All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[WestPhillyPunisher]

The GOP really is his cult now. Whether they're smart enough to realize it or not, they belong to him.

What concerns me is they do know and don't care. For damn sure Mitch McConnell doesn't give a rat's ass, all that matters to him are tax cuts for the wealthy, stacking the courts with right wing ideologues and being a human roadblock to anything Democrats want to bring up for votes. The rest are just along for the ride, happy to watch the country burn to the ground just as long as they remain in power.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

What concerns me is they do know and don't care. For damn sure Mitch McConnell doesn't give a rat's ass, all that matters to him are tax cuts for the wealthy, stacking the courts with right wing ideologues and being a human roadblock to anything Democrats want to bring up for votes. The rest are just along for the ride, happy to watch the country burn to the ground just as long as they remain in power.

They are people who are only where they are due to special interest and the minute they leave they are going to become lobbyists for them. They don’t care as long as those people are taken care of.

[shooshoomanjoe]

It's not only McMahon on trump's economy re-haul, it's also Dana White. This is the type of headline I've come to expect from The Onion, not reality.

[jetengine]

A) Millions of people were drunk partiers in college. Do you want compare how likely those people are to be sexual assaulters next to people who have a history of women saying they crossed personal boundaries with unwanted touching and made them feel uncomfortable? You’re ignoring the latter and putting a flimsy amount of emphasis on the former to justify that you were totally okay with believing a story where the accuser had zero evidence or context of this event that seemingly happened in a void absent of details. The only substantive difference is.... they have different politics.

2)To your second point..... Ford’s story contradicted multiple times including how many men were involved, there is no evidence that Kavanaufg is a man who strayed, there’s no location that Ford gave that we can even use to see if it was plausible because she can’t tell us anything about where this occurred, and likewise Ford never once brought this up until the 2012 (3 decades later) which was a much more friendly time to women and was in controlled therapy session where it was confidential, and didn’t go public until 2018 (which was at the height of the MeToo movement)

And again this is a situation with an accuser who can’t tell you where this happened in any level of detail (not even a neighborhood), the time, why she was there, how she got invited there, who took her, contradicted herself on how many people, contradicted herself on what she did after, has no friend who can corroborate not if the assault happened but if the party even happened

Which in substance is basically saying “I think it’s okay to drag the person who I don’t politically like through the mud without evidence, context, contradictory details, or facts based on an allegation in a vacuum because he drank, and I’m willing to give someone who doesn’t drink a total pass”.

See I’m willing to say they were both poor allegations. Drinking as an excuse to justify being okay with that disproportionate of a response is very suspect here

Your writing a book just to say "I dont believe you" fine. Ignore the statistics and how shady this looks.

[Kirby101]

"Former President Barack Obama convinced Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to drop out of the 2020 race over the course of four long conversations, according to a Tuesday report from The New York Times.

The Times reports that when it became clear that his former vice president, Joe Biden, would win the Democratic Party's nomination, Obama told a friend that he needed to "accelerate the endgame."

At the end of March, Obama made the first of four phone calls to the veteran independent senator.

Two people with knowledge of their interactions told the Times that Obama told Sanders that he had succeeded in pushing the Democratic Party and Biden to the left.

Mostly though, Obama listened to Sanders reflect on the campaign and talk about what he planned to do next, the sources said.

Sources close to Sanders said that these calls played an important role in him ending his presidential bid last week and endorsing Biden on Monday. Obama followed suit on Tuesday with his a stirring endorsement of Biden."

https://www.businessinsider.com/obam...20-race-2020-4

Democrats will see this as the former President asking for the Party to come together to defeat Trump. Sanderites will see it as "SEE, THE DNC HAS IT IN FOR BERNIE!!"

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Your writing a book just to say "I dont believe you" fine. Ignore the statistics and how shady this looks.

You’re writing a single sentence to avoid addressing that drinking is your standard for believing claims without evidence. Btw go run the statistics on the correlations between drinking and sexual assaults and unwanted touching and sexual assaults. It’s okay you just have a different standard when it’s someone you like politically.

[InformationGeek]

Hey, that's a disservice to Scrooge! That spot belongs to Flintheart Glomgold!

[aja_christopher]

Hey, that's a disservice to Scrooge! That spot belongs to Flintheart Glomgold!

Both Scrooge and Richie Rich should be replaced -- Montana Max and Reggie Van Dough would also make suitable replacements.

And it's doubtful that Gatsby would tolerate Trump long enough to spend any amount of time with him much less work in council with him.

Monopoly man has always been suspect due to his silence -- he has a nice smile but it could be misleading.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

Hey, that's a disservice to Scrooge! That spot belongs to Flintheart Glomgold!

Wouldn’t it be better if it was Gekko, Belfort instead of Gatsby, rich Biff from Back to the Future, Charles Foster Kane, and Vince McMahon since he doubles as a wrestling character

[Lightning Rider]

Democrats will see this as the former President asking for the Party to come together to defeat Trump. Sanderites will see it as "SEE, THE DNC HAS IT IN FOR BERNIE!!"

It's "coming together" at the expense of the progressive movement under the same centrist strategy that failed Democrats in 2016.

Just like having Klobuchar and Pete drop out to endorse Biden was not just "unifying the party" generally, but unifying them against the threat of Sanders.

I'm sure Obama has beating Trump in mind, but he's made it clear since before Biden took the lead that he didn't want to push for it on Sanders' platform.

[Tendrin]

WBE, you've got Deanna Lorraine in the queue, yeah?

https://twitter.com/DeAnna4Congress/...57858686656512

And:

Mindblowing to look back at the utter disdain he had for entrepreneurs, business owners, “white people”... heck America in general and the values that made America so great.
He also treated minorities as if they’re stupid and helpless which is the epitome of racist imo.

[aja_christopher]

It's "coming together" at the expense of the progressive movement under the same centrist strategy that failed Democrats in 2016.

Right.

Because moderate Democrats never win elections and progressive Democrats always do.

[jetengine]

You’re writing a single sentence to avoid addressing that drinking is your standard for believing claims without evidence. Btw go run the statistics on the correlations between drinking and sexual assaults and unwanted touching and sexual assaults. It’s okay you just have a different standard when it’s someone you like politically.

I'm writing a single sentence because its pretty clear your focused on drinking as if its personal, why I don't know. But you also seem to be so hideously focused on "Uh not all drinkers are rapists you know" that your ignoring Reades ever evolving story featuring teleportation and incredible ooc behaviour. You also somehow....SOMEHOW can't fathom that a rich fratboy JUST MIGHT sexually assault someone at a party during the 80s.

[TheDarman]

Right.

Because moderate Democrats never win elections and progressive Democrats always do.

The thing about politics is that you don't win unless you build coalitions. The broader your coalition, the better off you are.

Progressives have consistently shrunk their coalition. Sanders could've won this primary if he had made inroads with black folks and older voters. He did not and continued to say things and do things that made them feel uneasy. But I wouldn't even say Sanders is the biggest culprit.

Folks who voted for Sanders were insistent that there was no place in their movement for folks who didn't meet the purity tests. If you disagreed with Sanders on any one thing, you weren't a true liberal and were either a corporatist or a centrist and wanted poor people to die.

Like it or not, moderate Democrats form larger, broader coalitions because they get progressives to lament that "at least they are better than the other guy" and vote for them and they get the people who were left uneasy by the more progressive candidate in the primary. The only stories of real success by progressive candidates, like AOC and Ilhan Omar, are stories of success within an ultra-progressive district. Without a district that is packed with a lot of left-leaning voters (meaning you can lose some of those who feel put off by the more progressive ideas), it is difficult to win.

I think progressives can be successful at the national level. But they have to make inroads with key constituencies within the party AND attempt to make inroads with folks in the primary who voted against you. Sanders is savvy enough to know that is what he needed to do, at least on the latter point. The issue is that a lot of Sanders voters did not seem to understand this. They thought they could bully people into voting for Sanders by stating that other candidates were "obviously" awful and that Sanders was the only true liberal fighting for a just cause. Disagreement, especially within a primary, has to be handled properly. It hasn't been handled properly by Sanders folks for a while. Hopefully the next progressive candidate can acknowledge these mistakes and keep their supporters in line.

[Kirby101]

Right.

Because moderate Democrats never win elections and progressive Democrats always do.

Hillary, 3 million votes. minus voter suppression, Russians and Comey. But moderates don't win.

And why are Sanders supporters completely ignoring what he is now saying about Biden. I guess Sanders doesn't even meet their purity test anymore.