rchive

Amazon is very much not a monopoly. There are thousands of online retailers. There are also a lot of delivery services, no idea if there are thousands, but there's a lot.

Except Hamas is the government in Gaza and can setup pretty much whatever situation it wants to there, while it is hated in Israel outside of Gaza and would be prevented from taking an Israeli hospital and constructing elaborate tunnels under it. That's kind of like saying "If Russia wants Ukraine so bad, why doesn't it just take Kyiv?" Because it can't. There's a bunch of obstacles stopping it, otherwise it obviously would.

"Pride is not the opposite of shame, but it's source. True humility is the only antidote to shame." -Uncle Iroh

It wasn't the giving money, it was the fast tracking in terms of regulations. Many people in Trump's position would not have done that and would have waited the expected 18 months instead of the 11 that it actually took. Some in the industry were concerned as it was happening. Plenty of other countries dragged their feet in the approval process more than the US did.

Trump wasn't single handedly responsible for the approvals. Far from it. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if he didn't know much of the details. But it still seems he was pushing for it where other people wouldn't have. I'm not sure Biden would have. Trump likes to play fast and loose where Biden is a bit stuffier.

Hear that, folks? Markets work. 🙂

If your bit was sarcasm, then that makes more sense. Trump was not particularly good on Covid, but we would have had a big problem regardless of who was president at the time.

Every country got Covid, basically. You know that, right?

I'll be honest, unless you were in a special circumstance, that sounds like a you problem not a Trump problem. I didn't and wouldn't vote for him, but for most people he did not affect their day to day that much. 2020 was the peak of actual influence on daily life, but I don't think that had as much to do with Trump as people imply, either. The whole world got Covid. The US had a bit more deaths per capita than the rest of the developed world (less than UK) but it also has a less healthy population in general.

I think we all sort of trained each other to fixate on the president and be anxious if they're not on our team.

There are several different groups supporting him for different reasons. The biggest, I'd argue, is the slightly right very populist. They're not into fascism per se, they just want a wrecking ball like Trump to go in and break apart the elite institutions they blame for all the problems and see no other way of influencing. There certainly are supporters who are encroaching on fascism territory. Then there's long time Republicans who have flipped on a bunch of issues to try to get support from these people Trump activated.

At least he did Operation Warpspeed. Funny that some of his supporters turned on him for that.

The government doesn't do the reimbursing, they just specify how much each mile is worth. I assume companies follow the government's guidelines on that for tax reasons.

I don't deliver pizzas, but anytime I drive my own car for work I get reimbursed a standard rate set by the US federal government, updated each year. If a pizza place did that, then the delivery fee would cover that cost.