All purpose news and politics thread part v: The quickening

[numberthirty]

Are these applicable to the White House? Getting allies elected in Burlington is a different task than getting Senators elected in red (meaning conservative not socialist) states.

To put it simply...

We have a current status quo where Republicans version of negotiating on anything is "You Are Not Getting Anything You Want..."

Once you have factored that reality in, what Biden is talking about is just a straight up non-starter.

At least Sanders is saying something along the lines of "Looking At The Current Reality, I Have Accepted That I Will Probably Have To Apply A Different Strategy..."

As for your "Applicable..." question, versus what? The strategy that we know lost former President Obama Congress going into his second term?

A plan is better than "Let's Just Hope We Can Get The Other Side To Go Along With A Little More 'Center-Left' Version Of 'Business As Usual'..."

[Theleviathan]

Put simply, there can be more than one way by just taking a minute to acknowledge actual reality.

Biden's past accomplishments in a system that no longer exists are largely a non-issue because of the simple fact that it no longer exists. Unless you have some recent examples of notable change being made through the GOP deciding to compromise, Biden's accomplishments during a time when they would just amount to a relic or days long since past.

On the other hand, Sanders has a record of getting things done by using a strategy outside of what had been accepted up until that time. The "Past Reality..." that you mention is largely not worth even taking the time to consider because it no longer exists.

As for Tyson/Douglas(politely), you are getting the wrong thing out of it.

It is not "Sanders" versus "Biden".

It is "Biden" versus "Republican Nominee". The takeaway from "Tyson"/"Douglas" was that a lot of people lost their bets by placing them based on Tyson's record up until that fight.

The issue here is that we are already past the point in the fight where it was clear that the Mike Tyson with the record didn't show up to the fight that night, and folks are still placing bets on him instead of even second guessing the obvious reality that the guy whose record bets were based on is not in the ring.

You have moved the goal posts several times now. You made this about Biden and Sanders. I have continually met you on your terms, used your analogies, and applied your comparisons. Each time I effectively counterpoint you move the goalposts again. So....not really worth the effort to continue.

[Theleviathan]

Are these applicable to the White House? Getting allies elected in Burlington is a different task than getting Senators elected in red (meaning conservative not socialist) states.

Nor is fighting Burlington's city council in 1981 at all like 2020 Moscow Mitch. Apparently, we toss out all of Biden's work at a federal level a decade ago because it "no longer exists" but we have two links about what Bernie did in a podunk town 30 years ago. That record is totally applicable somehow.

[numberthirty]

You have moved the goal posts several times now. You made this about Biden and Sanders. I have continually met you on your terms, used your analogies, and applied your comparisons. Each time I effectively counterpoint you move the goalposts again. So....not really worth the effort to continue.

No one has moved anything.

Biden's main issue is the same as it always has been. He is essentially living in the past when it comes to how to get things done, and that many people seem to want to look at the past and go "Nope. I'm gonna just ignore everything that has obviously changed since Biden was in Congress, and believe that it will all work in a completely different lay of the land."

The idea that you can view that past as some sort of a record that applies to now was and remains nonsensical.

[numberthirty]

Nor is fighting Burlington's city council in 1981 at all like 2020 Moscow Mitch. Apparently, we toss out all of Biden's work at a federal level a decade ago because it "no longer exists" but we have two links about what Bernie did in a podunk town 30 years ago. That record is totally applicable somehow.

Versus Biden's record from that long ago in a present where it is essentially irrelevant?

Sander's strategy still could work.

Biden's accomplishments in Congress is something we know will not.

As for the "Federal..." level, see Congressional losses going into the second term.

[numberthirty]

Since my not having much use for most Democrats comes up from time to time, I'm just going to point this out...

Rep. Khanna saying some things that absolutely needed to be said -

https://twitter.com/RepRoKhanna/stat...84415136116737

While you are watching the video, take note who is sitting behind Khanna paying absolutely "Zero..." attention and playing with his phone like everything Khanna is saying is one big joke.

To me, I can't see not having a problem with that.

[numberthirty]

From the "Illinois" corner of the bigger impeachment picture...

https://www.dailyherald.com/news/201...on-impeachment

As House hearings close, Underwood still undecided on impeachment

They've also been hitting the local airwaves fairly hard with the "Call Lauren Underwood About Ending The Impeachment Farce..." commercials.

[Theleviathan]

No one has moved anything.

Biden's main issue is the same as it always has been. He is essentially living in the past when it comes to how to get things done, and that many people seem to want to look at the past and go "Nope. I'm gonna just ignore everything that has obviously changed since Biden was in Congress, and believe that it will all work in a completely different lay of the land."

The idea that you can view that past as some sort of a record that applies to now was and remains nonsensical.

You moved them yet again. I am not making any Biden arguments, as much as you want me to be.

I get you love Bernie. Irrationally so it appears.

[JackDaw]

The age of both Biden and Sanders would worry me intensely if ether became President. (But yes..I accept either would be an upgrade on the Lord Donald.)

Put it this way...I’m less old than both and almost certainly in better physical condition...but I know darn well I would struggle to do mentally taxing jobs I did 20 years ago. This “age is just a number” is pure and utter crap.

Certainly I’d be looking for clear evidence that they were still coming up with new ideas, and able to make decisions reasonably quickly in complex situations.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The age of both Biden and Sanders would worry me intensely if ether became President. (But yes..I accept either would be an upgrade on the Lord Donald.)

Put it this way...I’m less old than both and almost certainly in better physical condition...but I know darn well I would struggle to do mentally taxing jobs I did 20 years ago. This “age is just a number” is pure and utter crap.

Certainly I’d be looking for clear evidence that they were still coming up with new ideas, and able to make decisions reasonably quickly in complex situations.

I don't care about that because it's the whole reason we have a Vice President. I trust either of them far more than Buttegieg whose biggest accomplishment was being a Mayor of a small city (and he can't even get that right) who never won anything by more than an 8000 votes or Booker who is bought and payed for by special interests. People act like there aren't a million failsafes in place. The President literally gets to pick his immediate replacement, they have a cabinet full of accomplished policy makers that get to vote on their competence, and the Constitution has a succession plan that is incredibly elaborate and has never gotten beyond second level.

Also it's the President, you have no idea what is going to happen. JFK and Lincoln both got killed so their youth didn't matter much.

[jetengine]

I don't care about that because it's the whole reason we have a Vice President. I trust either of them far more than Buttegieg whose biggest accomplishment was being a Mayor of a small city (and he can't even get that right) who never won anything by more than an 8000 votes or Booker who is bought and payed for by special interests. People act like there aren't a million failsafes in place. The President literally gets to pick his immediate replacement, they have a cabinet full of accomplished policy makers that get to vote on their competence, and the Constitution has a succession plan that is incredibly elaborate and has never gotten beyond second level.

Also it's the President, you have no idea what is going to happen. JFK and Lincoln both got killed so their youth didn't matter much.

The attention is always on the main dude not the vice, you vote for the main guy. Its understandable people are uncomfortable with the idea of a dude who could be dead in a year teplaced by someone they dont know about

[Tami]

What Does Tucker Carlson Believe?

Three years later, Tucker Carlson Tonight is a massive success. According to Nielsen, the show averages 3.4 million viewers a night in its 8 p.m. time slot, more than its CNN and MSNBC counterparts—Anderson Cooper 360 and All In With Chris Hayes—combined. Carlson has distinguished himself from the rest of Fox’s prime-time lineup in large part for his willingness to denounce Republicans. He’s probed the destruction wrought by “vulture capitalism” in small towns and called Trump generally incapable of getting things done. He’s praised Elizabeth Warren’s economic policies as “pure, old-fashioned economics” that “make obvious sense.”

All of which could make Carlson singularly poised to rewrite conservatism, to cohere the populist tenor that continues to attract much of the electorate. And yet when we sat down for our interview, not half an hour after his standout segment on AEI, Carlson seemed to trade that appeal to nuance for something else. When I asked him how one could square segments such as the one I’d just watched with his comments last year, for example, that immigrants make America “dirtier,” he looked appalled that I might wonder whether one take was more sincere than the other. “I hate litter,” he said. For 35 years now, he said, he has fished in the Potomac River, and “it has gotten dirtier and dirtier and dirtier and dirtier. I go down there and that litter is left almost exclusively by immigrants, who I’m sure are good people, but nobody in our country—”

“Wait,” I said, cutting him off, “how do you know they’re—”

“Because I’m there,” he said. “I watch it.”

Which brings us to perhaps the most crucial metric of success for Carlson: how many people in Washington think he’s wrong. About what, it doesn’t matter, really. Just as long, he says, as whatever “costume” the Morning Joe folks are wearing—“fighting for private equity,” “making alarmed noises about Tehran,” believing “a woman’s right to choose is the bedrock of human freedom”—is the opposite of his own.

And maybe one day, he said as we wound down our interview, he’ll decide everything he’s saying in this moment is wrong. He’s certainly recanted his viewpoints before. “There’s no topic on which my views haven’t changed, because the country has changed so much,” he said. “And what I have learned is that a lot of the things I believed were totally wrong, a lot of the information that I was basing my opinions on was wrong, or dishonest, false, even fraudulent in some cases. A lot of the things conservatives were saying at one time have been completely disproven.”

But when it comes to the Tucker Carlson of the Trump era, don’t expect any sort of personal reckoning in the near future. “It’s very hard when you’re succeeding to see your own flaws. It’s very hard,” he said. “Because everything about the experience reinforces what you’re doing.

[Theleviathan]

What Does Tucker Carlson Believe?

In other words, he's an opportunistic fraud. Among many other adjectives.

[Tami]

In other words, he's an opportunistic fraud. Among many other adjectives.

Looks that way. Speaking of which...

The lies have it: Republicans abandon truth in Trump impeachment defence

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four,” George Orwell wrote in the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. “If that is granted, all else follows.”

The pro-Donald Trump industrial complex has not yet denied basic arithmetic. But as impeachment looms, his allies appear to be waging an increasingly frantic political and media counter-offensive that puts truth itself in the dock.

A bewildering array of fake news, warped facts and conspiracy theories have been propagated in the past week by conservative media, Republican politicians, White House officials and the president in his own defence. It is, commentators say, a concerted disinformation war, intended to crowd out damaging revelations as the House of Representatives prepares its ultimate sanction.

“The more facts come out, the more desperate they get,” said Kurt Bardella, a former spokesman and senior adviser on the House oversight committee. “They know in a debate centred on facts, truth and reality, they lose. Their only mechanism to survive is to muddy the waters, distort, distract and hope if they repeat lies often enough, they become real.”

Trump this week became the only fourth US president to face articles of impeachment. The two against him charge him with abuse of power by pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations that would boost his 2020 re-election campaign, and obstruction of Congress by ordering witnesses to defy subpoenas.

[KNIGHT OF THE LAKE]

The attention is always on the main dude not the vice, you vote for the main guy. Its understandable people are uncomfortable with the idea of a dude who could be dead in a year teplaced by someone they dont know about

No actually if you read a presidential ticket it's the President and Vice President candidates listed together. In nearly, every cycle the VP is scrutinized because of their role as the potential replacement. Debates are hosted with the VP candidates. Famous debates historically even. Even the logos they use feature both names prominently. "Obama/Biden" "Romney/Ryan", "Clinton/Gore. It's absolutely given an abundance of tension and you are in fact voting for the Vice President. Realistically a lot of people still thing Palin was one of the biggest reasons people went away from McCain and that Biden was a strategic move by Obama to make older white voters more comfortable with him. It's a big part of the equation.

It's protected in the constitution and it's a big part of the lection and what you vote for.

You're going far out of the way and dismissing alot of history and just what actually happens to make your point.