REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

What are our national goals? What about the international rules of the road? And who are "we", anyway?

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Tuesday, November 19, 2024 13:45
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Friday, November 20, 2015 8:51 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


One of the interesting things about the recent necroposting (which I really enjoy BTW - thanks Jayneztown!) is the long-term perspective that it offers on the discussions here. While the actual topic have changed - or not! in some cases, as old topics become relevant again - the underlying discussion has obdurately remained.

The actual topic, of course - the one that's been rolling from thread to thread and decade to decade - is, what SHOULD we, as a nation, be doing? What CAN we do? Who is "we", anyway? How do we fit in with everyone else?

Here are some examples of how this underlying argument works:

SGG (sorry SGG, I know you're pissed off at me because I don't like Obama but this is a clear example) believes that the USA should be welcoming to immigrants, no matter how they cross our borders. He believes that because he believes it's the American ideal: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..." That this ideal is what "makes America great" ... different than other nations ... and that there's no potential conflict between that American ideal and American future prospects or internal stability, it will always somehow work out in the end because it always has in the past, in some fashion. SGG's view of America and "Americans" is that our responsibility extends, not just to our current citizens but to EVERYBODY, that inclusiveness is the path to greatness (prosperity? security?) Clearly, SGG's definition of America and its responsibilities extends to more than just those living here. So, who or what is "America"?

In terms of foreign policy, there are the perennial arguments about American military intervention. Can you actually reach objectives like "freedom" and "democracy" via the military? Should we even be trying to extend "our way of life" to other nations, especially at the point of a gun? And are those the real objectives of our leadership, or just the hooks used to get the populace to "buy into" a military intervention? If our leadership HAS other goals, what are they?

How do we reach prosperity? With more, less, or a different government? Should prosperity be a goal in the fist place?

One of the reasons why this comes up as a question is that there seems to be a profound disunity between Americans. Not only do people not seem to be agreeing on HOW to achieve certain goals, we seem not to be agreeing on the goals themselves, and we even disagree on whether agreement is even necessary.

In fact, scanning across various (American) websites, it's as if we live in five or six very different worlds!

MANY years ago, when my employer actually believed in training, they had a short training course in ethics. Best as I recall, there were three different systems:

Canonical- the kinds that refers to the Bible, the Q'uran, or some other list of rules

Synthetic (or syncretic) - the kind that attempts to understand the underlying areas of agreement between different systems, and synthesize them into one system

??? - I forget the name of the third, but I remember it as "Whatever floats your boat" .... I won't look into YOUR system of morals if you won't look over the back fence at mine. Even then, more than half of the USA believed in the "Whatever floats your boat" system of ethics. More people than not believed that you DON'T need a common set of ethics to have a "successful" nation.

So should we even attempt to outline "our" underlying beliefs? Do we (as a nation) need some underlying, commonly-held morals anyway? Or can we just roll along without them?

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Friday, November 20, 2015 12:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Okay, not trick questions, but I want to flesh out some of this and possibly stimulate some discussion:

When BUSH said he was going in to Iraq to prevent the use/ deployment/ development (variously described) of WMD, I knew it was a feckless war. THe reason is because there were NO credible WMD in Iraq.

---------------

When he said that Iraq would become a unified, secular, democratic state .... it took me a bit to figure out whether that would work or not, but eventually I figures NOT, because:

The Sunnis (Baathists) who were relatively secular were in the minority, but they were Saddam's ethnic group and so they tended to run roughshod over the Kurds and Shiites. DEMOCRACY was the LAST thing they wanted!

The Shiites are a majority, but they tend to be pretty religious. SECULAR was never going to fly with them!

The Kurds and both linguistically and ethnically separate from the other two, AND they had their own source of oil and proto-government. UNIFIED (ie sharing oil revenue) was NOT in their list of acceptable outcomes!

By including all three points on his list of objectives, Bush made its achievement completely impossible.

So, the first thing you have to do is decide if the goals (as stated) are even achievable.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, November 20, 2015 12:37 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


In science, in economics, in military, in production these other countries are leading now, or moving closer to the American lead and the USA is not so far ahead of everyone in this world anymore. Back when I first came on this forum it was an Andromeda site, not a Firefly site with Joss shows and Joss movies but a site showing the writing of the tv show Andromeda, the actors like Kevin Sorbo as High Guard Captain Dylan Hunt and its crew of aliens and a robo-hologram affectionately named as 'Rommie'...Firefly had just started, and Joss and other scifi writers started to see a future, a frontier in space vision, the wild west around dusty planets like Mars and terraforming, a strange vision where the USA wasn't always number 1 and nations like China would rise....I thought some of it was good, a cowboys in space scifi with elements of Chinese culture but I didn't think so many predictions by scifi writers would start to come true. Bush Jnr was in power and the USA was still ahead, still great but he was so bad, such a moron with his neocon cronie friends that many of us belived even a leftist pot smoking fool like Obama might be the answer, the elites picked Obama, they paid for his planes, his fancy banquet dinners, they paid for his posters, elitist bankers and elites from Bilderberg global government inc bought his tv ads because they thought a black man with a muslim middle name 'hussein'would be able to fly over to the middle east, hold hands with the wacky muslims, sing happy songs and dance around the sand dunes with a bong, weed and flowers in hand and chill all this radical muslims out...you don't think the globalist elites Dutch, Saudis, Jews and British secret elites....you don't think they own Obama....ask youself who owns the Fed? did you know the Fed is a privaite bank and not a bank owned by the American people? the fake Federal Reserve with its phony dollar owned borrower or debtor money clocking up trillions in national debts, making profit from mistakes in war and possibly making money future wars and future corruption and they will add trillions more on the US national debt...Bush was a disaster and we were told Obama was the answer, elites picked this black dude with a 'hussein' name as a mark of friendship to the wacko muslims and boy did the elites get it wrong....especially now with members of the Senate and the Congress making moves that would formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization

After all my rants I am still a non-interventionist, I belive the USA or France or Russia or whatever country should only invade/attack, only respond with destructive warplanes & military violence only if it is an absolute must and sadly with radical muslims establishing the so called islamic state of ISIS that option may have become a 'must' and is it possible to win this war, saving the innocent without wiping the 'ISIS Capital City' of Raqqa off the face of this Earth?

On the positive side I think Muslims are slowly changing, not all but some are changing.... you have Muslims looking to Atheists or Apostates like Ali Hirsi and recently a young French Muslim call out his own people for their BS and calling for a war against raidical islam, not form the outside but from within Islam itself
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=66d_1447941216
his passion is interesting

America also needs to re-stablish its own culture and stop follwing hedonism, war and military industrial profits, out of control cronie banker capitalism, fake money, drugs and being ashamed of itself...Americ aneeds to be great again, not just in stats or numbers but as an American culture. I have lived in many nations across the world and what impressed me was how some of the strong national people or island people have an insanely strong culture, the smaller communities, the people in big cities who still have that small town rural culture, the island peoples...Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea...their pride may sometimes almost border on what the leftwing regressive liberals would call 'racism' but I would call it a good thing, a strong sense of identity. Europe will change soon, all this migrant refugee invasion, this rise of illegal immigration violence and shootings will only add to the rise of the Euro right, you also had globalist elites amd people like Soros publicly state they want to destroy a country's national identity through waves of immigration. What America needs to do now is raise the fences, pull up the bridge, let the gates go down and batten down the hatches...I'm not for stopping immigratrion totally, people should and will still move, trade will still go on...maybe even trade will get better but at this current rate its a mess, the USA also needs to absorb whatever people it let in, Dearborn being a perfect example of where multi-culturalism is failing.

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Friday, November 20, 2015 1:57 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

...JAYNZTOWN

On the positive side I think Muslims are slowly changing, not all but some are changing.... you have Muslims looking to Atheists or Apostates like Ali Hirsi and recently a young French Muslim call out his own people for their BS and calling for a war against raidical islam, not form the outside but from within Islam itself



You are an atheist, so am I. Well I don't believe in god. Here is why I see you as radicalized. There are more than 1.5 billion Muslims in the world. You apparently no longer see them as mostly honest and hard working like you did in 2004. Unless they have renounced religion entirely like the ones you mention, who "are looking to Atheists or Apostates". A person who renounces a religious or political belief or principle.

I wonder, does that hold for Catholic's, Jews and so on? Are they to be distrusted as well for believing in god?

By the way, I have posted your defense of Muslims in many threads now by reposting your 2004 post. I am hoping to solicit a response. What's the problem, don't have an answer as to why you taking an opposite today?





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Friday, November 20, 2015 2:06 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

...JAYNZTOWN
Hedonism is a school of thought that argues that pleasure is the primary or most important intrinsic good. In very simple terms, a hedonist strives to maximize net pleasure



Explain to me how you plan on changing human nature before humans decide it is necessary to do so. Look at us a thousand years ago and then now. We are slowly getting there and America is by far leading the way. Problems, many but the desire for better and not for self is still way out in our future if at all.

This is why integrating Muslims into modern society is crucial. Keeping them confined and backwards only delays our advancement. We need to send more into space and let that message permeate the Muslim world. Let them ask themselves, live in a hut sitting on a dirt floor, or fly to the stars?

Do this and watch what happens.


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Sunday, November 22, 2015 2:15 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


One of the interesting points about these necroposts is that it does give me a chance to look back.
I think it's pretty easy (for me, anyway) to notice when the USA does something WRONG, stupid-headed and short-sighted...

For example, the first and second invasions of Iraq and the destruction of Libya and attempted destruction of Syria are based on such blatantly obvious lies that I'm left casting about, in a kind of WTF? fugue, looking for ANY reason that makes sense because clearly the "Saddam's WMD", "R2P/Qaddafi is massacring his own people" and "Assad created ISIL" are so so much nonsense. Since the stated reasons for action are so specious, the actual reasons probably are too. If the real reason can't stand the light of day, it's probably not anything we collectively want.

It's pretty easy to decide NOT to do certain things ... and overall I think the USA and the world would be in far better shaped if the USA had simply canceled something like 99.9% of its' military actions since WWII. But it's much more difficult to figure out the RIGHT thing to do.

-------------

I've come to the following tentative conclusions.

Over time, I've become something of an isolationist. There are a few reasons for this:

I've come to realize that durability and efficiency are opposing evolutionary elements. Having ONE plant in Japan that manufactures the special plastic used for capacitors, relying on "just in time" delivery, etc may be very EFFICIENT, but it's extremely fragile. Durability requires redundant production pathways and storage capacity. If your daily life depends on 1000 uniquely-and-immediately-available resources or parts, you have just built in 1000 critical points of failure.

I've become something of a nationalist. Given the choice of being subject to international corporations/banks versus my nation-state, I choose my nation-state. The reason is that while a nation can always be reformed by its citizens, an international "anything" - CAN'T. Any organization needs feedback to guide its actions. International corporations and banks have no feedback from the billions that they affect. There has to be a way of devolving authority down to lower levels.

Along those lines, each nation should be self-reliant on the basics: Food, water, energy, basic manufacturing. And to the extent possible, each state, county, and city should be as self-reliant as possible too. We are all subject to hurricanes, blizzards, drought, earthquakes, or other disasters of various magnitudes. Relying on instant communication and instant delivery is a death-knell in the case of disaster.

Nations need to be more than just groups of people stuck in the same place- they need to have a common language and a basic set of common ethics.

As you may have noticed (!) I'm very much against unrestricted immigration into the USA. In this very crowded world, I'm a big fan of in-place problem solving. But my stance requires, among other things, that we stop messing up other nations. We would be in a much more defensible ethical structure if we stopped making life unbearable for so many in so many other places.

----------------

But OTOH, assuming that we've battened up our hatches and solved our internal problems and restrained ourselves from destroying other governments ... what do we do when confronted with a nation whose ethics are truly offensive? I don't mean ... a nation that insists on attacking us and sending suicide bombers and terrorists onto our shores because that would invoke self-defense (and no, I don't mean defending our soldiers 8000 miles away). But what do we do about a nation that's just truly abhorrent internally - Say, holds 90% of its population in abject slavery? Are we required to offer refuge? Are any other nations? If so, how many people do we need to accept? And how do we decide which ones?

OR what if there is some large non-state actor which is extracting large sums of money from everyone? (Think international corporations or banks.)

What do you do with "breakaway" regions? The region that is being broken from surely has SOME investment (infrastructure, education, trade) in the splitting area .... are they to be remunerated for their loss?

When you (as a nation) offer trade deals, are you supposed to ensure that your "deal" isn't causing impoverishment (eg cheap labor or resource extraction) or creating problems (arms sales) for others?



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 2:23 PM

THGRRI


All your subjective posting SIG falls flat on its face because you have zero credibility in these threads. It's like listening to a record constantly skipping and saying the same thing.

You and JAYNZTOWN are one side of a coin SIG and blind to what is on the other side. You don't see how easy that is recognizable in what you guys post, but hey, you wouldn't.


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Sunday, November 22, 2015 2:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:
All your subjective posting SIG falls flat on its face because you have zero credibility in these threads. It's like listening to a record constantly skipping and saying the same thing.

You and JAYNZTOWN are one side of a coin SIG and blind to what is on the other side. You don't see how easy that is recognizable in what you guys post, but hey, you wouldn't.




You might have noticed that nearly every sentence in my post ends with a ? That means I'm asking questions ... what about this situation? What do you think about that wrinkle?

This forum used to be a place where one could engage in spirited but reasoned discussion. You can't manage a single thoughtful counterpoint.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:06 PM

THGRRI



SIG

You might have noticed that nearly every sentence in my post ends with a ? That means I'm asking questions ... what about this situation? What do you think about that wrinkle?

My response

You asking a question is how you think you can get people to believe this is a viable thought. What it is, is mostly subjective crap

SIG

This forum used to be a place where one could engage in spirited but reasoned discussion. You can't manage a single thoughtful counterpoint.

My response

You need to be engaged with an honest broker of the truth for that. Something you and some others here are not.


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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I was asking very general questions about our nation's responsibilities to the world in general when we see injustice ... something that does NOT involve bombing and killing. How do we not promote injustice in our trade deals? How do we react to the desires of regions to break away from their home states? How many refugees are we morally obligated to take in? All of them? None? Some? How do we decide?

There are very open-ended questions designed to stimulate thought and discussion. I would be very interested in hearing what other people have to say, as I'm sure there are as many ideas as posters ... probably more!

I'd love to be able to really pursue some of these questions very deeply:

Why do you think ...?
What do you mean by ...?
How do you decide ...?

Perhaps somebody wants to ask me the same questions!

Everybody's got their views, it would be nice to discuss them in depth without all of the rancor and infighting.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:47 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I was asking very general questions about our nation's responsibilities to the world in general when we see injustice ... something that does NOT involve bombing and killing. How do we not promote injustice in our trade deals? How do we react to the desires of regions to break away from their home states? How many refugees are we morally obligated to take in? All of them? None? Some? How do we decide?

There are very open-ended questions designed to stimulate thought and discussion. I would be very interested in hearing what other people have to say, as I'm sure there are as many ideas as posters ... probably more!

I'd love to be able to really pursue some of these questions very deeply:




Why do you think ...?
What do you mean by ...?
How do you decide ...?

Perhaps somebody wants to ask me the same questions!

Everybody's got their views, it would be nice to discuss them in depth without all of the rancor and infighting.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.



No SIG what you are doing is what you always do. Try to bring down the reputation of America while lifting Russia's, and Irans'.





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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:48 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:

You are an atheist, so am I.





I am probably more Agnostic I can not prove or disprove a higher power, it is up to you to make that free choice of what to believe


However I know islam is violent perverted nonsense founded by the camel jacker pedophile terrorist Mahomet

they try to murder Rushdie, kill people over songs or cartoons

on this so-called religion I am Anti-Religion or Atheist


Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:
We need to send more into space and let that message permeate the Muslim world. Let them ask themselves, live in a hut sitting on a dirt floor, or fly to the stars?




I don't think you are a true man of science or don't think you truly ever followed the US space flight program, except maybe in some kind of superficial way

Let me give you a quick run down on Muslims in Space, first lets begin with Sputnik and the USA....not muslims yet but since a lot of asscrackistani and Communist Christian nations made up the USSR lets begin with the USSR in space.
Russia, first rocket launch into orbit
first satellite around the Earth
first man in space is done by the Russian USSR
first woman in space
first space station by the Russian USSR
first artificial space probe to fly near the Moon
at the start Russia was beating the pants off America
JFK comes along, decides to beat them Ruskies...he dies in office but his dream comes true....America lands on the Moon and beats the Russians...Nixon witnessed the landings and later ends the JFK Apollo Program
Carter comes along, does nothing of note
Reagan not to be out done by JFK dedicates one of the STS Challenger or was it Columbia? anyway he dedicates the Shuttle flights to the Taliban freedom fighters of Afghanistan...two launches later it explodes in space! Thanks for cursing it with your hexed islamic prayer Reagan!
Reagan also has the 'first' of putting the first muslim in space Salman-Al bin-lad-Saud or someshitname can't remember it correctly, anyyways this rich religous Saud with a dishcloth on his head he launches up on maybe STS-51....the stories of heard from people in the industry US flight crew are nervous Salam-al-bin-Saud keeps going over by the air-lock....the US can't wait to get back home and land with this wacko onboard
The USA and Russia start helping other nations with their programs, German, French, Japanese, British and others get space experience....Japan later builds great robotics, Canada builds a Canada-Arm to attach to sats and space stations, the Europeans later form the ESA build their own space telescopes in different spectrum and wavelength to look out into space and rival the discoveries of the Hubble
A bunch of muslim Soviets also launch, I think they had MIR, Salyuts and Skylab back then...most of the USSR-stan nations some of the cosmonaut muslims quit religion or become apostates or atheists or change their religion having a religious experience and seen or tiny planet from above
A Malaysian recently launches on a Soyuz on a space-tourist trip, the muslim malaysian government wastes the journey to the ISS by repeatedly asking the Malaysian to pray while in space, asks him Ramadano questions or to bow in the direction of Mecca as the station orbits at 22,000 mph, a space station spinning around the world 18 times a day, wonderful science experiments onboard and the idiotic islamo nmalaysian government wastes its time trying to get him to find Mecca....needless to say nothing has been heard of their space program since
Ansari a tech and phone company woman from Iran Persia, she doesn't seem too muslim, Western attitude Western dress, she goes into space....some of her trip gets good coverage in Iran, it features as news on live show, some in Iran radio are very positive while come religious hardline of Iran respond comdemning the launch and screaming DEATH TO AMERICA while trying to start a program building more scud missiles, Anasari becomes fluent in English and French and Russian....so while there have been some interesting stories I would say overall I don't have a positive outlook on our 2000 year old outdated garbage religious fairytales expanding into space

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:53 PM

THGRRI


No JAYNZTOWN, I don't think you have the skill set to teach anyone anything. Especially on American History. It's apparent you are very confused and so is your understanding of who, what, when, how and especially WHY things happened and what that really represents is subject.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:54 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


Point out where I'm wrong you regressive liberalist moron

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:59 PM

THGRRI


Quote:

Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Point out where I'm wrong you regressive liberalist moron



It's over your head or capability to understand. People like you exist throughout our history and are always at the forefront of trouble.

Like I have said before. The last time the world listened to assholes like you seventy two million people died. It was world war two.


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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:59 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Signy

The US used to be a mansion with infinite rooms. For the most part people assumed the mansion would take care of itself, they only needed to care about their own room. It's how I imagine we got such regionalism, factionalism, and isolationism, as well as apathy to what's going on nationally and internationally. If a topic doesn't have a connection to your own room - the 'war on Christmas' as an example - it doesn't exist. It's just part of the big mansion that someone (else) is taking care of.

So my vision of the US is one of many disparate groups, each focused on their farm, or their community, or their religion, or their borough, or their guns ... I suspect the people who have the strongest sense of the US as a nation and who have a sense of national identity are newly-minted citizens.

That leaves the oligarchy in charge of the mansion.

BTW, I was listening to a radio show a while ago and they had a whole series of speeches, movie clips, ads and popular songs, all focused on changing the American mind so people would support the US entering WWI. (If people think government doesn't have a propaganda arm aimed at the citizens they should look at history from 100 years ago.) I think that, looking over the herd of cats that is the US, the ruling class has figured out a way to bring people along with their specific goals (which most people would otherwise not care about). It starts with repeating a meme in the media over and over (Assad BAD!) and finding a way to link it to a sense of either outrage, vengeance, or superiority. And most people, being divorced as they are from better information, go along with it.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 3:59 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


if I have wrote anything wrong, I will give you a clue

cursed the future Shuttle launches with an islamic prayer ;)



Quote:

Originally posted by THGRRI:


Like I have said before. The last time the world listened to assholes like you seventy two million people died. It was world war two.




I am against war you braindead f*cking moron, you try to paint me as some deep south mississippi redneck cartoon character who wants to invade Iraq....what if I told you I was always against the Iraq war, what if I told you I wasn't even white...maybe that's wrong but maybe you know little about me, am I Canadian? Philippine? I have wrote very little about myself.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 4:05 PM

THGRRI


1kiki, America was never a mansion everyone lived in that is now decaying. America is the dream we can create a mansion everyone can live in and is a work in progress.

Look at the back of the dollar bill. The last block of the pyramid has not been placed yet signifying this. And many of the arguments now being put forth in these threads threaten that very concept.


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Sunday, November 22, 2015 4:10 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


I hope I didn't imply a sense of decay. What I hoped to express was a nation where groups of people have very limited identities, very limited concerns, and very limited goals. Which leaves national and international decisions in the hands of the oligarchy.



So my vision of the US is one of many disparate groups, each focused on their farm, or their community, or their religion, or their borough, or their guns ... I suspect the people who have the strongest sense of the US as a nation and who have a sense of national identity are newly-minted citizens.

That leaves the oligarchy in charge of the mansion.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 4:19 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Signy

The US used to be a mansion with infinite rooms. For the most part people assumed the mansion would take care of itself, they only needed to care about their own room. It's how I imagine we got such regionalism, factionalism, and isolationism, as well as apathy to what's going on nationally and internationally. If a topic doesn't have a connection to your own room - the 'war on Christmas' as an example - it doesn't exist. It's just part of the big mansion that someone (else) is taking care of.

So my vision of the US is one of many disparate groups, each focused on their farm, or their community, or their religion, or their borough, or their guns ... I suspect the people who have the strongest sense of the US as a nation and who have a sense of national identity are newly-minted citizens.

That leaves the oligarchy in charge of the mansion.

BTW, I was listening to a radio show a while ago and they had a whole series of speeches, movie clips, ads and popular songs, all focused on changing the American mind so people would support the US entering WWI. (If people think government doesn't have a propaganda arm aimed at the citizens they should look at history from 100 years ago.) I think that, looking over the herd of cats that is the US, the ruling class has figured out a way to bring people along with their specific goals (which most people would otherwise not care about). It starts with repeating a meme in the media over and over (Assad BAD!) and finding a way to link it to a sense of either outrage, vengeance, or superiority. And most people, being divorced as they are from better information, go along with it.




So, maybe the first questions:

1) DO we need to have more-or-less global memes and ethics? How individualized can we be, anyway?

2) Are our rights and responsibilities "god given" or "natural" (as the FF believed) or are they subject to change? IF they're subject to change, should we be involved in their development?

3) And, if we're shaping our rights and responsibilities (or at least accepting them), what do we want our society to look like, anyway?

I guess the last question is the first question to answer, since it's hard to know where you're going without a goal.



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Sunday, November 22, 2015 4:42 PM

THGRRI


1kiki

I hope I didn't imply a sense of decay. What I hoped to express was a nation where groups of people have very limited identities, very limited concerns, and very limited goals. Which leaves national and international decisions in the hands of the oligarchy.

My response

It did. The fact that we hold onto our identities 1kiki is so much of what is the problem here. We need to learn to let them go and embrace the human identity. Our selfish is what drives our concerns and yes is another problem. This is why the oligarchy has so much control. Think about it, we have the right to vote yet we vote against our own best interests. This is best illustrated in ignorance portrayed by JAYNZTOWN.

ikiki

So my vision of the US is one of many disparate groups, each focused on their farm, or their community, or their religion, or their borough, or their guns ... I suspect the people who have the strongest sense of the US as a nation and who have a sense of national identity are newly-minted citizens.

My response

Where you and I differ most 1kiki is in the fact that while you chose to point out what you see wrong in America you refuse to acknowledge is wrong in countries you wish to promote. These flaws exist everywhere.

1kiki

That leaves the oligarchy in charge of the mansion.

My response

I and many others are trying to evict them as we post here. It’s why the Republicans don’t stand a chance in the coming elections and why Bernie Sanders has Hillary leaning so far left.

I am not that much a liberal but at times you have to focus on one problem, meaning the growing wealth inequality and let the other shit pass for another day.



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Monday, November 23, 2015 8:40 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.



1) DO we need to have more-or-less global memes and ethics? How individualized can we be, anyway?

What I used to find refreshing about listening to CBC radio was the sense of national identity and expression of national concerns (yes, even, and especially in the call-in shows). I could be wrong but I think part of that comes from the media itself. People are treated like intelligent concerned citizens of the country and the world.
I don't know that I'd say there was a national Canadian sense of ethics - the country is too diverse for that, I think. But there are common threads among a large majority, the sense of being a small country that has to weather the larger country to the south, of Canada looking out for its citizens, and of being a nation of fair play. All good things to identify with and try to promote, imo.
I don't know if that answers your question, since I don't necessarily connect common identity with shared ethics.



2) Are our rights and responsibilities "god given" or "natural" (as the FF believed) or are they subject to change? IF they're subject to change, should we be involved in their development?

My opinion is that people are biological creatures with patterns of behavior. THAT SAID you'll always find exceptional groups behaving differently than the rest of their species - the courtly dolphins off of Australia, the (reasonably) neighborly baboons in Kenya, for example. Whenever you have creatures that learn they can learn different responses. So, god given?, no, I don't think god has anything to do with it. Natural rights? Uhm, no, there've been too many kinds of societies with different kinds of rights extended to different people to think nature is giving us any.
As far as I can tell, human societies have a broad enough range that we can pick and choose our preferred way of life without coming into serious conflict with our internal limits.



3) And, if we're shaping our rights and responsibilities (or at least accepting them), what do we want our society to look like, anyway?
I guess the last question is the first question to answer, since it's hard to know where you're going without a goal.

Well, I'd like to think that society should exist to benefit all its members.* No one should be rich while others starve at the very least. And I have an idea of how that could happen that isn't an economic system, but an ethic.

* I think there also needs to be an understanding that at any time a certain number of people won't be self-supporting, either completely or partially. They would be the children, elderly, ill, injured and disabled. Society needs to take them into account and be prepared to accommodate and provide resources for them (directly, through accommodating caregivers, or both) as a routine social function, not an extraordinary one.





SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Monday, November 23, 2015 9:27 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


Quote:

Originally posted by Brenda:
And as for me trying to get a handle on the US is getting difficult for me.



blacklives fem hood rats interupted him, what should he have done different?


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Monday, November 23, 2015 9:48 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"These flaws exist everywhere."

Well ... I disagree. I'm not saying any place is perfect, but some are much better than others. After all, where would you rather live? France or Swaziland? So the places that are more like what you want - they've avoided, or solved, or minimized problems, as compared to other places.

"I am not that much a liberal but at times you have to focus on one problem, meaning the growing wealth inequality and let the other shit pass for another day.'

The wealth inequality is also a problem of how long can the economy run like that, imo.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Friday, November 27, 2015 12:04 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

I hope I didn't imply a sense of decay. What I hoped to express was a nation where groups of people have very limited identities, very limited concerns, and very limited goals. Which leaves national and international decisions in the hands of the oligarchy. - KIKI

It did. The fact that we hold onto our identities 1kiki is so much of what is the problem here. We need to learn to let them go and embrace the human identity. Our selfish is what drives our concerns and yes is another problem. This is why the oligarchy has so much control. Think about it, we have the right to vote yet we vote against our own best interests. This is best illustrated in ignorance portrayed by JAYNZTOWN. - THUGR



Both good points. I'm not sure I would say that we need to embrace our HUMAN identity, but I sure would be happy if we could identify what we have in common, as opposed to what divides us.

Many years ago, when I was young, I discovered the women's liberation movement. I recognized how women were oppressed in many ways- everything from having scientific, literary, and medical contributions expunged from history to being victimized by violence to being saddled with almost all of the (unpaid) house care, child care, etc The themes were very similar to black liberation movement. (I would say that these issues still have not been resolved to this day.) Hubby, of course, had a different take. As a large, superbly athletic male, he was subject to all of the expectations that large physically-fit males are subject to- from being expected to join the football team (he tried out, did great in a few practices, and then joined the English writing and chess teams instead) and being constantly subjected to the internecine pecking-order high school fights to being hassled by the cops and subject to the draft. He tried to explain that most men were subject to equally discriminatory (if different) prejudices, and that the extra 60% that "most" men got in pay - in the grand scheme of things - didn't amount to much, compared to the REAL beneficiaries of the "divide and conquer" setup.

As a woman making my way thru a competitive field where not many women studied and worked, I just wasn't feeling the message, yanno?

It took many years and a lot of heartache, lost sleep, and stress - not related to being a woman but to simply being a parent, a spouse, a sibling, a child, a worker, and a person - to realize that I had a lot more in common with almost everybody else than differences. Experiencing helplessness when facing the death of someone you care for is a near-universal experience; sooner or later, one way or another, we almost all come to it. For me, that's the touchstone of what unites us. And if the grief of others simply doesn't move you, if you can ignore that by thinking of "them" as gay or straight, or Russian or Ukrainian, or black or white, or poor, or male or female, then you're not human, in my book. That's MY dividing line.

The woman's movement of yesterday is like the LGBT and "black lives matter" movements of today. These "rights" are being used to divide us when they should be uniting us. They're being used as wedge issues, kind of like the Confederate flag, and sometimes simply lead to meaningless and cosmetic changes. When the LGBT and "black lives matter" and environmental movements can sit down together and hash out a common goal, that's when we can make real progress.

I "get" that the conversation about what we (collectively) need - what we can (almost) all agree on (less the sociopaths among us), what meaningful changes will lead to the changes that we (almost) all require, will be a long and difficult one. Not only that, but since no changes come all at once, SOME changes will have to be delayed in favor of others. This is likely to be a conversation of epic proportions: What is good? What is bad? Why do we have a society? Why do we have an economy? What is our goal? What is real? What "evidence" do we admit into the discussion, and on what grounds? But I think this is a conversation too-long delayed. We literally have time for nothing else. If we don't have this conversation and decide our future, it will be decided for us.


Quote:

So my vision of the US is one of many disparate groups, each focused on their farm, or their community, or their religion, or their borough, or their guns ... I suspect the people who have the strongest sense of the US as a nation and who have a sense of national identity are newly-minted citizens. - KIKI

Where you and I differ most 1kiki is in the fact that while you chose to point out what you see wrong in America you refuse to acknowledge is wrong in countries you wish to promote. These flaws exist everywhere. - THGUR



I think it's irrelevant to obsess over what's wrong with other countries. I wouldn't even consider thinking about them, except possibly as negative examples that we don't want to emulate. MAYBE WE CAN LEARN FROM WHAT OTHER NATIONS HAVE DONE WELL, NO? BUT WE CAN'T EVEN INSTITUTE THE APPROPRIATE CHANGES IN OUR NATION, WHAT MAKES US THINK WE CAN FORCE IT ON SOMEONE ELSE?

Quote:

That leaves the oligarchy in charge of the mansion.- KIKI

I and many others are trying to evict them as we post here. It’s why the Republicans don’t stand a chance in the coming elections and why Bernie Sanders has Hillary leaning so far left. I am not that much a liberal but at times you have to focus on one problem, meaning the growing wealth inequality and let the other shit pass for another day. -THUGR



As an aside- you can't fix the growing wealth inequality in the USA unless you have national borders that MEAN SOMETHING. As long as people, money, and goods can pass freely through your borders, any changes that you attempt to institute will simply be undone by changes elsewhere.

Let me give you an example: You cannot simply "give money" to "the 95%" and expect to improve the American economy. Why? Because you won't increase demand here in the USA (thereby increasing in-border production and jobs) - MOST OF THAT MONEY WILL SIMPLY FLOW TO CHINESE/VIETNAMESE/HAITIAN ETC MANUFACTURERS.

There is a whole long chain of reforms which need to occur before real improvement can occur.

Let the conversation continue!



--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Friday, November 27, 2015 1:11 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

In science, in economics, in military, in production these other countries are leading now, or moving closer to the American lead and the USA is not so far ahead of everyone in this world anymore. Back when I first came on this forum it was an Andromeda site, not a Firefly site with Joss shows and Joss movies but a site showing the writing of the tv show Andromeda, the actors like Kevin Sorbo as High Guard Captain Dylan Hunt and its crew of aliens and a robo-hologram affectionately named as 'Rommie'...Firefly had just started, and Joss and other scifi writers started to see a future, a frontier in space vision, the wild west around dusty planets like Mars and terraforming, a strange vision where the USA wasn't always number 1
What do you mean by #1? #1 in military power? Production-power?

Quote:

and nations like China would rise....I thought some of it was good, a cowboys in space scifi with elements of Chinese culture but I didn't think so many predictions by scifi writers would start to come true. Bush Jnr was in power and the USA was still ahead, still great
Same question. Great in what? Ahead in what?

Quote:

but he was so bad, such a moron with his neocon cronie friends that many of us belived even a leftist pot smoking fool like Obama might be the answer, the elites picked Obama, they paid for his planes, his fancy banquet dinners, they paid for his posters, elitist bankers and elites from Bilderberg global government inc bought his tv ads because they thought a black man with a muslim middle name 'hussein'would be able to fly over to the middle east, hold hands with the wacky muslims, sing happy songs and dance around the sand dunes with a bong, weed and flowers in hand and chill all this radical muslims out...you don't think the globalist elites Dutch, Saudis, Jews and British secret elites....you don't think they own Obama....ask youself who owns the Fed? did you know the Fed is a privaite bank and not a bank owned by the American people? the fake Federal Reserve with its phony dollar owned borrower or debtor money clocking up trillions in national debts, making profit from mistakes in war and possibly making money future wars and future corruption and they will add trillions more on the US national debt... Bush was a disaster and we were told Obama was the answer, elites picked this black dude with a 'hussein' name as a mark of friendship to the wacko muslims and boy did the elites get it wrong....especially now with members of the Senate and the Congress making moves that would formally designate the Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization



Yes, I know about the Fed and all that. But personally I don't think that the international banksters, neocons, and militarists were so naive as to think that Obama would cause the whacky Muslims to chill bc I think they own the whacky Muslims too.

Quote:

After all my rants I am still a non-interventionist, I belive the USA or France or Russia or whatever country should only invade/attack, only respond with destructive warplanes & military violence only if it is an absolute must
I think I would put a more measurable threshold on military action than "absolute must", because we have been fooled so often into thinking that some nation's destruction was an "absolute must" ... because Saddam had WMD and it was an "absolute must", or Qaddafi was "massacring his people" and it was an absolute must, or Assad was "killing his people" and it was an "absolute must". The threshold for military action should be that the United States is being militarily threatened. And, no, I don't mean that our "interests abroad" are being militarily threatened, I mean that our nation is being threatened.

There are a whole bunch of tools in the toolkit besides military action that the USA can use, among them: HOW ABOUT NOT FUNDING AND ARMING TERRORISTS? We had a multi-decade deal with Saudi Arabia having to do with oil and the dollar and terrorism and Israel. Wahhabism didn't just spring up overnight, and all of the USA deep-state is fully aware of how it was spread and who was behind it. And they were complicit.

Quote:

sadly with radical muslims establishing the so called islamic state of ISIS that option may have become a 'must' and is it possible to win this war, saving the innocent without wiping the 'ISIS Capital City' of Raqqa off the face of this Earth?


As I was told, Russia wiped out most of the terrorists in Chechnya by flattening Grozny. They gave the citizens some warning - I forget how many days - and processed them through checkpoints leaving the city, and then destroyed whatever was left. It was truly Biblical- not one stone was left standing on the other.

Quote:

On the positive side I think Muslims are slowly changing, not all but some are changing.... you have Muslims looking to Atheists or Apostates like Ali Hirsi and recently a young French Muslim call out his own people for their BS and calling for a war against raidical islam, not form the outside but from within Islam itself
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=66d_1447941216
his passion is interesting



Quote:

America also needs to re-stablish its own culture and stop follwing hedonism
I agree. But probably from a different angle than yours. When I think about what kind of society I would like, it's a very human-centered one. Not trying to create heaven on earth, not trying to win points with god, or establish justice, but simply to create a society that can provide for human needs for the forseeable future (ie sustainable) But in thinking abotu what humans NEED, there is a huge difference between what we NEED and what we WANT. We evolved in an environment of privation- there was almost never enough of anything- food, security, time etc- for survival. So humans WANT food. High calorie food. Humans WANT sex. Humans WANT to sit around and do nothing (conserve energy). Humans WANT not to be bored. Humans would love to be diapered, fed, masturbated, and entertained without any effort. Part of human desire is hedonistic, and the consumerist/capitalistic economy is more than willing to stress that point.

But what humans NEED is exercise, and meaningful work which puts them in control of their future, and complex interaction, and learning experiences, and even compassion. Playing to our lowest common (hedonistic, pleasure-seeking) denominator, infantilizing people, isn't good actually for us.

Quote:

war and military industrial profits, out of control cronie banker capitalism, fake money, drugs and being ashamed of itself...Americ aneeds to be great again, not just in stats or numbers but as an American culture.
Agreed.

Quote:

I have lived in many nations across the world and what impressed me was how some of the strong national people or island people have an insanely strong culture, the smaller communities, the people in big cities who still have that small town rural culture, the island peoples...Iceland, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea...their pride may sometimes almost border on what the leftwing regressive liberals would call 'racism' but I would call it a good thing, a strong sense of identity. Europe will change soon, all this migrant refugee invasion, this rise of illegal immigration violence and shootings will only add to the rise of the Euro right, you also had globalist elites amd people like Soros publicly state they want to destroy a country's national identity through waves of immigration. What America needs to do now is raise the fences, pull up the bridge, let the gates go down and batten down the hatches...I'm not for stopping immigratrion totally, people should and will still move, trade will still go on...maybe even trade will get better but at this current rate its a mess, the USA also needs to absorb whatever people it let in, Dearborn being a perfect example of where multi-culturalism is failing.

Agree there, too. But we need more than pride, we need common goals. We have been reduced to atomized individuals with no interaction other than "the marketplace", just like TPTB wanted.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 6:44 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


but how is he on Israel Palestine madness


A vid on the Regressive Left



Ben Shapiro on Free Speech, College Campuses, and The Regressive Left

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 8:07 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Ahhhh, I get it now. You can't *build* a nation with bombs, but you sure can flatten one! Russian humor!
Not Russian, and not humor.

But, yes, you CAN'T build a nation on bombs. Which is why, when a nation starts dropping them, it must be fully aware of what it's doing, and why.

Which is why certain goals like Responsibility to Protect (R2P) or Democracy or Freedom are such fatuous cover-stories for a campaign of destruction. After all, if one nation is trying to destroy another, at least give it the honor of recognizing exactly what is happening, not some sort of rationalized feel-good balm for the masses. Which is something that you are fully brainwashed into; apparently you believe the propaganda that you've been fed and you still can't put any two nations on the same scale of justice, but must constantly weigh one side and lighten another. Something neither you, nor KPO, nor THUGR, nor RAPPY will ever be able to do, apparently.

--------------
You can't build a nation with bombs. You can't create a society with guns.

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Saturday, February 20, 2016 4:04 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"So Russia should at the very least inform Ukraine that it wants to destroy Ukraine?"

When did Russia start bombing Ukraine? Was it during the 'invasion'? I must have missed that.




SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Sunday, February 21, 2016 3:56 PM

MAGONSDAUGHTER


I would have thought one of your national goals should include not allowing someone who has filed for bankruptcy to run for president...what kind of weird universe is it, where Trump gets nominated??????

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Sunday, February 21, 2016 5:13 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Ah, how to explain Trump?

The supporting demographic is significantly old, white, male, and uneducated.

These were the people who previously had been buffered against capitalism's effects on labor by being on the privileged top of the 'disposable human' pile. But capitalism's effects, which were previously exported, have come home; and changing demographics means there are younger, better educated people of either sex and all colors, willing to work harder and smarter, for less money. The old white farts are feeling the pinch.

The Tea Party was supposed to take care of all that. To represent the pro-gun, pro-business, religious, male, white, old, uneducated (etc) demographic. Instead, the country's had 8 years of Obama (assuming he survives his last year). And national policy has been a stalemate at best on those issues.

The politicians have failed them.

Now along comes a guy who's saying all all the things the politician's haven't been saying, who isn't part of the political class they've come to mistrust.

That at least is how I explain how the Donald is where he is.






SAGAN: We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse effect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the cosmos, into a kind of hell.

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Tuesday, February 23, 2016 11:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Ah, how to explain Trump?

D'oh! Simpsons clip perfectly captures the absurdity of the 2016 election



The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Monday, March 14, 2016 7:14 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


I am trying to cypher how much of this "looking back" is merely Newspeak for rewriting history.

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Monday, May 27, 2024 10:14 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Libertarians Skip Over Trump and R.F.K. Jr. for Chase Oliver

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/26/us/politics/chase-oliver-libertaria
n-nominee.html

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Monday, May 27, 2024 10:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I would have thought one of your national goals should include not allowing someone who has filed for bankruptcy to run for president...what kind of weird universe is it, where Trump gets nominated??????



This was a funny gem.

You kidding me Wishy?

Our government on every level from rural alderman up to the President runs on deficit spending. America is beyond broke and wouldn't even operate anymore if they had to stay under budget.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, May 27, 2024 10:59 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I would have thought one of your national goals should include not allowing someone who has filed for bankruptcy to run for president...what kind of weird universe is it, where Trump gets nominated??????



This was a funny gem.

You kidding me Wishy?

Our government on every level from rural alderman up to the President runs on deficit spending. America is beyond broke and wouldn't even operate anymore if they had to stay under budget.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

There is a budget deficit because Trump and his kind don't pay their taxes. For example, Trump paid exactly $750 in 2016 and 2017. To discover that Trump was cheating on his taxes required the Supreme Court to rule twice that Trump's accountants must make his tax returns public knowledge. As for the rest of America's wealthy, they are cheating just as certainly as Trump is, but they didn't become President so there is not sufficient motivation to take their cases to the Supreme Court to discover how much they are cheating.

Trump has yet to pay, despite years of litigation to get him to pay what he owes.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-business-ny-state-wire-ap-top-
news-nyc-wire-f0e2af5f9f99de9d30dc6b9097121188


It is cost effective for the wealthy to pay their American tax attorneys a $million per month to legalistically stymie the IRS than to pay their $billions per year in taxes. But the budget deficit is the results of this endless legal folderol to delay collection of taxes.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, May 27, 2024 1:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Bullshit.

--------------------------------------------------

Trump will be fine.
He will also be your next President.

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Monday, May 27, 2024 2:24 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


There are a lot of reasons why we have a huge deficit. Its a lot more than individual tax cheats.

One reason is because our tax laws have so many built in loopholes, and favor corporations so heavily, you don't HAVE to cheat! Between depreciation, long term capital gains, expenses, etc you can whittle your business taxes down.

And if your taxes are still unacceptable, then set a up a bunch of shell corporations thru Mosack Fonseca (Panama), base one of them in a low tax nation like Ireland, and claim all your profits there.

Also, the USA hemorrhages its budget into various monopolies, "wars of choice", and grift.

Why are we aiding Israel???

Look at Ukraine. How many billions of dollars have been sunk into Ukraine since BEFORE 2014 (According to Vicki Nuland, when she was patting herself on the back for having engineered a coup in 2014, she bragged that the USA had spent $5 billion prepping the population. And that was before the coup! Then we spent who knows how many billion arming Ukraine and building it up to provoke war with Russia, just to engineer a "regime change" in Russia too.)

Or how about our health care and insurance monopolies? 18% of our GDP- much higher than evry other developed nation!- goes into health care, and a fair portion of that is paid by Medicare. How about open pricing? Making pharma bid for Medicare pricing? (Pfiser made a huge amount of $$ on its often-mandated vaccine.) Introducing Medicare option for all? Or re-introducing competition?

Or even "green energy" and the push for EVs.

Quote:

Early in the interview CBS’s Margaret Brennan called out Mayor Pete on something we wrote about just days ago: after spending more than $7 billion since 2021 on EV infrastructure, the nation has less than 10 EV chargers to show for it.

As we noted earlier this month, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by Biden in November 2021, allocated $7.5 billion for EV charging. Of this amount, $5 billion went to states as "formula funding" for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program to establish a network of fast chargers along major highways.

Today, there's seven chargers with a total of just 38 parking spots.



The big ticket items are the Pentagon and Social Security and Medicare.

If throttled back the Pentagon budget, we could cut the budget by at least half, $400 billion.

If we had competitive drug pricing we could probably cut Medicare spending on that (part D) by half. (About $40 billion)
Of the appx $1 trillion that Medicare pays out to hospital (corporations) and medical practices, appx 30% of that cost is due to "administrative costs". If we had at least a public option, since Medicare's admin costs are so much lower (less than 10%) costs would decrease considerably. (Insurances not keen on te idea bc they knew they they couldn't compete with Medicare. )
https://www.kff.org/medicare/issue-brief/what-to-know-about-medicare-s
pending-and-financing
/


If we simplified our tax laws, that would probably net us a few billion, and if we raised the income limit on which Medicare and Social Security taxes are paid, we could make them self sustaining.

We could go after corporate tax cheats and put a few heads on pikes outside the city gates. But

a) It is a very costly endeavor bc business/ corporate tax laws are extremely complex, and you would have to spend years determining if someone was really cheating, or just takjng full, advantage of legal loopholes, and

b) The effort would have to be seen as NOT POLITICALLY MOTIVATED bc ALL businesses would need to feel their necks potentially on the chopping block. None should feel safe bc they're in the political "safe zone".


But this has gotten far afield from the original topic.


BTW, SIX, I'm certain that MAGONS is not WISHY

----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

Why SECOND'S posts are brainless: "I clocked how much time: no more than 10 minutes per day. With cut-and-paste (Ctrl C and Ctrl V) and AI, none of this takes much time."
Or, any verification or thought.

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Wednesday, June 19, 2024 4:35 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


The USA should be making an effort to get the Middle back, divide politics the political madness has won against the center politics

Biden says Trump ‘uses Hitler’s language, not America’s’ after Truth Social video goes viral
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/kamala-h
arris-trump-nazi-truth-social-b2549016.html


and the social media platform you-tube sucks now, it got really bad with Susan Wojcicki its bleeding out users, Marxists and other Hindu poo politics the Bolsevik leadership is back, new leaders trying to save it Neal Mohan, Jawed Karim and other politics they say will be censored

Bitchute and Rumble and Odysee grow, platforms that allow more free ideas, less politically censored attacks on content

https://odysee.com/$/universe


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Monday, July 22, 2024 4:54 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


fixing the deficit and watching the debt and doing something about the debt might help

the culture thing is weird now, Hollyweird, drug worship, crime worship and a USA hating itself turning inward, politically attacking and aborting itself with transsexual regression revision politics, race baiting, religion groups, political groups a society almost worshiping its own decline...the cultural element needs to change for the better.

Education, social; decline, a failure of people, a USA take by a foreign culture and language, a rot in cities

No Security at the Border, the system overwhelmed a system of exploitation, gun running, human traffickers, no rights and drugs pouring into the USA and killing young Americans with a full life ahead of them.

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Tuesday, July 30, 2024 9:38 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


and crazy politics yet to come...



Cancel Netflix Boycott Sparked By Kamala Harris Campaign Donation By Netflix Chairman

https://www.screengeek.net/2024/07/27/cancel-netflix-boycott-kamala-ha
rris
/


Iran trying to undercut Trump campaign and Russia doing opposite, U.S. officials indicate

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/iran-russia-trump-campaign-us-intel-brief
ing


Iranian Suicide Drones Used in Tel Aviv Attack Constructed With American Components, Cruz Says

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/iranian-suicide-drones-used-i
n-tel-aviv-attack-constructed-with-american-components-cruz-says
/

'White Dudes for Harris' X Suspension Sparks Fury: 'Election Interference'

https://www.newsweek.com/white-dudes-harris-x-suspension-1931827


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Thursday, August 29, 2024 5:53 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Giving Bombs and firing missiles for 'Democracy'


US becoming ‘major organiser’ of conflicts in Asia: prominent Chinese academic
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3276129/asia-rapidly
-sliding-towards-war-and-us-blame-says-chinese-professor



And not the first time accused, others will accuse them of pushing conflict in the Balkans, Middle East and North Africa region or MENA, and Africa itself, and Latin America, and Oceania

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Tuesday, September 10, 2024 5:00 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


with an internal culture implosion also ask where the USA is going culturally

Slain college gymnast Kara Welsh was in fetal position when shot multiple times
https://www.nydailynews.com/2024/09/07/kara-welsh-whitewater-gymnast-s
hooting-fetal-position
/

5 teens, including 13-year-old, caught stealing nearly $3K worth of items from Atlanta Lululemon
https://vidmax.com/video/229263-5-teens-including-13-year-old-caught-s
tealing-nearly-3k-worth-of-items-from-atlanta-lululemon


Ohion Zombie Apocalypse...
Black woman eats the neighbors cat on driveway.
https://x.com/1776General_/status/1832369491402948940

School shooters
Waren Curtis Grant, was rushed to the hospital where he later died.



Devon Blair, 23, is charged


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Wednesday, September 25, 2024 4:52 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

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Tuesday, November 19, 2024 1:45 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


The Dark Truth About American Politics - Eric Weinstein


Chris Williamson

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