You cry for free shit? I'll give you something free a damn bullet to your damn head there's your damn free!!!

Spoken like our lord Jesus

There's something very weird about the religion of the American right.

The great, fake Republican mass baptism begins...

I suppose just about anything would work in banking, after-all, creating one's product out of thin air would seemingly open up a great deal of possibilities. — synthesis

I'm not sure it's really easier or harder in different industries. After all, the roles in co-operatives aren't any different than in a capitalist organisation: it's simply that everyone is on the same pay, everyone had the same stake, and people move around more, which happens at the top anyway, just between companies rather than within.

All kinds of people burnout or whatever and essentially ban themselves. Just indicates some lack of self-control, I guess. — praxis

Maybe he had a major problem with the forum and his wife at the same time. Still... Bizarre!

You are Jake, right? a guy that was banned a couple of years ago for posting a picture of your wife's boobies. — praxis

Why the...? What the...? I mean... Why?!?

The big problem is there is no evidence of any plan for violent insurrection. — NOS4A2

Holy shit, we agree on something!!

If Trump had intended a violent coup at the Capitol we would know for sure because he would have spent days saying: "It's a terrible thing, a terrible thing. The Armageddon people have voted for me, they love me, you know that? They really do. It's a beautiful thing, really. But there are people out there, I don't want to say who they are but I know who they are, we all know them, and I've seen the proof, democrat congressmen, a lot of our guys too, they're involved in this, I don't know how they got them, they got Mike Pence too, he's a good guy but he's weak, he's not a winner. They're using the vote count, which should never have happened, especially in Georgia, and Wisconsin, and Arizona, it's a terrible thing they did there, but they're using this count, this false count, mostly dead people and democrat voters which isn't fair but hey, and because of that they're going to steal the election from the Amoonian people, and the only thing I hope is that the people take matters into their own hands and, I don't know, I don't want to say lynch Congress, although I'd like nothing more than to see Nancy Pelosi hanging from a lamppost because she's a pig, a really bad person, you think I'm joking, but unless the people take control of Congress, and if that means by violent means then I'm not saying we shouldn't do that, I don't think, you know, well, it's going to be a terrible shame, a real shame."

That's how Donald Trump disguises his meaning: by trying, and failing, to put it into English.

Co-ops work well in distribution (especially food) — synthesis

And finance. The most successful co-ops are banks, insurers, etc. Energy too.

not so much on the production end — synthesis

Tbf they haven't been tried that much in factories, but there are some, here in Glorious Communist Britain anyway.

I don’t believe Antifa had anything to do with the capitol riots. — NOS4A2

That wasn't my point. You posted conspiracy theories about Antifa disguised as MAGA loons perpetrating that attempted coup. You do subscribe to conspiracy theories, even if you have the ability to accept when you're wrong about them later.

In all countries over the course of recent history they have benefitted from capitalism in that it has brought people out of poverty. It doesn’t matter whether you agree or not, I’m just making myself clear. — Brett

Ah, I thought you'd recanted this point already, although I suppose it depends what you mean by "recent". In the last 50 years, capitalism has drawn people out of poverty when markets are good and dumped them back into it when markets are bad, leading to no net gain in most capitalist countries and something of a disaster during, say, a lethal viral pandemic.

Going back much beyond that you're going to struggle, since poverty statistics become more scarce the further back we go.

Okay. The period of the video and the video itself is about globalism. Globalism may have pulled some people out of poverty, which wouldn’t have been hard, but it then placed other people in trouble. I don’t think I need to explain all that. In that sense globalism is a big con, a global con job. We know who benefitted. But historically, going back as far as the industrial revolution, capitalism has slowly drawn people out of crippling poverty. There’s no doubt it created problems. But no other system has done this, until now, which is China. China is not Russia, they’re flexible with their Marxist ideology, they’re pragmatic. Which is interesting. — Brett

I'm going to forego the question of capitalism's history for now, the above is basically saying that in an isolationist country, capitalism is net good and in an internationalist country, capitalism is net bad.

Which is what I suggested above that you refuted: it is not that capitalism is net good, but may be so under certain circumstances and may be bad under others.

Btw China's rise in wealth and power comes from globalisation.

Yes, in response to this:

The video addresses the last four decades of globalism. Of course the success of globalism is a lie. But the idea that capitalism brought people out of poverty is true historically. — Brett

So you don’t think it’s true that the money the government spends on public programs comes from taxation? — Brett

That has nothing to do with the point I responded to. You're obviously not going to defend the point, I give up.

I agree I'm totally wrong. — Hippyhead

In the spirit of your selection bias, seconded.

I like to compare Trump to Mick Jagger. Jagger is only barely a musician, but he has charisma out the ass. — Hippyhead

Those who are rimming Jagger might well say so.

Does that automatically mean he's stupid? No. — Hippyhead

Ahem. As I said, you keep pushing the incredible lie that Trump is a street-smart operator. The confusion is not mine. You keep introducing it. This assertion of yours had extremely low relevance to the point I was making.

Not relative to the population size; at least not if you're accounting for outstanding debts on land (e.g. mortgages). Most people don't own their own homes free and clear. Most people own no land at all free and clear. The ownership of land is concentrated in the hands of a small fraction of the population. That may be a large number, but that's irrelevant. "The 1%" is still millions of people, but that fact doesn't help the 99% any. — Pfhorrest

Right. In addition, you can't just rely on snapshots: that isn't very meaningful. Where I am, quite a lot of people still own their own homes, but that percentage is falling rather rapidly. It is the trend of land ownership, not the current value, that is the measure.

Its like if you invite me to a wedding. The fact that I haven't drunk all the champagne yet does not mean I'm not drinking all the champagne. And I will drink all the champagne.

Apologies, meaning no offense, but the majority of this thread is really little more than the usual fantasy superiority ego posturing so common on forums. Perhaps we could cut the crap and just get down to what we really want to do. — Hippyhead

You're projecting. You keep pushing the incredible lie that Trump is some street-smart operator. It's your religion. It doesn't take a genius to differentiate between an over-entitled moron and someone with realpolitik savvy. If you don't like having your religious views refuted, don't rely on them in argument.

There are interesting approaches out there. One doesn't need to drag Stalin's corpse out of the closet in any discussion about economic reform. — Echarmion

Bravo!

No I’m not saying that either. — Brett

How about saying something you actually believe with some precision, rather than saying something not generally true then denying when it does or does not hold true?

Well, what he explicitly said for at least months was a consistent pattern of blatant lies which became the foundation of the invasion of Congress. Without the lies, no invasion. — Hippyhead

Right. He is the cause, which is strong grounds to apply the 25th amendment. But lying about voter fraud, even if the cause of the coup, is not an outright incitement to insurrection.

What Trump's speech can highlight is what a savvy street smarts actor Trump is. He's been walking the line between legal and illegal for years, and is very good at it. Think of all the crap he's been hip deep in for decades, and yet never served a day in jail. — Hippyhead

Yeah, I know you like this line, you use it a lot, but Trump couldn't outsmart a banana. He has not survived because he is smart. He has survived because his abject corruption eliminated any efficacious means of sating his power hunger other than within an abjectly corrupt party. He didn't figure out that he could get away with murder because there was no crime so grave that Republicans would convict him, rather the only party that could let a criminal like him get away with murder is the Republican party.

Now his more honest admirers say, He got away with perverting the course of justice because he was smart. No, he got away with perverting the course of justice because most Republicans right now are corrupt. Ah, but he did it because he'd get away with, therefore he's smart. No, he did it because that's what he wanted, and he's never had to deal with not getting what he wants.

But the idea that capitalism brought people out of poverty is true historically. — Brett

So basically you're saying there are circumstances in which capitalism can bring people out of poverty, even if we're not in those circumstances and likely never will be. Agreed. There are also circumstances where pushing someone into a road might save their life. But don't push people into roads generally.

Most of the republican congress also can't accede to these kinds of arguments least they incriminate themselves. It's in their every interest to dump this mess on Trump's lap - but not have the case looked at too closely. They were slavish, willing instigators no less than Trump. — StreetlightX

On the other hand, voting to convict would be a great way of cheaply cleansing one's own sins before one's voters, which was my apparently unfounded concern (since the Republican line seems to be that Trump should not be impeached, not because he did nothing wrong, but because "bringing the country together" somehow involves supporting the nutter who divided the country with astonishing efficiency).

Let's see, he's been fraudulently claiming for months now that the election was stolen from him. Then he makes a statement that he's exhausted all legal avenues. So he recognizes that further moves would be illegal. Nevertheless he moves on to the infamous phone call. Then he tells his supporters to fight like hell to take back the Whitehouse. Where's the ambiguity? — Metaphysician Undercover

Because none of those things can be shown to reasonably expect as a consequence a violent coup in the Capitol. It's not about causality -- the 25th amendment option has been rejected. It's about criminal culpability. In order to pin the coup on him, they're obliged to demonstrate that he intended a coup. He probably didn't. He did intend a frenzy, an outrage, a hysterical mob, but there's no masterplan for an occupation of the Senate in what he did or said.

The Raffensperger call is a lesser crime, maybe, but one that was unambiguously intentional.

So you’re arguing ‘plausible deniability’? — Wayfarer

Yes. I'm not defending him, I think he's a turd who loved every second of the chaos he invited. But I don't think there's a solid line from what he explicitly said to what happened. In politics, "fight" does not mean "fisticuffs".

His lawyer, on the other hand, should and I think will be disbarred. His violent incitement was more explicit.

I don't have permissions to view what I guess is a lunatic right-wing propaganda site. Can you post evidence that the Capitol riots were staged by Antifa from trustworthy sources?

In absolute terms, you are correct, but there can never be equality (nor should there be). Equality of opportunity is a worthy goal, though. You cannot eliminate incentives nor can you refuse to award innovation and merit — synthesis

Yes you can. They're called co-operatives.

You're lucky you have the right-wingers here to serve as the common enemy, it's the closest you'll get to leftist unity. — BitconnectCarlos

We thank you for your services ;)

Also, note that in that video address, prior to telling his 'supporters' - that would be the mob that had just ransacked the Capitol and murdered a policeman - to 'go home', he told them they were 'special' and 'he loves them very much'. How can that constitute admonishment for their actions? — Wayfarer

It can't, of course. His more moderate language was undoubtedly through gritted teeth, but nevertheless is less ambiguous than "fight like hell" which doesn't necessarily mean violence. I'm sure Trump was delighted that they took him literally and seriously, but that's not a case.

I said I wouldn’t doubt it. — NOS4A2

That seemed to be the problem.

The Raffensperger angle seems less prone to interpretation. Given that Trump told his supporters to "remain peaceful" and, eventually, to "go home", I don't think they've got a cat in hell's chance of making the charges stick. But the Raffensperger call was outright and unambiguous criminality; they might conceivably get him on that.

The point is that picking up the carts is someone's job. It is therefore no great curtesy to eliminate it. — tim wood

Maybe it's different where you are, but here it's no one's sole job to collect carts. That's one of many things they have to do. You savage animal.

It's possible to get fucked off. As in "You better shut you're mouth pal before I really get fucked off with you." — bert1

That is true, or "I'm not going to play with those other children, mummy, in case I get fucked off." But neither fit the above context

That has happened to me too and my takeaway was that this person isn’t actually interested in me personally so it’s no loss to not stay connected with them. — Pfhorrest

:up: To hell with those people who just see you as a +1 to their friend count.

Now it's down.

Same for Pence. Hopefully a disgruntled employee and not a hack, otherwise that's a concerning security issue. — Michael

We wouldn't want one of those.

But I don’t believe in conspiracy theories. — NOS4A2

Says the guy who repeated the conspiracy theory that the Capitol rioters were Antifa in disguise...

First, you might want to deal with obvious criticisms of the grammatical structure of your attempt at a sentence. — counterpunch

Fair enough, editing fail.

Then, you may wish to give my post a reasonable response. — counterpunch

My response was perfectly reasonable. The fact that it's fatal to your argument and you don't want to deal with it doesn't make it unreasonable. This is your opportunity to defend your point; if you can't, you can't.

Or, alternatively, you could just get fucked off. — counterpunch

It's "get fucked" or "fuck off".

Isn't that an argument that human beings are absurd, not the universe?

I do check the cosmological scale from time to time. It can help put things in perspective. Nonetheless we cannot help but value life, and we are in a unique position to act on that. It's absurd to think anything you do matters on a cosmological scale, but it's even more absurd that people don't make the best of the negligible importance they have.

During that two hours, did you perchance - go back and read my post? Or just spend it thinking up another one liner? — counterpunch

I'd already read your post. I assume you're just into dealing with even the obvious criticisms of it.

If I made a coherent argument, you wouldn't read it. You'd ignore everything I said, and toss off some thoughtless one liner within two minuets of my post. — counterpunch

I took that on board and waited two hours so as to give you a more considered response, which is this: Pretty big if.

Argument against impeaching Trump: All of the sycophantic, opportunistic congresspersons who supported him these last few years knowing what he was will have a chance to absolve themselves quickly and cleanly for a purely symbolic gain.

(1) Many lifelong friends no longer contact me. — fdrake

I don't think real friends place strict rules on modes of communication like this. My real friends and I, the kind of people who would be in contact anyway, rarely contact each other on Facebook. "Friends" that will only speak to you on Facebook are "Facebook friends".

(2) I no longer get invited to any social gatherings I don't organise myself. — fdrake

This is true. You do miss out on interesting stuff sometimes. Of course, you don't *have* to boycott Facebook on principle. I've been suspended from Comment Is Free on The Guardian so many times for disagreeing with feminists (not in particular, I am just generally disagreeable) I've lost count. I still go on there to disagree with people. I just don't care enough about whether it's fair or not. Same with all social media, so in a rare wtf moment I am in total agreement with Hippyhead.

I still have a FB account. I stopped using it when Facebook decided to make it utterly useless. The algorithms they use and the density of advertising meant I was actually seeing less of my friends than I was when I had far fewer friends. I did a massive cull, whacked my friends list right down to little over a hundred. Didn't make much difference. Now it's just an address list I feel obliged to go to after my birthday to thank everyone for wishing me a happy birthday. It was good once, total crap now.

That future changes will be required as we change technologies is not a coherent argument against changing technologies, especially when the current technology is even less tenable.

Again, my point is that calling someone the R-word is just as unacceptable as calling someone the N-word because they are both examples of ad hominems, — Harry Hindu

Oh FFS, "racist" is not a pejorative term against racists. Likening it to the N-word is beyond stupid.