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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
He's a Hungarian Jew who managed to basically crash the British economy in one day with speculation and became a Billionaire off of it.
Since then he's basically been a bankroller for a ton of left wing initiatives.
He's to the Right Wing what the Koch Brothers are to the Left Wing.
edited 16th Nov '16 6:12:12 AM by PotatoesRock
@M84:
I daresay if Sanders can swallow his pride and endorse Clinton at the end of the day, any intellectually honest supporters of Sanders can see the sense of supporting what remains of the 'establishment' as long as their priorities aren't marginalized at the policy discussion table. We should remember that even Sanders is very much a seasoned politician with decades of experience at getting shit done, and it's only in comparison to our incredibly dysfunctional status quo can he in any way be considered a revolutionary outsider.
This
doesn't sound like the kind of interview that would alienate Sanders supporters from Dean, do you think?
The left cannot afford to fumble on defense in the next few years. We need to be united for the common good, which means that we don't need to be treating philosophical differences on campaign strategizing as deeply irrevocable ideological differences. Infighting is the last thing we need right now.
edited 16th Nov '16 6:21:08 AM by Karkadinn
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.This hasn't been the topic for a while now, but I just want to point out that the idea of states' rights makes literally no sense. Not just from a moral perspective, although that's also true, but simply from a logical perspective, because they are totally arbitrary lines drawn on maps.
It's often noted that California is a deeply blue, hyper-liberal state. But, really, that's not true. It's just a huge state. Some people hundreds of years drew a couple of lines that gave this one territory more land area than almost every other state. We probably have a bigger rural population than any state other than Texas. We certainly have more farmland than any other state. We're solidly blue because we have a couple of huge cities on the coast, but we also have more conservatives than any other state than Texas. We just have more of everything, because it's a huge state.
And the electoral college means those conservatives and rural farmers' votes don't count in the presidential election. How the heck is that supposed to be fair to rural populations? Maybe it's somehow balanced out by the other states, but these poor guys don't even get to choose their own state laws! Recreational marijuana is legal in California now, whether these people wanted it or not (I honestly don't know or care if they did). When the proposition to legalize gay marriage failed the popular vote in California, there was a doomed movement, reminiscent of Calexit, to split the state in half (Norcal and Socal). Literally "this is not my California."
The state is just a huge and clunky unit of governing that has a totally arbitrary size based on ancient mapmakers we shouldn't care about. If we really cared about people's right to choose their own local laws, we should absolutely abolish the concept of states' rights, because that is their biggest obstacle. States are just too big to serve local communities, whether that be for conservatives in Orange County, CA, or for liberals in Houston, TX. Laws being made on the county level would at least make sense, albeit be a huge pain in the ass to keep track of. If the electoral college was also county level, that would also track the popular vote far better.
I mean, it's totally impractical to get rid of the idea of states at this point, and obviously there are logistical benefits to having provinces. But there's absolutely no reason to consider a state's rights to be any more meaningful than a county's rights, or a city's rights. We're not sovereign governments, and we haven't been for hundreds of years. They're a convenient administrative fiction.
edited 16th Nov '16 6:45:32 AM by Clarste
Very well said. It also doesn't help that people talking about "states' rights" are almost uniformly invoking them as a dog whistle for prejudice.
It is however, fundamentally written into the constitution, with little realistic way to change it. It's the capstone to the Bill of Rights.
Amendment X:
Don't Shoot the Message, folks.
It's a bit like local churches: they only make the news for persecution and shit, but then again they also run the local food kitchens and homeless shelters.
edited 16th Nov '16 6:59:28 AM by blkwhtrbbt
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for youLiberals are capable of fighting dirty, it's just that their efforts are often misdirected. Like the affirmative action thing, that was meant to engineer social change by showing that qualified nonwhite students exist, if given the same opportunity they will succeed and our country will be better for it.
Somehow, that's changed from get the traditionally disadvantaged and persecuted into higher education to turning those entering higher education institutes into "my" own personal soldiers for "my" righteous cause.
There was all this dirt on President Elect Donald Trump, hell George Bush Jr was something of a punchline in political circles even before he ran for office but sour grapes over the Clinton administration has lead to a deliberate divisive movements in the left, the people who should be anti Republican by default, out of a cynical view that allowing the worst right politicians to screw up will have more long term benefit. I'm talking about the Green Party, in case you're wondering. And no, I'm not blaming them for the loss of elections, necessarily, I think the outcome would have been the same whether they deliberately tried to hinder the Democratic Party or did nothing regarding the election, but I do feel the effort was misguided. Is running for office in hopes for a disaster really better than say, donating the thousands of man hours and millions of dollars necessary to campaign to saving turtles, running soup kitchens, researching fossil fuel alternatives, campaigning for men imprisoned for nonviolent offensives or some other liberal concern?
Hell, comparing Donald Trump to Hitler or Mussolini is liberals playing dirty. I'll admit it is tempting, when one looks at the more overt than usual hypocrisy, racism and substance lacking promises of this former liberal turned reactionary's campaign, to shout "Hair Furor!", but we're getting ahead of ourselves. Adolph Hitler didn't successfully get elected, and he had already attempted two unsuccessful armed takeovers of government before his appointment. In Benito Mussolini's case, he succeeded in his armed takeover of the government. What's more, Hitler and Mussolini were military alumni men's men who built themselves back up after demoralizing failure. In horrifying ways, yes, but Trump is nursed with a silver spoon from birth brat who has been shielded from the trauma of violence and failure all his life, it's a comparison that does the Fascist overlords a disservice. As I see it, he's a less competent, less moral, less intelligent, less appealing Ronald Reagan, and it reflects in that Donald more or less stole his campaign from Ronald but didn't energize his base to nearly the same extent, winning the office mainly out of luck from getting voters in the right places with possible ramifications from the gutting of the voting rights act back in 2013 playing a role. Considering Reagan's flaws, a poor imitation of him running the country is something to fear in the current political climate, but all the same, Godwin's Law is Godwin's Law, it's dirty and you know it.
Buldogue's lawyer@Capsace: About the only situation I can think of where liberalism and states' rights have synced up in the modern world is marijuana legalization, but the same people crying about how the Evil Government tells them they can't keep darkies out of their schools are only too happy to insist that the Feds crack down on the War on Drugs or enshrine male-female marriage in the Constitution. The hypocrisy is extraordinary and unending.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:03:13 AM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"States' rights strike me as being a whole lot like corporate rights. Too many people get caught up on the idea of caring about the rights of a legal entity mattering more than the rights of real living and breathing individuals. But we create these legal constructs in the first place because our lives are supposedly better with them without them, so if they're no longer serving their purpose, what good are they?
Furthermore, I think Guantanamo must be destroyed.
3 Godwin's Law gets a free pass when reality itself invokes it. The parallels are obvious and hit really close to home. It's no coincidence that Trump was cheered on by actual American Nazis
edited 16th Nov '16 7:05:48 AM by blkwhtrbbt
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for youIn theory, I actually have no problem with the concept of States Rights, so long as precisely what those rights are are well-defined and well-understood by everyone.
States do not have the right to arbitrate on the rights of citizens, so an appeal to States Rights doesn't apply. You are asking for a right you aren't owed- indeed, not only are you not owed this as a right, allowing it contradicts the very concept of rights in the first place. The entire idea of having a right is that it is something that you always have, that you are owed a certain level of treatment simply because you are a Human being and can't be taken away from you. To say that taking rights away from citizens is a matter of preserving the rights of States is one serious head-fuck of a contradiction.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:09:00 AM by Gault
yeyGay marriage was legalized in a few states here and there, but its big victory came from California's ban on it being challenged in a case that went to the Supreme Court. That is, the supposedly progressive bastion of the country had banned it, and the Supreme Court said they couldn't. So... that's the opposite of states' rights.
Same with interracial marriage and abortion. Anything the Supreme Court decided is necessarily legal goes against states' rights.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:09:19 AM by Clarste
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Was basically gonna say this, but you summed it better than me.
The main issue is that when states' rights get brought up, it's way too often used to justify denying people their rights. Which is why I have very little patience for anyone bringing it up.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:08:39 AM by Draghinazzo
The idea of states rights is the idea of multispeed culture. Some places are more progressive than others and the ones who aren't don't like being dragged along. The same issue will come up in progressive states if Pence tries anything on the social side of things, they ain't as conservative as he is used to in Indiana.
It was more important earlier before technology made the world a smaller place, but even technology hasn't completely eliminated the multispeed nature of US culture.
In 1982, Pierre Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada at the time, presided over the creation of the Constitution Act, which created the current version of the Constitution of Canada and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. One of the things in the Constitution Act is an extremely clear delineation of powers between Parliament and the Provincial and Territorial Legislatures.
Back when we legalized gay marriage, Alberta tried pulling "provinces rights", but it got shot down really fast since marriage rights are are specifically stated as being in Parliament's purview. All the provinces can do is design the forms, basically.
The US really needs something like the Constitution Act in the hands of someone like Pierre Trudeau, to very specifically state exactly what the states and the feds are responsible for, and to reaffirm the fundamental rights.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:13:12 AM by Zendervai
Schools often already don't teach enough about local life.
Local volunteering opportunities, local jobs, local activities, local community activities.
The only local thing schools even do is math competitions and sports.
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for youStates' rights probably has a lot more use when it comes to micro-level issues that it's not helpful to apply a one-size-fits-all policy on, like administration, levels of taxation and regulation of intra-state industries. For example New Hampshire's elective high property tax and lack of sales tax. Or laws regarding hunting or logging in certain states, or marijuana like other people mentioned. Different states have different needs.
Issues regarding social matters and basic rights, like whether a person can get married at all, ages of consent (which mostly turns up in the minutiae such as Romeo and Juliet laws, which again should really be standardized across the nation), anything that involves individuals' rights or necessitate people temporarily moving to states with different laws should be handled at the federal level though.
edited 16th Nov '16 7:17:31 AM by AlleyOop

What is up with George Soros? All the righty nutters on my FB seem to think he's a one-man illuminati.
What's the story behind him?
Say to the others who did not follow through You're still our brothers, and we will fight for you