The New and Improved Sam Spade Good Post Gallery.

[Technocracy Timmy]

Big Cities have more intelligent and educated people. It's a fact that those with an IQ over 140 vote almost unanimously for Democrats, and those with an IQ under 80 vote overwhelmingly though not unanimously for Republicans.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

[Technocracy Timmy]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

I’ve never seen the atlas forum summarized so eloquently in one sentence before.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

I’ve never seen the atlas forum summarized so eloquently in one sentence before.

This

[IceSpear]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

Oops, I didn't even realize this was the knockoff thread. Why don't the mods just merge them?

[Santander]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

Well, just name the thread after me and all those problems will be solved.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

Oops, I didn't even realize this was the knockoff thread. Why don't the mods just merge them?

Pettiness and spite fostered by small-minded people is far more entertaining.

Besides, we can’t tear down every statue related to our problematic past.

[Former Dean Phillips Supporters for Haley (I guess???!?) 👁️]

Why on Earth are people still using this garbage thread named after a racist troll that was started by a mysoginistic moron poster only because he was angry about the current thread being named after a woman?

I used it because I thought the post I was quoting was a "good post" but couldn't really be called a "high-quality post" like in the Virginia thread. There is a difference between "good" and "high-quality."

[Santander]

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is one of the worst laws passed in this country within our lifetimes. It is historically bad.

If you took away the Medicaid expansion, it would be even worse. But even that was botched as a consequence of how poorly this abomination was written.

Consider the consequences of this legislation, now with almost a decade of hindsight: It did not reduce health care costs, it did not improve health outcomes, it did not make health care more accessible, and it has been a political catastrophe.

The best that can be said of it: Preventing at least some medical bankruptcies, delaying a few dozen hospital closures, and (arguably) reducing cost growth for about five years.

Oh, there's also been a massive amount of make-work employment in health care administration, if you're an unreformed New Dealer and into that sort of thing.  I would have preferred a new Civilian Conservation Corps to a bunch of electronic medical record systems that doctors and patients hate, but that's just me.

But that's not what we were promised. Listen to Obama's promises in 2008: Universal coverage, lower costs, "if you like your plan, you can keep it." Listen to any Democrat from that period. This has not been worth the costs. It is only the demands of partisan orthodoxy, and the sheer derangement of the opposition, that lead so many to insist that it has been.

One final thought: It has become fashionable among both the policy-illiterate left and the conspiracy-obsessed right to call the ACA a "gateway to single payer." Even some of the technocrats and centrists behind the law, eager to keep up with changing political moods and conceal their obvious failure, have hinted at this.

Whatever health care system you prefer, this is nonsense. No one passed this law thinking that it would lead us toward a single payer system, or any kind of system that would achieve actual universal coverage. It does not bring us closer except in the accelerationist sense of heightening the contradictions of a system that pretends to be the best in the world rather than merely the most expensive, that pretends to be driven by markets rather than top-down decrees from established interests, and that pretends to serve the interests of the entire country rather than the few who can afford to access all that it offers and those skimming their wealth off of it.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Nix always drops bombs. No idea if they’re true, but they work.

[Santander]

Nix always drops bombs. No idea if they’re true, but they work.

He is one of the posters I respect most, even if he probably doesn't like my open deplorability.

[Mechavada]

TOS aside, I honestly think people on both sides need to see where the other side is coming from. This not a civil war, it's a civil, democratic society based on a Constitution. If it doesn't work here in the United States, where modern democracy is born, it's in trouble everywhere. Discourse is supposed to be the tool to adjudicate our differences. If we can't tolerate discourse within the parameters of the differences we have as a people, what hope is there?

Are some of the positions and motivations of Trump supporters racist? Undoubtedly. Are Democrats or non-Trump supporters immune to bigotry? I don't think so. Is it possible to be bigoted and prejudiced against any group of people you don't like, no matter what party they are in? I think so. I think we would do better to recognize prejudice as a universal human failing, not a partisan issue tied to one man or one moment. Then we can start to actually have discussions across our divisions.

But to do that, we have to start leaning towards communication and away from moral denunciation. If someone is just insulting groups of people or making no effort at all to communicate, then yes, moderate their posts, and eventually ban them. But if someone is taking articulated positions and is not claiming to hate groups of people, then let them speak.

[Santander]

On the level of rhetoric, few notions are so antithetical to democracy as the idea that no ill must be spoken of retired military officers who wade into politics.

It's amazing. We're told that liberal democracy is under threat because of Trump's buffoonery by the same very serious people who, in their next breath, imply that certain figures are "heroes" with judgment beyond reproach.

These people don't care about democracy or human rights. What did McRaven do when the Bush administration of which he is "a big fan" was not just "normalizing" torture, but actually torturing people? Their problem with Trump is that he's a fat, illiterate, obnoxious lower-class slob. It's not about what he does, it's that he makes them feel bad.

[Santander]

G. Maybe if someone actually went and saw what a OC, you know, actually said, rather than accepting the Washington examiner taking less than 10 words in Her speech completely and grossly out of context? Or did you cretins get the equally dishonest Fox News version?

Whole point of her speech was that Trump and his rich boy interests trying to privatize the VA need to be fought. To quote her, if anyone in this country deserves Cadillac level medical service, it's our veterans. She said that the Trump Administration says they're trying to fix the VA, but who were they actually trying to fix it for. They are trying to fix it for big Pharma, they're trying to fix it 4 big health insurance, and they are above all trying to fix it for a for-profit health insurance industry that does not have the veterans best interests at heart. Again, this was near Verbatim what she said. Go spend three seconds on Google and watch her speech on YouTube.

The closest thing that she can be blamed for is not even a gaffe. But rather that a tiny fragment, a single sentence, out of her speech would be taken out by right-wing haters and used in a deliberately dishonest way. This was so ancillary to the point of her speech that literally she would never be able to give a speech again if equal levels of dishonesty applied to anything she said. But then again, I assume that's kind of a plant here.

You people who just criticize her in this thread just proved yourself utterly incapable of independent critical thinking. Nice job, doofuses.

[Santander]

She is the epitome of a gold digging underwear model bimbo who snared an elderly billionaire and locked him in with a child. The fact that she is married to one of literally the worst human beings on Earth doesn't make me feel much of any sympathy for her. She knew damn well who and what she was getting into by marrying the bastard, and willingly made the choice for her lifetime Economic Security.

The only thing nice I can say about her is that she apparently has made a conscious decision to raise Baron largely away from his father which, judging by what complete POS Eric and Don Jr turned into, is quite frankly the best possible thing that could happen to him.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

Pittsburgh is probably the most beautiful city I've ever been to in this country, so Pennsylvania is the obvious choice.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

I basically agree with the thrust of this thread. Everyone here has had their whole lives to be acquainted with the doctrine of justification by faith alone; this is in no way novel or unusual. One can debate the merits of the notion that all who do not accept Jesus as God are damned (and in fact we have a board for discussion of such issues), but it often we see that rather than engaging with a poster's points, another poster accuses them for being a bad person for holding that belief. That doesn't contribute to meaningful discussion in any way, and it makes this forum a less interesting place to post and read.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Jesus was banned for your sins. Rochambeau did not accept Jesus' ban as a way for him to obtain eternal membership.

[Sprouts Farmers Market ✘]

People here do not understand why the right is fighting the culture wars so hard right now. And it's not "the religious right" or even "conservatives" at times. It is anybody who thinks this gender/sexuality/race stuff has gone way too far. And you don't have to be religious or even conservative to think that.

Liberals, particularly postmodernists, have been very successful at implanting their CRT/identity politics-type ideology in nearly every institution in American life. In academia, in entertainment, in corporations. They've done it because they want to create a permanent Democratic/liberal majority in the future, and they know teaching people these concepts at a young age (whether it is by 5 or 25) will get them locked in easier for life. These are not dumb people.

This is why Republicans are now doing this. They feel they are overwhelmed by leftist insanity in every major institution. Now, the Republican Party takes a stance that 5-8 years olds shouldn't be taught about sexual or gender material, that biological males shouldn't compete in professional sports against biological women, and that children can't consent to life-changing surgeries, and THAT is now equivalent with opposing gay marriage in 2004? Actually, seems more like liberals are so used to getting everything they want that when the right finally pushes back a little it's the end of the world.

2022 is going to the biggest "F U" in American history in that if Republicans run on this stuff, Dems will finally take an official L on culture even though the most likely outcome in the institutions is they'll just push this stuff even harder. It's going to take years, decades, to really dislodge this garbage, and it's certainly not going to come from just electing Republicans.

[Grumpier Than Uncle Joe]

i am a starving child in africa and this is the last post i saw before succumbing to the sweet embrace of death. goodbye

[Badger]

i am a starving child in africa and this is the last post i saw before succumbing to the sweet embrace of death. goodbye

Cool.

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Here is California, this fast food chain is called "Carl's Jr."

Describe this Electoral College map

Louisiana Purchase vs Polk Presidency acquisitions vs places that preferred Federalists in 1800.

[支持核绿派 (Greens4Nuclear)]

I'll never understand the hate non-gig economy workers have for it all.  Not everyone needs "benefits" and it's funking stupid to force those people to pay for them if they don't want them.  Killing the gig economy (which is what you will do if you force the benefits on them) will hurt poor people.  Period.

Why Proposition 22 passed, in a nutshell

[Santander]

Pros
- witty and ingenious use of irony and self-deprecating humor
- charisma & "great grandpa" vibes even when he had Alzheimer's

Cons
- mass murderer
- war criminal

Tilt FF on balance.