Prelude to the Apocalypse

[Giest118]

u may not kno dis yet cause you tink abot penises al daay, buut teechnogggikal deveeloopmoot iz dah onli wai 4 a soosity 2 devleop

coowz dun innvent da supah roobits, capoopilists wit plaan 2 taek ovir woorld doodoo

coowz dun ezen has haonds d00fy

I don't know what point you think you made here, but you failed to make it.

Unless your point actually was that "technology is bad and we should discourage the things that lead to it."

[quash]

dafuq is "quasi-socialism"?

Keeping most people just poor enough so that they remain dependent on the state for basic services while still making sure that they're able to buy stuff (albeit cheap stuff made by child laborers in China). Obviously, it's a far cry from seizing the means of production, but it's supposed to be. Lazy, complacent people are the easiest to keep under your thumb. The real class warfare isn't between the rich and the poor, but the rich and the rich; and, frankly, they want to make sure it stays that way.

dafuq is "crony capitalism"?

A form of capitalism that enables what I said above. Walmart paying their employees the flies that come out of their wallet while the government absorbs the brunt of those people's needs.

Racial identity politics people are weird. "If only we got rid of the government, then we wouldn't have all this 'crony' capitalism! And everything would be fine!"

Eh, I wouldn't be so sure. The people who consider themselves fascists (in the Mussolini sense) would most certainly want government to set price controls and such, they'd just eliminate the power brokers that allow the law to work overwhelmingly in the favor of the upper class at the expense of everyone else. Pretty sure most Nazis would fall into this camp, too.

Libertarians on the other hand range from anywhere between Republican lite to full on anarcho-capitalists. I fall most closely to the Ron Paul point on that spectrum, I guess, but I don't think there's a one size fits all solution to regulation. Or anything, really.

You won't have to worry about Libertarians being taken seriously anytime soon, though.

[BryanM]

It is interesting to get cause and effect so flipped flopped, though. Always interesting to hear the opinions of minority groups (this case, the culture justice warrior).

"Environment dictates culture" suddenly becomes "Culture dictates environment" and suddenly it's the victim's fault that they're being used as capital to make some number on a king's spreadsheet go up.

Now if only we had a democratic party that wouldn't play their game, and instead offered some stop gaps to limit misery somewhat during the current slow slide of the economic value of human beings towards zero.

The next recession is certainly going to exceed expectations. I'm sure it'll be the fault of Islam, who we know holds all power over our domestic policy.

While the socialist and Berniecrat left takes it for granted that all Americans unconditionally deserve the good life, the Democrats want to see your resume first.

So much for today's big pivot in messaging away from RUSSIA...

[quash]

The next recession is certainly going to exceed expectations. I'm sure it'll be the fault of Islam, who we know holds all power over our domestic policy.

Nah, many things will be blamed, but Islam won't be one of them.

I certainly do agree with you otherwise, though. People have no fucking idea how bad shit is going to hit the fan within the next few years. I said many times before that I don't particularly care for any candidate's economic policy because nothing is going to change the impending crash on the horizon. I'll reap the benefits of the loosening of the noose around the economy's neck in the meantime, but make no mistake, this is not going to last long.

[Mischief Maker]

Too bad brain cancer is so damn slow.

But on the upside, brain cancer is slow.

[GaijinPunch]

I'll reap the benefits of the loosening of the noose around the economy's neck in the meantime, but make no mistake, this is not going to last long.

Nice crystal ball... but I guess even a broken clock is correct twice a day.

[Rob]

[BulletMagnet]

And, yes, in America we have things like a loud environmental movement and a concern for toxins in our food and water.

Considering we just elected (and re-elected) a whole bunch of people who completely and contemptuously discount said concerns and have been openly striving to disempower and/or eradicate said movement for decades upon decades, it would appear that we as a society are more than willing to instantly and capriciously abandon such aspects of "superior" culture (among many, many others) as soon as we're led to believe, as you say, that the "chips are down" in some fashion. I assume I don't have to explain that the primary way people are led into such self-destructive behavior is when they're told that they or their culture are somehow "under attack" by a familiar but nebulous Other, and that drastic, unprecedented action - or lack of action, just let us take care of it, trust us, anyone who says otherwise is out to get you - is necessary.

Do you count on a growing third world population to value these things as much as Americans do?

I'll repeat what I said in my previous post: the reason that we ever developed such safeguards against the elements within our - and every - society which would exploit and hobble its development is because at some point we became wealthy and educated enough that we had the time and resources to devote to problems larger and farther-reaching than "will I survive the day" (and yes, some of that wealth came at the direct expense of other cultures which have suffered greatly as a result - and in some cases have come back to bite us, a lesson our would-be isolationist saviors aren't even trying to learn - but since openly saying so is automatically interpreted as "self-hatred" these days I won't belabor the point). Again: If you want to solve, or even address, any culture's innate shortcomings, you first need to make sure said culture has the resources to address them in the first place. You can't put a person with a single stumpy crayon next to another with a new, full box and criticize the former for not having enough innate talent to still produce pictures as pretty as the latter's.

[Mischief Maker]

And, yes, in America we have things like a loud environmental movement and a concern for toxins in our food and water. Do you count on a growing third world population to value these things as much as Americans do?

Scott Pruit: That's right! Pay no attention to me and what I'm doing to the EPA right now, just focus on the brown people. Gimme a sec and I'll call Sinclair Broadcasting to shoot some B-roll of brown people littering at a local park. They're the real threat!

No, I think that it's a lot easier to give a country away than it is to get it back. I'm glad you have a Muslim friend, but people are tribal. It's tempting to believe that we've evolved past that when things are easy. When the chips are down Muslims will side with Muslims. When they have numbers they will elect Muslims that prioritize Muslims.

Karen Handel: That's right! Whereas the culturally superior suburban whites in my district who already had months of proof that Trump is an unstable incompetent who shouldn't be empowered, rallied around my message of "I don't support a living wage, but a vote for me will Make San Francisco Liberals Cry! (by which I mean Ossoff is gay)"

https://twitter.com/RichardBSpencer/sta ... 4999450624

You got me. Getting mad at John McCain for returning to DC to showboat for the cameras while saying Republicans should stand up to Trump... then cast the deciding vote to keep the Trumpcare nightmare going? That makes me just as racist as Richard Spencer.

[Mischief Maker]

For the record, Ron Johnson this week has stopped having staffers take public comments but instead set up a system to auto-dump public comments to a voicemail where presumably they can be safely ignored.

This is what democracy looks like!

Still for what it's worth: (202) 224-3121

[BryanM]

One technique to make them hurt more is probably by spamming their donation systems. Because you know they can't ignore those.

Unfortunately it costs money to mail in a letter with "eat shit" on it. The plight of being a cow.

[Rob]

[Durandal]

and in some cases have come back to bite us, a lesson our would-be isolationist saviors aren't even trying to learn

[BryanM]

Ted Rall isn't very talented, and got a lot of flack for his Homer Simpson-art making Obama look like a gorilla, but the man took an actual trip across post-war Afghanistan on multiple occasions. No military escort, just a local handler paid in cash. That kind of chutzpah, to learn about people who'd otherwise be invisible and alien to us, deserves some respect.

As opposed to disingenous turdbuckets making wank videos on youtube, pretending medicare for all is impossible by pretending every other healthcare system in the world doesn't exist/is a failure, and that the cost of such a system would be "added on" to what we're already spending, as opposed to replacing it.

Here's Matt Bor's coverage from their trip together from 7 years ago.

[Rob]

[Mischief Maker]

pretending medicare for all is impossible

I don't think anyone would argue that dysgenics isn't possible, but why should a health-conscious person want to pay for the lifestyle diseases of the lazy and overweight?

Because that's the way insurance works. Good drivers pool their resources so that the few who fuck up and get in crashes can cover their catastrophic damages. If you don't have low-risk people paying into the pot, the whole thing falls apart because premiums would have to be prohibitively high.

Also, my dear super-healthy ubermensch, health has a way of fizzling when you get older.

Republicans are exhibiting a combination of disingenuousness and/or stupidity when proffering the argument you just made because their attempt at repeal has nothing to do with Obamacare's problems and everything to do with freeing up enough money through the cancellation of the ACA so they can pass massive and PERMANENT tax cuts for the wealthy using the process of reconciliation. Reconciliation needs to be revenue-neutral and they sure as hell aren't taking that money out of the military, so they're slapping the meds out of grandma's hands so the Koch brothers can hoard even more money like the financial cat ladies they are.

[quash]

It looks like transgender people will no longer be able to join the armed forces. From an efficiency standpoint, it makes perfect sense. The policy that was going to take effect this month would have paid for the entire transition process, leaving you non-deployable (read: not useful) for two years, and that's without an obligated service extension (common practice for jobs with long schools, this way you don't spend half of your time in the military in training).

Some point to the current cost of transgender service members at $8 million a year and argue that the cost is minimal. To that I say: not only are there relatively few transgender service members as of right now, but once it becomes widely accepted, you can expect many more. And these costs add up quickly: just look at how much the Navy alone is now spending on non-deployable personnel due to pregnancies.

If you absolutely refuse to click on a Daily Caller link, you can view the raw report here. Personally, I don't think it goes far enough into all the ways pregnancies are detrimental to the service, but it should be enough for anyone to see why it's a problem. Should be.

[BryanM]

I do really like the framing Ted uses for the Pentagon, tho. Gets tiring hearing the undeserved unilateral respect the media gives them.

Republicans are exhibiting a combination of disingenuousness and/or stupidity when proffering the argument you just made

I like how it's an argument based on dividing people apart. By bringing up imaginary theoretical boogiemen to scare people with. It's a Hillary Clinton-esque "you don't like those people, so fuck'em" style argument, where you slice out some "undeserving" group from the whole and pretend that only they exist. It's very effective on the symbol-minded.

Paying for Universal Medicare is paying for yourself. And for price controls to finally limit the money we're increasingly hemorrhaging to healthcare's "prosperity sink" from it being a natural monopoly. That we export drugs to Canada, and they're sold for 1/3rd to 1/2th as much as they are here, basically kills their entire argument.

The conservative argument for Medicare is manifold - when you're at Wal-Mart, you don't want to catch fukin' tuberculosis from some leper coughing on you. You don't want to look at some ugly bastard having his face devoured by an easily treatable fungal infection.

If you hate people or like people, the result is the same - it's the only reasonable policy.

Unless you're an extremely wealthy person who lives in a biodome separated completely from Wal-Mart lepers. Or are an extremely wealthy person worried about care becoming more about need instead of money. Gotta be able to get that liposuction tomorrow pronto, don't wanna get bumped a week or two because some poor person needs a new face after it got melted off in a fire.

That's an honest, honorable argument. I can actually respect that. Rob's argument that's the same kind of thing as "Can't have Medicare because it'll help more white people than black people" (a popular line of attack wealthy liberal capitalists use for real, I shit you not), isn't.

Why are dishonest arguments used instead of the honest ones? Is it because the honest ones against Medicare would lose bigly?

Good 'ole politics.

[Rob]

[Durandal]

https://theintercept.com/2017/07/26/ste ... very-rich/

STEVE BANNON PUSHING FOR 44 PERCENT MARGINAL TAX RATE ON THE VERY RICH

TOP WHITE HOUSE adviser Steve Bannon is pushing for tax reform to include a new 44 percent top marginal tax rate, hitting people who earn more than $5 million a year, with the revenue paying for tax cuts for the rest, according to three people who’ve spoken to him recently.

The top rate is now 39.6 percent and most Republicans have been planning to lower it significantly as part of tax reform. The plan Trump put out previously would have only three brackets, with the top one brought down to 35 percent.

Raising taxes on the very rich has been a rare policy that President Donald Trump has publicly espoused throughout much of his life. On Tuesday, he told the Wall Street Journal, “if there’s upward revision it’s going to be on high-income people.”

“I have wealthy friends that say to me, ‘I don’t mind paying more tax,’” he said. White House spokesperson Sarah Huckabee Sanders was pressed on Trump’s comment at a televised briefing Wednesday, and said that further specifics of the plan would be released shortly, with an emphasis on tax cuts for the middle class.

Axios previously reported that Bannon was looking to raise the top marginal rate to “something with a four in front of it,” but the 44 percent bracket for those making $5 million and above is a more fleshed out proposal. Bannon has described himself as an “economic nationalist” and has pushed a populist agenda both through his previous outlet Breitbart News and and as an adviser to Trump. That contrasts with what Bannon calls the “globalist” wing of the party, made up by people like economic adviser Gary Cohn (though both Cohn and Bannon come from Goldman Sachs).

When the broad outline of the tax hike was reported earlier, Breitbart covered it favorably. The hike on the very rich would face stiff opposition from congressional Republicans, but find favor with Democrats.

According to IRS data, just over 43,000 people filed tax returns for the year 2014 claiming income of at least $5 million, accounting for $600 billion in taxes, or 8.8 percent of the total taxes paid.

The new rate would only apply to about a third of that money, as the 44 percent kicks in at the $5 million level. Still, the hike would pull in around $18 billion per year, or $180 billion over 10 years.

Also elsewhere:

ON TAXING THE WEALTHY:

PRESIDENT TRUMP: The truth is the people I care most about are the middle-income people in this country who have gotten screwed. And if there’s upward revision it’s going to be on high-income people. You know, I was with Bob Kraft the other night. He came to have dinner with me. He’s a friend of mine. And as he left, he said, Donald, don’t worry about the rich people. Tax the rich people. You got to take care of the people in the country. It was a very interesting statement. I feel the same way.

…..

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We want – look, the job producers we’re going to take great care of, but we have to take care of middle-income people in this country. They built the country, they started this whole beautiful thing that we have, and we have to take care of them. And people have not taken care of them, and we’re going to.

And I mean, I have wealthy friends that say to me I don’t mind paying more tax. And I’ll tell you what I sort of don’t like, is when they – you know, you’ll do your charts in The Wall Street Journal and they’ll be brilliantly done, very nice, and they’ll show that a rich guy who made, you know, $25 million last year is going to pay less than he was. In a certain way, I don’t like that. I’d rather take that difference and put it into the middle-income and put it into corporate.

WSJ: You should be able to get Democrat support for that, right? I mean, you can reach across the aisle –

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah, except they’re obstructionists. If they weren’t obstructionists, I would normally get Democratic support. So we don’t anticipate that. We don’t –

lol:

[GaijinPunch]

Some point to the current cost of transgender service members at $8 million a year and argue that the cost is minimal.

This sounds like an argument a friend of mine made for tougher immigration, because "it costs $80,000 for a child birth procedure in the US."

Which figure seems totally fucked up in that statement. Hint: It's the price tag.

[Elephants]

I'm glad you have a Muslim friend, but people are tribal. It's tempting to believe that we've evolved past that when things are easy. When the chips are down Muslims will side with Muslims. When they have numbers they will elect Muslims that prioritize Muslims.

Also, what Jared Taylor says here. Quite harsh, but on the money. 1.8 billion is not a global underdog. They have their own countries.

People are tribal when the chips are down? Shit, here you are with your chips all up-up-up and throwing your lot in with Jared fucking Taylor's tribe. Doesn't take much for some to show how ugly they really are.

For the people still engaging Rob because they don't seem to realise just how much of a lost cause he is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Taylor

And then you turn around and wag your finger at someone for sharing the same ugly view as a white nationalist (but which is nevertheless not actually a white nationalist view) while spouting the same ugly proto-fascist views as a white nationalist (which actually are white nationalist views)? What the fuck is wrong with you?

[Mischief Maker]

Forcing the responsible to subsidize irresponsible lifestyle choices is entirely unjust.

Whether or not you think it's just is irrelevant.

Insurance of any sort does not function without pooled risk.

You may be able to make argument that it's unjust you have to keep buying gasoline for a car you already paid off, it doesn't change the fact that without the gas, the car doesn't move.

[Obscura]

Bad drivers have to pay much higher insurance rates; every proposed law I've seen for universal healthcare protects the fat and irresponsible from having to pay higher rates under "pre-existing conditions".

[Rob]

[Mischief Maker]

Bad drivers have to pay much higher insurance rates; every proposed law I've seen for universal healthcare protects the fat and irresponsible from having to pay higher rates under "pre-existing conditions".

Tick-tock tick-tock, my dear.

Everybody ages into the high-risk category for health insurance eventually.

Even the olympian specimens of physical perfection who post to a shmup enthusiasts' forum.

[Blinge]

Whether or not you think it's just is irrelevant.

Whether or not it is just, and clearly.

wat. I like a good grammar correction fail

[Rob]

[BulletMagnet]

"More than two-thirds (68.8 percent) of adults are considered to be overweight or obese. More than one-third (35.7 percent) of adults are considered to be obese. More than 1 in 20 (6.3 percent) have extreme obesity. Almost 3 in 4 men (74 percent) are considered to be overweight or obese."

Okay, so if you want to make actual inroads when it comes to this problem instead of sitting back and hoping it solves itself, what course do you take? Make accurate, easy to interpret dietary information more widely available (first target for me personally would be the industry-demanded exemption for sugar to be listed as a percentage on RDA labels)? Eliminate corporate subsidies which make processed food cheaper than raw food? Improve working conditions and compensation to give people both the financial wherewithal and free time to devote to obtaining quality ingredients and cooking decent meals as opposed to swinging past the drive-thru on the way to their third minimum-wage job? Offer incentives to tackle "food deserts" where you have to drive for miles to find anything "real" to eat? Offer more infrastructure devoted to encouraging walking/biking as opposed to driving?

Or do you just say "I'm not paying for your bypass, fatass, and moreover I'll be going through your pockets for loose change once you keel over!" because our misbegotten, self-destructive culture, right down to the genetic level, is simply too far gone to even bother with?

[Obscura]

Bad drivers have to pay much higher insurance rates; every proposed law I've seen for universal healthcare protects the fat and irresponsible from having to pay higher rates under "pre-existing conditions".

Tick-tock tick-tock, my dear.

Everybody ages into the high-risk category for health insurance eventually.

Even the olympian specimens of physical perfection who post to a shmup enthusiasts' forum.

You think old people don't pay more for auto insurance?

Spoiler: they do.

Why should health insurance be any different?