All purpose news and politics thread part VI: This Is Not The Time For Posing

[Revolutionary_Jack]

In Trump's latest video, he boasts about visiting patients at Walter Reed...

Which, working in a hospital setting myself, is f***ing stupid and evil if he isn't lying (which is a lesser evil). He's supposed to be quarantined. If he's telling the truth, he's spreading the virus all over the hospital, and not remaining quarantined in his own ward. Which would only be the latest way he's unnecessarily doing something for himself that risks getting our veterans killed.

I think his boast about visiting vets is a lie if for no other reason than that Trump is
a) lazy,
b) wouldn't like the energy and time investment needed to be interested in people other than himself, unless it benefits him personally.

Interesting thing about the language coming out of Walter Reed is how much spin is used to bury the lede.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHyG...ombergPolitics

According to Walter Reed, the lead doctor Brian Garibaldi (a legit competent doctor) when asked to clarify Trump being discharged from Monday he said, "If he shows signs of recovery, he can be dicharged Monday and," let me add emphasis here, "and continue the treatment at the White House". Now that has been spun by Conley and others in Trumpworld to mean that "Trump will be recovered and fully cured by tomorrow" but in fact Garibaldi said that the treatment will continue at the White House. So that means that the Walter Reed team are committing to releasing a patient with COVID without the same normal procedures other patients are doing, and that Trump back in WH while keep getting treatment there (there apparently is an ICU and decent facilities there to handle it), while using henchmen, minions and other spin procedures to make out like he's fully cured.

I just left a Facebook group that was about "Leftist, not Liberal". I left because it was more about bashing Liberals than defeating Republicans. I don't get this "Let it all burn if I can't have it 100% my way" mentality. Sort of, take their marbles and go home just to show you. Some of them would have you believe there is zero difference between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. I would vote Third party if such a party had a chance of winning but they have absolutely zero chance and I don't subscribe to the idea that less than I want equals no difference.

Agreed. That isn't to say that one shouldn't criticize Dems or Third Way Liberals. Bill Clinton absolutely was a bougie hack where Obama (and I expect Biden) were simply bougie. Clinton's administration was maybe a respite from Reagan and a lot of good happened on his watch but at the same time he went too far conceding to the right than he should have, whereas Obama's legacy seems far more substantial in comparison. If Biden wins, that would be the end of Bill Clinton's legacy because Biden's victory would be the victory of Obama's over Clinton's. In England, Tony Blair was terrible who betrayed his electorate and took the party way too far to the right. Right now social democracy is doing good in Taiwan and New Zealand.

And as far as I am concerned, Bernie Sanders achieved far more in his failed campaigns in the primaries than he would have had he gone on the ticket in the General, or even if he hypothetically won. In power, Sanders as president would never have been able to achieve the ambitious ideas he wanted without the Senate and the House on his side. He needed to either put people closer to him in the ruling parties or substantially move the party to the left to achieve that. Through his campaigning you have Ocasio-Cortez and other left-wing reps coming to power, and that's a start but he needs far more to put himself over. A failed Sanders presidency would have been a huge setback to the left (in the same way Carter's failed Presidency was a setback for the Dems) whereas two failed primaries, the second bigger and more successful than the first, actually has pushed the Dems to the left. When Obama said that Biden had the most progressive platform he wasn't kidding.

[GindyPosts]

I just left a Facebook group that was about "Leftist, not Liberal". I left because it was more about bashing Liberals than defeating Republicans. I don't get this "Let it all burn if I can't have it 100% my way" mentality. Sort of, take their marbles and go home just to show you. Some of them would have you believe there is zero difference between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. I would vote Third party if such a party had a chance of winning but they have absolutely zero chance and I don't subscribe to the idea that less than I want equals no difference.

Being liberal nowadays sucks. Conservatives always argue you're what's wrong with America 'cuz you're (supposedly) Godless, soulless, and want to tax and spend, while leftists think you're part of the problem because you don't hate the establishment enough. Nobody wants to hang out with you, and nobody wants to listen to your opinion as it's been firmly beaten into Joe Average from the right that "the liberal elite" have had their way for decades, despite conservatives being the ones who have played the long con.

Thing is... third parties have as much influence in national elections as vegans do ordering at an Outback Steakhouse. Leftists going and saying "everything sucks, just go for the anarchy option" doesn't solve anything, and instead puts us at risk for more chaos.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

Fair enough, I think some leftists can be too harsh on liberals sometimes, but I think a lot of liberals can be dismissive of leftists or take them for granted.

I think the biggest criticism of liberals and centrists, has been their inability to counter the excesses of the GOP. Obama talked about bi-partisanship with a party that has no interest in it, Biden should not do that and if he gets the house and Senate, ram through as much he can when he can. If the GOP get this third justice on the Supreme Court, Biden should just pack the court. He doesn't have to say that on the campaign trail, he should just do it if he wins, regardless of the howling the GOP will engage in if that happens. You cannot counter the GOP's hardball tactics by just being nice to them.

Agreed on this. The Dem center has taken too much for granted and Hilary's defeat, as disastrous and unnecessary as it was, probably did wake them out of that because here was an arch-pragmatist and realist lose an election that she should have won.

I will say, the BLM protests should continue even if Biden wins, they should continue until the protesters get some actual justice and change.

Agreed. I think protests movements should push the mainstream parties and keep them honest, and reel the center closer to the left.

[The Overlord]

Agreed on this. The Dem center has taken too much for granted and Hilary's defeat, as disastrous and unnecessary as it was, probably did wake them out of that because here was an arch-pragmatist and realist lose an election that she should have won.

You should look at the video I posted, its in an interesting examination of this issue.

I think there are different types of leftists, bomb-throwers who think working within the system is pointless and somewhat more pragmatic ones who want to work from within and from without the system. I listen to content from both but favor the later. The difference is, sometimes centrists seem to treat pragmatism as an end rather than a means, which is a mistake.

Agreed. I think protests movements should push the mainstream parties and keep them honest, and reel the center closer to the left.

I think having a more proactively left-wing party in the US would improve things, be it the Democrats or a third party that somehow managed to gain real power (unlikely given the current set up). The lack of a real left-wing party and the Clinton administration adopted a lot of the right's economic policies, allowed the GOP to go to the far right since the early 90s, IMO. The GOP has not been properly challenged in decades and a lot of their talking points have become ''common wisdom'' after the 80s, the GOP's supposed ''common-sense solutions'' need to challenged, right-wing economic policy has gotten a pass for a long time, IMO.

Maybe we should go back to the era of big government because small government seemed to do jack to stop this virus.

[numberthirty]

As far as transforming the Democratic party into a full left-wing party rather than the big tent center-left opposition it is, it's not something that can be done in a single or couple of election cycles and to be honest, I'm not sure it can be done with a two party system. Not that I recommend voting third party but the fact is until you transform the party system (which can only begin to be done by getting rid of "winner take all" voting systems in favor of ranked voting), it can't be done.

I am quite left of Biden but I am happy with Biden, a lot can be done with him in charge. On climate change above all, which he himself personally directed and oversaw funds going to green energy during Obama's turn when he ran the stimulus disbursal.

I never understood the logic among leftists, that you ultimately hate centrists and liberals more than the right wing. They are the real enemy, make no mistake. It's unfortunately easier for right wingers and conservatives to unite around the left than vice versa mostly because that the right is animated by an absence of belief in real ideology while the left, even the center-left and liberals are driven by ideologies. I don't buy this idea that Obama was some bougie hack. He was bougie undoubtedly, but he and his administration did act on real principles in a lot of ways. And there was real reforms or beginning of that at the time.

With friends that have actively worked for decades to facilitate an overall shift to "Actual Right Of Center...", who needs enemies?

Never mind centrist and liberal politicians who see office firstly as "Vocation..." If you don't see someone who is looking after their own interests first and being a public servant second as a clear issue, the obvious question would be "Why Not?..."

[zinderel]

As far as transforming the Democratic party into a full left-wing party rather than the big tent center-left opposition it is, it's not something that can be done in a single or couple of election cycles and to be honest, I'm not sure it can be done with a two party system. Not that I recommend voting third party but the fact is until you transform the party system (which can only begin to be done by getting rid of "winner take all" voting systems in favor of ranked voting), it can't be done.

I am quite left of Biden but I am happy with Biden, a lot can be done with him in charge. On climate change above all, which he himself personally directed and oversaw funds going to green energy during Obama's turn when he ran the stimulus disbursal.

I never understood the logic among leftists, that you ultimately hate centrists and liberals more than the right wing. They are the real enemy, make no mistake. It's unfortunately easier for right wingers and conservatives to unite around the left than vice versa mostly because that the right is animated by an absence of belief in real ideology while the left, even the center-left and liberals are driven by ideologies. I don't buy this idea that Obama was some bougie hack. He was bougie undoubtedly, but he and his administration did act on real principles in a lot of ways. And there was real reforms or beginning of that at the time.

Agreed. I’m pretty far left, and I am perfectly happy voting for the sane, non-megalomaniacal imbecile. He’s far from perfect, but he’s a baby step in the correct direction compared to the wild leap backwards of four more years under Putin’s Pocket Pu...ppet.

[zinderel]

Agreed on this. The Dem center has taken too much for granted and Hilary's defeat, as disastrous and unnecessary as it was, probably did wake them out of that because here was an arch-pragmatist and realist lose an election that she should have won.

Agreed. I think protests movements should push the mainstream parties and keep them honest, and reel the center closer to the left.

I bolded the part that I and my leftist friends have the biggest problem with when it comes to ‘centrists’ and ‘liberals’. The ‘liberals’ who clutch their pearls that people are being ‘mean’ to the Toxic Terror. The complacency of their bougie, comfortable, privilege allowing them to vote blue, but Complain about paying taxes and support ‘school choice’ because they don’t want their precious little Aschleighy or Bramndyn to go to a PUBLIC school with all the criminals...

Complacent, hypocritical ‘centrists’ are absolutely a problem, but not as big a problem as actual fascists and white nationalists gaining more power. Centrists and ‘liberals’ are not the enemy, and leftists treating them like they are ‘just as bad’ is a big part of what led to the CURRENT four year disaster presidency. I can only hope this election, people wise up.

But I won’t hold my breath.

[Mister Mets]

I just left a Facebook group that was about "Leftist, not Liberal". I left because it was more about bashing Liberals than defeating Republicans. I don't get this "Let it all burn if I can't have it 100% my way" mentality. Sort of, take their marbles and go home just to show you. Some of them would have you believe there is zero difference between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans. I would vote Third party if such a party had a chance of winning but they have absolutely zero chance and I don't subscribe to the idea that less than I want equals no difference.

A more progressive third party might not work out.

There is the problem of a split vote. As long as we have first past the post, a new party would typically help Republicans by splitting the left-wing vote. It's kinda like how the United Kingdom has Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Activists can also have more of an impact in primaries. 19,743,821 people voted third party for Ross Perot in 1992, and he got zero votes in the electoral college. Five million less people voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries and he's President.

Puff piece profile with usual hyperbole. Never heard of the Jacobin, and I doubt it speaks for the left. Certainly not for the Democratic Party.

But nice try mets. Can we talk about your Party's embrace of the Proud Boys and White Supremcy.

Never heard of it.

Well, a magazine article is the same as Qanon members of Congress, dontcha know.

It's interesting that you guys aren't familiar with Jacobin, as the only people participating in this forum would be those with a high level of knowledge about current events.

I suspect it's more about different priorities than anything else. I'm generally interested in political philosophy and long-term policy. Others might be more interested in headlines, the political figures they generally agree with, or congressional majorities. A third man might have an entirely different set of interests.

David Sirota, a former Sanders speechwriter/ senior advisor is now their Editor-in-Chief, so they're not nobodies. A magazine can be more important than individual members of Congress, by adding something new to policy discussions, and framing the intellectual debates, even for people who don't read it.

[The Overlord]

I bolded the part that I and my leftist friends have the biggest problem with when it comes to ‘centrists’ and ‘liberals’. The ‘liberals’ who clutch their pearls that people are being ‘mean’ to the Toxic Terror. The complacency of their bougie, comfortable, privilege allowing them to vote blue, but Complain about paying taxes and support ‘school choice’ because they don’t want their precious little Aschleighy or Bramndyn to go to a PUBLIC school with all the criminals...

Complacent, hypocritical ‘centrists’ are absolutely a problem, but not as big a problem as actual fascists and white nationalists gaining more power. Centrists and ‘liberals’ are not the enemy, and leftists treating them like they are ‘just as bad’ is a big part of what led to the CURRENT four year disaster presidency. I can only hope this election, people wise up.

But I won’t hold my breath.

I think treating Trump like a terror and threat to Democracy one moment and someone we have to send well wishes the next is a mixed message that is not helpful. Trump gave this virus to himself, I do not pity him and his crimes are unforgivable:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfT8w7fbizM

We shouldn't be nice to this fascist, he is our enemy and politics is not about being nice to a fascist, its about defeating him and achieving our policy goals, over their goals, because our goals are better then their goals.

[numberthirty]

...

It's interesting that you guys aren't familiar with Jacobin, as the only people participating in this forum would be those with a high level of knowledge about current events.

I suspect it's more about different priorities than anything else. I'm generally interested in political philosophy and long-term policy. Others might be more interested in headlines, the political figures they generally agree with, or congressional majorities. A third man might have an entirely different set of interests.

David Sirota, a former Sanders speechwriter/ senior advisor is now their Editor-in-Chief, so they're not nobodies. A magazine can be more important than individual members of Congress, by adding something new to policy discussions, and framing the intellectual debates, even for people who don't read it.

Sounded about right, to me.

Never mind not being familiar with the way some of the folks in that corner of things have been treated.

[Revolutionary_Jack]

It's interesting that you guys aren't familiar with Jacobin, as the only people participating in this forum would be those with a high level of knowledge about current events.

I suspect it's more about different priorities than anything else. I'm generally interested in political philosophy and long-term policy. Others might be more interested in headlines, the political figures they generally agree with, or congressional majorities. A third man might have an entirely different set of interests.

David Sirota, a former Sanders speechwriter/ senior advisor is now their Editor-in-Chief, so they're not nobodies. A magazine can be more important than individual members of Congress, by adding something new to policy discussions, and framing the intellectual debates, even for people who don't read it.

If you are interested in long-term policy and so on, the stuff you should be reading is "Lawyers, Guns and Money Blog" (https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/), "Crooked Timber" (https://crookedtimber.org/), as well as the now suspended The Realignment Project (https://realignmentproject.wordpress.com/) whose writers moved on to other stuff. Vox is a fairly centrist online website (founded by Matt Yglesias and Ezra Klein former centrist dems who supported the Iraq War but since moved left) but it's not too bad either.

Jacobin is a young person's trendy political online magazine, which tends to do a lot of interesting and quality interviews and some insightful stuff but it reports on happenings more than anticipates or proposes ways of action. World Socialist Website likewise do a lot of quality interviews (it's Art and Film section is quite good and informative especially for the interviews) and it's been pretty honorable about the virus and its outbreak and since it's all-against-all i.e. the ruling classes of all nations it avoids the Putin trap of Putin somehow being a foreign power left parties should be nice to, it's actually not a bad place to look at for unbiased foreign policy stuff. But it does no original reporting...stuff like the Panama Papers or Trump's tax returns, that wasn't broken by the WSWS, that was broken by mainstream press. IF Stone's Weekly was not only openly socialist but provided original reporting and broke stories. Stuff like Jacobin and WSWS unfortunately do not do that, at least not yet.

[GindyPosts]

Agreed on this. The Dem center has taken too much for granted and Hilary's defeat, as disastrous and unnecessary as it was, probably did wake them out of that because here was an arch-pragmatist and realist lose an election that she should have won.



Agreed. I think protests movements should push the mainstream parties and keep them honest, and reel the center closer to the left.

That's the thing; the Democratic Party has taken the left wing for granted, especially after Hillary. Picking Joe Biden was the safest choice this year, but it wasn't the choice most people had envisioned. Biden wasn't even the first candidate I supported this year. After all, I originally was for Beto O'Rourke, then quit on him since he was out of his element after his first debate, then went for Kamala Harris, then she quit, then thought about Pete Buttigieg for a hot moment before deciding on my better angels and settled on Bernie Sanders since the other options were a guy with some historical problems with minorities and women... and Tulsi Gabbard. And you know if I had to choose between Tulsi Gabbard and something else, I'm picking something else all the time.

Yet, I believe this is due to the Democrats buying into the Republican and conservative spin machine that if you're "liberal" or "progressive", you're a danger to society, that you're going to turn America into this dystopic wasteland that we have seen in Bolivia and Venezuela, in which those countries embraced a socialist government by abandoning everything that was in the past, including the safety nets the previous system had to prevent a total collapse. But only a small portion of Americans fully believe in socialist ideals, and of those, many believe in it thanks in large part due to unchecked capitalism and lack of government oversight. Regardless, this fear of association forces the party to move center, ostracizing the more left-wing members and forcing them to either compromise (which means you essentially invalidate your purpose as a left-wing politician), accept status as an oddity in the party (which results in less support financially), or drop out and go it alone as a third party member (where you can kiss your hopes of being on the national level goodbye).

It's a weird structure in America, where we always like to argue that it's "left" vs. "right", but in reality, it's "center" vs. "right", with "left" being forced to scavenge for the leftovers, and "center" having to play both offense and defense while "right" blames the "center" for everything the "left" is despite the actual "left" having no real say whatsoever.

[JCAll]

It's interesting that you guys aren't familiar with Jacobin, as the only people participating in this forum would be those with a high level of knowledge about current events.

I suspect it's more about different priorities than anything else. I'm generally interested in political philosophy and long-term policy. Others might be more interested in headlines, the political figures they generally agree with, or congressional majorities. A third man might have an entirely different set of interests.

David Sirota, a former Sanders speechwriter/ senior advisor is now their Editor-in-Chief, so they're not nobodies. A magazine can be more important than individual members of Congress, by adding something new to policy discussions, and framing the intellectual debates, even for people who don't read it.

I can't say I've heard of them either. Someone earlier said they had a subscriber count of 60K, that's not small but it's not exactly a household name.
Doesn't anyone know how many subscribers the CBR forum has? I'd love to know how we stack up.

[Reverse Happy]

I can't say I've heard of them either. Someone earlier said they had a subscriber count of 60K, that's not small but it's not exactly a household name.
Doesn't anyone know how many subscribers the CBR forum has? I'd love to know how we stack up.

FWIW, the bottom of the forum front page says "Members: 98,016"

[The no face guy]

It's interesting that you guys aren't familiar with Jacobin, as the only people participating in this forum would be those with a high level of knowledge about current events.

I don't think people on this forum who describe themselves as hardcore lefties are the types who are going to have the Jacobin magazine on there night table, and lay down and read Slavoj Zizek before going to bed....and I think your well aware of that