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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 17th, 2023

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  • Just in the spirit of pedantry, its not really true to say that the US system predated most parliaments.

    Like, maybe its technically true now due to the expansion of democratic and republic systems in the post-colonial era, but parliaments in Western Europe were plentiful and long-established in 1776.

    The first American government was notable in that is was completely divorced from a hereditary Monarch, and I don’t wanna downplay that, but a system in which a representitive body of land-owners is elected by an enfranchised class to decide policy and even pass legislation existed in, for example, Iceland since the 10th Century, Catalonia since the 12th, England since the 13th. It was arguably the standard during the enlightenment in Europe.

    My two cents, the US system does seem to be remarkably inflexible. I guess it’s complicated to unpack why exactly, but a combination of myth-making, bad-faith originalists, and the sheer size of the country probably all play a part in it


  • It’s very debatable if trump’s EO would have capped the price of Insulin or Epipens in a meaningful way - and its factually wrong that it was the same cap and legislation that Biden put into place.

    Trump’s EO meant that Federally Qualified Health Centers would have to offer Insulin and Epinephrine to “Low Income Individuals” without health insurance "at the discounted price paid by the FQHC grantee or sub-grantee under the 340B Prescription Drug Program” plus a “minimal” fee.

    From your own link, FQHCs already had a requirement to not charge anything to people in poverty, so “If ‘low income’ is defined as under 100% of poverty, this may not really change anything. Even if the income level is set somewhat higher, most patients likely would still have been protected by the sliding fee scale without this change”.

    This link, like your others, is from 2020. I don’t know how “low income” would actually have been defined since it wasn’t scheduled to come into place until Jan 22nd - during Biden’s administration.

    It’s true that Biden froze this - as others have mentioned in this thread, he put a 60 day freeze on all pending legislature when taking office, which is a fairly standard practice.

    Biden’s own Insulin cap was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, and capped the price of Insulin to $35 monthly for products covered by Medicare D.

    So yeah I concede that it’s an oversimplification to say that Trump did nothing and Biden did everything, but… the Insulin cap is Biden’s legislation. Trump did not cap Insulin or Epipen prices during his 4 years in office.


  • The last time I was in Berlin, the year before Covid, they had set ups in some of the parks which were like painted lines and ‘boxes’ on the floor

    Weed dealers were allowed to sell within these lines (probably not actually legally, but with an understanding that the police would leave them be? Not sure of the specific rules) but not outside of them

    This meant that people who weren’t interested wouldnt have their park time marred by shady people coming up and trying to sell them drugs, and people who were interested could just go to one of the dealers in the lines

    It was just a better, safer way of doing things. Everybody won.

    Actual legalisation is the next step of course. Criminalisation of something as minor of weed just creates crime and danger, it doesnt reduce it. So this is good news


  • No sitting president has ever lost their party’s primary

    LBJ dropped out of his party’s primary, and although it was far too soon to say if he would have lost, he faced strong opposition in New-Politic anti-war candidates Kennedy and McCarthy. He is on record as worrying about the primary and it doubtless played a big part of his dropping out

    Kennedy of course got shot, and the more conservative Humphrey ended up with the nomination over McCarthy (or late entry McGovern), sparking riots at the DNC. The situations and systems were quite different, but i think there’s some parallels with Biden/Clinton vs Bernie there

    I think Truman also dropped out rather than fight a tough primary, but i don’t know so much about that


  • This just isnt true. I’m not saying this to defend Israel and their actions in Gaza - its just really important to not get swept up in falsehoods, particularly at a time when legitimate criticism of Israel is being portrayed as antisemitic.

    There are allegations that Israel administered a birth control drug - which has to be readministered every three months - to Ethiopian immigrants without informed consent. The investigation into this was flawed, but there is literally no evidence to suggest that anyone was forced or coerced into taking this.

    What does seem plausible and even likely based on the facts is that doctors often made little or no effort to overcome language and cultural barriers and make sure that consent was fully informed and patients were completely aware of the effects of the procedure.

    This is definitely an issue in and of itself, and is a level of societal racism. But what it is not, is ideoligical forcible sterilization.

    Further, when you say ‘Ethiopian Jewish women tried to invoke the Law of Return’ the implication is that Israel was really against Ethiopian immigration. In reality, the Israeli government worked with the US to actively enable this - in 1984 Israeli covert forces worked to evacuate the Beta Israel community from Sudan to Israel during the civil war there (this is known as Operation Moses).

    Basically, there is so so much to legitimately criticise the Israeli government for right now. Repeating misinformation like this just straight up doesn’t help.




  • And the antichrist characteristics they describe are a selection of the ones he fits, without including those he doesn’t. He hasn’t (pretended to) come back from the dead, and isn’t connected obviously to the number 666, for example.

    The article actually specifically mentions both coming back from the dead (Covid) and 666 (Kushner).

    Dont get me wrong, I’m not saying they aren’t tenuous and I’m 100% not saying he is the literal antichrist. But its not accurate to say they dont include that stuff