Luna Bliss

Unfortunately we just don't have a presidential president, and he is causing trouble with our allies all over the world. I pray he doesn't get 4 more years to do damage.

Actually a Harvard study from 09 put the number at 45,000 deaths yearly, but that's a bit dated. Here's newer info from the Annals Of Internal Medicine for the science-minded... https://www.acpjournals.org/doi/10.7326/M17-1403

The Democrats have not nor could they ever solve all our problems as there are many complications even when in control of 2 branches of govt, but they do provide more help for 'the little guy'. In Social Work I've watched the parties switch over the years, and when Repubs come into power the programs for the needy lessen or disappear. For sure they have not done enough to protect the underdogs -- the poor and the working class -- but they did deliver big time when they created Obamacare (ACA - Affordable Care Act) during the Obama-Biden term. They have much more than empty promises, as some assume. Many are upset about the loss of manufacturing jobs in certain areas of the country (or in adjacent states). I agree this hollowing out of the middle-class is an important issue, as those who had decent middle-class jobs were forced into poverty as neo-liberalism increasingly gained ascendance when factories were allowed to close jobs and relocate overseas. Enough of those forced into poverty due to job loss detached from the Democrats who are supposed to support the working class, and they placed their hopes in Trump -- this is likely the primary reason Trump won. Anyway, this hollowing out of the middle-class is an ongoing pattern stretching back 50 years or more, and has increased as neo-liberalism gained traction under both parties. I expected the Democrats, who typically stand for the underdogs, to do something about it. As I said, they haven't done enough, but they've done a lot of good things I shouldn't ignore. They've made progress in providing affordable health insurance for millions of Americans -- this has saved lives as 30,000 people each year in the US die from lack of affordable health insurance. It didn't go far enough in that it didn't cover everyone, but Biden's plan with a public option will not leave out any poor person, while allowing those who prefer their current health insurance plan to keep it. As I've stated before, I'd be dead without the ACA as I surely couldn't have afforded insurance costing $800.00 to $1300.00 monthly and was allowed to pay an amount based on my yearly income. ACA paid for an expensive medication that saved my life. We also shouldn't forget the social gains the Democrats pushed through -- marriage equality for the LGBTQ community, protections for the Trans community, the Violence Against Women Act, continued support for Affirmative Action, and much much more. Truly they are the party that believes in rights for all and not just the wealthy, white, straight male. I just want more from them.

Look at this @Mollymews If you want to know what the changing nature of global leadership in the 21st century looks like, it resembles this: New Zealand’s deputy prime minister telling a jeering, Covid-denying, Trumpist heckler to “sit down…sunshine” And yesterday, something remarkable happened: Jacinda Ardern was re-elected in a landslide. That might not sound like a big deal, so let me put in context. The big three Anglo societies — Australia, Britain, and America — have all fallen prey to strongman politics. America has become the world’s laughingstock, led by the Idiot-in-Chief, Donald Trump. Britain isn’t too far behind, with clownish Boris Johnson treating the future more like a satire than an exercise in governance. And then there’s Australia — whose PM is a climate change denier, even as his continent is being struck by megafires. The Anglo societies are leaders — in the wrong direction. They are pioneers of social collapse. America has the world’s highest Covid death toll — while Britain has its highest per capita deaths. The only two societies in the world — outside hardcore failed states, like North Korea — where incomes, happiness, trust, and life expectancies are all falling, in a kind of grim trifecta of implosion? America and Britain. America has no Covid strategy whatsoever, and so the current death toll of about 215,000 plus is simply skyrocketing upwards, at the jaw-dropping rate of about 1000 per day. Britain, on the other hand, now faces the “double cliff edge,” as former PM Gordon Brown has correctly put it, of a hard Brexit — breaking up with its largest trading partners, having no real way to obtain even basics like food, medicine, water, and energy — during a literal global pandemic. The mismanagement of Anglo societies is on an epic, surreal scale. They once used to be the envy of the world. No longer. Now they are the laughingstock of the world. The envy of the world now is a new set of leaders, emerging, in unlikely and improbable places. And chief among them is tiny New Zealand. Little New Zealand, it turns out might just be the new leader of the free world. Now, Kiwis don’t like it when I say that. But that doesn’t make it any less true. Take the example of Covid, which serves as a metaphor for what it takes to have a successful society in the 21st century. While completely mismanaged nations like America are simply letting it spiral out of control, even Europe has found it hard to cope with. Meanwhile, in New Zealand, Covid was actually defeated — twice. How did that come to be? Ardern took swift, decisive action. She pioneered what is now a global template of best practices, at least in part — locking down, testing, tracing, quarantining. At the time, there were concerns about the economic impact of all that. But the trade-off between health and the economy is largely false, as the dire experience of America and Britain shows: the longer the pandemic rips through a society, the longer and harder the economic chaos is, too. New Zealand’s leadership on Covid teaches a critical lesson of the 21st century. We now face genuinely existential threats. To democracy, to freedom, to civilisation itself. The best way to deal with these threats is swiftly and decisively. If they are allowed to fester, they soon spiral out of control. Take the example of Ardern herself. She is a woman in an age of strongmen, who gleefully bestride the world, wrecking society after society. Trump in America, Johnson in Britain, Modi in India, Duterte, Putin — the list is so long as to be almost endless. The strongmen are fascists and capitalists. They are playing out — hell-bent on playing out — in a grim repeat the story of the 1930s. Capitalism run amok implodes into fascism, as nations plunge into inequality, poverty, despair, and distrust. Their social bonds come undone as middle and working classes find themselves impoverished. When life is a bitter, brutal struggle for survival, friendship and cooperation quickly becomes luxuries. Such imploded classes — like America’s former middle class — become easy meat for demagogues, who misdirect their rage and fury at those even more powerless than them, who are usually already hated minorities. That is the story, in a nutshell, of how America and Britain both imploded. Britain will not survive Brexit, and it’s dubious that America will survive the fallout from Trumpism, even if Trump goes. These societies are now on trajectories of long run and very real collapse — fragmentation, disintegration, and implosion, in every way: economic, social, cultural, political. Now see how Ardern — and Kiwis themselves — resisted all that. What an achievement it really is for a nation to come together and stand for democracy, civilization, equality, goodness, and truth, in an age of collapse and chaos. Ardern is a social democrat — one of the few, who’s successfully led her nation to resist the implosive tide of fascist-capitalist strongman politics. As a result, New Zealand has begun to prosper in remarkable ways. Its success on Covid is only a reflection of those deeper forms of prosperity. It wasn’t just Ardern that led New Zealand to global leadership — but also Kiwis themselves. Check out this example of the deputy PM putting an American heckler firmly in his place. “Sorry, sunshine, wrong place.” Translation: we don’t tolerate uneducated people lecturing us here. Bang. That is how you deal with extremists. That sentiment is popular across New Zealand. That feeling remains — of civilisation, gentleness, goodness, truth. And there is nothing more important than all that. In formal terms, the economist in me would say that New Zealand is a “high trust society.” The truest harbinger of America’s and Britain’s social collapse to come was that levels of trust — in government, in society, in one another — began to fall, decades ago. When people begin to distrust one another, a society cannot cohere. Collective action then becomes impossible. The result is what enmity produces: a politics of hate, a culture of division, a society going backwards, and an economy growing poor. Trust is everything for a society — but especially now, in this age of existential threats. Why? Because a people must be able to cooperate. To defeat the great threats of the 21st century. Individualist approaches and attitudes and cultures no longer work, function. Whether pandemics, climate change, ecological collapse, inequality, or fascist-authoritarianism, no problem of the 21st century can now be defeated in an individualistic way. That is why though America and Britain try, they fail, over and over again — individualism cannot yield the level and intensity of collective action necessary now. Take the example of Covid to make that real. Ardern could have ordered the template that is now global best practice — lock down, test, trace, isolate, and so forth. But it took a population willing to cooperate with it to make it happen. That only was going to be the case in a high trust society. In America, by contrast, Trump’s Army of American Idiots refused to cooperate — and Covid spun out of control, as everyone from Red Staters to governors flatly refused to act collectively, in the name of free-dumb. The same was and is true in Britain, where impending lockdowns produce street parties which become super-spreader events. People in these societies no longer care about one another. I don’t mean that in an abstract way. I mean it in a lethally real one. They no longer care whether others live or die. That is what it means when Americans deny each other healthcare. That is what it means when Brits think a drink at the pub or a street party is more important than stopping the spread of a lethal virus. They have become low trust societies, and while that may sound like some kind of remote abstraction, what it really means is: the average person feels nothing whatsoever about mass death, he has lost the ability to care whether anyone else lives or dies. A society like that has already collapsed — it just doesn’t know it yet. It’s in that way that New Zealand really is different. Maybe Kiwis don’t fully understand the scale of their success, and their new role as global leaders. Or maybe, having re-elected Ardern, they do. Either way, what they have achieved is genuinely remarkable, not to be understated, in that very Kiwi way. It is a profoundly special and meaningful thing for a nation to prosper by cooperating with a leader who is a young woman and a social democrat in an age of collapse driven by the furious rise of global strongman politics. That is why, even if Kiwis don’t really want it to be, New Zealand has now emerged as a new global leader. People joke about fleeing there — but nobody’s really kidding. New Zealand has a rising quality of life, in an age where living standards are either stagnant, as they are across much of Europe, or falling catastrophically, like in America and Britain. It has done so not in the old way — exploitation, abuse, and hatred, of those even more powerless than it — but in the new way, which is through cooperation and investment. There is a lesson there. What was global leadership in the 20th century really about? America’s bizarre, macho intellectual and political class would have said: being able to “project power,” winning the Cold War, winning the “war on terror,” building a gigantic drone-powered killing machine. None of those things stopped America from collapsing. In retrospect, they were follies. They had no lasting positive effect. The idea of the 20th century was that power came from exploitation, cruelty, and violence — but the only result of that was mutually assured destruction not being deterred, as the theory went, but actually happening. America and Russia today are mirror images of each other, failed societies. Leadership in the 21st century is not about using force to defeat some imagined enemy. It is about just the opposite. A society being able to come together, cooperate, invest, to lift its own living standards. Through better education — not by becoming the kind of uneducated louts New Zealand’s deputy PM rightly shamed Americans for being. Through an expansive social contract that gives people freedom to enjoy the basics, to realise themselves, to develop and grow as human beings, not simply to be cogs in a military-industrial machine, or capitalist-profiteering one. The future is no longer about exploitation — it is about cooperation. New Zealanders will point out that their society still has a long way to go. They are correct. Its investment rate needs to rise. Its dependence on a few forms of exports, which are ecologically hyper-sensitive, should be both protected and diversified. Its currency and central banking mechanisms should be made more flexible in order to do it. It should build even stronger public institutions to make that all happen. Mobility needs to continue rising. I could go on, with the typical recommendations economists make. But the truth is that they are both obvious and superficial. A high trust society is capable of handling those challenges, but a low trust one never will. What’s more crucial is to see what New Zealand has done different, and right. It has done a far, far better job of overcoming old biases and hatreds than America and Britain and Australia. People can grant one another inherent worth and value. The ideas of dignity and freedom and justice are therefore not seen as luxuries, but necessities, with context and sophisticated meaning. Though it is relatively poorer than many of its peers, it has invested more in having an equal and fair society, made up of educated and healthy and secure and happy middle and bottom — not just a society where a tiny percent at the top takes all the gains, and everyone else struggles, leading to the vicious spiral of poverty, despair, ignorance, fascism, and ruin, like in America and Britain. That is what has made all the difference. So I see New Zealand something like the Canada of the East, to Australia’s America. A society which is overcoming the burdens and legacies of the last few centuries — hate, division, brutality, ignorance — and learning to come together, to cooperate, in gentle ways, retaining the paramount values of decency and truth and goodness, investing in itself, in lifting people up, in the equality and quality of their lives, not just in consumerist status seeking for the top 1% or 10%. And like Canada, it is going to go on succeeding, if it is wise enough to champion all those. The rest — economics, finance, industries, and so forth — are effects of the deeper cause of cooperation, trust, decency, the choice to continue to grow and develop as a civilised society. It might seem that that’s an easy choice. Why would anyone choose not to be a civilised society? But that is the norm now — and New Zealand is one a few exceptions. Again, take a hard look at America and Britain and even Australia. They are not making the correct choices. Australia is the best off, but even it is making some big, big mistakes. It has not been nearly as successful in building a cooperative, trusting, gentle, future-facing society as even New Zealand has been. America and Britain have failed abjectly at the task, demonising and scapegoating minorities — whether Mexicans or Europeans — for their own withering economic, social, and cultural outcomes. The choice to be, and to stay, a civilised society is the most difficult one of all. In this chaotic and challenging age, there are always extremists, fanatics, strongmen, fascists, authoritarians, willing to blame every misfortune on some hated minority, on a lack of purity and piety, on not enough hate and brutality and violence directed at the powerless. Not to take real responsibility for today’s challenges, and to say instead, we must invest together, act together, and that is the only way that our society will grow and mature, in the face of existential threats. That, after all, is what existential threats are: they threaten all of us. They can only thus be defeated, too, by enough of us, acting in concert, in unison, cooperatively. Kiwis might not like what I’ve written. Fair enough. Last time I wrote this, I got a fair amount of flak from them. But this isn’t really for them. It’s for a world, who’s watching a new class of global leaders emerge. Nobody much wants to be America or Britain or Russia anymore. The world looks at such societies with a combination of laughter, horror, and glee. Those violent sods who enslaved us and brutalised us — they’re finally getting what they deserve. LOL — how can people be so foolish?! As yesterday’s global leaders go on collapsing, they are being replaced by an improbable new set. Tiny islands of sanity, decency, civilisation, in an age of chaos driven by existential threats. New Zealand is one (literally). Canada is another. In Asia, perhaps Taiwan and Thailand and Vietnam are beginning to join this pack, too. These are nations who are today’s pioneers. They are not following yesterday’s rules anymore, because those rules have not worked — that much is evident in the stunning, swift, humiliating collapse of yesterday’s giants. They are blazing new trails — whether that global template of best practices for Covid, or Ardern’s “well-being budget,” or Canada’s cultural ideas of gentleness and kindness. It’s this set of global leaders who are really going to define and shape the 21st century, whether they know it or not. The collapsing giants are just that — societies on their way to disintegration and implosion. They will not exist as we know them by the century’s end — even by the decade’s end. They will be broken up, fragmented, poor, and riven. But the shocking, abject level of self-destruction we see in America and Britain was a choice, too. As is New Zealand’s choice to back Ardern, to grow and evolve as a social democracy, to rewrite the boundaries of cooperation and investment in the 21st century. The world is learning the hard way the true price of strongman politics — how catastrophic it is. It’s measured in America’s hundreds of thousands dead, in Britain’s destroyed future, in Australia’s megafires. And it is now beginning to look for an alternative. It is seeking something as far away from the stupidity, hate, violence, and folly of the strongmen as is possible — something very much like a little island that can cooperate, nurture, nourish, grow together, not apart, lift up, not punch down, led by a young woman, who is the opposite of a strongman in every conceivable way. Whether it knows it or not, the eyes of the world are on little New Zealand. It’s not easy being in the spotlight. Maybe you never wanted to. And yet when you are a beacon of light in a dark age, you are the spotlight. Umair Haque https://eand.co/the-new-leaders-of-the-21st-century-8512d029552

I don't know what you mean. Is that another Republican meme? Do you think it's fair that Blacks have 1/10th the wealth as Whites in this country, especially given all the ways we kept them down? Thinking of the GI bill that excluded them -- a very important factor in wealth building for Whites after WW2, enabling them to purchase homes and transfer wealth to descendants.

White people aren't bad, they just happen to be the ones with a certain color skin where industrialization began and so initially had the power to exploit land and people with these tools. Because of this, they have more wealth. I don't mind if some have more wealth and power -- not asking for total equality -- but hey, people are starving, dying. Have a heart, white people -- give a little more. Nobody needs multiple billions in this world.

It's not quite so simple with your identity politics Luna. Consider this from an economic standpoint: The discussion hasn't been about whether immigration in and of itself is a good thing, at least not until you brought it up. We've been discussing whether it's fair, or even true, that illegal immigrants aren't criminally prosecuted for doing something illegal (being undocumented) to the same degree that other criminals who break the law are. Jackson says they aren't because of "identity politics" perpetuated by the Left. I say "identity politics" has nothing to do with it. The issue is exploiting immigrants when it benefits us (Dems & Repubs alike) and ignoring the legality of their status when a greater benefit takes precedence (or a creepy orange guy tries to make it so). IDENTITY POLITICS: A label placed on historically disadvantaged groups when they or their supporters DARE to insist that the marginalized group be treated equally. In other words, those assigning the label are attempting to shut the exploited up or dismiss their valid concerns. But to your point, is immigration a good thing? You referenced it not being good for the low-wage earner, but it's certainly not good for those who want to stay in power in the US at this time -- the new autocrats headed by Trump. Trump and his autocrat minions are getting super-strict about brown people immigrating here because he wisely assumes they don't vote for bigots, as the brown people overwhelmingly vote Democrat. And the brown people are growing even without immigrants -- brown gene is dominant -- those poor white guys are a shakin' lol Would immigration lower the wages of the already working poor in the US? Well it would if we don't regulate and continue to support policies which allow exploitation -- immigrant vs poor US resident would make no difference if we had a guaranteed minimum wage. No employer could exploit workers then via hiring immigrants below minimum wage to extract greater profit from them. Problem solved. IT IS NOT THE EXPLOITED WORKER CAUSING THE PROBLEMS -- IT IS THE CORPORATIONS AND GOVERNMENT REGULATORS WHO SEEK PROFIT VIA FORCING LOWER CLASSES TO FIGHT EACH OTHER FOR THE CRUMBS.

Fine, Jackson, if you want to keep your panties in a twist over this non-issue have at it. Never mind that the Repubs haven't cared about the legality of immigrants when it was expedient -- when it lined their pockets. But now, when the US is poised (if not already) to become a country where people of color are the majority and the poor little white guys in the minority won't be able to keep their wealth so easily (acquired from their exploitation of the brown people), hey lets whip up the base with fears of invasion from the southern border, and get all huffy about law and order and equate people crossing the border (from countries WE DEVASTATED with our invasions and exploitation) to mass murderers and bank robbers.

I have a feeling we're not really blocked, and that he just wanted to tell us we were. Kind of a pre-departure gloating of sorts.

Joni Mitchell makes up for EVERY bad deed you've ever foisted upon us...and then some!

I really like seeing an example of a sane country given these crazy times.... BTW, there was an article about NZ in The Atlantic yesterday: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/10/jacinda-ardern-new-zealand-election/616753/

Don't put words in my mouth -- I never said I have one standard for those who break the saw and another for those who don't -- you don't get to be the 'law and order' side and make false accusations toward me with your righteous indignation. And I wasn't trying to change the subject to avoid talking about equality under the law -- you never made it clear enough just what issues you were concerned about from the get-go and neglected to answer my questions needed for clarification. As a typical right-winger you frame the debate using ridiculous parameters & memes you assume are truth -- but focusing on law and order in a discussion about immigrants misses the big picture. In your obsession with right-wing concerns regarding law and order you're unable to see what this really is about. You assume it's some kind of "identity politics" where we are letting our 'special brown people' get a pass and circumvent law and order because we (liberals) give special favors to people of color. The fact is that we use the resources and people in 3rd world countries for our benefit, and the US has been quite abusive about it all around the globe. And when it serves us to be more lenient regarding their legal status because we need Hispanics as maids and crop pickers then we turn a blind eye to what's legal. But when a demagogue like Trump comes along and needs to whip up his base by causing his minions to 'fear the foreigner' and uses this dynamic to divide us against each other (the 'divide and conquer' strategies typical of autocrats), then suddenly he manufactures a HUGE band of invading marauders on our southern borders. I mean a caravan for God's sake, and Mexican r-a-p-i-s-t-s. So you see here, Jackson, you've bought into two right-wing memes leveled at the 'left' -- accusing us of not respecting law and order when we value law and order just as much as anyone on the 'right', and accusing us of "identity politics" by imagining we are coddling the person of color by letting them off the hook while punishing the poor white guy via making him adhere to the law. The fact that immigrants wanting a place in the US should be treated with dignity and respect seems to fly right by you.

How can you so misunderstand the point he's making? You misunderstand -- I'm not evaluating him from viewing this one video -- I'm saying the video exemplifies his core essence, his psychological wound that causes him to obsess over individual freedom -- this is the core of his bizarre philosophy that in turn negatively affects his audience. Peterson has excessive fears of being 'taken over', of losing his freedom/autonomy, and this guides his entire philosophy in unbelievably bizarre ways. Sure, he spouts a lot of self-care truisms gleaned from Psychology 101, basic and often helpful in and of itself (like 'clean up your room' as a starting place when someone has neglected taking care of self and life), but he mixes basic Psychology in bizarre ways with a political philosophy appealing to alt-right, 4chan guys who use it to justify discrimination. Not to mention a few observations about lobsters thrown in for good laughs. The crying video simply lays bare for all to see the essence of the neurosis which underlies his philosophy. It would be like seeing the overly-controlling Mussolini have a temper tantrum because he couldn't control everyone, or seeing the narcissistic Trump wailing in pain because he can't make everybody love him. I'm not going to spend a lot of time describing it, but the following does a good job of explaining Peterson's destructive philosophy: https://jacobinmag.com/2020/04/jordan-peterson-capitalism-postmodernism-ideology/ https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/19/jordan-peterson-and-fascist-mysticism/ https://www.vox.com/world/2018/3/26/17144166/jordan-peterson-12-rules-for-life

YOU ARE BLOCKED, TDD IS BLOCKED, GARNET IS BLOCKED, CEKA,,,,,,, EVERYONE ON THE THREAD IS BLOCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I sent this toy to my grandson so he will learn to be protected from the southern border:

So you are worried about these immigrants from other countries (not from the southern border) who do not have as many rights? Which other immigrants and where do u see that Mexicans and South Americans have more rights? And how would this be tied to identity politics?

The very sad thing is, Sorciaa, is that I couldn't be more on topic.

Perhaps you don't live in the USA or have never watched any news? Well I will try to calm down from 'silly mode' and give a sewious reply...lol Serious Serious Serious. Ok, ready. First, I don't think this is a good way to debate -- I ask you to defend your position and you reply with a question, implying that I'm deficient for apparently not watching news? So once again, what is your position and what do you have to back your assertion up with...the assertion that one group can ignore immigration laws while another cannot..?

Janet, I wike you....a wot...