US Politics Thread |OT| SAD TRUMP

[Nintex]

Trump lost another attorney, this time it's Ty Cobb and his glorious mustache.

TBH he is replacing him with a really good.

Which says two things to me. Trump might finally have someone that can match Mueller's legal muscle. Trump is so desperate he is willingly walking into the inherent contradiction of seeking Clinton's fixer.

Bespoke:

Bill told his fixer to help Trump because he's afraid the election result will be annulled and he has to live in the White House limiting his access to what Colin Powell referred to as bimbo's.

[agrajag]

Trump's going full Etiolate.

[team filler]

that's his whole gimmick. he's weirdly obsessed with me. i just blocked him and moved on, but i guess he's still continuing his creepy distinguished mentally-challenged stalker schtick

Oh shit he must have really hit a nerve. OK, on a scale of 1 to beaking the scale how fat are you?

[etiolate]

Going to start charging rent to all these people on my nuts.

[agrajag]

I'm in your head rent free bitch

[seagrams hotsauce]

that's his whole gimmick. he's weirdly obsessed with me. i just blocked him and moved on, but i guess he's still continuing his creepy distinguished mentally-challenged stalker schtick

Oh shit he must have really hit a nerve. OK, on a scale of 1 to beaking the scale how fat are you?

i'm pretty sure the only person on the planet who would consider me fat would be TVC. you speds can't even coordinate get with it son

[Phoenix Dark]

The south has flipped back and forth. It's a bit of a misnomer to think southern strategy and boom it went perma Repub. Eisenhower managed LA and FL pre-Goldwater or Nixon, and Carter and Clinton won back southern states.

I think the idea that Kanye can't articulate or fully understand is that there is a dependency system that isn't helping and that the policy has negative impacts on families that we now understand to have a real negative impact on localized society. Being free votes for Dems isn't changing any of that. Sometimes it appears as though black americans were set up in a different game and winning that different game isn't on the same level as the game everyone else is playing. Part of that separation is the dependency system. I also think that the black voter has to stop letting the latest street preacher be their voice. Those people are idiots and exploitive as hell. Kanye is being a bit of one right now, but he's preaching inanity that's the other direction.

I'd argue your points further drive home my own. Two southern son democrats briefly regained the south before losing it again. Outside of that, the south has been solidly republican and post-2010 was perhaps redder than it had ever been. The thing that drove all of this was racial resentment and the feeling that democrats overreached on civil rights. This is where the states right issue emerges.

What do you mean by the dependency system btw, and the political predicament blacks are in.

[etiolate]

The south has flipped back and forth. It's a bit of a misnomer to think southern strategy and boom it went perma Repub. Eisenhower managed LA and FL pre-Goldwater or Nixon, and Carter and Clinton won back southern states.

I think the idea that Kanye can't articulate or fully understand is that there is a dependency system that isn't helping and that the policy has negative impacts on families that we now understand to have a real negative impact on localized society. Being free votes for Dems isn't changing any of that. Sometimes it appears as though black americans were set up in a different game and winning that different game isn't on the same level as the game everyone else is playing. Part of that separation is the dependency system. I also think that the black voter has to stop letting the latest street preacher be their voice. Those people are idiots and exploitive as hell. Kanye is being a bit of one right now, but he's preaching inanity that's the other direction.

I'd argue your points further drive home my own. Two southern son democrats briefly regained the south before losing it again. Outside of that, the south has been solidly republican and post-2010 was perhaps redder than it had ever been. The thing that drove all of this was racial resentment and the feeling that democrats overreached on civil rights. This is where the states right issue emerges.

What do you mean by the dependency system btw, and the political predicament blacks are in.

Government programs. The influence of social change and reward for single mothers has been shown to negatively impact communities. At a certain point, social welfare and social safety nets can become dependency programs that are generational.

Slightly related, but we also have the coastal strategy now. The split on the coasts has been consistent since the first Clinton election. That also melds into the south's perception of the candidates.

[Nola]

The south has flipped back and forth. It's a bit of a misnomer to think southern strategy and boom it went perma Repub. Eisenhower managed LA and FL pre-Goldwater or Nixon, and Carter and Clinton won back southern states.

I think the idea that Kanye can't articulate or fully understand is that there is a dependency system that isn't helping and that the policy has negative impacts on families that we now understand to have a real negative impact on localized society. Being free votes for Dems isn't changing any of that. Sometimes it appears as though black americans were set up in a different game and winning that different game isn't on the same level as the game everyone else is playing. Part of that separation is the dependency system. I also think that the black voter has to stop letting the latest street preacher be their voice. Those people are idiots and exploitive as hell. Kanye is being a bit of one right now, but he's preaching inanity that's the other direction.

I'd argue your points further drive home my own. Two southern son democrats briefly regained the south before losing it again. Outside of that, the south has been solidly republican and post-2010 was perhaps redder than it had ever been. The thing that drove all of this was racial resentment and the feeling that democrats overreached on civil rights. This is where the states right issue emerges.

What do you mean by the dependency system btw, and the political predicament blacks are in.

Government programs. The influence of social change and reward for single mothers has been shown to negatively impact communities. At a certain point, social welfare and social safety nets can become dependency programs that are generational.

Slightly related, but we also have the coastal strategy now. The split on the coasts has been consistent since the first Clinton election. That also melds into the south's perception of the candidates.

Government programs? Define that further please. Are we talking healthcare? Unemployment insurance? Welfare? Disability? Social Security?

And what is your evidence, specifically?

But I'm gonna tell you from the onset, unless you have figured out a solution to the business cycle and regulating the private market in a way to guarantee a living wage plus guaranteeing full employment, social safety nets are a necessity for a modern advanced society that wishes to have decent level of QOL. Hell, when it comes to healthcare and education, that probably still isn't enough. So if all you have is a basket of talking points and cherry picked evidence with no alternative solutions to dealing with the underlying problems, the value of your opinion is gonna end up being next to worthless.

[curly]

The influence of social change and reward for single mothers has been shown to negatively impact communities

breh do you read what you write before you hit post? this is gibberish, learn how to construct a sentence

[Oblivion]

et, do you think things like food stamps cause more harm to the black community than things like the drug war, police brutality, and just dealing with the criminal justice system in general? That's also ignoring the legacy of things like redlining and such.

[etiolate]

The drug war hurts. The impact of missing fathers hurts. It's not a zero sum game. Lessening prison population by decriminalizing certain drugs and correcting missing parents aren't separate issues.

[Nola]

et, do you think things like food stamps cause more harm to the black community than things like the drug war, police brutality, and just dealing with the criminal justice system in general? That's also ignoring the legacy of things like redlining and such.

? We can't even use legacy yet. That shits still going on.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/mississippi-bank-accused-of-mortgage-redlining-1467242094
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-wells-lending-settlement/wells-fargo-to-pay-175-million-in-race-discrimination-probe-idUSBRE86B0V220120712
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2015/09/redlining-is-alive-and-welland-evolving/407497/

[Nola]

The drug war hurts. The impact of missing fathers hurts. It's not a zero sum game. Lessening prison population by decriminalizing certain drugs and correcting missing parents aren't separate issues.

In the words of you, quit being a weasel.

Clarify your thoughts and expand into specifics.

What programs are doing this? What is the evidence? What is your alternative solution to dealing with the underlying issues those programs aim to solve? You've made two sets of statements twice without any supporting evidence.

[Oblivion]

The drug war hurts. The impact of missing fathers hurts. It's not a zero sum game. Lessening prison population by decriminalizing certain drugs and correcting missing parents aren't separate issues.

Missing parents as a result of them being imprisoned by things like the drug war seems to be connected issues.

[Coitus]

The missing black father cliche is largely a myth like the welfare queen.

[zomgee]

Ok so I definitely fucked her, and Cohen paid her, but I paid Cohen back, now can we just drop it?

And a nation is healed once again.

[thehunter116]

[Mandark]

fwiw Scandinavian countries have similar rates of single-mother families, and those households only have ~1/5th the poverty rate of those in the US (the same is true comparing two-parent households across those countries).

Also it would be odd if public benefits was a primary driver of poverty in the US, since we have a notoriously stingy welfare state compared to other developed countries.

[thehunter116]

https://twitter.com/pbump/status/991880989403107330?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fs9e.github.io%2Fiframe%2Ftwitter.min.html%23991880989403107330

Jesus they suck.

[Nola]

Who needs prosecutors with lawyers like these?

[Nola]

fwiw Scandinavian countries have similar rates of single-mother families, and those households only have ~1/5th the poverty rate of those in the US (the same is true comparing two-parent households across those countries).

Also it would be odd if public benefits was a primary driver of poverty in the US, since we have a notoriously stingy welfare state compared to other developed countries.

Yep, and studies done here back up the sort of things we see abroad. I.E. there doesn't seem to be any correlation and welfare is not making people more lazy either.

- From 1995 using state data amongst various welfare reforms to determine if there is any effect on welfare and increased single mother households

The results show that after controlling for individual effects, there is no evidence that welfare contributes to increasing propensities to form female headed households for either whites or blacks. Further, the results suggest that welfare-induced migration among blacks leads to an upward bias in the estimated welfare effect in previous studies.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w5149.pdf



- From 2010 looking at a similar hypothesis:

Evidence provided is inconsistent with the hypothesis that rising welfare expenditures generates an increase in the number of female-headed households. More generally, the results suggest that public policies which attempt to reduce the numbers of female-headed households via a reduction in AFDC benefits or a tightening of eligibility requirements are unlikely to be successful.

- From MIT in 2015 on whether welfare discourages work:

We re-analyze the data from 7 randomized controlled trials of government-run cash transfer programs in six developing countries throughout the world, and find no systematic evidence that cash transfer programs discourage work.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2703447

[jorma]

Looking from the outside i'd say that a primary driver for poverty is the prevalence of full time jobs that don't provide a living wage. I read somewhere that nearly 50 percent of americans work for 15 dollars/hour or less. That might have been fake news though, not sure.

But yikes if true. Yikes if anywhere near true.

[Nola]

Looking from the outside i'd say that a primary driver for poverty is the prevalence of full time jobs that don't provide a living wage. I read somewhere that nearly 50 percent of americans work for 15 dollars/hour or less. That might have been fake news though, not sure.

But yikes if true. Yikes if anywhere near true.

No that is about right from what I have seen.


The right(and the dummies that parrot their logic) in this country(and most countries for that matter) has this paradoxical view that goes welfare and the social safety net are the real causes of poverty in this country. It saps a persons pioneering spirit and makes them dependent on the government so they don't seek work. At the same time advocating how we need to remove labor protections and cap or remove the minimum wage because it forces too high of a burden on employers.

You can't pay your bills so you are on welfare...So the solution is somehow to cut welfare programs and put downward pressure on wages?? So now you have even less money to survive and little to no safety net if the business cycle turns over. It's the most backasswards bullshit. Though it makes perfect sense when you recognize the Republican party in this country is really just in it for the rich. So say whatever it takes to get enough votes to get tax cuts for the wealthy and maximize the system to their benefit.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

....Oh and then wait for them to complain about crime and how we need to shift even more social services money to policing the streets of inner cities because drugs and poverty are ravaging communities. Maybe get rid of sex education. Re-segregate blacks and whites by drawing new county lines around white communities which will decrease graduation rates in impoverished areas. Follow that up by blaming whats left of the welfare programs for why these communities have single-mother households. Then use that as further evidence to cut welfare programs. Then you can pass some tax cuts and make a speech about how the Republican party is trying to break you from the Democratic plantation and get Kanye to tweet about it.

[close]

[Oblivion]

What I wanna know is why does more welfare cause Black people in particular to commit more crimes and abandon their families?

edit: I mean, to give the Righties their due credit, they do seem to think welfare is bad for people of all races, but the issue of the increase in crime specifically seems to be a phenomenon limited to the blahs. Why is that?

[Mandark]

It's tough to make the ol' Cycle of Dependency argument for Americans, especially after welfare reform. There's very little in the way of direct cash transfers to the poor; the total "spent" on EITC is something like ten times as much as direct assistance from TANF, and that's directly tied to employment.

Even if you find the dependency cycle credible in theory, saying it's the root cause of poverty/unemployment in the US, in 2018? Nah.

[Nola]

Looking from the outside i'd say that a primary driver for poverty is the prevalence of full time jobs that don't provide a living wage.

As someone who makes $1200 a month, I wouldn't have a job if the minimum wage was any higher.

Why do you say that?

[Nola]

Because there are jobs that aren't worth a living wage.

I guess my point was more about the effect a shift in the minimum wage may or may not have for you.

Large shifts certainly can create shocks to employment, but a small rise probably isn’t going to affect aggregate unemployment was gonna be my point. Most relative evidence I’ve seen tends to show that while jobs below the new minimum do see losses, new jobs at and above the new minimum essentially offset them. Creating a new equilibrium that is on the whole a net gain.

....Seattle being the outlier people like to point to recently.



Edit: just saw your edit. You’remeaning more of a leap. I guess still relevent and all, but yeah, I hear you on that. A big jump is where things get iffy.

[Trent Dole]

https://twitter.com/BettyBowers/status/991684150166990848

[jorma]

Because there are jobs that aren't worth a living wage.

like?

[Nola]

Yeah if anyone is interested, Trump Inc. a podcast by Propublica I recently found, that has been looking into Trump’s business activity, did an episode on Cohen and they go into his background. It’s pretty wild. It touches on a lot of the Rolling Stone reported stuff like his possible loose ties to the Russian mob and his proximity to a major car and medical insurance scam.

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-inc-podcast-michael-cohen

[chronovore]

This might've been from earlier in this thread:
http://amp.nymag.com/selectall/2018/04/malcolm-harris-on-glitch-capitalism-and-ai-logic.html

Fav quote: "Donald Trump, who seems to be speedrunning American democracy, is like a living, breathing cheat code, proceeding through life by shortcuts alone."

[Optimus]

This is where you lose the plot to me. The alt-right(or Trump conservatives, which are basically just Republicans) are not useful idiots, they are just idiots. They co-opt terms but completely subvert their meaning.

Anti-globalism? It's not that they have some concept of economic justice they wish to advance, looking to close the major problem of growing wealth inequality or advance the interests of labor or the common man(even a superficial look at Trump's governing on things like executive orders on labor protections and his party's tax bill cements this), its just a flashy term for good old fashioned nativism to rile up their base. The deep state? It's been used literally like rhetoric borrowed from autocrats like Putin and Erdogan. It's populist language used to justify self-serving cronyism and power grabs, it has nothing to do with questions about institutional corruption or overreach, just rhetorical coverage to uproot institutions that stand as impediments to their authoritarian tendencies. In over a year, not once has Trump tried to advance any legislation that attempts to positively address structural issues in the political system or institutions. Just scandal after scandal and rampant cronyism. That right there should be the tell. Anti-corporate media? Give me a fucking break. The only reason there is any issue with the press on the right is because their leader has no respect for the ideals he is charged with protecting and wishes to eliminate adversarial voices that will inform the public on his incompetence and malfeasance. The opposite of what you claim your ideals to be. If the current corporate media is bad, you have your work cut out for me to explain how the right has the answers on that.

As for healthcare, you don't even make sense. Even Bernie can recognize that you don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Obamacare by any margin made healthcare more accessible and improved the system. Was it an ideal? Absolutely not. And I would gladly discuss this with you to any level of surgical depth you are capable of handling. But at the end of the day this is not an autocracy and Obama can't force Joe Lieberman to accept the public option or more generous subsidies. Obama can't overrule the courts that struck down a minor typo to refuse Medicaid expansion money, or stop Marco Rubio and Republicans from sabotaging the risk corridors and undermining the non-profit co-ops that were intended to inject additional market competition and make coverage more affordable. Either way, on any of those topics, the left, even the evil establishment left, is far closer to those ideals than the alt right. Yet you seem to throw almost all your hate at them while doing contortionist acts to apologize or blind yourself to the alt-right's vastly more disagreeable stances on every issue you claim to hold dear.

...Except for your hatred of social justice and feminism. There you seem to have a true common cause. One thats beyond using the same language, that does seem to be of substance.

So this all gets me back to the central point, despite all those vast sets of differences, you seem to almost exclusively organize around the alt-right and anti-liberalism with a high level of frequency, while the only thing you seem to truly have shared beliefs on are hating social justice advocates and feminism. Which certainly suggests that seems to be an overruling quality for you. So I would say again, identity over policy? Or were you really that superficially unaware of the context in which the alt-right's language exists in?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

As for the insistence on standing behind Russian propaganda. Which I will point out again, in your attempt to show that Wolf Blitzer is a deep-state war-for-profit shill, you literally quoted a state propaganda outlet attempting to misrepresent a situation to propagandize for their authoritarian employer so as to benefit their war-profit and geopolitical military interests in the Middle East. Even you need to laugh at the absurdity on that one pal.

[close]

While you definitely have a point about the alt-right subverting the meaning of certain terms it's still actually refreshing to have a mainstream group in this goddamn country that despises the establishment, maybe that will eventually evolve to something useful. The deep state for the record is a fact and I don't give a flying fuck if Putin or fucking Stalin was using the term.

ACA was basically the Heritage Foundations's plan to keep the HMO's pockets full while saving a collapsing health care system. It's a solution but not a solution for the people or the public, it's solution for the rich fucks that exploit human misery and suffering, it's a solution for health care "providers". Obama had  supermajority for 6 months, this was a classic Democratic tactic where they pretend to be incompetent when they're even near progressive legislation but go full-on authoritarian when it's time to support war, "free" trade agreements, and neoliberal policy in general.

My hatred for social justice warriors and modern feministm is perfectly justified. They consistently ignore scientific facts, numbers and logic to create unnecessary animosity amongst the middle class. Tell me which one of the great feminist causes you support? Manspreading, the wage gap myth, the importance of made up pronouns, the fetishization of Islam, the pink tax bullshit, sexist videogame characters, their rape hysteria even though all statistics (actual statistics not statistics made up by gender studies lunatics) show that numbers are decreasing significantly, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, sexist movies? Which ones?

The fact that I happen to agree once in a while with the alt-right and very rarely with liberals only indicates how pro-status quo liberals have become. You literally accuse people who don't trust media controlled by the ruling class of being Russian shills. And you expect me to be on your side? Never.

And Wolf Blitzer is a moron that says what he was told to say like most corporate media "journalists".

[VomKriege]

I mean we have Starbucks employees despite having a minimum wage, those discussions always seems really weird from here. I'd argue the shittiest jobs are among the more resilient because they are menial yet absolutely essential. Automation is gonna happen regardless if it must, not having a wage minimum is basically delaying the inevitable and if it reaches that scope we'll have bigger issues to address than just the lumpenproletariat anyway.

[jorma]

like?

I know it's easy for you to ask this question because you make so much money that you never even think about how much your groceries cost but ringing up food at the grocery store is an example of a job that requires such little skill that offering a living wage for it is ridiculous.

It's easy for me to ask the question sure, but not because i've got money, it's because we don't have those jobs where i live. If the job is worth less than the monthly welfare check i'd get were i broke and without a job (as i have been), the job doesn't get done. I think you've got some serious Stockholm Syndrome if you think that this job is staving off poverty rather than perpetuating it.

And working the cash register at starbucks is absolutely worth a living wage ffs.

[kingv]

I guess my point was more about the effect a shift in the minimum wage may or may not have for you.

Large shifts certainly can create shocks to employment, but a small rise probably isn’t going to affect aggregate unemployment was gonna be my point. Most relative evidence I’ve seen tends to show that while jobs below the new minimum do see losses, new jobs at and above the new minimum essentially offset them. Creating a new equilibrium that is on the whole a net gain.

....Seattle being the outlier people like to point to recently.



Edit: just saw your edit. You’remeaning more of a leap. I guess still relevent and all, but yeah, I hear you on that. A big jump is where things get iffy.

There are a lot of jobs which are really worthless. Starbucks employees come to mind. I don't mind raising the minimum wage (merely believing in a minimum wage at all implies you should be willing to raise it) but it's a balancing act of making sure there are enough jobs for everyone who truly has no skills but is still an abled body person willing to work. A corollary of this is that the right way to raise the minimum wage is to invest very heavily in education (and reeducation) and track the number of truly unskilled people. The farther down it goes, the higher the minimum wage can be.

I just remember this debate from two years ago and the consensus among left leaning economists seemed to be that $12.50 was good but $15 might be too high. I have no frame of reference for this other than I make $7.35 so I couldn't imagine a world where the federal minimum goes up to $12.50 and my job isn't the very first to go.

Didn't you mention that you have skill in R and statistics? You should be easily able to triple that, even if with little experience.

I still think even low-skilled jobs should make about $15. Strong believer that if you work 40 hours a week, you should be able to afford the basic necessities of life, even if you are picking strawberries or digging ditches.

[TakingBackSunday]

My hatred for social justice warriors and modern feministm is perfectly justified. They consistently ignore scientific facts, numbers and logic to create unnecessary animosity amongst the middle class. Tell me which one of the great feminist causes you support? Manspreading, the wage gap myth, the importance of made up pronouns, the fetishization of Islam, the pink tax bullshit, sexist videogame characters, their rape hysteria even though all statistics (actual statistics not statistics made up by gender studies lunatics) show that numbers are decreasing significantly, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, sexist movies? Which ones?

I don't know how to even process this

[Joe Molotov]

Because there are jobs that aren't worth a living wage.

Allow me to offer a counter-argument:

[TakingBackSunday]

This is where you lose the plot to me. The alt-right(or Trump conservatives, which are basically just Republicans) are not useful idiots, they are just idiots. They co-opt terms but completely subvert their meaning.

Anti-globalism? It's not that they have some concept of economic justice they wish to advance, looking to close the major problem of growing wealth inequality or advance the interests of labor or the common man(even a superficial look at Trump's governing on things like executive orders on labor protections and his party's tax bill cements this), its just a flashy term for good old fashioned nativism to rile up their base. The deep state? It's been used literally like rhetoric borrowed from autocrats like Putin and Erdogan. It's populist language used to justify self-serving cronyism and power grabs, it has nothing to do with questions about institutional corruption or overreach, just rhetorical coverage to uproot institutions that stand as impediments to their authoritarian tendencies. In over a year, not once has Trump tried to advance any legislation that attempts to positively address structural issues in the political system or institutions. Just scandal after scandal and rampant cronyism. That right there should be the tell. Anti-corporate media? Give me a fucking break. The only reason there is any issue with the press on the right is because their leader has no respect for the ideals he is charged with protecting and wishes to eliminate adversarial voices that will inform the public on his incompetence and malfeasance. The opposite of what you claim your ideals to be. If the current corporate media is bad, you have your work cut out for me to explain how the right has the answers on that.

As for healthcare, you don't even make sense. Even Bernie can recognize that you don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Obamacare by any margin made healthcare more accessible and improved the system. Was it an ideal? Absolutely not. And I would gladly discuss this with you to any level of surgical depth you are capable of handling. But at the end of the day this is not an autocracy and Obama can't force Joe Lieberman to accept the public option or more generous subsidies. Obama can't overrule the courts that struck down a minor typo to refuse Medicaid expansion money, or stop Marco Rubio and Republicans from sabotaging the risk corridors and undermining the non-profit co-ops that were intended to inject additional market competition and make coverage more affordable. Either way, on any of those topics, the left, even the evil establishment left, is far closer to those ideals than the alt right. Yet you seem to throw almost all your hate at them while doing contortionist acts to apologize or blind yourself to the alt-right's vastly more disagreeable stances on every issue you claim to hold dear.

...Except for your hatred of social justice and feminism. There you seem to have a true common cause. One thats beyond using the same language, that does seem to be of substance.

So this all gets me back to the central point, despite all those vast sets of differences, you seem to almost exclusively organize around the alt-right and anti-liberalism with a high level of frequency, while the only thing you seem to truly have shared beliefs on are hating social justice advocates and feminism. Which certainly suggests that seems to be an overruling quality for you. So I would say again, identity over policy? Or were you really that superficially unaware of the context in which the alt-right's language exists in?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

As for the insistence on standing behind Russian propaganda. Which I will point out again, in your attempt to show that Wolf Blitzer is a deep-state war-for-profit shill, you literally quoted a state propaganda outlet attempting to misrepresent a situation to propagandize for their authoritarian employer so as to benefit their war-profit and geopolitical military interests in the Middle East. Even you need to laugh at the absurdity on that one pal.

[close]

While you definitely have a point about the alt-right subverting the meaning of certain terms it's still actually refreshing to have a mainstream group in this goddamn country that despises the establishment, maybe that will eventually evolve to something useful. The deep state for the record is a fact and I don't give a flying fuck if Putin or fucking Stalin was using the term.

ACA was basically the Heritage Foundations's plan to keep the HMO's pockets full while saving a collapsing health care system. It's a solution but not a solution for the people or the public, it's solution for the rich fucks that exploit human misery and suffering, it's a solution for health care "providers". Obama had  supermajority for 6 months, this was a classic Democratic tactic where they pretend to be incompetent when they're even near progressive legislation but go full-on authoritarian when it's time to support war, "free" trade agreements, and neoliberal policy in general.

My hatred for social justice warriors and modern feministm is perfectly justified. They consistently ignore scientific facts, numbers and logic to create unnecessary animosity amongst the middle class. Tell me which one of the great feminist causes you support? Manspreading, the wage gap myth, the importance of made up pronouns, the fetishization of Islam, the pink tax bullshit, sexist videogame characters, their rape hysteria even though all statistics (actual statistics not statistics made up by gender studies lunatics) show that numbers are decreasing significantly, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, sexist movies? Which ones?

The fact that I happen to agree once in a while with the alt-right and very rarely with liberals only indicates how pro-status quo liberals have become. You literally accuse people who don't trust media controlled by the ruling class of being Russian shills. And you expect me to be on your side? Never.

And Wolf Blitzer is a moron that says what he was told to say like most corporate media "journalists".

I just have to attempt to make sense of this.

I think it's incredibly dangerous to encourage and find refreshment in a group of people that hate the "establishment," as you call it, especially when said people are responsible for white supremacy rallies nation-wide, doxxing of innocent people, incredibly offensive language towards any group of people that AREN'T white and male, and facilitators of proven, and I do mean 100% proven, falsehoods.  Some falsehoods that you appear to believe, for some reason.  Cynicism in the establishment and action against it, particularly our current government and societal structure, is NOT coming from these alt-righters.  It's coming from local grassroots progressives, who you appear to claim to be a part of.  Alt-right groups are against the establishment when the establishment is empowering people outside of their own personal circles – that's not happening anymore, they "won" and are reaping the spoils of war.  The "deep state" is "real" in the sense that all modern societies have a complex tapestry of bureaucrats, politicians, policy-makers, and high-profile citizens.  The antagonistic nature towards a developed society, even with its cronyism and corruption, is sleight of hand used by authoritative totalitarians whose attacks do far more harm to the general public than actually attempting to iterate and improve society with the powers dictated to those in necessary positions. It's helping to centralize all power to one person or body and removing all rights and freedoms of the populace.  This is snake-oil salesmanship, and you're buying it.

I wanna see the fucking receipts on the whole ACA nonsense.  You completely avoided all of Nola's illustration as to what was within Obama's power regarding the ACA, and you're failing to point the blame towards the conservative party in ensuring the legislation was limp-dicked in its atttempt to provide coverage for many more Americans.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/may/04/donald-trump/trumps-false-claim-dems-want-billions-go-insurance/

Yes, it's not a great healthcare solution.  But it still ensured millions more Americans received coverage.  Do not blame Obama or the whole of the Democratic party for a few DINOs who, and let me be clear, went against the party platform to tank the original health care proposal.

Your hatred for "Social Studies Warriors" and feminists is hypocritical considering you are choosing to focus all of your venom and hatred on a group of extremists while simultaneously "finding it refreshing" for a separate group of extremists that suffer from the same fallacies that you try to indict the former group with.  The wage gap "myth" is not a myth, just a figure that both the left and right fundamentally do not spend the time to explore.

http://www.politifact.com/florida/statements/2017/mar/14/patricia-farley/taking-closer-look-florida-democrats-claims-about-/

On the whole, women DO earn less than men, and particularly white men.  A number of factors play into this, to claim that it is a myth that women don't get paid equally to men is lazy work on your part, and proof enough that I know you don't give a shit about women.

I'm not even going to get into the rest of your stock 4chan talking points because its all steeped in homophobia, sexism, and racism.  I will say, however, that extremism from all sides and the adherence to talking points that aren't well-researched is toxic all around, including hardcore Social Studies Warriors and "feminists."  But please do not blur the lines between genuine activists and trolls with a severe lack of awareness.

You are an angry, angry man who has become indoctrinated with narratives that instill anger and resentment.  You place blame in those who aren't entirely blameless but aren't the main source of this country's issues, and you knowingly ignore the fallacies and hypocrisy in your arguments.  You are not a companion or fellow partner in progressive societal advancements – you are a tool being used by those who wish to burn those advancements to the ground. 

edit: accidentally submitted my post before I was finished

[seagrams hotsauce]

What specifically makes Starbucks employees worthless compared to every other service industry job out there?

[seagrams hotsauce]

Worthless how? Who do you expect to cook your food or stock shelves?

[Optimus]

fuck it, he replied properly

[seagrams hotsauce]

also can you guys stop quoting sloptimus? not really interested in scrolling past his latest distinguished mentally-challenged fellow manifestos

[seagrams hotsauce]

Ok, you misunderstand what I mean. Water is similarly vital to the function of society but worth next to nothing.

Okay, I'm confused - what point are you trying to convey here?

[seagrams hotsauce]

The same tired point everyone makes about minimum wage, which is that some jobs simply are not worth that salary, no matter how necessary they are or how hard they are. The value of labor is based on its scarcity, that's all.

I'm still confused. You're saying that these jobs are necessary and difficult, and that the people doing them don't deserve to be paid enough to live? Why?

[seagrams hotsauce]

Seems like a great way to incentivize immigrant slave labor tbh

[Optimus]

This is where you lose the plot to me. The alt-right(or Trump conservatives, which are basically just Republicans) are not useful idiots, they are just idiots. They co-opt terms but completely subvert their meaning.

Anti-globalism? It's not that they have some concept of economic justice they wish to advance, looking to close the major problem of growing wealth inequality or advance the interests of labor or the common man(even a superficial look at Trump's governing on things like executive orders on labor protections and his party's tax bill cements this), its just a flashy term for good old fashioned nativism to rile up their base. The deep state? It's been used literally like rhetoric borrowed from autocrats like Putin and Erdogan. It's populist language used to justify self-serving cronyism and power grabs, it has nothing to do with questions about institutional corruption or overreach, just rhetorical coverage to uproot institutions that stand as impediments to their authoritarian tendencies. In over a year, not once has Trump tried to advance any legislation that attempts to positively address structural issues in the political system or institutions. Just scandal after scandal and rampant cronyism. That right there should be the tell. Anti-corporate media? Give me a fucking break. The only reason there is any issue with the press on the right is because their leader has no respect for the ideals he is charged with protecting and wishes to eliminate adversarial voices that will inform the public on his incompetence and malfeasance. The opposite of what you claim your ideals to be. If the current corporate media is bad, you have your work cut out for me to explain how the right has the answers on that.

As for healthcare, you don't even make sense. Even Bernie can recognize that you don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Obamacare by any margin made healthcare more accessible and improved the system. Was it an ideal? Absolutely not. And I would gladly discuss this with you to any level of surgical depth you are capable of handling. But at the end of the day this is not an autocracy and Obama can't force Joe Lieberman to accept the public option or more generous subsidies. Obama can't overrule the courts that struck down a minor typo to refuse Medicaid expansion money, or stop Marco Rubio and Republicans from sabotaging the risk corridors and undermining the non-profit co-ops that were intended to inject additional market competition and make coverage more affordable. Either way, on any of those topics, the left, even the evil establishment left, is far closer to those ideals than the alt right. Yet you seem to throw almost all your hate at them while doing contortionist acts to apologize or blind yourself to the alt-right's vastly more disagreeable stances on every issue you claim to hold dear.

...Except for your hatred of social justice and feminism. There you seem to have a true common cause. One thats beyond using the same language, that does seem to be of substance.

So this all gets me back to the central point, despite all those vast sets of differences, you seem to almost exclusively organize around the alt-right and anti-liberalism with a high level of frequency, while the only thing you seem to truly have shared beliefs on are hating social justice advocates and feminism. Which certainly suggests that seems to be an overruling quality for you. So I would say again, identity over policy? Or were you really that superficially unaware of the context in which the alt-right's language exists in?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

As for the insistence on standing behind Russian propaganda. Which I will point out again, in your attempt to show that Wolf Blitzer is a deep-state war-for-profit shill, you literally quoted a state propaganda outlet attempting to misrepresent a situation to propagandize for their authoritarian employer so as to benefit their war-profit and geopolitical military interests in the Middle East. Even you need to laugh at the absurdity on that one pal.

[close]

While you definitely have a point about the alt-right subverting the meaning of certain terms it's still actually refreshing to have a mainstream group in this goddamn country that despises the establishment, maybe that will eventually evolve to something useful. The deep state for the record is a fact and I don't give a flying fuck if Putin or fucking Stalin was using the term.

ACA was basically the Heritage Foundations's plan to keep the HMO's pockets full while saving a collapsing health care system. It's a solution but not a solution for the people or the public, it's solution for the rich fucks that exploit human misery and suffering, it's a solution for health care "providers". Obama had  supermajority for 6 months, this was a classic Democratic tactic where they pretend to be incompetent when they're even near progressive legislation but go full-on authoritarian when it's time to support war, "free" trade agreements, and neoliberal policy in general.

My hatred for social justice warriors and modern feministm is perfectly justified. They consistently ignore scientific facts, numbers and logic to create unnecessary animosity amongst the middle class. Tell me which one of the great feminist causes you support? Manspreading, the wage gap myth, the importance of made up pronouns, the fetishization of Islam, the pink tax bullshit, sexist videogame characters, their rape hysteria even though all statistics (actual statistics not statistics made up by gender studies lunatics) show that numbers are decreasing significantly, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, sexist movies? Which ones?

The fact that I happen to agree once in a while with the alt-right and very rarely with liberals only indicates how pro-status quo liberals have become. You literally accuse people who don't trust media controlled by the ruling class of being Russian shills. And you expect me to be on your side? Never.

And Wolf Blitzer is a moron that says what he was told to say like most corporate media "journalists".

I just have to attempt to make sense of this.

1) I think it's incredibly dangerous to encourage and find refreshment in a group of people that hate the "establishment," as you call it, especially when said people are responsible for white supremacy rallies nation-wide, doxxing of innocent people, incredibly offensive language towards any group of people that AREN'T white and male, and facilitators of proven, and I do mean 100% proven, falsehoods.  Some falsehoods that you appear to believe, for some reason.  Cynicism in the establishment and action against it, particularly our current government and societal structure, is NOT coming from these alt-righters.  It's coming from local grassroots progressives, who you appear to claim to be a part of.  Alt-right groups are against the establishment when the establishment is empowering people outside of their own personal circles – that's not happening anymore, they "won" and are reaping the spoils of war.  The "deep state" is "real" in the sense that all modern societies have a complex tapestry of bureaucrats, politicians, policy-makers, and high-profile citizens.  The antagonistic nature towards a developed society, even with its cronyism and corruption, is sleight of hand used by authoritative totalitarians whose attacks do far more harm to the general public than actually attempting to iterate and improve society with the powers dictated to those in necessary positions. It's helping to centralize all power to one person or body and removing all rights and freedoms of the populace.  This is snake-oil salesmanship, and you're buying it.

I wanna see the fucking receipts on the whole ACA nonsense.  You completely avoided all of Nola's illustration as to what was within Obama's power regarding the ACA, and you're failing to point the blame towards the conservative party in ensuring the legislation was limp-dicked in its atttempt to provide coverage for many more Americans.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/may/04/donald-trump/trumps-false-claim-dems-want-billions-go-insurance/

Yes, it's not a great healthcare solution.  But it still ensured millions more Americans received coverage.  Do not blame Obama or the whole of the Democratic party for a few DINOs who, and let me be clear, went against the party platform to tank the original health care proposal.

Your hatred for "Social Studies Warriors" and feminists is hypocritical considering you are choosing to focus all of your venom and hatred on a group of extremists while simultaneously "finding it refreshing" for a separate group of extremists that suffer from the same fallacies that you try to indict the former group with.

First of all, not all alt-right is white supremacists, stop whitewashing white supremacists by comparing them to millions of people with different ideologies that united behind whatever the fuck alt-right it. As etiolate pointed out the best description for the alt-right is that it's an ugly counter-culture against the established politically correct system that creates millions of contrarians enraged against it. People who suffer don't want to be told they're privileged by pretentious liberal college brats and Hollywood dipshits because of their race, men don't want to be told there's something toxic in their masculinity, working class people don't want to be told how to talk and how to behave by the morality police backed by corporate media, hell even many women don't want to be told how to act and what to think in order not to be viewed as a victim.  The backlash was inevitable was was bound to be ugly, anyone with half a brain expected the alt-right years ago. So yeah to your last sentence, you must be really out of touch with reality if you think these distinguished mentally-challenged fellows haven't gone mainstream years ago and they're just a small group of extremists.

The American deep state has supported perpetual war for decades, has ruined entire regions on this planet, has sustained and enlarged the military industrial complex like a tumor in this country and waged war against Trump with obvious smear campaigns (still waiting on those evidence on golden showers, a rumor spread by a sketchy organization that was paid by various third parties to create it) and McCarthyist panic. The fact is that Trump is dirty as hell but he's not the only one, all these top scumbags are, Clinton for example was taking far bigger bribes from Russian oligarchs, the reason why they focused on him was because he wasn't the ruling class' chosen one.

ACA with the exception of a few favorable clauses like the aforementioned ban on preexisting conditions is indeed the Heritage Foundation's plan, ever the liberal "fact checking" rags partially admit it.

[seagrams hotsauce]

yeesh libertarians are so weird. at least you're a lot less of a shithead about it than most of em though

[Optimus]

also can you guys stop quoting sloptimus? not really interested in scrolling past his latest distinguished mentally-challenged fellow manifestos

Get fucked obsessive fatso.

[seagrams hotsauce]

lol where is this fatso stuff coming from

are you an bulimic 13 year old girl

[Optimus]

lol where is this fatso stuff coming from

are you an bulimic 13 year old girl

I mean, you really got triggered by Assimilate making fun of your appearance so I took a stab in the dark. Either you're hilariously overweight or hilariously ugly. Which one is it?

[seagrams hotsauce]

i don't really care, it's just kinda creepy that two anonymous teenage boys obsess about how i look because their feelings get hurt very very easily

[Optimus]

i don't really care, it's just kinda creepy that two anonymous teenage boys obsess about how i look because their feeling get hurt very very easily

Says the stalkerish lunatic that has been following me all around the forum with nothing but insults and obnoxious accusations. Go eat battery acid you hypocritical fat fuck.

[seagrams hotsauce]

another day, another embolism induced in little floptimus. like shootin fish in a barrel

[Optimus]

Another day, another whiny fat bitch put in its place.

[seagrams hotsauce]

yeesh libertarians are so weird. at least you're a lot less of a shithead about it than most of em though

I'm left leaning. I believe in high taxes, national programs, public sector, unions (...sometimes), etc. But the living wage discussion is unscientific. It's a feel good proclamation, not a real attempt to reconcile the worth of labor with the pulverizing experience that is poverty.

i agree that there's probably a solution more effective and nuanced than a flat minimum wage, but i think 'let employers set their price and people will fill in the blanks of their own free will' gives employers far too much credit in terms of how ethically they treat people who work for them. That's kind of how we wound up with child labor laws, yknow

[Optimus]

Shocking stuff

https://twitter.com/HootHootBerns/status/992005058593218561

[Coitus]

Not an inter-party power struggle.  Those never happen.  Bill Clinton, once again doing the bidding of the neoliberal deep state jewspiracy.

[Steve Contra]

Ok, you misunderstand what I mean. Water is similarly vital to the function of society but worth next to nothing.

Water is highly subsidized, regulated, and engineered to get it to serve the function it does.

[TakingBackSunday]

This is where you lose the plot to me. The alt-right(or Trump conservatives, which are basically just Republicans) are not useful idiots, they are just idiots. They co-opt terms but completely subvert their meaning.

Anti-globalism? It's not that they have some concept of economic justice they wish to advance, looking to close the major problem of growing wealth inequality or advance the interests of labor or the common man(even a superficial look at Trump's governing on things like executive orders on labor protections and his party's tax bill cements this), its just a flashy term for good old fashioned nativism to rile up their base. The deep state? It's been used literally like rhetoric borrowed from autocrats like Putin and Erdogan. It's populist language used to justify self-serving cronyism and power grabs, it has nothing to do with questions about institutional corruption or overreach, just rhetorical coverage to uproot institutions that stand as impediments to their authoritarian tendencies. In over a year, not once has Trump tried to advance any legislation that attempts to positively address structural issues in the political system or institutions. Just scandal after scandal and rampant cronyism. That right there should be the tell. Anti-corporate media? Give me a fucking break. The only reason there is any issue with the press on the right is because their leader has no respect for the ideals he is charged with protecting and wishes to eliminate adversarial voices that will inform the public on his incompetence and malfeasance. The opposite of what you claim your ideals to be. If the current corporate media is bad, you have your work cut out for me to explain how the right has the answers on that.

As for healthcare, you don't even make sense. Even Bernie can recognize that you don't make the perfect the enemy of the good. Obamacare by any margin made healthcare more accessible and improved the system. Was it an ideal? Absolutely not. And I would gladly discuss this with you to any level of surgical depth you are capable of handling. But at the end of the day this is not an autocracy and Obama can't force Joe Lieberman to accept the public option or more generous subsidies. Obama can't overrule the courts that struck down a minor typo to refuse Medicaid expansion money, or stop Marco Rubio and Republicans from sabotaging the risk corridors and undermining the non-profit co-ops that were intended to inject additional market competition and make coverage more affordable. Either way, on any of those topics, the left, even the evil establishment left, is far closer to those ideals than the alt right. Yet you seem to throw almost all your hate at them while doing contortionist acts to apologize or blind yourself to the alt-right's vastly more disagreeable stances on every issue you claim to hold dear.

...Except for your hatred of social justice and feminism. There you seem to have a true common cause. One thats beyond using the same language, that does seem to be of substance.

So this all gets me back to the central point, despite all those vast sets of differences, you seem to almost exclusively organize around the alt-right and anti-liberalism with a high level of frequency, while the only thing you seem to truly have shared beliefs on are hating social justice advocates and feminism. Which certainly suggests that seems to be an overruling quality for you. So I would say again, identity over policy? Or were you really that superficially unaware of the context in which the alt-right's language exists in?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

As for the insistence on standing behind Russian propaganda. Which I will point out again, in your attempt to show that Wolf Blitzer is a deep-state war-for-profit shill, you literally quoted a state propaganda outlet attempting to misrepresent a situation to propagandize for their authoritarian employer so as to benefit their war-profit and geopolitical military interests in the Middle East. Even you need to laugh at the absurdity on that one pal.

[close]

While you definitely have a point about the alt-right subverting the meaning of certain terms it's still actually refreshing to have a mainstream group in this goddamn country that despises the establishment, maybe that will eventually evolve to something useful. The deep state for the record is a fact and I don't give a flying fuck if Putin or fucking Stalin was using the term.

ACA was basically the Heritage Foundations's plan to keep the HMO's pockets full while saving a collapsing health care system. It's a solution but not a solution for the people or the public, it's solution for the rich fucks that exploit human misery and suffering, it's a solution for health care "providers". Obama had  supermajority for 6 months, this was a classic Democratic tactic where they pretend to be incompetent when they're even near progressive legislation but go full-on authoritarian when it's time to support war, "free" trade agreements, and neoliberal policy in general.

My hatred for social justice warriors and modern feministm is perfectly justified. They consistently ignore scientific facts, numbers and logic to create unnecessary animosity amongst the middle class. Tell me which one of the great feminist causes you support? Manspreading, the wage gap myth, the importance of made up pronouns, the fetishization of Islam, the pink tax bullshit, sexist videogame characters, their rape hysteria even though all statistics (actual statistics not statistics made up by gender studies lunatics) show that numbers are decreasing significantly, microaggressions, cultural appropriation, sexist movies? Which ones?

The fact that I happen to agree once in a while with the alt-right and very rarely with liberals only indicates how pro-status quo liberals have become. You literally accuse people who don't trust media controlled by the ruling class of being Russian shills. And you expect me to be on your side? Never.

And Wolf Blitzer is a moron that says what he was told to say like most corporate media "journalists".

I just have to attempt to make sense of this.

1) I think it's incredibly dangerous to encourage and find refreshment in a group of people that hate the "establishment," as you call it, especially when said people are responsible for white supremacy rallies nation-wide, doxxing of innocent people, incredibly offensive language towards any group of people that AREN'T white and male, and facilitators of proven, and I do mean 100% proven, falsehoods.  Some falsehoods that you appear to believe, for some reason.  Cynicism in the establishment and action against it, particularly our current government and societal structure, is NOT coming from these alt-righters.  It's coming from local grassroots progressives, who you appear to claim to be a part of.  Alt-right groups are against the establishment when the establishment is empowering people outside of their own personal circles – that's not happening anymore, they "won" and are reaping the spoils of war.  The "deep state" is "real" in the sense that all modern societies have a complex tapestry of bureaucrats, politicians, policy-makers, and high-profile citizens.  The antagonistic nature towards a developed society, even with its cronyism and corruption, is sleight of hand used by authoritative totalitarians whose attacks do far more harm to the general public than actually attempting to iterate and improve society with the powers dictated to those in necessary positions. It's helping to centralize all power to one person or body and removing all rights and freedoms of the populace.  This is snake-oil salesmanship, and you're buying it.

I wanna see the fucking receipts on the whole ACA nonsense.  You completely avoided all of Nola's illustration as to what was within Obama's power regarding the ACA, and you're failing to point the blame towards the conservative party in ensuring the legislation was limp-dicked in its atttempt to provide coverage for many more Americans.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/may/04/donald-trump/trumps-false-claim-dems-want-billions-go-insurance/

Yes, it's not a great healthcare solution.  But it still ensured millions more Americans received coverage.  Do not blame Obama or the whole of the Democratic party for a few DINOs who, and let me be clear, went against the party platform to tank the original health care proposal.

Your hatred for "Social Studies Warriors" and feminists is hypocritical considering you are choosing to focus all of your venom and hatred on a group of extremists while simultaneously "finding it refreshing" for a separate group of extremists that suffer from the same fallacies that you try to indict the former group with.

First of all, not all alt-right is white supremacists, stop whitewashing white supremacists by comparing them to millions of people with different ideologies that united behind whatever the fuck alt-right it. As etiolate pointed out the best description for the alt-right is that it's an ugly counter-culture against the established politically correct system that creates millions of contrarians enraged against it. People who suffer don't want to be told they're privileged by pretentious liberal college brats and Hollywood dipshits because of their race, men don't want to be told there's something toxic in their masculinity, working class people don't want to be told how to talk and how to behave by the morality police backed by corporate media, hell even many women don't want to be told how to act and what to think in order not to be viewed as a victim.  The backlash was inevitable was was bound to be ugly, anyone with half a brain expected the alt-right years ago. So yeah to your last sentence, you must be really out of touch with reality if you think these distinguished mentally-challenged fellows haven't gone mainstream years ago and they're just a small group of extremists.

The American deep state has supported perpetual war for decades, has ruined entire regions on this planet, has sustained and enlarged the military industrial complex like a tumor in this country and waged war against Trump with obvious smear campaigns (still waiting on those evidence on golden showers, a rumor spread by a sketchy organization that was paid by various third parties to create it) and McCarthyist panic. The fact is that Trump is dirty as hell but he's not the only one, all these top scumbags are, Clinton for example was taking far bigger bribes from Russian oligarchs, the reason why they focused on him was because he wasn't the ruling class' chosen one.

ACA with the exception of a few favorable clauses like the aforementioned ban on preexisting conditions is indeed the Heritage Foundation's plan, ever the liberal "fact checking" rags partially admit it.

Yeah, I think I'm done trying to engage with you.  You're long gone and you will never be able to contribute to improving this country.  You'll just sit back and be a pissant about how everything and everyone is a part of the   S T A T E  without ever doing anything to make positive changes.