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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Also something the Justice Democrats doesn't understand: If you want money out of politics, that means money that goes to things the left love will be gone as well. Which means green energy will even have more a slog to go through
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:13:08 AM by NoName999
Not US-based, but you know it'll have an impact here because one dead and at least 10 injured in a terrorist attack near Westminster Bridge
. I've already seen assholes online saying "Trump was right again!" (that's a verbatim quote from the person's post).
Representative Devin Nunes (R-California) says that there is a "big, gray cloud" over the White House due to the investigation on Trump-Russia Relations.
Keep in mind, this is the same Devin Nunes that tried his hardest to spin Trump's lie of the Wiretapping as Political Naivete that should be excused. When even he is starting to worry about Trump, you know crap is happening!
I still want him to lose his seat, though.
The Jordanian-aligned FSA groups (if the FSA is still anything more substantial than a historical group) are the closest you'll get to the original pro-democracy types. And then there's the YPG in Rojava, who are becoming a cause celebre among leftists.
SeriesOfNumbers: I don't care whether or not you're going to respond to this. I'm leaving this for posterity.
In literally all of your posts here, you have displayed an identical pattern of constant goalpost moving to justify your beliefs based on points refuted a thousand times. Whenever whatever you post gets refuted, you try to rules lawyer your way out of a bind or engage in whataboutism, while claiming that you did research whatever you are repeating verbatim.
Every time it has been brought up that Gabbard is blatantly spouting propaganda from a regime that literally ripped its own territory and subjects apart so the head honcho won't fear losing any power, you instead make a false equivalence popular among tankies.
When it's pointed out that Assad deliberately caused the rise of Daesh and the radicalisation of the opposition against him so he could look like a savior, you instead claim that Hillary Clinton personally armed child soldiers.
Whenever it's pointed out that Wikileaks endangers the people it claims to be looking out for through inaction and blatantly editorialises leaks supposedly made in the spirit of transparency, you claim that this horrendously warped version of transparency is preferable to opacity.
And now you are accusing those of us willing to answer you as fanatics. When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotKeeping money out of politics is a terrible idea, because then politics would be dominated by those who are independently wealthy enough to fund their own campaigns, and we'd end up becoming a plutocracy. Plus, the whole thing about politicians listening more closely to those who make campaign contributions is a way of weeding out the complaints of people who don't contribute and demand that money be taken out of politics.
The easiest solution to that though is to put a cap on all spending, not just from Corporations but for individuals as well.
Of course, you need a Constitutional Amendment for that, but if 2020 becomes a lot like 2008 (IE, Democrat Super Majorities in a lot of States and the Federal Government), they could do it. I'm just hoping that they make sure Money remains Free Speech, just that Congress can regulate how much Money anyone can spend on Campaigns.
The NRA admits they regret pushing Bernie because they have no power over him. They have no influence.
Huh? Progressives like Warren. The only ones that didn't like Warren were Bernie or Busters.
And I don't get this idea that progressives are looking for a Messiah but as you can see with your examples, we're perfectly willing to push candidates that aren't ideal to get to a specific end.
Tulsi is a weird fusion of a conservative-dem and progressive-dem. She has good opinions and some really bad ones. I don't like her nor do I trust her. In fact, she's one of those Dems that I wouldn't mind seeing get beaten Centrist. I think she damages the progressive branch by association too.
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:29:05 AM by MadSkillz
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See, I thought of the cap idea, too, but then that just becomes this whole other thing of politicians acting like contractors and going for the lowest bid on things, or cooking their books to look like they spent less than they did, under-the-table contributions and "gifts", and a whole bunch of other problems that would arise. Making campaign contributions a matter of public record would help, though.
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:28:42 AM by danime91
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There already are caps on donations from individuals
.
The most obvious problems are from dark money organisations and Super PACs due to the financial might they can muster, but I'll leave the solutions to someone more familiar with how this works
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:29:36 AM by Krieger22
I have disagreed with her a lot, but comparing her to republicans and propagandists of dictatorships is really low. - An idiotI'm not at all happy with the "money = free speech" idea. I'd much rather that we have "one person, one voice" rather than "one dollar, one voice". It inherently leads to plutocracy by one mechanism or another.
Rather, I (pie in the sky) would like to see blanket federal funding of elections, with a pot of money allocated from tax revenue spread among all qualified candidates. More importantly, certain services could be commandeered — rather than spending money to buy ad space, the government could simply demand airtime on major networks through its regulatory power.
Even if private individuals could spend money on their own campaigns, they wouldn't be able to freeze out poorer candidates, since the government would establish a baseline amount of campaigning any given person can do. Much like a minimum wage sets a floor for economic competitiveness, public funding sets a floor for electoral competitiveness.
Now, it's worth noting that there does exist a Presidential election fund, but the sheer amount of money available from private sources caused the major candidates to eschew it starting (if I recall correctly) with Obama in 2008. So what we also need is to cap all private donations to campaigns and ban corporations from acting as "people" when it comes to public speech.
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:33:12 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"That's what Canada does (though it helps that our courts didn't declare bribery free speech), companies, unions, organizations (so no Super PAC BS) and individuals are limited to $1150 CDN (roughly $860 US) to a party, or individual candidate or riding association, per year. And politicians are limited to $5,000 CDN (~$3750 US) of their own money towards campaigns (25k towards party leadership contests).
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:32:13 AM by Rationalinsanity
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.@ Madskillz :Hah. Bernie voted in favor of gun companies more than once. He was attacked by family members of Sandy Hook victims for voting against gun company liability.
And yeah, ones like Warren. Have you not seen what the hardcore Bernie fans have been saying about her? "Traitor" is the nicest. You also confuse two things: yes, they're pushing "not ideal" candidates. Problem is? They're hypocrites. They gleefully roar about flaws they excuse in their own side, pretending their side is the one with the moral highground and their solutions are the only ones. Don't support single payer? It doesn't matter if you support any other form of universal healthcare. Just go with the guy who has done nothing except introduce the same symbolic bill over and over and over because purity must trump achievements and accomplishments.
Obama passes a law to give tens of millions healthcare after a herculean struggle where Republicans were in lockstep against it, and a few red state Dems (And Lieberman) also opposed it? The purity faction didn't decide the problem was the red state Republicans and campaign to knock off another five seats...no, they howled for Obama to be primaried by his own party. Jane Hamsher campaigned with Grover fucking Norquist to kill the bill and get rid of Democrats, which got us 2010. All because Obama couldn't, I dunno, black bag Lieberman's children to force him to vote the way he wanted.
so, yeah, I'm kind of sick of these people always helping the Republicans because they can't learn what compromise means. It's petulance, and Bernie has been stoking those fires. In that sense, I cannot see how Tom Perez, a lifelong progressive who has vote for voting rights, civil rights, labor rights, was turned into the Neoliberal shill of the wicked corporate establishment because he dared run against Bernie's candidate and even worse, win the votes of his own party....and then declare said Bernie's chosen his deputy like thirty seconds after winning. But hey, Tom Perez once supported TPP and Bernie went after the TPP, so he must be impure.
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:36:30 AM by Lightysnake
We're already in a "plutocracy". I mean you have people like Mark Zuckerberg, Kanye West and Bob Iger all wondering whether they should run for president in 2020. We'll probably see some Kochs start making runs for office too.
Anyways the government should finance every political campaign with a budget.
edited 22nd Mar '17 11:37:30 AM by MadSkillz
I like the idea but I have a question: legally, how would "qualified" be defined?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I know he did.
As I said those were specifically Bernie or Busters. I don't see that anger at Warren anywhere on the progressive side at the moment.
Well they kinda do have the better policies but you know I'm a progressive.
Because Obama and his compatriots specifically pushed Perez so they could retain control of the DNC because Keith Ellison was too left for their tastes and part of Sanders' side.
I mean you have Centrist Dems screaming on TV that they'd jump from the Democrat Party if Ellison won.
And then you also have the anti-Semitic smear campaign thrown at Ellison for being Muslim.
And while Ellison was made Deputy chair of the DNC, it's up in the air on how much influence he really does have. He has as much influence as Perez let's him have.
Like earlier there was a report that on the DNC transition committee there was one progressive on there and around 30 establishment centrists. That is not a good look.
"Anti-Semitic"?
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.
I recall some worrying over some political stances Ellison had regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict in the past being avenues for Republican attack, but I haven't seen those actually being used as an attack by rival DNC candidates. Or the fact that he was a Muslim.
I'm having an Ig'nant White Trash moment here.
Are Muslims considered Semites? I've only ever heard the term applied to Jews.
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.![]()
Some Muslims are.
Here is a language map of the Semitic languages.
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The Abrahamic religions are called Semitic religions because all three originated in that area.
In terms of common-usage, "Semite" = "Jews"
edited 22nd Mar '17 12:06:44 PM by CrimsonZephyr
"For all those whose cares have been our concern, the work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives, and the dream shall never die."![]()
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Making it quick: Hebrew and Arab are both semitic languages. The term "antisemitic" originally was to "Jew-hater" as "race realist" is to "racist" (basically "people get pissed off at me if I say I am the second thing so I'll say I'm the first one instead"), some people (quite a few of whom I've heard identifying themselves as "anti-zionist
", by the way) nowadays try to bring up the etymology of anti-semitic (namely, that Arab, Amharic
and other languages are semitic too, and there's Jews that don't speak Hebrew, and other stuff like that) as a way to obfuscate that they hate Jewish people.
In other words:
- Semitic cultures: cultures that speak Semitic languages.
- Hebrew is a semitic language
- Jews generally can speak (communicate) Hebrew (though not all, I'm Jewish and I can't speak it, for example)
- Antisemitic: hates Jews
edited 22nd Mar '17 12:13:51 PM by IFwanderer
1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV

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I wonder if some of this is due to Sanders wishing to see these changes in his lifetime. He is already 74...
Disgusted, but not surprised