I think it's valid to want to defend those who you feel compassion and closeness to from those you perceive as threats.
Yeah, absolutely. I think what's kinda interesting about that though is that's essentially exactly what racist cops are doing, and wanting to protect people is probably why they joined the force. The problem lies in their perceiving brown people as threats...
That really can't be correct. Growth adds some jobs for sure, but not as many as you're implying. While "maintaining" an economy, you still need just as much health care, food production, retail stores, education, road maintenance... I mean just about everything I can think of with the one exception of construction won't be significantly different in a growth economy.
I mean it's some pretty serious overstepping... Nobody even does that to North Korea, even though they get ever closer to developing a ballistic missile, something capable of delivering a nuke (which they do have). But nobody is bombing NK... Why? Because that's a fucking act of war!
Bombing Iranian facilities is just an egregious breach of their sovereignty. If on the other hand, some country tried that against the US, it would be a major international incident as soon as they crossed into our airspace, regardless of whether they deployed a single munition. But if they did hit a target, a completely unproportional retaliatory bombing campaign would ensue.
And the only reason Israel gets away with this dangerously aggressive behavior is that they have the military might of the US at their back. They believe they're untouchable because they assume the US will always be an ally. And truth be told, it's all a terrible policy for their own longevity. Some day, eventually, we'll have a president with a conscience and a Congress that supports them, and then we'll stop giving weapons to Israel. And on that day Israel will finally have to take responsibility for their actions, and we'll see what their neighbors really think of them. Until then, they continue to dig themselves into a deeper hole, convinced that it's the safest way forward.
It's not good at all. Israel forces have been murdering so many civilians that collateral damage has become part of their plans.
So... you must know that the atrocities committed have nothing to do with the quality of their intel.
In other words, the comment makes 0 sense as a reply. I mean it's a fine comment on its own, it's just not at all a reply to what you quoted. I really only bring it up for your benefit, because being unrelated to the quote like that makes the comment seem dishonest, which makes the rest of your message less credible.
Using a Mac wouldn't be any safer, that's also an American company. Plus Apple has full control of the hardware as well as the software and they make their own silicon... It'd be even easier for Apple to spy on users than Microsoft, they could even do it with less chance of being detected.
What if some powerful people give you billions of dollars to not do it? And simultaneously other people start sending you credible death threats if you go through with it.
Now imagine they're also threatening your family and that you love your family a lot.
The problem with power, is how it's effected by money and fear.
Do you actually believe that? It's a pretty simplistic view of the situation.
I think if you honestly look at the situation, it's pretty clear to see that conservatives definitely love America, but they have a VERY different idea of what America is and how to make it better. They are working towards that goal of making America better, it's just that their privileged, bigoted, deeply problematic views would produce a truly horrifying version of the US.
The other issue is conservatives seem comfortable using an "ends justify the means" mentality, when the means are evil and the ends are only based on one interpretation of their faith. That kind of thing would certainly bother most progressives, but in their own eyes, they're "doing God's work".
I've been thinking about this, and I'm afraid I agree. I'm not sure how you could enforce this. Paying federal tax seems like a personal choice and the consequences would be felt by individuals (tax evasion charges, unless trump manages to get it treated as a terrorist act). I'd be interested to see if the state was actually offering to shield CA citizens from being arrested by federal agents or subpoenaed by federal courts.
Also, for the most part the Fed already has our money, right? The majority of that federal tax is withheld from paychecks and goes directly to the Fed...
It seems to me that the problem isn't that we shouldn't be subsidizing farm insurance, but that we need tighter controls on what the insurance companies are allowed to do. We've seen it in every sector, insurance companies will take advantage of people with unfair policies and always refuse to pay out if they possibly can. But crop insurance is an important and valuable safeguard, we shouldn't throw it out entirely, we just need to keep the insurers from being criminally greedy and make sure that even smaller farm operations have access to this service.
But why? I mean the effects of that are pretty regressive right?
As a country, we want to be able to produce lots of food, that's a good thing. And we want to keep the price of food down, that's also a good thing. We don't want a scenario where food is so expensive that more people need to start making hard choices between eating and rent. And regardless of that extreme example, if we see higher prices on food, that's going to have a greater impact on the poor than on the wealthy.
We subsidize lots of things, fuel, education, home renovation, etc. Many of these subsidies are pretty important to making our economy operate smoothly. Food production seems like one of those things that's worth paying for.
I mean the reason for starlink was that they could, and they could do it for cheaper than anyone else because they would be launching at cost.
Also, falcon doesn't really get subsidies for launching. SpaceX got a grant for the rural broadband infrastructure thing, but that's like a one time thing, it doesn't really pay for ongoing launches.
SpaceX is putting up satellites for SpaceX, they're the manufacturer and operator...
It's definitely in their best interest to keep them working as long as possible.
That said, they're high end communications devices, very fancy routers essentially. And like all computer technology, these things become obsolete quickly. So even if they could last 20 years, you wouldn't want them even 10 years from now. 100 GB/s speeds might be great now, but 10 years down the road 10 TB/s could be the norm, so at that point why are you still trying to provide service with ancient hardware 100x slower than it should be.
Yeah, absolutely. I think what's kinda interesting about that though is that's essentially exactly what racist cops are doing, and wanting to protect people is probably why they joined the force. The problem lies in their perceiving brown people as threats...