Any LGBT+ Republican individual out here?

[PozBearWI]

1 hour ago, NWUSHorny said:

@BootmanLA that accent to some extent has been adopted nationwide by the rural political right, it isn't just a southern thing nor is it limited to politicians. It has become a sort of identifier for them. I find it particularly disconcerting when I hear someone from Wisconsin or Minnesota (I know one from each state) that I have known for years using it.

Wisconsin here and you surely won't hear it from me,, ya'all.  🙂  Growing up in a very unique small town in Illilnois; most in my young adult life took me as slightly British.  At least I was often asked that.  It didn't get better as my closer USAF friends were British - Cockney.  Honest, I have developed a bit of the Sheboygan County accent with adopted family all Sheboygan Count based.  

[hntnhole]

I think most folks tend to develop speech-mannerisms native to where we grew up. 

One of mine, which I never have managed to get rid of, is adding the word "then" to a sentence, which is common as dirt where I grew up.  For instance, asking the question "how does that work then?" or  "where did you go then?" or "what did you do there then?" or "if you don't like it, don't do that then", on and on. 

Sometimes I get a quizzical look, but most folks just don't bother.  Even typing here on BZ (I almost always try to go back and correct mistypes, grammar, spelling, etc) I catch a "then" or three and get rid of them.  

[NWUSHorny]

@PozBearWI and @hntnhole here is the article that made me realize what these 2 were doing [think before following links] https://www.outsidethebeltway.com/southernification-of-rural-america/.

For the record both are well educated professionals, and the Wisconsinite still adds an eh at the end of every sentence, but in the last 10 years has started speaking with a southern drawl. Both of them have become hardcore MAGA.

[BootmanLA]

On 3/10/2024 at 7:02 PM, NWUSHorny said:

@BootmanLA that accent to some extent has been adopted nationwide by the rural political right, it isn't just a southern thing nor is it limited to politicians. It has become a sort of identifier for them. I find it particularly disconcerting when I hear someone from Wisconsin or Minnesota (I know one from each state) that I have known for years using it.

I have no doubt you're right, but Kennedy adopted this accent before MAGA was a thing. He was using it the last several years he served as state treasurer here, well before Trump rode down that fake gold escalator. But he certainly didn't sound like that as executive counsel to the governor, back in the late 80's and early 90's.

[nanana]

This is a great topic as it seems to create a lot of passion, which can be very exciting to the brain and to other nether regions.  With respect to all, I  am one of those folks who used to count myself as a liberal libertarian (the freedom to take cum and love who I  loved) but who has moved to the libertarian right (the freedom from government abuse) after seeing my trust abused by the uniparty, which channels discord to sow partisanship as a distraction from the fact that it works together against most Americans' and non-Americans' interests.  I used to trust the left to oppose war and corporate fraud, and now I think the left has either lost its muscle in this space or else never had it. I would concede that there are important differences between liberals and conservatives, but the political media magnifies and dramatizes the differences while stealing the country blind.  It also creates an atmosphere in which it is unsafe to order a la carte from a partially liberal and partially conservative menu and forces partisans to see a deranged worst in each other. I appreciate the values of socialists who want to help others, but I am completely over the tendency to help others by running through other people’s money.  Typically the great majority of people you might imagine are "privileged" are nowhere near as privileged as you think they are.  If 51% of the people voted that you should kill people, would you do it? or do you have any ethical basis for action? I think there are good people in both major parties, and I think each of the parties has decent points, but both are led by grifters who leave me with little faith that either a Republican or a Democratic platform can address the issues I care about:

1. As much as I  respect the liberals for their compassion for the poor, I respect the conservatives for also having some love and compassion for themselves and opposing the woke call to self-annihilate. 

2. I  don’t respect the left’s view that the stored value of the hard labor of others amounts to a good pirating opportunity.

3. An out-of-control empire that needs to end

4. Out-of-control spending that is destroying common people’s savings and shifting more power to the elites

5. I think the liberals are fooling themselves that they can value people while supporting mass censorship of all who disagree with them (leftists are also censored, and conservatives sometimes ignore this). it is disappointing to see so many free people crave approval from government experts and unable to value the contributions of generalists to the collection of valuable insights.  I  doubt that the kid who could tell the emperor had no clothes needed a certification or a degree to discern the emperor’s nudity.

6. It is sad that liberals have not noticed that all government agencies are captured by the special interests they were created to moderate in the public interest.  yet often liberals just want more government.

7. it is sad that liberals (and sometimes conservatives) think their fellow adult citizens need a nanny and that politicians are good nannies.  I  find this mentality especially hard to understand on a bareback site.

8. It is sad that liberals have forgotten that government doesn’t create rights.  Rights are inherent to sentient beings. The Founders of the country knew that their constitution wasn’t creating rights but instead acknowledging pre-existing rights endowed by the creator.  The word "responsibility" doesn’t show up anywhere in the Constitution,

9. A climate agenda that promotes slogans, encourages dogma rather than thought, and undermines innovation

10. People with a mission who need others to glorify their choices instead of creating space for diversity of thought and coexistence.

11. People who have lost their faith in their ability to influence others and instead want the government to make people do things.

Although it is not perfect, I  think the libertarian approach creates the greatest amount of safe space for radical homosexuals, conservative Mormons, satanists, and video-game addicts.  I  see no inconsistency in a world that creates maximal space for the differing tribes that inhabit it.  It gives both conservatives and liberals a safe space in which to pursue their values in a way that doesn’t eliminate space for others to do their thing.

In terms of how I’m voting this year, I hope to find something I  can vote for, but I  will still vote if all I  can find is something to vote against.

Happy brain and physical titillations to you all. 

Edited April 5 by nanana

[BootmanLA]

21 hours ago, nanana said:

I would concede that there are important differences between liberals and conservatives, but the political media magnifies and dramatizes the differences while stealing the country blind.

Kudos for recognizing that distinction, but it's not the media stealing the country blind. 

21 hours ago, nanana said:

1. As much as I  respect the liberals for their compassion for the poor, I respect the conservatives for also having some love and compassion for themselves and opposing the woke call to self-annihilate. 

"love and compassion for themselves" is not a conservative achievement. It's something fully mastered by most children by the age of two. The problem is that many conservatives never advance beyond that developmental stage, solely concerned about what's in [anything] for THEM. Exhibit A is Donald J. Trump.

21 hours ago, nanana said:

2. I  don’t respect the left’s view that the stored value of the hard labor of others amounts to a good pirating opportunity.

I'm not sure what you mean by this, except possibly objecting to the notion that participants in a society owe financial support to that society. If you mean proposals to tax the wealthy at a heavier level, I laugh at your notion that their wealth is "stored value of...hard labor" - unless you mean the labor of people OTHER than the wealthy person. I've never known anyone who works harder than most of the people at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale. Sitting in a chair directing one's investments from one tax sheltered entity to another is not "hard labor".

21 hours ago, nanana said:

3. An out-of-control empire that needs to end

 To a certain extent, I agree - we have a long and sordid history of messing in the affairs of other countries. But influence over others - and banding together against outside threats, like NATO - is not an out of control empire. It's maintaining alliances against those who would actively do us harm.

21 hours ago, nanana said:

4. Out-of-control spending that is destroying common people’s savings and shifting more power to the elites

What destroys common people's savings, more than anything, is the disastrous costs our society imposes on those who have the misfortune to get extremely ill. No other country spends nearly what we do on health care in total, and yet we have among the worst health results in the developed world. And that's primarily because of the vast amount of overhead we let private insurers, Big Pharma, giant hospital chains, and others suck out of the system - the people providing the care, for the most part, are overworked and underpaid, but not the C-suites at Aetna, United Health, the various Blue Crosses, most hospital chains, Pfizer, Merck, J and J, etc.

We had a social compact in this country in the late 1940's into the early 1970's that helped shift millions of people from poverty to the middle class. We know what to do. We just don't have the political will to do it because of the billionaires who control Congress to maintain the status quo.

21 hours ago, nanana said:

6. It is sad that liberals have not noticed that all government agencies are captured by the special interests they were created to moderate in the public interest.  yet often liberals just want more government.

We absolutely have. That's primarily, again, a result of conservatives' grip on the presidency and the judiciary from Reagan forward - they seed the agencies with conservatives who cripple the agencies' work to please the special interests, and they rely on activist conservative judges to strike down the agencies' rules that dare to try to improve things for ordinary people. I'm less worried about regulatory capture than I am about judicial capture, especially when conservatives manipulate the rules to stack courts, even the Supreme Court, with partisan operatives.

21 hours ago, nanana said:

7. it is sad that liberals (and sometimes conservatives) think their fellow adult citizens need a nanny and that politicians are good nannies.  I  find this mentality especially hard to understand on a bareback site.

It's not that I think we want nannies - far from it. We want a robust enough government that can protect its citizens from state-level tyranny like the kind being implemented in most red states these days - from voter suppression to violating citizens' First Amendment rights and worse. Especially since once in power, conservatives are adept at gerrymandering their way into staying in power long after the voters as a sum reject their policies. See, for instance, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc.

21 hours ago, nanana said:

8. It is sad that liberals have forgotten that government doesn’t create rights.  Rights are inherent to sentient beings. The Founders of the country knew that their constitution wasn’t creating rights but instead acknowledging pre-existing rights endowed by the creator. 

That's simply false as a categorical statement. Even though the founders believed certain rights were endowed by an alleged creator, they nonetheless recognized that government clearly had the power to grant and recognize additional rights. The only ones specifically acknowledged as creator-derived were life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; the authors of the Constitution went well beyond that, and amendments to the constitution have granted rights that the founders would not have recognized AT ALL - like the right to vote regardless of race.

21 hours ago, nanana said:

9. A climate agenda that promotes slogans, encourages dogma rather than thought, and undermines innovation

I'm all for that.  Unfortunately, the dogma of the "conservative" movement is that we need NO climate agenda at all, that the earth is just fine, everything we're experiencing is a normal variation, and for god's sake we can't expect Big Bidness to give up one fucking penny of profit to hedge against the distinct possibility that maybe, just maybe, climate change is real.

 

21 hours ago, nanana said:

Although it is not perfect, I  think the libertarian approach creates the greatest amount of safe space for radical homosexuals, conservative Mormons, satanists, and video-game addicts.

That may be the case. But no libertarian is going to win major elected office this year, or next, or anytime in the near future, and in the meantime, those who DO win are going to be in power. I do not see any way in which conservatives will be creating safe space for homosexuals (radical or not), satanists, or anyone other than people like themselves. This is a party/movement determined to eradicate even LGBT books from public libraries, for fuck's sake. As problematic as many liberal positions might be - and that's not to say they are, only acknowledging that possibility for the sake of argument - our positions aren't aimed at eliminating our opposition from the public square. Theirs are.

[nanana]

I  appreciate the thorough response BootmanLA.  You say that the media doesn't steal the country blind, but I would argue that if you look at ownership of the media, you'll find that it all traces back to the same corporations that own our big racket industries, like pharma, or arms, etc.  The same people that lobby Congress for special status and tax loopholes.  Whether or not we agree on that, I  appreciate you raising the point, as I    realize my point was less than clear.  

1. You write, "'love and compassion for themselves' is not a conservative achievement. It's something fully mastered by most children by the age of two," which is good for a laugh, but I think most gays, at least of a certain age, will have had to grapple with having to work through a lot of shaming from conservatives.  Now, I think that shaming is much more likely to come from woke people who are on a mission to shame the world into agreeing with them.  I    wish them all a little more self-love and confidence to exist in a highly diverse world filled with people who will never be woke clones.

2. You're assuming that most redistributions in our system go from the rich to the poor, but I    think there's a huge redistribution to the rich from inflation, which their investments can outlast.  I  wish I  had the source, but I    read that the working class has had over $50T diverted away from them over the past 50 years thanks to Inflation, which is much more devastating to the poor than to the rich, and using fake money to pay for war and welfare wrecks the middle class and robs the poor of what little independence they have.  

3.  I    see we have some common ground on the empire issue.  I     don't disagree with your point about NATO, but I  do not see a credible threat to the American homeland, and I  think we unnecessarily antagonize a huge number of enemies by maintaining 800 bases encircling those who don't submit to our control.  We also encourage a lot of local bullies.  

4. I  tend to agree, but I  think the left doesn't seem to notice how much worse health inflation has been since the government got involved, and also how much a thinking medical profession has been replaced by central-government bureaucratic protocols that dumb down our doctors, make them order takers, and raise expense unnecessarily.  Agreed that there is a lot of corporate welfare in this space that drives up costs. 

6. I     don't disagree with your point that a different party might gut the teeth of a regulatory agency, but it is INCREDIBLY PREDICTABLE that government changes hands every 4-12 years, so a bit of foresight would have seen that coming.  

7. I  agree that our two parties like to gerrymander and rig the elections.  I    think from what you are writing that you would agree with me that Congresspeople OFTEN are out of line with their constituencies.  I   don't think this is true of only conservative representatives, but on that we may not agree.  

8. On this point we DEFINITELY don't agree.  Government is mostly in the business of turning rights into privileges and pretending to grant things.  This is more akin to a protection racket than a true grantor of rights.  I   don't necessarily disagree with you that the founders may have been under the presumption that they were "granting" things, but that in my view is a hideously arrogant assumption. 

9. I   don't share your interpretation of this point.  Unfortunately, I  see the government misallocating capital, corporations shifting attention from real problems, and profiteering.  The green industry racket has outgrown any "fossil fuel" racket, while I    am pretty sure real environmental destruction continues at a massive scale while being ignored by the activists chasing the shiny penny issue.  

I    do think that like "liberals," "conservatives" are a diverse bunch.  I    agree that social conservatives are likely to want to act as nannies, and I    think the overturning of Roe versus Wade really makes your point here.  I    think that libertarian conservatives or economic conservatives are much less likely to act in the way you describe.  

I  tend to agree that we will have to make a less than ideal choice that favors either Democrats or Republicans.  Good luck to all in making choices that further a world we can all thrive in.  

[BootmanLA]

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

I appreciate the thorough response BootmanLA.  You say that the media doesn't steal the country blind, but I would argue that if you look at ownership of the media, you'll find that it all traces back to the same corporations that own our big racket industries, like pharma, or arms, etc.  

Very little of our media is owned by the same people or companies that own pharma companies or arms manufacturers. It's true that a few hedge funds, in particular, own big chunks of second-tier print media (ie those beyond the big papers that have overseas bureaus, etc.); for instance, the "USA Today network" of papers. But most of the big papers - and the big television networks - have no overlap in ownership with pharma or arms dealers. Now, one could argue that the billionaires (and multimillionaires) that own these papers have more in common with the big giant corporations, but that's not the same as them being the same corporations.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

1. You write, "'love and compassion for themselves' is not a conservative achievement. It's something fully mastered by most children by the age of two," which is good for a laugh, but I think most gays, at least of a certain age, will have had to grapple with having to work through a lot of shaming from conservatives.  Now, I think that shaming is much more likely to come from woke people who are on a mission to shame the world into agreeing with them.  I    wish them all a little more self-love and confidence to exist in a highly diverse world filled with people who will never be woke clones.

I stand by my point about children, who start out completely self-absorbed and who must develop, if they actually do, a sense of compassion and empathy for others. Donald Trump, for one, never did. I agree that conservatives have (AND STILL DO) shame others who aren't like them - witness the contempt "conservatives" have for immigrants even though they themselves are undoubtedly descended from immigrants. As for "woke people" (and use of that phrase is always a sign of assholes), what you deride as "woke" is simply recognition that concern for others is a sign of a mature individual. The problem isn't a highly diverse world; the problem is the "anti-woke" people in that world who resent that diversity and who are intent on treating people not like themselves differently. The "anti-woke" people demanding recognition of diversity is laughable.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

2. You're assuming that most redistributions in our system go from the rich to the poor, but I think there's a huge redistribution to the rich from inflation, which their investments can outlast.  I  wish I  had the source, but I read that the working class has had over $50T diverted away from them over the past 50 years thanks to Inflation, which is much more devastating to the poor than to the rich, and using fake money to pay for war and welfare wrecks the middle class and robs the poor of what little independence they have.

What redistributes to the rich is more an issue of stagnant wages for the working class. From about 1980 until well into the pandemic, real wages (after inflation) basically stood still for the vast majority of people with jobs, as opposed to the owner/investor class. But the incomes and wealth of the owner/investors skyrocketed. That wasn't due to inflation, which was mild through most of that period. It was due to tax policy favoring capital over wages; it was due to immigration policy favoring winked-at illegal immigration for manual labor, which depressed wages; it was due to vast increases in productivity (partly through automation/computerization) that ate away at working class positions. I'm glad you're concerned about the flow of money up to the rich, but you have the problem wrong, and the solution wrong. The solution is to return to the tax policies that produced the middle class in the first place.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

3. I don't disagree with your point about NATO, but I do not see a credible threat to the American homeland, and I  think we unnecessarily antagonize a huge number of enemies by maintaining 800 bases encircling those who don't submit to our control.  We also encourage a lot of local bullies.

If our adversaries are "antagonized" by us keeping troops and bases in our allies' countries to keep them from being invaded, so be it. That doesn't mean every alliance we have is a good one - our support of right-wing dictators in Central America stands out as a generally bad policy - but that's the nature of alliances. The point is - as it was during the Cold War - to deter our adversaries from attacking and absorbing our allies such that when they DO come to threaten the United States, they aren't massively empowered the way, say, Nazi Germany was. Or the way the USSR was at its height.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

4. I  tend to agree, but I  think the left doesn't seem to notice how much worse health inflation has been since the government got involved, and also how much a thinking medical profession has been replaced by central-government bureaucratic protocols that dumb down our doctors, make them order takers, and raise expense unnecessarily.  Agreed that there is a lot of corporate welfare in this space that drives up costs. 

Health care costs were rising by double-digit numbers every single year before the Affordable Care Act. That increase has been reduced - to on average well under 5%. As for replacing "thinking medical profession" FAR more of that has happened due to private insurers looking to boost profits than the government has ever even contemplated. Ask any doctor who isn't already a right-wing Trumpanzee and he'll tell you that insurance companies and their regulations are the single biggest drag on their practices. Insurance's overhead costs routinely hit 20% (the maximum allowable under the ACA), whereas Medicare and Medicaid's overhead is a tiny fraction of that. Given that the payments allowed under M/M are smaller, you'd think overhead would be a larger percentage, but it's not; it's just cheaper to run a single-payer system with one set of rules than it is to have hundreds of insurers with thousands of differing policies that have to be sorted out.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

6. I     don't disagree with your point that a different party might gut the teeth of a regulatory agency, but it is INCREDIBLY PREDICTABLE that government changes hands every 4-12 years, so a bit of foresight would have seen that coming.  

Which is one reason Trump's candidacy is so frightening. In the months before he left office, he tried to radically gut the civil service, removing job protections from all important positions (to make it easier for a new, anti-regulatory regime to gut an agency). Google "Schedule F". His anti-government team - the Steve Bannons and Stephen Millers and the like - is already planning to roll out something similar as soon as Trump takes office (assuming he's re-elected or steals this election). If that happens, the amount of damage an anti-government administration could do in a single term, much less in back-to-back terms, is enormous.

 

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

7. I  agree that our two parties like to gerrymander and rig the elections.  I    think from what you are writing that you would agree with me that Congresspeople OFTEN are out of line with their constituencies.  I   don't think this is true of only conservative representatives, but on that we may not agree.

Here's the thing: No "swing state" - that is, one where the votes for president are typically separated by 5% or less - is gerrymandered for its congressional or state legislative seats in favor of the Democrats. Several (Ohio, Wisconsin, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, for example) are heavily gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. Pennsylvania fell into this category as well until just recently, when a court-ordered redistricting brought the state closer into balance away from Republican domination.

Looking at the largest states, California's legislative and congressional seats, as well as New York's, fairly closely track the Democrats' share of the popular vote there (in part because both have redistricting commissions). But the largest Republican states (Texas, Florida) have a much higher Republican House and state legislative delegation than the overall balance in the state. The closest thing Democrats have is Illinois, which has far fewer congressional/electoral votes than TX or FL. The clear conclusion is that the Republicans do a lot more gerrymandering than the Democrats.

That doesn't mean that some smaller Democratic-majority states don't gerrymander in favor of their own party. But when you're making a delegation 4-2 instead of 3-3, you don't have as much effect as, say, a slightly Republican state like Ohio being districted 12-4 for Republicans (and thus for electoral votes), or Pennsylvania's former spread of 13-5.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

8. On this point we DEFINITELY don't agree.  Government is mostly in the business of turning rights into privileges and pretending to grant things.  This is more akin to a protection racket than a true grantor of rights.  I   don't necessarily disagree with you that the founders may have been under the presumption that they were "granting" things, but that in my view is a hideously arrogant assumption. 

You're free to disagree, of course. But I'd point out that it doesn't matter whether a right is "god-given" in your view or "government-granted" in mine; if the government doesn't recognize the right, people are shit out of luck. And since I don't believe in "god" - not the murderous, contradictory Judeo-Christian one, at least - I'm not going to accept that my rights come from a mythical being, period (all I care about is whether the society I live in recognizes that right through its government).

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

9. I   don't share your interpretation of this point. Unfortunately, I see the government misallocating capital, corporations shifting attention from real problems, and profiteering. The green industry racket has outgrown any "fossil fuel" racket, while I am pretty sure real environmental destruction continues at a massive scale while being ignored by the activists chasing the shiny penny issue.

That's simply false. Government subsidies for green energy are a tiny fraction (especially adjusted for inflation) of what the government has given fossil fuels. If you add up all the mining and drilling concessions on public land, the enormous tax breaks, etc. that fossil fuels have received over the last 150 or so years, green subsidies are a tiny part of that. ESPECIALLY when you consider the cost of environmental degradation that fossil fuels have inflicted on the world. If Big Oil had been required to pay for that, as opposed to ordinary taxpayers, they'd have gone bankrupt long ago. That's a subsidy keeping them afloat.

On 4/5/2024 at 10:49 PM, nanana said:

I do think that like "liberals," "conservatives" are a diverse bunch.  I agree that social conservatives are likely to want to act as nannies, and I think the overturning of Roe versus Wade really makes your point here. I think that libertarian conservatives or economic conservatives are much less likely to act in the way you describe.  

I tend to agree that we will have to make a less than ideal choice that favors either Democrats or Republicans.  Good luck to all in making choices that further a world we can all thrive in.

Except that to the extent that there are economic conservatives left, they're mostly Democrats. Republicans have zero concerns about voting for massive tax cuts, even though those are indistinguishable, from a deficit perspective, from spending hikes. Republicans always demand that Democrats offset spending increases (and then rail on them for wanting to increase revenues, or rail on them for cutting tax breaks for the rich). But Republicans ignore any demands that tax cuts be paid for, instead pretending that "growth" is going to offset them.

Except that economists are coming around to realize that in a mostly services economy, like ours, government spending does more to stimulate the economy than tax cuts. When we had a manufacturing economy, tax cuts made sense because it meant corporations could invest more in machinery and equipment to become more efficient and produce more stuff. When corporations mostly make money on services, there's only so much you can do to increase throughput or efficiency, and above that, the tax cuts just go in the owners' pockets. Which is why the rich have gotten richer and the workers haven't, for the last 50+ years.

[DallasPozzible]

1 hour ago, BootmanLA said:

a slightly Republican state like Ohio being districted 12-4 for Republicans (and thus for electoral votes)

Gerrymandering is awful, but I don’t understand how that impacts electoral votes since they are awarded based on popular vote in the entire state. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska which allocate one EV to popular vote winner in each congressional district.

[BootmanLA]

2 hours ago, DallasPozzible said:

Gerrymandering is awful, but I don’t understand how that impacts electoral votes since they are awarded based on popular vote in the entire state. The exceptions are Maine and Nebraska which allocate one EV to popular vote winner in each congressional district.

Yes and no, as in technically, you're right. But when you're a Democrat living in a hopelessly gerrymandered-red state that nonetheless is closely divided electorally, you may not bother to turn out to vote for president when you're more or less guaranteed to have Republicans representing you in Congress and your state legislature. It's quite possible to depress turnout enough to keep such a state from swinging to the Democrats for the electoral college.

[nanana]

this is a highly elegant, erudite response boatmanLA, thanks for it, will chew on it for a bit.  without conceding your points, I     would like to share that I     have blind spots, and love those who help me see them.  

your initial point about the media seems wrong, as Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard, and other investors seem to own everything in such a way as that even Matt Stoller might write about the cartels and trusts in his substack.  Here's a link to a clearly scripted commentary from the supposed right and left.  I  lean into folks who can - or even who cannot but dare to - demystify the unison in this: [think before following links] https://rumble.com/v1x4ioc-never-forget-this-is-extremely-dangerous-to-our-democracy.html.  

I     am a fan of analyst such as Maslow, Piaget, Torbin and Cook-Greuter who analyze the adult stages of development ([think before following links] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7090352/).  Agreed that children start off as shaky blobs who are their instincts, then perhaps notice that their mothers do anything for them when they cry, then perhaps appreciate their parents' brothers' and sisters' support, then enjoy winning arguments, then enjoy producing results, then start questioning their certainty, then have appreciation for criminals/popes/double-fuckers/elementary-school-teachers, then question meaning....  Action Inquiry is a lovely book..;

"If our 'adversaries' are antagonized..." this smacks of an inability to appreciate unintended consequences.  trust me, if bolivia invaded and shut down your gang-bang, you would eventually adopt jihad.  if this is too short-hand, it is incumbent upon all of us to understand when we are crossing other peoples' boundaries.  sure, we can fail to understand this, but our pleas of innocence will not be FELT DEEPLY by those with insight.  agreed that as kings on the block, USA can decide to ignore karma, but karma has agents.  

you point about medicine: doctors used to do house calls, where they could collect evidence of the living conditions of their patients.  they used to think patients were their customers. now, having been brainwashed by obamacare, they are more like droids with no insights without some health care app.  their patients are more like fidget-spinners than children of god.  As for your point about insurers looking to boost profits, you may be right, but this is a failure of entrepreneurship rather than of capitalism.  The pattern from Venice of the 12th century onwards is that the privileged use their influence over government to FREEZE entrepreneurs out and collude with government to cement profits by making the market too complex and restrictive.  Only lawyers and big corporations have time to wade through 50,000 pages of law.  Eventually the poor give up and seek out advocates to milk everyone else.  The poor would be much wealthier if they had freedom rather than a maze of lawfare.  

COMPLETELY AGREE WITH YOUR POINT ABOUT TAX POLICY FAVORING CAPITAL OVER LABOR. IF WE CAN'T AGREE ON ANYTHING ELSE, I'd happily partner with you to change this state of affairs.  

We don't agree about Schedule F employees. 

As for point about gerrymandering, I    am currently going through an evolution in my view of the legitimacy of the Federal Government.  I    have recently come to appreciate that the Constitution was a compact among independent governments, who, like Hungary, Andorra, and Finland, may have thought they were joining the United States not so much to make a president into a dictatress/king/moster, but more to facilitate trade, free passage, etc.  the United States' creditors were mainly interested in the constitution so that they could secure a repayment of their loans.  It would be like the mafia IMF enforcing austerity measures on its impoverished debtors.  There was a voluntary element to joining the United States, which noun remained plural until the Civil War.  To be clear, I    am not a fan of GERRYMANDERING, but most bring many assumptions into their analysis, which are not warranted.  Anyone who cites the POWER of the central government would seem to want to centralize decision-making and take it out of the hands of people close to the ramifications of power.  While nothing is perfect, I    would rather see many mistakes being made by many small people rather than some demogorgon who imagined that its expertise was superior to the peccadillos of all citizens.  (but we agree that this would not lead to perfection, my view is that it is more of a risk mitigation to centralizing power in the hands of some DEMENTED IDIOT far from understanding me and my boudoir). 

WE DO AGREE THAT PEOPLE ARE "SHIT OUT OF LUCK" when the government class forgets that they are servants.  God has watched many a generation suffer at the hands of Herods, Maos, Netanyahus, Lenins, Hitlers, Nebuchadnezzars, Trump/Bidens, and other people for whom I pray to have the wisdom to see that we are all gods children who should be free to pursue our interests as long as we don't agress others.  I'm not sure that I    agree that it doesn't matter when people realize that they are in the hands of God.  It's a pretty incredible discovery to realize that even if you don't believe in God, God believes in you.  We are in agreement that many high crimes have been committed in god's name.  There is no excuse for that.  I    have no doubt that God doesn't need anyone to suck up to him, and that as the Quran says, god needs no partners.  Anyone pretending to be a partner of God is babbling without a jaw.  

Tell me more (in $ and other figures) about your point about green subsidies versus fossil fuel subsidies.  I  do not oppose what you assert, but my spider sense tells me that the fossil-fuel oligarchs of the gilded age and the racketeers of the green new deal have more in common than not. 

As for your point about economic conservatives, I    am going to be charitable and pretend that your point is that economic conservatism is rare. On that point that I    am imagining you made, we agree.  Well over 51% of the population has realized they can make decisions and bill those decisions to someone else.  both parties rape the Treasury (though with a condom, so no DNA evidence is available).  Trump was profligate with taxpayer funds.  But anyone who asserts that Biden was a good steward of American taxes while leaving $80B worth of arms in the hands of those who might use those arms against us; who's son was emolumenting  the shit out of UKRAINE, CHINA and other focus areas of the BIG GUY are playing partisan with the facts.  

Let's all secede, make tiny sodomy countries, have a lot of fun inside each other, love each other for our powerful male hormones, but also love unsexy people for the fact that god created them, and laugh together in our gifts of disagreement.  

In case anyone wondered, I  am a generalist not an expert.  Thanks to the experts who know everything about nothing but still tell the world what to do.  I    love being bossed around.  

to the Bottoms: FUCK YOU (with an exciting penis) to the TOPS: FUCK ME!!! to the versatile (FUCK YOURSELVES, but leave room up yourself for dick-company.).  

HAHAHA.  

Hugs and wide smiles to all.  

P.S. Jerry Mander sounds like a great drag king name...

[nanana]

1 hour ago, BootmanLA said:

Yes and no, as in technically, you're right. But when you're a Democrat living in a hopelessly gerrymandered-red state that nonetheless is closely divided electorally, you may not bother to turn out to vote for president when you're more or less guaranteed to have Republicans representing you in Congress and your state legislature. It's quite possible to depress turnout enough to keep such a state from swinging to the Democrats for the electoral college.

Unfortunately, most districts are lopsided, regardless of gerrymandering, and not terribly competitive.  Swing states have that distinction because competition matters.  If you are a blue in a red state or a red in a blue state, you have to live vicariously.  

[BootmanLA]

On 4/7/2024 at 9:23 PM, nanana said:

Unfortunately, most districts are lopsided, regardless of gerrymandering, and not terribly competitive.  Swing states have that distinction because competition matters.  If you are a blue in a red state or a red in a blue state, you have to live vicariously.  

Most districts don't *have* to be lopsided, though - that's a choice by those who draw the districts. I mention only the most egregious examples of gerrymandering, but it's very possible to draw a lot more competitive districts - it's just that the people who have the power to draw them don't want to, and that's primarily a problem, as noted, in Republican states. 

[BootmanLA]

On 4/7/2024 at 9:06 PM, nanana said:

your initial point about the media seems wrong, as Black Rock, State Street, Vanguard, and other investors seem to own everything in such a way as that even Matt Stoller might write about the cartels and trusts in his substack.  Here's a link to a clearly scripted commentary from the supposed right and left.  I  lean into folks who can - or even who cannot but dare to - demystify the unison in this: [think before following links] [think before following links] https://rumble.com/v1x4ioc-never-forget-this-is-extremely-dangerous-to-our-democracy.html.

What the vulture capital class "seems" to own, and what they actually own, are two different things. They do not own Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC; they do not own the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Tampa Bay Times, or the Minnesota Star-Tribune, among the 10 largest papers in the US. They do not own the Associated Press or Reuters or UPI. It is true that they are increasingly buying up smaller media outlets - Alden Capital is particularly bad about this - and gutting their news operations, and the biggest concern about media ownership is that local news is fast becoming unavailable, at a time when local government activity is more in need of observation than ever.

On 4/7/2024 at 9:06 PM, nanana said:

I     am a fan of analyst ....  Action Inquiry is a lovely book..;

My point was that people do not need to be taught self-interest; that's something that develops innately and early, and much of education and socialization is about teaching people NOT to be so absorbed in self-interest and to be concerned about others and society as a whole.

On 4/7/2024 at 9:06 PM, nanana said:

you point about medicine: doctors used to do house calls, where they could collect evidence of the living conditions of their patients.  they used to think patients were their customers. now, having been brainwashed by obamacare,

I sincerely hope you don't think doctors were still doing house calls until the ACA passed. Again, the problem with doctors not seeing their patients as customers stems more from doctors no longer owning their practices, with giant health care corporations owning the practice and dictating the pace of how much time a doctor can spend on an appointment and how much can actually be spent on that care. That's not the ACA; that's greedy giant corporations wanting vertical control of the system.

On 4/7/2024 at 9:06 PM, nanana said:

The poor would be much wealthier if they had freedom rather than a maze of lawfare.  

Only someone ignorant of the history of exploitation of workers with no legal protections would make a statement like this. 

On 4/7/2024 at 9:06 PM, nanana said:

As for point about gerrymandering, I    am currently going through an evolution in my view of the legitimacy of the Federal Government.  I    have recently come to appreciate that the Constitution was a compact among independent governments

That was, essentially, the case until the 14th amendment, which radically reshaped the relationship between the states and the federal government. We fought a war in part over that principle. It's why things like the First Amendment, which on its face only restricts Congress (ie the federal government), applies to state and local governments as well - the 14th amendment specifically prohibits any state from violating a right that a person (or citizen, depending on the circumstances) has under federal law. And it's arguable this is more in keeping with what the founders intended anyway, given that they had just rejected the looser "compact" version of a federal government under the Articles of Confederation. They clearly intended a more robust federal government than we had previously had.

On 4/7/2024 at 9:06 PM, nanana said:

"If our 'adversaries' are antagonized..." this smacks of an inability to appreciate unintended consequences.  trust me, if bolivia invaded and shut down your gang-bang, you would eventually adopt jihad.  if this is too short-hand, it is incumbent upon all of us to understand when we are crossing other peoples' boundaries.  sure, we can fail to understand this, but our pleas of innocence will not be FELT DEEPLY by those with insight.  agreed that as kings on the block, USA can decide to ignore karma, but karma has agents.

In cases where we have invaded other places, sure, an argument can be made that sometimes those were bad decisions. Helping an ally prevent that kind of invasion - as this administration is trying to do with Ukraine, despite the best efforts of many Republicans to bolster Putin and Russia - is not invading anyone. It's drawing a line in the sand that says we, as allies, won't allow this.

Again, not defending things like invading Panama or Nicaragua or Honduras, or plotting to overthrow the duly elected leader of Chile, or whatever. But helping defend allies is fundamental to our national identity.

[nanana]

Let’s all get knocked up and have our butt babies on Inauguration Day. Just to prove we at least have timing down pat.