...I'd guess that he was just suicidally depressed, without much larger motive, ...
I remember for years seeing stories and discussions about how people tend to get more depressed around the holidays. And those who had issues with depression it got really bad really quickly. Either it's become less of a problem (doubt it) or a less reported on issue (probably) or I just have tuned a lot of it out (also probably). But I really don't remember seeing as much about it in the last few years. -Dave I’d lean more on the ‘tuning it out’ because it’s just heard so often that no one really even notices it at this point. When you hear about something so often — suicide rates increasing during the holidays — every year it isn’t really news anymore, it’s just something that you hear about all the time. Makes sense though, as the holidays are typically spent with a lot of family and if you don’t have family / recently lost them, then it’s going to make you feel a LOT more alone then normal. |
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So they're turning millions into guinea pigs for pharma companies and their untested vaccines.
Someone should read them the inserts and educate them because they are obviously too scared of the virus to do it themselves. In short, companies who produce these vaccines clearly say that these were tested on a very limited number of people and can produce a number of side effects. It's also unknown whether the vaccines actually work or not and how long the immunity lasts. The manufacturers are also not to be held liable for any health issues that may result from taking their product.
Vaccines aren’t just released into the public, they are tested. These vaccines in particular were tested on tens of thousands of people, and no results were present which would suggest they could hurt people. Don’t ya think that out of 40k people, one of them would’ve been able to leak if things were that bad? But in regards to the thread here, I’m assuming the 40m doses will include people that aren’t ‘citizens’ of Canada, and are illegal people who are living in the country as well. Not sure on what the standards will be in regards to who can receive the vaccine. I haven’t seen any of the news regarding grocery stores and such, is there a source on that? |
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I don’t understand why people are thinking this was so “sophisticated”..
He had an entire RV of volume for his bomb and the buildings are still standing.. The trees are still standing and the buildings don’t even look that damaged..
Not very impressed.. This was not some expertly made bomb to do real damage imo.. It only made good headlines..
Compare this to the Oklahoma city bombing as far as actual destruction, and even that was an amateur bomb..
Another thing is that motor homes are pretty big, but not really designed to carry that much weight.. They can’t easily hold/carry tons like a rented uhaul truck can..
It would be easy to get a “throwaway” RV with no paper trail by just buying one cheap on Craigslist with cash and never telling the seller your real name.. Just never register it..
This is what I keep harping back to in my own brain. Nothing was ‘too damaged’ from this bombing, when it would’ve been so very possible to blow up the AT&T building or transmission center if this was better targeted and more sophisticated in its handling. Obviously this entire thing is very strange, curious on what the investigations begin to unearth in the coming days, weeks, and months. It's not looking good for the Bruce Willis theory. The FBI is asking around if the RV owner was a 5G conspiratard. If QAnon bullshit is turning into bombs on the streets then this country is more fucked than I thought.
..... Never thought crazy bullshit conspiracies about 5G stuff would move from online bs memes and shit into full blown attacks, but we’ll see. |
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This seems like one of those ‘focus on the other side and ignore everything that our side has said, type of things’ Donald Trump made a similar process during the election, doesn’t change the fact that the two of them made a very dump proposal, but it shows that all this was was a way to try to court older voters. “I promise you if I’m elected president, you’re going to see the single most important thing that changes America,” he said. “We’re gonna cure cancer.”
A week later, on June 18, Trump made a similarly prophetic statement during his 2020 kickoff rally in Orlando, Florida, as he listed several agenda items for a second term.
“We will come up with the cures to many, many problems, to many, many diseases, including cancer and others,” he said. “And we’re getting closer all the time.” So yes, Biden said it first then Trump followed with the same sort of thing. I truly hope Biden does cure cancer, though I don’t think he personally is in any position to be making that sort of promise. Given that we’ve heard nothing from scientists saying that we’re ‘close’ or anything along those lines. |
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This must be a joke. Aren't there enough fish in the water to feed everybody? Are they figting over fish now?
It's not really about the fish. A lot of the Brexit stuff was about disentangling the UK from Europe, nationalist sentiment stoked up by the media into a frenzy of xenophobia and 'this is our country, not yours!'. Fishing rights is not so much about fish as it is about 'this is our water! ours! get your foreign boats out of here!'. Regarding your other point though, and not related to Brexit, no, there aren't enough fish in the water. Many fisheries around the world are hugely depleted and no longer sustainable. Overfishing is a massive global problem. +1 to that. Fishing rights was one of the things that the pro brexit people were pushing, though it was just another piece of the puzzle in regards to showing that they weren’t in complete control of their country and the waters that were surrounding it. It’s tough to think about the fact that people in Brussels, who aren’t British, are determining who is going to profit from ‘British Waters’ |
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I'd say that the people wanted a return to THEM having control of their country and what they could do with it. It shouldn't be up to some international body with in Brussels to decide if they'd be able to fish
The Brexit agreement means that the EU share of fishing from British waters will be reduced by 25%, and that this will take place gradually over 5 years. This must be a joke. Aren't there enough fish in the water to feed everybody? Are they figting over fish now? Crazily enough that really was apart of the Brexit deal that people cared about, obviously the ones that cares about this were in the fishing industry. Here’s a bit of the info on that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Fisheries_Policy - Though this is just some info on how fishing is regulated in the EU https://www.bbc.com/news/46401558 - This is on some of the more recent stuff, though I can’t seem to find the old stories from awhile ago. May not seem like a lot, though fishing is a VERY large industry in the UK (and obviously in other EU countries) |
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I'd say that the people wanted a return to THEM having control of their country and what they could do with it. It shouldn't be up to some international body with in Brussels to decide if they'd be able to fish
The Brexit agreement means that the EU share of fishing from British waters will be reduced by 25%, and that this will take place gradually over 5 years. In practice any trade agreement involves give and take. The price for taking back full control would have been hugely economically damaging to the UK, and was something that even 'Trump-lite' Boris Johnson was unwilling to countenance. But yes, you're right. Brexit was largely about reducing EU influence, so mission slightly accomplished in that regard. The mistake of course is in equating independence with power: Brexit, indisputably, weakens the UK. We are a small country on the edge of Europe, and are much stronger as a part of a larger bloc than when trying to stand on our own. Could be argued that the bulk of the financial sectors being in the UK + its very close relationship with the US (moreso then any other country in the EU) make it a much stronger country then anyone in the EU. I'm not super familiar with what the EU does and how the rules work in an international bloc, though I do understand why people would be angry about bureaucrats in brussels having more control over their life then their own politicians. That's the argument we have in the US about the federal government vs state government vs local government every day, lol. At least in the US thougb the people that are making regulations are at least from your country, they may be in Washington DC but they're still from America. |
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I have heard rumors that Trump will leave Washington DC on the plane that is Air Force One when it is holding the president, and will hold a rally that will compete with the inauguration. If this happens, it pretty much means he is kicking off his 2024 run before Biden even is able to get moved into the White House.
Reporting has now shown that this isn't going to happen. Trump seems to be moving away from this idea and is most likely not going to be doing anything. Seems right now the focus is keeping the pardon train rolling, getting higher stimulus checks for Americans, and continuing to raise money on the election fraud stuff thought that is going to be coming to a close VERY shortly once Biden is inaugurated. There must be some substance to the speculation. I'm starting to think that he will pardon Joe Exotic. And he'll then fill the White House with tigers, so that Biden can't get in.
Actually, there's probably a decent chance that one of the more belligerent of the tigers will get appointed SecDef. I know it's customarily hawks, but I know which animal I'd prefer to have my back in a fight. And after all, such things aren't unprecedented. Caligula did make his horse a senator. And before you say that's apocryphal, no it wasn't, it was Incitatus.
LOL We may get a pardon on Ross Ulrbricht, which people on here have been pushing for a LONG TIME. |
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So Let's say you want to make world Better place?
What need to be done?
There needs to be a more equal distribution of wealth and of opportunities to generate wealth. It's not great that we have billionaires, whilst more than 2 billion people don't have access to safe drinking water. People don't need $$$ billions. Yes, they may have earned it, but in many cases they've had certain natural advantages to start with - being born into wealthy rather than impoverished nations as a start. If Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg had been born into refugee camps in sub-saharan Africa, they'd probably not be billionaires. There is a moral case for giving to the poorest. I mean there's really nothing that you can do to stop billionaires from being present. Wealth taxes don't seem to work, income taxes do nothing to them, and capital gains can only do something if you sell your assets. You're also disregarding the fact that these billionaires also created millions and millions of jobs for people which have increased their wages and have done amazing things for them. Also -- direct giving DOES NOT WORK (maybe only for extreme extreme poverty on a short term basis) -- we've learned that time and time again. I remember reading a story about how those buy one give one away shoe brands seem all amazing but in reality they're killing small businesses in the regions that shoes are being donated because it's hard to compete with free. Great and all that you're getting shoes for free, but you're not allowing for capitalism and the market to begin to grow. All you're doing by giving things away to people forever is ensuring that they're in a cycle of poverty and are never able to rise above it through regular market forces. They're just stuck in a cycle of charity which leaves them in the same place long term. |
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That said, if taking bitcoin blockchain as an example, bitcoin blockchain has never been compromised before just because it is acceptable by people as miners protects it, web 3.0 will also be similar and will be protected by people just like in the case of bitcoin blockchain not by centralized body like google and the likes, and will never cease in operation like google just did for 45 minutes yesterday because it will be decentralized
It is not an uncommon occurrence for there to be over an hour between found blocks when the average is supposed to be 10 minutes. If you are running a full node, there is a good chance that you are connecting to other nodes via google infrastructure. If you are running a full node, you are certainly relying on a centralized ISP to connect to the internet. Decentralization has its purposes, but it is not the solution to everything. The overall performance of google products is likely greater than a hypothetical decentralized service that can help with similar tasks. +1 to this. A lot of people forget this. Decentralization can only really exist because your ISP is letting you do so. Obviously all of this traffic is encrypted, so they're only able to see the type of traffic which is occurring though they could use this to block bitcoin nodes and cripple the network. Though that would probably cause issues with other types of software in addition to bitcoin. There really isn't a lot you can do now to stop centralization. Supporting local networking infrastructure / hosting options could be something that people do to ensure that there is proper competition in the market. But they're only going to do that if the cost is in the same area. |
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Fair point about the WH not having much negotiating power given the fact that they're on the way out. Never thought about that point. Though you'd think that the Trump admin would've at least put some public pressure on this if they knew that this is what Republican / Dem plans were at.
Trump usually isn't too shy with his usage of his twitter, ya know?
But onto the PPP stuff, I think it's fine. It should've ensured a bit better that people who really didn't need it -- like Kanye getting a few million from it -- and others shouldn't have gotten it. Highly doubt they were going to have to fire their employees anyway.
Then again, more bureaucratic mess is never good. Should've been all in on stimulus payments instead of $600. Would've been better for the economy and allowed less government bullshit.
I suspect this is part of Trump's long-term strategy in the event that he decides to run again in 2024. Trump can be seen as sticking up for Americans in trying to get them a bigger stimulus check and trying to get the pork that will go to special interests removed. My guess is this will result in a higher price tag, which goes against conservative principles, but this should expand Trump's overall support. The threshold for being eligible for PPP loans was very low. Part of this was so the money could get out the door to businesses as quickly as possible. The program itself was also negotiated quickly, which added to the mess. I suspect the panic in our country (and the world) in March/April was the result of Chinese propaganda and the amplification of fear-based social media posts via the Chinese government. IMO if the stimulus in the spring, along with the early response was thought-out much more methodically, we would be in a much better position today. Putting all the money towards direct stimulus payments will result in many people receiving money they have nothing to do with, and some people not receiving enough money to make ends meet while spending on only the basic necessities. There should be some amount of targeted stimulus for the needy, such as modest unemployment insurance payments (UI should never exceed the amounts an employee received while working, except in extreme edge cases). Not sure if this is really part of his long term strategy or if this is just a way to push attention away from the fact that he is pardoning tons of people that are associated with him. Or it could be a way to continue to raise money on the election fraud issue and continue his grip on the party. I only say this because any reporting I've seen says Trump is most likely not going to run in 2024. But in regards to all of the stimulus early on in the pandemic, yes it was quickly pushed out the door which was the reason for them not being tons of rules surrounding who was eligible for it. I still think they should've done a better job to ensure that huge companies couldn't be classified as small businesses, but yeah. I may have misspoke/mistyped -- I'm fine with unemployment, and PPP (in a system where you can better pick out companies who lost revenue and need it, which is being used now), but I wanted more money to go towards stimulus payments for people. That's the way you ensure that the most money is going to go directly back into the economy. PPP was used to make the banking industry tons of money, as they got billions in filing fees. Unemployment is a very flawed system which is rigid in its eligibility which each state controls. Plus these two systems require a LOT of hoops to jump through on the regulatory / bureaucracy level. Stimulus payments are easy. |
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is this the deal that Britain residents wanted?.
It's better than no deal, but no, it's not what many of us wanted, and it's not what I wanted. Brexit is a victory for xenophobia and for the racist flag-wavers who still cling to a delusion of British supremacy. The days of empire are thankfully long gone, but many people want it all back. 'Taking back control' is a nonsensical soundbite, as in practice the UK will need to remain aligned with EU legislation and standards. Control of immigration is nonsense, too, as the UK is heavily dependent on migrant workers in many sectors, for example seasonal agriculture and the NHS. Brexit is perhaps the only trade deal in history where the aim has been to make trade more difficult and more expensive. It's a triumph for idiocy, bigotry, small-mindedness and prejudice, and is indicative of the state of modern politics. Eh I wouldn't go that far with all of the Brexit stuff. I'd say that the people wanted a return to THEM having control of their country and what they could do with it. It shouldn't be up to some international body with in Brussels to decide if they'd be able to fish or how many refugees they have to take. This is really an argument with big government and small government, not anythign else. Trade deal was never going to be amazing, but yet again this is better then a no deal with a hard exit from the EU's trading systems. |
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anyway all the news about the london strain is showing that more people are getting infected due to londoners disobeying the rules.
The virus is unlikely to spread after the lockdown. The people of England are educated and humane. Anecdotally, I've seen plenty of people here in the UK flouting rules, not wearing masks in shops and public transport, not social distancing, travelling to other areas. People in the UK are no better or worse than people elsewhere, they've just people. Some obey the rules, some don't. Some actively try to not spread the virus, others couldn't care less. Given what we've seen here so far, I would expect the 'tier 4' lockdown to be only partially effective. There are also people who are angry that other countries won't let people from the UK in... but if we had a more responsible attitude, the UK should be pre-emptively closing its borders to stop this variant from getting out. WOW! I was told it was just the fat Americans that couldn't abide by lockdown regulations for 2 weeks effectively extending this pandemic and then killing over 200k people. A bit crazy how that works! Lockdowns do absolutely nothing when the spread is out of control and I'm rather shocked the UK is focused on lockdown despite a strain that is more transmissible is floating around. Locking down will not stop the spread at this point -- focus on protecting the elderly instead of trying to destroy people's livelihood. I mean... If the spread is out of control enough, a temporary lockdown is not a bad idea. It allows for local officials to look at what is going on and more effectively plan for what they're doing for the future in terms of what businesses can stay open, regulations regarding the amount of people, if they're going to have county / state officials check in on things at establishments and so on and so forth. Obviously you don't want to keep this lockdown going for that long, but as long as needed to ensure the spread is at least under control. |
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Once a pandemic is out of control, flight bans hardly do anything. They're mostly a mitigation effort used to control the initial spread while countries get their shit figured out. Once you get vaccine rollouts, people will feel more comfortable to fly so why not allow flights to come in?
+1 to that. Flight bans at this point are just an effort to contain the area and allow for local officials to contain what is going on in their area. Makes a lot of things much easier - tracking of people, contact tracing, quarantine rules, etc. But once the vaccine is rolled out to everyone, everything can commence again. Given that the vaccine works. |
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I just read an article which says that Trump is planning to give a pardon to Saudi Prince, and the first thing that came to my mind was is this the pardon for the khashoggi murder, but it turns out that this pardon is for a planned murder attempt on Saad Aljabri. It’s pertinent to note that the attempt never took place, but yet Saad Aljabri had filed a case against the crown prince, and now if Trump does gives the Prince a pardon he’ll make him look guilty of this crime  . What do you’ll think will the crown prince get the pardon or he won’t?. Source: https://thehill.com/policy/international/middle-east-north-africa/531414-trump-administration-considering-immunity-forNot going to touch on the actual topic itself, though they're considering giving immunity to him from a civil lawsuit which is going through the courts now. Not a pardon or anything like that because a pardon does nothing for someone that committed a crime in another country as they can't be prosecuted for their crimes in the US anyway. Don't you have to be charged with some sort of crime to pardon yourself?
No. There are no limits to the pardon power, except that only the President can issue a pardon for crimes against the United States (Federal crimes). After the Civil War was over, President Johnson pardoned all the confederate soldiers in order to heal the country. Will he try to pardon himself??
Why? He didn't do anything wrong. Allegedly. Nor did any of his family members or family pets like Giuliani. Surely he wouldn't be pardoning them for no reason. Trump and his associates will likely be prosecuted for political reasons by the next administration, especially those associated with Harris. A pardon would preempt those political prosecutions. Don't you have to accept responsibility for the actions that they're pardoning for to actually be pardoned? Which is pretty much accepting guilt for the crime that you're accused of, even if it's completely wiped off your record anyway. Biden has signaled that he won't be using the DOJ to attack Trump, though It'd be understandable tot think that Trump does not trust that in the least. |
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Trump has pardoned another 26 people tonight, currently not sure on what the list of people is though it includes full pardons for: Stone, Manafort, Charles Kushner(Kushners Dad), George Papadopoulos, former US congressman Chris Collins, and the four Blackwater guards involved in the Iraq massacre, Alex van der Zwaan, the Dutch lawyer who was sentenced to 30 days in jail after pleading guilty to lying to Mueller investigators; two Border Patrol agents convicted in 2006 of shooting and wounding an unarmed undocumented immigrant and then covering it up; and several people convicted of non-violent drug crimes serving lengthy sentences. Source - https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/23/politics/trump-pardons-stone-manafort-kushner/index.html - Used some quotes from them in the above ^ EDIT for after my post: LOL, yeah just posted this shortly after you did. Crazy. Can't wait to see who the last minute people include. |
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$600
I think based on the timing, for those who have $600 in the bank, most of this stimulus money will be spent by consumers. Based on the savings rate earlier this year, most of the $1200 stimulus money was put into savings and paid down debt. Consumer spending was down in November, which may signal a slow Christmas shopping season this year. If there is too much inventory left over after Christmas, production of goods would have to go way down to avoid inventory glut, triggering a recession. Trump has signaled that he is not going to sign the bill in its current form, which has the $600 stimulus checks and is demanding the checks be increased to $2000 a person. Not sure why this wasn't something that the WH was negotiating for before, or if Trump just wanted some of the media power, would make sense if that was the case. Kind of a weird way of using the bully pulpit, as he could've just used it BEFORE negotiations were done and assembled his supporters to force the GOP to do that. I don't think the WH was part of the recent negotiations (he has limited ability to negotiate considering he is leaving office in a month). After the details of the bill were made public, there was backlash to some of the provisions in the bill, and there appears to be bi-partisan support for the changes Trump is asking for, including in Democrat leadership. I would expect Trump to get what he wants without giving major concessions. The small business loans are disgraceful. Like setting money on fire. Let's send money to movie theatres, a dying industry that will never recover. Great idea!
I have mixed feelings about the PPP loans. They were intended to keep employees on the payroll who otherwise would have been laid off. This meant that employers would not have to layoff, and subsequently rehire many of the same workers once the economy opened back up. It was intended to be a form of unemployment payments to workers via their employers. Unfortunately, many PPP loans were abused, and many businesses got them that didn't need them. It also gave political cover to local officials to impose lockdowns when they were really not necessary that early in the pandemic. Fair point about the WH not having much negotiating power given the fact that they're on the way out. Never thought about that point. Though you'd think that the Trump admin would've at least put some public pressure on this if they knew that this is what Republican / Dem plans were at. Trump usually isn't too shy with his usage of his twitter, ya know? But onto the PPP stuff, I think it's fine. It should've ensured a bit better that people who really didn't need it -- like Kanye getting a few million from it -- and others shouldn't have gotten it. Highly doubt they were going to have to fire their employees anyway. Then again, more bureaucratic mess is never good. Should've been all in on stimulus payments instead of $600. Would've been better for the economy and allowed less government bullshit. |
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I'm a bit disappointed Snowden wasn't pardoned.
Snowden is a hero and should definitely be pardoned. I'm disappointed but not remotely surprised that the Democrats are remaining silent on the matter. How any of his actions can be construed as criminal is utterly beyond me. It's probably more than a democratic issue honestly. Republicans are not whistlerblower friendly considering a lot of conservatives are cozied up with the intel community and CIA/NSA. No DC politician is pro whistler blower except for maybe Tulsi Gabbard. Oh yeah this is totally NOT A Republican/Democrat issue in the least. This is a big government / nanny state issue. Rand Paul is someone who I know who is lobbying President Trump to pardon Snowden, Assange, etc. This is a big government surveillance state against the rest of the people. Not a right vs left issue that some will try to make it out to be. |
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Don't you have to be charged with some sort of crime to pardon yourself?
In any event -- I'm a bit disappointed Snowden wasn't pardoned. Probably some Washington DC hacks convinced him out of it. They sure hate it when someone exposes their corruption.
Disappointed as well over here. Though we still have hope that this pardon could be a last minute thing as his term is ending, though I doubt the intelligence community is going to allow him to do that. They'll probably air out all of his dirty laundry if even makes an effort to do so. That's the threat for every other sitting President who wants to make a big decision like this. Saw some whispers of an Ulbricht pardon, though haven't seen anything come out of that yet. |
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The small business loans are disgraceful. Like setting money on fire. Let's send money to movie theatres, a dying industry that will never recover. Great idea!
And quite a few other business types too. There are some industries that are slowing dying and although it's not good for the people working there or for investors keeping them propped up with cheap / free money just hurts other businesses that are waiting in the wings to take over. The issue is how do you do it: There are probably a lot more independent motorcycle repair shops in the south then the north. Just due to the riding season. Where would you draw the line for funding? Same with some other things. Using your example movie theaters in densely populated locations are still going to do much better then ones in more rural areas. Where do you draw the line on population density for taking care of them. I really don't think there is a good clean answer. -Dave The business loans / free money (depending on if you keep your employees employed) were a great idea in the beginning of the pandemic. At the time there wasn't TIME to sift through who actually is not making as much money before because that would have held up a lot of people from being employed and put more of a strain on the unemployment system. In my mind, PPP worked. The next round of PPP is going to be for businesses that show a certain percentage lost during the quarters that the pandemic has occurred in. It's much more selective, and that MAKES SENSE. As you can actually prove something like that now. There really isn't a clean answer for any of this, but what can ya do? |
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