• Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-07-2024, 09:18 PM
    It's more than that though. I'm not very good at definitions, so maybe another example is in order. When you go to a gathering of people (social, professional, political, whatever) and it consists of people of diversified backgrounds (ethnic, religious, racial, and on rare occasions, principles) - you have to look around for where you check your coat, or hat, or maybe car keys, because there's probably also a place to check your privilege and you'll have to leave your privilege there. Now this is important - be sure to get your ticket when you check your privilege, because you want to be able to go back and pick up your privilege when you leave the gathering and return to the real world. I keep hearing about "checking your privilege", and I'm pretty sure that's the way it works. I met this girl And she looked like she might have been a privilege check clerk at an ice rink Which, in fact, she turned out to be And I said: "Oh boy, right again"
    26 replies | 266 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-07-2024, 08:33 PM
    Yeah, that's what it started out as. And then White Women ... (the segment starting at about 3:10)
    26 replies | 266 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-07-2024, 04:48 PM
    Sure thing; that's out of An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034 (dated June 2024) which was put out by the Congressional Budget Office. Search that document for the heading "The Budget Outlook, by Fiscal Year". Elon Musk was advertising that he'd cut $2 trillion from the budget. But if you look at the discretionary spending for the years 2023, 2024 and 2025 in that chart, you'll see that he doesn't have any more than $1.832 trillion in discretionary spending in any of those years to cut from. So I'm guessing he's not really talking about cutting $2 trillion from a single year; and is instead going by the old standby of cutting $2 trillion from the budget over the next decade (with the bulk of the cuts being in years 8 through 10 - which, of course, we'll never see).
    48 replies | 1108 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-07-2024, 01:12 PM
    And there's also mandatory vs. discretionary spending. Only Discretionary spending can be worked through reconciliation. Mandatory spending accounts for nearly 2/3 of federal spending. The largest components of mandatory spending are Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Other programs, such as unemployment insurance and food assistance, also fall under this category
    48 replies | 1108 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-07-2024, 12:56 PM
    It appears to be permissible, by Congressional rules, to implement cuts via the reconciliation process. That would only require approval by simple majority vote in both houses. That said, when a single party has control of both houses of Congress is when Primadonnas start crawling out of the woodwork and gumming up the works. Think back to when the Republicans had control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress and did away with Obamacare (yeah, that worked well).
    48 replies | 1108 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-06-2024, 08:56 PM
    Voluntarist replied to a thread An apology in U.S. Political News
    What's the 3% all about? Inflation? How much of the board lights up if she simply does better than Biden? Maybe it's not much better, but "doing better" means anything above what Biden received, not anything above 3% more than Biden received.
    184 replies | 3897 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-05-2024, 10:42 PM
    First swing state (North Carolina - 16 electoral votes) goes for Trump. Notes of interest: And what I'm seeing right now is that Trump leads Harris by 2.8% - which may be applicable to other swing states
    183 replies | 4609 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-05-2024, 10:35 PM
    Democratic Underground Damn; and I do so love to savor that adolescent angst. Guess I'll have to tune in to MSNBC.
    183 replies | 4609 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-05-2024, 10:12 PM
    Well, because the polls for Utah and Colorado going into election night were so lopsided that actual counted results weren't necessary, whereas the results in Pennsylvania and Virginia (not so much ... could have been called for the Democrats when the polls closed) were coin tosses. There really are only seven states the news organizations can't call right now. The other 43 they could have called a week ago.
    183 replies | 4609 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-05-2024, 09:50 PM
    The "election procedure" example that I generally refer to is France (population 68.17 million). The French electorate all cast their votes, in person at a qualified election site, on the same day (and there is no advance voting nor absentee ballots). Then again, you don't see hours-long waits for people to cast their ballots in France (and that's a game played in the US - like in Atlanta). --- Edited --- And I forgot to mention, they use paper ballots, which are all hand counted.
    31 replies | 5560 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-05-2024, 09:29 PM
    Perhaps. But the election that C H _ D refers to is 2000 - which is prior to 2020 ... and we could have gone back to 1960 and Illinois
    31 replies | 5560 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-05-2024, 09:01 PM
    Four letters, one word: C H _ D (significance) ... would you like to buy a vowel?
    31 replies | 5560 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-04-2024, 09:08 PM
    I'm hoping that there'll be a couple of undecided voters in Dixville Notch who can't make up their minds until later in the day. I just want to see the national news outlets keep going back to newscasters at that polling station who keep reporting, "We're still waiting for the results from Dixville Notch to come in."
    183 replies | 4609 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    11-03-2024, 07:49 PM
    Sounds like you're channeling George Carlin. Let me start by saying that each conducted poll is a model of the upcoming election. And anyone that works with models will tell you that "All models are wrong, but some are useful. So what are the RCP models useful for? The problem I see with the RCP polling is that each of the RCP polls are a simple average of existing polls. Each of those polls that RCP includes has its own: - Sampling Bias - Timing - Margin of error - Question wording - Non-response wording
    26 replies | 1374 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-31-2024, 03:02 PM
    ... had to post this (after seeing AF's nanny comment)
    10 replies | 936 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-30-2024, 10:38 AM
    Here's a thought experiment. Both Marxism and Fascism were devised as pseudo-socialist economic systems. So why is it that today's definition of Fascism (by Merriam Webster) is its political consequences: ...yet Marxism is still defined by its economic principles rather than its own political consequences ... which include "exalting the state above the individual" as well as "being associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition" but perhaps missing out on race issues. Maybe it's because the victors write history - and the only "hot war" that was fought against "Marxism/communism" was lost.
    6 replies | 1405 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
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  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-29-2024, 04:56 PM
    You probably didn't mean it the way you wrote it; but yeah, I wouldn't doubt that the Mises author made up the quote (based upon works he read from Mussolini). My take from the link you posted is that the "corporation" in the quotation is not what we think of as a corporation today (though today's type of corporation, of government limiting liability to what individual investors have invested in the corporation, obviously existed in Mussolini's time). No, what Mussolini was talking about was guilds and trade unions as incorporated in "the whole" ("the corporation").
    6 replies | 1405 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-28-2024, 10:02 PM
    PAF, you've obviously been through this more than I have. Do you have the original Mussolini source for the quote? I'll grant that that's exactly what the economic system in Italy was at the time; but I've been unable to find where Mussolini wrote or said it. Mussolini on the Corporate State The article concludes with some MUssolini quotes on the topic.
    6 replies | 1405 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-26-2024, 12:59 AM
    Voluntarist replied to a thread The Pill in U.S. Political News
    My condolences. You've cultivated this online personality that is a bit sarcastic (a BIT - ya think?), but rings a bell of truth. I'm seventy years old. I'm a never-married father of two. My kids were my life. I went through a custody action and lost (ended up with about 30% custody and paying less than statute in child support, because I was so active in their lives and got more face-time in custody). I found that paying child support was less expensive than living with their mother. I still have 100% of my house, my investments, and my retirement accounts. I gotta tell ya, for the generation of men that came after me, what's my incentive for getting married? But now, for Science Fiction: Imagine a world in which men had "a pill". How would society change?
    2 replies | 569 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-26-2024, 12:18 AM
    ... and no, I'm not talking about the red pill or the blue pill from the matrix, nor the birth control pill. I'm talking about RU-486 (mifepristone). Basically, I'm talking about the abortion issue in the 2024 election cycle. I don't think it's the issue that the Democrats are trying to make it out to be, nor the issue that religious conservatives want it to be. In that sense, I think Trump has been absolutely brilliant, Politically, he gave the religious conservatives what they wanted (repeal of Row vs Wade, to make it a state's issue) without imposing a federal mandate. For that portion of the electorate that reacts emotionally, it may still be an emotional issue, but (based upon their preconceived and heart-felt notions) they were going to vote Democratic or Republican anyway. I'm talking about that portion of the electorate that vote pragmatically, and realize, with the advent of telemedicine, that abortion in the first trimester is just a phone call away - that their rights to abortion have not been abridged. That argument about partial-birth abortion just doesn't speak to them. If you want to know the truth about partial birth abortion, most of the mothers who undergo them really want the child to survive, but have come to the realization that their pre-born child is already dead or will be dead within moments or days of birth (I speak from experience). In general, and unlike miscarriages, most of those aborted fetuses have graves and memorials. So, if you're arguing partial-birth abortion, you've already lost the argument from the point of view of the general audience. Most of the women who underwent partial birth abortion really wanted to deliver healthy babies, they just came to the conclusion that it was a lost cause; and emotionally came to the conclusion that it was time to accept reality, undergo the stages of grief, and move on. In reality, despite what the pro-life forces want to portray, women don't go through six to nine months of pregnancy in order to celebrate an abortion. And if you think otherwise, you're just an idiot; accept it. Almost all of the partial-birth abortions you portray are tragedies to the women that undergo them (yet leave the mothers involved in a better state, physically and emotionally, to later conceive and give birth). First trimester abortions? Sorry, if you're pro-life - you've lost the argument. The pro-abortion argument wins in every state (thanks to Donald Trump's repeal of Roe vs. Wade). You're only remaining argument is in the second trimester. And that argument is not principled (life begins at conception) but pragmatic (gee, it sure looks like a baby to me).
    2 replies | 569 view(s)
  • Voluntarist's Avatar
    10-23-2024, 10:53 AM
    The permutations of seven toss-up states that are all polling in margin-of-error territory. I guess these will be the states in which open hostilities will occur during the coming civil war. Arizona Georgia Michigan Nevada North Carolina Pennsylvania Wisconsin
    14 replies | 4141 view(s)
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8 Visitor Messages

  1. Genes code proteins with mRNA. Artificial mRNA codes proteins. Ergo, artificial mRNA is gene therapy (artificial gene, artificial protein.)
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    I am sorry to hear that. I hope this information helps.

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    Just bored...lookin' around. Nice pic. That's not how I imagined you. I was thinking you'd look more like Lysander Spooner for some reason.
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    Your mailbox is full. In response to your pm...

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    hahaha! I just logged on for the first time in weeks and saw your comment in my rep status. funny.
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    That would completely throw the Calvies into a tailspin. hehe
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    I don't exactly remember. But it wasn't scientific, it was an opinion.
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My choice of third person pronouns for myself is generally irrelevant. I'm not typically involved in the conversations that use them. It's other people referring to me in the third person, usually from a distance. I'm not a conversational partner in those exchanges. Those people could be referring to me as "That A$$hole" or "That Motherfukker" for all I know.

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