scoobdog

There's such a thing as being too brief, but point taken. It looks like that rats aren't going down with SS Trump.

Not exactly.

Because the underlying malaise in that sector continues to drag the job market. I'm not suggesting it isn't one of the permanent solutions because it very much is; I'm just pointing out that its benefits will decrease over time if we don't do more to replace those all-important semi-skilled jobs. It certainly doesn't replace increasing tax burden on corporations or, even, the highest income earners who benefit through stocks - the best way to refill the SSI coffers is to additionally keep corporations from diverting as much of their earnings to stock holders and execs while also decreasing the need for mid-level wager earners from reliance on the social safety net.

That is an excellent point. Obviously, raising the cap doesn't do much in the long term, but it does act as a great short term bridge while the economy transitions its manufacturing sector into emerging markets.

He's spending so much time tarnishing his already suspect reputation, I wonder how even has time to run his businesses into the ground.

To Pooh's point, all of those problems are self-inflicted. Allowing employers to lowball wages (and, in the service sector, offset some of that SSI burden with tips); generally cutting corporate taxes; and defunding social security for pet projects have all contributed to Social Security being underfunded. Furthermore, a bottom-heavy job market due to the exporting of manufacturing and general replacement of semi-skilled jobs by automation is similarly a direct consequence of both friendly corporate tax regulations and lax corporate oversight. Essentially, the government has a direct hand in defunding social safety nets for the sole purpose of boosting corporate stock value.

You know you're in for a bad time when both of the dudes you whored yourself to disavow you when you're finally getting a divorce. It's like her husband was thinking "Damn, I can't even pawn her off on her toys anymore. Better cut his bitch before she screws me."

I wonder if a true socialist society has ever existed?

They want more playoff teams, not more playoff games.

This is all pretty dumb. Revelations is almost certainly a work of early mysticism, meaning what ever John was attempting to convey through the Book of Revelation was intended to be interpreted not taken literally. In fact, most of the “signs” were either totemic, emblematic, or based on historical people. Also, asceticism in the west predates Christianity, all of the Semitic societies ringing the Mediterranean had some form of it centuries before.

NY Post is porn for bigots and racists.

I still wonder how much blame can be put on NATO or the United States for escalating the situation. We can all agree that they both have a hand in creating the situation, particularly by meddling in the 2014 election. But, from the beginning, Biden was out front warning anyone who would listen what was about to happen, weeks before it happened. Furthermore, there was never any discussions about bringing Ukraine into NATO... the whole uprising in '14 was about them becoming closer to Europe economically which, in of itself, isn't escalatory unless you're dealing with an irrational person. All of the "escalation" was sequence of phantom red-lines Putin could use to scare off Western partners.

NY Post is fucking trash.

Well, everyone else already jumped on this, but I would point out that providing weapons isn’t the same as controlling a war. Yeah, it would shift the balance away from Ukraine; it had nothing to do with their desire to defend their own territory. About all it will do is let the weasel Putin off the hook when he flailing badly. He has no way of holding the territory he annexed, and he’s one mistake away from getting dragged out into the street and beaten to death.

It's not "DCs" war to stop.

Not at the federal level where they’re appointed. I don’t think there’s a mechanism for removing federal judges other than through the same onerous impeachment process.

Hendrix was playing the national anthem; sampling is taking parts of song to create a different song. Gangsters Paradise doesn’t sound like the Stevie Wonder original even though it uses the refrain, but it does "sample" key, distinguishable, parts of the music that are copyrighted parts of the original. The definition you're creating for "sampling" simply isn't correct. Jazz is a completely different beast. Riffs in jazz solos aren't just taking the theme, they're blending it in to the fabric of the overall piece in a different way. To look it in this way: a sample is like using an existing foundation on a demolished house to build a new house on while jazz riffs are like taking ornamental pieces off an old house and using them on a new one. None of this, of course, addresses the right to use someone else's music which is required regardless of what you call it.

I thought they were just waiting for Ian to clean up their mess. Sometime, thoughts and prayers just don't work.

Good article on how the "sampled" hook came to be: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/29/entertainment/coolio-stevie-wonder-gangstas-paradise/index.html

I should say, though, that there is more unity than you let on. Third parties still remain mostly sidelined, and, like it or not, Biden one with an extremely high turnout despite not being much more than a better-than-the-alternative option. The same principles should apply to both sides of the issue. If mainstream Republicans can stomach voting for openly bigoted, racist, and misogynistic candidates (well, any time besides now) than it stands to reason that Democrats can do the same with candidates they disagree with that are far less distasteful.

That isn't much of a basis for unity, either. There are many different approaches to achieving those goals.

Oh.

Don't play dumb. Sampling is a foundation for several music genres going all the way back to the '60s, and it involve making "sampled" hooks a central part of a remixed tune. A sample is any portion of music that is taken from another established tune, modified either in performance or through digital manipulation, and incorporated into a new piece. The earliest forms of sampling were utilized by the pioneers of electronic music where the sample was taken whole cloth and then manipulated. Hip Hop DJs added a wrinkle of sampling just the rhythm section of a tune and some of the lyrics into a (mostly) spoken word performance, keeping with a tradition in R&B to use relatively standard baselines as a foundation for original music.

It's not realistic to expect that kind of unity, though. Hating Republicans isn't going to be enough like it is for Republicans hating Democrats, and there are lot of groups on the left with vastly different agendas sharing the one common goal of not being erased out of existence by Republicans' destructive policy goals. Frankly, if more people did sign up for socialists groups, they might find that Socialists' agenda is more adaptable and inclusive than they might have been led to believe.

True, to an extent. Someone who "earns" that much money through, say, selling his startup isn't necessarily a more capable money manager than a struggling single mom with a winning $1 Billion ticket, but he (yes, its probably a white male) has an infrastructure in place to handle all the money. Self-control only gets you so far, as does good advice. What usually ends up doing these unlucky winners in is the inability to find someone trustworthy to help them manage an unmanageable amount of money.