Who told you that your vote has to be based on morals and not practicality? It’s just a vote, you’re not swearing allegiance to them or agreeing with their every stance. It’s really not that complicated.
If you want to bring morals in, is it moral that women are literally dying because SCOTUS allowed states to deny women healthcare? Is deporting 11 million people moral? Seems like you get a lot of immorality when you let fundamentally immoral people have power.
What does this even mean? What TV shows are you even talking about? Indiana is a US state.
I’m too lazy to look this up, but I believe death rates were higher out of cities vs in cities. Half the reason hospitals were packed in cities is because rural people went where the ventilators were. Everywhere had all the covid waves, they just hit cities first.
Elderly tend to be more R, and D folks were more likely to mask and vaccinate. But elderly vaccinated pretty well across the board and the divide was bigger in the young. Lots of factors, but my money is on D making out slightly better as a broad cohort. Tragic all around though.
Ok I did some searching and excess mortality points to higher rural impact, but official cause of death data is mixed (too lazy to link though).
Not sure who’s downvoting you, you’re absolutely correct. Infrastructure for rural, and even suburban areas isn’t even close to being paid for by the people living there. I thought this was common knowledge. It should be obvious that 5 families living in a single large building require significantly fewer resources than 5 individual homes 5 miles apart.
I’m not sure what your comparing here, but there are constant budget shortfalls for rural paving in my state. It’s not cheap. There’s also the cost to build the roads (and run electric, phone, internet, etc). There’s a reason we needed a bunch of subsidies to add services to rural (and even suburban) places. I think we owe it to everyone in our society to provide basic services, but we don’t have to pretend it isn’t expensive to do so.
https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/1/9/the-real-reason-your-city-has-no-money
Unless the plan is something more like Terminator. If you “unshackle” AI and give them a mandate to get CO2 back to 250 ppm things are going to get real.
That’s entirely the wrong denominator for this comparison. IRS doesn’t write the budget nor do they write tax law, they just collect.
You’re right, 50k is the same as 30k, a 5ft tall hood is the same as 2.5ft, 40 mpg is the same as 20 mpg, and getting hit by a pickup is the same as a crosstrek. Look I ride a cargo bike most of the time and am very much fuckcars, but pretending like every since vehicle that isn’t a sedan is equally dangerous and polluting isn’t helpful.
So you’re saying that millions of fragile men are bullied into buying full size trucks and they have no agency whatsoever into their purchase? This is no different than exposing your kids to second hands smoke because you are afraid if you don’t smoke you won’t look cool. I seriously don’t understand why we’re making excuses and coddling these weak egos instead of actually supporting the victims of the violence these people inflict on other road users. I’m more than happy to criticize the regulatory bodies and the manufacturers for failing society as well, but that doesn’t mean the purchasers that make this all possible are innocent. It’s a rotten subculture that needs to be called out at all levels.
There’s a world of difference in pedestrian safety between a RAV4 and a Suburban or F150. Just because they call an e.g. CX30 a crossover doesn’t mean it’s as dangerous as a full size pickup truck. Your affordability argument doesn’t even make any sense - smaller vehicles are cheaper than larger vehicles. If affordability is such an issue why don’t we see more crosstreks? The mental gymnastics to avoid blaming a bunch of fragile dudes for buying ridiculously pickup trucks is absurd.
Americans don’t have the choice not to buy gigantic pickup trucks and SUVs? Gimme a break. I have never bought one, it’s not some kind of one weird trick thing, you just literally don’t fucking buy them and buy something smaller and cheaper instead.
The extra votes in PA beyond the magical single winning vote are meaningless too by that logic. And there are paths to victory for both candidates that don’t involve PA, so you don’t really know who got to cast the special winning vote until afterwards. The “swing states” only exist because of states like CA that vote more predictably. The EC is dogshit because of the disproportionate voting power and because the winner takes all at the state level (usually), not because of some post hoc analysis.
Pennsylvania is a large state, a vote there is barely worth more than a vote in California.
https://medium.com/practical-coding/whats-my-vote-worth-3ca2585b5d51
My point isn’t to defend the guy, it’s to put some context around the fact that half the Senate is even worse, so this is a disproportionate amount of villification. Let’s say he had an R next to his name, we then have a R majority leader and the whole Senate grinds to a halt. Then will you magically give him a pass because now being an asswipe is fully expected of him? That’s the kid gloves treatment you’re giving to the other 50 GOP senators that are the actual problem.
He’s not the Senate Majority Leader and doesn’t control what comes to a vote. I just don’t see the point of vilifying a centrist when there are 50 other lunatics that vote against progress 100% of the time. Manchin voted for all the judges, infra, chips, IRA, all the budget stuff, etc. Lets focus on the real problem - way too many GOP senators.
Manchin is a moderate that voted with Biden 88% of the time. You’ll be happy he’s not running for reelection and will be replaced with a worse R, so yay I guess? He’s the best you’ll get from WV anytime soon.
https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/joe-manchin/
The problem is the roads are already there. Like sure we could redevelop the entire area over decades but we could also add some speed bumps like next week while we get around to the hard work.
Exactly. What I don’t understand is how everyone knows this, but somehow the stock is still high. Somehow Elon is singlehandedly keeping the stock up while doing literally nothing to help the company, make it make sense.
Well lucky for us they have the R2/R3(X) in the pipeline. Can’t come soon enough though, 2026 for the R2 seems like a lifetime away.
How exactly does not voting/3rd party voting create any justice in your opinion? Opting out of our limited and imperfect democracy doesn’t magically create justice, it silences your own voice. Nobody here hates you, and broadly speaking the Democrats don’t hate you either. I can’t say the same for the cult of Trump. If you truly have a strong sense of justice, wouldn’t you want to at a bare minimum try to prevent am actual criminal from gaining power?