Lurker > ElatedVenusaur

I'm glad I am recognized for being wrong about everything.

Its poorly optimized, yes.
You need a guide to do it, and its very time-consuming.

Democrats LOSING! Why wont you donate to defeat President Trump, <insert donors name here>?
Meanwhile, I still occasionally get chill Bernie texts(hes fundraising for Warnock). Its so weird how histrionic official Dem fundraising is.

I still think people are missing the forest for the trees. There are plenty of irresponsible idiots in other countries, even if there are somewhat more of them in America, and they have uniformly done a better job handling this.

The issue is systemic. Healthcare in America is basically a game of chicken, where everyone tries to out price-gouge each other, and health "insurance" is arcane nonsense. Like, explain to me how getting liquid stitches at the ER led to the hospital charging my workers comp ~$700 and then the doctor charging me ~$800, and these being both completely above-board and legal and the latter not covered by my insurance(guess he was out-of-network...) So people internalize that they should avoid going to see the doctor, because it's expensive. You would have to be a lawyer to navigate this stuff.

But that's not all: Americans have no (federal) legally-mandated vacation or sick days. Lots of states have enacted their own legislation, but, for example: CT mandates 40 hours of sick-time per year per employee. It doesn't mandate that this has to be separate from paid time off. Whole Foods requires you to quarantine for 14 days if you have been exposed, and requires that + a negative test to come back from COVID-19. When you adjust for the fact that there more or less isn't a social safety net in this country, many people who put in the position of choosing to go into work sick or picking which bill isn't going to get paid this month.

Lastly, whereas most European and East Asian governments have passed generous, continuous relief packages(including cash payments, payroll subsidies, expanded UI, etc. etc.), Americans got a one-time payment of $1,200(and even that wasn't universal!) and a (now long expired) bump to unemployment.

I had a bottle of Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. Even Beer Advocate likes it!
Always good to see those on the shelf.

Just a reminder that Kamala Harris at 56 years old is literal decades younger than every other major Democrat in government.

Graycap posted...

It was a private conversation, so it's a he-said/she-said situation and we're never going to know.

I think Warren has a greater history of embellishing details about her personal life than Bernie does of his. And Bernie is also a proud feminist ally, who just previously endorsed a woman for president, so it would be odd if he flip-flopped to "a woman can't win".

But we can't be sure how he conducts himself in private. At the end of the day we weren't there.

It's worth noting that Bernie had urged Warren to run in 2016, and only ran because she ultimately decided not to.
I also do think Bernie is much more...consistent in his views than Warren.

CrimsonRage posted...

lol he probably would too

It might cut him a better deal than Mitch will.

YellowSUV posted...

If they are being replaced by mercenaries that is just going to make everything worse.

This is also true, because mercenaries are even less accountable.

Rock type attacks are great, but Rock is hilariously terrible defensively. Not as bad as Ice though.

In functional democracies, leaders who oversee electoral defeats get sacked.
In America, they get to keep power as long as they want and blame everyone and everything else for their failings.

Alteres posted...

We just threw lots of parties... that seemed to work, everyone in our friend group had a girlfriend(s) from it.

...so booze>socialism?

Not means-tested enough.

BLAKUboy posted...

Well just be back within a year if we just up and leave without an actual plan.

The Taliban is going to win whenever we leave, no matter when we leave or if we go back, because our very presence there strengthens and legitimizes them.

Mr. Krabs is a business Republican. He wants to get rid of regulations on his restaurant, and for his taxes to be low. He doesn't care about anything else.

I could see Squidward being low-key leftist. He mostly votes blue, even though he hates it. probably BECAUSE he hates it.

Spongebob would show up to vote every time, but never be able to decide which candidate to vote for. Too much pressure!

Patrick would forget to register, or when the election is, or end up winning a race he didn't even know he was in.

Sandy has a definite girl-boss liberal vibe.

Plankton votes straight-ticket communist, mostly because it freaks Mr. Krabs out.

Gary posts long, convoluted political arguments that no one understands.

Mermaid Man votes Republican, because he likes the man on the penny.

Work gives us those blue surgical masks. So I wear one of those, swap it out towards the end of my shift, then use it until the same time next shift.
I also have my own supply in my car to bridge gaps and otherwise insure I always have a mask.

waterjoe posted...

So how long should troops be there forever then, Get them the f#$k out already its been 19 years.

Seriously. I get that we broke it in the first place, but were clearly not fixing anything, especially in Afghanistan. Time to accept we failed.
Iraq is somewhat better off, but ultimately it has to be able to deal with its own problems if its ever going to be a functional state.

Good. Our presence in Afghanistan in particular is pointless. The sooner we admit the venture has failed, the better.

Usually slippers.

I mean, if you leave the food in the pot, you cant clean it.
Plus its not convenient to bring a pot to work to eat out of.

Wetterdew posted...

GSC did the most for the Pokemon franchise

-Setting a clock and daily or nocturnal/diurnal events and changing how the game looks day to night
-Held items were huge
-Pokemon breeding and genders
-Massive postgame, even if it's not as big as Kanto was in the original games
-Proper continuation of Pokemon's story, seeing how things changed since the first game

I disagree with most of your criticisms but some of them have some merit. (Still not enough to ruin the games when you consider how many great things they did)
The levels are badly scaled, but it doesn't ruin the game at all.
The caves look the same in GS but in Crystal they are differentiated visually. And even in GS each cave at least has a different structural design.

The story is bad in EVERY pokemon game so that isn't really an argument against gen 2 in particular. Gen 2 actually does a good job of showing how Kanto's trainers have changed over a few years. And squaring off against Red is the coolest thing a Pokemon game has ever put in its story. EVER.

A handful of new Pokemon are only in the postgame, including some of the coolest ones, I agree that can be frustrating but I also think it's good that you still see new content even when you get to Kanto.

I really have a bone to pick with the day/night business, particularly with how GSC handles it, because like everything else, the game handles it poorly.
Let's say you really want a Lapras(for some reason), but where do you get one? Well, they're only in the one cave on Friday, but you need surf to even get to the area they're in. And, of course, they're only there Friday, information provided to you by a single NPC. There really aren't many other day events either: the bug-catching contest, the sale on the roof of the department store, I guess the NPCs who give you items if you want to be generous. Then there's the fact that some things only happen or appear at highly specific times, which makes them really easy to miss.
Later games handle things in a much less all-or-nothing way. All these ideas GSC has are good and sound, but the execution is almost uniformly poor, sometimes to the extent they would be better off not even trying. That's poor game design.

Yeah, they weren't good. Gen 3 is better, even with all its warts, because it doesn't feel like an expansion pack.

SquirtleSkwad posted...

X and Y are by far the worst of the series.

I really couldn't keep focused on them, myself. Just didn't do it for me, and I loved ORAS and liked Sun/Moon.

K181 posted...

He didn't preclude federal investigations, he apparently said it wasn't going to be a major focus of his presidency. That doesn't remotely preclude a DoJ investigstion or any state charges.

Ease up. Normal presidential don't get bogged down in DoJ matters.

Yes, there's no way investigating and charging Trump administration officials wouldn't be big news. Definitely something you could do quietly jk Biden is going to let them off scot-free.

$5 billion is already more than anyone could ever need.

Medussa posted...

Hogan? Baker? Romney?

hahahaha

it's Cotton, and we all know it.

Don't count out Josh Hawley. He's got the fash energy, but is the kind of Ivy man that gives the business wing the vapors.
Fortunately, he would probably struggle against not-Claire McCaskill.

SK8T3R215 posted...

So are we just gonna periodically forgive $10K every 5 to 10 years now?

Again, we would ideally fix the root causes, but thats not going to happen with a Republican Senate or President Biden neither is anything more generous than the $10K relief he proposed.
Its just that, ideally, President Biden would use every executive remedy he could to the fullest possible extent to combat the pandemic and the attendant economic crisis.

voldothegr8 posted...

Will I be getting a rebate for paying mine off?

That would require Congress, unfortunately. Were likely only going to have incomplete, executive-only actions at our disposal.

I mean, it would be great if we could fix the root of the problem by making college free or otherwise cracking down on predatory student loans, but that went out the window in March.

Utterly inadequate.
Particularly when you control for a hostile Senate, forgiving student loan debt entirely is one of the easiest, quickest, most efficient forms of stimulus a Biden administration could but wont LOL do.

Whoever Trump tells them to go with, probably.

Yes, Bezos is the one who is most efficient at being evil. Like our realitys discount Lofwyr.

MaxEffingBemis posted...

1. You didnt answer my question
2. Lmfao what, no they didnt. They didnt even entertain defund the police

Not only that, but Joe Biden claimed(baselessly) that it was Trump who wanted to defund the police!

If a bunch of platformless activists can out-message a political party and a constellation of party candidates with countless millions of dollars and easy access to the media and voters at their disposal, I'm not sure it's the activists who're to blame. Also, weirdly it was basically only centrists who lost because of this, as opposed to the ones who are most ideologically sympathetic to the activists. Weird!

The best thing is that Gen 1 Blizzard was 90% accurate. Oh, and Fire Blast had a whopping 30% burn chance(it was nerfed in GSC, maybe to make Sacred Fire better in comparison).
Hydro Pump's main competition these days is Scald, because Game Freak thought it would be neat if Water-types had an attack that caused a burn 30% of the time

LRodC posted...

Heavy Duty Boots were introduced, which ignores any entry hazards. Also, in VGC, entry hazards are practically nonexistent due to the small amount of turns and switching in battles.

Using an item to get around entry-hazards is fine, because at least Knock Off is still a thing.

Yes. Specifically 2012-16.

It depends on how she wants to play out the fetish. Like, as long as its not her entire sexuality.

CADE FOSTER posted...

yep beyond broken cuz it can happen again

In fact, it seems more likely than not.

gunplagirl posted...

This. The advancement of trans rights has been set back decades.

Definitely.

Bio1590 posted...

They took out Return and Frustration as well lol

And Pursuit!
You know, actually useful moves.
https://www.serebii.net/swordshield/unusableattacks.shtml
That's the complete list: it's mostly Z-Moves, of course and some of these aren't really needed, but it's just weird that they winnowed a bunch of move, yet there are still a half-dozen "you're low-level, have a garbage normal-type move" type attacks.

There's no way he'll give up on an easy source of adulation and cash, so I buy it.
I don't have the same faith in our justice system actually holding some one wealthy accountable as some people do.

I have the movie, but haven't watched it.
The show is amazing though. Season 2 was even better than Season 1 and includes an extended Mark Hamill cameo and Jackie Daytona, Regular Human Bartender.

There are several reasons...

1) There has never been a successful socialist movement in the United States. The Democrats, at their most left, flirted with lite European-style social democracy.

2) Money has an extremely outsized influence on American politics, and people who have a ton of money tend to want to have even more money, and guess what would happen under any vaguely socialist economy? This goes for the donor classes of both parties, by the way.

3) Any sort of leftist thought and leftist organizations were thoroughly demonized and disrupted by law enforcement and most politicians(especially, but certainly not exclusively, Republicans) during the Cold War.

4) Everyone knows, deep down, that America isn't doing well, a fact born out in the declining standard of living for most Americans, declining life expectancy(pre-COVID!!!), etc. etc. Even at their most social democratic, Democrats were reluctant to point fingers, but ever since they were taken over by the "New" Democrats(starting with Carter in '76) they have essentially taken the tack that things are mostly fine. That if we just excise this or that inefficiency, go along with the Republicans(but do things in a smart, technocratic way or whatever), things will improve. Nothing is all that bad, so stop pointing fingers at the ruling class, you uncouth plebes!

The Republicans, for their part, offer an explanation that is both simple and completely(intentionally) wrong: the reason things suck are those lazy black welfare queens, those illegal Mexican gangsters took your jobs, the Japa-errr... Chinese are robbing us blind. This works so well on its target demographic(disaffected whites) because it not only acknowledges the legitimacy of their grievance, but tells them they've done nothing wrong and aren't doing anything wrong. They don't need to change, they don't need to care about others(no, they shouldn't care about others), etc. etc. It's toxic validation, but it feels a ton better than some aristocratic democrat telling them things are fine and that they're terrible people(doing so is unhelpful, even though it's true).

The sum total of this is that groups that buy into the Republican messaging hardest become increasingly unreachable. Just about the only way you might possibily manage it is by materially improving their conditions, but that would require toppling the current Democratic Party, and then somehow winning enough power to really change things.

Well, she was held as accountable as most male stars, the system works!
The exact wrong way around.

Hoover gets a bit of a bad wrap: he did actually try to help, he just drastically underestimated the extent of the crisis. FDR did too, but he was ultimately more flexible than Hoover and had more capacity to actually get things done.
In other words, he would have been a perfectly mediocre or even a good president if not for the completely unprecedented scale of the Great Depression.

Fun fact: Hoover remained active in Republican politics for decades, giving his last speech at a Republican National Convention in 1964.

His autobiography was definitely his legacy. It's legit brilliant and gives you unparalleled insight into his thinking and evolution. Though one part always made me sad...
He dictated the autobiography to Alex Haley, and in one scene from his days as a gangster, he plays Russian Roulette. In the epilogue, written after Malcolm was murdered, Haley disclosed that Malcolm X confessed to palming the bullet(i.e. all the chambers were empty) but told him not to include that because he didn't want people thinking he wasn't willing to die.

2SweetforTurtle posted...

Pretty sure as far as we know, he was murdered by the people who were listening to what he used to say before. Regardless its a little ridiculous to ever appreciate anybody who makes claims like that just because they say they changed their mind. Would anybody revere David Duke if he claimed to have had a life experience that changed his mind? Of course not, he still said what he said with conviction in the past, and no matter what he says after the fact will change the influence he had on people with his previous statements.

There's a huge difference between white supremacism and black supremacism, and it's that the former is the status quo. The white supremacist can act on his ideology in much more far-reaching and consequential ways, will be favored by the system, and feels his station inadequate despite being privileged above all others. American Black supremacism is rooted in the feeling of oppression and humiliation of being black in a white-dominated society and the longing to be the one on top. They mostly lack the power or ability to act on their more unsavory impulses.

I know they have at least two articles where they talked to people working in the porn industry.
They're both excellent.

I mean, who among hasn't "accidentally" driven our country to the brink of fascist ruin?

SSJKirby posted...

It only had one more season to go right?

It only had one left on the contract. Its not clear when or if it was intended to conclude.
Either way, I hope they get the space to end it properly. It is perhaps my favorite show ever.

Klain was pretty much the one pick who is amenable to the left(like, personally).
Were not going to get much out of Biden, but maybe this means we might get something.

Having a creaking, decaying government built upon an inflexible document from 1787 is not the best, no.

muchdran posted...

I love how new York handled it. The rest of the country should have the most cases?

I wouldnt say New York handled it well. Both Gov. Cuomo and Mayor De Blasio drug their feet on shutting down until it was too late to contain the initial wave(this while the Italian health care system was on the brink of collapse). Moreover, Cuomo gave nursing homes legal immunity for all COVID-related deaths, even ones that resulted from negligence.