houseoftolstoy @houseoftolstoy@merovingian.club

@deprecated_ii the government already overreaches by having the food aid program in the first place. If you want choice so badly, you should be paying with your own money, not someone else's. You lose my sympathy about personal choice when my taxes pay for your "choice."

@Elliptica This guy.

@Elliptica I am not the only one who sees the Happy Merchant in the redacted document, am I?

@Aether No wonder we are losing the AI arms race. We just HAVE to handicap ourselves with the false ideology of equality, because there is just no way that disparate outcomes are due to anything other than RACISM!

@N_Y_SparkyOxCable correct. Though I choose not to block them as I find it useful to have a window to the perspectives of people who have pretty much the opposite of all my viewpoints.

@DW2 You can see how the left's usual playbook against the Bush era politics largely fails when applied to today. Just the fact that the NeoCons have been exposed as being leftist expect on foreign policy issues has deflated this form of attack on the right. Yes, the NeoCons still try and make power plays, but it really fails to make the impact when Dick Cheney of all people (formerly the most evil person ever in the left's eyes) endorsed Kamala Harris. What a joke.

@DW2 I suspect the left got far too comfortable having the Bush era controlled opposition being the status quo for "right wing" politicians. Bush, McCain, and Romney made it far too easy for the left to dunk on right wingers, and we would have had more of the same if we got someone like Jeb Bush on the 2016 ticket.

While Trump is not the savior many thought, he exposed the fact that Republicans had been the designated opposition for far too long.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrWXOH8NCYI

Having heard the voice of the NPR anchor named here, I am not surprised to find out that he is a homosexual. You can hear it quite clearly in his voice.

Yes he is the member of a certain tribe, but that is a whole different topic (last I recall NPR is disproportionately represented by Jews).

Knowing what I know about political corruption, I can never trust that any report of a politician being arrested for wrongdoing is done out of sincere adherence to the rule of law. Rather, I suspect many politicians only get any punishment by the law when they fall out of favor among the string pullers. They were already known to be guilty long before they were reigned in, but they simply pissed off the wrong people in power or did not have enough favor with the string pullers to be let off.

@Owl @Evil_Bender >IMO there are much better ways to evangelize

Are these "better ways" just staying within your church building, waiting for people to come to the building while never interacting with people outside of the building of the church

@deprecated_ii to a point you are correct. You'll have to take a guess on the intake and output of calories, and you have to just accept that there will be some margin of error.

But what is not nonsense is that you will lose weight if you limit how much you eat. You will not be able to defy thermodynamics when you eat at a deficit. It just so happens that fat people often underestimate how many calories they eat or will try to claim that their 500 calorie coffee from Starbucks "doesn't count."

@Humpleupagus @HEREWARD_SILVATICI I care very little whether or not the intentions of cases like these are out of genuine kindness or are out of pure self-interest. The results are increased happiness for the buyers, and that outcome is worth more than any well intended actions that result in bad outcomes.

Every sob story about federal employees I hear is always the same thing.

"I love the work that I do."

"My work is very important and we are fulfilling critical needs."

Of course they are going to say things like this. They really do believe that our country could not possibly function without their oh-so-important jobs. I am quite sure people will find a way to live on without these federal government jobs, though that may not be quite as true for the federal employees themselves.

@grey the influence of celebrities on elections is probably not as strong as many make it out to be. But the fact that some people will vote based on who someone famous endorses shows that there are some people who should never be voting in the first place. And many more should not be voting for other equivalent stupid reasons.

@Heil_Honkler @DireGoy I noticed this Sam Seder will often rely on shaming tactics as arguments, which is on full display here. But when he gets an opponent who feels no shame, his supposed debate ability is just not there.

"Trump is Christian Nationalist and is Xenophobic!"

"I wish he really was."

And "it's problematic" is just the most effeminite response you can get.