Doug Smith

Cars and computers

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

The world's first trillionaire pays the same for a mcdonalds hamburger as a single mom with 3 kids. This has to stop. Our country cannot abide people creating wealth for themselves and others without permission and control by the government. If we dont stop @elonmusk and @JeffBezos and the likes, where will we be? Take their money now before they build even more companies! Let the politicians decide who should get what they created.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@Scott_Wiener @GavinNewsom @AGRobBonta Imagine how great this country could be if people put as much effort into understanding the actual systems governing our world rather than trying to govern our world to create temporary feel good outcomes.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@MorePerfectUS This should be classified as insider trading It is a clear conflict of interest, and should apply to everyone in government .

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@BernieSanders @BernieSanders you would just waste the money, like you and your uni party friends always do The private sector builds jobs and wealth, the government builds entitlements and debt. Stop trying to buy votes with other people's money

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

This is a great analysis of the tax rate paid by Bezos and Amazon. If you want to know the facts and why you hear about them laying 1% rates, this is a good read.

[@amuse @amuse]

https://t.co/E9HCA7JkUg

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@Mann2609 Hey now, don't bring logic or economics into a debate with a socialist. Bernie will just yell things that make him feel good until you give up. If only he had a little longer in office, I'm sure he would fix things

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

The free school breakfast thing is an interesting discussion if you can get past the evil republican vs commie democrat view. There are tangible benefits to feeding kids a healthy breakfast before investing in their education all day. But that does come at a cost to the taxpayers, and it assumes that the money is spent wisely. From what I have seen, the food is not healthy and it goes to all kids (not just the ones who would not otherwise be fed) because they dont want to single kids out. Add in that the taxpayers already pay for those kids breakfast, and that the admin and overhead costs, and you have a good reason to be skeptical.
But let's have a discussion focused on solving the issue, not proving that any opposing view is dumb .

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@Gatewayxchange_ @FoxNews Its bad for everyone when the Republicans do it Its bad for everyone when the democrats do it The only winner is the uniparty....

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@CSI_Starbase @mihirneal I was just a bit disappointed that there wasnt more to it. OK, its two very different programs, and that's why people are surprised Odd that they are angry though.... I disagree that its a good comparison but whatever Its an interesting point when you step all the way back.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

Fox News needs to stop all this fear mongering! There is no fraud problem. Wait... CBS found fraud? Uh oh...

[CBS Evening News with Tony Dokoupil @CBSEveningNews]

FRAUD UPDATE: A CBS News Investigation found one Los Angeles County hospice physician's name, Dr. Rajiv Bhuva, on Medicare claims for nearly 2,800 patients across 126 California hospices in 2024, according to the last full year of available data. @Adamyamaguchi tracked him down. https://t.co/gFoEqrEpGB

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

Want a break from doom and gloom? This made my day.

[鈴森はるか 『haruka suzumori』 🇯🇵 @harukaawake]

🇺🇸🇯🇵 Everyone in Japan knows "Take Me Home, Country Roads" by John Denver.

We cover it all the time so I hope our American friends can appreciate it.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@ChaseForLiberty I usually agree with you, but in this one I think you are marking a poor argument that detracts from your point The immigration of today is not what made this country great, because we tied it to perpetual welfare and don't enforce the laws. This for in the face of the goals and ideals of the libertarian party.
They does not mean that it is OK to track up crazy amounts of debt. These are two totally different things. Both are bad, and both create big government, big taxes, and less freedom .

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

This is worth watching to the end Almost half a century ago Ben Stein saw the perils of the media system and how it unintentionally warped people's sense of reality. Its eerie to look back and think how this played out , and is now playing out in media and social media

[Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost @Ne_pas_couvrir]

Here’s Ben Stein in 1979 describing television as an engine of cultural demoralization. He argues that a small clique of producers and writers pushed a left-coded inversion of reality onto the public. They despised traditional power centers and hated figures like Buckley. They propagandized the nation into accepting a fake world where businessmen are villains, criminals are the good-guys, small towns are sinister, military officers are proto-fascists, and work barely exists.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@justjack961 @liz_churchill10 Was thinking the same thing...

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@US_is_back @SawyerMerritt Can we agree that this launch is awesome without making it a SpaceX vs NASA thing? They are both doing amazing things right now, and that is just cool

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

@elonmusk Hey @elonmusk , dont worry about grok winning, just keep making it great. The other AIs will have to be great to compete, and that competition will make everyone better. Just like Tesla did for EVs and SpaceX did for launch platforms. The competition is key.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

Miss him yet?

[The Vigilant Fox 🦊 @VigilantFox]

2013. Barack Obama shuts down a reporter who asks him to consider “unilaterally freezing” deportations for children of illegal aliens.

Obama immediately rejected the idea: “My job in the executive branch is supposed to be to carry out the laws that are PASSED.”

He added that if he loosened the immigration rules on his own, then he would essentially “be IGNORING THE LAW in a way that I think would be very difficult to defend legally.”

“So that’s not an option.”

[MAZE @mazemoore]

2010. President Obama shoots down the whole "stop deportations and just let the illegal immigrants be" argument that the Democrat party is currently pushing.

[Doug Smith @stingray74]

This is a great assessment of why it seems like everyone with a different viewpoint seems crazy these days. And why they think you are.
Once you understand this you can start having discussions, and not before.

[Dylan Allman @dylanmallman]

We are living through a moment where a group of people do not just disagree, they do not even acknowledge a shared fundamental reality.

There is no common frame of reference, no mutual set of facts from which discourse can even begin. They can watch the same video, from multiple angles, and walk away convinced they saw a completely different event.

They exist inside a narrative so deeply entrenched that to question it, to even acknowledge a contradiction, is to commit some sort of ideological treason.

This is a deliberate, conditioned immunity to contradiction. It is a cultivated resistance to evidence. They have developed a mind so thoroughly welded to its chosen reality that it will alter, discard, or fabricate whatever it must to maintain coherence.

They can be shown, in real time, the unraveling of their worldview, and they will patch over the holes with fantasy rather than face any doubt whatsoever.

Politics has turned knowledge itself into a partisan weapon. The expectation is no longer to seek truth, but to defend your team at all costs.

There is a lingering obligation to have an opinion on everything, to be informed at all times, to adopt the correct stance. And so, they improvise. They adopt prefabricated opinions handed down by their faction. They fill in the gaps with instinctive loyalty rather than demonstrating any semblance of independent thought.

The game is rigged, and they know it. Two parties, two choices, two sides that everyone is herded into, and neither is worth the loyalty demanded of them.

But to acknowledge this would be to admit powerlessness, to admit that they are trapped in an illusion of choice. So they cope. They retroactively justify their allegiance by turning their side into something righteous, infallible, and necessary. The alternative is too terrifying.

It is a coping mechanism turned mass psychosis. And it is escalating. When reality itself is dictated by allegiance, when loyalty outranks reason, when every fact must be bent into submission to fit the tribe’s chosen narrative, the outcome is inevitable: war.

When factions exist in separate realities, they cannot coexist. They cannot negotiate, they cannot reason, they cannot even comprehend the other side as anything but a threat.

This is irreconcilable. We cannot function like this. A society cannot sustain itself when its people are no longer individuals but ideological husks, possessed by abstractions, fighting battles for masters who do not even know their names.

You are not your faction. You are not your party. You are not an extension of a collective mind.

The moment you outsource your thinking, the moment you allow yourself to believe that your side must be right because the alternative is unbearable, you have ceased to be an individual. You have become another interchangeable pawn in a game that does not need you to think, only to obey.

Wake up. This war for reality is not one you want to be drafted into.

[Barrett Linburg @DallasAptGP]

GOV: We have a housing crisis. Prices are too high.

ME: I agree. Supply is too low.

GOV: So we have a plan. We’re going to subsidize demand.

ME: …What does that mean?

GOV: We’re going to give people money to buy houses.

ME: But there aren't enough houses.

GOV: Right. So we’ll help them bid harder.

ME: If you have 10 people fighting for 1 house, and you give them all cash... the price just goes up.

GOV: Then we’ll give them more cash.

ME: That’s not a solution. That’s inflation.

GOV: It’s "First Time Homebuyer Assistance."

ME: Okay, let’s back up. Why are houses so expensive in the first place?

GOV: Because we made them the perfect investment vehicle.

ME: How?

GOV: First, the 30-year fixed mortgage.

ME: That’s standard, right?

GOV: Only in America. In other countries, rates float. Here, you can lock in a low rate for three decades.

ME: Why would a bank take that risk? If inflation goes up, they lose money.

GOV: Banks don’t take the risk. They sell the loan to us.

ME: To the government?

GOV: To Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. We guarantee the liquidity.

ME: So the taxpayer subsidizes the risk so I can have cheap leverage?

GOV: Correct.

ME: And then I get to deduct the interest?

GOV: Only on the first $750,000 of debt.

ME: That seems... high.

GOV: It used to be a million. We trimmed it.

ME: But wait. If I rent, can I deduct my rent?

GOV: No.

ME: If I buy a small business, can I deduct the interest on the loan?

GOV: It’s complicated.

ME: But if I buy a giant house, I definitely can?

GOV: Absolutely. We wrote it into the tax code.

ME: So you’re paying me to borrow money to buy a bigger house than I need.

GOV: We’re "incentivizing ownership."

ME: What happens when I sell?

GOV: The Capital Gains Exclusion!

ME: How does that work?

GOV: If you sell a stock for a $500,000 profit, you pay taxes.

ME: Roughly 20%.

GOV: If you sell your house for a $500,000 profit?

ME: What do I pay?

GOV: Zero.

ME: Zero tax?

GOV: As long as you lived there for two years.

ME: So housing is the only asset class where I get subsidized 30-year leverage and tax-free profits?

GOV: Pretty sweet deal, right?

ME: So you turned shelter into a speculative financial asset.

GOV: We call it "Generational Wealth."

ME: Okay, so demand is juiced to the moon. Can we at least build more supply to bring prices down?

GOV: Oh, absolutely not.

ME: Why?

GOV: Zoning.

ME: I own land. Can I build a duplex?

GOV: Illegal. Single-family only.

ME: Can I build a granny flat?

GOV: Only if you provide two parking spots and pass a shadow study.

ME: So you made it illegal to build cheaper housing?

GOV: We protect "Neighborhood Character."

ME: But you spend billions on roads and utilities for the suburbs.

GOV: Infrastructure investment.

ME: So you subsidize the expensive sprawl, but ban the cheap density?

GOV: Now you’re getting it.

ME: This system seems designed to keep prices high.

GOV: It is.

ME: But you started this conversation by saying we have an "Affordability Crisis."

GOV: We do. Prices are too high!

ME: So we should lower them?

GOV: No! We can’t lower prices.

ME: Why not?

GOV: Because then the voters lose their "Generational Wealth."

ME: So we need high prices for the voters... and low prices for the buyers?

GOV: Exactly.

ME: That’s a paradox.

GOV: It’s politics.

ME: So what is your actual plan?

GOV: We’re going to give first-time buyers $25,000.

ME: Okay. I’m a seller. I list my house for $400,000.

GOV: Uh huh.

ME: I know every buyer just got a free $25,000 from the government.

GOV: Right.

ME: What do I do?

GOV: You... keep the price the same?

ME: I raise the price to $425,000.

GOV: You wouldn't.

ME: I absolutely would. The buyer can afford it now.

GOV: But that just transfers the subsidy from the poor buyer to the rich seller!

ME: Econ 101.

GOV: We don’t think that will happen.

ME: Just like you didn’t think $7,500 EV credits would make Ford raise the price of the F-150 Lightning by exactly $7,500?

GOV: That was a coincidence.

ME: You are trapping us in a box.

GOV: It’s not a box.

ME: What is it?

GOV: It’s a Single Family Home with a 2.5% mortgage rate that you can never afford to sell.

ME: ...

GOV: Welcome to the American Dream.