2020 US Election (Part Two)

Status
Not open for further replies.
barack Hussein Obama was awarded an Oscar Nobel for not being Dabya . He has been a disaster for Middle East , he might have done nothing or not much for the people who voted him in , but well , yes , he was not Dabya . Not being Trump is good enough , despite Biden will be so much annoyance in apperance and so helpful to the going on doom of my country , isn't something ?

edit: ı hate auto correction software everywhere and take the opportunity to fix it to ongoing doom of my country , isn't that something ?
 
Last edited:
I owe you a fuller response to this than I can probably dash off just now, but I would make a few notes.

1) The "they" you identify here absolutely does exist and absolutely does profit from the two parties existing in the way that they do. But I don't think that's Graeber's "they" in the video (I mean the actual referent of his pronoun).

2) I don't regard the parties-as-they-exist as an absolute given--just practically speaking the only mechanism by which any sort of change is likely to occur. So, one thinks about the Democratic party's hope to get single-payer health care. Not even a particularly progressive aim, but for the US, progressive. And one watches what Obama was able to achieve, and how even something so meager as a public option disappears if you lose even one vote, and for me, that's a marker of what a load left-leaning people have to move to get anything done. One doesn't even have to characterize the right as Nazis to see how hard a pull they exert against any meaningful reform.

Even as a centrist, I can see all of the goods that would come from a more authentic progressive movement. I just can't see it happening in the country in which I've lived out these fifty five years of my life.

So when a guy in a video who chooses to present himself amid all the trappings of that "mishmash of bureaucracy" he so derides (comfy sweater, comfy chair, stylish lamp) lectures me on how Obama stands for nothing, it just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe this guy has progressive bonafides (had); I suppose I could go look him up. But the video itself wasn't the trenchant critique of centrism that @Ironsided prepared me for. Hell, the average @Lexicus post on this site represents a more impressive critique of centrism.
I'm not optimistic that the most desirable progressive reforms are possible except through a painfully slow grind... one-step-forward, half-step-back process. Even without the legislative filibuster, and a majority in the Senate... you still have the reality that you're going to have Senators like Joe Manchin representing deep red states... If he supports the kind of amnesty bill I'd like to see, he's toast. If he supports the kind of environmental reforms I'd like to see he's toast. He voted against Impeachment for Kavanaugh's appointment for crissakes.

Then you have slime like Sleazeberman, who you referenced, that represent deep blue states and still manage to undermine progressive reforms... (ugh... it makes me sick to my stomach thinking about what he did :yuck:) but the point is from where I sit I don't think its reasonable to expect sweeping progressive reforms. First the Democrats would need to really secure a ton of political power, before any of the real reforms folks want can be accomplished. That means boring stuff like admitting new States to get new senators, restructuring the judiciary, eliminating the filibuster... and so on. I know stuff like GND is more exciting, but they just don't have the structure in place yet.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, the real extreme centrists are people who label themselves as 'Moderates'. Now those buttholes will insist on civil debate when people are dying outside.
Nah. I considered myself a "moderate" in the last election. I was tolerant of Trump, knowing he would likely be catastrophic, in the hopes that one of two scenarios would play out: either he would expose the darkness of the Democratic party, or he would expose the darkness of the Republican party. (I did not vote for either party, and lost a great deal of friends on both sides via my defenses of both of them.)

I ultimately got scenario two, with the bonus of the Democrats being effectively exonerated by Trump's inability to even lock up a single Clinton (never mind Obama or Biden). But I made a grievous miscalculation. I had hoped that this corruption, when laid bare, would actually impact the people responsible; unfortunately, it turns out that the people who speak loudest about truth, order, and integrity have no interest in any of these things unless such an interest can be militarized against their political enemies. This is obvious in retrospect, but I wanted desperately to believe in my country's right to exist in modern society.

I have thoroughly earned my lesson. The United States has no future, and will never have a future, for as long as Republicans continue to exist. We will continue falling behind virtually every developed country for the sake of recapturing the glory of the gilded age. Even if Biden wins, the fact that he isn't winning every state in the country proves a very important fact: Republicans do not care even remotely about truth, they do not care even remotely about morality, they do not care even remotely about justice, they do not care even remotely about integrity, and the only things they do care about are power and spite -- and they will do literally anything for them. Those who continue to stand with Trump cannot and will not be reasoned with under any circumstances, and there is no place for them in any society founded after 1945. They deserve only as much respect as they give to others, as they complain about "partisan media" while watching news that cannot go five minutes without attacking a political opponent.

The ACB nomination is the absolute final chance for Republicans to prove that they are anything other than a cult. If (when) she goes through, I will actively support any possible means of re-consolidating power toward Democrats. Pack the courts, pursue statehood for DC and territories, destroy gerrymandering and the filibuster, I don't care what it takes; the Republicans would have no right whatsoever to complain when they would stoop just as low. Biden won't do these because he has nowhere near the balls Trump claims he has, but he should.
 
McConnell torpedoes stimulus bill

Frankly, I doubt the Democrats at this point even want a stimulus bill to pass as it would give Trump another much needed victory so close to the election. He's already going to get Barrett on the Court no matter what. They probably figure that waiting another 2 weeks to pass any stimulus probably does more good than harm if it means getting Trump out of office.

For the life of me though, I can't see why the Republicans aren't caving to Democrats on stimulus as failing to do so is kneecapping Trump. The only possibility I can see is that they really have abandoned hope that he is going to win.

When Trump originally torpedoed stimulus I thought it was some hamfisted attempt at hardball, whereby he had a knee-jerk belief that he could use the stimulus the Democrats wanted as leverage to force the Barrett nomination through... But then his advisors probably told him that was stupid as failing to pass stimulus would hurt him way worse than Pelosi or the Democrats.
 
Last edited:
1) The "they" you identify here absolutely does exist and absolutely does profit from the two parties existing in the way that they do. But I don't think that's Graeber's "they" in the video (I mean the actual referent of his pronoun).

On the contrary, I'm sure Graeber is referring to something like "the capitalist class" in that video. See the next response for why.

So when a guy in a video who chooses to present himself amid all the trappings of that "mishmash of bureaucracy" he so derides (comfy sweater, comfy chair, stylish lamp) lectures me on how Obama stands for nothing, it just rubs me the wrong way. Maybe this guy has progressive bonafides (had); I suppose I could go look him up. But the video itself wasn't the trenchant critique of centrism that @Ironsided prepared me for. Hell, the average @Lexicus post on this site represents a more impressive critique of centrism.

Graeber had a long and fairly well-documented history of activism and his scholarship speaks for itself (he taught at the London School of Economics). Whatever impresses you about my posts ;), some of that is owed to what I've taken from my reading of Graeber's work.

just practically speaking the only mechanism by which any sort of change is likely to occur.

As to this, in my view electoral politics are really the tip of the iceberg. The right in this country understands that well - they've done their "long march through the institutions" (the most obvious, and currently relevant, example being the creation of the Federalist Society as part of a decades-long project to staff the judiciary branch with extreme right-wingers). They have also done their best to destroy whatever "left-wing" civil-society institutions they can find - particularly labor unions - and too often when doing that they have enjoyed the assistance, or at least indifference, of the Democrats, who - too often - have made the mistake of viewing labor as just another interest group rather than the superstructure of their electoral coalition.
 
You're right. I confused his Impeachment/Removal vote with his Kavanaugh vote, that's my bad. Thanks for the correction.
Your larger point stands. We can get as progressive legislation as we can get Manchin to vote for.
 
Your larger point stands. We can get as progressive legislation as we can get Manchin to vote for.
I corrected it anyway. But yes you're absolutely right, the herd is only as fast as the slowest buffalo.

Thinking about it... a Biden term is possibly the best time to get the boring, lower controversy, less splashy stuff done. Because that's the stuff he is more apt to cooperating with. Ban fracking? Yeah, no. He's not doing that :nope:... but admitting Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? Eh, maybe he would go along.
 
Last edited:
Thinking about it... a Biden term is possibly the best time to get the boring, lower controversy, less splashy stuff done. Because that's the stuff he is more apt to cooperating with. Ban fracking? Yeah, no. He's not doing that :nope:... but admitting Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands? Eh, maybe he would go along.

I'm glad you mention fracking, because it gives me a springboard to make the following point that you and Gori seem to have forgotten: however unyielding you think Manchin is, I can assure you that THERMODYNAMICS is even less willing to compromise.

If the herd can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, but lava is chasing the herd and moving faster than the slowest buffalo, then the whole herd is gonna get incinerated if it's unwilling to leave the slower buffalo behind. That's physics. Inevitable as the sunrise.
 
It's the one thing Trump has been upfront about. They have a plan, it's the best plan ever, and it is always going to be released in 2 weeks time
Tomorrow never comes.
I've been meaning to say something and these posts are as good a prompt as any. Starting about a week ago, any increase in the gap in polling is meaningless. Trump is looking like a loser and people aren't going to tell pollsters that they intend to vote for a loser (except the fanboys, of course).
Which doesn't mean that they won't vote for him anyway.
 
Which doesn't mean that they won't vote for him anyway.
They will. That's my whole point about trusting the polls from this point on. The national gap will be more like 11 than anything higher than that. Which is still huge.
 
If the herd can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo, but lava is chasing the herd and moving faster than the slowest buffalo, then the whole herd is gonna get incinerated if it's unwilling to leave the slower buffalo behind. That's physics. Inevitable as the sunrise.
Yes, that is what our poor politics is going to cost the planet and humanity. I'm painfully conscious of that fact.
 
The 2nd Presidential debate was supposed to be today the 15th, but it was cancelled.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/politics/second-presidential-debate-canceled/index.html


Steve Scully will be the debate moderator for the 2nd debate.

He interned for Joe Biden in 1978. :lol:
Steve Scully has been suspended indefinitely by C-Span!
https://apnews.com/article/virus-ou...y-scaramucci-4657ccd8f5e51d1ce113290b9304f9d5
NEW YORK (AP) — C-SPAN suspended its political editor Steve Scully indefinitely Thursday after he admitted to lying about his Twitter feed being hacked when he was confronted about a questionable exchange with former Trump aide Anthony Scaramucci.

The news came on the day of what was supposed to be a career highlight for the 30-year C-SPAN veteran. Scully was to moderate the second debate between President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, which was canceled after Trump would not agree to a virtual format because of his COVID-19 diagnosis.
 
Yeah, we couldn't have a moderator for a Trump debate who'd lied!
 
I'm also not sure what Biden-harming October surprise can yet rear its head. The Senate GOP already released their Hunter Biden report, and the best they could say what that Hunter's presence in Ukraine was awkward - but could find no evidence of wrongdoing.
There has been a bit of a blow up with the New York Post expose'.
https://nypost.com/2020/10/15/emails-reveal-how-hunter-biden-tried-to-cash-in-big-with-chinese-firm/
Steve Bannon, former adviser to President Trump, told The Post about the existence of the hard drive in late September and Giuliani provided The Post with a copy of it on Sunday.
October Surprise™ timing written all over it. :lol:

If the abandoned laptop story is true :rolleyes:, there is a crack cocaine sex tape + Hunter got paid huge $$$ for introductions to his father + the Biden family members had to kick back 50% of what they "earned" to daddy Joe Biden.

Pffft, no way is this a story.
They'd have to arrest 50% of Washington DC if they went after the Bidens for this activity.


Twitter went crazy banning the story! :eek:
https://www.theatlantic.com/technol...iden-story-conservative-bias-paranoia/616726/

Lots of people who shared it also had their account locked like the White House Press Secretary and the Trump Campaign I think.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, the real extreme centrists are people who label themselves as 'Moderates'. Now those buttholes will insist on civil debate when people are dying outside.

this but unironically
 
Are you trying to make some sort of point?

He thinks Joe Biden invaded Iraq, Libya, and Syria. In 2016, he seemed to believe that Hillary Clinton had invaded these countries. The fact that the US never invaded Libya or Syria and that George W Bush invaded Iraq seems to be lost on him.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom