Hey, @grok, did this bozo make any similar posts when conservatives were being targeted?
It is a basic principle of American democracy that the government can’t selectively target individuals simply because of their political beliefs or what they say. But that’s exactly what the Trump Administration is doing to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
To understand why this is so appalling, it’s important to know the facts. Congresswoman Omar came to this country with her father when she was 12 years old. Five years later, her father became a naturalized citizen. If Ilhan had been 18 at the time, she would have had to apply for citizenship separately. But because she was 17, she became a naturalized citizen automatically.
Congresswoman Omar went on to graduate from college, work as a community organizer, become the first Somali-American legislator elected to public office in the U.S., and win a seat in Congress. There, she has been one of the Trump Administration’s fiercest critics, which has led the president to repeatedly single her out as someone who he believes does not belong in this country.
Now the Administration is actively trying to deport Congresswoman Omar, seemingly based solely on the unsubstantiated theory that she was actually 18 when her father was naturalized, and therefore is not a citizen. Federal agents have raided her home, confiscated personal records, and seized her phone — all to try and uncover a nonexistent smoking gun from 20 years ago that will somehow make their case.
Think about that. The full weight of the federal government is being brought down on a law-abiding elected official because she has dared to criticize the president. And it’s not the first time this has happened. Under President Trump, the Justice Department has repeatedly gone after those he considers his political enemies — from the Attorney General of New York, to the former head of the FBI, to members of the Federal Reserve.
In those cases, the prosecutions either stalled or were dismissed for having no basis in law, and the same is likely to happen in this case. But not before Congresswoman Omar’s life has been turned upside down, her legal bills have piled up, and she’s been forced to spend time fighting unsubstantiated charges instead of serving the people of Minnesota.
The fact that any president, or any administration, is willing to engage in such transparent efforts to intimidate someone should outrage all Americans, regardless of how they feel about Congresswoman Omar’s political views. Because if this becomes the new normal, there’s no reason to believe it will stop with her — or that future presidents, in either party, won’t do the same.
Those things are taught to kids. If you see poorly raised kids, you'll see that they give zero crap about others. Even when taught, they only believe it in a vague moral sense. They wouldn't want to sacrifice their own stuff to actually do those things.
Superfluity5 retweeted
Back in May, Australia threatened US website Gab with jail time for publishing a gag order wrt a censorship hearing.
I responded by asserting my American client's rights.
Australia wrote back again, objecting and referring to my conduct as "disgraceful."
This was my reply.
When you make the afterlife look so much more appealing than actual life, you kind of have to ban suicide because it becomes the most rational thing to do. That is, it's a system design issue rather than a moral one.
Superfluity5 retweeted
You are probably safer in San Salvador than Paris at this point
Criminals cause crime.
El Salvador understands this.
The West has forgotten it.
Superfluity5 retweeted
Several years ago I ‘volunteered’ (pressured is the better word) to help hand out food for a Thanksgiving drive. We gave out turkeys, potatoes, cranberry sauce - everything for free. There were people driving up in BMW or Lexus SUVs - all foreigners from Russia, East Asia, India. We were instructed not to question need. 50% was obvious fraud. But at the end the guy running this program was ecstatic. He talked about the sheer quantity of food we gave away without regard to helping anyone. Later I realized this ‘non-profit’ probably received state grants, the size of which depended on how much ‘good’ it was doing. Taxpayers had paid for free food for people who didn’t need it, a non-profit paid its employees and staff - and a bunch of suckers like me ‘volunteered’ to help the effort.
Superfluity5 retweeted
Recipients of welfare should never be afforded the same quality of life as middle class people whose labor is taxed to fund them. It should prevent homelessness, including being relocated to a cheaper part of the country. It should never be better than working.
The goal of ebt is to give people the same quality of life as a "middle class" person. It's literally that simple.
Readers added context they thought people might want to know
The goal of SNAP (benefits via EBT) is to supplement food purchasing power for low-income households to afford a nutritious diet, not to provide middle-class quality of life.
fns.usda.gov/snap
law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/7/271…
usda.gov/sites/default/…
I don't think people would mind if those people were exemplars of good citizens who just happened to not make a lot of money. Some are, I'm sure, but the ones who get noticed aren't.
Superfluity5 retweeted
The thing here is that you literally just have to expel 40 people, and you'll get a functional "mid PISA, but the same as Greece" environment.
The policies OF the pink-haired lib, going back to welfare, are WHY the school sucks.
I wonder if you could offer some incentive to people sentenced to death to just accept it and get it over with. Maybe in some cases, but there isn't much to offer a dead man.
Every convicted murderer in state court in the U.S. gets seven levels of review at a minimum, and nine in the majority of state jurisdictions with an intermediate appellate court. Plus executive clemency/pardon review.
I just don’t think they’re entitled to decades of additional bites at the apple. If they couldn’t find a winning issue the first seven times around, it’s because they’re guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and are now trying to manipulate the system through judges violating their oath to Resist the death penalty.
Superfluity5 retweeted
What happened with ABC and Don Jr. is media lawfare. Brian is either part of it or too dumb to understand what he is looking at, despite being paid huge amounts of money to understand it and expose it.
The sooner people understand that the media are not merely a partisan group that hates Trump or a collection of biased outlets that routinely get things wrong, the better. They are built into the lawfare machine. They help plan, coordinate, amplify, and legitimize its operations. Without them, the whole enterprise would fail.
Alfa Bank’s emails gave us a rare look under the hood during Russiagate. They showed the media communicating with the Clinton campaign as participants in the operation, not just cheering from the sidelines. The evidence is right there for all to see. The ABC stunt shows the same machinery at work. The millisecond the fake story came out, an army of Democrats, activists and other media lawfare operators, already primed to respond, rushed in to reinforce it.
This is a highly coordinated, vicious, and evil system. It has to be exposed and destroyed.
Superfluity5 retweeted
Here's what I constantly say to my Jewish/Israeli friends:
After the War, American society was the society in history with the highest levels of institutional trust (with the possible exception of, like, small Scandinavian countries). Everybody belonged to a church or synagogue or mosque, everybody read the newspapers, and they trusted the institutions of their country: newspapers, academia, even the government that had made the New Deal and won the World War and built the atom bomb.
Fast-forward to today, and American society has shockingly low amounts of institutional trust, especially among young people, to an extent that I think foreigners and older Americans fail to appreciate. I think Covid, in particular, was extremely important as the last nail in the coffin.
And what I believe American society to be doing right now, particularly on the Right (people on the left still trust *some* institutions), is taking Every Single Common Belief that American society had been doing until now, putting it on the table, and asking "Do we believe this? Why should we believe this?" And they will not stop asking until they have received satisfactory answers.
I believe this process to be fundamentally healthy.
I'm a conservative. Deep in my bones I want to preserve and not destroy; I like old and grand things simply because they are old and grand. I perfectly understand that taboos and sacred cows serve a useful and necessary social role. A society cannot long endure if it exists in a kind of perpetual state of metaphysical questioning.
But perhaps on some rare occasions such a bout of metaphysical questioning is healthy. It's certainly true that many--not all, but many--of the past taboos, particularly on issues relating to race or sex, have been demonic lies.
In any case, how I feel about it doesn't matter.
It's happening.
And one of the ways it's happning, Americans are asking: "How do we feel about the Jews? How do we feel about Israel?"
They are asking these questions because they are asking EVERY UNCOMFORTABLE QUESTION THEY CAN THINK OF, because in a world where every institution their parents trusted has failed them, they are trying to feel and reason their way to a worldview that actually works. They NEED this process. No demographic in America has been more unjustly treated in the past 20 years than young white men, all in the name of taboos and dogmas and moral blackmail.
And I think the best way to ensure this process is a creative and not a destructive one is to welcome the debate. Because I happen to believe that there are very good answers to those questions--but they will be ignored if they are crowded out by cries of "Nazi! Anti-semite!"
And moreover, I have faith in the great American people, a people who have achieved so much in so little time.
And enormous gratitude and admiration for @yhazony for welcoming the debate, and hosting the debate with such talent.
The National Conservative event in Jerusalem is my favorite type of chaos. I watched a bunch of the speeches from my friends and saw the predictable reaction from either side. One claiming it's anti-Semitism or "Jew hate" to have honest if difficult conversations. The other side, which also includes a lot of my friends, were upset that the event is in Israel. I wanted to go to Nat Con but other projects kept me state side.
What Yoram and Will Chamberlain are building is a new coalition where everyone is honest. Cards on the table. American Jews like Isreal and see it differently than I see my own ancestral homeland. I want the British to be free from tyranny and jihadis, and when the Manchester stadium attack happened, wanted to see something done about the "migrants." But it doesn't keep me up at night. The Brits are on their own path, I'm a spectator and occasional retweeter of good accounts. I am an American and the rest of the world does not occupy much of my mental space.
But my saying, "American Jews REALLY like Israel," is the kind of thing that gets you cancelled from conservative media. You're kept out of the infrastructure, said to be "obsessed with tha joos." You cannot say truthful things. I know this for a fact, and consider it condescending and insulting when people deny this.
That created an incredible amount of animosity over the years, this was brewing long before Gaza.
Neocons and the ADL are anti-white. Why did the ADL try to get people banned from FoxNews for discussing the South African farm murders? That's got nothing to do with Israel or Jews. The ADL's materials, taught in New York schools, on the Bataclan massacre are jihadi apologia. Look it up. I posted it years ago. Neocons likewise try to immediately dismiss any discussions of anti-white hatred.
That's the experience most people have of "Israel." Now before you say it. I KNOW. It's unfair because Isreal is not the ADL, neocons, or Never Trumpers. And? So what? Perception often shapes reality.
This has led younger people to the association that the pro-Israel cause is inherently anti-white. Now people like Will, Amanda Mililius, and others find this frustrating. All of my right wing Jewish friends do. They often complain that the left wing media props up left wing Jews, to make it seem like Jews are a monolith.
These are hard problems to solve. There's a lot of bad blood. There is, in some circles, legitimate hatred of Jews that has nothing to do with the issues. (Though in my personal experience, this is far less than you see online.) The question isn't whether these conversations will happen. They have been happening, and because of the heat you get (I will immediately regret posting this), older people like me generally avoid the topic.
It's a lose-lose. Words will be twisted one way or another. Because of this, a lot of people don't understand the world and the trends. No one wants to explain it. Why bring heat to yourself for no upside?
My solution, and this is more directed at others than me, is that the pro-Israel side needs to see itself as ambassadors. Do people generally have a positive experience or negative experience? I can already imagine the replies, "That's unfair." Again? So what? It's unfair that my movie was banned from Amazon for no reason, and nobody tried helping get it back on. It was unfair that I almost went bankrupt during the cancel culture years because of what Big Tech did. It's really unfair that people went to prison on false charges. What did you do for Douglas Mackey?
Nobody really has time for the sympathy stuff. Nobody really cares. Someone always had it worse.
If you want these issues to improve, at least on the right (the left is its own can of worms), then you need to find ways to be constructive and helpful. And of course, nobody has to do anything. That goes both ways.
Get this. @StateFarm is giving me the run-around. StateFarm.com (chat) directs me to my agent. My agent directs me to the site. And the stupid site keeps logging me out during my chats! Not good customer service. If their rate wasn't so good, I'd change insurers. 🤷♂️
Superfluity5 retweeted
Who’s ready for some real talk on Social Security?
Here it is: you didn’t “pay in” to Social Security, there’s no deposit account with “your” money in it, and every single dime of Social Security taxes you’ve paid in your entire life went directly to someone else or was frittered away by Congress.
For many decades after the program was created, there was more money collected in Social Security taxes paid in than money spent on benefits. This was due to the demographics of the country at the time: in 1950 there were 16 workers paying Social Security taxes for every 1 recipient of benefits, whereas today there are fewer than 3 workers per beneficiary.
So obviously, all that extra money collected for decades when there were more taxes collected than benefits paid was set aside and invested, right? LOL. If only.
Instead of setting all that extra money aside and protecting it for future beneficiaries, Congress spent it. Every last penny. Every dollar that has been collected in Social Security taxes has been spent. What Congress did instead of saving money was create a massive IOU which it dishonestly called the Social Security Trust Fund. Except there’s no trust and there’s no fund. It’s just a gigantic IOU, like in Dumb and Dumber. There’s no numbered account with money in it waiting to be withdrawn.
Where does this leave us? Beginning around 2020, payroll taxes collected were no longer sufficient to pay for current Social Security benefits, so money had to printed or borrowed from elsewhere. As more and more money has to be borrowed to pay current benefits, the Social Security Trust Fund balance is reduced.
Once it reaches zero—and right now that is expected to happen within the next 10 years—the government is legally prohibited from paying out more in benefits than it collects in Social Security payroll taxes each year. And that will mean an instant cut in Social Security benefits of around 20 percent. By the year 2100, expected benefits will be just 65 percent of promised benefits.
As of today, a 75-year-old who worked for 50 years and earned the median salary will have paid close to $100,000 in Social Security payroll taxes over his life. Based on average life expectancy of another 12 years, he will collected more than $500,000 in Social Security benefits, and those payments will come not from a savings account somewhere, but from taxes paid by his children and grandchildren. But when it comes time for the people paying directly for his Social Security checks to receive their benefits, they won’t get nearly as much as he gets, because the Trust Fund will be bankrupt.
The people paying for the Social Security benefits of Baby Boomers today will pay significantly more into the system than the Boomers ever did, but will receive a fraction of the eventual payout.
Does that seem fair? In light of those facts, is it really accurate to say you “earned” that Social Security payment? Of course it isn’t. Social Security is welfare for American retirees. And it’s a welfare system that is not only a total waste of money designed to give Congress an even bigger budget to fritter away (if you invested your Social Security taxes, your lump sum at retirement would be 5x higher than your expected lifetime benefits from Social Security), it’s also deeply immoral.
Because of the current demographics in the country, Social Security takes money from workers today so it can give retirees 3-5x more than they ever paid in AND will pay out significantly less when it’s time for the people currently paying into the system to collect their own benefits.
Boomers receive 3-5x more than they paid in, while their grandchildren will receive 35 percent less than what they were promised. They originally called this the New Deal when it was created, but it’s a raw deal for everyone currently being forced to pay into it.
So let’s stop with the pretense that Social Security is anything other than a poorly designed welfare scheme for retirees.
There was a good argument for it in his first term but not his second. I mean, he literally started a war.
