2020 Election

There should be a war tax on everyone while our troops are in harms way. Not $1,000 for poor people of course, but just enough to make people question if we really need to be at war.

 

If I thought it would work I would be in agreement with you
But people vote against their own interests all the time
And even when there is a strong public outcry, it doesn't seem to change anything. Congress and the presidential administration seem to still do whatever they want
So I think we would still be in perpetual war and the wealthy would still be benefitting from it at the expense of the lower and middle class, who would now be paying for it both with bodies and taxes.

But the main reason I'm against a war tax of any kind is because the military budget is already bloated. It's a problem of misappropriating funds, not a lack of money

 

It really doesn't at all. All I had to do was look at the headline and I knew it couldn't have been what he said, and, in fact, it wasn't. It's just the media's "style" to try and make him look bad no matter what he says or does.

 

That is O'Rourke's plan.

I haven't really grepped it yet, but it kinda makes a crazy amount of sense.

I think the incentive is causing some pain for war for Americans who aren't in the military, who can otherwise just sit around and watch the Kardashians. Is that show still on?

 

Nobody gives a shit about him now.

 

I know what the incentive is supposed to be, I just dont think it would change how the average person votes. And what would be the point if it doesn't cause people to vote those who authorize war out of office?

It's not like the American public authorizes war.

 

I agree with you there, particularly regarding the stereotypical Trump voter. And the military budget is way bloated. But war is serious business and I still think it should cost all of us a little extra. If we won't think morally then maybe we will think about the bottom line. Just my opinion.

 

I mean the real solution is for congress to step up and reassert itself as a coequal branch, and strip away war powers.

But a presidential candidate can't enforce that. All they can do is promise they won't take their imperial power too far in their 4 years.

 

Plus I would argue that we already feel the financial pain of war
We're told every day we cant afford single payer healthcare, which would change a lot of lives for the better
We cant afford free higher education, which would change a lot of lives for the better
Investment in public education? Pie in the sky!
Green investment apparantly costs too much too
But we can raise the military budget, there's always money for that.

 

There is no congress, there is no "We The People" to step forward. The leaders of the republican party were forced to bend over and grease their ass, because their party no longer stands for anything meaningful, except to overthrow the US government. It was republicans that elected him, republicans who insisted on his whole agenda, and republicans who rejected him. There's nobody home, just so many damned Chickens all pecking away at each other and promoting whichever clown screams the loudest. They are lucky they've not bankrupted us already.

Both parties are so predictable, especially when everyone votes for whoever advertises the most.

 

It's worse than that Neon it's the media's mission to make him look bad, tearing him down at every turn is essential to denying him any chance of reaching voters.

 

The mass media makes its money lying to their own children, at the insistence of the American people.

 

It has for some reason become exceedingly self destructive for political anti-Trumpers of any ideology and party and especially the media -- CNN domestic does wall-to-wall Trump coverage and loses a huge chunk of their audience because their operation, including old time mandarins of news like Blitzer and Amanpour and geniuses like sweet Kirsten Powers, looks like a slapdash cable-access show done by ten people on epoxy model aeroplane glue with a band of a six-pack of monkeys on crack playing a drum set with some tubas in their arseholes . . . not to mention the DNC and others, once again, running the campaign like a gang of junkies trying to send a rocket to the moon to check out rumours that the craters are full of smack . . . the political centre seems to be in a K Hole somewhere . . .

I get the politics, I guess, but some of them are just silly -- I swear what got me off of the idea that it was just retaliation for how Obama and Bill Clinton were treated was some pundit crowing about President Macron being elected in that election in which I was rooting for Mélenchon that it meant Trump was next to go down after Mme le Pen. Christ, how about saying that the BZÖ getting five per cent in the Carinthian provincial election in 2012 presages a Democratic blue tsunami in 2018? Give me a break

 

UNIX!?!?!?!

 

W00p! Only Unix can set you free, as the old song goes

 

The mass media and the internet are about to be run by AI programs, so relax, computers are more reliable than the idiots we've got. He who dies with the best AI, didn't have the best guns.

 

I'm one with the penguin.

 

The newest generation chips include pcie 4.0, while Intel and AMD are working on stacking nonvolatile memory right on top of the processor. As a result, Microsoft and others have been funding the development of Linux more than usual, hoping to steer the distros towards software they can leverage. Slapping together cheesy versions of Windows that are backwards compatible is rapidly becoming counterproductive due to the hardware being more compatible with UNIX. Intel is working on slapping everything including the power supply regulator and perhaps as much as 160tf on a single chip running at less than 5 watts. That way, you almost don't even need a motherboard or power supply.

 

Hopefully the AI can be smarter than it is now and imbued with Artificial Intuition -- one web page I visit shows me nothing but ads for feminine hygiene products . . .