Shit! we forgot an election thread for the midterms. Here it is now.

[Elijin]

It always baffles me that conservatives have this hard on for low and mid income tiers to be super strictly taxed, yet dont give a flying fuck about how little the corporations and rich pay. On the surface it's easy to dismiss it as them being the rich, but the common conservatives are right there, dragging their fellow man down for a spiel some rich asshole convinced them was right.

 

[Hades]

Tucker Carlson posited some time ago that there may be no red wave.

Seems like even a broken, dog whistling clock is right once every decade.

 

[meiam]

Seems like even a broken, dog whistling clock is right once every decade.

I think its important to look at this realistically. The GOP showing was very weak when considered against historical sample (ie the oposition almost always does much better in the midterm), but they still will almost certainly regain the house and the senate will go down to the wire on a re run (where one of the candidate is, to put it mildly, not very bright, talking about candidate with brain damage, I don't doubt he's had quite a few commotion in his life) and may very well be flipped. And they still have complete control of the SC. While it wasn't a wave, the GOP may very well be in charge of most branch of government and will easily dictate the next two years.

The democrat will have to work very hard on making sure the public understand this, because otherwise they'll be blamed for the lack of any action in the next two year and could get quite the drumming in 2024.

 

[Baffle]

It always baffles me that conservatives have this hard on for low and mid income tiers to be super strictly taxed, yet dont give a flying fuck about how little the corporations and rich pay. On the surface it's easy to dismiss it as them being the rich, but the common conservatives are right there, dragging their fellow man down for a spiel some rich asshole convinced them was right.

They don't think of themselves as being in the same group as their fellow man. The only nice thing about The Current Times in the UK is people realising the gap between the haves (hads) and the have-nots isn't as big as they thought. Generating a bit of empathy.

 

[gorfias]

He was a better candidate than Oz, who's a moron.

Maybe (seems so. Who would you rather vote for? Someone so mentally impaired, or the guy that couldn't beat him). But I think we're speaking of different things when talking about candidate quality. I'm pretty sure Oz is capable of communicating his positions and why he is taking them. When in the debate Fetterman was asked why his stance on fracking changed from 2018 to now, his answer was non-responsive at best. More important questions will be directed to him when he actually is a sitting Senator. Do not expect transparency.

Seems like even a broken, dog whistling clock is right once every decade.

I am angry on behalf of Democrats when they support a thing and their leaders do not act upon them or worse, flip flop once elected. When asked now that they lost the 2016 election, do they see any need for change, Nancy Pelosi replied something to the effect that they need to stay true to their values. Generic pap.

For there to be real choice in elections, we have to expect better from our pols.

I think its important to look at this realistically. The GOP showing was very weak when considered against historical sample (ie the oposition almost always does much better in the midterm), but they still will almost certainly regain the house and the senate will go down to the wire on a re run (where one of the candidate is, to put it mildly, not very bright, talking about candidate with brain damage, I don't doubt he's had quite a few commotion in his life) and may very well be flipped. And they still have complete control of the SC. While it wasn't a wave, the GOP may very well be in charge of most branch of government and will easily dictate the next two years.

The democrat will have to work very hard on making sure the public understand this, because otherwise they'll be blamed for the lack of any action in the next two year and could get quite the drumming in 2024.

This election will be analysis fodder for years.
Things are going horribly wrong in the US at this time and yet, the most important thing going for Pols this time around has been incumbency. If you cannot "throw the bums out" when they're messing up this badly, does voting even matter anymore if they've built an insurmountable power base?

 

[Silvanus]

Maybe (seems so. Who would you rather vote for? Someone so mentally impaired, or the guy that couldn't beat him). But I think we're speaking of different things when talking about candidate quality. I'm pretty sure Oz is capable of communicating his positions and why he is taking them. When in the debate Fetterman was asked why his stance on fracking changed from 2018 to now, his answer was non-responsive at best. More important questions will be directed to him when he actually is a sitting Senator. Do not expect transparency.

What exactly is it that's leading you to that conclusion about "mental impairment", though? His domestic policy positions, for the most part, seem sensible and middle-of-the-road, and everything left-leading (medicare-for-all) is popular in the US.

If all you're talking about is vocal performance in a debate, then that's nothing.

 

[Buyetyen]

I'm pretty sure Oz is capable of communicating his positions and why he is taking them.

Then why didn't he?

 

[Schadrach]

“This is not the first time this has happened either.”

I'm curious now, is "this" a candidate being posthumously on the ballot or is "this" a candidate winning their election after being left on the ballot posthumously?

 

[Chimpzy]

I'm curious now, is "this" a candidate being posthumously on the ballot or is "this" a candidate winning their election after being left on the ballot posthumously?

Yes, on the former. I've found one other example of a posthumous candidate in a Pennsylvania election. A Natelie Gehosky running for mayor. Same law also applies to jailed candidates, apparently.

Jailed man, dead woman listed as candidates on Pennsylvania ballots

Two towns in Pennsylvania have unusual candidates running for mayor – one is in prison and another is dead.

www.wtvr.com

She lost that election tho

Election results for Cumberland County municipal races: Live updates

This list of candidates for county, township, and borough races in Cumberland County will be updated with vote totals Tuesday night as results become available.

www.pennlive.com

 

[Trunkage]

It always baffles me that conservatives have this hard on for low and mid income tiers to be super strictly taxed, yet dont give a flying fuck about how little the corporations and rich pay. On the surface it's easy to dismiss it as them being the rich, but the common conservatives are right there, dragging their fellow man down for a spiel some rich asshole convinced them was right.

Oh, that easy. Here's how they think:

Rich people drive the economy. Without them, everything falls apart. They should be the ONLY ones getting government benefits because they know how to use it

Poor people are wasteful which can clearly be proven by the fact they are poor. Giving government benefits to them is more wasteful than flushing money down the toilet

If you want to see a detailed analysis with charts backing this up, read the Bell Curve. (Note: this is a US conservative take. It is not universal.)

 

[gorfias]

What exactly is it that's leading you to that conclusion about "mental impairment", though? His domestic policy positions, for the most part, seem sensible and middle-of-the-road, and everything left-leading (medicare-for-all) is popular in the US.

If all you're talking about is vocal performance in a debate, then that's nothing.

Vocal performance? Even this guy can be understood even if having trouble picking his voice.


This guy?


His voice is fine. It is what he said that I have a problem with. Does he acknowledge that he used to oppose fracking in the face of solid video evidence of him stating his opposition? What is his current position? (He tells us he supports it, I got that) For a coherent, transparent, trustworthy response, he needed to acknowledge his former position and explain the shift. If he doesn't and cannot, is his current stance genuine? We don't know. And I think he cannot, physically, do this.

 

[tstorm823]

Not even sure how someone could possibly reach this conclusion, it's so outlandish.

The forests of the world are in significantly better shape than when burning them was our primary energy source. Engines largely replaced beasts of burden. We support exponentially more people in decreasing space needs because of infrastructure and technology built out of and using fossil fuels.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

You didn't answer the question: "You don't think you can corrupt people telling them to expect something for nothing?"

As for defining "fair" your question, a good one. I do not have a ready answer.

Until you can answer my question, there's no good answer for yours. If we never did anything that could corrupt people, we'd never do anything.

Oh, that easy. Here's how they think:

Rich people drive the economy. Without them, everything falls apart. They should be the ONLY ones getting government benefits because they know how to use it

Poor people are wasteful which can clearly be proven by the fact they are poor. Giving government benefits to them is more wasteful than flushing money down the toilet

If you want to see a detailed analysis with charts backing this up, read the Bell Curve. (Note: this is a US conservative take. It is not universal.)

This can be condensed down: Republicans think that the rich should have all the money, so that they'll give it to the truly deserving (Republicans).

 

[meiam]

I think republican are still in love with tax cut for rich because it was the last time they had an idea that sprta worked. After WW2 tax in the west were extremely high, lowering them had very strong short term positive effect (we can discuss the long term effect for decades, but short term it was pretty good). But since then, they haven't really come up with anything other than removing people rights and freedom. So that's all they got to do, because once they get in power they realize that sending morality police, a la Iran, is probably going to piss off everybody, including their support who don't quite realize how much they use the stuff/right they hate. So the only thing they can do is offer tax cut, like remember when Trump promise he had an amazing plan to replace obamacare and then once in power did jack shit. They're just bankrupt in the department.

 

[immortalfrieza]

It always baffles me that conservatives have this hard on for low and mid income tiers to be super strictly taxed, yet dont give a flying fuck about how little the corporations and rich pay. On the surface it's easy to dismiss it as them being the rich, but the common conservatives are right there, dragging their fellow man down for a spiel some rich asshole convinced them was right.

It's rather simple. It's because any and all politicians need to either be rich or supported by the rich to get into office and stay there. A massive part of any given election is decided by who has the most money to throw at making themselves look good and their opposition look bad, with the actual policies of the candidates being a very very VERY distant second.

In short, even the "common" conservatives if there actually is such a thing know which side their bread is buttered on.

 

[Silvanus]

His voice is fine. It is what he said that I have a problem with. Does he acknowledge that he used to oppose fracking in the face of solid video evidence of him stating his opposition? What is his current position? (He tells us he supports it, I got that) For a coherent, transparent, trustworthy response, he needed to acknowledge his former position and explain the shift. If he doesn't and cannot, is his current stance genuine? We don't know. And I think he cannot, physically, do this.

Right... but that's just a policy flip and then a typical politician's question-dodge. A bit embarrassing, but you can find stuff like that from almost every politician on the planet. It's completely typical, nothing extraordinary.

 

[Silvanus]

The forests of the world are in significantly better shape than when burning them was our primary energy source. Engines largely replaced beasts of burden. We support exponentially more people in decreasing space needs because of infrastructure and technology built out of and using fossil fuels.

So your hypothetical "end-of-nature" scenario is one in which we completely failed to adapt to these challenges in any other way, then. That's a very big stretch. It's not as if the alternative was "never develop other sources of energy"; the alternative was "develop sustainable, clean sources of energy; and maybe curb the rate of expansion to allow us to cope more slowly".

 

[Eacaraxe]

...in a growing economy and rising wages, which we did appear to get for the first time since 1970.

Lemme just take a spitball guess on that one...



Seems as if having a labor force not subject to the wiles of outsourcing and labor importation, coupled with hazard pay for "essential" workers, created a seller's market for labor for the first time since the 1970's in which wage growth could not be artificially suppressed by empoyers while sustaining operations.

 

[Trunkage]

Not even sure how someone could possibly reach this conclusion, it's so outlandish.

The coal people will point out that coal is energy dense compared to wood, which they assume is the default source of energy for power station

Couple of issues with this though.

People who think that wood is the only other source compared to coal just doesn't understand history or technology. It a false equivalency.

Coal fired power plants became popular in the 60s. That doesn't mean coal wasnt used, it just started to be factory farm like it is now. We had a variety of source beforehand and coal propoganda reduced these sources mainly to coal

The reason why we are having issue with power now is that most coal fired plants last 50 years. Both sides knew this, hence the decades long push for new power station. If they get new ones now, they get 50 extra years of profit. Renewable people wanted a transition, slowly turning off power plants as they declined. Coal people knew this and have deliberately been blocking things until its a crisis so a slow transition is impossible

Like Nuclear, Solar, Wind and Hydro were targets of 50s coal propoganda. And coal won. Nothing shows this more than when Reagan ripped solar panels off the White House after Carter left.

It's why everyone before Reagan seemed so pro-environment. Nixon doing the EPA wasnt wierd. It was the natural progression on BOTH sides of the isle

It's why batteries, nuclear or renewable technology was stunted for decades. Many government and companies deliberately work against it

Coal has always been an identity politics thing. For decades. There were other solutions than using wood from forest for mass energy before power plants were a thing. Pretending that wood is the only alternative is ridiculous. It's all propoganda

 

[bluegate]

The forests of the world are in significantly better shape than when burning them was our primary energy source. Engines largely replaced beasts of burden. We support exponentially more people in decreasing space needs because of infrastructure and technology built out of and using fossil fuels.

You remind me a bit of myself.... When I was a 12 year old dumb edgelord at the turn of the millennium.