@LA9306@mastodo.neoliber.al I know. It’s really disappointing. I still like kbin but its development has stalled. It being down so much has also been frustrating.

Ernest has been having health issues and said he was going to hand the instance over to someone else three weeks ago. I am not sure when that is going to happen, but until then m/Neoliberal@kbin.social is out of commission.

Personally, Lemmy.world wasn’t my first choice but the site admins seem to be pretty chill here. Also, Lemmygrad.ml is defederated, and calls for violence are against the instance terms of service, so tankie posting isn’t tolerated.

It is nice to have an app though - Kbin only really had the web app.

Well, that wasn’t good. It wasn’t good at all.

The worst part? As expected, Trump lied the whole night, and for people in the middle who don’t pay too much attention (whose votes we need) he probably looked reasonable. He is an expert at lying with confidence.

Biden spent his time trying to (1) present a narrative, (2) explain what he did, and (3) fact check Trump. He wasn’t able to do all three.

Some parts I found enlightening (emphasis is mine):

The Post was at one point reportedly on track to lose about $100 million in 2023; after more than 200 staff buyouts and other drastic cost-cutting measures, it ended the year with a $77 million loss. This year, a loss of roughly $50 million has been forecast,

[…]

Shortly before Bezos bought the Post, traffic to the paper’s website was hovering at about 20 million unique visitors a month. But in September 2015, after Donald Trump had upended the Republican primary race for president, the Post scored nearly 60 million unique visitors, and in September 2016, more than 80 million. At the end of 2016, Ryan announced that the publication would “finish this year as a profitable and growing company.”

[…]

But looking back, it’s clear that while the Times used that heady period to build out a business structure that would enable it to thrive after the “Trump bump” ended, the Post … didn’t, at least not to the degree that was needed.

[…]

During the trump years, “on the surface, there was no problem,” a former senior editor told me. “But there was a problem. Our growth was based on politics” in a historically fraught political period. Whenever normalcy returned, it all risked a sudden collapse.

Well, this is certainly a case against profit-based news media.

I’ve seen it argued that news organizations loved the Trump era because they suddenly became extremely profitable. With Biden being relatively boring, they’re now struggling.

The Atlantic has a paywall, so see the archive link for article content.

It’s the Economist, so there is a paywall. See the archive link for article content.

Meanwhile, the ruling Conservative Party, which won 365 seats in 2019, is set to collapse to a mere 76, the fewest in its history.

Let’s fucking goooo!

It’s the Economist, so there is a paywall. Here is the archive link.

“I’ve always put democracy and our Constitution above of all us. It’s because of my unwavering support for democracy that today, as a proud conservative, I’m endorsing Joe Biden for reelection,” Kinzinger said, adding that he never thought he would be endorsing a Democrat for president.

Rejecting Trump on principle.

Kinzinger also said he felt Trump was a threat to American values.

Given that he is a conservative republican, I do not agree with Kinzinger on many issues. However, he does strike me as someone I could actually talk to about policy and have a constructive conversation with - something that is not possible with conspiratorial MAGAs.

I think it was always pretty clear it was unconstitutional.

The real question (IMO) is whether or not the court would uphold it, especially given the way conservative judges have been bending interpretations lately.

That makes two of us lol

Personally, I am quite disappointed to find that we have not heard the last of Lauren Boebert; Colorado’s 4th Congressional District is ridiculously conservative and there is no way a democrat is going to win there.

Separation of church and state for the win!

Oklahoma’s Charter School Board has been ordered to rescind the contract with St. Isidore  of Seville Catholic Virtual School.

[…]

The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s 6-2 decision is a resounding victory for the integrity of public education,” said Eric Paisner, acting CEO for the group.

[…]

“All charter schools are public schools. The National Alliance firmly believes charter schools, like all other public schools, may not be religious institutions. We insist every charter school student must be given the same federal and state civil rights and constitutional protections as their district school peers. The Oklahoma Supreme Court’s decision reassures all Oklahoma families that their students’ constitutional rights are not sacrificed when they choose to attend a public charter school,” Paisner added.

Emphasis is mine. It’s great to see this was struck down, especially considering how Oklahoma is about as conservative a US state can get.

A couple paragraphs I found interesting. Emphasis is mine:

[Hillary Clinton writes] I am the only person to have debated both men (Mr. Trump in 2016 and, in the 2008 Democratic presidential primary race, Senator Biden). I know the excruciating pressure of walking onto that stage and that it is nearly impossible to focus on substance when Mr. Trump is involved. In our three debates in 2016, he unleashed a blizzard of interruptions, insults and lies that overwhelmed the moderators and did a disservice to the voters who tuned in to learn about our visions for the country — including a record 84 million viewers for our first debate.

It is a waste of time to try to refute Mr. Trump’s arguments like in a normal debate. It’s nearly impossible to identify what his arguments even are. He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather. This has gotten only worse in the years since we debated. I was not surprised that after a recent meeting, several chief executives said that Mr. Trump, as one journalist described it, “could not keep a straight thought” and was “all over the map.” Yet expectations for him are so low that if he doesn’t literally light himself on fire on Thursday evening, some will say he was downright presidential.

Pretty much sums up the double standard with Trump.

I think we need to do that, and if I recall he did raise taxes on corporations with the Inflation Reduction Act. It also looks like it was originally going to be a more ambitious increase, but for whatever reason that didn’t happen.

However, to your point he did not raise them to where they were at 35% before the Trump tax cuts were passed in 2017.

If I had to guess, it was probably because raising taxes is generally not a popular move with the general electorate; its an easy way to lose votes and piss off some powerful people (which makes the Trump tax cuts even worse in the long run.)

Nah you see Trump is such a good businessman he makes other people’s money appear out of thin air. Poof. /s

But actually though, this is a really foreign concept for Trump. He’s always managed to fail his way into getting money from someone else.

This is a fair question, so I did some extra digging.

It’s important to note that Trump was president for about 9 or 10 months of the pandemic, and Biden was president until it ended. Consequently, they both spent money on Covid relief. In addition to the article posted above (which shows Trump at 3.6 trillion and Biden at 2.1 trillion for Covid spending) I found the below:

According to this NY Times article from March 2022, there was about $5 trillion in pandemic-related stimulus. But, I did not see a breakdown for which administration spent how much.

However, I did find this article from ProPublica from January 2021 which indicates that Trump spent about $3 trillion. Assuming both articles are correct, that means Biden would have spent about $2 trillion on Covid as of March 2022.

So Axios’s numbers roughly check out.

@Neblib@mastodo.neoliber.al Porque no los dos?

Conversion kits are a great idea and sound both more affordable & sustainable. I’d also bet they can be adopted more quickly too. However, I also see value in new vehicles that are designed to be electric from the get-go; I just think the auto industry will put up less resistance if there are incentives given to upgrade their facilities.

I definitely agree on the standardized battery formats, charging stations, etc. IMO, we should be standardizing as much as possible. The easier something is to swap out, the faster it can be adopted. Battery recycling is also a huge one, too.

I’d also like to see the fed adjust their vehicle standards to disincentivize the massive trucks and crossovers we see everywhere now.

Now if only we could get the rest of the world to follow suit and dump their conservative parties! Looks like even their most reliable voters are deserting them.

The Labour and Liberal Democrat surge is a welcome change in British politics.

Wow, who would have thought that cutting taxes and increasing spending would increase the national debt?

Not Trump, apparently.

A damning new report has shown that nearly all major car companies are actively sabotaging the world’s efforts to avoid catastrophic global warming. The lobbying strategies being used by the world’s largest automakers are putting global climate targets at risk and threatening the electric vehicle transition, according to the new report released by InfluenceMap.

[…]

The report says Japanese automakers are the least prepared for the EV transition and have the most active, strategic engagement against it.

This is why I am opposed to tariffs (side note - I dislike tariffs in general) on Chinese electric vehicles. While according to this article Japanese automakers are the worst offenders, the Big Three US auto companies aren’t behaving any better.

Something needs to be done to light a fire under major auto companies and get them to produce quality, affordable, electric vehicles. Right now, they don’t want to spend the money to invest in new research and facilities and would instead prefer to keep producing cars that rely on dead dinosaurs for fuel.

The long term solution is, of course, to invest in quality public transit and walkable cities. But cars and trucks should still transition to being electric.