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US Politics: Money, Money, Money Makes the World Go Round


Fragile Bird

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1 hour ago, James Arryn said:

AWOL drunk >>>>>>>> swift boat decorated hero because reasons.

Don't forget Jimmy Carter, the veteran of nuclear submarines, portrayed as a wimp while fake cowboy Ronald Reagan, who spent World War 2 pretending to be a soldier on camera, is lauded as a rugged Western tough guy.

I think right wingers fall for chicken hawks so much because so many of them are fake tough too. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Trump and his useless sons -- all pudding-soft fake-ass helium-filled badasses.

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29 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Don't forget Jimmy Carter, the veteran of nuclear submarines, portrayed as a wimp while fake cowboy Ronald Reagan, who spent World War 2 pretending to be a soldier on camera, is lauded as a rugged Western tough guy.

I think right wingers fall for chicken hawks so much because so many of them are fake tough too. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Trump and his useless sons -- all pudding-soft fake-ass helium-filled badasses.

Hold a minute there Dante. Are you actually suggesting that the group of people who like to call each other cuckservatives are all secretly cucks themselves because they let Trump cuck their party? Why I never……

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Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

Except he's not running on ending or destroying capitalism.

That would be phenomenally stupid. But add up the rest...and certain things are definitely being implied. He's not a capitalist.

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27 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Don't forget Jimmy Carter, the veteran of nuclear submarines, portrayed as a wimp while fake cowboy Ronald Reagan, who spent World War 2 pretending to be a soldier on camera, is lauded as a rugged Western tough guy.

I think right wingers fall for chicken hawks so much because so many of them are fake tough too. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Trump and his useless sons -- all pudding-soft fake-ass helium-filled badasses.

We have that up here in Canada too. Justin Trudeau was challenged to a boxing match by one of his Conservative opponents who bragged about being a Special Forces soldier before going into politics. Needless to say Justin cleaned the clock of Mr Special Forces.

Going back in history a bit, Ernest Hemingway made the mistake of challenging a skinny Canadian writer to a boxing match also. Hemingway also got his clock cleaned. 

The moral of the story is to actually make it physical with these guys. 

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4 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Hold a minute there Dante. Are you actually suggesting that the group of people who like to call each other cuckservatives are all secretly cucks themselves because they let Trump cuck their party? Why I never……

The Republican Party is a closed circle Human Centipede of cuckery.

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Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

I mean, there's a reason Trump's gotten so much mileage out of the phrase "fake news."

Yes. He uses it to avoid explaining why something is wrong because, you know, it's not wrong.

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19 minutes ago, maarsen said:

The moral of the story is to actually make it physical with these guys. 

Which is in a large sense exactly what Warren did with bloomie, and he just wilted.  And now all the news media are blathering on about his wilt, and about his NDAs and the tax returns -- our big take away from bloomie? 'consensual' and 'turbo tax.'

BUT! the media wouldn't be talking about this if Warren hadn't given him her excellent treatment and it wouldn't even be talking about his wilt without her excellent treatment -- but seemingly nobody notices that she accomplished this.  Their conversation, just like here, is all about TWO OLD WHITE GUYS, bloomie and Sanders.

 

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Just now, Muaddibs_Tapeworm said:

Such as?

That explains why he uses it, not why so many people were ready to accept it or buy into it.

Such as? I explained that. He's not capitalist. Bernie could clarify it easily with three words: "I'm a capitalist".

People buy it because Republicans have been brainwashing their own for decades now to distrust any media source but their own propaganda and this makes it easier to control their base. You counter an untrue statement with facts and proof, not by screeching "fake news!"

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45 minutes ago, Lollygag said:

That would be phenomenally stupid. But add up the rest...and certain things are definitely being implied. He's not a capitalist.

Sanders is a capitalist, just not a 'free market' capitalist. If you dig through his statements in the past, he does talk sometimes about how global capitalism has lifted people out of poverty. At the same time, unfettered capitalism can lead to wealth inequality. This isn't actually a radical proposition or view to hold and I share many of these sentiments.

As to how the GoP smear machine will portray all this, who knows? He does have the currency of authenticity more than many other politicians, so it is possible a well timed speech or series of statements could easily dissipate some of these attacks.

 

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54 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

The Republican Party is a closed circle Human Centipede of cuckery.

Look, just because you're thinking of Ted Cruz jerking off in a corner while Trump and Heidi Cruz fuck doesn't mean the rest of us need to have the image.

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25 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Sanders is a capitalist, just not a 'free market' capitalist. If you dig through his statements in the past, he does talk sometimes about how global capitalism has lifted people out of poverty. At the same time, unfettered capitalism can lead to wealth inequality. This isn't actually a radical proposition or view to hold and I share many of these sentiments.

As to how the GoP smear machine will portray all this, who knows? He does have the currency of authenticity more than many other politicians, so it is possible a well timed speech or series of statements could easily dissipate some of these attacks.

 

 

For the first one, Warren "is a capitalist to her bones. I'm not." He then goes on to talk about the problems which we all agree on but then doesn't specify the specific solutions he's suggesting which I assume wouldn't be capitalistic. It comes right after he talks about how all candidates should release their medical records. The second one is self-explanatory.

 

It seems like he's stretching authenticity thin. He's reversed himself on immigration (good for him - shows growth but some won't see it that way), he's reversed himself on medical records and reverses himself on how the nomination should work based on what works best for him in that moment. But next to Trump...

Bold: I wish I could live in that world.

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8 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

To me socialism is nationalizing banks, taking over the means of production (of say oil, and other important products) etc. Changing corporate or individual tax rates is still within the realms of capitalism. I cant watch videos but I will take a look later,

Interesting. To me it's just Denmark and Canada.

I think when Republicans use it they mean Venezuela but when Bernie uses it he means Denmark and Canada

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Just now, IheartIheartTesla said:

To me socialism is nationalizing banks, taking over the means of production (of say oil, and other important products) etc. Changing corporate or individual tax rates is still within the realms of capitalism. I cant watch videos but I will take a look later,

 

The definitions seem murky but he did advocate a government takeover of energy production.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/02/02/bernie-sanders-climate-federal-electricity-production-110117

In the '70s, he was quite fiery. In a recent statement, he didn't say whether he believed differently now.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html

Quote

Bernie Sanders advocated for the nationalization of most major industries, including energy companies, factories, and banks, when he was a leading member of a self-described "radical political party" in the 1970s, a CNN KFile review of his record reveals.

Sanders' past views shed light on a formative period of his political career that could become relevant as he advances in the 2020 Democratic primary.
Many of the positions he held at the time are more extreme compared to the more tempered democratic socialism the Vermont senator espouses today and could provide fodder for moderate Democrats and Republicans looking to cast the Democratic presidential candidate and his beliefs as a fringe form of socialism that would be harmful to the country.
Aspects of Sanders' plans and time in the Liberty Union have been reported before, but the material taken together, including hundreds of newly digitalized newspapers and files from the Liberty Union Party archived at the University of Vermont, paint a fuller portrait of Sanders' views on state and public-controlled industry at the time.
 
In a statement to CNN, Sanders campaign spokesman Josh Orton said, "Throughout his career, Bernie has fought on the side of working people and against the influence of both the powerful ultra-rich and giant corporations who seek only to further their own greed. The record shows that from the very beginning, Bernie anticipated and worked to combat the rise of a billionaire ruling class and the exploding power of Wall Street and multinational corporations. Whether fighting to lower energy prices or expand access to capital for local development, Bernie's first priority has always been -- and will always be -- defending the interests of working people across the country."

 

This should confuse everyone even more but it's interesting. :D

 

 

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3 hours ago, Ormond said:

I guess I don't have the trust in Sanders here that you do. I worry that he just doesn't have the personality to be more "conciliatory" on his "symbolic messaging" during the general election campaign than he is now. Do you have evidence for him making such a shift in the past somewhere?

So, I'll admit that I'm a Sanders fan, and especially a fan of his stump speech, because I'm firmly in the camp who believes that someone needs to point out that the Emperor has no clothes when it comes to capitalism and income inequality in the U.S.

However, I can see why some people might be turned off by the rhetoric of his stump speeches. I came across this clip the other day of bonus features released from an interview Sanders did with Hassan Minhaj of Patriot Act on Netflix, and Sanders seemed like a completely different person than he does in his stump speeches. He's funny, engaging, moderates his rhetoric, talks extensively about minority issues in addition to economic ones, and just seems like the "safer" type of candidate that many in the Democratic party seem to be looking for.

Here's a link to it if anyone would like to watch (it's a little over 12 minutes long).

https://youtu.be/iaqcwyZPuKg

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https://www.salon.com/2020/02/21/what-weve-learned-about-elizabeth-warrens-feminism-shes-no-moderate/

 

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As Greg Sargent of the Washington Post wrote Thursday, this was Warren tying together what one might call Bloomberg's "#MeToo problem" with the way he wields his wealth as a shield from accountability, all under the banner of "elites acting with impunity." It also makes Bloomberg sound a lot like Donald Trump, whose impunity while he "boasts about sexual assault" is tied to his more general sense of financial and legal impunity. 

Warren's ability to pull off this linkage of sexism to a larger criticism of elite abuse of power — and really, it was a hat trick, since she also tied all that together with Bloomberg's history of "supporting racist policies like redlining and stop-and-frisk" — wasn't just the result of some clever writing from her strategic team, however much they may have helped. This fits in with a larger pattern with Warren, whose feminism is simply inseparable from the issues that have defined her career, namely her opposition to predatory capitalism and her war against the ways economic elites corrupt our political systems. . . .

. . . . But another argument, one that Warren herself advanced at the time and has since put forward more bluntly, is that the problem isn't that women work. It's that the capitalist system has adjusted in ways that exploit families. That second income into households wasn't making families wealthier — it was just allowing the capitalist system to drive up the cost of everyday living and maximize profits. And it should be the job of the federal government to step in and change the system so that women's work can do more for their families economically. 

Yes, Warren was justifiably critical of feminist organizations back then for bucketing these economic considerations outside the larger concept of "women's issues". 

"Women's issues are not just about childbearing or domestic violence," Warren and Tyagi wrote. "If it were framed properly, middle-class economic reform just might become the issue that could galvanize millions of mainstream women to join the fight for women's issues."

In the years since, Warren's feminism has gotten sharper and, at the same time, feminism has become more interested in these kind of economic concerns. For instance, the issue of subsidized child care, which had been tabled for decades after activist campaigns around the issue in the 1970s had failed, has risen to the top of feminist concerns in the past decade.

Most Democrats have embraced some policy ideas for making child care more affordable, and none so more than Warren, who has released a detailed plan for universal day care — which she wants to pay for by taxing the wealthy, which is a double whammy, lifting women up economically while also reducing wealth inequalities. . . .

 

 

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