You’re still capable of feeling joy on the inside?

Here’s the broader situation: 30 percent of American households are classified by Pew as low income, and 19 percent are upper income. And yet a 2024 Gallup survey found that only 12 percent of Americans identified themselves as “lower class” and just 2 percent as “upper class.” In short: No one wants to be perceived as poor, and no one rich ever feels rich enough.

This is just nonsense. Being in the upper class doesn’t mean being in the top 19% of earners. Those 19% are middle class and they probably have never even interacted with anyone in the upper class. An upper-class person isn’t someone who earns a $100k a year or even $1000k a year. In fact, he probably doesn’t even have a job. CBS has a headline right now that says “Trump headlining $1 million a person super PAC dinner as stocks sink over tariffs”. The people at his dinner (or the ones who could come but choose not to) are in the upper class.

Edit: As for the rest of the article, it makes a good point about the disconnect between the working class and the middle class, but I’m not sure that this disconnect is bigger now than it used to be.

Edit 2: Part of the disconnect is due to different values rather than different incomes, and this should be emphasized because Trump is popular with the working class (and unpopular with the middle class) not because he doesn’t have much money but because he rejects middle-class values.

online information siloes

I’m not sure that’s possible because the Democratic platform doesn’t have the sort of populist appeal that Trump’s Republican platform does. Moderation can’t compete with extremism in this domain. I suppose that the Democrats could try to pivot to their own (presumably class-based) form of populism but, at least from my point of view, one very strong reason to support the Democrats is because they aren’t populist. Having one populist party versus another would be a lose/lose situation.

I don’t have an alternate proposal. It may actually be the case that social media will eventually force every serious political movement to pivot towards populism and create its own truth in order to be competitive, but then who would make the policy decisions in a world of meme warfare?

After the tariffs were unveiled in front of TV cameras at the White House, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told those countries named: “Do not retaliate, sit back, take it in, let’s see how it goes, because, if you retaliate, there will be escalation.”

I’m sure that went over well. Xi loves sitting back and taking it in, especially when this is on Trump’s mind:

“'Oh, he used the word ‘rape.’ That’s right. I used the word ‘rape,’” Trump said at the Detroit Economic Club after his remarks were met with what sounded like some gasps from the audience. “They raped our country,” he repeated.

snout smooch

That’s funny. My dog didn’t like it when I touched his nose even though he had no problem using it to jab me rather forcefully when he wanted something.

This isn’t on the list, but he did like it when I carefully scratched the groove between his eyes.

No, I don’t think that would have worked. Many did and it didn’t work. These tariffs are Trump’s pet project - he’s not going to compromise on them easily.

I’m curious about how well-informed most Americans are about the Soviet Union. Do they know that it was once a place where ordinary people were accused of crimes without evidence, taken away without a trial, and never seen again? Do they know that this generally happened because of the smallest suspicion that a person was not fanatically loyal to the government, rather than a violent criminal? Do they know that a million people were killed this way? And do they know that the Soviet Union was one of many places like that?

I expect that the Soviet Union doesn’t seem particularly relevant to younger generations of voters, but isn’t this the sort of lurid history that did interest them as adolescents? And don’t older voters remember the Cold War?

Titled “The Perimeter” and published on Monday, the report said the stated purpose of the plan was to create a thick strip of land that provided a clear line of sight for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to identify and kill militants. “This space was to have no crops, structures, or people. Almost every object, infrastructure installation, and structure within the perimeter was demolished,” it said.

The article presents this as a new revelation, but wasn’t creating a wider buffer zone on the Gaza side of the border one of the explicitly stated war goals? (And visible from space.) I’m surprised that there isn’t signage and barbed wire to prevent civilians from wandering in accidentally, but the rest seems to be describing what a buffer zone (or “kill zone”) is almost by definition.

No wonder he broke his back.

What could have protected Apple other than a reasonable trade policy or a specific exemption? I don’t think Trump would have done either for anyone.

I have a hard time believing this. It’s more of the 4D chess that his supporters believed he was playing, but I think the evidence has shown that he isn’t pretending to be ignorant and stubborn. If a different sort of President instituted tariffs then this could have been the plan, but if it happens now then it will be happening by coincidence.

(Or is the extremely careless and unreasonable way that the tariff rates were calculated also part of Trump’s madman theory? I doubt it.)

Republican congressmen are stuck in a bind. The economic damage from tariffs will hurt them in 2028, but preventing that damage will also hurt specifically the Republicans who defect - voters aren’t going to give them credit for a recession that didn’t happen, and Trump, paradoxically more powerful if his opposition prevents him from doing something unpopular, will destroy them in the primaries.

So the article is correct and tariffs won’t be stopped until enough of the Republican base opposes them. I’m not sure business could do anything before that point even if it was united, because lobbying politicians who either already agree in private or are fanatics isn’t very useful.

I am not a lawyer, but I think that presenting the defendants’ case as written in their memorandum would not be lying, although I can see how doing so would make an honest man uncomfortable. Reuveni supported the morally right side when, in effect, he argued for the plaintiffs, but in doing so he failed to fulfill a lawyer’s obligation to zealously defend his client. If he wanted to do both, he should have declined to take the case in the first place (although presumably he would have been demoted or fired for that too).

With that said, a man can do the right thing now even when he could have done so earlier and didn’t (and doing so in court was certainly more dramatic than refusing to take the case would have been). I wouldn’t mind donating money to him the way that people of a different sort donated money to Daniel Penny.

I’m not sure how to reconcile my view with the principle that even the worst criminal defendants have the right to competent legal representation. I suppose I make an exception here because the federal government is never in danger of being railroaded.

Thank you, but don’t mind me. I just had multiple tabs open and accidentally replied to the wrong post.

I did think the answer from jms21y in the screenshot was interesting. Years ago, before Reddit existed, I used to post on a message board where there was a great deal of diversity and still people were polite to each other - the rules were strict about that. There were also only several dozen active participants so we all knew each other. Anyway, one of the regulars was an active-duty military guy and his perspective was often very interesting. I think the ideological range of the people I talked to has become so much narrower since then. People (including me) are so much angrier now than even during the GWB presidency.

deleted by creator

They’re the “Say Friend and Enter” runes. Gandalf couldn’t figure them out but Merry (accidentally) did.

I don’t think that’s how people would have “gathered for instructions on an attack” especially when “attack” would mean launching missiles. But I’m glad that and we can trust Laura Loomer to handle the sort of intelligence gathering that would guide strikes like this.

Damn. Even the Jerusalem Post is disturbed by this.

But the IDF’s explanation for the ambush already has problems. Initially, the military claimed that the ambulances’ lights were off, but in fact, at least some of the ambulances’ lights were on, though possibly the first ambulance had its lights off.

Also, despite initial IDF claims, the ambulances were properly labeled as Red Cross.

After killing the Red Cross workers, the IDF still believed them to be Hamas based on examining six of the bodies, though the military’s explanation of what about the aid workers made them seem like Hamas forces was unclear.

[The IDF] buried the bodies to protect them from damage during any expected new fight, according to the narrative.

…

The Jerusalem Post was not provided with other cases in which the IDF used such a procedure to leave bodies of aid workers for the UN.

deleted by creator