|
Inescapable Duck posted:Isn't a big issue that the US spends more than enough money on social programs to be basically socialist but because so much of it goes to deliberate waste, graft and corporate welfare they get even less returns? Dude, what do you think the entirety of the military budget is? It's a jobs program for white folks and "the good ones." They call it camofare for a reason.
|
#
¿
Oct 13, 2017 02:06
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 09:40 |
|
|
Radish posted:https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/nancy-pelosi-says-socialism-is-not-ascendant-in-the-democratic-party/ SHe's trapped in fifty years ago when "socialism" was a dirty scary thing, and she's still reacting to Republican framing of all Democrats as socialist and therefore bad and scary and evil and basically Stalin. This is why we need new leadership; the old leadership has been boxing the same fights for so many decades that they can't think outside the ring.
|
|
#
¿
Jun 29, 2018 14:09
|
|
|
Megaman's Jockstrap posted:America is a normal country that keeps kids caged away from their parents for good reasons This was discredited -- the dog sitting thing was mentioned but it wasn't something the judge considered when setting timeframes.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 8, 2018 21:19
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:The sort of liberals who were making those comments have learned from the Republicans and basically use the Gish gallop when criticizing the left. It doesn't matter to them if something they say is later shown to be wrong, because they can just ignore it and move on to the next talking point. Eh, there are plenty of people around here (this forum, not this thread specifically) who thought they were "just being reasonable" a few days ago when this first broke, said none of this mattered and it was silly to bother about it, and said those of us who thought it needed to be dealt with were being emotional and unreasonable. Yet, here we are. Like, even if they're right and it makes no concrete difference in the actual race, just by being on the ballot he's fostering party disunity, opening the door to poo poo lieberman moves like this, and trolling the progressive wing of the party. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:01 on Jul 18, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Jul 18, 2018 14:53
|
|
|
Lightning Knight posted:Biden isn’t even gonna be the big hurdle tbh. My prediction is that the Democratic establishment coalesces around Warren and then it's Bernie vs. Warren. Whichever wins, they pick Booker as VP.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2018 21:13
|
|
|
Lightning Knight posted:This seems plausible but Booker would have to totally flame out first, I don’t see him dropping out unless he somehow only pulls single-digit numbers. I'm going by his speeches at the last DNC where he kinda flamed out. He's got charisma but I think people are overestimating him because everyone's looking for the Next Obama.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 21, 2018 21:27
|
|
|
I think it's bizarre that folks talk about "support" as if everyone was running around pledging allegiance to specific candidates unless you're a west virginia voter OR you are donating cash to Manchin or to the Democratic Party generally, your opinion on Manchin doesn't matter and all three of those things (being a west virginia voter, donating to Manchin, or donating to the Democratic Party generally instead of to specific candidates you prefer) are horrible mistakes This forum seems to be locked into some weirdass ARG where everyone has to Declare Their Support or Opposition for specific candidates as if that poo poo mattered at all in any way
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 17:30
|
|
|
twodot posted:Logistically the conversation becomes very difficult if people insist on only talking about politicians that are running in their exact voting district. Sure, but there's plenty to talk about without going into this bizarre head-space where folks are trying to get each other to Declare! Pro- or Anti-Manchin! Stand and Deliver! as if there were roving gangs of Manchinists trying to compel allegiance or some poo poo Prester Jane posted:Strongly disagree friend. My vote doesn't matter where Manchin is concerned, but my opinion very much does. Especially in the age of social media. This is a decent point but I'm not sure how much difference it makes given the self-segregating nature of social media. I'm not on Twitter but if I were I really doubt I'd have any Manchin voters in my feed. I *am* on Facebook and I'm virtually certain I have no Manchin voters in my friends list. I've been to West Virginia once in my life (decades ago, to do service work) and it was horrible and I never intend to go back. Condiv posted:you don't have to declare your opposition to manchin. just don't expect to be unchallenged when you declare your support whoa there with that "you" there buddy. Again though even terms like "support" or "opposition" are meaningless without context. I'm perfectly happy to send him nasty fax messages or whatever but since i'm not his constituent those will just be ignored. It's like asking me to declare my Support or Opposition towards Mount Rushmore. Mount Rushmore's gonna be there no matter what I do at this point; it' s not a decision I have any agency within. It seems like another example of team-think bullshit where everyone's getting superhyped on Declaring Allegiance and Purging the Unclean and it's all pointless bullshit unless you translate it somehow to concrete action in a specific race.
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 18:08
|
|
|
twodot posted:I mean yeah we could talk about like cake recipes, if we wanted I guess. How are we supposed to talk politics without politicians? Not what I meant, sorry if I wasn't clear there's a big difference between talking about politicians and talking about whether or not given posters here are Secret [$politicianname] Supporters or w/e in retrospect, the real lesson of the day for me is that I don't really get the utility of poster v poster "thunderdome" I may be in the wrong thread
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 18:18
|
|
|
Majorian posted:So why, exactly, are criticisms of Manchin and other garbage-Dems invariably met with these sanctimonious missives on how "Manchin's the best you're gonna get in WV"? I don't get why complaining about terrible conservative Democrats is treated as if it's a threat to the party's prospects in those states and districts. There's basically two defensible positions on Manchin 1) a bad Democrat is worse than no Democrat because they damage the Democrat brand 2) a bad Democrat is better than no Democrat because we need them for clutch votes Both positions are correct depending on your frame of reference. If we're talking about the PPACA "reform" vote that would have abolished Medicaid, a bad Democrat saved about a million lives there just by preserving Medicaid. If we're talking about the long term health of American politics though then bad Democrats are vipers in our bosom because they destroy progressive credibility and give rise to Trumpesquery ("fascism rises where socialist fails"). Given that background, I'd attempt to answer your question by proposing that people get holier than thou and sanctimonious because it's a lot easier to demonize the person on the other side of the argument than to shift frame of reference (especially if you disagree that the other person's frame of reference is appropriate). Like I said, I think I may not really get the thunderdome concept, it seems like a waste of energy
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 18:52
|
|
|
Majorian posted:Well sure, but my question is more, "What, exactly, is so harmful about criticizing Manchin and other garbage Dems, that it warrants these long-rear end thinkpieces about how West Virginia isn't going to get a better senator anytime soon?" I think it was Ytlaya that asked it originally, but it bears repeating: where's the harm? Where does this bizarre delusion that criticizing centrist Democrats is going to tank their electoral prospects come from? Ok yeah I got nothing' there, sorry, makes sense
|
|
#
¿
Jul 31, 2018 19:00
|
|
|
Radish posted:Regardless of the inherent issues with the ACA and payment, the fact that it relied on the good will of Republican Governors was so goddamned stupid I don't even know. That was an artifact of the judicial process, not a deliberate policy choice by Democrats. Republicans basically re-wrote fifty year's worth of law there in order to make the changes optional rather than mandatory.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 19:38
|
|
|
Radish posted:Fair enough I thought that the medicaid expansion was opt in but looks like I was wrong. Yeah, and it also really can't be overstated how bad that decision was, it was basically the Republican justices waving a wand and maliciously sabotaging the law.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 19:47
|
|
|
Iron Twinkie posted:The ACA was an improvement if you are part of the petit bourgeoisie where several thousand and several hundred thousand is a meaningful price difference. For the 80% of the country that can't cover an unplanned expense of a thousand dollars or more they both are more money then you have. Again, for people who fall in the "medicaid gap", where they qualify for neither medicaid nor the ACA, the Medicaid expansion was a HUGE boon, and those people are (mostly) not "petit bourgeoisie" but the actual poor. OF course Medicaid isn't a panacea either but depending on what you need it often does provide complete coverage. Condiv posted:the medicare expansion was one of the good pieces of ppaca.letting the possibility of there being a subsidy hole in the case where medicare expansion wasn't carried out was one of the hugely bad parts. ppaca would've been better if the subsidy hole was not a possibility. -caid not -care
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 19:50
|
|
|
Radish posted:Yeah when the Republicans talk about activist judges it's more projection. Pretty much every conservative judge just invents poo poo all the time. Being a judge is in and of itself a personality-warping job because 1) You're always, definitionally, the least informed person in the room (apart from the jury, when there are juries) -- the litigants and witnesses have first hand knowledge, the attorneys for each side have second hand knowledge, you have third hand knowledge 2) Everyone bows and scrapes and tells you you're brilliant all the time 3) You are definitionally always right (within your courtroom). All judges engage in motivated reasoning all the time because they're human beings and that's what human beings do, but at least with left-wing judges the motivations are less frequently poo poo
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 19:59
|
|
|
Iron Twinkie posted:I'm talking about the ACA, not the Medicaid gap. If 4/5ths of the country can't actually afford to use their insurance, why the gently caress should it matter if they are "actually poor" or not? The Medicaid gap would have been eliminated as part of the PPACA if not for Republican judicial fuckery, so those two things are, like, the same thing
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 20:30
|
|
|
twodot posted:The Medicaid expansion brings up the income level to 138% of federal poverty level (edit: at least in my state), the PPACA premium caps start increasing at 133% of poverty level. Forcing people who make 139% of the federal poverty level to buy insurance they can't afford is still hosed up, but they at least theoretically tried to cover the gap (assuming they couldn't have predicted the court would gently caress this up). Yeah. I've had several face-to-face conversations with people who had severe, potentially fatal medical conditions, who I was trying to help qualify for medicaid, where we discovered midway through the conversation that WHOOPS they had some pension or something that put them a few dollars over the threshold. It's a pretty lovely conversation to have! Justice Roberts straight up murdered those people! In a just world his judicial robes would pour blood eternally!
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 21:06
|
|
|
Iron Twinkie posted:I'm talking about the ACA as a whole. If you can't afford your deductible, then the way you interact with our health care system hasn't changed under it. Except perhaps for being more aware of how unaffordable and hosed the whole thing is. To be talking about the same thing, the threshold wouldn't be the federal poverty level but any household making less than six figures. There's a lot of variation in Medicaid state to state but it doesn't necessarily have either copays or deductibles. There are a lot of services under Medicaid that are just outright covered, or covered with truly minimal copayments (for example, a few dollars a month "copayment" for a mechanized power wheelchair costing upwards of $50k). The ACA as a whole had a shitload of real issues but Medicaid expansion is an unqualified good thing and the destruction of the Medicaid expansion provisions was an unqualified bad thing. Sometimes policies are complex and both good and bad in different ways at the same time. 
|
|
#
¿
Aug 1, 2018 21:15
|
|
|
Majorian posted:That only happened after Dubya had been out of office for years. Absence makes the heart grow fonder, and all that. No #Resistance types are voting for Trump; they may well stay home like the pouting toddlers they are, though. (or, as WL said, write in Zuckerberg) Yeah literally nobody except actual fascists are gonna vote Trump. The lanyard types will either swallow their pride and vote for Bernie or they'll swallow their heads and vote Bloomberg.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 3, 2018 18:35
|
|
|
Radish posted:I honestly don't even understand what centrists want to campaign on considering they can't even stand up to Trump. Their absolute lack of ideas to make life better for the majority of the country isn't exactly offset by their brave resistance to fascism. Centrists campaign on preserving the status quo, which is generally great for them personally, which is why they're centrists Of course right now the status quo is HORRIBLE for almost everyone who is not currently employed by a lobbying firm
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 17:01
|
|
|
Being a "good public speaker" means different things in different contexts, but the main thing is being able to empassion your audience. Obama was a good public speaker because he could create passion in his audience. Bernie's a good public speaker because he has a lot of passion and that communicates to his audience. Objectively speaking from like an eye-of-history standpoint Obama was the better speaker because he could sway an audience whereas most of Bernie's crowds are already angry, they just need focus; that's why it took Bernie a lot longer to find his audience. That's fine though. Bernie doesn't have to be any better than "good enough," and he is.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 17:42
|
|
|
I have yet to see any evidence that Booker is charismatic apart from a few tweets he made a decade ago when he was still mayor. His speech at the last DNC was a colossal flub. Biden has a certain kind of charisma but I don't think he has more charisma than Bernie.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 18:21
|
|
|
I will agree that Bernie's charisma is situational. He's basically an angry old man shouting that he's mad as hell and he's not gonna take it any more. If the rest of the country wasn't mad as hell it would just be a little weird. Since the rest of the country is mad as hell we all want to subscribe to his newsletter. Then it turns out his newsletter is full of really good ideas
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 18:28
|
|
|
forbidden dialectics posted:I think she's succ incarnate but Warren is absolutely charismatic and speaks with passion about *checks notes* the preservation of capitalism. yeah, I think Warren and Bernie are gonna be the Dem ticket this go round, though I wouldn't take a bet on which will be P and which VP.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 6, 2018 18:32
|
|
|
Box social?
|
|
#
¿
Aug 9, 2018 20:43
|
|
|
Prester Jane posted:So I went through my probate history and found this awesome post that I was probated for. . . .a large portion of the United States to overcome their Collective normalcy bias, and doing that is going to take time and a tremendous amount of effort. (Also patience.) You weren't probated in that post because anyone [edit: anyone on the mod team] actually thought you were wrong, from what I can tell -- it looks like Fans thought you were plugging your blog, which is a separate issue. That's two different things. A lot of probations people get are for technical rule violations that have little if anything to do with the substantive "value" of their posts. A probation can be a value determination but sometimes/often it just means the poster gambled with a rule violation and lost. FWIW I think your analysis is mostly valid most of the time but sometimes you misapply or overextend your own framework (the Houston predictions, etc) and sometimes factors outside the framework intervene (e.g., your pre-election predictions were all based on the assumption that Trump would lose). None of that means you're wrong as such but a prediction can be "correct" and still fail, or be "incorrect" and still succeed (see: Nate Silver and other pollsters ; Nate Silver was "correct" in that Hillary had at best at 2/3rds chance of winning, but his prediction still failed because the die rolled the other way; conversely, all the pollsters who predicted the election based on the national popular vote were actually correct, within the bounds of that prediction, but were substantively incorrect because the national popular vote did not determine the election). I mean, hell, even your Houston predictions (from what I remember anyway -- I admit I'm not an exact scholar) weren't so much "wrong" as "the breakdown of society happened in Puerto Rico instead a month later". Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Aug 10, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 16:47
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:My opinion on what I've seen of Prester Jane's stuff is that it's often not exactly wrong, but is just applying a lot of subjective interpretation to things that happen (or asserting things are "standard" that may or may not be). I sometimes get the feeling that she's just sort of asserting the nature or causes of things in ways that can't easily be proved or disproved. The root issue is that post hoc ergo propter hoc isn't enough for proof. It's probably accurate at this point to describe PJ's theoretical framework as a set of hypotheses that have so far proven valid within a specific range of situations. But that's not the same thing as "proof". (For a similar example, see: the various problems with the "Dunning-Kruger" theory : http://www.talyarkoni.org/blog/2010/07/07/what-the-dunning-kruger-effect-is-and-isnt/ . It's not so much that Dunning-Kruger is wrong as that it isn't proven because there are a range of other possible & overlapping explanations, and the theory may have less or more applicability than it was initially seen to have, and you have to be careful with saying things are proven because confirmation bias is a hell of a drug). Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 17:42 on Aug 10, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 17:39
|
|
|
Calibanibal posted:mods stepping into the thunderdome and using their magical powers to destroy PJ. Unfair! Oh god does that make me McMahon I'm so sorry
|
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 17:41
|
|
|
Rent-A-Cop posted:At least you're not McCaine. drat, faint praise Prester Jane posted:Edit: I forget where but Guyovich later clarified that he probated me for "carrying on a grudge" which directly translates to getting probated for upsetting certain popular posters by proving them wrong. I don't want to get sucked into a rabbit hole of defending/analyzing another mod's choices but I can say that in my own forum there have been times where I had to probate posters I one-thousand-percent agreed with, just because they were doing something like carrying on a derail way past when it needed to end, or making their argument in the wrong place when it needed to be in another thread instead and there had been warnings, etc. I mean, mods are human beings too, etc., but often it's not at all about the substantive content of the post, but about the posts' form or location or context. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Aug 10, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 10, 2018 17:59
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:No it won't. At best, the electing of better politicians will be the result, but it won't be a cause of action. Legislation is part of how you change America; these are recursive feedback loops. We're currently in a negative feedback loop but legislation is a necessary part of positive change. M4A and a UBI would give workers more freedom to strike, for example. We've seen this historically -- look at the history of the Progressive movement. Legislative change and block-by-block organizing are not mutually exclusive options; rather, they are mutually reinforcing.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 15, 2018 19:59
|
|
|
WampaLord posted:Basically someone said "Um, sure guys, gently caress Nazis and all but please don't dehumanize them or else we're just as bad as the Nazis" and the thread exploded in dumb back and forths about how much one should be allowed to hate Nazis. The derail was way dumber than that. Everyone agreed Nazis should not be tolerated. The "debate" was one group claiming that "toleration" = "humanization" and another group arguing the converse, that "humanization" != "toleration."
|
|
#
¿
Aug 20, 2018 17:04
|
|
|
VideoGameVet posted:Trump has the HIGHEST support of Republicans of ANY GOP president in modern history. This is a slightly misleading statistic because there has been a drop in people willing to identify as Republican. His base loves him but his base is relatively small compared to Reagan or Bush. Other Republican presidents had more moderate support.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2018 18:52
|
|
|
PT6A posted:Who's the 15.5% of Democrats who wouldn't support a policy of medicare for all? Uncle Wemus posted:The ones in office Ziiing (EDIT since the thread is hypersensitive:  )The real answer is probably a combination of "don't gently caress with medicare, any changes to the program are bad because I'm 97 years old and depend on it", "Medicare for All is a collection of insufficient policy programs and only true single payer now is even worth discussing," "I claim to be a Democrat but in practice I always vote Republican," etc. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 00:17 on Aug 24, 2018 |
|
#
¿
Aug 23, 2018 23:35
|
|
|
B B posted:
Y'all are hyper-defensive sometimes, I didn't say it wasn't But I doubt elected politicians made up 15% of poll respondents
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2018 00:13
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:This is almost comically corrupt. That seems at least borderline illegal if not an outright violation of the law. I feel like I've read articles about similar conduct in the past being ruled illegal due to campaign finance violations.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2018 21:50
|
|
|
Trabisnikof posted:I wouldn't be surprised if the laws in New York were built exactly to allow this kind of corruption. But fighting them is what has to be done. AOC is such a good leader for the Democratic Party's left because she isn't just focused on primaries but also on full-throated entryism which owns. Good point. I looked up the law I was thinking of and it turned out to be that my state makes it illegal to pay someone else to run for office (due to various historical shenanigans where Republicans would pay black spoiler candidates to run for office and split tickets).
|
|
#
¿
Aug 24, 2018 23:22
|
|
|
Main Paineframe posted:That doesn't mean they actually like their health insurance, though. That just means they think that other people have even worse health insurance. Well, they are likely not wrong
|
|
#
¿
Aug 27, 2018 14:49
|
|
|
theCalamity posted:I think I may have realized one of the fundamental differences between Sanders and Warren: Warren focuses more on the banks and any policies or regulations affecting them can take a while for the results to filter down to the regular population. Sanders, OTOH, attacks corporations on the behalf of workers, especially those who are exploited heavily. Warren is fundamentally still a capitalist. She sees reform of the free market as a possible and valid goal, and her policies thus focus on policing and monitoring abuses of market systems. Sanders, on the other hand, is focused on building non-market-based solutions (Medicare for All, etc.) Of the two Sanders is more directly engaged with actual problems individual people are dealing with. Warren's proposals are not bad in and of themselves, and if you're ranking members of the Democratic party she's about as far towards the good side as anyone you'll find, but most of her proposals stop short of what's necessary.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2018 19:15
|
|
|
MSDOS KAPITAL posted:Capitalism and markets aren't quite the same, and her proposal to force worker representation on boards at public corporations is not capitalist. That's a fair point, especially about the proposal to force worker representation on corporate boards. Still, I think rhetoric also matters -- it indicates a candidate's range of acceptable options -- and her general policy framework revolves around reforming and restructuring market systems, not (for example) nationalizing the health care industry as a whole. But yeah if my choices are Warren and any almost anyone else, short of Bernie or AOC, I'll happily pull the lever for Warren.
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2018 21:40
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 10, 2024 09:40 |
|
|
MSDOS KAPITAL posted:People conflate socialism with communism and the absence of private property at all, is my read of it. It's conditioning; every time I try to talk about market socialism around here the discussion gets derailed infinitely into various digressions about which kinds of socialism are real socialism and which aren't this is also why I call myself a Georgist
|
|
#
¿
Aug 29, 2018 22:22
|
|