All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[4saken1]

Socialism is what brought down the Venezuela government.

Are you sure about that? Correlation not being causation and everything......

Seems to me it had a lot more to do with Venezuala putting all of their eggs in one basket. Maduro and others in government mismanaged the money that was brought in by their booming oil industry, thinking that cow would support them indefinitely. Then, when oil prices dropped, it caused their currency's value to crash. Chavez should have looked after his country's long term interests and invested some of those oil earnings in other exports, like coffee and other agriculture. The exact same thing could have happened if Venezuala was a capitalist society.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

This cartoon by Signe Wilkerson from yesterday's Philadelphia Daily News was most appropriate regarding Trump's colossal ego stroke:

[Gray Lensman]

Are you sure about that? Correlation not being causation and everything......

Seems to me it had a lot more to do with Venezuala putting all of their eggs in one basket. Maduro and others in government mismanaged the money that was brought in by their booming oil industry, thinking that cow would support them indefinitely. Then, when oil prices dropped, it caused their currency's value to crash. Chavez should have looked after his country's long term interests and invested some of those oil earnings in other exports, like coffee and other agriculture. The exact same thing could have happened if Venezuala was a capitalist society.

Especially when you add in all the corruption, such things always make any crashes worse, as those who were stealing from the system aren't willing to stop or even slow down when the well starts running dry.

[Malvolio]

But you read the comments on Breitbart?

You don't need to be a Republican to read the comments on Breitbart. You just need to be a Republican to agree with those comments.

[aja_christopher]

On this 4th of July, a quote from the ending of Superman II, which hopefully in due time would be a quote I'd like to apply in terms of American goodwill and civility to all men and women.

"Sorry I've been away so long. I won't let you down again."

Appropriate given the fact that we have someone just as immoral -- and profoundly less intelligent -- than Lex Luthor in the White House.

To anyone supporting the modern Republican party, one has to wonder if their heroes would do the same.

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"Happy 4th of July! A day that represents courage in the face of tyranny. Take a moment today to question how history will look back on this chapter. Time brings truth into focus. This period of fear, hate, lies and complicity will be studied by generations to come." -- Chris Evans

https://twitter.com/ChrisEvans

[Tami]

6.4 EarthQuake in California, but it was centered in the dessert east of Bakersfield. No indication of damage or injury.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

6.4 EarthQuake in California, but it was centered in the dessert east of Bakersfield. No indication of damage or injury.

Just heard about that. Glad there was no deaths or injuries.

[Tami]

Just heard about that. Glad there was no deaths or injuries.

Watching cable, I see a house on fire, but I don't know the details.

[GindyPosts]

Are you sure about that? Correlation not being causation and everything......

Seems to me it had a lot more to do with Venezuala putting all of their eggs in one basket. Maduro and others in government mismanaged the money that was brought in by their booming oil industry, thinking that cow would support them indefinitely. Then, when oil prices dropped, it caused their currency's value to crash. Chavez should have looked after his country's long term interests and invested some of those oil earnings in other exports, like coffee and other agriculture. The exact same thing could have happened if Venezuala was a capitalist society.

Exactly. I look at it more of a country that assumed that as long as oil prices remained high that the citizens will look away at the government doing whatever it wanted if they liked it's leader than just "Socialism Just Doesn't Work". You know, "cult of personality", "banana republic", all those jargon buzzword type thingies apply to Venezuela. Maduro doesn't have that affluence that Chavez did, meaning that people aren't going to take his **** so easily (even though Chavez was also an ******* of a leader, it was that there weren't as many people who were as willing to go against him given the state of the country and how he was overall to the eyes of the public), yet Maduro thinks that his excrement has the scent of floral potpourri and considers himself to be a celebrity.

[GindyPosts]

I'm not a Republican. I just think that the Democrats are being a tiny bit hypocritical. They want to blame Trump for the crisis on the border but they wholeheartedly are endorsing Socialism. Socialism is what brought down the Venezuela government. And when Venezuela went down they cut off all aid to Nicaragua. And then because of that the Nicaraguan government had to cut back on some of it's public services like social security. And then when the Nicaraguan people protested in mass the government clapped down killing hundreds of protestors and devastating Nicaraguan's economy. So now many more migrants from Nicaragua are coming to the United States indirectly because of socialism which is being endorsed by all the Democrats.

I'm not a fan of capitalism also. I think that the United States messed up when they allowed the Federal Reserve control the flow of money in the United States.

Calm down, Hank Hill (on an aside, I first learned about the North American Free-Trade Agreement as a one-off reference in King of the Hill). I know most people like to blame NAFTA for the USA getting the dregs of Mexico brought to us thanks to the Clinton administration, but realistically, we've been getting immigration from Mexico since after the Mexican-American War, and as for those Central American countries, those problems tend to boil down to them becoming banana republics that are so dependent upon one or two means of income for export that if the rest of the world loses interest (generally due to either finding other countries having the same resource, increasing competition and making a premium item more of a commonplace stock or there becoming less of a reliance on said item), the market collapses, not to mention how corporations that rely on those exports take advantage of the government and the citizens to begin with. That's why American companies fell in love with outsourcing. They knew these countries had lower standards and could be manipulated easily, but the parts could be made just the same, and thus could be built there while bolstering the bankroll of the upper management. Having incompetent and/or corrupt leaders in charge doesn't help much, either.

Also, I'm not whole keen on the entire socialist game, which has only exists, as far as I'm concerned, in theory, since whenever it's "attempted", it ends up going into full-blown communism, and we see what happens to those nations, China notwithstanding. The issue is that the capitalist system we have is so fundamentally broken and, thanks in large part to Reaganomics (which we still have to live with), only aid the upper crust more as time goes on since the notion that poor people paying for the rich people's taxes interested and fascinated Republicans. When you have a system set up that way, people become interested in a more "balanced" approach to wealth distribution, which leads to your more radicalized thought. It's not entirely rocket science, and saying "Oh, well they can just work harder, then" isn't going to be the solution. The issue boils down to a multitude of problems, among them being how decades of bureaucratic nonsense have helped set it up where it's difficult for people to just work their way up the class ladder without stopping short of killing themselves. After all, there is the term "poverty trap" for a reason. I'm not going to go into the full details, but going around looking for the next Red Scare isn't going to just help everything magically improve.

[GindyPosts]

You don't need to be a Republican to read the comments on Breitbart. You just need to be a Republican to agree with those comments.

Breitbart's comment section is just Yahoo! News's with only a bit more reproach towards decency.

Which isn't high praise.

[Kirby101]

NAFTA resulted in a net negative immigration from Mexico. (more returning than coming in)The current immigrants are from south of Mexico.

[BruceWayneJr.]

Justice Department Reverses Course on Citizenship Question on Census, Citing Trump’s Orders



What a disorganized mess this entire administration is. One day we are doing this, the next no trump tweeted he doesn't want that he does want to find a way to discriminate still!

Trump said it himself. He doesn't stand by anything.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

It seems God is literally pissing on Trump’s half-assed parade:

Weather threatens Trump's Fourth of July "Salute to America" — live updates

[Malvolio]

Breitbart's comment section is just Yahoo! News's with only a bit more reproach towards decency.

Which isn't high praise.

That's why I only lurk on Yahoo's comment section and never post there. I don't want to be associated with those, well, Yahoos. That is quite the appropriate name for them.