The experience that feds have is vastly overstated. Yes, more than the clerks that will write the opinions but not much objectively. I have worked on regs much of my life on industries I have never worked in. I have always approached it with humility because I knew that I knew dick. That does not deter most within the beltway. Industries will have to redeploy some of their gov relations budgets to filing amicus curiae briefs.
Is it just me, or do The F1 teams go out of their way to hire the 20 most emotionally fragile men on the planet? I love Lando and McLaren, but he constantly looks like he's on the verge of tears. Also, WTAF is it with the drivers' dads sticking their noses into everything? These are grown men, right? As for Alpine, even when Pierre Gasly loses, Pierre Gasly wins... https://www.thesun.ie/sport/9717252/kika-cerqueira-gomes-blue-bikini/
"Is it just me, or do The F1 teams go out of their way to hire the 20 most emotionally fragile men on the planet?"
It's a side effect of how F1 drivers are created: they're in pressure cookers and performing in public from their sixth birthday forwards. Only occasionally do you get a Raikkonnen or similar. Everyone else is in a permanent state of panic.
We treated it more like a practice day; I lost the qualifying race because I brought the car in on Lap 10 for a tire pressure check and the young mechanic doing the checks had trouble getting accurate readings, this eating up every bit of the 45-second lead I had and putting me out 29 seconds in arrears with just two laps to go!
Traditionally the region puts me with the open-wheel Formula Continentals, against whom I am much more fairly matched, but they were trying to balance entry numbers and bolster a group that is becoming emptier and emptier as the economy stumbles.
Obama droned an American citizen in 2010. Anwar Al-awlaki. Full U.S. citizen born in New Mexico. Don’t recall any trial to pull his citizenship. Just added him to a CIA kill list and droned him and his son.
President Obama has always had the full immunity of which Trump could only dream. How often do we hear that Trump is using the office to bolster his fortune? Yet the Obamas entered the office with nothing more than two good salaries and left with $70 million in net worth (https://afrotech.com/how-barack-obama-increased-his-net-worth-to-70m-after-leaving-office/)
I don't understand what the complaint is here. How could the Obamas *not* benefit from being vastly more famous and in-demand after being the POTUS and FLOTUS, and specifically the first Black ones? Wouldn't *anyone* suddenly find themself and their family making a lot more money if they'd navigated that successfully? I don't see where they're violating any ethics by capitalizing on their post-presidency fame and desirability, and I'd probably do the same. That's the benefit of being in that sort of position. Why, they'd have had to try really hard *not* to come up the way that they did.
I also don't think Trump is a good comparison here, because he was already a "successful" entrepreneur prior to his presidency, and already had access to untold amounts of wealth. Being the president could not have enriched his finances in the same way, and only really served to hurt him (which is why he should've stayed out of the government).
Now--and even as an Obama supporter--do I think that people treated him with kid gloves and weren't as critical of some of his actions and policies as they should have been? Absolutely. Do I think that Trump, by contrast, has been needlessly persecuted and dragged through the mud for largely irrelevant things--even though his general attitude and conduct are deplorable? Again, absolutely.
But I don't think the Obamas did anything wrong strictly for making money off of their fame.
"But I don't think the Obamas did anything wrong strictly for making money off of their fame."
A lot of the argument hinges on whether the Netflix and book deals were merely spontaneous acts of profitable fan appreciation *or* payback for actions taken during the administration.
I'm not sure I can take a position on that, but I've heard it argued both ways, often using the same data.
The notion of pulling out of a wet, warm place just when things are getting critical so I can finish myself off on her face with my own hand doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. YMMV.
So, are you arguing that the Obamas be investigated--the way Trump would have been--for possible corruption and compensation during their presidency? Because if so--and if there's reasonable evidence to support the possibility--I'm in favor.
The Obamas were at best traitors and at worst foreign agents. They're perfect examples of how a lot of people are United States citizens, but they're not Americans.
As bizarre as it sounds, I'm suggesting they leave both Obama and Trump alone. Because the tighter we draw the partisan noose around stuff, and the more certain it becomes that each and every prominent politician will be dragged after their term of office, the closer we come to a genuine Caesar-at-the-Rubicon situation.
In My America, at the end of every presidency, the outgoing president would have to stand trial for each and every crime they may or may not have committed while in office. Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter. Face the goddamn music.
This is, of course, silly and probably irresponsible. Would absolutely lead to a host of bad things, but at the heart of it I really just like the idea that everyone is accountable for their actions.
Honestly I care less that Obama cashed in than I do that he refused to ride off into the sunset and keep his damned mouth shut. W. Bush had the good manners to gift that to him, but Obama refused to do it for Trump. You won, STFU and go home.
Your assertion that successful business people should stay out of government and leave it to folks that can make bank solely because of their governmental influence describes so much that has gone wrong with our country.
That's the rub. The Obamas and Clintons didn't become wealthy being 'famous' in the usual sense of the word. They did so because even out of office they are connected to levers of power. It is naked quid pro quo corruption.
Full immunity from whom? Obama didn't get a pass from right wing media on anything.
The left has certainly gone after Trump much harder than any other president, but the right gives him the same kid glove treatment they used to bitch that Obama got, and they make sure he skates out of every jam he gets into. It's all politics.
The 'right wing media' as if such a thing existed, can shout and stamp its feet all it wants.
Trump and anyone brave/stupid enough to support him have been hounded by courts and law enforcement at the state and federal level. SWATted, indicted, imprisoned and everything.
"The 'right wing media' as if such a thing existed"
Oh, come on. Are you really going to deny that there's sizable contingent of media that dedicated it's coverage attacking Obama when he was in office, and is now dedicated to shilling for Trump even if only out of calculated convenience rather than cultish devotion?
"Trump and anyone brave/stupid enough to support him have been hounded by courts and law enforcement at the state and federal level."
Emphasis on stupid. I remain of the opinion that Trump's ultimate disqualifying act was to fail to fall on his sword for these people. He should have taken the blame, (at least attempted to) issue a pardon), and withdrawn from public life. Instead we're still here, pretending he's not a selfish fuckup and that continuing to drive the culture war wedge in deeper isn't going to make things even worse.
I'm arguing that Fox and its copycats are barely center right.
The DOJ and NY have gone whole hog against Trump. This decision may keep him out of *jail*. Maybe. Nobody of import went after Obama in any material way. Calling him a Kenyan or closeted gay doesn't count.
Fox & Co are whores. They'll follow the money, and the money right now is apparently in covering "Biden Crime Family" scandals that never go anywhere, and not questioning anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. For that matter, CNN & Co isn't exactly discouraging the ratings boost of a Trump second term, either.
Trump's not going to jail. Never was. If the DOJ was serious, they wouldn't have let the documents case get assigned to an incompetent Trump sycophant to run out the clock. And Fat Albert is going to get slapped down in NY, it's just a question of by who. The "radical, Trump hating" judge already delayed the hush money sentencing even though that's the one the SCOTUS decision should have the least sway on.
Fox News, OAN, NewsMax, not to mention talk radio?!? Plus all the Blaze, Alex Jones, all that other online stuff?!? Come on.
The Overton Window has shifted so far that maybe some of them feel more center to you, but the supposed left-wing media has been dragged rightward too.
CNN right now is Fox from 15 years ago.
Practically allof the media is in the tank for Trump right now because they want the ratings back.
As noted above, President Obama ordered the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. This is the "immunity during official action" of which the court speaks. Obama already had it. As did every other President, before Trump.
Again, politics. Do you really think all the squish Romney types had a problem with Obama droning that guy? They all would have done it, too. Hell, I don't even had a problem with it, fuck that guy.
For all the bitching about it, Trump didn't get impeached or charged for assassinating Soleimani. At the end of the day, the uniparty is gonna uniparty. All this "official acts" stuff is an offramp for SCOTUS to deal with the Trump indictments without really dealing with them.
Doesn’t matter what mittens or anyone else would have done or that Al-awlaki was a bad hombre. He should have been tried for treason in absentia and if found guilty then drone away.
Not really disagreeing with you here -- but the killing of Soleimani was at least an act against a foreign national. The rules USED TO be different regarding Americans.
I somewhat disagree. Al Awaki had left the US with no intention to return, for the express purpose of working harm to America. That makes him a traitor at best. At what point does someone lose the protection of the citizenship they've sworn off. Also it's not like they smoked him in Tuscon, just because they didn't want to arrest him.
Exactly, the Company has been dealing with targets with extreme prejudice since the days it was called the OSS. There is a reason most Presidents don’t even bother to visit The Farm.
Al-Awlaki made himself a target and any President in Obama’s shoes should have given the same order, and you guys would have cheered if that was a Republican. Immunity in that case is warranted, and I would say the same if it was Romney at the time or Bush before him. Dude was involved in Ft Hood, and was trying to blow up jetliners.
Fair, but an enemy combatant and terrorist becomes a matter of self-defense at a certain point and the cost in blood of trying to apprehend them becomes to high as well. Would certainly be preferable to capture and try them for all the reasons you have stated, plus killing him made him a martyr and there’s argument that may have been worse.
There were no good options or results in this scenario.
Not only was Anwar killed, his son, a "boy" (he was 16) and "POC"" was "murdered" by Obama two weeks later. I would love to see Jack Smith charge him with murder for that one.
Edit to clarify per Gianni, I knew this but in case anyone did not. Not only was his son a "child" (not that I disagree, btw, the age of majority exists for a reason), he very much was a US citizen as well.
Just when I was thinking it was going to be a quiet end to a quiet race (and really, I'm glad to see all teams finish with all their cars and drivers still running), Red Bull had that awful pit stop. It was a pretty exciting ending. Jacques' ridiculous exuberance was warranted.
Congrats to those with positive race results last weekend.
The watch seems nice.
I am too midwitted to have much of an opinion about the Supreme Court decisions. I did not lose any sleep over them this week. Caffeine and Mrs. MD keep me awake at night.
The Trump ruling ultimately just kicks the can back to the lower courts. Trump, naturally, is going to claim everything he did was an "official" act and it'll all drag out until SCOTUS has to rule on each individual charge. Unless Trump gets back into office and has all the charges dropped first. SCOTUS would undoubtedly prefer the later and not because of bias towards Trump.
"This reminds me of Jeff Cooper’s acerbic observations on the “license to kill” that figured so prominently in the James Bond mythology:"
Apparently the "license to kill" has some basis in fact.
I just read Damien Lewis' book on which the movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is based. It's about Churchill's Special Operations Executive, a commando force originally established to do deniable operations early in the war, later to take part in significant operations in Sicily and Greece. Ian Fleming, was an assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence during World War II and was liaison to the Special Operations Executive, which is where he probably picked up the 007 and "licensed to kill" ideas that he used in Bond books.
Gus March-Phillips was SOE agent W.01, the W standing for West Africa, the 1 meaning him being the first agent assigned to that region, and the zero rating meant that he had been "trained and licensed to use all means to liquidate the enemy". It seems to me that "licensed" in this case means more like allowed or permitted to take initiative than some kind of formal license.
There was also actually someone nicknamed "M" in the Special Operations Executive, Brig. Gen. Colin McVean Gubbins.
The director of MI6 is said to sign everything ‘C’, in green ink, something the first guy started (surname Smith-Cummings) that established the code name.
In John Le Carre’s novels the head of the Circus is Control, which was also the name of the agency (in caps) led by the Chief in Get Smart—both superior spy fiction to anything Fleming wrote, IMHO.
With regards to the carbon fiber g-shock, I have the later of the two modules, the 3495, still a jdm model, has the same module as the GW5000u, which I like better than the carbon fiber one, and both deserve sapphire crystals.
Ignoring the legal argument, I think the moral argument of saying, 'if you're going to force these children to be born, you should support them beyond that' is a reasonable one. I think the oft-circulated Pastor David Barnhart quote makes this point pretty well:
""The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
i really dont like that support the unborn argument personally
its like the argument has purposely been shifted past the point by which these unborn children were conceived because those that are against abortion are usually against the circumstances around conception
of course theyre against rape but theyre also against whatever policy or situation that would enable rape in the first place
"Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
I think that part of Barnhart's quote is intellectually lazy. The idea of the "unborn" doesn't exist in the Bible because until 50 years ago there wasn't a billion-dollar publicly-funded industry that employs thousands of medical professionals to zip out fetuses. He might as well say "There are no SR-71 pilots in the Bible, why should we try to save their souls."
Allow me to make the argument AGAINST this viewpoint, and see if you agree with me.
Murder is a cardinal sin. If you believe that a fetus is a human being, then abortion is murder. Never in human history has it been seriously suggested that everyday citizens should be bribed not to commit murder. If I told you that I was about to kill my neighbor, you wouldn't say "Allow me to cover your F-250 payments in exchange for you not doing that."
The notion that I should be financially responsible for a woman's decision not to commit murder doesn't sit well with me. It's not my child, not my family, not my situation. I simply don't want her to kill her child. Should I have to pay her to prevent that?
Should we have to pay Israel (or Palestine, depending on your viewpoint) not to kill any more Palestinians (or kidnap any more Israelis)?
Abortion to me is morally repugnant to me, in most cases. Rape and death of the mother are the only reasons that a woman should have an abortion. Yet, don't woman have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. The fetus is a living thing but it isn't a person until it is out of the womb. Reminds me of a delusional chick in a bar one night that said morals are absolute, They are not.
I do agree that we should not be responsible for others children. Yet, who pays for foster care, social services and prison cells that are required from a no abortion policy? Us! We also incentivize families in this country so I don't think your argument holds water.
One's morals are axiomatically absolute. One would hold others in contempt for transgressions. Shared morals endemic to a polity are, as such, visibly absolute. So in the context of the "delusional chick's" polity, she's in a shared delusion. You, being outside her parish, see it as delusion.
You explained it much better than I did. I could argue even personal morals aren't absolute but I did mean that a group doesn't usually share absolute morals.
Theoretically, we wouldn’t have to pay for any of that. Everyone would carry their own weight, everything would be perfect and we would only die from stupidity, desease and old age.
Religiously, all of the churches would be doing a lot to take care of all of the poor and suffering amongst them, and that would pick up any delta between reality and the ideal.
Reasonable, yes, but that has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of the original (pro-forced-birth) position. But most anti-abortionists don't put measurable effort into the born, do they? Correct. Neither do most people irrespective of their views on abortion or any other social issue. Spend five minutes in a soup kitchen, or a hospice center, or a women's shelter and witness not compassion, but astounding insincerity. (I say this as someone whose best trait is astounding insincerity.)
Evolutionary biologists have long argued about the existence of true altruism. "No" is the modern consensus regarding most apparently altruistic behaviors. Would Pastor Barnhart say humans are the exception? Perhaps just the pro-choice humans?
“But most anti-abortionists don't put measurable effort into the born, do they?”
In fact, literally every person I know IRL who advocates for pro-life causes does both. Let’s take the example of my deceased grandmother. Yes, she worked at a Catholic Pregnancy Aid clinic, attempting to counsel pregnant women out of abortion.
What did she do for the born? In my grandmother’s case she literally gave them food, canned goods, all sorts of groceries, often times even taking the time to deliver the food to the door of the woman who gave birth. My grandmother is likely responsible for the first year’s worth of food consumed by the family of several hundred kids in the areas she worked.
Maybe "most" is the wrong qualifier, but I'll hold that position until data shows otherwise. That doesn't mean I think poorly of anti-abortion folks who don't help as much as your grandma. Life pulls people in many directions. I just mean that people like her are exemplary; sloth and insincerity are the rule even among the ostensibly righteous.
This is why it's an odd pastoral choice to malign anti-abortionists not for their stance, per se, but for some perceived greater insincerity than pro-choicers. Does it follow that a pro-choicer doesn't need to focus on ministries for the disadvantaged born because they didn't want the born to exist in the first place? It's silly on its face.
I know many anti-abortion couples with many adopted kids (and the six figure expenses of the process), but the only pro-choicers I know who adopted did so because they literally cannot reproduce (b/c gay). Chew on that generalization, Pastor B!
Does it matter? I can say abortion is wrong (murder) and also say that the mother and father need to figure it out on their own without the help of taxpayers.
Many charities which support mothers after a baby has been born are constantly under attack. Many if not most are religious in affiliation.
What I find hilarious is that a few years ago it was "well, if I can't have an abortion then the father should pay" and there was a resounding "yes" by most pro-lifers across the twittersphere.
Now we've devolved into "well if I have to have my baby then EVERYONE should pay" which is ridiculous.
I can believe abortion is wrong and I can also believe that society doesn't have to pay for someone else's choices at the same time.
He throws in immigrants which is interesting because they are not in the list of poor, sick, orphans, widows, and prisoners referenced in the NT. There is mention of sojourners in the OT and, of course, the waylaid traveler in the Good Samaritan, but those are not illegals coming to your homeland and turning it into a worse place for everyone there. We have mercy, but we are not called to forego justice.
Without being familiar with him he reads as a transparent progressive in-a-Christian-skinsuit trying to sealion and concern troll.
Meaning - yes, we are called to care for widows, orphans, the elderly, & etc and we ought. At my parish we have a group that regularly works a soup kitchen, we offer our parking lot in winter for cars for those who have no home, wifi, and power. Simultaneously, we understand through the Bible and Church teachings for thousands of years that protecting the innocent, including the unborn, from things like murder is also something we should do. Hospitals and orphanages are Christian institutions going back to the 4th century or further. Christians have done and probably do more still today for orphans through adoption and orphanages than any other group in history. We should not and cannot condone a society or a practice of murdering the innocent as that blood will cry out from the ground.
That guy is untrustworthy sounding from the get-go.
“Without being familiar with him he reads as a transparent progressive in-a-Christian-skinsuit trying to sealion and concern troll.”
So many of these skinsuits bedevil us these days. They’re in your church, blowing up the Boy Scouts, at your members-only club, on the ballot with an (R) next to name at the precinct…
I think the common thread of the SCOTUS rulings, including the Jan 6th and Immunity rulings, is that government agencies, including the DoJ, can't use creative expansive definitions not explicitly enabled by legislation. In general a rebuke to the deep state.
I particularly liked how Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion to the Immunity case, laid out a guide for Judge Cannon to throw out Jack Smith's case against Trump because his appointment as special prosecutor was unconstitutional.
If a policy has the force of law, it should be considered a law and made by the lawmaking body. This repugnant fiction that administrative rules are merely "regulations" is utter horseshit, whether it's the EPA, the Army or NHTSA.
So LAST Weekend the Bloviating British Bias Broadsheets were cheering Lando’s aggressive start line tactics in Barcelona - the Broccoli Cut Chav Bruv took the fight to the menace that is Verstappen by aggressively ushering the Dutchman onto the grass on the lengthy run down to Turn 1.
But THIS Weekend, those very same BBBBs had their knives out for Verstappen, who IMO did not deserve a penalty for Lando the Dive Bomber’s clumsy car positioning.
F1 names just crack me up. “Mikka Hakkinen” , “Valtterri Bottas”. With those names only 2 jobs are really open to you, and the other is Marseillais Gangster, of course they’re on the grid.
In the maneuver that transpired in Barcelona, Lando aggressively moved the World Champion onto the grass at high speed.
Whereas the maneuver in Austria featured a nobody with a forthcoming track limits penalty clumsily colliding with the World Champion in a low speed corner. Fortunately the nobody suffered a DNF as his just desserts.
My point specifically was the moving under braking leading up to that point. Also, all those comments are based on 'from what I've seen'. If I get a statement from Lando saying what that tweet claims I'll concede.
Your comments on Grants Pass might make sense in Ohio. On the West Coast, we have not created a situation where it is reasonable to expect adults to be responsible for finding housing. Individual cities have mostly banned construction of new housing while keeping the pedal to the floor on job creation, resulting in a fundamentally unbalanced housing market region-wide. This is great for local tax revenues, because jobs generate far more local taxes than residents. But it means in practice that the poorest few percent of each city's residents are forced out each year, and all the cities nearby are doing the same thing.
The 9th Circuit Boise ruling was effectively a tool to tell cities "you have to build more housing, or else you have to reap the consequences rather than trying to offload them on the poorer or more humanitarian-minded place next door." The Grants Pass decision will just resume the game of pass-the-buck. The number of homeless on the West Coast will just keep going up, but now more of them will have criminal records, making it much harder to reintegrate them.
If the citizens were concerned about building more houses in their neighborhoods, I’m assuming they would elect politicians who were for it. It’s the citizens who are voting for less housing.
Yes, and all hoping that the next town over will absorb the resulting homelessness and social problems. That's not tenable country-wide and it's a reasonable basis for state or even federal laws addressing it.
These are local problems that locals should address. I personally wouldn’t want to see a state or the Feds get involved as they don’t have a great track record with success. I live in a rural county and I surely would not want a state politician from an urban county thinking that they know better about housing in a rural county than we do.
I see where MC is coming from. I don't feel great about the idea of forcing jurisdictions to accommodate these people. But if they don't do it, who will?
You don't want this dealt with at the federal or even the state level. So it's all on the municipalities that are willing to deal with it. The homeless and illegal populations will invariably migrate to those places. That's not tenable, not without the feds stepping in with meaningful funding.
The states have already thrown a bunch of money at this problem and it hasn’t worked, so they need to try something new. But politicians are not interested in trying new things, so the doom loop continues.
From some back of the envelope calculations via Google California spends about 27.5k per homeless individual. I know things are expensive there but that is a lot of dosh being wasted. They still have a 1/3 of the nations homeless. It is like every other political boondoggle. Consultants are making good money so the problem won't be solved.
"Individual cities have mostly banned construction of new housing while keeping the pedal to the floor on job creation, resulting in a fundamentally unbalanced housing market region-wide."
People aren't homeless because of the lack of affordable housing (which is a separate issue that affects people capable of taking care of themselves). People are homeless because they have substance abuse and mental health issues. They're not the public's responsibility. At most they are the public's burden and if you want to call them unhoused, I'm happy with them being housed in mental hospitals.
Here's a theoretical question. A lot of municipalities are spending large per-homeless-person amounts of money on the issue (I presume most of that goes to grifting NGOs). Money that would normally provide nice middle class or better housing. When cities do build housing for the homeless they spend ridiculous per-unit amounts, high six and low seven figures.
What would be better for society at large, spending it on the homeless or shoring up the city's working and middle classes?
Personally, I don't want a penny of public funds spent on the homeless beyond what it takes to get them off the streets and institutionalized, where they might have some hope of getting to the point of being self-reliant. Build mental hospitals, schools, and libraries with the money (yes, and make sure the libraries have rules to keep folks with drug and mental issues from camping out in them).
As bit of a ex hippie I'll say that if people want to drop out or live off the grid, I'm not going to say that they have to be productive, but they should at least be responsible for their own sustenance and not be a burden on others, as much as that is possible (we all get by with a little help from our friends).
From a biblical standpoint, I'm not sure if society has an obligation to the poor but individuals do have some responsibility to see to the well being of all in their society.
Leviticus 19:9-11:
“When you [plural] reap the harvest of your land, you [singular] shall not reap all the way to the corner of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I the Lord am your God. "
People have always suffered from mental illness and addiction. They have not previously been homeless at this frequency.
The difference is that the bottom of the housing market in virtually any place with a strong job market is no longer a $20/night SRO room or a $300/month boarding house room, but a $1200 apodment. Why? We banned the SROs and gentrified the boarding houses.
That’s a policy choice, and it is the policy choice that causes us to have tents throughout every West Coast city, where we did not 25 or 30 years ago. In the old days, the same people would have been in flophouses and SRO rooms, which isn’t perfect, but is far better (for them and for us) than having them on the street.
"That’s a policy choice, and it is the policy choice that causes us to have tents throughout every West Coast city, where we did not 25 or 30 years ago."
Correlation is, of course, not the same as causation but every single one of those "West Coast" cities, as well as their states, have been run by the same political party for decades. They regulated out of existence the small business owners who ran those low cost housing options. They restricted housing development for supposed environmental concerns.
As far as gentrification is concerned, just how much of California's gentry is politically right of center?
West Coast residents have gotten the homeless situation for which they have voted.
While I don't disagree with you, it will be much more expensive to institutionalize the homeless than creating shelter. Put the fuckers in tents and throw them some bolonga sandwiches.
As a lifelong west coast resident, I completely disagree with your first paragraph. West coast homelessness is not in any way a housing problem. It is a mental health and substance abuse problem. The Boise ruling was a prime example of judicial overreach that had no hope of either fixing the homeless problem, increasing housing supply, or surviving further judicial scrutiny.
We’ve always had mental health and substance abuse issues. The people suffering from them mostly were not homeless three decades ago. Now they are. The difference is a shortage of housing driving up prices dramatically at the very bottom end of the market.
They were not homeless then because they were institutionalized or incarcerated. With modern west coast catch-and-release policing, neither of those are options unless the individual is exceptionally violent. The difference has been a move to soft on crime policing while throwing billions at NGOs that provide "homeless services." It hasn't worked.
They were in institutions or prisons - mixing them with the regular populace is a huge mistake and worse for both the populace, the life of the city, and the homeless who need serious care not to be left to their own devices.
Suggesting it is a housing problem is a category error.
Yep. The Japanese are quiet, respectful and orderly because that's what their society expects of them. Far too many Americans are selfish, thoughtless assholes.
That’s why Japan can have relaxed zoning laws, and the US has to have strict zoning laws so people can separate themselves from selfish, thoughtless assholes who would build anything, anywhere, as long as they could make a buck.
Going through this right now. Someonebuilt towmhomes and is using one as short term rentals. Shocking, some of our kids stuff is being messed with now. Stupid stuff but never had a single issue in 12 years. Developer is renting to college students. They are surprisingly better than the neighbors who moved out but the short term guys are awful. It’s dupage county not myrtle beach
All I can think of is to complain to your town. If short term rentals are not prevalent or don’t fit the character of the town, have the town ban them.
We have added 100 million people in the last 30 years. Japan has stable homogenous population. Scarce resources and politicians created this problem and the NIMBYs will encourage its continuation.
As an open member of the conservative right, I have always found the media to be deceitful. The absolute nonsense pushed by the media (and Biden) about the presidential immunity situation is completely laughable. They think you (Americans) are stupid. They don’t think I’m stupid because, you know, I can read and think. The only thing that bothers me more than the way the media acts is that so many Americans can’t be bothered to pay attention or be aware.
The death of chevron is fantastic. Why anyone would want some rando who works for the government developing the rules we all have to follow is nuts. We elect people to do this, and they are accountable to us. The admin/deep state needs to go away.
I’m sure the fellow who mandated the super gas can spout to save the planet has never once used one to learn that you leak more onto the planet than you get in the tank. Thank Amazon for selling basic spouts for a reasonable price.
MotoGP sees a resurgence of Impeccably Perfect Pecco with the pole, the sprint, and the race wins all by commanding margins. Jorge Martin continues to limit the bleeding as best he can and finished second in the sprint and the race where he started with a grid penalty. Bagnaia simply looked untouchable this weekend.
Marquez slips further behind the championship race with a crash out of the sprint and a post race penalty pushing him out of his solid placement.
Bastianini is consistently chipping away and gaining points to become a credible late championship contender at this rate.
The KTM riders had no spectacular showing and neither did Aprilia. Yamaha is making some gains and 2025 should be even better with a second team fielding bikes and generating data. Honda has barely made points across four riders in a continually abysmal showing.
MotoAmerica has competition by virtue of physical woes on the part of Beaubier and Gagne. I don't know that it makes the season exciting to watch.
No KotB, which I know all yall breathlessly wait to hear about!
The experience that feds have is vastly overstated. Yes, more than the clerks that will write the opinions but not much objectively. I have worked on regs much of my life on industries I have never worked in. I have always approached it with humility because I knew that I knew dick. That does not deter most within the beltway. Industries will have to redeploy some of their gov relations budgets to filing amicus curiae briefs.
Btw, I am disappointed you didn't manage to somehow tie Hawk Tuah into your piece.
I am working on an entirely separate piece about HER!
i am so ready for that
Bless you
My Bible says that Miss Hawk Tuah is a Sure Sign of the Coming (GEDDIT???) of the End Times. Or, at least the coming of some kind of climax.
TOO BAD SHE IS TOO YOUNG TO BE SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT. AT LEAST SHE SEEMS ALWAYS READY WITH A SNAPPY ANSWER.
john
Climax
I just don't see how she can get her 15 minutes of fame when her raison d'etre lasts only three.
" and with Red Bull seemingly stuck in neutral, there’s going to be room at the top."
I wonder how much losing Adrian Newey has to do with that.
Quite a bit, obviously. The Honda engine was never strong.
They're into penalty territory with their Honda engine usage.
Did you see the size of his new yacht? To paraphrase the great Chico Esquela, racing has been bery bery good to Newey.
The racing he designs for, anyway.
As a driver he's a nightmare.
Is it just me, or do The F1 teams go out of their way to hire the 20 most emotionally fragile men on the planet? I love Lando and McLaren, but he constantly looks like he's on the verge of tears. Also, WTAF is it with the drivers' dads sticking their noses into everything? These are grown men, right? As for Alpine, even when Pierre Gasly loses, Pierre Gasly wins... https://www.thesun.ie/sport/9717252/kika-cerqueira-gomes-blue-bikini/
(Somewhat NSFW)
"Is it just me, or do The F1 teams go out of their way to hire the 20 most emotionally fragile men on the planet?"
It's a side effect of how F1 drivers are created: they're in pressure cookers and performing in public from their sixth birthday forwards. Only occasionally do you get a Raikkonnen or similar. Everyone else is in a permanent state of panic.
Constantly adrenalized maybe? I would imagine that they are all super controlling and hyper focused.
Strong win in a field of four, I see.
We treated it more like a practice day; I lost the qualifying race because I brought the car in on Lap 10 for a tire pressure check and the young mechanic doing the checks had trouble getting accurate readings, this eating up every bit of the 45-second lead I had and putting me out 29 seconds in arrears with just two laps to go!
Traditionally the region puts me with the open-wheel Formula Continentals, against whom I am much more fairly matched, but they were trying to balance entry numbers and bolster a group that is becoming emptier and emptier as the economy stumbles.
Obama droned an American citizen in 2010. Anwar Al-awlaki. Full U.S. citizen born in New Mexico. Don’t recall any trial to pull his citizenship. Just added him to a CIA kill list and droned him and his son.
President Obama has always had the full immunity of which Trump could only dream. How often do we hear that Trump is using the office to bolster his fortune? Yet the Obamas entered the office with nothing more than two good salaries and left with $70 million in net worth (https://afrotech.com/how-barack-obama-increased-his-net-worth-to-70m-after-leaving-office/)
There's a lot to dislike the Obamas for, but I'm going to go to my grave holding on to a grudge with them for bulldozing Robin Masters' estate.
I try NOT to see that as a symbol for "DEI America" destroying every single part of "Masculine America", but...
That place was vacant for decades… it was halfway to falling down
I don't understand what the complaint is here. How could the Obamas *not* benefit from being vastly more famous and in-demand after being the POTUS and FLOTUS, and specifically the first Black ones? Wouldn't *anyone* suddenly find themself and their family making a lot more money if they'd navigated that successfully? I don't see where they're violating any ethics by capitalizing on their post-presidency fame and desirability, and I'd probably do the same. That's the benefit of being in that sort of position. Why, they'd have had to try really hard *not* to come up the way that they did.
I also don't think Trump is a good comparison here, because he was already a "successful" entrepreneur prior to his presidency, and already had access to untold amounts of wealth. Being the president could not have enriched his finances in the same way, and only really served to hurt him (which is why he should've stayed out of the government).
Now--and even as an Obama supporter--do I think that people treated him with kid gloves and weren't as critical of some of his actions and policies as they should have been? Absolutely. Do I think that Trump, by contrast, has been needlessly persecuted and dragged through the mud for largely irrelevant things--even though his general attitude and conduct are deplorable? Again, absolutely.
But I don't think the Obamas did anything wrong strictly for making money off of their fame.
"But I don't think the Obamas did anything wrong strictly for making money off of their fame."
A lot of the argument hinges on whether the Netflix and book deals were merely spontaneous acts of profitable fan appreciation *or* payback for actions taken during the administration.
I'm not sure I can take a position on that, but I've heard it argued both ways, often using the same data.
Melania has essentially ghosted compared to Mike, Hillary, or even Laura post presidency.
C’mon man, next you’re going to tell us is that Hunter Biden is not an accomplished artist.
hes probably painted a lot of faces
The notion of pulling out of a wet, warm place just when things are getting critical so I can finish myself off on her face with my own hand doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. YMMV.
He can lay out lines well.
And ropes
So, are you arguing that the Obamas be investigated--the way Trump would have been--for possible corruption and compensation during their presidency? Because if so--and if there's reasonable evidence to support the possibility--I'm in favor.
The Obamas were at best traitors and at worst foreign agents. They're perfect examples of how a lot of people are United States citizens, but they're not Americans.
As bizarre as it sounds, I'm suggesting they leave both Obama and Trump alone. Because the tighter we draw the partisan noose around stuff, and the more certain it becomes that each and every prominent politician will be dragged after their term of office, the closer we come to a genuine Caesar-at-the-Rubicon situation.
I wholeheartedly agree. The whole Trump thing was *suuuper* petty, and divisive.
In My America, at the end of every presidency, the outgoing president would have to stand trial for each and every crime they may or may not have committed while in office. Democrat, Republican, doesn't matter. Face the goddamn music.
This is, of course, silly and probably irresponsible. Would absolutely lead to a host of bad things, but at the heart of it I really just like the idea that everyone is accountable for their actions.
South Korea has a reputation amongst civilized countries of prosecuting her ex-presidents.
Billy Jeff Clinton laid the blueprint for cashing in. Obama just followed it. I don't blame them. Most of us would have tried to cash in.
Honestly I care less that Obama cashed in than I do that he refused to ride off into the sunset and keep his damned mouth shut. W. Bush had the good manners to gift that to him, but Obama refused to do it for Trump. You won, STFU and go home.
Your assertion that successful business people should stay out of government and leave it to folks that can make bank solely because of their governmental influence describes so much that has gone wrong with our country.
That's Europe, where they leave government to The Professionals.
Reagan's speaking engagements were arguably worse for being the prototype.
At least they didn’t cart off the White House China on their way out
They're finding a way to cart off the white house to China
Watching the obscene accumulation of wealth by the Obamas and Clintons makes you wonder what happened to the integrity displayed by Harry Truman.
That's the rub. The Obamas and Clintons didn't become wealthy being 'famous' in the usual sense of the word. They did so because even out of office they are connected to levers of power. It is naked quid pro quo corruption.
Full immunity from whom? Obama didn't get a pass from right wing media on anything.
The left has certainly gone after Trump much harder than any other president, but the right gives him the same kid glove treatment they used to bitch that Obama got, and they make sure he skates out of every jam he gets into. It's all politics.
The 'right wing media' as if such a thing existed, can shout and stamp its feet all it wants.
Trump and anyone brave/stupid enough to support him have been hounded by courts and law enforcement at the state and federal level. SWATted, indicted, imprisoned and everything.
"The 'right wing media' as if such a thing existed"
Oh, come on. Are you really going to deny that there's sizable contingent of media that dedicated it's coverage attacking Obama when he was in office, and is now dedicated to shilling for Trump even if only out of calculated convenience rather than cultish devotion?
"Trump and anyone brave/stupid enough to support him have been hounded by courts and law enforcement at the state and federal level."
Emphasis on stupid. I remain of the opinion that Trump's ultimate disqualifying act was to fail to fall on his sword for these people. He should have taken the blame, (at least attempted to) issue a pardon), and withdrawn from public life. Instead we're still here, pretending he's not a selfish fuckup and that continuing to drive the culture war wedge in deeper isn't going to make things even worse.
I'm arguing that Fox and its copycats are barely center right.
The DOJ and NY have gone whole hog against Trump. This decision may keep him out of *jail*. Maybe. Nobody of import went after Obama in any material way. Calling him a Kenyan or closeted gay doesn't count.
Fox & Co are whores. They'll follow the money, and the money right now is apparently in covering "Biden Crime Family" scandals that never go anywhere, and not questioning anything that comes out of Trump's mouth. For that matter, CNN & Co isn't exactly discouraging the ratings boost of a Trump second term, either.
Trump's not going to jail. Never was. If the DOJ was serious, they wouldn't have let the documents case get assigned to an incompetent Trump sycophant to run out the clock. And Fat Albert is going to get slapped down in NY, it's just a question of by who. The "radical, Trump hating" judge already delayed the hush money sentencing even though that's the one the SCOTUS decision should have the least sway on.
Fox News, OAN, NewsMax, not to mention talk radio?!? Plus all the Blaze, Alex Jones, all that other online stuff?!? Come on.
The Overton Window has shifted so far that maybe some of them feel more center to you, but the supposed left-wing media has been dragged rightward too.
CNN right now is Fox from 15 years ago.
Practically allof the media is in the tank for Trump right now because they want the ratings back.
#216 or thereabouts: best prez since coolidge
honestly it should be a bumper sticker at this point
"Full immunity from whom? Obama didn't get a pass from right wing media on anything."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anwar_al-Awlaki
As noted above, President Obama ordered the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen. This is the "immunity during official action" of which the court speaks. Obama already had it. As did every other President, before Trump.
Again, politics. Do you really think all the squish Romney types had a problem with Obama droning that guy? They all would have done it, too. Hell, I don't even had a problem with it, fuck that guy.
For all the bitching about it, Trump didn't get impeached or charged for assassinating Soleimani. At the end of the day, the uniparty is gonna uniparty. All this "official acts" stuff is an offramp for SCOTUS to deal with the Trump indictments without really dealing with them.
Doesn’t matter what mittens or anyone else would have done or that Al-awlaki was a bad hombre. He should have been tried for treason in absentia and if found guilty then drone away.
Not really disagreeing with you here -- but the killing of Soleimani was at least an act against a foreign national. The rules USED TO be different regarding Americans.
I somewhat disagree. Al Awaki had left the US with no intention to return, for the express purpose of working harm to America. That makes him a traitor at best. At what point does someone lose the protection of the citizenship they've sworn off. Also it's not like they smoked him in Tuscon, just because they didn't want to arrest him.
Exactly, the Company has been dealing with targets with extreme prejudice since the days it was called the OSS. There is a reason most Presidents don’t even bother to visit The Farm.
Al-Awlaki made himself a target and any President in Obama’s shoes should have given the same order, and you guys would have cheered if that was a Republican. Immunity in that case is warranted, and I would say the same if it was Romney at the time or Bush before him. Dude was involved in Ft Hood, and was trying to blow up jetliners.
Nope. He’s a bad dude does not justify extra judicial droning. Have a trial. A trial in Yemen by the Yemeni government doesn’t count.
Fair, but an enemy combatant and terrorist becomes a matter of self-defense at a certain point and the cost in blood of trying to apprehend them becomes to high as well. Would certainly be preferable to capture and try them for all the reasons you have stated, plus killing him made him a martyr and there’s argument that may have been worse.
There were no good options or results in this scenario.
Yep, the immunity of American culture being deathly afraid to call bullshit on a powerful black leftist.
Not only was Anwar killed, his son, a "boy" (he was 16) and "POC"" was "murdered" by Obama two weeks later. I would love to see Jack Smith charge him with murder for that one.
Edit to clarify per Gianni, I knew this but in case anyone did not. Not only was his son a "child" (not that I disagree, btw, the age of majority exists for a reason), he very much was a US citizen as well.
You are right. I was thinking they were killed at the same time, but his son was droned later. Son was also a US citizen, born in Denver, CO.
Just when I was thinking it was going to be a quiet end to a quiet race (and really, I'm glad to see all teams finish with all their cars and drivers still running), Red Bull had that awful pit stop. It was a pretty exciting ending. Jacques' ridiculous exuberance was warranted.
Congrats to those with positive race results last weekend.
The watch seems nice.
I am too midwitted to have much of an opinion about the Supreme Court decisions. I did not lose any sleep over them this week. Caffeine and Mrs. MD keep me awake at night.
The Trump ruling ultimately just kicks the can back to the lower courts. Trump, naturally, is going to claim everything he did was an "official" act and it'll all drag out until SCOTUS has to rule on each individual charge. Unless Trump gets back into office and has all the charges dropped first. SCOTUS would undoubtedly prefer the later and not because of bias towards Trump.
"This reminds me of Jeff Cooper’s acerbic observations on the “license to kill” that figured so prominently in the James Bond mythology:"
Apparently the "license to kill" has some basis in fact.
I just read Damien Lewis' book on which the movie The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare is based. It's about Churchill's Special Operations Executive, a commando force originally established to do deniable operations early in the war, later to take part in significant operations in Sicily and Greece. Ian Fleming, was an assistant to the Director of Naval Intelligence during World War II and was liaison to the Special Operations Executive, which is where he probably picked up the 007 and "licensed to kill" ideas that he used in Bond books.
Gus March-Phillips was SOE agent W.01, the W standing for West Africa, the 1 meaning him being the first agent assigned to that region, and the zero rating meant that he had been "trained and licensed to use all means to liquidate the enemy". It seems to me that "licensed" in this case means more like allowed or permitted to take initiative than some kind of formal license.
There was also actually someone nicknamed "M" in the Special Operations Executive, Brig. Gen. Colin McVean Gubbins.
sounds kinda like macvsog in a way
The director of MI6 is said to sign everything ‘C’, in green ink, something the first guy started (surname Smith-Cummings) that established the code name.
In John Le Carre’s novels the head of the Circus is Control, which was also the name of the agency (in caps) led by the Chief in Get Smart—both superior spy fiction to anything Fleming wrote, IMHO.
With regards to the carbon fiber g-shock, I have the later of the two modules, the 3495, still a jdm model, has the same module as the GW5000u, which I like better than the carbon fiber one, and both deserve sapphire crystals.
The Japanese screwback one you have is the nicest!
Nicer yet is the titanium square.
I love my titanium squares but I do find myself wearing the carbon fiber and JDM resin squares more than I wear those.
Ignoring the legal argument, I think the moral argument of saying, 'if you're going to force these children to be born, you should support them beyond that' is a reasonable one. I think the oft-circulated Pastor David Barnhart quote makes this point pretty well:
""The unborn" are a convenient group of people to advocate for. They never make demands of you; they are morally uncomplicated, unlike the incarcerated, addicted, or the chronically poor; they don't resent your condescension or complain that you are not politically correct; unlike widows, they don't ask you to question patriarchy; unlike orphans, they don't need money, education, or childcare; unlike aliens, they don't bring all that racial, cultural, and religious baggage that you dislike; they allow you to feel good about yourself without any work at creating or maintaining relationships; and when they are born, you can forget about them, because they cease to be unborn. It's almost as if, by being born, they have died to you. You can love the unborn and advocate for them without substantially challenging your own wealth, power, or privilege, without re-imagining social structures, apologizing, or making reparations to anyone. They are, in short, the perfect people to love if you want to claim you love Jesus but actually dislike people who breathe.
Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
i really dont like that support the unborn argument personally
its like the argument has purposely been shifted past the point by which these unborn children were conceived because those that are against abortion are usually against the circumstances around conception
of course theyre against rape but theyre also against whatever policy or situation that would enable rape in the first place
i may not have any idea what im talking about
Just like animals and trees, the Left picks groups to advocate for that can't refuse their "help."
"Prisoners? Immigrants? The sick? The poor? Widows? Orphans? All the groups that are specifically mentioned in the Bible? They all get thrown under the bus for the unborn."
I think that part of Barnhart's quote is intellectually lazy. The idea of the "unborn" doesn't exist in the Bible because until 50 years ago there wasn't a billion-dollar publicly-funded industry that employs thousands of medical professionals to zip out fetuses. He might as well say "There are no SR-71 pilots in the Bible, why should we try to save their souls."
Allow me to make the argument AGAINST this viewpoint, and see if you agree with me.
Murder is a cardinal sin. If you believe that a fetus is a human being, then abortion is murder. Never in human history has it been seriously suggested that everyday citizens should be bribed not to commit murder. If I told you that I was about to kill my neighbor, you wouldn't say "Allow me to cover your F-250 payments in exchange for you not doing that."
The notion that I should be financially responsible for a woman's decision not to commit murder doesn't sit well with me. It's not my child, not my family, not my situation. I simply don't want her to kill her child. Should I have to pay her to prevent that?
Should we have to pay Israel (or Palestine, depending on your viewpoint) not to kill any more Palestinians (or kidnap any more Israelis)?
Abortion to me is morally repugnant to me, in most cases. Rape and death of the mother are the only reasons that a woman should have an abortion. Yet, don't woman have the right to do whatever they want with their bodies. The fetus is a living thing but it isn't a person until it is out of the womb. Reminds me of a delusional chick in a bar one night that said morals are absolute, They are not.
I do agree that we should not be responsible for others children. Yet, who pays for foster care, social services and prison cells that are required from a no abortion policy? Us! We also incentivize families in this country so I don't think your argument holds water.
"... morals are absolute, They are not."
One's morals are axiomatically absolute. One would hold others in contempt for transgressions. Shared morals endemic to a polity are, as such, visibly absolute. So in the context of the "delusional chick's" polity, she's in a shared delusion. You, being outside her parish, see it as delusion.
"Americans love coca cola, we love death."
You explained it much better than I did. I could argue even personal morals aren't absolute but I did mean that a group doesn't usually share absolute morals.
Just because I have absolute morals doesn't mean I don't transgress ALL THE FUCKING TIME 🤭
Theoretically, we wouldn’t have to pay for any of that. Everyone would carry their own weight, everything would be perfect and we would only die from stupidity, desease and old age.
Religiously, all of the churches would be doing a lot to take care of all of the poor and suffering amongst them, and that would pick up any delta between reality and the ideal.
Reasonable, yes, but that has no bearing on the rightness or wrongness of the original (pro-forced-birth) position. But most anti-abortionists don't put measurable effort into the born, do they? Correct. Neither do most people irrespective of their views on abortion or any other social issue. Spend five minutes in a soup kitchen, or a hospice center, or a women's shelter and witness not compassion, but astounding insincerity. (I say this as someone whose best trait is astounding insincerity.)
Evolutionary biologists have long argued about the existence of true altruism. "No" is the modern consensus regarding most apparently altruistic behaviors. Would Pastor Barnhart say humans are the exception? Perhaps just the pro-choice humans?
“But most anti-abortionists don't put measurable effort into the born, do they?”
In fact, literally every person I know IRL who advocates for pro-life causes does both. Let’s take the example of my deceased grandmother. Yes, she worked at a Catholic Pregnancy Aid clinic, attempting to counsel pregnant women out of abortion.
What did she do for the born? In my grandmother’s case she literally gave them food, canned goods, all sorts of groceries, often times even taking the time to deliver the food to the door of the woman who gave birth. My grandmother is likely responsible for the first year’s worth of food consumed by the family of several hundred kids in the areas she worked.
Maybe "most" is the wrong qualifier, but I'll hold that position until data shows otherwise. That doesn't mean I think poorly of anti-abortion folks who don't help as much as your grandma. Life pulls people in many directions. I just mean that people like her are exemplary; sloth and insincerity are the rule even among the ostensibly righteous.
This is why it's an odd pastoral choice to malign anti-abortionists not for their stance, per se, but for some perceived greater insincerity than pro-choicers. Does it follow that a pro-choicer doesn't need to focus on ministries for the disadvantaged born because they didn't want the born to exist in the first place? It's silly on its face.
I know many anti-abortion couples with many adopted kids (and the six figure expenses of the process), but the only pro-choicers I know who adopted did so because they literally cannot reproduce (b/c gay). Chew on that generalization, Pastor B!
Ahh... I think i may have misapprehended your point to some extent.
" sloth and insincerity are the rule even among the ostensibly righteous."
painfully, brutally, tragically true.
A lucid wordsmith I am not.
There's a reason Pharisees are mentioned about 100 times in the Good Book and it's not to praise their spiritual CVs.
Or for the existence of spiritual CV’s.
Does it matter? I can say abortion is wrong (murder) and also say that the mother and father need to figure it out on their own without the help of taxpayers.
Indeed you can!
Many charities which support mothers after a baby has been born are constantly under attack. Many if not most are religious in affiliation.
What I find hilarious is that a few years ago it was "well, if I can't have an abortion then the father should pay" and there was a resounding "yes" by most pro-lifers across the twittersphere.
Now we've devolved into "well if I have to have my baby then EVERYONE should pay" which is ridiculous.
I can believe abortion is wrong and I can also believe that society doesn't have to pay for someone else's choices at the same time.
He throws in immigrants which is interesting because they are not in the list of poor, sick, orphans, widows, and prisoners referenced in the NT. There is mention of sojourners in the OT and, of course, the waylaid traveler in the Good Samaritan, but those are not illegals coming to your homeland and turning it into a worse place for everyone there. We have mercy, but we are not called to forego justice.
Without being familiar with him he reads as a transparent progressive in-a-Christian-skinsuit trying to sealion and concern troll.
Meaning - yes, we are called to care for widows, orphans, the elderly, & etc and we ought. At my parish we have a group that regularly works a soup kitchen, we offer our parking lot in winter for cars for those who have no home, wifi, and power. Simultaneously, we understand through the Bible and Church teachings for thousands of years that protecting the innocent, including the unborn, from things like murder is also something we should do. Hospitals and orphanages are Christian institutions going back to the 4th century or further. Christians have done and probably do more still today for orphans through adoption and orphanages than any other group in history. We should not and cannot condone a society or a practice of murdering the innocent as that blood will cry out from the ground.
That guy is untrustworthy sounding from the get-go.
https://www.birminghamtimes.com/2018/10/pastor-david-barnhart-on-what-love-looks-like-in-public/
guy is a retard
100X this.
“Without being familiar with him he reads as a transparent progressive in-a-Christian-skinsuit trying to sealion and concern troll.”
So many of these skinsuits bedevil us these days. They’re in your church, blowing up the Boy Scouts, at your members-only club, on the ballot with an (R) next to name at the precinct…
*Sir, it's Scouting America.
How long you think until the "America" gets dropped because it comes from a white precolonizer?
So sad. At my suburban 4th of July parade, there were the bsa and gsa marching, and 3 or 4 alternate organizations.
I think the common thread of the SCOTUS rulings, including the Jan 6th and Immunity rulings, is that government agencies, including the DoJ, can't use creative expansive definitions not explicitly enabled by legislation. In general a rebuke to the deep state.
I particularly liked how Justice Thomas, in his concurring opinion to the Immunity case, laid out a guide for Judge Cannon to throw out Jack Smith's case against Trump because his appointment as special prosecutor was unconstitutional.
>>In general a rebuke to the deep state.
Concur. It’s like they think *Congress should..make.. the laws?
(Forgive me, I get to these reveries..)
If a policy has the force of law, it should be considered a law and made by the lawmaking body. This repugnant fiction that administrative rules are merely "regulations" is utter horseshit, whether it's the EPA, the Army or NHTSA.
So LAST Weekend the Bloviating British Bias Broadsheets were cheering Lando’s aggressive start line tactics in Barcelona - the Broccoli Cut Chav Bruv took the fight to the menace that is Verstappen by aggressively ushering the Dutchman onto the grass on the lengthy run down to Turn 1.
But THIS Weekend, those very same BBBBs had their knives out for Verstappen, who IMO did not deserve a penalty for Lando the Dive Bomber’s clumsy car positioning.
Every time I heard "Lando," I think "The Last Black Man In The Galaxy."
now hes the latest blackish guy on the grid
But he shilled for Colt 45. That's gotta put him head and shoulders above the rest.
Were he to win the Bri’ish Grand Prix at the weekend, they should dispense with God Save The King in favor of Lando(f) Hope & Glory.
F1 names just crack me up. “Mikka Hakkinen” , “Valtterri Bottas”. With those names only 2 jobs are really open to you, and the other is Marseillais Gangster, of course they’re on the grid.
World rally championship drivers Kankkunen and Sorinen.
i wrote a lost story about german female rally drivers gerda tadlonger and cogda bitthier. forgotten about that effort for decades
Hard disagree, the severity of these two driving maneuvers isn't even on the same planet..
Truck the goddamn British knobs.
You’re right.
In the maneuver that transpired in Barcelona, Lando aggressively moved the World Champion onto the grass at high speed.
Whereas the maneuver in Austria featured a nobody with a forthcoming track limits penalty clumsily colliding with the World Champion in a low speed corner. Fortunately the nobody suffered a DNF as his just desserts.
Take your blinders off. Or I'll assume you just dream of fellating Max the way Jack does Yuki.
He drove dirty leading up to that point at well.
https://x.com/433_marc/status/1808914364092547363?s=46&t=gVtyjeCJUR7RdaiPtVrsqQ
My point specifically was the moving under braking leading up to that point. Also, all those comments are based on 'from what I've seen'. If I get a statement from Lando saying what that tweet claims I'll concede.
https://www.motorsport.com/f1/news/norris-backtracks-on-verstappen-f1-apology-demand/10631246/
Your comments on Grants Pass might make sense in Ohio. On the West Coast, we have not created a situation where it is reasonable to expect adults to be responsible for finding housing. Individual cities have mostly banned construction of new housing while keeping the pedal to the floor on job creation, resulting in a fundamentally unbalanced housing market region-wide. This is great for local tax revenues, because jobs generate far more local taxes than residents. But it means in practice that the poorest few percent of each city's residents are forced out each year, and all the cities nearby are doing the same thing.
The 9th Circuit Boise ruling was effectively a tool to tell cities "you have to build more housing, or else you have to reap the consequences rather than trying to offload them on the poorer or more humanitarian-minded place next door." The Grants Pass decision will just resume the game of pass-the-buck. The number of homeless on the West Coast will just keep going up, but now more of them will have criminal records, making it much harder to reintegrate them.
If the citizens were concerned about building more houses in their neighborhoods, I’m assuming they would elect politicians who were for it. It’s the citizens who are voting for less housing.
Yes, and all hoping that the next town over will absorb the resulting homelessness and social problems. That's not tenable country-wide and it's a reasonable basis for state or even federal laws addressing it.
These are local problems that locals should address. I personally wouldn’t want to see a state or the Feds get involved as they don’t have a great track record with success. I live in a rural county and I surely would not want a state politician from an urban county thinking that they know better about housing in a rural county than we do.
I see where MC is coming from. I don't feel great about the idea of forcing jurisdictions to accommodate these people. But if they don't do it, who will?
You don't want this dealt with at the federal or even the state level. So it's all on the municipalities that are willing to deal with it. The homeless and illegal populations will invariably migrate to those places. That's not tenable, not without the feds stepping in with meaningful funding.
Each US State is very wealthy, so Federal money is not needed. https://fee.org/articles/us-states-renamed-as-countries-with-similar-gdps/
The states have already thrown a bunch of money at this problem and it hasn’t worked, so they need to try something new. But politicians are not interested in trying new things, so the doom loop continues.
From some back of the envelope calculations via Google California spends about 27.5k per homeless individual. I know things are expensive there but that is a lot of dosh being wasted. They still have a 1/3 of the nations homeless. It is like every other political boondoggle. Consultants are making good money so the problem won't be solved.
remove all taxes on profits from building housing. simple.
It's the "Homeless Industrial Complex". A lot of connected people get a lot of taxpayer money. Solving the problem ends the gravy train.
If it were up to me, I'd blanket America with houses, oil wells, refineries, nuclear reactors and apartment buildings.
Make energy and housing so abundant they'd be practically worthless.
Well we already waste trillions on stupid shit so it’s worth a try.
Great idea but the NIMBY's are coming.
"Individual cities have mostly banned construction of new housing while keeping the pedal to the floor on job creation, resulting in a fundamentally unbalanced housing market region-wide."
welcome to canada
dont make the same mistakes we did
People aren't homeless because of the lack of affordable housing (which is a separate issue that affects people capable of taking care of themselves). People are homeless because they have substance abuse and mental health issues. They're not the public's responsibility. At most they are the public's burden and if you want to call them unhoused, I'm happy with them being housed in mental hospitals.
Here's a theoretical question. A lot of municipalities are spending large per-homeless-person amounts of money on the issue (I presume most of that goes to grifting NGOs). Money that would normally provide nice middle class or better housing. When cities do build housing for the homeless they spend ridiculous per-unit amounts, high six and low seven figures.
What would be better for society at large, spending it on the homeless or shoring up the city's working and middle classes?
Personally, I don't want a penny of public funds spent on the homeless beyond what it takes to get them off the streets and institutionalized, where they might have some hope of getting to the point of being self-reliant. Build mental hospitals, schools, and libraries with the money (yes, and make sure the libraries have rules to keep folks with drug and mental issues from camping out in them).
thats exactly what i was trying to say
you explained it far better than i could have
Yes, and also because they refuse to shoulder the responsibilities of being productive, responsible citizens. Society has no obligation to The Poor.
As bit of a ex hippie I'll say that if people want to drop out or live off the grid, I'm not going to say that they have to be productive, but they should at least be responsible for their own sustenance and not be a burden on others, as much as that is possible (we all get by with a little help from our friends).
From a biblical standpoint, I'm not sure if society has an obligation to the poor but individuals do have some responsibility to see to the well being of all in their society.
Leviticus 19:9-11:
“When you [plural] reap the harvest of your land, you [singular] shall not reap all the way to the corner of your field, or gather the gleanings of your harvest. You shall not pick your vineyard bare, or gather the fallen fruit of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and the stranger; I the Lord am your God. "
People have always suffered from mental illness and addiction. They have not previously been homeless at this frequency.
The difference is that the bottom of the housing market in virtually any place with a strong job market is no longer a $20/night SRO room or a $300/month boarding house room, but a $1200 apodment. Why? We banned the SROs and gentrified the boarding houses.
That’s a policy choice, and it is the policy choice that causes us to have tents throughout every West Coast city, where we did not 25 or 30 years ago. In the old days, the same people would have been in flophouses and SRO rooms, which isn’t perfect, but is far better (for them and for us) than having them on the street.
"That’s a policy choice, and it is the policy choice that causes us to have tents throughout every West Coast city, where we did not 25 or 30 years ago."
Correlation is, of course, not the same as causation but every single one of those "West Coast" cities, as well as their states, have been run by the same political party for decades. They regulated out of existence the small business owners who ran those low cost housing options. They restricted housing development for supposed environmental concerns.
As far as gentrification is concerned, just how much of California's gentry is politically right of center?
West Coast residents have gotten the homeless situation for which they have voted.
While I don't disagree with you, it will be much more expensive to institutionalize the homeless than creating shelter. Put the fuckers in tents and throw them some bolonga sandwiches.
As a lifelong west coast resident, I completely disagree with your first paragraph. West coast homelessness is not in any way a housing problem. It is a mental health and substance abuse problem. The Boise ruling was a prime example of judicial overreach that had no hope of either fixing the homeless problem, increasing housing supply, or surviving further judicial scrutiny.
We’ve always had mental health and substance abuse issues. The people suffering from them mostly were not homeless three decades ago. Now they are. The difference is a shortage of housing driving up prices dramatically at the very bottom end of the market.
They were not homeless then because they were institutionalized or incarcerated. With modern west coast catch-and-release policing, neither of those are options unless the individual is exceptionally violent. The difference has been a move to soft on crime policing while throwing billions at NGOs that provide "homeless services." It hasn't worked.
This.
They were in institutions or prisons - mixing them with the regular populace is a huge mistake and worse for both the populace, the life of the city, and the homeless who need serious care not to be left to their own devices.
Suggesting it is a housing problem is a category error.
Minimum wage laws are an issue as well. If you're not worth $20/hr fuck you, you can't work.
Here's something interesting along those lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=geex7KY3S7c
Japan’s goal as a society is harmony. Ours is not.
All you can do in the US is live somewhere where the majority of the people are law abiding, responsible citizens.
Yep. The Japanese are quiet, respectful and orderly because that's what their society expects of them. Far too many Americans are selfish, thoughtless assholes.
That’s why Japan can have relaxed zoning laws, and the US has to have strict zoning laws so people can separate themselves from selfish, thoughtless assholes who would build anything, anywhere, as long as they could make a buck.
Going through this right now. Someonebuilt towmhomes and is using one as short term rentals. Shocking, some of our kids stuff is being messed with now. Stupid stuff but never had a single issue in 12 years. Developer is renting to college students. They are surprisingly better than the neighbors who moved out but the short term guys are awful. It’s dupage county not myrtle beach
All I can think of is to complain to your town. If short term rentals are not prevalent or don’t fit the character of the town, have the town ban them.
is houston still zoneless? 30 years ago it was compared to zoning-heavy dallas and you couldn't tell them apart
We have added 100 million people in the last 30 years. Japan has stable homogenous population. Scarce resources and politicians created this problem and the NIMBYs will encourage its continuation.
the solution is obviously another 100 million squatemalans
That's the thing. Here in America, resources AREN'T scarce. And neither are politicians, unfortunately.
As an open member of the conservative right, I have always found the media to be deceitful. The absolute nonsense pushed by the media (and Biden) about the presidential immunity situation is completely laughable. They think you (Americans) are stupid. They don’t think I’m stupid because, you know, I can read and think. The only thing that bothers me more than the way the media acts is that so many Americans can’t be bothered to pay attention or be aware.
The death of chevron is fantastic. Why anyone would want some rando who works for the government developing the rules we all have to follow is nuts. We elect people to do this, and they are accountable to us. The admin/deep state needs to go away.
Just hope we can get reasonable gas cans again
I’m sure the fellow who mandated the super gas can spout to save the planet has never once used one to learn that you leak more onto the planet than you get in the tank. Thank Amazon for selling basic spouts for a reasonable price.
You can still buy real gas cans with real vents and spouts in Canada. I always bring a couple across the border with me and sell them to friends.
The lobbyists will have a harder time of it. Instead of greasing the agencies, they will have to grease Congress.
The horror.
This sounds like a multi level marketing scheme.
Paging Bark Baruth, someone needs a multi level marketing scam. 😄
“OMG TRUMP CAN KILL HOMELESS PEOPLE NOW, AND THE EPA HAS TO SHUT DOWN”
I was already gonna vote for him but now that you tell me this I’ll be getting a mail in ballot so I can do it twice.
"You already talked me into it..."
Stop it! I can't like Trump anymore!
MotoGP sees a resurgence of Impeccably Perfect Pecco with the pole, the sprint, and the race wins all by commanding margins. Jorge Martin continues to limit the bleeding as best he can and finished second in the sprint and the race where he started with a grid penalty. Bagnaia simply looked untouchable this weekend.
Marquez slips further behind the championship race with a crash out of the sprint and a post race penalty pushing him out of his solid placement.
Bastianini is consistently chipping away and gaining points to become a credible late championship contender at this rate.
The KTM riders had no spectacular showing and neither did Aprilia. Yamaha is making some gains and 2025 should be even better with a second team fielding bikes and generating data. Honda has barely made points across four riders in a continually abysmal showing.
MotoAmerica has competition by virtue of physical woes on the part of Beaubier and Gagne. I don't know that it makes the season exciting to watch.
No KotB, which I know all yall breathlessly wait to hear about!
The tire pressure rule in MotoGP needs to be revisited. I understand WHY, but this isn't HOW it should be done.
I am not thrilled with how it's working out or how fiddly it is for the teams