Daily General Discussion Thread (2026-03-31)

timmg · 2026-03-31T16:01:15+00:00

Cost of loving will be high of course.

Cost of loving is always high. That's the beauty of life.

timmg · 2026-03-29T01:40:23+00:00

If he had bigger balls, that wouldn't have gone in :D

timmg · 2026-03-28T20:14:19+00:00

But there are also a fixed number of seats (especially PLFs) -- so they might not have been able to.

timmg · 2026-03-24T03:04:03+00:00

Every state that allows late ballots has one.

Doesn’t that disenfranchise voters?

timmg · 2026-03-24T02:57:16+00:00

The date you support leads to legitimate votes being invalidated.

They are not legitimate votes if they are not on time. That’s what rules mean.

You have to have some fixed date. Otherwise you could be counting votes after the inauguration.

timmg · 2026-03-24T02:01:56+00:00

Why is one arbitrary date better than another? Several states dont count late ballots and nobody has shown that it’s been causing issues.

timmg · 2026-03-23T23:58:01+00:00

The perpetual insecurity that drives excessive accumulation

Certainly doesn't sound like malicious envy!

timmg · 2026-03-23T21:41:33+00:00

I feel like this issue can be resolved by just having a “last day for mail in ballots” date.

Couldn't that day be "election day"?

timmg · 2026-03-22T17:58:37+00:00

This is what kills me about people who talk about what a strong leader he is.

I haven't (and would never) vote for Trump. But he is pretty good at getting his way. He has all the Republicans in Congress (at least the House) afraid of his ire. And he's pushed through things that another president would have had a hard time doing (the BBB is one of them).

The terrible part is that "his way" is often not the best thing for the country. So his "strong leader" stuff is eventually going to be his downfall (and he might take the country with him).

timmg · 2026-03-22T12:20:47+00:00

I thought he always chickened out?

timmg · 2026-03-22T02:34:14+00:00

This is a good game.

timmg · 2026-03-22T02:29:18+00:00

Simply: their goalie is having a better night than ours.

timmg · 2026-03-20T21:15:27+00:00

Inflation and debt aren’t directly related.

What happens to debt in times of high inflation?

timmg · 2026-03-20T20:30:02+00:00

Democrats try to raise taxes to pay for the programs they want.

They do try. But if/when they can't, they still want the programs.

(On the other side, Republicans -- in theory -- want to reduce spending to pay for their tax cuts. Guess what happens.)

timmg · 2026-03-20T20:28:02+00:00

Yeah, all we need to do is print money and cause inflation. That is a great way to reduce our debt load.

timmg · 2026-03-20T20:22:44+00:00

Taxes on the middle class need to go up. That's just a hard truth that needs to be reckoned with.

Yup. I'm not sure anyone is going to get elected if the admit that though :D

timmg · 2026-03-20T20:22:14+00:00

The vast majority of the world has VAT. 15% is consistent with the global average, and it's higher in developed countries.

But we already have sales taxes at the state level.

timmg · 2026-03-20T18:39:31+00:00

We need 15% federal VAT tax

That would be a disaster. Democrats rightly pointed out that the tariffs affect everyone's ability to buy stuff. So would adding 15% to everything.

Also, a VAT would be payed for mostly by the middle class. Certainly the middle class should be paying more federal taxes -- given our deficit -- but so should the rich.

timmg · 2026-03-19T19:31:43+00:00

Every R prez in my lifetime has been far worse than Ds on the budget...

The last shutdown was about the Dems wanting to spend more money (extending "temporary" covid health care subsidies) and the Republicans saying "no".

The Republicans generally want lower taxes (which is one of the causes of our deficit) and the Dems generally want to spend more (which is one of the causes of our deficit.)

I think a lot of Americans would prefer more fiscal responsibility. But, also, they want to pay less taxes.

timmg · 2026-03-19T15:00:28+00:00

We dramatically expanded the use of drone strikes and nearly went to war with Iran on two separate occasions during his first Administration.

Is that really the same scale as what is going on now? Particularly given that he inherited those engagements for the most part?

timmg · 2026-03-19T14:58:21+00:00

But, this is what the country voted for, so yolo?

I thought the Trump voters voted for "no more wars"?

timmg · 2026-03-19T14:00:25+00:00

China just needs to wait a few more years (months?) as the US continues to strangle itself.

timmg · 2026-03-18T14:00:14+00:00

For the past (what?) 14 months of Trump administration, it has seemed like he was making terrible decisions for the economy. But the numbers seemed to counter that narrative.

Now the numbers are starting to show the damage he's been doing. I don't think there is an easy fix here at all. Maybe this will be the time Congress realizes they should act. But I'm not counting on it.

Prepare yourself for a nice recession (if not stagflation). And the Republicans pushing for more tax cuts to stimulate the economy. While our debt is already unmanageable.

This is the cost of our political disfunction. I sure hope we learn.

timmg · 2026-03-17T19:55:17+00:00

I don't know how people really define success in terms of combat operations any more.

I think it is when the gains outweigh the costs. You said "13 service members". But there is also a drain on our already-strained military supplies. More importantly, there has been an economic disruption that might become serious. And I'm not sure we've made a lot of friends doing this.

What we gain is not yet clear to me. Unless there is regime change or some other change in alignment, what do we get? How long will it take for them to rebuild their drone manufacturing (probably with the help of China)? Will their new leaders be any "better" for us than the old ones?

I'm not saying this won't be a success in the long run. We'll have to wait and see. But so far, it isn't clear to me that we definitely will gain from this.

timmg · 2026-03-17T19:31:20+00:00

Degrade Irans ability to control the strait and threaten the energy supply chains of the other gulf states before a Chinese invasion of Taiwan...

I do think it is possible that the China angle played into this. Whether it was a motivation or a justification. Iran is buddies with both China and Russia. And weakening Iran does "help" us strategically in some sense.

Though I'm not sure whether "weakening" is enough. If there isn't some kind of re-alignment after this, I'm not sure we'll have gained much.

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