A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Monday, September 14, 2026 11:03
VIEWED: 756680
PAGE 1 of 73
If you meet the requirements ( slightly to the right, middle and liberal ) and you have an interest in starting a discussion say so.
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I don't know that I consider myself a democrat, but these days I am definitely anti-republican, I like science too much, I guess. 
I wouldn't even bother with "Independant"
because there is no point to be a part of a perennially losing party that doesn't clearly stand for anything.
I think I am for sure a card carrying member of the "people of both parties piss me off".
I wish there were more options, I think it would be healthier for the country as well.
If there ever is a "Science and Education" party, let me know...
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I am an independent myself, but I figured to many would make the same claim that are actually far right nuts. To tell the truth they are the ones I expected to post here first. Glad it's you guys. 
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I'm an actual, registered Democrat.
But I'm not sure what the topic is. Democrats can post in here,
and talk about themselves ... about why they are democrats ...
or what democrats believe in?
My parents were Republicans.
I was an adult in my 40's before I found out I was a democrat.
I didn't really know what the 2 parties stood for, so I asked a
friend who loves politics what I was.
Republicans tend to be conservative. Democrats tend to be liberal.
Can I even say what those words mean? Not very well.
Conservatives stand for law & order. i.e., Authority.
Democrats believe in human rights and equality. i.e., Freedom.
Anarchists believe in every man for himself?
... oooOO}{OOooo ...
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I am a rejistered Democrat.
But I think the official party iz lost in the wilderness, wandering around confuzed. They dont no where they are or where they are going, not even where they shoud be going.
Just like the GoP wuz eazy prey to get hijacked by Trump last yir, the Dem can be now.
I hope to be the guy to do it, but expect it will be sum rich guy who haz the resoursez to broadcast hiz taylored to wut they want to hear salez pitch louder than anybody else.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:wow.
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
I'm an actual, registered Democrat.
But I'm not sure what the topic is. Democrats can post in here,
and talk about themselves ... about why they are democrats ...
or what democrats believe in?
My parents were Republicans.
I was an adult in my 40's before I found out I was a democrat.
I didn't really know what the 2 parties stood for, so I asked a
friend who loves politics what I was.
Republicans tend to be conservative. Democrats tend to be liberal.
Can I even say what those words mean? Not very well.
Conservatives stand for law & order. i.e., Authority.
Democrats believe in human rights and equality. i.e., Freedom.
Anarchists believe in every man for himself?
You still don't know what you are. Your friend misled you.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Oonjerah:
Conservatives stand for law & order. i.e., Authority.
Democrats believe in human rights and equality. i.e., Freedom.
The truly annoying thing about Republicans and Freedom, is that when a Democrat says Freedom Repugs hear "You mean at the expense of MY well-established track record of bigotry and public persona? How dare you not tolerate my religious persecution??"
Yes, you have to treat all people like PEOPLE, even if you disagree with them. You have to allow people to do things you don't want them to do if they aren't physically hurting you. Your "for the public good" ideas still CANNOT infringe on my rights. Public business means ALL PUBLIC BUSINESS. You wanna bake cakes for straight X-tians, then open a straight X-tians ONLY bakery. You don't want to?? Then you admit it's just about money and NOT about religion at ALL.
That is the main issue I see with Republicans.
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LOL... try opening a straight Christian only bakery in the US and see how quick that gets shut down.
You don't even think before you type, do you Wishy?
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
LOL... try opening a straight Christian only bakery in the US and see how quick that gets shut down.
Thanks to the SJW for keeping the shitty X-tians from discriminating.
Discriminating IS NOT A RIGHT.
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The way I was taught, both in & out of school ...
The Founding Fathers* seriously wanted Freedom of Religion in this country.
Naturally, that includes freedom from religion.
I argued with a lay preacher about it once; he was certain that
they intended this to be a Christian nation. ...
An odd point of view, since he was much better educated than I was.
* Adams, Franklin, Hamilton, Jay, Jefferson, Madison, and Washington.
... oooOO}{OOooo ...
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Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
LOL... try opening a straight Christian only bakery in the US and see how quick that gets shut down.
Thanks to the SJW for keeping the shitty X-tians from discriminating.
Discriminating IS NOT A RIGHT.
What? Are you just contradicting your own points for the sake of nothing?
Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:
You wanna bake cakes for straight X-tians, then open a straight X-tians ONLY bakery. You don't want to?? Then you admit it's just about money and NOT about religion at ALL.
The correct answer to the question is No. You do not use your brain before typing something.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
The correct answer to the question is No. You do not use your brain before typing something.
Ok, then tell me how I am wrong, Stud.
Tell me how discriminating is the right thing to do or in any way beneficial for society.
I'd LOVE to hear this one...
People who are shitty to other people just for planning a wedding ARE SHITTY PEOPLE, in this case X-tians.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
The correct answer to the question is No. You do not use your brain before typing something.
Ok, then tell me how I am wrong, Stud.
Tell me how discriminating is the right thing to do or in any way beneficial for society.
I'd LOVE to hear this one...
People who are shitty to other people just for planning a wedding ARE SHITTY PEOPLE, in this case X-tians.
You really are thick.
I didn't say that discrimination was the right thing to do or beneficial to society.
YOU SAID THIS:
Quote:
You wanna bake cakes for straight X-tians, then open a straight X-tians ONLY bakery. You don't want to?? Then you admit it's just about money and NOT about religion at ALL.
I SAID THIS:
Quote:
LOL... try opening a straight Christian only bakery in the US and see how quick that gets shut down.
What you said was stupid bullshit. YOU said that people should open a bakery that only serves straight Christians, but they wouldn't BECAUSE it's all about money.
I said that they wouldn't BECAUSE it's illegal.
I called you on your bullshit, then you turned it into a discrimination issue and tried to paint me to be a bad guy because you lost the argument.
Typical SJW, Feminist dissembling argument.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
I said that they wouldn't BECAUSE it's illegal.
I called you on your bullshit, then you turned it into a discrimination issue and tried to paint me to be a bad guy because you lost the argument.
That's just it, beer for brains...all you said was "LOL... try opening a straight Christian only bakery in the US and see how quick that gets shut down." YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT LEGAL. You implied your hated SJW would shut it down, and they do that on occasion.
And as for "legal", ever heard of a GAY BAR? You CAN open a business that caters to a specific clientele and even market that in an oblique way, but cannot refuse service to others. But you probably won't get a whole lot of straight people. SO yeah, they CAN open a bakery and "Serving the Conservative Christian since 1995" because you can make your slogan whatever you want. Probably would still get a gay couple or two, but it would limit the requests. They DON'T because they know they would lose the business of the marginal and non-religious. So it IS all about money.
.
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I saw this article that may make me change my mind about how wonderful it would be to join the GOP: Republican Tax Plan Literally Benefits Only Millionaires
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/09/republican-tax-plan-literally-b
enefits-only-millionaires/
I don't know that I can keep voting for Democrats when Republicans are the only ones protecting me and my wealth from the poor who want to steal it all: Trump slams Puerto Rico. ‘They want everything to be done for them’
San Juan mayor Carmen Yulin Cruz said, "I will do what I never thought I was going to do. I am begging, begging anyone who can hear us to save us from dying. If anybody out there is listening to us, we are dying, and you are killing us with the inefficiency."
Trump's response was: "Such poor leadership ability by the Mayor of San Juan" He continued: "What do they think I'm made of? Money? I have nothing to spare from my billions and billions!" Trump didn't actually say that. He only thought it.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-slams-puerto-rico-%E2%80%98they-
want-everything-to-be-done-for-them%E2%80%99/ar-AAsE1xP?li=BBmkt5R&oc
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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I see we've attracted a couple of trolls, both with the first initial J. That said, the biggest problem with the Democratic Parties direction is that they are locked into identity politics.
That's a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics. This is good if you are a minority. Joining forces helps to expand your powers. It is however not right for a political party to do this. They are supposed to represent everyone not just minorities. This is why so many white voters feel disenfranchised from the party and why the party has lost a thousand legislative seats nation wide in the last decade. 
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Quote:
Originally posted by Wishimay:Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
I said that they wouldn't BECAUSE it's illegal.
I called you on your bullshit, then you turned it into a discrimination issue and tried to paint me to be a bad guy because you lost the argument.
That's just it, beer for brains...all you said was "LOL... try opening a straight Christian only bakery in the US and see how quick that gets shut down." YOU DIDN'T SAY ANYTHING ABOUT LEGAL. You implied your hated SJW would shut it down, and they do that on occasion.
And as for "legal", ever heard of a GAY BAR? You CAN open a business that caters to a specific clientele and even market that in an oblique way, but cannot refuse service to others. But you probably won't get a whole lot of straight people. SO yeah, they CAN open a bakery and "Serving the Conservative Christian since 1995" because you can make your slogan whatever you want. Probably would still get a gay couple or two, but it would limit the requests. They DON'T because they know they would lose the business of the marginal and non-religious. So it IS all about money.
.
A bakery would be shut down by law that advertised that it was only for straight Christians. Don't be stupid. It would immediately be viewed as discriminatory just by the advertising and they would either be forced by law to immediately change the advertising or face being shut down.
I didn't imply that a bakery that actively catered only to straight Christians would be shut down by SJWs. You inferred that.
Yeah. I've heard of gay bars. Big difference here is that they are a miniority so they are actively protected. Try opening a straight bar and see what happens. (Infer that however you want to). Either way, that gets shut down too.
Why did the democrats ban smoking from all bars instead of letting the market decide? I guaranty that if they repealed those laws that half of the establishments would go back to allowing smoking and their business would boom. The non-smoking establishments would also see a spike in business since non-smokers would tend to only go to the ones that still didn't allow smoking.
You need to take a page out of T's book. I don't agree with almost anything he says, but he gets the identity politics problem of the Democrats today. I don't like being lumped in with Republicans, and I've been against them most of my life. The identity politics have pushed me to the other side though.
Fix your fucking party.
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Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
I see we've attracted a couple of trolls, both with the first initial J.
Wu?
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Wu?
Joker and JSF, hon.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
I didn't imply that a bakery that actively catered only to straight Christians would be shut down by SJWs. You inferred that.
Either way, that gets shut down too.
Why did the democrats ban smoking from all bars instead of letting the market decide?
Maybe because you whine about them every thirty seconds?? Can't imagine why I thought that...
We have gay bars HERE.
Are you REALLY advocating for mass crowd poisoning to brought back? When you look in the mirror at your teeth, doesn't that tell you ANYTHING?? You wanna smoke DO IT ON YOUR OWN DUMBASS TIME. THE MARKET doesn't decide public health policy or we would have drive through opioid injectables.
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It's called a pharmacy, kitten.
Don't be naive.
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There are no “adults in the room”
Retired General John Kelly's background and experience are unusual for a White House Chief of Staff, but as it happens his final military assignment was as commander of American military forces in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean basin — basically perfect preparation for the crisis that happens to have struck Puerto Rico.
It’s of course entirely possible that things would be going even worse if Reince Priebus were still in charge, but on its face Kelly’s experience does not seem to be doing any good. And that should be a stake through the heart of the notion that some stable of “adults in the room” are going to save the country from having picked a spectacularly inappropriate choice to serve as chief executive.
The one thing we can say for sure is that it’s essentially inconceivable that the next objectively difficult crisis that Trump fumbles will be more in Kelly’s wheelhouse than a disaster requiring a military response in the Caribbean. We’re witnessing the Trump administration at peak performance and it’s appalling. Bismarck supposedly said that God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America. If we’re lucky he’ll be proven right and nothing much else bad will happen for the next three years. If not, buckle your seatbelts.
www.vox.com/2017/10/1/16390006/puerto-rico-trump
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Well all we can hope for is that the Democrats fix their party and cast aside the vocal SJW minority and become a party of inclusion again instead of identity politics and they put forward a good candidate against Trump next time.
Trump would have lost to nearly any other Democrat that ran. No. Most people certainly were not with her.
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Oh goody! I'm a registered democrat who's totally disgusted by the corrupt deep-state corporatocracy the party has become.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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I was going to skip this thread entirely, but seeing as I've been a registered Democrat since I was old enough to vote (that would make it ... ummm ... 45 years) and have voted Democrat almost exclusively my entire life, and am DEFINITELY left-of-center, I guess I belong here.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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I voted for a Democrat once, for President.
My only voting mistake.
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Quote:And having been a nearly pure Republican, how do you feel about the Republicans' tax plan? I find their plan typical of their governing style:
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:
I voted for a Democrat once, for President.
My only voting mistake.
After a year of work, Republicans have decided nothing on corporate tax reform.
Congress needs to say what it wants the corporate income tax rate to be, and if it wants that tax rate to be 20 percent and it wants to limit the amount by which the deficit increases, then it needs to spell out which loopholes get closed. Doing this in the context of a big, bipartisan deal with Democrats would be challenging, but Republicans would not need almost every Republican Congressman to vote for every specific provision.
But doing it in a Republican only, hyperpartisan process where they’re trying to pass a giant tax cut for rich people that no Democrats will vote for leaves Republicans no room for mistakes. Any industry that wants to save a loophole provision only needs to find three GOP senators — or two dozen House members — to save it. This is presumably why Republican leaders keep not naming names as they go through different iterations of their plan. But unless they find some way to actually reach agreement on the crucial topic of which loopholes, exactly, are being closed, there’s just no way for their tax plan to move ahead. To pass a bill, Republicans will need, at some point, to actually commit some words to paper and spell something out. They have had since Mitt Romney ran for President to write it down so they could pass it. But they haven't started writing.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/3/16400412/corporate-tax-refor
m-details
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Editorial from today's Houston Chronicle blasts ex-governor Rick Perry, now Energy Secretary
www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Sins-of-oil-will-b
e-shouted-from-the-rooftops-12250744.php
. . . Battery costs are falling and renewable energy is becoming cheaper. China, Britain and France have plans to ban gasoline vehicles to help fight global warming. Following other automobile manufacturers, General Motors announced this week that it plans to phase out internal combustion cars and replace them with an electric future.
It doesn’t take a prophet to see that the writing’s on the wall. Houston is going to need all the help we can get as the world transitions to a clean energy future — but don’t expect it to come from Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
The former governor of Texas has been focusing his efforts on a bizarre plan to subsidize the coal industry. Last week, he directed the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to craft a new rule that gives extra compensation to power plants that can store 90 days worth of fuel on site, Bloomberg News reported. This regulation just so happens to specifically fit coal and nuclear plants. Wind turbines and solar panels can’t exactly store a stiff breeze or sunshine. Natural gas power plants rely on pipelines for fuel.
The rule’s stated premise is to reward resiliency — you want power plants ready to go during the worst disaster. It would also distort markets and hand out cash to an industry that simply can’t keep up with a world appropriately concerned about climate change and saturated with cheaper, cleaner natural gas.
“The proposal could essentially prevent coal and nuclear power plants from closing even if they’re not economic to run,” Catherine Traywick and Jim Polson wrote in Bloomberg. www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-29/perry-moves-to-aid-coal-nuc
lear-generators-with-pricing-rule
And if Perry really cares about resiliency, then why not encourage more pipelines in Texas fracking fields, or invest in battery storage research? Perhaps Perry’s Department of Energy could even direct some of those research dollars toward Houston, planting the seed money for a future-proof industry.
Because the big storm that Houston needs to prepare for isn’t just the next Hurricane Harvey — it’s an economic storm that threatens to sweep away a century built on oil and gas. Our entire economic model lacks the resiliency we’ll need to survive, and Perry finds himself conveniently positioned to both bolster natural gas as a clean fuel and keep Houston at the center of everything energy.
Instead, he’s giving government handouts to coal country. Looking at his agenda, you can’t help but feel like Perry has all but forgotten about Texas. And in our book, there’s no bigger sin.
It doesn’t take a prophet to see that the writing’s on the wall. Houston is going to need all the help we can get as the world transitions to a clean energy future — but don’t expect it to come from Secretary of Energy Rick Perry.
Trump promises to end the war on coal. "We will have clean coal, really clean coal." Yeah. Nobody can clean coal better than Trump.
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Nobody in an area that makes money off of oil is going to invest in battery storage technology for 2 reasons.
1. Let somebody else spend that money because we have a long and expensive path to go to make it something that is actually better for the environment when you consider what goes in to making them and what you have to do to dispose of them in the end. (Recharge times and battery life aren't the only important things to improve upon at all).
2. Whenever somebody successfully figures out everything in the first issue, it would make demand for their product fall sharply almost overnight.
A mythical Texas Democrat wouldn't support it either. Don't kid yourself.
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Quote:You ain't right about "Nobody" investing. The 1% don't have economic control of everybody in Texas, it only seems like they do but they really only control the wage-slaves in the lower 99% who were born to follow their wealthy superiors. There is a professor who invented the lithium-ion battery and works at the University of Texas at Austin. If the oil barons of Texas had the control of everybody you imagine, the barons would have shut him down. And he has got another battery, better than lithium-ion. Give it twenty or thirty years for the new battery to go from laboratory to a consumer product (for electric cars), about the same amount of time as lithium-ion.
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
Nobody in an area that makes money off of oil is going to invest in battery storage technology for 2 reasons.
https://news.utexas.edu/2017/02/28/goodenough-introduces-new-battery-t
echnology
Off to another subject explained in a manner only Democrats would believe:
The world learned a counterintuitive but central insight about capitalism during the 20th century: It’s just too productive. It tends to create much more supply than there is effective demand.
This doesn’t mean that capitalist countries don’t have children who go hungry or people who need to buy a new car but can’t. Far from it. Rather, it means that capitalism is extraordinarily inventive and usually generates the physical ability to produce that food and those cars — but not enough customers who can afford to buy it all. Simultaneously, there will be a small number of billionaires at the top with far more money than they could ever spend.
These frequent gluts of supply are why capitalist economies often fall into slow growth and even long-term recessions and depressions. When there’s more stuff than can be bought, factories fire some of the workers making it, then the workers who were fired are forced to buy less, then the factories fire more people, in an ongoing vicious cycle.
One of the best weapons against this, as the U.S. and the rest of the world discovered by ending the Great Depression via World War II, is for the government to run deficits by cutting taxes or increasing spending or both. Well-designed deficits will put money in the pocket of people who don’t have much and will spend it.
But even if deficits generally make life better for most people, from the perspective of the 1 percent, they’re politically repellent. A fast-growing economy means low unemployment, which puts more power in the hands of workers and less in the hands of employers. It also may generate higher prices, which reduce the value of most kinds of bonds. (A classic explanation of why we have the ability to choose to create economic booms, and the intense resistance among the rich to their countries making such a choice, is the 1943 article, “Political Aspects of Full Employment” by Polish economist Michael Kalecki.)
Thus, Republicans pretend to care about deficits during Democratic administrations because they’re desperate to prevent their opponents from benefiting from deficits’ positive effects. Meanwhile, Democratic deficits are often run up with social spending rather than tax cuts, which Republicans oppose because they worry the spending will lead to future tax hikes. (And some just don’t like social spending, period.) But when the GOP takes power, it immediately discards its rhetoric to try to utilize deficits’ usefulness for themselves.
https://theintercept.com/2017/10/03/donald-trumps-disgusting-remark-on
-puerto-rico-is-more-revealing-than-he-knows/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The problem is that Democrats on the other hand don't care about deficits at all.
I think we have a thread about the rest of the world doing what they can to untie the US dollar from oil as a result of our deficit.
Deficit spending doesn't fix anything by itself. It's only creating more problems.
And don't kid yourself. People have died for alternative energy solutions before. I'm amazed that we're actually making some progress on that front now. I only believe that it is allowed to happen these days because people who control everything see the writing on the wall. Alternative energy will come, but it will be on their timetable and they will still make all the money off of it when it does.
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Quote:The Republican Congress wants to increase the deficit in order to give the wealthy a tax cut. Congress might not pass it because some Republicans and most Democrats won't vote for it, but the tax cut is always a GOP project, decade after decade.
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
The problem is that Democrats on the other hand don't care about deficits at all.
I think we have a thread about the rest of the world doing what they can to untie the US dollar from oil as a result of our deficit.
Deficit spending doesn't fix anything by itself. It's only creating more problems.
And don't kid yourself. People have died for alternative energy solutions before. I'm amazed that we're actually making some progress on that front now. I only believe that it is allowed to happen these days because people who control everything see the writing on the wall. Alternative energy will come, but it will be on their timetable and they will still make all the money off of it when it does.
www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-05/gop-budget-kicks-off-effort
-on-tax-cuts-now-comes-the-hard-part
What if Trump gets lucky enough to end the inheritance tax because some Democrats act stupid by voting for Trump's tax cut? What will the rich (and Trump's family after he is dead) do with their extra money? They might do a little more charitable giving, not more than one tenth, but mostly they will buy more stocks, bonds, buildings and politicians. They are buying more control of the USA. That won't do good for 6stringJoker, but he probably doesn't care enough to be a force not to be ignored by the wealthy and their government. What Congress should be doing is a tax increase to force the wealthy to sell stocks, bonds, buildings. The wealthy would have less and less control over the USA as the years slowly go by. But that ain't gonna happen, is it? 6stringJack doesn't care very much, the vast majority don't care, while the wealthy are extremely passionate about increasing their control. Their energetic search for more money and their long range planning is why they are getting wealthier and more in control. The lower classes are too indifferent, too ignorant, too slow to stop what is happening. They only take action once every four years, but the wealthy keep at it 365 times a year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distribution_of_wealth
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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You make some good points, but you ruin them with your partisanship.
Democrats are not the friends of the "99%" you make them out to be.
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Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
I see we've attracted a couple of trolls, both with the first initial J. That said, the biggest problem with the Democratic Parties direction is that they are locked into identity politics.
That's a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics. This is good if you are a minority. Joining forces helps to expand your powers. It is however not right for a political party to do this. They are supposed to represent everyone not just minorities. This is why so many white voters feel disenfranchised from the party and why the party has lost a thousand legislative seats nation wide in the last decade.
I'll say it again.The biggest problem with the Democratic Parties direction is that they are locked into identity politics.
That's a tendency for people of a particular religion, race, social background, etc., to form exclusive political alliances, moving away from traditional broad-based party politics. This is good if you are a minority. Joining forces helps to expand your powers. It is however not right for a political party to do this. They are supposed to represent everyone not just minorities. This is why so many white voters feel disenfranchised from the party and why the party has lost a thousand legislative seats nation wide in the last decade.
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I will agree with that again.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
I will agree with that again.
Me too. I think hell just froze over.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Some people voted for Trump, the richest President in history, because he could not be bought. But selling themselves as indispensable men is what the rich do to become wealthy.
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
You make some good points, but you ruin them with your partisanship.
Democrats are not the friends of the "99%" you make them out to be.
Here is another extract only for Democrats. A Republican might say "You make some good points, but you ruin them with your partisanship", but it does not mention D's or R's, it simply does not respect some ideas that R's think were handed down by God as part of natural law:
www.edge.org/conversation/tim_oreilly-reality-is-an-activity-of-the-mo
st-august-imagination
I remember a conversation I had with Walt Mossberg in which he recounted a conversation he had with Steve Ballmer who, at the times, was the CEO of Microsoft. He told me he’d said, "Steve, if you guys would be 5 percent less greedy, the world would like you 100 percent more." I'm now watching that dynamic play out again with Google where, despite their "don't be evil" philosophy, they're becoming the focus of antitrust investigations.
I look at these patterns in platforms in which they start out with a burst of optimism and creation of public value, then gradually they start turning away from that. I'm trying to understand why that is.
It seems to me that the same pattern we've seen with technology platforms is playing out today in our broader economy, where financial markets in particular have turned into an extractive monopoly rather than a support system for our economy. Something like 85 percent of all corporate "investment" today goes to dividends and share buybacks. Very little goes to actual investment in people, building things, and R&D. It's all going into financial gamesmanship.
Looking at the pattern of algorithmic systems like Google and Facebook, I started thinking about how that applies to financial markets. A system like Google has hundreds of factors that are being taken into account, but they all have a master objective function, a fitness function, which is relevance in search results and ads.
Facebook's fitness function, their objective function, is to produce content that's engaging. We saw how that went wrong with fake news. Mark and the Facebook team are trying to deal with that. They're wrestling with the fact that they had this idea about how to build an engaging product, and it's been subverted.
I look at our economic system where inequality is increasing, and I ask myself: Is that also a system that's dominated by an algorithm? What are they trying to optimize for?
I started to realize that thirty or forty years ago was the point we told companies that there's only one thing to optimize for, and that is shareholder value. That's the point in the '70s where you see this great divergence between the increased productivity brought on by technology and the actual benefit to the economy, where you see inequality soar, where you see people not doing as well as their parents. I came around to thinking that in some ways financial markets are that rogue AI that people like Elon Musk have been talking about.
Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk and everybody use these artificial thought experiments, like the AI which follows its objective function of making paperclips. Musk used one recently about the strawberry-picking robot that decides humans are in the way of its picking strawberries. Those aren't realistic. What is realistic is a world in which you have an increasingly algorithmic financial system saying, "Hey, optimize for corporate profit because it drives stock price. Never mind what happens to the people. Never mind what happens to society." We're in that AI-driven situation.
What do we do about that? How do we debug the objective function of an increasingly automated economy, of an economy that's do
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Good article.
Wen skamz and mistakes are too big, peepl cant see them.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Good article.
Wen skamz and mistakes are too big, peepl cant see them.
Gee... you mean like everybody who voted for Hillary?
It's not as if the Democrats had anybody decent up against Trump.
You've got 3 years. Do something about that.
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If Hillary was popular (she's not), that'd be one thing.
She hoped to become the first woman president of the USA.
The USA may not be ready for that, despite all our talk of equality.
On a ticket with a popular male candidate for pres, had she run for
vice-president, easier for voters to accept that role.
Evenso, I think there are many women politicians in the USA who are
more respected than Hillary.
... oooOO}{OOooo ...
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Hillary would never have run as VP. Way too big of an ego.
She technically did win the popular vote. I think a lot of people who voted for Trump were simply voting against the Clinton family and the status quo.
I think say, a female version of Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide against Trump.
I don't think it had much to do with a fact she was a woman in the end. Sure, there are some people who were voting against that, but they generally speaking would have been voting against any democrat these days for a lot of other reasons anyhow.
You guys (and gals) just put the wrong woman up. She's just a shitty person all around. If you put another woman up next time, I suggest that it be somebody people actually like. Don't want to make a streak of females losing in that race and set a precedent of it.
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Good article.
Wen skamz and mistakes are too big, peepl cant see them.
The article is trying to make the point that it isn't a question of "skamz" ... not even BIG skamz ... but a SYSTEMS problem. That's why they keep using the word "algorithm".
That's the point that I've been trying to make: It doesn't matter how honest, or greedy, any particular business people are. Once you set up a system of rewards (a system or algorithm) it tends to impose its logic on the people who are in it.
For example, let's assume that you have a very generous business person who pays workers, salespeople, and suppliers fairly. Mr/Ms Generous doesn't make as large of a profit as Mr/Ms Chiseler, who pays poorly. Mr/Ms Chiseler can use that profit to expand. Eventually, Mr/Ms Chiseler can even buy up Mr/Ms Generous.
Play that out over multiple iterations of multiple businesses, and eventually you'll see that the businesses which make the largest profit are the ones who "win" the business space, because those are the rules of the game. Because there are very few ethical requirements on businesses ... and there are reasons why that's so, but I don't want to get into that now ... the least ethical will always overtake the most ethical, given time.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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I agree.
Wun Goverment's main jobz iz to keep companyz from running amok.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:That is because one particular party (I can't say which because saying always causes 6stringJoker to stop thinking since the conversation is now "partisan" ) despises the idea of government enforcing ethics. With that unnamed political party, it's always the "Market" that will enforce better behavior.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Play that out over multiple iterations of multiple businesses, and eventually you'll see that the businesses which make the largest profit are the ones who "win" the business space, because those are the rules of the game. Because there are very few ethical requirements on businesses ... and there are reasons why that's so, but I don't want to get into that now ... the least ethical will always overtake the most ethical, given time.
I'll give you an example of the difference between the two parties from yesterday's Houston Chronicle:
www.pressreader.com/usa/houston-chronicle-sunday/20171008/284064846941
489
CEO Smith told Congress that Equifax’s failure was caused by one person failing to make sure a manual patch was applied to vulnerable software. He chalked it up to one human’s error.
A closer examination, though, shows a pattern of his executive team taking shortcuts on cybersecurity. For example, personally identifying information was not encrypted, and executives scheduled security reviews only once a quarter.
The data breach may ultimately generate higher profits for Equifax and its competitors.
Smith need not fear any criminal consequences, though.
The Federal Trade Commission may sue Atlanta-based Equifax for the leak under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, but the settlements rarely amount to more than a slap on the wrist. Consumers can bring a class action lawsuit, but odds of a significant settlement are slim. And under current U.S. law, consumers can’t stop Equifax from stockpiling our personal information.
“I never said it was OK to have all my information, and now I want out. I want to lock out Equifax. Can I do that?” Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., asked Smith on Tuesday. [Did you notice it was a Democrat saying this?]
“That requires a much broader discussion around the role of the credit reporting agencies,” Smith said, dodging the question.
The data breach may ultimately generate higher profits for Equifax and its competitors because more consumers will need to pay for credit monitoring and freezes.
Democrats have proposed legislation that would force credit agencies to offer free credit freezes, but no Republicans have signed on. Democrats have also proposed giving more power to federal regulators to protect consumer data, but again, there is no Republican support. [Did you notice it was Republicans not supporting change?]
At a time when President Donald Trump is promising fewer regulations, Republicans don’t want to give more authority to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Obama-era agency that the president has promised to eliminate.
That leaves consumers paying credit agencies not to share our information.
A credit freeze, though, only prevents a criminal from obtaining a new credit card or loan using your information. A freeze does nothing to stop thieves from accessing your existing credit cards or bank accounts, which constitutes 86 percent of identity fraud cases, according to Bureau of Justice statistics.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
The European Union has much stricter rules protecting a person’s right to privacy and sets very high cybersecurity standards on companies and government agencies that possess sensitive personal information. . . .
More at www.pressreader.com/usa/houston-chronicle-sunday/20171008/284064846941
489
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
That is because one particular party (I can't say which because saying always causes 6stringJoker to stop thinking since the conversation is now "partisan" ) despises the idea of government enforcing ethics. With that unnamed political party, it's always the "Market" that will enforce better behavior.
Oh, you mean like how Bill Clinton set in motion the 2008 financial mayhem by repealing Glass-Steagall and signing the Commodities Futures Trading Act, promoting runaway corporations with various "free trade" agreements, and rewarding a "rentier" economy of ideas by promoting the DMCA?
[snark] You mean like how Obama sent those writers of fraudulent mortgages and fraudulent investment products to jail; sternly allowing "market forces" to crush those "too big to fail" banks by allowing them to fail instead of bailing them out; re-instituting Glass Steagall; refusing to sign the extortionate "bail in" procedures which allow banks to dip into their depositors' accounts to make themselves whole; re-industrializing the USA and restoring our sovereignty by repudiating the various "free trade" agreements and their extra-judicial secret trade tribunals; and disallowing nearly all of the M&A's which came before the SEC for approval? [/snark]
You mean like THAT Democratic enforcement of honest business practices and promotion of competition?
SECOND, I'd be the last person to say that Republicans enforce better business practices, but then - neither do Dems. All you have to do is look at the results: That xfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, which began under Reagan? It continued unabated whether the President had a "D" or an "R" after his name; and Bush's business policies continued without a hiccup under Obama. And like I said, if you don't believe me, just look at the results.
There is SO MUCH systemically wrong with our entire business system, starting with fractional reserve banking, any President who attempted to reverse course on anything fundamental would be assassinated in short order. Again, not dependent on whether there was a "D" or an "R" after their name.
But if you want some ideas on how to REALLY reform the system:
Get rid of fractional reserve lending. Lending money that an institution doesn't have is really money-creation; which means that SOME institutions get to "print money" for profit, while most of the rest of us have to WORK for a living.
Revise incorporation laws to require ethical standards in their business practices; right now, corps only have to mind their "fiduciary duty" to their shareholders. Create a "death penalty" - i.e. forced disbandment - for corporations which fail to meet their ethical standards, in addition to punishing individual decision-makers.
Another possibility is to simply require that all businesses be owned by their employees.
Either do away with the stock market entirely, or ban stock trades that take place in less than six months after purchase. The stock market used to be a reasonable way for a company to raise cash for investment; now it's just a gambling casino of microsecond speculation: a travesty of what it was supposed to be.
I don't even know WHAT to do with hedge funds and derivatives! The only thing I can hope for is that if their source of cheap funding (money conjured out of thin air by investment banks) is shut off, the speculation will be shut off too.
Reverse Citizen's United. Remove "personhood" from corporate status by Congressional law. Define "free speech" as speech that one does not have to pay to have distributed; any bought-and-paid-for speech is automatically considered "advertising", even if it's news.
Redefine anti-trust action as not just applying to "monopolistic practices" but also to corporations over a certain size.
Revise corporate tax
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My proposal for "free speech" just met with some resistance. Long story but there are unintended consequences with my proposal. So maybe simply have a democratically-elected commission run the internet instead, just like the government maintains the interstates.
This thing with Equifax ... it's just nibbling around the edges of "what is wrong with our system" by attacking a momentarily unpopular business, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of a system based entirely on profit (to the exclusion of everything else).
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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So, I'm going to start with a mention of Trump. Whether by accident or design, in international terms, he's doing exactly what the Deep State wants him to do*.
Even better, the Deep State gets to coast. Consider the alternative, under Hillary. Can you imagine how much fluffing of the American public it would take to get this all done with Hillary instead? Yeah, she's on-board and all that, but, wow. They'd have to make all this look statesman-like. Done with regrets and after deep and serious consideration of the potential consequences. With nothing but freedom, justice, and the American way in mind. We'd be treated to a full-on propaganda campaign, the likes of which we haven't yet seen, not even for Hussein's purported WMDs. Because, without all the kabuki, it would look like the foregone result of an uncaring party being crammed down the throats of a powerless populace.
And that in fact is the function of the 'democratic party'. To bring us on-board with things that hurt us but benefit business and internationalists - people like the Podestas, for example. People with agendas who view us as less than pawns.
*After they stopped Trump from normalizing relations with Russia (through an unrelenting and Deep State/ media coordinated campaign that included daily anonymous leaks and unevidenced claims) everything else was a bonus. And if Trump was doing something significantly challenging to the Deep State at the moment, he'd either not be alive, or not in power.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:Signym, you started with the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans. I don't believe that is true. Politics is entertainment for the masses and Democrats are the equivalent of documentary makers, while Republicans make the equivalent of Hollywood's summer movies. Note that even the very best documentary Oscar-winners get far less attention than the crappiest comic book movie.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, I'd be the last person to say that Republicans enforce better business practices, but then - neither do Dems. All you have to do is look at the results: That xfer of wealth from the poor to the rich, which began under Reagan? It continued unabated whether the President had a "D" or an "R" after his name; and Bush's business policies continued without a hiccup under Obama. And like I said, if you don't believe me, just look at the results.
There is SO MUCH systemically wrong with our entire business system, starting with fractional reserve banking, any President who attempted to reverse course on anything fundamental would be assassinated in short order. Again, not dependent on whether there was a "D" or an "R" after their name.
But if you want some ideas on how to REALLY reform the system:
Get rid of fractional reserve lending.
Revise incorporation laws to require ethical standards in their business practices; Create a "death penalty" - i.e. forced disbandment - for corporations which fail to meet their ethical standards, in addition to punishing individual decision-makers.
Either do away with the stock market entirely, or ban stock trades that take place in less than six months after purchase.
I don't even know WHAT to do with hedge funds and derivatives!
Reverse Citizen's United.
Redefine anti-trust action as not just applying to "monopolistic practices" but also to corporations over a certain size.
Revise corporate tax law to make it similar to individual income tax law; institute a Value Added Tax to be applied at the point of manufacture or assembly; eliminate most of the specialized deductions, exemptions, depreciations, and expenses which benefit mostly large corporations.
Re-institute a "border tax" to promote domestic manufacturing.
Nationalize certain important and infrastructural businesses, like health care insurance, electrical distribution, and energy extraction. Create a REAL national bank, not just a private bank which lends to the US government. Foster the creation of state and local banks.
That's just for starters.
www.imdb.com/list/ls000528998/
Signym's reforms all revolve around money. The cheaters can make money very fast, sometimes within seconds, but when they are caught cheating, their money can't be taken away quickly. It's months, years, but most of the time, never does the money get returned that the cheater stole. You need to devise a system with less friction when returning stolen wealth. Since Firefly is science fiction, can America do away with money completely to make that happen? I think it could be done, but the cheaters would fight that change even harder than they fight to hold on to money they steal under the present system, the one they have been building all their lives.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Well, then you're religious about your politics because (for you) it's a matter of belief and not fact.
Signym, you started with the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans. I don't believe that is true.
Quote:Wrong. BOTH Dems and Repubs engage together in creating a Punch-and-Judy show for the masses. But while they're performing .... whatever it is that they're performing ... the oligarchs (the REAL persons in power) get to decide where manufacturing goes, what our tax rates will be, what monetary policy the central banks will follow and whether "austerity" will be visited on the populace, how much our pockets will be picked by TPTB, and where we will go to war. The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.
Politics is entertainment for the masses and Democrats are the equivalent of documentary makers, while Republicans make the equivalent of Hollywood's summer movies.
Quote:Because the original article was about PROFIT. You want ideas on reforming our political process? I've got ideas for that, too.
Signym's reforms all revolve around money.
Quote:There are already agreements between various nations that do away with money. But, in answer: No, you CAN'T just do away with money. The only way to "do away" with money is to create a totally electronic ledger, but that is subject to natural disaster- just look at Puerto Rico. Cryptocurrency, if that's what you're aiming at, suffers from all of the same deficiencies as fiat currency, including the problem of being hoarded.
You need to devise a system with less friction when returning stolen wealth. Since Firefly is science fiction, can America do away with money completely to make that happen? I think it could be done, but the cheaters would fight that change even harder than they fight to hold on to money they steal under the present system, the one they have been building all their lives.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:Ha Ha! Nice rant, but the truth is that the system doesn't work well for the lower 50%, or is it the lower 80%? lower 99%? because Americans do the same stupid things, keep falling into the same century-old traps set for them at work, at banks, at every big business, by the 1%. They never learn precisely how to avoid the traps. Then to make sure that the traps are never removed, Americans keep returning the same incumbent politicians to office, politicians who ARE the 1%. See the article "The incredibly boring reason Trump is on track to win in 2020: The incumbent usually wins"
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wrong. BOTH Dems and Repubs . . .
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/9/16447546/trump-2020
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The flaws a Nobel Prize-winning economist wants you to know about yourself (You're not the 1% because you overindulge in these flaws)
Sorry to say it, but you’re not perfect. Democrats know this; Republicans not so much. We like to believe that we are smart, rational creatures, acting in our best interests. In fact, dominant economic theory these days often makes that assumption.
What was left of this illusion was further dismantled by the The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, who awarded the Nobel prize in economics to Richard Thaler, an American economist at the University of Chicago, for his pioneering work in behavioral economics, which examines humanity’s flaws—namely, why we don’t make rational economic decisions.
Here are some of the main ways behavioral economists like Thaler say we let ourselves down. More at https://qz.com/1098078 Republicans are not allowed to read that article. Democrats are welcome.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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old info and not relevant, nobody's thought of people as rational deciders for over a decade
And once again you posted something that failed to address the actual ideas of the person you're pretending to have a discussion with.
Which is what makes you completely useless as a factor in changing anyone's mind --- except of course to make them think less, and less, and less of you, as time goes on. You're certainly changing people's minds about you.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
old info and not relevant, nobody's thought of people as rational deciders for over a decade
And once again you posted something that failed to address the actual ideas of the person you're pretending to have a discussion with.
Which is what makes you completely useless as a factor in changing anyone's mind --- except of course to make them think less, and less, and less of you, as time goes on. You're certainly changing people's minds about you.
KIKI gets the Nobel Prize for the funniest post!
SECOND, if YOU think that I take the atomistic, rational (indeed prescient) actor of standard economic theory at all seriously, then your head is up your ass. MOST economic theory today is sheer bunk, which is ... wait, hold the presses! .... exactly what that article about "algorithmic" flaws said! Don't you understand or even read your own posts?? There is a serious problem with the underpinnings of today's economic theory, about how an economy works and what makes an economy run well. I have three books on the ten (in total) wrong assumptions underpinning today's economic theory, and the "rational actor" assumption is only one of them.
I only posted the list of ideas on how to FIX THE ALGORITHM to demonstrate that
.... if you really think that the problem is "Republicans", or "Trump", or even "people" then you're thinking too small.
Way too small.
Way waaaay too small.
Ditch your psychology degree and look into the world of physics and programming, because what you're dealing with is a non-human system, even tho humans are in it.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:A bit of precedent already.
Originally posted by 6stringJoker:
Hillary would never have run as VP. Way too big of an ego.
She technically did win the popular vote. I think a lot of people who voted for Trump were simply voting against the Clinton family and the status quo.
I think say, a female version of Bernie Sanders would have won by a landslide against Trump.
I don't think it had much to do with a fact she was a woman in the end. Sure, there are some people who were voting against that, but they generally speaking would have been voting against any democrat these days for a lot of other reasons anyhow.
You guys (and gals) just put the wrong woman up. She's just a shitty person all around. If you put another woman up next time, I suggest that it be somebody people actually like. Don't want to make a streak of females losing in that race and set a precedent of it.
Ferraro as VP. Lost
Palin as VP. Lost
Clinton as POTUS. Lost.
Of course ultra-liberals Mondale and McCain really lost the top of the tickets.
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Quote:The Republican Party swears on a stack of Bibles that the Market place is rational. When the GOP voters see that blacks and browns have lower networth they take it as proof of white superiority. The market awarded white virtue, at least according to Republicans I know in Texas.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
KIKI gets the Nobel Prize for the funniest post!
SECOND, if YOU think that I take the atomistic, rational (indeed prescient) actor of standard economic theory at all seriously, then your head is up your ass. MOST economic theory today is sheer bunk, which is ... wait, hold the presses! .... exactly what that article about "algorithmic" flaws said! Don't you understand or even read your own posts?? There is a serious problem with the underpinnings of today's economic theory, about how an economy works and what makes an economy run well. I have three books on the ten (in total) wrong assumptions underpinning today's economic theory, and the "rational actor" assumption is only one of them.
www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/10/05/heres-why-the-wealth-ga
p-is-widening-between-white-families-and-everyone-else/
On the other hand, if a white GOP voter is poor, he takes it as proof that the market is being manipulated by Democrats to make him poor. See for just one example Trump's references to The War On Coal. West Virginia really ate up Trump's nonsense that coalminers lost jobs because of Democrats. They actually lost jobs because natural gas is cheaper than coal. There is your Market place doing its job. If only natural gas was imported from China, the GOP could have blamed low import tariffs and the Chinese, but gas comes from Texas, which is GOP country, so the GOP came up with a plausible, yet false, story about Democrats.
GOP voters think that their economic success is all of their own doing. On the other hand, the 1%, most of whom are in the GOP at the very top, know that the vast majority of Americans are easily fooled out of their money. You can get a Nobel Prize in economics, or get rich in business, based on that knowledge. Will the fools ever learn to stop being fooled? Business certainly hopes not since the rich would be stopped from getting ever richer at an ever faster pace.
https://angrybearblog.com/2017/10/right-wing-propaganda-tank-ipi-likes
-the-trump-tax-cuts-for-the-rich-framework.html
A Republican reading the following would declare it FAKE NEWS. Sorry, Republicans, it is not fake.
Radically incorrect economic ideas flourish when they serve the powerful.
https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2017/10/08/the-schlock-of-the-new/
When the 2008 financial crisis struck, there were many calls for new economic ideas – even an Institute for New Economic Thinking. The implicit story, pretty much taken for granted as true, was that the crisis proved the inadequacy of economic orthodoxy and the need for fundamental new concepts. Pretty obviously, too, supporters of calls for new thinking had a sort of Hollywood script version of how it would play out: daring innovators would propose radical ideas, would face resistance from old fuddy-duddies, but would eventually win out through their superior ability to predict events.
What actually happened was very different. Panics and bank runs are an old topic, discussed in every economic principles book. The reason few economists saw the 2008 panic and bank run coming was an empirical failure – few realized that the rise of "shadow banking" had done an end run around Depression-era bank safeguards and, thus, avoided the business expense of deposit insurance, made more profit, but also made the banking system more prone to crashes. Yes, it has been referred to "shadow banking" for a reason. Just because few took into account the potential impact of a new phenomenon that was largely working in the shadows, does not mean that the economic orthodoxy was wrong.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_banking_system
The point was that only the dimmest of free-market i
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
And once again you posted something that failed to address the actual ideas of the person you're pretending to have a discussion with.
Which is what makes you completely useless as a factor in changing anyone's mind --- except of course to make them think less, and less, and less of you, as time goes on. You're certainly changing people's minds about you.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
There is no discussion because I think you are inauthentic. Remember the accusations that 1kiki and Signym are Russian trolls? That is one of the nicest theory about what you really are: you're making a living, you're serving Mother Russia, you're writing well. If you are a Russian troll, congratulations. You've done fine work for the Empire. There are other theories that are less complementary. Do you remember ending your posts with "Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda"? In only two sentences, you communicated that you're either a troll or a nut. But you still have more sentences to go in your signature that are nuttier and more trollish. Even if you change your signature, you won't be changed, whoever and whatever you really are.
Now this is what a signature should look like. It proves itself to be authentic when you click the link, then click a second link to get the script, then read the script to discover how Wash manages to live:
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I guess you could decide that the script is not authentic, that Joss didn't write what he wrote, because that version wasn't made into a movie. That would be very in line with how 1kiki's mind works -- misunderstand and disbelieve everything inconvenient to your world.
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Quote:
The Republican Party swears on a stack of Bibles that the Market place is rational. When the GOP voters see that blah blah blah and blah blah blah ... - SECOND
Now you're sounding like WISHY: "All men are violent". Despite the rather interesting article that you posted about bad algorithms, none of that actually absorbed, did it? For a moment, it seemed like you caught a glimmer of a larger world, but then went back to pounding your provincial, partisan belief system.
Quote:If you're not interesting in having a discussion, why the hell would anyone want to converse with you? All YOU'RE doing is pushing your religion. You're boring as shit, did you know that?
And once again you posted something that failed to address the actual ideas of the person you're pretending to have a discussion with.
Which is what makes you completely useless as a factor in changing anyone's mind --- except of course to make them think less, and less, and less of you, as time goes on. You're certainly changing people's minds about you. - KIKI
There is no discussion because I think you are inauthentic.- SECOND
Quote:Oh, hon, you wouldn't believe the theories that we have about you. One of the nicest ones is that you're pro-illegal immigration because you hate America and you hate Americans - especially white American males - because you're really loyal to Mexico. You just want to see this country go down in flames.
Remember the accusations that 1kiki and Signym are Russian trolls? That is one of the nicest theory about what you really are:- SECOND
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:I'll give you facts so you can create a theory about me: I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. www.jw.org
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
If you're not interesting in having a discussion, why the hell would anyone want to converse with you? All YOU'RE doing is pushing your religion. You're boring as shit, did you know that?Quote:Oh, hon, you wouldn't believe the theories that we have about you. One of the nicest ones is that you're pro-illegal immigration because you hate America and you hate Americans, you're really loyal to Mexico.
Remember the accusations that 1kiki and Signym are Russian trolls? That is one of the nicest theory about what you really are:- SECOND
One teaching of the Witnesses is to strictly avoid politics. Others are: Don't vote. Don't join political parties. Don't join the military. Oops! I have fallen away, to the regret of my mother and sisters. But they still hope!
One of the beliefs of Witnesses that have stayed with me is that The Righteous are in the minority and the wicked are all around. They need to be saved, but they will have to come to The Truth of their own volition. I took that as Democrats are the Righteous and Republicans, since they are the Antonin Scalias of the world, are the wicked. Scalia is dead, choked to death on a chicken bone, the greedy fat bastard.
As a child I liked the illustrations where they showed the wicked, who looked like ordinary Republicans, being completely surprised when Armageddon destroys them. The look on their faces was "Aren't we the righteous ones? Why is fire and brimstone falling on us?" The Witnesses also believed they would be persecuted for their beliefs. Unsurprising to me, it is the Russians living down to my expectations:
www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2017/0501/Jehovah-s-Witnesses-as-extrem
ists-Court-sharpens-edges-of-Russia-s-religious-space
And the Republicans, unsurprisingly, are really into persecuting minorities. Perhaps I need to add that Democrats aren't?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
If you're not interesting in having a discussion, why the hell would anyone want to converse with you? All YOU'RE doing is pushing your religion. You're boring as shit, did you know that? - SIGNY
So, no answer to the question as to why anyone would even want to talk to you because you're not interested in having a discussion, you just want to push your political religion?
Quote:Uh huh. So you say.
Remember the accusations that 1kiki and Signym are Russian trolls? That is one of the nicest theory about what you really are:- SECOND
Oh, hon, you wouldn't believe the theories that we have about you. One of the nicest ones is that you're pro-illegal immigration because you hate America and you hate Americans, you're really loyal to Mexico. - SIGNY
I'll give you facts so you can create a theory about me: I was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. www.jw.org - blah blah blah- SECOND
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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The Daily Beast reported that Russia recruited YouTubers to "bash" Hillary Clinton, highlighting a pro-Donald Trump YouTube channel that it says was backed by the Russian government and was previously banned from Facebook and YouTube.
We all know who posted all those lies here. We also know who was stupid enough to believe it all.
Google did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
Facebook found roughly 3,000 ads adverts linked to Russia — but it has refused to publicly release them despite calls from congressional investigators. It cited the investigation led by the special counsel Robert Mueller as hindering it from releasing the ads, Business Insider previously reported.
https://www.bing.com/news/search?q=Election+2016&bu=http%3a%2f%2fw
ww.businessinsider.com%2frussian-linked-accounts-google-accounts-2016-election-report-2017-10&FORM=HPPANW
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NYT editor was caught on hidden camera targeting the President of the USA, and denying any sort of objectivity.
Quote:So much for the objectivity and sanctity of the "free" (corporate) press!
While talking about being objective at the Times, Dudich replies candidly, "No I'm not, that's why I'm here."
Dudich considers himself an important player at the New York Times, telling the Project Veritas Journalist "my voice is on... my imprint is on every video we do."
Dudich goes on to explain what he might do to target President Trump:
"I'd target his businesses, his dumb fuck of a son, Donald Jr., and Eric...
"Target that. Get people to boycott going to his hotels. Boycott... So a lot of the Trump brands, if you can ruin the Trump brand and you put pressure on his business and you start investigating his business and you start shutting it down, or they're hacking or other things. He cares about his business more than he cares about being President. He would resign. Or he'd lash out and do something incredibly illegal, which he would have to."
When the undercover journalist asks Dudich if he could make sure that the anti-Trump stories make it to the front, he replied, "Oh, we always do."
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-10-10/okeefe-takes-aim-nyt-records-
editor-admitting-targeting-trumps-buinesses-his-dumb-fk
I'll post this in a thread where it really belongs, but just put this here to counter THUGR'S off-topic post.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:That is a very odd formulation, Signym. It's like you're a Jehovah's Witness, going from door to door, and when the people at home refuse to answer your knocks, you knock harder, even more insistently, demanding to know why they won't talk to you as you shout at them through the windows about Hillary being Satan and Trump saving the world from that devil woman.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, no answer to the question as to why anyone would even want to talk to you because you're not interested in having a discussion, you just want to push your political religion?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trolling AGAIN SECOND-RATE?
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
There is no discussion because I refuse to discuss anything because I'm a troll and RUSSIA! and blah blah blah
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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So, to get back to what's wrong with the ironically-named 'democratic' party.
For a start, SECOND is what's wrong with the party. SECOND and its wealthy ilk who don't like republicans but really don't want to change the way things are: where the rich get richer and more powerful by the day, and everyone else gets screwed.
'Third-way' politicians like the Clintons are what's wrong with the party. These deeply cynical people have no interest in the rest of us.
SGG and people like him are what's wrong with the party. Those are people who are permanently wedded to the party's identity politics because it gives them 'special victim' status. They'd rather go home with the plastic consolation prize, instead of finding common cause to change the system - or seeking true fairness and justice for all.
Do-gooder organizations like the Sierra Club are what's wrong with the party. They are so deeply entrenched that they, too, refuse to give up their little, meaningless piece of turf, to join forces to move the system.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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I jenerally agree with you. Exept for the attack on 2nd and SGG.
If you 2 can state your pozition on hiz complaints, we can all hav a good laff at hiz unfair karakterization.
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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"Exept for the attack on 2nd and SGG."
They attack me so frequently, I'm surprised you don't object to that.
"state your pozition on hiz complaints"
Whose complaints?
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:You're actually not struggling against a few thousand people in the hierarchy of the Democratic and Republican parties who will not accept your superior ideas. You're struggling against the mental inertia of 120,000,000 voters that don't want anything to change. They only want complete change for the better exclusively for one voter, themselves, their relatives, and friends. They don't care about anyone outside that tiny circle that only has a few hundred people inside it. Good luck with your struggle, 1kiki, but it takes more to change society than convincing party leadership to change their ways.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, to get back to what's wrong with the ironically-named 'democratic' party.
For a start, SECOND is what's wrong with the party. SECOND and its wealthy ilk who don't like republicans but really don't want to change the way things are: where the rich get richer and more powerful by the day, and everyone else gets screwed.
'Third-way' politicians like the Clintons are what's wrong with the party. These deeply cynical people have no interest in the rest of us.
SGG and people like him are what's wrong with the party. Those are people who are permanently wedded to the party's identity politics because it gives them 'special victim' status. They'd rather go home with the plastic consolation prize, instead of finding common cause to change the system - or seeking true fairness and justice for all.
Do-gooder organizations like the Sierra Club are what's wrong with the party. They are so deeply entrenched that they, too, refuse to give up their little, meaningless piece of turf, to join forces to move the system.
www.cracked.com/article_14990_what-monkeysphere.html
Monkey experts performed a monkey study a while back, and discovered that the size of the monkey's monkey brain determined the size of the monkey groups the monkeys formed. The bigger the brain, the bigger the little societies they built.
They cut up so many monkey brains, in fact, that they found they could actually take a brain they had never seen before and from it they could accurately predict what size tribes that species of creature formed.
Most monkeys operate in troupes of 50 or so. But somebody slipped them a slightly larger brain and they estimated the ideal group or society for this particular animal was about 150.
That brain, of course, was human. Probably from a homeless man they snatched off the streets. "So that's the big news? That humans are God's big-budget sequel to the monkey? Who didn't know that?"
It goes much, much deeper than that.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:I don't care what the party leadership does, SECOND.
You're actually not struggling against a few thousand people in the hierarchy of the Democratic and Republican parties who will not accept your superior ideas. ... it takes more to change society than convincing party leadership to change their ways.
BTW 61,943,670 voted for Trump. Republicans COULD have voted for more of the same in the primaries. But they didn't. Americans COULD have voted for more of the same in the general election. But 61,943,670 didn't.
A lot of people are seeking change.
I think what people of both parties fear, more than anything else, is a rogue candidate getting elected - which is what happened.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:Obviously, 1kiki, it takes more to change society than convincing party leadership to change their ways. It has taken a Revolutionary War, Civil War, WWII, or Vietnam War. All those wars only took a few people high in the political hierarchy to get a war rolling. You should hope for a war and then, maybe, your ideas might have a chance, but I strongly doubt it will work out well for those ideas. I just realized Trump can provide the war. So much better to have him in charge than Hillary. She might want to negotiate before bombing North Korea. Her cautious ways would slow down change in America
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I don't care what the party leadership does, SECOND.
BTW 61,943,670 voted for Trump. Republicans COULD have voted for more of the same in the primaries. But they didn't. Americans COULD have voted for more of the same in the general election. But 61,943,670 didn't.
A lot of people are seeking change.
I think what people of both parties fear, more than anything else, is a rogue candidate getting elected - which is what happened.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:New parties arise. Old parties disappear.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
I don't care what the party leadership does, SECOND.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:You'll tolerate unfair attacks on me and KIKI all day long, but when I do to SECOND EXACTLY what it does to me, you think I should explain myself?
Originally posted by JO753:
I jenerally agree with you. Exept for the attack on 2nd and SGG.
If you 2 can state your pozition on hiz complaints, we can all hav a good laff at hiz unfair karakterization.
Quote:No, that doesn't seem right to me. So, why should I explain myself to you?
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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HERE IS SECOND'S REPUDIATION OF DEMOCRACY. BECAUSE "PEOPLE".
Quote:
Most monkeys operate in troupes of 50 or so. But somebody slipped them a slightly larger brain and they estimated the ideal group or society for this particular animal was about 150.
That brain, of course, was human. Probably from a homeless man they snatched off the streets. "So that's the big news? That humans are God's big-budget sequel to the monkey? Who didn't know that?"
It goes much, much deeper than that.
You see? I said you hated the USA and here you are: hating the USA, hating democracy, and especially hating Americans.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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So, to get back to what's wrong with the ironically-named 'democratic' party.
For a start, SECOND is what's wrong with the party. SECOND and its wealthy ilk who don't like republicans but really don't want to change the way things are: where the rich get richer and more powerful by the day, and everyone else gets screwed.
'Third-way' politicians like the Clintons are what's wrong with the party. These deeply cynical people have no interest in the rest of us.
SGG and people like him are what's wrong with the party. Those are people who are permanently wedded to the party's identity politics because it gives them 'special victim' status. They'd rather go home with the plastic consolation prize, instead of finding common cause to change the system - or instead of seeking true fairness and justice for all.
Do-gooder organizations like the Sierra Club are what's wrong with the party. They are so deeply entrenched that they, too, refuse to give up their little, meaningless piece of turf, to join forces to move the system.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Perhaps to put this in context -
I'm under no illusion that I'm telling anyone what to do, let alone directing my opinions to the democratic party leadership as SECOND seems to think. And I'm also not deeply interested in changing the party. My loyalties aren't to the party, but to ideals. And ultimately, the party will either pass or fail the test of history.
But as a decades-long registered democrat, I have opinions on the direction of the party.
Over the very, VERY long term, the party has lost - lost membership, and lost support - from the composite voting base. It seems to have lost its way. And at this point, the party is in dire straits in terms of counties, state legislatures, governorships, the House, the Senate - and - the last bastion of political relevancy, the Presidency.
OBVIOUSLY it's doing something wrong. To think otherwise is to be deeply rooted in fantasy.
In the past it relied on select groups for loyal support, especially unions. Need I point out that unions are no longer the force they once were? (And if the Supreme Court rules aversely, the last bastion of unions will be decimated.)
Recently it's tried to cobble together support by fostering and aligning itself with various victim groups.
Don't get me wrong. People are being discriminated against. Most recently, State Street Corp - the firm that brought us 'Fearless Girl' - paid a $5 million fine for underpaying women and minorities. "The feds concluded that since “at least December 1, 2010,” State Street discriminated against women in senior-level roles including vice president, senior vice president, and managing director positions by paying them lower base salaries, bonuses and total compensation than men in “similarly situated” positions. The government office also found that they did the same thing to 15 black employees at the vice president level."
That said, catering to identity politics is not, in my opinion, a way to garner broad-based support.
I've already posted my ideas that I think are workable.
But surely other people have their own observations, opinions, and ideas.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:But identity politics works for Trump. Trump congratulated mostly non-American NHL team on being “incredible patriots”.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
That said, catering to identity politics is not, in my opinion, a way to garner broad-based support.
Calling an all-white assembly of mostly foreign hockey players patriots, in clear contrast to the group of African-American athletes that the president has blasted, suggests the real issue here isn’t love for America. It’s how well the athletes fit in to Trump’s and the GOP's vision of America — one in which black athletes shut up about racism and perform the sort of patriotic spectacle that Trump likes.
Trump’s approach to politics is often labeled nationalism. That’s right, to a degree, but imprecise. Trump’s actual view appears much closer to ethnonationalism; certain groups of people qualify as “true” Americans, while others who don’t fit the mold aren’t entitled to the same rights and level of concern. See Puerto Ricans for a recent example. They didn't get the concern of Texas or Florida.
Ultimately, some people matter more than others — which is how white foreigners are “incredible patriots” while black Americans asking to be treated equally get labeled “sons of bitches.” That attitude has propelled the GOP to the very top. Maybe the Democrats could learn the lesson and stage a comeback from second place?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Trump wants Americans to be great again:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You see? I said you hated the USA and here you are: hating the USA, hating democracy, and especially hating Americans.
Trump said he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal during a gathering this past summer of the nation’s highest ranking national security leaders, according to three officials who were in the room.
Trump’s comments, the officials said, came in response to a briefing slide he was shown that charted the steady reduction of U.S. nuclear weapons since the late 1960s. Trump indicated he wanted a bigger stockpile, not the bottom position on that downward-sloping curve.
It was soon after the meeting broke up that officials who remained behind heard Tillerson say that Trump is a “moron.”
Any increase in America’s nuclear arsenal would violate international disarmament treaties signed by every president since Ronald Reagan. Nonproliferation experts warned that such a move could set off a global arms race.
“If he were to increase the numbers, the Russians would match him, and the Chinese” would ramp up their nuclear ambitions, Joe Cirincione, a nuclear expert and MSNBC contributor, said, referring to the president.
“There hasn’t been a military mission that’s required a nuclear weapon in 71 years,” Cirincione said.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-wanted-tenfold-increase-in-nucle
ar-arsenal-surprising-military/ar-AAthYSc?li=AA5a8k&ocid
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND, remember that interesting quote that you posted about algorithms and systems? Here it is, just to refresh your memory. In that quote, did you see ANYthing about Republicans, Trump, or Democrats?
Quote:Hmmm... nothing about Trump yet.
I remember a conversation I had with Walt Mossberg in which he recounted a conversation he had with Steve Ballmer who, at the times, was the CEO of Microsoft. He told me he’d said, "Steve, if you guys would be 5 percent less greedy, the world would like you 100 percent more." I'm now watching that dynamic play out again with Google where, despite their "don't be evil" philosophy, they're becoming the focus of antitrust investigations.
I look at these patterns in platforms in which they start out with a burst of optimism and creation of public value, then gradually they start turning away from that. I'm trying to understand why that is.
Quote:Nothing about Republicans ...
It seems to me that the same pattern we've seen with technology platforms is playing out today in our broader economy, where financial markets in particular have turned into an extractive monopoly rather than a support system for our economy. Something like 85 percent of all corporate "investment" today goes to dividends and share buybacks. Very little goes to actual investment in people, building things, and R&D. It's all going into financial gamesmanship.
Looking at the pattern of algorithmic systems like Google and Facebook, I started thinking about how that applies to financial markets. A system like Google has hundreds of factors that are being taken into account, but they all have a master objective function, a fitness function, which is relevance in search results and ads.
Facebook's fitness function, their objective function, is to produce content that's engaging. We saw how that went wrong with fake news. Mark and the Facebook team are trying to deal with that. They're wrestling with the fact that they had this idea about how to build an engaging product, and it's been subverted.
Quote:
I look at our economic system where inequality is increasing, and I ask myself: Is that also a system that's dominated by an algorithm? What are they trying to optimize for?
I started to realize that thirty or forty years ago was the point we told companies that there's only one thing to optimize for, and that is shareholder value. That's the point in the '70s where you see this great divergence between the increased productivity brought on by technology and the actual benefit to the economy, where you see inequality soar, where you see people not doing as well as their parents. I came around to thinking that in some ways financial markets are that rogue AI that people like Elon Musk have been talking about.
Nick Bostrom and Elon Musk and everybody use these artificial thought experiments, like the AI which follows its objective function of making paperclips. Musk used one recently about the strawberry-picking robot that decides humans are in the way of its picking strawberries. Those aren't realistic. What is realistic is a world in which you have an increasingly algorithmic financial system saying, "Hey, optimize for corporate profit because it drives stock price. Never mind what happens to the people. Never mind what happens to society." We're in that AI-driven situation.
What do we do about that? How do we debug the objective function of an increasingly automated economy, of an economy that's dominated by systems that are, to use a great quote from Wallace Stevens, "without human feeling, without human meaning, a foreign song"? We're living in a world which is dominated by a system that disregards human value. A great quote comes to mind from a guy named Andrew Singer. Many years ago he said to me, "The art of debugging a computer program is to figure out what you really told the computer to do i
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Quote:You really think there is no stupidity? I have yet to find any real person I know in the flesh who is both not a Democrat and also thinks Trump should not drag us into violent conflict with North Korea. I'm sorry to say I have found 1 Democrat that supports Trump's urge to drop fire and fury on N Korea. But it is only 1 and he is stupid.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
There is no reason or logic behind your intense and irrational focus on the "stupidity" of people, Republicans in general, Texas Republicans in particular, and Trump specifically.
What's driving YOU, my friend, is that . . .
Trump's bouts of rage are intensifying (and his adversary, Kim Jong-un, isn’t an island of calm either). Trump completely misunderstands the history of U.S.-North Korean relations, in a manner that moves him away from diplomacy toward war.
For instance, in the middle of the day on Saturday, Trump tweeted:
Presidents and their administrations have been talking to North Korea for 25 years, agreements made and massive amounts of money paid … hasn’t worked, agreements violated before the ink was dry, making fools of U.S. negotiators. Sorry, but only one thing will work!
Everything about this statement is wrong.
First, one of those agreements—President Clinton’s Agreed Framework of 1994—worked quite well, as far as it went, keeping nuclear weapons out of North Korea’s hands for eight years.
Second, that agreement collapsed in large part because we violated its terms.
Third, North Korea made its biggest advancements—successfully testing an atom bomb, a long-range ballistic missile, and possibly a hydrogen bomb—precisely in the years when U.S. presidents (first George W. Bush, then Trump) rejected diplomacy as a matter of principle.
Finally, if Trump thinks the “one thing” that “will work” to rid North Korea of its nukes is a military strike, it’s worth noting that it has never worked before—or, in any case, nobody has figured out how to make it work without sparking retaliation, which would kill hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of civilians in South Korea and possibly Japan.
Much more at
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/10/it_is_pos
sible_to_negotiate_with_north_korea_bill_clinton_did_it.html
I also saw at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/10/11/16454978/chris-murphy-trump
-north-korea-war
Ezra Klein said: "One dimension of this that worries me is that a lot of people seem to be relying on a sort of soft coup to keep Trump in check. The hope, as I’ve heard it expressed, is that the generals surrounding Trump will control his paper flow, control the information he gets, and if Trump goes off the reservation and does try to order an unwarranted first strike, they will do something to stop it or slow-walk it or otherwise intercede. All of this might be better than Trump unleashed, but it seems to me to subvert civilian control of the military in a worrisome way."
Senator Chris Murphy responded: "I’m not sure I entirely buy the severity of that premise, but let me reframe it: If this ended up in the military convincing the president out of military action, it would be a dramatic reversal of traditional roles. From the Cuban Missile Crisis to Vietnam to the Iraq War, it is usually the military trying to convince the president to view a problem through a kinetic lens. The military sees problems through their toolkit. They are not very good at seeing complicated diplomatic paths out of vexing problems. To assume military leaders will tell Donald Trump not to use the military to solve a problem belies the history."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND, you have ENDLESSLY splattered the board with your anti-Trump schiess, on everything from his pink hair to his orange skin to his small hands and nude portrait; blaming Trump for being rich, for cheating on his taxes, for getting peed on by a prostitute, for colluding with Russia, for "racism", for warmongering (also see Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter), and for the process of advancing wealth inequality, which (as I've pointed out) has been going on for centuries (including being aided and abetted by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) not just the past nine months.
You've posted so much anal-splatter on the board, about how bad Trump is, how bad Texas Republicans are, how "stupid" people are ... I can't even keep track of all the bullshit that you posted, most of which makes no sense at all.
Clearly, you're just obsessively and selectively looking for anything and everything that puts Trump in a bad light. If you should happen to hit on one or two real issues, that doesn't explain or excuse all the rest of the crap that you posted. You're still an elitist butt hurt globalist shill.
AND your allegiances are STILL elsewhere. It's like you can't even talk about "America" or "Americans", as if the very concept offends you.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Clearly, you are not interested in what Trump's North Korean strategy is. Remember his "Only one thing will work" in dealing with North Korea? What is Trump's "thing"? It will be a surprise!
www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-41540736
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you have ENDLESSLY splattered the board with your anti-Trump schiess, on everything from his pink hair to his orange skin to his small hands and nude portrait; blaming Trump for being rich, for cheating on his taxes, for getting peed on by a prostitute, for colluding with Russia, for "racism", for warmongering (also see Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Reagan, and Carter), and for the process of advancing wealth inequality, which (as I've pointed out) has been going on for centuries (including being aided and abetted by Bill Clinton and Barack Obama) not just the past nine months.
You've posted so much anal-splatter on the board, about how bad Trump is, how bad Texas Republicans are, how "stupid" people are ... I can't even keep track of all the bullshit that you posted, most of which makes no sense at all.
Clearly, you're just obsessively and selectively looking for anything and everything that puts Trump in a bad light. If you should happen to hit on one or two real issues, that doesn't explain or excuse all the rest of the crap that you posted. You're still an elitist butt hurt globalist shill.
AND your allegiances are STILL elsewhere. It's like you can't even talk about "America" or "Americans", as if the very concept offends you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Clearly, you are not interested in what Trump's North Korean strategy is. Remember his "Only one thing will work" in dealing with North Korea? What is Trump's "thing"? It will be a surprise! - SECOND
Who says I'm not interested? I'm just not interesting in discussing it with you, because all YOU'RE interested in is spreading your political religion. Which is, to repeat myself, forwarding a "globalist" agenda which puts everyone else's interests ahead of ours, and which diminishes the role of democracy in the USA by handing off our sovereignty to faceless international bankers, nameless commissions, and secret trade tribunals.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:You've been reading too much propaganda written in Russia for American consumption, comrade Signym. I would never question your loyalty or patriotism to Russia/America/I have no idea what country you logged in from, you big fake.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
. . . to repeat myself, forwarding a "globalist" agenda which puts everyone else's interests ahead of ours, and which diminishes the role of democracy in the USA by handing off our sovereignty to faceless international bankers, nameless commissions, and secret trade tribunals.
www.nytimes.com/2017/10/09/technology/russia-election-facebook-ads-rag
e.html
Trump has been reading too much Richard Nixon:
Trump Threatens NBC TV Licenses After Story on Nuclear Buildup
In 1972, President Richard Nixon urged his lieutenants to interfere with the renewal of the Washington Post’s licenses for Florida TV stations. “Of all the threats to the company during Watergate — the attempts to undermine our credibility, the petty slights, and the favoring of the competition — the most effective were the challenges to the licenses of our two Florida television stations,” publisher Katharine Graham wrote in 1997.
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-threatens-nbc-licenses-after-sto
ry-on-nuclear-buildup/ar-AAtiwA6
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:You big fucking hypocritical liar, you have OFTEN questioned my loyalty to America.
You've been reading too much propaganda written in Russia for American consumption, comrade Signym. I would never question your loyalty or patriotism to Russia/America/I have no idea what country you logged in from, you big fake.
THIS, from the person (along with a whole bunch of other phony patriots here) who can't even bring themselves to discuss America's interests, as if there shouldn't be any.
But you'll endlessly whine and cry about "the poor (fill in the blank with the victim subgroup of the moment here)"
What a fucking douche.
ETA: But if ANY of you phony-patriot lib-Dem globalists want to rectify that disgust with talking about America's Interests you can find that thread here. http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=60986
Maybe this time you'll add something besides personal insults, avoidance, and cowardice.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:You're losing your cool, comrade Signym. You're as thin-skinned as your heroic Trump. To argue your case, find a way to align your views with Trump's buttons, then push them unashamedly. Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, reportedly persuaded him to send more troops to Afghanistan in part by showing him a photo from the 1970s of women in Kabul wearing miniskirts. (See, he seemed to suggest, Afghans can be just like us.) Maybe Tillerson, McMaster, and Secretary of Defense James Mattis are figuring out other paint-by-numbers games for keeping Trump in their lane on other matters, too.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What a fucking douche.
www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/10/now_we_kn
ow_why_rex_tillerson_called_donald_trump_a_moron.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND, I'm not losing my cool. I'm simply describing you as I see you: You're a hypocritical liar and a phony patriot who can't even seem to imagine that "Americans" might actually have many things in common. Instead, you seem more intent on splitting people apart, looking down on an awful lot of people, denigrating democracy, and pandering to victim subgroups, your favorite of which is "the poor illegal immigrant".
Until you learn to DISCUSS things with people instead of constantly proselytizing with an endless stream of mostly bullshit, there's not much point in discussing much of anything with you.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
Trolling AGAIN SECOND-RATE?Quote:
Originally posted by second:
There is no discussion because I refuse to discuss anything because I'm a troll and RUSSIA! and blah blah blah
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
One tool of trolling is posting from zerohedge. All non trolls know that. All trolls do it regardless of the fact that the writers there hide their identities.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second: There is no discussion because I refuse to discuss anything because I'm a troll and RUSSIA! and blah blah blah ... - KIKI
One tool of trolling is posting from zerohedge. All non trolls know that. All trolls do it regardless of the fact that the writers there hide their identities. - THUGR
Oh goody, another phony patriot know-nothing.. Zerohedge is more of an aggregator, not many posts are actually authored by "Tyler Durden". And since Zerohedge posts LINKS to where they get their stories it's incredibly easy to use the links to follow the info back to its source.
You DO know how to use links, right?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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How Amazon’s Accounting Makes Rich People’s Income Invisible
https://angrybearblog.com/2017/10/how-amazons-accounting-makes-rich-pe
oples-income-invisible.html
Image you’re Jeff Bezos, circa 1998. You’re building a company (Amazon) that stands to make you and your compatriots vastly rich.
But looking forward, you see a problem: if your company makes profits, it will have to pay taxes on them. (At least nominally, in theory, 35%!) Then you and your investors will have to pay taxes on them again when they’re distributed to you as dividends. (Though yes, at a far lower 20% rate than what high earners pay on earned income.) Add those two up over many years, and you’re talking tens, hundreds of billions of dollars in taxes.
You’re a very smart guy. How are you going to avoid that?
Simple: don’t show any profits (or, hence, distribute them as dividends). Consistently set prices so you constantly break even. This has at least three effects:
1. You undercut all your competitors’ prices, driving them out of business. Nobody who’s trying to make a profit can possibly compete.
2. You control more and more market share.
3. You build a bigger and bigger business.
Number 3 is how you monetize this, personally. The value of the company (its share price/market cap) rises steadily. Obviously, a business with $136 billion in revenues (2016) is going to be worth more than one with $10 or $50 billion in revenues — even if it never shows a “profit.” You take your profits in capital gains.
Because stock-market investors are always going to be thinking: “They could always turn the dial from market share to profits. Just raise prices a skootch, and reap the harvest. In spades.”
But: they never do. It’s like a perpetual-motion machine, or holding yourself up by your own bootstraps. All that rising valuation is eternally based on the fact that they could raise prices and deliver profit (and yes: they could). In the meantime the business both generates and has massive value. It employs 270,ooo people, delivers zillions in employee compensation, pays zillions more to suppliers, receives hundreds of billions in revenues, and dominates whole segments of multiple industries. Are there really no “profits”? Nobody’s being irrational here.
Here are the results of your long-term plan:
Half a trillion dollars in revenues.
Essentially zero profits. Ever.
Dollars delivered onto investors’ balance sheets? Somewhere north of 300 billion.
And instead of being double-taxed on profits for all that time, investors’ income is taxed once, at the low 20% capital gains rate. And that, only when those gains are “realized” through sale of the stock. In the meantime it’s all tax-deferred — yet another huge effective-tax-rate win for shareholders. The longer they hold, the bigger the win. If they pass the stock on to their heirs, those gains are never taxed at all.
And just to mention in passing, none of that shareholder income ever appears as household income in the national accounts. It might as well not exist.
You gotta be impressed. That Jeff Bezos is a very smart guy.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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THANKS! for not discussing the topic! Again.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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What is wrong with the dems -
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433&p=1
Democrats, you can’t vote for Hillary: The case for writing in Bernie Sanders If Hillary Clinton is the nominee
We need structural change: Clinton as president would merge GOPers and Dems into one party on war & foreign policy
H. A. Goodman
Hillary Clinton doesn’t get it: Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders and the truth about the free trade scam
Trade has been a disaster for Democratic voters, but a boon for Democratic politicians -- especially the Clintons
Making her first extensive comments about the crisis in Ukraine, Clinton said at a private fundraiser in California that Putin's campaign to provide Russian passports to those with Russian connections living outside his country's borders is reminiscent of Hitler's protection of ethnic Germans outside Germany, according to a report published overnight.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433&p=2
ETA: This would be the time for Hillary to make some significant policy concessions, if not for the sake of the party, then for the sake of her political career. I predict she won't. And I think the reasons will have to do with some combination of her arrogance and the fact she's deeply beholden to powerful interests that she can't cross. Not if she wants to keep the dollars rolling in at least.
Polling suggests the party is becoming less unified, not more. In March, 78% of Democratic primary voters said they would be satisfied if Mrs. Clinton were the nominee. In April, that fell to 73%, according to Wall Street Journal/NBC News polling. Asked if they could see themselves supporting Mrs. Clinton for president, just 58% of Sanders primary voters said yes, with 40% saying no, according to the April poll.
It's not just Wall Street banks. Most companies and groups that paid Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to speak between 2013 and 2015 have lobbied federal agencies in recent years, and more than one-third are government contractors, an Associated Press review has found. Their interests are sprawling and would follow Clinton to the White House should she win election this fall.
Hillary Clinton is lying about the criminal U.S.-backed coup in Honduras. It should be as scandalous as Libya
The U.S., under Clinton's leadership, helped overthrow Honduras' elected government. Today the country is in chaos
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433&p=4
Hillary, Debbie and Roberta
Hillary Clinton Targets Republicans Turned Off by Donald Trump
It's interesting - despite being for Hillary, second hasn't posted here at all, and sgg's only posted one post which didn't say anything about her.
It's almost like they're afraid to discuss their candidate.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=60433&p=5
Hillary’s holiday plans: FBI will reportedly interrogate Clinton over long weekend
Clinton’s pledge to forgive student debt of entrepreneurs, not average workers, will benefit the elite
Clinton wrong on student debt: Her new plan shows she learned nothing from the primary
I'll post more later. But what's wrong with Hillary is what's wrong with the party.
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:Donald Trump and the Rage of Republican Voters
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, I'm not losing my cool. I'm simply describing you as I see you: You're a hypocritical liar and a phony patriot who can't even seem to imagine that "Americans" might actually have many things in common. Instead, you seem more intent on splitting people apart, looking down on an awful lot of people, denigrating democracy, and pandering to victim subgroups, your favorite of which is "the poor illegal immigrant".
Until you learn to DISCUSS things with people instead of constantly proselytizing with an endless stream of mostly bullshit, there's not much point in discussing much of anything with you.
www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2017/10/donald-trump-and-the-rage-of-ru
ral-voters/
David French is a conservative lawyer who writes for National Review. Last year he wrote scathingly about both Donald Trump and the alt-right and was rewarded with a barrage of abuse, much of the worst of it aimed at his wife and children. Yesterday he wrote not about the alt-right, but about ordinary rural conservatives who support Trump:
Quote:Where does this end? Does this rural rage become a permanent part of American life? Or does something happen to finally let the air out of it?
Trump is stoking a particularly destructive form of rage — and his followers don’t just allow themselves to be stoked, they attack Trump’s targets with glee. Contrary to the stereotype of journalists who live in the Beltway and spend their nights at those allegedly omnipresent “cocktail parties,” I live in rural Tennessee, deep in the heart of Trump country. My travels mainly take me to other parts of Trump country, where I engage with Trump voters all the time. If I live in a bubble, it’s the Trump bubble. I know it intimately.
And I have never in my adult life seen such anger. There is a near-universal hatred of the media. There is a near-universal hatred of the so-called “elite.” If a person finds out that I didn’t support Trump, I’ll often watch their face transform into a mask of rage. Partisans are so primed to fight — and they so clearly define whom they’re fighting against — that they often don’t care whom or what they’re fighting for….Don’t like the media? Shut it down. Don’t like kneeling football players? Make them stand. Tired of American weakness overseas? Cheer incoherent and reckless tweets as evidence of “strength.”
The two big explanations for the rise of this rural anger (and the rise of Trump) revolve around economics and race. The modern economy has screwed these folks over and they’re tired of it. Or: they’re badly threatened by the growth of the nonwhite population. Which is it? Almost certainly both, and in any case it doesn’t matter much: both of these things are likely to get worse from their point of view. The nonwhite population share is obviously going to keep growing, and the economy of the future is only going to become ever more tilted toward the highly educated. If working-class whites really are enraged by either or both of these things, they’re only going to get more enraged as time goes by.
That’s especially true if they keep voting for Republicans, who will actively make these things worse while skillfully laying off the blame on “elites” and “Hollywood liberals.” Keeping the rage machine going is their ticket to political power.
How do we prick this bubble? Obama tried to give them cheap health care, and it enraged them. He passed stricter regulation on the Wall Street financiers who brought us the Great Recession, and they didn’t care. He fought to reduce their payroll taxes and fund infrastructure to help the economy get back on track, and they sneered that it was just a lot of wasted money that ballooned the national debt.
At the same time, Obama didn’t try to take their guns away. He didn’t outlaw Christianity or conduct a war on Christmas. He didn’t do much of anything related to abortion. He did promote a number of gay-friendly policies, and pr
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Quote:Then that makes Trump your candidate. Discuss how your imaginary version of Hillary is worse than reality Trump.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
It's interesting - despite being for Hillary, second hasn't posted here at all, and sgg's only posted one post which didn't say anything about her.
It's almost like they're afraid to discuss their candidate.
Praise your Trump, 1kiki, for he is hard at work wrecking the health care system — which could make sense if he had even a notion of what he’d like to see in its place. (Could his secret plan be “great, great health care for everybody at a tiny fraction of the cost” — which is not too much of an exaggerated description of what they already have in Canada and throughout Europe, Great Britain, Singapore and Japan? No, I don’t think so. He has no idea what he’s doing.)
Trump is treating the Puerto Rican crisis as if, well, let’s face it, Puerto Ricans were not real Americans — a view many of his faithful probably share.
And then there’s his work to undermine the agreement that brought Iran back from the brink of nuclear proliferation, to undermine environmental protections, to rain fire and fury on N Korea. Talk about how you helped Trump into power, 1kiki, because Hillary and Michelle Obama have equal political power in the USA -- none -- and aren't worth discussing. Tell us that Trump is better than Hillary, 1kiki.
1kiki, don't tell us about Bernie. As a Senator, he had and will have as little influence as George McGovern. I know you said Bernie was your candidate, but he lost to Hillary by more votes in the primary than Trump lost to Hillary in the general. With the election system the Constitution gave us in the 18th Century, it was a choice between Trump or Hillary. And even if 1kiki doesn't understand how voting works, 1kiki picked Trump.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_McGovern
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Texas’ largest power generator plans to shutter three of the state’s largest coal plants early next year, highlighting the continued decline of coal even as President Donald Trump tries to prop up the struggling industry.
Dallas-based Vistra Energy said the closure of its financially struggling Sandow plant near Austin and the Big Brown plant east of Waco, including their associated coal mines, will occur in January and February, respectively, eliminating about 650 jobs in the process. A week ago, Vistra said it would will close its Monticello coal plant in Northeast Texas in January and cut about 200 more jobs there.
The planned shutdowns come just afew days after the Trump administration said it would repeal greenhouse gas regulations known as the Clean Power Plan that President Donald Trump and other Republicans have blamed for the decline in the coal industry. Vistra executives, however, blamed low electricity prices and competition from cleaner, lower-cost natural gas-fired plants and renewable energy sources, perhaps underscoring that the so-called war on coal may be more about economics than regulations.
Barely any of the state’s more than 15 coal plants are turning a profit, according to power companies.
“The economics right now are dominating any political rhetoric,” said Travis Miller, power and utilities analyst at the research firm Morningstar. “Coal plants just can’t compete with renewable energy and natural gas, especially in Texas,” which is by far the nation’s biggest producer of wind power.
Wind accounts for more than 15 percent of the state’s electricity. Coal, which once generated about half of the state’s electricity, today accounts for just 30 percent.
The three plant closings, if approved by the state’s grid operator, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, would relieve Vistra of unprofitable operations . . .
In Texas, the power companies rely on price spikes during hot summer days to earn profits. But the surge of electricity generated by wind farms and, increasingly, solar panels has smoothed those spikes and slashed profits. Obviously, if Trump pays a price per megawatt-hour higher for coal-based electricity than renewable energy, he can win the war on coal. I dare him to try. I'm curious to see how far Trump will actually go to protect coal mining jobs.
www.houstonchronicle.com/business/energy/article/Vistra-to-shutter-two
-more-coal-fired-plants-12277119.php
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
It's interesting - despite being for Hillary, second hasn't posted here at all, and sgg's only posted one post which didn't say anything about her.
It's almost like they're afraid to discuss their candidate.
Quote:No, that makes Jill Stein my candidate. Or maybe Gary Johnson. Or Darrell Lane Castle (Constitution Party), or Rocky De La Fuente (Reform Party), or Evan McMullin (Independent), or Gloria Estela La Riva (Party for Socialism and Liberation).
Originally posted by SECOND:
Then that makes Trump your candidate.
After all, I didn't discuss them either.
Logic fail much, SECOND?
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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So, to start to summarize what's been wrong with Hillary for years, and by extension, what's wrong with the Democratic party:
They're a bunch of corrupt crony insiders (like Hillary, Debbie, and Roberta) who work the system to benefit their masters (international corporations, banks, and neo-cons) in order to benefit themselves.
As beneficiaries of the status quo, of course neither Hillary nor the party have any interest in changing the system to benefit the 99%.
So instead of trying to unite people to foster the common good, they focus on creating multiple special status victimhoods. For example, you'll find that in the the DNC platform LGBT Rights, Disability Rights, Agricultural Communities, Poverty / Communities Left Behind, Honoring Indigenous Tribal Nations, People of the Territories, and Puerto Rico all get their own special sections of special mention. And let's not forget Student Debt, Minority-Serving Institutions, Women and Girls, Young People, Religious Minorities and Refugees, which also get their own sections. And I'm sure if i looked harder, I'd find more.
What could be so terribly hard about setting a goal that everyone, regardless of sex, age, health, race, religion, location, culture or background will all have opportunities for meaningful employment that supports a secure lifestyle?
Trump is not the problem. He set himself against the Deep State's agenda. And the Deep State's been heading for WWIII for years.
As for you, you're just a Deep State useful idiot, furthering its agenda. So I hope you enjoy cesium in your coffee. You've earned it.
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Quote:Fail much yourself, Russian Troll? You can't even say which one you voted for. If you had voted in the election, you wouldn't be so coy about it now. So, real quick, make up an answer. Doesn't matter which candidate, nobody will believe it anyway, you big phony American who is actually from Russia.
Originally posted by 1kiki:
No, that makes Jill Stein my candidate. Or maybe Gary Johnson. Or Darrell Lane Castle (Constitution Party), or Rocky De La Fuente (Reform Party), or Evan McMullin (Independent), or Gloria Estela La Riva (Party for Socialism and Liberation).
After all, I didn't discuss them either.
Logic fail much, SECOND?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:No, let's mention one of Trump's complex blunders from this week:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, to start to summarize what's been wrong with Hillary for years, and by extension, what's wrong with the Democratic party:
Just before the Iranian Nuclear deal was signed, the Republican controlled Congress—which had no say in the matter, since it was not a formal treaty—passed a law called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. This law requires the president to certify, every 90 days, that Iran is still in compliance. If he certifies otherwise (in other words, if he acknowledges that Iran has been caught cheating), Congress could vote within 60 days to reimpose the sanctions.
The Republicans who wrote this law thought they were pulling a fast one: Iran was certain to cheat; President Obama or Hillary Clinton (his most likely successor) would be put in the embarrassing spot of admitting it; and Congress would destroy the deal. But, as the inspectors have reported time and time again, Iran is not cheating. Even Trump has had to certify twice that Iran was in compliance—and he was getting sick and tired of it. The most recent time he signed the certificate, he said that he probably wouldn’t do it the next time.
The 90-day deadline is this Sunday. Iran is still in compliance. So what did Trump do? He decided to decertify Iran anyway and to invent reasons why.
If our face-off with North Korea is to end without war, it will require some sort of diplomatic settlement. But how can North Korea believe any deal Trump would sign or guarantee he would make, if he pulls out of the Iran deal, even though Iran is abiding by its terms?
More at www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/war_stories/2017/10/why_trump
_s_iran_speech_was_one_of_the_most_dishonest_and_dangerous_ones.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:I'm a rich, white Texas gun-owner. I can pass as a Republican. That is how I know what Republicans believe. To summarize: "Why can't the Democrats treat white people better than the niggers, queers and Mex-skins? We are better!" This comes from the mouths of Republicans who have been beating down niggers, queers and Mex-skins all their lives. There is an article about how that works at the Business Insider:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
So, to start to summarize what's been wrong with the Democratic party:
So instead of trying to unite people to foster the common good, they focus on creating multiple special status victimhoods. For example, you'll find that in the the DNC platform LGBT Rights, Disability Rights, Agricultural Communities, Poverty / Communities Left Behind, Honoring Indigenous Tribal Nations, People of the Territories, and Puerto Rico all get their own special sections of special mention. And let's not forget Student Debt, Minority-Serving Institutions, Women and Girls, Young People, Religious Minorities and Refugees, which also get their own sections. And I'm sure if i looked harder, I'd find more.
What could be so terribly hard about setting a goal that everyone, regardless of sex, age, health, race, religion, location, culture or background will all have opportunities for meaningful employment that supports a secure lifestyle?
www.businessinsider.com/racial-wealth-gap-in-the-us-is-astounding-2015
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Or a more recent article, more focused on one race, at:
www.epi.org/blog/the-racial-wealth-gap-how-african-americans-have-been
-shortchanged-out-of-the-materials-to-build-wealth/
This information applies to Republicans in all states, not just Texas. Some Republicans I am familiar with in Nebraska and Utah are exceptions. And good for them! Even better, those exceptional Republicans would not vote for Trump.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:That hard part FOR SECOND is that he would have to end his exclusive focus on "evil Republicans", drop his biases against poor white Americans, and commit to an actual policy of equality for everyone. But since SECOND's POV is inherently twisted, he can't possibly give up his one-sided vendetta against Republicans specifically and white American citizens generally, but must always and exclusively bleat about
What could be so terribly hard about setting a goal that everyone, regardless of sex, age, health, race, religion, location, culture or background will all have opportunities for meaningful employment that supports a secure lifestyle? - KIKI
Quote:I guess he forgot to add "women" to the list.
niggers, queers and Mex-skins.
But anyway, SECOND, instead of me answering for you, why don't YOU tell us? What's wrong with a policy of equality for everyone?
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Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
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