One nazi less?

[Elok]

Reagan was forty years ago. He's dead. Right and left meant different things back then. By modern American standards--and I live in America--my position is centrist at most.

[Aeson]

EDIT: FFS everyone is right-wing compared to you, you're a bloody Green. What am I going to do to outflank you from the Left? Do I need to rag on Fidel Castro for his reactionary tendencies?

Maybe when masked Federal agents directed by a wannabe right wing authoritarian rip children out of apartment complexes in the middle of the night, instead of writing walls of text about how people who call such things fascist are wrong, maybe you could say, "yah, that does seem kinda fascist"?

[Aeson]

Or maybe when United Healthcare makes $22 billion in a year while 600k families go bankrupt and our nation adds trillions in debt because of absurd healthcare costs you could maybe stop trying to pretend $22 billion isn't much money and just say, "profiting off this doesn't seem right"

[Aeson]

Reagan was forty years ago. He's dead. Right and left meant different things back then. By modern American standards--and I live in America--my position is centrist at most.

Yah, our country has drifted way to the right on immigration.

There is an objective spectrum between "completely open borders" and "completely closed borders". We are well to the "completely closed borders" side of the spectrum.

The fix to all the immigration problems are towards the "completely open borders" side.

[Elok]

It really isn't much money. Medicare and Medicaid between them spend over a trillion dollars a year, of which something like $100 billion (just looked it up again) is estimated to be lost annually to fraud/waste/abuse and we freely admit that that's just a best guess and the true figure might well be higher. Most corporations have significantly higher profit margins than UHC. You're laser-focusing on an irrelevant fact and shutting out everything I say which tells you it's irrelevant, which is why I dropped the argument the first time.

[Aeson]

It really isn't much money. Medicare and Medicaid between them spend over a trillion dollars a year, of which something like $100 billion (just looked it up again) is estimated to be lost annually to fraud/waste/abuse and we freely admit that that's just a best guess and the true figure might well be higher. Most corporations have significantly higher profit margins than UHC. You're laser-focusing on an irrelevant fact and shutting out everything I say which tells you it's irrelevant, which is why I dropped the argument the first time.

I didn't just mention United Healthcare. You just pretend I only laser focus on insurers.

But that's $36,000 for every family that went bankrupt due to medical costs. Probably saves a lot of them a lot of suffering. Just one company's profits. After they pay ridiculous salaries and spend who knows how much to inflate the cost of healthcare since their margins are regulated.

And since it's all basically deficit spending, we pay compounding interest and inflation on that profit forever.

So you handwaved away the suffering of millions of Americans as "irrelevant" to play apologist for an evil corporation profiting off that suffering.

[Aeson]

The guy above us regularly chimes in to tell us we're going to burn in nuclear hellfire and we all just laugh it off.

It's difficult to know the future. He may very well be right on that point. We've been close on a few occasions.

[SlowwHand]

Yah, our country has drifted way to the right on immigration.

There is an objective spectrum between "completely open borders" and "completely closed borders". We are well to the "completely closed borders" side of the spectrum.

The fix to all the immigration problems are towards the "completely open borders" side.

That possibility went away completely following 9-11 when our world changed.
World, not just nation.

[Aeson]

That possibility still exists. Though you are probably right in that it won't happen because of the ratio of American viewpoints, and 9/11 did change Americans for the worse in general.

[Lorizael]

That possibility went away completely following 9-11 when our world changed.
World, not just nation.

19 legal residents did 9/11 and killed 3,000 Americans. Then a small number of Americans did a "War on Terror" and killed another 15,000 Americans. What does that have to do with illegal immigration?

[Aeson]

I would say 9/11 negativity impacted enough Americans minds about foreigners that positive immigration reform became much more difficult. Illegal immigration is simply what our current immigration law is designed to promote, so corporations have access to cheap labor here that helps suppress wages for everyone here.

[giblets]

In two years Elok will be saying his views on immigration are left wing because he doesn't want to shoot illegal border crossers on sight

[SlowwHand]

What's interesting is the perception that it's wrong to stop illegals, but if you do, don't send them here.

[giblets]

You seem to have them confused with homeless people?

[Aeson]

In two years Elok will be saying his views on immigration are left wing because he doesn't want to shoot illegal border crossers on sight

Pol Pot was a centrist after killing everyone on the right.