…That does not, in fact, make it any better.

That makes it even more terrorism.

People that are registered Republicans, consistently vote Republican, or hold Republican views make up a little under half of the overall population, current population in the US is around 340M (last time I checked, it’s been a minute), so 140M is a fairly conservative (ha!) guess at how many people would more-or-less be Republican, or lean Republican.

Oh, and the flip side of that is that there are a larger number of people that are registered as Democratic voters, consistently vote Democratic, or tend to lean Democratic in their views, even if they don’t vote/don’t vote consistently.

I’m in the US, and I can’t. I fucked my shoulder (probably a labral tear; still waiting on the MRI results), and it was two weeks to get in to see someone. If I’m actively dying from something, I would need to go to an ER or an urgent care center of some kind.

…It’s not even close to the majority of people in the GOP. It’s not even a particularly large minority

Jesus fucking christ.

Even if it was 100 people every single day that were being, caught, arrested, or convicted for CSAM or sexual misconduct of some kind with a minor, and every single one of them was in the GOP, that’s still 365,000 out of about 140,000,000, which is .2%, on an annual basis. Two tenths of one percent is about fifty percent away from being a majority.

Not a war crime; terrorism. Hezbollah is a political organization.

After all its not hard to make a corporation in the US

…A US corporation is subject to US laws.

ByteDance is subject to Chinese laws.

If TikTok wants to do everything that it’s currently doing, but under US law and under US scrutiny, they’re more than welcome to do so. But they’re currently evading any serious scrutiny. Hence the reason to shut them down if they refuse gov’t oversight.

National security interests are the interests of the people though.

The fundamental issue is that, assuming I’m not leaking national security information, I can say nearly anything I want on Facebook, Twitter, etc. (as long as I’m not in violation of their terms of service). The US largely does not censor people using the power of the gov’t. If I am an authoritarian communist, I’m more than welcome to spread these views on any American social network that I choose without gov’t interference. I can spread anti-vax and Q nonsense if I wish, and the worst-case scenario is that my neighbors will stop talking to me. I can attack the very foundation of the country if I want, as long as I’m not spreading military secrets.

This is not the case in China. Spreading pro-capitalism and pro-democracy messages can quickly get you arrested. Trying to share accurate information about what really happened in Tianamen Square in 1989 can result in you disappearing. Words and phrases are actively censored by the gov’t on social media. The Chinese gov’t takes a direct role in shaping social media by what it promotes, and what it forbids. Anything that’s perceived as an attack on the political system of the country, the party, or any of the leaders (remember the internationally famous tennis player that abruptly disappeared when she accused a local party leader of sexual assault?) will put you at risk.

This isn’t a case of, “oh, both sides are the same”.

The Constitution doesn’t only protect American citizens, it protects everyone

Uh, no. It doesn’t protect everyone, not by a long shot. The US constitution doesn’t guarantee Chinese citizens, living in China, the right to freedom of the press.

…And this isn’t about which speech they’re allowing. This is about who controls the platform, and how they respond to gov’t inquiries. If TikTok is divested from ByteDance, so that they’re no longer based in China and subject to China’s laws and interference, then there’s no problem. There are two fundamental issues; first, TikTok appears to be a tool of the Chinese gov’t (this is the best guess, considering that large parts of the intelligence about it are highly classified), and may be currently being used to amplify Chinese-state propaganda as well as increase political division, and second, what ByteDance is doing with the enormous amounts of data it’s collection, esp. from people that may be in sensitive or classified locations.

As I stated, if TikTok is sold off so that they’re no longer connected to China, then they’re more than welcome to continue to operate. ByteDance is refusing to do that.

One of the worst films I’ve ever seen. It’s especially bad because of the amount of raw talent that they have in it; had it been as bad as it is but with actors appearing in their first performance ever, it would be understandable. But to somehow be this bad, with people that have been in contention for Academy Awards, is simply unconscionable.

It’s so bad that it feels like someone tried The Producers scam IRL; this must be some scheme to launder cartel money.

Until it doesn’t.

…And that point is often what we call “genocide”, when you’ve killed so many people that there simply aren’t enough left to effectively resist, and then you forcibly assimilate the remainder into your culture.

Eh, trying everything they can to make a policy stick isn’t that far different in my mind to things like John Yoo’s pro-torture memos; they’re trying to warp the law in order to do what they want to do, rather than trying to work well within the boundaries of the law. I’ve seen plenty of Dems that say Republicans opened the door, and so it would be foolish of Dems to not walk through, but I’d argue that Dems should be trying to close the door. I’m generally opposed to a strong executive, since I’m broadly anti-authoritarian.

And yes, I recognize that there’s no way in hell Biden gets the student loan debt relief passed by the current congress, and yes, that’s shitty.

Are you okay with losing the majority of battles and having x10 the casualties?

The thing is that having 10x the casualties tends to create more fighters.

This is why Israel needs to commit total genocide in order to “win” in Gaza and the West Bank. Every time they kill a legitimate Palestinian fighter–versus an uninvolved civilian–they’re killing someone that had a family, and friends, people that knew the person, people that loved the person, had probably heard about the injustices (real or perceived; mostly real in the case of Palestinians) from them, and knew why they were taking up arms. These people don’t end up being cowed by the violence. Then you add in the people who have their whole families killed by indiscriminate bombing, and no longer feel like they have anything to lose except their shackles.

We know this already. We’ve known this since WWII. The Axis and Allies both through that bombing civilian population centers–London for the Axis, Dresden for the Allies–would break the will of the people, but instead it hardened them. The concept of total war and mass casualties simply Does. Not. Work.

You can’t win wars like this through military force alone, unless you’re willing to commit total genocide.

and your relying on sympathetic locals

This would also be true of a guerilla civil war in the US though. You’d be relying on locals–people that had probably had friends and families killed by gov’t military operations and indiscriminate bombing–to help you root out insurrectionists.

Would a large number of 2A supporters be in favor of tyranny as long at it had an ® next to it? Sure. Certainly not all of us though.

Huh?

Are you suuuuuure about that?

I’m pretty sure that most coups involve the military.

As far as civil wars go, oh, there’s at least one going on right now in Myanmar, and the gov’t def. has an air force there.

Calculators also say that dividing by 0 is an error, but logic says that the answer is infinite. (If i recall, it’s more correctly ‘undefined’, but I’m years out of math classes now.)

That is, as you divide a number by a smaller and smaller number, the product increases. 1/.1=10, 1/.01=100, 1/.001=1000, etc. As the denominator approaches 0, the product approaches infinity. But you can’t quantify infinity per se, which results in an undefined error.

If someone that’s a mathematician wants to explain this correctly, I’m all ears.

But the tree never makes a sound.

That depends on how you define ‘sound’. If it’s only perception and interpretation that creates sound, then sure, a tree falling with nothing to hear or perceive it makes no sound. But if you label sound as the vibration created independent of the perception of the phenomena, then sound happens regardless of whether it’s perceived or not. Since we label some sounds as imperceptible, or outside of human hearing ranges, my interpretation would be that the phenomena is the sound, rather than the perception of it.

TBH, Dems have absolutely done the same thing before. A super-easy example is Biden’s policies to forgive student loans (which, BTW, I’m fully in favor of; it was just done in such a way that it wasn’t legal). There’s currently a case underway right now regarding the Lloyd Austin throwing out plea agreements with Guantanamo Bay detainees; there’s a pretty solid argument that he doesn’t have that legal right.

My point is that Bush et al. pushed the limits of what was legal, and in general stopped doing those things when courts told them that they weren’t allowed to. OTOH, Trump has absolutely, 100%, flagrantly violated the law and court orders many, many times.

Ah! Got it.

I can’t say for certain that it will be hotter than regular hair, but it seems likely, because there’s a ‘cap’ built into them that the hair is tied to. Many wigs are also made with synthetic materials that can absorb and retain more heat than human hair. He best bet is likely going to be finding someone that specializes in wigs made of human hair, and talking to them about it. Be warned that wigs made from human hair costs quite a bit more than fashion items; they can easily be several hundred dollars each.

I have a lot more freedom in this area because of my gender; it’s socially acceptable for me to simply shave my head. If you mom doesn’t like the appearance of patchy or thinning hair, would she consider that option?

Most people don’t split their ticket when they vote; if someone votes Democratic for president, it’s likely that they end up voting Democratic in most other races on the ballot as well. That’s especially true if they’re actively voting against Trump, and the other candidates are endorsed by Trump. So, if I was a Republican trying to take control of the Senate and retain control of the House, that would be a risky strategy.

As far as the other possibilities go, IDK. It doesn’t seem likely because…

…Many of the Republicans currently endorsing Harris are been vocally anti-Trump for a long time now. It’s not new that they’re anti-Trump, but it is new that they’re actively endorsing a Democrat. I don’t think that they’re trying to actively work to get Trump elected by some subversive means, and it seems like the numbers of people that would work on–versus the number of Reagan-era Republicans that would take it at face value–seems very marginal.

Staffers are basically just office personel.

Staffers are usually True Believers. They want to work for an administration because they believe in the person, and believe in the policy. That, BTW, was why Trump had such ferocious turnover; people become disillusioned at a blistering rate.