TechyDad @ TechyDad @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Did you read what I wrote? It's not that they decided they weren't going to do anything. It's that the rules of the government limit what they can do with a small majority. They can't just unilaterally decide that they are passing a new constitutional amendment with a few vote majority in the House/Senate. They could try for a bill, but there they are limited by various other rules not to mention the conservative Supreme Court. If the Democrats had a big enough majority, they could get more bills passed.

And that being said, what's the alternative? Allow the Republicans to get into power and hope that they don't take away women's rights too much? Many Republicans have already declared that they want a national abortion ban. Others have said that they want to criminalize miscarriage and ban contraception.

Voting third party (thanks to our First Past The Post system) won't work. Sitting out the elections and not voting won't work. The best thing to do is get as many Democrats in office as possible from local positions to the highest offices. Then, put pressure on the higher up Democrats to get a women's rights bill passed.

At this point, and with our current political system, not supporting the Democratic candidate is essentially supporting the Republican one.

The Democrats could have passed a bill, but "enshrining it in the Constitution" would mean passing a Constitutional amendment. First, they would need a 2/3rds vote of Congress. That means that the Democrats couldn't have a slim majority - they'd need a large majority. Or they'd need to find Republicans willing to vote for a Constitutional amendment protecting abortion rights. Basically an impossibility.

Even if the Democrats managed to get the Constitutional Right To Abortion passed, they would need to have 75% of the state legislatures pass it. Democrats don't control that name state legislatures.

So perhaps the Democrats could have passed a national law, right? Except that the Republicans would inevitably filibuster this in the Senate. The Democrats could have changed the filibuster rules, but not all of them supported changing these rules. (Mainly because it would prevent them from stopping the Republicans if the Republicans regained the Senate.) Any law that was passed would inevitably have been challenged up to the conservative Supreme Court.

You could definitely criticize the Democrats for not pushing harder to pass a law guaranteeing abortion, but a Constitutional Amendment was out of reach.

Also worth noting: only one of them holds elected office.

Did Hunter Biden break the law? If the indictments against him are true, then yes he did. But I'm not voting for Hunter Biden in 2024. He's not running.

"His son broke the law so Joe Biden must be guilty too" isn't anywhere close to enough to base an impeachment on.

I'd have to look it up. My company actually just changed the entire system to help out younger employees - but with the effect of hurting employees who have worked here longer. So it actually ends up being harder for me to save up. They acknowledged this, but argued it off as not affecting that many people. (Not many people - just the folks who stuck around the longest!)

The explanation we were given, though, was that 15% came before the matching. So I should take every $100 I earn and stick $15 into my retirement fund. Then, of course, I'd need to put some into healthcare, some into taxes, and some into basic costs of living. Then, when I'm done, I might be lucky enough to have a shiny penny left over. Unless I have any unforeseen expenses in which case I'd go deep into debt.

Given Trump's penchant for grifting and fraud, I'm wondering if he kept the suit, had someone buy a series of similar looking suits as cheaply as possible, and then cut those up to sell. Why would he care if the hunk of fabric that he SAID came from his suit actually came from some thrift store find?

I do own my house and hopefully will be mortgage free by the time I retire (or hit retirement age). I'm in New York State. Social Security would theoretically help, but who knows if it'll be around in 30 years. If it's not, I'll be working until I'm 90. If it is, I might be able to retire at 75. Assuming I don't have any large, unexpected expenses (which is a huge assumption).

I'm a web developer. I own my house, but am still paying the mortgage. (So I guess I don't technically fully own it yet.) I'm in a decent position financially at the moment - my income exceeds my expenses. Still, I've had some big financial hits recently ($3,600 for hearing aids for me, $1,000+ for tests to rule out cancer for my wife, $750 for a new dryer when our old one died, the potential new car that I might need to buy,...).

So while I'm able to keep my head above water, financially, I'm not able to put enough away to secure my retirement. Also, one big adverse event (medical crisis, job loss with unsuccessful job search, etc) and my current financial state could go from "decent in the short term" to "drowning in debt."

Retirement: $715,958

And this is why I likely won't be able to retire. At a recent retirement meeting my company gave, they said that people should be putting 15% of their income into retirement. However, I can't afford to do this. Not even close.

I live a pretty frugal life. I don't vacation. I rarely go out to eat or order food in. I plan my meals and only buy what we need. I drive a 14 year old car that's paid off. Still, my expenses, while less than my income, wouldn't let me reduce my pretax income by 15%.

I'm 48 and I doubt if I'll have 20% of the figure above when it comes time to retire.

I bought my current car new 14 years ago. It has some issues that might be too expensive to fix so I might need to buy another car. My ideal car would be an electric car, but that is way too expensive for my budget. So I looked at hybrids. I might be able to make a hybrid work, but even a gas car will be stretching my budget.

And I plan to keep my next car until it breaks down - which hopefully would be about another 14 years.

Exactly. Ideally, they would have wanted to have impeached Biden 3 times. This way, Trump could have said that he wasn't impeached nearly as much as Biden.

They failed at that, but Plan B is to impeach him once regardless of any evidence or any charges. Then, Trump can claim that impeachment is just a normal thing that opposing parties do and that it means nothing.

Well, clearly he committed a very heinous act. He defeated Trump in the 2020 election. That's not allowed and means he needs to be removed ASAP!

In unrelated news, watch your step. I seem to have spilled a lot of sarcasm over here.

Hey, they have lots of evidence. In fact, I'll list it all here:

And done! See all that evidence?!!! /s

If it was just Trump we had to worry about, I'd say that there was little reason to worry. After all, Trump's so incompetent that he'd try to become a dictator, get distracted by some petty grudge, trip over his own feet, and leave office without having destroyed democracy. (Though he'd definitely still wound it.)

The bigger problems are the people Trump would appoint into positions of power. While Trump distracted us with social media feuds, these people would be filling the government with loyalists and forcing out anyone who valued the rule of law over the rule of Trump. Then, when they did horrible things, they would have no pushback and they'd be able to have courts rule that it was perfectly legal for them to break our democracy. These people are the bigger threat.

Maybe our fears are overblown and we'd emerge fine, but it's not something I'd bet on. If I were told to run through a deadly gauntlet with machine guns, poison darts, buzzsaws and the like, I'd refuse. Only if my refusal was denied would I hope that I emerged unscathed. And if I did so, then it wouldn't mean that there was no danger there - just that I was extremely lucky. If Trump and company regain power and we don't lose our democracy, it will mainly be due to extreme luck - not because there was no danger from Trump and company.

It's already happening. There are calls on the right to prosecute women who miscarry, charging them with manslaughter.

At least one woman, Brittany Watts, is already under arrest. She miscarried into her toilet and flushed. She was arrested and her toilet taken apart to get "evidence." She's charged with attempted abuse of a corpse.

If the abortion bans are upheld, the next step is banning miscarriages. Of course, this happens to women naturally - without any action on their part. Still, women will be subjected to criminal investigations to see what they did to "cause" the miscarriage ("you took one sip of wine! Guilty!"), what they did after the miscarriage ("you miscarried at 15 weeks and didn't bury the body in a coffin in a cemetery! Guilty!"), or anything else. Obviously, the rich and powerful will be spared from this scrutiny, but the middle class and poor women? They'll be harassed. Especially if they happen to not be white. ("Double Guilty!!!")

That and he hasn't stolen from Republicans. Republicans didn't seem to care about Santos' lies or fraud until it turned out that he stole from the Republican party. Then, suddenly, his lies and fraud were a big deal and needed to be punished.

"Sorry, we've reserved all that stuff for our shareholders and executives. The best we can do is a pizza party. You want more? Fine. We'll generously toss in some store bought cupcakes. Now get back to work! Our executives and shareholders want more money!"

And it's not only the population, but its GDP is tiny. Back when Russia first invaded Ukraine, I wondered how big Russia would be if it were a US state. I compared the GDP per Capita of all US states to Russia's.

Mississippi's GDP per Capita was almost 4 times larger than Russia's. Mississippi! I finally went into the US territories to find one that Russia could top (American Samoa).

And, in case you're thinking "well, that's GDP per Capita, they'd dwarf all US states in GDP," they'd be the third largest state behind California and Texas and just ahead of New York. The US as a whole has a GDP over 10 times larger than Russia.

Well, if the President is immune then he can always appoint a SCOTUS Hunter cabinet position.

There's no fine that could make them whole and Rudy definitely doesn't have enough money to pay them back even if we were able to put a monetary amount to their ruined lives.

Still, I hope they get every penny that can be drained from Giuliani.

As an American Jew: They hate all Jews. They see us as having no loyalty to our country (their evidence being: we're Jews - and that's it). They see us as controlling the world's markets and all the other anti-semitic tropes that have circulated for thousands of years.

When it comes to Israel, they approve of it for four main reasons:

1. Among the evangelicals, they think Jews running Israel is the first step towards Jesus returning. The second step is a huge attack on Israel and then Jesus would return and toss all the Jews into hell. This "support for Israel" is just delayed anti-semitism. They're willing to put up with Jews there because they think they'll benefit (be taken to heaven) while Jews will suffer.
2. Among the white supremacist groups, Israel is seen as a convenient dumping grounds for American Jews. If they ever get their wet dream of expelling all us "traitorous Jews," they'll just ship us all off to Israel. Nevermind that most of us don't trace our ancestry to Israel for thousands of years. Nevermind that we've been American citizens for generations. We're Jews so they would declare that Israel is where we "belong" and ship us off to rid "their country" of Jews.
3. Among the bigots (which includes white supremacists), there is hatred for Muslims as well. Israel opposes Muslim countries/groups. Therefore, they see Israel as a temporary... Well, not really an ally as much as a tool. They will "support" Israel and help them kill Muslims. If Israelis get slaughtered, the bigots don't care. After all, those are likely just Jews over there. This ignores that Israelis can be Jewish, Christian, or even Muslim - but since when have bigots cared about distinctions when a stereotype will suffice?
4. Among the politicians, it gives them talking points. Not only with the evangelicals and white supremacists, but with the Jewish community. The politicians can say that they "support Israel" and some Jews (like my parents) get fooled into thinking that this means they support Jews in America. Nope. They are more than willing to give Israel support, but Jews at home are "globalist traitors who must be dealt with as soon as possible." Not that most politicians would say this part out loud. They'd use dogwhistles, but there's a growing segment that doesn't bother with dogwhistles.