The Social Security Trust Fund does not exist. It is an accounting fiction. When Social Security was passed, it came with a tax increase to offset the increased spending. For decades, the tax increase was greater than the spending increase, so the government spent the difference on other stuff; but made a note that Social Security had a surplus. However, since 2010, this flipped and the cost of Social Security has exceeded the income of its associated tax. The bean counters would the flip happened in 2021, but that is because they believe in the fiction of the Social Security Trust Fund, so that interest on the Trust Fund counts as income to Social Security, despite the fact that said interest is paid by the federal government.

So, why does this accounting fiction called the Social Security Trust Fund matter? Because it has the force of law. Under current US law, Social Security is exempt from the the typical budgetting rules. As long as the bean counters would say the Trust Fund has a positive balance, Social Security is authorized to increase it’s budget to meet it’s obligations. In contrast, most Federal programs get their budgets increased as part of the yearly budget (or a continuing resolution when Congress can’t pass a budget. Or they just close when Congress can’t pass a CR).

So, what happens when the trust fund runs out?

Option 1, Congress does not authorize continued spending at current levels. This is typically known as a spending cut. But because it is triggered by an existing law and Republicans have spent decades playing up the trust fund, they can act like this cut was a force of nature, and not them actively deciding to cut it in the congressional budget.

Option 2, Congress funds social security just like it funds everything else, through an appropriations bill. SS keeps operating, and becomes another political football in the annual budget fight

Option 3, Congress picks some way to tell the bean counters that the social security trust fund is still positive. Social security keeps operating at current lol levels, and remains exempt from the normal appropriations process.

So, what is all this talk about removing the cap on the Social Security payroll tax? If we ignore all the accounting trickery, that is about taking a regressive income tax payed by workers earning less that $168,600/year and turning it into a flat tax. Nothing whatsoever to do with social security, but I agree that a flat tax is better than a regressive tax. Still not as good as a progressive tax, which is the only thing that would have been politically viable but for the fiction that this tax is at all related to Social Security benefits (and their associated limit).

Social Security isn’t even the only federal program to have this issue. Our highway system is payed for by the Highway Trust Fund, which is funded by a tax on gasoline. This fund has been insolvent since 2008, so Congress just included highway funding in their appropriations bills and payed for the difference like they pay for most Federal programs.

The monthly payout of social security is based on how much you earned while you were working, which is roughly correlated with how much you payed in [0]. However, the monthly payment has a hard cap. No matter how much you earned while working, SS will not pay you more than someone who averaged $168,600/year. Even below that cap, there is a progressive structure, where those with a lower income see a larger marginal benefit.

[0] not exactly, as it only looks at you inflation adjusted best 35 years

I have very course facial hair and switching to women’s razors pretty much solved my post-shave irritation problem. In order of quality for my face it goes: men’s disposable razor << safty razor < women’s disposable razor.

Because tensions between Hezbollah and Israel have been steadily rising since October 7th because of Hzebollah’s objection to how Israel is acting in Gaza. To be clear, prior to October 7th, tensions were already high enough that they would regularly lob bombs at each other. Today’s “escalated” tensions include northern Israel being evacuated due to threats from Hezbolla’s rocket attacks.

At this point, it is clear that the options available to Israel are to either withdraw from Gaza and hope Hezbolla stands down, or end up in a full war with Hezbolla. Historians will say that the war with Hezbolla started months ago, and this was just one attack among many.

But they didn’t because materials that explode like that simply aren’t used as batteries.

Further, software is not magic. In consumer electronics basic power management is done entirely by hardware. A hack cannot short out the battery, because the circuit to do that simply doesn’t exist. Maybe the hack could cause enough of a sustained power draw to overheat the battery and trigger a failure eventually, but that would still look quite different from what we saw.

Its not symbolism.

The reason people view Dax as a trans is that they were at times male and at times female. That is not symbolic of being trans, it is just being trans.

However, despite exploring what it means to be a trill passing through generations of hosts, the changing gender aspect of it never comes up. If Kurzon was a women, I doubt we would be talking about Dax as a trans stand-in, but I can’t think of a single plot point or character development that would meaningfully change.

Normally I’m a believer in death of the author, so I won’t be offended if anyone wants to completly ignore thus section, but in the DS9 documentary, they have a section on LGBT representation, and their big example for it was Jadzia. However, that was not for being trans, it was for being in a gay relationship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ya8WTQc93yI&t=5467s

Don’t, Jadzia clearly appreciated it.

Trill’s relationships to their past hosts is complicated and never fully explored, but it is clearly established that the distance they create between their current host’s life and that of their past host is something that is enforced apon them by broader trill society.

Both Kurzon and Jadzia were, at least at times, clearly unhappy at the extent to which they had to distance themselves from their past life.

https://youtu.be/Qu-bP5367Yo?si=YNBFC_IUo7o7FpCd

The thing is, Trill are not trans. Dax didn’t go from being a man to a woman. Kurzon was always a man and Jadzia was always a women. And DS9 actually took this concept seriously on its own terms.

I can’t guarantee that none of those drivers were actually part of Hamas

We need to get passed the idea that the mere presence of a Hamas member justifies all military action. Assuming it is true, what were those Hamas members doing?

Throwing away the vaccines to use the marked car for transporting weapons and fighters? Valid military target (and a war crime)

Assisting in distributing polio vaccines? Not a valid target.

The President’s role is largely ceremonial. The President consults party leaders to determine who they would support, then nominates that person. The nominee must then form a coalition that can get support from a majority of the Knesset.

How do you think intelligence agencies work? There is a reason why background investigations for security clearences focus so much on “is there anything you can be blackmailed with”

It was not compulsory for Ben Gvir, who was excused from compulsory service because the IDF at the tine thought he was too extreme. He has since been convicted of terrorism, and currently serves as Israel’s minister of defense.

The problem with Israel is that its leader was a bit too vile. About half of the elected knesset refused to form a coalition government with Netenyahu, resulting in years of failing to form a governing coalition.

Eventually, the path out of the stalemate ended up being forming a coalition with far right members of the knesset that had previously been political pariahs; including appointing a convicted terrorist to the role of minister of national security.

Prior to October 7, this was an extremely tenous political position. The coalition was hanging on by a thread. The attempted judicial coup reform was stopped by massive public backlash. And the politian whose divisiveness was central to the political crises that enabled the far right to join the coalition was in the middle of defending himself in a criminal trial. However, when a crisis like October 7 happens, you are stuck with the leaders you have. And Israeli leadership at the time was possibly the worst in the history of the country for handling it (unless you agree with their manifest destiny version of Zionism, in which case I think they are doing quite well).

When you are looking at someone down the scope of a gun, you do not see a kidnapper, or a mudered. You see a person. That is not a moral judgment. It is a deep instinctual inpulse we have, enhanced by a lifetime of socialization, against killing people. Half of the point of military training is getting people to overcome tharmt base instinct.

As the commanders say, these soldiers have not had adequate training.

We are talking about US politics here, so I’m assuming the focus is what the US has been doing.

Stop funding and supplying arms to Israel.

Like the $20 billion we approved earlier this month (in direct violation of the foreign assistance act)

recognize Palestine as a state

We simply do not do this. Then again we don’t recognize Taiwan either.

Back ICJ arrest ruling for Netenyahu

The US has been opposed to this warrent, and there is talk of sanctioning the ICJ over it.

Should anyone ever arrest any Israeli official pursuant to an ICJ ruling, there is standing US law (American Service-Members’ Protection Act, otherwise known as the invade the Hague act) authorizing the President to use full military force to secure their release [0]

Urge the UN to sanction Israel

The US is routinely the sole veto on every major UN vote on Israel.

[0] This isn’t Israel specific. It us authorized for bassically any ally that is not an ICJ member.

Let me share a passage from the dissent in a Supreme court case known as Plessy v Furguson. The majority of the court had just ruled that it was OK to force blacks to use seperate railcars from whites. Not only that, but it was OK for for the government to force railway companies to have such a rule. With this backdrop Justice Harlan spoke in dissent, arguing for true equality under the law. In the screed for justice, he wrote:

There is a race so different from our own that we do not permit those belonging to it to become citizens of the United States. Persons belonging to it are, with few exceptions, absolutely excluded from our country. I allude to the Chinese race. But, by the statute in question, a Chinaman can ride in the same passenger coach with white citizens of the United States, while citizens of the black race in Louisiana, many of whom, perhaps, risked their lives for the preservation of the Union, who are entitled, by law, to participate in the political control of the State and nation, who are not excluded, by law or by reason of their race, from public stations of any kind, and who have all the legal rights that belong to white citizens, are yet declared to be criminals, liable to imprisonment, if they ride in a public coach occupied by citizens of the white race.

Thats right folks. There was a period of us history where even your pro equality arguments were steeped in racism

More to the point. Even if you (for some reason) set asside the hole issue of slavery; there is still the whole Jim Crow era, where we litterally codified rasism into law.

I can’t see how option 3 happens. Different states have ruled in different ways; and this is a very important mattered. I can’t imagine any Supreme Court declining to hear this case; let alone a Supreme Court that is as obsessed with judicial supremecy as this one is.

In the days after after 10/7, we heard Israeli diplomats talk about how it was their 9/11. On the one hand, I get the comparison and how it explains the shock 10/7 has had on the Israeli phsyce. On the other hand, I get the 9/11 comparison and how it explains the emotional response of launching an impossible military canpaign that will result in a generation defining 20 year quagmire.

Seriously. Any time someone uses a 9/11 comparison to justify Israel’s response, the immediate followup should be “how did the American response work out”?

It depends on how the blur is done. A lot of the simple blurring teqniques have publicly available tools for reversing. If you need to hide information by blurring, make sure the blur you are using was designed with that in mind (as opposed to being an artsy feature)

Those services are scams. At least in my state, the court’s website includes a boilerplate form to fill out free of charge.

Having said that, even if there is no dispute, if you have sizable co-mingled assets/liabilities (such as a house and mortgage, effectively comingled retirement savings, etc), you should probably still get professional help even if you agree in principle how to divide them.

Admit fault … in a private meating with the parties offended by the faulty statement. Will he give a national speach walking back the statement he made in a national speach?

This was not a mis speak. This was not a mistake. Biden made a political calculation for how to talk about the conflict. He is trying to appease both sides of the issue by changing his position depending on who he is talking to.