Yeah, you can just not need/want those specific products for a number of legitimate reasons.

Ummm, how about it’s setting a super fucked up precedent? Even if they don’t do anything, it should absolutely not be something that’s tolerated and normalized to have armed military roaming our streets.

Why aren’t all blue controlled states viewing this as an act of war? The federal government is literally invading states against the states’ will. First LA, then DC, now Chicago? Where the fuck is the line drawn?

Serving in the military does actually have an expedited path to naturalization. https://www.uscis.gov/military/naturalization-through-military-service

But, this fascist regime doesn’t give a fuck about anything except hatred and cruelty.

Never had an issue with that word, but God damnit if “occasion” doesn’t get me just about every time. “Is it 1 C and 2 S’s, or 2 C’s and 2 S’s…?” I remember after writing it down wrong, of course. Stupid English.

Headline is a bit misleading:

There has been no confirmation that such a proposal is on the table, and Newsweek has contacted the White House and the office of Alaska’s governor for comment. The Telegraph cited a White House statement that it did not comment “on deliberative conversations that may or may not be happening.”

I loathe Trump and won’t be surprised if he does in fact offer this, but he hasn’t actually proposed it to Putin yet.

Blame the SCOTUS. At least some states like Pennsylvania had their courts rule gerrymandering as unconstitutional (for their state, not federally). Unfortunately, a lot of other states still gladly allow it.

Yeah, in fairness, NK would make more sense, tbh. It’s been so closed off for so long, that it increasing tourism after opening to it a few years back isn’t that surprising. But my point still stands regarding other countries that are extremely dangerous/even worse than the US in terms of safety.

I’m equally perplexed. So tourism to places like North Korea or places in active war like Libya or South Sudan have gone up?

which is why big blue states like California and Illinois and Massachusetts and New York also refuse to implement the far more efficient and equitable public health reforms common to countries in Europe with much smaller GDPs.

Those states do have a lot of benefits for low income families when it comes to healthcare that red states don’t offer.

But a big reason they don’t do universal healthcare, aside from billions of dollars in insurance and healthcare capital lobbying politicians, is because you need all the neighboring states to also be on board as well. Why would it be beneficial for me to have universal healthcare if I live on the state border and work in another state? If I get hurt and I need to go to the ER in the other state that doesn’t have universal healthcare, I’ll be super screwed when the bill finally hits. I bring this up because people in the US travel between states quite often.

But aside from that, I’d argue the biggest issue is that even though California and other blue states have large GDPs, they don’t usually have much money to spare. The fact that the Federal takes so much money from regular people in addition to State taxes, it wouldn’t be feasible to offer universal healthcare without buy-in at the national level.

The simple fact is, the healthcare system is broken. Costs are so high because they’ve been able to get away with it due to millions of people throwing money into insurance and not needing to use their insurance the majority of time outside of routine appointments. As a result, these companies had billions just sitting around and for-profit hospitals knew this. As such, it’s become a greedy race to the bottom.

A typical surgery even 40 years ago would not drastically hurt anyone financially. Yes, technology and medicine has drastically improved, and correct me if I’m wrong, but fixing a basic broken bone hasn’t changed much in the last 50+ years. So why does getting a broken leg fixed now cost thousands of dollars when it used to only cost maybe a couple hundred?

Greed, is my conclusion.

Are you referring to this photo?

Yes, he is definitely “groping” her here… Jfc.

And the kissing thing was definitely unacceptable, but hardly worth the amount of scandal it received.

She said Franken, a former “Saturday Night Live” cast member and liberal activist who was elected to the Senate in 2008 and won a second term in 2014, insisted on rehearsing the scene backstage.

“He said to me, ‘We need to rehearse the kiss.’ I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL. … We don’t need to rehearse the kiss’,” she wrote in a lengthy and detailed post on KABC’s website.

“He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.”

Tweeden said she reluctantly agreed to rehearse the line leading up to the kiss and that’s when Franken “came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.”

“I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time,” she said. “I felt disgusted and violated.”

Franken, through a spokesperson, responded: “I certainly don’t remember the rehearsal for the skit in the same way, but I send my sincerest apologies to Leeann.”

Edit: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/sen-al-franken-accused-forcibly-kissing-groping-woman-n821381

I will add that the GOP also amplified the issue 100x. The fact that Trump of all people was tweeting out against Franken is peak hypocrisy.

Chuck Schumer fucking sucks.

A hotel in Augusta, Georgia. I had to come into town for a 2 week training event for my job. Unfortunately, it was occurring at the same time as the Master’s tournament, so finding a hotel was virtually impossible. The one my work booked for me was easily in the top 3 grossest accommodations I’ve ever had, and I’ve deployed to combat zones in the Army. Waking up in the middle of the night to my bed and walls covered in roaches still haunts me to this day. And when I say covered, I don’t mean a few. I mean covered.

The judicial can only do so much. Congress being readily complicit makes this all much more difficult to combat.

Haven’t they been suspending habeas corpus this whole time? I thought that was the main reason behind the SCOTUS case, that they’re mass deporting people with zero due process?

This is the truth. Trump is their prophet. Why else does anyone think he posted a meme of himself as the Pope. They know they’ve created an unbreakable cult and there’s nothing that can be done to shatter the indoctrination his zealots are thoroughly infected with.

Context matters. Alito has done a shit ton more with the GOP than just their wife donating to them.

Now hold on, maybe they’re onto something. The highest levels of drug dealers most likely aren’t accepting cash, they’re laundering their money through legitimate fronts. Small time dealers setting up some simple LLC or something for a relatively small fee and funneling money through that could actually shield you better from local law enforcement. I’m pretty sure Cashapp and their ilk offer business accounts nowadays, haven’t checked myself.

We used to do tape backups up until about 6 years ago, but our higher headquarters decided they wanted to go all in on Rubrik instead. I will say that it is a lot easier to maintain and conduct restores from, and we have all of our various sites’ Rubriks backing up to each other for redundancy. But you’re definitely right that tape is far cheaper per GiB of storage than anything else.

My theory is that he’s always known Tesla was massively overvalued and it was only a matter of time before the company’s stock started correcting towards a more realistic value for the amount of profit it actually generates. As such, he needed to take drastic action(s) to find other gold mines for him to exploit to retain his wealth base.