The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

yeah this basically needs to stop being the go-to argument for this because A : it's fruitless and drives 0 point home

B : you're really REALLY fighting a loosing battle if we both opt for this strategy


I do feel obliged to mention that in the above response to my mock about the gun-wielding ect..., you completely skipped justifying anti-gay-marriage stance and the anti-abortion you misunderstood as something other I don't care for at all and left unaccounted for as well...

and those two stances you can't play off as being extremism they're literally the platform of the republican party


oh and the "self-serving" ...that part got ignored too...

Your position is doubly-baffling because the image gives no indication of a lack of coverage under the old ACA.

Oh? You didn't read it? It was right there...

It was a single-policy issue that lost the election for democrats, and it had a wide bracket of people it failed to cover but still enforced healthcare they couldn't afford to use, simply to enforce they purchased it, a "money for nothing" situation. "There are pages describing" was citation provided, you can click pages 120-130 for yourself, or better yet, you were there, so just remember it ffs.

If you must have an image, let me find one for you... ah, here's the evidence in image format, enjoy.
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Those are literally not the main platform of the Republican party. Those are authoritarian as hell, where do you THINK I stand on those??? Furthermore, tons of moderates, friends who are conservatives, support the marriage equality and choice on abortion. One of my friends IS gay and has a carry-license and votes conservative. "oh, but he's a self-hater". Those insults are what drove him away from the liberal, which I'm sure he'd vote for if they were willing to compromise with the gun thing, like moderate conservatives are about the gay thing. Y'know?

Those are extremist-christian and alt-right platforms. That's like calling tea-party platforms liberal platforms. Which I come close to doing, but to be fair, Hillary wasn't exactly "moderate" nor trying to cater to the bipartisan crowd. Which is crazy since she literally reads from script whatever makes people happy, but couldn't even be bothered to empty-promise on her already-poor credibility for some collaboration across party lines.

Just to make sure I've given you a clear answer, goodness knows I'll lose my shizz on you if you tried spinning it off as "I shrugged off the question without giving a clear answer", let me say this once and only once, to be put on record, so that it may always be the answer forever more if this is ever asked again, and I am no longer required to have to answer it from this point forward: I fully support marriage equality, women's rights with constructive solutions rather than umbrella claims and no recognition of men's rights violations currently in practice, and m̶i̶n̶o̶r̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶e̶q̶u̶a̶l̶i̶t̶y̶ law enforcement and employment reform since it fixes most or all problems present with the oppressed lower-class of all races.

That's the problem with people providing no sources. It means their claims are completely unsubstantiated.

Pages in this thread aren't exactly without bias, you see. Which is why I was quoting an external source in the first place, because who wants to read ten pages of this thread for a second time

Rubin is a true hero in every sense of the word. There are only a handful of people within the media space right now who are pioneering a new center of true intellectual honesty within political discussion. I think history will remember him very well among the likes of Larry King, Cronkite etc.

When it comes to Rubin, people (like gorbles) who have been conditioned to think in terms of tribes will find it hard to understand what's happening. They won't understand that it's not about teams or even where you are on the left/right political spectrum. Rather that it's about protecting fundamental cornerstone systems of free speech, reason and evidence, and civil discussion as integral to any stable society that wishes to aim towards morality.

Progressivism in general is authoritarian and very much against all these things. It is has taken over the left in the UK, Europe, NA, and even down here in Australia. It is no friend of humanity.

"I am truly the enlightened one, all other people are tribal, get it it's funny because tribal means backwards".

Nice showcase of your inherent biases there

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-24370967

This is trying to be fair with it, mind you, but the bottom of the page, the top two paragraphs are speculative, and the bottom two paragraphs are "problems". No solution was proposed to them, except the fines not encouraging enrollment being to "increase the fines".

Those are voters too. If you want to know "how many people were snubbed by the ACA", well, it includes people covered under it, because it's "money for nothing", some people paid the extortion money and it adds to "coverage" numbers. Thus, the only proper numbers one can use to show "how many people were snubbed", is this way...

The problem there is twofold. Not only are the problems not a reason to throw out the entire system (certainly, they don't damn it as a horrendous system), but you can't use support for the repealing of the Act to infer peoples' motives for doing so.

Just like conservatives manage to criticise widespread support of immigration (as per your bar chart there) despite a lot of voter-level support for it (and yes, conservative Democrats exist. It's why I use conservative with the lowercase 'c'). A statistic showing a number of people not liking something doesn't give you the ability to decide why they didn't like it.

Also, allowing states to decide their own expansions of Medicaid was, in my opinion, a terrible idea. There's an amusing tweet going around where a Texas doctor (or similar) was criticising the lack of expansion of Medicaid in Texas when the Republican seat deliberately did not expand it. There's a lot of misinformation around this, you see, not to mention GOP hypocrisy (in blaming Obama despite Republican state-level governance blocking Medicaid expansion).

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EDIT

Unrelated, but just found another large hole to poke in elodea's belief in my ascribing to a "tribal" state of affairs. He's lumping me in with a group, i.e. a "tribe" in his words (because he equates literally any label, ideological or otherwise, with some kind of tribe-based grouping) for believing in some kind of tribal divide of ideologies.

The hypocrisy continues unabated

Great job, Gorbles. Now, you just have to convince 10 million or more people that the Affordable Care Act was fixable and was entirely the Republican's fault, and not that it was just failing on it's own because it was doing nothing remotely similar to what modern national healthcare even vaguely looks like in any other country out there, and you can start electing politicians and winning elections again!

At the end of the day, it's theory until you can do it. Theoretically, Bernie and Gary would have been better presidents. Theoretically. Or is that false equivocation because, while neither actually happened, the topic is about your imaginary hypothetical and not mine, nor is it about my hypothetical outcome of your hypothetical situation because it's your hypothetical situation and only you can determine a hypothetical factual outcome? Am I not allowed to make up a hypothetical outcome that differs with your hypothetical outcome, because the hypothetical situation belongs to you? Hmm?

Hypothetically, theoretically, if I had to guess in order to elect someone, then I'd guess we should throw the paper the ACA is written on, directly in the trash can, and start over. Preferably with something that some other country is having positive results with. It's a pretty popular hypothesis, Gorbles, you're a fan of popular hypothesis like global warming, you might want to do some research into it.

Election results, m8. All those blue bars of Obama's previous voters, and all the taller ones, couldn't compete with the gap of opposition to the ACA and NAFTA. Obviously, immigration didn't win the election, ACA and NAFTA did. Especially judging by those bars.

Ask for why they didn't like it, I'm not doing this. No. Just. No. You are going to keep going deeper down the rabbit hole about it. "This graph shows more people didn't like it". "...but you can't prove why they didn't like it". "This article shows opinions on why it's unpopular" "...but you can't prove it's the same people on the graph". "well here's thousands of the same voters, expressing their specific concerns with it". "...but you can't prove it wasn't a unbiased source". It becomes obvious, no proof is satisfactory, even if it was gently patted across your face with a rubbery recoil to it, you wouldn't accept it. You'd say, "I'm probably dreaming. but when I wake up, but this better be a sausage or a rubber hose patting my face and not a schlong". No, Gorbles, it's evidence, evidence you'll pick flaws out on where few if any exist, and this isn't a dream, this is the real life, it's not just fantasy.

Where did I say it was entirely the Republican's fault? I mean, they played a large part in how it turned out, but that's not an argument I was making.

It's kinda hard to have a grown-up discussion when you flip between making sensible posts and large rants filled with font variations, unrelated arguments and immature (pointless) correction of spelling.

I was never debating that people didn't like the ACA. Once again, you've convinced yourself of something I never actually said. There's a large difference between not liking something and actually being able to demonstrate why it was the bad thing you're making it out to be *

* without complaining that you had to pay a bit more money so that other people don't die. Which would be a fascinating moral tangent but you don't seem to like being accused having a different set of morals to other people. So that's a non-starter **

** nevermind that people regularly pay a higher price to ensure better working conditions at the factory-level wrt. procurement of clothes and / or for better treatment of food sources wrt. eating. But apparently when it comes to healthcare it's SOCIALISM!!!111!

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I'd argue at this stage you're not doing very well at being polite, basically. elodea is similarly-bad, but I've kinda given up there.

EDIT

And man, I wish the post editor on these forums made sense

Gorbles, a b**ch might have to pay up to 1/20th their yearly salary in fines or even more in healthcare payments, just to not use healthcare so someone else might. A b**ch might not even need to be in the "middle class" to be in that position. A b**ch might just wish their government would figure out the RIGHT way to do something for a change, like if it were Germany or Canada or something. A b**ch just might.

A lot of people are fearful that socialism will stifle the research and quality end of the healthcare, reasonable arguments comparing US healthcare to countries that outsource their worse health cases to the US. (To Texas, no less)

Basically, it says, either let capitalism do things cheap, competitively, and right, and then volunteerism to provide access to everyone, and DON'T monopolize or restrict the market so you DO get competition to keep things as cheap as can be provided... OR let socialism structure it so the right people are covered. Don't do it half-arse and wind up ficticiously-covering about half the people that need it and charging the class just barely unable to afford it for the fines.

Sadly, the current administration doesn't look like they'll fix a lot of the problems, like FDA restricting competition in the market, or access to the needy. That is very much a problem, both which are problems with the ACA as well. You know what you call a republican with the balls to get control of the FDA without abusing it for it's own gain, and retract it's powers a bit so certain medicine prices stop increasing 1000%? You call them Libertarians.

Now, Gorbles... that's entirely uncalled for. Losing an argument is no reason to go snapping at people and being rude. Show some integrity and some kinsmanship. That's no way to talk to Tatsu, he was trying to support your side the best he can, he can't help it if he's a grammar fascist or a bit ranty and flamboyant. He feels passionately about his stance.

...oh, you were talking to me. This is... hypocritical. Let me provide evidence, since I know that's your fetish, Gorbles...

The hypocrisy continues unabated. Only one of us are above the hypocrisy, the other's taking a cue from Hillary and pretending, so that they can dress their argument up to look good from the spectator benches. As you can see above, it's not a very convincing show of being above hypocrisy in any way.

Dat hypocrisy ain't ever guna git "abated" at dis rate dewd... *mic drop*

I don't understand how you're equating me criticising hypocrisy with you making large confusing walls of text in different colours and sizes. But then, I guess confusion is the point

Like, I have no issue responding to you when you make sensible posts that have a grounding in the topic. But when you go off of a particular deep end to go "Gorbles Gorbles Gorbles Gorbles [lol small text here] Gorbles", you are no longer being sensible or making points relevant to the topic. To that end, given the misdirection of your posts, I'm not even sure the top half of your latest reply is even talking about the former ACA, or the currently-proposed AHCA.

That said, I doubt this will convince you of how your behaviour is off because you made that post intentionally and are sticking to it. Which makes this is a massive waste of time!

You play your game of "gotcha". I'll continue to drop links to criticise the current administration, their screwups, and how it affects American lives.

Oh yes please!

"tribe A in general is a subgroup of part B". Errr yeah...

That "Why I Left the Left" is an odd video. It made me think for a bit, as it manages to phrase arguments in a way that seem reasonable at first, but it actually has some glaring issues. For one it goes actually on about "tribes", specifically the tribe "progressives".
But there are issues with the actual content of the argumentation of it as well.
First it goes on about some things and concepts I really only ever have known from US-discussions. Save spaces? Trigger warnings? Prohibiting words? Identity politics? wtf is that ****? That's the stuff that is mostly crazy and has nothing to do with what I would've defined as progressive. More like batshit crazy. Like feminists who call out a woman for showing too much skin. So why now demand to redefine progressive this way? Because some portion of the people who think they are progressive are misunderstanding what progressive actually is supposed to mean?

Prohibiting people from holding speeches whose content you really won't like is an interesting issue. There is a pretty recent example of this issue: Should Germany allow Erdogan to hold election campaigns on German ground? Erdogan is treating liberal values like **** and is clearly aiming towards basically a dictatorship. Should we support that by letting his people hold speeches here? Or should we prevent it, even though we generally value free speech?
Are we required to host a foreign political power to make propaganda on our grounds? I'd say no.

If Putin were to send speakers to the US to hold pro communism speeches, how would the US react? Honest question, I have no idea...

Then the example in the video that got me thinking for a moment that is the biggest issue I see:
The baker for the gay marriage thing. So it's okay to discriminate people as long as you can put some religious reason behind it. That's nice. So I guess discrimination is fine after all? I thought he tried to make a point about peoples freedoms, but now he is going to the point where he defends the freedom to discriminate people. Which is absurd, as that is basically the freedom to take away freedom from other people.
I can easily make up my own religion to justify anything now. How convenient.

It is at this point that the views proposed in the video lose this disguise and are revealed for what they are: Anarchism. No rules to follow, everybody just do wtf they want. Freedom for everybody! Except for the part where everybody is free to breach the rights of other people as long as they can come up with some bogus "free speech" "religious freedom" explanation. You can't have total personal freedom with no rules like that. If you want to live together in a society you need to follow some rules. Yes those rules will take away the right to refuse to bake a cake from a baker. Or the freedom to go and kill another person. Or steal from them. Or do lots of other bad things we all agree on as bad.

People should be able to say what they think? Yes please. Not be punished for it? Errrm. Well. Legally punished usually not, but socially punished? Yeah sure. If you say or do stuff that makes me think you're an ******* I'll act accordingly and if I happen to be your boss you may lose your job over it, as I do not want to employ assholes.

Discrimination in financial institutions should be(and is, thankfully) illegal, because it allows for groups to cut off services on the basis of "freedom". The baker example might seem innocuous, but I've seen discrimination in real estate sales allow for major breaches in legal discrimination to the point where crimes against the non-majority group were not enforced.

Foreign people, especially Arabs, are bad and shouldn't be allowed in America, unless they're rich.

http://www.cc.com/shows/the-daily-show-with-trevor-noah/third-month-mania

Aside from not noticing that chain of hypocrisy earlier, calling it "flashy text", I agree that favoritism is being used to circumvent federal order. Like most laws, "if you're rich enough, ignore it". Includes drug abuse aka Michael Jackson, rape aka Brock Turner, and murder aka OJ Simpson. That's 1.5 black men btw. Fancy that. Add Hillary, and there's plenty of diversity in the "too rich to even remotely law" class.

"you might actually have a point but please first let me mention minorities and of course Hillary Clinton".

so accurate: