Us Politics: my creepy grandpa can beat up your creepy grandpa

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

“Smoking” anything, by smoking I mean deliberately inhaling large quantities of any smoke particulate matter into your lungs, is probably really bad for you.  Hence the reason such actions causes the person smoking to “cough”.

 

54 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

We need to find a happy medium between political/electoral realism and seeking genuine political/electoral change.

Change always makes people uncomfortable.  People push back against not because it’s good or bad but because it is change.  

That said winning political power and keeping the status quo for the mere sake of retaining or gaining political power and never seeking change seems a waste to me.

 

Who has been arguing that?

[Zorral]

This is a time of TOTAL UPHEAVAL, with a pandemic that nobody with medical and scientific intelligence is in charge of trying to remedy, climate catastrophe, and a global takeover of mafia totalitarianism for profit and power.

And Biden, Mr Credit Card and Health Insurance Industry campaign consultants, supposedly the only antithesis to this, can only speak of welcoming 'progressives' to join with him "on my journey to the presidency."  People, come on!  Why do you even think there is going to be an election with the virus still raging, when its continuance favors Them gathering ever more power and obscene wealth by flat out mafia means.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

18 hours ago, Zorral said:

So.  Where do you put FDR and the New Deal, the Civil Rights era massive changes, in your interpretation of what has actually happened in the past?

Those don't count, duh.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

30 minutes ago, Simon Steele said:

Those don't count, duh.

More like they were fulcrum points.

Funny how that works, right?

[Fragile Bird]

Just imagine a grim summer in the US, and Trump starts telling his campaign team that he needs universal health care in order to win the election. He pulls a surprise announcement in September. Winner?

 

[Zorral]

Rule by fear doesn't work like that, duh.

This is the mob / mafia; taking and keeping power via rule by fear and cruelty is the point.*

I am speaking literally.  In Italy the mafia is delivering food and medical supplies to their 'friends.'  Here They are delivering food and medical supplies that They have highjacked by every means possible, including via FEMA just taking possession of trucks of stuff going from one state to another, giving it Their friends who then sell it commercially to Their "friends."

Edited extract from Machiavelli: The Art of Teaching People What to Fear by Patrick Boucheron, published in the US by Other Press

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/feb/08/real-power-is-fear-donald-trump-machiavelli-boucheron

 

Quote

 

[….]

This experience, which is profoundly Machiavellian in nature, is one that recurs again and again in history, whenever the words for expressing the things of politics become obsolete. What do we do when confronting adversaries we can’t put a name to? We call them “fascists”, for want of a better term – just as in Italy’s medieval communes, the people called the lords “tyrants”. We intend to confound them, to abash and bring them down, when we should in fact be examining what they say closely for its fascist potential. 

[….]

In a sense, totalitarianism is a political fiction. It had its first trial in George Orwell’s 1949 fable and was then given a theoretical analysis by Hannah Arendt in 1951. We now know that what came after, what obtains today, took its place without receiving a name. Orwell imag­ined the tyranny of a “Ministry of Truth” but that’s not what happened, and we don’t yet know if it’s for better or worse. “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears,” Orwell’s hero, Winston Smith, says in Nineteen Eighty-Four. And: “Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied.” What the novel describes is the capacity of propaganda to hollow out a receptive space in people by undermin­ing reality and sense experiences. “The evidence of one’s eyes and ears” referred to by Orwell could be common sense; it could also be that sixth sense Machiavelli spoke of, the accessory knowledge that the people have of what is dominating them.

Admittedly it was not the Party, as imagined by anti-totalitarian writers, that spoke when Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, declared, “Our inten­tion is never to lie to you,” before adding “sometimes we can disagree with the facts.” It’s not a Party, but it’s something else that we don’t know what to call, a fiction that is taking on body under our eyes. And what we need to understand is: what is this taking on of body, and how can our own society come to embody monstrousness? Gramsci read Machiavelli’s The Prince replacing the word “prince” with the word “party”. We could in turn read Orwell and replace “party” with “prince”. Either way, Machiavelli needs to be read not in the present, but in the future tense.

[….]

 

 

 

* BTW, Last night I watched the first half of the 1964 Sean Connery Bond flick, Goldfinger.  It’s eerily as though this was chiefbloodonhishands's template for his life. He talks, behaves and looks like Goldfinger, who is characterized as a German? Dutch? ‘tycoon’ obsessed with gold. Even to obsession with golf and cheating at it (as, indeed, he cheats at everything else – “I like to win,”). Even to Goldfinger's presumed dominance in mob partnership, to steal the Fort Knox gold supply and rule it all.

[Tears of Lys]

12 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Just imagine a grim summer in the US, and Trump starts telling his campaign team that he needs universal health care in order to win the election. He pulls a surprise announcement in September. Winner?

 

With him, anything is possible.  And I do mean ANYTHING.  

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

53 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Just imagine a grim summer in the US, and Trump starts telling his campaign team that he needs universal health care in order to win the election. He pulls a surprise announcement in September. Winner?

 

Um, why are you stealing my hot take, BIRD!? 

This is like equally as bad as your fake champion ancestors. 

[Fragile Bird]

550 sailors from the aircraft carrier Roosevelt have now tested positive for Covid-19. 3,000 sailors have been moved off the ship.

The Vice Admiral responsible for handling the Roosevelt went on board for 6 hours the other day to allow sailors to express their concerns. No surprise, he reported high levels of stress and anger that they weren't kept informed about what the Navy was going to do for them, and that the crew was 'struggling' and morale was bad.

Vice Admiral Merz is now in 14 days quarantine in Japan.

It's been reported that the navy is willing to consider reinstating Captain Crozier.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-infections-among-carrier-crew-rise-as-15188314.php

[Guest]

34 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

550 sailors from the aircraft carrier Roosevelt have now tested positive for Covid-19. 3,000 sailors have been moved off the ship.

The Vice Admiral responsible for handling the Roosevelt went on board for 6 hours the other day to allow sailors to express their concerns. No surprise, he reported high levels of stress and anger that they weren't kept informed about what the Navy was going to do for them, and that the crew was 'struggling' and morale was bad.

Vice Admiral Merz is now in 14 days quarantine in Japan.

It's been reported that the navy is willing to consider reinstating Captain Crozier.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Coronavirus-infections-among-carrier-crew-rise-as-15188314.php

That's not surprising to me. Capt. Crozier was on path to make admiral, and just how badly this situation got botched makes me think the only way Esper will get to keep his job is by reinstating Crozier (although Crozier's career path has likely come to an end). 

If the video of the sailors cheering Crozier hadn't leaked, and then if Modly hadn't FUBARed the situation by having the exact thing happen to him that happened to Crozier (leak of the audio), then they might have been able to blame it on Crozier and make it stick. 

But their actions fucked military morale way more than Crozier's, and reinstatement is the only realistic salve.

 

[Guest]

Can someone explain to me why Democrats keep asking for reinstatement of the SALT exemption right now? I mean, I get that it's because it was specifically targeted to harm mostly blue states, but why SALT? That's just an own-goal.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

18 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Can someone explain to me why Democrats keep asking for reinstatement of the SALT exemption right now? I mean, I get that it's because it was specifically targeted to harm mostly blue states, but why SALT? That's just an own-goal.

Because it's what big donors want. 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, OnionAhaiReborn said:

Because it's what big donors want. 

Natch.

[Martell Spy]

U.S. now has the world's most coronavirus deaths. And Trump is keeping himself busy by planning a council to re-open the country.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 hours ago, Zorral said:

This is a time of TOTAL UPHEAVAL, with a pandemic that nobody with medical and scientific intelligence is in charge of trying to remedy, climate catastrophe, and a global takeover of mafia totalitarianism for profit and power.

And Biden, Mr Credit Card and Health Insurance Industry campaign consultants, supposedly the only antithesis to this, can only speak of welcoming 'progressives' to join with him "on my journey to the presidency."  People, come on!  Why do you even think there is going to be an election with the virus still raging, when its continuance favors Them gathering ever more power and obscene wealth by flat out mafia means.

If there is no election the only one place to draw from for the Executive is the Senate.

[Pecan]

3 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Just imagine a grim summer in the US, and Trump starts telling his campaign team that he needs universal health care in order to win the election. He pulls a surprise announcement in September. Winner?

 

I think this is very possible. It's also worth keeping an ear open to what pols like Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton have to say on this subject. Both are likely GOP candidates for President in 2024 and I don't see any reason why they wouldn't go left of the Dems on healthcare. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

1 hour ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Can someone explain to me why Democrats keep asking for reinstatement of the SALT exemption right now? I mean, I get that it's because it was specifically targeted to harm mostly blue states, but why SALT? That's just an own-goal.

What is the SALT exemption?

[Fragile Bird]

3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What is the SALT exemption?

The state and local tax exemption. You used to be able to deduct taxes from income, and now it’s limited to $10,000. It hits blue states harder because house prices are so much higher and the taxes higher. Red states have much lower housing costs, and most people will still be able to deduct taxes.

 

[ThinkerX]

small business strangulation.  No great surprise, given whose in charge.

 

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/10/small-business-loan-effort-less-generous-179592

An emergency loan program meant to aid small businesses hurt by the coronavirus pandemic could be a lot less generous than previously advertised.

The Economic Injury Disaster Loan program is supposed to provide small businesses running out of cash due to the pandemic “with working capital loans of up to $2 million,” according to the Small Business Administration’s website.

But small businesses don’t appear to be able to get anything close to $2 million. Those that apply “will likely be given maximum loans of $25,000-$35,000 (as opposed to the advertised $2 million cap for EIDLs),” Tom Sullivan, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s vice president for small business policy, wrote in an internal email on Thursday evening, which was obtained by POLITICO.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

4 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The state and local tax exemption. You used to be able to deduct taxes from income, and now it’s limited to $10,000. It hits blue states harder because house prices are so much higher and the taxes higher. Red states have much lower housing costs, and most people will still be able to deduct taxes.

 

Thanks.