NeuroTypical

Rather than pretend to give a crap about how people are beastly to each other online, maybe we could talk about crap that matters? In the first week after winning the election, Trump is already starting to solve the problem of illegal immigration and the border crisis: https://www.newsweek.com/migrant-caravans-turn-back-after-trump-election-win-1982274 Trump's transition office begins to float ideas for ending the war in Ukraine: https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-presidency-ukraine-russia-war-plans-008655c0?mod=Searchresults_pos2&page=1 More to come.

Here's some good points about what happened being made by someone on the left. I'd never heard of her before this vid, but her Democrat credentials seem pretty solid.

I've worked in a certain group for a global fortune 500 company for two decades. When I got there, we had R&D happening in 4 countries. The production was mostly done in one of these low cost countries. 2 decades later, even with new management every 5 years, and the occasional economic downturn forcing restructuring, we still have R&D happening in the same 4 countries in roughly the same proportions. A bit more in the US than before, actually. I don't know how representative my experience or yours is across industries, but the trend may not be something that happens everywhere.

LOL. I hate to admit it out loud, but the EPA performs a vital function that is well within the scope of reasonable governmental power. I absolutely agree. Perhaps a mitigation of my zealous mischaracterization is in order. Current yearly budgets for the mentioned departments: Interior: $94.5 billion EPA: $85.2B Ag: $467B I don't know a lot, but I know that when you have 3 large entities doing things with a lot of overlap, there's, well, a lot of overlap. Here's hoping Elon can identify and eliminate redundancy. Gold star to him whenever he finds stuff that shouldn't be happening in the first place.

If Elon ends up heading some stupid bloated bureaucracy with functionaries wielding unelected and unlegislated power, I will join you in the glorious revolution. Until then, I'm sort of hoping Trump will take his unprecedented mandate and agreeable congress and do stuff like - Extend the Trump tax cut and make them permanent - build the Wall and reform immigration - reform federal education spending to do things like require states to do robust school choice - pull an Argentinian "afurera" moment and slash the size of the federal bureaucracy. For example, shrink and combine departments of Interior/EPA/Agriculture into one guy with a typewriter and maybe a secretary. - end subsidies for left-wing government operations like NPR, CPB, PBS etc. - Evolve 'drill baby drill' into robust support for our growing nuclear industry. Sell it to everyone as a way of powering AI in the cleanest, greenest, most renewable way possible.

Honestly, humans and their weird politics are getting phased out in favor of the AI worlds created by children in their spare time. Yeesh. It's shockingly easier every hour to find stuff like this:

Fair enough, I suppose. We LDS are all about honoring, obeying, and sustaining the law. Even if there are serious, large, real issues with weaponizing law for political purposes. But your point was to give "Trump exactly the same sentence any non-President Elect would have gotten for the same crimes." Three things: - Had you completed your homework, you would have failed to come up with any other human being to be charged/convicted against the law they used against Trump. He was the first. - Let's call Trump's convictions what they are: He valued properties in ways that are the industry norm, in order to obtain favorable financing terms, just like everyone else in the business does. The New York prosecutor was an elected official who actually, literally ran on "elect me and I promise we'll find something on Trump and lock him up". After years of searching, this is the worst they could find. - In the US, the law is usually geared to go light on first time offenders. Arrests are often not made unless law enforcement is pretty certain there can be a conviction. Plea deals are the norm. For first time white collar felonies where there's not exactly a victim or blood or anything, light or suspended sentences are the norm. Maybe easy parole, followed by a record expungement. Maybe some court costs, maybe a fine or a penalty, maybe not. So, yes. Let's give Trump exactly the same sentence anyone would get for the same crimes. In other words, a slap on the wrist at worst, and nothing official on his criminal record. Exactly like any other American would get in the same situation. Compare and contrast with this other story that happened to one of my wife's friends. She was convicted of a federal crime of a magnitude greater severity than what Trump did.

Riley Gaines entered the chat.

Here’s your homework assignment. Go search for a single human being who has ever been tried and convicted of violating the law Trump was convicted of. Just one. Any one. Actually, if you want an easier assignment, please briefly state, in your own words, without looking it up, exactly what Trump was convicted of doing.

Why is the attack on Titan explanation not satisfying? I mean, did you see how quickly Angie internalized her new informed viewpoint? How swift the life of grief and pain and misery and evil got put in it’s proper perspective?

Yeah. "thought". In other news, I saw this book at Walmart the other day and sent the picture to @LDSGator as a laugh:

In other news, this 43 year old comic strip is almost exactly as on-point as it was in 1981 when Reagan was rocking it. You just have to update the last comment a tad to reflect international relations. (I'd love to see this comic go viral with the hashtag #TieDownAllTheChina.

Colorado remains blue, even though Representative Lauren Boebert won (memorable for trying to carry concealed into her day job in the US capitol the day after Jan 6). And so did right-wing talk radio host Jeff Crank, who basically said "the republicans in this state have been a joke for decades, so Imma go do something about it.

Me, going around to random Facebook Buddy's political posts:

The best way I've seen it put: Election day in America is like watching your phone’s three ‘typing’ dots when messaging your ex... the eventual result could go either way, but it’s the waiting that’ll kill ya.

As someone with a fear of public speaking, I've taken measures. If this ever happens to me, I have a link on my phone to this. I'll replace Anthony's name with the name of whoever made me talk into a microphone, and just go from there.

Fair enough. I just need to remember that for leftists such as yourself, when you look out the window, the whole world is to the right of you. And that has historically meant Democrats too. It's just that for the vast majority of Americans, there are enough current and historical differences between conservatives and liberals, dems and reps, that a statement like "the War on Drugs (fueled by conservative hysteria)" is gonna raise some eyebrows. Historically, the D and R, the C and L, have competed with each other for decades on who could win more votes by being considered more strong on waging the war on drugs. I was raised by a blue dog union Democrat, and remember endless griping about how the republicans were liars because they claimed it was Nixon's war on drugs, when the truth was the Dems were really against it and the R was just lying about being against it. Eventually the rhetoric stopped winning votes for the Dems, and they spun on an Orwellian dime and became the "conservative hysteria" pointer-outers.

Oof. @Phoenix_person, I like you because you show plenty of signs of being a reasonable, thoughtful person. My opinion is not changing. Please keep that in mind when I say that whoever taught you US history should be ashamed of themselves. https://time.com/6340590/drug-war-politics-history/ https://www.npr.org/2021/06/17/1006495476/after-50-years-of-the-war-on-drugs-what-good-is-it-doing-for-us https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2021/06/17/war-drugs-turns-50-today-its-time-make-peace/ https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/2000-democratic-party-platform Some excerpts from the Dem party platform in 2000: We will reform a justice system that spills half a million prisoners back onto our streets each year - many of them addicted to drugs, unrehabilitated, and just waiting to commit another crime. We have to test prisoners for drugs while they are in jail, treat them for addictions, and break up the drug rings inside our prison system. Drug and alcohol abuse are implicated in the crimes of 80 percent of the criminals behind bars. Al Gore believes we should make prisoners a simple deal: get clean to get out, stay clean to stay out. And this deal should be non-negotiable. Fighting the Scourge of Drugs and Gangs. We should send a strong message to every American child: drugs are wrong, and drugs can kill you. We need to dry up drug demand, hold up drugs at the border, and break up the drug rings that are spreading poison on our streets. We should open more drug courts, to speed justice for drug-related crimes; double the number of drug hot-spots where we aggressively target our enforcement efforts; expand drug treatment for at-risk youth; and make sure that all of our school zones are drug-free zones - by stiffening the penalties to those who would use children to peddle drugs, and those who would sell drugs anywhere near our schools. We know that to dry up drug demand, we must provide drug treatment upon demand. To empower communities protect themselves from organized criminal conduct, the Democrats support giving communities relief against gang related crimes. We should be tough on drugs no matter which form they take and should not discriminate in sentencing.

4) Attack on Titan: Hange Death Scene - Hanji VS Rumbling Titans For those who never watched the show, Hange (Angie) led a life of misery and blood and death just like the rest of the humans, finally dying against impossible odds. Upon which she finds herself in a field with blue skies, greeted by all the people who had preceded her in death. Beloved characters who had died in earlier seasons. People who used to fight and hate each other. And in a heartbeat, all the pain and suffering was a thing of the past. Replaced by a better perspective about what really matters. (I actually never watched the series, but my family did. I came upstairs one evening to find them all sobbing over a cartoon, and they explained what happened. I believe it's a worthy and valid #4.)

Or we could address the root cause of poverty. We could internalize the truth that if you graduate high school, get a job, and don't have children until you get married, you won't be in poverty. And since we just can't stand to look at ourselves in the mirror without feeling the need for government programs to help solve society's ills, we could target our government programs to encourage stuff like graduating high school, getting a job, and encouraging traditional marriage.

Yeah, I'd have to see a prosecution work it's way through the court system before I formed an opinion. Somewhere between "stealing $3 in gum is a felony", and "stealing stuff worth $950 won't be prosecuted" is where the actual law should be.

Odd, none of the millions of privately-owned AR-15's seemed to have created any casualties on that day where they happened to be... How come you assume they'd suddenly go off and hurt people if they had been at the Capitol on J6?

Sorry, can't hear y'all over the sound of Puerto Ricans defending the comedians' comments and wholeheartedly agreeing. Anyone who has been to PR can confirm - the place has serious problems with multigenerational, never-ending, almost inhumane poverty. And it has for a long time. https://centropr.hunter.cuny.edu/reports/pervasive-poverty-in-puerto-rico/ I mean, trying to pin it on Biden at a Trump rally isn't really the flex the comedian dude thought it was. It's not like this is a new problem. Also not a problem that govt has never tried to fix before. Can't hear you over the Puerto Ricans forming caravans in support of Trump. Can't hear you over the sound of Trump capitalizing on the word "garbage" in his usual way: But yeah, as we all turn into elementary school kids in the days leading up to the election, telling on each other for saying things, it would be nice if we could actually pull up our adult britches for a moment and think about the plight of folks in Puerto Rico and what might be done about it.

The militia is the thing where there’s a need to have a bunch of armed citizens show up all at one place, and get organized, and go deal with what needs to be dealt with. It works best when those citizens already know what the heck they’re doing, have experience, own their own weapons to a certain extent. And nah, the primary purpose is not to have tiny little pockets of weirdos that make good headlines and keep people in a frenzy. The primary purpose is twofold. My wife gets to defend herself with something at least as good as what the cartels are smuggling up from Mexico. And anyone in government or military that gets a wild itch to take over gets to understand they probably won’t make their first drive home. For all the press the Boogaloos and proud boys and Oathkeepers and black nationalist NFAC-ers and black Panthers get, they really don’t do bad things with guns hardly ever. Infinitely more good is done by letting Black people arm themselves in Chicago to defend themselves from their bad neighbors.