1. #23866
    Invincible Member numberthirty's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Powerboy View Post
    I was talking to a couple of Conservatives at work today. Note: Never get into politics at work though it didn't get bad or anything. But the gist was that Biden is an economic disaster, that trading is in the red across the board and that it's because of his environmental policies costing tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars.

    My counter was that not dealing with these environmental problems is already costing billions per year from increased natural disasters not even getting into the loss of life and that it's getting worse the more we pretend it isn't happening or that it will just go away of we ignore it. Also that not dealing with the reality of fossil fuels as a finite resource is going to be more costly in the long run.

    That's when someone pulled out their phone, quoted the thing about trade going red and said, "And that's not anecdotal evidence. It's factual."

    At that point, I knew it was pointless not that I didn't already know.

    P.S. Trump's grab 'em by the ***** was just locker room talk and every guy has done it. Yeah, maybe, at 12-18 years old or 22 if in college. How many people are still doing it at 70 with grown children and grand-children?
    When it comes to this...

    Democrats really do need to do a better job of getting out in front of that Republicans get an "Elevator Pitch..." out of it when it comes to why you shouldn't vote for Democrats.

    While Democrats have the right approach, they have the worst possible way of dealing with the issues that will come with that change.

  2. #23867
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    Quote Originally Posted by Gray Lensman View Post
    He was a wealthy person which by itself gives him outsized influence in the US. That would be enough to make him worthy of recruitment by the KGB, him running for office later is a bonus.
    At no point in his life was Trump close to being among the top wealthiest people in America. He had barely any influence in NYC (whose high society hated him). It's not like Trump was Ted Turner, or a Rockefeller. Trump would have been at best a minor asset, but the way the article frames it, i.e. a 40 year project to insert a Manchurian Candidate to the WH...that's just too goofy.

    Quote Originally Posted by TheDarman View Post
    But coming in with that swagger and lack of deference or civility is only going to allow them to blame you. And the only thing Democrats can say in response is, "Damn right we didn't reach out! [Expletive] you guys! We won!" Most voters, even Democrats, don't really want to see that you didn't even make a good faith attempt to reach out to the other side.
    Especially since Bernie Sanders himself would never be part of that. Sanders has always tried to reach out to people across the aisle, that's why he's an independent. He comes from Vermont, a small rural state that has weird politics and Sanders is on good terms with the Republican Governor Scott of that state. Even AOC has made attempts to reach across the aisle, strangely enough.

    It's not at all the case that Bernie Sanders is some hyper-partisan majoritarian or would act as such. He's introduced bills alongside John McCain and just before the Putsch, Sanders and Josh Hawley were involved in introducing regulation (when Hawley tried to make some right populist posture).

    Quote Originally Posted by TheDarman View Post
    Politics is almost as much about optics as results, much to my chagrin.
    You need both optics and results. Sometimes you have optics before results, and sometimes you have results before optics. Sometimes just optics. Other times, just results.

    If you are perceived as never reaching out to the other side, then you will lose in right-of-center districts and states. Just ask Obama after passing the ACA without a single Republican vote. And their salient arguments against the proposal were not "oh man, Democrats didn't go far enough". Their arguments were "Democrats succeeded in getting socialized health care passed and only we can stop him from going further--elect us!"

    Democrats got destroyed in 2010. And Sanders' argument, at least as you seemed to frame it ("we can't work with Republicans; let's just go directly to seeing what our caucus can pass"), seems to be going even further with the argument that got Democrats destroyed in 2010 (and was a salient argument against Biden and Democrats in key states in 2020).
    I disagree there. The problem with 2010 was that Obama's ACA got passed in a very compromised manner and what happened was that the manner in which it was executed prevented most Americans from seeing the results or understanding what the practical effect was. Nancy Pelosi's famous "let's pass the bill to find out what's in it" quote (people made fun of it, but she was quite right in terms of what the bill rollout actually entailed). The website crash at launch, I mean it's a minor thing but it symbolized the feelings people had towards it. It took several years for the ACA to have positive benefits, and ultimately be cherished enough that even Republicans didn't want to be cut off it (hence John McCain's famous Roman Emperor "thumbs down" to the Anti-Obama gladiators).

    The pol.sci. argument about social reform is that social benefits are controversial to implement politically but virtually impossible to delete once it takes root, that's why the Tories despite being anti-NHS (including Churchill, Thatcher) had to defend the NHS on taking power because once done it could not be undone. That's also why a lot of New Deal and Great Society stuff are still on the books. So Obama was gambling that the ACA would work that way...and it did, but not in the short term and not immediately, and not without the elbowgrease and propaganda that FDR and his Merry Men used to gin up the New Deal in the years before it took full effect. ACA is an example of "Results without Optics".

    If Obama and the Dems had been more aggressive and ambitious, if Obama had bailed out maybe 1 or 2 banks but threw some to the wolves...if he and the Dems had included the Public Option, and if they advertised that secret tax cut to the lower classes and middle classes, if they had been more confident...then they could have avoided the shellacking of 2010.m

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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    This article feels dubious to me.

    I don't buy the idea that the KGB is some all-powerful psychologically insightful organization who predicted somehow from 1977 that Trump would become president 40 years later. After all if they were, the USSR wouldn't have fallen, Chernobyl wouldn't have become public knowledge.

    Sure Trump visiting Moscow in 1987 during the Gorbachev years of Glasnost and Perestroika makes sense and they might have tried to inveigle Trump but it would be of the routine corruption and bribery level that exists in diplomacy in all times and all places. Barring special evidence, the best explanation for Trump being ********* by the Russians (and he is, that's for sure) is the one offered by NYT's Tax investigation where Trump after multiple bankruptices took a loan from Deutsche Bank which someone had to provide security for. Even then, I don't think it's a case that Putin backed Trump all along intending or expecting he'd win.

    I think the whole Trump thing and the 2016 intervention was a gamble on Putin's part and somehow he drew a inside straight in a manner even he might have been surprised by.
    They didn't have to, that's just an unexpected bonus.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    This article feels dubious to me.

    I don't buy the idea that the KGB is some all-powerful psychologically insightful organization who predicted somehow from 1977 that Trump would become president 40 years later. After all if they were, the USSR wouldn't have fallen, Chernobyl wouldn't have become public knowledge.

    Sure Trump visiting Moscow in 1987 during the Gorbachev years of Glasnost and Perestroika makes sense and they might have tried to inveigle Trump but it would be of the routine corruption and bribery level that exists in diplomacy in all times and all places. Barring special evidence, the best explanation for Trump being ********* by the Russians (and he is, that's for sure) is the one offered by NYT's Tax investigation where Trump after multiple bankruptices took a loan from Deutsche Bank which someone had to provide security for. Even then, I don't think it's a case that Putin backed Trump all along intending or expecting he'd win.

    I think the whole Trump thing and the 2016 intervention was a gamble on Putin's part and somehow he drew a inside straight in a manner even he might have been surprised by.
    Remarkably, we once again agree. Great Intelligence Victories are usually accidents. That doesn't mean Trump didn't get played like a Steinway by Putin, nor does it dismiss the prospects of Trump being a dupe. But this notion of some omniscient Russian puppet-master-machine positioning an agent is next door to QAnon logic. It's those of us screaming "how the ****?" assigning causation to correlation.

    Putin got lucky. Full Stop.

  5. #23870
    Put a smile on that face Immortal Weapon's Avatar
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    The ride never ends. Reddit is driving up the value of Dogecoin and Robinhood is putting restrictions on it's crypto business.

    https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/29/2...wallstreetbets

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    Quote Originally Posted by Tami View Post
    People who talk about the dangers of socialism in America, who accuse all Democrats of being dangerous socialists, make me think of Chicken Little on Steroids.

    It's more like they are running along the shore screaming "The Kaiju are coming!!" Meanwhile the winds are picking up and a hurricane is making landfall, and they are swept up into it.
    It also shows that people really weren't paying attention in their junior high and high school social science classes. There are like several orders of magnitude of difference between Bernie Sanders democratic socialism and Maoism/Stalinism.

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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    Remarkably, we once again agree. Great Intelligence Victories are usually accidents.
    The truly great intelligence victory is to pass your accidents like great intelligence victories. Espionage in actual fact is just hip posturing 95% of the time at least in the front-facing public aspects. The actual espionage stuff is just boring office-work, and boring field-work. The actual people risking their lives are utterly unglamorous types, usually local assets in other countries, who usually aren't entirely aware of the real worth and value of their missions, and they tend to be left holding the bag.

    One historian, J. Arch Getty, pointed out that when studying and talking about espionage and its role in the world, there's an entire level of assymetry at play. The world knows a great deal more about the KGB and the shenanigans it gets into than they do about the shenanigans of USA in other countries. Like who's to say, that the US government doesn't cultivate assets in other countries. Declassification of documents reveals some stuff but not a lot of stuff, since there's always elements that are redacted because it could affect current operations. It seems plausible for instance that Jeffrey Epstein was some kind of asset for someone, that the reason his human trafficking ring ran so long was that he was able to use his information and put it to work on behalf of government agents. (And as skeptical as I am of conspiracy theories, Epstein's death...that one I think was a case of the state muzzling an asset, though I am not going to be wasting time pondering it).

    That doesn't mean Trump didn't get played like a Steinway by Putin, nor does it dismiss the prospects of Trump being a dupe.
    Oh Trump absolutely is a dupe and is a Russian asset. That much is safe to assume. His foreign policy actions during his administration have strengthened Russia's position in the world at the expense of America's.

    But this notion of some omniscient Russian puppet-master-machine positioning an agent is next door to QAnon logic. It's those of us screaming "how the ****?" assigning causation to correlation.
    The Left has been guilt of conspiracy theorizing in the past (the entire "who killed JFK" hoopla is a good example, I've been to the Dealey Plaza, it wasn't an especially hard hit in a tiny cramped place like that, Oswald did it). Left-wing conspiracies in most occassions tend to be aimless and individually self-destructive (a ton of smart people have wasted their lives, careers, marriages on chasing "the truth") as opposed to socially destructive and volcanic like right-wing theories.
    Last edited by Revolutionary_Jack; 01-29-2021 at 06:09 PM.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Immortal Weapon View Post
    The ride never ends. Reddit is driving up the value of Dogecoin and Robinhood is putting restrictions on it's crypto business.

    https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/29/2...wallstreetbets
    Okay. Break out the clubs to pummel me. Maybe it is time to pump a few brakes.

    The insurgents made their point: companies with employees that people care about aren't just mathematical models to manipulate.

    At the same time, these hedge funds aren't just Billionaires-Sipping-Champagne-Off-Cannes. They're retirement funds for John-Qs.

    Now, we should have more secure instruments for people's old age (y'know, what social security was supposed to do?), but at this moment, we don't. So just how much chaos do we want to inflict on the system?

    And for those who will say "we should take the short-term pain to build a better system," how many futures are you willing to crush for the (maybe) betterment of the next generation?

    I honestly don't have a clear, best answer. I just think either side wanting an "I'm Right" answer is probably not helping.

  9. #23874
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    Quote Originally Posted by Revolutionary_Jack View Post
    At no point in his life was Trump close to being among the top wealthiest people in America. He had barely any influence in NYC (whose high society hated him). It's not like Trump was Ted Turner, or a Rockefeller. Trump would have been at best a minor asset, but the way the article frames it, i.e. a 40 year project to insert a Manchurian Candidate to the WH...that's just too goofy.
    He didn't have to be. Trump has lots of influence in America, he didn't have to be Ted Turner to be relevant to foreign spies. A 40 year old Russian asset, however, isn't. Spy agencies don't just have a single goal with assets and give up when things change, they evolve to get more juice out of their asset otherwise the asset becomes worthless to them long term.

    Especially since Bernie Sanders himself would never be part of that. Sanders has always tried to reach out to people across the aisle, that's why he's an independent. He comes from Vermont, a small rural state that has weird politics and Sanders is on good terms with the Republican Governor Scott of that state. Even AOC has made attempts to reach across the aisle, strangely enough.
    Except when he runs for president then this goes out the window and anyone not on Team Bernie is the enemy. Including Planned Parenthood, simply because they didn't endorse him. It's true Bernie has reached out to the Democrats but that's half the story not all of it. Remember in a tweet where he conflated both the GOP and Democratic establishments as the enemy he's running against?

    https://twitter.com/berniesanders/st...769664?lang=en

    I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us.
    A quote that's very Trump-like.

    AOC didn't start out like that, it took months for the other Democrats to not be afraid of her and her followers.

    It's not at all the case that Bernie Sanders is some hyper-partisan majoritarian or would act as such. He's introduced bills alongside John McCain and just before the Putsch, Sanders and Josh Hawley were involved in introducing regulation (when Hawley tried to make some right populist posture).
    That's not mutually exclusive. A politician doesn't have to be hyper partisan all the time to be hyper partisan.

    You need both optics and results. Sometimes you have optics before results, and sometimes you have results before optics. Sometimes just optics. Other times, just results.
    Bernie's really bad with optics, it appeals to his base who like how he "tells it like it is." It's why he does things like not being at the anniversary of Bloody Sunday when running for president.

    I disagree there. The problem with 2010 was that Obama's ACA got passed in a very compromised manner and what happened was that the manner in which it was executed prevented most Americans from seeing the results or understanding what the practical effect was. Nancy Pelosi's famous "let's pass the bill to find out what's in it" quote (people made fun of it, but she was quite right in terms of what the bill rollout actually entailed). The website crash at launch, I mean it's a minor thing but it symbolized the feelings people had towards it. It took several years for the ACA to have positive benefits, and ultimately be cherished enough that even Republicans didn't want to be cut off it (hence John McCain's famous Roman Emperor "thumbs down" to the Anti-Obama gladiators).
    The media and the GOP itself had a big role in making the public do this, something the Democrats have a blind spot for because they don't have large propaganda networks and a compromised education system.
    The pol.sci. argument about social reform is that social benefits are controversial to implement politically but virtually impossible to delete once it takes root, that's why the Tories despite being anti-NHS (including Churchill, Thatcher) had to defend the NHS on taking power because once done it could not be undone. That's also why a lot of New Deal and Great Society stuff are still on the books. So Obama was gambling that the ACA would work that way...and it did, but not in the short term and not immediately, and not without the elbowgrease and propaganda that FDR and his Merry Men used to gin up the New Deal in the years before it took full effect. ACA is an example of "Results without Optics". [/quote]

    Which Bernie wanted to scrap and start over with a partisan backing by Republicans for a bigger health care bill which was dead on arrival.

    If Obama and the Dems had been more aggressive and ambitious, if Obama had bailed out maybe 1 or 2 banks but threw some to the wolves...if he and the Dems had included the Public Option, and if they advertised that secret tax cut to the lower classes and middle classes, if they had been more confident...then they could have avoided the shellacking of 2010.m
    That's an incredibly big gamble for a president who inherited George Bush's economic disaster and an opposition who wanted him to lose before he was in the White House. Who do you think is going to get the blame if that fails? It'd also give the GOP more ammunition to run against the Democrats. The ACA originally had the Public Option in the House, the Senate threw that out.

  10. #23875
    Old school comic book fan WestPhillyPunisher's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by DrNewGod View Post
    Remarkably, we once again agree. Great Intelligence Victories are usually accidents. That doesn't mean Trump didn't get played like a Steinway by Putin, nor does it dismiss the prospects of Trump being a dupe. But this notion of some omniscient Russian puppet-master-machine positioning an agent is next door to QAnon logic. It's those of us screaming "how the ****?" assigning causation to correlation.

    Putin got lucky. Full Stop.
    DING DING! Exactly that. Bad Vlad was like the middle class nobody from North Dakota who struck it rich on a Powerball ticket he bought on his lunch break, never expecting to become a millionaire. While Putin has Bond level super villain cred, he's not omniscient, like the rest of us, he had NO idea Trump would win the presidency.
    Avatar: Here's to the late, great Steve Dillon. Best. Punisher. Artist. EVER!

  11. #23876
    Horrific Experiment JCAll's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by rogersmcfeely View Post
    It also shows that people really weren't paying attention in their junior high and high school social science classes. There are like several orders of magnitude of difference between Bernie Sanders democratic socialism and Maoism/Stalinism.
    We didn't even have social science classes like that.

  12. #23877
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    Quote Originally Posted by JCAll View Post
    We didn't even have social science classes like that.
    I think we had "Social Studies" classes when I was back in school (in the 1970s), but I can't remember how much time was specifically spent on civics and things like that. It may have been more mixed in to U.S. History when we dealt with that (whichever grades those were).

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    Quote Originally Posted by Steel Inquisitor View Post
    He didn't have to be. Trump has lots of influence in America,
    Not in 1987 he didn't. In fact not until 2016 either. Until Trump ran for President and won, he wasn't a super influential guy.

    Except when he runs for president then this goes out the window and anyone not on Team Bernie is the enemy.
    Political campaigns are about talking a big game, governing is about playing the big game.



    Campaign Obama was not the same as Pres-Elect Obama, which is why so many on the left still feel look at Obama as a bitter s--ty ex-boyfriend. Rest assured, had it come to pass, Pres-Elect Bernie would strike a different pose.

    The media and the GOP itself had a big role in making the public do this, something the Democrats have a blind spot for because they don't have large propaganda networks and a compromised education system.
    As far as the media goes, there's the fact that Obama had an alternative to Fox and mainstream news in terms of the internet activist setup he had built that propelled him to power. On taking office, he basically shuttered it at the command of the DNC, and shut out the activist set that brought him to office, underrating the strength and persistence of that energy as an ally and partner in government.
    https://newrepublic.com/article/1402...sroots-machine
    https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...mocratic-party

    AOC and others have long seen Obama's mistake of basically breaking up the activist wing as ceding battle ground to the Tea Party and ultimately Trump and others. He won the Social Media game but rather than keep it going and use it as his very own "Fireside Chats" he decided on appeasing the GOP and center to be "presidential" rather than actually using his bully pulpit. It was a weird kind of abdication. FDR absolutely would have used social media to talk up the benefits of the New Deal and Social Security had he had it. He used radio in a similar way.

    That's an incredibly big gamble for a president who inherited George Bush's economic disaster and an opposition who wanted him to lose before he was in the White House.
    A bad economy was the hand that FDR got dealt to him by Hoover, and he used that to gamble big and put in real social programs that despite controversy and pushback became bonanza for the Dems in midterms and beyond. Look...obviously hindsight is what it is. And it's easy to talk about what could have been now than in the moment. I get all that, but there were still actionable decisions made by Obama and the Dems, and Senate Dems, that can be taken to task and held to the world for all to see and ponder and shake their heads.

  14. #23879
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    "I love mankind...it's people I can't stand!!"

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    That's just asking for the baby Trump blimps to never go out of style.

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