• 31 Posts
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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Hamas’s cited reason was that Israel was demanding female soldiers, while the terms of the “pause” dictated the exchange of civilians. It seemed like Israel simply wanted an excuse to continue bombing.

    let’s be honest it’s because all the rape and torture would make their propaganda war tricky

    Let’s be honest about this having no substantiation at present and being based on Israeli and U.S. State Dept propaganda. Honestly it’s disgusting how quickly people will resort to insinuations like this.















  • Not sure I agree. I think many people who are “defeatist about voting” have observed that the surface-level differences between Democrats and Republicans (namely social issues and the more visible fascism from Republicans) just mask an underlying corporatist/fascist state that’s sacrosanct and immune from popular pressure and legislative change.

    Re: “Obamacare” (which is just one tiny change mind you) - there were some marginal improvements like re: preexisting conditions, but mostly it seemed to increase compliance costs, my understanding is premiums have just continued rising and the fundamental issues causing healthcare scarcity and limiting competition have been made worse.


  • In effect, the bonds I mentioned are just inverted loans. The Treasury takes in $1k from payroll taxes for these programs, issues a bond to the trust fund saying “I owe you $1k plus interest”, spends the $1k on whatever (I guess primarily the discretionary budget) and eventually has to somehow generate money to pay it back with interest.

    In terms of whether or not bonds were “borrowed” - this wouldn’t exactly matter in a meaningful sense, but I’m not clear this ever actually happened in the first place. There was some claim about, when the trust fund was mixed with the general fund 1968-1990, maybe the government took bonds out of the program, but you have to remember that inside the government, that’s not something of value, that’s just an obligation the government has to pay to itself, it’s a big nothing burger. The outstanding liabilities from Social Security to the actual beneficiaries (elderly people) exist regardless of how the government is doing their accounting internally.




  • I’m assuming you’re all talking about the Uyghur genocide. I wouldn’t downplay it for a second, but the simple reality is that they’re not being exterminated through a rapid act of carpet bombing by high-powered airstrikes, the degree and brutality of the killing going on in Gaza right now is unlike anything I’ve seen in my entire life. To cleave to the point here, which is, “do other ongoing genocides exceed this one in terms of killing of civilians”.

    It may be the case that the long-term death toll is higher, considering how many years it’s been happening, though downplaying what’s happening in Gaza on that basis, I mean, let’s not wait for that comparison to flip.