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JustSomeOldGuy wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote: Do you see what you did? You turned a simple joke into one of my patented rants.

Doesn't patenting your rants make you a capitalist?

Absolutely. All rights reserved.

dale blanker wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote: Dale, Dale, Dale............this is a joke! Does your lack of a sense of humor indicate you're a Sanders supporter?

[TAM's thoughtful, well written, but somewhat long and possibly bigotted, dissertation - deleted to save space.]

Do you see what you did? You turned a simple joke into one of my patented rants.

Thanks for the clarification but if you're thinking about getting into standup comedy, well...

I do agree with some of your conclusions about Sanders and socialism. I'm not a Sanders supporter - he makes me cringe when I see him speak. My concern is that your conclusions are absolute, finding little or no redeeming value in another point of view. This perspective is widespread in our dysfunctional Congress.

Let me temper this thread with a bit more reasonable example of Sanders view on government:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/17/politics/ ... socialism/

Anyway, thanks again for the lesson in Sanders but I suspect you enjoyed presenting it as much as we enjoyed seeing it.

Bigoted? Wow. At least my knowledge is closer to the source than yours. If you're suggesting that I should see merit in ideas that are without merit...... well.....

I completely understand Bernie Sanders' description of "democratic socialism", and I already know he makes comparisons to Denmark. I reject out of hand the idea of converting into a Danish style gov't, which as your video link points out, even Sanders doesn't understand as is pointed out by SEVERAL danes in that video.

This is a gun forum. Here are Denmark's gun laws: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_Norway. You have to have a LICENSE to own something which WE take to be a fundamental human right. In order to GET a license, you have to either be a licensed hunter or belong to a sport shooting club. You can't just buy a gun because you want one for home defense........let alone concealed carry.

An example:

The law for storage of firearms are strict.

For shotguns and rifles, the requirement given in the weapons act is to have the firearm, or a vital part of it, securely locked away. Generally, this means an approved gun safe, securely bolted to a non-removable part of the house. (A vital part is considered to be the bolt group—the bolt head will suffice—for rifles, the slide for pistols, or the barrel of a shotgun.)

The police are allowed to make a home inspection of the safe. An inspection must be announced more than 48 hours in advance, and the police are only allowed to see the safe and make sure it is legally installed.

Ammunition is generally only sold to persons with valid weapon license. However, if one is in possession of a legally unregistered shotgun bought before 1 April 1990, and is in the hunter registry, one can purchase shotgun ammunition. Without a special permit only 10,000 rounds of ammunition can be stored by a single person, or 15,000 rounds if 5,000 of them are 22LR or smaller calibre. Two kg of black powder may be stored in a separate building if the person has a license for a black-powder firearm.

Another problem with Denmark (AND most of the other socialist european nations)..... Danes have a critically low birth rate - SO low that the danish gov't is on a push to try and increase it. Their official retirement age to collect a retirement pension is 65, BUT, like most european countries, because they have a shrinking birthrate, and because all medical care is essentially free, they have an increasingly larger retired population, supported by the work of an increasingly smaller working population. So....what do they do to have enough workers to support their system? Like most european socialist countries, they import workers, primarily from Muslim nations, most (not all) of whom do not understand, agree with, or accept Denmark's social standards. And with that comes jihad, which they are now having troubles with, in addition to Muslim street gangs and neighborhoods where ethnic Danes are no longer safe to enter. I'm not saying this as a slap to Islam, but rather to point out the simple fact that the mass importation of religiously and ethnically different people with all the negatively attendant issues is the direct result of Denmark's socialist structure. When the US goes socialist (I believe it will unless the American voters pull their heads out of their nether regions), THAT will be our destiny — we'll have a growing pool of retirees who get everything for free, and a shrinking pool of workers to support it, as more and more of them are on the dole, and particularly those of european descent become a smaller minority as their birth rate stays below the rate necessary to keep the population stable (http://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-birthra ... 1434513662). That is being made up by an increasing number of immigrants - not all of whom appreciate American capitalism - with higher birth rates, as well as higher birth rates in minority communities. I don't care about the racial/ethnic makeup of this country. I am myself a product of more than one race. But I DO care about individual liberty, and the unsustainability of the socialist economic model.

Sanders IS a radical......maybe not when compared to other intentionally socialist countries.....but when compared to the economic history of the United States, he is very much a radical. I have not overstated my case. The problem is that a little less than half of the democrat base is as radical as he is. THAT is a tectonic shift in the electorate. It is hard to imagine even a democrat party stalwart like Tip O'Neill as a democrat today.

My work here is done. Now I'll go bless others with my "bigotry".

WildBill wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Do you see what you did? You turned a simple joke into one of my patented rants.

Just like a liberal, always blaming your problems on others.

dale blanker wrote:

The Annoyed Man wrote:Bernie Sanders is addressing a group of blue collar workers. He explains his manifesto: “Under democratic socialism, if I have two houses, I give you one. If I have two cars, I give you one. If I have two boats, I give you one.”

One of the workers asks “Does that mean if you have two shirts, you give me one.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I have two shirts,” Sanders explains.

Ok, I've heard him talk many times about big banks, campaign finance, and health care but missed hearing the quotes you make above. I suspect he's a bit radical but did not realize he was that bad.

What is your source of when and where he actually said what you have quoted?

Dale, Dale, Dale............this is a joke! Does your lack of a sense of humor indicate you're a Sanders supporter?

For what it is worth, my cousin Tommy "the Commie" knows Sanders personally VERY well. Tom was on the Burlington, VT city council when Sanders was Mayor (1981-1989). After that, Tom served a couple of terms as a legislator in the Vermont state House, and Sanders was a big reason he got elected. Tom was Sanders' campaign manager when he ran for the U.S. House (1991-2007), and has remained in touch with Sanders during his senatorial career (2007 to the present). Sanders has been my cousin Tom's political mentor virtually his entire adult life. I would say that Tom knows Sanders better than anybody on this board. Mind you, what Tom tells me about Sanders (as if it were all good stuff) marks Sanders as a VERY radical person......just like my cousin Tom is a radical person. Vermont has not always been a progressive state. It got that way from radicals out of New York and Massachussetts moving up there for "the rural life" (a danger that could happen to Texas, if we're not careful). Tom moved to Vermont from Baltimore - where he was a "community organizer". Sanders moved to Vermont from New York - where he was a "community organizer".

Please understand, I love my cousin Tom. He's a super nice guy, and I get along with him very well. He tells me that Sanders is a super nice guy. But I don't vote for politicians because they are super nice. I vote based on policies, which is why I'm a racist.........because I voted against Obama for policy reasons both times. (That's another political joke, ok?) Tom is, or was, a gun owner. He kept a .357 magnum by his bedside because he lived in a terrible Baltimore neighborhood.......yeah, the same neighborhood he "community organized" to make it as bad as it was. Sanders was repeatedly re-elected as a representative, and then a senator, from a constitutional carry state where gun ownership is common and not even questioned. But now that Sanders is running for POTUS, he's been making gun-control noises as he panders to the democrat party base. I'd be willing to bet that Tom (I haven't spoken to him since before Sanders announced his candidacy) has adopted more of a "guns for me, but not for thee" point of view, in line with Sanders'. Both would probably say it is fine to keep a revolver or shotgun in the home for self-defense, but nobody needs an AR15 or a Glock, and NOBODY who doesn't have a LEO badge of permission should be walking around with a gun........because progressivism is all about "granting permissions" instead of "inalienable rights".

Tom (and Sanders as well if Tom is to be believed) is a nice guy. They are just wrong as hades. The statist, tightly regulated and limited economy, in which industry is privately owned but gov't controlled, has always resulted in a decrease of wealth for all but the oligarchs, and a decrease in personal liberty. It reduces entrepreneurialism by burdening new businesses in a way that makes it way too hard to succeed (opening up new markets is tough enough without gov't hamstringing them), increasing the risks, while supporting a tax code that encourages existing large corporations to shift the tax burden onto the voters. Sanders wants to punish financial institutions for their "excesses" (as defined by a socialist), without removing gov't protections of those institutions to protect us taxpayers from their failures. I'm not talking about FDIC, I'm talking about the "too big to fail" mentality of big gov't progressives. Progressive gov't picks winners, crushes their competition, penalizes the successful, and rewards the shiftless. We've already got enough of that, but Sanders - if his rhetoric is to be believed - wants MORE of it. I don't know about you, but when Obama promised to fundamentally transform America, I believed him. EVERBYDOY should have believed him, because he did just that........just not the way that some had hoped. I believed him, the same way I believe a jihadist when he says he wants to kill people like me. When Sanders says he wants to go even more "progressive" than Obama, I BELIEVE HIM. You should too.

The point of my joke was the hypocrisy of progressives - who are all about giving away OPM (other people's money), but find it difficult to share what is actually theirs. They talk about giving away what they don't have. They SAY "I'm not a millionaire, but if I were, I'd give half of it to you", but they DO "heck no, I actually have a million dollars, go get your own!". In the joke, Sanders talks about giving away what he doesn't have (a second house, a second car, a second boat), but won't part with what he does have (a second shirt).

I'll give Bernie Sanders this: Between the current president, Hillary Clinton, and himself, he's the only progressive who hasn't used his office to make himself into a millionaire. So, do I believe he is sincere in his progressive beliefs unlike either Obama or Clinton, who only see progressivism as a way to gain political power so that they can use it to enrichen themselves? Sure. I think he is an honest progressive.....meaning that he honestly believes it is the best way to do things, and to date has avoided making himself richer than Croesus in the process.....which also means that he is on the same road to hades which is paved with the bones of the well-intentioned. But I don't want to get dragged into a fiscal hades, where individual liberty has to be subsumed to "the greater good" by gov't fiat.

Do you see what you did? You turned a simple joke into one of my patented rants.

Bernie Sanders is addressing a group of blue collar workers. He explains his manifesto: “Under democratic socialism, if I have two houses, I give you one. If I have two cars, I give you one. If I have two boats, I give you one.”

One of the workers asks “Does that mean if you have two shirts, you give me one.”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because I have two shirts,” Sanders explains.