BraveSirZaphod @ BraveSirZaphod @kbin.social

Posts

0

Comments

1,142

Joined

2 yr. ago

Such as when America tried to lead everyone into a predictably disastrous invasion of Iraq, resulting in most of Europe telling us to fuck off?

Truly, the 'infulence' of America is mighty and all must tremble before it.

It absolutely is; this guy is either an idiot or deliberately misleading.

Article V has been invoked exactly one time, by the United States after the September 11 attacks. The direct outcomes of this were two operations: Operation Eagle Assist, where NATO forces helped patrol and monitor US airspace in the immediate months after 9/11, and Operation Active Endeavour, a maritime operation where NATO ships patrolled and secured shipping lines in the Mediterranean. NATO itself was not directly involved under Article V in the Iraq invasion, though some members did voluntarily participate (hence Bush's "coalition of the willing").

There have been NATO operations in the Middle East under Article IV invoked by Turkey, which mandates only military consultation from members, not direct intervention, though they may voluntarily participate if they want. Likewise, NATO was involved in Afghanistan (which, it should be noted, is not in the Middle East) and Libya in a similar voluntary capacity. It should be noted that, despite not being a member, Sweden did participate in NATO operations in Afghanistan, voluntarily.

Sweden is only obligated to participate in military action if a member state is actively attacked. Otherwise, it's able to voluntarily participate in other NATO operations, as it has already done in the past. That NATO is a tightly organized and coordinated international military organization makes it really useful for large international operations - generally directed by the UN - but outside of defensive invocations of Article V, these are strictly optional, and members very much have refused to participate in American-led operations that they don't agree with (see Iraq).

You cannot set the rent to "whatever you like". There's a reason why my NYC apartment is $2500 a month and not $250,000 a month. If a corporation does take an owned unit into the rental market, it'll be competing with all other rentals. That will decrease supply for the ownership market, yes, but it also increases supply in the rental market, which tends to consist of people who are financially struggling more than people looking to buy a house.

Regardless, the actual solution is to just build some more god damned housing so that it stops being an attractive investment in the first place. Housing cannot be both a good investment and affordable.

This is only available to first-time buyers, not universally, so it wouldn't be quite that simple. If you're confident your house will sell quickly, yeah, you'll just increase the price by 5k, but if you've been having trouble finding a buyer, the credit might tip your current price into being affordable to a first-time buyer that would otherwise pass it up, so you may hold the price steady.

That said, subsidizing demand like this while ignoring the core supply crunch issue is generally not very helpful.

It won't end until we have significant growth in the supply of housing units in the places people want to live relative to the number of people we have. Anything else is just window dressing.

We've been chronically underbuilding for decades, while population continued to grow. What would you expect to happen?

UN resolutions are pieces of paper unless a power is willing to actually deploy power in service of it. I don't see Russia or China invading Israel, and nothing is stopping any country from throwing whatever sanctions at Israel they like.

...did you read the article?

It's long, but I'd hardly characterize it as anti-Biden. If anything, I'd say the ultimate tone is slightly positive and humanizing.

Israel has won simultaneous wars with all of its neighbors, multiple times.

And you think that, if only the US hadn't vetoed it, Russia and China would have invaded Israel to stop it?

Both instances are willful action that contributes to direct harm to yourself and others.

No, in the context of a voting system, it is not literally a vote for the other option. I don't think your friends tumbling off the cliff will really care much about the distinction that serves no purpose other than personal moral satisfaction.

Obama did vs Romney. He was consistently down during May of 2012, and then proceeded to have a slam dunk victory.

If you're driving in a bus with 40 people voting on where to go, with 14 wanting to drive to a buffet, 16 wanting to drive off a cliff, and 15 saying that they don't care enough to vote but they don't really want to go to the buffet because they're not hungry, yes, I am going to judge the 15 people who are content being driven off a cliff.

And Obama solidly lost his election against Romney if you looked at polls this far out. A strong case can be made that polls at this point are not predictive.

I think Shawn Fein.

Ignoring the fact that mine and most American's immediate reaction to this is "Who?", the fact that he has zero experience in elected office will be disqualifying to most people. He seems like a decent guy, and I'd love to see him in some sort of office some day, but this is not a serious suggestion.

Also, to quote him:

Proud to cast my vote for President @JoeBiden today, the first day of early in-person voting in the state of Michigan!

https://twitter.com/ShawnFainUAW/status/1758917912318902276

Joe Biden has had multiple opportunities to stop the genocide he is currently supporting and has not.

So, are you claiming that if the United States stops sending some military aid to Israel, Netanyahu will be unable to continue military operations in Gaza? Because if so, you are sorely mistaken. Israel's military is perfectly self-sufficient, and if you think they particularly care about some UN resolutions, you need to talk to some Israelis.

American support in this is not a significant factor in the outcome. Joe Biden could not unilaterally stop Israeli operations in Gaza unless he declared war on Israel and deployed troops, and I can assure you that isn't going to be happening. Not to mention, China, Russia, India, Europe, and all of South America also exist. Americans do not unilaterally decide everything that happens or doesn't happen in the world. We're not that important.

I'm not against some system of qualified exceptions, though they'd need to be very tight or you'll suddenly find every parent discovering their kid's own special need.

The school system already has all the tools it needs to deal with distractions in the classroom.

From conversations I've had with teachers, this is not at all remotely consistent with what they report.

It really needs to be emphasized that polls this far out are basically meaningless. This far out, Romney was significantly outpolling Obama, and that was a blowout.

It needs to be emphasized that this article is about a medical school, where a strong majority of graduates will become millionaires.

I'm all for increasing education funding, and medical school tuition is a real barrier for under-represented populations, but if you're trying to divert limited funds into helping the most people, medical school is targeting the people who need help the least. Making undergrad at public schools tuition-free would do a lot more.

I'm not gonna tell a random widow how to spend her money, but if we're talking finite tax dollars and public policy, that's a very different question.

To be clear, speaking as someone who got to enjoy being a gay atheist teenager going to school in rural Missouri, I get your point. However, negative things that directly impacted me or people like me aren't necessarily more important than negative impacts on other people, and when you're faced with decisions that genuinely do come down to direct trade-offs, you have to take a comprehensive and holistic view.

To throw a stupidly exaggerated example out, if I had a button that would fire every homophobic teacher in the country but also reduce the academic performance of all students by 5%, I personally wouldn't feel comfortable pressing it. Of course on the flip side, I probably wouldn't enjoy being faced with the opposite button that increases all students performance by 5% but also introduces some amount of homophobic teachers. My only point here is that these aren't simple and easy questions.

To be very clear, I was not suggesting that a cop arrest a student for opening Instagram.

My point is that schools will be significantly more able to resist parental pressure when the school boards quite literally do not have the authority to make the decision. Perhaps there is some room for exceptions with legitimate need, but I'd argue that the bar needs to be pretty high for that, because again, it was in fact possible for students to attend school without phones for essentially all of human history. If a parent really needs to get a message to a student, they can call the office.

People always say this, but somehow society and schools did manage to function before 2008.

We know that access to phones causes significantly worse student performance. Is it really worth harming all students' ability to learn just so that, in the event of a rare emergency, a family can get an "all good" message a little bit faster? Schools were perfectly able to locate and track their students during emergencies and notify families before smartphones existed, speaking as someone who was in an extreme weather emergency during school myself during that time.