Tom Aiello

@TheKevinDalton To everyone outside of California, it is. In most people's minds, 'LA' is the space between El Toro and Ventura, from the pacific coast to Riverside.

I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but Rancho Cucamonga is not Los Angeles.

The 2024 GAO report estimated that total annual fraud across federal programs ranges from $233 billion to $521 billion. Cut 2% of the fraud and you can fund free insulin in America for everyone who needs it plus free school lunch for every kid in Texas.

@Devon_Eriksen_ European nation states were only ethnically based from the end of WWI onwards. Historically, they were multi-ethnic empires.

Europe's disease is not a disease of America. It is a disease of World War 2. In 1946, after we rescued them from themselves and each other, Europeans crawled out of the rubble they had made of their continent, looked around at their mess, wept for a bit, and then formed the wrong conclusions. They decided that ethnic nations are bad. That patriotism is bad. That supporting your tribe, in preference to random strangers, is bad. They decided that these things had led to the horrors of global war and genocide in Europe itself, and so all vestiges of loyalty to one's own people must be stamped out. Nations were, forever afterward, to be post-ethnic, post-cultural legal and economic units filled with... well, anyone, really. A bunch of people who didn't, in fact shouldn't, share values, goals, morals, customs, or even a common language. Nations were to be mere fiefs, their boundaries determined by which set of political elites controlled them. America, having not been smashed to rubble in WW2, did not share this view. We saw WW2 as an expensive adventure in bailing out Europe, which we spent our treasure and our blood on (including my own grandfather's life, and his chance to ever see his grandson) precisely because we shared cultural and ethical values with the people we were rescuing. But they hate us for it. They see our patriotism as fascism precisely because they see all patriotism as fascism. Psychologists have long understood that humans respond to favors with gratitude only up until those favors become so great that they have no hope of repaying them. At that point, their gratitude turns to resentment. How dare we believe we did them a favor? How dare I believe that my father gave up his father so Europe could be safe, peaceful, and free? Don't we know that, because ${ELABORATE MENTAL GYMNASTICS}, we didn't do them any favors by fighting that war? Don't we know that, because ${ANY PATRIOTISM = HITLER}, our love of our country and favoring of its interests makes us fascist and problematic? Well, no. I don't know that. I don't think any European nation is our ally any more. Certainly, we have shared interests, but how much does that really matter, when they refuse to act in those shared interests, because they have come to believe that acting in your people's interest is bad? They hate us too much to work with us. They resent every ounce of the burden which they are asked to share. Our support has made Europe into a pack of idle welfare recipients, complete with sense of entitlement and self-destructive behavior. But if we didn't defend them... who would? Their native populations have been purged of all patriotism, and who would blame them if they didn't fight for ruling elites that hate them? Their imported third-world barbarians won't fight for them. The very idea is laughable. What's left? And what will make them wake up and think about these questions? Perhaps they need to dig themselves out of the rubble of another war.

@techtoby__ My (boomer) parents still live in the house I grew up in. My dad spends a lot of time gardening. My mom has memory issues and becomes disoriented in any other place. She needs to be in that house. My dad built that house after hours and weekends (while working full time).

Majority of all the 4, 5 and 6 bedroom homes in my area are all occupied by boomers. They spend all day from Spring to Autumn gardening. Some of them can barely bend down. I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t just sell up. Instead they complain about being unable to heat the property. Any time a home comes up for sale, it’s because someone has died. Then a lot of people don’t even want to buy them because they’ve not been decorated since 1985 and have no bath.

@JesseKellyDC > And then they will collapse. No, they won't. They will get bail out by the Newsom administration. That's how politics works.

But they can. And they will. And then they will collapse. This is how communism always works. Members of the Party get rich while promising great things for the public. The great things never come, people die, then it all collapses.

@hissgoescobra Your objection to this war is the language being used in social media posts?

Iran invented algebra and has some of the most unique, beautiful architecture on the planet. Their geography is unspeakably beautiful. The regime blows, but it is the most evil hubris imaginable to talk down to a gem of the ancient to modern world this way.

@Samra_D @mtracey And those are valid military targets.

@SnakeRiverBASE @mtracey I can think of a number of universities and colleges that also receive Dept of defence $$$

Imagine if Iran had the capacity to bomb any US university that in some way "cooperated" with the US military-industrial sector. You wouldn't have many universities left

@PhilipGreenspun @sandygrains I wasn't commenting on Iran's actual policies. A wartime adversary would be wise to target MIT, Caltech, and many other US universities. Those schools do military research and also train engineers who can build weapons. If Iran could bomb MIT, they would do so.

@SnakeRiverBASE @sandygrains What difference would that make to Iran? Aren’t they missiles at civilians?

Alma mater of Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the mathematics Fields Medal.

@sandygrains @PhilipGreenspun MIT is a valid military target.

@PhilipGreenspun I suppose that’s why they call it MIT of Iran

@David_J_Bier The argument that 'I have successfully broken the law for 20 years, so I should be allowed to continue doing so' is very odd. If I have successfully robbed banks for 20 years, should I not be arrested for robbing banks? The husband on active duty is a much stronger argument.

A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyweds. ICE has arrested and caged her instead. She was brought to the USA as a toddler. These people should be citizens.

@RnaudBertrand Was there any weapons development or military research at that university?

Make no mistake: destroying world-class universities, like the US just did with Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, isn't just an attack on Iran but it's literally an attack on all of us, on all of humanity. It's not Iran that "won" when Maryam Mirzakhani made her discoveries that won her a Fields Medal: it's all of mathematics, and everything mathematics is used for. Human progress won, technology won, we all won. It's the same type of stuff the Mongols did during the sack of Baghdad and their destruction of the House of Wisdom: we ALL lost something irreplaceable back then, entire fields of human knowledge set back. That's what bombing a university does. It doesn't just destroy buildings. It destroys us, all of us.

@vali_nasr Does it do military research or weapons development?

Sharif University of Technology (founded as Arya Mehr University in 1966) is an icon of modernization and progress in Iran. Its alumni include the first woman to win the Field Medal in Mathematics, Maryam Mirzakhani. It has been a national symbol of achievement, gaining international recognition for the quality of its graduates, large number who have been admitted into the very best engineering programs in the West. The aim of this kind of wonton destruction could only be the nation of Iran itself.

@RepYassAnsari MIT does a lot of military research.

Sharif University is Iran’s MIT. They’ve produced a huge number of engineers who’ve gone on to Silicon Valley and founded some of the most successful American tech companies. Why are we bombing a university in a city of 10 million people?

@stevemur @kotosan_dayo Same. I remember the proud day when we got the extended memory card, so we upgraded from 32k to 48k of RAM. And the green screen.

@kotosan_dayo 6502

初めて使ったPCのCPU教えて欲しい！！！！ 自分はCore i7 3770

@Tenn_MAGA2 Idaho resents being grouped with Washington, Oregon and California.

If a civil war broke out tomorrow who would win and why?

@RealMCRobles @Khritenzama Those guys demonstrated that they were quite literally willing to die for their country. That deserves some respect.

@Khritenzama And sending hundreds of young pilots to their death in cheap planes on pointless suicide kamikaze attacks and still losing a war is quintessentially Japanese…

クッソ高い特殊作戦専用機を2機失ってでも航空機搭乗員1名を救出するのを厭わないのは如何にもアメリカらしい

@Rob_ThaBuilder This is the truth.

No way. The "leave no man behind" doctrine is not only morally correct, it provides legitimate tactical advantage. Anyone whos served in a military knows that "morale" is not just a word for "the guys are in a good mood". It's a psychological force as important to combat effectiveness as training, equipment and command. The loss of a few planes is nothing compared to the force multiplier that morale boost provides, fighting a war a half world away from home, knowing that if the worst happens, your brothers are going to move heaven and Earth to bring you back, even if its just your body. Its also psychologically crucial for the men who wernt captured, knowing they will never have the feeling of leaving a brother behind. I guarantee you, not one of the men and women involved in that rescue had any problem whatsoever doing that mission

@HistoryBoomer If this violates the establishment clause, so does celebrating an Islamic holiday in a government office. I would say that they both do. But let's not be hypocrites. Both or neither.

This violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof"

@ChrisHeddles @RockChartrand Why not use a poll tax above a certain income?

@SnakeRiverBASE @RockChartrand Sure. By ignoring capacity to pay, poll tax inherently creates a category of taxpayers who simply can't pay the tax. Enforcing the tax then becomes increasingly brutal, unpopular and difficult/expensive to collect. All for a total revenue that is far less than other options.

Unpopular opinion: there shouldn’t be tax rates, there should be tax amounts. If you split only federal spending evenly, it’s about $27,000 per adult per year, with roughly $3,700 of that just paying interest on past spending. That’s the actual price tag. The reason it’s hidden behind rates and brackets is simple: amounts create accountability. If every adult saw a bill for $27K, the question wouldn’t be “who should pay more,” it would be “why does this cost this much, and what am I actually getting for it?” Right now the system blurs that. Costs are diffused, benefits are emphasized, and the bill is partially pushed into the future. Amounts would force a different conversation. Not about redistribution, but about value. And that’s the part the current framing avoids.