Yeah, though, Russia's foreign wealth wasn't really much of a bargaining chip in its insanity -- foreign countries have basically seized that wealth, and are handing it to Ukraine for war funding. If a bunch of Europeans have a bunch of money in the USA / US companies, that seems more like a risk for Europe than the USA -- the USA could just seize it, and use it to fund bombs / propaganda to attack Europe. Even with Trumps shenanigans, it seems foreign investors are still piling money in to the USA (or at least they had been, I haven't really looked at what the last couple weeks have done, admittedly).
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Sounds to me like a challenge they'd happily accept. They're like the Spartans of BJs.
You're being needlessly argumentative mate. The previous posted basically said "She's trash, but she can help tear things down".. You then reply, saying "no", but also saying "She can be a useful idiot" who can help "try and wreck trump". SO YOU AGREED AND ADDED NOTHING.
Just upvote the other guy. Yeesh.
Yeah, but not all women give BJs, some don't do it often -- married men will often talk about it like its a birthday/special event thing. Gay guys do it daily. Hell, a gay couple is going to rack up multiple BJs on both sides of the relationship daily -- they 69 twice and they already lapped a straight married guy's "birthday BJ"s 4 times.
Not saying it's definitely gay men, but I think we'd need more data to make a call really. I feel like it may be like those 'salary' things, where people'll always note at the start of the year "The richest 1% made as much as the poorest 70% by January 3rd" or whatnot, but with BJs and Gay dudes.
Makes sense. US build up of troops in the middle east in preparation for war with Iran. Or not war, but "special operations" or whatever BS term they use these days.
That'll eat up most headlines, so other atrocities can likely sneak by with less opposition.
To be fair, the dems also want, and use, authoritarian levers these days. Also, historically, they've been very ineffectual when it comes to pushing through progressive items -- see the USA as the only advanced economy without public healthcare as an easy example, or them being the only country without basic gun laws.
Heck, one of the very few legit points Trump made in the one weaksauce debate he had with Biden, was along the lines of "If tariffs are so bad, why'd you guys leave all the tariffs in place from my first term?". If there's an election, and if they win, I doubt the dems will really do all that much.
Idk. To me it's starting to look increasingly like there are irreconcilable differences between what the majority seem to want, and what a small rich minority wants. There are maga dads shooting their daughters, in maga states, over political shit, and they get let off by their maga jury. You've got red state ICE troops deploying to blue state cities explicitly to terrorize the population -- those same troops are shooting people in the streets with zero accountability, protected by a group of people who are increasingly looking like ultra rich pedophiles of a very depraved sort. A group of individuals who are basically Americas ruling class, with likely ties between their pedophile island crimes, to Israel and Russia, and the USA's unquestioning support of the atrocities being committed on the other side of the world.
It's really difficult to picture what you'd need to do as a politician, to 'make this right' for the people in blue states/cities. If the people demand accountability for all the shit that's gone on, it'll enrage the right further. If you don't hold them accountable, well everyone's seen the result of not holding Trump accountable for the Jan 6 insurrection -- it just gets worse and worse. They're already at a point where they're shooting dem civilians in the streets with impunity, and with 'righteous fury' automatically labelling these people terrorists/enemies of the states. Even using AI to alter photos of protesters to feed the propaganda machine.
Really feels like there's increasingly a chance for a civil war in the usa.
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Suspect in Canada shooting is identified as an 18-year-old with history of police visits to her home
Out of the loop? trans woman. So verbiage may vary.
Good for them.
Though I really doubt fascists actually care about women's sports all that much in general. And if they do it isn't "GASP Wokies won!!!", it's more "GASP who let them out of the kitchen!!".
Yeah, though, they tried half measures before, after the attempted coup. The result was that the republicans came back worse than before. So realistically, I can't imagine half measures being enough for anyone that isn't "all in" on the fascism thing. Cause you've literally got people doin nazi salutes in the administration's orbit, and the more you compromise, the more you inch towards their goals -- and the dems have done that so consistently over the years that it's lead them to this point. The frustration with the dems habit of compromising, is likely also why there are more younger sorts challenging older dems: people are pissed off with the lack of action / accountability currently on offer from the democrat elite.
And implementing laws, isn't likely to be viewed as an effective control / result, considering the current administration just ignores the laws / courts / constitution. If the military is completely under the command of the commander in chief, and its so massively lopsided in funding compared to anything else in America, and the commander in chief decides to turn it on the people, there's nothing stopping the next iteration of American Fascism really. If you only have two parties, and they're able to collude/scheme between all levels / branches of government, it invalidates the concept of checks and balances. Those sorts of issues are core to the current failure we're seeing in American politics, but they're also core to how American politics has "functioned" for decades. Changing those sorts of institutions, again, feels like it'd require that descent into civil war.
Like let's say analysts come together and figure out one of the major contributors to the current mess was the electoral college setup -- a legacy configuration left over from the times of slavery to redistribute votes for racist reasons etc. And the consensus amongst all those analyst sorts, let's say, is that the fix is to get rid of it: doing so would help to move towards elections being based on a majority of the popular vote. But it'd also give the dems a huge boost, likely angering most "red" states. It's the sort of change that likely couldn't get made without the red states agreeing, and it's the sort of thing they'd refuse to do, even after having followed a pant-shitting felon and alleged pedophile down a path of self-destruction for the country. These same red states are the ones that have been providing ICE troops for deployment to places like Minnesota, shooting civilians in the streets without a care. They'll absolve themselves of any wrong doing, and demand concessions for any initiative pushed forward by democrats, concessions that will basically infuriate the terrorized victims in the blue states. idk.
Like imagining myself in the shoes of a Minnesotan, seeing that Texans (iirc?) apparently feel totally fine rolling in and shooting people in your streets as part of a gestapo force -- and seeing all the red states cheer this shit while FOX and the administration accuse your dead neighbours of having been terrorists?? I really don't think a couple extra laws is gonna be enough to make me ok with that. I'd be demanding all those agents be held accountable for their reign of terror at my door. Hell, I'd be in favour of having state-level military/measures, specifically for the purpose of opposing such future federal terror campaigns / over-reach.
I'm starting to get more and more curious as to what could potentially happen if the USA manages to have another election (doubtful at this point), and the dems actually manage to get back in.
The rightwing/trump has now 'normalised' sending in gestapo to blue states to terrorize them into obedience. They openly encourage war crimes internationally. They accept bribes with a shrug. They destroy any form of paper agreement the second the whim strikes. They have no reservations about witholding funding for things like disaster relief, based on tertiary political projects / initiatives.
Like realistically, internationally, one of the few ways I can see the USA trying to salvage what's left of their tattered reputation, would be to do the unthinkable: offer up their people for the international criminal court and allow people like Hegseth to be tried for war crimes. Internally, the steps they'd need to take to prevent a repeat "next time around with the republicans", would likely need to be equally harsh -- like impeaching/removing most of the supreme court, firing all of Trumps "loyalty" appointees and trying them, quickly, for treason. Holding ICE accountable as a terrorist organisation, leveraging terror tactics against American citizens - abolishing it entirely in the process. They'd need to hold all the epstein pedos accountable, and burn many of the rich oligarchs empires to the ground.
Those steps would almost certainly cause the 30-40% of americans who still support the republicans, to take up arms / protest more violently. When they lost an election, they tried an insurrection -- imagine what they'd do if you threw their fascist leaders in prison? But taking half-measures / apologising / forgiving the actions of the republicans during this term, would likely not be enough for the majority of non-republicans-- cause, as noted, it'll just repeat, and continue devolving.
Honestly not too sure where they go from here. It feels like it's going to be a steady, albeit somewhat drawn out, descent into civil war.
EDI is inextricably tied to racial demographics. Changing it to one that's purely related to financial economic demographics is a fundamental change to all those programs and their implementations, and would likely fail / face significant headwinds from established EDI proponents. There are also components of EDI such as representing different cultural backgrounds / upbringings, that wouldn't get captured in a purely economic implementation -- so I really don't think you'd be talking EDI anymore if you went that route.
Admittedly, EDI being so tied to race stuff is one reason there's such pushback. Many white men in the current generation, have been told for the past few decades during hiring interviews "You're cut because you identified as a white male", because there are too many old white men still at the company / government offices. While it may be true there are systemic hidden racist things going on, that interaction at a personal/individual level is pretty overtly discriminating against hiring the individual due to their race/gender... things we're all meant to be shielded from. And while there are legal recourses for the former 'hidden' things if you can prove them, even an overtly stated "No because you're a white man" is not considered racist/discriminatory by our govt. In fact our govt will straight up say that to people itself. First time I heard it from the feds was back around 2005ish -- so yes, we're literally talking about generations of men having gone through this, and when I speak to peers we all seem to have a story or two about it.
I'd argue that EDI isn't really about fairness between individuals, and never was really. A second or third generation asian trust-fund kid in Vancouver is given preferential hiring for government work, compared to a working class new immigrant with more qualifications from eastern europe, based solely on race/gender -- and it's been done that way intentionally for political reasons. Canada's population growth is almost entirely tied to immigration in categories that fall into the EDI spectrum -- our government even took pains to separate out each different sub-culture of asian recently, to ensure they'd all continue to qualify for extra benefits. By providing custom programs/benefits to those demographics, it improves progressive party chances at the polls, since those demographics are the only ones 'growing' in Canada by % -- locals tend to have far fewer kids, outside of one demographic group (FN). At this point, outside of a "Trump style Pierre Pollievre destroying an absurd amount of our social network", it's highly unlikely that any of these parties/groups would willingly give up their benefits, even when confronted by data/stats (statscan's come out and noted that White Men are one of the least educated groups at this point, but we still disadvantage them in terms of scholarships/bursaries etc). It's just not "in their best interests" as a demographic slice, and no 'progressive' party will be willing to make those sorts of compromises as it'd erode their voter base.
Besides, every political movement needs a bad guy. For right-wing facists, that bad guy is currently "lgbtq+, visible minorities, poor people", and for progressives it's generally "white men". Heck, I still remember AOC's pitch to white guys in one of her online campaign blurbs, being all "Vote in the best interests of the women in your lives" .... cause she tacitly recognised that the platform the dems had put out at the time had spent 0 effort tryin to appeal to the young male/white male demographic, while being chalk full of promises/commitments to every other demographic. Pretty sure their next round will be more of the same, paired with "look what trump did" guilting.
America isn't a country of laws anymore. The supreme court rubber stamps anything the administration wants to do, and the administration "declines requests from the judiciary". You've got administration officials that don't know what Habeas Corpus means, suspending Habeas Corpus. You've got a military openly/brazenly committing war crimes on the international scene (blowing up unverified "narco boats"/civilians). You've got a paramilitary gestapo-like force quite literally shooting citizens in the streets, your own government aiming to terrorize its people -- which's the whole point of the violent Ice operations targeting blue states.
But yeah, sure, Google and the big tech bros who have been supporting Trump's actions throughout all of this will totally draw the line at disclosing data.
The presence of outliers doesn't really change the general point.
Plus, from my pov at least, the choice to have kids isn't one that's actually 'made' until there's the realistic opportunity to have kids based on your socio-economic background and expectations -- obviously, not withstanding "happy accidents" etc. So if someone is educated / normalised in a north american / western democratic upbringing, with an expectation that you should be able to provide a basic quality of life for kids before having them, and readily available birth control to allow couples to dictate when it happens, then you first need to reach a point of financial freedom before you can make a 'real' choice on the subject. That typically comes down to a highly stable middle-class income/life style, which few achieve, and fewer achieve at young ages where historically the 'choice' to have kids gets declared.
To use myself as an example to elaborate: when I was young, I didn't have stability in my employment/income, though I did have one or two partners during that time who would've likely been willing to have kids if we had financial security (those two being women who were unemployed/hoping to be stay at home moms, which doesn't really 'work' unless the guy makes serious money -- need that dual income if you're just a middle class earner -- my lack of a high enough income to provide a middle class lifestyle for a group of dependents was the reason for one of those breakups even). Later on in life, now that I have more financial security, the women I've typically dated aren't interested in having kids -- most have established careers that they don't want to interrupt, or are divorcees who already have kids. I'm not someone comfortable/capable of dating much outside my age range, so as I near the age it becomes unsafe for women to have kids, that windows basically closes. As a guy, I don't feel like I've ever actually made a "choice" on the subject, as I've never been in a position where I could choose yes or no. Anyone who claims to be making a 'choice' based on gaps/deficiencies in their situation at that time, I'd argue, aren't making a choice purely on their desire to have kids or not.
Point of that schpiel in part being that, while I recognise outliers exist (and don't skew the initial general statement), I'd also wager that a number of people identifying as "choosing not to have kids", may be making that call not based on their desire to have children/a next generation, but rather on their personal circumstances excluding them from having that choice. It's a lot like someone saying "I choose not to buy a $10 million car".... you ain't really making a choice, unless you have $10 million sitting around that you could use on a luxury purchase.
I also think that as people in that category age, they tend to become more cynical towards sustainability and more inclined towards personal comforts. It's easier to say "I'm eco conscious!" as a 25-30 year old, who's still got time to 'make a choice' on kids, and bike to work/forgo a car etc -- than it is to be a 60 year old, where there's no choice left to make on kids, with arthritis, still tryin to avoid the car and instead use transit to cut emissions for commuting to work / getting groceries etc.
Combination of looking primarily at your own progeny, not on aggregate, and focusing on your next generation doing relatively better -- and of a significant uptick in people without kids. The second is a bit of an extension of that first one really, as its looking at their own situation and saying "Welp, no next generation anyhow, may aswell burn some fossil fuels and enjoy myself while I'm here".
That real home price chart shows a massive dip in house prices post 2022. A trend that's continued since.
What changed in 2023? Did Trump come into power and start trade war shit in 2023? No. Did housing supply suddenly skyrocket in 2023? No. Did banks/financial institutions have a sudden shift in policy in 2023? No.
What DID happen in 2023, is that the Federal Government put in the Immigration/foreign student caps to reduce the number of foreigners coming in to the country at a more sustainable level.
We need immigration, but the way the fed had handled it pre-2022, and given that it was the main variable that changed in that time period, and the result is clear on the charts that after that change prices started coming down aggressively....
*edit -- like here's a statista chart showing Canada's immigration from 2000-2025. Has a dip during covid, followed by a massive spike in immigration for 2021-2022. The price chart shows a similar dip and spike in that period. Then the immigration levels trail off post 2022, and the housing prices dip post 2022. Another spike up on both in 2015/2016, and a dip following in both.....
Canadian politicians make all these BULLSHIT overtures about opening up trade and building up ties to the EU.
But it's been a year, and we're still stuck with just Apple and Google for phone options, with nothing like the fairphone available.
Someone should really smack Carney upside the head on this one.
Meh, good luck to Bernie and similar minded Americans.
But as a Canadian, I ain't going to America again, and I'm doing everything I can to get off of American products.
Like the news in America is currently going on about Trump's comments about nationalizing elections, and how people are afraid he may try to meddle in their elections. As though he hadn't tried to lead a violent insurrection when he lost last time around. Most of them seem to want to watch it all burn, and are willing to follow a convicted felon, alleged child rapist, and "prolific" pant shitter to see it happen. They're willing to shrug off Musk's Nazi salutes, and the epstein stuff is just a side-show without any real accountability for anyone involved. They're openly attacking other western democracies and attempting to undermine THEIR OWN ALLIES national security, while making absolutely bullshit claims about their neighbours causing "national security emergencies" by having trade deficits. It's utterly fucking absurd.
It should be really simple. You don't attack your allies. But Americans are too stupid to even figure that one out it seems. So idk, I think Bernie may be dreaming of an America that doesn't exist anymore. But best of luck to em.
Maybe American autodealers should've made cheaper cars and not relied on monopoly-like status and government protections manipulating the market.
Also, maybe American's shouldn't have been such cunts to their neighbours. I mean, they throw a big Trump diaper at Canada and Mexico, start demanding all the car companies shut down plants and shit, wtf did they expect Canada and Mexico to do exactly?
So I lazily glanced around earlier to see if there was any data, couldn't find anything all that strong in terms of sample size etc. One psuedo-survey was going on about how common oral sex is in general, and noted that like, in the 60 (happy and willing to talk about their sex lives) couples between 18-45 they surveyed, 30% didn't do it, and those that did tended to do it like 5 times a week (or was that month? I cant recall the frame). The small subset of gay couples had a higher average but not by tooo much, at like 6 or 7. Straight women tended to go down more than straight men, though straight men claimed greater satisfaction/arousal from giving oral (women were at like 25% who enjoyed it, vs 52% of the men).
That was a younger contingent, non-married/long term, and a tiny sample in general, likely from one particular region of the world. Likely a region fairly open/accepting of all this stuff, given the topic of the survey. I'd bet the numbers skew WAY differently amongst boomers and genX even -- even many older millennials are sorta prudish on this front.
But even with those really wobbly data points, its not quite "for every woman that doesn't, there's one that does", it's more "for every 10 women, there're 3 that don't do it, 1-2 that enjoy it, and 5-6 that tolerate it now and then".