I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I do not agree with this, but I'll grant it, as you granted my earlier point.

The rights of individuals to buy the policies they feel like buying trump the interests of cost-sharing.

Let's just assume that's so. My point, which you continue to miss, is that if you were to change the law in the way you suggest, individuals would not be able to buy the policies they feel like buying. So you need to find some other principle to invoke.

Finding that some people deserve to have their costs offset by forcing others to buy insurance is a troubling encroachment enough. That they must do so in particular form of policy is beyond the pale.

Why is it more of an infringement on liberty to be forced to buy insurance than to be unable to buy insurance? In both cases, your choices are limited. Do you suffer every day because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania requires you to buy auto insurance in order to drive? If so, you are remarkably stoic about it, in comparison to the deprivation you see with health insurance.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I uh... get that. I. Don't. Find. It. Interesting. Don't care.

Actually, I'm pretty sure you do care. In fact, unlike most trolls, and despite your constant protestations to the contrary, you seem to care a great deal about what people here think about your credibility. It's this weird combination faux-zero-fucks-given, say-whatever-the-fuck-I-want swagger and whimpering why-is-everybody-always-picking-on-me martyrdom.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

No point here worth considering.

You know there is, you just don't like the point. To put it in terms you might get, if someone presented me with a news story by ISIS, and said it was from an "independent foreign political organization," I'd be suspicious about the agenda of the person presenting that story.

Bloomberg was cited offering the same info in the same post. Your suspicion of Bloomberg was?

I did not say I was suspicious of Bloomberg. In fact, my actual point had nothing to do with the merits of the Susan Rice story, which is why I said, "my actual point had nothing to do with the merits of the Susan Rice story." You should know. You quoted me saying that in the very post I'm responding to.

I fully expect that. If the opposite were to occur, I'd be disturbed. If you can;t free the Id here...? I mean, really.

I am pretty aware of the relatively low risk of saying outrageous things just to say outrageous things on an anonymous online chatting board that nobody reads. I'll remind you that the phrase most usually associated with me here is "unsolicited, no-strings-attached fellatio." But if you really "fully expect" that your willingness to say blatantly untrue things and mischaracterize people's arguments will result in people dismissing your arguments as bullshit, why do you always act so surprised, angry, and hurt when it happens?

I didn't think it needed addressing, or was interesting. In much the same way, I read Ty's health care bit yesterday, found it more slieght of hand than substance, thought about replying, but then figured, "Eh, fuck it. He missed my point, I missed his, and we'll never agree."

I already responded to this when you said it again in another post.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Right. And I believe it was the NSA's Hayden who said this could be used to "reverse acquire" political info.

This is like saying that she was caught driving a car, which could be used as a getaway car for robbing a bank. True, but hardly a scandal. Especially if her job is to drive cars.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Much like Trump, actually.

stp

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

This is like saying that she was caught driving a car, which could be used as a getaway car for robbing a bank. True, but hardly a scandal. Especially if her job is to drive cars.

Not taking sides in your basic fight, but after the French terrorist attack on that magazine and your car defense, maybe you should move away from car posts?

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Let's just assume that's so. My point, which you continue to miss, is that if you were to change the law in the way you suggest, individuals would not be able to buy the policies they feel like buying. So you need to find some other principle to invoke.

I'm not advocating changing the law. I'm advocating removing the law, and the TPAs, which distort a normal market.

Why is it more of an infringement on liberty to be forced to buy insurance than to be unable to buy insurance?

Because no one has a right to have a product created for or delivered to them. People do have a right to not be compelled to pay for that which they do not want. Our rights are inherently negative. We allow positive ones only with extreme reluctance.

In both cases, your choices are limited. Do you suffer every day because the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania requires you to buy auto insurance in order to drive?

Driving is a privilege. If you don't like the rules of the road, don't drive. You might as well as me if I object to laws against drunk driving.

If so, you are remarkably stoic about it, in comparison to the deprivation you see with health insurance.

This country'd be 10X better off if we were all a lot more stoic about everything.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

You know there is, you just don't like the point. To put it in terms you might get, if someone presented me with a news story by ISIS, and said it was from an "independent foreign political organization," I'd be suspicious about the agenda of the person presenting that story.

So this is all about my calling that clown "indie media." Hell, I'll apologize for that. He's not media. He's a nut. But he did have a scoop. That's my sole reason for the cite.

I did not say I was suspicious of Bloomberg. In fact, my actual point had nothing to do with the merits of the Susan Rice story, which is why I said, "my actual point had nothing to do with the merits of the Susan Rice story." You should know. You quoted me saying that in the very post I'm responding to.

Really? Too dry? For you?

I am pretty aware of the relatively low risk of saying outrageous things just to say outrageous things on an anonymous online chatting board that nobody reads. I'll remind you that the phrase most usually associated with me here is "unsolicited, no-strings-attached fellatio." But if you really "fully expect" that your willingness to say blatantly untrue things and mischaracterize people's arguments will result in people dismissing your arguments as bullshit, why do you always act so surprised, angry, and hurt when it happens?

I don't like dumb. This will sound high-handed, but I often find this place, and my conservative friends, highly annoying. You're not looking long or broadly enough. You're probably not even reading people who disagree with you much. I think you should. I think the right should as well. Conservatives should be locked in rooms with Jeffrey Sachs and Robert Reich, and your sort should be locked in a room with a copy of Mobs, Messiahs and Markets, Tyler Cowen, and Jaron Lanier.

Adder should be force-fed Nassim Taleb, Reich, and Cowen until the rotten crap his dad's money manager and the shmuck who taught him Econ 101 in college bleeds out of his ears.

. . .

You should destabilize your thinking constantly. Elsewhere, I just agreed with someone - an ardent Republican - there will be no course for health care but single payer. The only question was whether it's an insurance consortium or the govt. I think the latter.

Truly, no fucks given. Except when I think... you're not. Then I find myself a mix of sad and irritated.

Nothing lets me down like tribes. Reminds me of religion. I hate it. And if I smell it, by extension, I detest the speaker of it.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I'm not advocating changing the law. I'm advocating removing the law, and the TPAs, which distort a normal market.

There's no such thing as a "normal" market. We get the markets our governments create, and that has been true for thousands of years.

Because no one has a right to have a product created for or delivered to them. People do have a right to not be compelled to pay for that which they do not want. Our rights are inherently negative. We allow positive ones only with extreme reluctance.

Now you've changed your argument. Before, you were talking about liberty. I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about liberty. If you want to have the liberty to buy insurance that covers pre-existing conditions -- and, just to state the obvious, most people do -- then you need the government to regulate the market in the way I've described. No regulation, no liberty.

You don't actually have a right not to be compelled to pay for that which you do not want. It's something you just made up. It's not in the Constitution -- indeed, check out the Sixteenth Amendment. You have to pay taxes, and no one wants to pay taxes.

Driving is a privilege. If you don't like the rules of the road, don't drive.

The government can just restrict your liberty by calling things privileges? For someone who pretends to be libertarian, you've kinda forgotten what liberty is about.

I'm not a libertarian, and I think it's an incoherent justification for privilege and selfishness masquerading as a philosophy. You're helping me make my point.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by Pretty Little Flower

I'll remind you that the phrase most usually associated with me here is "unsolicited, no-strings-attached fellatio."

But, really, isn't the lesson of Fox that there is no such thing as unsolicited, no-strings-attached fellatio in the workplace? Yet another lesson they refused to learn from Bill Clinton.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Unknown.

This sounds like a "No."

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

But as to why I'd cite this story, here? This story upsets the narrative here. Any fact that challenges a narrative, any fact that contradicts any person's belief, should be shown to that person. That's the essence of a thinking public: Holding no story too dearly... always being upon to taking a 180 on anything you've heard, and almost any value you hold. If I had a dream, it would be for people to believe in next to nothing, and always be open to suggestion. How much more interesting of a world would that be?

Here's the problem. You sometimes actually sound like you want to talk substance. But even then you approach it like you're the outsider taking on groupthink. Why not just bring it up and talk about it? Everyone here wants to talk substance. No one here thinks you have a unique outsider's perspective. If you have an opinion, share it. But stop with this stupid "I'm taking on the narrative" bullshit whenever anyone disagrees with you. The fact that many people think something you said is ridiculous is not evidence of an echo chamber. It's evidence you've said something ridiculous.

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Believe nothing. Stop taking a side. Stop falling right into Trump's, and the larger political machine's, playbook. Stop deifying people, and getting behind politicians. The system is broken.

Assume it's all worth nothing but extreme skepticism. And try to work across the aisle. Become post-party.

Be an angry moderate. It's not a solution, but it's an essential starting point for any useful one.

Again, I'm not picking the Democrat side because I feel like I'm a member of their tribe. When I take a stance on an issue, it's because I've thought about that issue. And every single issue I've thought about that Trump has taken any sort of position on, I've fallen on the opposite side. You see that and think I will buy whatever Democrats sell. That ain't it. I am against the Republican Party (and especially Trump's brand) on every single substantive issue. So, when I shit all over it, that doesn't mean I'm a Pelosi warrior. It means the Republicans are almost always wrong.

I don't care who the President is. If anyone were in office and there were the number of connections to the Russians and the unwillingness to ever take a stance against or even criticize Putin, I would want that shit to be investigated thoroughly and independently. The fact that you keep asserting that there's nothing there makes no logical sense. If there is nothing there, there should be no fight against a thorough investigation. There wouldn't be constant obfuscation and distraction. Nunes' actions alone make absolutely no fucking sense. And if you think this accusation against Rice is anything more than obfuscation and distraction (and you just said above there is zero evidence of anything nefarious), you're nuts.

If Trump could express one thought in a way that made me think he understood fucking anything, I wouldn't consider him to be a complete clown. If he could control himself when being criticized and not act like a child, I wouldn't call him a child. If he expressed the ability to empathize with anyone who isn't a billionaire, I wouldn't think he was a complete piece of shit. These aren't Democratic positions. They are natural reactions to what my eyes see.

So drop the echo chamber, tribal, garbage. It's stupid. And although you say a lot of stupid shit, I don't think you're stupid. If you disagree with something, say so and support it. But enough with the caricature bullshit already.

TM

[sebastian_dangerfield]

There's no such thing as a "normal" market. We get the markets our governments create, and that has been true for thousands of years.

We get the markets that emerge based on demand. The government then steps in and regulates them.

Now you've changed your argument. Before, you were talking about liberty. I'm not talking about rights, I'm talking about liberty. If you want to have the liberty to buy insurance that covers pre-existing conditions -- and, just to state the obvious, most people do -- then you need the government to regulate the market in the way I've described. No regulation, no liberty.

Rights and liberty are inextricably intertwined here, if not synonyms for purposes of this discussion. To suit you, I'll go with "liberty."

You have the liberty to purchase what you like. And the producers of products have the liberty to produce whatever they like. If they don't want to produce a certain product, they don't have to do so. If the govt wishes to have that product available to people, it can step in and produce it.

Medicare can expand to cover pre-existing conditions.

Again, however, it is not liberty -- in fact, it's a perversion of the concept of liberty (hence, I described your argument as sleight-of-hand earlier) to suggest producers of a product must create bespoke offerings because certain people want them.

Take your concept of market "liberty" to its ends. Where does this "liberty" to compel the market to provide you products cease? You can claim infringement on your liberty because there's not a mortgage available for person with 560 credit, or there isn't full tort auto insurance available to a person at limited tort rates, or that there must be a new class of airline ticket between the current tiers.

You're advocating for exclusively consumer liberty, with removal of producer liberty.

You don't actually have a right not to be compelled to pay for that which you do not want. It's something you just made up. It's not in the Constitution -- indeed, check out the Sixteenth Amendment. You have to pay taxes, and no one wants to pay taxes.

Taxes are an exception. The correct way to provide the consumer "liberty" you advocate is by increase of taxes to provide a Medicare expansion to provide insurance to people with pre-existing conditions.

By the way, re your first sentence, can the govt compel you to buy a Hyundai? Could it mandate that, even though you'd like to get a Subaru, you have to buy a Hyundai? No. This applies to all products.

The government can just restrict your liberty by calling things privileges?

Yes.

For someone who pretends to be libertarian, you've kinda forgotten what liberty is about.

I didn't say I liked it, but the govt can exercise control over the use of that which it builds and owns. And note -- it does not require those without cars to subsidize the car insurance risk pool by nevertheless purchasing insurance. Nor does it require all of those insured to purchase maximum coverage policies. It allows the entirety of the marketplace to purchase cheap policies which extremely limit their benefits in the case of injury. Not unlike catastrophic health insurance plans.

I'm not a libertarian, and I think it's an incoherent justification for privilege and selfishness masquerading as a philosophy. You're helping me make my point.

I'm not addressing the privilege argument. That's neither data nor logic. That's the emotional stuff I was talking about earlier.

As to selfishness, you're right. Libertarianism is selfish. But considering the Left has ballooned our debt by making unrealistic promises and seeks to create a more robust welfare state which will sap dynamism, someone has to be selfish.* Yin, meet yang.

And all ideologies are incoherent. Yours -- something I suspect would resemble a European welfare state -- would wreck this country. Mine would make it colder place, and also perhaps ruin some of its kinder elements. But we can meet in the middle. Because we both understand ideologies must by bent to get anything done. And we both know if either of us wee to get all of what we want, it'd be very bad. The problem is, instead of meeting in the middle, many of us are being factionalized. Which is what the moronic true ideologues desire.

______
*The Right is no better, and is responsible for 1/2 the debt explosion, with its ludicrous defense industry welfare programs and general corporate/plutocrat giveaways. Which is why Libertarians favor gutting the defense budget.

[ThurgreedMarshall]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

People do realize, the media doesn't really care. Maddow is on Maddow's side. As O'Reilly is on O'Reill'y side... as are the rest of them. This is their golden era -- the greatest political firestorm in history. From Vox, to the New Yorker, to Drudge, to Brietbart, the framers of this fiasco are its chief profiteers. And the arguments we're having right here - which are only exclusively substantive so long as that substance does not challenge the left-lean of this board's posters - are feeding the frenzy.

It's all quite emotional. But yes -- that is what makes it fascinating.

I hope you realize that no one here gives a shit about Maddow or O'Reilly. I think people may take joy in the fact that Maddow is beating O'Reilly in the ratings for a bit, but that doesn't mean anyone is a Maddow fan.

But what you fail to understand--and I think this is a real flaw in how you process this type of information--is that when people are upset about the political issues we have spent a lot of time posting about, it's because there are real repercussions to what Trump is doing and what he wants to do.

People aren't pissed off because right wing people are annoying. People are pissed off because the Department of Education is being run by someone who hates public education and who knows nothing, the head of the EPA doesn't think carbon contributes to global warming and has spent his career fighting the EPA, the DOJ is being run by a racist asshole who spent his first few weeks as AG sending overt signals to police departments that they won't be investigated and dismantling actual agreements that the DOJ and problematic police departments entered into to fix their problems, the President has deep economic ties to Russian oligarchs and that he is being investigated for colluding with Russia in an effort to help him win an election.

People are pissed off because the Secretary of State is an oil guy, because Trump can only be convinced to take action if a room full of rich people he respects tells him to. People are pissed because he quite clearly hasn't divested and seems to be making decisions based on what benefits his business (see his ridiculous Muslim ban that doesn't affect the countries in which he has business relationships). The guy has spent almost every minute of his Presidency at a Trump-branded location playing golf. He does nothing, except sign whatever is put in front of him and Tweet stupid shit. He knows nothing. And he has offended almost every ally we have and has embarrassed us all over the world.

This isn't about me being a Democrat and hating Republican issues because they come from Republicans. For me, this is about the moron in office, the assholes who put them there, and the real and damaging shit he is doing to the country. That emotion may be entertaining to you, but that's only because you don't give a fuck about anything other than your taxes and anyone who doesn't live in your house.

TM

[Replaced_Texan]

Oh nooooowwww the Republicans take the Russia thing seriously. They didnt realize they were being played too?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs...=.9c27125df535

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I still think she did something illegal (not the emails, but re the fund).

There's absolutely no evidentiary basis for this, yet you believe it. But you're not at all partisan.

ETA: Oh, and by the way, I don't yet believe that anyone in the Trump administration did anything illegal. They definitely did things that were shady, politically damaging and potentially compromising, but we haven't seen illegal yet (aside from that one statute that everyone thinks is likely unconstitutional).