factories, power plants, ships, airplanes, and vehicles.
People used to think the oceans could just slurp up all of our garbage and plastic forever without a problem. Yet, here we are.
Idk anything specifically but something that comes to mind is we floated CFCs into the upper atmosphere for decades before we figured out that was doing terrible things up there.
They really didn't. It was a dog and pony show under the belief that he would not make his way back into power. The dems/reps did not want to set a precedent of holding a president to account for doing terribly illegal things. They didn't intend to actually do anything to prevent this.
And so here we are.
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