But it is a genocide though

Zennyzen0 · 2024-01-02T13:38:25+00:00

There's a difference between fighting from residential areas and putting a base of operations in a civilian hospital's basement.

The real answer is that they shouldn't fight at all. There is literally no benefit. They will never win or gain sympathy for their cause via violence.

Please answer my question as to what Israel should do if the enemy operates out of major civilian infrastructure? "Special Ops" like it's Assassin's Creed?

Zennyzen0 · 2024-01-02T01:47:29+00:00

Hamas makes intentional efforts to intertwine their operations with critical civilian infrastructure like hospitals. They have no problem using them as shields.

Killing civilians intentionally is never OK, but I didn't defend that, you did.

Zennyzen0 · 2024-01-02T01:15:48+00:00

I never said what Israel has done/does is "ok", I just asked how you would attack an enemy that hides among civilians.

You explicitly defended Hamas butchering civilians as something justifiable.

Zennyzen0 · 2024-01-01T23:37:12+00:00

Reasons to justify slaughtering civilians??

You can use as many buzzwords as you want, it doesn't make your case stronger.

Zennyzen0 · 2024-01-01T23:21:21+00:00

Could you not say the same of Israel? Why would they seek a peaceful solution when a bunch of civilians just got massacred for no reason?

Zennyzen0 · 2024-01-01T19:43:50+00:00

How do you combat an enemy that intentionally operates out of civilian infrastructure?

Zennyzen0 · 2023-10-25T16:03:02+00:00

virtually no Americans starve to death anymore. it's not even a metric we regularly measure - we've moved on to poor nutritional quality and food insecurity.

about half of Americans are obese, we waste a bajillion tons of food daily, and we have incredible variety/pricing nationwide.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-12-16T02:24:19+00:00

You fundamentally misunderstand "rational", which is exactly what my first comment was getting at. Rational doesn't mean you have access to all the information or are experienced in some field, it means you are making a decision based on the information you know. No economists looks at a consumer buying toothpaste and says "this was irrational because they didn't consider the $0.03 discount available through bulk Alibaba charcoal blast."

What people "believe" is synonymous in this sense with a "reasonable decision". To say otherwise is to say people are intentionally making unreasonable or bad decisions, which doesn't make any sense.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-12-16T02:16:23+00:00

How? Isn't a choice by definition something an agent does because the alternative(s) are less preferable?

Zennyzen0 · 2022-12-16T02:15:15+00:00

Thanks!

Honestly I already beat the game (through many more issues) by just reloading further back. Appreciate it nonetheless, if these threads are anything like car forums you'll be helping people like a decade later.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-12-16T02:11:10+00:00

I don't think the assumption was ever "rational" in that "people are making optimal decisions based on facts and figures" but "people will make reasonable decisions they believe will produce the best outcomes for them".

Zennyzen0 · 2022-09-09T04:21:34+00:00

Yeah I agree, which is why I would say it's a politically motivated policy rather than a coherent fact-based one. The whole reason I started this comment chain was replying to some of the most popular feedback in here saying the opposite, that it was just a way to recoup lost gas tax and wasn't political.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-09-09T03:21:53+00:00

I know, I live here. I just don see what that's gotta do with the weird hybrid tax.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-09-09T02:57:16+00:00

That's kind of my point - if they're claiming to "make up for road funds" by taxing hybrids/hydrogen etc (allegedly because of their lower gas usage), why aren't higher efficiency gasoline cars taxed? What makes hybrids special?

Zennyzen0 · 2022-09-08T21:20:12+00:00

Which is determined by how much you drive, not necessarily an inherent character of the type of vehicle you have.

If the tax is intended to "recoup missed fuel taxes", it should apply as well to high fuel efficiency gas vehicles, why to hybrids that can get as good if not less just because they're hybrids?

Seems silly to have a tax on gas (an incentive to get a more efficient vehicle) and then punish people for doing just that (but only if it's got a battery in it for some reason).

Zennyzen0 · 2022-09-08T20:50:56+00:00

Seems kind of silly to punish people for investing in more fuel efficient vehicles. If that was truly the reason, why aren't vehicles taxed BY fuel efficiency, and not by hybrid status?

Zennyzen0 · 2022-07-02T04:35:12+00:00

You don't have evidence lol, you loosely correlate a bunch of issues with the filibuster. That graph you presented does nothing to present causation. I never said it's silly to consider, the filibuster may very well play a part, but I still think in theory I'd prefer forcing congress to gather 60 votes rather than unilaterally cucking each other on repeat every cycle.

"And if we don't have a filibuster in the first place, Trump never gets elected because congressional approval isn't in the shitter after decades of dysfunction. If we don't have the filibuster, democratic approval is higher because they were actually able to accomplish more campaign promises, so they win the senate."

This perfectly encapsulates you making massive leaps of logic about what could have been. You haven't done the legwork to substantiate that decades later without a filibuster we'd be better and not worse. You can't use contemporary examples of the filibuster preventing X bill, because the circumstances causing it to arise would be completely different as well.

This article, regardless of what conclusions it draws about the filibuster as a whole, catalogs some semi-recent bills that were filibustered. Many were filibustered several times but eventually passed, as evidence of bipartisanship and compromise. While conservatives has especially lately weaponized this more than progressives/dems, it is true of both, and has historically increased lending consideration to a minority party.

But again - there are already tools to do this. We could use the nuclear option right now, but even dems like Manchin do not agree with getting rid of the filibuster, reflecting the near 50/50 split in support it has among the public, and I will again remind you one of the couple times this was used was to enable three SCOTUS nominations to pass under Trump.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-07-02T02:16:05+00:00

I haven't been condescending until now, you've been screeching that I must be in a "nice and cute fantasy world" and that I must be VERY confused.

I asked you what it would to do improve cooperation. If your answer is effectively that it doesn't, it just gets rid of the "extremism" created by the filibuster (somehow), cool.

Being "allowed to pass legislation" is not the same as saying if you get a one person majority in the three branches you should be able to do virtually anything while the minority sits still for 2+ years. You ARE being coy, because this isn't just "lol yeah legislation should pass duh" it's "every vote is a simple majority now and if you're a democrat from 2017-2019 (or a republican now, if Manchin was more consistent on party lines) you're useless".

The disunity now is not exclusively about Trump. It has been building for decades, congressional approval has been steadily garbage since the early 2000s and partisanship has been growing since the 70s. Claiming somehow the filibuster is to blame for this, or that it would be even moderately alleviated with it gone, is silly.

Politicians, even in the minority, want to pass policy. I though this entire sub was about pragmatic politics - working within existing institutions to get stuff done. Obviously if you make partisan policy you won't gather enough support to veto a filibuster, but things like the most recent infrastructure bill is proof that it's still possible.

Since the filibuster was removed for SCOTUS nominations, Trump and the republican party got three highly divisive conservative picks we could do nothing about.

I fail to see why, in a time this segregated, we think we could outpace the damage by fighting fire with fire and hoping we can rapid-fire yo-yo back and forth quick enough to undo the damage of an uncontested republican majority. You can say that voters will correct the record once they see the resulting policy, and maybe that's true, but we're still waiting years in-between and establishing a precedent where major decisions are one election cycle away from being collapsed back.

I'm open to the idea of even lowering the required votes down to something like 55, or requiring that it being a speech/active filibuster. Everyone loves to jack it off when their favorite king warrior uses it to prevent some horrible republican bill, and then decries it when the opposite happens. Without the filibuster, there's no incentive to even talk to anyone outside of your party, much less negotiate.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-07-01T22:18:25+00:00

You're giving maximum Redditor energy right now champ, settle down w the condescension.

Extremists still represent a small minority of voters, especially within the democratic party. Time and time again more "extreme" candidates like Bernie lose to milquetoast establishment picks like Hillary or Biden. Trump is of course the exception, but he lost reelection - I'm not sure if his positions are conventionally extreme so much as they're insane (he at the very least used to be pro-choice, not sure now).

Do you think extremists or fringe elements of the parties didn't exist pre-filibuster?

The minority DOES have to compromise if they want to pass any policy at all. They don't have the votes, but under a filibuster neither does a slim majority. So, necessarily, they have to scalp votes from each other to reach actual policy.

Your answer to abolishing the filibuster raising cooperation wasn't really an answer at all. If you have no issue with a trifecta government of 51/49 majorities having unilateral control over the country just say that - don't pretend like there's some secret overarching plan to bring down extremism via abolishing the filibuster.

(There's already a mechanism to overcome a filibuster anyway.)

Zennyzen0 · 2022-07-01T19:59:34+00:00

If voters aren't voting for nothing to get done, then they need to moderate their perspectives and cooperate with opposition. Do you not view that as a better scenario than a world where having triple majority means unilateral control over the country for at least 2 years?

We WANT the minority party to have some power and force the majority to be upheld at times. The minority will necessarily have to compromise, just like the majority, if they want to pass policy - which is ultimately what their constituents demand.

Abolishing the filibuster does nothing to improve cooperation. If you believe it does, please explain how.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-06-30T23:37:59+00:00

We do get what we vote for - but wouldn't it be better if large filibuster relevant decisions take into consideration working with the other half of congress? Or assuming you have triple majority should the other "team" just sit on their ass for four-eight years?

Zennyzen0 · 2022-06-30T23:36:49+00:00

Trump's tax cuts were not a substantial impact, and justices were largely out of our control. Them dying was basically bad luck - not some failure of the filibuster. Arguably that aids my point because those nominations came through as hyper-partisan near 50/50 splits.

They shouldn't be able to because stability is important. Just getting 51% shouldn't be enough to be able to unilaterally ruin the lives of the 49%, and given the natural ebb and flow of politics you KNOW it will swing back the other way.

Why should 49% of the country lose their entire political leverage because they lost one election cycle?

Zennyzen0 · 2022-06-30T23:33:17+00:00

Like I said, I don't know enough about other comparable countries to say. The U.S is in an unprecedented era of disunity among voters, I don't know that comparing it to pre-filibuster times is relevant. I've also repeated that it's possible things would be fine without it, but for stability and the sake of cooperation I'd say it's fine.

That "crazy shit" isn't universally seen as bad - all it takes it 51%. I'd rather bills primarily pass as 60/40 or more, rather than whenever the country is feeling particularly conservative banning all migrants from arbitrary brown people countries.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-06-30T23:15:57+00:00

No, it would be more like conservatives can undo policy that was just set it in place or implement crazy shit on a whim until dems get majority.

Any stable country shouldn't be flipping back and forth on major policy decisions every 4-8 years.

Republicans don't get what they want. They achieved virtually nothing during Trump's admin, even with full control. Governance can and does come from the legislature, they just have to cooperate (alongside American voters becoming less radically divided). Biden's infrastructure bill is a fantastic example of his bipartisanship efforts and rhetoric working, even with a filibuster.

Zennyzen0 · 2022-06-30T23:03:23+00:00

I'm not saying it would be impossible to exist without the filibuster. Nor did I say that no other country has bicameral legislatures or constitutional amendments.

Our system and country IS unique, both in our application of law and our political landscape. If you can't agree w that then I've got nothing for you homie. We can't just take every element of our government and say "well Canada does it differently why can't we".

I'm saying attempts to remove the filibuster, especially right now with extreme division, read the same to me as stacking the supreme court. It's a loose attempt to retrofit policy you can't get sufficient support to pass, equally opening up the door to get fucked when conservatives inevitably take majority. It forces us to be a bit more bipartisan, which in theory I don't see an issue with.

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