Isn't there a rule that you don't eat Oysters harvested in months that don't have an "R" in them? At least in the US? The best Oysters I've had were from France and Ireland, and I was eating them in Prague.

"Irgun, Haganah, that kind of thing."

Technically, they didn't all flee. 21% of Israelis are Palestinian.

But surely, they would have preferred to be in Gaza. Ohne Juden.

Right now, there should be a Palestinian state that is equally prosperous as Israel.

Instead, Palestinians made the extirpation of Jews a top priority. It's worked out almost as well for them as it did for the German National Socialist Workers Party.

The Germans seemed to have learned their lesson. Maybe the Palestinians will as well.

"Colonialism isn't an act of philanthropy, you stupid ----."

It's not colonialism when it's your land. Just like I get to decide what to do with the land I own.

Was the establishment of Pakistan and example of colonialism?

So...why did the Palestinians flee?

Had they not, they would have had freedoms and prosperity that has eluded many Arabs.

In any case, it was Brit territory. And there is no doubt in my mind that the Brits did all they could to fairly accommodate all parties. It's no different than the creation of Pakistan as a homeland for Muslims on the Indian subcontinent. Do they fight? Yep. But would the world have been better without a Pakistan?

I don't think so. Do you?

"Can't wait for MadBomber to Pragersplain it to us!"

I don't think I need to. Effete did a pretty good job of summing it up.

"So is a 2 watt laser pointer in the eye. Non lethal but quite permanent."

I've never understood why a manufacturer has not come up with a pistol that has both lethal and non-lethal capability. There is certainly a need to terminate a threat, but more often you're going to want to keep them alive if possible.

"I bought my first AR15 for this very reason."

Bruh, no.

That's a cute gun. Fun to shoot. Easy. But for home defense, get a Judge or a Governor. .410 pistol. You could still use the .223 to finish them off if they are still alive to avoid the lawsuit.

"I wonder if idiots who shout "antisemitism" every time the evil actions of IsNOTreal are opposed realize how much damage they're actually doing?"

Israel? Not real?

How about Palestine, champ?

Can you point me towards any sort of Palestinian state? I'll answer for you. No, you can't. The closest thing in history was when the region's owners attempted to establish a Palestinian state. The Palestinians rejected it.

"We are Culpable, Morally and Legally in their Crimes."

Are we Culpable, Morally and Legally in the Crimes of the Islamic Resistance?

If not, who is?

Hamas might be the vilest organization since ISIS. Maybe moreso.

"Just like Madbomber said Hitler was."

Hitler was the head of the German National Socialist Workers Party. It's sorta in the name.

But, like most socialists, he wasn't actually a socialist. Socialism is a system where the workers own the means of production. That's never happened anywhere. Not even Bernie is a true socialist. In fact he might be a bigger proponent of capitalism than I am. He's just anti-free market.

Trump is taking the US in a corporatist direction. In that way, he is shaping the economy into something much closer to what you would see in western Europe. I'm not a fan, but it's not unprecedented.

I watch the currency markets like a hawk. The devaluation of the dollar has already resulted in a 10% pay cut for me as someone who is paid in US$, but pays bills in EUR. I recently read an article from 2024 regarding Trump's idea to de-value the dollar in order to make US-made goods more attractive to importers. First, it would crush me, but I alone am not a key policy concern, nor is any other expat living on a decreasing income. For people living in the US, I'm not as clear on the impact. In theory, the impact on consumers who would pay higher prices for US goods that were matched to comparable imports. But even then, US exports are not going to be all that attractive if the importing country puts tariffs on them.

Republicans have traditionally looked to how to increase free-market efficiencies. Trump seems to want to take more of a Dennis Kucinich approach.

"Holy ----, MadBomber got an economics question substantially right. And only invoked the mythological "unskilled labor unicorns" as an aside."

It's not an aside at all. If a teacher or nurse can make more working in a factory then they could working as a nurse or a teacher, they have incentive to do so. Even if their new chosen profession doesn't require the use of their training. Because at the end of the day, they are as fully qualified as unskilled workers as someone who did not train as a teacher or a nurse. This is nothing new. In the 1960s and 1970s, it wasn't uncommon for college grads to take union jobs because they paid more, and offered better working conditions. That paradigm began to erode as European and Asian markets developed and introduced competition to the global marketplace. That happened as the natural result of post-WWII re-development, but Trump appears to want to re-create similar conditions through political policy. The problem is, those Asian and European markets still exist and are quite robust. And they're likely looking forward to capturing those markets that Trump seems willing to cede in an effort to create a globally isolated market in the US.

Can't they work in a factory? Manufacturing is coming back to the US.

Haven't you heard?

"So Trump's strategy is working then, which is awesome to hear. Companies in America will see it's lucrative again to produce goods long since left behind because it wasn't worth producing given imports were cheaper."

This is what Bernie & co. Have been saying for years.

Problem is, it's not true. Or at least most likely not true. Depending on the tariff rate, US producers would simply match prices to what a comparable imported product would cost. Basically, it's the government forcing US consumers to pay more for a product in order to benefit US-based industry. But here's the rub-the population of the US is around 340 million. The global consumer class is around 3.5 billion. The US government can force USans to pay more, but they can't force consumers in other countries to do the same. When the US implements tariffs against another country, that country responds in kind. Which in this case means that US manufacturers lose as much as 90% of potential market share.

There are other problems as well. Who is going to work in these factories that provide all the goods and services that the US would need to replicate locally in order to meet demand? Robots? Maybe, IDK. But there isn't going to be a sufficient labor force, unless the demand for local labor drives labor costs in manufacturing to the point where skilled workers are choosing to work in factories rather than in their trained profession. This gets into the economic concepts of absolute advantage and comparative advantage. Skilled should and do benefit society in a way that unskilled workers cannot. And when policy compels skilled workers to take jobs that don't require those skills, you lose out on those people being able to contribute at the level they otherwise would have in a free market environment.

#25

Las Vegas has casinos?

That place is basically a second home for me due to work, but it's not the casinos that draw people. It's the sports, and the sphere, and the F1, and EDC, and any other number of significant events going on every single week in that city.

I work up in north Vegas, Nellis AFB, and if I'm staying off base and have to go south of Sahara, it's at least 45 minutes each way to get to the office. Staying at the Grand Chateau (on Harmon), it's taken me 15 minutes to get to the I-15 on-ramp. I could walk it in five minutes.

I once had the opportunity to meet Leon Smith. He was one of the ops guys who made the drops possible. The pilots who flew the missions got the credit, but in reality, they were little more than monkeys. It was the engineers who made it happen.

Decades later, while in Japan, he was asked whether he regretted his involvement in the Manhattan project. His answer was no. Had the nukes not been dropped, many more non-Japanese service members would have died, and Japanese society would have been close to exterminated.

It may seem counter-intuitive, but Japan is the powerhouse it is today because of the nukes. Just like Germany would have never becomes what it is today without the German Reich being completely defeated.