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U.S. Politics: Attaquer son cul orange!


DireWolfSpirit

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11 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I don’t disagree.  But impeding those who attempt to help seems a poor idea as well. 

You appear, please correct me if I’m wrong, to want to impede private space exploration. 

If it's the only game in town? Yeah. Cause I don't want it to be the one with the power in that situation. Like I said, private space colonies are literally dystopian novel premises.

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7 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

This thread is so exasperating, it reminds me why I take periodic breaks from this forum. It’s a socialist “twilight zone” pocket universe. 

You ever notice it's kind of hard to have a serious discussion about the pros and cons of socialism with certain sorts of people when the definition of socialism changes about every two minutes?

Since I'm such a nice guy, I'm going let you define what "socialism" means. And then we can have the discussion from there.

But, be advised, that attempting to define the word socialism can often lead conservative sorts of people to step in dog shit. So take your time and think very hard about how you'd like to define that concept. Because once you pick a definition, I won't let you change it.

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6 hours ago, Ran said:

So how exactly are new business ventures supposed to happen? Or is it that it's okay for a business to be owned predominantly by one or several individuals, until at a certain point it's no longer fine and they should be nationalized for the public good? Where's the middle ground?

Most likely more vigorous anti-trust enforcement. While there are some exceptions, monopolies are generally bad. Big businesses should be viewed with some amount of suspicion.

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32 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

If it's the only game in town? Yeah. Cause I don't want it to be the one with the power in that situation. Like I said, private space colonies are literally dystopian novel premises.

I don’t want it to be “the only game in town”.  But I also don’t wanted private exploration banned in favor of only State sponsored space exploration.

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33 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

You ever notice it's kind of hard to have a serious discussion about the pros and cons of socialism with certain sorts of people when the definition of socialism changes about every two minutes?

Since I'm such a nice guy, I'm going let you define what "socialism" means. And then we can have the discussion from there.

But, be advised, that attempting to define the word socialism can often lead conservative sorts of people to step in dog shit. So take your time and think very hard about how you'd like to define that concept. Because once you pick a definition, I won't let you change it.

I’ll save FNR the time.

 

Socialism: An interchangeable term used to deflect and belittle my political opponent. Because the term is interchangeable, it can be applied in any setting and always works as a meaningless Trump card.

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I've been listening to people I really respect lately saying things like, if Warren were to get the nom they may not vote?? These are people who hate Trump, and fear his win, but they're so afraid of him winning against Warren...they won't even vote? They also say things like if Warren gets the nom and Trump gets impeached and a "regular" Republican runs (like Romney), they'll vote for him. Liberals, I tell ya. I don't know how many of them there are, but this is mind boggling. 

Edit: I guess this is a threat saying not to ever vote for Warren or Sanders? Klobuchar is the new moderate hero. Not Pete, they say, a gay man won't be elected, but Klobuchar? She can beat Trump. Boomers.

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2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Bold move to use the finance sector fucking us all over as evidence to its positive influence.

 

The financial system stopped functioning because the shit the finance sector had been doing finally caught up to them. And we got caught up in the blast.

What are you going to use the finance sector for anyway? It just oppresses you without creating any value. Obviously it was good for the economy that it shut down for a while. As we could see. 

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3 minutes ago, Khaleesi did nothing wrong said:

What are you going to use the finance sector for anyway? It just oppresses you without creating any real value. Obviously it was good for the economy that it shut down for a while. As we could see. 

You repeated yourself, again giving no evidence whatsoever that this 'finance sector' contributes anything of value to society at large or locally.  All it is, now, at least, too big to fail, even as its actual fails brings down the finances across the board, while the oppressed, poor and other NOT OBSCENELY WEALTHY must give up whatever bit of accumulation they've managed to accumulate to BAIL THEM OUT -- and the bailers who give up their bit of progress and accumulation go under -- and the OBSCENELY WEALTHY walk away even more wealthy than before, to begin the same we fail - you save us process all over again.

 

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10 hours ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m not sure I understand your point.  Private enterprises can and should take a hand in curbing human impacts on Climate Change even if Governments are unwilling to take such actions.  Is the fact that some private actors will act responsibly even without coercion from the State a bad thing?

The fact that private enterprises can have a major effect on the planet for good or ill without any kind of democratic accountability is a bad thing, even if some of them sometimes do something good. And in general, market forces will discourage them from doing good.

10 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Common mistake here. You don’t even have to make a million dollars a year to be in the 1%.

Not even a million a year? However do they manage to scrape by? :rolleyes: Most people don't approach earning a million dollars in a decade, let a lone a year.

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16 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

And why should I care about this? If it somehow would lead to substantially lower economic output or more precisely lower economic well being, then maybe I should care. 

It's really hard to predict what it would do to the economy. I don't know of any country even vaguely like the US which does this. The largest one that had something like this at one point is France, but they got rid of most of it. It's a pretty safe bet that most people affected by the tax would act to shield their money in one way or another, but the manner in which they'd do it depends on the implementation.

16 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I'm not really concerned about about founders of publicly traded companies losing control of the companies they founded. That's kind of the trade off they made when they took their companies public (which in the process got them very rich).

This would have to apply to private companies too or else it would not make much sense (there would suddenly be a whole lot more investment in private companies...). That's actually a significant problem because it's not obvious what they're worth.

13 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

So yeah, regardless of Musks surprising success, space travel, mars colonies, etc should really be more a government thing.

Ironically, government involvement in space programs is now one of the strongest examples of corruption and waste that can be used to argue against additional taxes in the US. In the mid-20th century, the US government spent a lot of money, but got extraordinary results. Today, the US government is spending literally an order of magnitude more than private industry and getting... basically nothing.

10 hours ago, Free Northman Reborn said:

This thread is so exasperating, it reminds me why I take periodic breaks from this forum.

In this case, it's almost entirely hypothetical. While you can find lawyers to argue the opposite (really, you can find them to argue anything), it's really difficult to see how any wealth tax does not fall afoul of the same Constitutional issue that the Sixteenth Amendment was created to solve for the income tax. I have a hard time seeing the current Supreme Court buy the sophistry of not calling such a tax "direct" and there's no way you'll get an Amendment on practically any topic today.

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7 hours ago, Bonnot OG said:

 

Anyone who doubts that Republicans are the party of White Supremacy/Nationalism is ignorant or bullshitting at this point. But when you combine it with this:

On 11/6/2019 at 2:28 PM, Crazydog7 said:

The thing that no one outside of this board has ever talked about are the number of judicial appointments Trump got to make in 4 years.  All those people that got confirmed at an unprecedented rate.   Trumps "legacy" such as it is could be with us for 20 years potentially. 

You get a REAL nightmare. For example: White House lawyer Steven James Menashi has spent his life mocking and attacking every bit of decency possible. His career as college writer consisted of defending racism, denouncing LGTBQ groups, (including complaining about "incessantly exploit[ing] the slaying of Mathew Shepard for both financial and political benefit") mocking Take Back The Night demonstrations against rape on campus, (or "campus gynocentrists" as he called anti-rape activists) attacked the very existence of need-based financial aid as punishing to rich families, and wrote a defense of ethnonationalism that included the following:

Quote

Social scientists have found that greater ethnic heterogeneity is associated with lower social trust. Ethnically heterogeneous societies exhibit less political and civic engagement, less effective governing institutions, and fewer public goods. “Surely, it does not serve the cause of liberal democracy to ignore this reality.

Menashi has been nominated to sit on the Second Court of Appeals. Menashi's nomination was advanced along party lines the other day, and now only a single vote stands between Menashi and a lifetime appointment as a judge. Normally this process takes weeks, even months.

Republicans took only two days to advance Menashi this far. They want him, and everything he stands for and represents, on the bench and bending the course of the United States Courts their way. They want it badly.

Menashi will be turning 41 in January. The oldest Federal Judge to ever serve, Wesley Brown, was appointed by President Kennedy in 1962 and took cases until about a month before his death at age 104 in 2012. After he gets seated as a judge, how long will Menashi be making rulings to own the libs, and put women and non-white people back in their place?

Maybe opposing the people who want to put hot garbage like Meashi in a judge's robes is more important than playing People's Front of Judea vs The Judean People's Front and searching for the One True Leftist who will magically sweep aside all obstacles and turn the country into a utopia in 8 short years, never to be undone. But hey, I could be wrong.

Anyway, thanks for coming to my TED talk.

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He could fare even worse in the Senate, knowing that more than a few of the 53 Republican jurors might be tempted etch their names in the history books at his expense. None of this will alter his standing atop the party; none of this will change the fact that he is president through January 2021 and perhaps beyond.

And yet, Trump cannot stand to be embarrassed—and there is no greater embarrassment to a president than being impeached, much less with the abetting of his own tribe. There is an urgency, then, not only to limit defections but eliminate them. The administration, working in concert with its allies on Capitol Hill, has been hard at work identifying potential turncoats in the party and monitoring their activities to catch any sign of slippage. Believing that a unified party-line vote is needed in the House to prevent any narrative of Republicans abandoning Trump when action moves to the Senate, the president’s allies are determined to stay one step ahead of any lawmaker who might be going soft, gaming out scenarios for who could desert and why.

It amounts to a preemptive game of political whodunit, with Trump’s enforcers seeking to solve a mystery of political betrayal before it occurs. Naturally, there is no bigger fan of this game than the president himself.

To understand Trump’s fixation on the word loyalty is to understand that his interpretation, at least in a political context, means submission, subservience, subjugation.

 

Who Will Betray Trump?
Donald Trump knows there are potential traitors in his midst. His presidency could depend on keeping them at bay.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/11/08/trump-impeachment-republicans-congress-229904

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way back when, six or eight months before the last presidential election, I made two statements on this board which were repeatedly ridiculed:

 

First, there was a very strong possibility that Trump would actually win; and 

Second, Trump also stood a high chance of being impeached. 

Right now, I'm wondering if I'm going to be two for two here.  

Then, third...

said this many times before, but given Trumps declining physical and mental condition, odds are pushing 50-50 he won't be a viable 2020 presidential candidate.

 

Given the ages of the 'D' contenders (especially after the heart attack bit), their choices for Vice Presidents become crucial

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17 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

 

Then, third...

said this many times before, but given Trumps declining physical and mental condition, odds are pushing 50-50 he won't be a viable 2020 presidential candidate.

 

Given the ages of the 'D' contenders (especially after the heart attack bit), their choices for Vice Presidents become crucial

All the best media orgs that talked about the Gorilla Channel and yet didnt have enough evidence to report on Epstien 3 years ago are the ones saying he s impaired.  So that must be true.  

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32 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

way back when, six or eight months before the last presidential election, I made two statements on this board which were repeatedly ridiculed:

 

First, there was a very strong possibility that Trump would actually win; and 

Second, Trump also stood a high chance of being impeached. 

Right now, I'm wondering if I'm going to be two for two here.  

Then, third...

said this many times before, but given Trumps declining physical and mental condition, odds are pushing 50-50 he won't be a viable 2020 presidential candidate.

 

Given the ages of the 'D' contenders (especially after the heart attack bit), their choices for Vice Presidents become crucial

Well, we are still firmly under the thumb of the Baby Boomers. They are both our saviors and oppressors, like it or not. That is part of why I was hoping for a Harris Presidency, but it does not look like it will happen now. I guess I will just have to settle for the low bar Bill Gates has set for voting for a Presidential candidate, and hope the candidate that wins is the one that has a professional approach.

Quote

 

The average voter hasn’t a clue how public debt is financed and the television journalists who ask pointed questions on the debate stage seem similarly adrift. In fairness, the extent to which advanced economies like ours can sustain large debts is a highly complicated matter that economists have long debated. But there are a few facts about our fiscal position that progressives should know and explain to the public. The current American public debt-to-GDP ratio—that is, how much the government owes to others represented as a proportion of the size of our economy—is projected to hit 78 percent by the end of the year. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the United States is on track to surpass the public debt record set at the end of World War II—a debt to GDP ratio of 106 percent—around the 2030s. That makes our current debt seem high, but it’s not without precedent among our peer economies. Japan’s public debt, for instance, reached 236 percent of GDP in 2017. Yet the Japanese economy has been humming along for most of the past decade.

Much of the concern about the sustainability of high debt is animated by two dynamics. First, at higher levels of debt, borrowing money can become more expensive for governments—creditors can demand higher interest rates to cover the increased risk of their lending. Second, government overspending can put too much money into the economy, bringing about inflation. On both fronts, the United States is in good shape. Interest rates are currently historically low, as is our rate of inflation. It should be said, too, that when inflation does rise to unhealthy levels, policy measures can deflate the economy. Doing so could be economically costly, but would be much less damaging than, say, not taking on the existentially necessary project of addressing and adapting to climate change.

 

Against Debt Hysteria
When it comes to paying for the future, Democrats needn't accept the premises offered by Beltway scribblers and cable news pundits.

https://newrepublic.com/article/155639/debt-hysteria

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20 minutes ago, mcbigski said:

All the best media orgs that talked about the Gorilla Channel and yet didnt have enough evidence to report on Epstien 3 years ago are the ones saying he s impaired.  So that must be true.  

With me, it was something a bit different:

 

Went to the doctors office a couple years ago.  Saw a chart on the wall: risk of heart attack by age, height, and weight with attached notes about diet and exercise.  Got back, fired up the computer, and saw a profile picture of Trump - damn, he's obese!  Literally checks off all the bad boxes.  Notorious for not exercising and eating mostly junk food.  

 

As to his mental condition - about fifteen years ago, I was with a 'van service.'  Half of my riders were Alzheimer's patients.  I watched them deteriorate, month by month.  More and more, going from the various video clips, Trump sounds like somebody in the early stages of Alzheimer's.   

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