Bread and circuses.

This past weekend, I met a former resident of the USSR. We're both in our 50s and both veterans. He came to the US, legally, in the 90s. I asked him what he thought of the current crop of Dems wanting to bring Socialism to the US. He shook his head and said, "They have no idea what they're asking for."

When he had a Heart Attack, why didn't he go to a hospital in Cuba, England, Slovenia, or even Canada for treatment?

quote:

Originally posted by craglawnmanor:
We have six kids. Oldest will be 31 in March, then 2nd will be 30 in June. Next four will be 25, 22, 21, and 19 on their next birthday.
The older son is third, & will be 25 in June. In the last election he was feeling the "Bern".
Since then, he's graduated from college & has started a graduate degree in Economics.
He told his mother last week that Bern is a crazy loon.
I decided many years ago to let my kids figure this stuff out for themselves.
So far it's working, but I still have some work to do with the youngest. Don't worry, I'll eventually get her on board with the other five kids...

Sometimes it helps to see the light after you start paying rent,taxes and grocery bills.

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Originally posted by DaBigBR:
Nominate him, Democrats. I dare you.

Agree. Imho, the easiest nominee Trump will beat. Moderate Democrats do see through the fluff and either will cross-over and vote Trump (less likely) or not vote for any candidate (most likely). Trump will cruise through a full R turnout.

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Originally posted by 380Swift:
The problem with Bernie is that his sycophantic followers DON'T CARE about how much his bullshit costs. In fact, I'd argue that the more it costs the better, because if they can bankrupt the US, it makes it far more likely they'll be able to take over.

I suspect that 12131 hit on a big part of why they don’t care. They figure “the rich” can pay for it, where the rich is defined as someone who has more money than them. Call them parasites, call them leeches, either way you’re not wrong.

I have an experience much like RoverSig's: I spent a couple of years behind the Iron Curtain in the 1970s. I'm now in my late 60s, so I was a student at the time. I was studying in Munich, but family was attached to the U. S. Embassy, so "home" was there when school was not in session.

Before I went overseas, I had bought into the "hippie" counterculture. You know, free love, free music, free dope, etc. I was told the U. S. was an imperialistic country, and ventures such as Vietnam were efforts to build the world into the military-industrial complex.

Boy, did I have an awakening!

RoverSig said, "[I]t (socialism/communism) destroys the souls of everyone involved." A truer sentence you will not read! Socialists/Communists (and they ARE the same thing!) care nothing about people or their souls. They see the populace as "workers," and as an automated teller machine. Keep working and keep the money rolling in.

The socialist elitists don't see themselves as "workers," they see themselves as "intellectuals." If one of them were to get a flat tire, they would require a "worker" to change it for them, as they are incapable of doing so, and they would find it beneath them and demeaning.

My enlightening did not come in the flash of a burning bush, but it didn't take long to see the dark, gray streets, the empty shop windows, the drawn and defeated faces of the people and the ever-present police presence to make me see the light. Every time I crossed the border into the West, I was grateful that I was able to do so. Many people say the Iron Curtain was meant to keep people in, not to keep people out. But I disagree. It was meant to keep people in and to keep IDEAS out.

As I’ve discussed with a right-thinking friend, the thing that distresses me most about socialists, with Sanders as a radical example, is how easy it is to learn about how every single communist/socialist experiment in our history made life for their victims so much worse than the counterexamples. I can perhaps understand to some degree the “They didn’t do socialism right” argument if it were limited to one or two incidents, but the only reason some socialist societies haven’t been total disasters is because they were the ones that didn’t embrace its principles completely, not the other way around.

Ignorance due to the inability to obtain the facts is one thing; deliberate ignorance due to a refusal to acknowledge the readily-available facts is another. Such deliberate refusal isn’t limited to politics, but for me it is one of the worst failings of the human mind.

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Originally posted by 12131:

quote:

It blows my mind that this guy has the following he does.

Not really. Why should it? More than half of the world population, I'll venture to say, are parasites.

I'm not surprised at all by Bernie's following, envy is one of the seven deadly sins for a reason and Bernie's entire political existence is based on the politics of envy. Marxism is founded on envy and as we can see the Democrat party has embraced envy as well.

Parasites is a nice way to put it.

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Originally posted by DaBigBR:
Nominate him, Democrats. I dare you.

Couldn't even beat HRC in the 2016 primaries.

^^^^^
What does that tell you about the rest of this year’s Demotarded candidates?

Keep running your Commie cakehole, Comrade!

Trump is going to win 45 states AND the popular vote if this clown is the nominee:

Bernie Sanders defends Fidel Castro's socialist Cuba: 'Unfair to simply say everything is bad'

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Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:
Nominate him, Democrats. I dare you.

Couldn't even beat HRC in the 2016 primaries.

I mean, it was legitimately stolen from him by the DNC, so it isn't very relevant.

quote:

Originally posted by Scurvy:

quote:

Originally posted by radioman:

quote:

Originally posted by DaBigBR:
Nominate him, Democrats. I dare you.

Couldn't even beat HRC in the 2016 primaries.

I mean, it was legitimately stolen from him by the DNC, so it isn't very relevant.

Um, deliberately choosing HRC over Bernie isn't much of an endorsement of Bernie either, just sayin'

Should Sanders get the nomination, I expect the opinion makers (news, entertainment, education) to loudly rally behind him. Just like they did for the untenable and ridiculous Mueller investigation, Kavanaugh hearings and impeachment.

To paraphrase ol' Bernie, "North Korea bad, Cuba good."

Think about that for a moment....

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Originally posted by tacfoley:

quote:

Originally posted by Prefontaine:
He has the followers he does because he promises free shit. Free higher learning....

Hey, call me old-fashioned and way out of touch, but when I did MY 'higher learning' I had had to prove that I was well up to snuff by doing whole lot of 'lower learning' first. Y'know, like a 99.9% school attendance record [not hard for me, since I was at a school with boarding], records of all my progress, or lack of it, over the previous seven years or so, and a definite yen for that 'higher education' based on current learning standards being maintained.

I ended up with a Masters in Remote Sensing, based on a thorough grounding in math and physics, you know, like a BSc already and another BA in modern Languages...

From what I've been reading here for the last 14/15 years, there is a large element of your population who believe that higher education is right, and not a privilege that has to be earned.

Trust me, I EARNED my higher education, mostly paid for by the Army, I admit, without which it would not have happened.

Not different than me. I had to start taking care myself at age 5 and had a job at 10 years old and have worked every week since. Paid my own way through college, 5 years, 2 degrees. Bernie promising free college, expunging all school loan debt makes me furious. I worked my way through college and after 5 years and 2 degrees I had 17k in total loan debt which I have paid off many years ago. All these young uns want free this and that makes me sick.

What I read, they go out of state for school (way more expensive than in-state), don't work, and if they do it's not many hours a week. They charge up the loans like there is no tomorrow, doing the "college life" partying, buying i devices. Now that's it's finished they want their loans, which are !00% of their own doing, expunged. Nah. I don't want my taxes going to free shit.

I wonder if there will be Bernie Bro equivalents of Mao's Red Guards, recruited from Antifa ranks, to make sure we "deplorables" stay in line. At least one has used violence, i.e., the shooting of Rep. Steve Scalise. To my knowledge he - or any of the Dem candidates for that matter - has never disavowed it. A remote possibility, bordering on tin foil hat territory, but it can't hurt to be prepared.

I hear you Pre. I too grew up poor and paid my own way thru school. Luckily SUNY was only about 7k per year so I wasn't crushed with debt when I graduated. I do feel bad for some students today who I feel get swindled into taking these loans. Please don't read this as being in favor of forgiving these loans. I am not. I am however sickened by the state of the current education system, specifically colleges constantly raising tuition prices because the gov't guarantees the loans. Students graduating with 200K+ in loans have little hope in repaying them. I have been fortunate enough to have started a fairly successful business and been able to start saving early for my kids education. My kids hopefully won't have the stress of a huge debt hanging over their head upon graduation. But to your point, no on debt forgiveness. Perhaps yes to education loan reform or to better educating the repercussions of taking out these, IMO, borderline criminal loans. Reminds me of poaching.