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Politics: Biden, Brexit and Beyond
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Sure, but if the GOP implodes, how will the Democrats scare people into voting for them? In any other Western nation, the Democratic Party would be the Conservative one.
The Dem Party is beginning to implode as well, as the newer members go after the old geezers:
Ocasio-Cortez calls out Pelosi and Schumer
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But Ocasio-Cortez also offered criticism of progressives, noting that “the left isn’t really making a plan” ahead of Pelosi’s potential retirement, and warning that “there are folks more conservative than even” Pelosi and Schumer who are “willing to kind of fill that void” in leadership.
“The hesitancy that I have is that I want to make sure that if we’re pointing people in a direction, that we have a plan. And my concern — and this I acknowledge as a failing, as something that we need to sort out — is that there isn’t a plan,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “How do we fill that vacuum? Because if you create that vacuum, there are so many nefarious forces at play to fill that vacuum with something even worse.”
Well, I am glad AOC is challenging particularly Pelosi, and also that she’s thinking ahead strategically. The Dems really need a makeover, and she seems to be the only one (apart from Bernie) pushing for it in a way that people notice.
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All parties need to get their shit together, honestly.
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The Dems really need a makeover, and she seems to be the only one (apart from Bernie) pushing for it in a way that people notice.
AOC is the public voice, but she is speaking for quite a few progressives within her party. Which is encouraging.
There was also another news-piece yesterday noting that she has reached out to Republican voters, urging them to call or write to their Congressmen and Senators asking how they will vote on the stimulus package. She’s reaching across the aisle (so to speak) to remind them that the pandemic stimulus plan is intended to benefit ALL Americans who need it, while subtly noting that the GOP is being slow to approve it. Smart move on her part, I think, both as a politician and as someone who wants to help her constituents (even if they didn’t vote for her).
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Tillis Pushes Prison Time for Online Streamers After Pre-Election Hollywood Cash Blitz
https://prospect.org/power/senator-thom-tillis-pushes-prison-time-for-online-streamers/
Thom Tillis: another thing I don’t miss about North Carolina.
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Electoral College: Reform it, replace it or keep it?
https://news.yahoo.com/electoral-college-reform-it-replace-it-or-keep-it-213243713.html
Never thought about reform, tbh. How would one reform the electoral college?
Change the college votes to match population numbers, and allocate them proportionally would be a start.
I mean, if you did that the Republicans wouldn’t win the White House again, but I see that as a them problem.
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Dammit…we had 12,000 new cases yesterday. This lockdown better have some effect soon.
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I don’t think we’ll see any real downward trend in cases again until spring, whatever lockdown system we use.
Of course we will – IF we actually locked down! Like I said, during the recent 3-week lockdown, new cases fell every day, until they were down to 12,000 per day (give or take.) What makes you think they wouldn’t have continued to fall had we actually stayed in lockdown for another month?
Countries like New Zealand have been successful because they took drastic measures early on. The UK (and other nations, to be fair) continue with these pathetic half-measures, and we continue to have these massive surges once everyone comes out of the mini-lockdowns.
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ever thought about reform, tbh. How would one reform the electoral college?
The very simplest way would be to just use the popular vote, more Americans like that candidate so they win.
If people really want to retain the state representative thing then it’s as Lorcan says, they are already based roughly on population so you allocate a it proportionately. For example if a state has 10 electoral votes and the split is 60/40 then you give 6 to one party candidate and 4 to the other. Again it’s more representative of how people actually vote so if you are a Democrat in Wyoming or a Republican in Maryland you can feel your vote was actually worth casting.
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Proportional representation also gives smaller parties more opportunity to get a say in matters. I think that is a positive. The system in the US (and also the UK to an extent) leads to the same flawed parties staying in power.
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I don’t like Joe Biden but it’s hard not to like the fact that there’s no strongman bullshit in this interview. Just regular bullshit. God, I’ve missed regular bullshit.
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50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says – CBS News
<span style=”color: #101010; font-family: ‘Publico Text’, serif; font-size: 21.12px;”>But the analysis discovered one major change: The incomes of the rich grew much faster in countries where tax rates were lowered. Instead of trickling down to the middle class, tax cuts for the rich may not accomplish much more than help the rich keep more of their riches and exacerbate income inequality, the research indicates.</span>
The tougher social and economic question concerns how much income inequality really matters. For example, also in the article, the study found “Per capita gross domestic product and unemployment rates were nearly identical after five years in countries that slashed taxes on the rich and in those that didn’t.”
So, it wasn’t really a major difference that the rich got richer, and it really doesn’t matter to any individual how much wealth any other individual has unless the wealth gap is actively affecting an individual’s income – that would take more analysis.
My suspicion would be that the rise in wealth/income inequality actually represents a kind of bubble in our economy especially when it results from tax cuts. Essentially, the richer the rich get, then actually the value of our money grows much poorer in general.
Also, it represents a kind of imbalance in the system. Imagine a Football game where one team or group of players are better than their opponents. As long as the rules are fair, then it doesn’t matter that much that the better team wins most of the matches.
However, if the rules are changed to favor the better players for no apparent reason. For example, if a higher ranked team scores a goal, then they get two points on the scoreboard while the lower ranked team only gets one. Or if a player with a higher batting average is allowed to “write off” 30% of their strike outs at the end of the season, things like that would be seen as apparently unfair to any sports fan.
Nevertheless, those kinds of rules in our tax code are accepted as normal because the complication of the code and obscurity of our economic and financial systems keep people from seeing how rigged the system is toward those who benefit most from it.
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Sorry, I misunderstood and thought you were talking about in normal times rather than this year.
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Understood, yeah it absolutely is proven that flu is affected by climate. Hence it peaks in northern Europe every winter but spreads evenly across the year in the tropics.
Covid is still a lot of unknowns and if the vaccine is as effective as everyone hopes we may never get an answer to this. If it follows the trend of flu it should ease up in spring in the EU and north America, as David suggests, but also by then they’ll have vaccinated several million people per country.
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50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says – CBS News
And here are some examples of where the rich are spending their non-trickle-down fortunes:
I mean, who doesn’t need a $1.8M LeBron James rookie basketball card?! Right?!
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50 years of tax cuts for the rich failed to trickle down, economics study says
Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. In other news, water is wet.
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And here are some examples of where the rich are spending their non-trickle-down fortunes: Record auction sales in 2020 I mean, who doesn’t need a $1.8M LeBron James rookie basketball card?! Right?!
Collectibles and the high end art market are interesting in several instances.
Todd McFarlane famously spent something like a million dollars on home run baseballs (from batters who were later caught up in the steroid scandals). However, that was a business decision. He wanted to get into producing sports collectibles and that was a calculated purchase to get him the attention of the League leadership and customers in that market.
Art is famously rigged to maintain the value of artists like Van Gogh, Warhol and the contemporary conceptual artists like Jeffrey Koons. A lot of this is due to tax write-offs where donations to museums could be written off at the value of the pieces donated. So, art becomes a place where rich people can bank their money, and the art market is rigged so that the value of the artists remains at a high level. If you spent $100 million for a Van Gogh at auction, then the next time a Van Gogh painting goes on the block, it better go for at least that much or your investment loses value. So there are conglomerations of galleries that keep pieces off the market or ensure that they don’t sell for less than the collector’s expectations.
The more interesting element of this is the basic idea that “billionaires should not exist.” This often is a controversial statement that makes a lot of people angry or expresses the anger of even more people, but it is misinterpreted to mean that we should “kill the rich.”
Instead, though, it essentially means that billions of dollars in the control of one person can not be sustained in a democratic country. Anyone with that much economic power is essentially above the law and has more sway over the country than the collective power of any political representation. If you owe the bank a million dollars, the bank owns you, but if you owe the bank a billion dollars, then you own the bank.
Billions of dollars represents an incredible amount of economic power and that translates to real political and social power equivalent to a tyranny – or in modern terms – an oligarchy, when the new aristocracy feels that they are only obligated to maintain their personal wealth.
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ever thought about reform, tbh. How would one reform the electoral college?
The very simplest way would be to just use the popular vote, more Americans like that candidate so they win.
If people really want to retain the state representative thing then it’s as Lorcan says, they are already based roughly on population so you allocate a it proportionately. For example if a state has 10 electoral votes and the split is 60/40 then you give 6 to one party candidate and 4 to the other. Again it’s more representative of how people actually vote so if you are a Democrat in Wyoming or a Republican in Maryland you can feel your vote was actually worth casting.
that’s how it used to work. Then some states realised it was in their interest to dole out their EC in a block to help their native Presidental candidates, so switched to winner takes all and most of the others followed suit.
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A UBI or a system where basic needs like food, housing, etc are free would be the best solution to make sure people don’t have to wage slave for billionaires, but a good social security net could be adequate too.
There’s going to have to be a great deal of scrutiny applied to any UBI proposal, as a good few of its backers wish to use it to remove the social security net completely.
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Of course we will – IF we actually locked down! Like I said, during the recent 3-week lockdown, new cases fell every day, until they were down to 12,000 per day (give or take.) What makes you think they wouldn’t have continued to fall had we actually stayed in lockdown for another month?
Countries like New Zealand have been successful because they took drastic measures early on. The UK (and other nations, to be fair) continue with these pathetic half-measures, and we continue to have these massive surges once everyone comes out of the mini-lockdowns.
Yeah, the scientific advisors had made it pretty clear early on that the sooner we go into a proper full lockdown, the better the results would be and the less long we have to do it, but the politicians kind of tried to ignore reality and hope for the best. This was the counties’ ministers decision, mind you, Merkel would’ve done better (and finally got the county ministers and everybody to wake up with a very emotional appeal).
We will see how this full lockdown until 10th January goes. Theoretically, it could be enough, but with Christmas, we’re actually just hoping things won’t get even worse.
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Looks like the UK is finally realising today how fucked it is if it doesn’t have decent transport and trade links with continental Europe. Shame it’s taken a pandemic and a political crisis for it to come to this point.
The UK might be realising it, but I don’t expect that realisation to reach our government any time soon.
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I don’t expect that realisation to reach our government any time soon.
I’ve heard that Chris Grayling has been briefed on the fact that Dover is a port. So there’s some hope.
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One problem: Grayling still thinks a port delivers pizza.
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Money definitely buys influence in politics but I think this is more true in some countries than in others. Ideally we need a government that can’t be bought off, like in Plato’s Republic. But that ideal is very far off I admit. A UBI or a system where basic needs like food, housing, etc are free would be the best solution to make sure people don’t have to wage slave for billionaires, but a good social security net could be adequate too.
However, what effect would that have on the actual candidates put forward for election? The influence of money isn’t primarily on people in power – that’s a down-the-line consideration – but on the slate of candidates who are able to afford the millions needed in advertising, infrastructure and research necessary to run even an unsuccessful campaign.
Even secondarily, rather than influencing policy directly, any candidate in office needs to attract money into their nations, states or cities or federal coffers so they have to attract business and, more importantly, investment. Who buys bonds issued by national and local governments? The same people funding campaigns. Who builds factories or puts their headquarters in a certain country, city or state? The same people funding campaigns.
And if you look at a lot of the current oligarchs around the world, many, if not most, of them made their money by extracting it from the economy and often through favorable governmental support and subsidization. They aren’t the Henry Fords and Rockefellers of the past, but the Bloombergs and Buffets. Often, they’ll act like they are just working Joes who got lucky and struck it rich, but that is just an act. They are very wary and interested in influencing policy, politics and the people who hold office or regulate their sources of wealth.
This is an international system so I don’t really see how any single nation can insulate itself from their influence without facing sudden consequences from the international organizations in place to protect the wealthy.
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So supposedly the finalised Brexit trade deal is being announced tonight.
The timing makes me think this was the plan all along – delay the final deal until the point where it has to be forced through at speed, no questions asked, with the alternative being a no-deal exit.
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As usual it’s hard to tell because their emotional manipulation tactics are always mixed in with incompetence.
It’s similar with the Trump thing and his populist approach, they have some clever advisers with insight into which buttons to press but at the same time they employ all their friends in government rather than qualified people, who then cock things up.
Whichever it is I think it sadly will probably work, BJ will be hailed as pulling it off despite the fact that what will be delivered is nothing at all like what they promised all along. The detail always remains secondary to the narrative.
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The problem is with one party really being willing to drive over the cliff, to the degree that they’re revving the engine, is the other, grown-up rational adults who have an interest in them not driving over has limited latitude.
Even so, the idea that a single nation of 70m people gets to boss around a block of 27 nations and 650m, which is what it’ll be spun as by macho politicians and media, is utter fiction.
Will believe it when I see it.
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It’s similar with the Trump thing and his populist approach, they have some clever advisers with insight into which buttons to press but at the same time they employ all their friends in government rather than qualified people, who then cock things up.
Still, Trump really wasn’t all that much different than Clinton or Bush or even Biden as far as the approach they took toward politics. I remember this scene in VICE where Cheney has a think tank working on tailoring their proposals for best effect (such as saying “Climate Change” instead of “Global Warming”) as if that was invented by him. However, what do people think Clinton and his team were doing?
People probably compared Trump most to Nixon, but really the only comparison is that they both had a very contentious relationship with a mostly liberal media. Really, the comparisons between Trump and Clinton are the most striking not only in their personal history, but also in their political approach AND Trump actually was a pretty stunningly successful politician against an incredible amount of intense opposition just like Clinton was. Honestly, I think Trump is probably has a little stronger personal morality than Clinton, but that is a very low bar. It’s like saying Charles Manson personally is a little better than Edmund Kemper.
With the major factions of political persuasion, neither party has much interest in really delivering on political promises since they can pretty much tell their constituents “what are you gonna do? Vote for the other guy?”
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It’s like saying Charles Manson personally is a little better than Edmund Kemper.
HAH!
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Still, Trump really wasn’t all that much different than Clinton or Bush or even Biden as far as the approach they took toward politics.
I think they are different, you can argue quite well that neither is morally better but the tactics of ‘spin’ seen in those previous leaders is manipulating a narrative to make what you’re doing appear better. Cheney also shovelled government money to himself and close friends but all the while was trying to disguise it.
The current populist playbook doesn’t really try to hide anything. Trump and Johnson straight up appoint friends and family – give a senior job to your daughter and her husband and elevate your brother to the House of Lords, host major events at your own resort and charge for it. Their tactic is distraction, a mixture of Surkov’s spread of confusion and Crosby’s ‘dead cat’ theory. Where you fill the news cycle with so much shit to talk about nobody can focus on anything.
I felt a big relief when Trump lost, even though nothing he did (outside the climate issue) actually affects me personally purely because the constant noise of it all is mentally exhausting.
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So, headlines are deal is to be announced on Brexit. I’m fairly certain the EU would have preferred it be done earlier and it’s Johnson and his advisers going for the political theatrics of it being agreed on Xmas Eve.
A deal beats no deal, maybe the earlier border closure motivated some growing up on the UK side, but whatever the reason, fine, get it in place. There’ll be huffing and puffing from the lunatic Brexiteers but it’ll get whipped through, Starmer clearly wants to link the deal to Johnson, then roast him on it.
I expect the lunatic Brexiteers to pronounce the deal is awful, that they absolutely can have the gold at the end of the rainbow but more widely? I think it’ll be: You got your Brexit, shut up and eat it. Meanwhile, just as over 40 years ago, the entry to the EEC referendum result was not accepted, so too will work start, if it hasn’t already, on re-admittance to the EU. Likely take a while though.
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Meanwhile, just as over 40 years, the entry to the EEC referendum result was not accepted, so too will work start, if it hasn’t already, on re-admittance to the EU. Likely take a while though.
I think it will take a generation but will happen in our lifetime.
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I think it’ll take less time than getting out did.
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I mean you no harm, but I would laugh maniacally if you wanted back in but weren’t allowed due to not meeting the requirements.
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If I was on the EU side I probably wouldn’t be rushing to welcome the UK back.
“Remember those guys who turned up late to our party, then said it was shit while complaining that they couldn’t be in charge of the music, then got drunk, shat on the floor and tried to steal all the booze and burn the house down on the way out? They want in.”
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I think that is a difference in perspective. When Clinton was president there wasn’t such diffusion of media so when his administration did something scummy, it didn’t get much play except in the more conservative outlets that didn’t have a national voice.
We are probably looking at different things. I’m not really looking at the comparative morality of various characters but rather the tactics to achieve the same goal of taking the eyes off the things they’ve done wrong.
Let’s say the Hunter Biden stuff is very corrupt and Joe is knee deep in it enriching himself I think he’ll still play it the old spin doctor root of clever wording and presentation to dampen it down, despite the same media diffusion. Not the Trump tactic of throwing so much shit around every 5 minutes nobody can keep up.
Ultimately it’s a fair point whether that makes a huge difference or not but it what I was addressing when taking about their ‘approach to politics’.
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Not the Trump tactic of throwing so much shit around every 5 minutes nobody can keep up.
I absolutely think you’re giving Trump far, FAR too much credit applying words like tactic to whatever the hell he’s doing.
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“Remember those guys who turned up late to our party, then said it was shit while complaining that they couldn’t be in charge of the music, then got drunk, shat on the floor and tried to steal all the booze and burn the house down on the way out? They want in.”
Honestly I’d totally let those guys back in. The party was so much better whan all that was happening!
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I absolutely think you’re giving Trump far, FAR too much credit applying words like tactic to whatever the hell he’s doing.
I’m not really giving it to him. It’s the people around him. Everything around his campaign was basically trademark Surkov techniques. Trump’s natural tendencies to rant fitted into that.
That he didn’t succeed the second time is probably a fair chunk down to him firing a lot of the guys, the Steve Bannon’s of this world, that got him there. Like I said the whole populist thing works on a strange combination of clever analytics and reading of an electorate, but also a lot of incompetence in appointments. Admittedly it can be hard often to see which is which.
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That makes more sense. There is or was some competence in the rhetoric department surrounding Trump but I’m adamantly sure my ex’s kids (seven and eight years old) are more competent than Trump in Every. Single. Thing. Ever.
Everything.
Fuck, my neighbors dog is his better in most respects.
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We are probably looking at different things. I’m not really looking at the comparative morality of various characters but rather the tactics to achieve the same goal of taking the eyes off the things they’ve done wrong. Let’s say the Hunter Biden stuff is very corrupt and Joe is knee deep in it enriching himself I think he’ll still play it the old spin doctor root of clever wording and presentation to dampen it down, despite the same media diffusion. Not the Trump tactic of throwing so much shit around every 5 minutes nobody can keep up. Ultimately it’s a fair point whether that makes a huge difference or not but it what I was addressing when taking about their ‘approach to politics’.
It seems different, but from my perspective the main difference is the media environment. I think Clinton used the exact same approach as Trump in a much different world where voters received their information in different ways on different time lines. It had changed from Reagan’s era, but it was far from what we have today.
Think about where we get our impressions of Trump and where we got out impressions of Clinton. It wasn’t like Clinton tried to hide his lies and failures to keep promises or that he didn’t use distraction (like bombing different places) or smear campaigns on his opponents (and accusers) to get the attention away from some corrupt activity he was involved in. All these things were being reported and revealed at the time he was in office and doing them, but his administration could manipulate the media with the willing ignorance of his supporters.
However, today, the environment is completely changed and no politician is going to be able to have the ability to influence media in the same global way as 20th century presidents. Trump’s media mastery – which is really the only thing he’s mastered – is that he understands the same thing that Clinton did BUT in a much harsher public space. He only needs to care about the news that his voters pay attention to and if he creates a contentious relationship with legitimate news sources, it will only benefit him today rather than hurt like it did Nixon, because your supporters will attribute that to liberal bias. It worked, too. Trump got more votes than Obama in this past election, and Clinton is still seen as a successful president and, surprisingly, mostly good person. Like a lot of people, I supported Clinton when he was president and the 90’s were a good time for me — looking back on it though, it is a little embarrassing to see what was going on not only from a scummy point of view but politically. Many of the problems we have with health care, homelessness, welfare protections and even the financial crisis were set up by that administration.
If the conservative press had as much national and international reach then as it does today, Clinton would have been just as contentious with them as Trump is with CNN, MSNBC or the New York Times. Obviously, Clinton did have a very antagonistic relationship with the press during the impeachment scandal where he behaved pretty much the same way Trump did when faced with the same pressure.
Clinton, unlike Trump, probably could rely on many of the reporters of his day being people who also voted for him as well. Their personal inclinations would incline them to be far less critical even when reporting on what he did and far more laudatory for whatever he accomplished – especially after he left office. However, what this allowed him to do was make bold promises to progressives and civil rights groups that he knew he would never be able to fulfill and then when he backed off on those promises when in office, he could say “well, would you have rather Bush or Dole had won?”
The relevant point here is that I’m sure Biden will take exactly the same approach Trump and Clinton have taken, and I think people really underestimate his ability at political diversion and potential for underhanded behavior. Honestly, though, it is hard to blame any of them for it. The strategy works because the voters either fall for it (if we’re being generous) or want it to work that way (if we’re being honest).
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I cannot take seriously any post that implies that Trump is NOT the worst president in my lifetime (which dates back to the Eisenhower administration). As crooked as Nixon was, as abusive and warmongering as Reagan was, as lecherous as Clinton was, and as clueless and puppetlike as George W was, Trump beats them all. Through all the other administrations, America was looked to as a leader and a protector and a country ready to do the right thing in a world crisis. Trump has stripped our country of that status, by pulling out of trade agreements, of climate change agreements, of longterm military alliances, and even of international health organizations in the middle of the worst health crisis in 100 years.
Fuck Trump. Fuck his entire corrupt, greedy, self-serving family and circle of shitbag cronies.
Merry Christmas.
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Fuck Trump. Fuck his entire corrupt, greedy, self-serving family and circle of shitbag cronies.
Also, fuck the Republican Party for being complicit little bitches and not keeping him in check. They have neither honor or shame. They are horrible people and don’t give a fuck about anyone except their rich white male
friendsdonors.FUCK. THEM. ALL.
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Yeah, I’m with Todd and njerry. I think Trump has done more damage to the very institutions that hold America together. In large part because the GOP allowed it. His current pardon spree shows just how self serving and corrupt Trump is. Whether he’s more or less moral than Clinton doesn’t really factor in for me. Although I’ll say Trump doesn’t even have an illusion of shame. Trump is a president that has propped up white supremacists and actively supported conspiracy theories almost daily at this point. All the while he’s lining his own pockets. He can’t be gone soon enough.
I only wish McConnell was going with him.
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Yeah, I’m with Todd and njerry. I think Trump has done more damage to the very institutions that hold America together. In large part because the GOP allowed it. His current pardon spree shows just how self serving and corrupt Trump is. Whether he’s more or less moral than Clinton doesn’t really factor in for me. Although I’ll say Trump doesn’t even have an illusion of shame. Trump is a president that has propped up white supremacists and actively supported conspiracy theories almost daily at this point. All the while he’s lining his own pockets. He can’t be gone soon enough.
True – I’m not gonna defend Trump. However, I disagree that he is somehow that much worse than the presidents that have come before. These conspiracy theories began under Clinton and GW Bush. The militia movement was a direct result of Clinton’s domestic policies (Ruby Ridge and the Koresh bombing). Black Lives Matter started under Obama. Obama deported far more people in his first term than Trump did (though Trump promised he would), and Obama did nothing to reverse the expansion of police powers that GW Bush began in response to 9-11. If anything, his administration accelerating militarization of police forces, and his use of drone strikes as well as treatment of whistleblowers was despicable and indefensible, really. Practices that Trump has continued.
The point I think is that we have a correct view of the failures of Trump as president because we are reading reliable material about him primarily because we already have a negative viewpoint of him. However, I don’t think people who have a positive view of Trump would agree with any of this and, obviously, many think he has been one of the best presidents of their lifetimes. I keep bringing up the fact that 74 million people voted for him because I think that most of those voters actually believed in him. Whereas, I think more of Biden’s voters were voting against Trump than for Biden.
However, because I had a positive view of Clinton and have a positive view of Obama, I’m far more inclined to read supportive material for their administrations. Then, when I look honestly at contrary opinions or research their domestic and foreign actions as president, I can admit that they had many failures and that many of the problems the country faced under Trump were left behind by previous administrations (though mostly GW Bush than either Clinton or Obama). From my perspective, Bush is absolutely the worst president we’ve had – and we had 8 years of him – and the world he left behind contained all the problems we face today. Even if some of them were inherited from Reagan, his father, and Clinton, he (and Cheney) actively made them far worse.
So, as Biden takes power, I’m not going to fall for the idea that he can’t be worse than Trump.
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Brexit is done, the official UK statement is whopper after whopper of total bollocks, there’ll be loads of juvenile, nationalist bullshit for the rest of the year but should be less disruption 1 Jan now
I think you’re being naively optimistic. This deal will make no change to the amount of disruption on January 1st.
Nobody will know what to do on 1st January. The deal doesn’t say, “Continue as before”. Everything is still going to change, despite (and because of) this deal, and nobody knows how. The agreement is 2000 pages of legal text which nobody has had time to read. Once it’s been read it has to be converted into guidance for businesses, who then have to understand and implement the changes the agreement mandates. All in the next seven days. Actually, four business days.
The first week of January will be a shitstorm. And I’m being naively optimistic by just saying the first week of January.
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These conspiracy theories began under Clinton and GW Bush.
Which conspiracies are you referring to? Pizzagate was started by Alt-Right conservative “journalists” in 2016
The militia movement was a direct result of Clinton’s domestic policies (Ruby Ridge and the Koresh bombing).
Ruby Ridge occurred in 1992; Clinton was inaugurated in 1993. The Waco siege began in February 1993, by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents who had begun investigating David Koresh and his Branch Davidians sect in early 1992, before Clinton was even chosen as the Democratic nominee. Not sure Clinton even had a “domestic policy” in place at that point. And it should be noted that Clinton never encouraged militias or white supremacists, unlike Trump who famously stated “there are good people on both sides” and refused to denounce (when given the opportunity) the racist Proud Boys group.
Black Lives Matter started under Obama.
Are you suggesting that the BLM movement is a bad thing? Either way, Obama did not start the movement; it began as three separate movements by three women of color who eventually decided to pool their efforts and resources into one national movement.
I keep bringing up the fact that 74 million people voted for him because I think that most of those voters actually believed in him. Whereas, I think more of Biden’s voters were voting against Trump than for Biden.
It could also be that most of those 74 million believed the blatant falsehoods that were fed to them by Trump’s re-election propaganda team, or by biased Alt-Right networks like OAN and NewsMax, or by Trump himself on the campaign trail. It also says something, doesn’t it, that 80 million voters cast their ballot to ensure that Trump would not get four more years to further destroy this country?
Please don’t take this as a personal attack on you, @johnnyjoseph. It’s just so clear to me that Trump is the worst president this country has had since the days of Andrew Johnson, and it frustrates me when anyone tries to defend him with “whattabouts” regarding other administrations. If your only defense of Trump is to point out the faults of past presidents, it suggests that you cannot think of a single GOOD thing Trump has done in four years of leadership.
Happy Holidays.
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think of a single GOOD thing Trump has done in four years of leadership
I can think of one even though it’s kind of speculation to view it as a good thing in the long run. Space Force.
The militarisation of space is a bad thing!
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think of a single GOOD thing Trump has done in four years of leadership
I can think of one even though it’s kind of speculation to view it as a good thing in the long run. Space Force.
The militarisation of space is a bad thing!
Well, yes. Yes it is. I was conforming to watching the world through a less idealized lens.
This thread is not ready for my actual political beliefs.
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I don’t know, it all feels like a very long-winded way of saying “they’re all as bad as each other,” which you hear from jaded voters a lot. But I’m not sure that holds up to scrutiny.
Yes, you can say that no president has a spotless record, and many presidents have done things that history has judged poorly (as well as actions that were seen poorly at the time). And yes, a lot of current problems have their roots in political missteps of the past. Even on that basis though, it feels too pat and simplistic to say that all presidents end up with an equally bad record when you tally their pluses and minuses. Either it’s a huge coincidence that they all end up being equally poor or you just haven’t bothered to really try and make the calculation and compare them.
But then, after all that, when you take in all the very Trump-specific elements on top of those “normal” presidential behaviours – the overt sexism and racism, the misinformation about the electoral system itself, the lies on a scale never before seen, the level of dysfunction of his administration – it seems highly unlikely that you’d tally up all of that and find him to be no better and no worse, no more or less harmful, no more or less preferable than any other president.
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It’ll be interesting to see if Trump ever gets that reinvisioning like past presidents have. What I would say is going against him is that he’s a complete and utter asshole. People like Clinton and GWB at least have some level of charm. GWB, despite his many flaws, always seems like a nice guy. Terrible president, but not a dick. Even Reagan had some level of charm (even if, by all accounts, he was awful). Trump is just a straight up piece of shit on the surface. I don’t really see Trump haters ever coming around to seeing him as anything other than the selfish, insecure wannabe dictator that he is. Of course, his followers will continue to worship him forever. And that’s always been a huge concern.
For what it’s worth outside of Trump, I’d probably rank Reagan as the worst president by a lot of metrics. Just with policies like Trickle down economics and the war on drugs. It’s hard to think of more damaging policies to this country than those two in the last 50 years. Reagan was basically the birth of the current conservative party that gave us GWB and eventually (thanks to FOX News and conservative talk radio) turned into the Trump Party. And the scary thing is that Reagan today would probably be viewed as some sort of leftist by the new conservative movement.
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Meanwhile the explosion on Nashville continues to sound like weird shit.
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The news reports I’ve read have mentioned a prominent AT&T building nearby, but only as a possibility.
Good point – I did see the reports on the AT&T outage. It would be in keeping with the logic of 2020 if this had something to do with some crazed grudge against AT&T. Possibly some Anti-5G conspiracy.
Anthony Quinn Warner: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know | Heavy.com
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It’ll be interesting to see if Trump ever gets that reinvisioning like past presidents have.
Probably not. The bonus for ex Presidents (or leaders in general really) is once they leave they move on to ‘nice work’. Whether they started damaging wars or whatever while in charge you’ll most likely see them afterwards at charitable functions for foundations etc. Sometimes they get put forwards in peace talk roles etc. Without the pressure of re-election they don’t have to speak on every subject any more or follow unpopular party lines.
Trump is clearly so self-absorbed though I can’t see much of that applying to him. You’d have to put pretty long odds on him doing volunteer work building housing for the poor like Carter. He’ll bleat on being generally nasty about people until he eventually dies is my prediction.
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The other prerequisite is that the someone who’s an even worse president comes along. Can’t see that happening for a while either. *crosses fingers*
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Last year, I was at a convention and GWB was the keynote speaker. He was funny and affable. I knew all the horrible shit he had done but he still came across as a nice guy.
I think this is the good thing about Trump, in a way: It was clear from the get-go that he was the worst kind of person. I lying, grandiose, self-centered, ignorant con-man; a bully and a show-off – somebody you wouldn’t want to spend one minute with.
At least you know where you stand, with him. I think this kind of is the point that Gar was making – he doesn’t even bother to hide his schemes and corruption and manipulations, he even boasts about them. Clinton and Bush and so on were worse because they were better at what they were doing (well, in Bush’s case, Cheney was).
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He’ll bleat on being generally nasty about people until he eventually dies is my prediction.
I literally can’t imagine any scenario where these things don’t happen.
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However, if anyone thinks I’m defending Trump, then I’m not being clear. The vaccine rollout, though, is a good example of what I’m really getting to. Even allowing that Trump may have somehow contributed to the fasted development of a vaccine in history for the worst pandemic this century, no one can ignore all the activity he’s done to make the pandemic worse. Downplaying the risks at the beginning, criticizing safety measures (lockdowns, closures and stay at home orders) and not following safety procedures (masks, cancelling large events), promoting crazy untested and even dangerous treatments and threatening to fire the people in charge of the pandemic response.
My feeling is that while almost everything he did was wrong it wouldn’t have been much better with anyone else. From my perspective looking at the responses in the UK compared to here and the high rates across most of Europe and the US a fair amount is cultural. People in modern democracies don’t like to be told what to do and there isn’t a huge appetite for enforcement.
A friend sent me a video with a conspiracy theory on why China’s big cities of Shanghai and Beijing didn’t have significant problems with Covid and that it was because they launched it as a weapon etc and asked me what I thought as I’m in the region. The simple answer I gave him is they shut Wuhan down like a prison camp until most of the problem was eradicated. Nobody went on protest marches because they know they’ll get locked up for a long time. Now, even when it’s opened up with almost no cases the compliance with wearing masks is pretty much universal.
When you looked at relying on people to self-isolate voluntarily for 14 days in UK the figures came back that 80% ignored it and didn’t comply. In Malaysia there’s a tower block less than a mile from me that had a cluster of cases and they have literally cut it off from society. It’s surrounded by barbed wire and military guard and nobody (bar food deliveries and medics) can go in or out until the spread stops. So if you have 100% compliance with isolating in one place (albeit through force) and 20% in another it’s no scientific mystery why the latter has much higher spread.
Even if you look at France which has a fairly moderate and level headed guy in Macron, compared to the US and UK leaders anyway, their deaths per head figure is not significantly better, Belgium and Spain are worse. With Obama in place instead of Trump it’s possible to imagine that the backlash from the conspiracy anti-mask types would have been bigger, spreading it around at rallies and protests.
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Yes probably a bit of all of that.
What’s interesting is Australia and New Zealand did to some extent (and get included as ‘western’ democracies even though geographically they are very far east). Not as strictly as somewhere like China but they have the borders are effectively closed to non-citizens and their families and mandatory quarantine in designated hotels is being done the same as in most of east Asia. A lot of restrictions on inter-state travel too.
Maybe their geographical remoteness meant it was an easier thing to accept economically and culturally. They aren’t used to popping overseas for short meeting and weekends away. Also seeing that it’s working helps, there’s a lot of things involved.
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So I guess the question that then comes out of that is why these western democracies didn’t impose stricter controls.
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The silly thing about that is that even when resisting stronger controls and allowing the pandemic to spread they didn’t manage to stop the economy from being fucked, so part of me thinks they might as well have just gone for it whole hog, rather than ending up with the worst of both worlds.
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