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halfmanhalfbronco

Who is ready for a blue wave?

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8 hours ago, SalinasSpartan said:

So even though Nevada has term limits of 12 years for its the elected officials they are still laughably dumb? Hardly a ringing endorsement for term limits. 

No it is. Because the only people more stupid than elected officials are voters. I mean, TRUMP is the president for gods sake.

It would be another layer of protection for the  people from their own stupidity, and remove the focus of re-election. 

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On 7/27/2020 at 7:44 PM, modestobulldog said:

TDS and Progressive bullshit.  Some were making more on unemployment than when they were working.  This is a good move, don't like it, get back to work.

why do we have to be so mean to hourly mostly lopaid workers????  Donald and his cronies got all they needed in the first bills. Now you bitch about poor workers getting a bit more??? wow

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On 7/27/2020 at 8:30 PM, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Just got off the phone with my father.  He is in the service industry and was laid off for months.  His work could only bring him back part time, not nearly enough to pay his rent and bills.

My father is a HUGE Trump supporter.  Hates democrats.  Hated Obama.  He went on this tirade about how he will never, as long as he lives, vote for another Republican.  I have rarely seen him angry, let alone raging angry.  Why is he so angry?  The new stimulus package.  $200 unemployment insurance.  

Republicans just lost a big chunk of the working blue collar vote that they worked hard for decades to solidify.

Great job guys.

It is probably going to happen. Then it will reverse itself. The country will say no we don’t want this shit after 2 years. I think there is a good chance the Dems pull off the sweep. I think the Republicans win back the house and senate in 2022. 

The Masters 5k road race All American.

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2 hours ago, NevadaFan said:

No it is. Because the only people more stupid than elected officials are voters. I mean, TRUMP is the president for gods sake.

It would be another layer of protection for the  people from their own stupidity, and remove the focus of re-election. 

If elected officials are dumb regardless, what difference does it make if those dumb people are experienced or inexperienced? 

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1 hour ago, robe said:

It is probably going to happen. Then it will reverse itself. The country will say no we don’t want this shit after 2 years. I think there is a good chance the Dems pull off the sweep. I think the Republicans win back the house and senate in 2022. 

The 2022 Senate map doesn't look particularly conducive to the GOP winning the majority back if they lose it this year. They're going to be playing defense in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and there aren't really any potentially vulnerable Democratic seats in the cycle other than perhaps Nevada. If they lose the Senate majority this year, then I think 2024 would likely be a much better chance to win it back. 

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my company does work on capitol hill

success, power, and a 'job well done' are way more about navigating high school drama and game of thrones intrigue than it is book, social, history, economics, civics, constitutional, law, and policy knowledge

by, like, unbelievable margins.

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18 minutes ago, retrofade said:

The 2022 Senate map doesn't look particularly conducive to the GOP winning the majority back if they lose it this year. They're going to be playing defense in Wisconsin, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Florida, and there aren't really any potentially vulnerable Democratic seats in the cycle other than perhaps Nevada. If they lose the Senate majority this year, then I think 2024 would likely be a much better chance to win it back. 

Haven’t look at the map so you are probably right. Hard to say what would happen in 2024. The Presidential race will have a big say. 

The Masters 5k road race All American.

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On 7/28/2020 at 3:59 PM, NVGiant said:

I think you instinctively view government as the problem. I understand. But while I am happy to concede that point, the selfishness of our culture is a key issue that you shouldn't dismiss. And it goes beyond people turning protests into a fun night out every night or because people like to lick door knobs for freedom. Like the working class point you made. Other free countries have deemed many in the working class as essential, too. That doesn't differentiate us from any other free country, and yet all of them are doing better. Why? What differentiates us is it seems that our companies take fewer steps to protect their workers. That is a function of both our view government and our view of business.

Lack of planning is an issue, too. You'll hear no argument from me on that. Generations of a philosophy that says all government is bad government has fueled that incompetence. But it's not the only reason, of course. I know you've heard me say this before. But the fundamental problem with our government is that almost no one is willing to take responsibility. That obviously includes this president, but it also includes officials at the state and local governments, both elected and nonelected. They're all looking to avoid blame, because they know if they are to blame they will lose their job or lose an election. So while I chide protestors and anti-maskers and well-to-do tourists who apparently think Covid-19 doesn't spread when you are on vacation, the common theme among them, government officials, and more, is a pervasive selfishness and an unwillingness to take responsibility for anything.

But again, I think you do this country a disservice by tossing away the selfishness of our culture. Japan's government has had a mostly incompetent response. But the people wear masks, which has helped. The UK was woefully unprepared. But they corrected and demanded better government. And their people now wear masks and social distance. That said, the uniqueness of our system shouldn't be dismissed. Oregon has done a relatively decent job of managing this, but ultimately it won't matter when our neighbors to the south and east get pummeled and then come here. 

This virus preys on our shortcomings as a society, which is why we are uniquely +++++ed in the free world.

I get this is delayed, and this literally matters to no one but myself, but +++++ it. I don't care. What is a message board for other than self indulgence?

Look, the problem I have with what you're saying here is the fact that selfishness itself is almost always an ideologically loaded term. You seem to instinctively view a unique form of American selfishness as the main problem here because you instinctively view selfishness as the thing fundamentally at the core of all of America's problems. But the issue with that is it turns into a circular kind of logic where selfishness is attached to anything that someone does that is deemed problematic, and the intentions are inserted as a big part of what makes it problematic. Look at the way people differentiate legitimate protesters from people who just want to have a fun night out. I get you post that as a kind of aside, but it speaks to the fact that there seems to be a clear delineation between people who protest for supposedly unselfish reasons (the protesters who really believe in racial justice and fighting police brutality) and the protesters who do it for selfish reasons (a good night out, breaking things, and maybe a little racial justice too). But the fact is that it's entirely reasonable to say that any large-scale protests of any nature right are in fact acts of selfishness if you weigh the costs and benefits with the immediacy of the issues... the pandemic is more of an immediate threat to more people (many of them marginalized too) than cops in this moment. And yet, the selfishness argument is almost entirely focused on red-state Americans who hate masks (people who should be mocked and derided, btw). Or people who just aren't willing to abide by social distancing because they need to get a haircut or get their nails done (usually in red states or red regions). So you'll have to excuse me if I dismiss the "selfishness" argument when the term almost always seems to be used selectively. 

It's even used selectively with the working class example. First, it needs to be pointed out that I doubt strongly that there is an economic system in Europe that is comparable to Agribusiness in the Central Valley. The working class of this region is just different than the working class of other regions in their sheer numbers, patterns of movement and migration, living situations, recreation habits, religious and moral values, cultural makeup, integration with other economic sectors, etc. I can almost guarantee that, so any comparisons should attempt to account for those massive differences. But I will accept that limiting protective measures for those workers in favor of corporate interests can reasonably be considered selfishness by politicians and corporate interests. Interesting in California, which is often held up as an unselfish, progressive paradise. But still, it's selfishness on behalf of corporate interests to fail to protect their employees. And yet, as I pointed out elsewhere, Europeans have cultivated this supposed culture of unselfishness around an ethnocentric view of the nation state. Ask a French speaker from Morocco or the Ivory Coast who lives in Paris how unselfish their French neighbors are. I bet you they have an interesting take. In many of these places, they help their fellow countrymen while actively working to limit what it means to be a countrymen and limit people who don't look and talk like them and eat like them from becoming one. I don't deny the racial, cultural and economic issues we have here in my little corner of the world re: immigration. But I bet you that the daughter of a working class illegal immigrant in my town is much more accepted as an American than the daughter of one of those immigrants in Europe. And to the degree that those daughters are being less and less accepted, well that's a certain kind of nationalist culture of unselfishness that is being imported from the continent to our East. So what's more selfish?

So no, I don't accept that selfishness is clearly the root cause of the problem here because selfishness is a term that in this case (and in most cases) is entirely used as an ideological tool. Just like the term "smart government" used in that Fareed Zakaria clip posted like forever ago... where he correctly identifies policy failures and then ascribes them to people and movements he has ideological problems with. Because some people might argue that "smart government" would be a good way to describe a public health apparatus that prioritizes preparation for inevitable health emergencies like a pandemic over banning things that are seen to be morally and ideologically bad (big sodas, third hand smoke, vaping, teenage sex, home baked cookies sold at farmers markets, anything else corporations do, and most other things the public health apparatus has cared deeply about in recent decades).

What I do accept is that the state has failed at every level from the president to local schools to prepare for and react to this situation in a way that balances the real need to protect people and the need to maintain some kind of social, cultural and economic balance. That doesn't necessarily mean that government is "the problem" as much as it means that the problems with our government response are a reflection of a cultural moment that we find ourselves in.  A lot of that has to do with our national politics, our media landscape (and I mean that in the broad  sense of the term - all media, how it is consumed, etc. and not the editorial makeup of the NYT or WSJ) and the direction these things have taken at least since the 90s but especially in the past 10 years or so, and most extremely in the last 3.5. Now you may ascribe that to a growing selfishness on the part of, oh, half or so Americans (the cult of freedom, etc etc) but I think that is as or more myopic than the idea that one instinctively views government as "the problem." Historians will agree with me 100 years from now. 

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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29 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

I get this is delayed, and this literally matters to no one but myself, but +++++ it. I don't care. What is a message board for other than self indulgence?

Look, the problem I have with what you're saying here is the fact that selfishness itself is almost always an ideologically loaded term. You seem to instinctively view a unique form of American selfishness as the main problem here because you instinctively view selfishness as the thing fundamentally at the core of all of America's problems. But the issue with that is it turns into a circular kind of logic where selfishness is attached to anything that someone does that is deemed problematic, and the intentions are inserted as a big part of what makes it problematic. Look at the way people differentiate legitimate protesters from people who just want to have a fun night out. I get you post that as a kind of aside, but it speaks to the fact that there seems to be a clear delineation between people who protest for supposedly unselfish reasons (the protesters who really believe in racial justice and fighting police brutality) and the protesters who do it for selfish reasons (a good night out, breaking things, and maybe a little racial justice too). But the fact is that it's entirely reasonable to say that any large-scale protests of any nature right are in fact acts of selfishness if you weigh the costs and benefits with the immediacy of the issues... the pandemic is more of an immediate threat to more people (many of them marginalized too) than cops in this moment. And yet, the selfishness argument is almost entirely focused on red-state Americans who hate masks (people who should be mocked and derided, btw). Or people who just aren't willing to abide by social distancing because they need to get a haircut or get their nails done (usually in red states or red regions). So you'll have to excuse me if I dismiss the "selfishness" argument when the term almost always seems to be used selectively. 

It's even used selectively with the working class example. First, it needs to be pointed out that I doubt strongly that there is an economic system in Europe that is comparable to Agribusiness in the Central Valley. The working class of this region is just different than the working class of other regions in their sheer numbers, patterns of movement and migration, living situations, recreation habits, religious and moral values, cultural makeup, integration with other economic sectors, etc. I can almost guarantee that, so any comparisons should attempt to account for those massive differences. But I will accept that limiting protective measures for those workers in favor of corporate interests can reasonably be considered selfishness by politicians and corporate interests. Interesting in California, which is often held up as an unselfish, progressive paradise. But still, it's selfishness on behalf of corporate interests to fail to protect their employees. And yet, as I pointed out elsewhere, Europeans have cultivated this supposed culture of unselfishness around an ethnocentric view of the nation state. Ask a French speaker from Morocco or the Ivory Coast who lives in Paris how unselfish their French neighbors are. I bet you they have an interesting take. In many of these places, they help their fellow countrymen while actively working to limit what it means to be a countrymen and limit people who don't look and talk like them and eat like them from becoming one. I don't deny the racial, cultural and economic issues we have here in my little corner of the world re: immigration. But I bet you that the daughter of a working class illegal immigrant in my town is much more accepted as an American than the daughter of one of those immigrants in Europe. And to the degree that those daughters are being less and less accepted, well that's a certain kind of nationalist culture of unselfishness that is being imported from the continent to our East. So what's more selfish?

So no, I don't accept that selfishness is clearly the root cause of the problem here because selfishness is a term that in this case (and in most cases) is entirely used as an ideological tool. Just like the term "smart government" used in that Fareed Zakaria clip posted like forever ago... where here correctly identifies policy failures and then ascribes them to people and movements he has ideological problems with. Because some people might argue that "smart government" would be a good way to describe a public health apparatus that prioritizes preparation for inevitable health emergencies like a pandemic over banning things that are seen to be morally and ideologically bad (big sodas, third hand smoke, vaping, teenage sex, home baked cookies sold at farmers markets, anything else corporations do, and most other things the public health apparatus has cared deeply about in recent decades).

What I do accept is that the state has failed at every level from the president to local schools to prepare for and react to this situation in a way that balances the real need to protect people and the need to maintain some kind of social, cultural and economic balance. That doesn't necessarily mean that government is "the problem" as much as it means that the problems with our government response are a reflection of a cultural moment that we find ourselves in.  A lot of that has to do with our national politics, our media landscape (and I mean that in the broad  sense of the term - all media, how it is consumed, etc. and not the editorial makeup of the NYT or WSJ) and the direction these things have taken at least since the 90s but especially in the past 10 years or so, and most extremely in the last 3.5. Now you may ascribe that to a growing selfishness on the part of, oh, half or so Americans (the cult of freedom, etc etc) but I think that is as or more myopic than the idea that one instinctively views government as "the problem." Historians will agree with me 100 years from now. 

A self indulgence!? Nah fam. I saw how many uneducated, ignorant, and just wrong posts and posters were on here and I took up the burden of correcting as many posts and posters as I could bear. Remember every reply you see is time out of my day to simply help the less fortunate. 

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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4 minutes ago, happycamper said:

A self indulgence!? Nah fam. I saw how many uneducated, ignorant, and just wrong posts and posters were on here and I took up the burden of correcting as many posts and posters as I could bear. Remember every reply you see is time out of my day to simply help the less fortunate. 

A selfless act.

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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Just now, smltwnrckr said:

A selfless act.

Bright man's burden, you could say

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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1 minute ago, happycamper said:

Bright man's burden, you could say

racist. cancel whatever your version of the Jungle Book is.

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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Just now, smltwnrckr said:

racist. cancel whatever your version of the Jungle Book is.

I assure you it's class, not race

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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4 minutes ago, happycamper said:

I assure you it's class, not race

 

5 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

classist. cancel whatever your version of The Jungle is.

You happy, Happy?

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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Just now, halfmanhalfbronco said:

Sexist.  I think you are implying bright women have no such burden, or are you implying there are no bright women?

I try to get my wife to take up the burden after attempting to show her some particularly egregious examples but she just rolls her eyes and didn't even say a word. I admit I could not understand her actions but as a proud ally, I did not question them either.

 

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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1 minute ago, smltwnrckr said:

 

You happy, Happy?

You take those words against Ben Shapiro back

(wait... should I have used Jordan Peterson? hmm....)

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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1 minute ago, happycamper said:

You take those words against Ben Shapiro back

(wait... should I have used Jordan Peterson? hmm....)

I just feel bad for Jordan Peterson now. Isn't he at some experimental drug treatment program in Poland or something? 

Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, would have done himself and the rest of us a favor if he actually smoked some grass in college instead of holding affirmative action bake sales and trying to get pro-Palestine students kicked out of school.

Planning is an exercise of power, and in a modern state much real power is suffused with boredom. The agents of planning are usually boring; the planning process is boring; the implementation of plans is always boring. In a democracy boredom works for bureaucracies and corporations as smell works for skunk. It keeps danger away. Power does not have to be exercised behind the scenes. It can be open. The audience is asleep. The modern world is forged amidst our inattention.

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13 minutes ago, smltwnrckr said:

I just feel bad for Jordan Peterson now. Isn't he at some experimental drug treatment program in Poland or something? 

Ben Shapiro, on the other hand, would have done himself and the rest of us a favor if he actually smoked some grass in college instead of holding affirmative action bake sales and trying to get pro-Palestine students kicked out of school.

Last I heard he was in a coma from... gasp... psychiatric treatment. Feel bad for him but also can't ignore the glaringly obvious.

Remember that every argument you have with someone on MWCboard is actually the continuation of a different argument they had with someone else also on MWCboard. 

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34 minutes ago, happycamper said:

Last I heard he was in a coma from... gasp... psychiatric treatment. Feel bad for him but also can't ignore the glaringly obvious.

It’s a Wonderful Worrrlddddd (Peterson voice)

On 12/1/2016 at 12:26 PM, WyomingCoog said:

I own a vehicle likely worth more than everything you own combined and just flew first class (including a ticket for a 2 1/2 year old), round trip to Las Vegas and I'm not 35 yet. When you accomplish something outside of finishing a book, let me know. When's the last time you saw a 2 year old fly first class in their own seat? Don't tell me about elite.  

28 minutes ago, NorCalCoug said:

I’d happily compare IQ’s with you any day of the week.

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