Random Rant Thread

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This false idea that a household budget is a good metaphor for public finance is finally _almost_ dead in the center-left/mainstream liberal America, but apparently is making a big comeback across the Atlantic ocean.

The history of this false metaphor is pretty long, but it was re-invented by the Thatcher-Reaganites (and reappropriated by the German Ordoliberals, which is another story for another day).

Labour in the UK is surrendering even before the fight begins. If British people want to talk about surrender monkeys, they wouldn't have to look across the channel.

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Wow, the communist party (Kommunistische Partei Österreichs) won the election in Graz, Austria. Amazing.

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In places like Germany, the national/federal election is like a pre-game show, and the real business begins after that.

It's messy and chaotic and all, but I prefer that to the American bullshit.

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Simply staggering.

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Of course in any other democratic country than the US, such a wildly popular health care policy would be basically unstoppable, and even Big Lobby couldn't stop it. It might be able to dilute it a bit, but not completely cripple it like that.

There are so many articles and stuff that explain what's going on, so I won't go deep into that now. What I want to emphasize instead is really the totally undemocratic nature of the US Senate.

Yeah, I know, you're sick of hearing that from me. But man.

Democrats won 56% of all votes in the Senatorial elections in total. 56%. But it's a 50-50 Senate now, and could've easily been 48-52 in favor of Republicans with virtually the same margin of %.

You'd be hard-pressed to find such a ridiculous "democratic" institution anywhere in Europe, or even Asia. In some countries, like Japan - which is not a country that is a beacon for democracy by any means - it would be just unconstitutional. It's so blatantly so that it would be impossible for the court to uphold it without completely destroying the legal legitimacy of the entire political system. There are absolutely limits to what Big Lobby can do. They aren't invincible.

But they appear to be in the Best Democracy In The World, as all it takes Big Pharma and Big Lobby, who owns the GOP, to completely cripple any popular health care bill is "influence" a few Democratic Senators, and in this particular case specifically only ONE, in Krystin Sinema. Joe Manchin is just another matter.

Sinema is a narcissistic sociopath. She was no show for a long time at the Capitol because she wanted to "work at a winery," as if she were a 19-year-old sophomore student at Oberlin in a special summer off-campus humanity course, or like a 24-year-old Japanese aroma instructor on a working holiday visa in Australia. She took one month off her work because she was going to "run a marathon."

You can talk about "moderates," but she's just a narcissistic sociopath who pisses at the very notion of being a representative for people, who would rather shit-post all day long to be a life-style influencer for women in their 40s or something.

And it all comes down to the fact that both Idaho and California have two Senators. A nihilistic attention whore like Sinema wouldn't decide the fate of the country in a fairer system.

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It'll take a long, long time to figure out what Angela Merkel was all about. I have made some sophomoric analyses, but mostly I'm still wondering. I saw someone talk about how the departure of Merkel meant Europe losing the "moral compass."

Well, I can definitely smell some heavy delusion there. But that should be discussed independently of how skilled and competent she was as a politician.

They said times make a man, and as such times make a woman. I'm pretty sure that Merkel herself has no idea what the whole Angela Merkel thing was all about.

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An overwhelming majority of university students at top Ivy league schools are either liberal or leftist, and the truth is that that would the result all the same if you did a survey on the very first day that they came to the campus as new freshmen. Meaning they are ALREADY liberal or leftist with no so-called Liberal Academia Indoctrination to supposedly mess with their young minds.

In one typical philosophy class at Harvard, you could literally count with one hand the conservative/right-winger students. And I mean literally.

And yes, the US is a land of credentialism, dominated and mostly governed by these Ivy students. Some of them do switch to conservatism/right-wing America purely as career choice, law students in particular, but still the numerical disadvantage of the right-wing side is massive. In the elite intellectual world of right-wing America, everyone knows everyone else, or in many cases even related through blood and marriage like good old European aristocracy, because there are so few of them to begin with.

So how come do they have so much political power then? is the million dollar question that everyone should know the answer to, because it's so fucking obvious.

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Breakthrough cases were common even with polio in the early days of the polio vaccine. We have squashed that viral disease because we didn't scream "Breakthrough cases! Vaccination useless!" every time it occurred, and instead carried on vaccinating as many people as possible.

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I'm a bit concerned about the prevalence of Adderall addiction everywhere. I don't know if it's a Donald Trump effect, but maybe it does take Adderall to get through life in that "how gratuitous and gross you can be to draw attention and grift" competition.

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So, why should I ever take seriously the US Beltway morons who thought this bottomless dumbfuckery of a man was the future of American conservatism?

I always, always told you this man was the dumbest fucking guy in US politics, and I always, always ALMOST meant it literally.

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This is exactly what I've been saying in this thread for more than a decade(!) now.

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This one made me chuckle.

I never liked, and still don't like The Sopranos, though. Pretentious, immature, overrated show.

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Does anyone, even among the MAGA crowd, know or even care about what any of this crap means for anything at this point?

So the Deep State came up with some system and algorithm to illegally change the outcome of elections and made sure the whole thing was publicly available information by patenting them.

As Rubio also demonstrated it above, words don't mean shit anymore.

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I have no sympathy for Democrats. I knew that Krysten Sinema was a piece of shit who should be primaried. A former green leftist turned cringeworthy self-promoter who takes anyone's money? I've known too many of this type in my life, and without an exception they are the worst. They don't give a fuck about anything other than themselves, and everything, no matter what, is nothing more than a fashion statement for them.
 
Now it's fucking too late. They can't primary her until 2024. Three years in politics is eternity. There's absolutely nothing they can do about that piece of shit, and they can't say they hadn't been warned.

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We pay a lot of attention to MAGA in the US and fanatical Christian Bolsonaro supporters in Brazil, but the average Modi-loving Hindu chauvinist is even worse in my opinion.