I'm just saying that someone just out of college has likely never shopped for a mortgage, a car, health insurance, a cell phone plan, etc., so how will they interpret the facts when they read about interest rates, insurance costs, etc.? On the other hand, with stuff like climate change, I would certainly hope that the younger generation has a better idea of what is going on. But yes, the big problem is the large number of stupid people, regardless of age.
This is something we can agree on. On the other hand, we then run into the prospect of people being regarded as stupid for having the "wrong" opinions or principles or priorities.
Maybe because us fogies have heard all the same bullcrap promises ever since we were promised a chicken in every garage and a car in every pot....or something. The debates are a gotcha fashion show, nothing more!
Belongs here. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/01/if-only-obama-had-done-the-things-obama-actually-did.html You might like or dislike Obama, but he was a liberal. A solid FDR liberal. Stop saying he wasn't.
Sanders did not really attack Obama, I kind of hope that the lefty candidates do go after Obama during the primary, I think they would lose support very fast, specially from the moderate black voters. I doubt they will be dumb enough to attack him directly, they will attack some of his policies, but not him. (I can see them attacking H. Clinton more often).
"The House Judiciary Committee is preparing to hold hearings and call witnesses involved in hush-money payments to ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels as soon as October." https://t.co/Ga4UXoeq7T— Robert Costa (@costareports) September 2, 2019 Yes Nancy and Jerry...this is precisely what you should be focusing on.
Should they not be focusing on this? The corruption in the Trump campaign was widespread and took many forms. The National Enquirer guy didn't have the money to "catch-and-kill" these stories until Saudi Arabia got involved, which would be illegal foreign influence on the election.
Someone is in jail for doing what Cheeto Benito told him to do. This is definitely something the dems should be talking about.
I am not sure if failure, or just smack back, but a son of a person hat died during 9/11 did not take the comments of Ilhan Omar about 'some people did something' Dude did drop the "Judeo-Christian' thing. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news...ar-show-respect-after-controversy/2285171001/
I was potentially with him until then. I mean, I would have had to look up the Omar quote to see if it was taken out of context, but perhaps. Then he dropped that last line and I was out of there.
How did bin Laden attack "constitutional freedoms"? It seems to me it was actually the US Government that did the bulk of restricting freedoms in the aftermath of 9/11
The thing that probably upset me most about Obama was how he rolled over for the big banks in handling the mortgage crisis and not going bigger on the stimulus. His continuance of drone warfare didn't make my top 20 I have to admit.
?? He went much bigger on the stimulus, both on the initial and the followup that never happened; the Republicans in congress and the Blue Dogs wouldn't do it is all. Then they bitched about the slowness of the recovery as though it was his fault. The President proposes and Congress disposes...
I don't think at that time anybody realized quite how evil they were going to be. The welfare of the country went entirely out the window to ensure that there was no success to be associated with the ni66er administration... I mean, that was really unprecedented then--and still continues today, with the ridiculous fanaticism about cleaning the black fingerprints off the history of the oval office. How many times in the last few years have we seen headlines proclaiming "Trump administration reverses another Obama program" and the text reveals it was a tweak of the funding for school crossing guards or a protocol for the reception of foreign dignitaries or the like. Even to the location of Churchill's bust...
If centrists did their job by punishing obstructionism, we wouldn't be in this fix. But the center has shirked its duty, so instead of fearing the center, the Republican politicians fear their base. That's not an idle insult. It's a statement of fact: We are where we are now because the center abdicated its role.
Where is their electoral base? Centrists have been chased out of the GOP and are increasingly being targeted from the left as well.
What? How do you fig...oh, it's the constant berating and blame-laying. Right. 'Course, anyone claiming to not be of the hive at all, even if they're not The Designated Other, is worse than Hitler.
I told you my reasoning. Vote Mitch McConnell out because he said his most important job was to take down the POTUS, and because of the Garland Merrick obstruction, and the next Senator will be more conciliatory. Keep Mitch in office, on the other hand, and the aggression will only intensify. The base loves partisanship. That behavior is for the center to stop. It hasn't. And yeah, absolutely, you can and should apply this policy to Democrats too. Mind you, I'm speaking for normal times, meaning any time the President is not named "Trump." He stepped into office attacking the states that didn't vote for him, and the cities that didn't vote for him, and he has made this a 100% bloodbath war. This situation is hopelessly partisan, because Trump never gives, only takes. So nobody will play ball with him, even if he actually talked to Democrats rather than insulting them.
The politics of ideological purity--combined with the populist wave that's trampling it's way across the globe--will be the death of democracy. I'm not opposed to ideology, but I fear that far too few people appreciate that ideology and politics are two separate things, and that in a pluralistic democracy like ours the latter is much more important than the former.
Right now the Democratic party needs to be as broad-based and inclusive as possible. Purity tests from the progressive left are the last thing we need at the moment. I'm not so sure I blame centrists for this, although there's a case to be made that the centrist policies of the DLC and whatnot severed the left-liberal alliance which made the post-New Deal Democratic coalition viable. But I'd argue that the backlash to the Civil Rights movement & the 60's in general, along with the changing global economic realities of the past few decades did more damage than anything else.
IMHO, centrist have been asked/reminded/begged to vote for Dems in order to save the US democracy. Some (most?) have replied with more tps about Dems, or felt that their vote is more precious now than in 2016, so Dems need to appeal to them even more. That's when they became targets for the left.
I'm not talking about purity tests. I don't believe in those. I'm talking that the normal practice of compromise, negotiations, and deal-making that the Republicans in general, and Trump in particular, have eliminated through their ongoing aggression and bad faith.
It's this elevated language, where everything is a crisis, everything is IN DANGER!!!!...hell, it's the speaking about "democracy" in hushed, reverential tones as if it were a god, immutable and The One End Worth Seeking that leads inevitably to this idiotic consequence that we see on display every day here. There is no more room for regarding democracy as the process it is. To a lesser extent (and bigredfutbol and I have discussed this at various times), the elevation of "ideology" as if it were capitalized - a proper noun, The Devil - isn't helping either. None of this is any good for anyone.
I agree with your sentiments in general. However, I really do think democracy is in danger around the world, I don't think that's hyperbole. It's not some big dramatic crisis that's about to blow up, mind you--more a continued erosion of democratic norms and institutions. It's a "crisis" but not a sexy, made-for-Hollywood drama.