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Stuff you just can't make up

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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Daryl   » Thu May 16, 2019 6:13 am

Daryl
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Sorry if you were offended, but I'm not apologising as that was never even remotely my intention.
From all of our many discussions I know that you are a highly ethical person, who would never do what happened as I described.
However I do believe that you are also an idealistic person who hasn't been exposed to the grubby reality of what some people do. Even with all my vetting I have had at times to gut and completely redecorate houses. When year old carpet throughout a house has to be replaced because of many bong burns along with ground in animal crap you get harder.
As to failed modes I agree that the US can be conservative but would point out that Australia essentially has what you are talking about.
While we do charge some rent for our public housing, at the same time we do have a national welfare net where the government pays for people to live, despite in some cases them never working and contributing. This payment can include a Rent Allowance as well. So actually it could be claimed that we have gone a step further, and supplied them with not only free accommodation, but enough money to live on junk food.
Many years ago I did work in the government welfare field, and could fill a book with stories. I pioneered a national scheme of Skills For Living and Working. When people are made to attend or lose their dole, and you hear a hired dietitian explain how they could cook simple cheap nutritious foods instead of buying KFC, and the response was "Nah, too hard" to making pumpkin soup (cut it up, boil in water, mash and eat with bread from the charities), you get harder. My son has a rental house, and took pity on his tenants by replacing blown light bulbs (their responsibility) after he found that they had several dark rooms, so you wonder.
I'm not remotely religious but remember from my church boarding school more than a half century ago how christ said "The poor will always be with us", plus I also remember reading how Warren Buffet said that if we redistributed all wealth evenly and came back ten years later much of it would have sprung back.

The E wrote:
Daryl wrote:I remember a single female friend who rented out her farmhouse to people who had The E's attitude about free accommodation.


Thank you very much for insinuating that I am a deadbeat tenant who lets the flat he's living in deteriorate, that's great.

I think it's quite telling that my desire to not have anyone be homeless transforms in your mind into a desire to not have to care about the place I'm living in.

Also interesting how both you and Imaginos both look at the failure modes of the systems your countries have tried and are both coming to the conclusion that the idea of state-administrated housing is an obvious failure that can't ever work (I mean, I get it in Imaginos' case; after all, he seems to be someone who is convinced that government can't work, keeps electing people who tell him that government is bad, and then is astonished that his government is getting worse...)
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by The E   » Thu May 16, 2019 6:49 am

The E
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Daryl wrote:Sorry if you were offended, but I'm not apologising as that was never even remotely my intention.


All good. I know you didn't mean it that way; I just hate linguistic ambiguities like that.

However I do believe that you are also an idealistic person who hasn't been exposed to the grubby reality of what some people do. Even with all my vetting I have had at times to gut and completely redecorate houses. When year old carpet throughout a house has to be replaced because of many bong burns along with ground in animal crap you get harder.


It's true, I am an idealist. I should add that, at one point around 2005, I was actually briefly homeless, and that my life since then has been about avoiding sliding back into that state.
During my way back up into "normal" society, I encountered everything you describe, but I still believe that having a place to call your own, even if it is financed by tax money, is an important part. The german constitution, which at one point I swore to uphold and defend, states in the first sentence of its first article that "Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority." This is something I believe in deeply; While "dignity" is a somewhat nebulous concept, I do believe homelessness to be utterly undignified. I do believe that it should be possible to live in a place of your own regardless of how much money you make or whether or not you are employed (Time for a prediction: Imaginos will read this sentence and somehow twist it into something ridiculous like "E says everyone should have their own 3-bedroom mansions").

Basically, when you're dealing with the people at the bottom of the societal food chain, you need to adjust your expectations. Housing for them will never be profitable, and as private landlords who have gone into that business with the expectation of reaping some profit, they are the wrong clientele for you -- Which is why, just as with roads and schools and other infrastructure projects that require a bunch of investment, a lot more maintenance and which can not ever be profitable because the return on that investment is generated on a societal rather than personal level, it is the right place for a government to take up the work.

So actually it could be claimed that we have gone a step further, and supplied them with not only free accommodation, but enough money to live on junk food.
Many years ago I did work in the government welfare field, and could fill a book with stories. I pioneered a national scheme of Skills For Living and Working. When people are made to attend or lose their dole, and you hear a hired dietitian explain how they could cook simple cheap nutritious foods instead of buying KFC, and the response was "Nah, too hard" to making pumpkin soup (cut it up, boil in water, mash and eat with bread from the charities), you get harder.


This reeks of entitlement to me. As in, you feel entitled to have a say over how people live their lives because your tax money is being given to them.
You're berating people for making decisions that are (to a degree) objectively wrong -- but you're not really investigating why they make those decisions. Are they making those choices because they genuinely are lazy and can't be bothered, or is it because they live in an environment saturated with things being advertised as "cheap and convenient" that, on closer inspection aren't?

I'm not remotely religious but remember from my church boarding school more than a half century ago how christ said "The poor will always be with us", plus I also remember reading how Warren Buffet said that if we redistributed all wealth evenly and came back ten years later much of it would have sprung back.


Yes, that is what happens if you address the symptoms of a disease rather than the disease itself.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Imaginos1892   » Thu May 16, 2019 10:30 am

Imaginos1892
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The E wrote:Or am I just disappointed and tired at you trying to spin simple answers relying on common shorthand with well-understood meanings as large fails on my part?

I am disgusted by the way communists and socialists persistently misuse words to mislead people. Forcing somebody else to pay for what you consume does not make it ‘free’. Working for a living is not ‘slavery’. You do not have a ‘right’ to anything which requires someone else to labor on your behalf.

Language is a tool for communication. It should be used for accurate communication. Unfortunately, language can be twisted into a tool for fraud and propaganda by those that do not respect its purpose.

The E wrote:While you're at it, make sure to explain how tax-funded education (which, like public housing, is "free at point of purchase")

I have seen what ‘free’ housing and ‘free’ education amounts to in practice. I am not impressed.

The E wrote:So the answer to my questions is "no, I don't actually put in the hours to ensure that I am capable of using my firearms to safely and accurately defend myself or others against attackers". Thank you.

I do not need to be a Delta Force commando to use my gun for emergency self-defense, you jackass. Hell, most police officers don’t meet your expectations due to limited range time, shortage of instructors, and restricted ammunition budgets. I’m competent, and better trained than most criminal scum, and my chances of survival are much higher with my gun than without it.

The E wrote:No, statistically speaking, you're far more likely to hurt yourself or others accidentally.

No, you are just repeating one old tired bullshit left-wing ‘study’ from decades ago — a political hack job done by the Brady ‘institute’. Their data, methods and results have been thoroughly and repeatedly debunked. Why do so many assholes continue to quote it as Holy Writ?
———————————
I used to live on a farm. I know what bullshit smells like.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Daryl   » Thu May 16, 2019 11:25 pm

Daryl
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Joined: Sat Apr 24, 2010 1:57 am
Location: Queensland Australia

This reeks of entitlement to me. As in, you feel entitled to have a say over how people live their lives because your tax money is being given to them.
You're berating people for making decisions that are (to a degree) objectively wrong -- but you're not really investigating why they make those decisions. Are they making those choices because they genuinely are lazy and can't be bothered, or is it because they live in an environment saturated with things being advertised as "cheap and convenient" that, on closer inspection aren't?


I agree to believing to be entitled for a say. However I disagree about the investigation bit, as it was my job at the time, and I really worked hard investigating the cause. My conclusions were mixed.
Some of the cause was generational welfare where people who knew no better by not having decent role models. Many of these people benefited greatly from these courses and lived better lives as a result.
Another cause was lack of capacity, in that some people just aren't the sharpest knife in the drawer, and no amount of training would help.
There were some who were fraudulently abusing our generous welfare system, having cash in hand jobs and such, with no intention of doing the right thing. Very satisfying to cancel their benefit when it was proven.
The last category I do feel entitled to be critical of. Only a relatively small percentage thankfully. Bone idle, and determined to be passengers all their lives. A story to illustrate this was when some of our neighbours rented out their house, my wife became friendly with the tenant's wife. She asked my wife, who asked me, if I could help her husband get a job. I pulled some strings and called in some favours to organise a trainee factory hand job for him, then let him know. Got home that night to discover that he had come home and declared that "I'll never get any work here,we're moving across the country", and they had left immediately.
At the time I was working 70 hour weeks and paying huge income tax, so yes I felt entitled to look down on people like him.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by cthia   » Thu May 30, 2019 5:07 pm

cthia
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This is s :lol: hilari :lol: us it can d :lol: d :lol: uble duty, s :lol:, I
rep :lol: sted it here as well . . .


gcomeau wrote:When you know Trump is actually writing his own gibbering twitter rants instead of having staff fire them off:

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 1510378501

Russia, Russia, Russia! That’s all you heard at the beginning of this Witch Hunt Hoax...And now Russia has disappeared because I had nothing to do with Russia helping me to get elected. It was a crime that didn’t exist. So now the Dems and their partner, the Fake News Media,.....

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by gcomeau   » Fri Sep 27, 2019 1:48 pm

gcomeau
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Yes, the President of the United States tweeted this.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 09056?s=20

To show you how dishonest the LameStream Media is, I used the word Liddle’, not Liddle, in discribing Corrupt Congressman Liddle’ Adam Schiff. Low ratings @CNN purposely took the hyphen out and said I spelled the word little wrong. A small but never ending situation with CNN!



1. I repeat, President of the United States. Not a whiny 8 year old. I know it's hard to tell the difference.

2. He misspelled "describing" in a tweet complaining he's being unfairly portrayed as having problems spelling words.

3. That's an apostrophe, not a hyphen.

4. Using either an apostrophe OR a hyphen doesn't make "liddle" a word. It actually makes it more nonsensical than it already is. But since Trump doesn't understand how punctuation works he doesn't know that.

5. The slang form of little used as a prefix is "lil"

6. One more time. PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES right there folks. Hard at work on the important issues of our time, when he's not golfing, destroying US access to overseas markets with tantrum initiated trade wars, expanding refugee concentration camps, or extorting foreign leaders to try to undermine US elections.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by cthia   » Wed Apr 22, 2020 6:23 am

cthia
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Will Ivanka ever be in touch with reality?

She has been angering women since day 1.

People are also pissed about her and Jared breaking the restrictions on travel imposed by DC.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by Joat42   » Wed Apr 22, 2020 7:29 am

Joat42
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cthia wrote:People are also pissed about her and Jared breaking the restrictions on travel imposed by DC.

Rules for thee but not for me. :(

I'm not particularly surprised though...

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by edgeworthy   » Wed Apr 22, 2020 9:45 pm

edgeworthy
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Did everyone catch Trump somehow compare himself to Captain Bligh?
https://www.thewrap.com/trump-compares- ... ain-bligh/
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 8282576898
How does he not get that is a bad thing.
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Re: Stuff you just can't make up
Post by n7axw   » Thu Apr 23, 2020 12:11 am

n7axw
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edgeworthy wrote:Did everyone catch Trump somehow compare himself to Captain Bligh?
https://www.thewrap.com/trump-compares- ... ain-bligh/
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/sta ... 8282576898
How does he not get that is a bad thing.


He's confused, as usual. What he is really doing in rearranging chairs on the deck of the Titanic...after it hits the iceberg.

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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