Potpourri, and a little pot - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15249241
Judge Jackson is a member of the Supreme Court now. I still have some revulsion at the racist treatment she got.

Estimates for the hurricane are in the $50-70 billion range. Insurance companies in Florida that haven't already gone bankrupt or left have been dramatically raising premiums. Looks like they are about to go up again. One disaster expert I saw said that a house bought for $300K might cost $500K just to replace the building. A lot of people won't be able to swing that. On top of that, the increasing water damage means the expensive new regs are already obsolete...

Zelensky has asked for accelerated admission to NATO. He won't get it, but I like the idea. And yes, I do realise it's a dramatic escalation, but it would deliver the message I want to send..

If you add it all up, it looks like Putin will use the pipeline attack as an excuse to attack non-Russian energy. It fits a pattern that he has had since the beginning. So.. I'm thinking he did it, and that's why.

Remember when Trump threw towels in Puerto Rico? PR needs a lot, but at least Biden is trying.

The increased spending on kids is going to decline. Parts of it worked really well, and should be kept in a means tested form.

That football player (American football) with the concussion, Tuo something, tells us the helmets need to be improved again. Or we could stop pretending football makes sense..

I make a pot blend that's about 90% CBD and 10% THC. My wife needs a hip replacement and is in a lot of pain. The prescription painkillers don't cut it, but with my pills she can get to sleep. It works.
#15249341
3/4 of a bottle of Bordeaux so far.

Judge Jackson is a member of the Supreme Court now. I still have some revulsion at the racist treatment she got.


It was appalling but not surprising. The Republican party has doubled down on its racism time and again. It is racist, admits it, and acts on it through voter suppression.

Estimates for the hurricane are in the $50-70 billion range. Insurance companies in Florida that haven't already gone bankrupt or left have been dramatically raising premiums. Looks like they are about to go up again. One disaster expert I saw said that a house bought for $300K might cost $500K just to replace the building. A lot of people won't be able to swing that. On top of that, the increasing water damage means the expensive new regs are already obsolete...


Floridians? Fuck them. They elected that climate denier as governor. I hate Florida anyway. It is a mildewed backwater except for Miami which is just a hot-humid Baltimore.

Zelensky has asked for accelerated admission to NATO. He won't get it, but I like the idea. And yes, I do realise it's a dramatic escalation, but it would deliver the message I want to send..


From your mouth to God's ears.

If you add it all up, it looks like Putin will use the pipeline attack as an excuse to attack non-Russian energy. It fits a pattern that he has had since the beginning. So.. I'm thinking he did it, and that's why.


He did.

Remember when Trump threw towels in Puerto Rico? PR needs a lot, but at least Biden is trying.


I am so embarrassed about how the US handles PR. Shame on us. It ought to be a state or an independent country. Take a pick. Biden is much better than Trump when it comes to taking care of people. (Or just about anything else for that matter.)

The increased spending on kids is going to decline. Parts of it worked really well, and should be kept in a means tested form.


Don't know what you mean. Musing. The problem with our declining schools is not the amount of money spent. It is that they are undisciplined diploma mills.

That football player (American football) with the concussion, Tuo something, tells us the helmets need to be improved again. Or we could stop pretending football makes sense..


A bunch of Nancyboys in armor playing Rugby 30 seconds at a time.

I make a pot blend that's about 90% CBD and 10% THC. My wife needs a hip replacement and is in a lot of pain. The prescription painkillers don't cut it, but with my pills she can get to sleep. It works.


Pot is a great drug for moderate to severe pain. Especially since we impale any doctor who writes a prescription for what actually works....opiates. Many years ago I suffered some severe burns. I shudder to think of what coping with that would have been like without appropriate opiates.

I hope your wife feels better. With a good Orthopod she will really like the results of the hip replacement I imagine.

I think everyone ought to own a cat. I am catless for the nonce as our cat died awhile ago. My wife is not ready for one yet. I want one a lot. Time spent with a cat on your lap does not count off of your life.
#15249493
Drlee wrote:


Don't know what you mean. Musing. The problem with our declining schools is not the amount of money spent. It is that they are undisciplined diploma mills.




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"“In my career, I’ve never seen anything so dramatic as the shift in resources to families with kids during the pandemic,” said H. Luke Shaefer, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Social Work studying poverty and social welfare.

“Now we have much more evidence that these types of provisions can really work, and almost all of it is going away.”

Excluding tax reductions, federal spending was $8,240 per child. By comparison, similar spending on adults 65 and older last year was $35,200 per person. In typical times, for every $1 the federal government spends on children, it spends $6 on older adults. This is largely because of health costs, through Medicare and Medicaid as well as Social Security.

Children, by comparison, get 9 percent of the budget now — and that’s expected to shrink to 6 percent in a decade.

When it comes to designing family policies, these kinds of questions — whether support should be for poor families or for everyone, and whether it should be provided through cash grants or good and services — are areas of disagreement. But the outcomes are not. The evidence is clear that government support for families during the pandemic benefited children: In 2021, child poverty fell to the lowest rate on record."
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/01/upsh ... nding.html
#15249513
I don't think that it is wise to devise some sort of false equivalency between the elderly and children with regard to federal spending. Here is why.

The money for children that you are speaking consists largely of two revenue streams. Federal transfers to K-12 schools which only accounts for about 8% of the average school district's budget. The other 92% is paid by states/counties/districts.

WRT to spending on the elderly the overwhelming majority of this money comes directly from Social Security and medicare. These are programs into which seniors have paid for coverage. The fact that the federal government has plundered the trust funds does not diminish the fact that these were supposed to be prepaid benefits.

Then consider. When you discuss the medicare/medicaid budgets these are not limited to seniors. Indeed my state spends (federal money) more on those under 65 than those over.

Finally follow the money. The federal and state governments allowed business to abrogate its responsibility to provide salaries commensurate with any semblance of a living wage. We subsidize health care, training costs, infrastructure costs, tax incentives and much more. On top of that we have allowed businesses to simply rely on the federal government to fund the retirements of its (especially lower wage) workers.

In my fathers day (and early in my career) the employer was expected to create a retirement plan for its workers. It was as common as health insurance, which was ubiquitous. (I had health care at a fast food job back in the day.) Now? Social security and Obamacare for most.

See what I mean?
#15249516
Drlee wrote:

See what I mean?




Of course, and that's not what I was trying to do.

There is tension between the the things we need doing. We need to spend a LOT of money developing and helping states deploy the next gen power grid, aka the Smart Grid. We will have to replace at least some of the weapons and materiel we have been giving Ukraine. The cost of weather disasters keeps going up. Because we are human (read idiots) the cost of pandemics will go up, etc, etc, etc.

Macroeconomics suggests we can spend a lot if it's worthwhile. But we have pissed away many trillions on idiotic wars and the rich.

Given our track record, I have no idea how we pull this off.
#15249538
Hey Bluto. Do you remember when the Republican party WAS the liberal party? I do. I doubt Lincoln would have much liked any of the Republican leadership these days. Even the real conservatives I remember Goldwater wouldn't. Buckley, Eisenhower, Nixon or Reagan? They would not piss on Trump if he was on fire.

Here is what arch-conservative intellectual and author on the penultimate book on conservatism said about Donald Trump way back in 2000. (@late This is the answer to your implied question "Given our track record, I have no idea how we pull this off.")

Look for the narcissist. The most obvious target in today’s lineup is, of course, Donald Trump. When he looks at a glass, he is mesmerized by its reflection. If Donald Trump were shaped a little differently, he would compete for Miss America. But whatever the depths of self-enchantment, the demagogue has to say something. So what does Trump say? That he is a successful businessman and that that is what America needs in the Oval Office. There is some plausibility in this, though not much. The greatest deeds of American Presidents — midwifing the new republic; freeing the slaves; harnessing the energies and vision needed to win the Cold War — had little to do with a bottom line.
#15249557
Drlee wrote:Hey Bluto. Do you remember when the Republican party WAS the liberal party? I do. I doubt Lincoln would have much liked any of the Republican leadership these days. Even the real conservatives I remember Goldwater wouldn't. Buckley, Eisenhower, Nixon or Reagan? They would not piss on Trump if he was on fire.

Here is what arch-conservative intellectual and author on the penultimate book on conservatism said about Donald Trump way back in 2000. (@late This is the answer to your implied question "Given our track record, I have no idea how we pull this off.")



Hey democrat bitch, you remember what's convenient to you. Don't lecture anyone on real conservatives because you aren't and have never been a conservative or a republican. You're a leftist like the rest of them and fuck you and your welfare state dreams.


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#15249565
BlutoSays wrote:

Hey democrat bitch

you remember what's convenient to you. Don't lecture anyone on real conservatives

because you aren't and have never been a conservative or a republican.

You're a leftist like the rest of them and fuck you and your welfare state dreams.




He is a republican and a Republican. You are accidentally correct this time, respecting democracy is protecting the republic. Which means conserving the republic...

Which means he's conservative, and you're a radical. Trying to overthrow the government is the opposite of protecting it, and the opposite of conservatism. We have avowed communists that aren't as far from conservatism as you are.

Your anger tells us you already know this...

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