But your entire last paragraph, on the practicality and realism spectrum, ranks just a bit lower than “worthless, idle wishful thinking”.

It’s no more or less serious than if you’d said we should all just join together in song and force aliens to show up to fix all our problems.

It’s not organized enough.

And if any gun-grabbers think the cops and ICE and politicians are fascist enough as-is, imagine how they would be acting if they could kick down doors with full impunity and zero fear. Yeah, the local cops could get a squad of 20 and take this house apart. But somebody’s getting hurt. I guarantee it.

And there’s the real case for private ownership.

If you have the choice of being disappeared and killed…or being disappeared and killed while taking a few of them with you, definitely choose the latter.

It won’t help you, but if you do it, your neighbor does it, and the next 10, 20…50 people do it, eventually two things are going to happen: if it’s local forces, they’re gonna start needing help, and if it’s not local, it forces those powers into a more difficult decision of having to either get more overt with their fascism or backing off. It’s not ideal but that’s pretty much the options you have.

If they want to do all the shitty fascist things, don’t let them do it easily and for free. The higher ups might not care, but that local cop in the red hat might start to think twice when “his” government keeps asking him to haul away people, and each time, another of his friends goes down. If not from a place of shifting world view, then maybe from self preservation.

I mean, that’s a pretty hard shift in the defense of your assertion.

You lead off strong with “I think it’s XYZ”, with no support, then when that’s challenged, you’re restating it in the framework of “you need to prove it’s not XYZ”.

Might as well have said the purge is because these guys liked raspberry donuts and Xi hates that flavor. Good luck proving that negative.

I think their argument is that the tax revenue is still owed, whether it’s collected or not. So the IRS could absolutely get back on track post Trump and pursue these unpaid taxes.

Mysterious ways, I tells ya!

Y’know… I’d have found all this “coconuts floated from Asia to the Caribbean” stuff pretty far fetched…

But not two years ago I was fishing, and a goddamn coconut floated right down and bumped me in the leg.

In the Monongahela River.

In Pittsburgh.

I’m starting to think maybe the username isn’t just a username, and the account is literally for a wall panel to express its views.

Of the entire list, I guess I’d pick Grassley.

At least he’s from the old school of partisan bickering.

Remember when Obama wearing a tan suit was enough to keep the right frothing at the mouth for weeks?

Anyone who thinks tariffs will do anything at all positive for the American working class is absolutely clueless.

All they do is make prices jump for consumers. It doesn’t put domestic goods at an advantage because the domestic producers of those goods increase their prices artificially to achieve parity with import pricing.

So prices go up for the consumer with the extra money going to either:

1. For imported goods, to pay the tariff, a tax, to the government, which in this case wants to use that tax revenue to offset tax cuts for the wealthy.

or

2. For domestic goods, it’s pure straight profit for the unethical corporations who are price gouging their domestic customer base. They’re not giving the consumer a break on price and they’re not sharing the profits by giving employees raises. Hell, they’re not even taking advantage of the competitive advantage to ramp up production and create jobs. They’re just pocketing that extra cash for doing exactly what they’re always doing…passing it on to, you guessed it…the wealthy.

Which is why we need an update to the tax system to add brackets to cover the entire range of income, then redefine them based on percentages off the median, with the highest bracket set at 95% or more for the highest 5% of earners.

Can you give examples?

Both clock and auto?

Because other than time, I’m having a hard time seeing what else a clock is telling you by being analogue.

Because he thinks it makes him look cool and edgy, especially in an environment like this, where the way to gain popularity is to be the most extreme far left voice in the crowd.

People like that are the vegans of politics: even if you may agree with them in many ways, their repulsive attitude and conduct more than overrules any common views you might share.

Legally it’s totally okay, actually.

I know this is all very unpopular opinion here on Lemmy, but it’s fact.

Same picks for the same reasons.

… although I’m less proud to admit that I read it as “Known Father” the first time, didn’t catch it until I came to the comments, and he still didn’t make the top 2.

I just kinda figured that “Known Father” meant he was always talking about his kids and experiences with parenthood, and that was enough to eliminate him.

I kinda get it though…it’s not like these armed forces are producing the movie themselves.

The studio wants to make a movie about/involving these entities. They want it to be as realistic as possible and the entity itself has the authority to give them access that it could also deny.

If you’re in charge of, say, the Marines PR department, you’re constantly trying to make the Corps look good and boost recruitment. If you can do this for next to nothing against your budget by granting access to a studio making a film that will give you essentially free PR, that’s a great move. The bigger the movies potential, the more the entity in question is motivated to support it.

On the other hand, if the film is going to make your organization look bad, no PR person with a functioning brain is going to help that project in any way.

Idunno, I feel like these organizations do enough actually bad things, that I don’t feel the urge to crucify them for cultivating image and working to generate positive PR.

It’s “nObOdY wAnTs To WoRk AnYmOrE!” with extra steps.

Democrats: taking votes for granted that they shouldn’t be taking for granted since forever.

Seems that’s an insult to the rat.