ViperMan

I normally agree with your posts, but I think you miss the mark on this topic. Of course people's experiences affect their view of the world, their outlook, how they approach problems, and how they think. BUT, the left loves to use this as a substitute for their actual argument, which is that people with different skin colors necessarily have different experiences, and are necessarily different from each other. This is unequivocally untrue. Put another way, it's the argument that gets trotted out anytime the left wants to increase participation of group 'X' because of some reason, but they need a reason that sounds legitimate because of course the actual argument is racist. How do I know this? Precisely because of the argument you just made. No one - not one politician, not one general officer, not one pastor, not one poster on an internet forum, and not you, has ever been able to articulate why someone of a certain race has an essential characteristic that makes them fundamentally different from someone of a different race. Because of course, such arguments are inherently and correctly recognized as racist; hence the deferral to substitute arguments. The left makes an argument for including certain races based on characteristics that aren't tied to those races, and then justifies it with an appeal to different 'experiences.' Katie Hobbs' most recent hum and haw session in this Univision interview is exhibit #1. A 'true believer' was completely unable to describe why she thought so highly of her extended Hispanic family (as she should be unable to because of course she's not actually racist, she just plays one to her constituency). So we learned what she loves is "hanging out with them" and "practicing her Español". M'kay. What is glaringly obvious in this interview is that she doesn't believe a word of what she's saying, knows it's bullshit, but has chosen to say it anyway. Our society is endangered when our politicians are so willing to go there. This is not an indictment of Katie Hobbs. It's an indictment of everyone who thinks this way. It's effing poison. It's cowardly. "Yes" to the woman question. "No" to the Hispanic and black question. Women are different from men. Men are different from women. Regardless of the current social discourse. Blacks, Hispanics, and whites are not fundamentally different from each other. I know the left thinks the right is missing "context" in how our society operates. What the left is missing is that there is never a reason (good or bad) to discriminate upon the basis of race. Somehow we once knew this, but we seem determined to forget it and regress. Sigh.

Credit given where due. Good Job.

Yeah, I'm not too sure about that...

We - modern people - necessarily cannot recognize every bit of propaganda in our society. So with that said, understand that you may be falling prey to the actual purpose of propaganda you've unknowingly consumed. As obvious as previous generations' propaganda seems to us, it likely compelled behaviors from people unwittingly. Point: what you may be focused on may be bait to get you to behave exactly as you're beginning to behave. I hope you realize that at least one of propaganda's purposes is meant to demoralize you and get you to not care and finally to disengage. That creates maneuver space for your enemy. I'm not saying you should spend more time on reddit. I'm saying you might consider exactly why it is you feel the way you feel and to not disengage at large. You should speak your mind, vote, and be a beacon to other people who think like you do. Because they do. I hear your about peer pressure. Most students and academia nowadays have succumbed in one way or another to this pressure, and even whole parts of "science" have now fallen to it. The irony of college being about free-thinking in the modern era should instantly collapse when presented with the fact that it has become a nearly complete mono culture, rife with conformity. It's disheartening and demoralizing...until you realize that these things only have as much power over you as you give them. Because America.

I have also had it up to here with USAA. They don't know it yet, but I am switching to **something** come December when their 2.5% cashback card goes TU, but I haven't quite figured out exactly who yet. I'm thinking Fidelity, but does anyone have a recommendation for a good, one-stop-shop, for investments, banking, insurance, etc? I want the ability to project out expenses and financial scenarios in my banking app without it being a pain in the ass. USAA's app has changed so much in the last 5 months that I'm basically done with it.

Let me clarify for you @BashiChuni. That post was getting long and fairly unwieldy and I didn't want the main point to be lost. I guess it was. One of my other points was to say that there is a log jam of BS making its way through our collective system right now under the cover of "nuance" - in quotes. "Nuanced" positions on who is at fault in the Russia/Ukraine war fall squarely into that category. It's become highly fashionable to stake out a "nuanced" position on some topic in the world. "Look at how smart my opinion is!" "Look ma, both sides of the issue!" All I can say is no shit, there are two sides to an issue - people are fighting, duh. Take the Russian war in Ukraine as an example. "Nuance" has gotten some of us thinking that we are in the wrong on this one. "Nuance" gets us talking about the Gulf of Tonkin, COVID response, the Iran contra affair, Iraq '03, the moon landing, that the Earth is flat (which it is), etc, etc. Not all those topics, of course, but the point is that someone will always point to some instance in history where we probably fucked something up (or there's at least the perception that we did) and use it to score points presently. In short, the purpose of "nuance" is to place hand-cuffs on a given entity - in this case us. "As if" is my only response. Always thinking of the world in terms of "nuance" and "shades of gray" are their own memes. The world is more black and white than most of us now-a-days probably think. Putin has absolutely no moral authority or legitimate reason for his adventure in Ukraine - how incompetent America is at home or abroad doesn't change that one iota. Putin started this war. He drew first blood. It's his war to end. Us backing down or being "fearful" of escalating is going to get us more of the same. He needs to be made to fear for his life. IMO, we don't need "nuanced" opinions coming from soldiers who might be called upon to fight a war that sprouts out of this current conflict. Just ask Putin's troops how their moral is doing. Or how their shit feels when it's moving in the wrong direction. Probably a lot worse than "pretty darn good." "NATO expansion became an excuse post facto..." for Russian militarism and autocracy. "The ability of countries to determine their own foreign policy and their alliances, is written into the UN Charter...written into the 1975 Helsinki act...written into the 1990 charter of Paris for a new Europe...written into the 1997 NATO-Russia founding act...Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Moscow signed the UN Charter, it signed the Helsinki final act...signed the NATO-Russia founding act that places no limits on NATO expansion..." etc, etc. I've posted this before, but it contains a density of fact that really should be grasped by anyone wearing a uniform who might have a "nuanced" opinion on who is to blame for this current war. I don't want to come across as saying that people shouldn't have nuanced opinions or that all stones shouldn't be overturned, so don't walk away with that message, either. I'm just saying that when you have very strong opinions, which are not based in fact (because in fact you don't know and will never know), there is another - unspoken - reason why you have that opinion, whether or not you admit it to yourself. I MFing guarantee you that no one getting shelled in Ukraine thinks of this as "nuanced".

I recently listened to a podcast hosted by the Federalist (right wing), and I was startled by the nonchalance John Davidson was able to claim the US sabotaged the pipeline. He did so without evidence (https://www.spreaker.com/user/10614200/populism-keeps-surging-across-the-west). I posted the link for reference, not as a recommendation to listen to it. Don't. I consider(ed?) the Federalist a legitimate source (albeit right wing), but needless to say, I'll be far more suspect of what else I hear come from them going forward. Why I bring it up is because I see the same thing from some on this message board, and from many others on the right side of the isle (which I am part of). I find this highly incongruent, actually. In my view, this default position has less to do with the goodness or badness of the action per se, and much more to do with the fact that it's being carried out by the Biden administration and is therefore necessarily wrong. Get over it. Putin is the one making threats. Not Europe. Not Biden. Not the USA. Not Trump. Pick your side. Your fear of "risking escalation" strengthens Putin's ability to escalate. Want to see him STFU? Next time he makes a nuclear threat, we indicate we will respond in kind on behalf of Ukraine. Fuck it, let's say we did blow it up: Putin threatens to cut off Europe from gas as strategic leverage, and we blow the pipeline up, thereby taking away his ability to leverage acquiescence from European governments, you know, a "burn the fleet" "shoot the hostage" type of logic. Fairly brilliant if you ask me. Maybe we should blow up NS1 in a couple months. Followed by others as time goes on. Maybe Putin will start to realize that oil flows in one direction, but money flows in the other. Yes, the administration is incompetent, has lost all SA, and seems to be doing its best to drive wedges wherever they can. And yeah, on about 99.9% (repeating of course) of issues, they've made objectively bad decisions. Be that as it may, it doesn't necessarily mean everything they do is wrong by default - all things and decisions should be judged according to their own merit, and in the case of the Russian war in Ukraine, we are doing good things, notwithstanding the likely fact that our spectacle of retreat in Afghanistan probably signaled to Putin (et al) that now would be a good time to get started with those war plans - but that's another discussion. That is what I think is a blind spot on the right - the unwillingness to give any credit even in places where it may be due. Lest we forget, this war started before the current admin was in power. No one on this message board knows - or ever will know - exactly what happened or who sabotaged the pipeline. Unless you're someone special, that is a fact. Another fact is that in each of us there is something that wants the world to be like a Tom Clancy movie - with clear cut lines of conspiracy and wrong doing. That fact is really what drives such strong opinions on matters like this, because in all truth not one of us knows. You don't know because you typed some URL in your interweb browser and read someone else's opinion/analysis. For my part, I strongly, strongly discount the possibility we did it, if for no other reason than the risk/reward ratio is way, way too high. The payoff? Very little. The potential cost if it was discovered that we unilaterally destroyed the pipeline? Well, we just achieved one of Putin's major objectives by getting NATO to act against itself. It's so unlikely, it's crazy and conspiratorial to consider it a possibility, given these realities. Insane even. The chances Putin did it? Nearly 100%. It lets him generate propaganda within and outside his country, and if it is ever discovered for certain that he did blow it up, well there are no political consequences because it belonged to him anyway. So there is a far higher payoff to risk ratio on his side as far as I can tell. All in all, I don't really care. We probably didn't do it, but if we did, I'm fine with it because it ultimately takes away leverage Putin thought he had. Putin is wrong. We are right. He should stop. It's that simple.

Your spew is difficult to keep pace with - I'll give you that. In fact, I have a feeling you might be having fun with GPT-3 (https://openai.com/api/)? Aaaaaannnnnnnywaaaayyyyy. The part that is MMT is the idea that deficit spending is 'free'. A Stony Brook economics professor, Stephanie Kelton, wrote a (terrible) book about it called The Deficit Myth, in which she spells out a lot of the theory that you promulgate in this thread. In a sentence, the idea is that the government can spend and spend and spend and all will be ok. The implicit assumption that is taken for granted, is that this only works for so long, and is additionally propped up by the fact that we hold the world's reserve currency. Money is a key factor that helps the economy function, but productivity is the core of the economic system. Elon Musk, though you dismissed him without refuting him, sufficiently understands and stated that money's function is to allow goods and services to be transferred through its medium, and to transfer spending across time and space. You seem to be wrapping yourself up about a relic of the modern financial system - not every dollar in existence has a physical bill. Nor has anyone you're speaking to asserted such. My objection is not about money being printed - when there is productivity, there needs to be money in order to facilitate transaction. The problem becomes when there is no productivity, misdirected productivity, or even negative productivity. The phraseology "printing money" refers specifically to those situations wherein the government has exhausted all sources of revenue, determines they need more, and goes to the federal reserve for a "loan." That, by definition, is spending without productivity, and is thus inflationary. It creates demand where there was no supply (i.e. no supply of previous labor). Private banks are different for a number of important reasons. 1. They cannot initiate unlimited loans. 2. They cannot (do not) provide a loans without collateral. 3. Private banks can become insolvent and go bankrupt. The Fed is precisely to opposite of each of those factors. Home mortgages are not unproductive. Your mortgage (if you have one) provides you "housing services" each and every month - ultimately providing you housing for an indeterminate amount of time if you succeed in paying it all the way off. Look up imputed income. You'll gain an understanding about just how productive a mortgage can be. Lastly, I think people do consider that inflation. Who doesn't think the stock market and housing are at all time highs because there's a dearth of money rushing around in the system? For real. I have one question for you. What is your purpose?

See your own thread. No need to be cagey. You have clearly advocated for the magical ability to place something onto a balance sheet, conjuring it out of thin air. That is MMT. People who advocate for that framework forget that money is ultimately worthless - it depends on a real economy to function. The actual effect of printing money distorts and damages the real economy. Here, this is simple, clear, and understandable. "Money is a database for resource allocation." Edit to answer: Yes. I agree. Further edit: I'll engage on this topic over at Money and Finance - don't need to digress on this thread.

Rapid, chaos-driven system-level changes always happen. The 20th century alone is replete with them. Rare? Maybe the chances of any given individual living through one is rare, but that is a matter of timing, location, and perspective. The biggest one happening right now is the dissolution of our monetary system. In ordinary times, this would be a huge deal. Right now, we're setting ourselves up (and being set up) for catastrophe.

You're an advocate for MMT. There. That's a basis for an entire system of political and economic organization which is antithetical to America's. It's "free lunch" theory. You project a lot of knowledge about it and do seek to provide others "education" without being able to sufficiently explain it or elucidate your position yourself, without recourse to some other external youtube video of dubious origin/sourcing.

How?

It's pedantic to just come back and say you need to look up what democracy is supposed to be (though you do), but you probably won't so I'll give you two sentences about what ours is here: we have a democratically elected government wherein three coequal branches of government share power. This was done to avoid what you'd like - which is a tyranny of the majority. Our system makes it impossible for 51 people to tell 49 others how to live. Sorry about it, but your misconception of this as anti-democratic is uncompelling. Likewise, appeals to what "polls" show Americans want are lackluster arguments. The only poll that matters is the one that takes place at the ballot box on voting day. Most Americans (including me up until last week) don't even know what Roe v Wade actually established. Spoiler alert, I looked it up, and Roe v Wade did not establish a woman had a right to choose to have an abortion. Roe v Wade held the following: It's amazing what you can learn when you read the actual decisions. In practice, this may be implemented in a manner that allows a woman to tell her physician that she needs an abortion and be granted one, but the case does not establish a "woman's right to choose." It absolutely does no such thing. So polls about subjects Americans have no, or limited, or misinformed levels of understanding can be safely disregarded. And more than that, the court is supposed to call balls and strikes; to keep the legislature and executive branches in check - not to express the will of the people. Seriously, I can't believe this has to even be stated, let alone defended. Read up on what the difference is between due process and substantive due process is. They deal with two esoteric legal concepts. I included the relevant text from Thomas' opinion since you are either haven't read, are misapprehending the case, or intentionally misconstruing it to support your viewpoint. Thomas isn't saying birth control should be made illegal. He's saying the basis upon which that case, and others like it, was decided needs to be re-evaluated. You can disagree about that, but there it is for you in black and white. On Griswold specifically, Connecticut was the only state in the union that had outlawed contraception, so that case really was about bringing an outlier back into line with the "thrust" of the rest of the country. Hence, gasping about how this case is somehow now endangered ignores both the historical context (49 to 1) and the temporal reality that it was decided before Roe (1965). Duh! Finally, the liberal dissent from the opinion is farcical. Out of one corner of their mouth, they lament that the majority in Dobbs reads history "all the way back to the 13th century (the 13th!)," while simultaneously, they ignore the fact that the case which kicked off this whole thing, Roe, in fact discussed Aristotelian philosophy, the Pythagorean school, ancient Jewish tradition, etc...in short, they need to get real. They are completely disingenuous and insincere in their overall approach to this case. Also note their parenthetical exclamation. It reads more like an activist's polemic than it does a serious legal treatise seeking to deal fairly with the law and the majority opinion.

I find your reasoning fair. I just don't think it was the court's purview to unilaterally redefine it. Especially considering that its redefinition quite literally flips its meaning on its head. Again, it's extending benefits to people who were never intended to receive them. Maybe that necessitates revisiting the basis on which those benefits were first enacted. Probably does. Should whites be given access to affirmative action programs designed for blacks? How about able-bodied access for handicapped parking spaces? What about men getting women's sports scholarships? How 'bout social security payments for those who never worked? The point is things have their proper place and domain. Generally agree, I just don't think the government should give you a $ break for whatever relationship you happen to be in. That said, there is a difference between recognizing something, vs officially sanctifying it. Polygamy hasn't been a part of our modern tradition for a long time (unless you're part of some fringe religion).

Who said anything about the bible? Jesus. You guys have a hard time absorbing (or even recognizing) any view that deviates from your own, narrow, predefined narrative about what constitutes "the other sides'" opinion. Islamic, Hindu, European, African, Asian, Japanese, Polynesian, and Indian cultures all conceived as marriage as between a man and woman. You're listening skills are akin to the kid hammering a square peg into the round hole: if it doesn't fit into something I think I heard, pound on it harder. My point is simply that the court had/has no business altering the definition of a bygone human tradition. Nope. Of course they can and do. So no one need disagree, nor should they be denied benefits. The real solution from my perspective is to remove tax benefits from marriage. If kids become involved, then this can be adjudicated with the use of child tax credits or something along those lines. I got nothing against gay people. Thanks.

I hear the "woe is me/us" coming through, but honestly, what are you advocating for in your post? Should we just pay for everyone's school? It's simple logic to see how that would fail, right? I mean we already have an entire generation of people who took out loans, got degrees (went to college), and are now in the workforce (or not) complaining about how they are getting crushed by student loan debt. If the return on investment was positive, there would be no issue paying all those loans back. Trouble is, they ARE having trouble. Doesn't that highlight the folly of that entire idea to you? How is over-spending on college going to fix this problem in the end??? Seriously. I want to know what the answer is. If the US government got back more than what they put in, then I'd be all for it because in the end it'd mean less taxes. Is it not implicit that we (the people) are not getting our $$$ worth??? This is all valid, and I'd be more supportive of "forgiving" (transferring) these types of loans. Though, if we're going to make a broad sweeping accusation of fraud that was committed by the Univ of PHX et al, then I want the attorney general/DOJ involved. I want people arrested, tried, convicted, their assets seized, and finally sentenced to prison for defrauding individuals and the US government. But it seems to me that without this follow through by the DOJ, it really amounts to nothing more than a talking point for advocates of free college.

People are known by their actions, not their thoughts. Your desire to control what is in someone else's head is tyrannical. Yes, it does actually. Being handicapped is an immutable trait - only handicapped people are allowed to park in handicapped spaces. See, there are rules and laws that apply to certain subsets of people based on certain characteristics. Marriage, like it or not, was crafted to support relationships between men and women (i.e. child rearers) for the express purpose of providing economic benefits for those people who had children so their bank accounts wouldn't be broken and their families left destitute if someone happened to die. And to address your statement re the thought police: "some thoughts are actually so fucked that they should not be allowed." Let's just say I rest my case. Your comparison is invalid. To address this, you need to come up with an a priori reason why some people should be enslaved but not others. I don't think you or I or anyone else could ever make that convincing argument. I have provided a reason why marriage was previously defined as such - why society defined it as such - but no such reason has been provided as to why it should be extended to a separate class of relationships for which it was never designed. That's the point. Handicapped laws apply to handicapped people. Marriage laws apply to men and women - or so they did. Having that position isn't necessarily bigoted, though it certainly can be depending, even though you would have us believe it is.

100% this is an oil / natural gas war.

Dude you left off the active clause of @brabus point - which was that people he knows can disagree with something but not be actively working to disabuse anyone of their rights. Lurking behind your post is the thought police. Because you don't believe what I believe, you are an immoral person. I am the only one who gets to determine what is true. Of course we all agree that discriminating against people based on their immutable characteristics is bad. The disagreement in this case is that benefits which society historically conferred (effectively) only on mothers and fathers shouldn't be extended to cover anyone else who decides they want them. It's not even a moral position in my case - it's a legal/financial one.

This conception of other people is not fully "covering." i.e. there are other reasons to oppose gay marriage besides bigotry. But such is nuance, which is not popular these days. The thing about marriage is that it has been around since before time. Marriage between a man and a woman was always a thing, and it was enacted for reasons - to ensure children were cared for by those who made them. This tradition cuts across cultures, societies, epochs, civilizations, etc. It just so happens that in our modern conception of a state, we have elected to legally "codify" marriage, and confer social and economic benefits to those who get married, but that is secondary to the innate fact that it has historically been only understood to be that relationship between a man and a woman. Numerous religious traditions have their reasons for teaching whatever they want to teach about religion. I don't subscribe to any of it. I just think that redefining marriage in order to conform to the "due process" and/or "equal protection" clauses of our constitution was done on dubious grounds and is blinkered to historical tradition. IMO, the correct way to approach it would have been to define something called "civil unionship" and then let that legal umbrella cover everything from "marriage" between straights to "marriage" between gays. Then, let the different churches sort it all out how they best saw fit. All the legal benefits would accrue and people could keep their bigotry where it belonged: within their own backyards. Don't get me wrong: people should generally be allowed to do what they want, but in this case we chose the culture war path and decided to allow everyone to park in the handicapped spot; in effect, nullifying the very reason why it exists in the first place.

Bill Barr has quite a good take on the whole Trump phenomenon and the end of his presidency. I didn't know what a statesmen he was. https://www.hoover.org/research/more-one-damn-thing-bill-barr

That is some level 9 satire, bro. If it's not, well, let's just say everyone is less well off than before all this inflation hit (https://www.axios.com/2022/06/15/what-workers-really-want-raises-that-beat-inflation). People are spending more money because prices are higher and they have to. Wages are not keeping pace with price inflation (https://news.wttw.com/2022/06/08/inflation-overpowers-city-minimum-wage-hike). Also, logic that says "because we're full, it's all good" ignores all the scheduling optimization that goes into creating an airline schedule. Remember, all seven major US airlines have reduced their flying this summer. The reason is immaterial. Delta could fly one line per day, and every single seat would be filled. That has nothing to do with the prevailing economic undercurrent.

Gas has always been more expensive in Europe. European nations are not, and have never been, energy independent - we have been. The US has all the energy we need within our own borders, and we have historically been a net exporter of energy. We purchase from others for good strategic and other economic reasons. ALL of the Trump stimulus was bi-partisan, and ALL of the shut down happened under Trump. COVID was under control when Biden took the reigns. Biden's stimulus was fully partisan and had zero support from the right - it was a democrat giveaway. Here is an economist credibly arguing that inflation is about double what it would be, save for Biden's extra stimulus: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-inflation-economy-what-you-need-to-know/id1570872415?i=1000558019343 Agreed, but our current economic conundrum is not solely due to the COVID crisis. There were other mistakes dating all the way back in 2008 (i.e. not allowing a full crash to happen). Latent effects from that event have still not fully cleared the system, and someday they must, lest we continue hurtling down the economic black hole we're staring into. Banks had (and have) stopped foreclosing on properties that defaulted during the 2008 recession. What is the net effect of this??? Spoiler alert: inflation. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-bubble-era-home-mortgages-are-a-disaster-waiting-to-happen-2019-02-25?mod=article_inline "In 2012, just 2% of all these delinquent borrowers had not paid for more than five years. Two years later that number had skyrocketed to 21%. Why? Mortgage servicers around the country had discontinued foreclosing on millions of delinquent properties. Homeowners got wind of this and realized they could probably stop making payments without any consequences whatsoever. So they did." https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-ghost-of-the-housing-bubble-still-haunts-the-home-mortgage-market-2020-01-15 "By mid-2010, mortgage servicers around the nation had a strategy of supporting housing markets by not placing expensive foreclosed properties on the active market. They had also begun to take the next step of cutting back on foreclosing long-term delinquent properties." "As I have reiterated many times, mortgage servicers have consistently maintained this strategy of not foreclosing on jumbo mortgages. What seems crystal clear is that the vast majority of long-term delinquent jumbo mortgages have not been foreclosed and are still outstanding. Many jumbo borrowers have not paid for years. As a result, the jumbo-mortgage market now is a ticking time bomb."

Could be a good path, depending. No opinion on that. If I wasn't already where I was and I wanted to fly "Air Force", given my personal goals, it may have appealed to me. Yes, the Air Force will shit on you, but, in the end, you'll learn to love it.

Don't take my word for it. It's Harvard macro-economist Greg Mankiw who says that money is a medium of exchange. Also, logic. Logic says it's a medium of exchange. People can become indebted to one another, of course, but the primary function of money is not to become indebted to one another. It's to facilitate transaction. Also, it's cool for the government to run a debt. I didn't say the government needed to run a surplus. I said there are real limits on how much currency can be printed. That's what I said. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salary#First_paid_salary Salaries were first paid as a means of exchange for labor and work - a medium, dating back to perhaps 10,000 BC. "...widely circulating but erroneous belief that banks create money out of nothing..." https://voxeu.org/article/banks-do-not-create-money-out-thin-air Private banks do not get to create money. They can issue loans, but the amount of loans they are able to initiate have real limits. Do you honestly think my local Wells Fargo branch can loan out $50 trillion dollars? Why or why not? How about infinity dollars? Can they loan out infinity dollars? To themselves? It seems like you might be getting wrapped up around technicalities about how money works in our modern day system. It's complicated, sure. M2, etc, are all esoteric concepts to lay people - which is your audience on this message board. Anyway, I have a feeling this thread will be hard to keep on the rails.