SoTier Posted December 1, 2020 Posted December 1, 2020 2 hours ago, Iron Maiden said: I seriously wonder how any of my sane republican fellow Americans can still support Trump....You reach a point where the amount of ***** that needs to be swept under the rug outweighs the conviction of " following the party line "......He's not worth it...no single individual is....The GOP has to get as far away from Trumpism as possible.... Apparently Barr has had enough of Trump's bullcrap. 1
ComradeKayAdams Posted December 4, 2020 Posted December 4, 2020 On 12/1/2020 at 3:12 AM, Doc Brown said: That's part of it. Some candidates calling for slavery reparations, medicaid for illegal citizens, free college, complete college loan forgiveness, and the banning of ALL fracking should scare the hell out of people. Biden was the only one in the field who could win and it took a poorly handled pandemic optically by the Trump administration to make me realize that. I give credit to Clyburn, Obama, and the rest of the DNC players to go all in on Biden right before Super Tuesday to avoid Sanders becoming the nominee. Based on Biden's announced potential cabinet appointments so far, they are thankfully giving the finger to the socialist wing of the party. It looks like we can at least agree that slavery reparations and universal health care coverage for illegal immigrants are generally bad ideas. However, you seem to be intimating that these issues are the exclusive domain of scary socialists and not that of moderate Democrats. The reality is that none of the Democratic Party presidential candidates bothered to separate themselves from these ideas during the summer 2019 debates. Biden and Harris have the same official stance as Sanders does on slavery reparations: they only go so far as to support funding for studies on the idea. Also, both Biden and Harris support an expansion of the ACA to allow undocumented immigrants to buy into the system with the public option. We will mostly disagree on the subject of free college and student loan forgiveness, but the details and the nuances matter a great deal. I’d rather discuss these at a later time. This is an issue that lends itself well to political compromise. All fracking needs to be banned. Sorry. Please read (in scientific journals or related sources, preferably) about the environmental effects and about the science of methane emissions. My only concession is that of course it can’t realistically happen immediately, so a timeline for a gradual reduction within a decade or two needs to be articulated. See my response in the “California (again)” thread on fracking and on energy independence (page 94). Trump was a formidable political opponent before the pandemic struck. I seriously doubt Biden or any of the lame moderate Democrats could have beaten him without the help of COVID-19. Just my opinion: Tulsi was the strongest candidate for the general election and Bernie was a close second, on the (ok fine…admittedly unrealistic) condition that the mainstream media would have done their jobs and played a neutral role covering their campaigns…instead of actively undermining it on the DNC’s directives. Yes, between the DNC’s pre-Super Tuesday scheming and Joe Biden’s potential Cabinet appointments (Rahm Emanuel?! NEERA TANDEN?!?!), it is quite apparent that the Democratic Party leaders have given the progressives and socialists the middle finger. Are my fellow comrades paying attention?! I believe enough are, to the point that the Democratic Party now has a big problem on their hands and will rue the day that they extended that centrist finger to us in 2020. The more politically savvy progressives among us knew all along that Biden’s unity task forces were a complete farce. The Obama, Clyburn, Hillary, Biden, Harris, Pelosi, and Schumer types were never interested in mending relationships with us and in seeking genuine compromise for the good of the party and country. They should have always been looked at as our political enemies to be distrusted as much as the Republicans. This is fine with me! I CRAVE political drama. I’ve been looking forward to Act 2 of this magnificent play since March: Act 1: remove the Great Orange Menace…done! Act 2: intra-party warfare with centrist wing…beginning now but with no definitive end in sight. Whether progressives take over the Democratic Party or destroy it externally with third party pressure and what not, the focus needs to remain on putting neoliberalism six feet into the ground. I’m willing to tolerate Election Day defeats (Pyrrhic victories?) to the Republicans in 2022 and 2024 in order to achieve this goal. Why? Because from my political vantage point, not much separates moderate Dems and non-Trump Reps anyway. I’ve made my peace long ago with handing Biden and Harris their 4-year shovels to dig their own BLEEPING graves. Act 3: inter-party warfare with the economic libertarian Republicans…could be as early as November 2024 if progressives (AOC?) can successfully primary the heck out of Kamala. November 2028 is more realistic. I like the progressives’ electoral chances against conservatives later this decade, given the country’s demographic trends as well as the right wing’s spiraling downward trajectory into the miasma of conspiracy theories, pathological skepticism of experts and authority figures, myopic pursuits of selfishness, and outright hostility toward empathic dispositions. Act 4: celebrate our new European-style social democratic government with a totally AWESOME party. The details of Act 2 and Act 3 are open to intense debate. I already have the minutiae of Act 4 figured out inside my head, right on down to the outfit I intend to wear. PPP Community: “Oh, neat! Can you tell us more about your outfit plans, Kay?” Me: “Sure! I’m glad someone asked. So it will be a small variation of my Halloween costume this year, where I went as a more fashionable and secular version of Stephen King’s Carrie, but with all the accompanying social awkwardness and latent rage. The final look will include a red Herve Leger long sleeve off-shoulder bandage dress, Nemanti knee-highs, a red choker, ostentatious chandelier earrings, a classic film noir Veronica Lake peek-a-boo hair style with red highlights, my usual Audrey Hepburn doe-eyed makeup routine with pale foundation/red blush/cherry red lipstick, and lots of blood all over.” PPP Community: “Woah!!! Ms. Adamski! What a fun look! But what’s with you and the color red? Is that because you’re such a silly little Soviet-style commie? And by that time, shouldn’t you have washed off all the fake blood from the Halloween party?” Me: “Fake…yes…fake blood. Red is my color of choice because it is the color of revenge. It symbolizes the neoliberal blood that must be spilled this decade, trickling down into the streets, from Wall Street to Main Street, in much the same direction that their economic theory of lies promised the wealth would run. We will be drinking from the finest Charles Shaw bottles our canvassing volunteers can amass, though that red wine won’t be red wine. And who knows if any of the fallen’s names will include an actual Charles or a Shaw.” PPP Community: “WOW. Intense response, Kay. Very Glenn Close-like from Fatal Attraction, sans the animal abuse. You really need to move on from the results of the 2016+2020 Democratic primaries.” Me: “No.”
shoshin Posted December 4, 2020 Posted December 4, 2020 The best thing to come out of fracking is that the Pegulas outbid Trump.
Tiberius Posted December 4, 2020 Posted December 4, 2020 Add to list The refusal by Republicans to acknowledge President-elect Joe Biden’s election victory is remarkable in its contempt for democracy and defiance of reality. But while much time has been spent trying to get Republicans to admit that Biden won, very little time has been spent impressing upon them the magnitude of the victory. That matters as we begin Biden’s presidency. Biden not only received a majority of the popular vote, but also cleared 51 percent — the largest vote percentage obtained against an incumbent president since 1932 and a bigger percentage of the popular vote than any Republican president since George H.W. Bush in 1988, when Bush was essentially running for a third Ronald Reagan term. In the process, Biden amassed the largest total number of ballots in U.S. history. He pummeled Trump by more than 7 million votes (and exceeded Barack Obama’s 2008 vote total by more than 11 million). That margin is bigger than Massachusetts’ entire population; in fact, only 14 states have a population of more than 7 million. Biden’s popular vote margin by percentage (4.4 percent) far surpasses Obama’s 2012 victory over Mitt Romney. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/12/04/size-bidens-win-matters-it-is-huge/
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