Jump to content
Sign in to follow this  
Vader

The Next President

Recommended Posts

What a twist it would be if Rubio announced his support for Sanders.

https://twitter.com/joesonka/status/708674789943218177

Oh shit I was just arriving to link to this video. That is a defeated man. I actually feel really badly for Rubio. I know he has a soul now. Which means that some way, some how, the things we disagree on can be met with the act of convincing him to change his mind or outright educate him.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
 
A little more context for nazi grandma.
 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2016/03/12/trump-supporter-who-made-nazi-salute-explains-why-she-made-the-gesture/

 

And a little more, words from her mouth. Found it in one of the replies to that tweet.

 

I, um. I don't know. Maybe she is being honest, but what a poor choice. And besides that, even if she is, there is no doubt in my mind that there are literal neo-Nazis in Trump's camp. Maybe even literal OG Nazis, as well...

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

 


I put together a video that pretty much reflects how I hear The Rains of Castamere in my head whenever I think of Trump's rise to power.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hillary Clinton must have said something in the last 24 hours about "where was Bernie Sanders when I was fighting for healthcare reform in the 1990s?" because the internet is flooded with this stuff right now:

CdXcNL7UIAElx0F.jpg

 

CdXzHEmUEAAatnq.jpg

 

Spoilers: Sanders was right there with her literally.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This stage of the campaign has been interesting to watch seeing how Clinton addresses sanders.  For a while it was as though he didn't exist, then it was friendly between them, and now the Clinton camp is on the attack.  I would guess this is somewhat a product of redistricting, but there have been a number of what I guess could be called ideological purity attacks in this and the last election cycle with republican candidates saying their opponents are not conservative enough, and on the other side saying they aren't liberal/progressive enough.  I'm interested to see how the rest of the campaign turns out for the Dems now that even Clinton can't ignore Sanders' success.  Then on the other side of the aisle Trump is literally calling for violence against protesters, and given that he is the favorite candidate of white supremacists, and many of the protesters are black, that'll probably end well.  I was wondering if at some point Trump will be held legally accountable for the shit he's pulling, and the answer is probably not.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I tend to think it is better to mend and improve existing institutions than to try to burn them all down, and that listening to what marginalized communities want rather than imposing your own agenda on what is best for them is a much better approach, even if it doesn't lead to outcomes you are totally happy with.

I wanted to just say that your whole post, and this point in particular is exceedingly important. It should be repeated, often. History seems to say that slow, incremental changes are almost uniformly preferable to cost of wholesale change. Sadly, it is not a sexy, passionate message that rallies people.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Slow change better been faster than a couple decades or the world is doomed.

 

We can't work slow to address climate change. We already tried that. Look where it got us.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Slow change better been faster than a couple decades or the world is doomed.

 

We can't work slow to address climate change. We already tried that. Look where it got us.

It think it somewhat uncharitable or hyperbolic to say the world is doomed. The world is doomed to change. This century will like see the most change since the industrial revolution. We have some ideas on what those changes are going to be, but some will still take us by surprise.

I suspect climate change was not preventable. It would have required a significant or severe increase in cost of living the moment the phenomenon was understood well enough. I do not think it would have been realistic under any circumstances. Still, I think we have done a lot. But there is still a lot to do. Almost all of it is going to have some economic cost associated to it. And we can not know exactly what we should do about it for good results.

'Burn it all down' doesn't guarantee anything about the direction things are going to go afterwards. And the burning is almost always going to have a very terrible, human cost.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's not hyperbolic or uncharitable.

 

These are things happening right now. If we continue to meander slowly in the right direction, at odds with the ignorant and greedy, it won't be enough.

 

I'm not sure how you got "burn it all down" out of anything I said.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Thanks for the props, unimoral. I think the point should be to dream big, but to take progress wherever we can find it. I'm not saying that huge social changes aren't possible, but when they occur successfully there is almost always plenty of training and groundwork that preceded them. An example of this is the enormous progress on LGBTQ rights we've seen in the United States over the last few years. Yes, there is still an enormous amount of work to be done, but we have seen some pretty amazing sea changes in a seemingly short amount of time. Look a little closer, though, and you will see that millions of people have been hard at work at this for decades. It may have seemed to come suddenly for those (like me) who were on the outside for most of that history, but it was in fact won through a series of hard fought battles over many years.

 

Both the benefit and challenge of living in a democracy (or at least a society that aspires to democratic principles) is that government will alway be constrained by public opinion and competing interest groups with often asymmetrical amounts of power. If we can't expect someone to be able to build a coalition of 50% plus one, we need to work to change hearts and mind while pushing for whatever amount of progress we are able to get a strong enough plurality of interests to rally around in the moment. That's why politics is often referred to as "the art of the possible." This doesn't mean we don't work our damndest to push those limits further, but I believe we can both extend the possible while also going as far as we can inside of it.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Growing up I remember one particular street in my town that crossed a highway, and was a major ingress and egress into the surrounding residential areas.  There was low visibility on the turn, and you were turning from a residential area to the one highway on the island, and given it was the only highway people were prone to drive way over the speed limit.  Everyone in the town, and in the larger area knew how dangerous this particular turn was, and local radio personalities would even refer to it as a place to avoid during bad conditions explicitly.  Throughout my entire childhood the turn didn't have a stop light, and only got a stop sign in my sophomore year in High School.  I went back home last year and the noticed that particular section finally got a stop light.  I asked my parents about when that went it, and they told me it happened a month or so after some people died in what was surely the most predictable accident imaginable.  I think it's the same with Climate Change in the US, in that no significant measures will be taken until there is a clear example where a lack of regulation lead directly to the deaths of American citizens in a way that can't be rationalized as an act of god.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So in other words by the time the government does anything we'll all be fucked? Because it's not going to be just one, or just ten or a hundred, people that die if climate change gets really bad... Especially when you account for the fact that so many people are going to deny unseasonable storms and the like are stemming from human-caused problems.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So in other words by the time the government does anything we'll all be fucked? Because it's not going to be just one, or just ten or a hundred, people that die if climate change gets really bad... Especially when you account for the fact that so many people are going to deny unseasonable storms and the like are stemming from human-caused problems.

Not necessarily, but I would think that is going to be the case.  I don't think anything less than a specific and overwhelming tragedy will cause congress to take any action, after all just look at how all the recent mass shootings haven't impacted gun laws nationwide.  The supreme court already struck down a major provision of Obama's executive order that resulted from the recent climate talks in Europe, and James Inhoff (the guy who brought a fucking snowball into congress to make his argument against climate change) is the chairman of the committee on the environment and public works.  Even republicans like Chris Christie, who's home state was devastated by Sandy won't bring himself to admit Climate change is a crisis.  Maybe it won't be too late, but excepting a major sea change in Washington where all parties agree to give up their perks, personal wealth, party wealth and systems of control I don't see the issue being brought to bear by anything less.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Pretty much, there's far too much resistance to the mere IDEA of climate change, let alone actually addressing it, to get anything done before it's far too late. We need a revolution now. Gradual change will not solve this problem in time.

 

Make no mistake, this is the greatest challenge we have ever faced. If we don't address it properly, the human race will not last. This isn't hyperbole. This is reality.

 

I suppose if I was feeling particularly morbid, I'd make a joke about how failing to address climate change would successfully solve all other problems the human race faces. By eliminating the human race.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I can't think if this deserves its own thread or if it's worth posting here because it is a campaign issue (for Democrats at least). It's about the minimum wage increase and why particular arguments against it are a load of shit. Keep in mind, "a load of shit" is the tone and rhetoric of the article's writing, but people are allowed to be frustrated at dumb shit. More importantly to note on that however is that the article is full of citations to back it up.

http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/heres-how-every-argument-against-a-minimum-wage-hike-is-1728874042

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I can't think if this deserves its own thread or if it's worth posting here because it is a campaign issue (for Democrats at least). It's about the minimum wage increase and why particular arguments against it are a load of shit. Keep in mind, "a load of shit" is the tone and rhetoric of the article's writing, but people are allowed to be frustrated at dumb shit. More importantly to note on that however is that the article is full of citations to back it up.

http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/heres-how-every-argument-against-a-minimum-wage-hike-is-1728874042

I am currently working towards a $15 minimum wage ballot initiative in Minneapolis. It would give ~38% of workers in Minneapolis a raise and constitute an annual transfer of wealth to low wage workers of $900 million. It is kind of amazing how such a simple change can have such vast effects on so many peoples lives.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I'm seeing a Missouri win (with data) for Sanders and an Illinois win (without data) for Clinton.

 

Edit - Okay now it's being called a sweep for Clinton. Her strong suit - the south, where she and Bill are from and where the country's dumbest voters are* - is over with. The coasts are going to be a different story with a bigger delegate count at stake.

 

I will say though, if she ends up getting the nomination... I'm going to laugh in the face of all her supporters when she reveals herself as a Trojan Horse of Wall Street / Republican values.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hope is cool and all but damn Bernie is not gonna win the nomination. Has anyone ever come back from this kind of lead at this point in the race? First time for everything, sure, I get that, but, oof.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Hope is cool and all but damn Bernie is not gonna win the nomination. Has anyone ever come back from this kind of lead at this point in the race? First time for everything, sure, I get that, but, oof.

Keep in mind that being declared winner doesn't mean all the delegates are won. The delegates are split accordingly with the % of who got what. So in the case of a .2% difference vote for a state, Hillary actually only gets a +1 delegate count (if that) over Sanders for that state.

 

Again, he's far from out. Clinton has 1,094 and Sanders has 774. That's without superdelegates counted (and they aren't committed until the convention, going with total popular vote) (but as an aside, people like to count them in toward Clinton to make it seem like she's winning by a landslide). There's still 2.5k delegates to win over, with 2.4k being the total needed on the Democratic ticket to get the nomination.

 

As I proposed before, Clinton is more popular among southern democrats, who tend to have right-wing leanings moreso than east and west coast democrats (edit - my examples of this are religious beliefs, homophobia, and fiscal leanings). The south is done with its primaries - the coasts are coming up and with a ton of delegates at stake and Sanders being more popular there (with the exception of New York), it's not hard to imagine that he sweeps in with a big upset.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

He has to win every state from here on out with about 60% to her 40%.

 

This, after almost every single one of his won states being small margins compared to her dominant victories.

 

He's out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
Sign in to follow this  

×