Billie M Jones

Canada doesn’t have an NHS. They have 13 provincial and territorial systems (with notable differences). Canada has a fraction of the population that the US has. Even if they had private medicine there would still be ads for Canadians to go to American hospitals to try some treatments because a smaller country couldn’t possibly offer them all.…[Read more]

Better to Suavez qui peut, avoid spreading misery, enjoy what’s possible, and assure those who are born that I did try to warn others before them.

That was the most incoherent rant you’ve made yet. Debt is irrelevant. Centralised medicine is CHEAPER that private medicine. The taxes levied are cheaper than the money put towards private in…[Read more]

While the mind is a legitimate area of study, the “experts” are novices at best and scratch deep enough, many of those “experts” think that they themselves need help.

Wow. So you are a knowledge denier. It must be really wonderful to be able to dismiss anything you don’t like and generate excuses to explain away shit that conflicts with your wo…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:

Do you want your offspring to experience the apocalypse?

Both of mine are working to avoid the apocalypse. I still think humanity has a chance to redeem itself. An apocalypse is not a viable option… by definition.

Ivy wrote:

How much you wanna bet he’s gonna do something really stupid before Wednesday.

I think he’s burned too many bridges now. I’ve not seen evidence of any American institutions backing him, other than a minority of law enforcement officers acting with Trump Power in their minds. His biggest militarized backers are private groups, like p…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

You know, we aren’t talking enough about the causes of the Trumpist movement. He didn’t create it, he awakened it and gave it permission to reveal itself.

Aha, yes, this. And the rest of that post; +1.

jakelafort wrote:

[…] Probably true of Trump cultists too. But goddamn i hope it is only a tiny minority. It is scary to contemplate how easily we homos are to manipulation. The plasticity that must have given us a survival advantage is leading us to our extinction.

I’m still hearing of the large numbers of Trump supporters, even after a…[Read more]

Encoginator, I don’t personally know this, psychologists and sociologist know this through comprehensive studies. For example when HR specialists are given resumés with non-ethnic sounding gender neutral names, the most qualified person is selected. If it is clearly a woman’s name or an ethnic sounding name, they are less likely to be selected.…[Read more]

I’m not saying in your particular case that racism is the problem. What I am saying is that when cashiers can or choose to be selective about when they card people, and they disproportionately do so towards marginalised people…then that IS bigotry in action. It happens subconsciously every day. There are tons of studies which show these…[Read more]

No, you have not come with a valid argument.

Ugh Jesus Christ give me a bloody break. Anti-health care crusaders are some of the most stubborn and wilfully ignorant people to debate with.

The cashier is racist if they disproportionately ask for ID from marginalised people and irregularly or little from non-marginalised people. And that does happen. It’s easy to not notice and a lot of people don’t notice.

_Robert_ wrote:

The more realistic cause is that some sort of compartmentalization of their ability to rationalize things they are told.

Makes sense, and makes me think of how inner/evolved, tribal tendencies likely nurture and communicate/spread those compartmentalizations. It’s the old Us vs Them theme as a quick justification to avoid the…[Read more]

Here are two, particularly relevant audio segments on today’s NPR Morning Edition show:

• Parler Insists It Would Not Knowingly Tolerate Criminal Activity On Its Site (6:32 long)
• Can The Forces Unleashed By Trump’s Big Election Lie Be Undone? (5:08 long)

The second one analogizes Trump’s lies to fascist lies in world history.

For some Christians, the Capitol riot doesn’t change the prophecy: Trump will be president

[WaPo story]

Excerpt:

Five years ago, a prophetess Dyrud follows said she’d gotten a message that Trump would be president and save Christian America. Trump would be “as fearless as a lion being robbed of its cubs” and cause the “tall and lofty mountains…

[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

If that is their statement of purpose, it’s ideological suicide, isn’t it?

It looks to me more like an anti-ideology than an ideology, except perhaps where they quote from the UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS, ARTICLE 19. But yeah, any kind of promotion of western values might put those promoters at risk, ala Charlie Hebdo. Per…[Read more]

Kristina wrote:

…but I thought I read somewhere that a simple majority is enough to block him from running for office again.

Yes, but unless I’m mistaken, blocking him from running again can happen only after he’s actually convicted. In any case, I’m personally ok with the impeachment even as just a tokenal message, and ok with delaying any…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

PopeBeanie, no dice on the psychotropics, at least not on their purity or quality.  Thanks to both the old Alcohol Prohibition and the U.S. “War On (Some) Drugs” and their implementation worldwide, psychotropics are underground and controlled by organized crime gangs, their quality and purity are iffy at best and over…

[Read more]

Unseen I had said the article is only half serious. Having said that, it is half serious so you might not want to just discard everything in it just because you don’t like it.