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Ours. Military - socialist. State health care (Medicare/Medicaid) - socialist. Police and fire - socialist (mostly.) Public utilities - socialist (mostly.) CDC, FAA, air traffic control, FEMA, FBI, CIA - socialist. Roads - socialist. The reason our country works so well is we take bits and pieces of all the other systems out there. We have a democracy, but not a pure one (we use representation.) We don't have a king but we have a president who is a lot more powerful than a prime minister. We have a capitalist consumer economy, but a socialist set of public welfare organizations. We have a communist national park system but we often charge admission. Any one of those ideologies is toxic by itself. By blending them we reduce the toxicity.

They made a calculation that this was the right play politically….I REALLY hope that they calculated wrong, for the sake of the country that I had to work to become a citizen of.

A mob of Trump’s supporters stormed the US Capitol complex, brutalizing police officers and sending lawmakers into hiding. Nine people died in connection with the attack and more than 150 officers were injured. The GOP's RNC just passed a resolution without discussion and almost without dissent, calling it "legitimate political discourse". Has the GOP gone mad?

Have you ever heard the term "mixed economy"? Show me a pure capitalist economy that works.

So I actually read that study. (Sorry.) First off its conclusion is that shutdowns aren't worth it because they cause economic damage. This is not surprising as it is written by economists and political scientists: Jonas Herby, special advisor at Center for Political Studies, Lars Jonung, professor emeritus in economics and Steve H. Hanke, Professor of Applied Economics. Good people to evaluate economic fallout; terrible people to evaluate effectiveness of non-pharmaceutical interventions. Second this is not a study. It is a "meta-study" which means it uses many other studies as its input. How did it select those studies? By looking at all the studies that looked at lockdown effectiveness then rejecting almost all of them. There were 117 studies in their pool and they rejected 83 of them for reasons like "used modeling" or "used time series approach." They even reject any study that looked at the effect of "well-timed shutdowns." By excluding all the studies showing well timed shutdowns, they are left with the studies of poorly or randomly timed shutdowns. They were left with 34. I looked at the first study they listed of the ones they looked at. Their summary of that study was "that shelter-in-place orders are - for the average duration - associated with 1% (insignificant) fewer deaths per capita." I looked up the study, and the study actually concluded that "a longer duration of a shelter-in-place order is associated with lower cases and deaths per capita from COVID-19." Keep in mind that this is from a study they did NOT reject, even though it looked at well-timed shutdowns. So sorry, not going to take this economic study seriously when it comes to medical results. It cherrypicked results, and then was not honest about the remaining studies they looked at.

Any discussion of "socialism" is pointless as long as the left & right don't even use the same meaning for the word. Left wing definition: Democracy, capitalist economy, with social safety-net programs. Right wing definition: Autocracy, with command economy.

Nah, just a gauntlet thrown.

Good to know you're going to refuse your social security and medicare.

While it is true that 'both parties have problems', that's a pretty standard "both-siderism". To pretend that 'both sides' have similar problems is pretty silly. One party is having issues getting everyone on board for legislative issues. The other party is being heavily investigated for trying to overturn the presidential election. One party is having trouble getting people to follow the protocols to manage the pandemic (and its not even slightly funny that the people whining and crying the loudest about Biden's handling of it are the ones petulantly refusing to do anything he asks). The other party has members blatantly flouting those protocols. When one party has Nazis, the KKK and white supremacists on it's side, they aren't the 'good guys'.

That's as meaningful as asking what the D stands for in DPRK. At this point I could also throw in the U in USA.

The truth is that the Biden administration has yet to create a single job. Until the number of employed exceeds pre-pandemic level, any newly employed can only be characterized as jobs recovered NOT jobs created.

I teach personal finance for the Diversified Occupation Program at the local public high school. My observations there are the main reason my kids are now in private school. Since it is a voluntary gig I guess it doesn’t count as a job.

We should invade the Bahamas.