US Politics: 40 Acres and Barack Obama

[Isalie]

Inspirational speaker over politician every time, huh?

[Gorn]

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/livin-large-the-duncan-hunter-story

So, a dude who inherited his congressional seat from his father, who wants to deport US citizens, and who attacked his Democratic opponent as "Islamist Muslim Brotherhood-supported terrorist threat trying to infiltrate the Congress" (he wasn't even Muslim), is charged of misusing $250 000 campaign funds on, among other things, family vacations and games from Steam. The tough guy first blames his wife for spending the money. Then, it turns out that he was using the money to finance no less than five different extramarital affairs.

At least you have to admire his stamina and time management skills.

[GrimTuesday]

The fact that pretty much anyone accepts anyone except Bernie or Warren, and claims to be progressive is ridiculous. If you want to see any substantive change, we need actual leftist candidates. That is how we won in 2018, you can say that it was just anti-Trump backlash, but lets face it, a lot of people were driven to the polls on the basis of medicare for all, free college tuition, debt relief. These are the issues that drive engagement and motivate voters, especially young ones and you may say that it is not time to be radical, but the iron is hot, let's strike.

Joe Biden is going to collapse in the debates, he is going to be exposed as the out of touch old coot he is when he is standing on the stage with Bernie and Warren, when he can't just run an incumbent campaign, that he he is even doing his damnedest to fuck up.

Harris is fine, she wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but let's face it she isn't anything special in terms of setting herself apart outside of being a woman, which is in and of itself a fine reason to vote for her, but Warren's policies are better. She has a bad record on criminal justice reform

Pete Buttigieg is a mayor of a medium sized city in Indiana, not to mention the fact that he is weak on actual policy, oh, and his craven answer on the Israeli embassy crap (some crap about what is done is done).

And don't even get me started on Yang. His whole UBI proposal is a libertarian dream in terms of killing any semblance of a social safety net. Go watch is interview with noted libertarian dunce Dave Ruben, he specifically says that the idea is to offer it as alternative to social programs, so that eventually so many people are on the "Freedom Dividend" that Republican's can finally follow through with their wet dream of drowning the welfare state in the bathtub.

The less said about the rest the better, from Beto's newly announced idiotic war tax, to a man who literally drank fracking fluid to cozy up to the national gas lobby, we honestly would be better served having Mike Gravel on the debate stage so he can savage Biden for being a warmongering prick.

[Martell Spy]

4 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

The fact that pretty much anyone accepts anyone except Bernie or Warren, and claims to be progressive is ridiculous. If you want to see any substantive change, we need actual leftist candidates. That is how we won in 2018, you can say that it was just anti-Trump backlash, but lets face it, a lot of people were driven to the polls on the basis of medicare for all, free college tuition, debt relief. These are the issues that drive engagement and motivate voters, especially young ones and you may say that it is not time to be radical, but the iron is hot, let's strike.

Joe Biden is going to collapse in the debates, he is going to be exposed as the out of touch old coot he is when he is standing on the stage with Bernie and Warren, when he can't just run an incumbent campaign, that he he is even doing his damnedest to fuck up.

Harris is fine, she wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but let's face it she isn't anything special in terms of setting herself apart outside of being a woman, which is in and of itself a fine reason to vote for her, but Warren's policies are better. She has a bad record on criminal justice reform

Pete Buttigieg is a mayor of a medium sized city in Indiana, not to mention the fact that he is weak on actual policy, oh, and his craven answer on the Israeli embassy crap (some crap about what is done is done).

And don't even get me started on Yang. His whole UBI proposal is a libertarian dream in terms of killing any semblance of a social safety net. Go watch is interview with noted libertarian dunce Dave Ruben, he specifically says that the idea is to offer it as alternative to social programs, so that eventually so many people are on the "Freedom Dividend" that Republican's can finally follow through with their wet dream of drowning the welfare state in the bathtub.

The less said about the rest the better, from Beto's newly announced idiotic war tax, to a man who literally drank fracking fluid to cozy up to the national gas lobby, we honestly would be better served having Mike Gravel on the debate stage so he can savage Biden for being a warmongering prick.

That would make the French socialist Hamon a libertarian, as he also supports UBI. 

[Zorral]

Joe Biden may be more polite one-on-one than el romper, but he's still no good at all.  Nor does he even have minimal desire, and possesses no skills, to fix anything of the everything in our society and culture that is broken: racism, sexism, medicine, housing, food and water, politics, government, finance, and the environment -- everything is broken and corrupted.  Drowning more slowly while continuing to drown is not survival.

I tend to agree about the uselessnes of forgiving student debt, except those fortunate ones who receive the forgiveness.  The reason I think that is there's no plan for continuing to finance higher education for those who can't afford it, while employers still demand academic degrees.  At least as far as I know.  Everything is in the python grip of Big Biz, finance and otherwise.  So to do it would mean a revamping of all these systems.  Who has the insight, brilliance and stamina for that?  Certainly NOT Biden.  He's helped create all these disasters himself.

[DMC]

16 hours ago, Altherion said:

If the idea is to help struggling people, then the way to do it would be to actually help them rather than help some struggling people and some who happen to have a specific kind of debt. If the idea is to help the economy, there is a variety of better things to do with the trillion or two.

This isn't the worst point in the world, and is actually one of your better ones.  However, I think it misses the boat as the push to abolish student debt is specifically a middle class proposal.  I dislike Bernie, and even Warren - hell apparently you like each more than I do - but they both have been explicit about that.  So, in that way, they're not really going after what you purport they're going after.  Their aim is to fix (what the fuck ever remains of) the middle class, not the lower class.

[Zorral]

I wish all the Dem candidates tonight and tomorrow would address the fact that in the last decades of non-regulation and oversight, whether officially / voter mandated or not, the corps and corrupts have stolen absolutely everything, including what was to nailed down by government regulation. 

This becomes really clear when reading about the UK though my outside eyes -- every public institution and service is broke.  Where did the money go?  Into the pockets of the afore named corporate capitalists.  And now they have so much money they don't know what to do with it -- and don't do anything with it, except buy up whatever is left of housing stock, land and water.

We are in a system that is irretrievably broken for it doesn't exist for any purpose than to keep enriching the few.  Exactly like our so called health care -- it literally is run to enrich the insurance companies and corporations at our expense, not to provide good health.

This really does included every so-called corporation. Boeing would rather kill hundreds of passengers than build a system that keeps the planes in the air.  The stuff my brother is telling me, as are the investigative reporters -- we are all going to have to stop flying.  If we can. But the employers are going to keep sending their employees up in the air anyway.  Just like the old river boats, deliberately built to blow up, because the violations of safety for the volume of steam got them there faster.  The ships, crews and passengers who died, were merely 'the cost of doing business.'

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

53 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Joe Biden may be more polite one-on-one than el romper, but he's still no good at all.  Nor does he even have minimal desire, and possesses no skills, to fix anything of the everything in our society and culture that is broken: racism, sexism, medicine, housing, food and water, politics, government, finance, and the environment -- everything is broken and corrupted.  Drowning more slowly while continuing to drown is not survival.

I tend to agree about the uselessnes of forgiving student debt, except those fortunate ones who receive the forgiveness.  The reason I think that is there's no plan for continuing to finance higher education for those who can't afford it, while employers still demand academic degrees.  At least as far as I know.  Everything is in the python grip of Big Biz, finance and otherwise.  So to do it would mean a revamping of all these systems.  Who has the insight, brilliance and stamina for that?  Certainly NOT Biden.  He's helped create all these disasters himself.

I like you. I wanted to make that clear before I just tear into everything you've suggested. Don't read further if you're prone to bouts of irreconcilable self association.

This is some grade A dumb. I get that Biden is kind of a jackass. But let's be real. He's kind of a jackass. Just because he's an old white guy who thinks old white guy things does not make him a monster. Mitch McConnell is a monster, Stephen Miller is a monster. And they work a deranged other old white guy (who is a cowardly monster) like a fucking hand puppet to systematically disassemble the parts of a 'free' society people like you seem to value despite being very excited about abandoning if the champions of 'freedom' don't meet your ideological purity. 

And that's a fair position to take. I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong for demanding virtuous and steadfast leaders in your political party. But I will tell you that when faced with a binary choice, picking the lesser of the evils is the correct decision. Because life doesn't care if you refuse to play, it's not taking your opinions into consideration unless you force it to. And that's what voting is. When you vote you're imposing political assertions on others. That is how democracy works. Where we diverge from Mr. Ratjack's world view is in believing that the act of imposition itself does not justify said imposition.  We have a (allegedly) democratic system, where political authority is derived from the individual in collective.

I want to be very, very, clear with the following statement. I don't get to tell you what you believe or value. However, if you value things like democracy, laws, and representative government then I will state that you have a moral imperative to drown more slowly so that survival is still at least on the table. Waiting until you hit the sea floor to start kicking is how people wake up in a one party system.  
 

ETA: Big 'D' on democracy for some reason.

[DireWolfSpirit]

I wouldnt support eliminating student debt carte blanche. For me to support that it would have to be means tested. I like idea of deferments for people unemployed and limits on the interest rate that can be charged, but wholesale debt forgiveness isnt something I agree with. I payed my student debt and feel people should pay theirs as well. I did benefit from low interest rates and a deferment though, so I support those tools being available to all student borrowers if thats not the practice anymore?

[Larry of the Lawn]

8 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

The fact that pretty much anyone accepts anyone except Bernie or Warren, and claims to be progressive is ridiculous. If you want to see any substantive change, we need actual leftist candidates. That is how we won in 2018, you can say that it was just anti-Trump backlash, but lets face it, a lot of people were driven to the polls on the basis of medicare for all, free college tuition, debt relief. These are the issues that drive engagement and motivate voters, especially young ones and you may say that it is not time to be radical, but the iron is hot, let's strike.

Joe Biden is going to collapse in the debates, he is going to be exposed as the out of touch old coot he is when he is standing on the stage with Bernie and Warren, when he can't just run an incumbent campaign, that he he is even doing his damnedest to fuck up.

Harris is fine, she wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, but let's face it she isn't anything special in terms of setting herself apart outside of being a woman, which is in and of itself a fine reason to vote for her, but Warren's policies are better. She has a bad record on criminal justice reform

Pete Buttigieg is a mayor of a medium sized city in Indiana, not to mention the fact that he is weak on actual policy, oh, and his craven answer on the Israeli embassy crap (some crap about what is done is done).

And don't even get me started on Yang. His whole UBI proposal is a libertarian dream in terms of killing any semblance of a social safety net. Go watch is interview with noted libertarian dunce Dave Ruben, he specifically says that the idea is to offer it as alternative to social programs, so that eventually so many people are on the "Freedom Dividend" that Republican's can finally follow through with their wet dream of drowning the welfare state in the bathtub.

The less said about the rest the better, from Beto's newly announced idiotic war tax, to a man who literally drank fracking fluid to cozy up to the national gas lobby, we honestly would be better served having Mike Gravel on the debate stage so he can savage Biden for being a warmongering prick.

Castro, who I wish would get more attention, is pretty progressive compared to the rest of the field 

[Larry of the Lawn]

1 minute ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I wouldnt support eliminating student debt carte blanche. For me to support that it would have to be means tested. I like idea of deferments for people unemployed and limits on the interest rate that can be charged, but wholesale debt forgiveness isnt something I agree with. I payed my student debt and feel people should pay theirs as well. I did benefit from low interest rates and a deferment though, so I support those tools being available to all student borrowers if thats not the practice anymore?

Thing is, a lot of that 1.6 trillion isn't going to be paid back regardless.  They were essentially garbage loans.  I've been making payments on line when I can't and I haven't even gotten into the principal on one of them.  I don't have a degree and I owe over 30k on loans.  The school I went to is threatening to sue over one of them 

[Kalbear]

8 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

The fact that pretty much anyone accepts anyone except Bernie or Warren, and claims to be progressive is ridiculous. If you want to see any substantive change, we need actual leftist candidates. That is how we won in 2018, you can say that it was just anti-Trump backlash, but lets face it, a lot of people were driven to the polls on the basis of medicare for all, free college tuition, debt relief. These are the issues that drive engagement and motivate voters, especially young ones and you may say that it is not time to be radical, but the iron is hot, let's strike.

 

This is revisionist bullshit of the highest order. Progressive candidates did well in some places and did poorly in others. The candidates that won tended to win because they were newer voices, ran on issues that were important to their community, and were otherwise in fairly moderate areas. 

It was largely anti-Trump backlash, and the single biggest issue that was stated was defending current healthcare rights.

[aceluby]

27 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

I wouldnt support eliminating student debt carte blanche. For me to support that it would have to be means tested. I like idea of deferments for people unemployed and limits on the interest rate that can be charged, but wholesale debt forgiveness isnt something I agree with. I payed my student debt and feel people should pay theirs as well. I did benefit from low interest rates and a deferment though, so I support those tools being available to all student borrowers if thats not the practice anymore?

Oh yes, the old 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps, like I did' argument.  Never gets old. 

Not everyone is in the same situation.  You got a hell of a lot more benefits than I ever did in paying back my student loans, but I would never assume that people might need more help than I did.  I'm all for means testing and starting small, but you might want to take a look into why you're against other people getting better benefits, and not just because you didn't get them.

[Mexal]

1 hour ago, Kalbear said:

This is revisionist bullshit of the highest order. Progressive candidates did well in some places and did poorly in others. The candidates that won tended to win because they were newer voices, ran on issues that were important to their community, and were otherwise in fairly moderate areas. 

It was largely anti-Trump backlash, and the single biggest issue that was stated was defending current healthcare rights.

This.

[Jace, Extat]

Fivethirtyeight has me a little hyped to see what viewer numbers are for tonight and tomorrow all of a sudden. They included a disturbing chart in an article released just today (it's not really an article, it's more like their slightly-formal discussion of the debates) that showed Republicans had 4 debates that outscored the top rated Democrat debate (by an average of like 30 or 40 percent no less). The Democratic debate in question, which was the first one that pulled in 15.4 million sets of eyes, is also the only one that outscored any of the other Republican debates.

Jace wants to find out if I can start piecing together a theory that large amounts of candidates could be a good thing. To whip up the sports team like fanaticism. Sure, you're sad when your favorite team is out of the playoffs but there's always a team you want to lose more than the others. Big ass spectacles like the impending fiasco(s) tonight and tomorrow might should be about drawing as many people to the freak show as possible and then othering the fuck out of Republicans. But that would require teamwork, or at least a strong Democratic party. We are likely to get neither. So instead we have to hope one of their prefabricated zingers lands and it doesn't come from some jackass like Gabbard.

[Mexal]

6 minutes ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Fivethirtyeight has me a little hyped to see what viewer numbers are for tonight and tomorrow all of a sudden. They included a disturbing chart in an article released just today (it's not really an article, it's more like their slightly-formal discussion of the debates) that showed Republicans had 4 debates that outscored the top rated Democrat debate (by an average of like 30 or 40 percent no less). The Democratic debate in question, which was the first one that pulled in 15.4 million sets of eyes, is also the only one that outscored any of the other Republican debates.

Jace wants to find out if I can start piecing together a theory that large amounts of candidates could be a good thing. To whip up the sports team like fanaticism. Sure, you're sad when your favorite team is out of the playoffs but there's always a team you want to lose more than the others. Big ass spectacles like the impending fiasco(s) tonight and tomorrow might should be about drawing as many people to the freak show as possible and then othering the fuck out of Republicans. But that would require teamwork, or at least a strong Democratic party. We are likely to get neither. So instead we have to hope one of their prefabricated zingers lands and it doesn't come from some jackass like Gabbard.

The Republican debates got a lot of eyes because Trump was in it and he said bonkers shit. The Dem debate is going to be boring as fuck.

[felice]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

And that's a fair position to take. I'm not gonna tell you you're wrong for demanding virtuous and steadfast leaders in your political party. But I will tell you that when faced with a binary choice, picking the lesser of the evils is the correct decision.

Absolutely, but we haven't reached the binary choice stage yet! Who the other evil will be is still to be determined, and there are a lot of options who'd be significantly less evil than Biden.

[aceluby]

15 minutes ago, Mexal said:

The Republican debates got a lot of eyes because Trump was in it and he said bonkers shit. The Dem debate is going to be boring as fuck.

So. Boring.  Like, I bet they don't talk about the size of their dicks even once.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

41 minutes ago, aceluby said:

So. Boring.  Like, I bet they don't talk about the size of their dicks even once.

I’m offering 500 to 1 odds that Amy throws a binder at Elizabeth.

Those are the same odds we got for Luis Suarez triggering a zombie apocalypse by biting Messi, so I think there’s some good value there.

[Jace, Extat]

56 minutes ago, Mexal said:

The Republican debates got a lot of eyes because Trump was in it and he said bonkers shit. The Dem debate is going to be boring as fuck.

Agreed, 100%. That's why I'm excited to see if there's a big ass viewer count, because it would indicate to me that fighting Trump matters to a now significant portion of voters and possibly (this is pure conjecture) could suggest that my thesis may have some kind of merit. It would take a lot of people a lot smarter than me to put those (hypothetical) jigsaw pieces together, but I'd love to see Dems turn politics into an outright sporting event and remove any pretense at 'dignity' or 'statesmanship'. The people like to be entertained, give them what they want and they might be sympathetic to our cause.

I have absolutely no evidence for this. It's just a fun little thing I was kicking around while making a resident drain an abscess. Can you believe this little twerp had the nerve to ask me to do an assessment on a bruised knee? I tell ya, the kids these days... he didn't even see Jurassic Park in the theater!!!!!

42 minutes ago, felice said:

Absolutely, but we haven't reached the binary choice stage yet! Who the other evil will be is still to be determined, and there are a lot of options who'd be significantly less evil than Biden.

Sure, but attacking Democrats needs to be done with deliberation. We don't want to scuttle our champion again, whether we love him or not.