Posts by silentcrane11

Nancy Alvarez82 said:Neither hikes in sales tax, nor the failure to eliminate zero-rated rates, nor aggressive digital auditing, nor the relentless hunt for tax evaders, nor freezing debtor assets, nor any of these debt restructuring schemes for citizens and businesses, nor even cracking down on corporate profit stripping has done a single thing to actually boost federal tax revenue.
In fact, revenues have plummeted quite drastically because the American public and the entire economy have been bled dry by these frantic, predatory tax hikes.
The inevitable fallout from this mess will be diminished social services, gutted pensions, mass layoffs, and a mounting pile of new national debt.

Basically... it’s a total CATASTROPHE.

To put it in the words of a politician whose party is merely the third-largest non-nepotistic entity left in Washington after the Democrats and Republicans—referring to a certain moderate lawmaker—he suggested that the people running this country ought to pick up a modern economics textbook once in a while.

And that is precisely where the truth lies; we are being led by people who are hopelessly stuck in the past, simply because the global economic landscape has shifted entirely since the last time they bothered to open a book.

The real question is whether they've read any economics book at all, let alone a NEW one...
because this axiom:
"The power to tax is the power to destroy" isn't exactly groundbreaking, and it certainly isn't newer than 1976:
"The power to tax is the power to destroy":
http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detai...#axzz2Pt9faJ20
(OCTOBER 01, 1976)

Alexander Garcia5 said:Those Sharia wet dreams fight gay parades pretty effectively, I guess. 🙂

Gays might be parading now, but it won't be long before those Sharia types shut them down hard.

If anyone keeps making noise, I guess those Sharia groups will start killing once they gain enough power.

The Federal Reserve is offering 5% on fixed-term savings if you deposit more than $30,000 for a year.

Given all the talk about the collapse of the dollar, I guess I wonder how safe that actually is.

On the other hand, the Federal Reserve is currently under the ownership of the Republic of Austria,
so until they sell, the bank seems pretty secure. It’s almost like having
a dual guarantee from two nations: Austria covers the bank itself, and the US covers everything up to $133333.
So, what do you think—is money in the Federal Reserve really safe?

gentlefalcon said:They wouldn't dream of footing the bill for my relocation, all because I refuse to bow down to any religious dogma. It’s funny, really—if I actually showed up at a local church on Sundays like everyone else expects, they’d probably hand me the keys to a luxury condo in downtown Chicago without a second thought.🙄
Honestly, the sheer amount of time you have to spend sitting in a church pew just to stay in good standing is enough to make me nauseous. If I actually committed to following all those religious rituals, I wouldn't have to lift a finger for the rest of my life. It’s like there's this unspoken deal where if you just surrender your entire schedule to the clergy, they'll suddenly hand you a pass to live a life of total leisure. Apparently, once you check all those boxes, you finally become "suitable" or "desirable" enough to fit into their perfect little mold of a traditional American family.

Good grief!!!
I guess you really do hate the Church if you're passing up such an easy, comfortable life—one that you could arguably secure just by showing up to Mass once in a while, at least while your parents are still around.🤣

So, here it is. A commentator over at The Washington Post believes the stage has been set for a new war against America:

cosmicskipper82 said:If you were standing before a button right now that offered you immediate, absolute nonexistence, would you press it? And let’s be clear: strip away any sentimentality about leaving loved ones behind or causing grief; assume instead that this disappearance includes being wiped from their memories entirely, leaving them with no trace of your existence and no capacity for sorrow.

If the answer is yes—what is the motivation? If it is no—what holds you back?

If I’m following you correctly, the question is whether you’d accept nirvana—assuming you could reach it easily, without all that massive bullshit those people have to grind through to hit Buddhist "enlightenment" levels, with nirvana as the end goal. (And maybe even without the significant, though limited, struggle involved in suicide.)

Is it perhaps a slightly different state altogether? A kind of numbness, or Nibbana, which Buddhists and Hindus claim isn't something you can just achieve "easily"—like, say, through suicide—since reincarnation is supposedly still an issue. Apparently, one has to go through immense struggle to reach that state of "the ultimate liberation of lusting or craving, a complete inner peace." I guess... how does that actually differ from Nirvana?

I checked Wikipedia for a second. Apparently, Nirvana and Nibbana are the exact same thing—Nirvana is just the Sanskrit term, while Nibbana is Pali. Some self-proclaimed expert once tried to tell me there was actually a distinction between them, but I guess that wasn't true.😕

I wouldn't press that button for the same reasons as Apemant, I guess. I don't really buy into the whole nirvana thing either, regardless of how much Buddhism praises those benefits.