Prelude to the Apocalypse

[quash]

Money that the government gives you simply for existing that you can do anything you want with (including investing in your own retirement) is totally the same as paying money to the government that they totally pinky swear to give back to you as soon as you hit a certain age?

[BulletMagnet]

I could swear I've had that very article waved in my face before, but what the hey, let's have some fun.

Best part is actually right at the beginning: in his zeal to argue that taxing rich people more wouldn't even bring in that much extra money (not even bothering to run a spell checker, it would seem), the author commits one of the right's cardinal sins: he provides a cursory explanation of how income tax brackets actually work. In the process, he puts a well-placed bullet into one of the plutocrats' most ancient and sacred lies: If you get a raise and move into the next-highest tax bracket, your taxes go up so much you lose money! Not that anyone who reads The Blaze actually cares, but I still got a good laugh out of imagining the corporatists getting wind of this.

"Glenn?! Glenn, what are you doing? Stop it, Glenn! Stop it right now! Don't make me come down there!"

The rest, more predictably, is the usual deliberately-sloppy embarrassment to actual journalism; the insinuation that the plummeting tax rate at the top has been cancelled out by a matching plethora of closed loopholes doesn't even pass the laugh test, but they even have the gall to trot out the "rich people pay a larger percentage of the country's overall taxes than they used to" canard without so much as acknowledging how much fucking richer they've gotten...for no particular reason, of course (or that businesses pay in far less than they used to). I also can't help but appreciate the irony of singling out real estate deductions as a heroic example of Reagan's tough-but-fair tax knowhow without mentioning his game-changing contribution to the national debt (funny how quickly that bogeyman vanishes from the plutocratic lexicon whenever it's not being used to push cuts to Social security and Medicare)...or that Trump included a specific exemption for real-estate investors in his populist tax bill.

You're getting rusty. Troll harder.

[BryanM]

Money that the government gives you simply for existing that you can do anything you want with (including investing in your own retirement) is totally the same as paying money to the government that they totally pinky swear to give back to you as soon as you hit a certain age?

> Money that the government gives you simply for existing that you can do anything you want with

Minus the means testing for age or disability, that's what SS is, yes. A simple cash transfer for the individual to use as they see fit.

> The government isn't going to allow this program to live

Who is this "government"? It's a bunch of assholes selected by the electorate! How many times has congress led by Clinton/Bush/Obama/Trump tried to cut or kill Social Security and Medicare? A thousand million times. How many times has it passed? Zero. Why? Because they still need to be able to scoop up a few assholes to vote them in.

They can murder the shit out of kids abroad as much as they want. They can cut taxes on billionaires to zero. They can privatize almost every commodity and hand it over to the banks. This stuff is trivial, because it doesn't personally affect the lives of their voters in a clear and direct way whatsoever.

Are they really going to allow the 20% benefit cut 35 years from now go through, or are we going to get our shit together within that time and fund the thing, by lifting the cap or any other method?

This reminds me of the time you were talking about going to war with China or whatever when we invented ICBMs a lifetime ago. There are some things that can't happen - we'll be starving from climate death long before our politicians castrate themselves by openly destroying the New Deal. The donors have incredible power, but they're still only men with a giant megaphone and an army of paid biblethumpers.

....

It is nice to see you coming around to communism by embracing Karl Marx's "freedom is only possible once you're free from need" argument, though. My father and grandfather only got a single SS paycheck before dying, thanks to the means testing. While my uncle lives off way more money than he put in, spending it on animals who are his only true companionship in this world. The only modern politician that offered him anything was Sanders, who offered him a raise back in 2016. But of course he thinks Sanders is the devil.

[quash]

While my uncle lives off way more money than he put in

Do you not see the problem here? You aren't paying into your SS right now, you're paying into his. It's not going to be there for you, and if it somehow doesn't go completely insolvent, you won't be living high on the hog like your uncle is. Inflation alone will ensure that, but there's a plethora of other factors that all but guarantee that nobody younger than 40 is going to be able to retire.

But of course he thinks Sanders is the devil.

Sanders thinks I don't know what it's like to be poor or live in a ghetto, so the feeling is mutual.

@BM: I spotted some inaccuracies in that article too, but it's still generally correct in that higher taxes on paper don't necessarily translate to higher taxes in practice, at least for the people with enough money to get out of it.

I leave you with a simple question: do you honestly think that at any point in time, the 1% ever paid what they were actually supposed to in taxes? When even in the modern age we know full well that this is not the case? If so, I have some bad news for you.

[BryanM]

You aren't paying into your SS right now, you're paying into his.

Social Security is 81 years old.

Sanders thinks I don't know what it's like to be poor or live in a ghetto, so the feeling is mutual.

Oh shut the fuck up with that you lying shitbag. Where are the other examples to prove your thesis, besides this "you don't know what it's like to be poor with the additional pain in the ass of the police busting your balls all the time" example you keep using like a dog coming back to its own dogshit?

He's such a white-hating Jewish person according to you, so there should be hundreds of examples, right?

But there are none. Fuck off.

[quash]

Hey, if you recall, I actually didn't mind Bernie so much until he said that. Even if you give him the benefit of the doubt that it was a genuine flub, the talk of "racial justice" doesn't sit well with me, either. But past that, I can't say he's much if any worse than any other Democrat, and sometimes he even hits the nail on the head like when he calls out Bezos or the Kochs.

It's not like you to get so upset over someone that would inevitably disappoint if ever elected. Take a deep breath.

Good? Okay. Funnily enough, I came back to this thread, against my better judgment, to ask two open questions.

1. If you didn't like Trump during the election and still don't, why don't you like him now? If nothing else, shouldn't you be glad that he's been hilariously ineffective at executing his agenda?

2. How diverse is this community? Be honest. I have my suspicions but I'll take a step back from them and let you all tell me what the makeup of the STG community looks like.

As a white guy in the FGC, I feel like a guest character on In Living Color. Strangely enough, the people who don't aim to inject politics into every single aspect of life get along with me just fine. Some of them even ask me for life advice and keep coming back! Truly crazy stuff.

[Domino]

Oh shut the fuck up with that you lying shitbag. Where are the other examples to prove your thesis, besides this "you don't know what it's like to be poor with the additional pain in the ass of the police busting your balls all the time" example you keep using like a dog coming back to its own dogshit?

He's such a white-hating Jewish person according to you, so there should be hundreds of examples, right?

But there are none. Fuck off.

I always have a trust problem with people from NYC. Myself, Sanders, and Trump included.

[BulletMagnet]

I leave you with a simple question: do you honestly think that at any point in time, the 1% ever paid what they were actually supposed to in taxes?

They paid a good deal closer to it back when they weren't treated as infallible superhumans who must be constantly placated in order for a sliver of their blinding glory to drift our way, and considering what a complete and destructive sham trickle-down economics has proved itself to be I see absolutely no reason we shouldn't be moving back in that direction - and beyond it - with all possible haste. Will they evade their obligations as best they can? Yes, because by and large they'd rather see civilization end than admit they've got a stake in it. Should we just give up on holding them accountable? The pitiful shells of human beings who advocate that are the ones truly deserving of their precious "cuck" moniker.

[quash]

Part of the issue that few people talk about (by design, no doubt) is that now more than ever, the so-called private sector and the government really are one and the same.

Google? Started by the Pentagon. Amazon? Didn't turn a profit for fifteen years, then they scored the cloud computing contract with the CIA. Tesla? Was started thanks to a type of loan the government created specifically for it. The list goes on. The rich paying 99% tax ultimately won't mean a thing if they're just getting that money back and thensome.

Personally, I don't see any solution at this point other than starving the beast en masse. But not only would that mean not paying taxes, that'd also mean not using anything that makes Amazon or Google money, so good luck with that.

[ED-057]

Do tax revenues from the 1% even outweigh the trillions of dollars printed by the fed for the purpose of inflating the "market value" of assets held by the 1%? How many corps would suddenly be worth zilch without that umbilical cable connecting them to the fed?

Combine that with the trillions already spent by the government without bothering to wait for tax revenue, and tax policy starts to look less like something important and more like ritual sadomasochism.

[Mischief Maker]

If Maduro really is this big (Saddam Hussein-esque) dictator, why is Juan Guaidó still walking the streets as a free man, trying to start coups via periscope?

[BryanM]

Talking about racebrains, the political cartoonist Dees (that's the... interesting fellow whose lizardpeople metaphors are always a synonym for "the Jews") has also turned on Trump. Not for being an ally to his class and self interests, not for vetoing the bill to stop aiding genocide in Yemen... no. He's mad he's on the take from the Israel lobby. Other giant lobbies? Eh, they don't seem to matter.

Which gets back to a classic original meme of this thread - that those who think primarily in terms of race tend to follow their basic animal thoughts and impulses, and create ad-hoc rationalizations for them after the fact. The "asian fetish" that makes Mr. Yang acceptable to some hardcore former Trump supporters was encapsulated perfectly 20 years ago in South Park's Chinpokomon episode. In which the nefarious Japanese businessmen trick the hicks of South Park into thinking that they were harmless and incapable of accomplishing great things, because of having "Very small penis."

I guess we've made a little progress, from back when Chinese peasants brought in to build the railroads were hated.

Venezuela talk

Zero anti-regime change voices in the corporate media. Yet another affirmation that NPR, PBS Newshour etc are indeed also propaganda outlets.

I was reading an article in the Bezos Post on this week's failed Bay of Pigs and it really did its best to create an air of befuddled mystery to why nobody there wants to murder their neighbors and die in order to give their country to wealthy foreign interests.

This passive voice trick the media uses is kind of rage inducing.

[quash]

The "asian fetish" that makes Mr. Yang acceptable to some hardcore former Trump supporters was encapsulated perfectly 20 years ago in South Park's Chinpokomon episode. In which the nefarious Japanese businessmen trick the hicks of South Park into thinking that they were harmless and incapable of accomplishing great things, because of having "Very small penis."

???

I just want free money, dude. Hopefully we can implement UBI sooner rather than later and at least start to correct the damage boomers have done to America.

Speaking of which, those same boomers who lived in the most prosperous nation during its most prosperous period ever, who will actually gain money from SS and actually have a 401K to pull from? They're going to be working at McDonald's. Really percolates the peanuts.

[ED-057]

Talking about racebrains, the political cartoonist Dees (that's the... interesting fellow whose lizardpeople metaphors are always a synonym for "the Jews") has also turned on Trump. Not for being an ally to his class and self interests, not for vetoing the bill to stop aiding genocide in Yemen... no. He's mad he's on the take from the Israel lobby. Other giant lobbies? Eh, they don't seem to matter.

Aside from the failure to distinguish between "the jews" and the state of Israel, it's nice that somebody is mad about this. The other thing you mentioned, Yemen, is probably related. After all, the Saudis are attacking because "mumble mumble, Iran!" which is the same kind of explanation that the Israeli gov regularly gives for various activities of its own.

This reminds me of the hilarious "outrage" recently after the NYT ran a cartoon critical of Trump. Critical of Trump? Isn't that normal? Yes but this one was a little different. It turns out that if you're the corporate media, it's A-OK to run fabricated BS about Trump and Putin as often as you want. But don't you DARE make the same implication about nutty yahoo because that's anti-semitism!

[quash]

Which one of you was this?

[BryanM]

I don't have a Eugene Debs shirt. And thanks for making me sad that Big Dogs doesn't actually sell that shirt. dril tried man.

Image search suggests the shooper was maybe from the Chapo reddit. Reddit is filled with nothing but memers, after all.

I know way too much internet etymology... christ what am I doing with my life.

[Mischief Maker]

Which one of you was this?

The guy who posted all kinds of pictures about how the Space X car launch was faked was more convincing than this.

See the parts where the shirt is creased yet the image supposedly printed on it is not creased? See how the D in the bottom left corner floats in the air above the shirt? In fact, see how the whole left side of that kid's torso is cut into an unnaturally straight line in order to fit that "D" into "DESERVED?"

quash, if you're getting fake images like this from Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, and god knows who else you get your news from, maybe you should question if the dire predictions they've been feeding you about social security are bullshit, too.

[BryanM]

Easy easy, I'm sure he knows it's a meme.

[quash]

quash, if you're getting fake images like this from Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, and god knows who else you get your news from, maybe you should question if the dire predictions they've been feeding you about social security are bullshit, too.

Don't you watch The Young Turks?

And it's obviously a photoshop, I can tell from the pixels and having seen quite a few shops in my time. Did you think I actually thought it was someone who posted here who actually wore that shirt, too?

Funny you'd mention SS though, the government itself admits that it's not long for this world. They actually make a point of making sure you understand this when you separate from the service. And that's not coming from some strawman AR-15 wielding tea party member either, but normal people, many of whom aren't even veterans, who teach the separation courses.

As for where I get my news: for six years, I was the news. I know what's bullshit and what isn't. My friends and family were shocked when I first called out the Jussie Smollet story as bullshit, only to later realize I was right about it before it was an admitted hoax. I have primary sources still, some of which are even publicly available, but if I told you about them you wouldn't trust them, anyways.

[Mischief Maker]

As for where I get my news: for six years, I was the news. I know what's bullshit and what isn't. My friends and family were shocked when I first called out the Jussie Smollet story as bullshit, only to later realize I was right about it before it was an admitted hoax. I have primary sources still, some of which are even publicly available, but if I told you about them you wouldn't trust them, anyways.

Woah! You had the inside scoop on Jussie Smollet?!

Got any dish on Britney Spears?

[quash]

If she's ever accused of or is supposedly a victim of a hate crime, I'll give you the deets.

[BryanM]

normal people

Normal people are suffering from a top-down imposed delusion, about everything.

The donors backing Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are their "sources". And your sources as well.

Funny how they said Trump had a 0% chance of winning his primary back in late 2015 and I said it was closer to 96%.

A 20% reduction in benefits 30 years from now if nothing is done is not "complete destruction". Whenever They talk about cutting it, they just want to accelerate the speed we get to that point of additional desperation. You're welcome.

[BulletMagnet]

As for where I get my news: for six years, I was the news.

Troll harder.

[Mischief Maker]

Aha! I see now why the right-wing press suddenly resurrected the Jussie Smollet story.

The Sandra Bland arrest video just came out.

Yep, she totally sounded suicidal in that video and the cop definitely seemed in control of his emotions.

[GaijinPunch]

As for where I get my news: for six years, I was the news.

Troll harder.

JAPJAC of shmups politics

[quash]

As for where I get my news: for six years, I was the news.

Troll harder.

https://www.cnn.com/2015/10/29/politics ... index.html
https://theaviationist.com/2016/06/19/t ... etachment/
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa- ... SKCN1GK0HU

What do these three news articles all have in common? I was there for all of them.

https://news.yahoo.com/trump-doesnt-wan ... 09080.html

At the rate things are going, I'll probably be in more.

[Specineff]

I was the news. I know what's bullshit and what isn't. My friends and family were shocked when I first called out the Jussie Smollet story as bullshit, only to later realize I was right about it before it was an admitted hoax. I have primary sources still, some of which are even publicly available, but if I told you about them you wouldn't trust them, anyways.

[BryanM]

Rorschach was a hero occasionally don't besmirch him like that >_<



^ People are fine with a dictatorship as long as it's their dictatorship.

This is also a good overall measure of how much peasant infighting a country's elite have managed to successfully initiate. Matt and Chris had a chat about it a couple days ago.

[quash]

Villains are the best characters, anyways. So thanks I guess?

Also, RT?!?! Literal Russian propaganda?!?! OMG I literally can't even

[BulletMagnet]

At the rate things are going, I'll probably be in more.

All that experience and resulting insight certainly ensured that you were right on the money about Daddy, particularly on the foreign policy front. Assuming you actually meant any of that shit in the first place, that is.