REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

A thread for Democrats Only

POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Wednesday, March 13, 2024 08:08
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Thursday, May 24, 2018 12:33 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Signym, this is why I do not think you live in America. Your strange delusion is that changing the President also changes what the top 50% of Americans do to the bottom 50%. Another formulation: what the top 10% do to the bottom 90%. You might read an article about how America is actually organized. I suggest http://time.com/5280446/baby-boomer-generation-america-steve-brill/
Quote:

Lately, most Americans, regardless of their political leanings, have been asking themselves some version of the same question: How did we get here? How did the world’s greatest democracy and economy become a land of crumbling roads, galloping income inequality, bitter polarization and dysfunctional government?
Short answer: the people in the top 1% have steadily gotten more and more competent at looking after their own interests while less and less willing to look after your interests. That does not change when a new President is elected.

If you ever wondered why replacing one political party with another does not overthrow within a few years the top 1%, that article will explain it to you.

Switching from generalities about America to something very specific, Signym, I summarize: Trump’s bagman takes $400,000 to set up a meeting between Trump and the President of Ukraine. After the meeting, Ukraine stops helping Mueller investigate Trump’s Manafort. Then Trump sends 210 anti-tank missiles to Ukraine for killing Russians (which Trump refused to do, until he flip-flopped). It is obviously quid pro quo even if Trump and his lawyers won’t admit to it.

Signym, one of the selling points for you to vote for Trump was he would not start a war with Russia but Hillary would. And then Signym writes nothing about those 210 anti-tank missiles for killing Russians and antagonizing Putin. Instead, Signym writes hundreds of words about Hillary being bribed. Signym, you are wasting time.

https://qz.com/1286718
http://thehill.com/policy/defense/376351-us-approves-sale-of-210-anti-
tank-missiles-to-ukraine


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 12:33 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


My point, GSTRING, is that politicians of BOTH parties lie. You don't like Trump because he lies? Well, guess what ... do did Hillary and Obama and Bush and Bill. You don't like politicians because they're personally skeezy? Because they violate your Constitutional rights? Don't have the interests of the "common man/ woman" at heart? Represent the oligarchy? Concocted false flags to get us into war?

Huh. Could be said of every President that I can think of in my lifetime except (maybe) Kennedy, but I was too young to know anything about politics back then.

Let's get to characteristics that DIFFERENTIATE politicians, not ones that they all share.



-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 12:47 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Signym, this is why I do not think you live in America. Your strange delusion is that changing the President also changes what the top 50% of Americans do to the bottom 50%.
SECOND, this is why you're not worth replying to: I never posted that, and in fact posted the exact opposite. Why do you think I have "America is an oligarchy" as my signature line?

Quote:

If you ever wondered why replacing one political party with another does not overthrow within a few years the top 1%, that article will explain it to you.
No, I have not wondered that in decades, but I DO wonder why you ... after saying that both parties are equally at fault ... continue with your anti-Republican/ anti-Trump obsession. Why is that? Do you suppose you could move OFF that idee fixe and onto something more objective?

Quote:

Signym, one of the selling points for you to vote for Trump was he would not start a war with Russia but Hillary would. And then Signym writes nothing about those 210 anti-tank missiles for killing Russians and antagonizing Putin. Instead, Signym writes hundreds of words about Hillary being bribed. Signym, you are wasting time.
SECOND, YOU post THOUSANDS of words about every little insignificant detail about Trump, from the size of his hands to the color of his skin. If you would only either be more fair-minded about it, and wax vitriolic about Hillary's cankles, or at least acknowledge that Obama repeatedly backstabbed the American public, I'd have a great deal more respect for your opinion. But as long as you insist that everything is the Republicans' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

Also, it would be nice if you would stop strawmanning me.

How about this: You stop obsessively posting how much you hate Trump/GOP/ Texas Republicans at every opportunity, show a LITTLE perspective, and we can have a decent conversation. Does that sound fair?

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 2:31 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Hi KIKI, I did respond to your post but this was at risk of being buried in the shuffle...

Quote:

Yes. At the absolute best, it's redundancy.- SIX

Redundancy to what? To the non-existent national training and jobs programs? To the non-existent public works projects?- KIKI

And that's only if it were done on a temporary basis as a program to transition existing military service members out of an active duty role. -SIX

Why? just because you say so doesn't make it so. - KIKI

I don't agree, but not because it necessarily represents an numeric expansion (i.e. numbers of military volunteers increasing) but because it expands the scope of "military code of justice" to non-military situations even further. If there's any reason at all for putting recruits under "martial law" it's because they will be forced into a wartime situation, where obedience is required. But there's no reason to put people under "martial law" because they're learning how to make their beds, brush their teeth, and run a bulldozer. - SIGNY

This will STILL be the military. People will go for basic training. They will be called up for combat duty if they need to defend the country. - KIKI

That's kind of my point. If the end goal here is not actually lowering the existing numbers in the military - SIX

It's not. And I never said it was. It's to get us more value at home for government money spent on the military that would otherwise be wasted.- KIKI

I fear that the numbers would rise because of how desperate people are going to become for any sort of meaningful jobs as more get shipped overseas or replaced with automation. ... I don't believe the Government would put any limits to how many people could join this program since the labor would be extremely cheap ... Who's to say that this wouldn't grow? - SIX

Are you saying the government would somehow be 'forced' to admit the flood of applicants? And. Wait. Weren't you arguing this was such a bad deal no one would go for it? Do you think you can keep your arguments straight? 0 KIKI

... and they'd be signing over their lives on contract to the Government until their time was up. These "employees" would have no real say about the direction their lives go while enlisted ... SIX

You mean, JUST EXACTLY LIKE HOW THINGS ARE NOW? - KIKI

Everybody here knows how corrupt our Government and businesses are. SIX

Do you have a point? - KIKI

... and by the time they could leave there might not be a whole lot of good paying jobs utilizing the skills they learned SIX

... And that's different from now ... how exactly? KIKI

... if there are now twice as many new recruits in there as well as a waiting list, so they're probably much more likely to re-enlist for a small bonus or bump in pay for the next 4 years of their lives. This circle only stands to get more vicious as the ranks become professional caliber after re-enlisting 1 or 2 times because it's better than the alternatives. - SIX

And how's THAT different from now?- KIKI

You just go round and round, and go nowhere.- SIX



Hmm... offhand, it's the "value added" argument ..., the one that should be the most acceptable ... that troubles me most. It creates a motivation that could expand the [military] endlessly, EVEN IF there are no current wars being fought and no need for a constant/ expanded military force. The program would eliminate any possible "peace dividend" and any possible rational for reducing the military force/ budget by expanding the scope of the military into peacetime. I think that's the thing that bothers me.


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 3:21 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Hmm... offhand, it's the "value added" argument ..., the one that should be the most acceptable ... that troubles me most. It creates a motivation that could expand the [military] endlessly, EVEN IF there are no current wars being fought and no need for a constant/ expanded military force. The program would eliminate any possible "peace dividend" and any possible rational for reducing the military force/ budget by expanding the scope of the military into peacetime. I think that's the thing that bothers me.



This.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 3:24 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
My point, GSTRING, is that politicians of BOTH parties lie. You don't like Trump because he lies? Well, guess what ... do did Hillary and Obama and Bush and Bill. You don't like politicians because they're personally skeezy? Because they violate your Constitutional rights? Don't have the interests of the "common man/ woman" at heart? Represent the oligarchy? Concocted false flags to get us into war?

Huh. Could be said of every President that I can think of in my lifetime except (maybe) Kennedy, but I was too young to know anything about politics back then.

Let's get to characteristics that DIFFERENTIATE politicians, not ones that they all share.




The shear number of Trump's lies are so staggering that you would make money in Vegas if you take 1 to 9 odds he's lying every time he speaks. This isn't, "they all do it" territory, not even close. This is gluttonous lying, gorging, Roman banquet style lying. This is sociopathic lying bordering on mental health issues volume of lying. I believe amongst his other epically poor traits, his lying is one of the worst ones. So this lying of his DIFFERENTIATES him from all of his predecessors. Bonus for Putin!

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 4:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
My point, GSTRING, is that politicians of BOTH parties lie. You don't like Trump because he lies? Well, guess what ... do did Hillary and Obama and Bush and Bill. You don't like politicians because they're personally skeezy? Because they violate your Constitutional rights? Don't have the interests of the "common man/ woman" at heart? Represent the oligarchy? Concocted false flags to get us into war?

Huh. Could be said of every President that I can think of in my lifetime except (maybe) Kennedy, but I was too young to know anything about politics back then.

Let's get to characteristics that DIFFERENTIATE politicians, not ones that they all share.




The shear number of Trump's lies are so staggering that you would make money in Vegas if you take 1 to 9 odds he's lying every time he speaks. This isn't, "they all do it" territory, not even close. This is gluttonous lying, gorging, Roman banquet style lying. This is sociopathic lying bordering on mental health issues volume of lying. I believe amongst his other epically poor traits, his lying is one of the worst ones. So this lying of his DIFFERENTIATES him from all of his predecessors. Bonus for Putin!



The only thing Trump is guilty of compared to any other politician is that his lies are the most talked about by the MSM at a time where more people are connected to the news than any past president.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Thursday, May 24, 2018 4:20 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

The shear number of Trump's lies are so staggering that you would make money in Vegas if you take 1 to 9 odds he's lying every time he speaks.
Prove it.

HINT: You can't.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, May 25, 2018 1:23 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Just to reiterate.

It's still the military. Only we don't send them overseas to waste trillions of taxpayer dollars in countless wars. We keep the military here, at home, ready to defend the US home soil should the need arise.

There are very few jobs in the US that can't be exported. Anything i-net can be transmitted from foreign countries. Manufacturing plants can be moved. The two types of jobs that have to be done here and nowhere else on the planet are public projects (construction-related), and caring for people. Those jobs will never move away.

And the money that we would waste in war overseas is invested in those projects here, in the US - on conservation, rebuilding, service, and so on. You could count that as part of the peace dividend.

But let's talk about the another part of the peace dividend - the lives spared, the disabilities avoided. And on top of that, the military service members would leave with something they don't get now, which is valuable job skills. And since those jobs will never physically leave, there will always be a demand.


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Yes. At the absolute best, it's redundancy.- SIX

Redundancy to what? To the non-existent national training and jobs programs? To the non-existent public works projects?- KIKI

And that's only if it were done on a temporary basis as a program to transition existing military service members out of an active duty role. -SIX

Why? just because you say so doesn't make it so. - KIKI

I don't agree, but not because it necessarily represents an numeric expansion (i.e. numbers of military volunteers increasing) but because it expands the scope of "military code of justice" to non-military situations even further. If there's any reason at all for putting recruits under "martial law" it's because they will be forced into a wartime situation, where obedience is required. But there's no reason to put people under "martial law" because they're learning how to make their beds, brush their teeth, and run a bulldozer. - SIGNY

This will STILL be the military. People will go for basic training. They will be called up for combat duty if they need to defend the country. - KIKI

That's kind of my point. If the end goal here is not actually lowering the existing numbers in the military - SIX

It's not. And I never said it was. It's to get us more value at home for government money spent on the military that would otherwise be wasted.- KIKI

I fear that the numbers would rise because of how desperate people are going to become for any sort of meaningful jobs as more get shipped overseas or replaced with automation. ... I don't believe the Government would put any limits to how many people could join this program since the labor would be extremely cheap ... Who's to say that this wouldn't grow? - SIX

Are you saying the government would somehow be 'forced' to admit the flood of applicants? And. Wait. Weren't you arguing this was such a bad deal no one would go for it? Do you think you can keep your arguments straight? 0 KIKI

... and they'd be signing over their lives on contract to the Government until their time was up. These "employees" would have no real say about the direction their lives go while enlisted ... SIX

You mean, JUST EXACTLY LIKE HOW THINGS ARE NOW? - KIKI

Everybody here knows how corrupt our Government and businesses are. SIX

Do you have a point? - KIKI

... and by the time they could leave there might not be a whole lot of good paying jobs utilizing the skills they learned SIX

... And that's different from now ... how exactly? KIKI

... if there are now twice as many new recruits in there as well as a waiting list, so they're probably much more likely to re-enlist for a small bonus or bump in pay for the next 4 years of their lives. This circle only stands to get more vicious as the ranks become professional caliber after re-enlisting 1 or 2 times because it's better than the alternatives. - SIX

And how's THAT different from now?- KIKI

You just go round and round, and go nowhere.- SIX



Hmm... offhand, it's the "value added" argument ..., the one that should be the most acceptable ... that troubles me most. It creates a motivation that could expand the program endlessly, EVEN IF there are no current wars being fought and no need for a constant/ expanded military force. The program would eliminate any possible "peace dividend" and any possible rational for reducing the military force/ budget by expanding the scope of the military into peacetime. I think that's the thing that bothers me.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

America is an oligarchy
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Friday, May 25, 2018 1:38 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


btw, many countries with COMPULSORY service offer civilian, non-combat service alternatives, including Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_service#Civilian,_unarmed_or_no
n-combatant_service_option





SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Friday, May 25, 2018 1:56 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"Apparently she is basing her theory upon some TV Show set in Colorado. Our Military Strategy has a preference of not fighting War on our own soil - which would lead to certain loss. Tell me, which Foreign Aggitators or Aggressors, or Oceans, border Colorado?"

What the fuck are you trying to say? That Colorado doesn't have a shit-ton of military bases? That all of the US military is stationed oversees? That the constitution doesn't specify the military is for the common defense?

My point, (which you seem to be unable to comprehend) is that the military is ALREADY a large part of the US job-related economy.

If you were to gather all of the military bases and installations in one single place in the US, it would be a city as large as Dallas, exclusively populated by military personnel. Just to reiterate, that Dallas-sized city would be ONLY military personnel. There would be no waitresses, meter-readers, cashiers or stockboys. There would be no Walmarts, no grocery stores, no Chevrons. No landlords or landscapers. It would be a city the size of Dallas, with nobody but the military.

That's how big the military is as an employer.


And just to make the point further, the US military is not the single largest employer in the US - it's the single largest employer in the world.

MarketWatch
https://www.marketwatch.com › The Margin
Jun 17, 2015 - At 3.2 million strong, the U.S. military is the largest employer in the world






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Friday, May 25, 2018 3:21 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:

My point, (which you seem to be unable to comprehend) is that the military is ALREADY a large part of the US job-related economy.



Yes. This is a problem.

Quote:

And just to make the point further, the US military is not the single largest employer in the US - it's the single largest employer in the world.



This, if it id indeed true (and I have no real reason to doubt that it is), is a terrifying thought.

I see no benefit to increasing that power.

I don't understand why you think the other military stuff that we're already doing would decrease at all by enacting all of these things you're talking about. Name one thing the US Government has ever done that would give you that idea.

If this idea were to gain traction in political and social circles, I'm sure that we'd be told that decreasing overseas military expenditures and lives would be decreased as a huge selling point to start doing this, but in a short period of time that wouldn't happen at all. If anything, the increase in numbers, power and money in the military would only serve to increase its reach.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Friday, May 25, 2018 5:07 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You whine, bitch, and moan endlessly about Trump. I'd take it a lot more seriously if you didn't have such a big fucking double standard/ hole in your head.

I'd take you a little more seriously if you realized that Obama is no longer president. You and people of you ilk, constantly defend Trump (omg) by blaming someone who's out of work and has zero effect on your life. "If only you'd criticized John Tyler like this..." Big fucking transparent hole in your head.

Mebbe you should let your fellow Libtard cretins know Obama is no longer Preezy.
After 8 years of the disastrous Obamanomics being blamed on Bush, now MSM is claiming Trump's unleashed Economy is really Obama's Economy. And they seem to expect non-Libtards to fall for that Fairy Tale.

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Friday, May 25, 2018 7:57 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

The shear number of Trump's lies are so staggering that you would make money in Vegas if you take 1 to 9 odds he's lying every time he speaks.
Prove it.

HINT: You can't.




Eh? I have always suspected that you are such a believer in the use of lying that long ago you stopped considering it a bad thing. I suspect that you - just like Trump - find truth telling to be a sign of weakness. "You'll never get anywhere telling the truth!"

Maybe you are unable to penetrate his NY style of speaking and are enraptured every time he makes a speech?
Maybe you are just a fan of Russia and love to see him create disruption? I think I know the truth.

How about I post his lies every day for the next week? How about just the last 4 days?

"Sir, should you get a nobel prize?"
"Everyone thinks I should..."
Not really.

"Sadly, I was forced to cancel the summit..."
He wasn't forced.

"Not surprisingly, the GREAT Men & Women of the FBI are starting to speak out against Comey, McCabe and all of the political corruption and poor leadership found within the top ranks of the FBI. Comey was a terrible and corrupt leader who inflicted great pain on the FBI! "

They are? Who? Cites for anything in that statement? 2, 3, 5 lies in that one tweet?

"Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!"
No he didn't. "largest scandals in US History?" Not so much.

"WITCH HUNT!" that lie never gets old.

"Everybody is with Tomi Lahren, a truly outstanding and respected young woman! "
No.

"John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community..."
No, that would be you.

That's just the last 4 days - there are more in that time fame, just why bother? You will defend *cough* lie about *cough* his chaos style as long as he's in office.

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Friday, May 25, 2018 9:51 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


GSTRING, here's the thing: A "lie" is when people say something that they know to be untrue. In order to know whether someone is lying, you have to know what THEY think is true and what THEY think is false. Since we can't crawl into Trump's mind, we don't know what HE thinks is fact and what isn't. We would need a statement of intent ...Oh, I just said that to get the press/ Democrats/ deep state off my back.

It was the same argument with GWB and Iraq's so-called WMD. I could demonstrate morning, noon, and night that GWB was wrong, wrong, wrong. But, was he lying? I don't know. I'm not sure that HE had the mental capacity to sustain a lie over such a long term. Maybe everyone else ... Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld ... maybe THEY lied to GWB and he believed them. I was left with the choice that either GWB lied, or else he was fatally incompetent. (Fatal for our troops and for a huge number of Iraqis, that is.) But in the end, I don't think I could "prove" that he lied unless someone published a formerly secret diary where GWB admitted to lying.

So I'm not about to try and prove that Trump "lied" or "didn't lie" with each his statements. Instead, we can discuss whether or not he was right or wrong. Some of his statements that YOU deem to be a "lie" I think were actually correct.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, May 25, 2018 10:01 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

After 8 years of the disastrous Obamanomics being blamed on Bush
You DO realize that the Great Depression (II) began well in Bush's term and resulted from a series of bad decisions WHICH INCLUDED BUSH'S, right?

Quote:

, now MSM is claiming Trump's unleashed Economy is really Obama's Economy.
You yourself said that a President can collapse an economy but improvements take YEARS to take hold, correct? Well, it took almost 16 years of Clinton's and GWB's economic/fiscal policies and The Fed's financial policies to collapse the financial system, so why wouldn't it take almost that long to pump it back up again? About 8 years-worth? Because one year seems to be far too short a time to substantially change ANY economy.

BTW...

1) I wouldn't be claiming too loudly that "the economy" is on the mend. After 8+ years of The Fed flooding the financial system with (even more) funny-money, SOME of it finally trickled down to the masses and is showing up in higher consumption, but our manufacturing has not recovered. Again, it would take years ... more than a decade ... to even begin to make a significant (30%) improvement in that direction.

2) It's all built on The Fed blowing bubbles with funny-money anyway; all of the factors that led to the first collapse are in place to create a second one. This is not Trump's doing, it's The Fed's. And The Fed doesn't answer to the President ... it's just a group pf private bankers making policy on their own behalf.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, May 25, 2018 10:13 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

btw, many countries with COMPULSORY service offer civilian, non-combat service alternatives, including Switzerland, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark.
I would have to know the terms of non-combat service. For example, do they live "on base"? Does the government house, feed, and clothe them? Are they under a non-civilian form of justice?

And even if there are military-style non-combat forms of service in other nations, I'm not sure its a good idea for us, JUST BECAUSE our military is the largest employer in the world and just because it already represents and huge concentration of sociopath/ parasite-attracting money and power. Our government is very, very corrupt; and until that corruption is broken the thought of potentially expanding the military's scope doesn't seem like a good choice to me.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, May 25, 2018 12:56 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
GSTRING, here's the thing: A "lie" is when people say something that they know to be untrue. In order to know whether someone is lying, you have to know what THEY think is true and what THEY think is false. Since we can't crawl into Trump's mind, we don't know what HE thinks is fact and what isn't. We would need a statement of intent ...Oh, I just said that to get the press/ Democrats/ deep state off my back.

It was the same argument with GWB and Iraq's so-called WMD. I could demonstrate morning, noon, and night that GWB was wrong, wrong, wrong. But, was he lying? I don't know. I'm not sure that HE had the mental capacity to sustain a lie over such a long term. Maybe everyone else ... Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld ... maybe THEY lied to GWB and he believed them. I was left with the choice that either GWB lied, or else he was fatally incompetent. (Fatal for our troops and for a huge number of Iraqis, that is.) But in the end, I don't think I could "prove" that he lied unless someone published a formerly secret diary where GWB admitted to lying.

So I'm not about to try and prove that Trump "lied" or "didn't lie" with each his statements. Instead, we can discuss whether or not he was right or wrong. Some of his statements that YOU deem to be a "lie" I think were actually correct.

Which statements that CC/G/pizmobeach deems a lie do you consider to be factually inaccurate?

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Friday, May 25, 2018 1:38 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Which statements that CC/G/pizmobeach deems a lie do you consider to be factually inaccurate?


Quote:

"Sir, should you get a nobel prize?"
"Everyone thinks I should..."

Statements which contain universally-inclusive (or exclusive) terms like "everyone", "nobody", "always", and "never" are categorically suspect. We don't even know if the "laws of physics" apply universally, much less an opinion.

Quote:

"Everybody is with Tomi Lahren, a truly outstanding and respected young woman! "
Same problem. And I don't even know who that is.


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Friday, May 25, 2018 1:52 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Which statements that CC/G/pizmobeach deems a lie do you consider to be factually inaccurate?


Quote:

"Sir, should you get a nobel prize?"
"Everyone thinks I should..."

Statements which contain universally-inclusive (or exclusive) terms like "everyone", "nobody", "always", and "never" are categorically suspect. We don't even know if the "laws of physics" apply universally, much less an opinion.

Quote:

"Everybody is with Tomi Lahren, a truly outstanding and respected young woman! "
Same problem. And I don't even know who that is.

Fair points. I had dismissed those lacking context. Like when Trump said that all heinous MS-13 murderers were animals, and Libtards galore lied by saying he said all Illegal Aliens were animals.

As for Tomi Lauren, I don't think you are supposed to know who she is. I suspect RapKnight might know of her. I wonder who told Trump about her, she seems too sensible for him to follow.

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Friday, May 25, 2018 2:05 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"Apparently she is basing her theory upon some TV Show set in Colorado. Our Military Strategy has a preference of not fighting War on our own soil - which would lead to certain loss. Tell me, which Foreign Aggitators or Aggressors, or Oceans, border Colorado?"

What the fuck are you trying to say? That Colorado doesn't have a shit-ton of military bases? That all of the US military is stationed oversees? That the constitution doesn't specify the military is for the common defense?

My point, (which you seem to be unable to comprehend) is that the military is ALREADY a large part of the US job-related economy.

If you were to gather all of the military bases and installations in one single place in the US, it would be a city as large as Dallas, exclusively populated by military personnel. Just to reiterate, that Dallas-sized city would be ONLY military personnel. There would be no waitresses, meter-readers, cashiers or stockboys. There would be no Walmarts, no grocery stores, no Chevrons. No landlords or landscapers. It would be a city the size of Dallas, with nobody but the military.

That's how big the military is as an employer.


And just to make the point further, the US military is not the single largest employer in the US - it's the single largest employer in the world.

MarketWatch
https://www.marketwatch.com › The Margin
Jun 17, 2015 - At 3.2 million strong, the U.S. military is the largest employer in the world

SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

To be clear, Dallas has a City Area of about 386 Sq Miles and an Urban Area of about 1,400 Sq Miles, right?

In the Marine Corps, 29 Stumps is 931 Sq Miles, or 2,413 Sq Km. Camp Lejuene is 246 Sq Miles, or 640 Sq Km. Camp Pendleton is 506 Sq Km (~194 Sq Miles). Quantico is 86 Sq Miles. MWTC Pickel Meadows is 190 Sq Km (~73 Sq Miles). That sums about 1,530 Sq Miles merely for those 5 Installations. Reportedly, 29 Stumps is larger than every other Marine Corps base combined.

The Marine Corps is considered the smallest of the 4 Services. But Navy might have less land mass. USMC is an amphibious service, so much time is spent at sea.

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Friday, May 25, 2018 3:40 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

The shear number of Trump's lies are so staggering that you would make money in Vegas if you take 1 to 9 odds he's lying every time he speaks.
Prove it.

HINT: You can't.

Eh? I have always suspected that you are such a believer in the use of lying that long ago you stopped considering it a bad thing. I suspect that you - just like Trump - find truth telling to be a sign of weakness. "You'll never get anywhere telling the truth!"

Maybe you are unable to penetrate his NY style of speaking and are enraptured every time he makes a speech?
Maybe you are just a fan of Russia and love to see him create disruption? I think I know the truth.

How about I post his lies every day for the next week? How about just the last 4 days?

"Sir, should you get a nobel prize?"
"Everyone thinks I should..."
Not really.

"Sadly, I was forced to cancel the summit..."
He wasn't forced.

"Not surprisingly, the GREAT Men & Women of the FBI are starting to speak out against Comey, McCabe and all of the political corruption and poor leadership found within the top ranks of the FBI. Comey was a terrible and corrupt leader who inflicted great pain on the FBI! "

They are? Who? Cites for anything in that statement? 2, 3, 5 lies in that one tweet?

"Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!"
No he didn't. "largest scandals in US History?" Not so much.

"WITCH HUNT!" that lie never gets old.

"Everybody is with Tomi Lahren, a truly outstanding and respected young woman! "
No.

"John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself, he has disgraced the Country, he has disgraced the entire Intelligence Community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of American’s faith in the Intelligence Community..."
No, that would be you.

That's just the last 4 days - there are more in that time fame, just why bother? You will defend *cough* lie about *cough* his chaos style as long as he's in office.

Other than the 2 mentioned, the rest of these facts seem only disputed by Libtards.

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 12:19 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
GSTRING, here's the thing: A "lie" is when people say something that they know to be untrue. In order to know whether someone is lying, you have to know what THEY think is true and what THEY think is false. Since we can't crawl into Trump's mind, we don't know what HE thinks is fact and what isn't. We would need a statement of intent ...Oh, I just said that to get the press/ Democrats/ deep state off my back.

It was the same argument with GWB and Iraq's so-called WMD. I could demonstrate morning, noon, and night that GWB was wrong, wrong, wrong. But, was he lying? I don't know. I'm not sure that HE had the mental capacity to sustain a lie over such a long term. Maybe everyone else ... Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld ... maybe THEY lied to GWB and he believed them. I was left with the choice that either GWB lied, or else he was fatally incompetent. (Fatal for our troops and for a huge number of Iraqis, that is.) But in the end, I don't think I could "prove" that he lied unless someone published a formerly secret diary where GWB admitted to lying.

So I'm not about to try and prove that Trump "lied" or "didn't lie" with each his statements. Instead, we can discuss whether or not he was right or wrong. Some of his statements that YOU deem to be a "lie" I think were actually correct.




That's a very popular tactic used by people who lie, a bit like: "I was joking." I think you just are not familiar with sales people or Trump in particular. I know their schpiel backwards and forwards. "Never admit a wrong..." "Never ask a question that has a "no" answer..." On and on. It's a fascinating and exceptionally slimey business. No, I wasn't a sales person - save your "humor."
Lying is like eating a Big Mac for Trump - he never had much of a social filter, and now that he's the most powerful man on earth, his ego knows no bounds, few rules apply.

He is purposely overstating for effect. Just listen to him, he uses the "every blank" expression constantly. "Everyone is horrified by what the FBI is doing."

Here's more - over statement (lying) for effect - you have to wonder if he's a bit drunk in this clip:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4731522/factual-errors

You have to watch the video there ^

Error #1: The $700B defense budget for FY18 is not the largest ever. It was larger under the Obama administration: $710B in FY11 and $714B in FY10. And that's without adjusting for inflation!

Error #2: The number of ships in the Navy today is not the smallest since the end of WWI. We have 283 ships today, and in 2007 (Bush administration) we had 279.

Error #3: The Navy will not get to 355 ships "very soon." The Navy's 30-year plan says it will not get to that level until after 2050, but it could possibly be accelerated to the 2030s. Either way, it's not very soon.

Error #4: Getting to 355 ships is not an increase of "a couple of hundred" ships. Here's the math: 355 - 283 = 72

Error #5: The 355-ship fleet has not yet been "approved." The ships have not all been authorized yet, and Congress appropriates the money one year at a time.

Error #6: This year's military pay raise is not the first in ten years. There were pay raises in each of the past ten years, & some were higher than this year's raise.
FY09: 3.9%
FY10: 3.4%
FY11: 1.4%
FY12: 1.6%
FY13: 1.7%
FY14: 1.0%
FY15: 1.0%
FY16: 1.3%
FY17: 2.1%
FY18: 2.4%

I believe these comments:

"These lies are told purposefully - to be repeated on Fox etc and to become "reality" for the masses."

"That's Trumps main MO - tell so many lies we can't keep up."

"That's a debating technique, called the Gish Gallop."

I confess I didn't know there was an actual phrase for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gish_gallop

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 12:25 PM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:Statements which contain universally-inclusive (or exclusive) terms like "everyone", "nobody", "always", and "never" are categorically suspect. We don't even know if the "laws of physics" apply universally, much less an opinion.


Huh? What sort of BS is that????

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 3:45 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

That's a very popular tactic used by people who lie, a bit like: "I was joking." I think you just are not familiar with sales people or Trump in particular. I know their schpiel backwards and forwards. "Never admit a wrong..." "Never ask a question that has a "no" answer..." On and on. It's a fascinating and exceptionally slimey business. No, I wasn't a sales person - save your "humor."
Lying is like eating a Big Mac for Trump - he never had much of a social filter

Deliberately lying requires a big social filter. If you just blurt out whatever pops into your head at the moment, it will be very difficult to lie. So by your own opinion, Trump is constitutionally incapable of lying consistently. Correct?

What you transcribed is a bunch of factually incorrect statements. Whether they were deliberate, inexact, or uninformed is I suppose a matter for discussion. Since people constantly accuse Trump of not knowing the details of how the government works or what's in the budget, some of it might be sheer carelessness. It's a point I find useless to argue.

Quote:

Statements which contain universally-inclusive (or exclusive) terms like "everyone", "nobody", "always", and "never" are categorically suspect. We don't even know if the "laws of physics" apply universally, much less an opinion. SIGNY

Huh? What sort of BS is that????- GSTRING



It's not. JSF asked which of Trump's statements were inaccurate, and those were the ones I can say were clearly incorrect. His other statements were mixtures of accuracies, potential accuracies, and inaccuracies, and each one would require debating the three or four points in each statement to determine how accurate each one was. Not a debate I felt like doing, and if I did you would simply say I was posting too many words!

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 7:52 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"I see no benefit to increasing that power."

NOT increasing!!! NOT INCREASING. NOT INCREASING!! NOT INCREASING!!

I had only 3 things I said would change

1) no overseas wars
2) public works types assignments
3) job training

If those are the ONLY things that change, what does that mean for everything else?

EVERYTHING ELSE STAYS THE SAME.

My god, but you are dense.






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 9:15 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"I see no benefit to increasing that power."

NOT increasing!!! NOT INCREASING. NOT INCREASING!! NOT INCREASING!!

I had only 3 things I said would change

1) no overseas wars
2) public works types assignments
3) job training

If those are the ONLY things that change, what does that mean for everything else?

EVERYTHING ELSE STAYS THE SAME.

My god, but you are dense.









I don't care what you think would or wouldn't happen Kiki.

The power would increase. They're not going to ask you for permission first.

BAD IDEA. BAD IDEA. BAD IDEA!!!!

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 10:41 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Well jack - let me know when someone makes you god, and I can believe everything you claim.

Otherwise, it's CLEARLY evident you have no argument besides your knee JERK reaction.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Saturday, May 26, 2018 11:09 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Signy, honestly - I'm not about to write a treatise on foreign military justice.

But in case you're wondering - military personnel are accountable to the US military code, not to civilian law enforcement.



Is off-base conduct covered by military law?


The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) specifically requires active duty personnel to follow all applicable rules of military conduct, whether on or off duty, or on or off base. Furlough, a temporary leave of absence from the military, does not change this rule.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice and Off-Base Conduct

The UCMJ is federal law and as such, is not enforced by civilian law enforcement. The UCMJ is instead enforced by federal officers and federal military courts. This has practical implications for enforcement, especially because local law enforcement may not be aware of certain proscriptions on military life. Further, local police have no direct legal authority for enforcing breaches of the UCMJ.

Many crimes under the UCMJ such as murder, rape or robbery, are defined the same way as they are in a civilian court. If a solider commits a crime off-base, and is caught by local law enforcement, the solider will still be under the jurisdiction of the UCMJ. The soldier will be tried for their crime in the military courts.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice and Local Law Enforcement

The military justice system also enforces crimes under the UCMJ that are outside the realm of the civilian courts. However, this does not mean that local law enforcement is required to enforce these UCMJ provisions when a soldier is off-base. For example, the UCMJ prohibits certain adulterous conduct by active military members. This means that if an active military member is caught engaging in adulterous conduct, even if they are off-base, they may be still be subject to military law.

If an off-base soldier engages in adulterous conduct, local law enforcement does not have the responsibility of charging the solider with the breach of the UCMJ. Law enforcement may inform the military that the off-base solider breached the UCMJ, however, they are not obligated to. Further, civilian agencies may have jurisdiction over some off-base conduct that they are not required to inform the military of. Domestic violence incidents are an example of this type of conduct.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice and Conduct Overseas

The UCMJ is also enforced on off-duty soldiers overseas. However, military law enforcement agreements are negotiated between the base and the host nation, and therefore vary. These agreements are designed to keep jurisdiction for off-base infractions within Department of Defense jurisdiction.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 12:26 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
GSTRING, here's the thing: A "lie" is when people say something that they know to be untrue. In order to know whether someone is lying, you have to know what THEY think is true and what THEY think is false. Since we can't crawl into Trump's mind, we don't know what HE thinks is fact and what isn't. We would need a statement of intent ...Oh, I just said that to get the press/ Democrats/ deep state off my back.

It was the same argument with GWB and Iraq's so-called WMD. I could demonstrate morning, noon, and night that GWB was wrong, wrong, wrong. But, was he lying? I don't know. I'm not sure that HE had the mental capacity to sustain a lie over such a long term. Maybe everyone else ... Cheney, Rice, Tenet, Rumsfeld ... maybe THEY lied to GWB and he believed them. I was left with the choice that either GWB lied, or else he was fatally incompetent. (Fatal for our troops and for a huge number of Iraqis, that is.) But in the end, I don't think I could "prove" that he lied unless someone published a formerly secret diary where GWB admitted to lying.

So I'm not about to try and prove that Trump "lied" or "didn't lie" with each his statements. Instead, we can discuss whether or not he was right or wrong. Some of his statements that YOU deem to be a "lie" I think were actually correct.

That's a very popular tactic used by people who lie, a bit like: "I was joking." I think you just are not familiar with sales people or Trump in particular. I know their schpiel backwards and forwards. "Never admit a wrong..." "Never ask a question that has a "no" answer..." On and on. It's a fascinating and exceptionally slimey business. No, I wasn't a sales person - save your "humor."
Lying is like eating a Big Mac for Trump - he never had much of a social filter, and now that he's the most powerful man on earth, his ego knows no bounds, few rules apply.

He is purposely overstating for effect. Just listen to him, he uses the "every blank" expression constantly. "Everyone is horrified by what the FBI is doing."

Here's more - over statement (lying) for effect - you have to wonder if he's a bit drunk in this clip:

https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4731522/factual-errors

You have to watch the video there ^

Error #1: The $700B defense budget for FY18 is not the largest ever. It was larger under the Obama administration: $710B in FY11 and $714B in FY10. And that's without adjusting for inflation!

Error #2: The number of ships in the Navy today is not the smallest since the end of WWI. We have 283 ships today, and in 2007 (Bush administration) we had 279.

Error #3: The Navy will not get to 355 ships "very soon." The Navy's 30-year plan says it will not get to that level until after 2050, but it could possibly be accelerated to the 2030s. Either way, it's not very soon.

Error #4: Getting to 355 ships is not an increase of "a couple of hundred" ships. Here's the math: 355 - 283 = 72

Error #5: The 355-ship fleet has not yet been "approved." The ships have not all been authorized yet, and Congress appropriates the money one year at a time.

Error #6: This year's military pay raise is not the first in ten years. There were pay raises in each of the past ten years, & some were higher than this year's raise.
FY09: 3.9%
FY10: 3.4%
FY11: 1.4%
FY12: 1.6%
FY13: 1.7%
FY14: 1.0%
FY15: 1.0%
FY16: 1.3%
FY17: 2.1%
FY18: 2.4%

I believe these comments:

"These lies are told purposefully - to be repeated on Fox etc and to become "reality" for the masses."

"That's Trumps main MO - tell so many lies we can't keep up."

"That's a debating technique, called the Gish Gallop."

Are you stupid? Or just trying to emulate your hero Clap Clap Clap Clapper, dancing around the facts?

Compared to nonstop lies of Obama and Hilliary, Trump must strike most sensible Americans as a Super hlHonest Boy Scout.

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 12:38 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
Well jack - let me know when someone makes you god, and I can believe everything you claim.

Otherwise, it's CLEARLY evident you have no argument besides your knee JERK reaction.



Let me know when anybody takes your ideas seriously as well.

This is a stupid argument since it's not going to happen anyhow.

I think it's safe to say that you're all alone in the argument too. Nobody else seems to think that you're on to anything.

Do Right, Be Right. :)

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 1:07 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


KIKI, I'm still trying to make sense of the purpose of your proposal. Is it a way to get more "value" out of the military budget? Is is a way to improve the civilian infrastructure? Is it a "stealth" jobs or job training program? All of the above?

In any case, let's say that - as you say - everything remains the same. The budget, the number of recruits, everything. But let's say that by some miracle OUTSIDE circumstances change ... the USA decides to not to jump into more military adventures and the necessity for the military decreases. Will the military budget and the number of recruits be allowed to decrease? Or will we hear ... If we let these people go unemployment will increase? But look, we have them working on jobs programs already!

Pffft! No incentive to actually reduce military spending. There goes the "peace dividend!"

If I may generalize a bit, the Federal government is a powerful entity; it has tremendous capacity to solve problems. Just look at what FDR did during the Great Depression; it couldn't possibly be duplicated at the city/state level. But every time you have a large pile of money, it attracts a large population of sociopaths. Concentrated resources create a different kind of behavior. Sometimes it creates more problems than it solves. The temptation is to reach for the biggest resource available to solve a big problem. But there's kind of a "one ring" aspect to that; I seem to have a problem explaining what my issue is, but that "one ring" often induces corruption, even if it's started with good intentions.

--------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 1:15 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Quote:

Is it a way to get more "value" out of the military budget?
YES
Quote:

Is is a way to improve the civilian infrastructure?
YES
Quote:

Is it a "stealth" jobs or job training program?
NO - though having those skills would benefit individuals.

As it is, the military wastes trillions of dollars on overseas adventures. If we could spend that money here and bring that much value to our society instead, that would be our "peace dividend".






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 1:44 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I added to my post, see above

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 1:51 AM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
KIKI, I'm still trying to make sense of the purpose of your proposal. Is it a way to get more "value" out of the military budget? Is is a way to improve the civilian infrastructure? Is it a "stealth" jobs or job training program? All of the above?

In any case, let's say that - as you say - everything remains the same. The budget, the number of recruits, everything. But let's say that by some miracle OUTSIDE circumstances change ... the USA decides to not to jump into more military adventures and the necessity for the military decreases. Will the military budget and the number of recruits be allowed to decrease? Or will we hear ... If we let these people go unemployment will increase? But look, we have them working on jobs programs already!

Pffft! No incentive to actually reduce military spending. There goes the "peace dividend!"

I'm wondering if you have made sense of a few things.

What is the plan to eradicate power hungry despots across the globe, thereby ending further need of Forceful Defense?

What is the benefit of taking Nuclear Power Plant Operators (which college gradjitates are not qualified for), Avionics Technicians (after training equivalent to more than 5 years of college), aircraft pilots, remote operators, computer programmers, medics/corpsmen - or illiterate Obama's corpse-men - or heavy equipment Construction Engineers/SeaBees, and retrain them to become Ummm, highly trained hmmmm carpenters? Or janitors?

How will the peaceniks be convinced that continued Defense Spending devoid of military operations would be a good idea?

How will Budget Hawks be convinced that excessive government spending on non-Defense functions is a warranted idea?

What is the purpose of converting the DoD from the only cost-beneficial entity of the Federal Government (used to be 2nd behind NASA, but Bobo got rid of that) into one of the worst, like the rest of the welfare programs? (NASA had $1.21 return per $1 spent, DoD had $1.06 return, and welfare scams like this returned about $0.33 return per $1 spent).

Is the only percieved goal of this idea to replace private sector jobs/work with wasteful public sector work and thus "growing the Economy with Big Government Spending" again?

What is the benefit of trading all battlefields from outside North America in exchange for locations inside USA chosen by the terrorist or despot Aggressor? Why turn New York, LA, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Dallas into Fallujah, Mosul?

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 2:41 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


"What is the plan to eradicate power hungry despots across the globe, thereby ending further need of Forceful Defense?" There's no mention in the Constitution of having the military engage in wars overseas (especially not being the aggressor in a war of choice), only for "common (states) defense".

"What is the benefit of taking Nuclear Power Plant Operators (which college gradjitates are not qualified for), Avionics Technicians (after training equivalent to more than 5 years of college), medics/corpsmen - or illiterate Obama's corpse-men - or heavy equipment Construction Engineers/SeaBees, and retrain them to become Ummm, highly trained hmmmm carpenters?"
Quote:

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/military/military-careers.htm
Enlisted personnel make up about 82 percent of the Armed Forces and carry out military operations.
Administrative 51,283
Combat Specialty 151,501
Construction 30,322
Electronic and Electrical Equipment Repair 129,209
Engineering, Science, and Technical 161,571
Healthcare 68,365
Human Resource Development 29,574
Machine Operator and Production 23,293
Media and Public Affairs 19,371
Protective Service 76,567
Support Service 26,783
Transportation and Material Handling 142,198
Vehicle and Machinery Mechanic 160,690
Non-occupation or unspecified coded personnel 14,559

The remaining 18 percent are officers—military leaders who manage operations and enlisted personnel.
Combat Specialty 35,743
Engineering, Science, and Technical 53,097
Executive, Administrative, and Managerial 29,230
Healthcare 26,967
Human Resource Development 8,449
Media and Public Affairs 1,053
Protective Service 5,611
Support Service 3,388
Transportation 45,346
Non-occupation or unspecified coded personnel 24,705

Now, as impressive as all of this sounds, the military trains people in an extremely narrow way. You don't learn to "build", you learn to set up specific models of military-supplied prefab units. You don't learn to "operate heavy machinery" you learn to drive one particular type of military vehicle. ... I'll have to get to this later. Family calls ...
Back now. Training and equipping military personnel for non-military duties would give them something they could take into a civilian economy. But that's not the main purpose of this.

"How will the peaceniks be convinced that continued Defense Spending devoid of military operations would be a good idea?" Peaceniks might be more in favor of it if it doesn't involve killing brown people overseas, but returns value to the country.

"How will Budget Hawks be convinced that excessive government spending on non-Defense functions is a warranted idea?" This would still be the military - trained, equipped, and ready to defend the country. But providing benefit while not in combat.

"What is the purpose of converting the DoD from the only cost-beneficial entity of the Federal Government (used to be 2nd behind NASA, but Bobo got rid of that) into one of the worst, like the rest of the welfare programs? (NASA had $1.21 return per $1 spent, DoD had $1.06 return, and welfare scams like this returned about $0.33 return per $1 spent)." I think you need to talk to the budget people in Washington and tell them the trillions spent in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are really benefits, not huge budget deficits.

"Is the only percieved goal of this idea to replace private sector jobs/work with wasteful public sector work and thus "growing the Economy with Big Government Spending" again?" No, the purpose is to get more value from military spending.

"What is the benefit of trading all battlefields from outside North America in exchange for locations inside USA chosen by the terrorist or despot Aggressor? Why turn New York, LA, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Dallas into Fallujah, Mosul?" If we were actually fighting them instead of giving them money and supplies (like we did in Syria) you might have just reitersted Putin's goal.







SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 3:55 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

I added to my post, see above


Oh, I didn't see this until later ...

Quote:

That would be our "peace dividend."
More people employed at civilian work under a military/government structure?

Okay, let me take another run at this. Maybe another THREE runs at this!

***

What is the REAL solution to unemployment? Does it consist of the government running after the corporations, cleaning up after the human wreckage that they leave behind by sweeping up the unemployed, homeless, and poverty-stricken into government jobs and welfare programs? Doing it more "efficiently" by hijacking a wasteful (military) program? Or does it consist of eliminating the REAL source of unemployment, which is the PROFIT MOTIVE which continually puts people out of work? (Corporations as "job creators". HA! "Job destroyers" is more like it!)

If you look at FDR, what did he do? He swept up the broken human refuse of the Gilded Age, "provided" jobs and welfare to the common people crushed under the Great Depression. But what did he REALLY do? Did he REALLY save "the people"? Or did he "really" save capitalism and financialism from impending revolt?

****

IMHO, the "real" solution to unemployment doesn't mean "the government providing" jobs to the unemployed. Instead, "the government" should be changing the laws which incentivize unemployment to begin with.

The REAL solution would be to rewrite the laws of "incorporation" to disallow individual ownership of "the means of production" (a la The Dispossessed) and disallow monetary creation by the banks via "fractional reserve banking". The creation of Federal welfare programs doesn't save The People, it saves capitalism from its own self-destruction. The REAL solution, IMHO, is to create a system which actively destroys concentration of power. It's a kind of "anti-monopoly" system which doesn't apply just to businesses but also to ideas (no trade-able "copyrights" and "patents" which can be transferred to someone besides the original author/inventor) and media (if you have to pay to transmit an idea, it's no longer "free speech", it's advertising). Because POWER CONCENTRATES (it has a kind of gravitational force, in which power begets more power, like mass attracts more mass) there must be a force which actively disperses it. (one of my arguments with libertarians is that "market forces" will solve everything. HAHAHAHA!)

*****

I will go back to the story of washerwomen at the riverbank, seeing babies floating down the river, drowning. One woman cries and wrings her hands. Another woman organizes a village brigade to rescue babies from the river. But a third breaks way to run upstream.

Where are you going? cry the rescue brigade, We need you for the rescue!!

I'm going upstream to find the bastards who are throwing the babies in! is the reply.

Well, we seem to be busy saving [some] babies from the river. Maybe we should catch the bastards who are throwing them in.


*****

"I believe in solving problems, not sharing them" Well, I believe in solving problems, not sharing them. And not creating them, either. If we would STOP CREATING problems, maybe we wouldn't have so many to solve. And maybe "the government" wouldn't have to solve the problems ("coincidentally" accruing even more power to itself) that it, itself, created.

*****

And finally, regarding Ursula Le Giun: While I find The Left Hand of Darkness some of the Earthsea Trilogy and some short stories to be the most readable, The Dispossessed is the most challenging. She attempts to create an entire society based on an entirely different economic structure, and I think her rigorous treatment of this new society reveals some warts that make it unattractive and possibly unworkable (for example the tendency to form hierarchies and bureaucracies even in a strictly egalitarian society). I feel that she has missed some vital ingredients in her thought experiment. I read that she passed way recently, which I find a terrible shame. Scifi has devolved into a mishmash of sword and sorcery; the last real unknown depth to investigate is human society. Very few writers attempt that topic: Azimov, L'Engle, Le Guin, Cherryh, Busby (Young Rissa), and MZ Bradley are the only ones that I know which present real, different options to our current structure.
-------

Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 8:05 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

***

If you look at FDR, what did he do? He swept up the broken human refuse of the Gilded Age, "provided" jobs and welfare to the common people crushed under the Great Depression. But what did he REALLY do? Did he REALLY save "the people"? Or did he "really" save capitalism and financialism from impending revolt?

****

FDR is admired because he was huge improvement over Hoover. The Hoover Institute at Stanford exists to complain bitterly about how FDR almost destroyed capitalism. Signym can look up the ranking of Presidents to see where FDR is placed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the
_United_States

www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/05/americas-presidents-ranked/

Signym’s voting choice, Trump, is ranked low.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 8:31 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

*****

I will go back to the story of washerwomen at the riverbank, seeing babies floating down the river, drowning. One woman cries and wrings her hands. Another woman organizes a village brigade to rescue babies from the river. But a third breaks way to run upstream.

Where are you going? cry the rescue brigade, We need you for the rescue!!

I'm going upstream to find the bastards who are throwing the babies in! is the reply.

Well, we seem to be busy saving [some] babies from the river. Maybe we should catch the bastards who are throwing them in.

*****

Democrats see GOP state and federal legislators who routinely slash taxes on the wealthy, and services for the poor, in defiance of their constituents’ wishes; GOP controlled regulatory agencies that serve as training grounds for the firms they’re meant to police; a GOP majority Supreme Court that’s forever expanding the rights of corporations, and restricting those of organized labor; a GOP controlled criminal-justice system that won’t prosecute bankers for laundering drug money, but will dole out life sentences to small-time crack dealers; a central bank that has the resources to bail out financial firms, but not the homeowners whom they exploit; a Pentagon that can wage multitrillion-dollar wars that exacerbate the very problems they were supposed to solve — and still get rewarded with a higher budget — even as Republican Ben Carson’s Housing Department asks the working poor to pay higher rent for worse accommodations; and, seething beneath all of these defects, disparities in the distribution of private wealth so vast and consequential, the nation’s super-rich have come to enjoy an average life expectancy 15 years longer than its poor.

In these grisly conditions, social democrats see a textbook case of malignant capitalism. When markets are left under-regulated — and workers, unorganized thanks to the GOP’s hatred of Unions — the corporate sector becomes a cancerous growth, expanding until it dominates politics and civil society. An ever-greater share of economic gains concentrates in ever-fewer hands, while the barriers to converting private wealth into public power grow fewer and farther between because of GOP sponsored legislation and GOP Supreme Court Justices' decisions ( 5 Republicans vs 4 Democrats on the Court for Citizens United, for one example www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/citizens-united-v-federal-election
-commission
/ ). Politicians become unresponsive to popular preferences and needs. Voters lose faith in elections — and then, a strongman steps forward to say that he, alone, can fix it.

America’s Version of Capitalism Is Incompatible With Democracy
https://goo.gl/fq1FCS

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 10:01 AM

CAPTAINCRUNCH

... stay crunchy...


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Deliberately lying requires a big social filter. If you just blurt out whatever pops into your head at the moment, it will be very difficult to lie.



Um, no it wouldn't - I keep telling you that's what salesmen do. I don't think you have had any experience with sales people. It's a study, it becomes second nature. This guy trained in the crucible of NYC. He knows the downside to lying is virtually non existent for him. He lied again this morning.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So by your own opinion, Trump is constitutionally incapable of lying consistently. Correct?



Way incorrect. He is a consummate liar. He's even got you snowed. I thought you were smart? How do you miss all of this?

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What you transcribed is a bunch of factually incorrect statements. Whether they were deliberate, inexact, or uninformed is I suppose a matter for discussion.



2 things on that:
1. you're saying he's lying or pretty damn stupid, or a combination of both. That doesn't concern you?
2. I get the argument for incompetence, but when you see the pattern of him always making "false statements" that always make him and his people look better and brighter, then you realize there's an underlying methodology, and it's called lying.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since people constantly accuse Trump of not knowing the details of how the government works or what's in the budget, some of it might be sheer carelessness. It's a point I find useless to argue.



Dodge away.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's not. JSF asked which of Trump's statements were inaccurate, and those were the ones I can say were clearly incorrect. His other statements were mixtures of accuracies, potential accuracies, and inaccuracies, and each one would require debating the three or four points in each statement to determine how accurate each one was. Not a debate I felt like doing, and if I did you would simply say I was posting too many words!



There's no debate necessary - the facts were posted. You choose to not understand and that is your right.

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 10:15 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Deliberately lying requires a big social filter. If you just blurt out whatever pops into your head at the moment, it will be very difficult to lie.



Um, no it wouldn't - I keep telling you that's what salesmen do. I don't think you have had any experience with sales people. It's a study, it becomes second nature. This guy trained in the crucible of NYC. He knows the downside to lying is virtually non existent for him. He lied again this morning.

Trump Falsely Says Times Made Up Source in Report on Korea Summit Meeting
www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-falsely-says-times-made-up-sourc
e-in-report-on-korea-summit-meeting/ar-AAxQtb0?ocid=spartandhp


The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 11:55 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Deliberately lying requires a big social filter. If you just blurt out whatever pops into your head at the moment, it will be very difficult to lie. - SIGNY

Um, no it wouldn't - I keep telling you that's what salesmen do. - CC

Salesmen have YUGE social filters. They don't blurt out whatever pops into their head at the moment ... Hey, you're black! Do you suppose I can sell you a nice Cadillac that you can't afford??? So you either need to credit Trump with more forethought, or give up on the idea of him lying.

Quote:

So by your own opinion, Trump is constitutionally incapable of lying consistently. Correct? - SIGNY

Way incorrect. He is a consummate liar. He's even got you snowed. I thought you were smart? How do you miss all of this? - CC

Well, Obama had YOU snowed, apparently. He said one thing and did the opposite, frequently.

Quote:

What you transcribed is a bunch of factually incorrect statements. Whether they were deliberate, inexact, or uninformed is I suppose a matter for discussion.- SIGNY

2 things on that:
1. you're saying he's lying or pretty damn stupid, or a combination of both. That doesn't concern you?

Well, I AM tired of the drama. But we DO live in the age of reality TV, I guess that's what a lot of people want to see.

Quote:

2. I get the argument for incompetence, but when you see the pattern of him always making "false statements" that always make him and his people look better and brighter, then you realize there's an underlying methodology, and it's called lying. - - CC
Yep, those are the choices. Just like with Obama, GWB, Hillary and Bill, Nixon, Bush, and Reagan!

Quote:

Since people constantly accuse Trump of not knowing the details of how the government works or what's in the budget, some of it might be sheer carelessness. It's a point I find useless to argue. - SIGNY

Dodge away. =CC

Nope. I just got tired of arguing whether GWB "lied" about Iraq or was incredibly stupid.

Quote:

It's not. JSF asked which of Trump's statements were inaccurate, and those were the ones I can say were clearly incorrect. His other statements were mixtures of accuracies, potential accuracies, and inaccuracies, and each one would require debating the three or four points in each statement to determine how accurate each one was. Not a debate I felt like doing, and if I did you would simply say I was posting too many words! - SIGNY

There's no debate necessary - the facts were posted. You choose to not understand and that is your right. - CC

No, I understood the post.

Quote:

"Sadly, I was forced to cancel the summit..."
He wasn't forced.

How do you know? If he had said sadly, I had no other choice but to cancel the summit would that have been more acceptable to you?

Quote:

"Not surprisingly, the GREAT Men & Women of the FBI are starting to speak out against Comey, McCabe and all of the political corruption and poor leadership found within the top ranks of the FBI. Comey was a terrible and corrupt leader who inflicted great pain on the FBI! "

They are? Who? Cites for anything in that statement? 2, 3, 5 lies in that one tweet?

How do you know whether they are or they aren't? I have read stories that FBI agents are quietly asking to be subpoenaed because if they come forward as whistleblowers they're hosed, but if they're subpoenaed they're safe. So possibly a true statement, we just don't know.

Quote:

"Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign.
There was spying ON the Trump campaign. If there was a spy IN the Trump campaign we have yet to find out. This may be like Trump's tweet that they "wiretapped" Trump Tower. Did they physically tap into phone lines? No. But did they collect the electronic communications of people who were in Trump Tower? YES. So, an inexact statement but not entirely incorrect.
Quote:

Large dollars were paid to the Spy
Halpern was paid a million dollars.
Quote:

far beyond normal.
I have no idea what's normal and what isn't. Still, a million dollars DOES seem like a lot.
Quote:

Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!"
If the spook agencies were spying on a candidate and President, concocting dirt and leaking half-truths for political purposes, that WOULD be a YUGE political scandal in American history. Not sure if "the biggest" but certainly worse than Watergate.

See?

Frankly, I don't pay all that much attention what what Trump SAYS. Like with ALL politicians I've learned that it is much more important to look at what they DO.


-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 11:59 AM

JJ


There is only one reason to lie in these threads as some do G, because they are trolling and nothing more. Sig and kiki to name two, are Russian trolls.

Hey guys, stop with the threats and have your lawyers contact me. I'm curious to see if they are Russian. I can hardly wait.


T


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Sunday, May 27, 2018 12:15 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND, your defense of Saint FDR is touching. But Saint FDR was a baby-rescuer, and not terribly interested in getting to the root causes of the booms and crashes which plague capitalism and financialism. Much of the crash was caused by speculation on stocks, fueled by loans made by banks ... loans of money which THE BANKS DIDN'T HAVE. When stock prices crashed, the loans became worthless, the bank coffers were empty, and banks started to topple over one after another. Yanno, kinda like 2008. Instead of disbanding The Fed and doing away with fractional reserve banking, FDR stepped in with government deficit spending to pump up the financial system, and Glass Steagall. Yanno, kind of like 2008, 2009, and beyond.

You read about Thorstein Veblen, right? Maybe you should re-read that chapter.

Quote:

Democrats see GOP state and federal legislators who routinely slash taxes on the wealthy, and services for the poor, in defiance of their constituents’ wishes;
Economists see Democrats eager to ship jobs overseas, just like their GOP brethren.

What we have today isn't "capitalism", because essential features of "capitalism" are competition, a relative equivalence of power between workers and owners, and reliance on selling goods and services. We have "monopolism", we have "financialism" (the "renting of money"), we have politicians (Dems AND GOP) ready and willing to do the monopolies financial and legislative favors, which some would call "fascism". But whatever you call it, it's not capitalism, and FDR helped push it in this direction.

FDR ameliorated the worst effects of capitalism by "helping" people. The help was greatly appreciated, but in the end he didn't really do away with the causes of economic misery, he just made it less miserable.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 3:34 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by captaincrunch:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Deliberately lying requires a big social filter. If you just blurt out whatever pops into your head at the moment, it will be very difficult to lie.

Um, no it wouldn't - I keep telling you that's what salesmen do. I don't think you have had any experience with sales people. It's a study, it becomes second nature. This guy trained in the crucible of NYC. He knows the downside to lying is virtually non existent for him. He lied again this morning.
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So by your own opinion, Trump is constitutionally incapable of lying consistently. Correct?

Way incorrect. He is a consummate liar. He's even got you snowed. I thought you were smart? How do you miss all of this?
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What you transcribed is a bunch of factually incorrect statements. Whether they were deliberate, inexact, or uninformed is I suppose a matter for discussion.

2 things on that:
1. you're saying he's lying or pretty damn stupid, or a combination of both. That doesn't concern you?

The 2 Most Stupid and incompetent Presidents we've had in a long time are Clinton and Obama. And those 2 have no rivals regarding the incessant lies they peddled.
But that doesn't seem to concern you, or other trolls.

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 5:20 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly


Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

The 2 Most Stupid and incompetent Presidents we've had in a long time are Clinton and Obama. And those 2 have no rivals regarding the incessant lies they peddled.
But that doesn't seem to concern you, or other trolls.

China loaned $500 million to an Indonesian theme park that will include a Trump-branded golf course and hotels. The Trump administration could not explain the apparent conflict of interest of the Trump organization benefiting from Trump’s actions as president.

Ivanka Trump’s business recently secured five more valuable trademarks from China (with a sixth given trial approval), allowing her to expand her business there to the tune of millions of dollars in profits. The timing of the approval suspiciously overlaps with President Trump’s own dealings with China.

The new trademarks were approved on May 7, just days before Trump promised on Twitter to help save the Chinese phone company ZTE.

ZTE had previously been banned from buying American technology because it violated U.S. sanctions against Iran and North Korea. On Friday, Trump announced that ZTE would be allowed to continue business after paying a $1.3 billion fine, a deal that both Democrats and Republicans in Congress oppose. In fact, more than 60 House Democrats are now calling for an ethics investigation into Trump’s ties to China.

This isn’t the first time that Ivanka’s business has been approved for Chinese trademarks under suspicious circumstances. Last year, three such trademarks were approved within hours of Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping at Mar-a-Lago. Following that meeting, Trump also reneged on his campaign promise to label China a “currency manipulator” and instead praised the country’s leader.

https://thinkprogress.org/ivanka-zte-china-2e5bc9241439/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 5:28 PM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


Signy

I'm not trying to solve all the world's problems. Or even all of this country's problems. I'm not trying to re-invent the economy, or change the tax structure, or redistribute wealth.

I have one very limited goal in mind: how to provide more benefit to the people of this country keeping everything else the same. This is one proposal.

Now, you may argue very cogently, and in my opinion correctly, that this won't 'solve' the problem. And personally, I don't see profit as potential energy, waiting to be released to boost the economy further. (Though why we need to 'boost' an economy beyond providing for everyone in it is beyond me.) I see profit in today's structure as entropy, energy in an unusable form, lost to the economic universe. Trickle down has never worked.

But to reiterate, solving our economic structure isn't my goal. My goal, which I've stated very plainly, is to provide more value from living in this society to the people in it, without restructuring.

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

I added to my post, see above


Oh, I didn't see this until later ...

Quote:

That would be our "peace dividend."
More people employed at civilian work under a military/government structure?

Okay, let me take another run at this. Maybe another THREE runs at this!

***

What is the REAL solution to unemployment? Does it consist of the government running after the corporations, cleaning up after the human wreckage that they leave behind by sweeping up the unemployed, homeless, and poverty-stricken into government jobs and welfare programs? Doing it more "efficiently" by hijacking a wasteful (military) program? Or does it consist of eliminating the REAL source of unemployment, which is the PROFIT MOTIVE which continually puts people out of work? (Corporations as "job creators". HA! "Job destroyers" is more like it!)

If you look at FDR, what did he do? He swept up the broken human refuse of the Gilded Age, "provided" jobs and welfare to the common people crushed under the Great Depression. But what did he REALLY do? Did he REALLY save "the people"? Or did he "really" save capitalism and financialism from impending revolt?

****

IMHO, the "real" solution to unemployment doesn't mean "the government providing" jobs to the unemployed. Instead, "the government" should be changing the laws which incentivize unemployment to begin with.

The REAL solution would be to rewrite the laws of "incorporation" to disallow individual ownership of "the means of production" (a la The Dispossessed) and disallow monetary creation by the banks via "fractional reserve banking". The creation of Federal welfare programs doesn't save The People, it saves capitalism from its own self-destruction. The REAL solution, IMHO, is to create a system which actively destroys concentration of power. It's a kind of "anti-monopoly" system which doesn't apply just to businesses but also to ideas (no trade-able "copyrights" and "patents" which can be transferred to someone besides the original author/inventor) and media (if you have to pay to transmit an idea, it's no longer "free speech", it's advertising). Because POWER CONCENTRATES (it has a kind of gravitational force, in which power begets more power, like mass attracts more mass) there must be a force which actively disperses it. (one of my arguments with libertarians is that "market forces" will solve everything. HAHAHAHA!)

*****

I will go back to the story of washerwomen at the riverbank, seeing babies floating down the river, drowning. One woman cries and wrings her hands. Another woman organizes a village brigade to rescue babies from the river. But a third breaks way to run upstream.

Where are you going? cry the rescue brigade, We need you for the rescue!!

I'm going upstream to find the bastards who are throwing the babies in! is the reply.

Well, we seem to be busy saving [some] babies from the river. Maybe we should catch the bastards who are throwing them in.


*****

"I believe in solving problems, not sharing them" Well, I believe in solving problems, not sharing them. And not creating them, either. If we would STOP CREATING problems, maybe we wouldn't have so many to solve. And maybe "the government" wouldn't have to solve the problems ("coincidentally" accruing even more power to itself) that it, itself, created.

*****

And finally, regarding Ursula Le Giun: While I find The Left Hand of Darkness some of the Earthsea Trilogy and some short stories to be the most readable, The Dispossessed is the most challenging. She attempts to create an entire society based on an entirely different economic structure, and I think her rigorous treatment of this new society reveals some warts that make it unattractive and possibly unworkable (for example the tendency to form hierarchies and bureaucracies even in a strictly egalitarian society). I feel that she has missed some vital ingredients in her thought experiment. I read that she passed way recently, which I find a terrible shame. Scifi has devolved into a mishmash of sword and sorcery; the last real unknown depth to investigate is human society. Very few writers attempt that topic: Azimov, L'Engle, Le Guin, Cherryh, Busby (Young Rissa), and MZ Bradley are the only ones that I know which present real, different options to our current structure.
-------

Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

As long as you insist that everything is the Republicans'/ Democrats' fault, then you fail to grasp the REAL problem with American politics.

America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876






SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 7:38 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:

The 2 Most Stupid and incompetent Presidents we've had in a long time are Clinton and Obama. And those 2 have no rivals regarding the incessant lies they peddled.
But that doesn't seem to concern you, or other trolls.

China loaned $500 million to an Indonesian blah blah blah.

My statement remains the highpoint of your post.
Your limp attempts of diversion do not induce sensible folk to avoid the simple truth.

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Sunday, May 27, 2018 11:17 PM

JEWELSTAITEFAN


Quote:

Originally posted by 1kiki:
"What is the plan to eradicate power hungry despots across the globe, thereby ending further need of Forceful Defense?" There's no mention in the Constitution of having the military engage in wars overseas (especially not being the aggressor in a war of choice), only for "common (states) defense".

"What is the benefit of taking Nuclear Power Plant Operators (which college gradjitates are not qualified for), Avionics Technicians (after training equivalent to more than 5 years of college), medics/corpsmen - or illiterate Obama's corpse-men - or heavy equipment Construction Engineers/SeaBees, and retrain them to become Ummm, highly trained hmmmm carpenters?"
Quote:

https://www.bls.gov/ooh/military/military-careers.htm
Enlisted personnel make up about 82 percent of the Armed Forces and carry out military operations.
Administrative 51,283
Combat Specialty 151,501
Construction 30,322
Electronic and Electrical Equipment Repair 129,209
Engineering, Science, and Technical 161,571
Healthcare 68,365
Human Resource Development 29,574
Machine Operator and Production 23,293
Media and Public Affairs 19,371
Protective Service 76,567
Support Service 26,783
Transportation and Material Handling 142,198
Vehicle and Machinery Mechanic 160,690
Non-occupation or unspecified coded personnel 14,559

The remaining 18 percent are officers—military leaders who manage operations and enlisted personnel.
Combat Specialty 35,743
Engineering, Science, and Technical 53,097
Executive, Administrative, and Managerial 29,230
Healthcare 26,967
Human Resource Development 8,449
Media and Public Affairs 1,053
Protective Service 5,611
Support Service 3,388
Transportation 45,346
Non-occupation or unspecified coded personnel 24,705

Now, as impressive as all of this sounds, the military trains people in an extremely narrow way. You don't learn to "build", you learn to set up specific models of military-supplied prefab units. You don't learn to "operate heavy machinery" you learn to drive one particular type of military vehicle. ... I'll have to get to this later. Family calls ...
Back now. Training and equipping military personnel for non-military duties would give them something they could take into a civilian economy. But that's not the main purpose of this.

"How will the peaceniks be convinced that continued Defense Spending devoid of military operations would be a good idea?" Peaceniks might be more in favor of it if it doesn't involve killing brown people overseas, but returns value to the country.

"How will Budget Hawks be convinced that excessive government spending on non-Defense functions is a warranted idea?" This would still be the military - trained, equipped, and ready to defend the country. But providing benefit while not in combat.

"What is the purpose of converting the DoD from the only cost-beneficial entity of the Federal Government (used to be 2nd behind NASA, but Bobo got rid of that) into one of the worst, like the rest of the welfare programs? (NASA had $1.21 return per $1 spent, DoD had $1.06 return, and welfare scams like this returned about $0.33 return per $1 spent)." I think you need to talk to the budget people in Washington and tell them the trillions spent in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria are really benefits, not huge budget deficits.

"Is the only percieved goal of this idea to replace private sector jobs/work with wasteful public sector work and thus "growing the Economy with Big Government Spending" again?" No, the purpose is to get more value from military spending.

"What is the benefit of trading all battlefields from outside North America in exchange for locations inside USA chosen by the terrorist or despot Aggressor? Why turn New York, LA, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami, Dallas into Fallujah, Mosul?" If we were actually fighting them instead of giving them money and supplies (like we did in Syria) you might have just reitersted Putin's goal.

SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

OK, I think I understand now.
Sounds like you will be quite irritated tomorrow when America observes Memorial Day. And you must be giddy each year while celebrating 7 December and 11 September.

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Monday, May 28, 2018 1:29 AM

1KIKI

Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.


You mean I'm happy at America's failure to defend its own borders? Not at all. But it looks like we need more border defense, not less.




SECOND is a troll because it constantly misrepresents what people post, fails to address their actual positions, and resorts to personal attacks when its brain isn't working (which is most of the time).

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