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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
Not really. Both parties are heavily partisan as hell. There's no real undecided/independent voters in the way one thinks.
Krugman notes Kasich believes the Fed keeping the Interest Rates at 0 are what damaged our economy
So, everyone of them besides the Fascist are basically crackpots on the economics, except the Fascists' preference in Judges and Racism cancels out what economic sensibility he has.
Yeah, Kasich looks like a classical hard money type, which is, from Krugman's point of view, even more of a disqualifier for the presidency than wanting to mass-deport Mexicans.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"Honestly, I don't think the fear of Bloomberg being an independent is warranted. Dude is a man without a country. Maybe I say this because I'm from NYC, and even though I wasn't living there while Bloomberg was mayor, I go to pains to keep up with its politics. But Bloomberg has plenty of ground for both righties and lefties to despise: among righties he became infamous as mayor for policies like trying to ban oversized sodas, and limit sodium intake, but especially for his gun control efforts, which got him railed against as the NYC big government freedom hating liberal, (never mind that he spent 2 terms as a Republican after being handpicked as a successor to a past Republican mayor, and only jumped off that ship in 2009 when the Republican brand was extremely toxic in NYC) and liberals have plenty of room to despise Bloomberg on many ground, especially civil rights issues with both Stop and Frisk, (which was proved to a failure many times over) and with stalking mosques outside of his jurisdiction to spy on Muslims.
And both sides can hate him, rightfully, for the evidence that a number of departments, but especially police and schools, were forced to fix the statistics to make Bloomberg's administration look good. (Protip for you, Mike: when your high school graduation rate
has a huge jump
while every other single measurement of student achievement is either flat or down
, people know you're fucking with the system just so you can create an excuse to pat yourself on the back. Cops spending years secretly recording your police brass giving them instructions to write more fines while ignoring or downplaying actual crimes is kind of a giveaway too
.)
As for his economic policy, it's basically the same BS center right, austerity is great, run everything like a CEO looking to get a big quarterly stock spike that everyone on both sides of the aisle is sick of.
So that leaves him trying to sell either his famous antipathy towards guns, willingness to interfere in the daily life of people, and relative lack of religion to Southern Conservatives, or his violations of Civil Rights and common sense to Coastal Liberals. It's not going to fly. There a reason why in Bloomberg's last election in NYC he had to spend $108 million dollars to defeat a no name city bureaucrat who spent 10 million
and yet Bloomberg barely won.
Dude is going nowhere.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |Quick low down because that question has been asked before: Michael Bloomberg is a billionaire businessman/engineer, former Mayor of New York City from 2001-2013. Despite first being a Republican and then an Independent, the hard right held him up for years as the face of "nanny state paternalism" and liberal excess.
In actuality he operated as a mostly not crazy plutocratic Republican, albeit one with a strong dislike of guns and not being religious. For other details, see my prior post.
| Wandering, but not lost. | If people bring so much courage to this world...◊ |![]()
What is it with semi-independent New York billionaires coming out of nowhere and acting like Spanners In The Works in this election?
edited 8th Feb '16 3:16:24 PM by LogoP
It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane.I'm not sure that's relevant, since Ohio is not a sovereign currency issuer and is thus forced to maintain a balance of payments, like any other U.S. state.
edited 8th Feb '16 3:26:44 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"No, but does his behavior on what he can do with the state budget suggest he'd match his rhetoric overall? After all certain strategies in some economic areas betray an attitude toward other areas.
Basically, rhetoric is cheap and I'd rather see if there is anything he has actually done that suggests he's serious. Perhaps his record during Congress can shed light?
The letter from FBI general counsel James Baker comes one day before the New Hamshire primary.
The message does not offer new details about the probe, which the bureau has been reluctant to discuss. However, it represents the FBI’s formal notification to the State Department that it is investigating the issue.
[* * *]
FBI Director James Comey has previously referenced the FBI probe, which the bureau had previously declined to confirm or deny in court filings last year.
Key details about the probe remain unclear, such as whether it is tied to a possible criminal case or whether it has expanded beyond an initial security review.
Comey has previously said that bureau investigators “don’t give a rip about politics,” and would not be put off by the looming presidential campaign.
edited 8th Feb '16 3:47:57 PM by SolipsistOwl
Well of course it's ongoing, saying "nothing was done wrong and this entire thing is pointless" would cause a ton of backlash against the FBI from republicans, the FBI will keep it going until after the election, if they did otherwise I wouldn't put it past republicans to try and derefund the FBI.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranI do wonder how quickly the nonreligious are growing in the US. We could really throw a monkey wrench in the politicians' "Jesus Jesus Jesus" BS they pull to make people support whatever.
A liberal Christian friend of mine points out that there's no support for many of their policies anyway, and shouldn't they be feeding the poor and healing the sick like Jesus commanded? So I imagine if the nonreligious were large in number, the same policies would still be promoted by the Right, just using religion as an excuse less and less.
After all, I'm convinced that people do what they want to first, then justify it later. Removing one justification doesn't change their behavior, is the justification was nothing more just that: a justification, not their actual reason for their behavior or policy.
![]()
So? I'm sure that the FBI investigate bogus stuff all the time, they have to at least do their due diligence and check that the obviously bogus bullshit is indeed bogus bullshit.
No it means they're looking into the possibility of something other than just that, if anything actually happened or not we don't know.
The FBI will have to at least look at every accusation that's been throw at Clinton, that doesn't mean any of them have any basis in reality.
edited 8th Feb '16 4:04:41 PM by Silasw
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranIt's not really the FBI's fault. They are supposed to investigate reports of federal crimes.
Nobody has said anything about actually defunding the FBI. We are just observing that we wouldn't put it past Republicans if the FBI tells them to get stuffed about the Clinton emails.
edited 8th Feb '16 4:19:43 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"And speaking of petty, Republicans stop pretending to even listen to the President
.
"Rather than spend time on a proposal that, if anything like this administration's previous budgets, will double down on the same failed policies that have led to the worst economic recovery in modern times, Congress should continue our work on building a budget that balances and that will foster a healthy economy," Mr. Price said in a statement.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, called the decision an insult and said it was representative of the "corrosive radicalism that has gripped congressional Republicans." White House officials said it raised doubts about the frequent Republican leadership claims to restore "regular order" in Congress.

Teddy was running against two men who shared many of his ideological principles. Bloomberg would be running against what most Americans see as a Fascists, and what most see as a Communist. He might have a shot.
I Bring Doom,and a bit of gloom, but mostly gloom.