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On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it.
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On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it.
Ive worked with the FDA alot, they didnt do a great job of inspecting your food in the first place. Not at the clearance level anyway. Then again they get paid shit and their job is super subjective (even though the rules are quite well defined, they are just too well defined and way too onerous) so I wouldnt fault them for just shrugging and getting their numbers up.
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On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago.
Yeah but don't you know they're all Democrats?
Oh wait, never mind an article came out about Trump isn't hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting.
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On January 11 2019 04:11 Rebs wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. Ive worked with the FDA alot, they didnt do a great job of inspecting your food in the first place. Not at the clearance level anyway. Then again they get paid shit and their job is super subjective (even though the rules are quite well defined, they are just too well defined and way too onerous) so I wouldnt fault them for just shrugging and getting their numbers up. The lady who directs traffic outside of the school doesn’t do a great job of keeping traffic going while assuring kids can cross the busy street safely. But she is better than the alternative no kids trying to navigate that busy street on their own.
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On January 11 2019 04:17 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:11 Rebs wrote:On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. Ive worked with the FDA alot, they didnt do a great job of inspecting your food in the first place. Not at the clearance level anyway. Then again they get paid shit and their job is super subjective (even though the rules are quite well defined, they are just too well defined and way too onerous) so I wouldnt fault them for just shrugging and getting their numbers up. The lady who directs traffic outside of the school doesn’t do a great job of keeping traffic going while assuring kids can cross the busy street safely. But she is better than the alternative no kids trying to navigate that busy street on their own.
Which is why I didnt say that it was ok that no one was inspecting your food. Just that if theyre absence is the reason your diet is exclusive to Poptarts you might aswell stick to the Poptarts permanently.
I also wouldnt want my children crossing the road that lady is on either.
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On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it.
I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen.
This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever.
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Bisutopia19158 Posts
On January 11 2019 03:38 Plansix wrote:On that topic, the Nation Parks are already being damaged by people who want to use them for off roading and all the other stuff they could do literally anywhere else. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-joshua-tree-cleanup-20190109-story.htmlShow nested quote +While Joshua Tree is famous for its otherworldly landscape of weather-beaten rocks and spindly, namesake trees, unruly visitors have turned it into a worst-case example of parkland abuse, officials say.
With no rangers in sight for roughly three weeks, visitors have fought over official campsites and driven through off-limit areas to create illegal encampments. They have littered, set illegal fires, defecated in the wild, and chopped down vegetation to drive around barriers intended to keep people out of sensitive wildlife corridors.
Abbott, one of dozens of ardent volunteers helping out in the park, figures he’s spent nearly $5,000 on bleach, rags and garbage bags and driven 702 miles while cleaning overflowing toilets, picking up garbage and documenting the mess from his wheelchair.
The 55-year-old said that last Sunday, he confronted a group that had used a chain saw to cut up a Joshua tree and a pine tree for firewood. In a separate incident, he cautioned a man who had illegally parked a pickup truck and trailer in a rocky cove frequented by bighorn sheep. Not for nothing, but can we start a go fund me for this guy, because Jesus what a hero. Without any knowledge of this or other people's stories, my wife and I had already planned to head to our local National parks with trash bags to go around emptying them and cleaning up this weekend. It is nice to see other people have the same idea. The libertarian party is rallying people up too and sending groups to clean up the parks. I think it's great and really love there attitude about proving that we don't need the government to maintain things we find important.
source: https://hanfordsentinel.com/news/local/libertarian-party-organizes-yosemite-cleanup/article_82ae735e-e77d-5904-9760-ec6d098a301b.html
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Savings culture does not exist independent of expense culture, so to indict the savings habits of Americans, many of which face costs our European brethren do not (especially regarding healthcare, insurance, and transportation), is to leave out a large part of the equation.
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On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever.
People do that because they don't make enough money to save at all.
You make it sound like people are bad at saving. That makes you sound pretty privileged and quite ignorant, to be honest.
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On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever. It goes beyond culture to fundamental problems with our safety net system and that it is a pain in the ass to save money. My wife and I have a couple savings accounts we pack money away in, but it always feels like the money could be better used investing. But any sort of investment has costs associated with it that make committing those savings to it undesirable. We keep looking into it, but there has never been a good system that we felt confident in. And we are firmly middle class and not complete morons with our credit. I don’t know what people with kids do beyond have no money to save.
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On January 11 2019 04:44 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 03:38 Plansix wrote:On that topic, the Nation Parks are already being damaged by people who want to use them for off roading and all the other stuff they could do literally anywhere else. https://www.latimes.com/local/california/la-me-joshua-tree-cleanup-20190109-story.htmlWhile Joshua Tree is famous for its otherworldly landscape of weather-beaten rocks and spindly, namesake trees, unruly visitors have turned it into a worst-case example of parkland abuse, officials say.
With no rangers in sight for roughly three weeks, visitors have fought over official campsites and driven through off-limit areas to create illegal encampments. They have littered, set illegal fires, defecated in the wild, and chopped down vegetation to drive around barriers intended to keep people out of sensitive wildlife corridors.
Abbott, one of dozens of ardent volunteers helping out in the park, figures he’s spent nearly $5,000 on bleach, rags and garbage bags and driven 702 miles while cleaning overflowing toilets, picking up garbage and documenting the mess from his wheelchair.
The 55-year-old said that last Sunday, he confronted a group that had used a chain saw to cut up a Joshua tree and a pine tree for firewood. In a separate incident, he cautioned a man who had illegally parked a pickup truck and trailer in a rocky cove frequented by bighorn sheep. Not for nothing, but can we start a go fund me for this guy, because Jesus what a hero. Without any knowledge of this or other people's stories, my wife and I had already planned to head to our local National parks with trash bags to go around emptying them and cleaning up this weekend. It is nice to see other people have the same idea. The libertarian party is rallying people up too and sending groups to clean up the parks. I think it's great and really love there attitude about proving that we don't need the government to maintain things we find important. source: https://hanfordsentinel.com/news/local/libertarian-party-organizes-yosemite-cleanup/article_82ae735e-e77d-5904-9760-ec6d098a301b.html I think it is great that people are pitching in and of course the community is important. But the reason the national parks exist at all is because people found them important and the government created them and made the land sacrosanct. The park rangers exist because those parts need to be cared for, and we as tax payers, created a profession to assure that takes place.
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On January 11 2019 04:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever. People do that because they don't make enough money to save at all. You make it sound like people are bad at saving. That makes you sound pretty privileged and quite ignorant, to be honest. It's not ignorant. Many people are bad at saving. Of course there are poor people who can't save but there are also many middle class families who spend their wages without saving much. Financial literacy is a huge problem in both Europe and the US. As a general principle you should have enough liquid assets to survive 6 months without any income. There are very few people who actually have that much.
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The notion that folks want to come and clean up the messes left behind by folks who took advantage of the lack of government oversight doesn’t say anything positive with regards to “we don’t need no government” sentiments. It says the exact opposite.
On January 11 2019 04:59 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever. People do that because they don't make enough money to save at all. You make it sound like people are bad at saving. That makes you sound pretty privileged and quite ignorant, to be honest. It's not ignorant. Many people are bad at saving. Of course there are poor people who can't save but there are also many middle class families who spend their wages without saving much. Financial literacy is a huge problem in both Europe and the US. As a general principle you should have enough liquid assets to survive 6 months without any income. There are very few people who actually have that much. Tossing out “savings 101” tips without any reference to the material circumstances of those with little savings is unhelpful at best, ignorant at worst.
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On January 11 2019 04:52 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever. My wife and I have a couple savings accounts we pack money away in, but it always feels like the money could be better used investing. But any sort of investment has costs associated with it that make committing those savings to it undesirable. We keep looking into it, but there has never been a good system that we felt confident in. There are a ton of index tracking ETFs that can be bought for a management fee of 0-0.2% as opposed to mutual funds that can go 2%+. These cover everything from S&P 500 to the global equity and bond market. They have data that spans decades that explain their performance.
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On January 11 2019 04:59 RvB wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever. People do that because they don't make enough money to save at all. You make it sound like people are bad at saving. That makes you sound pretty privileged and quite ignorant, to be honest. It's not ignorant. Many people are bad at saving. Of course there are poor people who can't save but there are also many middle class families who spend their wages without saving much. Financial literacy is a huge problem in both Europe and the US. As a general principle you should have enough liquid assets to survive 6 months without any income. There are very few people who actually have that much.
Yes and no. While there certainly are people who're bad at saving (i wouldn't exclude myself there considering i've just spent $1400 on a GPU instead of putting it away), his specific story is absolutely ignorant.
It's assuming that every worker on governmental payroll lives a student life. There are plenty of families where there's only one earner. That's leaving out families with kids, where two "standard" wages are actually not enough to put any meaningful amount of money away - and that's not just the case in the US, it's the case in europe (or specifically germany, since i have second hand experience there) too. A friend of mine has a wife and two kids, both have "normal jobs" (he works as a fire-prevention-system-inspector, she as a secretary), and between two cars (needed), the apartment (needed, in fact a bigger/more expensive one would be needed) etc, there is barely enough money left over to have a camping holiday once a year in the netherlands, in a caravan owned by his father.
To argue that everyone can live on toast and peanuts with barely any financial obligations is, in fact, ignorant.
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or, in the wise words of our last representative from utah, perhaps the FBI should just sell their iphones if they wanted to pay rent.
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On January 11 2019 05:11 brian wrote: or, in the wise words of our last representative from utah, perhaps the FBI should just sell their iphones if they wanted to pay rent.
Or maybe ask their landlords if there's anything they can help around with. That's totally how this works.
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Like Mohdoo, I fly Sunday to start a new job. I completely forgot about the FAA not being close to fully operational. Here's to safe travels.
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On January 10 2019 11:19 On_Slaught wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2019 09:25 abmhm wrote:On January 09 2019 12:17 Doodsmack wrote:On January 09 2019 12:03 Wulfey_LA wrote:The Donald speech was a complete waste of everyone's time. Nothing he said maps to reality. His sniffly ramblings about how the wall will makes things more secure are completely bogus. No one should care. But the COLLUSION story is off the charts explosive today! + Show Spoiler ++ Show Spoiler + Both Mr. Manafort and Rick Gates, the deputy campaign manager, transferred the data to Mr. Kilimnik in the spring of 2016 as Mr. Trump clinched the Republican presidential nomination, according to a person knowledgeable about the situation. Most of the data was public, but some of it was developed by a private polling firm working for the campaign, according to the person.
Mr. Manafort asked Mr. Gates to tell Mr. Kilimnik to pass the data to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to the Kremlin and who has claimed that Mr. Manafort owed him money from a failed business venture, the person said. It is unclear whether Mr. Manafort was acting at the campaign’s behest or independently, trying to gain favor with someone to whom he was deeply in debt.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/08/us/politics/manafort-trump-campaign-data-kilimnik.htmlThis isn't something Mueller is alleging. This was an error in redaction by Manafort's attorneys. This is all stuff that Manafort himself swore/admitted was true. This is on the nose COLLUSION. Manafort was passing internal campaign data and working deals with a Russian intelligence asset and directing the data and deals to be passed up the chain to an oligarch whom Manafort owed money. Yeah, the Agalarov summit was also collusion, but damn this is the big stuff. Derispaska isn't some nobody. Read onwards. This guy sits at the table with Putin and in his own words: Deripaska always knew the game he was playing, and at times he has been candid about it. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” he told the FT in 2007. “I have no other interests.” + Show Spoiler +Deripaska always knew the game he was playing, and at times he has been candid about it. “I don’t separate myself from the state,” he told the FT in 2007. “I have no other interests.” And indeed, while he did well by Putin, he has also been quite useful to him. Shortly after the Bush Administration revoked Deripaska’s visa in 2006, allegedly due to his ties to organized crime, he was granted a diplomatic passport by Russia, not just for his own business purposes, but also so that he could represent Russia in the international arena. A U.S. diplomatic cable sent in 2006 noted the dynamic: Deripaska was “among the two to three oligarchs Putin turns to on a regular basis” and “a more or less permanent fixture on Putin’s trips abroad.” The conversation unearthed by anti-corruption activist and opposition politician Alexei Navalny last year between Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Prikhodko, a top foreign policy advisor to Putin, suggests that Deripaska’s role as a kind of unofficial intermediary remains unchanged. https://www.the-american-interest.com/2018/05/30/the-great-oligarch-whitewash/EDIT: more out and out COLLUSION: "If he needs private briefings we can accommodate," Manafort wrote in the July 7, 2016, email, portions of which were read to The Washington Post along with other Manafort correspondence from that time. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/manafort-offered-to-give-russian-billionaire-private-briefings-on-2016-campaign/2017/09/20/399bba1a-9d48-11e7-8ea1-ed975285475e_story.html?utm_term=.506fa58583f0 It is actual hard evidence of collusion, though there is also the possibility that Manafort was acting on his own out of his own financial interests. He had a long and very close relationship with Deripaska. But there are emails showing that Manafort was explicitly offering to meet with Deripaska to discuss US-Russia policy. If nothing else this shows conclusively that the matter is worth investigating to the fullest extent possible. The story has been corrected. Manafort shared the data with the intention of getting it into the hands of Ukrainian oligarchs. To be honest, Ukrainian-Trump collusion makes a lot more sense since Trump has been selling them weapons, much to the annoyance of the Kremlin. *snickers* "No, no he didn't give the info to that one Russian stooge, he gave it to those other 2 Russian stooges living in Ukraine via his Russian spy friend. " That makes things so much better! Still, a pretty big mistake on the NYTs part.
Yeah, look at what Manafort was telling that Russian spy in this e-mail. So deceitful, trying to get this obvious Kremlin agent (Konstantin Kilimnik, aka "KK" in the "to" field) to push Ukraine closer to the European Union and the West. Exactly as the Kremlin would demand from their spies!
+ Show Spoiler +https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DwkeWfiXQAE4Z60.jpg
It must be collusion!
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On January 11 2019 05:09 m4ini wrote:Show nested quote +On January 11 2019 04:59 RvB wrote:On January 11 2019 04:46 Stratos_speAr wrote:On January 11 2019 04:40 Simberto wrote:On January 11 2019 04:08 Plansix wrote:On January 11 2019 04:04 Mohdoo wrote:On January 11 2019 03:57 Plansix wrote: Remember that super cool discussion we had about how shutdowns don’t matter and federal employees would all be fine because of their huge saving accounts? It feels like a lifetime ago. Yeah office administrators are known for being flush with cash. Park Rangers and FDA inspectors too. FYI, the FDA is closed, so no one is inspecting our food. My master plan is to eat pop tarts until the shut down ends. Not sure I will make it. I think pretty much everyone should try their best to be able to survive 1-2 months without income. I personally am not rich, and don't have a lot of income due to being mostly a student and only secondarily making money. But i still saved up enough money for emergencies to be able to pay rent and eat for at least two months if i suddenly stop having any income at all for whatever reason. Anything else would be horribly scary. Shit happens sometimes. Maybe the washing machine breaks. Or my bike gets stolen. This is not to debate how incredibly stupid this whole shutdown thing is, and that it is clearly hurting people. But i think something is very wrong with the savings culture in the US if so many people life from paycheck to paycheck, which i read as basically having no emergency funds whatsoever. People do that because they don't make enough money to save at all. You make it sound like people are bad at saving. That makes you sound pretty privileged and quite ignorant, to be honest. It's not ignorant. Many people are bad at saving. Of course there are poor people who can't save but there are also many middle class families who spend their wages without saving much. Financial literacy is a huge problem in both Europe and the US. As a general principle you should have enough liquid assets to survive 6 months without any income. There are very few people who actually have that much. Yes and no. While there certainly are people who're bad at saving (i wouldn't exclude myself there considering i've just spent $1400 on a GPU instead of putting it away), his specific story is absolutely ignorant. It's assuming that every worker on governmental payroll lives a student life. There are plenty of families where there's only one earner. That's leaving out families with kids, where two "standard" wages are actually not enough to put any meaningful amount of money away - and that's not just the case in the US, it's the case in europe (or specifically germany, since i have second hand experience there) too. A friend of mine has a wife and two kids, both have "normal jobs" (he works as a fire-prevention-system-inspector, she as a secretary), and between two cars (needed), the apartment (needed, in fact a bigger/more expensive one would be needed) etc, there is barely enough money left over to have a camping holiday once a year in the netherlands, in a caravan owned by his father. To argue that everyone can live on toast and peanuts with barely any financial obligations is, in fact, ignorant.
Maybe you are classifying too much stuff as "needed". You can save a lot of money by not buying as much stuff, and you might notice that you don't actually need all the stuff that is "needed". What i am saying is that if your standard budget does not involve 5-10% of your income/month to be set aside in case of emergencies (until you have built up a reasonable safety fund), you are asking for trouble. Especially in a situation like in the US where you are not actually covered by healthcare if you get sick. And if i can manage that off of ~600-700€ monthly income in Munich, people with "two standard wages" should be able to do that, too.
Otherwise, how do you deal with any sudden expenses? Do you just borrow money? In that case you are spending even more, only later.
And i still have the feeling that you are classifying far too much as "needed" expenses. Why does a family need two cars? Are both living so far from their jobs that not at least one of them could ride a bike or take public transit? Especially if both drive to some common spot together first? I am deeply sceptic of any budget that deems two cars as necessary.
To me, this means that you just don't prioritize having safety funds high enough, because they are not immediately obviously necessary. But of course, you can call this "privileged".
Note that i am not saying that you should push people into their safety funds for no reason whatsoever. Not paying government workers is utterly insane. My point was kind of perpendicular to this. Not having enough money in the bank to survive for one month is not a good situation to constantly be in, it is incredibly unstable, and if one is in that situation, one should try to find some way to change this.
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