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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
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Are you fucking kidding me?
Does anybody know if tourism revenue has gone down for America in the last few years? Between the open bigotry on and off the campaign trail, the ridiculous amount of shootings, and long lines at the airport, I can't imagine people from other countries wanting to visit here.
Going by this
, tourism seems to be strong as of 2015.
I'm sure Trump will put a few people off visiting, but I don't think it will make a noticeable difference in the long run. I'd expect things like the strong dollar to have a bigger impact than anything else.
edited 15th Jun '16 6:37:32 AM by storyyeller
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayI don't know if anyone has mentioned this or not but.
I am at a loss as to someone can even try and say 'thanks for the support' to a community he at one point said was not only going completely to hell, but anyone who defended them would go to hell as well.
How is that even. I am at a complete loss.
edited 15th Jun '16 6:45:09 AM by LMage
It is pointless to think of anything Donald Trump says or does in terms of a coherent narrative or ethical/moral philosophy. Trying to do so will drive you mad.
edited 15th Jun '16 6:44:31 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"In America's case (and the case of the other "settler" states) there was a built-in bulwark against the kind of economic dysfunction that bread socialism. Sure there was terrible inequality, but people could always escape to the frontier, there was little serfdom (except for sharecropping in the South after the civil war), and less pre-built social hierarchy meant that there was more independence, either small landholders or small business owners, unlike Europe where more defined class systems exacerbated the tendency for class conflict.
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I've noticed that after the attacks in Orlando, support for the LGBT community has increased dramatically among conservatives (Hannity went on TV decrying Saudi Arabia's death penalty for gays just a day or two ago). Perhaps if there is any good thing to come out of this horrific attack, it's that LGBT people will be considered more acceptable in mainstream society.
edited 15th Jun '16 6:50:40 AM by ThePest179
Extreme homophobia hasn't been a part of mainstream conservatism for a while, though the "death to the gays" folks have remained tolerated or embraced in the fundamentalist circles, more secular conservatives don't care about the issue one way or another and can be seen condemning some of the worst stuff at times as well.
Extreme homophobia might not have been part of mainstream conservatism for a while but it's been a big part of mainstream Republicanism, it remains so.
As for the G Op shifting to liking LGBT people, it won't last, nor is the LGBT community stupid enough to fall for such falsehood.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranOrlando nightclub as police chief admits officers may have shot some of the VICTIMS
. It's from the Daily Fail, but holy fuck.
Yeah in the end the hostages were saved and the guy was stopped, that's better then a lot of similar situations go. I think the police deserve a pass on if a ricoshade bullet may have hit someone by accident.
edited 15th Jun '16 7:19:10 AM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt's not surprising, honestly. It was a chaotic scene and a lot of things may have happened. Autopsies and other parts of the investigation will reveal whether any of the victims were hit by friendly fire eventually.
It's an unfortunate reality that when good guys are mixed in with bad guys in the middle of a fire fight, sometimes you're going to hit the wrong people. That's just the nature of the beast, and why an armed entry like that is generally a last resort.
If anyone was killed by police by accident, it honestly doesn't change anything. The police went in because they felt that the gunman was about to start executing hostages. They saved 30 people by doing so. Unless it's shown that the police acted negligently, any friendly fire casualties are tragic but the blame for them rests firmly on the gunman and no one else.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.Re: socialism, the thing is that every socialist revolution (as in, socialist parties or communes seizing power) has ended in one of three failure modes.
- Squashed by external forces. Hungary (oh the irony), the Paris Commune, and the various Spanish groups come to mind.
- Thermidorian Full-Circle Revolution. Everyone gets sick of revolutionary terror and throws in the towel, restoring things to more-or-less the old status quo.
- A strongman takes power and governs exactly like any other right-wing strongman, using socialist ideology to justify personal power and usually enrichment.
Revolution is essentially a giant roll of the dice where most of the outcomes are unfavorable. That was the flaw in Marx' thinking - he assumed that revolutionary terror wouldn't lead to a straight-up dictatorship instead of a dictatorship of the proletariat.
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I have to agree. When people are shooting wildly, the priority is to take them down as quickly as possible. If innocents are hit, then that's unfortunate but not the police's fault.
edited 15th Jun '16 7:32:06 AM by Ramidel
High-threat response teams are extensively trained in target recognition. Friendly-fire casualties should be virtually nil under any conceivable single-shooter scenario, unless they literally have to shoot through a hostage to take down the gunman. I refuse to accept any other outcome without extensive justification.
Edit: Louisiana's adoption of the Obamacare Medicaid expansion has been phenomenally successful.
So much for the doomsayers, yet again.
edited 15th Jun '16 7:41:53 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"@ speedyboris
Does anybody know if tourism revenue has gone down for America in the last few years? Between the open bigotry on and off the campaign trail, the ridiculous amount of shootings, and long lines at the airport, I can't imagine people from other countries wanting to visit here.
I'm more concerned about legal immigration, especially on who wins this November.
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The problem with that is that either the constitutional safeguards work and you get half-measures (because the 1% are protected from rampant smash-and-grab populism, and to a hardcore socialist, the elites need to be brought down as much as the workers need to be lifted up), or they don't, and you get Chavez.
Anarcho-communism is a workable route but only on a small scale - it's not a good blueprint for a large-scale revolution because most people aren't anarchists. (Loved having deathpigeon around, though; he was a wonderful breath of fresh ideas in my mind.)
edited 15th Jun '16 8:06:30 AM by Ramidel
Indeed, and in my opinion, our current degree of technological development is incapable of supporting a largely socialist economy. A heavy welfare state with an emphasis on empowering organized labor is more or less what I'd consider the limit of what is achievable with present day technology, but I believe that's going to change quite dramatically over the course of the 21st century. It'll probably start with measures like Universal Basic Income, and progressively greater and greater regulation of critical sectors of the economy in response to economic meltdowns, and while I'm not sure it'll ever actually be called socialism, after a certain point, it's certainly not going to be capitalism anymore, in my opinion.
edited 15th Jun '16 8:12:12 AM by CaptainCapsase
