US Politics: Serenity Now

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

13 minutes ago, Rippounet said:

I'm genuinely impressed by how insulting you manage to be in a single sentence.

Careful now, you may create the most dangerous of games. 

[Jaxom 1974]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Careful now, you may create the most dangerous of games. 

Knife Monopoly?

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 minute ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Knife Monopoly?

Go on....

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

@Martell Spy

Quote

That's a hilarious Nazi joke. Are you mocking us because our country might be on our way to becoming a fascist hellhole?

No I'm mocking him for acting like our country is becoming a fascist hellhole for white people and that non-white Americans living abroad who don't vote for Biden are somehow to blame.

Quote

We're in a pandemic and people are dying. Why not laugh about that, too?

Actually somebody told me to drink bleach after one of my first posts because I made a joke about some similarities between Trump and Biden. Then half the thread jumped on me for "playing a victim" when I pointed out how fucked up a thing that is to say. My whole family is in the US, it's still my home. I don't think that kind of joke is funny at all.

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yes, it would be a slight inconvenience for my family if one of them died due to lack of healthcare.

Gee, that sure sounds rough. I could point out that there are still places you could go with your family to get healthcare if you'd be willing to take a dip in quality of life in other areas, or that you could leave your family where they are and still technically leave the country if you really felt your safety was in danger, but instead why don't we not make ridiculous speculations about each others' personal live's and just stick to politics? Sound fair?

Quote

Bullshit.

I'm not sure what to say to this. Cross my heart, pinky-swear?

[Jaxom 1974]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Go on....

Blast.  Can't figure out how to imbed the image of the tweet/meme that prompted such a perfect response...

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

Gee, that sure sounds rough. I could point out that there are still places you could go with your family to get healthcare if you'd be willing to take a dip in quality of life in other areas, or that you could leave your family where they are and still technically leave the country if you really felt your safety was in danger, but instead why don't we not make ridiculous speculations about each others' personal live's and just stick to politics? Sound fair?

No, it doesn't. Please, let me know what countries I can emigrate to so that they can get healthcare. I'm entirely all ears here. Are you talking, like, Cuba? Because Cuba doesn't just allow random people to come in. Most countries will give healthcare to their visa applicants if they get a job, and to their spouse and their children - who are 16 or under. Some countries will allow children over 16 to come with you...but those kids don't get the healthcare unless you pay for it directly. 

So you've got two choices - you can choose not to have healthcare, or you can find a job that pays enough to cover the healthcare cost along with all the other things. So far it hasn't worked out. 

I suspect you just don't know what you're talking about at all, and you assume that getting healthcare for your family is fairly easy because it was easy for you. 

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

No, it doesn't. Please, let me know what countries I can emigrate to so that they can get healthcare. I'm entirely all ears here. Are you talking, like, Cuba? Because Cuba doesn't just allow random people to come in. Most countries will give healthcare to their visa applicants if they get a job, and to their spouse and their children - who are 16 or under. Some countries will allow children over 16 to come with you...but those kids don't get the healthcare unless you pay for it directly. 

So you've got two choices - you can choose not to have healthcare, or you can find a job that pays enough to cover the healthcare cost along with all the other things. So far it hasn't worked out. 

Friend of mine has been teaching English in Vietnam for like 8 years. All you need is a diploma and a thousand dollar certificate.

But that's not the point. Like I said, if Biden embraced the type of healthcare reform that the US needs, I would vote for him.

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I suspect you just don't know what you're talking about at all, and you assume that getting healthcare for your family is fairly easy because it was easy for you.

You suspect right. When it comes to your life I don't know what I'm talking about. Just like you don't when making assumptions about me and my life. That was my point. Let's just keep it about the politics and not try to invalidate each others' points of view or personal struggles.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

28 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Blast.  Can't figure out how to imbed the image of the tweet/meme that prompted such a perfect response...

Just C&P the tweet url.

This is why you Jaxomed the world, dude. 

[Ran]

Folks.

[Kalbear]

4 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

Friend of mine has been teaching English in Vietnam for like 8 years. All you need is a diploma and a thousand dollar certificate.

Yeah, I don't think one is going to be able to get affordable oncological healthcare in Vietnam. Curse that pesky slight inconvenience of quality of life, like actually having one!

4 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

But that's not the point. Like I said, if Biden embraced the type of healthcare reform that the US needs, I would vote for him. 

Yeah, and I'm guessing that unless it's precisely the thing that you deem worthy you wouldn't. So if he announced, say, a public option for anyone to enroll into Medicare, you'd say that isn't enough. If he announced that we'd do something similar to the Switzerland model, you'd say that's not enough. If he announced we'd do a Singapore model (which requires everyone to save money towards their own healthcare and has a public and private set of insurances) that wouldn't be enough. 

4 minutes ago, Stannis Cool-Ranchus said:

You suspect right. When it comes to your life I don't know what I'm talking about.

You also don't appear to know a lot about what's going on in the US, what threats people are facing, or how to reasonably make an argument. You don't even know about the country you're living in and how it provides healthcare to noncitizens. 

[Ran]

6 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, I don't think one is going to be able to get affordable oncological healthcare in Vietnam. Curse that pesky slight inconvenience of quality of life, like actually having one!

He did cite quality of life as being lower. I also have to say that it's unreasonable to say that being in Vietnam means no quality of life...

 

[Week]

Ironically, I wonder if the SC challenge to the ACA is the best chance for a single-payer system. An intact ACA and recalcitrant GOP (already deficit concern trolling), will require significant more momentum to overcome as opposed to an environment where the ACA has been struck down. 

[Jaxom 1974]

30 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Just C&P the tweet url.

This is why you Jaxomed the world, dude. 

Bah.  It was a picture of a tweet.  Screenshot of someone else's post in an article.  I know how to link tweet urls.  

It was good too.

[Kalbear]

25 minutes ago, Ran said:

He did cite quality of life as being lower. I also have to say that it's unreasonable to say that being in Vietnam means no quality of life...

I'm saying that my son would, ya know, die from lack of correct care. In his case, that would be no quality of life.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

17 minutes ago, Jaxom 1974 said:

Bah.  It was a picture of a tweet.  Screenshot of someone else's post in an article.  I know how to link tweet urls.  

It was good too.

You tease! 

[Darth Richard II]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Snip

 

Ahhhh there it is. 

[Stannis Cool-Ranchus]

45 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Yeah, I don't think one is going to be able to get affordable oncological healthcare in Vietnam. Curse that pesky slight inconvenience of quality of life, like actually having one!

So the entire U.S. is a fascist hellhole, Vietnam is unlivable, but living in Germany, under whatever circumstances, makes me too privileged to weigh in on the issue?

45 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

You also don't appear to know a lot about what's going on in the US, what threats people are facing, or how to reasonably make an argument. You don't even know about the country you're living in and how it provides healthcare to noncitizens. 

It is incredible the degree to which you refuse to move past me having lived abroad for the past 3 years. You want to talk about those issues, talk about them. Don't just keep bringing up my living situation. I would be happy to talk about the policy implications of another Trump term weighed against Biden. You're the one who wont move past this.

[Ormond]

Not sure if this is significant in any way, but Nebraska's primary election is tomorrow, and the number of absentee mail ballots turned in so far is already greater than the total number of votes cast in the 2016 primary:

https://www.ncnewspress.com/news/20200511/early-voting-ballots-returned-in-record-numbers

This was the first time in my life I ever voted by mail instead of in person, by the way. It will be interesting to see the results. The city of Omaha has a bond issue on the ballot for street repairs -- I wonder if the Covid-19 crisis will make that less likely to pass. 

 

[OldGimletEye]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/11/magazine/an-update-to-the-1619-project.html

Did not walk back the 1619 Project and its assertion that the War for Independence was spurred very strongly in the southern slavery economy states by deep concern that the Brits might well take away their -- well I won't use the word that Patrick Henry used when howling that assertion in the VA House of Burgesses.  The English had already dangled exchanging freedom for slaves who fought with them in the French and Indian War -- which outraged and terrified the Virginians particularly, so it didn't happen.  But it was one of the first policies issued by the Brits in the War of 1812.  And in the meantime the Slave Revolution of San Domingue (to become Hayti) took place, terrifiyng the slaveholders even more

Frankly, if Ms. Jones always believed that slavery was "one reason among many", then one does wonder how she maintains her thesis that 1619 was the "true founding". If there were other reasons, then it would seem her maintained hypothesis does not compute. It's not wise to make big claims you can't support very well.

I probably wouldn't say anything about this, but Ms. Jones isn't the only one screwing up on this matter on the left, a trend a find a bit troubling. In fact, there are people who are making much bigger screw ups with regard to these issues. People that have less of an excuse, like trained Phd Historians from prestigious universities, like Cornell, utterly blowing it. And it concerns me.

Edward Baptist is a Cornell history professor who claimed that cotton made up 50% of the GDP prior to the Civil War. You'd think after computing such an eye popping number he would have said to himself, "Hmm. Is it plausible that 9 million people would outproduce 22 million people who have more capital and land?". And if he wasn't sure, he should have walked himself down to the Cornell economics department and got some help. But, he didn't do that and then proceeded to publish that claim among others that were rather dubious claims. Of course, it didn't take long for right wingers to pounce on Baptist's claims and the fact of the matter is the right wingers were not wrong in sneering at Baptist's GDP calculations. He goofed. He made a big claim and then screwed the pooch. He opened himself up for the right to pounce and there is really no defense to his error.

And then Baptist claimed that the growth cotton production was due mainly to southern planters developing ever more efficient tortures and beatings. That too is a suspect claim. For one, we generally have a pretty good idea that economic growth happens mainly because of knowledge production. So Baptist claims seems counter to what we know about economic growth in general. Secondly, there are economic historians who dispute Baptist's claims and present evidence that it was due mainly to the introduction of new species of cotton plants.

Baptist then kind of hints that he discovered the fact slavery was a profitable enterprise, kind of suggesting there was this big conspiracy to cover that up. Except, it has been known since about 1957 that it was profitable, being comparable to holding other forms of capital. And then that fact was confirmed again by Fogle and Engerman's classic work on the the Southern Slavery economy, which was published in the 1970s.

Baptist is of associated with  the so called New History of Capitalism, but frankly a lot of their work needs read with a great deal of caution.

And then of course there are people on the left, who are trying to make the case that slavery was essential to economic growth. Well for one, they ignore the econometric evidence that it tends to harm economic growth in the long run. But, secondly, as indicated before about economic growth, it seems the main driver is knowledge production and neither the growth of capital, nor labor.  Not that the growth of capital, nor labor don't matter, but the claim that economic growth wouldn't have happened but for slavery is, in my opinion, a bit of an overreach.

I'm sure people like Baptist and Jones meant well and they could have made some valuable contributions. But, I just wish they would be a little more cautious in their claims, if they don't have really arguments to back them up.

[Ran]

27 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm saying that my son would, ya know, die from lack of correct care. In his case, that would be no quality of life.

Ah, fair enough. Yes, this is probably true. Cancer treatment options are limited in Vietnam. For SE Asia, Thailand's probably the place you'd want to be, and even so, that's not really up to the standards of most of Europe or the US. There's some EU countries where you can get residency pretty quickly, to be sure, but it generally entails property purchases. Portugal, Spain...

Better to seek job opportunities and a work visa thereby, I guess.

In any case, that's a digression. To the broader subject, the US will still be there, whether one is there or not. If one cares to see Trump be re-elected, there are things a citizen can do to help that. Or one can oppose it, and there are things you can do for that as well.