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I think that the most of the immigrants to any country are for economic reasons. The percent of "true" immigrants fleeing persecution in their home country is probably pretty small. As I have said before, I am very much in favor of expanding legal immigration policies, but also being strong against illegal immigration. But I am sure that there is some relation between the labor shortage in the "service" industries and the reduction in immigration (legal or illegal). I dont know how much, but there must be some. The only reason the US is growing in population and what really sustains alot of economic growth is immigration. Natural births are not enough.

Literally.

@Larry said in Trump’s latest sinking ship: @taiwan_girl said in Trump’s latest sinking ship: @Larry said in Trump’s latest sinking ship: @89th said in Trump’s latest sinking ship: It's not like you started a company and it went bankrupt after 2 months. See, this shows either a single minded stubbornness or an inability to learn. No matter how many times it gets poi Ted out to you that Trump didnt do that either, you continue to cling to your same old destroyed narrative. Trump didn't start Trump Steaks. He didn't ruin Trump Steaks. He didn't do a fucking thing except sell a license to his name to The Sharper Image. But you don't understand that. It shows a serious lack of reasoning skills 9n your part. To the point of it being ridiculous. Trying to have an honest discussion with you is a total waste of my time. QUOTE Trump struck up a relationship with Buckhead Beef, a specialty meat company that was purchased by Sysco, the largest marketer and distributor of food service products in the United States, in 1999. According to Jack Serratilli, a Buckhead Beef sales manager, Trump first approached the company when he opened his first casino in Atlantic City. Buckhead had already been servicing other casinos in Atlantic City, supplying beef for their restaurants, and they began to do the same for Trump. Beginning around the mid-2000s, however, Trump’s Atlantic City projects began to suffer financial blows, culminating, eventually, in a 2004 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing. According to the filing, Trump Hotels owed Buckhead Beef $715,240, related to their partnership with the casino. Two years later, on August 6, 2006, Trump filed an application to trademark Trump Steaks. A few months later, in October, the New York Inquirer published a story reporting that Trump had entered into a partnership with Buckhead Beef to sell the steaks. The now-trademarked Trump Steaks name was first used in commerce, according to filings made to the United States Patent and Trademark Office, in December 2006. To start, it appears as though Trump sold his steaks through a direct sales website, housed at www.trumpsteaks.com. A few months later, a licensing executive with the Trump Organization approached Jerry Levin, CEO of the Sharper Image. The Trump Organization had been looking for a place to sell their newly trademarked steaks, and the executive, who was a good friend of Levin’s, thought that the product could be an interesting fit for the stores, which until that point had been better known for electronics than food products. The idea of selling steaks, even those bearing the Donald Trump name, seemed instantly odd to Levin. “The idea was certainly an unusual one,” he said, calling the connection between Trump Steaks and the Sharper Image “truly a non sequitur.” Levin explained that the licensing executive likely picked the Sharper Image because he and Levin had a pre-existing relationship (though Trump, in the sales commercial, refers to Sharper Image as “one of [his] favorite stores, with fantastic products of all kinds). “I asked, ‘What is it they want us to do?’” Levin recalled. “And they really only had two criteria to the licensing agreement itself: Donald wanted his picture on the front of a Sharper Image catalog when we introduced this, and he wanted his picture in every one of our stores when we introduced it.” UNQUOTE (https://archive.thinkprogress.org/a-definitive-history-of-trump-steaks-e0e6fc31b689/) What a load of horse shit.... BWaaaaahahahahahaaaaaaaaa What is incorrect in what was posted? For example: US Trademark application (https://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4805:k6ayyz.2.1)

@Klaus said in The "W-Boson": Also, without particle physics, we wouldn't have CT scans, MRI, PET, proton therapy, accelerator-based cancer treatment, And years ago, without understanding (sort of) relativity, televisions would be impossible. That's because the electron beam which is scanning the screen takes just that much longer to go to the edges than it does to the center of the screen.

Really interesting to read these schedules, although @Copper (ok, maybe @George-K ) wins. @LuFins-Dad I can see why that is one blur of a schedule. @Aqua-Letifer yours has a lot of stuff I think you probably appreciate now, and will even moreso looking back on it. Good work, daddio. Last summer when our (then 10-month old) kid was at the stage where he could walk but would either need to have his hand held or would fall every 3 seconds was exhausting. Even being in the back yard trying to do ANY chore felt like 1 minute of progress for 10 minutes of non-work. This year it's better since the kid is more stable, although now he likes to get into rocks, throw them, and climb every thing in sight. Anyway....he also is teething and doesn't sleep well so the days are long but there are pros and cons to each phase of life it seems. While I look forward to eventual retirement and playing golf daily, or traveling, or whatever... I know that also comes without having a 1 and 3 year old who are really a blast to play with right now. "Daddy, let's play monster chase!" is something I hear every 5 minutes from my wife.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Pelosi positive for COVID: @89th said in Pelosi positive for COVID: With all due respect to the elderly... mother EFF it's like watching a nursing home bingo night sometimes. There needs to be a change in the political culture to stop people working so long into old age. Either that, or put the retirement age at 70 and be done with it. Jobs where people routinely work until they drop are typically going to attract the type of person that wants to work until they drop, and to be honest I'm not convinced of these people's sanity. Certainly they're not normal. Also, if so many people can still do this job when they're 80 years old, how hard can it be? You know, I don't have a problem with that, although term limits may accomplish the same goal with less muss and fuss.

@Doctor-Phibes said in Please call me "Doctor.": I have to say, it felt pretty good to be Doctor for a day. You're a doctor every day... [image: 1649463501304-screen-shot-2022-04-08-at-7.16.54-pm-resized.png]

@Mik I agree. The term genocide gets bandied about too often without regard to its true legal definition. I have a close friend who worked on the War Crimes Tribunal investigations in Bosnia Herzegovina and Rwanda. He too agrees all too often the word is improperly used. I spoke with him at length on a Zoom call this am about the article and Snyder’s essay. The Russian article is explicit about eradicating not only Ukraine as a sovereign state but the very notion of Ukrainian as as a national and cultural identity. If it can be determined that both are intended outcomes of Russian policy and actions against Ukraine and Ukrainians, the charge of genocide may very well be warranted against the Russian state and its officials.

@xenon said in "Excess" Votes?: @Jolly said in "Excess" Votes?: I think we have a problem. The majority of the American public thinks we have a problem! So quit sitting on your mounds of data analysis shit, admit that the general public might be right, and help solve the problem. I'm all for some hyper-centralized, national ID voter system. No issue with it. And, I agree, there is much less faith in our election now than there was during the 2016 cycle. But this whole problem has been manufactured by irresponsible people. Step 1 is for the accusers to put up or shut up. Innocent until proven guilty and all that shit. Where's the evidence? Where are the court cases? Again - Trump's chief law enforcement official though Trump was off his rocker on this. You are correct that it was manufactured by irresponsible people. Where you lose the plot is in deciding who those irresponsible people are. You don't seem to see the irony of saying you support a national voter ID, but then call those calling for just that the guilty ones. One side wants voter ID, the other side says that is racist, and wants to 1. Harvest votes 2. Extend vote by mail with no checks on it, . No ID required because,... well... black people are too stupid to go out and get an ID,..... every attempt to bring any of this in front of a court has been blocked, yet you want them to "put up or shut up" - and in a thread dealing with the very issue of "putting up" you have, without any evidence to support your claims, done nothing but ridicule them for it. But at the same time you are utterly convinced that you have it right, no need or reason to entertain the notion that you might be wrong. As a result, trying to discuss this with you is like trying to warn a petulant 3 year old not to stick a fork in an electrical socket. But it's ok. This seems to be a common problem among your generation. God I hope my generation wasn't this logic challenged at your age.

Want. The flame thing, that is. It wouldn't have to happen too many times in say, Chicago, for carjackings to drop like a hot rock.

@89th said in Flip Tax: @Ivorythumper said in Flip Tax: I’m pretty sure that selling things for more than you paid for them is, in the eyes of the iRS, always a taxable event. Kinda. If you sell your car, you don't have to pay the IRS. If you sell your house, you don't have to pay the IRS on profits up to $500k (if married) or $250k (if single). The first $500k is excluded from gains by tax regulation but that demonstrates my point that government claims the right to tax all profits. It’s smart policy to exclude some profits so to make society more mobile and to encourage upward mobility and economic stimulus. As for cars, there are casual sales vs business transactions— even if you did sell your car for a few thousand more than you paid, it’s not worth going after low sums from individuals.

Do all Ukrainian refugee hosts go to heaven?

@Axtremus said in The Resident's Financial Problem: @Mik said in The Resident's Financial Problem: Have you ever known, in nigh on 20 years, of George citing scripture to buttress his argument? Reading this thread inspired me to ask “What Would Jesus Do”, so I looked it up. (Of course Deuteronomy is OT so if you really want to and don’t mind overlooking the Trinity idea you can claim that Deuteronomy predates Biblical Jesus and thus disqualify it from answering any WWJD question. But I digress.) With regards to “student debt” and it’s funding via the public purse, I am still trying to sort through a few things: Is all higher education a public good? The implication is that if it’s a public good, then maybe there is a rationale to fund it via the public purse. Is some higher education a public good but some other higher education is not? If so, who gets to decide what higher education is a public good and what other education isn’t? If you’re going to allow the public purse to fund some higher education but not some other higher education, who do you let decide which portions of higher education to fund via the public purse? An agency of the (people’s democratically elected) government using criteria set forth by the same government, or individuals (such as private schools’ financial aid officers and private banks’ loan officers) making these decisions using the private schools and private banks’ respective criteria? The ship to not use any public funds to finance higher education has long sailed, pretty much very state has a public university system that’s supported by public funds. Then you have folks who like to draw a line separating “federal funding” and “state funding.” This federal vs. state split isn’t very practical either because all states take federal money. Maybe it’s fine to use the public purse to fund only the sort of public education that satisfies government criteria. (Sounds like the status quo.) And we are left to argue over what those criteria should be. (Also sounds like the status quo.) Maybe we publicly fund only the institutions but never the individuals. E.g. give public money to public universities (so they keep tuition low for all students) but don’t give any public money to any individual student. (Will wreak havoc to well understood concepts like school funded “work study”, “research assistantship,” “teaching assistantship,” etc.) Maybe we let private lenders do whatever they want with regards to “student loans,” and resist the urge to not treat private “student loans” any different from other private loans. (The private lenders themselves do not want this, though, they lobbied hard to make “student loans” ineligible for discharge through bankruptcies. Heck, they also want the government to guarantee the loans too if they can get it.) Still left with the status quo. Alpha and Omega. Period.

Amazing. Does this person make money doing that?

@brenda not at all… she’s a force of nature and he’s a very sweet guy.

@Renauda said in Green Onions: Green Onions, a great early funk tune. Big hit for Booker T & the MGs. Based on a blues riff associated with Sonny Boy Williams’ tune Help Me Here’s a cover version of Green Onions featuring the late, great Jon Lord and the Hoochie Coochie Men: https://m. Link to video Ok...... THAT. Is how it's done.