Without even reading it.

A Windows update broke my wife’s install earlier this week. Her laptop has Manjaro on it now.

Why are you here, Oklahoma man?

The issue, addressed in the article, is that these rural areas used to have industry that gave people a sense of purpose. Now the choices are basically move to a city, die of a heroin overdose, or join a right wing militia. We need to give these people something to do that’s beneficial and where they feel they’re contributing to their communities, otherwise, they’re going to be wooed by groups with ulterior motives that dress their goals up in rhetoric of service and cohesion.

Incompetent? No.

From Wikipedia:

In July 1995, Netanyahu led a mock funeral procession featuring a coffin and hangman’s noose at an anti-Rabin rally where protesters chanted, “Death to Rabin”. The chief of internal security, Carmi Gillon, then alerted Netanyahu of a plot on Rabin’s life and asked him to moderate the protests’ rhetoric, which Netanyahu declined to do. Netanyahu denied any intention to incite violence.

Rabin was leading the Oslo peace process. Four months later in November of 1995, he was assassinated. Netanyahu’s corruption, power grabs, and violence are intentional and planned.

The real mistake may have been attempting to pivot to Iran in an attempt to reinstate the JCPOA. As admirable a goal as that is, I also think it’s clear Trump squandered any trust Iran had in the US when he cancelled it. Iran has taken the Biden admin’s overtures as an opportunity to test its regional influence, instead of being a good faith negotiating partner - and why would the Biden admin have expected anything else when the US hadn’t been a good faith partner? Trump was awful on foreign policy, and set middle-east peace back decades, but Biden has completely failed to understand and adapt to the new status quo.

Agreed. Having lived through the ad campaigns and voted for this tax myself, I can confirm that I, at least, never heard anyone call it a wealth tax. A millionaire’s tax, sure, but that’s just a catchy shorthand. If you do the google search Mr. Flying Squid suggested, you’ll find a lot of sources calling it a millionaire’s tax, and maybe a couple calling it a wealth tax. The ones calling it a wealth tax are just plain wrong.

Massachusetts passed a wealth tax recently.

Not to be pedantic, but it’s an income tax.

Yes, Trump supporters honestly believe that the vast majority of undocumented migrants are criminals and terrorists. They honestly believe that the Democrats are trying to create a Soviet style dictatorship. They honestly believe we need a strongman to rid the country of people who are genuinely trying to destroy it. I know a bunch of them; they think they’re helping.

What would be beautiful is if “entity” meant “subdivision of a single state” but I won’t hold my breath.

The PA was intended to manage the Israeli withdrawal and establishment of an independent Palestinian state, as agreed upon in the Oslo Accords, and yes that was meant to be a collaborative process with the Israelis. There were people on both sides who were serious about the peace process, but unfortunately the people in charge often weren’t, and so the situation deteriorated until Hamas and Likud, the two worst possible parties to oversee the peace process, consolidated power.

I don’t know that people really consider Floyd a hero… A martyr, maybe. He wasn’t fighting for anything except his own life, and it’s enough of a crime that it was taken away from him for allegedly using a fake $20 bill. Whatever kind of symbolic figure he is, is because of things that were done to him, not things that he did himself. The situation didn’t even warrant his arrest, but Thomas Lane walked up behind him sitting in his car and tapped on his window WITH A FUCKING GUN. Is that what they’re teaching in police gun safety classes? At no point did any one of those absolute shitbirds do a single thing right in their interaction with Floyd.

Just make sure no one named Ted Faro gets anywhere near the project.

The problem is democrats love exploiting brown people for their cheap sweat shop labor.

You could build an IMAX theater with all that projection.

I’m not going to tell you all the things you mentioned are impossible. I’ve read your other comments too. I’ve seen homeless women crying in the street, people with obvious mental or physical problems begging. Homelessness - visible homelessness - is terribly common. As far as crime goes, I don’t know, maybe people target tourists? My rental car visibly full of luggage was broken into in San Jose once, and they stole a bunch of electronics. Learned my lesson on that one. Apart from that I’ve wandered around some rough areas on occasion and in 36 years I’ve never been victimized in person.

Anyway, one last point: according to official stats, the rate of homelessness in Australia is nearly 3x that in the US, although I imagine that Australia probably counts homelessness differently, so it’s hard to compare, but 3x seems like a big difference for simple differences in methodology to account for. That said, I’m sure Australia has better services, so it may not be as visible to the average person, and less of a struggle for those experiencing homelessness. Hard for me to believe things are all that much better in the land of Murdoch, though.

I suppose that’s because parliamentary parties are much stricter with their membership. A small difference of opinion could lead to the expulsion of a member. US parties can’t really do that, so instead we have caucuses within the parties that vote along party lines most of the time, but differently on some important issues. In a parliamentary system, the caucus members would be expelled and would have to form their own party to have their views represented.

Yeah, beyond that I was mostly responding to the assertion that “Americans are stupid and easily manipulated.”

No, they are responding to an imperfect system that punishes them for having strong morals. Far from stupid, it’s actually quite rational. The best thing you can do if you care about not having to choose between genocide and even more genocide is get involved in pushing ranked choice voting through ballot measures, lobbying your state legislature, or hell, start with just municipal elections if you think you can get that done.

I say this as someone who’s going to vote third party - Trump and Biden are the only two choices. One of them is going to win, period. I’m voting third party because I know beyond reasonable doubt which one is going to win my state, so I have the privilege of throwing away my vote. I can’t fault someone for voting on a “lesser evil” basis in a swing state.

It’s more that the third-party spoiler effect is inherent to the first past the post system, so voting your conscience (for a third party) is effectively the same as not voting, and if enough people vote their conscience, it’s effectively like voting for exactly the opposite of what you want.