The Political Thread - Burlamaqui edition

[Gfted1]

"People" are whining bags of meat whos seeming only purpose is to tear down instead of build up, only capable of generating problems instead of solutions. Weve fostered this for generations and now its coming home to roost. Myself included.

 

Im curious though...for you is there no middle ground between "Western" democracy ----> dictatorship?

[Volourn]

I don't think 'western democracy' gives enough freedom as is. Having money stolen because you choose not to wear a seatbelt is the ultimate nanny law.

[Maedhros]

Not wearing a seatbelt you are a danger to others, if the car crashes. It's as reasonable as smoking bans in public places.

 

I'm ok with some nanny laws, others not. Playing Poker tournaments for cash was illegal in Norway up until recently. Completely ridiculous. Of course most people didn't care about the law and did it anyway, but still dumb.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Thingolfin

[Volourn]

"Not wearing a seatbelt you are a danger to others, if the car crashes."

 

talk about stretching nonsense. Next youa re gonna claim helmet laws exist because if you don't wear a helmet it is dangerous for other people. LMAO

 

Only Nazis are pro nanny laws.

Edited January 16, 2019 by Volourn

[Blarghagh]

I'd be against nanny laws if most people weren't giant children.

[ShadySands]

Wasn't sure whether to put this here, the basketball thread, or maybe even the random news thread.

[Gfted1]

May's government survives no confidence vote.

 

I guess we'll see what happens in tomorrows no confidence vote.

[213374U]

It's always fun to see that people still think that the solution to a fractured society is more authoritarianism. Because of course in these dark times wise men of strong moral fiber are needed to drag the unwashed masses to greatness—kicking and screaming if need be.

 

This time we'll get it right, guys.

[SonicMage117]

Butterfly Effect: If I fake sneeze in America, a child in China will get a hernia.

[Agiel]

 

 

talk about stretching nonsense. Next youa re gonna claim helmet laws exist because if you don't wear a helmet it is dangerous for other people. LMAO

 

 

 

There are other ways in which one's idiocy can affect others. For instance, should one suffer grievous injuries as a result of not wearing a seatbelt or helmet I don't see many people advocating paramedics administering the "Emperor's Peace" on them to save on medical costs instead of nursing them back to health.

[Guard Dog]

My kingdom for a worldwide EMP.

I would miss my XM Radio but otherwise I'd be just fine. Bring it on!

[Gorth]

Another week, another no confidence vote. Do the MP's get paid per no confidence vote or something? Imagine what they could accomplish if they spent as much time parlimenting as they did no confidence voting.

 

I think you guys might just have dodged a bullet in 1776

[SonicMage117]

This is too good not to post

[ktchong]

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is going to Canada for surgery

 

https://www.courier-journal.com/story/news/politics/2019/01/14/rand-paul-neighbor-attack-senator-have-surgery-canada/2568200002/

 

Here were my comments from a couple other sites, but are relevant to the topic:

 

 

The hospital may be private, but it still covers Canadians who use the country's single-payer universal healthcare program. It still receives money and reimbursements from the government, which lowers its overall costs for all treatments. It is not a coincidence that Rand Paul's hernia surgery would costs only $6000 to $8000 at the Canadian "private" hospitals, but the same surgery would cost well over $20,000 in the U.S. Rand Paul is paying the cheaper rate in Canada because that "private" hospital is being indirectly subsidized by Canadian taxpayers in a country that has an overall better healthcare system.

 

Even if America institutes single-payer universal healthcare, we will still have private hospitals - just like the one Rand Paul is going to in Canada. And, like the "private" Canadian hospital Rand Paul is going, the treatment costs will be lowered (even for private hospitals) because Americans won't have to deal with the parasitic health insurance industry. The private insurance industry really does nothing, offers nothing of value, does not innovate, does not advance nor create new medical technologies. It exists solely to make profits as an unnecessary middleman, to increase healthcare costs and find ways to deny treatments for customers to cut costs. The private insurance industry is parasitic in nature.

 

You cannot just say, "hey, it's a private hospital!" and ignore the context in which that hospital exists. It is a private hospital that exists in the environment of the country's single-payer healthcare, and it benefits from that environment - which leads to overall lower costs and better treatments; i.e., it is rated as number one in hernia treatment, and its treatment cost is less than half for the same treatment in the U.S. So ask yourself, why that superior hospital exists in the context and environment of Canada but NOT the U.S.? My conjecture: that private hospital does not have to deal with the middleman industry - i.e., the private insurance industry that artificially inflates costs (like in America) by not actually adding or creating values for customers/patients. When Canada reduces or eliminates the parasitic middlemen, then the healthcare industry can focus on, well, healthcare instead of feeding profits to the parasites.

 

And that reflects the hypocrisy of Rand Paul and libertarians who opposes single-payer universal healthcare but would gladly take advantage of the overall better treatment and lower cost it provides in a foreign country.

 

 

 

It has everything to do with Rand Paul as a congressman who consistently opposes the Canadian-style single-payer universal healthcare and insists America's fully privatized healthcare system is superior to Canada's.

 

He may be going to a "private" hospital in Canada because it offers the best hernia surgery in the world and at a cost cheaper than what U.S. hospitals can offer. However, it is the environment and policies of Canada's single-payer universal healthcare that allows that hospital to exist and thrive - and to charge him only $8,000 when the same treatment would cost over $20,000 in America where medical costs are greatly inflated by the parasitic healthcare insurance and paperwork industry. Now THAT kind of unproductive wasteful bureaucracy, created by an unnecessary middleman in the privatized healthcare, is far worse than any government's bureaucracy. The bureaucracy of the government in Canada has led to an overall better treatment and lower cost for healthcare that even the libertarian Rand Paul cannot resist, while the bureaucracy of the private insurance industry in America has led to worse outcomes - higher costs, substandard treatments - than whatever bureaucracy of the government can produce.

 

Of course, he as a private citizen can do whatever he wants, but it shows his two-faced duplicity and hypocrisy.

 

P.S. BTW, other comments by CANADIANS in here point out: that Canadian hospital is actually not completely "private". It still benefits and receives money from Canada's single-payer healthcare system. So, as always, Rand Paul and libertarians LIED and DECEIVE again.

Edited January 17, 2019 by ktchong

[Guard Dog]

Hmm... I believe Rand Paul is a Republican. I thin you are confusing him for his father. But... y'know... they all look the same right?

[Gfted1]

It's always fun to see that people still think that the solution to a fractured society is more authoritarianism. Because of course in these dark times wise men of strong moral fiber are needed to drag the unwashed masses to greatness—kicking and screaming if need be.

 

This time we'll get it right, guys.

 

 

Moral fiber? Lol Wtf? Id settle for anyone that can "get something accomplished". The problem isn't our individual leaders, its the entire government from the ground up.

 

Also, to you, theres no middle ground between this wild wild west clown show that we employ -----> China shoot you and bill your family the bullet?

[Raithe]

 

But no-ones staring at Germany this time around...

[smjjames]

Hmm... I believe Rand Paul is a Republican. I thin you are confusing him for his father. But... y'know... they all look the same right?

 

Well, RINO anyway, we all know he's really libertarian. I'd have laughed if it was any other Republican, it just happened to be Rand Paul.

 

 

 

But no-ones staring at Germany this time around...

 

I don't think they were staring at Germany that time either? Other than the fact that WWI would have just recently ended.

[213374U]

Moral fiber? Lol Wtf? Id settle for anyone that can "get something accomplished".

Well, then. I hear Los Zetas are pretty good at getting stuff done, if you don't much care about morals. Also, they are fairly upfront regarding what they are about, unlike the US government. Great track record dealing with complainers, too.

[Gfted1]

Oh boy, just phoning it in now? Say la V.

[Malcador]

Moral fiber? Lol Wtf? Id settle for anyone that can "get something accomplished". The problem isn't our individual leaders, its the entire government from the ground up.

 

Also, to you, theres no middle ground between this wild wild west

 

clown show that we employ -----> China shoot you and bill your family the bullet?

Well, if you're going to make a change to the system, you have to design it so that the worst that can happen isn't bad.  Not everyone is going to be a philosopher king, after all.

 

Then again

 

 

 

JC: The separation of powers acknowledges the petty ambitions of individuals; that's its strength.

Bartender: A system organized around the weakest qualities of individuals will produce these same qualities in its leaders.

JC: Perhaps certain qualities are an inseparable part of human nature.

Bartender: The mark of the educated man is the suppression of these qualities in favor of better ones. The same is true of civilization.

Edited January 17, 2019 by Malcador

[Gfted1]

Heh, I had to Google that exchange.

[Raithe]

A conservative challenged liberal Facebook friends to “make a case, not based on emotion” against Trump’s wall. Conservative buddies flooded his post with snide... remarks about how this would be impossible for “deluded libs.”

 

“Okay, I’ll play,” I responded. And in order to avoid being accused of bias, I explained that I would use only conservative sources to prove my point. My primary source was a policy paper by the Cato Institute, a conservative, rightwing think tank, along with other conservative voices (listed at the end of the piece). Here’s why I’m against the wall, I wrote:

 

1. Walls don’t work. Illegal immigrants have tunneled underneath and/or erected ramps up and down walls to simply drive over them. People find a way. When East Germany erected its wall, it created a military zone, staffed by booted, machine-gun carrying guards ready to shoot to kill. Yet thousands managed to make it to West Germany anyway. More to the point, do we really want to model ourselves after communist East Germany?

 

2. Most illegal immigrants are “overstayers.” They come to the US legally — for vacations, business, to study, etc. — and then STAY past their visas. By 2012, overstayers accounted for 58% (THE MAJORITY!) of all unauthorized immigrants. A wall is meaningless here!

 

3. Walls have little impact on drugs being brought in to the US. According to the DEA, almost all drugs come in through legal points of entry, hidden in secret containers and/or among legit goods in tractor-trailers. A wall will have little to no impact on the influx of drugs into our country.

 

4. It’s environmentally impractical. Walls have a hard time making it through extreme weather. For example, in 2011, a flood in Arizona washed away 40 feet of STEEL fencing. Torrential rains and raging waters do serious damage. Also, conservative sources generally do not address the environmental harm that walls create, but there is plenty of documentation available that show its potential for irreparable damage to both plant and animal life.

 

5. A wall would forces the U.S. government to take land from private citizens in eminent domain battles. Private citizens own much of the land slated for the wall. The costs of the government snatching private land — and the legal battles that would ensue — are incalculable.

 

6. Border patrol agents don’t like concrete or steel walls because they block surveillance capabilities. In other words, they can’t mobilize correctly to meet challenges. So in many ways, a wall makes their job more difficult.

 

7. Border patrol agents say, “Walls are meaningless without agents and technology to back them up.” Are we prepared to pour countless billions annually — after the wall is built — to create a nearly 2,000 mile, militarized 24-hour surveillance border operation? Because according to patrol agents, that’s the only way a wall would work. Again, are we really, going to use East Germany, a brutal communist state, as our model here?

 

8. Where walls have been built, there was “no discernable impact on the influx of unauthorized aliens.” In other words, they came in elsewhere, primarily where natural barriers such as water or mountainous regions precluded a wall.

 

9. An unintended consequence is that a wall blocks farmworkers from EXITING when their invaluable seasonal work is done. Farmers are against the wall because it makes getting cheap seasonal labor almost impossible as few American citizens want or can even do those jobs. And if seasonal worker do get in, a wall makes it harder for them to leave! A wall traps migrant farm laborers in our country.

 

10. Trump’s $5 billion is a laughable drop in the bucket for what would ACTUALLY be needed. For example, according to the Cato Institute: An estimate for a border wall area that only covered 700 miles was originally 1.2 billion. How much did it REALLY cost? SEVEN BILLION. And that’s only for 700 miles. Whatever we think it’s going to cost, experience shows us we have to multiply it by more than 500%.

 

11. According to MIT engineers, the wall would cost $31.2 billion. Homeland Security estimates it at $22 billion. Given the pattern of spending mentioned in number 10 (plus Murphy’s Law), that means we’re really talking about pouring endless billions into something that doesn’t even work. And, of course, we taxpayers will be footing the bill, not Mexico. Given all the drawbacks, is that REALLY the best use of our taxes?

 

As the conservatives of the Cato Institute put it, “President Trump’s wall would be a mammoth expenditure that would have little impact on illegal immigration.” (Emphasis mine) Also it would create many “direct harms:” “the spending, the taxes, the eminent domain abuse, and the decrease in immigrant’s freedoms of movement.”

And, we must add, since conservative sources do not — that the environmental harms are likely to be severe.

In other words, the facts show that walls don’t work and they create even bigger, more expensive problems.

So what happened after I posted this conservative-sourced, fact-based list of why the wall is a bad idea?

 

Silence.

 

I waited for someone to respond, to engage with me. Where were the angry defenses or rebuttals? But when I searched for the post after a few days, I couldn’t find it.

My FB friend had deleted it. You could say, like Trump with the government, he shut me down rather than deal with the facts.

The ugly genius of Trump is his ability to manipulate deep, primal emotions — namely fear and hate. He, along with Fox News, have convinced his base that they are in “extreme danger” from immigrants and only a wall will make them “safe.”

 

Unfortunately, the need to “feel” safe is much stronger than the will to grapple with a complex, multi-faceted problem.

And so, here we are, paralyzed by shutdowns at every turn.

 

Conservative Sources Outlining the Uselessness of Trump’s Wall:

The Cato Institute: https://www.cato.org/publicat…/commentary/why-wall-wont-work

Former Reagan staffer and Tea-Party liaison: https://www.usnews.com/…/the-conservative-case-against-a-bo…

Chicago Tribune (conservative paper): https://www.chicagotribune.com/…/ct-perspec-chapman-trump-w…

The National Review (conservative magazine): https://www.nationalreview.com/…/donald-trump-border-wall-…/

Nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute (MPI) think tank: https://www.migrationpolicy.org/…/borders-and-walls-do-barr…

Edited January 17, 2019 by Raithe

[Malcador]

Heh, I had to Google that exchange.

Truly the pinnacle of voice acting

[Malcador]

https://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/russian-tv-airs-doc-claiming-nazi-loving-ukrainians-are-running-canada-s-government-1.4979924

 

Canada's caught in a rhetorical crossfire in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. One of the Kremlin's most prominent propagandists has aired a segment with the incredible claiming that Nazi-loving Ukrainians are running Canada's government and shaping anti-Russian policies

Volo was on to something...