Conquer Club

HitRed wrote:Biden declares Whataburger “off-limits” to Russian cyberattacks. First President to protect critical infrastructure.

If he declare Chic-fil-a next will he have God back on his side?

mookiemcgee wrote:

HitRed wrote:Biden declares Whataburger “off-limits” to Russian cyberattacks. First President to protect critical infrastructure.

If he declare Chic-fil-a next will he have God back on his side?

I will drive MILES to get a good, fresh Chick-Fil-A original chicken sandwich, with pickles, and of course we pair that with vintage Dr. Pepper, bottled in 2021, with a hint of vanilla.

This sounds like the fast food thread, NOW. I can SMELL that crispy chicken NOW...!

https://www.chick-fil-a.com/

Biden continues to disappoint all of his supporters. Even the Taliban troops who campaigned for him feel betrayed.

“How can it be that we are waiting for Biden to come, and it has become so much worse than when Trump was president?” Abdul Latif Nasser, a 19-year detainee at the prison without trial, told VICE News through his lawyers at Reprieve U.S., an international human rights organization that represents six detainees at Guantánamo.

Besides Nasser, detainees Asadullah Haroon Gul and Ahmed Rabbani have told VICE News through their lawyers that conditions at the American military prison have rapidly worsened over the last few months. Men like them at Guantánamo count their years through passing American presidents; when Biden was elected, they hoped things might improve. But while conditions at the prison have never been exemplary, detainees say they have recently become even less tolerable.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7e3jq/ ... ium=social

saxitoxin wrote:Biden continues to disappoint all of his supporters. Even the Taliban troops who campaigned for him feel betrayed.

“How can it be that we are waiting for Biden to come, and it has become so much worse than when Trump was president?” Abdul Latif Nasser, a 19-year detainee at the prison without trial, told VICE News through his lawyers at Reprieve U.S., an international human rights organization that represents six detainees at Guantánamo.

Besides Nasser, detainees Asadullah Haroon Gul and Ahmed Rabbani have told VICE News through their lawyers that conditions at the American military prison have rapidly worsened over the last few months. Men like them at Guantánamo count their years through passing American presidents; when Biden was elected, they hoped things might improve. But while conditions at the prison have never been exemplary, detainees say they have recently become even less tolerable.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7e3jq/ ... ium=social

What a mess, who opened those prisons? Fucking democrats probably

mookiemcgee wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:Biden continues to disappoint all of his supporters. Even the Taliban troops who campaigned for him feel betrayed.

“How can it be that we are waiting for Biden to come, and it has become so much worse than when Trump was president?” Abdul Latif Nasser, a 19-year detainee at the prison without trial, told VICE News through his lawyers at Reprieve U.S., an international human rights organization that represents six detainees at Guantánamo.

Besides Nasser, detainees Asadullah Haroon Gul and Ahmed Rabbani have told VICE News through their lawyers that conditions at the American military prison have rapidly worsened over the last few months. Men like them at Guantánamo count their years through passing American presidents; when Biden was elected, they hoped things might improve. But while conditions at the prison have never been exemplary, detainees say they have recently become even less tolerable.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/m7e3jq/ ... ium=social

What a mess, who opened those prisons? Fucking democrats probably

A former president who says he voted for Joe Biden over Donald Trump opened them.

Elderly, failing Joe Biden accidentally revealed the script his nurses and caretakers wrote for him. And it confirms --- he's still obsessed with Donald Trump! SAD! With just 18 months left until his impeachment, he's accomplished nothing except talk about the last guy. SAD!

https://local12.com/news/nation-world/p ... g-to-media

Members of Old Joe's own party are revolting over his caretakers' just-announced edict to keep the Canadian border closed.

Rep. Brian Higgins (D-NY) has publicly declared the decision by Old Joe's caretakers and nurses to be "bullshit."

https://twitter.com/RepBrianHiggins/sta ... 4736003077

Meanwhile, Canada's aging bisexual prime minister is rejecting science in favor of politics, while Republicans and Anti-Biden Democrats are calling for Science.

The delays have fed concerns that decision-makers are being guided more by politics than science.

Provincial premiers like Ontario’s Doug Ford have urged the Trudeau government to keep tough border measures in place, while recent public opinion polls have suggested many Canadians want the border restrictions to stick around until the end of summer.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/06/1 ... ure-495165

It is SAD to be so myopic, reactionary, AND partisan, saxi. Very sad indeed.

So it appears that you have conceded defeat to me in the other threads where I have cogently refuted your weak, discombobulate, and obtuse arguments, saxi.

Great news! The Chair of Old Joe's Presidential Council on Physical Fitness, Herschel Walker, has pledged his loyalty to Donald Trump and announced he will be challenging corporate statist Rat Senator Raphael Warlock - who previously spent his career as the leader of a crazed religious cult - in 2022 as a Republican. Walker has apparently moved from Texas to Georgia to take out the Warlock. A recent poll showed him 2 points ahead of the cult leader, Warlock, were he to run.

https://twitter.com/HerschelWalker/stat ... 8902511616
https://www.thetrafalgargroup.org/news/ ... 2021-poll/

Walker is the greatest running back in the sport of American football and the father of Chris Walker, a prominent Gay Black Youth™, who has also pledged himself to the lawful president, Donald Trump.

In Washington, the wealthy neoliberal capitalist ruling class are celebrating the withdrawal of Donald Trump to Florida, gorging themselves on artisanal cakes and feting their aging king Old Joe with $100 bottles of champagne. It's like the courtiers of the Royal House of Bourbon celebrating Napoleon's withdrawal to St. Helena to the brief delight of doddering old Louis XVIII.

Washington Society Steps Back Out
Like a grizzly waking from hibernation, the ruling class is coming out of this thing with an appetite.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/18/styl ... elite.html

WASHINGTON — Something surreal was happening on the Potomac one recent night. A big white tent erected outside the Kennedy Center seemed to be a portal back in time.

Underneath it, young men clamored to have their picture taken with Paul Ryan. White House aides worked a tuxedoed crowd. Ballerinas twirled before a Supreme Court justice and a glut of foreign dignitaries. No one talked about tweets, F.B.I. investigations or impeachments. There was hardly a mask in sight.

It was as if this last year of Covid-19, barbed wire and insurrection had simply been one bad trip. Had Proud Boys really marched in the streets? Had St. John’s Church been torched? Had the seat of government actually been set upon by a horned rabble? Yes, it had, and now the nation’s capital would like to spit out the taste of tear gas and pick up a champagne flute.

“You had to have a moment each day where you would wake up thinking the world was going to end,” said Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia.

Today in Washington:


Soon in Washington?

saxitoxin wrote:

This is what happens when you obtain your degree in gender studies.

The ram wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:

This is what happens when you obtain your degree in gender studies.

I thought it's what happens when you become senior editor at Breitbart.

Dukasaur wrote:

The ram wrote:

saxitoxin wrote:

This is what happens when you obtain your degree in gender studies.

I thought it's what happens when you become senior editor at Breitbart.

Aren't you the guy whose family did everything they could to escape a dystopian socialist republic, only to advocate a dystopian socialist republic because nice words have hoodwinked you? So, I think we can take what you think with a pinch of salt, matey.

The ram wrote: Aren't you the guy whose family did everything they could to escape a dystopian socialist republic, only to advocate a dystopian socialist republic because nice words have hoodwinked you? So, I think we can take what you think with a pinch of salt, matey.

I think you've peddled this lie before, haven't you? I've never advocated for dystopian socialist republics, just utopian ones like Denmark and Sweden.

Dukasaur wrote:

The ram wrote: Aren't you the guy whose family did everything they could to escape a dystopian socialist republic, only to advocate a dystopian socialist republic because nice words have hoodwinked you? So, I think we can take what you think with a pinch of salt, matey.

I think you've peddled this lie before, haven't you? I've never advocated for dystopian socialist republics, just utopian ones like Denmark and Sweden.

Duk and I agree on something. I also support Denmark's model of no minimum wage, a privatized post office, a low corporate tax rate, a white hereditary ruling family, mandatory deportation for asylum seekers entering the country before being granted asylum unlike the US, and equipping police with armored water cannon trucks which are illegal in the US.

• The image [Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.] conjures up is of a warm and fuzzy social democracy in which market economics are kept on a tight leash through regulation, the rich are heavily taxed, and the social safety net is generous. That is, however, an inaccurate and highly misleading description of those Northern European countries today. … Sanders’s vision of Scandinavian countries, as with much of his ideology, seems to be stuck in the 1960s and 1970s … .
  
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

saxitoxin wrote:

Dukasaur wrote:

The ram wrote: Aren't you the guy whose family did everything they could to escape a dystopian socialist republic, only to advocate a dystopian socialist republic because nice words have hoodwinked you? So, I think we can take what you think with a pinch of salt, matey.

I think you've peddled this lie before, haven't you? I've never advocated for dystopian socialist republics, just utopian ones like Denmark and Sweden.

Duk and I agree on something. I also support Denmark's model of no minimum wage, a privatized post office, a low corporate tax rate, a white hereditary ruling family, mandatory deportation for asylum seekers entering the country before being granted asylum unlike the US, and equipping police with armored water cannon trucks which are illegal in the US.

• The image [Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.] conjures up is of a warm and fuzzy social democracy in which market economics are kept on a tight leash through regulation, the rich are heavily taxed, and the social safety net is generous. That is, however, an inaccurate and highly misleading description of those Northern European countries today. … Sanders’s vision of Scandinavian countries, as with much of his ideology, seems to be stuck in the 1960s and 1970s … .
  
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions ... story.html

To quote more from Saxi's source:

Sanders’s vision of Scandinavian countries, as with much of his ideology, seems to be stuck in the 1960s and 1970s, a period when these countries were indeed pioneers in creating a social market economy. In Sweden, government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product doubled from 1960 to 1980, going from approximately 30 percent to 60 percent. But as Swedish commentator Johan Norberg points out, this experiment in Sanders-style democratic socialism tanked the Swedish economy. Between 1970 and 1995, he notes, Sweden did not create a single net new job in the private sector. In 1991, a free-market prime minister, Carl Bildt, initiated a series of reforms to kick-start the economy. By the mid-2000s, Sweden had cut the size of its government by a third and emerged from its long economic slump.

My conclusion: Too much of ANYTHING is usually NOT good. Too much socialism led to economic stagnation in Sweden (and in other countries, too, but Sweden is highlighted in my quote). I think the EU overall stagnation (few new jobs for young people, too much protection of "old" ways and companies and sectors of the economy) is detrimental to raising economic standards for ALL peoples of that nation/entity. To quote the Greeks at Delphi: "Nothing in Excess"

Except prayer.

HitRed wrote:Except prayer.

If one were to pray TOO much, then what is neglected? eating? work?** helping others via actions and NOT JUS words (i.e., prayers)?

Even in monastaries, those who lived there and PRAYED there had to do other things and NOT PRAY TOO much.

** see the article posted at the end

Monasticism In The Middle Ages
Christian monasticism is the devotional practice of individuals who live ascetic and typically cloistered lives that are dedicated to Christian worship. Monasticism became quite popular in the Middle Ages, with religion being the most important force in Europe. Monks and nuns were to live isolated from the world to become closer to God. Monks provided service to the church by copying manuscripts, creating art, educating people, and working as missionaries. Convents were especially appealing to women. It was the only place they would receive any sort of education or power. It also let them escape unwanted marriages.

https://courses.lumenlearning.com/atd-h ... nasteries/

and this:
https://www.thejournal.ie/nuns-praying- ... 9-Nov2015/

Dukasaur wrote:

The ram wrote: Aren't you the guy whose family did everything they could to escape a dystopian socialist republic, only to advocate a dystopian socialist republic because nice words have hoodwinked you? So, I think we can take what you think with a pinch of salt, matey.

I think you've peddled this lie before, haven't you? I've never advocated for dystopian socialist republics, just utopian ones like Denmark and Sweden.

Like the old saying goes ' fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me '.

jusplay4fun wrote:Too much socialism led to economic stagnation in Sweden (and in other countries, too, but Sweden is highlighted in my quote). I think the EU overall stagnation (few new jobs for young people, too much protection of "old" ways and companies and sectors of the economy) is detrimental to raising economic standards for ALL peoples of that nation/entity.

And yet, people in Europe are able to enjoy life, while people in North America spend all their time either working or paying bills or stressing and worrying about their next round of working and paying bills.

In my lifetime, the GNP (in real terms, after adjusting for inflation) of the U.S. has quadrupled, and the GNP of Canada has increased almost as much, a factor of 3.6 or something like that. And not one single solitary fucking penny of that has trickled down to the working man. Every single penny has gone to increased corporate profits and the increased fortunes of their billionaire owners. The working man produces more and more and gets paid less and less.

In the time of our fathers, one man could support a family comfortably on one income. Today, most families have three incomes and still can't pay their bills. Good jobs continue to disappear and are replaced with part-time and temporary jobs with less pay.

The company I work for is pretty typical. When they first got the contract in my area, in 2005, we had 65 full-time employees here and a similar number of seasonal contract workers. Today, we have about 25 full-time employees and probably about 120 seasonal contract workers. We do pretty much the same work, maintaining the same length of highway to the same standards. The only difference is that the number of people earning a decent living has been slashed by two-thirds, while a large number of people lives on pins and needles, never knowing whether they've going to get called or not next week, unable to meaningfully budget or plan. My region is only about 1% of the company, so that's probably about 4000 people across the country who have had good jobs taken away and had them replaced with shit jobs. Each full-time position cut means probably $20,000 in extra profit, so in aggregate that's about $80 million extra profit every year that goes into the bosses' pocket. And of course there's the usual song and dance about how we need that for research and innovation, but it's bullshit. We're in a mature industry, we still do things mostly the same way that they were done in 1950, and what little R&D is there is, is done by our suppliers at their expense. The $80 million a year is just gravy for the boss to stash away in an offshore account, and whatever he doesn't spend on hookers and blow, he can leave to his kids so they can buy more companies and destroy more lives.

It used to be that companies might have to lay off staff and cut wages during lean times, but they would expand staff and raise wages in good times. Now they lay off staff and cut wages in good times and in bad. It's not unusual to hear a company announce record profits and a new round of layoffs in the same week.

We've been in a sustained boom for 40 years (with a couple minor recessionary blips that were over in a flash). The economy grows and grows, corporate profits break new records every day, and yet good jobs disappear, poverty continues to rise, and by every meaningful standard our lives get worse. The working man of today is statistically less likely than his father to own his own home, to be debt free, to be able to retire in comfort, to be able to take a foreign vacation.

Just as an example, when my parents came to Canada in '64, the median income was $4,500 and the median house price was $19,000. Easy math; you can see that you could, in theory, earn enough to buy a house in just a little over four years. Of course in practice it would take longer because you still have to eat, etc., but in theory at least, the average employed person could buy the average house in a little over four years. Today, the median employment income is $37,000 and the median house price is $688,000. That means today, one would have to work almost 19 years to earn enough to buy a house. Again, that's in theory -- in practice one still needs to eat, etc., so it takes much longer. Small wonder that many people entering the workforce nowadays don't even entertain the fantasy of being homeowners and resign themselves to stoking the landlord forever.

The astronomical prices of houses nowadays reflect the fact that there's just so much money floating around in the world. The fact that working wages are NOT similarly astronomical reflects the fact that all the vast wealth created by this sustained boom has not been shared with the workers who earned it. It has all gone to the balance sheets of the corporations and their billionaire owners.

Forty years ago we were told if we cut red tape, slash taxes, remove barriers to the movement of wealth, it would usher in a new era of vast prosperity. We did all that, and it did usher in a new era of vast prosperity, but only for a tiny minority. I was a big libertarian in those days. I loved Reagan and Thatcher. I really believed that a rising tide lifts all boats. I knew the rich would get richer, of course, but I really thought that some reasonable fraction would be shared with everyone. If you had told me forty years ago that the rich would insist on keeping 100% of the new wealth, that they would actually have the nerve to demand wage cuts from their employees even while their own incomes were doubling and tripling and quadrupling, I would have called you a liar.

So, yeah. Maybe socialism does lead to economic stagnation. If it allows people to enjoy life, maybe it's a price worth paying. What good is an economy blasting off into the stratosphere, if it doesn't provide a reasonable standard of living to the people busting their ass seventy hours a week to make it possible?

Dukasaur wrote:

jusplay4fun wrote:Too much socialism led to economic stagnation in Sweden (and in other countries, too, but Sweden is highlighted in my quote). I think the EU overall stagnation (few new jobs for young people, too much protection of "old" ways and companies and sectors of the economy) is detrimental to raising economic standards for ALL peoples of that nation/entity.

And yet, people in Europe are able to enjoy life, while people in North America spend all their time either working or paying bills or stressing and worrying about their next round of working and paying bills.

In my lifetime, the GNP (in real terms, after adjusting for inflation) of the U.S. has quadrupled, and the GNP of Canada has increased almost as much, a factor of 3.6 or something like that. And not one single solitary fucking penny of that has trickled down to the working man. Every single penny has gone to increased corporate profits and the increased fortunes of their billionaire owners. The working man produces more and more and gets paid less and less.

• The median disposable (after-tax) income of middle-class households in the U.S. was $60,884 in 2010. With the exception of Luxembourg – a virtual city-state where the median income was $71,799 – the disposable incomes of middle-class households in the other 10 Western European countries in the study trailed well behind the American middle class.
  
  Overall, regardless of how middle class fortunes are analyzed, the material standard of living in the U.S. is estimated to be better than in most Western European countries examined.
  
  https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2 ... r-smaller/

I predict that Biden will repair tRump's damage to most of the government agencies that protect US citizens from greedy wrongdoers.
I predict that Biden will continue to serve honorably, but still be vilified and obstructed by the paid servants of those greedy wrongdoers and those who've been duped into enabling them.
I predict that when his term of office is complete in 4 or 8 years, Biden will leave office peaceably and with dignity, not kicking, screaming, calling for a coup, inciting insurrections, or trying to cripple his successor's administration.

cdbridges wrote:I predict that Biden will repair tRump's damage to most of the government agencies that protect US citizens from greedy wrongdoers.
I predict that Biden will continue to serve honorably, but still be vilified and obstructed by the paid servants of those greedy wrongdoers and those who've been duped into enabling them.

Greedy wrongdoing Obama ethics staff!

• Former Obama-era Office of Government Ethics chief Walter Shaub called the Biden administration’s hiring of multiple relatives of senior staffers a disgraceful repudiation to the mission of restoring ethics in government.
  
  “I’m sorry, I know some folks don’t like hearing any criticism of him. But this royally sucks. I’m disgusted. A lot of us worked hard to tee him up to restore ethics to government and believed the promises. This is a a real ‘f*** you’ to us—and government ethics,” Shaub wrote on Twitter.
  
  https://news.yahoo.com/amphtml/former-o ... 38291.html

I predict that when his term of office is complete in 4 or 8 years,

Well it's only 18 months until we have the numbers to start impeaching him twice each week, every Monday and Wednesday. I doubt his frail, elderly old body will be able to take that and he'll resign by the 14th or 15th impeachment. Then Koko Harris and her 41% approval rating can drag the corpse of the Rats into 2024.