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#802 May 03 2015 at 6:25 AM Rating: Good
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Nope. It's the middle three income quintiles....hence the term 'middle'. Not that ******* complicated, really.


No, the middle class is a nebulous group of people with the right accent, quality of education, type of job and only then, lastly, income, a piece of shrapnel reflecting an exploded feudal society that stubbornly refuses to go away. Don't you know anything?
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#803 May 04 2015 at 5:47 AM Rating: Decent
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Um... No. That's not even close. Where is the working class?

That's..not a thing. "Working class" is a subset of the middle class who live from their wage income. You know...YOU. It's not a place on a spectrum with 'middle class' "above" it. I'm still not sure what you don't understand about the fucking word 'middle'???
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#804 May 04 2015 at 8:02 AM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:

Stating a belief is not the same as making an argument. When I say that welfare is a problem, and list of a number of reasons why I think this is true, and your response is basically "You're wrong because there's this problem here, and that problem there, and this other problem over thataway", you're not actually making an argument that welfare isn't a problem. You're just changing the subject.

The only thing remotely close to an argument you've made about welfare has been that it doesn't affect people's choices unless they choose to make those choices. Which, as I've pointed out several times, is completely circular and non-useful.
Gbaji wrote:
Yes. I know the history. It was a dumb counter then, and it's no less dumb now. Notice how you didn't actually address whether or not welfare harms those who receive it, nor if it's a contributing factor to the perpetuation of black poverty. You changed the subject. This is exactly what I'm talking about. You just pointed to other things that you view as problems. Great! But that doesn't address the question of welfare.

If we end welfare things like question marks and exclamation points wont disappear either. What does that have to do with welfare? Nothing. That's the point. Bringing them up in that situation was purely about changing the subject. Eliminating welfare wont prevent aids, or world hunger, or help us build a base on mars either. Those facts also don't constitute a valid response to my argument about welfare.
I specifically made an argument on how welfare is not a problem at all. You just continue with strawman arguments of "other problems".

Gbaji wrote:
No. You gave me a list (I guess two things is technically a list) of things that black people oppose. Ironically, right after I pointed out that black voters tend to be motivated not to vote *for* the Democrats, but *against* the GOP. Those two things were "VRA (gutting of)" and "privatization of public services, such as schools". Again, it's interesting to note that you didn't frame this in the form of things that the Democrats do that you think black people support, but things that the GOP does that you think black people oppose.

My point is that it's always easiest to get people to join together *against* things than to join together *for* things. Which kinda supports my argument that black voters have been the recipients of a significant amount of political manipulation. It's just always been funny to me how I'll ask liberals to tell me what they are for, and why, and it's nearly impossible for them to do so without turning it around into a negative thing they are against. Funny. Not unique to black voters at all btw, but telling that you do this. And usually indicative of the degree to which the person has been subjected to liberal rhetoric.
I provided more than two things. Those things were reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, not against Republicans. If this weren't a two party system, then you would have a point, but it isn't, so your differentiation between "voting against Republican" as opposed to "for Democrats" is moot.

Gbaji wrote:
That's the theory. I even addressed it earlier. Don't get me wrong, when people do use it this way, they can get themselves out of their state of poverty. Problem is that most people don't use welfare to get education and training for a better job. They just use welfare to get a better life while doing the same amount of work. There's more or less zero evidence that welfare recipients are any more likely to recover via education/training than those who don't avail themselves of public assistance.

And this doesn't address the generational issue. It's one thing for someone to fall on hard times, and receive temporary assistance until they get back on their feet. The problem is with the percentage who don't, and then raise children in that state. Their children have a much harder time getting out of poverty and avoiding welfare themselves. Over time, this creates a population of "always been on welfare". And it's in this segment that blacks are horrifically overrepresented. Single motherhood is the hallmark of that generational welfare effect, and black children are the victims of this at a disproportionate rate. 29% of white children are born to single mothers. 75% of black children are. That's three out of freaking four black children. You can't possibly be trying to tell me that there's no underlying generational poverty effect going on here.

As I mentioned earlier, welfare tends to replace the fathers in that situation. It's hard not to see a strong correlation between the effect of welfare on family and the effect of that on the children. And, once again, the effect of this is born most heavily by blacks. Do you think this is because black people choose to be poor more than whites? Or they choose to be single moms more than whites? External factors affect those choices. And welfare is a biggie.
You keep talking about single mothers as if mass incarceration of black men don't play a role in that. That's what I'm pointing out. You are not trying to have an honest conversation about the problem, you're specifically attacking welfare because you are against the government spending. You admitted that if welfare were used the way I mentioned, it would be beneficial. Your counter is that it isn't statistically likely, which means if you were serious about the problem, then you should be arguing for welfare reform, not the removal of welfare.

Gbaji wrote:
And? What is your point? All of these guys are popular conservative figures. You're cherry picking who is in "power" on the right to suit your narrative. Is it the voters? CPAC? Donors? Who? I'm just not seeing the pattern you're trying to make at all.

Remember that your starting claim was that labeling of conservatives as RINOs was equivalent to labeling of blacks at Uncle Toms. Somehow you've arrived at this bizarre idea that conservatives (the definition of which changes from case to case) "shun" Republican leaders who do things that appeal to minorities. But your evidence in support of this is incredibly spotty. You lurch from issue to issue with different candidates, but there's no pattern there. Some of those may appeal to some voters, but not to others, and there's no real correlation between "minorities" much less "black voters".

You're simultaneously arguing about disagreements with such candidates over common core and dream act in one case, and libertarian positions in another, and then trying to claim that they are both being "shunned" for the same reason? That's nuts? Those are on opposite sides of the scale. The only thing we can glean from any of this is that conservatives are not all in agreement over everything (which is a good thing), and that we're fine with expressing our disagreements and openly discussing them. I'm not sure how that's "bad".
You're intentionally attempting to befog the conversation. Republicans tend to vote for Republicans. The more liberal Republicans behave, the less appealing they are to the Republican voters. This is not only true for Democrats as well, but is categorically true. Since Black voters tend to vote Democrat, then any Republican who leans left, increases the potential black vote, while becoming less appealing to the Republican voting base.


Gbaji wrote:

Uh... The connection only exists in your own mind. I know exactly what an Uncle Tom is, and how the term is used to pressure blacks into complying with a very strict set of social positions. The fact that you seem to want to deny this is amazing to me. All your examples show is that conservatives will criticize their own leaders for a wide assortment of reasons, depending on the varying positions of various conservative viewpoints. On the Left? Especially when it comes to blacks? Not much room for variation allowed at all. They're just not comparable conditions.
If you understood what an Uncle Tom was, then you wouldn't be making your argument. I've explained this to you already, you decided not to respond.
#805 May 04 2015 at 9:23 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Otherwise, there's no point to having the terms in the first place.
I wish this were simply naivety because it'd be so adorable.
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#807 May 04 2015 at 4:31 PM Rating: Decent
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Um... No. That's not even close. Where is the working class?

That's..not a thing. "Working class" is a subset of the middle class who live from their wage income. You know...YOU. It's not a place on a spectrum with 'middle class' "above" it. I'm still not sure what you don't understand about the fucking word 'middle'???


Is interesting to me how the terms the Left uses have changed so dramatically over time based on public perception. Used to be that the Left was the "champion of the working class", and the distinction between the mostly blue collared working class and the mostly white collared middle class was clearly and definitively made. But that was when unions were strong and you guys could use that narrative to your advantage.

I laugh now when Obama or some other prominent Democrat talks about how government social programs "help the middle class". Um... Only because you've now redefined it so that folks who need welfare now qualify. Laughable. Sorry Smash. Middle class is the group that *doesn't* need government help. They're the class that is sufficiently financially capable that they can provide for themselves and their families and instead of worrying about whether they can pay their bills, they worry about whether they can juggle their kids social, sport, and school schedules. Working class people worry about paying the rent and food and utilities each month. Middle class people worry about whether it'll disappoint their kids if they can't take a Disney cruise this year.

Pretending there isn't a difference doesn't make it so. The Left has just figured out that by actually making enemies of half of the population, it will make things harder for them, so they pretend that their policies are "good for the middle class". The reason folks earning the median income and higher vote GOP more often than DEM, is because they're smart enough to know that just isn't the case. And again, no amount of pretending it, or repeating it, makes it so.

Edited, May 4th 2015 3:32pm by gbaji
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#808 May 04 2015 at 4:49 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
I specifically made an argument on how welfare is not a problem at all. You just continue with strawman arguments of "other problems".


The only argument you've presented is that welfare only negative affects peoples choices if they choose to make those bad choices. Which, as I've pointed out repeatedly, is about the dumbest argument you could make. I've given a half dozen different examples of things that influence choices in order to illustrate this point. But you just keep repeating the same thing over and over.

It's not a straw man when those are the actual arguments you are using. You keep injecting other problems into the discussion and insist we must discuss those things instead of welfare. That's "changing the subject".

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I provided more than two things. Those things were reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, not against Republicans. If this weren't a two party system, then you would have a point, but it isn't, so your differentiation between "voting against Republican" as opposed to "for Democrats" is moot.


I was making a point about how when you (most liberals in fact) talk about why you support the Dems, it's almost always in the "because the GOP is bad" way. I get that it's a two party system. Do you get that in a two party system, if I want you to support party A without you comparing it directly to party B, I might just tell you all the bad things about party B so you'll choose party A, not because it's "better" but because you've been taught to oppose party B? You're not putting the policies and agenda of both parties side by side and doing a pro-con comparison. You're just hearing all the "bad things" about the GOP, and choosing to vote Democrat.

That's a crappy way to pick a party btw. You should pick it because you like their platform, not because you dislike the other guy's.

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You keep talking about single mothers as if mass incarceration of black men don't play a role in that. That's what I'm pointing out. You are not trying to have an honest conversation about the problem, you're specifically attacking welfare because you are against the government spending. You admitted that if welfare were used the way I mentioned, it would be beneficial. Your counter is that it isn't statistically likely, which means if you were serious about the problem, then you should be arguing for welfare reform, not the removal of welfare.


It's all about statistics though, right? I mean, this whole conversation started with statistical differences in negative interactions between blacks and police versus whites and police. It seems fair to point out other statistical differences which may affect that one, right? That was my entire argument, in fact. That the crime differences are based on the crime rate differences in the neighborhoods, and statistical difference with black people in that regard, and then to the statistical difference in poverty between black and white, which causes that "high crime" neighborhood difference.

The part you keep balking at is when I point to welfare as a major contributing factor to the initial difference (poverty rates between black and white). But that's you refusing to even consider that your chosen party might not actually be "good for blacks" as you assume. Cart before the horse though.

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You're intentionally attempting to befog the conversation. Republicans tend to vote for Republicans. The more liberal Republicans behave, the less appealing they are to the Republican voters. This is not only true for Democrats as well, but is categorically true. Since Black voters tend to vote Democrat, then any Republican who leans left, increases the potential black vote, while becoming less appealing to the Republican voting base.


Again though, this is completely circular. You are starting with the assumption that the GOP is "bad for blacks" and the Dems are therefore "good for blacks", but then refusing to actually look at the positions of the parties and the effects those have. Your entire argument revolves around the assumption that "appealing to blacks" is equivalent to "more liberal". My argument is that there's nothing about being black that should require you to be liberal. That association is one of your own making and I think it's preventing you from examining the issue clearly.

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If you understood what an Uncle Tom was, then you wouldn't be making your argument. I've explained this to you already, you decided not to respond.


You're kidding right? Ok. I'll bite. Explain to us all what Uncle Tom means then.

And no. You haven't "explained this to me already". Stop falling back on that tired cliche. If you think you already explained something, don't just say "I already explained this" and stop there. Explain it again.
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#809 May 04 2015 at 5:13 PM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
And no. You haven't "explained this to me already". Stop falling back on that tired cliche. If you think you already explained something, don't just say "I already explained this" and stop there. Explain it again.
Good advice. You should try it.

In three sentences or less.
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#810 May 04 2015 at 5:51 PM Rating: Excellent
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So the GOP is the Party of Financially Comfortable People Who Worry If Their Kids Get Enough Disney Cruises Between Soccer Camps?

Ok. Put it on a bumper sticker, I guess Smiley: laugh

Edited, May 4th 2015 6:52pm by Jophiel
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#811 May 04 2015 at 7:16 PM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
The only argument you've presented is that welfare only negative affects peoples choices if they choose to make those bad choices. Which, as I've pointed out repeatedly, is about the dumbest argument you could make. I've given a half dozen different examples of things that influence choices in order to illustrate this point. But you just keep repeating the same thing over and over.

It's not a straw man when those are the actual arguments you are using. You keep injecting other problems into the discussion and insist we must discuss those things instead of welfare. That's "changing the subject".
My argument was that welfare is no different than other financial interactions that we experience in life. You've misconstrued into a circular argument. Furthermore, I've said that it provides the opportunity to not worry about paying for the necessities which opens way for education and training. So when your interpretation of my argument is "yea, but look over here at these other problems", you are indeed arguing a strawman.

Gbaji wrote:

I was making a point about how when you (most liberals in fact) talk about why you support the Dems, it's almost always in the "because the GOP is bad" way. I get that it's a two party system. Do you get that in a two party system, if I want you to support party A without you comparing it directly to party B, I might just tell you all the bad things about party B so you'll choose party A, not because it's "better" but because you've been taught to oppose party B? You're not putting the policies and agenda of both parties side by side and doing a pro-con comparison. You're just hearing all the "bad things" about the GOP, and choosing to vote Democrat.

That's a crappy way to pick a party btw. You should pick it because you like their platform, not because you dislike the other guy's.
I provided reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, as opposed to simply against Republicans.

Gbaji wrote:
It's all about statistics though, right? I mean, this whole conversation started with statistical differences in negative interactions between blacks and police versus whites and police. It seems fair to point out other statistical differences which may affect that one, right? That was my entire argument, in fact. That the crime differences are based on the crime rate differences in the neighborhoods, and statistical difference with black people in that regard, and then to the statistical difference in poverty between black and white, which causes that "high crime" neighborhood difference.

The part you keep balking at is when I point to welfare as a major contributing factor to the initial difference (poverty rates between black and white). But that's you refusing to even consider that your chosen party might not actually be "good for blacks" as you assume. Cart before the horse though.

Two party system. We're going in circles. As I said pages ago, it's the lesser of two evils. You're arguing a fallacy that since the Democratic policies aren't "good" for blacks, then Republican policies must be "good or better" for blacks. The reality can be and often is, that neither are good. Look at how HRC is now arguing against her own prison policies.

Gbaji wrote:
Again though, this is completely circular. You are starting with the assumption that the GOP is "bad for blacks" and the Dems are therefore "good for blacks", but then refusing to actually look at the positions of the parties and the effects those have. Your entire argument revolves around the assumption that "appealing to blacks" is equivalent to "more liberal". My argument is that there's nothing about being black that should require you to be liberal. That association is one of your own making and I think it's preventing you from examining the issue clearly.
You literally just made that up in order to complicate this. The more Democratic you behave, the more likely you will attract Democrats and not Republicans. Since more blacks tend to vote Democrat, the more likely you will attract black voters. That statement has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Republican policies are good or bad for blacks. It has nothing to do with blacks needing to be liberal. You can literally replace the word "black" with any other voting group that is factual and it would be just as true. This statement is to disprove your claim that there is no correlation.

Gbaji wrote:
You're kidding right? Ok. I'll bite. Explain to us all what Uncle Tom means then.

And no. You haven't "explained this to me already". Stop falling back on that tired cliche. If you think you already explained something, don't just say "I already explained this" and stop there. Explain it again.
Are you going to tell me that you didn't skip my entire explanation of this? I'm the one telling you that you don't understand what an Uncle Tom is. Although, I'm confident in your Google ability, the counter would be you telling me, not the other way around.

You got backed in the corner. You intentionally didn't respond to all of my posts and now you're conveniently bringing up the topic again after I narrowed the conversation back into one post. This is your posting tactic. You like to argue in big paragraphs and multiple posts because it allows you to transition the topic easier. When you're pinned into one topic without distractions, you always flee. Every time.
#812 May 04 2015 at 7:19 PM Rating: Default
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Double post

Edited, May 5th 2015 3:19am by Almalieque
#813 May 04 2015 at 11:41 PM Rating: Good
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When you're pinned into one topic without distractions, you always flee. Every time.
With the extremely rare cases of gbaji saying "you're right, I was wrong"...yes; every time.
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#814 May 05 2015 at 5:19 AM Rating: Good
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Again though, this is completely circular. You are starting with the assumption that the GOP is "bad for blacks" and the Dems are therefore "good for blacks", but then refusing to actually look at the positions of the parties and the effects those have. Your entire argument revolves around the assumption that "appealing to blacks" is equivalent to "more liberal". My argument is that there's nothing about being black that should require you to be liberal. That association is one of your own making and I think it's preventing you from examining the issue clearly.


Are you still sad that a demographic that your party actively maligns doesn't want to vote for you? It's not necessarily that the democrats are doing that much for black people, it's that they share some themes in interests, and the RNC shafts minority groups to score points among it's base whenever humanly possible.
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#815 May 05 2015 at 8:41 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
Explain it again.
Pay attention? Stop ignoring?
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#816 May 05 2015 at 9:23 AM Rating: Decent
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Middle class is the group that *doesn't* need government help.

Nope, still just the class that's IN THE FUCKING MIDDLE. It'd be great if no one in the middle class needed welfare. Our society has chosen leaders who have prevented that from happening in the name of capitalism, though. Sad, but the solution isn't just to wave our hands and say "no true middle class member would need welfare, the Tautology Department of Tautology Studies in Tautology told me".

Also, the Democratic Party is the party of the working class, which again, includes you. You just vote manifestly against your own self interest because you are easy to manipulate. It's close to literally impossible to think of any GOP policy that's benefited you in any way. Your taxes certainly haven't gone down. Your job only exists because of trade limitations. In a free market you make $25 a day assuming you aren't replaced outright by slave labor.

You are welcome, comrade.

Edited, May 5th 2015 11:24am by Smasharoo
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#817 May 05 2015 at 5:39 PM Rating: Decent
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Smasharoo wrote:
It'd be great if no one in the middle class needed welfare. Our society has chosen leaders who have prevented that from happening in the name of capitalism, though.


I'd say that our society has chosen leaders who have caused that the reverse to happen in the name of socialism, though. I mean, it's not crazy to suspect that a political ideology that exists to create government programs to provide stuff for people might just be responsible for the expansion of such programs (and thus dependence on them) into increasingly higher income ranges. And if they are at the same time increasing taxes on real earnings in order to pay for those things, it's kind of a double whammy.

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Sad, but the solution isn't just to wave our hands and say "no true middle class member would need welfare, the Tautology Department of Tautology Studies in Tautology told me".


If we're to have a useful definition of "middle class", then it's perfectly acceptable though. Otherwise, we're left with income numbers with no meaning. So would you argue that if the bottom 50% of the population all lost their jobs tomorrow, that we should still call those in say the 20th to 50th percentile "middle class" (or all of them since the median would equal the 1st percentile)? Wouldn't that make the term meaningless? What if the bottom 50% earned zero dollars, and the 51st percentile immediately jumped to $100k/year? Would you still lump the folks within some number of percentiles above 50 and below in the same class?

That's an absurd measure to use. I mean, it's a measure, but it has no real economic meaning. In contrast, if we judge middle class based on relative self sufficiency, then this becomes a useful metric by which to measure the performance of our economy based on how it benefits those living in it. A large middle class then actually means something. Whereas in your measure, the middle class is always the same relative size and thus meaningless to measure.


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It's close to literally impossible to think of any GOP policy that's benefited you in any way. Your taxes certainly haven't gone down.


Except when Reagan lowered them. And again when Bush lowered them, of course. Then there's when Clinton raised them. And when Obama raised them as well. You really want to make the tax rate argument? Or are you going to actually play the whole "Obama didn't raise taxes, he just let the lower tax rate expire" game?

And that's just income tax rates. We can also look at capital gains tax rates. And we can look at payroll tax rates. And then we can look at things like the ACA, which significantly increased health care costs for most working people. All of that creates a strong motivation for people in the "middle class" to avoid the Dems like a plague. Which, I suspect is precisely why they do just that. You're repeating the same old narrative of the GOP being the "party of the rich", but the reality is that anyone making even an average wage is hurt by the Dems and conversely helped by the GOP, even if merely because they are *not* passing new laws that lump additional costs on them and blockages to their success and the success of their children.
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#818 May 05 2015 at 5:46 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
So would you argue that if the bottom 50% of the population all lost their jobs tomorrow, that we should still call those in say the 20th to 50th percentile "middle class" (or all of them since the median would equal the 1st percentile)? [...] That's an absurd measure to use.

Your argument is that it's an "absurd measure" because it doesn't hold up to an even more absurd scenario where 50% of the country suddenly loses their jobs overnight? Well, okay then.

Edited, May 5th 2015 6:47pm by Jophiel
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#819 May 05 2015 at 6:28 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
My argument was that welfare is no different than other financial interactions that we experience in life.


So is mine. That's why I repeatedly compared the choice to work the minimum amount required to receive welfare benefits rather than working to increase real earnings to the choice to buy the half off t-shirt rather than the one not on sale. When you affect the reward/effort equation, you will change the rate at which people make different choices. And in the case of welfare, the change is that more people will choose to remain on welfare rather than expend the effort to earn a higher wage on their own.

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You've misconstrued into a circular argument.


No. I've actually applied the financial rules that work everywhere else. You, on the other hand want to believe in this magical case where welfare does not influence people's choices. And you defend this by repeatedly insisting that people only stay on welfare if they choose to, so it's still their choice, so nothing bad is happening. I think that's circular. You're ignoring the fact that the mere existence of welfare benefits affects people's choices, in the same way that the existence of a sale affects what people will buy. You can't just hand wave that away.

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Furthermore, I've said that it provides the opportunity to not worry about paying for the necessities which opens way for education and training. So when your interpretation of my argument is "yea, but look over here at these other problems", you are indeed arguing a strawman.


No. I've directly responded to your argument several times. The problem is that bit above that you keep ignoring. That welfare influences people's choices. The number of people who might otherwise have chosen to work harder/smarter/whatever and improve their real earnings but do not because of welfare is much higher than the number of people who were able to use welfare to pursue education and training and improve their lives who would otherwise not have been able to do this. We have to look at the relative deltas. Welfare causes a net decrease in real economic prosperity. It attempts to make up for this with false prosperity in the form of the benefits themselves.

Which would be fine if the only factor involved was whether someone could afford to put food on the table. But what we find is that there's a massive sociological effect based the difference between "real" and "false" prosperity. It's that difference that affects statistics like why blacks are so much more likely to be on the wrong end of police activities than whites.

And, of course, the recipient of the "false" prosperity has a much steeper hill to clime to get to "real" prosperity as well. As I stated earlier, someone who actually earns 30k/year is much better off than someone earning $10k/year with $20k/year in benefits. Both may live at the same level economically, but the latter person has to increase his earnings by $20k/year before he sees any increase in outcome. The person earning $30k in real income gains a dollar of prosperity for every dollar he increases his earnings from that point on. That creates an absolutely massive difference in reward to effort ratio for those two people.

There's just a huge list of negatives to welfare and not much positives except the assumption that without it, maybe people would starve or something. And yet, people weren't starving before Johnson's "Great Society". We managed to find ways to help the truly needy without creating a gigantic government safety net. It's been a disastrous social experiment IMO. And yes, it's most negatively impacted people of color, which is why I find it ironic that you're so steadfastly defending it. I'm honestly not sure if this is because you refuse to believe that it's negative, or if you just don't want to admit that the party you've aligned yourself with may have been involved in one of the greatest negative socio-economic impacts to blacks in this country since segregation.

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I provided reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, as opposed to simply against Republicans.


And as I quite clearly stated (with quotes of you as well), you did so by talking about positions you oppose, not ones you support. I'm not sure how much more clearly I can state this. What's funny is that this is a kind of subtle word difference, but it's very noticeable once you start looking for it. And it's amazing how often liberal positions are defined not by what they are "for", but what they are "against". As I have said many times in the past (and will probably repeat many times in the future), it's much much easier to get people to agree on what they don't want, than to get them to agree on what they want.

Which is precisely why the Left defines themselves this way. Which is ironic given that their platform is all about "change" and "progress". You'd think, if you are proposing some new change, that you should have to justify that change by showing that it's "better" than the status quo. But nearly always, the left simply points to the flaws of said status quo and then calls for "change" or "reform", absent any details of what that entails. Then, once they've got enough people clamoring for something new and win some political power, they are free to enact the change they want. Which, most of the time, isn't what people would have supported if they'd started out by saying what they wanted to do. The ACA is a great example of this btw. Generic "health care reform" polled at somewhere around 80% back in 2008. But the ACA itself has consistently polled at 55-60% in opposition. That's a pretty big gap, right? How'd we get a law in place that the majority opposed? Because they weren't voting *for* that law. They were voting *against* the status quo.

Again, that's why the Left does it this way. It's about tricking people into supporting an agenda they would not support otherwise.

Alma wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
The part you keep balking at is when I point to welfare as a major contributing factor to the initial difference (poverty rates between black and white). But that's you refusing to even consider that your chosen party might not actually be "good for blacks" as you assume. Cart before the horse though.

Two party system. We're going in circles. As I said pages ago, it's the lesser of two evils. You're arguing a fallacy that since the Democratic policies aren't "good" for blacks, then Republican policies must be "good or better" for blacks. The reality can be and often is, that neither are good. Look at how HRC is now arguing against her own prison policies.


Ok. But I'm asking why blacks vote so overwhelmingly Democrat. You can say "lesser of two evils", but are you actually assessing the relative "evil" here? As I pointed out earlier, all you seem to do is point to things you don't like about the GOP, but not so much what you like about the Dems (or dislike about the Dems and like about the GOP). There's a whole slew of issues out there, all of which should weigh in any rational pro/con decision, but you're basically saying "the GOP is bad for blacks on this small list of issues, so blacks vote Democrat".

I just think that's a poor way to make a decision like this.

Quote:
The more Democratic you behave, the more likely you will attract Democrats and not Republicans. Since more blacks tend to vote Democrat, the more likely you will attract black voters. That statement has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not Republican policies are good or bad for blacks. It has nothing to do with blacks needing to be liberal.


Except that you're assuming that "blacks tend to vote Democratic" is some natural state of being that can't change. I keep telling you that this is circular. Why don't blacks tend to vote Republican? If your answer is "because blacks tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans aren't Democratic enough", then your answer is completely meaningless (and circular). And that's what it looks like you just said.

Quote:
You can literally replace the word "black" with any other voting group that is factual and it would be just as true. This statement is to disprove your claim that there is no correlation.


Except that no other group votes in such lockstep with one party along racial lines. Which is the whole point I'm trying to make. Why do blacks "tend to vote Democratic"?

Quote:
Are you going to tell me that you didn't skip my entire explanation of this? I'm the one telling you that you don't understand what an Uncle Tom is.


I'm telling you that I honestly don't recall you ever explaining what you think an Uncle Tom is and I'm not going to read through 17 pages of this thread to try to find it. And I'm asking you to write this explanation down so that we're not playing this stupid game of "What do you mean?" "I already told you!".

I've been very clear about what Uncle Tom means and how it is used to apply pressure to black people to comply with a social ideology. If you think I'm wrong, how about actually providing a counter argument? Wouldn't that be shocking!

Edited, May 5th 2015 5:46pm by gbaji
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#820 May 05 2015 at 6:38 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
So would you argue that if the bottom 50% of the population all lost their jobs tomorrow, that we should still call those in say the 20th to 50th percentile "middle class" (or all of them since the median would equal the 1st percentile)? [...] That's an absurd measure to use.

Your argument is that it's an "absurd measure" because it doesn't hold up to an even more absurd scenario where 50% of the country suddenly loses their jobs overnight? Well, okay then.


It's an example case to prove the point that merely taking a percentile range of a population and calling it "middle class" is meaningless. We could just as easily talk about an economy with a very flat income growth over the first 50 percentiles, and a much sharper growth from that point up and the same flaw with Smash's methodology appears. At some point, for a term like this to have meaning, it has to actually mean something. If the term is a measure of relative self sufficiency, then the "size" of the middle class grows or shrinks based on how well people are doing relatively. Which makes it useful, right? If it's always a set range of percentiles, then it's always the same size, and measuring it does not tell us anything. It becomes a meaningless piece of rhetoric to use to try to appeal to a wider range of people by lying to them about whether or how some policy you're advocating will actually affect them.

Kinda exactly what Obama is doing when he claims his policies are "good for the middle class". Well. By Smash's definition, it's good for the portion of the middle class that needs welfare to get by, but not good for the portion of the middle class that doesn't. Which makes his use of the term meaningless. Which is the whole point of using the term this way.
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#821 May 05 2015 at 6:40 PM Rating: Good
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How'd we get a law in place that the majority opposed?


Politics.

The ideal solution would be basic state healthcare, like every other developed nation, but instead we got a mediocre solution. Still better than no solution.
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gbaji wrote:
It becomes a meaningless piece of rhetoric to use to try to appeal to a wider range of people by lying to them about whether or how some policy you're advocating will actually affect them.

Well, um... yeah. I realize that you have a broad band of political naivety and all but... umm... duh?

While you were Googling "What's the middle class?" you should have come across the 95,000 remarks that one major 'fact' of the middle class is that nearly everyone considers themselves part of it. When a politician speaks of the 'middle class', they're doing so because it's a nice phrase that makes everyone feel good about themselves.

You didn't know this? Really? I mean, I get that now you'll start backpedaling and insisting that of course you knew this (then try and spin some thing about how Democrats do this but Republicans do that) but... really? Well, thanks for the laugh anyway.
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#823 May 06 2015 at 5:40 AM Rating: Default
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Gbaji wrote:
So is mine. That's why I repeatedly compared the choice to work the minimum amount required to receive welfare benefits rather than working to increase real earnings to the choice to buy the half off t-shirt rather than the one not on sale. When you affect the reward/effort equation, you will change the rate at which people make different choices. And in the case of welfare, the change is that more people will choose to remain on welfare rather than expend the effort to earn a higher wage on their own.


Gbaji wrote:

No. I've actually applied the financial rules that work everywhere else. You, on the other hand want to believe in this magical case where welfare does not influence people's choices. And you defend this by repeatedly insisting that people only stay on welfare if they choose to, so it's still their choice, so nothing bad is happening. I think that's circular. You're ignoring the fact that the mere existence of welfare benefits affects people's choices, in the same way that the existence of a sale affects what people will buy. You can't just hand wave that away.


Gbaji wrote:
No. I've directly responded to your argument several times. The problem is that bit above that you keep ignoring. That welfare influences people's choices. The number of people who might otherwise have chosen to work harder/smarter/whatever and improve their real earnings but do not because of welfare is much higher than the number of people who were able to use welfare to pursue education and training and improve their lives who would otherwise not have been able to do this. We have to look at the relative deltas. Welfare causes a net decrease in real economic prosperity. It attempts to make up for this with false prosperity in the form of the benefits themselves.

Which would be fine if the only factor involved was whether someone could afford to put food on the table. But what we find is that there's a massive sociological effect based the difference between "real" and "false" prosperity. It's that difference that affects statistics like why blacks are so much more likely to be on the wrong end of police activities than whites.

And, of course, the recipient of the "false" prosperity has a much steeper hill to clime to get to "real" prosperity as well. As I stated earlier, someone who actually earns 30k/year is much better off than someone earning $10k/year with $20k/year in benefits. Both may live at the same level economically, but the latter person has to increase his earnings by $20k/year before he sees any increase in outcome. The person earning $30k in real income gains a dollar of prosperity for every dollar he increases his earnings from that point on. That creates an absolutely massive difference in reward to effort ratio for those two people.

There's just a huge list of negatives to welfare and not much positives except the assumption that without it, maybe people would starve or something. And yet, people weren't starving before Johnson's "Great Society". We managed to find ways to help the truly needy without creating a gigantic government safety net. It's been a disastrous social experiment IMO. And yes, it's most negatively impacted people of color, which is why I find it ironic that you're so steadfastly defending it. I'm honestly not sure if this is because you refuse to believe that it's negative, or if you just don't want to admit that the party you've aligned yourself with may have been involved in one of the greatest negative socio-economic impacts to blacks in this country since segregation.
Even as a competitor, you wouldn't argue against sales, you would counter how your product is worth the extra money or adjust quantities or prices. You're arguing for welfare reform under the guise of removing welfare. You're singling out welfare because of the source of funds, not because of the effects that are ubiquitous in everything else that we do in life.

Gbaji wrote:
And as I quite clearly stated (with quotes of you as well), you did so by talking about positions you oppose, not ones you support. I'm not sure how much more clearly I can state this. What's funny is that this is a kind of subtle word difference, but it's very noticeable once you start looking for it. And it's amazing how often liberal positions are defined not by what they are "for", but what they are "against". As I have said many times in the past (and will probably repeat many times in the future), it's much much easier to get people to agree on what they don't want, than to get them to agree on what they want.

Which is precisely why the Left defines themselves this way. Which is ironic given that their platform is all about "change" and "progress". You'd think, if you are proposing some new change, that you should have to justify that change by showing that it's "better" than the status quo. But nearly always, the left simply points to the flaws of said status quo and then calls for "change" or "reform", absent any details of what that entails. Then, once they've got enough people clamoring for something new and win some political power, they are free to enact the change they want. Which, most of the time, isn't what people would have supported if they'd started out by saying what they wanted to do. The ACA is a great example of this btw. Generic "health care reform" polled at somewhere around 80% back in 2008. But the ACA itself has consistently polled at 55-60% in opposition. That's a pretty big gap, right? How'd we get a law in place that the majority opposed? Because they weren't voting *for* that law. They were voting *against* the status quo.

Again, that's why the Left does it this way. It's about tricking people into supporting an agenda they would not support otherwise.


Gbaji wrote:
Ok. But I'm asking why blacks vote so overwhelmingly Democrat. You can say "lesser of two evils", but are you actually assessing the relative "evil" here? As I pointed out earlier, all you seem to do is point to things you don't like about the GOP, but not so much what you like about the Dems (or dislike about the Dems and like about the GOP). There's a whole slew of issues out there, all of which should weigh in any rational pro/con decision, but you're basically saying "the GOP is bad for blacks on this small list of issues, so blacks vote Democrat".

I just think that's a poor way to make a decision like this.
I provided reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, as opposed to simply against Republicans. You only quoted the latter and ignored the former. That is a personal problem.

Gbaji wrote:

Except that you're assuming that "blacks tend to vote Democratic" is some natural state of being that can't change. I keep telling you that this is circular. Why don't blacks tend to vote Republican? If your answer is "because blacks tend to vote Democratic, and Republicans aren't Democratic enough", then your answer is completely meaningless (and circular). And that's what it looks like you just said.
I don't assume that at all. Blacks voting Democratic is merely a fact as of today. So the correlation exists and you are wrong. I've argued this entire time that Blacks vote based on policies, not political party. When the state of black America changes (e.g, becomes the top 1%), support of political policies will change and vary more.

gbaji wrote:
Except that no other group votes in such lockstep with one party along racial lines. Which is the whole point I'm trying to make. Why do blacks "tend to vote Democratic"?
*Transition attempt* The point of this comment was to show that the correlation exist. There are several groups that are lockstep with one party. If you want to know why the black community specifically, then read my second response of this post.

Gbaji wrote:
'm telling you that I honestly don't recall you ever explaining what you think an Uncle Tom is and I'm not going to read through 17 pages of this thread to try to find it. And I'm asking you to write this explanation down so that we're not playing this stupid game of "What do you mean?" "I already told you!".

I've been very clear about what Uncle Tom means and how it is used to apply pressure to black people to comply with a social ideology. If you think I'm wrong, how about actually providing a counter argument? Wouldn't that be shocking!
What I explained to you is how your argument of Uncle Tom vs RINO is wrong. Furthermore, you never expressed what an actual uncle tom is. If you stand behind your argument of "just reproduce it, don't have me look for it", then why don't you explain your understanding of what an Uncle Tom is. It's clear that you don't understand.


Edited, May 6th 2015 2:26pm by Almalieque
#824 May 06 2015 at 7:51 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:
How'd we get a law in place that the majority opposed?
Call it a religious jihad to oppose it. Pick small time in history where the laws were changed and pretend everything before it didn't exist so you can insist it's "tradition" and "correct" to do it the newer way.
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#825 May 06 2015 at 4:58 PM Rating: Decent
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Jophiel wrote:
gbaji wrote:
It becomes a meaningless piece of rhetoric to use to try to appeal to a wider range of people by lying to them about whether or how some policy you're advocating will actually affect them.

Well, um... yeah. I realize that you have a broad band of political naivety and all but... umm... duh?

While you were Googling "What's the middle class?" you should have come across the 95,000 remarks that one major 'fact' of the middle class is that nearly everyone considers themselves part of it. When a politician speaks of the 'middle class', they're doing so because it's a nice phrase that makes everyone feel good about themselves.

You didn't know this? Really? I mean, I get that now you'll start backpedaling and insisting that of course you knew this (then try and spin some thing about how Democrats do this but Republicans do that) but... really? Well, thanks for the laugh anyway.


At the risk of falling into your cleverly laid trap, you kinda did just quote me clearly indicating that I did, indeed, know this. But once you get past the meaningless "everyone is middle class" rhetoric and start reading stuff by folks who are actually attempting to use the term in a meaningful manner, you start finding a pattern of usage that aligns with how I've been using the term. It's why nearly every serious discussion of the middle class will mention that hard dollar numbers don't work because costs of living vary wildly based on region. So a given dollar income might put you in the middle class in Kansas, but not in New York. Clearly, it's not just where you fall in the national income percentile bracket, but whether you earn "enough" money to meet some criteria. And that criteria is some level well above mere subsistence. Measuring your income relative to cost of living is the correct way to determine this. Assigning arbitrary percentile values is not.
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#826 May 06 2015 at 5:34 PM Rating: Decent
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Even as a competitor, you wouldn't argue against sales, you would counter how your product is worth the extra money or adjust quantities or prices. You're arguing for welfare reform under the guise of removing welfare. You're singling out welfare because of the source of funds, not because of the effects that are ubiquitous in everything else that we do in life.


You seem to be confusing two different aspects of the issue:

1. Whether the act of subsidizing lack of or less work affects people's choices. This is analogous to the market effect of putting something on sale. And yes, of course it will affect people's choices. This effect is either true or not true regardless of what we think of the choice itself. If the government provides a tax credit if you buy an electric car, it will increase the number of people who will choose to buy electric cars. This should not even be an issue in contention. Can we agree that this is true?

2. The effect of the choice difference is negative. This is a separate issue and can be argued. My argument is that while the short term effects of providing "help" to those with low incomes seems good, the effect on their future employment choices far far outweighs this. By flattening the reward curve, welfare reduces the benefit of working more as opposed to simply sitting at some low level of income and relying on assistance programs to make up the difference. And this harms those who do this over time. Worse, it seriously harms their children since it both ensures that they will be raised in an environment with minimal good paying jobs *and* ensures that they feel less stigmatized by the mere fact of receiving public assistance. It's hard to teach children a strong work ethic when you're engaged in the "do the minimum to get benefits" behavior.


The reason why the source of funds matters is because unlike a free market business which has a bottom line, the government doesn't have one. It's spending our money to do this. So if it does the equivalent of putting "less work" on sale (it makes that choice more attractive than it would otherwise be), it doesn't need to receive more work in the future to make up for that. They can just raise more taxes to pay for the difference. Which in turn creates a downward spiral since the taxes themselves must come from the productive side of the economy. So you're basically taxing those who are working productively to subsidize those who are not. Which seems like an absolutely insane and unsustainable economic model to adopt.

Quote:
I provided reasons why Blacks vote for Democrats, as opposed to simply against Republicans. You only quoted the latter and ignored the former. That is a personal problem.


I'm sorry. As far as I could tell, your reasons were all framed as "they vote Democrat because the Republicans are bad at X, Y, and Z". If you said something different, how about you quote yourself doing this? I don't recall this at all. But hey. It's possible I missed it.

Quote:
I don't assume that at all. Blacks voting Democratic is merely a fact as of today. So the correlation exists and you are wrong. I've argued this entire time that Blacks vote based on policies, not political party. When the state of black America changes (e.g, becomes the top 1%), support of political policies will change and vary more.


Yes. And I've been arguing that blacks should be voting GOP. Let me bottom line this. As long as blacks continue to vote for the Democrats in such high percentages, their state will never change for the better. If blacks will always vote Dem if they are poor, why on earth would the Dems want to change that? Do you even understand that you just basically proved my argument?

What I'm trying to get you to grasp is that the Democratic party agenda (in this context anyway) for the last 50+ years (actually more like 150 years) has been to keep blacks poor. The only thing that changed with the civil rights act was their method of doing this. Prior to the civil rights act, they kept black people poor via segregation, and prevented them from voting against them via Jim Crow laws (and other forms of voter suppression). After the civil rights act, they have kept black people poor via welfare and prevented them from voting against them by a combination of buying their votes with the welfare benefits and judicious use of the Uncle Tom rhetoric. They managed to convince enough black leaders of the day that socialism was the way forward for black advancement and have kept that ruse going ever since. It's reached the point now where it would take a monumental change to fix this because those leaders would have to admit that they were wrong. And that's not likely to happen.

I'll point out that a lot of black leaders back in the late 19th and early 20th century also thought segregation was a good thing for blacks. It took nearly 100 years for them to realize that mistake. How long will it take to realize this one? There is no easy fix to racially aligned social and economic disparity. But by trying for the quick and easy solutions, they've managed to massively lengthen the time involved. Blacks should not be disparate today. At all. There's no reason for it. Except for public policies, entirely supported by the Democrats, that have made it so.

Why do you vote Dem again?

Quote:
The point of this comment was to show that the correlation exist. There are several groups that are lockstep with one party. If you want to know why the black community specifically, then read my second response of this post.


Your second response in this post didn't contain the reasons though. How about you restate your reasons for us instead of referring back to a claimed earlier statement? The problem with your approach is that you are really really terrible at remembering what you actually wrote earlier. I think I've highlighted this several times in this thread already, where you clearly insisted you said one thing, then I went back and quoted where you said something completely different.

So no. I'm not going to accept you just insisting you already did this. If you want to claim your reasons, then state them here, or directly quote them. Don't just say "I already told you!!!". That gets old really fast.

Quote:
What I explained to you is how your argument of Uncle Tom vs RINO is wrong.


Um... But that's not the same as you saying what Uncle Tom means. Once again, you are claiming to have done something you didn't actually do.

Quote:
Furthermore, you never expressed what an actual uncle tom is.


Yes, I did. Multiple times. Uncle Tom is a label applied to a black person who does not comply with the "black political agenda". If he doesn't vote the right way, or hold the right positions, he is labeled an Uncle Tom. Not sure how much more clearly I can say this.

What do you think it means?

Quote:
If you stand behind your argument of "just reproduce it, don't have me look for it", then why don't you explain your understanding of what an Uncle Tom is. It's clear that you don't understand.


I just did. I could give you the entire history of the term, if you want. But I thought (maybe incorrectly) that we were both talking about the same term. I don't think either of us is confused about what the term means. Where we seem to have a disagreement is how it's used.

Uncle Tom refers to the titular character of the book "Uncle Toms cabin". Interestingly enough, the term is a bit of a mistake because the character of Uncle Tom doesn't actually exhibit the kind of complacency that the term has become known for (well, not exactly). Over time, it's evolved to mean a black person who "went along" with the status quo of an unfair/unequal world around him. In our current vernacular, it means someone who acts in ways that are perceived by black activists to be in violation or opposition to their own agenda. It's purely about making people comply with and maintain solidarity with, a very specific social and political agenda.

It's commonly used to refer to any black person who gains political power who is not a Democrat (or who is specifically a Republican). Clarence Thomas was called an Uncle Tom merely for being black and conservative, for example.

Ok. Now it's your turn. What do you think the term means, and how do you think it's applied today? You know, since we're both clearly writing things rather than claiming we already did. Can you do this? At all?

Edited, May 6th 2015 6:31pm by gbaji
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