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OOTB's Political Thread . ..

Get a better computer. I’m not tracking down links for you because you want to live in denial. It’s common knowledge who Rubin gets his funding from.

Rational wiki is a perfectly accessible link.

I'm talking about the #49 link that your whole argument is based upon. Do you have a link that works, or did you just link some random wiki page that you hoped could bail you out?
 
I'm talking about the #49 link that your whole argument is based upon. Do you have a link that works, or did you just link some random wiki page that you hoped could bail you out?

Go to the wiki page and source it yourself. I’m not making an argument. This is common knowledge. I have zero interest in wasting my night sitting here watching you do mental gymnastics to defend this clown
 
Go to the wiki page and source it yourself. I’m not making an argument. This is common knowledge. I have zero interest in wasting my night sitting here watching you do mental gymnastics to defend this clown

I went to the link and I tried to sauce the material you poasted. It led to nowhere. I'm not calling you a liar at this point, but your accusation that Rubin is funded by the Koch brothers is completely unfounded until you provide some actual proof.
 
He publicly announced the partnership with Learn Liberty you dolt. Google it. It's not that hard.

Apparently their servers are down but if you google "Rubin Report Learn Liberty" the first result is the link to a specific landing page on learnliberty.org that discusses their partnership. This is such a stupid fukking thing to even try to deny. Its public information.
 
Regardless of his funding, what he said regarding identity politics was spot on.

Exactly. @uncboy10 is trying to discredit what was actually said by changing the subject. The problem he's running into is that he can't even prove that point. The citation from the Wiki page that he claims proves his point is broken. It doesn't work. Then when pressed about this, he resorts to insulting other people who only wanted proof of his claims.
 
He publicly announced the partnership with Learn Liberty you dolt. Google it. It's not that hard.

Apparently their servers are down but if you google "Rubin Report Learn Liberty" the first result is the link to a specific landing page on learnliberty.org that discusses their partnership. This is such a stupid fukking thing to even try to deny. Its public information.

He receives "part" of his income from Learn Liberty, who in turn receives "part" of their income from Koch brothers donations. That isn't exactly how a transitive property works, Brofessor.

What's funny about the accusations from The Young Turks in the video is that TYT took $20 million directly from a Wall Street hedge fund after complaining about money in politics. Then you have Ana Kasparian (who's family is from Armenia), the most hateful person in the news, down on her knees for Cenk Uyger, who just recently stopped denying the Armenian genocide by the Turkish people. See, if you want to play this game, we can play this game, Brotato Chip.
 
Regardless of his funding, what he said regarding identity politics was spot on.

Everything he says is cliche and has been said better by smarter people already. Of course identity politics is a problem. That’s not exactly a hot take. It’s also an overstated problem because twitter amplifies idiots. The super “woke” crowd is probably a few hundred thousand people, but we let them steer our conversation because they’re the loudest people on social media. Now there’s an entire cottage industry of people like Rubin who make a living talking about nothing but identity politics, and stir their followers into a frenzy and convince them every liberal and progressive is the same. This type of stuff is no different than the woke crowd that tell their followers that every conservative is a Nazi. There are real nazis out there’s just like there’s real super woke identitarians and communists. The minorities on both sides are controlling the discussion.

These people are the reason we can’t have reasonable discussions about politics anymore. It’s a giant feedback loop. Everyone is a nazi. Everyone is a commie. Blah blah blah.
 
As is usual in political matters, you and I disagree. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the degree to which Dems are using identity politics to compartmentalize people and thereby keep them divided. They see everyone as a victim to be exploited in furtherance of their political ambitions.

Obama is a classic example of a minority who rose from poverty and a broken home to attend one of the most prestigious schools in America(gratis); who could have been the most unifying President since Lincoln. Yet he lacked much of Lincoln’s humility and love of country and chose to broaden the racial rift rather than bridge it. He saw everything through tinted glasses. Such a wasted opportunity.
 
Obama is a classic example of a minority who rose from poverty and a broken home to attend one of the most prestigious schools in America(gratis); who could have been the most unifying President since Lincoln. Yet he lacked much of Lincoln’s humility and love of country and chose to broaden the racial rift rather than bridge it. He saw everything through tinted glasses. Such a wasted opportunity.

Lincoln literally (literally) tore apart the country. The racial rift during and immediately post Lincoln was the highest it’s ever been.

I love Lincoln, but he only unified half the country.
 
Lincoln literally (literally) tore apart the country. The racial rift during and immediately post Lincoln was the highest it’s ever been.

I love Lincoln, but he only unified half the country.
Of course the racial rift was at it’s widest, we had just fought a civil war and freed the slaves. What do you expect race relations to be at that point. But by fighting that war and keeping the country unified, he paved the way for Obama to be POTUS 150 years later.
 
Of course the racial rift was at it’s widest, we had just fought a civil war and freed the slaves. What do you expect race relations to be at that point. But by fighting that war and keeping the country unified, he paved the way for Obama to be POTUS 150 years later.

But the unified is really only in the sense that he literally had to fight for it to stay as 1. Everything he did just further divided an already extremely divided country. It was obviously the right thing but calling him some great unifier of people is just inaccurate.
 
Everything he says is cliche and has been said better by smarter people already. Of course identity politics is a problem. That’s not exactly a hot take. It’s also an overstated problem because twitter amplifies idiots. The super “woke” crowd is probably a few hundred thousand people, but we let them steer our conversation because they’re the loudest people on social media. Now there’s an entire cottage industry of people like Rubin who make a living talking about nothing but identity politics, and stir their followers into a frenzy and convince them every liberal and progressive is the same. This type of stuff is no different than the woke crowd that tell their followers that every conservative is a Nazi. There are real nazis out there’s just like there’s real super woke identitarians and communists. The minorities on both sides are controlling the discussion.

These people are the reason we can’t have reasonable discussions about politics anymore. It’s a giant feedback loop. Everyone is a nazi. Everyone is a commie. Blah blah blah.

I'll agree with a lot of that. The media doesn't help matters either. They feed the insanity on both sides. It's one reason why CNN's ratings have absolutely plummeted. Hardly anyone trusts them anymore.
 
This is the problem with the Democrat Party in a nutshell.

Democrats say it'll take a white male to beat Trump in election

https://www.washingtontimes.com/quiz/2015/feb/11/us-citizenship-test-could-you-pass/

Nobody is talking about policies. They can't even get passed what sex/color the candidate should be. I just can't see any of them beating Trump in 2020. Florida is probably as good as gone. Desantis has those east coast mouth-breathers on lockdown over in the Broward/Miami-Dade/Palm Beach counties. It's going to be a lot harder for those Dem populated areas to cheat in 2020.
 
As is usual in political matters, you and I disagree. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate the degree to which Dems are using identity politics to compartmentalize people and thereby keep them divided. They see everyone as a victim to be exploited in furtherance of their political ambitions.

Obama is a classic example of a minority who rose from poverty and a broken home to attend one of the most prestigious schools in America(gratis); who could have been the most unifying President since Lincoln. Yet he lacked much of Lincoln’s humility and love of country and chose to broaden the racial rift rather than bridge it. He saw everything through tinted glasses. Such a wasted opportunity.

Nothing wrong with disagreeing if we’re both coming into the discussion with good faith.

I’m not talking about party politics though. I’m talking about the social conditions of our country. We can’t judge liberals and progressives by the behavior of the DNC just like we can’t judge every conservative by the behavior of the GOP. More and more people are becoming independents every day because they are waking up and realizing that both sides are bought and paid for by wealthy campaign donors. I’m a big fan of left wing intellectuals like Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein (this is guy is a mega genius that everyone should check out) who constantly decry identity politics.

We’ve got to get away from this partisan political battle. You can be a progressive and hate Hillary Clinton and Cory Booker. You can be a conservative and be repulsed by Donald Trump. We can all be be better and do what we can to elevate the discourse. We have to stop identifying each other based on the things a bunch of sellouts in Washington do. And people need to stop watching these partisan networks that tell them exactly what they want to hear.

How could he have been the most unifying president since Lincoln when he was one of the most villified presidents ever? “Thanks Obama” became a meme for a reason. This is the man who fox criticized for wearing a tan suit and putting the wrong kind of mustard on his burger. Now we have a president that brags about grabbing women by the pussy. If Obama said he went around grabbing rich white women by the pussy we would have had a second civil war.

A lot of people wanted him to say that racism was dead because we elected a black president, and when he acknowledged issues of race, he got called a divider. Of course he made mistakes. And frankly he sold out a lot of people by pretending to be the cool president who smoked weed then doing a 180 on MJ legalization. I’m not his biggest fan. But a lot of the divisiveness did not come from him. It came from the fact that we live in two completely different paradigms. If you watch CNN then you live in a completely different universe than someone who watches Fox News.
 
Nothing wrong with disagreeing if we’re both coming into the discussion with good faith.

I’m not talking about party politics though. I’m talking about the social conditions of our country. We can’t judge liberals and progressives by the behavior of the DNC just like we can’t judge every conservative by the behavior of the GOP. More and more people are becoming independents every day because they are waking up and realizing that both sides are bought and paid for by wealthy campaign donors. I’m a big fan of left wing intellectuals like Sam Harris and Eric Weinstein (this is guy is a mega genius that everyone should check out) who constantly decry identity politics.

We’ve got to get away from this partisan political battle. You can be a progressive and hate Hillary Clinton and Cory Booker. You can be a conservative and be repulsed by Donald Trump. We can all be be better and do what we can to elevate the discourse. We have to stop identifying each other based on the things a bunch of sellouts in Washington do. And people need to stop watching these partisan networks that tell them exactly what they want to hear.

How could he have been the most unifying president since Lincoln when he was one of the most villified presidents ever? “Thanks Obama” became a meme for a reason. This is the man who fox criticized for wearing a tan suit and putting the wrong kind of mustard on his burger. Now we have a president that brags about grabbing women by the pussy. If Obama said he went around grabbing rich white women by the pussy we would have had a second civil war.

A lot of people wanted him to say that racism was dead because we elected a black president, and when he acknowledged issues of race, he got called a divider. Of course he made mistakes. And frankly he sold out a lot of people by pretending to be the cool president who smoked weed then doing a 180 on MJ legalization. I’m not his biggest fan. But a lot of the divisiveness did not come from him. It came from the fact that we live in two completely different paradigms. If you watch CNN then you live in a completely different universe than someone who watches Fox News.

This is where you lose me. Obama was handled with kid gloves compared to how GW and Trump have been treated. I also don't give even the slightest f*** about what a candidate says. I care about policies, and with regards to policies, Trump has been light years ahead of the two jackasses that preceded him. That's why I'll break my trend of voting third party this time around and vote for DT Barnum in 2020 (as long as he doesn't do anything really stupid).
 
Obama “one of the most vilified Presidents ever?” Nothing could be more untrue. The media adored him and thought he walked on water. He was absolutely handled with kid gloves. Trump has been treated more unfairly by the media and the opposing party than any President in my lifetime, and it’s not even close.
 
Obama “one of the most vilified Presidents ever?” Nothing could be more untrue. The media adored him and thought he walked on water. He was absolutely handled with kid gloves. Trump has been treated more unfairly by the media and the opposing party than any President in my lifetime, and it’s not even close.

What’s unfair about how trump is treated? The list of objectively stupid stuff he’s said and done is so long that he could be criticized 24/7 for the next ten years and they still wouldn’t cover all the bases.

At the end of the day the guy bragged about assaulting women. Recently said he would take opposition research from a foreign state. Sided with putin over our own intelligence agencies. Defended the Saudi royal prince after he had a journalist murdered. Talks about “clean coal” and calls co2 the “freedom molecule.” At this point this list is so long that it’s hard to keep it straight. It’s like watching Idiocracy play out in real life.

There are plenty of decent conservative candidates. Trump being president is evidence of how far we’ve fallen. He’s a celebration of anti-intellectualism. But Fox News will continue telling its base that trump is being persecuted. Meanwhile intelligent conservatives like George Will are pulling their hair out.
 
Obama “one of the most vilified Presidents ever?” Nothing could be more untrue. The media adored him and thought he walked on water. He was absolutely handled with kid gloves. Trump has been treated more unfairly by the media and the opposing party than any President in my lifetime, and it’s not even close.

He sorta brings it on himself though you have to admit. I'd say about half of it is completely self-inflicted.
 
The vast majority of young people have never read a page of Marx. They don’t even know what socialism is. Tax and spend government programs are not socialism. I have not seen any significant portion of the population advocating for the abolition of private ownership of capital, regardless of what they call themselves.

The most watched news network on tv is heavily biased to the right, and is basically state sponsored tv for trump. Nobody in the media can even hold a candle to Fox News.
 
Didn’t take long to get back to those accusations about socialism I was talking about...
 
Oh, I agree. But the other half is pure bias. 90% of the press leans heavily to the left. The same applies to college professors. Ergo the reason we’re raising young socialists.

I agree that professors are absurdly left but I did 4 years of it in college history classes and survived still thinking socialism is incredibly dumb for America. The catholic church on the other hand...hard to come away with great feelings about them but I digress.

And @uncboy10, I've read Das and CM by Marx a few times. It's been 170 years now, can we safely say he was wrong? It's fair to say he, while having a vast understanding of economics, had a poor grasp on the human impact of his ideas when put into action. How many times do we have to fail at communism/socialism as a society before we all decide it's not realistic for a population of any scale? Adam Smith won.
 
I agree that professors are absurdly left but I did 4 years of it in college history classes and survived still thinking socialism is incredibly dumb for America. The catholic church on the other hand...hard to come away with great feelings about them but I digress.

And @uncboy10, I've read Das and CM by Marx a few times. It's been 170 years now, can we safely say he was wrong? It's fair to say he, while having a vast understanding of economics, had a poor grasp on the human impact of his ideas when put into action. How many times do we have to fail at communism/socialism as a society before we all decide it's not realistic for a population of any scale? Adam Smith won.

Marx made valid critiques of capitalism, but his prescription for solving the problem was dumb.

I think you’re spot on. He understood the basic economics, but he wasn’t a very practical thinker. One reason why smith/Locke work in practice is because they fit our nature. But we are heading towards a precipice with automation and AI. I firmly believe that 90% of human labor will be obsolete in the next century.
 
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The vast majority of young people have never read a page of Marx. They don’t even know what socialism is. Tax and spend government programs are not socialism. I have not seen any significant portion of the population advocating for the abolition of private ownership of capital, regardless of what they call themselves.

The most watched news network on tv is heavily biased to the right, and is basically state sponsored tv for trump. Nobody in the media can even hold a candle to Fox News.
A country doesn’t just morph from being a Democratic Republic into being a Socialist Country, there are intermediate stages, starting with Democratic Socialism which has characteristics of both. But as the centralized government becomes more and more involved with every aspect of your life, individual freedom is gradually eroded and pure Socialism is the result. We’re in the intermediate stage right now.
 
A country doesn’t just morph from being a Democratic Republic into being a Socialist Country, there are intermediate stages, starting with Democratic Socialism which has characteristics of both. But as the centralized government becomes more and more involved with every aspect of your life, individual freedom is gradually eroded and pure Socialism is the result. We’re in the intermediate stage right now.

Democratic socialism is a European labor party style of liberalism that has no real basis in socialism whatsoever. It advocates for national welfare policies and labor rights that are designed to make the economy more equitable. Advocating for higher wages is literally the polar opposite of what Marx wrote about. He thought wage labor was a form of slavery. Democratic socialism is a misnomer. Social democrat is a better labor for people like Bernie Sanders.

Socialism has nothing to do with the size of government. It is about the private vs public ownership of capital. We have a mixed economy with capitalism and some social democrat (democratic socialist) policies such as national healthcare, education and transportation programs. Those programs make the lives of citizens better. But they’re not socialism, at all. There is an entire political philosophy called anarchosyndicalism that advocates for the abolition of privately owned capital while simukaneously advocating for libertarianism. A small government can be socialistic, and a large government can be capitalistic.

I see no evidence that individual freedoms are being eroded. In fact, we are rolling back the criminalization of marijuana, we’ve given gay couples the freedom to get married, and people can still buy as many guns as they want. I think we’re about as free as we’ve ever been. I’m open to being corrected though.
 
Democratic socialism is a European labor party style of liberalism that has no real basis in socialism whatsoever. It advocates for national welfare policies and labor rights that are designed to make the economy more equitable. Advocating for higher wages is literally the polar opposite of what Marx wrote about. He thought wage labor was a form of slavery. Democratic socialism is a misnomer. Social democrat is a better labor for people like Bernie Sanders.

Socialism has nothing to do with the size of government. It is about the private vs public ownership of capital. We have a mixed economy with capitalism and some social democrat (democratic socialist) policies such as national healthcare, education and transportation programs. Those programs make the lives of citizens better. But they’re not socialism, at all. There is an entire political philosophy called anarchosyndicalism that advocates for the abolition of privately owned capital while simukaneously advocating for libertarianism. A small government can be socialistic, and a large government can be capitalistic.

I see no evidence that individual freedoms are being eroded. In fact, we are rolling back the criminalization of marijuana, we’ve given gay couples the freedom to get married, and people can still buy as many guns as they want. I think we’re about as free as we’ve ever been. I’m open to being corrected though.

They're already chiseling away at the 1st and 2nd Amendments. You may think that's fine, but the fact is that our liberty has been eroding at a faster pace in the last century. It's worse in places like Europe and Canada, but it's only a matter of time until they try to bring some kind of anti-1st Amendment law wrapped in the idiocy of this diversity movement.
 
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What’s unfair about how trump is treated? The list of objectively stupid stuff he’s said and done is so long that he could be criticized 24/7 for the next ten years and they still wouldn’t cover all the bases.

At the end of the day the guy bragged about assaulting women. Recently said he would take opposition research from a foreign state. Sided with putin over our own intelligence agencies. Defended the Saudi royal prince after he had a journalist murdered. Talks about “clean coal” and calls co2 the “freedom molecule.” At this point this list is so long that it’s hard to keep it straight. It’s like watching Idiocracy play out in real life.

There are plenty of decent conservative candidates. Trump being president is evidence of how far we’ve fallen. He’s a celebration of anti-intellectualism. But Fox News will continue telling its base that trump is being persecuted. Meanwhile intelligent conservatives like George Will are pulling their hair out.

I don't think anyone is trying to make the case that it's unfair, but just look at the difference between GW and Obama. Obama's administration was almost a carbon copy of GW's administration, and George was hammered a lot harder than Obama was.
 

Gotcha. I didn’t know if you meant stuff like reparations which is apparently becoming a real talking point.

Unfortunately without some social safety net we would all have to drive past favelas on our way to work. And I didn’t really mean welfare as in giving money to poor people or food stamps, though those are obviously forms of welfare too. My understanding is that the technical definition of welfare encompasses any government program that is designed to benefit its citizens.

The free rider problem is real, but so is the public good problem. Markets don’t produce enough of public goods because firms can not capture all of the revenue, so they produce less than the efficient quantity. This applies to things like roads, schools, etc. I think the goal should be to use economics to find the efficient combination of government spending and market exchange. I’d rather remove the ideologies and just try to do the math. But that isn’t sexy enough to get anyone elected.
 
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