Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped?

[mikeh]

LOL at this.

Please enlighten us how many terorists attacks were in Japan and China lately.

Well, depending on how one defines terrorism, China actually has quite a few each year. But since China doesn't like to talk about its ethnic issues, especially with its muslim population, it doesn't surprise me that a trump supporter would be ignorant about this, as with so much else. Look up Xinjiang

[hrothgar]

LOL at this.

Please enlighten us how many terorists attacks were in Japan and China lately.

 

Mike has already pointed out that the Chinese does experience terrorist attacks.

 

With this said and done, can you please explain why countries need to be experiencing terrorist attacks in order to show sympathy and express solidarity with one another?

[Cyberyeti]

LOL at this.

Please enlighten us how many terorists attacks were in Japan and China lately.

 

Japan still has its issues https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aum_Shinrikyo are still under surveillance.

 

As pointed out China has its isses with the Uighur minority.

[Winstonm]

You seem to dismiss another poster in a quite condescending tone, in my opinion. Could you enlighten me regarding how you form your opinions and what factual bases you use in the current political climate?

 

Sure. I do my best to emulate John Maynard Keynes who once said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

 

To this end I may find factual claims interesting but I do not take anything at face value unless it can be confirmed by at least one other neutral source. I also begin with a presumption of reasonableness. For example, in 1994, I was opposed to Bill Clinton but I never believed that he was engaged in murder or rape or vast real estate swindles - not only did these claims fly in the face of reasonableness but there was no objective evidence that any of it ever occurred. In other words, I had no reason to believe it to be accurate.

 

In this day and age, I accept that Hillary Clinton is a reasonable person, so the idea of her orchestrating some kind of Benghazi stand down or cover up is ludicrous on its surface, and a most thorough investigation by the opposition party found no wrongdoing. What is the point, then, in even listening to this claim or repeating it?

 

To sum up, it really isn't that hard. I try not to be gullible or vastly partisan; I demand proof - the more outrageous the claim, the higher the standard of proof needed; I try over time to eliminate partisan sources from my information sources.

[jogs]

I happen to think that Hillary would accomplish more in 10 hours than Trump would in 20.

Please don't confuse Hillary with Bill. Bill Clinton was a lovable scoundrel. Bill understood the art of compromise. He didn't insult the opposition. Ross Perot voters were true deplorables.

In 2008 Hillary asked who would be there to answer the call at 3AM in the morning? During the Benghazi attack neither Hillary or Barack were awake to answer the call. The Donald would have been awake.

Trump saved jobs at Carrier. Trump made Boeing agree to watch those cost overruns. Obama and HRC said that's the way of the world. Those jobs can't be saved. Those costs can't be negotiated.

Mitch McConnell wants tax cuts to be revenue neutral. Trump is a businessman. He plans to do more with fewer tax dollars. Trump will run the country like an efficient multi-trillion dollar corporation.

[jogs]

Sure. I do my best to emulate John Maynard Keynes who once said, "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?"

 

 

Keynes is part of the swamp.

[Winstonm]

Keynes is part of the swamp.

 

 

Thanks for that intellectually stimulating comment. Let me write that down lest I forget. How did it go? When facts change, I change my mind is wrong; whatever Breitbart claims is fact. OK. I think I got it. But do I really have to go to all that trouble?

 

Wouldn't it work just as well if I simply stuck my head into a garbage pile and inhaled deeply?

[PassedOut]

Trump will run the country like an efficient multi-trillion dollar corporation.

If this is your way of predicting a US bankruptcy, I think you are jumping the gun. While it's true that Trump campaigned on going back to fiscal irresponsibility big-time, he can't do that alone. We can suppose that more responsible elements in congress will put the brakes on. Let's hope so anyway!

[hrothgar]

Trump will run the country like an efficient multi-trillion dollar corporation.

 

I am terrified that Trump will try to run the country like one of his corporations.

 

First and foremost, a country is not the same as a corporation

 

1. Governments have a monopoly on the legitimate use of force. Corporations are not allowed the exercise this.

2. Currently, the average lifetime of a company is approximately 15 years. In theory, we want the US government to have a much longer time horizon

3. Nearly all companies are designed to try to make as much money as possible. Trust me when I say that you really don't want the US government to be operating as a revenue maximizing monopolist.

4. Companies have a narrow fiduciary responsibly to the owners (typically to their shareholders). In contrast, a the United State government is supposed to "promote the general welfare".

5. Governments have a wide variety of fiscal powers available to them that are not available to corporations

6. Then of course, there's the whole issue with tight ties between corporations and governments being a defining characteristic of fascism

 

Simply put, trying to draw and analogy between a government and a corporation or, worse yet, a government and a household is at best facetious and, more often, an exhibition of true stupidity

 

Next, even if you wanted the US government to be run like a corporation, is Trump really the one to do it?

 

1. Trump's business career has been mediocre at best. He inherited a lot of money from his dad, however, his rate of return with this money has been well below what he could have made parking the $$$ in the market

2. Trump has had a string of well publicized bankruptcies. He did a decent job preserving his own assets, but his shareholders got fleeced. No one in the US is willing to do business with the man which is why he had to abandon real estate and retreat into deals where he is licensing his name.

3. The man is a low grade grifter who repeated screws over both his creditors and his customers

4. Many of Trumps most noticeable failures resulted from a combination of ignornance about the basics of the markets that he was entering combined with poor impulse control

 

This is the genius who is supposed run the US government

 

Give me a break...

[jogs]

The same place as the Prime Minister of Japan, the Premiere of China, and the heads of state for other leading non-European powers...

 

This idiocy got debunked a year ago ***** for brains

China and Japan don't accept Muslim refugees. Obama declined the invitation to join this march. Winstonm wasn't aware of this.

[hrothgar]

China and Japan don't accept Muslim refugees. Obama declined the invitation to join this march. Winstonm wasn't aware of this.

 

1. What does China and Japan accepting muslim refugees have to do with anything. Stop trying to change the subject

2. A very small set of world leaders joined the march in France.

3. The French and indeed the Europeans don't care that Obama didn't show. Indeed, given the security levels levels required to protect the President, they preferred that he not attend.

 

They only ones who care about this issue are a small number of right wing idiots in the US who care more about bitching about the President than they do about making logical arguments.

 

In short, the fact that Winston didn't recognize what you were referring to simply means that he doesn't dwell in the fever swamps.

It does not mean that your asinine claim is, in any way, correct

[mikeh]

Please don't confuse Hillary with Bill. Bill Clinton was a lovable scoundrel. Bill understood the art of compromise. He didn't insult the opposition. Ross Perot voters were true deplorables.

In 2008 Hillary asked who would be there to answer the call at 3AM in the morning? During the Benghazi attack neither Hillary or Barack were awake to answer the call. The Donald would have been awake.

Trump saved jobs at Carrier. Trump made Boeing agree to watch those cost overruns. Obama and HRC said that's the way of the world. Those jobs can't be saved. Those costs can't be negotiated.

Mitch McConnell wants tax cuts to be revenue neutral. Trump is a businessman. He plans to do more with fewer tax dollars. Trump will run the country like an efficient multi-trillion dollar corporation.

 

Hmmm...let's examine some of these/

 

Benghazi. Despite the attention this got, it was a relatively minor matter in geopolitical terms. While republicans like to pretend that democrats bear personal responsibility for every bad thing that happens, reality-based people recognize that ***** happens and that there are chains of command and levels of responsibility. Btw, the same morns who want to blame Clinton for Benghazi were all too ready to believe that Reagan had nothing to do with Iran contra, or that Bush wasn't negligent in 9/11 etc.

 

As for trump being awake....maybe he will be, but while this may be news to you, a twitter response would not likely have been effective and, so far, the evidence suggests that twitter is exactly how trump would respond. Furthermore, since the Donald disdains security briefings, and since Exxon-Mobil has no refinery in Benghazim afaik, and Vladimir won't have asked for any favours there, the odds are that neither trump nor his designee for secretary of state would be aware that there even was a problem.

 

Trump saved jobs at Carrier?

 

Hmmm. I wonder how he did that? Carrier's parent company does multiple billions of dollars business with the Federal Government, and would any of us be surprized to learn that Trump bullied his way to this deal, about which he promptly lied? Btw, the average cost per job saved in Indiana, under Pence, was about 400K per job, almost all of which went to the owners of the businesses, and in many cases the jobs left within a couple of years of being saved. Btw, I thought republicans believed in the market?

 

As for running the country like a business....really? That's the best you've got?

 

Do you know one f*cking thing about the duties of Directors and Officers of companies? It is to maximize shareholder value....it is to make money for the owners. Who do you think owns the US? The top 20% own 85% of the net worth. 5 white guys own more land in the US than all black people combined. The duty of those who run the US as a company would be to maximize profits for the wealthy. Where is the value in spending money on educating the poor? In preventing discrimination? In having a fair justice system? Etc. Do you have one f*cking clue about how countries operate economically?

 

As for trump: there is good reason to believe that he is at best a mediocre businessman. Had he invested his inheritance (140MM) in an exchange traded fund, he'd be wealthier that he is today. Plus, I really don't think that declaring bankruptcy and sticking his shareholders, business partners, and creditors with the losses, while putting millions in his own bank account is what we hope for from his presidency. Or would that seem to you to be a good idea?

[andrei]

Well, depending on how one defines terrorism.

 

The march in question took place a few days after Charlie Hebdo attack.

It seems to me they were marching against Islamic terrorism, the kind of terrorism that killed 17 people then, a lot more at Bataclan, at Nice, at Berlin and a few in US.

 

China/Japan have their fair-share of domestic terrorism, but that's a different discussion.

 

2. A very small set of world leaders joined the march in France.

 

There were over 40 presidents/PM present, very small indeed.

 

3. The French and indeed the Europeans don't care that Obama didn't show. Indeed, given the security levels levels required to protect the President, they preferred that he not attend.

 

Is this for real?

[y66]

From The Psychological Research That Helps Explain The Election by Maria Kinnikova:

 

At the end of most years, I’m typically asked to write about the best psychology papers of the past twelve months. This year, though, is not your typical year. And so, instead of the usual “best of,” I’ve decided to create a list of classic psychology papers and findings that can explain not just the rise of Donald Trump in the U.S. but also the rising polarization and extremism that seem to have permeated the world. To do this, I solicited the opinion of many leading psychologists, asking them to nominate a paper or two, with a brief explanation for their choice. (Then I nominated some stories myself.) And so, as 2016 draws to a close, here’s a partial collection of the insights that psychology can bring to bear on what the year has brought about, arranged in chronological order.

 

Charles Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper’s “Biased Assimilation and Attitude Polarization”

 

In 1979, a team from Stanford University—Charles Lord, Lee Ross, and Mark Lepper—published a paper that made sense of a common, and seemingly irrational, phenomenon: that the beliefs we hold already affect how we process and assimilate new information. In other words, we don’t learn rationally, taking in information and then making a studied judgment. Instead, the very way we learn is influenced from the onset by what we know and who we are. In the original study, Lord and his colleagues asked people to read a series of studies that seemed to either support or reject the idea that capital punishment deters crime. The participants, it turned out, rated studies confirming their original beliefs as more methodologically rigorous—and those that went against them as shoddy.

 

This process, which is a form of what’s called confirmation bias, can help explain why Trump supporters remain supportive no matter what evidence one puts to them—and why Trump’s opponents are unlikely to be convinced of his worth even if he ends up doing something actually positive. The two groups simply process information differently. “The confirmation bias is not specific to Donald Trump. It’s something we are all susceptible to,” the Columbia University psychologist Daniel Ames, one of several scholars to nominate this paper, said. “But Trump appears to be an especially public and risky illustration of it in many domains.” (Ames and his colleague Alice Lee recently showed a similar effect with beliefs about torture.)

 

A closely related paper by Ross, Lepper, and Robert Vallone, from 1985, found that the polarization effect was particularly powerful among strong partisans. When looking at perceptions of the 1982 Beirut massacre, they found that more extreme partisans saw the facts as more biased, and recalled the media coverage of the massacre differently. They saw more negative references to their side, and they predicted that nonpartisans would be swayed more negatively against them as a result—thus increasing their perception of being assaulted and solidifying their opinions. The more knowledge of the issue they had, the greater their perception of bias. American politics has grown only more partisan since the eighties, and this finding can help explain some of the backlash among Trump supporters to press outlets that reported critically on him.

 

Dan Kahan’s “Cultural Cognition”

 

Over the last decade, Dan Kahan, a psychologist at Yale University, has been studying a phenomenon he calls “cultural cognition,” or how values shape perception of risk and policy beliefs. One of his insights is that people often engage in something called “identity-protective cognition.” They process information in a way that protects their idea of themselves. Incongruous information is discarded, and supporting information is eagerly retained. Our memory actually ends up skewed: we are better able to process and recall the facts that we are motivated to process and recall, while conveniently forgetting those that we would prefer weren’t true. The Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, one of several to nominate Kahan for this list, said that his theory is best called “political and intellectual tribalism.” Like seeks like, and like affirms like—and people gravitate to the intellectually similar others, even when all of their actions should rightly set off alarm bells.

 

Trump, Pinker said, won over pretty much the entire Republican Party, and all those who felt alienated from the left, by declaring himself to be opposed to the “establishment” and political correctness. And this all happened, Pinker wrote to me, “despite his obvious temperamental unsuitability for the responsibilities of the Presidency, his opposition to free trade and open borders (which should have, but did not, poison him with the libertarian right), his libertine and irreligious lifestyle (which should have, but did not, poison him with evangelicals), his sympathies with Putin’s Russia (which should have, but did not, poison him with patriots), and his hostility to American military and political alliances with democracies (which should have, but did not, poison him with neoconservatives).”

 

Karen Stenner’s “The Authoritarian Dynamic”

 

Research published a decade ago by Karen Stenner provides insight into a psychological trait known as authoritarianism: the desire for strong order and control. Most people aren’t authoritarian as such, Stenner finds. Instead, most of us are usually capable of fairly high tolerance. It’s only when we feel we are under threat—especially what Stenner calls “normative threat,” or a threat to the perceived integrity of the moral order—that we suddenly shut down our openness and begin to ask for greater force and authoritarian power. People want to protect their way of life, and when they think it’s in danger they start grasping for more extreme-seeming alternatives. In 2005, Stenner offered a prediction that seems clairvoyant now. In response to the increasing tolerance in Western societies, she wrote, an authoritarian backlash was all but inevitable:

 

The increasing license allowed by those evolving cultures generates the very conditions guaranteed to goad latent authoritarians to sudden and intense, perhaps violent, and almost certainly unexpected, expressions of intolerance. . . . The kind of intolerance that springs from aberrant individual psychology, rather than the disinterested absorption of pervasive cultural norms, is bound to be more passionate and irrational, less predictable, less amenable to persuasion, and more aggravated than educated by the cultural promotion of tolerance.

These ideas have been discussed many times over the years in the water cooler. And, except for a few savvy posters, many of us on the left of center and perhaps even a few to the right were still surprised. It's enough to make a visitor to the WC think no one here is listening.

[hrothgar]

 

There were over 40 presidents/PM present, very small indeed.

 

 

Here's the list of the more prominent individuals who participated in the march

 

Note: Nearly all of them all from Europe, the Middle East, or former French colonies in Africa

There is (essentially) no participation from North America or Asia

 

For example, for all the discussion about President Obama not attending, Stephen Harper also wasn't in attendance, nor was Enrique Nieto or any number of other heads of state in South or Asia or Australia, or most anywhere outside of EUROPE...

 

Its almost as if the fact that the President of the United States didn't show up had less to do with the fact that Obama is president than issues related to geography and logistics.

 

I know that your little pea brain doesn't actually process facts or other such inconvenient details, but here's hoping that the rest of the forums understand just what an idiot we're dealing with

 

 

EUROPE:

French President Francois Hollande

German Chancellor Angela Merkel

British Prime Minister David Cameron

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy

Romanian President Klaus Iohannis

European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker

European Parliament president Martin Schulz

European Union president Donald Tusk

Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg

Polish Prime Minister Ewa Kopacz

Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras

Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny

Portuguese Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho

Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico

Latvian Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban

Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic

Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Bettel

Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat

Slovenian Prime Minister Miro Cerar

Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven

Finnish Prime Minister Alexander Stubb

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko

Swiss President Simonetta Sommaruga

Kosovo President Atifete Jahjaga

Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu

Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg

Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibachvili

Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov

Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz

NORTH AMERICA:

US attorney general Eric Holder

Canadian public safety minister Steven Blaney

MIDDLE EAST:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman

Jordanian King Abdullah II and Queen Rania

Palestinian Authority President Mahmud Abbas

United Arab Emirates foreign minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan

Qatari Sheikh Mohamed Ben Hamad Ben Khalifa Al Thani

Bahrain foreign minister Sheikh Khaled ben Ahmed Al Khalifa and Prince Abdullah Ben Hamad al-Khalifa

AFRICA:

Malian President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita

Gabonese President Ali Bongo

Niger President Mahamadou Issoufou

Benin President Thomas Boni Yayi

Tunisian Prime Minister Mehdi Jomaa

Algerian foreign minister Ramtane Lamamra

[Winstonm]

China and Japan don't accept Muslim refugees. Obama declined the invitation to join this march. Winstonm wasn't aware of this.

 

I'm certain that this is not the only right wing talking point with which I hold no familiarity. I don't consider lack of knowledge of right wing "spin" as failure.

[kenberg]

From The Psychological Research That Helps Explain The Election by Maria Kinnikova:

 

 

These ideas have been discussed many times over the years in the water cooler. And, except for a few savvy posters, many of us on the left of center and perhaps even a few to the right were still surprised. It's enough to make a visitor to the WC think no one here is listening.

 

I'll take the last section:

 

Karen Stenner's "The Authoritarian Dynamic"

 

Research published a decade ago by Karen Stenner provides insight into a psychological trait known as authoritarianism: the desire for strong order and control. Most people aren't authoritarian as such, Stenner finds. Instead, most of us are usually capable of fairly high tolerance. It's only when we feel we are under threat—especially what Stenner calls "normative threat," or a threat to the perceived integrity of the moral order—that we suddenly shut down our openness and begin to ask for greater force and authoritarian power. People want to protect their way of life, and when they think it's in danger they start grasping for more extreme-seeming alternatives. In 2005, Stenner offered a prediction that seems clairvoyant now. In response to the increasing tolerance in Western societies, she wrote, an authoritarian backlash was all but inevitable:

 

The increasing license allowed by those evolving cultures generates the very conditions guaranteed to goad latent authoritarians to sudden and intense, perhaps violent, and almost certainly unexpected, expressions of intolerance. . . . The kind of intolerance that springs from aberrant individual psychology, rather than the disinterested absorption of pervasive cultural norms, is bound to be more passionate and irrational, less predictable, less amenable to persuasion, and more aggravated than educated by the cultural promotion of tolerance.

 

Are we being told here that people who feel under threat are apt to be more combative than people who do not feel under threat? I am trying to think of a way to interpret "It's only when we feel we are under threat—especially what Stenner calls "normative threat," or a threat to the perceived integrity of the moral order—that we suddenly shut down our openness and begin to ask for greater force and authoritarian power." so that the response is not "Well, yeah, duh".

 

And earlier in the article we find the assertion

A closely related paper by Ross, Lepper, and Robert Vallone, from 1985, found that the polarization effect was particularly powerful among strong partisans.

 

Do people make big bucks doing this research?

 

A woman in Becky's hiking group sent a message "I wish all of my Christian friends a Merry Christmas" The problem, as I see it, is not Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday Season but rather that people do not seem to be able to wish others well without making a political statement out of it.

 

As Tom Lehrer put it long ago: "There are people out there who do not love their fellow man, and I hate people like that".

 

Stay cool, all.

[y66]

Are we being told here that people who feel under threat are apt to be more combative than people who do not feel under threat? I am trying to think of a way to interpret "It's only when we feel we are under threat—especially what Stenner calls "normative threat," or a threat to the perceived integrity of the moral order—that we suddenly shut down our openness and begin to ask for greater force and authoritarian power." so that the response is not "Well, yeah, duh".

I do not have any personal experience finding authoritarianism reassuring so this one is counter intuitive for me. If anyone was clairvoyant it was Thomas Frank when he wrote What's The Matter With Kansas in 2004 in which he predicted the "great backlash" of white, working class voters.

[Trinidad]

A woman in Becky's hiking group sent a message "I wish all of my Christian friends a Merry Christmas" The problem, as I see it, is not Merry Christmas or Happy Holiday Season but rather that people do not seem to be able to wish others well without making a political statement out of it.

I really fail to see why wishing everybody "Happy holidays" means anything other than that you wish them to enjoy those days off around the end of the year, without any idea of "only if you're christian" or "except if you are christian, since then I mean Merry Christmas".

 

We have sent holiday greetings to friends and relatives that are (in alphabetical order):

Agnost

Atheist

Bridge fanatic

Buddhist

Calvinist

Hindu

Lutheran

Muslim

Nothing

Roman Catholic

 

Most likely I have forgotten something.

 

And, of course, this goes both ways:

 

Each year we - of the category "Nothing" - receive holiday greetings from Muslims, Buddhists and Hindus, as well as from Christians and non-religious people. I have never seen that as anything odd. Should I?

 

Why would wishing somebody well be a political statement?

Stay cool, all.

'Peace' to you too, dude.

 

Rik

[helene_t]

I do not have any personal experience finding authoritarianism reassuring so this one is counter intuitive for me.

Yes I would think so also. When I was young, there was a prominent theory that all evil comes from lack of self confidence. But it turned out that violent criminals tend to have higher self esteem than normal people.

[jogs]

You seem to dismiss another poster in a quite condescending tone, in my opinion. Could you enlighten me regarding how you form your opinions and what factual bases you use in the current political climate?

This is straight out the the elitist progressive left playbook. If they can't refute the argument, attack the arguer. For 12 years the left used political correctness to keep republicans on the defensive. Each republican allowed the democrats to define them. Luckily Trump isn't actually a republican. Trump will define himself, thank you. Trump knows forcing PC speech on others is just censorship. It is a violation of the opposition's 1st amendment rights.

[jogs]

I'm certain that this is not the only right wing talking point with which I hold no familiarity. I don't consider lack of knowledge of right wing "spin" as failure.

A truly open minded person is familiar both side's argument. And knows why the other side's argument is flawed.

 

I'm really only a fiscal conservative. Don't really care one way or the other on most social issues.

[mikeh]

A truly open minded person is familiar both side's argument. And knows why the other side's argument is flawed.

 

I'm really only a fiscal conservative. Don't really care one way or the other on most social issues.

Your problem is that you lack the ability to argue logically. As for example, the post where on the one hand you criticized Obama for acting as if he had the right to order other countries to do what the US wanted, then went on a few lines later to assert that, since the US is the most powerful country in the world, it should tell other countries how to act.

 

Anyone who writes like that isn't going to get much respect from those of us who can think somewhat logically.

 

A truly open minded person evaluates the arguments and, if one argument appears to be plausible and reality-based while the other lacks either characteristic, concludes and states that the latter is wrong. Too much of US (and, to be fair other) media these days thinks that the mere fact that there are two 'arguments' means that there is an equivalency between the two. Nonsense. Only an idiot confuses open-mindedness with neutrality of outcome.

 

Oh... and you must be a very unusual fiscal conservative, since you praise trump for using tax dollars to bribe Carrier into (temporarily) preserving some 700 jobs (while claiming credit for over 1000). Weird sort of conservative, that! Maybe you can explain why, being a fiscal conservative, you support the use of tax dollars to distort the job market in this fashion?

 

Before you go whining about ad hominin: please note that I am specifically citing arguments you made. I am attacking those arguments, while pointing out the stupidity of them. You judge for yourself how best to describe a person who repeatedly and consistently makes stupid arguments. Or, maybe try to justify the arguments with facts or reasoning. Start by explaining your post about Obama being wrong to order other countries around, while then claiming that the US should do exactly that.

 

No? LOL. I don't think you'll even try, since I suspect that you have belatedly realized how foolish you appeared in that post.

[Kaitlyn S]

This is straight out the the elitist progressive left playbook. If they can't refute the argument, attack the arguer.

Let's test that hypothesis. The most attacked people in the Water Cooler are Al_U_Card, jonottowa, Kaitlyn S, jogs, (did I miss anyone?)

 

Wow, it's just awe-striking how much truth there is to that statement!

 

 

I'm really only a fiscal conservative. Don't really care one way or the other on most social issues.

Same here. I'm pro-choice, pro environment, and pro-gay rights. Still considered an alt-right wingnut in most places though.

[Winstonm]

Let's test that hypothesis. The most attacked people in the Water Cooler are Al_U_Card, jonottowa, Kaitlyn S, jogs, (did I miss anyone?)

 

Wow, it's just awe-striking how much truth there is to that statement!

 

 

You could have simply requested everyone to ignore you rather than forcing us to do so.