It’s a question loaded with presumptions. Either way I answer would make me seem complicit. That’s the point: you don’t want a discussion, you want to malign your opponents, because I suspect that’s all you have left.

4x, no answer. I invite all who reply to nos4 to stick with this. He acknowledges that Trump and his are liars all. Or not, and he says so.

This is the 4th time you’ve asked your loaded question and expected an answer, even though I responded the first time you asked it.

How exactly is one supposed to vote responsibly? Are there situations or circumstances where it is more responsible to not vote at all? Where exactly does my responsibility lie? Myself? My party? My country? Does it make sense to compromise when the candidate you favor is out of the race and simply vote for the candidate you dislike the least?

I think it would be irresponsible to vote for someone along party lines or for strategic purposes, because to do so would be for the sake of power-grubbing, not principle. If there is no candidate who you can stand behind don’t bother voting.

Is it that difficult to comprehend that people care about policy first and foremost and don't think of elections as reality TV shows?

Anyone who wants Warren to back out so as to syphon her voters to Bernie is concerned about seeking power, not policy. Warren is a capitalist and believes in markets.

Yes we love a strong American economy, military and energy independence. It’s bound to help out the motherland.

Unfortunately that didn't last long. I don't think there's anything that Trump can say or do that other administrations haven't already tried. Short of finding a way to wipe out the Taliban entirely, I don't know what will get them to stop fighting.

He just needs to stick to his guns, especially when the Taliban aren't willing to do so. As Trump has always said on the matter, "We'll see what happens".

Why is Russia supporting Trump?

We're gluttons for punishment, I suppose.

Why is Russia supporting Warren?

Because Europe supports Bernie.

Capitalism is one of the two roots of our health problem (lifestyle is the other one). Attached to American Health Care, like a big ugly glioblastoma on the brain, is the parasitical profit-making health insurance and intermediary administration companies. Americans have been brainwashed by the capitalists into fearing single-payer insurance (aka, medicare for all).

One of the reasons why branded drug prices are so high in the US is that, in effect, the US helps subsidize the rest of the world's global drug research and development costs. Through compulsory licensing a foreign government can threaten to invalidate an American drug company's patent in order to issue a generic. The company must choose to lower prices for much less profit, or get no profit at all. I'm not sure if this is true of medical tech, but given that published patents in medical technology in the US far exceeds that of any country (by hundreds of thousands), I suspect it is true of this facet of the industry. So there is a sort of parasitic relationship here as well. Perhaps the rest of the world have been brainwashed into reviling the American system when they should instead be thankful for it.

Good luck on your health battle. It sounds like you're in good hands.

Bernie Bros are pissed on Twitter that Elizabeth Warren hasn’t backed out and given Bernie his supporters, as if she wasn’t his opponent in an election. I now prefer Warren and will be rooting for her from her on out.

Oh good. Now we also know that you don't know what an argument is and that you swallow propaganda like a prostitute.

You’re zero for two, Benkei. (Or is it three?) and this from someone who claims to exist outside of propaganda.

Here’s my argument.

You're zero for two. The GAO is an investigative arm of Congress with no power. It offers an opinion, or for democrats and their parrots, a piece of paper they can wave in the air to justify an unjust impeachment. The administration has offered the opposite opinion, that everything is done legally. You've merely accepted the song and dance of congress. Also, no criminal penalties are associated with violating the impound control act. Every administration has done it. So you're wrong on that account.

The Attorney General disagreed with that finding of the Horowitz report, that "The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions". US Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a Justice Department criminal review of the investigation into Russia, said "Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened". So according to those now investigating the utter failure of Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation, you're wrong on that account.

Here’s what you cherry picked:

Every administration has done it.

Great argument.

Oh, so he did do it. Thanks for admitting to it finally.

Tu quoque isn't an argument but the way. Only kids think it is.

And here you are cherry picking from the sidelines like a little cheerleader. U mad?

I think he means his socialist ideas, the ones that have proven ruinous to all the despotic regimes he once championed.

You're zero for two. The GAO is an investigative arm of Congress with no power. It offers an opinion, or for democrats and their parrots, a piece of paper they can wave in the air to justify an unjust impeachment. The administration has offered the opposite opinion, that everything is done legally. You've merely accepted the song and dance of congress. Also, no criminal penalties are associated with violating the impound control act. Every administration has done it. So you're wrong on that account.

The Attorney General disagreed with that finding of the Horowitz report, that "The Inspector General’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions". US Attorney John Durham, who is conducting a Justice Department criminal review of the investigation into Russia, said "Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened". So according to those now investigating the utter failure of Crossfire Hurricane and the Mueller investigation, you're wrong on that account.

Interesting story here:

Trump’s election may have messed up the sex balance of babies

The ascendancy of the billionaire president may be linked to a decline in the number of boys born to liberal-leaning parents in Ontario, Canada.

According to a new study in the scientific journal BMJ Open, Trump’s election was associated with a temporary shift in the sex ratio of newborn babies. But this short-term decline in male babies was only apparent in politically liberal areas of the Canadian province and not in conservative parts.

A relationship between stressful events and the sex ratio of babies might seem implausible, but the pattern is actually well established. Terrorist incidents such as 9/11 and the 2005 London bombings saw a similar shift in the gender balance, which skewed towards girls over baby boys for a few months afterwards.

Good god.

The problem is Giuliani has documents and testimony, which I doubt you’ve seen or heard or even bothered to look at. Instead all you can do is post articles and fact-checks wherein they simply assert the opposite, without documentation or investigation. Luckily these documents are now with the DOJ, so we’ll find out one way or the other whether you’ll go zero for 3.

I’m not sure running to conclusions before the investigation is a bright idea.

You supported the Russia hoax and the Ukraine hoax, but when a little investigation is thrown Biden’s way we get all touchy.

Looks like we’re finally getting some action on the Biden front.

Senate Homeland Security Panel Chairman Wants to Issue Subpoena in Hunter Biden Probe

Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, wrote in a letter Sunday that he wants to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukranian diplomatic aide who worked for Blue Star Strategies, a Washington-based consulting firm. Mr. Johnson said he would schedule a committee meeting soon to vote on the subpoena.

Mr. Johnson’s committee is one of several in the Republican-led Senate that is investigating Hunter Biden’s service on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company, while his father was vice president and leading international anticorruption efforts in Ukraine.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/senate-homeland-security-panel-chairman-says-he-will-issue-subpoena-in-hunter-biden-probe-11583183194

Also, some of the same action is occurring on the Ukraine side.

A court ruling in Ukraine has forced state investigators to open a probe into alleged pressure by then-vice president Joe Biden that led to the 2016 dismissal of Viktor Shokin as the country’s prosecutor general, officials said Thursday.

Ukraine court forces probe into Biden role in firing of prosecutor Viktor Shokin

It’s about to get exciting, what with an election right around the corner.

Except, entropy. Why do you remember the past but not the future?

I suppose because the past has occurred. But remembering occurs in the present, as does everything else. There are no anterior states.

As an aside, an anti-Bernie pundit has just resigned. Chris Matthews of Hardball fame has stepped down amidst revelations about his "inappropriate comments".

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/business/media/chris-matthews-resigns-steps-down-msnbc.html

Couldn't the selective effects of past consequences on behavior explain why one wants to do something at a given time? The interactive effects of myriad experiences of the past impinging on present circumstances to bring about (not coerce) determined thoughts and actions.

I suppose it could explain why one wants to do something at a given time, but I don't see why one would bother. Each "effects of past consequences" and "experience of the past impinging on present circumstances" occurs at the level our own being and nowhere besides. So I think it's somewhat redundant to say our past selves determine our future selves.

I get what you're saying, and I agree. The arrangement between state and citizen needs to be just.

That's why I don't think one can trust the police in particular, and the government in general, because any state that makes the plunder of its citizens legal is at the outset unjust. When a state has the wholesale power to both defend man and his property from plunder while at the same time plundering man and his property for the benefit of the government and legislators, we have by its very organization an unjust arrangement. And people will abuse their power. That's why it needs to be reduced, in my opinion.

You did not choose them. Nobody asked me whether I wanted to like philosophy. I just do and in the same breath there are others who wouldn't do philosophy even if their life depended on it.

But no one and nothing else determined your affinity for philosophy but yourself.

Perhaps "Green Leap Forward" is a more accurate term than "Green New Deal". Sooner or later some nutter in a backwoods isn't going to want to have his mobile home replaced. What then?

You're contributing to the total.

Your money goes somewhere, certainly, but someone else gets to decide exactly where. For all you know you could be funding children in cages.

I don't really see why or how in the world the destination of the total versus the individual dollars makes a difference.

Theoretically, it would matter to someone who wants to know what sorts of things her hard-earned dollars are funding.

Which do currently exist and are open and available to the public, just fyi.

This may be true but I doubt you can track your own dollars to their final destination, for instance whether you are funding healthcare or the droning of children overseas.

What is lacking here is the question how much would you pay for things like just to take on example, a working police and judicial system? Or put it another way, how much ought to be paid for you to move to Mexico or Honduras where basically the legal system doesn't work? Tax rates are lower in both countries, so I guess you wouldn't have to be paid much.

Certainly as little as is required. But absent any sort of audit of where the tax money goes I fear that the question of how much tax money is required for a working police and judicial system is a difficult one.

People do indeed vote against their interests. Not their "real" interests in the sense you mean -- like I know what their "real" interests are and they stupidly vote against them. They themselves acknowledge they would benefit from certain policies, like extending medicare, but vote for politicians that refuse to implement such policies. That's voting against one's interests. And they have their reasons, too: they're willing to stomach a candidate they don't even like for other reasons. What are these "other reasons"? Usually social issues like abortion, guns, immigration, religion, anti-liberalism, being anti-"elites," etc. This is what is seen when you talk to people, and it shows up in the polls as well. Most of it is complete nonsense, yet they vote on the basis of it.

I'm beginning to get the impression that the claim "people vote against their own interests" is always levied against people who vote differently than the claimant. He voted differently than me, therefor he voted against his own interests. I could easily claim the same of you, for example. So I think it's more of a condescending accusation rather than useful comment.

So you're sticking with "because I just don't wanna."

Well, when you have an argument, get back to me.

But this is a blatant straw man. I clearly did not say that. I suppose evasions and dodging is the best approach given the sheer emptiness of your claims.

To continue the conversation I asked what your reason for X is. You haven't offered me anything aside from versions of "because I don't wanna."

There are some reasonably irreducible claims, but "I don't want to pay taxes" is not one of them.

So, if that's your entire reasoning, I rest my case on the irrationality of your position.

That’s not what I said, but I doubt accuracy is paramount here. It’s my money; I earned it; I know best what to do with it. It’s really that simple. If you cannot explain how that is irrational or don’t want to answer or cannot say how that is against my best interest, that’s fine, but just know that I was genuinely curious.

I think calling people to their faces irrational might alienate them and be just undiplomatic all around. But I don't think laying out why X is not in their best interest but Y is does or should alienate anyone. People who do feel alienated by that (i.e., by a rational presentation of the other view) are opting out of the conversation from the get-go and thus lost causes.

Why won’t you lay out why X is not in my best interest but Y is? Are you opting out of the conversation, and thus a lost cause?

Still waiting for a good reason on your end.

Because you cannot defend your claim.

And right there you've shown you don't even understand what taxes and the government are and what their purpose is.

That’s not true. I just don’t get how it is against my interests to vote for lower taxes when I am interested in paying less taxes.

Because.....?

Because it’s my money, not theirs.

Depends why you want lower taxes.

Because I prefer to pay less money to the government.

Your argument works for the pro-life side of things.

But voting for lower taxes against social programs such as universal healthcare is precisely an example of such voters going against their own interests.

I don’t get how it is against my interests to vote for lower taxes when I am interested in paying less taxes.

The above quote encapsulates an argument against free will for if we didn't chose our preferences (likes and dislikes) and all our actions are determined by our preferences then it follows that we're not free; we are automatons, each with its own preprogrammed set of dispositions that will ultimately determine every course of action that we'll ever choose in the course of our lives.

Our preferences grow and alter with the rest of us. If our actions are determined by our preferences, then our actions are determined by us. I don’t understand how our “preferences” are not a part of us, as if foreign. Each of us determine the course of our own lives by the simple fact that nothing else does.