Callmeishmael

Back in 2000 there were widespread concerns about the reliability of electronic voting machines. After the Supreme Court awarded Florida to Bush, Gore decided to not pursue questions about the voting machines simply because casting doubt on the electoral outcome would be too divisive. His decision to stand by the public results in 2000 was mirrored by Pence's actions in 2020. Two men on opposite sides of the political spectrum who decided to put any person doubts aside and preside over their own defeats.

The Thai Air Force will probably order a dozen of those useless F35s to even up the trade imbalance!

Making the world safe for Liberian shipping!

I'm 1/2 Canadian and 1/2 USAian, but hold a US passport. If war broke out I would renounce the US passport and go to the Canadian Embassy with a copy of my mother's birth certificate!

How exactly are they going to prove citizenship? Non-Citizens can have US driver's licenses and Social Security cards and the US has consistently voted against having a national ID card. Will people have to bring their Passports or Birth Certificates to the voting stations?

That's a very interesting discussion with a thoughtful conservative. One quote really stood out for me: if you want to cut Social Security, if you want to tell people you’re cutting Medicare and Medicaid, you have to start with the other stuff that doesn’t seem as close to home, with the stuff that’s, you know, the comic books in Peru about wokeness or whatever. You have to cut that stuff out first, and you have to hold up the bloody head before you have popular interest and willingness to go with you to the stuff that touches their families.

This is exactly what I said in the last social security thread. Trump/Musk don't need to shut down Social Security, they just need to cut the personnel until the whole department fails. If they start demanding "in-person verification" by going into a SS office every year there will be a lot of unhappy posters here!

^^ Lack of law enforcement looks a lot like freedom, but it isn't really the same.

Getting back to the original topic, Trump cannot and will not get rid of Social Security. However, Musk's DOGE is already closing SS field offices and firing SS customer service staff. If they then purge the SS database of a few million questionable accounts the people affected will struggle to get reinstated. In some cases, they may end up dying (next winter!) before getting their payments started again. Also, making people people apply in person while closing hundreds of field offices will save billions of dollars for their tax cuts!

Well, on the bright side, we don't have to worry about Trump going to war with China.... He's too busy going to war with the US!

The last time I few AirAsia Economy I just didn't fit into my seat. I've flown Economy class my entire life, but if that is the current size of Economy Class seats I will just have to bit the bullet and spend more the next time I fly. The problem wasn't width, I am 185cm tall and weigh 80 kilos, it was leg-room. Even sitting straight up in my seat, my legs were too long to fit in the space between my seat and the back of the seat in front of me. I had to choose between 'man-spreading' and fitting my knees into the cracks between the seats in front of me, or bracing my knees against the seat back in front of me with my legs up in the air. Fortunately it was a short flight, I don't think I could have lasted more than an hour or so like that!

Although I am usually left-wing (I voted for Bernie), I agree with Musk on this one. Freedom of speech is really the foundation of a civilized society and imprisoning people for hate speech is just wrong. To paraphrase some old pundit: "I may disagree with everything you say, but I will always defend your right to say it."

I think "feebly pawing reporters" would be a better description!

I just completed this quiz. My Score 33/100 My Time 113 seconds  

DeSantis saying that MAGA heroes are not welcome?? I am pleasantly surprised, I wouldn't have thought that he would publicly go against right-wing folk heroes like the Tate bros.

I'm sure that the DOGE savings will more than pay for this very useful and practical tunnel. 😝

An under 15 on a dating ap??? I don't want to shift any blame from this fellow, but where were her parents?

Several years ago I had a student who was half Arab and half Thai. She was obviously raised in a secular household and was a very nice, normal girl. She never wore a headscarf and dressed and acted just like her Buddhist classmates. She was admitted to an English University a few years ago and now always wears a full Niqap and only posts quotes from the Quran on her Facebook page. Sending her the the Islamic Republic of England was the worst choice her parents could have made.

So $5 million for staying with him from December 2022 to now - that's about $2.4 million per year. Not a bad payday! 😆

I've encountered sharks that size while skin-diving in those waters. Rather than approaching the shark I would always swim quietly away from them!

If they are really serious about cutting waste, they should look at the DOD. The US has more aircraft carriers than the rest of the world combined. Do you know how many billions could be saved by selling off 1/2 of them?

I just completed this quiz. My Score 90/100 My Time 119 seconds  

Entitlements... The easiest way to cut money there would be to cut everyone off of SS and Medicare a make them prove that they are eligible all over again. That would eliminate fraud and save billions. Brace yourselves, after USAID, this is the next obvious target.

USAID is low hanging fruit. After that has been picked, what's next? The obvious targets are Medicare and Social Security. Billions could be saved in Social Security payments by requiring recipients to personally verify their identity in their state of residence. Better get copies your Birth Certificates and a plane ticket back to your US hometown ready!

Looks like Musk is eliminating the competition!