General News Thread

[Trubo]

I forget, but wasn't he opposed to gay marriage?

He's a pretty late-comer to supporting it compared to the other democratic candidates, though he did marry 2 White House male staff in 2012 at the White House I think. Don't think his gay rights policy is anything people have really attacked him on beyond him being a more recent supporter than others, and it pales in comparison to his refusal to acknowledge that people like Strom Thurmond were vile and should not be remembered fondly at all.

[I3uster]

Nobody expects saviors, just people that stand for something.

The fix of the recession immediately caused business as usual shortly after and the negative aftereffects of not only signaling that you can speculate without consequences because you are Too Big To Fail, as well as the horrendous wealth gap that widened during it still persist. And now they are doing the exact same shit again, and it will get worse, and this is the cycle that the wingnuts like me are truly scared of.

Why do Democrats have to cling to what is politically possible with bipartisanship when the Republicans then can just gift tax money to their friends and nobody questions the viability of that because they are evil?

The US is in the process of doing transport company bailouts with no equity, no regulations and, new addition, not even fucking oversight without punitive measures in place like Obama set it up. Just free reign! Why is that even remotely viable?

[RacingeR]

Also, yeah, the Reps have basically gone the route of a religious extremist group. They're just not actively violent on a large scale yet. To other American citizens, at least.

Indeed. If you ask Bolivia, the violence on a large scale is already happening. But a look at history would show it's been going on for a while.


Honestly while I disagree with toby he does bring up an uncomfortable truth with the fact that Bernie or whoever wants to bring up the left in the US (center-left in the rest of the world) would need to have a lot of political acumen to make it work. The reality is that even the South American center left which I consider had extremely good results during its duration (not that I'm not critical on many points, but that aside) and is probably the way forward once the house of cards is done coming down, had to compromise many times and do a lot of maneuvering to make their policies work. It was when the various parties started to get isolated within their own countries that they started to slowly fall apart and the reuslting split of the vote between various leftist parties let the right wingers win elections.

However, it is basically saying that Bernie or whoever takes his place would need to outright lie to get ahead. ie they'd have to compromise and agree with the so-called centrist policies and postures, and once you take into account that this "US centrism" is basically the right in the rest of the world, let's say it'd be rather odd at the very least, and it'd imply that once they get to the presidency he'd have to turn right around and give said policies a double middle finger before going to do his thing. Basically I don't see where you'd have the political maneuver space to start compromising on things with the way the USA political scene is laid in. You'd need bipartidism to go away before that becomes possible, because that'd make getting a coalition of some sort going actually tenable.

I guess I'm just repeating my "bipartidism is unhealthy as fuck" argument over and over again at this point

[Tobias]

10 years ago I would have told you that psych meds were a crutch we should ban and Freud was a certifiable genius.

then I learned and now I know better. People who don’t reevaluate their previous ideas are just children. Good for Biden for bieng intelligent enough to change his mind and humble enough to realize he needed to do so.

EDIT: thread is lively.

[I3uster]

was it humility or political opportunism

[Tobias]

was it humility or political opportunism

Humility.

[I3uster]

thats good i guess we can expect him to have the opinions of a european center left party by the time he is dead

[Pendant]

10 years ago I would have told you that psych meds were a crutch we should ban and Freud was a certifiable genius.

then I learned and now I know better. People who don’t reevaluate their previous ideas are just children. Good for Biden for bid day intelligent enough to change his mind and humble enough to realize he needed to do so.

EDIT: thread is lively.

What is the rational argument for hating people for no other reason than what their very nature dictates they are especially when you, allegedly, had a father who worked very hard to instill in you very progressive values on this front?

[Tobias]

He as an adult made choices and held beliefs. Then later he reconsidered them. That’s what good people do.

[Trubo]

One of the things I’m most excited about Biden is his policies actually. His plans for minimum sentence guidelines, rebuilding the tax code, and energy reforms are all well thought out and informed. And as I have note previously, the only way M4A becomes a thing is if it proves its own worth, and it’s Biden who is going to do that too.

this no policy thing is just a twitter talking point.

The first two are eh for me, because we all know they'll favor for-profit prisons and corporations as a whole, respectively. The last point is the only one I'd give Biden an edge on, but only because Sanders won't float nuclear as the only viable non-carbon energy source to pursue. Course, Japan showed the issue of how this can go poorly if you let private enterprises make major decisions without proper oversight, but one could argue that the routine fuck ups by BP and other oil companies are just as bad.

[Pendant]

Indeed. If you ask Bolivia, the violence on a large scale is already happening. But a look at history would show it's been going on for a while.


Honestly while I disagree with toby he does bring up an uncomfortable truth with the fact that Bernie or whoever wants to bring up the left in the US (center-left in the rest of the world) would need to have a lot of political acumen to make it work. The reality is that even the South American center left which I consider had extremely good results during its duration (not that I'm not critical on many points, but that aside) and is probably the way forward once the house of cards is done coming down, had to compromise many times and do a lot of maneuvering to make their policies work. It was when the various parties started to get isolated within their own countries that they started to slowly fall apart and the reuslting split of the vote between various leftist parties let the right wingers win elections.

However, it is basically saying that Bernie or whoever takes his place would need to outright lie to get ahead. ie they'd have to compromise and agree with the so-called centrist policies and postures, and once you take into account that this "US centrism" is basically the right in the rest of the world, let's say it'd be rather odd at the very least, and it'd imply that once they get to the presidency he'd have to turn right around and give said policies a double middle finger before going to do his thing. Basically I don't see where you'd have the political maneuver space to start compromising on things with the way the USA political scene is laid in. You'd need bipartidism to go away before that becomes possible, because that'd make getting a coalition of some sort going actually tenable.

I guess I'm just repeating my "bipartidism is unhealthy as fuck" argument over and over again at this point

Well, when Lula governed he got hit for not doing enough to combat corruption and opted to operate within the system embedded in state and local governments which needed to have their fingers greased before getting any work done. Rather than crusading against corruption he just accepted it as the cost of doing business but in the process he did nearly end food insecurity in Brazil. So you can make the argument that rather than fighting on every front there is some merit to doing the most attainable good first. I believe he himself said something to the effect that, "if the worker has no bread, nothing more can get done."

If it were me, I would have put those corrupt officials on blast because a) it is the right thing to do; and b) getting involved with such seedy elements can catch up to you and with Lula, it did. Even though he was never especially corrupt, especially by Brazilian standards, he was corrupt enough that he provided his foes with the ammunition they sought to take him down.

[I3uster]

Fighting on the most attainable thing is also a matter of the will to fight, which can with Joe only be shown in the realm of opinion as demonstrated here (we're caught up on some unprovable interpretations of his character which frankly do not matter even the slightest bit as much as how he used the power he has been given as functionary of the party and state he was elected in).

Personal sympathy is an argument for children and while I recognize its effectiveness in politics it also should not affect discussion between adults with functional brains.

[Trubo]

I voted Obama in to fix the Great Recession

Debatable. The fixes to the Great Recession laid bare why what we're currently going through is even possible.

and pass Obamacare.

Strongly disagree here. Obama should have done everything in his power to force Democrats to vote for a non-concession version of ACA, not the malformed reject that ew got after Republicans and Dixiecrats were through with it.

And he did those things. I’m quite pleased with his legacy. Sure he didn’t do everything I wanted and I didn’t agree with every one of his policies. But that’s politics. You give people 80% of what they want.

His efforts to end our involvement in foreign conflicts were insufficient. Yes, Dubya didn't leave him a great situation regarding that, but Obama expanded on it.

if it seems like a politician is giving you 100% of what you want he either is lying to you or can’t win an election. There isn’t a third option.

More like a politician can say whatever they want, but when their actions are routinely against what they're promising, it's hard to believe they'll actually follow through. Never mind other things like Biden's potential deteriorating mental ability shown on what's arguably been the nicest Democratic primary in recent history. Biden literally reads for extended periods of time from his notes during his few 4-7 minutes softball interviews on live television, and his responses regularly portray him to be meek.

[I3uster]

sometimes i wish i in my unqualified shitty job were given the same leeway as american politicians (not like the french have this mindset, you fuck something up and paris is on fire for 5 days)

you see he fucked up the refill, and the store is a mess, and he puked on a customer, but hes a man of integrity and character and what really matters is that he wanted those things to not happen

[Tobias]

Works for me.

like I said, I quite look forward to the policies of the Biden administration. Biden will intelligently lead us through the rest of the pandemic, reform prisons, and institute the public option. And he will likely do things I disagree with as well. And that’s OK. He is supposed to.

EDIT: again, what a lively thread.

[Pendant]

Fighting on the most attainable thing is also a matter of the will to fight, which can with Joe only be shown in the realm of opinion as demonstrated here (we're caught up on some unprovable interpretations of his character which frankly do not matter even the slightest bit as much as how he used the power he has been given as functionary of the party and state he was elected in).

Personal sympathy is an argument for children and while I recognize its effectiveness in politics it also should not affect discussion between adults with functional brains.

In general, the "character" point doesn't mean much for me. And, of course, there is a line to this. But when dealing with a politician's personality I don't see how this should impact your decision in any way. A politician will impact things on a bureaucratic level, whether they are "folksy" or "awkward" has no bearing on their governance. I'd support the guy who I don't think I could in a million years get along with over the one "I'd like to have a beer with" every time if the former had the better policy set.

[I3uster]

Caveat is that thats something you have to take into account as electability argument.

If Obama was the fresh one coming off disastrous policies off idk, a Clinton administration or whatever, I'd certainly give him the points there. It works on people.

But at the end of the day you don't live under a politicians character, you live under them continually making your living situation more and more precarious and giving money to people that have everything. So if you want to have a discussion on policy it should not enter the picture.

[Kamera]

the more i read this thread the more i realize just how much i hate liberal democracy

[I3uster]

as the old saying goes, hate the liberal not the democracy

[Kamera]

yes