Comments by "Harry Stoddard" (@HarryS77) on "Rebel HQ"
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They say she could have come out a long time ago, but what would have happened if she had?
What if she'd come out with her allegations when Kavanaugh was nominated to the D.C. Circuit? Well, why is she coming out now? Why didn't she do it earlier, when he was clerking for Ken Starr? That party was 20 years ago.
Or how about when he was a clerk for Ken Starr? But then the same excuse arises. Why didn't she do it earlier? That party was 10 years ago.
And we'd keep backpedalling like this until we're left with the only possible option: she "should" have come out right after the incident. So why didn't she? There is an abundance of testimonials from victims of sexual assault that explain why they didn't come forward. We know that most rapes and other forms of sexual assault go unreported. Or you could look at what happened with Brock Turner. How did the court perceive the case? Nice college kid, bright future, good at sports, so what if he raped some girl? This happened recently, in this climate of increased scrutiny of sex crimes, and there are plenty of similar examples. Or think of the Cosby trial: it took the word of 50 women or whatever it was to finally convince people to take the charges seriously.
Ford would have been making her allegation in the 90s when women were believed even less than they are now. For Republicans the dynamics of the situation haven't changed in the 30 intervening years, her word against the word of altar boy scholar athlete virgin Brett Kavanaugh.
So when Republicans ask why she didn't come out earlier, flash them a mirror. They're the goblins that keep stuff like this in the dark.
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Yul Bahbo Free markets in capitalism tend to be disastrous to all except the extremely rich. One example I'm currently fond of is the control/deregulation of price controls for grain in the 2 decades leading up to the French Revolution.
The problem I see with arguments like yours is that "pure capitalism" is defined in such a way that all unsuccessful implementations can be dismissed as crony capitalism and the like, making "capitalism" an abstraction that cannot inhere in the real world. Maybe that's okay for a philosophical discussion, but it's not very useful regarding implementation.
Now, your definition is kind of aberrant. I doubt a Chicago School economist would recognize a system with regulations as "capitalism," because regulations are considered distortions. But let's assume that that's not a problem.
Real existing capitalism creates a symbiotic relationship with big government. Business needs a strong government to safeguard its property rights and to arbitrate disputes among business interests. If a strong government doesn't exist, business will create one. As a result, real existing capitalism tends to consolidate wealth and power. I can't stress this enough, because it's a point that's often neglected. It's assumed that business and government are inherently separate and antagonistic entities. Big business without a big government is called Fascism, and in that case big business IS the government.
Moreover, capitalism in its more successful permutations has historically arisen thanks to protectionist (anti-capitalist) measures, as in Great Britain where the king protected against things like imported wool and corn, and in the US. In places where strict free market policies are imposed, particularly in the modern world, the economy has floundered. Ha-Joon Chang has a good book on this called Kicking Away the Ladder.
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Nationalization of the railways is a popular policy in the UK (⅔ support). Privatization of that industry has led to less efficient schedules and routes, resulting in artificially higher costs for riders. Industries that rely heavily on ownership of infrastructure and/or serving the public good tend to perform better under nationalization or some kind of natural monopoly with government oversight.
Bernie is right to recover the word "socialist" from right-wing demonization, and he does so by touting successful, wide-spread social democratic policies and historical American figures, like Eugene Debs.
Where I personally disagree with him is that I wish he had a capital 'S' Socialist position, i.e. not state socialism but worker control. In the end, Sanders is a capitalist who supports private property. Doesn't matter much whether the state functions as a capitalist or private entities do. It's sort of like the difference between feudalism where land was owned by barons versus feudalism (sometimes called absolutism) where ownership and control primarily resided with the state monarchy.
I think in some ways Sanders's "socialist" identification, while reawakening some people to forgotten aspects of political history, entrenches the misunderstanding, by now a century old, over what Socialism, the political theory of a democratic economy through worker self-management and federation, means, a misunderstanding that the right used to demonize socialism in the first place. His brand of socialism is a concession that keeps the powerful in power, much like FDR's "socialist" policies that "saved capitalism."
Corbyn is certainly more left than Sanders, but I don't think he qualifies as a Socialist-Socialist, as shown by his commitment to increasing funding for police and surveillance. Moreover, unlike the US, Europe has a long history of Socialist and Communist parties. Calling yourself a socialist there is not at all uncommon.
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First, take your hand off Shift+1. Global warming is a part of climate change. They are different. What you're doing is like calling a staircase a building. One is only a part of the whole.
Climate change is a broader term that encompasses not just global warming, but also the side effects, like increased rains, hurricanes, etc., things we don't normally think of as "warm."
You shouldn't ask a geologist about "global warming," you should ask a climatologist. Would you ask a particle physicist his opinion on bee populations?
There are two polar ice caps, the Arctic and Antarctic. The latter has increased substantially—however, not enough to offset the loss of ice in the Arctic. According to satellite imagery, the Arctic has lost much of its old ice, that is, the ice that does not need to be replenished every winter. The less old ice there is, the less new ice can be formed to make up for it, which leads to an overall loss of ice in the Arctic. The flow of frigid water not only raises global sea levels, but also disrupts the Gulf Stream.
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Let's see what NASA has to say:
Headline: Antarctic Sea Ice Reaches New Record Maximum
Editor’s note: Antarctica and the Arctic are two very different environments: the former is a continent surrounded by ocean, the latter is ocean enclosed by land. As a result, sea ice behaves very differently in the two regions. While the Antarctic sea ice yearly wintertime maximum extent hit record highs from 2012 to 2014 before returning to average levels in 2015, both the Arctic wintertime maximum and its summer minimum extent have been in a sharp decline for the past decades. Studies show that globally, the decreases in Arctic sea ice far exceed the increases in Antarctic sea ice.
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/antarctic-sea-ice-reaches-new-record-maximum
As for "global cooling," you can read about how that term came to be in this Scientific American article:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-global-cooling-story-came-to-be/
In that article, Mark McCaffrey draws a distinction between what scientists think would happen in a natural world absent human industrial intervention and the world as it is, in which humans are a "force of nature":
"Even today, "there is some degree of uncertainty about natural variability," acknowledged Mark McCaffrey, programs and policy director of the National Center for Science Education based in Oakland, Calif. "If it weren't for the fact that humans had become a force of nature, we would be slipping back into an ice age, according to orbital cycles."
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+sinistar99 What false stories? The emails that emerged from the alleged hack have never been falsified, and the few attempts by Democratic leadership to discredit the authenticity of the emails have been refuted, as in the case of Dona Brazille first denying then apologizing for leaking questions to Clinton during the primary debates.
One could argue that it is wrong for those emails to've become public, but that doesn't change the fact that the content of the emails, as far as anyone can tell, is authentic and damaging, which is tantamount to saying that the conduct, beliefs, and attitudes of the Clinton campaign were damaging: they just didn't expect anyone to know about that stuff.
For instance, if I recall, several people close to Clinton or the Democratic leadership questioned her decision to take hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees from Wall Street firms in light of her plans to run for president. She didn't heed those admonitions, and, predictably, people recoiled at her coziness to the financial elite who nearly destroyed the world economy with impunity.
There's also the anti-Sanders comments of several DNC staff that lead to their firing and a public apology. That was real; that happened; it wasn't "fake news."
There's also suggestions in the email that the Clinton camp coordinated with Super PACs, something that I wish journalists would follow up on.
This list could keep going, but one final thing that emerged in part from the emails is the dubious structure of Clinton's fundraising apparatus, a nationwide scheme to funnel money ostensibly for down-ballot races into the Clinton coffers, which to experts resembled a troubling if legal system of money laundering that could be exploited by future campaigns, Democratic and Republican, thereby undermining the democratic process.
So I ask again, what false stories based on the hacks? One can be concerned about possible foreign intrusion into our election process (though that's nothing new from the US's end) while still welcoming the emergence of important information on a candidate. You don't have to pick one or the other.
The KGB hasn't existed since 1991 fyi.
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America didn't pick her. That's why Trump is president. The Democrats could have pushed to amend election procedures while they had power (supermajority), but they didn't. Instead, they chose to retain not only the antiquated electoral college but also their own superdelegates and undemocratic primary procedures (closed primaries, caucuses, etc.). No sympathy. The DNC and Clinton knew what game they were playing and they still lost, in part by their own machinations, to the least favored candidate in the post-war era of polling.
Also, yes, Obama in '12 did get about 60 thousand more votes than Clinton in '16. The numbers I cited were accurate, from the Federal Election Commission, linked below. The fact that you can't be bothered to look up information that is a google search away speaks volumes about how blinkered you are. Ironic that someone caviling about "fake stories" is out here spreading fake information.
Raw numbers are one way to gauge election success, but if you're trying to make a historical comparison, even to races on 4 or 8 years ago, it's much better to compare vote share. Populations can change a lot in that window. In that regard, in Obama's worst election (2012) he got 51% of the vote compared to Clinton's (2016) 48%. All of this has to also be placed in the miserable light of American electoral politics in general, since a president—even saying Clinton did win—is often elected by a minority of the country. If Clinton had won with 48% of the vote and only 54% of voters turned out, she would have won with only about a quarter of the country's support. More Americans did vote for her over Trump (one can only wonder what would have happened had the Republicans had a less polarizing candidate), but many more voted for no one at all, which speaks to the disillusionment of the population with the political system, which is unable or unwilling to cajole them into civil obedience. That is nothing to gloat over. And guess what, in 2020 it's possible that the winning candidate will receive the most votes ever just by sheer dint of there being more people to vote.
Moreover, all of this is just nitpicking. The bigger issue, which you have failed to address, is what you meant by "fake stories" given that by all accounts, the content of the emails is accurate. No specific claims have been made and stood up to scrutiny.
https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2012/federalelections2012.pdf
https://transition.fec.gov/pubrec/fe2016/2016presgeresults.pdf
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She knows why the Left is alarmed by people like Mattis and Flynn. I'd bet that she also realizes that, while merely having military personnel in the cabinet is not itself a major cause for concern, the stacking of the cabinet with the military is, especially when the incoming president displays authoritarian tendencies. The military has civilian oversight (POTUS, Congress) so that we don't risk our government devolving into a junta.
But that's just one issue. Overall, she's far from progressive. For example, Progressive Punch ranks Gabbard as the 130th most progressive member of Congress. Not 3rd or 10th or 20th—130th. Punch labels her a "Strong Dem," but one who fails to be as progressive as her district would allow her to be.
Govtrack ranks her as the 19th most conservative Democrat. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/tulsi_gabbard/412532/report-card/2015
Gabbard has plenty of good, even progressive positions, but in a lot of other ways she's more like the kind of center-left Democrat that we've all come to dislike. John Bickel, who works with Progressive PAC in Hawaii, has said, “I am a little skeptical about how deep her progressive roots run. Tulsi Gabbard shows up in places and gets in front of the camera, spinning herself as a progressive-- but I’m not sure her record backs up what she’s created as a public persona.” http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/25/the-bernie-endorsing-congresswoman-who-trump-fans-can-love.html
While you may not like the tone of Hit Stoner's comment (or the obnoxious copy-paste) there is some substance to it, namely her ties to right wing Hindu organizations and leaders, like Modi. https://socialistworker.org/2016/12/08/an-islamophobic-progressive
She tends to the right on military issues, though she does oppose military expansion and intervention in general. However, she has voted in favor of the NDAA several times, including in 2013 when the bill contained the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act, which essentially allows the US government (specifically the State Dept. and BBG) to deploy the same psyops, disinformation, and propaganda on the American public as it uses against foreign countries. I fail to see how that "protects democracy."
She also used to be vociferously opposed to marriage equality, a stance she's since flipped on completely. This could be a case of a child overcoming the prejudices of her parents (her father was notorious for his homophobia) or it could be opportunism. I'd like to think the former, but we just got done having the same conversation about Clinton and her flip-flops on marriage equality, and Clinton was never as passionate as Gabbard.
If Gabbard hews progressive from here on out, that's great. I can support that. But that's not quite the picture I'm seeing, which is more complicated. The fact that she's being seen as THE progressive in the country is 1) a tremendous PR success and 2) a bit troubling for the progressive movement. We've already seen how much disappointment can come when enough people rally around a young, charismatic "progressive" who can't or won't live up to that expectation.
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Erik F I couldn't get that page to load before so I apologize for the mistake.
One interesting thing, if I'm reading the page correctly, is that the profits are not the result of companies simply repaying the loan.
For instance: "Altogether, accounting for both the TARP and the Fannie and Freddie bailout, $621B has gone out the door—invested, loaned, or paid out—while $390B has been returned."
Instead, the gov't has made a profit from the bailout through dividends, warrants, interest, etc.
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"Russia undermined our democracy."
I wish the same politicians and citizens clamoring to denounce Russia and Trump had attacked with the same fervor Citizens United, campaign finance law, super PACs, corruption, bribery, and the oligarchy. Where were these same people, with their rallies and marches and twitter hashtags, when Clinton laundered money through a joint committee to get around campaign finance limits, a tactic that is unscrupulous, to be sure, but, thanks to the fact that the laws in this country are made by the people who own the country, technically legal? Where were they when the news media effectively undermined democracy through subtle and not-so-subtle propaganda campaigns, e.g. WMD in Iraq? Where were they when the NSA undermined democracy by spying on every single US citizen? Where were they when the Bush administration passed the Patriot Act, which was then renewed under Obama? Where were they when Obama undermined democracy by executing US citizens without due process?
People did protest those things, but I cannot remember the Democratic establishment coming out so vehemently and relentlessly against them, nor the corporate media giving them so much airtime.
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I don't want to pick on the young lady speaking around 2:15, but this notion--so common and anodyne that it is the slogan for Fox News--that there are two sides to issues and that our political process exists to parse, compromise, and legislate them, is a fiction. When someone says to listen to both sides, ask them, both sides for whom?
The critical realization of the Sanders campaign is that finally there is a politician saying what average people have known for a long time: that the political system exists to serve our corporate and wealthy masters. When we speak of both sides, we're often talking about how decisions will affect the richest in the country. We are seldom presented with real, imaginative political options.
Far from being designed to adjudicate "both sides" of the argument (in reality, most arguments are not that simple), the system of American politics was designed, explicitly-read Madison, Hamilton, Washington, et al.- to curtail the "harmful" effects of democracy, that is, of ordinary people having a say over the direction of their lives, and to protect the property and wealth of the upper classes.
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