Bipartisan Senate group proposes ‘no fly, no buy’ gun measure

[Classic-Xer]

(11-16-2018, 04:42 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(11-13-2018, 08:52 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: ... The Heartland Dem's gave you a breath of life but they turn out to be no better or no more capable or independent than the Democrats who were replaced by Republicans during the Obama years, you can expect those seats to go back to the Republicans in two years and you can expect to see Republicans who are more devoted to actually lowering the cost of healthcare for everyone who is actually PAYING FOR IT vs continuing providing it for those who are getting it for free. I don't get into playing fools games that liberals seem content with playing which is why I don't get into the Democratic party, don't get into to it's politics and don't even consider voting Democratic these days.

BTW, it's not that we forget, it's that we tend to ignore it because we understand the relationship between the blues and the systems that so many are now reliant upon these days. You see, we don't have and are not entitled to receive the so-called insurance that you often claim to be equally beneficial/ available for all of us.

OK, so your real issue is being screwed-over with crappy insurance (ACA) that's worse than the crappy insurance (Medicaid) supplied to the poor.  To an extent, it's worked that way because the opposition (GOP) made sure it does, yet your expected solution is better-cheaper private insurance that the GOP will miraculously provide.  Ain't happening!  The simple reason: healthcare is expensive, so someone has to pay for it.  Everyone can get sick or injured.  Running the system through private providers and private insurance makes it even more expensive.  So the only insurance you'll be getting that's cheap is insurance that covers healthy people … until they get sick.  Nothing will get you destitute faster than a major illness and insurance with low caps and no guarantees of future coverage.  

BTW, even the uninsured receive healthcare, typically through the emergency room -- the most expensive kind.  Hospitals can't say no; it's a law of long standing.  So leaving the poor to die on the streets isn't an answer either.  The only real answer involves a single payer (or single provider) that can negotiate on behalf of everyone and hold prices down.  I don't see your friends in the GOP going for that.  It would crimp the pockets of the healthcare, drug and insurance companies that pay to keep them in office.  It will be a miracle if the Dems can do it, and they favor it by overwhelming margins.

My issue was cost back then and my issue is cost today.  My issue wasn't needing it or wanting it for my self at the time. Well, the wants & needs were addressed but the cost wasn't really addressed. I knew that would happen. I knew the the blues would focus on primarily serving themselves, their interests and their political needs because that's blues do when their in power. The blues ain't much different than Bolshevik's, Nazi's, Marxists, Leninist's who proceeded them. The only difference is the country and the American system that's in place that they currently reside in. A country with a strong American right (a strong faith in the American Constitution and the American flag and Americans in general) that no other country on the planet seems to have around at this time.

Yes, there is a risk of getting really sick or seriously injured or being diagnosed with a debilitating disease and not having insurance with a large enough cap to cover all the medical costs that causes a loss of insurance which makes you no longer able to be insured. I'm aware of that, it almost happened to a friends wife and would have happened to another friend as well. However, the risk of it is relatively small and the number of people it happens to is relatively a small number as well. Well, that can be addressed relatively easy without substantially impacting the cost of insurance and the policy's of everyone else. The government could offer a supplemental or add a special supplemental policy to medicare that costs less than a percent for everyone and pass a law that makes relatively cheap supplemental policies available in the market. Blues always think big and prefer to see or make big changes and tend to support big government related ideas when issue and the solution should/could be addressed with or requires small changes and relatively minor costs or added expenses.

Hint: This is the reason the liberal Democrats are going to find/ finding themselves being ignored by Heartland Democrats as they tend to business as they should/have to instead of allowing themselves to be corralled or bought off by the Peloci/Sanders wing. Like I've said, my goal would not be to keep an entire nation together. My goal would be to keep bulk of it together and I'd be willing to let go or part with some of it.

Reds don't cling, reds accept realities and are willing to let go and move on. I keep hearing about the reactionary Reds as I'm watching reactionary Blues going nuts over Trump, going nuts over the Supreme Court judges that he's picked and going nuts over the way he's managing the economy and the way he's changing trade deals and he's sticking to delivering the promises that he made to those who supported him exclusively and clinging to their programs and their mostly government funded economic system.

Now, if the lady who was elected by independent woman who's issues are the same as mine with healthcare ( it's the cost of healthcare stupid) delivers of her promise to them, I might reward her with a couple more years of employment as a Democratic politician. However, if she fails ir allows herself to be drawn in or tied up with the liberal shit. I will support the Republican woman/male with some political experience who has no financial ties to the healthcare industry that will unseat her in 2020. Hint: The guys and gals who voted for Trump stayed home or went deer hunting or went some place else because their guy is in the White House and the liberals are now pretty much contained. However, they'll  be back in force to support their guy again in 2020 and they won't be voting liberal because they hate the liberals more than me.

THIS NATIONAL ELECTION WAS PRETTY MUCH MEANINGLESS TO ME. The only race that really mattered to me was the race for attorney general of Minnesota. I had to come back home and vote against the SJW who was running for the seat despite all the accusations and despite a documented history of roughing up girlfriends. I guess if you're a black SWJ, a powerful blue Congressman and a Muslim from Minneapolis to boot, you get a pass on being associated with actually doing that shit. Sorry, I have to laugh. However, if I ever run into that fucking Senator of mine, she is going to treated an earful and be treated with no respect but I view her as a piece of shit human being.

[Eric the Green]

Well, you certainly get a pass on that kind of shit if you are running for president in 2016 or appointed for a supreme court position in 2018.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-17-2018, 12:22 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-17-2018, 11:57 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: I don't even vote for local parcel taxes anymore because I want to see all districts funded equally. But in my district parcel taxes always get 2/3 vote anyway and they are well-funded and perform well. I get their mailings and they seem to be proud of their accomplishments.

My sister, back in the 70s, attending the University of Massachusetts at the time, had to listen to a black girl saying how lousy the local Rockland MA school system was.  Naturally, Sally pointed out she had a 4.0 average at Zoo Mass, that how good a school was depended on how much work one was willing to put into it.  The instructors in suburban Rockland would work if a kid was putting some effort into it, but often would let kids not trying go.  You couldn't help a kid who was not trying.

But I would tend to agree.  While I never married, never had kids, I never begrudged the spending and taxes required to give kids the same chance I had back in the day.  You can lead a horse to water, and I made sure there was lots of water available.  I'm not so pushy on making the horse drink.

The way I view education is the same way your sister viewed it. We all need some form of basic education ( reading, writing, math and science) in order for us to function as members of an advanced society. We have moved so far left in some places that we have public schools in some places that are functioning more like daycare's than educational institutions, We have schools in some places that the teachers & school adminstraters are functioning more like social workers. Republicans do much to help those areas because those area's are damn near completely dominated by Democrats. Who gets the bulk the public money, the Democratic officials and the Democratic voters who work in those areas or the poor parents of the poor kids who are stuck in those area's? At some point, Democrats like you have to start opening minds to other ideas and approaches or accept the consequences with being involved with large scale failures that result in last scale riots and significant loss of life.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-17-2018, 07:31 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, you certainly get a pass on that kind of shit if you are running for president in 2016 or appointed for a supreme court position in 2018.

The next one, you should probably have something more substantial than word of mouth and hear say and a victim who was only there for show who couldn't answer specific questions or give us anymore specific details related to her accusation. Me, I think it was something she probably heard and that she gave more credibility to by using her name.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-16-2018, 01:19 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: No, it is just as I said. Reform was made, gerrymandering was not done by the Democrats in CA, AZ and PA, but districts were drawn by independent commissions, which allowed people to vote for their politicians instead of vice versa. You can't tell a reform from a partisan gerrymander, and a legal recount from law-breaking. You vote to keep big money considered as free speech, and thus keep our politicians locked into special interests. 

You forget again that I myself am quite willing to separate from your red states, if that's what the people want to do, and that I would not join or support a war to keep you in the union if you want to leave, and that I might support such a war if it's us blues who want to leave and you reds who want to impose your red regime upon us. How many times do I need to say this, so you don't have to keep repeating your threat to separate from us blues, since I regard it as a promise and not a threat?

I'm already separated from the blues. I live in a purple area.

[pbrower2a]

(11-17-2018, 07:15 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: My issue was cost back then and my issue is cost today.  My issue wasn't needing it or wanting it for my self at the time. Well, the wants & needs were addressed but the cost wasn't really addressed. I knew that would happen. I knew the the blues would focus on primarily serving themselves, their interests  and their political needs because that's blues do when their in power. The blues ain't much different than Bolshevik's, Nazi's, Marxists, Leninist's who proceeded them. The only difference is the country and the American system that's in place that they currently reside in. A country with a strong American right (a strong faith in the American Constitution and the American flag and Americans in general) that no other country on the planet seems to have around at this time.

Before I address the issue of medical cost, let me remind you that this "Blue" political hack repudiates every tyrannical, dictatorial, and despotic order that exist now or ever has. I have excoriated leadership of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. My favorite object of political mockery is North Korea, which has somehow melded two of the worst styles of government to have ever existed: Marxism-Leninism and absolute monarchy into something that will have to go into one of the most ludicrous political systems to have ever existed. Poverty of the country is no excuse for someone like Pol Pot, Rafael Trujillo, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Haile Mengistu, or Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. I see Donald Trump as a horrible leader for reasons other than ideology. He is making mistakes that Ronald Reagan would have called out in a political opponent. He is a crass demagogue in the sense that Juan Peron was (except that Juan Peron really was a soldier instead of a cowardly draft dodger). Trump is so bad that he causes me to adopt rhetoric that I once associated exclusively with right-wing extremists such as "I love my country but dread my government". Donald Trump seems to have thought that the President is simply a CEO who can run things despotically. The Presidency has not been suited to anyone acting as a despot. George Washington established a model for limited power of the Executive to which 42 later Presidents adhered (and only 42 because I do not wish to double-count Cleveland) that Donald Trump has violated. 

Now on medical cost: in recent years the economic model from business has gone from a competitive norm to crony capitalism. In competitive capitalism, consumers decide what they want and business owners achieve consumers' desires or fail as businesses. This is not to say that consumers can get stuff for less than cost of manufacture and distribution; profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses. Businesses (except insurance companies and lenders, which are bureaucracies by nature) do what they can to keep costs down at all levels, including executive compensation. A bloated bureaucracy is nothing but burden that only a monopolized, vertically-
integrated firm can tolerate.  Prices tend to reflect costs and a necessary, modest profit for shareholders. Service and marketing go together, and so do revenues. That is capitalism at its best.

We have gone toward a different, and not a better model (except for elites) in which Big Business has consolidated industry through mergers and acquisitions. Giant firms take advantage of vertical integration that might produce economies of scale -- but also monopolies and cartels. Competition vanishes, and the model of business becomes the squeezing of customers as much as possible. Profit maximization is the objective. Management becomes increasingly harsh, relying more upon threats (including upon taxing authorities in which those firms have business operations) than upon incentives and inducements. Supply gets constricted, profits soar, and management is paid profusely to treat people badly. Cost to the consumer becomes whatever the business can extract, and as competition disappears, costs soar. Big Business tries to take over the political process, ensuring that politicians beholden to corporate lobbyists win elections at all levels of government. Service becomes menial chores for people barely paid enough to survive.

In recent years the United States has become a nearly absolute plutocracy. As the late oilman H. L. Hunt put it, the Golden Rule is that "He who has the gold makes the rules". Donald Trump is a late phase in transforming America into a nightmare in which a few people own everything and the rest of us have the choice to 'comply or die'. Comply or die? That's how things were under Josef Stalin, and a capitalist version of such is little better.

Quote:Yes, there is a risk of getting really sick or seriously injured or being diagnosed with a debilitating disease and not having insurance with a large enough cap to cover all the medical costs that causes a loss of insurance which makes you no longer able to be insured. I'm aware of that, it almost happened to a friends wife and would have happened to another friend as well. However, the risk of it is relatively small and the number of people it happens to is relatively a small number as well. Well, that can be addressed relatively easy without substantially impacting the cost of insurance and the policy's of everyone else. The government could offer a supplemental or add a special supplemental policy to medicare that costs less than a percent for everyone and pass a law that makes relatively cheap supplemental policies available in the market. Blues always think big and prefer to see or make big changes and tend to support big government related ideas when issue and the solution should/could be addressed with or requires small changes and relatively minor costs or added expenses.

Poverty is a reality in America, and anyone can fall into it even without a personal vice that puts one in poverty. Poverty compels compromises in life far more serious than having a ten-year-old jalopy instead of a new car. People may have to choose between buying insurance for the world's most expensive health-care system or having food on the table, paying the utility bill, or seeking employment that requires some personal investment. The paradox is that someone who finds himself with disabilities to which an enlightened employer could make adjustments has an incentive to take disability payments, Medicaid, and food aid instead of working.

Quote:Hint: This is the reason the liberal Democrats are going to find/ finding themselves being ignored by Heartland Democrats as they tend to business as they should/have to instead of allowing themselves to be corralled or bought off by the Pelosi/Sanders wing. Like I've said, my goal would not be to keep an entire nation together. My goal would be to keep bulk of it together and I'd be willing to let go or part with some of it.

Trump has pushed more Americans to the Left as he endorses capitalism at its worst -- a New Feudalism in which elites get everything. If the Soviet order was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us", the ideal of the Right is "They work, we don't pretend to pay them, but we get solid output because we crack a real whip"... the old joke about the Soviet system is more humane by default. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party gained in the 2018 election, and your Party lost much.

Quote:Reds don't cling, reds accept realities and are willing to let go and move on. I keep hearing about the reactionary Reds as I'm watching reactionary Blues going nuts over Trump, going nuts over the Supreme Court judges that he's picked and going nuts over the way he's managing the economy and the way he's changing trade deals and he's sticking to delivering the promises that he made to those who supported him exclusively and clinging to their programs and their mostly government funded economic system.

Until I see otherwise, Reds clung to the personality cult around Donald Trump. The people who prefer superstition to science prefer Trump. The people who think gun rights more precious than 'gay rights' prefer Trump. I can concur that many conservatives such as Steve Schmidt and George Will have decided that Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, and that as flawed as welfare-state liberalism is it is far better than the economic jungle and crony capitalism that Trump offers. Yes, conservatism retains considerable relevance as a political backup in the event of liberal failure. As a recent example, liberals used to see crime as the result of poverty instead of the flawed character of offenders. Liberals found out otherwise after conservatives did, but eventually figured that some viciously-amoral people were one-person crime waves. So if one is a community organizer as Barack Obama was, he learns that there are plenty of good people in the nastiest ghettos and that they can tell some outsider like him what people to avoid. Like drug traffickers and perverts.

Of course character matters, but just as much among economic elites and the middle class (I know to sociopaths that I want nothing to deal with -- and they are relatives) as among poor people. A couple of decades ago someone like the late Jack Kemp (very much a conservative) pushed the idea that if one offered incentives to poor people to discover and use talents that they have in honest paid work they would be relieved of poverty. Many accepted that offer, and they are now part of the fast-growing black and Hispanic middle class. The current Movement Conservatives offer little but poverty, profit as the sole objective of the economic order, with even the public sector sold cheaply to profiteering monopolists who get whatever the traffic will bear. Exploitation of economic power makes character irrelevant.

Quote:Now, if the lady who was elected by independent woman who's issues are the same as mine with healthcare ( it's the cost of healthcare stupid) delivers of her promise to them, I might reward her with a couple more years of employment as a Democratic politician. However, if she fails ir allows herself to be drawn in or tied up with the liberal shit. I will support the Republican woman/male with some political experience who has no financial ties to the healthcare industry that will unseat her in 2020. Hint: The guys and gals who voted for Trump stayed home or went deer hunting or went some place else because their guy is in the White House and the liberals are now pretty much contained. However, they'll  be back in force to support their guy again in 2020 and they won't be voting liberal because they hate the liberals more than me.

The real sewage is the idea that people exist solely for the enrichment, indulgence, and security of economic elites. Multitudes of voters gave up on Trump after having voted for him -- or decided to vote for liberals after his gross failure as President. New, younger voters came into the electoral process, and they voted heavily against Trump. In 2020 I expect the anti-Trump voters to be back, and I expect the young voters who had never voted in a midterm election before (those voters voted heavily Democratic) to vote in 2020. I expect them to dislike Donald Trump just as much. Note well that voting typically increases in a Presidential election. I can see Democrats winning three Senate seats to offset the net gains of the GOP in 2018 -- and largely undoing the wave of Republican gains in the Senate in 2014. But I get ahead of myself.

Quote:THIS NATIONAL ELECTION WAS PRETTY MUCH MEANINGLESS TO ME. The only race that really mattered to me was the race for attorney general of Minnesota. I had to come back home and vote against the SJW who was running for the seat despite all the accusations and despite a documented history of roughing up girlfriends. I guess if you're a black SWJ, a powerful blue Congressman and a Muslim from Minneapolis to boot, you get a pass on being associated with actually doing that (sewage). Sorry, I have to laugh. However, if I ever run into (Senator Amy Klobuchar), she is going to treated  an earful and be treated with no respect but I view her as a (horrible) human being.

This election was important to me as the choice between freedom and fascism. An economic elite that acts as if its gain and power is the duty of us all must be called to account before it starts killing people through hunger, war, and executions.

Senator Klobuchar won re-election by a landslide margin in a state that has been drifting R. She must be doing something right. She has a fine legal mind, which will keep her out of trouble (see also Barack Obama). Our current President holds the rule of law in contempt, and that is much of the trouble with this Presidency. Winning elections as she did suggests her ability to connect to people not core supporters of her Party. Republicans did what they could to stop any Obama agenda after two years, using gridlock for six years, until they got power that they used as if they held a single-Party dictatorship in which anyone not in line with them was irrelevant. We who voted for Obama and against Trump are still here. We have greater numbers because of young adults new to voting who find Trump an anathema who offers us nothing.

I do not want socialism. I want capitalism with a human face. I want full democracy and not government by lobbyists.

[beechnut79]

(11-18-2018, 12:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2018, 07:15 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: My issue was cost back then and my issue is cost today.  My issue wasn't needing it or wanting it for my self at the time. Well, the wants & needs were addressed but the cost wasn't really addressed. I knew that would happen. I knew the the blues would focus on primarily serving themselves, their interests  and their political needs because that's blues do when their in power. The blues ain't much different than Bolshevik's, Nazi's, Marxists, Leninist's who proceeded them. The only difference is the country and the American system that's in place that they currently reside in. A country with a strong American right (a strong faith in the American Constitution and the American flag and Americans in general) that no other country on the planet seems to have around at this time.

Before I address the issue of medical cost, let me remind you that this "Blue" political hack repudiates every tyrannical, dictatorial, and despotic order that exist now or ever has. I have excoriated leadership of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. My favorite object of political mockery is North Korea, which has somehow melded two of the worst styles of government to have ever existed: Marxism-Leninism and absolute monarchy into something that will have to go into one of the most ludicrous political systems to have ever existed. Poverty of the country is no excuse for someone like Pol Pot, Rafael Trujillo, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Haile Mengistu, or Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. I see Donald Trump as a horrible leader for reasons other than ideology. He is making mistakes that Ronald Reagan would have called out in a political opponent. He is a crass demagogue in the sense that Juan Peron was (except that Juan Peron really was a soldier instead of a cowardly draft dodger). Trump is so bad that he causes me to adopt rhetoric that I once associated exclusively with right-wing extremists such as "I love my country but dread my government". Donald Trump seems to have thought that the President is simply a CEO who can run things despotically. The Presidency has not been suited to anyone acting as a despot. George Washington established a model for limited power of the Executive to which 42 later Presidents adhered (and only 42 because I do not wish to double-count Cleveland) that Donald Trump has violated. 

Now on medical cost: in recent years the economic model from business has gone from a competitive norm to crony capitalism. In competitive capitalism, consumers decide what they want and business owners achieve consumers' desires or fail as businesses. This is not to say that consumers can get stuff for less than cost of manufacture and distribution; profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses. Businesses (except insurance companies and lenders, which are bureaucracies by nature) do what they can to keep costs down at all levels, including executive compensation. A bloated bureaucracy is nothing but burden that only a monopolized, vertically-
integrated firm can tolerate.  Prices tend to reflect costs and a necessary, modest profit for shareholders. Service and marketing go together, and so do revenues. That is capitalism at its best.

We have gone toward a different, and not a better model (except for elites) in which Big Business has consolidated industry through mergers and acquisitions. Giant firms take advantage of vertical integration that might produce economies of scale -- but also monopolies and cartels. Competition vanishes, and the model of business becomes the squeezing of customers as much as possible. Profit maximization is the objective. Management becomes increasingly harsh, relying more upon threats (including upon taxing authorities in which those firms have business operations) than upon incentives and inducements. Supply gets constricted, profits soar, and management is paid profusely to treat people badly. Cost to the consumer becomes whatever the business can extract, and as competition disappears, costs soar. Big Business tries to take over the political process, ensuring that politicians beholden to corporate lobbyists win elections at all levels of government. Service becomes menial chores for people barely paid enough to survive.

In recent years the United States has become a nearly absolute plutocracy. As the late oilman H. L. Hunt put it, the Golden Rule is that "He who has the gold makes the rules". Donald Trump is a late phase in transforming America into a nightmare in which a few people own everything and the rest of us have the choice to 'comply or die'. Comply or die? That's how things were under Josef Stalin, and a capitalist version of such is little better.  

Quote:Yes, there is a risk of getting really sick or seriously injured or being diagnosed with a debilitating disease and not having insurance with a large enough cap to cover all the medical costs that causes a loss of insurance which makes you no longer able to be insured. I'm aware of that, it almost happened to a friends wife and would have happened to another friend as well. However, the risk of it is relatively small and the number of people it happens to is relatively a small number as well. Well, that can be addressed relatively easy without substantially impacting the cost of insurance and the policy's of everyone else. The government could offer a supplemental or add a special supplemental policy to medicare that costs less than a percent for everyone and pass a law that makes relatively cheap supplemental policies available in the market. Blues always think big and prefer to see or make big changes and tend to support big government related ideas when issue and the solution should/could be addressed with or requires small changes and relatively minor costs or added expenses.

Poverty is a reality in America, and anyone can fall into it even without a personal vice that puts one in poverty. Poverty compels compromises in life far more serious than having a ten-year-old jalopy instead of a new car. People may have to choose between buying insurance for the world's most expensive health-care system or having food on the table, paying the utility bill, or seeking employment that requires some personal investment. The paradox is that someone who finds himself with disabilities to which an enlightened employer could make adjustments has an incentive to take disability payments, Medicaid, and food aid instead of working.  

Quote:Hint: This is the reason the liberal Democrats are going to find/ finding themselves being ignored by Heartland Democrats as they tend to business as they should/have to instead of allowing themselves to be corralled or bought off by the Pelosi/Sanders wing. Like I've said, my goal would not be to keep an entire nation together. My goal would be to keep bulk of it together and I'd be willing to let go or part with some of it.

Trump has pushed more Americans to the Left as he endorses capitalism at its worst -- a New Feudalism in which elites get everything. If the Soviet order was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us", the ideal of the Right is "They work, we don't pretend to pay them, but we get solid output because we crack a real whip"... the old joke about the Soviet system is more humane by default. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party gained in the 2018 election, and your Party lost much.

Quote:Reds don't cling, reds accept realities and are willing to let go and move on. I keep hearing about the reactionary Reds as I'm watching reactionary Blues going nuts over Trump, going nuts over the Supreme Court judges that he's picked and going nuts over the way he's managing the economy and the way he's changing trade deals and he's sticking to delivering the promises that he made to those who supported him exclusively and clinging to their programs and their mostly government funded economic system.

Until I see otherwise, Reds clung to the personality cult around Donald Trump. The people who prefer superstition to science prefer Trump. The people who think gun rights more precious than 'gay rights' prefer Trump. I can concur that many conservatives such as Steve Schmidt and George Will have decided that Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, and that as flawed as welfare-state liberalism is it is far better than the economic jungle and crony capitalism that Trump offers. Yes, conservatism retains considerable relevance as a political backup in the event of liberal failure. As a recent example, liberals used to see crime as the result of poverty instead of the flawed character of offenders. Liberals found out otherwise after conservatives did, but eventually figured that some viciously-amoral people were one-person crime waves. So if one is a community organizer as Barack Obama was, he learns that there are plenty of good people in the nastiest ghettos and that they can tell some outsider like him what people to avoid. Like drug traffickers and perverts.

Of course character matters, but just as much among economic elites and the middle class (I know to sociopaths that I want nothing to deal with -- and they are relatives) as among poor people. A couple of decades ago someone like the late Jack Kemp (very much a conservative) pushed the idea that if one offered incentives to poor people to discover and use talents that they have in honest paid work they would be relieved of poverty. Many accepted that offer, and they are now part of the fast-growing black and Hispanic middle class. The current Movement Conservatives offer little but poverty, profit as the sole objective of the economic order, with even the public sector sold cheaply to profiteering monopolists who get whatever the traffic will bear. Exploitation of economic power makes character irrelevant.

Quote:Now, if the lady who was elected by independent woman who's issues are the same as mine with healthcare ( it's the cost of healthcare stupid) delivers of her promise to them, I might reward her with a couple more years of employment as a Democratic politician. However, if she fails ir allows herself to be drawn in or tied up with the liberal shit. I will support the Republican woman/male with some political experience who has no financial ties to the healthcare industry that will unseat her in 2020. Hint: The guys and gals who voted for Trump stayed home or went deer hunting or went some place else because their guy is in the White House and the liberals are now pretty much contained. However, they'll  be back in force to support their guy again in 2020 and they won't be voting liberal because they hate the liberals more than me.

The real sewage is the idea that people exist solely for the enrichment, indulgence, and security of economic elites. Multitudes of voters gave up on Trump after having voted for him -- or decided to vote for liberals after his gross failure as President. New, younger voters came into the electoral process, and they voted heavily against Trump. In 2020 I expect the anti-Trump voters to be back, and I expect the young voters who had never voted in a midterm election before (those voters voted heavily Democratic) to vote in 2020. I expect them to dislike Donald Trump just as much. Note well that voting typically increases in a Presidential election. I can see Democrats winning three Senate seats to offset the net gains of the GOP in 2018 -- and largely undoing the wave of Republican gains in the Senate in 2014. But I get ahead of myself.

Quote:THIS NATIONAL ELECTION WAS PRETTY MUCH MEANINGLESS TO ME. The only race that really mattered to me was the race for attorney general of Minnesota. I had to come back home and vote against the SJW who was running for the seat despite all the accusations and despite a documented history of roughing up girlfriends. I guess if you're a black SWJ, a powerful blue Congressman and a Muslim from Minneapolis to boot, you get a pass on being associated with actually doing that (sewage). Sorry, I have to laugh. However, if I ever run into (Senator Amy Klobuchar), she is going to treated  an earful and be treated with no respect but I view her as a (horrible) human being.

This election was important to me as the choice between freedom and fascism. An economic elite that acts as if its gain and power is the duty of us all must be called to account before it starts killing people through hunger, war, and executions.

Senator Klobuchar won re-election by a landslide margin in a state that has been drifting R. She must be doing something right. She has a fine legal mind, which will keep her out of trouble (see also Barack Obama). Our current President holds the rule of law in contempt, and that is much of the trouble with this Presidency. Winning elections as she did suggests her ability to connect to people not core supporters of her Party. Republicans did what they could to stop any Obama agenda after two years, using gridlock for six years, until they got power that they used as if they held a single-Party dictatorship in which anyone not in line with them was irrelevant. We who voted for Obama and against Trump are still here. We have greater numbers because of young adults new to voting who find Trump an anathema who offers us nothing.

I do not want socialism. I want capitalism with a human face. I want full democracy and not government by lobbyists.

[beechnut79]

profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses

For sure this is so, but with that in mind a fair question to ask would be, then, how were the large employers of the postwar period able to almost guarantee lifetime security to their workers? They couldn't have known for sure if they would turn a profit for two decades or more down the road. In fact, when employers of the time interviewed they went the extra mile to weed out those they thought might be "job hoppers", the here today, gone tomorrow types. A common question often asked was where you expected to be in your life five, ten, or more years down the road? We all know that this kind of thinking has now been obsolete for quite some time. And yet at the same time there is a bigger push to set goals then there was then. Or at least so it seems.

[beechnut79]

(11-18-2018, 03:09 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(11-18-2018, 12:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(11-17-2018, 07:15 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote: My issue was cost back then and my issue is cost today.  My issue wasn't needing it or wanting it for my self at the time. Well, the wants & needs were addressed but the cost wasn't really addressed. I knew that would happen. I knew the the blues would focus on primarily serving themselves, their interests  and their political needs because that's blues do when their in power. The blues ain't much different than Bolshevik's, Nazi's, Marxists, Leninist's who proceeded them. The only difference is the country and the American system that's in place that they currently reside in. A country with a strong American right (a strong faith in the American Constitution and the American flag and Americans in general) that no other country on the planet seems to have around at this time.

Before I address the issue of medical cost, let me remind you that this "Blue" political hack repudiates every tyrannical, dictatorial, and despotic order that exist now or ever has. I have excoriated leadership of Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia, China, and Russia. My favorite object of political mockery is North Korea, which has somehow melded two of the worst styles of government to have ever existed: Marxism-Leninism and absolute monarchy into something that will have to go into one of the most ludicrous political systems to have ever existed. Poverty of the country is no excuse for someone like Pol Pot, Rafael Trujillo, Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, Haile Mengistu, or Francois "Papa Doc" Duvalier. I see Donald Trump as a horrible leader for reasons other than ideology. He is making mistakes that Ronald Reagan would have called out in a political opponent. He is a crass demagogue in the sense that Juan Peron was (except that Juan Peron really was a soldier instead of a cowardly draft dodger). Trump is so bad that he causes me to adopt rhetoric that I once associated exclusively with right-wing extremists such as "I love my country but dread my government". Donald Trump seems to have thought that the President is simply a CEO who can run things despotically. The Presidency has not been suited to anyone acting as a despot. George Washington established a model for limited power of the Executive to which 42 later Presidents adhered (and only 42 because I do not wish to double-count Cleveland) that Donald Trump has violated. 

Now on medical cost: in recent years the economic model from business has gone from a competitive norm to crony capitalism. In competitive capitalism, consumers decide what they want and business owners achieve consumers' desires or fail as businesses. This is not to say that consumers can get stuff for less than cost of manufacture and distribution; profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses. Businesses (except insurance companies and lenders, which are bureaucracies by nature) do what they can to keep costs down at all levels, including executive compensation. A bloated bureaucracy is nothing but burden that only a monopolized, vertically-
integrated firm can tolerate.  Prices tend to reflect costs and a necessary, modest profit for shareholders. Service and marketing go together, and so do revenues. That is capitalism at its best.

We have gone toward a different, and not a better model (except for elites) in which Big Business has consolidated industry through mergers and acquisitions. Giant firms take advantage of vertical integration that might produce economies of scale -- but also monopolies and cartels. Competition vanishes, and the model of business becomes the squeezing of customers as much as possible. Profit maximization is the objective. Management becomes increasingly harsh, relying more upon threats (including upon taxing authorities in which those firms have business operations) than upon incentives and inducements. Supply gets constricted, profits soar, and management is paid profusely to treat people badly. Cost to the consumer becomes whatever the business can extract, and as competition disappears, costs soar. Big Business tries to take over the political process, ensuring that politicians beholden to corporate lobbyists win elections at all levels of government. Service becomes menial chores for people barely paid enough to survive.

In recent years the United States has become a nearly absolute plutocracy. As the late oilman H. L. Hunt put it, the Golden Rule is that "He who has the gold makes the rules". Donald Trump is a late phase in transforming America into a nightmare in which a few people own everything and the rest of us have the choice to 'comply or die'. Comply or die? That's how things were under Josef Stalin, and a capitalist version of such is little better.  

Quote:Yes, there is a risk of getting really sick or seriously injured or being diagnosed with a debilitating disease and not having insurance with a large enough cap to cover all the medical costs that causes a loss of insurance which makes you no longer able to be insured. I'm aware of that, it almost happened to a friends wife and would have happened to another friend as well. However, the risk of it is relatively small and the number of people it happens to is relatively a small number as well. Well, that can be addressed relatively easy without substantially impacting the cost of insurance and the policy's of everyone else. The government could offer a supplemental or add a special supplemental policy to medicare that costs less than a percent for everyone and pass a law that makes relatively cheap supplemental policies available in the market. Blues always think big and prefer to see or make big changes and tend to support big government related ideas when issue and the solution should/could be addressed with or requires small changes and relatively minor costs or added expenses.

Poverty is a reality in America, and anyone can fall into it even without a personal vice that puts one in poverty. Poverty compels compromises in life far more serious than having a ten-year-old jalopy instead of a new car. People may have to choose between buying insurance for the world's most expensive health-care system or having food on the table, paying the utility bill, or seeking employment that requires some personal investment. The paradox is that someone who finds himself with disabilities to which an enlightened employer could make adjustments has an incentive to take disability payments, Medicaid, and food aid instead of working.  

Quote:Hint: This is the reason the liberal Democrats are going to find/ finding themselves being ignored by Heartland Democrats as they tend to business as they should/have to instead of allowing themselves to be corralled or bought off by the Pelosi/Sanders wing. Like I've said, my goal would not be to keep an entire nation together. My goal would be to keep bulk of it together and I'd be willing to let go or part with some of it.

Trump has pushed more Americans to the Left as he endorses capitalism at its worst -- a New Feudalism in which elites get everything. If the Soviet order was "we pretend to work and they pretend to pay us", the ideal of the Right is "They work, we don't pretend to pay them, but we get solid output because we crack a real whip"... the old joke about the Soviet system is more humane by default. The Progressive wing of the Democratic Party gained in the 2018 election, and your Party lost much.

Quote:Reds don't cling, reds accept realities and are willing to let go and move on. I keep hearing about the reactionary Reds as I'm watching reactionary Blues going nuts over Trump, going nuts over the Supreme Court judges that he's picked and going nuts over the way he's managing the economy and the way he's changing trade deals and he's sticking to delivering the promises that he made to those who supported him exclusively and clinging to their programs and their mostly government funded economic system.

Until I see otherwise, Reds clung to the personality cult around Donald Trump. The people who prefer superstition to science prefer Trump. The people who think gun rights more precious than 'gay rights' prefer Trump. I can concur that many conservatives such as Steve Schmidt and George Will have decided that Donald Trump is an unmitigated disaster, and that as flawed as welfare-state liberalism is it is far better than the economic jungle and crony capitalism that Trump offers. Yes, conservatism retains considerable relevance as a political backup in the event of liberal failure. As a recent example, liberals used to see crime as the result of poverty instead of the flawed character of offenders. Liberals found out otherwise after conservatives did, but eventually figured that some viciously-amoral people were one-person crime waves. So if one is a community organizer as Barack Obama was, he learns that there are plenty of good people in the nastiest ghettos and that they can tell some outsider like him what people to avoid. Like drug traffickers and perverts.

Of course character matters, but just as much among economic elites and the middle class (I know to sociopaths that I want nothing to deal with -- and they are relatives) as among poor people. A couple of decades ago someone like the late Jack Kemp (very much a conservative) pushed the idea that if one offered incentives to poor people to discover and use talents that they have in honest paid work they would be relieved of poverty. Many accepted that offer, and they are now part of the fast-growing black and Hispanic middle class. The current Movement Conservatives offer little but poverty, profit as the sole objective of the economic order, with even the public sector sold cheaply to profiteering monopolists who get whatever the traffic will bear. Exploitation of economic power makes character irrelevant.

Quote:Now, if the lady who was elected by independent woman who's issues are the same as mine with healthcare ( it's the cost of healthcare stupid) delivers of her promise to them, I might reward her with a couple more years of employment as a Democratic politician. However, if she fails ir allows herself to be drawn in or tied up with the liberal shit. I will support the Republican woman/male with some political experience who has no financial ties to the healthcare industry that will unseat her in 2020. Hint: The guys and gals who voted for Trump stayed home or went deer hunting or went some place else because their guy is in the White House and the liberals are now pretty much contained. However, they'll  be back in force to support their guy again in 2020 and they won't be voting liberal because they hate the liberals more than me.

The real sewage is the idea that people exist solely for the enrichment, indulgence, and security of economic elites. Multitudes of voters gave up on Trump after having voted for him -- or decided to vote for liberals after his gross failure as President. New, younger voters came into the electoral process, and they voted heavily against Trump. In 2020 I expect the anti-Trump voters to be back, and I expect the young voters who had never voted in a midterm election before (those voters voted heavily Democratic) to vote in 2020. I expect them to dislike Donald Trump just as much. Note well that voting typically increases in a Presidential election. I can see Democrats winning three Senate seats to offset the net gains of the GOP in 2018 -- and largely undoing the wave of Republican gains in the Senate in 2014. But I get ahead of myself.

Quote:THIS NATIONAL ELECTION WAS PRETTY MUCH MEANINGLESS TO ME. The only race that really mattered to me was the race for attorney general of Minnesota. I had to come back home and vote against the SJW who was running for the seat despite all the accusations and despite a documented history of roughing up girlfriends. I guess if you're a black SWJ, a powerful blue Congressman and a Muslim from Minneapolis to boot, you get a pass on being associated with actually doing that (sewage). Sorry, I have to laugh. However, if I ever run into (Senator Amy Klobuchar), she is going to treated  an earful and be treated with no respect but I view her as a (horrible) human being.

This election was important to me as the choice between freedom and fascism. An economic elite that acts as if its gain and power is the duty of us all must be called to account before it starts killing people through hunger, war, and executions.

Senator Klobuchar won re-election by a landslide margin in a state that has been drifting R. She must be doing something right. She has a fine legal mind, which will keep her out of trouble (see also Barack Obama). Our current President holds the rule of law in contempt, and that is much of the trouble with this Presidency. Winning elections as she did suggests her ability to connect to people not core supporters of her Party. Republicans did what they could to stop any Obama agenda after two years, using gridlock for six years, until they got power that they used as if they held a single-Party dictatorship in which anyone not in line with them was irrelevant. We who voted for Obama and against Trump are still here. We have greater numbers because of young adults new to voting who find Trump an anathema who offers us nothing.

I do not want socialism. I want capitalism with a human face. I want full democracy and not government by lobbyists.

Service becomes menial chores for people barely paid enough to survive.

The people in these positions, with very limited opportunities to obtain advancement or escape their situations, were once referred to as Generation LIMBO. Capitalized because I was able to come up with what I felt was the perfect acronym. Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-18-2018, 03:12 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses

For sure this is so, but with that in mind a fair question to ask would be, then, how were the large employers of the postwar period able to almost guarantee lifetime security to their workers? They couldn't have known for sure if they would turn a profit for two decades or more down the road. In fact, when employers of the time interviewed they went the extra mile to weed out those they thought might be "job hoppers", the here today, gone tomorrow types. A common question often asked was where you expected to be in your life five, ten, or more years down the road? We all know that this kind of thinking has now been obsolete for quite some time. And yet at the same time there is a bigger push to set goals then there was then. Or at least so it seems.

Workers were just rarer and more needed then.  If you could lock in a lifetime supply of loyal employees, you did.  Part of the Information Age economy is living with an environment where there are more workers than jobs, but the workers vote.  The current corporations are just taking the cheap and plentiful workers for granted, and the workers are not very organized yet.  They are focused on other issues.

The big thing is treating nothing as holy and fixed.  Retiring at 65.  The 40 hour work week.  Several weeks of vacation.  In an environment with less work to be performed and more people to do it, things have to be adjusted.  Right now, certain numbers are treated as fixed, things haven't been adjusted since the New Deal.  More labor?  Less work?  The corporations are letting the laws of supply and demand run rampant and putting the results in their pocket.

Eventually, there will have to be adjustments made, but not even the blue have recognized the change.

[pbrower2a]

(11-18-2018, 03:12 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: profit is the lifeblood of successful businesses

For sure this is so, but with that in mind a fair question to ask would be, then, how were the large employers of the postwar period able to almost guarantee lifetime security to their workers? They couldn't have known for sure if they would turn a profit for two decades or more down the road. In fact, when employers of the time interviewed they went the extra mile to weed out those they thought might be "job hoppers", the here today, gone tomorrow types. A common question often asked was where you expected to be in your life five, ten, or more years down the road? We all know that this kind of thinking has now been obsolete for quite some time. And yet at the same time there is a bigger push to set goals then there was then. Or at least so it seems.

...and until about 1980 people got the advice to stick with the same employer and not jump to get a promotion or pay raise. This may have kept people in professional tasks from getting as much money as they might have been had they been more mercenary and slowed the advancement of competent people. So if one was a retail clerk and was thinking about taking courses in accounting or engineering, he might ask his boss first, who would ask his boss. "Our company does not need engineers" or "We don't think that you would serve us well as an accountant" was a good reason to drop the idea.

People traded opportunity for economic security, and institutions such as housing lenders promoted such. It is safe to assume now that most people have little faith in their employers to keep them from job-hopping. On the other hand, longer duration in a position meant that one learned the subtle things that made one slightly more efficient and attentive even in assembly-line work. Today the employer typically keeps a Help Wanted sign just to remind workers that there is always someone who wants to take his job, perhaps by promising to work for less.

In few cases does anyone expect someone to stay in the same job or the same employment for so much as two years. Employers are finding that employee retention is a good thing, especially in service and sales activities, often menial and ill-paid, for not having to spend so much time training new employees. Starbucks promotes a liberal arts degree through distance learning, figuring that if its baristas can keep a conversation intact with a customer that that customer will buy more latte or cappuccino in slow times in the coffee shop. Accounting or engineering is not good for a discussion with a customer.

[pbrower2a]

(11-18-2018, 03:16 PM)beechnut79 Wrote: Service becomes menial chores for people barely paid enough to survive.

The people in these positions, with very limited opportunities to obtain advancement or escape their situations, were once referred to as Generation LIMBO. Capitalized because I was able to come up with what I felt was the perfect acronym. Lower Income Mostly Beyond Overhaul.

No matter how miserable one's conditions, one is often obliged to affect that broad, theatrical "Happy to Serve You!" smile. The economic elites expect the masses to accept their cruelty as necessity and even charity.

If religion was the opiate of the masses in Marxist literature, low-brow entertainment is the opiate of the masses in contemporary America.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-18-2018, 12:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This election was important to me as the choice between freedom and fascism. An economic elite that acts as if its gain and power is the duty of us all must be called to account before it starts killing people through hunger, war, and executions.

Senator Klobuchar won re-election by a landslide margin in a state that has been drifting R. She must be doing something right. She has a fine legal mind, which will keep her out of trouble (see also Barack Obama). Our current President holds the rule of law in contempt, and that is much of the trouble with this Presidency. Winning elections as she did suggests her ability to connect to people not core supporters of her Party. Republicans did what they could to stop any Obama agenda after two years, using gridlock for six years, until they got power that they used as if they held a single-Party dictatorship in which anyone not in line with them was irrelevant. We who voted for Obama and against Trump are still here. We have greater numbers because of young adults new to voting who find Trump an anathema who offers us nothing.

I do not want socialism. I want capitalism with a human face. I want full democracy and not government by lobbyists.

Amy Klobuchar beat a weak challenger who had little GOP support, little financial support and relatively no name recognition. So yes, she won by a landslide as she should have and I'm sure her campaign was supported and partly financed by the Evil Koch brothers that you used to hate so much and accuse me of supporting so much. Well, guess what, the Koch's are supporting your candidates these days along with the bulk of the elites that you folks are always expressing concerns about them having to much power and pointing your finger at us and blaming us for voting for them and their interests.

PB, you're a partisan hack as you say.  Well, at least you're honest and able to openly admit that to us. Well, you've pretty got socialism and that's about all you have to choose from from now on. I don't blame you for voting the way you do now. I mean what other choice do you have at this point in your life and the position you seem to be in financially as well as mentally.

[pbrower2a]

(11-19-2018, 12:56 AM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-18-2018, 12:30 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: This election was important to me as the choice between freedom and fascism. An economic elite that acts as if its gain and power is the duty of us all must be called to account before it starts killing people through hunger, war, and executions.

Senator Klobuchar won re-election by a landslide margin in a state that has been drifting R. She must be doing something right. She has a fine legal mind, which will keep her out of trouble (see also Barack Obama). Our current President holds the rule of law in contempt, and that is much of the trouble with this Presidency. Winning elections as she did suggests her ability to connect to people not core supporters of her Party. Republicans did what they could to stop any Obama agenda after two years, using gridlock for six years, until they got power that they used as if they held a single-Party dictatorship in which anyone not in line with them was irrelevant. We who voted for Obama and against Trump are still here. We have greater numbers because of young adults new to voting who find Trump an anathema who offers us nothing.

I do not want socialism. I want capitalism with a human face. I want full democracy and not government by lobbyists.

Amy Klobuchar beat a weak challenger who had little GOP support, little financial support and relatively no name recognition. So yes, she won by a landslide as she should have and I'm sure her campaign was supported and partly financed by the Evil Koch brothers that you used to hate so much and accuse me of supporting so much. Well, guess what, the Koch's are supporting your candidates these days along with the bulk of the elites that you folks are always expressing concerns about them having to much power and pointing your finger at us and blaming us for voting for them and their interests.

About like former Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana until he got defeated in a primary by right-wingers who did not think him adequately right-wing. One time he faced no Democratic opposition. Politicians who win states as decidedly Left as Minnesota and decidedly Right as Indiana in their political heritage with landslide margins even if for the more powerful Party in that state look  promising should they run for President.

Better Lugar than Dubya, but that is past.

...I question whether the Koch brothers ever liked Donald Trump. Too much a bull in a china shop. But I have doubts that the Koch brothers are free of ulterior motives. They might want Democrats to have the impression that the electoral process can work for them, only for it to be taken away in a short time. Giving the Democrats one step forward followed by two steps back looks better at the moment than being in constant retreat.

Quote:PB, you're a partisan hack as you say.  Well, at least you're honest and able to openly admit that to us. Well, you've pretty got socialism and that's about all you have to choose from from now on. I don't blame you for voting the way you do now. I mean what other choice do you have at this point in your life and the position you seem to be in financially as well as mentally.

What other position? Six feet under. A moron with more stamina than I might be happy holding onto a job tailor-made for dullards and getting paid just enough to sit in an easy chair to watch stock car races, professional wrestling, and vapid sitcoms -- a mass-market domestic beer in one hand, a bowl or bag of chips on my lap, and probably dropping dead of a heart attack due to obesity by age 50. I knew someone like that. He probably never opened a book after he dropped out of high school.

With medical miracles that could take away Parkinsonism that killed my mother and senile dementia that  killed my father, I might live into my nineties. A slow heart beat will not kill me.

[Bob Butler 54]

I know I have unusual hobbies.  I collect and use music synthesizers, am into fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons, fly flight simulators like X-plane, work computer generated images, and here I am into a mix of history and politics.

But I don't show contempt for people who just listen to music, but don't create it.  Nor do I sneer at people who are into movies, books, plays or other media which do not allow one to change and effect the plot on the fly and create unique characters with unusual ways of looking at things.  I do not sneer at folks who can't land a plane, or create a fair image.  I likely can't or won't do what they do, and what I do is often kinda weird.

What is it about holding an extreme worldview which makes one show contempt for others with different world views?  Are extremists by nature ready to stereotype, to think the worst of those who see the world differently?  Like I know Pbower is into classical music and dogs, but that alone doesn't make him superior or inferior.  Me, I will take a ragtime piece like Maple Leaf Rag and play it on a simulated set of vibes because I find the usual piano boring.  That does not me inherently superior.  It just means I have weird ways of spending my time.

What is it with you guys?

[Eric the Green]

What is it with you?

Philosopher Alan Watts, whom I just finished listening to, has an interesting way of looking at this whole thing. I don't agree with him necessarily, but it is at least a good starting point.

He says that you don't know who you are without an enemy. You define yourself by putting down all those other people. But Jesus said love your enemies. But what does this really mean? It means, says Watts, that you must recognize that you need your enemy. Where would Sen. McCarthy have been without communists to hunt and put down? Where would Marx have been without capitalists? He would have had no reason to create his theory, by which he made a name for himself. If there are no criminals, then the police need us to pass a law against something so they can make a living and have something to do enforcing it. So we pass a law against gambling and the mafia takes it over and pays the police to look the other way, and both sides are happy. St. Thomas Aquinas said that the saints in heaven look over the battlements and watch the poor souls in hell, so they know who they are in heaven. Those on the good side of the tracks call the poor dirty and lazy, while the poor look upon the rich as squares who don't live authentic lives. Today we look down on and try to defeat terrorists, or the rednecks in the red states, or as he called them in his time, those awful white southerners. Every in group defines itself by opposing the outgroup. It's a mutual dependency. So, you don't want to make your enemy into your friend; that would spoil the show and just make you a wimp. But conflict must be contained and not get out of hand. There needs to be chivalry and respect for our enemies, rather than just destroying them and today maybe blowing up the world.

That's what he said. He was also not a big believer in progress, but as a progressive, I must have some hope that the enemy can be reformed, or may reform itself. Capitalism does not need to be cutthroat, and communism can have a human face, and so on. Part of that is having respect for those who may be different within your own group, as for example in a capitalist country those on the better side of the tracks who benefit would respect those on the opposite side who use the government to take some of their money, and vice versa, or hard-line communists would respect the revisionists, and vice versa, and so on.

In life, we always have obstacles to face, otherwise life is not a game or an adventure, and we don't learn and grow and there's no story; there's no music without low and high notes; no roller coaster ride without going up and down; etc.

[Eric the Green]

Without Classic Xer, and a few of his allies who might drop in like Just Passing Through, we liberals would have no-one to argue with here. So I actually look forward to his posts as an opportunity at least to make sure his ideas don't go unanswered. And a site consisting only of people I agree with and are always nice and positive gets boring. So I don't hang out as often on blissful new age sites. But on the other hand, although I might respect the fact that Galen is my enemy and I define myself as opposite to him, I don't care to engage with him much. Classic Xer doesn't like me and wants to separate from my kind and such, but at least he is fairly civilized; whereas Galen is not, so I don't directly engage with him much.

There is a process in history which Hegel and Marx described in which two antitheses are succeeded by a new synthesis, and we also have The Who who said the new boss ends up being like the old boss, and the revolution continues. The party on the left becomes the party on the right. And in the saeculum a crisis occurs in which a war happens which is followed by a new consensus. In our crisis or fourth turning the Democrats and Republicans, or as we call them since the year 2000 "the blue and the red," are in a cold civil war in which progress in our society can no longer occur until the red side is defeated. And the war could get out of hand and get hot. I don't see an alternative, unless the Republicans mellow out and realize the falsehood of their fanaticism, and start to work together with the good guys with some mutual respect.

If the conflict can be contained and be settled politically, perhaps due to demographic shifts, then a new consensus can be achieved without both sides trying to destroy each other. Or, what might happen, as in the 1860 era, the country could divide up, AND/OR the current party system could break down. In a democracy, one party rule is unhealthy, and could degenerate into a corrupt mess or an authoritarian regime. The party in power in a one party state won't be challenged enough to keep itself dedicated and not get spoiled, flabby, corrupt, arrogant, oppressive, incompetent, complacent and lazy. Just as we always need an enemy in a contained conflict to be healthy, in a democracy the party in power must be challenged by an out of power party that gives a voice to potential dissenters to keep it on track and dedicated and ready to fight politically for its real goals and values.

But today it might mean that the Democrats soon become the conservative party and the Greens become the progressive alternative out-party, until it too becomes the dominant party someday. The party on the left will become the party on the right, and the new boss will be like the old boss again. That may be optimistic, but I don't know what becomes of the Republican Party if it keeps on its current course. It not only contains every wrong idea, but is convinced that it is right, and does not respect the other party; and the Democrats increasingly don't respect them in turn. So far in our history we haven't been able to contain the 4T conflicts, at least not entirely.

[Eric the Green]

(11-17-2018, 10:28 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-16-2018, 01:19 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: No, it is just as I said. Reform was made, gerrymandering was not done by the Democrats in CA, AZ and PA, but districts were drawn by independent commissions, which allowed people to vote for their politicians instead of vice versa. You can't tell a reform from a partisan gerrymander, and a legal recount from law-breaking. You vote to keep big money considered as free speech, and thus keep our politicians locked into special interests. 

You forget again that I myself am quite willing to separate from your red states, if that's what the people want to do, and that I would not join or support a war to keep you in the union if you want to leave, and that I might support such a war if it's us blues who want to leave and you reds who want to impose your red regime upon us. How many times do I need to say this, so you don't have to keep repeating your threat to separate from us blues, since I regard it as a promise and not a threat?

I'm already separated from the blues. I live in a purple area.

Except that most suburbs are turning blue now, and will stay blue as long as the red side is as far off the rails as it is now.

In any case, an actual separation won't be able to be made in such detail. It will have to be states breaking away, or at least major contiguous portions of states. Every major city will not be able to separate from its suburbs and/or its rural surrounding areas. Minnesota leans blue, and so might join a confederation of great lakes states with Illinois and Michigan and maybe others if it doesn't want to be part of the new Dixie redneck Heartland. To be part of your new red America, you might have to move to the Dakotas.

Myself, I dream of being part of a new continguous Canada. It would be a strange configuration too, where the Pacific Coast states and Hawaii would join up with the Pacific northwest of Canada, and the states in the industrial mid-west and east bordering on Canada and the Great Lakes over to the mid-Atlantic East Coast all joined to Canada as well. Northern Virginia, once home to Robert E Lee and George Washington, would separate from Southern Virginia and join the new federation, perhaps still headquartered in DC. A cross country trip would have to go all the way up the coasts and then over the top of Montana and the Dakotas to reach the current North-Eastern USA. Alaska is already separated from the other states, so it could stay red or just become independent, and Hawaii might do that as well. In effect the blue states would trade away the red states and get Canada instead.

[Eric the Green]

(11-17-2018, 10:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-17-2018, 07:31 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, you certainly get a pass on that kind of shit if you are running for president in 2016 or appointed for a supreme court position in 2018.

The next one, you should probably have something more substantial than word of mouth and hear say and a victim who was only there for show who couldn't answer specific questions or give us anymore specific details related to her accusation. Me, I think it was something she probably heard and that she gave more credibility to by using her name.

She had great credibility, and after she spoke the Republicans were thinking Kavanaugh might have to withdraw. But she was scheduled in the morning while Kavanaugh was given prime time. The testimony of the victim in such cases of rape or direct physical assault is often the only testimony to go by. In this case it was referred to the Justice Dept under Trump who did not give witnesses the chance to speak. Kavanaugh's friend could not have told the truth without implicating himself, and wasn't given immunity. Even then Mr. Judge would have had to be shamed for what he did. She gave lots of details, and just because the Republicans say she didn't does not make it so. The fact is that Republicans have no ground to stand on when making accusations against Democrats of this kind. They are always hypocrites and are guilty of far worse.

[Classic-Xer]

(11-19-2018, 04:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-17-2018, 10:01 PM)Classic-Xer Wrote:

(11-17-2018, 07:31 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Well, you certainly get a pass on that kind of shit if you are running for president in 2016 or appointed for a supreme court position in 2018.

The next one, you should probably have something more substantial than word of mouth and hear say and a victim who was only there for show who couldn't answer specific questions or give us anymore specific details related to her accusation. Me, I think it was something she probably heard and that she gave more credibility to by using her name.

She had great credibility, and after she spoke the Republicans were thinking Kavanaugh might have to withdraw. But she was scheduled in the morning while Kavanaugh was given prime time. The testimony of the victim in such cases of rape or direct physical assault is often the only testimony to go by. In this case it was referred to the Justice Dept under Trump who did not give witnesses the chance to speak. Kavanaugh's friend could not have told the truth without implicating himself, and wasn't given immunity. Even then Mr. Judge would have had to be shamed for what he did. She gave lots of details, and just because the Republicans say she didn't does not make it so. The fact is that Republicans have no ground to stand on when making accusations against Democrats of this kind. They are always hypocrites and are guilty of far worse.

If she actually had great credibility. Kavanaugh wouldn't be sitting where he is today. I assume the witness's weren't willing to lie for her under oath. Did she seem believable at first, did she cry enough to convince some of the judges and the play by play announcers/ annalists who were watching her testimony and sharing their views and opinions with the audience. Yes, it was quite a spectacle that was loaded with all kinds of blue drama. I'm sure there were some pinko's who thought he should withdraw/ be withdrawn as soon as they heard/learned about her coming in to testify on TV. Pinko Republicans are pretty squeamish and worried about how people feel about them and their precious images and so forth. Well, you can keep them and you can tax them as much as you want to tax them.