POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Come back when you figure out the difference between Republicans and Libertarians.
Well, these days, it's hard to distinguish between Republicans and crazies, since they allowed so many of them to gain power within the party.
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@asdf said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
@ScholRLEA said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Well, except that no country that is better would let a fuck-up like me stay...
I'd love to be able to claim that Germany is sooo much better, but it's probably not. The reason I prefer to live here is probably that it's the evil I know vs. the evil I don't know that well.
Note that even if it is better, it would be better, not good. There are no good countries, because they all consist of people.
Make America
forget that the only reason it was on top was because it was the last man standing in the great Russian Roulette Olympics of 1945Great again!
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Maybe it's a corollary of "Only whites can be racist"?
@fox hasn't heard of the concept of "honorary white" yet. Then they'll have an explanation, and won't be so confused.
Regressive left have to stay on top of the soul-patches or they get confused.
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@boomzilla said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
divided government
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@asdf said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Well, these days, it's hard to distinguish between Republicans and crazies, since they allowed so many of them to gain power within the party.
Al Gore, Nanci Pelosi, Kerry...
It's like watching people looking into a one-way-mirror and completely unable to tell which side they're looking from.
I give up.
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@ScholRLEA said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Make America forget that the only reason it was on top was because it was the last man standing in the great Russian Roulette Olympics of 1945
Not true. Explain Brazil.
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@asdf said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
I'm not saying Obama didn't contribute to the problem during his second presidency. But from the distance, it seems like he still tried to find compromises during his first one, and the Republican hardliners did everything in their power to make sure he fails as badly as possible.
You're getting bad information. What compromises did he try to make? Check out the date of this article:
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@boomzilla ACA was based on the Republican HEART act. That's not a compromise?
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@Yamikuronue said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
I can only pray the repubs cannibalize their candidate faster and harder than the dems cannibalize theirs. And that's pretty damn fucked up.
At the moment, there's a strong inherent bias towards Trump winning, simply because that's the way it works in American elections.
Here's something I wrote before this whole process even got started, illustrating the point:
Remember Bush Sr.? Remember "read my lips, no new taxes?" And then there were new taxes, and a sucky economy, and people got sick of him and threw him out.
They picked a new guy who was kind of the anti-Bush: (relatively) young, charming, with an informal air about him. Problem is, he turned out to be thoroughly corrupt and oh-by-the-way also a sexual predator, and the country had to sit through years of scandal upon scandal upon scandal. (Everyone remembers Monica Lewinsky; do you remember the rest of them? I do.) The Clinton presidency was worse than the Bush presidency, and after 8 years of Clinton screwing around, people were fed up... so we got sick of him and threw him out.
Of course, it seems utterly bizarre now, but do you remember what Bush Jr.'s campaign platform was, the first time around? "I will restore dignity to the White House." It was sorely needed, and he did a great job of portraying himself as the anti-Clinton, so we elected him. And we all remember how that went: he was utterly incompetent and in way over his head, especially after 9/11, and the Bush Jr. presidency turned out to be worse than the Clinton presidency. After 8 years of him screwing things up, we got sick of it and threw him out.
Well, you can guess what happened next, right? Yup: we elected the guy who managed to portray himself as the Anti-Bush. Hope and Change and all that. Well, things have changed since then, but it's been mostly more of the same changes we were getting through the Bush years: changes for the worse. The Obama administration has been even worse than the Bush Jr. administration, and after 8 years of him screwing things up... it's not hard to guess what's going to happen in the next election.
The next President is going to be whichever Republican candidate most successfully portrays himself as the Anti-Obama. (And he or she will most likely end up being even worse than Obama... somehow.) You can say no, that's not going to happen, but consider this: for a significant percentage of today's voters, that's the only pattern they've ever known. And the ones older than that are... well... older, and statistically speaking older demographics are more likely to vote Republican.
I don't like it, but I believe that it's going to happen. Just watch and see.
So Hillary's got the odds against her right from the start, simply on the basis of "it's the Republicans' turn to win the presidency this time around." Compounding that is the fact that she's a Clinton, with all of the baggage that name brings but without Bill's charisma to counterbalance it. And the recent DNC email leaks that show that she, with the willful collusion of high-ranking Party officials, blatantly rigged the primaries and stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders aren't going to help her odds any either.
It's hard to escape the conclusion that she doesn't stand a chance, even against such a massive loser as Donald Trump. Heck, even Michael Moore says so, and he's about the last guy you'd ever expect to see promoting a Republican victory!
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Come back when you figure out the difference between Republicans and Libertarians.
Oh, that's easy. Republicans are more or less right about approximately half of their platform, and horribly, dangerously wrong about the other half. (The same can be said of the Democrats, since they tend to take opposite positions to the Republicans on so many issues.) Libertarians are the ones that combine the worst of both worlds and are horribly, dangerously wrong about practically everything.
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@Captain Let's imagine a future where Trump gets elected and is as terrible as the hysterics believe and passes Jim Crow laws. By your logic, he compromised with the Democrats.
No, obviously he didn't That's stupid. You've taken a two decades old thing that a some Republicans supported at the time and assumed that it gives bipartisan cover to anything remotely resembling it. I don't think you're really dumb enough to believe that.
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@masonwheeler A lot of the problem with the Republicans is simply how out-of-touch they are. They have no clue how much popular support there is for issues like gay marriage or marijuana legalization, and they're still writing platform statements like it's 1984.
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
#cthulu2016
My plan for healthcare reform:
- Expand HSA's
- Eliminate price opacity
- Full deductibility of health ins.
- Global mass extinction
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@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
They have no clue how much popular support there is for issues like gay marriage or marijuana legalization, and they're still writing platform statements like it's 1984.
The Libertarians have always been in favor of marijuana legalization. @masonwheeler, is this part of the "practically everything" libertarians are wrong about?
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@antiquarian Yes
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
The Libertarians have always been in favor of marijuana legalization.
They're in favor of EVERYTHING legalization. That's the problem.
Most people are just of the reasonable opinion that the controls on a drug should have some vague relation to the danger of that drug. And Marijuana is quite simply not very dangerous.
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@masonwheeler So what's wrong with marijuana legalization (you may want to start a separate thread for this)?
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Michael Moore
I'm still not convinced that Moore and Limbaugh aren't the same person, either with them both being an act, or them being two different personalities of someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder.
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@boomzilla Well guess what: America voted for universal health care. And they got it, despite the Republican's ineffectual cock blocking.
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@Captain said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Well guess what: America voted for universal health care.
Oh, really? I guess I missed that. Do you remember, right before Obamacare was actually passed, that Massachussetts...Massachussetts had a special Senate election that was effectively a referendum on exactly this thing, and they voted against it?
@Captain said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
And they got it, despite the Republican's ineffectual cock blocking.
Ah, I see. I was being trolled. Well done.
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So far Pence seems to be slightly more reasonable than Trump. Slightly. A tiny bit.
Oh look another onebox that reloads on every press of the keyboard. Good job NodeBB. I love seeing that same mistake over and over.
Oh and then I hit submit and the onebox is just 100% invisible. Rock on. I love it. I love the bugs. Give me more.
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@boomzilla It's not my fault that republicans are obstructionists or bad at it. They sure love to spend when it's their turn, though.
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
@masonwheeler So what's wrong with marijuana legalization (you may want to start a separate thread for this)?
Before I landed a job as a developer, I paid the bills working at a chemical dependency clinic (ie. we helped drug addicts get clean). In an environment like that you learn things about the real impact of drugs on real people's lives that you would never hear from the purveyors of pro-legalization propaganda.
There are two major ways people get hooked on opioids (heroin and similar drugs):
- Some well-meaning idiot of a doctor or dentist who doesn't know anywhere near enough about the toxicology side of things prescribes too strong of pain meds after a minor surgery or major dental procedure (which is essentially a minor surgery), leading to addiction, leading to the doctor eventually recognizing it as addiction, freaking out, and cutting the poor patient off, leading to the patient turning to less-than-legal sources to stave off withdrawal
- They started out with smoking pot, because it's supposed to be harmless, right?
#2 was far more common.
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@masonwheeler They didn't start with alcohol?
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@Captain said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
@masonwheeler They didn't start with alcohol?
In a society where it sometimes seems that everybody but the Mormons sees their 21st birthday as a rite of passage, the point at which they "become legal," is there really any predictive value in a question like that?
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
#2 was far more common.
Oh please. The "gateway drug" theory is crap.
If you interviewed the same number of people who hadn't been addicted to harder drugs, you'd find the same number of people who tried smoking pot.
It's the same thing as the media assigning blame to Doom for school shooting. Yes, a lot of shooters played Doom. That's true because DOOM WAS REALLY POPULAR IDIOTS, a lot of EVERYBODY played Doom.
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
They started out with smoking pot, because it's supposed to be harmless, right?
#2 was far more common.
The next question to ask is: how many people smoked pot but didn't become heroin addicts?
There are two major ways people get into auto accidents:
- They are walking around minding their own business when a car hits them.
- They are driving a car, and one or more people either aren't paying enough attention or are doing something incredibly stupid.
#2 is much more common.
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@antiquarian ...which is why I never put any stock in people saying that it's OK for them to drive recklessly seeing as how they've never been in an accident. Because you know who else has never been in an accident? Every single person who's ever been in an accident, before it happened.
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@Captain said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
They sure love to spend when it's their turn, though.
Yes, we agree on this.
@Captain said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
It's not my fault that republicans are obstructionists or bad at it.
Well, it's not my fault that you pick untrue things to argue for.
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@Captain said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
@boomzilla Well guess what: America voted for universal health care. And they got it, despite the Republican's ineffectual cock blocking.
Health insurance, not health care. There is a huge difference. Not to mention that the passage of the Affordable (lololololololol) Care Act was a major reason the Congress turned Republican.
The way I see it, both parties are collapsing. Conservatives and Republicans are sick of the Republican establishment which is how Trump got to where he is: not because he's a good candidate, but because he wasn't really a Republican. The same thing almost happened on the Democratic side with the broad support for Sanders because he wasn't really a Democrat. Both parties are trying to break out of their molds. The Republicans just might do it, but the Democrats got blocked by typical Clinton family corruption.
A vote for Clinton is a vote for more of the same out-of-touch corrupt political dynasties. A vote for Trump could be the wake-up call to the parties that we don't like either of them and they need to re-evaluate themselves if they want to stay relevant.
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@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Oh please. The "gateway drug" theory is crap.
...based on your personal knowledge of talking with how many actual addicts? When it starts affecting real people's real lives, it moves beyond the realm of the theoretical.
If you interviewed the same number of people who hadn't been addicted to harder drugs, you'd find the same number of people who tried smoking pot.
I didn't say it's a direct, inevitable causation, along the lines of "throw a match in a pool of gasoline and you absolutely will get a fire," so please don't try to refute that idea and then say I was wrong.
A better analogy would be that
class HumanBeing
has aSusceptibility
property, and marijuana use increases that value by a non-trivial amount. Those who are particularly strong can probably use pot safely, and those who are particularly weak would probably have become addicts anyway, but for those in-between, it can be the deciding factor. The trouble is that it's very difficult to know what yourSusceptibility
is any other way than testing it and seeing where the point is at which you fail... and then you have a drug problem.
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
...based on your personal knowledge of talking with how many actual addicts?
You have the exact same amount of credentials on this site as I do, a.k.a. jack shit.
@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
When it starts affecting real people's real lives, it moves beyond the realm of the theoretical.
Ooo deep. Oh wait. No. I meant truism.
@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
I didn't say it's a direct, inevitable causation,
Fair enough.
The point is a large percentage of everybody has tried marijuana (including at least two people who have later been elected to the office of President, to circle this back on-topic), so saying it's a predictor of something would require a lot of evidence for it.
@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
A better analogy would be that class HumanBeing has a Susceptibility property, and marijuana use increases that value by a non-trivial amount. Those who are particularly strong can probably use pot safely, and those who are particularly weak would probably have become addicts anyway, but for those in-between, it can be the deciding factor. The trouble is that it's very difficult to know what your Susceptibility is any other way than testing it and seeing where the point is at which you fail... and then you have a drug problem.
That's a great theory. Do you have any evidence?
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
...which is why I never put any stock in people saying that it's OK for them to drive recklessly seeing as how they've never been in an accident.
Who the hell says that? Either you're associating with the wrong people, or I am.
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@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Oh please. The "gateway drug" theory is crap.
If anything, it's only a gateway drug because it's illegal and you may meet the wrong people when trying to buy it.
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@asdf said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Oh please. The "gateway drug" theory is crap.
If anything, it's only a gateway drug because it's illegal and you may meet the wrong people when trying to buy it.
I find that to be a much more plausible theory.
Especially given the effect of pot and many of the other drugs are entirely different (opposite, in fact)
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@antiquarian said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Who the hell says that?
Way too many people, unfortunately.
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@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
The point is a large percentage of everybody has tried marijuana (including at least two people who have later been elected to the office of President, to circle this back on-topic), so saying it's a predictor of something would require a lot of evidence for it.
...and they were horrible Presidents, so that's hardly a glowing recommendation. Also, what "large percentage of everybody"?
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
A better analogy would be that class HumanBeing has a Susceptibility property, and marijuana use increases that value by a non-trivial amount. Those who are particularly strong can probably use pot safely, and those who are particularly weak would probably have become addicts anyway, but for those in-between, it can be the deciding factor. The trouble is that it's very difficult to know what your Susceptibility is any other way than testing it and seeing where the point is at which you fail... and then you have a drug problem.
Next question: how many people would really like to smoke pot but don't because it's illegal?
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@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
And Marijuana is quite simply not very dangerous.
It's no more dangerous than alcohol, and we've done a bang up job preventing DUI related injuries and deaths.
Coming from someone that knows first responders, yes, marijuana is dangerous.
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Also, what "large percentage of everybody"?
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/04/14/6-facts-about-marijuana/
About 50% of Americans have tried marijuana, and that's just the ones who didn't lie to the survey.
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@mott555 said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Health insurance, not health care.
Win.
@mott555 said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
but because he wasn't really a Republican.
double win.
@mott555 said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
A vote for Trump could be the wake-up call to the parties that we don't like either of them and they need to re-evaluate themselves if they want to stay relevant.
triple win.
You read my notes didn't you.
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@masonwheeler said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
The trouble is that it's very difficult to know what your Susceptibility is any other way than testing it and seeing where the point is at which you fail... and then you have a drug problem.
How is this any different from alcohol?
Look, I'm not a stoner. In fact, I've never taken any illegal drug in my life, including marijuana, and I will never smoke it even if it becomes legal. I am also not one of the people who claim that pot is not addictive: I've seen to many people who are addicted to the substance to know that's bullshit. I also know that pot can be very dangerous for teenagers whose brains are still developing.
But I still refuse to believe that pot should be illegal in a society in which alcohol, which has similar properties and which negatively affects addicts a lot more than most other drugs, is legal. I also refuse to believe the "gateway drug" claim is valid. The only people I know who moved on from marijuana to something else did so because they met the wrong people when looking for pot.
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I won't be one of those that pretends that marijuana is uniquely problematic.
Hell, I'm even for legalization.
I just want people to stop pretending that it isn't just as dangerous on the road, and how terrible we've been at managing DUI of all substances.
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@asdf said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
I also refuse to believe the "gateway drug" claim is valid. The only people I know who moved on from marijuana to something else did so because they met the wrong people when looking for pot.
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@asdf said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
But I still refuse to believe that pot should be illegal in a society in which alcohol, which has similar properties and which negatively affects addicts a lot more than most other drugs, is legal.
There are two obvious solutions to that dilemma. You seem to only see one of them.
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@masonwheeler NO ONE IS GOING TO TAKE MY SCOTCH AWAY! OVER MY DEAD BODY!!!
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@xaade I don't think anybody (sane) in the universe is saying marijuana is perfectly 100% harmless and a glorious holy drug from heaven.
The problem is merely that the drug's penalties are completely out-of-whack with its effects. Which then causes other secondary problems, like a completely overloaded justice system, overcrowded prisons, etc.
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@mott555 said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
A vote for Clinton is a vote for more of the same out-of-touch corrupt political dynasties. A vote for Trump could be the wake-up call to the parties that we don't like either of them and they need to re-evaluate themselves if they want to stay relevant.
This, unfortunately, is very true. I would have loved to see Sanders win the primaries for exactly that reason.
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@blakeyrat said in POLITICS The Collapse of the RNC BEGINS TODAY:
Which then causes other secondary problems, like a completely overloaded justice system, overcrowded prisons, etc.
It does that, in a vacuum.
I'm afraid that there is an illegal system in place in America, where those problems won't alleviate to the degree that people suggest they will.
Again, not speaking against legalization, just being aware of the reality of the problems we've created.
I'm expecting that we won't get the full benefits for at least a couple of generations.
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Sanders is a full on socialist, government takeover of all business, type.
If it's just free healthcare and free college, we are headed in that direction already.
Sanders isn't needed to accomplish what he's SAID is his platform.