Politics

Calliban · 2024-08-28 14:56:09

The paradox of declining female happiness.
https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/file … _Dec08.pdf

'By many objective measures the lives of women in the United States have improved over the past 35 years, yet we show that measures of subjective well-being indicate that women’s happiness has declined both absolutely and relative to men. The paradox of women’s declining relative well-being is found across various datasets, measures of subjective well-being, and is pervasive across demographic groups and industrialized countries. Relative declines in female happiness have eroded a gender gap in happiness in which women in the 1970s typically reported higher subjective well-being than did men. These declines have continued and a new gender gap is emerging, one with higher subjective well-being for men.'

This sounds a lot to me like the sexual revolution was a raw deal for women. It was not an act of liberation, it was an act of vandalism. People exalting the new freedoms that women now have miss the point entirely. A job is something you have to do to bring home the resources that you need. It isn't enjoyable and it isn't a privalage. It does not make people happy, it is simply a necessity. Why would anyone think that women being forced to do that would make them happier?

A woman's biological function is to produce and raise children. A man's job is to provide a secure environment for her to do that. Back in the 1960s, many women worked to provide extra money. But since the 1970s, the western world has seen an explosion in the cost of real estate. Now, all women have to work to cover the grossly inflated price of real estate and mortgage costs. And the degradation of social norms means that they often cannot count on marriage to free them from wage slavery. Even if they do get married, both partners are going to have to work to cover the enormous cost of buying a home. Many cannot start families because they cannot afford to stop working. That is not a healthy situation and it is bound to make women unhappy.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-08-28 15:24:27)

clark · 2024-08-30 23:48:24

kbd512 wrote:

clark,
Your "go ask your wife if she's scared of X / Y / Z" comment makes me think you actually believe I don't talk to or listen to my own wife. I attempted to teach her what I know about convincing other people to go away and leave her alone. She told me she wasn't interested, because "that's what she has me for". She's very far from the only woman with that attitude towards protecting herself from violence.

Then for the rest of humanity not enamored with being enabled, your wife is a data discrepancy. And you know it. Your talk big talk about freedom and being self-sufficient, and here you have your wife, "save me". She may not be the only women with that attitude, but it doesn't prove much of your point. Breed them victims. Genetics determines outcomes. I hope you see where this logic takes us all. Because if you don't, then research WW2 Germany or any period between, before or after the American civil war.

As for caring about the "2nd amendment" why don't your performative friends figure out how you support free rights to military grade automatic rifles while children die in elementary school. I mean, thanks for preventing, something, while 5 year old's don't come home from school. I appreciate your priorities. It's almost like we lost a "right" but thanks to the vigilance of those like you, a few dead kids means we get to keep that bump stock.

M

kbd512 · 2024-08-31 19:14:59

clark,

Your opinion is not representative of "the rest of humanity". Your opinion is merely another data point, same as mine. My point, which you either missed or were never interested in to begin with, was that women are fully capable of holding different opinions from your own, and mine, to include self-contradictory opinions. "I'm strong and independent, but you men out there should protect me from all evil and provide for me." There's clearly nothing contradictory about that. After these women become the men they wish to marry, they cannot figure out why men are not interested in marrying women who behave like men.

At some point in your life, there may not be anyone else there to help you. For that reason, I try to impress upon people the idea that they cannot outsource all of their personal protection needs to someone else. That only works when someone else is willing and able to help, and physically with you at the exact moment you need help. Most people reach the conclusion that only they will be there in their hour of need, but some don't.

I personally want more people (men and women alike) to be self-sufficient to the degree that they can be, because I believe it will ultimately serve them better than total reliance on the good nature of other people who are willing and able to help them and physically present to do so. Different people are different, which should surprise no one, and not result in any pointless arguments over the fact that they are.

There are a few logically valid reasons to want to overturn The Second Amendment:
1. You're someone who thinks it's someone else's responsibility to do all of your fighting for you, and that there is some utopian version of society wherein this is an achievable outcome, despite all historical evidence to the contrary. This reason is always based in childish idealism.
2. You're a criminal hoping to use the power of government to help victimize more people by disarming your would-be victims, or convincing them to disarm themselves. This reason is always malevolent.
3. You're a pacifist who thinks all conflict can be resolved without violence. To prove how selfless you are, you're willing to give up anything your attacker(s) want from you, including your life and human dignity. This reason is ultimately self-destructive.

I've never argued for why we should have "bump stocks", but the fact that you're worried about someone possessing a piece of plastic tells me you don't know much of anything about firearms. Someone can spout off some nonsense about firearms that you don't understand, and if it agrees with your own beliefs about firearms, then you'll believe it.

At some point, I would sincerely hope someone like you would ask himself what it is that you actually fear, but from your comments during COVID, I think I already know the answer. You're terrified of other people in a way that I'm not. You know, as well as I do, that certain people are horrifically violent towards their fellow men and women. That's not really a cogent explanation as to why we should penalize or restrict the freedoms of people who are not.

My belief is that our best course of action is to separate violent criminals from the rest of society so that they cannot victimize more people. In contrast, you seem to think that if we only took certain "dangerous" objects away from non-criminals, that somehow there would be less violence or the violence would be less lethal. There's vanishingly little historical evidence supporting that assertion, though.

Guns account for about half of all homicides in the US each year, roughly 10,000 out of 20,000 or so. Rifles of all kinds account for about 200 to as high as 500 out of that 10,000. It varies, year-to-year. Whether a rifle was "military grade" by your own made-up definition, or merely a semi-automatic rifle of some variety, doesn't matter much, because hardly anyone who was murdered with a firearm was shot with a rifle of any kind. The vast majority of firearms homicides are attributable to handguns. I figure perhaps half of the rifle homicides are attributable to whatever you define a military weapon to be, based upon physical appearance or some other nonsense criteria you cannot define. In rough numbers, there are at least 15 million AR-15s in civilian hands. There are probably 25 to 40 million semi-automatic rifles in total. There are probably more now since so many Democrat voters finally figured out that Democrat politicians won't lock up repeat violent criminals. I figure about 0.5% of all firearms homicides are attributable to semi-automatic rifles of any kind.

Approximately twice as many people are killed each year in the US with fists and feet, as compared to rifles of any description. If we banned "bump stocks", it would have a near-zero or actual zero effect on the murder rate. Since people were shooting other people with firearms long before "bump stocks" existed, I'm going to go way out on a limb and say the likely number is pretty close to actual zero.

Calliban · 2024-09-01 23:59:59

If you want to know where this sort of left-wing, control freak attitude will take you, extend your gaze across the Atlantic towards Britain. In the UK, most firearms are banned and you need a licence (granted by the police) to own something like a shotgun. There are strict limits on muzzle velocity for airguns. Machettes and swords are banned. Not just banned from carrying, you cannot own one even in the privacy of your own home. Threatening looking knives are banned. Speech and belief systems are heavily monitored and often criminalised.

In spite of all this, violent crime has never been so high in UK cities. Why? The UK imports foreign criminals. The criminals do not care what laws the UK government makes. That is why they are called criminals. Left wing thinking has resulted in one of the most oppressive environments on Earth, alongside one of the highest crime rates. Top down oppression rarely brings peace. The most peaceful countries are peaceful because they have a responsible citizenship with well established ties of kinship. In white Republican areas, gun crime rates are low in the US, despite having high rates of gun ownership. Gun homicide figures for the US as a whole are lower than they appear, because terminally ill people often top themselves using their guns and these incidents are recorded as homicide. That is one more reason why guns SHOULD be available to people. When all hope is gone and pain makes life unbearable, a gun provides people with a fast and dignified exit strategy.

The right to bare arms in the US is enshrined in the constitution. It was done so that the American people would always have the means to remove a tyrannical and evil government. If you want to know what that government looks like, extend your gaze across the Atlantic towards Britain. The British government serves as a shining example of why you need an armed citizenry. There are evil psychopathic people in every part of society. But they are nowhere so prevalent as they are in government. People that want to disarm the citizenship inevitably have evil intentions towards them. They want them disarmed, helpless and easy to abuse. The American people fought a violent revolution to escape the psychopaths and sadists that run the British government. That freedom was hard earned. Do not be fooled into relinquishing it.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-09-02 00:22:04)

kbd512 · 2024-09-02 02:37:03

Calliban,

Disarmament has always been a pretext for forced co-dependence with and subjugation to the most depraved elements of society.

Terraformer · 2024-09-02 03:28:31

Reducing people's ability to defend themselves down to their bare hands, making physical strength the determining factor, is misogynistic. Sam Colt was a major proponent of women's liberation

In Britain, firearms covers pepper spray. The only kind of self defence a woman is allowed against an attacker with twice the upper body strength is her own physical ability. We should at least make sure to level the playing field more than this...

kbd512 · 2024-09-02 10:53:26

Terraformer,

That's always what I thought, but apparently some of our "women's advocates" out there would rather enforce women's dependence upon good men for their self-protection. More than a few women seem all-too-happy to let them do it, but their take on firearms and self defense has changed over time. Since we now have so many weak of character and effeminate men who were never raised by their fathers to behave and treat women as mature men do, I think women relying upon men who are either unwilling or unable to protect them is a rather absurd plan of action for our immediate future.

I didn't teach my wife and daughter how to use firearms because I thought better or worse of their physical abilities, relative to a man. I did so because there's always someone who is stronger / faster / more violent than you are, yet the gun remains a great equalizer in terms of physical force disparity. People who wish to subjugate and abuse other people seem to have a much more difficult time doing that when those who they wish to victimize are better armed and trained than they are.

What we teach in class is the use of hands, feet, knives, and other improvised weapons. However, we preface all of that by telling the students, women and men alike, to seek out competent firearms instruction, and to use what we're teaching them only when they cannot use a firearm, for whatever reason. We do this because we care about the lives of our students. If there's anything at all they can do to tilt the odds in their favor during an attack by a violent criminal, to convince said criminal to go away and leave them alone, then we want them to use all the tools at their disposal, rather than purely whatever we've taught them. We articulate that concept to them as well as we know how, in as many different ways as we know how. Owning a hammer doesn't make you a carpenter. A carpenter has many tools and uses all of them when and where appropriate.

We also teach our students to fight only as a last resort, regardless of how capable they are relative to their attacker(s). Legal jeopardy is one aspect of fighting between civilians in a civilized society that everyone who survives a criminal assault should count on. Regardless of how horrendously violent your attacker(s) may have been, or how reluctant to fight you were, there's no guarantee as to which party will be assigned blame in a legal system dominated by immoral and amoral people.

Even though I detest the worst aspects of religion, I'm at least honest enough with myself and others to admit that the traditional religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism) teach morality to those who abide by those teachings. Society is lacking morality worse than any other feature. If there was a "shared morality" between the various members of society, on any basic level, then even our most intractable problems are greatly diminished in scope and severity. Criminality will always be with us, much like poverty, but that doesn't mean morality cannot ease the burden of those problems.

Calliban · 2024-09-05 09:27:07

GW Johnson wrote:

Free speech is NOT an absolute right, despite what Musk and several others claim. If you yell "fire" in a crowded theater, there had bloody well better well be a fire in there, or you are going to jail for endangering the public. The critical elements are (1) truth, and (2) public danger.
Musk's version of X is rife with lies, racist crap, neo-nazi crap, and much disinformation. The disinformation can incite violence, which is why it is a public danger. Why is anyone surprised when a legal system would disallow such things?
Musk is operating within another country, which means he has to obey their rules to operate within it. If he fails to obey their rules, he must take the consequences of that failure.
GW

That is incredibly naive.

Your rights are simply whatever 'other people with power over you' decide they are going to be. That is all a right really is. Which is what makes a constitution, bill of rights, seperation of powers and an apolitical civil service and justice system, all so very important. This was the greatest achievement of the United States. A system of government that protects individuals from the ugly, naked power of the state. You might understand better the importance of this inheritance if you had been born into a country without it. A country like Britain, which has no such protections against the abuse of state power.

Speech has indeed always had limitations in common law. Many of them are directly designed to protect people and most people comply with them voluntarily. Inciting and planning murder is illegal in most places. Spilling military secrets is also illegal. Lying to incriminate someone is illegal. Wilfully lying to cause a riot or panic that kills or injures people is usually illegal as well. Very few people oppose these examples because they apply equally to everyone and are not political weapons designed to advantage one person over another.

But contention comes when speech is curtailed under the pretense of protecting the safety of some defined group, but in reality is being done to protect and enforce the authority of specific political actors. Or to empower a politically defined minority against the majority. This is what is being done with the creation of hate speech laws covering race and religion. It protects specific groups from facing public opinion, by making it illegal to call out their behaviour. It sets people against one another and turns foreign people into a fifth column against the native majority.

GW Johnson wrote:

Musk's version of X is rife with lies, racist crap, neo-nazi crap, and much disinformation. The disinformation can incite violence, which is why it is a public danger. Why is anyone surprised when a legal system would disallow such things?

That is your opinion, it isn't a fact. 'Racist' is a communist slander word that they throw at anyone that doesn't buy into their vision of a mixed race utopia. A neo-nazi is another slur that they throw at people who don't buy into their BS. The Nazi party ceased to exist in 1945. Communists weaponise language, use it to demonise their opponents and when they cannot control the content of public speech, they punish the forum. You are a walking and talking example of why speech needs apolitical protections that are embedded within a constitution and protected by a supreme court. Musk understands that. He actually has strict rules against advocating violence on X. It is not a rule-free forum. But he refuses to respect rules created by communist group think that are designed to promote identity politics. Which is why communists want to shut him down.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-09-05 09:39:10)

kbd512 · 2024-09-05 14:09:10

Calliban,

If someone actually believes that, then they're going to assert that anyone who says things they disagree with is racist or bigoted or whatever slander words they can throw out to mask their inability to articulate what they think is wrong beyond their own anger towards the idea, because someone else voiced a difference of opinion. I must be one of the few people who thinks difference of opinion is completely normal, rational, to be expected, and even cherished, because it means we're not all boring as hell robots who think / speak / act in near-identical ways. It also means that maybe someone knows something that I don't, so I might learn something from them.

I fully expect that any and all ideas I throw out in a public forum to be challenged, and rightly so. As long as the challenge is more substantive than, "you're stupid because I said so", I feel like both myself and other people can at least potentially learn something from the exchange. With any luck, that process of learning improves our lot in life. The idea that a falsehood would go unchallenged, or worse, reinforced with false group think, is anathema to intellectualism. In point of fact, that would signal the death knell of intellectualism. As so many have already articulated, I believe we've entered into a new "Age of Unreason". I don't know where that will take us, but it probably won't be where we actually want to go, nor where the unreasonable amongst us expected it to go.

clark · 2024-09-11 01:23:32

SO MUCH. but just going to add this to my free thinking American friends. Calliban is a full class racist. I know he does "mars" sh*t. But come on, he is left of left field. But hey, play your "im going to listen to your ideology game." Just note what you defend or allow. kbd, your world view i reject, but you are not a racist. You see humanity. But come on guys, look at what you allow for the sake of engagement. Literally, if you do not publicly reject his statements you are accepting agreement.

Calliban · 2024-09-11 07:46:28

clark wrote:

SO MUCH. but just going to add this to my free thinking American friends. Calliban is a full class racist. I know he does "mars" sh*t. But come on, he is left of left field. But hey, play your "im going to listen to your ideology game." Just note what you defend or allow. kbd, your world view i reject, but you are not a racist. You see humanity. But come on guys, look at what you allow for the sake of engagement. Literally, if you do not publicly reject his statements you are accepting agreement.

Clark, I am not responsible for your psychological problems. I have never met you. You continue to provide a living example of the neuroses that develop in the minds of human beings. You cannot tolerate the presence of people that disagree with you. You cannot debate anything without venting spite and personal insults. This illustrates to me that you have mental insecurities and you have built up an inner belief system of utopian political ideals as a way of making sense of a dangerous outside world. You feel threatened by people that might 'say things' that undermine that belief system, because your emotional security is built around it. When that happens you vent anger and spite as if those people are in some way threatening to you. You call for such people to be excluded from debate. You have what psychologists refer to as a 'complex'. But your offence is taken, not given. I do not cause your reactions by believing in something different. You are the cause and you are the only one that can solve your problems.

When you first started trolling me, I pointed out that your behaviour demonstrates mental illness. The insults and vitriol in your posts demonstrate that you have emotional problems. I don't need to be a medical professional to see that you have a problem. I maintain that point. I pity you that you have that problem, but I am powerless to solve it. If I were not here, you would still have your problem and would be trolling someone else.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-09-11 07:49:50)

kbd512 · 2024-09-11 15:35:04

clark,

I reject the worldview that we must publicly denounce or exclude from public debate, any viewpoint which does not pass some other specific person's own equally arbitrary worldview. It's either anti-intellectualism or performative virtue signaling of the worst kind. That's the intellectual equivalent of a Sunni muslim telling a Shia muslim that they're not "real muslms", nor "true believers" in Islam. Alternatively, if you're pretending that you're so much better than they are because you hold a different belief than they do. Well... Gee whiz, every anti-intellectual religious group throughout all of human history has made that exact same claim at least once about anyone and everyone else who does not imbibe in their religion. Dogmatic religious beliefs do not make one "right" or "virtuous", they merely make one a "tribalist". It also tends to make one very rigid and thoughtless in their worldviews. "I don't need any introspection, because I have faith, and my faith in my beliefs makes me right, as I define myself." After you're done patting yourself on the back over that, try doing some real thinking. If you only know your own beliefs about any particular issue, then you know very little. Arguments stemming from that line of reasoning are very unpersuasive.

Real virtue and tolerance of other ideas includes:
1. possessing the intellectual faculties to tell other people why we think their viewpoints are wrong or bad (calling someone names only indicates your own inability to do more than express something more substantive than anger over what they said)
2. the ability to actually listen to what someone else has said without using your brain to "read-into" what was never stated
3. the honesty to ask direct explanatory questions for sake of clarity about the beliefs of others, in lieu of simply "making up in our heads" what we merely perceive that others believe
4. the acceptance that some of our viewpoints will never align
5. the humility to believe that all of us are fallible, that we're all capable of allowing our emotions to get the better of us, and that we can either choose to hold beliefs against others forever, or move on with the rest of our lives

Those last two points are key to humanizing everyone who does not think or believe exactly as we do. I can hold the belief that someone else is fully capable of sincerely believing something I completely disagree with, without behaving as though them expressing their difference of opinion in a public forum represents any kind of existential threat to me or my viewpoints. I can do that, because I have thought through the intellectual merits and demerits of my own ideas and their ideas.

Watching what's going on in this country and so many others right now, and how people don't even talk to each other anymore unless they get some kind of "signal" that the other person is 100% aligned to their own worldview, is surreal. This is happening because a select few individuals have decided to pick issues, polarize them, and religiously politicize absolutely every idea, no matter how petty or ridiculous. Most people are very easy to manipulate because their emotions "rule them". Well, ruling over that kind of person, regardless of how creative they otherwise are, is not that hard to do, because they're slaves to their emotions.

That kind of public discourse is taken directly from Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals". It's how I actually "know" what is going on. I don't simply read what agrees with my own worldview, I also read things I completely disagree with, which I can do without feeling that my core identity is somehow threatened by beliefs I completely disagree with. I read the Communist Manifesto and Mein Kampf to understand what motivates communists and socialists. I read Rules for Radicals to understand what animates radical leftists.

I'm not afraid of these anti-intellectual anti-virtuous mobs of angry and spiteful people. They're cretins, plain and simple. I don't have to devolve to their level of discourse. I can simply call them out, they can go nuts, and I will snack on my popcorn while they work themselves up into a tizzy over something they cannot even articulate.

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have."
This point is so true, it's hard to underestimate. Why do our leftists never exploit this to our advantage in foreign conflicts, in order to prevent them in the first place? We don't need to "make nice" with countries like Russia or China. We have more real and repeatedly demonstrated firepower than they do.

2. "Never go outside the experience of your people."
This is why the left never wins any arguments over the Second Amendment. They're all too stunningly ignorant on this issue, which 2A advocates never fail to illustrate to otherwise disinterested onlookers.

3. "Whenever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy."
The entire trans movement is a great example of exploiting this, so bravo on that.

4. "Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules."
This tactic no longer has any effect, because you failed to follow Rule #7.

5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon. There is no defense. It is almost impossible to counterattack ridicule. Also it infuriates the opposition, who then react to your advantage."
The left is truly great at this, but when it's used against them it still works equally well.

6. "A good tactic is one your people enjoy."
That explains the school playground behavior, but again, this ultimately fails when used against actual well-adjusted adults, which is why the left is constantly attacking children.

7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag."
Calling people names doesn't work forever. Eventually everyone sees right through the ploy.

8. "Keep the pressure on."
This is what I think is driving the left into the ground, because all the pressure is actually on them. Someone who is in a naturally comfortable state cannot be readily agitated to be uncomfortable, but someone who is already agitated cannot remain agitated forever without suffering from severe mental health issues.

9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
This certainly applies to President Trump. If he gets in office, he's going to be a dictator who says mean stuff and... did nothing to the left except agitate them to behave as they normally do, except now the right is doing the agitation.

10. "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
Agreed.

11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside; this is based on the principle that every positive has its negative."
This is how DEI, woke-ism, and cancel culture ultimately fell apart. It became a circular firing squad.

12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative."
The left in America rarely presents constructive alternatives these days, and it's why they've had so little and fleeting success in changing much more than their own culture.

13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
The target is the entirety of western civilization and liberalized democracy. Our radicals keep falling back on the very tired and failed idea of socialist / communist ideology. I haven't seen a newer or better idea come out of the left since that idea took root in the counter-culture of the 1960s. We already tried it, it hasn't worked, and it's time for a new idea.

What's the "constructive alternative" to moral, humble, and giving men and women choosing to cooperate with each other to raise children who will then become the next generation of our society?

If it's only nihilism and eventual self-destruction, how is that a "constructive alternative"?

What does a realistic self-sustaining alternative to what we were previously doing, actually involve?

If you convince men and women to behave in an antagonistic manner towards each other, convince women to kill their own babies, and rip out all the other underpinnings of civilized society (safety from external threats, abundant food / energy, economic prosperity, religions which take care of the poor, and tech that serves people vs people serving tech), then what are you left with?

We're going to tear up our Constitution and then do what, exactly?

Are we going to be "Not American" Americans? Really? How is that supposed to work? People like you will be the very first to become disillusioned with what you get, because you're already disillusioned. You will then tear down what you've built, because you'll eventually be disgusted by it. I think you already are.

This is where someone who operates beyond tribalism, yet thinks our present course of action is either the best one or best alternative, should make an intellectual argument about what they think it will lead to.

I'll let you in on a little secret. I've never made it all the way through a single Trump speech. I just can't do it. I've tried, many times. I'm personally irritated not by what he actually says, but how he says it. I can't exactly explain why, I just am. I can only listen to him in small doses. I feel the same way about President Biden and Vice President Harris, because both of them are the dictionary definition of "failing upwards". They're all dumber than dishwater, and I don't just mean the Democrats. I tried watching the Presidential debate last night, but all of it sounded so dumb that I just couldn't. All I know for certain is that both our economy and foreign policy situation was almost infinitely better when President Trump was in office, as compared to what it is right now (Ukraine/Russia War, Israel/Palestine War, soon to be China/Taiwan/US War), at least until our radical left lunatics (Fauci, Daszak, and their beloved commies in Wuhan) ruined that with their utterly insane COVID virus experiment. I can set aside my personal dislike of how President Trump says things long enough to recognize that what he was doing actually worked, which is why American workers had their only real wage increase in my lifetime, relative to inflation, under President Trump. How I feel about how he says things is irrelevant when compared to that. He's not dating my daughter, I don't have to meet him, I wouldn't even have to see him if the psychotic leftist groupies who follow him around would stop fixating on him and talk about almost anything else. There was plenty of other stuff going on that had nothing to do with Trump, but they couldn't stop themselves because they're psychotic. People who are truly nuts are the only ones who think they're perfectly sane and rational.

President Trump became a lightning rod for all the nutball insanity of our radical left, so they would focus all of their energy on attacking him, while mostly leaving everyone else to their own devices, so that the rest of us could get on with the business of being America. That's what he's actually "good at" and "good for". He's a scratching post to scratch all the "go nuts" itches of our assorted radicals (left and right). While he's there in office, our radicals can throw all of their bile and vitriol at him, instead of the rest of us. I'm not itching for a fight, I'm itching to be left the hell alone. I truly mean that. Every word of it. That's why we need him. Otherwise, the Democrats fight themselves while doing nothing constructive for the rest of us. By constructive, I mean anything at all which doesn't leave more Americans poorer or an otherwise worse predicament than they were in to begin with.

During these past four years, I don't even know who was actually in charge of our federal government, because it sure as hell wasn't Biden, since he cannot even speak coherently. If it actually was Harris, then all the more reason to get rid of them, because both the American economy and the rest of the world went to pot with her or whomever was left in charge. If it was someone who was never elected to office, such as his wife, then we have a much much deeper problem, because nobody I know, Democrat or Republican EVER voted for her. Giving them another four years probably won't change anything, because they'll simply double-down on what they've been doing, until some outside force motivates them to change, and right now there isn't any. If there was, it would probably involve a complete breakdown of civil order, which nobody in their right mind truly wants. Why would they do anything different? They got their way, they were given power, so what would motivate them to change? They'll keep doing exactly what got them elected, because from their perspective it worked.

That's my underlying beef with the Democrats. A guy who can't even speak coherently was somehow elected President, essentially because "muh Trump". He was somehow ousted by his own political party despite expressing a desire to run for reelection, and now somebody that not even the Democrats voted for in their primary is their Presidential candidate, despite the fact that she was so unpopular with her own political constituents that she never won a single delegate vote, because she didn't receive enough votes from the electorate. If that doesn't sound insane to anyone else, then maybe you haven't been paying attention. If you take no issue with that, then you essentially don't believe in actually practicing our democratic process. There was plenty of time for a run-off to replace President Biden, but the Democrat Party didn't bother with having one. Worse still, nobody invoked the 25th Amendment after it was undeniably obvious that he couldn't think or speak coherently. How long until the Democrats won't even both with holding elections to elect their own candidates?

Our state of affairs is beyond ridiculous. I don't care if the rest of the world is even worse.

kbd512 · 2024-09-11 16:42:30

In rough general terms, I think "The New World Order" / "Bretton Woods Agreement" fell apart. It just fell flat on its face after the US dollar was completely detached from its tie to the Gold Standard. I'm not suggesting that we go back to using Gold, but rather when a currency is not tied to anything real, it's ultimately doomed to collapse because there's no incentive for the holders of the fiat currency to be fiscally responsible. US monetary policy and fiscal restraint was completely obliterated during the 1970s, which is how and why we all became so much poorer, relative to decades past which still remain within living memory. There are not enough people here in America, nor abroad for that matter, to sustain the economic growth. After that happened, debt spiraled, and our fiat currency's value is nearly worthless now. This is not to assert that any other nation is "better off", because they all did the same insane thing.

The Democrats' argument seems to be that since our currency's purchasing power is so worthless, relative to what it was in the past, that it really doesn't matter if they print trillions of new dollars. Taxing the money you just printed doesn't work, because it's not generating any net new economic activity. It accomplishes their wealth transfer imperative, but only on paper. Our government doesn't actually own anything "new" by printing more money, except for the paper itself and promise to pay back the investors. You can tinker with the terms and conditions of that Ponzi scheme any way you wish, but at the end of the day it doesn't increase the valuation of the assets.

The Republicans' argument seems to be that we should not spend any money on government, which is equally absurd, or at least it is to me.

The issue is not what the government will spend your money on, but what you can afford to pay back to our government after they issue more currency, which has the word "debt" printed on it for a very good reason. That is what the money represents to you and I- debt that we, the ordinary Joe Schmos, are then obligated to somehow "pay back" into our Federal Reserve, which created the debt.

Put another way, you slice a pie a hundred times or a million times, but how you slice it doesn't actually increase the total amount of pie available. If you have more apples and more pie crust and more people who pay for pie, then and only then do you get net organic economic growth. Only net organic economic growth can produce that, because 69% of our economy is driven by consumption. All of us "consuming" a smaller and smaller relative amount of "pie" (debt / money supply), doesn't increase our purchasing power, it can only decrease it.

This is a painfully stupid game. It's insane to me that nobody who votes for either side has "caught on" to what is actually happening.

That is what actually happened under President Biden's administration- they ran the debt / money printing presses almost to the point of them catching fire. We are now responsible for paying this all back, with interest, with fewer and fewer people. How in the hell are we supposed to do that? We imported a bunch of people from other countries, but they don't actually increase net growth until about another generation down the road. That was a potentially very clever idea the Democrats had, if it wasn't 20 years too late.

When you think about demographics, you should think in terms of 20 (peak consumption), 40 (stabilized consumption), and 60 (peak earning potential, net organic economic growth IF AND ONLY IF they had kids who became the next generation of consumers, followed by severe decline and depression because all that money gets pulled out of the economy and sunk into DEBT) years.

kbd512 · 2024-09-16 08:32:51

A second lunatic has tried to murder President Trump. This one was 58 years old, so the "young and dumb" excuse cannot be used. Well... He was still painfully dumb, but that's besides the point. This fellow was apparently trying to convince young Afghans and possibly Americans to go fight the Russians in Ukraine.

From Reuters:

...
On April 21, Routh directed an X message to Elon Musk, in which he wrote: "I would like to buy a rocket from you. I wish to load it with a warhead for Putins Black sea mansion bunker to end him. Can you give me a price please."
The New York Times reported it had interviewed Routh in 2023 for an article about Americans who were volunteering to help the Ukraine war effort. Routh told the Times he'd traveled to Ukraine and spent several months there in 2022 and was trying to recruit Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban to fight in Ukraine.
"A lot of the other conflicts are grey but this conflict is definitely black and white. This is about good versus evil," Routh said in an interview posted by Newsweek Romania in June 2022. His comments suggested he was in Kyiv at the time.
Routh said he had initially planned to go to Ukraine to fight, but was not accepted due to his age and lack of military experience.
The International Legion, where many foreign fighters in Ukraine serve, said it had no links with Routh.
On X in 2020, Routh expressed support for Democratic U.S. presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and mocked Biden as "sleepy Joe."
Earlier this year, Routh tagged Biden in a post on X: "@POTUS Your campaign should be called something like KADAF. Keep America democratic and free. Trumps should be MASA ...make Americans slaves again master. DEMOCRACY is on the ballot and we cannot lose."
...

Meanwhile, someone from the administration of President Biden accidentally sent an E-mail to Fox News, because they're either incompetent or just don't care, expressing their utter contempt for our veterans. They showed no respect for our war dead following their botched Afghanistan pull-out, so it should surprise no one that Democrats don't respect any of us who survived, either.

kbd512 · 2024-11-05 11:27:23

As a reminder to my fellow Americans: Today, November 5th, 2024, is Election Day. GO VOTE!

RobertDyck · 2024-11-05 14:54:45

I have reposted videos from Jake Broe on an internet group with a number of Trump supporters. My concern is propaganda and disinformation from Russia about the war in Ukraine. Jake Broe posts a YouTube video about 3 times per week covering events of the war. I post a link and a "Cole's Notes" for those who don't want to watch. Two days ago I wrote this as part of my post...

Jake covers campaigns for the US presidential election. Jake is a one-issue channel, he supports Ukraine. I understand many on this channel support smaller government, less regulation, and believe Trump will deliver. I agree with smaller government and less regulation, but I don't live in the US so try to avoid partisan politics in the US. Jake is an American who lives in Las Vegas. But Jake played one speech from Trump: "In many cases our allies are worse than our so-called enemies." America's enemies are Russia, China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela. Is Trump saying France is worse for America than Russia? Germany is worse for America than China? Canada is worse for America than North Korea? This isn't how you maintain an alliance.

RobertDyck · 2024-11-05 15:55:08

An interesting video by Peter Zeihan. Short version: he doesn't like any of the candidates for president. He has a detailed, scathing description of just how screwed America is no matter who wins. He ends the video by saying he has probably thoroughly pissed-off everyone, so realize by the time we see this video he's already out of the country for a couple days.
YouTube: America After the Election: Foreign Policy || Peter Zeihan

May I make a polite suggestion? I would like to see "None of the Above" added to the ballot. If "None of the Above" wins more votes than any candidate, then it requires a run-off election or by-election, and none of the candidates who's names were on the ballot are allowed to be on the ballot again. So all parties will have to find a new candidate. Keep doing this until someone wins. Once someone wins, it resets, so the candidates who lost before could run again. The ban isn't permanent. The reason for disallowing candidates to be on the by-election is voters already voted against them. Could I campaign for "none of the Above"?

Ps. Go Vote!!!
I may not like the candidates available in the US right now, failure to vote means you let someone else choose. And you may not like who they choose. If your candidate does lose, the fact you voted means you are justified to complain. If you don't vote, you can't complain.

kbd512 · 2024-11-06 09:15:52

After accumulating 277 Electoral College votes, The Associated Press appears to have called the 2024 Presidential Election for the 47th President of the United States of America, President-elect Donald J. Trump. It would appear that President-elect Trump is likely to win the popular vote as well, with approximately 5 million more votes at the time of this writing, as compared to his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. However, there are still outstanding votes which have yet to be counted. To my knowledge, no concession has been made at the present time, so all votes need to be counted. Vice President Harris will deliver her remarks to her supporters later today.

The Republican Party will hold a Senate majority, with 52 senators elected at the time of this writing.

House races are still being tabulated.

The Republican Party has elected 198 House members and the Democrat Party has elected 180 House members at the time of this writing.

kbd512 · 2024-11-06 14:55:33

US 2024 Elections Results Updates

Presidency Election Results
President-elect Trump now has 292 Electoral College votes and his popular vote lead remains virtually unchanged, at approximately 5 million more total votes than Vice President Harris. Current vote tallies are about 72 million votes to 67 million votes, in favor of President-elect Trump. It would appear that for Maine, Vice President Harris will capture at least 3 of the 4 Electoral College votes, which should bump her total Electoral College vote count to at least 227, but since Maine is not a "winner take all" state, all votes must be counted. Alaska, Arizona, and Nevada still have ongoing vote counting taking place. The Associated Press believes that President Trump will retain his lead in these states, but that remains to be seen, and it's too soon to call any of those states.

Senate Elections Results
Senate election results remain unchanged due to ongoing counting of ballots in Maine, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, thus far 52 Republican and 44 Democrat senators.

House Elections Results
House election results are now updated, with Republicans taking 201 House seats and Democrats taking 186 House seats.

Calliban · 2024-11-06 15:51:16

Not everyone reading this board will be happy with the election result. Politics varies, because life experience varies. But within the (relatively) narrow interests of this board (space colonisation) this is the best US administration since John F Kennedy. Better in fact. A return to the moon and onwards to Mars, fits the MAGA ethos perfectly. And Trump's new bestie and principle technical advisor is none other than Elon Musk. So far as Mars is concerned, this confluence of political outcomes may be a truly pivotal moment in history. It is analogous to the passion for exploration that gripped the Iberian peninsular in the 15th century. That ultimately led to the discovery and settling of America and a worldof wealth and technology that our ancestors could not have imagined. Maybe we stand at the cusp of something similar right now? I dare to hope.

Last edited by Calliban (2024-11-06 15:52:38)

Calliban · 2024-11-06 17:26:12

As an aside, the 2020 election result looks even more suspicious given the recent one.
https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1854144250562429081

The question is, if 2020 was the result of cheating on the Dem side, why didn't they cheat again? The democrat vote is literally half what it was in 2020. The 2020 vote seems to defy reasonable explaination.

kbd512 · 2024-11-06 17:46:18

US 2024 Elections Results Updates

Presidency Election Results
President-elect Trump has secured 295 Electoral College votes.
Vice President Harris has secured 226 Electoral College votes.
The popular vote has shifted slightly in favor of Vice President Harris, as President-elect Trump now has just over 4.8 million more votes than Vice President Harris.

The Associated Press has yet to call the Presidential election results for Arizona and Nevada. As near as I can tell, results from these two states are the only ones still in progress to any significant degree.

Senate Elections Results
Results remain unchanged.
Republicans secured 52 seats.
Democrats secured 44 seats.

House Elections Results
Republicans have now secured 205 seats.
Democrats have now secured 190 seats.
Edit: Independents Angus King Jr (Maine) and Bernie Sanders (Vermont) appear to have won reelection. Senator Sanders won his race by an incredible margin. I have no idea why the race has yet to be called for Senator King, who is also ahead of his opponent by a considerable margin.

Gubernatorial Elections Results
Republicans have been elected Governor of 27 states.
Democrats have been elected Governor of 23 states.

Last edited by kbd512 (2024-11-06 17:53:36)

Void · 2024-11-07 08:01:21

I have been thinking about a way to track large scale voting fraud.

It would involve having a thumbprint on a ballot. A Standard Ballot might take a Right Thumbprint.

If a voter did not have that option then their might be a Left Thumbprint exception ballot.

If you could not do that then there could be a Next Exception which might require other paths to validation.

So, when counting votes the print would be scanned. If the machines see 100 very similar thumbprints, then some sort of investigation might be invoked to track down who did it.

While it could be argued that some homeless and other unfortunate people may not have access to a valid ID, most people have a Right Thumb, and a Left Thumb.

You would not so much invalidate a ballot by way of a thumbprint, rather you would collect evidence of who has a thumbprint that keeps showing up.

We sometimes require citizens to do things like military service or some other obligation. I think that if you want the right to cast a vote, then this is the very minimum of an obligation. If a voter cannot consent, then they forfeit their right to vote.

And if they cast an exception for a ballot, such as doing a Left Thumbprint because they lack the Right Thumb, then if in a following election event they do a Right Thumbprint, that could also raise a flag.

I would not yet call this a perfected plan, but I think it is moving towards a possible method.

Ending Pending

This could also catch dead voters, who had a print taken previously.

Ending Pending

Last edited by Void (2024-11-07 08:12:49)

kbd512 · 2024-11-07 14:25:29

US 2024 Elections Results Updates

Presidency Election Results
Results appear unchanged.
295 Electoral College votes for President-elect Trump
226 Electoral College votes for Vice President Harris

The Associated Press has yet to call the Presidential election results for Arizona and Nevada.

The popular vote has shifted slightly in favor of Vice President Harris, as President-elect Trump now has just over 4.65 million more votes than Vice President Harris. Most of this appears to be the result of a trickle-in counting process of Democrat votes from our West Coast states, namely California, Oregon, and Washington. At this point, enough votes have been counted to say with a reasonably high degree of confidence that President-elect Trump will retain the popular vote.

Senate Elections Results
Republicans secured 52 seats.
Democrats secured 45 seats.
Independents secured 2 seats.

House Elections Results
Republicans secured 210 seats.
Democrats secured 197 seats.

Gubernatorial Elections Results
I believe these results are now finalized.
Republicans have been elected Governor of 27 states.
Democrats have been elected Governor of 23 states.

kbd512 · 2024-11-07 23:06:18

US 2024 Elections Results Updates

Presidency Election Results
I'm taking my official election information from The Associated Press, but apparently more than 95% of the vote is now in for Arizona and Nevada, which has yet to be reflected in the vote totals displayed by The Associated Press for whatever reason. However, a number of other news organizations have now called Arizona and Nevada for President-elect Trump. This puts President-elect Trump's Electoral College vote total at 312. We're much closer to having our vote tallies being finalized at this point, with the exception of House races and some local elections.

Presidency election results are not completely finalized, but won't change in a meaningful way.

President-elect Donald J. Trump will become the 47th President of the United States of America.

The 46th President of the United States of America, President Joseph R. Biden Jr, has announced by way of press announcement that a peaceful and orderly transition of power will take place. Our current President has invited President-elect Donald J. Trump to the White House to begin that process.

Senate Elections Results
Republicans secured 53 seats.
Democrats secured 45 seats.
Independents secured 2 seats.

There are at most 1 to 2 Senate seats still being contested. I believe these will go to the Democrats, but outstanding votes remain to be counted in Arizona and Nevada. There is something amiss with their elections process. Both of those states consistently fail to count their votes in a reasonable amount of time.

House Elections Results
Republicans secured 211 seats.
Democrats secured 197 seats.

House race election results are also still being tabulated in Arizona and Nevada.

Gubernatorial Elections Results
Gubernatorial election results appear to be finalized. No changes or challenges are expected.

To the best of my knowledge, no national level ballot measures were set before the American people on which to cast their votes.

To the best of my knowledge, no recounts have been requested at this time, although that may change in the future.

We are very close to achieving a quorum, for the purpose of continuing our form of government and way of life.

I would like to express a heart-felt "thank you" to my fellow Americans who participated in our 2024 elections process. Our form of government, a Constitutional Republic with democratically-elected representatives, functions best when we maximize our participation as citizens of the United States of America- land of the free, home of the brave.

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