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Post by impulse on Dec 8, 2018 0:36:06 GMT -5
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Post by The Captain on Dec 8, 2018 8:24:22 GMT -5
This is a start. I will respectfully ask the following questions: 1. How much influence, in your estimation, does any POTUS have on the economy? 2. Follow-up: how quickly do you think a POTUS, if he does have influence on the economy, can turn things around? Obama spent most of his presidency undoing the damage from Bush II, which accounts, in part, for the less-than-robust results under him, but are we to believe Obama's actions had nothing to do with the recovery and that it is all because of POTUS Donald J. Trump? The economy is like the Titanic, slow to change course but quick to sink. 3. Who is benefiting from the growth? Young people are still having difficulty finding jobs that pay enough to cover their student loan debt, even with the low unemployment figures, and real wages have been stagnant for years. Is this a case where the rich are getting richer and the masses are falling further behind? Mind you, I'm a fiscal conservative, and up until this year, had voted Republican predominantly for the better part of the past three decades. I'm just disgusted by what the Republican Party has become, especially under POTUS Donald J. Trump, tacking harder to the right and more strongly embracing Randian philosophic tenets instead of making sure that everyone gets taken care of. The POTUS does appoint Federal Reserve governors, steer fiscal and regulatory policy, respond to crises and external shocks, these are directly attributable to him. And the extent to which they are working is reflected in a healthy GDP. Lackluster performance makes for good ammo in any campaign, Trump used it in his and so far, his GDP returns are better than anything immediately prior to 2016. If Trump's policies do lead to a next recession, I'm sure you will be blaming him for it. First off, thanks for the response. You are absolutely correct that the President does all of those things, and while they absolutely have some impact on the overall economic mood of the country (not just the GDP), how quickly do they do so? Again, as was pointed out by another poster, the recovery started under Obama, and that can't be debated. The US economy was in the tank due to the disastrous Bush II years, where he started two wars that he didn't have the money for and the housing bubble burst (and this, as I will fairly point out, was the result of policies and actions taken during Bill Clinton's presidency, so while it happened under Bush's watch, it wasn't his fault necessarily). One thing that I think Trump did do, although not directly through actions, is embolden Wall Street, and businesses in general, to act in ways that may not be necessarily in the best interest of the country. When a candidate who has declared bankruptcy multiple times, brags about not paying taxes (not illegal, mind you, but because he used the tax code to his advantage), and shows a general disregard for common convention is running, people may get the idea that under his watch, things will be a little more lenient for rule breakers and scofflaws. He certainly sets a mood of "anything goes", and while that may be great for goosing the stock market higher and higher, his tariffs and trade war with China are beginning to have an adverse affect, as we've seen this week. So yes, if the trade war with China does cause further damage to the US economy, I certainly will blame him, because one can draw a direct correlation between the two. IRT the bolded, I don't even know where to go with this. That kind of description of Ryan smacks of hard-core right-wing talk radio, but what has he done to the Republican Party that is so distasteful? I have a couple of ideas of where you might be going with that, but rather than put words into your mouth (which certainly isn't fair to you), I'm hoping you can provide an explanation so we can continue the dialogue. Cheers!
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2018 8:35:11 GMT -5
Sorry guys but honestly this thread is an echo chamber for all of you with democratic party beliefs. If anyone says anything outside those beliefs you all dogpile on him or her. It's hard to put your self out there when the other side really has no interest on hearing a different view point.
The first part is neither fair nor true. There's been plenty of good discussion and debate once someone brought something to the table besides flinging poo all over the place. The second part... well, we'll say that's a rather bold perspective, and I will say it's at least as frustrating when folks support the current administration and has no interest in accepting basic objective reality. (I know you are not a fan of the current admin from your other posts). It's a shame you are bowing it, and you are absolutely mistaken that folks here are unwilling to hear an actual rational conservatives viewpoint. Folks have explicitly said so, but I completely understand having to do what you need to do. see it from my pov. It's like being in a room with 10 people and you are the only one with the dissenting opinion. It's exhausting trying to respond to everyone. I have other things I would rather do than this. One on one in real life would be cool. And you may not feel this way but I am betting based on other posts that others really don't care about the other side.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 8, 2018 8:36:20 GMT -5
Geez. Give a guy some space. I am now on vacation so I am signing off for a few days Sorry to hear that.. you posted some good stuff and I was hoping to discuss Thanks but this takes up too much of my time
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 8, 2018 9:35:47 GMT -5
In Quebec we pay nothing at all. People in BC should protest and not let the government get away with it! In the last two years my mother underwent cancer surgery, then chemotherapy, then paliative care in a wonderful pavillion until her death. At the same time, I got three surgeries after a bicycle accident that required a lot of metal pieces being inserted and removed. We did not pay one penny (except the parking at the hospital). There was no waiting list because in each case it was an emergency. That’s how things should be! (Perhaps our prime minister should hear of it... he could then deflect any criticism by saying “well, it’s worse on the other side of the country!”) We may be the last province to have directly billed people, according to income, for the Medical Services Plan. That ended since an NDP and Green Party coalition took power, so most people in B.C. now have no direct connection to paying for MSP health care coverage, it's done by the employer, only the self employed might know what they are paying into the system. I don't know how it works for a Quebeccer (Quebecois), but I did visit a specialist near Laval once years ago and at that time the transportation costs were all mine (this too changed shortly after, though I didn't qualify for reimbursement as it was not retroactive). Our Emergency areas out here are pretty bad, an hour wait is considered quick and there are routinely people in hallways after admission for lack of ward beds. There is a crisis for years where there are not enough doctors and at least a fifth of the population doesn't have and can't get a General Practitioner or family doctor. I hate to suggest it but if things are so much different in Quebec it could be that more is spent on it as it represents a political necessity. Our prime minister has put an oil pipeline he used government fund to buy into, to sell and ship more oil to Asia, ahead of the killer whales. His father gave the west a raised middle finger once, not sure his son would ever do the same though literally. We also used to have fees for clinic visits, so that's another thing they did get rid of here too, but now we're limited to a certain number of doctor and specialist visits in a year which was not the case that I know of before. You can get a voucher for ferry transport to see a medical specialist in another area, but very difficult to get other transport costs paid (I got a taxi voucher once but paid for the buses too many times to count and trains a couple of times). Also we pay for a few hundred dollars of prescription pharmaceuticals before some of it starts to get covered, dispensing fees are not covered, nothing used to be covered at all here, having anything partially paid for near the end of the year is relatively new for me, except for exceptions. But you won't go bankrupt, that part is different than the U.S. was, but hospital cafeteria food here is almost made to make you ill compared to U.S. hospital food (ours was contracted out to some massive Asian owned processed food corporation years ago). If you have money or a good plan the U.S. cancer patient (my fiancee who sadly eventually died of cancer) gets in very very quickly. When my Mother was diagnosed with cancer twice (she is still alive though) she waited weeks for a specialist and then two months give or take a week or so for surgery, and it is even longer now. Egad!!! I had no idea; I naively figured each provincial system was pretty much the same. Here there is no direct money involved; it’s all paid for by our taxes -with the partial exception of the prescription drug insurance; we have the choice between the government plan and a private one provided by our employer. In fact, twenty years ago when I was living in the U.S., we came back to Quebec for the holiday and had to take our baby to a doctor; since we were no longer living in Quebec we weren’t covered by the provincial insurance, and I naturally expected to pay for the services... but neither the doctor nor the office staff had any idea how to charge money for their services, so they ended telling me that it was all pro bono. It’s not all that rosey, of course. For anything not life-threatening, delays can be long (seeing a dermatologist takes months; some surgeries also have long waiting lists). In emergency rooms, there is also a triage system; someone going there because of some ill-defined ache is going to be passed over by every case of heart attack or traffic crash that comes along. I once spent seven hours at the emergency woth our second kid, who had stepped on something at the beach and seemed to have a piece of shell stuck deep in the heel. Unfortunately, it was June 24, our national holiday, when everybody gets drunk and parties around bonfires... we just sat there as ambulance after ambulance brought in people who had drunk too much or jumped INTO a bonfire. We eventually left without having seen a doctor. Rather than emergency rooms, we are encouraged to call our family clinic i. the morning and take an appointment for later in the day. Thanks for the explanations about the system in BC! I realize that I often don’t know a whole lot about provinces west of Ontario.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 8, 2018 10:43:52 GMT -5
The first part is neither fair nor true. There's been plenty of good discussion and debate once someone brought something to the table besides flinging poo all over the place. The second part... well, we'll say that's a rather bold perspective, and I will say it's at least as frustrating when folks support the current administration and has no interest in accepting basic objective reality. (I know you are not a fan of the current admin from your other posts). It's a shame you are bowing it, and you are absolutely mistaken that folks here are unwilling to hear an actual rational conservatives viewpoint. Folks have explicitly said so, but I completely understand having to do what you need to do. see it from my pov. It's like being in a room with 10 people and you are the only one with the dissenting opinion. It's exhausting trying to respond to everyone. I have other things I would rather do than this. One on one in real life would be cool. And you may not feel this way but I am betting based on other posts that others really don't care about the other side. Personally, I love hearing what “the other side” has to say. First because an echo room has no purpose but to make people feel smug, and second because I don’t think we have to belong to one side or another; surely our opinions on different issues can be itemized without always having to conform to a general viewpoint? I’m a lefty on most issues, but I also find myself agreeing with a lot of what people like Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Haidt have to say (and they seem to be quite popular among conservatives). I also don’t see the song “baby, it’s cold outside” as either an invitation to rape or as a denial of climate change. I find no contradiction in promoting universal health care and fiscal responsibility, nor in disliking religion in general but defending everyone’s right to practice their own. So let’s hear those opinions! Exchanging ideas is at the heart of what politics should be.
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 8, 2018 13:31:15 GMT -5
brags about not paying taxes (not illegal, mind you, but because he used the tax code to his advantage) Just a small correction, Trump was caught being involved in a high end jewelry importing scheme that dodged taxes by shipping empty boxes within the country and claiming the imports were domestic. He should have lost his NJ state casino license over it at the time but didn't, perhaps as his casino was failing anyway.
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Post by beccabear67 on Dec 8, 2018 13:37:34 GMT -5
I still see Republicans protecting him from the law, totally different standard for their team, diminishing and being silent for their people and then like Trump himself often exaggerating the heck out of anything by an enemy or someone like Cohen or Tillerson who become one. The Karl Rove accuse your opponent of the things you are most guilty of playbook also still in operation with a few. If 'my side' breaks rules they are no longer my side, but others dig in deeper to the extent of denying reality outright and just being abusive and downright threatening, a couple decades of this and a huge number of people just want to stay out of things and add to the roll of apathy and not following, not wanting to know etc., or else there are slogan chanting angry people in the street all the time (so not to laugh at Paris too much).
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 8, 2018 14:18:26 GMT -5
The first part is neither fair nor true. There's been plenty of good discussion and debate once someone brought something to the table besides flinging poo all over the place. The second part... well, we'll say that's a rather bold perspective, and I will say it's at least as frustrating when folks support the current administration and has no interest in accepting basic objective reality. (I know you are not a fan of the current admin from your other posts). It's a shame you are bowing it, and you are absolutely mistaken that folks here are unwilling to hear an actual rational conservatives viewpoint. Folks have explicitly said so, but I completely understand having to do what you need to do. see it from my pov. It's like being in a room with 10 people and you are the only one with the dissenting opinion. It's exhausting trying to respond to everyone. I have other things I would rather do than this. One on one in real life would be cool. And you may not feel this way but I am betting based on other posts that others really don't care about the other side. I can't speak for anybody else, but I know all about "the other side." I used to be a Republican. True, it's been a while. In addition to keeping an eye on the national conservative media and having discussions with conservative friends - my best friend is a major Trump supporter - I used to work in media at a very conservative regional newspaper as a copy editor. And that meant reading the very biased, very slanted articles in the Opinion section almost every day. I don't keep up with "the other side" quite as thoroughly as I used to. But I still read a certain amount of right-wing opinion. So I'm well aware of what the other side is saying. It's just been a long time since I found any of it at all convincing.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 8, 2018 14:27:40 GMT -5
see it from my pov. It's like being in a room with 10 people and you are the only one with the dissenting opinion. It's exhausting trying to respond to everyone. I have other things I would rather do than this. One on one in real life would be cool. And you may not feel this way but I am betting based on other posts that others really don't care about the other side. Personally, I love hearing what “the other side” has to say. First because an echo room has no purpose but to make people feel smug, and second because I don’t think we have to belong to one side or another; surely our opinions on different issues can be itemized without always having to conform to a general viewpoint? I’m a lefty on most issues, but I also find myself agreeing with a lot of what people like Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Haidt have to say (and they seem to be quite popular among conservatives). I also don’t see the song “baby, it’s cold outside” as either an invitation to rape or as a denial of climate change. I find no contradiction in promoting universal health care and fiscal responsibility, nor in disliking religion in general but defending everyone’s right to practice their own. So let’s hear those opinions! Exchanging ideas is at the heart of what politics should be. Are there really that many people that have strong objections to "Baby, it's cold outside"? I've seen dozens and dozens of people talking about how stupid the radio ban is. (It was just one radio station, right?) Progressives and conservatives both are going on and on about how dumb the ban is. On the other side, I've seen two or three people saying they can kind of see the point because they think the song does sound kind of creepy in 2018, but I have yet to see one person who actually supports the ban. And, as usual, the conservatives I know are painting all liberals and Democrats with a broad brush and going on and on about all this "political correctness" when it's actually not an issue to anybody except the person who made the decision to ban it.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 8, 2018 16:12:25 GMT -5
Personally, I love hearing what “the other side” has to say. First because an echo room has no purpose but to make people feel smug, and second because I don’t think we have to belong to one side or another; surely our opinions on different issues can be itemized without always having to conform to a general viewpoint? I’m a lefty on most issues, but I also find myself agreeing with a lot of what people like Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Haidt have to say (and they seem to be quite popular among conservatives). I also don’t see the song “baby, it’s cold outside” as either an invitation to rape or as a denial of climate change. I find no contradiction in promoting universal health care and fiscal responsibility, nor in disliking religion in general but defending everyone’s right to practice their own. So let’s hear those opinions! Exchanging ideas is at the heart of what politics should be. Are there really that many people that have strong objections to "Baby, it's cold outside"? Probably not. It's usually the case with fringe opinions, like banning the expression "killing two birds with one stones" (because according top PETA it banalizes the mistreatment of animals). It's actually a sound strategy on their part, because if there's one surefire recipe to get middle-of-the-road voters to vote conservative it's isolated examples of "progressive" nonsense. Things like refusing to fund movies that feature a villain with a facial scar. Such examples don't have to be widespread or even have much of a real impact (and they usually don't); all that's required is to find some known non-conservative public figure or organization to say that yes, "hello ladies and gentlemen" is a transphobic greeting. It's then very easy to run a campaign that depicts progressive candidates as adhering to nonsensical issues, passing over all the things they say that does make sense. We have a far left party here in Quebec that has a lot of good ideas amongst the stranger ones; but those ideas are hardly ever heard because their more conservative opponents focus the public's attention on this like (a) their dress code, which can charitably be described as thrift shop chic, and (b) their refusal to use the word "patrimony", on account that it's an oppressive patriarchal word.
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Post by Hoosier X on Dec 8, 2018 16:38:20 GMT -5
One of my Facebook friends (I swear he wasn't a nutcase back in high school) posted this:
"If you think Rudolph was bullied, wait until you hear what happened to Jesus!"
I didn't respond. But there are several ways that this is really really stupid. I wanted to post: "Uh, yeah, we already heard what happened to Jesus. Despite the alleged War on Christmas, what happened to Jesus is very well known to everybody that uses Facebook."
And the first clause. Because Rudolph wasn't tortured and crucified, he wasn't bullied. Whatever. What a great way to minimize what bullying is. "Those boys who hit you and stole your lunch money didn't torture you and crucify you. So it's not bullying."
Some of His followers are minimizing bullying just so they can emphasize how little they care about His teachings and how much they love His torture and crucifixion. I can only hope that's not what Jesus wanted.
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Post by badwolf on Dec 8, 2018 17:57:22 GMT -5
I’m a lefty on most issues, but I also find myself agreeing with a lot of what people like Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Haidt have to say (and they seem to be quite popular among conservatives). Peterson is actually a classical liberal. If he seems conservative, it's only because the spectrum has shifted so much in the last few years. (Well, that and misrepresentation of him by the media.)
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Post by Prince Hal on Dec 8, 2018 18:12:30 GMT -5
I’m a lefty on most issues, but I also find myself agreeing with a lot of what people like Jordan Peterson or Jonathan Haidt have to say (and they seem to be quite popular among conservatives). Peterson is actually a classical liberal. If he seems conservative, it's only because the spectrum has shifted so much in the last few years. (Well, that and misrepresentation of him by the media.) You must be f- ing kidding. He’s an apologist for Hitler, whose premise is that Hitler was just a neat-freak and Zyklon-B was just a way to kill insects. That “classical liberal” stuff is an alt-right disguise.
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Post by Roquefort Raider on Dec 8, 2018 18:52:00 GMT -5
Peterson is actually a classical liberal. If he seems conservative, it's only because the spectrum has shifted so much in the last few years. (Well, that and misrepresentation of him by the media.) You must be f- ing kidding. He’s an apologist for Hitler, whose premise is that Hitler was just a neat-freak and Zyklon-B was just a way to kill insects. That “classical liberal” stuff is an alt-right disguise. An apologist for Hitler? I hardly think so, good Prince. Peterson has taught a lot of classes on the evils of authoritarian regimes like Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, warning us about how easily they could come back. Here he clearly states that any pretense by Hitler that he was acting for some kind of greater good was likely a lie, and that his real motivation was a psychopathic need to exterminate people he didn’t like. All I heard from Peterson himself, rather than his detractors, does agree with his being a classical liberal... the kind of fellow who would vote for the conservative party of Canada (which is to the left of the American Democratic party). A conservative in Canadian terms, but by no means not a tea bagger.
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