Danny Dravot

Appreciate the response, but I guess that means we’ll just drag this out until December? Oh joy.

In what way?

I saw something a few weeks ago that Mitch McConnell hadn’t been to the White House in a month or two because Trump and co clearly had a different idea about masks than he did.

So...how does this actually work? I mean, I vaguely remember Obama winning Ohio and hitting 270 and Romney conceding, so that was that. At this point, Biden has won MI and WI, so NV will put him at 270. PA is irrelevant. That should be a wrap, but of course Trump isn’t going to concede. Do we have to wait for a bunch of lawsuits to conclude or is Biden pretty much officially the president elect (assuming NV, of course)?

Fell asleep on the couch with the TV on. Woke up to Trump saying he did win the election and this is all some sort of travesty. What the hell did I miss?

I agree with a lot of this. Looks like Trump will win Texas, but I would have been thrilled if Trump lost Texas but Cornyn won. Trump would go away and any honest reflection would tell President Biden that he’s only there because he’s not Trump- no progressive mandate, just a bit of calm.

No idea. I live in a low COL area (relatively) and the wife and I both have good jobs, so we’re in the clear. But you can’t be the breadwinner of the family with a minimum wage job and live in SF. It’s not feasible. Even my own budget would be blown out of the water if I tried it in a place like that.

Graham wins in S.C.

To be fair, we did eject her.

Whatcha got? Wife and I will dip into a bottle of Grangestone 25 y/o later.

Since you wanted me to read Chomsky, here’s something you can read about Chomsky: http://www.paulbogdanor.com/200chomskylies.pdf I’ve wasted far too much time here today so I’m going to bow out now. Enjoy your day.

Oh. Did I tell you who I listen to on these topics? I don’t recall that. Whatever you think you know about me, you should reconsider. You don’t know anything about me or who I listen to. Chomsky is a dilettante. He is a professor of linguistics so he should talk about linguistics. When he wades into other topics, he does idiotic things like downplaying the Cambodian genocide. I don’t fear him. I think he’s a massive clown.

I said I’m open to an idea but had a particular fear about it, which isn’t contrived (the only people who should have had a say in the treatment of their child were denied that say) and you tell me to read a Noam Chomsky excerpt on how I’m a brainwashing victim? Uh, great argument buddy.

I’m open to a public option, but it’s not something I think a ton about. I do fear excessive government control of any aspect of our lives. Two names that come to mind in healthcare are Charlie Gard and Alice Evans. Both were British infants who had rare and lethal diseases. Parents wanted to take them elsewhere for experimental treatments but the Brit hospitals took them to court to have their ability to move their own children denied. The hospitals won and both children passed away. That comes off as incredibly unjust to me, but in a socialized system more groups would get a say than just those patient and his/her loved one. If M4A was enacted here, would it lead to cases of this sort? Either way, I want what’s best for America. If universal healthcare would save Americans money and produce a better result while respecting people’s freedom of choice, I’d be open to it.

I was an infantryman so if anybody feels like they have no other options, they probably don’t go that direction. The people I served with were for the most part enthusiastic about our role in the world and happy to be the tip of the spear.

ROFL. You’re wrong about WMDs as I already pointed out. Your last part is conspiratorial lunacy- we know why Afghanistan occurred. We watched it on TV. Even without that atrocity, it was righteous to pull the Afghan people away from the grips of the Taliban. The area was already fractionalized and always has been, but we didn’t need to let that reign of terror continue.

Operation Avarice recovered hundreds of Iraqi chemical weapons in 2005. So that's wrong. And Afghanistan had nothing to do with oil at all. Neither did Iraq, for that matter. Trump idiotically suggesting pilfering oil supplies in the area and was laughed at for it. That's not why our forces were there and you know it. I'm out. Have a nice day.

I respect your opinion but disagree. I hope if I were in such dire straits, I would be true enough to my principles to refuse such help. Either way, have a nice day.

Dude, I'd like to have a civil conversation, but you can spare me that bullshit, actually. Sorry about your friend. Genuinely. The guy who slept in the bunk next to me at boot camp died in Afghanistan a week after his daughter was born. They "met" via Skype and then he was gone. When I was down range, we pulled the body of a KIA out of a creek five days after he went missing in an IED belt. I'll remember that day for the rest of my life. Your friend signed up. Shipping out was always possibility. I met a couple of guys over the years who didn't want to deploy, but when they signed up, that was a risk they were taking. People are welcome to sign up for the health benefits and education and so forth, but that's the risk.

I was a soldier and I fought in one of those "meaningless" wars. Nobody forced me to do that. We can agree to disagree on everything else, but please don't talk about soldiers like they were victims of some nefarious plot. We knew what we were getting into.

Should it happen, nobody will be responsible for it but me.

This is nuts, man. You can postulate about it, but you can't point to it actually happening because it hasn't. It never will. Google has about 100,000 employees worldwide. In 2016, Trump won each of the Dakotas, Wyoming, and Montana by over 100,000 votes. He won Idaho by 200,000+. So even if Google decided to place EVERY SINGLE ONE of its employees in Fargo, and every single Silicon Valley Google bro decided he was fine with moving his life out there, and every single one of those lads and ladies was an ardent liberal, North Dakota STILL would have gone for Trump. You're not playing chess. You're playing Calvinball.

Likewise, the bolded is your opinion. I empathize with the homeless. But you must consider that many of them deal with substance abuse and mental health issues. It's not simply like you're going to hand them $1,000 a month and their problems are going to vanish. You think the US is a failed state? You're free to do so, but I think many of these are failed human beings. You're living in a fantasy land if you think this is unbelievable just because the nation as a whole is wealthy. I disagree with the idea that we gave 5T to rich people. You can disagree with tax cuts, but if you can't see that there is a massive difference between "you may keep more of this money you made" and "we are going to give you money these other people made", then I just don't know what to tell you.

So if Google, Apple, and Microsoft decided to move their entire operations to ND at one time, assuming those techies are an ideological monolith in the first place, they could steal three whole EC votes, and that’s why you don’t like it? C’mon man, that’s as nutty as something Q would come up with.

So support a limited welfare state, which I do. You and I don’t deserve $1k extra a month just for being alive. So scratch UBI entirely. I can pay for my health insurance, so let’s establish a public option for the neediest but let those who can handle it themselves do so. Rather than trying to live off minimum wage, encourage self improvement and let teenagers make $7.50 an hour. There is affordable housing out there but it might not be in SF or Brooklyn (hell, I couldn’t even afford housing in those places). So get out there and find it.