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Meatball posted:In this analogy, though, frog Joe Biden is only temporarily stunned by the poison, and always swims back to the shore. He's given McConnell several rides at this point. In this analogy (and also in real life) Joe Biden Greenfrog has incipient dementia, retains no memories of previous betrayals, and spends his days in a reverie of when his Dad used to drive the Corvette down to the ice -cream parlour on a summers day (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 14:48 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 10:41 |
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Biden is giving Denzel Washington the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Denzel is literally receiving the nation's highest civilian honor and still hasn't gotten a Best Picture Oscar. For shame, Hollywood. He's also giving one to a nurse who was the first American who received the Covid-19 vaccine, but does being first in line to get a vaccine technically count as an "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."? The other 15 recipients are the standard major civil rights icons, Olympic athletes, politicians who served a very long time, labor leaders, and - for some reason - a posthumous award to Steve Jobs. https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-award-medal-freedom-biles-mccain-15/story?id=86321997&cid=social_twitter_abcn Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 15:09 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 14:58 |
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Oxyclean posted:If anything, wouldn't making FTM play in women's sports be worse or just as bad? Most of the hormone therapies (especially testosterone) for FTM are already very, very banned by doping rules, for obvious reasons. I guess this hasn't come up yet because they were not going to be competitive anyway at the elite levels against cis men. The only issue has been MTF beating cis women at the elite level. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST) Rigel fucked around with this message at 15:34 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 15:31 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:He's also giving one to a nurse who was the first American who received the Covid-19 vaccine, but does being first in line to get a vaccine technically count as an "especially meritorious contributions to the security or national interests of the United States, to world peace, or to cultural or other significant public or private endeavors."? Neil Armstrong was the first in a line, even though Buzz was also right there. Though in Buzz's defense, he did punch that moon landing hoaxer, so in the end it's a wash
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 15:46 |
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Meatball posted:In this analogy, though, frog Joe Biden is only temporarily stunned by the poison, and always swims back to the shore. He's given McConnell several rides at this point. Failed Imagineer posted:In this analogy (and also in real life) Joe Biden Greenfrog has incipient dementia, retains no memories of previous betrayals, and spends his days in a reverie of when his Dad used to drive the Corvette down to the ice -cream parlour on a summers day idk where this extended analogy slapfight is going but let's end it, thanks
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 15:59 |
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Brittney Griner pled guilty because Russia said it would be willing to negotiate her release if she did. She is facing 10 years in a penal colony for bringing an empty vape cartridge with "traces of hash oil" into the country. Russia has not made clear what they want negotiated, but they have publicly stated that they need to have communications "outside of the public eye" with the U.S. to come to an understanding. It is assumed that part of the request will be to free a Russian arms dealer - Viktor Bout - who was arrested in Thailand in 2008 and extradited to the U.S. If you don't know who Viktor Bout is, his biography is pretty wild. The Nicolas Cage movie "Lord of War" is based on him. quote:Viktor Bout is a Russian arms dealer. An entrepreneur and former Soviet military translator, he reportedly used his multiple air transport companies to smuggle weapons since the collapse of communism from Eastern Europe to Africa and the Middle East during the 1990s and early 2000s. Bout was nicknamed the Merchant of Death and Sanctions Buster for his reported wide-reaching operations, extensive clientele, and willingness to bypass embargoes. quote:His training allowed Bout to become a polyglot and master six languages: Russian, Portuguese, English, French, Arabic and Persian. He is reported to be fluent in Esperanto, which he learned at age 12 in the early 1980s as a member of the Dushanbe Esperanto club. quote:On 2 November 2011, Bout was convicted by a jury in a Manhattan federal court of conspiracy to kill U.S. citizens and officials, delivery of anti-aircraft missiles, and providing aid to a terrorist organization, and was sentenced to 25 years' imprisonment. Since June 2012, Bout has been held at the United States Penitentiary, Marion https://twitter.com/nytimes/status/1545051632240472065 quote:The United States government has classified Brittney Griner as “wrongfully detained” and is working to secure her release regardless of the outcome of the trial. While the Kremlin claims it has no involvement in Ms. Griner’s case, Russian state media reports have indicated that Moscow may press the United States to free a Russian in American custody — like the convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout — in exchange for her freedom.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:09 |
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Looks like that Russian arms dealer was sentenced to 25 years and I believe he's been in prison in the US for roughly half that.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:12 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Brittney Griner pled guilty because Russia said it would be willing to negotiate her release if she did. I can’t find in this article about the vape cartridge being empty. Is there another article you can link?
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:12 |
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russian official statements on it previously have been that it was 'traces of residue'
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:14 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Biden is giving Denzel Washington the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Denzel won Best Actor for Training Day, I think.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:15 |
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I think the iPhone and more generally the late-00s smartphone revolution counts as a major contribution to the culture of the United States (discounting picayune arguments over how much Jobs was personally responsible for its design and engineering)
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:20 |
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yronic heroism posted:Denzel won Best Actor for Training Day, I think. Yeah, but none of his movies have gotten the Best Picture. mawarannahr posted:I can’t find in this article about the vape cartridge being empty. Is there another article you can link? https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/01/world/europe/brittney-griner-trial-photos-russia.html quote:She was detained as she passed through security after officials said they had found vape cartridges with traces of hashish oil in her luggage. If convicted, she faces a sentence of up to 10 years at a penal colony.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:24 |
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Herstory Begins Now posted:russian official statements on it previously have been that it was 'traces of residue' Here’s something from TASS with weights https://tass.ru/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/15098621?l posted:"Будучи в достаточной степени осведомленной, что перемещение наркотических средств не разрешено на ЕврАзЭс, не позднее 17 февраля 2022 года в неустановленном месте при неустановленных обстоятельствах у неустановленного лица приобрела для личного употребления два картриджа, в которых было 0,252 грамма и 0,45 грамма гашишного масла, а всего - 0, 702 грамма", - сказал прокурор. После Грайнер решила ввезти наркотик на территорию России, положив запрещенные вещества в рюкзак и чемодан, полагает обвинение. iphone translation posted:"Being sufficiently aware that the movement of narcotic drugs is not allowed on EurAsEC, no later than February 17, 2022 in an unspecified place under unspecified circumstances, she purchased two cartridges for personal use, which contained 0.252 grams and 0.45 grams of hashish oil, and a total of 0.702 grams," the prosecutor said. After that, Griner decided to import the drug into the territory of Russia, putting prohibited substances in a backpack and suitcase, the prosecution believes. These are some unusual weights that I don’t think you can buy at most stores that sell vape cartridges. Could someone with better understanding say if this is more likely the measured weight of residue than the net weight at purchase? Typically you see .5 and 1 g net weight. If that was the recorded net weight remaining, I wouldn’t call them empty.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:31 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Biden is giving Denzel Washington the Presidential Medal of Freedom. I can't think of anything Denzel produced which should have won Best Picture. He has two acting awards for Glory and Training Day, though. I have no idea what you're talking about here.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:32 |
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mawarannahr posted:Here’s something from TASS with weights Could have been gram or half gram carts that were partially used.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:38 |
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Darko posted:I can't think of anything Denzel produced which should have won Best Picture. He has two acting awards for Glory and Training Day, though. I have no idea what you're talking about here. It was just an old joke that the Oscars were snubbing Denzel movies for a while. None of his movies were nominated for Best Picture until 2017 and in the 90's there were jokes about Denzel's movies getting snubbed. They were eventually replaced by the complaint about Leonardo DiCaprio being snubbed every year until he finally won one.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 16:58 |
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Everything that is happening to ms. Griner really sucks and I feel bad for her but it really should be pointed out that if she wasn't rich and famous you would never hear about it
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:11 |
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Dubar posted:Everything that is happening to ms. Griner really sucks and I feel bad for her but it really should be pointed out that if she wasn't rich and famous you would never hear about it Yeah, it’d be difficult to impossible to convince Biden that an American being treated this way in American courts was anything to be concerned about. Now, if your his son, he’ll just have his people wire you $20k on the pinky promise it’s not for more drugs. But that’s not how it works in his eyes for the rest of us. (USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:15 |
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Dubar posted:Everything that is happening to ms. Griner really sucks and I feel bad for her but it really should be pointed out that if she wasn't rich and famous you would never hear about it Worth noting that WNBA members travel to play overseas precisely because they make significantly less than NBA players, so they are forced to.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:17 |
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At a glance, I'd also assume the fact that Griner is an openly-married lesbian probably factored into her being targeted by the notoriously discriminatory Russian state.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:29 |
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Kaal posted:At a glance, I'd also assume the fact that Griner is an openly-married lesbian probably factored into her being targeted by the notoriously discriminatory Russian state. I'm thinking it's more likely that her sexuality would come into play under a Dem president but maybe not under a GOP president, and the Russians took that into account. Like, what are the optics of a president touting diversity & letting a Black lesbian rot in a Russian prison? As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison: quote:A colonial territory used (mainly) for the detention and forced labor of deportees, typically where free labor is desperately scarce. Is it supposed to sound scarier than the hell of our own penal system?
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:35 |
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Willa Rogers posted:I'm thinking it's more likely that her sexuality would come into play under a Dem president but maybe not under a GOP president, and the Russians took that into account. As bad as American prisons are I don’t think it’s an idiosyncratic or underhanded way of reporting or translating it. I’m pretty sure I’ve read about penal colonies being a thing in Russia since I first started reading anything about Russia as a child. “Colony” is in the name of the designation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrective_labor_colony posted:A corrective colony (Russian: исправительная колония (ИК), romanized: ispravitelnaya koloniya) is the most common type of prison in Russia and some post-Soviet states. Such colonies combine penal detention with compulsory work.[1][2] The system of labor colonies originated in 1929[3][4] alongside the Gulag labor camps, and after 1953 the corrective penal colonies in the Soviet Union developed as a post-Stalin replacement of the Gulag labor-camp system.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:39 |
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Willa Rogers posted:As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison: You should check out this excellent book, which depicts life in one of the labor camps / penal colonies. The book was banned for a very long time throughout Russia, only to become required reading when the author returned to Russia and agreed to publicly support Putin as a nationalist and reformer. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Day_in_the_Life_of_Ivan_Denisovich
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:45 |
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Kaal posted:You should check out this excellent book, which depicts life in one of the labor camps / penal colonies. The book was banned for a very long time throughout Russia, only to become required reading when the author returned to Russia and agreed to publicly support Putin as a nationalist and reformer. Is a novel from 60 years ago written under a different political system a relevant source for modern Russian prison conditions? This is basically posting 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' as recommended reading to someone interested in modern psychiatric care in the United States.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 17:56 |
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hekaton posted:Is a novel from 60 years ago written under a different political system a relevant source for modern Russian prison conditions? This is basically posting 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' as recommended reading to someone interested in modern psychiatric care in the United States. I guess we'd have to emphasize that modern psychiatric care has actually probably gotten worse outside of private practice. Russia's jail system is pretty bad. Their penal system is even worse. CommieGIR fucked around with this message at 18:06 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:00 |
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Willa Rogers posted:I'm thinking it's more likely that her sexuality would come into play under a Dem president but maybe not under a GOP president, and the Russians took that into account. You can be sentenced to a penal colony or prison in Russia. Normal prison is like prison everywhere else: individual cells, structured time outside of cells, and generally run directly by the state government. Penal colonies are bunk/military style housing, generally run by an appointed local official and not the state/national government, don't have a fixed daily schedule, don't have guaranteed heating or water because they are constructed in remote locations outside of where you were arrested for the crime, and are generally structured around a specific form of labor (i.e. everyone there mines a specific mine). quote:Instead of cells in prisons the inmates are housed in barracks in penal colonies. In total, there are 869 such colonies of various regimes scattered across Russia, eight prisons and 315 remand centres. The geographical location of penal colonies is linked to the concept of economic development adopted back in Soviet times, when prisoners were used as forced labour, such as during the construction of large-scale investments carried out by the Soviet state including the White Sea–Baltic Canal and the Baikal–Amur Mainline (BAM), as well as in forestry in harsh weather conditions – in Karelia, for instance. Even today, the largest number of penal colonies is located in regions that are rich in natural resources (mainly forests), such as Krasnoyarsk Krai and Perm Krai, or in highly industrialised ones, such as Sverdlovsk Oblast, Kemerovo Oblast and Primorsky Krai. Inmates in penal colonies also aren't told where they are going and aren't allowed visitors. Normal prisons are assigned to a specific address that is public and have certain hours allowable for visitors. quote:Most often, prisoner transport is organised in special windowless railroad carriages known as Stolypin cars, in which prisoners in groups of ten are transported in compartments measuring 3.4 m2. Moreover, neither the convicts nor their families know the train’s destination. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 18:05 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:00 |
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hekaton posted:Is a novel from 60 years ago written under a different political system a relevant source for modern Russian prison conditions? This is basically posting 'One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest' as recommended reading to someone interested in modern psychiatric care in the United States. Depends on if modern Russian prisons have changed since Soviet times (they haven't). That being said, there's plenty of modern exposés of what Griner is looking forward to. https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/785yny/brutal-and-often-too-brief-photos-of-life-in-a-female-penal-colony
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:03 |
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I looked up some stats & all-over deaths-per-thousands for prisoners in Russia are almost twice that of the U.S.:quote:Some 600,000 people are held in nearly 1,000 prisons and detention centers across Russia, with 4,000 deaths from various causes recorded each year, "one of the highest rates in the Council of Europe countries," panel chairman Jens Modvig said during the review. https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2018/08/10/russia-must-rein-in-torture-prosecute-prison-guards-un-a62498 That's 666 per 100k. quote:In 2018, [U.S.] state prisons reported 4,135 deaths (not including the 25 people executed in state prisons); this is the highest number on record since BJS began collecting mortality data in 2001. Between 2016 and 2018, the prison mortality rate jumped from 303 to a record 344 per 100,000 people, a shameful superlative. It may seem like a foregone conclusion that more people, serving decades or lifetimes, will die in prison. But for at least 935 people, a sentence for a nonviolent property, drug, or public order offense became a death sentence in 2018. https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2021/06/08/prison_mortality/ Doesn't include federal prisons or d.p. deaths, and both places were reported during the pre-covid times.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:10 |
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Willa Rogers posted:As an aside, why are news outlets saying she might be sentenced into a "penal colony"? Looking up the definition I can't see the difference between that and a good ol' American prison: The difference is that the prisons are on a distant, remote, lightly-populated frontier, where the prisoners are typically used as a labor force to develop the area, building up the infrastructure necessary to make the region hospitable for free settlers and industry. It also made for a convenient way to deter escape, since the prisons were often so isolated that it would be extremely difficult for fugitives to hide out on their own or return to a major settlement. The British and French empires primarily used penal transportation to expand their overseas colonies, but the Russian Empire made heavy use of penal labor for the colonization of Siberia. While later governments reformed the prison system in various ways, several aspects of the penal colony system - including the name - were inherited in some form to this day. It does sound scary and foreign to American sensibilities, but that's mostly because for various reasons, the US never really had any interest in to shipping prisoners off to a distant frontier. Our demands for forced labor and our systems for providing that involuntary labor were different enough that we never really did anything quite like the penal colonies used by the British, French, and Russian empires. After all, there was little need for temporary prison labor when straight-up slavery was thriving.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:34 |
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Main Paineframe posted:It does sound scary and foreign to American sensibilities, but that's mostly because for various reasons, the US never really had any interest in to shipping prisoners off to a distant frontier. Our demands for forced labor and our systems for providing that involuntary labor were different enough that we never really did anything quite like the penal colonies used by the British, French, and Russian empires. After all, there was little need for temporary prison labor when straight-up slavery was thriving. I mean, slavery is straight up thriving, in prisons.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:36 |
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Everyone on Herschel Walker's campaign thinks he is a pathological liar and mentally unstable, but they are hanging on for the paycheck and in the vain hope that they can steer him in the right direction. Some of them think the campaign stress is going to push him over the edge, that he might actually not be 100% there, and dozens of members of his campaign staff are leaking it to reporters. https://twitter.com/SollenbergerRC/status/1545055876456669186 https://twitter.com/sambrodey/status/1545061260449832961 quote:Herschel Walker Lied About His Secret Kids to His Own Campaign Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 18:42 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:38 |
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Rigel posted:Most of the hormone therapies (especially testosterone) for FTM are already very, very banned by doping rules, for obvious reasons. I guess this hasn't come up yet because they were not going to be competitive anyway at the elite levels against cis men. The only issue has been MTF beating cis women at the elite level. As a general comment on trans athletes and other trans issues, these are sensitive and complex issues and it is not the responsibility of trans posters to educate you on them. Before you comment on trans issues in D&D, please do some homework and/or maybe lurk the LGBTQIA+ thread. The purpose of D&D is to inform and educate, so posts like the quoted above are walking a thin line between regurgitating unexamined TERFy talking points and serving as an opportunity to discuss and learn. Don't make assumptions, please come informed or lurk/read up before you wade into discussion of trans issues. Fritz the Horse fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 18:47 |
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They actually got Sinema to agree to a new revenue raiser. One of the provisions in the Trump tax bill allowed people with passthrough income to get a 20% reduction on their income taxes for that income. Passthrough income is essentially when you own or co-own the business or entity that pays your salary and you generate income that you take personally, but not as salary. This would eliminate that provision and is effectively a 3.8% increase in taxes on passthrough income for people above $400k. It is part of the new planned reconciliation package and will raise $200 billion, but all of it is going into the Medicare trust. So, that doesn't mean $200 billion in additional new spending for the bill. It would keep Medicare fully solvent through 2031. https://twitter.com/sahilkapur/status/1545099324748595202
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 19:00 |
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The passthrough element became an instant area of focus for IRS after the TCJA went through, because of course it incentivizes a lot of sleazy fact-specific behavior to minimize costs with passthrough entities. If it's going away, that'll be some degree of enforcement relief (in several years when it's no longer part of the audit system).
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 19:09 |
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Leon Trotsky 2012 posted:Everyone on Herschel Walker's campaign thinks he is a pathological liar and mentally unstable, but they are hanging on for the paycheck and in the vain hope that they can steer him in the right direction. It’s very possible Walker is not lying to the best of his knowledge.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 19:23 |
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A mentally unstable pathological liar? Not only does he have a good shot at a Senate seat he should try for President!
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 19:33 |
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Darko posted:I'd need to see them because conservatives use California and Chicago as stats because of their pure numbers. Currently, though, per capita, California has 25 percent fewer mass shootings than the average, similar to how Chicago starts dipping to teens and twenties when per capita comes into play. https://journals.lww.com/jtrauma/Abstract/2019/01000/Changes_in_US_mass_shooting_deaths_associated_with.2.aspx METHODS Mass shooting data for 1981 to 2017 were obtained from three well-documented, referenced, and open-source sets of data, based on media reports. We calculated the yearly rates of mass shooting fatalities as a proportion of total firearm homicide deaths and per US population. We compared the 1994 to 2004 federal ban period to non-ban periods, using simple linear regression models for rates and a Poison model for counts with a year variable to control for trend. The relative effects of the ban period were estimated with odds ratios. RESULTS Assault rifles accounted for 430 or 85.8% of the total 501 mass-shooting fatalities reported (95% confidence interval, 82.8–88.9) in 44 mass-shooting incidents. Mass shootings in the United States accounted for an increasing proportion of all firearm-related homicides (coefficient for year, 0.7; p = 0.0003), with increment in year alone capturing over a third of the overall variance in the data (adjusted R2 = 0.3). In a linear regression model controlling for yearly trend, the federal ban period was associated with a statistically significant 9 fewer mass shooting related deaths per 10,000 firearm homicides (p = 0.03). Mass-shooting fatalities were 70% less likely to occur during the federal ban period (relative rate, 0.30; 95% confidence interval, 0.22–0.39). CONCLUSION Mass-shooting related homicides in the United States were reduced during the years of the federal assault weapons ban of 1994 to 2004. I'm sure the ammosexuals will gunsplain this somehow, but there you go.
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 20:13 |
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Crime in general dropped during the 90s as it was a period of economic growth and stability. You did see a huge drop in the murder rate after the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill. And while assault rifles are an efficient tool, the prior to 2009 Aurora theater shootings most of the mass shootings were performed with pistols. The media coverage of that weirdo spawned a good deal of what followed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_shootings_in_the_United_States
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 20:38 |
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Scuffy_1989 posted:Crime in general dropped during the 90s as it was a period of economic growth and stability. You did see a huge drop in the murder rate after the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill. There's a very strong correlation between the assault weapons ban and the murder reduction - the murder rate even shot back up as soon as it expired - but, there isn't a conclusive proven causation. The argument that crime in general dropped because it was a period of economic growth and stability seemed like a tried and tested truth, but after 2009 we had the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and crime kept going down for years. Then, when the average savings of the bottom 50% of Americans tripled in the back half of 2020 and first half of 2021, we had the highest percentage increase in violent crime alongside a small decrease in property crime. The last 20 years or so have sort of broken what everyone thought they knew about crime rates. We also don't really know for sure what caused the huge crime decline in the 90's. There's lot of theories about lead pipes, abortion, tough on crime policies, the crack epidemic dying down, the huge crackdown on gangs, gun control, Clinton-era "peace and prosperity," etc. But, crime basically fell everywhere in the entire country over a period of years and income, policing policies, and geography seemed to have no effect. It was just a huge universal drop in almost all crime. Leon Trotsky 2012 fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jul 7, 2022 |
# ? Jul 7, 2022 20:45 |
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# ? May 23, 2024 10:41 |
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The murder rate was already on the rise prior to the 2004 expiration of the assault weapons ban. https://www.statista.com/statistics/191134/reported-murder-and-nonnegligent-manslaughter-cases-in-the-us-since-1990/
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# ? Jul 7, 2022 20:53 |