That's not how structured debates (Policy, Public Forum, Lincoln-Douglas, etc) work. Judges don't tell a team their facts are wrong, the other team does. Judges decide which of the teams had better argumentation. If you spout lies and I don't call you on it, as the opposing team, I will probably lose.
But let's say we accept that this is barely a structured debate, and the structure that was there sucked anyways, so hey- maybe it's was really a speech event (like Big Question, Extemporaneous, Humorous Interpretation, etc). That makes it even clearer why people are reacting like this, because those are not about facts at all, they're all about performance (as in 'acting').
My own view is that presidential debates are more akin to throwing the candidates in a gladiatorial arena and seeing whoever comes out least bloody. And that was always going to be Trump. Biden and his team are to blame for this, because it never should have taken place.
Too bad prices are up 20% on average since 2020, and aren't coming back down. That the 2023-2024 inflation rate is only 3% doesn't matter when wages never caught up with the giant price jumps from the pandemic.
Prices have risen 20.8% since the pandemic-induced recession began in February 2020, with just 6% of the nearly 400 items the Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks cheaper today.
That’s well above the historic average for a four-year period. For comparison, inflation rose 18.9 percent in the 2010s, 28.4 percent in the 2000s and 32.4 percent in the 1990s.
Not to be rude, but do you even read your own sources?
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
It's literally at the top of your article, under "Key Findings", probably because they knew that it's easy to misunderstand statistical data, or to claim it says what you want it to.
So the percentiles you are talking about still cannot keep their heads above water, despite the growth of wages in many of their jobs, and the other percentiles haven't seen that level of wage growth, or have even lost ground to inflation, but you're over here going, "I've got great news for you, you're actually not in a bad financial position, stop taking your actual lived experiences over my big numbers!"
This is where they're getting their 35% claims from.
And here's what it says under Key Findings:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
This is where they're getting their 35% claims from.
And here's what it says under Key Findings:
Wage rates remain insufficient for individuals and families working to make ends meet. Nowhere can a worker at the 10th percentile of the wage distribution earn enough to meet a basic family budget.
My disagreement with the post's article is that it is conflating the stock market with the economy, and the financial news sector is pushing this narrative very hard, or even saying it openly.
My issues with the article you linked about wages, in the comments, is that you're omissively citing bits and pieces to different people in order to support the idea that the economy is doing well, as the post article claims, when the post article is really about the stock market, not wages or living standards.
If the wage growth at the bottom 10th percentile doesn't mean they're not fucked, why would you even cite it?
The bottom 10th percentile covers people making less than $22,880, according to BLS.
That firmly excludes the median mode of American households, by wages. The vast majority of Americans were not helped by that number. Is it good that it happened? Yeah, absolutely. It wasn't Biden though. And it isn't most Americans. And it isn't the economy as a whole.
Wait, are "times tough", or are we in a "great" position, economically? I can't keep up.
But in all seriousness, this all boils down to a simple truth:
Low and middle-class workers today are in far worse positions than our parents' generation(s).
We can't afford homes. We can't afford childcare. We can't afford healthcare. Many of us can't even afford food consistently.
That is where we are at, bottom-line.
Arguing about percentage gains among certain groups belies the fact that this is a shitty economic system, that funnels money upwards.
Do we sometimes claw back a few steps? Sure. But praising the 2 steps forward, while ignoring the previous 10 steps back, just comes across as caping for it.
One particularly depressing graph is home ownership among Millennials. As of 2019, that number sits at 43.3%. But in the year 2000, that number was 20%. The oldest millennials were born in 1981, which means they were 19 years old in 2000.
So at minimum, HALF of the Millennials who own homes now, were rich kids who had their homes bought for them as highschool grads. And that was just the ones literally born in 1981-82. How many of the new millennial home owners are just rich kids who were younger millennials?
This economy is fucked.
I'm sure boiling frogs appreciate when you reduce the heat by a couple degrees, but it doesn't mean they're in a good position.
Actually this case was a two-pronged attack; first on mifepristone, but more broadly about whether federal agencies have the authority to conduct regulatory actions without express and specific direction and permission from Congress.
Republicans have been attacking this fundamental function of the Executive branch for a while now, as a way to kill regulations. They know that Congress is deadlocked over many issues and that it will never or rarely pass highly specific and technical regulations (e.g. environmental regulations, water quality standards, manufacturing safety regulations, communications rules, etc), and when it rarely does it takes years to do so, which will allow companies to do all sorts of horrible shit in the meantime.
This case was brought on the grounds that the FDA didn't have the authority to authorize mifepristone without express congressional direction.
This was a huge relief, because much more than just access to contraceptives was on the table.
The surprise search was reportedly part of a criminal antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) into RealPage, a $9 billion software company that recommends rent raises on millions of housing units across the U.S....
After working at the U.S. State Department for over 20 years, Stacy Gilbert quit the Biden administration this week after a report she contributed to concluded Israel was not obstructing humanitarian assistance to Gaza....
One of those cases that really should unite literally everyone behind police reform, but will sadly be lost among the noise of all the other horrible shit going on.
Families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting are suing the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack, the maker of a video game and Instagram parent company Meta....
This is a difficult subject, but the inclusion of Meta pushes this towards frivolous litigation, and then over the cliff entirely with Activision.
“Instagram creates a connection between …an adolescent …and the gun and a gun company,”
Instagram sees what someone is looking at and shows them more of it; it's an amplification chamber. My wife gets ads for Harvest Moon-likes, and I get ads for socialist laptop stickers. For this kid to be getting gun ads, he was looking up and liking posts about guns (I train people in firearm safety, and post pictures from range days, but I've never gotten a single ad for a gun on IG), and that starts making this lawsuit about whether it is the job of parents or companies to monitor their kids' online activities. If he is seeking something out that he shouldn't be, whose job is it to stop him?
Call of Duty, a war-based video game with a rifle similar to the one used in the shooting...
...conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems.
Including Activision is the real indicator of intent here; the rhetoric of violent video games making kids do violence has been debunked time and time again, but Activision and Meta do have much deeper pockets than DD.
So what is the goal of this suit?
Suing DanielDefense could ostensibly be in order to shut them down as a business, thus decreasing the supply of firearms readily-available for purchase.
Suing Meta for money, without actually asking the court to prohibit them from allowing firearms-related content, seems like it wouldn't do anything to prevent this elsewhere unless Meta decides the risk of firearms ads just aren't worth it.
Suing Activision is going to... make them stop making Call of Duty games? One of their flagship franchises? No.
It's hard to overstate how much danger this intentionally places protest organizers in. There's essentially no way to risk even holding them under this ruling, because some Right-wing asshole can show up in a mask, throw a brick at the cops, and they can arrest the organizers and charge them with felony assault of a police officer.
Hell yeah. Let no one claim ignorance of what is happening over there; no "I don't keep up with news much" to shrug off the choice to ignore a genocide. Put it in front of everyone's faces.
To be fair, the EV market is already somewhat reliant on slave labor in Xinjiang, but Chinese companies especially-so for obvious reasons. Buying cars from Chinese companies means there's basically no ability to pressure them out of using Xinjiang-sourced lithium.
The Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in the US actually bans import of products by companies in Xinjiang that can't prove they don't use forced labor in their supply chains, so this isn't a hypothetical harm reduction, either.
The views of seven current and former US government officials reflect the way internal objections to policy continue to mount. They said many government workers were voicing their frustrations in unofficial forums that include at least a dozen groups on messaging apps, which the officials said counted hundreds of administration...
A bunch of pieces by neolib outlets like NYT basically predicted that Netanyahu would end this by early Summer at the latest, and that would give Biden enough time to recover in the polls. Leaving aside how cynical that is ("those silly kids/ activists will get bored, and Muslims will all forget after a few months, right!?"), Biden's team needs to give real thought to what happens if Israel is still in Gaza in November (and they will be, since Netanyahu has made clear that withdrawl is not his plan even after the active bombings are "done").
There are so many ways his support for this is hurting not just himself, but Democrats and any semblance of youth faith in political engagement. If this was translating to actual loss of political power for the USFG, I'd be all for it, but by all appearances it's just going to negatively impact down-ballot Democrats, and progressive-Left staffing in government agencies, ceding power to the Right.
There is a point at which, regardless of what Biden's personal views might be, he needs to act as though he actually cares what his constituents want. This paternalistic "I know the best way to handle it" act may have fooled some people back at the start, but Biden's 'concerned-friend' approach has visibly not worked to rein in Netanyahu, and sticking to it now just looks like he doesn't understand, or can't admit, that he was wrong.
Pompeo, who served in the Trump administration, said in a letter with John Walters, the CEO and president of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, that protecting Ukraine is connected to issues at home, making the argument as some Republicans, including Johnson, have previously insisted the U.S. must secure the border...
We should be supporting people who are defending against invasions (Ukraine), and boycotting, divesting from, and sanctioning people who are conducting invasions (Russia, Israel).
Sadly, these Republican dirtbags are all pro-Israel due to them thinking of it as the least-brown and least-Muslim state in the Middle East, and if there's one thing America hates more than peace, it's brown Muslims.
Russian propaganda pushed by the Kremlin has “infected” part of the Republican base, a senior GOP congressman has said, as indications grow that a vital U.S. military package for Ukraine will come up for a vote with U.S. lawmakers this month....
both groups want to expand the power of Islamic Theocratic Rule
Sure, but they have pretty significant divergences in their beliefs about Islamic jurisprudence. IS-K (IS Khorasan) is heavily populated by Salafists, who the Taliban (who are mainly Deobandis) suppressed prior to the US invasion. Now that the US is gone, they’re back to beefing.
But also, ISIS-K’s explicit goal is the establishment of a caliphate across the Khorasan region, which includes Afghanistan, and obviously the Taliban isn’t down with handing over power to them.
Just like in any religion, there are many more subdivisions and sects than just the larger overall factions. Within Sunni and Shia, there are extremely diverse ranges of beliefs. Salafism is a sect of Sunnism that believes that only the laws and practices of the era that Mohammad lived in were valid. Deobandism on the other hand is extremely heavy in academic analysis and refinement of Islamic jurisprudence, and is very famous for its scholars wanting to debate other religious scholars on theological grounds. They have a very large body of works that they consider important treatise on Islamic law, and Salafists often accuse them of not being true Muslims because of this. Sort of a Lutheranism (Deobandi) vs Fundamentalism (Salafi) dynamic.
The Taliban and Salafi militias (including ISIS, once formed) did stop fighting in order to oppose the US invasion together. It’s only because it’s now over that they’re back to beefing. Afghanistan isn’t at risk of being invaded by anyone right now.
If the power rests with the states, it’s the state supreme courts who make the final determination, so it couldn’t be appealed up to federal courts if a bunch of MAGA judges in Red states decided that “that darn Liberalism brainrot is a Commie insurrection against America, hyuck hyuck!” and kick all Dems off the ballots.
No. In Catholicism, when a Pope makes official rulings on matters of Catholic doctrine it is supposed to be infallible. It also must be explicitly invoked as ex cathedra, meaning “from the chair”, as applying to all Catholics. The last time that happened was in 1950, with a doctrinal ruling on the nature of the Assumption of Mary. It also cannot be a new doctrine, only a ruling on the nature of an existing one, so it’s meant to be sort of akin to a SCOTUS ruling interpreting a law, rather than being an executive order.
In Protestant and other Reformation-derived denominations (e.g. Evangelicals) Pastors are not supposed to be authoritative or infallible. They just often present themselves that way.
People regularly post credential dumps on Pastebin, which can be publicly and freely seen, but that doesn’t make those credentials legal to use.
If the journalist had received copies of the video that someone else had downloaded, he’d be in the clear, and that other person would be on the hook.
If the credentials were posted publicly by the news site as a shared login, and the site simply didn’t realize that these videos were accessible with those credentials, he would likely prevail. Otherwise, he is likely guilty of hacking under current US laws.
I think that the fear of government censorship or bias in publicly-funded media can also be allayed by taking funding decisions for it away from legislative bodies, and allowing citizens to directly vote on funding, so that it’s not about appealing to whoever the current administration is.
But then we’re back to insisting on some amount of government influence in the media. “People won’t vote to fund the correct, ‘necessary’ media, so we need the government to decide what the necessary media to fund is.”
Ultimately, trusting in democracy means you have to trust people to choose what’s best for themselves (with protections against those choices hurting others). Sure, people might not agree that a certain type of media is valuable, and that’s fine.
Who, if not the media consumers, do you think should determine what kind of journalism is “needed”?
Misinformation does not discredit democracy, it discredits the state apparatus that either allows- or conducts- the misinformation. Educational failure is also a huge part of our current problem with misinformation, and it’s the active, malicious deconstruction of our education system by political and corporate interests that is to blame for that, making voters less informed about history and science, less capable of applying rigorous critical thinking skills to information they encounter, etc, that is exacerbating our current problem of easily misled voters.
so i have no issue with this.
So then I would again ask, who do you think should determine what kind of journalism is ‘needed’?
so i just reject the premise here and what follows from it
…okay? I’m happy to discuss this within the parameters of a different political paradigm if you prefer, I just normally discuss things within the paradigms they currently operate under.
ProPublica would not exist if journalism was incapable of doing this from within
ProPublica exists precisely because of the public directly deciding which media organizations should receive funding; they’re a donor-funded non-profit. They would not exist if the public did not agree- and vote with their wallets, as it were- to fund them. Journalism as a collective institution does not sustain itself.
journalism as a collective institution to produce the sort of necessary journalism for a healthy civic society
So just to be clear, are you advocating for news media to not be publicly-funded, or are you advocating that all news be publicly-funded?
Because if it’s anything else, someone is making the call as to who receives funding and who doesn’t, and journalism as a collective institution is not actually a decision-making body.
i think it’s perfectly fine for all news to be publicly funded, yeah
So anyone could create a news organization, and publish anything they want, and receive public money for it? That seems like it would massively increase the amount of misinformation being thrown at voters, making them even less informed?
Personally, I don’t like governments, so in my ideal world there would not be “public” funding in the way we define that now, it would be up to communities how to allocate their resources (and how to make those decisions), and which industries are important. But obviously I understand that situation is purely aspirational. In our current system, I prefer direct democracy over leaving decisions to a political class that is bought and paid for.
I don’t think it’s government involvement that causes that, I think it’s the absence of some kind of mechanism to discriminate between news entities. The only question then, when avoiding that, is whether it’s ultimately the government doing the choosing, or the public.
MSNBC's Lawrence on Biden-Trump debate: "We live in a country where most commentators declared the liar the debate winner" -- (video, 20 min) ( iv.datura.network )
Here is the original link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgjyHwQOUoo...
Under Biden, U.S. economic growth becomes the ‘envy of the world’ ( www.msnbc.com )
Supreme Court unanimously decides to preserve access to widely used abortion medication ( apnews.com )
In sweeping change, Biden administration to ban medical debt from credit reports | ABC News ( abcnews.go.com )
RealPage Rent Price-Fixing Probe Escalates With FBI Raid ( www.entrepreneur.com )
The surprise search was reportedly part of a criminal antitrust investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) into RealPage, a $9 billion software company that recommends rent raises on millions of housing units across the U.S....
"I was shocked:" State Department Official quits after report denies Israel blocking humanitarian assistance in Gaza despite "abundant evidence showing Israel is responsible for blocking aid" ( www.democracynow.org )
After working at the U.S. State Department for over 20 years, Stacy Gilbert quit the Biden administration this week after a report she contributed to concluded Israel was not obstructing humanitarian assistance to Gaza....
GUILTY ( edition.cnn.com )
Guilty on 34 counts....
‘Psychologically tortured’: California city pays man nearly $1m after 17-hour police interrogation ( www.theguardian.com )
Uvalde families sue Meta, video game creator and gunmaker ( www.bbc.com )
Families of the victims of the Uvalde school shooting are suing the manufacturer of the gun used in the attack, the maker of a video game and Instagram parent company Meta....
American Airlines Blames 9 Year Old Girl for being Filmed in Bathroom ( www.dailymail.co.uk )
American Airlines has been accused of blaming a nine-year-old girl for being filmed in the plane's bathrooms by a male flight attendant....
Supreme Court refuses to defend constitutional right to organize ( redphoenixnews.com )
Pro-Palestinian protesters paralyse roads in US cities over war on Gaza ( www.aljazeera.com )
Biden urged to ban China-made electric vehicles ( www.bbc.com )
President Joe Biden has been urged to ban imports of Chinese-made electric cars to the US....
Texas is replacing thousands of human exam graders with AI ( www.theverge.com )
AI will soon be grading AI submitted papers, certainly nothing can go wrong here
Biden pressure on Israel not enough, say dissenting US officials ( www.bbc.com )
The views of seven current and former US government officials reflect the way internal objections to policy continue to mount. They said many government workers were voicing their frustrations in unofficial forums that include at least a dozen groups on messaging apps, which the officials said counted hundreds of administration...
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and a conservative think tank’s president pushed Speaker Mike Johnson to approve more aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia ( thehill.com )
Pompeo, who served in the Trump administration, said in a letter with John Walters, the CEO and president of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank, that protecting Ukraine is connected to issues at home, making the argument as some Republicans, including Johnson, have previously insisted the U.S. must secure the border...
Top Republican says party base "infected" by Russian propaganda ( www.newsweek.com )
Russian propaganda pushed by the Kremlin has “infected” part of the Republican base, a senior GOP congressman has said, as indications grow that a vital U.S. military package for Ukraine will come up for a vote with U.S. lawmakers this month....
Are American progressives making themselves sad? ( www.economist.com )
Archive link
Large Grocers Took Advantage of Pandemic Supply Chain Disruptions, F.T.C. Finds ( www.nytimes.com )
Donald Trump joins the meme-stock frenzy ( www.economist.com )
Archive link...
Supreme Court restores Trump to ballot, rejecting state attempts to ban him over Capitol attack ( apnews.com )
Man to plead guilty to helping kill 3,600 eagles, other birds and selling feathers prized by tribes ( apnews.com )
From the article:...
U.S. Serviceman Dies After Setting Self on Fire Outside Israeli Embassy to Protest War in Gaza ( time.com )
Today, I am planning to engage in an extreme act of protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people...
Pastor’s Sermon Implying Women in Shorts Deserve to Be Raped Prompts Response ( julieroys.com )
US journalist Tim Burke indicted for accessing unaired footage of Tucker Carlson and others at Fox News ( www.washingtonpost.com )
Michigan 1st state in decades to repeal 'right-to-work' law ( apnews.com )
Public Funding of Journalism Is the Only Way ( www.hamiltonnolan.com )