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US Politics: Georgia on Our Minds


Fragile Bird

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3 hours ago, Lollygag said:

“A lot of it was blatantly anti-Semitic,” David said. “We’re Jewish, but I don’t think my dad is knowledgeable enough to understand the dog whistles.”

That says a lot.

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56 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

So you think that it isn't insane that the co-chair of Biden's transition transition team just got done absolutely fucking over California workers? This isn't about purity, it has gone beyond a question of purity, it is about right and wrong, and if you're working in a role like Tony West  is with Uber and now Lyft, you're wrong.

Without commenting on the actual merits of the ballot, I'd think this case supports my initial point.  Prop 22 was passed by over a 17 point margin in California.  While I get it that there was a ton of corporate spending on the vote, given that Uber and Lyft are both based out of San Francisco, I am guessing that when their own money is on the line (property value, stock, corporate employment, and money in the local economy), a significant portion of the people in the state are pretty pro-capitalism themselves.  So, yes, while West was definitely instrumental in getting it passed, so were the nearly ten million Californians that, ya know, actually voted for it.   So if you happen to be in California, you are pretty likely to be 1 degree of separation (that's a whole lotta bacon!) and I would bet you that the margin skews even farther when weighting by folks with the necessary skills/experience for the roles in a federal Administration. 

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When you have a country with inadequate base employment protections across the board then it's always going to be a race to the bottom for worker's rights when states have to compete with states. It's not like we don't already have examples of jobs going to other cheap labour countries to give us some foreshadowing of what would happen inside the border.

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While this isn't really news, the role of the Cheneys as leaders of the intraparty battle with Trump makes it considerably more difficult to decide who to root for:

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Driving the news: The elder Cheney helped pull together an op-ed from all 10 living former defense secretaries to warn against military intervention to thwart a transfer of power. Liz Cheney pounded out a 21-page argument against plans to try to stall certification of Biden's win.

Why it matters: Each has said little about President Trump over the past four years. But now that they're speaking out, they're making it count — with muscular, blunt cases against obstruction of the inevitable.

Liz Cheney has ambitions to run for the White House or House speaker. Her dad remains a formidable force in establishment Republican politics.

 

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30 minutes ago, Martell Spy said:

Maybe the Cheneyistsas will declare Trump an enemy combatant and torture him though.

I really don't think any "EITs" would be necessary to get Trump to break.  Like any child, just take away his phone for a few hours and ignore him, sure he'd consider that torture.

Just saw this op-ed, thought it was interesting and worth sharing on election eve.  As a bonus, it was written by Takeo Spikes, a pretty damn good linebacker who had a solid stint with the Niners - Georgia's rural Black voters were ignored and suppressed. Now they might flip the Senate:

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Since the November election, attention has been rightfully paid to the role of Black voters — and Black organizers — in flipping Georgia for President-elect Joe Biden. This attention is warranted, and long overdue, but often overlooked is the role of rural Black voters in particular. After decades of political neglect, emboldened rural Georgian voters are turning out in droves and forcing themselves into the political conversation. Rural Black voters played a central role in helping Biden win Georgia, and now have the chance to decide which party controls the U.S. Senate. 

People tend to see Georgia as made up of Atlanta and Not Atlanta, with a lot of Democratic (Black) voters in urban Atlanta and heavily Republican (white) voters in the rural rest of the state — and when people hear “rural,” they almost always think “white.” But that’s just not what Georgia is like. A third of rural Georgians are people of color and one in four voters outside the Atlanta metro area are Black. In fact, most of the 20 majority-Black counties in Georgia are in rural areas — including Washington County, where I grew up.  

 

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The CNN program on Jimmy Carter, the Rock ‘n Roll President, was pretty interesting, not just because of the rock stars who funded his campaign but because of the story about where he lived. The county was 80% black, and as his son Chip put it, if you didn’t have black friends you were pretty lonely. The Carter kids got beaten up in school almost every day because they wouldn’t join the other white kids in bad-mouthing black people.Carter had well-earned black support.

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2 hours ago, DMC said:

So him doing his job at Uber counts but him doing his job under the Obama administration doesn't?  Regardless, he's very unlikely to have any role in the Biden administration and I don't know where you're getting that he's a co-chair of the transition.  He was a co-chair of Harris' Senate transition team in 2016, but according to this he's not a co-chair, staff member, or even on Biden transition's advisory council.

Anyway, my sister and definitely brother-in-law have taken on unseemly clients in their legal careers, let alone the clients of the firms they've worked for.  It doesn't change their politics or even policy positions that directly adversely affect said clients one iota.  But by your standards, they are both evil people that I should never speak to again.

Ok, fair play I got the bit about the transition really, really wrong.

As far as your sister and brother-in-law goes, I ask you if they just got done fucking over an entire state? There are orders of magnitude of bad, and short of signing on to the Trump election fraud team, it doesn't get much worse than what he did, especially if he is strongly associated with the party who were theoretically ideologically opposed to what happened.

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17 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

The CNN program on Jimmy Carter, the Rock ‘n Roll President, was pretty interesting, not just because of the rock stars who funded his campaign but because of the story about where he lived. The county was 80% black, and as his son Chip put it, if you didn’t have black friends you were pretty lonely. The Carter kids got beaten up in school almost every day because they wouldn’t join the other white kids in bad-mouthing black people.Carter had well-earned black support.

Chip also smoked weed with Willie Nelson on the rooftop of the WH.

I've smoked weed in my state's capital before.

Respect.

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10 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

As far as your sister and brother-in-law goes, I ask you if they just got done fucking over an entire state?

Heh, coincidentally one of the only serious arguments I've had with my sister during our adult lives was over the 2015 NYC Uber cap battle.  Personal ethics aside, I'd agree with you if West had a role in Biden's administration - which would also obviously have nepotism concerns and why there was pushback to such a notion back in November.  And I'd even disagree with him being on the transition team - although I wouldn't be that outraged.  He would be qualified to be on, say, the transition's DOJ agency review team, and would only be one voice in over 30 members of that team anyway.  (Moreover, I think Maya should not play any official role in Harris' future campaigns and/or staff, let alone her husband, but that's neither here nor there.)  

But considering he's not part of either the administration or the transition as far as I can tell (and as of yet in terms of the former), it seems all you're complaining about is the fact that he's married to Harris' sister.  What exactly do you want Harris, let alone Biden, to do about that?

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17 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

And where does everyone think the tax base lives in these states?  Omfg urban/rural nonsense. Think with your brain - at least in NY the blue urban centers carry the rest of the state. Mind you that’s not to say there shouldn’t be a ton of reform in Albany and NYC city hall but breaking up the state?  Look to the money and then think about it ....

I’m not saying such schism would ultimately be for everyone’s benefit just that the idea may not need statewide support.

Yes it would be bad for rural voters, but they often let their prejudices vote for things that hurt them.

Take immigration; it’s the top issue for many rural voters, when it’s probable most will never interact with an immigrant.

But the fear of immigrants changing America in any capacity is enough outrage them.

 

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4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

The CNN program on Jimmy Carter, the Rock ‘n Roll President, was pretty interesting, not just because of the rock stars who funded his campaign but because of the story about where he lived. The county was 80% black, and as his son Chip put it, if you didn’t have black friends you were pretty lonely. The Carter kids got beaten up in school almost every day because they wouldn’t join the other white kids in bad-mouthing black people.Carter had well-earned black support.

I was going to post in advance that this sounded like it was going to be a very nice show. I procrastinated and didn't get around to it. Thank you for mentioning this.

Jimmy Carter got broadsided by the inflation that Nixon created and then further screwed when Reagan sold out the American hostages when they told Tehran to hold the hostages till after the election. 

It's obvious a deal was made ( I think those hostages were released within minutes after that election).

Ah here it is-

January 20, 1981: Hostages are formally released into United States custody after spending 444 days in captivity. The release takes place just minutes after Ronald Reagan is sworn in as president.
Wikipedia › wiki › October_Surpris...

The Republicans screwed Carter coming and going.

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17 minutes ago, DireWolfSpirit said:

Jimmy Carter got broadsided by the inflation that Nixon created and then further screwed when Reagan sold out the American hostages when they told Tehran to hold the hostages till after the election. 

It's obvious a deal was made ( I think those hostages were released within minutes after that election).

While the timing of the hostage releases has always been suspect - and has been thoroughly investigated known as the "October Surprise" conspiracy - the exact timing appears to simply reflect the fact it was immediately after reaching the Algiers Accords.  Which were negotiated by Warren Christopher, and at that point Reagan had already won, obviously, for over two months.  In retrospect I'm sure Reagan would have preferred the agreement was resolved considerably earlier (whether he engineered its delay or not).  

Regardless, while Carter faced horrid circumstances both foreign and domestic during his tenure, he still bears significant responsibility for his own failures.  In terms of the Iran Hostage Crisis, the quagmire that was Operation Eagle Claw is all on him, and caused his SoS Cy Vance to resign in protest (albeit this was also in part due to a longstanding feud with NSA Brzezinski).  It was not long after this that Carter's approval dropped to the low 30s and never really recovered.

On the domestic side, Carter absolutely squandered extraordinary majorities in both chambers in large part due to his insulated and micromanaging leadership style (a mistake Clinton - rather ironically considering his determination to not act like Carter - replicated in his first two years), highlighted by his refusal to hire a chief of staff for his first two and a half years in a misguided politically symbolic attempt to demonstrate there would be no Haldemans in his administration. 

This approach to pushing his legislative agenda alienated Democrats in Congress when a cooperative and coordinated effort could have led to considerable policy successes given the composition of Congress and readiness of the entire country to move on from the Watergate era.  Carter is probably the greatest post-president ever.  And, again, he faced daunting challenges during his tenure.  But neither changes the rather objective consensus that he wasn't a very good president.

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13 hours ago, Chataya de Fleury said:

Oh, it does bad things to Gen X, too. 

Basically, everyone, really. It’s more visible in the boomers, but IMO it is socially corrosive.

I sometimes think that, in the last fifteen years or so, lefties have developed a set of doctrines to rival those of the right. Of course, leftish doctrines point in a different direction, but they are no less intellectually confining. This in my experience leads to no end of online sand-fights between progressives and the dreaded "centrists" that supposedly stole the 2016 from Bernie and helped usher Trump into power. Facebook is simply one of the venues in which this internecine battle is fought.

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13 minutes ago, TrackerNeil said:

I sometimes think that, in the last fifteen years or so, lefties have developed a set of doctrines to rival those of the right. Of course, leftish doctrines point in a different direction, but they are no less intellectually confining. This in my experience leads to no end of online sand-fights between progressives and the dreaded "centrists" that supposedly stole the 2016 from Bernie and helped usher Trump into power. Facebook is simply one of the venues in which this internecine battle is fought.

TRUTH. I prefer the term Evil Centrist or maybe the Malevolent Center.
 

As a pretty middle of the road type this means that the current GOP left me about a decade ago (give it take) so I exist within the Big Donkey Tent somewhat uneasily.  

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3 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

What is “the Isaakson conundrum”?

Johnny Isakson resigned halfway through his term.  Loeffler was appointed to replace him, but only until the results of a special election, which (hopefully) will finally be resolved today.  This is why she is still a Senator whereas Purdue is not - his own term expired Sunday while Isakson/Loeffler/today's winner's doesn't expire until January 2023 (which, of course, means whomever wins today will be running for reelection in 2022).  The conundrum part is either a clever title for this complication or somewhat of a ripoff of how Big Bang Theory titles its episodes, YMMV.

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10 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

So you think that it isn't insane that the co-chair of Biden's transition transition team just got done absolutely fucking over California workers? This isn't about purity, it has gone beyond a question of purity, it is about right and wrong, and if you're working in a role like Tony West  is with Uber and now Lyft, you're wrong.

Grim,

This is somewhat more complicated than I think you imagine.  I drive for Uber usually in the evenings about 6 days a week.  I have done so since I lost my job back in February.  I do have full time employment and have continued to drive for Uber since I found full time employment back in March.

I, and I suspect many other Uber and Lyft drivers, do not want to be an employee of Uber.  I don’t want a set schedule, I don’t want management meetings, I don’t want a “supervisor”.  I like the freedom and independence of being an independent contractor.

This is not a black and white “good and evil” issue.

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I think it is kind of funny that the old adage that "democrats want high turnout" has shifted to "democrats want high turnout, until election day".  Estimates are that 1-1.2 million Georgians will vote today, but if that number ended up being only 800k, it would probably be good for the Democrats.  Because 3 million people have already voted, and indications are that group was very Democratic leaning.  If another 1.2+ million voters come out, then we'll probably see an electorate very similar to November, and with it a likely Republican victory. 

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New year; new tea leaves to read:

My assumption: Pence doesn't want to piss off Trump by certifying the vote but knows there's nothing he can do to prevent it, so Grassley is taking the political hit in his place.

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