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2016/03/07 22:01:55
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Is that the, "I've never heard of that, therefore it doesn't exist," defence?
Why do I have to defend anything? Perhaps the accuser should provide some evidence first.
I get the distinct feeling that you wouldn't accept evidence. I discussed the liberal support of an invasion of Afghanistan (specifically to save people from their own life style), the liberals that supported invasion of Iraq (specifically to liberate people from their own life styles), the very fact that post-colonialsim as a school of thought exists in academia as a criticism of western liberalism even exists. How about liberal hawkism that assumes military intervention is what the beleaguered brown people of the world need to save them (Libya). Neoliberalism, that sees nothing wrong with destruction of pesky non-secular cultures in the name of globalization. The liberal quote Sanders made at the last debate that robs minorities of their agency in favor of the helping hand of white liberals.
Are you using the tactic of asking for citations* so you can get me to refuse to waste my time so you can claim victory?
* I see no reason to give you a litany of books you will never read and immediately dismiss. Websites you can nitpick in order to dismiss or any other media. I've given you topics of discussion and you have google.
I figured I would opset a few by countering the narrative with reality. Didn't think it would break into childlish yahbuts, sensationalism, denialism an outright arrogance by ignorance. Not everyday you get to say something so liberal it has to be dismissed as conservative propaganda to return to the comfort zone of assuming conservativism is the root of all problems.
It's a very easy get out for you to assume I won't look at your evidence so you won't bother to present any, so I am guilty.
NuggzTheNinja wrote: On another note, why is it that so many liberals are claiming that they will move to Canada if he is elected, but so few claim they would move to Mexico?
Because if Trump becomes President there'll be a big wall blocking them from getting into Mexico.
While this and all of the other joke replies are cute, it doesn't address the reality - the people who would leave and go to Canada because, they claim, Trump is a racist would not be caught dead living with Mexicans. Latte liberal elitist racism is still racism after all.
And what makes you think that a disinclination to move to Mexico is because "I dislike Mexicans" as opposed to "Mexico is a poor country" or "the weather is awful" or "English is not their official language" or any other plethora of non-racist reasons for not wanting to move to a country?
[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - ALPHARIUS]
This message was edited 5 times. Last update was at 2016/03/08 01:23:55
2016/03/07 22:21:27
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
As a liberal, I was behind the invasion of Afghanistan because the country refused to turn over Osama after 9/11. Giving shelter for that magnitude of criminal is grounds for military force.
I did not support the invasion of Iraq.
2016/03/07 22:21:36
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Is that the, "I've never heard of that, therefore it doesn't exist," defence?
Why do I have to defend anything? Perhaps the accuser should provide some evidence first.
I get the distinct feeling that you wouldn't accept evidence. I discussed the liberal support of an invasion of Afghanistan (specifically to save people from their own life style), the liberals that supported invasion of Iraq (specifically to liberate people from their own life styles), the very fact that post-colonialsim as a school of thought exists in academia as a criticism of western liberalism even exists. How about liberal hawkism that assumes military intervention is what the beleaguered brown people of the world need to save them (Libya). Neoliberalism, that sees nothing wrong with destruction of pesky non-secular cultures in the name of globalization. The liberal quote Sanders made at the last debate that robs minorities of their agency in favor of the helping hand of white liberals.
Are you using the tactic of asking for citations* so you can get me to refuse to waste my time so you can claim victory?
* I see no reason to give you a litany of books you will never read and immediately dismiss. Websites you can nitpick in order to dismiss or any other media. I've given you topics of discussion and you have google.
I figured I would opset a few by countering the narrative with reality. Didn't think it would break into childlish yahbuts, sensationalism, denialism an outright arrogance by ignorance. Not everyday you get to say something so liberal it has to be dismissed as conservative propaganda to return to the comfort zone of assuming conservativism is the root of all problems.
It's a very easy get out for you to assume I won't look at your evidence so you won't bother to present any, so I am guilty.
Fair enough, I apologize for the assumption. Here are some readings that are good. I mostly specialize in foreign policy of the Middle East and North Africa so there will be a running theme to region.
Anthropolgist Lila Abu-Lughod is a sharp critic of western secular liberalism while being as much as if not more of a critic of western conservativism. Try "Do Muslim Women Need Saving?"
Historian Charles Tripp does a good job of showing the who and what involved from a clinical perspective but you can see the effects of western liberal policies that serve egos over realities.
Ervand Abrahamian is another historian that writes from the part of the world effected by liberal and conservative policies.
I mentioned Michael McDonald's Overreach, as solid indictment of American and European foreign policy, its justifications, who was part of the justifications all leading up to Iraq and during.
Within their writings are citations of other writing for even more reading but those where next to me on my book shelf.
This entire argument was spawned from the arrogant idea of liberals being somehow immune to rascism. The point is, western liberalism has yet to escape rascism. It may not desire to be rascist but in practice it has create institutional rascism that effects people from all over the world. The problem stems from the (apparent) lack of desire to confront these issues in favor of shifting blame to more overt issues out side of the ideology of western liberalism. Issues such as focusing on right wing rascism or right wing miltitary intervention which allow western liberalism to avoid talking about left wing rascism or left wing military intervention. Rarely does military intervention improve the lives of those being intervened and rarely are the people to be liberated asked if that is what they want. It is simply assumed from a position of morale authority that they want what we will offer after the bombs have stopped falling.
2016/03/07 22:50:55
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
skyth wrote: As a liberal, I was behind the invasion of Afghanistan because the country refused to turn over Osama after 9/11. Giving shelter for that magnitude of criminal is grounds for military force.
I did not support the invasion of Iraq.
I can understand that.
2016/03/07 23:40:34
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Co'tor Shas wrote: Actually, I think the main problem here is that "Liberal" and "Conservative" are such wide brushes, and most political beliefs really don't fit neatly into them. A problem I often see.
But in reality, Liberal and Conservative are both terms that have a fairly specific meaning.... Hell, Libertarians are about as pure Liberal as you can possibly be, and yet, in their ignorance, they will bring out the pitchforks and torches if you call them such.
2016/03/08 00:06:21
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Co'tor Shas wrote: Actually, I think the main problem here is that "Liberal" and "Conservative" are such wide brushes, and most political beliefs really don't fit neatly into them. A problem I often see.
But in reality, Liberal and Conservative are both terms that have a fairly specific meaning.... Hell, Libertarians are about as pure Liberal as you can possibly be, and yet, in their ignorance, they will bring out the pitchforks and torches if you call them such.
The thing is, they fall into the 'There is no need to help out the 'other' ' that is prevalent in conservative thinking.
2016/03/08 00:15:28
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Prestor Jon wrote: Cruz won Texas and Oklahoma. Oklahoma is a closed primary with voting not caucus format.
Yes, that's what I said. "Trump has only lost two primaries, and one of those was Texas."
Of course it's changed since that was posted, Saturday's results are a strong sign of a wobble in Trump's position, and it seems the party has finally decided to bite the bullet and accept Cruz as their Trump alternative.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/03/08 01:09:26
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 01:17:40
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
TheMeanDM wrote: So Sanders wins 2 states and Clinton wins 1...but it's about a wash due to delegates and %.
Is this good or bad for either candidate?
The two states that Sanders won favoured him strongly, given the demographics. He won them, but if he was on track to win the nomination he would have been winning them by a lot more.
Think of it like a bike race where Sanders is better on the flats and Clinton is better on the hills. Whenever there's a stretch of road on the flat Sanders gains ground, but not much. He's not behind by much, but as the race goes on there's going to be a lot more mountain that doesn't suit Sanders. If it was really a touch and go thing, you'd expect Sanders to be well ahead in delegates right now, because so far the mix of flat and hills have suited him.
Anything can happen, of course, and in terms of delegates it's not so far that Clinton has it. But we're at the point where something big would have to happen.
whembly wrote: Cruz, by contrast, can only rally the righties. His strength isn't to convince new voters. So, in my opinion... compared to Rubio, Cruz is going to have a hell of a time rallying the troops and fend of the Clinton attacks.
Yeah, and that's the strategy the Cruz campaign is openly talking about - that you can win just by maximizing the vote among strong conservatives. It isn't actually a bad theory if you just look at Republican vote counts in the last few election cycles. But what the theory misses is the impact a hard line candidate has on voting counts for the other side. That is, it is all good and well to say 'if only Romney/McCain was more exciting to strong conservatives'... but that's missing the effect that a hardline candidate would have had on encouraging even more liberal voters to turn out for Obama.
Same thing here, with the sheer 'meh' of Clinton brings to the campaign trail, a fairly dull Republican candidate would have been a strong favourite. But if Cruz does as he says, and sticks to hardline policies to really encourage his base, well that's likely to have an equally strong, or even stronger effect of encouraging liberals to get out and vote 'against' Cruz.
FWIW: I thought Mitt Romney would have been an excellent 'moderate' President.
Yeah, I thought that too, until he ended up having to run as part of the current Republican party. His push out to the hard right to win over the base in the primary pretty much scuppered his campaign.
Ahtman wrote: Of course the Dems are having their own problems with someone people like versus someone the elite of the party want, but this isn't the first time Super-delagates have been an issue and nothing has come of that either.
You know Clinton is straight up leading in pledged delegates and the vote count? Her advantage in super-delegates is strong, but if things continue as they it will also be entirely unecessary, because she's well ahead without them.
You know at sporting matches and some idiot will wear an outfit like that, and they're all excited before the game. Then their team has a terrible night and is getting pounded, and the TV will show that same supporter again, only now they're sitting there slumped over and really sad, but still in that ridiculous outfit. Well hopefully that's what happens to that idiot.
Anyone really believes a President can order the military to "carpet bomb" a target to disregard civvie casualties, in this age?
So Cruz is moderate on foreign policy, because he makes claims so extreme they won't happen, therefore he'll be forced in to something more moderate.
This is the modern Republican party, people.
This message was edited 6 times. Last update was at 2016/03/08 02:16:57
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 02:26:28
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Co'tor Shas wrote: Actually, I think the main problem here is that "Liberal" and "Conservative" are such wide brushes, and most political beliefs really don't fit neatly into them. A problem I often see.
But in reality, Liberal and Conservative are both terms that have a fairly specific meaning.... Hell, Libertarians are about as pure Liberal as you can possibly be, and yet, in their ignorance, they will bring out the pitchforks and torches if you call them such.
The thing is, they fall into the 'There is no need to help out the 'other' ' that is prevalent in conservative thinking.
Not really... True conservatism would say "there's no need to help out people, because America was great before we had those things." Libertarians take the Liberal view of "help should come from the people, not the government as people only give up as few rights as necessary to have a State."
Classical Liberalism is a more literal interpretation of Locke. A better example of how Libertarians fit into the Conservative ideology, is in their views on income taxes and mandated taxes in general. The usual thing I see on FB from the libertarians on my friends list is the meme stating "the US had no income tax until 1903, and yet we still had a standing army, roads and a postal service"
2016/03/08 02:37:27
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
TheMeanDM wrote: Clinton pretty much side stepped and twisted the "Do you support fracking" by saying "Under these conditions I do not..." which means YES she does support it.
Bernie the straight shooter: "No"
There’s a difference between ‘straight shooting’ and simplistic political rhetoric. Clinton said she wouldn’t support fracking if the local area rejected it, if there was a known environmental risk, or if the chemicals being used weren’t disclosed. That’s a nuanced position that makes perfect sense, but doesn’t work as easy as Sanders’ very simple ‘no’.
Essentially Sanders position, to differentiate from Clinton’s, would be that if a place wanted fracking, there was no environmental impact, and the process was fully disclosed by the company, Sanders wouldn’t let it happen anyway. Which is very silly, of course, but that’s what happens when you give very simplistic answers to reasonably complicated issues.
I think the biggest irony of this campaign is that people have declared they’re sick of politicians making easy promises, and so they’re flocking to the candidates giving them very easy answers.
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NuggzTheNinja wrote: While this and all of the other joke replies are cute, it doesn't address the reality - the people who would leave and go to Canada because, they claim, Trump is a racist would not be caught dead living with Mexicans. Latte liberal elitist racism is still racism after all.
You're assuming that the only reason people would prefer Canada over Mexico is the skin colour of the locals. As if living standards and crime rates play no part in where people might prefer to live.
Do I really need to spend any time pointing out ridiculous that assumption was? It's pretty clear you thought you had a 'gotcha' to score a point againt them liberals, and that stopped you spending any time thinking about whether your argument made a lick of sense. Please don't do that. Stop trying to win, start trying to make arguments that work.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/03/08 02:44:46
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 02:48:05
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Co'tor Shas wrote: Actually, I think the main problem here is that "Liberal" and "Conservative" are such wide brushes, and most political beliefs really don't fit neatly into them. A problem I often see.
But in reality, Liberal and Conservative are both terms that have a fairly specific meaning.... Hell, Libertarians are about as pure Liberal as you can possibly be, and yet, in their ignorance, they will bring out the pitchforks and torches if you call them such.
The thing is, they fall into the 'There is no need to help out the 'other' ' that is prevalent in conservative thinking.
Not really... True conservatism would say "there's no need to help out people, because America was great before we had those things." Libertarians take the Liberal view of "help should come from the people, not the government as people only give up as few rights as necessary to have a State."
The thing is, both positions (Conservative and Libertarian) take the stance that there is no ethical requirement to help someone else.
2016/03/08 02:57:17
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
BrotherGecko wrote: ... neoliberalism (saving brown people through control of their economies because they can't make the right decisions) can be fairly rascist.
Okay, these terms can get tricky because 'liberal' has two very different meanings. You used ‘neoliberalism’ but then described something that’s not neoliberalism in the slightest. it’s actually using the classic meaning of ‘liberal’, which is about economic freedom, ie let the markets do as they please. It refers to the resurgence of classical microeconomics as the dominant basis for assessing policies, instead of the Keynesian economics that had dominted prior to that. So the term really had nothing at all to do with what you were talking about.
I comment on that because your whole post is really very broad, sweeping and not particularly accurate. I agree that there’s racism everywhere, I saw a thing the other day where Bill Maher was saying the most racist kind of claptrap, and then saying it can’t be racist because he’s liberal. But in terms of describing of actual intellectual groups you were trading in very broad and quite contrived generalisations.
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Gordon Shumway wrote: @whembly: funny, I watched the democratic debate last night and didn't see a single mention of size of dicks, endless shouting matches, yelling "liar" back and forth, vows to round up and deport 11 million people, turning sand to glass, promoting the use of torture, or hunting down families of terrorists. Maybe we have different criteria of what constitutes clown shows.
Sure but everyone said the Republican debate was a clown show, so it's important to say that about the Democratic debate as well. You don't have to prove it, you just have to believe it.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/03/08 03:04:29
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 03:04:40
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
The thing is, both positions (Conservative and Libertarian) take the stance that there is no ethical requirement to help someone else.
That will happen within most political ideologies. What matters in the examples you and I have presented, is in how the reasoning comes about.
Locke's ideas of Liberalism means that a person's work is "property" and thus a worker negotiates his property for money (wages)
Conservatives fall back on more of a Hobbesian view, where there's a "social contract" in place that dictates when a person works, they get wages.
It's largely the same thing from the grand scheme of things, but the manner in which the view comes about is important, because it also reflects on other principles that actually do differ.
2016/03/08 03:08:07
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
sebster wrote: You know Clinton is straight up leading in pledged delegates and the vote count? Her advantage in super-delegates is strong, but if things continue as they it will also be entirely unecessary, because she's well ahead without them.
Of course, but not in a way that would give her a clear mandate. I exaggerated a bit, but it also doesn't change the (sort of) popular support for Bernie, though I imagine much of it is from non-party members. Either way it won't stop the whole thing from being a momentary controversy that blows over fairly quickly until the next election. Since I have been alive almost every time there has been an national election Super Delegates are an issue and then they aren't until the next time.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2016/03/08 03:37:04
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
BrotherGecko wrote: I get the distinct feeling that you wouldn't accept evidence. I discussed the liberal support of an invasion of Afghanistan (specifically to save people from their own life style…
Yeah, this is pretty much the ridiculousness that leftist ideology disappeared in to in the late 70s, a kind of self-righteous open mindedness that ends up being comical and scary in equal measures. Moral and cultural relativism taken to the point of self-parody.
I mean holy crap, there is nothing racist about saying Afghanistan under the Taliban was a horrible mess. To describe wanting to remove corrupt and malevolent warlords as ‘wanting to save people from their own lifestyle’ is ridiculous. I could pass your comment on to some Afghanis living here and back in Afghanistan, just to get some really colourful language asking you to never, ever talk about that country again, but I’m not all that interested in upsetting them just to prove a point in an internet debate.
I mean, yeah, it's a fair point that racism and ignorance about the rest of the world can, potentially, lead to wrong headed intervention, even when there’s good intentions. But to take that point to such an extreme that you’re willing to call the Taliban the ‘lifestyle’ chosen by Afghanistan is absurd.
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Breotan wrote: The question is, who is Rubio going to sell give his delegates to?
If they're worth anything, because it's a close run thing at the end, then you'd have to think they will go to Cruz, or to no-one. The question is what price Rubio will be able to extract for them.
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Ahtman wrote: Of course, but not in a way that would give her a clear mandate. I exaggerated a bit, but it also doesn't change the (sort of) popular support for Bernie, though I imagine much of it is from non-party members. Either way it won't stop the whole thing from being a momentary controversy that blows over fairly quickly until the next election. Since I have been alive almost every time there has been an national election Super Delegates are an issue and then they aren't until the next time.
Well, no. Sanders has a very vocal supporter base on the internet, but in terms of people actually turning up and voting Clinton is ahead by a far margin. It seems there's something of a Howard Dean style bubble forming around Sanders, supporters are just sure he's the most popular option, despite the polls and the electoral results.
I mean, I agree that if super-delegates ended up deciding this then it will be very bad, but there's no sign of that at this point.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2016/03/08 05:03:44
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 05:23:46
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
sebster wrote: I agree that if super-delegates ended up deciding this then it will be very bad, but there's no sign of that at this point.
I don't believe I said that they would decide, just that they will be complained about. Do you think this will be the one election where people don't? Considering how much the internet gives megaphones to minor issues I can't imagine that it won't.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2016/03/08 06:13:45
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Ahtman wrote: I don't believe I said that they would decide, just that they will be complained about. Do you think this will be the one election where people don't? Considering how much the internet gives megaphones to minor issues I can't imagine that it won't.
You said it was someone the people like vs someone the elites want. Which would imply that Sanders was more popular among the people, except he's actually won less votes, more people are choosing Clinton. Anyway, pretty pedantic at this point
But I agree that people will complain, probably quite a lot. Whether it ends up producing people who will vote for no-one once they've lost their preferred candidate, I don't know. A fair few people decided Gore was just the same as Bush, and got a fair surprise, do they have 16 year old memories?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/03/08 06:14:13
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 06:39:29
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Well, no. Sanders has a very vocal supporter base on the internet, but in terms of people actually turning up and voting Clinton is ahead by a far margin. It seems there's something of a Howard Dean style bubble forming around Sanders, supporters are just sure he's the most popular option, despite the polls and the electoral results.
I mean, I agree that if super-delegates ended up deciding this then it will be very bad, but there's no sign of that at this point.
I think that the visual evidence, the size of Sanders rallies compared to most Clinton rallies shows that there is quite a bit of support.... But that doesn't mean jack crap in the face of people actually getting to the polls. Remember there was that "rally" that clinton had, where she claimed to have had "hundreds" of supporters filling a school gym that it turned out maybe 50 people showed up, and her staffers forced all the cameras to shoot only from a particular angle to make it look like it was actually full. Of course, someone still snuck a shot or two from beyond the designated areas and showed what a farce that was.
I will say though, with the disparity in the polls, it goes to show the age old truth: young people don't really vote in high numbers. Or at least, in this campaign, in high enough numbers to matter for the candidate they claim to support.
2016/03/08 07:53:40
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Ensis Ferrae wrote: I think that the visual evidence, the size of Sanders rallies compared to most Clinton rallies shows that there is quite a bit of support.... But that doesn't mean jack crap in the face of people actually getting to the polls. Remember there was that "rally" that clinton had, where she claimed to have had "hundreds" of supporters filling a school gym that it turned out maybe 50 people showed up, and her staffers forced all the cameras to shoot only from a particular angle to make it look like it was actually full. Of course, someone still snuck a shot or two from beyond the designated areas and showed what a farce that was.
I will say though, with the disparity in the polls, it goes to show the age old truth: young people don't really vote in high numbers. Or at least, in this campaign, in high enough numbers to matter for the candidate they claim to support.
I think there's kind of a weird duality in youth voters. They show up in much smaller numbers than older voters, but the ones who do engage with politics tend to really get in to it. So not that many young people vote, but the ones who do are also much more likely to turn up at rallies.
And I think that's kind of the dynamic that's defined the Democratic race so far. Its a race between a candidate that a lot of people are really excited about, and a candidate that a % more people are happy to vote for, even if they're not anywhere near as excited about it.
People who've been really confident of Sanders chances have been looking at the enthusiasm he's generated, while forgetting that a really enthusiastic vote is worth the same as any other vote. As you say, it doesn't mean jack crap compared to actually getting people to the polls.
“We may observe that the government in a civilized country is much more expensive than in a barbarous one; and when we say that one government is more expensive than another, it is the same as if we said that that one country is farther advanced in improvement than another. To say that the government is expensive and the people not oppressed is to say that the people are rich.”
Adam Smith, who must have been some kind of leftie or something.
2016/03/08 08:20:08
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Hillary has a lot of BIG MONEY backing her, she has the DNC under DWS as well as the MSM behind getting her in.
But People are tired of her kind of politics, most vote for her as they have answered, "They wish to see a female President" -Bad reason, she is as corrupt as any man.
Or the sad reason of having fallen for that she is the "likeliest" candidate
Sanders has the grassroots campaign going, and the momentum is growing, he has won in states that were Hillary territory.
Sanders has experience, and with out all the baggage of Clinton. We have yet to finish March primaries, and then we have April/May and June, and Hillary has just 193delegates over Bernie, he may well catch and or pass her between now and the last March rounds. then the other three months with some huge delegate counts.
Bernie is staying in, he has out-raised her in February by 15million or so, maybe 13million, but still, he has gotten much in donations to keep going.
Do not swallow the pablum spewed by the propaganda machine known as the Main Stream Media.
"Your mumblings are awakening the sleeping Dragon, be wary when meddling the affairs of Dragons, for thou art tasty and go good with either ketchup or chocolate. "
Dragons fear nothing, if it acts up, we breath magic fire that turns them into marshmallow peeps. We leaguers only cry rivets!
2016/03/08 08:52:27
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Ahtman wrote: I don't believe I said that they would decide, just that they will be complained about. Do you think this will be the one election where people don't? Considering how much the internet gives megaphones to minor issues I can't imagine that it won't.
You said it was someone the people like vs someone the elites want.
I also said I was exaggerating. I could have, and should have, been more clear.
Amidst the mists and coldest frosts he thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.
2016/03/08 09:23:40
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Let us now address the greatest American mystery at the moment: what motivates the supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump?
I call it a “mystery” because the working-class white people who make up the bulk of Trump’s fan base show up in amazing numbers for the candidate, filling stadiums and airport hangars, but their views, by and large, do not appear in our prestige newspapers. On their opinion pages, these publications take care to represent demographic categories of nearly every kind, but “blue-collar” is one they persistently overlook. The views of working-class people are so foreign to that universe that when New York Times columnist Nick Kristof wanted to “engage” a Trump supporter last week, he made one up, along with this imaginary person’s responses to his questions.
When members of the professional class wish to understand the working-class Other, they traditionally consult experts on the subject. And when these authorities are asked to explain the Trump movement, they always seem to zero in on one main accusation: bigotry. Only racism, they tell us, is capable of powering a movement like Trump’s, which is blowing through the inherited structure of the Republican party like a tornado through a cluster of McMansions.
Trump himself provides rather excellent evidence for this finding. The man is an insult clown who has systematically gone down the list of American ethnic groups and offended them each in turn. He wants to deport millions upon millions of undocumented immigrants. He wants to bar Muslims from visiting the United States. He admires various foreign strongmen and dictators, and has even retweeted a quote from Mussolini. This gold-plated buffoon has in turn drawn the enthusiastic endorsement of leading racists from across the spectrum of intolerance, a gorgeous mosaic of haters, each of them quivering excitedly at the prospect of getting a real, honest-to-god bigot in the White House.
All this stuff is so insane, so wildly outrageous, that the commentariat has deemed it to be the entirety of the Trump campaign. Trump appears to be a racist, so racism must be what motivates his armies of followers. And so, on Saturday, New York Times columnist Timothy Egan blamed none other than “the people” for Trump’s racism: “Donald Trump’s supporters know exactly what he stands for: hatred of immigrants, racial superiority, a sneering disregard of the basic civility that binds a society.”
Stories marveling at the stupidity of Trump voters are published nearly every day. Articles that accuse Trump’s followers of being bigots have appeared by the hundreds, if not the thousands. Conservatives have written them; liberals have written them; impartial professionals have written them. The headline of a recent Huffington Post column announced, bluntly, that “Trump Won Super Tuesday Because America is Racist.” A New York Times reporter proved that Trump’s followers were bigots by coordinating a map of Trump support with a map of racist Google searches. Everyone knows it: Trump’s followers’ passions are nothing more than the ignorant blurtings of the white American id, driven to madness by the presence of a black man in the White House. The Trump movement is a one-note phenomenon, a vast surge of race-hate. Its partisans are not only incomprehensible, they are not really worth comprehending.
* * *
Or so we’re told. Last week, I decided to watch several hours of Trump speeches for myself. I saw the man ramble and boast and threaten and even seem to gloat when protesters were ejected from the arenas in which he spoke. I was disgusted by these things, as I have been disgusted by Trump for 20 years. But I also noticed something surprising. In each of the speeches I watched, Trump spent a good part of his time talking about an entirely legitimate issue, one that could even be called left-wing.
Yes, Donald Trump talked about trade. In fact, to judge by how much time he spent talking about it, trade may be his single biggest concern – not white supremacy. Not even his plan to build a wall along the Mexican border, the issue that first won him political fame. He did it again during the debate on 3 March: asked about his political excommunication by Mitt Romney, he chose to pivot and talk about ... trade.
It seems to obsess him: the destructive free-trade deals our leaders have made, the many companies that have moved their production facilities to other lands, the phone calls he will make to those companies’ CEOs in order to threaten them with steep tariffs unless they move back to the US.
Trump embellished this vision with another favorite left-wing idea: under his leadership, the government would “start competitive bidding in the drug industry.” (“We don’t competitively bid!” he marveled – another true fact, a legendary boondoggle brought to you by the George W Bush administration.) Trump extended the critique to the military-industrial complex, describing how the government is forced to buy lousy but expensive airplanes thanks to the power of industry lobbyists.
Thus did he hint at his curious selling proposition: because he is personally so wealthy, a fact about which he loves to boast, Trump himself is unaffected by business lobbyists and donations. And because he is free from the corrupting power of modern campaign finance, famous deal-maker Trump can make deals on our behalf that are “good” instead of “bad.” The chance that he will actually do so, of course, is small. He appears to be a hypocrite on this issue as well as so many other things. But at least Trump is saying this stuff.
All this surprised me because, for all the articles about Trump I had read in recent months, I didn’t recall trade coming up very often. Trump is supposed to be on a one-note crusade for whiteness. Could it be that all this trade stuff is a key to understanding the Trump phenomenon?
* * *
Trade is an issue that polarizes Americans by socio-economic status. To the professional class, which encompasses the vast majority of our media figures, economists, Washington officials and Democratic power brokers, what they call “free trade” is something so obviously good and noble it doesn’t require explanation or inquiry or even thought. Republican and Democratic leaders alike agree on this, and no amount of facts can move them from their Econ 101 dream.
To the remaining 80 or 90% of America, trade means something very different. There’s a video going around on the internet these days that shows a room full of workers at a Carrier air conditioning plant in Indiana being told by an officer of the company that the factory is being moved to Monterrey, Mexico and that they’re all going to lose their jobs.
As I watched it, I thought of all the arguments over trade that we’ve had in this country since the early 1990s, all the sweet words from our economists about the scientifically proven benevolence of free trade, all the ways in which our newspapers mock people who say that treaties like the North Atlantic Free Trade Agreement allow companies to move jobs to Mexico.
Well, here is a video of a company moving its jobs to Mexico, courtesy of Nafta. This is what it looks like. The Carrier executive talks in that familiar and highly professional HR language about the need to “stay competitive” and “the extremely price-sensitive marketplace.” A worker shouts “feth you!” at the executive. The executive asks people to please be quiet so he can “share” his “information”. His information about all of them losing their jobs.
* * *
Now, I have no special reason to doubt the suspicion that Donald Trump is a racist. Either he is one, or (as the comedian John Oliver puts it) he is pretending to be one, which amounts to the same thing.
But there is another way to interpret the Trump phenomenon. A map of his support may coordinate with racist Google searches, but it coordinates even better with deindustrialization and despair, with the zones of economic misery that 30 years of Washington’s free-market consensus have brought the rest of America.
It is worth noting that Trump is making a point of assailing that Indiana air conditioning company from the video in his speeches. What this suggests is that he’s telling a tale as much about economic outrage as it is tale of racism on the march. Many of Trump’s followers are bigots, no doubt, but many more are probably excited by the prospect of a president who seems to mean it when he denounces our trade agreements and promises to bring the hammer down on the CEO that fired you and wrecked your town, unlike Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Here is the most salient supporting fact: when people talk to white, working-class Trump supporters, instead of simply imagining what they might say, they find that what most concerns these people is the economy and their place in it. I am referring to a study just published by Working America, a political-action auxiliary of the AFL-CIO, which interviewed some 1,600 white working-class voters in the suburbs of Cleveland and Pittsburgh in December and January.
Support for Donald Trump, the group found, ran strong among these people, even among self-identified Democrats, but not because they are all pining for a racist in the White House. Their favorite aspect of Trump was his “attitude,” the blunt and forthright way he talks. As far as issues are concerned, “immigration” placed third among the matters such voters care about, far behind their number one concern: “good jobs / the economy.”
“People are much more frightened than they are bigoted,” is how the findings were described to me by Karen Nussbaum, the executive director of Working America. The survey “confirmed what we heard all the time: people are fed up, people are hurting, they are very distressed about the fact that their kids don’t have a future” and that “there still hasn’t been a recovery from the recession, that every family still suffers from it in one way or another.”
Tom Lewandowski, the president of the Northeast Indiana Central Labor Council in Fort Wayne, puts it even more bluntly when I asked him about working-class Trump fans. “These people aren’t racist, not any more than anybody else is,” he says of Trump supporters he knows. “When Trump talks about trade, we think about the Clinton administration, first with Nafta and then with [Permanent Normal Trade Relations] China, and here in Northeast Indiana, we hemorrhaged jobs.”
“They look at that, and here’s Trump talking about trade, in a ham-handed way, but at least he’s representing emotionally. We’ve had all the political establishment standing behind every trade deal, and we endorsed some of these people, and then we’ve had to fight them to get them to represent us.”
Now, let us stop and smell the perversity. Left parties the world over were founded to advance the fortunes of working people. But our left party in America – one of our two monopoly parties – chose long ago to turn its back on these people’s concerns, making itself instead into the tribune of the enlightened professional class, a “creative class” that makes innovative things like derivative securities and smartphone apps. The working people that the party used to care about, Democrats figured, had nowhere else to go, in the famous Clinton-era expression. The party just didn’t need to listen to them any longer.
What Lewandowski and Nussbaum are saying, then, should be obvious to anyone who’s dipped a toe outside the prosperous enclaves on the two coasts. Ill-considered trade deals and generous bank bailouts and guaranteed profits for insurance companies but no recovery for average people, ever – these policies have taken their toll. As Trump says, “we have rebuilt China and yet our country is falling apart. Our infrastructure is falling apart. . . . Our airports are, like, Third World.”
Trump’s words articulate the populist backlash against liberalism that has been building slowly for decades and may very well occupy the White House itself, whereupon the entire world will be required to take seriously its demented ideas.
Yet still we cannot bring ourselves to look the thing in the eyes. We cannot admit that we liberals bear some of the blame for its emergence, for the frustration of the working-class millions, for their blighted cities and their downward spiraling lives. So much easier to scold them for their twisted racist souls, to close our eyes to the obvious reality of which Trumpism is just a crude and ugly expression: that neoliberalism has well and truly failed.
“People are much more frightened than they are bigoted,”
Quite.
... And understandable.
....One doubts however that Trump is actually going to do anything to really stop things like the exporting of jobs.
The poor man really has a stake in the country. The rich man hasn't; he can go away to New Guinea in a yacht. The poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly; the rich have always objected to being governed at all
We love our superheroes because they refuse to give up on us. We can analyze them out of existence, kill them, ban them, mock them, and still they return, patiently reminding us of who we are and what we wish we could be.
"the play's the thing wherein I'll catch the conscience of the king,
2016/03/08 13:49:52
Subject: The Political Junkie™ Thread - USA Edition
Well, given Trump's record of using overseas factories to produce his lines, I would say the likelihood of him doing anything to undercut global outsourcing is exactly 0%. Of course, he will likely push for things that favor his interests and I can only imagine crony capitalism reaching new heights.
