Politics over Religion at MD&D

[_canpakes]

His view of support or defense of individual rights always comes down to legislating them out of existence, using "death by a thousand cuts" methodology... One of his last acts as President was to screw over hundreds of thousands of SS recipients who have their finances conducted by a third party: these became "incompetent", i.e. "mental defectives", and therefore placed on the "prohibited" list by faceless bureaucrats working inside the SS system...

Looks like you need 999 more cuts. Can you get us at least a third of the way there to better illustrate how pushing a 2015 Social Security Administration proposal placing arguably mentally incompetent people on a federal no-buy list qualifies as unequivocally 'hating guns', as opposed to merely (or possibly) being misguided?



Interesting factoid #1: the 'mental defective' characterization is actually a term/condition defined by the VA for laws already in place that long preceded the SSA's 2015 proposed rule, by decades. Folks subject to the latter's requirement would be classified per that terminology but the 2015 proposal did not introduce that term.

Interesting factoid #2: actually, all bureaucrats have faces.

[_Meadowchik]

I think Ed is right about guns. Deadly gun violence is a burden Americans need to live with, just like residents of Carribean islands need to accept hurricane destruction as a way of life. It goes with the territory.

Human behavior is not the same as weather. I don't think we should ever gift gun violence to futility.

[_Kishkumen]

"Lopsided" only means which major party is dominant at the time. I guess this next year will be a nail-biter.

No, it actually doesn’t. What we are looking at is the speed with which we fly apart as a nation. It is clear that the Dems are not virtuous. They are, if anything, Empire-lite. But the GOP has descended into madness. A number of veteran participants in past Republican administrations see this. That you don’t is neither here nor there.

One of the problems with the GOP's push for tax cuts is that they never last long enough to have the theoretical beneficial effect on the economy.

Absolute dribble. The tax rate on individuals in the top bracket has been significantly lower than pre-Reagan levels for a very long time. The only effect we have seen is that the rich have become much richer, and the poor have become much poorer. Wages have stagnated, while unproductive capital has ballooned. You are living in a fantasyland.

"Economic inequality" is the warcry of the LLS demographic, the world over. They also holler "economic equality!" as their purported agenda. But the real world isn't ready for that. Economic equal opportunity needs to be built on the back of individual liberty a la the "American Experiment". Forcing economic equality by hauling the US down while siphoning off our wealth to attempt to build them up, will only result in a vacuum of power which will be filled by tyrannies (created by sending wealth to them).

Balderdash. Absolute balderdash. What centrists propose is greater equality of opportunity, not absolute economic equality. Those who benefit from a system should pay into its maintenance. The right wing oligarchs steal from the nation and do not pay into it. They enlist culture warriors like you to abet them in doing so. You are only too happy to oblige because you think in black and white terms.

[_Uncle Ed]

Okay, I am a B&W thinker. What are you going to do about it? There are literally billions of us worldwide. If you can't fix the problem at home. What makes you think that YOU (and whoever else agrees with you) can fix anything as a "centrist"?

Ye gods, a "centrist" proposing that as a good thing! Equal opportunity without equal material opportunity is a toothless offer. The way people become equal is to be given equal chances at the wealth surplus. It doesn't mean that all will become equally rich. And it sure doesn't mean that because of that we should all be equally deprived of our wealth above a given line.

[_moksha]

I think Ed is right about guns. Deadly gun violence is a burden Americans need to live with, just like residents of Carribean islands need to accept hurricane destruction as a way of life. It goes with the territory.

Human behavior is not the same as weather. I don't think we should ever gift gun violence to futility.

What is David going to do against Goliath when Goliath has all the slingshots?

[_Meadowchik]

What is David going to do against Goliath when Goliath has all the slingshots?

Make some.