Political Roundtable Part XXIV

[gtn130]

Guess what? I want that too. Popper does too. So does Nate. So does induveca. So does Daoneandonly. yes they do. they want that too. We all want that. A level playing field.

What you liberals have to come to understand is that successful people such as myself, Indu, Popper, and Nate know more about the obstacles in life than you.

I find it funny that you left Daoneandonly out of your successful list.

lmao

[pancakes3]

i mean, even Ryan as acknowledged that he has massive regrets re: the deficit during his tenure as speaker specifically with regard to the deficit. that tax bill was a nightmare; it had freaking handwritten edits on the copy that was circulated for vote.

facts are facts. not everything goes according to plan and making note of it isn't a personal attack, much less a political attack.

and tax bill talk doesn't even get into substantive policy arguments over whether partisan spending issues like health care and education are fiscally feasible, or the massive unspoken elephant in the room that is military spending.

but really, it's rich to have the right side of the board call for civility and honest discourse while at the same time tacitly condoning STD when he tries to condescend to the left. several posters with incredible knowledge re: science, economics, and the law have tried to lay out the issues for engagement as clearly as patiently as humanly possible only to be met with jacob wohl and candace owens retweets. basically, it's not that the left of this board hates the right - they just hate SD. it has nothing to do with partisanship. that dude just sucks.

[popper]

Dude we're not debate opponents. You don't even argue in good faith. You claim to be a deficit hawk while offering total unconditional support of the tax cuts. That type of intellectually dishonest posting deserves zero respect and should not be taken seriously.

When you're not on your neocon bull**** you're celebrating the bold clear-eyed nonpartisan posting of SD20. How can anyone take you seriously?

I still have hope for you gtn. Hopefully you will grow up soon.

Edit. Seriously gtn, how old are you?

you’re proving my point man. the second anyone goes in on your backwards views you dive into irrelevant pearl clutching nonsense.

why don’t you explain how you justify being a deficit hawk who supports the tax cuts. Everything Paul Ryan and Trump have done is contrary to all the high minded stuff neocons pretend they care about. the point i’m making is 1) you’re totally FOS along with basically all conservatives and 2) everything the GOP does is completely depraved and immoral and you shouldn’t be welcome in polite society

Ok. Do you remember not long ago when the Clintons and Obama’s said that marriage is between a man and women? Maybe you were still in diapers then. I can name many other “evolutions” in thought and process that occurred in the recent past where D’s held what you now refer to as backward (conservative) views. BTW, unlike the Clintons and Obama’s I have no problem with gay marriage. I supported the tax cuts because it makes our corporations more competitive. Did you not notice that we collected record tax revenues after the tax cuts? Of course you didn’t. You were too busy planning for the next Antifa attack. The increased deficits derive from additional spending that D’s and R’s agreed to in the latest budget negotiations. That doesn’t mean that every component of the tax reform was meritorious but it was a positive step in the right direction IMO. I won’t dignify the last two sentences of your post with a response because they’re born of totalitarian stridency, ignorance of history, and just a pathetic and inaccurate view of your fellow Americans. You can’t admit you’re young, inexperienced and uneducated in history and so you compensate with an arrogance made possible only by hiding behind the anonymity of this thread. Have a nice little boy.

[popper]

i mean, even Ryan as acknowledged that he has massive regrets re: the deficit during his tenure as speaker specifically with regard to the deficit. that tax bill was a nightmare; it had freaking handwritten edits on the copy that was circulated for vote.

facts are facts. not everything goes according to plan and making note of it isn't a personal attack, much less a political attack.

and tax bill talk doesn't even get into substantive policy arguments over whether partisan spending issues like health care and education are fiscally feasible, or the massive unspoken elephant in the room that is military spending.

but really, it's rich to have the right side of the board call for civility and honest discourse while at the same time tacitly condoning STD when he tries to condescend to the left. several posters with incredible knowledge re: science, economics, and the law have tried to lay out the issues for engagement as clearly as patiently as humanly possible only to be met with jacob wohl and candace owens retweets. basically, it's not that the left of this board hates the right - they just hate SD. it has nothing to do with partisanship. that dude just sucks.

I see you as a thoughtful, educated and mature contributor to this thread. Do you tacitly condone Gtn and pointgod when they condescend to the right?

[doclinkin]

sorry, when STD characterizes a change of dress code that dates back to the 1830's as the American government endorsing sharia law, how should it be received? with an open mind and a willingness to debate the merits of that argument?

or how about pushing the idea that we can build a border wall that can double as functional, marketable office space out of shipping containers?

and these aren't just cherrypicked, isolated incidents. it's pretty much the entirety of his posting identity. he just said that the American people "booted" Obama out of office.

even rejecting "snopes" as a "liberal" site is insane. there's zero proof that snopes is biased in any way. there's no debating any of this. the rot goes too deep.

none of his posting is useful. and to counter Doc's point about this forum being a release valve that would prevent a unibomber, that's not really how it works in a 21st century internet environment. realgm is not the tether to reality that SD needs because especially since he rejects reasonable discourse at every turn.

STD is unique in his idiocy. I've had good faith arguments with Da1andOnly and the Belarusian fellow. There as been zero such interactions with STD. There's no value add, and often, the conservatives on this board feel an obligation to defend him on this board out of solidarity (much like supporting Trump) when really his views are sincerely and overtly out of wack.

That's not at all funny to you? The container wall? I snorted, personally. I guess I look at the thread differently. The site is for entertainment, we are not ourselves curing the world. STD openly admits he is a hack. He wants backpats for his personal success. If you believe him. But mostly he is entertaining himself at your expense. Sometimes he is genuinely entertaining to me, or at least memorable, and a unifying figure in that he uniformly pisses people off. In this way I think he has found a kindred spirit or role model in "Twitler". Trump similarly loves to piss people off.

I think its funny though that the one thing all sides of the board agree on is that he ought to post a little less, less often and fewer words or curses or exclamation points. And maybe factcheck some, occasionally. And occasionally, hey, don't respond to every little thing.

Yes, the quality of debate in this thread has devolved since back when Pine and Nivek and crackhed lopii and all were in here. But quality of debate in the US as a whole has gone Neanderthal. My point on the Unibomber is smirky, but the concept wasn't that the internet would have tethered him to reality, but instead helped him vent spleen --even unproductively-- and thus not harbor his grudges and blow things up. STD is not encouraging seditious actions, he is just loudly supporting a politician that I personally despise --an odious human colostomy bag spoiled brat rich boy with a face that's built for punching (in my personal opinion). As such for me its useful to be able to lob spitballs back at STD as a proxy for the animate prostate tumor we have currently befouling the CEO chair of our democracy. I'd rather rip into StilDrop and give as good as I get on here than um, I dunno, have the secret service humorlessly knocking at my door because of my rhetorical flourish that I think Trump is a bag of pus and his litter of ratlings have no business scurrying around in living daylight much less pi55ing and gnawing in the corridors of power.

I think most of STDs stuff would be better off in the Insults thread. where no one would huff and take it seriously. And we could freely lob insults at each other in over-the-top fashion and no one would mind censor evading language or even an obnoxious over abundance of exclamation points ( I seriously wish someone would break that key on his keyboard). But, I'll still talk ideas with him. When they surface. I honestly think people are more put off by his style and act than they are anything he says. There's a Trumpload of "Me me me me me" which makes it harder to find an idea in it all. And sometimes, sadly sounds a little empty. Like ****, the dude actually does want friends and respect, he is just far more skilled at breaking balls than he is making real trustworthy pals.

Ok what do liberals want:

Speaking for my own beliefs.

Government exists to provide a structure for the common good to succeed. At a clan or tribal level people can be altruistic, but on an individual level people tend to be selfish and when we bump up against other tribes or sports teams we get competitive. So. It's useful to have Law to channel those selfish aims to productive consequences. If we have a Democratic government the point is to protect the voice of the little guy so that it is not drowned out by greater powers. We shot Redcoats so that we will not have a royal class who is born to power, but every person willing to participate in day-to-day america has a stake in our future and a right to have their say.

It's in our founding documents:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

and

in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,

we decided to make one out of many. E. Pluribus Unum. Making a Union out of a mess of individuals. So the object of the Union is in part to protect individuals, even if they have not gotten lucky. Been born into money, or not been born with the cojones and gumption and smarts to succeed at a multimillionaire level in a dog eat dog world.

Some part of the "me me me" aspect is that hell, you want credit for being a unique and special individual. Not everybody could have done what you claim to do. Especially given the hurdles in front of you. You saw people even smarter than yourself fail. And people with lesser raw brains, succeed.

To my mind the Lefty angle says: cool. That's life. There are a limited number of lottery tickets, not everyone is going to win. However, that Divine Providence that is gifted to some, means those lucky few have a duty to give back. It's the Spider-man maxim: with great power comes great responsibility. Or from an older source: "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded" .

(I personally was raised without churching, so learned my morality from the Good Books of marvel comics more than the bible. And my human role models were activists and hard working caring people who rarely earned a ton of money because they spent a life working at clinics and legal aid for poor people and non profits dedicated to causes of people who lack a voice).

Anyway. So yes. The lefty types believe government exists to harness Capitalism to pull the sleigh of society. People are selfish, they work hard for themselves and their family. But if you let them only look out for themselves then society itself falls apart.

So, yes, those talented economic superheroes have a duty to carry our America, they have benefited greatly by the opportunities provided by this society, so whether they like it or not they are the ones strong enough to bear the weight of Justice, Common Defense, Tranquility and the General Welfare. A rabbi said it I believe: "I ask God not for a lighter burden but a stronger back".

Now, I personally am grateful for the ability to pay taxes. I was on food stamps as a kid, went to some pretty great programs in the public school system (and saw terrible programs for kids in the lower tracks), got loans to go to college, have a lifetime love of libraries as an institution of individual learning and lifetime personal improvement for people of any income. I bought a house with government insured loans.

Because of good government I did not starve. I learned to be productive. I'm not the biggest wage earner, and no matter how many sexy girlfriends I have or wives (or both or whatever) I still was able to succeed at a reasonable level and carry my family (and even other peoples families. 15 years ago, we basically adopted my stepsons friend when his family was unable to care for him. Because we could. He is my son, grown up and a mechanic, but at the time we did it because he needed it, you do what you can. But its not a unique story. The liberals I know don't ask for a hand out for themselves, they look to help people who don't know how to improve their lot.

I have worked in government and union work and have seen directly how tax dollars are a choice between filling potholes vs healthcare for the family of the guy on the back of the garbage truck in 100 degree august heat. I've been in the budget fights where even Liberal home owners complain that their house value has gone up, that because of the privilege of where they live they are benefitting from a measurable quantifiable improved quality of life, but have qualms paying the price for the people who earned that improvement for them by reducing crime, providing activities for kids to do after school, making sure houses in the neighborhood are up to code and not attracting vermin, etc. I like smooth roads. The overgrowth of rats meant 1/3 of western Europe died of the black plague. Government is good.

So but yes, there are people who will never carry their fair share and may get away with it. Some part of the difference between Progressive and Reactionary mindsets is about arguing about which is the greater injustice: theft or neglect. We would not want to see a mother and child starving to death and nobody was willing to help. Also. Nobody thinks it is a fine thing that someone else can quit work and buy luxury items while collect government checks that are earned by someone else's labor. But no system is perfect. Either someone is going to cheat the system or someone is going to starve to death. Which is the greater injustice. The Progressive mindset says government exists to care for our citizens. If someone learns to hustle and game the system we would rather that happen at the EBT level than at the Corporate level. Let's tax the biggest earners, who can afford it best, so that not a single damn child ever dies. No mother ever has to make the choice my mom did as a single mom of three: do I pay the lights or make the car payment so I can drive to school and work and afford to buy groceries etc. Do I feed my kids or have a telephone.

So. Its natural, to look to your own pockets and resent anyone dipping into it. I love any month with a 3rd paycheck when suddenly only the Fed and State taxes are taken out and I get that extra cash. But I am grateful for the ability to complain about paying taxes. Ultimately Mario Cuomo summed the liberal mindset:

We Democrats still have a dream. We still believe in this nation's future. And this is our answer to the question. This is our credo:

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do.

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

We -- Our -- Our government -- Our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. We would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.

We believe -- We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

We believe in firm -- We believe in firm but fair law and order.

We believe proudly in the union movement.

We believe in a -- We believe -- We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.

We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights.

We believe in a single -- We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child -- that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.

[doclinkin]

way too long but whatever I had a minute, since my name was evoked I appeared

[pancakes3]

i mean, even Ryan as acknowledged that he has massive regrets re: the deficit during his tenure as speaker specifically with regard to the deficit. that tax bill was a nightmare; it had freaking handwritten edits on the copy that was circulated for vote.

facts are facts. not everything goes according to plan and making note of it isn't a personal attack, much less a political attack.

and tax bill talk doesn't even get into substantive policy arguments over whether partisan spending issues like health care and education are fiscally feasible, or the massive unspoken elephant in the room that is military spending.

but really, it's rich to have the right side of the board call for civility and honest discourse while at the same time tacitly condoning STD when he tries to condescend to the left. several posters with incredible knowledge re: science, economics, and the law have tried to lay out the issues for engagement as clearly as patiently as humanly possible only to be met with jacob wohl and candace owens retweets. basically, it's not that the left of this board hates the right - they just hate SD. it has nothing to do with partisanship. that dude just sucks.

I see you as a thoughtful, educated and mature contributor to this thread. Do you tacitly condone Gtn and pointgod when they condescend to the right?

if the level of antagonism is limited to GTN calling you a hypocritical deficit hawk, or you calling GTN immature? sure. that's tolerable, and me not chastising either of you can be construed as my tolerance. it's not ideal, but it can still allowed for a reasoned discourse.

what i find to be beyond the pale are posts like:

"So instead of "fighting with me." learn from me. I'm really here to help. . But the first step in learning from me is really shutting the phuck up...stop resisting... and start asking the right questions. There is nothing you are going to teach me."

that crosses my tolerance threshold. There's no way to have a reasoned discourse with someone that's telling you to shut the f up, and that there's nothing that you can teach him because his girlfriend is hotter.

and yes, popper, to your credit, you did mildly push back on that rhetoric but even your posts didn't really do much to fix the root of the problem. and on the flip side, popper, to your detriment, SD comes off as much more immature than GTN and your tone to GTN is much harsher because of political affiliation.

[pancakes3]

way too long but whatever I had a minute, since my name was evoked I appeared

i guess we all view this board through our own lens. i first started lurking on this board in middle school and now i'm middle aged. very specific portions of my world view were shaped on this board, by this board. you were a part of it, doc. so was pine, and fish, dobro, sev, nate, monte, zonk, donkey, jwiz, ccj, ed wood, etc.

for me, checking realgm felt like sitting at a barber shop and i could just lurk and listen in. and yeah, you're probably right in that quality of debate has changed so much that it'll never feel like that again. but there was a time where we learned about each other and it was humanizing. sfam can share his dope ass pumpkin carvings and not make it about how lazy millennials are.

i guess coming back from such a long hiatus and seeing how many ppl have fallen by the wayside was a bit of a shock. on the other hand, it'd be nice if it didn't turn into complete crap.

[montestewart]

way too long but whatever I had a minute, since my name was evoked I appeared

Channeling your inner STD

[daoneandonly]

Guess what? I want that too. Popper does too. So does Nate. So does induveca. So does Daoneandonly. yes they do. they want that too. We all want that. A level playing field.

What you liberals have to come to understand is that successful people such as myself, Indu, Popper, and Nate know more about the obstacles in life than you.

I find it funny that you left Daoneandonly out of your successful list.

lmao

Yeah you guys are hilarious, I'll still extend the challenge out. You post a pay stub with PII blacked out, I'll do the same. let's see whose is higher, unless you guys cant take making less than a simpleton. Still waiting on j wiz to answer the call, but he dodged it like Trump did the military

[daoneandonly]

^^^^^^and there you have it. They just want to bicker, complain, argue, and point fingers.

Nice post std. Short and sweet. And you are right about gtn. But I’m hopeful that once he matures he’ll realize that people of good faith can have a different political opinion.

he won't, as long as he gets nods and kudos from point, tgw, jwiz, and querdi, they'll all just stick to the sophomoric insults, yet complain about Trump doing the same. The irony and double standard is just comical.

[montestewart]

way too long but whatever I had a minute, since my name was evoked I appeared

i guess we all view this board through our own lens. i first started lurking on this board in middle school and now i'm middle aged. very specific portions of my world view were shaped on this board, by this board. you were a part of it, doc. so was pine, and fish, dobro, sev, nate, monte, zonk, donkey, jwiz, ccj, ed wood, etc.

for me, checking realgm felt like sitting at a barber shop and i could just lurk and listen in. and yeah, you're probably right in that quality of debate has changed so much that it'll never feel like that again. but there was a time where we learned about each other and it was humanizing. sfam can share his dope ass pumpkin carvings and not make it about how lazy millennials are.

i guess coming back from such a long hiatus and seeing how many ppl have fallen by the wayside was a bit of a shock. on the other hand, it'd be nice if it didn't turn into complete crap.

I've never looked at this forum, a Wizards basketball forum, as a one-stop shop for political discussion, and that includes the RealGM Current Affairs board as well. But where the CA board has 10 extremely hard working mods trying to keep the discussion from devolving into name calling, this thread is a little looser. I'm still surprised that STD manages to rile the responses out of people as he does, but I can only repeat Pine's mantra that the Ignore feature is your friend.

I speed read virtually all of STD's posts, mostly looking for filter evasion language and insults, but occasionally cracking up at the over-the-top 3rd-person self regard. Political views? More like forwarded twitter feeds. I think he gets a fee from James Woods agent just to keep that thespained cromag in some limelight.

Yeah, pretty funny, but a lot less intellectual, well-informed and well-supported a dialogue than in the days of Z, Nivek, Fish, Pine, etc. Even PIF and AFM rarely stop by. Well, the Wizards are a gripping team this year. Who has time for politics?

[queridiculo]

Ok. Do you remember not long ago when the Clintons and Obama’s said that marriage is between a man and women? Maybe you were still in diapers then. I can name many other “evolutions” in thought and process that occurred in the recent past where D’s held what you now refer to as backward (conservative) views.

Are you trying to make a point, and what is it, because I'm confused, are evolutions of thought bad, or are your quotations simply intended to attribute malice?

I supported the tax cuts because it makes our corporations more competitive. Did you not notice that we collected record tax revenues after the tax cuts? Of course you didn’t. You were too busy planning for the next Antifa attack. The increased deficits derive from additional spending that D’s and R’s agreed to in the latest budget negotiations.

http://www.crfb.org/blogs/has-revenue-risen-2018

Yet even these numbers understate revenue losses between 2017 and 2018, since they count revenue raised in 2018 but under 2017's pre-tax cut laws. Roughly three-quarters of the increase in nominal individual income tax revenue since 2017 is the result of non-withheld tax payments made in April (and March) to cover last year's taxes. Another quarter of the rise is from revenue in October, November, and December of 2017 – months which are part of fiscal year 2018 but were under the old tax code.

That doesn’t mean that every component of the tax reform was meritorious but it was a positive step in the right direction IMO. I won’t dignify the last two sentences of your post with a response because they’re born of totalitarian stridency, ignorance of history, and just a pathetic and inaccurate view of your fellow Americans. You can’t admit you’re young, inexperienced and uneducated in history and so you compensate with an arrogance made possible only by hiding behind the anonymity of this thread. Have a nice little boy.

You're parading around here claiming the high ground but it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

[JWizmentality]

I find it funny that you left Daoneandonly out of your successful list.

lmao

Yeah you guys are hilarious, I'll still extend the challenge out. You post a pay stub with PII blacked out, I'll do the same. let's see whose is higher, unless you guys cant take making less than a simpleton. Still waiting on j wiz to answer the call, but he dodged it like Trump did the military

or an unwanted pregnancy.

Ba Dum Ba!

[popper]

i mean, even Ryan as acknowledged that he has massive regrets re: the deficit during his tenure as speaker specifically with regard to the deficit. that tax bill was a nightmare; it had freaking handwritten edits on the copy that was circulated for vote.

facts are facts. not everything goes according to plan and making note of it isn't a personal attack, much less a political attack.

and tax bill talk doesn't even get into substantive policy arguments over whether partisan spending issues like health care and education are fiscally feasible, or the massive unspoken elephant in the room that is military spending.

but really, it's rich to have the right side of the board call for civility and honest discourse while at the same time tacitly condoning STD when he tries to condescend to the left. several posters with incredible knowledge re: science, economics, and the law have tried to lay out the issues for engagement as clearly as patiently as humanly possible only to be met with jacob wohl and candace owens retweets. basically, it's not that the left of this board hates the right - they just hate SD. it has nothing to do with partisanship. that dude just sucks.

I see you as a thoughtful, educated and mature contributor to this thread. Do you tacitly condone Gtn and pointgod when they condescend to the right?

if the level of antagonism is limited to GTN calling you a hypocritical deficit hawk, or you calling GTN immature? sure. that's tolerable, and me not chastising either of you can be construed as my tolerance. it's not ideal, but it can still allowed for a reasoned discourse.

what i find to be beyond the pale are posts like:

"So instead of "fighting with me." learn from me. I'm really here to help. . But the first step in learning from me is really shutting the phuck up...stop resisting... and start asking the right questions. There is nothing you are going to teach me."

that crosses my tolerance threshold. There's no way to have a reasoned discourse with someone that's telling you to shut the f up, and that there's nothing that you can teach him because his girlfriend is hotter.

and yes, popper, to your credit, you did mildly push back on that rhetoric but even your posts didn't really do much to fix the root of the problem. and on the flip side, popper, to your detriment, SD comes off as much more immature than GTN and your tone to GTN is much harsher because of political affiliation.

I had to check my blood pressure before logging back on this morning. I was a bit angry last night. I appreciate your thoughts and response. I see things a bit differently though. Just as you find that your tolerance is crossed with the std quote above I find my tolerance crossed when Gtn and pointgod consistently attach judgements like “deplorable, idiot, dumb, lemmings, despicable, evil, etc. to posters that challenge their views. That’s their MO and has been since they’ve joined the thread. I’ve tried to politely make the point that that behavior forecloses any useful discussion on important topics. Which, btw may very well be their intent.

Regarding my reaction to std’s posts, I don’t think it’s productive to pile on someone when they’ve already been heavily criticized by almost every other poster here. It’s a judgement call on my part. You can make your own judgment and I’ll respect that. Last, I’ve been in heated debates with D’s on this thread for almost nine years. With one or two exceptions, the interactions have been polite, informative and conducted with some acceptable level of decorum. I dont want gtn or pointgod to stop posting here. I look forward to hearing their views absent the labeling and name calling. I lost my temper last night I may very well take a step back from the thread but I don’t regret calling them out or encouraging them to adopt a more civil tone in their posts.

[daoneandonly]

sorry, when STD characterizes a change of dress code that dates back to the 1830's as the American government endorsing sharia law, how should it be received? with an open mind and a willingness to debate the merits of that argument?

or how about pushing the idea that we can build a border wall that can double as functional, marketable office space out of shipping containers?

and these aren't just cherrypicked, isolated incidents. it's pretty much the entirety of his posting identity. he just said that the American people "booted" Obama out of office.

even rejecting "snopes" as a "liberal" site is insane. there's zero proof that snopes is biased in any way. there's no debating any of this. the rot goes too deep.

none of his posting is useful. and to counter Doc's point about this forum being a release valve that would prevent a unibomber, that's not really how it works in a 21st century internet environment. realgm is not the tether to reality that SD needs because especially since he rejects reasonable discourse at every turn.

STD is unique in his idiocy. I've had good faith arguments with Da1andOnly and the Belarusian fellow. There as been zero such interactions with STD. There's no value add, and often, the conservatives on this board feel an obligation to defend him on this board out of solidarity (much like supporting Trump) when really his views are sincerely and overtly out of wack.

That's not at all funny to you? The container wall? I snorted, personally. I guess I look at the thread differently. The site is for entertainment, we are not ourselves curing the world. STD openly admits he is a hack. He wants backpats for his personal success. If you believe him. But mostly he is entertaining himself at your expense. Sometimes he is genuinely entertaining to me, or at least memorable, and a unifying figure in that he uniformly pisses people off. In this way I think he has found a kindred spirit or role model in "Twitler". Trump similarly loves to piss people off.

I think its funny though that the one thing all sides of the board agree on is that he ought to post a little less, less often and fewer words or curses or exclamation points. And maybe factcheck some, occasionally. And occasionally, hey, don't respond to every little thing.

Yes, the quality of debate in this thread has devolved since back when Pine and Nivek and crackhed lopii and all were in here. But quality of debate in the US as a whole has gone Neanderthal. My point on the Unibomber is smirky, but the concept wasn't that the internet would have tethered him to reality, but instead helped him vent spleen --even unproductively-- and thus not harbor his grudges and blow things up. STD is not encouraging seditious actions, he is just loudly supporting a politician that I personally despise --an odious human colostomy bag spoiled brat rich boy with a face that's built for punching (in my personal opinion). As such for me its useful to be able to lob spitballs back at STD as a proxy for the animate prostate tumor we have currently befouling the CEO chair of our democracy. I'd rather rip into StilDrop and give as good as I get on here than um, I dunno, have the secret service humorlessly knocking at my door because of my rhetorical flourish that I think Trump is a bag of pus and his litter of ratlings have no business scurrying around in living daylight much less pi55ing and gnawing in the corridors of power.

I think most of STDs stuff would be better off in the Insults thread. where no one would huff and take it seriously. And we could freely lob insults at each other in over-the-top fashion and no one would mind censor evading language or even an obnoxious over abundance of exclamation points ( I seriously wish someone would break that key on his keyboard). But, I'll still talk ideas with him. When they surface. I honestly think people are more put off by his style and act than they are anything he says. There's a Trumpload of "Me me me me me" which makes it harder to find an idea in it all. And sometimes, sadly sounds a little empty. Like ****, the dude actually does want friends and respect, he is just far more skilled at breaking balls than he is making real trustworthy pals.

Ok what do liberals want:

Speaking for my own beliefs.

Government exists to provide a structure for the common good to succeed. At a clan or tribal level people can be altruistic, but on an individual level people tend to be selfish and when we bump up against other tribes or sports teams we get competitive. So. It's useful to have Law to channel those selfish aims to productive consequences. If we have a Democratic government the point is to protect the voice of the little guy so that it is not drowned out by greater powers. We shot Redcoats so that we will not have a royal class who is born to power, but every person willing to participate in day-to-day america has a stake in our future and a right to have their say.

It's in our founding documents:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

and

in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity,

we decided to make one out of many. E. Pluribus Unum. Making a Union out of a mess of individuals. So the object of the Union is in part to protect individuals, even if they have not gotten lucky. Been born into money, or not been born with the cojones and gumption and smarts to succeed at a multimillionaire level in a dog eat dog world.

Some part of the "me me me" aspect is that hell, you want credit for being a unique and special individual. Not everybody could have done what you claim to do. Especially given the hurdles in front of you. You saw people even smarter than yourself fail. And people with lesser raw brains, succeed.

To my mind the Lefty angle says: cool. That's life. There are a limited number of lottery tickets, not everyone is going to win. However, that Divine Providence that is gifted to some, means those lucky few have a duty to give back. It's the Spider-man maxim: with great power comes great responsibility. Or from an older source: "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required; and from the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded" .

(I personally was raised without churching, so learned my morality from the Good Books of marvel comics more than the bible. And my human role models were activists and hard working caring people who rarely earned a ton of money because they spent a life working at clinics and legal aid for poor people and non profits dedicated to causes of people who lack a voice).

Anyway. So yes. The lefty types believe government exists to harness Capitalism to pull the sleigh of society. People are selfish, they work hard for themselves and their family. But if you let them only look out for themselves then society itself falls apart.

So, yes, those talented economic superheroes have a duty to carry our America, they have benefited greatly by the opportunities provided by this society, so whether they like it or not they are the ones strong enough to bear the weight of Justice, Common Defense, Tranquility and the General Welfare. A rabbi said it I believe: "I ask God not for a lighter burden but a stronger back".

Now, I personally am grateful for the ability to pay taxes. I was on food stamps as a kid, went to some pretty great programs in the public school system (and saw terrible programs for kids in the lower tracks), got loans to go to college, have a lifetime love of libraries as an institution of individual learning and lifetime personal improvement for people of any income. I bought a house with government insured loans.

Because of good government I did not starve. I learned to be productive. I'm not the biggest wage earner, and no matter how many sexy girlfriends I have or wives (or both or whatever) I still was able to succeed at a reasonable level and carry my family (and even other peoples families. 15 years ago, we basically adopted my stepsons friend when his family was unable to care for him. Because we could. He is my son, grown up and a mechanic, but at the time we did it because he needed it, you do what you can. But its not a unique story. The liberals I know don't ask for a hand out for themselves, they look to help people who don't know how to improve their lot.

I have worked in government and union work and have seen directly how tax dollars are a choice between filling potholes vs healthcare for the family of the guy on the back of the garbage truck in 100 degree august heat. I've been in the budget fights where even Liberal home owners complain that their house value has gone up, that because of the privilege of where they live they are benefitting from a measurable quantifiable improved quality of life, but have qualms paying the price for the people who earned that improvement for them by reducing crime, providing activities for kids to do after school, making sure houses in the neighborhood are up to code and not attracting vermin, etc. I like smooth roads. The overgrowth of rats meant 1/3 of western Europe died of the black plague. Government is good.

So but yes, there are people who will never carry their fair share and may get away with it. Some part of the difference between Progressive and Reactionary mindsets is about arguing about which is the greater injustice: theft or neglect. We would not want to see a mother and child starving to death and nobody was willing to help. Also. Nobody thinks it is a fine thing that someone else can quit work and buy luxury items while collect government checks that are earned by someone else's labor. But no system is perfect. Either someone is going to cheat the system or someone is going to starve to death. Which is the greater injustice. The Progressive mindset says government exists to care for our citizens. If someone learns to hustle and game the system we would rather that happen at the EBT level than at the Corporate level. Let's tax the biggest earners, who can afford it best, so that not a single damn child ever dies. No mother ever has to make the choice my mom did as a single mom of three: do I pay the lights or make the car payment so I can drive to school and work and afford to buy groceries etc. Do I feed my kids or have a telephone.

So. Its natural, to look to your own pockets and resent anyone dipping into it. I love any month with a 3rd paycheck when suddenly only the Fed and State taxes are taken out and I get that extra cash. But I am grateful for the ability to complain about paying taxes. Ultimately Mario Cuomo summed the liberal mindset:

We Democrats still have a dream. We still believe in this nation's future. And this is our answer to the question. This is our credo:

We believe in only the government we need, but we insist on all the government we need.

We believe in a government that is characterized by fairness and reasonableness, a reasonableness that goes beyond labels, that doesn't distort or promise to do things that we know we can't do.

We believe in a government strong enough to use words like "love" and "compassion" and smart enough to convert our noblest aspirations into practical realities.

We believe in encouraging the talented, but we believe that while survival of the fittest may be a good working description of the process of evolution, a government of humans should elevate itself to a higher order.

We -- Our -- Our government -- Our government should be able to rise to the level where it can fill the gaps that are left by chance or by a wisdom we don't fully understand. We would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.

We believe -- We believe as Democrats, that a society as blessed as ours, the most affluent democracy in the world's history, one that can spend trillions on instruments of destruction, ought to be able to help the middle class in its struggle, ought to be able to find work for all who can do it, room at the table, shelter for the homeless, care for the elderly and infirm, and hope for the destitute. And we proclaim as loudly as we can the utter insanity of nuclear proliferation and the need for a nuclear freeze, if only to affirm the simple truth that peace is better than war because life is better than death.

We believe in firm -- We believe in firm but fair law and order.

We believe proudly in the union movement.

We believe in a -- We believe -- We believe in privacy for people, openness by government.

We believe in civil rights, and we believe in human rights.

We believe in a single -- We believe in a single fundamental idea that describes better than most textbooks and any speech that I could write what a proper government should be: the idea of family, mutuality, the sharing of benefits and burdens for the good of all, feeling one another's pain, sharing one another's blessings -- reasonably, honestly, fairly, without respect to race, or sex, or geography, or political affiliation.

We believe we must be the family of America, recognizing that at the heart of the matter we are bound one to another, that the problems of a retired school teacher in Duluth are our problems; that the future of the child -- that the future of the child in Buffalo is our future; that the struggle of a disabled man in Boston to survive and live decently is our struggle; that the hunger of a woman in Little Rock is our hunger; that the failure anywhere to provide what reasonably we might, to avoid pain, is our failure.

Very thorough and insightful post, so kudos for that doc

There are some pieces I have to chime in on though as they seem to be contradictory to some liberal stances. You speak of the government looking out for the little guy, making sure their voices are heard, and people being inherently selfish and the government having to do something about that me first mindset for the greater good, how does any of that line up with being pro choice? Isn't that a little guy voice not being heard? isn't an abortion as selfish a move as it gets?

With respect to the guy gaming the system vs the one that genuinely needs help due to their circumstances, yes the latter is far more important, I don't think anyone is really arguing that. But we can't ignore all the advances we've made in generations, its 2018, we can much more adequately weed out those that genuinely need a hand up at life, versus those that are just lazy or what have you and can make change son their own to advance their own life. It won't be fail proof, nothing in life is, but it seems like the liberals dont want to do a darn thing about it, just an Oprah Winfrey style you get a ..., you get a .... That's not how life should work, many of the people you described are in the circumstances they are in due to their own choices and actions, whether its laziness, drug use, frivolous spending habits, etc, it's not society's job to bail them out. Now the people who are sick, born into families that were ill prepared to raise them, suffered some type of accident, etc, those are the people we should be quick to help back up.

[dckingsfan]

I just had a flashback to my old, racist grandfather who used to gorge on Fox.

The stupid thing about STDs anti immigrant stance is that unless you’re Indigenous American, everyone in the US are immigrants. This same stupid argument has been made decades before. Guess what if immigrants come to the US and have kids, then their kids grow up as Americans! Imagine that.

Stupider still are the policy ideas that the GOP has vehemently opposed for decades. "Raise the minimum wage!!!" Lol, like how big of a rock do you have to be living under to miss that one? Even the conservatives who would benefit hate it; they'd rather spend their energy freaking out about Muslims and Mexicans swarming over the border. One again, LBJ's quote about how to manipulate working class whites was one of the most accurate political observations of all time. Right behind Trump noting that he could kill somebody and still not lose any voters.

About that... I think those are two different policy decisions.

And a "US" based minimum wage isn't necessarily a good idea. One that is better implemented on a state by state, region by region basis. Why? Because a high minimum wage in rural Mississippi will have a different affect than that same minimum wage in NY, NY.

And it would be most useful to have a real immigration policy (the one that was agreed on before was a non-policy policy). As gtn put it - we don't currently reconcile what immigration against our social services. But we also don't reconcile immigration against what we really need (demographically or work force).

But yes, Trump one because of fear and a lot of that is tied into how they are governing now.

[dckingsfan]

And here is where the rubber meets the road. They could have created a really good tax bill that would have had some nice growth and still reduced the deficit. But no. They decided to do the wrong thing. They decreased receipts and increased spending on the Military. They haven't even TRIED to fix the healthcare problem.

This administration is (Barkley voice) TURRIBLE.

What is interesting is what this means to the next POTUS - it is going to be soooo hard to fix now.

http://www.crfb.org/blogs/has-revenue-risen-2018

[popper]

Ok. Do you remember not long ago when the Clintons and Obama’s said that marriage is between a man and women? Maybe you were still in diapers then. I can name many other “evolutions” in thought and process that occurred in the recent past where D’s held what you now refer to as backward (conservative) views.

Are you trying to make a point, and what is it, because I'm confused, are evolutions of thought bad, or are your quotations simply intended to attribute malice?

I supported the tax cuts because it makes our corporations more competitive. Did you not notice that we collected record tax revenues after the tax cuts? Of course you didn’t. You were too busy planning for the next Antifa attack. The increased deficits derive from additional spending that D’s and R’s agreed to in the latest budget negotiations.

http://www.crfb.org/blogs/has-revenue-risen-2018

Yet even these numbers understate revenue losses between 2017 and 2018, since they count revenue raised in 2018 but under 2017's pre-tax cut laws. Roughly three-quarters of the increase in nominal individual income tax revenue since 2017 is the result of non-withheld tax payments made in April (and March) to cover last year's taxes. Another quarter of the rise is from revenue in October, November, and December of 2017 – months which are part of fiscal year 2018 but were under the old tax code.

That doesn’t mean that every component of the tax reform was meritorious but it was a positive step in the right direction IMO. I won’t dignify the last two sentences of your post with a response because they’re born of totalitarian stridency, ignorance of history, and just a pathetic and inaccurate view of your fellow Americans. You can’t admit you’re young, inexperienced and uneducated in history and so you compensate with an arrogance made possible only by hiding behind the anonymity of this thread. Have a nice little boy.

You're parading around here claiming the high ground but it really doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

Except it does.

https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/trump-tax-cuts-federal-revenues-deficits/

Go Figure: Federal Revenues Hit All-Time Highs Under Trump Tax Cuts

10/16/2018

Taxes: Critics of the Trump tax cuts said they would blow a hole in the deficit. Yet individual income taxes climbed 6% in the just-ended fiscal year 2018, as the economy grew faster and created more jobs than expected.

The Treasury Department reported this week that individual income tax collections for FY 2018 totaled $1.7 trillion. That's up $14 billion from fiscal 2017, and an all-time high. And that's despite the fact that individual income tax rates got a significant cut this year as part of President Donald Trump's tax reform plan.

Income Taxes After Trump Tax Cuts
True, the first three months of the fiscal year were before the tax cuts kicked in. But if you limit the accounting to this calendar year, individual income tax revenues are up by 5% through September.
Other major sources of revenue climbed as well, as the overall economy revived. FICA tax collections rose by more than 3%. Excise taxes jumped 13%. The only category that was down? Corporate income taxes, which dropped by 31%. Overall, federal revenues came in slightly higher in FY 2018 — up 0.5%.

Spending, on the other hand, was $127 billion higher in fiscal 2018. As a result, deficits for 2018 climbed $113 billion.
Let's compare these results with Obama's last full fiscal year in office, 2016.


Individual income tax revenues went up by a mere 0.3%, Treasury data show. Fiscal 2016 also saw a 13% drop in corporate income taxes. FICA tax collections climbed by less than 1%. Excise tax collections dropped almost 3%.
Overall revenues increased by 0.5% — about the same as this year. The deficit? It climbed by $148 billion.
So, in other words, the government did better on revenues and deficits in the year after Trump's tax cuts went into effect than it did in Obama's last year in office.

Trump Tax Cuts To Blame For Deficit?
To this, critics say, yes, but revenues would have climbed faster had it not been for the tax cuts, because the economy was booming in 2018, unlike in 2016. Not necessarily.

Yes, the economy was booming in fiscal 2018. But it probably wouldn't have been booming without the tax cuts. Had Trump not succeeded in getting his pro-growth tax cuts across the finish line, it's possible we'd have seen a year like Obama's last one. A sluggish economy, barely increasing federal revenues, and a large increase in deficits.

Does that mean Trump's tax cuts are fully "paying for themselves"? We wouldn't make that argument. But the faster economic growth is clearly offsetting at least some of their costs — which is precisely what backers said would happen.

What is unmistakable from the data, however, is that the Trump tax cuts are not entirely, or even mostly, responsible for the increase in the deficit. Blame for that rests squarely with spendthrifts in Congress — on both sides of the aisle — who refuse to bring federal spending under control.

So, the question is: Would it have been better to have kept taxes high, and sacrificed economic, job and wage gains we've been enjoying, so that the government could have collected a little bit more in taxes?

[gtn130]

Just as you find that your tolerance is crossed with the std quote above I find my tolerance crossed when Gtn and pointgod consistently attach judgements like “deplorable, idiot, dumb, lemmings, despicable, evil, etc. to posters that challenge their views. That’s their MO and has been since they’ve joined the thread. I’ve tried to politely make the point that that behavior forecloses any useful discussion on important topics. Which, btw may very well be their intent.

popper, I genuinely and truthfully believe that the current iteration of the GOP is entirely illegitimate and fraught with grifter charlatans. Like, when I call them 'Deplorables' or 'idiots' it's because I honestly believe they fit those descriptions, and I don't think their beliefs should be validated because they don't actually represent anything honest or moral. For example:

• The tax cuts were a handout for the wealthy at the expense of the middle class (and the deficit!)
• Privatizing and deregulating unquestionably leads to really bad results and only serves billionaires and corporations
• All GOP machinations regarding healthcare in the last decade have been totally dishonest and depraved
• Climate change denialism is depraved and wrong and a symptom of moral rot brought on by Citizens United
• The NRA is a terrorist group
• All of the GOP-led wars are 100% wrong and evil (Dems share plenty of guilt here)
• The GOP elected Trump, a fascist reality show clown who proudly knows nothing

Neocons like you tend to associate the GOP with Romney or Kasich or GHWB, but in reality those days are over. Trump is your party now and you seem to be doing a bunch of mental gymnastics in an effort to ignore that fact and ignore what has happened to the GOP over the last decade or so.

Like at some point you need to decide if you're a full blown Deplorable or if you're just a rube buying what the Koch Brothers Paul Ryan is selling. Or, just leave the party and rethink some of this stuff!