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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • And pair that with the government saying it’s mostly killing old people and those with health issues then just declaring it over. I wasn’t expecting lockdown forever, but just like keeping it as an ongoing health concern. Instead they’ve been wiping their site of tracking, dropping funding, and abandoning workers to just hope their employer isn’t going to get them sick. COVID being over is good politically and good for business, so COVID is over.


  • Militias aren’t government controlled. That’s the whole damn point. You regulate them if they’re doing dangerous stuff like practicing next to a school, but you can’t do things that are effectively preventing them from existing.

    For your questions on hunters and ownership and whatever, there’s a difference between constitutionally protected and legal. States can say hunting with guns of various types (you’ll note there are restrictions). You don’t need the constitution to make something legal and it not being constitutionally protected doesn’t make it illegal. States can legalize or restrict firearms for anything that does not prevent the citizenry from forming a well-regulated militia. Having your guns locked up and disassembled when not in use in training doesn’t prevent you from forming an effective(-ish) militia so DC vs. Heller was badly decided (5-4! it was a contentious decision split along political lines).

    All the other weapons are arms too and if owned for the purpose of militia service, should be legal. If not, states can decide which weapons are appropriate for which purposes. Texas can decide cowboys were super cool and everyone should have a mandatory six shooter while peaceful Hawaii can decide guns are good for hunting pigs and bad for going to the beach. And if we decide we want to change one or the other, that’s our business, because the government can regulate things that don’t involve preventing the citizenry from rising up against it.


  • Organized labor sure thinks it is. And it’s not like these free-trade jobs are going to organized labor elsewhere, it’s going to people being exploited with no recourse.

    And yes, I think it’s very likely labor is a major component of shipping cost increase from the Jones Act, and would love to see you provide literally any proof otherwise, because I’ve shown you a study of costs that directly compares them. I am notably not saying it’s only cost, but it is almost certainly a major driver, for the simple fact that labor is almost always the major cost in a business and why capital is so desperate to offshore or replace it.

    I’ve answered your question. Why is your position aligned with capital?




  • Ignoring the inexplicable diversion into the Constitution’s applicability to states.

    You keep arguing against a straw man (no ownership) rather than the actual point (no absolute right to free carry/use). You can have an individual right to own weapons for the purpose of being a part of a militia without having an inherent right to use those weapons for other purposes.

    As to the “bear arms” it’s still in the context of a militia. You can’t be arrested for being in a militia. You and your buddies can march around, showing that you’re ready to rebel against an oppressive government, but that doesn’t mean YOU can individually walk down Main Street firing into the air. There’s a prosocial and political benefit from the citizenship being able to rebel, there isn’t one for having random people be constantly armed for resolving personal disputes.


  • What? This response is incoherent. American crews cost more, significantly more than foreign crews, and that has a significant impact on costs. Labor is 2/3 of the operating cost for domestic shipping and 1/3 for foreign shipping. Domestic workers costing more and offshoring being cheaper aren’t some new theory, they’re the bedrock motivation for global free trade. Are you a real person?

    And why do you ignore that your philosophy just happens to align with capital? This just read like a neoliberal screed about supporting the global south through deregulation.


  • it’s still arguable that Republicans have unfair representation in the Senate and EC

    LOL, wut? There’s nothing arguable about that. Republicans very definitely have an unfair senate and electoral advantage entirely related to being more popular in less populated states (which, with the notable exceptions you’ve highlighted, tend to also be more rural).

    You’re cherry picking top ten and bottom ten like the whole swath of states in between don’t also have unfair allocation and thus don’t matter, while being pretty inconsistent with your battleground state definitions to suit your sorting needs (NH is blue because it only voted R once in 30 years, while every battleground you listed has the same history, and red Florida and Ohio have been 50/50).

    While your point about population vs. density is correct, everything else seems to be trying to muddy the waters about the EC rather than just point out an interesting factoid or offer a pedantic correction. There’s no serious argument that the EC isn’t unfair from an individual voter perspective and biased toward one side from a national perspective.



  • Easy:

    1. Vote in better Democrats
    2. Abolish the filibuster
    3. Pass law changing the number of justices on the court

    Support from the legislature is all that’s important. If the justices say “you can’t do it”, then ignore them because clearly they can. The constitution says very little about the supreme court and its size has been changed multiple times before. This is just doing history again.




  • Or instead of giving up we could make court expansion and reform a litmus test in future Democratic primaries. And/or normalize the idea that judicial rulings need to be enforced by someone else and they too have agency.

    Because allowing this to continue for much of our remaining lives is also decorum. We live in an unjust system, but it’s not just how life has to be for the next 30 years.