You’re not wrong that it’s the profit margin that tells the story, and you can’t tell just from the nominal amount alone.

But average profit margins in the United States have reached a record high percentile not seen since the 1950’s. So it’s not just the dollar amount that’s gone up for corporations, it’s the margin percent that’s gone up too.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-25/us-corporate-profits-soar-taking-margins-to-widest-since-1950

It wasn’t exactly “fast tracked,” a little misleading phrase (not helped by the official name of the operation called “warp speed”) that I think makes people more nervous than they need to me. This kind of implies they didn’t go through the same testing as other vaccines. They have gone through the same stringent criteria as any other vaccine at this point. A lot of what was done to speed things up was the government subsidizing and risk guaranteeing, so multiple steps in vaccine testing and deployment could be done in parellel rather than in series. Normally you wouldn’t be mass producing experimental vaccine doses or medications before you know they work, or else you’ve wasted a ton of money. To speed things up the government basically said they would cover the losses on the vaccines if they ended up being useless. This allowed production of these vaccines to start being distributed as soon as the research was complete. Otherwise they wouldn’t have been churning out millions of doses already with a lot already stockpiled and giving doses of it to icu staff only three days after it got emergency authorization (full formal approval would follow about nine months later).

Honestly people get way more nervous about vaccines than they really need to be. Some of the lowest risk things we use in all of medicine. Though not that they shouldn’t be, since they’re deployed on such a mass scale.

Here Roberts, I had chat gpt generate a better statement for you:

Over the past year, the Supreme Court has faced significant criticism for rulings that have stirred controversy and eroded public trust. I must express regret for decisions related to abortion rights, where the Court’s stance has been perceived by many as regressive and infringing upon individual freedoms. The impact of these rulings on reproductive rights has been a source of concern and disappointment.

Furthermore, the Court acknowledges the pressing issue of dark money in elections. The lack of stringent regulations has allowed for an influx of undisclosed funds, casting a shadow over the democratic process. We recognize the importance of addressing these concerns to ensure the transparency and fairness of our electoral system.

In addition, there have been allegations of blatantly partisan rulings, devoid of a solid legal foundation, seemingly aimed at frustrating the President’s agenda. The perception of judicial decisions being driven by political motives undermines the impartiality that the judiciary should uphold. We understand the frustration and anxiety caused by such actions and pledge to reinforce the Court’s commitment to impartiality and adherence to the rule of law.

As Chief Justice, I assure the public that these challenges have not gone unnoticed, and steps are being taken to reevaluate our processes, engage in introspection, and work towards restoring faith in the judiciary. The Court remains dedicated to upholding the principles of justice, ensuring a fair and impartial legal system for all.

Clearly pure fiction, but one can imagine.

This is real. It’s also one reason why laws against gay sex were on the books in many states until finally overturned by the Supreme Court in 2003 in Lawrence v Texas. Sometimes police would use the laws directly, but more commonly since gay sex was considered a criminal activity, landlords would use it as an excuse to deny lgbt people housing or evict them.

Thanks for pointing this out. Of course the article leaves that this incident is believed to be unconnected to the ruling to the last line. Not that it would be entirely unexpected if it did happen considering the amount of threats they’ve been getting and the terroristic rhetoric of republicans.

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The San Antonio sheriff doesn’t think so, and recommended charges related to the Martha’s vineyard flight at least. DA there still reviewing it.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/migrant-flights-marthas-vineyard-floride-role-60-minutes-transcript/

No idea why more isn’t being done on the federal level. My guess would be political expediency though. Texas especially loves taking illegal and unconstitutional actions and the using the resulting federal lawsuits as evidence that democrats are advocating for totally open borders, totally misdefining what the word “sanctuary city” means, or some other related BS. They might think it’d be an especially bad look for the Justice department to be running criminal investigations against multiple of Biden’s political opponents (not saying I agree with this, just thinking about why they might not want to pursue this criminally from their pont of view).

I searched hard but couldn’t find any news or updates about what the federal government is doing about this though. As far as I can tell moving migrants away from the border to reduce overcrowding is somewhat along lines with their policies anyways.

https://news.yahoo.com/amid-border-surge-biden-admin-183015276.html

If Abbot and Republicans weren’t so intent on dumping migrants in the middle of the night in dangerous conditions as far from resources as possible, it’s possible the federal government would even be cooperating with the effort. The new city ordinances requiring advance notice of transport by busses will hopefully help. Moving migrants away from crowding at the border and more evenly distributing them across the country might be part of the solution, but these political stunts by Republicans are intended to hurt not help them, feds really need to be doing something.

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And don’t forget that congressional Republicans have sued to stop the federal government from helping to prevent any international propoganda efforts and have been harrasing any independent researchers who have been tracking it! And we have sites like X who have bascially just said propoganda and disinformation is welcome on our websites, have at it. So it’ll be intensified if anything. All the gop basically on putin’s payroll.

Criticized is the word you’re looking for the hill. Stop it with these trump hit that or dewine slammed that nonsense headlines. “Trump criticizes Ohio governor’s veto of proposed gender affirming care ban.” There, feel free to pay me to write your headlines.

Not that I support sending arms to Israel (I don’t), it’s a sale approval not aid, so since they don’t need money from congress (Israel is paying), they can make the sale. If they want to give aid, like Ukraine (where we are paying), they need a new law by congress allocating that money. Congress controls the purse strings is like constitution 101. If Ukraine had the money to buy weapons they could theoretically do this too. It looks like according to the article they have for Ukraine already when Ukraine was able to purchase. But Ukraine is out of money now. This provision can’t help them.

The 14th amendment doesn’t state anything about prior criminal convections for specific crimes, and doesn’t try to define the term “insurrection,” leaving it somewhat open to interpretation. Also includes any sort of rebellion, or giving any aid or comfort to anyone carrying out an insurrection or rebellion. When it was first drafted, former confederates who had previously sworn an oath of office to the United States were widely barred from running for any office despite not having any specific criminal conviction (at least until 1872 when congress used the second part of that clause and passed an amnesty applying to most confederates, allowing them to run for office again, unfortunately). It might be the way the supreme court goes in the end, but saying you need some prior specific criminal conviction of certain crimes before it applies would be a new understanding of the amendment.

He also has the option to, and has, been fighting the disqualification in courts. Those trying to disqualify had to show evidence of his aid in insurrection (which they did, since it’s publicly available in droves). And he and his lawyers were given the opportunity to make his arguments and defend his qualifications to be on the ballot. It went through multiple appeals and is now likely going all the way to the supreme court. It’s not like a secretary of state’s whims are the final word on the issue.

The point is that wasn’t actually happening to children, they made it up out of thin air as a pretext to attack all healthcare for trans children, and now nationwide are moving on to making healthcare for trans adults (the adult care can include surgery) illegal as well. These laws including Florida’s are opposed by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Psychological Association, and many other medical organizations. These laws are causing great harm to both children and adults across the country, all based on lies and half truths as an excuse to prevent doctors and patients from making their own healthcare decisions, which seems to be the Republican MO.

Hence no representation for Washington DC, among others.

'And I never read ‘Mein Kampf.’

The accusation isn’t about mein kampf (though wouldn’t put it past him). I think he very deliberately phrases it this way, because the actual accusation is he frequently read and even kept a copy on his bedstand of “my new order,” a collection of Hitler’s speeches.

https://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2015/07/donald-ivana-trump-divorce-prenup-marie-brenner

I’m making the time scales bigger to make the changes more obvious to you. But it’s not something that has a start and stop point and suddenly our current version of the Bible froze in time never to change again. You said new editions don’t count but then said people don’t carry around a pen changing them. But that’s exactly what the new editions are. You can’t just read the old versions because that’s a different language than it is now, you won’t get the same meaning as what that language meant when it was written. You can try and translate to current language, but something will always be lost and changes will have to be made in some regard or other, especially for non current languages, and how you do that and the choices you make in that new edition will depend on many factors, including their own religious interpretations. Even fifty years ago English is a different language, just not as much as a thousand. Our current religious texts are continuing to change over time, just as they always done in the past, for many different reasons including the impermenance of language itself. And that process has happened many many times and is still happening. That’s the point. If the text of scriptures stayed the same over time we wouldn’t have so many endless versions of so many different religious texts, some of which even started out as the same story if you go far back enough. To say, the text of the Bible doesn’t change, is just untrue unless you really stretch the definitions of what that would mean to a meaningless place.

They do change, otherwise we’d have the exact same Bible as we did a thousand years ago which isn’t the case. And if you read a Bible from a thousand years ago, it no longer means the same thing as it did to someone from a thousand years ago. If the hill you want to die on is, the shape of the letters on the page of a particular version’s pages stay the same over time. Then fine. But a scripture is made of language which has to change over time. So for any practical purposes the texts are changing over time. Take any cursory examination at the history of religious texts including the Bible and you’ll see morphing over time for tons of different reasons. Politics often involved! And our current interpretations, linguistics, and cultural understandings and contexts will absolutely inform how the Bible and any religious text (or any text for that matter) continues to change over time, just as it always has.

The king James Bible of 1611? The version specifically made to emphasize the divine rights and absolute authority of kings? Sure sounds a lot like the text adapting to the times to me. And do you understand the meanings and context of English from the 17th century? The answer is no, no one does perfectly, the meaning of that text to you will be different to someone reading in the 17th century than to you because the language has changed. Experts could make surmises based on other writings at the time. Ultimately though newer versions will need to be made, that will inevitably be bound up in the current religious interpretations and linguistics background of the one doing that. The texts change in response to our interpretation over time, they don’t sit still, it’s impossible. They are all an ongoing evolution that has been and is still happening.

No I’m using it the same way. What I’m saying is there is no such thing as an “original” Bible text, and even if there was people don’t all agree what those texts should be or which versions of those texts to begin from. And even if they did there’d be no way to perfectly preserve their meaning over the many of thousands of years they developed. And the re interpretations at every step along the way will influence how they get passed down and rewritten. Our current versions of all the many different religious texts are all a part of a long process of evolution, some even with common ancestors. Meanings, connotations, words, passages, entire books, and all sorts of things change at every step for many different reasons. They didn’t just appear suddenly out of nowhere. Many started even as an oral tradition.

That’s untrue, scriptures have been adapted many many times. There’s no one agreed upon definition of what the Bible even is, varying significantly between different sects of Christianity, and even more as we broaden to other Abrahamic religions. There’s near endless variations of the different texts. Translation, copying, and selection of which texts to include in a scripture is inevitably bound up in interpretations, they’re inseparable. New ideas, biases, agendas, and shifts in meaning will work their way into the translation or copying of older texts or what sources to derive the translations from. Words don’t stay the same over time in any language and are constantly shifting in meanings.

Now some religious people may say, God inspires the people who select what religious texts to use, their copying, and their translations, to ensure perfect unchanging meaning over time. But outside of invoking miracles this is an impossibility. But this is what people who take a literal interpretation of the Bible believe.

Barring miracles though, start with development and history section below if interested, but there’s countless opportunities for the scriptures to have changed, and they are still changing. There’s no way they couldn’t, language itself wouldn’t let it stay static no matter how much effort is put in to it, not even thinking of all the other factors and agendas that have changed them or what they even consist of many times over thousands of years. There’s no one definitive Bible that sprang fully formed out of some vacuum, and even if that somehow occured it’d have to drift overtime with language itself.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible