Hilario Baldness posted:

Remember when we laughed about Eric Cantor losing to a guy that never held a political job in his life? Democrats should primary every corporatist democrat (hint: everyone that didn't bail from the DNC to support Sanders). This is how you fix and energize the democratic party.

Venom Snake posted:

People laughed because the Freedom Caucus crazies are a literal ball and chain around their legislative efforts. It's not something you want for yourself.

Fidel Castronaut posted:

I don't think we can map Trump onto anything prior because he is the only president who has had zero government experience at any level. Nixon was a cunning political animal who would have got away with it if it weren't for a piece of tape. Reagan was a charming idiot who took a lovely Carter economy and made it not so lovely. (Or, rather, the people he had working for him did.) W was also a rather charming idiot who lucked into 9/11 making him infallible because of patriotism. Trump is coming in with a not so awful economy, with no political savvy, and (inshallah) no terrorist attacks to make people stand together.

CheesyDog posted:

I talked about wondering how millennials were going to handle regression of social issues in one of these drat threads, and it's not looking good...

My campus's LGBT group has canceled their weekly bowling night, citing "safety concerns" following the election. Apparently a drunk Trump supporter cursed at them this week... thus causing a group of 15 people to feel too unsafe to bowl.

A lot of young people are going to have to harden the gently caress up and fast.

Larry Parrish posted:

On the other hand Nixon sabotaged the peace talks to make his campaign easier

RiotGearEpsilon posted:

Larry Parrish posted:

Let's be honest though. Do you really care what anyone from LA or Portland thinks.

Fiction posted:

There are plenty of working class people and undocumented immigrants in LA and the surrounding areas we should talk to, yes

Hilario Baldness posted:

That broad movement energized them to a majority control of nearly every lever of power of government in the United States. They did so as a reaction to the neoliberal disaster of mixing politics with finance/mercantile capital. If you can craft a similar movement with the message around getting money out of politics to make an economic system that works for everyone, you have tangible good in this country. I have to say, I've genuinely enjoyed going back and forth with you, as I think we agree.

Venom Snake posted:

In the 90's Dems lurched to the right in response to massive Republican gains made during the Clinton admin which is where third wasyism comes from. Then later on you had blue dogs. So yeah you are correct that in the past two decades them dems haven't really been big champions of the working class but it's not like the GOP hasn't been cutting benefits in the mean time.

The dilemma facing the United States right now is the majority of the population lives on the coasts/in cities but proportionally has less power. Dems won the votes for the Presidency, senate and house but control none of those now. The protests are only going to get worse because people are tired of their vote not mattering and getting hosed over by a government that has no mandate. The modern DNC is going to need to draw off midwestern voters without pissing off it's coastal base.

quote:

I interviewed today with an Atlanta startup founded by one of the nation's premier African-American entrepreneurs, a Morehouse Man with a GT PhD. This is his sixth Atlanta-based company, all of which either chug along successfully or have been acquired. All have a higher percentage of blacks in engineering than Google, or indeed any other major tech company. The exciting and vivacious single-room office I toured today was at least one-third people of color.

This is perhaps to be expected in the city responsible for more African-American PhDs and engineering graduates than any other, a city which has elected black mayors since 1973, the birth and resting place of Martin Luther King Jr., the home of Morehouse aka "Black Harvard" and Spelman aka "Black Wellesley", the city that shows up as my first hit for a Google search of "African American Mecca".

It's also rumored to influence hip-hop. Just a bit.

Google talks endlessly about diversity, and spends millions of dollars on the cause. My NYC office lends its prodigiously expensive square feet to Black Girls Code. We attempt to hook the recruiting pipeline up to HBCUs. We tweet about social justice and blog about the very real problem of racial inequality in America. Noble endeavors, all. It's too bad that they're not taking place where black people actually, you know, live.

According to census.gov's data as of 2016, Mountain View is 2% black. In 2010, the Bay Area Census Project recorded 1,468 blacks in MTV. I saw more black people than that crossing Peachtree Street today. census.gov reports, as of 2010, blacks making up 25.1% of NYC, 9.6% of Los Angeles, and 6.1% of famously liberal San Francisco. census.gov does not provide data for Dublin or Zürich, but we can make some reasonable assumptions about those other largest Google offices, n'est-ce pas? And let's be honest -- I doubt much of that 25.1% of NYC is centered around Chelsea.

Atlanta's a bit down from 67% in 1990, but 54% ain't so bad.

In one of the most reasonably-priced major cities of America, a ten-minute walk from one of the world's top ten engineering schools, Google has an office. It's one floor. There are no mass outings to the Fox Theatre, let alone Broadway. Food is served from 1200 to 1330, though mainly gone by 1300. Let it be noted that this food includes traditional African-American fare, something I've seen in other Google offices only during special events celebrating our self-congratulating focus on diversity. There are more black people in this office than I've seen in our NYC building, unless one counts custodial staff. There are three engineers, one of whom is black. That doesn't seem like many, except that I know precisely one black engineer on my entire ninth floor of Google NYC.

There were once dozens of SWEs and SREs in this office, humming along, cranking out GWT, nerd poo poo etc. Google decided to close Atlanta engineering, and they mainly went as a group to Square. A recent diversity-themed TGIF explicitly mentioned the importance of recruiting Atlanta; it's too bad we won't go all the way and actually hire ATLiens.

Madison? Sure. Pittsburgh? Gotta stick CMU's robotics department somewhere! Ann Arbor? Go Blue! Atlanta? Nah. Larry, what did we do to you?

Believe it or not, some of us like it here. California doesn't have seasons, and people talk to crystals, and the fried chicken sucks. Manhattan won't let you have a yard to grill in, and you have to hunt trees like rare Pokémon, and what the gently caress is that smell? It's godawfully hot, admittedly, but we don't screw around with our air conditioning, and there's plenty of room for pools. We can make effective use of the second-person (gender neutral!) plural "y'all" without being assumed mentally deficient, youz guys. Our families, people, and heritages are here, and no, by heritage I'm not talking about that goddamned flag.

If I help this company sell, it'll seed a half-dozen new black tech entrepreneurs. They'll go on to hire plenty more black engineers, and do it in Atlanta.

At Google, I'll be encouraged to take annual Bias-Busting training, gathering with other privileged honkeys to encourage one another's virtuous respect of black coworkers we don't have.

I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony, a symphonic blank stare, yeah.

I'll then make money for Californian white people who don't think the South merits a lousy engineering office.

--atlanta 2016-07-14

Fidel Castronaut posted:

Lol did SNL really open with Kate McKinnon doing an unironic Buckleyesque Hallelujah while dressed as Hillary?

Cyron posted:

what is buckleyesque? you mean that shity webcomic guy

quote:

It's really interesting living here now as a Dem where people I grew up with that hated Republicans are now sharing facebook memes about Trump taking back "Our" country. It confused the hell out of me for a long time till I realized that social issues had become the same as economic ones to them. These people were lumber yard workers, miners, farmers and so on. They liked unions, hated corporate America, and just wanted to have a nice middle class life. Then the lumber yards shut down, the mines became much more automated, and big corporate farms had run a lot of people out of business. Suddenly you have a lot of people sitting around with not much to do and don't know what to blame when some GOP nut comes in and tells them that Democrats want to help gay people, immigrants, and take your guns. Now some of them do really hate gay people and are racist (you can thank the evangelicals for that) but most are convinced that they aren't being helped BECAUSE of these groups. They do not give a gently caress about gay rights, they don't care about the trans bathroom issues, immigrants to them are just competition and all the new tourists pouring in look like they walked out of a different universe.

They are voting Trump and other republicans because he's giving them someone to blame. He's promising to turn back time. I don't think you can out promise that. But when he doesn't deliver and their lives continue to go to poo poo you sure as hell can tell them that they were lied to.

Grognan posted:

They might not have won poo poo because poo poo is not a fuckin poll and politics is not just PR.

Venom Snake posted:

Mate I am talking about if you count the raw popular vote for the Pres, Senate, and House that the dems got more votes. We are being ruled by a government elected by like 19% of the population. That's going to piss a lot of people off.

Larry Parrish posted:

I think it's funny that Venom Snake went from being genuinely confused that the Dems lost to joining the rest of the hill folk with retarded hand wringing about how Hillary totally would have won if only we were a democracy and not a republic.


It's a stupid loving point to make though since democracies vote differently than republics

Venom Snake posted:

Mate I am talking about if you count the raw popular vote for the Pres, Senate, and House that the dems got more votes. We are being ruled by a government elected by like 19% of the population. That's going to piss a lot of people off.

Venom Snake posted:

Mate I am talking about if you count the raw popular vote for the Pres, Senate, and House that the dems got more votes. We are being ruled by a government elected by like 19% of the population. That's going to piss a lot of people off.

hailthefish posted:

Yeah the EC is kinda dumb but 4 days after an election decided on the basis of one candidate completely ignoring half the goddamn EC votes on the goddamn table, the navel-gazing about 'well if we just make the EC go away we won't have to change anything' is just

Larry Parrish posted:

I think it's funny that Venom Snake went from being genuinely confused that the Dems lost to joining the rest of the hill folk with retarded hand wringing about how Hillary totally would have won if only we were a democracy and not a republic.


It's a stupid loving point to make though since democracies vote differently than republics

LastInLine posted:

Honestly, that's only going to piss off the people you've already got on your side.

mrmcd posted:

Dude everything I've seen from VS seems like he genuinely believes that the hill people hosed this in an amazing way, and wants to learn how to get it right. Even on foreign policy stuff, he's been respectful and engaged honestly with people he disagrees with that basically called him Hillter 2.0.

zen death robot posted:

The EC is dumb right now because there hasn't been an expansion of the number of districts to reflect overall population growth. Even in "flyover country".

Fidel Castronaut posted:

Yeah, while I still cast a side-eye at VS sometimes, and I think the Dwarf Fortress burn was hilarious, he has at least stuck around and eaten a great deal of poo poo sandwiches that folks have handed him.

LastInLine posted:

I agree with everything you said except the bolded part. Sounds like the EC which was designed to prevent exactly what Hillary was trying to do is kinda great, tbqh

zen death robot posted:

The EC is dumb right now because there hasn't been an expansion of the number of districts to reflect overall population growth. Even in "flyover country".

Grognan posted:

Same with the house of reps since the eighteenth century

Third World Reggin posted:

The EC will change when the winner needs it to.

The winner will never need the EC to change.