Nah, he doth protest too much. I don’t expect women are appearing in his “fantasies”. Definitely finding Christmas presents if you catch my drift.

Typically it’s prescribed for ghosts in the blood, but can pull double duty off-lable for ADHD if amphetamine is out of stock at your local apothecary.

My spirit is willing, but my wallet is spongy and bruised.

Same here, and I am hoping that as battery density increases I may be able to extend the range on mine when the car gets old enough for a rebuild.

This was a problem with government owned Volts, they reimbursed for gas as this was already happening for the rest of the ICE fleet but had no way to reimburse for charging. Would not be surprised if this trend is the same for many company fleets too. Fix that and you would probably see similar numbers to private ownership.

To be fair, any American at least 35 years old can run for president. Criminal status or history isn’t a block to that, to prevent pulling a Putin and jailing political rivals to clear the field. The media is also a cesspool of ragebait and train wrecks due to the 24 hour news cycle and “ratings”.

I don’t think those are inherently opposed, the whole point of libertarianism being about liberty. Power gained through free market principles is no different than any other power, and thus can and should be opposed through competing ideas/services. If I don’t like your service being provided, I or anyone should be free to provide a competing service that matches my needs/values.

Being a libertarian doesn’t require keeping Fountainhead as your Bible and worshipping at the feet of oligarchs instead of politicians/the State, and I would argue selling your soul to the company store is as antithetical to liberty as selling your soul to a centralized State. But as you’ve indirectly mentioned, there is a rather huge spectrum under the libertarian umbrella.

I won’t speak for other libertarians, as I know there are those that think do worship the oligarchy, and many of my views do probably put me on the left side of libertarianism. If I didn’t believe that government has a role is keeping free markets free and providing stability and peace for liberty to exist (most fiscally conservatively paid for by collapsing all social safety nets into an actual UBI requiring miniscule overhead, Universal Healthcare, and more Georgist tax codes), I’d probably be closer to the anarcho-capitalists maybe? Maybe some offshoot or flavor of Minarchist?

It only needs to be solved if the country is going to survive, so if that doesn’t matter then it doesn’t. There will be knock on results from that, because countries usually fall a grade or two when they fail, and with decreased affluence the number of children will increase again.

The reality is that if you do not have at least a replacement rate, retirement and social safety nets will fail as they become overwhelmed which leads to social unrest and upheaval. Immigration can help, but this comes with its own trade-offs. 8 billion people is also nowhere near an overstressor for the planet if fossil fuels and pollutants can be curbed, and even dropping the numbers of humans substantially will not help with unfettered greed continues to drive dirty industrialization

You are correct, as quality of life increases overall fertility rates decrease. That does need to be solved, and immigration is part of that solution. Unlimited/unregulated immigration is not.

Difficulty with legal immigration is generally the case for almost every first world country, the US is not abnormal or exclusive there. I do not meet qualifications to immigrate to Canada, or anywhere in Europe right now even as a tech sector worker, except possibly by having family history through my ancestors. I am not arguing that US immigration policy needs a lot of work, but it’s not fair how much the US gets singled out for it as if it’s the outlier here.

The invisible hand of the market is not all powerful, which is why regulation and safeguards are needed for a “free” market to function. Anti-monopoly laws, labor laws, etc. I lean libertarian, but do not embrace 100% laissez-faire economics. Immigration falls under this same framework.

The West has eliminated their manufacturing and blue collar base by outsourcing it overseas, which hurt large swaths of the working class. Outsourcing labor by importing labor from overseas to do the job cheaper here has similar results. See the agricultural sector in the US for this example. Everyone always says that the reason immigrants are needed is because Americans don’t want to do those jobs, but leave out “for the wages paid”.

Some regulation is needed, and we have had wholesale failure of meaningful regulation and complete regulatory capture by the oligarchy which started under Reagan and snowballed out of control since. Proper support networks and social safety nets have also failed, for the same reasons. Unrestricted immigration does not solve these issues, and with these holes in place does indeed hurt.

Things that aren’t a problem when everything is healthy and working as intended can definitely hurt when things aren’t healthy. Obviously the “health issues” need to be addressed to actually fix the problem, but ignoring symptoms while doing so doesn’t help.

https://www.theonion.com/gays-too-precious-to-risk-in-combat-says-general-1819594658

You are correct, everyone is a villain at that point. The problem with that, as horrible this is, is it incentivizes the action. For the same reason countries don’t negotiate with terrorists. If you prove that committing terrorist acts, or taking hostages, or using children as human shields works, you positively reinforce those acts. Its fucked up beyond belief, and all alternatives need to be exhausted, but at some level someone takes the responsibility for where the lines are drawn for the least damage in the long run.

Is it actually preferable to just give money to anyone who hijacks a bus load of people, or a plane, or a bank, etc, so that no hostages are possibly injured when that happens? It might be, and could be argued for. Is such acts becoming more frequent or commonplace because it works an acceptable price weight against innocent human life? Again, it very well might be. It’s only money. I am glad I am not the one making those decisions, but we can’t pretend that the calculus doesn’t happen and/or doesn’t matter.

America is a power bottom, and proud of it.

Do you have a better word for lending money and charging exorbitant interest rates, fees, or conditions to unjustly enrich the lender? I could just call them legally gray loan sharks, which they are, but the laws surrounding the governance of money lending are actually called usury laws. That’s why I used the term. I think the Banks and Credit companies that have bled the countries bottom 50% dry and have nearly succeeded in eliminating the middle class qualify for the label, but you do you.

Biden was Senator from Delaware for nearly 25 years, during which time his state discarded usury laws and became a haven for the Credit Card companies and predatory Banks. He was one of the sponsors removing the ability to discharge student loan debt in bankruptcy. He had a rather staunch record of supporting financial lobby interests throughout his career. He supported drone strikes, including on American citizens, while Vice President. He was openly against desegregation actions in the 70’s, but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt and say he has grown on that front.

I am saying that the harm he was part of due to the selling out of protections for the American people at the beheadst of the financial services lobby over multiple decades means that his current actions to cap fees and provide some student loan relief are little and late. It’s better than nothing, but he is not a paragon of supporting the little guy

No, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. In fact I think that fixing his mistakes is a good thing. I also don’t think that it more than balances out the years of damage that be did before having a change of heart when he is running for President and needs votes. He started in a hole, and the good things he does start in that hole, not at ground level.

I don’t think that Biden is now as ethical as Bernie Sanders just because he is trying to reduce some of the harm he was responsible for. Let’s also not attribute to genuine generosity and compassion that which can also be explained by pragmatism and calculus. If he was not running for President and was instead still a 30+ year incumbent Senator of Delaware, would he be sponsoring student loan relief bills and credit card/banking fee limitation bills? I don’t think so, but maybe you do.

So if I spend my life being a right bastard, like 50 straight years of kicking dogs, stealing from old ladies, being a slum lord and extorting people, breaking people’s legs in mafia style protection rackets, dumping toxic industrial byproducts into rivers, and using my wealth and power to keep and enforce “sundown laws”, but then in my 60s open an animal shelter, fund bingo nights and retirement centers, set up community reinvestment grants, sponsor efforts to get the wetlands to get cleaned up as a Superfund site, and get diversity and equality training implemented for the police department, would I then be considered to be a good person because my attitude shifted? The thousands of people I hurt and potentially indirectly killed over those 50 years don’t count against the good I am now doing?

Even simpler, if I steal and destroy your car, causing you to lose your job because you don’t have transportation which then causes you to lose your home, should I then be praised for giving you a nicer brand new car a year later?

Sticking to politics in case that’s the only place this kind of behavior gets a pass, what if someone didn’t cheer for Don’t Ask Don’t Tell but instead had sponsored bills undoing limitations or bans on gay conversion therapy. Does later supporting a bill making conversion therapy illegal undo the suicides and trauma they inflicted because their apparent attitude has changed? Are they now equal to the person who spent their entire career pushing for gay rights, because this person supported strengthening of domestic partnership laws instead of marriage equality 20-30 years ago? They both support gay rights now, so is saying that the first person is doing the bare minimum and shouldn’t really be called an ally “moving the finish line”?

Prior to being the VP and now President, he had a long political career as an establishment corporate Democrat. His home state is where almost all US usury is headquartered, and he consistently sold out the American people to those corporations. He sponsored the bill removing bankruptcy options from student loans, sided with the banks and credit card companies on interest rates and fees, was a war hawk, and was more than “it was just how it was at the time” racist.

Essentially every bit of the “whole lot of good” has been an 11th hour change of heart and fixing problems he was more than complicit in creating. Add to that the DNC manipulation to block other candidates, and you have the South Park special of a Douche vs. a Turd Sandwich.

I deduct credit from a President if they are primarily fixing problems that they themselves caused or greatly assisted in creating throughout their previous political career. In Biden’s case, that means that he is unlikely to get better than absolute neutral due to his incredibly long history of selling out the American people.

I will not give Biden an 11th hour passing grade just because he is up against Trump, he doesn’t deserve to be graded on a curve.

Each Wyoming is worth one California in the Senate due to the fact that California and Wyoming are both single states. The messed up part is the missing like 140 representatives that should exist to balance population to representative for each state.