A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 15:36
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Quote:Afghans will live in the mess they created for themselves. The New York Times ran a piece and got someone to go on the record: A senior officer in the country’s military, who asked not to be named because of the sensitivity of the situation, noted that many Taliban conquests are carried out by a small force of 10 or so fighters from whom it should be easy to take back districts. Yet even if they were to do so, he said, Afghan security forces would be unlikely to hold them because of weak defenses, weak local leaders and a lack of central government support.
Originally posted by 1KIKI:
snicker
Bashir Ahmad Nemani, a local police commander in the northern province of Badakhshan, saw those weaknesses firsthand. The province, including his district of Khwahan, is now almost entirely in the hands of the Taliban — a bitter pill for the government as it was the one area in Afghanistan that resisted the insurgents throughout their reign in the late 1990s.
This time, faced with a Taliban onslaught, Badakhshan’s provincial police chief “promised reinforcements,” said Mr. Nemani. “They never came.” The local militia working with the government quickly collapsed.
“There was no option,” he said. “Everything was destroyed. The police collapsed.” Mr. Nemani fled across the border to Tajikistan with six of his men.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210808210651/https://www.nytimes.com/202
1/08/08/world/asia/afghanistan-government-propaganda.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Over the past 20 years, the US has spent around $1 trillion in Afghanistan, only to return to square one as soon as it departed. Nation-building is expensive, and US president Joe Biden has chosen to spend the money at home rather than in a hostile, complex overseas environment that he feels is no longer America’s problem. “I do not regret my decision [to pull the US out of Afghanistan],” said Biden on Aug. 10. “Afghan leaders have to come together. They’ve got to fight for themselves, fight for their nation.”
https://qz.com/2047170/why-is-the-us-sending-troops-back-to-afghanista
n/
The Afghans knew since February 2020 that America would leave in 14 months. 17 months later, the Afghans are not fighting effectively for their nation.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The problem with Republican posturing over guns and abortion
Supporters of banning abortions and unrestricted access to rapid-fire weapons have something in common — a preference for bait and switch debate tactics. They provide emotionally charged justifications for policies that in reality have less politically potent rationales.
This is their response to a dilemma. If they did not use exaggerated melodramatic rhetoric that calls for policies much more disruptive than those they actually support, it would be harder to sway public opinion.
For the anti-choice side, making it illegal for women to decide — based on the circumstances of their lives — whether or not to go through with the difficult process of carrying a pregnancy to term because of the religious or philosophical objections of others is a hard sell. So, they label it "murder." But they lack the courage of their conviction — in this case literally. If abortion is murder, a woman who voluntarily undergoes one is a murderer. Obviously, if she took a one-year-old child to a person who she knew was going to kill the child, and she actively assisted in the act, she should — and would — be criminally liable. But when Donald Trump blurted out that he favored prosecuting the potential mother, he was immediately contradicted by his new-found anti-abortion allies, who understand that the overwhelming majority of people do not favor jailing women who have had abortions because they do not think she has murdered anyone.
Of course, an objection may be made to abortion on moral, religious or other grounds. But invoking the forces of the criminal law to make this argument legally binding on those who disagree is much harder to justify than demanding an end to unpunished murder.
In the case of those who wish to allow untrammeled access to automatic weapons and to prevent effective pre-sale background checks on the suitability of gun purchasers, the bait is the people’s right to resist an oppressive government.
More at https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/567102-the-problem-with-posturing
-over-guns-and-abortion
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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You said you were in the military.
Quit throwing around the term automatic like a Democrat.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:It was Barney Frank, the Democrat who wrote the article, using "automatic". The bigger point Frank was making is about how these so-called "debates" with Republicans never get to the bottom of why Republicans make their arguments in the way they do. There is a world of difference between how Republicans think and how successful people think, but Republicans think it is unfair that they have change how they think if they wannabe a success. They handle that by insisting they are already successful and retreating into their delusions of superiority, very much the same thing that the Confederates did before the Civil War.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
You said you were in the military.
Quit throwing around the term automatic like a Democrat.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Thursday night on Fox News, Laura Ingraham straightforwardly expressed the key challenge for capitalism: How can bosses get people to do awful, degrading jobs for little pay in order to make other people rich?
Capitalism has been grappling with this problem for hundreds of years, but as history and Ingraham show, the answer now is the same as it’s always been: The laboring classes must be forced into circumstances in which they must work or starve.
Laura Ingraham: "What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing."
After the passage of the U.K.’s Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, British officials openly debated what they were going to do once the people they’d enslaved were free to just leave the plantations. One key issue, particularly in the West Indies, was that there was a great deal of public land that could be claimed and farmed by anyone.
“Where there is land enough to yield an abundant subsistence to the whole population in return for slight labour,” wrote Lord Glenelg, the U.K. secretary of state for war and the colonies, “they will probably have no sufficient inducement to prefer the more toilsome existence of a regular labourer.”
The solution was obvious: Put a high price on the public land so the laboring population didn’t have the option to support themselves on it. This worked, and the British were largely able to convert their former slaves into their new employees.
Anyone who’s ever had a bad job — not just, say, cutting sugar cane, but also working the cash register at Burger King or selling shoes at JCPenney — knows that human beings will generally avoid this kind of work if they can.
It is also true that for an economy to function, there is a ton of work that has to be done. But what’s needed to make this happen depends on what you believe about human nature. Conservatives think people are fundamentally greedy and lazy, and so they must be forced to work by the lash of hunger. Ingraham once dated Larry Summers, treasury secretary during the Clinton administration and a director of the National Economic Council for President Barack Obama, who recently explained that it would be bad to allow people to work less because they’ll just use it to drink beer and watch TV. They clearly see humans the same way.
By contrast, progressives believe that people, under the right circumstances, are fundamentally creative and reasonable and will do the work with the correct incentives. Crucially, these incentives aren’t just about money and the length of the work week. It’s true that capitalism’s bad jobs tend to require long hours and are underpaid. But what makes bad jobs bad is as much or more the lack of control that employees have over working conditions and hence their lives in general.
“Maverick!: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace,” a book by Brazilian businessperson Ricardo Semler, describes how Semler transformed an industrial corporation he inherited from his father that was conventionally hierarchical into one that is largely democratically run. One key change is that employees choose their own salaries, and everyone’s salary is public. This would seem outlandish to American businesses — obviously, given the opportunity, workers will go nuts and bankrupt the company! — but the management of Semler’s corporation found that employees, with real control over their working lives and a genuine desire for the whole enterprise to succeed, tended to underpay themselves. Often the company had to encourage employees to pay themselves more.
Whether companies structured like Semler’s could work everywhere is unknown, since capitalism and capitalists generally hate the prospect of surrendering control. But there’s no reason for everyone else to think that work must be about a small number of people giving orders and the rest of us obeying them. For that reason, we should all be grateful to Laura Ingraham for making so clear the perspective of the employing class. Anything that gives us the ability to subsist without jobs, a
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Laura Ingraham: "What if we just cut off the unemployment? Hunger is a pretty powerful thing."
Careful, Laura...
That's the same type of thinking that Leftists trying to inject untested vaccines in everyone is using. And since you goons at Fox"News" like to all pretend that you're religious, it's also very close to Mark of the Beast talk too.
Quote:
Anyone who’s ever had a bad job — not just, say, cutting sugar cane, but also working the cash register at Burger King or selling shoes at JCPenney — knows that human beings will generally avoid this kind of work if they can.
25 years ago, these jobs were almost exclusively done by kids for fun money and to save for college which was quite affordable compared to prices today.
Now that we've shipped all the manufacturing AND most of the tech jobs out of the country, grown ass men and women are fighting for these shit jobs, often working 2 or even 3 of them at the same time just to get by. No health insurance at the same time either, since in most states they've priced themselves out of state assistance by working multiple part-time jobs to pay the bills.
What a way to live.
Laura Ingraham was born with a silver spoon up her ass and has never worked a day in her life, just like all of the other crooked media personalities and politicians.
Go flip your own fucking burgers bitch.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:You are wrong. 50 years ago adults were working those crappy jobs. 6ix, my father worked at Burger King for pennies. I worked there too until the pain of standing on my feet all day made me follow my sisters' example of going to college. They became a nurse and a school teacher. I became an engineer because it was manly, graduating when I was 25 years old, 4 years older than my sisters when they graduated because I made a wrong decision by detouring into Vietnam. My brother-in-law worked for JCPenney . . . selling shoes. He votes for Trump.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Anyone who’s ever had a bad job — not just, say, cutting sugar cane, but also working the cash register at Burger King or selling shoes at JCPenney — knows that human beings will generally avoid this kind of work if they can.
25 years ago, these jobs were almost exclusively done by kids for fun money and to save for college which was quite affordable compared to prices today.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are wrong. 40 years ago adults were working those crappy jobs. 6ix, my father worked at Burger King for pennies. I worked there too until the pain of standing on my feet all day made me follow my sisters' example of going to college. They became a nurse and a school teacher. I became an engineer because it was manly, graduating when I was 25 years old, 4 years older than my sisters when they graduated because I made a wrong decision by detouring into Vietnam. My brother-in-law worked for JCPenney . . . selling shoes. He votes for Trump.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Anyone who’s ever had a bad job — not just, say, cutting sugar cane, but also working the cash register at Burger King or selling shoes at JCPenney — knows that human beings will generally avoid this kind of work if they can.
25 years ago, these jobs were almost exclusively done by kids for fun money and to save for college which was quite affordable compared to prices today.
That's the problem with anecdotal evidence then, I'm afraid.
Where I lived, in the mid to late 90's when I had a shitty job, the only ones doing shitty jobs around me were the kids. Outside of the customers, the only adults in those buildings were management.
P.S. And seriously dude. Why am I still hearing about Trump from you every single day?
If you haven't noticed, we've got a new douche in office screwing everything up right now.
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Vaccinated People: "You need to get muh vaccination shots that don't work because I got muh vaccination shots that don't work and I'm afraid of people that didn't get muh vaccination shots that don't work because muh vaccination shots that don't work don't work."
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Quote:Is Trump dead? No. Is Trump highly regarded in Texas? Yes.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
That's the problem with anecdotal evidence then, I'm afraid.
Where I lived, in the mid to late 90's when I had a shitty job, the only ones doing shitty jobs around me were the kids. Outside of the customers, the only adults in those buildings were management.
P.S. And seriously dude. Why am I still hearing about Trump from you every single day?
If you haven't noticed, we've got a new douche in office screwing everything up right now.
Is Biden screwing up? No. Is Biden poorly regarded in Texas? Yes.
Those are what you call anecdotal evidence.
If you asked Americans in a poll, what would be their the answer to "How many Vietnamese died in the Vietnam War?" Before Google, Americans would say 100,000. After Google? 3,000,000. More anecdotal evidence.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/08/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-
fall-of-saigon-vietnam-comparison.html
If you google What percent of population are working poor you will be enlightened. The percentage is NOT constant over time. And it is not the same in every state in any particular year.
https://www.google.com/search?q=what+percent+of+population+are+working
+poor
I'm not capable of explaining in a way that would change your mind, because I have tried many times with real people who are in the same location as I am, for example when we are hunting, but this is true: the world around you is actually not the same world as you see it from inside your head. Maybe their eyesight is poor; maybe they don't pay sufficient attention; maybe their beliefs are a poor guide to reality; maybe it is their personality; maybe ... you could go on and on. For many reasons, most people will never understand the world-outside is not the world-inside until the world kills them or collapses on them. The few people who do adjust their world-inside to match the actual world-outside tend to do MUCH better and live longer, as would a near-sighted person who gets eyeglasses or has cataracts removed late in life, but the rest of humanity can't be bothered to adjust their vision. They already believe their vision is almost perfect, but they go through life almost blind, bumping into things unless they keep to routine and keep far away from new/complicated environments.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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