Yet another slick, fraudulent neoliberal Dem

I had been ignoring the patently corporate campaign of nobody Pete Buttigieg - until I came across this definitive demolition of the man's fake persona. The article goes into immense detail, which I suppose is necessary to rebut the flood of corporate media puff pieces that are being cranked out.

For this small post (hardly an essay), I will snip a brief summary of PB (I already can't stand his barely pronouncable and vaguely humorous surname.) and a closing rant on why he should be flushed down the toilet of duopoly politics. If you want to know the details, the article is long and excellent.

Mayor Pete does not have an entirely different story than any other politician in our lifetime. He has the same story they all have. David Axelrod has gushed: “His story is an incredible story.” Is it? The son of two professors at an elite university goes on to several different elite universities, serves an uneventful seven-month tour of duty in the Navy, and then becomes the technocratic mayor of the city his parents’ university is in? Ilhan Omar has an entirely different story than any other politician. So does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. This man is the story of the American elite.

The myth-making here is going to be intense. The profiles are already streaming forth. The New York Times covered his wedding by wondering if Buttigieg would be president. You will be sold Buttigieg’s small-town milliennial neoliberalism the way they’re trying to sell you Beto O’Rourke’s skateboard neoliberalism. Hey kids, you like Medicare For All? So does this guy! But he’s young and from the Midwest and likes Hamilton! Bernie is old. You don’t need an old man. You need young hip progressivism.

Do not be deceived by this. Look into the actual records of these candidates. Get their shitty books and scrutinize them closely. A lot of money is going to be flowing toward tricks like this, as frantic Democratic elites try to push someone like Buttigieg in order to prevent a Sanders nomination. They know Buttigieg is one of them; they see “McKinsey” and realize they’ll come to no harm. But they hope you don’t see what they see.

- Nathan Robinson, All about Pete

The article closes with an awesome rant:

Why have I been so relentlessly negative? Because I see what this is, and I see how these things go, and we can’t afford to make this mistake again. No more Bright Young People with their beautiful families and flawless characters and elite educations and vacuous messages of uplift and togetherness. Give me fucked-up people with convictions and gusto. Give me real human beings, not CV-padding corporate zombies. If we are lucky, Buttigieg Fever will dissipate quickly when people realize this guy is the same rancid wine in a new wifi-enabled bottle.

As more and more young, stealth neoliberal candidates are funded and promoted, the game plan of TPTB is quite clear. Find someone, anyone to siphon enough votes away from Sanders to throw the contest to a second ballot where the superdelegates can pull the same shit as 2016.

Clearly, those people who still believe that American politics is anything more than Kabuki theater need to get behind Sanders (the only proven domestic progressive, the only progressive candidate with massive name recognition) and start stomping out these wildfires being set by TPTB arsonists.

And we are still two years out from the election. I think a secondary goal is to make Americans so sick of electoral politics that they find being dictated to a relief.

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There is almost zero chance that he'd be a progressive.

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arendt's picture

@gjohnsit

about 90 miles from downtown Chicago. With Notre Dame there, it is less of a hick town than most of Indiana.

But, in general, yes Indiana has always been a horribly rightwing bunch of mouthbreathers. That's where fundamentalist douchebag VP Pence is from.

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@arendt
I'm usually good with geography.

Nevertheless, if the media is pushing someone, then they suck until proven otherwise.

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@gjohnsit South Bend with North Bend, which is in southern Indiana.

As for RW Indiana, there was once Birch Bayh, who was anti-VN War and anti-EC, nearly getting his amendment to abolish it through congress in the early 70s (Sen Sam Ervin played a major role in blocking it). His son Evan, coming along in the sellout New Democrat era, was a pale centrist comparison with the father.

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gulfgal98's picture

@gjohnsit

if the media is pushing someone, then they suck until proven otherwise.
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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Lily O Lady's picture

@gulfgal98

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@arendt @arendt we’re not all deplorables here. Blum 3

...just mostly. Sigh.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

arendt's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

someone is always legitimately offended.

You have my condolences for being domiciled amongst that bunch.

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@arendt @arendt when I tell NeverTrumpers you really don’t want President Pence, I know what the hell I’m talking about. Not that they want to hear it or anything.

It’s not all terrible but living here has probably contributed to my political apathy as much as anything.

EDIT: to go back on topic, when Obama won Indiana, that confirmed everything I thought about him. The comparisons people are making of Mayor Pete to Obama are probably pretty apt because that’s the only kind of Democrat Indiana likes. (See also Evan Bayh, who I’m shocked they aren’t wheeling out yet again as a potential contender.)

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Lily O Lady's picture

@Dr. John Carpenter

look at Georgia Governor Kemp, who asked the legislature for heartbeat anti-abortion bill promising to sign it when passed.

Well, it passed and and is on its way to his desk. Once signed and in effect it will mean that as soon as a fetal heartbeat is detected an abortion would be illegal except in the case of the health of the mother. Demonstrations mean nothing because those in power don’t care. Some Hollywood personalities have said they wouldn’t work in Georgia, but as Gov. Kemp asked for the law I doubt it will matter.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

@Lily O Lady Governor Pence was heading in a similar direction. I think he got too distracted giving bakeries and pizza joints the right to legally discriminate against LGBT people to get around to it. But he did plenty of other nasty things and was definitely working on reshaping Indiana in the model of his narrow religious views.

There was a lot of debate locally about if we dodged a bullet when he was called up to the majors with most people correctly fearing he'd have a bigger platform now. I still see Trump as a bit of a stalking horse for Pence, but I guess time will tell.

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Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.

Agreed. The sooner we can ID all of the DNC hopier changier plants and call them out the better.

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@entrepreneur @entrepreneur So thanks for providing me with something tangible to base my opinion on. If they aren't Harvard elitist chosen by privilege to bamboozle the masses aka Obama, then they're billionaire CEOs with too much money buying influence into things they know nothing about aka Bill Gates. I'm sick of both.

My reaction to the boodle of bamboozlers running for office is that it is one big boondoggle. A second vote is exactly where they're headed while the splintered left does once again what it does so well. Fragment.

PS: Edited for politeness.

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"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon

arendt's picture

@dkmich

His angle is UBI, which as we know must be postponed until after we get control of our government back from the duopoly - else we will get the corporate/Randian version of UBI.

But Yang is also bizarre:

2020 Candidate Andrew Yang Takes a Stand Against … Circumcision

And, then he instantly had to walk it back.

This guy would get the gong on the Gong Show for a stunt like that. But in elections as entertainment land, it just gets Yang more eyeballs.

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lotlizard's picture

@arendt  
the slant taught in university ethnic studies programs … would lead to me automatically having to back Yang.

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders must mobilize to support their fellow AAPI, the way African Americans backed Obama!

(♫ Donovan song ♫) “I’m just mad for the Yang Gang … They’ll call it ‘Fellow Yellow’ (quite rightly) …”

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Bollox Ref's picture

long lost brother.

No thanks.

(The article is definitely worth the read.)

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Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.

arendt's picture

@Bollox Ref

The whole political system has been short-circuited by the ability of TPTB to put mountains of PR and spin in front of people with almost zero track record - who, surpirse, turn out to be more of the same neoliberal gang of looters.

We shouldn't be talking about maximum time in office (i.e., term limits). We should be talking about minimum time in office - so you can get the person on the record, see what he does instead of what he says. If America had that opportunity with Obama, they would have taken a pass. But, with Hillary as the Dem candidate, we would have had President McCain just as the financial crisis hit.

This all started when the rightwing started coaching potential SCOTUS nominees to have a vapid track record that couldn't be attacked in a confirmation hearing. Now that tactic has spread to politics in general. Find a nobody who will vote the way you want, and sell him like laundry detergent. Get the suckers to buy the package, and then be stuck with the contents.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@arendt
Reading articles about the guy and they were a reminder of the way Obama was foisted on us. Sooo complimentary and fawning. But if you scratch the surface, it’s The Empty Suit without the melanin.

This election is going to be a doozy.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

arendt's picture

@Amanda Matthews

LOL.

That's another version of what I heard about Beto-and-switch:

White Obama

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@Bollox Ref So like everyone else, when I first took notice of "Beto and Switcho" a few months ago, I couldn't help but note his startling resemblance to RFK. Then, with some free time on my hands and a mischievous idea in my head, I googled the guy and found some confirmatory information.

"Robert Francis" -- the two first names of RFK. Beto -- born in 1972, or 4 yrs after RFK's death. O'Rourke -- Irish family like RFK's. From TX -- home state of RFK's brother's despised VP Lyndon. Beto's wife's family connection to JFK admin (Navy Sec'y). Charisma like RFK. A Dem but not a straight-down-the-line liberal like RFK.

Hey, I can't prove it, but this Beto and Switcho guy sure seems a good exhibit for The Reincarnation of RFK. And if Bobby has reincarnated, where is his arch-nemesis Lyndon and who did he come back as? And who might be JFK?

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arendt's picture

@wokkamile

The Deep State has a deep bench. With money behind her, Tori Spelling (the ugliest actress I ever saw trying to pass herself off as good looking) became a star.

Its the same in politics, just look at Adam Schiff. Although, having good looks and charm is always a plus.

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Deja's picture

@arendt
My brother thinks Sandra Bernhard is the hottest thing since ghost peppers.

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arendt's picture

@Deja

You win the point.

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Centaurea's picture

@arendt Not just a lot of $$$ behind her. She's the daughter of Aaron Spelling, one of the most successful TV producers of the 1960s-90s. He gave her her first big acting gig, on his show Beverly Hills 90210. I always assumed that was the basis for her career: her dad. More "elite begets elite" at work.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

arendt's picture

@Centaurea

Yeah, Aaron - smarmy Love Boat producer.

My point was more about the elite than about money. Sorry for the confusion. Thanks for making the situation clear to others.

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SnappleBC's picture

That article was an excellent read. I've had many questions about "Mayor Pete" and my thoughts generally trend towards, "Sounds good at the high level but then so did Obama." This article was an informative read and presented a distinctly different viewpoint. I'm not sure I agree with all of it but I absolutely intend to track down each item (or as many as I think I need to anyway) and form definitive conclusions about them.

The fact that the takedown used Pete's own book as the primary source was brilliant.

Overall, on wealth inequality, I have the same metric as always. Is the person willing to name the problem or not? Sanders goes most of the way there with stuff like, "The business model of Wall Street is fraud." The next step, however, he doesn't want to portray quite so clearly (or at least I don't recall him doing so). That's the part where the criminals on Wall Street bribe the politicians. AOC did a nice takedown on that recently. Sanders is too much of a company man to just say flat out, "Yeah, DC is corrupt."

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

arendt's picture

@SnappleBC

I wholeheartedly endorse another snip from Robinson's article

let me be up front about my bias. I don’t trust former McKinsey consultants. I don’t trust military intelligence officers. And I don’t trust the type of people likely to appear on “40 under 40” lists, the valedictorian-to-Harvard-to-Rhodes-Scholarship types who populate the American elite. I don’t trust people who get flattering reams of newspaper profiles and are pitched as the Next Big Thing That You Must Pay Attention To, and I don’t trust wunderkinds who become successful too early. Why? Because I am somewhat cynical about the United States meritocracy. Few people amass these kind of résumés if they are the type to openly challenge authority. Noam Chomsky says that the factors predicting success in our “meritocracy” are a “combination of greed, cynicism, obsequiousness and subordination, lack of curiosity and independence of mind, [and] self-serving disregard for others.” So when journalists see “Harvard” and think “impressive,” I see it and think “uh-oh.”

An acquaintance of mine who went to Harvard described the place as (paraphrase)

Imagine the most out-for-number-one, pushy, arrogant, entitled guy in your high school class. Now collect 2000 of them from all over the country. That is one class at Harvard.

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gulfgal98's picture

@arendt is exactly what I had intended to highlight in a comment.

I am so damn sick and tired of our leaders coming from either Harvard or Yale that I could scream. These are elitist institutions grooming students into becoming elitist neoliberal leaders, whether it be in business or politics.

Neoliberals are taught and truly do believe that they are far better than the rest of us and that they deserve to be treated better and make more money simply based upon their educational credentials. Sadly many Americans also have that same belief which has been deeply ingrained in them under the guise of the great American dream.

Some time ago when I did my series of essays on neoliberalism, one of the most commented upon and the one I felt was the most important essay was the one on meritocracy. Please forgive me for being somewhat arrogant by quoting from that essay.

This belief in "meritocracy" forms the core basis for neo-liberalism. Meritocracy theoretically rewards individuals with power and wealth based upon their merit only while ignoring the structural reasons why some individuals can more easily succeed due to family wealth and / or connections. Such connections can result in legacy appointments to the right schools and family connections to facilitate success. The belief in meritocracy is widely accepted in the United States despite much evidence to the contrary.

The last thing this country needs right now is another neoliberal elitist being shoved down our throats.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

arendt's picture

@gulfgal98

I keep going back to descriptions of capital vs labor in the late 19th century, and they sound exactly the same as today's description of the 0.1%/1% vs the rest of us. Just substitute "The 1%" wherever you see "bourgeoisie" (an awful word, right down there with "entreprenuer").

The main characteristic of the bourgeoisie as a class was that it was a body of persons of power and influence, independent of the power and influence of traditional birth and status. To belong to it a a man had to be 'someone'; a person who counted as an individual, because of his wealth, his capacity to command other men, or otherwise to influence them...

- E. Hobsbawm, The Age of Capital

Neolibs want to destroy government (that is, those parts of government put in place in response to the ravages of unregulated monopoly capitalism) and let the rigged markets be the only law.

Of course, "free" markets are artificial and created by government laws. Neolibs do a great song and dance about how something like the World Bank or the IMF have nothing to do with government.

Anyway, I agree with you. Thanks for reading the article and finding the same worthy quote.

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lotlizard's picture

@SnappleBC  

too much of a company man to just say flat out, "Yeah, DC is corrupt."

(Note to German-speaking readers: “let alone” means “geschweige denn”)

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Big Al's picture

just like many like O'Rourke, Harris, Booker, Gabbard and Sanders. And they all think theirs is the best. I just saw an article the other day about ordinary americans gushing over O'Rourke, just like they did about Obama. One democrat's neoliberal is another democrat's, uh, bestest democratic politician ever. At the end they'll all come together and sing kumbaya and vote for their party's representative to see if they can beat Trump and the republicans. See, I just saved a year and a half.

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WaterLily's picture

@Big Al

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@Big Al
Then they will sabotage the campaign. Earnest young men will go on TV and say their party made a mistake. they will enlist some neolib to run as a third party candidate because "Sanders is a Socialist so it's all a Putin Plot."

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

from an obviously positive piece and I was guardedly impressed.
Three things come to mind. First, his 1000 homes in 1000 days thing. What the Robinson article doesn't mention is that when people came to lament that the fines were too great and even prevented them from making the necessary repairs he offered grants to cover the costs. (but) Second, his criticism of Chelsea Manning might have come from his being an intelligence officer. He might just be someone who has been in a culture that universally condemned Manning and where any defense of Manning would be heretical. I have a good friend who has a similar hole in his game; I am not quick to condemn. And third, support for abolishing the Electoral College is partisan pandering. I've said this before, but the 2000 election was not a flaw in the Electoral College, it was outright, simple theft. Gore won Florida. Cathleen Harris stole the election and the Supreme Court enforced her treason. Period. And the Electoral Collage gave did what it was designed to do - save us from Hillary, a special interest candidate able to convince a numerical majority to vote against the collective good. Trump is our fault.
But back to Buttigieg. I don't think that he will be another Obama, his record (such as it is) is that if approached he actually does listen, if not to empathize at least to make adjustments for the sake of avoiding criticism. He looks more like later Jerry Brown, disappointing, but generally more positive than negative. Or perhaps Gavin Newsome, a "lightweight prettyboy" who experience (or an awareness of which way the wind is blowing) has led him to surprising positives. In any event he looks like the future, we better figure out how to deal with him.

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On to Biden since 1973

@doh1304 more voters prefer the D, yet by an EC quirk, Donald again is awarded the victory, would that show any flaw in the system for you? 23 million?

And did the EC do "what it was designed to do" and prevent us from Trump? Do these supposed wise men and women ever meet to discuss/reconsider their votes? Never to my knowledge.

I think, rather, it was mainly designed to keep the smaller-states on board with ratifying the Con, by giving them extra clout in determining who would become president.

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SnappleBC's picture

@wokkamile

I see the electoral college as protecting the views of the rural population. I don't generally agree with those views but then again, I don't much agree with the views of the urban population either. Still, I don't see much purpose in allowing LA to crush smalltown USA.

For me personally, I am WAY more interested in the fact that our voting systems are rigged every which way from Sunday than I am in the electoral college.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

@SnappleBC that small-town fiction immortalized by Norman Rockwell and Frank Capra. Charming ideal. I'm more interested in counting the votes of people, regardless of where they live, not so much in counting cows or chickens or giving excessive weight to those artificial constructs known as states.

The EC is an important reason our system is broken, but not the only one. There are definitely reforms to undertake in the areas of protecting and ensuring the right to vote. Voter suppression by the Rs and election fraud in the electronic manipulation of vote tallies are hugely important to address.

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Deja's picture

@wokkamile
Do you have some badass urban farm that feeds you and all the other uber special, important city people? Where does your transportation fuel come from? Heating fuel? Asking for a friend, of course. [Re: Ah the sacred rural population . . . counting chickens and cows.]

Same friend wonders if you think the Republicans were responsible for wiping thousands off the rolls just prior to the 2016 primaries? Also, what about those lopsided, then cancelled exit polls? Republicans again?

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@Deja farmers, including the agribusiness ones, and the few rural inhabitants nearby extra voting privileges because of that? People that serve in the military and in the police forces do important work in protecting the country and our citizens -- should we not treat them similarly and give them extra voting rights? How about doctors and nurses? Let's go through the list of occupations and rank them from most important on down and make some of them super-citizens deserving of more voting clout.

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Amanda Matthews's picture

@wokkamile
get a chance to participate in the fucking elections. You apparently don’t think we deserve that.

What if I said you urban dwellers shouldn’t be allowed to participate because you always end up voting for bro-liberal trash like Clinton?

Because that’s what it comes down to.

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I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa

k9disc's picture

Let’s say the goal is to pick the best shade of Blue.

You’re suggesting that the wavelength sort has failed. And that the wavelength sorter is a problem. But you are doing so because the final results are not correct. “They are not even Blue!”

But you miss the fact that it is the color chooser, the initial sort, or the initial color filter that has failed and is the critical problem. In the initial sort no blue was allowed. Just like in the initial political sort, no empathy, community, or humanity are allowed into the calculus: “Who pays whom?” and “What are the costs?” “Does this maximize profits (and GDP)?” is the extent of our initial political sort.

If no Blue is allowed in the initial sort, then you can’t sort the Blues, regardless of how you sort the wavelengths. You could do it with all the flexibility of the naked eye and human brain and still not be able to chooe a shade of Blue from the initial sort. No humanity, community, or empathy can be spat out of the color sorter because none of it went in.

That the sorter says that green is more blue than yellow is irrelevant trivia. If we want shades of Blue we have to choose, initially, from shades of blue.

The electoral college is so far down the flow chart that it’s effects on the results of races is negligible, to claim them to be a significant problem with US politics is a trivial assertion with little institutional validity. 


Also, I find your perspective on rural America to be fairly myopic and condescending. A little bit of empathy and imagination goes a long way towards understanding. The same can be done to Citiots:

Ah the sacred city dwelling population
@SnappleBC that big town fiction immortalized by global multimedia conglomerates. Smasing ideal!

I'm more interested in counting the votes of people, regardless of where they live, not so much in counting money, stocks or bonds, or giving excessive weight to those artificial constructs known as bank accounts.

It's very easy to make a caricature out of people and ideas, but you cannot communicate and have positive social interactions using caricatures as message.

Best of luck.
@wokkamile

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

@k9disc It was just my pushback against the overvaluation and sentimentalizing of the rural population that currently prevails. Last I checked, the smaller population states representing large geographical areas of many small towns are given more representation in congress, and thus in the EC, and so it might be said that the rurals currently lord it over the urbans in our political system. Are you OK with that unfair situation?

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k9disc's picture

But it's absurd on it's face. Resources and control over resources is how interpersonal power operates.

You suggest that poor rural people are keeping you down and in control of the levers of government. It's completely absurd and should not, at all be taken seriously; any more seriously than those uppity black/immigrant people stealing our freedom and taking away our rights. They are reflections of one another.

And the order of operations argument is still on the table...

The Tyranny of the Rural Poor is not a serious political argument IMO. Seems like a divide and conquer tactic.
@wokkamile

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“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” ~ Sun Tzu

arendt's picture

@k9disc

political operation.

Everyone knows that, because of two senators per state, something like 16% of the population has veto power over everyone else. And, TPTB realize that those rural states (like Wyoming - home of Dick Cheney) already lean highly conservative. They have made it a point to control those states.

So, TPTB make sure there is always plenty of money for rightwing politicos in those key states. Lotta conserva-Dems there too, so even if the label is blue, the vote is red. These states also get more money from the Feds than they give - and TPTB let them know its the conservatives that are delivering that money in the form of military bases, etc.

Bottom line: "rural poor" is a meaningless label; but there is a sophisticated scheme to control those votes.

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@arendt
rule than I am about the EC.

I'm not sure I agree with abolishing the Senate, as some do, but I would consider a weighting system where states receive 1, 2 or 3 Senators, depending on population. The low-pop states would still have disproportionate pull, but it wouldn't be nearly so egregious. (It's worth noting that the 10 lowest pop states are not all particularly rural or "conservative". Consider: Delaware, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine.) The problem though is that you then have 15 million republicans in California who rightly point out that they are not represented in the Senate because of the winner-take-all nature of such elections. So maybe you also have to switch to proportional representation. It would be a complex formula, for sure.

If Jeff Bezos really wanted to effect political change, he'd set up Amazon call centers and distribution warehouses in Wyoming, Montana and the Dakotas, and then offer to relocate jobseekers from Chicago and Detroit. Those 4 states own 8% of the Senate, with 1% of the population.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

gulfgal98's picture

@SnappleBC candidates would focus almost exclusively on the two coasts and a few other populous states such as Texas. This basically would have the net effect of disenfranchising voters in smaller and less populous states as well as much of middle America. Under our current governing system, the electoral college serves as a balancing factor. I would consider being in favor of abolishing the electoral college if the United States operated under a parliamentary system. However, under our current system, I am for keeping the electoral college, however flawed it may be.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

@gulfgal98 the current system of privileging the smaller less populous states. I see. I prefer putting people ahead of the artificial thing we call states, and in a democracy we're supposed to be about accepting the vote of the majority. Note too that no other civilized country in the world emulates our EC. In those places, the person or party with the most votes wins.

In an EC-abolished world we here in CA and many other states where most of the people live would actually get to see candidates for the highest office campaigning. Instead, they just come here to get the big bux in an exclusive private affair than leave. What a boost in getting people interested in the political process.

I'm also interested in Andrew Yang's idea of priority voting, being able to register a 1st and 2d preference until someone gets a majority. Many reforms needed. Doing an end-run around the EC with the National Popular Vote is another solid idea.

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@gulfgal98

candidates would focus almost exclusively on the two coasts and a few other populous states such as Texas.
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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
very clear that the "problem" in the case of HRC winning the popular vote but not the electoral vote was that HRC declined to make an effort to win votes in Michigan, Wisconsin, and who knows where else that she lost by small margins (PA and FL).

it is never epistemologically correct to assert that, "If it weren't for the EC, Candidate X would have beaten Candidate Y," because in the no-EC alternate universe there would have been different campaign strategies as well as different voter psychology. For example, we know that voters in non-swing states are less motivated to vote, especially if they're not aligned with the partisan weight of their state. In the no-EC alternate universe, there is no way to know what turnout might have looked like.

This is the same reason, BTW, that anyone who asserts that Nader definitely cost Gore the 2000 election is mistaken. There is no way to know whether Gore would have won had Nader not run, because it would have been a different campaign, and a different election.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

arendt's picture

@UntimelyRippd

you folks = k9disc, untimelyRipped, gulfgal98, Amanda Matthews...

Both sides have valid talking points. The argument will never be settled in the narrow scope of the discussion. You stated the problem quite well.

in the no-EC alternate universe there would have been different campaign strategies as well as different voter psychology...In the no-EC alternate universe, there is no way to know what turnout might have looked like.

The EC is one part of a complex system. Changes to one part necessitate changes to many other parts or the larger system will break.

That's why I pointed at my ideas twice above - i.e., Governmental Organization

I guess I'll try one more time to get people to pop up a level or two and consider that its the entire system that needs work.

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SnappleBC's picture

@gulfgal98

I'm open to hearing alternatives that don't disenfranchise most of the nation but until I do, then I stand with the EC.

Sure, that makes it hard for the neoliberal Democrats. They can't sell their slick tech-town glitter to the yokels so instead, they demonize them. My simple answer to that is that the Democratic Party needs to come up with some pitch that works for the deplorables. A good start on that is to stop thinking of them as deplorables and start listening to their issues. You know.. like a real candidate would.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

lotlizard's picture

@gulfgal98  
The pro-E.U. people promise (Obama voice) “If you like your country, you can keep your country,” but sooner or later, there’ll be a push for one person, one vote.

And led by their elites, the places with bigger, denser populations will lord it over, and destroy the identity of, the places with smaller, thinner populations — just what Europeans have struggled for over a thousand years to prevent.

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@gulfgal98 candidates largely ignore most of the country in the general while focusing heavily on a few swing states. And it mostly tends to be the same small group of purple states being courted and catered to every 4 years. How about the rest of the country?

By eliminating the EC, or side-stepping it through the Nat'l Popular Vote method, candidates would be incentivized to go wherever they think they can find votes, including a D candidate going to a deep red state and vice versa.

Imagine candidates for president actually campaigning across the land, and not just in OH, FL, PN and 3-4 other states. A refreshing idea.

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@wokkamile
The EC over weights the small states currently neglected (or rather abandoned to the GOP).

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I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

@The Voice In the Wilderness
hopeless states as ZERO. thus, a Republican is unlikely to put a lot of resources into wooing voters in New York, not because there are no votes to be won there, but because those votes aren't going to add to the GOP EC total.

thus, eliminating the EC would motivate candidates to give more attention to densely populated centers in states they could not win. why, for example, would a Democratic Presidential campaign currently invest heavily in field offices in Houston? without the EC, there'd be a very good reason.

that's what Dean's 50-state strategy was all about: fight everywhere, even where you can't win the electoral votes, and even where you're guaranteed the electoral votes. it worked brilliantly, producing historic Democratic victories in Congress and in the state houses ... and was immediately discarded.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

arendt's picture

@SnappleBC

I'm happy to see that some people ( SnappleBC, wokkamile) are interested in fixing our broken governmental organization.

I worked on this problem for a long time - like 20 years. My proposal was up on the internet, but got ZERO traffic, so I took it down. But it is still available on the Wayback Machine:

I called it Distributed Government or Elected Bureaucracy. The WM homepage is here.

And the details are here.

What is relevant to this thread is how the voting districts are organized. I proposed, as have many others, that states be centered around cities - since cities are the major organizing force of the economy.

That is not to say that cities run everything. Each city-state is made up of the city and its rural area. In the case of cities like Denver, the "catchment basin" is quite large geographically (although low in population). On the East and West Coasts and in places like Texas, the city-state boundaries bump into each other more quickly.

Here is a great map that demonstrates that, based on commuting distances.

The article for that is here

The whole idea of city and hinterlands has been around since 1830, when Von Thunen invented his famous model of rings

Of course modern transportation and communication technology has had a massive impact on the physical geography and the economic organization. Hence maps such as the commuting map I just posted.

Bottom line for me: the whole current system is a disaster - the EC, the organization by state boundaries set in concrete, sometimes two centuries ago, the bicameral legislature with 500k voters per representative.

In general, I propose:
- National proportional representation for federal issues
- Geographical representation for city/state level issues

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Shahryar's picture

@wokkamile

then it's time to split up the country. It could only happen if California and New York were pretty unanimously for one person and the rest of the country favored someone else.

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arendt's picture

@wokkamile

I'm happy to see that some people ( SnappleBC, wokkamile) are interested in fixing our broken governmental organization.

I worked on this problem for a long time - like 20 years. My proposal was up on the internet, but got ZERO traffic, so I took it down. But it is still available on the Wayback Machine:

I called it Distributed Government or Elected Bureaucracy. The WM homepage is here.

And the details are here.

What is relevant to this thread is how the voting districts are organized. I proposed, as have many others, that states be centered around cities - since cities are the major organizing force of the economy.

That is not to say that cities run everything. Each city-state is made up of the city and its rural area. In the case of cities like Denver, the "catchment basin" is quite large geographically (although low in population). On the East and West Coasts and in places like Texas, the city-state boundaries bump into each other more quickly.

Here is a great map that demonstrates that, based on commuting distances.

The article for that is here

The whole idea of city and hinterlands has been around since 1830, when Von Thunen invented his famous model of rings

Of course modern transportation and communication technology has had a massive impact on the physical geography and the economic organization. Hence maps such as the commuting map I just posted.

Bottom line for me: the whole current system is a disaster - the EC, the organization by state boundaries set in concrete, sometimes two centuries ago, the bicameral legislature with 500k voters per representative.

In general, I propose:
- National proportional representation for federal issues
- Geographical representation for city/state level issues

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

@wokkamile

But if you think that's why Democrats lose elections, your view is overly simplistic. Blaming the EC tends to obscure much more rancid political phenomena, like for instance people blame Gore's "loss" on the EC when it was actually due to outright fraud.

As for last time, she who does not use superdelegates to get her way can cast the first stone.

The clearest sign of the EC not being a problem for establishment Democrats is that (much like the filibuster) they never try to fix it (or in the case of the EC, remove it), not even when they have a supermajority in Congress, the Presidency, and the support of roughly 60% of the American public. Instead, they work on Romneycare.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

gulfgal98's picture

@doh1304 It was Katherine Harris in Florida, not Cathleen Harris.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Centaurea's picture

@doh1304 @doh1304

Second, his criticism of Chelsea Manning might have come from his being an intelligence officer. He might just be someone who has been in a culture that universally condemned Manning and where any defense of Manning would be heretical.

I think that's probably true, but if so, it's an explanation, not a justification.

I don't want a POTUS who's going to enable the MIC by prosecuting/persecuting whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden.

Even in the role of commander in chief, the POTUS is supposed to act for the benefit of the American people, not as a representative of the military culture. Perhaps Buttigieg isn't capable of going beyond his military training/indoctrination, in terms of how he views the world. In my personal opinion, that would disqualify him from being POTUS.

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"Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep ... Don't go back to sleep."
~Rumi

"If you want revolution, be it."
~Caitlin Johnstone

lotlizard's picture

@Centaurea  

I don’t want a POTUS who’s going to enable the MIC by prosecuting/persecuting whistleblowers like Manning and Snowden.

And Assange and WikiLeaks.

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Man, the guy uses the word "values" more than Perez. Here he is on foreign policy from a Vox article.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/3/28/18283925/pete-buttigie...

To me, the way you ground all of this is you start with core, life-and-death American interests as the threshold for the commitment of force. But you also vet anything we think we’re going to do that’s in our interests against American values, because so much of the original sin of American foreign policy has to do with moments where we thought it was in our interests to act against our values. In the long run, that’s almost always turned out to be wrong.

So American interests, American values, and also American alliances. ...

I had to laugh when he said that the Russians are crony capitalists. And we have the right values to unite democracy and capitalism.

I think you are right. The democratic establishment is looking for neoliberal cronies to force a second vote in at the democratic convention.

Also, I know you have taken AOC to task. Here is Michael Tracey on AOC retweeting a xenophobic blurb by Schiff.

https://twitter.com/mtracey/status/1112339062378115072

This is so pathetic. It took about her about two weeks to imbibe all the corrupt Democratic establishment orthodoxies that she pretended to oppose

If re-tweeting is a form of agreement, very disappointing. How is she now going to vote on corrupt ugly bills whose foundations were born out of Russian hysteria.

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Shahryar's picture

I unsubscribed from Bernie's emails yesterday, after getting the third one of the day. If I have extra money I'll give it to the homeless people I see every day. I believe it will do more good than sending any to candidates.

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WaterLily's picture

@Shahryar But I have been pushing back on Bernie's campaign texts asking me for money.

For instance, them:

Hi Eagles92! Did you see our first text? Tomorrow at midnight, we'll close our books on our first official fundraising deadline. Can you can [sic] chip in before then, so we can report a number the political establishment can't ignore?

Me:

Listen, I'm going to be honest. Between the time Bernie announced in 2015 and the end of the bullshit primary, I donated close to $800, $27 and less at a time, to his campaign -- only to have that money, and the entire effort, stolen from him by a corrupt party he still insists on trying to reform. Not to mention his disingenuous embrace of Russiagate. No thanks. Let me know when Bernie goes Green or truly Independent and I'll donate my blood, sweat, and tears. But not until then.

Them:

The campaign used the money. You can view how the money was spent on the FEC's website [link].

Me:

Thank you for replying. I appreciate it. My point, however, is that Bernie never had a chance to win thanks to the DNC. I have no confidence that reality has changed.

Them:

Bernie is still the most progressive candidate with the most fully-formulated plans! He plans to prioritize climate change, to get money out of politics, and to ensure we get Medicare for All in the United States. Plus, he's the most popular politician in America!

Me:

...

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Deja's picture

@WaterLily
And no, our money went to that horrible soul sucking warmonger who owns the DNC. That's why we sued.

The last response screams DemBot to me. Ignored your text, and started listing talking points. Gross!

Thanks for sharing, though; and glad you won't be harassed anymore (hopefully).

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@WaterLily you might ask them about the F35s scheduled to arrive at BTV. (I lack the courage or have some other deep character flaw, probably more than one.) The largest concentration of affordable housing in the state is about to enter an expanded zone the FAA labels "unsuitable for residential use" because of the increased noise the F35s will produce. If families stay, they face an increased chance of cognitive impairment in their children and an increased risk of high blood pressure and related cardio-pulmonary ailments.

On the positive side, Ernie Pomerleau, Bernie's BFF and Patrick "Air Marshall" Leahy's cousin-in-law, stands to make big bucks developing the land around the airport after they bulldoze the rubble.

A lot of people here are confused by Bernie. He didn't want to be president last time. He doesn't want to be president this time. Bernie is in love with the sound of his own voice. Nirvana for Bernie is speaking to an adoring crowd, preferably with a celebrity at each elbow.

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@FuturePassed
this:

Bernie is in love with the sound of his own voice. Nirvana for Bernie is speaking to an adoring crowd, preferably with a celebrity at each elbow.

is the first go-to criticism leveled at any person with any charisma who manages to mobilize the public from the left. Nader, Jackson, Sharpton, Ted Kennedy, blah blah blah all narcissists don't really care just love the spotlight yadda yadda yadda.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
I've never aimed that criticism at any of the people you named. I don't know how old you are, but at the beginning of his public career, Ralph Nader was painfully shy. It was an effort for him to communicate over the media. The publicity hound meme occurred when Democrats wanted to blame his candidacy for a presidential defeat.

Edward Kennedy got a huge amount of publicity. But he had no need to fear that anyone could take it away. More importantly, he was widely respected in the senate for putting in the hours doing committee work. He had enough money (and fame) to get lots of assistance, but he put in the hours.

IMHO Jesse Jackson walked the walk as much as he talked the talk. He was beginning to meld white working class voters and students with black voters. Given the murders of MLK and RFK I'm not sure how he managed to stay alive. Maybe he stepped back in time.

I have not followed Al Sharpton closely enough to have an opinion.

Bernie Sanders has never in all these years been willing to sit down and talk with people who live in the affected area, which is interesting because they were, and for the most part still are, Bernie supporters. These are the people he's supposed to care about. And this is a case where he, single handedly, could have had a significant effect. If you email him on the subject he sends you back a list of talking points prepared by the commercial real estate industry and the VT Air Guard.

He relies on the commercial developers to claim people living in the area will not have to disclose that their homes are in an area deemed unfit for residential use. I'm not sure that's a good thing. In any case the Northwestern VT Association of Residential Realtors says they do. He says the VTANG will mitigate the noise. The USAF says, in writing, they can't. He stuck his fingers in his ears about medical effects years ago. VT is in the midst of an affordable housing crisis. But Bernie wants what he wants, which just happens to correspond with what his rich friends want.

If Bernie hadn't gone along with Russia, Russia, Russia, or the rigged primary, the party would have shut him down like they did during the early months of the 2016 primary and that was a price too high. People who worked their hearts out for Bernie were treated horribly at the convention. Did he speak out for them or even suggest it would be harder for him to turn them out for Hillary. No, and the DNC didn't have to threaten his family. They just had to threaten to cut off his mic.

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@FuturePassed
Narcissism is the go-to attack on any person with any charisma who gets any traction on the left. I don't care whether you've ever said that about any of those other people. It's what gets said. I don't respect it. It's pseudo-psychoanalysis that presumes far too much, while marginalizing the target as not serious and not sincere.

Meanwhile, if you want to lecture me on the history of this or that modern personality, I recommend you don't implicitly belittle my understanding by suggesting that mayhaps i just don't have the necessary first-person recollection. I done bin roun' awhiles, but e'en i' i ha'n't, they's this thing what ya call yer videotaype what lets ya live them past times right on over almost 'zif y'uz there yuh own self.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

@UntimelyRippd
There are narcissists and people unjustly accused of narcissism. It is possible to discern the difference by observing the time people spend doing the quiet work necessary to accomplish the causes on which they speak out.

When the people a politician claims to speak for are being badly hurt and their alleged spokesperson is not merely silent but joins the other side, most people here can figure it out. Don't bother to try.

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@FuturePassed
Believe even that you've arrived at your belief(s) via epistemologically sound processes.

Nonetheless, I will differ.

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
If you cannot accept these facts, I cannot fake an interest in any of your opinions.

lotlizard's picture

@UntimelyRippd  
anyone who was an independent thinker and not in league with the site’s Kool Kidz — suddenly, insider loudmouths would descend and accuse them of (1) only posting at TOP in order to promote themselves and sell their books (David Sirota) or (2) being guilty of one of the “isms” (Ted Rall was run off the site because his style of drawing Obama was deemed “racist”).

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snoopydawg's picture

@FuturePassed

that scrap of metal called the F 35? It's still going over budget every year and not too long ago every one of them had been grounded. And once again we are seeing poor people paying the price for being poor. Building affordable housing in the flight path is just one more thing that wouldn't be tolerated in rich people's neighborhoods.

I grew up in the flight path of Hill Air Force base in Utah and I hated it. During the summer around 5 in the evening the jets come home from flying in the west desert and then they practice touch and goes for another hour. And now that the F 35 is stationed at Hill when they fly over my house it rattles the windows. I have a great place I like to walk, but there are days when they are doing the touch and goes right over me during the whole time. It's noise pollution and it's beyond horrible having to be subjected to this.

So yeah I'd love for someone to ask Bernie about them. I doubt we would like his answer though. This is why the military has plants in every state. Share the wealth and the pain.

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg
Runways have been designed so that the worst of the noise will be inflicted almost entirely on some of the poorest people in the state. I suspect a larger group of people in the county are in for an unpleasant shock. It cheers me up.

The F35 was approved in the late 1990s with an expected production run to be delivered starting in 2010. The plane that's supposed to go into production in 2020 will be slower with much less climb, less maneuverable, with shorter range than was called for in the 2010 buy. When the Russians and the Chinese know the technology you'll be relying on and you give them an extra 10 years to prepare it's possible they've made some progress. It was never intended to be an air superiority fighter, but when the Obama Administration cancelled the F22 with a small percentage of the expected buy, the F35 became an air superiority fighter too.

Every time someone other than Lockheed looks at progress they find it continues to fall behind schedule. Readiness is not improving. The frequency of sorties is a bad joke unless you live near the thing in which case it's a very enjoyable joke. To save weight they use jet fuel as the coolant, which means it requires very special handling in the middle east. I haven't verified it but read a recent report that the cannons do not achieve the required accuracy. But, to maintain the illusion of progress, it appears the services will continue to accept delivery of flawed planes that will be fixed some day when fully operational planes can be produced.

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arendt's picture

@FuturePassed

To save weight they use jet fuel as the coolant, which means it requires very special handling in the middle east.

What a boondoggle! Start with an already ridiculously complex plane, with too many missions to be optimal for any of them, and with a skin so fragile that it needs rework after almost every flight. Then, create some Rube Golberg fuel/coolant system.

Deliver to destructive, dangerous desert environment. Shake gently, and KABOOM.

The Russians and Chinese won't have to fire a shot. Our planes will shoot themselves down.

The MIC and all the crooked politicians who give them whatever they want should all be sent to the desert as fuel handlers for the F-35 Turkey.

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WaterLily's picture

@FuturePassed It's a lost cause. Depresses me to say it, but I've been watching the debacle unfold from Day One. And, while Bernie's hands aren't entirely clean, I blame most of it on that dipshit Leahy.

I'm not sure if you live near here or not, so apologies if you already know this, but the city already bulldozed most of the neighborhood around the airport thanks to an updated noise map that preceded the F-35's known impact. You're absolutely right that it was one of the few remaining affordable neighborhoods in the area, and many families who had owned their homes and lived there for decades were forced out. (Technically, they were bought out, but they had little choice). Now, as you mention, thanks to the F-35, even more homes are at risk.

Yet none of our "Democratic" "representatives" have any compunction about it.

Have I mentioned how much I despise Weinberger? (Slightly OT ... sorry).

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SnappleBC's picture

@Shahryar

So I did not imagine that signing up for ANY Democratic thing anywhere would put me on every spam list in the liberal universe. I spent the better part of 3 months religiously marking entire domains as spammers. So now it's mostly under control. We'll see since I just donated to Sanders and Gabbard so with any luck I won't see anything in my inbox.

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A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard

and explaining one's philosophy are important, but aren't a substitute for at least trying to lay out how he would implement such values and philosophy. I went to his campaign website and saw zilch as far as policy proposals. Unhelpful, lazy and not what we should expect from those seeking the highest office.

Interesting fellow, intelligent and well-spoken, but with a light track record to consider, he needs to show specifics.

And I'm not entirely convinced the country is quite ready for a married gay guy as prez. An early trail-blazer, yes. Check back with me on this in about 20-25 years.

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arendt's picture

@wokkamile

The IdPol is deep with this one.

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Deja's picture

@arendt
. . . my grandma said, "I don't think the country is ready for a Black president."

I sarcastically replied, "He's half White, so that makes him half good, right?"

Looking back, of course, it wasn't his races that made him a shitty president. Ugh.

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@Deja exactly hamper O's chances in 2008. And re black, we had Jesse Jackson's 84 and 88 runs, which garnered plenty of attention. So gradually people became accustomed to the idea.

And Obama of course presented well with the white audiences, with his calm non-black speaking voice. Jesse was a little too black, too hot in the rhetoric. But his campaigns did make it easier for Obama years later to win.

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lotlizard's picture

@wokkamile

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arendt's picture

@arendt

Open Thread at Naked Capitalism, includes the Robinson article - and this troll saying all criticism of PB is automatically gay bashing.

Robinson is dubious. The politics of Buttigieg doesn't omit being gay. Omitting to comment on this gives his game away I think, which is to savage the gay guy. The kinds of things wrong with Buttigieg characterize practically every female candidate talked up. Robinson is probably #metoo feminist and woke, but there is a lot of anti-sex in #metoo, especially male sexuality, which gay men tend to have.

Posted by: steven t johnson | Mar 31, 2019 4:37:48 PM | 14

So, not making a big deal out of his gayness is "savaging" his gayness. We have seen this movie before. So have many commenters at NC.

@ steven t johnson #14

The politics of Buttigieg doesn't omit being gay. Omitting to comment on this gives his game away I think, which is to savage the gay guy.

I'm not sure what "omitting to comment" means, but my browser found six instances of the use of the word "gay" in the piece as well as the phrase "his sexuality".

Posted by: Zachary Smith | Mar 31, 2019 5:16:43 PM | 15

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Shahryar's picture

Talks progressively but with no specifics.

Obama had plenty of specifics. Turned out he didn't plan on coming through with 'em. But he had some good ideas!

Perhaps Buttigieg has learned to avoid that pitfall. So instead of "I agree with him" it's "he might think something I agree with, I don't know, maybe"

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snoopydawg's picture

VICE: I listened to you talk today. On the one hand, you definitely speak very progressively. But you don’t have a lot of super-specific policy ideas.

BUTTIGIEG: Part of where the left and the center-left have gone wrong is that we’ve been so policy-led that we haven’t been as philosophical. We like to think of ourselves as the intellectual ones. But the truth is that the right has done a better job, in my lifetime, of connecting up its philosophy and its values to its politics. Right now I think we need to articulate the values, lay out our philosophical commitments and then develop policies off of that. And I’m working very hard not to put the cart before the horse.

VICE: Is there time for that? They want the list. They want to know exactly what you’re going to do.

BUTTIGIEG: I think it can actually be a little bit dishonest to think you have it all figured out on day 1. I think anybody in this race is going to be a lot more specific or policy-oriented than the current president. But I don’t think we ought to have that all locked in on day 1.

So Pete, what are your f'cking policies?

I too think that being involved in the military gives me the heebies. Unless someone joined for patriotic reasons and once they saw war for what it is came back and told people that. People are still naive about what the military regime really does for some reason, but once in theater and you're killing innocents then I think that would be a wake up call.

I had a conversation with a young woman today who said she is joining the Air Force. I don't remember all of the conversation, but it got to a point where I started talking about our hegemony and destroying countries and killing innocent civilians.... she said that she is going into an area where she isn't really involved in that. I piped up that she is still supporting the apparatus and said as long as people do that it's not going to stop. She later told me about her student loans that she can't pay off, works 2 jobs and has no time for her family. Now wasn't that the way it's been setup for her generation? Saddled with debts and can't find jobs that help pay her loans and can't find affordable housing...yada yada and I see why she's joining the military.

Oops...looks like I went off on a rant...I'll blame the drugs.

But getting back to Pete and his military career, I think it was just one more thing to cross off while he's climbing the corporate ladder. Sure hope this makes sense. Did I mention drugs?

Smile

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

@snoopydawg information presented earlier in the thread didn't produce a rant, I would have suggested that you needed to increase you dosage.

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snoopydawg's picture

@FuturePassed

I'd love to increase the dosage, but alas I was given them during a procedure. Damn good drugs though. It's nice taking a break from reality now and then.

Smile

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Which AIPAC/MIC/pharma/bank bought politician are you going to vote for? Don’t be surprised when nothing changes.

arendt's picture

Have You Heard? Pete Buttigieg Is Really Smart

The recent craze for Pete Buttigieg — multilingual Rhodes Scholar and all-around smart guy — is just the latest incarnation of the meritocratic cult of “smartness.” It’s social Darwinism for liberals...

The question of what “smart” even means and why this type of smart should matter in a presidential race got less attention. One person rightly asked, “are you sure he’s not just smart in the ways you also fancy yourself to also be smart.” No one asked why this particular form of well-credentialed “smart” should “count for quite a lot.”

That’s because while the PMC are often eager to be more inclusive about who gets to be “smart” — women, black people — they have tremendous faith in the concept itself. They love rich people whose intelligence has made them prosper: they may cringe at the science-denying Koch Brothers but they went into deep mourning when Steve Jobs died. They devour Malcolm Gladwell’s veneration of the wisdom of genius entrepreneurs over the plodding, clueless masses.

This notion of “smart” allows elites to recast inequality as meritocracy. In this narrative, you’re rich because you did well in high school and went to Princeton, not because capitalism has taken something from someone else and given it to you. Yet the culture of smart is not all smugness; it also contains a heavy dose of fear. The PMC understands that while it’s fun to brag about having a kid like BOOTedgeedge, it’s not optional (like, say, having a pet that can do weird tricks, a cat that can use a human toilet, for instance). In the neoliberal order, if you’re not born into the top 0.1 percent, you have to be “smart” and unusually talented and motivated, otherwise you will not only lose what privileges you have, but possibly not even survive. As New York Times columnist Tom Friedman once gleefully proclaimed, “Average is over.”

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the biggest picture is the "Westminster Kennel Club" Dem IdPol dog and pony show. The "pedigree" of most of these candidates venn diagram around current dem panderspeak that passes as a platform. They want you to debate coke and pepsi when in the end both are nutrient deficient taste good shit. If they run as a democrat suspect the worst, no matter what they say. Like vampires, you have to invite them in to cross your threshold before they can harm you.

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