Lurker > red sox 777

Nelson_Mandela posted...

https://twitter.com/m_mendozaferrer/status/1231929071292026882

Daily reminder that Bernie is a hypocritical scumbag

Sephy, if Bernie wins someday you'll go to buy your lake house in Vermont and find that you don't have the money because it was all taken in taxes.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Sucks that he got off on some of the charges, but its great that this piece of shit convicted rapist is now going to actually pay for his crimes.

Wonder if hes ditched his fake walker yet!

He was taken into custody in the courtroom. I'm actually a little surprised he didn't flee the country over the weekend. When the jury on Friday asked if they could deadlock on the 2 most serious charges and return a verdict on the rest, it was pretty clear there was going to be a conviction on at least 1 of the charges. Because each of the 2 most serious charges required the jury to believe that at least one of the other charges had occurred and then to also believe another witness.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Because Im smarter, clearly

If I were Joe Biden, I'd challenge you to an IQ test.

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Jakyl25 posted...

But why should those opinions have equal weight when it comes to societal law?

Why should your opinion have greater weight? You are the one seeking greater weight for your opinions and theories.

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Jakyl25 posted...

If you want a less sanctimonious response:

There is no evidence that a soul, spirit, or life force exists. If you want ethics to take those things into account, you need to make a logical case for their potential existence, which no one has.

Well if your position is based on a lack of evidence for the alternative position, that doesn't show a lot of confidence.

The vast majority of beings we all agree are living (i.e. humans) have believed for thousands of years in souls, spirits, life forces, etc. You would think they are in a strong position to know what makes themselves alive. Maybe that isn't definitive proof but it's enough to avoid the argument that the idea of souls is drawn from nothing.

That is, the soul hypothesis isn't something that could easily be discarded and replaced with an alternative, newly created, theory. It's a well established theory that's been a constant for thousands of years, across many different nations and cultures. No new theory invented for the sake of argument would have this kind of history and testimonial evidence in support of it.


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DoomTheGyarados posted...

Not how burden of proof works

It is if he is trying to convince others. He says he is 100% certain, so that suggests he has what he feels is strong evidence in support of his position. By asserting that kind of level of confidence he assumes the burden of proof.

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Jakyl25 posted...

I know with 100% certainty that all of those things are fictional

Prove it.

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Jakyl25 posted...

A computer is not alive.

Machine sentience is its own can of worms, but no one would argue a computer is BIOLOGICALLY alive

If the question is whether something is alive, a tree is alive and cannot think.

If the question is whether something can think, we need to consider the case of a computer. Or, if you argue that its hardware is similar to a brain, a distributed cloud computing network where there is obviously no physical "brain."

Also, why is a computer not biologically alive? Because it's made of silicon rather than carbon? That seems very prejudiced to me!

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Jakyl25 posted...

It is factual that a living thing without a brain cannot think

Can a computer think?

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Jakyl25 posted...

Yeah but some of those are just factually untenable in the face of a woman having her own bodily autonomy

There is no logical reason an unthinking clump of cells should take precedence over a womans reproductive rights.

You can believe all you want but at some point reality sets in. I might believe that masturbation should count as murder but I would be rightfully laughed out of any reproductive health debate.

Just because a lot of people believe something doesnt make their beliefs worth listening to if they cant make an informed case for WHY they believe it.

You haven't actually stated a basis for your opinion beyond calling it "logical." Well, I guess you presumed that the clump of cells is "unthinking" but Corrik is not assuming this.

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Harvey Weinstein was convicted of 2 counts and acquitted on 3 counts today. Faces 5 to 25 years in prison.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Seems pretty clear to me that people like free stuff was a joke, but in any case Ill always look at Trumps actions over his words. He literally got impeached trying to manufacture shit on Joe Biden, whereas hes trying to push to Bernie supporters that everythings rigged against him. A much better argument, as Rock said, is that Trump is not exactly a very stable genius.

His actions are to sow division. It just shows he doesn't think Bernie is likely to win the nomination.

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Are you sure it'll be a referendum on Trump? Is not more likely it will be a referendum on the Democratic Party?

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LordoftheMorons posted...

So apparently Sanders/Warren could resign their Senate seat and force a special election on the November ballot and avoid their states R governors from replacing them longer term as long as they do so at least three months ahead of time

Not sure to what extent voters would consider that to be fuckery or if theres any small risk of a Republican winning, giving Rs an additional seat for free in the event of a Trump win.

That is really high risk.

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Wanglicious posted...

de blasio, a mayor currently hated in new york who was laughed at here more than anywhere else for his presidential campaign, talking about showing humility.

fuck, this election has had not one but TWO NYC mayors in it.

If Trump was a little less arrogant it could have had 3.

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So does this mean Trump and Russia will start trying to harm Bernie now so he doesn't actually win the nomination? I assume the goal is to get a contested convention.

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pxlated posted...

apparently this is the first time in US history that a candidate from either party won the popular vote in the first 3 primaries.

You're joking right? I would be so shocked if that had never happened before.

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We have dozens of examples of other countries with single payer healthcare. How likely is it that we are going to be the one country that tries it and gets a disastrous result? When we can observe other countries and model our system after the ones that look like they are working well?

I mean, I guess if we put the Democrats in charge of this, they could probably run us into the ground, but if we get Bernie leading this and a team of Republicans managing the details, there should be no problem.

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Yeah, Corrik, I don't think you need to be worried about people faking mental health issues to get treatment. Who wants to be getting mental health treatment? The one single place there may be some faking is with people getting ADD diagnoses to get advantages when taking tests in school, but that also isn't a thing that costs a lot - those people are trying to get that diagnosis so they can cheat on tests with as little expense as possible.

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Corrik7 posted...

Where it is gonna skyrocket is mental health costs.

The more I think about it, the more I am shaky on it and the details are probably where it is gonna lose me at.

If this isn't 100% covered medical then what is the point. If it is 100% covered, then people are going to be going for any old thing regardless of the actual need.

Is it so bad if people are getting medical care for any old thing? People in other countries do get treated for any old thing and their health is better for it.

Now, we might have to open some more medical school so we have more doctors, and maybe some of those doctors - the ones treating colds and cat scratches, say - wouldn't make as much money. Is that supposed to be bad?

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Sorry, edited in a better example which I believe is actually fairly common: somebody demanding antibiotics for a viral infection (which they dont help with).

That does not cost a lot. And does not need to be prescribed.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Its not someone might abuse it. Its a ton of people will abuse it, raising costs for everyone.

Heres a similar example. I dont know if Bernies everything is covered includes this (I hope not!), but lets say it included coverage for alternative medicine. Theres nothing to discourage this; its free! Say that, because of this, 10% of spending ends up going to shit that doesnt work. This benefits nobody; in fact, it hurts people because theyre putting off real treatment. And everybody pays more because of it! The same can occur even for procedures/meds with some merit.

Now if you have copays/deductibles, theres incentive not to do this. And on average, everybody is now paying less because it cuts down on unnecessary spending. And Im not saying that copays/deductibles need to be nearly as large as they are now, or that they cant, e.g., scale with income or something. They serve an actual purpose in helping to correctly align incentives.

That's why you need the other half of socialized healthcare - a single payer that controls what is paid for and what is not.

Or as Sarah Palin would call it, a death panel.

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There won't be a moral hazard problem for unnecessary procedures if those have to paid for out of pocket. Broke your arm? The government will pay for it. Have cancer? Same. Want plastic surgery? You can pay for it yourself.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

As far as I'm aware no country nearly as large as ours or with an insurance system so entangled with employment has made that switch. No other country's single payer system is as expansive as what Bernie's proposing, either.

That our system is so entangled with employment is more of a reason to switch, not less. Think about what it means to have employer-provided healthcare. It means that if you don't have employment, you don't get healthcare! How can that possibly be a good thing?

Yes, there's always risk whenever you change anything. But there is also risk from not changing. Risk is unavoidable.

And some people are much better able to bear risk than others. If people who have employer-based healthcare now - people with full-time employment with benefits - end up paying a little more for their healthcare for a while because socialized healthcare has a rocky transition period - they can bear it. People who don't have jobs are in a much more economically stressful position.

People who make in the 30-40k range are being asked to pay in many cases 25%+ of their income (40%+ of their after-tax income) on health insurance premiums alone, and that's if they don't get sick and have to pay astronomical copays and deductibles. That is an outrageous tax is what that is - legal scholars would call it a per capita tax, Republicans would call it a wealth tax, and Democrats should be calling it what it is - a poor tax. It is outrageous and needs to stop.


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LordoftheMorons posted...

1. The people with the most relevant expertise to analyze this are economists, not doctors.
2. If everything you say is 100% true and electing Bernie is going to save tens of thousands of lives and you see people getting turned off by mean tweets, would it not logically follow that, I don't know, these people not being a dick to everybody who disagrees with them? After all, it's saving lives!
I've been clear that I think there is massive risk in transitioning to M4A. It's an extremely complex task with a ton of potential for unintended consequences, and nothing that Bernie has done has convinced me that he can bring those risks down to a low enough level to justify it.

LOTM, I get the feeling that you didn't study economics in college. I did. There's a big difference between how models are tested in economics and in hard sciences. In hard sciences, it's regarded as critical that the experiment that tests the model comes after the model, and is replicable. In economics, especially macroeconomics, it often isn't possible to construct experiments capable of testing models and so they are "tested" with past data. Which means there is a huge danger of overfitting.

If you already know the data you need to explain, and you are trying to construct a model that makes sense intuitively and fits the data, that is a lot easier than constructing a model that can predict data you haven't seen yet. And it's even harder to make that replicable (so I can't just run a gazillion experiments until one of them fits one of my models purely from luck).

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So what I'm getting from this discussion is that the Democrats richly deserve a Trump reelection. And it shall be their fate until the day when they learn their error and stop attacking the American People.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

The point was that not supporting Hillary meant that Donald Trump, a guy who opposes everything that Bernie claimed to stand for, got elected. It wasn't "hah you lost bow down before queen Hillary."

He doesn't though. And he didn't. Here's a quick list of things Trump and Bernie both support:

1. The working class
2. Protectionism
3. America
4. Self-determination/democracy
5. Opposing the Democratic Party
6. Opposing money in politics
7. Healthcare that is better than Obamacare
8. Populism

Hillary by contrast doesn't really support any of these things except maybe #3.

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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

I can never tell if comments like this are serious or if this is some sort of excuse/defense mechanism meant to guilt others.

Are we not allowed to be concerned about you listening to us when months ago Bernie and his supporters were told to shut up and fall in line or theyd hurt Dems general election chances?

Bernie was called out as divisive for a phone-banking script saying hey, Bernies base is more diverse than Warrens for Christmas sake, like we cant friggin catch a break, dude

He just doesn't like Bernie. He doesn't like Bernie's message or what he stands for. He doesn't like populism. He wants government by the elite. Only he wants the elite to be elite in education, technical proficiency, etc. rather than obscenely rich.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

I came to a bit of a realization recently that this is another thing that makes me hugely prefer Warren to Bernie. A lot of his supporters give off the vibe that they're almost more interested in being the ones that everyone has to listen to then actually advancing his policies. It's really off-putting.

I've already said that I'm voting for the Democratic nominee no matter what.

Because that's where the game is at. Being listened to. You realize that is why Trump is president, right? He wasn't elected for the nuances of his policies. He provided no detail regarding his policies, only broad directions.

But he made people feel like they mattered. Like they were listened to. And he did it by actually listening, which is the same as Bernie.

It doesn't work to hear someone say my problem is X and I want you to do A to fix it, and then tell them, well I have a policy B and that's way better than A and will solve X, as well as Y and Z, so vote for me because I'm the best for your interests. That doesn't work because that is not listening.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Yeah I think it is hard to attack Bernie in the context of the primary (whereas for the general its very easy), and no one wants to piss off his supporters. But the fact is that hes the frontrunner, and if he keeps coming out of debates unscathed hes probably going to remain in that position.

Im not sure what the most effective angle would be. One I like (partially because I think it would hurt less in the general if Bernie is the nominee) is challenging Sanders on electability. Maybe that doesnt work though; I dont know! The one thing that sure as fuck wont work is leaving him alone and hoping that hell implode by himself, though.

There was a really interesting article on this dilemma from Jeb!s old communications director explaining how things went down for the GOP with Trump, which definitely has some parallels (just to be clear I absolutely do not think that Bernie is anywhere near as bad as Trump, but the strategic challenge for everyone other than Bernie is pretty similar to the one faced by everyone other than Trump in 2016):

https://twitter.com/timodc/status/1230847621058768897?s=21

Given that we are talking about Democrats, the best thing they could do to stop Bernie is to endorse him. Imagine if Pete's 46 billionaires started running TV ads talking about how great Bernie is.

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pyresword posted...

Well, first off you're the one who used the word "scary", not anyone else.

But, the reason we shouldn't allow Putin to interfere in our elections is that all indications are such that Putin's best interests lie in undermining America's economic and political influence, as well as in undermining the strength of democracy more broadly so that he can legitimize his own stranglehold on Russia. So, it stands to reason that whatever is in Putin's best interest is not in our best interest as a nation. (Though, of course it is overwhelmingly likely in Donald Trump's best interest to allow Putin to interfere in the election. That does not mean it's in the nation's best interest)

This is in addition to the point that we just shouldn't be allowing foreign influence of any sort to wage massive disinformation campaigns on the citizens of our own country regardless of the motives or perceived threat level, but Putin is a particularly egregious case as I'm sure most people would agree.

All of that is equally applicable to Michael Bloomberg, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, or Goldman Sachs.

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pyresword posted...

Why would you ever think this was the idea?

Why else is he scary?

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Bloombergs an American (and is not actively seeking the downfall of America).

So if Trump (or Congress) granted Putin American citizenship everything would be okay?

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Like really now, just what is Russia going to do that makes them so capable of deciding our elections? Bloomberg has already spent more on this election than Russia would consider doing. If the idea is that Putin is scary because he is the richest man in the world, having effective control of all of Russia's assets, well, you should probably have a problem with Bloomberg buying the election too.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

https://twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/1230904643393335298?s=21

Even 3+ years later I cant believe we elected the moron who literally said No puppet. No puppet. Youre the puppet! No youre the puppet! In a debate to be fucking president of the United States

We had no choice. The alternative was Hillary.

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Jakyl25 posted...

Shes not a sycophant though. Shes more like a Stockholm Syndrome captive who thinks she can fix the bad guys few faults

No, she knows what she's doing, and she's working hard for the people of Maine and the United States. And really delivering the results. I'd be very happy with her as my senator.

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Sheriff Joe would turn off a lot of swing voters. Remember he lost his election in 2016, where Trump won. Arpaio is mainly known for being mean and cruel.

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In my ideal world Trump offers his VP spot to Bernie.

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Corrik7 posted...

That's funny but surely Trump wants a more loyal VP right? Didn't yinz say Pence was ready to turn on Trump during the Ukraine stuff until Trump was willing to burn it all down? Plus, since yinz believe VPs from battleground states gives edges, then surely he would want one.

Who is an intensely loyal sycophant from a battleground state?

The VP also has to be a really good poison pill so Congressional Republicans don't turn on Trump. Imagine if he had picked someone they thought would be a great president as VP - they would have given a lot more thought to removing Trump from office.

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Corrik7 posted...

Hey, us outlier polls with significantly higher anti Trump numbers are right. Everyone else is wrong. = /

Economist has been going opposite of the trend basically and swinging wildly.

12/7 -9
12/14 -9
12/22 -11
12/28 -9
1/5 -11
1/11 -4
1/19 -4
1/26 -9
2/2 -10
2/9 -7
2/16 -11

January when his approval descended, they went to -4s. Now when his approval is rising, they are raising up to -11. It's like opposite of the trends. Economist seems iffy on reliability compared to the rest of the polls.

The thing is, suppose differential partisan response rate is happening, where Republicans are becoming more willing to answer polls.

You know what else is a poll people can answer or not? The election.

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Sorry, I think I exaggerated a bit. It's only really good for the 1%. It also works for the whole top 10%. Maybe it's halfway tolerable for the rest of the top 20%. But certainly not for anyone below that.

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I also don't really care about his record on civil rights from 40 years ago as long as I feel he is sincere now.

But the sticking point for me is, what ideas does Biden bring to the table? Does he have any plan other than repeating the same policies tried by Reagan/Clinton/Bush/Obama? Including hiring the same advisors.

Neoliberal economics really only works for the 1% and we cannot go back to it. We just cannot afford it as a country.

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I mean, I don't really care about it for voting purposes. It was decades ago and from what I remember, not a malicious thing. It does confirm what a lot of other things suggest, which is that Biden isn't one of the brightest people around.

And that is......actually a quality I really want in a president. Not necessarily that they are highly knowledgeable or even all around smart. But that they have insight and creativity and are not just going to do what a bunch of advisors tell them to do. If presidents were supposed to just listen to their advisors, we really wouldn't need elections at all.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Is there a less biased source than King?

I did vaguely know that he had some history with plagiarism from a long time ago, which I agree is bad but if he paid the price for that and hasnt done it in 30 or 40 years I look at that as being in the past. As far as the new allegations go its pretty hard to tell from this whether Biden has actually been blatantly making stuff up or is exaggerating and Kings interpreting it in the worst possible light. I do know that Biden has a tendency to exaggerate and mix up facts (Ive seen several Daniel Dale fact checks of him). I dont like it, but I havent seen anything so egregious to make me jump ship.

He did not pay the price. He got his degree, he got his law license, he got to be senator and vice president.

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Yeah me too, gave up a way more valuable NH vote. Though given I work in CA now maybe it wouldn't be credible to say my residence is in a state I am in 10ish days a year. Although Bloomberg seems to think it's no big deal to just transfer his domicile to Florida because he says so.

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LordoftheMorons posted...

Yeah looks like my vote might be eaten for my district given how badly Biden is doing in the bay area :(

Were you forced by the UC to move your voter registration here?

I've found voting in CA so depressing. Like what I imagine voting in the USSR to be like. Many offices where I there isn't a Republican on the ballot.

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KamikazePotato posted...

How does that work, exactly? As far as awarding delegates goes.

If replicated across all districts, Bernie would get 100% of delegates.

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Also, if Bernie wins, he better not compromise with the centrists on his VP. We do not want to elect Bernie and get Hillary. Ideally Bernie should nom a fellow socialist like himself who is not a Democrat.

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It's so scary though. If President Trump loses Florida he has to run the table of swing states pretty much or we could be in for disaster.

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LOL Florida. Well please just go ahead and give your 29 electoral votes to President Trump please.

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