Mantergeistmann
No bio...
User ID: 323
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
I see nothing wrong with directly targeting your opponent's leader, rather than having to kill all the plebs in between first. Israel especially cannot complain, given their policiy and tactics. If I were Netanyahu, my response (after the initial nerves and shock) would be along the lines of "Fair play, but you're not good enough."
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
Is this why negotiations dried up after Netanyahu refused to compromise on the Philadelphi Corridor? From the sound of his possessions, he seemed to be ready to try to flee across the border.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
I don't know about doctors, but I believe there was an Al Jazeera journalist that met that fate.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
most importantly, it's explicit racial discrimination against the 86% of the country who isn't black.
It says "and others". So it sounds like its available to all, she's just spinning it. In the same way that someone might say "this bill will create hundreds of jobs for welders and others" if trying to get a union vote.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
The deep state isn't some nefarious ingroup. It's a useful umbrella term to capture the emergent ideology of DC's upper-middle-class bureaucracy. But that’s it. It personifies the incompetence inherent in all bureaucracy. It is as faceless as it is boring.
I feel like "Yes, Minister" should be required watching in Civics classes.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
Oddly enough, even DC might be secondary: I'd assume the Naval shipyards would be the primary targets. If the US can't repair/maintain/rearm ships (no concern with building, since modern ships take forever), the US can't project forces across the Pacific, and is therefore almost entirely impotent.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
while the Supreme Court has been dominated by progressive justices for almost a hundred years, it has also been overwhelmingly controlled by Republican-appointed justices since Nixon was in office. But for some reason, moving to Washington D.C. and taking a lifetime sinecure tends to shift people's politics leftward.
Is it that? Or is it that for decades, there were tremendously few years where Republicans controlled the Senate, and therefore any candidates nominated by a Republican president had to be those that would appeal to the Democratic senators?
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
So what solution do you propose, then? Just therapy of some sort? Honestly asking in a non-snark manner, as I know two people with chronic illness who also (I thought coincidentally) have significant amounts of stored emotional trauma.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
I'd just like to say that Vanderbilt University has just beaten the #1 team in American College Football. They are now 1-60 against Top 5 teams.
That is all.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
There's an effortpost to be made on how the Iron Dome is, from a geopolitical standpoint, the most counterproductive technology of the past few decades.
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
So hypothetically, what happens if you get stopped by Police and they ask to see your license? Or is that not a thing that they ask for where you live?
Mantergeistmann
1mo ago
Thankfully for the Canadians Maple Syrup is actually good,
How dare you try to appropriate what rightfully belongs to the Green Mountain State!
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
Honestly, if I ever went for a name change, even keeping my gender, I'd absolutely go for something awesome. Why wouldn't I? And I might even make "Danger" my legal middle name, while I'm at it.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I loved the branched conversation style over single-threaded forums like PHPBB that dominated the web before.
It's funny you say that, because I honestly really miss forums, and how they've been completely displaced by Reddit and Discord.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I'm more shocked that Al Jazeera has a green rating, to be honest.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
Honestly? Strongly in favour of! Particularly if they're from groups as well-regarded as ProPublica. I am always in favour of poor/yellow journalism being torn apart.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
... that's a line from The Longest Day, isn't it?
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I prefer the "swap land with Taiwan" strategy, personally.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I don't think that the outcome is very impressive
There's another point you brushed against, but moved past: the pagers were used as a safe alternative to cell phones. As a morale downer and paranoia increaser, this will hit Hezbollah pretty hard.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I'd be very interested in that. I have an interest in the shipbuilding industry, which as far as I'm aware is currently having the devil's own time with staffing for the Trades, and is in three main locations: New England (Dem), Gulf Coast (Rep), and Norfolk (I don't know if Virginia qualifies as Dem or not).
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I think one thing the left gets wrong is assuming that pro-life advocacy is primarily male-coded
Is that something they get wrong, or a deliberate rhetorical trick to strengthen their own position in the public eye? Granted, "deliberate" is certainly putting in a lot of work there.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
It only works if you forget about game stuff like “what’s the fastest way to the next mission”
I wish I could have done that, but it felt like at least early on, a lot of stuff is locked behind those missions.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
I've posted about this before. Watch police bodycam videos. The speed at which ho-hum traffic stops turns into "SHOTS FIRED! SHOTS FIRED!" is frightening. One of the things cops are doing is assessing how compliant you're being. If you're being compliant, they can make some assumptions about the next 15 - 30 seconds. If you're not, they're operating on the assumption of "this could go bad right now."
My father was in the Coast Guard. During training, he almost failed out because of a fatal mistake in one "shoot/no shoot exercise scenario". It was a routine check of yacht, where instead of complying with his request, an old grandmother went about her business getting food out of a picnic basket. Now, my father's not the sort to shoot an unarmed old lady just for not complying immediately - after all, perhaps she's just getting a sandwich or a drink to offer the nice young man? - so when she pulled a gun out of the picnic basket and shot him... well, exercise failed.
Mantergeistmann
2mo ago
After all, even if it's not true, the fact that I could believe it really says something about society.
I appreciate your sarcasm, so I'm just going to jump in to say that that's a line of argument I loathe. It's lazy, masturbatory, and ultimately boils down to "I wanted to be right, so that's just as valid as having been right!"
Of course, as is often the case, C.S. Lewis put it into far better words:
Suppose one reads a story of filthy atrocities in the paper. Then suppose that something turns up suggesting that the story might not be quite true, or not quite so bad as it was made out. Is one’s first feeling, “Thank God, even they aren’t quite so bad as that”, or is it a feeling of disappointment, and even a determination to cling to the first story for the sheer pleasure of thinking your enemies are as bad as possible? If it is the second then it is, I am afraid, the first step in a process which, if followed to the end, will make us into devils. You see, one is beginning to wish that black was a little blacker. If we give that wish its head, later on we shall wish to see grey as black, and then to see white itself as black. Finally we shall insist on seeing everything — God and our friends and ourselves included — as bad, and not be able to stop doing it: we shall be fixed for ever in a universe of pure hatred.
I feel like if the Trump campaign released such an ad, there'd be 18 dozen different articles up by now about how it's completely racist.
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