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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
edited 9th Feb '16 2:08:10 PM by Nihlus1
Millennial College Students are with Bernie.
God some of these people are so fucking stupid. Still, I understand why our generation is pissed. If this place goes to hell we are probably going to spend our entire lives watching it burn.
The whole point of free trade is that every country gets to play to its strengths. The only justification you can use for being against free trade (which benefits consumers here who pay much less for products, as well as workers overseas who get much higher wages) the way Trump etc. are is that it's bad for a certain section of the middle class (unskilled laborers who can't switch to another job), and so we should ignore what the most efficient and universally beneficial path is in favor of helping them. This is the exact same justification the Luddites used when they smashed machines threatening their jobs.
edited 9th Feb '16 2:18:22 PM by Nihlus1
Cruz is the hardcore Bible thumper whose motto is that he will personally bring hellfire to all the unbelievers before they even die. He's also the hardest of the hardcore
Tea Party, and has been a major leader in getting the Tea Party to try to destroy the older school Republicans. Hence why the old school Republicans completely loathe him. They might even prefer Obama or Clinton to Cruz. Also, as Fighteer noted, Cruz was the key figure in causing the government shutdown... and then within a few days after the shutdown began, he called the press to follow him to the Vietnam and WWII memorials, where he decried what shame it was that the government shutdown was robbing veterans of their chance to visit those memorials, which they would have access to if only the government wasn't so broken
. He's that kind of asshole.
Rubio is a Tea Party guy, but not nearly as hardcore as Cruz and he was willing to differ from the Tea Party orthodoxy in one or two ways before it blew up in his face, at which point he did a 180. We have always been at war with Eurasia, in a nutshell. Also the ultimate in being an empty suit and openly shilling for the right to sell his vote to whoever pays him.
Kasich's positions would have been considered a hardcore right winger pretty deep into the conservative spectrum about 12 years ago or more, but now the party has moved rightward so much it's left him looking like an appealing moderate. His positions are fairly terrible, but he's willing to not be an asshole about them and to make a pragmatic compromise here and there on some small things, which practically makes him a pleasant breath of fresh air.
I think twice now I've started to type up something about this and stopped because it was going to get too involved and raise my blood pressure too much. But long story short contest, currently a ridiculously high percentage of New Jersey citizens work in New York City, particularly Manhattan. The only train tunnel under the river and into the city is over 100 years old and had all sorts of problems that were in dire need of maintenance even before the calamity that was Hurricane Sandy. The feds would have paid for nearly all of the new tunnel, with a small remainder being split between New York and New Jersey. Christie turned it down in an attempt to get the Federal money already granted into the state's general funds, so he could brag about about balancing the budget without raising taxes. (Not that it entirely worked for him, since the feds insisted on some of the money that had been disbursed to Jersey being paid back.) Had he not done so, the new tunnel would be more than halfway to completion by now, and it would give a chance to mostly use that new tunnel while the old one was fixed up, at which point a much more efficient system would be in play and benefit the 400,000 people who pass commute from Jersey to New York on a daily basis.
Then Sandy hit and wrecked the inside of the already old and worn out tunnel, which has squeezed it down to only being able to operate on a single rail lane for trains going back and forth, ramping the time for those commuters up to something like 3 hours each way. And it's not like driving or busing in will do them any favors either, as the main way is the George Washington Bridge, (the same one his people briefly closed down during) which is infamously terrible for its traffic and the volume of cars on it, even when it's not rush hour. When it is rush hour... you might be better off committing seppuku.
So basically in his policy of being penny wise and pound foolish, Christie screwed over the people in his state for at least another decade to come, maybe 2. He undermined their quality of life, their buying power, their employment, and the economy of what they're able to bring home with them due to working in New York all to make himself look like the guy who would make tough choices and say no to big government spending. In reality he made the worst possible choices and screwed everyone over with his actions.
Christie is pretty contemptible.
edited 9th Feb '16 2:15:30 PM by TheWanderer
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |The machines did not threaten their jobs. They were fine with machines, and many of them were skilled enough to operate them. They wanted the same things every sane worker wanted - decent wages and conditions. Destruction of machines was a form to protect, not the end goal.
It's like saying people who go picketing fight for their right to wave signs around. If you're gonna use historical comparisons, don't rely on ignorant myths.
Nihlus, I'm going to trust the word of a Nobel-prize-winning economist over yours, if that's okay with you. You are literally the only person I've seen making that argument.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!""Few propositions command as much consensus among professional economists as that open world trade increases economic growth and raises living standards."
edited 9th Feb '16 2:33:28 PM by Nihlus1
To put Kasich's ultra right wing
into perspective
Refused to set up a state run exchange for healthcare because he wanted to spite Obamacare
16 abortion clinics shut down during his time as governor
Proposed cutting Medicaid for poor pregnant women and if poor cancer patients
Limited budgeting for family care plans for working class women
Gutted $1.8 million in public schooling and transported that into corrupted charter schools
Push to strip public labor unions of their bargaining power
The ever so usual tax cuts for the rich
And contrary to claiming that he would love his imaginary gay child and went to a gay wedding once, he still supported a ban for gay marriage in Ohio.
Oh and you can still be fired for being gay in Ohio
Let's face it. There are no moderates in the GOP primary.
edited 9th Feb '16 2:31:54 PM by NoName999
I believed that myth about the Luddites until thirty seconds ago.
I did notice that I was confused when I was told about them in history class, but the teacher insisted that they were indeed that stupid, unbelievable though it may have seemed. In the end, I was right!
edited 9th Feb '16 2:36:26 PM by TheHandle
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.There's a new project in the planning stages, work isn't currently expected to start until around 2019. If it finishes on time (it won't) then it won't open until 2024. Personally, I'm betting 2026-2028 at best, especially considering how long the previous project was expected to take. This time around, the states of New York and Jersey are expect to pay for at least half of the total, rather than the feds were going to pick up something like 60-75% or something along those lines last time.
So not only did Christie slow down a rail tunnel by years, he made sure New Jersey will pay more for it too. (Especially since not only will the % Jersey has to pay be higher, but so will the total price tag. The previous project was expect to come in at maybe $11 billion, this one is starting off at a $20 billion estimate from Amtrak and that's before the inevitable time and cost overruns.)
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |The Very Serious People are almost entirely journalists or politicos. The point of the sarcastic nickname is to highlight their lack of actual practical or academic expertise despite the 'elder sage' personae they cultivate. They aren't experts, they just want people to think they are.
That said, RationalWiki's list seems to be as much a place to pillory right-of-centre commentators they can't call racist as much as it is about calling out cultish centrism.
edited 9th Feb '16 3:11:46 PM by Achaemenid
Schild und Schwert der ParteiAs soon as we dispel the notion that electing a Democrat as a president is a checkmate move.
Another thing we need to do is dispel the notion that Obama doesn't know what he's doing, he knows EXACTLY what he's doing!

"Republicans need a puppet and you fit, got their hand so far up your rear, call you 'Mitt'."
"Why would I inflict myself on somebody else?"