bubbatheclown

Trash human being, trash president. The two-party system that forces me to choose Trump is trash.

The pre-Trump GOP was a force for good in America and the world, and I hope that the post-Trump GOP will be the same way.

The judiciary is the glue that holds our republic together. When SCOTUS was in their pocket for half a century (1973-2022) the collective left wasn't shrieking about its corruption. I have no reason to take those people seriously now, since the only thing that's changed is the Court's voting record.

Congress has lost the ability to govern, but neither do I want an imperial presidency. I can only hope that at some point in the future they'll get their act together.

It's a reasonable compromise between majoritarianism and minoritarianism, one that's served our republic well enough for 200+ years.

Any change to the electoral map should be something both parties have to sign off on in order to be approved (the two party-system's not going away any time soon). The problem with "independent commissions" is, appointments thereto would soon devolve into another partisan tool to be fought over.

I'm admittedly not well informed about how this would work, but if ranked-choice would make voting more a matter of expressing one's principle and less one of unconditionally rallying behind the leader to keep the other side from winning, then I'm all for that.

There's a push in blue zones to let noncitizens vote in local elections, which might translate to noncitizens controlling state govs that oversee Federal elections, which might translate to noncitizens voting in Federal elections. REAL ID will one day become ubiquitous enough to not depress turnout.

All I really care about is whether money is disclosed, not where it came from.

Populist drivel that would deprive the USFG of desperately needed expertise. 55% of all Senators have been in the job 10 years or longer. If all those Senators got replaced at one time, what then?

Populist Drivel pushed by Dems to seize a majority of seats without having to win enough election cycles to do so the normal way. Republicans waited 49 years to overturn Roe, and Democrats can wait too.

It is murder and should be tried as severely as any other case of murder. No exceptions save for life of the mother as verified by medical officials. If any hospital get caught lying about this, it ought to be immediately shuttered and said personnel tried for murder / accessory to murder.

Reverse racism is still racism. If indeed it the state has any business giving a leg up to disadvantaged citizens, it should do so on the basis of socioeconomic status, which would still disproportionately benefit disproportionately marginalized groups while not excluding poor whites either.

I'm not completely sure what DEI programs look like, but it conjures images of white male employees getting browbeaten about their privilege in HR-mandated struggle sessions by smug black female consultants who probably make more than they do.

In the large majority of cases, the terminally ill are capable of ending their own lives without assistance, and in many cases where they aren't, they're unable to communicate whether or not they want to die. As MAID is proving every day in Canada, legal euthanasia is too rife for abuse.

Any state which infringes upon this right beyond maybe a handful of common sense restrictions (e.g. don't violate an NDA or a restraining order) is an occupying terroristic entity that may be overthrown by its citizens without said act being morally questionable.

This isn't a utilitarian debate for me; a right's existence doesn't hinge on whether it can pass somebody's cost-benefit analysis. So whatever the effect of lax gun policies on crime or mass shootings that has no bearing on the rights of law-abiding adults.

Secularism is not French-style laicite but rather state neutrality in matters of religion. Our republic was founded upon such values as this. It doesn't give a cult leader the right to molest his followers' children but broadly speaking faith communities should be entitled to a very wide berth.

I support things like body cam requirements. But where laws are written with hostile attitudes toward the police in mind, public safety suffers. The years where BLM's activism (and power to shape governmental policy) peaked saw a spike in violent crime and reversal of a long downward trend thereof.

No, the government shouldn't have backdoors to encrypted apps or software, if that's what option #3 is insinuating. Without privacy, the seeds of resistance to tyranny are crushed underfoot before they can be sown. The end result of this is a regime that cannot be overthrown from within.

Its current lack of visible effect on crime has to do with how it's been nerfed; for example, it takes far longer to execute a convicted criminal today than in 1960. But in any event, the punishment ought to fit the crime; this is a principle that has been acknowledged since the Code of Hammurabi.

There's too much of a backlog in the courts to do without it. The only motive I could see for dispensing with the plea bargain is to generate such a crisis within the criminal justice system that it'd be compelled to not prosecute certain types of offenses.

As much as I would like for even-handed justices to have the leeway to hand down lenient sentences in select cases that rightly call for it, we're increasingly faced with far-left judges who give violent offenders a slap on the wrist due to nothing more than their race.

Cash bail keeps more violent offenders off the streets between their arrests and final sentencing. It can be made fair by scaling it up (e.g. higher bail for more affluent offenders, perhaps even on a progressive scheme), but even if not it serves its intended purpose in the large majority of cases.

I don't see why this has to be an either/or deal (penance is indispensable to the pursuit of redemption), but what worries me is that some people would use the cause of rehabilitation to justify mild punishments for violent offenders.

I'm torn because this doesn't differentiate between possession and distribution. My position is that mere users of mild drugs like marijuana should not be imprisoned for it, while dealers of dangerous poisons like heroin/fentanyl should get the death penalty.

More lenient than the punishment an adult who did the exact same thing would get, but not lenient per se. Obviously 17 year old rapists shouldn't be getting 6 months and probation.

I see no particular issue with private prisons. The cost of keeping a man behind bars has ballooned over time, and private prisons are a tool to reassert control over said costs. Even if this translates to a more miserable experience for the average inmate, prison isn't supposed to be fun.

That being said, there ought to be stringent rules protecting people who do not consent to second-hand exposure to marijuana. A reasonable compromise would be permitting edibles but not cigarettes.

Monopolies don't have a good track record for providing quality service, and in this event private medical debt would be translated to public national debt, which is already running dangerously high and climbing by the year.

The cost of living varies wildly across the country. $16 / hr might not kill huge numbers of jobs in California or Hawaii but it would, say, in Mississippi. A more modest increase from the current $7.25 might do some good.

We already have the income tax, do we not? And it is already a progressive tax, is it not?

Enforce the tax code that already exists. Make the wealthy pay their fair share and not a penny beyond that.

Companies are drivers of long-term economic growth, not private consumption. They're more inclined to invest what savings they have than the average individual. The bigger a chunk of the economic pie that's in their hands, the more economic growth we see. The more in consumers' hands, the less.

This should be self-explanatory.

Rent control benefits current tenants, who in some cases have been known to literally pass on a favorable lease to their children like a piece of inheritance, but hurts everyone else. The way forward on affordable housing is to encourage the building of new homes, not to harshly penalize it.

Free trade zones have been the key historic driver of economic growth. The Roman Empire, for instance, reached a level of specialization and urbanization that was otherwise unsustainable given the technology level they were at. Likewise, one of the great achivements of the Pax Americana.

Congress ought to make it a rule that they must pass balanced budgets, barring something like WW3 or another Covid-level pandemic. Ideally this would take something like a 2/3rds majority to override. The national debt is an existential crisis, especially its mushrooming interest payments.

For more information, pay the national debt clock website a visit.

The current framework is unsustainable, to say nothing of expanding it. Ideally our retirees would be encouraged to live in self-governing communities where the cost of living per resident is low enough to absorb the necessary payment cuts.

At present the CTC is a refundable credit, meaning even if you pay nothing in taxes you can still get money out of it. In essence it's a welfare program wrapped in Republican-friendly language. It's also set too low to benefit middle class families and only encourages the poor to procreate.

Fuck NIMBYs.

It's a shame that my party has, in recent years, cozied up to our old enemy even as it routinely threatens our allies and cravenly preys on a smaller country that's done nothing to it. Reagan defeated the Soviet Union and Trump's enabling its successor.

Two things can be true. Israel's the bad guy in that it's needlessly encroaching on Palestinian lands and adding to their misery, and the good guy in that it wages wars to defend its citizens against a second Holocaust, which'll be the outcome if the world's only Jewish state should ever fall

Not a 5 because the European mentality does have this perennial contempt, hostility, and distrust toward America, but in the past they have been willing to put these feelings aside and work with us, and it's clear that Trump is the main instigator of this current souring of relations.

I don't completely trust that Trump won't start a foreign adventure out of boredom or to boost his election chances (e.g. Cuba), but overall the US has been a force for good in the world and as a rule the countries that we go to war with suffer just as much at the hands of their own gov as to ours.

At some point we'll probably need to cut defense spending for debt reasons, but the current international landscape is too dangerous to justify that at this time.

Our current posture towards the PRC is probably sufficient. We should look to deter aggression on their part without provoking them. Their growth is slowing and this will one day lead to regime change, but in the meantime the risks of conflict are heightened - we must navigate this period carefully.

Foreign aid should be the domain of private charity, not compulsory distribution of taxpayer wealth to non-taxpayers.

We are THIS close to regime change, if only we don't lose heart and throw in the towel. If Iran survives this then the regime will be emboldened and its 90 million hostages might not get another opportunity to see freedom for a generation.

Secularism means public schools with irreligious education models aren't privileged by the state over private schools with religious education models. The Establishment/Free Exercise Clause demands this.

It's increasingly adult daycare that imparts few valuable skills, and reframing it as a rite of passage everyone should experience will ultimately transform it into the de facto last phase of high school, pushing adolescence and delaying the start of adulthood well into the average American's 20s.

Forcible wealth redistribution from people who didn't go to college, or worked hard to pay off their loans, to people who chugged beer from a funnel for 4 years. This will also exacerbate bloated tuition costs like Medicare, Medicaid, etc. did for healthcare.

I'm not opposed to labor unions in general, provided that the state doesn't afford them a leg up in negotiations with their employer.

Aggressive US emissions reductions would not put any noticeable dent in climate change, and if the Green New Deal's touted price tag is any indication it would cost $18-90 trillion (in late 2010s dollars). The long-term solution to climate change is innovation via free markets.

If solar, etc. is profitable like advocates say it is then the transition will happen naturally over time. And if not, then consumers have a right to make an informed choice. But I would agree with Dems it's beyond retarded for red states to be arbitrarily punishing renewable projects.

Given how bad the US is at building nuclear plants on a reasonable timescale, this is more of a "things could've been different in a better world" issue than something we ought to be focusing on at this juncture. Still, it might have a useful role to play going forward.