Ze First Debate

Jaskalas · Sunday at 9:45 PM

gothuevos said:
The internet was a mistake.

Worse than Skynet.

K1052 said:
We got up to stuff just as bad with the printing press. Only difference is you read it on a screen now.

Journalism was a profession. The authorities, and men of money, gave it standards. Sure it could serve corrupt interests but they had to compete with each other and no one owned it all. So it was a veritable bastion of freedom compared to the internet. This is sort of like a Republic VS a pure Democracy. But in our version the internet is a Democracy run wild via Idiocracy. With zealotry and falsehoods for all.

Journalism of the 19th and 20th centuries was a pillar of our Democratic Republic. Modern communication shreds that. Through us, the internet jeopardizes the foundations of our society.

Stokely · Sunday at 11:18 PM

Yep, all this crap about "lamestream media" but people just push aside the fact that journalism has standards, and at least there are attempts to hold companies to them.

Now it's nothing but snakeoil influencers for miles. There's no telling if any of them believe one word out of their own mouths--not that it matters if they get viewers. They are held to no standards at all. They aren't employed by anyone. If they lie more and get more clicks why they'll just lie more. Every time I hear 'do your own research' I cringe, because it seems to just mean "go find some hack on youtube saying what you want to hear".

NWRMidnight · Monday at 12:13 AM

FelixDeCat said:
What level? Federal tax law.

It was a concept born out out of oil / gas well investing. It takes a lot of money to drill a successful well. When you finally have one and are now producing income, you get to offset part of your payments to recover your investment before you pay taxes on your income stream from the well. Lets say you make $100,000 a month from a well and it cost $5,000,000 in up front costs. Until you fully recover your $5,000,000, you only pay tax on much less than your $100,000.

I am not a RE expert but from what I have heard is that the same concept applies. In fact, you can even buy a REIT and just hold it and now you have qualified dividends that can be counted as return of capital.

Theoretically the "investor" in real estate would then pay capital gains taxes when the property is sold since they since recovered their initial investment (eventually).

But wait! You can avoid capital gains taxes on the sell of your old RE for new RE so long as you do a "like kind" exchange ....

Internal Revenue Code section 1031 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

In fact as you continue to hog real estate, building your low tax cash flows using borrowed money (leverage) you may build a sizable portfolio. Your now also "putting off" capital gains. And as final kick in pants, if you transfer your homes to a living trust near your end of life naming your children as heirs, they are not paying tax either. During your lifetime your goal is to pay little to no income tax and you are a millionaire.

So yeah, this system needs to be reformed.

What does the oil industry have to do with housing? Once again you say something and then go off the rails, with something that has zero to do with what you where talking about.

The tax incentives for building houses, you are suggesting, are at the state and local level and have nothing to do with federal. Any taxes a builder has at the federal level, are ordinary business taxes that all business incure, and is calculated in the products and services they offer. So basically, more corporate welfare, is all you are suggesting.

You seem to be confusing developers,/contractors with real estate investors. Which is why the rest of your crap has nothing to do with developing and building housing. A completely indifferent argument.

akugami · Monday at 12:27 AM

FelixDeCat said:
So you are saying you would give any amount to anyone who asks for it for any reason (or even no reason at all) and the amount of money you would give them would be unlimited? And do otherwise would be shitty? Ok. We do this sometimes, its called "stimulus payments" and it causes a lot of inflation.

And no, I do not disagree that corporate welfare is excessive and should be reigned in outside of targeted investments for the greater good. A recent example would be the "chips act" that seeks to re-shore chip manufacturing for security reasons.

Stop thinking with your emotions and use your noodle.

Well, it seems if it's a corporation, republicans give free handouts for whatever crapton of money they want. So why not give it to normal citizens trying to put food on the table to feed his kids?

No liberal is trying to say hand out free money with no controls. What we want is to do what conservatives have been claiming. To support families and especially children.

For example, the child tax credits which conservatives want to abolish. Overwhelmingly this hurts poor working folks. If you don't work, you ain't getting this credit. For those struggling to make ends meet, or trying to save money to buy a house, this is devastating to remove these child tax credits.

Free higher education. Another thing conservatives are overwhelmingly against. Studies have shown that better education leads to a better, smarter, and more productive work force. More highly educated individuals also leads to a higher chance of researching new inventions, leading to overall better quality of life for all. Think of all the inventions we have created in the last 200 years. Now imagine if we had double the scientists and other educated people who can work to invent new things. How much better would our lives be? But no! Fucking conservatives says we can't have none of that shit.

These are examples of good uses of our money to better society.

And don't get me started on how conservatives have their panties up their asses over giving US government the ability to negotiate drug prices, so we can drop drug prices to be more inline with what big pharma charges every other nation in the world.

Tax breaks for big oil, which are reaping in record profits, and I do mean RECORD PROFITS. They don't need any more of our tax dollars to dig oil. They're making money hand over fist. It may have made sense at one point, but it no longer does, and hasn't for decades.

These are examples of conservatives giving free money to corporations, which does zero good for reducing government spending, nor does it help society at large. And yet conservatives overwhelmingly support big pharma being able to charge whatever the hell they want for drugs, and also for big oil to continue getting millions in handouts every year.

So you need to step outside your cult, and actually use your own noodle. I actually use mine. I actually have compassion for my fellow man. I can see beyond what is in front of me. Something conservatives such as you clearly cannot.

NWRMidnight · Monday at 12:30 AM

FelixDeCat said:
But the arguments against upending favorable real estate tax policy are numerous. They do pay all their local property taxes and help fund schools, they also maintain the properties and provide places to live for people.

But I say, why cant the average family have the same opportunity? Just buy your own home over time and own it outright. When its paid off, no more payments plus you have capital appreciation and its a place to live. That is the way it should be. Not some guy who wants a bazillion Air BNBs because its making him fucking rich.

Whereas the average family might have paid $800 to $1200 a month for a 1-4 family home, because of investor demand, it would now cost $2500 a month or more.

You are arguing about state and local taxes that has nothing to with federal. Short of local and state property taxes being tax deductible on federal returns.

Any incentives for building new homes that comes from the federal government, generally is part of state funding from the federal government, which is part of state budgets. Which is regulated and controlled by the states.

What I hear you saying is on the subject of building new housing, is you are on board with Kamala Harris, and should vote for her, right?

Muse · Monday at 12:44 AM

K1052 said:
Yes. He was a terrible candidate and McConnell told Thiel that if he wanted him to win that Thiel would have to put up all the money in because the Rs won't. Really should have been a layup election for a competent R but he turned in a worse performance than any other winning R senate candidate there in like a quarter century.

Picking him as VP has been a predictably dreadful mistake but that's what happens when you listen to Don Jr and Musk.

I very accidently tuned into him on Face the Nation this morning. He was condescendingly mansplaining ad nauseum to Margaret Brennan. For stretches she couldn't get a word in edgewise, kept trying to get him to shut up for a second. He was blaming Kamala for things she couldn't possibly have had anything to do with the last 4 years. I turned it off in disgust.

Muse · Monday at 1:16 AM

esquared said:
Yeah, no. Being called a disgrace was tame.

If she wanted to she could have called him a traitorous, misogynistic, racist, sexual assaulter, felon and it would have just been the truth.

Calling him only a disgrace was actually being kind.

IIRC, what she said was that she'd talked to many world leaders (military, I think she said) who told her Trump was a disgrace. She told this to Trump while looking at him with 70,000,000 people watching/listening. Yes, she could have added that he's a "traitorous, misogynistic, racist, sexual assaulter, felon" without stretching the truth. She was actually rather decorous. Hey, he was the one who (figuratively) ahead of the debate said he was going to punch her in the face using the famous Mike Tyson quotation. The motherfucker had it coming.

Muse · Monday at 1:32 AM

Stokely said:
Don't really get why people don't use the ignore function. Trolling or people that support what's happening in Springfield, either one is enough to say bye as far as I'm concerned.

Some people at ATF appear to never use the ignore function. I've had Felix on my ignore list for a very long time. I haven't unignored a single one of Felix's posts in this thread, so at most I'm skimming the many responses.

Edit: I'm not advocating for using the ignore function. I can see the other side. Yes, BS should be called out.

Muse · Monday at 1:39 AM

jdubs03 said:
So 46% of Republicans believe this eating pets crap. 24% aren’t sure.
Independents- 51% think it’s false, 26% not sure.
How the hell are 10%* of Dems not sure. (Mistakenly put 20%, that was total)

This shit is insane!
View attachment 107633

This all started with a missing cat, evidently. My GF's cat went missing. She was rather upset. I scoured her neighborhood, to no avail. She eventually got a new kitten, which quickly grew up. Then the first cat returned and she had two cats.

[DHT]Osiris · Monday at 6:26 AM

Muse said:
This all started with a missing cat, evidently. My GF's cat went missing. She was rather upset. I scoured her neighborhood, to no avail. She eventually got a new kitten, which quickly grew up. Then the first cat returned and she had two cats.

It's worse than that, it started with a facebook post about a 'friend's girlfriend's cousins' cat' situation.

ch33zw1z · Monday at 7:33 AM

Fanatical Meat said:
We tried that in 2015 and look where it got us.

Yes unfortunately we have to deal with the shitty people the conservatives decide to elect repeatedly.

Amused · Monday at 8:43 AM

So the "affidavit" from the claimed "ABC whistleblower" has been posted.

Let's see what we have here.
A fully redacted affidavit from an anonymous agitprop X acct. No way to verify ANY of it. Anyone could have created this. Affiant being called "deponent" is irregular for US legal speak, hinting of foreign origin.
To run with this without ANY valid confirmation is irresponsible.
And yet virtually every right-wing influencer and talking head IS running with it. Full steam ahead.

Original source from Twitter:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1835358499548602666

ch33zw1z · Monday at 9:00 AM

Amused said:
So the "affidavit" from the claimed "ABC whistleblower" has been posted.

Let's see what we have here.
A fully redacted affidavit from an anonymous agitprop X acct. No way to verify ANY of it. Anyone could have created this. Affiant being called "deponent" is irregular for US legal speak, hinting of foreign origin.
To run with this without ANY valid confirmation is irresponsible.
And yet virtually every right-wing influencer and talking head IS running with it. Full steam ahead.

Original source from Twitter:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1835358499548602666

Post truth, alt-facts. Conservatives wouldn’t have it any other way

FelixDeCat · Monday at 9:15 AM

NWRMidnight said:
What does the oil industry have to do with housing? Once again you say something and then go off the rails, with something that has zero to do with what you where talking about.

The tax incentives for building houses, you are suggesting, are at the state and local level and have nothing to do with federal. Any taxes a builder has at the federal level, are ordinary business taxes that all business incure, and is calculated in the products and services they offer. So basically, more corporate welfare, is all you are suggesting.

You seem to be confusing developers,/contractors with real estate investors. Which is why the rest of your crap has nothing to do with developing and building housing. A completely indifferent argument.

Oh lord. We are talking apples and oranges. I gave you a clear and detailed explanation of what I see as the problem and you bring something totally different.

You talk about building and I talk about who is buying and how the buying group is getting rich taking it all.

FelixDeCat · Monday at 9:31 AM

akugami said:
Well, it seems if it's a corporation, republicans give free handouts for whatever crapton of money they want. So why not give it to normal citizens trying to put food on the table to feed his kids?

No liberal is trying to say hand out free money with no controls. What we want is to do what conservatives have been claiming. To support families and especially children.

For example, the child tax credits which conservatives want to abolish. Overwhelmingly this hurts poor working folks. If you don't work, you ain't getting this credit. For those struggling to make ends meet, or trying to save money to buy a house, this is devastating to remove these child tax credits.

Free higher education. Another thing conservatives are overwhelmingly against. Studies have shown that better education leads to a better, smarter, and more productive work force. More highly educated individuals also leads to a higher chance of researching new inventions, leading to overall better quality of life for all. Think of all the inventions we have created in the last 200 years. Now imagine if we had double the scientists and other educated people who can work to invent new things. How much better would our lives be? But no! Fucking conservatives says we can't have none of that shit.

These are examples of good uses of our money to better society.

And don't get me started on how conservatives have their panties up their asses over giving US government the ability to negotiate drug prices, so we can drop drug prices to be more inline with what big pharma charges every other nation in the world.

Tax breaks for big oil, which are reaping in record profits, and I do mean RECORD PROFITS. They don't need any more of our tax dollars to dig oil. They're making money hand over fist. It may have made sense at one point, but it no longer does, and hasn't for decades.

These are examples of conservatives giving free money to corporations, which does zero good for reducing government spending, nor does it help society at large. And yet conservatives overwhelmingly support big pharma being able to charge whatever the hell they want for drugs, and also for big oil to continue getting millions in handouts every year.

So you need to step outside your cult, and actually use your own noodle. I actually use mine. I actually have compassion for my fellow man. I can see beyond what is in front of me. Something conservatives such as you clearly cannot.

You could have said this in your first response.

Jaskalas · Monday at 9:49 AM

[DHT]Osiris said:
It's worse than that, it started with a facebook post about a 'friend's girlfriend's cousins' cat' situation.

And became a witch hunt against Haitians, fully endorsed by the leader of some 70 million Americans.
Like Hitler finding a story about Jews. Does not matter if it is real, MAGA has POC to harm.

[DHT]Osiris · Monday at 10:08 AM

Jaskalas said:
And became a witch hunt against Haitians, fully endorsed by the leader of some 70 million Americans.
Like Hitler finding a story about Jews. Does not matter if it is real, MAGA has POC to harm.

Yup, Trumps behavior, is literally comparable to Hitler at this point, and likely has for a long while. That cannot be emphasized enough.

eelw · Monday at 10:20 AM

Back to Jim Henson's Dinosaurs. It popped in my head so I'll make everyone else listen to it

Amused · Monday at 10:25 AM

ch33zw1z said:
Post truth, alt-facts. Conservatives wouldn’t have it any other way

True, but this is blowing up right now. The credulous followers and many others are taking it as gospel truth.

Thankfully, we're far enough out from the election that this will be debunked before election day. But this has been explosive so far.

Muse · Monday at 10:27 AM

[DHT]Osiris said:
Yup, Trumps behavior, is literally comparable to Hitler at this point, and likely has for a long while. That cannot be emphasized enough.

Vance was on record saying some years ago that Trump is "America's Hitler." Vance traded that objectivity for personal advantage. Bought and paid for by Thiel and the R party, who provided him with a Senate seat and is now riding shotgun on Trump's election stagecoach doing his best to imitate the most ardent liar in American history.

Round two of Trump assassination attempts failed. We're going to have to finish him off at the polls.

Jaskalas · Monday at 10:36 AM

Muse said:
Vance was on record saying some years ago that Trump is "America's Hitler." Vance traded that objectivity for personal advantage. Bought and paid for by Thiel and the R party, who provided him with a Senate seat and now riding shotgun on Trump's election stagecoach.

Maybe Vance is a case study of a public person actively, knowingly, choosing Nazism.
It makes sense, the Republican Party has been casting out anyone not loyal to der Fuhrer.
What else is a patriot to do?

akugami · Monday at 10:40 AM

FelixDeCat said:
You could have said this in your first response.

You also could have asked me nicely for clarification. I am more than happy to debate with anyone who I feel is up for an intellectual conversation in a civil manner, rather than a response for me to "use my noodles".

NWRMidnight · Monday at 11:26 AM

FelixDeCat said:
Oh lord. We are talking apples and oranges. I gave you a clear and detailed explanation of what I see as the problem and you bring something totally different.

You talk about building and I talk about who is buying and how the buying group is getting rich taking it all.

No, not really. I'm talking about the only real estate investments, and those taxes, that will bring housing prices down for single family homes for regular people to buy, which is those investements that are in new construction. I guess when you said: "Repeal favorable tax policy for real estate investors and you will see housing supply come on to the market and depress prices making opportunities available for single family home ownership ... by actual families! " I thought you understood it is a supply problem, which can only be fixed by building, I guess not! That's why your whole tax argument, or your oil example, didn't make sense, as the housing prices has very little to do with real estate investors buying/selling and capitol gains tax. In fact, what you suggest, will actually harm families from getting into bigger and better homes, as the same tax laws apply to them when they sell their "starter" homes and use that money to buy their next home.

nakedfrog · Monday at 12:07 PM

Muse said:
Vance was on record saying some years ago that Trump is "America's Hitler." Vance traded that objectivity for personal advantage. Bought and paid for by Thiel and the R party, who provided him with a Senate seat and is now riding shotgun on Trump's election stagecoach doing his best to imitate the most ardent liar in American history.

Just like all the other Republicans that initially pointed out what a shitsack Trump was, but soon closed ranks and supported whatever stupid thing he had to say. Shame they have no loyalty other than to money.

FelixDeCat · Monday at 12:09 PM

NWRMidnight said:
No, not really. I'm talking about the only real estate investments, and those taxes, that will bring housing prices down for single family homes for regular people to buy, which is those investements that are in new construction. I guess when you said: "Repeal favorable tax policy for real estate investors and you will see housing supply come on to the market and depress prices making opportunities available for single family home ownership ... by actual families! " I thought you understood it is a supply problem, which can only be fixed by building, I guess not! That's why your whole tax argument, or your oil example, didn't make sense, as the housing prices has very little to do with real estate investors buying/selling and capitol gains tax. In fact, what you suggest, will actually harm families from getting into bigger and better homes, as the same tax laws apply to them when they sell their "starter" homes and use that money to buy their next home.

This is definitely where we disagree. I have discussed this with people before and they come to same conclusion you have..thar supply is the problem.

While supply is a contributing factor you have to look at demand. If you are the average couple your average combined salary is $120k. That means the max you can afford is roughly $350k assuming you have no other big expenses. Throw in childcare at 1k per kid per month, two car notes with insurance for $750 each and suddenly all you can afford now is $250,000. I did not include food, income taxes and some meager entertainment. Then there is 12% combined 401k contributions and dont forget wild healthcare premiums at the family level. Let's say now $200,000 max with 3% down for FHA mortgage.

That family has to compete with a cash flow positive LLC with a portfolio of properties and money to not only meet the ask and even overbid if necessary and close today with a suitcase of 100% cash in 24 hours.

Once rented out to that family...for a profit ..he gets to shelter some of that income and go out the next day and gobble up.more homes. If you can't pay his rent...tough...go sleep in your car.

How is a family supposed to compete with that kind of financial firepower?

We can build homes but we also need to restrict access to them to actual owner occupiers for a period of 10 years (at least).

No flippers, no investors. Home owners. If they HAVE to sell for any reason it must be to another family who also intends to complete the initial 10 year term.

Unfortunately this does not happen. Instead it's a free for all and the biggest wallet always win and the family sleeps in the car for now or is stuck in an expensive apartment.

Ze First Debate

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