US US Politics General 2: Hope Edition - Discussion of President Trump and other politicians

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Should be a wild four years.

Helpful links for those who need them:

Current members of the House of Representatives
https://www.house.gov/representatives

Current members of the Senate
https://www.senate.gov/senators/

Current members of the US Supreme Court
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

Members of the Trump Administration
https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/
 
Última edición por un moderador:
I have literally seen medications in America that costed nearly $100,000 for a 3-month supply, where in every other country that same exact amount of medication cost a little under $1,000. I hate to sound like a dirty commie but this whole "charge whatever the fuck we like because muh free market" shit is for the birds.
Because it's not a free market. Drug companies get a 20 year monopoly on things they design granted by the government. See how loud they squeal when you threaten to abolish that system. If the government can grant a monopoly, they can stipulate a few extra strings attached as well. Or just get rid of patents and make product development iterative and collaborative.

Patents are no longer even really held by individuals anyways. It's all a big racket. You design some sort of product? Too bad, you're almost certainly working for a big corpo who actually gets to reap ALL of the rewards. Enjoy your regular salary, forever. It's like that blue LED guy.
 
Hey you know what we should do then? Take a slice out of that fucking TRILLION dollars a year we spend on the military and also stop sending aid to countries that hate us anyway, and then the government can kick in some of that "magical money that falls from the sky, I guess" to medication allocation.

We already direct rivers of government money into the pharmaceutical industry. It hasn't made anything cheaper. Subsidies never bring costs down. Ever. Never in the history of America has a government subsidy made an industry leaner.

We should be able to easily figure out a way to bring the price down on a $900 pill that costs $5 to make.

That $900 pill only exists because of government subsidies. Add in more subsidies, and Pfizer doesn't find a way to make that pill cheaper. It starts finding ways to product $2500 pills.
 
Of course grinder was like "What the fuck are these idiots talking about?" and it got buried in the article. I expect nothing less from the media these days.

Log cabin Republicans are a real group. This isn't Reagan's Republican party anymore, Trump has made it abundantly clear many times that people from the gay community are more than welcome to be a part of the party.
As long as they are cool gays, like Freddy mercury, Welcome aboard. Faggots like Booker not welcome
 
It might be more people now, I don't know.
But I can tell you with 100% certainty that it was absolutely a thing that people were calling GWB facist nazi hitler and there were also antifa/black block protests at that time just like there are now.
I grew up in that stuff and it was absolutely a thing.

You can look stuff up like 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. It's an example of the same shit we see today.
And yeah Bill Clinton was president at that time, it was even before GWB and his crackdown patriot act stuff after 9/11
Protests, and political activism have always been a thing. It's definitely gone back further than that. What I mean is the popular sentiment, and things that are normal for prominent politicians to say. I mean, there was even the whole rodney king riots in LA back before that, i think that was 93? But that was LA. then look at the BLM stuff more recently that was all over the country. In the past it was definitely not wide spread like it is now.

It definitely wasn't normal for people to talk about trans-rights, and if someone didn't support them enough, have normal-ish people turn on them. It was normal to no support gay marriage openly, on tv. Where you grew up very well might have been one of the places where this stuff was around much earlier than the rest of the country. I would guess Seattle Portland, some places in LA, then places like new york, and other parts of New England are the places where this stuff was more popular then. Where I grew up though. You definitely wouldn't have seen any of that.

It didn't come out of nowhere. But it has absolutely changed over time.
 
Here's a good docu thing that's appropriate in the wake of the FBI's separation with the ADL, afaik it's well informed and not hard to absorb (no ai voice)
https://youtube.com/watch?v=2zEZnL2Tdec
*wow this video is 2 months old, let me know if this video is actually unavailable to anyone now. It reminds me of the Murder on the tracks series if anyone knows that one about the smalltown murders to coverup the Clinton drug smuggling during Iran Contra.
Doesn’t show up for me
Edit: works now but I guess the other video you linked was from ragefem weirdo?
 
Sorry, video is weird and I'm having issues with it :/
Doesn’t show up for me
Edit: works now but I guess the other video you linked was from ragefem weirdo?
okay maybe hopefully this URL works. to preface as well, this video just for the facts alone leans more anti Israel for a bit, but to be fair to it they have spied for countless countries and bullshit people in their time (smearing right wing people as well, if I'm taking it wrong and this is just some sort of weird anti-jew vid please call it out)
 
Última edición:
Because it's not a free market. Drug companies get a 20 year monopoly on things they design granted by the government. See how loud they squeal when you threaten to abolish that system. If the government can grant a monopoly, they can stipulate a few extra strings attached as well. Or just get rid of patents and make product development iterative and collaborative.

If you get rid of patents and Medicare, the development just doesn't happen.

I'll give a concrete, hypothetical example with somewhat realistic numbers:

On average, every year, 15,000 elderly people are suffering from a moderately rare ailment known as Kiwi Syndrome that makes them slightly retarded. It's not going to kill them, but the retardation makes them annoying to deal with, and it also makes them fart a lot, which smells bad. They'd rather not have Kiwi Syndrome. Pfizer has an idea, a pill that mitigates this. Developing it and bringing it to production costs $1,500,000,000.

Recouping just the R&D will cost, per patient, $100,000. Typically you want to recoup a capital investment in 5 years, so $20,000 per year. Pfizer know ahead of time that Medicare will pay for it, so they develop the drug.

In a free market, nobody's paying twenty fucking thousand dollars a year to make Grandma fart less and be slightly less retarded. So Kiwi Syndrome goes untreated, and the economy redirects that capital into Fortnite skins.
 
Guess they are moving from "Republicans shut down the gov not us" to the project 2025 spin now that they realized people understand much to their dismay how the government works
 
I have literally seen medications in America that costed nearly $100,000 for a 3-month supply,
Patients don't write $100,000 checks for that kind of medication. The government pays for it, or insurance does, so exactly what you want to happen - somebody else pays for it - is what happens. You're just mad that the cost of it appears on a piece of paper the patient sees instead of it getting buried in a government budget.
 
It might be more people now, I don't know.
But I can tell you with 100% certainty that it was absolutely a thing that people were calling GWB facist nazi hitler and there were also antifa/black block protests at that time just like there are now.
I grew up in that stuff and it was absolutely a thing.

You can look stuff up like 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. It's an example of the same shit we see today.
And yeah Bill Clinton was president at that time, it was even before GWB and his crackdown patriot act stuff after 9/11
Hardcore leftism has been around for a long time. Leftists called Reagan a fascist. '60s and '70s radicals were into that kind of talk. Goes back even futher. Sure, there have been radical leftists organizations since forever, too. Greenpeace, Black Panthers, Weather Underground, American communist parties, etc. The rhetoric heated up in the culture more at certain times more than others. The '60s got radical, there was a resurgence of leftist rhetoric and preaching again in the '90s. But, I would agree that things are more extreme now than they've maybe ever been.

The thing is that in the past you could have people throwing around the fascist talk, but you could also get away from it. There was more balance of public opinion. There was more societal space for neutral ground. The entire culture wasn't captured the way it is now. You could have times and opportunites to be a-political. You could have Republicans and Democrats mix together. You could enjoy movies and music where there wasn't heavy handed political messaging. You could have comedy where both sides could laugh and poke fun of each other. You didn't have corporations and institutions pushing far left radical language and ideas. You didn't have all the TV networks and most social media sites all repeating the same talking points about Trump is Hilter. You could have political talk shows where different guests would advance ideas from left, right, and center with civil discussion.

You don't have that anymore. Now the only places you can go and not hear about how Trump and all people on the right are fascists are little islands like this site, portions of X.com, Rumble, and certain other places. But almost all of mainstream life involves a constant barrage of leftwing messaging. That's new.
 
Última edición:
If you get rid of patents and Medicare, the development just doesn't happen.

I'll give a concrete, hypothetical example with somewhat realistic numbers:

On average, every year, 15,000 elderly people are suffering from a moderately rare ailment known as Kiwi Syndrome that makes them slightly retarded. It's not going to kill them, but the retardation makes them annoying to deal with, and it also makes them fart a lot, which smells bad. They'd rather not have Kiwi Syndrome. Pfizer has an idea, a pill that mitigates this. Developing it and bringing it to production costs $1,500,000,000.

Recouping just the R&D will cost, per patient, $100,000. Typically you want to recoup a capital investment in 5 years, so $20,000 per year. Pfizer know ahead of time that Medicare will pay for it, so they develop the drug.

In a free market, nobody's paying twenty fucking thousand dollars a year to make Grandma fart less and be slightly less retarded. So Kiwi Syndrome goes untreated, and the economy redirects that capital into Fortnite skins.
I get the argument, and haven't done a detailed analysis. But I look at open source and man is the quality of stuff produced iteratively and collaboratively almost always better than curtained off projects made by one company that forbids sharing their process/information.

Maybe that's a function of copyright law being TOTALLY indefensible, and patents at least only last 20 years. Could be shorter tbh.

Big companies can figure it out, imo, stuff will get done regardless. Big pharma has scale and that's what you'd use to make the money. It's a fair debate though, unlike copyright.
 
A third Presidential Sombrero Meme has dropped:
Is this the same guy who was doing Trump impressions during the pandemic? Doing things like talking about Joe "Empty Shelves" Biden, or trying to order a large covfefe at the drive-thru?

The Grim Reaper is coming for Feds:
My only complaint is that the visuals with Trump and the bell are off. First, it's not a cowbell. Second, the visual timing doesn't line up with the audio of the song. Otherwise, it's excellent.
 
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