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Bat Guano

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Posts posted by Bat Guano

  1. On 6/6/2022 at 11:13 AM, chainsaw said:

    My philosophy is pretty simple: socialism for needs, capitalism for wants

    You need: shelter, rest, food, water, medicine and medical supplies, healthcare, emergency relief, basic education, job training, transportation, a defense force to repel hostile invasions (see Ukraine), and caregiving (kids, olds, infirm). Maybe other things too, but you get the idea.

    You want: a vacation house on the beach, the best meals, the longest and fanciest vacations, boob jobs and facelifts for the mistress, a degree in gender studies and underwater basket weaving, a BMW, a PS5 in every room....the list goes on.

    Call it "socialism" but I think all the needs should be taken care of with the mutual wealth and efforts of the population. Those basics plus a universal basic income. We have more than enough to do this, already, and there's no moral justification for withholding it. There's the argument that nobody will want to work, but if "free to play" video games are any indication, most people are going to want more than the default options. People want to work, but they don't want to be disrespected or exploited. If workers always have the option to quit (not just in theory but in fact) you will see morale and productivity go way up.

     

     

    This reminds me of several conversations I had in Sweden on a trip there a few years ago. They don't have socialism; everybody took pains to clarify that their system is one of universal benefits, meaning everybody gets the same benefits from the government, paid for by a progressive tax system, as opposed to a to-each-according-to-his-needs, as in socialism. And capitalism is flourishing. The example one person gave is that everybody can afford a decent, basic pair of shoes. If you want better shoes, you can work and save until you can afford them. But the point isn't about the better shoes or car or whatever; it's that nobody goes without the basics of a decent life. Even the poor have dignity and self-respect. And there is still an incentive to work; almost everybody does, but they are not slaves to their jobs, meaning they don't live in fear that their children will starve if they get fired.

    This has all kinds of benefits. Much lower economic inequality than the US, for starters, which takes out a lot of the resentment that politicians play on. Greater entrepreneurialism, because people with an idea for a business feel freer to quit their jobs and pursue their dream (and this is actually borne out in the statistics; Sweden has more startups than the US). And there's the thing that certain quarters over here scoff at, but may be the most important one of all: happiness. People are actually happy when they have a sense of dignity and agency over their own lives. Who would have guessed?

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  2. 2 hours ago, wildcat09 said:

    Cornyn's tweet is one of the strangest things I think I've ever seen. It's not remotely clear who the intended audience is or what meaning they're supposed to take from his tweet. 

    Seems to me the intended audience is the NRA and the takeaway is, "See, we really didn't do anything of substance so please don't primary me!"

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  3. I've done it. Sometimes I DVR Tucker while watching something else and watch a few minutes of it later. It's rage-inducing; the lies are so transparent that it's hard to believe anybody falls for them, but you know they do, hook, line and sinker. I can usually only make it through a few minutes of the opening monologue; never actually watched the whole show.

  4. On 5/27/2022 at 3:31 PM, henrygandorf said:

    that's a question only the politicians can answer.  they govern like they have a far right mandate, but they don't.

    biden won harris county by double digits.  trump only won texas by 600,000 votes.  for perspective, biden won california by 7mm votes.

    Texas politicians are unresponsive to their constituents. Cool story bro: I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn and there was a protest down the street from his house. Bunch of local residents speechifying and holding signs. A couple of reporters were there, and the city council member for the district showed up. What were they protesting? The city was proposing to reclassify three parking spaces.

    I couldn't imagine a politician in most cities in Texas responding to a protest over such a hyperlocal issue; and, as a result, I couldn't imagine a protest in any city in Texas over such a 'small' issue - because they know it would be futile. Why waste your time? It's only three parking spaces, and your making noise ain't gonna change shit anyway.

    I don't know what became of the parking spaces, but at least the residents made their voices heard. Democracy in action. Doesn't exist here, in any practical sense; the pols know they can get away with ignoring certain segments of their constituency, in fact mocking them on social media.

     

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  5. 31 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    Yes.  So your issue is not that we tax the same or more than we did in 1950, but how the burden is now distributed?  That's not really what was being said here.  What was being said is that Americans don't pay as much taxes as they did in the good old days, so that's why we cannot afford our infrastructure.  That is not true at all (and especially when you factor in state and local).  We are as a group paying as much as we ever had, even in the good old days when we built all this shit that now needs fixing.

     

    24 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    And the overall tax burden on the top 1 percent has increased in the last 35 years, even as marginal rates have dropped.  It has gone from 25% to 35%.  What has happened is that half of taxpayers pay no federal income tax these days (and many get credits).  So the federal income tax burden falls entirely on the top 50%.

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    Don't you get a bit of cognitive dissonance from the two graphs - the one you responded to and the one you presented? How can the effective rate of the 1 percent and above have fallen, and yet their share of the tax burden goes up? It's because of the old dodge by the right-wingers of conflating all taxes into Federal income taxes. Not the same thing, as you note - state and local, property and sales tax, all that adds up. Sales taxes in particular have risen over the time periods shown, and they are very regressive. Add to that that the delta between the 1 and even more so the .1 percent, and everybody else, has grown exponentially, which means that while their share of the federal income tax may have gone up, it's still way down from where it would have been if the top rates had stayed where they were in the 1950s. And federal dollars are where, by and large, infrastructure spending comes from. Sure, spending on SS and medicare has gone up, and that is paid for mostly by the middle class and below because of the income caps, and is a separate issue because they have their own dedicated revenue streams. So conflating all taxes with Federal income taxes is misleading, and, to get back to the discussion, federal dollars available for infrastructure spending have been declining. And yes, it's because of tax policy, though it's not quite as simple as "rich people pay most of the taxes." 

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  6. 10 minutes ago, Johnny Sack said:

    You see that bottom line?  That is the average effective tax rate.  It has not changed.

    So the effective rate fell for the top 1 percent and above, according to that graph. Which means it had to have gone up for everybody else. Correct?

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  7. You fuckers have been seeded. Where is workswithseed now, I ask you? He got you arguing among yourselves about a stupid topic and now he's nowhere to be found. Mission accomplished. You always take the bait, don't you?

    The original topic is more interesting. 

    Carville is a political pro, which means in essence he's a marketing guy. He cares less about the principles he's selling than selling them and winning races, and he's damn good at it. He can read the room.

    There was actually a time when I seriously considered voting for Trump. It was early on, a week or two after he came down the escalator; he was talking about how he'd been making donations to politicians for decades, and always getting something out of it. He promised to put an end to it. That appealed to me, deep in my gut. This was before I realized that he doesn't utter a single sentence fragment without at least three or four lies in it.

    Of course it didn't take long to figure out he was lying about that, but soon after that his 'promise' evolved into the 'drain the swamp' bullshit. Trump never actually came up with that; it was a line put in one of his speeches by someone, he tried it out at a rally, and it got a good response, so he kept it in. Same as the 'build the wall' stuff; that was just another throwaway line that caught fire at a rally. Trump is a moron, but he knows how to sell shit; stuff that is popular stays in, whether he agrees with it or even knows what the hell he is saying.

    Carville works the same way, without the lying; he doesn't have to lie, because the policies his chosen party advocate for are inherently popular, but he knows what gets people fired up. That's all he's really saying; it's pure messaging and marketing. Push the 15/hour wage, the right to vote, and all the other popular stuff. Make snappy slogans and sell those ideas; it's easy because people already like them. You don't have to ignore the stuff that is easily caricatured by the other side, but just keep pushing the popular stuff. It's not fucking rocket surgery.

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  8. On 4/26/2021 at 8:55 PM, DigglerontheHoof said:

    It's dotard and it ain't even close.  Since I didn't see any fantasy parameters in the OP.  I'd make it where I'm at least 10 years older than him, and get his fat, orange ass to the mat and beat him until he admitted he LOST over and over and over again.  And after he said it a dozen times, I'd beat him until he was unconscious, throw water piss on him, wake him up and make him tell me he lost over and over again.  And then I'd beat him unconscious again. 

    The End. 

    This is very good. Just one small change to make it more better. It's the little things....

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  9. 17 hours ago, henrygandorf said:

    all kidding aside, i hope tucker makes a serious bid for the republican presidential nomination.

    the more clowns come forward, the more they look like a circus.

    Not so sure about this. I remember thinking along these lines 6 years ago when a clownish fake billionaire game show host threw a red MAGA trucker hat in the ring. What's the worst that can happen, I thought. He has no chance of winning, I thought. It'll be entertaining as hell, I thought....

  10. On 4/20/2021 at 10:58 PM, Satchel said:

    Fucker Carlson is a troll.

    You know... I thought that for a long time. He's too smart to actually believe the shit he's saying, I thought; he's just cashing in on the rubes. But lately I'm starting to think he really believes his schtick. Maybe I overestimated his intelligence.

  11. At the risk of derailing this productive discussion, I'll take a crack at answering the OP's original question. With a real answer.

     

    How do we gain tolerance for views we disagree with? More exposure to those ideas. Here's an exercise that might help: for every opinion piece you read that you agree with, seek out one on the other side - preferably an intelligent one, not a crazy off-the-rails purely partisan hack job. Read it. And I mean REALLY read it, with an open mind, trying to suss out the facts of the issue, understand what the author is really trying to say. In particular, don't automatically take a kneejerk critical stance to the one that is on the opposite side of the one you agree with; read it with the same open-mindedness that you read the first one with. 

    See if it changes your mind. If not, that's fine; but do the same thing again. Read both sides. Do it every day for a month; seriously, it won't hurt you. You might learn something; at the very least, it should create some tolerance for the other side in your own mind. Isn't that what this thread is asking?

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  12. On 11/13/2020 at 5:50 PM, Huckleberry said:

    Sorry, guv'nah, tolerance of morons and years of comforting them by telling them their opinions matter is how we got to where we are. Idiots should realize they're idiots and shrink back into the shadows, ashamed of their stupidity.

    As satisfying as this would be, I worry that it's not going to work. Stupid people don't realize they're stupid; in fact they're quite resistant to the idea. 

    And of course they blame the 'elites' for constantly telling them they're stupid and racist and and lazy and making them feel bad. And Fox News and the other even worse outlets tell them they're smart and the best part of the country, and that the weak, parasitic elites are looking down on them and giving their jobs to the brown people, and someone like Trump comes along and ... you know the rest. 

    So it's essential to point out their stupidity, but it's counterproductive at the same time. We find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think this is it.

  13. 7 minutes ago, DanTheHorn said:

    Are you saying Trump will be announcing his run for 2024 at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania during Biden's inauguration speech. He would not sink to something that low would he?

    Is that a real question? He's gone lower in the past. A lot lower. 

  14. 54 minutes ago, Brisketexan said:

    Bottom line, if GOP officials, without actually winning a court battle involving proof of fraud, simply conclude that they will not abide by the votes of the people in those states, and appoint electors to vote in contravention of those votes.....

    .....we can and should see large-scale violence.  It would be a complete refutation of the rule of law and of allowing elections and the votes of the people to determine outcomes.  We will become just another failed state governed by the "ruling party" simply because it happens to be the "ruling party" and refuses to cede power.  That sort of thing is the font of violent revolution, and with good reason

    Some election lawyer type on MSNBC last night said the Trump strategy wouldn't work. Even if the states don't certify the election results, the real electors - the ones who would have been appointed based on the results - can still meet and send their slate of electors to Congress for approval; apparently they don't need no stinkin' certification. Then if the legislature sends their slate of Trump electors, the Congress can simply choose which electors they're going to go with. House will certainly pick the real electors, and he was sure the Senate had enough R quislings traitors realists to accept the real ones too, based on the public statements by more than 4 of them.

    He seemed authoritative; I hope he's right.

  15. 2 hours ago, Chooky said:

    Emo Donny is now retweeting any account who says they are mad at Fox and are moving to Newsmax and OANN.

    But then he retweets Hannity segments in the next hour and then Greg Gutfeld and Dobbs. He even sucks at flailing in agony and despair. 

    He's just back there grumbling and watching TV and releasing waves of KFC flatulence until people's eyes start to itch. 

    At this point it's just promotion for Trump TV. He's going to hire Hannity and Dobbs and Tucker Carlson from Fox, and maybe whoever Greg Gutfeld is when he starts the bestest TV network evarr! In the meantime he's promoting Fox's competition to sink their ratings, so he gets a better price for their talents' contracts.

     

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  16. 15 hours ago, Satchel said:

    Some may believe Trump’s attempt to bribe the Ukrainian president was purely political but when one considers what he was willing to do in order to get a talking point to use against Biden, he meets the definition of evil. He’s also cravenly cruel, blur he’s evil as well.

    I think he's a true sociopath - completely amoral, willing to do whatever he thinks he can get away with to benefit himself. These people have learned to pretend they have morals, by watching other people and modeling their behavior, but it's just an act; they don't understand why people would willingly give up a personal advantage for some crazy reason like, it's the right thing to do, or because they don't want to hurt other people. This is distinct from someone who is evil, who actively wants to hurt people, but the biggest difference is that the amoral sociopath is better able to hide his motives, because he's done it all his life and refined it to a fine art. Trump has been conning people his whole life, literally, and he's pretty good at it; that's why so many people still fall for his act. So in that respect he's actually more dangerous than someone who is actively evil, who is easier to spot.

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  17. When he came down the escalator I thought, well, this clown will be good for a few laughs.

    When he won the R nomination I thought, well, good luck with that; no sensible person will vote for this clown.

    When I first heard the words "President Trump," I thought I was taking crazy pills; might as well say President Bozo. 

    Then he turned out to be less Bozo and more John Wayne Gacy.

    As with others, I'm mostly surprised by all the enablers. Seems like at first they went along with him because they were afraid he'd say mean things about them on Twitter, and now it's the same but with some other lagniappes in the form of keeping their seats and SC justices. Without them he'd still be relatively harmless Bozo.

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  18. 2 hours ago, DonkeyCigars said:

    I'll join you, and everyone else, in the outrage and be on the front row of calling for his head if the clock hits double zero and he's still in the office refusing to leave. U

    I don't believe you. 

    You sound like a pretty typical Trump voter; I may be wrong about that, but you fit the stereotype. And the typical Trump voter goes along with every escalation in Trump's drive toward autocracy and supports it, no matter what they said earlier.

    Remember the impeachment? Seems like a long time ago now, but it was just earlier this year. Lots of Rs in the Senate said at the outset that the charges looked kind of bad, but as long as there was no quid pro quo, i.e. that Trump wasn't making the military aid contingent on Ukraine digging up/manufacturing dirt on Biden, it was probably OK. If there was a quid pro quo, that would be grounds for removal from office.

    Well, there was a quid pro quo, proven beyond a reasonable doubt; several Rs even admitted as much, in so many words - the Ds proved their case. And of course they moved the goalposts, forgot about what they'd said before, whatever - but they voted not to remove him from office, bottom line. One exception, not enough to make a difference. Principles? Who needs fucking principles? 

    Trump is planning a large-scale insurrection to overturn the results of the election, the will of the people. That is his strategy; he's planning 'rallies' already (and who knows what the fuck he's planning for the DoD to do, but that certainly bears looking into). His plan is to pressure the legislatures in R-controlled states that didn't vote his way - Pennsylvania and then  Wisconsin - into not certifying the results, and picking the electors for the EC themselves. It's out in the open - that is what he plans to do. 

    And you will go along with it. You'll say he's within his rights to do what he's doing every step of the way, up to and including his refusal to leave on Jan. 20. Maybe that's just, like, my opinion, man, but  I'll be interested at what point you pull the plug on your support. My guess is never. Prove me wrong.

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  19. 54 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

    I can't speak to your father, but I think it is very common for conservatives to lie to themselves and others about what they actually value. A big part of the propaganda we all get when we're children about what makes America great are liberal ideals about freedom and equality. Those ideals have to be sold even to children of conservatives, because how many children are going to believe the fact that Jeff Bezos is the richest man in the history of the world because he denies his employees even bathroom breaks is what makes America great?

    However, what conservatives really believe is there is a proper and natural social order and that any attempt to modify that is wrong. They embrace the lies and the misinformation because it gives them a way to rationalize ignoring the liberal ideals that they've been taught but don't really believe in, in much the same way they embrace their opposition to abortion as a way to rationalize their abandonment of everything Christ teaches in the Bible.

    This doesn't apply to every conservative because people adopt political beliefs for a variety of reasons, but I think it pretty clearly applies to conservatism writ large (and thus, most conservatives). 

    Well put. 

  20. 8 minutes ago, conVINCEd said:

    I tried for several years.  I tried several different approaches.  I’ve quit trying.

    Me too. 

    Apparently I'm the one who doesn't know all the facts. I believe whatever the lying mainstream media shoves down my throat, without bothering to investigate the truth about the climate change hoax, the Russia hoax, the Covid hoax, and on and on. I've lost lifelong friends despite my best efforts to be respectful and polite (which probably aren't very effective; I do tend to lose patience with obvious bullshit). 

    What really gets to them is when they are really confronted with facts that contradict their stated values systems - some of the shit Trump has done is a case in point. They prefer to ignore it, but sometimes you can put it in a way they have to confront it. I did this with Trump's Covid lies, undeniable because Woodward caught them on tape, and that's when a friend since early childhood stopped speaking to me.

    I've still got a bet with him - in 2016 we had bet on whether Trump was going to get rid of the carried-interest loophole like he promised in the campaign. I gave him until the end of the first term or he got removed from office, whichever came first; my buddy is going to have to give $100 to the ACLU after Jan. 20 (he hates the ACLU with a white-hot passion). He's welched on earlier bets, though, so I don't think he'll come through. I'm hoping the fever breaks in the next couple of months, when reality has a chance to settle in, but I really doubt it.

    Loyalty is all with these people. They cherish the lies that support their team over truth and pretty much anything else. I don't think there is any way to reach them.

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