I hope it is kosher to post this under ~talk. I know people are sick of this topic, so I put plenty of tags in to help those not interested avoid seeing this thread. FWIW, you can go into your Settings and enter keywords to filter threads on ( via tags ).

To my question.

Netanyahu has been killing people with no means of defense.

What is President Biden's motivation to keep sending military aide to Israel while Netanyahu continues to do this?

I have a few guesses, but none of them on their own or together seems to justify the political or humanitarian costs:

1. Somehow it is in the geopolitical interest of the U.S. to do so
2. Israel would be destroyed without military aide ( but defensive weapons can still be sent )
3. The U.S. benefits from Israeli intelligence
4. Congressional republicans aligned with Christian Nationlists want to see Israel live out a Biblical prophesy and it would cost President Biden politically if he were to push a decrease in military aide - assuming he could.
5. President Biden might have lost Jewish American votes, BUT Jews are a minority in America and many American Jews are against what Netanyahu is doing.

Those are the possibilities I could come up with. Am I missing anything? All of these possibilities together do not seem to be worth the political cost President Biden incurred. Is there something I missed?

I can't get my head around President Biden polling poorly and Trump polling well.

I don't think I need to provide details for people on this site, but Trump was so horrible as a president and President Biden has done such a good job. Even if Biden was a passive placeholder four years of him would have been better than 4 more years of Trump.

I don't understand where the low polls are coming from. Particularly for groups that would not do particularly well under a Trump regime like African Americans and youth.

I see some people complaining about President Biden's age, but his administration has been doing a good job and Trump is only about 4 years younger ( and in much worse shape ).

I don't get where the hate is coming from.

I remember the "red wave" that never happened and articles explaining why polls aren't as accurate as they used to be. However, that answer feels too easy to me, a cop out.

Maybe people are angry about greedflation. However, Trump's presidency when it wasn't about vindictiveness was all about neglect. I can't believe people think Trump would be better for the economy -- that he would even try beyond the stock market so he polls well.

*Disclaimer:

My apologies if this is the wrong place for this conversation. I thought here or "talk" would be the best choices, though people in "talk" might not want political conversations.

I have tried to answer this myself and come up empty handed. When a U.S. president leaves office, they take intimate awareness of many national secrets with them (weapons systems, intelligence gathering techniques, etc.). What prevents a former president from selling this information to the highest bidder?

I'm Brazilian, and personally (in the most radical, electability-indifferent and honestly meme-y campaign) would go for Bernie with the campaign finance and tax reform but with a platform for civical reform like putting STV as the nomination method for our chamber of deputies and supporting automating or funding new technologies to replace menial labor, like funding lab grown meat to replace all farming companies and labor now or robotics to automate large parts of the industrial and service sectors and use that money saved from not paying wages to people doing bad jobs to fund free universities and better schools/wages/welfare/infrastructure to the people once doing that work, along with adding civics and economics as subjects in school and always including notes as to where do you use the content you're learning, along with requiring subsidiaries to go independent or drop their branding. Clearly this isn't very realistic so feel free to expouse absurd policy.

So what I want to know is whether or not this is that unusual for someone in real estate.

The discussion on r/politics is myopic and the discussion on /r/tax lacks detail.

From the NYT article:

The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.

Trump's statement/tweet:

“You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes....almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport,

Now my very limited understanding of real estate and taxes is this:

• You can depreciate the building but not the land
• Depreciation can be carried over multiple years
• When you sell property you can roll those proceeds into the purchase of another property, thus delaying income tax

Are those accurate? If so, do they explain Trump's taxes?

I'm thinking not (I suspect Russian money laundering is the real source of income). However, I have yet to read a good discussion of the specifics. Has anyone read such a discussion or have insight to add?

Main story from NYT:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/05/07/us/politics/donald-trump-taxes.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

CNBC's article about Trump's response:
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/08/trump-defends-tax-tactics-after-nyt-story-says-he-racked-up-more-than-1-billion-in-losses-it-was-sport.html

EDIT: As an aside, I got into a wee bit of trouble because my wife's (very) small business lost money three years running. The accountant that I worked with informed me that if a business losses $ three years in a row, the IRS considers it a "hobby" and you can't subtract those losses from your personal taxes. Is that in play with Trump at all? If not, why not?

EDIT2: I'm going to answer my own question I think. I heard a good segment on NPR yesterday that addressed my question. You can read the transcript here: https://www.npr.org/2019/05/08/721552462/president-trump-defends-himself-against-report-he-did-not-pay-taxes-for-8-years

The bottom line is it's not so unusual but it doesn't exclude the possibility of him running his businesses poorly either. So I think it's not really what the headlines have made it out to be.