One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
I said "He", not "She".
Warren? oh I see,October, 15,Elizabeth Warren swears off major donations from Facebook
----...And she wants the other Democrats to do so as well
Elizabeth Warren’s presidential campaign announced on Tuesday that it will no longer take large donations from executives working at big tech companies like Facebook and Google.
In a Medium post, Warren pledged to refuse any contributions totaling over $200 from executives of big tech companies, banks, private equity firms, and hedge funds. More specifically, her new contribution rules apply to Alphabet, Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Lyft, and Uber, among others. Personal donations are capped at $2,800 when contributing to individual campaigns.
According to The Wall Street Journal, this policy applies to past contributions as well. The campaign will compare the names of individual contributors with leadership teams listed on corporate websites.
For Republicans, the revenge is a dish best served cold Joe Biden Could Be Impeached Over Ukraine If He Wins: GOP ...
Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
Charles Péguy
Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
Thomas Piketty
One thing is for certain: the more profoundly baffled you have been in your life, the more open your mind becomes to new ideas.
-Neil deGrasse Tyson
Let's think the unthinkable, let's do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.
The assertion was that the DNC should have embraced Sanders to pull him to the center, and presumably, to capitalize on his populist support base. If Sanders had any interest in being the center of the Democrat party, he wouldn’t have spent his career explicitly distinguishing himself from the Democrat party.
There are umpteen ways in which Trump is the polar opposite of the principles the GOP claims to uphold. From the cynical standpoint of political calculus, however, he delivers. That is part of the reason why the GOP slavishly defends him, even while he treats them like a battered wife, to the point where they wouldn’t even entertain the pretense of having witnesses at the impeachment trial, mostly to avoid his wrath. The other reason is, by the same token, that they can’t afford not to protect him, because he is the party now. Hence the tail wagging the dog. Piss him off, and you get primaried, because Trump enjoys increasingly loyal support from a shrinking Republican base. Nobody liked Bush, everybody liked Obama, so rather than move away from their more unpopular policies and rebrand, the GOP went full tard to survive.Contrary to popular belief, Trump has consistently appeased the Republican establishment on policy. Cutting taxes, deregulating the market, attempting to reverse the ACA, appointing con. judges, increasing defense spending, ending the Iran deal, opposing abortion (even if he can't do anything about it), opposing addition federal firearms restrictions, limiting certain entitlements, not bending to climate activism and restricting immigration are all exactly what I'd expect from a Republican president. Off the top of my head, the only area where he's successfully deviated from the default is on renegotiating NAFTA and US-China trading relations and cancelling TPP. He tried to avoid direct involvement against Assad and failed. He tried to withdraw from Syria and was comprehensively slapped down by his neocon allies.
The Democratic Party, on the other hand, enjoys the majority of public support on key issues. Obama was one of the most popular presidents in modern history. Hillary won the popular vote. Where’s the payoff in embracing a guy who doesn’t even want to be in the party? Let Bernie take his supporters and run on the DSA ticket if he thinks his “grassroots campaign” doesn’t need the national infrastructure and credibility of the filthy corporate DNC. Only half of his supporters plan to support the nominee if he doesn’t win anyway.
Buttigieg has the closest thing to the usual standards of any supposed frontrunner other than Biden or Warren. Hence being third choice in a field of second choices in a world where an openly corrupt failson is POTUS. He has a better resume IMO than a Senator from Vermont whose primary qualifications are being ideologically consistent and surviving a heart attack. At a bare minimum, I’ll trust a scandal-free soldier who went to Harvard and Oxford on a merit scholarship to act in the best interests of the nation, more than I would either a career protestor, or the guy who spent the last 4 years telling us how much more he trusts a KGB officer than the people who dedicated their lives in service to the Republic.Being a junior military officer and mayor of a small town for a bit isn't "qualified" by the usual standards. Holding - or having held - senior political (Senator/Congressman/Governor) or military office(s) is the normal expectation.
....which, without the kind of leadership that lives in the nation’s past, is exactly what the country needs: a return to normalcy that lasts at least long enough for the extremists on either side of the aisle to politically starve absent the ability to feed off the other’s power or position in the public sphere.Buttigieg is the PR candidate: he's young, clean cut, ex-military, sans scandal, bland, talks exclusively in managerial rhetoric and ticks a diversity box. He's what you might call the Dem establishment's presidential window dressing. And, if his campaign is anything to go by, he'll almost certainly be Washington's yes-man if he wins the White House.
“Authenticity,” whether that means ideological purity, or the proverbial ability to “sit down and have a beer with someone,” exists only as far as political marketing and virtue signaling can take it. It’s an especially American fantasy born as a side effect of the belief in our unique and inherent virtue as a people.Authenticity is a key attribute of successful leadership because (for obvious reasons) it's an indicator of affinity and trustworthiness. Not that I've heard any Sanders' voters complaining about Buttigieg for being "boring" though. They just don't like his policies or his connections with corporate/billionaire donors.
Sanders supporters certainly don’t like Buttigieg for ideological reasons, like being “morally tainted” by corporate donations. Overturning Citizens United as part of campaign finance reform is at the core of the Democrat party platform at this point. If the reason that only 3% of Sander supporters name Buttigieg their second choice is because he supports transitioning to M4A via a public option, then they’re welcome to oppose something that enjoys the broader of public support.
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII
I find it quite ironic, how DNC in Iowa redistributed chunk of Sander's votes, just like he would with capital.
Latest news from Iowa: with 96% of the vote counted, Bernie Sanders is now only 0.1% behind Buttigieg in terms of the vote and tied for 11 delegates. The county that has yet to be fully accounted for has been reported as being strongly pro-Bernie, so he is most likely going to win Iowa days later. Putting conspiracy theories about the app failure designed by a shady company literally called "Shadow" aside, the whole point of winning Iowa is to gain media attention and a boost for one's campaign going into other states. The debacle in Iowa has certainly helped Buttigieg who statistically isn't favored in other states as he was the apparent winner for days. If Bernie actually is the winner here, he was kinda robbed of that early momentum. I won't say anything further without further evidence that something nefarious actually happened, although it certainly smells like it.
As for this conversation about the differences between Buttigieg and Sanders, the latter would almost certainly be considered the progressive candidate had he been running against Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primary, especially with his advocacy for the public option being included in the ACA that got canned thanks to Joe Lieberman's efforts in the Senate back in 2009-2010. However, while candidates like Warren and Steyer certainly advocate for progressive policies in tackling climate change, Sanders is clearly the most progressive in the field right now on big issues like healthcare. People in the US are finally waking up to the fact that Canadians and British people don't go bankrupt from medical bills, or pay 500 billion dollars for one goddamn ambulance ride to the hospital, sometimes even with insurance. Our healthcare system is a nightmare, even with "Obamacare" and that is a huge reason why Sanders is surging.
As for polling, the next state New Hampshire is clearly going to be won by Bernie as well: https://www.commondreams.org/news/20...-new-hampshire
Sanders having 32+ percent is enormous when the other second place tying candidates Biden and Warren only hover around 13+ percent, with Buttigieg and Klobuchar at 12+ percent. Certain media outlets can try to spin it as much as they like but a candidate who wins both Iowa and New Hampshire is usually unstoppable later on. In fact, historically, I don't think there has been a Democratic primary candidate who has lost overall after winning both Iowa and New Hampshire in these early rounds.
Haha, very funny. Yeah, I heard about that "correction" they had to make in Black Hawk County where oops! Some of Bernie's delegates "accidentally" went to Deval Patrick and Tom Steyer, but were fixed when the county released their own data ahead of the IDP. Funny how that happens!
As for Sanders redistributing capital, he basically wants to do that slightly more than present Democrats and Republicans but certainly far less so than a truly social democratic country like Sweden. Even Republicans "redistribute" wealth if you think about where our tax dollars are currently going and what they are funding. For instance, our military doesn't pay for itself. Although that would be cool if it actually did generate capital in a self-sustaining way somehow. Also, while they have tried several times to cut Social Security and Medicare for the elderly, even Republicans can't touch these time-honored golden gooses of the legislature, a legacy stretching back to FDR's New Deal. It's no wonder that "Medicare for All" as championed by Sanders is now supported by a clear majority of Americans: https://www.kff.org/health-reform/po...-january-2020/
Last edited by Roma_Victrix; February 06, 2020 at 08:46 AM.
You're right in that regard R_V. The Iowa thing is really just for national attention. It lets voters know who is hot at the moment and who isn't. Regardless of whether Sanders or Buttgieg wins, they both got what they wanted out of it. Buttgieg got the massive boost in publicity he wanted and Sanders has pretty much proven himself as a frontrunner, if not the frontrunner. I'm pretty sure he's going to end up being the Dem. nominee.
Patron: The Mighty Katsumoto
Sukiyama's Blog
Simple explanations of Austrian Economics POV on a number of issues.
Simplified Western Philosophy
Best of Thooorin, CS:GO Analyst and Historian.
Although SC could be a wild card. Will a tie in Iowa and a clear with NH be enough to convince the black vote that its Bernie's day, and that Biden's race has been run. Will it go to one of the moderates.Sanders having 32+ percent is enormous when the other second place tying candidates Biden and Warren only hover around 13+ percent, with Buttigieg and Klobuchar at 12+ percent. Certain media outlets can try to spin it as much as they like but a candidate who wins both Iowa and New Hampshire is usually unstoppable later on. In fact, historically, I don't think there has been a Democratic primary candidate who has lost overall after winning both Iowa and New Hampshire in these early rounds.
I think Bernie has the Left progressive side probably locked up. Biden poor showing means he is not the lead for the moderate/centrist wing but whom? I think Klobuchar has the problem of Hillery loosing and too many will shy away from a women. Pete is too small town and seems to easy to drop centrist drivel that sounds good not as bad as Biden but still annoying. Which god(or goddess or gods) I hope not Bloomberg to grasp that mantel if he spends enough. When you talk to dems the fear is electibilty. HC's lose I think dooms a women, and a lot people are going to be spooked by the fear of the power of the socialism tag - but at the same time loosing the Bernie bros on the far left if they are total dicks could be just as costly.
Last edited by conon394; February 06, 2020 at 11:49 AM.
IN PATROCINIVM SVB Dromikaites
'One day when I fly with my hands - up down the sky, like a bird'
But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place; some swearing, some crying for surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left.
Hyperides of Athens: We know, replied he, that Antipater is good, but we (the Demos of Athens) have no need of a master at present, even a good one.
Let's not exaggerate. Buttigieg is a good guy.
... and honesty, solidarity, endurance, generosity and friendship- four secrets of a long life.
...explicitly trying to change for the better the Democratic Party.Sadly, the opposite happens.The "Politburo" isn't happy: DNC members discuss rules change to stop Sanders The Politico
Read above, my friend.In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention. Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members...
-----
Anyway, Warren supports progressive policies. Hillary insists she is a progressive, now that's ironic.US election: Hillary Clinton insists she is a progressive - BBC ...
Good news
Indeed. For now... "...time advances.We decide if society advances with with". Right " https://twitter.com/i/status/1221968255184703489
Americans never cease to amaze me-in a positive way.
Steiner is a generous soul, I like him.while candidates like Warren and Steyer
---
While considering health care policies, healthcare- for those interested: Medscape Medical News-Medical Groups Criticize Trump Bid to Limit Federal Medicaid Funding
Spoiler Alert, click show to read:
Last edited by Ludicus; February 06, 2020 at 12:03 PM.
Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
Charles Péguy
Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
Thomas Piketty
Medicare as a public option is a better option in my opinion. It can be slowly expanded over the years. There's already a lot of data and a lot of reform we can do in regards to medicare, medicaid... It's just that touching either of those programs is a political risk. Medicare for all is a much bigger risk.
Patron: The Mighty Katsumoto
Sukiyama's Blog
Simple explanations of Austrian Economics POV on a number of issues.
Simplified Western Philosophy
Best of Thooorin, CS:GO Analyst and Historian.
Forgive me if I’m being ignorant, but would abolishing any private option not be step past what the UK for example has. Here you have the option of the NHS or going private.
Who wants to abolish all private healthcare?
Last edited by PointOfViewGun; February 06, 2020 at 01:03 PM.
The Armenian Issuehttp://www.twcenter.net/forums/group.php?groupid=1930
GTA 6 Thread
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?819300-GTA-6-Reveal-Trailer
"We're nice mainly because we're rich and comfortable."
“Yes, we should essentially eliminate private health insurance,” Sanders told The Post. “Private insurance as it exists today is nothing more than a confusing morass designed to make people jump through hoops before they can actually get the care they need.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graph...ate-insurance/No one has examined the full economic impact of such plans on jobs, wages, investors, doctors and hospitals — or the health insurance companies themselves. Such an undertaking would be difficult, given the vagueness of key parts of the proposals being discussed and the wide-ranging possible effects.
There are few international analogues to the Medicare for all proposals, but Canada, which provides similar doctor and hospital benefits for its residents, probably comes closest. Even there, people buy private insurance for benefits that are not covered by the government program, like prescription drugs and dental care.
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/23/h...e-sanders.htmlThe same has been true for over ten years. Obamacare was a compromise with the GOP against the public option. The idea of a public option may be ideological heresy for the Sanders wing, but the American people have been consistent, nonetheless.Though both proposed changes to the nation’s health care system have majority support, a public option that would compete with private health insurance plans continues to garner more support than the more sweeping change presented in a Medicare-for-all plan
https://www.kff.org/health-reform/po...-january-2020/
Originally Posted by 2009 Polls
Last edited by Lord Thesaurian; February 06, 2020 at 01:33 PM.
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII
Fresh news.The saga goes on.Tom Perez, a few minutes ago,
So, The Iowa Democratic Party responded, saying it is prepared if "any presidential campaign" makes a request.Enough is enough. In light of the problems that have emerged in the implementation of the delegate selection plan and in order to assure public confidence in the results, I am calling on the Iowa Democratic Party to immediately begin a recanvass.
-----
According to the Census Bureau, Income inequality in the U.S. is at an all-time high
The Rich Can't Get Richer Forever, Can They? | The New Yorker...The disparity grew despite a surging national economy that has seen low unemployment and more than 10 years of consecutive GDP growth.The most troubling thing about the new report, says William M. Rodgers III, a professor of public policy and chief economist at the Heldrich Center at Rutgers University, is that it "clearly illustrates the inability of the current economic expansion, the longest on record, to lessen inequality."
--
In 1831, Alexis de Tocqueville, at the age of twenty-five, was sent by France’s Ministry of Justice to study the American penal system. He spent ten months in the United States, dutifully visiting prisons and meeting hundreds of people, including President Andrew Jackson and his predecessor, John Quincy Adams. On his return to France, he wrote a book about his observations, “Democracy in America,” the first volume of which was published in 1835. Many of the observations have weathered well (he noted, for instance, how American individualism coexisted with conformism). Others have not. For example, Tocqueville, who was the youngest son of a count, was deeply impressed by how equal the economic conditions in the United States were.
It was, at the time, an accurate assessment. The United States was the world’s most egalitarian society. Wages in the young nation were higher than in Europe, and land in the West was abundant and cheap. There were rich people, but they weren’t super-rich, like European aristocrats.
The prevailing ideology of the country favored equality (though, to be sure, only for whites); Americans were proud that there was a relatively small gap between rich and poor. “Can any condition of society be more desirable than this?” Thomas Jefferson bragged to a friend.
Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
Charles Péguy
Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
Thomas Piketty
Did any bill Sanders proposed or the Medicare for All proposal of his campaign actually eliminate all private healthcare?
The Armenian Issuehttp://www.twcenter.net/forums/group.php?groupid=1930
GTA 6 Thread
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?819300-GTA-6-Reveal-Trailer
"We're nice mainly because we're rich and comfortable."
Absolutely not. Private healthcare insurances exist in Europe- and Canada.No one really wants to ban all private insurance. Not even Sanders
---
Meanwhile,Sanders declares "very strong victory". I quote,
Speaking in Manchester, New Hampshire, Sanders declared a "very strong victory" in the Iowa caucuses.
"Even though the vote tabulations have been extremely slow, we are now at a point with some 97 percent of the precincts reporting where our campaign is winning the popular initial vote by some 6,000 votes," Sanders said. "In other words, some 6,000 more Iowans came out on caucus night to support our candidacy than the candidacy of anyone else. And when 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in Northern New England call that a victory."
Sanders said he should have given this speech three days ago, but the Iowa Democratic Party failed to count the voters "in a timely fashion."
"That screwup has been extremely unfair to the people of Iowa," he said. "It has been unfair to the candidates, all of the candidates and all of their supporters."
Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
Charles Péguy
Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
Thomas Piketty
Originally Posted by Bernie Sanders
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII
So, even in that speech Sanders is pointing out that Medicare for All doesn't abolish all private healthcare. No one really wants to get rid of private healthcare in its entirety. As extreme as Sander's position may be, its a starting point for negotiations.
The Armenian Issuehttp://www.twcenter.net/forums/group.php?groupid=1930
GTA 6 Thread
https://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?819300-GTA-6-Reveal-Trailer
"We're nice mainly because we're rich and comfortable."
Breaking news. Trump supporters swarmed the Iowa caucus phone lines to delay the results
Lets hope it does not work again.
---
From my previous link,
In more detail,Understanding the Medicare For All Act of 2019 - PNHPSanders' plan may allow private insurers to cover things the government doesn't, but under Sanders' plan, the government would also cover a ton. "It would cover hospital visits, primary care, medical devices, lab services, maternity care, and prescription drugs as well as vision and dental benefits," Sarah Kliff pointed out at Vox. "The plan is significantly more generous than the single-payer plans run by America's peer countries. The Canadian health-care system, for example, does not cover vision or dental care, prescription drugs, rehabilitative services, or home health services."
In other words, while Sanders' plan doesn’t ban supplementary coverage from private insurers, it does offer such generous coverage by the government that there's not much room left for private coverage to fill any gaps. This is the logic upon which both conservative critics — and supposedly nonpartisan mainstream reporters and pundits — hang the logic that Sanders' plan would "ban" private coverage.
PERI economic analysis:
https://www.peri.umass.edu…
Download the PDF
Last edited by Ludicus; February 06, 2020 at 03:09 PM.
Il y a quelque chose de pire que d'avoir une âme perverse. C’est d'avoir une âme habituée
Charles Péguy
Every human society must justify its inequalities: reasons must be found because, without them, the whole political and social edifice is in danger of collapsing”.
Thomas Piketty
Sanders wants to end the use of private health insurance, except to cover non-essential care like cosmetic surgeries, with no premiums, no deductibles and no copays. There are few, if any, international equivalents to this. Under the NHS, my understanding is there are a range of copays for things like dental care, eye care, prescriptions, medical braces, etc. There is also a private health insurance market in the UK that is allowed to cover a wide range of things, not just cosmetic care. So, would M4A be a step past the UK system? In many ways, yes.
When factoring in tax increases and ending the use of private health insurance while allowing you to “keep your doctor” (Americans have heard that platitude before), KFF reports that support for M4A drops to an even split in support.
KFF polling finds more Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents would prefer voting for a candidate who wants to build on the ACA in order to expand coverage and reduce costs rather than replace the ACA with a national Medicare-for-all plan (Figure 12). Additionally, KFF polling has found broader public support for more incremental changes to expand the public health insurance program in this country including proposals that expand the role of public programs like Medicare and Medicaid (Figure 13). And while partisans are divided on a Medicare-for-all national health plan, there is robust support among Democrats, and even support among four in ten Republicans, for a government run health plan, sometimes called a public option (Figure 14).While there are numerous policy options available to finance the costs of Medicare for All, there does not appear to be any plausible path to finance it with tax increases on just wealthy individuals and businesses.
It is unlikely that policymakers could agree to enact anywhere close to $11 trillion in tax increases only on the wealthy and corporations, let alone the $30 trillion needed to fund Medicare for All. As a result, funding Medicare for All will almost certainly require broad-based taxes that apply to the middle class, either directly or indirectly (for example through an employer payroll tax or consumption tax).
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/would-med...class-tax-hike
Last edited by Lord Thesaurian; February 06, 2020 at 03:47 PM. Reason: Missed a word
Of these facts there cannot be any shadow of doubt: for instance, that civil society was renovated in every part by Christian institutions; that in the strength of that renewal the human race was lifted up to better things-nay, that it was brought back from death to life, and to so excellent a life that nothing more perfect had been known before, or will come to be known in the ages that have yet to be. - Pope Leo XIII