ndawg

If you do that, then the difference between 3k and 30k will also not seem like much anymore.

I’ll say this, as someone who has needed the help of nurses and occupational & physical therapists to help put my body back together, I’m sure glad they made the really financially stupid decision to rack up hundreds of thousands in student loan debt for 50-60k / year jobs.

There’s an odd truth to it. Trump supporters certainly say they don’t like dishonest politicians. What I think they mean is that intelligent politicians confuse them, and that confusion begets fear, which they cast into mistrust. Trump uses really short, simple sentences (because he is an idiot), and his supporters don’t feel as threatened by him. Trump supporters are just like Trump. They believe they’re above average thinkers, and people like Hannity make them feel smart. It is pathetic, of course, but I suspect it’s how they think.

And that’s a problem with your mind. It satisfies itself with oversimplifications.

This format doesn't exactly allow any of the candidates to look like world beaters. I'm not worried. EDIT: Well, I should say, our future outright terrifies me.. but this debate has little bearing on that one way or the other.

It's worth pointing out that it'll be a free re-education camp.

Bingo. R's are dumb enough to believe that not only will a serious health catastrophe will never happen to them, they think that even if it did, their insurance companies won't do everything they legally can to get off the hook. Like, underneath it all, I bet they think that megacorporations are their friends because the those megacorps buy the politicians they support. It's the same as with the senate trial. They like the outcome, and can't see ahead to when those in power no longer need the rubes to maintain control.

I used to have one of those plans. Really glad I switched from it.

Y’all gotta start recognizing when folks are arguing in bad faith. If a Dem were president, none of these pro-Trump fascists would be arguing the economy is any good. They’d be arguing that the deficit is out of control, that the quality of jobs is declining, and that the next recession is going to be the Dem’s fault. The only truly shocking thing I’ve read from any of them is just how many dumbass Cletuses Johnny must have unleashed on this world to stand to save over $1k a month on healthcare with one of those shitty non-ACA plans.

American executives are usually spineless cowards pretending to be superheroes, and companies like McKinsey are paid to lend their legitimacy to those executives. By the time things go south with a consultant firm, the executive sponsor has already leveraged their position into a vertical move. It's a tidy little arrangement that works out most of the time. And what happens after that? A new executive gets to sponsor a new consulting firm to come clean up the mess.

The Democrats should sustain an all-out, indefatigable holy war aimed singularly at holding the GOP accountable, whether they win the White House or not. In the meantime, this means more impeachments, more investigations, etc. Their campaign message this year should be that they are going to root out the obvious corruption that has infected the GOP, and if they fail, we're all fucked. Poor, rich, black, white, gay, straight. Every single voter needs to know that a vote for a Democrat means, more than anything else, a vote for restoring the rule of law. At this point, if we don't step up the fight against the GOP in the political arena, we'll either be a wholly subjugated people, or we'll eventually be fighting an actual war. So, what will the Democrats do? They'll probably continue the same strategy that's failed them in the past: appeasement.

And a more balanced perspective is that we have a gaping wound that was self-inflicted, and it's now open season for foreign powers to exploit our weakness. Not to mention, as the impeachment trial closes, it's becoming clear that, for the first time in our history, our government will flat out permit interference. Nothing about Russia's GDP has anything to do with their capacity to do harm, particularly given that they realistically face zero repercussions for anything they do going forward.

You might want to disentangle the notion of something being an issue from the notion of who is to blame.

Our wilfully ignorant electorate means that anyone who tries to interfere stands a chance at succeeding. Which makes their interference *more* of an issue, not less. Your logic.. isn't.

The only reason we say "fuck cancer" for even our worst enemies is that our society has been prosperous enough that death isn't constantly at our door, and civil enough that we can all come together for the bitter end. Rush Limbaugh's lasting legacy will be at the tip of the spear that pierced through our society's prosperity and civility. So, no, I won't begrudge him anything on this.

The idea that a middle-of-the-road Democratic candidate will fare better than a socialist like Sanders strikes me as short-sighted. The GOP at present has a stranglehold on the economy narrative, i.e. they get to determine whether working and middle class white Americans perceive the economy as strong or weak. When the stock markets are great, and a Democrat is in the White House, the GOP has made hay out of the "numbers aren't telling the whole story" narrative. Conversely, when the stock markets drop with a Republican in the White House, they can counteract the reputation hit by fear-mongering socialism. When Democrats win elections, the GOP still wins so long as they can sustain the socialism boogeyman, because the fear of being perceived as a socialist tends to keep moderate Dems in check. The left needs to rid "socialism" of the stigma it has with center/independent white voters. By breaking the power that word has over so many Americans, we stand to diminish the GOP's power bigly. Liberals need to understand that, as repulsive as it is to accept, a lot of working/middle class white Americans believe Trump is interested in improving their lot in life. They buy into the notion that the "elites" run the country, and still see Trump as an outsider. More than the other Dem candidates, Sanders can steal that narrative away from Trump, and *that's* why his far-left ideology is vastly overstated as a liability. The fact that he can also destigmatize "socialism" makes him a very attractive candidate to oppose Trump. I've been leaning Warren up until the recent spat, and now I'm ready to put the Bernie sign in my yard. I'm not a rich man, but I'm in a much better situation financially than most of Trump's supporters. The message that well-off Republicans and centrists need to hear over and over is that nobody's wealth is safe if we regress into a banana republic.

I wasn't making an argument, I was making an observation. When discussing government spending, I've noticed that libertarians tend to really struggle with realizing that the degrees of waste that we deem outrageous versus acceptable differ when we're discussing private versus public spending. There are also who categories of waste that libertarians tend to ignore, as well. Even further still, there are societal objectives that private enterprise is simply never going to have any incentive to pursue. Do you think Elon Musk would ever try to shoot rockets into space if NASA didn't do it first? I'm digressing, so I'll get back to the point. If you actually want to have an argument about waste, go study management. As it stands, from my vantage point, it seems like you're guessing at how the world works by framing it with an overly simplistic narrative. Of course, all libertarians think that way, it's y'alls major flaw. EDIT: I should also admit that we've veered way off topic here. We'd probably actually agree that these govt fees that the OP brought up are bullshit.

Libertarians love to talk about government waste and how corporations are so much better at managing money but are oblivious to the fact that we grade their wastefulness completely differently. A CEO makes 40x what the average employee makes? No problem, according to a libertarian. Big corporation wastes most of its revenue due to complete mismanagement, but spends enough on sales and marketing to undercut and squash competition? Business as usual. Multiple corporations spend money duplicating the same services as one another? That's how capitalism works, duh! Nobody elsewhere on the political spectrum wastes as many neurons convincing themselves they're smarter than everyone else than libertarians. They're fake intellectuals.

Dmitri was hilarious.

We're at 218. Fun times.

And you also have otherwise intelligent people who never develop a "big picture" in spite of getting some degree of education that should have helped them build one. They can download plenty of knowledge into their memory banks, and recite it wherever it seems relevant in order to attempt an argument, but none of it ever gets integrated. They trust only their own present understanding of everything around them, instead of growing up, joining the human race, and learning how to discern who to trust properly. They pass themselves off as intellectuals, but they're imposters -- in reality, they're some of the least scholarly people you'll ever meet, and that includes the barbarians that show up at Trump rallies. Their underlying bias is that they're the smartest person in the room, no matter who else is in it, and they will literally never consider any idea that challenges their present worldview, except to find some superficial hole they can poke. Since they have spent their whole lives mimicking intellectuals, they can be hard to spot sometimes. But I find when I talk to them about politics, it doesn't take long to snuff them out. They all voted for Gary Johnson.

@henrygandorf in the mind of a Trumpkin, the use of the term "favor" is likely to be perceived as an example of Trump employing his brilliant negotiating skills he developed as a businessman.

Yeah you’re not getting it. Where we’re headed, Trump’s executive branch can just brazenly violate civil liberties.

Everyone remember: if you find yourself perseverating over FISA warrants for more than three hours, consult your doctor.

The state didn't control all tobacco "outlets" when they forced them to add warning labels to cigarette packs. Imagine not jumping to conclusions impulsively, and considering ideas thoughtfully.