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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It'd be nice if Tillerson turned out to not be a total fuckup. From what I've heard (warning:hearsay alert, this is not really evidence of anything) he's probably less of a fuckup than some of the other candidates that were being floated around. Unfortunately, he is the embodiment of Big Oil (at least he acknowledges climate change as real)
"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." -Thomas EdisonCracked: Why Democrats Are Every School Yard Bully's Wet Dream
TLDR: The Democrats are letting Trump get away with murder out of a false sense that their moral high ground will eventually net them a big win in the future. Real life and politics don't work like that, much as we'd like them to (and as the 2016 election thoroughly proved). "They go low, we go high" just makes it easier for the low-goers to beat you to a pulp, and the only way to win now is through stubborn and total opposition to everything (essentially, turning the GOP's Tea Party strategy against them) with no compromises whatsoever. Ignore the hypocrisy of becoming like the '09-'16 GOP, and obstruct everything.
"Cynic, n. — A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be." - The Devil's Dictionary@Dingo: Tillerson is a realist in the vein of Henry Kissinger based on his own company's ruthless "foreign policy" when he was in charge of Exxon. Not a very nice guy to put things mildly, but rational and competent. I respect him and Mattis (and Elon Musk) for stepping into this swap turned quagmire despite the obvious signs of impending disaster, but if they stick to their guns it's only a matter of time before they end up being dismissed or sidelined by Trump's inner circle.
Of course, if things get to the point where deep state elements are actively plotting against Trump, those are the most likely defectors within the cabinet.
There's a very certain strategy to nonviolent resistance. Nonviolent doesn't mean "completely harmless", Gahndi's own movement did a great deal of economic harm to the British Empire through acts civil disobedience, and the same or similar factors were true of pretty much all other examples of nonviolent movements succeeding.
We should not be afraid to fight the GOP tooth and nail over things that are really and truly intolerable and/or extremely harmful, but if they offer a reasonable compromise once in a blue moon, don't block that for the sake of blocking it, because doing that just feeds into the climate of political nihilism which regards both parties as nothing more than two factions of cynical, power hungry elites engaged in a tug of war over who gets to loot the nation's coffers. It doesn't help that this sentiment is closer to being true than we'd like in an ideal world; neither party is squeaky clean, but there's a meaningful enough difference in degrees for the choice to be obvious, to me a least.
edited 4th Feb '17 12:14:46 PM by CaptainCapsase
It won't be difficult, but I would recommend lawmakers at least look at what's being proposed before voting no, and actually vote no instead of doing things like refuse to show up for a senate hearing. Beyond that though, there's very little democrats can do beyond talk. The confirmation hearings I think are a fairly good model for resisting Trump; when he puts forward people who could be found in a normal Republican administration (Mattis, Tillerson and his foreign policy team in general as far as positions requiring confirmation go), voice disapproval but don't go out of your way to cause problems. Block people like DeVos and Sessions with every trick available.
The GOP should take away from this confrontations the lesson that "if we don't give any ground to the democrats, they will do everything they can to make this difficult for us" not "the democrats have no interest in compromising no matter what we're offering, so let's just use our total control of government to overrule them."
edited 4th Feb '17 12:24:49 PM by CaptainCapsase
Obstructionism isn't unreasonable considering nearly everything and everyone Trump and his administration have put out are full of shit.
Democratic officials need to oppose everything, if only for the pragmatic reason of being able to say "Don't blame me, I voted against this crap" when it all goes to shit.
edited 4th Feb '17 1:35:47 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised![]()
Let's not do things like cause government shutdowns unless they try to pull something exceedingly bad in the budget package. That doesn't help anyone. In order to be effective rather than furthering the sentiment that both parties are so unpleasant that we might as well not vote (even though it doesn't really matter how bad the parties are, just that there's a meaningful difference between them), we need to be more nuanced in our opposition than "oppose everything, no matter what."
edited 4th Feb '17 1:49:34 PM by CaptainCapsase
"Fortunately" the GOP and Trump have yet to produce anything good so far. I'm not entirely sure if it's even possible to produce a budget proposal bad enough that a gov't shutdown would be the better option, but I wouldn't put it past Trump and his cronies to do it.
Of course the Democrats shouldn't obstruct just for the sake of it. They should at least read through everything first...so they can better argue why it's full of shit.
edited 4th Feb '17 1:54:31 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprisedAt this point, the obstructionism itself is almost incidental; the platform of the Democrats is based on social equality, a balance of federal and state power, globalism, multiculturalism, and for the most part flexible economic policies. The Republicans are giving them nothing to work with in terms of compromise or bipartisanship, to the point where they might as well be living on different planets. Really, what are the the Democrats supposed to agree to compromise on? Stripping liberties? Voter suppression?
And honestly, the Democrats have a lot of shaky ground to cover before they even begin to resemble the GOP: what the Senate did to Garland was beyond the pale.
edited 4th Feb '17 1:55:49 PM by ViperMagnum357
Surely the assumption that everything the GOP and Trump backs is awful is a bit much. Surely sometimes, there's gonna be a bill that doesn't attract any media attention because the content is uninteresting, and then pretty much everyone supports it because there's nothing wrong with it.
edited 4th Feb '17 1:59:34 PM by Gilphon
Perhaps, but I still think giving Trump and co. the benefit of the doubt and with it any hint of validation is a bad idea. "Give him a chance"...that ship has sailed.
Democratic officials need to go over everything this administration tries to push through with a magnifying glass and a fine-toothed comb. At this point, I wouldn't put it past the GOP to try to sneak through something abhorrent in even the most apparently innocuous bills.
edited 4th Feb '17 2:08:09 PM by M84
Disgusted, but not surprised@Magnum: You compromise where there's room to compromise, and if Trump actually does for example get around to pushing to fund infrastructure spending (other than, you know the wall), you put in a good faith effort to work with the GOP to produce something workable. Nuance in the key here; a blanket "we obstruct everything just because" stance will just make things worse, especially since the GOP can completely override the democrats in their current position.
Democrats should have made it clear they'd be willing to confirm Hardiman but not Trump's other two top picks, rather than saying they'd block it no matter who it was, because even if Trump doesn't take the bait, you still put in the effort to try and reach a reasonable compromise.
edited 4th Feb '17 2:16:06 PM by CaptainCapsase
What we are saying, though, is that even bills that seem good on the surface deserve greater scrutiny at this point because the Trump administration and the GOP have already worn out their assumption of good faith. For example, one of the plans that Trump floated for infrastructure spending was to fund it via tax credits to companies building such projects. This is an absolutely terrible way to support infrastructure projects, and basically means that a bunch of companies get to do stuff they were doing anyway using government money, while stuff that needs to be done but hasn't been picked up by private companies because it doesn't generate a profit would be left undone.
What we don't want to see is for Democrats to pass that sort of shitty bill in the name of "well, it's infrastructure, and we like infrastructure, right...?" A bad bill is a bad bill, regardless of whether it purports to be in support of something good. Democrats should work with the GOP where they can, but should not hesitate to dig in their heels when they're being offered a bad idea, even if it's one that looks like a good deal on the surface.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.So, does anyone remember the chart measuring media bias and quality?
◊ Well, someone did an extended version
◊, I like it but it seems a bit skewed rightwards (a lot of the stuff on "leans left" should probably be in the center) and some stuff seems higher (Fox, Breitbart, The Young Turks...) or lower (Vox, The Guardian...) on the quality axis than it should be (also, it's missing the daily mail, which should be right alongside info wars).
EDIT: a third chart
, I think this one's very crappy.
edited 4th Feb '17 3:11:42 PM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KVBreitbart should be further right on the extended one. There's a ton they put out that doesn't even resemble actual news. And while Vox can be kind of overboard sometimes, they go way out of their way to cite their sources and they make their opinion pieces clear. I don't think they should be as far left on there as they are.
edited 4th Feb '17 3:15:49 PM by Zendervai

Here is the law itself
.
edited 4th Feb '17 11:21:35 AM by DingoWalley1