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US Politics: The American Messias, Greenland and attacks on Jews voting Democrats. Or as we call it Wednesday.


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On 8/21/2019 at 7:21 PM, Triskele said:

I touched on this in the climate change thread, but if climate change is really the threat that everyone says it is, and Chinese Politburo leaders, EU leaders, and a majority of US leaders know it (even if Trump doesn't and some of the Senate doesn't), why isn't there more talk about a NATO-style pact to defend the rainforest from any attacks under punishment by invasion?  Sure that many Brazilians wouldn't like this, but is this really a threat to our future on this planet or not?  

 

because their plan is to simply accumulate as much wealth, power and access to resources so that they are completely insulated from the effects of catastrophic climate collapse, and likely prefer such an outcome

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Does anyone worry that, if Trump can get away with what he's gotten away with despite being a complete moron, an actual smart version of him taking over at some point in the future would mean humanity is fucked?

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David Koch is dead. May Hell be hotter than the climate apocalypse he contributed to so mightily, and may the demons tormenting him be union organized.

Let's give him a Viking funeral and burn him on his yacht with a few dozen of his most loyal Republican politicians as retainers in the next life.

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22 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Does anyone worry that, if Trump can get away with what he's gotten away with despite being a complete moron, an actual smart version of him taking over at some point in the future would mean humanity is fucked?

I've heard such thoughts expressed on this board. I don't really worry too much about that simply because this is an existential crisis for our country. We weren't sure if the nukes were going to fly or we were going to war with Iran. We're in survival mode, basically.

My biggest worry I guess is that Trump will get reelected and break up NATO. That's in addition to all sorts of horrible things that will certainly happen, like Obamacare repeal. The NATO thing is a huge crisis for the entire West though.

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10 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

But he's from Harvard, and a war hero, and look at the jawline. It's like a fash fantasy come true.

Maybe we could lock him in a room with Seth Moulton and they'll just cancel each other out?

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1 minute ago, DanteGabriel said:

Maybe we could lock him in a room with Seth Moulton and they'll just cancel each other out?

Seth Moulton looked like a good presidential candidate.  He didn't seem to have a lot of other qualifications, given his track record of mostly failure in the House.  I'm not at all disappointed to see him drop out.

Now the big question is whether anyone else will qualify for the next debate and we have to deal with 11 candidates on the stage (bleh) or if they split into two and have one debate almost assuredly be a waste of everybody's time 

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Just now, Maithanet said:

Seth Moulton looked like a good presidential candidate.  He didn't seem to have a lot of other qualifications, given his track record of mostly failure in the House.  I'm not at all disappointed to see him drop out.

Now the big question is whether anyone else will qualify for the next debate and we have to deal with 11 candidates on the stage (bleh) or if they split into two and have one debate almost assuredly be a waste of everybody's time 

Moulton is my representative and I had high hopes for him at the beginning, but he's been pretty disappointing. Independent of the wisdom of wanting to replace Pelosi as Speaker, he blundered repeatedly during the challenge, and he's shown himself to be an empty suit with a nice resume.

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Yeah Moulton's bungling of the Pelosi challenge definitely lowered his stock among the party and with the political media.  He probably would have been better off passing on trying to run as it did him no favors trying to recover that stock.

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The earlier, lying jobs reports was the talk upstate among groups of people that one might not expect it to be.  But up in Saratoga this week, as the high racing season, winds to an end at the close of the month, jobs and employment were constant topics, as the tracks, the stables, the trainers -- and then all the vast number of resorts from high to low end, and all the eating establishments were so short-handed, due to we know what. 

But that's not the same as this -- the so-called administration of liars lied about job growth immediately upon inauguration.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-created-500000-fewer-jobs-since-2018-than-previously-reported-new-figures-show-2019-08-21

 

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16 hours ago, Triskele said:

During the Bush and into Obama years I naively thought that what drove the right was low taxes, opposition to expanding healthcare, and foreign policy invasions and jingoism.  And maybe that still is true among wealthy Republican elites or lots of them.   I thought of the immigration issue as this one other political issue that both sides seemed to care about to some degree and it was just a matter of when some kind of comprehensive immigration reform would be passed and exactly where that would shake out.  But man did it turn out that the immigration was the issue that the GOP voting base cared about.

It's really interesting (if depressing) to think about if Trump hadn't run and the rest of the party was just running on the same old Romney stuff and trying to tone down the overt racism.  Like, there was that "autopsy" that a lot of the GOP elites bought into about how they had to tack left on immigration and Trump came along and said quite the opposite...and was rewarded for it.  Depressing also because it feels like a Pandora's Box where now that it's been unearthed you know others will try it even when Trump is gone.  

Insularity and racisms are festering cancers at the heart of america, and they've been there for centuries.  One feeds off the other.   Trump has to walk a fine line of leading the racism parade without being too completly obvious about it or he might lose more of what remains of the moderate GOP voters.  And he has to continually push for the things that keep the big money folks happy.  

To give him his due, Trump is a pretty slick con-man if you're the kind of person who falls for his type.  His wierd way of speakly is oddly effective as long as you're not trying to read written transcripts of it (at which point it looks like he has dementia).

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On 8/21/2019 at 8:35 PM, Triskele said:

What are the theories on why Harris has had such a collapse?  Any analysis on where some of the polling that was behind her has gone?  

I think Tulsi Gabbard really hit her hard on her questionable practices as a prosecutor and AG. I really think this hurt Harris in that she couldn't truly rebut it, which is honestly shocking, these narratives have been out there for a bit. She had to know they were coming sooner or later, and you'd think she might have a succinct, clear answer to it. Or maybe it's just indefensible. (To me it is)

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1 hour ago, Simon Steele said:

I think Tulsi Gabbard really hit her hard on her questionable practices as a prosecutor and AG. I really think this hurt Harris in that she couldn't truly rebut it, which is honestly shocking, these narratives have been out there for a bit. She had to know they were coming sooner or later, and you'd think she might have a succinct, clear answer to it. Or maybe it's just indefensible. (To me it is)

Yeah, at the time I saw people comparing it to a boxer with a glass jaw, or arguing that while a prosecutor is damn good at making the arguments they want to make, they’re all offense, no defense. Put them on the back foot or hit them with a surprise and some have trouble adjusting or changing the argument that they were making.

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7 hours ago, Darryk said:

Does anyone worry that, if Trump can get away with what he's gotten away with despite being a complete moron, an actual smart version of him taking over at some point in the future would mean humanity is fucked?

I was just reading about the mathematician Kurt Godel and what happened when he went to get his American citizenship. He started to explain to the citizenship official about the logical inconsistency in the American constitution that makes a dictatorship possible when Einstein cut him short. 

I guess the answer is yes. 

 

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3 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

I think Tulsi Gabbard really hit her hard on her questionable practices as a prosecutor and AG. I really think this hurt Harris in that she couldn't truly rebut it, which is honestly shocking, these narratives have been out there for a bit. She had to know they were coming sooner or later, and you'd think she might have a succinct, clear answer to it. Or maybe it's just indefensible. (To me it is)

Eh, I'm not entirely sure that it was the one debate performance that caused her to tank in the polls. Iirc, her polling trendline was already declining before the 2nd debate.

While Gabbard certainly came loaded for bear, and while I agree with your assessment that Harris was completely unprepared for the question she should have been prepping against for months, I think it's rather been her lack of a natural constituency, along with trying to pander to both liberal and moderate Democratic voters that has caused her polling to flatline. 

I know I've mentioned on at least one previous occasion that she has an atrocious tendency to espouse liberal positions during high profile events, and then walk those positions back a day or two later when not as many people are paying attention.

Imo, if she really wants to have a chance at winning, she should pick the moderate lane and go hard after Biden. She was able to briefly cut deeply into his support after the 1st debate, and there isn't a whole lot of competition at this point for moderate primary voters, besides Biden of course. 

With the caveat that it's still early in the primary season, I don't think she has a shot at siphoning votes from the liberal wing of the party. Sanders and Warren pretty much have those voters locked down at this point, and Harris is too squishy when it comes to her policies to make serious inroads with that crowd.

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