Recent kwiples

Sunday 19th of May 2024

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Bullshitters say Everybody's very attentive to those kinds of things. Amy Coney Barrett, denying there's a need for ethical guidelines for Supreme Court justices in cases involving their spouses, weeks after it became known that Justice Clarence Thomas voted in a case involving his wife, just as one expects of him [There is a law specifically prohibiting federal judges from participating in cases involving their spouse. Apparently, Barrett doesn't believe that laws that apply to federal judges also apply to Supreme Court justices.] © 2022 Kwiple.com
Housing In this booming housing market, many homeowners earned more last year from home appreciation than from their jobs. Zillow Group Inc.’s home value index, which estimates the value of the typical  U.S. home, rose 19.6% in 2021 to $321,634, an increase of $52,667 from 2020. That figure was slightly higher than what the median U.S. full-time worker earned, which was about $50,000 last year before taxes, according to Census Bureau data cited by Zillow. Wall Street Journal, March 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality As in recent years, some of the highest- paid CEOs of public companies weren’t running businesses in the S&P 500 index. Private-equity giant KKR & Co. reported paying co-CEOs Joseph Bae and Scott Nuttall compensation valued at $559.6 million and $523.1 million, respectively. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Discovery Inc.’s David Zaslav, at nearly $247 million, had the highest 2021 pay disclosed so far among the CEOs of S&P 500 companies who served the full year. Mr. Zaslav’s pay was nearly 3,000 times the $82,964 that the company reported paying its median worker last year, up from a multiple of 1,511 in 2018. … The second-highest paid CEO so far in the S&P 500 was Amazon.com Inc.’s Andy Jassy, who was awarded compensation valued at  nearly $213 million, narly all in retricted stock. That was nearly 6,500 times the median Amazon worker, who made $32,855 in 2021. Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Income inequality Median pay rose to $14.2 million last year for the leaders of S&P 500 companies, up from a record $13.4 million for the same companies a year earlier, according to a  Wall Street Journal analysis of pay data for  more than half the index from MyLogIQ LLC. Most CEOs received a pay increase of 11% or more, and pay rose by at least 25% for nearly one-third of them. … CEOs at roughly half the companies were paid at least 186 times what their median worker made in 2021 … That is up from 166 times in the year before the pandemic and 156 times in 2018 Wall Street Journal, April 3, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Kwiplers say Count votes in Congress by: 1. Calculating a Member's Proportional Vote (MPV) for each member, as follows: MPV = SPNP / NLRS where: SPNP = State's Percentage of the National Population NLRS = Number of Legislators Representing the State (in that legislature) 2. Totaling “yes” MPVs and “no” MPVs 3. Passing if total MPV is more than 50 OTHERWISE Abolish the Senate © 2019 Kwiple.com
Liars say I have no idea what a burner phone is, to the best of my knowledge I have never even heard the term. Donald Trump © 2022 Kwiple.com
Liars say I'm not into coups! Donald Trump, July 15, 2021 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Mental health I can’t be the only foreigner in the US who has been chided for not having a therapist by someone who — choosing my words carefully here — seems to be getting uneven results from theirs. Janan Ganesh, Financial Times, April 8, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Money in politics Among Americans overall, roughly 18 percent make political donations,  usually in amounts between $25 and $100. Forty percent of all political donations come from the top 1 percent of the 1 percent. Jaime Lowe, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Money in politics  When “Billionaires and Stealth Politics” [by Benjamin Page, Jason Seawright and Matthew Lacombe] came out in 2018, Page says, multimillionaires who made political contribu- tions gave on average around $4,500 annually; for billionaires, the amount was $500,000. And, he emphasizes, that was just reported contributions, which means it didn't include any so-called dark money, the political giving by undisclosed donors that was blessed  by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United.  Page adds that 21 percent of the multimillionaires in their study bundled political donations from other people. “Twenty-one percent is a lot,” he says. “But then, among the billionaires, it was 36 percent.” Jaime Lowe, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Post-2020 Senate shituation 15 states (Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming) 2020 population: 40,085,414 Senators: 30 Republicans 1 Senator per 1,336,180 people — 1 state (California) 2020 population: 39,368,075 Senators: 2 Democrats 1 Senator per 19,684,037 people 19,684,037 / 1,336,180 = 14.7, therefore: average 15er's vote is worth nearly 15 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth less than 7% of an average 15er's — 1 state (Wyoming) 2020 population = 582,328, therefore: 1 Senator per 291,164 Wyomians, a Wyomian's vote is worth 68 times a Californian's, a Californian's vote is worth 1.5% of a Wyomian's  © 2021 Kwiple.com
Republican Party For all of you who get frustrated because Manchin and Sinema don't vote like true liberals — because they never were — or think Trump is as bad as it's going to get, remember the first rule of modern Republican politics: they always go lower, because this party has no bottom, unless you count Lindsey Graham. Bill Maher, Real Time with Bill Maher, April 1, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Snapshot The new crop [of Republicans] are such foamimg-at-the-mouth Kraken releasers  that Clarence Thomas wants to marry them. Republicans running for office in 2022 portrayed by Bill Maher, April 1, 2022  © 2022 Kwiple.com
Sociopaths say The Democrats are the party of pedophiles. The Democrats are the party of princess predators from Disney.  The Democrats are the party of teachers, elementary school teachers trying to transition their elementary school-age children and convince them they're a different gender. This is the party of their identity, and their identity is the most disgusting, evil, horrible thing happening in our country. Marjorie Taylor Greene, seeding the ground for political violence by sociopaths like herself and her kuckle-dragging followers  © 2022 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say At one time, science said man came from apes, did it not? If that's true, why are there still apes? Think about it. Herschel Walker, March 13, 2022, while frontrunner for the Georgia Republican Senate nomination in 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say God loves it when I try to talk in my spirit language. He thinks it's so cute that the only person in the world who can understand me is him. When I'm praying in tongues, my brain oftentimes is active. That's just because I've got this high-powered brain that never stops and drives me crazy, and so what I'll often do is I will send it on another assignment. Kelly Tshibaka, Trump-endorsed candidate to become a new Republican Senator from Alaska in 2022 to rerplace Lisa Murkowski, who's too sane © 2018 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say I have total confidence in Justice Thomas's impartiality in every aspect of the work of the Court. Each of the nine judges should feel free to make every single judicial decision they make with total independence and complete freedom, what cases they hear, how they hear them, how they rule,  whether and when they recuse themselves, and whether and when they retire. Mitch McConnell, opposing any ethics standards for Supreme Court justices, including ones preventing them from ruling in cases where they have conflicts of interest, like Thomas, who voted to prevent evidence of his wife's attempts to overturn the 2020 election to be turned over to Congress © 2022 Kwiple.com
< Trumpists say We should string you up by a lamppost right now. You're running into a patriot now. Justin Andersch, conspiracy theorist, after unleasing a string of racial and anti-government empithets toward Nevada's governor Steve Sisolak and his wife, Kathy, who is of Chinese heritage and calling her a "working-for-China piece of shit” in a Las Vegas restaurant © 2022 Kwiple.com
Trumpists say What, are you kidding me? I'm about to fly to Paris and shoot 'em in the head myself! … I am not OK with Syrian refugees. I'm not OK with terrorists. I'm OK with putting them down, blacking them out, just put a piece of brass in their ocular cavity and end their miserable life. I’m good with that. Michele Fiore, currently seeking Trump's endorsement in her run to become governor of Nevada, explaining her opposition to settling Syrian refugees in Nevada in 2015 © 2022 Kwiple.com
War Combat space is shrinking. War space is expanding. Chinese strategic doctrine © 2022 Kwiple.com
War In the early 20th century, the ratio of deaths in wars was roughly eight soldiers to every civilian. By the end of the 20th century, this was reversed. One soldier died for every eight civilians. We must reverse the meaning of that horrible American euphemism collateral damage. It is dead and injured soldiers  who are now the collateral damage of war. Civilian casualties are the main event. Fintan O'Toole, March 17, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
War crimes It [Russia's “special military operation” in Ukraine] is going on strictly in accord- ance with the plans and the purposes that were established beforehand. … We have a concept of domestic security and it's public. You can read all the reasons for nuclear arms to be used. So if it is an existential threat for our country, then it can be used in accordance with our concept. Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary, March 13, 2022, interview with CNN, well after Russian started bombing houses, apartment buildings, schools, maternity wards, food markets, etc. © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The average full-time Amazon employee made $37,930 in 2020. In order to accumulate as much money as Bezos ($172 billion) … an employee would have had to start working in the Pliocene Epoch (4.5 million years ago, when hominids had just started standing on two feet!). Mona Chalabi, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality  The housing-value gap between households earning more than 200% of their area's median income and other homeowners widened significantly over the decade. In 2010, high-income homeowners held 28% of of all U.S. housing wealth. By 2020, that figure rose to 42.6%. The share of housing wealth held by middle-income households declined to 37.5% in 2020, from 43.8% in 2010. Low-income housing wealth fell to 19.8% in 2020, from 28.2% in 2010. Wall Street Journal, March 9, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com
Wealth inequality The median U.S. household net worth is $118,200. Bezos has $172,000,000,000. So … how does that compare? Mona Chalabi, New York Times Magazine, April 7, 2022, whose answers are physical comparisons — e.g., if household worth = size of a white blood cell, then Bezos' worth = size of a finback whale [An arithmetic comparison is that Bezos' net worth of $172,000,000,000 = net worth of 1,455,161 median households, which contained 2.64 people in 2022, which means his net worth in 2022 = that of at least 3,841,625 people, which is more people than live in 24 states or  in any city other than New York and Los Angeles] © 2022 Kwiple.com
 
Whites With Obama, there was this narrative: “Woo, we have crossed the racial Rubicon! We have overcome! We put a Black man in the White House!” Without looking at the data that shows that a majority of white people did not vote for Barack Obama and that they have not voted for a Democratic candidate for president since 1964, the year Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. Carol Anderson, New York Times Magazine, March 20, 2022 © 2022 Kwiple.com