I know someone who is a 25 year old AMAB who chooses not to vote for personal reasons but believes AFAB people should have a right to their bodies. I have yet to dive in deeper with his stances on other topics like weapon violence, schools, etc. However, given the recent news in the US, as a 19 year old AFAB that voted for Harris, I feel odd. This AMAB also gets along with other AFAB's and most of them are his friends. He is also part of the LGBTQIA+ Community. It feels really weird that he doesn't vote for at least the bigger elections like the one we just had, but I also understand he has his right to not vote. This isn't to hate on him but I am curious what others may think. (There are other factors that I know personally about him, however I'd rather not "air out" his experiences that also make me feel as awkward as I do with his choice not to vote.)

I am also curious of opinions where as it's the flip side of AFAB's who decided not to vote for this presidential election yet seemingly have a blue political views.

I pose the question again but altered: What is worse? A red voter or someone who seemingly has a blue-like mindset but chooses not to vote?

1. Why does every debate feel more like a bullying among young people?

2. How does it make sense to give a president immunity if you have broken the law?

3. Why is there no 3rd party that holds a bit of both parties' values?

In my country we have 10 parties. The Right types, the Left types and some in the middle. But they don't act extreme towards each other but instead act professionals and even invites each other over for dinner.

Lol.. two Ahern's still claimin' on my family name like it's "their house" due to my blame by way of they're also "preceedingly" blaming me for what's "going to be" my response after 35 years of responses, (despite their claim of seeing all but not seeing my superior-to-them toddler thoughts at 3 years old,) to all their forcibly and willfully imposed doing of the wrong things they're promoting for which I'm responding; and why "that house" which is not mine and never has been is so ill-begotten, and ill-ordered with such disorderly and obscene statements opposed to what they're doing to me, "preceedingly".

Oh so psychics... what I wouldn't do you, if I knew the unwanted things I cause in reponse to the things I "preceedingly" do, if I were instead to be the one of having such "alleged" foreknowing eyes as is spoken you.

I supposed I'd being the ascent to perfection, being as I'd do different, and actually reap what I INTEND to sow, without the pretenious lies and self-compromise that comes with the fallibility of your inferior use of suchforeknowing eyes.

Anybody think those Aherns are guilty? And "that house" was always gluttonously guilty?

Perhaps jealous, being with such foreknowledge of the two Aherns, which obviously wanted what's mine, rather than our mere conjunction and union that have been with them; not the House which was never in union with me.

It is as if she Ahern herself is the seed, of such "a house" with Tammy.

What do you all think?? Is he propagating slander? Or looking for false security in fraudulent sympathy? Is his old way of such warring more deploring as something necessary? Or have not realized he's clinging in desperate dependance on the necks of "you guys"; (of "CivilPolitics" congregal)?

Good Night. And Good Morning.

Project 2025 is a list of proposals created by American conservatives, to reshape the U.S. These proposals are said to be enacted, should a Republican candidate win the election. There has been a lot of fear, criticism and controversy concerning this proposed agenda as many fear that it will create a far-right society.

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WARNING: LONG POST AHEAD!

Far too often, I come across people who make downright outlandish claims, but fail utterly to provide any sources to back up their claims. When confronted on their bullshit, they will often tell me that "google is free" and "it's not my job to educate you."

Honey, if you weren't interested in educating anybody, why are you posting a video on TikTok trying to tell people about this fact?!

Furthermore, the "Google is free" excuse isn't an excuse at all. It's a cop-out. After all, yes, it is free ... for BOTH OF US! So if I ask you for a source, it's literally just as easy for YOU to provide the source as it is for ME to quote-unquote "do my own research." Why should I have to sift through a haystack the size of the entire fucking Internet just in search of some random-ass needle that I'm not convinced is even there? Especially when you supposedly know exactly where the needle is could just show me the damn needle?

Even if you retort and say that you did in fact do your research, and it didn't support your opponent's arguments, they'll probably just spout of some cop-out defense like "Well, you obviously didn't do a very good job of googling it," as I alluded to earlier with the JK Rowling discussion. At that point, you literally just contradicted yourself. See, the "Google is free" argument purportedly states that my complete failure to do a simple google search is the only potential explanation for my alleged ignorance. But now, you're claiming that I have to actually double down and try a full spectrum of search terms, otherwise it doesn't count as googling it? Those two cannot both be true at the same time. At this point, you are ... quite literally ... making up the rules as you go along.

And even if the latter were the case all along, how do you know that YOU aren't the one who "didn't do a very good job of googling it?" Obviously, by arguing the latter, you are admitting that there is in fact a margin of error on these researches. So aside from your own ego, what honestly makes you think that it was me, not you, who overlooked something crucial? Surely you aren't that fucking vain.

Here's an example of this logic at work: Back when the JK Rowling transphobia controversy was still fresh and being talked about, I went onto r/asklbgt and asked for proof of what JK Rowling said that was so transphobic. I pointed out that the only tweets I ever saw that even remotely came in the orbit of transphobia was her insisting that biological sex was immutable and permanent. But she still insisted that trans people deserve rights and that she would even march alongside them in their fight for equality! The trans people on that subreddit told me that she then went on to continue to say truly horrific things, things that are undoubtedly transphobic. When I asked for them tos how me these tweets, they just told me "Google is free." When I told them that I did Google it, they just replied and said "Well you obviously didn't do a very good job of it!"

Honey, if you have personal memories of reading a tweet from Rowling that really did cross the line, it should only take you about 30 seconds to find it and send me the link! What, am I supposed to sift through her entire history of media posts, which encompasses literally hundreds of thousands of tweets, until I stumble upon the needle in the haystack that you (quite vulgarly) insist is there but adamantly refuse to show me? The excuse of "it's not my job to educate you" can only take you so far before it becomes an excuse for you to simply not admit that you're just making it all up.

Once in a blue moon, they might defer you to a source, only to make it an absolutely huge source, and then expect you to sit through the entire thing to find the golden needle that they're talking about. For example, regarding the murder of George Floyd, some police apologists, rather than insisting that I simply "do my research," deferred me to the full, uncut release of Officer Kueng's bodycam footage, which you can find here: https://youtu.be/0gQYMBALDXc I was then expected to watch literally every single second of this hour-and-five-minute video. If I merely did that, they said, I would suddenly understand Chauvin's position.

Seriously? Why can't you just point me to the timestamps where the important stuff happens? For example, at timestamp 3:30, all I can see are up close shots of one officer's forearm hair! Surely, you don't think that me seeing that clip - where absolutely nothing interesting whatsoever went down - is somehow indespensible to me getting the quote-unquote "full picture," do you? Seriously, can't you just give me some timestamps of all the highlights?

Well no, you can't do that, because if you did, and I watched those highlights and still wasn't persuaded to your side, you won't be able to fall back on the excuse that I "didn't watch enough!" Of course, even if I watch the whole thing, you'll still say I must not have been paying very close attention!

Put simply, people who don't give their sources are effectively admitting that they're just pulling it out of their ass.

This is why I believe people should be required to provide their sources as a matter of course. It not only makes you infinitely more credible, but it also significantly lessens the likelihood that you'll say something untrue, even by accident! For example, at 54:58 - 58:07 of this video ... https://youtu.be/XClYooOVYrE?t=3298 ... you can see that I was about to make a false statement of fact, but managed to avoid doing so. Why? Because I fact-checked first!

If you are required to provide sources in the first instance, that effectively requires you to fact check everything, even things that you are 100% certain of the factual accuracy of. While this would merely reaffirm your preexisting beliefs in 99% of cases, even the 1% of cases where your search for an obligatory source to include may force you to accept that you don't actually have any proof of this after all is still worth it. After all, considering how much content gets posted online in this day and age, even 1% of that still constitutes a large amount of misinformation that gets prevented.

In addition, they should be required to provide PRIMARY sources. This would ensure that people don't make false citations. A big example can be found at 0:11 - 3:06 https://youtu.be/1q1qp4ioknI?t=11. That guy mentions a commonly-cited study that was NEVER PUBLISHED, and other scientists who attempted the experiment were unable to replicate the results (which makes it significantly unscientific). People are citing a second-hand source when they do this. The earliest you can trace it back to is one study that mentions this study, but mentions that it is only "submitted for publication," not that it's actually published.

Of course, we can always just explain that to people when they make that mistake. However, (A) once you've given that exact same explanation over a hundred times, it gets really tedious really fast, and (B) it very rarely succeeds in converting people to their side.

However, if people simply HAD to provide primary sources in the first instance, no matter how confident they personally were in the accuracy of what they were reporting, simply because fuck you primary sources are just required, it would significantly cut back on these kinds of (admittedly good faith) errors.

And even then, people should be required to give specific excerpts from these sources, unless they're already so small that simply citing the entire source is tantamount to citing one specific fact, or unless the beginning of the source puts the main point in a nice little, easily consumable graph or chart, with elaborations later on. This would prevent people from engaging in the bad faith mentioned earlier regarding watching the entirety of the bodycam footage, even clips where the view is so obstructed that we have absolutely no way of verifying what really happened.

Last but not least, anyone who is made aware of rebuttal arguments should have to incorporate those rebuttals moving forward. This one is tricky, since it's not a foregone conclusion that any one user will subjectively be aware of every conceivable rebuttal argument. But if you have screenshot proof that you posted a comment bringing a rebuttal argument to their attention, or sent them a DM or private email stating as much, they should be required to rebut the rebuttal going forward if they are to still maintain their overall stance on the issue.

Adopting this policy would make discussions of polarizing issues so, soooooo much more amicable and productive.

There was another discussion that came up recently about taxes and the wealthy. In general, people with a lot of wealth, pay little in taxes. Oftentimes, they are not the 1% or .1% of the country. Income taxes affect income, not wealth. Income taxes also seem especially poorly positioned to hit wealthy people. Raising taxes on those that make the most often ends up raising taxes on doctors and lawyers.

There are lots of ways in which a person with a lot of assets can avoid high taxes. One way is to take out a line of credit and only pay it off using long term capital gains. This allows someone to buy something for a lot of money, but only ever pay 15% tax on their money with no FICA taxes. In recent years, adding in the interest would not be a big deal at all. There are also a lot of write-offs that people with pass-through business income can use, especially after the recent Trump tax law changes.

In response to this, there has been an idea put out there about taxing the assets of the very wealthy. This seems like it is not going to go anywhere, and is very unpopular.

I had a thought though...

What if for those people with assets above $100 million, all income (realized gains for many people) is taxed at the highest income bracket? This would take the assets into account for the incredibly wealthy and attempt to stop them from dodging paying taxes.

What do people think of that?

There is a lot of news about the laws that have been passed and are being passed after the Dobbs decision. They are often very emotional stories. The stories don't seem especially conducive to a civil discussion. What do people think would be a well designed law for abortion post Dobbs?

Personally, I like the Roe framework, and I wish we could move back to that. The current path we are going down has two sets of states...one with no right to abortion and the other to some right to abortion. This has lead to some questionable medical outcomes in the short term.

We have been locked at 9 Justices for a very long time. In 1869, the number of 9 was decided, and it has stuck. There have been some stresses on it, but it has still remained intact. Ignoring court packing or any discussion of it, what do people think is the correct number of Justices?

Until 1866, the number of SCOTUS Justices aligned closely with the number of Judicial Circuits. After 1869, we have kept 9. We now have 13 Judicial Circuits.

I believe there should be one Justice per Judicial Circuit. This would increase us to 13 Justices and put one Justice over each Circuit. Right now, multiple Justices sit over two Circuits.

Beyond that, I would like for all Judicial Decisions to require a 2 vote margin to overturn or put in place a lower court decision. If the decision isn't made by a 2 vote margin, the lower court decision would stand and the precedent would only be binding on that circuit. If the number of Justices are even, this would be the smallest majority. If they are not, it would be bigger. Because of this, I would rather we try to maintain an even number. If we wanted to try to impose this just by the size of the court, I would have the Chief Justice only sit over a Circuit, if there are an even number of Circuits. I believe this could also be passed by Congressional law, to change the working of the court.

So, the Supreme Court has seen a great expansion of religious exemptions and religious allowances in the last few years. The idea is that for a sincerely held religious belief, there should be exceptions made. At what point, do we hold those that have those sincerely held religious beliefs when it comes to one thing to apply to other things...for instance, the objection to vaccines would actually remove much of modern medicine. If we take them at their word, should this remove access to other medicines?

How can we allow for religious objections, when they can be used for only those things that the person wants, but aren't binding in places they don't want? How can we allow religious objections that are only a positive, but never a negative?

In Smith, Scalia actually addressed the issue with where we are going...

"The "compelling government interest" requirement seems benign, because it is familiar from other fields. But using it as the standard that must be met before the government may accord different treatment on the basis of race, see, e.g., Palmore v. Sidoti, or before the government may regulate the content of speech, see, e.g., Sable Communications of California v. FCC, is not remotely comparable to using it for the purpose asserted here. What it produces in those other fields -- equality of treatment, and an unrestricted flow of contending speech -- are constitutional norms; what it would produce here -- a private right to ignore generally applicable laws -- is a constitutional anomaly. ....The rule respondents favor would open the prospect of constitutionally required religious exemptions from civic obligations of almost every conceivable kind -- ranging from compulsory military service to the payment of taxes to health and safety regulation such as manslaughter and child neglect laws, compulsory vaccination laws, drug laws, and traffic laws; to social welfare legislation such as minimum wage laws, child labor laws, animal cruelty laws, environmental protection laws, and laws providing for equality of opportunity for the races."

Smith struck a good balance, but there are now at least five members on the Supreme Court that want it removed.

What new balance can we find? Should we require people to register their beliefs? Register with a religion, that has beliefs? Constrain them, if they use them?