I miss the good old days when you might see you might see a CAT5 one year and then maybe not see another one for 5, 6 , 8 or even 10 years
See above table for examples.
All of the gaps below are 5 years or more.
1938-44
1944-55, (11 years)
1955- 61
1961 -66
1971-77
1980-88, (eight years)
1992-98
1998-03
2007-16 (9 years)
Contrast this with the most recent 8 years - in 6 out of the last 8 years we have seen a CAT5.
17 in all since 2000. Prior to that, there were only 24 recorded CAT 5's in all from 1924 - 2000.
Now if I am being fair, we didn't have weather sats prior to 1960 so maybe we missed a few? most storms don't last long at that level before getting downgraded again.
My point is - A CAT 5 used to be a BIG DEAL. This year it's the first storm out of the gate and it went from a tropical storm to a cat 4 in 2 days and then Cat 5 a day later. Also earliest CAT4 or CAT 5 we have ever seen since modern records were kept.
I'm sure it's a fluke but so far the warnings of a big year for canes from the meteorologist's seems to be holding true.
Stock up now water, food for two weeks, meds for a month, batteries, keep your car at 3/4 tank and get a gas can and fill it, etc.
We all know what happens when the warnings officially go up.
This is the relevent passage:
"..Sorting private from official conduct sometimes will be difficult — but not always. Take the President’s alleged attempt to organize alternative slates of electors. . . In my view, that conduct is private and therefore not entitled to protection. . . The Constitution vests power to appoint Presidential electors in the States. . . And while Congress has a limited role in that process, the President has none. "
Everyone get that? It's none of his business. period. full stop.
She goes on to say....
" In short, a President has no legal authority — and thus no official capacity — to influence how the States appoint their electors. I see no plausible argument for barring prosecution of that alleged conduct..."
There it is,
In 5th grade English. It's not POTUS's job to appoint the electors and he is outside of his mind if he thinks this is going to go down as 'an official act'.
I'm curious to see how this plays out. On one hand, they delayed this until '1 minute before midnight' and so the point may be moot, but this is basically a warning shot across the bow of the lower court who now gets to decide if this was an 'official act' or not.
One of his legal team is already floating fake electors scheme as an official act which I also found interesting - he's 'owning' an illegal act thinking he has immunity?
I noted it's just a lawyer floating a test balloon in the court of public opinion - I can't imagine they actually try and make a case for this in Federal court but apparently that's what's next.
WCGW?
If you are using 3rd party chargers and paying 'retail' on your power vs. charging at home and getting a residential rate, You are not seeing any economic benefits vs owning a hybrid.
usage fees range a bit on the charger including the time of day, the location, speed and the city's charging rate but baseline seems to be around $20 - $25 to charge a base model 3 from whatever up to 100%.
Call it $22.50 on average. That might get you 250 miles range on average.
A new Prius gets approx 55 mpg combined. Spend $22.50 at the gas station at approx 3.49/gal and you should net 6 1/2 gal that should roll you approx 357 miles.
You might be onto something here. I see a lot more of TRUMP IS THE MAD DEVIL WHO SEEKS TO END DEMOCRACY AND MAKE HIMSELF KING! and a lot less of 'heres what legit 3rd party fact checked sources say we actually accomplished as a party in 4 years - and here's a few things we might have botched. Need your help to take a 2nd swing at some of this stuff. '
The level of hysteria - and anger (looking at you fox news) I see in the news media - from BOTH sides is a little irrational. I realize most of us get our news from our phones these days and you can only fit 5 or 6 words in the headline and either you got a click or you didn't and that in of itself may be part of our downfall.
Trump did exactly what I / we knew he would do. If he's going to show up - ON CNN of all places, it's not to answer questions and give nuanced policy positions, it's to rant and make soundbites for rebroadcast for his fanbase to consume.
He knew there would be no live fact checking via audio or on screen text and they were not going to otherwise call him on his bullshit other than to say - the one time I heard this from the mods "Mr. Trump, you have xx seconds left and you have not yet answered the question" They were really walking on eggshells.
Trump showed up to say 'Biden is the worst President in the history of the world' and 'HE ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO COME IN HERE FROM PRISONS JAILS AND METAL INSTITUTIONS TO COME INTO OUR COUNTRY AND DESTROY OUR COUNTRY' over and over - along with WE HAD THE BEST ECONOMY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD - that's all. he didn't even need to prepare, he just clipped 5 or 6 lines out of his stump speech.
I lol'd the next day when he posted that the bulk of the commentary on the debate was on how unbelievably BAD President Biden was and not anywhere near enough praise (except maybe on Fox or Newsmax) for how FANTASTIC he was.
Specifically, Trump wrote, "As I walked off the stage on Thursday night, at the end of the highly anticipated 'Debate,' anchors, political reporters and all screamed that I had had the greatest debate performance in the long and storied history of Presidential Debates. They all said, effectively, 'Trump was fantastic!'"
He then complained that he was not getting continuing praise he claimed was being lavished on him later Friday.
Yes, yassss THEY SCREAMED "BEST EVER!!! TRUMP FANTASTIC!!!"
it's really bad, especially if and when it dawns on you and you fully realize this ruling was probably not so much about hindsight as foresight.
Here it is in simple English for 5th graders.
this was never about Jan 6th from a legal standpoint, they are setting the stage for the actual coup that's coming in 2025.
the way they chose to handle it ensured the case never sees the light of day before he becomes President and once he does, it goes in the trash. but along the way they established he can do anything he wants as a so called 'official act'. We already know the Senate will not vote to impeach so he has achieved the actual status he has really been seeking for 8 years - to be a king.
From my POV, this was always about giving him what he needs to succeed this time around. now if that doesn't freak you even just a little bit, you're just not having fun in show business.
The Ubers are going to be a big hit on your budget. the beach surges a lot even in the off season 10 mile round trips are probably in the area of $30 rt per day.
As an alternative, the hotel you are at has a bus that stops right in front that runs by the street in front of the hall (#40) fares are $2 pp each way or you can pick up an unlimited 3 day pass for $12 per person and then just use cash on the last day.
ticketing app info is here: https://www.broward.org/BCT/Pages/FaresPasses.aspx
or, as others mentioned, take an Uber one way and run the bus the other way. walking is a bit of a hike, it's 4.5 miles and walking over the causeway bridge is a slog in the heat.
There's a fair bit of fast food MDonald's , Burger King, Taco bell, chipotle etc and such in the area but I might walk over to the whole foods at the corner of 17th street and US1 or make a right and go down a couple blocks and on the right there is a Publix - if you make a left and cross over 17th street on the north side is a winn dixie supermarket which is the least expensive of the bunch.
pick up a cheap styrofoam cooler, use the hotel ice machine and stock it with milk and lunchmeat , pick up cereal , bread, etc and you have breakfast and lunch sammiches covered for cheap (on the beach even the pizza's expensive - like 10 a slice.) and then maybe treat yourself to dinner out - there are a bunch of reasonable places to eat, La Bamba & Duffy's are in the plaza with the Publix, and Quarterdeck is across the street near the Winn Dixie.
there's also an outback steakhouse and a Carraba's to treat yourself for living frugal and saving money the other days. if he's a big winner, there's no shortage of places you can treat yourselves at.
If you can swing it after you save some money living frugal, I suggest the Jungle Queen riverboat sunset cruise and show. Adults are $70 and kids up to 12 are $50. sometimes Groupon has BOGO's and reduced rates. sometimes a quick search for 'jungle queen promo codes' or checking their FB twitter might get you a discount.
it's all you can eat BBQ dinner and Polynesian review and tour of millionaire's row homes and some history of the city via the river - it runs 3 hours+
It's a local institution running since WWII era.
It leaves from the Bahia Mar resort which is literally next door (start walking back to the hotel and it's on the right)
so if the competition gets out say 4 or 5pm, it's perfect positioning and timing. They leave at 6 and they like you there 20-30 minutes before. It's maybe a 10 minute walk from the SHOF.
on the fence? wanna scope it out online - here's a dad with his kids on youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xW1UM2T0JCc
I'm curious to see how the SCOTUS comes down on this because it's a shitshow to give or deny 100%.
Give blanket immunity to the head of the Executive branch and they are just 100% immune to any / all repercussions?
That is the very definition of 'power corrupts, but absolute power corrupts absolutely'.
On the other hand, don't give immunity, and don't quantify it in any way - it simply does not exist?
I can think of a few former President's that will have an issue with that , not just DJT.
As others in the legal world have already commented, this will be closer to a split decision, acts initiated by the Executive in the official capacity of discharging his official duties as President - sure. Absolutely. You're protected. Declaration of War as a result of your lobbying? - even if under now known as false pretenses? again, protected.
Riling up a crowd of yaya's and sending them to hang Mike Pence and do battle hand to hand with Capitol Police?
= = nah - OK, so as it turns out - that may be ok too if it's considered an 'official act
Then SCOTUS sent it back to the lower court so they can play another volley of PING PONG with it to ensure it doesn't see the light of day before the election.
Folks, the only way this goes the way it needs to go is by voting. All the delay tactics are meaningless if he loses in November.
To all those who wonder if he will ever see the inside of a prison, the answer is no. He will get on his jet, flip off the transponders and PEACE OUT BITCHES! straight to a non extradition country.
I'll give you 2 guesses which one is at the top of the list but you're only going to need one.
nope. only half the town gets bombed. errybody knows carpet bombing takes the whole town and the town next door.
you tell an out of towner looking for a GREAT restaurant to go to Flanny's and they are usually going to be dissapoint.
It's upscale bar food level munchies plain and simple. dinner entree's are on par with most of the other fast casual chains but the price point is friendlier and the rest is just homegrown pride talking. If given a choice, I would take Flanny's over anything else out there from Friday's to Chili's/Applebee's to Miller's Ale House and Duffy's and that's exactly the way you should describe it.
People are seeing it on the sub and pulling up thinking it's Ruth's Chris / Morton's / Eddie V's level joint and seeing all the lounge lizards packed in at 5:01pm on a Friday and going WTF? We took an Uber from Bo-Ca to FLL for this?
I was done with you a week ago. you are obviously a needly attention whore that keeps coming back for more after starting up with me and 8 or more other people to begin with. buzz off little fanboy fly. bzzzzt!
I didn't say anything about carpet bombing. but if a bunch of yaya's think all they have to do to is pull a Prigozhin, jump on I-95 with a convoy of trucks and small arms and some AR's thinking they can take the capitol and the oval by force because they saw it done in a movie, they are in for a rude awakening.
[eye roll] really? they don't matter? Because you presume they will be next door to where the action is?
They won't be. as I recall, most of the predator and reaper drones raining death from above in Iraq and Afghanistan were being controlled from trailers in Nevada. That was back when the tech was still somewhat new. 20 years on, pretty sure they can run them from just about anywhere now and even if you know where that is, they can be packed and relocated in a couple hours.
Add 'encrypted satellite communications' and ultra hi-res GPS that actually WORKS in combat usage to the list of thing the .gov folks have that the .civ folks do not.
also, in a real civil war scenario, add the internet kill switch to that list. and when things get really dire, all civilian satphones, starlink, all cell phones, al landlines and even ham radio/ CB radios will be inoperable except for a couple things they might leave open 'accidentally' so they can more easily listen in and / or track you. if you lock it all down, you don't get any intel.
High tech absolutely does matter and you are outside of your mind if you honestly think it doesn't
The reason the world is as it is now is because the British Empire and a few other European countries brought cannon and guns to a knife, sword + bow and arrow fight in the Americas. A few hundred men on boats conquered everything from the Caribbean to most of what is now Latin America
A few thousand others took care of what is now USA and Canada.
Flash forward 500 years or so and the disparity in the level of tech that is out there now vs the updated musket civilians are allowed to have is just mind boggling.
Any fantasy that your AR is the great equalizer even if you've got a couple hundred or couple thousand of your clan with you is exactly that - a fantasy. In a real 'gloves off' scenario, they will slaughter anything deemed a threat even if it is uparmored.
Did you see what they did to Saddam's army in the Gulf? Look up 'highway of death' Those are T-55 tanks with their turrents blown sky high.
your homeboy and his Ford Explorer truck? They and everyone for 2 football fields in all directions will get killed by the bomblets dropping from a ATACMS fired from 190 miles away. all dead in the time it took to read this line.
A couple of Bradleys with 20mm chain guns and MK19 40mm grenade launchers from a mile off across the valley and over the next hill will rake you once and that's the ballgame.
They won't even need to send the hogs to mop up.
But you've got a red dot and match grade ammo for your AR. Sure. you'll be fine.
'so say we all' er, so says a dozen randoms on Univision.
Side A would say that (and this is the part that's outdated) a civilian population with firearms is necessary for the national defense as it was in the 1700's when America had no standing army. In our countries infancy we faced invasion from British forces and if it were not for a well armed civilian population, they would have probably walked right up one side of us and down the other because this is what they did when simply asking nicely doesn't work.
We now have the most well funded and equipped standing army / navy and air forces in the world and we can deliver a quick reaction force along with fighter jets to just about any beach in our country to repel invaders in roughly the time it takes for Domino's to deliver a pie.
Side A would also say that having a well armed civilian population means protection from a government that suddenly gets ornery and decides to override the will of the people and become something they don't like and didn't elect but the reality of the logic in having a well armed civilian population for both national defense and prevent a government from getting too ornery are no longer valid. The point is moot, The weaponry and tech of military grade hardware is overwhelming anything civilians are allowed to have.
While civilian firearm tech accuracy and power has advanced, military grade weaponry has increased by leaps and bounds and several orders of magnitude to the point it doesn't matter if every citizen had a long gun, it's useless against something like an A-10 Thunderbolt aka 'The Warthog' with it's 20mm cannon and bombs.
Or a bomber wing dropping it's bomb load on you from 60,000 feet and wiping out half your town and you never even heard their engines.
SURE, you can put a Vietnam War era machine gun like an M-60 on a chopper or Learjet and wire it to the cockpit but it's not going to be very effective when a AIM 260 AMRAAM takes you out from 90 miles away over the horizon before you ever even get a radar blip on the aircraft that killed you.
Side B would say that America has societal issues even today that require it's population be armed not only for home defense (castle docterine) but for personal protection when in public. Every time there is a shooting in public they feel this is an affirmation. They also feel that police can not be relied upon to protect them and prefer to be empowered to take matters into their own hands if threatened with bodily harm.
They also believe that because they are well armed, even though any military grade power would eventually overwhelm them, they believe that the level of resistance they could put up would be sufficient to wear them down / degrade their ability to operate.
They point to guerrilla style wars in other countries in recent decades as proof of that. They cling to the idea that their guns are ensuring their continued freedom and if they are forced to give them up, it means they would be powerless to act against a hostile adversary foreign or domestic.
Right. So you are obviously NOT a buyer who is looking to ' buy a home and came across this site called realpha' and just wondered what all of us fine people thought about it.
Bear in mind we can see your entire posting history under this account. all 3 months of it. I particularly liked these two:
Do you use any AI listing tools for Real Estate? Real Estate description generator & marketing tool "Calling out to all the REALTORS in the group!! We are a product lab based in Nepal, and making some sick AI tools" (emphasis mine)
Why not use something like Gena, Real estate marketing tool that generates property description with the help of AI, and writes following all the Housing laws! And it is FREE to use too
You asked for feedback? Here it is. the overall look of the site is - at best - wordpress circa 2015 and the coding and canned responses on your site are 'meh'
There is a popup stating you are only operating in South Florida but you have Jackson, TN in your drop menu that autopopulates and I was able to select it and proceed. Also, Las Maras county PR , Calera AL , Dandridge TN, Kearney, NE and a bunch of other places not even in Florida.
Now, I get it - why turn down a lead if you can at least get a referral off of it? but from a website use case feedback perspective, any response that is not squarely in the south florida market should yield a prompt that you will keep them on file and contact them when the service goes live in their area. This is website leadgen 101. Instead it lets me get to price range, number of beds and baths before it throws a Server Error 500 which means you probably just lost that lead.
Also. Website domain history. Anyone that wants to go to archive.org and look up your previous itineration's of the site can easily see your history before you pivoted to this AI crap.
Recycling websites from previous / discarded pitches and business plans is never a good idea.. It prompts the question: what happened to your focus of investing on short term rentals and airB's? what happened to the four alphas? Did you give up? how long until you give up on this?
You may think my feedback harsh but I can see you are trying to get to the next level and I am not going to be the first to give you negative feedback. If you want to play the game at the upper levels, you can't make rookie mistakes. Like using multiple business center office addresses to make it look like you are a national company. It takes 5 seconds to google the address to see what comes up. A legit office address will have things associated with your name pop up, a virtual will not and if I look at an address and see a 'meeting room' or regus/ we work or UPS store with the same address, I automatically know what's going on there.
And picking the South Florida real estate market for your launch? It doesn't get any shadier than here. I would have started in smaller markets where there is less competition in the space and built a name for yourselves before going into the larger markets but that's just me. And listing Dublin, Ohio ( A suburb of Columbus, OH ) isn't fooling anyone with half a brain.
You made it very clear that your only focus on DEALS is in South Florida the moment you click the 'Get Started' button on the front page.
Things I DID like: using your AI bot / chat gpt / whatever is behind the curtain to generate commentary relevant to the city they picked.
Example: Dandridge TN: Ah, Dandridge, a charming town nestled by the serene waters of Douglas Lake! (and it is, in fact on the edge of Douglas lake - not bad)
Cute. The rubes in Tennessee will love it but not everyone loves to read and for some folks, reading is a chore. if it takes them 10 seconds to read the line and it did nothing for them to move them forward - it gets annoying real fast.
if you insist on your script being a 'chatty cathy' - maybe consider using an audio response instead. it's an AI you're going for? then make it as human as possible.
I think that about does it for now.
Good luck.
I don't know who they are but I am compelled to warn you: THIS IS SPARTA! South Floriduh! AKA - the sunny place for shady people and I have seen enough of these South Florida tech / sales / leadgen type startups (this op is not even 2 years old) and their cookie cutter websites featuring no real office address (the 3 locations they post appear to be shared workspaces) trying to drum up business from buyers / sellers as well as investors all at the same time with nothing more than a website with the usual hooks.
Maybe this one has what it takes to go the distance but I wouldn't want to be a beta tester.
IMO websites like this promising you that AI is the key! - - is the next dot com boom / bust.
So tell us, what was YOUR experience? The whole thing looked like little more than a glorified javascript plugin / wordpress blind responder form - slash - lead generator to me.
It's the usual What's your name, how soon do you want to buy, how much do you want to spend, what features, how many beds and baths etc and then 'LETS SIGN YOU UP!' and the canned responses are REALLY bad. Whoever scripted these responses is an idiot. lolz
if you live in a humid area, and even more so if you are relying on room / in-wall AC units , get a decent dehumidifier. If your sheets feel damp, that's a sign your room is too humid. I run a fan and keep my AC at 77 most nights in the summer and sleep great. I used to run it a lot cooler like some of you folks down around 72-74 and found once I dried out the air a little I could adjust my ac to run less.
this is just my casual observation and not based in anything remotely close to science but in addition to the cultural side, some cultures are just more reserved and low key - I have noticed that within the confines of the individual culture itself - family size seems to have an impact.
It doesn't take much - just going from an 'only' child situation - imaginary playmates and all - to having a few brothers and sisters (usually) leads to a degree of social development that contributes to kids being animated, outgoing and gregarious.
Sure, there are quiet kids in large families but even the quietest kid from a larger family is going to be more animated that the kid who spent most of their childhood off by themselves reading books.
The larger the fam, the louder and more boisterous they get from having to compete to be heard at the dinner table, etc.
Side A would say that the quality public school academia relative to the technology of the workplace has slipped - especially in poorer urban areas - over the last 25-50 years. Funding for teachers and updating the curriculum to keep up with the times and prepare students with the skills needed in the workforce is severely lacking.
Teachers are told not to stray from the text or inject any bias or leanings into their classes so as a result, many teachers are taking the easiest way out and instead of lectures, demonstrations or experiments (for which there is no funding anyway) they resort to just having the kids read paragraphs aloud from the text book and go around the room taking turns having different kids read. This is how many kids in my classes were taught subjects like history and science.
Subjects that require greater immersion and concentration, like Math and Language arts, suffer using this method and the weaker kids fall behind quickly and give up.
Regarding social media and cell phone use: many kids having difficulty focusing on anything for more than a few minutes as a result to exposure to social media content in the form of 15-30 second clips. Over the course of weeks and months You train your mind to skip from one thing to another and can't concentrate on multiple steps anymore. Deductive reasoning is right out the window.
Screens may also degrade / reduce your ability to focus. I remember an experiment from the early NASA days where astronauts were hooked up to a feedback machine that measured cognitive function and were told to watch TV and keep their activity above a certain minimal level. ( one they could easily do if not looking at a a screen)
All failed in just a few minutes. Apparently TV Screens literally lulled you into a diminished state of consciousness. Modern screens may not flicker or scan the same but long term use may be damaging in ways we are only now starting to comprehend
Kids are getting hundreds of philosophies from their feeds, POV's, rhetoric and just BS fed to them simultaneously during the developmental stages of their brains when they are most easily influenced. I can't even comprehend the feelings of schizophrenia that must induce in heavy users. So many voices , many contradicting each other.
Finally, as the need for humans to actually perform math by hand at a high level has diminished over the decades, Kids are simply not interested in Math anymore - who needs math with computers and calculators built right into my phone? besides they want to grow up and be a Youtube / FB/ IG creator / influencer. That's what all the cool kids are doing amirite?
Side B would say . . . . . side A has a valid point. Maybe not all kids are like this, but a shocking percentage of them are essentially useless these days where it comes to math at a level anything above adding 2+2.
I went into a Wendy's not long ago and the kid working the register - so help me - couldn't make change. He didn't know what the values of the coins were or how to count.
Sure. he was just a dumb kid who was probably either in a work experience program or had already dropped out of school.
But if you are 16 and don't know how to count out 35 cents, and they are letting you run a cash register, something is very very wrong.
this is just me but if you're not using anything at all like foam, gel, sponges or even looking at a calendar to determine peak fertility and just raw dogging like crazed weasels - I might have a look at your sperm count.
The other less obvious choice is your partner doesn't share your faith in the pull out method and is and has been taking steps unbeknownst to you to lower the risk.
An old friend of mine is up to 6 kids doing the same as you. not a very bright guy.
And these same people also know that simply banning abortion isn't going to change the basic calculus of this
of course it does.
anything you can do to make abortion harder to access and more expensive cuts the numbers down - especially on the poors. It probably doesn't affect the rich at all - other than a minor inconvenience. Fly to another state for a cosmetic procedure and get your womb vacuumed at the same time.
If you look at the opposite extreme: if abortions were legal AND free as well as any / all birth control up to and including vasectomies' and tubal ligations, if everyone has access to the morning after pill OTC at zero cost - just walk in, go to the vending machine and press a button so they don't even have to talk to someone - or order online to get mailed to you - again FREE of charge - you don't need a debit cards, just a name and address:
- - what do you think the birth rate becomes then?
As to the rest, the effect of birth rate on the demographic problem is exponential. if you can boost the birth rate from less than 1 per couple to 2 or even three, in 50 years and 2 generations you have a much different picture than had you not forced the birth rate up. China is discovering right now what the 1-2 punch of urbanization combined with their '1 child policy' has done to their country in less than 40 years.
Peter Zeihan talks a lot about this - take a look at some of this vids on youtube here. other urbanized mature economies are facing the same problems - including the USA. Just look at the Social Security debacle. That's driven by not enough young people working their asses off to support the drain of the aging and infirm.
And it's not just abortion - if it was up to the most radical far right, they would go back to no doctor driven medical based birth control at all (read: pill, injections, implants, IUD's) NONE. It would be the 1950's again.
As to the REST - as long as the rich get to stay rich, and the wage slaves /savages show up to work , it ain't broke in their eyes.
I agree with fellow posters in the thread that part of the reason for the ban is to control women via birth control but there are simple economic reasons also. see tl;dr if you don't want to read a chapter.
We're just not having babies anymore and if we DO - it's one or two - not 4 , 6 and 8 like teh Boomers and generations older did.
Why? I'm going to tell you.
in the early 1900's 90 percent of Americans lived on farms and the cost of having a baby was minimal.
You had big families and those kids helped run the farm and do the work. Therefore it was logical to have a big family and they they worked before school and after. The reason you have summer break is so the kids can work the fields and harvest.
Post- WII we all started moving into cities and breaking up the huge multigenerational family all living under one roof (all the better for big business to sell us MORE products and services, from homes and cars to insurance) and now kids became an expensive hobby to the tune of almost 400k today to raise a kid to age 18 - and that doesn't include college. That's another 100 if you're lucky. 200+ if you don't have a ride and going private.
The bulk of our population is either already retired and living into their 80's and 90's or soon aging into retirement and retirees don't work to produce anything and they certainly don't CONSUME goods and services like young people do.
From going to the movies and eating out to buying cars, homes, clothes, fashion, higher education - you name it.
And at the top of the food chain of both parties but especially the GOP , the actual puppets with the strings - is big business.
Without a large number of new up and coming wage slaves to consume their products and services, they have a real problem.
They have modeled this and can actually see societal atrophy and impending collapse as a result. In the USA, we've been borrowing for decades to sustain us but we can't keep cashing checks with IOU written on them.
There is no easy fix here. 100 years ago when things got bad, you just had a big old multi national party.
These were called WARS. Wars have gotten prohibitively expensive so spinning up that wartime economy as you send off 10 million of your youngest and dumbest to die so those that survive can return to enjoy enjoy that wonderful' post war prosperity' is not as enticing of an option anymore.
M-1 tanks are 10mil a pop, new aircraft carriers are north of 13 Billion. a B2 bomber is 2 Billion a copy.
Another problem is that the ratio of KIA to Wounded numbers have flipped from 10 KIA - 1 wounded to 1 KIA and -10 survivors in the last 75 years since helicopters, MASH units and combat medicine became cutting edge.
A lot of these survivors will require extensive rehab and treatment for rest of their lives. it all adds up.
Our national debt was less than 6 Trillion in 2001. It's now 34 trillion. Interest alone is 1 Trillion a year.
Now that's not all war, tax cuts and a pandemic helped. But a lot of war.
Anyway, I'm just sayin - it's not just to 'control women' for the sake of it. Women are the babymakers and babies mean prosperity, not austerity to them.
tl;dr Babies MAKE YOU SPEND FUCKTONS OF MONEY UNTIL YOU DIE.
I'm trying to figure which of the Beasties Boys in the video from 'Sabotage' he looks like the most.
Folks need to understand that politicians are little more than the winners of their respective popularity contests that have pledged allegiance to their respective party. Nothing more. Charisma matters but at the end of the day the most popular useful idiot who can raise money usually wins.
I don't think anyone believes these are great Statesmen / women who are bringing bold new ideas, vision or policy.
They run, they shake hands, accept checks, and then they get an office and sign stuff other people put in front of them all day and occasionally read a prompter in a 'presidential voice'.
Ideally, these men are little more than puppets easily controlled by the actual power structure. Sure they have a VETO stamp but they better be careful what they use it for and how often.
The Republicans adored Reagan because he talked softly, told great stories and jokes - and did their bidding. He was declining badly by the time he ran for re-elect and that was fine. As a trained actor he could still deliver a monologue and tell his little stories and jokes. It was a lot easier to hide back then.
He gave the actual power brokers everything they wanted.
They won't say it, but this is the primary reason for Trump's ascension as well. I'm not talking about the poorly educated rubes who show up at his rally's, I'm talking about the shadowy folks who really run shit and they don't take questions in front of cameras.
Trump is easily controlled - just show him a big bag of money and he'll whip out that black sharpie on demand and that's fine - they have plenty. And they allow him to sell stock for publicly traded companies that do nothing but lose money so he can break off a few billion for himself in addition to all he can steal.
They are also quick to point to President Biden and project the same accusation of being easily controlled - he's checked out! Alzheimer's! Dementia! Obama's the one secretly running things! Watch - Michelle will step in and run for office!
The whole system is a little archaic. Not just here but worldwide.
It rarely works in our (the masses) best interest. Instead it's special interests and lobbyists throwing money around that end up being the early birds feasting on the fattest and juiciest worms while the rest of us get to eat that delicious worm poop. This is the best case scenario and bad as it is, it beats places where soldiers in a jeep just roll up and take you away and nobody ever sees you again.
We're about to have our 3rd (and perhaps last) world war of the last 100 years and you might say the world has gone mad.
After all, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result.
Happy 4th of July everyone.
Whats Wrong With Americans?
uspolitics