And that raises an interesting point, because a constant argument from the left is that the working class rural right often votes against its interests by supporting policies that favor the wealthy. The response is that they are not motivated by self-interest, but by ideology, which is as consistent as the very rich voting for socialism. The rural working class are motivated much more by American concepts of liberty than they are in receiving additional government social security measures, even if pragmatically, they'd be better off with a larger government. — Hanover

There's one important traditional divide in the working class or with blue-collar workers. And that is if the person an employee or an entrepreneur, a self-employed person. This has a big effect on just what issues one see important. The self-employed or family enterprise hasn't got the employer and capital (if any) is owned by the person. This divides basically from outward factors the group into two.

And yes, you are totally correct about the effect of the American ideology. But why the left has been out of the picture in the US has to do other historical reasons also. The labor movement hasn't had the same success as in other countries (and was infiltrated by organized crime). Population made out of immigrants hasn't had similar social and class structure than old European countries: modern USA hasn't been built on the remnants of feudalism, so no history of peasant revolts. Non-leftist parties have dominated US politics. And of course, US has prospered, which naturally has kept the people very content and hasn't driven them to the barricades. People are happy when things work.

Once we understand the limitations of structuralism and in the method of "looking at the historical change past individual events", it's a great way to think about history. As usual, one has to understand the limitation.

Perhaps the best example the history of science. In many cases things are invented or discovered in the same era even without any communication. We can understand that many for example philosophical or mathematical insights could for example been done in Antique Times, but where done only Centuries later. Yet for example some smart Roman coming up with Quantum Mechanics or Theory of Relativity wouldn't be possible. It simply shows that not only is there actually a "Scientific Paradigm" in the way Kuhn himself used the term, but also many things rooted in the prevailing society, it's norms, the knowledge of technology and the scope of globalization. Just how important are those connections, trade and interaction with other cultures and civilizations, can be seen from the American Indian cultures. Small ragtag forces of Spaniards could literally hijack the Aztec and Inca empires.

Just confront the likely truth: both Trump and Clinton enjoyed the sex ring of Epstein. Yes, now two Presidents.

Unless you're suggesting that those civilisations just happened to have an unfortunate 10,000 year tun of bad decisions, then I think his overall point still stands. — Isaac

No. My argument was that you simply cannot explain all from the stucturalist point of view. You need also the historical narrative, what people did and what events happened. You need to use both. And this is crucial in answering Jacob-B's OP. Think about China. It sent of this huge flotilla to discover far away lands and then decided to scrap the ships and turn away from the World. And then, just like all countries that have decided to cut the World outside them out, was in for a rude awakening. Just like the Ottomans were with Napoleonic invasion.

Or just think about modern day China. During Mao's time it struggled to feed it's population and now even with the same party in power, it's quite different from what it was in the 1970's. Political decisions have huge consequences.

Oh, and on the subject of elephants, Diamond talks about Hannibal in the same paragraph as the one about the rhinos. — Isaac

Thanks for the correction! I didn't remember that, my bad.

You originally said that "the real mudslinging hasnt yet started", and I explained how that's not true given the examples you provided. If you want to expand, feel free to do so. — Maw

Right. New Hampshire is just behind us. The attack from the Republicans has not in earnest yet started (as you could see from Trump's remarks) as there are simply far too contenders to attack.

The accusations surely have already been done in the last election. Sanders has avoided them clearly and of course his supporters aren't bothered about it. Yet for them naturally it isn't at all focused. It's the Republican voters that have to be frightened in order to come to the ballot box. And if you don't find something bad that Bernie has said, then find something that his aides/staff/campaigners have said.

Whether it's awesome or not, I don't know. But that there is an ideology associated with America is obvious, easily decipherable from the Constitution, the Declaration, writings by the founders, and even as noted in writings by others (as I referenced Lincoln). Whether one considers being called unAmerican an insult or point of pride is another matter, but it is a meaningful statement. — Hanover

Oh, the awesome was for how much people would get angry on the forum for that...

Coming from a right leaning member that unAmerican (Un-American?) sounds a bit bad. Reminds of House Un-American Activities Committee. It's the classic thing: ask a liberal, a right-leaning libertarian, a Trumpist, a progressive what is good in America and what is Un-American, I assume you won't get the same answer.

Simply untrue. You're a non-American, so I don't expect you to have a strong pulse on American political discourse — Maw

Maw on the pulse! And again you simply don't get my point, which is totally typical of you.

Anyone who is an avid reader of the Washington Examiner is unlikely to consider voting for Sanders in the first place. However, the GOP (and the Democrats) have leveraged the state of contemporary Venezuela against Sanders and other Left politicians for the last year, which doesn't stick given that the simple solution, which has in fact been effective, is to ignore it and point to other developed countries or Norwegian models instead, some of which have Governments with larger wealth ownership in their countries than the Venezuela government has over their own. — Maw

I'm just making the point HOW the GOP will attack Bernie. Now it seems you think I'm think so about Bernie Sanders. :roll:

Bernie isn't actually very socialist, but when has things like facts had an impact on election rhetoric?

None of these slanders are particularly novel or potent. — Maw

Are the slanders particularly novel or potent?

Just look at the nonsense put towards ALL Democrat candidates! Bill Clinton, Obama, Hillary Clinton. The vast majority of the accusations were quite outrageous. But that's the way US politics goes.

I wasn't aware that it had been criticised a lot. I'm aware of one or two points of dispute, but I always thought it was quite well regarded. Who are the main critics you're thinking of? — Isaac

Let's make this a bit more general.

Diamond, who isn't a pure historian, but an anthropologist and knows his biology is the perfect example of a structural history or stucturalism, that human culture must be understood by way of their relationship to a broader, overarching system or structure. With Diamond the emphasis is on the environment the biological advantages without forgetting technology. Basically the title of his famous book gives it away: Guns, Germs and Steel.

Good example of Diamond is him pondering the thought on why Africans didn't conquer Europe, but the other way around. If the African Rhino could be tamed like a horse, Diamond argues, that would have made African cavalry extremely deadly. Since Rhino's are in Africa, Africans would
have had the advantage.

(Marvel's imagination)


Fine. But then again, this did happen. An African called Hannibal Barka did introduce an equally devastating creature to Europe called war elephants, which did create panic among the ranks within the soon-to-be Empire builders, the Romans. Diamond is on the right path. Yet Carthago was destroyed and Rome was victorious and was crucial in forming Europe.

(Reality. Even if the elephant armour is Asian, not African)


And this is here where trying to make sense of some specific civilization falling with structural history. In the end it's the butterfly effect of history, a decision of one leader to do something foolish that makes all the World go haywire. You simply cannot avoid it if the question is why West Rome perished, why was Islam so successful? Why China didn't conquer the World? You can give all the structural reasons starting from weather, geography etc. as reason for a civilization to fall, but you simply cannot avoid the historical narrative on how it just happened. That people make decisions, battles are won or lost and they have consequences. Because in that narrative we see totally clearly that things could have gone differently on that specific moment:

What if the driver of the Arch Duke Franz Ferdinand's car had not driven the wrong way and stumble in front of an assassin? Would we have had WW1? Would we then have had WW2? If we would have had the Great War, how different would it have been if the starting day would have been 1934? How different the World would be IF the US had invaded Cuba and those Marines landing on the Cuban beach would have been wiped out by a Russian tactical nukes, that the Americans had no knowledge about when planning OPLAN 326-62? What would be the post-WW3 era now be like to live in?

And these of course we cannot answer.The death of Franz Ferdinand did start the path to the Great War and the US and the Russian's did avoid nuclear war in 1962. Hence we cannot use the scientific method of a laboratory test on these issues.

Who or what is a true Republican? Or A Democrat?

Remember that the two American parties are both a hodgepodge of different groups and wings, which typically wouldn't be in the same political party in other countries.

I would say that being communist keeps you from being American, largely because I see being an American as requiring an allegiance to a certain ideology, thus the term "unAmerican ideals" holds meaning. — Hanover

Awesome. We have gotten to "unAmerican ideals"!



It will come to this in the election hype. 9 months to go.

Simple, because he hasn't been the Democratic presidential candidate. The GOP hasn't really put the crosshairs on him.

Last election the mudslinging was basically done by other Democrats, Hillary etc. It was convenient for GOP to portray Bernie positively or simple to back off, because he wasn't the "official" candidate. Trump has been quite cordial, yet backtracked from a debate with Bernie last election.

That Bernie Sanders will be painted to a like Corbyn is evident for examples like this article from Tom Rogan's piece in the Washington Examiner last month:

The most notable example here is Sanders's long-standing support for the Nicaraguan Sandinista movement. During his 1980s tenure as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, Sanders even directly supported the Marxist Sandinistas. This included his 1986 delivery of 500 tons in aid to a Sandinista-controlled town. It is worth noting here that 1986 was at the height of Sandinista tyranny in Nicaragua, a time when they had shut down media publications and were actively using an emergency declaration to detain civilians without trial. Apparently unconcerned, Sanders had been the July 1985 guest of honor at Sandinista festivities to celebrate its sixth year in power.

By the end of the 1980s, Sanders wasn't exactly disabused of his admiration for the Sandinistas, whom he saw as a socialist example to replicate and a lesson even to be transplanted into American schools.

Interviewed for a 1989 master's thesis, he declared that "when you go into the schools, that is where you start. It's important for young people to understand the history of Nicaragua and what's going on there. But do you know what is even more important? For them to understand that they're suppose to understand, that is what is important for them to understand. That is the first thing."

This inadvertently Orwellian language speaks to the ideological devotion with which Sanders serves his socialist cause.

Sanders expanded on that education theme in the same interview, noting that "we're in the process of organizing an observation in remembrance of the destruction of democracy in Chile and the death of Salvador Allende ... obviously as part of that we're going to be showing films, having a panel discussion, getting some stuff on television. That's something I think a mayor, and a governor as well, should be doing."

History shows that Sanders's adoration for Latin American socialism runs particularly deep. In August 2011, Sanders's website featured an opinion piece suggesting that "the American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela, and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today [than in the U.S]."

The current state of Venezuela, Earth's oil-richest nation and home to a shocking number of children starving to death, might be considered a rebuke to these words.

The last comment reminds me of how Ron Paul was painted to be a racist because of some opinion by another person posted on his webpage. That Bernie has referred Chavez to a (dead) dictator hardly matters as you can see.

Of course, he may not be portrayed as an anti-semite like Corbyn, but who knows in this post-truth World of ours...

Parliamentary democracy is compromise.

Only fools think that people are united...and all think as they themselves do.

And what is your problem with consensus?

Trump's election was reactionary to the fact the political establishment hasn't listened to people for quite some time and was a lurch to the insane right. Bernie Sanders isn't reactionary at all but the most sensible of the democrats as it most closely aligns what a majority of Americans want. — Benkei

Uhhh...you're sure about that? USA isn't Europe.

Bernie is going to be made to be an American Corbyn. Here's a photo of young Bernie!


Yet the real mudslinging hasn't really started. Hence Trump can say this about Bernie Sanders:

If Bernie gets the ticket, I assume Trump's rhetoric will get more like he had for Hillary.

There is no agreement between governments that needs to make this possible. — BitconnectCarlos

Except they allow bitcoin to be used. And there's a multitude of laws and regulations on it.

For example, The EU and bitcoin:

The European Union has passed no specific legislation relative to the status of bitcoin as a currency, but has stated that VAT/GST is not applicable to the conversion between traditional (fiat) currency and bitcoin.In October 2015, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that "The exchange of traditional currencies for units of the 'bitcoin' virtual currency is exempt from VAT" and that "Member States must exempt, inter alia, transactions relating to 'currency, bank notes and coins used as legal tender'", making bitcoin a currency as opposed to being a commodity. According to judges, the tax should not be charged because bitcoins should be treated as a means of payment. The European Central Bank classifies bitcoin as a convertible decentralized virtual currency.

And some countries view it as illegal: Algeria, Egypt, Bolivia, Nepal, Pakistan for starters. Others have banking bans on bitcoin.

Just as with alcohol, drugs or automatic weapons, you can surely have them and use them, but is it legal or illegal depends on the sovereign state you are in. And that will have consequences.

We are potentially swinging into decentralization, but this is an ongoing battle as governments and corporations attempt to further centralize power and use technology to monitor citizens. I don't know who will win: maybe government, maybe corporations, or maybe the people. — BitconnectCarlos

Well, that may be a too simplified juxtaposition of people being on the one side and governments and corporations being on the other. Governments and corporations are made of people too. The real power of a government institutions comes from the fact that people also support them and obey the rules. And then "the people" aren't as unified as many want to depict them.

I'd say that there are worrying phenomena, these kinds of vicious circles in society going around without a clear culprit or a designer / mastermind behind them. We can blame some actor for them and create this elaborate nefarious plan they have, but very seldom is there any kind of true conspiracy.

Or a no-confidence vote, one or the other. The ties that bind the coalition are rarely as solid as multi-party proponents like to pretend.

If "working together" means silencing or otherwise modifying a platform in order to appease the coalition and to achieve consensus, then maintaining the coalition and power becomes the prime motive over implementing party policy. Coalition becomes little more than bargaining between political elites, dressed up as compromise. — NOS4A2

Those are the things in politics. If the coalition cannot work together, then the administration doesn't work. Usually the government falls on a "no confidence" vote. If nobody is willing to work together, then nothing happens. But Republics can work too, you know. One party rule isn't the only answer.

But how is now it working with the two party system? The other one can simply wait 4 to 8 years until people are so fed up with what they have they'll vote for something different. And that' 4 to 8 years time to get a working campaign together. Both just aim for total control and will have zero incentive to work with the other party.

Things like corruption, the rule of law or how well the institutions of a justice state work are the outcome of many different things. However, in a multiparty system it is more easier for new parties to emerge than in a two party system. Also if the political landscape is too much fractured to many little parties, that can pose also a problem.

I think we can agree that a one party system means a lot of trouble and the potential for overwhelming corruption and misuse of power. My argument that a far too solid two-party system will have those same negative aspects than as one party system too, even if the bickering between the two might hide it. Just as in business, replacing a monopoly with a duopoly might not make things better, especially if the duopolies agree on a joint effort on keeping any other serious competition ever from rising. And then dividing the market themselves.

But the big business, especially military industrial interests would hate that, as they would lose all their power, so they have to promise people those things respectively and then deliver on nothing but their own self-interest. If they split in four like suggested, the Trump Republicans and “centrist” Democrats would die completely because our electoral structure naturally gravitates towards two parties. — Pfhorrest

What party is most successful depends quite a lot of the actual leaders and the people. And not just on right wing or left wing party gets everybody. The traditional blue collar worker voting for the left is quite far from the woke student voting left. Just as a traditional conservative is from the alt-right. The support of a party doesn't follow just from it's agenda. How it would play out, only God knows.

What a multiparty system does is that it creates the necessity of coalition administrations. This has one extremely important effect: the political parties have to work together. A party leader cannot viciously attack and defame an opponent and then think they can later form a government with that opponent. It would eat his/her own credibility. Hence the political debate loses part of the vitriol, which is actually good in my view. In the US system, the two parties have to invent that vitriol to get the people to be fixated on the two party system. Otherwise more would see through the facade. Just like Trump & Clinton, they were great friends! One of them took this role of being "an outsider", which his followers eagerly still believe in.

pushing the envelope even further with the possibility of cutting out the company entirely and going directly peer to peer with basically no fees going to the middleman — BitconnectCarlos

Actually, the middlemen are there. They aren't just so visibile. For example, you still need:

a) secure and reliable internet connections
b) a working global payment system
c) all agreements between sovereign states and laws that make the above possible.

In the 15th Century the Medici's and the Fuggers could handle international transactions simply by sending a family member to foreign countries to serve as the trustworthy banker there.

I understand that in the 1950s we needed a centralizer to build the highways. But it's 2020 now. The world is increasingly digital, and governments and intelligence agencies are well aware of this and have used to it further centralize power and keep tabs on their citizens like never before. — BitconnectCarlos

Oh, you think there aren't equivalent investments anymore of need of similar centralization? Or think that the financial system will take care of it by itself?

How about tackling climate change?

Centralization of power isn't only about control and supervision of the citizens. It is to make otherwise extremely costly investments. It is to create an emphasis on certain issues. And many of them even international endeavours: the ISS, CERN, ITER etc.

Would there have been an interested billionaire that would have made them?

We're just at a neat point in history where the pendulum is starting to swing the other way towards decentralization after around 150 years of it swinging towards centralization beginning with the industrial revolution.

Why desperately cling for the old ways? — BitconnectCarlos

I'm not sure we are swinging into decentralization. Might be the opposite.

Surveillance of the masses is now totally possible with ever more detail that was unheard of earlier. Control is getting easier. The great film Lives of Others depicts quite well the fundamental problem that police states have had in history: to survey just few people you have had to have also a few people that listened or observed, at least looked through vast amounts of useless data when surveying people when defining them to be an "enemy of the state" or not. With more intelligent AI's, that limiting personnel problem won't be a problem anymore. A computer can listen to all the telephone calls, read through all emails, tweets and text messages and every word you ever have put to facebook or this forum. I gather that from all 'big data' on you specifically a cunning computer program can answer questions of "yes" or "no" to questions the government (or an employer) will want to ask of you.

That of course leads to a society where you simply don't talk politics to anyone. Or perhaps only to your friends in a safe environment. Which is more or less the way it was in the Soviet Union.

That said, at critical events in US history like the Civil War or the Depression/WWII these "power figures" (in a more modified American sense) or "centralizers" did step up and expand the state and we generally look upon Lincoln and FDR favorably even though they were undoubtedly centralizers who took considerable executive privilege. — BitconnectCarlos

And you have a standing army, btw. Not just basically an enlarged National Guard. The point of defense is typically the issue which even the most hardcore libertarian big-government hater accepts that in this 'special' case centralization works.

If the military is the example that small-government libertarians are OK with, then it opens a door to many issues. How about infrastructure? If the question is the legitimacy of power, the first question is how centralized power ought to be: when are things decided by the individual, when by the collective and when, to make matters function well, by a single person?

How about building something like the interstate highway system? People might take care of the road leading to their house with a neighbor, but how do you organize the planning, funding and building of a system of that proportions? Especially when it genuinely is a life and death decisions for towns and small cities just where the junctions of an interstate highway system are? The vast majority of city mayors would definitely want that their city to be linked in the most convenient way to other cities by highways. Yet you can't please everyone.

This comes back to power. The question isn't just about worrying that some evil guy will take power. The issue is that when there isn't centralized power, the lack of this can have a lot of consequences. And the military isn't the only example. The people who decide just where the highway close hold a lot of power in their field. And simply assuming that "anybody can build an interstate highway system and the best option wins by market mechanism" is the wrong utopian answer. In reality that won't happen. Without a central authority the most prosperous cities will have some form of fast highways/motorways, but on some point when the highway comes too far from the big city to a poor community, it will turn into a normal two lane road. And the result is that the prosperity simply won't appear: the lagging infrastructure will decrease economic growth.

Or just take zoning and city planning. At first, you might argue that in a free country, anybody ought to have the right to build anything they want on their land. Or who cares who owns it, it's problematic. Again the end result is quite a mush. The anarchic way some Third World countries grow is the perfect example how things go without central planning, without functioning institutions.

(Streets and roads, who needs them?)

I think the best would be if the two parties would partition to two parties.

the GOP => Libertarian&Conservative Wing GOP / Trumpist-populist GOP
the DNC => Leftist Social Democrat DNC / Centrist DNC

Even one party dissolving into two would mean that the other party would win. Both House and Senate could easily be contested. Also the political map at the state level could turn different.

It is essential for a democracy in order to function that the political landscape can change. Now America just get's these media campaigns promising change, yet the political structures don't change at all.

Bloomberg spoke at the RNC in 2004 to praise George Bush and the Iraq war and gave money to Republican candidates in 2016. — Maw

Bloomberg obviously thinks that four years from now isn't the best option. Reminds of one former Democrat supporter (below in picture with Bloomberg and Clinton).

Best democratic buddies! Why wouldn't Michael Bloomberg want to be in the same league as his fellow golf friends?

As premature as it is to say anything about the Democratic Convention in July, I suspect that it'll be brokered, that is, no candidate will emerge from the primaries with enough delegates to be nominated (principally because of Bloomberg & Steyer). Rules changes in 2016 suggest 'Superdelegates' - the Democrats own mini- Electoral College - will be poised select the nominee (by breaking deadlock on the convention floor). — 180 Proof

Political parties can make their own rules how they want.

What really matters is the general election.

I'm starting to like Bloomberg. Anyone else? And there are a lot of folks who would make a great running mate for him. (That is, Biden and Bernie, no - too old - too bad we can't put Bernie in a way-back machine.) — tim wood

Yang perhaps, but he's too unknown. I think looking at the times we live in, at least one candidate, either the the presidential candidate or the vice-presidential candidate has to be a woman. Even with Bernie (which would silence a lot of leftists), having two old white males on the DNC ticket would itself get a lot of flak. Which two old white males are you going to vote, the Republican or Democrat option?

Yet one party having candidates as different as Bloomberg and Sanders shows the inherent problem in the US system: the two are so different from Bernie, that in any other country you would have different political parties. Does Bloomberg fit into the mold of Democratic Socialism? No. Does Bernie fit in a Centrist party? No, or he's being hypocritical.

Political parties are formed around and ideology and an agenda. That is their core. Political parties cannot be totally open vessels that then one side or another hope to conquer and take it somewhere totally else than the other side of the party. This just creates genuine emptiness in the party, it is just a mere shell.

Yet many Americans pin their hopes on this. They pin their hopes on getting the perfect candidate nominated as the candidate of the two parties and then become President... as if that would change things. And one part thinks or hopes that they have gotten this with Trump. Trump WAS the outsider of the GOP, the GOP leadership was against him. And he got to be nominated and got elected. Hooray! NOS4A2 is ecstatic. Yet when look at Trump's actual performance, when the Republicans had both houses. And then what? It's the tax cuts. Something very much the same for all Republican administrations. But Trump tweets! Trump gets Democrats angry! Might be happy with that, because not much has changed.

Actor Michael J. that is.

Well, you got me clicking the article. So hope The Hill is happy.

How would it be defined without the help of the law? — Brett

Laws are about social organization. Otherwise, without laws it simply would be that people wouldn't like one killing another. I don't like that and you don't like that. I guess many would oppose that. You don't have to have a law for that. But with a law, you have the constructs of an society with formal institutions. Killing and murder are two different definitions.

Many see in animal group behavior some kind of proto-society from where our society has developed. That may be, but how much the behavior of other primates can say about us is not so simple. We differ a lot from animals, thanks to our advanced language skill and advanced co-operation.

Oooh yes...

Let's go through Trumps tweets and comment on those tweets and then comment on the comment tweets and...



Nice map, actually!

Actually, US healthcare is among the best in the world. — Benkei

For those who can pay, definitely.

Unfortunately the stats don't take into account only the affluent in America, but include all people.

The difference in life expectancy of a white woman (81 years) and a African-American male (72 years) is quite big. So perhaps the answer would be in the case of the US, just to look at how the health stats are for the Americans with median income. Or simply don't take into account minorities. (That's a bit racist, I know.)

Or I know: just like they don't count those who have been unemployed for too long to be "unemployed" in the official unemployment figures (U3) and refer to these people of having opted not to go to work (U6), perhaps with the same kind of reasoning official stats could simply write off people that are alcoholics, smoke or have used drugs, because obviously their living habits show that they don't want to live, so we can exclude them from the ordinary stats! That would surely make the statistic concerning health better! Life expectancy figures as other health stats then would refer to group/class P1 of the population and the classic "population" could be referred to be P4 or something and never be spoken in the official stats.

I'll bet non-smoking teetotalers who haven't ever used drugs will have better health stats. Would be a great way for Trump to show how much Americans are winning!

Even if it's lovable to humanize animals (notice the avatars of Coben and mine!) and it is also honest to admit that we are animals too, yet animal "society" isn't like human society. Societies have norms, like killing other humans is murder. As the definition of murder goes, murder is an unlawful killing of another person, just as Hanover remarked already.

Edit: by the way why do you think I’m American? — Brett

I believe in probability calculus. And "Brett" sounds Anglo-American. :wink:

Sorry if I offended you.

Excuse my confusion, but doesn’t that graph indicate a higher spending by government on people than other countries? I don’t see what’s so bad about this graph. — Brett

You think it isn't bad???

Ok. The graph tells you just how much countries spend on health care per on citizen. The US spends the MOST money on it's citizens.

Then you can look at the outcomes on that spending:



Or how about a classic indicator, the infant mortality rate:



And I could go on and on with statistics that all show how bad your system is. By OECD standards, the US performance is utterly dismal. But these two above should make the point: Would you assume that the US puts THE MOST money on healthcare, looking at the two charts above? You spend far more than anybody else, so the natural reasoning would be then that the Americans would then be better of or at least close to the top by health indicators. No. Not so. Not with a long shot.

And why? Because of your health care system.

Sometimes a cartoon makes makes the point well:

Medicare will fall short on funds in 2026, earlier than previously forecast due to the recent Republican tax cut. — frank

Don't forget social security.

Social Security and Medicare together accounted for 45 percent of Federal program expenditures (excluding net interest on the debt) in fiscal year 2018. - Both Social Security and Medicare will experience cost growth substantially in excess of GDP growth through the mid-2030s due to rapid population aging caused by the large baby-boom generation entering retirement and lower-birth-rate generations entering employment. For Medicare, it is also the case that growth in expenditures per beneficiary exceeds growth in per capita GDP over this time period. Social Security’s total cost is projected to exceed its total income (including interest) in 2020 for the first time since 1982. The Trustees project that the combined trust funds will be depleted in 2035, one year later than projected in last year’s report.

Notice how people aren't talking about this anymore? Especially those tea party people? Because they follow Trump now. And Trump has said about social security: "“I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!” Well, I guess that tweet takes care of it.

The entire system would be watered down if everyone had it. — jgill

Sorry, but this is total nonsense.

We have universal health care and it costs half of what you are paying for your present system. So have others. So I guess the US with far higher GDP per capita could easily afford it, if it would change things. But Americans simply want to pay a lot for their health care and give the money to corporation profits. And without a functioning system you pay the most with then people that haven't had adequate health care turning up to be treated in the emergency ward.

It's really simple: the companies, especially the insurance companies make a big buck from the system. They have their own lobbyists taken care of the system. Hence no wonder that it is so expensive. But I guess you just love rackets!

Question: Why is it so hard to understand the underlying graph?


(Btw, as one smart commentator put it: Obama shouldn't have called it Health Care reform, it should have been called Health Insurance reform.)

Question: Why make counting votes so hard?

While there’s no evidence that the tallies were tampered with or intentionally altered, the issues are likely to fuel skepticism in the caucus results and provide fodder for the campaigns to question its final outcome.

One instance of an apparent error in Indianola’s second precinct in Warren County, first noted by The New York Times, shows that billionaire philanthropist Tom Steyer and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick received 50 and 41 votes, respectively, in the first round of caucusing on Monday.

But on the second alignment, both candidates received zero support, a result that flies in the face of caucus rules mandating that a candidate considered viable after the first round of voting — usually by notching at least 15 percent support — cannot lose support in the second round.

Conversely, in the same precinct, Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) were recorded as receiving zero votes in the first alignment and then picking up 44 and 51 votes in the second, a result that would also violate caucus rules, because candidates that do not have sufficient support in the first round of caucusing are knocked out and cannot win support in the second alignment.

In several precincts, there are cases in which the candidate who got the most votes didn’t end up with the most state delegate equivalents.

A Finnish newspaper had their journalists report on the Iowa caucus. They found the whole process confusing and quite strange, but ended just by saying "Well, This is America".

And what are SDE's?

Here's how the State Delegate Equivalents, or SDEs, are broken down.:

564.012 for Mayor Pete Buttigieg
562.497 for Sen. Bernie Sanders
387.069 for Sen. Elizabeth Warren
341.172 for Former Vice President Joe Biden
264.204 for Sen. Amy Klobuchar
22.223 for Andrew Yang

Its like the Brexiters over here. They are basically going Grrh ahh Grrh ahh sovereignty, Grrh ahh Grrh ahh reclaim our borders. Anyone who questions it is some sort of traitor to our great nation, or can't bare to loose, remoners. — Punshhh

This is the effect of populism. Populism that can emerge both from the right and left.

You see, you can criticize the EU, where it's going and yet keep the discussion civilized like with the lines of Margaret Thatcher. (Of course, then you might not be noticed.) The UK never got into a leadership position in the EU and obviously did feel sidelined by the Franco-German axis, hence there are many reasons for UK not having been fine and dandy with the EEC/EU.

Yet then you can go with the populist rhetoric of the elites being against the ordinary people, their evil intensions, spread fear about open borders, all the conspiracies etc. The thing is, the polarization, us to them, then does have consequences. Shouldn't be hard to figure out that with the juxtaposition you will alienate others. And populists are just fine with that.

And really notice that it isn't confined to the right. Leftists can be also very populist, especially in their hatred for the rich.

I wonder why. In the lead up to Trump’s presidency the political class promised us the next Hitler, recessions, race wars, mushroom clouds, Russian tanks rolling down our streets. Anyone who voted opposite to them are racist, know-nothing xenophobes. So where was your “objective criticism” then? — NOS4A2

Russian tanks rolling down your streets? Seriously, NOS4A2? Russian tanks?

Please give the reference to Russian tanks rolling down your streets. Just for starters.

No, this is just of the example of the hype up vitriolic fervor typical to the 2016 election and the utter incapability of seeing things from another viewpoint. Oh, how badly Trump is been treated? Ok, how about then Hillary Clinton? Or Bill Clinton before? Remember an impeachment? How long did those hearings for Benghazi go on? How long did those investigations about the emails go on? What was that chant again the Trump crowd was so eager to chant? And of course, that the FBI gave the Trump the October surprise by opening the investigations again hardly matters, because they did their job of which they are supposed to do, check if foreign intelligence services are active on US soil. (You see, the FBI really goes quite impartially against both sides of the political spectrum: far right militias, far left organizations, radical green movements etc.)

As is predictable “objective criticism” is reserved for the opponent only. Zero praise, zero optimism. zero acknowledgement of anything beneficial will come from you, because it would contradict the world-view so many have bought into and invested in. — NOS4A2

Then you simply don't actually read what I write.

I've always said that Trump made great choices by picking up non-political US generals into key positions at first (Mattis as Secretary for Defence, Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security, McMaster as National Security Advisor). That really took the "Foreign Policy blob" politicians, especially the neocons, out of the loop for a while. Of course now they are all out. I've never though Trump would start any serious conflict. Men with missions start wars. Trump's not that kind of person, who has a deep conviction about himself and what he wants to be done. And the best argument I've heard by a Trump supporter say (that I have to agree with): with Trump in power, the media will be a ferocious attack dog constantly looking for misuse of power by him (as it should), while with a Hillary administration the mainstream media would be a lap dog of Hillary. And of course with Hillary Clinton administration, the Republicans would have lost their marbles totally. Fist fights in the House or Senate would be close.

Wouldn't be actually the first time in US history, actually.
Here's a chapter from "Drunk History":


Oh yeah, and then you got a civil war...

Romney is wrong for the same reason the impeachment brigade is wrong. It’s as simple as that really. It’s hatred and envy. — NOS4A2

It seems like everything is just hatred and envy for you. That's the point. Trump supporters yell "Trump derangement syndrome!" for any and every critical view "hurled" (by their view) against their cherished POTUS. It's all one huge conspiracy.

But I get. A lot of Americans are this way. If one would have dared to criticize Obama's War-on-Terror tactics and dared to point out it was quite the same as Bush had it, there would be many Americans coming to the defence their beloved President. They would just blame the Republicans or simply ignore the facts. Many of those complaining how the War-on-Terror approaches go against what the US stands for where quite silent when Obama took office, even if much didn't change.

The incapability of any kind of objective criticism of the President or the party you actually support and/or have voted comes I guess from the vitriolic hatred of the opposing party.

The issue is about sovereignty. How much country loses sovereignty in being in the EU. The fundamental question in Brexit.

Finland being in the EU can have a totally different foreign policy towards the Russia if it would be not a member of the EU. As a EU member it can refer to EU policies: "We're part of EU, so we have to do these sanctions". Just compare Russia's "Near Abroad": Baltic States (EU members, NATO members) to those which aren't either in EU or NATO (Ukraine, Georgia). Ukraine's and Georgia's sovereignty has been truly challenged by Russia... far more than the EU would do.

Hence my sentence my preferment to "Brussels rule than Moscow rule".

In this series there are very good interviews. Some also show how empty the people are while others appear very intelligent.

The thing is that the divide will get even more deep.

Mitt Romney was wrong, yes. — NOS4A2

Awww. How dare he went against Trump. How dare he!!!

The one conservative senator who appears to have upheld conservative values is a fake and a traitor. — praxis

If upholding past Republican values means going against Trump, that is simply sacrilege!

I would want any president to look into corruption — NOS4A2

..of the other party you don't support, I know. Many Americans are like that.

He is the best asset of the SNP, everything he does hastens indyref2. — Punshhh

Luckily the English aren't the Spanish.

They'll will deal with this issue with silk gloves and shrewd intelligence. Yet the "we love you so much, please don't leave" moment of the first referendum has now passed and the response will start being more like the Spanish had with the Catalonians. Trying to avoid Nicola is a start. Yet it's unlikely that Nicola and the SNP leadership will end up in jail or in exile like the Catalan leadership.

Getting your independence without a fight is still very rare.

The UK needs to decide what it means to take back sovereignty. Every treaty ends up being a limitation to it as you agree to something and you're expected to keep your word out you'll soon find yourselves without any agreement. — Benkei

Benkei, it's just like with Trump and the greatness of the USA.

All needed to 'Make America Great Again' was to elect Trump. Then America was great again. And it's similar here too. All needed was to resign from the union. That act is enough, never mind the reality.

Once not a member of the EU the UK is "Sovereign again", free to do whatever it wants! That's all. This has NOTHING to do with the reality that every international treaty and deal limits that 'independence' of sovereign states. Nothing to do with the UK economy is quite interconnected with the European economy. Nothing about the real impact on the strength of the UK when it has to deal now with it's biggest trading partner from position of being outside the union. All that doesn't matter at all. Just like MAGA, the whole reason for Brexit is quite an empty shell and was more about feelings than facts. When your dealing with feelings, not facts, why on Earth would the facts be important?

And if in this position the EU can say this or that to the UK, who's going to make the argument? Nigel Farage? Why would the Brexiteers start to bitch about the present situation now when they just have had their Trafalgar / Waterloo / Battle of Britain -moment where the independence of the island nation has been again saved from the fangs of evil continental Europeans. They want to make Brexit one of those defining moments of British history and it's consequences have to be great. Have to. And if bad things happen, it isn't because of Brexit.

In a way, the only thing the Brexiteers have succeeded in is that they now cannot blame Brussels for everything that sucks anymore.

Telling that you are very excited about Bernie and concentrate on his campaign.

And of course from the political viewpoint, Buttigieg, Yang, Bloomberg or Biden etc. aren't so interesting.

Do those who take power have the right to take it and wield it? — Brett

Is power a thing based on what is right or wrong?

We may strive for a moral justification for power, we may accept it as necessary for organization of our society, but those are moral points of view.

When nobody anymore challenges their power, then those in power have the power. We either accept their holding of power by a) agreeing that they hold power or b) being unable to challenge their power.

You surely aren't going to change NOS4A2's views, only a tiny majority even of this forum will listen to others and have the ability to learn and change their views, but it's worth to put things into context.