Thanatos

I'm right in the middle of buying a house and have got way too much going on this year to do this right now, unfortunately.

I absolutely agree here, which is why I think Bernie's plan is second to Yang's. Give people $1000/mo and let them decide what to do with it. We'd still need a safety net for people who get hit with the ridiculous costs for say, chemotherapy. I also think people below a certain income should not be paying more in taxes. That doesn't really make sense to me. A vote for Bernie, to me, at this point, is not me thinking M4A is going to be a thing shortly. I don't think he can get it past Congress. It's more that Bernie is an actual progressive running here and we need to shift the government that way.

I think he assumes that a lot of poorer people, (speaking as one myself), have medical conditions that they either A) pay out of pocket for or B) are simply not getting checked out due to price. I'm in camp B, to be sure, so while I think I would pay about $200 more overall, M4A is also about having peace of mind that if something big does happen I'm not utterly fucked like I would be at the moment. It also doesn't tie my insurance to my job, as it is at the moment, which makes it even harder to find another job if necessary. Health insurance is a damn racket. Ever since I figured out how to look up the actual cost of the drug versus what the insurance charges, (I work in pharmacy, I can access that information easily enough) my mind is blown on a daily basis.

I meant how much are you paying in healthcare costs. But yeah its a 4% tax, so the more you make the more you would pay.

How much are you paying for it, would be the question.

Yeah I misread you at first and redid my post. I'm not talking about general election polls I'm talking about head to head in swing states. I concur they can be inaccurate but to argue he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell is silly. Sanders site is talking about the combined total of out-of-pocket medical expenses, including cost of drugs, plus total medical insurance cost you pay. The Castro comments are stupidly blown out of proportion. Obama said roughly the same thing. Just because Castro was a pretty bad dictator doesn't mean literally everything in Cuba was bad. Trump says and does things on a daily basis that are way worse and no one seems to care anymore.

Bernie beats Trump in like 80% of the head to head polls. So he doesn't have a snowball's chance in hell. Gotcha. His tax plan is spelled out on his website here: https://www.bernietax.com/ So you can absolutely put it in there and find out, he is upfront about it.

Sanders is attempting to move the party to the left. You don't do that by holding positions just to the left of the mainstream. Bernie's position is that things like M4A pay for themselves in the long run, due to lowered hospital costs. He does have studies that supports such an assertion but there are also studies that claim otherwise. What we need to do, and what no one is brave enough to suggest, is cut military spending in half. And take a hard look at how we acquire things for the military because they don't it in a very cost-efficient manner. We don't need to have the strongest military in the world by 30 miles, just by five. Gabbard is dead on accurate here, and I would love for Bernie to pick her or Yang as his VP. I hope he does not pick a moderate liberal. I really think its time to try to see what power the real left of this country has. I think for too long the Dems have been concerned with appeasing the moderates and playing to the middle ground. Bernie ain't gonna appeal to many republicans, so fuck it, go with a pure progressive ticket and see what happens. You will at least fire up your base. I don't think, at this point, anyone else has a shot at Trump, barring a huge economic collapse, simply because Bernie is going to have a plurality of delegates going into the convention. Any scenario that does not result in him being the nominee, assuming that is the case, will cause a huge rebellion from the so-called "Bernie Bros" which will sink the Dems regardless.

We already knew Russia was helping Sanders campaign, Mueller told us that way back in 2017. Likely because of his staunch anti-war stance or they believe he's the easiest target for Trump. Doesn't change that he's the best Dem we have right now.

Oh he's done plenty worse. First of all, Dems talk about Trump being accused by women- 24. A lot, to be sure. Bloomberg has been accused by 63. He's been quoted as telling a pregnant female employee to "just kill it," that it would kill her career to have the child. He got upset when one of his female staff got married, claiming "there goes another one." The man is utter scum of the earth. I could never bring myself to vote for Trump because Trump is in the same old good ol boys club, but for the sake of our democracy I'd far rather see Trump get 4 more years than have Bloomberg buy a Presidency. Fortunately I don't think there's any way in hell Bloomberg beats Trump if its get that far because the entire progressive wing will sit at home.

I agree with sean on one thing here, for sure. On no account am I voting for Bloomberg. He's worse than Trump in the long run.

I said he's a wanna-be dictator. Stuff like wanting to strip Vindman of his medals just for testifying the truth against him. Stuff like consolidating his power at the expense of everyone around him. Stuff like calling the media the enemy of the people. He echoes dictators in his every day speech all the time. Trump has accomplished almost nothing. He has two things of note- the criminal law he signed after a bipartisan passage of the bill, and the withdrawal from the TPP. Almost everything else he's done has been to benefit himself or his rich friends. You know, the ones he's caught on tape telling about how the tax cuts will benefit them so much after passing them. Hell, he couldn't even get healthcare passed with full control of all houses of government. Talk about failure lol. GOP talked about repealing Obamacare for seven years and couldn't get it done with full control lol. It is illegal to ask a foreign government to investigate to a political rival. That's a crime. He breaks the emoulment clause on a daily basis by profiting off the presidency. For example, Trump Towers charges secret service something like $600/night. Just scratching the surface here. 13,000 misleading statements or flat out lies since taking office. And counting. Ask Norway and Sweden and Finland how Democratic Socialism has worked out for them. Quite well, considering they are some of the happiest people on the planet. Venezuela is often pointed to as a counter example, but Maduros has been rigging elections there quite blatantly. They are socialist, sure, but they are the furthest thing from democratic. You're getting very triggered by me just stating facts in response to you posting misleading Fox News talking points. I'm fully aware the likelihood is Trump gets re-elected after how the DNC flubbed the initial caucus. The mere fact that its even in question with the economy as it is shows how utterly horrible Trump is as a human being and how much of a complete failure he is as a leader. I love how you act like people are against him just because they don't like him, when you and yours are voting for him because he's a troll and you just wanna spite the "snowflakes" as you put it. Grow up.

Medicare for All being classified as "just wanting free stuff" is about the dumbest characterization. You can do better than just repeating Fox News fearmongering. Is having police and firefighters come help you because of your taxes just "getting free stuff?" The polls- even the ones on Fox News- show otherwise on impeachment. Americans supported impeachment 50-44. 75% of them wanted witnesses in the Senate trial. The GOP railroaded it through anyway. Americans know Trump committed a crime. And he just continues to dig himself in a deeper hole. Now he wants to strip Vindman of his medals after firing him- and his twin, who did nothing. Then he sticks his nose in the Roger Stone case and causes all four prosecutors to resign because they won't be part of the President getting his buddy's sentence reduced. How any sane functioning adult can continue to support this dictator wanna be is beyond me. Like, I get it if you feel you have to vote for him because you don't want the Dems to take over. I disagree, but I understand the position. But to be an actual enthusiastic supporter makes you basically part of a cult at this point. Dear Leader can do no wrong and everything is part of the master plan kinda thing. Does that mean he's not gonna get re-elected? Absolutely not. The DNC has royally fucked this up at the beginning and I think they may have gone and put themselves in a lose-lose. As Favre said, Bernie has polarized a lot of things. Buttigieg's line about "you have to be part of the revolution or you're the enemy, essentially" is exactly how Bernie makes a lot of moderates feel. But if they don't nominate Bernie, the people like sean that are convinced the entire thing is a plot by the DNC to strip Bernie of the nomination will vote third party instead of voting for the Dem nominee. The way the "bernie bros" act, the DNC needed a near-flawless primary here, and they have done anything but at this point. Honestly if I had to choose between getting rid of Trump or McConnell at this point, I'd choose Mitch. He's done more damage to our democracy for far longer than Trump. Ideally, we get rid of both of them, of course, but the DNC is not exactly inspiring confidence at this point. Edit: The NH thing is also stupid. Leave it to Fox for the propaganda here, lol. The GOP has lost 20,000 voters on the rolls since 2016 in NH. People are leaving the Republican party if they are disgusted with Trump.

Yeah it is. And Im gonna have to reverse my initial opinion here. There's a lot more people coming out with said paper trail saying it doesn't add up. It goes beyond the Deval Patrick votes going to Sanders, and its not just Sanders either, it hurt Warren too. The primary benefactor seems to be Buttigieg, though he does lose a couple of delegates incorrectly, overall he gains significantly more than he should have. I remain unconvinced this is intentional. I think its far more likely the IDP- note the DNC was not the ones running this- made a colossal mistake here in not testing the app on the ground well in advance of the primary, and had a technical malfunction that they are trying to brush under the rug and make go away. Note that the AP has debunked Pete's campaign funding the app as well. They have, in the past, given money to Shadow Inc, (like wtf, this is as bad as that ski resort being named the Contaminated Mountain of Love or w/e), the company who developed the app, but it was far prior to this. And Klobuchar, Biden, and the DNC have all also paid this company for their services on various occasions. I don't really think this helped Pete at all. The backlash against him here resonated with a lot of people. Had he just flat out won, or even took second, that's a huge momentum boost to a campaign that desperately needed it. Now he's gonna have a ton of people that will, in all likelihood, vote third party like sean, since they are convinced the DNC is trying to make him the nominee. Which, again, I point out is incredibly stupid if your sole goal here is to beat Trump. There is no way in hell a gay man beats Trump. He won't get a single delegate from the Southern states. Plus he isn't going to get the required 90%+ of the black vote given his history of racial suppression. The dude defended the South Bend police wearing and selling shirts that said "Breathe free. Obey law enforcement" after the Eric Garner debacle where the dude was choked to death in NYC. Remember the rallying cry for Garner was "I can't breathe" its a direct shot at the people who were outraged by the incident. If Klobuchar didn't have the personality of a vacuum cleaner, she'd be a great pick. Biden has got to hang on until we get to SC and such. Bernie is the frontrunner IMO, and its now his race to lose. Pete is going to fall off hard after New Hampshire, I still don't give him much of a chance. I think its down to Biden and Bernie. Warren needs to drop out and endorse Bernie. It'd throw him over the top and give us a heavy favorite which the Dems really need right now. We need this not to drag into April/May with no clear winner.

There is, again, a paper trail. There was a glitch in the system that awarded Deval's votes to Bernie. Because they had the paper trail, that has since been fixed. Anyone who thinks this is rigged is just looking for something to get mad about. They have a paper trail back to the original votes in every case. It's not a good look, to be sure, but its clearly not rigged if you took half a second to look into it instead of just re-posting conspiracy nonsense.

I don't see this as a good thing for Bloomberg at all. He's going to get destroyed on stage. The DNC wanted him on stage just to have him get murdered by the other candidates, IMO. He's polling at what, 8%? Yall are all ridiculously overreacting. Iowa caucuses have always been a shitshow and the DNC needs to change it. But there is no way Buttigieg gets the nomination. You might as well hand the Presidency to Trump, because there is no way in hell a gay man beats Trump. Remember what I said about how Biden has a shot because the racist part of Trump's base won't be as motivated? Well you can at least double that as far as people who will simply vote against a gay person just because. That's not even getting into his policies, which are decidedly centrist and not going to motivate the Dem's base to vote for him As far as Iowa goes, the most progressive counties in Iowa are left to count, that's first. Secondly, yelling that's a rigged primary when we have a paper trail of *all* votes counted is just being a conspiracy nutter for no sake other than to yell conspiracy. The issue is things like the district where Bernie won 4.8 delegates with 104 votes and Pete won 3.2 delegates with 66 votes. And somehow the geniuses in charge decided to flip a coin instead of making it a 5-3 split. So they both end up with 4 delegates when Bernie had 60% more actual votes. Bernie is going to win Iowa going away in terms of the popular vote and he's way ahead in NH.

Huh. I actually did not know this. That's pretty cool.

PE, my man. First off, seriously major props for calling San Fran having a great year. I think you and Sean were the only two to think that. But doesn't your logic here just show that no matter what the outcome, you could find some sort of story to argue its staged? If SF had won, you'd've said it was staged for the reasons you said earlier. And now KC has won, so now it must be staged because of Andy Reid. You're always gonna be able to find some sort of story. That's hardly proof. Also the Seahawks aren't really an Indian team. At all.

This aged well. Happy for him, he deserves it. Even if he sucks at clock management, he's a great coach. And at least he's no Kyle Shanahan. That last 90 seconds of the first half were terrible.

You're putting a lot of nuance into his words, when given his statement, there is no such nuance. Much more inclined to believe he's using the same argument the political right always does. Regardless, even if we give him the entirety of the benefit of the doubt, what he's arguing will still do exactly what I'm saying. In other words, you have no safety net here. The system is currently broken and we have a ton of students in a lot of debt that are unable to pay it because of hefty interest rates. That man's example: Sure, maybe he doesn't pick up an extra shift because the government is paying for his daughter's education. And that either A) lets him make more doing something else or B) spend more time at home with his family. Then we compare him to another family who is unable to do anything because of loan debt. Suddenly, that is gone, and now they can try to start saving up to better themselves. And the GOP sees this as a bad thing? People are not just going to sit back and do nothing. That's simply not reality. It's why UBI is the best idea I've heard on the subject. I suggested a compromise of removing any further interest so the students can actually pay it back. Liberals believe the government should create a floor for people. No one should have to watch someone they love die because they don't have health insurance. No one should have to wait to go to the doctor because they can't afford it. We don't need to spend that much money on the military. Half of what we currently do would be absolutely fine, moreso if we streamlined the process. That money could be going to make the people at home better off. This is a primary plank of Gabbard's platform, btw, not the half part specifically, she hasn't specified. But she wants to cut military funding. Is she a liberal as well? Why do we care if China and Russia combined know they couldn't take it? Russia is so far behind us tech wise they accidentally dropped a bomb on an isolated region because their computers lost contact because the tech is from the late 80s. Russia is not a military threat. They had that one attempt at an attack in Iraq via their "mercenary companies totally not affiliated with Russia" and lost 3k troops while we lost zero. We don't need to be the world police. We don't need to have such a strong military that if literally everyone in the world ganged up on us we would still be able to crush them. America first, right? Why is someone with that slogan putting more and more troops into harm's way while cutting needed programs here at home?

I do too, in a way. It was so much easier to just be the same as everyone around me, (my family is hardcore GOP and hardline religious). Pretend that everyone else was against us. Honestly, kinda the dude's argument as well, lol. "It's not fair for us." Just as an aside- not just liberals that think we pay way too much into the military. My dad thinks so, and so does my best friend. Both are conservatives in every way.

Just as a sidenote- you don't need a college degree to work in the pharmacy. You need one to be a pharmacist, sure. I'm a technician. And yes, they will just let people walk in and count meds. I mean, there is a training program but its not hard, it's about 30 hours worth of training. It's a somewhat challenging job mentally to deal with the insurance side of things, and sometimes typing in the scripts, but counting the meds and release to patient is brain-dead. And no, I am not using my college degree for this. It probably helped me get in initially just because I had one, but my degree has nothing to do with pharmacy. So to respond to the rest of it: His argument is "I got fucked over by how the system was in the past. I was able to save for my daughter's college, and its not fair that under your plan, other people will not also have to." This will ALWAYS be true. No matter if/when the system is fixed, there will be people that have paid money for their kids to go to school that it will be unfair for. The key thing here is that they were able to do it. What about the kids whose parents could not, or would not? The kids drowning in student loan debt and unable to even make payments on the principle of the loan because its such a high interest rate- this guy is arguing we should just leave them there because its not fair to him to save them. This kind of attitude is everything that is wrong with what has become of the GOP in this country. The right's attitude is always- if I was able to do it, clearly that means that everyone else could do it as well and are just too lazy to put in the work. They see helping out others intrinsically through the lens of "Does this hurt me in any way?" Healthcare- same argument, why do my taxes pay for someone else's health problems? Of course they are fine with cops and firefighters, and other things, but I digress. The blatant hypocrisy is not the point of this post. The point is the right has little to no empathy for those worse off than themselves, at least as far as actually trying to FIX the underlying issue. In other words, they are fine helping the individual, but not solving the issue that caused the problems in the first place. We get all hyped up over a dude helping a homeless guy, for example. And that's great! But try getting the city to build the homeless houses- even if it saves money in the long run- and all of a sudden the political right is all "Why are we using welfare to help out these bums?" As far as the pushing college thing, I mean specifically regarding students who obviously would be better off doing something else. The idea is that everyone should go, there are plenty of kids who have no desire to go to college and should be told to go after a trade. Instead, college is pushed as the end goal for basically everyone in education.

No its not. His argument is literally "I had to pay my kids way, so everyone else should always have to as well." In other words- diverting the trolley disrespects the people its already killed, to use the metaphor. What about parents who can't pay off their kids loans? What about kids who get suckered into loans they have no business going into? What about the fact that college is pushed a ridiculous deal in this country when it shouldn't be?

Warren's response is utter shit, but so is the guy's argument. The system being broken in the past is not a reason to not fix it in the future. You're not going to save everyone and you can't help everyone, and acting like any solution that can only help some people is not worth trying is disingenuous at best. But you can help a bunch of people swamped in debt and skyrocketing interest rates that make it impossible to repay said debt. I said a good compromise would be to make the interest rate 0 for a long period- 5-10 years- so the students can actually make payments against the principal.

I really don't think this is some big thing. I think she's just a cunt, as Ngata put it. She's not smart enough to be running everything behind the scenes.