Today’s another big political day here in the US — lots of primaries, including some that look like they’ll be pretty close. So have a thread to talk politics. Feel free to keep discussing Der Trump in the Trump threads, or here, it’s all good. And feel free to discuss non-US politics here as well. But please, no one use the phrase “Feel the Bern.”
I like this little wrap-up Slate just did:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/03/15/brit_hume_and_joe_scarborough_don_t_like_hillary_s_face_voice.html
@weirdtreehugger
Ad hominem attack detected.
Damn, the US elections are a total car wreck. The Republican candidates are total loons (and what’s the scariest, Trump is “only” the loudest, not the worst of them), Clinton stumbled into the wrong party and I’m not really optimistic about Sanders’ chances, party-shenanigans or not). Am I ever happy not to carry a US passport in my pocket!! If I’d be a US citizen, I’d flip both off and go third party. The Democrats have to actually do something to deserve votes besides screaming about how bad the Republicans are (and don’t get me wrong, they ARE bad as they are now).
@weirwoodtreehugger
You’re so childish and mean, and I don’t really understand why. I really don’t like Clinton, like I didn’t like other Clinton and I don’t like Obama for reasons I’ve explained clearly multiple times, and you do nothing but tear me down and try to put words in my mouth.
I’m sick of every conversation about Clinton and Sanders being turned into one about whether people are unfair to Clinton. I just want to talk about who will be best for the country.
And I really have no use for radicals like you who look for people on your side who you can tear down instead of working together to fight the real enemy. Being accused by someone so petty, self-involved and myopic of being a “smug, condescending asshole” is… well, I guess it’s worth a chuckle, but it’s not worth wasting any more of my time on.
@hedin
Relax, s/he’s always like that. Take it with humor.
I’m not WWTH, but I’m imagining WWTH’s response to this and I’m already smiling.
http://i.imgur.com/Zqanexd.jpg
… On second thought, that projector might not be big enough.
POM,
Since I’m watching basketball, I give it an air ball gif
http://www.totalprosports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/free-throw-airball-terrible-basketball-shots.gif
2 things, this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3iBb1gvehI
And Second: I might upset some people here by saying this, but I don’t feel like I can trust Hilary Clinton because of several reasons. Her hawkishness on war, her cozying up to Wall Street even after the recession, she won’t reveal the contents of the speeches she gave to them. The Republicans beat the Benghazi thing like it were a dead horse and that can’t be blamed on her, but her god damn emails can be. Not having those on a secure server was a mistake.
That, and her camp is one of the dirtier campaigns out there. (Well, unless we look at the mudslinging from the remainder of the republican candidates like Trumpet and The Zodiac Killer) but they still play by incredibly dirty and dishonest “rules” (http://www.carlbeijer.com/2016/01/how-many-smears-on-sanders-supporters.html)
Just out of curiosity, what do you have in mind with this phrase? By which I mean, what actual policies of hers are you thinking about here?
I am a bit late to this open thread but I just needed to share these make up tips to make your face great again!
https://youtu.be/xDgy37kPOZ4
As a non American I don’t know how welcome my opinion might be but since foreign policy of one of the most powerful nations on earth impacts me and people I care a lot about, I guess I have a strong one. I don’t feel it’s my place to comment on cosmetic policy so I bow to greater knowledge on that one (@katz and others have made really good points about Clintons stance vs Sanders on this anyway)
I don’t understand how any of the candidates get called moderate or liberal, the meaning is different I guess as my own country was jointly founded by (and holds as a cultural hero) a man was a communist, a woman who helped run a military uprising and others.
I dislike all the republican candidates, trump in particular is as odious a politician as he was a person when I met him a few years ago. I dislike Clinton because of her foreign policy. It’s why I dislike Obama, disliked Bush, Clinton’s husband and basically all presidents you’ve had. I don’t like Clinton’s war record, and I can’t find it in myself to want someone that supports a country that commits genocide as a leader of one of the most powerful countries on earth. I dislike empires and imperialistic wars and establishments that take part in any of that, so really I have a deep abiding distrust of any person who wants to continue a foreign policy similar to the one that kept my own country captive for hundreds of years.
Ddog,
I think that American imperialism is bigger than the presidency. The military industrial complex is so powerful, I think it’s going to take a really big change in the attitudes of the American people. It’s really hard. I wish I knew what to do about it, but I don’t. Democrats are far less likely to take us into outright wars. But the drone warfare and the absurd number of military bases we have all over the world, I just don’t know.
@wwth
I think you got it spot on with the American imperialism thing. But there is another side to it which is whilst the US has many influence all over the world the general public also don’t know very much about the rest of the world. I know this is a stereotype but it supports the kind of ‘disconnection’ which allow people to support many foreign wars.
This is anecdotes but we had a riding crew of 8 people from US sailing with us last month. They wanted to talk alot about Obama but none of them knew how to correctly pronounce Colon which surprised me since the Us has so much influence in Panama.
Made me think that the US has all these countries that it influence but it goes mainly unnoticed by the general public.
Very true. How many Americans think that Africa is a monolithic place, not a large continent with dozens of countries? Or that Iranians are Arabs? It’s pretty damn depressing.
@weirwoodtreehugger
That’s a good point, I get scared by the tech humans keep producing because as history teaches humanity is never afraid to use devastating military force.
Democrats are definitely the better of the two, I just wish there was more than 2 choices. Wishful thinking I know. Even here in our recent election the votes where basically divided between two almost identical conservative parties even though there where so many options. We likened them to Mr Burns and Mr Burns in his fake moustache.
Edited to note that by conservative I mean by Irish terms, still rather left of what’s considered conservative elsewhere I think. Though the miserable gits still won’t even begin to talk about a referendum on repealing the 8th amendment, abortion rights. Sorry off topic but it’s very upsetting and really a major topic here considering 12 women a day travel to the UK for abortions, and there’s only like 4 million people on the island ?
Thanks, that’s a big thing that’s bothered me this election season. Like everyone else, I was really excited when Sanders announced he was running because I thought he’d move the conversation in a good direction. But the thing is…I don’t like the direction it’s gone.
I mean, sure, I like that we’re talking about tuition, I like that we’re talking about healthcare, but the social issues have completely dropped off the radar. We’re not talking about abortion. We’re not talking about equal pay. We’re not talking about racial justice. We’re not talking about gun control. And these things are really, really important to me! I want a candidate to finally take gender issues off the back burner and do something about them instead of just giving them lip service! I think this video is totally awesome!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xhjA0RmL8o
Instead, I’ve seen gendered dogwhistles becoming commonplace on the left. A lot of white guys shouting down women and black people and trying to invalidate their opinions. Wanting a female president used to be a progressive goal, but now feminists are expected to prove their cred through their willingness to vote against a female candidate and only consider their positions and not their gender. (Somehow Bernie supporters are never expected to prove that they’re not voting for him because he’s a man.) Who’s pushing the Overton Window on that one?
Not to say that Sanders is deliberately making all that happen or that Clinton would otherwise be talking about everything I want, but this is the direction it’s gone and I’m not happy about it.
@skiriki
Kitties? Congratulations!
Kitties make the world go ’round.
Man o man, they all just keep voting for Trump! I think maybe if every single other republican in the country wasn’t also running for president, somebody could beat him. If you add everybody else up, Trump has fewer delegates than “Not Trump.” I would suggest everybody but 2nd place drop out so “Not Trump” can win, but I really really don’t want evil Piers Morgan to win either. He’s also terrible.
On the democrat side:
I just don’t have enough palms to bury my face into.
Off-topic, but this is an open thread so I thought I may as well:
This is an extremely readable, simple treatment of how most people misunderstand economics. It introduces basic concepts and explains how macroeconomics is counterintuitive in some crucial ways, and how it matters.
It’s Keynesian, yes, but then I’m a Keynesian so I don’t see this as a failing.
@ katz
That was a really excellent blog. Especially good were the points about how Clinton is judged by her husband’s policies and actions, as if we were electing Bill Clinton again. On the right, there’s been a revival of “of course Bill cheated if he had to sleep with that” memes. As well as “if her husband can’t stand her, how can this country” ones. Both of which feed the narratives and double standards you mention in your blog.
@ NickNameNick
Congrats on the new job. I’ve been in a similar place to where you’ve been, so I hope things work out for you.
@ WWTH
You may like this op-ed from The Village Voice. It echoes some of what you’ve been talking about in these political discussions.
Speaking of ideological purity, if anyone here wants to see next level purity politics, there’s always the folks over at the World Socialist Website. They accuse Sanders of not being a genuine socialist. You see, he’s a “pseudo-left appendage” of the elites and he will “sheepdog” his supporters into supporting the Democrat establishment. Yes, that’s really the claim. The Huffington Post blogger writing about this also wrote a blog in support of Trump, calling Trump’s rise “exhilarating”, despite his “ignorance”. Why? For his use of Occupy Wall Street rhetoric. Again, not even joking.
@ a ridiculous comparison
“Ms. Clinton is a woman. We know. A qualified woman. We know. But if you want to make the case that there must absolutely be a woman in the presidency because of The Right Side of History (TM), I’ll make you the same argument for one Marine Le Pen in the French elections scheduled to happen next year.”
In addition to hugseverycat’s point, I want to add another reason to why this is a really bad comparison. I know the user is already banned for being a troll, but there’s so much wrong packed in here.
For those who don’t know, Marine Le Pen is the leader of France’s right-wing, ultra-nationalistic, xenophobic “Eurosceptic” Front National. She’s kind of like Ann Coulter, if Ann Coulter was 10 years younger, a daughter of Rush Limbaugh, and was serving in the House of Representatives. She got the job thanks to nepotism. The Front National doesn’t have much representation in France’s Parliament, but it does have seats in the European Parliament and in regional councils (somewhat akin to Congressional districts here in the US, although they’re regional governments and so not part of the federal government). She’s not a member of the French Parliament, but she is a member of the European one and serves as a Regional Councilor.
One could argue that Le Pen does not have a CV as impressive as Clinton’s. But surely the point of the comparison is to dismiss one woman’s qualifications by saying that one can find another qualified woman. One whose politics are anathema to regular commenters at WHTM. Notice how you really never see a man’s qualifications dismissed like that. Or so casually poo-poo’d by saying “A qualified woman. We know.” Well, if they’re a white man at least. Similar poo-pooing has been made about black people who voted for Obama but wouldn’t support Ben Carson. Representation matters, yeah. But so do policies and ideology. Arguably as much as representation.
It’s a strange absolutist stance to demand of Clinton supporters: will you vote for anyone with a vagina or not? If not then you’re a hypocrite, is the implication. It’s very similar to arguments defending another right-winger on the grounds that he’s a gay man. Therefore, to be truly progressive, you must support anything he says. Well, as has often been said on this site, including by David Futrelle himself: no, that’s not true. Supporting the empowerment of women, for example, does not mean agreeing with everything any woman says ever. You’d end up with a lot of contradictory stances then.
bluecat:
Yes! Carisma is quite a ballerina, both in skills (she can turn around in incredibly tight and precarious places) and in build.
Just to be sure, do check out Savannah Cat pics (crossbreeds between servals and domestic moggies), since they are way bigger.
A sign of what, I wish I knew! 😀
Freemage:
Oh yes, I know how the ownership flows for the Furrinati and I’m not gonna buck that trend, I know what’s good for me. (Purrs. Those sweet, sweet purrs are so good for me.)
Kat:
Thanks! And yes, yes they do. 🙂
They were quite a pain in the butt last night (or in this case, feet, as Didi once again got her foot-biting thing going), but I’m still gonna chalk it up to them getting familiar with the place and exploring everything. Locking them out of bedroom as a “punishment” seemed to take lots of wind out of their miscreant exploration and nomming.
About US politics:
I don’t get to vote (due to being a foreigner), yet the country is dunking it’s presidential rat race to my face, so I’m at least gonna voice my thoughts.
I dread about this development of things, because these days the wind blows from the west, and we’ve already seen in this dinky splat of a country we call Finland how things drift along with the wind.
Our right-wing (of extreme invisible-hand-of-the-market capitalism or racist variety — or both) is busy taking notes to see how to apply talking points and ideas. Nordic ideas of welfare are getting replaced by tough “bootstraps” ideas, which already have been proven not to work. Toxic memes of racist, classist, ablist and sexist variety make their way around, too — although “social justice warrior” doesn’t translate snappily to Finnish and actually looks laughably clunky, instantly revealing the dog whistle. There’s actual pressure to join NATO, which I do not want.
And now, Trumpnado. Holy shit, people. Just holy shit.
In other cat news:
My cat just fell asleep while cleaning his feet, so he’s hugging his leg with his tiny tongue sticking out. Feel free to use that mental image as brain bleach.
I spotted this in the comments of the articles posted here, and it’s kind of hilarious:
A few Bernie supporters on Gawker and Slate are claiming that the existence of the BernieBros is an anti-Bernie conspiracy. If I was a meaner person, I’d link them to an article about Bernie himself denouncing the BernieBros… Just so I could sit back and watch them say that Bernie is part of the anti-Bernie conspiracy. And then vanish in a puff of logic.
@sfhc
It might be the 4 hours sleep I got last night but that logic (as in their lack of it) is making my head go all fuzzy. You have logic puffed my brain ha