ArbitraryValue

That and the sign is probably not real too.

Isn't this a very reasonable rule? I really would prefer that you did not wash your balls in the Baja Blast.

He's the man the voters chose - if they didn't trust his judgement, they could have chosen someone else. His moral character represents American moral character.

It's fairly straightforward to give a child no opportunity to lie about the things important to the parents, if the parents put in the effort. They can watch the kid come home right after school and sit in the living room doing homework all evening, and the school will tell them his grades and whether or not he's behaving well.

Reminds me of "Ninja parade slips through town unnoticed" from the Onion.

Depends on what you mean by "strict". I think the meme is about the parents who get angry over little things but don't actually pay attention to their kids much - the ones who just assume that their kids would not dare to misbehave. However when I was in high school, I also saw plenty of kids (often immigrants) who had successfully been taught to work pretty much non-stop. I think their parents watched them (or at least their grades) closely enough that they couldn't have gotten away with anything. It seemed to work well - they got straight A's, never got in trouble, and went to prestigious universities. I can't think of a single one I knew who burned out or rebelled (while in high school - I don't know what happened to them afterwards). However, the ones I got to meet were already filtered, with the low- and medium-achievers not admitted to that school.

People get surprisingly angry about something no one would force them to participate in.

I think that then we actually agree.

That is my current understanding as well, except that I would add that cigarettes are so expensive because of sin taxes, not because they're inherently that expensive to produce. In NYC (admittedly a place with particularly high taxes on cigarettes) the total tax on a single pack is $7.86. Therefore I don't have a lot of sympathy for arguments that the government ought to discourage smoking specifically because it costs poor people a lot of money. (With that said, public health arguments for discouraging the burning of tobacco are valid.) My guess is that a nicotine habit doesn't have to be much more expensive than a caffeine habit.

The policy goals of the 0.01% are basically in lock step, why would they bid against each other?

But in fact both The Democrats and the Republicans raise money.

Oh, and centrist Democrats often urge leftier types to rally behind their nominees in general elections. I agree. Anyone claiming that there’s no difference between the parties is a fool. But this deal has to be reciprocal. Mamdani will be the Democratic nominee, and anyone calling themselves a Democrat should support him.

This idea is based on pragmatic concerns, not moral principles: in most elections, either Democrats unite behind one candidate or Republicans win. However, Republicans definitely won't win the NYC mayoral election. The same candidate running now ran last time too and got only 28% of the votes. In this context, I see no reason at all for Democrats to unite, except perhaps that further direct opposition is a waste of effort. Awful candidates like Cuomo and Adams almost certainly can't win by running as third- and fourth-parties.