Donald Trump and US politics

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Jennik wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

I'm not trying to say Trump was scandal-free before 2015, but Clinton was clearly the more corrupt candidate to anyone with an eye for evidence.

And here we see the effectiveness of propaganda and the ease with which people can believe the most obviously untrue things. There's literally nothing I can say that hasn't been said a thousand times, nothing I can debunk that hasn't been thoroughly shown to be bunk already. He's just another sad example of someone who simply doesn't exist in the world of actual facts. It's sad and frustrating how many of them are lost.

So WikiLeaks is "obviously untrue things" now?

$30 for a pack of cigarettes?

Sounds like the future of California's cig tax. They relied on the tax revenue and spent the money in advance, but smoking is on the way out culturally. To make up for the shortfall, they started raising the tax which accelerated people moving off of cigs, so they raised it again, and again, and classified ecigs as tobacco, and raised it again, and...

Presumably the end goal here is that only five people will still be smoking*, all billionaires, and they'll fund the construction of a new highway every time they do so.

*Smoking in this dystopian future is defined as any kind of enjoyment that has the potential for self-harm. Includes smoking, ecigs, drinking, consuming caffeine, skydiving, driving, pet ownership, and watching sports. High blood pressure is a killer, you know.

You left out a few.

Fatty foods, soda, having sex, eating candy, fast food, meat eating, cheese, salty snacks, prepackaged sweet snacks, paper towels, hosiery, lingerie, toilet paper, computer games, cell phones, internet.

The list goes on. And on. And on.

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鬼殺し wrote:

25-30 usually. Roll-your-own is incredibly popular as a result, but even that's getting taxed pretty hard.

To provide the other side of things, one perhaps more relevant to most of us, a slab of 30 cans (375ml) of domestic, low-grade-as-fuck beer is $50. Craft beer is closer to 7-10 dollars a bottle, depending on where you buy it. A typical bottle of wine you'd grab for dinner is 20-30 bucks. Any cheaper than that and you're in vinegar territory.

Does everyone just make their own beer over there? Those prices seem insane to me.
I pay around $9-10 for a 6 bottles of craft beer here.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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鬼殺し wrote:

a buy-in medicaid-for-all (essentially, what we call medicare here) option being talked about:

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/8/22/16171160/schatz-health-care-medicaid

It's a start. Anything to get basic healthcare out of the clutches of private insurance companies is a *start*.

No, it isn't. Once again it doesn't cover the pricing problem at all, and attends only to the funding problem.

The problem is emphatically not "why doesn't every person have health insurance?" The problem is "why does healthcare cost so much that everyone needs insurance?" If you solve the former without solving the latter, it means taxpayers have "solved" the problem of price gouging not by negotiating reasonable prices, but by convincing some rich sucker to pay it... and that sucker is the taxpayers, aka themselves. Do you think Big Pharma is opposed to any of these guaranteed windfalls?

Any funding-based rather than pricing-based solution is at best a bubble waiting to burst. Just scan quickly, see if it mentions pricing or negotiating or anything of the sort, if it doesn't it's garbage. And Obamacare needs to be removed before we can build.

I’m willing to go along with this; it seems like a logical conclusion to the thoughts I began earlier. I am cautious of approaching a Sanders-esque proposal, though as I do believe profit motivates new research. A complete audit would be a good place to start, IMO—let’s see just how true that belief is.

That said, I do believe “Medicaid for all” is also a start, just not a solution, and runs the risk of going off course.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

There were some gems I’d like to quote to +1, but fuck that ;)

Eh, but you're currently my unofficial taste-tester for the pro-Trump crowd in here. Did I forget to mention that? Oops.

Who said I was pro-Trump? I like him better than Clinton, Bush, or Obama, but I didn’t vote for him (would have voted Gary Johnson, if I could have been arsed to take off work). He somewhat aligns with my political ideals—smaller government where its ineffective, bigger government where it counts—whether or not this is actually the case.

Otherwise, most notably, I think three things about him:
He has denied a platform to BLM / Antifa and their racist / fascist ilk. Sure, KKK and neonazis, blah blah, but they’re not out vandalizing businesses, attacking people with bike locks, censoring people, and holding our college campuses hostage. That’s not sympathizing, btw, it’s just not giving a fuck because they’re irrelevant.

He returned operational control of our theatres of war back to the generals. I withhold having an opinion about whether we should be in those theatres or not, but if we’re going to be there, we might as well be effective.

Lastly, I don’t care which direction Don Lemon’s shit flushed this morning. I’m sure Trump does plenty of bad things, but if it’s in a news headline I probably don’t care. I don’t care about peoples’ moral outrage.

It doesn't matter to some of these peeps who you voted for or didn't, if you don't revere their pscyho goddess HRC and lame brain last prez you are a Trump supporter. You have to admit it does keep things simple, right?

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CanHasPants wrote:

I don’t care about peoples’ moral outrage.

I'm with you on that, and never really understood the expectation some have of others reacting to their moral outrage. Like, how dare I not be as mad as they are about something I personally don't care about? These people get no reassurance from me.

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

I don’t care about peoples’ moral outrage.

I'm with you on that, and never really understood the expectation some have of others reacting to their moral outrage. Like, how dare I not be as mad as they are about something I personally don't care about? These people get no reassurance from me.

I am sure they are fine with public shaming, mob justice and bullying people that lack morals. Get used to it then.

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鬼殺し wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

Who said I was pro-Trump?

Not me. Sorry, was I not clear enough? I have the lot of them on ignore, so when you quote one of them, that's you 'taste-testing' for me. You literally control what I see of their posts, because in and of themselves they're mostly useless. So please don't stop +1ing at least some of it. :)

I think the rest of what you said spins off from that misconception, so I'll leave that there. I really don't care to engage with your political stance, but it's not surprising that it's somewhere between the two. They were two utterly vile candidates. I have said before I don't envy those who had to make the choice, although obviously I know which I'd ultimately have ticked had I been forced to do so.

I wasn't, but the outcome affects me nonetheless. As it does so many people in the world outside of America.

At any rate, that's what I meant. :)

I don’t know what I thought you meant. In my defense, I only post when I first wake up or after my shift ends. No point during those times am I of sound mind ;)

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deathflower wrote:

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MrSmiley21 wrote:

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CanHasPants wrote:

I don’t care about peoples’ moral outrage.

I'm with you on that, and never really understood the expectation some have of others reacting to their moral outrage. Like, how dare I not be as mad as they are about something I personally don't care about? These people get no reassurance from me.

I am sure they are fine with public shaming, mob justice and bullying people that lack morals. Get used to it then.

This is precisely why I don’t care about moral outrage. Politics is the religion of crucifying straw men bedazzled with sensationalism while somebody makes off with the collection plate.

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CanHasPants wrote:

This is precisely why I don’t care about moral outrage. Politics is the religion of crucifying straw men bedazzled with sensationalism while somebody makes off with the collection plate.

Then you should. You can't talk about the collection plate until the outrage is settled. If you are willing to pass a law that they hate, they can do the same. If you willing to vote someone they hate into office, they can do the same. That is what is wrong with your politics.

If their problem isn't your problem, your problem isn't their either. You will probably spend less dealing with their problems than wasting time and resources fighting over it. It is like a couple who can't stand each other in a marriage. They Don't Listen to Each Other.