of course he was talking about the "Unite the Right" protestors. The violence occurred at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, what other "side" could he possibly have been referring to?
The articles you linked actually confirm my point, did you mean to link something else?
As Snopes and politifact confirms, Trump made the following statement about the "Unite the Right" protestors, a group of racists, anti-semites, KKK and neo-Nazis who had staged a violent rally followed by a vehicular murder: "you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides".
Please take a look at the transcript in its entirety. Shortly after the part where he says Nazis should be condemned, he goes on to say that there are "fine people on both sides", undercutting his earlier claim.
You don't seem to understand why the "very fine people" remark was unacceptable to many of us. Like I said, he was excusing political violence. A woman had been murdered by neo-Nazis and he went out of his way to minimize, justify and excuse the act, while condemning imaginary "alt-left" violence at the same event.
On the topic of Sicknick, I don't find it credible that he died coincidentally the day after being assaulted. The timing alone is strong evidence that the two are related.
Even if it was "merely" an assault on a police officer, it's political violence and it's acceptable to every Republican voter. You opened this door.
when right wingers killed Heather Heyer, Trump called them "very fine people". When they killed Brian Sicknick, he called them heroes and pardoned them. If even 10 percent of the right had drawn a line against political violence after Jan 6 then we wouldn't be here today. They all embraced it when it was their side. Charlie himself chartered the buses and obstructed the resulting investigation.
Rabin and Abe seem to be examples where the assassin more or less got what they wanted (derail the peace process and damage the Unification Church respectively)
if the debt ever causes actual problems, e.g. we can't sell our treasury bonds, then our politicians will suddenly remember how to tax rich people.
In the mean time the impossible, unsustainable, terrifying national debt will be used to justify benefit cuts (like the upcoming privatization/cut of social security when the trust fund runs out in 7 years)
there are many indirect effects. Imagine a factory employing 80 low-wage "takers" (line workers etc) and 20 high-wage "makers" (managers etc). The owners of the factory make $1 million in profit every month as a taxable dividend. Well if you get rid of the line workers: no more factory, no more managers, no more dividend. This is why honest analyses go beyond simple tax balance accounting.
The other big impact is on price level. When you have an inverted population pyramid, fewer workers need to support more retirees and this shows up as inflation concentrated in labor-intensive industries like healthcare. So even if a program like Medicare really had more tax receipts per beneficiary after reducing immigration, it would also be spending much more per beneficiary under a labor shortage.
Progressive taxation will generally mean that anyone under the median income has a negative net impact on the government's finances. All this study is doing is reflecting the obvious fact that immigrants are by and large working class.
> I don’t even know what to call someone who thinks the government should give private parties discretionary grants and contracts, but shouldn’t be able to use those to influence private actors.
The idea that the sovereign should be limited to follow law, due process, and the advice of experts in the administration of grants goes back at least to the magna carta and is so widespread that you would use a more specific term — a "constitutional monarchist", "republican", "democrat", or "democratic socialist", etc., would all agree on this point. The opposite point of view however, has a name — authoritarian — so you could call such a person "anti-authoritarian".
this is a largely meaningless distinction, immunity covers all the most concerning Presidential misbehavior (i.e. abuse of the powers of the office) while leaving him vulnerable to prosecution for petty personal crimes like getting in a fist fight or something.
> no amount of discussion is going to change their minds
It's a slow process. A MAGA extremist isn't going to read "LGBT rights are human rights!" and say "Ah, I didn't realize! Of course!" and become a liberal.
Maybe they argue with someone about how tariffs are going to be great for the country, and they don't change their mind. But a few months later their neighbor in trucking loses their job, and their friend in construction is talking about how hard it is now, and they start to have a few doubts. They think back to how the guy they were arguing with said this would happen.
And then they argue with someone that only illegal aliens are going to be deported, and they don't change their mind. But then when US citizens start being sent to the camps, they remember that they thought this wouldn't happen and even argued against it.
People do change their mind eventually. Even violent fanatics have changed their minds: the Maoist Red Guards lost steam, the IRA followed a peace process as did FARC in Colombia. If you love liberty, democracy, peace, and prosperity, then I think your best move is to persist in trying to convince MAGA extremists, while understanding that it will take a long time and potentially a lot of chaos and conflict.
A lot of modern industry started as academic research. Things like semiconductors, EUV lithography, mRNA vaccines, or AI originate in government-funded academic research.
The health effects of smoking and leaded gas were established by academic research, allowing government programs to massively improve our collective health.
Climate change has been recognized, diagnosed, and its solutions invented mostly by academic researchers, an effort that may save all industrial civilization.
You're incorrect, this is the normal way that the reddit algorithm functions, it promotes highly-engaging content from niche subreddits.
The top post of all time on r/toledo is about a police officer harassing a woman. It's highly engaging but not overtly political. It has 100x the upvotes of a normal r/toledo post about traffic or what have you.
One of the top posts of all time in r/sanjose is a video of someone trying to jimmy a hotel door open using a hook contraption. Highly engaging, not overtly political.
These were the first two city subreddits I checked. It's literally just how reddit works, highly engaging content bubbles to the top and can reach a much larger audience.