I’m not sure why this is a better argument against a 50 year mortgage than against 15 or 30 year mortgages. The author does say that 50 years gives more opportunities to refinance, but many people who buy homes don’t intend to live there 50, 30, or even 15 years. For these people, the only thing that matters is the monthly payment and the choice of a lower payment but with more of that payment going towards interest can be a rational one.
he has no control over his party
He can’t actually order them to do anything. One might argue that if he was a better leader, he could have persuaded them to stick with the plan longer, but maybe he had already done that weeks ago and this is the longest that anyone could have persuaded them to hold out. It is the longest shutdown ever, after all…
The random sample survey of 604 D.C. residents was taken between August 14 and 17 shortly after Trump signed the executive order. It indicates some 65 percent of residents do not believe the presence of FBI agents and uniformed National Guard troops from an increasing number of states makes the city safer.
Eight of 10 residents surveyed oppose Trump’s executive order to federalize law enforcement in the city. Seven in 10 oppose it “strongly.”
I’m not sure why they thought a DC jury would ever convict, given that even a DC grand jury (which hears only the prosecutor’s side) didn’t indict.
Things intended to be temporary often end up permanent, especially when it is in the interest of the party in power to make them permanent (and gerrymandering is always in the interest of the party in power, because that’s the party that does the gerrymandering).
With that said, the intent to revert this gerrymandering is the intent to rebuild the town, but even if the town will be rebuilt someday, it’s still being destroyed now. California Republicans have a right to representation, and the Democrats are deliberately depriving them of that right because of something that totally different people in Texas are doing.
I’ll extend the war metaphor: sometimes military necessity dictates a course of action that will cause civilian casualties, but even then we should still acknowledge that there are civilian casualties and that that’s bad.
I think you’re probably right, in the sense that not doing this would probably be even worse, but we’re destroying the town to save it, as the saying goes. Win or lose, there won’t be much left of a very important norm.
Because disenfranchising people is the solution to disenfranchising people. But who knows - this may be the least bad option.
The article seems to be saying that the VA is no longer classifying breast cancer in men as a “reproductive organ” cancer, and therefore it’s no longer eligible for automatic coverage in some contexts the way that other cancers of the reproductive system are. I’m not sure why this is an issue, because I’ve never heard of any ideological claims about male breasts which the Trump administration might wish to oppose.
He married her and he wants her to convert, but there’s no reason to think that he married her for the purpose of converting her.
So people want him to (1) believe that the Catholic faith is essential for eternal salvation but also (2) not care whether or not his wife is Catholic? That wouldn’t make any sense. Of course any Catholic who cares about his loved ones is going to hope that they convert to Catholicism.
These tax savings come at the cost of having to live off of a small fraction of one’s net worth. That provides a social benefit - a fortune that isn’t being spent is like a loan to society. Consider, for example, a person with two hundred million dollars of assets. He has the option of selling those assets, paying a tax of, say, eighty million dollars, and then buying a hundred and twenty million dollars of stuff right now. He also has the option of spending ten million dollars per year tax free forever. The latter is worth incentivising - maybe it’s not worth incentivising to the extent that it is right now, but an essay about tax policy which makes no mention of that is incomplete.
Plus, if unrealized gains on American assets are taxed, that reduces the value of American assets relative to foreign assets in jurisdictions where unrealized gains are not taxed. That might cause problems which this essay also omits.
It’s just two House Republicans, at least so far. Just par for the course of Republicans proposing things like this.
I don’t know if Tolkien’s notes support this, but I always assumed that Treebeard’s Entish name was something completely unpronounceable for anyone who isn’t an ent, and “Treebeard” was a nickname that he picked for himself. Maybe because he finds it funny that other species think he looks like a tree. (I’m sure that ents look clearly different from trees to other ents.)
Edit: he says so himself.
Hrum, now, well, I am an Ent, or that’s what they call me. Yes, Ent is the word. The Ent, I am, you might say, in your manner of speaking. Fangorn is my name according to some, Treebeard others make it. Treebeard will do.
I don’t get it. Obviously hobgoblins don’t think hobgoblins are ugly.
I wouldn’t say that Trump is interested in being a theocrat - his movement pays lip service to Christianity as part of its nostalgic fantasy of America the way that it used to be, but the actual Christian conservative movement has been sidelined within the Republican party since 2016 (if not earlier). Trump and his inner circle care about Christianity only to the extent that it is a label that divides “us” from “them”.
That’s true, and I think that Trump is actually not a Catholic theologian but rather that he is expressing the view, common among cultural Christians today, that God weighs a person’s good and bad deeds against each other. There’s still the hope for divine forgiveness in this view, but the abandonment of the idea of unearned grace is contrary to the teachings of every Christian denomination, as far as I know.
Confession is not permanent, in the sense that it does not absolve the penitent of future sin. That’s one reason why last rites are important.
CANON XVI.-If any one saith, that he will for certain, of an absolute and infallible certainty, have that great gift of perseverance unto the end,-unless he have learned this by special revelation; let him be anathema.
Catholics consider the idea that any living person can be sure of getting into heaven a heresy. Trump isn’t Catholic but he’s still not saying anything theologically controversial here.
Reid’s longtime partner, Alonzo Mable, is Black.
If they’re into race play, that’s weird but none of our business. Judge not lest ye be judged for the porn that you like.
Our silence will not protect us.
I’m not sure why a man who wrote an essay about how silence (and later emigrating) did protect people in Russia would end that essay with this line. As for why people in Silicon Valley might have the attitude he criticizes - maybe they feel the way that I do? After Trump was elected the first time, I thought the country had made a terrible mistake. After Trump was elected the second time, I think the country knowingly voted for what it wanted - democracy in action. There is still a large minority of Americans who do not deserve what is going to happen, and fighting on their behalf is commendable but I wouldn’t say that it is morally obligatory or a good idea in practice.
My favorite part of this is that the redistricting would have had no problems in court if the Republicans had simply not talked about their race-related motives in public.
With that said, I don’t have high hopes for the Supreme Court here.