Bay 12 Games Forum

So apparently I've missed it, and it hasn't been discussed here much, but Trump has explicitly said that he would put Hillary in jail if he was to win. Seems like a distinctly un-American and Russian thing to say here. Not that anyone who has paid even a little attention to Trump would be surprised about him trying to emulate his idol and embrace the anti-democratic values that would destroy America and turn it into a twisted Russia-lookalike mockery, but apparently there are still quite a few of those left.

Correct me if I'm wrong but Putin isn't stupid enough to come out and say that.  He is smart enough to delegate the task.

Describing any part of the video in question as 'bragging about sexual assault' is simply an inaccurate interpretation of his words.

Trump: Yeah, that’s her. With the gold. I better use some Tic Tacs just in case I start kissing her. You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

This is a description of sexual assault.  If a court of law decided beyond a reasonable doubt that this event happened then each time it happened would be a case of sexual assault.

Hilariously Deplorably the wikipedia article for sexual assault has been edited since the time of this videos released to remove the statement that forcible kissing is sexual assault.  Because horrible people exist.

So lets go back to what the page was last month: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sexual_assault&diff=741058753&oldid=741058210

There are American towns which have a fire tax, and if you forget to pay it (even a month late), they'll let your house burn down while they watch.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2011/12/07/9272989-firefighters-let-home-burn-over-75-fee-again

Which besides being dickish also does not solve the problem of funding the fire department.  Nor would it solve the problem of the fire department if they showed up and said "okay give us your life savings" because then you still have the people opting in subsidizing everyone who opts out but doesn't have their home burn down.  And it's actually a really good metaphor because health insurance is a lot like a fire department more then fire insurance.  It's okay for not everyone to have homeowners insurance that pays for fire damage.  But everyone needs to pay for the fire department.

Probably functionally the same, given that they wouldn't offer Cadillac plans if they were heavily taxed.

Well it's hard to tell because the taxes on Cadillac plans aren't downright draconian.  It starts to be a more wonky question about tax incentives because benefits like health insurance aren't subject to income taxes.

I'm gonna be dead honest, I've expressed opposition to the aca before, but whatever I actually knew about the actual workings of the bill I've since forgotten. Can someone help me out and explain what it actually consists of to me, so I'm not full of shit?

3 things:

1) Community Rating: Everyone is offered the same insurance options.  The only factors are age, location and smoking status.  This means that if you are sick and need insurance, you cant lose it or have your rates skyrocket.  It also means if you are healthy you dont get bargain basement prices (which would vanish the moment you get sick).  AKA it makes insurance act like insurance

2) Subsidies: Not everyone can afford insurance at rates that pay for the above.  Before they were getting bargain basement insurance that went away if they were sick.  Now the government subsidizes your insurance if you are poor

3) Individual mandate: Because insurance is worth more if you are sick and less if you aren't sick, the law requires everyone pay for insurance or uncle sam starts giving you fines on your income taxes to make it that you dont free ride

There is also other stuff like some IT modernization and healthcare access but that is the big stuff.

I see inthread tends to consist more of fingerpointing for disagreeing on any sort of issue hat involves race at all, Brexit being a brilliantly shining example.

But there was racism in Brexit.  Personally I dont think racism was the most important part about Brexit (the most important part being that it will lower British economic welfare long term) but Redking isn't making it up.

Even in congress we do expect them to adapt to new stuff not wait two years for the voters to tell them what to do.

So seeing all this dismissiveness does a fair bit to sadden and disappoint me, as well as infuriate me. When people decide that they can stop listening or taking people with seriousness because oh, their side has the moral superiority, oh, the other side's a bunch of racists, it shuts down any sort of meaningful discussion and turns into simply feeing smugly superior.

Whereas you decide that the other side is being closeminded and so you stop listening to them.  Which shuts down any sort of meaningful discussion and turns it into a chance for you to feel smugly superior.

Actual sexism exists, along with actual racism, actual privledge, etc.  But whenever it is pointed out the discussion is shut down with bitching about how people are so quick to fly off the handle.

So when this wall of condescension rolls in with "yeah poor white straight man riiiight" sort of stuff or the endless shutting down of conversation

Yeah, people are assholes to you.  That's humanity.  The shit goes in all directions.

But what about the nice stuff?  What about the liberals picking a champion who is trying to help with the opioid epidemic in poor rural areas?  What about the liberals chosing that they are going to die on the hill of providing health insurance to poor people?  Or how the liberals are sticking by their guns to make sure this insurance reaches poor, rural conservative voters who aint exactly liberal after a conservative congress and conservative state governments teamed up to keep poor people from getting insurance in their states?  What about the liberals shoving a ton of money into making sure the poor rural people have access to high speed internet?  Or making sure that funding keeps flowing to the national parks and infrastructure spending that is a huge boon to the economies of rural areas?

You tell me I need to treat someone nice and I'll tell you to fuck off and shove that high horse you rode in on up your ass.  But I think it's fair to say that all liberals want the government to respect the needs and even the wishes of all people including the ones I dont like.

Nobody has said rape.

People have said sexual assault.  And sexual assault is a completely fair description of the comments Donald Trump made.

Eh, if there's zero chance of either party preventing the other from getting things through you run into issues.

You do run into issues but it also solves some stuff.  If Nancy Pelosi is Speaker, a Democrat is Senate President and Clinton is President President then congress is going to be passing budgets no if and or buts.  If republicans try to filibuster all budgets then democrats are going to change Senate rules to curtail use of the filibuster.  That is just a bridge too far...

context versus content

I would vote for Alvin Greene.  I think that Alvin Greene type candidates would never win in a competitive election unless republicans put up someone like Trump.
If the republicans had ever run a good candidate against someone like Marion Barry or Rob Blagoyovoylitchavich, I would vote for said republican.  But said republican would need to represent a constituency to their left, which means accepting a candidate I doubt they would ever accept.  I think republicans could be competitive even in democratic lock places like DC if they weren't so rigid.

Basically if all else is equal, I would vote for the party label and nothing else.  I've done that many times with less noteworthy candidates (I live in a conservative district so I vote for a sacrificial democratic lamb every year).  But often the character of a person is deeply informative about why they would be terrible at the job (such as Marion Barry).

I guess Obama is a useful idiot for trying diplomacy with Iran and Cuba then, Mainiac? If she was belligerent about Russia, you'd probably hate that, too. Let me guess, if someone is either slightly more friendly, or slightly less friendly to Russia than Hillary is, then they're automatically an idiot?

There is a difference between diplomacy and a photo-op for dictators who want to prop you up so in order to peel off a few votes from the candidate they want to lose.

And yes, sometimes diplomacy does mean you give a photo-op to dictators.  Quid pro quo.  But Jill Stein isn't doing diplomacy here.  She is just posing with a man who is the opposite of everything she claims to stand for.