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Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#244901: Jun 9th 2018 at 10:53:49 AM

A Sanders willing to join the Democrats would be the kind of Sanders able to shelve his ego and play second fiddle, but that’s not Sanders.

That’s why he didn’t join the party, because he won’t play second fiddle and he knows that he’d have lost if he ran for DNC chair, he can’t manage a takeover of the party and as such he won’t join until he can.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
PushoverMediaCritic I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out. from the Italy of America Since: Jul, 2015 Relationship Status: watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ
I'm sorry Tien, but I must go all out.
#244902: Jun 9th 2018 at 10:56:21 AM

Don't forget that Bernie Sanders was one of the only people who voted against sanctions on Russia. Or that he made a speech on goddamn Martin Luthor King Jr day to complain about how the Democrats are fucking garbage and have been fucking garbage for the last ten years, and we all were just too stupid and blinded to see it because the first black President was a "charismatic candidate".

Bernie Sanders is a fucking asshole and his holier-than-thou attitude is only matched by his willful ignorance and empty bluster.

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#244903: Jun 9th 2018 at 10:59:30 AM

Universal healthcare benefits everyone (well it benefits most minorities, native Americans on tribal lands are in a very different legal situation due to technically being micro-nations within the US), free university does help with social mobility (and with the ever increasing number of women going to university it will probably benefit women more than men), what actual specific policy ideas has he suggested that won’t help in general? Yes he’s a total arse who gives no shitshow about minorities, that’s I grant, but his policy ideas aren’t segregation.

Sure...but the problem is not that Sanders' policies are inherently segregationist, it's that if you don't include some things to help minorities specifically, then they will miss out on large parts of the supposed benefits of these policies.

"Free university" doesn't especially help you if your school system is so bad you're not made ready for it. Universal healthcare is useless to you if there's no hospitals in your area and you can't afford to travel. A fifteen dollar minimum wage doesn't help you if businesses refuse to open in your area, or if you don't get hired in the first place courtesy of your skin colour. And so on and so forth.

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#244904: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:03:54 AM

Oh god I just realised, Sanders believes in trickle down economics, it’s just that he thinks the trickle down will go naturally from whites to minorities instead of the rich to the poor.

I think you’re right though, Sanders loves his big sexy policy ideas, boring infrastructure investment and urban growth plans simply don’t interest him, and that’s what many minorities need.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#244905: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:08:07 AM

That's a good way of putting it. And the problem is a lot of his fanboys believe him. They buy into the idea that "free college" is magically going to get rid of racism by letting black people go to school, when the reality is, it will only help a comparatively small group of African-Americans: investing in the public primary and secondary education system would actually do far more to combat the problem.

fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#244906: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:10:53 AM

Plus a number of them are still hung up on him losing and are convinced the evil democrats ruined everything and thus they have to vote for third party candidates like Jill Stein. That’s what my brother did.

megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#244907: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:14:42 AM

I am a firm believer that we should be moving towards a single payer healthcare though. Although, obviously, it's not a perfect solution, it certainly is better than what we have now. It has a lower overhead cost, and would genuinely benefit everyone (except CEO's of insurance companies.

edited 9th Jun '18 11:15:54 AM by megaeliz

Hodor2 Since: Jan, 2015
#244908: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:17:53 AM

Seems apropos to bring up something in "leftist discourse" that is a pet peeve of mine.

So it's this joke about characterizing neoliberalism and liberals as advocating "hire more female prison guards" and mocking this strawman characterization of liberal support of diversity/inclusivity, as if liberals celebrate anyone who is not a straight white male, regardless of how awful they are.

There's two major issues I have with this. First, it's really more of a thing for conservatives to abuse the language of diversity and inclusivity to support awful people than it is for liberals to actually defend them. Like very few if any liberals are fans of say David Clarke, Betsy Devos, Gina Haspel, or Omorossa.

But more importantly, it gets at the implicit and explicit sexism and racism of a certain brand of leftism. Because like yeah ICE shouldn't exist and I'm pretty on board with criticisms of say law enforcement or Wall Street executives, but if those groups have harassment and barriers to the advancement of women and/or minorities, that's actually a bad thing that should be remedied. And even if you can't be convinced that gender and racial parity should exist in jobs you believe should be abolished entirely (i.e. prison guard and Wall Street executive), you should care about that because the inequalities there are a microcosm of inequalities at all levels of society. And if you supposedly care about the working class, you should care about that.

And the whole framing of the criticism evidences this issue where there's a very thin line between criticism of "identity politics" to the exclusion of economic reforms (which I think is itself a strawman of liberal opinions and Democratic policies) and a hostility to diversity and inclusion in themselves.

edited 9th Jun '18 11:21:36 AM by Hodor2

DeathorCake Since: Mar, 2016
#244909: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:20:33 AM

[up]x6

To be fair, most of that would apply to a significant number of poor white-majority areas too if the US population maps follow similar trends to the UK ones. Infrastructure being terrible is only a minority issue if it was made terrible to screw the minorities, which admittedly isn't unheard of, and it can still be rectified by proper investment into schools and hospitals. Can't speak re: discrimination in hiring, know very little about what people want to do to fix that.

[up]x5

Trickle-down is rather specific, he's just rather bad at targeting his trickle-up. Not many presidential campaigns get far without at least a couple of big flashy policies, making an entire platform out of obviously useful yet rather visionless technocratic tinkering when people wanted serious change was one of the ways everyone beat up on Clinton. At the very least you need to plug the government money taps into Social Security/Medicaid, guarantee that with the same rock-solid backing as US treasuries and explain to the population that the deficit hawks can go hang.

[up][up][up]

The Green Party slightly-nuts woman? No Democratic Socialist Party or something less moonbatty to throw spoiler votes at?

AmbarSonofDeshar Since: Jan, 2010
#244910: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:23:13 AM

Efforts to combat failing school systems and infrastructure problems have traditionally focused on white or majority white areas. So while there are absolutely poor rural white areas, they are still better off than poor inner city black areas—or poor rural black areas, which everyone tends to forget even exist.

Also a serious [tup] to what Hodor just said. The notion that "more female Wall Street execs" is a bad thing is an idea that should go die. You can hate Wall Street all you want, but as long as it exists it should be inclusive, as should everything else.

edited 9th Jun '18 11:25:34 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#244911: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:24:46 AM

I guess it shouldn't be surprising that building new public hospitals and better funding/ reform for K-12 education would be even more of a political undertaking then getting National Insurance style single-payer or free-college. Not least of all because of how our federal system divides authority.

You'd have to really campaign at the local levels to make it happen, this also where the politics is most corrupt and the racism most rampant.

[up][up]It's been all but scientifically proven that White Americans will cut of their nose to spite their face when it comes to race and public spending.

Also the effect of the two "big-tent" parties makes it so that any third party kind of needs to be extremist or else it will just have it's views co-opted by the big two.

edited 9th Jun '18 11:26:41 AM by Mio

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#244912: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:25:10 AM

The Republican version of handling schools is to encourage rich people not to send their kids to public school.

This is very obvious in Kentucky, TN, and West Virginia.

They also are behind many other ways to hurt poor working whites every bit as much as blacks but they fully expect the former to continue supporting them—which they do.

Fanatically.

edited 9th Jun '18 11:26:09 AM by CharlesPhipps

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#244913: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:42:48 AM

It's a tangent, but how would you guys feel about extending some version of the ethics rules that were created for members of the Civil Service to elected officials?

A good example of this would be recusal and divestment. Unlike the Civil Service, elected officials don't have to recuse themselves or divest, if they own stock in the industries that they are making policy for, which often results in them making policy that benefits the bottom line, at the expense of their actual constituents.

Or to put it another way, why might a politician heavily invested in insurance, drug, and medical device companies, might have another reason to oppose single payer healthcare, even though many of their constituents might support it?

edited 9th Jun '18 11:52:11 AM by megaeliz

DeathorCake Since: Mar, 2016
#244914: Jun 9th 2018 at 11:52:03 AM

[up][up][up]

Can't just hand the states a big pile of money marked "spend on infrastructure in areas meeting conditions X, Y and/or Z"? If the State republicans waste it on busywork then you can contrast their terrible performance with the more likely Democratic success stories, especially if you have a Democratic federal government. Do a mirror of what the Tories here are doing, which is to start an austerity program, aim it mostly at Labour areas and then say "look, Labour is failing compared to us and the SNP".

[up]x4

That particular strain of equality campaigning is probably the most easily strawmanned one, since it's easy to attack it with "why no quotas in waste collection/females in the draft" and then smear the whole exercise as positive discrimination regardless of the prior discriminations in that area.

I do find a few of the measures taken to ensure more representative populations mildly suspect myself, like the all-women shortlists in the UK. There has to be a less divisive way to do that kind of thing than denying half the population the option of seeking party candidacy in certain constituencies, because that's going to sour them on the whole idea and doesn't actually help the women concerned win the elections. What do you do when you reach 50%, anyway? Do you select one woman and one man per constituency and then flip a coin?

Mio Since: Jan, 2001
#244915: Jun 9th 2018 at 12:08:59 PM

[up]You can, but states can and do reject federal money to fund things they don't like. My own state has done it several times when it came to healthcare and constructing high-speed rail that the consituients voted on back in 2000.

It wasn't until they could get a private company to run it that they finally started it, in 2014.

Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#244916: Jun 9th 2018 at 12:31:27 PM

Apparently Crimea being annexed was...Obama's fault.

And to the surprise of no one; Trump did nothing but make an ass of himself at the G7 summit.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/09/politics/trump-russia-g8-press-conference/index.html

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#244917: Jun 9th 2018 at 12:32:28 PM

This is why I support impeachment.

If nothing else, defending himself will force Trump to stop being....everything about himself.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Rationalinsanity from Halifax, Canada Since: Aug, 2010 Relationship Status: It's complicated
#244918: Jun 9th 2018 at 12:43:34 PM

Nah, if he actually starts getting impeached he'll start to panic and get even worse until power is actually taken from him. But you are correct in that the one area that would definitely improve if Trump were removed from office tomorrow would be trade and foreign policy..

Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.
Euodiachloris Since: Oct, 2010
#244919: Jun 9th 2018 at 12:53:50 PM

[up]That and just general press briefings. Oh, for press briefings that make sense...

DeathorCake Since: Mar, 2016
#244920: Jun 9th 2018 at 12:56:36 PM

[up][up]

Foreign policy is the zone with all the tail risk in it, where everything is complicated and interconnected and vague. We knew what he was going to do with healthcare, taxes, race, all that lot, but even if you have to replace him with Pence I'd say price well paid for getting someone that unstable out of the role of Commander In Chief.

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#244921: Jun 9th 2018 at 1:00:03 PM

Mind you, Pence is heavily involved in all of this Russia crap.

I also take the note the issue isn't impeachment is a political act here but the fact he's done many crimes against the Presidency, law, and country plus is working with a foreign power to subvert American democracy (and succeeded).

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Grafite Since: Apr, 2016 Relationship Status: Less than three
#244922: Jun 9th 2018 at 1:19:13 PM

Isn't that all a bit too vague and lacking in evidence to merit impeachment? The Congress acts according to the law and should only move towards the process if there's sufficient proof to justify it to the judicial institutions.

Life is unfair...
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#244923: Jun 9th 2018 at 1:22:45 PM

There's nothing vague about Trump's impeachable offenses. The issue is the fact he has broken the law publicly, repeatedly, and with no consequences. Firing Comey was impeachable and that's among like 40 other offenses since.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
megaeliz Since: Mar, 2017
#244924: Jun 9th 2018 at 2:30:02 PM

A bit more about yesterday's indictment

1. Oh, Kilimnik... Konstantin Kilimnik. remember him? He's the one who was working directly with Manafort and Gates. A "former Russian intelligence officer (There's no such thing, once RU intelligence always RU intelligence).

2. Van der Zwaan (yes the Dutch attorney who is serving prison time for lying to Mueller) is the one who confirmed, via HIS PHONE RECORDS that Gates and Manafort were working directly with Kilimnik. And not by themselves, but FOR TRUMP, in case it isn't clear.

3. Kilimnik (who is person no. TWENTY in Mueller's investigation to face charges for those who keep score) and Manafort face two counts of obstruction of justice and one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice. They worked together to tamper with witnesses.

4. Per last night's NY story, two of the witnesses, who had worked with Manafort to "promote" Ukrainian former President Yanukovich, are Alan Friedman (an American journalist working here in Italy, and no I never liked him) and Eckart Sager.

5. Unfortunately for Manafort, Friedman and Sager are NOT traitors, despite having worked with him in the past, so when Manafort and Kilimnik tried to make them lie to Mueller, they reached out to Mueller instead and told him the whole story. Bloop!

6. Friedman accused Manafort of trying to "suborn perjury" by persuading him to lie to investigators. That's according to a declaration by an FBI agent on the case, per last night's NYT story.

7. Based on Friedman's testimony, plus Sager's, AND Van der Zwaan's evidence, Manafort is, how do we put it, FRITTO as we say in Italian. This is why Mueller is requesting to revise terms of Manafort's bail and send him to jail while he awaits trial in July.

8. Manafort has already been charged with conspiracy against the US, conspiracy to launder money, unregistered agent of a foreign principal, false and misleading FARA statements and false statements. How's it going Paulie? And wait...

9. The above charges do NOT include the National Security crimes part, you know the strict "conspiracy with Russia/others" part, that Mueller is yet to indict him for, and rest assured? IT IS COMING. So sit comfortably, get snacks and a drink. The show just got started. /END

I said there would be more superseding indictments coming.

archonspeaks Since: Jun, 2013
#244925: Jun 9th 2018 at 2:49:48 PM

The thing about impeachment is that it’s not a criminal proceeding. When people say impeachment is political it’s because it’s subject to all the same whims and debates as politics.

It’s an inherently political process.

They should have sent a poet.

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