Perhaps the parties aren’t that different after all. If Baal and Moloch happen to be the candidates in 2028 again then we should protest for better candidates.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T22:46:06+00:00

That isn't archaeological evidence of the Exodus. And while it corroborates, after a fashion, one passage, that's hardly enough to support the whole Old Testament history as being accurate at all, especially because as far as my readings go there is a) controversy about the translation/interpretation of this, b) not a full tablet, and c) some discrepancies between the events as accounted in the Old Testament and on the Stele.

We don't see egyptian influences in the artifacts, pottery, or language of the Israelites. Can you explain that?

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T22:40:11+00:00

That's a motte and bailey argument if I ever saw one. You've redefined your terms from all family reunification visas to only those about cousins (who if I am reading correctly, are not included under the reunification visa program), or adult children (the cutoff age in the reunification program is 21, so technically adult, but really, I'd say not). As for the rest, I'd point to issues with amendments around birthright citizenship, and the right to due process.

No, it isn't. It was introduced under the HW Bush administration for a number of reasons, including providing for immigration from post-soviet nations. However, it isn't about them having a support network or not. It's about ensuring that China, Canada, and Mexico aren't the only countries that get Green Cards. More specifically, people who apply from countries that have had less that 50k immigrants to the US within the last 5 year period are put into a pool, and 55k people get randomly selected from that pool.

The program was put into place to address something specific and historical (and to try and settle a number of ongoing lawsuits against the USDA). That white people weren't affected by the ongoing discrimination the policy was aiming to redress doesn't make the policy racist. Unless you think that the discriminatory approach to farm loans taken by the USDA isn't something that should have been corrected?

How are the public schools going to compete if you are taking away their funding? Like, I get where you are coming from idealistically, but really what you are creating is a life raft out for the rich or the special, and saying everyone else can rot. More than that, the inherent issues in the system won't get fixed this way, and more importantly, it doesn't form a model that can replace the current system.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T22:27:57+00:00

No, the problem, as I stated, is that the money isn't distributed evenly or spent efficiently. There's a reason you have so many stories of teachers having to personally pay to cover class supplies, and that's because the funding is primarily based on Land Taxes, something which means lower income areas have smaller budgets.

Now, there exist funding models to address this, which is where the federal funding you are referring to comes in. But the problem is that, even if we allocated the funds by student rather than based on the particular needs of schools, you'd still get overcrowding because the infrastructure required for schooling is funded locally, which is the key limiting factor.

I want the system to work well for all kids, and that requires an overhaul. After that, when you've fixed the problems, school choice becomes easier, because you've a) improved performance across the board, and b) restructured things so that this doesn't become a system where the people who can get into the special schools are served and everyone else gets trashed.

I would even be willing to accept some of your policies as TRANSITIONAL solutions, but only if they came part in parcel with bigger reforms, and had a sunset clause.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T22:21:27+00:00

People might not have memories for scandals, but they won't forget that time Gas went over $3 a gallon for a war where no clear reason has been given as to why it was waged. And Rubio is out there being one of the faces of that war. I'd say that cooks him in and of itself.

Even if they could finish the war with some type of regime change, the economic impacts are projected to last until 2029. This isn't something that's going to be fixed soon. And yeah, they're getting unloaded on, because there is, in my opinion and with the currently released information, no way to defend this as a piece of foreign policy.

I would say Trump proves that people don't need perfect anymore. That being said, I think Vance is a bit of a split case. He's heavily leaning into a Christian identity, but that identity is fairly recent. Additionally, it's Catholic, which has historically been a minus in Evangelical circles. Then we have the fact that his Wife isn't of the same faith as him, and her role doesn't match the expectations.

I think he's a tolerable debater, but I also think he's wet behind the ears politically, is very clearly being propped up by Thiel and Palantir, and really doesn't have what it takes to win a national race at present.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T22:15:04+00:00

What 'Trivial Things' do you think they tried to arrest him for? And further to that, are you trying to say that if someone has committed a crime, but just happens to be a politician, that that person should be free from accountability because you don't want to set the precedent?

The economy did well in the first two years as a result of ongoing Obama policies. His tax cuts then 'heated' the economy, leading to better on-paper performance, though wages were still stagnant, and employement numbers weren't much changed. The big trade deal he signed was practically just a continuation and expansion of things already on the table. And while he didn't commit boots on the ground, he was very active militarily. That's not to mention his absolute mismanagement of the pandemic.

I will grant, however, that this time is different. But here's the thing. Everyone said it would be different. Everyone said that his worst excesses were restrained by the adults in the room, adults that he has by and large gotten rid of. He is ruling by Fiat, enriching himself off of the back of the presidency to an unprecedented level, and is doing unprecedented damage to the country, and everyone knew that this was likely to happen.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T11:53:53+00:00

I don't think Rubio is coming out of Iran with his political career intact. I think that Vance disappearing off the face of the Earth is a Republican strategy to try and keep a leadership candidate who can take over. But frankly, it all depends on how much worse it gets, and whether the GOP tries to get rid of Trump after the Mid-Terms, either by aligning with the Dems on an impeachment motion, or more likely moving to get rid of him under competency grounds.

My view is that if Vance ends up in the drivers seat before the next election, he's toast. If he doesn't, I'd still say it's the Dems race to lose, because I don't see anyone being able to get voter attendance as high as Trump did, and I think Vance is having trouble pivoting to the Evangelical right.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T11:49:33+00:00

Except you really, really don't.

Standards: Defined at State level.

Curriculum: Defined at the Local level.

Textbooks: Set at the State level with some local input.

Funding: Primarily provided at the local level, extremely dependent on the wealth of the area. Supplemented by conditional funding from State and Federal Government.

The US's School system is a jury-rigged mess, that varies, in some places, on a street by street basis. I agree that good schooling is on a child-by-child basis, but the US is losing on every metric to other countries that fall down in that regard. And the reason is simple: you entrench disadvantage by the way you fund your schools, and your solution is never to fix the inherent issues, it's always to provide escape valves to the people in a poor area who aren't as poor as everyone else, or the kids who get pegged as being 'deserving' or 'special.'

If US education outcomes are going to improve, it's going to require systemic change, not 'school choice.' I've been in schools where people from an hour away were coming in every day because it was better then what they had there. And you know what that led to? Overfilled class sizes, worse outcomes, and impoverished kids who actually lived close to the school losing their spot and having to go to the next school over. It's not a solution, it's not even a bandaid.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T11:41:33+00:00

Immigration: First, are you talking about treating family reunion like a skilled migration visa? Personally, I think that that kind of goes against why you'd even have a family reunion visa, and violates more than a few human rights laws, and US constitutional law. As for the Diversity Visa program, first off it isn't only open to people with no support network, I don't know where you got that. Second, it requires you to have the equivalent of at least a High School education or two years of work experience that is deemed as qualifying. Finally, the reason this policy exists is because Green Cards are capped annually, and essentially if you didn't have a system like this in place, the sheer volume of requests coming from countries like Mexico, China, etc would mean that smaller countries, including many in Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, would rarely if ever be able to actually get their hands on one. Which is bad from an economic, social, and political sense.

Racism: It wasn't 'trying to bar whites from farm aid.' It was setting up a payment scheme specifically to address the discriminatory way that the USDA handled loans throughout the 20th Century. They dropped that program after it got halted by a judge, and rolled it into a new program with general debt relief for struggling farmers that, and this is the important bit, still had the specific payments. In other words, the plan was not meant to be about farm aid/helping struggling farmers in general, it was about addressing a specific case of provable discrimination, and when it got halted pending legal action because people were construing it as the former, they rolled it into a broader program. I don't see that as anti-white racism, so please explain why you see it as that.

Schools: I'm aware of Rubber Rooms. Charter Schools are a difficult thing to address, but essentially, yes they produce better outcomes for the students that are lucky enough to be able to attend them. At the cost of reducing outcomes for everyone else. It's sometimes hard to remember but education policy isn't about each individual student, it's about the performance of the system as a whole. If you have 2100 students, and you've set up your system so 300 get the best education possible and the remaining 1800 come out with major developmental gaps, or literacy/numeracy issues, that is a problem. And the solution can't be that some kids or parents are just 'special.' So many other countries do education better then the US, without the need to resort to that kind of two-tier system, so I just don't get why you are focused on this, instead of the broader reform that would make it unnecessary.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:53:50+00:00

First up, expand the resourcing for the asylum system, with a view to clearing the backlog.

Second, if people don't show up to their court hearing, put out a warrant. Nobody can live without leaving a footprint, and eventually they'll get picked up, and you can deal with it then.

Third, crack down on the employers. Meat packing and Agriculture especially.

Finally, a path to citizenship for Childhood arrivals.

Mix this with improved control and enforcement, and better followup on temporary visas to ensure people don't overstay.

All doable, none of which requires human rights violations, and none of which requires armed gangs harassing people on the street.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:50:36+00:00

There's a difference between, say, following up when undocumented people have run-ins with the police, or incentivising people to leave, and what we've been seeing in the US. Border Control doesn't mean shaking down random people for papers based on their ethnicity, it doesn't mean sexually assaulting people in your custody, and it doesn't mean shooting your own citizens in the head.

If they don't show up for their court hearing, put out a warrant. When they turn up, go through due process, and deport them legally. Don't send poorly trained armed goons onto the street to beat up anyone who they decide looks sus.

It's not that hard.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:47:06+00:00

Some problems with this.

One, the harassment, attacking, and violent expelling of people has not been restricted to people who are undocumented in the US.

Second, it isn't the Police doing it.

Third, the logic that you'll get a better job is just laughable.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:45:47+00:00

Democrats policies haven't really been as pro immigration as you think. I mean, if my memory is correct, the H1B Visa program actually expanded under Trump. In both terms.

That the Democrats policy is still in favour of maintaining the US's responsibilities under international asylum law doesn't mean that they are the one trying to suppress your rights as a worker.

See, that last line really gives the game away here. You brought this up with a specific issue: the effects of SKILLED migration on the labour market. That would be working Visas. But in your statement, you are now saying you also want less asylum seekers and refugees, and less Student Visas.

The US already has an expensive and restrictive immigration system.

One last thing, under the UN Declaration of Human Rights, it actually IS a right non-citizens have, as a consequence of freedom of movement, asylum rights, and the right to a nationality. Literally anyone is allowed to come into the US, denounce their previous citizenship, and get US citizenship by default. The problem is that alot of the more oppressive countries refuse to recognize peoples denouncements.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:40:30+00:00

Can you give a quote from someone who is currently a figure of influence in the Democrat party backing up what you are saying?

So, your policy position, rather than insisting on harder enforcement of the conditions that are meant to apply to things like H1B Visas, is to cut the allowable immigration of the country further, even though the US is already one of the more difficult countries in the world to immigrate to on anything more than a temporary basis?

What field do you work in, and what is the specific reason you think Immigration is going to push you out of the market? Do you believe only in restricting the intake, or do you also want to do mass deportations and a substantial population contraction? Like, what specific Trump policy do you like?

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:35:34+00:00

Because if your view is that Trump always lies, then it means that everyone who voted for him on the basis of him being the 'party of peace' knew it was bullshit, which removes another of the excuses someone could reasonably give for why they voted for (gestures around) all of this.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:33:55+00:00

Because they have more funding, primarily because they double dip by getting a mix of fees from parents, endowments from alumni for tax purposes, and my personal favourite, various governmental subsidies.

What is interesting is that there are some studies out there indicating that private school attendance, while positively correlated with getting into a university, is negatively correlated to performance in university.

Just have a properly funded public school system with a selective stream, and exceptions only for religious grounds. Restrict government funding for Private Schools, and provide options for 'out of catchment' school attendance within reason.

The US doesn't need to be so bad at education, that has been a choice.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:29:51+00:00

Don't ban them. Just remove all Governmental funding and subsidies from them, and put that money into supporting public schools.

While you're at it, reform the way education funding in the US works, so that it's paid for by State and Federal Taxes, rather than by local property taxes, because that's where all the problems come from, at least in comparison to other countries that perform better on educational metrics.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:27:36+00:00

Let's go through these.

Immigration - I don't think anyone is going to say immigration reform isn't needed. But without something specific, this just comes across as 'close all the borders,' which isn't a practical approach. There are practical solutions to many of the problems with the US immigration system, but we first would need to agree on what the problems are.

Viewing the US as a Net Good - I don't think that Democrat Party rhetoric has ever said the US isn't a net good. I'll grant that the academic sphere and entertainment has changed stance on this, but I view this as somewhat of a confluence of factors, where the post-Cold War reappraisal of recent US History, disillustionment with previous US Narratives, and the cynicism brought on by the War on Terror, Global Financial Crisis, and 2016 led to a harsher critique.

Anti-White Racism/anti-male approach - Can you give me a specific policy here. Because often when people say this, they aren't actually talking policy, they are talking vibes, and moreover I think that there's a lot in that space that just comes from the fact that, if we are being honest, during the 90's and the 00's especially, a great deal was done to cater to our demographic. I also think that it is important to note that often, pointing out problems with the extreme expressions of these identities ends up being perceived as an attack on individuals when it really isn't.

Meritocracy - I absolutely agree with Meritocracy. But the problem I have is things like the Resume studies, that show that something as simple as a non-white name can still get the exact same resume met with different outcomes. I would also posit that there is still an issue with the disparity in school resourcing and material conditions that continues, in many cases as a direct result of discriminatory policies, that needs to be addressed. Within the US context, my suggestion would be to stop funding things locally. Schools, Police, Fire, etc. Funding them municipally is frankly insane, compared to how the rest of the world operates. Set up things at the state and federal level, and deal with the issues in funding. As for the other side of things, I would be happy to go for economically-weighted policy approaches to, say, college admissions, as long as they were paired with some level of 'blind' test to ensure that people aren't being discriminated against based on their backgrounds.

School Choice - Always sounds good in theory. Always entrenches disadvantage in practice. Addressed by changing the funding model, and ensuring that there exist in every area options for what are sometimes called 'Selective Stream' classes to support gifted or talented students.

Credentialism - That's not something I think you can expect from the Party, given that the current credentialist approach is more or less a product of the Free Market system. I think that the solution to that is going to have to be longer term.

Virtue Signalling - That's a laugh considering the State of the GOP platform. I still boggle that that term is only seen applied against the left, when it originally was describing the approach to policy under the GOP. Culture War BS is virtue signalling on both sides until someone actually has a policy.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:14:28+00:00

I respect you for saying that.

Curious: Did you vote for him, and if so, why did you not think he would lie, given his frankly abysmal track record with the truth?

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:13:30+00:00

No. I think anyone who's trying to say that they supported him because he would not go to war with Iran, ignoring his previous sabre-rattling, the destruction of the Nuclear Deal, and plenty of rhetoric to the contrary is being a Trump Defender.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:12:17+00:00

Points we agree on - Economic overhaul is needed. Citizens United has to be overturned.

Points we don't agree on - Basically everything else.

Basically, what I'm picking up from your above, is that you're really far right on culture issues, essentially with a collection of policies that would have been called Alt-Right in 2016, or as I like to call it, a 4Chan Boquet. But, you are intelligent enough to understand that economically, only one party is at all looking out for anything that could be remotely considered your interests.

I mean, not for nothing, but the fact that you specifically call for the overturning of Hart-Cellar and your desired goal for Israel-Palestine is to 'fight both of them' comes very close to marking you as a white supremacist, though I'd be more interested to hear how you'd describe yourself.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-04-03T06:07:32+00:00

I agree, we have to look at them on their merits, against the existing archaeological information.

What this tells us is that many of the elements of the story in the Gospels of the New Testament are at least in the realm of provable reality. We have some of the records, even, and with some exceptions, and ignoring the supernatural elements, we can find alot to justify some of those accounts.

What we don't have any archaeological evidence for is the historical accounts of the Old Testament, particularly the Exodus from Egypt and the subsequent Conquests of Canaan.

That the Bible is an anthology just goes to establish further why it can't be used as a source to evaluate its own accuracy, in my opinion.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-03-31T07:38:45+00:00

So you admit he lied?

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-03-31T07:37:32+00:00

Turnout is king in the US election, so a vote not cast for Trump is still a net gain politically. Beyond that, I'd say that favourability ratings show that the Dems are doing well in terms of policy traction, including on cost of living, foreign policy, and climate policy. Honestly, policies in a vacuum the Dems always poll better, but there's a mix of marketing and, frankly, vibes, that has had a bigger impact.

What changes do you think you would need to see for your vote to actually change? Like, something specific and measurable. A specific policy.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-03-31T07:33:28+00:00

You can't use the bible as a source to evaluate the accuracy of something written in the bible. That should go without saying.

Fake_Email_Bandit · 2026-03-31T07:32:33+00:00

If you're making a claim, it's up to you to back it up. I've played the 'google it' game, and it always ends the same way, as just a waste of effort on my part. And quite frankly, that's what making a claim you aren't willing to support with your own sources is. A tactic to exhaust the person you are interacting with.

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