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ManBoyChef posted:I'm still trying to come to grips with feeling guilty about not voting for the shitlib in the election because the republican is worse. I keep thinking that if they wanted my vote or for me to remain in the party they would have tried ticking some of my boxes but they didn't. In fact they went the opposite direction. Healthcare is very important to me because I have some pretty expensive health problems that have put me on disability. Because of this I don't have a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of and what little money left over after child support goes to doctors visit copays and prescription drugs. Joe literally does next to nothing about any of that. In fact he has lied about trying to cut the benefits I rely on to survive. I'm really at a crossroads here. I voted for hillary last election and I felt bad about it because of how terrible she is and this election I'm seeing the same problem with Biden. I guess I just don't know if I am making the right choice and I could really use some perspective. Here's some perspective for you: https://twitter.com/natashakorecki/status/1239387880902008832 That senior advisor? https://twitter.com/jeremyscahill/status/1239549394099359744 So if you are to the left of Biden, the woman who decided to help a serial rapist pro bono is calling you a "protester." And for the clincher, here's republicans going to the left of democrats on the corona virus: https://twitter.com/zachdcarter/status/1239561744688832513
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Mar 16, 2020 16:26
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twice burned ice posted:I'd prefer the democrat who harms stupidly than the republican who harms maliciously. Wait, you think that Obama's immigration policy, drone policy, "coups in Latin America" policy were all the result of stupidity as opposed to intentional? Funny thing happened this month, while everyone else was focused on corona. A story came out that confirmed that Obama's DoJ was actively coordinating with the carwash investigation in Brazil. The investigation that was also revealed to be explicitly about getting rid of the workers party. Now, I am not even going to go into how badly the alternative that Obama preferred is handling covid. I am just going to point out that the first thing that passed after the workers party was removed from power was a constitutional amendment that set a maximum that the government can spend on healthcare, pegged to GDP. Which means that once the crisis hits Brazil full on, and GDP declines, Brazil will actually have to cut healthcare spending in the middle of a pandemic. It is not inconceivable that Brazil is going to end up with one of the highest body counts in this entire mess. So remind me, again, as a Brazilian-American, how there's a substantive difference there as far as my family is concerned? Not a difference in tone, but an actual difference.
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Mar 17, 2020 17:22
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As for "lesser evil:" https://twitter.com/SenKamalaHarris/status/1239946668990246912 The dem senate response is Harris' "LIFT act." Funny thing about the LIFT act: you don't qualify if you are not working or are making less than 6k a year. Warren proposed raising SS payments by 200. Meanwhile, Romney has proposed a straight up 1000 for everyone https://www.romney.senate.gov/romney-calls-urgent-action-additional-coronavirus-response-measures Let that sink in: the democratic plans in the senate exclude the poorest people in the country, and are either 1/4 or 1/5 the size of the one proposed by Romney.
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Mar 17, 2020 18:06
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How are u posted:Any Democratic Admin will be 1000% more receptive to and proactive on climate legislation than any Republican. Do you even know what the Paris agreement does?
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Mar 30, 2020 20:17
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It's going to be great when immigrants rights groups and Latinx groups protest Biden during the campaign and the folks pretending here to be really concerned about Trump tell them to shut up.
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Mar 31, 2020 20:20
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Trump as an individual might be better than Biden. But I am pretty sure that the second a democrat is back in the white house, all the liberals will stop pretending to care about immigrants, minorities, poor people, foreign interventions, etc.
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Mar 31, 2020 20:31
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How are u posted:That war was entirely driven by GWB and Cheney and their neo-conservative agenda. No Democrat would have done the same. Do you just not remember what happened 18 years ago or are you being willfully ignorant because it serves your idiotic pro-Trump agenda? The status quo before the Iraq war was constant bombing and a sanctions regime that, when it was revealed had led to the death of half a million children, was deemed acceptable by the democratic administration. It's the common refrain. "While Biden said that he would have invaded Iraq anyways and helped make sure it happened, I am convinced that he would have instead just continued the genocidal sanctions regime and frequent bombing of the Clinton years" "While Biden has repeatedly said that he doesn't think the camps for children under Obama wasn't a problem, I am convinced that he will not use the camps as much and instead just revert to Obama's policy of expedited deportations and 3 year olds having to represent themselves in court."
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Mar 31, 2020 23:04
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For the people who talk about lesser evil, here are the democratic solutions to the crisis so far: - Joe Biden has followed Trump in blaming China, and the only difference is that Biden claims that he would have forced China to let in American specialists early in the pandemic - Andrew Cuomo has a budget deal to cut medicaid spending while they increase the budget for prisons and district attorneys as they roll back bail reform. While the state is deep in a budget hole, the cuts to medicaid were made necessary because Cuomo ruled out any sort of tax increase on the wealthy. - Pelosi's bold new stimulus idea is to retroactively lift the cap on state and local tax deductions, something where about 94% of beneficiaries make at least 100k. Now, I am sure someone is going to barge in to say that the republicans are somehow worse. But keep in mind that the above ideas have been met with either indifference and support from liberals.
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Apr 2, 2020 17:27
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Verviticus posted:there isnt a loving hope in hell that if i were american that id vote for biden or even The Rat, and yet it's extremely conceivable that it could've covid-21 or whatever and i feel like no matter how much i hate biden, the democrats, etc - their response to this wouldnt have been as catastrophic as trumps. coming from a scumbag fake leftist govt in BC that had a lovely but vastly superior response, i genuinely cant complete square away what i think the acceleration effect of a biden presidency would be vs the uh, hundreds of thousands of unnecessary deaths you guys are gonna suffer soon One way to determine whether the democrats would have been doing a better job is to look at what they are proposing right now. I honestly don't think the democratic establishment ideas would have been too different. 1- There is a lot of talk about Trump disbanding the group dedicated to pandemics, but under Obama's sequestration and etc the budgets for the CDC and the NIH were slashed Here's the CDC responding to budget cuts: https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2013/fy-2013-sequester-impacts.pdf Here's the NIH budget  2- Yes, Trump appoints sycophants based on loyalty. Kushner as the guy handling the crisis is a joke. But the HHS secretary under Clinton would have been Neera Tanden. Who doesn't have a single bit of experience or training in healthcare and the only qualification is being loyal to Clinton. So what are the democrats proposing that would have been different? 3- Biden's main talking point on how he would have prevented this is that he would have forced China to let American specialists in to see what was really happening. That is essentially Trump's talking point on the "Chinese Virus" in more polite clothing. 4- Biden's and Hillary's main policy proposal right now is that Trump should waive the requirement of having to prove loss of employment to be able to shop for insurance on the ACA marketplace. Keep in mind that people who lose their jobs can already do that, the proposal is specifically to waive the requirements that they provide documentation that they lost their job. So we are talking about a proposal that affects an insignificant number of people. 5- The democrat's darling right now, Andrew Cuomo, just proposed a budget that cuts billions from medicaid because he didn't want to raise taxes on the wealthy. On the flipside, he raised funding for prisons and DAs because they rolled back bail reform, so he's going to send and keep more people in prison even as they have become infection centers. 6- Pelosi initially resisted direct cash assistance to people, and now her big proposal is to roll back state and local tax deductions, something where the estimate is that 94% of those who benefit make 100k or more. 7- One of Joe Biden's main fundraisers has been caught discussing with Obama's former press secretary the best ways to smear the worker that they fired at amazon because he led the walk out demanding better protective gear. 8- Here's a Biden campaign surrogate telling people to go vote in person in WI https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC/status/1245965778928783360 If you take democrats at their word, their response would have been timid and not very different from Trump's.
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Apr 3, 2020 15:40
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Condiv posted:btw, if anyone in thread is part of an entryist org like dsa or ourrevolution or political revolution, start trying to push these orgs to endorse a third party candidate in this election DSA passed a resolution that they'd only endorse Bernie in last year's convention.
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Apr 6, 2020 17:36
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The issue with Biden isn't so much whether he will beat Trump or not. It is that he is fundamentally ill suited for this particular historical moment. We are in the middle of an unprecedented economic and healthcare crisis. And the big ideas pushed by the democrats so far alternate between "same as Trump but different tone" and "fundamentally innocuous" Let's recap what Biden and democrats has said should be done: - Force China to allow American scientists in (same as Trump but different tone) - Open the healthcare exchanges to more people than just those who lost their jobs (fundamentally innocuous) - Remove SALT deduction cap (fundamentally innocuous) - Provide free testing and care, but only for corona (fundamentally innocuous) History has shown us that in moments of profound crisis like this, there will be an anti-systemic backlash. Right now people will be staying at home, but once people start losing their jobs and running out of food and being homeless, the backlash will come. And it's in these moments that socialism or barbarism is truer than ever. A Biden presidency where the bold plans that he starts with are the above will be a recipe for the rise of a fascist movement that will have your average democrat nostalgic for Trump in 5 years. There is a great book that discusses the rise of fascism in Europe, called the great transformation by Karl Polanyi. quote:With the liberal the idea of freedom thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free enterprise—which is today reduced to a fiction by the hard reality of giant trusts and princely monopolies. This means the fullness of freedom for those whose income, leisure, and security need no enhancing, and a mere pittance of liberty for the people, who may in vain attempt to make use of their democratic rights to gain shelter from the power of the owners of property. Nor is that all. Nowhere did the liberals in fact succeed in reestablishing free enterprise, which was doomed to fail for intrinsic reasons. It was as a result of their efforts that big business was installed in several European countries and, incidentally, also various brands of fascism, as in Austria. Planning, regulation, and control, which they wanted to see banned as dangers to freedom, were then employed by the confessed enemies of freedom to abolish it altogether. Yet the victory of fascism was made practically unavoidable by the liberals' obstruction of any reform involving planning, regulation, or control. Freedom's utter frustration in fascism is, indeed, the inevitable result of the liberal philosophy, which claims that power and compulsion are evil, that freedom demands their absence from a human community. No such thing is possible; in a complex society this becomes apparent. This leaves no alternative but either to remain faithful to an illusionary idea of freedom and deny the reality of society, or to accept that reality and reject the idea of freedom. The first is the liberal's conclusion; the latter the fascist's. No other seems possible.
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Apr 8, 2020 18:28
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The only good thing about the ACA was medicaid expansion. On the private insurance side, it has been a gigantic give away to private insurance companies. Gross profit margin on the individual health insurance marketplace (premiums minus claims per month) have gone from $44 in 2011 to $167 in 2018. Average share of premiums paid as claims have from from 80% in 2011 to 70% in 2018. Average deductible has gone from $2491 in 2013 for a family to 3392 in 2018. In 2010, 49% of the population had employer insurance, 5% had individual insurance, 17% had medicaid, 11% had medicare and 16% were uninsured. 2018 9% were uninsured, but that was because 20% now had medicaid, 14% had medicare. So almost the entire increase in coverage is because of medicaid and medicare, even as profits and costs have increased dramatically.
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Apr 10, 2020 18:25
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I guarantee that Biden, if elected, will try to cut social security and medicare to balance the budget after all this stimulus, and they will try to shame Bernie for helping a republican win when he publicly objects to it.
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Apr 11, 2020 01:06
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Archonex posted:So you'd rather have us actively rolling back what little progress we had then? That makes no sense. Especially given that Trump and the Republicans don't believe climate change exists and actively try to dismantle any efforts to combat it not just in the country but also internationally. What progress? That is the biggest problem with a Biden presidency. Liberals wholeheartedly thinking that empty symbolic measures is progress.
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Apr 12, 2020 00:26
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I listened to every PSA from back when they were keeping it 1600 to about early 2018. I stopped when they had like 4 guests on Lovett or Leave it concern trolling about how many people of color would lose their jobs in the insurance industry if we had medicare 4 all. It was the final straw, but it was clear that they sucked for a long time. For example, there was the book that came after 2016 that talked about Jon Favreau and how he was going to help write Hillary's convention speech and gave up because the campaign was so bad and didn't even know why they were running. Which was certainly at odds with how he would describe her campaign on the podcast. Or the time Jon Lovett was part of an episode where they interviewed Hillary about her book, and it was a bunch of softballs and letting her talk poo poo about Bernie all the time. Now, this wasn't the main issue. The main issue was that later Ronan Farrow, Lovett's partner, wrote a book about how at around the same time here Hillary was trying to get him to kill the story on Weinstein. This is perhaps the best example of what PSA is: defending the democratic establishment line even when Hillary is trying to destroy your partner's career because of a serial rapist. PSA is MSNBC for younger people. It is 100% the democratic party line, vote blue no matter who, even if they occasionally say the minimum to maintain their credibility. Mellow Seas posted:Well firstly, I would never claim to be “on the left” in D&D because of the gatekeeping. You've spent two years now concern trolling about how you totally support Bernie, but the bros are too mean. Don't stop now.
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Jul 16, 2020 23:41
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What you need to know about fervent PSA listeners is that in their live shows Keith Ellison was booed and Tim Miller was applauded.
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Jul 17, 2020 20:55
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World War Mammories posted:lol, for what? The domestic abuse allegations that ended up showing Ellison was the victim? They asked him about 2016 and he said that it wasn't rigged but it also " “wasn’t fair that one candidate in the primary had the prerogative to appoint staff–we should just admit that!”
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Jul 17, 2020 21:58
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The democrats just threatened to fully reinstate the powers of superdelegates for 2024 if the Bernie delegates proposed controversial things like more early voting, extended voting hours, more mail voting, or moving away from caucuses. The way you move the democrats left is by making sure that the people trying to block these measures have no power.
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Jul 31, 2020 16:50
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SlothfulCobra posted:In theory, Biden could be bullied into accepting reforms because aside from being an old and stagnant piece of garbage, he is a pathetic worm who stands for nothing. There have been a number of more progressive candidates for congress that made headway during the primaries, and if the democrats don't entirely sabotage their entire party across the board just to spite them, that could lead to something better. Even outside congressional dealings, it's more likely that once in power, he would be more prone to listening to mass protests. This is nonsense. Had Biden been a pathetic worm who stands for nothing, on random chance alone he'd occasionally take up a leftwing position or two. SlothfulCobra posted:It's not good, I'll give you that. I would cut him some slack since almost the entire political establishment lost their minds around that time and it's another incident of Biden being a spineless worm and going along with the flow, which would imply that he wouldn't have the ambition to start a war himself. This is the sort of calculus that is only possible if you value the lives of non-Americans at exactly 0. Why focus on how many Americans died, as opposed to all deaths? Why do only American deaths count in Iraq, Libya or Afghanistan? As for the CDC, the crippling of the CDC started with sequestration. https://www.cdc.gov/budget/documents/fy2013/fy-2013-sequester-impacts.pdf
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Aug 1, 2020 22:10
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