Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN
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@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
I really don't get you guys. You can shit on our heads of states all day long but god forbid someone insult your Dear Orange Leader.
I think you overestimate how important the Federal Government is to US residents. There's really nothing Trump can do to fuck up my life much (although his tarriff plan is coming close.) Even after his dumbshit bulldog said he was going to start enforcing marijuana laws in States that voted to legalize it, it turns out they actually don't, so it's still status-quo at the moment.
And BTW, he was totally right about Germany's dependence on Russian energy. He's an idiot, but he's not wrong all the time.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
If that's the kind of "Freedom of Speech" you're after, then count me out.
I mean the kind where you can put a Nazi flag in a video game without getting arrested.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
You're nothing but a nation of trolls, on your way out
Out of what?
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
and not even noticing that you're burning down your own house.
Please; there's nothing even a completely hostile President can do in 4 years that constitutes "burning down our own house". The only thing slightly more notable about Trump isn't that he's trying to sabotage everything, but that he's so goddamned blatant about it.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
Hell, your own people are cheering him on for destroying their jobs.
The idiots who voted for Trump aren't "my people". I live in Washington State. Look up the poll results.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
But I'm sure you'll come up with yet another cheap quip just as long as you don't have to admit that you voted for a turd.
I didn't vote for a turd. People who were (rightly) concerned about the Federal Govnerment ignoring the very real challenges of rural America right now but (wrongly) thought that putting an outsider into government would fix anything are the ones who voted for a turd.
Turns out our electoral system is designed (purposefully or not) to favor rural States over urban ones, and farm economies over information economies. And so those rural Americans have more say than they "ought to" in a perfectly fair system.
At the same time, I don't blame them for voting Trump considering the Democrats message to them was basically "huh? What? There's farms in the US? Huh!" and Trump, even though he's an idiot, actually flew to those States and spoke to people. (Although I still don't understand why they thought Trump would do any better than literally anybody else on the Republican ticket. My theory is: they didn't, they just voted for him because they watch a lot of TV and Trump was on TV.)
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
The only thing slightly more notable about Trump isn't that he's trying to sabotage everything, but that he's so goddamned blatant about it.
No more so than the last guy who liked to talk about "fundamentally transforming" the country, and assuming that any statement like "sabotage everything" makes sense.
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Although I still don't understand why they thought Trump would do any better than literally anybody else on the Republican ticket.
They were visionaries.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Turns out our electoral system is designed (purposefully or not) to favor rural States over urban ones, and farm economies over information economies. And so those rural Americans have more say than they "ought to" in a perfectly fair system
Incorrect.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
I really don't get you guys. You can shit on our heads of states all day long but god forbid someone insult your Dear Orange Leader.
I think you overestimate how important the Federal Government is to US residents. There's really nothing Trump can do to fuck up my life much (although his tarriff plan is coming close.) Even after his dumbshit bulldog said he was going to start enforcing marijuana laws in States that voted to legalize it, it turns out they actually don't, so it's still status-quo at the moment.
And BTW, he was totally right about Germany's dependence on Russian energy. He's an idiot, but he's not wrong all the time.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
If that's the kind of "Freedom of Speech" you're after, then count me out.
I mean the kind where you can put a Nazi flag in a video game without getting arrested.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
You're nothing but a nation of trolls, on your way out
Out of what?
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
and not even noticing that you're burning down your own house.
Please; there's nothing even a completely hostile President can do in 4 years that constitutes "burning down our own house". The only thing slightly more notable about Trump isn't that he's trying to sabotage everything, but that he's so goddamned blatant about it.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
Hell, your own people are cheering him on for destroying their jobs.
The idiots who voted for Trump aren't "my people". I live in Washington State. Look up the poll results.
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
But I'm sure you'll come up with yet another cheap quip just as long as you don't have to admit that you voted for a turd.
I didn't vote for a turd. People who were (rightly) concerned about the Federal Govnerment ignoring the very real challenges of rural America right now but (wrongly) thought that putting an outsider into government would fix anything are the ones who voted for a turd.
Turns out our electoral system is designed (purposefully or not) to favor rural States over urban ones, and farm economies over information economies. And so those rural Americans have more say than they "ought to" in a perfectly fair system.
At the same time, I don't blame them for voting Trump considering the Democrats message to them was basically "huh? What? There's farms in the US? Huh!" and Trump, even though he's an idiot, actually flew to those States and spoke to people. (Although I still don't understand why they thought Trump would do any better than literally anybody else on the Republican ticket. My theory is: they didn't, they just voted for him because they watch a lot of TV and Trump was on TV.)
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
No more so than the last guy who liked to talk about "fundamentally transforming" the country, and assuming that any statement like "sabotage everything" makes sense.
I know you disagree because you're a Nazi, but Trump so far hasn't made one positive change to anything ever. All he's done is "fuck Obama, undo everything Obama did" and put babies in prison. (And I even support enforcing immigration law, but that was about 20 steps too far. Also a border wall is useless, expensive, and stupid.)
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
They were visionaries.
You mean hallucinating from Oxycontin overdoses? Yeah, I could see that.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Please; there's nothing even a completely hostile President can do in 4 years that constitutes "burning down our own house"
It's not Trump that matters. It's his supporters. Those will continue to exist and will continue to fall for whatever "NATO is literally stealing money from our bank accounts, Canada is taxing our milk at 120%, we must isolate ourselves for FREEDOM, and if the LIBERALS object remember they're all elitists so you must do the opposite of what they want" retarded propaganda their media wants to push.
The idiots who voted for Trump aren't "my people". I live in Washington State. Look up the poll results.
Sucks for you. You're in their jurisdiction
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@pie_flavor said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Incorrect.
Single word response with no supporting details.
As you can see, the number of EC votes per person varies from about 1.5 millionths (California) to 5.3 millionths (Wyoming), about a factor of 3.5. State with populations above about 10 million all have similar EC votes per person, but small states can have much larger votes per person.
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@anonymous234 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Sucks for you. You're in their jurisdiction
Yeah but other than paying taxes and renewing my passport once a decade, I don't interact with the Federal government... ever, basically.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
No more so than the last guy who liked to talk about "fundamentally transforming" the country, and assuming that any statement like "sabotage everything" makes sense.
I know you disagree because you're a Nazi, but Trump so far hasn't made one positive change to anything ever. All he's done is "fuck Obama, undo everything Obama did" and put babies in prison. (And I even support enforcing immigration law, but that was about 20 steps too far. Also a border wall is useless, expensive, and stupid.)
Riiiiight.
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
They were visionaries.
You mean hallucinating from Oxycontin overdoses? Yeah, I could see that.
Hey, it worked better than your state full of tokers.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Yeah but other than paying taxes and renewing my passport once a decade, I don't interact with the Federal government... ever, basically.
You're still subject to its laws and represented by it on the international level. I mean, I get that the US is quite decentralized, but your attitude is still puzzling.
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Hey, it worked better than your state full of tokers.
Guess so, but people in my State are, you know, educated, employed, have a solid heathcare option, etc. And in addition to all of that, we pay way more to the Federal government budget than we take out, unlike virtually every Trump-heavy State. So we must be doing something right.
@dfdub said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
You're still subject to it's laws and represented by it on the international level.
Well like I said, the tariffs might affect me I guess. Haven't yet though.
@dfdub said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I mean, I get that the US is quite decentralized, but your attitude is still puzzling.
Why? Like, in practical terms, why should I care?
The US isn't just decentralized, it's also pretty self-contained. I frankly don't give much of a shit about the rest of the world.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Guess so, but people in my State are, you know, educated, employed, have a solid heathcare option, etc. And in addition to all of that, we pay way more to the Federal government budget than we take out, unlike virtually every Trump-heavy State. So we must be doing something right.
Except for voting for Trump, apparently.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
No more so than the last guy who liked to talk about "fundamentally transforming" the country, and assuming that any statement like "sabotage everything" makes sense.
I know you disagree because you're a Nazi, but Trump so far hasn't made one positive change to anything ever. All he's done is "fuck Obama, undo everything Obama did" and put babies in prison.
And lower your taxes
(And I even support enforcing immigration law, but that was about 20 steps too far. Also a border wall is useless, expensive, and stupid.)
Why don't we start by removing your front door and see how it works on a small scale first.
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
They were visionaries.
You mean hallucinating from Oxycontin overdoses? Yeah, I could see that.
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Except for voting for Trump, apparently.
Well we would have voted for Sanders, but that primary "didn't count".
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Single word response with no supporting details.
The rural states are not more powerful than the urban states. The urban states usually have many more votes than the rural states. You linked something about a popular vote, but popular vote isn't what decides the presidency - we're not the United California, New York, And Miscellaneous Unimportant Regions.
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@pie_flavor said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
And lower your taxes
Except he didn't. I did the math. And even for those who do get lower taxes, it's temporary anyway.
How successful has the policy of getting large corps to bring money back from overseas? I haven't seen any article revisiting that in the last few months. Has it happened, or was it just a wishful thinking fantasy? Remember that was supposed to cover the revenue gap.
@pie_flavor said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Why don't we start by removing your front door and see how it works on a small scale first.
But we're not talking about building a front door. We're talking about putting a silk rope across the doorway reading "please do not enter".
I'm not saying the wall is useless because we don't need to or shouldn't defend our border; I'm saying it's useless because it's super expensive and wouldn't keep anybody out of the country. (Well, it might keep some particularly honest people out, but it wouldn't help against the criminals it's ostensibly there for.)
That doesn't even mention that a large, large percentage of illegal immigration happens via. people traveling here legally (something no wall will prevent) and then overstaying their visas.
If Trump wants to help his base, what he should do is take all the concrete slated to build this wall and build non-level crossings for all the small towns in the US that right now need to virtually shut-down every time a freight train comes through and blocks their main streets, because they were built around a railroad. Use that concrete to build overpasses. That'd be worthwhile.
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@pie_flavor Person-for-person, rural votes are worth more than urban votes. Making things worse, most States have a winner-takes-all strategy for allocating their electoral votes, which only makes the problem worse.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@Rhywden said in In other news today...:
If that's the kind of "Freedom of Speech" you're after, then count me out.
I mean the kind where you can put a Nazi flag in a video game without getting arrested.
Or even walk down the street waving it. Not that I think you should do that; Nazis were despicable, and anybody who sympathizes with them is either an idiot or deserves to be spat upon (INB4 why not both). It is not popular speech that needs protection, but unpopular (and whatever impression you may get from the media, Nazism is unpopular with >99.999% of Americans). If a government can suppress one category of unpopular speech, what stops it from expanding the category to include expressing your unpopular opinion?
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Person-for-person, rural votes are worth more than urban votes.
Both sides suck. Either cities feel ripped off because they're outvoted by farms, or the farms feel ripped off because they get outvoted by cities which don't even know that there are real people out here. There really is no "fair" solution IMO, and so we all fall back to whichever one we think helps "our" side the most.
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Making things worse, most States have a winner-takes-all strategy for allocating their electoral votes, which only makes the problem worse.
As far as I know, my state (Nebraska) is the only state that splits electoral votes up by congressional district. And yet our state still went 100% Trump, even though Omaha is a massively blue city that usually gives its electoral vote to the Democrats, so changing the system here wouldn't have mattered.
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@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Both sides suck.
Well part of the problem in the US is this idea that there are two "sides" and they are opposite each other.
I have some beliefs that match up with the Democrat positions, and other that match up with the Republican positions. There's no "side" that includes me. And I'm sure that's true of most of the people in the US.
For example, I'd love to be fiscally conservative, but the Republic position is to cut government to save money-- which you then hand to the military without any accountability. (To the extent that high-ranking generals will sometimes beg Republican Congressmen to stop giving them money for stupid shit. Like building replacement jet engines they don't need and will never use.) I'd be happy cutting our military expenses by half. (Except the VA; those soldiers earned that right, and its budget needs to be sufficient to cover their needs.) But no party supports that.
(Remember all the late night joke shows that got people foaming at the mouth ranting about Obamacare and then seconds later recorded them praising their coverage from the Affordable Care Act with absolutely no twinge of awareness that the two were the same thing.)
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Except for voting for Trump, apparently.
Well we would have voted for Sanders, but that primary "didn't count".
So we'll put that in the "Why oxycontin is better than marijuana" bin, too.
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This post is deleted!
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Except he didn't. I did the math. And even for those who do get lower taxes, it's temporary anyway.
So he actually did but it doesn't last forever under current law because ridiculous Congress accounting shenanigans? That's why he didn't?
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
How successful has the policy of getting large corps to bring money back from overseas? I haven't seen any article revisiting that in the last few months. Has it happened, or was it just a wishful thinking fantasy? Remember that was supposed to cover the revenue gap.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/overseas-profits-return/
The growth in the economy seems to have tax receipts at about the same level as last year, which is less than it would be if we kept higher taxes but the economy grew the same amount (which seems doubtful to me).
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-16/rising-federal-deficit-fuels-u-s-economic-growth
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@pie_flavor Person-for-person, rural votes are worth more than urban votes. Making things worse, most States have a winner-takes-all strategy for allocating their electoral votes, which only makes the problem worse.
It's not a problem, but a benefit. As someone who likes to talk about the benefits of having sovereign states it's a bit weird to hear this sort of talk coming from you.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Well part of the problem in the US is this idea that there are two "sides" and they are opposite each other.
Sometimes they are. I haven't spent enough time with city politics to see that side, but I know from my farm days that all too often, cities would force stuff through at a state level and it was really bad for us. Things like smog regulations massively raising the prices on tractors even though smog doesn't exist when you have a total of three internal combustion engines per square mile, or some prissystate senator doesn't like that their neighbor has a pet chicken and somehow gets the state to pass a law that hurts chicken farmers two hundred miles away. This stuff is why rural folks are so cynical towards the cities. The other direction just seems to be simple ignorance. "Farms? LOL. Those exist? Who cares?"
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
For example, I'd love to be fiscally conservative, but the Republic position is to cut government to save money-- which you then hand to the military without any accountability. (To the extent that high-ranking generals will sometimes beg Republican Congressmen to stop giving them money for stupid shit. Like building replacement jet engines they don't need and will never use.) I'd be happy cutting our military expenses by half. (Except the VA; those soldiers earned that right, and its budget needs to be sufficient to cover their needs.) But no party supports that.
I used to be opposed to cutting military spending for any reason. But now that I'm somewhat on the inside, I get it. We have one customer who spent a very large amount of money on a project from us years ago, but they've never used it. Their turnover is so high that they continually pay for training from us a few times a year to come teach the new guys how to use it, but then the new guys leave before it gets used. Now I understand why military aircraft are so damn expensive.
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
(Remember all the late night joke shows that got people foaming at the mouth ranting about Obamacare and then seconds later recorded them praising their coverage from the Affordable Care Act with absolutely no twinge of awareness that the two were the same thing.)
I'd rather have a hydrofluoric acid enema than subject myself to the late night "comedy" shows.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Turns out our electoral system is designed (purposefully or not) to favor rural States over urban ones, and farm economies over information economies. And so those rural Americans have more say than they "ought to" in a perfectly fair system.
Statistics about electoral votes per person notwithstanding, there are a few rural states that indisputably have influence far beyond their size. The red states are going to vote red and the blue states are going to vote blue, no matter what, and they're fairly evenly balanced in the number of electoral votes they wield. So the elections tend to be decided by a handful of smallish, mostly rural purple states. Candidates campaign heavily in those states, and the media watch every shift in popularity. Meanwhile, everybody ignores states like California (except for fundraising) because the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
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@HardwareGeek It's seems to be their fault for voting the same no matter what happens, isn't it?
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@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I used to be opposed to cutting military spending for any reason. But now that I'm somewhat on the inside, I get it.
What's "funny" is that a lot of people say that they want it but then scream when it actually happens. I had friends on both sides of the political aisle (but I mostly remember liberals being the loudest about it at the time) upset about the "sequestration" thing that happened under Obama.
I thought it was great. Finally, a tiny bit of movement in the direction of fiscal sanity!
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
upset about the "sequestration" thing that happened under Obama.
That sucked, but only because the "cuts" were designed to hurt political opponents. Most of the military/government was completely unaffected, but the Air Force suddenly quit paying for a veteran friend's college and he had to sell a ton of crap to finish out his final semester. Forget about the layers and layers and layers of incompetent management, and screw the vet who is $10K away from finishing college!
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
It's not a problem, but a benefit. As someone who likes to talk about the benefits of having sovereign states it's a bit weird to hear this sort of talk coming from you.
I don't argue that the States shouldn't be able to distribute their electoral votes however the fuck they want. However, I'd hope that States would choose to do it in the most fair fashion possible.
@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Sometimes they are.
Sometimes, but not often.
The biggest problem for me at the moment is that neither party, like I said above, is fiscally conservative. (If anything, the Democrats are better at this even though they don't even claim this is part of their platform.)
Another problem is as Boomzilla mentioned, I'm a big advocate of States' rights, and if a State passes a law by fair referendum with popular support, the Federal Government should fuck off and leave them alone. Neither major party supports that.
(Trump claimed to when it came to marijuana; turns out he lied about that. He's also trying to punish States or cities for being "sanctuary", aka passing laws to prevent Federal immigration enforcement from using their police resources, which is something States have never been legally compelled to do ever. But Republicans act as if they were.)
@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Sometimes they are. I haven't spent enough time with city politics to see that side, but I know from my farm days that all too often, cities would force stuff through at a state level and it was really bad for us.
Yeah, and that's a big problem everywhere. There have been a lot of complaints that the King County government likes to act like "Seattle City Government Level 2" and pass laws that work in the city, but don't work in the other 90% of the county which is mostly rural.
@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I used to be opposed to cutting military spending for any reason.
Really? Even shit like the F-35 program?
@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
But now that I'm somewhat on the inside, I get it. We have one customer who spent a very large amount of money on a project from us years ago, but they've never used it. Their turnover is so high that they continually pay for training from us a few times a year to come teach the new guys how to use it, but then the new guys leave before it gets used. Now I understand why military aircraft are so damn expensive.
We had a perfectly good F-22, F/A-18 (ok, getting up there in years) and A-10 that do all the things the F-35 is supposed to do but better and cheaper. It's a crime that the F-22 program was cancelled.
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
What's "funny" is that a lot of people say that they want it but then scream when it actually happens.
Really?
What I want is a small addition to the tax form that lists the top 5 expenditures of the Federal government with a simple "Do you approve of this? Yes/no" next to it that tax payers can circle. Non-binding. But I'd like to see the results.
@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
That sucked, but only because the "cuts" were designed to hurt political opponents. Most of the military/government was completely unaffected, but the Air Force suddenly quit paying for a veteran friend's college and he had to sell a ton of crap to finish out his final semester.
I want to cut their budget, not renege on promises. Because that sucks ass.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
We had a perfectly good F-22, F/A-18 (ok, getting up there in years) and A-10 that do all the things the F-35 is supposed to do but better and cheaper. It's a crime that the F-22 program was cancelled.
The biggest "problem" with the F-22 is that it could not be exported. F-35 is, and we were supposed to make money on it by selling some to our allies...but like any large program, budgets spin out of control and there's too much incompetence with not enough oversight. F-22 may have been expensive, but we definitely never should have given up on it. Although I strongly suspect there are black programs producing something way better than the F-22 or F-35 that nobody will know about until 30 years from now, and sometimes I wonder if this whole thing is just a Sun Tzu-style facade to make our enemies underestimate us except I also doubt the DoD is that brilliant or leakproof.
It would have been amazing to just take some of the stuff that went into the F-35 and upgrade the F-22's to that capability instead, although who knows since the F-35 is unclassified and the F-22 is classified. The A-10 thing is stupid inter-branch politics, Army loves it but can't have it, Air Force hates it but has to operate it. DoD should just transfer them to the Army and call it a day.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Well we would have voted for Sanders, but that primary "didn't count".
@Gribnit said in 🔥 The Inflamed Political Trollery thread:
Sanders isn't a Democrat.
I'll let you two battle it out.
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@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Although I strongly suspect there are black programs producing something way better than the F-22 or F-35 that nobody will know about until 30 years from now, and sometimes I wonder if this whole thing is just a Sun Tzu-style facade to make our enemies underestimate us except I also doubt the DoD is that brilliant or leakproof.
So you think the F-35 money is being funneled into another, secret, plane? I'd actually love that, if true. But sadly it's probably not.
@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
The A-10 thing is inter-branch politics, DoD should just transfer them to the Army and call it a day.
Yeah the "rule" that they don't belong in the Army because... I dunno fixed wings? Is bullshit. The Air Force obviously doesn't want them, but the Army does. Whatever it takes to modernize those suckers is what we should do, and going to be 20,000 times cheaper than making the F-35 even slightly remotely useful in the same situations.
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@mott555 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
upset about the "sequestration" thing that happened under Obama.
That sucked, but only because the "cuts" were designed to hurt political opponents. Most of the military/government was completely unaffected, but the Air Force suddenly quit paying for a veteran friend's college and he had to sell a ton of crap to finish out his final semester. Forget about the layers and layers and layers of incompetent management, and screw the vet who is $10K away from finishing college!
And for pretty much everything that the government spends money on, you can find a story like that, which is a big reason why nothing ever gets cut.
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@pie_flavor Your statement is correct - in that it is incorrect and blakeyrat is correct. Take another gander at what stupid crap we did to try to placate the South. Grant should have fucking finished the job.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
The biggest problem for me at the moment is that neither party, like I said above, is fiscally conservative. (If anything, the Democrats are better at this even though they don't even claim this is part of their platform.)
I'm not sure what has made you think that and would be interested to hear the reason.
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Trump claimed to when it came to marijuana; turns out he lied about that.
No, but this is one of those instances where we see him being less of a dictator than he is accused of where he follows the law (and the ridiculous, but legally binding, Supreme Court decisions that empowered the Feds to do just about anything) instead of ignoring it.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I'm not saying the wall is useless because we don't need to or shouldn't defend our border; I'm saying it's useless because it's super expensive and wouldn't keep anybody out of the country. (Well, it might keep some particularly honest people out, but it wouldn't help against the criminals it's ostensibly there for.)
The entire point of the wall is to keep people out. Wall designs are being gauged on how well they accomplish that goal. They are high enough to deter climbing and strong enough to withstand I believe ten minutes straight of noise-making punishment.
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@Gribnit If the South hadn't stolen Federal weapons and supplies and just left those forts alone peaceably, the North probably would have just let them go. One of those unexplored branches of history because, of course, the Southerners gunned-up and went on a drunken rampage. (Remember at the time there wasn't any law that says States could succeed but there also wasn't any law saying they couldn't. That came later.)
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@pie_flavor Person-for-person, rural votes are worth more than urban votes. Making things worse, most States have a winner-takes-all strategy for allocating their electoral votes, which only makes the problem worse.
Person-for-person, votes don't matter. EC votes are determined by the total number of Congressional representatives.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I have some beliefs that match up with the Democrat positions, and other that match up with the Republican positions. There's no "side" that includes me. And I'm sure that's true of most of the people in the US.
Mainstream TDS and the absolute derailment of the Democratic party leads me to predict, long-term, a return to multi-party politics. It's wishful thinking probably, but it could happen.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
What's "funny" is that a lot of people say that they want it but then scream when it actually happens.
Really?
What I want is a small addition to the tax form that lists the top 5 expenditures of the Federal government with a simple "Do you approve of this? Yes/no" next to it that tax payers can circle. Non-binding. But I'd like to see the results.
Most of that "unreported" must be Defense. You'll get traditional hawks and newfound NATO lovers telling you why you can't do that. Trying to reform Medicare or Social Security is the easiest way to retire from political life. Interest on the debt is amazingly smaller than welfare stuff, which is about the only thing you can realistically do anything about because poor people don't vote and you can actually do good stuff, as Clinton and the Republican Congress showed us in the 1990s, without simply cutting spending.
Hell, you can't even cut public television! The reasons for this tend to be, "It's too small to matter, so why bother?" and "It's critical for our culture and our children!"
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@boomzilla said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
No, but this is one of those instances where we see him being less of a dictator than he is accused of where he follows the law (and the ridiculous, but legally binding, Supreme Court decisions that empowered the Feds to do just about anything) instead of ignoring it.
Obama was following the law when he said he wouldn't waste DEA resources on things that State residents declared were legal. It's part of his job to allocate DEA resources. We've had that discussion before and you obviously disagreed, even though you were wrong.
The problem isn't that Trump has changed the priorities (again: it's part of his job to determine what those priorities are), the problem (for me) is that he lied and said he wouldn't, then did at the first opportunity.
In other departments where he's increase or re-prioritized enforcement, for example ICE, he was following his promises, and nobody who voted for him would be justified to complain about that. In this case, however, he was a fucking liar.
@pie_flavor said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
The entire point of the wall is to keep people out.
Right; they just aren't very good at it.
@pie_flavor said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
They are high enough to deter climbing and strong enough to withstand I believe ten minutes straight of noise-making punishment.
Fair enough and they might even be minimally effective. Not nearly effective enough to warrant the cost. And Trump's ridiculous declaration that the Mexican government would pay for it, even he's given up on that fairy tale.
Look, once again, I'm not saying:
- Walls are useless
- The government shouldn't enforce the border
I'm not saying those things, and I don't believe those things. What I am saying is that walls aren't even slightly as useful as people think, and the money being spent on the wall would be better-spent elsewhere.
They withstand 10 minutes of punishment; great. For hundreds or thousands of miles, they'll go days between inspections, not minutes. It's a really long border. Meanwhile, a significantly cheaper camera/motion detector system might have spotted the same criminals and had a law enforcement SUV on them in 15 minutes.
@pie_flavor said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
Mainstream TDS and the absolute derailment of the Democratic party leads me to predict, long-term, a return to multi-party politics. It's wishful thinking probably, but it could happen.
Only a few years ago people were virtually certain the Republican party would split. (Remember the Tea Party that was all-but-certain to split away?) But it didn't happen.
Trump's caused another giant break in party positions, and yet that also hasn't split the party in two. (It did however result in a lot of high-profile legislative failures.)
Bernie Sanders hasn't done anything to erode the structure of the Democrat party, either. Although he never went as far as the Tea Party to, for example, adopt his own "party name".
Anyway. Wishful thinking. The only thing in the US that will result in an increase in multi-party politics is a change in our winner-take-all voting system, which is unlikely to ever occur so no (current) politicians would ever benefit from that.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I have some beliefs that match up with the Democrat positions, and other that match up with the Republican positions. There's no "side" that includes me. And I'm sure that's true of most of the people in the US.
This. I don't know about most of the people, but it definitely includes me. I tend to align mostly with the more moderate Republicans, fiscally and socially conservative, strong military but with effective accountability for how their money is spent, very pro-life. On some issues, though, I have opinions that more closely resemble those associated with Democrats, strong environmental protection (though not with absurd regulations that turn temporary puddles into "wetlands," and I'm still an AGW skeptic), and having seen the health care system from the POV of a have-not, although ACA is an unmitigated disaster, the idea of a socialized system looks a lot less bad to me than it did a few years ago.
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@boomzilla What's interesting is VA isn't included in your chart. (Unless that's included in the generically-named "Health". Technically VA does more than healthcare, but that's their primary function.)
Anyway like I said, it'd be non-binding, it'd just be interesting to get the data from people who pay taxes instead of merely people who vote.
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@blakeyrat I think the VA is probably in health (and it's interesting that they broke medicare out separately). You can alternately look at it broken down by agency and the VA shows up as a big box.
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@sockpuppet7 said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@HardwareGeek It's seems to be their fault for voting the same no matter what happens, isn't it?
As a Californian who diametrically disagrees with just about everything the California libtards do, yes.
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@HardwareGeek said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
I have some beliefs that match up with the Democrat positions, and other that match up with the Republican positions. There's no "side" that includes me. And I'm sure that's true of most of the people in the US.
This. I don't know about most of the people, but it definitely includes me.
There are certainly things I disagree with Republicans about. Perhaps the only thing I agree with Democrats is same sex marriage. I don't think I've ever encountered a Democrat in a partisan race that I would want to vote for (and voting is always picking the lesser of evils).
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@boomzilla My only interaction with the VA has been at the cemeteries they maintain, which I guess are "health care" of a sort.
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@blakeyrat said in Re: In other news today... Rhywden is being an ANGRY GERMAN:
So you think the F-35 money is being funneled into another, secret, plane? I'd actually love that, if true. But sadly it's probably not.
I think the B-2 and F-117 may have been funded that way. I also think it's less discreet today, most people know better than to ask questions about funding/invoices that are obviously going to something classified, where as lots of naive people will openly question a $1M invoice for a box of napkins going to an Air Force cafeteria.
The electoral college is states vs. federal, not urban vs. rural
USAspending.gov