MC Nietzche posted:

That long rambling recollection was by way of saying that Clinton seemed invincible then too, but she's 6 years older and making the same god damned stupid, unforced errors. I mean, remember, Terry loving McAuliffe ran that campaign. No one made him pick her, and that kind of dumbass poo poo ran down the line. The advantages she had 6 years ago are the same advantages people are touting now, the only thing she's done in the meantime was be Secretary of State, and who the hell even knows what the SecState does besides political junkies?

MC Nietzche posted:

The only problem I see is no one on the horizon to take her down, but that was true in 2008 too. Maybe Reid will pull another rabbit out of his hat and stop the juggernaut again.

DynamicSloth posted:

Terry McCauliffe did not run the Clinton 08 campaign, he will also be too busy to have any kind of campaign roll before Iowa in this next cycle. I see zero evidence Clinton is going to make any of the same tactical mistakes she made in 08.
You hadn't heard of Barack Obama in 2008? that's pretty nutty.

Pope Guilty posted:

I remember just after Obama's speech at the '04 telling a friend that we'd just watched the next President speak. Hadn't heard of the guy at the time, but goddamn can he give speeches.

MC Nietzche posted:

Terry McAuliffe was the chairman of her bid to get the nomination. And yes, I had heard of Obama, I was being loose with the timeline for the nomination run. That being said, I don't think anybody at the time expected him to win in 2008, even after his 2004 Keynote. People were saying it was too early.

DynamicSloth posted:

Chairman is a nice honorary title that mostly exists outside the structure of people who actually do run a campaign, Clinton had co-chair's for every primary contest and the position is usually given to important politicians whose endorsement she'd want to highlight not political operatives who run campaigns. McAuliffe was never in any sense in charge of the campaign, he got a nice sounding title because he was the best fundraiser.

This is nonsense. Many people at this point in 2006 thought Obama was seeking the presidency and his national name recognition was double what Elizabeth Warren's is now, by February he'd be out fundraising Clinton. There is no one is a position to replicate Obama's track to the White House today.

Radish posted:

I get the feeling this kind of thing is the way Hillary could blow the election. Republicans are going to vote so hard their election machines will catch fire after eight years of Obama with the thought of their great enemy Hillary in the Presidency. If she spends her time making stupid "Hey I can understand how poor you guys are since I was broke" statements while cozying up to Wall Street types that not only want more money, but to reduce social services it's not going to be a compelling campaign. We can talk about how important it is that we get a Democrat to nominate RBG's scotus replacement but that isn't going to drive non-political types to the polls on election day. If the GOP can keep their misogyny in check and only infer that the younger, unmarried types are the "bad ones" they won't have to worry too much about middle class, white, married women leaving their party in droves.

MC Nietzche posted:

Well then, your data beats my anecdote. I'm running mostly off memories of 2007-2008, and it's not like I was highly placed or anything, just working out of one office in a state Clinton was never going to lose. In my heart of hearts what I worry about is Clinton getting the nom and then punting the general to some Republican whackjob. They are going to be fired up, a weak Democratic campaign would be catastrophic.

mcmagic posted:

They can't. They can't talk to both their base and the public at large white remaining viable in a general election. And they are going to be looking at less than 10% of the latino vote considering those videos from CA getting widespread play.

mcmagic posted:

They can't. They can't talk to both their base and the public at large while remaining viable in a general election. And they are going to be looking at less than 10% of the latino vote considering those videos from CA getting widespread play.

Magres posted:

Link? I haven't heard about this

Magres posted:

Link? I haven't heard about this

Magres posted:

Ooooh okay I heard about that. Yeah those people are loving lunatics. I'm glad counter-protestors got going and started outnumbering them though, at least according to the LA Times article

I really ought to start reading the FReep thread again

Dr. VooDoo posted:

How much do you wanna bet that "Not our kids, not our problem" lady views herself as a good Christian?

Rhesus Pieces posted:

They're not still using "I'm ready for Hillary!" as the campaign slogan, are they? Because that's honestly one of the worst slogans I've ever heard.

Warmachine posted:

There is no risk to saying "yes" to this. I stopped just short of saying to someone last night that a hell fence on the border and ignoring the problem doesn't speak much for America having any kind of moral high ground as the self-styled most prosperous nation on earth.

Sir Tonk posted:

Taerkar posted:

Isn't it actually even dumber in the book? Like a few of the TITANS OF INDUSTRY gardened as a hobby and that would be all they need. After all as TITANS OF INDUSTRY they would no doubt be far more productive with their farms than those leeches that are regular farmers.

Magres posted:

Ooooh okay I heard about that. Yeah those people are loving lunatics. I'm glad counter-protestors got going and started outnumbering them though, at least according to the LA Times article

I really ought to start reading the FReep thread again

Chantilly Say posted:

It's an amazingly concise summary of Randian beliefs that in one of their most important texts the hero invents a perpetual motion machine capable of generating limitless energy for free and then decides to keep it all to himself rather than let anyone use any of his literally infinite energy.

Like, even hypothesizing a bottomless pile of resources it's decried as immoral to share any of it. When you lose nothing.

Chantilly Say posted:

It's an amazingly concise summary of Randian beliefs that in one of their most important texts the hero invents a perpetual motion machine capable of generating limitless energy for free and then decides to keep it all to himself rather than let anyone use any of his literally infinite energy.

Like, even hypothesizing a bottomless pile of resources it's decried as immoral to share any of it. When you lose nothing.

Elephant Ambush posted:

It's the principle of giving something to someone who hasn't earned it. Remember that the one thing Ayn Rand hated most over anything else was altruism.

Radish posted:

Doesn't the pirate character die to save the lives of the other heroes? It seems like the people he saved should have spit on his corpse for not living up to the Objectivist ideal and just letting everyone die to save his own rear end.

Dante Logos posted:

Le gasp!

mdemone posted:

You already know that they can't. Ask any recent female Democratic candidate how she thinks the GOP will respond to Hillary Clinton on a national ticket -- I bet the responses would be golden.

But I take your larger point about HRC 3rd-waying herself into a corner. In the meantime, we can console ourselves with toy math about white married women, because whether one likes it or not, identity politics is going to be worth at least a couple of percentage points in an election with the first female presidential candidate. But can we keep enough men? I worry about Bradley-effect misogyny because I think it's way more ingrained in 18yr-40yr white men (at this point in history) than racism was during the Obama elections.

quote:

...
Tarrant found Leahy's action particularly hard to swallow given that a patent troll bill had passed, 325-91, in December in the ultra-contentious House of Representatives, and that President Barack Obama had said he would sign a bill.

U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., called the vote in the House a "miracle of miracles."

"We had a bipartisan bill on a very important issue, protecting our small businesses, nonprofits and entrepreneurs from these stick-up artists that are lower than low — patent trolls," Welch said in a recent interview.

So what could possibly have gone wrong in a Democratically controlled Senate?

"You have this divided House that is so partisan typically, and they're able to get a strong bill through," Tarrant said. "The president of the United States comes out and strongly supports it. He mentions it in his State of the Union address that he wants to see a bill. And the Democratically controlled Senate can't even get a bill to the floor for a vote? I think it's disgusting."

In an interview with the Burlington Free Press, Leahy said he was essentially forced to drop the bill by U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"I am furious with what happened," Leahy said. "We worked so hard to get a coalition. Harry Reid and a couple of others said, 'We won't let it come to the floor.' I think that's wrong, but I'm not going to give up."

Calls to Reid's office seeking comment were not returned last week.

Leahy said opposition to the bill came primarily from the bio-pharmaceutical industry, along with universities and trial lawyers. The Vermont senator's postmortem confirmed rampant speculation in the Washington media that Reid had strong-armed Leahy at the behest of lobbyists representing those groups.
...

gently caress You And Diebold posted:

Probably referring to protesters in CA that blocked buses carrying loads of refugees/'detainees'.

More info here: http://touch.latimes.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-80695527/

Also if you haven't stopped by the freep thread, you can head there and watch them lose their minds over this.

Taerkar posted:

Isn't it actually even dumber in the book? Like a few of the TITANS OF INDUSTRY gardened as a hobby and that would be all they need. After all as TITANS OF INDUSTRY they would no doubt be far more productive with their farms than those leeches that are regular farmers.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

It's monumentally dumb. Galt's Gulch was powered by a mix of perpetual motion machines (which are literally physically impossible) and the engines that Galt invented that ran off of ambient, static electricity and produced effectively unlimited power (which is, of course, literally physically impossible). They ran all of their little society off of robots and automation with minimal effort. One thing Rand assumed was that these TITANS OF INDUSTRY were unbelievable geniuses that could figure out anything they needed to instantly but were being held back by society. She literally argued that if we completely took the reins off this would happen but if we don't then Galt and Pals will punish us by doing a Galt's Gulch thing.

It's...pretty damned stupid. She argued that if Galt created the magic static engine that he should be able to own the idea absolutely forever and make as much money as he wanted, which is, you know, kind of not how that sort of thing works, especially if you want to have a functional society. You wouldn't even necessarily have to "steal" the idea or "force" him to give it to everybody if it's just that drat good. He could have drawn up blueprints and said "hey have fun, Imma go live in my Gulch. Later, shitlords" and left everybody else to do their thing but instead he threw a tantrum and decided to destroy the world's economy deliberately. One thing a lot of Randists fail to realize is that the Galt Revolution literally left the whole world as a starving ruin, except Galt's Gulch. That's pretty hosed up.

ToxicSlurpee posted:

One thing Rand assumed was that these TITANS OF INDUSTRY were unbelievable geniuses that could figure out anything they needed to instantly but were being held back by society. She literally argued that if we completely took the reins off this would happen but if we don't then Galt and Pals will punish us by doing a Galt's Gulch thing.

Taerkar posted:

Isn't it actually even dumber in the book? Like a few of the TITANS OF INDUSTRY gardened as a hobby and that would be all they need. After all as TITANS OF INDUSTRY they would no doubt be far more productive with their farms than those leeches that are regular farmers.

Elephant Ambush posted:

It's the principle of giving something to someone who hasn't earned it. Remember that the one thing Ayn Rand hated most over anything else was altruism.

quote:

For all this vast and sparkling intellectual production, though, Americans hear surprisingly little about what it’s like to be managed. Perhaps the reason for this is because, when viewed from below, all the glittering, dazzling theories of management seem to come down to the same ugly thing. This is the lesson that Barbara Ehrenreich learns from the series of low-wage jobs that she works and then describes in bitter detail in her book “Nickel and Dimed.” Pious chatter about “free agents” and “empowered workers” may illuminate the covers of Fast Company and Business 2.0, but what strikes one most forcefully about the world of waitresses, maids and Wal-Mart workers that Ehrenreich enters is the overwhelming power of management, the intimidating array of advantages it holds in its endless war on wages. This is a place where even jobs like housecleaning have been Taylorized to extract maximum output from workers (“You know, all this was figured out with a stopwatch,” Ehrenreich is told by a proud manager at a maid service), where omnipresent personality and drug tests screen out those of assertive nature, where even the lowliest of employees are overseen by professional-grade hierarchs who crack the whip without remorse or relent, where workers are cautioned against “stealing time” from their employer by thinking about anything other than their immediate task, and where every bit of legal, moral, psychological, and anthropological guile available to advanced civilization is deployed to prevent the problem of pay from ever impeding the upward curve of profitability. This is the real story of life under markets.

The social panorama that Ehrenreich describes should stand as an eternal shrine to the god that sucked: slum housing that is only affordable if workers take on two jobs at once; exhausted maids eating packages of hot-dog buns for their meals; women in their 20s so enfeebled by this regimen that they can no longer lift the vacuum cleaners that the maid service demands they carry about on their backs; purse searches, drug tests, personality tests, corporate pep rallies. Were we not so determined to worship the market and its boogie-boarding billionaires, Ehrenreich suggests, we might even view their desperate, spent employees as philanthropists of a sort, giving selflessly of their well-being so that the comfortable might live even more comfortably. “They neglect their own children so that the children of others will be cared for,” she writes; “they live in substandard housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices high.”