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US Politics: compromising positions


DanteGabriel

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1 minute ago, The Anti-Targ said:

In all other cases, they will leave office and eventually be labelled as not having been conservative enough.

I think most GOP presidents (both Bushs, Ford, Eisenhower) are criticized later as not being conservative enough because the GOP continues to get more conservative.  Reagan, though, obviously they deified.  And they don't like mentioning Nixon.

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We’re Losing the War on Corruption
Paul Manafort and Felicity Huffman are twin avatars of an elite that still acts with impunity.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/manafort-and-huffman-show-elite-act-impunity/584860/

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This is the same pattern made visible by the college admissions scandal. The public gets inflamed over a supposedly outrageous piece of behavior that is really not so far from the standard elite procedure. When a wealthy donor contributes $10 million to a university, imagining that their child will someday attend, administrators call it a “gift” and applaud the gesture of philanthropy. But it is, in effect, institutionalized bribery, and it creates new templates of moral behavior. It makes recognizing as wrong under-the-table payments to college coaches harder for parents, when these payment so resemble the gift-giving they see officially sanctioned.

America never had an edenic period, when the country resided in a state of pristine civic virtue. But the past half century has ushered in an era of rank indifference to the perils of corruption and bribery. Not so long ago, the United States had a far more robust definition of what counted as a bribe. That broad definition constrained the growth of the American lobbying industry. Back in the 1960s, lobbying hardly existed in Washington—at least not in the form and on the scale that we now know it. The ledger of officially registered lobbyists extended into the high double digits. By the 1990s, the population of lobbyists had swelled to well over 10,000.  

If Americans are more comfortable living in a world of bribery, perhaps it’s because American jurisprudence has legalized so much of it.

 

 

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Interesting. A lawyer named Robert Costello, who was not Michael Cohen's lawyer, back in the days when Trump still liked Cohen, sent Cohen an e-mail saying 'sleep well tonight, you have friends in high places'. This was just after the feds raided Cohen's offices.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/13/politics/michael-cohen-email-costello/index.html

The lawyer says it has nothing to do with pardons.

 

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17 hours ago, Ser Reptitious said:

It's rather ironic (but in no way surprising) that American society just shrugs and accepts that the rich can buy a spot, yet scream bloody murder over the supposed unfairness of affirmative action.

They scream at what there's at least some non-negligble chance of changing. Make no mistake, people are upset about "legacy" admissions too, but almost nobody is stupid enough to believe that they can stand in the way of people with that kind of money. This isn't about a couple of hundred grand, it's millions. Interestingly enough, a sports site has an explanation by one of the creators of this scheme:

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Okay, so, who we are-- what we do is we help the wealthiest families in the U.S. get their kids into school …. Every year there are-- is a group of families, especially where I am right now in the Bay Area, Palo Alto, I just flew in. That they want guarantees, they want this thing done. They don’t want to be messing around with this thing. And so they want in at certain schools.

So I did what I would call, “side doors.” There is a front door which means you get in on your own. The back door is through institutional advancement [or donating money to the school legally], which is ten times as much money. And I’ve created this side door in.

Because the back door, when you go through institutional advancement, as you know, everybody’s got a friend of a friend, who knows somebody who knows somebody but there’s no guarantee, they’re just gonna give you a second look.

 

If you want a guarantee, a parent must give more than the ten times as much money that the backdoor people pay. Feel free to scream at these people all you want -- the only outcome will be a sore throat.

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6 minutes ago, Altherion said:

They scream at what there's at least some non-negligble chance of changing. Make no mistake, people are upset about "legacy" admissions too, but almost nobody is stupid enough to believe that they can stand in the way of people with that kind of money. This isn't about a couple of hundred grand, it's millions. Interestingly enough, a sports site has an explanation by one of the creators of this scheme:

If you want a guarantee, a parent must give more than the ten times as much money that the backdoor people pay. Feel free to scream at these people all you want -- the only outcome will be a sore throat.

That is bullshit. Prior to affirmative action, college was reserved almost exclusively for the top twelve percent (of income) of white males (other than the narrow window of the GI bill), while the tiny handful of historically black college served probably less than five percent of the black population, but as integration accompanied the influx of baby boomers, college exclusivity changed and more people went (up to about 33% now).

but even going back to the moment when affirmative action was instituted, college still only represented about the top fifteen percent (in income) and was still over 75% male. And the instant—and continual to this day—howl and rage against affirmative action came from this cohort composed entirely of wealth and privilege: opposition was most strident from the most privileged. For the exact same reason the wealthy and powerful opposed integrating country clubs, college was a country club for most students, a lifestyle, not an educational path.

now one of their core tactics against affirmative action is what you are so enthusiastically promulgating in your post, instituting a divide and conquer strategy by using affirmative action to sow division by stoking fear and resentment and jealousy in white under classes, which has long been and still is, a profoundly powerful tool constantly deployed to maintain their wealth and privilege.

in other words there is a vast institution dedicated to attacking affirmative action on behalf of racist rich whites, but there is no such  institution dedicated to attacking (the affirmative action) of legacy admissions, so society attacks what they’re trained to attack, they don’t meekly accept legacy admissions affirmative action because they know they can’t change it, they have not been taught and encouraged to hate it and no attention is paid to it, many don’t even know it exists. 

No one is making calculations about non neglible  chances of changing anything in how they react to this scandal or legacy admissions.

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5 hours ago, lokisnow said:

That is bullshit. Prior to affirmative action, college was reserved almost exclusively for the top twelve percent (of income) of white males (other than the narrow window of the GI bill), while the tiny handful of historically black college served probably less than five percent of the black population, but as integration accompanied the influx of baby boomers, college exclusivity changed and more people went (up to about 33% now).

but even going back to the moment when affirmative action was instituted, college still only represented about the top fifteen percent (in income) and was still over 75% male. And the instant—and continual to this day—howl and rage against affirmative action came from this cohort composed entirely of wealth and privilege: opposition was most strident from the most privileged. For the exact same reason the wealthy and powerful opposed integrating country clubs, college was a country club for most students, a lifestyle, not an educational path.

now one of their core tactics against affirmative action is what you are so enthusiastically promulgating in your post, instituting a divide and conquer strategy by using affirmative action to sow division by stoking fear and resentment and jealousy in white under classes, which has long been and still is, a profoundly powerful tool constantly deployed to maintain their wealth and privilege.

in other words there is a vast institution dedicated to attacking affirmative action on behalf of racist rich whites, but there is no such  institution dedicated to attacking (the affirmative action) of legacy admissions, so society attacks what they’re trained to attack, they don’t meekly accept legacy admissions affirmative action because they know they can’t change it, they have not been taught and encouraged to hate it and no attention is paid to it, many don’t even know it exists. 

No one is making calculations about non neglible  chances of changing anything in how they react to this scandal or legacy admissions.

I think Republican leaders are more cynical than that.  The last thing they would want to see is the end of affirmative action or Roe v Wade repealed.  They are both excellent  recruiting tools.

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5 hours ago, Triskele said:

It's being fairly widely reported that Beto is running and will announce tomorrow.  We'll see if I'm a fool, and I fully concede that we don't know a ton about this guy, but I am still pretty bullish on his chances.

Why bother running when there so many stronger candidates out there?  Someone on Twitter said "I feel like the choice for Beto was running for president or buy a motorcycle" and can't stop laughing about this.

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2 hours ago, larrytheimp said:

Why bother running when there so many stronger candidates out there?  Someone on Twitter said "I feel like the choice for Beto was running for president or buy a motorcycle" and can't stop laughing about this.

Well he has announced it now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47564276

also, had not realised there were 15 democrats who had announced they were running. I knew there were a lot but didnt realise there were so many

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9 hours ago, Triskele said:

It's being fairly widely reported that Beto is running and will announce tomorrow.  We'll see if I'm a fool, and I fully concede that we don't know a ton about this guy, but I am still pretty bullish on his chances.

You called it! I'm not certain on him. He has a lot of big money ties that might not work well in this primary, and if he made it through the primary, I'm not certain how he'd fare against Trump. You need someone who is really good at diffusing bullshit in the moment, and I honestly don't know enough about Beto to suggest he can/cannot do that.

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1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Well he has announced it now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47564276

also, had not realised there were 15 democrats who had announced they were running. I knew there were a lot but didnt realise there were so many

This is embarrassing almost. I mean somewhere between three and fifteen--there ought to be a happy medium. Do they not remember the absolute silliness of the 15+ Republican debates that pulled enough allegiances than Trump won? I swear, if Corey Booker wins...

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15 hours ago, DMC said:

Well, sure, it's never going to happen in a bipartisan way because one party will always have the immediate advantage.  But the argument was if one party could do it unilaterally - and my contention that if they could they should.

I don't think this is really a valid argument at this point.  Doing anything of substance is going to drive the parties further apart.  That doesn't mean you stop trying to do things.

But again, where will that leave us? At the end of the day we can’t keep making a toxic situation even more toxic. Or else will be left with this:

14 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

America needs its last rites.

 

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Regarding this whole debacle over the Max jet.

Canada announced it was suspending flights yesterday morning after analyzing new information. That information was satellite images of the Ethiopian Air crash. The images were overlaid on the images from the Indonesian crash and they were found to be very similar.

Canada was a last holdout, and it seems once Canada stopped flights the US finally did as well. Trump took credit for the decision (he’s such a sleazebag!) but Boeing came back and said they made the decision and advised the government. The US government changed the way it deals with the airline business a number of years ago and allowed the industry to be essentially self-policing.

However, the government could still have made the decision to suspend flights on it’s own, but didn’t. Lots of spokespeople kept saying the planes had flown for thousands of hours without incidents. Turns out that there’s a hotline for whistle blowing/complaints and five pilots had called in with concerns about the way the planes were working.

Trump, who had viciously attacked Boeing early in his presidency, all of a sudden has become a big Boeing supporter, even hiring a Boeing executive to run, what, the Defense department, right? People have pointed out he got to announce the sale of 200 planes while in Vietnam, which probably helped change his attitude.

So do you think the failure of the US to suspend flights stinks? Or was the government just being prudent?

Those satellite images were apparently freely available to everyone in the world. You didn’t have to wait for the black box contents to be analyzed. Why didn’t the FAA do that?

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1 hour ago, HelenaExMachina said:

Well he has announced it now

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47564276

also, had not realised there were 15 democrats who had announced they were running. I knew there were a lot but didnt realise there were so many

Beto is a loser and a fraud.

And speaking of the number of candidates, I’m becoming concerned that nobody will win the nomination outright, which again will lead to a contentious convention, a divided party and a Trump reelection.

As my favorite professor and dean of the graduate department was oft to say, “Democrats are the masters of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”

But hey, it could be worse. At least we’re not living in the U.K.

:P

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36 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

You called it! I'm not certain on him. He has a lot of big money ties that might not work well in this primary, and if he made it through the primary, I'm not certain how he'd fare against Trump. You need someone who is really good at diffusing bullshit in the moment, and I honestly don't know enough about Beto to suggest he can/cannot do that.

In his Senate race here in Texas he was very much a 'take the high road' candidate.  He really didn't want to get down into the mud.  I really like Beto, but if I had one criticism against him it would be that he did not go after Cruz hard enough.  I get what he was trying to do.  He was trying an Obama-esqe strategy of selling hope and optimism against the cynical, fear-mongering Republicans.  But Cruz was just so... attack-able.  And so is Trump. 

If it were me, I would not have been able to resist repeatedly hammering Cruz over his Trump brown-nosing after Trump insulted him, his wife, and his father in front of the whole country.  It is an embarrassment to the state of Texas, IMO, that this fucking worm is our representative in Washington and I think Beto could have made hay out of a couple of 2016 campaign era clips of Ted Cruz on Donald Trump juxtaposed with some post-election clips of Ted Cruz on Donald Trump.  But, he didn't.  Instead Ted Cruz pasted his slogan 'Tough as Texas' all over the state without a hint of irony.  God, that was just SO ripe for mockery that it feels like a missed opportunity to me.  There was one instance where Beto regurgitated Trump's 'Lyin' Ted' nickname and then immediately apologized for it.  Meanwhile Cruz was dragging out old punk-rock era photos, Beto's DUI, making up stupid anti-Beto country jingles for the radio, claiming his nickname was political pandering to Latinos (as if Rafael isn't pandering to Texas good ol' boys with "Ted") ... anything he could get his hands on

All that said... Beto did nearly win as a progressive in Texas.  It took historic Republican turnout to beat him and maybe... MAYBE, there's a chance he could put Texas in play vs. Trump.  He would at least force them to spend resources here.  Maybe he knew what he was doing staying out of the mud, or maybe he would have won if he'd pressed the attack.  Hard to say.  Anyway, I am bullish on Beto, but if I had one concern about him vs. Trump it would be that I could see him not really going after him hard enough.  Maybe this could be resolved by a pitbull VP pick who goes after the President while Beto can keep his hands clean as a 'good guy' candidate.  

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6 minutes ago, S John said:

In his Senate race here in Texas he was very much a 'take the high road' candidate.  He really didn't want to get down into the mud.  I really like Beto, but if I had one criticism against him it would be that he did not go after Cruz hard enough.  I get what he was trying to do.  He was trying an Obama-esqe strategy of selling hope and optimism against the cynical, fear-mongering Republicans.  But Cruz was just so... attack-able.  And so is Trump.

Personally that's one thing I like about Harris is that I think she might be the best candidate that can juggle both being compassionate to citizens but twisting the knife with Trump.  I definitely prefer a candidate who can do both. 

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1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

But again, where will that leave us? At the end of the day we can’t keep making a toxic situation even more toxic. Or else will be left with this:

This is just rehashing the conversation we already had, which went nowhere anyway.  If you wanna know why I think this is a thoroughly stupid argument, just reread those threads.

1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

This is embarrassing almost. I mean somewhere between three and fifteen--there ought to be a happy medium. Do they not remember the absolute silliness of the 15+ Republican debates that pulled enough allegiances than Trump won? I swear, if Corey Booker wins...

I think the only candidate that could benefit the way Trump did from such a divided field is Bernie.  That's something to worry about (from my perspective), but other than that the number of candidates well naturally work itself out.  Time to realize 15-20 candidates is the new normal.  Let's just hope it doesn't continue to get bigger.

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

Beto is a loser and a fraud.

I'm not a big fan but that seems a bit harsh.  I don't think he's a fraud.  Well, I don't think he's any more of a fraud than your average politician.

I do think Beto made a significant mistake waiting this long to announce.  It seems ridiculous to say announcing 11 months before the Iowa caucus is engaging in a Hamlet routine, but that's the impression a lot of people got in terms of big donors, activists, and the media.  And that's not good.

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32 minutes ago, S John said:

If it were me, I would not have been able to resist repeatedly hammering Cruz over his Trump brown-nosing after Trump insulted him, his wife, and his father in front of the whole country.  It is an embarrassment to the state of Texas, IMO, that this fucking worm is our representative in Washington and I think Beto could have made hay out of a couple of 2016 campaign era clips of Ted Cruz on Donald Trump juxtaposed with some post-election clips of Ted Cruz on Donald Trump. 

There are three reasons why I cannot support Beto. First, HE LOST. Why are we thinking about nominating a loser? Same goes for Abrams. This is insane. Second, he doesn’t really stand for anything. Beto is essentially a likable blank canvass, and people can see what they want in him. And lastly, the above. Those attack ads would write themselves and he refused to do it. And he apologized for the most mild of attacks. You need someone who can go on the offensive to beat Trump, and Beto is simply not capable of hitting those notes, which leads me to this:

33 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Personally that's one thing I like about Harris is that I think she might be the best candidate that can juggle both being compassionate to citizens but twisting the knife with Trump.  I definitely prefer a candidate who can do both. 

I’ve been bullish on Harris from the get go because she’s the best suited to cut Trump to pieces. At the end of the day, all the candidates outside of Sanders will basically be the same with regards to fund raising, infrastructure and messaging, etc., so we should be looking to who can do the most damage to him in the debates, and I think Harris is absolutely the obvious choice there. She has been incredibly impressive during her time in committee hearings, and I think that translate well.

Plus she’ll be able to bait Trump into making racist and sexist comments, not that he’ll need baiting though.

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I want a candidate that doesn’t attack trump constantly, my ideal candidate would be one that mentions trumps name once a month at most. We saw what a 100% anti trump campaign all the time unending TrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrumpTrump

Campaign was like in 2016, I don’t think Clinton or any surrogates ever aired a non trump ad, and it failed in key states, someone willing to do a different strategy will have my support.

but Havinf read up more on his campaign and history lately, I don’t think Beto or his team are tactically sophisticated enough to come close to winning, his biggest advantage is possessing an Obama esque blank slate for voters, which is one of the most valuable and desirable attributes any presidential candidate can have, but against the hyper emotional choice (sanders), the status quo default (Biden), the tactical nuke (Harris) and the charming clone (booker) I don’t think he’s going to find a lot of room to leverage his all things to all people niche, there’s too many “just what the doctor ordered” candidates for various factions for him to Hoover up surplus voters.

I really hope the dnc imposes escalating debate requirements every third debate or so, it’d be really nice to have the field winnowed to eight at a debate a few months before Iowa, NH, SC, NV

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I think Beto's fine. It's too earlier to know if he did a remarkable job turning out Democrats in Texas or if that demographic shift is finally happening and most senate candidates would've done what he did against Cruz. But he clearly does know how to fundraise and excite small donors, and that is an important skill. Probably a useful VP candidate, depending on the nominee. 

However, and I know this is the boring answer, but I think this entire nomination process is just Biden's to lose; and I don't think he'll lose. If he does lose Iowa that maybe changes things, but if he wins there I think the inevitability train will immediately line up behind him.

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1 hour ago, DMC said:

I'm not a big fan but that seems a bit harsh.  I don't think he's a fraud.  Well, I don't think he's any more of a fraud than your average politician.

Well I don’t think he’s a loser personally, but he lost to Ted Cruz. That’s an instant DQ for me, even if it’s in a red state. And by fraud I mean he seems incredibly phony, and his rhetoric does not match a lot of his actions. I know that can be true of any politician, but he comes off as insincere to me.

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I do think Beto made a significant mistake waiting this long to announce.  It seems ridiculous to say announcing 11 months before the Iowa caucus is engaging in a Hamlet routine, but that's the impression a lot of people got in terms of big donors, activists, and the media.  And that's not good.

I agree. If you know you’re running and others are starting to announce, you’ve got to step up too. I think waiting will also hurt Biden, but at least he already had some national infrastructure to rely on.

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