Yeah, they're doing it wrong again. Something they did or just some nebulous culture shift around ~2000 or so seemed to actually work, and it takes about four or five years before you can know whether what you did worked or not. Prior to the 2000 thing, it was scare tactics, which don't work on invincible teenagers. Then they switched to a less dramatic "it's not a big deal, it's okay to chose not to smoke" approach, which I think was the good one.

The real problem (in the US at least) is the 17 and 18 year-old kids smoking, which means the 13-16 year-old kids do it to be like their older peers. If you can break that cycle, even just once, you come as close to solving the problem as you can. But, since there is this lag time between the beginning of the cycle and it coming full circle, the industry assumes it was the most recent ("evil tobacco corporations taking advantage of you") effort that was actually the effective one. I don't think it is. I especially don't think it will work on college-age demographic they're targeting. It's still "The Man" telling them what to do, even if it's a different hand of "The Man."

I wonder if Moore would have said the same things in Germany in the 1930s.

And so it begins.... the Trump apologists are already out in force, talking about how "this was a victory for the disenfranchised" and how "no-one was listening to these people".

Of course, we weren't listening to them, those people are fucking idiots. "We want our country back" -> "I want to go back to the 50s when white men had a job for life, and those damn women, gays, coloureds weren't so uppity".

Newsflash morons, your jobs aren't coming back. They're gone, and they're not even gone to Mexico or "Jy-na", they no longer exist. Robots do them. This is a real problem, it's coming for all of us (me included) and it's not going to be solved by protectionism or tariffs or walls or whatever other nonsense Trump has dreamed up.

And then there are the people talking about a call for "unity".

Fuck.
That.
Shit.

You do not have "unity" with racists, bigots and misogynists. We are not going to roll back centuries of progress because some uneducated fools feel threatened.

Women's rights, minority rights, LGBTQ rights, climate change... these things are not up for discussion or compromise. They are done, settled and off the fucking table. If you have a problem with that, you're wrong.

And while I'm no fan of religion, I'm even less of a fan of the idea of discriminating against people based solely on their religion. (Religion is not an excuse either; if someone does something stupid and/or evil in the name of your religion, it doesn't get you a free pass, but that's another story).

Bottom line: this isn't some "we're all the same deep down scenario".

If this year has shown anything, it's that we need protection from idiots being allowed to vote.

Ohhhh, so you just reassert your point about Democrats never backing down, but Republicans do without any factual basis whatsoever! What a novel losing debate strategy!

Obamacare isn't perfect and needs to be fixed or replaced with something better. Not the Trumpian "something great" if it should be replaced, but something that is well thought out and addresses what Obamacare couldn't accomplish if the entire premise is systemically not going to work.

Did you see what I did there? I *gasp* recognize that sometimes things don't work! OMG! IT'S AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I also didn't say it's a "fucking disaster", because it isn't. If it were that, explain how the uninsured rate has dropped very significantly. It was never going to achieve 100% insurance rate. The only way that happens is with single payer.

Here's how stupid you are. You don't seem to understand that if Obamacare isn't the answer, you're just making single payer universal health care more likely to be enacted. The American people are not going to go back to being denied coverage because of a pre-existing condition. They're just not gonna. Obamacare is the least left policy you could possibly enact that would help control costs and decrease the number of people who are uninsured.

You can scream to the top of your lungs, but Obamacare was enacted to remedy real problems. I'm even sympathetic to the argument that those were real problems, but Obamacare isn't the answer, but if you're going to make that argument, you have to propose something that has historical precedent and rationale to solve those problems. And you simply don't have one.

So again, keep struggling in the quicksand until it swallows you whole, and single payer is enacted.

Your evidence about health insurance premiums is anecdotal, and quite frankly, you don't seem to understand that your numbers and description of what happened to her is absolutely ridiculous. You don't get on medicaid because your insurance premiums go up under Obamacare. You qualify for Medicaid because of a lack of income.

Secondly, the claim is absolutely ridiculous that her premiums went up that much. For data we have available, *unsubsidized* premiums for the lowest cost silver plans for data we have in the Obamacare exchanges was $257 a month for a single person.

http://kff.org/health-reform/issue-brief/analysis-of-2017-premium-changes-and-insurer-participation-in-the-affordable-care-acts-health-insurance-marke
tplaces/

If she qualifies for Medicaid, then surely she could go on a silver plan in the Obamacare exchanges and come out likely paying less. Oh, and, on top of that, she would EASILY qualify for federal subsidies if she qualified for medicaid.

Oh, and btw, without Obamacare, if health care companies decided to raise those premiums just to price gouge, what protection would she have? Not much. Obamacare insures that you can only take in so much that isn't spent on health care.

Your story is completely utterly full of crap on so many levels, it's clear you made it up.

I'm dismissing all your numbers are being unsubstantiated bullshit. Have premiums gone up? Sure have. Were they going up before Obamacare? Yep! There's a healthy debate about how much Obamacare is contributing to premium increases. Obamacare isn't perfect. I'm happy to discuss rationally what could be done to improve Obamacare, or another plausible alternative. But not with you, since you pull numbers out of your ass that easily are completely debunked.

BTW, FYI, Obamacare was not intended to lower premiums nor to completely eliminate the number of uninsured. It was to control costs in all forms and reduce the amount of uninsured, as well as reform the health care system to eliminate problems like being denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions, people having to declare bankruptcy due to medical bills, etc.

Some of its goals it succeeded in, and some not so much. That's a fair assessment at this point. Medical related bankruptcies have not declined. Being denied coverage due to a pre-existing condition has been eliminated. Premiums have gone up, but we simply don't have enough data to determine if they've slowed or accelerated since Obamacare was implemented. If you go by the immediate years after Obamacare was fully implemented, they slowed.

http://healthaffairs.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/Adler_Exhibit1.png

More recently, they've accelerated. It's important to note that health care costs are not solely determined by premiums alone. It's interesting you cherry picked premiums only to prove costs haven't been controlled because premiums are your best case to make that point. Copays, coinsurance, deductibles, prescription drugs, all those play a role. IE, if the average American pays more in premiums but less everywhere else, it's possible the net average is lower for total costs paid for health care.

These are complex topics that have no room for bringing in rose colored ideologically tinted lenses to force the outcome to be "a fucking disaster", where you'll bring in anecdotal evidence, some of which is completely utterly made up.

Just how far are you willing to make stuff up? Hillary Clinton, according to you, has never in the last 40 years done anything substantially positive.

REALLY?! Look, I understand not necessarily wanting her to be President. OK, fine. But that claim is absolutely ridiculous. Over $2 billion has been raised by the Clinton Foundation, and over 90% of that has gone to charitable work according to independent studies. Before you go down the path of "paid access", blah blah blah, even if that were true, the reality is $1.8 billion went to charitable works around the world through the Clinton Foundation Hillary Clinton helped to create and run.

That's not substantial?!?!

Dude, just stop. The only people who believe that BS are people within your bubble. You're not convincing anyone else who didn't already think Hillary Clinton personally killed Vince Foster. You're just making people like me think you're a complete loon.

But that's just it - Trump talks about these real problems, he absolutely doesn't address them. When he's asked about what his policies might be, he begins talking and ends up on a completely different subject, usually concluding that he would be the best person to fix [insert problem here] but not saying how.

Does Clinton not talk about the same problems? Of course she does.

Interesting discussion but, like most in the environmental and foodie subcultures, refuses to acknowledge that the only real problem is too many people trying to occupy the planet. Solve that, and the rest of the problems go away. If you don't solve that, then nothing else matters.

Um no. The body has no problems combining ingredients, and storing certain essential ingredients for several months until the appropriate catalyst is introduced into the body. The real problem with most of these cures is that they ignore the basic principle of equivalent exchange. For every change you want to make in the body, you have to offer something of equal intrinsic value, or you'll suffer nasty rebound. And that's a good way to lose an arm and a leg.

Most of the population of the world is still impoverished by a lack of access to electric power, motor transport, manufactured goods, chemical fertilizers ... Stuff you undoubtedly take for granted. Climate change is a gigantic distraction and a power grab, and focusing on it will result in many poor people remaining poor.

There are real problems to deal with, for one, fossil fuels really are present only in limited supply, and we'll have to somehow stop using them eventually. Climate hysteria does not help.

They can't say anything they want.

You don't get Hitler without the Great Depression.

You don't get Donald Trump without a Tea Party.

They do have to say what people want to hear to take advantage of them. I've said it before, but the real problem with Donald Trump isn't Donald Trump. It's the number of people who would actually be willing to vote for him.

Will it? Or might the ignorant heard instead frequently shit all over something that lies beyond their own foresight, self interest and/or ill considered sensibilities?

By way of example, the abolition of the death penalty was opposed by the majority population in the UK up until about 2015 (it was introduced in 1965)

Likewise with equal voting rights, the abolition of slavery, child labour and so on (though I don't have numbers/dates for those to hand).

I realise the question of democracy is more nuanced than that, but there are enough examples of progress despite popular opinion to seriously call it into question.

I just can't help but shake the notion that the most successful and free democratic societies tend to be those most limited by political elites within them. (this can of course work both ways)

I will agree however that the illusion of democracy certainly seems to do wonders for keeping the baying pitchforks at bay.

A cycle of violent revolution does not seem at all preferable I agree. Clearly we are going to need a bit of both, a meritocratically regulated Noo perhaps? (i.e. earned but readily accessible votes for the demos to influence an elite Noo)

Though of course the problems with establishing that are also legion. I suspect that ultimately unless/until we create a mind greater than our own (A.I. or somesuch), it's always going to be a bit of a shit sandwich.

I don't think the systems are usually the real problem. I think it's just that people as groups are bloody awful.

All hail the mighty Noosphere!

Edit: I'm using Noo here to refer to the higher functions of the hypothetical collective brain. Strictly speaking everyone is part of the theoretical Noo and the anticipated harmony which it would/could grow into.

I always felt that my progressive ideology was a natural result of my atheism and 'skepticism', so it was really weird to find all these angry conservatives online shouting at women, muslims and black people while calling themselves atheists and rational skeptics.

I think the 'problem' with SJWs online is that a lot of concepts that 20 years ago would have been discussed mainly by well-educated academics, such as privilege, appropriation, etc., are now becoming mainstream and are being wielded by teenagers, lunatics, and people who are no smarter than you or I. This is technically a good thing - we need to get those concepts into the open if we are ever going to address the real problems they describe - but it means that there will be some people who fuck up or overreach while trying out these concepts. If somebody badly wants an excuse to dismiss all of feminism, or all of racial equality, there will thus inevitable be some teenager online with a webcam who is all too happy to give them that excuse - but why look for that excuse in the first place?

@ChaosEngine

I think we're getting a bit far off from the original topic, so I'll try to stay focused on my original point: you're still saying this guy in the video was presented with evidence and refused to change his mind.

He wasn't.

He was asked a rhetorical question to which he spontaneously replied in the way that he felt would be most in line with the thinking of his political party since he knew he was going to be on TV. His throwaway answer triggered your angry throwaway comment and here we are, with you apparently unable to grasp the irony of how your demonizing a group of "wooly thinking" bogeymen (who according to you are responsible for slavery, homophobia, and the drug war among other things) is completely mirroring the rhetoric of all the people in the video who are demonizing the BLM movement and the rhetoric of Trump in general regarding Mexicans, Muslims, etc.

You can see how well that approach is working for the Republicans, so it's baffling to me why you'd take that approach in dealing with something that is a real problem--convincing people to change their minds about beliefs that are deeply held but also based on what others would say is faulty reasoning (but seems perfectly reasonable to the person holding the belief). I think you'll find, along with the Republicans, that this approach of demonizing the "other" (who exists only in your mind--when was the last time you met someone who actually believed they were possessed by demons when they caught a cold?) does nothing to solve problems but in fact exacerbates them instead.

And that concludes all I have to say on the subject. I'll read whatever response you post but won't be replying in this thread again.

Tell me the real problem. Enlighten me.

Ahhh Bob, you did a Trump there, didnt you?

Present a dubious irrelevant statement to sway the discussion away from the real problem.

Surely you do not think black people should be shot preventively to keep cops safe?

BTW, you can own Bombs/RPGs/Missiles/etc.

Just fill out a form4 to get one transferred to you from a current owner, or a form1 if you wish to make a new one.

If you get a class 7 firearms license, and make sure to make whatever you make available for sale to LEO/military, then you can also make new automatic weapons for yourself (usually by converting semi auto to auto).

You can also own tanks and fighter planes.
There are clubs where folks hang out and drive around in their tanks, and fly around in their fighters, and shoot heavy weapons, etc.

Granted, the expense and paperwork of all of these makes them something only wealthy/organized people can afford. And realistically, anyone who has the cash to play with these sorts of things has his ducks in a row to begin with. (eg. An automatic rifle runs around the 20'000 usd range.) With a median individual income of around 26k per year, practically everyone in the U.S. can't afford such items (or is unwilling to).

Things called NFA items (rockets/artillery/etc) are registered, but not denied. Since AFAIK the mid 1930's, only a dozen NFA item owners have been convicted of a serious crime, and none of those crimes involved any NFA item. Only one shooting involved an automatic weapon, and it was committed by a police officer that lost his mind.

Other than a periodic flashy event like Fla, practically every gun crime is committed by cheap pistols. Crime and lack of wealth go hand in hand. Poor people are less likely to be educated, less likely to be from a stable well adjusted home, more likely to grow up in a strife ridden neighborhood, and less likely to be able to afford more than a cheap pistol. This is why you never hear about rockets/tanks/etc regarding crime - if the typical criminal could afford them, he wouldn't have to be a criminal. Realistically speaking, the U.S. is wealthy as a nation, but as individuals, people are not that well off. Majority of the country lives hand to mouth. TBH, that's the real problem. That's not to do with exceptions/unicorns like Fla - only with the most common/likely case.

As a side note, Swiss civilians are more heavily armed than U.S. civilians. But as a people they have their heads on straighter, so gun attacks are rare.

-scheherazade

@RFlagg And they won't stonewall Bernie?

Come on. That is pretty much guaranteed.

That is the real problem these days, and the internet hasn't helped. How do we get people to move off "winner take all"? "My way or no way?"

We are in deep yogurt.

Here's the plus side to being on the dark side of 60. I won't be around when the whole thing collapses.