False.

Pro tip: if someone starts a sentence with "we are being told" or "they are telling us," what follows is almost certainly foolish.

Yes, do your own research. No, don't do your research on Facebook. Learn statistics.

It's a waste of human life when people get into that garbage pseudo-science. But how much was their life really worth to the rest of us in the first place?

None according to my check ups. Those of us with a family history of heart disease tend to keep a very good eye on our heart health. And any small changes tend to show up on tests, especially something like the persistent inflammation of the heart. Inflammatory cardiomyopathy is a serious complication for us old farts with bad tickers and it's best to stay on top of it.

Inventing unfounded fears that isn't backed by data and more importantly, doesn't appear in my individual case, is paranoia at best and politically-driven fear mongering at worst. Please don't make human health a pawn in your warped political views.

This was not a zero sum game. Both the US and Soviet Union lost the Cold War.

The decline we see in the US today with regard to individual liberty is a direct result of policies established through the second half of the 20th century.

Putin wins because his country already lost, acknowledge its lost, and has to some degree recovered from it. Although they transformed into something far worse.

Can you cite any sources? Bitchute links don’t count.

First off parents don't give vaccines to their kids and then their kids die horribly. I was unvaccinated for measles until very recently. My mother was an antivax lunatic. Colloidal silver and the whole nine yards.

But even ignoring the kids all those people become breeding grounds for new variants that go right past the vaccines you've got and kill you.

You can't have a peeing section in the pool.

That's okay King Trump will protect me from the viruses. And hurricanes. Both of which using nukes.

Since none of that is true, no need for any studies.

But yes, it's not fun to die a painful death as your blood clots and your lungs fill with fluids because you didn't get vaccinated.

Wut? Have you been taking a nap for 40 years? The whole schtick on family values, law and order, and growing the economy was an act. The end goal is and has always been to obtain power.
Power over the courts: check.
Power over the legislature: light check.
Power over the executive branch: dark black check with a sharpie.

I'm unlikely to get invited to any orgies. And I can own my own hot tub so I don't have to share with anyone.

Don't get too hung up on it. Moving money around has been a profitable endeavor for thousands of years (2000 BCE Mesopotamia?)

Modern macroeconomic theory is rooted in Adam Smith’s "Theory of Money" and "Wealth of Nations". And in John Maynard Keynes's "The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money", especially his concept of Keynesian Multiplier. Where a dollar spent in an economy rather than saved feeds into a cycle and increases the money supply. This concept has been taken to an extreme to justify some of the most bizarre economic policies that dominated politics in the 1980's to present day. And probably where you're seeing the idea that our economy is based on just moving money around instead of making things.

I'm open to new ideas, and I haven't seen everything. AI is improving all the time. So maybe one of these companies found a way to fix major portions of technical debt. And if it does, I hope someone will tell me.

I haven't seen it yet.

I'm confused on what base you have to have this hope?

The US lost the Cold War. Cultural coping mechanism of hypernormalization has set in for us. And we're not going "wake up" until there are food shortages. Which is FAR too late to steer our economy out of a long lasting disaster.

For the most part, the American people don't care too much about what happens to Ukraine or Gaza/Israel/Iran, especially the people that would support Trump. It is completely unnecessary for Trump to provide a distraction to what he can safely ignore. Failed foreign policy is something that voters of both parties have long been used to, and voters rarely hold anyone accountable.

The distractions that the Trump administration have created are to distract the media and opponents from the open dismantling of institutions that the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025 orchestrated and Trump is "all in" on. A great deal of personal gain is possible for the one in charge of raiding of the largest economy in the world. Trump's legacy and family wealth will continue through the next century. This Constitutional Republic on the other hand might not make it that long.

So, I have to admit, this was back when I was a (apparently clueless) teenager, and basically what I was amounted to being a gopher and extra set of hands. It never occurred to me that the guys owned their own tools, I didn't see them hauling them in/out.

The guys I know now, I know through the owner of a rather large auto shop. He is frequently talking about expensive stuff he's bought for the shop, so I've just assumed he bought everything.

Side note - back in the day, it was pretty obvious I wasn't particularly well-suited to that sort of work. I always envied (still do, actually) of guys who know cars inside and out.