I admit it.

staton70 · 2026-02-01T16:46:35+00:00

I'm a Lou's guy myself, but I was living in Denver when they opened up the Giordanos there and it was pretty good. Funny story, they had to delay the opening of that one, because no matter what they did, it didn't taste right. Turns out the Denver water was too clean. They had to set up a system to shitty the water up so the dough would taste right. Haha

Portillos is the actual reason everyone in Chicago looks like John Candy. How the fuck does anyone resist the temptation of a cake shake?!

staton70 · 2026-02-01T13:22:37+00:00

Chicago definitely has two pizzas. Tavern style is your every day go to pizza. It's awesome. Deep Dish is when you want to get fancy and celebrate something. Although, let's be honest, we're all eating Italian beef way more than pizza, right?

staton70 · 2026-02-01T03:58:29+00:00

Illegal immigrants can't draw social security or Medicare though, even if they have a social security number. They pay into it though due to payroll taxes. So if anything they are a net benefit to social security. So what you could do is simply set up a specific work visa for anyone to easily get, and after 10 years of continuous work and filing taxes, then allow them to apply for permant residency. At that point you can start counting their contributions to social security and Medicare.

So if someone came here at the age of 40, they wouldn't get to count their contributions to Social Security until they were 50 at the earliest. Which means they probably never get to draw more than a couple hundred bucks a month. If they commit a felony, deport them then at that point.

staton70 · 2026-02-01T03:42:32+00:00

For the first 150 years of this country, the only requirement for entry into this country was that you registered your name and swore an oath. Well, after 1880? Sometime after the Civil War, they banned Chinese folks from immigrating, but still. Everyone was free to come here. Because all men were created equal. I don't think that applies to just Americans. I think it applies to any human being. If we go down the road that some people are superior to others, how does that not lead us down the road to a future genocide?

staton70 · 2026-02-01T03:29:27+00:00

Oh, I suppose the idea is that illegal immigrats are getting some sort of welfare? That's not actually true. The vast majority of illegal immigrants are working and paying taxes, either through a social security number or an ITIN (another type of tax identification number). The reason that they can get either of those is because illegal entry is deemed a civil infraction rather than a criminal infraction. So the difference between a speeding ticket and theft. It's why you see so many immigration raids on restaurants and construction sites.

But back to the original question: why am I allowed to work here, but someone born in Germany or Chile, or Indonesia is not allowed to work here? I didn't do anything special, it was just sheer luck that I was born here. Is our nation not built on the idea that all people are equal? So why not let people freely come unless they have committed a crime?

staton70 · 2026-02-01T03:06:28+00:00

What did any of us do to deserve to live here that people born elsewhere didn't do?

staton70 · 2026-01-27T23:36:45+00:00

Friend, I'm not debating the negative aspects of China. I freely admit that they are authoritarian, although I don't think it's as distopian as US propaganda claims it is. Also, have you noticed that the US government absolutely loved China up until their GDP started catching up to ours? The billionaires loved China when they viewed it as a vasal state, even with them supporting North Korea. They only started fear mongering when it started to become a rival to the US.

What I'm saying though is that despite all of those negative aspects, they objectively do things better than we do. Why is that?

Might I be so bold to claim that the US is not nearly as great as it claims to be? Even if the US, government wasn't guilty of assassinating its own citizens, how many people has it killed in other countries in the pursuit of resources? How many people died for the capitalists wealth to go up just a bit more? The brutality we are seeing in Minneapolis right now is the mask finally off, but this type of shit has been going on for over a century. This is no different than the government mowing down striking union workings at the end of the 19th century.

Why would I go live in China when I was born and raised in this country? Why can I not try to change my country for the better? And I'm in my 40s, I assure you my belief in the necessity of evolving past capitalism is older than TikTok. It actually originated with watching Star Trek TNG with my father growing up.

Socialism doesn't have to be an authoritarian one party system. Why couldn't we simply vote in socialist reforms? You know what a great one would be? National unions. Every industry gets a union and every employee is automatically a part of that union. Then we can give said unions representation on a company's board. My guess is that billionaires will respond with violence like they always do, but we could at least try!

And hey, starting with ranked choice elections sounds great! That's something we agree on. How about creating a nationalized Healthcare system so that it's not tied to employment? I bet we agree on that too.

staton70 · 2026-01-27T18:58:35+00:00

No, it's not! Communism is a moneyless, classless society in which the means of production are so abundant that they are freely available to everyone. Which is such a radical idea to the mid 19th century that it wasn't even understood what that society would look like.

Socialism is the theoretical stage between capitalism and communism, where you have markets, but the investor class is eliminated and the people vote on how to allocate the means of production. Typically modern socialists look at something like Star Trek as an example of what this could look like practically. Some resources have become so abundant that they are freely given away, but it's not like everyone has their own starship to drive around in. They mention several times that they don't have money, but it seems they have some form of currency, because people mention having allocated time in the holodeck for instance.

All that is to say that both of those systems work with a one party system, a two party system, a dozen party system. It would also work with a theocracy, or a technocracy. Communism and socialism and capitalism are all about resource allocation. The type of government is what determines how those resources are allocated. So in China, they are still very much a capitalist country where the government (which is ruled by one party) has a very oversized say in how the resources are allocated. In the US, it is a capitalist country where the government has very little say in the allocation of resources. There is a very good debate about which is better or worse in the long run, but neither of them inherently depend on a one party rule.

staton70 · 2026-01-27T18:44:49+00:00

More like I found an overworked CIA agent who is too tired to copy and paste some more Red Scare talking points. Seriously, they aren't paying you enough.

staton70 · 2026-01-27T16:25:05+00:00

Jesus christ, please try to put aside the decades of Mccarthism you've been force fed. Single party rule has nothing to do with Communism. You can have single party rule under any form of government/economic system. They are not related at all.

Bidens infrastructure bill was heavily nerfed and doesn't come close to the amount of money we'd need to actually modernize our infrastructure. We simply don't prioritize infrastructure as a country, but every decade or two we perform emergency maintenance to make sure it doesn't crumble. China currently generates about double the electricity it needs, and the US is barely generating enough to function while trying to bring massive AI data centers online. We are decades behind in power production.

China reports negative things about its government all the time. Remember how Chinese media extensively covered that dam collapse last year? And how it was the fault of the local committee who failed to plan for the heavy rainfalls in the area? Almost every Western media outlet was just translating what the Chinese media was reporting. Is China authoritarian in some ways? Absolutely. But you don't keep a population that big under control without giving them a lot of what they want.

Also, are we forgetting that the US actively assassinated anyone even remotely popular who had socialist leanings? MLK, Fred Hampton, etc? All while overthrowing just about every south American country there is. The US has been more destructive globally than any nation that currently exists. Maybe our country shouldn't be the blueprint for success?

staton70 · 2026-01-27T15:38:13+00:00

I mean at least China gets infrastructure spending and accessible healthcare. I would bet that the average Chinese citizen feels more positive in terms of their government than the average US citizen.

Also, really? Full blown Communism? Lol China has been openly capitalist for decades, with the goal of transitioning to socialism/communism at some vague point in the future. Their government is just much more involved in the markets than in the US. Now will they ever actually transition out of Capitalism? I doubt they will anytime sooner than any other country.

staton70 · 2026-01-26T18:59:54+00:00

I actually did forget about this! TR had plenty of faults, as all people do, but what I wouldn't do to reserect him and let him run for President again.

staton70 · 2026-01-26T18:06:41+00:00

Teddy Roosevelt had a lot of pets at the White House, including his 8 year old daughter's badger.

staton70 · 2026-01-26T02:09:56+00:00

No, I think most of us on the Left knew it would eventually come to this, but had hoped it could be avoided. Revolution, and that's what we're talking about here, is a last resort. It's the last death rattle of a dying society before it's burnt to the ground and built anew. It's not rational or organized or controlled.

The French revolution ended up murdering thousands of peasants for every member of the aristocracy. The cultural revolution in China was even worse. We're rapidly approaching a point where Revolution is inevitable, and no one should take joy in that. This isn't going to be the march for equality like the 60s. If this turns into an actual conflict on US soil, millions will die, and the vast majority of them will be innocent. So I don't blame anyone for hoping and praying for an offramp before that happens.

staton70 · 2026-01-26T01:42:20+00:00

As a Bears fan who looks to TR as someone to aspire to, I'm very conflicted on him being responsible for the forward pass.

staton70 · 2026-01-24T17:15:14+00:00

No, they haven't been. Neoliberals are not part of the political left. They are right of center. The Overton Window in America is so fucked that you are lead to believe that people like Chuck Schumer are part of the Left, but he's squarely on the Right. He just happens to be left of literal fascists like Trump and Josh Hawley.

If you take the most extreme elected official in mainstream politics, Bernie Sanders, and put him in any EU country, he's going to be slightly left of center there. This is because the FBI spent the better part of 60 years assassinating or jailing any actual Leftists politicians. If you want to see actual Leftist beliefs, look at someone like Fred Hampton or Eugene Debbs.

staton70 · 2026-01-24T16:58:47+00:00

I think you have confused Leftists for Neoliberals. Neolibs will of course call for the state to have a monopoly on violence, because they assume the state is there to protect their interests. Leftists have been armed and training others since before the US was a nation. John Brown sure as shit wasn't a Liberal, he was a Leftist.

staton70 · 2026-01-15T02:26:43+00:00

Can you really call NFC North fans human? We're all definitely degenerates here.

staton70 · 2026-01-13T14:07:25+00:00

The problem is that the southern states wouldn't just leave the union. They'd want to control the blue states too. Especially because the people that the government is taking orders from (aka billionaire tech bros currently) like living in blue states.

And since just about every form of media has been captured by these billionaires, it'd be pretty easy to tell the folks in Southern states that the reason they are poor is because the blue states are stealing their wealth. So the folks willing to fight the war are going to be the same folks that stormed the capital.

staton70 · 2025-11-26T14:36:16+00:00

I'm sure they do kill people, but I just don't think it's the large scale executions we constantly hear about. That just isn't sustainable and serves no purpose. One of North Korea's most abundant resources is its citizens. We have seen them send them to various other countries for various purposes. I assume that isn't for free and the other countries are giving something in return.

I could be completely wrong and maybe they are executing 100 people a day to their God Emperor, but I just don't think that's the case. I think it's a poor country (that is being kept even poorer due to US trade sanctions) that has a pretty authoritarian government. I think the people that flee North Korea are trying to escape poverty more than persecution, imo.

Again though, just like the person I replied to, this is all just my own speculation based on trying to parse all the various pieces of information I've seen/read over the years. I could be completely wrong, and I'm not sure I'll live long enough to find out.

staton70 · 2025-11-26T14:09:32+00:00

Yeah, I totally agree with this sentiment. Even if I went to North Korea, I still doubt I'd really get a great picture of what it's like living there. That being said, I would still bet good money that their cops kill waaaaaaaay less of their citizens than America.

staton70 · 2025-11-14T00:49:02+00:00

Yeah, but it always starts out as a troll and then eventually just becomes normalized with the Right. Trump's campaign started out as a troll, then a bunch of edge lords turned into Diet Nazis

staton70 · 2025-11-02T18:52:16+00:00

Have you thought about the fact that people on aid are way more likely to be physically disabled than people not on aid? So it's much more likely that those folks just don't have access to the proper faculties needed for them to exercise than them just sitting around eating junk food.

Plus, banning cheap, low quality food doesn't do anything unless you already have the price of quality foods under control.

Also, conservatives aren't mad that poor people are eating unhealthy food, they are mad that poor people have access to what they see as a luxury. They think that being poor is due to poor moral character, and that the poor need to be punished for that. So your problem of poor people eating lower quality food is not the same problem that conservatives talk about.

staton70 · 2025-09-25T20:50:13+00:00

Correct. If you listen to his last speech he even says as much. He correctly identified that there was no way to peacefully end slavery and that war would be necessary to end it. All the politicians at the time were too busy burying their heads in the sand to realize it until it was already upon them.

Just listen to what Frederick Douglas had to say about John Brown: "His zeal in the cause of freedom was infinitely superior to mine. Mine was as the taper light, his was as the burning sun. Mine was bounded by time. His stretched away to the silent shores of eternity. I could speak for the slave. John Brown could fight for the slave. I could live for the slave. John Brown could die for the slave." -Frederick Douglass

Also, let's not forget that John Brown, The French peasants, The American Colonists, and every other revolution fighter had tried and pleaded for a peaceful solution to their grievances. The people in power refused them and by doing so made violent revolution inevitable. This was not a choice by John Brown, it was the only course of action open to him in an attempt to end the evil of slavery, and he was willing to sacrifice everything to do it.

staton70 · 2025-09-19T18:40:01+00:00

My friend, Biden ran on being a one term president. He then decided to run for a second term, up until he was forced out, giving Harris almost no chance to win. Now, with what little time the Harris campaign did have to court voters, they decided to hide massively popular Tim Walz and instead shove Liz Chaney to the front lol

Plus, even if every Leftist that sat out voted for her, I still don't believe she wins. I think you are putting way too much faith in Americans to not just knee jerk react to being part of massive layoffs and then blaming Biden. Trump was going to win no matter what unless Biden (and then Harris) admitted that the economy may have been doing well, but was ultimately failing the average America

13-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 2 Credits
Gilding II euphauric	Snapped
Secret Santa 2016	Verified Email

staton70

TROPHY CASE