@ruicharadrius Poverty causes people to assault and murder and rape to survive? smh
Criminals can absolutely be oppressors of society when their activities restrict the freedoms of others. Organized crime is a serious problem in many countries. Your ideas are simply not grounded in reality.
@Coalz511 I don't know which state you're in, but it'd probably be better to try instituting a state minimum wage rather than rely on the federal one. That way, the specifics of your local economy can be better considered.
@Coalz511 Only about 80,000 people in the US actually work for federal minimum wage. Ofc, they're concentrated in states which don't have state minimums, which I assume includes your state. This figure also doesn't include workers who earn a significant part of their money from tips.
@Coalz511 There's no reason to increase federal minimum wage. Plenty of states already have their own minimum wage laws. Pretty much no one in the US actually works for federal min. wage. Increasing the minimum wage to the levels of states like CA would be a disaster for smaller states.
@McCarthyist2 You and Dev are in agreement, I think. He's saying that conservatives don't understand, "breathing a sigh of relief," when their sons are away, but liberals do. That stance agrees with the chart you presented.
@Kirwithdot I thought my response to this new question was unoriginal, but somehow no one in this thread has said anything remotely similar to what I said.
USA. Summer. It is 95 degrees outside, and I am shivering inside a sandwich shop.
I have discovered how Americans forge strong souls.
Outside, the sun is trying to kill everyone. Inside this small restaurant, it is winter. My breath does not fog, but it is thinking about it. A man near me is eating a cold sandwich while wearing a jacket. In summer. Indoors.
In Japan we would simply turn it down. Americans do not turn it down. And now I understand them better than they understand themselves.
This cold is not an accident. This cold is a gift.
The owner has built, inside his shop, a second season. He invites you in from the brutal heat and hands you the one thing the sun has denied you all day: a reason to be cold. To endure it is to be tempered. You walk in soft and sweating. You walk out sharp and clear, a slightly stronger person than you were.
So I did not complain. I removed my outer layer and offered it to the woman at the next table, who was hugging herself. She said, "Oh, no, I'm fine, thank you." She was not fine. Her lips were blue. But she, too, understood the training. She would not break first. I respected her deeply.
The owner asked if everything was okay.
"It is perfect," I said, through my teeth, which were chattering. "Thank you for the winter."
He said, "...I can turn the AC down if you want?"
I told him no. A man does not ask the mountain to be shorter.
I stayed two hours. I ordered a hot coffee to survive. Then a second one, to hold. By the end I could no longer feel my hands, but my spirit had never been clearer.
So now, on the hottest days, I seek out the coldest rooms. I sit. I shiver. I sharpen.
And when I finally step back out into the summer heat, and it wraps around me like a warm bath, I feel it.
Reborn.
A man who has survived the winter, in August, indoors, for the price of a sandwich.
The moment it clicked why modern starters feel so wrong made me feel so smart. It’s because it’s practically impossible to picture them in the wild. Like I can’t imagine Cinderace in a desert or open field not looking out of place
On This Day — May 28, 1948
Israel appointed a Jewish American badass as its first general in nearly 2,000 years — David “Mickey” Marcus.
Marcus was a tough Brooklyn kid, a West Point graduate, and a decorated U.S. Army colonel and war hero who volunteered to help the newborn Jewish state on the brink of annihilation.
He had already lived a legendary life: helped take down Lucky Luciano, parachuted into Normandy with the 101st Airborne, liberated Nazi death camps, and worked on the Nuremberg trials.
Then, in 1948, he walked away from a promising U.S. Army career, took the fake name “Michael Stone,” and sailed to Israel to turn the ragtag Haganah into a real army. To turn it into the IDF.
See him immortalized by the great Kirk Douglas in the clip below from the 1966 movie Cast a Giant Shadow.
On May 28, David Ben-Gurion gave Marcus command of the Jerusalem front. The situation was dire: 100,000 Jews in Jerusalem were under siege. The Arab Legion (with British officers) had cut the only supply road, starving the city. Food was rationed to near nothing. Water was cut off. People were eating mallow leaves and facing surrender.
Marcus didn’t flinch.
He helped design and build the legendary Burma Road — a desperate, hand-carved bypass through mountains and ravines under enemy fire. Convoys, jeeps pushed by hand, and even donkeys carried supplies over terrain many thought impossible. That road broke the siege and saved Jerusalem.
He trained fighters, designed command structures, and brought American military know-how to men and women who had just survived the Holocaust and refused to die again.
On June 10, hours before a ceasefire, Mickey Marcus was tragically killed by friendly fire — a young sentry didn’t recognize him in the dark. He was wrapped in a white sheet, walking back to his quarters. He never saw the full victory he helped make possible.
Israel buried its first general with full honors. His body was returned to West Point, where his tombstone reads: “A Soldier for All Humanity.”
Mickey Marcus is the ultimate “Never Again” hero: a man who had everything in America but chose to risk it all so Jews would never again be defenseless.
From a Brooklyn street fighter to Israel’s first general since the Maccabees.
That’s the spirit that built the Jewish state.