[Illuyankas]

I must be careful to only use my kiss of death powers for good, clearly.

[Obdigore]

Illuyankas, on 13 February 2016 - 10:08 PM, said:

I must be careful to only use my kiss of death powers for good, clearly.

Did you just admit to kissing Scalia?

I think you can contract ignorance that way. Be careful.

[worry]

One thing I DID see on Twitter today was the Clinton camp taking pot shots at Bernie's activist history (by proxy, via the Washington Post) and getting nailed for the blatant dishonesty:
https://twitter.com/...575008612876288

The article:
https://www.washingt...bernie-sanders/
(It's one time where I WILL advise reading the comment section).

[HoosierDaddy]

Obama's got to do his thing right now.

[Terez]

Dumbledude, on 13 February 2016 - 11:44 PM, said:

One thing I DID see on Twitter today was the Clinton camp taking pot shots at Bernie's activist history (by proxy, via the Washington Post)...

Yeah, Capehart is definitely an access journalist; I bet he's used 'muscular' in reference to Hillary's foreign policy. I don't think he's a terrible person, but I follow tons of journalists and I honestly have no idea why he's at the Post while much more talented diversity hires languish at much smaller shops.

Dumbledude, on 13 February 2016 - 11:44 PM, said:

and getting nailed for the blatant dishonesty:
https://twitter.com/...575008612876288

Where was the 'getting nailed' part? In the comments on the article?

[worry]

There's this: https://twitter.com/...593977482608640 (and other photos from the same event).

Along with the necessity of writing an (admittedly highly defensive, non-conciliatory) update article because the actual photographer confirms it's Bernie. The revelation (not by him, in either article) that his partner works for the Clinton campaign. And the old standby of the pundit & beltway journo class: calling everyone who rightly called you out on your nonsense "trolls". He's still defending the piece on Twitter: https://twitter.com/CapehartJ

[worry]

Well, the audience also just booed "getting the facts right" so they're not exactly sound judges.

[Terez]

I started watching it late, and might not finish. Tired tonight; having a hard time giving a shit about a GOP debate.

[worry]

Trump is the only one throwing real punches. He's getting them in return, of course, but really generic GOP answers, like Jeb saying Trump gets his foreign policy from "the shows" (TV shows I guess -- pretty distasteful given how much we know Scalia learned from Jack Bauer!). I do def wish Christie was still here.

[worry]

Trump ain't wrong about the WTC and GWB, and it's unfortunate that he's the only one on his side of the equation (minus Kasich trying to have it both ways). This might actually be the worst/dumbest crowd at any of the debates so far though, so I wonder how many GOPers at home are siding with Trump.

[Tsundoku]

On Scalia:

All those Republicans just want to hold off until after the election because that way they think they'll have a chance to pick another Conservative who will just rubber-stamp their shit.

I say do what they would do if there were a Republican as the current President: pick someone you prefer (or tender a list of preferred candidates, however it's done) straight away. Fuck those guys, the only time they ever bleat about "playing fair" or whatever (those fuckers wouldn't know "fair" if it bit them on the balls) is when they know they're losing.

This is not the time to take the moral "high road" and give the other side a fighting chance. Kick them when they're down. Stack the SC with liberals/progressives for the next generation and maybe some good will come of it. Don't scuttle that chance just because of your own qualms. Take one for the team and make the hard choice. Those GOP shitstains wouldn't lose a moments sleep over it.

If you think that's "sinking to their level" - yup, it is. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, the road to hell is paved with good intentions blah blah blah ... whatever. You can look back and say "I did a good thing the wrong way" at worst. I can live with something like that. It's the last year of your Presidency, go nuts.

[Terez]

[Terez]

Didn't he just say he was a good entertainer? I thought that's what Trump thanked him for...

[worry]

Kasich would see your head on a spike if his owners called for it just as fast as the rest of them. He'd just kinda murmur "Aw jeez, shucks, isn't this crazy, jiminy" while he did it.

[worry]

Haha, good point. I did miss the second half cuz I had to go to the store, but I do think none of the attacks on him landed that I saw (including the Medicaid one). I think maybe even anti-Obamacare people are sick of hearing about it, and it's not a big voting priority even if GOP politicians still love talking about it, so going after Kasich on Medicaid expansion is a non-starter.

[Terez]

I translated a column by Thomas Piketty in Le Monde. I was going to post it on Daily Kos, but I've never used it before and apparently I don't understand how it works. Anyway, if you don't know, Piketty wrote a very famous book on economics called Le Capital au XXIe siècle, the English translation of which (Capital in the 21st Century) made #1 on the non-fiction NYT best seller list. That was a big deal because no one likes to read about economics, but he did some really important work in the study of income inequality. I think this is acknowledged across the board even if his theories are criticized.

Thomas Picketty said:

THE SANDERS SHOCK

How to interpret the unbelievable success of the "socialist" Bernie Sanders in the American primaries? The senator from Vermont now leads Hillary Clinton among those of Democratic sympathies under the age of 50, and only senior citizens permit Hillary to maintain the advantage. In the face of the Clinton machine and the conservatism of the mainstream media, perhaps Bernie doesn't win the primary. But there is evidence that another Sanders, no doubt younger and less white, could one day soon win the American presidency and change the face of the country. In many ways, we are witnessing the end of the politico-ideological cycle that opened with Ronald Reagan's victory in the elections of November 1980.

Let's back up. From the 1930s to the 1970s, the United States ran an ambitious policy of inequality reduction. In part to draw a contrast with the Old Continent, then perceived as hyper-stratified and contrary to the American democratic spirit, in the interwar period the country invented the sharply progressive tax on income and estates and put in place a level of tax progressivity never used on our side of the Atlantic.

From 1930 to 1980, for a half-century, the tax on the highest American incomes (over $1 million per year) was 82% on average, peaking at 91% between 1940 and 1960, from Roosevelt to Kennedy, and still 70% upon the election of Reagan in 1980.

This policy did not at all affect the vigorous American growth after the war, without doubt because it serves no purpose to pay top executives 10 million dollars instead of one. The estate tax, just as progressive, with applicable rates on the largest fortunes on the order of 70% to 80% for decades—while the rate has almost never exceeded 30–40% in Germany or France—greatly reduced the concentration of American inheritance, without the European wars and destruction.

MYTHICAL CAPITALISM

The United States also instituted a federal minimum wage in the 1930s, long before the European countries, the level of which surpassed 10 dollars per hour (expressed in 2016 dollars) in the 1960s, by far the highest of the time. All this without unemployment, or nearly, because the productivity level and the education system allowed for it. This was also the moment when the United States finally put an end to the legal racial discrimination still in place in the country's barely-democratic South, launching new social policies.

But all this provokes strong resistance, notably among the financial elites and in the reactionary fringes of the white electorate. Humiliated in Vietnam, the America of the 1970s was disturbed, aside from the fact that the the war's vanquished (Germany and Japan foremost) were catching up to her at a lively pace. She also suffered from the petroleum crisis, from inflation, and from the under-indexation of the tax brackets. Reagan surfed all these frustrations and was elected in 1980 on a platform to restore a mythical origin of capitalism. The high point was the tax reform of 1986, which put an end to a half-century of strong fiscal progressivity and lowered the top marginal rate to 28%.

This choice would never truly be called into question by the Democrats of the years of Clinton (1992–2000) and Obama (2008–2016), who would stabilize this rate around 40% (twice as low as the average level from 1930–1980), ending with an explosion of both inequality and extraordinary compensations, all this with weak growth (somewhat higher than in Europe, embroiled in other problems) and the stagnation of the incomes of the great majority.

PROGRESSIVE AGENDA

Reagan also decided to freeze the federal minimum wage which, starting from the 1980s, would slowly but surely be nibbled away by inflation (barely more than 7 dollars per hour in 2016, against nearly 11 dollars in 1969). Here again, this new politico-ideological regime has scarcely been mitigated by the alternations of Democrats Clinton and Obama.

The success achieved today by Sanders shows that a good part of America is weary of rising inequality and these pseudo-alternations, and that it intends to reconnect with the progressive agenda and the American egalitarian tradition. Hillary Clinton, who waged a campaign to the left of Barack Obama in 2008, notably on universal health care, appears today as the defender of the status quo, the heiress of the Reagan-Clinton-Obama political regime.

Bernie plainly proposes reestablishing progressive taxation and a raised minimum wage (15 dollars per hour). To that he adds free health care and college, in a country where inequality of access to education has reached unprecedented heights, exposing a gaping chasm within the lulling meritocratic discourse maintained by the system's winners.

In the meantime, the Republican Party descends into a hyper-nationalist discourse, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam (though this religion is virtually absent in the United States), and into a limitless glorification of the fortune of white skin. The judges appointed under Reagan and Bush have blown away any legal limitation on the influence of private money in politics, which uniquely complicates the task of candidates like Sanders. But the new forms of political mobilization and crowdfunding could prevail and bring America into a new political cycle. We are far from the gloomy prophecies on the end of history.

This post has been edited by Terez: 18 February 2016 - 07:40 PM

[worry]

I dunno, I thought he did great a few days back at the Rotary Club.

[Terez]

I forgot that the SC GOP primary will be this Saturday, along with the Nevada Democratic caucuses. And then the following Saturday, it will be the SC Democratic primary and the Nevada GOP caucuses.

[amphibian]

Lotta parallels between that Piketty article and this one I found a while back:

Benjaminstudebaker.com/2016/02/05/why-bernie-vs-hillary-matters-more-than-people-think/

[EmperorMagus]

Is Rubio a retard?
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