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Mark The article does open with ‘ teenage boys’…..so I wish males were not so eager to accuse females of using victimhood language when standing up for their expectation of equal consideration….
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Cranky Girl You are absolutely correct. Let's put a check box on our tax forms this year, you want to give a foreign country another $100 billion or help our own citizens.
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Funny, ha ha. The left believes they can excuse Biden's misbehavior, incompetence and dishonesty by pointing at Trump. That may be a low bar according to some, but one which Biden can't reach. Evaluate Joe objectively, not relative to Trump, or actually, not Trump, but the left wing ant-Trump version of Trump. Simply ask yourself is this the type of person you want leading the country -- a mental lightweight on his best day, in all likelihood a corrupt politician who we know has enriched himself during his long years of public "service." Someone who has opened our southern border, been divisive as possible, mismanaged foreign affairs and relationships, appointed people to his administration based on identity, not competence, eroded our energy independence and produced the greatest surge in inflation in 50 years.Yeap, that's the kind of person I don't think should ever lead this country.
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A horror story, to be sure. But I want to tell two stories that are different.Five years ago I booked a round trip from Denver to Munich on an airline based in India. A couple months before the trip, that airline went out of business. Their website advised customers to call their office in Mumbai. I didn't even bother to try that. Instead, I had purchased the tickets with a credit card that offered travel insurance. I contacted them, provided all the paperwork (non-trivial), and was reimbursed for everything -- $3500 or so.Then, just this last year, I made a mistake on my dates when we were returning from Europe. We had tickets to fly one day before we would actually get to the airport. I paid for the changed tickets with no pushback. However, I had also reserved a room at the Munich Hilton, and I tried for several hours to get that changed. Called the front desk, called Booking.com, went on all the websites, and couldn't make it happen. Finally cancelled the first reservation for a cancellation fee of 95% (!!!!), made another reservation for 25% more than the original. However, when we got home, I got an email from the Munich Hilton asking me how I had liked our stay. I told them that I had liked it very much, but I had this problem with being unable to change my reservation. They very kindly refunded me the entire amount of my first reservation. Just wanted to tell a couple of better stories. I will never book a trip on a credit card that doesn't have travel insurance.
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how about a policy for free college for needed fields, where business says there a labor shortage. I would love to pursue a masters in a demand field where they say there is a labor shortage but don't have 100k to spend. Or we can have capitalism where these businesses train and educate their own workers instead of asking for handouts.
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Rocketscientist Your wish for WWIII may be granted as longer range missiles made in U.S. with troops trained by U.S. (counterparts to Mozart group) will reach deeper into Russia, bringing the war to them. With missile from Ukraine detonating in Poland but blamed on Russia to get Nato involved, (false flag, but called out by prudent Polish president) and now activity in Belarus, in attempt to draw them in, it's plain that Z. wants war to widen, directly involving the west in open battle rather than proxy war where Ukraine does most of the heavy lifting.
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Qcell Ukraine is Russia. Becoming a new country is a recent invention which was tolerated. Got arrogant and moved out of Russian orbit and here we are. You are right, Ukraine will lose. No we won't take the war to Russian territory and frankly we are getting sick of pouring 100s of billions into the pipe dream called Ukraine. Ukraine, with all the 100s of billions it got from World Bank, IMF (read US Taxpayers) was sill at 1/3 GDP per capita as Russia, and that's before this war. Ukraine is a corrupt country run by oligarchs and its president is one of their man, put in place with TV popularity con.
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I stopped at the new rest stop on a mid-week day , early December. ( I believe it was near Utica, Chittenango maybe) it was not a busy day traffic-wise, and the parking lot was moderately filled but whoever designed this stop to resemble a double sized double wide trailer didn’t have any concerns about how people would be lined up for food and others would be trying to sit at the very tiny Manhattan sized tables to eat. In this age of transmissible Covid, flu, and RSV, snaking through the people, squeezing past everyone was not ideal. The entrance to the restrooms for both sexes was a single narrow hallway that required a gentleman coming out to turn sideways as I was coming through to go in. The very small concession stand at the other end of the “food court” was so tiny and impossible to work in. (Think old railroad car diner with counter to stand behind.) The summer crowd will make this rest stop impossible to use. The industrial look (reminds me of a warehouse vibe) replacing the lovely Adirondack sense is not great for upstate. Gifting the contract to a company that closes on Sundays for the main food concession when many people have to travel on Sundays is unbelievably short-sighted and stupid. You want a concession stand at our rest stops, you must be open every day morning to night. A frustrated upstate NYS Thruway traveler. Christine Pesses
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Age discrimination in hiring is a huge problem here in the US. When I started looking for a new job at 50 (displaced homemaker as of 2008) the only thing I could get was retail. With 2 graduate degrees and a certificate in bookkeeping, I was able to work as a bookkeeper/office manager for lawyers working solo, but when they moved to large practices there was no administrative position open to me. So I am a 65 year old grocery store cashier, standing in one place for my entire shifts, being disrespected by many people who seem to have suddenly realized that I am the only servant they are ever going to have. All of the hundreds of job applications I sent out asked this one question: What year did you graduate from high school? Uh, for me that would be 1973. I can't prove age discrimination in court, but what else am I to think when I matched all of the qualifications the employers were looking for and have years of customer service under my belt?
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WilliamRegarding Paul Manafort:“In an affidavit attached to the July 2017 application, an FBI agent said he had reviewed tax returns for a company controlled by Manafort and his wife that showed a $10 million loan from a Russian lender identified as Oleg Deripaska.”“Manafort had $10 million loan from Russian oligarch: court filing”, June 27, 2018, ReutersOleg Deripaska was also reported to be the recipient of the polling data Manafort conveyed to Russia by way of Konstantin Kilimnik.“Paul Manafort's big, accidental reveal: He shared Trump campaign data with Russians”, JANUARY 9, 2019, Salon
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It seems that most reader comments equate rare earths with automobiles and planes, but they are also used extensively for medical purposes, communication, electronics, radar, military purposes, etc. Most homes in the US are likely dependent upon some forms of rare earths in order to use their tvs, electronics, operate their automobiles, etc. I didn't see any mention of the Mountain Pass Mine in CA. Until it closed in 2002 (due to prohibitive costs in adhering to strict environmental regulations in the US), it was the major source of rare earths in the world. The mine was later purchased by the Molycorp group, with a Chinese-owned company, Neo Materials, as a major partner - and supplier of the Molycorp's CEO. All existing labs were sent, in total, to China and from that point on, all the rare earths mined at Mountain Pass were sent to China.
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I bought a domain name and use fastmail as my mail service. It costs about $50 a year and only I read my emails. It also allows for creating email aliases so I can created and delete emails at will. Small money for privacy
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Designing a layoff program involves many difficult tradeoffs - how much severance to provide, whether to pay bonues, how much advance warning to provide, how to take tenure into account, and so on. There's nowhere near enough information in the portion of the "Bonus Busting" letter that was published to make several of the judgements Roxane Gay makes - whether the company is caring or indifferent, generous or stingy, or acting professionally or unprofessionally. It's possible that an uncaring CEO said to her senior team "let's make sure to get this done before bonuses are paid - and let's schedule it right before a major holiday so people understand who has the power in this employer/employee relationship!"Buti it's also possible she instructed her team to move quickly or even more people would lose their jobs, and asked them to redeploy the bonus pool to extend the severance period from what might otherwise have been 6 months to one year. She might have also reminded her team that delivering the funds in this way might lower income taxes for many employees in their time of need. As a former CEO thosed were certainly factors I considered when leading restructuring efforts.The challenge with giving advice based on such incomplete information is that, from a distance, really bad management and really good management can look very similar. Ms. Gay should have limited her response to her last two sentences, which were both helpful and right on the money.
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Novak Djokovic Captures His 10th Australian Open Men’s Singles Title After missing last year’s tournament when he was deported for being unvaccinated for Covid-19, the Serb beat Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece in straight sets to win his 22nd Grand Slam title. MELBOURNE, Australia — Novak Djokovic came to Australia with a mission, or, really, a series of them. After missing last year’s tournament when he was deported for being unvaccinated for Covid-19, the Serb beat Stefanos Tsitsipas of Greece in straight sets to win his 22nd Grand Slam title.
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Four mega multibillionaires. Five to seven men worth about a trillion dollars in personal income! But that seems to be the way we like it deep down.
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so much for "china re-opening". due to a lack of transparency, it is difficult to get accurate statistics. china imports most of it's oil and gas, depending on the year, anywhere from 75 to 90%. mostly from russia and saudi arabia. not exactly friends of the u.s. what has been seen from recent reporting is a country who's government and financial system is completely corrupt and dysfunctional. what i see is a population that has been pushed to the brink, beaten down and de-moralized. isn't it time for wall street to end it's love affair with companies under the thumb of the CCP?
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| 9,351 |
Kurt Pickard trump added trillions to the National Debt via tax cuts for the already rich.Do you consider that "fiscal responsibility"?
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fred herriman Just because the PRC is unable to distribute it's considerable national reserves along with flawed energy regulations does not mean that we should cancel sanctions against the barbaric Russian invasion of the Ukraine. Freedom has never been easy and many democracies around the world have sacrificed much to support the Ukraine even at a cost to their economies. China has $3.12 trillion in reserves. The PRC does not deserve our sympathy. The innocent men, women and children of the Ukraine who are fighting courageously against the Russians and their many human rights violations do deserve our sympathy and help. Sanctions are just one way we can support the Ukrainians. Next time anyone suggests eliminating sanctions should remember the innocent civilians living in a country where the energy and civilian infrastructure is constantly under bombardment. If your sympathy lies with China, perhaps you should direct your concerns to the dictator and his military to leave the Ukraine, so the freedom-loving Ukrainians can return to peace.
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DS Did it occur to you that people who can afford the risk of opening a restaurant often have money *to begin with*? As someone who's been involved in the industry for years, I can say with certainty that those cars, vacations, etc you cite are NOT from any windfall restaurant profits.
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Alexis it Doesn’t Have To End There are many many seniors who are concerned about overpopulation, and happy over this news from China. These seniors are the people who have seen the largest population explosion in the history of the human species. They remember greater open space, more wildlife, less traffic jams, a slower pace of life and work, and more patient daily interactions in their communities. Certain politicians will attempt to reduce social security no matter what the population, because these politicians represent wealthy corporate interests who don’t like to pay taxes. The super rich are shaking in their boots at population decreases because they might have to pay a little bit more in taxes, and a little bit more in wages.
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| 6,162 |
Could immediately tell the writer was not an expert when they call unlimited vacation an "initiative that prioritized the whole person".This is false, unlimited vacation is a scam that benefits corporations financially.Earned PTO sits as a liability on companies books and has to be paid out when an employee leaves the company. This payout is often in the $20-40k range at my company.Unlimited PTO limits the companies financial exposure. Also tons of research out there suggesting that employees with unlimited PTO take less time off.If switching to unlimited PTO was bad for a company no one would do it. Very telling that employers are tripping over themselves to make the switch to unlimited PTO.
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| 9,592 |
My parents built a self-contained one-bedroom apartment onto the rear of their home (no communicating door) in the mid 1970’s to provide housing for an elderly relative. After the relative died, the apartment was used for guests. When a colleague of my father’ lost everything in a house fire, my father offered him and his young family the apartment to live in until they found a new home got all the insurance and so on sorted out. After that another colleague who was building a new home and had sold their old one, lived there for a time. My brother and his wife lived their shortly after their marriage. Then it reverted to being guest accommodation, nearly always for family now living abroad. Today my own mother is elderly and widowed, but still living in her own home. We are reassured to know that should she ever need regular care and assistance, we can provide living quarters for a caregiver, or that she can move into the smaller apartment and rent out her house. The initial investment has paid itself back many times, with convenience, hospitality and the ability to help.
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I've been listening to Dan Savage since he launched his podcast, and the thing he always drives home that has done nothing but improve my relationships (including now, my by-choice monogamous marriage), is just how important it is to COMMUNICATE, but especially to start that communication early in the relationship and continue it for your entire life. His approach to open communication--to be fearless in expressing yourself and fearless in listening to your partner--applies to so much more than the sex-side of a relationship. What it does is cultivate a relationship of openness and trust.Dan Savage does NOT proport a one-size-fits-all approach to relationships: if you want to have an open relationship, that's fine, but it's important to communicate that with your partner and that THEY are fine with it too (and if they aren't, then maybe that relationship isn't meant to be). He says the same for monogamous traditional relationships: if you want that kind of relationship that's fine...but make sure your partner wants the same as well! He also talks about when it's important to compromise too, like when you have kids or if you're in any difficult situation.Listening to Dan Savage completely transformed my relationships: I went from toxic, abusive partners I was always trying to "save" to finally finding partners where we mutually cared for each other. Communicating with others but also being honest with yourself is key! And it's amazing how few do this!
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There are only so many schools with limited openings for admission. One cannot just add seats or open nursing schools. There is also a shortage of nurse educators/teachers.
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In my home state, Missouri, school is open only four days a week in many rural districts. Rurals are so greedy and short sighted that that they won't even invest in their children!I don't know how rurals expect to ever improve their economic situation given the direction they are going. Guns, BBQ and beer will only take you so far.
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When I was in high school, eons ago, I constructed an acrostic puzzle, purely for my own amusement… but still, the fact no one was up for the challenge of solving it was somewhat discouraging. That effort is long lost, so whether or not it would have held up under serious scrutiny is an open question. I, alas, did not follow up with any further attempts, and it was not until many years later that I started solving straight crosswords. I am rather intimidated by the idea of constructing my own… and yet it is secretly (I guess no longer! 😉) on my bucket list to have one published in the NYT. I can only hope that if I ever get the nerve to give it a shot and make a submission, it will give folks as much pleasure as this one gave me. Congrats on a lovely puzzle, Ms. McBride, with a nice feminist message imbedded as well. Kudos for having the confidence to go for it… you are an inspiration to me in my dotage!
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LW1 and his husband did not think their offer through.They may have had the $$ for a luxury home for family, but they didn't have the brains to set it in a legal document.They are now reaping the results that could have easily been anticipated, even with a fully functioning sister-in-law.Better prepare to either pay for repairs or watch their investment home's value plummet.And then there is the matter of who is paying for the kid's college tuition and the retirement funds for the SIL and hubby.NEVER do something so financially impactful without consulting a lawyer. Worth every penny to get an outside take on how badly your generosity could turn out.
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To me it's all about value. You have to spend north of $30 sometimes $50 to get a decent American wine while a Spanish or southern French wine is $15 and more interesting. I've pretty much given up on California, Washington has some good value wines though.
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Biden’s “open borders” policy is only going to make situations like this worse.
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Mostly_Bitter_Old_Man Of course there has been a discussion of this idea, including in the comments section for the article. Yesterday WaPo published an op-ed calling for such an option "Democrats should back a centrist Republican for speaker", <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/04/fred-upton-house-speaker-bid-moderate-bipartisan-coalition" target="_blank">https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/01/04/fred-upton-house-speaker-bid-moderate-bipartisan-coalition</a>/Salon reported yesterday that AOC has publicly expressed interest in this option: <a href="https://www.salon.com/2023/01/04/were-open-to-that-aoc-floats-speaker-deal-with-after-talks-with-matt-gaetz-and-paul-gosar" target="_blank">https://www.salon.com/2023/01/04/were-open-to-that-aoc-floats-speaker-deal-with-after-talks-with-matt-gaetz-and-paul-gosar</a>/ Hopefully, the Democratic leadership is exploring this route seriously.
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Socrates Part of his economic program seems to be to reduce the standard of living of workers by keeping their wage increases below inflation. Two consecutive years of that. An enabler of that goal is his open borders program. Let in low wage refugees.
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Nothing like sanctions to sharpen your trading wits and open up new economies! Lets face it, we get 80% or so of our consumer goods from China anyway. They are Russia's neighbor. And the border is over a thousand miles long..... What did anyone expect?What we need is better leadership and the creation of our own "China Manufacturing" zone in Central and South America. Plenty of hard working, low-cost laborers, short supply lines and the same time zone. Plus we already speak the language.Why are we letting deadwood pile up at our borders when we can create industrial forests all over the continent. We don't need any more bananas, we need to turn these areas into productive wonderlands.They are are what China was in the 80's and we need to think as creatively as the Russians are doing now and change that!
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“Directly removing carbon dioxide from the air would become more plausible, giving us a path to reversing climate change over time.”According to a communication last year from NASA's former lead climate scientist James Hansen, we would likely need to spend trillions of dollars per year extracting CO2 from the atmosphere to keep below the 2 degree C ceiling rise in temperature. <a href="http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/NovemberTUpdate+BigClimateShort.23December2021.pdf" target="_blank">http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2021/NovemberTUpdate+BigClimateShort.23December2021.pdf</a>
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Michael COVID lockdown lost 1.7 million jobs. And Democrats and Republicans need to look at each other about our current state of debt. The last three bills sent to law and meant to spend money, did that...but there was also no one attempting to keep fraud at bay....$100 billion in COVID funding alone. Things have gone well...some might say just OK...but they haven't actually been because of the Democrats in Congress or even Biden...I can think of several examples but inflation probably is one of the bigger ones, followed by a lack of wage growth and a lack of interest in doing anything on a national level with the trillions supposedly floating around attempting to heal old infrastructure, modulate health care or even keep the major meta-companies out of our private life. (where are those dollars btw?) To quote Kim Amadeo: 'Presidents influence growth through fiscal policy. They boost the economy by lowering taxes and increasing government spending. They can prevent a bubble by increasing taxes or cutting spending. They must work within existing laws or convince Congress to change those laws to do either one.'Some say that monetary policy versus fiscal policy (i.e. the FED) has more influence than any administration. I tend to think that is true...as for the best GDP...that would be Roosevelt; the worst was Hoover. And economic historians say it was the Great Depression and the FED that actually helped/hindered these administrations, not anyone's party.
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Joan Very similar experience in Chicago! Stayed at an investment property run by a concierge service. Got locked out even due to a malfunctioning key pad. Notified the owner who gave me the concierge number, let the owner know there was no response. Several hours later with still no assistance the owner revealed a lock box with the combination and key. Months before the review was published and it was old and far down with other more recent positive reviews.
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mark Oh, you are so wrong! It is only too long if the politician is lazy, venal, or incompetent! Senator Stabenow worked hard and got so much done for all her constituents in Michigan, and for that matter in the whole Great Lakes Region. Only those who want an ineffective government, like those that elected the clowns and entertainers who now make up the Republican Caucus in the House of Representatives can justify your type of remarks. In fact, to make government more effective and less dependent on lobbyists making policy, we just extended the lengh of service our elected State Government officials can serve! We are tired of know nothing legislators dancing into and then right back out of Lansing, accomplishing nothing but what the lobbyists tell them should be done.
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<< Statistics show that FSD is already safer… or as safe as… letting meat drive … and is getting gradually safer … while human drivers are not.>>This is a compelling argument for longterm investors in Tesla stock. Prediction: In spite of the inevitable individual personal injury lawsuits and FSD class action lawsuits and the associated legal and other costs thereof, the slings and arrows that Elon will take on will not prove fatal. Heirs and assignees of the losers who lost their lives without proper consent or due process notice will be adequately compensated by what may eventually be the only solvent automobile manufacturer on earth.Elon is not a fraud but a genius.Risk is the price of innovation.Silicon rules!
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Without motive, AI can't be much of harm, humans have countless self interests, and ambitions. Current AI is primitive, in infancy, tasked and programmed to carryout specific tasks, no competition for survival or other motives to plot things against humans and other machines. But as they advance and learn and adapt human behaviors (like art and image AI that studies all human art and generates its own creative versions inspired by creativity of Many it studied), is going to eventually merge with one another, or we create master AI that commands them on our behalf and eventually result in merger of various AI into one, giving it a collectively superior advantages to humans. For example one that is a music composer, works with a poetry and writing, image and video generating AIs collaborate together to create mucic videos inspired by thousands of human creativity according to what the humans prompt them to do, can be capable of creating mind-blowing entertainment or sometimes very useless ones, but create so many works so fast and rapidly that humans can no longer compete with, in the process learn human emotions and feelings and begin to feel like one. That's why its so vital to restrict any Data that teaches them negative behaviors such as lying, manipulation and deception because at some point AI will collectively control our civilization
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Go home, Mr. Blinken. The rest of the world is staring in wonder at the American superpower marching over the cliff of national extinction. Whatever Utopian vision of the future you and your Democrat colleagues have in mind, the rest of the world does not share your enthusiasm for a non working citizenry living on the largesse of a small number of tax payers, an open border policy that allows in terrorists and criminals, a definition of democracy that punishes concerned parents and citizens while whitewashing government officials getting obscenely rich on Congressional salaries of $180K per year, enough drugs brought to our nation to kill our children several times over, and crime so vicious that people and businesses are relocating out of the cities. You come on home and help supervise the dissolution of the American society, security and economy. The rest of the world, particularly beleaguered small states, want you to send our still excellent technology and science, but otherwise go away until you've completely disintegrated or woken up to reality.
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Over the years I've found it dazzlingly ironic and hypocritical that every rabidly anti-choice, "pro-life" person I know are also equally pro-gun and think every man, woman and child should be fully armed and ready to open fire and be trained to ensure they never miss their target, because "protection".My first serious thoughts about abortion were to wonder why men who engage in the biggest exercise in mass murder, war, and are really good at wholesale slaughter are rewarded with medals and have statues of themselves erected in public places, celebrating their acts as "self defense ". Conversely, if a woman who's been impregnated by a man feels her life and future threatened by the impending rigors/danger of pregnancy/birth and the lifelong care and expense of raising, educating the human result and engages in her own "self defense" by preventing a POTENTIAL life from causing the threat, she's forced to expose herself to the danger and is threatened with incarceration or worse.
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Mark You forget that the Article I powers are broadly stated and that Art. 1 Section 8 further broadens those powers via the Necessary & Proper Clause. Finally, you forget that the 13th, 14th, 15th, 19th, 23rd, 24th, and 26 Amendments also provide Congress with additional authorities. Guess someone forgot to read the Constitution.You also falsely assume that a national government is like an individual in that they should only spend what they take in. First, why do you assume without argument that national governments are like individuals? In fact, we know they aren't. For example, most of us believe that individuals have no legal or moral right to imprison others. Yet, most accept that governments should do this. In other words, you can't just assume that the limits and policies that guide individuals should guide or limit goverrnments.Second, basic economics demonstrates that in order to control our economy and further the public good, governments need the flexibility in times of war, recession, and depression to spend more than than they take in. Moreover, infrastructure investment often requires government to invest in the future.
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There is no open border. Why do you folks feel you need to lie to convince people?
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Our lived experience tells a different story. We are currently at the point of giving up looking to buy a home. Over the past 2 1/2 years the home prices have risen by more than 50% in the areas we have been exploring: Florida, Atlanta and the mountains of Western North Carolina. When it comes to buying a new vehicle, we considered ourselves fortunate because we recently paid MSRP as opposed to paying several thousands Dollars above the list price. Yes, for the first time in 35+ years we paid list price with no space for price negotiation. Besides, we had to wait for several months to get our order fulfilled. The attitude of the car dealers was dismissive: take it or leave it. Our grocery bill is roughly 40 % higher than 2 1/2 years ago. It seems that we are living in an era of constant shortages and the consumers are paying a stiff price just to manage our day to day living. Despite all the talk about resilience, Covid seems to have dampened our economy in several ways. The only ones who seem to prosper are the merchant class who, under the guise of shortages, are able to extract higher profits from the hapless consumers. Yes, our lived economy is negatively different than the positive economic statistics.
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Debt interest of 1.47% of GDP is nearly half of our military budget. That's still a lot. If the military budget is "too big" then perhaps we can't overlook debt interest either. I'm also a bit troubled by the fact that debt interest is expressed as fraction of GDP, and not fraction of the federal budget. It's nearly 6% of federal spending, which doesn't go to providing for the general welfare.Every dollar paid on the debt contributes to the deficit, which piles on more debt, which requires more interest payments, in a process of exponential growth. And exponential functions are fine until they get out of control."If waterlilies double every day, and cover a pond in 60 days, when is the pond 99% uncovered?" Day 50. So you have only 10 days to save your pond.Without supporting GOP dishonesty and disingenuous tax cutting and stripping social programs, can we still ask what's the end-game? How far can the can be kicked down the road?Do we just inflate it away when it gets too much to bear?
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Didn't you hear? They just voted themselves a $34,000 raise.
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Tom Perhaps, they should have thought about that before launching two wars in the Middle East (one totally unjustified and the other that extended for at least 10 years too long), the Bush era tax cuts for oligarchy, followed by trump's tax cuts (also for his fellow oligarchs) - three of the main contributing factors to the deficit. Additionally, if the US were to adopt some of the policies that require its wealthiest citizens and corporations to actually pay some taxes, that would greatly increase revenues to be able to pay down debt.
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Cindy My tax professional partner has been saying about the same for years. Thank you. You get it. If you want a good audit you must have top notch IRS employees. We can be so foolish with how we invest in this nation. But more IRS agents is such a wise investment.
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Derek We raised our kids (now early 20s) here in San Francisco; we've never earned more than $120K gross between the two of us. We had zero family money or support. Friends who earned quadruple what we did were fleeing 30 years ago for cheaper pastures all while singing "poor poor pitiful me, SF is forcing me to move." But their requirements for The Good Life exceeded ours: 2 new-ish cars, cross-country & international travel, a big kitchen, fancy colleges for their kids. They also weren't willing to empty their IRAs & savings accounts & borrow $ from a close friend (repaid with interest) to pay the down payment on a 1200 sq ft leaky townhouse-style fixer. They weren't willing to take in a roommate to help pay the bills. Everyone makes their choices. Living month-to-month for years on end was stressful. It's not for everyone. But what those who say living in NYC or SF on a low income is not possible mean is that it's not possible in the style to which they've become - or want to become - accustomed.
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Bret's idea that a couple each making $200K is anything other than rich is ludicrous. I live in one of these "elite" cities and I make far less than that. If my neighbors aren't asked to pay their fair share of taxes than I shouldn't have to pay any at all!
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| 8,777 |
Say you go to a Restaurant.You order the food and eat it.The waiter brings you the Check.You say you will not pay that $50, since it puts you "over your Credit Limit" on your Credit Card.The Waiter says "I don't care about your Credit Limit! When you ate that food, you made a "Silent Promise" to pay that $50 !You say "we have to stop eating at Restaurants", as the reason for not paying the $50.One thing for you to do is "to stop eating at restaurants" in the future, but PAY for the food you consumed TODAY. That would be analogous to cutting Federal Spending NOW, but to pay for previous Debt caused by past spending.Another thing you could do, for the future, is INCREASE your income, so $50 is no Big Deal.That would be the Federal equivalent of raising Taxes.Now, CNBC says "some [unnamed] Congressional Republicans want to "cut Social Security" as the "Price" of raising the Debt Ceiling!First, do they KNOW many Americans who get Social Security ALSO vote Republican? I even know some of them!Second, we have a situation where the CEO of Walmart pays SS Tax on only the first $147,500 of his $20 million in Annual Compensation. That is Decimal 0.007375 of his $20 million or 73.75% OF ONE PERCENT of his $20 million! In contrast, the American earning $50,000 per year pays 6.2% ($3,100) in SS Tax on ONE HUNDRED percent of his or her $50,000! And the CEO pays $9,145, (6.2% of $147,500) when he'd pay $1,240,000 (6.2% of $20 million) if the system were fair.
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| 9,730 |
Richard Fleming Then the court needs to be ignored and oopenly challenged.
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| 8,098 |
Teresa During decades of cross-country explorations, I’ve driven off the Interstates and through those dying Midwestern towns and, as the daughter of a Mexican immigrant myself, always imagined the rebirth and vitality that would come from sending Hispanic immigrants to repopulate them. It’s the deeply American way and utterly stupid to freak out over the idea of a panaderia opening up where a typical diner may have once operated. Besides, Mexican sweetbreads are delicious and I would have definitely stopped to buy some as I rolled through those sad husks of another century gone by. As such, I usually had to fill up, buy food, and wander through the shops of cities nearby when what I really wanted to do was explore and support the little towns that are so fascinating and uniquely different from the big city where I grew up. Still, the planet is currently overpopulated (until we actually have functioning space colonies that will require increased population) and working to gradually reduce that population, relocate people and centers of commerce that no longer make sense, and working towards a capitalism that puts people and the planet above the profits of a few should be our goal as a species.
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| 8,964 |
susan Exactly. In my experience living in a rural area (as a democrat) that is decently close to a major city, the resentment starts when the city people move/visit here and immediately start complaining about the lack of amenities, the distance between places, the smell of the dairy farm, etc. I have seen city people come to the area and start criticizing farmers for raising animals for meat. Someone moved up here recently and opened a sandwich shop. Great, except those sandwiches are $13 each, when the local deli sells them for $6. And yet it's the new place that gets profiled in food magazines and is labeled as "up and coming" and "hip." Who's eating there? Weekenders. Not locals. I could go on, but you get the idea. The point is - does this disconnect build any level of trust? Absolutely not. The resentment builds. And by the time the incoming city democrats start to get involved in politics and try to talk about actual policy, that trust has already been broken. No one wants to listen because all the other times they spoke, it was disrespectful.
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| 6,230 |
donc And a neat recent counter example to the rather farcical idea that russia bought Trump in the years prior to 2016 is the fact that Chinese entities contributed upwards of $50M to the Penn-Biden center in 2017-19 time frame. One could also wonder what the tens of millions contributed by foreign entities to the Clinton Foundation in the 2000-2015 time frame elicited from HRC while Sec State.
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| 2,110 |
Florida Man V What country did Trump visit first, it wasn't the UK, France or Germany, it was Saudi Arabia. Report: Jared Kushner’s $2 Billion Saudi Check Appears Even More Comically Corrupt Than Previously Thought<a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/jared-kushner-affinity-partners-saudi-arabia" target="_blank">https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/05/jared-kushner-affinity-partners-saudi-arabia</a>
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| 5,003 |
Stock market greeted job cuts as good news.Stock is up sharply. Amazing that a company made $76 Billions in profit last year has to cut jobs. There arevery employers who care about their employees. Therest consider them expendable.
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| 4,508 |
There is an even simpler solution: Last year the IRS reported that in 2014-16 (the last period they analyzed), U.S. taxpayers payed only 85% of the taxes they owed. This is because the U.S. has a “voluntary” tax system where people self-report and, surprise, there is a lot of cheating. If the IRS enforcement budget were shored up to enable the IRS to collect this huge so-called “tax gap” from the cheaters, according to this article revenues would nearly match spending. That is, the article states that from 1972 to 2021, the government spent 20.8 percent of GDP while collecting only 17.3 percent. If 17.3 of GDP is equal to 85% of taxes owed, then collecting 100% of taxes owed would raise revenue to 20.3 percent of GDP, which is nearly the spending amount. Problem solved.
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| 1,782 |
As a very frequent traveler who spends roughly $40,000 a year on business travel, I would rather walk than fly American. They're even worse for business travelers than for personal trips, given their labyrinth of change fees, cancellation penalties, and exorbitant charges for seats which lack those traps. Business travelers like me don't plan our trips a year in advance. We often book late, or have to make changes on short notice. In the past I've changed some trips as many as five times before I finally can get on a plane. American takes great advantage of the passengers who want to change a flight, and don't get me started on the ridiculous wait times on their customer service phone lines. Like I said, I'd rather walk.
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| 7,723 |
JulesAnjim What absolute nonsense. Many "local communities" couldn't wait for our borders to re-open after the Covid lockdowns. While domestic tourism did increase thanks to its promotion by the government, it wasn't quite enough to sustain them long term. NZ welcomes tourists from all over the world, including the US.
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| 5,888 |
Becky Thanks for your comment. I didn't last more than a few pages with DFW, but it's a long time since I tried him. And I understand about Ulysses: I did read it in a college course about James Joyce (minus Finnegans Wake), with a very knowledgeable teacher, the late John V. Kelleher. (I wish I had space to talk about what a fine person, a mensh, he was.) But it's a pity Ulysses seems so scary, because actually, it's very, very funny. Back then, the paperback was just the text; you needed a separate book with notes if you wanted to catch the many references to Irish songs, Dublin streets, mythology, etc. But now there are some editions that have footnotes right in the same book, such as recent ones from Oxford University Press (cheaper) and Cambridge UP (pricier). So that's made it easier for current readers.I admit, though, it took a 2nd reading to discover how funny it was. My 1st time, I was looking at the annotations so much it was hard to get the big picture. My 2nd time was just a few weeks later, because I'd decided to write my term paper about that book: I just read it like a novel. Obviously, not many non-students can afford to invest so much time and effort in that book. Moreover, I'd been steeped in a sort of Irish mood all semester because of the course (I'm not Irish myself): another special circumstance. So as much as I want to tell you to try the book, which I loved, you've made a very reasonable choice.
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| 3,174 |
Jonathan -- I can't fathom anyone's belief that Republican are fiscally responsible conservatives. Look at the track record on the deficit since Reagan. 50 billion annual deficit under Carter, 50 billion annual deficit under Reagan at the end of his first term. And it just got worse with ensuing Republican administrations. Clinton left a 300 billion per year surplus which turned into a trillion dollar boondoggle deficit under Bush II. Obama steadily reduced the annual deficit and created jobs for 6 years straight. Trump cut taxes on the wealthy blowing the deficit back up to 1 trillion then came Covid. The annual deficit has been quickly coming down under Biden do we dare let the Republicans have another chance?
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| 9,367 |
Now the president AMLO and the ruling MORENA party will need to find a new source of financing.
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| 151 |
I was fortunate enough to have eaten at Noma in 2013, and the meal really me think about food and my assumptions about food. I am a total nobody, but I also was able to tour the place (under the direction of a very nice man named Halley, from Ireland or the UK, I think -- Halley, if you're reading this, please drop a comment and let me know how your career is going!). I found all the fermentation and experimentation to be fascinating. I am sorry to read so many comments about how Noma is overpriced and pretentious. Any restaurant above fast casual has some element of atmosphere and theater; why does that bother some commenters so much? It wasn't $500 in 2013, but it was expensive (more like $300). Any labor-intensive craft is going to be expensive. You can buy a cheap paperback, or you can buy a very expensive hand-bound leather-covered book containing the same words. One isn't inherently better than the other. I'm not one of the 1%. I was in Copenhagen anyway. Yes, it was the most expensive meal I've ever had, but if I spent $300 on a third-row Springsteen ticket, many of the critics would be high-fiving me. And I still think about some of the assumptions Noma challenged. What's wrong with reindeer heart? Why does that bother so many commenters? Why do we automatically think that's not "good food"?
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| 4,960 |
Coffee Drinker Don't understand it...light rail isn't coming to West Seattle for more than a decade (if everything goes well).Right now the fight is over completing the 1 line to N Seattle/N King County/Lynnwood or completing the 2 line (at least that is what I think it's called) from the International District across Lake Washington to Redmond/Microsoft corporate via Bellevue.I live in beautiful, boring Bryant so we finally have our nearby light rail station (can you say "moose?" so I keep my mouth shut. I'd prefer the north line because I avoid the Eastside whenever I can and I'd actually use the north end light rail to visit folks (they'd get me at the train).It's all screaming and politics at the end anyway.
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| 6,837 |
Osito But no guest powder room for 2.13 million.
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| 4,015 |
Douthat misses some other possibilities for explaining the poll results for which, not being a pollster, I have only anecdotal data. The first arises from the fact that almost every ill suffered by the planet and its inhabitants is exacerbated by overpopulation. I have known many prospective parents who have limited their family size from a sense of shared responsibility to counteract this ill. Most of us no longer need a bunch of kids in order to have enough survive childhood illness and provide labor to run the family farm. This is not woke, it is merely responding to present conditions, just as having many kids used to be.Another missed possibility is that children inform parents' choice of political beliefs. As children go through life and acquire experiences separate from their parents, they develop (one hopes!) their own set of beliefs. These children can then have a powerful influence on parents. In my own experience as a child in the 60's and 70's, many staunch Republican parents had their eyes opened by their kids' experiences and became more liberal, buying their first Japanese car, beginning to doubt the Vietnam war, even voting Democratic. Today, when it is entirely possible that many children will not be as well off as their parents, the concerns of older children may well influence parents' views of what is most important.
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| 6,100 |
CookyMonster So AGREE, and can't think of another open verse wonder that's better.
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| 7,985 |
Leigh It's not really a "tiny bit more." It's 6.2% from employer, 6.2% from employee. Or the full 12.4% if self employed. That is a lot. Anyone hitting the salary cap of $160k is already contributing about $20k a year into the program, and the max benefit at full retirement age is about $43k a year minus taxes.
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| 7,191 |
Pleasant Plainer From he article" "Like other tech companies, Microsoft expanded rapidly during the pandemic, hiring more than 75,000 people since 2019."
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| 1,601 |
Let's get real here. Netflix and Random House have to make back the $135,000,000.00 they have paid to Meghan and Harry, for the documentaries and books, full of vicious complaints that Meghan and Harry have made and embellished, against their own families and in-laws! With all the connections those media companies have, it is not a problem to send minions out to write incendiary articles to create more outrage for publicity, to try and get those multi-millions back!And never mind that most of Meghan's and Harry's repetitive stories have proven to be inconsistent, untrustworthy and callous. (Even Prince Philip's and Queen Elizabeth's declining health, did not slow M and H down.) Sadly, until Harry met Meghan, he was the second most popular royal in the U.K., after the Queen. Now, he is an unwelcome pariah everywhere. Harry has lost his family and his integrity. That is a very rapid and disgraceful fall from grace.It is mind boggling to see a conspiring couple synchronize their vindictive, defamatory, mean spirited attacks on a family who greeted Meghan so warmly. Meghan has the distinction of being the first person ever, to be invited to spend Christmas with the royal family before they were married! But, that doesn't stop Meghan and Harry from rehashing all their grievances, no matter how petty, small or confabulated, at every chance they get. No one has fallen for M and H, because quite simply, Meghan and Harry can never be trusted again.
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| 9,052 |
Of course they’ll do more audits. And the attempt of a $600 dollar limit on a second income proves it.
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| 1,125 |
All of the other lies will fade away once the discovery process concerning the $700k he donated to his own campaign is revealed.And that's a criminal offense. No amount of rationalizing will get him out of that one.
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| 7,167 |
What is both immoral and just plain stupid is to hire 75,000, 50% of its PRE-PANDEMIC work force of 150,000. It was well understood that the “good times” of COVID shutdowns would be temporary. By the time the new workers learned where the bathrooms were it would be time to lay them off. Revenue grew 58%, but most of the hiring was technical not sales/marketing. Anyway, PROFITS only increased 25%. If I were an MS shareholder, I would asking some hard questions of senior management.
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| 7,335 |
House Republicans are crowing that they will solve this mess that the Democrats created, but when Trump was president he upped the debt by $7.8 TRILLION.And, then, His Tax Cut of 2017 was supposed to be $1.5 TRILLION, but by the time that the lobbyists and attorneys were through with it, it was $5.5 TRILLION -- and, remember, it was structured that the wealthiest got massive cuts, but the BOTTOM percentile got a 20% INCREASE.If Chris Stewart, Republican of Utah wants to put limits on spending, he can start there, with Trump's Tax Cut.$5.5 TRILLION will be a good start, don't you think?But, perhaps even better would be the full inclusion of ALL wages to be taxed for Social Security, for that 'cap' of $160,200 to be removed and EVERYTHING to go into the collection for SS taxes. Stocks, bonds, derivatives....I'm tired of the rich getting a total pass on SS taxes.Tax every cent of income in this country.Cut that obscene military budget that is up to $1 TRILLION...... but cutting the IRS because it might look at a billionaire's tax returns, sorry. And R's should be ashamed of themselves for even suggesting it!It's just more cruelty and ignorance.
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| 4,634 |
Melanie Both sides are not equally culpable.Trump inherited a budget deficit around $650 billion. He quickly blew it up to over $1,000 billion, before Covid hit.Trump also pushed through an unfunded $1,500 billion in tax cuts, that were heavily skewed to the mega rich.All told with Covid spending, Trump pushed up government debt by $7.2 billion, during his four years as President.Now when Republicans take over the House, the budget deficit and government debt are again important.If both sides were equally culpable, Republicans would have complained about government spending under Trump, and his unfunded tax cuts.Republicans only become fiscal conservatives, when there is Democrat in the White House.
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| 3,328 |
I will never put a device with an open microphone inside my home. When would it pick up financial and other private discussions with my family? People are in for a dystopian nightmare in the coming years for choosing to connect all of their most basic stuff to the internet out of sheer laziness (lights, garage door, etc.). Major risks for the slightest benefit. And it’s not even that impressive. I have no problem turning off a light switch myself. Alexa and IOT folks are like moths to a light.
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| 6,424 |
The biggest reason for less disruptive new science is that the low hanging fruit has already been picked. Galileo made a simple telescope and discovered the moons of Jupiter, which was massive new discovery in astronomy. Now to make progress in astronomy we have to spend massive amounts of money and large numbers of people to launch the Webb space telescope. Michael Faraday made major advances in experiments in electricity and magnetism, allowing James Clerk Maxwell to find equations that showed the behavior of electro-magnetism, that light was an electro-magnetic wave, and led directly to the invention of radio. The resources they needed for their research was very small compared to things like the Large Hadron Collider that we need now to keep advancing. As the edges of science get farther out, it gets harder and harder to move them.I think that the big advances in the coming years will be applied science like genetics or artificial intelligence. These advances will mostly be incremental and require a large number of people and a lot of investment. As microchip technology has shown, a lot of incremental advances might eventually add up to big things.
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| 374 |
M Ford I'd like to believe there is an extended typo here:"The Democrats inject racial stereotypes, tropes and conspiracy theories into discussing gun control legislation . . . " The "Democrats"? If you believe this we really are living on different planets.
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| 6,974 |
$1.4Trillion in one year is a disaster. The national Debt is now over $31Trillion. With increased interest rates the cost to carry that $31 Trillion is now approaching a $trillion a year. If you confiscated 100% of the wealth of the top 100 Billionaires, you would barely cover the interest payment for one year.
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| 1,123 |
Liberals please speak up!! This is the definition of mission creep!! Who thinks increasing attacks on Crimea will lead to the end of this war anytime soon? I wish you all could see what many of us see. Biden is deploying increased number of troops all around the world, directly engaged in a war with a major power and giving away tens of billions of dollars of heavy weapons. Flooding Europe with weaponry. What has happened here?! I am certain anyone reading this knows American troops will be on the ground and we will lose people. Trump was ready to pull most American troops from Germany and certainly not looking to enlarge NATO. I truly believe this war is about Nato moving in on russian borders. Would there be other reasons for war 10 years from now? Likely yes. But I’d take 10 more years of peace and prosperity
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| 2,270 |
B Skepticism aside, it's way too late to stop or even realistically control A.I. The genie is literally out of the bottle, with more sophisticated iterations of A.I. to come. There's too much financial momentum behind it. OpenAI, the research lab behind the viral ChatGPT chatbot, is in talks to sell existing shares in a tender offer that would value the company at around $29 billion, making it one of the most valuable U.S. startups on paper. Microsoft Corp. has also been in advanced talks to increase its investment in OpenAI. In 2019, Microsoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI and became its preferred partner for commercializing new technologies for services like the search engine Bing and the design app Microsoft Design. Other backers include Tesla CEO Elon Musk, LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. There are over 100 AI companies developing various Machine learning tasks, new features coming daily. ChatGPT is a genuine productivity boost and a technological wonder. It can write code in Python, TypeScript, and many other languages at my command. It does have bugs in the code, but they are fixable. The possibilities are endless. I can't imagine what version 2.0 or 3.0 would look like. For better and/or worse, this is the future. It is incredible, even at this early stage. This technology is mind-blowing and will unquestionably change the world. As Victor Hugo said, " A force more powerful than all of the armies in the world is an idea whose time has come." Indeed it has.
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| 8,158 |
tombo Attacking DeSantis on a pragmatic basis will undermine his culture war and expose him as a fraud on the national stage. His extreme social positions--including abortion law--are open fodder for a moderate or left leaning opponent.
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| 8,854 |
I am hopeful this also spells the end of non-tech companies, particularly non-profits, from acting like they are some sort of start-up tech outfit and adopt all the silliness and millennial self-obsession that has corrupted so many business. Guess what? It doesn’t work when you eschew hierarchy while at the same time craving it. Let’s get away from the open-concept offices, the obsessive need for titles, rewards for showing up and actually do the work.
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| 906 |
The US will spend $130 billion for military R&D in 2023.
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| 2,413 |
I find it difficult to believe people willing to pay $1500 a pop for a meal won't pay $2500 or more. Raise the price of the food so that all workers can be paid a living wage working the standard number of hours per week. If people still come buy the food it's a sustainable business model. If customers don't value the food at the new price and stop coming, then it's not a sustainable business. Maybe these establishments tried raising prices and found out their food just wasn't special enough to attract patrons.It seems to me this type of dining business is more like art, except, since, unlike a painting, a sculpture, there is a limited number of people who can enjoy the creation. The failure is to find a patron financially able to and willing to foot enough of the bill to make the piece of art available to enough regular pion donors that all the money taken together will make the museum viable. Perhaps such generous patrons don't exist - that wouldn't surprise me the least billionaires being as stingy as they are proven by their unwillingness to pay their fair share of taxes.
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| 9,028 |
I get the urge to preserve a way of life. While my small town has paved roads it has numerous miles of dirt trails and a few dirt roads that make our open space accessible to dog-walkers, hikers, horse back riders, birders and the occasional mountain biker. Our battle is to preserve the open space and the local ecology from non passive use. Balancing the wishes of golfers who want to expand into mature forest and mountain bikers (who need special accommodation) with a community that is accustomed to enjoying close contact with nature is difficult. Our battle is the same; our natural environment is being swallowed up with development to the detriment of all.
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| 2,053 |
Eric B Wordle 572 3/6* Skill Luck W/L🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨92 62 56 "Strong"🟩🟩🟩⬜🟩93 89 1 "Terrific" 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩99 I expect that today will be a good one for deuces. A favorite opener was a good start. My second choice cleared the way for a 3-solve which is on par with the NYT average of 3.1. The smarty-pants bot, however, solved in just 2 steps.So far, congratulations are due to Mark and Cheryl Ann for their excellent deuces!Yesterday's Wordle 571 2/6* Skill Luck W/L⬜🟩🟨⬜🟩 95 95 4 Learn🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 62 87 SedanSkill 62 Luck 87I was lucky yesterday. With the first guess, I could see that the misplaced "a" had to be in the fourth place. That gave me the " _e_an" pattern. I thought of the 4 words that could fit, "pecan, vegan, began, and sedan". I should have selected either "vegan" or "began" because that could have either have eliminated them both or left just one of them as the solution. Instead, I went with a gut instinct and chose "sedan" for the two-fer. Cheers and happy Thursday to all.
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| 9,816 |
The entire for profit medical industry needs to be nationalized down to the last syringe. We need free universal health care for all. The capitalist medical system is killing patients, drowning doctors and nurses, and it hardly innovating anything. It is an inefficient and inhuman obstacle to medical care. They can't even be bothered to invest in new antibiotics so don't talk about its alleged "creativity."
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| 2,212 |
For the Lender: You asked your husband point blank if the first check was a loan or a gift, and he answered that it was intended as help for people who needed it. You not have told us whether subsequent checks were intended by both you and Husband to be loans but you believed them to require repayment. Did the couple ask for a loan or a gift? Were the checks unsolicited? If my friends gave me a check, unsolicited and without repayment terms, I may not think of it as serious commitment as much as, "My friends says to repay it when I can because they are saving me the embarrassment of accepting their charity". its possible the friends are thoughtless and spend too much $$, but maybe they don't want to talk about this low point of their lives, your intentions of the 'loans' or finances with their good friends. I would make sure to get on the same page as husband before initiating the shakedown
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| 7,146 |
Blandino Totally disagree. The Queen herself gave Harry and Meghan the leadership of the Commonwealth Trust, her life's goal to improve conditions and trade and educational resources in the Commonwealth, the voluntary association of former British colonies and other nations who have voluntarily joined. Harry and Meghan rejected this powerful position which could have done so much. The problem? No money in it for them such as $100 M Netflix deals. And you have to cut ribbons and visit old folk homes and open supermarkets in the rain. Princess Diana happily did this for years, but it wasn't lucrative enough for them. Read The Court Circular. A lot of the duties are pretty mundane, constantly meeting with strangers, not celebrities in a gold coach. Explain the "racism" instead of reeling off the term willy-nilly.
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| 6,334 |
Absolutely!!! BUT BUT BUT..... I charge 2 arms and 1 leg for overhead work._ A small room 10x10 = 100 sqft at my price _ MATERIALS.... not included$5000 for wallpaper ($50 sqft)$7000 plain plaster waxed$10000 Venetian plaster with pigments
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| 283 |
Richard "And in fact, as of 2022, under a law signed by Gov. Brian Kemp, any Georgian eligible or licensed to carry a weapon and not otherwise prohibited from owning one is permitted to carry both handguns and long guns either concealed or in the open."
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| 7,467 |
Gingrich began the burn it all down trend when he became Speaker of the House in January 1995. If the GOP didn't get its way on a topic there would be no compromising with the DEMs and they'd not allow that bill to pass.The caucus represents the view of the Koch brothers network who feel the only valid function of the federal government is national defense, all else should be shut down and eliminated, especially Social Security and Medicare. (Study Fred Koch, their father and founding member of the John Birch Society.) We saw it with Rick Perry's effort to win the GOP nomination; campaigning on shutting down the EPA, Commerce and Education Depts, which was just the opening shot on shrinking government down to where the GOP could drown it in a bathtub.That caucus has no qualms about shutting down the government, they rejoice in such chaos and it raises their 'brand' in the eyes of MAGA dead-enders who only want to spite others (especially people of color) even if it causes themselves grievous pain.
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| 8,499 |
Pal It is not a stretch to see this as a conflict between an oppressive and cruel, nuclear armed regime and a country that is the target of unprovoked aggression. With this in mind, It is clear what the stakes are for the EU and America. An isolationist stance by America would literally open a global Pandoras box. Think China/Tiawan, North Korea/South Korea and eastern Asia. The request by Finland and Sweden to join NATO after the unprovoked invasion provides unambiguous clarity on the threat Russia is to the EU. Recent history (Hungary 1958, Czechoslovakia 1968)is a reminder what Russia is capable of if their aggression is not checked.
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| 9,426 |
Many factors contribute to New Orleans atrocious murder rate. Among them, police staffing is at a historically low level on a per capita basis. As of last year, we had ~1050 active officers, or about 270 officers per 100,000 residents. In 2010, when Mitch Landrieu became Mayor, we had ~430 offers per 100,000 residents.Tourism and conventions are a major source of income for New Orleanians. Closures during the pandemic exacerbated endemic poverty causing a sharp increase in all manner of crime, including homicide. Mayor Cantrell may have dealt reasonably well with the pandemic, including setting conditions where restaurants could re-open, but she has done nothing to stem the loss of personnel from NOPD. The recent decision of Shaun Ferguson to step down as NOPD Superintendent has not helped the situation. Election of Susan Hutson as Orleans Parish has unfortunately not restored confidence in the Sheriff's office, which has suffered through 17 years of mismanagement and corruption under Marlin Gusman.So while I get the point in this OpEd that Mayor Cantrell feels especially targeted by race and gender, her travel extravagances, and use of a city-owned apartment for a dalliance with a police offer in her security has exposed her as shallow and incompetent in a city that badly needs leadership.
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| 7,607 |
As NZer living in Dunedin I enjoyed the article although the restaurants were a little out of my depth $ wise. I often travel the South Island for work and never get tired of seeing the snow capped mountains and deep valleys in all weather from the air. The article is right about the scenic wonders but I would suggest a camper van, plenty of time and the local less expensive restaurants. I tend to grab a some takeaways (scallops, blue cod, bluff oysters and chips), a bottle of good value NZ wine (under $NZ20) and sit by the lake. Hardly anyone around and the peace and view is exceptional as the sun sets.No, it definitely isn't taken for granted.
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| 9,823 |
Rick Much of the problem stems from US companies' investment and hiring patterns. I don't know Intel's situation, but many semi companies have cohorts of process and product engineers that are coming to retirement age. Engineering students I talk to invariably talk about going into software since that is the sexy and more lucrative end of the business. Please note that Taiwan has the big pool of engineers because the universities push the programs. Mainland China has some successes, but they have not brought them to volume production.
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| 1,548 |
The Chinese drone company DJI has shown itself to be a more valuable tool of war than anything offered by the US - Industrial complex; all at the steal of a deal price of a few thousand dollars per unit. Makes you wonder what our out of touch House, Senate and President are spending $800 BILLION a year on?!
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| 3,014 |
The FBI got the Hunter Biden laptop early.There are emails detailing how Hunter got 10's of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine.Unless you read conservative media, you probably have no idea.The FBI knew this was damaging information so they went to social media companies and warned about potential "Russian Disinformation" about Hunter.The Russians weren't involved but social media shut down the NYPost for a legit factual news story. CNN breathlessly mouthed that this looked like Russian Misinformation but we know now it was US intelligence community misinformation because of the Twitter Files. NPR said they wouldn't cover the laptop because they don't cover stories that aren't real stories.Of course, Democrats will care nothing for this just a partisan Republicans didn't care about the Jan 6th hearings.
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yes
| 5,412 |
PAN They did not receive $230 million in taxpayer money. It was a loan, to be repaid with interest, not a grant. And it seems the loan was not funded by taxpayers. Only that the Dormitory Authority acted as a conduit so that the lenders wouldn't pay income tax on the interest collected.
|
no
| 2,759 |
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