Solvent posted:

Hello.
I’m going to come with a long range snipe because I can’t sleep.
I can’t sleep, I haven’t posted in months, and I want this to be something I can quote without having to toxx for it.
Something Awful is a drat fine place full of brilliant people who have some serious opinions (problems).
Reading Goon takes on the debates are waaaaaay better than watching them.
Here are some of my opinions, ripe for first (second) page hatred.

Warren is the democratic nominee, I didn’t watch the debates, I’m not remotely interested in them.
I knew she was the democratic nominee when she started running.
She knew she was the democratic nominee when she started running.

Joe Biden didn’t want to run at all, he’s doing this to call more attention to the democrats who are. To say he’s committing political suicide is to say “who is that guy again? oh yeah, barry’s vp”.
I think he wanted to step out of the way a couple years ago, but people, I don’t know who, butt people think he should have ran.

Check my probes, I was the literal first person in C-SPAM to say Bernie would have won after Colbert looked like he was going to cry on election night.
That being said: “I am not now and have never been a member of the communist party or otherwise affiliated with it.”
After minimal in the DSA thread, I’ve declared this rabid communist bullshit to be not funny anymore.
You loving goons. God drat. Go talk to some people outside of your bubble. It’ll do them and you some good if you try.
I dunno, hear them out and not try to demonize them or convince them of anything maybe.
Try to find things you agree with (those) people about, make any sort of common ground.
Bernie has made his point, and I salute his unbelievable integrity. The man is a saint even if you don’t agree with him.
If I’m incorrect about Liz and he is nominated, of course I’d vote for him. I love the man.
When I say Bernie is unbelievable, I say “hey there’s a politician in Washington who’s had the same message for longer than I’ve been alive!” (I’m one of the oldest of my generation) I’ve said this before too, wouldn’t it be fair to ask who the hell that person who’s been in politics so long, and has stayed on message so consistently could possibly could be if you’d never heard of the man?

Good luck to people with a horse in this race, I’m not so sure that the orange crybaby will be voted out at all.

The world is a complicated place, and it looks more interesting (frightening) all the time. I’m tired of people trying to make me feel stupid and bad because a plastic shopping bag doesn’t break and drop all my food on the ground. How come I can’t shop at the co-op for oatmeal that isn’t full of roundup, without getting the side eye like I came to church wearing a yarmulke? I’m sorry I like steak and beer, as well as kombucha and insoluble fiber.

Maybe the bad guy wrestler will make me rich too somehow, and prevent the utter dissolution of the white race (my team).
Maybe it’s time I just let go of trying to care about people who just aren’t like me, and instead focus on my own family.

I’ve talked to too many people, young and old, without interjecting my own opinion for at least five loving minutes to have faith in the system right now, and I’ve read a lot of yours. I’m so very, very sorry (tired) that this post is (mostly) in earnest.
The internet really did make us all stupid.

Apologies, I’m going back to my hiatus for at least another month.
I also need to buy a new av.
Not like anybody noticed or cared.
I’ll be reading even if not posting, so, thank you if you took the time to read my spectacularly bad post.

Timeless Appeal posted:

WampaLord posted:

I don't know how "back" I am, but I appreciate it.

Anyway, Bernie didn't do gangbusters but he did fine enough, obviously the media narrative takeaway is Biden failing due to Kamala knifing him hard, which I think works out great for Bernie if Kamala ends up stealing a good chunk of Biden's support.

It's still June of 2019 and we have several more months and debates to go. Strap in, folks.

Craptacular! posted:

I’m just tired of “well you know (name) will not keep to their promises” as if that’s some kind of tangible negative. You’re predicting the future, and it’s deliberately hard to argue with someone who feels they can prognosticate eventual timelines.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

lol what exactly do you think is wrong about this factually true statement other than the bullshit you stuck in front that no one is arguing

Marxalot posted:

You have some decent points about how just screaming "it's capital" can be entirely too reductive at times, but in this particular context the capitalists themselves are chained together by the stock market. Also taxation.

Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:

https://mobile.twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1147301694952411136

Gripweed posted:

It never ends!

https://twitter.com/IsaacDovere/status/1148054937689083904

Marxalot posted:

us I guess

https://twitter.com/michaelschwab13/status/1148770279155523584



this city is ruined forever now

sitchensis posted:

bUt wHaT aBoUt tHe sOciAL cReDiT sCoReS iN cHiNa??

Majorian posted:

I'm not seeing where autonomy of the individual for everyone is guaranteed under liberalism; I'm also not seeing how it isn't guaranteed under socialism.

Tibalt posted:

Naw, access to credit is necessary to thrive in our economy, and eliminating the credit score just means you're obfuscating the process - something that has historically lead to poo poo outcomes for poor, rural, minority etc. Borrowers

Ruminahui posted:

Something like 12 American families can still be considered true “farmers” though, the rest of the farming is done by massive agricultural corporations.

wikipedia posted:

In 2012, the United States had 2,039,093 family farms (as defined by USDA), accounting for 97 percent of all farms and 89 percent of census farm area in the United States.
....

Trabisnikof posted:

You're completely wrong, most "family farms" are large or medium sized:

And this is the confusing thing about the statistics, if you look at size of farm, you'll see by number of farms they're mostly small farms, but if you look at acres managed they're by far mostly massively large farms.

There are 2 million farms in the US accounting for 900 million acres. There are only 85,127 farms larger than 2,000 acres, but they have 519 million acres. 4.2% of farms account for 57% of the acres.

quote:

Small family farms are defined as those with annual gross cash farm income (GCFI) of less than $350,000; in 2011, these accounted for 90 percent of all US farms. Because low net farm incomes tend to predominate on such farms, most farm families on small family farms are extremely dependent on off-farm income. Small family farms in which the principal operator was mostly employed off-farm accounted for 42 percent of all farms and 15 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income was $788. Retirement family farms were small farms accounting for 16 percent of all farms and 7 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income was $5,002.

The other small family farm categories are those in which farming occupies at least 50 percent of the principal operator’s working time. These are:

Low-sales small family farms (with GCFI less than $150,000); 26 percent of all US farms, 18 percent of total US farm area, median net farm income $3,579.

Moderate-sales small family farms (with GCFI of $150,000 to $349,999); 5.44 percent of all US farms, 13 percent of total US farm area, median net farm income $67,986.

Mid-size family farms (GCFI of $350,000 to $999,999); 6 percent of all US farms, 22 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income $154,538.

Large family farms (GCFI $1,000,000 to $4,999,999); 2 percent of all US farms, 14 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income $476,234.

Very large family farms (GCFI over $5,000,000); <1 percent of all US farms, 2 percent of total US farm area; median net farm income $1,910,454.[20]

Trabisnikof posted:

This is a definitions issue of sorts. USDA ERS uses economic activity to determine size, while I was pulling from USDA Census of Agriculture by acreage.

So under the ERS definition there are 27,828 "Low-sales small family farms" that are over 2,000+ acres because they gross less than $100,00 a year. That accounts for at least 6% of all ag land in the US and at least 34% of all "low-sales small family farm" land.

Which is a vastly different kind of farm than the less than 50 acre farm that the majority of "low-sales small family farm" owns.

Majorian posted:

I would strongly recommend that you read some Russian (and Chinese and Cuban and Vietnamese and...) history and take the time to contextualize where these Communist states' concentration of power arose from. Because the Russians didn't need Marx to prefer autocratic, sometimes tyrannical rulers.

e to be slightly less dickish, but come on dude

Majorian posted:

My dude, I'm (partially) ethnically Russian. A good chunk of my family quite literally died in the Gulag. So you can leave out the faux-outrage, please. What I am saying has nothing to do with culture or genes, and everything to do with historical development. China, Vietnam, and Cuba experienced horrific socioeconomic setbacks at around the time the West was industrializing because of, you guessed it, good ol' imperialism. Russia, of course, had its own fun, peculiar issues.


Marx-Leninism came into being because Lenin wanted Russia to leap from being a semi-feudal, semi-industrialized society, into an industrialized one that was ready to become a post-capitalist one in quick succession. Which is what I have been describing in this conversation.

Majorian posted:

There's a reason Peter the Great and Stalin are always in the top three most beloved Russians, whenever one news source or another runs one of those silly surveys.

Marxalot posted:

Yeah but if you say things like "and after those things we decided to wage decades of economic warfare against the communist states of the world and then publically wondered why they didn't turn out great" then some disingenuous lib or Extreme History Understander is going to say you're a Stalinist.

Marxalot posted:

https://twitter.com/bad_takes/status/1149553144793202688

if only there was some common thread among these random shitlib bernie detractors in the media





e: here's the article I guess https://twitter.com/juliaioffe/status/1149490172930564098

Willie Tomg posted:

This is a bizarre, asserted, just-so conception of socialism as distinct from democracy that does not actually exist. Weimar Germany is an interesting time period though, refresh my memory: who was it made the government with the Nazis in order to shut the left out of power in the Reichstag? I would otherwise generally reiterate Ytlaya's point and I do wonder how often a materialistic conception of political economy needs to be validated again and again and again before a broad acceptance takes hold that things keep happening in observable, repeated, and predictable patterns for fairly reasons.

Ardennes posted:

The obvious issue is that the February Revolution had already happened, and the reason why the workers and soldiers threw their lot with the Bolsheviks was because of the general failures of both Lvov and Kerensky to both affect any real change or stop the war. Also, the right SRs actually who got a majority really couldn't capitalize on their support in the countryside in a large part because they were a largely decentralized one issue party that (clearly) wasn't prepared to actually run the country (there is a reason why they got lost in the mix later). It wasn't because of "Russian culture" but ultimately what choices were available, and the rise of the Bolsheviks was the result of the general failures of their opposition to affect any real course of action.

Ardennes posted:

Eh, no, it was the result of the inability of Russia or the Soviet Union to compete on the same level as other economies, moreover, the Great Depression actually did tremendously affect the Soviet Union. It is a complete myth that it didn't. Also, Comecon was also more complicated than just "limiting the Western influence."

Ardennes posted:

Wasn't the "collaboration" a couple of isolation incidences involving strikes? Moreover, the SDP refused to work with the KPD in either case, but the Center Party was happy to work directly with the NSDAP.

Ardennes posted:

No Russians are "not destinated to dictatorship" but "I am more Russian than thou thus I am right" is similarly tiresome.

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

I like Numbers Fuckstien as a pejorative for someone that sees the immense task at hand, and wants to make small adjustments to the failing system as it crashes in around them.

using it for someone that went to college and is educated is stupid., but there does seem to be a bit of a venn diagram between numbers fuckstiens and the "college elite"

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

why

Heck Yes! Loam! posted:

I'd be fine with changing it to Numbers Fuckstain to avoid any possible connotations, but I think you are stretching.

Unoriginal Name posted:

Are people saying college is bad or that a system that only recognizes those who have the spare time/money to get a degree is bad

mcmagic posted:

https://twitter.com/SymoneDSanders/status/1150858451343556609

This is a disgusting individual.

Oh Snapple! posted:

She was Bernie's press secretary.

Discendo Vox posted:

Kirkland and Ellis has over a thousand partners.

eke out posted:

this whole story was about Harris but, given this thread, I can understand how we're blaming Warren for it

shades of eternity posted:

RuanGacho posted:

Does anyone know why Democrats are having to pay democrats for voter data or is rent seeking just the norm--- I know what the answer is gently caress these idiots

Gripweed posted:

If this man becomes president he will kill us all

Trabisnikof posted:

Yang wants to give powerpoints. Buttigieg wants to hire lots of expensive consultants.

Main Paineframe posted:

He also proposed making every single law expire automatically after ten years.

Chilichimp posted:

She doesn't need to be VP to realign the chakras of the zeitgeist.

In fact, some would say it puts her at a disadvantage.

Bernie should create a new cabinet position to head the new Department of Crystals.

Halloween Jack posted:

The US military is the leading global consumer of oil and producer of greenhouse gases

Halloween Jack posted:

I was only pointing out that American liberals love the national security state and don't give a poo poo about the imperial murder machine. But hey, feel free to miss the point and go on a weird tear. Solkanar seems like a nice person and I don't want them to have to go it alone.

twice burned ice posted:

gently caress this clown

https://twitter.com/nytpolitics/status/1152254796398759936

Condiv posted:

https://twitter.com/AndrewYang/status/1152372357253730304