Hey. Yeah. Sorry. When I hit reply on kbin it @‘s everyone above me in that comment all the way to the OP. I guess I didn’t realize it. When I responded to this just now I had to delete 2 or 3 other people.
What, afraid you might hear an opinion based in fact for once?
Sorry, that's rude. I'm sure it would conflict with your entire worldview and make you very uncomfortable. Naturally, that must be avoided at all costs, up to and including the cost of democracy being ripped from under your feet.
Typically you do a good, hearty round of invoking a french mechanism before continuing with anything major like that. Out of an abundance of caution.
These days, hard to say how you get yourself to a blank slate. The wealthy in this country are richer than any of the nobility our forefathers ever had to contend with.
He lost the Presidential election and thanks to the patriots and heroes both elected and civil servants this enemy of our republics plans to install his regime under his authority and total control was thwarted... if he would have won I 100% would have respected the result but he did not and will not again and thankfully no amount of confusing you and your fellow enemies of this union and what it stands for will get in the way... losers gonna lose buddy and lies are always exposed if you choose to keep believing its on you and if you get in the way of our families, communities and country you'll wind up in prison paying Trumps price for him.
...audio from Trump advisor, Steve Bannon, surfaced from October 31st, 2020, just a few days before the Presidential election.
Let's listen. [Begin Videotape]
STEVE BANNON: And what Trump's going to do is declare victory, right? He's going to declare victory, but that doesn't mean he's a winner. He's just gonna say he's a winner. The Democrats — more of our people vote early that count. Theirs vote in mail. And so they're going to have a natural disadvantage and Trump's going to take advantage — that's our strategy.
He's gonna declare himself a winner. So when you wake up Wednesday morning, it's going to be a firestorm. Also — also if Trump is — if Trump is losing by 10 or 11:00 at night, it's going to be even crazier. Because he's gonna sit right there and say they stole it. If Biden's wining, Trump is going to do some crazy shit.
Can you explain what she's done since she's been in office? All I see is her virtue signaling on social media. I wasn't a fan of her faked border pictures of her crying at a fence when it was proven there was nothing on the other side and she just did it for publicity. I've never seen her argue anything of actual substance and research beyond the usual Democratic dog whistles.
Please at least explain to me why you like her if you're gonna downvote me. Please be specific. Most people that like her just seem to like her because she's a Democrat but then she acts super sketch like when it came down to force the vote and her not voting in the direction that her supporters and constituents wanted. She just seems more like a typical neo-lib.
What is "virtue signaling" in this case? Proposing and advocating for progressive legislation? Refusing to vote on controversial policies that are endorsed by the party? Using her bully pulpit to try and push issues?
Voting no on the debt ceiling bill was not very "neoliberal". But I guess that "doesn't count" since it passed anyway?
Seems to me that "virtue signaling" is just a disingenuous way to discredit someone doing the job of being an elected legislator. Don't vote for her if you don't like her, but try to have an actual specific reason for it.
Virtue signaling as in, making sure people knows she's progressive by when it came to force the vote, when she needed to vote progressively, she didn't. She makes sure everyone is progressive but when it comes down to it, she's hasn't seemed to do much, but everyone calls her an all star because she says the words that progressives want to hear.
Also, some people just don't agree with her world view, which is perfectly fine. We are so astronomically in debt that simply saying you want to keep allowing spending of money we haven't had in decades feels very reckless, at least without the caveat that there needs to be serious cuts. The government is incredibly bloated and we are going to default hard at some point if we don't reign it in. There's nuance to be discussed here but I'm afraid kbin is gonna be just like Reddit where anyone that tries to open discussion or get answers will just be downvoted and hated on for simply not going with the site's progressive leaning.
I'm still waiting for someone to provide me more than just "she is fighting the corporate rot" when I haven't really actually seen any proof of that from her beyond just lots of talk and grandstanding on social media. That's the virtue signaling I'm referring to. And please don't do the "whataboutisms" with Republican members of congress because they certainly do it too and I'll call them out for it, but the current focus is on AOC.
Your take on the debt ceiling is at odds with history. When Democrats and Republicans pass bills that require spending, they are forcing the increase of the debt ceiling. This happened under Biden, Trump, Obama, Bush, everyone. If Washington politicians were serious about limiting the debt, they would have not passed all of these bills.
If you think that politicians should care about national debt, then you need to be calling on them to reduce spending in ordinary legislation, not on debt ceiling legislation.
That being said, I don't know where you're going to find the savings. What does the federal government spend a lot of its money on? Social security medicare, medicaid, and the military. Which of those do you want to cut?
It didn't bother you that she went to the border and took photos fake crying about immigrants that weren't actually there? It's super phony and it's exactly the kind of trash that fires up her base on social media. She's an instigator and has some super naive views about the economy and fiscal policies that sound nice in theory but wouldn't play out properly in practice because she doesn't seem to understand even simple math. You can't just keep promising people free money. Our country is already 10s of trillions in debt. It's my biggest issue with progressives... Endless ideas but no feasible way of paying for it. Look at the homeless problem in California. It spawned a multi-million dollar industry that only continues to survive as they get more funding that is overwhelmingly soaked up by the administration itself.
It's why people like me are resistant to progressive ideas they all sound nice on paper and the default is just "tax the rich" when in reality, you can't keep this kind of spending going even if you taxed the top 1% at 90%. The Covid stimulus cost taxpayers nearly 1 trillion dollars. That's a one-time payment and again, with money we don't have. Please make it make sense and not with idealistic hand waving and just insisting that richest people could (or would) be able to fix our gross debt and out of control spending. The bubble has to pop at some point. Republicans are just as much to blame for the debt. Trust me, I'm not Republican, I just can't stand the politicians that just call everyone else names and label them awful things for simply asking questions or having a different point of view.
Basically, if a progressive advocates for a policy position, that's virtue signaling and bad. If a rep doesn't have all the answers and hasn't already passed all the legislation they shouldn't be taken seriously. I guess you don't vote often.
So long as the GDP raises faster than the debt payments you can continue raising the debt infinitely. This isn't a radical Progressive Theory it's basic macroeconomics. I agree, it's a bubble that will eventually pop. The bubble called capitalism. When your entire economic system can only function on the principle of growth it cannot be maintained forever. So we better be preparing right now for what comes after capitalism. One of the best things we can do is invest now in building the things we need built to survive it, not just as a nation but as a planet. I bet you don't have any helpful ideas for that, though.
To be clear though, Republicans/conservatives are certainly not "just as much to blame". They're much much more responsible. They refuse to do the policies that are maintenance of society and instead push off those payments until there's an economic catastrophe that requires huge spending bills to address.
Go join Strong Towns. That's what it looks like when a conservative actually tries to solve problems around financial sustainability. They have the kind of answers you're looking for. The fact that most conservatives label that organization as far left really tells you the state of American conservatism in general though.
And next time you want to talk about how bad AOC is just keep the framing to how dangerous hero worship in general is. People aren't going to disagree with you there. Don't whip out all these disingenuous Reddit-style argument strategies. Say the thing you actually care about instead of making up bullshit.
AOC as the Democrat's candidate seems like a path to another Trump-type Republican in the White House. There must be few Democrats the Republicans would prefer to face in a national election.
It might not be inspiring, but for now I just want the Democrats to nominate moderate presidential candidates who will win. Even the worst Democrat is light years ahead of the best post-Trump Republican. There's too much at stake and the world literally might not survive the consequences of the next Trump or Trump-like presidency.
I think the point is that having a Democratic candidate that far to the left would push centrists towards voting for a Republican, and there are a fair few of them like Trump.
Did you not read what I wrote? I said that AOC as the Democratic candidate means the Republican candidate has a much clearer route to win - she's a candidate to appeal to the Democratic faithful, not one for the swing voters.
If Pence did in fact follow up at Trump's behest, he should also be charged. Even without the charges, this should disqualify him from running for President (though we know it won't).
14th Amendment Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
One could easily argue that an attempted coup qualifies as rebellion, or the January 6th insurrection, which qualifies all on its own.
If I had a nickel for every time our former president was caught trying to blackmail a sitting senior government official in a phone call, I'd have three nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird it happened three ti-- oh, who am I kidding, with this guy it's weird that every single phone call he made didn't involve him trying to blackmail someone in any way, shape, or form.
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