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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
If you are going to look at UK political opinion, I would highly suggest watching PMQs to get the lay of the land. This isn't just about t_d, as much as you want to keep bringing up that i said that. In about 20 seconds, I did a google search and on the first page came up with two elected republican officials literally calling Obama a dictator. M4ini did exactly the same thing. Pedantry aside, this proves the exact point I was making.
Everything else is just you getting upset because I said something you don't like about Americans. I hadn't pegged you for the political correctness warrior type. Maybe I'm wrong.
As for the last section of your post - maybe you should get an understanding of where stereotypes come from, and the consequences of electing morons into office. Stereotypes of Americans are everywhere in the UK at the moment because you have elected Donald Trump as your president. In 70 years time, no-one will remember danglars on a forum thought about politics, they will assume they know what you thought because of what Trump thinks. To many foreigners, the one defining feature of Americans in this decade is that they are so utterly stupid that they elected Donald fucking Trump to be their president. I'm sorry if this isn't politically correct enough for you, but you can't control these kind of optics, except for electing sensible people into office.
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On July 01 2018 23:13 Jockmcplop wrote: If you are going to look at UK political opinion, I would highly suggest watching PMQs to get the lay of the land. This isn't just about t_d, as much as you want to keep bringing up that i said that. In about 20 seconds, I did a google search and on the first page came up with two elected republican officials literally calling Obama a dictator. M4ini did exactly the same thing. Pedantry aside, this proves the exact point I was making.
Everything else is just you getting upset because I said something you don't like about Americans. I hadn't pegged you for the political correctness warrior type. Maybe I'm wrong.
As for the last section of your post - maybe you should get an understanding of where stereotypes come from, and the consequences of electing morons into office. Stereotypes of Americans are everywhere in the UK at the moment because you have elected Donald Trump as your president. In 70 years time, no-one will remember danglars on a forum thought about politics, they will assume they know what you thought because of what Trump thinks. To many foreigners, the one defining feature of Americans in this decade is that they are so utterly stupid that they elected Donald fucking Trump to be their president. I'm sorry if this isn't politically correct enough for you, but you can't control these kind of optics, except for electing sensible people into office. I agree with you on Trump; who the American people are willing to send as our outward face of the nation says something about the people in a general sense.
I can’t agree that citing r/The_Donald and a handful of politicians gives any useful metric about what the American people think and believe. If you want to know something about the average American in the future, I recommend you find public opinion polls. Anything less allows you to paint whatever picture you want of the American people, since you can find a half dozen politicians saying any crazy thing you like.
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On July 01 2018 23:38 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2018 23:13 Jockmcplop wrote: If you are going to look at UK political opinion, I would highly suggest watching PMQs to get the lay of the land. This isn't just about t_d, as much as you want to keep bringing up that i said that. In about 20 seconds, I did a google search and on the first page came up with two elected republican officials literally calling Obama a dictator. M4ini did exactly the same thing. Pedantry aside, this proves the exact point I was making.
Everything else is just you getting upset because I said something you don't like about Americans. I hadn't pegged you for the political correctness warrior type. Maybe I'm wrong.
As for the last section of your post - maybe you should get an understanding of where stereotypes come from, and the consequences of electing morons into office. Stereotypes of Americans are everywhere in the UK at the moment because you have elected Donald Trump as your president. In 70 years time, no-one will remember danglars on a forum thought about politics, they will assume they know what you thought because of what Trump thinks. To many foreigners, the one defining feature of Americans in this decade is that they are so utterly stupid that they elected Donald fucking Trump to be their president. I'm sorry if this isn't politically correct enough for you, but you can't control these kind of optics, except for electing sensible people into office. I agree with you on Trump; who the American people are willing to send as our outward face of the nation says something about the people in a general sense. I can’t agree that citing r/The_Donald and a handful of politicians gives any useful metric about what the American people think and believe. If you want to know something about the average American in the future, I recommend you find public opinion polls. Anything less allows you to paint whatever picture you want of the American people, since you can find a half dozen politicians saying any crazy thing you like.
That's a fair point. Originally though, I wasn't trying to say anything about Americans, I was trying to say something about a tendency to hyperbole when on the losing side of politics, and I just used Americans as an example (this is the US politics thread after all) and the quotes I provided, although not representative of all Americans, seem to be typical of the kind of hyperbole I was referring to.
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I don't know that there are polls so specific to capture "Republicans think the tax bill makes Obama a Dictator"
But I did happen across this
![[image loading]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/01/1-20-2015_02.png)
2015 is where you see "Dictator" as a top one-word response to describe Obama.
2009 (circa the healthcare bill) he was more of a "socialist".
Hyperbole, idiots, or both, take your pick.
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United States42009 Posts
On July 01 2018 22:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2018 17:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:On July 01 2018 05:58 ticklishmusic wrote: perhaps the most important factor to the "success" of socialism in venezuela under chavez was that the price of oil at the time, which made the country relatively flush. it has a lot of parallels to the scandinavian countries which are often lauded for their strong social safety programs whose economies largely rely on north sea oil. i find it more than a little ironic that capitalism is basically what makes all that work. Like Longshank wrote, Norway is the only Scandinavian country with any significant oil wealth. Denmark and Sweden still manage to have pretty generous social safety programs. And Norway also doesn't actually use all that much oil wealth on social safety programs. We've been very careful in how we spend it, utilizing it to create a government pension fund. We have a strict rule on how much oil money can be spent per year (to not overstimulate economy) - only 3%, so that it ends up continuously increasing during what is kind of estimated as 'peak oil'. 60% is invested into stocks, some is prolly gonna be invested into real estate, so that fluctuations in oil prices end up being less detrimental. (global finance crisis hits hard, though.) Anyway to get to a Norwegian level of wealth and social safety net, where 40% of the population has access to at least one vacation home, the oil wealth is necessary. But say, reduce average income&benefits by 15-20% - which would still be ahead of most countries and on par with swedenmark - we could do without any oil revenue. At the moment, the fund has accumulated nearly $200000 per Norwegian. If anything, it's a great argument for nationalizing resources - of course, only coupled with a responsible, non-populist government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway) We can also compare outcomes with the UK. The UK also has North Sea oil rights only they went the privatization route. Norway's outcome has been far superior. UK just has a political culture in which spending the money immediately for short term political gains was more popular. In Norway the elected representatives went "hey guys, we won a small fortune, if we invest this responsibly we could make an amazing retirement fund for the future". UK went "lower taxes for everyone!!! woooooooo!".
North Sea oil wealth hit at the height of Thatcher's unemployment. It propped up the pound significantly and enabled the government to pay for the benefits needed through that period of greater outflows and reduced inflows without raising taxes.
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On July 01 2018 23:52 GreenHorizons wrote:I don't know that there are polls so specific to capture "Republicans think the tax bill makes Obama a Dictator" But I did happen across this ![[image loading]](http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/01/1-20-2015_02.png) 2015 is where you see "Dictator" as a top one-word response to describe Obama. 2009 (circa the healthcare bill) he was more of a "socialist". Hyperbole, idiots, or both, take your pick. That is a hat eight years of Republicans demonizing the president got us. They just called him a dictator over and over until a section of the population believed it.
Edit: on a side note it appears that every single one of the possible nominees opposes abortion. So the chances of Roe being overturned increases daily.
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It's funny how good and incompetent are this close to each other. How can a system work with these kinds of oppositions imbedded in the human psyche?
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The USA, a normal country where a woman's right to have an abortion is contingent on whether an 85 y/o cancer survivor can stay alive out of spite until 2021.
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On July 02 2018 00:59 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 01 2018 22:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 01 2018 17:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:On July 01 2018 05:58 ticklishmusic wrote: perhaps the most important factor to the "success" of socialism in venezuela under chavez was that the price of oil at the time, which made the country relatively flush. it has a lot of parallels to the scandinavian countries which are often lauded for their strong social safety programs whose economies largely rely on north sea oil. i find it more than a little ironic that capitalism is basically what makes all that work. Like Longshank wrote, Norway is the only Scandinavian country with any significant oil wealth. Denmark and Sweden still manage to have pretty generous social safety programs. And Norway also doesn't actually use all that much oil wealth on social safety programs. We've been very careful in how we spend it, utilizing it to create a government pension fund. We have a strict rule on how much oil money can be spent per year (to not overstimulate economy) - only 3%, so that it ends up continuously increasing during what is kind of estimated as 'peak oil'. 60% is invested into stocks, some is prolly gonna be invested into real estate, so that fluctuations in oil prices end up being less detrimental. (global finance crisis hits hard, though.) Anyway to get to a Norwegian level of wealth and social safety net, where 40% of the population has access to at least one vacation home, the oil wealth is necessary. But say, reduce average income&benefits by 15-20% - which would still be ahead of most countries and on par with swedenmark - we could do without any oil revenue. At the moment, the fund has accumulated nearly $200000 per Norwegian. If anything, it's a great argument for nationalizing resources - of course, only coupled with a responsible, non-populist government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway) We can also compare outcomes with the UK. The UK also has North Sea oil rights only they went the privatization route. Norway's outcome has been far superior. UK just has a political culture in which spending the money immediately for short term political gains was more popular. In Norway the elected representatives went "hey guys, we won a small fortune, if we invest this responsibly we could make an amazing retirement fund for the future". UK went "lower taxes for everyone!!! woooooooo!". North Sea oil wealth hit at the height of Thatcher's unemployment. It propped up the pound significantly and enabled the government to pay for the benefits needed through that period of greater outflows and reduced inflows without raising taxes.
This man knows.
Thatcher herself was pretty popular, but the government a bit less so, and she did a lot of unpopular things. Lowering taxes at the expense of a larger gain down the road (god this is sounding eerily familiar, almost like someone is doing something similar right now...) was a political necessity to off-set a bunch of hardline Tory policies she wanted to implement. My timeline isn't the best, so I don't remember if this is before or after she bulldozed the Unions and the mines started closing, but the UK was hit hard by that. Tons of people suddenly on wellfare that weren't before.
Our government can't get away with just saying 'fuck y'all lol'. Even the Conservatives wouldn't vote for that. But getting a bunch of miners into other work cost a ton of money between social programs and retraining offers and the like.
On July 02 2018 02:49 Grumbels wrote: The USA, a normal country where a woman's right to have an abortion is contingent on whether an 85 y/o cancer survivor can stay alive out of spite until 2021.
And people will celebrate if they're able to take that right away. Lots of them. I'll bet you gay rights will be up right afterward.
Also, GH! Yo, dude! I've found something you might actually like: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jun/30/minimum-wage-maximum-wage-income-inequality
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It says in the article the employee that did this was fired, so I would so no, it's not a thing.
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United States42009 Posts
On July 02 2018 02:55 iamthedave wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 00:59 KwarK wrote:On July 01 2018 22:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 01 2018 17:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:On July 01 2018 05:58 ticklishmusic wrote: perhaps the most important factor to the "success" of socialism in venezuela under chavez was that the price of oil at the time, which made the country relatively flush. it has a lot of parallels to the scandinavian countries which are often lauded for their strong social safety programs whose economies largely rely on north sea oil. i find it more than a little ironic that capitalism is basically what makes all that work. Like Longshank wrote, Norway is the only Scandinavian country with any significant oil wealth. Denmark and Sweden still manage to have pretty generous social safety programs. And Norway also doesn't actually use all that much oil wealth on social safety programs. We've been very careful in how we spend it, utilizing it to create a government pension fund. We have a strict rule on how much oil money can be spent per year (to not overstimulate economy) - only 3%, so that it ends up continuously increasing during what is kind of estimated as 'peak oil'. 60% is invested into stocks, some is prolly gonna be invested into real estate, so that fluctuations in oil prices end up being less detrimental. (global finance crisis hits hard, though.) Anyway to get to a Norwegian level of wealth and social safety net, where 40% of the population has access to at least one vacation home, the oil wealth is necessary. But say, reduce average income&benefits by 15-20% - which would still be ahead of most countries and on par with swedenmark - we could do without any oil revenue. At the moment, the fund has accumulated nearly $200000 per Norwegian. If anything, it's a great argument for nationalizing resources - of course, only coupled with a responsible, non-populist government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway) We can also compare outcomes with the UK. The UK also has North Sea oil rights only they went the privatization route. Norway's outcome has been far superior. UK just has a political culture in which spending the money immediately for short term political gains was more popular. In Norway the elected representatives went "hey guys, we won a small fortune, if we invest this responsibly we could make an amazing retirement fund for the future". UK went "lower taxes for everyone!!! woooooooo!". North Sea oil wealth hit at the height of Thatcher's unemployment. It propped up the pound significantly and enabled the government to pay for the benefits needed through that period of greater outflows and reduced inflows without raising taxes. This man knows. Thatcher herself was pretty popular, but the government a bit less so, and she did a lot of unpopular things. Lowering taxes at the expense of a larger gain down the road (god this is sounding eerily familiar, almost like someone is doing something similar right now...) was a political necessity to off-set a bunch of hardline Tory policies she wanted to implement. My timeline isn't the best, so I don't remember if this is before or after she bulldozed the Unions and the mines started closing, but the UK was hit hard by that. Tons of people suddenly on wellfare that weren't before. Our government can't get away with just saying 'fuck y'all lol'. Even the Conservatives wouldn't vote for that. But getting a bunch of miners into other work cost a ton of money between social programs and retraining offers and the like. UK was in economic collapse before Thatcher. The value of the pound was built on British manufactured exports and by the 70s those were being massively outcompeted by West Germany etc. Meanwhile the legacy of empire was basically drying up, BP losing Iranian oil being the final nail in the coffin. If nobody is buying anything denominated in stirling then stirling falls.
North Sea oil was winning the jackpot. High quality light oil in the middle of Northern Europe while instability in the Middle East and rivalry with the Soviet Union pushed the prices sky high. Everyone who wanted it had to buy it in stirling which meant they had to buy stirling which meant that the government could print stirling without devaluation.
Thatcher bit the bullet and shut down the failed British industries, leading to a pretty huge economic dislocation, huge loss off output (even if the output wasn't economically competitive), huge unemployment, and a huge loss of government revenues. Then she printed stirling to keep things running while praying to Adam Smith that the fire she'd lit on half the country would get better on its own if she just ignored it for long enough.
Voters aren't great at considering these things so Thatcher's record doesn't really take the fact that she got lucky into account. It would theoretically have been possible for a Labour government to have continued to prop up the ailing British industries for decades with the use of North Sea oil, but people only remember that Labour struggled to prop them up before the oil wealth hit.
Personally I have mixed feelings about the Iron Lady. On the one hand as a classical conservative I have some fondness for her, and the part of me I don't especially like admires her stance on a number of issues like the IRA. She was great, even if she wasn't good. But if she came back I'd vote against her, her government ruined too many lives, she was too unfaltering in her convictions. She wouldn't just go to war over the Falklands, she'd sink the Belgrano outside of the engagement theatre.
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United States42009 Posts
On July 02 2018 03:30 JimmiC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 03:12 hunts wrote:It says in the article the employee that did this was fired, so I would so no, it's not a thing. What does a thing mean? It happened with someone following that act. Im glad they were fired. A thing is "restaurant has policy of political discrimination". Not a thing is "idiot does dumb thing at work". The firing of the guy shows that this is not a thing.
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On July 02 2018 03:46 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 03:30 JimmiC wrote:On July 02 2018 03:12 hunts wrote:It says in the article the employee that did this was fired, so I would so no, it's not a thing. What does a thing mean? It happened with someone following that act. Im glad they were fired. A thing is "restaurant has policy of political discrimination". Not a thing is "idiot does dumb thing at work". The firing of the guy shows that this is not a thing.
Kwark basically said it for me. When a company fires someone for doing something unpopular, that generally means the company does not have a policy of doing that thing. You very conveniently left out the guy being fired, because you wanted to push a narrative. If however you wish to keep arguing and continue down this path, we can use the same logic to say that all republicans are nazi's because the neo nazi marchers were republicans. We could also extrapolate that all republicans are child molesters and rapists, because republican politicians have gone down for those things. All republicans are also of course bigots and bakers. Do you see how what you said is horribly disingenuous and a bad way to try and converse?
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On July 02 2018 03:44 KwarK wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 02:55 iamthedave wrote:On July 02 2018 00:59 KwarK wrote:On July 01 2018 22:33 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 01 2018 17:22 Liquid`Drone wrote:On July 01 2018 05:58 ticklishmusic wrote: perhaps the most important factor to the "success" of socialism in venezuela under chavez was that the price of oil at the time, which made the country relatively flush. it has a lot of parallels to the scandinavian countries which are often lauded for their strong social safety programs whose economies largely rely on north sea oil. i find it more than a little ironic that capitalism is basically what makes all that work. Like Longshank wrote, Norway is the only Scandinavian country with any significant oil wealth. Denmark and Sweden still manage to have pretty generous social safety programs. And Norway also doesn't actually use all that much oil wealth on social safety programs. We've been very careful in how we spend it, utilizing it to create a government pension fund. We have a strict rule on how much oil money can be spent per year (to not overstimulate economy) - only 3%, so that it ends up continuously increasing during what is kind of estimated as 'peak oil'. 60% is invested into stocks, some is prolly gonna be invested into real estate, so that fluctuations in oil prices end up being less detrimental. (global finance crisis hits hard, though.) Anyway to get to a Norwegian level of wealth and social safety net, where 40% of the population has access to at least one vacation home, the oil wealth is necessary. But say, reduce average income&benefits by 15-20% - which would still be ahead of most countries and on par with swedenmark - we could do without any oil revenue. At the moment, the fund has accumulated nearly $200000 per Norwegian. If anything, it's a great argument for nationalizing resources - of course, only coupled with a responsible, non-populist government. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Pension_Fund_of_Norway) We can also compare outcomes with the UK. The UK also has North Sea oil rights only they went the privatization route. Norway's outcome has been far superior. UK just has a political culture in which spending the money immediately for short term political gains was more popular. In Norway the elected representatives went "hey guys, we won a small fortune, if we invest this responsibly we could make an amazing retirement fund for the future". UK went "lower taxes for everyone!!! woooooooo!". North Sea oil wealth hit at the height of Thatcher's unemployment. It propped up the pound significantly and enabled the government to pay for the benefits needed through that period of greater outflows and reduced inflows without raising taxes. This man knows. Thatcher herself was pretty popular, but the government a bit less so, and she did a lot of unpopular things. Lowering taxes at the expense of a larger gain down the road (god this is sounding eerily familiar, almost like someone is doing something similar right now...) was a political necessity to off-set a bunch of hardline Tory policies she wanted to implement. My timeline isn't the best, so I don't remember if this is before or after she bulldozed the Unions and the mines started closing, but the UK was hit hard by that. Tons of people suddenly on wellfare that weren't before. Our government can't get away with just saying 'fuck y'all lol'. Even the Conservatives wouldn't vote for that. But getting a bunch of miners into other work cost a ton of money between social programs and retraining offers and the like. UK was in economic collapse before Thatcher. The value of the pound was built on British manufactured exports and by the 70s those were being massively outcompeted by West Germany etc. Meanwhile the legacy of empire was basically drying up, BP losing Iranian oil being the final nail in the coffin. If nobody is buying anything denominated in stirling then stirling falls. North Sea oil was winning the jackpot. High quality light oil in the middle of Northern Europe while instability in the Middle East and rivalry with the Soviet Union pushed the prices sky high. Everyone who wanted it had to buy it in stirling which meant they had to buy stirling which meant that the government could print stirling without devaluation. Thatcher bit the bullet and shut down the failed British industries, leading to a pretty huge economic dislocation, huge loss off output (even if the output wasn't economically competitive), huge unemployment, and a huge loss of government revenues. Then she printed stirling to keep things running while praying to Adam Smith that the fire she'd lit on half the country would get better on its own if she just ignored it for long enough. Voters aren't great at considering these things so Thatcher's record doesn't really take the fact that she got lucky into account. It would theoretically have been possible for a Labour government to have continued to prop up the ailing British industries for decades with the use of North Sea oil, but people only remember that Labour struggled to prop them up before the oil wealth hit. Personally I have mixed feelings about the Iron Lady. On the one hand as a classical conservative I have some fondness for her, and the part of me I don't especially like admires her stance on a number of issues like the IRA. She was great, even if she wasn't good. But if she came back I'd vote against her, her government ruined too many lives, she was too unfaltering in her convictions. She wouldn't just go to war over the Falklands, she'd sink the Belgrano outside of the engagement theatre.
Mixed feelings are the right ones to have. I'm from an ex-mining village, and it's a ghost town to this day. When she died the people from my village had full celebrations in the pub.
On the other hand, Thatcher did something that was going to happen sooner or later, as the unions had grown a little too powerful and needed to be brought down a bit. Bulldozing them into the earth and setting it on fire was, however, perhaps more than was strictly necessary.
If she was running today, I can say she'd probably get elected. Corbyn's the kind of politician she ate for breakfast before asking if Labour had any more for lunch. Just unstoppably determined to bring her vision about. We honestly haven't seen a politician like her since. Few places have. I think the only one I know of I'd compare her to would be Putin, in terms of someone society just couldn't have stopped, who came about at the right time in the right place.
As you said, the economy was in her advantage, but if you've never seen it, watch some of her Prime Minister Questions performances. Just remarkable. Nobody ate it up like her. Only comparison I can think of was Blair in the early days against John Major. But he didn't perform near as well when he wasn't against a weak opponent.
Her final PMQs was fascinating; half the 'questions' she got (from the LABOUR side, mind you) were basically just praising her.
God, I wish you guys had PMQs. Trump in PMQs would be the quickest way to end him as President.
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On July 02 2018 02:49 Grumbels wrote: The USA, a normal country where a woman's right to have an abortion is contingent on whether an 85 y/o cancer survivor can stay alive out of spite until 2021. realistically speaking, probably until 2025 no? Presidents usually win their second terms in the US and if there's one President who I'd say really doesn't give a fuck about how to stay in power it's Trump. If it gets close there will be a need to invade Iran, or some other place and you don't vote against a president during times of w...peacekeeping.
I'd probably even say if the Dems lost the race for congress that might be good for them? You know, if they win lots of people might start feeling complacent like they've already got it in the bag, the republicans will be put on notice and will show up en masse during the presidential elections and it's probably bad for your public image to nonstop block everything.
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On July 02 2018 03:53 hunts wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2018 03:46 KwarK wrote:On July 02 2018 03:30 JimmiC wrote:On July 02 2018 03:12 hunts wrote:It says in the article the employee that did this was fired, so I would so no, it's not a thing. What does a thing mean? It happened with someone following that act. Im glad they were fired. A thing is "restaurant has policy of political discrimination". Not a thing is "idiot does dumb thing at work". The firing of the guy shows that this is not a thing. Kwark basically said it for me. When a company fires someone for doing something unpopular, that generally means the company does not have a policy of doing that thing. You very conveniently left out the guy being fired, because you wanted to push a narrative. If however you wish to keep arguing and continue down this path, we can use the same logic to say that all republicans are nazi's because the neo nazi marchers were republicans. We could also extrapolate that all republicans are child molesters and rapists, because republican politicians have gone down for those things. All republicans are also of course bigots and bakers. Do you see how what you said is horribly disingenuous and a bad way to try and converse?
I guess I think of republicans as people who are conservative & somewhat thick-headed about it. Beyond that, it's hard to say what they are specifically. It is a discussion that is well worth elaborating on. Trump seriously considered running as an independent like Ross Perot did (unsuccessfully) in the early 90's (probably why he didn't run as an indy). While in office he has taken some positions that liberals often take, although, c'mon, clearly he is unabashedly pro-US-businesses. He is a fan of the gas & oil industries. Bush & Bush junior are typical conservatives but have now served as much as they are allowed to & so they are out of the running as far as the future goes. In the past, people loved the Reagan example as a show of what conservatives should look like but that is waning these days.
Senator Susan Collins is a "middle-ground" republican who would consider "Roe V. Wade" to be a litmus test to what is considered "conservative enough" these days. She is vaguely right-of-center but disavows any connection with neo-nazis or any other wingnuts, but also disagrees with Democrats in some very key ways. I believe she pushes for a muscular foreign policy that doesn't take any guff from "criminal nations" or "cheating companies," which Obama did sometimes, being the pushover that he is. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/01/us/politics/susan-collins-supreme-court-nominee-abortion.html?hpw&rref=politics&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well
On this new Iphone, the news app has a ton of political news that is streamed to it almost hourly, so I've been trying to keep up with what is going on in the world of international politics & such, as I consider that important for adults to pay attention to. There is more to life than your girlfriend & your career!
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I’m really sorry for that export of ours to yours. I really wish this red plate/blue plate nonsense had stayed here and died here.
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It can’t die, Trump feeds it every day. The culture wars and division are this bread and butter. So long as he does it and pays no price, people on the left and right will do the same.
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