Second Bank of the United States was a powerful privately owned national bank in early Republic and was the largest corporation in the country at the time. It accounted for approximately 20% of lending to American businesses and farmers and held approximately one-third of the banking system's deposits and gold-and-silver reserves and did primitive monetary policy. It helped shape the national economy/establish national market, as Hamilton wanted. Jefferson, Jackson and Madison for a long time, thought it was not constitutional, but Chief Justice Marshall rejected that in landmark McCulloch v. Marlyand decision. Roger Taney, who would later become chief justice, worried that the president of the bank would become more powerful than the president of the US pretty soon. What do you think?

Is it possible for this judge to MAKE this work stop? If so, how?

https://time.com/article/2026/10/19/trump-says-dc-golf-course-renovation-will-move-forward-despite-judge-s-order/

The federal criminal investigation into Representative Ilhan Omar centers on allegations of immigration fraud, false statements on historical citizenship paperwork, questions surrounding a past marriage, and scrutiny of her congressional financial disclosures.

We know of multiple tribes of people that have had little or no contact with the outside world. Do these people have a special right to preserve their “savage” cultures? Or should efforts be made to modernize and integrate their societies?

Edit: Forgot to address this- assuming we can mitigate the risk of disease.

France is literally burning down under macron they will need an extensive deportation campaign to send the third worlders rioters and looters back to where they came from.

Hypothetical I came up with on the toilet. If the world discovered a new species within the Homo genus, that had a level of intelligence, social structure, and appearance that was similar to us, but distinct and unique from homo sapiens how would you want the world and individual governments to deal with them? They woul be much less hostile than the Sentinelese people just for the sake of conversation.

https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it/

The internet told them Europe was a social paradise. Turns out the trains are awful, the health care isn’t free, and people can be really mean.

Trump is proposing $8 billion to cover farmers losses. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/20/business/trump-farmer-bailout.html. Isn’t this the very sort of wealth redistribution or bailout that his party has complained about for years. There are plenty hurting in this economy. Why not help others in the same way.

I think it's interesting that this movie touched on something which is usually a conservative point about just how much control the media has over people's lives.

I personally thought it was interesting for a movie to seriously cover a show like TCAP critically, although I kind of feel like the movie was a little bit too harsh on Chris Hansen. At the same time I think that now is a pretty terrible cultural moment to be trying to add nuance to a show about sending pedophiles to prison or criticize people like Hansen too much especially considering how much the social internet has destroyed the general public's attention span and I don't trust that that many people watching the movie will actually take away the intended message. I saw some criticism about releasing a movie criticizing people like Hansen who track down pedophiles when the Epstein list is a current topic of national discussion.

The company I work for has offices in US, India, Vietnam etc. My question is why should I hire local Americans and what do they offer me which others don't? If you are saying US is your country and I have an obligation to serve you, then I am sorry to say that my obligations are only towards the company CTO and shareholders. If you want me to limit who I hire, then I'll just stop hiring here and hire someone from abroad. If you want me to hire the best of the best, then Asians and Indians outscore you. If you want me to hire least problematic folks, then Asians are way better. Why should I hire a local at all?

For those that support him as President, is it because of what you've seen during his time in the cabinet? What has changed between now and 2016 when he ran before?

Prompted by a comment from a member of the House of Representatives.

In a recent discussion, it was told that Islamism is incompatible with American politics, and Muslims can't follow the Quoran and be a politician.

It made me think of Dr. Oz, who is an American politician and a Muslim. So what makes him successful? Is there something that he has said or done to earn him the trust of Conservatives?

I am the first generation in my family that did not serve. Going back at least 6 generations my father and grandfathers served in the Army. When it came my time at age 19 (for reasons I don't fully grasp) they did not steer me towards service. Also at that point I had a very strong pull towards my career of choice.

But I wonder, when you chose to enlist, did the current state of geopolitics sway you one direction or the other? Did being in a war, or not being in a war, or the potential where it looked like we might go into a war, sway your choice? Did it matter if you felt that the US entering certain conflicts was moral/immoral?

How did you weigh, the potential for your deployment for the period of enlistment if you did at all?

One issue I’ve grappled a lot with in contemporary western society (and most industrialized societies across the world for that matter) is the loss of community and social atomization. I do believe without the social bonds of community we are generally less happy and it in large part comes with the degradation of other traditional values in society such as family, faith, a sense of nationhood and belonging, civic pride and the like. I’ve wondered as to what we can do to re-establish those bonds in our current setting and have wondered about fraternities as a means to re-establish that sort of common ground. Think groups like the Knights of Columbus, the Freemasons, the Shriners, etc. I wonder if this would be a practical step to re-establishing that sense of community through a common fraternal bond which itself is outside or at most adjacent to the political sphere. Especially since young men especially (like myself) are looking for belonging in society, most people I know want to be a part of something greater than themselves that offers some sense of belonging or purpose.

What are your thoughts on this and fraternities in general? Could a resurgence of them be a step to moving away from social atomization and what Emile Durkheim called Anomie?

This is a world news story about Russia hitting a park full of families in Ukraine with a drone..

I searched the comments for a few keywords and found the following:

Trump: 46 mentions

Putin: 22 mentions

Musk: 5 mentions

Trump was mentioned more than twice as often as Putin in a story about a Russian drone attack on civilians in Ukraine.

How have we gotten to the point where Trump seems to get more attention and blame than the Russian leader responsible for the attack? Why does every major world event seem to turn into a discussion about Trump, even when he's not the one carrying out the attack?

The United States currently houses the world's largest prison population with 1.8 million prisoners and ranks #5 in inmates per capita at 541 inmates per 100,000 people.

While laws, rules, and regulations vary widely among states, national averages are approximately as follows:

Violent Offenders: ~47%

Property offenders: ~16% (includes burglary, theft, larceny, etc.)

Drug offenders: ~15%

Public order/ other offenders: ~14% (Includes weapons charges, court violations, immigration, and non-violent commercial crimes)

DUI/Posession/Traffic: ~8%

At an average cost of $48,000 to house an immate, do you feel this is money well spent for non-violent or non-publicly-endangering crimes?

Do you feel that non-violent offenders or offenders that do not obviously pose a public threat should be incarcerated? Or do you feel like alternative punishments should be available for those that are non-violent offenders?

I frequently see conservatives here describe government as inherently bad or argue that it should be drastically reduced. But aren’t we a democratic republic built on the principle of government “of the people, by the people, for the people”?

Countries like Norway demonstrate that a strong public sector, extensive social programs, and a market economy can coexist with high levels of happiness and quality of life.

So what drives the distrust of government itself, rather than a desire to improve how it functions? Is the objection to government as an institution, or simply how ours operates?

Housing, childcare, healthcare, the things most people are short on, are slow money. And data centers and AI compute are fast money. So yeah, capital follows returns.

But then there's the public layer. The power lines and substations those server farms need are getting socialized onto rate bases in state after state, so the utility bill of a family that will never see the upside helps carry the infrastructure of the people who will. The tax code tilts the same direction, lighter treatment for gains from owning than from working.

Nobody owes the country their capital but the public is already investing in the data centers, through its utility bills. If we're all going to be investors anyway, the least we should get is a say in what we're buying. At what point do you think, is this a policy choice instead of a market outcome?